 Structural economics can provide a framework for describing and evaluating alternative approaches to environmentally-sound economic development. This structural approach is concerned with physical stocks and flows, including those of natural resources and waste products, and with technological choices, as well as the corresponding costs and prices which are often practically the exclusive focus of the economist's attention. These can all be analyzed using so-called input-output models, and corresponding input-output databases, which have been built for many individual economies and for the world economy as a whole. Industrial ecology is an expanded version of life-cycle engineering which provides a coherent and powerful set of ideas for reducing pollution. Industrial ecology will probably be applied first in affluent, developed countries. Industrial ecology calls for a systematic approach to modifying economic activities in order to substantially reduce the generation of wastes at each stage of production or use. In addition to reducing their own pollution, however, the developed countries will also have to provide assistance for economic development in the South that has a relatively low impact on the environment. This assistance could take the form of a "Marshall Plan" for investing heavily in a package of environmentally-sound development options. It could also take the form of substantial reform to the conventions now governing international trade in order to remove barriers to developing countries' exports of processed raw materials and manufactured goods based on these inputs. Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus (AcMNPV) is a double-stranded DNA virus that expresses several immediate-early genes under the control of different promoters. The expression of one of these transcription units, IE-N, is shown here, by a transient expression assay, to be regulated by both cis- and trans-acting viral elements. The steady-state levels of IE-N mRNA were very abundant soon after infection but were nearly undetectable during the late phase of the viral life cycle. Analysis of the transient expression of a reporter construct driven by the IE-N promoter (IE-NCAT) was conducted to define viral elements which regulate IE-N gene expression. Viral enhancer hr1 and two immediate-early genes, IE-1 and IE-N, were shown to affect relative levels of reporter enzyme activity produced by IE-NCAT. The hr1 enhancer stimulated the expression of IE-NCAT, independent of orientation and position relative to the promoter and in the absence of any trans-acting viral factors. Regulation of IE-NCAT expression by the IE-1 and IE-N genes required less than 290 bp of promoter sequences upstream of the site of transcription initiation and was not dependent upon the hr1 enhancer. Coexpression of the IE-N gene had an autostimulatory effect upon IE-NCAT activity, whereas coexpression of the IE-1 gene reduced levels of reporter activity. The levels of reporter activity measured upon coexpression of either immediate-early gene with IE-NCAT linked to the hr1 enhancer appear to be the combined result of both cis- and trans-regulatory elements influencing expression from IE-NCAT. These results suggest that IE-N gene expression in baculovirus infection may be influenced by the concerted activity of three AcMNPV regulatory elements.

 The greenhouse effect is intrinsically global. Accordingly, effective responses require global coordination. While limited policies have been adopted, notably for phasing out chlorofluorocarbons, there is no clear consensus as to what to do about other greenhouse gases. In this paper, we survey attitudes and policy responses among the nations of the world. Public opinion surveys are consistent in showing that considerable sensitivity to environmental issues exists virtually everywhere. On the other hand, there is acute awareness that other issues, especially economic development, can conflict with global climate-change mitigation goals. In such a state of uncertainty there is a strong argument to be made for implementing policies which are good ideas independent of greenhouse-gas considerations. There is also good reason to expand research. What is feasible depends strongly on present and changing attitudes of the citizens of the world, and of their governments. It is thus critical to follow closely the evolution of attitudes. The kind of work summarized in this paper needs to be updated on a continuing basis, and the results made available routinely to the global policy community. We conclude our review with several recommendations for research designed specifically to reduce uncertainty about costs and institutional issues relating to responses to global climate change. Industrial ecology is a new approach to the industrial design of products and processes and the implementation of sustainable manufacturing strategies. It is a concept in which an industrial system is viewed not in isolation from its surrounding systems but in concert with them. Industrial ecology seeks to optimize the total materials cycle from virgin material to finished material, to component, to product, to waste product, and to ultimate disposal. To better characterize the topic, the National Academy of Sciences convened a colloquium from which were derived a number of salient contributions. This paper sets the stage for the contributions that follow and discusses how each fits into the framework of industrial ecology.Industrial ecology addresses issues that will impact future production, use, and disposal technologies; proper use of the concept should reduce significantly the resources devoted to potential remediation in the future. This cradle-to-reincarnation production philosophy includes industrial processes that are environmentally sound and products that are environmentally safe during use and economically recyclable after use without adverse impact on the environment or on the net cost to society. This will require an industry-university-government round table to set the strategy and agenda for progress.By analogy with natural ecosystems, an industrial ecology system, in addition to minimizing waste production in processes, would maximize the economical use of waste materials and of products at the ends of their lives as inputs to other processes and industries. This possibility can be made real only if a number of potential problems can be solved. These include the design of wastes along with the design of products and processes, the economics of such a system, the internalizing of the costs of waste disposal to the design and choice of processes and products, the effects of regulations intended for other purposes, and problems of responsibility and liability. The various stakeholders in making the effects of industry on the environment more benign will need to adopt some new behaviors if the possibility is to become real.The concept of "industrial economic metabolism" can provide a bridge to better understanding between environmentalists and industry. In nature each individual or species reacts to natural stimuli, competing with others for resources, extending its domain until it loses comparative advantage and comes to equilibrium with an adjacent competitor. Those species that succeed over time flourish; those that do not, diminish or disappear. Nature's rule book has no moral or ethical ingredient beyond self-interest. Corporate metabolisms are remarkably similar to those of nature. They too react to stimuli, collect and use resources, and grow or perish based on how effectively they compete. Corporate management recognizes and responds naturally and efficiently to cost and price signals. Through them it selects resources and converts them into useful products. The efficiency with which this is done is measured by profit, the lifeblood of the corporation and its means of growth. Profit thus provides a discipline on corporate behavior, encouraging efficient performers, and, by its absence, weeding out others. Unfettered by influences other than economics, the path to corporate success is unlikely to be a compassionate one. The dilemma of the manager is that to do what is socially "right" often conflicts with what must be done to survive and prosper. Fortunately, corporations' behavior can be altered by society when their purely economic role comes into conflict with other human values. The environment and the economy are not separate systems but intertwined to form a complex natural and social setting. The human-designed economic system depends on natural resource inputs, and in turn its metabolic wastes can overload the ecological system, threatening the long-term survivability of both. Increasing concern for the environment now gives the farsighted manager new latitude. There are competitive benefits in some pollution prevention. But there are not sufficiently strong forces to correct all current ills. In addition, we must harness the metabolism of the industrial world to the realities of the natural one by recognizing the immense value of depletable natural resources and ecosystems. Considering these resources as "cheap" or "free" encourages their overuse. What is needed are adjustments that price these resources at their true long-term value. Corporations will respond naturally, quickly, and efficiently to such signals. If we can send our metabolic industry the economic signals it can understand, we can retrofit our human economic system to live in harmony with the natural ecosystem of which we are a part. If we do not, nature assuredly will not accommodate our failure by changing its ways.Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are currently used in systems for preservation of perishable foods and medical supplies, increasing worker productivity and consumer comfort, conserving energy and increasing product reliability. As use of CFCs is phased out due to concerns of ozone depletion, a variety of new chemicals and technologies will be needed to serve these needs. In choosing alternatives, industry must balance concerns over safety and environmental acceptability and still meet the performance characteristics of the current CFC-based products. About 60% of projected CFC demand will either be eliminated by improved conservation practices or will be satisfied by nonfluorocarbon alternatives. With current technology, the only viable alternatives meeting the safety, performance, and environmental requirements for the remaining 40% of demand are fluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HCFCs and HFCs possess many of the desirable properties of the CFCs, but because of the, hydrogen, they react with hydroxyl in the lower atmosphere. This results in shorter atmospheric lifetimes compared to CFCs and reduces their potential to contribute to stratospheric ozone depletion or global warming; HFCs do not contain chlorine and have no potential to destroy ozone. This paper provides an overview of challenges faced by industry, regulators, and society in general in continuing to meet societal needs and consumer demands while reducing risk to the environment without compromising consumer or worker safety.Until quite recently, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had been considered the safest and most benign of industrial chemicals. Their physical and chemical properties made them an integral part of manufacturing processes for electronics products. The recognition that CFCs destroy the stratospheric ozone layer, with consequent enormous consequences to all forms of life on earth, has led to international agreements which will end virtually all production of these materials by the end of the century and possibly before. This impending phaseout of CFCs has caused electronics manufacturers to examine alternative chemicals and processing methods. This manuscript documents the steps AT&T has taken to reach its goal of 100% phaseout of CFCs by year-end 1994. These actions include top-down management support with combined bottom-up thrusts, an internal information gathering and dissemination center, internal technology transfer, and external corporate activism.Long-term ecological sustainability is incompatible with an open materials cycle. The toxic heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, silver, uranium/plutonium, zinc) exemplify the problem. These metals are being mobilized and dispersed into the environment by industrial activity at a rate far higher than by natural processes. Apart from losses to the environment resulting from mine wastes and primary processing, many of these metals are utilized in products that are inherently dissipative. Examples of such uses include fuels, lubricants, solvents, fire retardants, stabilizers, flocculants, pigments, biocides, and preservatives. To close the materials cycle, it will be necessary to accomplish two things. The first is to ban or otherwise discourage (e.g., by means of high severance taxes on virgin materials) dissipative uses of the above type. The second is to increase the efficiency of recycling of those materials that are not replaceable in principle. Here, also, economic instruments (such as returnable deposits) can be effective in some cases. A systems view of the problem is essential to assess the cost and effectiveness of alternative strategies.In the manufacture of chemical feedstocks and subsequent processing into derivatives and materials, the U. S. chemical industry sets the current standard of excellence for technological competitiveness. This world-class leadership is attributed to the innovation and advancement of chemical engineering process technology. Whether this status is sustained over the next decade depends strongly on meeting increasingly demanding challenges stimulated by growing concerns about the safe production and use of chemicals without harmful impacts on the environment. To comply with stringent environmental regulations while remaining economically competitive, industry must exploit alternative benign starting materials and develop environmentally neutral industrial processes. Opportunities are described for development of environmentally compatible alternatives and substitutes for some of the most abundantly produced. potentially hazardous industrial chemicals now labeled as " high-priority toxic chemicals. For several other uniquely important commodity chemicals where no economically competitive, environmentally satisfactory, nontoxic alternative starting material exists. We advocate the development of new dynamic processes for the on-demand generation of toxic chemicals. In this general concept, which obviates mass storage and transportation of chemicals, toxic raw materials are produced in real time, where possible, from less-hazardous starting materials and then chemically transformed immediately into the final product. As a selected example for semiconductor technology, recent progress is reviewed for the on-demand production of arsine in turnkey electrochemical generators. Innovation of on-demand chemical generators and alternative processes provide rich areas for environmentally responsive chemical engineering processing research and development for next-generation technology.The potential for improved industrial efficiency is great and a substantial part of that potential is being realized in the course of events. With new technology and increasing affluence, the composition of production is changing such that energy and materials consumption is growing more slowly than the economy. Through new technologies and appropriate public policies, the energy intensities of all production processes should also continue to decline. Potential difficulties facing this relatively rosy scenario are also discussed.EPA's (Environmental Protection Agency) Green Lights Program for energy-efficient lighting illustrates the economic benefits and the market-transforming value of a pollution prevention philosophy. Using technologies available today, and assuming current prices, this program is expected to reduce air pollution 5 %, while saving the nation's businesses up to $20 billion in electric bills every year. However, these pollution prevention and savings estimates may be low. As Green Lights transforms the market for lighting services by creating a higher demand for better technologies at lower costs. the program will likely achieve even larger pollution reductions and electricity savings.The disposal of polymer solid waste by means other than landfilling is necessary. The various approaches-source reduction, incineration, degradation, composting, and recycling-all have their roles and must be employed in an integrated manner. Where appropriate, recycling has ecological advantages, but its application is dependent upon the feasibility of collection, sorting, and/or compatibilization of resulting mixtures to produce economically viable products. The practice should be encouraged by societal or legislative pressure which recognizes that the cost of disposal should be a factor in determining the cost of a product.Interest in biodegradable plastics made from renewable resources has increased significantly in recent years. PHBV (polyhydroxybutyrate-polyhydroxyvalerate) copolymers are good examples of this type of materials. This paper provides an overview of the manufacturing process, properties, biodegradability, and application/commercial issues associated with PHBV copolymers. They are naturally produced by bacteria from agricultural raw materials, and they can be processed to make a variety of useful products, where their biodegradability and naturalness are quite beneficial. PHBV copolymers are still in the first stage of commercialization. But they are presented in this paper as an example of how new technology can help meet society's needs for plastics and a clean environment.Economies are sometimes viewed as analogous to ecological systems in which "everything is connected to everything else." In complex modern economics, the question arises whether the market mechanism can appropriately coordinate all the interconnections or whether instead some supramarket body is needed to coordinate the vast web of human activities. This study describes how an idealized decentralized competitive market in fact coordinates the different economic organisms in an efficient manner. The problems of pollution and other externalities can undo the efficient outcome unless corrected by appropriate property rights or corrective taxes. But in closing the economic circle, the internalized economy does not actually need to close the natural cycles by linking up all physical flows through recycling.Industrial ecology will need to develop fundamentally new approaches to reducing, reusing, and recycling wastes. Industrial ecology will also require an analytic framework for examining the implications for the economic system as a whole of each potential web of industrial changes. A suitable framework is furnished by structural economics, which situates the economy within the physical world. This approach is based on dynamic analysis rather than static concepts of equilibrium, and optimization assumptions are used selectively rather than as the general solution mechanism. Input-output economics, an important formal model within structural economics, can trace the stocks and flows of energy and other materials from extraction through production and consumption to recycling or disposal. An input-output computation, including wastes. is presented; it illustrates the separate but integrated analysis of physical stocks and flows and of prices and costs. This paper also describes the major advances that have been made in the last decade in the extension of input-output economics to address increasingly complex questions, notably the fully dynamic physical/price/income model and the engineering/input-output data base. Economists need to be able to assess the costs of cleaning up and to develop incentive schemes to increase the likelihood this will happen. To do this, economists need to take on the difficult "how" questions that concern industrial ecologists since the cost, and indeed the wider implications, of cleaning up depends upon how it is done. Structural economics, and modern input-output models and data bases, in particular, can help meet this challenge.This report first briefly reviews the history and lessons learned from our legislation regarding protection of our environment. Then, these lessons are combined with principles of general jurisprudence to suggest avenues for regulation of industrial ecology. Even though the law has important limitations, it can be used as a tool to identify national goals and to promote their achievement by means of incentives or sanctions.Carcinogenic risk assessments are based on extrapolating from high-dose chronic rodent-feeding studies to human-exposure levels. A serious problem is that about half of all substances tested at their respective maximum tolerated dose (MTD) are found to induce cancer. The MTD as currently defined has been criticized because it may stimulate cell proliferation in susceptible tissues. Such chemically induced mitogenesis is postulated to increase the probability that neoplasia will develop at the affected site. It is proposed that, in the development of an MTD for a given substance, chemically induced mitogenesis be considered an undesirable toxic manifestation. Hence, mitogenesis should not be induced by a substance fed at its true MTD. Since MTDs determined in this fashion are likely to be lower than those developed using current criteria, an added level of protection is introduced by employing a safety factor similar to that used now in determining acceptable daily intakes for noncarcinogenic food additives. In calculating acceptable daily intakes, the usual safety factor is 100; i.e., the acceptable daily intake is set at 1% of the no-observed-effect level. Hence it is proposed that the acceptable daily level of exposure to a substance that does not induce cancer at its MTD as defined herein be set at 1 % of that MTD. On the other hand, a chemical that induces cancer at its MTD as defined herein would continue to be regulated as is customary now.For industrial ecology to become a reality and flourish, many talents must be integrated into a single system. Basically, there are four types of technologists who must be brought together to create a system: (i) technical specialist those that can take the state of knowledge to the state of the art and eventually to the state of practice; (ii) technical "generalists" those that can integrate diverse technologies into a comprehensive solution; (iii) technical managers-those that can lead technical efforts to an optimal solution (these people must have management skills in their area); and (iv) program managers-those that can understand and merge the overall efforts of technology, business, schedule, and finance. The initial questions for industrial ecology in the 1990s are: Do these people presently exist in industry? What will be needed to bring new people (recent graduates) into the field of industrial ecology? For this decade, the people who will develop and lead the concept of industrial ecology are presently in industry. However, certainly few, if any, today understand the concept of industrial ecology as a system issue. Training will be needed for these practitioners of the 1990s so that the overall goal and the mechanism for achieving industrial ecology are understood. A three-tiered approach is presented to define the education/training needed, to conduct training on an industry basis, and then to initiate the training to be done within a corporation. The three tiers propose the use of universities. professional societies, and industry groups. Having universities participate in the training of the 1990s industrial ecologists will give universities insight to the development of industrial ecology, and access to industry needs so that curriculum can be initiated to educate the industrial ecologists of the future.The need for a new profession devoted to environmental matters is asserted. The qualities of such a profession are sketched, and it is argued that new initiatives in environmental education are needed in the form of graduate, professional programs with primary emphasis on practice. An example 2-year program is presented. A fundamental requirement is scientific competence, undergraduate preparation in the sciences or engineering is mandatory. The graduate curriculum itself is built on three primary cores: environmental science and engineering, business and management, and public policy. Additionally, an environmental round table is proposed as a focal point for academic, industrial, governmental, and public discussion on environmental matters. The round table would provide oversight for the professional educational program and an affiliated research institute.The societal issues relevant to the subject of industrial ecology call for the participation of broadly educated engineers who can integrate their technology with the social, political, environmental, and economic aspects of its applications. This increase in the responsibility of traditional engineering to include the end-use, obsolescence, and disposition of technical products signals a new era for engineering education.Transitions in dealing with the root causes of environmental problems are advocated to achieve environmental sustainability. These transformations include (i) a demographic transition, (ii) a technology transition that includes the "green" automobile, (iii) an economic transition to one in which prices reflect full environmental costs, (iv) a transition in social equity, and (v) an institutional transition to different arrangements among governments, businesses, and peoples. Businessmen and environmentalists are urged to work together in the next decade to make the environment a personal issue, to call for government action, to recognize the environmental challenges, and to commit to accountability in order to leave a legacy of hope to the twenty-first century.Pollution is a complex equation, compounded by population, rate of consumption, and toxic emissions per unit of resource consumed. This article defines industrial ecology as a management science that focuses a corporation's expertise on the third variable. Thus, industrial ecology is involved with changing the efficiency of machines, not just changing the law or a firm's compliance strategy. This article also explores how this emphasis allows a profoundly different orientation than the end-of-the-pipe regulatory approach of the last 20 yr.Industrial ecology is the network of all industrial processes as they may interact with each other and live off each other, not only in the economic sense, but also in the sense of direct use of each other's material and energy wastes and products. This paper, which reflects upon the papers and discussions at the National Academy of Sciences Colloquium on Industrial Ecology on May 20-21, 1991, is structured around 10 questions. Do sociotechnical systems have long-range environmental goals? How is the concept of industrial ecology useful and timely? What are environmental technologies" Is there a systematic way to choose among alternatives for improving the ecology of technologies? What are ways to measure performance with respect to industrial ecology? What are the sources and rates of innovation in environmental technologies? How is the market economy performing with respect to industrial ecology? What will be the effect of the ecological modernization of the developed nations of the North on the developing countries of the South? How can creative interaction on environmental issues be fostered among diverse social groups? How must research and education change? The last 20 years have seen a marked increase in environmental policy as a strategic tool in corporate policy. World class manufacturers in particular have woven environmenta concerns into their corporate culture, their marketing strategies and their operations, to great effect. What they are finding is that waste reduction techniques, life cycle analysis and cradle-to-grave concern in the design process yield unexpected rewards. A case in point is Kodak, a study of which reveals the many benefits available to a company that wholly integrates environmental concerns into its corporate mandate.Environmental as well as economic policy decisions may be supported effectively by means of ecobalancing procedures which compare products, processes, systems or services comprehensively to find alternatives with less environmental burden. Ecological indicator categories to be considered in a future standard procedure of ecobalancing are described and examples are given.Recently there has been a fundamental shift in the way large companies think about their corporate missions. Prior to the 1970s, most companies were simply concerned with profitability. In the past two decades, a new management concept appeared and included high-performance, total quality management with a higher awareness of social and environmental responsibility. These concepts were also coupled with an increased awareness of the demand for a cleaner environment, the higher cost of energy, and a scarcity of some natural resources. Recent surveys have shown that most people want to protect the environment, even if they have to pay higher prices. This verdict from public opinion polling indicates that the manufacturing industry has to look carefully at the impact of its operations and products on the environment if the industry is to maintain market share and, in some extreme cases, stay in business. To meet this challenge, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) was introduced to examine the environmental impact of a product from its birth in the R&D laboratory through manufacturing and marketing to its ''ultimate fate'' after the completion of its useful life. A great need now exists for the development and application of an analytical methodology for LCA that could be acceptable to the business community, the regulating agencies, and the public at large. LCA is an effective tool that can be used to reduce environmental stresses and potential depletion of our natural resources. Most environmental economists and policy analysts believe that people in the United States, as well as in other industrialized countries, have grossly underestimated the value of environmental resources, therefore inducing tremendous levels of stress on and abuse of air, water, and land resources, as well as mineral and energy reserves. A true accounting of the monetary and non-monetary costs associated with the total life of products will undoubtedly raise the level of awareness. A level of commitment to achieve our ultimate goal of environmentally sustainable development will depend on programs such as life cycle management of products and responsible care. This program, in turn, will allow future generations to meet their own needs. The great challenges of the 1990s must include making significant strides toward clean technology and pollution prevention and managing our production and consumption of products in a manner that meets the concepts of sustainable development and responsible care toward the environment. This paper addresses the critical issues related to the application of LCA as a tool for working toward meeting these goals.Four essential components are highlighted which must be considered when attempting to ecologically restructure economies: cradle to grave analysis of goods and services, ecological guidelines and indicators, the market focus of policies, and true cost pricing of goods and services.Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a method which allows the development of objective criteria and procedures for the assessment of the environmental impacts of products, based on the total life cycle of the product (from cradle to grave). Packaging materials are taken as an example in order to demonstrate the principle of "eco-balancing" or comparing different products which fulfil the same function. This comparative assessment is the real strength of LCA. The criteria to be used are described and a general way of performing an LCA is presented. As an example, different packaging used for milk is analysed by means of LCA and eco-balancing.The concept of product life-cycle assessment is described and its application to pollution prevention and product stewardship programs is discussed.

 The potential for natural C sinks to be manipulated by human means to mitigate climate change has been discussed in the environmental literature for more than a decade. There now appears to be little doubt that changes in global land-use and land management practices could significantly slow the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. As a result, some forward-thinking companies and governmental bodies are acting now upon the biotic mitigation literature by developing actual mitigation projects. It is now national policy in the United States to encourage such activities. The future of C offsets, however, is unclear, due in large measure to lagging scientific knowledge. Large-scale private action likely will await regulatory signals that action will be accepted as a legitimate mitigation measure, perhaps providing retroactive regulatory credit, a source of tradeable emission entitlements, or credit against yet-to-be-established C taxes. The practical potential of most biotic mitigation approaches is unknown, and the entire concept remains subject to political challenge domestically and abroad. The ability to predict C benefits of individual mitigation projects is often tenuous and subject to debate. To allow expansion of C offset practices as quickly as possible, and hopefully to fund projects with many ancillary environmental and economic benefits, policymakers and project developers desperately need physical and social science data to be provided in a useable form.The author discusses factors likely to affect Indonesia's participation in global climate change mitigation negotiations. These include Indonesia's performance to date in the international arena and its track record for compliance with agreements; domestic challenges such as demographic pressures, economic growth, deforestation, and energy consumption; the institutional culture of the government; and the activities and limitations of the legal system, non-governmental organizations, and business. The author concludes that, while the Indonesian government may be a vocal advocate for 'sustainable development', it has little ability to follow through on large-scale commitments to international efforts because of issues It faces at home. Flexible polyurethane foams were prepared using naturally-derived materials as alternatives to conventional auxiliary blowing agents. This research was based on the concept held by some that natural chemicals are better as a part of industrial ecology. The authors have attempted to define the foam manufacturing suitability of natural chemicals, but have not defined or defended the policy implications of such choices. Natural chemicals are often less suitable than those refined from petroleum and may then need some environmental credit related to greater discharge to be viable substitutes. Modest decreases in density (relative to foams without any auxiliary blowing agent) were obtained with the addition of solid CO2, but other physical properties were not measured. It is unclear whether the reduction in density is a result of the phase change of CO2 from solid to liquid within the polyurethane cell matrix or simply a bubbling effect of CO2 in solution causing voids within the final product. Although it was anticipated that the high boiling point of limonene, from citrus peels, would negate effectiveness as an auxiliary blowing agent, there were analogous decreases in foam density. The observed effect might be rationalized by the significant vapor pressure of limonene at temperatures lower than the boiling point. The limonene may be swept from the foam system coincident with the loss of in situ generated CO2. Isoprene, naturally emitted from deciduous vegetation as well as from the combustion of carbonaceous fuels, provides a useful, if not complete, range of foam densities and may then be a partial substitute for halogenated auxiliary blowing agents. Switching from methylene chloride to isoprene as the auxiliary blowing agent of choice would immediately decrease organic emissions from polyurethane foam plants by 20 percent (molecular weight effect). Regulation as a VOC and the residual acrid odor may be potential drawbacks to commercial utilization of isoprene. The functions of packaging are derived from product requirements, thus for insight into the environmental effects of packaging the actual combination of product and package has to be evaluated along the production and distribution system. This extension to all related environmental aspects adds realism to the environmental analysis and provides guidance for design while preventing a too detailed investigation of parts of the production system. This approach is contrary to current environmental studies where packaging is always treated as an independent object, neglecting the more important environmental effects of the product that are influenced by packaging. The general analysis and quantification stages for this approach are described, and the currently available methods for the assessment of environmental effects are reviewed. To limit the workload involved in an environmental assessment, a step-by-step analysis and the use of feedback is recommended. First the dominant environmental effects of a particular product and its production and distribution are estimated. Then, on the basis of these preliminary results, the appropriate system boundaries are chosen and the need for further or more detailed environmental analysis is determined. For typical food and drink applications, the effect of different system boundaries on the outcome of environmental assessments and the advantage of the step-by-step analysis of the food supply system is shown. It appears that, depending on the consumer group, different advice for reduction of environmental effects has to be given. Furthermore, because of interrelated environmental effects of the food supply system, the continuing quest for more detailed and accurate analysis of the package components is not necessary for improved management of the environmental effects of packaging.Quantitative life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method allocating the environmental impacts of the whole life cycle of a product to the functioning of that product. The scientific basis of the method is still being elaborated. In this paper a proposal is made to improve the scientific basis of one specific step of the method: the aggregation of potentially toxic emissions of substances in one score for human toxicity and two scores for ecotoxicity. The aggregation is based on multimedia environmental models of Mackay simulating the behaviour of substances in the environment, and on toxicity data such as acceptable resp. tolerable daily intake (ADI resp. TDI) and no observed effect concentration (NOEC) per substance. It is proposed to apply models describing the environmental fate of toxic substances in LCAS Of products. In addition, it is proposed to adopt the concept of a reference substance, as used in the ozone depletion potential (ODP) and the global warming potential (GWP), to assess and aggregate emissions of potentially toxic substances.The development of the gastrointestinal nematode Heligmosomoides polygyrus was studied in the mouse. Levels of production of acetylcholinesterase and proteases were measured in excretory/secretory products of various stages of the parasite. The production of acetylcholinesterase was found to be maximal between days 4 and 6 post-infection, corresponding to the fourth larval stage of the parasite's life-cycle. Analysis of proteolytic activity revealed both quantitative and qualitative differences between the stages. Quantitative examination showed a maximal concentration of proteolytic enzymes in the early third larval stage (L3). Qualitative analysis revealed L3-associated molecules at 96, 15 and 8 kDa, L4-associated molecules at 58 and 33 kDa and adult-associated molecules at 116, 102, 39 and 25 kDa. A number appeared to be shared by all stages (18, 16 and 13 kDa), whilst others (76 and 42 kDa) appeared to be associated with the late L4/early adult parasite. The biological and immunological implications of variation in the production of proteases and acetylcholinesterase during the development of H. polygyrus are discussed.Technology and colour are viewed as interfaces between the environment, humans and human activity. Examples are provided of ways of facilitating and improving access to and use of colours by commercial users of colour coatings through improvements in the accuracy of measuring and displaying colour. By analogy, the task of providing effective interfaces within the coatings industry, between the coatings industry and the environment and between the coatings industry and the public and political domain are discussed. Examples of information shortfalls are cited to illustrate how distortions arise. Examples of more effective, integrated technological, organisational and political interfacing are culled from the author's experiences.The inheritance of an extrachromosomal 6-kb element has been examined in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. A single base pair difference in the cytochrome b gene from the 6-kb element of two different cloned lines of the parasite was identified, and used as a marker in a cross in the mosquito stage of the life cycle. Analysis of 59 individual hybrid oocysts resulting from this cross clearly demonstrated that inheritance of the cytochrome b gene was uniparental. This observation makes it possible to investigate the inheritance and evolution of cytoplasmic traits, including certain forms of drug resistance, in natural populations of this parasite.

 The estimation of the costs and benefits of national climate change mitigation has acquired primary importance with the ratification of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). The FCCC requires that each signatory prepare and complete inventories of greenhouse gases, and it calls for each party to formulate, implement, publish and regularly update national programs containing measures to mitigate climate change. In addition, it states that the developing countries may propose projects for financing with an estimate of the incremental costs and benefits of reducing emissions. Another article of the Convention notes that developing country parties may seek funds from developed countries for climate change mitigation activities. The Convention thus requires the estimation of incremental costs, and of the amount of fund transfers required for stabilizing emissions growth.Since use of natural gas emits less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other fossil fuels and CO2 is an important greenhouse gas, policies to encourage greater natural gas use are often touted as one strategy to reduce global warming. In this analysis, we examine the impacts of lower natural gas prices, brought about by government initiatives or market forces, on greenhouse gas emissions. The most surprising result of this analysis is that lower gas prices appear to have little impact on US greenhouse gas emission trends. However, lower gas prices and commensurate overall lower fossil energy costs do defer energy conservation efforts, stimulate more energy use economy-wide, and may displace cleaner renewable sources of energy. These results argue for a careful examination of attributes needed to align policy options intended to increase efficient gas use and those intended to lower overall greenhouse gas emissions. Life cycle assessment, a method for the assessment of the environmental impacts of products, is briefly explained. A mathematical method to perform the calculations and to identify dominant aspects in the environmental load of a product is developed. The results are used to derive expressions for a marginal analysis which can be used for improvement analysis. In this way, a designer or process engineer can determine which processes or materials to consider first when (re)designing a product. The method developed can also be used to estimate the reliability of the determination of the environmental load of the products analyzed in terms of the reliability of the data of the processes involved.Some problems of the international co-operation between the Parents Region countries are analysed from the perspective of one of the Russian participants-the Institute of Industrial Ecology Problems of the North, the Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences.Opportunities for pollution prevention can be identified from three distinct perspectives. Waste audits identify flow rates and compositions of materials that could be targets for pollution prevention. Life cycle analyses examine individual products, determining rates of waste generation, energy consumption and raw material usage. Studies in industrial ecology examine the uses and wastes associated with particular materials. This paper will review these three frameworks (waste audits, life cycle analyses, industrial ecology) for identifying pollution prevention opportunities. Each method has different strengths and weaknesses, but regardless of whether the focus is on wastes, products or materials, systematic evaluation of pollution prevention opportunities is a critical first step in minimizing environmental burdens. If life cycle assessment (LCA) is to become a widely respected and practised environmental management tool, common guidelines and a policy of openness need to be adopted, ECN conference delegates heard recently.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method for making a comprehensive evaluation of all the material and energy resources needed for a product or service during its physical life, as well as the emissions involved. At KCL, a dedicated computer program has been developed for LCA purposes. One of its first applications concerns newsprint. The analysis is based on systematically collected data. Two cases of maximized maximized collection rate are studied, the first involving greater paper re-use and the second energy recovery from waste paper. These are compared with the reference condition in Europe (Germany) in 1990. The LCA inventory calculations show that, if the landfilling rate is to be reduced, it is ecologically preferable to use more waste paper for energy recovery rather than to maximize recycling. Besides carbon dioxide balance, several other emission parameters (though not all) support this conclusion.Renewable raw materials provide ecological advantages such as renewability, protection of limited resources, unlimited availability, ease of decomposition of end-products, as well as reintegration of material. In the public discussion the above-mentioned characteristics are increasingly examined from an ecological point of view. Do they require too much fertilizer and pesticides? Are there any impacts on the ecological system such as emissions to the groundwater and damages by erosion? Within certain limits - as the social-economic sector is not taken into account - the LCA-method proves to be a means of investigation whereby ecological processes can be evaluated in a comprehensive way from ''cradle to grave''. It is, however, stressed that LCA is not always carried out uniformly. Especially the LCA of renewable raw material shows considerable deviations resulting from the different evaluation of agricultural residue. The term ''waste'' in agricultural and industrial systems is discussed. By using the example of the Malaysian agricultural production of oil palms in plantations and palm oil in oil mills it is demonstrated that there exists an almost closed recycling system of all the agricultural residue and by-products. Furthermore, the paper deals with the closed CO2 loop in agricultural systems.Cleaner manufacturing is an increasing goal for industry in Europe for both existing and new facilities. The central issue is, how does one quantify cleaner? Toward that end, many university and industry groups in Europe are applying the principles of life cycle analysis (LCA). They also seek to develop new methods for use in the life cycle analysis process. These efforts fit in three categories 1) life cycle inventory or characterization, 2) the simplification algorithms to reduce the complexity of life cycle inventory to a single environmental factor, and 3) the policy or process utilization of these information. The review of activities in the field of determining what are cleaner manufacturing alternatives was conducted in five European countries and the European Union (EU) and for the period spanning 1992-1994. The purpose was to summarize and to establish mechanisms for U.S. engineers and scientists to begin collaboration with these research programs. Finally, some observations are made which compare the U.S. pollution prevention thrust with the European system for life cycle analysis and ecolabelling as a means to achieve environmental improvements.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a theoretically attractive approach for evaluating resource consumption and environmental mental emissions associated with the production, use, and disposal of products. Current LCA guidelines suggest adherence to conventions that can significantly affect results. Conventions of special importance in LCAs of forest products are those pertaining to sustainability of natural resources, recyclability and biodegradability of products, and use of renewable energy in manufacturing processes. More general methodological issues (e.g., relating emissions to impacts, site-to-site variability in loads, data quality) are also important in forest-product LCAs.The paper discusses the Environmental Management System (EMS) in termes of its implementation within a company, of product development and of the benefits resulting there from. This is followed by a discussion of Life-Cycle Assessment, both in terms of paints, their production, raw materials, packaging materials and solvent emissions. The paper concludes with a brief review of Eco-labelling systems.Life Cycle Assessments cannot solve our problems and cannot relieve us from decision making. LCA ist a tool to check possible changes in a system e.g. for their contribution to sustainable development. They can help to make decisions based on a better understanding of the pros and cons. Protection of sensible company know how in life cycle inventories was achieved through ISOPA, the European Isooyanate Producers Association. Advantages from use of polyurethanes are shown with examples (energy balances) taken from literature.This paper describes a technique to identify the effects on potential global warning of waste, of both energy and materials, in the areas of refrigeration and air-conditioning. Such equipment always uses energy and generally contains an chemical driving fluid. The calculation converts emissions of the driving fluids and the energy used to run the equipment into the equivalent Warning Impact (TEWI). Examples show that the switch from CFCs to HFCs should result in marked reductions in the potential for global warning from refrigeration and air-conditioning and that the TEWIs of hermetically sealed systems are influenced more by energy efficiency than the effect of total loss of the driving fluid. The technique may be applied with equal facility in areas other than refrigeration.An imlementation of life-cycle analysis (LCA) for energy systems is presented and applied to two renewable energy systems (wind turbines and building-integrated photovoltaic modules) and compared with coal plants.Popcorn as a packing material was examined as an alternative to polystyrene chips on the basis of energy requirements and load of pollutants to air, water and soil. The analysis included maize production, popcorn manufacture and disposal of the waste packing (by incineration) to generate heat. Popcorn production requires 2.0-3.3 times less energy than polystyrene chips and causes 2.6-4.7 lower air pollutant emissions per kilogram of packing material. However, as popcorn is 4.6 times denser than polystyrene chips, emissions to the air per cubic metre of packing material range from 0% (if the material is composted after use) to 80% (if maize is imported from the USA) higher for popcorn than for polystyrene. Popcorn packing production causes more water pollution than polystyrene because of drainage of nitrates, phosphates and pesticides to the ground water. If, in the future, popcorn or other bio-products are to be used as environment friendly packing materials, their volumetric weight will have to be reduced by increasing the expansion factor, which will reduce the density and hence the transport and postage costs.The work presented here demonstrates the existence of statistically identifiable groups of consumers within the population with differentiable gasoline expenditure levels. The existence of these differences in gasoline expenditure levels is demonstrated through examination of urban consumers in the southern region of the USA and US rural consumers as a proxy for southern regional rural consumers. Current work in the analysis of energy end-use patterns indicates that changes in socioeconomic characteristics can lead to substantial changes in the demand for energy. The groups identified in this work have been linked to a developmental description of the formation and maturation of the family unit, known as a lifecycle. The majority of previous studies of consumer demand for gasoline have been performed with aggregate data on a state, regional or national basis. As a result household characteristics, such as age distribution within the household, which have been shown to play an important role in the determination of levels of other transport services, have not been included in previous analyses of the derived household demand for gasoline. Incorporating these factors into an analysis should be useful from a policy perspective, as well as from the perspective of improving forecast reliability.Life-cycle assessment is increasingly being recognized as an important tool for determining the environmental impacts. of products and packaging. A complete life-cycle assessment consists of three components: life-cycle inventory, impact assessment, and improvement assessment. The impact assessment methodology is still relatively undeveloped and controversial; however, the life-cycle inventory methodology is well established. Life-cycle inventory provides useful information on the quantities of energy and resources consumed and environmental releases associated with product and packaging systems. This article illustrates the types of useful information that are obtained from a life-cycle inventory and shows how the information can be analyzed and used to target areas for improving products in terms of reducing energy usage, resource usage, and environmental releases.A previous life cycle analysis (LCA) compared the reusable cloth diaper and disposable paper diaper with respect to energetics and environmental effects during manufacture, consumer use. and disposal. However, data are lacking on the first phase of the LCA - the chemical and natural resource inputs required to plant, maintain. and harvest cotton lands for the cloth diaper and softwood forests for the paper diaper In this inventory study, data for cotton and southern softwood production in the United States were compiled in terms of the following inputs: irrigation water, fuel, fertilizers, biocides, soil amendments, and harvest aids. Inputs required for cotton fiber generally exceeded those for paper fiber Depending on the specific growing region, production of 1 kg of cotton fiber requires up to four orders of magnitude more irrigation water than 1 kg of diaper pulp. Chemical and natural resource inputs were expressed on the basis of 1,000 equivalent diaperings for commercially laundered cloth, home-laundered cloth, and paper diapers using assumptions for the fiber content of diapers, the life span of the cloth diaper, and a market share estimate for home- and commercially laundered cloth diapers. On this basis, cloth diapering consumes about four times more fertilizer, 27 times more biocide, and 450 times more irrigation water than the paper diaper system. Production of softwood pulpwood for the paper diaper consumed about three times more fuel than for cotton. Biocide requirements for 1 kg of cotton fiber were up to 500 times higher, with several applications required per year, compared to 2 to 3 applications required over a 24-year period for softwood. Fertilizer inputs for cotton were up to 150 times greater than for softwood. Lime and harvest aids were generally not used on softwood forests, but were required in amounts of 84 and 2 g, respectively, for the production of 1 kg of cotton. The dataset suggests an environmental trade-off exists among the diapering systems; no one diapering system is superior in terms of required chemical and natural resource inputs.Currently, reducing VOC emissions is a major activity for surface coaters. This paper examines the often ill-understood driving forces behind this activity and asks how far the trend should continue; diminishing returns in VOC emissions eventually becoming offset by environmental or other compromises whichever route of control is chosen. The difference between VOC's smog forming potentials is discussed and the potential environmental benefits of simple based solvent-solvent reformulation are shown. Combining this with end-of-pipe emission controls is shown to give a predictable, highly effective and (for medium to large coating users) economically attractive way forward.The malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum can only synthesize pyrimidine nucleotides via the de novo pathway which is therefore a suitable target for development of antimalarial drugs. New assay procedures have been developed using high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) which enable concurrent measurement of pyrimidine intermediates in malaria. Synchronized parasites growing in erythrocytes were pulse-labeled with [C-14] bicarbonate at 6-h intervals around the 48-h asexual life cycle. Analysis of malarial extracts by HPLC showed that incorporation of [C-14]bicarbonate into pyrimidine nucleotides was maximal during the transition from trophozoites to schizonts. The reaction, N-carbamyl-L-aspartate --> L-dihydroorotate (CA-asp --> DHO) catalyzed by malarial dihydroorotase is inhibited by L-6-thiodihydroorotate (TDHO) in vitro (K-i = 6.5 mu M), and TDHO, as the free acid or methyl ester, induces a major accumulation of CA-asp in malaria. Atovaquone, a naphthoquinone, is a moderate inhibitor of dihydroorotate dehydrogenase in vitro (K-i = 27 mu M) but induces major accumulations of CA-asp and DHO. Pyrazofurin induces accumulation of orotate and orotidine in malaria, consistent with inhibition of orotidine 5'-monophosphate (OMP) decarboxylase with subsequent dephosphorylation of the OMP accumulated. Although TDHO, atovaquone, and pyrazofurin arrest the growth of P. falciparum, only moderate decreases in UTP, CTP, and dTTP were observed. 5-Fluoroorotate also arrests the growth of P. falciparum with major accumulations of 5-fluorouridine mono-, di-, and triphosphates and the most significant inhibition of de novo biosynthesis of pyrimidine nucleotides.Life cycle assessment, a method for the assessment of the environmental impacts of products, is briefly explained. A mathematical method to perform the calculations and to identify dominant aspects in the environmental load of a product is developed. The results are used to derive expressions for a marginal analysis which can be used for improvement analysis. In this way, a designer or process engineer can determine which processes or materials to consider first when (re)designing a product. The method developed can also be used to estimate the reliability of the determination of the environmental load of the products analyzed in terms of the reliability of the data of the processes involved.Producing constructed facilities of the highest quality in a cost-effective environment will benefit not only owners and end users, but also all participants engaged in the conception, design, construction, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, or decommission phase of its life cycle. Cost-effective and top-quality facilities can be conceived, designed, built, and operated if these activities are not performed in a vacuum, but rather, performed in a life-cycle context. Concurrent engineering is a philosophy, which is conductive to true life-cycle analysis. It brings together, from project inception, multiple individuals to address all angles of a project and enables the accumulation of knowledge and information so as to reduce downstream risks and anticipate constructability, operability, and maintainability expectations. Aspects of concurrent engineering are already practiced in the architecture/engineering-construction (A/E/C) industry in the form of Total Quality Management (TQM), constructability reviews, and partnering. Other aspects like multifunctional team formation, macrolevel reorganization, and computer-based cooperative and distributed design still have not been adopted. This paper suggests that the A/E/C industry should continue adopting more facets of the concurrent engineering paradigm. Concurrent engineering can turn the industry's high degree of fragmentation and specialization into a strength, as opposed to a current debility.In the late 1980s the demands for a more ecological life style and sustainability set off intense research for methods to analyse and assess the environmental impact of products and systems. The methodology crystallizing from this research is called life cycle assessment (LCA). This paper presents the concept, methodology, applications and present status of LCA. LCA as applied to food production systems is discussed in terms of needs, special demands on methodology, the studies that have been performed and ongoing activities.A comprehensive nonlinear programming model, MIMES, for the optimization of linked material and energy flow systems is presented. The model is generic, intended for systems that can be described by materials and energy balances but where the details of phase transitions and chemical reactions can be omitted. It fills a niche between energy systems engineering and process flowsheeting models. Issues suitable for analysis by the model range from energy conservation in industrial plants, specific industries or industrial subsectors to municipal waste management and fuels a id materials life cycle analysis. MIMES is implemented on PC (386/486). The mod is demonstrated tor a paper production line in a paper mill. This example shows how the model can be used for joint analysis of energy and water conservation, substitution of energy carriers, and utilization of waste heat outside the system.Life-cycle analysis (LCA) has been described by its proponents as an environmental panacea, capable of providing engineers, designers, and managers with everything that they need to make environmentally correct decisions. Unfortunately, the goals of the technique and the reality of its application are very different. Like any analytical technique, its application requires the imposition of assumptions to accommodate limitations in budgets, resources, and know-how. Furthermore, the evaluation of the analytical results introduces questions of strategy and priority that are currently unresolved. Thus, while the concepts underlying LCA are readily understandable, the practical application of the method has substantial problems.The life-cycle analysis (LCA) of products is essentially the LCA of materials: both are concurrently and interdependently analyzed and assessed according to their environment effects. This approach provides a framework to measure the extrinsic environmental properties of materials. In the following, three properties-gross energy requirement, global-warming potential, and solid-waste burden-are broadly discussed for steel, aluminum, and polyethylene. The environmental profiles are then applied to assess the use of alternative materials in terms of the LCA of an automotive component. Given the possibility of a substantial variation in results, one must be careful with the scoping and assessment of LCA. Despite the limitations, it provides a useful map for improving environmental compatibility and performance.Inventory calculations are used to compare different scenarios for the entire life cycle of newsprint in Central-European market area. From the analyses it is concluded that to make a major impact on the landfill problem in Germany, area chosen as a reference, burning waste paper for electricity generation is ecologically preferable to deinking and re-use. Based on the calculations, a provisional but ecologically sound model is outlined which would greatly ease the load on landfill sites and involve low consumption of non-renewable fuels and low emissions. In this model, the load on landfill sites would be reduced by maximizing paper collection (80%) and total emissions also reduced by using primary fibre, i.e. pressure groundwood and TCF chemical pulp only. All the paper produced in this way would be burned in a back-pressure boiler plant, and the electricity and heat generated would be used internally within the system. ff a use could be found for all of the ''surplus '' heat, a situation would be reached in which all emissions would be lower than is the case at present.This paper presents an evaluation of the status and direction of toxic/hazardous waste reduction in the chemical and petrochemical industries from an international perspective. Pertinent approaches, experiences and trends are described. Industrial waste management has evolved from an ''end-of-pipe'' treatment mentality to source reduction as the preferred option. It is generally agreed that the Chemical/Petrochemical Industries generate more hazardous and toxic waste than any other industrial sector. Also because of the large quantities of materials and energy used by these industries, significant opportunities are available for waste reduction. In almost all cases costs savings have resulted, many of which are significant. The importance of pollution prevention by ''clean technologies'' instead of remediation, multi-media considerations and the significance of product life-cycle assessment in pollution prevention programs is stressed. Examples are provided which demonstrate, that a proactive approach by DOW, E.I. DuPONT, AMOCO, 3M Corp., CIBA-GEIGY and others is now becoming the norm. From an international policy perspective, important commonalities and differences in strategy and efforts for toxics/hazardous waste management exist. Much can be learned by the mistakes and solutions between cultures and countries. Much progress has been made in protection of public health and the environment - but much remains to be done. This paper is intended to provide a stimulus for discussion aimed at optimizing future waste minimization activities in the chemical and petrochemical industries.Waste minimization/pollution prevention has become the strategic approach to waste management in the 90s and the hope for environmental management as we enter the third millenium. Nearly a decade ago, EPA's Office of Research and Development began a focused Waste Minimization Research Program to identify and demonstrate technology for reducing the generation of wastes and shifted the Agency's priority from end-of-pipe controls to the prevention of waste generation. The purpose of this presentation is to share a number of the results from several years of researching engineering solutions to multi-media problems, building a sound scientific foundation to support pollution prevention (P2) principles, and developing and demonstrating pollution prevention technologies, tools, and techniques. The ''tools of the trade'' for pollution prevention are the research reports that provide results of technology development, the case studies and demonstrations of P2 technologies, and the technical guides and manuals for conducting P2 activities. Technology Development - Tools resulting from technology development include the numerous research reports and briefs from: 1) the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Program, 2) pollution Prevention Measurement Projects, and 3) the Innovative Clean Technologies Program. Technology Demonstration - Tools resulting from technology demonstration include the research reports and summaries from: 1) the Waste Reduction Innovative Technology Evaluation (WRITE) Program, 2) the Waste Reduction Evaluation At Federal Sites (WREAFS) program, 3) the New Jersey/EPA Waste Minimization Assessment Project, and 4) Small Generator Waste Minimization Assessment Program. Technical Guides and Manuals - These tools include: 1)Facility Pollution Prevention Guide, 2) 16 industry specific guides to pollution prevention, 3) Background Document on Clean Products Research and Implementation, and 4) industrial Pollution Prevention Opportunities for the 1990s. Much of the EPA's Pollution Prevention RD&D Program has focused on the development and demonstration of practical tools to encourage the development and adoption of processing technologies and products that will lead to reducing the aggregate generation rates for pollutatants entering various environmental media. The strategic direction for pollution prevention RD&D through the 1990s is: 1) to study high risk environmental problems where P2 offers a cost-effective solution for reducing the risks, 2) to conduct cross-cutting research such as measurement, modelling, and LCA that can be applied to multiple problems, and 3) to establish joint global P2 RD&D ventures where products and processes know no waste generating boundaries.For some years government organizations. industry, and consumer and environmental organizations have been working on methods with which, like industrial management balances, the environmental burden resulting from the manufacture of products are measured and assessed with the object of making products ecologically comparable. Balance models and terms with widely differing factual content have been used such as ''ecobalance'', ''product line analysis'' (PLA) or in the American language sphere ''Product-Life-Cycle-Assessment''(LCA). The PLA is supposed to combine and assess all the factors affecting the environment during the life of a product. The evaluation is intended to extent beyond the environmental sphere and also incorporate economic, social and communal criteria. However no scheme has as yet been agreed for this. Both in the LCA and in the ecobalance the life of the product is described from raw material extraction to final disposal within an exactly defined balance framework. On the input side are the consumption of energy, raw materials, water and air as well as the demands on land The output side contains the airborne emissions. the noise immission. the waste material, waste water and waste heat, as well as useful raw materials produced The evaluation is to be confined to environmental demands, however it is only in some respects that it is simpler than that of the complex PLA, as at present there is still no generally accepted ''ecological'' calculation unit. In the ecobalance for concrete various environmental units are standardized on the basis of the procedure used by the Federal Swiss Office for Environment, Forests and Agriculture, and dimensionless proportional numbers are compiled on the basis of actual and maximum possible loadings (limit values). The ecological loading caused by the product is weighed against its benefit to the environment in the form of a utility analysis. This decision technique familiar mainly from planning processes makes it possible to include several points of view at once arriving at a decision. Differing quantitative, and also qualitative, data can be taken into account in the form of weighted dimensionless utility values. The paper presents the first results of a European overview of urban innovations, undertaken by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Projects have been chosen which improve urban metabolism; have a collective aim; resist time; favor local democracy and participation at the conception, decision and execution phase; and produce models that are transferable to different places. Projects concerned with urban environmental auditing or social justice in cities are extremely important as they can lead to new planning to achieve the European sustainable city.

 Forests play an important role in sequestering and storing carbon in terrestrial ecosystems, so countries considering ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are looking at forestry projects as one option. Designing forestry projects that accomplish desired goals is no simple task however, as many past failures es attest. This paper proposes that, to be successful, climate change mitigation forestry projects need to. (a) feature other socially, economically and environmentally desireable goals as primary motivators; (b) be designed in cooperation with, and in the interests of, local populations; and (c), feature cooperative efforts between government, industry, and volunteer associations. Volunteer associations can often be assisted in being a more capable partner through an organizational training and support process, and this is one of the services offered to cooperating countries through American Forests.The global warming debate has neglected and thus underestimated the importance of technical change in considering reduction in greenhouse gases and adaptation to climate change, Relevant quantitative cases of long-run technical change during the past 100 years are presented in computing, communications, transport, energy, and agriculture, A noteworthy technological trajectory is that of decarbonization, or decreasing carbon intensity of primary energy, If human societies have not yet reached the end of the history of technology, the cost structure for mitigation and adaptation changes could be cheap. AT&T recognizes that industrial ecology and design for environment (DFE) are crucial competencies that are vital now, and they will become keys to corporate success in the next century. The importance of these competencies is based on the following three fundamental considerations: the need to control environmental compliance costs; the need to meet customer requirements and demands; and the need to enlarge market access and generate continuous competitive advantage. Over the long term, environmental competence and offerings-especially in services that reduce material and energy consumption-will become increasingly important, and they will ensure that AT&T continues in a leadership position into the next century. Thus, all AT&T stakeholders-including customers, employees, shareowners, and the communities within which AT&T has a presence-attach crucial importance to both industrial ecology and DFE. In short, environmental concerns that once were considered overhead now have assumed strategic importance.Trade policies and environmental policies have evolved largely independently, and until recently their interactions attracted little attention. There is much discussion of the institutional arrangements and economic instruments needed to embody environmental concerns in trade policy, but relatively little discussion of the role of technology. This paper describes the long-term, environmentally-motivated technological change involved in shifting from an ''end-of-pipe'' approach for capturing pollutants after they are generated to a focus on the prevention of environmental degradation. The new engineering field of Industrial Ecology promotes design and manufacturing practices that are based on an examination of the full life-cycle of a product in order to improve environmental performance. Industrial Ecology is spreading quickly in the industrialized countries, but its repercussions are transmitted widely through international trade. Plastics provide a good example of both the opportunities and the difficulties surrounding environmental protection, technological change, and trade. Concerns over solid waste in the rich countries may result in new market opportunities for biomass-based polymers, but the success of these products depends upon a complex set of factors, including very different alternative ways individual countries may choose to deal with solid waste. The implications for the developing countries are examined for the case of plastics, and more generally.The main thrust of this paper is to define the concept of industrial ecology and to discuss how its principles may be utilized to reconsider the materials cycle. Simply put, ecological principles imply that we minimize waste during manufacture and ensure that the products are recycled at the end of their useful life. Such a rethought materials cycle has to stress waste minimization and, at the same time, track energy flows and cost considerations simultaneously with the movement of the materials streams. In this paper, special attention is paid to recycling issues in metals production, municipal waste, and also to recycling issues pertaining to electronic materials. Comments are made on the driving forces and the barriers to industrial ecology, including economics, regulation, management and education, and on the international aspects of industrial ecology.We present an assembly of metrics for monitoring environmental performance at the national level, based on the flow of materials through the US economy, To set the stage, we show a schematic rendering of national materials flows, identifying the most important flow components. We compare and contrast amounts of materials entering and exiting the economy, using weight as the common measure, Additionally, we relate physical data on materials consumption and disposal to monetary measures of national economic activity, Eight general classes and eighteen individual metrics comprise the set, For several, we provide quantitative examples, Our aim is to initiate a framework for assessing national materials use which helps prevent pollution, reduce waste and encourage efficient resource use.Since the collapse of an asset-inflated economic bubble in Japan started in the second half of the 1980s, it has brought about an entirely different assessment of this country. For all admiration claimed for it, the Japanese economy proved to be subject to Newton's law of gravitation. Opinions were beginning to divide over Japanese technology, too, after it was once believed to be leading the world. In fact, Japan has a big task to solve in the years before the 21st century. How will the Japanese face up to upheavals in the world, or how will they respond to their domestic problems such as demographic and rigid structures? Few messages from Japan have so far been available with regard to these questions. The world is left in a puzzle over the questions. Our task in this issue is to make clear what the Japanese are thinking and preparing to do in the years before the 21st century, and ''what it is that they have to produce an influence on the world.'' Specifically, discussions center on moves toward a knowledge-based society, research and development projects, manufacturing technologies, business strategies, industrial ecology, and the possibilities of a trilemma. In this article, I make some observations as a background to those subjects.The functioning of modern societies requires large flows of materials to satisfy human wants both directly and indirectly; for example, 50 kg per day per American. The nature of these flows determines their impact on the natural environment. We develop and test a comprehensive framework to order materials flows in the US economy, We assess and quantify inputs to the national economy, outputs, foreign trade, and wastes from resource extraction, using mass measures of these flow components. The bulk of materials inputs satisfies demand for energy, construction, and food. Atmospheric emissions and materials embedded in long-lived structures dominate outputs, with smaller contributions from solid wastes and dissipated materials. Trade, accounting for approximately 10% of US materials flows, is dominated by bulk commodities such as fuel, food, and chemicals. Extractive wastes from fuel and nonfuel minerals account for more than double the amount of inputs and mostly remain at the site of generation, Metrics based on a consistent, periodic accounting of physical materials flows can provide a powerful means to assess environmental performance at the national level. Improvements in the collection and organization of the data supporting national material accounts will further their utility. Environmental Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) has emerged over the past years as a method to assess environmental impacts of products and processes. In this case study we use LCA to obtain an environmental measure for refined oils, which are inputs for fat blends. As a start, an inventory is drawn up of the environmental effects of the oils. Then we use the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to aggregate the scores of these effects to one environmental index for each oil. This multiple criteria decision tool involves making pairwise comparisons between the environmental effects, resulting in relative weight factors. Multiplying the effect scores with the relative weights yields an environmental index. It is now possible to improve the environmental impact of a fat blend composition using the environmental index in a linear programming (LP) blending model. With this combination of methods, environmental aspects of products can become part of product portfolio management.This paper describes a computer-aided analysis of the drilling mud process for offshore drilling in Brazil by Petrobra's. The analysis, which employs a numerical model and software for drilling mud lifecycle analysis (LCA), was originally developed for Conoco, Inc., as part of a fellowship investigation of environmental control technology for drilling fluids. Since then, the model has been improved and rested using field drilling data. The model quantifies the life cycle of drilling fluid used for a well. The life cycle is related to the well's drilling program and involves the sequence of operations from the fresh mud mixing, to usage, processing, storage, and final disposal of waste mud. In the model, the time-related prediction of drilling depth has been combined with calculations regarding the condition of the mud system, such as solids control, updated volumes of spent mud discharge and storage, and cumulative costs of mud mixing and disposal. The paper shows how a qualitative expert knowledge of drilling technology has been quantified in order to input data to the computer program. The analysis, presented herein, included two steps. First, drilling data from other well in the area was used to calibrate the model with regard to drilling rate and the rime of non-drilling operations. Then, the simulation runs examined several options of drilling mud process for offshore wells including the closed-loop and zero-discharge operations. The model proved to be a valuable tool to evaluate mud process modification and predict environmental compliance cost.Too scientific, too complicated, too expensive... life cycle assessment is now being reassessed, Setac, whose guidelines aim to provide an industry standard, is looking to improve its code of practice and to limit LCA's goals.This paper describes how a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach can be a beneficial support tool in assessing pollution prevention (P2) opportunities. LCA evaluates potential upstream and downstream impacts that may result from the implementation of a P2 activity, including impacts during resource extraction, manufacturing, product use and maintenance, and final disposal. Two such LCA-based approaches, developed by EPA's Pollution Prevention Research Branch, are presented. The first approach is a preliminary P2 Factors methodology that was developed using the lithographic printing industry as the test industry. Two P2 activities were selected for study: solvent substitution in blanket and press wash and waterless versus conventional dampening fountain system printing. The second approach accesses P2 progress when incorporating product re-design, reformulation or replacement. The P2 Progress method compares the pollution generated by the manufacturing, use and disposal of the original product with the modified product. A fictionalized reformulation of rubber cement demonstrates the P2 Progress method.This paper addresses an increasingly important aspect of product design and its relationship to life-cycle costing: disassembly for material recovery opportunities (MRO). MRO is defined as an opportunity to reclaim post-consumer products for recycling, remanufacturing and re-use. The authors have developed a methodology which can be used to identify and assess cost-effective characteristics of disassembly for the recovery of products. The central focus of this paper is aimed at improving the efficiency of the disassembly planning process and generating an optimal disassembly sequence. Four criteria are established to optimize the generation of the disassembly sequence: (1) material compatibility, (2) clustering for disposal, (3) concurrent disassembly operations, and (4) maximizing yield. In this paper we define the 'disassemblability' of a product as the ability to optimize the design and disassembly process for removal of specific parts or materials in a manner which will minimize costs. Steps have been taken to incorporate this methodology within a life-cycle analysis software tool (EDIT) to be used at the early concept stage of product design.The project group ''Life Cycle Assessment'' of the IKW (German Detergent Industry Association) compiled the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for the detergent manufacturing in Germany. The LCI follows the principles recommended by SETAC and the ISO Commitee Draft on ''Life Cycle Assessment''. The study covers regular powder, compact powder and liquid detergents. The companies participating in this LCI data acquisition represent more than 90% of the German detergent market. The LCI includes the phases of detergent manufacturing: storage, spray tower (for powders only), mixing and packaging. For these phases the environmental data energy demand airborne/waterborne emissions and solid waste are being evaluated. All data in this study are expressed as required amount of detergents per 1,000 kg dry laundry. The study covers only one segment of the detergent's life-cycle: the detergent manufacturing processes. It must be emphasized, however, that the study does not allow any comparative evaluation on the overall environmental effects of regular powder, compact powder and liquid detergents. Additionally, regular powder, compact powder and liquid detergents differ in their formulation characteristics, cleaning properties and performance, although all considered detergents are heavy duty detergents. For liquid detergents, the LCI data show a lower energy demand and consequently also lower air emissions and solid waste in comparison to powder detergents; air emissions and solid waste are mostly fuel related. Reason is that the manufacturing of liquid detergents does not require the spray tower technology. It needs to be recognized that the new generation of compact powders which is already introduced to the German market does not require spray tower technology anymore. Therefore, energy demand air emissions and solid waste will be reduced significantly. No conclusions on the waterborne emissions from liquid detergent manufacturing is feasible due to process technology constraints. Packagings for liquid detergents require more plastics while powder dergents use more paper/cardboard for their packagings.This study performed a life cycle analysis on eight different types of nestable pallets. The pallets were made from wood and plastic. The performance of the pallets was compared based on number of trips without damage, cost, weight, and environmental considerations. A pallet performance coefficient was developed to compare the different pallet types. The results showed that the twin sheet thermo-formed HDPE plastic pallets showed the best performance followed by the structural foam HDPE pallets. The presswood pallets showed the poorest performance.Paint application is a sector of human activity, where the common use according to product determination by the end user or small craftmans business contributes most obviously to environment pollution, in first instance of course by solvent evaporation. There is a steadily increasing pressure by governmental authorities on the paint industry to reduce solvent emission from its products. At the same time, more integral approaches of environmental impact assessments - so called life cycle analysis - become more and more important. The paint industry answers these challenges by development of new types of coatings, which mainly means new types of binder polymers and new types of crosslink chemistry. Advances in the understanding of polymer physical chemistry, as well as the advent of new synthesis concepts lead to a number of emerging technologies expected to contribute significantly to reduction of pollution by paint application. While in industrial paint application end-of-the-pipe technology is still economically favourably competing with the advanced paint chemistry concepts (e.g. high-solids, waterborne, UV-curing, electrocoating, powder coating and supercritical CO2-application), the situation in the large sector of end-user and craftsman application of paint is much more difficult, at least in the sector of high performance and particularly high gloss coatings. End-of-pipe-technology is unapplicable and, on the other hand, degrees of freedom in application equipment and curing conditions are limited. Furthermore, labour safety requirement further restrict the scope of applicable new chemistry.The example of a recuperative heat exchanger is used to demonstrate the temperature monitoring and the thermal fatigue assessment of a component in the primary circuit of a PWR. After describing the geometry and the operating conditions, the placement of the thermocouples at locations of interest is shown. The temperature recordings show that the existing operational instrumentation was very slow and the fluid transients were actually much faster than anticipated. With a computer program allowing the reduction from outside wall to fluid temperatures, the thermal inertia of the old instrumentation could be quantified. Consequently, old recordings from slow instrumentation could still be used. Thermal finite element computations are presented that yield quite favourable correlations between computations and measurements.A steadily increasing demand for recycling of polymers has resulted in a demand for methods making it possible to compare different: disposal processes' influence on the environment and on the resources. 'Ecoprofiles' can be used for ranking of different disposal processes in an environmentally and resource compatible way. An ecoprofile is an assessment of the environmental and resource impacts for a given disposal process, and those processes influenced by the disposal process. Within the constraints and boundaries imposed by the model, assumptions made, and data utilized, this article describes ecoprofiles for six different ways of disposing the plastic fraction in municipal solid waste. The following disposal processes are studied: (1 and 2) two different material recycling processes that include separation of the plastic waste; (3) material recycling without separation of the plastic waste; (4) pyrolysis; (5) incineration with heat recovery; and (6) landfill.Total balance and evaluation of production processes taking the evaluation of metallic surface cleaning systems as an example Abstract In evaluating production processes for plant optimisation as well as for installation comparisons, nowadays the aspects of the complete requirements are only partially taken into account. Whereas techno-economical optimisation of production processes is currently applied by engineering processes, only few concepts exist for the quantification of ecological impacts. The main focus of this paper is to consider the ecological dimension through a process oriented ecological balance methodology. This methodology is based on the concept of life cycle analysis (LCA) of products and is applied in the field of metallic surface cleaning processes.Currently, more and more companies are becoming interested in designing their products to cause the least harm to the environment. This is called Design For the Environment (DFE) and one major tool in the environmental assessment of a design is Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). Life Cycle Analysis involves considering the environmental impact of every stage in the product's life, ending with retirement. This paper discusses a framework for a Design For the Environment software system and discusses one tool which has been developed.In reaction to a paper in Environmental Management in which the sense and sensibility of environmental assessments of packaging were questioned, it is argued that these types of assessments may be very useful, provided the relevant types of questions are posed. These boundary conditions are discussed, along with an overview of more recent methodological developments with respect to environmental assessment of products.Life-cycle assessment models attempt to quantify the environmental implications of alternative products and processes, tracing pollution discharges and resources use through the chain of producers and consumers. Present life-cycle assessments must draw boundaries that limit consideration to a few producers in the chain from raw materials to a finished product. We show that this limitation considers only a fraction of the environmental discharges associated with a product or process, thereby making current assessments unreliable. We propose an approach that uses economic input-output analysis and pollution discharge data and apply the model to automobiles, refrigerators, and computer purchases, and to a comparison of paper and plastic cups.Many management processes and tools can provide companies with information to support their environmental decision making. Risk assessment, environmental auditing, life cycle assessment and environmental reporting are but a few examples. Each of these has typically evolved independently as the need for it has arisen. Today, however, this abundance of tools can lead to confusion: What is the exact objective of each tool? How do they differ? Are some 'better' than others? Should they be used in parallel, sequentially or in place of each other? More importantly, how do they fit together into a coherent environmental management framework that will ensure sound environmental and economic decision making in a company? This paper seeks to answer these questions. It describes the overall environmental framework that has been developed internally within Procter & Gamble and which allows the company to make coherent economically and environmentally sound decisions, in both the short- and long-term.Life cycle inventory (LCI) quantifies the energy requirements and emissions associated with specific packages and/or products. The unique feature of the analysis is its focus on the entire life of a product, from raw material extraction to consumer use to final disposition, rather than on a single manufacturing step or environmental emission. The principals of Franklin Associates, Ltd. have been performing LCIs, also known as Resource and Environmental Profile Analyses (REPAs), for the past 20 years. Procter & Gamble (P&G) scientists have been using LCI to analyze their feedstocks, processes, packaging, and products since the late 1980s. Current worldwide environmental concerns have made LCI a useful tool for prioritizing efforts, goal setting, and measuring environmental quality improvement. Three P&G case studies conducted by Franklin Associates will be discussed to illustrate the usefulness of LCI in identifying environmental quality improvement opportunities.Life cycle analysis (LCA) is an increasingly important tool for environmental policy, and even for industry. Analysts are also interested in forecasting future materials/energy fluxes on regional and global scales, as a function of various economic growth and regulatory scenarios. A fundamental tenet of LCA is that every material product must eventually become a waste. To choose the 'greener' of two products or policies it is necessary to take into account its environmental impacts from 'cradle to grave'. This includes not only indirect inputs to the production process, and associated wastes and emissions, but also the future (downstream) fate of a product. The first stage in the analysis is quantitative comparisons of materials flows and transformations. Energy fluxes are important insofar as they involve materials (e.g., fuels, combustion products). This can be an extremely valuable exercise, if done carefully. However, the data required to accomplish this first step are not normally available from published sources. Theoretical process descriptions from open sources may not correspond to actual practice. Moreover, so-called 'confidential' data are unverifiable (by definition) and may well be erroneous. In the absence of a formal materials balance accounting system, such errors may not be detected. A key thesis of this paper is that process data can, in many cases, be synthesized, using models based on the laws of thermodynamics and chemistry. While synthetic but possible data may not fully reflect the actual situation, it is far superior to 'impossible' data. Most of the recent literature on LCA focusses on the second stage of the analysis, namely the selection and evaluation of different, non-comparable environmental impacts ('chalk vs. cheese'). This problem is, indeed, very difficult -and may well be impossible to solve convincingly -even at the conceptual level. However, the only approach that can make progress is one that utilizes monetization to the limits of its applicability, rather than one that seeks to by-pass (or 're-invent') economics. Nevertheless, the evaluation problem is second in priority, for the simple reason that LCA has utility even if the evaluation technique is imperfect. On the other hand, LCA has no (or even negative) utility if the underlying physical data is wrong with respect to critical pollutants.A life cycle assessment (LCA) has been carried out to compare production and use of three different fuel products: regular gasoline, gasoline with MTBE and diesel. The study quantifies energy consumption and emissions through the production chain and assesses the potential impacts to the environment. Some of the methodological problems performing the LCA are discussed. The study indicates that production of gasoline with MTBE has potentially larger environmental impacts than production of regular gasoline, caused by the extra facilities for production of MTBE. The study also shows that the results are highly sensitive to the actual product specifications and assumptions that are made. Different product specifications can therefore lead to other conclusions. The results also indicate that production of diesel leads to significantly lower potential impacts than the gasolines.The paper presents a comprehensive life cycle model and analysis of the WSI Associative String Processor (WASP). The model simulates the manufacture, acceptance, and operational life of a hypothetical WASP device using discrete event simulation techniques, Manufacturing defects are modeled with the negative binomial distribution, and operational faults are modeled using an adaptation of the MIL-HDBK-217F VHSIC reliability model, A full description is given of the simulation procedures and fault tolerant structure representations used in the model, A hypothetical WASP device manufactured in poor conditions and subjected to harsh operational conditions is shown to support nearly 8000 associative processing elements (APE) after 100000 h (11.4 yr) of continuous simulated operation, A simple post-manufacture device selection procedure is demonstrated which improves this harvest figure to over 10000 APE's. A hypothetical WASP device manufactured in good conditions and subjected to mild operational conditions is shown to support an average of over 12500 APE's after 100000 h of continuous simulated operation, without device selection, An architectural parameter sensitivity analysis for the hypothetical device shows that the areas of circuit elements at the upper levels of the fault tolerance hierarchy have greater significance than those at the leaf level for both yield and reliability, A test coverage analysis demonstrates the need for a comprehensive testing strategy for WSI devices.Ninety-eight per cent of Norwegian low-rise housing construction is in timber frame, a technique which has reached a high level of perfection with regards to thermal efficiency, air tightness and speed of erection. This paper makes a comprehensive life cycle analysis of both timber-frame and log construction.Some aspects of a number of different techniques for environmental decision support, in particular risk assessment (RA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA), are briefly discussed. The importance of a co-herent framework, the use of common data sets, and harmonization of methods is emphasized. The latter leads to a discussion of a fundamental difference between techniques that assess continuous emission fluxes, like RA, and techniques that assess discrete emission pulses, like LCA. The question whether it is possible to apply the same types of impact assessment models is positively answered for most models. The implications are threefold: It is allowed to employ the much easier steady-state models in pulse-oriented techniques, there exist often postulated but not yet rigidly proven equivalency factors for use in e. g. life-cycle assessment, and it is possible to harmonize the models as used in pulse-oriented and in flux-oriented models.Life cycle assessments to protect global environment and to control waste in the polymer industry are reviewed. It focused on 1) the environmentally sound technology, 2) the energy conservation, and 3) recycling of industrial products. The competitiveness of a nation depends on how to balance between economic development of sustainable growth and responsible care of global environment in borderless economy. It fully depends on the development of both the environmentally sound manufacturing and the effective products recycling technologies. Current environmental issues of the Japanese chemical industries as well as Toray's performance and new products development for environment business are reviewed; 1) Energy conservation and technology of Japanese manufacturing industry. 2) Development of environmentally sound technology. 3) Effective products recycling technologies, and 4) Sustainable growth of the new chemical age. The future issues of life cycle assessment and environmental protection in manufacturing industries are discussed.We develop an applied general equilibrium model to examine the optimal social security replacement rate and the welfare benefits associated with it. Our setup consists of overlapping generations of 65-period lived individuals facing mortality risk and individual income risk. Private credit markets, including markets for private annuities, are closed by assumption. Unlike previous analyses, we find that an unfunded social security system may well enhance economic welfare. In our benchmark economy, the optimal social security replacement rate is 30%, and an empirically more plausible replacement rate of 60% raises welfare compared with an economy with no social security system.Life cycle energy balance and carbon dioxide emission have been evaluated for LNG combined cycle and integrated coal gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power generation system with carbon dioxide capture and sequestering technologies. The study gave a prediction that CO2 recovery and sequestration would lower the net energy ratio by 16% to 61%. CO2 emission control potential was estimated to be in the range of 61% to 76%.The environmental impact of small-scale sewage-treatment works has been evaluated using the technique of 'life-cycle analysis'. Three sewage-treatment works with different process options were analysed to identify and quantify material use, energy use and environmental releases during construction operation and demolition. This enabled (i) a comparison to be made between process options, and (ii) the identification of opportunities for the improvement of environmental performance. Subject to satisfactory sewage treatment and sludge disposal, the technique identified additional impacts of importance, which have implications for energy management, works design, supplier management and general environmental policy. Life-cycle analysis provides a useful insight into environmental impact and has potential for wider application within the water industry.The inventory of a life Cycle Assessment of Copper production from primary and secondary sources, of Copper and Copper alloy fabrication to semifinished and selected final products is presented. It consits of 3 parts. Ordered by 'Deutsches Kupfer-Institut' and in cooperation with the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Metalle e. V. as well as with various industrial companies.The goal in selecting environmentally-sound building products is to maximize use to recycled materials, and to ensure that, mining, harvesting and extracting raw materials does not pose a threat to existing resources of endangered species. The amount of energy that goes into the material at every stage of its life-cycle should be minimized, as should the amount of waste generated.Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) of products has been the focus of growing attention in the last few years. The methodological framework has been developed rapidly, and a provisional ''Code of Practice'' has been drawn up by an international group of experts. One of the elements of LCA is impact assessment, which includes a characterization step in which the contributions of resource extraction and polluting emissions to impact categories such as resource depletion, global warming, and acidification are quantified and aggregated as far as possible. This can be achieved by multiplying extractions and emissions by a so-called equivalency factor and aggregating the results in one or more effect score(s) per impact category. In this report a proposal is developed for equivalency factors indicating the relative depletion of a resource per unit extracted. It is proposed to measure depletion by physical data on reserves and production and regeneration rates, and to distinguish between abiotic and biotic resources. Equations are developed to calculate equivalency factors for these two categories of resources, resulting in so-called abiotic depletion potentials (ADP) and biotic depletion potentials (BDP). The application of these ADPs and BDPs in LCA is illustrated.The inventory of a life Cycle Assessment of Copper production from primary and secondary sources, of Copper and Copper alloy fabrication to semifinished and selected final products is presented. it will be published in 3 parts. ordered by 'Deutsches Kupfer-Institut' and in cooperation with the Metalle e. V. as well with various companies.The debate over the environmental impact of detergent builders has historically focused on the disposal of phosphates to wastewater and the potential consequences for surface waters. This study uses the technique of life-cycle analysis to review the overall environmental impact of the use of key detergent builders in the European Union (EU). By comparing their impacts in a relative context, the environmental impact of the major builder systems is concluded to be small, negative, and none can be considered to have a relative advantage or disadvantage. The most effective policy initiatives for environmental improvements are independent of detergent builder and should focus on use minimisation, the use of more efficient washing machines and effective implementation of the Urban Wastewater Directive.The chemical industry is becoming more and more determined by environmental and societal issues. This influence creates a framework for the chemical industry which requires a responsibility for products and processes concerning economy, ecology/safety and society. Adherence to this framework can be achieved by means of an integrated development of chemical products and processes over their whole life cycle. The key parameters are societal acceptance, inherent safety and economic and ecological efficiency, employing the corresponding methods of risk/benefit dialogue, risk analysis and life cycle analysis (LCA). This network of parameters and methods leads to the synergies which are necessary for sustainability. These abstract concepts are illustrated by practical examples. Case studies will be necessary tools to bring the promising concept of integrated product and process development to universities and to encourage the cooperation between academia and the chemical industry.A Clean Technology is a means of providing a human benefit which, overall, uses less resources and causes less environmental damage than alternative means with which it is economically competitive. Life Cycle Assessment is central to Clean Technology, as the way to identify overall resource usage and environmental damage. Pollution Prevention and Waste Minimisation are important parts of Clean Technology, but more fundamental is the shift from selling products to providing services. Some specific technological challenges for the chemical and biotechnology industries are identified.The inventory of a life Cycle Assessment of Copper production from primary and secondary sources, of Copper and Copper alloy fabrication to semifinished and selected final products is presented. It will be published in 3 parts. Part 1 consists of mining, mineral processing, primary and secondary Copper production. In part 2 follow fabrication processes for copper and copper alloys to semifinished material, inclusive production of wire and cable. Part 3 show casting to final shape, as well as alloy ingot production, PCDD/PCDF-emission values and summarized statements. Finally the application of the data is shown. Mass cmd energy inventories, emission data, coupled products, waste and Co-2-emission will be shown for every single step. The presentation is given in modules. To get the whole picture, specific modules have to be added. For a few energy data this is shown in an appendix. Other values may calculated in a similar way. Ordered by Deutsches Kupfer-Institut and in cooperation with the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Metall e. V. as well as with various industrial companies.This paper summarises the basic methodology of life cycle analysis, and aims to show that without clear understanding of the technique, life cycle inventories (LCI) can be easily misused to give preferred results, or misunderstood to give erroneous results which could lead to detrimental environmental decisions. It highlights areas where most errors are likely to exist, namely through the definition of system boundaries and the collection of data, and shows through examples how these can drastically affect LCI results. The paper also touches briefly on life cycle assessment techniques, which are aimed at evaluating environmental damage, and concludes with a brief summary of the properties of an ideal LCI which would provide a comprehensive data base for life cycle assessment.Experience demonstrates that the life cycle assessment (LCA) for a complex manufactured product or an industrial manufacturing process works most effectively when it is done semiquantitatively and in modest depth. To facilitate such assessments, we have devised an abridged LCA matrix. We discuss the concepts leading to this matrix and give examples of check lists and evaluations to guide assessors in valuing the matrix elements. The matrix scoring system provides a straightforward means of comparing options, and we recommend ''target plots'' as convenient and visually arresting ways of calling attention to those design and implementation aspects whose modification could most dramatically improve the assessment rating. We demonstrate these tools by performing assessments on familiar products: generic automobiles of the 1950s and 1990s.The analysis focuses on a comparative evaluation of emissions from conventional private passenger vehicles versus the environmental burdens of electric passenger vehicles. The batteries of electric passenger vehicles are loaded during daily working hours partly via silicon-based PV panels covering the vehicle parking areas (solar service stations), and partly via the public electric grid. The data base refers to Western Germany, and the tentative time period is around 2005. The analysis is based on detailed data collections for the fabrication of technical silicon, multi- and monocrystalline standard, MIS-I cells, and amorphous cells. The information on substance discharges into the environment permitted an environmental assessment to be made via evaluation criteria, quantitatively expressed as burden values. The results lead to the following main conclusions on the environmental impacts of Si-PV cells and to the major recommendations for PV development focuses: To substitute SI-PV for substance-emitting technologies is environmentally beneficial, but due to its manufacturing processes PV is not a zero emitter; supporting structures should be as low-weight as possible with minimized material requirements for low emissions from PV-system fabrication; PV only makes sense for applications relevant to the energy economy with high-efficiency modules and minimized electricity demand to enable solar supply shares to be as high as possible; and highest development priority should be given to the industrial fabrication maturity of high-efficiency modules.A Life-Cycle Analysis Inventory (LCI) has been compiled by the European LCI Surfactant Study Group (CEFIC/ECOSOL) and Franklin Associates Limited for the production of major surfactants presently used in European detergent products, specifically LAS, AS, AES, soap, SAS, AE and APG. These are derived from petrochemical and oleochemical intermediates. The Life-Cycle Inventory is comprehensive and includes energy and material requirements as well as environmental emissions and solid waste associated with all phases of surfactant production. A Peer Review Panel has reviewed the study in accordance with the principles recommended by SETAC. The study shows that each system has an impact on the environment via the consumption of a broad variety of resources such as crude oil, natural gas, agricultural products and minerals for material feedstock, energy generation and transport purposes. Also environmental releases occur during the production and transport of all surfactant systems. Based on the findings, no unequivocal technical rationale exists far claiming overall environmental superiority neither for production of individual surfactants nor for the various options for sourcing from petrochemical and oleochemical/agricultural feedstocks and minerals. The value of the study lies in allowing each manufacturer to assess opportunities for improving the environmental profile of their surfactants and intermediates. The study has demonstrated the need for co-operation with organisations located earlier as well as later in the product Life-Cycle chain. Furthermore, the findings have indicated that there is a benefit in looking beyond the scope of the surfactant producers, for example by assessments of energy generation systems, and by making emission control techniques available on a broader basis. The European LCI Surfactant Study Group hopes that publication of these findings will contribute to environmental improvements via a constructive use of the data and to objective rather than judgmental assessments of the environmental profile of surfactant production.This review presents the current status of wind turbine technology and recent advances in understanding the long history of wind energy, Reasons for the convergence of technological solutions towards a horizontal axis concept with two or three blades are discussed, and the advances in materials science are identified as determinants of the change toward increasing optimum turbine size. The modest environmental impacts of wind turbines are illustrated by recent life-cycle analyses, and the economic incentive structure and power buy-back rates in different countries are invoked to explain the variation in wind technology penetration in countries with similar resource potentials, Finally, the possible future role of wind technology is discussed, based on resource estimates, competing land demands, government commitments and technological trends, including the recent offshore wind farm developments.Application of Linear Programming (LP) Modelling to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a novel approach to analysing and managing the environmental performance of a complete product system. Not only can it solve the problem of allocation of environmental burdens in the Inventory stage of the LCA, but it also enables the environmental optimum of the system to be investigated. Once the environmental burdens have been allocated amongst different products on the basis of marginal changes in activities, they are aggregated to quantify environmental impacts and then reduced to a single environmental impact function which is treated as a new objective function of the LP model. The LP solution then gives the environmental optimum of the system and identifies places where improvements can be made. If multiobjective LP is applied, then the environmental performance of the system can be combined with other requirements, such as societal preferences or economics, thus giving the best compromise for the system performance. The idea behind this approach is illustrated by a simplified analysis of a system to produce thermoplastics.A Methodology for Environmental Impact Minimization (MEIM) is presented in this paper. The methodology, which embeds Life Cycle Analysis principles within a process optimization framework, involves proper definition of a consistent boundary around the process of interest, identification of the emissions inventory, quantification of environmental impact via proper metrics (for air and water pollution, solid waste, global warming and ozone depletion) and inclusion of environmental criteria within process modelling and optimization tools. A case study, the production of VCM from ethylene, is presented to illustrate the basic features of MEIM.A life cycle analysis approach is employed to determine the combined potential global warming impacts of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions arising from the production, supply and use of coal, oil and natural gas in the United Kingdom. The study pays particular attention to recurring claims that the methane emissions associated with gas industry activities are removing the inherent low carbon advantage of natural gas. The results illustrate that natural gas maintains a clear lead as the least impacting fossil fuel and further demonstrates that the higher utilisation efficiency that natural gas maintains over coal and oil systems in many industrial, commercial and domestic applications, increases those advantages still further.This study demonstrated an integrated waste minimization approach for the printed circuit board manufacturing shop of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL). It included process waste assessment, process optimization and treatability analysis of the treatment system, and source reduction assessment. The results of a process waste assessment indicated that over 99.5% of the waste stream was rinsewater and less than 0.5% was characterized as hazardous waste. This finding led to a thorough source reduction assessment. From the process and treatability analysis, it was found that an organic chelating ligand in the wastewater was causing a copper precipitation problem. The results of a series of bench and process experiments indicated that optimization of pH, chemical dosage, and addition of ferrous sulfate were needed to destabilize the complexed copper. The destabilization mechanism of Cu-EDTA with ferrous sulfate at pH 6-9 was discussed. Different separation/recycling technologies were also evaluated through the source reduction assessment. A closed-loop process was simulated and designed. Through the source reduction and treatment process optimization efforts, at least 90% reduction of total acid wastes and wastewater and more than 99% metal removal were achieved. A material life cycle analysis was also performed. The results indicated that a total quality control strategy is crucial to minimize wastes and reduce product rejection rate.

 Africa is one of the regions of the world potentially most vulnerable to climate change. Warming of the globe due to increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases appears to be inevitable. Therefore, it is imperative that policy makers in regions such as Africa begin to consider what measures they should take to adapt to the potential conseqences of climate change. A number of adaptation policies are suggested here. The policies address general adaptation measures as well as specific measures in water resources, coastal resources (adapting to sea-level rise), forests, ecosystems, and agriculture. These measures would enhance the flexibility of resources to adapt to climate change and would have net benefits greater than costs. In some cases, the measures make sense without considering climate change because they help address current climate variability. In other cases, the measures must be implemented in anticipation of climate change because they would be ineffective if implemented as a reaction to climate change. One of the most pressing environmental issues today is the possibility that projected increases in global emissions of greenhouse gases from increased deforestation, development, and fossil-fuel combustion could significantly alter global climate patterns. Under the terms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in Rio de Janeiro during the June 1992 Earth Summit, the United States and other industrialized countries committed to balancing greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels in the year 2000. Included in the treaty is a provision titled ''Joint Implementation,'' whereby industrialized countries assist developing countries in jointly modifying long-term emission trends, either through emission reductions or by protecting and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks (carbon sequestration). The US Climate Action Plan, signed by President Clinton in 1993, calls for voluntary climate change mitigation measures by various sectors, and the action plan included a new program, the US Initiative on Joint implementation. Wisconsin Electric decided to invest in a JI project because its concept encourages creative, cost-effective solutions to environmental problems through partnering, international cooperation, and innovation. The project chosen, a forest preservation and management effort in Belize, will sequester more than five million tons of carbon dioxide over a 40-year period, will become economically self-sustaining after ten years, and will have substantial biodiversity benefits.This paper discusses methodological lessons and empirical results of climate change mitigation assessment for developing countries with a special emphasis on economic studies, National study results are discussed in relation to expected general international development trends in greenhouse gas emissions. It is concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries certainly will increase in the future due to economic development needs. There is however a large and relatively cheap potential for emission reductions connected to efficiency improvements in industrial production and general energy efficiency improvements in the countries. The implementation of greenhouse gas mitigation strategies is interrelated with general national economic development policies. The macroeconomic impact of implementing climate change mititgation strategies is assessed on the basis of two case studies for Zimbabwe and Venezuela and it is concluded that project implementation and economic welfare improvement in some cases can be achieved simultaneously. The methodological basis for macroeconomic assessment and for the establishment of baseline scenarios are critically discussed in relation to the specific planning context of developing countries and recommendations are given on research requirements. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.This paper summarizes selected studies of the potential and cost of carbon emissions mitigation strategies in the post-planned economies. The economies of the Former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe present significant opportunities and serious difficulties in energy related carbon dioxide emissions mitigation. This region in 1990 accounted for over one-fifth of global energy consumption and energy related greenhouse gas emissions. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.Even with changes in the industrial structure and continued improvement in energy efficiency, China's economic development and strong reliance on its indigenous coal resources will lead to large increases in its CO2 emissions in the next century. A number of technical options exist that can provide benefits to China's economic development, help protect the national environment, and also contribute to climate change mitigation. These include improvement of energy efficiency in all sectors of the economy; greater use of energy resources such as natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, and renewable energy instead of coal; and afforestation. Promotion of these options is in accord with China's strategy for sustainable development and its energy policy, which call for rational resource utilization and environmental protection.Renewable energy, especially its new forms, starts from a very small base. The pace of recent development and diffusion has been too slow, and effective action is required to accelerate development and diffusion. The paper provides the results of recently published work on global energy perspectives, based on six long-term scenarios, with particular respect to the possible contribution of renewable energy.Solar energy is one option for reducing future greenhouse gas emissions, Offsetting 50% of all future growth in thermal electricity generation by photovoltaics (PVs) would reduce annual global carbon dioxide emission from projected increased levels by 10% in 20 years and 32% in 50 years, Several projects are under way worldwide to demonstrate the feasibility of PV systems, This paper examines the economic competitiveness of PV systems and concludes that even after including externality costs, without significant technological breakthroughs, the economics of PV applications are unlikely to allow for an unsubsidized, widespread adoption of this technology in the near future, Further, if the goal of PV transfer programmes is to limit future greenhouse gas emissions, there are larger and cheaper opportunities available in industrialized countries to achieve reductions, Alternative measures for ensuring a market for photovoltaics, hence providing manufacturers with opportunities to improve the current technology, include mandating that utilities install a certain quantity of solar technologies by a certain date, Finally, moving towards a renewable energy future that includes PV systems requires a sustained R&D programme that will lead to improvements in panel and other system efficiencies.Future developments of the Bulgarian economy, energy demand, energy supply, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are projected and evaluated for baseline and mitigation scenarios. Different methods and approaches are used at different stages of the study with a tendency to incorporate them in a single integrated resource planning tool such as the MARKAL-MACRO model. The results obtained indicate that the aim of Framework Convention of Climate Change to have year 2000 GHG emissions below the base year 1988 emissions will be achieved without further mitigation steps. Reducing the expected increase of GHG emissions in the decade 2000 to 2010 requires a package of mitigation measures to be implemented in the next few years.The participation of developing countries in climate change mitigation requires that mitigation projects be compatible with general national social and economic development objectives in the countries. This paper outlines a methodological framework for the assessment of the cost of climate change mitigation The cost assessment involves a comparison between baseline development trends and a climate change mitigation scenario. It recommends constructing baseline scenarios on the basis of a critical evaluation of official macroeconomic development programmes in the countries. Country study results for Venezuela and Zimbabwe are referenced and methodological lessons are drawn. In this paper we introduce the concept of 'islands of sustainability'. The basic assumption is that the development towards sustainability can be introduced starting from sustainable 'islands'. An island is an area where sustainability is reached at a local or regional level. Exchange activities within the regional network and with the environment are key points in creating an island of sustainability. One of the main theses is that the concept of sustainability addresses not only the interactions between the economic system and the ecosphere but also structural aspects of the anthropogenic system, such as the economic diversity and economic connectedness. Hence, sustainability is linked to the complexity of the regional network. In order to attain sustainability the intensity, the speed, and comprehensiveness of internal and external interactions, as well as the connectedness of the regional network, have to be changed. In this paper we examine the regional system. The structure, elements, interactions, and boundaries of the regional system are discussed in detail. This systems analysis is the basis of the definition of islands of sustainability. Once we reach sustainable development within islands, we then turn our discussion to the change of the whole unsustainable economic system. Islands of sustainability can be seen as 'troublemakers' which infiltrate the whole unsustainable system and act as cells of development.Many proponents of industrial ecology have asserted that the declining volume of raw materials used per unit of gross national product (GNP) constitutes a process of ''dematerialization.'' They have suggested that this process could allow continued growth in production and wealth while attenuating adverse impacts on the environment. Dematerialization, however, has been a central strategy for reducing production costs since before the beginnings of industrial capitalism Historically it has been associated with expanded, rather than contracted use of raw materials. Besides ignoring the historical record, proponents of dematerialization have failed to recognize that absolute volume of material consumed rather than volume relative to GNP is the significant measure in ecological terms. On a global scale, the volumes and the distances transported of major minerals have increased over the periods for which dematerialization has been claimed.This paper discusses the transformation of values underpinning the shift toward an industrial ecology by a broad spectrum of stakeholders representing many disciplines. A series of models discuss the shift from anthropocentrism toward biocentrism - moving all stakeholders ever closer to sustainability. At the core of the paper is a model that elucidates how value shifts transpire and is presently underway among a growing number of diverse stakeholders. The second half of the paper discusses several industrial initiatives that recognize the blending of economics, econology ethics, technology and government policy: (1) environmental standards; (2) environmental tools of analysis; (3) best management practices; and (4) environmental accounting.The term industrial ecology was conceived to suggest that industrial activity can be thought of and approached in much the same way as a biological ecosystem and that in its ideal form it would strive toward integration of activities and cyclization of resources, as do natural ecosystems. Beyond this attractive but fuzzy notion, little has been done to explore the usefulness of the analogy. This paper examines the structural framework of biological ecology and the tools used for its study, and it demonstrates that many aspects of biological organisms and ecosystems (for example, food webs, engineering activities, community development) do have parallels in industrial organisms and ecosystems. Some of the tools of biological ecology appear to be applicable to industrial ecology, and vice versa. In a world in which no biological ecosystem is free of human influence and no industrial ecosystem is free of biological influence, it is appropriate to abandon the artificial division between the two frameworks and develop a new synthesis-Earth system ecology-as the logical construct for all of Earth's ecosystems.This paper examines the impact of biotechnology for enhancing the quality of the environment, and the necessity of encouraging holistic approaches to environmental problem solving. Current actions are considered wanting because they place insufficient attention on the causes of environmental degradation. In this context, a number of issues and research agendas are presented, a consideration of which leads me to opine that urgent priorities for ensuring lasting sustainable development must include the widespread adoption of clean technology and ecosystem restoration. Biotechnology has a particularly decisive role to play in realizing clean processes and clean products, and this role is illustrated with reference to clean technology options in the industrial, agroforestry, food, raw materials, and minerals sectors. A quarter of a century ago Commoner (1971) used the metaphor of a closing circle to draw attention to incompatibilities of modern industrial society and ecological health. The second part of this paper argues that, as biotechnology has matured, a circle of synergistic flows of materials, services and ideas has been established between it and biodiversity and suggests a more optimistic scenario to that portrayed by Commoner. The closing of the biotechnology-biodiversity circle is manifest in the following terms: search and discovery; detection, circumscription and phylogeny; ecosystem function and restoration; industrial ecology; and the gearing provided by molecular biology. Finally, the North-South biotechnology-biodiversity circle presents critical problems of commercial exploitation and intellectual property rights in relation to the gene pools of the megadiversity but predominantly developing countries of the world.Scientists, policy-makers, and the general public are becoming increasingly aware of environmental damage associated with the large and growing material through-put required in modern industrial society. One approach emerging in response to these concerns is called Industrial Ecology (IE). IE signals a shift from 'end-of-pipe' pollution control methods towards holistic strategies for prevention and planning of more environmentally sound industrial development. However, the broad umbrella of IE currently houses a diverse group of scholars, consultants, and environmentalists, who range in scope from those advocating incremental changes in existing systems, to some promoting a total transformation of industrial activity. This article presents a critical review of the existing US literature on IE. We introduce and critique IE's primary concepts, and analyse weaknesses and gaps in IE's conceptual framework. We also discuss the needs and potential for advancing if concepts and projects in the future.After a brief review of the evolution of the steel industry during the past 25 years, some basic definitions are presented, including that of industrial ecology, advanced materials, and ''green'' materials. Then, we discuss the environmental problems that are inherently associated with both conventional and novel steel processing technologies, touching on pollution control, waste minimization and recycling. The important conclusion is reached that when modern technologies are employed, steel is both an advanced material and a green material. Particularly noteworthy in the finding is that steel is one of the most recycled materials in current use. The paper concludes with the enumeration of the tasks ahead and with the definition of the steelplant of the future, which will have to be clean, environmentally benign, located close to the customer and will produce no waste. Indeed, it may derive significant revenue streams from the treatment of wastes produced by other industrial activities. By its very nature, the future steelplant will have to use some mixture of scrap and virgin iron units. It will be frugal on energy, highly flexible in operation, and will expolit synergies with other industrial systems.Industrial Ecology, by emulating the ecology of nature, is production with zero waste. Whatever is left over as a result of any particular transforming action or process is consumed in some other activity. Zero industrial waste seems near impassible. But left over materials can be recycled or reused. Waste water can be purified; air discharges rendered harmless. Knowledge is coming to the fore to reduce waste and mitigate damaging effects. Life Cycle Analysis is a methodology to evaluate all environmental impacts including acquisition of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, product use and final disposition. Design for Environment is a discipline to achieve improvement. Design for Disassembly at the end of a product's life makes reclamation practical. An Industrial Ecology Conceptual Framework useful in generating additional needed knowledge is presented.This paper selectively reviews Professor Julian, Szekely's research contributions in the two decades since he joined MIT. The paper describes Szekely's research strategy and style and examines how he developed understanding of disparate materials processing systems while maintaining a unifying focus on fluid flow phenomena. Szekely's interdisciplinary skill is demonstrated by his ability to simultaneously study electromagnet driven flows, gas stirred melts, transport phenomena in plasmas, solidifying systems, multiphase phenomena in packed beds and industrial ecology. It is suggested that Szekely's work constitutes a foundation and a lasting contribution to the burgeoning discipline of mathematical modeling of materials processing. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an environmental auditing tool that quantifies the environmental burdens of an activity inclusive of all its related systems. In the past, LCA has been applied primarily to products, but recent literature suggests it also has potential as an analysis and design tool for processes and services. This potential arises from the unique ability of LCA to link the environmental burdens of a process with its mass and energy flows. The aim of this work is to apply LCA as a tool for process design rather than one for product assessment. A nitric acid plant formed the basis for a case study wherein LCA was used to quantify and compare environmental performance of a number of design alternatives aimed at waste reduction. Economic models for the alternatives were formulated and linked to the environmental models to perform a multiobjective optimization with the express aim to maximize economic returns and minimize environmental impact. The comparative study showed that one design alternative teas clearly superior from an environmental point of view. The optimization demonstrated that operational changes could result in significant environmental improvement at minimal economic cost. Future work in this area should focus on the allocation of environmental burdens from multiple-output processes as well as extending the analysis to include environmental and economic impacts of all related downstream processes.There is potential for significant change in the U.S. Surfactants market. The factors working to cause change include new laundry powder formulation technology, the introduction of washing machines which meet proposed Department of Energy regulations, increased use of enzymes, environmental considerations, environmental considerations, increased mildness and clarity for dish liquids and the introduction of dish liquids with antibacterial action. Life Cycle Analysis techniques have demonstrated that the comparison between the environmental impact of oleochemical and petrochemical based surfactants is more complex than was thought. In the future the choice between surfactants from the two different feedstock sources will largely be governed by cost and performance considerations. In spite of the potential for change it is forecast that the surfactant types enjoying large volume sales today will continue to be the most widely used products in the future. The reason for this is the expense incurred in developing and securing environmental approval for new molecules and the cost/performance already available from existing products. On a global basis LAS will remain the workhorse surfactant. However, mature surfactant markets such as the U.S., Europe and Japan will increase the use of alcohol based derivatives (alcohol sulphate, alcohol ethoxylates and alcohol ethoxysulphates).The road transport sector has been studied with a life-cycle perspective. Transport activities and products used for road transportation have been analysed in order to identify those with significant contribution to the total environmental impact. Detailed data on the environmental burdens caused by different transportation activities such as fuel production, fuel combustion at driving, maintenance of the vehicle and production and after use treatment of the vehicle have been collected and transformed into a form usable in life cycle assessment (LCA). A comprehensive and flexible system model for description of road transportation systems has been developed. A software program, KRABAT, has been developed from the system model. The program has been used for calculation of the environmental burdens of road transportation. The use of non-renewable energy is sometimes used as an indicator of the environmental impact of activities. In this study the consumption of non-renewable fuels, electricity and air emissions have been considered. The production, maintenance and after use treatment of the vehicle have shown to contribute significantly to the total environmental impact of road transportation, measured per vehicle kilometer. This is especially valid for passenger cars, for which the amount of fossile fuel used for production of the vehicle is about 10% of the total amount used during the whole life time of the car. This share is generally much smaller for trucks, since they are used more frequently than passenger cars. The treatment of the different materials of the car after use is of importance for the possibilities of minimization of the environmental impact from road transport. In a case study, the environmental burdens from all processes and transports in the life cycle of newspapers have been analysed. Two after use treatment scenarios were studied. one with 70% recycling and the other with 100% incineration with heat recovery. The total contribution of environmental burdens from transportation to the total of the whole life cycle were studied. It could not be concluded that transportation increased with a higher degree of recycling. This holds true for our assumptions. The result may however be different for other geographical conditions, population densities, etc.We analyze the structure of the impact pathway methodology and show that, for the important problem of calculating the expectation value of the marginal damage from a point pollution source, the equations can be simplified greatly. Ln particular, in a uniform world (uniform receptor density and uniform atmosphere) they can be integrated in closed form to yield a very simple formula for the total damage D-uni in a uniform world. The generalization to secondary pollutants is straightforward. We then test the relevance of this simple formula in the real world, by using curve fits to the results of derailed models for atmospheric dispersion and chemistry and by varying the receptor density according to typical patterns. We also compare D-uni with the output of a software package that carries out an accurate numerical integration of atmospheric dispersion results over geographic data for population and other receptors. Evaluating a set of five sites in France that appear generally representative, ranging from rural to extremely urban, we find that the true damage is within a factor of three of D-uni. This remarkably small sensitivity to geographical detail can be explained by the conservation of matter. We provide guidelines for several questions that are relevant for environmental policy: what are the functional relations and key parameters, as input to an uncertainty analysis? How does the damage vary with key parameters, e.g. stack height? How much accuracy and resolution is needed, in the atmospheric modeling and in the data for receptor distribution? How large is the error if one uses typical average values rather than detailed calculations? Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science LtdLife-cycle assessments (LCA) as a tool for the evaluation of the environmental burdens occurring during the life-cycle oi a product are increasing in significance for environmental oriented decisions in industry, trade and politics. However, there are still several methodological issues which are not yet clarified. In the international discussions on ICA an agreement has been generally achieved concerning the structure of LCAs based on the four steps scoping/goal definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment and evaluation. The methodological framework for scoping/goal definition and inventory analysis is widely developed. in the fields of impact assessment and evaluation several methodological alternatives are under discussion. Therefore, most oi the published LCAs focus on the inventory analysis evaluating material and energy flows as system inputs as well as outputs in terms of air- and water-borne emissions or solid waste. The results of an inventory analysis are beneficial e.g. for ecological improvements in product development or for weak point analyses and process optimizations. Even with inventory analyses, problems must be solved with the allocation of environmental burdens (energy, emissions, waste) related to the production of primary raw materials between products made of these primary raw materials and those made of recycled material. This issue is a challenge when waste paper is recycled. The paper deals with methodology of LCA focusing on allocation issues. In a case study two allocation approaches are presented and discussed.There is a growing concern about the concept of environmental quality (EQ) in the building product industry. A classification of existing EQ models is presented, as well as a discussion of the underlying assumptions of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and the significance of the results. It is proposed that some modifications to the classic LCA model are necessary to take into account the characteristics of building products and their associated actors. Some of these modifications can be achieved through simple extensions within the existing framework, others call for specific developments of the framework. A list of requirements is presented for building product specific EQ evaluation and improvement methodologies based on LCA. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.When marketing environmentally responsible packaged products, the producer is confronted with consumer beliefs concerning the environmental friendliness of packaging materials. When making environmentally conscious packaging decisions, these consumer beliefs should be taken into account alongside the technical guidelines. Dutch consumer perceptions of the environmental friendliness of packaged products are reported and compared with the results of a life-cycle analysis assessment. It is shown that consumers judge environmental friendliness mainly from material and returnability. Furthermore, the consumer perception of the environmental friendliness of packaging material is based on the postconsumption waste, whereas the environmental effects of production are ignored. From the consumer beliefs concerning environmental friendliness implications are deduced for packaging policy and for environmental policy.In this paper the method employed for a detailed economic analysis of a solar energy system is presented. A spreadsheet computer program is used as a tool for the economic analysis because the general format of such a program is a table with cells which can contain values or formulae and the fact that they incorporate many build-in functions. System optimisation is also presented through an example for a hot water system. Both of them show that the method presented here is both accurate and fast. Although the method presented here deals with solar systems, it is applicable to all energy producing systems and consequently to all renewable energy systems.In most industrial countries, waste management is giving way to an emphasis on recycling. The effects of this change have been particularly noticeable on the electrical engineering and electronics sectors, which often require tailor-made materials. Siemens' EcoCOMPASS, which conforms to Germany's new Closed Substance Cycle Waste Management Act, provides valuable assistance in making decisions regarding the design of innovative, rationally priced, and environmentally compatible products.Appropriate design and construction can reduce the environmental impact of buildings over their entire life cycle. Such a prevention strategy can be supported by an evaluation tool. Our approach consists of applying life cycle analysis to the building sector. The use of computers is preferred for an easier comparison of alternative designs and to test possible improvements of a project. We adopted an object oriented approach in order to link models with professional practice. A data structure has been defined, in which a building is decomposed into objects. The corresponding classes include both data (inventories of basic materials and processes) and methods (accounting for fabrication, recycling, etc.). The result of such an evaluation is an environmental profile, constituted from various indicators on natural resources used, environmental effects and waste produced. First sensitivity analysis were performed showing the importance of the utilisation phase with its associated energy, water and waste fluxes. The environmental performance of a building is a result of a sequence of decisions like the choice of the building site, design choices, occupant's behaviour, etc. The potential applications of this research are to inform the various actors about the consequences of their choices, to assess the environmental interest of innovative technologies (e.g. solar components) and to develop new tools for practitioners. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is essentially a material and energy balance over the entire life cycle of a material, product or service to determine its interaction with its environment and to assess its impact on the environment. Most LCAs have so far been of specific consumer products. This paper develops a method for LCA of the base materials, which are derived from many different products, in municipal waste. The method quantifies the environmental impact of all stages in the life of a material: production, product manufacture and use, and waste disposal. It includes impacts apportioned from general industrial processes, such as transport and electricity generation. Measures of specific environmental impacts, for example SO2 emissions and NOx emissions, are aggregated wherever possible into environmental loads, in this case units of polluted air. Recycling is widely believed to reduce the burden of product life cycles on the environment. However, consideration of the additional loads due to the extra operations needed to recycle material often casts doubt on this belief. The method is designed for comparing the environmental loads of various rates of material recycle with the other waste management options of landfill and incineration. The method is applied to aluminium. It is shown that recycling aluminium considerably reduces all the environmental loads considered, compared to landfill and incineration.A simple framework for environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) based on physical measures is presented and applied to the comparison of long-distance energy transport systems, including high-voltage alternating and direct current transmission lines, pipelines for gas and oil, inland waterway, road and rail transportation. Quantitative indicators for fossil-energy consumption, air-emission impacts, land use, audible noise impacts, and visual impacts are developed. These can be used in the context of existing planning or decision making instruments, such as integrated resource planning, technology assessment, LCA, regional planning, line and power plant siting. To reduce all information to a single indicator, the concept of the equivalent impacted area is introduced for land use, audible noise and visual impacts. It is shown that pipelines are the environmentally most favourable option in the case of oil and gas transport. In the case of coal transport, early conversion to electricity and transmission by high-voltage lines can lead to significant impact reductions compared to coal transport with barges and trains. For long transport distances, high-voltage direct current lines yield particularly good results. (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.The comparison of the ecological aspects of production processes and products are playing an increasingly important role in the decision-making processes of e.g. public enterprise and consumer behaviour. Raw materials such as wood and wood-based products are also being affected by these developments. The listing of all material and energy flows, starting with the production of wood in the forest to the manufacturing of products up to and including the further use or disposal of wood products provides the basis for the elaboration of product-related life-cycle analyses. This paper presents, structures and discusses the first two modules ''Wood Production in the Forest'' and ''Sawn Timber Manufacture'' in the life-cycle analysis of wood products.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aspire to quantify the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle. The technique is used to identify and realize opportunities to improve the environmental aspects of processes, and to compare between products with equivalent function and performance in order to select the environmentally best ones. Especially when the intended application is a comparative assertion, it is inevitable that the key features and methodological framework currently discussed in ISO be accepted and applied to fulfill the specific requirements of transparency, completeness, reproducibility, reliability, and consistency. Because construction affects our environment to a significant extent, building materials and products have been evaluated in LCA studies for several years. In this context, wood and timber based products do have an exceptional position, in that they are produced from a resource which itself is an integral part of the forest ecosystem. It has not yet been possible to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable forestry to such an extent that they can be used in LCA to underline the environmental benefits of wood with CO2-storage being the exception to the rule. Nevertheless, the examples selected from applications in building construction and power supply lines manifest that timber derived products have an excellent environmental position when compared to alternative products. This is mainly due to the sparing use of fossile energy resources, low contribution to the greenhouse effect, and small waste volume.This article gives a review of practical applicability of Life Cycle Assessment for wooden constructions. The problems of data collection in this field and related problems are discussed. The report is restricted to the specific situation and experience of the WeberHaus company (wood based houses). The aim of this report is not to present scientific results, but to offer some inside into practical handling of ecological based management notwithstanding the need of further scientific support.The so-called allocation or partitioning problem which is still indeterminable in life cycle assessment (LCA) has been studied. The phi balance defined in this study is used to describe the relations of inputs and outputs in each subsystem consisting of the whole environment system. In doing so, the mass balance of pollutant materials in environment system under consideration is expressed in much smaller dimension compared to the case where the conventional mass balance is employed and thus the mathematical procedure is highly simplified in establishing a computer program for calculating the cumulative CO2 emission unit which is equivalent to the total quantity of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere to produce the present material or energy from raw fossil resources. The cumulative CO2 emission unit which is an indicative value of CO2 pollution used in this study of LCA are calculated for some petrochemical materials for plastics depending on several kinds of partitionings.The whole life cycle of a product or system has to be considered to prevent the neglect or shift of important environmental consequences.Two types of Japanese CO2 emissions inventories were compiled based on energy balance and input-output tables. The first inventory covers the years 1965 to 1990 and clearly describes historical changes in the emission structure by sector and by origin. The second inventory, covering the years 1975 to 1990, provides us with not only a detailed sectoral breakdown of direct emissions, but also opportunities for broader application based on the ''embodied emission intensity''. We applied the concept of emissions intensity to several issues, including analyses of structural changes in emissions from the viewpoint of the final demand of the economy, implications of embodied emission in international trade, and a life-cycle analysis of CO2 emissions from an automobile. The results proved that emissions inventories can be effectively used for mitigation assessments, both in economic analyses and in technological assessments.The IEA Greenhouse Gas programme is the principal international collaboration on R&D into mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. It is actively supported by 16 countries as well as 3 industrial sponsors. The programme undertakes analysis of options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, disseminates the results and develops targets for future R&D. In its first 4 years of work, the programme has carried out 24 separate studies, initially focusing on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power generation. Assessments cover technologies to capture, store and utilise greenhouse gases. The first life-cycle analysis of power generation incorporating carbon dioxide removal has been completed and valuable lessons learnt about methods suitable for this purpose. More recently work has begun on mitigation of other greenhouse gases and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from different sources. In addition, targets for research are identified and plans are developed for demonstration of appropriate technologies. A variety of publications are produced, reporting results of this work, as well as stimulating dialogue about greenhouse issues through the medium of a regular newsletter.The complex structure of energy supply systems and the range of environmental issues involved, make decisions regarding the use of new or improved energy resources and energy technologies far from being straightforward. A life-cycle approach is required to reveal the full potential for an option to realize increased energy performance and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition, the life-cycle assessment reveals possible bottlenecks regarding other environmental issues.The IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme is an international collaboration supported by 16 countries and several industrial organisations. Its purpose is to evaluate technologies for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. In the first 3 years of work, the programme concentrated on CO2 emissions from power stations. The main types of power plant and various technologies for capturing CO2 were examined. Storage and utilisation options for CO2 were assessed. The work culminated in the life cycle assessment reported here of 3 fossil fuel based power generation cycles in which CO2 was captured and stored. For each fuel cycle, one natural gas and two coal based, a full 'cradle-to-grave' analysis of emissions was made. A fundamental objective was to establish a consistent and transparent methodology which could form the basis for comparing technical responses to the possibility of global warming. The paper discusses the logic behind the assumptions, and limitations in the data and methodolgy. The uncertainty of much of the data on environmental externalities is recognised and a distinction made between lack of scientific data and the influence of value judgements. External costs that were quantified are small relative to the private costs.In this study, the quantity of CO2 emitted resulting from the construction of a solar cell power station in Indonesia using Japanese-manufactured modules was calculated by means of life cycle analysis, and was compared with that from the production of an analogous power station in Japan using the same modules. The CO2 emitted per unit of electrical energy generated by the power station in Indonesia is less than that of the analogous Japanese station because solar energy is available in larger quantities. However, due to the present relative inefficiency of Indonesian thermal power plants, CO2 emissions per unit electrical energy grows larger than that using Japanese-manufactured modules if Indonesian-manufactured modules are used. This analysis suggests that solar cell power generation systems be used in low latitudes where high-efficiency has been demonstrated, and that cooperation between developed and developing countries is essential for the utilization of solar energy in these regions.This paper aims at clarifying kg points for realizing sustainable energy supply under restrictions on resource and environment. For this purpose, we first developed a database to estimate life cycle efficiencies and greenhouse gas emissions for various energy systems. Then on the basis of this life cycle assessment, we quantitatively define the concept of 'Sustainability Limitations' on resource depletion and environmental emissions. From this concept, present world is judged to be unsustainable both from resource and environmental viewpoints. At the same time, we clarify how far present world is from Sustainability Limitations. Then we describe our mathematical model simulating global energy supply and demand in ultra-long term. In this model, the concept of Sustainability Limitations is utilized so as to impose economic incentives to make energy system shift to a sustainable one in long term. Sustainability limitations of resource depletion and CO2 emissions are taken into consideration. As energy resources. this model includes coal, oil, natural gas, other unconventional fossil fuels, uranium and renewable resources. As energy technologies, it includes major technologies of mining, transport, conversion and final utilization. Computed results have shown that present energy system, which is judged to be unsustainable, shifts to a sustainable system in the ultra-long term with appropriate incentives.Bleached eucalypt kraft pulps manufactured in prospective Australian greenfield pulp mills with elemental chlorine free (ECF) and totally chlorine free (TCF) bleaching sequences were compared using life cycle assessment (LCA). The comparison was restricted to two wood resources from different geographical areas: plantation wood from Western Australia and mature wood from Northern Tasmania. The starting point of the study was the tree harvesting stage and the end point was dried pulp. The main differences between the cases were a result of the different pulp yields of mature and plantation wood. In the Tasmanian mature wood case, more wood and slightly more fossil fuel were needed, but more power was available for external use than in the Western Australian plantation case. The fossil fuel requirement was mainly for transport and wood harvesting. The pulp mills produced more effluent, emissions to air and solid waste than the wood harvesting or transport. However the contribution of the latter activity to certain air emissions and fossil fuel consumption was appreciable. There were minor differences between the ECF and TCF cases for each wood resource.An environmental assessment has been made of five options for the treatment of sulphur dioxide in gases from metallurgical smelters. The five options are the production of sulphuric acid, elemental sulphur, saleable gypsum and disposable calcium sulphite sludge, and release of untreated sulphur dioxide to atmosphere. The specific case of treatment options for a hypothetical smelter located at a mine site was also examined. The environmental assessment method used is an adaptation of life cycle assessment methodology, and has been applied to desulphurization, transport of desulphurization products to point of use, and selected downstream processing of sulphur and sulphuric acid. Little difference is observed between the environmental performance of the desulphurization processes assessed where the products are sulphuric acid, elemental sulphur, saleable gypsum and disposable calcium sulphite sludge. If the boundary is extended to include downstream product manufacture, the impacts associated with the processing of sulphuric acid and elemental sulphur become an order of magnitude greater than the impacts of the limestone scrubbing processes producing saleable gypsum and disposable calcium sulphite sludge. Transport was found to have a minor contribution to the overall impacts.The environmental consequences of options for the manufacture, application, disposal, reuse and recycling, applicable to the Full range of currently conceived advanced window systems, are discussed. Advanced window systems may incorporate, singly and in various combinations: evacuated contiguously-sealed glazing, electrochromics, thermochromics, photochromics, aerogels, xerogels, inert gas filled double glazings, low infra-red emittance coatings, diffractive daylight deflectors, holographic daylight deflectors refractive daylight deflectors, toughened glass. The primary impetus for the development of such systems is that their use enables buildings to incur minimal energy use by reducing window heat losses and/or the displacement of electric lighting by enhanced daylighting The energy savings associated with advanced glazings displace the combustion oi fossil fuels directly and indirectly; environmental benefits thus ensue. However these benefits map be offset by the impact of energy embodied from manufacture and the negative impacts of the extraction and disposal of constituent materials. Over their total life-cycle the environmental impact for advanced glazing systems and their associated means of manufacture, system fabrication and the tenable reuse, recycling and disposal options are unknown. The usefulness of life cycle analyses during the research and development stage is discussed.The assessment of the adverse effects on the environment arising from the production of the raw materials to the finished product and its eventual disposal is known as a life cycle assessment The relevant information in the present instance serves to assist ail the interested parties to determine those stages in the cycle that in the case of the alkyd emulsion manufactured by Dyno Industries can be improved to reduce adverse effects, arising therefrom, on the environment. The most effective improvements derive from the constant development of modifications to the production processes and the elimination of noxious substances.In spite of the fact that solar energy is a ''clean'' energy form, gaseous pollutants are emitted during the manufacturing of the systems necessary for its utilisation. An attempt is made in this paper to estimate the level of atmospheric pollutants emitted during the successive stages which make up the manufacture process for solar water heating (SWH) systems, and to evaluate these results in comparison with the respective pollutant emission levels attributed to the generation of electricity in Greece's conventional power plants. As energy consumption is recognised as the main source of atmospheric pollution, a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) method was applied, focusing on the most energy-consuming stages of the SWH system production process. The conclusions of the analysis indicate that the emissions of gaseous pollutants associated with the utilisation of solar energy are considerably lower than those caused by the production of electricity in conventional systems, thereby substantiating that solar energy utilisation can make a notable contribution to the abatement of atmospheric pollution. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science LtdThis study proposes and demonstrates an extension of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for the purpose of assessing the environmental and social consequences of sectorial policies. It introduces the concept of ''activity elasticity''. The method relies on relative, rather than absolute, assessments of the contribution of various activities to environmental impacts. The methodology is designed to be easy to apply, to require relatively little training for implementation and to make the most of the acquired experience of local professional staff and affected parties. The method is demonstrated by an application to the effects of the reformed CAP on a fanning community in Greece, from which it is concluded that the environmental and social costs are high. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited.The goal of environmentally conscious design for manufacturing is to select materials and processes that minimize environmental impact. This paper describes a general and uniform way to analyze the environmental impact of manufacturing based on the product decomposition, the materials used in the manufacturing processes, and the particular view of the environment. To accomplish this task, we developed a computer program, called EcoSys(TM) that assists manufacturing engineers and environmental reviewers in assessing the environmental consequences of their manufacturing decisions.The proper selection of a wheelchair requires making several critical decisions, not the least of which is what type of wheelchair is appropriate. The International Organization for Standards (ISO) continues to develop and refine wheelchair standards. Standards allow the objective comparison of products from various sources, permitting consumers or clinicians to assess wheelchairs with which they are not familiar by comparing test results. This study consisted of three components: 1) the comparison of fatigue test results with a planar ANSI/RESNA test dummy to a HERL contoured test dummy; 2) the comparison of fatigue test results for common depot versus common rehabilitation manual wheelchairs; and 3) the comparison of fatigue test results for manual rehabilitation wheelchairs with solid 8-inch casters versus those with pneumatic 8-inch casters. Rehabilitation wheelchairs lasted on average 13.2 times longer than the depot wheelchairs. Both types, tested with the standard ISO-ANSI/RESNA dummy, lasted on average 2.1 times longer than those wheelchairs tested using the contoured dummy. The three rehabilitation wheelchairs equipped with 8-inch pneumatic casters lasted on average 3.2 times longer than the 6 rehabilitation wheelchairs equipped with solid 8-inch casters. The depot wheelchairs cost about 3.4 times as much to operate per cycle or per meter than the rehabilitation wheelchairs. The rehabilitation wheelchairs tended to experience component failures, while the depot wheelchairs tended to experience frame failures. Our testing indicates that the tests in the ISO-ANSI/RESNA standards can relate design features to fatigue test results and durability. Rehabilitation wheelchairs tend to use higher quality materials and better manufacturing practices, and they provide greater mobility for wheelchair users. Purchasers and prescribers of wheelchairs should consider the life-cycle cost and not just the purchase price for wheelchairs.Environmental Performance Evaluation (EPE) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are both useful management tools for the effective and efficient avoidance and reduction of operational effects damaging to the environment. EPE and LCA, as they are termed in the international Standard ISO 14000ff, for example, are linked. The basis for EPE as well as for LCA can be a product and process analysis, for which a common inventory is useful. Implementing the enterprise modelling method and other mathematical methods makes the development and maintenance of an ecological data base less time-consuming and makes it easier to use.Approaches to implement sustainable and environmental engineering in Norwegian education and research are described in this paper. The major obstacle for the growth and implementation of interdisciplinary topics is found in the traditional university culture. Three different ways of implementing inter-disciplinary engineering education are sketched and an integrated research, education and industrial programs are described. Integration is sometimes easier in smaller universities and colleges. A successful outreach program from the much larger Norwegian University of Science and Technology to the Aalesund College is described in the area of systems engineering, life cycle assessment and cleaner production in ship yards.This paper reviews and analyzes the major recent North American studies that have compared on an environmental basis the major options used to manage the materials that comprise municipal solid waste (MSW). The reviewed studies provide quantitative comparative information on one or more of the following environmental parameters: solid waste output, energy use, and releases of pollutants to the air and water. The review finds that all of the studies support the following conclusions: Systems based on recycled production plus recycling offer substantial system-wide or ''life-cycle'' environmental advantages over systems based on virgin production plus either incineration or landfilling, across all four parameters examined. Only when the material recovery or waste management activities are analyzed in isolation-which does not account for the system-wide consequences of choosing one system option over another-do the virgin material-based systems appear to offer advantages over recycled production plus recycling.This paper presents a project-level evaluation of highway maintenance options using the state increment life-cycle cost analysis method. The case study utilizes pavement management data specific to the New York State Thruway Authority (NYSTA). The study demonstrates that the state increment method can be used at the project-level to:(1) assess the effect of treatments on pavement condition and remaining life, (2) determine the optimal time and condition for various treatments using stochastic dynamic programming, (3) evaluate the effects of uncertainty in pavement performance, (4) rank alternatives for each state based on life-cycle cost, and (5) provide remaining life estimates. Based on the case study results, a reasonable probabilistic representation for the pavement state transitions is selected and the condition-treatment matching rules are suitably modified. It is concluded that the presented comprehensive project-level evaluation of highway maintenance has helped adjust and validate the modeling information used in decision making.In any overall balance of hydrogen energy systems it is the way in which this energy is generated and the primary energy required to produce the equipment that are of decisive importance. Excerpts from the results of a study entitled ''Process Chain Analysis for a Hydrogen Energy System'', commissioned by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economics, Transportation and Technology, are presented and commented on.The relationship between life-cycle analysis and risk assessment is explored on a methodological level, and examples of state-of-the-art studies are presented and discussed, leading to an identification of some areas needing further work.Technology Assessment studies try to find out and evaluate the different impacts of the technologies assessed. Among these impacts the ecological impact of certain production technologies or products play an important role. A methodological tool for an improved assessment of the ecological effects is Life-Cycle-Analysis. It identifies the ecological effects 'from cradle to grave' by including the analysis of the horizontal and vertical process chains from mining of raw material through the production and use to the deposition. For each of the three parts of a Life-Cycle-Analysis - Inventory, Environmental Assessment, Valuation - the paper describes state of the art, methodological problems and likely developments.The importance of fuel cells for future low emission transportation systems is well known, but in order to obtain a complete picture of the benefits there is a need to consider the environmental impact of such systems over their lifetime from manufacture to disposal. This paper presents the preliminary results of environmental life cycle analyses of fuel cell vehicle drives and other low pollution options, thus enabling a comparative assessment to be made.A quantitative method of life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed to enable an energy audit of the process of material recycling to be carried out. An equation has been derived to provide information on the optimum balance between adverse environmental effects and beneficial recycling/reuse capabilities. The parameter analysed is the embodied energy of a material or product, but the LCA could equally be applied to other environmental burdens, such as CO2, SOx, and NOx emissions.Life cycle assessments to protect global environment and to control waste in the polymer industry are reviewed. The focus is on 1) environmentally sound technology, 2) energy conservation, and 3) recycling of industrial products. The competitiveness of a nation depends on how it balances economic development of sustainable growth and responsible care of the global environment in a borderless economy. It fully depends on the development of both environmentally sound manufacturing and effective recycling technologies for the products. Current environmental issues of the Japanese chemical industries as well as Toray's performance and new products development for environment business are reviewed: 1) Energy conservation and technology of the Japanese manufacturing industry, 2) Development of environmentally sound technology, 3) Effective products recycling technologies, and 4) Sustainable growth in the new chemical age. The future issues of life cycle assessment and environmental protection in manufacturing industries are discussed.Industrial Ecology, by emulating the ecology of nature, is production with zero waste. Whatever is left over as a result of any particular transforming action or process is consumed in some other activity. Zero industrial waste seems near impassible. But left over materials can be recycled or reused. Waste water can be purified; air discharges rendered harmless. Knowledge is coming to the fore to reduce waste and mitigate damaging effects. Life Cycle Analysis is a methodology to evaluate all environmental impacts including acquisition of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, product use and final disposition. Design for Environment is a discipline to achieve improvement. Design for Disassembly at the end of a product's life makes reclamation practical. An Industrial Ecology Conceptual Framework useful in generating additional needed knowledge is presented.A key question for life cycle analysis has been the translation of the inventory phase of the analysis into results usable in a business environment to make product decisions. The methods routinely used to translate the many dimensions of a life cycle inventory into a single ''score'' or measure of performance have been regularly challenged on a wide range of bases. However, these criticisms fail to recognize the inherent normative nature of the exercise, where the only relevant criterion for success is the ability make a discrete choice from a limited set of alternatives, rather than identifying the ''best'' possible action. The need to discriminate among alternatives, rather than to optimize globally, should allow the analyst to approach the problem of life cycle analysis from a more practical perspective. This premise is tested through the application of a proposed methodology that provides a set of broad ranges of value, in $/kg of every emission, based on aggregate willingness to pay to avoid the environmental impacts of each pollutant. The ranges include scientific uncertainty, variation in context or location, and a large range of possible values for parameters that have a subjective component. The $/kg ranges can be applied to the life cycle inventories of products to produce measures of overall environmental impact. Often, these ranges are sufficient to determine which is the best of several product or process alternatives. Finally, the methodology provides a quick guide to which pollutants and parameters are the most important, which makes conclusions more transparent, and it helps focuses further analysis for decision making, if no conclusion emerges initially. This kind of methodology can be very useful if the $/kg estimates are reliable. The first half of this paper develops how the ranges were derived. Any potential user needs to understand the notions of value employed; which effects are included and which are not, what the assumptions are, and how the answers can be modified. The second half of the paper demonstrates the application of the methodology to an automotive fender case study.In the plenum closing 20 lectures on life cycle analysis for passenger cars we will attempt to formulate answers to three questions: Why do we make life cycle analysis? How do we make it? What are the methodological deficiencies and what are the areas where research is needed? In the first part I point out the relationship between sustainable development and technology assessment. Both disciplines have been jointly influencing each other and will continue to do so even more increasingly. In the second part I deal with aspects of technology assessment: the differing procedures, schemes for classification, tools (LCA among others), methods, and typical misunderstandings. In the third and last part I draw a conclusion, point out and describe where research is needed, and give an outlook.In general, the method of Process-Chain-Analysis is used to perform a Life-Cycle-Analysis which allows a very detailed analysis of the different process steps. The disadvantage of this approach is the large amount of data needed to perform the assessment. Therefore, a Hybrid-Method is presented which completes the Process-Chain-Analysis by the economic model of Input-Output-Analysis which is extended for calculation of emissions and primary energy demand. This Hybrid-Approach allows an estimation of the influence of processes that are not included in the Process-Chain-Analysis and give hints whether the process chain should be more detailed. Based on the presentation of the methodical background, both methods - the Hybrid-Approach and the Process-Chain-Analysis - are compared by balancing a specific freight transport task.In the coming years, higher reductions in the environmental burdens of the car will be achieved through a better design of the automobile. A controversial debate continues to surround the issue of building this environmentally friendly vehicle. Car designers alike anticipate new design guidelines and evaluation tools capable of reaching these environmental goals. Life Cycle Assessment is one of the tools available today with an application to assist the automobile industry with these new design goals. The paper will demonstrates the potential benefits of LCA for the new design guidelines within the automobile industry.The great success of personal transportation in the past shows for-reaching influences on our way of living and our environment. Its future will be shaped not only by population growth and urban congestion, but it will also be influenced by legal constraints in view of lowering all environmental impacts like global warming, photosmog or acidification. Hybrid vehicles are supposed to be one step towards of the solution to the above mentioned problems. In addition to conventional vehicles with internal combustion engine (ICE) they offer the possibility to the driver to enter in ''zero emission'' areas. In comparison with pure electric vehicles they can be driven beyond the range limits of the batteries. This paper points out the environmental impacts of one battery type and its application in hybrid electric power train concepts and gives an analysis of the differences among them. The environmental impacts are analysed using the Life Cycle Assessment concept. This was done considering two different driving modes (parallel and seriell) over 100 000 km according to the 1996 European driving cycle (MVEG) in order to determine the differences between a number of battery systems. At the moment following conclusions can be made: The hybrid technology shifts the energy consumption from fuels to electricity. With new battery technology fuel consumption can be reduced in both driving modes to 24% for parallel and 32% for seriell hybrid systems compared to functionally equivalent diesel vehicles. However the replacement or the reduction of fossil fuel consumption does not automatically reduce the environmental impacts such as radioactivity, (non)renewable energy depletion or global warming. In this case the results demonstrate that the largest environmental impact reduction potential for vehicles with Lead-Acid batteries is due to the reduction of the operating energy. It seems that there is no ecologically favourable vehicle system and that the choice depends on the valuation of the various environmental problems.The main difference between conventional and electric vehicles is between the drive system and energy storage. Especially the batteries play an important role within the life cycle assessment of electric vehicles. Based on our work within the ''Rugen project'' under contract with the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology we have derived full energy and mass flow analysis for the production, supply, and recycling of four types of batteries (lead/acid, Ni/Cd, Na/NiCl2 and Na/S). The balances were made in accordance with the present state of the discussion concerning the standardization of life cycle assessments (ISO DIS 14040) (''from cradle to grave'', e.g.) and considering the following impact categories: Resource demand, greenhouse effect, ozon depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human and ecotoxicity, and photosmog. Our approaches to solve problems concerning the balancing will be discussed and the most important results of the balancing of energy and material flows of battery life cycles will be presented.The paper compares three cars with different propulsion systems: a vehicle with conventional combustion engine, an electric vehicle and a hybrid with the combination of combustion and electric engine, which is actually developed at the TU Munich. All propulsion systems are calculated for the same basic vehicle. Fundamental value of the comparison is the cumulated energy demand of the vehicles. For these life cycle assessment user profiles have been created regarding different mileages, using times and driving cycles. Refering to primary energy balance the electric vehicle compares unfavourably with the hybrid, while hybrid and conventional vehicle show almost the same results, depending on the user profile. By contrast the cumulated emissions of the electric vehicle are better than those of the hybrid, which causes less emissions than the combustion engine.The present paper describes a Life Cycle Approach of polyurethane foams used in car seats. The LCA practice is applied on: production and assembly of polyurethane foams; use of polyurethane foams on car seats; mechanical recycling of polyurethane foams to get secondary raw materials. The main results, referred to the environmental impact in terms of energy consumption and emissions into air, seem to confirm the technical and economical feasibility of F.A.RE. (Fiat Auto REcycling) project, that, until now, has allowed the recovery of scraps destined to the landfill.This case study has been performed in the paintshop of the car manufacturer AUDI in 1995 as part of a joint project between AUDI and the GSF Research Center. The aim of the study was to compare today's method of paraffin wax with the alternative of polyolefine foils which are glued to the car surface. Up to now most new cars are protected by a layer of wax (solved in white spirit) sprayed on their surface. Upon arrival at the local car distributor the wax has to be removed with a hot Water/petroleum-mixture. To compare the two methods under ecological aspects and to identify environmental improvement potentials the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been performed. The LCA-software tool HERAKLIT was used to calculate extended life cycle inventories. Additionally a large set of scenarios was computed for sensitivity analysis. The results of the inventory already suggests an advantage of the foil alternative because a 200 of altogether 250 parameters lie better than those of the wax alternative. The result is also not unambiguous. For comparative assessment of the different products the large amount of data compiled in the inventory table therefore needs to be further aggregated. Extending these results, an impact assessment (IA) methodology was developed by the author in his doctoral thesis. Applying the IA methodology yields that all selected 12 impact categories are better at the foil alternative.Within a research project executed by several industrial companies, trade unions and scientific institutions life cycle assessment of the floor panel cover of a motor-car was worked out. The project aimes at an evaluation of the opportunities and limitations of such an assessment for the selection process of products and materials, neither than at the establishment of a ''hit-list'' for the products or materials itself. After evaluating the functionel requirements of a motor-car panel floor cover and technical solutions four possible product-alternatives, different in the stages of practical use and development, were selected for further investigations. The data inventory started with the extraction of raw materials necessary for the final product, going through all pre-products along the life cycle and ending at the final product, its application and its use. The after use phase of the product could not be included due to technical reasons, As a result it can be stated, that life cycle assessment reveals a lot of enviromental data along the life cycle in all entities involved and can mark up some weak points on special positions. However, life cycle assessments of course donot cover all decision relevant aspects; they are an additionel and valual information basis for technically reasonable and economical projects or developments.Underwater acoustic experiments at the NATO SACLANT Undersea Research Centre, La Spezia, Italy (SACLANTCEN) are largely dependent on moored and towed instrumentation. Every year up to 500 cable terminations are made and tested in compliance with safety standards to evaluate breaking strength and fatigue effects and life-cycle analysis of fiber ropes.. Elongation and breaking strength can be determined for rope samples (maximum length 10 meters) subjected to up to 300 kN of tensile force. A computerized acquisition system records the details of safety control tests and the associated analysis. The machine also performs tension to tension cycling and ''strumming'' effect simulations on cable terminations, thus reproducing in air the two basic forcing functions on mooring lines at sea: wave action and current action. Aramid fiber ropes with advanced characteristics are being evaluated and the apparatus is being applied to the development of a new type of rope with high modulus fibers. An improved, rapid splicing technique has been developed for reliable cable terminations for long term moorings. This technique has been successfully applied to the moorings deployed during Atlantic-Ionian-Stream (AIS) 95 and Otranto Gap Experiment (OGEX2) oceanographic experiments in the Sicilian Channel and the Adriatic Sea.Software managers need to have information in order to control a software development process, One way to get this information is using data from old software projects. When this information is not available, software managers can not make precise plans to develop software. In this paper we are going to present an intelligent system that given the estimated software size in Function Points (FP) or in Source Lines of Code (SLOC), it will determine the staff, schedule, effort, and paperwork needed to complete the software life cycle (Analysis, Feasibility, Design, Implementation, Integration, and Testing). The system will also estimate how many defects will be expected during the software life cycle. With this information, software managers can make appropriate plans to develop software.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method to track material production, consumption, and reuse. This paper explores Life Cycle Design (LCD) as an applied approach associated with the purposeful designing or manipulating of life cycle issues to meet specified perfor- mance objectives, using the design process and the built environment as mechanisms for stabilization. The paper also describes Life Cycle Modeling (LCM) procedures that match different performance scales through a conceptual model. Ultimately, this model will be incorporated into an object based C++ CAD programming environment. The actual presentation will demonstrate at least one partial model within a particular regional context.The necessity to dispose of always growing waste quantity (particularly of plastics post-consumer), has caused a strong helping-hand to find oriented solutions, on the one hand towards the same waste reduction's on the other hand towards their utilization as source of energy or source of secondary materials. Life-Cycle Assessment concept enters into this contest; the LCA is an objective methodology of evaluation of the energy requirements and environmental loadings associated with the product, process or activity life-cycle (from the stage of raw materials to that of last disposal). In this paper the SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) methodology has been used to energetically compare three different plastic materials (PVC, PE and PET containers) life-cycle for two systems: 1) two-products system A that uses virgin plastics for the containers and for not specific handmade articles; 2) two-products system B that uses only virgin plastics for containers production's and recycled plastics for not specific handmade articles. For this purpose a mathematical model has been used to quantify the inputs and the outputs of the life-cycle derived product. So we determine the energy requirements of the two systems for any possible combination between disposal alternatives (landfill, incineration with or without heat recovery) to highlight recycling savings of the system B. The energetic analysis carried out allows the energy requirement quantification to determine the possible improvements of PVC and PET separation pilot-plant that has been illustrated in a previous paper.It is increasingly apparent that VOC emission reductions from coating processes have to be seen in a broader context. Firstly there is the balance between formulation, performance and cost. Secondly the issue of environmental trade-offs which accompany reductions in the VOC content of a paint formulation. Some early results from a life cycle assessment study on car painting are presented - these consider a range of environmental impacts associated with water based base coats and compare the profile of solvent based paint with end of pipe controls for VOC. Energy considerations play a major role in the analysis - it emerges that the two paint systems are environmentally. similar; neither has an all round better performance across the environmental criteria. Particularly interesting is to compare the total ozone creating potential in each case - ozone being the driver for VOC controls. The results suggest both systems offer an example of 'best available techniques' for car painting.This paper outlines a holistic approach to the nuclear fuel cycle and the impact that waste management can have on the holistic approach. The philosophy includes regarding irradiated fuel as a resource rather than a waste that can be used as a source of fissile material to be recycled, either Uranium returned to fuel or Plutonium in MOX for fast and thermal reactors. The holistic fuel cycle demands that the cost and impact of those compounds that leave the cycle (solid waste, liquid effluent and gaseous effluent) are minimized. This can only be achieved by applying a full life cycle analysis of process benefits. The paper describes some of the work in waste management but notes that waste and its generation must be seen as an integral part of any developed strategy.Standard methods for assessing the environmental impact of waste management systems are needed to underpin the development and implementation of sustainable waste management practices. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an emerging tool for ensuring such assessment is comprehensive and covers the full ''cradle to grave'' impacts associated with providing a product or service. This paper discusses aspects of a recent study commissioned by the U.K. Department of the Environment to assess how LCA methodology could be developed and applied to assist decision makers in waste management. It focuses on a method developed by the research contractors for identifying the environmental burdens that occur during the collection, treatment and disposal of non-hazardous waste. The method requires waste management activities to be defined as generic unit operations which are independent of the specific characteristics of the waste processed. These unit operations are used to flowsheet the specific system under study and burdens that are independent of the waste are identified. Waste-dependent burdens are identified separately by considering the interaction of unit operations and the specific characteristics exhibited by the waste under study. For identification purposes a restricted list of 10 characteristics is considered sufficient to highlight those burdens for which inventory data may be required, Comment is made on the potential to develop the identification method to provide quantified data for the burden inventory. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science LtdThe most universal of all binders, produced in huge quantities worldwide, is Portland cement. Following introduction in 1824 by Joseph Aspin, it has quite properly enjoyed popular appear with craftsmen, architects and engineers for its bonding properties. The manufacture of cement relies largely on primary minerals for feedstock and depends heavily on carboniferous fuels for production. Naturally occurring minerals have similar properties as a binder and have been used in their own right or as partial replacements for cement. Likewise, secondary products recovered from modern manufacturing or energy production processes also have the potential to replace in part a proportion of cement. Life cycle analysis of cement production supports the proposition that large quantities of fossil fuel and primary minerals are being unnecessarily used in situations where alternative replacements are available and frequently placed to waste. This paper considers the implications of cement production on a sustainable environment. It argues that, contrary to some opinions, partial replacement of cement with secondary wastes which have potential cementitious properties can enhance and improve structures which otherwise would include only Portland cement as the binder. Acceptance of this argument would leave massive quantities of primary minerals untouched and reduce the amount of fossil fuels demanded of cement production on the present scale. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science LtdThe reason for this investigation was the lack of insight into the environmental effects occurring during the entire life cycle of the means of production used in greenhouse horticulture. The utility value of the Life Cycle Assessment method was investigated as a tool to find answers to questions about environmental pollution. The LCA method is an internationally accepted method to compare the environmental pressure of products. For round tomatoes and small-flowered roses the environmental pressures of a soil-grown crop, a substrate crop with free drainage, and a substrate crop with recirculation were compared. The environmental effects of the means of production employed during the phases of raw material extraction, production, consumption at the glasshouse holding, and waste processing, are taken into account. Due to lack of data, crop protection has not been considered in this investigation. Substrate cultivation with recirculation of the drainage water results in less environmental effects per kilogram of tomatoes or per bunch of roses than soil cultivation and free drainage. Reusing the drainage water leads to a lower emission of N and P and consequently to a much lower score for nutrification. The lower consumption of phosphate fertilizers in crops with recirculation results in much lower scores for toxicity to water and soil organisms. These conclusions are also valid for other fruit vegetable and ornamental crops grown on substrate. The energy consumption at the glasshouse holding of natural gas and electricity has a great share in the total environmental pressure. The environmental effects of energy consumption are determined by fuel, and emissions and efficiency of the combustion process. Energy requirement, energy consumption or energy content only give an indication about the greenhouse effect and not about other environmental effects. The Life Cycle Assessment is a suitable tool to visualize the effects of a decision on the environmental effects during the entire life cycle. Hong Kong is a well-defined, highly developed metropolitan region where technical and economic developments have made it possible to support 6.1 million people on approximately 110 km(2) of built-up land resulting in one of the highest population densities of the world. Such a highly organised urban system interacts with the environment through materials, energy and information, similar to a living organism or an ecosystem. It can therefore be analysed in terms of uptake, transformation and storage of materials, and the discharge of waste products. In addition to the metabolic rate of man due to food assimilation, the additional turnover of the urban system due to its material and cultural development can be determined thus establishing a ''metabolic rate'' of the urban system. Hong Kong is an extreme example of an urban system and therefore an ideal case to study the present limits of urban metabolism. Based on available statistical data, the net fluxes, sources and sinks for the most important resources, namely food, fuels (energy), construction materials and other goods are quantitatively analysed. Material balances are established and the ''metabolic rate'' of Hong Kong is determined. The link between resource consumption and modern building construction and operation is shown. The associated waste generation, rapid accumulation of solid waste and resulting consumption of scarce land by landfills are discussed with regard to present and future waste management concepts. Finally, comparisons are made with the metabolic rate of the natural environment. It was found that approximately nine tonnes of materials are used annually per person of which about one third remain as waste. The major part of the materials is incorporated in new buildings and infrastructure where approximately 50 tonnes have already been accumulated per person. Material consumption and waste generation per person are, however, still low in the service industry dominated economy of Hong Kong as compared to industrialised countries such as Japan. Hong Kong probably has one of the highest metabolic rates per unit area of urban systems in the world and therefore faces the most serious challenges in sustaining long-term environmental quality.

 Candidate weed biocontrol agents must be screened to exclude those that could threaten desirable plants. Traditionally, this has been done by rejecting species that develop on economically important plants in laboratory no-choice tests. However, because congeneric plants often support development in these tests, even when they are not utilized in nature, the tests do not meet legislated requirements for rare plant species or the increasing public concern for native plants. Plant suitability for larval development is a poor predictor of host range because insects use a sequence of steps in which the early steps, such as host finding and acceptance for oviposition, tend to be stronger than the later ones, such as suitability for development. This study is a trial of a new approach to screening insects as weed biocontrol agents that uses risk analysis to quantify the suitability of a plant as a host on the basis of inset performance at various stages in its life cycle. The insects used for the study was a NW Chinese biotype of the leaf beetle, Altica carduorum, which in terms of climate adaptation and damage it inflicts on the weedy thistle Cirsium arvense, is a promising biocontrol agent for Canada. However, its ability to develop on all North American Cirsium spp. in laboratory no-choice tests currently excludes its release. We show by risk and factor analyses, with five sequential host-selection parameters, that the suitability of these thistles to A. carduorum is so low that the beetle would not jeopardize the continued existence of rare native thistles, so its release should not be a problem.The paper explores the distinction between climate and climate change. Adaptation to current climate variability has been proposed as an additional way to approach adaptation to long-term climate change. In effect improved adaptation to current climate is a step in preparation for longer term climate change. International programs of research and assessment are separately organized to deal with natural disasters and climate change. There is no scientific concensus so far, that extreme events have changed in frequency on a world-wide basis, although some regional changes have occured. It is extremely unlikely that significant shifts in the means of weather distrbutions will take place without shifts in the tails. In some situations it may make more sense to focus on adaptation to extreme events and the tails of distributions. In other circumstances adaptation to the norms is the logical focus. The relationship between normal climate and climate change is examined in terms of single and complex variables and phenomena. It is proposed that the research communities studying adaptation to extreme events and adaptation to climate change work more closely together, perhaps in a newly organized joint research program.The Russian Federation contains approximately 20% of the world's timber resources and more than half of all boreal forests. These forests play a prominent role in environmental protection and economic development at global, national, and local levels, as well as, provide commodities for indigenous people and habitat for a variety of plant and animal species. The response and feedbacks of Russian boreal forests to projected global climate change are expected to be profound. Large shifts in the distribution (up to 19% area reduction) and productivity of boreal forests are implied by scenarios of General Circulation Models (GCMs), Uncertainty regarding the potential distribution and productivity of future boreal forests complicates the development of adaptation strategies for forest establishment, management, harvesting and wood processing. Although a low potential exists for rapid natural adaptation of long lived, complex boreal forests, recent analyses suggest Russian forest management and utilization strategies should be field tested to assess their potential to assist boreal forests in adaptation to a changing global environment. Current understanding of the vulnerability of Russian forest resources to projected climate change is discussed and examples of possible adaptation measures for Russian forests are presented, including: (1) artificial forestation techniques that can be applied with the advent of failed natural regeneration and to facilitate forest migration northward; (2) silvicultural measures that can influence the species mix to maintain productivity under future climates; (3) identifying forests at risk and developing special management adaptation measures for them; (4) alternative processing and uses of wood and non-wood products from future forests; and (5) potential future infrastructure and transport systems that can be employed as boreal forests shift northward into melting permafrost zones. Current infrastructure and technology can be employed to help Russian boreal forests adapt to projected global environmental change, however many current forest management practices may have to be modified. Application of this technical knowledge can help policymakers identify priorities for climate change adaptation.The main chlorophyll a/c light harvesting complex of the diatom Cyclotella cryptica was isolated by sucrose density gradient centrifugation. It consisted of two polypeptides of Mrs 18000 and 22000. Both polypeptides and fragments thereof, obtained by formic acid treatment, were blocked at their N-termini. An antiserum raised against the two subunits selectively immunolabeled the thylakoid within the chloroplasts. The subunits were nuclear encoded and could be immunoprecipitated from poly (A)(+) RNA as precursor proteins in the Mr range of 20000 to 24000. The existence of minor chlorophyll protein complexes and their possible function in light climate adaptation processes was investigated in cells adapted to low light and high light conditions. Low light grown cells contained more fucoxanthin and less beta-carotene relative to chlorophyll a than high light adapted cells. The xanthophyll cycle pigments diatoxanthin and diadinoxanthin increased five-fold relative to chlorophyll a under high light conditions. Western-immunoblotting experiments with antisera raised against several chlorophyll a/b and chlorophyll a/c antenna complexes demonstrated that, beside the dominating chlorophyll a/c light harvesting complex, minor antenna complexes might exist, which, in part, seem to react to the light climate applied.Cultivated walnut varieties, generally well adapted to climatic conditions of the different production zones, often lack some important agronomic characteristics. It would therefore be useful to select in natural populations or create through hybridization new cultivars combining characters of improved climate adaptation, early fruiting, high productivity, disease tolerance and quality fruit production. This is possible given the very large and so far unexploited variability within the Juglans regia L. species. Research carried out on walnut genetics at UC Davis (USA) and at the Fruit and Vine Research Station in Bordeaux (France) has led to the study of several tree and fruit quantitative characters. Hybridization programs to create walnut varieties are relatively less developed than those of other fruit species. However three main breeding programs carried out in California, France and Hungary have led to the release of twenty new lateral fruit bearing varieties. Two recent programs to create vigorous and cherry leaf roll virus tolerant rootstocks but also CLRV - hypersensitive cultivars, are being developed at Davis and Bordeaux. These programs are using interspecific hybridization's between Black Walnuts and Juglans regia L. followed by back-crosses with the latter species. Some of these rootstock clones multiplied in vitro are currently being assessed. The tools of biotechnology began to be used at Davis (USA) and Orleans (France) to transform the Persian walnut and particularly to introduce resistance to insect pests or cherry leaf roll virus. The forestry sector provides a number of climate change mitigation options. Apart from this ecological benefit, it has significant social and economic relevance. Implementation of forestry options requires large investments and sustained long-term planning. Thus there is a need for a detailed analysis of forestry options to understand their implications on stock and flow of carbon, required investments, value of forest wealth, contribution to GNP and livelihood, demand management, employment and foreign trade. There is a need to evaluate the additional spending on forestry by analysing the environmental (particularly carbon abatement), social and economic benefits. The biomass needs for India are expected to increase by two to three times by 2020. Depending upon the forest types, ownership patterns and land use patterns, feasible forestry options are identified. It is found among many supply options to be feasible to meet the 'demand based needs' with a mix of management options, species choices and organisational set up. A comparative static framework is used to analyze the macro-economic impacts. Forestry accounts for 1.84% of GNP in India. It is characterized by significant forward industrial linkages and least backward linkage. Forestry generates about 36 million person years of employment annually. India imports Rs. 15 billion worth of forest based materials annually. Implementation of the demand based forestry options can lead to a number of ecological, economic and institutional changes. The notable ones are: enhancement of C stock from 9578 to 17 094 Mt and a net annual C-sequestration from 73 to 149 Mt after accounting for all emissions; a trebling of the output of forestry sector from Rs. 49 billion to Rs. 146 billion annually; an increase in GDP contribution of forestry from Rs. 32 billion to Rs. 105 billion over a period of 35 years; an increase in annual employment level by 23 million person years, emergence of forestry as a net contributor of foreign exchange through trading of forestry products; and an increase in economic value of forest capital stock by Rs. 7260 billion with a cost benefit analysis showing forestry as a profitable option. Implementation of forestry options calls for an understanding of current forest policies and barriers which are analyzed and a number of policy options are suggested. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.The impacts of global warming are among the more serious environmental threats far the Pacific Island countries. These nations justifiably argue that developed countries should give immediate priority to the implementation of climate change mitigation policies because of the severe nature of potential greenhouse impacts for the Pacific Islands. Another immediate priority acknowledged by these nations is the need for development of adaptation policies that plan for adjustment or adaptation, where possible, to the foreshadowed impacts of climate change. This article does not focus on adaptation or mitigation policy directly but on an allied opportunity that exists for the Pacific Islands via the auspices of the Climate Convention, because the existing very costly energy systems used in the Pacific island region are fossil-fuel dependent. It is argued here that efforts can be made towards the development of energy systems that are ecologically sustainable because Pacific Island nations are eligible to receive assistance to introduce renewable energy technology and pursue energy conservation via implementation mechanisms of the Climate Convention and, in particular through transfer of technology and via joint implementation. II is contended that assistance in the form of finance, technology, and human resource development from developed countries and international organizations would provide sustainable benefits in improving the local Pacific island environments. It is also emphasized that mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is not the responsibility of the Pacific Islands as they contribute very little on a per capita global scale and a tiny proportion of total global greenhouse gas emissions.This paper presents a summary of the technologies and practices that could be implemented in Venezuela in order to contribute to both climate change mitigation and national development efforts. The mitigation analysis concentrates an options to reduce CO2 emissions generated from the energy sector and land-use change. From the mitigation options analyzed for the energy sector it was determined that the most effective are those in the transportation sector (switching to larger capacity vehicles, reduced private vehicle share, and switching fuels for public transportation from gasoline to natural gas), both in terms of contribution to emissions reduction and costs. Regarding the options for industry, boilers conversion from liquids to natural gas shows negative cost, but to a considerably lower extent that for the transportation sector. Efficiency improvements of natural gas boilers, which presents close to zero cost, is more effective in reducing emissions than boiler conversion. Increase in hydro power generation is the alternative with the highest total cost but it is very effective in reducing emissions. From the mitigation options analyzed for land-use change, if was established that the forest sector has a considerable potential for reducing CO2 emissions through the adoption of sustainable forest practices, especially by slowing the rate of forest loss and degradation. Maintenance of already existing biomass in natural forests should be the first priority of forest measures to reduce the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere. Forest protection and management of native forest represent the two options with the highest carbon conservation potential and the lowest carbon unit cost. Expansion of the forest cover through the development of intensive forest plantations also presents a high potential to offset carbon emissions in Venezuela. An analysis of the barriers to mitigation options implementation shows that in the energy sector, low energy prices represent the main barrier to any mitigation program. Another important limitation to mitigation strategies implementation is the lack of institutional capacity and legal instruments for developing the mitigation measures. In the forest sector the primary causes of forest clearing in the country are not related to forest activities, so the definition of feasible mitigation options will depend upon a good understanding of other economic sectors and how they account for land-use change. Land tenure, rural poverty, political interests, and weak implementation of land-use planning instruments and environmental laws are considered to be the key limitations to any effort dealing with forest conservation. Land tenure, economic factors, and lack of incentives represent some of the most important barriers to the development of forest plantations and agroforestry systems in the country. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.The paper addresses the relationship between national economic and social development objectives and climate change mitigation, with national studies for Tanzania and Zimbabwe as the starting point. The main activities driving GHG emissions in these countries are evaluated in order to identify key options and polity areas where there may be synergistic effects between climate change mitigation and national development objectives, The country study for Tanzania has identified forestry and land use activities and the agricultural sectors as some of the main drivers in the future growth of greenhouse gas emissions, Forestry, land use and agriculture are at the same time key economic and social development areas, This means that options leading to improved performance of these activities can reduce future greenhouse gas emissions and imply increasing welfare, A potential for win-win options has similarly been assessed in the country study for Zimbabwe, The options include in particular efficiency improvements in industrial plants and in the energy sector, A new methodological issue in the country study for Zimbabwe is the comparable assessment of greenhouse gas reductions options for multiple emission sources and gases. The paper reports the result of the integrated assessment of CO2 and CH4 reduction options for energy, agriculture, forestry and waste management for Zimbabwe, This leads up to a final discussion on methodological issues involved in cross-sectoral mitigation assessment. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.The environmental agenda for mitigating climate change through international transfers of technology is linked with a diverse literature, reviewed here within a framework that combines technological, agent/agenda, and market/transaction perspectives. Literature that bears on international technology transfer for climate change mitigation is similar in many ways for Russia and China: opportunities for energy efficiency and renewable energy, economic reform and restructuring, the difficulties enterprises face in responding to market conditions, international assistance policies, international joint ventures, market intermediation, and capacity building for market development. In both countries, capacity building means enhancing market-oriented capabilities in addition to technological capabilities. For Russia, institutional development is critical, such as new commercial legal codes and housing-sector changes beyond privatization. For China, technology policies and modernization programs significantly influence technology transfers.Compensation to developing countries for mitigating global climate change by conserving forest or improving forest management should include the opportunity cost of foregone national development and not just the cost of carbon stored.Estimation of the opportunity cost is discussed and alternative compensation schemes compared.To implement effective carbon sequestration policies policymakers must analyze key characteristics of the country (geographic, institutional, economic, and infrastructural factors) and forestry and land-use practices (the degree of risk associated with investment, the relative difficulty in measuring Sequestration, and the degree of discretion allowed). Without careful analysis of this type, policies may have unintended negative effects.In many climate change mitigation cost-effectiveness studies that do not develop endogenous shadow prices for the value of carbon it is necessary to determine the time value of reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. This paper examines the implications for the time value of carbon of exogenously specifying (2) the path of marginal damages over time, (2) the path of emissions over time, and (3) that the emissions path follow an optimal trajectory over time. The US glass industry produces a wide variety of products for industrial and end use purposes, Towards that end, large amounts of raw materials are extracted and used, energy is degraded and pollutants are generated and released into the environment, The industry has long recognized its influence on material cycles and energy hows through the economy-environment system, It is now in the process of adopting a systems perspective to tackle the problems associated with its material and energy use, To operationalize that systems perspective a dynamic computer model of the container, flat and fiberglass sectors of the industry is developed on the basis of time series data, engineering information and insights from industry experts. The model includes the extraction stage of the main raw materials, transportation of raw materials and discarded products - both back to producers and to landfills - and the various manufacturing processes of the desired products, On the basis of the model, material and energy use and CO2 emissions profiles for the years 1988-2028 are quantified under a variety of scenarios on production rates, technology change and recycling. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology involves a systems view of material and energy flows in industry, where industry is thought of very broadly, and between industry and the environment. Closed loop material systems can lighten environmental burdens posed by society, and improve materials sustainability. Fundamental physical and chemical principles, and some experience, suggest that closing material circulation loops is likely to be both environmentally and economically beneficial. The metal manufacturing system contains complex metal recycling networks involving a variety of actors. Most metal produced as manufacturing 'waste' is recycled, but some wastes containing high concentrations of metals go to landfills for reasons of scale, and the idiosyncrasies of regulation. The greatest loss of manufactured metal appears to be through the disposal of consumer products to landfills.A thriving semiconductor industry has been created in Taiwan over the course of the past two decades by the use of advanced organizational techniques of technology leverage and accelerated technology diffusion. By the mid-1990s, the industry had reached a level of output that placed it behind only the U.S., Japan, and Korea. Almost all of Taiwan's semiconductor industry is located in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industry Park, which was created in emulation of California's Stanford Research Park, but with more direct government involvement. This article explores the extent to which this emergent Silicon Valley in Taiwan shares the ''industrial ecology'' that has powered innovation in California and examines the extent to which the Taiwan industry suffers from weaknesses attributable to its rapid creation through technology leverage.The study of economic systems, and their guidance towards sustainability, can be enhanced by understanding how natural systems use materials and energy at various levels of system organization, how these levels interrelate, and how interrelationships change. Towards this end, the paper introduces natural economics as an approach to understanding the dynamics of hierarchical systems. We define the concepts of natural economics to facilitate the description and assessment of system change, and present dynamic modeling as a method for empirical research and as a tool for management decision making. We illustrate with empirical applications the use of dynamic modeling at various levels of system organization. Empirical illustrations range from dynamic models of simple physical systems of material transport, energy degradation and self-organized criticality to models of complex industrial systems, such as US iron ore mining and steel production. The insights derived from the natural economics approach are used to draw conclusions for the study and management of economy-environment interactions.Clean Technology is an idea which goes beyond Cleaner Production: it concentrates not on a product but on the human benefit which it delivers. Clean Technology is a way of thinking, rather than a set of 'hard technologies'. One productive approach is through dematerialisation, i.e. providing a service rather than selling a product. This approach leads to the developing idea of Industrial Ecology: the systematic use and re-use of materials.The desire of environmentally-conscious consumers and manufacturers to choose more environmentally benign products and processes has led to the development of life cycle assessment (LCA) and design for environment (DfE). In both of these areas, attention has focused initially on the development of inventories of emissions and raw materials consumption for particular products and processes. A number of methods for the comparison and evaluation of an inventory's dissimilar pollution loads and resource demands have been proposed, but no satisfactory solution has yet been identified. This paper compares the structure and properties of six different methods. The health hazard scoring (HHS) system uses the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to weight workplace toxic effects and accident risks. The material input per service-unit (MIPS) aggregates the mass of all the material input required to produce a product or service, The Swiss eco-point (SEP) method scores pollutant loadings based on a source's contribution to an acceptable total pollution load and an environmental scarcity factor. The sustainable process index (SPI) determines the area that would be required to operate a process sustainably, based on renewable resource generation and toxic degradation; an extension of the dilution volume approach, The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry's life-cycle impact assessment (SETAC LCA) impact assessment method aggregates pollutants with similar impacts to equivalency potentials (measured in kg CO2 equivalent, kg benzene equivalent etc.) and uses decision analysis to assign weights to different adverse impacts. The environmental priority system (EPS) characterizes the environmental damage caused by equivalency potentials and expresses it in monetary terms, derived from environmental economics. Despite their use for the same purposes, the six methods differ in what they try to achieve, in the effects they consider, in the depth of analysis, in the way values influence the final score, and in use of ordinal or cardinal measures of impact. Two problem areas are identified: (1) to varying degrees, each of the methods has the potential to recommend an alternative that actually has a higher impact than other alternatives; (2) for some of the methods the data requirement is so extensive and the tolerance of imperfect data is so low that the application of the method for reasonably sophisticated products or processes would be too complicated. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.During the past 5 years, a number of US Department of Energy (DOE) funded efforts have demonstrated the technical efficacy of converting various forms of radioactive scrap metal (RSM) into useable products. From the development of accelerator shielding blocks, to the construction of low level waste containers, technology has been applied to this fabrication process in a safe and stakeholder supported manner. The potential health and safety risks to both workers and the public have been addressed, The question remains: do the benefits of fabricating products from RSM outweigh the costs? This paper presents a decision methodology for use within DOE to evaluate the costs and benefits of recycling and reusing some RSM, rather than disposing of this RSM in an approved burial site. The methodology is being applied to a decision on whether the DOE Fernald site should recycle its radioactively contaminated metals. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.The theory of industrial ecology (IE) and the implementation of IE strategies are both hindered by inadequate definitions of consumption and recycling, In this paper, we introduce a definition of consumption that separates the consumptive process into two independent, quantifiable phenomena: throughput and degradation. We propose that exergy removal be used to provide a non-resource specific measure of material degradation, We also introduce an exergy-based definition of material cycling -- cycling of material exergy (CME) -- and describe how it quantifies the differences among three distinct categories of material re-use: upgrading, recirculation, and cascading, Finally, we use a simple, quantitative example involving three methanol-water waste streams to demonstrate exergy-based measures of consumption and material cycling. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.The Industrial Revolution transformed society and its interaction with the environment, increasing the use of natural resources and the pace of development of new products and processes. This has left permanent changes in the structure of society and also on the earth through depletion of resources, alteration of natural habitats and pollution from unwanted by-products of the production process and discarded products at the end of their useful life. Recently, concern for the environment has led manufacturing industry to take a proactive role in the development of cleaner manufacturing processes and the design of recyclable products. The goal is sustainable development, where the waste from one process becomes the raw material for another in a large cycle which imitates the natural food chain. This paper outlines the requirements for such sustainable development, and gives an example of the elimination of unwanted by-product through the use of dry cutting.Sustainable development refers to the fulfillment of human needs through simultaneous socioeconomic and technological progress and conservation of the earth's natural systems. Industrial ecology represents one of the major approaches to insure high quality products with resource conservation. This paper discusses the key role of systems engineering and systems management as a provider of the knowledge principles and practices that help realize this integration of economic and environmental efficiency and effectiveness to achieve industrial ecology and sustainable development.The methods of systems analysis - principally, mathematical modelling, simulation, and optimisation - have been widely applied to solving problems in managing the water environment for over three decades. These foundations of the subject remain just as relevant today as hitherto. The problems to which they might be applied, however, or the context in which they might be applied, seem to have changed in ways that could genuinely be described as ''radical''. In this survey stock is taken of these changes in perspective, especially over the past ten years: in the emergence of stakeholder participation, environmental ethics, life-cycle analysis, sustainability, industrial ecology, and design for ecological (as opposed to engineering) resilience. Whether the application of systems analysis will require a new approach or new methods with which to address these new issues, is thus open to question. For there are undoubtedly limits of method now discernible, even in respect of the more conventional problems of applying systems analysis to managing water quality. For example, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that, were we to encode all our currently available hypothetical knowledge into a model, this would not be verifiable in the conventional, rigorous sense. Similarly, in spite of a wealth of apparently ever more powerful mathematical formulations of the problem of optimisation, heuristics and intuition must still be called upon to reach even good solutions, reasonably close to where the optimum is thought to lie. Circumventing such methodological difficulties, while yet absorbing the changing currents in outlook on the man-environment relationship, is where candidate tasks for the ''new agenda'' of the next few years might be found. This paper presents some personal observations on a handful of such candidate tasks. (C) 1997 IAWQ. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has sponsored the development of a conceptual and flexible, computer aided tool to perform the impact assessment within LCA (life cycle assessment) for technical products and processses. The developed general framework ''Ela 1.0''' (environmental loads analysis) consists of four elements: the selection of appropriate impact categories, the categorization of emissions and wastes leaving the systems as well as of resource and energy consumption, the characterization and an analysis of the results of the impact assessment. The latter compares the product-based emissions with the total of emissions of a region such as Germany, the EU or OECD countries. The framework Ela 1.0 considers the environmental categories: global warming, ozone depletion, resource and energy consumption, wastes, eutrophication (including COD and BOD as measured parameters), acidification, ecotoxicity, ozone formation and human toxicity. The latter categories are handled by listing of precursors for ozone formation, and by listing of emissions scored according to their human hazard potential. The options, possibilities and limitations of the conceptual framework are presented in part A of a series of publications. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.Titanium dioxide pigments have been produced commercially for eight decades. The industry has seen many developments from the humble beginnings with uncoated, impure, anatase pigments to the highly refined pigments of today. For the past four decades there have been two commercial routes far making titanium dioxide pigments - sulphate and chloride. In recent years, significant efforts have been made to produce titanium dioxide by both routes with greater environmental awareness. To compare the overall impact of titanium dioxide manufacturing processes on the environment life-cycle assessments of several process options ore described.Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the instruments for analyzing the effects of activities on the environment. A LCA was carried out to compare two groundwater treatment schemes for removing hardness and colour. One is a conventional treatment, using pellet softening and granular activated carbon (GAC), the other using nanofiltration. From an environmental point of view, there is no significant difference between the two alternatives. This is striking because the general impression is that membrane filtration has more energy. The main impact for both treatment schemes was caused by the on-site use of energy. Also GAC filtration contributes substantially to the total score for the conventinal scenario. A very interesting and efficient way to improve nanofiltration environmentally is the use of low-pressure membranes and "green" energy.An accurate study has been conducted on the Municipal Solid Waste Incineration (MSWI) plants in the Emilia-Romagna Region. The technological characteristics and operational conditions of the different plants have been examined in order to determine mass and energy balance data and emission factors for purposes of comparison. The scope of this work has been the definition of a methodology for the study of the incineration process that would constitute a basis for a Life Cycle Assessment (L.C.A.) to be employed for a more correct management and a more accurate control of plants aimed at reducing their environmental impact.Since the concept of sustainable development has found a broad echo in public and political issues, the need for measures that are highly sensitive to sustainable qualities has arisen. As the dissemination of the sustainability concept unfolded, different indicators claimed to show the right direction for our common future. This paper focuses on flow based measures for eco-sustainability. The life cycle analysis (LCA) combined with a valuation via limit threshold values, the material input per unit service (MIPS), the sustainable process index (SPI), the appropriated carrying capacity (ACC), an abatement cost based approach (PCC) and a concept based on the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) are reviewed and discussed. The application of eco-sustainability measures requires an understanding of the basic ideas (ideology) behind the concepts. Each measure is designed for a special field of application and to achieve a special aim. Therefore, valuations do not necessarily point in the same direction when different indices are used. The application of different measures to numerous case studies shows that results strongly depend on the basic assumptions. None of the described measures singly represents all the important attributes of ecological accounting. However, SPI shows the most important abilities and a big ranking potential: recycling problems and the general problems of accounting for sustainable qualities are solved to a large extent. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Recent research and development in the area of shape memory alloys (SMA) continues to yield novel and unique results. The strategic and market issues addressed in this paper seek to recognise the potential of shape memory alloy actuators and their future role in product design. The paper considers current market conditions through life cycle analysis and recognises that the diffusion of shape memory alloys into mainstream design usage will only come about through the successful targeting of innovative customers. For this to occur, the differentiating material function of shape memory must be promoted and perceived as adding value to the product function. Consideration is given to the commercialisation of SMA actuators and the role of an R&D/Market interface. The paper states that for SMA actuators to become commercially viable the physical and mechanical properties of commercially available shape memory alloys must be consolidated and future R&D focused on design properties relevant to applications.Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is one method to support environmental information needs by multi-attribute product evaluations. LCA describes the environmental effects associated with a product, process or activity over its whole life cycle by calculating the material and energy requirements as well as emissions to air, water and soil and by assessing the environmental impacts of those. An LCA study has both objective and subjective steps. So far, LCA has been developed without much consideration of the literature on decision modelling. We want to show that approaches and tools from decision analysis would be beneficial both in the planning of an LCA study and in the interpretation and understanding of the results. We describe the LCA methodology and application, and discuss how the integration of decision analysis and LCA could improve LCA as a tool for decision making. We use an LCA study on beverage packaging systems to illustrate the new approach. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.The objective of this paper is to show that for the optimal design of an energy system, where there is a trade-off between exergy saving during operation and exergy use during construction of the energy system, exergy analysis and life cycle analysis should be combined. The two methods are often used separately, but a limited number of studies has been carried out in which they are combined in some way. An exergetic optimisation of a heat exchanger has been carried out on the basis of the life cycle analysis method in this paper. The optimisation takes into account irreversibilities due to frictional pressure drops and the temperature difference between the hot and cold stream and irreversibilities due to the production of the materials and the construction of the heat exchanger. As an example of this type of heat exchanger, a water to water heat exchanger in a city heating system has been selected. The influence of the configuration of the heating system, including the energy conversion, on the optimisation of the heat exchangers has been shown. The analysis of the heat exchanger in which exergy analysis and life cycle analysis are combined gives the design conditions of the heat exchangers which lead to the lowest life cycle irreversibility. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.The position of the printing ink industry in relation to environmental problems is discussed. The effect of legislation and market pressures on the activities of ink makers and product developments ore explained by reference to the key subjects of renewable resources, recycled materials, emissions, volatile organic compounds, waste from ink manufacture, print waste, biodegradability and life cycle analysis. Ink makers are responding by establishing environmental management systems and developing products which contribute to the environmental objectives of printers.Pursuing clean production and the manufacturing of green products are very beneficial in the alleviation of environmental burdens. In order to reap such benefits, a life-cycle analysis should be applied for all products and processes. Thus, establishing an assessment model for manufacturing processes in terms of environmental impact is necessary for quantitative evaluation of product design. In this paper, an assessment methodology is developed on the basis of the 'material balance' of a process and the relationship amongst different processes. As a result, the amount of solid waste generated, the energy consumed, the waste-water incurred as well as the level of noise are obtained. A case study of the production of a toy train with twelve scenarios is performed to illustrate and examine the assessment model, this study showing that the number of components, the selection of materials and processes, and recyclability are the essential factors to determine whether the products are environmentally-oriented. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.The Optimal Fibre Flow Model, a combined optimization and simulation model, calculates the optimal combination of energy recovery and recycling of waste paper for paper and board production. In addition, the environmental impact is estimated by using an environment load unit-index (ELU-index). The ELU-index assigns an environmental load value to emissions and to the use of non-renewable resources such as oil and coal. Given a 'forced' utilization rate for the Scandinavian forest industry, optimization of marginal revenue shows environmental impact to be at a minimum with a utilization rate of about 30% in Scandinavia and 73% (an assumed upper limit) for the rest of Europe. If instead environmental impact is minimized, the utilization rate for Scandinavia is almost the same, while the utilization rate for the rest of Europe is 53% (a lower assumed level). Given a fixed use of virgin fibres for the rest of Western Europe, a comparison of the environmental load at different 'forced' utilization rates for the Scandinavian forest industry shows no significant differences between the economic and environmental optimizations. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.In this study, single-crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic (PV) cells and residential PV systems using off-grade silicon supplied from semiconductor industries were evaluated from a life cycle point of view. Energy payback time (EPT) of the residential PV system with the c-Si PV cells made of the off-grade silicon was estimated at 15.5 years and indirect CO2 emission per unit electrical output was calculated at 91 g-C/kWh even in the worst case. These figures were more than those of the polycrystalline-Si and the amorphous-Si PV cells to be used in the near future, but the EPT was shorter than its lifetime and the indirect CO2 emissions were less than the recent average CO2 emissions per kWh from the utilities in Japan. The recycling of the c-Si PV cells should be discussed for the reason of the effective use of energy and silicon material.Two 1.5-kb macronuclear chromosomes bearing histone H2B genes from the ciliated protozoan Euplotes crassus were cloned and sequenced. Although the noncoding sequences on these macronuclear chromosomes are very different, the genes encode an identical 113-aa histone H2B protein that has a shortened N-terminus and a highly conserved C-terminus relative to histone H2B proteins in other organisms. Primer extension was used to determine the transcription start points. Northern analysis shows that the abundance of H2B mRNA changes relative to DNA replication periods during the sexual phase of the life cycle. Analysis of 3' RACE products indicates that the H2B genes are coexpressed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.The applicability of exergy in the methodology of environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) is discussed. Exergy consumption (or entropy production) may be used as a measure of resource depletion and competition when performing the impact assessment of an LCA. Exergies of several metal ores and other natural resources are calculated using system boundaries compatible with LCA, i.e. the inflow is the resource as found in the environment. These system boundaries may also be appropriate for other applications of exergy analysis and may yield results different from those in calculations where only a part of the resource has been considered. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.In some well-known TEWI (total equivalent warming impact) analyses of CFC alternatives, global warmer emissions in production have not been considered. The authors show that TEWI can be affected significantly by these production emissions, which suggests they should be considered in some TEWI analyses. The paper describes a TEWI analysis for one production sequence, that which leads from chloroform to tetrafluoroethylene and thence to HFC-227ea, a fire extinguishing agent. Numerous other commercial products stem from this sequence as well, including refrigerants, polymers and surfactants - these are summarised in the paper. Particular emphasis is placed on describing the production sequence and its global warming parameters to show that these can indeed be estimated from published information. The TEWI profile is presented at the close.A case study of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) is performed concerning tile treatment of household solid wastes in a landfill. The stages considered in this LCA study are: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis and impact assessment. The data of the inventory include the consumption of raw materials and energy through the transport of wastes and the management of landfill, and the corresponding emissions to the environment. Abiotic resource depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and human toxicological impacts have been considered as impact categories for the impact assessment phase of the LCA. A comparison of the environmental impact of the landfilling with and without energy recovery is carried out.This paper describes the incorporation of an independent review process into a life-cycle inventory (LCI) study. The peer review process was the first application of the three-stage review of an LCI. The three stages are: Review of the Goal and Scope Definition, performed when the study plan has been established; Review of the Data-Gathering Methodology, performed after the data have been collected; and Review of the Final Report, performed after the draft report has been written. The purpose, process, and benefits of the review are discussed. Examples of benefits include the incorporation of a process to select ancillary materials for inclusion in the study, and a sensitivity analysis rationale.On the occasion of the JLCA Meeting held on June 19 and 20, the LCA National Project has been planned which will start in April 1998. It is financially supported by MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry). The Project will consist of members from industry, university and research institutes. They cooperate for five jears. Main subject areas are: Development of an Inventory Data Base; LCA Case Studies; LCA Application Guidelines; LCA Education and Propagation; Inventory Analysis Methodology; Impact Assessment MethodologyIf the aim of an LCA is to support decisions or to generate and evaluate ideas for future decisions, the allocation procedure should generally be effect-oriented rather than cause-oriented. It is important that the procedure he acceptable to decision makers expected to use the LCA results. It is also an advantage if the procedure is easy to apply. Applicability appears to be in conflict with accurate reflection of effect-oriented causalities. To make LCA a more efficient tool for decision support, a range of feasible allocation procedures that reflect the consequences of inflows and outflows of cascade materials is required.It is generally recognised that the valuation in LCA requires political, ideological and/or ethical values (hence the term). These values, however, are seldom discussed, and this paper may be seen as an early attempt. One result is that not only the valuation weighting factors, but also the choice of valuation methodology and the choice of using a valuation weighting method at all, are influenced by fundamental ethical and ideological valuations. Since there is no societal consensus on these fundamental values, and never will be one in an open democratic society, there is no reason to expect consensus either on valuation weighting factors, or on the valuation method or even on the choice of using a valuation weighting method at all. Another result of the discussion on values is that the ethical and ideological valuations are often made implicitly in the choice of method, data, etc., thus making it difficult to discuss the values and the implications of different standpoints. Although this paper focus on the valuation methods within LCA, it is expected that much of the discussion and the conclusions are of relevance for other environmental management tools, e.g. Environmental Impact Assessment.The necessity of the impact assessment phase in life-cycle assessment (LCA) is presently debated. The crux of the debate lies in the poor accordance in some I. CA studies between the predicted environmental impact and the expected occurrence of actual environmental impact. That is in particular the case for impacts of a continental, regional and local character. We consider an impact assessment as being an indispensable phase of LCA, and see options for solving the identified problem. This article takes a closer look into the nature of the assessed impact in LCA in order to provide the basis for enhancement of life-cycle impact assessment. LCA is one of the analytical tools to support environmental policy focused on the control of present environmental problems. Nowadays, environmental problems are caused by concentration levels that result from the emissions of many sources together, rather than from single sources alone. The contribution from a single source is usually small or even marginal in comparison with the total contribution from all sources together. The multiple source character of the related impact categories provides the justification for the linear nature of the assessed impact in LCA. An article in the next issue of this journal will build further on this article, and will discuss the inclusion of temporal and spatial aspects (by a site-dependent approach) in order to enhance the accordance between the predicted environmental impact and the expected occurrence of actual environmental impact.It has recently been acknowledged that the quality of data used in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the most important limiting factors to the application of the methodology. Early approaches dealing with this problem solely based on Data Quality Indicators (DQI) have revealed their limitations, and stochastic models are increasingly proposed as an alternative. Although facing methodological and practical difficulties, for instance the characterization of the distribution of input data, these stochastic models can significantly enhance decision-making in LCA. Uncertainty and data quality however, are two distinct attributes. No matter how sophisticated the stochastic models are, they do not address the issue of the adequacy of the data used with regard to the goal of the study. Actual data on the distribution of SO emissions for US coal fired power plants for instance, would be of low quality for a European study. It is therefore believed that mixed approaches DQI/stochastic models should be developed in the future.This article proposes that there is a recognizable and predictable life cycle to important general enabling technologies such as the railroad, or the telephone, or the ''Net,'' This life cycle, in simple terms, consists of three stages: A stage of experimentation and development; a stage of societal concern with issues of equity and access, with concomitant regulations; and a stage when the emphasis shifts to efficiency and effectiveness, with concomitant emphasis upon competition and deregulation. The point of this life cycle analysis is that it illuminates the phenomenon that while the great previous general enabling technologies of the 19th and 20th centuries have all recently entered their third, deregulatory, stage, creating a Stage III mind-set, the Net is only just entering its second, regulatory, stage. From this analysis, from the tension thereby revealed, some issues and paradoxes can be illuminated and understood, and others revealed for further analysis. The thrust of this article derives from the thesis that the Net is entering a very different phase in its likely life cycle than that of the society around it. An examination of some of the characteristics of this phenomenon will, we hope, be illuminating.Potato sprout inhibitors are generally applied to suppress sprouting during winter storage. This study presents the compared environmental profiles of the two sprout inhibitors available on the Dutch market: A traditional chemical product with isopropyl-3-chlorophenylcarbamate (CIPC) and isopropyl-phenylcarbamate (IPC) and a new agrification product with S-(+)-carvone derived from caraway seed (Carum carvi), examining the common idea that natural products are less harmful to the environment than chemical products. Nine environmental effect scores are evaluated based on emissions and energy use during the entire life cycle (life cycle analysis, LCA). A substantial difference is found in the environmental profiles of the two sprout inhibitors. In seven environmental effects (C)IPC scores better than carvone. Carvone only scores better with regard to human toxicity and ozone depletion. This study has also produced a clear insight into the relevant factors in the life cycles determining the environmental profiles. Regarding carvone, the essential factors are the use of fertilizer in the cultivation of caraway and the relatively high amount of carvone used per ton of potatoes as compared to (C)IPC. It is recommended that environmental LCA's be performed for other agrification products. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.The life cycle analysis of a product enables one to assess its environmental quality. A simple, transparent method taking into account the processes of recycling in the life cycle is developed here. It permits dealing with all types of open loops of all sectors. The principles on which the proposed method is grounded are discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.For most life-cycle impact assessments global-type stressors only are selected and organized into the respective impact categories, mainly due to the fact, that the life-cycle inventory results in aggregated information an loadings but not on site-specific concentrations. With respect to the local-type impact category ''ecotoxicity'' two differently in-depth approaches have been developed: The screening approach results in potential ecological loadings. The in-depth approach additionally analyses the character of emission sources and uses a scoring system for the effects assessment. A second local double left right arrow global problem might arise when assessing long-lived products. They often comprise global-type, unspecific and also specific-type, geographically defined stages along their life-cycle. Possibilities and limitations in aggregating the results from both types - also accounting for several LCA applications such as product comparison and identification of improvement options - are presented. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.A small-sized hydrogen gas-turbine originated from a light-weight car turbo-charger is selected as a practical candidate in constructing an alternative hydrogen energy system element and its energetic characteristic is experimentally examined. Additionally, the potential of alternative hydrogen energy systems including hydrogen gas-turbines are investigated from the standpoint of usage, regeneration, transportation, storage and of wasted heat reutilization including environmental load reduction. Some hydrogen energy schemes are also revealed in this paper. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.In 1986 degreasing processes in the German metal-processing industry contributed about 70,000 t to the emission of chlorinated C-1 and C-2 hydrocarbons (trichloroethane, trichloroethene, tetrachloroethene, dichloromethane). Measures aiming at the reduction of toxic emissions and ozone depletion potential (ODP) may possibly lead to a shift of environmental impacts towards higher energy consumption, emission of waste water, and Volatile organic compounds (VOC) with photochemical oxidant creation potential (POCP). The present article concerns itself with a life cycle assessment of the three main degreasing processes in order to compare their integral environmental impacts with one another. This is supplemented by presenting the methodology of the life cycle inventory life cycle inventory analysis (LCI). Generally, the applicability of the established LCI method can be shown quite clearly. However, some difficulties arise, especially at the stage of the goal definition, as the use of the process and the functional unit cannot be pinned down as easily and neatly as for most other products. The definition of the use of the process and the functional unit is not as straightforward as for most products. Among the potential functional units identified are the mass of removed impurities, cleaning time, cleaning work, percentage of purity, throughput of parts, loads, mass or surface and virtual coefficients. The mass of removed impurities turned out to be the most suitable parameter for measuring the technical performance of degreasing processes. The article discusses background, purpose, scope, system boundaries, target group, process tree and representativeness of the present study.The underlying theme of this paper is that society, globally, is undergoing a fundamental conceptual shift in the way it views the environment and the role of industry within it. There are views in certain quarters that this could result in the virtual elimination of the lead industry's entire product range. Despite these threats, it is argued that the prospects for the lead industry appear to be relatively favourable in a number of respects. The industry's future depends to a significant degree, however, upon its ability to argue its case in a number of key areas. It is contended, therefore, that if appropriate strategies and means are promulgated, the prospects of the industry would appear to be relatively healthy. But, for this to happen with optimal effectiveness, a conceptual change will be necessary within the industry. New strategies and tools will have to be developed, These will require a significantly more integrated, holistically based and 'reflexive' approach than previously. The main elements of such an approach are outlined. With reference to the authors' ongoing research into automotive lead/acid starting lighting ignition (SLI) batteries, the paper shows how the technique of in-depth life cycle assessment (LCA), appropriately adapted to the needs of the industry, will provide a crucial role in this new approach. It also shows how it may be used as an internal design and assessment tool to identify those stages in the battery life cycle that give rise to the greatest environmental burdens, and to assess the effects of changes in the cycle to those burdens. It is argued that the development of this approach requires the serious and urgent attention of the whole of the lead industry. Also to make the LCA tool fully effective, it must be based on a 'live' database that is produced, maintained and continually updated by the industry. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.Recycling of materials is a key technology for environmental burden reduction or natural resources conservation in materials production. However, the energy consumption and environmental burden associated with recycling are frequently subject to be very severe. Thus, it is very important to evaluate the performance of the recycling process by obtaining quantitative information in which the condition is the best for covering the original purpose of recycling, This work is to propose a nem assessment: moder for metal production and a recycling system. The model consists of three processes, smelting of ore, cascading of metal scrap and upgrading of metal scrap, and the present approach is to assess the total energy consumption of the metal production system, by introducing two equations for describing the relationships between the critical impurity content and the mass of production or scrap recycling. The upgrading process is requested in cases in which the content of the impurity should be reduced due to the quality demand of the corresponding metal market. According to the model, the total energy consumption in the metal production system can be described as a function of recycling rate and performance of the upgrading process;Model calculation nas conducted using the cases of the aluminum and steel production process. The results suggest that the impurity removal efficiency and yield in the upgrading process are essential to reduce the energy consumption in these metal production systems. Especially, such points should be explicitly controlled in the aluminum recycling process. The potential capability of this model may not be overemphasized. It is rather surprisingly effective for the development of beneficial recycling of metals by obtaining several quantitative information required for the process design and its control.Firms are the primary organisers and drivers of resources flows through and emissions from developed economies. Sustainable industrial development is a process in which these flows are modified. This includes both a reduction of materials and energy intensity, increasing cyclicity of materials fluxes, and a reduction of dissipative uses of toxic materials. The role of firms in achieving these changes is discussed in this paper. Life cycle assessment activities in large European firms in six industrial sectors are assessed. Market and regulatory pressures on firms to adopt life cycle approaches differ markedly between industrial sectors and across national markets. Producers of final products are most likely to find opportunities for improvements in the life cycle environmental performance of products while making gains in dynamic competitiveness at the same time. Upstream producers of commodity products have tended to use life cycle approaches defensively against negative environmental claims and in seeking to influence the policy process. Despite widespread adoption of life cycle approaches, changes in product system ecoprofiles are likely to be slow given technological trajectories, infrastructural and resource endowments, and the fragmentation of environmental responsibility across the product chain. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.A life-cycle approach takes a cradle-to-grave perspective of a product's numerous activities from the raw material extraction to final disposal. There have been recent efforts to develop life-cycle assessment (LCA) to assess both environmental and human health issues. The question then arises: what are the capabilities of LCA, especially in relation to risk assessment? To address this question, this paper first describes the LCA mass-based accounting system and then analyzes the use of this approach for environmental and human health assessment. The key LCA limitations in this respect are loss of spatial, temporal, dose-response, and threshold information. These limitations affect LCA's capability to assess several environmental issues, and human health in particular. This leads to the conclusion that LCA impact assessment does not predict or measure actual effects, quantitate risks, or address safety. Instead, LCA uses mass loadings with simplifying assumptions and subjective judgments to add independent effects and exposures into an overall score. As a result, LCA identifies possible human health issues on a systemwide basis from a worst case, hypothetical hazard perspective. Ideally, the identified issues would then be addressed by more detailed assessment methods, such as risk assessment.The environmental impact of the three flooring materials linoleum, vinyl flooring and solid wood flooring during their life cycles was assessed and compared through life cycle assessment (LCA). The scenarios used describe a Swedish situation. Only impacts on the natural environment were studied The quantitative results of the inventory analysis were evaluated by using three different assessment methods. According to the results, solid wood flooring proved to be clearly the most environmentally sound flooring. Linoleum was ranked as more environmentally sound than vinyl flooring, although this was less evident in comparison with ranking the solid wood flooring. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has gained in recent years widespread acceptance as an environmental management tool to assess and valuate the environmental impacts (resource consumption and emissions to nature) of products and processes, covering the whole life cycle from cradle (extraction of raw material) to grave (final disposal). Applied to chemical manufacturing, LCA allows to compare the ecological performance of synthesis processes, guide process developers to weak points and improvement options, and avoid suboptimizations. Ln our Consumer Care Chemicals Division, we apply LCA routinely to sales products as well as manufacturing-process chains, and we developed a specialized LCA computer system ECOSYS for that purpose. Material flow, energy, and waste data for all in-house manufacturing processes are extracted from our company data bases into ECOSYS. For meaningful comparisons of whole life cycles, we must include LCA results for the raw materials bought from other suppliers, and since such data are rarely available, appropriate estimation procedures were developed. The multitude of ecological burdens calculated over the life cycle can be judged and compared by a variety of valuation schemes, e.g. according to the Swiss BUWAL or the modern Eco-indicator 95 method. ECOSYS is not restricted to existing, operational processes, but allows the process developer to-test his hypothetical designs (e.g. derived from a simulation tool) at a very early stage. If process alternatives use different raw materials, a narrow judgement on data for the process step alone may lead to suboptimization, whereas LCA results that consider all preceding syntheses of intermediates allow a more objective comparison. As an example, two synthesis paths for DNS (4,4'-dinitro-2,2'-stilbenedisulfonic acid disodium salt) were compared: The older, established route uses NaOCl in aqueous media as an oxidant, whereas the method more recently introduced in one of our production plants is based on air oxidation in liquid ammonia. The latter produces considerably less waste and is favorable with respect to many ecological parameters, including energy consumption, over the whole life cycle.The ever expanding growth of energy and material fluxes and the associated environmental impact challenge the chemical industry to integrate ecological issues into the design of new chemical substances and products (integrated product design). To achieve this goal, product developers as well as marketing and application specialists need appropriate tools for incorporating ecological issues at every stage of product development. Life-Cycle Design, an approach based on the screening indicators of the streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, is an appropriate concept that can be used even at early development stages. Still today, however, many product designers regard screening indicators, e.g. energy and/or material intensity, summary emission indicators (DOG, TOC, VOC, etc.) as rather subjective judgements, even if they are based on experts' knowledge, panel discussions, etc. Thus, there is a strong need for defining an appropriate set of objective screening indicators based on a natural science approach. These enable an accurate description of environmental effects of a chemical substance in all environmental compartments (air, soil, water, and biota). In this work, we present a conceptual framework for screening, indicators that take into account both process inputs and outputs at every single life-cycle stage. Finally, first results based on several case studies (solvents, dyestuffs,...) are shown.The use of energy for cooking is one of the most important sectors for the energy consumption in India. Results of a life cycle inventory are presented for the use of kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas as cooking fuels, The situation in India was investigated through life cycle inventories for the following stages of the life cycle: Extraction of crude oil and natural gas, processing in refineries and fractionating plants, distribution, product transports (including energy imports) and cooking, Environmental impacts are summarized with final calculated ecological profiles for cooking with the two fuels in different cooking scenarios, These results are analysed regarding the origin of the environmental impacts in the life cycle, A direct comparison shows in the majority of the investigated indicators an ecological advantage in the use of liquefied petroleum gas over kerosene, In addition, a reflection on the economic conditions and the social consequences of both life cycles is made. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.This paper reports the findings of a project to assess the costs and benefits of adopting environment-friendly construction practices for social rented housing in Scotland. Two contrasted dwelling specifications-one for a conventional building (the Control) and one for an environmentally responsible building (Eco-Type 1)-are compared using Life Cycle Analysis and Life Cycle Costing methodologies. An assessment is made of the environmental and economic implications of adopting environmentally conscious construction practices in social rented housing. If is concluded that the provision of environmentally responsible dwellings could bring large-scale reductions in the environmental burden of housing, and economic savings for housing providers and tenants over the life cycle of a dwelling with only a small increase in capital costs.In order to maintain the long term economic viability of nuclear fuel reprocessing BNFL has a long term ongoing R&D programme into nuclear fuel reprocessing technologies. A major theme of this programme is the use of clean technology to reduce the financial cost of reprocessing, while maintaining the highest standards of safety and environmental care. To ensure reductions in environmental impact in reprocessing do not cause an increase in impact elsewhere in the nuclear fuel cycle, a 'Life Cycle Assessment' of the fuel cycle is being developed. This life cycle model should allow definition of: (1) the key areas of the cycle responsible or the majority of the environmental impact; (2) the major differences in environmental burden between reprocessing and alternative technologies and (3) the effects any changes in the upstream and downstream processes will have on the entire fuel cycle.The desire of environmentally-conscious consumers and manufacturers to choose more environmentally benign products and processes has led to the development of life cycle assessment (LCA) and design for environment (DfE). In both of these areas, attention has focused initially on the development of inventories of emissions and raw materials consumption for particular products and processes. A number of methods for the comparison and evaluation of an inventory's dissimilar pollution loads and resource demands have been proposed, but no satisfactory solution has yet been identified. This paper compares the structure and properties of six different methods. The health hazard scoring (HHS) system uses the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to weight workplace toxic effects and accident risks. The material input per service-unit (MIPS) aggregates the mass of all the material input required to produce a product or service, The Swiss eco-point (SEP) method scores pollutant loadings based on a source's contribution to an acceptable total pollution load and an environmental scarcity factor. The sustainable process index (SPI) determines the area that would be required to operate a process sustainably, based on renewable resource generation and toxic degradation; an extension of the dilution volume approach, The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry's life-cycle impact assessment (SETAC LCA) impact assessment method aggregates pollutants with similar impacts to equivalency potentials (measured in kg CO2 equivalent, kg benzene equivalent etc.) and uses decision analysis to assign weights to different adverse impacts. The environmental priority system (EPS) characterizes the environmental damage caused by equivalency potentials and expresses it in monetary terms, derived from environmental economics. Despite their use for the same purposes, the six methods differ in what they try to achieve, in the effects they consider, in the depth of analysis, in the way values influence the final score, and in use of ordinal or cardinal measures of impact. Two problem areas are identified: (1) to varying degrees, each of the methods has the potential to recommend an alternative that actually has a higher impact than other alternatives; (2) for some of the methods the data requirement is so extensive and the tolerance of imperfect data is so low that the application of the method for reasonably sophisticated products or processes would be too complicated. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.Strict economical considerations govern the application of energy conservation measures in buildings. From an environmental perspective, the analysis should include the pollutant effects of manufacturing materials, transport, building and demolition compared to the emissions saved from reduced heating. A Life-Cycle Assessment approach has been used to evaluate an additional external wall insulation measure for a multifamily building. The study shows that the environmental impact of the additional wall insulation has a small vollutant effect compared to the emissions saved. In addition, the profitability is almost equal for insulation thicknesses of between 100 and 170 mm, where the extra building costs for the thicker insulation balance the expected cost savings on fuel purchased in a 40-year perspective. Environmental factors should then favor the thicker insulation. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.Most analysts are still watching for the concrete institutional commitment and policy tools necessary to implement the conceptual shift needed to achieve sustainability. Recent stewardship policies and programs for packaging and packaging waste offer a timely example of the approaches that might be taken to reduce the impact of packaging and packaging waste and put us on a path towards sustainability. Through a comparison of the Canadian National Packaging Protocol and the European Parliament Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive and corresponding literature, approaches to the issue of packaging stewardship are explored, and the essential elements of packaging stewardship policy are established. These include take-back obligations, waste-prevention obligations, and life-cycle analysis reporting obligations. Each of these is discussed, and examples are drawn from Canadian provinces and European Union member states. As well, three policy vehicles easing the implementation of the essential elements are developed, including the transfer of take-back obligations, levy fees, and international standards for life-cycle assessment. Direction is presented regarding the future development of packaging stewardship policy in Canada. In particular, Canada's policies must evolve to create a contractual obligation for firms to meet quantified targets for reducing waste from packaging. A specific obligation for take-back and valorization of packaging waste, as well as an obligation to reduce packaging, would greatly improve Canada's packaging-stewardship policies.During the past 5 years, a number of US Department of Energy (DOE) funded efforts have demonstrated the technical efficacy of converting various forms of radioactive scrap metal (RSM) into useable products. From the development of accelerator shielding blocks, to the construction of low level waste containers, technology has been applied to this fabrication process in a safe and stakeholder supported manner. The potential health and safety risks to both workers and the public have been addressed, The question remains: do the benefits of fabricating products from RSM outweigh the costs? This paper presents a decision methodology for use within DOE to evaluate the costs and benefits of recycling and reusing some RSM, rather than disposing of this RSM in an approved burial site. The methodology is being applied to a decision on whether the DOE Fernald site should recycle its radioactively contaminated metals. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.Life-cycle energy balances and emissions of CO, and other gases have been evaluated for the following systems: an LNG combined-cycle(LNGC/C), an integrated coal-gasification combined cycle (IGCC) and a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) combined-cycle power-generation systems with CO2 capture and sequestration technologies. The predicted CO2 recovery and sequestration will lower the net energy ratio (which measures the total efficiency of a fossil-fuel system) by 16 to 38% for the LNG C/C system, by 21 to 57% for the IGCC system and by 17 to 56% for the MCFC system. The CO2-emission control potentials for the LNG C/C, IGCC and MCFC are in the range 64-72%, 65-76% and 57-68%, respectively. However, off-site power required for CO2 emission control increases NOx and SOx emissions by as much as a factor of 1.3 to 10.For the first time, design of a major new public building in Australia has been subjected to Life-Cycle Assessment-with the aim of minimising overall environmental impact of the development. Resource depletion, emissions, and waste products were quantified from construction, use and demolition of three alternative design options: a 'Base Case', with little environmental innovation; the 'Offer', including existing, available reduced-impact technologies; and an 'Enhanced Environmental Case', including 'cutting-edge' technologies, which are expected to become available within the development programme. Results showed significant reductions in energy and water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and air and water pollution, for both the 'Offer' and 'Enhanced' cases. Greenhouse gas emissions from construction of the Stadium were also shown to be of the same order of magnitude as those from its operation. Copyright (C) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.The author takes the reader along the pathway of the wood products system, either paper or other wood products; reflecting on the different assessment mechanisms available or in development, to help in decision making. Decision making either for a manager or a policy maker is always done in the face of uncertainty. In a corporation, it involves balancing of shareholders' demand for superior financial returns with society's desire for a clean and sustainable environment. The issues of sustainability and eco-efficiency require new analytical tools for their better interpretation. To achieve these objectives, impact assessment methods, in general, should be examined in the context of a model for the product system and for their applicability at each link of the product system chain. Using a life cycle model for the product system, the author explains each of the three (3) elements of the model, indicating the suitable and available assessment methods for each of them as well as the common endpoints associated with assessments for each element. None of the available assessment methods is applicable across the elements of the model for its entirety. The different endpoints and biological organizational levels make a ''one-size-fits-all'' assessment approach a scientific impossibility. The more recently developed ecological risk assessment is also discussed since it provides a novel approach to the assessment of the ecosystem which is different from that of human and other biological organisms. Another assessment discussed is the Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, methodology. A holistic methodology to assess the resources and environmental aspects of the whole product system is naturally of irresistible appeal. Nevertheless, the questionable nature of its impact assessment phase, LCIA, has created conflict in efforts to apply it to policy-making and as an arbitrer of environmentally preferable product systems or configurations. In concluding, the author while reaffirming the soundness of a product system life cycle approach, is of the opinion that efforts to develop a ''one-size-fits-all'' assessment methodology are bound to fail. The role of a more and better developed LCA methodology in the future would be as a screening tool, via indicators and/or a ranking system for its impact assessment phase. An example of a scoring outline is provided.Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing movement toward ecolabeling or environmental certification of products and processes. Indeed, this momentum continues today, and with the ultimate implementation of the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO's) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework, the backdrop is set for a new world marketplace where the relative environmental impacts of a process or product will be required to be known before its widespread use. With much at stake, it is important that the forest products industry continue to recognize the transition from a society where environmental impacts were judged on a retrospective basis to the current paradigm of prospective environmental planning, assessment, and prevention. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), the second component of a traditional LCA, has historically relied upon rudimentary hazard screening protocols to assess or predict environmental impacts related to the life cycle of a product or process. While these ''screening-level'' hazard evaluations may have sufficed in the past, current experience and knowledge of quantitative exposure and risk assessment principles and practices suggests that the time has come to incorporate more contemporary tools into the LCIA framework to enhance the value, reliability, and the prospect of securing a favorable ecolabeling designation.International concern about environmental effects of energy generation has increased the interest in commercialising renewable energy technologies. In Sweden, energy from combustion of biofuels has been produced on a commercial scale since 1980. One typical example of the state-of-the-art technology used in forest residue fuelled combined heat and power plants in Sweden is the Nassjo Circulating Fluidised Bed (CFB) process. In this paper, the environmental impacts of CFB processes for combustion of biomass are identified and quantified by using Life Cycle Assessment approach, with the data obtained from the Nassjo plant. The system boundaries are drawn to include the biofuel cycle from collection of forest residues, through the combustion process to the return of ashes to the forest. The most significant environmental impacts of the forest fuel cycle are fossil fuel depletion and greenhouse effect due to the use of fossil fuels in the collection, chipping and transport stages. Other impacts in the life cycle, are less significant and some of them can be counteracted by returning ashes to the forest as a fertiliser.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become a widely recognised tool for analysing the environmental performance of product, process and service systems and for analysing and assessing the difference in environmental impacts of alternative activities. In this work, the LCA approach has been applied to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle to investigate the environmental effects of nuclear fuel processing and reprocessing. There is an ongoing need to minimise the system-related impacts of our energy services, and the LCA outlined here has been developed to provide a tool to assess process improvement projects within the industry. The environmental profile determined in the study is central to the concept of Clean Technology as it highlights where in the system the greatest environmental burdens arise, and in what cases process changes may increase burdens elsewhere in the cycle. This paper presents some preliminary results of this study, and provides an illustration of the use of LCA in process selection.A new approach to Life Cycle Assessment is presented, based on the concept of sustainability. The challenge of sustainability requires a deeper emphasis on resource use that is often the root cause of many environmental problems, rather than a focus on pollution symptoms. It is proposed that Life Cycle Assessment is adopted as a perpetual, self referential study that seeks to minimise net life cycle throughput, emissions and wastes through a process of continuous improvement.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a material and energy balance over a system, with some of the inputs and outputs used to assess environmental impact. We summarise a published method for LCA of the materials in domestic waste, that is the aggregated waste paper or glass, etc., which is derived from many different consumer products. We enhance the method to model transport of materials to recycling sites by consumers and collection and delivery to a transfer station. We use the method to show that the environmental impact of recycling glass is considerably less than disposal by landfill, even when the extra impact of consumer and local transport is included. We determine the recovery rate for recycling that minimises the overall energy consumption.The application of clean technology to the production of potable spirits is under investigation. A unique design for the distillation step in the manufacture of potable spirits has been developed in collaboration with Welsh Distillers. The design incorporates a pot still and rectifying column and employs both recycle and pump round options to give the process flexibility for manufacturing a variety of potable spirits from a unit. Preliminary data are presented for the commissioning trials. These trials are used to validate the process design and develop process operation protocols. They will also be used to generate information for a detailed environmental impact assessment which will form part of a broader life cycle analysis of potable spirit manufacture. Trials will be conducted using ethanol-water, standard organic mixtures and synthetic and real washes. A novel sampling system has been designed which facilitates access to all almost all of the plates in the rectifying column; samples obtained are analysed by gas chromatography.Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is gaining popularity as a tool for decision-making related to industrial systems. Efforts in the development of the LCA methodology have led to agreement on several aspects of procedure for conducting an LCA. This procedure includes documentation of the goal and scope of the assessment, the performance of an inventory of materials and energy associated with the system, and an assessment of the potential impacts associated with these inventory items. More detailed aspects, including specific data and modeling requirements, remain a source of discussion among LCA practitioners. Through consensus on methodology and metrics, the application of LCA will highlight opportunities for the protection of human health and the environment in conjunction with the continuous improvement of industrial systems.Application of the Environmental Life Cycle Assessment methodology to building materials will be discussed. The way in which process analysis is used to reveal the details of the life cycle of specific building materials and how they intervene in the total life cycle of the whole building will be illustrated. The importance of clearly and comprehensively defining this process sequence in terms of the intended use and purpose of the Life Cycle Assessment is essential to constructing an analytical framework that is manageable and capable of meeting the objective of the LCA. Identification and careful consideration of the values of all stakeholders is essential to the successful completion and acceptance of an LCA, Methodologies for dealing with the concerns of a diverse group of stakeholders and their differing sets of ''values'' are suggested. These approaches clearly demonstrate that LCA can be successfully applied to such complex systems as buildings and building materials, and that LCA can be a very powerful and practically tool for environmental decision making.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has taken prominence over the last several years as a tool for evaluating system-wide effects of product and process design options. As part of the American Textile Partnership (AMTEX), LCA software applications are being developed to help streamline and reduce the cost of conducting LCAs in the US integrated textile industry. The Textile Resource Integration Model (TRIM) software is a leading example of an environmental decision support tool developed by the AMTEX Partnership. Applications of TRIM build off of experience gained to date with LCAs of textile products, such as the inventory analysis of a woman's 100% polyester blouse conducted in 1993 by the American Fiber Manufacturers' Association. The types of product evaluations envisioned for TRIM include analysis of proposed eco-labeling systems being considered overseas that may pose trade barriers to the import of US textiles. Other uses of TRIM include analysis of the cost of resource losses and opportunities for improving the system-wide cost-effectiveness of the integrated US textile industry.Pursuing clean production and the manufacturing of green products are very beneficial in the alleviation of environmental burdens. In order to reap such benefits, a life-cycle analysis should be applied for all products and processes. Thus, establishing an assessment model for manufacturing processes in terms of environmental impact is necessary for quantitative evaluation of product design. In this paper, an assessment methodology is developed on the basis of the "material balance" of a process and the relationship amongst different processes. As a result, the amount of solid waste generated, the energy consumed, the waste-water incurred as well as the level of noise are obtained. A case study of the production of a toy train with twelve scenarios is performed to illustrate and er;amine the assessment model, this study shows that the number of components, the selection of materials and processes, recyclability are the essential factors to determine whether the products are environmentally-oriented.Corrosion fatigue of 12%Cr LP steam turbine blading is, according to international experience, one of the major causes, if not the major cause, for unavailability of steam turbines. Corrosion fatigue of LP turbine blading has also been a problem in some of the Swedish nuclear power plants, although no severe damage has occurred so far. The corrosion fatigue typically occurs in the transition zone between dry and wet steam, leading to pits and cracks. Experience from COST showed that some precipitation-hardened steels had a better resistance than 12%Cr towards corrosion fatigue in corrosive environments. A life cycle analysis was carried out with the alternatives: (a) replacement of conventional 12% Cr steel with 15-5 PH (b) continuous operation with 12%Cr steel. The results of the LCC-analysis showed that replacement was the best choice. In order to reduce the risk of corrosion fatigue in LP steam turbine blades the Vattenfall Power Group therefore decided to test the precipitation hardened steel, 15-5 PH. The composition of the 15-5 is 15% Cr, 5% Ni and 2% Mo. The test consists of 10 blades installed in May 1997 at unit 2, Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant. The unit is a ABB-designed BWR that commenced operation in 1981. The 15-5 steel was manufactured by Bohler Steel, Austria, and the blades were machined by ABB-STAL, Finspong, Sweden. The blades will be in service at least four years before they are taken out for inspection.The benefits of national and international cooperation on environmental issues are described. Reference is made to the development of European Directives and Regulations and their implementation in member states, in particular the development of an integrated multi media approach to environmental regulation. The ways in which cooperation can help environmental regulators are described from the perspective of the new Environment Agency in the United Kingdom and as a Member State of the European Union. The financial and environmental benefits of investment in cleaner technology, process and life cycle analysis and the use of more environmentally benign materials are identified. Details are given of the formation and operation of the EU Network for the Implementation and Enforcement of Environmental Law - the IMPEL Network - regulatory authorities developing a consistent approach to technical standards, charging, permitting and inspection. Complementary approaches to regulation across the European Union are reviewed, in particular the impact of the EU Eco-management and audit Regulation acid environmental management standards. It is suggested that the lessons learned through these experiences are relevant to all countries.Automotive component designers will be faced with a barrage of legislation in the next century, focusing on reduced environmental impact. Issues, such as ''end-of-life'' product take-back and reduced landfill burden, will mean that new tools are needed to aid the designer to arrive at a fully balanced solution. Techniques such as Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) have been advocated to assess the environmental consequences of a product, studying the whole life cycle from ''cradle to grave''. Using the results of such studies has proved to be problematical, therefore the designer has demanded that a more pragmatic approach should be adopted. The approach chosen uses several tools to support the environmental considerations of component design. LCA supports a Design For Environment (DFE) methodology which allows the LCA results to be used in a meaningful way. Streamlining has been adopted to focus the LCA on the immediate environmental requirements. Therefore, DFE helps to define the level of the study and translates the results of the LCA into a meaningful form which can be used by designers. An example of this is given by the improvements that have been made into the assessment of the environmental burden of the product in ''use''. This phase of the life cycle is dominant in most automotive studies and therefore warrants closer investigation.The environmental impact of bioenergy carriers can be determined with the help of life cycle analysis. The present study shows that bioenergy carriers offer some clear ecological advantages over fossil fuels, such as conserving fossil energy resources or reducing the greenhouse effect, but they also have some definite disadvantages-in particular regarding certain airborne pollutants-when the overall life cycle is considered. The paper first discusses the methodological approach for conducting a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for biofuels; this approach is then used for a case study of Rape Methyl Ester (RME) compared with diesel fuel. The same approach is then applied for some bioenergy routes discussed currently in Germany. For the different bioenergy routes the results of the LCA for Energy, CO2 equivalents, N2O emissions, SO2 equivalents, SO2 emissions and NOx emissions are given and discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.A systematic methodology for incorporating ecological considerations in the optimal design and scheduling of batch/semi-continuous processes is presented in this paper. The methodology embeds principles from Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) within a general multi-objective formulation for the design of multipurpose batch plants, with process economics and environmental impact as distinct design objectives. An expanded boundary is defined around the process of interest, for the consistent evaluation of environmental impact, which is quantified by a set of metrics (for air, water pollution, global warming etc.). Examples from the dairy industry are presented to demonstrate the potential of the methodology to assist in arriving at environmentally friendly and economically favourable batch designs and schedules. Issues regarding the use of alternative cleaning and legislation policies on batch operation and design are also discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.This study is part of the ExternE programme of the European Commission on the external costs of the photovoltaic (PV) fuel cycle. The objective of this paper is the quantitative evaluation of the main environmental impacts of two selected PV systems - the ground-based 1MWp system in Toledo, Spain and the 40 kWp building integrated facade in Newcastle upon Tyne, NE England, using the methodology of life cycle analysis (LCA). Both systems use silicon wafer technology at present, but the Newcastle facade was also studied with the incorporation CdTe modules. The results of the LCA show that atmospheric emissions are the priority impacts with respect to the assessed PV systems. Comparing Si wafer systems, the CO2 emissions were 88 t/GWh for the Toledo PV plant and 143t/GWh for the BIPV facade. If the facade had used electrodeposited CdTe, the CO2 emissions would fall to about 50t/GWh.The Optimal Fibre Flow-model, a combined optimization and simulation model, calculates the optimal combination of energy recovery and recycling of waste paper for paper and board production. In addition, the environmental impact is estimated by using an Environment Load Unit-index (ELU-index). The ELU-index assigns an environmental load value to emissions and to the use of non-renewable resources such as oil and coal. If the Scandinavian forest industry uses hydroelectric energy in pulp and paper production, and the utilization rate of waste paper increases, the FLU-index increase. However, a political decision that would force the forest industry to decrease its utilization rate and thus favor a 10% increase in energy recovery would result in a marginal loss for the Scandinavian forest industry of about 5.5 USD/ton. On the other hand, if the electricity is produced from fossil fuel, the ELU-index is initially quite stable, but later increases. a minimum is found at a utilization rate of about 25 per cent. Here, a forced decrease in the utilization rate, along with a 10% increase in energy recovery, would cause a marginal loss for the Scandinavian forest industry with about 6.5 USD/ton.The amount of carbon dioxide available for industrial utilisation may expand to unprecedented levels if the recovery of carbon dioxide from energy plants flue gases will be implemented. The potential of each of the three possible uses (technological, chemical, and biological) is far from being clearly defined. The chemical utilisation option, that has intrinsic thermodynamic and kinetic constraints, may rise controversial positions, depending on the criteria used for the analysis. The estimate of its real potential demands a thorough comparative analysis, using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, of existing processes/products with the new ones based on CO2, in order to establish whether, or not, the latter avoid carbon dioxide (either directly or indirectly) and their economics. The rejection/consideration assessment methodology will produce reliable results only if an exhaustive number of parameters is used. The analysis cannot be limited to practiced industrial processes, but must be extended to an exhaustive inventory of cases. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.World energy supply up to the year 2100 has been analysed from a life cycle standpoint of the full fuel cycle. Five scenarios are set up and these scenarios are analysed and compared with regard to excess energy requirements, carbon emissions, health risks and investment costs for entire power generation systems. The current trend (fossil fuel-intensive) scenario of these scenarios is attractive from an investment standpoint, but deleterious froman environmental and risk standpoint, The CO2 removal and carbon recycle scenarios must get over the hard barriers of reducing excess energy use and investment costs through future technological innovations. Renewable energy technologies are environmentally appropriate and the renewable-intensive scenario could be introduced with acceptable cost burdens in long-term projections. The nuclear-intensive scenario is attractive from its economic, environmental and risk aspects, but must make efforts to acquire public and political acceptability for further worldwide adoption. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.CO2 emissions from construction of various power plants were calculated by the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology. The LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) was calculated by ''NIRE-LCA'', LCA software developed at the National Institute for Resources and Environment using a bottom-up approach. CO2 payback times of renewable energy electric power plants (hydroelectric, OTEC and PV) were calculated vs. conventional fossil fuel-fired power plants (coal, oil and LNG). The evaluated payback times were much shorter than the typical operational lifetimes of the respective renewable energy electric power plants. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is not sufficiently tailored to the analysis of strategic environmental problems of material suppliers. Sustainable development calls for a reduction by a factor of 10 to 20 in the material intensity of the economy, a situation which leads to dramatic shifts in markets for raw materials. Furthermore, a material supplier might have major improvement options in the material's numerous downstream uses. LCAs, however, can't cover these two aspects. An adapted form of Substance Flow Analysis (SFA) may be an answer. This approach defines a system in relation to the flow of a specific material through society. All environmental interventions related to the material are inventoried. An emission evaluation indicates the dominant environmental bottlenecks, given the current market volume of each application of the material. This helps to identify improvement options and strategic choices in market portfolios. Scenario analysis on potential measures can further indicate changes of material flows - and thus markers - in the system. The approach is illustrated with a case study on chlorine.The basic idea of LCA is that all environmental burdens connected with a product or service have to be assessed, back to the raw materials and down to waste removal. Therefore, the term ''Life Cycle Assessment'' is more precise than the German ''Okobilanz'' or the French ''ecobilan''. This basic idea is undoubtedly true, and LCA is the only environmental assessment tool which avoids positive ratings for measurements which only consists in the shifting of burdens. In the years from 1990 to 1993, SETAC and SETAC-Europe shaped the development of LCA in a series of important workshops culminating in the ''Code of Practice'' of 1993. The results of these workshops can be illustrated by the famous SETAC-triangle. It shows the basic structure which is now underlying the standardizing activities of ISO: 1. Goal definition and scoping, 2. Inventory analysis, 3. Impact assessment, 4. Improvement assessment. The structure recently defined by ISO differs from the SETAC structure only in the last element which is called ''Interpretation'' in the international standard 14040. According to ISO, ''Improvement Assessment'' is only one of the many activities which may follow LCA but is not part of the true analysis. The components of an LCA are described and interpreted in detail, SETAC vs. ISO. Recent developments and activities initiated by ISO, SPOLD and other organisations complete the review.Software systems to support environmental research and management can often be developed and applied within the context of general purpose computer-aided engineering tools such as spreadsheets and databases. Reliance on general purpose CAE tools reduces development time, is usually less expensive and yields software that is often more capable for a specific task than custom-designed systems with a broader range of functionality. We outline several examples of such applications in this paper, including a spreadsheet for toxic emissions weighting, database and matrix manipulation software for life cycle assessment using economic input-output models, a database system to support environmental reporting, and a Java-enabled browser for visualizing a TRI database.In addition to information on the technical performance of materials, there is an increasing demand for information on the environmental performance. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is widely accepted as the instrument for determining this environmental performance. The determination of the environmental performance of building materials is a part of the Dutch national environmental policy on Sustainable Building. This paper deals with the system for environmental product information by LCA, which is in development in the Netherlands for the building industry.Few engineering schools offer students an opportunity to learn about the environmental implications of engineering design until late in the curriculum, if at all. However, such implications are becoming increasingly important and complex. We have successfully implemented a hands-on group project for the first-year course Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering which acquaints students with the concepts of green design. The objectives of the project were to reach students the basic ideas of life cycle analysis (LCA) and environmentally conscious decisionmaking and to encourage them to think about how products are designed. The project was divided into two parts. In the first part, each group of students dismantled a new toaster in the original packaging. At appropriate points during disassembly, students were asked questions about how the toaster operated; for example, they were asked to determine how the thermostat worked so that toast is heated for the desired time period. After separating the materials, the students determined the total weight in each of four categories of materials used in manufacturing the toaster. In the second part of the project, the students considered the environmental effects of the current toaster design and proposed different designs to promote easy disassembly and repair, to save energy, and to increase the fraction of materials in the toaster that could be recycled. The groups were also asked to suggest ways to make the packaging material less harmful to the environment. After the completion of the project, toaster parts and packaging were recycled or retained for demonstration purposes. To examine the effectiveness of this project, a detailed survey was given to the students after the completion of the project. Overall, the project allowed students to discover for themselves the challenges of designing a product to be environmentally benign. This project can be modified using other appliances.The life time of each technology consists of phases following each other. The phases can be identified by the typical features driving the improvements in a phase. Theoretical and empirical studies on technology management cover a wide variety of different efforts to model these dynamics. The dynamics include features common to all technologies but also features individual to a certain technology only. This paper gives an overview of mathematical models for describing diffusion dynamics. The aim of the paper is to increase understanding of the life cycle analysis of different technologies. Deeper understanding supports better quality of technology management from the managers point of view and increases the predictability of future changes as well as engineering process in general.A variety of quantitative techniques are available and widely used by risk managers to assess hazard, risk and consequences, including chemical process quantitative risk analysis, human health and ecological risk assessments, product life cycle analysis and operations research. A comprehensive framework that forms linkages between these techniques has not, however, been developed. In this paper, we introduce an integrated quantitative decision approach (IQDA) that encompasses an array of techniques and can vastly improve the usefulness of risk analysis tools in decision-making. Several initial applications of integrated quantitative approaches are presented and discussed with respect to their ability to fit in the IQDA process. The case studies focus on the selection of pollution control equipment for a hazardous waste combustor, identification of remedial alternatives for soils at a chemically contaminated site, and evaluation of chemical emissions from a manufacturing facility. Initial principles for an integrative framework are presented, drawing on the disciplines of decision analysis and operations research, and areas requiring additional work are identified.This paper gives an overview of some criteria for the selection of processes for the recovery of lead and zinc from various raw materials and/or intermediate products. A glossary of possible processes and process variants, is presented and discussed, as well as the way in which these are interlinked. Recent developments in metallurgical process synthesis are also discussed, and the results produced by an eco-techno-economic synthesis procedure for process routes in zinc metallurgy are given briefly; The way in which such a synthesis can complement a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of zinc-producing technologies is also described.CO2 payback times were calculated for renewable energy electric power plants (hydroelectric, OTEC (Ocean Thermal Electric Conversion) and PV (photovoltaic)) by LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), using fossil fuel-fired electric power plants (coal, oil and LNG) as a reference. The CO2 emissions resulting from plant construction and production of plant construction materials were calculated for each case. The amounts of materials for construction of each power plant were taken from previous papers. The resulting LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) was calculated by "NIRE-LCA", LCA software using a bottom -up approach developed at the National Institute for Resources and Environment. The calculated total CO2 emission from the construction of each power plant was divided by annual net generated electricity. Subsequently, CO2 payback times were calculated from estimates of CO2 emissions from construction and operation of renewable energy power plants with fossil fuel-fired power plants used as the reference. CO2 payback times for hydroelectric and OTEC (100 MW) power plants were very short in comparison to PV power plants, which was mainly due to CO2 emissions construction. It was also suggested that CO2 payback times for all renewable energy electric power plants evaluated by the present paper were much shorter than typical operational lifetimes of renewable energy electric power plants.The REMPRODUSE project is a current European initiative towards re-design of electromechanical products for reuse and recycling, sponsored by the European Commission. Focus is on closing the copper recycling loop through re-design of copper rich electromechanical products, exemplified by an electric motor, and development of suitable recycling and dismantling technology to go along with the new product design. A life cycle assessment approach secures optimum environmental performance.Life cycle assessment (LCA) for personal computers (PCs) is examined as an approach towards developing environmentally friendly PCs. We conducted a life cycle impact analysis for a desktop PC and a notebook PC, and found several factors that contribute to high environmental loads. The environmental loads of PCs in the use and production stages were the largest among all the life cycle stages. Reducing the power consumption, adopting LCDs, using plastic materials in the housing, and improving the PWB manufacturing are all effective ways to reduce the environmental loads.We compare two tools for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The software GaBi (Ganzheitliche Bilanzlerung - Integrated Assessment) from Germany is based on a process model approach, as recommended by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). These results are contrasted to those from the method developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Green Design Initiative, Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Analysis (EIO-LCA). The EIO-LCA model uses economic input-output matrices, and industry sector level environmental and nonrenewable resource consumption data to assesses the economy-wide environmental impacts of products and processes. The results from the alternative approaches are compared in terms of toxic chemical releases, conventional pollutant emissions, energy use by fuel type, and use of oars. We find that most of the values from the two tools are within the same order of magnitude, despite the fundamental differences in the models. We contrast the two approaches to identify their relative strengths and weaknesses.This paper introduces a novel life cycle approach to designing environmental considerations into products. The approach consists of a qualitative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework for both single and multiple life cycle electromechanical products, The LCA framework will consist of a 'body of knowledge' and a methodology far applying this knowledge to evaluate designs, It will be able to integrate quantitative and qualitative data, consider the views of all the life cycle participants and be implemented as part of a Concurrent Engineering (CE) structure, Details of a pilot study an a sample number of consumers, including users, are given, The study involved undertaking questionnaires and informal interviews to identify, rank and weight consumers key product requirements and environmental considerations, Pt also involved gathering of participants views on general environmental issues such as product tate back, rental/leasing and willingness to pay extra for perceived environmental benefits, A summary of the results and conclusions drawn from this study are given with a discussion of future work planned.(1)This paper reports progress in the development of a novel fabrication technique for printing circuit board designs directly onto suitable substrates. Circuit trades can be formed on organic or synthetic substrates by depositing films of a metal-loaded ink via a standard lithographic printing process. The application of this work is in substitutes for conventional (copper-clad resin/laminate) circuit boards where, for low complexity circuits, directly printed substrates offer cost advantages and environmental benefits. The paper is a resume of work and results, including; int formulation, environmental test, circuit modelling and life cycle analysis. Conductive Lithographic Films have now been successfully demonstrated in a telephone handset developed in conjunction with Nortel, microprocessor and microwave stripline applications. Whilst developed primarily as a lour cost, low environmental impact alternative to subtractive PCB manufacture, other potential advantages such as flexibility and environmental robustness are apparent.Comparison of the environmental impacts of chemicals, production processes, products, or companies requires methods to interpret emissions data contained in DFE evaluations, lifecycle inventories, and toxics release inventories. Impact evaluation methods for toxic substances range from simple toxicity scoring to sophisticated risk-based models. This paper explains two such methods. The environmental impact matrix approach is based on a categorical hazard identification. As a qualitative assessment, it is fairly simple to conduct. It has been used by the Source Reduction Research Partnership to evaluate alternatives to chlorinated solvents, The Human Toxicity Potential is based on a multi-pathway environmental exposure model and uses extensive toxicity data. The Dutch government recommended its use in life cycle analysis, along with other equivalency scores, e.g. for global warming, ozone depletion, and smog generation. The steps necessary to calculate an HTP score using the CalTOX model are presented and data needs as well as underlying assumptions are discussed. Differences between the simple scoring mechanism and HTP are illuminated through an example.Traditional life-cycle assessment begins with a product and examines its environmental impacts throughout its life cycle. An alternative approach is to proceed in reverse: to examine the need that the product is designed to fulfill, to determine the minimal environmental impacts that could be engendered by filling that need, and thereby to design the ''perfect green product'' for the purpose. This approach, termed reverse life-cycle assessment (RLCA), is demonstrated by examining the environmental impacts attributable to a generic washing machine of current design, and then by reviewing other ways in which the provisioning of clean clothing may be accomplished. RLCA, as used here, is shown to encourage systems thinking and to identify opportunities for innovation in design and in marketing of environmentally-responsible products in ways that would be unlikely to arise from a traditional LCA.Modeling tools have been developed to design buildings relative to energy use and pollution impacts in a place specific manner. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) tracks production, consumption and reuse of materials with at least one design friendly CAD connectable procedure but without accounting for location throughout the life cycle stages. Benchmarking techniques have been applied mostly in production facilities to optimize internal efficiency with some consideration of environmental impact. ISO 14000 attempts to develop international protocols to minimize environmental impacts of production. Total Quality Building(TM) (TQB) is an emerging procedure to benchmark building relative to the environment using some techniques mentioned above but correlates them to a GIS input/output based modeling framework so that location sensitive issues regarding material and energy flows relative to environment and resource use can be measured. TQB's main objective is to evaluate a building as a performance system in a site sensitive context. Site is defined in a multiple scalar measurement depending on resource and technology.Cost estimating models have been used for many years as a means to reduce the uncertainty in budget estimates and improve the contract preparation and negotiation process. There are several estimating methodologies that have been developed and standardized over time for this purpose. These include comparative analysis, quantity take-off or line item estimating, life cycle analysis, and parametric, or top-down modeling This article will describe the Department of Energy's (DOE) Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) Budget Estimating Support Tool, an addition to the parametric Remedial Action Cost Engineering and Requirements (RACER) System. Models for Surface Decontamination and the Segmenting and Dismantlement of Contaminated Building Structures will be discussed along with their integration into the system of models. An example problem win illustrate the rise of the D&D models and demonstrate how parametric toots standardize and improve the budget estimating process.Several approaches have been devised to evaluate the effects of proposed or existing operations on the human organism These effects may be da eloped as part of a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a component of the ISO 14000 protocols. One approach to LCA is Life-Cycle Stresser-Effects Analysis, or LCSEA. The goals of an LCSEA include reduced adverse environmental effects: improved human health: improved resource allocation: improved inventory control and efficiency of use: and reduced waste(1). Life-Cycle Analysis may be applied to examine cumulative risk over the lifetime of a product and for this examination it is necessary to begin with an understanding of the technologies that are available. To generate impact and risk values, it is necessary to quantify the waste inventory. Current waste inventories will be estimated for ferrous and total wastes at Department of Energy (DOE) facilities, with the discussion focusing on ferrous wastes. The analysis is based on available literature and published reports, and supports the concept of recycling these materials. There exist considerable uncertainties in past inventory estimates. Recent studies described bq Loiselle(2) and Bierman(3) suggest that the current inventory of scrap steel at Department of Energy (DOE) facilities at Oak Ridge lies bem een 29,000 and 120,000 tons. The contribution to the scrap steel inventory from future decontamination, decommissioning and dismantling activities at the Oak Ridge K-25 plant alone may be an additional 335,000 tons. The current total United States DOE and DOE/DOD (Department of Defense) total scrap steel inventory has been recently estimated at 292,000 tons(3) 389,300 tons based on Bierman's values(3), extrapolated; and 396,000 tons(2), with an additional component of perhaps 505,000 tons from future decontamination and decommissioning activities(2). The DOE and DOE/DOD total (metallic and non-metallic) waste inventory through year 2070 possibly available for recycling may be as high as 36,162,000 tons, based on recent DOE publications(4,5). Development of new technologies is being spurred by the need to recycle significant quantities of contaminated waste stored at federal facilities.LCA(Life cycle assessment) is a systematic process used to calculate and evaluate the environmental impacts of products. Because boiler components are now exposed a more severe erosion/corrosion environment by improving efficiency of thermal power plant, it is expected that the use of thermal spray coatings will increase. The LCA method was attempted to apply to various thermal spray coatings for PFBC (Pressurized Fluidized Bed-Combustion) and evaluate the eco-friendly coatings. The result was gained that all the alumina coatings have good characteristics. In fact the Al2O3-40%ZrO2 coating by APS has the lowest environmental impact and the best erosion resistance, it may be considered the most effective coating.Viewpoints gathered at the final session of the "Use of Recycled Wood and Paper in Building Applications" conference were consolidated and grouped into four main categories: infrastructural needs; environmental issues; processing, products, and markets; and construction industry issues. The discussion of the infrastructure includes ideas and suggestions related to the supply and cost of recovered material, information sources, definitions, standards, education, public perception, legislation, and funding for research and implementation. Environmental issues include contaminant distribution and life cycle assessment. The discussion of processing, products, and markets covers handling of material, medium density fiberboard, wood-plastic composites, agricultural fibers, exterior structural products, and new building systems. Finally, the section on the construction industry addresses salvage and deconstruction.The methods of systems analysis - principally, mathematical modelling, simulation, and optimisation - have been widely applied to solving problems in managing the water environment for over three decades. These foundations of the subject remain just as relevant today as hitherto. The problems to which they might be applied, however, or the context in which they might be applied, seem to have changed in ways that could genuinely be described as ''radical''. In this survey stock is taken of these changes in perspective, especially over the past ten years: in the emergence of stakeholder participation, environmental ethics, life-cycle analysis, sustainability, industrial ecology, and design for ecological (as opposed to engineering) resilience. Whether the application of systems analysis will require a new approach or new methods with which to address these new issues, is thus open to question. For there are undoubtedly limits of method now discernible, even in respect of the more conventional problems of applying systems analysis to managing water quality. For example, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that, were we to encode all our currently available hypothetical knowledge into a model, this would not be verifiable in the conventional, rigorous sense. Similarly, in spite of a wealth of apparently ever more powerful mathematical formulations of the problem of optimisation, heuristics and intuition must still be called upon to reach even good solutions, reasonably close to where the optimum is thought to lie. Circumventing such methodological difficulties, while yet absorbing the changing currents in outlook on the man-environment relationship, is where candidate tasks for the ''new agenda'' of the next few years might be found. This paper presents some personal observations on a handful of such candidate tasks. (C) 1997 IAWQ. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.Whether sustainability can, or should, be defined in a practical operational sense, it is clear that the emergence of such a notion has prompted what seems to be a profound re-thinking of whether our society, economic system, and technology are as we would wish them to be. Sustainable development, clean technology, life-cycle analysis, pollution prevention, and so on, are expressions of a willingness to leave no stone unturned, as it were, in the search for what would be appropriate. With respect to the design and operation of a city's wastewater infrastructure, in particular, this search is characterised by a seeming explosion in the possible combinations of appropriate technologies, gross uncertainty about how novel technologies - only now emerging - might perform in the very long term, and a continuing absence of specific criteria of sustainability for determining the grounds on which any candidate technology might be preferred over another. The paper introduces a simple computational procedure for generating and screening candidate combinations of unit-process technologies for an urban wastewater infrastructure. This is based on the use of Monte Carlo simulation, with the identification of those specific technologies (and combinations thereof) that appear to have the greatest probability of being selected for use under different, possibly evolving, criteria of sustainability. Application of the procedure is illustrated with respect to just a part of this infrastructure, i.e., the wastewater treatment plant. (C) 1997 IAWQ. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.In this study the insustainability of the treatment of municipal wastewater is evaluated with the LCA-methodology. Life-Cycle Assessments (LCA) analyze and assess the environmental profile over the entire life cycle of a product or process. The LCA-methodology proved to be a proper instrument to evaluate the wastewater treatment plant on the sustainability. However, environmental impacts which are caused by sludge handling should still be classified. Besides that, the LCA should be carried out on regional level instead of on national level. In a situation of high nutrient removal the contribution of the treatment of municipal wastewater to the total insustainability level in the Netherlands is relatively low. When the sustainability of the WWTP has to be improved, the most attention has to be paid to the minimization of discharge from pollutions with the effluent and minimization of the sludge production. Because the contribution of energy consumption is relatively low, less attention can be paid to the minimization of the energy demand. The building of a WWTP and the use of chemicals are not determining the insustainability of the WWTP. (C) 1997 IAWQ. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.Life-Cycle Assessment is a tool for evaluating the environmental burdens of goods and services from the "cradle to the grave". Such an approach is applicable to the energy sector where different technologies often have contrasting environmental impacts and may have significant impacts outside generation, for example associated with the extraction and processing of raw material, the production of components or decommissioning. In this paper the life-cycle impacts of electricity generated from a wind farm in Spain are compared to those associated with the conventional fuel mix. The net environmental benefits of wind energy are calculated taking into account all materials and resources used and the emissions produced during all activities, including transport, across the complete lifecycle. Wind energy, as expected has significant benefits over conventional generation. Coastal cities are critical areas for global environmental change, but they have not been a focus of study in coastal zone management or urban planning, This paper lays the conceptual groundwork for such a focus, based on an 'ecomanagement' or ecosystem approach, The unique 'bi-polar' aspect of the juxtaposition of a complex natural system with a complex built system is stressed and explored, Among the benefits of an ecosystem approach is that it provides a common, scientifically defensible, ground for diverse visions and jurisdictions in a designated area, The history of recent ecosystemic and metabolic studies of cities is reviewed, as well as the implications of the intensification of use of the natural ecosystem for coastal city purposes, A series of brief case studies of developed and developing country cities is presented: Dakar, Hanoi, Alexandria, Toronto, and Venice, Finally, some of the implications of studying coastal cities in the context of rapid global change are outlined, as a preliminary agenda for further research, (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.

 Neither the costs nor the benefits of adaptation to climate change have been systematically studied so far. This paper discusses the extent to which the vast body of literature on climate change impacts can provide insights into the scope and likely cost of adaptation. The ways in which the impacts literature deals with adaptation can be grouped into four categories: no adaptation, arbitrary adaptation observed adaptation (analogues), and modeled adaptation (optimization), All four cases are characterized by the simple assumptions made about the mechanisms of adaptation. No or only scant attention is paid to the process of adapting to a new climate. Adaptation analysis has to acknowledge that people will be neither dumb nor brilliant at adapting. They are likely to see the need for change, but may be constrained in their ability to adapt or in their comprehension of the permanence and direction of change, (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.Three hundred broiler chicks (Hubbard) of both sexes were assigned to five feeding treatments: TO received a complete diet (control), TI was a choice feeding system with simultaneous access to an energy-rich feed (ground corn) and a protein concentrate (43.7% CP), and T2, T3, and T4 were introduced to choice feeding after 1, 3, and 5 wk, respectively, of consuming the complete diet. At 1-d-old, TI chicks showed a marked preference for corn, with only 21.4% of their intake being the protein concentrate diet. Intake of the concentrate progressively increased to 40 to 45% after 3 d of adaptation, resulting in diets with 22.5 to 24.3% CP. When broilers fed the complete diet for 1 to 5 wk (T2, T3, T4) were changed to choice feeding, on the Ist d, their feed choice intake was similar to that of T1 chicks at the same age. Visual observation and tactile assessment of the feed particles during the initial period allowed the chicks to quickly evaluate the new feeds and to adapt their feeding behavior. Although total feed intake to 6 wk of age was not significantly affected by the feeding treatments, broilers on choice feeding selected diets with a lower percentage of CP and had lower live body weights at 6 wk than those fed the complete diet (TO).Climate-induced changes in the forest sector could have far-reaching consequences for rural communities and the economy in developing countries. Despite the many uncertainties involved in predicting impacts, it makes social and economic sense to identify adaptation options now. The case study of Himachal Pradesh shows that, for adaptation measures to be realistic, the needs of different stakeholders with an interest in forest products and services must be addressed. It is recommended that existing programmes to resolve conflicts between different stakeholders be strengthened. Diversification of occupation structures has also been identified as an important strategy to reduce the vulnerability of forest-dependent communities. Additional investment may be required in new areas of research, such as tree genetics programmes, in order to facilitate the selection of species that are resistant to climate change.Fruit breeding pursues the creation of new cultivars by improving desired characteristics and eliminating shortcomings. Thus, the objectives of any breeding program must take into account the problems to be solved. In almond, the traits of an ideal variety must fulfill requirements for fruit quality and growth characteristics of the tree. These latter traits include those related to climate (adaptation to the growing region), phytopathology (resistance to pests and diseases), vegetation (growth and branching facilitating orchard management), reproduction (ensuring a high and constant yield) and physiology (which ensures reproductive ability). With greater certainty in anthropogenic influence on observed changes in climate there is increasing pressure for agreements to control emissions of greenhouse gases (Houghton et al., 1996). While it is difficult to assess the appropriate level of mitigation, it has been argued that flexibility in meeting emission targets offers significant economic savings. Such flexibility can be exercised in terms of timing of mitigation (i.e. delay) or geographic location of the intervention (e.g. permit trading and Joint-Implementation). Much of this insight is based on standard models of technical change in energy supply and demand. However, standard model formulations rarely consider: (i) a link between the pattern of technical change and policy interventions; (ii) economies of learning; and (iii) technical progress in discovery and recovery of oil and gas. While there is evidence to support the importance of these factors in historic patterns of technical progress, the data necessary to calibrate internally consistent economic models of these phenomena have not been available. In this paper simple representations of endogenous and induced technical change have been used to explore the sensitivity of mitigation cost estimates to how technical change is represented in energy economics models. The scenarios involve control of CO2 emissions to limit its concentration to no more than 550 ppm(v), starting in the year 2000, and delayed to 2025. This sensitivity analysis has revealed four robust insights: (i) If endogenous technical change is assumed, expected business as usual emissions are higher than otherwise estimated - nevertheless, while 25% greater CO2 control is required for meeting the CO2 concentration target, the cost of mitigation is 40% lower; (ii) If technical progress in oil and gas discovery and recovery is assumed, energy use and CO2 emissions increase by 75% and 65%, respectively above the standard estimates; (iii) If the economies of learning exhibited in various manufacturing sectors are repeated in development of non-fossil technologies and abatement of CO2 emissions, the costs of abatement can be 50% lower than those assessed using standard models; and (iv) In this sequential learning framework, delay in abatement towards a 550 ppm(v) CO2 concentration target leads to expected net economic loss in seven of nine model structures studied. Only when the model structure permits new oil and gas discoveries while keeping other features of standard models does delay offer economic gain with greater than 60% confidence. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Current debates on climate mitigation emphasize the role of the inertia of the economic system. Our aim in this paper is to study in more depth how sectorally differentiated inertia impacts on optimal CO2-emission abatement policies. Using the STARTS model, we show that optimal abatement levels and costs differ sensibly among sectors. Differential inertia is the critical determinant of this trade-off, especially in the case of a 20-year delay in the action, or in an underestimation of the growth of the transportation sector. In particular, the burden of any additional abatement effort falls on the most flexible sector, i.e. the industry. Debates on mitigation emphasize the role of inertia of the economic system. This paper aims at studying more in depth how sectorally differentiated inertia should influence optimal CO2 emission abatement policies. Using a two-sector version of STARTS, we show that under perfect expectations, optimal abatement profiles and associated costs differ sensibly between a flexible and a rigid sector (transportation). In a second step, we scrutinize the role of the uncertainty by testing the case of a 20-year delay of action and an underestimated growth of the transportation sector. We do this for three concentration ceilings and we point out the magnitude of the burden which falls on the flexible sector. We derive some policy implications for the ranking of public policies and for incentive instruments to be set up at international level. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.In order to elucidate interactions between climate change and biogeochemical processes and to provide a tool for comprehensive analysis of sensitivity, uncertainty, and proposed climate change mitigation policies, we have developed a zonally averaged two-dimensional model including coupled biogeochemical and climate submodels, as a part of an integrated global system model. When driven with calculated or estimated trace gas emissions from both anthropogenic and natural sources, it is designed to simulate centennial-scale evolution of many radiatively and chemically important tracers in the atmosphere. Predicted concentrations of chemical species in the chemistry submodel are used interactively to calculate radiative forcing in the climate submodel, which, in turn, provides winds, temperatures, and other variables to the chemistry submodel. Model predictions of the surface trends of several key species are close to observations over the past 10-20 years. Predicted vertical distributions of climate-relevant species, as well as seasonal variations, are also in good agreement with observations. Runs of the model imply that if the current increasing trends of anthropogenic emissions of climate-relevant gases are continued over the next century, the chemical composition of the atmosphere would be quite different in the year 2100 than that currently observed. The differences involve not only higher concentrations of major long-lived trace gases such as CO2, N2O, and CH4 but also about 20% lower concentrations of the major tropospheric oxidizer (OH free radical), and almost double the current concentrations of the short-lived air pollutants CO and NOx.The continued accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is expected to severely impact the earth's natural resources and agriculture. Greenhouse gas emissions from the developing world are rising faster than those from other countries, and many studies have noted that it would not be possible to stabilize climate change without reducing the growth of these emissions. Can this be achieved without affecting economic growth and social fabric in these countries? Mitigation studies indicate that if energy efficiency and forestry options are implemented judiciously, emissions can be reduced at a negative cost without affecting economic growth. The studies also suggest that this would increase significantly the worldwide demand for natural gas and renewable technologies. Country studies show that the aggregate mitigation potential in the forestry sector is higher, and the costs per tonne of carbon are lower, than reported earlier by global studies. Barriers to the implementation of energy and forestry options need to be explicitly taken into consideration because these may change the priority of options and the choice of policy measures.Brazil is fortunate in having large areas of land that are not currently forested but that are suitable for silvicultural plantations. Changes in the area and regional distribution of the country's silvicultural plantations imply a wide variety of environmental and social impacts. Projections of future development of plantation silviculture are needed for analyzing these impacts, as well as to serve as a reference scenario for evaluating the potential effects of climatic change on Brazil's plantations, and for the related task of evaluating the implications of proposals to combat global warming by increasing the area of silvicultural plantations in Brazil beyond the extent to which they would otherwise expand. Such a reference scenario provides the control, or "business as usual" standard, against which one can compare the situation as affected by climatic change and/or by additional silvicultural or other activities carried out to help mitigate climatic change. Assuming constancy of climate, technology, per-capita consumption of wood products, and Brazil's share of international trade, the area of plantations in 2050 would be 3.2 times larger than the area in 1991. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Extensive work is underway on potential climate change mitigation strategies. It remains difficult, however, to compare the costs of CO2 mitigation measures being undertaken around the world. Because greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets represent a relatively new phenomenon, generally accepted rules of cost or mitigation accounting do not exist; most offset projects make it up as they go along. Nonetheless, comparing the costs of GHG offset approaches is crucial to those considering alternative mitigation strategies. This paper reviews discrepancies in how CO2 mitigation costs are currently estimated and introduces a model for generating reliable mitigation cost curves. The Greenhouse Gas Offset Cost Assessment and Decision making Model (GGOCAD(C)) allows utilities, other emitters, or governmental agencies to review carbon offset options, including in the AIJ/JI sectors; learn about mitigation projects being implemented; consistently evaluate proposed and existing projects; and incorporate their own concerns, priorities, and objectives into offset evaluation. The model helps users to more efficiently identify GHG offset opportunities that will most effectively advance their climate change mitigation aims.Land-based climate change mitigation options face questioning from several directions and may not survive to be a part of the developing climate change mitigation regime. A number of important interest groups have raised concerns about the ability of forestry and other biotic approaches to achieve real greenhouse gas mitigation benefits. Yet many national, provincial, and company-level climate change plans involve the use of forestry and other land-use mitigation options. Indeed, there is an abundance of analysis from sources including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the potential for biotic mitigation options to advance climate change mitigation objectives. Very little analysis, however, directly responds to concerns being raised by critics of biotic mitigation measures. Supporters of biotic offsets need to make a concerted and immediate effort to address technical as well as political arguments and concerns being raised by opponents of land-based mitigation approaches. This project investigates the concepts of industrial ecology and eco-industrial parks and applies those concepts to the redesign of an existing industrial park in Choctaw, OK. The opportunity for developing an eco-industrial park on this site comes from the availability of waste water for non-potable water needs, and the abundance of waste tires as raw materials for products to drive a new set of industrial partnerships. These industrial partnerships include the City of Choctaw Waste Water Treatment Plant, a tire shredding company, a tire pyrolysis company, a hydroponics industry, a hard rubber tire manufacturer, a screen printer, a plastics manufacturer, a toner manufacturer, and a toner cartridge manufacturer. The nature of this relationship and the design of the eco-industrial park is contained within this report. The result of this investigation is a new, common sense, approach to industrial land use that combines economic growth and environmental protection. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology is assumed as a conceptual tool emulating models derived from natural systems and it is aimed at developing fundamentally new approaches to the industrial system environmentally-oriented reorganization. It implies two essential elements of definition: it is a concept involving a systemic approach to changes in goods manufacture, use and disposal and it is a concept related to the organization of new interactions among the industrial system structural components. Starting from these assumptions, this paper opens three possible paths to the theoretical implications of such a perspective: (1) The need to conceive sustainable industrial growth as a process of co-adaptation between natural and industrial systems; (2) The need for a better definition of the 'environment' of a manufacturing system; (3) The possibility of designing innovative interactions for manufacturers, consumers and decomposers as structural components of the industrial ecosystem.The methods of industrial ecology have been applied to the selection of a high-Z material for indirect-drive targets in the HYLIFE-II reactor. We quantify physical, chemical, and radiological impacts, rate the social-welfare impacts, and identify trends in the economic dimensions of the material selection. Early accident dose, the waste disposal rating, life-cycle volume, gamma dose rate, and resource availability are all considered. Four high-Z materials are considered: Ta, W, Hg, and Pb. A new activation module has been developed to accurately account for the complex activation scenarios of target materials. We explore a range of recycling scenarios and the results of these activation calculations are translated into the indices mentioned above. The recycling scenario can be modified to reduce accident hazards, disposal hazards, maintenance hazards, or fiscal expenditures, but different hazards or costs suggest different recycling scenarios are preferable. The IE methodology and examples of results are presented and areas for further study are identified.Background In the future, competitive industries will need to design for environment, health and safety as well as for productivity. Although the new areas of pollution prevention and clean production have evolved to address the design of production processes with concerns for the ambient environment, current pollution prevention models do not include explicit concerns for health, safety, and the work environment. The field of occupational health and safety has much to contribute to improve current pollution prevention approaches and solutions. Methods The application of work environment disciplines will need to be expanded fi om the conventional focus on "end-of-pipe" assessment and solutions, which take the production processes and resulting hazards as a given, to include a new focus on materials selection and process redesign. To make this shift, a new framework called "sustainable production" is proposed. The basic unit of sustainable production is the production process. The framework integrates a focus on the ambient and work environment along with a focus on productivity and the economic viability of the business enterprise in setting production process design parameters. Results By shifting the focus of occupational and environmental health and safety from exposure control to process design, sustainable production reduces the likelihood that concerns for health, safety, and the environment will be seen as antagonistic to productivity and economic development. To move a firm toward sustainable production, occupational health and safety professionals will need to participate in interdisciplinary workplace teams that design and build new production processes and that continuously evaluate and redesign existing processes. Conclusions This new strategy requires an expansion of the role of the occupational health and safety professional to include evaluation and redesign of processes that produce goods and services as well as the conventional evaluation of chemical, physical, and biological agents, work practices, and ergonomics. This expansion of occupational and environmental health and safety requires new research to develop the scientific and public policy basis of sustainable production. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.This work is intended to contribute to the foundations for formalizing industrial ecology analyses of energy systems (systems for energy generation, transfer, or transformation) and to examine how the tools for performing these analyses can also enhance the field of industrial ecology in other applications. We discuss requirements for studying materials and energy cycling in industrial processes, with particular emphasis on energy generating systems, through explicit inclusion of entropy concepts in industrial ecology considerations. This perspective is intended to contribute to the theoretical basis for industrial ecology, to the development of tools for comparing the ecological (human and environmental health, and institutional) impacts of energy generating and other industrial processes, and to possible changes in engineering curricula with emphasis on design. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology (IE) is an emerging framework for characterizing relationships between businesses and analyzing their economic and environmental performance. By applying the principles of IE, members of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) pursue improvements in their economic efficiency while reducing the environmental burden of their production activities. This article discusses the potential of EIPs for improving economic and environmental performance and presents a methodology for developing and analyzing potential EIPs. The methodology is applied to a prototype EIP based on companies in Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, The potential for improved economic performance can be an important draw for public and private developers frying to populate an EIP and this study shows that these benefits are attainable. We conclude with a discussion of the conditions necessary for successful EIPs in the United States.In this paper, we argue that environmental business performance indicators are substantially and qualitatively different to sustainable development indicators and thus require different approaches in terms of public consultation, scope of measurement, time scale and range of issues covered. It does so by first reviewing some developments within environmental performance indicators for industry and, after providing a definition of sustainable development, it argues for the necessity of including SDIs in business in a way that reflects the fundamentally different nature of SDIs in comparison to environmental performance indicators for industry. It exemplifies the differences by focusing on one often-missing aspect - Biological Diversity.Although 'Sustainable Development' is invoked in current political and environmental debates, the concept has eluded precise definition. In general terms, 'sustainability' means working within three sets of constraints: techno-economic, environmental and social. Traditionally, engineering has been concerned with techno-economic issues. Explicit recognition of environmental and social issues has led to the way of thinking called Clean Technology, and to the use of more holistic analytical tools including Life Cycle Assessment. Howeover, it is argued here that a paradigm shift is needed in the way engineering skills and knowledge are used, as inputs to deliberative processes which go beyond techno-economic decisions. The need for this new paradigm is illustrated by the waste management sector, which is increasingly seen as needing the skills of the 'New Model' chemical engineer.The US copper, lead, zinc, aluminum and iron and steel sectors exhibit increasing competition for their products from new materials such as plastics and ceramics. The likely result of that competition and increased recycling is a decline in domestic production from virgin materials. Parallel to these developments are continued strong efforts by industry to improve material handling and energy efficiencies, and to switch towards cleaner fuels. What are implications of these trends for material and energy use and CO2 emissions by the copper, lead, zinc, aluminum and iron and steel sectors? To answer this question, this paper presents a systems view of industrial activity in which the major raw materials and energy flows are traced through the five US metals sectors. Dynamic interrelationships among resource extraction, materials processing, fuel use and technological change are specified on the basis of time series data and engineering information. Projections of material, energy and CO2 emissions profiles are presented for the years 1990-2020, These projections include energy requirements by the energy sectors to supply various fuels and electricity for the five metals sectors. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The scope and scale of industrialization apparently have progressed to a stage where the base of the engineering sciences must now be expanded beyond the realm of distinct industrial and agricultural technologies to the realm of industrial ecosystems, in which discrete technologies are characterized as design and innovation parameters in organized networks of economic production and consumption processes. The presumed objective of industrial ecosystem design and innovation is to efficiently and economically deploy natural and industrial resources with minimal risks to the integrity of significant natural processes of the biosphere. Mathematical tools for such an expansion derive from the premise that, for given intervals of time, industrial and natural ecosystems and their interactions can be characterized by hierarchies of bounded networks of biotic and abiotic resource acquisition, conversion, and transfer processes. The hierarchies illustrated in this paper range from modular networks of production technologies in manufacturing and refining to food chains and sequential products to biological communities and industrial production networks to product life cycles and beyond. The ecology of each resource conversion process within a bounded network of processes is characterized mathematically in terms of the principles of material and energy balance, with energy as one of many biotic and abiotic enabling factors of resource acquisition, conversion, and transfer that are ecologically quantified and monetarily priced. Design equations are developed that map the ecologies of bounded networks of ecological processes into the ecology of the network at its boundary, thereby providing operational procedures for mathematically defining hierarchial network structures. At the lowest level of ecological organization, all constituent network processes are observable first-order natural processes or engineered technologies. The economics of a given industrial enterprise are evaluated as an explicit mathematical function of its network of production technologies, its ecological organization, and its ecological boundary prices; thereby providing procedures for the coordinated design, management, and accounting of its technological, ecological. and economic dimensions at hierarchial levels of organization from factory floors and farms to corporate levels and beyond. Sustainable industrialization is shown to be achievable through on-line, risk-control pricing mechanisms.Confusion surrounds the terminology associated with product end-of-life processes such as recycling, remanufacture, reuse and refurbishing. In order that product end-of-life strategies can be communicated effectively, an established terminology needs to be developed and adopted. The purpose of this paper is to define these terms, drawing on current literature and case studies in order to establish a taxonomy. Remanufacturing addresses the aims of industrial ecology in a more effective way than material recycling and is a thriving business in many industrial sectors. Before remanufacturing is fully accepted by the public at large, and not just by informed buyers within industry, standards to govern the processes and procedures should be established in order to ensure that the items are as-good-as-new (AGAN). In order to proceed, it is important to define remanufacturing so that it can be differentiated from merely refurbishment and other synonymously used terminology.Industrial Ecology (IE) is an interdisciplinary field of study that uses system approaches to focus upon the relationship of industrialism to organisms and their environment. IE promotes changes from a wasteful economy, to a closed looped system of production and consumption. Through this mechanism, industrial, governmental and consumer waste is reused, recycled, and remanufactured to the limits of knowledge and technology. Nanotechnology is technology operating at the atomic level. An application of this technology is the manufacture of inert and bio-objects. Similar to nature, bio-engineered "software" instructions will be the blueprint for the assembly and operation of products at, or from the atomic level. The development of this technology presents the possibility of the application to dis-assemble existing and future waste (inert and bio) to the molecular level and then re-assemble it into new resources and products. This cyclical approach, if designed into the system, would allow the raw materials used in objects to never reach end-of-life.Industrial Ecology (IE) is an interdisciplinary field of study that uses system approaches to focus upon the relationship of industrialism to organisms and their environment. IE promotes changes from a wasteful economy, to a closed looped system of production and consumption. Through this mechanism, industrial, governmental and consumer waste is reused, recycled, and remanufactured to the limits of knowledge and technology. Nanotechnology is technology operating at the atomic level. An application of this technology is the manufacture of inert and bio-objects. Similar to nature, bio-engineered "software" instructions will be the blueprint for the assembly and operation of products at, or from the atomic level. The development of this technology presents the possibility of the application to dis-assemble existing and future waste (inert and bio) to the molecular level and then re-assemble it into new resources and products. This cyclical approach, if designed into the system, would allow the raw materials used in objects to never reach end-of-life.As a result of organizational changes and rapid expansion of the telecommunications sector, AT&T faces challenges regarding the environmentally efficient end-of-Life management of vintage/surplus telecommunications equipment in its Central Offices. This paper will describe AT&T's Case Study and Business Case regarding the end-of-life management of such telecommunications equipment. This project is considered a key pilot for AT&T's internal Industrial Ecology Strategy.Movement of business focus from a regional to a global basis is redefining how companies organize their activities. During the past 25 years, the chemical industry has been gradually moving from a focus on "end-of-pipe" treatment to source reduction, recycling, and reuse. Pollution Prevention, once viewed primarily as an environmental issue, is now becoming a critical business opportunity. This change is not coming easily because it requires institutional transformation in organizations where such change is difficult. The emphasis on Pollution Prevention is now broadening to include tools such as: life-cycle analysis, full-cost accounting, sustainable development, and eco-efficiency. As we look twenty years into the future, process design and optimization will incorporate more elements of the environment into the objective function that defines success. Modeling and simulation will play a key role in making these changes occur more rapidly. This paper reviews the drivers, change, and tools that can be used to accelerate this change. The environmental aspects of the electricity supply system in Korea has been analyzed from the point of view of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). As an initial step, thermal power generation, which has the largest portion in national electricity system and is considered to release significant amounts of emissions, is defined as the system. All the inputs and outputs associated with the defined system has been identified and calculated based on the delivery of 1kWh electricity generated by thermal power to consumers. The national electricity supply system is a circle-network type connecting the whole country to a single super grid with all generators feeding into it and all consumers drawing from it. Thus, the national averaged data have been collected and used to describe the present system. The Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) results show that anthracite releases the largest amount of airborne emissions and LNG releases the smallest amount of emissions among the fuels used in thermal power generation. The most dominant airborne emission is CO(2) which is one of the main causes for global warming effect. Waterborne emissions like COD, SS, oil etc; and solid wastes such as waste synthetic resins and combustion ashes are also quantified. The results of the analysis carried out here will be a part of the basic database for indispensible electricity in LCA studies for almost all industries.Recycling is considered to play an essential role in developing a sustainable economy. A restrictive environmental legislation has forced German economy into extensive recycling activities. Meanwhile, German society and German industry have more than six years of practical experience with recycling of postconsumer plastic waste from household packaging due to this Legislative situation. II is time to critically evaluate the situation. This paper summarizes the development in Germany and tries to show ecological impacts based on a life-cycle analysis and correlates these data with economical consequences.Recently published life-cycle assessments (LCAs) on recycling and incineration with energy recovery of paper packaging materials are used as examples in order to discuss the usefulness of LCAs. The type of information that can typically be produced by an LCA is described. The reproducibility of LCAs is evaluated and reasons for possible discrepancies between LCAs are discussed. An attempt is also made to make conclusions on advantages to the environment of recycling versus incineration of paper packaging materials, and discuss lessons learned that can be applied to other materials. In all seven studies, including 12 cases and 27 scenarios, total energy use is consistently lower when paper packaging materials are recycled rather than incinerated. Other, differing results can be explained by the assumptions made concerning the energy source used instead of the energy from incineration when paper is recycled instead of incinerated (called 'the alternative energy source'). If fossil fuels are the alternative energy source, incinerated paper replaces fossil fuels, and emissions of CO, can be decreased. If, on the other hand solid waste (which in other cases would have been landfilled), or biofuels are the alternative energy source, fossil fuels will not be replaced. In these cases, increased recycling will in general lead to decreased emissions of greenhouse gases. It is suggested that the alternative energy source for the near future is usually solid waste. In the longer term this depends on political decisions on waste management in general. Studies which address the issue of transportation consistently conclude that as long as it is reasonably efficient, transportation will not have any effect on the conclusions. It is noted that not all relevant environmental impacts are considered in the studies reviewed. This is one reason why none of the discussed LCAs can alone be used to determine the environmental preference of the alternatives studied. Another reason is that the question is too narrow. The ranking order by environmental impact of the alternatives may depend on other policy decisions. Some of the LCAs can however be used to identify key issues, i.e. critical aspects which need further study or should be considered when choosing between recycling and incineration. Equally important, some of the LCAs can be used to identify aspects which are of limited importance for the decision. It is suggested that this is typical for current LCAs and presumably also for future ones. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of nitrogen emissions from soil resulting from the use of organic fertilizers, such as manure, are large compared with the corresponding impacts of mineral fertilizers. However, soil emissions are rarely included in systems analysis of waste management strategies. This study examines whether the inclusion of soil emissions can affect the environmental ranking of systems for managing solid biodegradable waste. Waste management scenarios based on incineration, anaerobic digestion and composting, respectively, were compared. The scenarios were analysed using the organic waste research (ORWARE) simulation model. A simplified model for calculating nitrogen availability and emissions was also constructed. Life-cycle analysis methodology was used for choosing system boundaries and evaluating the results. Global warming, acidification and eutrophication were the impact categories considered. The results indicate the vital importance of considering nitrogen emissions from soil when comparing biological waste management systems with other waste management methods, especially with regard to eutrophication effects. Soil emissions are also important when comparing the environmental impacts of anaerobic digestion and composting systems. However, the variation in nitrogen emissions from soil is large and depends on the spreading technique used, climate, drainage and soil texture (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the complete study of everything concerning a material, from the raw materials extraction to all the following impacts, including the waste produced directly and indirectly. The procedure is based upon four stages divided into a cyclic procedure of evaluation improvement and refinement. The first stages frames the problem and studies the quality of the data to be utilised; the second provides the numerical values deriving from the mass and energy balances. The integrated management of municipal solid waste (MSW) requires a thorough assessment of material flows, environmental impact and costs associated with the entire: life-cycle of the products under review.The utilization of renewable energy is one main subject for discussion an Sustainable Development, because of its possibility to replace primary energy. How many primary energy could be really saved by wind energy converters, can be said with the Cumulative Energy Demand and the Energy Yield Ratio, which are part of a Life Cycle Assessment.Using interaction trap technology, we identified a putative extracytoplasmic-function (ECF) sigma factor (RpoE1) in Myxococcus xanthus, a bacterium which has a complex life cycle that includes fruiting body formation. The first domain of the response regulator protein FrzZ, a component of the Frz signal transduction system, was used as bait. Although the RpoE1 protein displayed no interactions with control proteins presented as bait, a weak interaction with a second M. xanthus response regulator (AsgA) was observed. While the specificity of the FrzZ-RpoE1 interaction therefore remains speculative, cloning and sequencing of the region surrounding rpoE1 localized it to a position downstream of the frzZ gene. A potential promoter site for binding of an ECF sigma factor was identified upstream of rpoE1, suggesting the gene may be autoregulated. However, primer extension studies suggested that transcription of rpoE1 occurs under both vegetative and developmental conditions from a sigma(70)-like promoter. not blot analysis of RNA preparations confirmed the low-level, constitutive expression of rpoE1 during both stages of the life cycle. Analysis of an insertion mutant also indicated a role for RpoE1 under both vegetative and developmental conditions, since swarming was reduced on nutrient-rich agar and developmental aggregation was effected under starvation conditions, especially at high cell densities. An insertion mutation introduced into the gene directly downstream of rpoE1 (orf5) did not result in either swarming or developmental aggregation defects, even though the gene is transcribed as part of the same operon. Therefore, we propose that this new ECF sigma factor could play a role in the transcriptional regulation of genes involved in motility behavior during both stages of the complex M. xanthus life cycle.In order to develop a life cycle assessment method, which can be widely applied to electrical appliances and office automation equipment we have investigated resource depletion, energy consumption, and environmental pollution in the manufacturing process of circuit boards, and we have identified the common units, such as 228 Mcal/kg of energy consumption and 15.979 kg-C/kg of carbon dioxide emission. Using these common units, we have calculated the categorized impact for the environment (resource depletion, global warming, acid rain, and atmospheric pollution) using a laptop personal computer, whose processing speed (PS) is improved by 5 times, weight is decreased by 47%, and energy-consumption is cut by 44%, compared with previous type. We have also shown that the life cycle environmental impact (EI) per personal computer decreases by 38% in resource depletion, life cycle EI per processing speed decreases 87% in all categories, and environmental efficiency (=PS/EI) in all categories improves by a factor of approximately eight (factor value: 8).Increased recognition of the importance of sustainable development is posing new challenges for industry. A systems approach gives a framework for reconciling the needs of sustainable development with all the other demands on industry. The computer industry has been chosen to illustrate the application of a systems approach to green design in industry on account of both its increasing economic importance and the increasing role of computers in society. A plumber of examples are given to illustrate the advantages of a systems approach to green design, and the main principles and some of the details of a systems approach to green design in the computer industry are discussed. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Softs, Ltd.Life cycle accessment (LCA) has been widely used to evaluate the environmental load associated with products, materials and services from cradle to grave. Most of the effort in LCA so far has been devoted to construct the inventory database because collecting the related data is tremendously time-consuming process. On the other hand, problems of LCA as a evaluation tool also has to be considered. Typical LCI methods, such as I/O analysis and process analysis, assume that the relationships between the input and output for each process are linear. In fact, most of the relationship between the input and output for processes do not satisfy the linearity and so the influence of the non-linearity on the result has to be investigated to evaluate more accurate environmental load. This paper formulates the nonlinear analysis in LCP, to extend the normal linearity-based LCA. In the formulation, a method to express the nonlinearity in the general format is newly proposed. Next, a general system for the evaluation of environmental load is developed using this formulation. It is shown that object-oriented approach is effective for the development. Using the developed system, influence of non-linearity on environmental load and the derived problems will be investigated. Finally, an effective method to modify nonlinear data, which is supposed to become important in the future, will be proposed.The design paradigm called virtual prototyping (VP) is important because of the need to manufacture products in a short period of time and in a cost effective manner. By replacing the building of physical prototypes for testing various design issues such as usability, life-cycle analysis, functionality and so on with so called "virtual models" on a computer and analyzing them, virtual prototyping is achieved. One of the design issues that has become increasingly important is the "design-for-disassembly (DFD)" paradigm. A well designed product that is easy to disassemble has the obvious advantages when it needs to be taken apart for service or end-of-life recycling. Therefore a design tool that can tie the DFD issues into a virtual prototyping system is of considerable interest. This paper attempts to address this particular issue in the virtual prototyping area: DFD as applied to VP. This paper presents an overview of a detailed DFD method. An algorithm that can be readily tied into a computer aided design system, therefore also useful for virtual prototyping, is discussed. Some implementation issues and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the DFD method currently employed are explained. Even though this research is still in its early stages, the paper presents a general framework of DFD methodology and its potential to be used as a virtual prototyping tool.Four decorative points were evaluated by a life cycle analysis. The points were hosed an different binders: conventional alkyd, high solids alkyd, alkyd emulsion and acrylic dispersion. In respect of the evolution of eutrophiating agents, the point based on the acrylic dispersion performed better than those based on the alkyds. In all other respects the high solids and the alkyd emulsion based paints had a lesser effect on the environment than those hosed on the conventional alkyd and the acrylic dispersion. This holds good far the exhaustion of non-renewable row materials and energy sources, Required Air Quality (RAQ) values, emissions of acidifying compounds, potentially harmful to human beings and photothemically active.Ordered by the Deutsches Kupfer-lnstitut the Institute of Non-ferrous Process Metallurgy of the RWTH-Aachen treated the inventory of a life cycle assessment copper materials in the rime between march 1992 and December 1993, Since finishing and publishing this study in summer 1995 it became clear that by giving only primary energy demands of processes no concrete energetic information about the technology itself is possible because they are decisively influenced by the kind of energy supply, Interpretation of processes therefore is only possible by knowing the corresponding final energy which means the reel energy demand of a production plant divided up into the different energy carriers, The present inventory for copper production and manufacturing represents a scientific basis in the field of eco-balancing. The comparision of primary and final energy demand firstly shows the complexity of such an inventory but also the risk of misinterpretation. So only experts with precise knowledge of a production plant can make conclusions.The ISO 14000 norm provides a framework in which a continuous improvement of the environmental performance of a process may be realised. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) forms an integral part of ISO 14000 however, its inventory analysis presently often simplifies process routes for metals processing to simple averaging black-boxes that represent whole processes. This approach hardly makes it possible to capture the detail of complex interconnected materials processing systems as found in metals processing. As a consequence the use of LCA in its present form as a tool to invoke improvement for metal processing and recycling systems may be questionable. As an alternative to the poor inventory analysis of LCA for the above mentioned systems, this paper discusses the architecture of a simulation model that permits the detailed simulation of interconnected material cycles in view of realising the ISO 14000 norm and other imposed environmental legislation. This means that interconnected routes such as for Cu, Sn, Zn, Pb, Al, Mg and Mn are simulated simultaneously. This would put the very useful LCA methodology for these applications on a more sound basis, rendering the subsequent improvement analysis better for these systems. The proposed architecture is characterised by four levels, each of the levels providing information to different interested parties, i.e. from decision-makers, politicians to plant managers and metallurgists. Very much like thermodynamic simulators, which communicate with appropriate thermodynamic data in a suitable standard database, a possible environmental database is defined, which can efficiently communicate with the different levels defined by the simulator. This architecture clarifies the complexity of these systems. Various illustrative case studies and corresponding numerical results provide an overview of the proposed architecture as well as the scope of this approach. Without providing a statement regarding the overall environmental soundness of the interconnected Al, Cu, Sn, Zn, Mn, Mg and Pb production routes, the results give an indication what detail results can be produced for these process routes spanning countries and continents. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.When making a choice between alternatives, in whatever field, it is essential to have regard for the complete set of costs and benefits, in the widest possible sense, that will result in each case. The preferred option should be that which confers the maximum benefit, although relevant objectives will often conflict and its identification may be far from straightforward. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an environmental accounting tool for measuring the inputs and outputs of an option, whether a product, a process or an activity. This paper Explains the principles and methodologies involved in LCA, its application to the nuclear sector, and to electricity generating options and sustainable development.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful technique used to calculate total input and output flows of materials and energy from and to the environment during every step of a product life. A measure of a product Environmental Quality (EQ) can then be derived and help in the selection and in the design of more environmentally friendly design alternatives. EQ is a multicriteria measurement. In the construction field, LCA flows cannot be known with precision without loss of realism. Hence intervals have been introduced to model them. Thus, different designs are characterized by interval multicriteria measures. Manipulation bf such environmental performances falls for a MCDA method which (1) does not allow for trade-offs between criteria, (2) preserves as much information as possible and (3) is simple enough to be understood by non-specialist users, PROMETHEE was identified as a suitable method according to the previous criteria, but it is not able to handle interval performances so far. We discuss the necessary changes to devise an interval version, called "PROMETHEE I". (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to describe how one pollution prevention tool, life-cycle assessment, can be used to identify and manage environmental issues associated with product systems. Specifically, this paper will describe what lifecycle assessment is, determine the key players in its development and application, and present ideas on how life-cycle assessment can be used today. LCA provides a systematic means to broaden the perspective of a company's decisionmaking process to incorporate the consideration of energy and material use, transportation, post-customer use, and disposal, and the environmental releases associated with the product system. LCA provides a framework to achieve a better understanding of the trade-offs associated with specific change in a product, package, or process. This understanding lays the foundation for subsequent risk assessments and risk management efforts by decision-makers.This paper suggests an approach to life-cycle impact assessment which is based on the comparison of predicted exploitation or pollution levels with critical levels; the latter representing the carrying capacity of the commodity-supplying or pollutant-receiving environment. The incremental pressure induced by the product system is weighted with the total pressure on the reference environment. Geographic dimensions of the reference environment are chosen in accordance with the spatial sphere of influence of commodity extractions or pollutant emissions. The feasibility of the approach is shortly surveyed for a number of input-related and output-related impacts and the approach is compared with conventional Life-cycle impact assessment. It is concluded that life-cycle risk assessment may contribute to a better harmonization of methods for impact assessment. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.A new data model has been developed to handle information relevant to site-specific life cycle assessments (LCA). The model is orientated towards GIS-representations of three generalised subsystems; the technical, the environmental and the social subsystems. The technical and environmental systems are mainly linked through flows of energy and matter, which are the causes of environmental impacts, which subsequently is perceived, evaluated and acted upon by the social subsystem. For all three systems important differences, attributable to geographical locations can be determined. With the new data model a possibility to enhance LCA and reach more relevant results emerge due to a higher site specificity. The high level data model is expressed as relations between different entities using the entity relationship (ER) modelling language. An existing LCA-database, SPINE, which is already used by several companies for decision support in product development, can be utilised since the structure of the database supports geographical information. So far, applications with GIS-data are limited, but examples of area specific LCA impact characterisation factors exist. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.In current life-cycle impact assessment, little attention is paid to the spatial aspects of emissions: the place where an emission is released and the area and or target system on which the emission has its impact. This lack of differentiation affects the relevance of the assessed impact. This paper presents factors for Europe that relate the region of emission to the acidifying impact on its deposition area. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Fluorinated materials developed to replace materials banned from manufacture under the Montreal Protocol are themselves contributors to environment damage. In particular, their contribution go global warming is under scrutiny from customers, regulators and pressure groups. This paper provides a comparison of the global warming and other impacts associated with two possible replacements for Halon 1301 (a banned fire extinguishant), namely an 'in-kind' compound CF3CHFCF3 (HFC-227ea) and a 'not-in-kind' blend of nitrogen, argon and carbon dioxide (IG-541). The impacts associated with the manufacture and deployment of the HFC-227ea are found to be substantially greater than those of the inert gas mixture designed for the same fire-extinguishing duty. The impacts during manufacture reveal an important issue for the widely used measure of global warming impact-the so-called Total Equivalent Warming Impact (TEWI). The present work clearly reveals that where impacts associated with manufacture are significant, the scope of the TEWI analysis needs to cover the manufacturing process if it is to be meaningful.The environmental and energy implications of a midsized automobile were assessed by performing a life-cycle inventory analysis that emphasized manufacture and use phases. An Economic Input-Output Life-Cycle Analysis model was used that produces a large array of indicators of the effects of a product or service on the economy and the environment. The analysis corroborates two previous studies that used the conventional life-cycle analysis model developed by the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) (1,2) and EPA (3). The use phase ia more important than the manufacture and disposal phases in terms of energy use and environmental discharges. Automobile service is comparable to the fuel cycle in terms of discharges of toxic substances. In contrast to a Volkswagen study, tailpipe exhaust and evaporative emissions of hydrocarbons (HC)/volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and particulate matter are greater than emissions upstream in the fuel cycle. This difference apparently arises from using on-road tailpipe emissions data, rather than emissions data from laboratory tests. The Economic Input-Output model is found useful for quantifying the range of implications of decisions concerning manufacture and use.This paper describes the overall reduction of the environmental impact by the use of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) determined by a investigation of the life cycle assessment of SCR systems for power plants. The overall reduction of the environmental impact by the use of SCR was determined under consideration of the total product life cycle from manufacture of the starting materials through catalyst production and use in the powerplant to processing for recycling. Following clear specification of the overall system limits and definition of the goals for the analysis to be performed, the inventory analyses were determined for the individual process steps and in summary for the overall process cycle/sequence under consideration of basic SCR application variants in the power plant. The inventory analysis was used to generate the impact assessment and improvement assessment. This work was performed using the concept given by Braunschweig, A., and Muller-Wenk, R. [5]. Other tools of environmental management of products and processes used were the methods of process cycle/sequence analysis, process input-output analysis and cumulative energy consumption or expenditure [14].In January 1997, the German Research Association (DFG) established a special research programme for an integrated analysis of metallic resource flows. The programme is a joint interdisciplinary effort of the Technical University of Aachen and of the Research Centre Julich. Apart from many other activities, a series of conferences is organised within this programme. In October 1997, a first conference was held on "The Economics of Resource Flows: The Case of Aluminium". In December 1997, a second conference took place on "Life Cycle Assessment of Aluminium: Methods and Applications". In April 1998 the third workshop was held entitled "Methodological Aspects of a Resource-oriented Analysis of Material Flows". The next conference is planned for December 1998 on "Environmental related Aspects of Aluminium Production". Finally, a conference on " Methods for an Integrated Evaluation of Material Flows" is under consideration for 1999.Indicators which reflect environmental, economic, health and safety issues, have been categorized as microecometrics and macroecometrics. The former, generally flow based measures, have been developed for local, firm-wide or product based assessments. Microecometrics include materials intensity, energy consumption and emissions data, often from life cycle perspectives. They are, generally, intensive and are scaled with respect to unit of production, GDP or per capita, though other normalization factors have been proposed. In contrast macroecometrics tend to be extensive and represent global conditions such as temperatures and environmental concentrations. Ecometrics are subjective and reflect the dominant value of the individual, family unit, stakeholder group or firm. As such overaggregating or reducing the number of ecometrics for given applications, such as the rating of investments or access to credit, presents potential conflicts. Furthermore, while eco-indicators used for internal corporate reporting should not, necessarily, be validated, those microecometrics which involve external reporting, or multiple stakeholders, are arbitrary if not derived from, or based on, comprehensive life cycle approaches. This paper summarizes ECOMETRICS'98, a workshop held in Lausanne, Switzerland in January 19-20, 1998. It discusses ecometric needs of various users including consumers, designers, private sector decision makers as well as politicians and policy makers. A discussion regarding appropriate microecometrics for industrial sectors including chemical, pharmaceutical, insurance, finance, electronics, manufacturing and consumer products is also summarized.The German Waste Avoidance, Recovery and Disposal Act (KrW-/AbfG) creates the demand to select for "high quality" and "environmentally sound" waste treatment and disposal techniques. Waste disposers have to choose the most "high quality" and "environmentally sound" technique among different treatment and disposal options, and therefore must have a way to comparably evaluate the different techniques. Prognos developed an assessment method called HoVe to evaluate waste treatment and disposal facilities based on these new guidelines. It adheres to international standards of life cycle assessments (DIN/ISO 14 040). The assessment is based on emission, material, energy and economic data which already exists, making it practical, time and cost efficient. HoVe employs three Impact Categories (IC) to evaluate the impact of waste treatment. Each IC is characterized by Impact Clusters (ICL) to which original plant data are allocated. The ICL consider the amount and quality of produced products and residues from treatment processes, as well as the issues of ecological impact and energy balance. Further they incorporate economic aspects in order to assess the economic soundness of treatment and disposal plants, a requirement of the KrW-/AbfG. A pilot assessment of treatment options for shredder residues proves the viability of the method.Crop protection aids, used in the agriculture phase, contribute a great deal to the environmental impact of food products. An adequate inclusion of those substances in life cycle assessment is usually hampered by the lack of relevant equivalency factors. In this paper rough equivalency factors are given for 65 frequently used herbicides and pesticides. Those factors are calculated according to the methodology, originally developed by EPA, which was used by CML in 1992. It is acknowledged that equivalency factors, derived in this way, have a limited value. They only indicate potential impacts, ignoring the fate of such substances. However, as long as better data are lacking, these figures provide a useful approximation.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been applied in the leather footwear industry. Due to the fact that the goal of the study is to point those steps in the footwear cycle which contribute most to the total environmental impact, only a simplified semi-quantitative methodology is used. Background-data of all the inputs and outputs from the system have been inventoried. Impact assessment has been restricted to classification and characterisation. From the results of this LCA it has been concluded that energy consumption is an important impact generator phase, due to the characteristics of the electricity production in the studied area (Catalonia and the rest of Spain). A remarkable impact is generated in the solid waste management phase, also due to its characteristics in the studied area. Another significant impact source is the cattle raising phase where great values of Global Warming, Acidification and Eutrophication Potentials are estimated. At the tannery, a great value of water eutrophication potential is observed and this phase is also important for its non-renewable resource consumption.Two different methods for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) applied to the dairy industry was performed at two dairies. In the simplified method, total environmental loads from a dairy was registred and allocated to liquid milk. Energy and emissions are measured for each process step for the detailed method. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. The simplified method captures all energy and emissions of dairy processing, but treats the dairy as a "black box". The energy consumption was found to be 1,27 MJ/l and 2,55 MJ/l for the two dairies. By use of the detailed method it is easy to "loose" information, and it is very time consuming. The energy consumption was lower than for the simplified method. The environmental loads can on the other hand be divided on the different process steps. The main conclusion is that choice of method depends on the purpose of the LCA-study.The effects on the external environment of seven concrete and steel building frames representative of present-day building technology in Sweden were analysed using LCA methodology. Obiects of the study included frame construction and supplememary materials. Several-storey offices and dwellings were studied. The functional unit was defined as one average m(2) of floor area during the lifetime of the building. Inventory data were elaborated for concrete and steel production, the building site, service life, demolition and final disposal. Parameters included were raw material use, energy use, emissions to air, emissions to water and waste generation. The inventory results were presented and evaluated as such, in addition to an interpretation by using three quantitative impact assessment methods. Parameters that weighed heavily were use of fossil fuels, CO2, electricity, SOx, NOx, alloy materials and waste, depending on what assessment method was used. Over the life cycle, building production from cradle to gate accounted for about the same contribution to total environmental loads as maintenance and replacement of heat losses through external walls during service life, whereas demolition and final disposal accounted for a considerably lower contribution.This paper presents and verifies the computer tool LCA-LAND for estimation of emissions from specific waste products disposed in mtmicipal solid waste landfills in European countries for use in the inventory analysis of LCA. Examples of input data (e.g. distribution of the waste product in different countries, composition of the product and physical/chenfical/biological properties of waste product components) and output data (e.g. estimated emissions to atmosphere and water) are given for a fictive waste product made of representative types of components (toluene, cellulose, polyvinylchloride (PVC), copper and chloride). Since waste products from different processes in the product system may be disposed at different landfills where they are mixed with waste originating outside the product system, the estimated emissions from specific waste products cannot be compared with measured emissions from true landfills. Hence, the computer tool is verified in terms of mass balances and sensitivity analyses. The mass balances agree exactly and the sensitivity analyses show that different types of waste product components behave differently in different types of landfills. Emission of e.g. toluene is significantly reduced in the presence of landfill top-cover, landfill gas combustion units and leachate treatment units. Generally, the sensitivity analysis shows good agreement between the relative proportions of various types of emissions (based on properties of the waste and properties of landfills) and good agreement with emission levels that would be expected based on a general understanding of landfill processes.Different lists of application areas for life cycle assessment are reviewed together with some suggestions for a typology of these application areas. It is concluded that the scope of a life cycle assessment is determined by the area of validity of the decision with respect to time, space, and interest groups affected. On this basis, six application areas are distinguished. It is further concluded that the application area has limited influence on the inventory analysis and impact assessment phases, although these may be influenced significantly by the decision-maker and the complexity of the trade-offs between the involved environmental impacts. The reporting format for a life cycle assessment depends on the socio-economic importance of the decision, the intended audience, and the time available for decision making.Management of forest resources and related industries has a significant effect on the Finnish environment. Therefore there was an obvious need for a study to assess environmental impacts and to identify needs and options for environmental improvements in the forest sector. It was against this background that the Finnish Environment Institute carried out a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the Finnish forest industry. This application included methodological innovations compared with the traditional product-related LCA because it was a study of the whole production system of the mechanical and chemical forest industry. Areas for improvement of environmental protection in the forest sector for the year 2005 were identified on the basis of the inventory (emissions, wastes, etc.), environmental impact assessment and other available data. During the study a new impact assessment procedure was developed in order to assess more actual impacts of country-specific systems. Although the prioritized factors found were not strongly ranked against each other it can be concluded that maintaining biodiversity in the context of forestry practices and increasing the efficiency of energy use are the key issues in the environmental protection of the forest sector. Before detailed ranking of emissions and other stressors can be produced there is a need for more reliable stressor data, better understanding of stressor-effect relationships and more consensus on the importance of different environmental problems. Despite the limitations and needs for further development, the presented LCA approach can be regarded as a useful tool for providing a deeper understanding of the key issues in the environmental protection of a whole production system. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This paper argues that: (a) construction and operation of buildings is internationally a major cause of resource depletion and environmental pollution, (b) traditional criteria of construction cost and energy use estimation are insufficient in view of a comprehensive environmental impact analysis of buildings, (c) LCA (life-cycle analysis), "eco-bookkeeping" and "eco-balance" approaches could be advantageously utilized in concurrence with more traditional engineering, cost estimation and energy simulation to obtain a broader building design evaluation scheme and (d) appropriate IT-based computational tools could facilitate environmentally informed, integrative decisionmaking throughout the building design, construction, operation and decommissioning phases. Toward this end, this paper specifically introduces the prototypical realization of a computational tool for the integration of environmental impact modeling approaches within an object-oriented space-based CAD environment. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a means to analyze the environmental implications of product and service systems. As defined by international standards, the framework of LCA includes four distinct elements. The elements are goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory analysis, life cycle impact assessment, and life cycle interpretation. Although the LCA elements are at different stages of development, increased interest In the use of LCA will help fuel advancement of the science. The steel industry is gaining valuable experience in the use of LCA. The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), with members in Canada, Chile, Mexico, and the United States initiated a LCA program in 1994. The program centers on training and education, conducting studies of steel products, participating in LCA projects which include steel, and promoting the development of LCA. The LCA program at AISI has proven to be successful. Over ten AISI member companies are directly participating in the effort, with even more companies represented at training and education events. LCA Projects in which AISI is active include an international steel industry study, a North American automobile industry benchmark study, and application of LCA to waste management activities.Recently Danone has been packaging a yoghurt product in a degradable package made of the renewable raw material polylactic acid (PLA). Apart from the development aspects of the tubs themselves, the company had to devise a disposal strategy and make preparations for a life-cycle analysis.Corporate environmental management is becoming more strategically oriented. With increased emphasis on the natural environmental by organizational stakeholders, including governments, stockholders, customers, employees and communities, the need for explicit consideration and incorporation of environmental strategy within corporate strategy has never been more critical to the organization. With such programs as design for the environment, total quality environmental management, life cycle analysis, green supply chain management, and ISO 14000 standards gaining notoriety, the operational and strategic decisions for environmental managers and businesses is becoming more complex. This paper integrates these elements and their attributes into a strategic assessment and decision tool using the systems with feedback or analytical network process (ANP) technique first introduced by Saaty. The ANP technique, which has been sparingly Investigated by researchers or applied by practitioners is useful for modeling dynamic strategies systemic influences on managerial decisions. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.The authors argue that thermodynamics offers a means of accounting for both resource inputs and waste outputs in a systematic and uniform way. The new feature of the present work is to extend the applications of exergy analysis to resource and waste accounting and to present the results in an integrated analytical framework, namely, life-cycle analysis (LCA). We conclude that exergy is appropriate for general statistical use, both as a measure of resource stocks and flows and as a measure of waste emissions and potential for causing environmental harm. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Although 'Sustainable Development' is invoked in current political and environmental debates, the concept has eluded precise definition. In general terms, 'sustainability' means working within three sets of constraints: techno-economic, environmental and social. Traditionally, engineering has been concerned with techno-economic issues. Explicit recognition of environmental and social issues has led to the way of thinking called Clean Technology, and to the use of more holistic analytical tools including Life Cycle Assessment. Howeover, it is argued here that a paradigm shift is needed in the way engineering skills and knowledge are used, as inputs to deliberative processes which go beyond techno-economic decisions. The need for this new paradigm is illustrated by the waste management sector, which is increasingly seen as needing the skills of the 'New Model' chemical engineer.Process and product models are commonly used for performing life-cycle assessments (LCAs) of the environmental impacts of materials and products through different stages of fabrication, use, and end-of-life options. In this article, we show that these models can be represented as process flow diagrams or as matrices of process interactions. In either representation, the inventory of environmental emissions and resources used is comparable, provided the process models are proportional in nature (any increase in product output produces a corresponding environmental burden). Matrix representations are advantageous if application cost, feedback flow, or speed of analysis is important. They are also useful in conjunction with comprehensive, general equilibrium models in which the system boundary of the problem (e.g., an LCA of a product) being analyzed is on the level of the national economy.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software has been developed and a case study for Personal In the software, product life cycle flow is Computers (PCs) has been accomplished. represented by a coupled-tree structure. A flow window provides two kinds of views, a sheet view and a tree view, for ease in constructing a product life cycle in the software. Using this software, a case study has been achieved for desktop PCs and notebook PCs. Concerning four impact assessment categories, the greenhouse effect, acidification, eutrophication, and resource consumption, the environmental impact was large in the use and production stages.This paper discusses the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA) and design for environment (DFE) and their application in the design and development of the asymmetric digital subscriber loop (ADSL) high speed modem. This application was used as a case study to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating "green" issues into the design cycle. Section II focuses on the green design methodology, It describes some fundamentals and the state-of-the-art of LCA/DFE, It also raises some critical issues that show up in the definition of LCA/DFE methodology. Section III describes the actual case study, It shows how the green design methodology, described in Section II, is adopted to the project under study. More specifically, it is described how the LCA is introduced into the physical design stage of the product, which assumptions are taken into account for the LCA analysis, and how the analysis affects the usual product design how, It discusses how the study started by performing an LCA of the ADSL high speed modem R1 (Release 1), with a large emphasis on the analysis of manufacturing processes. Secondly, these LCA results were used as input for the DFE methodology, in order to design a perceived greener product, the ADSL high speed modem R2 (Release 2), The "greenness" of this new product is validated by comparing the two environmental profiles. This case study resulted in a coherent and extensive environmental assessment of some fundamental design options (and the associated manufacturing processes) involved in complex electronic devices. By implementing the results of this LCA into a specific DFE methodology, green design issues have been introduced in the design cycle as just another design constraint to be dealt with.Photovoltaic (PV) power systems call lead to significant reduction of emissions to the environment, Contrary to conventional fossil fuel-based electricity production, the environmental aspects of PV power systems ara mostly related to indirect processes such as cell and module manufacturing and 'end of life' waste management, Careful assessment of such environmental aspects throughout all life-cycle stages is required to reveal the contribution that PV power systems can make to environmental sustainability within fire energy sector. An expert workshop was held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, oil 25-27 June 1997 that addressed issues and approaches regarding the environmental aspects of PV power systems, including energy payback times, CO2 mitigation potential, environmental life-cycle assessment and health and safety assessment and control. Various issues of environmental importance were identified during the workshop and recommendations were made for further work to ensure that PV power systems will indeed fulfil the promise of environmental sustainability. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The methodology used and results obtained for grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) plants in recent Swiss life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies on current and future energy systems are discussed Mono- and polycrystalline silicon cell technologies utilized in current panels as well as monocrystalline and amorphous cells for future applications were analysed for Swiss conditions. The environmental inventories of slanted-roof solar panels and large plants are presented. Greenhouse gas emissions from present and future electricity systems are compared The high electricity requirements for manufacturing determine most of the environmental hardens associated with current photovoltaics. However, due to increasing efficiency of production processes and cells, the environmental performance of PV systems is likely to improve substantially in the future. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This paper addresses the air emissions of grid supply versus grid-connected and off-grid photovoltaic power generation, using the framework of life-cycle assessment, in the concert of rural household energy supply in Australia. Emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides are calculated for the three life-cycle stages of manufacture, use and disposal. Sensitivities to materials and data inputs, as well as to component efficiencies, lifetimes and sizing are discussed. For each supply option, demand management options, including insulation and appliance choice, and the substitution of solar heating or bottled gas for electricity, are considered. The best option in all cases, in terms of life-cycle air emissions, is a grid-connected photovoltaic system used to supply an energy-efficient household with a mix of solar, gas and electric appliances. However, in financial terms, with current Australian energy prices, this option represents a high capital and life-cycle cost. Additionally, for the grid options, electricity costs do not significantly disadvantage the high demand scenarios. Both results provide a clear illustration of current Australian energy-pricing policies being ill conflict with long-term environmental sustainability. (C) 1998 John Wiley C Sons, Ltd.The integration of photovoltaic (PV) systems in buildings shows several advantages compared to conventional PV power plants, The main objectives of the present study are the quantitative evaluation of the benefits of building-integrated PV systems over their entire life-cycle and the identification of best solutions to maximize their energy efficiency and CO2 mitigation potential. In order to achieve these objectives, a simplified life-cycle analysis (LCA) has Been carried oat, Firstly, a number of existing applications have been studied. Secondly, a parametric analysis of possible improvements in the balance-of-system (BOS) has been developed. Finally, the two steps have been combined,Pith the analysis of crystalline silicon technologies. Results are reported in terms of sever al indicators: energy pay-back time, CO2 yield and specific CO2 emissions, The indicators show that the integration of PV systems irt buildings clearly, increases the environmental benefits of present PV technology. These benefits will further increase with future PV technologies, Future optimized PV roof-integrated systems are expected to have an energy pay-back rime of around 1.5 year (1 year with heat recovery) and to save during their lifetime more than 20 times the amount of CO2 emitted daring their manufacturing (34 times heat recovery). (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The life cycle inventories (LCIs) of recyclable and recycled materials can be strongly affected by how the savings from recycling are accounted. Unfortunately, most LCI methodologies do not explicitly address the important and subjective question of how to allocate inputs and outputs between primary and secondary material. This paper describes an LCI methodology that enables the analyst to explore and define the accounting rules more explicitly. Examples are developed to demonstrate the workings of the methodology and its implications for materials selection. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The cycle assessment can evaluate th system-wide effects of product and process design options. Software development is streamlining and reducing the cost of life cycle assessments in the textile industry. One environmental decision support tool builds on the experience of life cycle assessment of textile products such as the inventory analysis of a woman's 100% polyester blouse. Other types of product evaluations might include analysis of the proposed eco-labeling systems being considered overseas that may pose trade barriers to the import of U.S. textiles. Additional uses include analysis of the cost of resource losses and opportunities for improving the system-wide cost-effectiveness of the integrated U.S. textile industry.With industrialization, the material flows in the world have grown enormously, expanded geographically and become more open and complex. Traditionally, the emissions have been strongly connected to earlier steps in the material flows (extraction and raw-materials intensive industry), but during the last few decades, the emissions from industrial pointsources have decreased radically in the Western industrialized world. The result of the industrial 'cleanup' is a shift towards the latter steps of the societal material flows; the relative importance of consumption emissions has increased. As indicated in studies of the Rhine Basin, important prerequisites for this development have been increasing environmental awareness and public opinion, putting pressure on legislators, authorities and companies and a dynamic industrial development with structural changes, that have permitted investments in modern technology and emissions control. Despite the often radical emission reductions, problems with acidification, eutrophication, diffusion of persistent organic chemicals and climate change still persist on a regional and global level. During the last decade, there has been an increasing emphasis on the international and global environmental problems. The materials flow perspective has experienced a major breakthrough. Waste minimization, recycling, life-cycle analysis and environmental auditing have become major themes in most European countries and have also started to influence industry. The importance of the consumer and his attitudes and actions, as well as the relationship between trade and environment are often emphasized in this context. The industrial metabolism approach needs further development to be able to assist in meeting the modern challenges of environmental management. To sum up flows of a few elements or products in a limited region is not sufficient. It is necessary to develop the analysis of the context of the flows, include industrial, economic and geographical change in the analysis and more actively seek connection to political and industrial decision-making and human behavior and attitudes. The time-geographical Process Landscape launched by Torsten Hagerstrand could be an important source of inspiration in this context. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.The embodied energy of the four main materials used in the construction of an inert gas filled, double-glazed window, of a given size, was quantified. The four main materials considered were infill gas (argon, krypton and xenon), timber, aluminium and glass. The energy requirements of the underlying manufacturing processes are also estimated for the processing of the finished product. The total embodied energy for argon, krypton and xenon cavity filled windows (1.2 m by 1.2 m standard tilt and turn window), was found to be 1031 MJ, 1539 MJ and 5531 MJ per window, respectively. For argon filled cavities, this leads to the production of 94.7 kg of CO2, 1.2 kg of SO2 and 0.4 kg of NOx per window. The results presented in this paper are initial findings in the first stages of a complete Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of double-glazed windows for sustainable buildings. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.The environmental friendliness of paper products is a topic of today's ecology related discussion. Nowadays, this discussion also affects the printed media such as newspapers and magazines. Besides the conventional method of distributing information through printed media, it is also possible to publish them electronically. Since information technology is developing fast and internet access is widely available, electronic media are of an increasing significance. However, the environmental impacts of electronic media-particularly in comparison with printed media - have not been part of the discussion. The paper compares the environmental friendliness of printed newspapers and electronically published newspapers by using life cycle assessment methods. For both products the environmental burdens in terms of energy consumption, airborne and waterborne emissions and dumped waste occurring over the whole life cycle are analysed and compared.Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a conceptual tool that attempts to quantify the environmental consequences of a product, process, or activity across its entire life cycle. However, manufacturing plant engineers have questioned how to apply LCA to the processes that they can control. In this paper, a method of quantifying the environmental and resource impacts of manufacturing processes is presented. This new method utilizes Input Output Analysis coupled with Markov decision making into a tool that is useful to plant managers in determining and modifying the environmental impacts of their plant.There is an increasing demand to move the radio base station closer to the antenna for future mobile telecommunication systems, which requires a significant reduction in weight and volume and environmental compatibility. In this work, an evaluation of environmental impact and reliability when using anisotropically conductive adhesives (ACA) for flip-chip joining in radio base station applications has been performed. Conventional FR-4 substrate has been used to assemble a digital asic chip using an anisotropically conductive adhesive and flip-chip technology. The chip has a smallest pitch of 128 mu m with 7,76 mm in chip size and has in total 216 bumps with a bump size of 108x120 mu m. Bumping was made using the electroless nickel/gold technology. The bonding quality has been characterized by optical and scanning electron microscopy and substrate planarity measurement. Main quality affecting parameters are misalignment and softening of the FR-4 substrate during assembly which lead to high joint resistance. The reliability testing was conducted in the temperature cycling test between -40 and +125 degrees C for 1000 cycles 125 degrees C aging test I for 1000 hours and humidity test 85/85, 500 hours. The results show that relatively small resistance change has been observed after the reliability testing. The environmental impact evaluation has been done as a material content declaration and as a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). By using the flip-chip ACA joining technology, the content of environmental risky materials has been reduced more than ten times and the use of precious metals has been reduced more than 30 times compared to conventional surface mount technology.The current state of knowledge in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) field has recently been recently assessed. Within the broader sphere of sustainable development, Life Cycle Assessment is emerging as a powerful tool that potentially will aid industry in the environmental assessment of their products and operations Rk recognised that the timber industry should accept responsibility for the environmental impacts caused in all process stages. A number of prerequisites ae discussed in the paper for the implementation of an LCA' in one sector of the timber industry.System closure is gaining support as the preferred way to achieve further emission reduction and to minimize the costs of environmental protection. In this paper we first give a brief review of applications in Canada. Next, research activities in prediction and design, separation processes, corrosion control, and process dynamics are described to highlight the multi-disciplinary approach and multitude of issues to be considered while embarking on the path of system closure. Selected case studies are then presented to demonstrate technology transfer from research to mill scale application. Finally, we propose a systems engineering approach, incorporating life cycle assessment, as an improved method to evaluate system closure options.Life cycle assessment (LCA) approach has been applied to evaluate a base case gasoline powered Escort sedan and four alternative systems by using fuels converted the coal for automobiles in terms of energy utilization and emission reduction in China. The life cycle stages of each system were inventoried in terms of material flow and energy flow. The results show that all the alternative scenarios have lower energy efficiencies than the base case. Among the alternative scenarios, the high efficiency EV has the highest energy efficiency; coal-to-gasoline scenario has the lowest energy efficiency; and coal-to-methanol is in the middle. Compared to the base case, the emissions in both the coal-to-electricity-EV/high efficiency battery and coal-to-electricity-EV/low efficiency battery systems illustrate higher volume in CO2, SO2 and PM, and lower amount in NOx, CO and THC. The coal-methanol-FFV system shows improvement in SO2, NOx, CO and THC emissions, but increase in CO2 and PM.The Dauphine province in south-eastern France is a major area for walnut orchards. Growers manage their orchards with some specific agroforestry features: grafted walnut trees may be pruned to form a bottom log with a timber end use (dual purpose trees), and intercrops may be grown between the tree lines. These agroforestry practices are however only partially adopted. Three surveys were conducted in 1993, 1995 and 1996 to elicit the farmer motivations for adopting or rejecting agroforestry management features. The walnut industry is a key activity in two parts of Dauphine: the Isere valley, and the Diois basin. The reasons for adoption of agroforestry practices are discussed. In the Isere valley, the priority is given to walnut production in specialised farms, and the extension services are opposed to agroforestry practices. In the dryer Diois area, the main explanations for agroforestry adoption were the welfare of the farmer family, the age of the farm manager, and the contribution of walnut production to the family income. Dual purpose management schemes were characterised by extended investment return delays, but proved to be the most rewarding schemes when practised with intercrops. A very extensive tree management with few pest control operations improved the profitability. Intensive orchards had a low bequest value at the time of inheritance, in contrast to dual-purpose orchards. The age of the farmer at planting time appeared to be a key criterion for agroforestry management adoption.The environment has emerged as an important determinant of the performance of the modem chemical industry. This paper reviews approaches for incorporating environmental issues into the design of new processes and manufacturing facilities. The organizational framework is the design process itself, which includes framing the problem and generating, analyzing, and evaluating alternatives. A historical perspective on the chemical process synthesis problem illustrates how both performance objectives and the context of the design have evolved to the point where environmental issues must be considered throughout the production chain. In particular, the review illustrates the need to view environmental issues as part of the design objectives rather than as constraints on operations. A concluding section identifies gaps in the literature and opportunities for additional research.The production and use of biomass for energy has both positive and negative impacts on the environment. The environmental impacts of energy crops should be clarified before political choices concerning energy crops are made. An important aid to policy-making would be a systematic methodology to assess the environmental sustainability of energy crops. So far, most studies on the environmental aspects of energy crops deal mainly with the energy production of the crops and the possible consequences for CO2 mitigation. The Dutch Centre for Agriculture and Environment (CLM) has developed a systematic methodology to assess the ecological and socio-economic sustainability of biomass crops. The method is best described as a multicriteria analysis of process chains and is very much related to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Characteristics of our methodology are the use of: definition of functional units; analysis of the entire lifecycle; definition of yield levels and corresponding agricultural practices; analysis of both ecological and economic criteria; definition of reference systems; definition of procedures for normalisation and weighting. CLM has applied the method to assess the sustainability of ten potentially interesting energy crops in four European regions. The results are used to outline the perspectives for large scale production of biomass crops with regard to the medium and long term land availability in Europe. For the crops considered, net energy budget ranges from 85 GJ net avoided fossil energy per ha for rape seed for fuel to 248 GJ net avoided fossil energy per ha for silage maize for electricity from gasification. The methodology of the tool and its results were discussed at the concerted action "Environmental aspects of biomass production and routes for European energy supply" (AIR3-94-2455), organised by CLM in 1996. Major conclusions of the research: Multicriteria analysis of process lifecycles is at present the best available option to assess the ecological and economical sustainability of energy crops. However, it is recognised that further research and development activities in the field of LCA are necessary; Use of crops for generation of electricity is preferred to use of crops for transport fuels since the latter score low on both ecological and socio-economical criteria. Large scale use and production of energy crops requires (a) choices and goals from agricultural, environmental, and energy policies, and (b) policy instruments for financial incentives e.g. with payments or with tax rebates, preferably per kilogram avoided CO2 emission. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Many influential organisations foresee biomass playing a key role in a future, more sustainable, global energy supply matrix. Countries such as Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, India, the USA and the UK are actively encouraging the use of biomass for energy, and pushing forward the development of the necessary knowledge and technology for modern biomass energy systems. There is a growing consensus that renewable energy must progressively displace the use of fossil fuels, with fears of global climate change adding urgency to this need. Among the available types of renewable energy biomass is unique in its ability to provide solid, liquid and gaseous fuels which can be stored and transported. The potential resource for bioenergy is large, especially in forest-rich nations, in richer countries where there is a surplus of agricultural land, and in many low latitude countries where high biomass yields are possible. Therefore we expect biomass to be an important fuel of the future, but this cannot be taken for granted. The systems adopted must demonstrate clear environmental and social benefits relative to alternatives if the potential is to be realised. These benefits are not inherent to biomass energy, but depend on site- and fuel cycle-specific factors. Life-cycle analysis and evaluation of external costs are important means for assessing the social and environmental pros and cons of bioenergy systems. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of selected hemp products are compared to conventional products and subjected to a life cycle assessment. In effect there are no generally valid statements. The results strongly depend on the particular product life cycle. Different utilisation of hemp fibres (here: textiles, insulating card web, plastic stiffening) leads to partly different results. And also for a single use results differ when the life cycle is modified. Nevertheless for specific cases the ecological pros and cons of hemp fibres can be determined.Environmental aspects are becoming increasingly important when building products are evaluated comprehensively. Considering the principles of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, energy and mass flow inventories of the production and manufacturing of eight different insulation materials, including two wood based materials, are compiled and evaluated in an impact assessment phase. Some options for product and production specific improvements are located, but no clear ranking of the materials could be verified. In order to use the information for the practical decision-making processes, a reduction of complexity as well as an extension of the evaluation including qualitative aspects covering the whole life cycle of building constructions is necessary.In spite of more than 15 years of biomass district heating (BMDH) and more than 300 realised plants in Austria there are still some essential bottlenecks. By means of a life-cycle analysis the energy system District Heating with Biomass was described, evaluated and compared to other heating systems in order to specify bottlenecks and find out possible solutions. The results presented in this paper focus on the two main limiting factors fdr a future extension: the fuel supply and the economic situation. The additional long-term potential of biomass for thermal utilisation in Austria is as high as the amount used at present. A future large-scale and professional biomass fuel supply will have to focus on mechanised forest wood chip production from first thinnigs. The weak points culminate in the fact that high public investment grants are required to render such systems economically efficient and competitive on the market. Measures taken in order to lower costs and overcome this barrier are avoiding poor plant design and reducing investment costs (standardisation, serial manufacturing, learning effects). A gradual reduction of subsidies is essential in order to reach this aims.In many predictions for the future development of the energy supply, biomass is the number one renewable energy carrier. The reasons for this are rather simple, biomass is easy to handle with already well-known technologies, it is available in every region of the world and it is economical competitive in comparison to other renewable energy carriers. For the development and assessment of perspectives of renewable energy carriers it is essential to analyse the potential and the environmental impacts. In this presentation different scenarios of the supply prospects of biomass in the European Union will be given. For the first time data to the different sources and the resulting biofuels will be presented separately. In addition, the life cycle analysis of biofuels and the adjunctive transport systems will be presented. With the results of this report we are able to assess the chances and possibilities of a biofuel based transport-system in Europe.In the framework of the Altener Program and the OSTC-Woodsustain project [1], we have analysed the carbon emissions reductions that could be achieved by producing energy from short rotation coppice (SRC). We applied a basic life cycle assessment methodology (LCA) in order to estimate all carbon emissions related with wood cultivation, wood pre-treatment and final energy production. In addition, we have calculated the energy balance of all these operations. The aim of these estimations is to know the real impacts of substituting fossil fuels with SRC on the global. energy system efficiency and on the atmospheric carbon emissions. Three agricultural scenarios, based on the level of intensification, have been analysed. Different wood pre treatment are considered for three types of final energy production : local peak electricity, local cogeneration of heat and power (CHP) and centralised base power production. Depending on cultivation practices, pre-treatment choices and final energy conversion systems, we estimated carbon emissions reductions per hectare of SRC of 3.1 to 10.5 tC/ha/a by substituting fossil fuels with wood chips.A methodology has been developed for biomass-to-energy which links different resource assessment models (through GIS) with various yield and financial models, provided that appropriate data sets are available. It has been validated on Eve test sites covering a range of agro-climatic factors, biomass feed-stock types and energy applications. An Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for short rotation willow coppice has been completed; the rule-base for a 'meso-scale' Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) capability has been tested against one of the test sites. This approach can be applied to other key renewable energy sources (wind, bio-waste and micro-hydro); a pilot wind study has been completed for UK and Sweden. In conclusion, the analytical tool is useful for the determination of the real potential of renewable energy in the test regions selected. Given the availability of suitable data, this approach could be adopted by other Member States within the European Union.Biomass is one of the crucial energy carriers for future energy systems. Of particular importance are residues, such as organic household refuse ("biowaste"). This paper, as part of an effort to analyse fuels for fuel cell systems, investigates the environmental impacts of anaerobic digestion of biowaste as compared to composting plants. it is shown that processing 1 t biowaste in a digestion plant reduces total greenhouse gases by up to 186 kg CO2 equiv, and limits other environmental impacts such as land use and particle emissions. Fuel cells are particularly attractive in this application because of the high electrical efficiency and the low emission level.The building environmental assessment field is reviewed since it first came into prominence in the early 1990s. Key limitations of existing building environmental assessment methods are identified and the emerging importance of issues such as sustainability, life-cycle assessment, globalization and standardization are discussed. The author provides a constructive direction for emerging 'second generation' building environmental assessment methods and protocols. This includes a standardization of environmental assessment methodologies; a common, generalized framework which allows for adaptation of specific and changing explicit criteria and an increased emphasis on building performance over time.In the Federal State of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, a decision tool has been developed, suitable for quantification and evaluation of environmental impacts caused by remedial action techniques. For the first time, the quantified environmental impacts of remedial actions can be taken into account in decision making, in addition to their technical or financial aspects. The basic aspects of life cycle assessment and the specific adaptations of the method to remedial action techniques are described and the first results are illustrated with an example.In the Federal State of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, a decision tool has been developed, suitable for quantification and evaluation of environmental impacts caused by remedial action techniques. For the first time, the quantified environmental impacts of remedial actions can be taken into account in decision making, in addition to the technical or financial aspects. The basic aspects of life cycle assessment and the specific adaptations of the method to remedial action techniques are described.A decision support system for treatment of dredged sediments (DSTS) has been constructed, in which the environmental effects of various treatment options applied can be compared. The effects are evaluated by scores on environmental themes like global warming and acidification, using life cycle assessment methodology.New forms of communication and co-operation do not have the same environmental impact pattern as current forms of work. Environmental impacts are produced by work technologies (mainly communication technologies), buildings (construction, maintenance, operation and destruction) and transport (induced by work relations and housing). The thesis that new information technologies reduce transport and building energy consumption has not been verified in practice until now. The contribution discusses the interrelation between different impacts, gives quantitative data of environmental impact based on the combination of existing life cycle analysis and tries to estimate possible future developments. The question of the necessity of new buildings and the possible development of virtual buildings is discussed in relation with sustainable development.The research presented is an interim report based on activities at ESTCO Energy that are part of the International Energy Agency Implementing Agreement for Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Technologies and Programmes that began in 1993. The Annex II research task of this agreement is to study the energy and environmental impacts of electric vehicles. The life cycle analysis (LCA) of batteries in electric vehicles is reviewed and discussed in terms of the automobile industry's growing commitment to sustainable transportation. The environmental impact of some of the existing electric vehicle battery systems that are now in use, such as lead acid and Ni/Cd, is examined. Future technologies now being commercialized, such as advanced nickel-based batteries e.g. Ni/metal hydride and lithium batteries as well as fuel cells, are also discussed.This paper describes the stages involved in designing fluid power systems and how these relate to the research being undertaken at the Engineering Design Centre in Fluid Power Systems, University of Bath. An overview of the research is given and the status of the current project areas is presented relating to: circuit configuration design; computer simulation and performance evaluation; design for low vibration and noise; design methodology for fluid power systems; a multimedia media design aid; and life cycle assessment.Zero-emission mandates are opening commercial markets for battery-powered electric vehicles. Although these vehicles do not produce tailpipe emissions, recent assessments have raised concerns that emissions generated by recycling lead-acid batteries used in electric vehicles may create a major environmental impact. We used an abridged life-cycle assessment, which produces easily comprehended information about each life stage of a product, to analyze environmental impacts associated with recycling and waste management of four battery technologies likely to be used in electric vehicles over the next 5-10 years. We ranked recycling and waste management impacts and emphasized environmental consequences associated with design factors. Our results suggest that nickel-metal hydride batteries are the most environmentally benign; however, an infrastructure for recycling these batteries does not exist. Although its toxicity is relatively low, the sodium-sulfur battery received the poorest ranking, because it is not recyclable. Lead-acid and nickel-cadmium batteries are highly recyclable, but the question of significant toxicity remains.Although the level of recycling activities fluctuates over time, the underlying driving forces point to the overall increase of these activities. Recycling is both an economic as well as environmental activity. As an economic activity, recycling represents recovery of residual value from waste product. As an environmental activity, recycling is neither inherently positive nor negative. Life cycle assessment methodology can be applied to the recycling process just like to any other process to assess the overall impact. The environmental impact can be assessed in terms of local, regional and global impacts. Ecoprofile is a form of life cycle assessment but with the application of weighing factors which allow for comparison and rating of impacts.For plastics containing waste streams disposal/recycling alternatives to landfilling or incineration include: a) reuse of parts, b) reclamation/melt reprocessing of contaminated single plastics or commingled streams, c) reclamation followed by chemical modification of single plastics or compatibilization of commingled streams, d) thermolysis to fuels/chemicals, and e) thermolysis/solvolysis to monomers. Life cycle analysis principles can be applied to these alternatives to establish an approximate hierarchy of energy recovery potential. In this article, a methodology to rank the various recovery options in terms of potential energy savings by defining their respective sub-systems and estimating energy requirements is presented. By establishing the proper boundary conditions that place the alternatives considered on a comparable basis, it is shown that the overall energy requirements for most alternatives are well below those of landfilling (highest energy consumption), and for some alternatives closer to those of reuse (lowest energy consumption).An important cornerstone of our society is the individual mobility which, today, chiefly can only be offered by the automobile. However, in the industrial countries the car at the same time is exposed to harsh criticism as far as environmental pollution is discussed. Goal of this presentation is to show a scientific method by means of which environmental loads during manufacture, use and utilization/disposal of whole systems - in this special case vehicles - can be quantified and optimized. In order to do this the instrument of life cycle analysis of parts and procedures is used and whilst this is done the scientific method is developed beyond the level of literature. Due to these modifications the results are only useful if the boundary conditions are mentioned in detail. Considerations on the system such as the examination of an automobile require a method extended by essential criteria due to its complexity. Possibilities are presented which help to describe the product life cycle of an automobile sufficiently accurate by careful examination of the main parameters such as material, material intensity and fabrication procedures. As demonstrated on a small car, an automobile of upper standard and a train respective ways of action are shown and results of a system analysis are represented. As regards automobiles various weak points exist. On the one hand these are specific parameters during manufacture and on the other hand during the utilization phase the fuel consumption and its production. The track-bound traffic shows disadvantages if the generation of current is unfavourable. Therefore optimization potentials are to be seen in the field of fuel efficiency and its underlying factors as well as in the field of electricity supply.An environmental-friendly and effective cycle economy calls for an open information connection concerning the designers, the recyclers and the manufacturers of recycling techniques. Disposal and recycling information has to be available for the design, including the product assessment. The recycler and the manufacturer of recycling techniques need general conditions and product information from the design. The requirements for the information system are derived from these needs. The concept designates a standardised data model. A federalised data base system with appropriate transformations is suggested for the data organisation.An approach is being developed to examine technologies for their energy saving potential and their capabilities to meet various functional needs while causing less impact to the environment than conventional approaches for meeting these needs. Four technologies will be examined, including: electric vehicles, compact fluorescent lamps, electronic ballasts, and automatic light sensors. While some of these technologies are commercially applicable today in special markets, the majority of them suffer from the "high-first-cost" syndrome. The paradigm of "ecological efficiency" that will be developed will offer opportunities to evaluate these technologies on the basis of their life-cycle assessment, and therefore, quantify their life-time benefits. Present and projected use of these technologies will be studied in ten target countries: Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States. Because the future price of energy, and the level and cost of clean-up due to energy use is uncertain, any attempt to minimize the use of fossil fuels and associated technologies provides less risk to the users and developers of such technologies. This risk is embodied in terms of higher future financial commitment. The ten technologies are penetrating various markets in the ten target countries at differing levels. New technologies were not purchased for field study, but rather, research team members monitored the performance of the technologies in the target countries through ongoing projects in these countries. As a result of the country surveys, two characteristics were clearly identified during the collaborative research: 1) possible pitfalls and drawbacks of using such technologies in different countries, and 2) expected market penetration of the technologies.Identifying and understanding factors that affect interpretation of sediment toxicity is critical to the development and standardization of sediment test methods. In this study, we evaluated the influence of sediment particle size on survival, growth, emergence, and reproduction in a life cycle test with the midge Chironomus tentans, and on substrate selection behaviour of C. tentans larvae. In the life cycle assessment, larval development was followed for one generation on six substrates with mean particle sizes of 8, 146, 218, 306, 448, and 592 mu m. For behavioural tests, first and third instar larvae were provided with a choice between paired substrates, with and without equal quantities of food. Survival of larvae at 20 d was not affected by particle size; however, survival of larvae at test completion was significantly reduced (65.6%) in the 8 mu m substrate. Larval growth was not systematically related to particle size. Total emergence was significantly lower in the 8 and 592 mu m substrates (50 and 53.1%, respectively) relative to the other substrates, reflecting the lower survival in these treatments. In addition, time to first emergence was significantly longer, and the rate of emergence depressed, in the 8 mu m treatment. Reproductive output (mean eggs/female) was not significantly different among substrates, although fewer egg masses were produced in the 592 and 8 mu m substrates. In behavioural tests, third instar larvae exhibited a weak preference for the smaller of two grain sizes when food was equally available, but this was not systematically related to the absolute difference in mean grain size. In contrast, first instar larvae consistently selected the smaller of two grain sizes when food was equally available; for these larvae, substrate selection was significantly correlated with the absolute difference in mean grain size. When food supply differed between substrates, a significantly higher proportion of both first and third instar larvae selected the substrate with food, independent of particle size. Together, the life cycle and behavioural data from this study suggest that sediment particle size, by itself, should not significantly influence interpretation of the results of toxicity tests with C. tentans.Plastic parts for automobiles, especially plastic fuel tanks, must fulfil all demands placed upon them during their entire service life under conditions which vary a great deal within the car environment. Plastic fuel tanks have to be qualified by testing with respect to function, service life, environmental impact and compatibility. This paper describes modern strategies for environmental qualification, based on test tailoring concepts. Tailoring includes a life-cycle analysis (LCA), an analysis of environmental influences during all phases of the lifecycle and the derivation of test procedures and parameters. Problems of time compression and acceleration of tests are included, methods for measuring the environmental impact are explained. Plastic fuel tanks are regarded as complex technical systems with highest demands placed on both their reliability and durability. They must maintain their functionality during the entire service life of an automobile, withstanding various environmental impacts such as mechanical shocks and vibrations, temperature extremes, humidity storage, sunlight and chemical attacks from the environment and the fuels used. Some test procedures, such as shape stability test, fuel resistance test, creeping tests, temperature shock test, heat soaking and:all test are described in this paper. Special emphasis has been placed on environmental compatibility tests such as permeation tests in accordance with ECE-or SHED-Specifications.The paradigm of sustainable construction has substituted in recent years the paradigm of industrialized housing construction that was basically based on prefabrication techniques: the substitution of manpower by capital. Habitat 11 Conference -Istanbul, June 1996- has reinforced the vision and necessity of a sustainable development of the urban space supported by decentralization policies, small scale production, local-resources utilization, recycling of production processes and construction residues, reduction of embodied energy in buildings and infrastructural works, among other factors. This concept affects the organization of the productive process and the production units, the building materials industry, the specialization of the labour force, the equipment and tools used in the process, just as other exogenous factors like transportation. But, parallel to the generalized (globalize) objective of sustainable construction, the materials. and building technical processes are modified through the innovations, from other branches of the scientific-technologic knowledge like materials science, biotechnology, solid states physics, organic and inorganic chemistry, process engineering production engineering and management, and other interdisciplinary areas. The tendency is towards an approach they call technological syncretism in housing production (Cilento, 1996a). In this essay are analyzed with that syncretic vision the processes of construction innovations and its limitations, the importance of building products life-cycle analysis, the idea of technological, economical. social and ecological sustainability of construction, and the tendencies in new materials and processes that affects -any way- the professionals, promoters, contractors and the users.In any overall balance of hydrogen energy systems it is the way in which this energy is generated and the primary energy required to produce the equipment that are of decisive importance. Excerpts from the results of a study entitled "Process Chain Analysis for a Hydrogen Energy System", commissioned by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economics, Transportation and Technology are presented and commented on. (C) 1997 International Association for Hydrogen Energy.This study tests the Life Cycle Analysis methodology for motorway infrastructures. The investigation addresses the comparison of air pollution impacts of motorway alternatives. The atmospheric emissions are estimated over an infrastructure operation period of 50 years (motorway lifetime). Two scenarios for emission factors are considered. The first one takes constant emission factors for vehicles and the second one makes hypotheses on their variation during 50 years, including the participation of electrical vehicles. Moreover, assumptions on vehicle types and traffic composition are made. The global potential impacts (greenhouse effect, acidification, smog, toxicity) caused by these emissions have been assessed. Life cycle assessment seems a good step towards new methodologies for global analysis of road infrastructure impacts on the environment.Public interest is increasingly focused on leather goods and the potential risks to our health and the environment arising from them. Although these hazards are not substantiated by any established findings, the media seize on them and often paint a very alarmist picture in their stories. Fortunately, the real picture is not all black, there are also some positive aspects. The leather industry is making considerable progress in improving its environmental performance. This paper will look at risk and life-cycle assessment of leather dyes. The identification of human health and environmental hazards are important prerequisites for risk and life cycle assessment. Good quality information on exposure is needed to address the risk objectively, and possible options for risk reduction. Risk management should indeed start with a careful selection of colorants that exhibit the required performance with regard to substrate affinity, fastness and other boundary conditions. The environmental risk posed by a colorant can be defined in both its inherent ecotoxicity and the concentrations attained in the environmental compartments. There is an increasing body of circumstantial evidence indicating that the portion of colorants entering the environment is ultimately degradable either by biological or photochemical pathways.The recycling of car scrap is an important source of metals and materials for the secondary materials processing industry. In Europe more than 90 % of the aluminum used in automobiles is recycled. The driving force behind this excellent recycling rate is the inherent value of aluminum. Traditionally the processing of scrap cars starts with size reduction by a shredder. As a second step various sorting procedures generate different material fractions. The metallic fractions are recycled and the residual "fluff" a mixture of plastic, cloth, rubber and glass is currently landfilled. Aluminum is being used in a multitude of applications in the automotive industry casting alloys as well as wrought alloys are applied. Therefore the recovered aluminum fractions consist of a mixture of different alloys. Most of this mixed aluminum scrap is returned into the production of new cast automotive aluminum parts. Wrought alloys are produced only on a virgin metal basis due to their tight impurity tolerances. The production of wrought alloys on aluminum car scrap basis requires an upgrading technology which is able to sort alloys by grade or segregate alloys during dismantling. Future concepts of aluminum intensive vehicles have to fulfil as well as technical and economic also ecological aspects. Terms like green manufacturing, life cycle analysis, recyclability, closed loop recycling are used to evaluate new concepts. Consequently there exists a certain demand to investigate the parameters for closed loop recycling procedures of automotive aluminum parts. The paper examines technical possibilities for dismantled aluminum intensive automotive parts to generate wrought alloy scrap fractions by using conventionally processing techniques.Minerals underpin major sectors of the national economies of most industrialised countries. They are the raw materials of the manufacturing, construction and energy industries on which our standards of living depend. Mineral production in the UK was worth pound 21.8 billion in 1996. There is increasing concern about the environmental impact of mineral extraction. The concept of sustainable development requires that the most efficient and effective use is made of minerals, to maximise the economic value of the resource and to minimise environmental impact. Legislation and regulation based on the principles of sustainable development are increasingly concerned with mineral activities. Full life-cycle analysis of minerals from extraction, through processing to disposal and the re-use of land is, therefore, essential. Minerals are valued for their physical and/or chemical properties, either in a raw or processed form. These properties also determine the extent to which minerals, or their derived products, can be recycled or re-used. This presentation reviews some of the properties of energy, metallic and non-metallic minerals, with specific reference to minerals extraction in Britain, and considers the new technologies that are needed to improve the environmental performance of the industry into the twenty-first century.Spin-on oil filters began their use on the automobile in 1956. Until recently almost all spent filters were disposed of landfills. An EPA study in 1992 concluded that if oil tilters were adequately drained and did not contain terne plate; a lead based plating, the filters would not be considered hazardous waste and could be disposed of in landfills. The individual states however are free to impose more stringent regulations and many states have done so, banning oil filters from their landfills. In this process new businesses have evolved to deal with the disposal and recycling of used oil filters. Filter manufactures and OE vehicle manufactures have been looking at better ways to lessen this waste disposal impact. The "Green" trend has been alive in Europe for several years and many of their automobiles incorporate a disposable cartridge filter inserted into a permanently mounted housing. Many of these filters still have metal components which must be separated and recycled. Newer designs being considered incorporate no metal components or hazardous materials and therefore can be wholly incinerated. Efforts are also underway to extend the use of the filters. Environmental impact models value re-use even higher on the scale. Filter materials are available today that can withstand repeated cleanings and would last the life of a vehicle. However, a "Life Cycle Analysis" does not necessarily justify the shift from the conventional spin-on filter. Other influences will impact the decision to make this quantum change.Although the bioreactor landfill concept is gaining rapid acceptance as an operational strategy for a modern day municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill in the technical community, the economic feasibility in the California regulatory environment has not been fully explored. While landfill managers and engineers are well aware of the benefits (gains in airspace, enhanced gas production, etc.) and cost effectiveness of leachate recirculation that a bioreactor landfill presents, the costs of a full scale operation and regulatory requirements are not well known. Therefore, operators who may be inclined to implement an operational strategy based on the obvious technical merits may not be able to because of uncertainties in the full scale costs including regulatory uncertainties that may affect such costs. In California, implementation entails addressing a myriad of local and state regulations related to design and operations-some of which may substantially affect the economic benefits of the bioreactor operation. The life cycle analysis of a bioreactor landfill in California evaluates the design and operational modifications and the associated costs necessary to convert a dry lined landfill to a bioreactor landfill within the framework of the current regulatory environment. The bioreactor design and life cycle cost model estimate the development, operating, closure, and post closure costs of the bioreactor landfill and compare the costs with those of a traditional dry landfill as currently permitted under California regulations. Further, and more importantly, the life cycle cost model is used to run sensitivity analyses to demonstrate the effects of certain variables on various cost components. For example, the model can evaluate if the added cost to install a double containment system, if imposed by the regulatory community, would make the bioreactor landfill noneconomical. The life cycle cost model enables landfill operators to assess the economic feasibility of a bioreactor landfill in the current competitive California market. The per-ton cost differential that the cost model identifies enables operators to determine their operating rate. Also, the cost model facilitates a more complete assessment of the bioreactor landfill concept outside of the technical community and is a necessary step toward achieving wide acceptance by operators, regulators and the environmental community.By evaluating two environmental aspects of televisions - lifecycle energy use and the impact of the lead in the cathode ray tube, we explore practical approaches to lifecycle assessment. Specifically, comparing the environmental impacts of different models is easier and more informative than trying to assess the environmental significance of the average impact in absolute terms. By examining the differences in energy use of similar models of televisions, we find that energy use among similar televisions varies widely. In addition, we introduce the concept of marginal emissions, and explore the application of this concept to the impact of lead from television cathode ray tube screens.Industrial Ecology (IE) is an interdisciplinary field of study that uses system approaches to focus upon the relationship of industrialism to organisms and their environment. IE promotes changes from a wasteful economy, to a closed looped system of production and consumption. Through this mechanism, industrial, governmental and consumer waste is reused, recycled, and remanufactured to the limits of knowledge and technology. Nanotechnology is technology operating at the atomic level. An application of this technology is the manufacture of inert and bio-objects. Similar to nature, bio-engineered "software" instructions will be the blueprint for the assembly and operation of products at, or from the atomic level. The development of this technology presents the possibility of the application to dis-assemble existing and future waste (inert and bio) to the molecular level and then re-assemble it into new resources and products. This cyclical approach, if designed into the system, would allow the raw materials used in objects to never reach end-of-life.A life cycle analysis (LCA) case study evaluates the environmental load of CD-ROM drives. We performed a life cycle inventory using data for mechanical parts compiled from company records and data for electronic parts compiled from governmental and industrial records. We evaluated carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions and found that their suppression depends heavily on the design parts and circuits.Products and services cause different environmental problems during the different stages of their life cycle. The Life Cycle Assessment tool aims to identify possibilities to improve the environmental behavior of the systems under consideration. Therefore it is necessary to systematically collect and interpret material and energy flows for all relevant processes. The whole life cycle of a system has to be considered to prevent the neglecting or shift of possible important environmental aspects. In order to support designers, engineers and decision makers to make better informed decisions, it is necessary to perform LCA studies and economic assessments at a very early stage in product design. It is very well known, that the cost and environmental performance responsibility for a product lies mainly in the hand of the designers. Therefore management tools and procedures have to be found or developed to include LCA in this early stage. By means of an integration approach LCA can help to enlarge today's valuation and decision making decisively. The earlier a well informed and not somehow fast performed decision can take place, the more freedom the designers have. This is getting more and more important with the decrease of product innovation times. A basic element of the potential of this approach, so called Life Cycle Engineering (LCE), is shown exemplary for an electronic specific component, a PWB. Starting from forming a parametric calculation:model it will be shown how parameter variation will influence the results and how decisions are presented.This joint study between Environment Canada and Northern Telecom aimed at carrying out an LCA on a manufactured product, the Nortel M7310 business telephone, in order to identify improvement strategies. The telephone, invented a century ago, by Alexander Graham Bell in Canada, is emblematic of a sophisticated but common everyday product. As such, this study provides an excellent demonstration of the benefits of Design-for-Environment. This paper describes the details of the methodology.Since 1995, Nortel (Northern Telecom Ltd.) has made several environmental achievements, including: a lead-free interconnection technology; use of a nonhalogenated flame retardant for printed circuit broads; and a I eduction in the diversity of plastics in telephones. In 1997, Nortel decided to consolidate these achievements into one green design research project, using a telephone as a predictive model. The purpose of this project was: 1) to develop new environmental design process metrics; and 2) to cascade environmental technologies into the design process. A Life Cycle Analysis was completed to identify new technologies or processes for cost reduction.This paper describes the development and use of a methodology which combines two modeling approaches for the purpose of evaluating the impacts created by new materials in electronic products. This technique utilizes Abridged Lifecycle Assessment (ALCA) thinking combined with a computer-based Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) tool. Through this approach, an abridged lifecycle analysis can be integrated with company-specific attitudes and preferences on the importance of each life stage in the ALCA. The result is a useful and justifiable evaluation of new materials proposed for incorporation into a product or process. Rather than offering a definitive answer for deciding between materials, the tool offers decision makers additional assistance in identifying and evaluating conflicting objectives. Examples of applications are provided.Environmental awareness in industry is not longer focused on technological and economical aspects alone, and ecology is becoming a factor of growing importance at all stages of a product life cycle. To understand the ecological weak points in a life cycle of a product and to compare solutions to ensure the improvements In each stage of the life cycle a systematic method is needed to quantify all environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment performs the capability to quantify the environmental performance of a products. The output of LCAs, the ecoprofiles serve as ct starting point for product and process improvements through scenario and weak point analysis. This paper will show the application of LCA to a telecommunication product (pager). In section one the methodology of LCA and some product information are shown In section two details of the LCA project and findings ape described. In the conclusion an outlook on most important needs to improve LCAs in electronics applications.Within the framework of a research program of the Technical University of Aachen and the Forschungszentrum Julich it is intended to develop an instrument for a resource orientated analysis of material flows of metallic raw materials. The analysis of environmental impacts is an essential element regarding the ecological, economic and social dimensions of material flows. Considering the current practice of Life Cycle Assessment the ecological impact of material flows is normally figured as site independent. Assessing the inputs and outputs as they result from a detailed process chain analysis several environmental impacts may be summarised and interpreted. On the other hand there are instruments to express the risk evolving from one site in its specific environment. To achieve a balanced view of the potential impacts of the processes in their individual environment it is considered to integrate local and regional environmental properties into the inventory analysis. This integration is a refinement of the technological inventory. Based on international world wide environmental studies it can be shown, that the estimation of e.g. the potential and current land use as well as population density is suitable to characterise the environmental endowment of single locations and therefore allows the weighting of the considered environmental impacts.Transportations of people and products are fundamental in our society. When developing towards a sustainable future the use of fossile fuel must decrease due to the environmental effects from emmissions of CO2. In harmony with this the vehicles must be more efficient with lower weight and effective engines. By performing a life cycle assessment, LCA, the environmental effects are shown. In this study a comparative LCA is made for a coast guard boat. The structural materials compared are aluminium and GRP-sandwich. In this first part of the study the results from a screening LCA were raw material production, manufacturing of structure and usage are presentated.Recently, interest to environmental problem has risen, and Life cycle analysis(LCA) of recycling system in waste treatment has attracted much attention. Under the present conditions, the sludge is not necessarily treated appropriately from a point of view of environmental control. Therefore, the now of sludge in sludge treatment was modeled from a point of view of now control. Here the sewage treatment process that is a part of sewage treatment system was modeled by using the technique of system dynamics. The program for treating the now was made by using the personal computer and the system constitution that could cope with various conditions was examined. As a result, it has turned out that the system dynamics is a useful technique for obtaining the result corresponding to the change of environmental factors.Movement of business focus from a regional to a global basis is redefining how companies organize their activities. During the past 25 years, the chemical industry has been gradually moving from a focus on "end-of-pipe" treatment to source reduction, recycling, and reuse. Pollution Prevention, once viewed primarily as an environmental issue, is now becoming a critical business opportunity. This change is not coming easily because it requires institutional transformation in organizations where such change is difficult. The emphasis on Pollution Prevention is now broadening to include tools such as: life-cycle analysis, full-cost accounting, sustainable development, and eco-efficiency. As we look twenty years into the future, process design and optimization will incorporate more elements of the environment into the objective function that defines success. Modeling and simulation will play a key role in making these changes occur more rapidly. This paper reviews the drivers, change, and tools that can be used to accelerate this change.One of the most important steps towards the evaluation of sustainability is to define appropriate criteria. Two promising methods for such an evaluation are risk analysis and life-cycle assessment. Both these approaches need appropriate strategies for the identification of such criteria. This paper focuses on quantitative evaluations and gives examples of mathematical evaluation functions as used in life-cycle and risk assessments of a heavy-metal polluted soil. The mathematical evaluation models are presented together with their corresponding word model (i.e, their intended meaning expressed in words). Hence with limited effort mathematical evaluation functions are available which are simple, intuitive, and easy to understand and which at the same time may be used to consistently aggregate soil variables.For the Spring semester of 1998 of the Mechanical Engineering 466K Design Project class, the design team of Jeff Janert, Kevin Lo, and Craig White worked on a project sponsored by Ted Aanstoos, PE, a research engineer at The University of Texas Center for Electromechanics. The project was the reduction of energy in a notebook computer using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Design For the Environment (DFE) methodologies. The project has two main components for its completion: the development of a design methodology that emphasizes environmental concerns and the generation of redesign options for a notebook computer emphasizing environmental issues. Because information on the energy used by notebook computers was not available, detailed data on a desktop computer was used because the components in both computers are of the same material and function even if they are of a different size. The desktop data is only for the manufacturing of the computer and ignores the other stages of the product lifecycle. The computer manufacturing processes were divided into the following four divisions, semiconductor devices (SD), semiconductor packaging (SP), printed wiring boards/computer assemblies (PWB/CA), and display (DIS) based on which area of the computer the process affected. The manufacturing of the PWB/CA turned out to use 1790 kWh of energy, the most any division. The PWB/CA had the highest values for waste and water use of 46lbs and 1400 gal. When these four divisions were rated for the best opportunity for energy reduction, PWB/CA was selected based on a comparison of five criteria: material use, energy use, waste, water usage, and universability, which is likelihood that any significant changes made within any of the component divisions can be applied on all computers universally. The design team developed a methodology that includes an emphasis on environmental issues by placing it as one of three major groups representing customer needs. The other two customer needs groups are non-environmental regulations and physical requirements. These three customer needs groups feed into the design of a new product equally and concurrently, making sure that the proper importance is place on what the customers feel are the important customer needs. The newly designed product is then checked to make sure it meets the product standards set by the customer needs. If it does, then the product is ready for production, if not, it is redesigned until it meets the needs. The methodology is used with the Customer Focused Redesign Flow Chart (CFRFC), which provides quantifiable data as a benchmark to base design changes on. Numerous designs were generated to reduce the energy of the team's notebook computer.Undertaking transportation projects involve high initial investments and considerable commitments of operation and maintenance funds to be disbursed over the useful life of considered projects. This paper presents the parameters that need to be considered in modeling the life-cycle of such projects. Life-cycle models and analyses are tools necessary for the feasibility assessment of projects that are desired or deemed warranted by highway agencies. As a feasibility assessment study is normally threefold: technical, economic, and environmental, the paper mainly emphasizes the economic aspects which inherently reflects the consequences of technical decisions and environmental constraints. In addition, the implications of type of finance and form of organizations entrusted with the construction, operation, and maintenance of implemented projects are addressed. A general, life-cycle based approach is presented, which illustrates the structure of the analysis process.This paper presents the preliminary results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study comparing different wastewater treatment works, operated by Thames Water Utilities Ltd. in the UK. Fifteen works have been studied, representing a range of size and type of treatment works. Five management regimes for centralising sludge treatment and disposal were analyzed in the context of LCA to provide guidance on choosing the best practicable environmental option (BPEO). Consideration of Global warming potential indicates that the four proposed management regimes with centralisation of sludge for treatment and disposal, as adopted by Thames Water Utilities Ltd., is an environmental improvement upon the current practice. One of these options, that of complete centralisation and composting of sludge prior to disposal, exerts the least environmental impact with respect to Global warming potential. This suggests that the adoption of composting at Crawley is environmentally preferable to increasing the digestion facility at this works. (C) 1998 IAWQ. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In May 1996 an International Task Group was established to gather information from different countries about the current criteria used for the design and construction of membrane roofs, that minimise harm to the environment. This paper sets out the views of some specifiers on the issue of sustainability in construction, and goes on to give current definitions. The importance of the whole life cycle is discussed and a cradle-to-grave model included. It is recognised that the issues are complex and involve inter-relationships which are not well understood and are in need of further research. For example, how are the various sets of environmental data weighted for a given roofing system on a specific project? Previous studies into the performance of membrane roofs have reached practical conclusions on individual issues, although the designer or contractor is now looking for balanced guidance on wider environmental issues. The Task Group has suggested that it would be helpful to bring together the key points of best practice in a single page document, and this paper concludes with a set of common principles or 'tenets of sustainable roofing' which are offered for public comment.Recycling plays a major role in the total life-cycle of roof systems. Calculations show that roof systems that are recyclable to a high extent, score very positive compared to roof systems that are not very suitable for recycling. In this paper different types of waste treatment are distinguished, because of the great differences that exist. For the simulations a computer-model named SimaPro was used, using the world-wide accepted method developed by CML (Centre for the Environment, Leiden, the Netherlands). With this model different life-cycle scenarios were studied and evaluated. From the undertaken studies it becomes clear that PVC and APP roof coverings do not differ largely in environmental impact, also due to the fact that the relatively heavy steel substructure is of more importance. The differences between APP and PVC are negligible. However, the differences between high and low recycling ratio scenarios are substantial. Bottle-neck in this field of study is estimating average recycling and re-use percentages of the total flow of material waste in the building sector and collecting reliable process data. Another problem within LCA studies is estimating the reliability of the input data and modelling uncertainties. Research on the human dimensions of global change typically examines the vulnerability of sociotechnical systems to anticipated environmental stresses, most often in non-urban settings. This paper takes a somewhat different track; first it argues that urban areas should receive high priority in global change research and second, it highlights an expanded view of "urban metabolism" as a neglected set of variables that mediate between environmental hazards and human responses. Other researchers have defined "urban metabolism" as the production and consumption of natural resources and physical environments by cities (Stren, White, and Whitney, 1992 [16, p. 9]). In the brief overview that is presented here the term has broader connotations; it includes various means - social as well as biophysical - by which cities acquire or lose the capacity for sustainability in the face of diverse and competing problems. Chief among these is the process by which opportunities for reducing natural disasters are increased or decreased as a result of interactions among different urban issues.Nowadays, urban and infrastructure planning do usually not intensively communicate. But for solving future challenges only joint actions will be the adequate response. Thus, one has to think of means to increase interaction among the different planning participants. Energy tasks aim at the analysis of the actual urban system, development and implementation of an integrated energy, telecommunications and water infrastructure as well as the optimized use of renewable energies. Nevertheless, on national or EU level there has to be a framework, which basically defines ecological assessment and taxation of the different forms of energy in order to be able to use market mechanisms on urban level. For achieving sustainable systems on the field of energy, there are three major tasks: Improving overall efficiency, closing cycles and feeding in renewable sources. A urban system is a very complex organism, which consists of many civilisatoric units, such as households, trades, offices, industries etc. These units could be seen as metabolic systems, which are fed by products and services while spilling out solid waste, waste energy and waste water. This is a typical end-of-pipe situation, with all its disadvantages according to environment as well as national economy. In fact, a even worse picture comes up, if one looks at these civilisatoric units under exergetic aspects. To substantially convert the urban system to a sustainable organism the different civilisatoric units and their interactions have to be analysed from bottom up. Later on, this will lead to innovative solutions which will become even more important in the future. The concept is, that with a metabolic view, which is originally neither an urban planning nor a technical approach, communication can be improved and doors be opened for innovative, unconventional solutions to reach previously defined environmental goals. In fact, the implementation of the concept of urban metabolism on a GIS basis, i.e. a graphical display of these complex processes and interconnections, give the opportunity, that participating planners of the different disciplines get information, they are all able to understand on a similar level. This will be a huge progress compared to the current situation. The administrative goal is the close integration of urban and infrastructure planning with benefits for both sides. Introducing e.g, vacuum technology for gathering faeces instead of the conventional waste water infrastructure has consequences up to the architecture of buildings; on the other hand, me energetic standard of new buildings may have huge influence on existing or planned district heating networks. The largest potentials for improving urban systems under energy aspects is to find within establishing and interconnecting energy flows and conversion subsystems.

 This paper discusses some of the elements that may characterise an efficient strategy to adapt to a changing climate. Such a strategy will have to reflect the long time horizon of, and the prevailing uncertainties about, climate change. An intuitively appealing approach therefore seems to be to enhance the flexibility and resilience of systems to react to and cope with climate shocks and extremes, as well as to improve information. In addition, in the case of quasi-irreversible investments with a long lifetime (e.g. infrastructure investments, development of coastal zones) precautionary adjustments may be called for to increase the robustness of structures, or to increase the rate of depreciation to allow for earlier replacement. Many of these measures may already have to be considered now, and could be worthwhile in their own right, independent of climate change considerations. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Programmed selection and breeding of Actinidia in China started at end of the 70s, and can be divided into two periods. The first is from 1978 to 1990. The major objective during this time was to select elite strains and/or cultivars with big fruits (>80 g) in A. chinensis and what is now known as A. deliciosa. More than 11 cultivars and 40 strains of A. deliciosa, and more than 40 cultivars and 80 strains of A. chinensis have been named. The second period is fi om 1990 to the present. The main objective was to select and breed new cultivars and/or strains with longer fruit storage-life, better soil and climate adaptation and high productivity as well as particular horticultural characters. During this period, more than 10 cultivars of A. deliciosa, 8 of A. chinensis, 4 of A. arguta, 3 of A. eriantha, and 5 from interspecific hybridization have been obtained. In addition to pistillate cultivars, more than 10 staminate cultivars have been released. In this paper, the most important cultivars in each species and from their interspecific hybrids are briefly described, and others are tabulated. The problems of and prospects for Actinidia improvement are discussed.The wet-base moisture content (MC) in outer sapwood of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) pulpwood in different wood management programmes from the forest to the mill was studied from the point of view of three objectives: (1) the importance of rapid raw material delivery, (2) the effect of bark condition as a result of harvesting during the late dormant season and the growing season, and (3) the possibilities for retaining the pulpwood MC using climate-adapted wet storage. The reduction in MC after felling was significant in the pulpwood stored without wet storage, When not wet-stored, pulpwood with a high degree of bark damage dried out more rapidly than wood with a low degree of bark loss. In pulpwood, wet-stored in accordance with climate-adaptation, the MC remained or increased during storage. The shorter the drying time before wet storage, i.e., faster delivery to the mill, the more significant the increase in MC. The increase in MC during wet storage was more significant in pulpwood with a low degree of bark damage. Climate-adapted wet storage reduced the variation of the MC. When conducted with fresh pulpwood, i.e., drying time shorter than 4 weeks (low bark loss) or 2 weeks (high bark loss), a more homogeneous MC distribution was gained. This paper focuses on the desirability, from an economic perspective, of setting fixed and relatively short-term targets and timetables, such as those contained in the Kyoto Protocol, as a means of achieving longer-term climate change mitigation goals. The paper argues that whatever long-term policy goals are adopted, greater flexibility lowers implementation costs. Lower implementation costs, in turn, increases the likelihood that the policies will actually be followed and the goals achieved. Importantly, the Kyoto Protocol incorporates key elements of both "what" and "where" flexibility. That is, the "Kyoto basket" includes all six of the major greenhouse gases plus sinks, and the Protocol incorporates several mechanisms that allow emission reductions to take place at the least-cost geographic location, regardless of nation-state boundaries. The Protocol also provides substantial "how" flexibility in the sense that countries can use a variety of means to achieve domestic policy goals. However, the Protocol does not allow emission reductions to take place at a point in time when they can be achieved at lowest cost as long as they are consistent with the long-term environmental goals ("when" flexibility). Additionally, it does not allow the use of efficient price-based policy instruments to define targets and, thereby, balance environmental goals and compliance costs (which could be thought of as a broader version of "when" flexibility). instead, the Protocol relies exclusively on strict, short term quantity targets. The relative inflexibility of the Protocol with respect to the timing of reductions and definitions of the targets may derive, in part, from a misplaced analogy between the global warming issue and the highly successful effort to phase out CFCs under the Montreal Protocol. The lack of when flexibility may be a key barrier to achieving the broader goals of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly if where flexibility is constrained in the implementation process.The problematique of global climate change is usually investigated in a ceteris paribus framework, i.e., impacts and driving forces are embedded in the world as it presents itself nowadays. In parallel, however, quite a number of other phenomena of global environmental change take place: soil degradation, shortage of freshwater resources, or the massive loss of biodiversity are just a few examples. Furthermore drastic socio-economic developments take place: the globalization of economy and society, the still increasing international indebtedness, the hefty progress in information technologies and many others more. All these complexly interconnected symptoms of Global Change call for an integrated research strategy which can serve as the information and evaluation base for rough but robust global environmental management strategies. In this paper we want to present a research approach which from our point of view is capable to include most of the relevant trends and symptoms of Global Change. The approach is based on the assumption that Global Change can be decomposed into archetypical patterns of civilization-nature interactions, called syndromes of Global Change (Schellnhuber et al., 1997). Besides a general discussion of the syndrome concept we sketch some qualitative ideas how this approach can be applied to evaluate climate change mitigation strategies with respect to synergies and side-effects.Published costs of climate change mitigation options have been derived using a wide range of technical and economic assumptions. This can make it difficult to compare results from different sources. To overcome this problem, the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme uses a common basis for its studies to assess a variety of options. An important issue in any assessment of options is the timing of the costs and the carbon sequestration. It is generally accepted that costs and benefits that occur in future are worth less to society then present day costs and benefits. The rate at which future costs and benefits are discounted to the present is the subject of debate amongst economists and very different rates are used in different circumstances. Nevertheless, it is important that the same discount rate and methodology are used when comparing options. In this paper, the importance of timing and the discounting methodology is illustrated by reference to two alternative mitigation options: capturing CO2 in a power station with underground sequestration, and planting and managing forests to sequester carbon. Some results are reported from a recent study of a large-scale tropical forestry scheme, carried out for the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme. When put on the same economic basis, the costs of the forestry sequestration scheme are found to be broadly comparable with the costs of power station CO2 capture and sequestration. Other environmental benefits, such as helping to maintain biodiversity, will count in favour of forestry sequestration but are typically not included in these calculations. With privatization, managed competition, deregulation of the power industry, and increasing environmental legislation, water utilities must aspire to more than high levels of service and reliability. They must seek competitive levels of service and reliability. To reach this goal, water providers have to balance financial considerations and consumer requirements. They must make optimal use of production processes and support systems, ultimately achieving ecoefficiency, i.e., economically efficient use of resources with other businesses. Information technology (IT) plays a key role in achieving this climate of widespread efficiency by (1) enabling the integration of computer systems, information, human resources, and natural resources; (2) defining common performance measures; and (3) optimizing performance. Three existing paradigms-the utility communications architecture, utility business architecture; and industrial ecology-can serve as structured applications for efficient IT planning and deployment at the plant, utility, and regional levels.A brief accounting is presented of the evolution of natural ecosystems and human cultures including industrialization and its ecologically-significant interactions with natural abiotic and biotic processes of the earth. These accounts show, among other things, that excess resource harvest rates and material releases into the natural environment have been ecological risks of growing scope and scale throughout the history of political economies. The growing ecological risks of industrialization are attributed to disparities between the rates and directions of evolution in the ecological features of process and structure of corporate and political economies relative to the rates and directions of evolution in their cultural institutions of control. Many social and political organizations are now calling for adaptations toward sustainable industrialization by promoting evolution in the cultural institutions of control through research, education, ethics, politics and government. What is required are on-line institutional processes for effectively translating emerging ecological risk assessments into economic incentives for feasible adaptations throughout the systems. Institutionalization of such on-line adaptive processes requires broad moral-ethical enlightenment and social-political commitment to make the emerging scientific, technological and economic dimensions productive (Faber et al., 1996). This paper presents on-line strategies of ecological risk assessment and control which are believed to be superior to alternatives that require a prior consensus on economic valuations of natural resource stocks, natural processes and environmental damages; and incentives have advantages over prescriptive regulations. When viewed in their greater economic context, the proposed strategies are formulated as coordinated institutions of on-line ecological and fiscal control processes on what is here defined as the ecological economies of corporate and political economies. The objective of the proposed control strategies is to pursue trajectories of joint ecological and cultural evolution toward systems that are ecologically and culturally both satisfying and sustainable. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing and Product Recovery (ECMPRO) has become an obligation to the environment and to the society itself, enforced primarily by governmental regulations and customer perspective on environmental issues. This is mainly driven by the escalating deterioration of the environment, e.g. diminishing raw material resources, overflowing waste sites and increasing levels of pollution. ECMPRO involves integrating environmental thinking into new product development including design, material selection, manufacturing processes and delivery of the product to the consumers, plus the end-of-life management of the product after its useful life. ECMPRO related issues have found a large following in industry and academia who aim to find solutions to the problems that arise in this newly emerged research area. Problems are widespread including the ones related to life cycle of products, disassembly, material recovery, remanufacturing and pollution prevention. In this paper, we present the development of research in ECMPRO and provide a state-of-the-art survey of published work. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology is an evocative metaphor that has evolved into a new paradigm for environmental management. It locates human activity in a larger, environmental context and uses the natural would as a model for organizing industrial activities. To date the concepts of place and jurisdiction have been missing from industrial ecology, even though many important environmental decisions are made within local political boundaries. Planners are uniquely equipped to advance this field because they (a) study locally-open systems such as economies, and(b)link big-picture ideas to incremental decisions, in return, industrial ecology offers planners an integrative framework for describing, explaining, and solving environmental problems.The use of the metabolism concept, expanded to include aspects of livability, is applied to cities to demonstrate the practical meaning of sustainability. Its application in industrial ecology, urban ecology, urban demonstration projects, business plans and city comparisons are used to illustrate its potential. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Nutrients in manure constitute an ecological and economic liability if managed as a waste for disposal. However nutrients are the source of economic benefit when managed as a resource. By combining economic and ecological analyses, the ecological benefits of nutrients in manure are conserved, their economic value is captured, and both ecological and economic goals can be met. We derived a simple model to define the conditions required for manure to be recycled effectively and transported economically The basic premise of the model is that ecological and economic considerations must be in balance at steady state for manure nutrient management to be sustainable. The model combines the cost of processing and transportation, the value of the crop yield response to the manure product and the steady state capacity of the land to recycle macronutrients. The model predicts that processing, to increase macronutrient content or to decrease unit transportation cost, and use of manure products on high value crops could permit break-even distribution distances for same manure products of more than 300 km. We then used estimates of manure and crop production in Alberta to calculate municipal N and P balances to determine the distance of distribution required to use manure effectively (municipality as used here is analogous to county in many parts of the world). In 1991, municipalities with manure nutrients in excess of that harvested as grain were adjacent to municipalities with nutrient deficits. We conclude that (1) equating ecological and economic aspects of manure distribution is feasible and may enhance the profitability of agriculture, and (2) improved effectiveness in the use of manure resources may be achieved by nutrient conservation and harvesting, processing to increase nutrient retention and reduce transport costs, and application technologies to increase crop response to nutrients in manure products.Businesses can Improve operations by capitalizing on the collective knowledge of their human resources.The molecular-mass distribution of polymer fragments in lanthanum oxide hydroxide (LOH) gels was determined. Quasi-steady states of the gels with solutions of their salts were studied. Derivative thermoanalytical curves for gel samples were recorded. A periodicity in morphologic (shape-forming) and sorptive properties of La(2)O(3) center dot kH(2)O gels was observed as a function of the amount of the initial salt used in the synthesis and the quasi-steady-state pH value. It was established that gels in contact with solutions of their salts acquire steady states due to an interplay of sorption and peptization processes. A mechanism was proposed for these phenomena.Prediction of end-of-life strategies early in design leads to improved eco-efficient product and processes. This paper describes the development of an internet-based tool, End-of-Life Design Advisor (ELDA), that guides product developers to specify appropriate end-of-life strategies. The study began with surveys of end-of-life strategies currently used in the electronics industry that identified key product characteristics that influence end-of-life strategies. The survey led to a scheme for identifying suitable product end-of-life strategies early in the design cycle of a broad range of products. The end-of-life strategy categorization in ELDA is a result of statistical analysis applied to 12 characteristics across 20 products. The tool aids product designers, recycling technology developers, and policy makers.Emphasizing global environmental issues in classes presents students with powerful, comparative perspectives on controversial issues. Yet, students cannot make critical judgments without first understanding the structure of critical reasoning. The logic of argument forms used to make critical judgments is a necessary tool that may be conveyed through an interactive classroom-activity, drawing on discipline-specific examples that reinforce the content of a course. Two argument forms-convergent reasoning and inference to the bed explanation-are described, with instructions for an interactive activity. Examples are drawn from issues of industrial ecology and the human dimensions-of global change.In studying complex systems such as an organization, a system of industries, or a natural ecosystem, models are developed to enhance the amount and quality of information that a decision-maker can obtain. Due to the complexity of such systems, the simulation models include approximations of the real world. In this paper. system dynamics is used to model the dow and accumulation of matter, information, and energy in a system of industries in Kalundborg, Denmark. This model is utilized in the analysis and improvement of the Kalundborg system with a response surface-based concept exploration process in which the degree of approximation present in the simulation model is acknowledged and handled. Instead of directly using response surfaces to make decisions, the information embodied in the response surfaces is used to locate promising regions of the design space, which are then searched with the simulation model. This response surface based concept exploration process is unique in that: the final recommendations are based on the simulation model, not on an approximation of the simulation model, and by relying on the simulation model, instead of solely relying on response surfaces, design knowledge is increased without sacrificing design freedom. In this paper, the overall approach, the method, and its validation, as opposed to results particular to the case study, are of primary importance.Industrial ecology is the objective, multidisciplinary study of industrial and economic systems and their linkages with fundamental natural systems, the "science and engineering of sustainability." It provides the science and technology base for a sustainable economy, when combined with appropriate evolution of ethical and institutional systems. Design for Environment (DFE) is one means by which the principles of industrial ecology can be implemented today, within the overall perspective of a global economy that is increasingly service-oriented. Examples of such technologies might include Internet central sewer, biotechnology, and the modern automobile.As the next millennium approaches, effective product stewardship strategies require that computer manufacturers put in motion industrial ecology principles of optimizing the materials life cycle from raw material to a product's final disposal. One method is aggressively embracing enterprise integration the linking of organizations, companies and communities with the goal of making environmental considerations a parr of every activity. This paper describes how IBM and the industry are responding-and must respond even further-to shifting environmental awareness around the world, the explosive growth of electronic products, technical challenges to solving global environmental problems, and regulatory challenges posed by governments around the world.Industrial ecology, to be successfully understood and implemented must be seen bath as a systems oriented concept and an ongoing process. Irs theoretical framework rests on a comprehensive search for basic principles from economy, thermodynamics and ecology, all seen within the context of sound practice. Whereas the fact remains that nothing is as practical as good theory, that theory must itself have its roots in reality, and should preferably be based on an important and worthwhile practice. Hence, industrial ecology informed strategies should be developed in close collaboration among industrial leaders and external decision-makers, specialists and planners. The present article discusses this type of framework for decision-making in relation to industrial ecology in general, and seen through the case of the extended producer responsibility principle.This paper presents the critical importance of integrating end-of-life strategies in the early states of design, i.e., product definition. We begin with an overview of research and practice on Design for Environment(DFE) in the United States. DFE has been receiving increasing attention in U.S. academia and industry, but the level of implementation remains low compared To Europe or Japan. The survey starts with a broad perspective on Industrial Ecology and proceeds to recyclability. The paper concludes with our recent research on incorporating end-of-life strategies into the product definition..Photovoltaics (PV) technology has definite environmental advantages over competing electricity generation technologies, and so far these advantages have driven market penetration. The PV industry follows a pro-active approach to present its safe and environmentally friendly nature. Industrial ecology considerations raise the issue of what to do with the PV modules at the end of their useful tife. One option is recycling. This paper discusses the value of proactive recycling and compares several alternatives.Traditional applications of exergy analysis have focused upon the optimization of energy use in thermal and chemical processes. This paper introduces a form of exergy analysis in which the methodology is extended to consider the characteristics of material flows in a process as well. This new form of analysis, termed extended exergy analysis (EEA), is shown to be particularly useful in valuating the environmental performance of industrial processes. EEA differs from traditional theory in its requirement that all ground states be defined such that they are environmentally acceptable. Environmental acceptability can be determined using a number of health, occupational and ecological criteria. By integrating biological considerations into the existing physical definition, EEA provides manufacturers and regulators alike with relevant information regarding the costs of achieving environmentally benign production. These costs are valued consistently for both raw material and energy inputs and product and residual outputs, affording degrees of transparency and objectivity not present in other valuation methodologies. Application of the technique to a case study involving the machining of aluminium is developed.The role of copper in the economy will not diminish in the 21(st) century, Following the tenets of industrial ecology, production and use of copper must take into account both human needs and also how to minimize "collateral" effects on the environment. Dispersive uses will be phased out and post-use recovery of copper will increase. This will result into an advantage for smelting processes that can accommodate mixed metal scrap and waste streams. The bath smelting processes of Noranda and Mitsubishi will continue to make progress but the dominance of the Outokumpu flash smelting will not be challenged until the Noranda reactor overcomes the obstacles to the direct production of copper, thus eliminating the need for a converter.Industrial ecology (IE) is a biological concept applied to industrial structures. The basic concepts of IE include regional, intra-firm and product-based waste recycling systems as well as the principle of upward and downward cascading. In best current examples of regional systems, several parties are in an industrial waste re-use symbiosis. Paper industry has learned to arrange the recovery and re-use of its products on distant markets, even up to a level where indications df exceeding optimal recovery and re-use rates already exist through deteriorated fibre and product quality. Such occurrences will take place in certain legislative-economic situations. Paper industry has many cascade levels, each with their internal recovery and recycling, as well as many intra-firm, regional, and life cycle ecology structures. As an example of prospects for individual cascading routes, sludges may continue to be incinerated, but the route to landfills will be closed. The main obstacles of legislative drive toward better IE systems are in many cases existing laws and political considerations rather than economic or technical aspects. The study and practice of engineering human technology systems and related elements of natural systems should develop in such a way that they provide quality of life by actively managing the dynamics of relevant systems to reduce the risk and scale of undesirable behavior and outcomes. For the paper industry, earth systems engineering offers several development routes. One of them is the further recognition of and research on the fact that the products of the industry are returned back to the carbon cycle of the natural environment. Opportunities for modifying current earth systems may also be available for the industry, e.g. genetically modified plants for raw materials or organisms for making good quality pulp out of current raw materials. It is to be recognized that earth systems engineering may become a very controversial area, and that very diverse political pressures may determine its future usefulness to the paper industry. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of the IAWQ. All rights reserved. Environmental aspects are playing an increasingly important role in the development of new products. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for the ecological assessment of products. Within this method the whole life cycle "from the cradle to the grave" will be analyzed and evaluated. The goal of the presented LCA was the comparison of a natural fibre-reinforced poly(propylene) under-floor panel (NMT) of a passenger car with a glass-fibre reinforced panel (GMT). The results of the study show that GMT under-floor panels have a higher contribution to all environmental effects considered in this study. That can be put down to the fact that the production of the flax-fleeces is environmentally more friendly than the production of glass-fibre mars.With the increasing importance of environmental interactions, several innovations of the environmental performance are introduced in automotive industry. One aspect of innovation is an environmental material selection including renewable raw materials. Products of renewable raw materials are generally regarded as environmentally friendly, including products from hemp, jute and flax. The ecological preferences of products of natural fibres can be investigated and described by means of ecological balances. However, no general principles for the ecological advantages or disadvantages of fibre plants can be deducted from their life cycle assessment, since the ecological compatibility of the different products strongly depends on the circumstances of the journey of life of the product. The objective of this study is a decision support of automotive engineers by giving an ecological balance of the benefits of substituting ABS by hemp fibres for covering applications. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of hemp fibre reinforced components is introduced. This study contains the agricultural cultivation of fibre plants, the method of harvesting and the processing of the harvested crops. Finally, the analysis includes the further processing of the fibre, starting from the manufacturing of the fibre composite matrix, on which the production of form press components for the automotive industry bases. The differences of energy demand and emissions amount during the use phase of a passenger car as well as different recycling scenarios are assessed.One of the main potential uses of life cycle assessment (LCA) in environmental management is for identifying options for environmental improvements of a system in which complete supply chains are considered. The main problem, however, lies in finding the optimum improvement strategies and choosing the best alternative in a decision environment with multiple, and often conflicting, objectives. To aid the decision-making process, this paper proposes the use of multiobjective optimisation (MO), whereby the system is simultaneously optimised on a number of environmental objective functions, defined and quantified through the LCA approach. This results in a Pareto or noninferior surface, with a range of environmental optima, from which the best compromise solution for improving the environmental performance of the system can be chosen. However, system improvements cannot be based solely on environmental considerations and other factors, including socio-economic, must be considered in parallel. This paper also shows that MO coupled with LCA provides a powerful tool for balancing environmental and economic performance, thus enabling the choice of best practicable environmental option (BPEO) and best available technique not entailing excessive cost (BATNEEC). The value of this approach in environmental system analysis lies in providing a set of alternative optimal options for system improvements rather than a single prescriptive solution, which may be optimal but not necessarily appropriate for a particular situation. A decision-aid tool-optimum LCA performance (OLCAP)-has been developed for these purposes. OLCAP is tested and demonstrated by application to a case study of an existing mineral-processing system producing boron products. It is shown that LCA can successfully be combined with optimisation techniques to satisfy both economic and environmental criteria for more sustainable performance of the product system over the whole life cycle. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an analytic tool for quantifying the environmental impacts of all processes used in converting raw materials into a final product. The LCA consists of three parts. Life cycle inventory quantifies all material and energy use, and environmental emissions for the entire product life cycle, while impact assessment evaluates actual and potential environmental and human health consequences of the activities identified in the inventory phase. Most importantly, life cycle improvement aims at reducing the risk of these consequences occurring to make the product more benign. When the LCA is performed in conjunction with a technoeconomic analysis, the total economic and environmental benefits and shortcomings of a product or process can be quantified. A methodology has been developed incorporating process performance, economics, and life cycle inventory data to synthesize process systems, which meet life cycle impact-improvement targets at least cost. The method relies on a systematic description of the product life cycle and utilizes successive Linear Programming to formulate and optimize the non-linear, constrained problem which results. The practicality and power of this approach have been demonstrated by examining options for the reduction of emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 from petroleum-based fuels.The human toxicity potential, a weighting scheme used to evaluate toxic emissions for life cycle assessment and toxics release inventories, is based on potential dose calculations and toxicity factors. This paper evaluates the variance in potential dose calculations that can be attributed to the uncertainty in chemical-specific input parameters as well as the variability in exposure factors and landscape parameters. A knowledge of the uncertainty allows us to assess the robustness of a decision based on the toxicity potential; a knowledge of the sources of uncertainty allows us to focus our resources if we want to reduce the uncertainty. The potential dose of 236 chemicals was assessed. The chemicals were grouped by dominant exposure route, and a Monte Carlo analysis was conducted for one representative chemical in each group. The variance is typically one to two orders of magnitude. For comparison, the point estimates in potential dose for 236 chemicals span ten orders of magnitude. Most of the variance in the potential dose is due to chemical-specific input parameters, especially half-lives, although exposure factors such as fish intake and the source of drinking water can be important for chemicals whose dominant exposure is through indirect routes, Landscape characteristics are generally of minor importance.The paper describes the priority given to licensing in the control of waste management in the UK. It outlines both the historical and present day impact of EU legislation on UK practices and explains potential problems and benefits resulting from the implementation of the EU landfill directive. Basic waste data is given and some of the key factors underpinning waste regulation are delineated primarily sustainable development - but also land-use planning, groundwater protection and global climate change. The paper concludes by profiling the UK's lifecycle programme for waste management and its intended uses.Encouragement of innovation is a major reason for using the performance concept in construction regulations and specifications, mostly in the context of design-build contracts. Performance criteria aiming at sustainability emphasize long term behaviour of built facilities, which complicates the measurement of compliance. Strategies for identifying areas with strong promises of innovative technologies should be developed, so as to concentrate the efforts in developing performance requirements. The development of standardized consensus methods and procedures should be accelerated. Finally, it is suggested that good examples of how performance requirements can be expressed and monitored should be made globally available.Research undertaken in the development of basic approaches for and dissemination of information on the design, maintenance, reuse or renewal and assessment of materials and technologies for sustainable construction were the focus of Symposium A at the 1998 CIB Gavle Conference. Contributions have been prepared within four areas including: (i) performance, durability and service life, (ii) information technologies, (iii) Life cycle analysis and maintenance management and (iv) environmental technologies and processes. A summary of the more significant contributions within these specific areas is provided.The Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) tool implements a rational, systematic technique for selecting cost-effective green building products. The technique is based on consensus standards and designed to be practical, flexible, and transparent. The Windows-based decision support software, aimed at designers, builders, and product manufacturers, includes actual environmental and economic performance data for 24 building products across a range of functional applications. BEES measures the environmental performance of building products using the environmental Life-cycle assessment approach specified in the latest versions of ISO 14000 draft standards. The approach is based on the belief that all stages in the Life of a product generate environmental impacts and must be analyzed. The stages include raw material acquisition, manufacture, transportation, installation, use, and waste management. Economic performance is measured using the ASTM standard life-cycle cost method. The technique includes the costs over a given study period of initial investment, replacement, operation, maintenance and repair, and disposal. Environmental and economic performance are combined into an overall performance measure using the ASTM standard for multiattribute decision analysis.This article compares the social costs of electric vehicles with those of conventional, thermal vehicles for typical passenger use in the Ile-de-France region (Greater Paris), a case of particular interest because nearly 80% of the electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. A four-seat electric car is compared to a new conventional car of the same make and model; for the latter both the gasoline and the diesel version are considered because almost half of new car sales in France are diesel. These results are also compared to typical existing diesel and gasoline vehicles in the current French fleet. The methodology developed by the ExternE (External Costs of Energy) Project of the European Commission is used to estimate the costs associated with atmospheric pollution due to power plants, refineries and tail pipe emissions. Our discussion of externalities is limited to air pollution thus excluding others such as costs associated with noise or accidents. Our results imply that the external costs are large and significant, even when one considers the uncertainties. If internalized by government regulations, these externalities can render the total cost of an electric vehicle more competitive with that of currently available thermal vehicles in large urban centers if the electricity is produced by sources with low pollution. However, the current generation electric vehicles are so expensive that internalization of pollution damage would not give it a very clear advantage. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Throughout the 1990s a significant change in the perception of environmental problems has been taking place. This has led to a whole environment and whole life-cycle perspective. The paper reviews the current state of development of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and presents examples, from the authors' case studies on timber products to illustrate how the technique addresses and highlights several problems in environmental impact assessment. The particular case of painted timber window frames is discussed.DIN EN ISO 9001, Community eco-management and audit scheme, DIN EN ISO 14001 and SCC are only some of the rules that the companies of the paper industry actually have to deal with. With a focus on their individual protection objectives - the product, the environment, the employees - all these rules persecute a common goal in principle: to create a management system for a better coping with the requirements. Especially the partly negative experiences made with quality management put an extra burden on this matter of concern. This may be the reason for the fact, that the opportunities of management systems are often disregarded. Today more than ever planned and structured procedures are imperative within the companies, regarding the amount of national and international - especially European - regulations. It is decisive for the contribution of management systems to the success of the company that they are "alive" throughout all levels of hierarchy. This especially requires an integral view of the real procedures within the company, Involving all managers and employees. A management system according to a "textbook" is just as little meaningful as an "artificial" separation of quality assurance, environmental protection and occupational safety. Also the valuation of single products within the context of life cycle assessment or the contemplation of a limited number of environmental aspects for an environmental label are only suitable in promoting the required integral view but not to replace it.Global environmental management is a critically important issue for the business development towards the 21st century. The focus of effort of recovery and recycling of both industrial material of pre-consumer solid waste and post-consumer solid waste has become more import-ant in recent years. As a case study, the current problem of recycling of PET bottles business in Japan is reviewed. In order to maximize productivity of global environment, the closed system, of recycling materials should be re-evaluated and established as new social and industrial systems. Global environmental productivity is defined as the ratio of total output to total consumption of materials and energy. Concepts such as 'Seaborg's Closed System' and 'Reverse Factories' should be considered if environmental productivity is to be maximized. To encourage a large marker for recovered material, a growing buy recycled movement has emerged. The environmental soundness of products can be enhanced through Total Quality Management (TQM). The environmental recycle laws enacted in 1997-99 in Japan is reviewed to produce plastic packages, which contain post-consumer recycled materials with the required price, performance and quality. (C) 1999 Society of Chemical Industry.A full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been developed for a case study of the car tyre. The results have been compared with those obtained by applying to the same case different LCA streamlining methods in order to understand the differences. The principle of "reliability", which is the necessary condition of the streamlining methods, is evaluated for the specific case of the car tyre. Moreover some aspects of the methodology whose elaboration in one way or another can lead to drastic changes in the results are identified. In particular, space and time aspects are discussed and options for their assessment are briefly described.Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing and Product Recovery (ECMPRO) has become an obligation to the environment and to the society itself, enforced primarily by governmental regulations and customer perspective on environmental issues. This is mainly driven by the escalating deterioration of the environment, e.g. diminishing raw material resources, overflowing waste sites and increasing levels of pollution. ECMPRO involves integrating environmental thinking into new product development including design, material selection, manufacturing processes and delivery of the product to the consumers, plus the end-of-life management of the product after its useful life. ECMPRO related issues have found a large following in industry and academia who aim to find solutions to the problems that arise in this newly emerged research area. Problems are widespread including the ones related to life cycle of products, disassembly, material recovery, remanufacturing and pollution prevention. In this paper, we present the development of research in ECMPRO and provide a state-of-the-art survey of published work. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of electric power production through an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) fired by dedicated energy crops (poplar Short Rotation Forestry (SRF)) is analysed by a Life Cycle Assessment approach, The results are compared with the alternative option of producing power by conventional fossil fueled power plants, The energy and raw materials consumption and polluting emissions data both come from experimental cases. Thermodynamic models are applied for simulation of the energy conversion system. The results establish relative proportions for both consumption and emissions of the two energy systems, in detail. Considerable differences emerge about the environmental impact caused by the different gasification conditions. The evaluation of the environmental effects of residues of the pesticides in ground/surface water and in the soil required a particular care, as well as the characterisation of all chemicals (herbicides, fungicides and insecticides) used for the crops. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Ten case study businesses were assessed in relation to sixteen criteria in order to test the application of an hypothesised life cycle. Analysis of stakeholder aspirations for each of these ten businesses was also undertaken. On the basis of the empirical evidence, it was demonstrated that stakeholder groups favour diverse goals, that the level of goal coherence between major stakeholder groups declines as a co-op progresses through the co-operative rife cycle and that in the later stages of the life cycle, the aspirations of the managers, rather than those of the farmers, are realised. Furthermore, the managers' preferred goals are reflected in the organisational and financial structures and trading practices of individual late stage businesses, which are more akin to investor oriented firms than traditional co-operatives.A combination of life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) was used to evaluate and compare the relative environmental impacts and socio-economic costs of several products, made from either rapeseed oil or mineral oil in the UK. The chainsaw bar oil case study is used to demonstrate the methodologies used and results obtained. Chainsaw bar oil is a total-loss oil, and has considerable potential for substitution of the conventional base oil (mineral oil) with rapeseed oil. Results are presented from LCA impact assessments of the mineral oil and rapeseed oil chainsaw lubricants Several scenarios were compared using different co-product allocation and alternative land-use assumptions. Global warming potential (GWP) impacts were lower for rapeseed chainsaw oil, in ail scenarios, than for the mineral oil product. Other environmental impacts illustrated that both assumptions (i.e. whether to examine the total or marginal impacts) and allocation can strongly influence conclusions. The most realistic scenario for rapeseed oil was considered to be 70% allocation of burdens to the oil, with winter wheat impacts subtracted from those of oilseed rape. With this scenario, ail environmental impacts considered for chainsaw lubricants were lower for rapeseed oil. Monetary valuation of impacts through CBA varied, depending on the valuation system used, but in general rapeseed oil chainsaw lubricant had lower costs than the mineral oil product. Allocating some of the environmental burdens of crop production and crushing to rapeseed meal, and consideration of marginal impacts relative to alternative land uses increased the apparent environmental benefits of rapeseed oil chainsaw lubricant. Combination of ICA and CBA will require further development but affords new opportunities for socio-economic interpretation of environmental aspects.in the last past years, life Cycle Assessment has acquired a broader extent. ICA is now a method whose methodological frame is set by international standards. This does not mean that things will not evolve in the future, which is in particularly the case for the calculation of environmental impact indicators, such as toxicity and ecotoxicity indicators. Whereas ICA is still mainly carried out by consultants, more and more industries perform their own studies or update previous ones, thanks to dedicated LCA softwares. ICA may be used to fulfil several objectives. This paper describes one of them: the comparison of different ends-of life for a given product, used oils. Derived from LCA, environmentally friendly conception is an innovative and promising approach aiming at taking into account environmental criteria as soon as the product design phase. The key ideas of this design for environment approach are introduced through a brief presentation of the software EIME(TM) developed by Ecobilan.The current position on the environmental advantages offered by returnable versus one-way glass packages is discussed The energy needs of both options are considered as important parameters. A critical concept in the published LCA studies is the breakage rate, which serves to estimate the number (n) of returns that a functional unit of bottles can perform. Normally the energy of production of the glass (E) is divided by n. The authors consider this concept too theoretical and for long-term situations demonstrate that, in all LCA calculations, an energy value equal to 2E/n should be used This value is useful in calculating the break-even point. The paper summarizes the effect of different breakage rates and distribution distances on the break-even point. It is clear that, for breakage rates below 5%, returnable glass bottles remain competitive and advantageous, even for quite long distribution distances. The methology proposed should be applicable to other materials. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is essentially a material and energy balance over a system with some of the inputs and outputs used to assess the environmental impact of the system. Municipal waste life cycle assessment Part 1, and aluminium case study(1), by the same authors, described a method for Life Cycle Assessment of the base materials, for example aluminium or glass, in municipal waste. The aim of the method is to provide quantitative guidance, based upon environmental impact, for choosing the 'best' waste management option for a material and, in particular, to show whether it should be recycled. The focus on base materials differentiates the method from the usual LCA of a single product or group of products, which are formed from base material(s). The method quantifies environmental impacts from all stages in the life of materials, from production from raw materials to final disposal and includes impacts apportioned from supporting activity, such as electricity generation. This paper extends the method to include the environmental impact due to collecting material for recycling. The model estimates the distances travelled by consumers bringing 'recyclables' to collection sites and by vehicles collecting recycled material from these sites for delivery to transfer stations (local transport). Long distance haulage from the transfer stations to the material production plant is also included in the model. The method is applied to glass and it is found that the specific fuel usage per kg recycled material for consumer transport decreases with increasing material recovery rate. Specific fuel usage is almost constant for local transport over the range of practical recovery rates (10-85%) but at very low or high recovery rates it rises dramatically. Even at low recycling site densities and hence recovery rates, the fuel consumption due to recycling is not as high as other estimates. Recycling glass produces a reduction of 30+% in environmental loads, that is the totals of the impacts with a common effect. However, the extra loads due to collection reduce these savings by 3-5%. The savings against incineration are always greater than against landfill, because glass is non-combustible. The energy saved by recycling glass reaches a maximum of 4 MJ per kg of produced glass at a recovery rate of 83%. However, a practical rate might be between 65 and 72%, corresponding to site densities of 10-15 per 10,000 people, yielding savings of 3.3-3.7 MJ per kg produced glass.A comparison study on the various waste management scenarios of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles has been carried out using the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The energy and material balances were set up to account for all the energy consumed and the emissions released by each stage of the production and waste management phases of the life-cycle of the PET bottles, and then a mathematical model was derived to illustrate these energy and emissions for the-various waste management pathways. For the collection process of the bottles, a nonlinear functional relationship was chosen and included in the model. Using the developed model, the environmental burdens of various waste management alternatives were evaluated to yield a ready comparison of each pathway. We can also easily discern through parameter analysis which waste management scenario is deemed best having the least energy consumed and the smallest emissions released with respect to the environmental burdens in question. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This paper reports on experiences from the Swedish participation in Green Building Challenge '98 and ongoing similar work in Sweden. It argues against very simplified environmental assessment methods and recommends, as far as possible, calculation of environmental effects caused by buildings during their life cycle. participation in the development of the GBC tool provided a broad view of the issues, clarified different opinions in a new field and provided additional stimulation while developing our national assessment methodology, EcoEffect. The environmental assessment of buildings is discussed in relation to the strength and weaknesses of the GBC system. The design and characteristics of 'green buildings' in Sweden is addressed, including ten poster presentations and two case studies presented at GBC '98.The construction and property sector has seen the development of a number of methods for evaluating the 'greenness' of buildings in the 1990s - both for new designs and existing buildings, These range from very detailed life cycle assessment methods, which account for all the embodied and operational environmental impacts of building materials, to higher level environmental impact assessment methods, which evaluate the broader implications of the building's impact on the environment. In between these two are environmental assessment methods such as BREEAM, BEPAC, LEED, and GBA. In this paper, we discuss the potential market applications of these systems and compare and contrast several of the major environmental assessment methods.The objectives and achievements of the international Green Building Challenge project are analysed. GBC is situated within the context of other international environmental methods. The differences between assessment tools, design tools, environmental management and audit tools and the large data problems entailed by these are discussed. Possible development scenarios for extending GBC into Life Cycle Assessment methodology, into other life cycle phases (maintenance and refurbishment) and adapting GBC for use with the existing building stocks are proposed. The notion of 'green' buildings is replaced by a larger concept of sustainable development. New aggregation principles and scaleable design methods are proposed. Finally, the question of how relevant the proposed targets of GBC are in relation to the longterm sustainable development of buildings, building stock and urban environments is addressed.Environmental concerns have raised public awareness of environmental issues and are driving forces for regulation; The impact of regulation on the cost of production is expected to become important in determining the international competitiveness of the US chemical industry. In response to cost pressures, industry has launched a number of initiatives aimed at improving efficiency and reducing environmental impact. Some of these environmental success stories are receiving increased national attention due to programs such as the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards Program. In addition to traditional metrics for evaluating process performance, such as productivity, environmental considerations increasingly are important in process development. Chemical processes evolve through life cycle phases, beginning with research, and then moving to process engineering, plant operation, and eventually, decommissioning. The number of technology options available for reducing environmental impact are highest early on in the life cycle and then decrease drastically. In contrast, costs associated with resolving an environmental problem typically increase exponentially as the process matures and the scale of equipment gets larger. There is, therefore, a considerable incentive to address and resolve environmental issues early in the life cycle. Chemical reactions responsible for producing high value-;added products are, in most cases, also responsible for generating by-products and pollutants. New chemical and biochemical approaches are providing new reaction concepts. As in the development of traditional chemical and petrochemical processes, reaction engineering, broadly defined as the field that quantifies the engineering aspects of chemically reactive systems, is providing enabling tools that accelerate the development of environmentally friendly processes. Core reaction engineering methods are being utilized for kinetic modeling, reactor selection, scale-up, and design. Meanwhile, the research frontiers are providing new reaction engineering tools,from computational chemistry to probe the nature of catalytic active sites to computational fluid dynamics modeling for designing the internals of reaction-separation systems. The long-term goal is to develop processes having 100% raw materials utilization, or zero waste. The near-term strategy for controlling emissions is to institute pollution prevention programs and install cost-effective end-of-pipe technologies. These technologies typically control generic classes of air pollutant emissions such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NO(x)) and sulfur oxides (SO(x)). Technologies for treating wastewater are also available. Over time, a shift in focus is expected, from mere compliance to a point where environmentalism, like safety, is fully integrated into the corporate culture. The present paper discusses the role of reaction engineering in the development of environmentally-friendly processes. Select examples of processes, from the author's experience, that benefit from reaction engineering will be presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Whether in the public or private sector, facility maintenance and repair is less tangible, less glamorous, and less immediate than many other uses of an organization's limited resources. The engineers who manage and operate large physical plants must be vigilant as they compete in the annual budget allocation process. This paper, the first of two in a series, reports on the variety and relative acceptance of methodologies for estimating facility maintenance and repair funding requirements. Four bases are outlined for budget-level estimating: (1) The physical plant's initial cost or replacement value; (2) formulas grounded in other quantifiable attributes of the plant, (3) life-cycle analysis of each facility's systems and components; and (4) assessment of the facility's current or projected physical condition. Most importantly, a description and comparison of 18 available maintenance and repair budgeting models is provided. Each description includes an explanation of the mechanisms through which the model functions, the degree to which each estimating basis is applied within the model's construct, and any limitations to the model's implementation by a prospective user.The environmental impact of both the vanadium redox battery (vanadium battery) and the lead-acid battery for use in stationary applications has been evaluated using a life cycle assessment approach. In this Study, the calculated environmental impact was lower for the vanadium battery than for the lead-acid one. The net energy storage efficiency of the vanadium battery was greater due to lower primary energy needs during the life cycle. Favourable characteristics such as long cycle-life, good availability of resources and recycling ability justify the development and commercialisation of the vanadium battery. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.Automobile transportation is one of the predominant sources of air pollution, producing CO2, NOx, and SOx. The weight reduction of automobiles is essential for reducing the environmental burden during their life cycle. High-tension steel, aluminum alloy and resin are candidates for such purpose. However, substituting aluminum for steel is not always beneficial with respect to reducing the burden on the environment, because the energy consumption during aluminum production is considerably greater than that for steel. A generalized equation has been derived to describe the relationship between the driving distance, weight reduction, materials production route, and change in environmental performance. In particular, the effect of the difference of electricity source for aluminum smelting on life cycle CO2, NOx, and SOx, by substituting aluminum for steel in automobile parts, is discussed. The reduction of CO2 emission can be expected for all cases, if 50% of mass reduction is made. On the other hand, aluminum produced by the uncontrolled coal fire power is not capable of reducing NOx emission. It is also suggested that a reduction of SOx emission can only be obtained when using very clean aluminum.Adverse environmental impact, a consequence of the ever-increasing industrial activities since the Industrial Revolution, is a growing global problem. Corrective measures in the last several decades have proven insufficient and ineffective to remedy such environmental damage. To protect the world we live in, it is necessary to adopt a preventive approach to environmental pollution. In order to eliminate the problems from the very source, Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing (ECM), Design for Environment (DfE), and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) are now being pursued, falling under the paradigm of Concurrent Engineering (CE). This has led to the need of this research to define environmental consciousness, and to analyze its design implications. Environmental decision-making at the design stage of a product is considered vital to preventing negative environmental impact. Based on concerns of all phases in the product life cycle, this research defines seven criteria to measure environmental consciousness, including recyclability, reusability, maintainability/serviceability, emissions, energy consumption, materials, and durability. It also examines their significance and implications for design. Interactions among these criteria are analyzed by classifying their relationships as positive, negative, and partially positive and negative. To further quantify the degree of environmental consciousness of product design, mathematical and graphical representation of the imprecise environmental data is exemplified.There is an increasing demand to move the radio base station closer to the antenna for future mobile telecommunication systems. This requires a significant reduction in weight and volume and increased environmental compatibility. This work provides an evaluation of environmental impact and reliability when using anisotropically conductive adhesives (ACA) for flipchip joining in radio base station applications. Conventional FR-4 substrate has been used to assemble a digital ASIC chip using an anisotropically conductive adhesive and flip-chip technology. The chip has a minimum pitch of 128 mu m with 7.8 mm in chip 8 and has in total 144 bumps with a bump size of 114 x 126 mu m(2). Bumping was made using electroless nickel/gold technology. Bonding quality has been characterized by optical and scanning electron microscopy and substrate planarity measurement. The main parameters affecting quality are misalignment and softening of the FR-4 substrate during assembly, leading to high joint resistance. Reliability testing was conducted in the form of a temperature cycling test between -40 and +125 degrees C for 1000 cycles, a 125 degrees C aging test for 100 h and a 85/85 humidity test for 500 h, The results show that relatively small resistance changes were observed after the reliability test. The environmental impact evaluation was done in the form of a material content declaration and a life cycle assessment (LCA). By using flip-chip ACA joining technology, the content of environmentally risky materials has been reduced more than ten times, and the use of precious metals has been reduced more than 30 times compared to conventional surface mount technology.Systems using rain water or reducing water consumption have been recently developed as an alternative to conventional toilet hushing. This article aims to quantify the environmental impacts of these systems and to identify key factors in each system. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been carried out to reach these goals. Scenarios with conventional water supplies present a lower energy requirement and lower environmental loads than recuperation scenarios. Sensitivity analyses indicate that recuperation is energetically favourable only when the energy required for the water supply is higher than 0.8 kWh/m(3), assuming a complex drinking water treatment. The study also reveals that low-flow toilets should be promoted as they lead to significant reductions in energy consumption and in pollutant emissions. A combination of a conventional water supply and low water consumption (scenario CONVeco) is advantageous for all environmental problems.A process for the manufacture of highly inorganically filled starch based fiber reinforced foam composites for food-packaging use is described. Starch, obtained from potato, corn, or other sources, is used as binder to form net shape foam composite substrates under hydrothermal conditions. The starch content is 25 to 60 wt. % of the product. Ground calcium carbonate is the principal inorganic material, being 25 to 60 wt. % of the product. The composite substrate is foamed by steam at temperatures between 160 degrees and 220 degrees C in a single 15 to 200 seconds step within heated molds. The organic-inorganic composite is reinforced with 5 to 20 wt. % wood or plant fiber. The substrate is rendered functional with food and beverages by thin overlay coatings that provide moisture barrier properties and additional mechanical flexibility. The product is used to package dry and wet foods and meets required food packaging standards. The substrate biodegrades rapidly in the presence of sufficient moisture or microbes. An environmental life-cycle model and an economic model are described as the additional forces to a materials model for research, development and commercialization. The primary goal of this development is to provide disposable packaging materials from renewable resources that are low in cost, low in environmental impact, and meet commercial performance requirements.Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) developed rapidly during the 1990s and has reached a certain level of harmonisation and standardisation. LCA has mainly been developed for analysing material products, but can also be applied to services, e.g. treatment of a particular amount of solid waste. This paper discusses some methodological issues which come into focus when LCAs are applied to solid waste management systems. The following five issues are discussed. (1) Upstream and downstream system boundaries ies: where is the 'cradle' and where is the 'grave' in the analysed system? (2) Open-loop I recycling allocation: besides taking care of a certain amount of solid waste, many treatment processes also provide additional functions, e.g. energy or materials which are recycled into other products. Two important questions which arise are if an allocation between the different functions should be made (and if so how), or if system boundaries should be expanded to include several functions. (3) Multi-input allocation: in waste treatment processes, different materials and products are usually mixed. In many applications there is a need to allocate environmental interventions from the treatment processes to the different input materials. The question is how this should be done. (4) Time: emissions from landfills will continue for a long time. An important issue to resolve is the length of time emissions from the landfill should be considered. (5) Life cycle impact assessment : are there any aspects of solid waste systems (e.g. the time horizon) that may require specific attention for the impact assessment element of an LCA? Although the discussion centres around LCA it is expected that many of these issues are also relevant for other types of systems analyses. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Process planning in environmentally conscious machining involves a multi-objective analysis of manufacturing dimensions that include production rate, quality, process energy and mass of waste streams generated by the process. While there has been a body of work developed in life cycle analysis, one of the critical issues limiting environmental analyses is the material and geometric complexity of engineered components. In this paper a formalized approach towards integrating environmental factors in process planning is presented, which incrementally evaluates part designs through an aggregation of features. Process planning is divided into two phases, micro and macroplanning. In microplanning, process, parameters, tooling and cutting fluids are selected for the individual features, while in macroplanning interactions between features are examined. Microplanning is the focus of this paper where predictive process models are used to obtain process level inventory of process energy, machining time, mass of waste streams (primary scrap and secondary catalysts) and quality parameters. The mass of waste streams are then evaluated for their environmental impact based on a health hazard scoring index. The Microplanning algorithm integrates these dimensions in an optimization framework to make robust process planning decisions at the feature level. A case study of a machined part is presented to illustrate the microplanning methodology. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the development of a semi-quantitative pre-LCA (life-cycle assessment) tool for assessing the environmental impacts of the production of a printer. This tool provides a quick-and-easy means of assessing the environmental impacts of a complex product, where a full LCA evaluation of the complex product would often require extensive calculations and the analysis is very time-consuming and places a heavy burden on the designer. The tool allows a designer to easily compute a total environmental impact value for each of the various alternative designs. The pre-LCA tool computes an environmental impact value by considering factors such as airborne and waterborne emissions, the recyclability potential, waste disposal, the global warming factor, the energy content of raw materials, the divertible plastic waste potential, etc. The analytical hierarchy comparison method is used for the designers to indicate the relative importance of these factors with respect to their designs. Environmental values for the various factors are calculated from graphs that have been derived based on extensive interviews with engineers involved in the production process, as well as from literature research. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.New approaches and tools are needed to enable engineers to assess and deal with the environmental attributes of manufacturing processes. A special concern of adding environmental attributes to products and processes is dealing with the tradeoffs associated with those attributes. The paper demonstrates the utility of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) wh en applied to the environmental streamlined life-cycle assessment (SLCA) of two manufacturing processes (chromic acid and boric/sulfuric acid anodizing). Two methods are detailed in the paper and the accompanying Supporting Information. The application of AHP to abridged matrix-based tools adds value to a SLCA approach by providing logical consistency to valuing the matrix cells and increasing the speed of analysis. AHP also provides a built-in check on consistency that enables the user to monitor the various comparison matrixes for logical consistency in assigning numbers to the cells of the matrixes.As the pressures on the chemical and process industries to improve their environmental performance are increasing, the need to move away from narrow system definitions and concepts in environmental system management is becoming more apparent. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is gaining wider acceptance as a method that enables quantification of environmental interventions and evaluation of the improvement options throughout the life cycle of a process, product or activity. Historically, LCA has mainly been applied to products; however, recent literature suggests that it can assist in identifying more sustainable options in process selection, design and optimisation. This paper reviews some of these newly emerging applications of LCA. A number of case studies indicate that process selection must be based on considerations of the environment as a whole, including indirect releases, consumption of raw materials and waste disposal. This approach goes beyond the present practice of choosing Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO), by which it is possible to reduce the environmental impacts directly from the plant, but to increase them elsewhere in the life cycle. These issues are discussed and demonstrated by the examples of end-of-pipe abatement techniques for SO2, NO, and VOCs and processes for the production of liquid CO2 and O-2. The integration of LCA into the early stages of process design and optimisation is also reviewed and discussed. The approach is outlined and illustrated with real case studies related to the mineral and chemical industries. It is shown that a newly emerging Life Cycle Process Design (LCPD) tool offers a potential for technological innovation in process concept and structure through the selection of best material and process alternatives over the whole life cycle. The literature also suggests that LCA coupled with multi-objective optimisation (MO) provides a robust framework for process design by simultaneously optimising on environmental, technical, economic and other criteria. Pareto-optimum solutions obtained in MO provide a number of options for improved design and operation throughout the whole life cycle: This approach therefore provides a potentially powerful decision making tool which may help to identify more sustainable solutions in the process industries. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.Surgical drapes made of cotton are under increasing competition with various disposable products and reusable draping systems (e. g., made of synthetic fabrics like polyester). When making a choice to use one of these medical devices in practical surgery, major aspects like handling, hygienic safety and costs, but also environmental effects have to be taken into account. In this study a mixed system for patient drapes (reusable cotton drapes combined with a reduced set of impermeable single-use drapes made of cellulose/polyethylene) was compared to a system that is only based on single-use drapes with regard to ecology [life-cycle assessment (LCA)]. The medical literature was reviewed to assess important medical aspects of the use of patient drapes, resulting in the statement that there are no conclusive arguments to support a clear hygienic superiority of one of these alternatives. Based on the conditions assumed and stated, the results of the LCA indicate that the mixed draping system is associated with two times more total energy consumption. In addition, more water is needed and more CO2 emissions are produced. However, draping with the single-use product results in more clinical waste. Regarding water pollution no system proved superior. It is difficult to compare and weigh various environmental aspects like the polluting cultivation of cotton in distant countries (reusable drapes) and the higher figure of transportation necessary to deliver the single-use product within Germany. It is an important disadvantage of the mixed system that it combines the ecological burden of both cotton drapes and the single-use alternative.The consumption of food products involves emissions of greenhouse gases. Emissions occur in the various stages of the life cycle of food products. In this paper we discuss the greenhouse gas emissions, CO2, CH4, and N2O, related to Dutch household food consumption. Combinations of greenhouse gas intensities (per DB) with annual household expenditures results in the greenhouse gas emissions from annual food consumption. An energy analysis methodology is elaborated with greenhouse gas emissions to calculate greenhouse gas intensities. The CO2 emission pattern resembles closely the household expenditure pattern. Emission patterns of CH4 and N2O differ strongly from the expenditure pattern. Food products from cattle farming determine the CH4 emissions, while food products from agriculture determine the N2O emissions. The non-CO2 greenhouse gases contribute 25% to the total emissions of CO2 equivalents from Dutch household food consumption, significantly above their share in the total Dutch emission of greenhouse gases. For food product life cycles it is very important to include the non-CO2 greenhouse gases. The analyses show differences in greenhouse gas intensities within food product categories and between food product categories. These differences offer possibilities for reduction options. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.To address burdens associated with contaminated sites and issuing from remediation activities, a lire-cycle framework (LCF) was developed, including an approach based on life-cycle management (LCM) and an adaptation of life-cycle assessment (LCA). Intended for application to a wide range of remediation options, the objective of the LCF is to broaden consideration of potential impacts beyond the contaminated site and over a prolonged time frame. The LCM approach is a qualitative method for investigating remediation activities from a life-cycle perspective. This adaptation of the more rigorous, quantitative LCA method has involved specifying appropriate life-cycle stages, a long-term time horizon, a spatial boundary encompassing the contaminated site and other affected locations, a process boundary containing the contaminated soil, and an impact assessment method that considers site- and process-related metrics. To assess the suitability of LCM as a decision-making tool, six generic site remediation options were investigated: no action, encapsulation, excavation and disposal, vapor extraction, in situ bioremediation, and soil washing. The analysis exemplified tradeoffs between the streamlined LCM, and comprehensive, quantitative LCA approaches, and highlighted potential environmental and human health impacts arising from the six technologies investigated.An adaptation of life-cycle assessment for contaminated site remediation activities was used to examine a lead-contaminated site remediated by excavation and disposal. The study indicated emissions and impacts associated with energy consumption (transportation of contaminated soil to hazardous and nonhazardous sites), solid waste production (contaminated soil and sludge), land use at four sites (the contaminated site, two disposal sites, and a borrow pit for clean fill), and potential toxicity from emissions and contaminants remaining on-site. These impacts were drawn from an inventory compiled mainly from proprietary consultants' reports, and related to impacts through several stressor-impact models; the process-related indicators of global warming potential, solid waste burden, and ecological and human toxicity potential; and site-related indicators of land use and residual human toxicity burden. Ecological and human toxicity potentials were estimated using the Mackay level III model for southern Ontario, Canada, adapted for metals. The life-cycle approach proved useful for identifying potential impacts occurring at local, regional, and global scales, over all activities and locations affected by the remediation.Indicators and indices are important teals that assist decision makers to formulate and implement plans for management at local, national and international levels. Four indicators for hazardous waste management are described that have recently been adopted within the United Nations framework of Indicators of Sustainable Development. Although these four indicators will be useful tools, the need for a broader range of policy-relevant qualitative and quantitative indicators, proxy indicators and indices is outlined The argument is advanced that in order for all nations to better manage the range of hazardous waste issues, including waste generation, export/import and disposal, a set of innovative indicators and indices is required. Useful indicators and indices are described that could be used to link and quantify likely environmental, ecosystem and health impacts and risks especially from hazardous waste disposal. Indicators are also suggested that could be used to illustrate the shift in industrial strategy away from end-of-pipe processes towards waste recycling, cleaner production and integrated life-cycle analysis. It was concluded that until the lack of reliable and harmonized data on hazardous waste is addressed, indicator development and use by national and international decision makers cannot readily be implemented. (C) 1999 Academic Press.Green Quality Function Deployment-II (GQFD-II), a new methodology for product development or improvement, is introduced in this paper. By integrating Life Cycle Costing (LCC) into QFD matrices and deploying quality, environmental and cost requirements throughout the entire product development process, GQFD-II elaborates the original GQFD, in which Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and QFD are combined to evaluate different product concepts. GQFD;II includes three major phases. Phase I-Technical Requirement Identification. Quality house, green house and cost house are established in this phase, where customer, environmental and cost requirements are established and documented. Phase II-Product Concept Generation. A series of product concepts are generated to satisfy the requirements established from Phase I. These concepts can be evaluated with respect to quality, environment and cost. The best product concept is then selected. Phase III-Product/Process Design. In this phase, the requirements from previous phases are deployed into all product/process design stages, so that a series of matrices can be established, including: design deployment, process planning, production planning, maintenance planning, and retirement planning. In this paper, an illustrative example (engine filters) is used to demonstrate the concept of GQFD-II.This paper compares the results of a box model for the environmental fate of chemicals with spatially explicit models for water, air and soil. The spatially explicit models are based on the same model formulations as the box model, but use maps of emission patterns and environmental properties instead of average values. Results are expressed as a spatial distribution on a 25 x 25 km scale over Europe. For water and soil, the calculated maximum values are a factor 100-1000 higher than the box model results, for the air compartment, the maximum difference is approximately a factor 10. The consequences of the present results for the use of box models in risk assessment are discussed. It is concluded that for the air and soil compartments the box model gives a fair estimate of the calculated spatial average, given emission and chemical property data. The use of a local-scale model in addition to the overall model would give sufficient information to make application of spatially explicit models unnecessary in risk assessment. For the water model the box model underestimates the spatial average and the spatial maximum may be a factor 100-1000 above this average. For this compartment, an assessment of spatial variability would give important additional information. The present paper shows that a simple model may not be able to provide good local predictions of concentrations, but is able to provide the required spatial distribution in concentrations. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper is to show that for the optimal design of an energy system, where there is a trade-off between exergy saving during operation and exergy use during construction of the energy system, exergy analysis and life cycle analysis should be combined. An exergy optimisation of a heat exchanger has been carried out on the basis of the life cycle analysis method in this paper. The analysis of the heat exchanger in which exergy analysis and life cycle analysis are combined gives the design conditions of the heat exchangers which lead to the lowest life cycle irreversibility. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Development of an emissions inventory is frequently incorporated into many techniques and methodologies used in determining environmental impact, for example life-cycle assessment and as part of the review procedures essential to the implementation of an environmental management system. A software package has been developed for use by farmers and advisers, which seeks to encourage environmentally sound agriculture. The software acts as an informal environmental management system. An estimate of the emissions generated on-farm, coupled with performance indicators known as eco-ratings, are used to enable the setting of objectives and targets, the monitoring of progress and the success of improvement programmes. This paper seeks to describe the techniques adopted for estimating farm emissions. The development, piloting and validation of the eco-ratings have been described elsewhere. The approach used is necessarily simplistic as it relies on readily available farm data and heuristics to derive broad estimates of emissions including losses of nitrate via leaching, pesticides and gaseous losses of ammonia and methane from livestock. It is not the aim of the system to provide accurate measures of these emissions but, rather; to provide the farmer with data to identify trends which vary with farm techniques showing that as practices improve emission levels also improve. The inventory, together with the eco-ratings and text reports provided by the software give the user a variety of techniques for managing and monitoring environmental impact and improvement programmes. This paper also discusses the techniques commonly used within industry and the problems in transferring these techniques to the farm. (C) 1999 Academic Press.Rapid progress is being made in many aspects of materials, design and construction for lead-acid batteries. Much of this work has taken place under the auspices of the Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC). From the general tone of the literature, it seems Likely that several of these developments will be adopted in commercial products, and that there will be cross-fertilization between the emerging electric vehicle (EV) battery technology and the starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) battery. Given the impetus for improvement from several different factors, the development process appears to be accelerating. To those not intimately involved in the battery design and specification process, it is not clear which of the possible developments will make it from the laboratory to general commercial adoption. Some of the possible changes in materials, design and construction could have an impact on the recovery, recycling, smelting and refining of lead-acid batteries. Some of the possible developments are outlined and their possible impact is discussed. It is likely that negative effects may be minimized if battery developments are considered from other perspectives, largely based on the overall life-cycle, as early in the design phase of new products as possible. Three strategies for minimizing undesirable effects are advocated: first, improved communication between car manufacturers, battery manufacturers and lead producers second, use of life-cycle analysis (LCA) to identify and optimize all attributes of the product throughout its life-cycle third, concerted and coordinated action to deal with issues important to the industry once trends are identified. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.A life-cycle assessment (LCA) study on various recycle routes of plastic materials has been conducted using the case of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles as an example. The energy consumed and the emissions released during the entire life-cycle of the plastic material were accounted for using the energy and material balances on each stage of the life-cycle. A mathematical modal including a simple nonlinear relation for the collection process of the bottles was derived for the system which encompasses all possible recycle alternatives. This model contains several adjustable parameters representing each alternative step of the recycle routes. Then through parameter sensitivity analysis and optimization analysis we could both identify environmentally favorable recycle routes and determine the optimal conditions for the best one. The methodology of this study can be easily applied to the comparison of the general waste management alternatives determining their relative advantages and disadvantages viewed from the associated environmental burdens. Those results will be reported elsewhere.This report surveys NTT's latest environment protection activities as well as the history and background of NTT's environment protection issues. As part of NTT's efforts in building the NTT group environmental promotion systems, we set up in November 1997 six committees, each responsible for studying one of the following issues: reduction of carbon dioxide, storage and handling of PCBs, disposal and recycling of wastes, building a telecommunications network to reduce the load on the environment, research and development of services and systems to make environmental contributions, and life cycle assessment. These committees are currently examining basic policies regarding each of these issues. All these issues are major themes that require the efforts of the entire company, led by the Global Environmental Protection Action Committee. In May 1998, an outline of the NTT Group's Environmental Policies to be adopted following NTT's reorganization was determined.Material reclamation facility, or MRF, was a name originally coined in the USA to describe the variety of sorting facilities developed in an attempt to cope with the vast increase in municipal rubbish from the 1970s onwards. Based on agricultural and mining sorting and grading equipment, some of these facilities have evolved into sophisticated machinery systems requiring elaborate design and considerable investment from the responsible municipality or its contractor. Municipal waste is typically high volume and low value. It contains a large percentage of organic waste and some hazardous items and materials, such as household cleaners and discarded syringe needles. The extraction of potentially saleable recyclates from such material is the purpose of MRFs and the general principles of managing this process are discussed. Recycling is generally placed second only to reuse in the hierarchy of waste management. To maintain this position will, as the life cycle analysis of waste materials becomes more intensive and thorough, largely depend on the efficiency of the MRF and, crucially, the collection system that feeds it. The position of the MRF within the waste management system is discussed. Ultimately, MRFs must be considered a temporary measure to allow some material recovery while the whole nature of material flows in society is readjusted to ensure that nothing of recycling value ends up as waste. The system supplying recyclates, typically packaging and newsprint, must also reclaim those materials and the responsibility must ultimately rest with the supplier not the municipality. The author became involved in waste management in 1989 with the 'Energy Park' concept of interrelated waste activities on one site. He set up from scratch the Plymouth Energy Park MRF, and ran it until 1997, when he joined County Environmental Services Ltd, the Cornish Local Authority Waste Disposal Company (LAWDC), with responsibility for recycling and waste to energy.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a broad topic that is currently being discussed. However, little is known about the assessment method of environmental impacts expressing a single index, especially in Japan. Non ferrous metals are one of the basic materials for industrial products. The establishment of the assessment for these materials is important to improve the quality of LCA for products. We have proposed a method of assessment for total impact in Japan, and a case study of LCA is performed concerning the nonferrous metals in this paper. The stages considered in this LCA study are: goal and scope of the inventory analysis and impact assessment. The inventory data include the consumption of raw materials and the emissions through the mining, transport and manufacturing. Resource depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and air pollution have been considered as impact categories. The main results of this study are summarized as follows, (1) The impacts of eutrophication, air pollution and resource depletion are serious for the production of aluminum. (2) The stages of the consumption of non oil and that of the production of non oil are serious for the production of zinc, because the large quantity of non oil such as cokes are consumed. (3) We have showed that the interpretation will differ if the criteria of materials for assessment are changed from weight (per kg) to tensile strength (per MN).Life cycle assessment methodologies were used to evaluate claims that cereal straw is an environmentally friendlier fiber source for the manufacture of telephone directory-grade paper. The major conclusions are that while less wood is used, the substitution of straw chemical pulp for the mechanical wood component results in increased environmental burdens due to higher energy and raw materials consumption. This is attributed in part to the lack of applicable black liquor recovery systems for straw chemical pulping in North America.An environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to two techniques for advanced wastewater treatment: granular activated carbon (GAC) on reactivation basis and advanced oxidation by means of ozone/UV. The LCA was set up for two situations: percolation water from a landfill (heavily contaminated flow) and HCH/chlorobenzenes contaminated groundwater (lightly contaminated flow). 1 m(3) of treated water was chosen as functional unit. The most important conclusions are that GAC has a significantly better environmental profile than ozonen/UV for the aspects studied. The environmental impact is dominated by: production and reactivation (GAC), in situ power consumption and the production of pure oxygen (ozone/UV).Life Cycle has and shall play an increasing role in the future, by influencing industrial management and eco-management puffing together producers, suppliers, customers to properly face the environment needs. Concurrent ecodesign enables, at design level, to anticipate, many of the problems that arise at the end of a product life. Eco-sustainable technologies shall be faced with a global monitoring as a summa of sub-monitoring and pre-monitoring activities, together with "ad hoc" simulation tools. New methods of costs auditing should be structured, involving the whole product life cycles where likely new business areas could arise.Increasing the use of bioenergy is a promising way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hence it is important to know the greenhouse gas emissions of bioenergy systems in comparison with fossil fuel systems. A life cycle analysis of biomass and fossil fuel energy systems compared the overall greenhouse gas emission of both systems for heat and electricity supply. Different bioenergy systems to supply electricity and heat from various biomass sources were analysed for Austria in year 2000 and 2020. Total emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2, N2O, CH4) along the fuel chain, including land use change and byproducts, are calculated. Various conversion technologies and various fuels from forestry, agriculture and industry were considered. The methodology was developed within the IEA Bioenergy Task 25 on "Greenhouse Gas Balances of Bioenergy Systems" and is orientated on ISO 14 040. In this paper the results of selected bioenergy heat supply systems are shown as emission of CO2-equivalents per kWh heat for bioenergy systems as compared with fossil fuel systems, and as a percentage of CO2-equivalent reduction. The results demonstrate that some bioenergy systems already reduce greenhouse gas emissions because of avoided emissions of the reference biomass use or because of certain substitution effects of byproducts. In general the greenhouse gas emissions of bioenergy systems are lower compared to the fossil systems. Therefore a significant reduction of greenhouse gases is possible by replacing fossil energy systems with bioenergy systems. This comparison may help policy makers, utilities and industry to identify effective biomass options in order to reach emission reduction targets.Life cycle analysis has been used to compare the environmental performance of different sugarcane bioenergy systems. Environmental performance indicators such as resource consumption, chemical stressors and ecological health are used to analyse the trade-off between options. The reference fuel chain is based on current practices in Mauritius whereby bagasse in excess of sugar factory requirements is used to generate electricity for the grid. An alternative option uses the excess bagasse and factory filter cake to produce compost which when applied to the sugarcane plantations increases cane yield by up to 30% but at the expense of surplus electricity production. A third option combines improvements in steam management with composting of bagasse/filter cake. Results obtained from the comparative analysis show that it is possible to improve both the production of raw sugar (by 30%) and surplus electricity (by 190%) while reducing environmental stress as measured by the predefined eco-efficiency indicators. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental effects of electricity production from different biofuels by means of co-combustion with hard coal in existing coal fired power plants are analysed and compared to electricity production from hard coal alone based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The use of straw and residual wood at a 10% blend with coal in an existing power plant in the southern part of Germany shows that all investigated environmental effects are significantly lower if biomass is used instead of coal. Thus based on the available and proven technology of co-combustion of hard coal and biomass in existing power plants a significant contribution could be made to a more environmentally sound energy system compared to using coal alone. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Research and development of a nerv sophisticated software environment to support building design decisions are presented. This new software, the Building Design Advisor (BDA), is intended as a research tool, teaching aid and, eventually, as a practical professional tool to facilitate both strategic and detailed decision-making throughout the design process from the early schematic phases of building design through to the detailed specification of building components and systems. BDA supports the integrated, concurrent use of multiple simulation tools and databases, while allowing output to support multicriterion judgement. BDA's ultimate aims are to address the data needs of whole building life cycle analysis: design, construction, commissioning, operation, performance and demolition.Based on the concept of organisational capabilities and organisational learning, the paper looks at possible specifics and the influencing factors of the building and development of environmental capabilities and investigates in the light of these characteristics policy implications on the governmental as well as the business level. In this context, it is first attempted to identify the main determinants of the direction and rate of the exploration of ecological hazards, which is seen as an information driven societal process with differences in the conceptualization of codes. Within this framework, the,path' of ecological information from the ecological sphere,into' the firm is depicted from an evolutionary perspective. In this context, it is looked at the major role of environmental information systems, such as the Life-Cycle-Analysis (LCA), which can contribute substantially to this process not only by their outcomes in describing the environmental impacts of corporate activities, but also already by the increase of awareness concerning possible environmental suboptimalities in the course of the implementation of this instrument itself. Finally, main paradigms of environmental policy and business strategy are (re-) discussed concerning their consideration of the depicted diffusion of ecological issues. Main emphasis is given here in case studies on the discussion of the implications of the findings on the controversy concerning the competitive effects of environmental regulation.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method for analysing and assessing the environmental impact of a material, product or service throughout the entire life cycle. In this study 100 GWh heat is to be demanded by a local heat district. A mixture of coal and wet biofuel is frequently used as fuel for steam generation (Case I). A conversion of the mixed fuel to dried biofuel is proposed. In the district it is also estimated that it is possible for 4000 private houses to convert from oil to wood pellets. It is proposed that a sustainable solution to the actual problem is to combine heat and power production together with an in improvement in the quality of wood residues and manufacture of pellets. It is also proposed that a steam dryer is integrated to the system (Case 2). Most of the heat from the drying process is used to the municipal heating networks. In this study the environmental impact of the two cases is examined with LCA. Different valuation methods shows that Case 2 is an improvement over Case 1, but there is diversity in the magnitudes of environmental impact in the comparison of the cases. The differences depend particularly on how the emissions of CO2, NOx and hydrocarbons are estimated. The impact of the organic compounds from the exhaust gas during the drying is estimated as low in all of the three used methods.The service life of buildings is an important factor e.g. in life cycle assessment and the assessment of global costs. Based on experience much information is available regarding the service life of building elements. However, for existing buildings such information is of little use as the key question is the probable date of repair/replacement. MEDIC is developed on the theories of conditional probabilities to help assess the residual service life and thereby the necessary investments in refurbishment. When passing from working on general products, like the life span of wooden windows, to specific objects, for example 29-year old wooden windows, the current condition of the object must be taken into account. An evaluation of residual service life must for that reason be closely connected to a good diagnosis method. In the European project EPIQR on deterioration of building materials and components is described by the use of a classification system with four classes for the qualitative condition (e.g. of a facade or window). MEDIC calculates the probability to change from one class to another during time. The prediction is based on the combination of the a priori probability based on experience from a large number of previous investigations/refurbishments and the current state of the object under study.A Lift Cycle Assessment on floor coverings in the public and service sector is under progress in Sweden, with emphasis on the usage phase. The result is sensitive to the predicted service life and it is highly desirable with a good estimate of the actual service life. But, service life prediction for a specific type of floor covering has shown difficult. However, an important topic is to detect the relation between the type of service life and the type of premise when the floor covering is installed. Five different types of service life are suggested, and further, it is suggested that technically and aesthetically requirement play an important role, strongly influenced by the economy. The public and service sector is also divided into five different types of premises and related to the different types of service life. It is showed that the prediction of service life for floor coverings can not be done with data on floor coverings only. Further information is required concerning maintenance methods and building related data. No intentions have been made to estimate the length of the different service life.This paper presents the framework of a fuzzy sets-based methodology for life-cycle cost analysis of facilities, including application to buildings. Life-cycle cost analysis is a major phase of facility management and value engineering. Facility components and materials deteriorate at different rates and require some form of maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement (improvement efforts) throughout their service lives. It is difficult to estimate the timing of these improvement efforts, i.e., the expected service lives of the materials at the end of which they have to be replaced or a point in the life at which they have to be rehabilitated. The timing of the required improvement efforts can be predicted from deterioration models or estimated subjectively based on expert opinions. The costs of required maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement may be obtained from historical data but these cost estimates have to be sometimes supplemented with expert opinions in order to perform life-cycle analysis. Representing these variables in the form of crisp numbers and fuzzy numbers, an algorithm is presented to formulate a methodology for life-cycle cost analysis of buildings. Fuzzy sets theory has been proven as a valuable tool for handling uncertainties due to subjective estimates in decision making models. Alternative building designs can be evaluated and compared early in the project development stage.Data regarding the performance and service life of buildings and building products are of utmost importance when assessing the serviceability of buildings. A well developed methodology is available when it comes to the selection of building materials and components based on performance requirements while this is not the case when it comes to the function of entire buildings. This is due to the fact that the performance of entire buildings is far more complex. The paper discusses the problems in assessment of life time serviceability of entire buildings, i.e. the ability of the entire building including materials, components, rooms etc, to function properly over the entire service life. It makes suggestions on how to account for the relationship between performance of materials and components, service life and long term serviceability and how performance and durability data may be used in assessment of long term serviceability. This is far from an easy task and in fact the paper should be considered as an invitation to discussion and to submit proposals on how the problems might be solved.In researching and preparing this paper it has seemed with an increasingly clarity that there is a case for adopting a performance scope approach in order to maximise upon the degree of freedom necessary in the early stages of the brief and design-concept if durability and serviceability of buildings is to be secured. In doing so permitting a fuller review of the building's own life cycle and, on a larger scale, the asset management of a building portfolio. The usefulness of a building, in terms of functional and economical performance, depends on its ability to support the primary activities of the owner organisation in adding value to their products and services. More specifically the building's configuration and space quality will need to respond to the way the activities are linked within the owners value chains and their associated embodied energy can fit within a broader base target set on a break down basis. Hot issues in the environmental agenda system, i.e. the life circuit of the building, its whole life costs and material life cycle appraisal may not fit comfortably in the current models for the building process and its project-management. Perhaps by using an integral performance approach in procurement this could change if only because the whole life or parts of the life can be embraced in the pre-briefing or briefing stages to suit.Life cycle assessment (LCA) permits a holistic design supply chain management methodology. However, its introduction requires a fundamental review of the design agenda and the client supplier interface. Life cycle assessment (LCA) should be seen in terms of the strategic domain of each supply chain that goes to make up a building and the extent design agenda which embraces and secures environmentally acceptable, serviceable and life balanced buildings. The new ISO 15686 "Guide for Service Life of Buildings" (in the course of preparation) will provide a basis to promote a client culture for a design practice that includes guidance on supply chain of the whole life cycle assessment and auditing. Connecting the principles of LCA in this standard, it is believed that all relevant stakeholders should develop design agendas that encourage a life resource management through a defined reference period.The time horizon in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) depends on the product being studied, and on the goal definition of the LCA. Service Life Prediction is the prediction of service life under specific conditions, as found in service life models or testing. The study reported in this paper was undertaken with the purpose to show how service life data are needed in LCA, how the data occur and how they influence the result. Wooden cladding and brick veneer are the external wall materials included in the study. There is a large variation in the environmental load, calculated from LCA, for the different scenarios. This study shows that in order to use LCA as a tool to evaluate the environmental quality of different products, it is important to assess the surroundings in which the materials are used, and the maintenance of the materials during use.The sustainable design of buildings and building components represents a complex problem and requires the examination of many variables across a number of disciplines. For contemporary building assets to be truly sustainable, they must be capable of being supplied at a positive rate whilst ensuring that resource stocks are not compromised. Moreover, their delivery and subsequent operation must not compromise the future quality of the environment. Such requirements impact all area's of future building design and delivery. Windows and proprietary glazing systems are principal components in the external envelope of contemporary office buildings. As such, an evaluation of the sustainability of window systems is considered to be of importance in gaining an improved understanding of the sustainable design of buildings as complete systems. The evaluation of windows and proprietary glazing systems must be undertaken on two fronts. First, it is necessary to undertake a detailed Life Cycle Assessment of window systems in order to identify optimum approaches for given circumstances. Building designers can subsequently introduce these optimum systems, given the known performance characteristics of other building elements, having confidence that the environmental impact that is associated with the specified windows is minimised having taken due consideration of the functional performance characteristics that are required. Second, it is necessary to understand how important optimising the window system is in relation to improving the overall sustainability of a complete building as it functions as a total system. This paper presents work undertaken to produce a detailed Life Cycle Assessment of window systems in offices and commercial buildings. Subsequently, a causal path model is proposed to understand the relative importance of window systems in determining the overall environmental performance of buildings in relation to other key building elements and sub-systems.The dominant life cycle model of building materials and components is a linear system, which ends in demolition and disposal. If however, the act of demolition is replaced with the act of disassembly, more materials and components can be reused and recycled. This suggests a different life cycle model, one that accommodates an increase in service life. To achieve extended service life designers must design buildings for disassembly to facilitate the new steps in the life cycle and encourage the reuse and recycling of materials and components. Experience gained in the industrial design field and knowledge from attempts at creating disassemblable buildings can be used to create a set of guidelines for design for disassembly. Such a set of guidelines could be implemented to extend service life and improve environmental sustainability.Initial development of the National Master Specification (NMS) of Canada began in the late 1960's to avoid duplication by the federal government departments involved in construction, Through collaboration with private sector specification writing organizations. this document is now national in scope and accepted as the primary master construction specification by the Canadian construction industry. Canadian federal government regulations required that all departments undertake proactive and verifiable steps towards sustainable development. Six areas were identified as having the greatest environmental impact, and therefore, the highest priorities in the "greening" process. The criteria used to determine the environmentally responsible choices that have been added to the NMS are based on consideration of life-cycle assessment and environmentally responsible design. The communication and awareness heightening methods used to assist in decision making, relative to the "greenness" of available options, are discussed in this paper. The paper details the action plan implemented to integrate sustainable development and durability principles and elaborates on the future application of the greened NMS in the construction practices specified by Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC).In the Netherlands, 14 million tons of demolition and construction wastes are produced every year, of which about 80 percent is recycled on a material level, as rubble used for road subbases. The government however, prefers product reuse above material-reuse or landfill and incineration. Yet, there is no tool which would allow a decision maker to make a considered choice for the most Eco-efficient end-of-life scenario for a building product. The end of life of a building is defined as the last phase of the lifecycle of a building and can be subdivided in the following stages: demolition/disassembly; transport; sorting, cleaning, repairing and storage of products and materials; landfill, incineration, material recycling and product reuse. These various options for the end of the life of a building are called End of Life Scenarios (ELS). Optimizing for the end of life of a building has its consequences for the design process. When an architect tries to design for a certain ELS, he must choose the appropriate products and optimize the connections between those products. Suppose, an architect wants to design a building that can easily be disassembled and that consists of building products most of which are suitable for reuse. Of course he does not want to reach this aim at any price. He seeks a balance between environmental profit and the life cycle costs of a design, the costs that have to be made for the end of life of a building. To handle this problem we will not concentrate on the whole building, but at components of the building: the building products. This research project aims to develop a tool to assess both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the end of life of a building product that effect the product's environmental impact and life cycle costs. This article describes product features that influence the end of life of a building product. A case study of an office building that has a very short lifetime of twenty years, designed for disassembly and recycling, illustrates the first results of this analyze tool.There is a genuine interest among enlightened building owners and roof system designers in adopting environmental objectives. In many countries a whole generation has grown up in a culture sympathetic and supportive to 'green' issues and many colleges and universities include environmental studies as part of their normal course work. The challenge facing the roofing industry and the CIBW.83/RILEM 166 RMS Committee, of which the authors are co-chairman is to translate this interest and good will into practical guidelines which will lead to improvements in the long term performance of roofs, within a given financial budget. Defining Sustainable Roofing as: "A roof system that is designed, constructed, maintained, rehabilitated and demolished with an emphasis throughout its life cycle on using natural resources efficiently and preserving the global environment," this paper addresses life cycle analysis issues across each step in the life of a product: from raw material extraction or processing, production, packaging, transportation, design, installation, service life, reuse, recover or tear-off, and its ultimate disposal and is illustrated in a cradle to grave model. Practical guidelines or 'tenets for sustainable roof systems' are developed and systemized under the basic principles of 'Minimizing the Burden on the Environment,' 'Conserving Energy,' and 'Extending Roof Lifespan.' These tenets are produced in a form that will be of practical everyday use for designers, suppliers, and contractors. Examples of sustainable roof design from around the world with optimal service life goats are given.In order to design for life a revised design and life care management procedural and decision framework needs to be developed upon building serviceability and the service life, not only to design for life but also to manage the designed service life through its life care plan. This would change the very nature and future of asset management. If such a practice was accepted, it would also place a new responsibility on those in charge of drawing up, or setting legal standards or regulatory controls, as well as those manufacturing building materials or components, or funding, insuring, procuring or maintaining buildings and above all the client and their design team. There would be then, the possibility of buildings and their constituent parts being designed and managed on their respective service lives and taken in and out of service, or disassembled or reused according to their serviceability and economic merits. Such practices would contribute to an extended building product life quality and life crafted and managed designs that could be under written as an insured life. In consequence, both design and service life methodologies need to be shaped to meet this new common but defined design service life practice. A change that will also include the service life and the life cycle assessment of the supply chains and building they will be located in. Adopting such an approach would also secure that whole life costed practice that would sit comfortably within the construct of the sustainable city. The new vivendi is intended to contribute to sustainable development and asset new vivendi is intended management as well.The burning of kerosene in jet turbines is investigated for two reference flights with a Boeing 747-400 and an Airbus A320-200, representing the typical Lufthansa planes for long and middle distance. The ecological evaluation is performed by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Formation of condensation trails, which is a specific environmental impact caused by air traffic, has to be considered in addition to established LCA impact categories. Based on the ecological assessment, an improvement assessment is performed. Environmental performance of diesel fuel during the combustion in car engines is analysed based on available publications. The relevant parameters for the environmental impact of the combustion of diesel (aromatics content, reduction of sulphur content, the reduction of the density and raising of the cetane number) are discussed with regard to improvements of the exhaust dualities of kerosene. A reduction of the aromatics content promises to improve the emission of soot which should be further investigated.Starting from an ecological perspective of urban-industrial areas, environmental accounting is used to analyse and to evaluate which environmental impacts are the result of communal activities (e.g. the results of different kinds of water supply systems). Therefore, the anthropogenic fluxes, the changing quality of areas as well as the processes between the environmental fields are taken into account. The approach is based on methodical elements of re Life Cycle Analysis and the Environmental Impact Assessment. Looking at the 'urban systems' within the communal activities, 'ecological modelling' gives us a new and fuller picture of the spatial and temporal character of urban metabolism. The approach supports the perception of cumulative effects and the postponement of environmental problems and opens new horizons for process-oriented environmental planning within the community. Greater efficiency and a decrease in costs can be arrived at by leaving 'end of the pipe' strategies; opportunities for a better planning process and measures for different individuals and organisations can be drawn up. A data base which acts as a 'support system' implements the computer-aided approach to environmental accounting.In this paper, the concept of Environmentally Conscious Ferroelectrics (abbr. as Ecoferroelectrics) is emphasized, the evaluation methodology of the preparation, processing, and applications of ferroelectrics on environmental load is proposed, the present researches on Ecoferroelectrics are outlined, and some aspects of future researches for Ecoferroelectrics are suggested.A sustainable society must meet the requirements for improved wealth as well as for closed material loops and minimised environmental impact. In new product development, functional requirements, economy and environmental considerations have to be balanced. Environmental adaptation means also a longer time scale, the entire product life cycle must be considered during design. Dematerialisation means that virtually all environmental impact could be considered dependent on direct and indirect mass flows. The total flow of materials in the eco-cycle must then be reduced, in relation to the service produced Radical changes, often expressed by the "factor 10", will be required. This is the real challenge in engineering. In this paper, environmental and utility indicators that could be used by designers are discussed. It is shown, that the dematerialisation concept has much in common with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).The aim of the present study was to develop effective instruments which permit the choice of materials and architecture of an industrial product to be optimized, while conferring a high degree of eco-compatibility on the product's life cycle by means of different types of recycling at the end of its operating life. Having introduced the principles of Life Cycle Analysis and outlined a design methodology which uses this instrument, it was possible to analytically define some Green Indicators considered particularly significant. Dependent on the recovery plan envisaged at the end of the product's life, these indicators are able to quantify the energy and emission content of the product as a function of the main design choices (materials and architecture). The indicators defined allow the architecture and the choice of materials to be optimized during the design phase, guaranteeing both a limited environmental impact fbr the product's entire life cycle and the recovery of resources by means of an efficient plan for recycling pa, ts and materials at the end of the product's life.Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is often too expensive in termsw of time that is required to carry out the analysis and in terms of the data required from a multitude of outside sources. Here it is shown that LCA data of assemblies, subassemblies, machine elements and other standard used parts and engineering materials can be represented in such a manner that subsequent LCA's on complex products can be carried out with a largely reduced effort and additional data acquisition. The method is based on analysing relationships (empirical and theoretical) between characteristics of the groups of assemblies and the life cycle inventory (LCI). The data is statistically analysed to test the significance of the relationships. The main feature of this method is the modelling of the life cycle inventory information as a function of the characteristics of the assembly. The LCI data can be then used as input data for the environmental impact analysis (EIA) according to existing methods(e.g. EDIP, EcoIndicator; etc.). The method is briefly illustrated with a case study on an electric moter.This paper describes a study on the environmental impact of a Bosch windshield wiper. The first part of the project consisted of comparing the windshield wiper with known ecodesign examples, in order to put red flags at apparently the most important environmental impacts of the product's life cycle (including production, use, and disposal). In a second part of the project a full life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on the windshield wiper in order to check the red flag assumptions of the first phase. These proved indeed to be environmentally important. The LCA was based, as much as possible, on on-sire measurements at the Bosch production plant. Finally, the results of the analysis have been used to formulate improvement options for the wiper.Environmental awareness in industry is nor longer focused on technological and economical aspects alone, and ecology is becoming a factor of growing importance at all stages of a product life cycle. To understand the ecological weak points in a life cycle of a product and to compare solutions to ensure the improvements in each stage of the life cycle a systematic method is needed to quantify all environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment performs the capability to quantify the environmental performance of a products. The output of LCAs, the ecoprofiles serve as a starting point for product and process improvements through scenario and weak point analysis. This paper will show the application of LCA to a telecommunication product (pager). In section one the methodology of LCA and some product information are shown. In section two details of the LCA project and findings are described, in the conclusion an outlook on most important needs to improve LCAs in electronics applications.Recent concern of people on global environment becomes much more serious. Therefore it is clear that no industry can be unconcern for their products' environmental impact The authors composed "Life-Cycle Design Check Sheet" for ceramic tiles and sanitary wares which focus on 6 environmental assessment factors; Product concept, Material composition, Durability, Recyclability, Packaging and LCA(Life-Cycle Analysis). With this sheer our conventional products such as ceramic tiles, sanitary wares, and pre-fabricated bathroom modules are evaluated. The results show ceramic tiles are excellent in Material composition, but poor in Recyclability and Durability. In contrast, sanitary wares are superior in Recyclability but poor in Material. The checksheet has already applied to newly coming EcoDesign-ed products. Septic tank requires less parts variation, Toilets' sophisticated material composition reduced LCCO2 emission, and Bathrooms consume lower energy and water in actual use. The checksheet is now expected to invite our EcoDesign-ed products to next step in ceramic industry.Ecomaterials research states in China were reviewed in this paper It involves the improvements in the following five fields: (1) Basic research on ecomaterials (2) Life-cycle assessment of materials and products (3) Ecodesign-materials and products (4) Recycling and reuse of industrial solid wastes (5) Materials for ameliorating environment.This study develops the ecodesign strategy on product research and development according to the concept of product life-cycle design. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model in this study is used to develop the design strategy for achieving the best environmental efficiency from the products. Furthermore, the development direction of green product decided by assessment model can forward the goal of green design within the company. This study searches a life cycle assessment model for submitting the improved methods on environmental impact from products when processing green product analysis by designers. The methodology and procedures for developing the design strategy of green products under life-cycle assessment model is the concept of structured system analysis. The study applies the Material cycle, Energy use, Toxic emissions assessment matrix (MET) and the checking list of green design for the LCA analytical tools. In addition it uses the Ecodesign Strategy Wheel (ESW) to develop the possible design solution and then establishes the ecodesign strategy of green products, The result of study helps designers to understand the improved degree on environmental protection from products. In conclusion, the application of case study appears that the company, has achieved the green design of notebook computer through the application of ecodesign strategy based on LCA.Many life cycle assessments are performed on existing products. However, it is of more interest to take environmental considerations into account when designing new products. With environmental aspects involved from the very beginning the number of uncertainties becomes overwhelming. To deal with this initial lack of product specification data (you have to 'design' those), the LCA-procedure is divided into steps, which are integrated into the design method. The life cycle oriented design procedure consists of a goal and procedure definition phase, generation and selection of alternatives (with the aid of an adjusted life cycle assessment) and, finally, the complete design and LCA phase. There are also some suggestions on how to take exergy use into consideration during this design procedure.A new 'bottom-up' approach to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which addresses industry needs is discussed. The current stare of knowledge in the LCA field has recently been assessed within the broader sphere of sustainable development and problems have been identified. In order for industry to take responsibility for its environmental impacts it requires an environmental management toolbox which can be implemented to assess operations and production processes. LCA is a powerful evaluative tool that has the potential to aid industry in their environmental assessment strategy. Current LCA methodologies however are complex and their generic nature focus on 'up-stream' decision making. This paper discusses one way to address inherent LCA problems and to thereby aid the implementation process in industry. This approach has evolved out of an architectural design philosophy, addressing issues at a sustainable community, level. The 'bottom-up' approach to LCA accepts the argument that local impacts lend to global implications and focuses on giving industry the ability to implement small-scale positive changes. The authors are using the Australian Plywood industry to test this approach and the paper discusses the findings to date.The Copenhagen Metro is expected to start operation in the year 2001. Building a fast, high frequency, automated metro in the capital of Denmark, means reducing air pollution and local noise due to transport. Ecobilan Italy, for its experience and skill in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, was appointed by the main contractor of the project, Ansaldo trasporti, to implement an Environment Management System (EMS). Besides the traditional EMS, Ecobilan developed an innovative approach, basing the EMS on an a-priori Life Cycle Assessment and including major elements from the Design For Environment methodology. As soon as the design phase, all relevant elements and sub-elements of the life cycle of a metro system have been assessed. All the stages of the life cycle have been taken into account, from the extraction of raw materials to end of life aspects, including transportation, construction and maintenance phases. A close co-operation was sought after between the partners of the project: Ecobilan Italy (as the environment project manager), the main contractor and the subcontractors. This co-operation ensured the gathering and circulation of information between the partners in order to lead preventive actions and to minimise environmental impacts. An a-priori ecobalance has been performed based on the information collected. Towards this end the Ecobilan Group's LCA software TEAM(TM) has been used. This powerful software tool includes a comprehensive database and is able to simulate different scenarios and to calculate their effects on the environment. It has also been a continuous commitment to achieve conformity with local, European and international environmental regulations. One main aspect of the EMS approach discussed in this paper is the a-priori impact evaluation. This innovative measure became necessary since the Metro is still at the stage of a project. Plants or installations do not exist yet. This paper will also stress on the elements of Design for the Environment (DFE) included in the EMS methodology. The DFE approach allowed to improve the environmental profile by considering environmental constraints as early as the design phase. The consideration of the working environment is also part of the new approach chosen by Ecobilan. It required extensive cross-checking between plural European legislation. In the end the paper underlines the relationship between the project partners. The constructive co-operation has lead to the setting up of a real team geared toward the implementation of an environment-friendly project.Under constant pressure through both national and EC-wide regulations as well as increased consumer awareness industry has become more and more concerned with improving the environmental profiles of its products. Namely the end-of-life aspects have recently been pushed into the center of interest. Trying to minimize recycling and disposal cost and to increase potential revalorisation? profits, companies strive to integrate environmental constraints early in the design phase. This paper describes how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Design for the Environment (DFE) respectively contribute towards the objective of improved environmental profiles of products and especially their end-of-life handling.This paper starts with a discussion of the importance of environmental demands in the early design process and the demands on an efficient DfE-tool for small and medium sized enterprises. It continues with a presentation of two quite common DfE-methods, Life Cycle Assessment and Checklists/Guidelines. This presentation is followed by a presentation of a new DfE-method named E-FMEA, previously presented by Nilsson et al [I]. The paper presents and discusses advantages and disadvantages of these three methods. For the E-FMEA method we also present some results from case studies. In "Discussion and conclusions" a figure is presented in an attempt to show where the three above described DfE-methods are most fruitful to use. Finally we present some ideas of further reseach on the E-FMEA-method.With the changes of life style, the sales volume of multimedia computer keeps growing quickly in recent years. Like other electric products, the multimedia computers are assembled by many pieces of materials and have short usage periods, which would result in heavy environmental load To reduce the environment burden effectively, the characteristics of life cycle design should be taken into account at the first beginning of product design. The purpose of this study is to investigate the environmental impact from multimedia computers by the analysis of LCA (life cycle assessment) and to establish the checking guidelines for designers in the process of product development After a checking assessment list is formed, an applied example is followed to support the result finally This paper is based on analytical and research concept to develop:apply and assess the whole model of recycling materials. In the beginning of the research, foreign and domestic literature review relating with green design, were made. Then the research flow & environmental assessment tools are assured and thereafter the screened design principle and checking list ave produced Meanwhile, the example of multimedia computer's development is applied to explain that how to reduce the environmental load and damage during the process of development Marched with the opinions of scholars, experts and users, the example is utilized to evaluate and to approve the effectiveness of this assessment model under this study.As a complement to life cycle assessment various environmental screening models have been developed. The screening parameter discussed in this paper addresses the toxicity of materials in electronic products. Obviously the material content of electronic assemblies is also needed for all other methods which distinguish down to the technology level and therefore serves as a starting point for more detailed environmental investigations. The modern packaging and interconnection technologies are driving forces behind the miniaturization of electronics in general and are used as parameters for a trend analysis of tomorrows electronics.An environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of a specific tomato ketchup was carried out. The objectives of the work were to illustrate how LCA can be used in production development; to investigate the influence of the geographical location of certain processes, and to find ways to improve the product's environmental performance. In the screening LCA which includes the whole life cycle, the packaging and processing sub-systems were found to be significant in the total environmental impact made by ketchup. Accordingly, six alternative systems, including packaging, processing and transportation, were modelled and simulated The environmental impact categories included were energy use, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, photo-oxidant formation and the generation of radioactive waste. It was concluded that the current geographical location of the production of ketchup is preferable; the contributions to acidification can be reduced significantly; and the environmental profile of the product can be improved for either the type of tomato paste currently used or a less concentrated tomato paste. A shift to a less concentrated paste would also mean that traditional quality parameters of the ketchup could be improved. (C) 1999 Academic Press.When analyzing the waste paper cycle, we use a systems analytical approach. In contrast to the most common methods used in life cycle analyses, no allocation methods are needed for allocating different effects. The use of such methods always introduces great uncertainty about how to interpret the result. Our conclusion is that a systems analytical approach is to be preferred. Examples will be presented of differences between the two approaches.CO2 separation and storage system is one of several ways proposed to mitigate the greenhouse effect gases, particularly CO2. We evaluated CO2 separation and storage system - generation, CO2 separation, liquefaction, and storage- using life-cycle analysis. Emission from all life-cycle stages - from mining coal to CO2 storage in the ocean - are calculated. Energy consumption occurred in operation of facility, and using much energy leads CO2 emission. Nevertheless, this system is still the technology with low CO2 emission and high power generations, and thus it might be thus a promising option as one of CO2 mitigation technologies.The paper summarises the results for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions obtained within the Swiss studies on environmental inventories of current and future energy systems for the generation of electricity and heat in Western Europe. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied. Full energy chains have been considered to allow a fair comparison of energy systems and of different future supply alternatives. The results of these comparisons are intended as a support for energy policy decisions in Switzerland. In addition, LCA provides insights on the contributions from individual stages of energy chains thus allowing the identification of priorities for emission reduction policies or the selection of alternative processes within specific system. Generally, future systems will exhibit improved energy conversion. With the considerable improvements in fossil power plant technologies, the relative importance of other activities in the energy chains for the total environmental burdens will increase. Therefore, in the case of all analysed future energy systems the overall emissions of GHGs are significantly reduced in the absolute sense (e.g. 30-50% in comparison with the corresponding present average for fossil systems in Western Europe). The trend for modem cogeneration systems points to increasing electricity efficiency with simultaneous preservation of high overall efficiency. These developments are in turn reflected in the comparative assessment of representative energy mix options for future energy strategies for Switzerland.Global transport demand is expected to increase due to the combined influences of population growth and economic development. To ensure that CO2 - neutral fuels can provide for an increasing fraction of this demand, both demand side measures and advances in Vehicle technology are required. Specific fuel consumption may be lowered by decreasing the energy demand at the wheel (lighter vehicles with lower air and rolling resistance), by using highly efficient converters such as fuel cells, and by advanced systems design that allows for the recuperation of braking energy. Low temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cells combined with regenerative electricity storage in supercapacitors represent a particularly promising option, as they combine an attractive cruising range with ultra-low emissions. A future sustainable transport technology must be based on renewable fuel supplies. Distribution infrastructure is a key issue in the introduction of synthetic fuels from renewables. Waste biomass and solar energy may be used for the CO2 - neutral production of gases with high calorific value (synthesis gas, hydrogen). Synthesis gas from biomass gasification may be combined with hydrogen from renewable sources (hydroelectric power, solar electricity) to produce methanol as a carbon dioxide neutral, renewable fuel. The potential of solar chemistry for the production of solar fuels is described. Life cycle analysis is the appropriate tool to choose among the many possible energy chains (from primary energy to propulsion energy). These issues will be analysed with a view to assessing CO2 mitigation options in the transportation sector.We describe a decision-analytical, structured approach for developing environmental indexes, ensuring them to be explicit and problem-specific. The indexes are used for setting and communicating targets related to a product's environmental performance. Two index models are the fixed model, based on the prevailing tradition, where announced targets must be met in every impact category, and the flexible model, where impacts are aggregated and a target is announced in terms of the aggregated impact, thus enabling trade-offs between the impacts. The flexible model is a new and promising approach, which offers more freedom to reach the target even though more preference information must be modelled. We stress the different viewpoints of those using the index for target setting and of those whose products are evaluated with the index. We do this by differentiating between impacts and stressors and expressing the targets in terms of both. We illustrate the approaches with a hypothetical environmental labelling example.This paper presents an overview of the emerging field of predictive engineering. This is an integrated approach to life-cycle analysis, system monitoring, and management and usable-life prediction that is built on life assessment methodologies, measurements, data analysis and the application of predictive models applied to critical structures and systems. The science and technology that is now becoming predictive engineering has been developing over a period of nearly 30 years. Research is currently in progress to develop predictive engineering for application to critical defense infrastructure and systems, including units in the national conventional munitions stockpile, and to extend its application to elements in the critical national infrastructure.Minimising the environmental impact of a process is an important objective for plant design engineers. It is a goal, however, which is closely linked to the flowsheet structure and, therefore, must be considered at the conceptual stage of the design process. At the same time, economic criteria are important for the selection of good designs. Frequently, these goals may result in conflicting designs and compromises are required. In this paper, we describe a multiobjective process synthesis methodology, for the early stages of design, which can help the design engineer to identify such compromises. The algorithm is particularly suitable for bioprocess synthesis and is demonstrated and evaluated by applying it to a penicillin manufacturing process. The objective criteria considered include capital and operating costs, revenue generated, and two environmental metrics: the sustainable process index and life cycle analysis. The results show that the synthesis technique provides insight into the effect of different processing technologies and their interconnections on the multiple criteria. For this case study, the procedure is able to identify a set of flowsheets which satisfy both environmental and economic objectives demonstrating that a multicriteria synthesis tool can be invaluable for design with multiple objectives.Alcatel SSD Antwerp (Belgium) has an "ecodesign toolkit" available, in order to reduce the overall environmental impacts of its telecommunications products. This toolkit contains three basic types of "tools": qualitative (guidelines and checklists), semi-quantitative (metrics) and quantitative (LCA based approaches). This paper will specifically focus on product related metrics, which indicate how well a product meets the requirements which are part of the ecodesign guidelines and checklist. This allows product designers to calculate a single value (expressed in environmental penalty points) which indicates the environmental performance of a specific product layout. In addition, the metrics reveals the key issues where environmental product improvements can be achieved. In this paper, the metrics approach is described and compared to two life cycle oriented approaches: life cycle assessment (LCA) and an eco-design analysis using software tool for quick eco-design assessments. The subject of this comparative assessment was a fan unit, a sub-assembly of a telecommunication broadband switching rack.The aim of this study is to estimate the total amount of materials used in the Telecom Italia telephone exchange (TE) equipment operating in the fixed network in Italy, in order to assess their environmental; impact, to improve their end of life (EOL) management and to obtain information for the Telecom Italia Environmental Report. Two systems, having different logical gates number (LGIU), were analyzed. Three representative types of electronic printed mires boards (PWB), used in this electronic equipment, were analyzed in details and a mass balance of all the mounted electronic components was done. The results of the inventory allowed us to evaluate the total amount of the materials for all electronic equipment of the same manufacturer. The inventory data were used in an environmental software based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and for the first time the relationship between environmental impact and the LGN is presented. Finally it was possible to indicate some EOL management improvements.This paper summarizes the findings of a lifecycle impact assessment study consistent with the ISO 14041/ISO 14042 DIS standards. This study involved teams from key suppliers and telecom partners and describes the telecommunications systems in two cities: Stockholm, Sweden and Sacramento, CA, USA. The study is the first application of a system-life-cycle impact assessment (S-LCIA) in the telecom industry and uses the Life-Cycle Stressor-Effects Assessment (LCSEA) Methodology, A major goal of the study to provide a baseline impact profile of environmental impacts of the telecom system across the Lifecycle. This S-LCIA baseline is a necessary precursor to evaluate the environmental implications of the use and growth of telecommunications and to develop possible environmental improvement strategies such as supply-chain management initiatives and applications of telecommuting and alternative work arrangements. The system wide assessment produced impact profiles for each city at three levels: system intrastructural operation, equipment manufacturing and full system including peripherals. Selected findings from this study are presented in this paper.Assessment integration becomes more and more important as companies must handle increasingly complex issues. Traditionally, cost management, environmental management and design have been separated. Here, we present a assessment system that gives decision support with respect to both management and design; costs and environmental impact. The system is implemented based on the Activity-Based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. Activity-Based LCA is an extension of Activity-Based Costing as it handles costs, energy consumption and waste generation under the presence of uncertainty. In this paper we discuss how an Activity-Based LCA system has been implemented in two very different situations and the associated results. We believe that Activity-Based LCA would provide the electronics industry similar decision support that it gave in the two case studies presented here.Global warming, depletion of stratospheric ozone, acid rain, loss of species diversity, and other environmental impacts can be traced, at least in part, to man's industrial activities. Resulting business and social pressures have caused the design and engineering communities to begin systematically integrating environmental issues into the design process; an activity referred to as Design for the Environment (DfE). Environmental Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) matrices may be used as a template for establishing a DfE framework that can be tailored to a specific program or project and can be applied to processes, products or facilities. By using a team-based approach to identify significant environmental aspects, the design personnel are in a position to build checklists, guidelines and other DfE tools based on a life-cycle analysis. The matrix approach can be used to support the environmental aspects analysis of ISO 14001.Life-Cycle assessment (LCA) is used to improve the environmental performance of products over their entire life, and LCA methods are in a constant state of evolution, A quantitative model for product analysis has been developed at Carnegie Mellon. The model is based on economic input-output life-cycle analysis (EIO-LCA), a tool that allows a user to quantify direct and indirect relationships among industry sectors and associated environmental burdens during the manufacturing stage of a product. However, to study environmental effects over a product's entire life, use and end-of-life impacts must also be quantified. This paper presents a hybrid LCA approach to product environmental assessment in which both EIO-LCA and a conventional LCA approach are applied to comparing the total environmental impacts of primary and rechargeable batteries. We find that through the manufacturing stage, the environmental impact of primary batteries is greater than;that of storage batteries. Resource use and associated impacts after manufacturing can be partially quantified at present.This paper deals with the the combined environmental and economic rating of products with the help of the tools (Environmental) Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCC Analysis). Their application will be shown with the comparison of bodyshells made of aluminium, steel and stainless steel for ICE, double-deck and rapid-transit passenger cars of the Deutsche Bahn AG. Especially because of the extensive consideration of manufacture, operation, maintenance and disposal, that means the entire life-cycle, a reliable rating of products is possible.There have been a lot of changes in the railway business due to privatisation. New definitions of regulations for system acceptance, harmonisation of European standardisation as well as innovations within material, processes and information technology are calling for a progressive way of cooperation with operators, maintenance organizations, and the supply industry. The quality of cooperation with suppliers and Deutsche Bahn made great strides concerning the aspects of life cycle cost optimisation and assessment of operational reliability with regard to the large orders of ICE and ICT trains. The main goal was to fulfill the safety and availability targets. Last year the research project "Bahnkreis" started a common approach in dealing with ecological effects and impacts of railways. The project working group will establish a common understanding for the handling of the life cycle assessment methodology (LCA) in the field of railway applications. Some examples of current improvements will be presented.Direct environmental considerations have led to the removal of chlorine from refrigerant gases. The objective of this paper is to describe a methodology employed to investigate the sustainable development of a domestic refrigerator influenced by this design constraint. This is ensured by concurrently addressing the indirect environmental effects taken from a product life cycle viewpoint. The parameters considered in this study are compressor wear, friction and the energy consumed in the use phase working with different HFC-134a/lubricant combinations. A life cycle assessment scenario is employed to assess the indirect environmental effects of these three parameters.The objective fixed by the European Commission in 1995 was that 5 % of the fuel used for transport in France should be produced from renewable energy by 2005. As opposed to some other European countries, there is no environmental fax on fossil fuels in France, but the Government has agreed to a tar incentive system on biofuels. Experimental work on liquid biofuels as a transport fuel started in France in the early 80's, but the use of biofuels on a commercial basis really started to develop,chen the setaside rules and tar incentives came into force in 1991. Out of the two routes originally considered for development : bioethanol and ifs ETBE derivative, and vegetable oils and their methyl ester derivatives, priority has now been given to. ETBE produced from sugar beet and wheat and now from sub-products of starch industry, which are widely grown in France; ETBE is blended with gasoline for use in spark ignition engines. Production of wheat and beet for energy purposes is very similar to food production. In France, ethanol produced from sugar beet is a traditional industry; this was the first route to be developed. The results of a life cycle analysis made for ETBE produced from sugar beet will be given, showing advantages and limitations. Alcohol produced from wheat is a more recent activity; two industrial plants have been built since beginning of the 90's and other projects are planned like for example a production from starch industry. RME (rapeseed methyl ester)for use in diesel engines at various blend rates. Vegetable oils or their derivatives such as esters can be used directly in diesel engines. Pure, filtered and degummed oils can be used in pre-chamber engines. Relatively advanced knowledge has now been gained about esters; because their characteristics are very similar to those of conventional diesel fuel, they are considered suitable for use in direct injection diesel engines without engine modification. In France, methyl ester is at present produced mainly from rapeseed; the results of the first life cycle analysis on RME (1991-93) will be summarised. Sunflower ester has been undergoing evaluation since 1995. Rape methyl ester is now widely commercialised (about 300 000 t/year); unesterified oil is still undergoing experimental work. A wide-scale advanced laboratory and field test programme was launched by ADEME in the early 90's, on the use of RME in engines. IFP (French Petroleum Institute) was the co-ordinator of this experimental programme which included * Laboratory measurements and engine tests with RME; * Field tests on captive vehicles or fleets (with different blends of RME); * Field tests with a 5% RME blend with diesel fuel. The major conclusion is that a 5% RME blend in diesel fuel does not cause any damage to the engines (running and engine wear) it improves the diesel fuel lubricity when mixed with a low sulphur content fuel. The French government has now authorised the unpublicized use of 5% RME in diesel fuel and domestic fuel. The use of higher blend rates is also authorised on a case-by-case basis. The French "clean air act" which came into force on 31/12/96, encourages the use of oxygenated compounds. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Recycling is very important for the global environment, however, it is very difficult to determine its quantitative impact. Generally speaking, a life cycle assessment is currently the most popular and typical method to solve it. Exergy is very important when considering the global environmental impact. All of our activities have been developed to obtain a high exergy material and/or energy and throw away the waste and/or waste heat. We are trying to use exergy to estimate the quantity of energy and matter for resource accounting. The environmental assessment of plastic recycling was possible using this method and the exergy reduction of the entire system was estimated by the yield of matter and the process efficiency.Life Cycle Assessment has been used to study the environmental impact of mobile hydraulic systems using both mineral and rapeseed 'hydraulic' oils. Rapeseed oil is far more readily biodegradable than mineral oil. It is for this reason that it has become popular for use in situations where a spill could cause significant environmental damage, for example, within forested areas. The case of a forest harvester has been studied in order to evaluate the whole life cycle impact of these alternative fluids, including their refining, field use and disposal. It is found that the production of rapeseed oil has a greater impact in relation to many environmental issues than the production of refined mineral oil. This is largely due to the energy required in the crushing stage of the oil's production. Rapeseed oil deteriorates more rapidly than mineral oil and so a larger quantity is required over the lifetime of the fluid power system. This means that the impacts associated with the production of the rapeseed oil is exacerbated when viewed over its life-cycle. The contribution to environmental issues for both oils has been assessed and it is found that there is a larger impact attributable to the rapeseed-based oil in respect to all the global and regional issues examined.Life cycle of a control valve is one of the longest in process industry. In this paper, we discuss how life cycle performance and costs can be optimized with the help of new Life Cycle Management (LCM) concept. A new Life Cycle Management (LCM) software has been designed. It can manage and analyzes all the information from control valve selection to the end of the life cycle. An analyzing tool helps to make maintenance decisions. Sizing and selection information are saved to a database. Also, valve performance is recorded before the delivery of the control valve to end users. Later, condition and control performance of an installed valve can be checked periodically. This service is called Control Valve Survey. It consists of performance analysis of the control valve and the control loop. Smart valve controllers have their own testing capability. Conventional valves can be tested with a portable testing system. All the test data is transferred to LCM database. Maintenance actions are based on visual inspection, test result and life cycle analysis. LCM analyzing tool helps to make correct and profitable maintenance investments. Decisions are based on real data. LCM database saves also the maintenance history and recommendations for next service.An approved method for the assessment of environmental advantages of alternative components is the Life Cycle Assessment. BMW applies this instrument in the vehicle development process. Within the framework of a Screening Life Cycle Assessment this paper will examine whether the higher ecological burdens for production of an aluminium body in white in comparison with a steel b.i.w, of an efficient powered compact car can be more than compensated by savings achieved during usage and recycling. The total result is significantly dependent upon the savings of fuel, realized through light weight design. Al the first analytical stage fuel reduction coefficients are derived. They range from 0,35 to 0.48 l/(100 kg 100 km) for gasoline and from 0.29 to 0,33 l/(100 kg . 100 km) for diesel powered middle and upper class cars. On the basis of these values fuel reduction coefficients between 0,19 and 0,26 l/100 kg x 100 km) can be estimated for a 3,3-Litre-Car with a steel b.i.w. (weight 884 kg). The result of the Life Cycle Assessment makes it clear that despite the lower fuel consumption the aluminium b.i.w. scenarios can show disadvantages in comparison with the equivalent steel b.i.w, in the environmental categories of Energy Demand, Global Warming Potential and Resource Depletion. Using energy-intensive light weight materials for compact class vehicles raises the risk of a disadvantageous shift of the environmental burdens in to the production phase as a consequence of the reduced fuel saving and the limited life time mileage.Many Romanian industrial plants and technologies are either old and inefficient or not well operated. They need to be modernized through process modification; by increases in the efficiency of equipment, operation and maintenance procedures; or by undergoing complete technological change. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technical tool to use to identify and evaluate opportunities to reduce the environmental effects associated with a specific product, production process, package, or activity. It has three separate but interrelated components: inventory analysis, impact analysis and improvement analysis. Implementation of opportunities pointed out in the third stage of LCA can be made using pollution prevention techniques. The paper presents characteristics of the iron and steel industry, a case study of an LCA in a Romanian iron and steel plant, and some resultant pollution prevention measures for the studied system.Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been developed primarily as a tool for product development and comparison, it has much wider scope. This paper addresses the application of LCA to the selection, design and optimisation of process operations, with examples from the chemical, water and mining sectors. Of particular interest is the problem of reconciling incommensurable environmental impacts - known as the "valuation" problem - in LCA. For optimisation problems, rather than attempting to reduce impacts to a single metric constituting the objective function, the non-inferior (or "Pareto") surface can be used to define the space within which optimal solutions lie, and thus to provide the basis for implementing environmental improvements in process design and operation.Phosphorus is the nutrient that most often limits growth in freshwater systems. A major part of the Black Sea is critically eutrophic, because there has been an enormous increase in the nutrient load to the Sea in the past 25 years, probably as a consequence of the widespread use of phosphate detergents and fertilisers in the Danube Basin. The removal of P from detergents is the fastest way to reduce P-discharge into surface water; however all appropriate steps should be taken to encourage industries to develop phosphate substitutes that are harmless to the environment. A simplified LCA study was completed in the frame of the EU PHARE Project on Removal of Phosphate from Detergents in the Danube Basin Countries (Detergent Project). A consortium consisting of SENATOR Consult Ltd. and VITUKI Consult Rt. (Hungary), RIIDHE (Research Institute for Irrigation, Drainage and Hydraulic Engineering, Bulgaria) and WRI (Water Research Institute, Slovakia) was formed specifically for the purposes of this project. In addition to the consortium, experts from the EU member countries and local organisations and experts from the Danube Basin countries worked on the project. The Detergent Project was funded by the PHARE Programme of the Commission of the European Union on the advice of the Danube Programme Coordination Unit, Vienna. However, the findings, interpretation and conclusions expressed in this paper should not be attributed in any manner to the Commission of the European Union, to the Danube Programme Go-ordination Unit, or to the countries they represent. The overall objective of the Detergent Project was to support the riparian countries in the Danube Basin to eliminate phosphorous from detergents as soon as technically possible and economically and environmentally justified. The study aimed at providing support for the preparation of integrated, coherent detergent-policy and strategy in the Danube Basin and for the integration of LCA with other tools into processes that aid water quality decision-making, combining environmental life cycle thinking with economic and social decision-making criteria. The countries studied were Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Moldavia and Bulgaria. According to the objectives of the Detergent Project, those criteria have to be developed for detergents which lead to a reduced environmental impact during their entire life cycle. The criteria were based on the results of a simplified LCA approach. It is apparent that the criteria are of different importance and should be of different weight in the final scoring result. The results of the environmental impact studies confirmed that the emissions to waste water/water are the most important ones. Whereas the packaging of the detergents is dealing with an impact to soil (dumping sites), air (combustion of packaging waste) and recycling management, the detergent ingredients are solely related to an impact an waste water/water. It is a result of the current discussion in LCA for laundry detergents that the impact and effects an different environmental compartments should be assessed separately but can be combined to a final result by appropriate assessments. All the environmental loadings that occur during the life-cycle of detergents have to be studied.The term 'green' is nowadays widely used (and misused) in connection with many types of technologies. If a technology is 'green' it usually means that the technology requires less non-renewable energy sources than other alternatives. However, other parameters need to be considered as well, such as sustainability, recycling potential, treatment capacity and potential, conservation of ecosystems, etc. In this paper the energy requirements and nutrient recycling potential of constructed wetlands and wastewater aquaculture facilities are compared with that of conventional wastewater treatment technologies. The energy requirements of constructed wetlands are very low, but if significant reuse of nutrients is included (aquaculture), the energy requirements increase significantly and usually beyond the energy equivalent of the biomass produced. This is especially true in cold temperate climates where the aquaculture systems need to be housed in heated greenhouses and artificial light must be provided to secure operation throughout the year. In countries where fresh water itself is a limiting resource and where the economic capability may limit the use of artificial fertilisers, the reuse potential of wastewater may be more important. The potential for sustainable cropping of the plant biomass is excellent in tropical wetlands as the plants have a high productivity and a continuous growing season. In order to evaluate in more detail the 'greenness' of the different wastewater treatment technologies, the life-cycle approach might be applied. However, because constructed wetlands, besides the water quality improvement function, perform a multitude of other functions such as biodiversity, habitat, climatic, hydrological and public use functions, methodologies need to be developed to evaluate these functions and to weigh them in relation to the water quality issues. (C) 1999 IAWQ Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In The Netherlands a research project is presently conducted, which has the objective to identify new, more sustainable sewage treatment scenarios which are based on physical-chemical pretreatment. After collecting possible treatment scenarios by means of literature research and contacts with international experts the identified scenarios are evaluated on sustainability and costs. For evaluating the sustainability, the following sustainability criteria (derived from the Life Cycle Assessment methodology) are used: energy balance, final sludge production, effluent quality. the use of chemicals and space requirement (footprint), Within this paper the use of these criteria is illustrated and discussed by means of two example scenarios and a reference scenario. The calculation results for the two example scenario's show that physical-chemical pretreatment leads to energy saving when biological post treatment is applied. Besides, more energy can be generated through sludge digestion, due to an increased sludge production. However, the increased particle removal also leads to an increased final sludge production after digestion which will have to be disposed of and to a relatively high consumption of chemicals, (C) 1999 IAWQ Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.When attempting to assess the relative sustainability of a process or practice, it is important to be able to use measures which are appropriate. Sustainability can be viewed at different levels. At one level for any given process, the closing of cycles in terms of resource use and outputs (products and waste) may be an aspiration, and make that process in itself sustainable. However, the process may be intrinsically unsustainable when considered within a broader context accounting for all of the economic, ecological and socio-political implications. Traditionally sustainable indicators have been used as a measure to assess increasing or decreasing sustainability, following detailed analyses to define what the appropriate indicators should be. A current UK project investigating the options for the most sustainable means of disposal of domestic sanitary wastes requires measures to assist in the evaluation of the options. This paper reviews the use of indicators in the context of the current project and municipal water systems, and illustrates how an integrated approach may be envisaged incorporating economics, life cycle analysis and risk assessment as part of a framework to assist decision makers when deciding whether changes to systems or practices are likely to be more or less sustainable. A major conclusion is that any moves to introduce sustainable systems can only be made in conjunction with the system users - the public, who must be involved in the formulation of any new practices which require a change in lifestyle. (C) 1999 IAWQ Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the preliminary results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study which aims to compare two different potable water pipe materials: ductile iron (DI) and medium density polyethylene (MDPE). Stages where environmental impacts may be reduced in the life cycle of these pipes have been highlighted. A takeback scheme between water companies and pipe suppliers has been identified as an environmental improvement to the current disposal stage of the pipe life cycle. Potential exists for dual-use or reuse of abandoned mains. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of the IAWQ. All rights reserved. Starting from an ecological perspective of urban-industrial areas, environmental accounting is used to analyse and to evaluate which environmental impacts are the result of communal activities (e.g. the results of different kinds of water supply systems). Therefore, the anthropogenic fluxes, the changing quality of areas as well as the processes between the environmental fields are taken into account. The approach is based on methodical elements of re Life Cycle Analysis and the Environmental Impact Assessment. Looking at the 'urban systems' within the communal activities, 'ecological modelling' gives us a new and fuller picture of the spatial and temporal character of urban metabolism. The approach supports the perception of cumulative effects and the postponement of environmental problems and opens new horizons for process-oriented environmental planning within the community. Greater efficiency and a decrease in costs can be arrived at by leaving 'end of the pipe' strategies; opportunities for a better planning process and measures for different individuals and organisations can be drawn up. A data base which acts as a 'support system' implements the computer-aided approach to environmental accounting.

 As part of the Cooperative Research Project 389 ACACIA (Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa), investigations were carried out in the Great Sand Sea of Egypt in spring 1996. Along 450 km of a selected dune ridge, 24 cross-sections reveal both a south-north change in modern and palaeo-processes and a change in palaeo-climate. The southern longitudinal draa (megadunes) were modelled by strong Pleistocene trade winds from sands most probably derived from weathered native sandstone, and were stabilized during an Early Holocene humid phase. Following aridisation, aeolian sands - probably in the form of barchan dunes - migrated some tens of kilometers farther south. The unique northern megadunes are probably transverse draa modelled during the Pleistocene by dry(!) extra-tropical westerlies. As a result of the aridisation following the humid phase, all of the draa sands, as opposed to the dune sands, are saline. The modem dunes (silk type), sitting between the draa in the north and on top of the draa in the south, reflect the bimodal wind system with a main component shifting from strong westerlies in the north to northern winds in the south. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Pacific Salmon are anadromous fish that cross state and international boundaries in their oceanic migrations. Fish spawned in the rivers of one jurisdiction are vulnerable to harvest in other jurisdictions. The rocky history of attempts by the United States and Canada to cooperatively manage their respective salmon harvests suggests that such shared resources may present difficult challenges for effective adaptation to climate change. On June 30, 1999, the two nations signed an agreement which, if successfully implemented, may end several years of rancorous conflict. For the previous six years, they had been unable to agree on a full set of salmon "fishing regimes" under the terms of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. This conflict was sparked by strongly divergent trends in the abundance of northern and southern salmon stocks, and a consequent change in the balance of each nation's interceptions of salmon spawned in the other nation's rivers. The trends are attributable, in part, to the effects of large-scale climatic fluctuations. This case demonstrates that it may not be a simple matter to respond effectively to a climate change. Adaptation is difficult when a resource is exploited by multiple competing users who possess incomplete information. If, in addition, their incentives to cooperate are disrupted by the impacts of the climatic variation, dysfunctional breakdowns in management rather than efficient adaptation may ensue. Institutional factors will determine the extent to which the management of such resources can adapt effectively to climate variability or long-term climate change.The usefulness of adaptation strategies to changing climate depends on the characteristics of the system that must adapt. Divergent views on whether climate change will seriously affect society and what society can do about it can be traced, in part, to divergent views on these characteristics of systems. Issues of scale and how impacts are measured are also important. We identify a set of fundamental characteristics of natural systems and social systems that help to make underlying assumptions in climate change adaptation studies explicit. These are: Short-run autonomous flexibility; short-run non-autonomous flexibility; knowledge and capacity to undertake short-run actions; long-run autonomous flexibility; long-run non-autonomous flexibility; and knowledge and capacity to plan for and undertake adaptations that require changes in long-lived assets. Applications to crop agriculture and ecosystems illustrate how these portraits can be used. We find that if empirical research is to resolve questions of adaptability, more careful specification of the exact measure of impact and far richer models of the process of adaptation, able to test implicit assumptions in much of the existing empirical research, are needed.In this article, the relationship between U.K. water companies' perceptions of past climatic extremes and their effect on resilience to future climatic change is explored. Perceptions and activities related to past and future dry periods was investigated through interviews with managers at the ten major English and Welsh water supply/sewerage companies, and several smaller, water-only companies. Several of the companies report that they have observed a trend towards drier summers in their regions, and a number of companies say that they have observed a change towards more intensive rainfall of shorter duration. Recent supply measures in a number of regions have been aimed at improving storage and distribution related to the perceived change in rainfall intensity. A new requirement to incorporate regional climate change scenarios in future supply assumptions appears to have had little impact on planning in the region to date. Many water resource planners believe that the scenarios generated are too aggregated and do not encourage a precautionary approach to planning. Some managers believe that records of historical drought conditions, such as experienced in 1933/1934 or 1995/1996, as worst-case scenarios provide a better basis for planning.Many developing countries, especially in Africa, contribute only very small amounts to the world total of greenhouse gas emissions. For them, the reduction of such emissions is not a priority, and the more important issue is to find ways to reduce their vulnerability to the projected climate change which is being imposed upon them largely as a result of emissions from developed countries. This priority does not accord with the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper reports upon studies in Uganda designed to help in the development of a national adaptation strategy, and addresses the need to reconcile such a strategy with the global priority accorded to mitigation and with national economic development priorities. Some features of a national climate change adaptation strategy are identified and questions are raised about the need for an international regime to facilitate and support adaptation. Time-dependent geographical distributions of surface-air temperature change relative to year 2000 are constructed for four scenarios of greenhouse gas (GHG) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, and are compared to the IS92a scenario. The four new scenarios have been developed by four different modeling teams. The four scenarios are noninterventionist, in that they do not include abatement of GHG emissions for the purpose of climate-change mitigation. The rime evolution of the changes in global-mean surface-air temperature and sea level are calculated for each scenario by our energy-balance-climate/upwelling-diffusion-model. The temperature changes individually and jointly for the radiative forcing by the GHGs and by the sulfate aerosol, which is formed in the atmosphere from the emitted SO2. These GHG- and SO2-induced global-mean temperature changes are used to scale in time the geographical distributions of surface-air temperature simulated by our University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) atmospheric-general-circulation/mixed-layer-ocean model, respectively for a doubling of the CO2 amount and for a 10-fold increase in present-day SO2 emission-the latter from the entire earth as well as individually from Europe, Siberia, North Africa, Asia, North America.The proposed Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol paves the way for financial and technological transfers to support forestry projects that sequester carbon or protect carbon stocks. From its inception, the concept has been highly controversial. It has been enthusiastically supported by those who believe that conservation of tropical forests will be difficult unless forest owners and managers are compensated for the environmental services of their forests. Others believe that financial transfers supporting 'carbon farming' would ignore social concerns and the full range of goods and services of forests. This paper examines the implications of CDM for forest conservation and sustainable use, by drawing on recent literature and the results of a policy dialogue with CDM stakeholders. We conclude that initial estimates of the contribution tropical forestry could make to both climate change mitigation and to forest conservation need to be scaled down. CDM payments for tropical forestry are likely to be received in a far more limited area than initially expected. The cost-effectiveness of forestry projects relative to projects in the energy sector may have been overestimated. In particular few estimates have adequately accounted for the likelihood that the duration of CDM forestry projects is unlikely to be as long as the residency time of carbon in the atmosphere. Also political realities and investor priorities may not have been sufficiently understood. CDM funding for forestry may also decline in future as economically viable clean technologies are increasingly developed in the energy sector. Tropical forests are likely to be an intermediate climate change mitigation strategy for buying time, until more permanent options become available. The most important justification for including forests in CDM may lie in the contribution CDM could potentially make to forest conservation and sustainable use. An analysis of the implications of CDM for forests reveals the importance of involving forest stakeholders more closely in the CDM debate. To prevent perverse outcomes and reduce the risk of 'leakage' of emission reduction to areas outside project boundaries; CDM projects may need to be limited to niches which meet certain political and institutional preconditions and where sufficient understanding of local decision-making and the broader context is available. CDM may be more effective if used to remove non-economic impediments to forestry activities that are economically viable and meet local needs. Lessons from the forestry sector in relation to plantations, natural forest management, forest conservation and non-timber forest products are discussed to illustrate the dangers of misusing CDM and also to give examples of how CDM could be harnessed for better use of forests. CDM should be seen as one more tool for enhancing the effectiveness of more conventional ways of promoting forest conservation and sustainable use.The adoption of physical thresholds as a ceiling for permitted climate change sidesteps contentious issues such as: policy cost, impact valuation, discounting and equity. In this paper I offer some reflections on the concept of tolerable climate change. I also use an integrated climate assessment model (ICAM-3) to demonstrate how uncertainties in our understanding of socioeconomic and earth systems reduce the probability of success in keeping climate change within a pre-defined tolerable range. Finally, I explore the implications of socioeconomic thresholds for welfare loss in pursuit of a climate policy (e.g., tax rebellions). Crossing such regional socioeconomic thresholds will lead to local failures to pursue climate change mitigation policies - increasing the probability of straying beyond the tolerable window of global climate change. Given various uncertainties and the dynamics of the socioeconomic and the earth systems, the odds of success in staying within a climate change window of Delta T less than or equal to 2 degrees C, and Delta T/yr less than or equal to 0.015 degrees C are estimated to be no higher than 25% over the next century. A risk-risk tradeoff approach appears to hold promise, but while adoption of a larger window of tolerance increases the probability of success, it also opens the window specification criteria to contention.Current concerns with the sustainability of agroecosystems in different parts of the world have hightened the awareness for careful use of the natural resource base on which agriculture depends. For proper and efficient use of soils and plant/animal genetic material, knowledge of the role of climate is an essential precondition. Several elements of the chapters in Agenda 21, a global plan of action agreed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), require the attention of the agrometeorologists and these have been reviewed. Three International Conventions which have a bearing on sustainable agriculture including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) were negotiated and ratified since 1992. The World Food Summit Plan of Action (WFSPA), which was developed in 1996, includes several commitments to make agricultural production sustainable. Agrometeorological aspects of these three Conventions and the WFSPA were reviewed. Some of the priorities for agrometeorologists to address sustainable agriculture in the 21st Century were discussed. These include improvement and strengthening of agrometeorological networks, development of new sources of data for operational agrometeorology, improved understanding of natural climate variability, promotion and use of seasonal to inter-annual climate forecasts, establishment and/or strengthening of early warning and monitoring systems and promotion of geographical information systems and remote sensing applications and agroecological zoning for sustainable management of farming systems, forestry and livestock. Other priorities include use of improved methods, procedures and techniques for the dissemination of agrometeorological information, development of agrometeorological adaptation strategies to climate variability and climate change, mitigation of the effects of climate change, more active applications of models for phenology, yield forecasting etc.,active promotion of tactical applications such as response farming at the field level and promoting a better understanding of the interactions between climate and biological diversity. These present important challenges and great opportunities for agrometeorologists to play a proactive role in promoting sustainable development in the 21st Century. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The idea of greenhouse-gas credit borrowing in global or national context faces severe problems such as international and intergenerational equity issues. Though the merit of cost reduction is obvious, the possibility is small for such a scheme to be massively allowed in future international negotiations. Still, there is a good chance for each specific player to use the idea of time flexibility. Through analytic and numerical model analysis, this paper demonstrates the merits of time flexibility on a sector base. First, the derived analytic solution for time paths of marginal mitigation costs gives an insight to the relation between timing and costs of mitigation action. Second, the numerical model analysis for the Japanese electricity supply sector shows that time flexibility can drastically reduce costs for mitigation in the sector. Time flexibility is important specifically to the Japanese electricity supply sector because (1) the sector is capital intensive and has long capital turnover time and (2) available mitigation option is limited for near future. A sector like the Japanese utility sector needs some kind of mechanism to virtually realize the merits of using time flexibility. Domestic and international emission trading systems are the most promising candidate to date. (C) 2000 Scripta Technica.The impact of climate change in Scotland will be felt either directly, through changes in our physical environment or in the cost of adapting to change, or indirectly, from the changes in society required to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper reports on the first broad assessment of these direct and indirect impacts of climate change on the following socio-economic sectors in Scotland: energy supply, transport, domestic, public services, business, agriculture forestry and fisheries. The emphasis in each sector has been to detect its vulnerability to climate change impacts and climate change mitigation strategies, combined with a judgement on the confidence of prediction. This provides a comparative analysis of the sensitivity of different sectors to climate change. As such, it is the most appropriate approach for assessing and prioritising response strategies between different sectors.The Global Environment Facility (GEF) was established to forge international cooperation and finance actions to address four critical threats to the global environment: biodiversity loss, climate change, degradation of international waters, and ozone depletion. From 1991-1999, the GEF approved 92 climate change projects that represent a diverse range of innovative approaches to promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy. The paper provides an overview of the GEF's climate-change mitigation strategies, project designs, and emerging project impacts. The paper will interest those seeking to understand approaches to climate change mitigation, those designing projects to build sustainable markets for climate-friendly technologies, and those undertaking energy project evaluations. The practice of life cycle assessment has been well documented as a tool for comparing products and processes or comparing various components within a life cycle. This paper addresses the question of how changes can be made once an assessment has been completed, such as identifying the improvements that can be made to address environmental problems and to decrease impacts on human health and the environment. Green chemistry, a fairly recent approach that addresses environmental concerns at a fundamental level, has already demonstrated examples of what we call 'life cycle innovation', that is, improvements at all stages of the product or process life cycle. This paper explores various applications of green chemistry methodologies to all stages of a product or process life cycle.Industrial ecology is an evolving framework for the analysis and design of public policy, corporate strategy and technological systems and products. Its metaphorical denotation springs from conceptual models characteristic of sustainable or long-lived ecosystems. Some authors stress the material and energy flows within a system of producers and consumers and aim to build knowledge about these flows that can be used for such design purposes as above. Others see industrial ecology primarily in its more metaphorical sense as providing new normative themes for a possibly sustainable world. Such norms include connectedness, cooperation, and community. These particular norms are, more or less, contrary to prevailing elements of social structures in market-based, industrialized nations. The paradigmatic, normative potential of industrial ecology is contrasted with its potential as an emerging "science" of sustainability.Industrial ecology is fundamentally a social and organizational construct The article explores the centrality of human decision, imagination, skill, and process in effective industrial ecology applications. The role of self-organizing systems, social process, business drivers, industrial network theory and practice, environmental management systems, human resource strategies, and learning organizational constructs are presented as critical components of the industrial ecology concept and implementation Broad inclusion of these conceptual and operational frameworks will assist in the spread of industrial ecology Reductionist approaches to industrial ecology are challenged to seek systemic and socially cognizant strategies.Despite increases in the nation's population, affluence, and timber removals, US forest area has remained constant and timber inventory has risen 30 percent since 1952. Industrial ecology, which analyzes the flow of timber through systems of production and consumption, seeks to explain how that happened; it also shows the leverage that consumers, millers, and foresters have to reduce harvested area and continue the rebirth of the American forest. Changes in demand by consumers, wood utilization by millers, and management by foresters can help conserve forests for uses other than timber. Of the three actors, however, foresters can exert the most leverage-by increasing the growth rate of trees.Industrial ecology is both a vision, a research field, and a source of inspiration for practical work. Its proponents aim to contribute to sustainable development by closing materials cycles and realising a fundamental paradigm shift in the thinking concerning industry-ecology relations. Dominant research lines in industrial ecology focus on industrial metabolism and life cycle tools. The underlying assumption is that the flow and transformation of materials can be managed through the correcting of market and regulatory failures which are causes of environmental degradation. This literature review suggests, on the one hand, that the manageability of the flow of materials is currently limited by market and regulatory failures which inhibit the implementation of the principles of industrial ecology and, on the other hand, that the flow and transformation of materials are only partly affected by prices, information and laws.Three factors are likely to cause a major paradigm shift in the field of ecotoxicology: 1. heightened interest in sustainable use of the planet, 2. increased recognition of the value of ecosystem services and natural capital, 3. the consilience of ecology and industry via the rapidly developing field of industrial ecology. This manuscript provides a preliminary exploration of likely components of the paradigm shift.Drawing from two different strands of literature, industrial ecology and spatial analysis, the paper attempts to examine the role that location plays in determining firm survival. A time-varying covariates hazard model is used on Greek firms, which enter manufacturing in the early 1980s and are followed up to 1992. Location in Greater Athens vs. the rest of the country affects survival positively, especially when smaller firms are concerned. Other firm variables such as current size, profitability, leverage and capital together with growth and industry contestability are also found to affect survival, which becomes more difficult for firms established closer to recessions.Industrial ecology, the multidisciplinary study of coupled economic and environmental systems, provides the intellectual basis for understanding and implementing the vision of sustainable development in the firm. Using this approach, AT&T developed a matrix system which, when applied to the firm's products and operations, laid the groundwork for systemic improvements in the firm's environmental performance.Recoverable manufacturing systems minimize the environmental impact of industry by reusing materials, reducing energy use, and reducing the need to landfill industrial products. These systems are widespread in the United States and are profitable, in addition to contributing to sustainable development. However, the management of supply-chain activities can differ greatly from management activities in traditional manufacturing supply chains. Seven complicating characteristics increase uncertainty. Managers must take actions to reduce uncertainty in the timing and quantity of returns, balance return rates with demand rates,;md make material recovery more predictable. Managers must also plan for the collection of products from end-users. The use of information systems with new production-planning and control techniques makes management of these activities more predictable.Industrial ecology suggests that businesses should operate more like ecosystems: cycling energy and matter through the system, with limited waste outputs. By preventing contamination and reusing by-products, industry could sale money while protecting the environment and generating new economic opportunities. This paper discusses the theory: practice, and limitations of the new field of industrial ecology and considers some of its implications for planning and designing industrial parks.A quite unconventional, innovative scientific methodology called "macroscopic pattern analysis" is presented in this paper. This approach is more adequate in the case of complex systems than the well-known microscopic, mechanistic approach. Complex systems are not only attracting more engineering interest, but their scientific treatment is increasingly wanted by society due to the manifold problems in Earth's ecosphere. The macroscopic pattern approach will be explained in depth and illustrated in some case studies from the ecosphere (sustainability, hurricanes and avalanches), where nature serves as a teacher for the solution of the sustainability problem. Then, a series of case studies on macropatterns are described showing the problem-solving capacity for anthropo- and technosphere: sustainability in society with an index of sustainability, the eco-social market economy with eco-tech as an instrument, biokinetics, bioreactor mixing and integrated bioprocessing with models, design of cars and houses and even quality of life as an attempt to quantify macropatterns. The innovations are briefly compared in their problem-solving capacity with known approaches such as the microscopic method in science, technology and society (free market economy), including the evaluation of other indices and cleaner production, industrial ecology and zero emission initiative. Finally, a deeper integration of sciences, ethics, arts and nature will be introduced based on the vision with macroscopic pattern analysis, where the different domains of human life are integratable to effect a reconciliation.Industrial symbiosis, as part of the emerging field of industrial ecology, demands resolute attention to the how of materials and energy through local and regional economies. Industrial symbiosis engages traditionally separate industries in a collective approach to competitive advantage involving physical exchange of materials, energy, water, and/or by-products. The keys to industrial symbiosis are collaboration and the synergistic possibilities offered by geographic proximity. This gaper reviews the small industrial symbiosis literature and some antecedents, as well as early efforts to develop eco-industrial parks as concrete realizations of the industrial symbiosis concept. Review of the projects is organized around a taxonomy of five different material exchange types. Input-output matching, stakeholder processes, and materials budgeting appear to be useful tools in advancing eco-industrial park development. Evolutionary approaches to industrial symbosis are found to be important in creating the level of cooperation needed for multi-party exchanges.The Surface Mount Council(1) has identified the issue of lead-firee electronics as an emerging area for concern and evaluation. This has been triggered by the European Union's (EU) proposal for a Directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)(2) and by the Japanese focus on environmental marketing and on recycling which has resulted in timetables for lead elimination. 3 From an industrial ecology perspective, it is essential to evaluate the environmental impact of the proposed alternatives and to compare this with that of the present Sn/Pb solder. Industrial ecology is the multidisciplinary study of industrial systems and economic activities, and their links, to fundamental natural systems. 4 Based on this definition, it is important to reflect on the environmental impact of lead-free electronics through their entire life cycle. This includes factors such as alloy availability, processing considerations, energy use and ground water contamination. Based on these criteria, lead-free products are not more environmentally friendly than the present electronics soldered with Sn/Pb. Thus, the focus of future regulation should be on recovery and recycling of the metals at end-of-life as required in the WEEE rather than the elimination of lead-based solder.As the world's population and global standard of living increase, the role of metals in the economy will not diminish in the 21(st) century, despite substitution and dematerialisation trends. Industrial Ecology is an emerging science that attempts to bring together physical, biological and social scientists and develop the tools for good management of the planet in the long run. In engineering terms, industrial Ecology is defined as the reconfiguring of industrial activities with full knowledge of their environment consequences. Production and use of materials must take into account the needs of both market and environment. Dispersive uses of metals will be phased out, as is being done with lead in gasoline, and post-use recovery of materials and energy will increase. This will result in an advantage for metallurgical processes that can use as feed materials concentrates as well as metal scrap and waste streams, such as bath smelting processes and slag resistance electric furnaces. The paper also discusses how metal extraction technologies, developed in the 20(th) century to provide essential materials to humanity, can be applied for the benefit of both mankind and environment in the 21(st) century.From a material cycles perspective all processes are interconnected and consequently a process can never be evaluated as an isolated and independent unit. This also holds true for the evaluated co-incineration options. Environmental and sustainability issues for example, such as raw material and energy utilisation or air pollution, are a resultant of the whole system of industrial activities. It is therefore important, not to optimise a single process or industrial activity, but rather the whole system. Although engineering procedures far the design of individual industrial units are well developed, the problem of determining the best arrangement of these interconnected units is often far more difficult. Regulation that manages the arrangement of the units for waste processing is still under construction. In the evaluation of co-incineration, analogous principle from process control can be used: feedforward control. This principle includes the determination of which outlets can be used for all process outputs, hence avoidance of any 'unusable' products or wastes possibly arising from co-incineration. To establish the extent, to which produced wastes are usable, a system overview is necessary, in addition to in-depth information on the subsystems, which produce and can consume wastes. Material cycles modelling can be used as the basis for a tool that supports the development of a suitable playing field. It should provide overview of the system and in-depth information on its subsystems. This toot then represents an attempt to bridge the gap between 'holistic' industrial ecology and process engineering.A hydrotreating unit has been analyzed using the notion of exergy. The analysis has been based on the simulation results with the aid of real operating data. Driving and material exergy losses have been separately defined and quantified. Locations and the reason of major exergy losses have been pinpointed and improvement strategies have been suggested. It has been noted that the exergy analysis can provide a sound base for adopting the concept of industrial ecology and developing loss prevention schemes.The Surface Mount Council(1) has identified the issue of lead-free electronics as an emerging area for concern and evaluation This has been triggered by the European Union's (EU) proposal for a Directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)(2) and by the Japanese focus on environmental marketing and on recycling which has resulted in timetables for lead elimination(3). From an industrial ecology perspective, it is essential to evaluate the environmental impact of the proposed alternatives and to compare those with that of the present Sn/Pb solder. Industrial ecology is the multidisciplinary study of industrial systems and economic activities, and their links to fundamental natural systems(4). Based on this definition, it is important to reflect on the environmental impact of lead-free electronics through their entire life cycle. This includes factors such as alloy availability, processing considerations, energy use and ground water contamination. Based on these criteria, lead-free products are not more environmentally friendly than the present electronics soldered with Sn/Pb. Thus, the focus of future regulation should be on recovery and recycling of the metals at end-of-life as required in the WEEE rather than the elimination of lead-based solder.Over thirty communities in North America are creating eco-industrial projects as a new paradigm for environmentally sensitive economic development. These developments promise job creation, resource efficiency, and reduced municipal waste burdens through carefully designed and applied industrial ecology principles. This paper seeks to understand the evolution of eco-industrial developments and examine their application within the context of electronics disposition. It offers examples of operating and potential park developments and the various strategic and design approaches taken by different communities. It also highlights the potential synergies, both materially and economically, inherent in these types of developments and suggests a cluster or regional approach to electronics recycling efforts in general. The practice of life cycle assessment has been well documented as a tool for comparing products and processes or comparing various components within a life cycle. This paper addresses the question of how changes can be made once an assessment has been completed, such as identifying the improvements that can be made to address environmental problems and to decrease impacts on human health and the environment. Green chemistry, a fairly recent approach that addresses environmental concerns at a fundamental level, has already demonstrated examples of what we call 'life cycle innovation', that is, improvements at all stages of the product or process life cycle. This paper explores various applications of green chemistry methodologies to all stages of a product or process life cycle.In this paper, a life-cycle assessment methodology is used to evaluate the environmental effects of cement-concrete system. The production factors notably affecting environment are obtained and the way improving environmental effects is indicated.The authors develop a methodological framework for the environmental assessment of materials recycling systems. Typically such systems exhibit both dynamic and non-linear behaviour. By contrast, many existing environmental assessment techniques (such as Life Cycle Assessment and Materials Flow Analysis) employ a static linear model of the underlying system. This paper first reviews some of the attempts to develop dynamic non-linear models for materials systems. It then discusses the structural peculiarities of recycling systems drawing attention in particular to the presence of dynamic features (such as time lags between production and disposal) and non-linearities (such as the dependency of scrap collection energies on the flow of material through the recycling loop). The principal analytic task of this paper is to construct an illustrative case study, in which different modelling techniques are used to assess the energy requirements of a hypothetical recycling system possessing both dynamic and non-linear features. The difference in system energy intensity derived using the different types of model are analysed. Finally, the paper discusses the policy implications of these results. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Like radioactive waste, municipal solid waste (MSW) requires consideration of a complex mix of intergenerational and intragenerational risks surrounded by uncertain science. Unlike radioactive waste, MSW is a common problem and hence one often perceived to be controllable, at least until a required facility is proposed in a particular community. The intragenerational risks focused on local communities rouse intense public pressures for management. Although some of the risks can be quantified, the risk assessment process cannot deal with all questions. This article examines the multiple dimensions of the decisions required to be made and the weaknesses of a number of decision tools traditionally used. A case is made for the need to integrate decision tools appropriate to the risks into reflexive and iterative decision processes open to public involvement. It is argued that this presents the best hope of both optimizing decisions about the intragenerational risks as well as raising public debate about the importance of sustainable waste management in transgenerational terms.Solid waste management needs to be environmentally sustainable to reduce overall environmental burdens. It also needs to be economically sustainable to be affordable for all sectors of the community served. Integrated waste management (IWM) takes an overall approach to this, involves the use of a range of different treatment options and deals with the entire waste stream. The tool of Life Cycle Inventory (the goal definition and inventory stages of a Life Cycle Assessment) can successfully be applied to integrated waste management systems to assess their environmental burdens. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) tools for solid waste management have been available for some time. Several models have been developed and applied to both theoretical and actual waste management strategies. This report reviews a case study where a Life Cycle Inventory model was applied in the development of an integrated approach to waste management.The service sector in the U.S. economy accounts for twice the monetary output of manufacturing and is typically perceived as less damaging to the environment than manufacturing sectors. We use an Economic Input-Output Life-Cycle Assessment model (EIO-LCA) to assess both the direct and indirect (supply chain) effects of services on the economy and the environment. As expected, environmental emissions and wastes generated directly by service providers are small per dollar of output, and energy use per dollar output is lower for services than for most manufacturing industries. However, with such a large share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the impacts of services have become a significant component of overall U.S. emissions, wastes, and energy consumption. For several environmental metrics (e.g., hazardous waste generation), service industries have significant indirect environmental effects on an economy-wide basis even when their direct emissions are negligible. When an average annual "market basket" of goods and services is purchased by an average consumer in the U.S., the amount spent on manufactured goods is about 25% greater than that spent on services, hut the environmental effects associated with manufacturing are about two to three times that of services. To investigate services in more detail, four representative service industries were analyzed: trucking and courier services, retail trade, colleges and universities, and hotels. Some results are expected, such as the high direct consumption of electricity, the low direct emission of toxic chemicals, and the low direct generation of hazardous wastes. We demonstrate that the supply chain environmental effects associated with these four services are more significant and merit further consideration. A better understanding of these impacts will encourage service providers to consider more carefully the environmental implications of their supply chain.Refinery products serve as the source for a significant portion of energy use and industrial chemicals. Assessing the variability and reliability of the life cycle inventory (LCI) data for the refinery process is an important issue for the acceptance of life cycle studies. The purpose of this research is to review and compare the LCI results for refinery products among several available databases, evaluating the level of variability and technical consistency among data sets. Another objective is to highlight the need for greater transparency and standardization in LCI databases. We found important links between the type or media of emissions and the unit processes found in typical refineries. The variability of estimated emissions to the atmosphere is approximately 50-150%, while variability in aqueous discharges is higher, approaching 1000%. Variability for solid emissions is on the order of 30%. This variability is believed to be related to the preparation and summary use of individual practitioner databases and not to the actual primary variations among refineries. Some variations clearly reflect technically incorrect data. Improvement of refinery LCI information can be achieved by the research and user communities devoting effort to produce credible, representative LCI data for this critical manufacturing unit. Greater transparency would significantly improve specific areas of LCI assessment, as many of the current databases are highly nontransparent, thus allowing errors to be undetected. The central role of refinery LCI data in life cycle assessment argues strongly for practitioners to develop more representative and less variable LCI information.Assessing the environmental risk of novel technological systems and of the European Union (EU) policies supporting them and regulating their implementation requires good understanding of (i) the pressure on the environment posed by the large-scale use of new technology, and (ii) the vulnerability of the receptor of this pressure. Generic life-cycle assessments (LCAs) provide exhaustive accounting of environmental pressure, yet they do not take into account the vulnerability of the receiving ecosystem. Generic studies of technology externalities fail to produce conclusions on the impacts in a certain area of the systems envisaged due to lack of site-specific information. The combined use of generic (LCA) and spatially referenced data offers new opportunities for comprehensively analysing the environmental impact of novel technologies. A novel information fusion methodology is suggested. Example applications are presented herein focusing on the evaluation of renewable energy technologies as an example of the implementation of meso-scale LCA for integrated environmental risk assessment of EU technology policies. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.In the absence of direct sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (i.e. combustion), other sources of emission become dominant in so-called 'emission-free' power plants. In this study the indirect GHG emissions, related to construction of nuclear plants, windfarms and photovoltaic plants, are estimated with two different types of life-cycle assessment. The process-chain analysis divides an investment good into its material components (tons of material) and then unravels the entire production process of each material product. The energy required in, and the GHG emissions related to, the construction of the power plant are obtained by integration over all process steps and summation over all material products. The input/output analysis looks at the different economic sectors called on in the construction of the power plant. The sectors that represent a part of the total cost of the power plant are responsible for the amount of energy used (and the corresponding GHG emissions) to deliver their final product. A result is provided by detailed analysis of all relevant sectors and fitting them into the construction phase. Using similar techniques, energy use and GHG emissions related to maintenance and demolition, including storage of nuclear equipment, can be quantified. For construction, maintenance and demolition of these power plants, following orders of magnitude are obtained: nuclear: 40kJ(prim)/kWh(el), 3g(CO2)/kWh(el); wind(coast): 120kJ(prim)/kWh(el), 9g(CO2)/kWh(el); wind(inland): 350kJ(prim)/kWh(el), 25g(CO2)/kWh(el); PV(1998): 3000kJ(prim)/kWh(el), 130g(CO2)/kWh(el); PV(near future): 1500kJ(prim)/kWh(el) and 60g(CO2)/kWh(el). (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.On May 25-26, 2000 in Brighton (England), the third in a series of international workshops was held under the umbrella of UNEP addressing issues in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). The workshop provided a forum for experts to discuss midpoint vs. endpoint modeling. Midpoints are considered to be links in the cause-effect chain (environmental mechanism) of an impact category, prior to the endpoints, at which characterization factors or indicators can be derived to reflect the relative importance of emissions or extractions. Common examples of midpoint characterization factors include ozone depletion potentials, global warming potentials, and photochemical ozone (smog) creation potentials. Recently, however, some methodologies have adopted characterization factors at an endpoint level in the cause-effect chain for all categories of impact (e. g., human health impacts in terms of disability adjusted life years for carcinogenicity, climate change, ozone depletion, photochemical ozone creation; or impacts in terms of changes in biodiversity, etc.). The topics addressed at this workshop included the implications of midpoint versus endpoint indicators with respect to uncertainty (parameter, model and scenario), transparency and the ability to subsequently resolve trade-offs across impact categories using weighting techniques. The workshop closed with a consensus that both midpoint and endpoint methodologies provide useful information to the decision maker, prompting the call for tools that include both in a consistent framework.To date, numerous simplified Life Cycle Assessment methods and techniques have been developed to reduce complexities associated with practical application. However, these methods often identify critical elements according to subjective considerations. In this paper, we develop and apply a new type of Life Cycle Inventory method - Component Manufacturing Analysis (CMA) - that is easy to implement and less arbitrary. Application of CMA requires identificfition of all product components and their associated weights, which are then entered into a factory-type database. Because the factory database has a rigorous yet generic structure and because calculation is done automatically, the application of CMA tends to be less arbitrary and more complete than other simplified methods. Results of a case study on beverage vending machines show that the manufacturing stage is a significant phase in the whole life-cycle inventory of a product. We conclude that CMA shows promise for further development and future application.For an accurate assessment of the toxic effects of chemicals during their life cycle, LCA developers try more and more to include chemical fate into the life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) procedure. In this study the application of multi-media partitioning models within LCIA is discussed. With the case of textile chemicals as an example, USES-LCA and a simple river model (box approach) are compared according to their practicability and the value added to the assessment results. It is shown that emissions from the supply and use of energy still dominate the LCIA results even if ecotoxicity is assessed with a rather complex fate model such as USES-LCA. Second, the treatment of modelling results is addressed for persistent substances with low or unknown toxicity. A possible approach to include such chemicals into valuation is to define an exposure-based impact category additionally to the existing effect-oriented ones (toxicity scores) or a combination of differenr methods. A combined presentation of results from complementary tools is proposed, providing a more detailed background for decision making while avoiding aggregation and leaving the final weighting between the categories to the user.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method that can be used to assess the environmental impact of agriculture, but impact categories and the functional unit of classical LCA's must be adapted to the specific agricultural production process. Serving as an example, the framework of a LCA of 18 grassland dairy farms covering three farming intensity levels and carried out in the Allgau region in southern Germany is presented. By focussing on the chosen impact categories and the respective, suitable functional units, the specific needs and backgrounds of conducting an agricultural LCA are discussed in general.Nitrogen compounds emitted from the field are usually considered in Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of agricultural products or processes. The environmentally most important of these N emissions are ammonia (NH3), nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitrate (NO3). The emission rates are variable due to the influence of soil type, climatic conditions and agricultural management practices. Due to considerable financial and time efforts, and great variations in the results, actual measurements of emissions are neither practical nor appropriate for LCA purposes. Instead of measurements, structured methods can be used to estimate average emission rates. Another possibility is the use of values derived from the literature which would, however, require considerable effort compared to estimation methods, especially because the values might only be valid for the particular system under investigation. In this paper methods to determine estimates for NH3, N2O and NO3 emissions were selected from a literature review. Different procedures were chosen to estimate NH3 emissions from organic (HORLACHER & MARSCHNER, 1990) and mineral fertilizers (ECETOC, 1994). To calculate the N2O emissions, a function derived by Bouwman (1995) was selected. A method developed by the German Soil Science Association (DBG, 1992) was adopted to determine potential NO3 emissions. None of the methods are computer-based and consequently require only a minimum set of input data. This makes them, on the one hand, transparent and easy to perform, while, on the other hand, they certainly simplify the complex processes.The Return on Environment ( ROE) is developed, and tested, as an objective indicator to support the results of Life Cycle Assessments. It is based on the observation that a ratio of life cycle costs incurred throughout the extraction, transport, manufacturing, use and disposal stages, to the selling price, appears to scale linearly with a quantitative impact assessment. ROE is therefore a normalization method which permits comparison of new assessments with existing data, even from products with quite different characteristics. It can, alternatively, be applied to estimate either the life cycle cost, or quantify environmental impact, provided the other is known. Like its economic cousin, the return on investment, cases studied typically have ROEs in over the range of 2-20%. ROE is intended as a preliminary estimation method, akin to engineering costing, which has a precision of +/- 30%. As such, it can be used to rapidly determine if a more detailed cost assessment can be justified and, if so, where the efforts should be oriented. ROE is a measurable life cycle index intended to render LCAs more suitable for decision making. A further benefit that ROE provides is the guidance to a life cycle practitioner, or product development team, to assess if sufficient data has been collected, or if costs and impacts have been over or under-estimated. It has advantages over specific ecoindicators, such as manufacturing energy or waste emissions, which are both product specific and subjective. The Return on Environment also serves as a systematic index for reporting improvements or as a relative environmental rating.Explorations of the LCA practice have been less numerous compared to the conceptual descriptions of LCA. To counter this imbalance, studies of LCA projects conducted in Swedish industry were carried out. One of them is in a chemical company, the other in an electronics company. The studied LCA projects represent early attempts, but not first attempts, at LCA within these two companies. The two studied cases are contrasted with each other and aspects important for the implementation of LCA are identified. Among other things, the presence of an LCA entrepreneur seems to be important for LCA implementation. The argumentation for the usefulness of LCA needs to be situationally adapted to each organisation. Strategies of the LCA entrepreneur are described.For the utilisation of an energy carrier such as lignite, the whole life cycle including necessary energy supply processes have to be considered. Therefore using the 'Cumulative Energy Demand' (CED) is especially suited to determine and compare the energy intensity of processes. The goal of the CED is to calculate the total primary energy input for the generation of a product, taking into account the pertinent front-end process chains. So the CED is in many steps similar to the LCA, especially in the 'inventory analysis step'. The statements of the CED for energy supply-systems are concerned with the (primary) energy-efficiency of the energy supply and pointing out the life cycle steps with high energy-resources demand. Due to the great environmental impacts of energy supply and use which have to be laboriously assessed in LCA, the CED provides a useful, additional, energy-related 'screening-indicator' to LCA. This case study analyses the extraction of lignite in an opencast mine in West-Germany as the first step of energy carrier provision. Our data for the inventory analysis arise from a measuring campaign about the period of one year. The results underline the great energy demand of lignite extraction in West-Germany. With reference to the energy contents of lignite, the fraction of primary energy demands for its' mining amounts to about 6.2%. This accounts to 93.8 % of the lignite energy content being available as usable energy for further processes, which is obviously worse than other studies have shown.This study provides a benchmark of the life cycle environmental impact characteristics associated with a typical soy-based ink used for sheetfed lithographic printing. The scope included a streamlined Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Impact Assessment (LCIA). Materials, processes, and life cycle stages that are the same between different printing inks, or were less than one percent by mass of the printing system input materials, were excluded. The LCIA included identification of specific processes in the life cycle of soy-based ink printing that make the greatest contribution to the overall environmental hazard potential in 13 impact categories for the baseline printing system selected. The LCIA approach included both regional scaling for areas that differ in sensitivity to certain impact indicators and normalization against a reference value. Reduction in the use of tall oil rosin and switching from conventional to low or no-till farming appear to be promising opportunities for reducing the environmental hazard potential.This study uses the TRNSYS computer program for the modeling and simulation of the energy flows of the modern houses of Cyprus followed by an energy consumption analysis. For the calculations. a Typical Meteorological Year for the Nicosia area and a typical model house are used. Initially, the Cyprus energy scene and an analysis of the number of houses employing heating and cooling equipment is presented from which it is observed that the number of systems installed has increased tremendously during the last decade. The results of the simulation show that the inside house temperature, when no air-conditioning is used, varies between 10-20 degrees C for winter and between 30-50 degrees C for summer. The effect on the temperature and the heating and cooling loads that various wall and roof constructions present is determined. This investigation indicates the importance of the roof insulation, which results in a reduction up to 45.5% of the cooling load and up to 75% of the heating load. The effect of mechanical ventilation, window shading, as well as that of the inclined concrete roof used for aesthetic reasons, is also examined. The life cycle analysis is used for the economic analysis of the various constructions. The results indicate that the wall insulation pays back in a twenty year period with marginal savings, whereas the roof insulation has considerable economic benefit, with life cycle savings up to EUR 22374 depending on the type of construction. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This study describes the basic design/evaluation of a combined cycle power generation system using solid oxide fuel cells in conjunction with a gas turbine. Factors included are system performance and cost/energy pay-back times (CPT/EPT). Total generation efficiency (E-th) was analyzed from the standpoint of plant size, cell performance, working pressure/temperature, steam carbon ratio, fuel/air utilization ratios (U-f/U-a) and turbine inlet temperature (TIT). A calculation method for determining the system life cycle cost and input energy requirements is also proposed. Results show that Eth is higher than that for conventional power plants; it has a working temperature/pressure of 1073 K/0.4 MPa, E-th = 68.3% with CPT = 9.3 years and EPT = 0.71 years with load following capability from 60 to 121% nominal load. The main parameters for determining Eth, CPT and EPT were found to be working temperature, cell performance, U-a and TIT limitation. Also discussed in detail are development areas and targets. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent years have seen a world-wide change in the environmental policy towards integrated pollution prevention, taking into account all environmental media. Consequently, the environmental assessment of production techniques has to consider multiple criteria which cannot be aggregated to one single index. The concepts of Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) seem a suitable means in order to implement Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into integrated decision processes. The outranking methods as a special subgroup of MCDM methods are particularly suitable for integral decision making through the notion of weak preference and incomparability, which better represent the real decision situation, as demonstrated in this paper. Especially the outranking method PROMETHEE brings together flexibility and simplicity for the user and is therefore chosen for the enhancement towards the evaluation of fuzzy data on preferences, scores and weights. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Mining and metallurgical processing companies that have adopted the principles of good environmental management often fund it difficult to carry out an environmental assessment that yields meaningful opportunities for improved performance. This topic was investigated by means of a case study of a South African Base Metal Refinery (BMR) producing primarily nickel. A process-based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out on the refining process, with the environmental impacts related to the production of reagents and utilities forming part of the assessment. The life cycle inventory (LCI) was based on plant operating data spanning 31 months of production, from which a baseline environmental profile could be generated and Interpreted to indicate the main sources of potential environmental impacts. Consequently, opportunities for improved environmental performance could be Identified from the LCA model, which expressly related potential environmental liability to specific sub-processes in the assessed industrial operation. The on-site steam plant was found to be the primary source of potential environmental impacts in most of the impact categories considered. In closing, the paper discusses some of the limitations encountered in use of the LCA method.A view is presented on future BF-BOF type and EF type steelmaking plants. The former and the latter include, respectively, rationalized process steps for a mass production and small lot production of quality steels at reduced costs. Integration of the 2 types of plants is discussed for better synergy effects. Emphasis is placed on minimizing the consumption of primary energy and evolution of wastes such as dust, slag and gases, with a consideration given for maximized utilization of the wastes. Metallurgical key issues for future R & D to achieve improved productivity and wastes evolution are also suggested.The present study has been done in the framework of the European Project IMAGE (Implementation of Advanced Glazing systems in Europe) and offers to the glass industry, engineers, architects and all people dealing with energy in buildings a reliable indicator of the environmental impact of advanced windows: their global environmental impact, which includes an Life Cycle Assessment analysis of the glazing system production/maintenance phase and a thermal balance of its utilisation phase. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.We examine the economic and environmental implications of the fuels and propulsion technologies that will be available over the next two decades for powering a large proportion of the light duty fleet (cars and light trucks). Since R&D change is rapid, we treat the uncertainty about future technologies using bounding calculations. A lifecycle perspective is used to analyze fossil fuels [conventional unleaded and reformulated gasolines, low sulfur reformulated diesel, and compressed natural gas (CNG)], ethanol from biomass, and electricity together with current and advanced internal combustion engines (ICE, indirect (port) and direct injection, spark, and compression ignited) and electric vehicles (battery-powered, hybrid electric, and fuel cell). Technological advances continue to improve the efficiency and environmental performance of ICE automobiles powered by low sulfur fossil fuels. Absent a doubling of petroleum prices or stringent regulation [due, for example, to intense concerns about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions], ICE using fossil fuels will dominate the market for the next two decades. CNG cars have low emissions, including GHG, but must be redesigned to store enough CNG to achieve the current range. Battery powered cars have limited range and are expensive, and the life-cycle of battery components leads to discharges of toxic materials. Although both hybrid and fuel cell vehicles promise better fuel economy and lower emissions, in the near term these do not justify their higher costs. If global warming becomes a major concern, CNG offers carbon dioxide emission reductions of up to 30%, and bioethanol could provide a fuel with no net carbon dioxide emissions, although the bioethanol price would be more than twice current petroleum prices.This paper describes a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of a new Business Communication 10 (BC 10) and an old Business Communication 8 (BC 8) model of the private branch exchange Modular Digital 110 (MD 110), designed and sold by Ericsson Enterprise AB (EE) and produced by Flextronics, in this case for the European Union (EU) market. LCA is a technique for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impact associated with a product's whole life cycle from the "cradle to grave". The study meets the requirements of the standards International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 14040:1997 English (E), ISO 14041:1998 E and the draft standards ISO/Draft International Standard (DIS) 14042 and ISO/DIS 14043 and was critically reviewed by Henrik Wenzel, Instituttet for ProduktUdvikling (The Institute for Product Development, IPU) in Denmark. The modelling of the system includes manufacturing (hardware and EE's organisation), use stage (electricity consumption), end-of-life (recycling processes) and transports. Electronic devices axe modelled in depth (16 groups of components) and data from over 40 suppliers have been collected. EE's organisation (development, marketing & sales, supply, installation, service and maintenance) is modelled for the use of offices and business travelling. The following main conclusions of the project are based on results for potential contributions to the environmental impact categories acidification, global warming and eutrophication, which were chosen to be the most relevant. The environmental impact improvements of the new model compared to the old are approximately 10%, and the uncertainty of the results is judged to be smaller than the difference between the systems. The use stage and the manufacturing stage give the largest impacts, both for the new and the old model. In the manufacturing stage, the hardware production clearly dominates. EE's organisation is secondly most important and hardware transport is least important. This is due to more environmental load from service and business travelling in the organisation than environmental load arising from the distribution of the product. The results predominantly reflect energy use, whereas toxicological aspects could not be reliably assessed due to lack of data and reliable methods and needs separate attention. The technology improvements shown for BC 10 compared to BC 8 only describe design improvements made by EE, and do not take into account potential technology production improvements made by component suppliers.In response to market demands for credible and comprehensive environmental information associated with the life cycle of products, the CPPA and TerraChoice Environmental Services Inc. developed an Environmental Profile Program for pulp and paper products. The program's reporting mechanism,the Environmental Profile Data Sheet (EPDS)(TM) provides a standard, cost-effective and understandable method to provide environmental information to customers. The EPDS is based on a holistic consideration of the raw material acquisition and manufacturing stages of the product life cycle, incorporates risk assessment and environmental management systems, and is supported by third-party independent verification.Toxicity potentials are standard values used in life cycle assessment (LCA) to enable a comparison of toxic impacts between substances. In most cases, toxicity potentials are calculated with multi-media fate models. Until now, unrealistic system settings were used for these calculations. The present paper outlines an improved model to calculate toxicity potentials: the global nested multi-media fate, exposure and effects model USES-LCA.(1) It is based on the Uniform System for the Evaluation of Substances 2.0 (USES 2.0). USES-LCA was used to calculate for 181 substances toxicity potentials for the six impact categories freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, freshwater sediment ecotoxicity, marine sediment ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and human toxicity, after initial emission to the compartments air, freshwater, seawater, industrial soil and agricultural soil, respectively. Differences of several orders of magnitude were found between the new toxicity potentials and those calculated previously. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Toxicity potentials are standard values used in life cycle assessment (LCA) to enable a comparison of toxic impacts between substances. This paper presents the results of an uncertainty assessment of toxicity potentials that were calculated with the global nested multi-media fate, exposure and effects model USES-LCA. The variance in toxicity potentials resulting from input parameter uncertainties and human variability was quantified by means of Monte Carlo analysis with Latin Hypercube sampling (LHS). For Atrazine, 2,3,7,8-TCDD and Lead, variation, expressed by the ratio of the 97.5%-ile and the 2.5%-ile, ranges from about 1.5 to 6 orders of magnitude. The major part of this variation originates from a limited set of substance-specific input parameters, i.e. parameters that describe transport mechanisms, substance degradation, indirect exposure routes and no-effect concentrations. Considerable correlations were found between the toxicity potentials of one substance, in particular within one impact category. The uncertainties and correlations reported in the present study may have a significant impact on the outcome of LCA case studies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Various authors have stated that Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) differs fundamentally from product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper shows the contrary. LCA is a specific elaboration of a generic environmental evaluation framework. EIA is a procedure rather than a tool, in which LCA certainly may be useful. Particularly in strategic and project EIAs, environmental comparisons of process and abatement alternatives may be relevant. Although these alternatives may lead to different emissions and effects at the location of the process itself (which is usually the focus in project EIAs), they can also influence the demand for activities upstream and downstream in the production chain. Including such secondary effects in an EIA, which may be crucial for a proper comparison of alternatives, requires a system approach that takes into account all relevant effects. This is, in fact, LCA. A review of five case studies shows that it is quite feasible to use elements of LCA in EIA. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.LCA (Life cycle assessment) is a tool to evaluate quantitatively the resource consumption, the environmental loads and impacts of a product throughout its life cycle. The purpose of the present work is to establish how to evaluate the effect of recycling of materials and how to predict the environmental loads of new materials by a prospective application of LCA. Beverage cans were chosen as an evaluating object for LCA in which the recycling rate of a material of a steel or aluminum can was changed. A fictitious process for a stainless steel can was also analyzed in order to search the feasibility of the new material for a beverage can. In the absence of recycling, the energy consumption and the CO2, SOx, NOx emissions for the aluminum can are much higher than those for the steel product. The recycling of materials changes the situation, because the environmental loads for the aluminum can are reduced much higher than those for the steel can. As for the stainless can, it was shown that the environmental loads for the system are comparable to the conventional beverage cans when the can is decreased in thickness and fully recycled. In conclusion, it is emphasized that the decrease in environmental loads can be achieved by the combination of the selection of recyclable materials and the development of production technology.Multimedia fate and exposure models are widely used to regulate the release of toxic chemicals, to set cleanup standards for contaminated sites, and to evaluate emissions in life-cycle assessment. CalTOX, one of these models, is used to calculate the potential dose, an outcome that is combined with the toxicity of the chemical to determine the Human Toxicity Potential (HTP), used to aggregate and compare emissions. The comprehensive assessment of the uncertainty in the potential dose calculation in this article serves to provide the information necessary to evaluate the reliability of decisions based on the HTP. A framework for uncertainty analysis in multimedia risk assessment is proposed and evaluated with four types of uncertainty. Parameter uncertainty is assessed through Monte Carlo analysis. The variability in landscape parameters is assessed through a comparison of potential dose calculations for different regions in the United States. Decision rule uncertainty is explored through a comparison of the HTP values under open and closed system boundaries. Model uncertainty is evaluated through two case studies, one using alternative formulations for calculating the plant concentration and the other testing the steady state assumption for wet deposition. This investigation shows that steady state conditions for the removal of chemicals from the atmosphere are not appropriate and result in an underestimate of the potential dose for 25% of the 336 chemicals evaluated.Process design requires the simultaneous satisfaction of environmental, economic and social goals. This invariably requires some trade off between these objectives. The challenge for process design engineers is to develop synthesis and analysis tools, which support this requirement. Process System Engineering (PSE) techniques for multiple objective optimisation have to date focused typically on the optimisation of cost versus the potential for waste minimisation, with the recent inclusion of operability issues. The incorporation of environmental sensitivity into PSE approaches has been less than satisfactory. Much of this stems from the (seeming) difficulty in translating process information to environmental objectives. It is our argument that life cycle assessment (LCA), a methodology for quantifying the full 'cradle-to-grave' impact of industrial processes, can be used to assist in developing environmental objectives for process design and analysis. In this paper, we restrict our analysis to the multiple objective optimisation of environmental and economic objectives. Our approach is demonstrated for the case study of a nitric acid plant, modeled using Hysys(R). The general approach entails the transfer of mass and energy information from the Hysys(R) model to the optimisation algorithm. Environmental objectives, based on the Hysys(R) model, are formulated first using a life cycle assessment toolbox. The multi-objective formulation of the process combines economic objectives with the LCA-based environmental objectives. The optimiser routine uses goal programming to identify the Pareto surface of non inferior solutions for this situation, thereby making explicit what trade-off between economic and environmental objectives results from any preferred operating condition. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In the 1990s, significant progress was made in process synthesis concerning environmental issues, however the routine design procedures stay almost the same as before. This paper attempts to summarize the developments of this area in the last 10 years in order to remind chemical engineers of what has been accomplished to date and what should be possible in the near future from an industrial viewpoint. After discussing some original concepts and hierarchies, two aspects of conceptual design, synthesis of reaction paths and process flowsheet, are highlighted for environmental impact minimization. Finally, several points are identified for future research. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Making process systems engineering decisions that are ecologically conscious requires analysis of both industrial and ecological processes. Traditional methods in process engineering usually fall short of meeting this requirement due to considering the environment as secondary to economic objectives. Life cycle assessment and design methods have broadened the scope of traditional methods by considering the environmental impact in the entire life cycle of a product or process. These methods focus primarily on the environmental impact of emissions and ignore the contribution of ecological products and services. This paper presents a thermodynamic approach for including the input from both ecological and economic resources, and for analyzing industrial and ecological processes together. This approach is based on the fact that growth and sustenance of both industrial and ecological processes are limited by the available energy and its conversion to useful work. Thus, the embodied energy (emergy), that is, the energy used directly or indirectly to make a product or service is a measure of ecological cost. Emergy analysis of industrial and ecological processes provides insight into the environmental performance and sustainability of the industrial process or product. Emergy-based life cycle assessment is developed to combine the benefits of both methods. The proposed framework is broadly applicable and is illustrated by the emergy based life cycle assessment of soy bean growth. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite numerous actions worldwide which call for adoption of more sustainable strategies, relatively little has been done on a practical level so far on the pretext that the issue is too complex and not fully understood. This paper follows the argument that it is important that today's decision-makers address the issue of sustainability, however imperfectly, as ignoring it may only exacerbate the problem for future generations. In particular, the paper concentrates on measuring the level of sustainability of industry with the aim of further informing the debate in this area. It proposes a general framework with a relatively simple, yet comprehensive set of indicators for identification of more sustainable practices for industry. The indicators cover the three aspects of sustainability-environmental, economic and social-and among others, include environmental impacts, financial and ethical indicators. The framework is applicable across industry; however, more specific indicators for different sectors have to be defined separately, on a case-by-case basis. It allows a modular approach for gradual incorporation of the framework into the organizational structure. The life cycle approach ensures that the most important stages in the life cycle and their impacts are identified and targeted for improvements. The framework also provides a link between micro- and macro-aspects of sustainable development through appropriate indicators. Thus, it serves as a tool which can assist companies in assessing their performance with regard to goals and objectives embedded in the idea of sustainable development.Integrated Waste Management is one of the holistic approaches to environmental and resource management which are emerging from applying the concept of sustainable development. Assessment of waste management options requires application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper summarizes the methodology for applying LCA to Integrated Waste Management of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) developed for and now used by the UK Environment Agency, including recent developments in international fora. Particular attention is devoted to system definition leading to rational and clear compilation of the Life Cycle Inventory, with appropriate 'credit' for recovering materials and/or energy from the waste. LCA of waste management is best seen as a way of structuring information to help decision processes.The environmental aspects of different waste management options for paper materials are the subject of an ongoing debate. A large number of life cycle assessments have been performed in order to study the topic. The comparison between recycling and incineration with energy recovery is often in focus. Different studies have arrived at different conclusions due to differences in the methods applied and assumptions made in the Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI). Key factors for the LCI results include what energy is replaced by incinerated waste paper, what material is replaced by recycled fibres, how the pulpwood savings are used, what external energy carrier is used for the recycling process, and what environmental burdens are associated with a change in the electricity demand. These factors can be investigated for different decision contexts and from different ethical, time and geographical perspectives. Different choices are appropriate for different decisions and perspectives. Hence, to obtain an adequate conclusion, the comparison needs to be specified in terms of what perspectives are relevant.Green chemistry not only emphasizes the central production process of the "green" chemical, but it ultimately requires a life-cycle conceptual approach for each chemical product. A life-cycle conceptual approach comprises the consideration of all stages along the life cycle of a chemical (i.e., raw material extraction, pre-production, production, use, recycling, and disposal) as well as the consideration of environmental impacts caused by by-products and auxiliaries (such as solvents and additives, but also technical facilities which have to be provided to produce the green chemical). A significant improvement in the evaluation of green chemical products can be approached by the complementary use of the methodologies of life-cycle assessment (LCA) and risk assessment. The use and combination of both methodologies can be performed by a separate use of the instruments (depending on the scope, definition, and application of LCA), an iterative use of LCA and risk assessment, or a complete integration of both instruments. Pros and cons of these approaches are discussed.This paper concentrates on the assessment of energy and emissions related to the production and manufacture of materials for an offshore wind farm as well as a wind farm on land based on a life cycle analysis (LCA) model. In Denmark a model has been developed for life cycle assessments of different materials. The model is able to assess the energy use related to the production, transportation and manufacture of 1 kg of material. The energy use is divided into fuels used in order to estimate the emissions through the life cycle. In the paper the model and the attached assumptions are described, and the model is demonstrated for two wind farms. The externalities for the wind farms are reported, showing the importance of life cycle assessment for renewable energy technologies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The study presents an estimation of the energy input and the amount of emissions to air due to fuel, chainsaw and hydraulic oil consumption by heavy duty diesel engine vehicles operating in forest logging operations in Sweden. Exhaust concentrations are given for carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and particulate matter. Three fuel types (rapeseed methyl ester, environmental class 1 and environmental class 3 diesel fuels) and two types of lubricating base oil (mineral- and vegetable-based) were examined. Energy input per unit of timber production (m(3)ub) was 82 MJ, 11% of which was due to energy consumption during the production phase of the fuel. Emissions during the whole life cycle of the fuels and the base oils are included in the study. The highest CO, and NO, emissions occurred when rapeseed methyl ester was used as fuel together with rapeseed as base oil for chainsaw and hydraulic oil. The highest HC and CO emissions occurred when environmental class 3 diesel fuel was used. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate environmental burdens associated with a product, process or activity by identifying and quantifying relevant inputs and outputs of the defined system and evaluating their potential impacts. This article outlines the four components that comprise LCA (goal definition, inventory, impact assessment and interpretation) and addresses various applications of LCA within industry and government. Included are references to several resources that may be used to better understand and apply LCA, such as books, journals, software programs and internet websites.Beginning with the goal and scope definition five different fender designs using steel, aluminum, PP/EPDM, PC/PBT and PPO/PA are described and the boundary conditions set. This exemplary case study demonstrates the general approach and beneficial uses of life cycle assessment and life cycle engineering. The inventory of the fenders shows that the steel design has advantages in terms of lower energy consumption during production. However, when the utilization phase of the fenders is considered, the overall energy consumption of the PP/EPDM fender is smaller due to the slight weight of the this polymer design. Concerning the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), the global warming potential of the PP/EPDM design is the smallest of all the fender materials even during the production of the fenders. The inventory analysis shows that the utilization phase of automotive parts is dominated by fuel consumption and related emissions like CO2. Nevertheless the LCIA shows that some impacts are mainly determined in the production phase. For example, the global warming potential of nitrous oxide (N2O) released during PPO/PA material production cannot be compensated for the lower energy demand (and also lower CO2 emissions) during the utilization phase. Economic considerations are also discussed. As a parameter, the cost of parts was chosen. Parts costs depend on material costs, labor costs and other variable costs. In addition, the fixed costs for machines and tools were considered. Steel fenders have the smallest production costs, followed by the PP/EPDM design. Finally, in an overall valuation of the compared fender designs the best design considering primary energy demand, global warming potential, and part costs was investigated. In terms of the specified criteria, the PP/EPDM fender is the best design, however, the results lead to a variety of different conclusions.Metrics (potentials, potency factors, equivalency factors or characterization factors) are available to support the environmental comparison of alternatives in application domains like process design and product life-cycle assessment (LCA). These metrics typically provide relative insights into the implicit concern associated with chemicals, emissions and resource consumption in the context of human health, ecological health and resource depletion. The approaches used to derive the metrics range in their Site-specificity, complexity, comprehensiveness, sophistication and uncertainty. It is therefore often necessary to consider the use of more than one approach within the context of a given impact category to help support a decision. In this paper we outline some of the strengths and weaknesses of available approaches in the commonly considered categories of global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, tropospheric ozone (smog) creation, eutrophication/nutrification, acidification, toxicological impacts and resource depletion.Life Cycle Interpretation "is a systematic technique to identify, quantify, check, and evaluate information from the results of the life cycle inventory (LCI) and/or the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)... "[1] The purpose of performing life cycle interpretation is to determine the level of confidence in the final results and communicate them in a fair, complete, and accurate manner. Interpreting the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) is not as Simple as 3 is better then 2, therefore Alternative A is the best choice! Interpreting the results of an LCA starts with understanding the accuracy of the results, and ensuring they meet the goal of the study. This is accomplished by identifying the data elements that contribute significantly to each impart category, evaluating the sensitivity of these significant data elements, assessing the completeness & consistency of the study, and drawing conclusions and recommendations based on a clear understanding of how the LCA was conducted and the results were developed. The guidance provided in this article builds from the information provided on life cycle interpretation in the International Organization of Standards (ISO's) draft standard entitled "Environmental Management - Life Cycle Assessment - Life Cycle Interpretation, "ISO/DIS 14043.The article deals with the weighting step in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Different weighting methods are briefly described, and four operational such methods (Ecoscarcity 97, EDIP Ecoindicator 99, and EPS 2000d) are applied to a simplified case to illustrate how they can contribute with additional information to the environmental assessment and decision making process. It is argued that the use of weighting ran contribute to the relevance and acceptability of LCA results, but that the weighting step should be seen as a test of the compatibility between environmental impact profiles and different value profiles rather than as a procedure leading to a true measure of the aggregated impact. The authors also discuss some issues of controversy connected to weighting, as well as the practical implications of the ISO standard for weighting in LCA.The U.S. EPA hds developed guidance for the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)for environmentally preferable purchasing. To support the guidance development pilot studies were performed, one of which is described here. The study was performed in only four months, using simplified impact assessment methodologies. It showed that one product was environmentally preferable. This pilot demonstrated that LCA's are feasible for the purpose of purchasing decisions.The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) decisions regarding D&D, waste management, and the selection of technologies for R, D&D are extremely complex. Historically, DOE decisions were based primarily on meeting near-term goals. There is evidence that some of those decisions were not optimal in terms of minimizing costs or in terms of minimizing overall environment and health impacts. Fortunately, DOE is currently embracing the principles of life cycle analysis (LCA) in its decision-making. The results indicate that DOE is making better decisions since implementing the principles of LCA. This paper discusses LCA from the perspective of DOE and reviews several specific examples of the use of LCA by DOE.From experience in developing and testing pollution prevention tools ranging from the opportunity assessment methodology to life cycle assessment and impact assessment, the Systems Analysis Branch (SAB) of the EPA's National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) has acquired a long record of lessons learned in applying these approaches for real world applications. Many of these lessons illustrate several limitations exhibited by each of these P2 approaches. For example, the pollution prevention opportunity assessment (PPOA), perhaps the most intuitive and simplest P2 tool available, is very good at identifying ways to improve operating practices, but the SAB has found several deficiencies in the PPOA's ability to support the procurement of new equipment, products and substitute materials. Life cycle assessment, by contrast, resolves most of those deficiencies by providing a far more comprehensive picture than PPOA, but it is very complex and more expensive by at least an order of magnitude than the PPOA. Further, while each methodological approach provides information on environmental burdens, neither provides any insights on the inevitable trade-offs that occur in performance and cost resulting from a decision. The failure to account for these trade-offs early in the assessment may result in a decision that inadvertently creates negative impacts in performance, cost and environments. The purpose of this article is to propose a new perspective to account for the trade-offs inherent from making a change.Projects related to Total Cost Assessment and Life Cycle Analysis have been underway for four years within the American institute of Chemical Engineer's (AIChE) Center for Waste Reduction Technologies (CWRT). The effort has culminated in a fully automated Total Cost Assessment tool called TCAce(TM).Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used to improve the environmental performance of products throughout their life cycle. With ongoing discussions about system boundaries, appropriate data, and model limitations, LCA methods are in a constant state of evolution. This paper presents the use of a hybrid LCA approach to product environmental assessment in which two methods of analysis are combined to present the total environmental impact for two battery systems. A quantitative model for product assessment has been developed at Carnegie Mellon. The model is based on economic input-output life-cycle analysis (EIO-LCA) and has been explained in previous works. The EIO-LCA tool allows a user to quantify the direct and indirect relationships among industry sectors and the associated environmental burdens through the materials extraction and manufacturing phases. However, to study environmental effects over a product's entire life, use and end-of-life impacts must also be quantified. This is accomplished using the LCA approach in which an emissions and energy inventory is compiled and the environmental impacts are quantified. In this paper, the above hybrid LCA approach is applied to comparing the total environmental impacts of primary and rechargeable batteries. The primary (non-rechargeable) batteries mainly used in electronic products are zinc-alkaline batteries, and the most widely used consumer rechargeable batteries are nickel-cadmium. It is generally accepted that rechargeable batteries offer environmental advantages over primary batteries. We find that materials use, energy use, and emissions can be quantified over the entire product lifecycle to quantitatively show that resource use and emissions are substantially lower if a rechargeable battery can be substituted for a primary battery. However, consumer use patterns will affect the relative environmental benefits of rechargeable batteries. Noting the effect of consumer behavior also determines where uncertainties in the analysis may lie, since behavior is difficult to predict. Recycling batteries will also have associated emissions and energy use. Even accounting for the additional resource consumption and emissions for rechargeable batteries in the use and recycling phases of life, rechargeable batteries will still consume less resources over the entire life cycle when used in applications as a substitute for primary batteries. The assessment methods can also be applied to electronic products in addition to components such as batteries.The formation of the Working Group "Land use" by SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) and of the COST Action E9 Lv the European Community is the manifestation of the necessity to integrate the impact category "Land Use" in LCAs. The requisite Method should Permit the integration of different land use activities into the complex structures of process networks of LCAs and should be able to reflect the various land uses in a satisfactory manner. More than merely the quantification of area units is required, as the quality of the used land has to be integrated as well as the temporal variations in quality In this approach quality is described in terms of the performance of "natural" functions of the land before, during and after use. The quality of used land is subjected to variations in the course of time, i.e. the temporal relationships of functions should be represented. The modelled functions are erosion resistance, filtering and buffering, material transformation, rainwater drain-off, groundwater formation and groundwater protection, protection against immissions, stability and biotic output and should be adapted to the specifications of LCAs, i.e. description of different land uses within the life cycle of products, quantification via distinct and measurable parameters, characterisation of environmental effects and feasibility of data collation. Functions are quantified using measurable parameters e.g. granulation, cationic exchange capacity pH value, C/N value. Boundary conditions based on information on e.g. vegetation and land uses shall be integrated and maps and electronic databases used for background information. Wherever detailed information about investigated areas is available, it should be directly used in the model to improve the accuracy of the results. If only some derails about land uses are extant, assessments and estimates may be done based on key parameters and background information to obtain the most comprehensive possible idea of land use impacts. This would make it possible to assess the potential qualify of land which shall be related to output (functional unit) e.g. limestone as output of a quarry and timber as output of a forest. The dimension of land use is [(squaremeter . year quality difference)/ functional unit]. The objective of LCA is to identify potential environmental effects for the entire life cycle, making the evaluation of land use such as the supply of resources, manufacturing of products, use of products and recycling an important factor in impact assessment. Once a potential environmental problem within the process network has been identified, other tools may be used such as Risk Assessment or EIA or gee-ecological methods which are usually too time consuming and limited to local systems to be used in the analysis of global process networks.This paper describes the stepwise life cycle engineering methodology for the clean design of large made to order (LMTO) products under development at the Engineering Design Centre, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. LMTO products, such as offshore platforms, ships and power stations, have particular environmental implications due to their size, cost, long life spans, high public visibility and their potential for ecological/civil disaster. The methodology uses a stepwise approach to apply life cycle costing,life cycle assessment (environmental impact estimation) and risk assessment to an inventory model of the product. Both the inventory model and the analyses increase in complexity as the design progresses. The methodology extends the LMTO product life cycle model to include a long-term 'legacy' phase to address the intergenerational equity principle of sustainable development.The aim of the study is to develop a framework of applying life cycle assessment to production policy. A case-study on corrugated paperboard manufacture is therefore implemented. The application framework comprises three components: the conventional life cycle assessment procedure, the analytical hierarchy process, and a multiobjective programming model. In the decision model for production policy adjustment the objectives of cost-effectiveness and environment-friendliness are incorporated The environmental impacts are classified as categories of pollution and disturbance as well as space groups of global, regional and local scales. This makes applicable the analytical hierarchy process for evaluating the environmental impacts. In the application the objectives incorporated are found to be competitive. The manufacture has to trade the increase of production costs for the reduction of environmental impacts. We also observe that the marginal effects of impacts on cost increase as the spatial scales of impact increase. (C) 2000 Academic Press.Previous life-cycle studies of buildings tended to omit the phases after demolition. If recycling is not included, the potential benefits of recycling are not possible to assess. A parametric study of a one family house is presented which focuses on the potential energy savings by recycling the various building materials after demolition. The results indicate that it can be more important to design a building for recycling than to use materials which require little energy for production, that the creation of effective recycling depends upon its consideration and inclusion at the design stage, that the re-use and adaptation of existing foundations is an important component of recycling.The current industrial productions of zinc and synthesis gas are characterized by their high energy consumption and their concomitant environmental pollution. Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) could be reduced substantially by combining both productions and by replacing fossil fuels with concentrated solar energy as the source of high-temperature process heat. The extent of such a GHG mitigation has been quantified by conducting a Life Cycle Assessment on the solar- and fossil-fuel-based processes. Total GHG emissions for the conventional zinc production are 3.14 CO2-eq per kg primary zinc (99.995% purity), of which 64% are derived from the electricity consumption in the electrolytic step. Total GHG emissions for the conventional syngas production are 1.04 CO2-eq per kg syngas (molar ratio H-2/CO=2), of which 84% are derived from the combustion of fossil fuels in the endothermic steam-reforming step. Total emissions for the solar combined process are 1.51 CO2-eq per 1 kg zinc and 0.527 kg syngas, of which 78% are derived from the pre-/post-processing of reactants and products of the solar reactor, and 16% are derived from their transportation to/from the solar site. However, CO2-eq emissions derived from the solar processing step and its infrastructure are negligible. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology, the multidisciplinary study of coupled economic and environmental systems, provides the intellectual basis for understanding and implementing the vision of sustainable development in the firm. Using this approach, AT&T developed a matrix system which, when applied to the firm's products and operations, laid the groundwork for systemic improvements in the firm's environmental performance.I use an actor-network perspective to analyze a case study of an environmentally sustainable, commercial textile fabric design. Susan Lyons of DesignTex, Inc., William McDonough of William McDonough and Partners, and Albin Kalin of Rohner Textil AG constructed and maintained a network of people and objects with an environmental focus by anticipating contingencies that continually threatened their network, such as waste disposal, credibility, and financial problems. In response to these contingencies, they developed and implemented environmental tools, such as an environmental design protocol, a life-cycle development (LCD) methodology, environmental cost accounting procedures, product-evaluation metrics, and employee-management systems. The success of their efforts rests on their ability to recruit network allies by integrating these environmental tools.In this report, a CO2 recycling system is proposed and designed for the purpose of CO2 mitigation through utilization of natural energy (photovoltaic power generation). The materials for construction and unit requirements of this system are quantified and also an energy analysis is performed as one of life-cycle analysis (LCA) of this system. Concrete required for the foundation of the facilities is the largest material requirement and accounts for 62 per cent of the total amount of materials for building this system. The energy consumption needed to build the photovoltaic (PV) power generation facilities represents the largest fraction of energy consumption and accounts for 82 per cent of the energy consumption needed for building of plants. The energy balance ratio of the system is approximately 1.85. It clearly reveals that this system would be an effective way to utilize natural energy. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The EC Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC), now to be implemented in the UK under the Pollution Prevention and Control Act (1999), will widen the range of issues to be considered by enforcing authorities when determining the Best Available Techniques (BAT) for an installation. IPPC requires integrated control of emissions to air, water and land, the efficient use of energy and raw materials and the avoidance or reduction of impacts caused by disposal of wastes. This paper demonstrates that adopting a life cycle approach for the assessment of candidate techniques can fulfil these new requirements when choosing BAT. The glass manufacturing industry is used as a case study to show that the methodology can be used to assess both primary (in-process) and secondary (end-of-pipe) techniques for pollution prevention and control. General conclusions are drawn regarding the use of life cycle approaches to support the assessment of BAT, limitations in the current methodology and the requirements for future research.Plastics are indispensable materials for life cycle assessment (LCA), because they are as important basic raw materials as steel with its variety of applications including automobile and electric/electronic equipment. The LCA is also useful for evaluating the validity of recycling of plastics. In this paper, the amount of CO2 emission from the production of Polyvinyl chloride resins (PVC) was calculated by using the LCA methodology. The energy structure such as in-house electric power generation in the industries associated with the production of PVC was analyzed. The analysis of life cycle inventory (LCI) has been conducted under various scenarios based on the trading extent of the processes related to PVC production, and as a result, the followings have been observed. (1) The gross CO2 emission from the production of PVC varied in the range of 1.5-2.0 kg-CO2/kg-PVC, reflecting the difference in the unit value of CO2 emission attributable to in-house electric power generation in each of the industries related to PVC production. (2) The gross electricity consumption of PVC production was as high as 1.30 kWh/kg-PVC, and the CO2 emission attributable to the power generation was 63-72% of the total CO2 emission, while chlorine production consumed 0.73 kWh/kg-PVC. (3) It was necessary to evaluate the average amount of CO2 emission from the production of PVC in Japan based on the energy structure of the industries related to PVC production. Moreover, the amount of CO2 emission is greatly influenced by the allocation methodology for electrolysis of NaCl. Also, the effect of reduction on the CO2 emission of the projected gas diffusion electrode for energy saving was discussed by means of quantitative LCI analysis.In the aquatic environment, a number of techniques are available to evaluate environmental benefits arising from improvements in water quality. However, such techniques do not account for the environmental costs of implementing a given quality change, for example those associated with the construction and operation of necessary treatment processes. Life cycle assessment is a technique that enables the nature of environmental impacts arising from the construction and operation of processes to be established. Although comprehensive assessment of all options is likely to be uneconomic, focusing on a number of key system inputs and outputs offers the possibility to include such impacts cost effectively in investment appraisal. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, the introduction of superconducting magnetic energy storage systems (SMES) into a power system is drawing considerable research effort because of their high efficiency rate and large storage capacity characteristics. In this paper, the introduction of SMES into a power system and its effects on energy and on environmental issues are addressed. The analysis results show that the introduction of SMES can considerably cut down CO2 emissions without increasing the production cost if it substitutes for the operation of thermal plants during peak load period. However, to achieve this, nuclear plants are also needed for charging purposes. Thus, an algorithm to find the best generation mix, subject to CO2 emissions constraints and nuclear plant introduction constraints, is proposed. The inclusion of nuclear plant constraints increases the coal consumption, hence CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, in most of the analyzed cases, the introduction of SMES could attain important cost savings and environmental conservation. (C) 2000 Scripta Technica.This paper describes the assessment of the human health damages related to the man-made routine releases of radioactive material to the environment as reported in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The fate and exposure analyses are based on site-specific modelling of the French nuclear fuel cycle, from which generic exposure factors are derived. The effect analysis is based largely on epidemiological studies. The damage analysis relies on the concept of disability adjusted life years (DALY). Cultural theory is used in the damage assessment to create two value-compatible assessment scenarios. Two sets of damage factors for damage-oriented and two sets of equivalency factors for effect-oriented impact assessment methods are presented. An assessment of human health damages of different electricity supply systems shows that low-dose ionising radiation contributes to 13% and 80-99% of total human health damages of nuclear power production, applying an individualist and an egalitarian perspective, respectively. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is frequently used as a tool for environmental assessment of buildings and building products. Generally, the main focus of LCA is the impact on the regional and global external environment. However, there are important environmental problems related to buildings that arise locally in connection with the indoor environment, such as effects on human health. The approaches of LCA, measurements of emissions from building materials, and indoor climate assessment were studied to see how they relate to each other from a methodological point of view, using volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions as an example. The possibility of including indoor climate issues as an impact category in LCA of building products was investigated. Only very limited aspects of the indoor climate could be addressed in LCA; thus, indoor climate issues are preferably dealt with separately. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.Changes in the amount of recycled material delivered by, or used in, the life cycle of a product will affect the environmental burdens of other product life cycles. These indirect effects can potentially be taken into account through expansion of the system investigated to include the activities affected. Presently, the assessment of the indirect effects is often based on inaccurate assumptions. The indirect effects depend on, e.g. how the market for the recycled material reacts to a change in the supply of, or demand for, the recycled material. This, in turn, depends on political constraints, price elasticities, etc, in the markets for recycled material. This paper presents a model that takes the market aspects into consideration. It can be used in a life cycle assessment (LCA) to model the indirect effects either through system expansion or as a basis for allocation. It is designed for the use in change-oriented LCAs, but it can also be used in accounting type LCAs. The model is demonstrated in two theoretical cases: increased local collection for recycling of old corrugated containers and newsprint, respectively. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.During the process of developing a new product, consciously or unconsciously, a number of decisions are made that affect the environment, thus making a company responsible not only for the technical performance but also for the "environmental performance" of a product. This research paper broadly speaks about this development process and lists the various tools available to the modern decision maker for balancing the ecological, economical and technological aspects of production. The focus of this paper is on the environmental issues in the automobile industry and environmental impacts presently associated with the automobile life cycle. The paper reviews existing tools and opportunities for reducing these burdens in the future through decision-making by industry and other stakeholders. The paper ends with a very latest example from the German automobile industry on the assumption that this automobile (SMART from MCC AG)I in the present context, is perhaps an outcome of a very vigorous development process where the impact of the product outside the automobile sector was considered. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessments of 18 grassland farms in three relevant subprograms of the Bavarian agri-environmental program - "intensive" (no real restriction), "extensified" (no mineral nitrogen fertilizer) and "organic" - were carried out to analyse ecological deficits and to suggest efficient measures for improvement. Support of intensive farms (approx. 43% of all farms) does not reduce negative environmental impacts. Renunciation of mineral nitrogen fertilizer in the "extensified" subprogram (approx. 46% of all farms) reduces negative effects in the energy use, climate change and ground water impact categories. Howe, er in the central impact categories for the region - quality of surfacewater (lakes), biodiversity of wild species and landscape image - no progress is achieved. In these categories organic farms (approx. 6% of all farms) have clear advantages, but financial support is only marginally higher. Based on the results of the life cycle assessment several proposals for support measures are suggested that would create a more effective agri-environmental program. The main problem of die region is the very high farming intensity, specifically expressed in live stock-units per area. In order to reduce the intensity with either several single approaches or with a system approach (organic farming), smaller regional live-stock-units or milk quotas should be considered. Therefore the program should be sensitive rind attractive to farmers.This paper reviews the functions of packaging materials and the social ann environmental impacts that packaging has, reflecting our changing lifestyle. The functions of some packaging materials, such as prevention of food contamination protection against spoilage, preservation of contents ann communications linking the food manufacturer to the customer, are many and varied in extent ann complexity. The current life cycle assessment (LCA) can not easily be applied to the assessment of environmental impacts of packaging materials, taking packaging functions into consideration, but attempts at such application are being made experimentally. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Emerging environmental pressures over the last two decades have urged the development of sophisticated tools to evaluate the environmental burdens and impact of products and processes. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was first used some 30 years ago and has now developed into a valuable tool for businesses to support their decision making in packaging development and application. This paper outlines the concept of LCA and how it can be applied to support strategic business development. The paper also describes the integration of the LCA concept in an existing Code of Practice, as well as future developments in furthering the integration with economical and social decision parameters. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.As industry moves toward a world of extended producer responsibility (EPR) in which ownership of products becomes less common and product leasing and service provisioning become more pervasive, it is increasingly important to develop frameworks for assessing the environmental impacts of the service industry. In this paper, we use streamlined life cycle assessment to compare the environmental impacts of a residential air conditioning unit with a proposed "conditioned air" service. When the entire life cycle is considered, the assessments indicate that the service option is environmentally preferable. By making the producer ultimately responsible for product repair and "take-back," the service option creates incentives for the producer to design air conditioning units and their packaging for recovery, remanufacture, and recycling. This in turn minimizes the need for new raw materials and component parts. EPR also helps to ensure responsible unit maintenance and repair, which reduces chemical and oil dissipation into the environment. Public policy actions that provide incentives for EPR may therefore prove to be environmentally beneficial.The growing concern for environmental problems in the current economy has spurred the study of the way materials and substances flow through the economy, resulting in many different types of analysis. Since all of these have their merits and shortcomings, much of the present theoretical research seems to be focusing on combining the best aspects of each model type into an integrated model. The aim of this payer is to make a first step in bridging the gap between the various types of analysis of material flows in the economy, by discussing the main differences and similarities of three often employed model types: substance flow analysis, life cycle assessment and partial economic equilibrium analysis. Instead of submitting each model to a lengthy theoretical discussion, we apply them to a single, hypothetical example of a pollution problem. By doing so we are able to evaluate the differences and similarities of the methods:and results of the model in a practical way. It appears that the results of the three models are complementary rather than contradictory. Each of them puts an emphasis on different aspects of 'the real world'. A sequential application of a number of limited models may therefore be an approach that provides more useful information than the tedious construction and application of an encompassing model that integrates these models. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This study aims to investigate the ISO 14001 implementation process and its implications for regional environmental management. The region of Central Japan (known as Chubu in Japanese. which literally means center) was chosen for this case study. The study focuses on selected issues such as the: (1) trends and motives of private firms in the implementation of an ISO 14001-based environmental management system (EMS); (2) obstacles during system implementation; (3) role of the system in enhancing environmental performance within the certified organization; and (4) relation between the major stakeholders, local citizens, governments, and firms after adopting the system. To achieve these objectives, a questionnaire survey was mailed to all certified firms in the region. A 58% response was achieved overall. The results show that the main aims behind the adoption of ISO 14001 by firms in the Chubu region are to improve the environmental aspects within the enterprises and to enhance the employees' environmental awareness and capacity. The results have also shown that the ISO 14001-based EMS has had a great effect on a firm's environmental status as certified firms have claimed that natural resources such as fuel, water, and paper consumption have been more efficiently managed after adopting the system. implementation of the system causes the firms to consider the role of the local people and the government in more effectively involving the local people in the firm's daily environmental activities. It also helps to enhance the environmental awareness among the local people. Adopting the system also promotes a better relation within the enterprises affiliated to the same group, such as more attention given by the parent firms (head offices) towards other firms working for the same group, or branches-mainly small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)-in the field of EMS. Finally, the results show that firms give serious consideration to their final products' impacts on the environment. In other words, attention is given to life cycle analysis (LCA) among certified firms.Polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs) are organic compounds with some chemical properties and uses similar to polychlorinated biphenyls. Polychlorinated naphthalenes have been detected in biota from certain aquatic environments. The toxicities of several PCN technical mixtures (Halowax) to medaka (Oryzias latipes) were determined by use of an embryo nanoinjection method. Medaka eggs (early gastrula) were injected with 0.5 nl of triolein (vehicle control) or 0.5 nl of four to five graded doses (0.3-30 ng/egg) of Halowax 1014, Halowax 1013, or Halowax 1051 in triolein. Following exposure, embryos developed, and fry were reared to sexual maturity (4 months), at which time they were euthanized. Responses were evaluated as early life stage (ELS) and early adult life stage (EALS) assessments. For ELS, lethality and sublethal alterations in embryos and larvae (<16 d old), such as craniofacial, cardiovascular, and myoskeletal deformities and abnormal or delayed hatch, were monitored for the first 9 d, and a dose severity index was computed. The EALS assessment examined the survival of 16-d-old larvae until early adulthood (123 +/- 3 d old), including gonadosomatic index (GSI) and morphometry. Halowax 1014 was found to be the most toxic mixture (LD50 4.2 ng/egg), whereas Halowax 1013 and 1051 were significantly less toxic (LD50s could not be determined). The gonadosomatic index of females was significantly less in fish dosed with Halowax 1014 or 1051. The LD50 for medaka embryos nanoinjected with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is about 0.75 pg/egg. Thus, Halowax 1014 was 5,585-fold less patent than TCDD. For Halowax 1014, ELS assessments accurately predicted the results of EALS assessments.This paper analyses the environmental impacts of a large-scale sewage-treatment plant and identifies opportunities for environmental performance improvements over the three life-cycle phases of construction, operation and demolition. Results show that nearly 70% of energy consumption occurred during the operation phase, which was lower than the normal energy consumption level of the conventional activated-sludge process. The results of the life-cycle assessment mag have implications in material selection, energy management, process design, supplier and contractor management, and environmental policy making.Nordberg, a capital equipment manufacturer, performed a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study on its rock crusher to aid in making decisions on product design and energy improvements. LCA is a relatively new cutting edge environmental tool recently standardized by ISO that provides quantitative environmental and energy data on products or processes. This paper commences with a brief introduction to LCA and presents the system boundaries, modeling and assumptions for the rock crusher study. System boundaries include all major life cycle stages except manufacturing and assembly of the crusher. Results of the LCA show that over 99% of most of the flows into and out of the system may be attributed to the use phase of the rock crusher. Within the use phase itself, over 95% of each environmental inflow and outflow (with some exceptions) are attributed to electricity consumption, and not the replacement of spares/wears or lubricating oil over the lifetime of the crusher. Results tables and charts present selected environmental flows, including CO2 NOx, SOx, particulate matter, and energy consumption, for each of the rock crusher life cycle stages and the use phase. This paper aims to demonstrate the benefits of adopting a rigorous scientific approach to assess energy and environmental impacts over the life cycle of capital equipment. Nordberg has used these results to enhance its engineering efforts toward developing an even more energy efficient machine to further progress its vision of providing economic solutions to its customers by reducing the crusher operating (mainly electricity) costs. (C) 2000 ACEEE Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The increasing awareness of the environment has contributed to concerns regarding our life styles and our indiscriminate disposal of wastes. During the last decade, we have been trying to address this complex problem, more aggressively. Discussed here briefly, are our efforts in the United States in addressing the issue of solid wastes and in particular, plastic wastes. These efforts have begun to show promising results. The municipal solid waste (MSW) produced annually, has begun to decrease, e.g. from 211.5 million tons in 1995 to 209.7 million tons in 1996. Recycling rates and composting rates are increasing. Disposal in landfills is decreasing (from 60.9 to 55.5% in 1996). Waste disposal by combustion is also increasing. This is primarily due to the increased efficiencies of the new incinerators and their ability for the removal of particulates and harmful gases. Plastics are a small but a significant component of the waste stream. It is encouraging to note that the amount of plastics being recycled has grown significantly. In 1997, about 317 million kg of high density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles and 294 million kg of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles were recycled. Recycling of durable goods, such as automotive parts, carpets, electronic and appliance housings and parts are being explored. Environmental compatibility and recyclability are being considered during the designing of new parts. Life cycle analyses and management are also being studied as tools for decision making. (C) 2000 ACEEE Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Degradation of the global environment and depletion of resources are threatening sustainable development of mankind. In particular, climate change caused by increasing greenhouse gases is one of the most serious issues in analyzing energy systems. This paper aims at proposing frameworks to investigate sustainability and at evaluating technologies for sustainable energy systems. For this purpose, we first define the index of sustainable limits on resource depletion and emissions. Sustainability of mineral and energy resources is evaluated based on the index. Estimations indicate that energy resources and CO2 are unsustainable, and that we should introduce technologies to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Life cycle energy requirements are assessed for photovoltaic systems as representatives of the technologies. Through the life cycle assessment, we quantitatively evaluate measures to improve life cycle energy requirements and capital costs. At the same time, we clarify the direction of research and development required for technologies to realize sustainable energy systems. (C) 1999 Scripta Technica.This paper demonstrates how finite element simulations combined with embedded models, structured methodologies, data gathering, validation, plus integration and interpretation of results, are used to assess the in-service performance of a variety of elastomeric sealing systems. Typical examples will be covered, including : a seal and housing design optimisation a sensitivity study on the effect of an individual material property on explosive decompression. a quantitative seal performance life cycle assessment by simultaneous consideration of a number of competing factors, such as gas or liquid uptake, temperature and pressure effects etc.For utilities in deregulated states, the issue of customer choice takes on an added dimension. Customers concerned about the quality of their local environment -or more specifically, the perceived harm being done to their current electricity supplier- now have a new reason to consider another supplier. The aim of this paper is to propose the disclosure of suitable environmental performance indicators provided during energy market transactions with kWh cost of the generation. An indicator, which describes synthetically the environmental impact relative to energy production is proposed in this paper for industrial customers. It is shown how the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology can provide such an indicator. Open problems about the implementation of an electricity market where environmental attributes are disclosed are also addressed.This paper presents a new graduate level cost analysis course that has been taught in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland. The objective of this course is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the process of predicting the cost of systems. Elements of traditional engineering economics are melded with manufacturing process modeling, life cycle cost management concepts, and selected concepts from environmental life cycle cost assessment to form a practical foundation for predicting the real cost of electronic products. Various manufacturing cost analysis methods are included in the course: process-flow, parametric, cost-of-ownership, and activity based costing. The effects of learning curves, data uncertainty, test and rework processes, and defects are considered in conjunction with these methodologies. In addition to manufacturing processes, the product life cycle costs associated with design, procurement, manufacturing waste, sustainment, and end-of-life are also addressed. This course uses real life design scenarios from integrated circuit fabrication, electronic systems assembly, substrate fabrication, and testing at various levels. As a next step in the development of these educational materials, we propose to expand the involvement of industry in the course and create a set of web-based modules for use in this course, and as supplements to other courses. In addition, we will expand the elements the course addressing environmental costs, particularly the concepts of environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) and design for environment (DFE). Simplified methodologies and metrics that demonstrate the economic impact environmental issues will be incorporated.A life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic evaluation tool used to identify the environmental impacts of a product that result from its manufacture, use and disposal. An LCA takes into account both the raw materials consumed and the waste generated throughout the entire life of a product. Industries are discovering that LCAs can - if conducted properly - lower costs associated with environmental issues, reduce the use of certain materials, and enhance public image. Conducting an LCA can be an extremely time-consuming process, however, if the parameters of the overall system are not clearly defined. A clear definition of a system's limitations or boundaries is necessary to establish each life cycle stage and, in turn, to clearly communicate the intent of the analysis and the basis for the results. This paper will present the fundamentals of conducting an LCA - most importantly, what elements to include and exclude in the process. The techniques presented, commonly accepted by regulatory agencies and manufacturing firms alike, will demonstrate how to use the LCA tool to its fullest.Biomass for energy conversion is usually considered as a local resource. With appropriate logistic systems, access to biomass can be improved over a large geographical area. In this study, life cycle inventory (LCI) has been used as a method to investigate the environmental load of selected bioenergy transport chains. As a case study, chains starting in Sweden and ending in Holland have been investigated. Biomass originates from tree sections or forest residues, the latter upgraded to bales or pellets. The study is concentrated on production of electricity, hot cooling water is considered as a loss. Electricity is, in the case study, produced from solid biomass in the importing country. Electricity can also be produced in the country of origin and exported via the transnational grid as transportation medium. The results show that emissions from long range transportation, 1200 km, performed with ships, is of minor importance compared to emissions from local bioenergy systems in a local market. In bioenergy systems the use of fuels and electricity for operating machines and transportation carriers requires a net energy input which amounts to typically 7-9% of delivered electrical energy from the system. Emissions of key substances such as NOx, CO, S, hydrocarbons, and particles are low in a perspective of sustainability. Emissions of CO2 from bio-combustion are considered to be zero since there is approximately no net contribution of carbon to the biosphere in an energy system based on biomass. The results indicate that biomass for energy can be transported from Scandinavia to Holland without losing its environmental benefits. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass utilisation for energy production presently faces an uphill battle against fossil fuels. The use of biomass must offer additional benefits to compensate for higher pl ices: on the basis of a life cycle assessment (using BEAM to evaluate a variety of integrated bioenergy systems in connection with the Sustainable Process Index as a highly aggregated environmental pressure index) it is shown that integrated bioenergy systems are superior to fossil fuel systems in terms of environmental compatibility. The implementation of sustainability measures provides additional valuable information that might help in constructing and optimising integrated bioenergy systems. For a set of reference processes, among them fast pyrolysis, atmospheric gasification, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), combustion and steam cycle (CS) and conventional hydrolysis, a detailed impact assessment is shown. Sensitivity analyses of the most important ecological parameters are calculated, giving an overview of the impacts of various stages in the total life cycle and showing 'what really matters'. Much of the ecological impact of integrated bioenergy systems is induced by feedstock production. It is mainly the use of fossil fuels in cultivation, harvesting and transportation as well as the use of fertilisers in short-rotation coppice production that impose considerable ecological pressure. Concerning electricity generation the most problematic pressures are due to gaseous emissions, most notably the release of NOx. Moreover, a rather complicated process thigh amount of grey energy) and the use of fossil pilot fuel (co-combustion) leads to a rather weak ecological performance in contrast to other 100% biomass-based systems. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The thermal energy supply of private residences was investigated with regards to the Carbondioxide emissions by the Institute of Technical an Environmental Chemistry of Jena University. Reasons for this study were basic reorganisations in the city's thermal energy supply since 1990. The Carbondioxide emissions have been investigated by means of Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate the heat supply of Jena residences under ecological aspects.Energy use is a widely used measure of the environmental impact of buildings. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of both the operational and embodied energy attributable to buildings over their lifetime. The method of assessing lifetime building energy is known as life-cycle energy analysis. With Kyoto target obligations necessitating the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions at the national level, it seems increasingly probable that analyses of this kind will increase in use. If conducted in primary energy terms, such analyses directly reflect greenhouse gas emissions, except for a few processes which involve significant non-energy related emissions such as cement manufacture. A Life-Cycle Assessment would include these issues, as well as other environmental parameters, though probably with a corresponding decrease in system boundary completeness. This paper briefly explains some of the theoretical issues associated with life-cycle energy analysis and then uses an Australian based case study to demonstrate its use in evaluating alternative design strategies for an energy efficient residential building. For example, it was found that the addition of higher levels of insulation in Australia paid back its initial embodied energy in life-cycle energy terms in around 12 years. However, the saving represented less than 6% of the total embodied energy and operational energy of the building over a 100-year life cycle. This indicates that there may be other strategies worth pursuing before additional insulation. Energy efficiency and other environmental strategies should be prioritized on a life-cycle basis.As a result of legislation and increasing public awareness, environmental considerations are given more and more importance in chemical process design. Furthermore, the focus in environmental protection has shifted from end-of-pipe technologies to improvements of the chemical processes. The realization of such improvements, on one hand, requires chemical or technical innovations (new molecules, new synthesis routes, new process designs) and, on the other hand, assessment methods are needed that deliver an objective comparison of process alternatives on appropriately defined system boundaries. Four different indicators for assessing the environmental impact of chemical processes are discussed: Mass Loss Indices (MLI), Environmental Indices (EI), a comprehensive EHS (Environment, Health, and Safety) assessment method, and Eco-lndicator 95, an evaluation method used in the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) framework. These methods are summarized, compared, and applied to case studies from the chemical industry. Finally, the corresponding results are discussed and conclusions on the capability and limitations of the different indicators are drawn, in particular with regard to their applicability during the early phases of process development.Thinking in terms of product life cycles is one of the challenges facing manufacturers today: efforts to increase efficiency throughout the life cycle do not only lead to an extended responsibility of the concerned parties. As a result, economically successful business areas can be explored. Whether new service concepts are required, new regulations have been passed or consumers values are changing, the differences between business areas are disappearing. "Life Cycle Management" (LCM) considers the product life cycle as a whole and optimizes the interaction of product design, manufacturing and life cycle activities. The goal of this approach is to protect resources and maximize the effectiveness during usage by means of Life Cycle Assessment, Product Data Management, Technical Support and last but not least by Life Cycle Costing. This paper shows the existing approaches of LCM and discusses their visions and further development.Recycling of concrete is current practice. However, crushing of concrete is not environment friendly and concrete made of crushed concrete needs at least as much cement as other concrete. Therefore, it would be preferable to design concrete structures demountable such that they can be easily demounted or adjusted to new needs and maybe reused. The paper deals with requirements on demountable structures and the current situation in Central Europe.Today industrial products should not only meet the requirements of functionality and profitability but should also have an environmentally friendly design. This demand needs an objective and internationally accepted method to rate products and services from an environmental viewpoint - the life cycle assessment. The R&D department of Siemens developed a branchspecific method based on the ISO 14040 series for life cycle assessment of products of the electro-industry. In every chapter of the methodological modelframe, branchspecific aspects were discussed and possible pathways of solution were presented. With, for example, a cordless telephone, it could be proven that the developed method can be transferred to products of higher complexity and to real consumer-end-products. The life cycle assessment implemented as environmental management proves useful for information, controlling, planning and decision making With life cycle assessment it is possible to identify areas for improvement. This serves to locate processes with hazardous emissions identify environmentally benign manufacturing technologies economize material and energy save costs The aim of the presented project was the development of a universally comprehensive model for a life cycle assessment for the products of the electro industry with the claim to a sustainable development as a business intention.The complex and immense demands of information and data for conducting LCAs are able to be managed by preparing a pre-calculated environmental orientated database. Once a data set of technical processes, energy systems or material productions is known it is only a matter of storage, handling and quality assurance for using these data in further studies or for similar products. The principal idea to implement Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into Design for Environment (DIE) is the shift from modeling the process chains of the different life cycle phases -LCA- to an object or module based provision of the environmental information -DfE. In other words the environmental experts' language of input/output schemes has to be transferred into more technological, component or (sub-)assembly based designers' language. Therefore, the environmental input/output based processes must be offered in a pre-calculated manner. To ensure more flexibility parameters are implemented to vary the modules. This offers the feasibility to adapt pre-calculated modules to specific situations. The methodological approach how to come from LCA to DfE is underlined by the description of some depicted examples from the field of electronic products.From 1991 to 1996 the EDIP-methodology (Environmental Design of Industrial Products) was developed. One experience from the EDIP-project is that environmental assessment of products must give simple and operational conclusions, which can be acknowledged in the product development and by other decision makers throughout the product life cycle. The EDIP-project has demonstrated that it is possible to identify "the ten most important environmental hot spots". The documentation achieved by the environmental assessment shows where the most serious environmental impacts in the product life cycle occur, and uncover where the improvement potentials are in the product. The environmental knowledge obtained in this context will be valid for a number of years, and both the producer and other interested parties can use this information for setting priorities in their future planning. However, it can be very time consuming to perform an environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and it would be an advantage if a number of similar products - product families - could be handled in one and the same LCA as a whole. The project has presently developed a method for selecting and forming product families, based on environmental and economical importance as well as the existence of several producers. Using this method, five families have been selected, namely mobile phones, vacuum cleaners, industrial valves with electronic controls, lighting and ventilation. Collaboration with 5 industrial companies has subsequently been established and environmental assessments (LCA) including diagnosis (the pointing out of hot spots) have been performed.Improving the environmental performance of telecommunications products can be achieved through the application of ecodesign and life cycle assessment tools during the design phase of products. Decision-making and selection trade-offs in component and material selection processes can present difficulties for both mechanical and hardware designers because of the short design cycles and "time to market" pressures. Ideally components would be "eco-evaluated" (including life cycle costs/revenues) as a standard part of the component qualification process. This leaves the designer to freely select components and materials according to functionality knowing that environmental performance had been taken into account. Component selection decisions in terms of circuitry power management would, of course, be made by the designer. The main purpose of the evaluation is to provide an input to evaluating the eco-performance of Nortel Networks products and predicting end-of-life financial scenarios. The development of a component eco-evaluation and predictive end-of-life cost/value procedure is introduced in this paper. The feasibility of integrating such a procedure into current processes for component selection at Nortel Networks is discussed. In addition the possibilities for implementation of a similar process by contract manufacturers is presented as the supply chain management strategy of Nortel Networks changes. Improving product eco-performance, minimising costs over the life cycle, and extending material life through effective materials management are some of the aims of a research programme at Nortel Networks. The work presented in this paper is a step towards realising those aims and making a contribution to sustainability.This presentation introduces a methodology to evaluate products and services on a full life cycle basis, based on the VDI-guideline 4600,Cumulative Energy Demand". After the definition of key indicators the method is applied to a complex electronic product composed of a PC with monitor, keyboard, mouse, disk drives, printer and modem. The production processes of the different components are analysed on the basis of the mass flow of the applied materials and a database with an integrated software tool developed at the Technical University Munich. The use of personal computers was analysed during a measurement campaign in cooperation with the EU Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy. As a result different user profiles were determined and applied to the whole life time of a PC working place to get the Cumulative Energy Demand for Use. The deduction of all energy demands for dismantling, separation, disposition and preparation of secondary raw materials results in a bonus for the Cumulative Energy Demand for disposal of the PC and its peripheries. Finally the Cumulative Energy Demand during the whole life cycle depending on different parameters is calculated. With the presented results it is possible for the first time to evaluate a complex electronic product like a PC and its peripheral equipment on full life cycle basis. The study supplies detailed information on potentials of energy savings for all PC-system components.A recent life cycle assessment (LCA) clearly demonstrates a huge potential for reduction of environmental load by the use of voice mail services in stead of telephone answering machines. The LCA was performed as one among several others in an effort to cover the entire environmental load for Scandinavia's largest telecommunications operator Telia. The effort has lead to that Telia today has an extensive knowledge of where the hotspots are as well as where the largest potential is for load reduction as seen from a life-cycle perspective. This has also lead to a coherent view on product development, necessary demands on suppliers and customer value.In 1997, Inco Limited initiated a project to conduct eco-profiles of its worldwide metal production utilizing a life cycle assessment methodology. The information is intended to support (1) customer, government, and public informational needs, (2) internal process improvement, (3) marketing, and (4) environmental management and reporting. This paper discusses life cycle inventory/assessment (LCI/LCA) methodologies, the drivers behind the Inco Limited decision to undertake such a study, the methodology used, and the learnings from the project.This paper outlines the development of a life cycle analysis (LCA) model of the Canadian natural gas industry using Battelle's Life-Cycle Advantage(TM) platform. This model, developed on behalf of the Canadian Gas Association (CGA) and the Gas Research Institute Canada (GRI-Canada), provides detailed information on the cradle to grave emissions Of CO2, CH4 and NO2 gases through each segment of the Canadian natural gas industry, including upstream, transmission, storage, distribution and end-use. Development of the model involved an initial design of the model structure, data gathering on emission factors, equipment counts and individual company gas throughputs, model construction, calibration and results verification. The model is useful for the Canadian natural gas industry as it provides detailed equipment-level information on emission profiles for each area of operation. It also allows for a full fuel cycle comparison of natural gas with other fossil fuels on an equivalent end-use energy basis. These results are particularly useful within the context of Canada's National Climate Change Process and when examining the role of natural gas in reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions as per Kyoto Protocol commitments.Railways have a variety of environmental issues, such as noise, vibration, chemicals, heavy metals, NOx, SOx, CO2, waste and so on. In order to solve these problems, there are five categories of engineering subjects, namely analysis of pollutants, assessment of environment, cleanup of pollutants, and preservation, harmonization, and improvement of environment. Several technical themes are also connected with these subjects, such as life cycle assessment (LCA), recycling, environment conscious materials (ECO-Materials), energy saving, environmental management system, including ISO14001 / JIS Q 14001 and so on. This paper discusses not only the engineering and technical aspects but also the economy, culture/tradition, public communications and mission of railways. From these investigations, sound environments can be obtained and finally "Sustainable Development" of our railways is achieved.This paper demonstrates the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a basis for assessing potential environmental performance in the minerals industry through a copper case study. The case study is sourced from a demonstration plant of a hydrometallurgical process that converts copper sulfides and oxides to LME Grade A copper using a leach / electrowinning technology. The life cycle approach is supported by a sequential leach extraction protocol to better quantify the potential mobility of metals and complementary anions from solid waste residues. Sequential leach tests showed that the majority of iron and sulfur, the main components of these residues, are unlikely to mobilize under waste deposit conditions. This information was used to modify the potential burdens predicted using conventional LCA practice, giving a more realistic view of the overall potential impact associated with this process. Certain environmental effect scores were sensitive to changing process conditions; the eco-toxicity indicator was affected by changing process feed composition, whilst the global climate change indicator (greenhouse effect) was affected by changes to the current density for electrowinning.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to compare the environmental loads from wastewater systems with different technical solutions. This study compared proposed conventional wastewater systems, both large and small scale, with separation systems: one in which urine is handled separately and one in which black water is treated in a liquid composting process. The study showed that large economies of scale, in environmental terms, could be gained both for the operation and for the construction phase. The separation systems outperformed the conventional systems by showing lower emissions to water and more efficient recycling of nutrients to agriculture, especially of nitrogen but also of phosphorus. This implies that the use of separation systems could significantly reduce the need for, and hence the production of, mineral fertilizers and thus reduce the overall use of energy and phosphate minerals. The combination of large-scale wastewater treatment and urine separation was found to be especially advantageous in these respects. It is concluded that some of the most important environmental advantages of separation systems emerge only when models of wastewater systems are expanded to also include potential effects on the production of fertilizers.Life Cycle Assessment has been used to compare the environmental performance of landfilling versus recycling of the zinc used for galvanizing steel. Hypothetical process routes were composed involving four different EAF dust treatment processes; Waelz kiln, DC-furnace, EZINEX and slag fuming, as well as scrap dezincing. The study shows that recycling of zinc used for galvanizing steel has environmental benefits in that it saves zinc resources. However, zinc recovery does not necessarily decrease the potential impact on global warming and acidification. The magnitude of these two impact categories is tightly correlated with the amount and type of primary energy consumed in a process. Due to the high electricity consumption in the dezincing process, this route has the highest impact on Global Warming Potential as well as Acidification Potential. The major part of the energy requirement for the production of zinc from primary and secondary sources is consumed in the reduction of ZnO to Zn. The consequence is that the theoretically possible savings in primary energy by recycling zinc-containing materials are relatively minor. The impact categories "land use" and "waste generation" are not considered in this study, but most likely the evaluation of such impacts would further increase the potential environmental impact of the landfill alternative. The results also show that the location of an electricity-intensive process highly affects the potential environmental impact. Comparing process and material alternatives in LCA studies where branch average data is used, is considerably more complex than when LCA is used within a company.The concept of "sustainable growth" is described from the viewpoint of the DuPont Company. Heuristics for estimating waste treatment costs and for solvent selection are reviewed, and open questions are identified. Sustainable products should be examined by Life Cycle Analysis, and the results of such an analysis for Nylon 66 in an automobile application are presented. Future information and modeling needs for developing greener processes are identified and discussed.The impacts of a crop production on the environment, local or global, present a wide range of diversity. This characteristic requires a global evaluation tool in ol der to optimise the whale chain or to avoid pollution transfer between medium lair, sail, water table...), or between economic actors (agriculture, industry...). Life cycle analysis (LCA) is one on these tools. The application of LCA to agriculture requires a reliable and representative quantification of the direct emissions on the field to water table (nitrates...), or to the atmosphere (CO(2), nitrous oxide, ammonia...). For a given crop production system, a given location, these direct emissions depend largely from the fluctuating conditions of the climate and particularly rainfall. A reliable and representative quantification of the direct emissions can be obtained through a modelling approach. Research activities aim to set up a model of direct emissions on the field; limited in a first step to nitrogen compounds. A CERES type model has been used, the different submodules have been calibrated from a long term experiment (a rape seed crop and its intercrop) on an experimental sire in Champagne-Ardennes (NE France).This introductory presentation will highlight recent efforts to quantify the positive value of recycling metals such as aluminum, magnesium, lead, zinc, nickel and copper in relation to the three pillars of "sustainable development" - environmental protection, economic development and improve social consequences. This presentation will provide an overview of life cycle assessment profiles increasingly being utilized by customers, regulators and environmental advocacy groups to holistically evaluate the environmental performance of materials and products. The environmental profiles of products containing recycled metal will be presented based on rules established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Significant to the life cycle profile of metal products is recent confirmation that recycling has the potential to reduce materials production energy consumption by 95% for aluminum, 80% for magnesium and lead, 75% for zinc, and 70% for copper. Furthermore, "metals are eminently and repeatedly recyclable, while maintaining all their properties (1). Their durability relative to many hydrocarbon based materials enhance their life cycle performance. However, the persistence of metals when dispersed into our natural environmental makes recovery and recycling particularly important Overall, when considering life cycle effects, recycling is critical to a sustainable future for metal products. Finally, regional and international regulations will be highlighted which will effect the efficient recovery and recycle of metals and their overall contribution to environmental protection, economic development and the enhancement of society.This paper presents a methodology that uses a risk-based approach and life-cycle principles to incorporate environmental considerations into process design and development. Using a risk assessment model, a framework has been developed to assess the risk of harm that the process poses to the environment and conversely, the sensitivity of the process to environmentally related issues. A set of criteria has been introduced within the framework to select design tools and techniques applicable to the different stages of process design and development. By considering the lifecycle of the process and the relevant stakeholders, a holistic treatment is given to the risk assessment - which differs this methodology from traditional risk assessment approaches. Integrating such a risk approach to the design and development activity enables risk assessment to be used proactively in contrast to its typical audit function. The methodology is illustrated with a simplified example of a PVC process case study.The energy intensive nature of electric a re furnace (EAF) steelmaking necessitates that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will affect steelmakers directly and/or through electric power producers. A model of GHG emissions from an EAF meltshop has been developed using the life cycle assessment approach. Direct and indirect sources of GHG gas emissions are estimated and ranked, Furnace combustion optimisation was evaluated in case studies conducted on a Canadian conventional EAF and a British scrap preheating 'shaft' furnace. The analysis assumed 32 and 68% fossil fuel electricity generation, respectively. These case studies show that indirect GHG emission sources, in particular electricity generation, are more significant than direct emissions from the EAF. For the conventional EAF, off gas analysis and improved combustion control reduced electricity consumption by 40 kWh t(-1), costs by US$1.05/t, and GHG emissions by 20 kg CO2-eq./t, For the shaft EAF, real time offgas monitoring and closed loop burner control reduced electricity consumption by 25 kWh t(-1), costs by US$3.6/t, and GHG emissions by 15 kg CO2-eq./t. The case studies show that combustion optimisation using an EAF off gas analysis and combustion control system provides greater electricity, cost, and GHG reductions than previously reported in the literature, I&S/1492.Life Cycle Assessment has been used to compare the environmental performance of landfilling of the zinc used for galvanising steel with recycling by a number processes. Hypothetical process routes were composed involving three different EAF dust treatment processes, Waelz kiln, DC-furnace, and EZINEX, as well as scrap dezincing. The study shows that recycling of zinc used for galvanising steel clearly has environmental benefits in that it saves zinc resources. However, zinc recovery does not necessarily decrease the potential impact on global warming and acidification. The magnitude of these two impact categories is tightly correlated with the amount and type of primary energy consumed in a process. Due to the high electricity consumption in the dezincing process, this route has the highest impact on Global Warming Potential as well as Acidification Potential. The major part of the energy requirement for the production of zinc from primary and secondary sources is consumed in the reduction of ZnO to Zn. The consequence is that the theoretically possible saving in primary energy by recycling zinc-containing materials is relatively small. The impact categories land use and waste generation are not considered in this study, but most likely the evaluation of such impacts would further increase the potential environmental impact of the landfill alternative. The results also show that the location of an electricity-intensive process highly affects the potential environmental impact. Comparing process and material alternatives in LCA studies where branch average data is used is therefore considerably more complex than when ICA is used within a company.China has become the largest producer of SO2 emissions in the world. Thus effective SO2 emission and acid rain controls are urgently needed. This paper designated the priority control zones for both SO2 emission and acid precipitation in China. The Control Zones were identified as an area of 1.09x10(6) km(2), about 11.4% of the China's territory and about 14 Million tons SO2 emissions. The Acid Rain Control Zones involved 14 provinces, autonomous regions or municipalities, with 806000 km(2), about 8.4% of the national territory. The SO2 Pollution Control Zones had 290000 km(2), about 3% of the national territory. The policies against SO2 emissions were also formulated based on the coal life-cycle assessment. In the short term, it was suggested that affordable countermeasures should be taken to reduce SO2 emissions from sources, mainly including shutdown or retrofit of high-sulfur-coal mines, coal processing, and utilization of desulfurizing technologies in power plants. In the long term, clean coal technologies should be developed to avoid SO2 emissions from sources. The Chinese Government has accepted the designation results and the corresponding control policies.Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) offer many advantages over conventional methods of electrical generation including higher efficiencies and lower emissions. The environmental benefits of the use phase of SOFCs have been extensively reported but it is important that the total environmental burden is evaluated. This is done by adopting a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach. An essential element of the LCA of SOFCs is the fabrication stage. This paper describes the environmental impact of six SOFC fabrication methods;: screen-printing, slurry spraying, tape casting, calendering, electrochemical vapor deposition and physical vapor deposition.A study of refined metallic copper and nickel production was carried out using Life Cycle Assessment methodology to estimate the life cycle emissions of greenhouse and acid rain gases for these metals using data derived from the literature. Various processing routes were investigated which included a pyrometallurgical and a hydrometallurgical route for each metal. The effect of a number of process variables, namely ore grade, fuel type for electricity generation and efficiency of generation were also examined in the study. The results of the study, expressed in terms of total (or full cycle) energy consumption, Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Acidification Potential (AP), showed that the hydrometallurgical processes involving solvent extraction and electrowinning had higher energy consumptions and GWPs than the pyrometallurgical processes for both metals. Nickel metal production was shown to be several-fold mote energy intensive than copper metal production. The significant effect that falling ore grades have on attempts to meet greenhouse emission targets was also highlighted in the study.Agricultural processes are considerable sources of nitrous oxide and methane. An assessment of the contribution of particular processes should include the industrial inputs to agriculture. Life cycle analysis based on process chains is an appropriate assessment method. There are promising options to reduce emissions of nitrous oxide and methane. Successful strategies are based on an improvement of the output-input-ratio of production systems, e.g. by the introduction of precision farming. Additional options can be seen in a shift from high input cultures to low input cultures, if possible. Whether genetic engineering or other advancements are able to contribute to a decrease of the emission potential is not yet clear.Whereas there are known technical and economical advantages of using SF6-technology in electricity supply systems, the potential environmental effects of applying this technology has not been quantified in detail up to now. From this background, a comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on the supply of electricity using different switchgear technology has been carried out, which showed the following main results : Already on the level of switchgear bays the use of SF6-technology results in reductions of the area needed and energy losses and thereby also in a decrease of emissions contributing to acid rain and nutrification of rivers and seas. The total global warming potential can be decreased subject to low SF6 losses and in bays with a high loading. For an electricity supply grid of a city with 140,000 inhabitants the use of SF6-technology showed to be favourable in all environmental aspects studied (area used, energy needed, acid rain, nutrification and global warming potential) as compared to conventional SF6-free-technoIogy. SF6-technology provides particular flexibility in the basic design and in case of extension or re-arrangements of electricity supply grids. Thus, the length of the medium-voltage-cables can be reduced resulting in lower transmission losses. This fact is the main reason for the environmental advantages of SF6-technology, provided the SF6 losses are adequately controlled The study has been performed and critically reviewed according to ISO 14040.Current engineering design methods do not take the concept of 'sustainability' into consideration. In light of increasingly clear signs of unsustainability on a world scale, such as global warming, it is, however, necessary that process and product development include the concept of sustainability. This paper describes a new general method that operationalises the concept of sustainability into engineering design methods for selecting a sustainable process or product. The method modifies and extends principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the long-term effects of the production, use, and disposal of possible alternatives. In addition to global warming, the comparison of the different alternatives is based on themes including ozone depletion, nutrification, acidification, and photo-chemical smog formation. New themes developed include safety and household toxicity. The method also explicitly considers the important social concept of 'equity', the 'ultimate environmental fate' of substances, and the precautionary principle as criteria to assess sustainability. The developed method is applied to six possible alternatives to CFC-refrigerants for household refrigerators: iso-butane, formaldehyde, dimethylether, HFC, chloromethane, and ammonia. The new method shows that iso-butane is the best refrigerant, but only sustainable if the electricity production itself is sustainable.The paper describes the implementation of a computer-aided procedure capable of performing the Extended Exergy Analysis of an arbitrary model of a Complex Energy System. By this denomination we indicate a structured representation of any organised anthropic activity interacting with the Environment: individual Energy Conversion Systems, Industrial Settlements, Societal Sectors and an entire Society are examples of "Systems" that can be analysed by the procedure. The level of aggregation, the relevant input data and boundary conditions must be assigned by the user, and are scrutinised by the code for internal consistence. Except for this preliminary check, the procedure is entirely acritical about the input data, thus allowing a very broad range of sensitivity studies. The total amount of the resources entering the control volume must be assigned, either directly in exergetic form, or otherwise by means of mass- and specific energy flow rate values: the code executes a simple screening on the input data and computes the exergetic value of the incoming flows with the help of a table of "raw exergy data" available in one of its libraries. Energy- and exergy balances are performed independently: the package generates mass-, energy-, exergy- and extended exergy "balances". Irreversible losses are computed separately for each component of the System. The Extended Exergy Accounting ("EEA") technique allows for the computation of the real "value" of a product or artefact or service, and enables the analyst to assess a particular instance of Complex System (i.e., a certain structure and a certain input/output composition) in a more complete and meaningful way than both Life Cycle Analysis and Exergy-Life Cycle Analysis and Engineering Economic techniques (including Then-no-economics). The advantage of EEA consists in the inclusion in the System balance of the exergetic equivalent of human work (Labour), of Capital and of environmental damage. An example of application of the procedure to the Italian Society (on a 1996 database) is presented and discussed.An Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment and a classical environmental Life Cycle Assessment have been carried out for a power cycle featuring low emissions of carbon dioxide. The configuration of the power cycle is a semi-closed gas turbine combined cycle which allows tile increasing Of CO2 concentration in flue gases. The sequestration of carbon dioxide is achieved by means of chemical absorption with blended solution of amines. The Life Cycle Assessment is mainly focussed on Greenhouse Effect during the three phases of construction, operation and dismantling of the complete plant. This is necessary to verify if the process is effective in terms Of CO2 reduction. Others environmental effects have been considered, too. Besides the classic Life Cycle Assessment, an Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment has also been performed - in which exergy is considered as an indicator of resources depletion; the aim of this analysis is to assess the environmental cost, in term of exergy losses, of the life cycle of the plant. An accurate exergy analysis of the removal plant has been carried out.This study provides a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) scheme for a co-generation system aiming at compromising compatibility between environmentally and economically eco-operation with a NETS (Numerically Environmental Total Standard) concept. An optimum scheme for a co-generation system for an energy demand is environmentally and economically evaluated with an introduction of ESS (Eco-load standardization scheme) by noting fossil fuel depletion as input resources, and global warming due to CO2 emission and rain acidification due to NOx and SOx emissions as output. In this paper, an optimum operation scheme for a co-generation system is investigated from a point of view with use of various fuels for elemental machines because the exhaust gas composition and running cost differs according to a variety of fuels. The merits and demerits of the introduction of a co-generation system is numerically shown from an ecological and economical standpoint.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed in the last decades. A comprehensive framework has been established to enable the execution of the analysis. In this framework the concept of exergy or similar thermodynamic concepts have not yet been introduced. It is shown in this paper that for sustainable development the depletion of exergy reservoirs and the exergetic emission to the environment have to be minimised. To accomplish this it is proposed to extend the LCA with an Exergetic Life-cycle Analysis (ELCA). The method of how to perform an ELCA is presented. In the paper the concept of a zero-exergy or a reduced exergy emission plant is introduced. It is shown that in the case of a zero-exergy emission plant the LCA can completely be replaced by an ELCA. An extension to the method of ELCA is presented in which emissions are translated in terms of exergy. As a case study the comparison between the disposable polystyrene cup and the porcelain mug has been made. It is shown that the extended ELCA is a valuable approach because it gives a good indication of the effort in terms of natural resources needed to prevent emissions.The main objective is to minimize the influence of subjective arguments in the determination of an indicator for sustainability. Current methods are often based on the results of an environmental oriented Life Cycle Assessment. These results show the impact on the environment in many different effects, which are often aggregated into an indicator. The method of aggregation is often subject of discussion. By using the laws of thermodynamics it is possible to calculate the amount of the apparent non-renewable exergy necessary for the life cycle of a certain product or process. The new concept is mainly based on dividing the exergetic cost of a flow into a renewable exergetic cost flow and a non-renewable exergetic cost flow. The result of this method is the so-called rate of sustainability and is an indicator of the potential environmental impact of a particular process. An example is given whereby it is made clear that the production of electricity by a (Municipal) Waste Incinerating Plant (WIP) is less sustainable than by a Natural Gas fired power Plant (NGP).This paper outlines a Design Combined Methodology (DCM) that allows to conjugate some advantages from Pinch Technology and Thermoeconomics. Life Cycle Analysis is emphasized during Environmental Evaluation step and used in Thermoeconomics. Nowadays, the industrial processes used for fertilizers production in Colombia show a poor performance in both environmental and economic aspects. A nitric acid plant, which exports steam and produces mechanical energy, is considered as study case. Methodology application shows that there are many sources of exergy loss and irreversibilities in the process, caused by large temperature differences in heat transfer and several cases of bad allocations of heat exchangers. Because of this, two proposals of revamping are formulated: process with steam exportation only and process focused in production of mechanical energy. Proposed designs are discussed in some detail and DCM is applied to each one. Total investment for study case and proposed processes and their production cost are compared: new processes reach savings of 9 and 10%, respectively.This paper summarises the methodology and results generated as part of an integrated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Cost Analysis of key elements of the draft proposal for an EC Directive on waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) commissioned by the UK Department of Trade and Industry. Eight products were analysed: refrigerator, washing machine, personal computer, vacuum cleaner, television lawn mower, kettle and telephone. Three scenarios were investigated: the current situation in the UK; 100% landfilling of WEEE; and the draft proposed EU Directive requirements. The results of the study showed that for all products the Current UK scenario had less of an environmental impact than the 100% Landfilling Scenario. Also for six of the eight products, i.e. washing machine, PC, telephone, kettle, vacuum cleaner and lawnmower, the proposed WEEE Directive scenario was environmentally superior to the Current UK scenario; for the remaining two products - the refrigerator and TV - the result was less clear cut, with some environmental impacts being higher in the proposed WEEE Directive scenario. In terms of the life cycle financial analysis, it was generally concluded that the Current UK Scenario was the most cost effective. Although the proposed WEEE Directive scenario also offered positive net values for many of the products at the assumed prices, it was considered that the existing markets are insufficient to enable the provisions in the Proposal to be met cost-effectively.Market pressures and regulations are increasingly driving businesses to consider environmental issues during product development, promoting the idea of Design for Environment (DfE). A number of different approaches to DfE have emerged as this concept takes hold, which cover the spectrum from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to guidelines for design to Design for Disassembly. Conducting a full LCA is very difficult for those who are not familiar with the method, such as design teams charged with the development of complex products (e.g., electronic devices or cars). Other approaches to DfE address specific concerns but have limitations in scope and applicability. To fully address the concept of DfE, most companies require an integrated approach that provides life cycle data for their products and addresses regulatory and consumer concerns. This paper will present how each of these different DfE approaches falls short with respect to the requirements of a product design team. It will present how these methodologies can be combined to provide a robust life cycle design tool, and it will outline how it would meet the needs of a typical design team.This paper presents the concept of Environmental Quality related to the supply chain of an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), This concept embodies an Environmental Performance Tool, which generates a relative Normalized Environmental Performance per supplier. Such a performance can be integrated into the Supply-Chain Strategy related to Eco-Supplier Development and Contracting. This business approach is compared with LCA Method Eco-Indicator '95, which generates an absolute environmental load per kilogram produced printed board related to different environmental effects. Both approaches have been applied at production facilities of printed board suppliers. Based on research results, both approaches are discussed and advantages and disadvantages are shown.Electronic products consist of various materials, need a lot of sophisticated manufacturing processes and are manufactured from many different suppliers. These conditions make environmental assessments even more complicated. The approach of a model based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) / Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) means managing complex process models from the basis of a background database. Despite of the demanding conditions of electronics industry this offers the opportunity to provide transparent and summarized results with an acceptable time effort. It is realized by forming flexible modules with parameter variation that show already modeled parts and subassemblies which can be chosen from the database. These modules -that can be combined like a tool kit- will be exemplary demonstrated by the LCA of a copier machine. The parameter variation offers the possibility to adapt the modules to the specific product properties and subassembly modifications as far as they are given. Also the interactions within the different life cycle phases can be quickly modeled and analyzed. Even with no detailed material information of single parts and subassemblies the model based approach allows a LCA of the entire product by using those pre-calculated LCA profiles. The case study will present the relation between given information and gained LCA results by using the generic modules based LCA method. This study was partially supported by NEDO/JEMAI and we thank them for the financial support.This article reports on a study carried out within Ericsson Radio Systems. The aim was to provide input to an Ericsson strategy for treatment of end-of-life products. A representative product was sent for recycling to five different recycling companies in Japan, Europe and the USA. An evaluation was made from technical, economic and environmental perspectives. The options for end-of-life treatment, manual disassembly and mechanized shredding were compared. The result of the economic evaluation favored shredding. A Life Cycle Assessment carried out simultaneously ranked shredding and manual disassembly equally, assuming there is no hazardous substance contents providing a problem when shredding.Electronic products are so complex and fast evolving that specific life cycle analysis (LCA) during the product development are still not feasible. One successful alternative is a modular evaluation concept. The spectrum of companies in electronics - from the small, specialized company where one person handles all environmental affairs to the global players with their own environmental research departments - requires a flexible mixture of basic research and reliable data generation, contract R&D, and the transfer of results and methods into management workflows. Several electronic systems mainly from information and communications products have been assessed with a different number of modules, depending on the expected or necessary width and depth of results. For all examples optimization strategies and specific improvements will be shown.Increasing global population and consumption are causing declining natural and social systems. Sustainable development addresses these issues by integrating strategies for economic success, environmental quality, and social equity. This approach seeks to achieve long-term prosperity by removing operational constraints to growth through a focus on resource productivity and eco-efficiency. The key to success in sustainable development is innovative technology development and management. Many companies are showing that the best way to achieve this is by managing their supply chain network. Supply chain networks leverage resources to systematically develop products and innovate outside their internal technology management framework and resource base. This can translate into more technology innovation with less cost and more speed than the traditional vertically integrated approach. However, inefficiencies in supply chain processes can cause operational constraints, such as greenhouse gas emission limits that prevent the realization of technological advances. The adaptation of resource productivity and eco-efficiency practices helps to remove these constraints and drive toward sustainability. Although there is increasing interest in the business potential of sustainable development, there is no consensus, agreed upon context, or ''environmental metric" on how to measure progress. This paper proposes such a metric and demonstrates its link to supply chain effectiveness and competitive advantage. EcoPro, The Universal Environmental Metric, allows changes in the various types of environmental aspects to be evaluated together in relation to progress toward sustainability. It allows the concepts of resource productivity and eco-efficiency to be quantified in a convenient and meaningful way through the resource productivity indicator RP and the eco-efficiency index EE. These can be used as both leading (predictive) and lagging (evaluative) indicators of environmental performance. EcoPro balances environmental impact with economic output, provides a practical, quantitative criteria for sustainability (EE greater than or equal to 1), and demonstrates that the terms eco-efficiency and sustainability are synonymous. EcoPro utilizes and extends the methodology and terminology of the Environmental Management System approach now being widely implemented, e.g., ISO 14001, and addresses the guidance found in ISO 14031 on selecting environmental performance evaluation indicators and in ISO 14031 for life cycle analysis. Preliminary calculations on different Lucent product lines have provided insights into where environment,al investments should be focused to achieve the highest return on investment and risk reduction. We believe that this approach provides a practical basis for measuring continual improvement in environmental performance, sustainability, and associated competitive advantage. Using EcoPro, operational efficiencies of a firm and its suppliers can be evaluated without divulging sensitive business information. When extended to the full product lifecycle, EcoPro will provide customers with a product differentiator that can capture market share.Quantum Corporation, a computer storage products company, recently designed a new packaging system for their bulk hard disk drive product shipped to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The system involves a packaging design with a smaller environmental footprint and, more significantly, collection and reuse of the used packaging from OEM sites worldwide. The general analysis of the new packaging system is that of a traditional investment problem, with up front costs in terms of redesign, program rollout, etc., and expected savings over time from reduced use of packaging. Although some cost savings are expected once collection of used packaging replaces a threshold amount of new packaging purchases, costs of implementation were generally higher than predicted, and participation has been slower. The program should reduce package material costs by 30% at long-run peak usage. Because one of the primary drivers for the new system was to reduce environmental damages, the life cycle impacts of switching to the new packaging system were estimated using Carnegie Mellon University's Life Cycle Assessment method (available at http://www.eiolca.net/). The associated life cycle impacts suggest that energy and global warming emissions will be reduced by about 40%. This is significant because use of transportation networks will be increased with takeback.A partnership approach to performing an industry-wide environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) of cathode ray tube (CRT) and liquid crystal display (LCD) computer monitors is being conducted under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Design for the Environment Program. This approach encourages unbiased data collection and methodology development. Preliminary results from the product use life-cycle stage found that impacts calculated for the manufactured life of a monitor are on the order of 4 times greater than those estimated for an "effective (actual) life. Results also found the impacts from CRT use were approximately 2.7 times that of the LCD use and that potential variability in these findings must be considered when comparing use stage impacts to other life-cycle stages.The paper describes the application of an environmental assessment procedure to a manufacturer of lawn trimmers. The company makes six different sizes of trimmers. The paper brings out the unique features of such an operation when examined in light of environmental impact. The objective of this study is to help the manufacturer in making decisions such that environmental Factors become part of the company's operating policies.The paper discusses the concepts of Life Cycle Assessment and Design for the Environment. The procedures used in their application are described. An example of the development of a telephone terminal is given.Because of its importance a technique for systematically analyzing a product from gradle-to-grave, as the first of all helpful methods is the so called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. LCA is used as a tool to identify the weak points in a product design. These weak points show us where changes in product design will lead to improvements of the product's environmental profile. With the co-operation of the product manufacturer, a selection is made of the different options for improvement. Based on this selection a changed concept of the product will be elaborated which can be screened by means of a LCA to be sure the total environmental profile has been improved.During the management of municipal solid wastes there are a number of activities which result in emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) which are believed to cause to Global Warming. These are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). As all sectors of society will have to start reducing these emissions, effort is needed to address the greenhouse gas contribution resulting from waste management. A life-cycle analysis was performed to determine the GHG benefit of using composting in an Ontario municipality to divert organic waste (yard trimmings plus industrial organic waste such as lees from wine industry and renderings from animal processing plants) from landfill disposal and to determine the full emissions per tonne from landfilling, incinerating or backyard composting of food scraps. By excluding any carbon sequestering in landfills, it was found that 34, 122 tCO(2)e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) could be prevented from being emitted over the next 12 years by composting yard waste. However, when including carbon sequestering in landfills, it was found that there was no short-term GHG benefit to yard waste composting; more carbon was being stored in the landfill than being emitted as CO2 and CH4. For the management. of food waste, it has been estimated that landfilling will result in 0.120 tCO(2)e per tonne of food waste, but incineration and backyard composting will result in only 0.053 and 0.049 tCO(2)e per tonne of food waste. It is nitrous oxide emissions during backyard composting which causes this activity to become a positive contributor of GHG emissions. As a result, organic/yard waste composting may or may not have less GHG emissions than landfilling. However, for food waste management, backyard composting and incineration result in similar emissions and both are better than landfilling.Since the data involved in product life cycle is complicated, the time when old data produce passed longer, the local area where data being collected scattered widely, at present the database technical can't fit the requirement of product life cycle assessment (LCA). In this paper, we study on the practice of using data warehouse technical in product life cycle assessment software including the database warehouse system model of LCA and its structure, the WEB technical used to collect data from different location and so on.Nuclear energy is the major source of the electricity generation due to the lack of domestic energy in Korea. In recent years, environmental preservation concern has been increased for more efficient management of nuclear energy. Therefore it is necessary to apply Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology including environmental management system, waste reduction schemes and environmental analysis methods. In this study, LCA methodology is introduced to the nuclear power generation system and environmental burden caused by this system is assessed. This study suggests new methodology for environmental assessment and establishes the extensive infradatabase related with nuclear power generation system. Also, it is possible to improve the scientific basis of LCA with the emphasis on the nuclear power generation system. Therefore, this study consists of general framework of LCA such as goal and scope, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and valuation of the nuclear power generation system. The major objectives are to identify the environmental impact and the environmentally most dominant stage in life cycle of nuclear power generation system and to suggest the new methodology to solve the problem when LCA is applied to facility releasing the radioactive wastes. Thus this study is useful to improve the environmental impact assessment of nuclear power generation system and to promote the methodology of LCA. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper addresses external cost and multi-criteria analyses carried out for selected future electricity generating systems of interest under the Swiss conditions. The external cost estimates are based on an application of the "impact pathway approach", enriched by earlier experience from extensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The estimated total costs, i.e. the sum of internal and external costs may serve as a measure of economic and environmental efficiency of energy systems. The multi-criteria approach allows a more explicit consideration of the social dimension, highly important for the decision process. The applications of multi-criteria analysis illustrate the sensitivity of the results to a range of preferences expressed in the energy debate. Certain patterns in systems ranking can be observed in spite of these sensitivities. Both total cost assessment and multicriteria analysis are found to be useful, complementary instruments to support the decision process.The management system for solid and liquid organic waste affects the environment and surrounding technical systems in several ways. In order to decrease the environmental impact and resource use, biological waste treatment and alternative solutions for sewage treatment are often advocated. These alternatives include increased agricultural use of waste residuals. To analyse whether such proposed systems indicate improvements for the environment and its sustainability, systems analysis is a useful method The changes in environmental impact and resource use is not only a result of changes in waste treatment methods, but also largely a result of changes in surrounding systems (energy and agriculture) caused by changes in waste management practices. In order to perform a systems analysis, a substance-flow simulation model, the organic waste research model (ORWARE), has been used. The results are evaluated by using methodology from life cycle assessment (LCA). An economic analysis was also performed on three of the studied scenarios. The management system for solid organic waste and sewage in the municipality of Uppsala, Sweden, was studied. Three scenarios for different treatments of solid waste were analysed: incineration with heat recovery, composting, and anaerobic digestion. These three scenarios included conventional sewage treatment. A fourth scenario reviewed was anaerobic digestion of solid waste, using urine-separating toilets and separate handling of the urine fraction. The results are only valid for the case study and under the assumptions made. In this case study anaerobic digestion result in the lowest environmental impact of all the solid waste management systems, but is costly. Economically, incineration with heat recovery is the cheapest way to treat solid waste. Composting gives environmental advantages compared to incineration methods, without significantly increased costs. Urine separation, which may be implemented together with any solid waste treatment, has great advantages, particularly in its low impact on the environment. However, there is a large increase in acidification. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Over the last decades increased use of waste paper as a source of fibre for the pulp and paper production process has meant that the industry has undergone significant changes in material and energy use. However, this means use of technologies that do not generate a significant amount of biomass for energy recovery, and thus requires that more energy is purchased by the industry. If waste paper is incinerated instead of repulped, energy purchases by society can be reduced, which will have a positive effect on CO2 emissions. In this article, we argue that an analysis of these effects requires a systems analytical approach including the different production lines, fibre flows and alternative uses of the fibre rather than a life cycle analysis with allocation methods. In the latter case, one often looks at just one production process and uses allocation methods for in- and outflow from or to other processes. We show that allocation methods sometimes used in life cycle analyses do not give a good approximation. Thus, it is recommended that allocation be avoided by, for example, expanding the system. If allocation cannot be avoided, the allocation should be based on the way in which the inputs and outputs are changed by quantitative changes in the products or functions delivered by the system. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Steel making technology poses strong potentials for environmental protection in three direction. One is pollution control on steel making process itself. Japanese steel industry has cut down various type of emission drastically since 1970's. Secondary, those process technology can be applied to reduce environmental burden in other industrial sectors. One of the successful examples is municipal waste treatment facility. Thirdly, development; of high performance steel products, such as high strength steel for automobile body, can contribute to improve environmental performance during their use, based on the concept of life cycle assessment. Some examples of the successful development and future task is discussed.Recycling should be: promoted to keep the global environment. However, it is difficult to determine the quantitative impact. A life cycle assessment is one of the most reliable methods to estimate the global environment impact. Exergy is useful like entropy when considering the sustainable development. All of our activities have been obtained exergy resources and/or energy itself and throw away waste and/or waste heat. We are trying to use exergy to estimate the quantity of energy and matter for resource accounting. For recycling plastic, plastic has two aspects: material and energy source. The environmental assessment of plastic recycling suggests that the exergy reduction of the entire system is estimated by the yield of matter and the process efficiency. The material recycling is better than the thermal recycling when the process efficiency is high. However, the thermal recycling, is much better for the low efficiency. The transition point is able to be decided by the efficiency of the manufacturing and the electric power generation.Efforts to reduce energy use in freight transportation usually center around "mode-based" approaches, namely improving the energy efficiency of energy intensive modes, such as truck, and shifting more freight to energy efficient modes, such as rail. In the first part of this paper we review the recent trends and future prospects for these mode-based approaches, finding that despite substantial improvement in the technological efficiency of freight modes and robust growth in the use of intermodal rail since 1980, total freight energy use across all modes in the US has grown by approximately 33%, with proportional growth in carbon emissions, In the second part of the paper we propose use of a "commodity-based" approach, in which freight energy use is disaggregated by contribution of major commodity groups, in order to support efficiency improvement at the commodity level. Two potential applications of the commodity based approach, namely (1) life cycle analysis of energy use for major commodity groups and (2) spatial analysis of freight patterns, are demonstrated using the 1993 US Commodity Flow Survey data. Results of these preliminary findings suggest that commodity groups vary widely in the ratio of energy use in production to energy use in transport, and that for many commodity groups, there may be substantial opportunities for saving energy by redistributing flow patterns. Through development of the commodity-based approach, we also identify the collaborative involvement of shippers and carriers as a key point in improving energy efficiency, since it can be used to both make the mode-based approach more effective and address new issues such as the underlying growth in tonne-km, Benefits for air quality and other transportation issues are also discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.This paper describes a set of visualization techniques that will support the training of environmental economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) users. ETO-LCA is a software tool used to estimate the environmental effects of any product throughout the course of its life. The process of estimating the environmental effects of a product using the EIO-LCA software prototype consists of the following steps: problem formulation, computations, and results analysis. Empirical software evaluation has shown that user solutions to EIO-LCA problems yield large variability; therefore, users need to have a clearer understanding of the model, and they need to be trained. Instead of using only long tutorial documents and tables to train the users to use the data sources, we have designed a software tool that uses visualization tools to train users in the problem formulation and data analysis tasks. For the problem-formulation task, the coloring matrices will allow users to better understand the economic data used. Also, treemaps are included so users can evaluate the relationships between different levels of aggregation used in the problem formulation. Treemaps were used to allow users to understand both the direct and indirect effects in the results analysis.A general mathematical model has been developed as a tool for environmental evaluation of industrial chemical processes. This model is based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and includes a modular and cumulative conceptual approximation. Accordingly, the model considers the potential effects on the environment caused by mass, energy and exergy flows. For environmental loads related with mass flows, two main categories are defined: pollution and perturbation environmental effects. Whereas for the environmental effect associated with energy flows, a factor defined as "energy dissipation" is employed, and similarly for exergy flows, a "exergy destruction" parameter is used. The measurement unit employed throughout the model is expressed in terms of "potential environmental impact units/hour". As an example study case, the integrated production chain (IPC) for nitric acid production in the Colombian context is evaluated. This particular IPC includes the ammonia production plant, energy plants and main process plant. The results demonstrate that for environmental perturbation effects based on mass flows, the main contribution in the IPC corresponds to the energy plants. In the case of pollution environmental loads, the principal contribution relates to ammonia production. Regarding environmental effects associated with energy flows, the highest "energy dissipation" factor corresponds to the main process, followed in order by the ammonia process. Finally, for the effect denominated as "exergy destruction", it could be established that Colombian energy plants show the highest contribution in the IPC. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The history of water pollution control and environmental management in Japan is outlined. Particular attention is paid to Minamata disease and other impacts of industrial pollution, and the consequent development of environmental legislation. The growth of sewerage systems and more recently of wastewater and sludge reuse are noted, before considering the application of the concept of life cycle assessment, which is increasingly central to the minimisation of environmental impacts.Life cycle assessment (LCA) on total sewage sludge treatment systems including thickening. anaerobic digestion, dewatering, and incineration/melting was performed to estimate a global warming impact as carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. As representative processes for the assessment, the most typical and widely used processes were selected. Generally. the life cycle of actual treatment facilities consists of three stages: construction. operation and dismantlement. In this study, the amount of CO2 produced from the life cycle steps of existing unit sludge treatment processes, was calculated by inventory analysis of input materials. In addition, for all processes investigated, individual CO2 emission units (CEUs), i.e. the amount of emitted CO2 for treating a unit weight of sludge, were also calculated. By using the obtained CEU matrix, it was possible to simulate the CO2 production from various types of complex treatment systems as well as to trace the dominant cause of CO2 production in individual treatment processes.This analysis suggests that a holistic or life-cycle approach be taken when assessing the longterm sustainability of sludge reuse options, issues such as compliance with world best practice environmental/health standards, energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, odour control and volume reduction must now be taken into account when assessing the long-term sustainability and public acceptability of the various management options. Four major criteria for the assessment of sludge reuse options are proposed and five management options are assessed using these criteria. The results indicate that traditional land application reuse options must be evaluated in more detail to confirm whether they offer a long-term sustainable management option. Newer thermal based management options may however provide long-term sustainable management options.Membrane processes have recently been applied much more extensively by South African industry. A number of the older plants have suffered from fouling problems, sometimes brought on by changes in the feed stream. Newer installations are tending to apply the techniques of Cleaner Production to more closely integrate the membrane process into the manufacturing process and to reduce the size of the installation. There has been a trend to investigate methods of using the brine in place of discharging it to the environment. Membrane related research is still very active and a range of current initiatives is provided.In order to get more detailed information for better decision making in future biogenic waste treatment, different processes to treat biogenic wastes in plants with a treating capacity of 10,000 tons of organic household wastes per year were compared. The comparison included life cycle assessments as well as economic considerations for different treating methods. Measurements on compost plants showed that methane emissions are higher than estimated so far. With the tools ECOINDICATOR and UBP anaerobic digestion shows to be advantageous as compared to composting, incineration or combination of digestion and composting, mainly because of a better energy balance. In fully enclosed, professional treatment plants, the specific biotechnological treatment costs are in the range of about 150.-sFr/ton for aerobic, anaerobic and combined technologies. it can be concluded, that anaerobic processes will become considerably more important in the future mainly for ecological reasons.The methods of ecological balancing up to its recent state of art are developed mainly from the analysis of industrial products. When they are applied to agricultural subjects it is attempted to analyse as broad as possible the fluxes of matter caused by agricultural activities within the framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The fluxes of matter and energy of machine employment and of the provision of means of production (seeds, fertiliser, pesticides) have to be investigated in order to reflect on cropping measures. The results of the expenditures for the production of pesticides both show lacks and emissions within the spectrum of active substances being offered. Different publications and own studies are investigated with regard to this state of affairs. On the basis of site specific crop rotations (loess area in Lower Saxony and a site in the basin of Uelzen), the shares of pesticide expenditure in the life cycle inventory of different crops are calculated and assessed for material and energy inputs and for the environmental effects. Finally, methodical approaches for the impact assessment of pesticide applications are discussed in view of the pest management and the environmental fate of pesticides.The life cycle analysis (LCA) for different methods of weed control was carried out by the ifeu-Institute Heidelberg in cooperation with the SLFA-Neustadt, department of ecology. Eight different types of weed control (mechanical and chemical) were analyzed for the governement of Rheinland-Pfalz between the years 1996 and 1998. The LCA was carried out under the rules of ISO 14040 and was sucessfully reviewed by independent experts. Urban planning and decision-making for sustainable development urgently need data of high spatial resolution to establish the relationship between the socio-economic performance of the urban system and its different sub-units (i.e. housing schemes, commercial and industrial developments, services) on the one hand and their environmental impacts of these subunits on the other. To achieve this task, a system was developed to delineate urban land cover units. The approach was tested for the city of Munich. The units delineate the fine-grained pattern of urban built-up and open spaces. The typology was based on established categories of zoning and development plans. In addition, the units were delineated on an aggregated scale to generate a synoptic understanding of the urban "metabolism" for different "strategic" levels of urban planning. A case study on urban hydrology is presented to characterize aspects of the metabolism of the urban system. Additional case studies covered urban climates, energy demand for space heating and carbon dioxide emissions. Results showed that the cover units and types had distinct environmental features. Furthermore the causal links with urban physical and land use features were investigated. Based on the hydrological case study, environmental targets and standards to promote sustainable development are proposed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

 We used a multilayered, backpropagation neural network to investigate the relative effects of yearly weather and long-term climate patterns on the abundance of northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus: hereafter, bobwhite) in Oklahoma, USA. Bobwhite populations have been declining for several decades across the United States, and predicted global climate change might accelerate the rate of decline. We were interested in whether bobwhite abundance was more responsive to yearly precipitation and temperature, or to annual deviations from long-term mean climate patterns. We used roadside count data collected over a 6 year period (1991-1997) by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation as a measure of bobwhite abundance. We standardized quail counts among counties by calculating the standard normal deviate for each county. Weather data were obtained from weather stations closest to the roadside-count route. We had 280 training cases and 68 test-validation cases. Two data sets were constructed: one using yearly weather data (actual rainfall and temperature) and the second using annual deviations from long-term mean values. We conducted simulation analyses to determine the nature of the relationship between each dependent variable and the standardized bobwhite counts. A neural network with eight neurons was most efficient for the yearly weather data, accounting for 25% of the variation in the training data. The adjusted sum-of-squares for this model was 2.42. A four-neuron network was selected for the deviation-from-normal data set, accounting for 23% of the variation in the training data. The adjusted sum-of-squares for the deviation model was 1.44, indicating it performed better than the model for yearly weather patterns. Deviation from long-term mean July and August temperatures combined contributed 31.5% to the climate network's predictions, and deviations from mean winter, spring, and summer precipitation combined contributed 42.8% to the network's predictions. As July temperature increased over the long-term mean, the number of bobwhites counted increased over the route mean, but the relationship decelerated at high July temperatures. Predicted increases in bobwhites counted were highest when August temperatures were below the mean and decreased rapidly for all temperatures greater than the mean. Predicted bobwhite counts increased asymptotically as winter rain increased over the long-term mean, but were greatest at mean spring-rainfall amounts and at below average amounts of summer rainfall. We conclude that the absolute changes in yearly weather pattern predicted by some global change models will not have as great an impact on bobwhite abundance as will the magnitude of the deviations of these values from the climate bobwhites are adapted to in this portion of their range. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Technological research and development are among the most frequently advocated strategies for adapting agriculture to possible future changes in climate. However, while many statements point to the reliance that is placed on technology, and to the power of induced innovation, the actual process of agricultural research and development has received little explicit consideration in the context of climatic constraints on food production. This paper offers both a descriptive assessment and empirical analysis of the place of technology research and development in climate adaptation research and planning. Insights into the assumed role of technology are developed through a review of the published literature and recent commentary. The role of technological innovation in the handling of climatic risks is then explored empirically in an analysis of innovation research and development in the Ontario soybean industry. This reveals an array of technological innovations that have helped Ontario soybean-growers manage climatic challenges to date, as well as a range of potential constraints on the innovation process itself. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Funding for greenhouse gas mitigation projects in developing countries is crucial for addressing the global climate change problem. By examining current climate change-related financial mechanisms and their limitations, this paper indicates that their roles are limited in affecting developing countries' future emissions, and argues for the necessity of stronger private sector engagement in financing mitigation projects. In this regard, the clean development mechanism (CDM), one of the flexibility mechanisms incorporated into the Kyoto Protocol, could offer great potential in helping mobilize foreign direct investment towards climate mitigation, by providing commercial incentives for the private sector to invest in mitigation projects and internalizing externalities associated with mitigation projects. However, due to additional risks and barriers involved in CDM projects, we believe that appropriate public-private linkage would be necessary in order to bring the CDM into full play. To this end, we suggest that public funds could be used to complement private investment via the CDM, thus enhancing market functions of such an investment. Moreover, in so doing, we think that it would be necessary to examine a host of factors, such as risk sharing, private sector investment behaviour, types of technologies to be transferred, and co-ordination with the commonly practiced trade and investment rules. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Monitoring and evaluation of forestry projects is needed to accurately determine their impact on greenhouse gas emissions and other attributes, and to ensure that the global climate is protected and that country obligations are met. We present an overview of guidelines recently developed for the monitoring, evaluation, reporting, verification, and certification of forestry projects for climate change mitigation.(1) These guidelines are targeted to developers, evaluators, verifiers, and certifiers of forestry projects, and address several key issues, including methods for estimating gross and net carbon savings. The next phase of our work will be to develop a procedural handbook providing information on how one can complete monitoring, evaluation and verification forms. We then plan to test the usefulness of these handbooks in the real world. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides an overview of Canadian climate change policy. It is argued that voluntary action will contribute little to climate change mitigation and that forest management strategies can, at most, contribute some 7.5 percent of Canada's required Kyoto CO2-emissions reduction target. To do so requires tree-planting subsidies, which are inefficient locally and globally. In the arena of land-use change and forest strategies, Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism offers a more efficient alternative to domestic strategies.Although emissions trading lowers the costs of climate change mitigation, transaction costs (e.g. to find a trading partner) may reduce its cost-effectiveness. Some economists claim that transaction costs for Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects will be higher than for International Emissions Trading (IET) transfers, arguing that projects require advance approval whereas permit transfers can be automatically registered and checked annually. However, this article demonstrates the incompleteness of their views by both analyzing empirical data and discussing the theoretical conditions under which transaction costs decrease for JI and CDM and increase for IET. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recently released its Third Assessment Report (TAR), in which new projections are given for global-mean warming in the absence of policies to limit climate change. The full warming range over 1990 to 2100, 1.4 degrees to 5.8 degreesC, is substantially higher than the range given previously in the IPCC Second Assessment Report. Here we interpret the new warming range in probabilistic terms, accounting for uncertainties in emissions, the climate sensitivity, the carbon cycle, ocean mixing, and aerosol forcing. We show that the probabilities of warming values at both the high and Low ends of the TAR range are very Low. In the absence of climate-mitigation policies, the 90% probability interval for 1990 to 2100 warming is 1.7 degrees to 4.9 degreesC.Various studies of public opinion regarding the causes and consequences of climate change reveal both a deep reservoir of concern, yet also a muddle over causes, consequences and appropriate policy measures for mitigation. The technique adopted here, namely integrated assessment (IA) focus groups, in which groups of randomly selected individuals in Switzerland looked at models of possible consequences of climate change and questioned specialists as to their accuracy and meaning, revealed a rich assembly of reactions. Respondents were alarmed about the consequences of high-energy futures, and mollified by images of low-energy futures. Yet they also erected a series of psychological barriers to justify why they should not act either individually or through collective institutions to mitigate climate change. From the viewpoint of changing their lifestyles of material comfort and high-energy dependence, they regarded the consequences of possible behavioural shift arising from the need to meet mitigation measures as more daunting. To overcome the dissonance created in their minds they created a number of socio-psychological denial mechanisms. Such mechanisms heightened the costs of shifting away from comfortable lifestyles, set blame on the inaction of others, including governments, and emphasised doubts regarding the immediacy of personal action when the effects of climate change seemed uncertain and far away. These findings suggest that more attention needs to be given to the social and psychological motivations as to why individuals erect barriers to their personal commitment to climate change mitigation, even when professing anxiety over climate futures. Prolonged and progressive packages of information tailored to cultural models or organised belief patterns, coupled to greater community based policy incentives may help to widen the basis of personal and moral responsibility. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.To investigate the potential local health benefits of adopting greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies, we develop scenarios of GHG mitigation for Mexico City, Mexico; Santiago, Chile; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and New York, New York, USA using air pollution health impact factors appropriate to each city. We estimate that the adoption of readily available technologies to lessen fossil fuel emissions over the next two decades in these four cities alone will reduce particulate matter and ozone and avoid approximately 64,000 (95% confidence interval [CI] 18.000-116,000) premature deaths (including infant deaths), 65,000 (95% CI 22,000-108,000) chronic bronchitis cases, and 37 million (95% CI 27-47 million) person-days of work loss or other restricted activity. These findings illustrate that GHG mitigation can provide considerable local air pollution-related public health benefits to countries that choose to abate GHG emissions by reducing fossil fuel combustion.The organic matter content of many soils in West Africa has been depleted due to overgrazing, agricultural mismanagement, deforestation and overexploitation of the natural resources. Degraded agro(eco)systems can be managed to increase carbon sinks in vegetation and soil, and to reduce carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The capacity for sequestering carbon will increase as annual precipitation increases, and generally as mean temperature decreases, provided the soil and terrain conditions are not limiting for crop (biomass) growth. The agroecological suitability of three pilot sites, proposed for soil carbon sequestration projects in Senegal, is assessed and the feasibility of various management options to increase organic carbon levels in the soil is discussed. For the future, a Land Resources Information System should be developed to consider detailed data on climate, soil and terrain conditions, status of soil degradation, and land-use systems for West Africa. Upon its linkage to a dynamic soil carbon model and a socio-economic module, such an integrated system can be used to assess the ecotechnological and socio-economic potential for carbon sequestration projects in the context of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) proposed under article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. If adapted, this mechanism could confer funds to West African countries for the sustainable use and conservation of their natural resources, thereby providing economic, environmental and societal benefits for local populations, while simultaneously contributing to climate change mitigation. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.We are just beginning to evaluate and model the contributions policies make toward improving energy efficiency. In this article, three recent studies are reviewed. They represent an important step in the analyses of climate-change mitigation strategies. All studies model estimated policy impacts rather than the policies themselves. Often the policy impacts are based on assumptions, as the effects of a policy are not certain. Most models incorporate only economic (or price) tools, which, for estimating impacts, costs, and benefits of mitigation strategies, recent studies have proven are insufficient. The studies reviewed are a first effort to capture the effects of nonprice policies. They contribute to a better understanding of the role of policies in improving energy efficiency and mitigating climate change. All policy scenarios result in substantial energy savings compared with the baseline scenario used: they also result in substantial net benefits to the US economy. Because the industrial sector is the most diverse and, arguably, the most challenging energy-demand sector to model, studying policies for them is no easy task. The challenges, which are many, fall into two categories: appropriate level of detail (i.e., sector, technology, and policy) and representations of decision making. A better understanding of decision-making behavior, technology choice, and policy impact and effectiveness is needed to improve our understanding of the potential effectiveness of future energy efficiency policies as well as to improve policy modeling. With these developments, the current and next-generation policy models and studies have the potential to become richer representations of the industrial sector.Although, it has received relatively little attention as a potential method of combating climate change in comparison to energy reduction measures and development of carbon-free energy technologies, sequestration of carbon dioxide in geologic or biospheric sinks has enormous potential. This paper reviews the potential for sequestration using geological and ocean storage as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Considerable quantities of carbon dioxide separated from natural gas deposits and from hydrogen production from steam reforming of methane are already used in enhanced oil recovery and in extraction of coalbed methane, the carbon dioxide remaining sequestered at the end of the process. A number of barriers lie in the way of its implementation on a large scale. There are concerns about possible environmental effects of large-scale injection of carbon dioxide especially into the oceans. Available technologies, especially of separating and capturing the carbon dioxide from waste stream, have high costs at present, perhaps representing an additional 40-100% onto the costs of generating electricity. In most of the world there are no mechanisms to encourage firms to consider sequestration. Considerable R&D is required to bring down the costs of the process, to elucidate the environmental effects of storage and to ensure that carbon dioxide will not escape from stores in unacceptably short timescales. However, the potential of sequestration should not be underestimated as a contribution to global climate change mitigation measures.Against increasing scientific evidence of human-induced global warming, and prevailing uncertainties regarding the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, the use of environmental taxes has been gaining increasing popularity in the OECD region. Economists often conjecture that such instruments provide a continuous incentive for technological innovation, which is likely to be a key determinant for success or failure in climate policy, at least in the long turn. However, there is little empirical evidence available to justify claims of that kind. The objective of this paper is to provide such evidence, by assessing the impacts of Norwegian CO(2)-taxes, the key instrument in Norway's climate policy, on technological innovation in upstream petroleum operations. The balance of evidence suggests that the introduction of CO(2)-taxes has provided some incentive for innovation that has shifted petroleum operations in a less emission-intensive direction. That said, the pattern of technological change pertains mostly to incremental process innovations, cumulative improvements, and adaptations of technologies already available. These insights may assist policymakers when formulating policy strategies and selecting instruments for climate change mitigation.Recent progress in decarbonization processes and engineered storage systems for CO2, together with preliminary cost estimates for these technologies, indicate that capture and storage Of CO2 Will have a major role to play in achieving deep reductions in emissions. These technologies hold the potential to reduce the cost of stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases, the ultimate objective of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). Their value rises as the allowable level of cumulative carbon emissions declines. The value of these technologies is robust regardless of whether the world's economically recoverable oil and gas resources are eventually found to be large or small. This paper considers the economic implication of those advances in the context of long-term, global climate change mitigation strategies. This indicates the need for a broad, robust research and development strategy to reduce the cost of separating CO2 and to make accessible the widest range of storage reservoirs. It is also important to demonstrate excellent security of storage, in order to win public acceptance of the use of capture and storage techniques.The near- to mid-term deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies can accelerate the process of significantly reducing emissions of carbon dioxide under a wide range of policy scenarios and reduce significantly the costs of complying with a climate change mitigation protocol -- by as much as $1 trillion over the period 2005-2050. These carbon capture and sequestration technologies also allow the continued use of fossil fuels, while reducing their carbon emissions and keeping the cost of electricity generated from fossil fuels competitive with other generation technologies.Substantial efforts will be required to enable the world to reduce the output of greenhouse gases below levels which would otherwise be expected to accompany the population growth and economic development anticipated over the next century. Many hope that technology will provide solutions to meet this challenge. The International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA) organized a workshop to examine the results of several major greenhouse gas mitigation technology assessment programmes. Outlined are general guidelines elaborated at the IPIECA workshop for effective assessments of these greenhouse gas mitigating technologies. Factors including capacity (how much reduction or limitation a given technology could provide), timing (how soon could the technology become significant in the market place), and cost or commercial viability are critical in effective assessment of technology options. In addition, assessments should also consider the economic, political and social implications of the technology, as well as its possible ancillary environmental effects. Current assessments of technologies demonstrate that a range of factors need to be considered when assessing greenhouse gas mitigating technologies, and that a suite of technologies will be required to achieve reductions - there is no magic bullet.This paper outlines a methodological framework for the economic evaluation Of CO2 emissions abatement policies and measures, formulating a basis for the selection of those options of climate change mitigation interventions that minimize the economic cost and maximize the social welfare, To this purpose, a Cost Benefit Analysis has been implemented in order to evaluate a variety Of CO2 emission abatement measures in the Greek energy sector on the basis of their social (i.e. the sum of the private and external) costs and benefits, and it is compared with a Cost Effectiveness Analysis, which takes into account only the net financial costs of the examined interventions. The analysis clearly reveals that a significant decrease in CO2 emissions is possible without great cost to the economy. Moreover, the monetization of environmental benefits (e.g. restriction of impacts on human health, agriculture, biodiversity, etc.) associated with the above mentioned interventions represents a powerful tool for highlighting priority actions in the context of a climate change mitigation policy and quantifying their overall economic and environmental effectiveness. Industrial ecology (IE) promotes the development of industrial systems based on recycling of matter and cascading of energy through cooperation. In this paper, the local/regional industrial ecosystem approach is reflected in two examples from Finland. The local forest industry system is based on renewable resources, waste materials and energy utilisation between forestry companies, a saw-mill, a pulp mill, a paper mill and a forest industry power plant. Waste energy from electricity production is used for production of heat and process steam. Regional city energy supply systems in Finland are also to a large extent arranged around power plants that utilise waste energy. The potential of combining the forest industry system with the energy supply systems of cities is considered and the conditions for success in the Finnish case are discussed. (C) 2001 Academic Press.Industrial Ecology is an industrial environmental management concept with an analogy in the natural ecosystem, In an ecosystem, materials are recycled between organisms, and energy is embedded in the matter of the food chain, while the only external input to the system as a whole is the solar energy. An Industrial Ecosystem is a system where the industrial actors use this natural recycling model and co-operate by using each other's waste material and waste energy flows to minimize the system virgin material and energy input as well as the waste and emission output from the system as a whole. In theory, the economic environment win-win can be achieved as raw material, emission control and waste management costs are reduced through using waste as a resource of production. In this paper, the material and energy flows of the forest ecosystem are considered, and this natural recycling model is used to construct an industrial ecosystem in the forest industry of Finland. Recycling of matter including nutrients and carbon constitutes the basis in the operation of the forest ecosystem as well as in the operation of the forest industry system. The forest industry will use the cycle in these flows as a source of raw materials and energy. An industrial ecosystem is constructed with the flows of matter, nutrients, energy and carbon. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology? A surprising, intriguing expression that immediately draws our attention. The spontaneous reaction is that "industrial ecology" is a contradiction in terms, something of an oxymoron, like "obscure clarity" or "burning ice". Why this reflex? Probably because we are accustomed to considering the industrial system as isolated from the Biosphere, with factories and cities on one side and nature on the other, as well as the recurrent problem of trying to minimise the impact of the industrial system on what is "beyond" it: its surroundings, the "environment". As early as the 1950s, this end-of-pipe angle was the one adopted by ecologists, whose first serious studies focused oil the consequences of the various forms of pollution oil nature. In this perspective on the industrial system, human industrial activity as such remained outside the field of research. Industrial ecology explores the opposite assumption: The industrial system can be seen as a certain kind of ecosystem. After all, the industrial system, just as natural ecosystems, can be described as a particular distribution of materials, energy, and information flows. Furthermore, the entire industrial system relies on resources and services provided by the Biosphere, fi-om which it cannot be dissociated. (It should be specified that "'industrial", in the context of industrial ecology, refers to all human activities occurring within modern technological society. Thus, tourism, housing, medical services, transportation, agriculture, etc. are part of the industrial system) Besides its rigorous scientific conceptual framework (Scientific ecology), industrial ecology can also be seen as a practical approach to sustainability. It is an attempt to address the question, "How can the concept of sustainable development be made operational in an economically feasible way?" Industrial ecology represents precisely one of the paths that could provide concrete solutions. Governments have traditionally approached development and environmental issues in a fragmented and compartimentalised way. This is illustrated in the classical end-of-pipe strategy for the treatment of pollution, which has proven to be quite useful, but not adequate to make all efficient use of limited resources, in the context of a growing population with increasing economic aspirations. Thus, industrial ecology emerges at a time when it is becoming increasingly clear that the traditional pollution treatment approach (end-of-pipe) is not only insufficient to solve environmental problems, but also too costly in the long run.Superior environmental performance has not traditionally been a goal of managers of power generating facilities, but there is now considerable pressure to go "beyond compliance," even for facilities that have been in existence for decades. In this regard, significant environmental improvement can be achieved by taking a life-cycle perspective. We have conducted a streamlined life-cycle assessment on an existing gas/oil-fired generating facility. With the results of this assessment as a basis, we propose a number of generic steps that can be taken to improve the environmental performance of most existing power generating facilities.The Ford Motor Company is a transnational automobile manufacturer and a contemporary cultural icon with immense and far-reaching effects on economy, ecology, and society. As it has been throughout its history, Ford today is often in the public spotlight. Its recent move toward more ecological and sustainable practices, one of the more remarkable developments in business management in decades, has begun to remake Ford's image. As this cultural critique shows, however the continued production of SUVs, a highly profitable but possibly anti-ecological pursuit, is not the only contradiction in Ford's quest to reinvent itself as a green business leader Its core belief (that the world can and should accommodate the desires of mobile consumers, most of whom are both auto enthusiasts and environmentalists) serves as a severely limiting condition. Ford's innovations are noteworthy, but its approach falls short of what is needed from big business to help create a more ecological society.Global population and environmental pressures are challenging multinational companies to develop new business strategies founded upon the principles of sustainability-assuring that they can meet the needs of both present and future generations of customers and stakeholders. Corporate sustainability requires understanding the "triple bottom line", which includes economic, societal, and ecological performance. It involves designing products and processes with a full awareness of their life-cycle costs and benefits, and seeking new technologies to create more value with fewer resources. To put sustainability into practice, companies are beginning to transform their core business processes and develop environmentally and socially responsible products and services. Many are adopting the concepts of industrial ecology and green chemistry in an effort to transform their operations from a linear to a closed-loop business model. This changing climate is creating new opportunities for break-through research and development, ranging from nanotechnology to green chemistry.In the last decade, an area of increasing estuarine research in the New York/New Jersey Harbor has been the identification of toxic contaminant sources, mapping of contaminant levels in water and sediments, and assessment of contaminant accumulation in biota. The accumulation of anthropogenic contamination in the harbor's sediments has occurred for centuries, primarily from land-based municipal and industrial sources. Contaminants from land-based sources introduced into surface waters rapidly become scavenged by suspended particles that then tend to settle to the bottom, primarily in deep areas, such as berths and navigation channels. Several million cubic meters of sediments must be dredged annually to clear navigation channels. In the past, the dredged material was disposed in a designated ocean site. However, in 1992, new testing procedures were implemented, and much of the harbor's dredged material was determined to be unsuitable for ocean placement. It is ironic that these restrictions came at a time when the quality of harbor sediments is improving, largely because of pollution controls implemented as a result of the Clean Water Act and other environmental measures put in place by government and industry. For example, the harbor-wide concentration of mercury has decreased to 0.7-0.8 ppm, a level that is approaching the pre-industrial background level. Nevertheless, in certain areas of the harbor, there remain sufficiently high concentrations of contaminants to merit concern and to create serious problems for sponsors of dredging projects. Development of a basin-wide sediment management strategy is necessary to guide port decision-makers in their efforts to clean-up contaminant sources, to dredge regional waterways, and to ameliorate the contaminated sediment disposal problem. The backbone of this strategy is the integration of the data from an ongoing field monitoring and modeling program with a parallel investigation of watershed and airshed sources and sinks using industrial ecology methodology. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The paper differentiates approaches in technology (end-of-pipe, cleaner production, industrial ecology, zero emission and eco-social-tech) and compares them in respect to the problem solving capacity on the ecological as well as social dimension by showing the eco-impact reduction and job creation. Eco-social-tech represents the approach with highest problem solution as it is based on "eco-social market economy", which will the replace free market economy. The deep background of these innovations is "ecosophy", the wisdom of nature, which serves as guideline for eco-restructuring the world.Human activity to support scientific research in the Antarctic environment poses potential threats to Antarctic ecosystems with regard to materials use and waste generation. To begin to understand the potential environmental impacts, a case study materials flow analysis was carried out for New Zealand's Scott Base. In a typical research season (1 July 1997-30 June 1998), Scott Base consumed 308 tonnes of fossil fuels, producing approximately 1000 tonnes of CO2, 26 tonnes of NOx, and measurable quantities of SOx, CO, particulates, and trace metals. It required 1482 tonnes of freshwater, which produced 1400 tonnes of sewage containing approximately 170 kg of Total Nitrogen, 25 kg of Total Phosphorous, 750 kg of BOD5, and 1250 kg of suspended solids. It received 217.5 tonnes of bulk cargo; 12 tonnes of burnables were incinerated on site and 40 tonnes of rubbish and cargo were returned to New Zealand. Human industrial residues are accumulating in and around Scott Base. In response to this material imbalance, management initiatives to improve environmental performance are discussed, including the transition to non-fossil fuel energy sources to reduce air emissions; the use of an integrated biosystem. to reduce wastewater; and improved building design to reduce solid wastes.Recent decades have witnessed accelerated growth in the demand for construction aggregates in Taiwan. The ecological pressures caused by riverbed mining of aggregates have resulted in shortages in domestic supply. Simultaneously, Taiwan must contend with the accumulated generation of construction wastes. Industrial ecology offers solutions that recover resources from construction wastes. For example, in areas of high-density urban construction, the use of crushed concrete can be economically attractive. To investigate environmentally sound and economically feasible solutions for satisfying future demand, researchers at National Taiwan University and Columbia University propose a study of the long-range consequences of utilizing domestic supply sources including construction waste. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.It is currently believed that science and technology can provide effective solutions to most, if not all, environmental problems facing western industrial societies. The validity of this optimistic assumption is highly questionable for at least three reasons: First, current mechanistic, reductionist science is inherently incapable of providing the complete and accurate information which is required to successfully address environmental problems. Second, both the conservation of mass principle and the second law of thermodynamics dictate that most remediation technologies while successful in solving specific pollution problems - cause unavoidable negative environmental impacts elsewhere or in the future. Third, it is intrinsically impossible to design industrial processes that have no negative environmental impacts. This follows not only from the entropy law but also from the fact that any generation of energy is impossible without negative environmental consequences. It can therefore be concluded that science and technology have only very limited potential in solving current and future environmental problems. Consequently, it will be necessary to address the root cause of environmental deterioration, namely, the prevailing materialistic values that are the main driving force for both overpopulation and overconsumption. The long-term protection of the environment is, therefore, not primarily a technical problem but rather a social and moral problem that can only be solved by drastically reducing the strong influence of materialistic values. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This article is a transcript of the Roundtable Discussion that opened "Industrial Ecology 2000: Maximizing Shareholder Value, Lessons from the Natural World,"a conference held at the Haas School of Business, October 5-8, 2000. This roundtable discussion offers an interesting and provocative introduction to the concept of industrial ecology and the paradigm shift that is taking place in corporate environmental management.The development of Industrial Ecology (IE) is based on the philosophy that the two systems, the industrial system and the ecosystem operate through different principles of system development and on the philosophy that IE can serve to reduce the conflict between the two systems as it learns from the model of an ecosystem. In an IE, following the roundput analogy of a natural ecosystem, the industrial actors co-operate by utilising each other's waste material and energy flows and try and reduce the system virgin material and energy input as well as the waste and emission output. In a successful IE, a business-environment win-win might be possible because the raw material and energy costs, waste management costs, costs resulting from environmental legislation, as well as the image costs of the companies in the system and of the system as a whole, can be reduced. In this paper, the IE analogy includes the four basic principles of system development of ecosystems; roundput, diversity, locality and gradual change. The principles are understood as a potential direction in which Regional. Industrial Ecosystem Management (RIEM) can be developed.This paper presents a conceptual link among green marketing, environmental justice, and industrial ecology. It argues for greater awareness of environmental justice in the practice of green marketing. In contrast with the type of costs commonly discussed in the literature, the paper identified another type of costs, termed "costs with positive results," that may be associated with the presence of environmental justice in green marketing. A research agenda is finally suggested to determine consumers' awareness of environmental justice, and their willingness to bear the costs associated with it.In order for society to secure a healthy environment and reach sustainability, there is a need for reconsideration of municipal environmental management (MEM). Among other things, the potential roles of a municipality in regionally oriented environmental management and development planning have to be further analysed. In this paper, MEM is confronted with the concept of industrial ecology (IE). In particular, the role of a municipality in developing regional industrial ecology, and, vice versa, the role of regional industrial ecology in developing MEM, will be reflected upon. It is argued that a municipality, serving as an institutional anchor tenant, may provide the regional IE effort with the needed institutional support. In return, regional IE seems to have the potential to provide a basis for increased co-operation between public and private actors of a region as well as integration of regional environmental and development issues. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The impact of concerns about environmental degradation has prompted many initiatives to improve the environmental efficiency of businesses, such as environmental management systems and industrial ecology as well as recycling, waste reduction and energy reduction programmes. Hawken et al. (1999) argue that these kinds of change are part of processes so profound that humankind is actually participating in another industrial revolution, a revolution to Natural Capitalism. These three authors outline basic changes to the capitalist system that necessitate different mind-sets and sets of values that ultimately lead to profound differences in the ways in which businesses are managed. This paper considers the possibility that we are on the verge of an industrial revolution that will implement a new form of capitalism that will facilitate an easier transition to sustainable industrial development. This paper proceeds by first identifying key approaches to the management of the environment and then identifying six steps that will have to be taken if the putative revolution is to be realized. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Sustainable development (SD) is premised on the inescapable and integral role played by humans in shaping and impacting the natural world and has been recognized as a foundational norm of international environmental law and policy. Ecologicalism-an outlook that embraces a comprehensive approach to interdependent natural and human systems-provides the conceptual underpinnings for a creative and integrated environmental management philosophy for implementing SD, This Article argues that the daunting task of defining and applying such an integrated approach and philosophy to the multiple interacting changes affecting planetary life support systems can benefit from the U.S. experience in addressing the need for integrated pollution control (IPC). It also contends that the relatively new discipline of Industrial Ecology (IE) that pairs industry with ecology offers a promising new system paradigm for analyzing human activity within the biophysical environment, By entwining humans and their needs with ecosystems, IE does in fact aspire to become the "science of sustainability."In 1999, the Surface Mount Council [1] identified the issue of lead-free electronics as an emerging area for concern and evaluation. This was triggered by the initial European Union's (EU) proposal for a Directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)[2] and by the Japanese focus on environmental marketing and on recycling, which has resulted in timetables for lead elimination [3], The present EU directive on the elimination of lead from electronics by 2008 [4] has added further urgency to this issue. From an industrial ecology perspective, it is essential to evaluate the environmental impact of the proposed alternatives and to compare this with that of the present Sn/Pb solder. Industrial ecology is the multidisciplinary study of industrial systems and economic activities, and their links to fundamental natural systems [5], Based on this definition, it is important to study the environmental impact of lead-free electronics through their entire life cycle. Factors such as alloy availability, processing considerations, energy use and potential ground water contamination must be considered. Based on these criteria, lead-free products are not more environmentally friendly than the present electronics soldered with Sn/Pb, Thus, the focus of future regulation should be on recovery and recycling of the metals at end-of-life as required in the WEEE rather than the elimination of lead-based solder.The natural environment and the manufacturing function are becoming inextricably linked. As the new millennium approaches and progresses, profitability, Productivity and environmental consciousness are increasingly viewed as integral goals of manufacturing organizations. The issues facing manufacturing organizations in general, and the manufacturing Junction in particular are discussed in this paper. Some of the current practices and future requirements for an environmentally sustainable manufacturing enterprise are included in this discussion. Even though the focus is on manufacturing strategy and operations, issues relevant to the overall organization and other functions are also included In the final analysis, this field and topic is relatively novel to most organizations, ample room exists for both Practitioners and researchers for making progress in the next millennium.Industrial Ecology is a new field of environment. It bases on the Industrial Sustainability. Firstly, we discuss the Industrial Situation in Vietnam because our Industrial Sustainability isn't good and may be untied. We assess sonic kinds of industries, what they release and their effects to our environment. Then, we show the policies of government for protecting damaged environment. After an extensive discussion of the concept of Industrial Ecology in Vietnam, the report will describe and illustrate the results of a field study about Vietnamese companies experiencing with Environmental Management Systems, Life Cycle Assessment, Eco-Labeling and so on. Vietnamese companies wonder if they join into these standards what they will catch inter-organization co-operation in the field of environment or if there are cognitive or organizational barriers that hinder the development of Industrial Ecology in general. We also discuss the policies of our decided government and lay out some solutions to improve environmental situation in Vietnam greener and greener. We also lay out some solution to improve our environmental situation and how government control and treat environment-law-broken companies. If they don't obey the law, authorities will take them to "black book", at that time their companies may be closed or buyers won't purchase their products. In the other hand, they will be come to ''green book". We think that if this principle is put into application in all over the world, our environment will be better.Industrial ecology was born about a decade ago. Since then it has grown as a field of inquiry and has produced a community of practice in several sectors including academia, business, and government. This paper takes a critical view of the developments so far and asks to what extent industrial ecology has taken on the attributes of more conventional academic fields. And, in a related analysis, I look at the progress industrial ecology has made in establishing itself as a cultural basis for action in the above sectors. Ideas like industrial ecology must become institutionalized if they are to have much effect on the reality of everyday activities. My personal assessment is positive in both aspects of this analysis.Material Flow Accounting (MFA) has been developed and applied to systematically describe the flow of materials including resources, products, wastes, and other emissions. Overview of MFA methodology and empirical results from an international joint study of MFA at the nation-wide scale are presented. From nation-wide scale to company or process level, MFA can play an important and useful role for benchmarking and improvement of resource productivity and environmental efficiency. At any scales, further integration of MFA with monetary/cost accounting will provide us with better insights. Meso-scale study with economic input-output analysis of inter-industrial material flow is one of the promising approaches to link micro level studies and macro level studies. MFA for specific local/regional areas will be another interesting target of study from the perspective of the industrial ecology.This paper proposed the idea of 'ecological material use'. The idea is defined as the material use where waste production and environmental impacts are reduced than existing material use within the scope of lifecycle of products. The paper discusses possible ecological material use of off-site building elements. It exemplify case study on, prefabricated three-dimensional package of bathroom (bath-unit). Based on the interview, the paper analyzes the material use from the perspective of whole lifecycle stages of the bath-unit. It tries to discuss the material inputs and waste outputs from manufacturing stage to dismantling stage of the bath-unit product lifecycle, then list up the factors of unrealized ecological material use of bath-unit lifecycle. Among these factors, the paper focuses on product design related issues, and on interdependencies of including suppliers of elements of bathroom unit. The paper lists up the countermeasures to these factors. Then the paper proposes a possible idea model of ecological material use model relating to bathroom unit production and disposal by coordinating and integrating the set of strategies to these factors. In concluding comments, the paper summarize the knowledge from discusses on to what extent the knowledge is applicable to other kind of off site building productsThis brief note proposes the alternative index of performance over time termed as Life Cycle Value (LCV) index that integrate qualitative performance with LCA and LCC. The note presents the case study to verify the applicability of LCV index to housing. Qualitative aspects to assess LCV index in housing are listed up. The aspects are related to adaptable performance of housing to ever changing requirements. The idea of hierarchical structures emerges to simplify interfaces of various facets of modules. It is identified here that subdivision of products and process into autonomous hierarchical modules could realize better LCV index by promoting dematerialization in the business of continual customization of housing over time. The case study suggests that introduction of LCV index could promote industrial ecology in housing. Life-cycle analysis of a charging station for electric vehicles (EVs) was performed in the three phases, that is, production, transportation and installation of the charging equipment, which consists of charger, battery and stand. We chose parking lots on expressways, commercial parking lots in cities, municipal facilities, shopping centers, etc. throughout the country as the charging sites according to the EV charge program in Southern California. Air-pollutant emissions during the transportation phase were calculated based on the emission factors of vehicles, running speed and the transport distance between one factory of the charging equipment and each site. The share of transporting the charging machines in total emissions of CO2, SOx and CO was less than 15% and the production phase was dominant. In case of NOx, the share of transporting them was over 20%. The relation between gasoline vehicle and gas station was applied to estimate the number of EVs using the charging stations through the country, and the contribution of the charging stations to life-cycle emissions of air pollutants from EV was presented. The share of infrastructure in total emissions of CO2 was 16% in our model case. Thus the development of the charging infrastructure almost did not change the advantage of EV compared to gasoline vehicle (GV) in terms of CO2, NOx, and CO emissions. But an EV emits more life-cycle SOx than gasoline vehicles (GVs). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers the role of Life-Cycle Costing (LCC), Time-Based Competition (TBC), and other relevant goals at the three planning-horizon levels of strategic, intermediate, and tactical with respect to time and cost of products to market in a concurrent engineering environment. A conceptual framework has been developed in which the general areas of LCC and TBC are delineated. Based on the conceptual framework, the specific components of LCC and TBC at each level of planning are developed and presented. Subsequently, a Preemptive Goal Programming (PGP) model is developed. This model uses the components of LCC, TBC, and other relevant goals as the decision variables. Then, a case study of a company that has developed LCC and TBC is considered. The PGP model is then applied to the company's operations by using the actual data obtained from the company in order to capture the essence of the conceptual framework. This example explains and validates the PGP model in practice and provides managerial implications of the solution. Finally, a set of conclusions and an assessment of the results are presented.If sustainability in the construction industry is to move beyond rhetoric, civil engineering and other construction designers need some new tools - such as life-cycle assessment software. John Dowling of Corus explains.The environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing of different automotive paint materials including solvent-based and powder primers, water-based basecoat, and solvent-based and powder clearcoats were investigated based on life cycle analysis (LCA). The LCA of each paint formulation included the environmental emissions associated with mining and production of the raw materials, production of energy required to mine and produce raw materials and final product, mining of fossil fuels required to produce energy to run the mining and manufacturing processes, and transportation of raw materials to manufacturing plant. We have studied the environmental performance of three different paint scenarios: (a) solventborne primer-waterborne basecoat-solventborne clearcoat; (b) powder primer-waterborne basecoat-solventborne clearcoat; (c) powder primer-waterborne basecoat-powder clearcoat. Results show that the LCA energy requirement to manufacture the polyester powder primer, in a quantity necessary to paint a sport utility vehicle, is lower by 67% compared to that found for the acrylic powder. For waterborne basecoat, the two colors white and pewter use about the same amount of energy. In manufacturing of the materials for the three painting scenarios considered, the powder primer-waterborne basecoat-powder clear is associated with the least energy, water consumption, solid waste, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). However, it exceeds other scenarios in particulate matter (PM), SOx, and CO2-equivalent emissions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This article aims to determine the environmental performance of China reed fibre used as a substitute for glass fibre as reinforcement in plastics and to identify key environmental parameters. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed on these two materials for an application to plastic transport pallets. Transport pallets reinforced with China reed fibre prove to be ecologically advantageous if they have a minimal lifetime of 3 years compared with the 5-year lifetime of the conventional pallet. The energy consumption and other environmental impacts are strongly reduced by the use of raw renewable fibres, due to three important factors: (a) the substitution of glass fibre production by the natural fibre production; (b) the indirect reduction in the use of polypropylene linked to the higher proportion of China reed fibre used and (c) the reduced pallet weight, which reduces fuel consumption during transport. Considering the whole life cycle, the polypropylene production process and the transport cause the strongest environmental impacts during the use phase of the life cycle. Since thermoplastic composites are hardly biodegradable, incineration has to be preferred to discharge on landfills at the end of its useful life cycle. The potential advantages of the renewable fibres will be effective only if a purer fibre extraction is obtained to ensure an optimal material stiffness, a topic for further research. China reed biofibres are finally compared with other usages of biomass, biomaterials, in general, can enable a three to ten times more efficient valorisation of biomass than mere heat production or biofuels for transport. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The need for integrated chemical processes that take economic and environmental issues into account simultaneously has increased considerably. In this paper a systematic method is described to generate and screen process alternatives and to identify promising technologies in early development stages. The method is based on a computerized generation of alternative ways to produce a given chemical and can identify feasible process alternatives depending on emission limits or other user input. It is proposed to evaluate the corresponding mass balances using the total annualized profit per service unit (TAPPS) and the material intensity per service unit (MIPS) as economic and environmental indicators, respectively. The method was applied to an industrial case study for the production of hydrogen cyanide. For our problem framing it could be shown that Blausaure-Methan-Ammoniak processes are more promising than Andrussow processes according to these indicators. The most important design parameters are the type of reactor and the use of the byproducts hydrogen and ammonium salts.A possible refinery process with higher output of gas oil and more hydrogen consumption than in conventional refinery processes was proposed. The CO, emissions form the proposed processes with (case B) and without (base case, A) outer source of hydrogen were evaluated. The possibility of combining the refinement and transportation of petroleum with hydrogen produced from renewable energy resources such as hydropower and solar cells (photovoltaic, PV) was discussed by life cycle assessment (LCA), where hydrogen is supplied to the refinery process installed overseas and the lighten and desulfurized products are transported to Japan (case Q. The result was compared with the case when liquefied hydrogen is transported to Japan and supplied to a refinery installed in Japan (case B). CO2 emissions from the proposed refinery processes with (case B) and without (case A) outer source of hydrogen were calculated with 159 and 141 kg-CO2/kl-produced oil, respectively. In any case with outer hydrogen supply (cases B and Q, the total CO2 emission was less than that for case A, when the hydrogen is produced from hydroelectricity. On the other hand, when the hydrogen is produced from PV, total CO2 emissions for cases B and C were larger than that for case A. Finally, the characteristics of case C was identified and the conditions for the product import case (case Q can show the best one with the minimum CO2 emission were discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this research is to develop a desirable type III environmental declaration format for the industrial consumer. A total of five different scenarios were chosen for the presentation of life-cycle assessment results in a format that meets the requirements of a type III environmental declaration. Life-cycle assessment of an electronic component was performed for this purpose. Environmentally significant impact categories and input/output items of a product system derived from the life-cycle assessment are presented in this format. Presenting these Information concisely in a standardized format would accelerate the communication of environmental aspects of materials and components in a product supply chain. Thus the type III environmental declaration can be a useful instrument for the manufacturing of an ecoproduct.Chemical screening in the United States is often conducted using scoring and ranking methodologies. Linked models accounting for chemical fate, exposure, and toxicological effects are generally preferred in Europe and in product Life Cycle Assessment. For the first time, a comparison is presented in this article of two of the prominent, but structurally different methodologies adopted to help screen and rank chemicals and chemical emissions data. Results for 250 chemicals are presented, with a focus on 12 chemicals of interest in the United Nations Environment Programme's, Persistent Organic Pollutants global treaty negotiations. These results help to illustrate the significance of described structural differences and to assess the correlation between the methodologies. The scope of the comparison was restricted here to human health, although the insights would be equally useful in the context of the health of ecosystems. Illustrating the current types of chemical screening and emissions comparison approaches, the relative significance of the scenario and structural differences of the Waste Minimization Prioritization Tool (WMPT) and the Toxic Equivalency Potential (TEP) methodologies are analyzed. The WMPT facilitates comparison in terms of key physical-chemical properties. Measures for Persistence, Bioaccumulation, and Toxicity (PBT) are calculated. Each PBT measure is scored and then these scores are added to provide a single measure of relative concern. TEPs account for chemical fate, multipathway exposure, and toxicity using a model-based approach. This model structure is sometimes considered to provide a less subjective representation of environmental mechanisms, and, hence, an improved basis for screening. Nevertheless, a strong :relationship exists between the two approaches and both have their limitations.Over recent years, European cities have been questioning their traditional pre-sorting and waste collection practices and looking for new schemes to improve environmental problems generated by waste disposal. This paper presents an integral methodology for four pre-sorting practices that are beginning to be implemented in Spanish cities. A great effort has been made to compile information to be able to estimate a large number of valuation indexes. Based on this information, the methodology is supported by the forecasting of waste generation, the use of GIS techniques, the definition of objectives and their evaluation taking into account legal, social, performance, environmental and economic issues. Special attention is given to environmental impact, for which life cycle assessment methodology is used.Increased CO2 in the atmosphere is such a serious problem for mankind that many research and development approaches are implemented to reduce CO2 emissions. One is a biological CO2 fixation using the photosynthetic function of microalgae like Chlorella and Synechocystis sp, The target of the project is to achieve a CO2 fixation rate of 50 g CO2/m(2).d, which is 10 times as large as that of the temperate forest. The purpose of this study is to clarify the possibilities of the biological CO2 fixation system in view of the CO, balance, energy balance, and payback period. The amount Of CO2 fixation of the system should be larger than the emission of CO2 by operating. Furthermore, the energy consumption of the system should also be less than the biochemical energy (enthalpy) of glucose, which is made by photosynthesis. After CO2 fixation was completed by the microalgae, the biomass must be utilized practically for many markets and the initial investment in the system construction could be regained. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The Leontief input-output model has been applied for macro environmental analysis since 1970, and life cycle analysis has been used in industrial design over the last decade. This paper presents two extended environmental input-output models for life cycle analysis in pollutant abatement and towards resource recycling. It is demonstrated that the suggested models are systematic tools that can be used for integrated environmental analysis and planning.Human and ecotoxicity impact categories are problematic to quantify within life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) because their local scope makes them difficult to aggregate with the traditional global-impact categories used in life-cycle assessment (LCA). For being able to assess local impacts such as toxicity, LCIA developers increasingly include fate modeling into LCA. This article follows this development by comparing different LCIA methods for aquatic ecotoxicology and by investigating the importance of fate within LCIA, the necessity of considering freshwater and seawater compartments separately, and the key degradation and intermedia transfer processes involved. The methods are compared by assessing an example study of domestic clothes washing in former West Germany. Four LCIA methods are selected and applied to four substances emitted during the washing process. The conclusion is that the consideration of environmental fate does matter and that aquatic ecotoxic impacts can differ significantly for the same substance in freshwater and in marine ecosystems. The way (bio) degradation, photolysis, volatilization, and transfer from agricultural soils are considered plays an important role as do the system boundaries chosen. This means that the LCIA methodology should remain flexible so that appropriate methods can be chosen for different applications. Fate models being developed in the environmental risk assessment of chemicals can contribute to the further improvement of LCIA methods.Superior environmental performance has not traditionally been a goal of managers of power generating facilities, but there is now considerable pressure to go "beyond compliance," even for facilities that have been in existence for decades. In this regard, significant environmental improvement can be achieved by taking a life-cycle perspective. We have conducted a streamlined life-cycle assessment on an existing gas/oil-fired generating facility. With the results of this assessment as a basis, we propose a number of generic steps that can be taken to improve the environmental performance of most existing power generating facilities.Based on the data of SO2 emission, urban air quality, and acid precipitation, the status and characteristics of acid rain and SO2 pollution in China were analyzed. To prevent the further deterioration of acid rain and SO, pollution effectively, the Acid Rain Control Zones and SO2 Pollution Control Zones (Two Control Zones called for short) were designated. The range of Two Control Zones was 1.09 x 10(6) km(2), 11.4% of the whole territory of China, with SO2 emissions of 14 million tons in 1995. The Acid Rain Control Zone involves 14 provinces, autonomous regions or municipalities, with total area of 0.806 x 10(6) km(2). The SO2 Pollution Control Zone includes 63 cities with total area of 0.29 x 10(6) km(2). The control policies to be implemented in the Two Control Zones were formulated by the method of life cycle analysis on sulfur-in-coal. The impacts of the policy implementation on energy industry, including coal industry and power industry, were calculated and analyzed. It was proved that the policy implementation would improve the thermal power mix and promote the sustainable development of energy industry. The paper also analyzed the decrease of SO2 emission and the improvement of air quality in the cities in recent years, which were achieved by the control efforts.Methodologies based on Life Cycle Assessment (L.C.A.) give the opportunity to realise a global and complete evaluation of the environmental effects of products from their production to their use and elimination (from craddle to grave); methods used for analysis are internationally wellknown and standardised. These methods are rarely used in construction materials area, although materials flows and energy consumption are important and constructions have a long way of life. A calculation methodology, based on ecofactors/ecopoints, has been used-for the analysis of industrial hall made of concrete, steel, or concrete/wood structure; materials but also construction process are compared at the point of view of their environmental impact. This analysis completes the technical and economical approaches for the construction owner and designer and gives a global view of the interaction between construction and civil engineering, and environment.Most companies have embraced the American Chemistry Council (ACC) Responsible Care(R) program, including Product Stewardship, and are integrating ISO 14001 and other environmental management systems. The Rohm and Haas Company uses environmental improvement objectives that not only focus on compliance with existing regulations and industry trends, but for developing business unit-driven objectives to reduce our environmental footprints for processes and systems. To attain the next level of strategic environmental management, integration of sustainable concepts and activities into a general management framework, new product development and corporate decision-making processes must occur. Businesses need to internalize that operating sustainably creates long-term value, achieves a greater competitive edge, and is not solely a short-term cost-reduction activity. They must recognize and foster implementation of technological advances in green chemistry, life-cycle analysis, risk assessment, and engineering consistent with specific business goals. Development of sustainability improvement objectives for each business unit assists in meeting our global sustainability goals. The process, measures and metrics, challenges, and results for integrating sustainability into the culture at Rohm and Haas will be described during this presentation.The public has growing concerns about the effects of human activity on the environment for both themselves and future generations. The concept being developed to address these environmental concerns, along with economic and social-equity considerations, is called "sustainable development". The business community has already started to address their contribution to environmental issues through collaborative efforts under organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. That work has focused primarily on industrial and corporate environmental and economic performance through the development of eco-efficiency metrics, which are a measure of resources and materials consumed per unit output of product, sales, or value-added. While this development is important, it is not enough. Clearly, the environmental performance of the entire product system must also be elucidated. Otherwise, one might forget, for example, the power plant emissions of his or her so-called "zero-emission" vehicle. The metrics required to characterize sustainable practices and systems have yet to be developed. The set will include economic, environmental. and social-equity metrics. Because of their system-oriented environmental performance representation, life-cycle assessment metrics are certainly going to be included in such a set. A discussion of some potential life-cycle metrics follows.Toxicity potentials are scaling factors used in life cycle assessment (LCA) indicating their relative importance in terms of potential toxic impacts. This paper presents the results of an uncertainty assessment of toxicity potentials for 181 substances that were calculated with the global nested multi-media fate, exposure and effects model USES-LCA. The variance in toxicity potentials resulting from choices in the modelling procedure was quantified by means of scenario analysis. A first scenario analysis showed to what extent potential impacts in the relatively short term are obscured by the inclusion of impacts on the very long term. Toxicity potentials representing potential impacts over time horizons of 20, 100 and 500 years were compared with toxicity potentials representing potential impacts over an infinite time horizon. Time horizon dependent differences up to 6.5 orders of magnitude were found for metal toxicity potentials, while for toxicity potentials of organic substances under study, differences remain within 0.5 orders of magnitude. The second scenario analysis addressed to what extent potential impacts on the continental scale are obscured by the inclusion of impacts on the global scale. Exclusion of potential impacts on the global scale changed the toxicity potentials of metals and volatile persistent halogenated organics up to 2.3 orders of magnitude. These scenario analyses also provide the basis for determining exports to future generations and outside the emission area. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Chemical and allied industries have shown interest in reducing pollution by implementing cleaner technologies or processes that use, or generate, lower amounts of or less harmful pollutants. However, abatement processes are still required at many plants to reduce the discharge of pollutants at the end-of-the-pipe. It has been observed many times that efforts made to optimise the abatement process reduce the quality and/or quantity of waste discharge at the end-of-the-pipe, but increase the total environmental burden and impact. Therefore. it is very important to consider the environmental burden and adverse impacts caused due to any change or modification in the process and allied facilities for the complete system (up- and downstream of the process). Moreover, these measures have generally been taken only after fully fledged design of the process or at the operating stage, thus making the preventive/abatement measure a costly affair. Therefore, there is great need for a design process (applicable to the early design and decision-making stages) that not only considers economy and technology as the basic input for the design, but also considers environmental soundness as one of the important parameters. This paper proposes a systematic methodology for process design that considers the assessment and minimisation of the environmental impacts of the complete process system (including upstream processes), It incorporates life cycle analysis (LCA) principles within a formal design process and optimisation framework. This proposed process design methodology with minimum environmental impact extends to a complete description of the environmental impact of the process and its associated activities. It has good real-life application potential, as it includes environmental objectives together with technology and economics at the design stage so as to determine a cost-efficient solution. Further, by employing process modelling and optimisation techniques. it yields optimal design/operating conditions with minimum environmental impact. The applicability of the proposed methodology has been demonstrated through a real case study. The most interesting observation made in the case study is that the total cost of the optimised operation is minimum when the process is designed and optimised considering the global boundary (the "cradle to the grave" approach) in contrast to the conventional boundary (process boundary). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The "Establishment of a Sustainable Society Based on Material Recycle" can be regarded as an issue urging a fundamental change in the values and social systems of the modern society and a challenge demanding a reform of the industrial structure from the conventional systems of individual optimization. This paper reports our views on LCA (Life Cycles Assessment) issues and on material selection, taking LCA of automobiles as an example, and challenges of Japanese steel industry on them. The LCA study on automobiles makes us aware of the significance of not only data itself but also the development of Life Cycle Aspect which tries to evaluate Life Cycle Cost and Function, etc.Ore-TMRs, which are the total amount of overburden and rock to obtain metal ore, were estimated as a fundamental data to estimate the value of TMR (Total Materials Requirement) of metals. Ore-TMR of coal, iron, copper, zinc and tin are estimated 12.5, 5.1, 304, 34 and 95 representatively by statistic method based on hearing and investigation of practical mining sites. An approximation from the quality of crude ore and further approximation from the concentration of the metal in the crust were also proposed as and (ore-TMR) = 2.0/{100 x (quality of crude ore %)} (ore-TMR) = 2.0 x (concentration in the crust [ppm])(-2/3)).CO2, SOx, NOx emissions form non ferrous metal processing were estimated by using economical statistical yearbook of the year 1999. The subjected processes were ore-mining, Cu-smelting, Cu-electrolysis, Pb-smelting, Pb-electrolysis, Zn-electrolysis, distilled Zn, secondary Al, Al sheet rolling, wrought Cu, electric wire production, and optical fiber production. These inventory data were compared with the data of 1989. The "Cradle to Gate" emissions were also calculated. The greater part of emissions were put on the foreign countries.The reduction effects Of CO2 emission from typical steel products by the reduction agent injection into blast furnace were analyzed by Life Cycle Assessment methodology, using the statistical data. As the results, the reduction effects by pulverized coal injection and waste plastic injection were estimated to be 0.07 kg and 0.16 kg-CO2 at the point of 0.1 kg/kg-HM of injection, respectively. As the coke is replaced with pulverized coal on the equivalent in carbon content, the CO2 emission from the coke manufacturing is reduced. And the reduction effect Of CO2 emission by waste plastic injection is higher than that by pulverized coal injection, because the replacement ratio of coke with waste plastics is higher. The injection ratio of waste plastics would not be raised to the same ratio as the pulverized coal in the viewpoint of the material balance of waste plastics.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) has been conducted on residential gas appliances designed based on the eco-design guide that city gas suppliers planned, for certifying validity and clarifying problems of it. In other words, life cycle inventories of these gas appliances were generated, and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) was carried out. Five environmental impact categories were considered: "Resources Consumption", "Global Warming", "Acidification", "Energy Consumption", and "Solid Waste". The following results were obtained. Components of residential gas appliances are mostly iron and nonferrous metals. The residential gas appliances designed to be light give lower environmental loads at the production stage than general gas appliances, but occasionally the environmental loads are increased. This suggests there is the trade-off relation between the designing for lightness and the environmental loads depending on the material. It is necessary to develop the optimizing techniques to minimize environment loads when the material is selected. It is necessary to develop a new LCA methodology by which the change of the inventory as time passes is considered with the product that has large environmental loads at the using stage.The 1994 EU Packaging Directive placed obligations on various parties in the 'packaging chain' and was the first example in Europe of 'producer responsibility'. The responsibility, however, ceases at the point of selling the (packaged) product and it seems unlikely that the UK will meet mandatory recovery and recycling targets by 2001. Other waste stream directives are also directed at 'end-of-pipe' policies. To involve consumers will probably entail placing a responsibility on them in terms of the 'product'. This may include aspects of education and publicity, more take-back schemes and proposals to incentivise households to reduce and recycle their waste. Direct charging for household waste collection seems to have gone out of favour, but other methods are currently being researched. A third aspect of responsibility is often referred to as 'extended producer responsibility' and this includes the choice of resources and the design of products. In packaging, this is covered by the Essential Requirements legislation, although detailed guidelines on design for reuse/recycling/composting/energy recovery have yet to be finalised. The ultimate aim is to promote 'integrated product policies', where all products are designed in the context of 'cradle to grave' evaluation of economic and environmental costs and benefits, using such tools as Life Cycle Analysis and Value Chain Analysis. It is still unclear how policy options for producers and/or consumers are to be measured. Percentage targets have been set for the packaging chain, and the UK now has statutory Best Value Performance Indicators for household waste. None of the measures to date adequately measure waste prevention or reduction. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.In order to test the potential of chironomid deformities for biomonitoring, induction of morphological deformities in Chironomus riparius larvae was assessed after chronic exposure (static with renewal) of eggs and subsequent instars to sublethal nominal cadmium concentrations of 0, 3 (NOEC), 9 (intermediate) and 27 (chronic (LC50)) mug Cd l(-1) during 7 to 10 generations. Deformities which could be associated with an indirect or direct cadmium effect were split medial mentum teeth (more frequent in 9 and 27 mug Cd l(-1)) and premandible deformities (especially in 3 mug Cd l(-1)). The control contained more larvae with additional teeth in mentum and mandible than the metal-exposed conditions. In the 9 mug Cd l(-1) condition the frequencies of larvae with split medial mentum teeth increased in the last four generations, to reach 40%. The unpredictability of fluctuations of deformity frequencies over the generations was associated with parental effects and experimental manipulation. The deformity percentages correlated positively with the mortalities and could be related to the induction of tolerance to cadmium, as was concluded on the basis of life cycle analysis in a previous paper. This experiment demonstrated a concentration-response relationship between deformities and sublethal levels of cadmium. However, the observed generation fluctuations caution for (1) the use of single-generation experiments for defining ecotoxicological threshold values, and (2) experimentally induced genetical drift in multi-generation experiments.Although many life cycle assessment (LCA) software tools are available, most tools can either address the needs of a specific produce or a general industry range, but not both. This calls for the development of an easy-to-use and interactive Pre-LCA tool that would allow users to customise and improve flexibility and efficiency. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method uses established procedures to capture the best rank from judgements, through the weighting and synthesising of the decision process, into a hierarchy which is compatible with a network synthesised with various dependencies. It compares alternatives, one at a time, in the context of priorities. For this research, the AI IP method is used to derive a single environmental score based on process emissions for each of the products or alternatives evaluated. Based on these environmental scores, these products can be ranked with respect to their environmental merits. The AHP method is incorporated into the Pre-LCA tool to assign accurate environmental scores to products. This paper discusses this AHP model in the Pre-LCA system developed. The developed AHP model has been applied to a case study, which is a comparative study on polystyrene and porcelain plates. The results show that the developed system is able to provide sound evaluation. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This study focuses on the sustainability of different technological options for the treatment of waste gases from a waste water treatment plant loaded with volatile organic compounds. The options considered an biofiltration, active carbon adsorption and catalytic and thermal oxidation. The amount of resources and utilities to construct and operate each system have been investigated from the point of view of the Second Law of thermodynamics. The unit in which all resources are treated is Joules of exergy. It was concluded that biofiltration was the most exergetically efficient system. The cumulative exergy consumption of the resources and utilities for construction and operation have been quantified in exergy terms. Further on, the requirements for the abatement of emissions generated by operating the waste gas treatment systems and the amount of renewables have been taken into account in the assessment of the sustainability of the waste gas treatment technologies. Finally, a comparison between exergy analysis and life cycle analysis in assessing the sustainability of the waste gas treatment options, is presented. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Representatives of world governments and the policy research community often promote expansion of exports from developing countries as a means of growing national economies of these countries and raising living standards. This type of export growth over the long term will have important implications for the international freight transportation system and for its overall level of ecological impact; however, up to the present there is little research on this issue. This paper gives a preliminary analysis of the possibility for future growth over the next several decades, in two parts. First, an estimate of the range of potential growth in total export tonne-km and associated energy use is given. Second, production and export of apparel from developing countries is modeled to illustrate the effect of growth in international freight from the perspective of product life-cycle analysis. At the upper end of the estimated growth range, substantial increases in energy use and carbon emissions will merit specific policies to counteract the full participation of industrializing countries in the world trading system, and these are discussed. The paper also identifies areas where data gathering should be improved. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Matrix population models have become popular tools in research areas as diverse as population dynamics, life history theory, wildlife management, and conservation biology. Two classes of matrix models are commonly used for demographic analysis of age-structured populations: age-structured (Leslie) matrix models, which require age-specific demographic data, and partial life cycle models, which can be parameterized with partial demographic data. Partial life cycle models are easier to parameterize because data needed to estimate parameters for these models are collected much more easily than those needed to estimate age-specific demographic parameters. Partial life cycle models also allow evaluation of the sensitivity of population growth rate to changes in ages at first and last reproduction, which cannot be done with age-structured models. Timing of censuses relative to the birth-pulse is an important consideration in discrete-time population models but most existing partial life cycle models do not address this issue, nor do they allow fractional values of variables such as ages at first and last reproduction. Here, we fully develop a partial life cycle model appropriate for situations in which demographic data are collected immediately before the birth-pulse (pre-breeding census). Our pre-breeding census partial life cycle model can be fully parameterized with five variables (agc at maturity, age at last reproduction. juvenile survival rate. adult survival rate, and fertility), and it has some important applications even when age-specific demographic data are available (e.g., perturbation analysis involving ages at first and last reproduction). Wr have extended the model to allow non-integer values of ages at first and last reproduction, derived formulae for sensitivity analyses, and presented methods for estimating parameters for our pre-breeding census partial life cycle model. We applied the age-structured Leslie matrix model and our pre-breeding census partial life cycle model to demographic data for several species of mammals. Our results suggest that dynamical properties of the age-structured model are generally retained in our partial life cycle model, and that our pre-breeding census partial life cycle model is an excellent proxy for the age-structured Leslie matrix model.Life cycle assessment (LCA) offers a systematic approach in identifying the potential in reducing the environmental burden throughout the product life cycle. Generally, it;deals with the steady-state aspect of material and/or energy balances under the recycle structure. In this work, the dynamic behavior of the product life cycles is studied. First, the well-known block digram analysis is incorporated in the LCA, and the implications of recycling to process. dynamics are explored. The result indicates that, as a result of the positive feedback from material recycling; the overall production dynamics. becomes much slower. This implies a lack of flexibility as more and more recycled materials are utilized in product manufacturing, and this cannot be foreseen without incorporation of dynamics in the life cycles. To meet the market demand, increased inventories for the raw and recycled materials are needed to compensate the slow recycle dynamics and a larger turndown ratio is necessary for the raw material processing plants. The missing inventory, due to slow dynamics, can be expressed analytically in terms of the recycle ratio and the recycle time constant. It can be used for legislating new recycle policies which can alleviate the increased inventory and large-turndown ratio problems for the future processing plants. The results indicate that the dynamic analysis provides a better assessment of product Life cycles and, moreover, only the recycle ratio and recycle time constant are needed to Complete the analysis.The relationship between the body residue of 2,2',4,4',5,5'-hexachlorobiphenyl (HCBP) and its effects, including 10-d mortality and chronic sublethal effects on the midge, Chironomus riparius, are examined in a partial life cycle assessment. The alga, Chlorella vulgaris, was loaded with C-14-labeled HCBP and fed to midges as the method for delivery of the toxicant. In a 10-d bioassay, median lethal body residue (LR50) was 0.57 (95% CI: 0.49-0.66) mmol/kg. In the partial life cycle test, midges were fed a mixture of C-12- and C-14-HCBP-laden algae and exposed in four separate tests to assess the different developmental stages representing 2nd to 3rd instar, 2nd to 4th, 2nd to pupa, and 2nd to adult stages. A variety of sublethal endpoints were monitored, including developmental time within a stadium, body concentration at the end of each stadium, body weight, and fecundity (the number of ova) for the female pupae and adults. Overall, midge body concentrations of HCBP increased with increasing exposure concentration. Body weight was not significantly affected by HCBP except during the 4th instar. Body residue also increased with each successive stadium. Developmental time increased significantly with increasing body concentration in 2nd to 4th, 2nd to pupa, and 2nd to adult tests, while there was no statistical significance in developmental time for the 2nd to 3rd instar test. The number of ova decreased significantly in adults with increasing body concentration of HCBP, with an average of 345 ova in controls, 289 ova at 0.028 mmol/kg of HCBP, and 258 ova at 0.250 mmol/kg. These data, which, relate chronic endpoints to body residues, suggest that sublethal endpoints in invertebrates are useful for defining sublethal hazards of PCBs. These data also suggest that ecological consequences may result from relatively low body burdens of PCBs. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.A life cycle simulation tool has been developed and linked with thermal simulation. Inventories given in the Oekoinventare database or collected in the European REGENER project are considered to evaluate the environmental impacts of material fabrication and other processes (energy, transport, etc.). An application of this tool is presented here concerning the comparison of three houses: the present construction standard in France (reference), a solar and a wooden frame house. The results of this exercise are presented and its limits are discussed. It seems still difficult to apply life cycle assessment (LCA) to the selection of materials and components. Rather, LCA can be used for the improvement of technical solutions (e.g. increasing the roof insulation in the solar house). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The suitability of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to analyse the environmental impact of agricultural production is investigated. The first part of an LCA is an inventory of all the resources used and emissions released due to the system under investigation. In the following step, i.e. the Life Cycle Impact Assessment the inventory data were analysed and aggregated in order to finally get one index representing the total environmental burden. For the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) the Eco-indicator 95 method has been chosen, because this is a well-documented and regularly applied impact assessment method. The resulting index is called Eco-indicator value. The higher the Eco-indicator value the stronger is the total environmental impact of an analysed system. A sugar beet field experiment conducted in northeastern Germany was chosen as an example for the analysis. In this experiment three different nitrogen fertilisers (calcium ammonium nitrate = CAN, urea ammonium nitrate solution = UAN, urea) were used at optimum N rates. The obtained Eco-indicator values were clearly different for the N fertilisers used in the sugar beet trial. The highest value was observed for the system where urea was used as N source. The lowest Eco-indicator value has been calculated for the CAN system. The differences are mainly due to different ammonia volatilisation after application of the N fertilisers. For all the systems the environmental effects of acidification and eutrophication contributed most to the total Eco-indicator value. The results show that the LCA methodology is basically suitable to assess the environmental impact associated with agricultural production. A comparative analysis of the system's contribution to global warming, acidification, eutrophication and summer smog is possible. However, some important environmental issues are missing in the Eco-indicator 95 method (e.g. the use of resources and land). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.An important issue technology managers face today, and a vital component of any coherent technology strategy, concerns the decision to chose between developing technical capabilities internally or acquiring them through external means. While there is a clear indication in the literature of a greater reliance on external sources of technology, the factors driving this phenomenon and the potential benefit to firm performance have received limited empirical attention. This study addresses these issues by testing the relationships between several potential determinants of external technology sourcing, and the differential impacts of external vs. internal sourcing on firm performance. The study addresses three potential determinants of external technology sourcing: discontinuous technological change life cycle stage (the stage of the resulting life-cycle patterns developed around radical technological changes, or DTC-life cycle), intellectual property protection, and internally available resources. DTC-life cycles, and the industries built around them, are characterized by patterns of competitive behavior and a few key milestones, particularly the emergence of a dominant design. For example, the early stages of the life cycle are characterized by a focus on product technologies, as firms compete to develop the technical standard for the industry, while the Inter stages are more concerned with process technologies, as firms compete to produce the standard at the lowest cost. We argue that DTC-life-cycle analysis can inform the "internal vs. external" decision and that the evolution from a product-based competition to a cost-based competition will affect not only the focus of that external sourcing but also the benefits received as a result. Further, we suggest that perceived intellectual property protection and the level of resources available internally to the firm will also impact the decision to source technology externally. The growing interest in external technology acquisition would appear to reflect a positive effect on firm performance. The literature, however, is equivocal and often anecdotal, focusing only on a limited perspective of firm performance. We investigate the relationship between external technology acquisition (vs. internal technology development) and firm performance from three perspectives: product-, market-, and finance-based measures of performance. Further, given that the focus of external technology acquisition will be driven in part by life-cycle stage (earlier stages feats on product technology and Inter stages focus on process technology), we also study the effect that focus has on related firm performance measures; i.e., how will product-related external technology acquisition affect product-based performance measures and how will process-related external technology acquisition affect cost- (or finance) based measures. Finally, we investigate the impact of internal resource capability on the existing relationship between external technology acquisition and firm performance; i.e., the absorptive capacity argument. Data collected from 188 U.S. subsidiaries of both domestic (U.S.) and foreign firms were used to test hypothesized relationships among these variables: DTC-life cycles, intellectual property protection, internally available resources, external technology acquisition, and frim performance. While not all hypotheses were supported, the results on the relationship between external technology acquisition (vs. internal technology development) and the three firm performance perspectives warrant caution for technology managers considering or currently utilizing external sources of technology. The more salient results and implications for managers are presented below. First, regarding the potential drivers for external technology acquisition, the results varied with theoretical expectations. Contrary to theory, neither DTC-life cycle nor intellectual property protection exhibited a significant relationship to external sourcing, in general. However, consistent with expectations, the level of available internal resources did exhibit a direct and negative relationship to external acquisition. Firms with greater internal resources are less inclined to source externally. Second, technology managers would be well advised to consider a number of issues when approaching the decision to acquire technology externally or develop it internally. In all cases where a statistically significant relationship between external technology acquisition and firm performance was found, the direction was negative, indicating that acquiring technology externally detracts from firm performance. Further, in limited cases, that negative relationship is compounded in the presence of internal technology capabilities Also, a significant relationship was found between external product technology acquisition and product performance measures (and not for financial performance measures), and between external process technology acquisition and finance performance measures (and not for product performance measures), as expected and were both negative. In other words, the dimension of performance most hindered by external technology acquisition is precisely that dimension that managers might strategically target at a given stage in the technology life cycle. The availability of technical resources internal to the firm was in all cases positively associated with product, market and financial performance measures. These results taken together suggest that firm performance is negatively impacted by external technology acquisition,firms with internally available resources typically do not tend to seek external technology, and when they do, in some cases the negative relationship between external sourcing and performance is increased. Clearly, external technology acquisition is nor a panacea and great care must be taken to ensure firm success-and our findings suggest that all else equal, firms may want to err on the sine of internal development. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.Associated with sustainable technology, in this paper, we have developed a prototype system for evaluating life cycle engineering of chemical products. For this purpose, giving a whole framework on the G2 software known as a graphical development environment of intelligent system, we have built a product life cycle model as one of its element technologies. Practically it is described as an object oriented model having a hierarchical structure like IDEF0 model. Furthermore, due to the interdisciplinary nature of the problem-solving, highlighting an importance to facilitate a continuous improvement and to employ distributed information technologies, we also engage in developing a few related element technologies. Through a case study associated with the farm sheets, we have revealed that the developed system can analyze easily various kinds of life cycle scenarios just by giving certain values via a graphical user interface, and support strategic decision making on the life cycle engineering of chemical products.A Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, of a nanocrystalline dye sensitized solar cell (ncDSC) system has been performed, according to the ISO14040 standard. In brief, LCA is a tool to analyse the total environmental impact of a product or system from cradle to grave. Six different weighing methods were used to rank and select the significant environmental aspects to study further. The most significant environmental aspects according to the weighing methods are emission of sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide emission was selected as the environmental indicator depending on the growing attention on the global warming effect. In an environmental comparison of electricity generation from a ncDSC system and a natural gas/combined cycle power plant, the gas power plant would result in 450 g CO2/kWh and the ncDSC system in between 19-47 g CO2/kWh. The latter can be compared with 42 g CO2/kWh, according to van Brummelen et al. "Life Cycle Assessment of Roof Integrated Solar Cell Systems, (Report: Department of Science, Technology and Society, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 1994)" for another thin film solar eel system made of amorphous silicon. The most significant activity/component contributing to environmental impact over the Life cycle of the ncDSC system is the process energy for producing the solar cell module. Secondly comes the components; glass substrate, frame and junction box. The main improvement from an environmental point of view of the current technology would be an increase in the conversion efficiency from solar radiation to electricity generation and still use low energy demanding production technologies. Also the amount of material in the solar cell system should be minimised and designed to maximise recycling. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper discusses the environmental assessment approach that has been developed and applied in the SusHouse project (Strategies towards the Sustainable Household)l. This project aims at developing and evaluating strategies for a sustainable development of households in the future, for three basic household activities: nutrition, shelter and clothing. The environmental assessment approach in the SusHouse project is different from traditional approaches such as life cycle assessment, due to the system-level character and due to the focus on future developments. Examples are taken from the clothing research in the Netherlands. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The literature on the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to process industry products and particularly to chemical processes has been reviewed. The main purpose of an LCA is to provide a quantitative assessment of the environmental impact of products over their entire life cycle, with a view to making improvements. Application to processes, which are key parts of the life cycle, is important in the context of process design and development, and in the analysis of processing chains. Reference is made to some important techniques for environmental assessment which interface with LCA when evaluating processes. The essential features of the LCA methodology are reviewed and some specific difficulties in the application of LCA are identified and discussed. These difficulties include allocation of impacts to multiple products, the definition of system boundaries, the quality of data, temporal and spatial characteristics, and impact assessment methods. Consideration is given to the combined use of LCA with economic evaluations, which is important in the process industry context. Finally, some cases of the application of LCA to specific chemical processes are reviewed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Matrix population models have become standard tools for the demographic analysis of age- or stage-structured populations. Although age-classified (Leslie) matrix models make maximum use of age-specific demographic data, age at first reproduction, which has been suggested to be an important life-history variable, does not appear as an explicit parameter in these models. Consequently, the sensitivity of population growth rate to changes in age at first reproduction cannot be calculated using standard techniques. Age-specific demographic data to parameterize age-structured models are difficult to collect, and models that can be parameterized with partial demographic data ("partial life-cycle models") have been developed. Partial life-cycle models are based on life-history stages, and these models can also be used to calculate sensitivity of population growth rate to changes in various life-history variables, including ages at first and last reproduction. Here, we present a partial life-cycle model appropriate for situations where demographic data are collected immediately after the birth pulse (post-breeding census). We present methods of parameterizing the partial life-cycle model, and derive formulas for calculating the sensitivity of the population growth rate to changes in model parameters, including ages at first and last reproduction. We analyzed life-table data for several species of mammals using the partial life-cycle model and found that results of our partial life-cycle model compare favorably with those obtained from the corresponding age-classified models.The human toxicity potential (HTP), a calculated index that reflects the potential harm of a unit of chemical released into the environment, is based on both the inherent toxicity of a compound and its potential dose. It is used to weight emissions inventoried as part of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) or in the toxics release inventory (TRI) and to aggregate emissions in terms of a reference compound. Total emissions can be evaluated in terms of benzene equivalence (carcino.-ens) and toluene equivalents (noncarcinogens). The potential dose is calculated using a generic fate and exposure model, CalTOX, which determines the distribution of a chemical in a model environment and accounts for a number of exposure routes, including inhalation, ingestion of produce, fish, and meat, and dermal contact with water and soil. Toxicity is represented by the cancer potency q1* for carcinogens and the safe dose (RfD, RfC) for noncarcinogens. This article presents cancer and noncancer HTP values for air and surface-water emissions of 330 compounds. This list covers 258 chemicals listed in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency TRI, or 79 weight% of the TRI releases to air reported in 1997.Taking the life cycle assessment (LCA) database being developed by the authors as an example, this paper discusses the main problems in the development of LCA databases and the ways to overcome these problems. The application of the object-oriented technique for the development of a LCA database is also discussed. A LCA database should contain two parts: one is the database of material properties; the other is the database of environmental impacts. The discussion in this paper is mainly focused on the database of the environmental impacts of materials. The database of environmental impacts consists of waste emissions caused in mining, extraction, manufacturing, use and recycling processes of materials. The database also contains a system to analyze the relationship between the environmental impacts and the processing technologies of the materials. The database is developed under Windows 98 and uses VISUAL BASIC 5.0 as the main tool. The application of the object-oriented program design technique can reduce the difficulty of database design and ensure a reasonable database structure. It can also reduce the complexity in data processing. In the last part of the paper, part-implementation of life cycle assessments for some polymers and metallic materials are shown. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.China has been developing its economy with a speed that it never experienced before and has achieved progress that attracts worldwide attention. However, as its large population and the pressures from resources and environment are constraining its economic and social development, China firmly chose the route of sustainable development. China's material experts have been pondering over ecological and environmental problems throughout the process of material design, fabrication, application, disposal and recycling. In recent years, the applied fundamental research on ecomaterials has been underway through the priority foundation project of the National Education Committee, NSFC and project of China's High-Tech. 863. Chinese Ecomaterials Society, and the Chinese Center for Materials Life Cycle Assessment (CCMLCA) are now being established. With the guidance and support of the government, our material researchers are now carefully drawing up a sustainable material development plan that is suitable for China's situation and carrying out extensive studies on ecomaterials science research and development of ecomaterials. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved.The technology of ferrous metals is well established. The use of iron and steel, in particular, is considerable and widespread. However, the processing of these materials is resource intensive and generates considerable pollutants, despite continual development. To maintain the use of these popular and versatile materials in the future will necessitate an increased attention to reductions in the consumption of natural resources and power, and greater sensitivity to the environment. This paper presents guidelines for ecological design of engineering product and processing of iron and steel in order to encourage greater processing and recycling efficiencies. It also describes the use of life-cycle analysis as a technique to assess the impact of change on society. The techniques are illustrated through the application of automobile manufacture and use. It goes further to stress the importance of relevant education in the principles of edodesign as fundamental to the effective implementation. The paper concludes with recommendations for the future. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.In this paper, a method of sequential and accumulative life cycle assessment for materials and products, and the concept of whole life cycle assessment (WLCA), are proposed. Some fundamental considerations for materials life cycle assessment (MLCA) are discussed. Also, the LCA software based on these ideas is introduced. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Multiple perspectives are presented on failure-event-chain analysis and failure cause categorization followed by description of a systems engineering framework for failure evaluation. The framework consists of engineering and organizational elements typically within the program manager span of control. The systems engineering lens is then used to evaluate 50 space system failures. The high level mapping of failure attributes (causal root structure) indicates the need for across the board systems engineering rigor. That is, failure can propagate from virtually every critical activity in a space system life cycle. Analysis results show strong implication of design, design verification & test, manufacturing/production, and manufacturing/production verification & test as recurrent causal factors in space system failures. The Failure Space perspective reminds one of the need for thorough and complete risk management and assurance process implementation over the life of a project as well as, increased emphasis on lessons learned and recurrent monitoring of critical process fidelity. (C) 2001 AIAA. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.Environmental issues in polymer processing can be related to materials/energy balances in terms of volatile emissions generated during manufacture and selection of appropriate material/energy recovery options for the manufactured product. This review presents information related to the types of volatiles emanating during the processing of commodity thermoplastics and reinforced thermosets along with analytical methods for their measurement. The identification of volatiles and the development of analytic techniques for measuring their concentration in the workplace are of paramount importance to establish or revise threshold limit values that would minimize exposure to hazardous chemical substances. With respect to material/energy recovery options applicable to fabricated polymer-based parts, this article reviews methodologies based on life-cycle analysis principles to establish an approximate hierarchy of energy recovery potential. It is shown that the overall energy requirements for most secondary (melt reprocessing) or tertiary (chemical) recycling alternatives are well below those of landfilling (highest energy consumption) and for some alternatives closer to those of reuse (lowest energy consumption). (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.A wide range of industries are investigating methods of reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide(CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous pride (N2O). Several options have been identified ranging from energy efficiency and reforestation to capture and storage in oceans, aquifers, or underground. Although greenhouse gases are not yet regulated, the power generation and petroleum industries are already considering greenhouse gas capture and storage methods to reduce their emissions to the atmosphere. Preferred options are the ones utilizing CO2 as a product and therefore providing an additional economic benefit to the oil and gas production process. Currently, CO2 is widely used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects to extract more oil out of aging reservoirs: Thus, storage of CO2 in active reservoirs does not require technology advances and offers the advantage of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. The present research conducted a life cycle assessment to determine the benefits derived from staring CO2 in active reservoirs while enhancing the,extraction of oil and the impacts on the environment over the process lifetime. The potential for CO2 storage in: a specific oil reservoir in Texas was demonstrated, as well as the mass balance of greenhouse gas emissions generated from the energy-intensive process. Our findings suggest that the storage capacity of this reservoir is huge,the process emissions are minimal in comparison, and the EOR activity is almost carbon-neutral when comparing net storage potential and gasoline emissions from the additional oil extracted.A LCA (life cycle assessment) scheme for any industrial activity system is introduced to estimate the quantitative loan on the environment with the aid of the NETS (numerical environment total standard) method proposed by the authors as a numerical measure. Two kinds of environmental loads respecting fossil fuel depletion as input resources to the system and global warming due to CO2 emission as output are taken into account in the present eco-criterion, in which the total eco-load (EcL) value is calculated from the summation of respective environmental load factors on the whole process in a life cycle of the system. This NETS method is applied to eco-management co-generation systems, in which a computer-aided output navigator proceeds the LCA estimation,with ICON and Q&A communication. An operation scheme most friendly to the environment with a minimum EcL value, i.e., an eco-operation scheme, is derived from the optimization theory.Until recently waste production was seen as an inevitable outcome of industrial production and processing, and a problem that could be managed by end-of-pipe and ill situ biotreatment, disposal, or simply be ignored. However the introduction of clean, or cleaner, technology options now is focussing attention on the minimisation of materials and energy use, and waste generation, and upon recycle. Thus clean technology has emerged as a concept that is compatible with industrial sustainability, and whose environmental benefits and economic competitiveness have been demonstrable over a range of industrial sectors. Biotechnology is an enabling technology that offers one important route to clean products and processes; it provides powerful and versatile tools that can compete with chemical and physical means of reducing both material and energy consumption, and tl-re generation of wastes and emissions. The wide penetration of biotechnology in industry has still to occur but many examples of its ability to deliver clean and competitive products and processes are now available particularly through the development and application of biocatalysts. The introduction of clean or cleaner processing does not necessarily entail a complete change in manufacturing strategy or the refitting of plant. Upgrading existing manufacturing processes by fitting biotechnology unit stages illustrates the opportunities for such intermediate technology. Nevertheless, for biotechnology to achieve its full potential as a basis for clean industrial products and processes beyond its current applications, innovative R&D will be needed. The successful application of biotechnology as a clean technology is illustrated in this review through a series of case studies, while the innovative nature of biotechnology in this context is demonstrated by the development and application of novel biocatalysts.Authors have evaluated the life cycle of a thin-film CdS/CdTe PV module to estimate the energy payback time (EPT) and the life-cycle CO(2) emissions of a residential rooftop PV system using the CdS/CdTe PV modules. The primary energy requirement for producing 1 m(2) of the CdS/CdTe PV module was similar to a-Si PV module at annual production scale of 100 MW. EPT was calculated at 1.7-1.1yr, which was much shorter than the lifetime of the PV system and similar to that of a-Si PV modules. The life-cycle CO(2) emissions were also estimated at 14-9 g-C/kWh, which was less than that of electricity generated by utility companies. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Using a global systemic approach, the wind energy system operation behaviour is first simulated using five different types of power curve for the wind turbine. Adding physical (charge current limitation) and cost considerations, we have determined the optimized energy system for various levels of satisfaction (LLP), i.e. both able to satisfy the load with a certain percentage of the load not satisfied and to offer the lowest kWh cost. We studied the influences of the power profile of the wind turbine that affect productivity and the relative repartition between input power and output power and wasted energy. This wasted energy decreases rapidly with the value of the LLP. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.An innovative mathematical programming decision support model Life Cycle Activity Analysis (LCAA) - is presented, integrating considerations of optimal allocations of resources and impacts upon the environment during the life cycle of products. LCAA is based on the classical formulation of activity analysis on the life cycle assessment framework. The concept of linear activities is extended to embrace mass and energy fluxes over the entire life cycle of products including their environmental impacts. Special attention is given to the presence of loops in the product chains, such as those occurring when materials/products are recovered (reused, recycled.). An application brought from the Portuguese bottled water industry is described. The model features alternative activities for production technologies and product recovery strategies and permits the joint consideration of monetary costs and environmental burdens. The results obtained under five scenarios, including distinct disposal strategies and environmental constraints, are discussed.Life-cycle analysis (LCA) is most commonly used to inform the product design process, but here the focus is on institutional design issues - contracts, rules, and procedures that govern the behavior of individuals working in large organizations. To illustrate the issues, this study investigates the procurement, use, and disposal of microcomputers in state government agencies in Trenton, New Jersey, USA. It finds evidence of environmentally and economically suboptimal asset management, much of which can be explained and mitigated by considering the associated transaction costs. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Aerospace design processes demand the best talent (regardless of geographic location), with access to the best design and analysis tools to reduce design cycle times and cost without sacrificing reliability or safety. The solution is a collaborative, distributed engineering environment for life-cycle analysis. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is developing such an advanced engineering environment, called the Intelligent Synthesis Environment (ISE). This paper reports the progress made in developing ISE, future development plans and ISE success stories to date.The modem design concept is focused on the life - cycle, such that all the aspects of the designed systems, and the corresponding dependencies are considered. These conditions are fulfilled by the concurrent engineering (CE) approach that creates a new context for design and management according to which the life - cycle design is performed by functional and disciplinary heterogeneous teams. Thus, results a new concept for computer aided design (CAD) that must support system's life-cycle analysis and design. Defining the CE context for electronics, the present paper determines the main elements of the CE-CAD concept, and the basic functional architecture of the corresponding environment in creating a total product design, highlighting, as a result, the concept of virtual 'world' distributed manufacturing enterprise.The objective of this project is to build internet-based educational materials that address the economic impact of electronic packaging technology, specifically the process of predicting the manufacturing and life cycle cost of electronic systems during their design and development process. This paper reports progress on: 1) the development and dissemination of web-based instructional materials for use in cost analysis courses and as supplemental materials for a broad cross-section of other courses in the electronics and electronic packaging areas; and 2) the expansion of the elements within the course that address life cycle costs, particularly the concepts of life cycle assessment (LCA) and design for environment (DFE). Six internet-based modules are being developed. The modules developed include a mixture of lecture materials tin textual and video format), case studies, on-line computational toots, bibliographies, links, and discussion/homework problems. The modules are internet-based and could be hosted by a central organization such as the IEEE.To reduce the environmental burden of agriculture, suitable methods to comprehend and assess the impact on natural resources are needed. One of the methods considered is the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, which was used to assess the environmental impacts of 18 grassland farms in three different farming intensities - intensive, extensified, and organic - in the Allgau region in southern Germany. Extensified and organic compared with intensive farms could reduce negative effects in the abiotic impact categories of energy use, global warming potential (GWP) and ground water mainly by renouncing mineral nitrogen fertilizer. Energy consumption of intensive farms was 19.1 GJ ha(-1) and 2.7 GJ t(-1) milk, of extensified and organic farms 8.7 and 5.9 GJ ha(-1) along with 1.3 and 1.2 GJ t(-1) milk, respectively Global warming potential was 9.4, 7.0 and 6.3 CO2-equivalents ha(-1) and 1.3, 1.0 and 1.3 CO2-equivalents t(-1) milk for the intensive, extensified and organic farms, respectively. Acidification calculated in SO2-equivalents was high, but the extensified (119 kg SO2 ha(-1)) and the organic farms (107 kg SO2 ha(-1)) emit a lower amount compared with the intensive farms (136 kg SO2 ha(-1)). Eutrophication potential computed in PO4-equivalents was higher for intensive (54.2 kg PO4 ha(-1)) compared with extensified (31.2 kg PO4 ha(-1)) and organic farms (13.5 kg PO4 ha(-1)). Farmgate balances for N (80.1, 31.4 and 31.1 kg ha(-1)) and P (5.3, 4.5 and -2.3 kg ha(-1)) for intensive, extensified and organic farms, respectively, indicate the different impacts on ground and surface water quality. Analysing the impact categories biodiversity, landscape image and animal husbandry, organic farms had clear advantages in the indicators number of grassland species, grazing cattle, layout of farmstead and herd management, but indices in these categories showed a wide range and are partly independent of the farming system. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Annual crops for energy generation from agriculture are usually processed as cereal bales with air-dry biomass. As a promising alternative a novel concept of moist biomass has been developed. In this concept biomass is produced in a "double-cropping system" and processed via ensiling and mechanical dehydration. The aim of this paper is to describe the concept of moist biomass provision in comparison with air-dry biomass provision. To assess the advantages and disadvantages of the two concepts, they are compared with each other regarding environmental and economic aspects. The methodological approaches used as well as selected results are presented. Among others, the results show that the provision of moist biomass could be advantageous concerning some environmental aspects but the energy provision costs are significantly higher. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Computational building simulation tools have historically viewed buildings as artefacts isolated and disconnected from their contexts. At most, the external environmental conditions have been viewed as outside influences or stressors encapsulated in, for example, weather files for energy simulation or sky models for lighting simulation. In the field of environmental assessment, life cycle analysis (LCA) has followed a similar path of isolating the artefact under analysis from its context. Modeling the building artefact as a participant in multiple contexts over time so that the interactions and dependencies between the regions and the building can be adequately explored in the design process requires support for the modeling of regional areas, as well as the artefact and the related life cycle processes. Using computational design and evaluation tools can provide the computing capability required for effective design decision support. This paper presents the implementation of the affordance impact assessment method and the regional enviromnental simulation in Ecologue. Ecologue is the computational tool for life cycle environmental impact assessment in the SEWER integrated building design and simulation system. Ecologue contains a building model and an environmental model. The building model is automatically derived from the shared building model of the SEMPER system. The environmental model is a combination of a representation of the processes and emissions occurring in the life cycle of buildings and an impact assessment model, The impact assessment model is a combination of a context model of the physical characteristics of a region and a sub-regional fate and transport model based on the fugacity concept.One step in the synthesis for FPGA-based Reconfigurable Computers (RCs) involves mapping the design data structures onto the physical memory banks available in the hardware. The advent of Xilinx Virtex-style FPGAs and of hierarchical memory schemes on reconfigurable boards introduced an added complexity to this mapping. The new RC boards offer a wealth of memory banks many of them on-chip (such as the BlockRAMs available in the Virtex architecture) and many of them offering variable number of ports and several depth/width configurations. Along with the external RAMs, a hierarchy of memories with varying access performances are available in a reconfigurable computer it becomes critical to perform a good mapping to achieve optimal design performance. This paper presents an automatic memory mapping methodology which rakes into account: the number of words and word size of design data segments and physical memory banks, number of ports on the banks, access latency of the banks, proximity of the hanks to the processing unit, life cycle analysis of data segments, and it also incorporates configuration selection from the multiple configurations available in BlockRAMs of Virtex series FPGAs. In the case of multiple processing elements on board, the paper also provides a framework in which the task of memory mapping interacts with spatial partitioning to provide the best implementation.In recent years ecological aspects in streams have been a center of public attention. Nature friendly river works, which have been done by mainly nature material since 1981, are well known to have an effect of reducing CO2. However almost nature friendly river works are more expensive than conventional river works. Namely nature friendly river works have destiny trade-off between environment and money. The necessity of the project evaluation of a public works rises. Especially, the value of the environment is remarkable. Then we should evaluate clearly the value of river environment in point of money. We proposed the LCA method. The effect of the reduction of CO2 is evaluating analyzed. The LCA evaluation of the Tama River Basin was concretely done by the input-output analysis of inter-industry relationships. The input-output analysis was pursued from money the effect to all industries which the reduction of CO2 brought respect. We proposed the cost-benefit analysis to put the benefit of the river environment together in the effect of the stock of river works in the past investigation. The System for Integrated Environmental Economic Accounting was made based on the I/O table which was in existence. The effect of flow was calculated by applying this to actual river works for environmental improvement.The assessment of sustainability requires alternative and integrated approaches for a deeper understanding of the complex network of interactions occurring between humans and the environment, In the present publication we will present an overview of some of the more interesting environmental accounting indicators (methodologies). The ecological footprint, as proposed by Wackernagel and Rees, quantifies the intensity of resources used and the waste discharge activity in a specified area in relation to the area's capacity to provide for that activity. Emergy analysis is an holistic methodology which can evaluate both the contribution of economics and environmental work on a common basis. Odum defines emergy as the solar energy directly and indirectly required to generate a specific flow or a product. This quantity represents the memory of all energy, matter and time that the biosphere used to make a product available. The indicator exergy is a more effective way to verify if and how much a system is efficient, whether in a single productive process or on a territorial level because it includes both quantity and quality aspects. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) permits a systematic analysis of the effects of a particular human activity on the environment. This method allows an environmental diagnosis of the whole story of a product, from its production until the exhaustion of its functions and effects: a cycle called "cradle to grave'. All this methodologies are focusing only on particular aspects of the overall, so the integration is recommended, in order to have a global and more accurate vision of the problem.Environmental assessment of energy utilization technologies is essential to the efficient utilization of energy resources and the development of human society. The paper will develop a methodology for LCA of the energy utilization technologies. After general description of the methodology, a detailed case on coal-fired thermal power plant will be analyzed in the paper. The inputs and emissions inventories through the main life cycle stages are listed. The paper tries to assess environmental impact quantitatively of coal-fired thermal power plants. It is expected that the paper can contribute some to the development of LCA on energy utilization technologies.An exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA) and a classical environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) has been performed for a carbon dioxide low emission power cycle. The configuration of the power cycle is a semi-closed gas turbine combined cycle (SCGT/CC) which allows increasing of the CO2 concentration in the hue gases. The decreasing CO2 Plant (DeCO(2) Plant) achieves a CO2 reduction of 85% by means of chemical absorption with a blended solution of amines. The LCA is mainly focussed on CO2 production during the three phases of construction, operation and dismantling of the complete SCGT/CC + DeCO(2) plant. This is necessary to verify if the process is effective in terms of CO2 reduction. Besides the classic LCA, an ELCA was also performed, whose aim was to assess the cost of the life cycle of the plant in terms of exergy losses. The results are quite encouraging: the CO2 reduction is effective during the life time. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Heat pumps stand out because they are energy efficient heating and cooling devices and able to reduce global CO2 emissions to as much as 6%, which is one of the largest potentials for a single technology. This paper discusses the results of studies carried out by the International Energy Agency Heat Pump Centre (HPC) concerning the international status of residential heat pump technology, markets, as well as efforts for accelerating the use of heat pumps in buildings. The impact of heat pump policy instruments is analyzed. The paper highlights how energy efficiency of heat pump and air conditioner equipment has evolved during the past decade. A recent HPC energy life cycle analysis of heat pumps shows that they contribute only marginally to global warming.The recent MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) Italian Regulation highlights strategies that allow reduction of both landfill use for non stabilised organic waste and organic fraction waste to energy process feeding. For this purpose, the new regulation defines a refuse derived fuel (RDF) fraction, obtained by separation of finest and organic fractions, from commingled waste collection. RDF production systems, for every single waste collection and management defined area, need a following incineration system as tail end treatment for energy recovery, able to treat the obtained high Low Heat Value (LHV). Two main different strategies are applicable: one or more RDF incineration units for every single waste collection and management area or a minor waste to energy unit number with respect to waste collection and management area number. An overall environmental load corresponds to each different scenario, due to all the different system components; the main aim of the work is to highlight the different scenario environmental balances, in order to indicate a possible solution having a minimum environmental load. Referring to the Tuscany Region territorial scale, an overall environmental balance was carried out based on a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) approach, as a suitable instrument for direct and indirect impacts, resource depletion and saving evaluation, concerning different scenarios.This paper proposes a mathematical model for life-cycle inventory analysis (LCI) of waste incineration in Switzerland. In order to model conventional and new incineration technologies adequately, fundamental aspects of the different technologies relevant for the LCI are discussed. The environmental impact of these technologies strongly depends on the assessment of the long-term emissions of the solid incineration residues and is therefore related to value based decisions about the time horizon considered. The article illustrates that the choice of the landfill model has a significant influence on the results of life-cycle assessment of waste incineration.General public environmental awareness and education is increasing, therefore stimulating the demand for reliable, objective and comparable information about products' environmental performances. The recently published standard series ISO 14040 and ISO 14025 are normalizing the preparation of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) containing comprehensive information relevant to a product's environmental impact during its life cycle. So far, only a few environmentally leading manufacturing organizations have experimented the preparation of EPDs (mostly from Europe). demonstrating its great potential as a marketing weapon. However the preparation of EPDs is a complex process, requiring collection and analysis of massive amounts of information coming from disparate sources (suppliers. sub-contractors, etc.). In a foreseeable future, the streamlining of the EPD preparation process will require product manufacturers to adapt their information systems (ERP, MES, SCADA) in order to make them capable of gathering, and transmitting the appropriate environmental information. It also requires strong functional integration all along the product supply chain in order to ensure that all the information is made available in a standardized and timely manner. The goal of the present paper is two fold: first to propose a transitional model towards green supply chain management and EPD preparation: second to identify key technologies and methodologies allowing to streamline the EPD process and subsequently the transition toward sustainable product development.This study was performed jointly by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment), Bologna and Florence Universities and the firm BEGHELLI. The system function to be studied is the lighting of a room where a blackout has occurred. The functional unit is an emergency lamp manufactured by BEGHELLI, provided by a fluorescent tube and an accumulator battery with lead elements. The lamp life lasts 10 years. LCA is obtained by using the SimaPro 3.1 code and two methods: Eco indicator 95 with the normalisation weight ascribed to 10 years and a new method obtained by enclosing into the Eco - indicator 95 method some new damage categories such as some raw material depletion, solid and energy. The results show that the accumulator battery, the structure of the lamp and the electronic board are the components with greater environmental damage and the electrical energy for use produces 31% of total damage calculated by the Eco indicator method. The most important categories of damage produced by accumulator battery are acidification due to material production and heavy metals due to disposal treatment of lead, and the ones produced by electronic card are acidification and winter smog due to copper production. To reduce the damage of emergency lamp some new solutions have been proposed. Finally the characteristics to obtain emergency lamp Ecolabel have been proposed.This study was performed jointly by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment), Bologna and Florence Universities and the firm FINI COMPRESSORI. The functional unit is an axial air compressor manufactured by FINI COMPRESSORI, lubricated, having a 25-litres air tank, provided by 1.8 kW electrical motor. The system boundaries include raw material extraction and the end of life of the compressor. All metallic materials have the recycling as waste scenario. The LCA is obtained by using the SimaPro 3.1 code and the two methods Eco-indicator 95 and Ecopoints. The results show that air tank and stator of electrical motor are the components with greater environmental damage, even if the damage is mainly due to the electrical energy consumed during use. The most important categories of damage produced by the air tank are carcinogenic substances, heavy metals and acidification due to the material and processes used for its manufacturing and the ones produced by aluminium part of stator are acidification and winter smog due to material manufacturing. To reduce the damage of air compressor we have proposed some design solutions to lower air temperature in cylinder and at collector outlet.When the life cycle of a product, material or service, studied in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) affects other life cycles not included in the system in analysis, it is necessary to apply allocation rules. Allocation can be defined, in LCA context, as the act of assigning the environmental loads of a system to the functions of that system in proportionate shares. Most of the available allocation methods are of generic application and do not take into account the quality of the materials to be recycled. The few that do take quality into account attribute to it a quantitative value. Methods that are both generic and scientifically correct are generally difficult to apply. Rules that are simple enough for a case by case application could lead to LCA studies that cannot be compared. This way, the best will be to dispose of simple methods but fair and mathematically correct methods available with a fundamentally driven application to a sector of economic activity. In this study a method of allocation is proposed which takes into account primarily the "qualitative" value of the material to be recycled. irrespective of being a pos-consumption product/material or a secondary material of a production process. Through a case study, the potential of application of the proposed method is demonstrated, in the recycling of products coming from wood industries and its derivatives, when compared with other allocation methods.The objective of this Life Cycle Environmental Cost Analysis (LCECA) model is to include eco-costs into the total cost of the products. Eco-costs are both the direct and indirect costs of the environmental impacts caused by the product in its entire life cycle. Subsequently, this LCECA model identifies The feasible alternatives for cost effective, eco-friendly parts/products. This attempts to incorporate costing into the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practice. Ultimately, it aims to reduce the total cost with the help of green or eco-friendly alternatives in all the stages of the life cycle of any product. The new category of eight eco-costs is being included in the cost breakdown structure. The mathematical model of LCECA aims to define the relationships between the total cost of products and the various eco-costs concerned with the life cycle of the products, and determine quantitative expressions between the above said costs. A computational LCECA model has been developed to compare the eco-costs of the alternatives. This model will include a break-even analysis to evaluate the alternatives, sensitivity and risk analysis modules. This model aims at a cost-effective, eco-friendly product as an end result. This LCECA model will be compatible with the existing LCA software tools.This study was performed jointly by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment), Bologna and Florence Universities and the firm FINI COMPRESSORI. A comparison is carried out between the environmental damages of two models (MK10 and MK94) of air axial compressors manufactured by FINI COMPRESSORI, with a volume of intaken air of 226 l/min, a power of 1.8 kW and a maximum pressure of 10 bar. The comparison is obtained by using LCA calculated by SimaPro 3.1 code and two methods: Eco-indicator 95 and a new method obtained by adding to the Eco-indicator 95 method other damage categories such as some raw material depletion, solid and energy. The system boundaries include raw material extraction and the end of life of the components and some special tools for manufacturing such as dies, moulds and shells. All metallic materials have the recycling as waste scenario. For LCA study we have considered the three components crankshaft, crankcase and valve plate for both the models, the air cooling conveyor for the MK94 and the surplus of consumed energy for the MK10. The conveyor decreases the temperature of air and therefore increases the compressor efficiency and reduces the electrical energy consumption during the use. From the LCA results, we can conclude that the introduction of the conveyor reduces the damage of MK10 model of 114.07 mPt and that the other modifications of the design increase the damage of MK10 model of 11 mPt. The damage of air compressor can be diminished by reusing crankshaft and crankcase. A design modification of the blades of the ventilator is proposed to avoid the conveyor.This study presents a methodology for capturing the environmental impact of a product and its processes throughout the life cycle in discrete part manufacturing. The objectives of the study are to identify opportunities to enhance environmental friendliness of a product in its design stage, and assess whether the environmental impact has actually been reduced or has simply been shifted elsewhere in the life cycle of the product. Using the bill of materials and the process route sheet, we build the environmental status of its operations as a vector of measurable attributes, categorized under the taxonomy of social, ecological, and economic impact that can be aggregated and evaluated at a business unit level. The vector of social impact deals with the effects of materials used and wastes produced on people through the life cycle. The vector of ecological impact consists of effects of recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing of a product based on the notion of materials balance. Finally, the vector of economic impact represents the conversion of the previous two vectors into managerially relevant costs to firm expressed in dollar amounts so that managers in any positions visually appraise their operations and communicate each other with the same language.Data and time requirements and complex methodological problems of a detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are well-known and discussed. Its application has specific difficulties in Italian Small- and Medium- sized Enterprises (SMEs) where environmental information is generally dispersed, a short-term problem-oriented environmental management approach is common and dedicated human resources are usually missing. As a consequence, a new procedure specifically designed for SMEs, VerdEE (Verifica dell'Eco-Efficienza - Verification of Eco-Efficiency), was developed and implemented on an interactive CD-ROM. It is based on the following criteria: relying on a life cycle approach; aimed at evaluating the environmental profile of a product and at identifying improvement opportunities; sufficiently simple to be applied in a limited time: containing as much quantitative information as possible to make it usable by a non-expert user. The VerdEE procedure includes four main steps: "Goal and Scope definition"; semi-quantitative "Inventory"; "Check-list"; visualisation of results in "Matrix" and "Target-plot" form. The procedure is supported by an interconnected informative part about advantages of the life cycle approach for SMEs, principles of eco-design and environmental concerns.Technological development is seen as one of the fundamental forces in shaping the modern economies. The effects and the role of technological development are also central questions in many issues of environmental protection. This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment study of the Finnish pulp an paper industry. Three comparative scenarios are drawn. Two scenarios describe the technological levels and production volumes of 1993 and 1997. A comparison scenario with the production volumes of 1997 and the technological level of 1997 describes the effects avoided by improvements. The results demonstrate that technological development has had considerable effects on the material flows of the industry within a relatively short period of time. Changes in most material flows result from various improvements. The environmental performance of the industry has been improved by both changes in operative practices as well as capital investments. The study fails to describe some aspects of realized developments and thus indicates that factors connected to technological change are highly problematic for LCA modelling.Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) has been embraced by governments worldwide and as building plays a key role in development, it is implicated in this movement. Consideration of the whole life cycle of a building is a major aspect, when assessing its sustainability. While the reduction of operating energy and the optimization of building material selection has been a main focus of research in Europe, the consideration of maintenance during operation or the demolition of a building at the end of its life has usually been neglected. Aiming for sustainability the conversation of materials and energy by applying a closed system approach on a long term time scale must be realized. Therefore building materials are to be recycled, building elements are to be reused and buildings are to be more flexible. Designing to facilitate the disassembly of building elements is expected to be an improvement for sustainable buildings. A tool for the assessment of building elements has been developed that focuses on connection selection, its influence on material and energy flow, as well as the quality of building waste materials. The assessment of material production and erection processes, using Life Cycle Assessment is completed with a qualitative/quantitative classification of demolition processes, and disposal scenarios, considering environmental, economic and technical aspects. An analysis of floor elements has confirmed, that Design for Disassembly is very promising for the improvement of sustainable buildings but that improvement potentials can differ considerably. Details of the analysis tool developed and an analysis of building elements will be shown in this article.The VAMP project (VAlorization of building demolition Materials and Products, LIFE 98/ENV/IT/33) aims to build an effective and innovative information system to support decision making in selective demolition activity and to manage the valorization (recovery-reuse-recycling) of waste flows produced by the construction and demolition (C&D) sector. The VAMP information system will be tested it in Italy in some case studies of selective demolition. In this paper the proposed demolition-valorization system will be compared to the traditional one in a life cycle perspective, applying LCA methodology to highlight the advantages of VAMP system from an eco-sustainability point of view. Within the system boundaries demolition processes, transport of demolition wastes and its recovery/treatment or disposal in landfill were included. Processes avoided due to reuse-recycling activities, such as extraction of natural resources and manufacture of building materials and components, were considered too. In this paper data collection procedure applied in inventory and impact assessment phases and a general overview about data availability for LCA studies in this sector are presented. Results of application of VAMP methodology to a case study are discussed and compared with a simulated traditional demolition of the same building. Environmental advantages of VAMP demolition-valorization system are demonstrated quantitatively emphasizing the special, importance of reuse of building components with high demand of energy for manufacture.SF6 gas insulated high voltage switchgear (GIS) has been installed in an increasing number over the last three decades. GIS covering the voltage range from 72,5kV to 800kV are now in service worldwide. The driving forces for installing GIS instead of traditional air insulated switchgear (AIS) were, among other the needs to cope with space limitation in densely populated urban areas (installations in buildings and underground) to increase availability in areas exposed to high atmospheric stress (pollution, extreme climatic conditions) to improve safety of operation in earthquake areas to meet special requirements of hydroelectric plants. Economic considerations and the progress in GIS technology have reduced the gap in the overall cost relationship between AIS and GIS and thus increased the application range of this technology. Besides the economic aspects such issues as the space saving potential, improved safety and reliability, favourable maintenance, increased service availability, and insensitivity to external disturbances have played a key role. This paper comparatively presents the major layout and design features of GIS and AIS and the related performance characteristics. These allow to determine functional advantages, to carry out life cycle cost (LCC) comparisons, and to assess environmental issues (LCA - life cycle assessment). For the value based comparison exemplified LCC has been given the main impact followed by performance issues and environmental impact. As a result GIS and AIS technology achieve similar ranking values, depending on the specific assessment. The optimisation of GIS technology with respect to lowest life cycle cost, highest availability and zero-maintenance has made GIS competitive with AIS not only at special application fields.Industries are investigating methods to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane and others). Several options have been proposed ranging from energy efficiency, to reforestation, to capture and sequestration in lakes, oceans or underground. The power generation and petroleum industries are considering greenhouse gas capture and sequestration methods to reduce their emissions to the atmosphere. Preferred options are the ones utilizing the CO2 as a product and therefore providing an additional valuable benefit to the production process. CO2 is widely used for enhanced oil recovery projects to extract more oil out of aging reservoirs. For this reason, storage Of CO2 in active reservoirs by using enhanced oil recovery is very attractive and would add to the extraction of oil the incentives of storing CO2 and reducing emissions. This work will investigate the benefits derived from storing CO2 in active reservoirs while recovering oil. We will demonstrate the potential for CO2 sequestration in a specific oil reservoir in Texas, as well as the mass balance of greenhouse gas emissions generated from the energy intensive process. This paper will also demonstrate how the overall sequestration efficiency can be enhanced by utilizing captured and recycled CO2 from natural gas treating plants instead of using CO2 from pure CO2 natural reservoirs.An Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA) and a classical environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) have been carried out for a zero CO2 emissions power cycle. It is basically a regenerative gas cycle operating on CO2 as the working fluid and using O-2 as the fuel oxidiser. The main cycle feature is the removal of the CO2 produced in the combustion process in liquid or supercritical state at high pressure levels, ready for transportation, reuse or final storage. The LCA is mainly focussed on CO2 production during the three phases of construction, operation and dismantling of the complete plant. This is necessary to verify if the process is effective in terms Of CO2 reduction. Besides the classic LCA, also an ELCA was performed, whose aim is to assess the cost, in term of exergy losses, of the life cycle of the plant. Results showed an effective decrease Of CO2 emissions during the entire life cycle if compared with those of a conventional combined cycle. Concerning the Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment, results showed that the major exergy waste occurs during the cycle operating phase, due to the combustion process.The Australian Coal Industry has committed to the investigation of strategic options for sustainable development. This paper summarises Stage I of the study; a life cycle analysis for steel and electricity production in Australia. The study shows that coal-based steelmaking can compete favourably with the new gas-based technologies in Greenhouse gas emissions. Although the GGEs from coal-based electricity production is higher than for gas and for renewable energy, the study has shown that the emerging clean coal technologies and synergies with renewable energy can give a marked improvement - both now and into the future. The present LCA study will continue as part of a broader research program, Coal in a Sustainable Society, supported by the coal industry and others. The findings and outcomes of this work will form the basis of a concerted awareness and education program by the coal industry in working with government and the broader community. This will further provide a platform to launch the investigative and technology transfer work of the proposed CRC for Coal in Sustainable Development.Environmental Life Cycle Analysis, ELCA, has been used for assessing the environmental impact of the synthesis of methanol using either carbon monoxide or recovered carbon dioxide. The best mixing for the minimisation of both the emissions and hydrogen consumption has been shown to be a 3:1 molar ratio of CO and CO2. The preliminary results of a cost analysis and energy assessment, mixing steam and dry reforming, are also presented. The same methodology has been used for the assessment of three different synthetic pathways for dimethylcarbonate, including the one based on the use of phosgene, a process now on stream that has a high environmental impact.This paper addresses the performance of the future options for the Swiss energy supply, with regard to greenhouse gas emissions and costs. Technological advancements expected for the next 20 years are fully credited. Particular attention is given to the potential contributions of decentralised cogeneration systems, heat pumps, renewables and energy conservation. The ecological analysis is based on Life Cycle Assessment. The results show that the replacement of current nuclear plants by advanced fossil systems is not compatible with policy goals aiming at reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. With the strategy based on nuclear energy, combined with strong promotion of renewables and conservation measures these objectives can be met and additional reductions may be achievable. The associated costs are, however, significantly higher than the ones for the current Swiss energy supply system.With the development of society, demand for energy is increasing day by day. With increase in population and settlements and environmental consciousness, stringent conditions are imposed on power generation. The paper analyses environmental impacts of hydropower vis-A-vis thermal and wind power generation in terms of area requirement, cost analysis and impacts based on life cycle assessment.In recent years, sustainable manufacturing has become important all over the world. Manufacturers have begun to realise the need for the responsible use and management of resources in the life cycle of a manufactured product, especially the planning for product retirement. The common end-of-life options are reuse, remanufacture, recycle, landfill, and incineration. This paper discusses a multi-objective methodology for determining appropriate end-of-life options for manufactured products, set against the often conflicting objectives of minimising environmental impact and minimising deficit (or sometimes maximising surplus). Guidelines for determining feasible end-of-life options (including the economic value of products and their components) are discussed. A numerical index of the environmental impact of a material or process - the eco-indicator - is adopted. Except for landfill and incineration, components of economic value destined for reuse, remanufacture, or recycling have first to be extracted from the product. It is therefore necessary to determine the optimal stage of disassembly, when all economically valuable components are retrieved. In order to determine the extent to which a product should be disassembled during its retirement, one may consider minimising environmental impact or associated costs or maximising the rate of return. Two end-of-life disassembly charts are introduced showing the impact on the environment and cumulative costs incurred as a product is disassembled. One of the charts can be used to assist in product design or redesign, whereas the other can be used to determine the optimal stage of end-of-life disassembly of the product. An end-of-life disassembly chart for a telecommunication pager revealed that if the pager is disassembled and its components reused, remanufactured, or recycled, the costs incurred will be very high. The pager is not designed for end-of-life retirement. It is best landfilled. The end-of-life options of a coffee maker were investigated using the methodology. It is concluded that the coffee maker is designed for end-of-life retirement. Complete product disassembly is always mandatory. If the coffee maker were completely disassembled and all components processed, the total disassembly time is 97 s, and a surplus of US$0.1918 is even realisable. The coffee maker was found to be designed for end-of-life retirement.How can private households contribute to a more resource-efficient food production system? The importance of meat consumption has previously been highlighted. Various life-cycle analysis studies suggest which products are favourable from an ecological point of view. This study uses a material flux analysis to assess material and energy fluxes of the entire system of food production and consumption. It compares different steps in production and consumption as well as different product categories. The results reveal that agricultural production and private households account for most of the system's energy requirements. The outcomes of two possible initiatives taken by private households are analysed by scenario calculation. It compares optimization of technical devices in private households with purchase decisions that favour organically produced food products. The results reveal an astonishing optimization potential of cooling devices in private households. However, it also shows the importance of specific parameters, such as the energy-mix coefficient.Life-cycle assessment is a useful instrument to evaluate the ecological performance of innovative energy systems. This paper investigates the production process of polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) stacks, identifies the ecological contributions of various components and materials and compares the results with impacts due to utilization of the stacks in a vehicle (i.e. hydrogen or methanol production and direct emissions). The production of fuel cell stacks leads to environmental impacts which cannot be neglected compared to the utilization of the stacks in a vehicle (the actual driving process). These impacts are mainly caused by the platinum group metals for the catalyst and, to a lesser degree, the materials and energy for the flow field plates. The paper identifies several options how to further enhance the environmental advantages of fuel cells. (C) 2000 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessments (LCAs) are conducted to satisfy the aspiration of decision makers to consider the environment in their decision making. This paper reviews decision analysis and discusses how it can be used to structure the assessment and to integrate characterization and valuation. The decision analytic concepts of objectives (goals) and attributes (indicators of the degree to which an objective is achieved) are used to describe steps of the assessment of the entire impact chain. Decision analysis distinguishes among different types of objectives and attributes; it describes how these relate to each other. Impact indicators such as the Human Toxicity Potential are constructed attributes. A means-ends objectives network can show how the different constructed attributes relate to the objective of protecting the environment. As LCA takes disparate environmental impacts into account, it needs to assess their relative importance. Trade-off methods in decision analysis are grouped into utility theory and multicriteria decision aids; they have different advantages and disadvantages, but are all more sophisticated than simple weighting. The performance of the different trade-off methods has not yet been tested in an LCA context. In the second part of the paper, we present criteria for the development of characterization methods.The application of the methodology Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is time-consuming and expensive. A definite interpretation, furthermore, is not always derivable from the determined results. The reason for the leeway of interpretation is frequently due to the imprecision and uncertainty of the ingoing data. An improved clearance of interpretation is to be expected by an ecological evaluation of methodology with the support of fuzzy-sets. The influence of uncertainties of ingoing data on evaluation results becomes transparent through a representation as fuzzy-sets. Thus, the interpretation of an uncertainty of assessment results is reduced in comparison to usual procedures for environmental LCA thus far. Time and cost saving is to be expected from the fact that the extensive quantification of many energy and mass flows is replaced by a fuzzy-set supported iteration loop, with which only the exact quantification of a few important flows is necessary.The determination and the assessment of Best Available Techniques (BAT) is one of the key issues in the realisation of the IPPC-Directive. While research has already focused on environmental benefits and technical practicability of techniques within LCA, little work has been carried out assessing economic feasibility. A methodology for the economic assessment of BAT in the framework of the IPPC-Directive on a plant level has to comprise all costs that accrue by measures to prevent, to reduce, to utilise or to remove emissions into water, air and soil caused by industrial production processes. The applied cost concept provides a systematic accounting and allocation of decision relevant costs and possibly revenues, that are pertinent to the economic assessment of BAT. The application of the methodology to a case study from the steel industry shows the practical use of the approach.Oxygen depletion of lake and seawater is a serious condition with large implications for biodiversity. Therefore, in LCA, the potential oxygen demand of water emissions is estimated under the label eutrophication impact category. This impact category should contain the impact of water emissions on the total oxygen consumption in the receiving water. This means that it should include both primary and secondary oxygen consumption. In spite of this, the oxygen needed to oxidise ammonia has normally not been taken into account when quantifying the eutrophication impact category. In this paper, weighting factors for ammonium/ammonia are suggested for the eutrophication impact category. It is shown that, for treated wastewater, the amount of oxygen needed for nitrification of ammonia is important when compared to the potential eutrophication calculated using the current recommended weighting factors. These weighting factors take into account oxygen needed to oxidise the organic matter in the wastewater emission and that needed to degrade the algae potentially grown due to the emission of nutrients.The environmental performance of a color computer monitor is investigated by implementing a Life Cycle Assessment. The goal of this study is to collect LCI data of foreground systems, to identify hot spots, and to introduce life cycle thinking at the product design stage. Secondary data are used in the background system, and site-specific data are collected in the foreground system. Results show that the use phase is the most contributing phase. The operating mode and the energy saving mode during the overall use phase contribute to the total by 59% and by 9.9%, respectively. In the production phase, the cathode ray tube assembly process and the printed circuit board assembly process are the most contributing processes. The sensitivity analysis on the use pattern scenario shows that the contribution ratio of the use phase ranges from 32% to 84%. Even in the home use case, which is the best case scenario, the use phase is one of the most contributing processes to the environmental performance of the color computer monitor. There is no significant difference in the choice of the impact assessment methodologies for identifying the improvement opportunities. For the external use of Life Cycle Assessment in a short-run product for the market, it is recommended that Life Cycle Assessment should be carried out in parallel with the product design stage. It is also necessary to have a pre-existing, in-house database for a product group in order to accelerate life cycle procedures.From the very beginning, the research of Material Life Cycle Assessment (MLCA) has been an important part of the eco-materials research in China, and large numbers of researchers have been focusing their efforts on it. From 1998, and supported by the National High-tech Program-863 Projects, the study of some typical materials has been put into practice. Thus far, the first phase of the project has been finished smoothly. The practical MLCA methods have been developed, and the manufacturing technologies and processes of the steel and iron, aluminum, cement, ceramic, polymer and construction coatings have been assessed. The relevant assessment software has been developed. Reference systems are being set up for evaluation by studying typical materials. In this paper, the main achievements are reviewed. Some other developments of MLCA in China are also introduced.LCAccess is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sponsored web-site intended to promote the use of Life Cycle Assessments in business decision-making by facilitating access to data sources useful in developing a life cycle inventory (LCI). While LCAccess will not itself contain data, it will be a search-able global directory to potential data sources. In additional to directing users to relevant data sources, LCAccess will also serve as central source for LCA information. Development is currently being completed on LCAccess with an expected operational date of winter 2000/2001 for some features of the web-site. The LCI Global Directory is expected be fully functional by the summer of 2001. To find the LCAccess web-site in 2001 go to: www.epa.gov/LCAccess. LCAccess is currently soliciting organizations that have completed LCI/LCA studies to provide their data sources for reference in LCAccess. Inquiries should be directed to the development manager, Mr. Tim Skone (US 703/318-4745) and/or the EPA Sponsor, Ms. Mary Ann Curran (513/569-7782).The BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability) software brings to your fingertips a powerful technique for balancing the environmental and economic performance of building products. The tool is based on consensus standards and designed to be practical, flexible, and transparent. Version 2.0 of the Windows(TM)-based decision support software, aimed at designers, builders, and product manufacturers, includes actual environmental and economic performance data for 65 building products. The purpose is to support purchasing decisions by providing key science-based information often lacking in 'green' product selection. The intended result is a cost-effective reduction in building-related contributions to environmental problems.The growing availability of software tools has increased the speed of generating LCA studies. Databases and visual tools for constructing material balance modules greatly facilitate the process of analyzing the environmental aspects of product systems over their life cycle. A robust software tool, containing a large LCI dataset and functions for performing LCIA and sensitivity analysis will allow companies and LCA practitioners to conduct systems analyses efficiently and reliably. This paper discusses how the GaBi 3 software tool can be used to perform LCA and Life Cycle Engineering (LCE), a methodology that combines life cycle economic, environmental, and technology assessment. The paper highlights important attributes of LCA software tools, including high quality, well-documented data, transparency in modeling, and data analysis functionality. An example of a regional power grid mix model is used to illustrate the versatility of GaBi 3.Two purposes for normalization in LCA are presented: resolving non-commensurate units, and assessing significance. Two families of approach for normalization in LCA are described: internal and external. The need for congruence between the normalization and valuation is illustrated by showing the nonsensical conclusions which can result from an approach that is common in North American LCA applications: internal normalization with external valuation. In order to achieve congruence with internal normalization methods, valuation in such instances must be case-specific. External normalization methods bring an added benefit not provided by internal normalization methods: an assessment of relative significance.Fate, exposure and effect measures provide a basis for the calculation of characterisation factors in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Such characterisation factors provide insights into the relative concern of chemical emissions within and across life cycle inventories, in the context of toxicological stress to humans and to ecosystems. A brief overview is presented in this paper of the available options for toxicological characterisation and of associated issues that will need to be addressed in future consensus-building initiatives. An introduction is provided to issues such as: (1) the benefit of measures calculated at midpoints versus at endpoints in the toxicological cause-effect chains (sometimes termed environmental mechanisms); (2) the need to use multimedia models with spatial resolution; (3) the political consequences of accounting for variations in population density; (4) uncertainties in the toxicological potency measures; and (5) the different options for the toxicological endpoint measure(s). These issues are addressed under the headings of Fate and Exposure, Human Health and (aquatic) Ecosystem Health.Three approaches recommended for characterization of toxicity impact potential in a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) are tested on a case study and compared. The two equivalency factor methods are the Persistence, Bioaccumulation, and Toxicity (PBT) method and the Multimedia Fate Modeling (MFM) method using a Mackay Level III model with state-specific environmental data. The simplified risk assessment (SRA) method involved dispersion modeling using site-specific environmental data. The life cycle inventory information evaluated by all three methods was limited to manufacturing of the RDX-based explosive in Kingsport, Tennessee. The effort to collect site-specific environmental data and conduct air dispersion modeling for the SRA method required about 24 times more effort than the PBT method and about 4 times more effort than the MFM method. Direct comparison of impact potential scores for the three approaches were limited to inhalation toxicity scores for nine air pollutants modeled by SRA. Correlations were made on the rank order of the impact potential scores for the nine air emissions evaluated for all three LCIA methods. Although the number of chemicals compared is very limited, the best correlation coefficient (0.96) was between the rank orders for the MFM and the SRA methods. The minimal effort and reduced accuracy of the PBT approach make it best suited for screening large numbers of chemicals for further evaluation of the highest ranked chemicals. The intermediate effort and reasonable accuracy (includes transfers to other media) of the MFM approach make it well suited for LCIAs involving comparative assertions or governmental policy decisions. The maximum effort and assumption of highest accuracy make the SRA approach suitable only after limiting the locations of interest to a few sites by screening with the other two approaches.The Human Toxicity Potential (HTP) is a quantitative toxic equivalency potential (TEP) that has been introduced previously to express the potential harm of a unit of chemical released into the environment. HTP includes both inherent toxicity and generic source-to-dose relationships for pollutant emissions. Three issues associated with the use of HTP in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) are evaluated here. First is the use of regional multimedia models to define source-to-dose relationships for the HTP. Second is uncertainty and variability in source-to-dose calculations. And third is model performance evaluation for TEP models. Using the HTP as a case study, we consider important sources of uncertainty/variability in the development of source-to-dose models - including parameter variability/uncertainty, model uncertainty, and decision rule uncertainty. Once sources of uncertainty are made explicit, a model performance evaluation is appropriate and useful and thus introduced. Model performance evaluation can illustrate the relative value of increasing model complexity, assembling more data, and/or providing a more explicit representation of uncertainty. This work reveals that an understanding of the uncertainty in TEPs as well as a model performance evaluation are needed to a) refine and target the assessment process and b) improve decision making.LCA practice focuses on impacts resulting from the release of chemicals into the environment, but consideration of 'non-chemical impacts' is as important for LCA, particularly as it relates to sustainability. Methodologies and philosophies exist for addressing non-chemical impacts, particularly in the area of resource depletion and land use, but the problem of comparing or integrating chemical and non-chemical impacts remains. A new approach for identifying and integrating impacts involves the use of an object-oriented modeling and simulation platform, such as Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory's Dynamic Information Architecture System (DIAS). LCA and impact categories can be described as 'objects' (at any level of detail or specificity) and any combination of objects and behaviors can be brought into a DIAS analysis frame. Related models that address objects' behavior characteristics are linked only to their respective objects, not to each other. Thus, maximum flexibility and speed is possible. The process of dividing LCA and impact assessment into a hierarchy of objects provides new insights into the complex mixture of dynamic things, activities, and relationships inherent in LCA and sustainability. Ultimately, embracing the complexity of LCA may be the way to simplify it.Background. The primary purpose of environmental assessment is to protect biological systems. Data collected over the last several decades indicates that the greatest impacts on biological resources derive from physical changes in land use. However, to date there is no consensus on indicators of land use that could be applicable worldwide at all scales. This has hampered the assessment of land use in the context of LCA. Objectives. The Institute for Environmental Research and Education and its partner Defenders of Wildlife have begun an effort to develop the necessary consensus. Methods. In July 2000, they held a workshop attended by a diverse group of interested parties and experts to develop a preliminary list of life cycle indicators for land use impacts Results. Their preliminary list of impact indicators includes: protection of priority habitats/species; soil characteristics: soil health; proximity to & protection of high priority vegetative communities; interface between water and terrestrial habitats/buffer zones; assimilative capacity of water and land; hydrological function; percent coverage of invasive species within protected areas; road density; percent native-dominated vegetation; restoration of native vegetation; adoption of Best Management Practices linked to biodiversity objectives; distribution (patchiness; evenness, etc.); and connectivity of native habitat. Conclusion. The list of indicators conforms well to other efforts in developing indicators. There appears to be convergence among experts in the field and in related fields on the appropriate things to measure. Future Prospects. These indicators are currently being tested in the United States. Further workshops and testing is planned towards developing internationally recognized indicators for land use.The private sector decision making situations which LCA addresses must also eventually take the economic consequences of alternative products or product designs into account. However, neither the internal nor external economic aspects of the decisions are within the scope of developed LCA methodology, nor are they properly addressed by existing LCA tools. This traditional separation of life cycle environmental assessment from economic analysis has limited the influence and relevance of LCA for decision-making, and left uncharacterized the important relationships and trade-offs between the economic and life cycle environmental performance of alternative product design decision scenarios. Still standard methods of LCA can and have been tightly, logically, and practically integrated with standard methods for cost accounting, life cycle cost analysis, and scenario-based economic risk modeling. The result is an ability to take both economic and environmental performance - and their tradeoff relationships - into account in product/process design decision making.The goal of LCA is to identify the environmental impacts resulting from a product, process, or activity. While LCA is useful for evaluating environmental attributes, it stops short of providing information that business managers routinely utilize for decision-making - i.e., dollars. Thus, decisions regarding the processes used for manufacturing products and the materials comprising those products can be enhanced by weaving cost and environmental information into the decision-making process. Various approaches have been used during the past decade to supplement environmental information with cost information. One of these tools is environmental accounting, the identification, analysis, reporting, and use of environmental information, including environmental cost data. Environmental cost accounting provides information necessary for identifying the true costs of products and processes and for evaluating opportunities to minimize those costs. As demonstrated through two case studies, many companies are incorporating environmental cost information into their accounting systems to prioritize investments in new technologies and products.Modelling data uncertainty is not common practice in life cycle inventories (LCI), although different techniques are available for estimating and expressing uncertainties, and for propagating the uncertainties to the final model results. To clarify and stimulate the use of data uncertainty assessments in common LCI practice, the SETAC working group 'Data Availability and Quality' presents a framework for data uncertainty assessment in LCI Data uncertainty is divided in two categories: (1) lack of data, further specified as complete lack of data (data gaps) and a lack of representative data, and (2) data inaccuracy. Filling data gaps can be done by input-output modelling, using information for similar products or the main ingredients of a product, and applying the law of mass conservation. Lack of temporal, geographical and further technological correlation between the data used and needed may be accounted for by applying uncertainty factors to the non-representative data. Stochastic modelling, which can be performed by Monte Carlo simulation, is a promising technique to deal with data inaccuracy in LCIs.The subgroup 'Driving Forces for Data Exchange' as part of the SETAC LCA Workgroup on Data Availability and Quality is finishing its final report with recommendations and guidelines to stimulate availability and exchange of LCI data. Activities in the past three years involved a literature review, interviews with LCI data publishers and stakeholder discussions. The final report will be part of a SETAC 'Code of Life Cycle Inventory Practice', dealing with LCI data availability and quality aspects in a broader sense.The subgroup 'Energy, Transport and Waste Models' as part of the SETAC LCA Working Group on Data Availability and Data Quality is finishing its final report with recommendations and references on LCI data concerning energy, transport and waste. To achieve the objectives for each of the models for energy production, transportation and waste management the subgroup has supplied: A description of the technical function of LCA and the technical background of existing data, including the influence of using different energy carriers and technologies to reduce emissions a data quality description with separate checklists, based on understanding the technology aspects of energy production, transport and waste treatment and LCA thinking. The checklists are meant to be suggestions for data 'providers' of how to improve available data and also the availability of relevant data references for available relevant data guidelines for what to look for when selecting an appropriate data set.The ISO-standard for LCA distinguishes four phases, of which the last one, the interpretation, is the least elaborated. It can be regarded as containing procedural steps (like a completeness check) as well as numerical steps (like a sensitivity check). This paper provides five examples of techniques that can be used for the numerical steps. These are the contribution analysis, the perturbation analysis, the uncertainty analysis, the comparative analysis, and the discernibility analysis. All five techniques are described at a non-technical level with respect to basic concept, possibilities, tabular and graphical representation, restriction and warnings, and all are illustrated with a simple example.Intention, Goal and Scope: Dealing with data gaps, data asymmetries, and inconsistencies in life cycle inventories (LCI) is a general problem in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies. An approach to deal with these difficulties is the simplification of LCA. A methodology that lowers the requirements for data quality (accuracy) for process emissions within a simplified LCA is introduced in this article. Background: Simplification is essential for applying LCA in the context of design for environment (DfE). The tool euroMat is a comprehensive DfE software tool that is based on a specific, simplified LCA approach, the Iterative Screening LCA (IS-LCA). Within the scope of the IS-LCA, there is a quantitative assessment of energy-related processes, as well as a semi-quantitative assessment of non-energy related emissions which supplement each other. Objectives: The semi-quantitative assessment, which is in the focus of this article, aims at lowering the requirements for the quality of non-energy related emissions data through combined use of qualitative and quantitative inventory data. Methods: Potential environmental impacts are assessed based on ABC-categories for qualities (harmfulness) of emissions and XYZ-categories for quantities of emitted substances. Employing statistical methods assignment rules for the ABC/XYZ-categories were derived from literature data and databases on emissions to air, water, and soil. Statistical tests as well as a DfE case study (comparing the materials aluminum and carbon fiber reinforced epoxy for a lightweight container to be used in an aerospace application) were conducted in order to evaluate the level of confidence and practicality of the proposed, simplified impact assessment. Results: Statistical and technical consistency checks show that the method bears a high level of confidence. Results obtained by the simplified assessment correlate to those of a detailed quantitative LCA. Conclusions: Therefore, the application of the ABC/XYZ-categories (together with the cumulative energy demand) can be considered a practical and consistent approach for determining the environmental significance of products when only incomplete emission data is available. Future Prospects: The statistical base of the method is expanded continuously since it is an integral part of the DfE software tool euroMat, which is currently being further developed. That should foster the application of the method. Outside DfE, the method should also be capable of facilitating simplified LCAs in general.In literature, many models (qualitatively as well as quantitatively) can be found to cope with the problem of communicating results of LCA analyses with decision takers. In a previous article of this journal, an LCA-based single indicator for emissions is proposed: the 'virtual pollution prevention costs '99' (Vogtlander et al. 2000a). In this article, a single LCA-based indicator for sustainability is proposed. It builds on the virtual pollution prevention costs '99 for emissions, and adds the other two main aspects of sustainability: material depletion and energy consumption. This single indicator, the 'virtual eco-costs '99', is the sum of the marginal prevention costs of: Material depletion, applying 'material depletion costs', to be reduced by recycling Energy consumption, applying 'eco-costs of energy' being the price of renewable energy Toxic emissions, applying the 'virtual pollution prevention costs '99' The calculation model includes 'direct' as well as 'indirect' environmental impacts. The main groups of 'indirect' components in the life cycle of products and services are: Labour (the environmental impacts of office heating, lighting, computers, commuting, etc.) production assets (equipment, buildings, transport vehicles, etc.) To overcome allocation problems of the indirect components of complex product-service systems, a methodology of economic allocation has been developed, based on the so called Eco-costs/ Value Ratio (EVR) model. This EVR calculation model appears to be a practical and powerful tool to assess the sustainability of a product, a service, or a product-service combination.The aim of this article is to show how, at PSA peugeot-citroen, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as a tool to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, a process or an activity by identifying and quantifying energy, material used and wastes released to the environment. In this paper, the LCA methodology is applied to a practical case study: the comparison of various end-of-life scenarios (recycling versus incineration with or without energy recovery with landfill as a reference) for a polypropylene (PP) bumper skin. All the LCA steps (goal, inventory, impacts assessment, interpretation) are developed in this study. It is shown that in the particular case of PP, incineration with energy recovery is on an environmental point of view between 30 and 60% recycling. However, due to some uncertainties on data quality, the absolute values of the inputs/outputs for the inventory step may not be sufficient to allow strong decision making and the use of the factorial experiments (Taguchi) is then proposed to select the dominant parameters of the study. Strong environmental conclusions can then be drawn from the study.The development and use of, as well as scientific discussions on, eco-balances and in particular life cycle assessment has largely occurred without involving experts on environmental law. However, in the light of recent proposals to 'legalize' eco-balances, i.e. formally introducing them into environmental law, the legal implications of eco-balancing must be addressed in the future. The formal introduction, especially of LCA, cannot be decided independent of the general economic and environmental policy implications of material flow management, and it raises major questions of policy and constitutional law. An important question of principle is whether eco-balances should be prescribed or only a legal framework set forth for voluntary use. In view of the unfinished methodological development of LCA, any formal introduction raises the constitutional problem of conformity with the requirements of legal certainty. References to the 'principles of good eco-balancing' are problematic, and an introduction on an experimental basis would have to be confined to cases where the legal consequences of grossly divergent interpretations of this term are tolerable to affected firms. Where eco-balances are prescribed as a method of preparing governmental or administrative decisions, one must determine whether and to what extent they are binding on the decision-maker, and develop proper mechanisms of participation, transparency and critical review.The knowledge and use of western-based environmental management tools like LCA (life cycle assessment) in Eastern Europe is very low. Discussions about introducing environmental management systems and taking care of environmental consequences of producing processes are very relevant now in Eastern European countries that want to become members of the European Union and to introduce their goods onto the international market. In this paper, the problems connected to introducing LCA based environmental management systems and Eco-Labeling in Eastern European countries are described. The poor financial condition of national sciences in Estonia does not appear to be the main problem. A brief overview of the development and current status of LCA research in Denmark, Finland and Japan is presented. Solutions to current problems are discussed, and experiences gained during conducting LCA research on oil shale energy production in Estonia are presented.Data availability and data quality are still critical factors for successful LCA work. The SETAC-Europe LCA Working Group 'Data Availability and Data Quality' has therefore focused on ongoing developments toward a common data exchange format, public databases and accepted quality measures to find science-based solutions than can be widely accepted. A necessary prerequisite for the free flow and exchange of life cycle inventory (LCI) data and the comparability of LCIs is the consistent definition, nomenclature, and use of inventory parameters. This is the main subject of the subgroup 'Recommended List of Exchanges' that presents its results and findings here: Rigid parameter lists for LCIs are not practical; especially, compulsory lists of measurements for all inventories are counterproductive. Instead, practitioners should be obliged to give the rationale for their scientific choice of selected and omitted parameters. The standardized (not: mandatory!) parameter list established by the subgroup can help to facilitate this. The standardized nomenclature of LCI parameters and the standardized list of measurement bases (units) for these parameters need not be applied internally (e.g. in LCA software), but should be adhered to in external communications (data for publication and exchange). Deviations need to be clearly stated. Sum parameters may or may not overlap - misinterpretations in either direction introduce a bias of unknown significance in the subsequent life cycle impact assessments (LCIA). The only person who can discriminate unambiguously is the practitioner who measures or calculates such values. Therefore, a clear statement of independence or overlap is necessary for every sum parameter reported. Sum parameters should be only used when the group of emissions as such is measured. Individually measured emission parameters should not be hidden in group or sum parameters. Problematic substances (such as carcinogens, ozone depleting agents and the like) may never be obscured in group emissions (together with less harmful substances or with substances of different environmental impact), but must be determined and reported individually, as mentioned in paragraph 3.3 of this article. Mass and energy balances should be carried out on a unit process level. Mass balances should be done on the level of the entire mass flow in a process as well as on the level of individual chemical elements. Whenever possible, practitioners should try to fill data gaps with their knowledge of analogous processes, environmental expert judgements, mass balance calculations, worst case assumptions or similar estimation procedures.An integrated impact assessment model is used to calculate the impact per tonne of SO2, NOx, fine particles, and NMVOC emitted from different source countries on human health, acidification, eutrophication, and the man-made environment (crop yield and building materials). Indicators on the endpoint level are used to measure the effects resulting from a marginal change in emission levels. While the assessment of impacts on ecosystems and the man-made environment is limited to Europe, damage factors for health effects are also derived for Asia and South America. For Europe, emission scenarios for the years 1990 and 2010 are considered to analyse the influence of changing background conditions on the resulting impacts. Results show that there is a significant variation in the damage resulting from a unit emission for some of the impact categories, both between countries and between base years. Depending on the scope of the study and the information available from the life cycle inventory, results from the paper can be used to consider site dependent conditions in life cycle impact assessment as a complement to the current site-independent (or global) approach.Distance-to-target weighting methods are widely used in life cycle impact assessment. The methods rank impacts as being more important the further away society's activities are from achieving the desired targets for the pollutants. However, we feet that the scientific bases of the distance-to-target methods still need more clarification. This article illustrates how multiattribute value theory (MAVT) can be applied to interpret the impact category weights as well as the aggregation rule and normalisation used in the distant-to-target methods. Our comparison revealed that under certain conditions two of the three commonly used impact assessment methods (Ecoindicator 95, ET-method) applying distance-to-target weighting are consistent with the impact assessment framework derived from MAVT. This consistency holds for non-zero targets with equal importance and linear damage functions passing through the origin. We show that the MAVT framework offers a foundation for the methodological development in life cycle impact assessment.Application and development of the LCA methodology to the context of the building sector makes several building specific considerations necessary, as some key characteristics of products in the building sector differ considerably from those of other industrial sectors. The largest difference is that the service life of a building can stretch over centuries, rather than decades or years as seen for consumer products. The result of the long service life is that it is difficult to obtain accurate data and to make relevant assumptions about future conditions regarding, for example, recycling. These problems have implications on the issue of allocation in the building sector, in the way that several allocation procedures ascribe environmental loads to users of recycled or reused products and materials in the future which are unknown today. The long service life for buildings, building materials and building components, is associated with the introduced concept of a virtual parallel time perspective proposed here, which basically substitutes historical and future processes and values with current data. Further, the production and refining of raw material as a parallel to upgrading of recycled material, normally contains several intermediate products. A suggestion is given for how to determine the comparability of intermediate materials The suggested method for allocation presented is based on three basic assumptions: (1) If environmental loads are to be allocated to a succeeding product life cycle, the studied actual life cycle has to take responsibility for upgrading of the residual material into secondary resources. (2) Material characteristics and design of products are important factors to estimate the recyclable amount of the material. Therefore, a design factor is suggested using information for inherent material properties combined with information of the product context at the building level. (3) The quality reduction between the materials in two following product life cycles is indicated as the ratio between the market value for the material in the products. The presented method can be a good alternative for handling the problem of open-loop recycling allocation in the context of the building sector if a consensus for the use of the fictive parallel time perspective and the use of the design factor can be established. This as the use of the time perspective and design factor is crucial to be able to deal with the problem of long service lives for buildings and building materials and the specific characteristics of the same building materials and components built into different building contexts.The Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) for the freight traffic with heavy duty vehicles in Germany was determined for the reference year 1995 and the target year 2010 by application of ISO 14040 and ISO 14041. Based on these results and under consideration of the dynamic development of road freight traffic with German heavy duty vehicles of >14 t max laden weight and composition of the German heavy duty vehicles fleet in this class the LCI for the introduction of various scenarios for reducing emissions from freight traffic was generated. Special emphasis was placed in the determination of the LCI for the implementation of primary, secondary and a combination of primary and secondary emission reduction measures for heavy duty diesel engines such as variation of diesel fuel characteristics, engine-based measures for exhaust gas optimisation, urea selective catalytic reduction (SCR) process with and without fuel consumption optimised diesel engines and particulate trap for exhaust gas optimised diesel engines with low sulphur diesel fuel. The overall environmental effects of the investigated measures on the other phases of the product life cycle of the freight traffic with heavy duty vehicles and on associated and new products to be introduced was included in the generated results for the LCI of each variant. For the implementation of the urea SCR process the results are based on manufacturer data for the overall production process of SCR honeycomb catalysts and SCR application measurements in engine and field test after a travelled distance of between 187,825 and 325,178 km under road traffic conditions with typical EURO 2 standard diesel engines for heavy duty vehicles with a max laden weight of >32 t under control of and data certification by TUV Automotive Bayern Sachsen GmbH.Goal. This research aims to assess the environmental effects of integrated strategies in a municipal waste management system. In particular, analysis is focused on a waste stream in Palermo, where landfill involves the prompt disposal of the most waste after collection. The current local management system is compared with two integrated waste management alternatives. Both the options comply with Italian regulations, but each one predicts adopting the available technologies in different ways. Methods and objectives. Energetic and environmental balances are carried out in each management system referring to local waste composition in order to quantify energy consumption, the recovery of material and energy, and the environmental releases. Impact assessment is carried out to define the environmental profile of each option. Impact categories are defined and inventory data, by means of a suitable aggregation, can be used to evaluate the potential contribution that system inputs and outputs could bring to the relative category. Results. In opposition to the current management, which involves energy balance at a loss, the mass and energy balances outcomes in both of the two hypothetical management systems show the capability to obtain energy and material recovery to a substantial extent. Sorted collection plays a remarkable role in the improvement of environmental performance of management systems. In particular, the thermal treatment of waste associated with energy recovery, and the concomitant material recycling, increase the saving of energy. Conclusions. Environmental pressure factors of the management system are assessed depending on the relevant consumption of raw materials and energy, and on the emission of pollutants. The resulting figures reflect the two different integrated management options as being sustainable solutions for achieving an improvement in environmental performance, which is based on increasing the value of waste, as an alternative to resources, and the reduction of environmental releases. Life Cycle Assessment of municipal waste management systems can be usefully applied to define synthetic indices of environmental impact. These indices could single out possible alternatives in multi-criteria analysis, together with economic and technical parameters.A new method for the spatially differentiated assessment of impacts of airborne pollutants on human health is presented. It is applicable to primary pollutants with linear exposure response functions. This includes the most important primary air pollutants from transportation and energy generation. The article looks at the spatial differentiation of impacts due to emission height and the local population density distribution around the emission site, as has been predicted using a Gaussian plume model. The differentiation due to population density is captured by way of five generic spatial classes: large cities in agglomerations, highly densified districts in agglomerations, cities in urbanized regions, country average districts, and low density rural districts in rural regions. Average impacts are calculated for each class. The method is simple enough to be applied to a large number of emissions within Life Cycle Assessments. It was used to calculate site-dependent exposure efficiencies for a variety of primary pollutants emitted at different heights. For traffic emissions of pollutants with short atmospheric residence times, the exposure efficiencies vary by a factor of 5 across Germany and by a factor of 75 across Europe. This differentiation due to population density decreases significantly with an increasing atmospheric residence time of the pollutants and with an increasing emission height.In the first part of this paper, we showed how lifecycle impact assessment can be described as an exercise in decision analysis. We developed a structure for how to decide on the relative importance of different environmental stressors. In this second part, we offer criteria for the grouping of stressors into impact categories and for the development of impact indicators. Facts to be included in a characterization method should be selected according to their relevance and combined following established scientific models. Facts should be included only if they are informative, that is, if sufficient and sufficiently certain information is available for all stressors that should be evaluated by this method. Abstract, constructed indicators at the 'midpoint level' are better suited to compare similar impacts than indicators reflecting 'observable environmental endpoints' if there is a large uncertainty about the effects on observable endpoints. We argue that midpoint modeling should be retained. The additional evidence introduced by endpoint methods should be used to support 'judgments about facts' needed to evaluate the importance of different impact categories (or means objectives) in the means-ends objectives network.This paper is guided by two premises. First, effective pollution prevention requires the demonstrated ability to decrease adverse environmental impacts at every stage of the life cycle of any given product. Firms that take full responsibility for the impacts of their products from cradle to grave experience high levels of organizational learning. A five-stage learning curve is proposed which stems mostly from the actions undertaken within a large firm or multinational context. The second premise is centered on the critical importance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to 'green' their products. Based on a sample of 368 environmentally responsive SMEs, it is shown that they are making some progress towards dealing with the environmental impacts of their products, despite the fact that their product life cycle initiatives seem to be partial and limited in scope. They will, however, have to move faster along the proposed learning curve, since more advanced, stronger environmental performance will increasingly constitute an asset for selling their products on the international scene or for qualifying as a subcontractor or supplier. Furthermore, empirical evidence demonstrates that improved environmental performance encourages process innovations and enhances corporate image and liability management, but tangible economic returns such as cost containment and revenue generation seem to be harder to achieve.Publicly available databases are analysed to demonstrate their relevance to life cycle inventory for energy production in the Canadian context. Site specific emissions along with sectoral emissions data are combined with production data to construct an energy production model, which has been applied to air emissions. The allocation procedure leads to reasonable results for coal, natural gas and electricity. The detailed allocation of the inventory among petroleum co-products is outside the scope of this study as it requires incorporating knowledge of physical relationship (unit process) or using economic data.Under consideration of the overall Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) results generated in the first step of this study and based on the February 1999 edition of ISO/DIS 14042 the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) for the introduction of various emission control measures for freight traffic heavy duty vehicles in Germany was determined. For the examination of the several mandatory elements 11 impact categories related to the freight traffic and the LCT results were focussed, the LCI results were designed to these impact categories and with characterization factors of the 11 selected and recognized characterisation models the categories indicator endpoints were quantified. The optional elements for normalization and weighting were added to the analysis. Two reference values are used for normalizing the category indicator results. For the weighting step 8 recognized evaluation methods were selected with the aim to aggregate the LCI results to an overall value. The results enable plausible conclusions with regard to the ecological advantages and disadvantages of the use of each analysed emission control technology for heavy duty diesel vehicles. As no perfectly clear ranking can be distinguished for evaluation of the generated results and no correlation can be established to the economical effects of the corresponding measurements, it is necessary to complete the currently existing recommendation from the ISO/DIS-Standards with further parameters.The current case study was performed to determine and evaluate the environmental impacts, and to look for possible improvements in the production and distribution of a basic lager beer that is packed into multi-packs of glass battles. The life cycle investigated includes the stages from agricultural production up to the delivering of products to the shops, the consumption phase has been excluded. Raw water treatment and energy production and use have been included, and the contribution of different sub-systems inside of the life cycle to climate change, acidification, eutrophication, oxygen depletion and summer smog were assessed. The investigation resulted with several suggestions for improving the product and environmental performance of brewery.A qualitative, quantitative, and overall quality assessment of life cycle inventory is suggested. The method is composed of five indicators which are set up at three levels of the inventory quality: flows, processes, and the system. The method allows one to assess the reliability of the method generating inventory data (justness of data, completeness of data, representativity of processes, repeatability of system definition) and at the same time to quantify the uncertainty of the resulting data made under the data generation method. LCA practitioners can finally decide the overall inventory quality through the information for the acceptability of the inventory result comparing the objective of quality and the cost necessary to improve the quality. The operation of the method was verified in the application to the production of polyethylene bottles. The proposed method was also found applicable for the validation of data in the ISO's LCA data documentation format.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly becoming an important tool for ecological evaluation of products or processes. In this study the environmental impacts associated with the returnable and the non-returnable glass beer bottles were assessed in order to compare different reuse percentages. The inventory analysis is performed with data obtained from two Portuguese companies (a glass bottles producer and a brewery) and completed with the BUWAL database. It includes all operations associated with the bottles' manufacture, the brewery and the wastewater treatment plant. The environmental impact assessment considers both the potential ecological and ecotoxicological effects of the emissions. The environmental impact categories included and discussed in this study are the contribution to ecological and human health, global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication and photochemical ozone creation. The first category is divided into three subcategories that are human toxicity, critical air volume and critical water volume. This study was performed for several reuse percentages and returnable bottle cycles, and is comprised of a sensitivity analysis. The general output is that the relative importance of the impacts associated with the use of returnable and/or non-returnable bottles depends on the number of cycles performed by the returnable bottles. According to the impact index defined in this study, the most significant impacts are the eutrophication and the final solid wastes generated, and the least significant impact is the ozone depletion.Within a Life Cycle Assessment of the fuel supply and the operation of cars fueled by natural gas, diesel and gasoline, the impacts of airborne pollutants on human health were assessed in a spatially differentiated way. Country average impacts were used for secondary sulfate and nitrate aerosols. The use of country average impacts also turned out to be sufficient for the primary pollutants emitted from most processes of the fuel supply. For emissions of primary pollutants from the vehicles and from some processes of the fuel supply, the low to moderate emission height and the high local population density in urban areas needed to be taken into account. In these cases, the method of generic spatial classes presented in Part I was applied. The spatially differentiated impacts were compared with the results of a generic impact assessment based on average European damage factors. The generic impact assessment overestimates the human health impact of the fuel supply by about a factor of 2, since many of the upstream processes take place in very sparsely populated countries, and underestimates the impact of the primary particles emitted by the diesel cars in large cities by about a factor of 2.In life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), limited attention is generally given to a consistent inclusion of a fate analysis in the derivation of aquatic eutrophication potentials. This paper includes fate and potential effects in the calculation of aquatic eutrophication potentials of NH3 and NOx emitted to the air, N and P emitted to water, and N and P emitted to soil. These characterisation factors were calculated for the Netherlands, West-Europe and the world, respectively. Implementation in current LCIA practice is further facilitated by calculating normalisation scores for the Netherlands in 1997, West-Europe in 1995 and the world in 1990. Although the results presented may be a step forward, significant improvements are still needed in the assessment of pollutants causing aquatic eutrophication. In particular, the fate factors representing transport of NOs and NH3 air emissions via soils to the aquatic environment should be improved. In addition, differences in the biological availability of nutrients and differences in the sensitivity of aquatic environments should be included in the calculation of effect factors for aquatic eutrophication.'Design for Recycling' and dematerialization by enhancing the durability of products are major aspects of the quest for sustainable products. This article presents an LCA-based model for the integrated analyses of the product chain, its recycling systems, and its waste treatment systems at the 'End of Life' stage. The model is an extension of the EVR (Eco-costs/Value Ratio) model which has been published in this journal (Vogtlander et al. 2001), but can also be applied to other life cycle interpretation models, since the model as such is not restricted to the use of the eco-costs as a single indicator. The model has been developed to evaluate the design alternatives of complex products like buildings and cars. These products comprise several subsystems, each with its own special solution at the End of Life stage: Extending of the product life, object renovation, re-use of components, re-use of materials, useful application of waste materials, immobilization with and without useful applications, incineration with and without energy recovery, land fill. Since complex product systems always comprise a combination of these design alternatives, a methodology is given to calculate and allocate the eco-costs of the total system in order to select the best solution for sustainability. The methodology is characterized by: A main allocation model of the recycling flow based on physical relationships, a strict separation of the market value, the costs and the eco-costs in the system, a main allocation model for extension of lifetime based on 'depreciation of eco-costs', parallel to economic depreciation.This Life Cycle Interpretation Analysis describes the third phase of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the implementation of emission control measures for the freight traffic with heavy duty vehicles (HDV) in Germany. It is based on the December 1999 edition of ISO/DIS 14043. Special emphasis was placed on the determination of the ecological effectiveness and the ecological category indicator effectiveness for each emission control scenario to compare the overall ecological-economical effect of the emission control measures investigated. Following these steps the main factors influencing the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) results were identified. As a result of these analyses only a small number of influencing factors were detected having an influence on the LCIA result of more than 93%. Another result was the determination of the main influence factors from the different phases of the Product Life Cycle (PLC) of the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system on the total weighting results of the bulk environmental load. The influence of the Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) results on the final Category Indicator Effectiveness result was analysed. The contribution of the different phases of the PLC of SCR systems on the total result of the LCI with regard to the bulk environmental load was determined. A completeness and sensitivity check was carried out. The results of the study enable plausible conclusions and recommendations, the absolutely essential one being the introduction of an consumption-optimized Diesel engine with SCR systems by the reference year 2005 for ecological and economical reasons.Regular (1988) and compact granular (1992, 1998) laundry detergents were compared on the basis of two distinct, complementary approaches: Environmental Risk Assessment and Life-Cycle Assessment. The results are presented in this paper and an accompanying paper in this volume (Part II: Life-Cycle Assessment). Exposure data from The Netherlands and Sweden were used for this retrospective analysis. The time period studied (1988-1998) spans many innovations in laundry detergents, one of which was the introduction of compact detergents. The aquatic risk assessment resulted in risk quotients below I for all detergent ingredients in both countries over the period studied. Furthermore, it showed that risk quotients decrease two to fivefold between 1988 and 1998 in each country due to the introduction of compact detergents. Slightly lower risk quotients were observed in Sweden, when compared to The Netherlands, attributable to the lower water hardness resulting in lower detergent usage per wash cycle in that country. If water hardnesses were equal, the outcome of the product risk assessments would also be the same in the two countries.Materials for energy sources, such as rechargeable batteries and fuel cells, are functional materials. Their development presents special challenges since they are designed for more than one function and must satisfy multiple and mostly interlocking requirements. A unique combination of properties is achievable in complex structures such as functional composites, multi-element and multiphase intermetallics, cermets, layered insertion compounds, and new nanostructured and disordered phases. This review deals with a variety of such materials being developed for use in clean energy storage, which is mostly, but not entirely, hydrogen energy storage. The scope of the work encompasses hydrogen gas storage alloys and intermetallics used for electrochemical hydrogen storage, insertion compounds for Li batteries, and ceramics and metal catalysts for fuel cells. It also includes materials used in lead-acid, nickel metal hydride, and lithium rechargeable batteries as well as in solid oxide, proton exchange membrane, and direct methanol fuel cells. Special topics highlight new nanostructured materials obtained by rapid quenching, mechanical alloying, and other processes, The review is complemented by a brief discussion of present trends in assessment of materials requirements for batteries and fuel cells for electric vehicles and portable telecommunication. Also addressed are aspects of recycling and life-cycle analysis.A computational tool has been developed for the environmental evaluation of building designs. Construction and operation of buildings is a major cause of resource depletion and environmental pollution. Computational performance evaluation tools can support the decision making in the area of environmentally responsive building design and play an important role in environmental impact assessment, especially when a life-cycle assessment approach is used. For comprehensive environmental impact analysis to be realized in a computational support tool for the building design domain, such tools must have the following three characteristics: (1) An analysis method that considers the life cycle of building construction, operation, and decommissioning; (2) a representation that is able to accommodate the data and computability requirements of the analysis method and tool; and (3) be integrated within a multiaspect design analysis environment that can provide data on environmentally relevant building operation criteria. This paper describes a computational tool, ECOLOGUE, developed in response to these requirements. However, limitations remain in terms of data availability and the precision of the environmental impact assessment methods.According to UK Government surveys, concern for the environment is growing, Environmental regulation of the industry is becoming wider in its scope and tougher in its implementation. Various techniques are available to assess how the industry can drive down its environmental impact and comply with environmental regulation. Environmental Assessments (EA) required by European law do not cover the whole life cycle of the project that they are analysing. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) was developed to assess the environmental loadings of a product, process or activity over its entire life cycle. It was the first technique used in environmental analysis that adopted what was described as a holistic approach, It fails this approach by not assessing accidental emissions or environmental impacts other than those that are direct. Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) offers the opportunity to value environmental effects and appraise a project on the basis of costs and benefits. Not all environmental effects can be valued and of those that can there is considerable uncertainty in their valuation and occurrence. CBA cannot satisfactorily measure the total environmental risk of a project. Consequently there is a need for a technique that overcomes the failures of project-level EA, LCA and CBA, and assesses total environmental risk. Many organizations such as, the British Medical Association, the European Oilfield Speciality Chemicals Association, the Royal ministry of Petroleum and Energy (Norway) and Shell Expro now recognize that a holistic approach is an integral part of assessing total risk. The Brent SPAR case study highlights the interdisciplinary nature required of any environmental analysis. Holistic Environmental Assessment is recommended as such an environmental analysis. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are used to evaluate the environmental impacts attributable to products and processes. For construction projects, LCAs can be used to assess the pollution associated with the manufacture of building materials for the construction process, but many upstream processes are excluded. Input-output analysis is subject to inherent errors when applied to the LCA of specific products. This paper proposed a hybrid LCA method for construction for comprehensive assessment.Principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are implemented for the investigation of the Estonian oil shale energy production system. The energy produced on the smallest of Estonia's thermal power plants is studied as a product. A brief description of the inventory analysis and material balance for this product system is presented. A possible change in water management of investigated life cycle is discussed. Implementing these suggestions will diminish the pressure on local water resources in an economically effective way.To select the most appropriate pavement design for a given situation, it is necessary to understand how the pavement properties and in-service conditions relate to performance and life cycle cost. A given design may be most appropriate on one type of road and least appropriate on another type of road. This design selection is further complicated by the advent of new design methodologies, materials, and construction delivery techniques. Life cycle economic analysis is an important tool for comparing alternative treatment strategies. A life cycle analysis can use a deterministic approach, which incorporates a single point value, or it can use a probabilistic approach, which includes a mean, variance, and probability distribution. The probabilistic approach is better suited to describing the uncertainty associated with engineering. The Canadian Strategic Highway Research Program Canadian Long-Term Pavement Performance database and data provided by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario were used in this analysis. Most construction variables are generally believed to be best described by a normal distribution. However, a lognormal probability distribution is better suited to describing these variables. This best fit is based on both a mathematical examination and a comparison of similar variables such as stocks and real estate values. It is also shown that thickness is a probabilistic variable that should be combined with the cost and incorporated into pavement life cycle costing. Ignoring the lognormal nature of these variables introduces bias into a life cycle cost analysis and does not reflect the true overall cost.Due to the anticipated high economical relevance of polytronics (low cost, high volume, high innovation rates, short product life, exploding diversity of products), the application of life-cycle engineering is required at an early stage of material and process development. The environmental effects of polytronics are highly variable depending as well on the stage of product life (material production, product assembly, use, and end of life) as on the type of the materials. Because of the expected widespread use of polymers in mobile products, for these materials an environmental assessment is necessary to get further criteria for the selection. The high complexity of life-cycle assessment using conventional methods is demonstrated exemplary for the production of epoxy resin, a versatile pre-product for many applications. Because ecological assessment is the key for improvement and optimization, a simplified methodology for the regarded complex products and processes is essential. EE-Toolbox provides a screening method developed especially for electronic products, based on the material content. As the polymer materials up to now are only considered according to their content of certain additives, a new tool for environmental screening assessment of these materials is introduced. With regard to the need of CO2 reduction and energy preservation, characteristic values of incineration are used for rating. It is assumed, that thermal pretreatment is a major disposal pathway particularly for future mobile products. The environmental impact of polymer materials is expected to be much lower compared to the impact heavy metals and their compounds. Thus, expectations are high for the environmental benefit of polytronics, but further examinations are necessary.Disassembly factories provide new environmental and economic options for a sustainable cycle economy. This paper presents results indicating high ecological benefits that may be realized with the disassembly of complex products and re-use of its components. However, the economical side of disassembly has to be presented too, because these ecological benefits cannot be obtained for free. The results are part of the scientific research of the collaborative research center 281 Disassembly Factories, supported by the Deutsche Forschlangsgemeinschaft and carried out at the Berlin University of Technology. The aim of the research center is to develop strategies and technologies that enable the automatic disassembly of consumer goods. To estimate the ecological effects of industrial disassembly, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as the adequate instrument The evaluation of the complex material and energy flows shows clear ecological benefits of the disassembly land re-use) compared to traditional ways of waste treatment i.e. disposal. On the other hand the analysis of the disassembly-costs shows, that the more ecological way of waste-treatment is also the more cost-effective way. However, the calculations for the designed disassembly system indicate that it might yet be possible to build and operate a disassembly factory without deficit.It is well known that most decisions that effect the end-of-life disposal and recycling of a product are made during the product design phase. The premise of a Design for Environment (DfE) approach is that product designers will evaluate and improve their designs from an environmental perspective. Our survey of designers indicates they are typically overburdened with product functionality and cost reduction objectives. This more or less eliminates any serious DtE analysis, particularly in small and medium sized companies. There is therefore a need for DfE tools that require minimal user input and hence can be nm automatically in the shadow of the design process. At MERC we are involved in the development of such a suite of tools, which evaluate several life-cycle analysis dimensions simultaneously. In this paper we present DfD-Compact a design tool that evaluates disassembly complexity and material recyclability. The only input data required by this tool is readily extracted from common CAD programs. Specifically, this data includes a part relationship tree, part weight, and part material composition. All other data is stored in standardized libraries. The CAD file data does not typically include all the data required to make a detailed analysis. We have developed a procedure that is able to use this core data to estimate other product data and then combine this with the library data to generate a reliable DfD-Ratio. This Ratio evaluates the product in three dimensions: (i) material separation and: recyclability, (ii) unfastening difficulty, and (iii) disassembly accessibility. The DfD-Ratio is measured on an open-ended scale starting from zero, with zero indicating the worst case. The higher the ratio the better the design. This ratio can be used by the designer to compare design alternatives, improve the design, and/or meet minimum DfE objectives. The procedure is illustrated by an example.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become a standard tool for analyzing environmental effects of products and processes. In addition, companies are requested to report product stewardship information to customers. However, performing Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) and collecting product stewardship information is expensive. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are widely used to plan, organize, direct, measure, and, control logistics, financial and human resources of organizations. Meanwhile, ERP systems are also prepared-to register environmental management information, such as weights of raw materials and supplies, use of energy and water. ERP systems include much product and-process related information needed for performing Life Cycle Inventories, such as bill of material and work orders. The paper describes how an LCI on a product can be compiled using the ERP system SAP R/3. In addition, allocation methods for supplies on a product level are demonstrated with support from an ERP system. As an example the paper demonstrates how an LCI of an electric product of an automotive supplier was performed using the system SAP R/3. Finally, the paper summarizes the benefits: and costs of the use of ERP systems-for LCI qualitatively.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Design for the Environment Program is conducting an industry-wide environmental life-cycle assessment of cathode ray tube (CRT) and liquid crystal display (LCD) computer monitors. Preliminary results are presented for 16 environmental impact categories that show the relative difference in life-cycle impacts for the CRT and LCD. Considering the entire life cycle of each monitor, global warming and water eutrophication impacts were greater for the LCD while all other impact categories (e.g., resource use, energy, ozone depletion, landfill space use, etc.) were greater for the CRT. Energy inputs for CRT glass manufacturing data, for which there was relatively low confidence in the data, drive many of the CRT impacts. When comparing the manufacturing stages of each monitor type, the LCD has more relative burdens on the environment than does the CRT. Using these study results can allow industry to begin focusing on where environmental improvements can be made.The use of an Integrated Circuits (IC's) is continually increasing in any kind of industrial products and in particular in the Electronic and Information and Communications Technology products. The environmental impact related to the use and production phases of the TC's could be potentially very strong due to the high technological level of the process, the amount of energy and the special materials used for their realization, The aim of this study is to evaluate the environmental impact of an TC during its production and use phases basing on the Life Cycle Assessment (ICA) methodology. In fact the LCA is a useful tool to quantify the environmental impact. An E-PROM IC has been chosen as a representative device for its technological complexity and its large diffusion in the market. Front-end. and Back-end technological steps have been analyzed in detail The energy and the fixed consumables (gases, chemicals,...,) used in the fab have been related to the number of masks. The number of the masking steps is an indicator of process complexity. The data inventory has been obtained from detailed technological analysis, from information obtained directly from material suppliers and from the commercial data base. The IC process makes: large use of de-ionized water (DI), The reclaim of DI Wafer and other materials is important in order to reduce the total environmental impact. The fetal inventory for a single E-PROM chip has been obtained. The same approach can be extended to other types of IC's.supporting the industry in the design process, the approach described in this paper provides a real Design for Environment (DfE), including cost aspects. The basis for this form of DfE are the experiences and the data gained in numberless Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) studies as well as know how in applying generic modeling, simulations and scenario analysis. The method of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) helps to implement economic aspects, which are often the main important aspects in industrial decision making. The goal is to bring environmental and economic considerations in harmony in respect to a sustainable development. LCE/LCA data and experiences shall be used for DfE to objectify the results, by using these scientific proven methods, It will be applied and further developed on examples within the 'Active Disassembly using Smart Materials' (ADSM) project. The goals of this project is the demonstration of the feasibility of providing a nondestructive, cost effective, self disassembly system for industry with the smart material device. Within the consumer electronics sector, existing state of the art products without smart materials are analyzed using LCA and LCC; A subsequent analysis with redesigned products consisting of embedded 'Shape Memory Alloy' (SMA) and 'Shape Memory Polymers' (SMP) devices is conducted. As a final stage the analysis will be completed with assessed results and: will be included in the activity of redesign for further product development.Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) must be integrated into design systems to achieve continuous improvement in the environmental performance of products. This will provide the designer feedback on the lifecycle environmental impacts of an evolving design, emphasizing material, process of form substitution to decrease environmental impact. The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has developed a prototype design for environment (DFE) and environmental LCA software tool that interfaces with Pro/Engineer (a CAD tool developed by Parametric Technology Corporation) to extract product description and bill of materials data in order to conduct an environmental LCA inventory analysis. The inventory analysis is modeled to account for materials flows, energy usage, and environmental burdens such as air emissions and hazardous materials, as well as costs associated with the product life cycle. Environmental impact assessment of the inventory analysis and interpretation of the results are performed with EcoPro, a universal lifecycle metric developed at Lucent Technologies that can provide the designer quantified feedback on environmental performance and sustainability in the form of single indicators for resource productivity (RP) and eco-efficiency (EE). Working in partnership, Lucent Technologies and the NJIT Multi-Lifecycle Engineering Research Center conducted an evaluation on two different circuit pack faceplate designs. Pro/Engineer files representing a proposed "two-shot" molded thermoplastic faceplate and a current metal (aluminum) assembly design were evaluated using the NJIT software tool and EcoPro. Results for RP and EE of the two designs and comparison of cost data demonstrate the benefits of the proposed design as well as the advantages of using this approach to evaluate alternative designs, construction, processes and materials. By integrating environmental LCA and EcoPro into product design systems, efforts to extend Des for (X) metrics to include the environment have been formalized in a strategy that gives designers timely feedback on the lifecycle impact of an evolving design. We believe that the results of this evaluation demonstrate an approach that provides a practical basis for improved design operational efficiencies and environmental performance and for generating business value in terms of reduced total cost of ownership.In the new economic situation many high-tech enterprises' strategic alliances come forth. This paper discusses the life cycle of high-tech enterprises' strategic alliance, their characteristic in each phase and the cause of the difference between the life cycle of alliance and that of enterprise.Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are used to evaluate the environmental impacts attributable to products and processes. For construction projects, LCAs can be used to assess the pollution associated with the manufacture of building materials for the construction process, but many upstream processes are excluded. Input-output analysis is subject to inherent errors when applied to the LCA of specific products. This paper proposed a hybrid LCA method for construction for comprehensive assessment.Knowledge-Based Corporation, as a new organizational form, has its own features during the period of growth. The paper gives a brief introduction to the features of Knowledge-Based Corporation, and analyzes the features and aberrance of each stage of life cycle in Knowledge-Based Corporation.Considerable progress has been made during the past thirty years toward a more complete understanding of design and construction requirements for "healthy" buildings. Buildings are now being built with available technology that consume only 10% to 25% of the energy consumed in today's average buildings while being more comfortable, healthier for their occupants, and less harmful to the environment. Awareness of environmental problems has shifted design and construction toward socalled "green" or "sustainable" building practices, yet there is scarce evidence that such practices actually produce less overall environmental damage. Very limited attention to rigorous analysis of buildings' actual impacts has resulted in the establishment and increasingly widespread acceptance of many purportedly "green" practices of undetermined environmental impact. Dissemination and adoption of advanced building practices require overcoming resistances of habit and opposition from vested interests. Methods are being developed and tested that can provide more evidence-based decisions for improving buildings' overall environmental performance, but much improvement is still needed.The environmental performance of selected biofuels has been evaluated compared to the fossil fuels most likely to substitute using a life cycle approach. The comparisons investigated were: (a) sunflower seed oil methyl ester (SME) versus fossil diesel fuel for transportation; (b) wheat straw versus heating oil and natural gas for district heating and (c) biogas from liquid swine manure versus natural gas for combined heat and power production. According to the results, the production and use of all biofuels under study may contribute to net savings both in greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption. Additionally, all biofuels may contribute to the reduction of photochemical smog with the exception of wheat straw when it substitutes heating oil. Concerning acidification and eutrophication all biofuels appeared slightly disadvantageous compared to their fossil counterparts.A new approach to environmental decision-making is explored. Essentially it consists of a decision support system based on the combined use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). As a consequence, decision-making is carried out taking into account site-dependent issues concerning the entire life cycle of the system under study. The advantages in environmental decision-making are that we can combine the holistic view of LCA with the visualization power of GIS. Photovoltaic systems and solid waste landfilling are discussed as case studies for implementing this approach. For both cases we address the current environmental concerns and we provide decision support according to the main observations and targets of each application.Liquid Hydrogen is the only known fuel suitable for aircraft to be produced from renewable energy and offering extremely low emissions (zero CO2, very low NOx). Use of Liquid Hydrogen can: eliminate the dependency of aviation upon dwindling crude oil resources; eliminate, or at least reduce dramatically, the contribution of aviation to the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. The CRYOPLANE project shall provide a comprehensive analysis of the complex interrelated aspects, the feasibility of safety and environmental compatibility. It shall produce technical solutions and tools and indicate possible strategies for Europe for a smooth transition to the new fuel. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of kerosene is the first step for comparing the environmental impacts with those from different production chains of hydrogen fuel. A complete and accurate identification and quantification of air emissions, water effluents, and other life-cycle inputs and outputs has been performed. The environmental performance of kerosene that has been determined by the LCA study will be used as a reference point for the evaluation of hydrogen as an aviation fuel.In Finland, in late 90'ies, studies to limit and solve the thaw-deformation problem of pavements were carried out. one problem was to determine the start of thaw-weakening and the end of thaw in time. Another problem was to describe the development of effective stresses in a thawing and thawed subgrade with reference to development of resilient stiffness of the subgrade. Further, testing on development of irreversible deformations (surface rutting) was carried out and analysed. Further, measurement data on development of subgrade modulus during thaw on a road line over more than 10 years was collected and analysed. The resilient stiffness of the pavement can be used for estimating the cracking of the asphalt surface. Knowing the ratio between irreversible and reversible deformations, the rate of rutting can be estimated, too. These can be applied in life-cycle analysis of a pavement structure on thawing, frost-susceptible subgrades.Thinking in terms of product life cycles is one of the challenges facing manufacturers today: efforts to increase efficiency throughout the life cycle do not only mean extended responsibility of the parties concerned. Economically successful business areas can also be explored. Whether new service concepts are required, new regulations have been passed or consumer values are changing, the differences between business areas are disappearing. Life cycle management (LCM) considers the product life cycle as a whole and optimizes the interaction of product design, manufacturing and life cycle activities. The goal of this approach is to protect resources and maximize effectiveness by means of life cycle assessment, product data management, technical support and, last but not least, life cycle costing. This paper shows the existing approaches of LCM and discusses their prospects and further development.Industrial experience shows that many current eco-design methods, such as life cycle assessment (LCA), are very complex and cannot easily be used by designers. Such methods are primarily useful during detail design, when major design decisions have already been taken. Simplified, easy-to-use methods and tools for designers, such as eco-indicators, to be used during: early design phases in product concept development, are therefore being developed. Examples of simple eco-indicators are recycling quotas, energy consumption, amount of material used and waste produced. Company-, business area- or product family-specific eco-indicators could be derived, using aggregations of commercially available and company-specific LCA data, combined with product user profiles and production process data. Irrelevant data can then be omitted. The reuse of eco-indicators should be justified in evolutionary product development, characterized by marginal improvements. The range of application and validity has to be specified carefully though. A generalized and simple set of eco-indicators would not be possible. Indicators for design should be defined for a specific purpose and several aspects must be considered. In this paper, a structured overview of various types of eco-indicator will be presented, in order to guide management, designers and other stakeholders in the selection of suitable eco-indicators to be used in product development.The paper describes the requirements of product designers concerning methods for environmental evaluation. It argues that indicators can be used for rough environmental evaluations and presents experience gained with the indicator-based Oil Point Method (OPM). This method is illustrated by means of three examples: a vacuum cleaner, two sweaters and a passenger car. The quality of the results is compared with two other methods for environmental evaluation.Today's industrial enterprises are operating in a turbulent field of activity. Technical aspects as well as the international markets determine the production activities. The permanent monitoring and adaptation of the manufacturing and service processes help to master these constraints. Demands regarding efficiency and quality of modern manufacturing systems are further increasing. Producers of manufacturing systems are responsible for supporting a more robust operation and observing regulations and restrictions during the life cycle stages of the system. Life cycle management (LCM) considers the product life cycle as a whole and optimizes the interaction of the product design and the life cycle activities. To this end, the protection of resources and the effectiveness during use is maximized by means of product data management (PDM), technical support, simulation and, last but not least, life cycle evaluation methods such as life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle assessment (LCA).Industry is increasingly being confronted with the need to consider the whole life cycle effects of its products, in order to make environmental improvements of any significance. There is a danger that naive environmental decisions are made, due to apparent lack of data or actual lack of insight. This paper describes a case study, where a class of students was presented with a product from the Danish company, Danfoss A/S, and given the task of carrying out an initial environmental evaluation of the product. This evaluation consisted of both a "life cycle check" and an exercise where the students were to "read" the environment out of the product, in order to systematically, quickly and efficiently come to some design recommendations for the company. The phrases "LCA" and "product life thinking" will be described and differentiated and a pattern identified for their cooperative effect in use.The demand for designing environment-conscious products, "green-products" in other words, is ever increasing. Fujitsu thus has developed and started application of a three-dimensional virtual product simulator called "FJVPS/Eco Design," that works in closer cooperation with three-dimensional CAD, to support an environment-conscious design at the design stage. Four functions of Eco Design among extended functions of FJVPS/Eco Design especially contribute to shortening man-hour of environmental conscious design process. The four functions are: 1) LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) evaluation support at the design stage, 2) verification of product disassembling, 3) calculation of a recyclable rate in accordance with environmental law in Japan, and 4) calculation of the total amount of toxic or controlled substance content. These four functions of "FJVPS/Eco Design " are explained in this paper.Obtaining the life cycle inventories (LCI) required for life cycle assessment (LCA) is often too expensive to be of use, as data is difficult to obtain and the amount of data is considerably high. Integrating LCA into the design process can only be achieved by automating the extraction of LCI-relevant product data. Product models, that are used in product design, contain information relevant to the LCI and enabling structured access to that data reduces the amount of work for the LCA analyst by a voiding repeated determination and input of LCI data (data redundancy). This paper introduces a framework,for a structured data retrieval in an LCA context through the use of feature technology. In a product model, that includes a feature model, information on design features (e.g. geometry, dimensions) and manufacturing properties (e.g. material used, machining process applied) are included, Structured and efficient access to the LCI relevant data can be realized by a dedicated application program interface (API) bridging the gap between an LCA program and the product model. The characteristics and basic functionality, of the API are described and the advantages of using an API are discussed. The basic idea of the framework is illustrated with a designed part.The authors have proposed a new life-cycle design system specifically applicable to machined parts. The system automatically generates life-cycle assessment (LCA) feedback for the design process through the effective linkage of life-cycle inventory data with computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM) data by feature-based modeling. The system is described, and through application to the environmental impact assessment of a mold-machined product, is shown to clearly reflect the change in environmental impact as a result of changes to aspects of the machining process. Specifically, the use of minimum quantities of lubricant system instead of conventional lubrication is shown to reduce the overall environmental impact of the product. By evaluating the machining process in detail, this system provides highly useful information that can he used to involve the machining process, representing a valuable aid to the life-cycle assessment if machined products.In the early phases of the product life cycle, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is recently used to support the decision-making for the conceptual product design and the best alternative can be selected based on its estimated LCA and its benefits. Both the lack of detailed information and time for a full LCA for a various range of design concepts need the new approach for the environmental analysis. This paper suggests a novel approximate LCA methodology for the conceptual design stage by grouping products according to their environmental characteristics and by mapping product attributes into impact driver index. The relationship is statistically verified by exploring the correlation between total impact indicator and energy impact category. Then a neural network approach is developed to predict an approximate LCA of grouping products in conceptual design. Trained learning algorithms for the known characteristics of existing products will quickly give the result of LCA for new design products. The training are generalized by using product attributes for an ID in a group as well as another product attributes for another IDs in other groups. The neural network model with back propagation algorithm is used and the results are compared with those of multiple regression analysis. The proposed approach does not replace the full LCA but it would give some useful guidelines for the design of environmentally conscious products in conceptual design phase.Ericsson is currently performing a life cycle assessment on its third generation wireless telecommunication systems. The methodology applied uses ISO 14040-series as a framework, but due to the complexity of the studied systems, a number of methodological matters have been necessary to consider. A hierarchical model has been used to model the systems, and a special view on sites has been applied. Preliminary findings about the different life stages of the system are presented, and the importance of including non-production activities like research and development in LCA studies of telecommunication systems is discussed. The functional unit of a telecommunication system is also discussed, along with some major difficulties and uncertainties in the study.Goal of the study is the ecological comparison between ceramic and epoxy based populated Printed Wiring Boards (PWB). All relevant differences of the product systems are taken into consideration. The approach of Generic Modules is applied to manage the complex product models. Despite of the aggregated environmental profiles the method offers the opportunity to provide transparent results regarding an acceptable time effort for conducting a study. Generic Modules offer the link between Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Design for Environment (DfE). The paper will demonstrate-based on the description of the different criteria of LCA and DfE- how Generic Modules allow the implementation of the information and results of a LCA into the modular structure of DfE. This will be exemplary shown on two examples an epoxy based PWB and a ceramic based hybrid.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), which can assess the environmental aspect and potential impact associated with a product "from the cradle to the grave " synthetically, has become noteworthy The software "MieLCA", which can be operated easily, on the personal computer to conduct LCA-NETS (Numerical Eco-Load Total Standardization) was composed by, employing LCA method "ESS" (Eco-Load Standardization System) proposed by, the authors group. The assessment of various kinds of the industrial products can be performed applying "MieLCA". On the other hand, the Vending Machine has something to do with the environment in a sane extent with the other industrial products. At this time, in addition to conducting such assessment, the ecological improvement was performed taking account of the concept of re-use etc. As a case study, the evaluation of environmental performance of vending machine will be discussed detail in this paper.Recently, the design for disassemblability/recyclability becomes more important from the viewpoint of Life Cycle Assessment or Emission-Minimum. Therefore, a disassembly support system which can be applied to the design considering reuse/recycle is developed. First, an algorithm for verifying disassemblability of parts is briefly explained. Next, a method for estimate the total number of feasible disassembly sequences without actually generating them is proposed. Furthermore, in order to reduce the number of disassembly sequences, precedence constraints such as the assembly feature are introduced. Finally, the efficiency of our developed disassembly sequence generation system is demonstrated and it is shown that the design can be evaluated from the viewpoint of disassemblability/recyclability by using our system.Concerning information about the environment, it has become indispensable to grasp relevant data from the viewpoint of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) in order to meet the growing social demand for environmental protection and measure the effects of intracompany, environmental conservation activity,. In order to respond to those issues properly, the Ricoh Group is building what it calls "Environmental Impact Information System" which makes it possible to quantitatively, grasp the eco-balance in the entire sphere of the Group business activity, so that it can he used in the environmental management the Group aims to practice.This paper presents a simple life cycle assessment method by, using neural network technique during the product conceptual design stage. The designer can use this method to forecast the data of life cycle assessment of a new product for reducing environmental impact. Details of neural network model and two product examples will be described in this paper to illustrate the capabilities of proposed method.Environmental impact is assessed for various kinds of information technology (IT) systems. The life cycle assessment (LCA) concept was developed for IT systems to attain LCA for IT systems. The life cycle stages of IT systems were defined as design, construction, operation and disposal stages. Environmental load evaluation for Internet shopping systems showed that both an Internet bookstore and Internet software shop made the amount of carbon dioxide (CO,) emission decrease. The reduction effect for the software shop was found to be larger than that for the bookstore. In classifying various kinds of IT systems according to their environmental aspects, the systems were classified into three categories: "dematerialization", "waste avoidance" and "performance improvement". The classifications for 32 systems, including 19 systems we evaluated, were found to be related to the reduction rate of the CO2 emission amount obtained when the systems were introduced. Dematerialization systems showed a particularly large effect on CO2 emission reduction.For the purpose of discussing the current situation of resource consumption and environmental loading in grains supply system, a preliminary case study of life cycle analysis for grains production and transportation process both in Japan and Heilongjiang province of China is examined. In the paper, attempts are made to calculate energy consumption and CO2 emission throughout the life cycle of grain (wheat, rice, maize and bean) productions and transportations, which will provide basic data to evaluate the current situation of grains supply system. As results of the examination, including data collection and compiling, the energy consumption and CO2 emission in grains supply system in Japan (3.9MJ/kg, in average of four grains, the same as the follows) is around twice as large as those in China (2.1MJ/kg), Although, the difference between energy consumption in production stage in Japan (2.5MJ/kg) and that in China (2.0MJ/kg) is small, quite large difference between energy consumption in transportation stage in Japan (1.4MJ/kg) and that in China (0.1MJ/kg) is found.Industrial Ecology is a new field of environment. It bases on the Industrial Sustainability. Firstly, we discuss the Industrial Situation in Vietnam because our Industrial Sustainability isn't good and may be untied. We assess sonic kinds of industries, what they release and their effects to our environment. Then, we show the policies of government for protecting damaged environment. After an extensive discussion of the concept of Industrial Ecology in Vietnam, the report will describe and illustrate the results of a field study about Vietnamese companies experiencing with Environmental Management Systems, Life Cycle Assessment, Eco-Labeling and so on. Vietnamese companies wonder if they join into these standards what they will catch inter-organization co-operation in the field of environment or if there are cognitive or organizational barriers that hinder the development of Industrial Ecology in general. We also discuss the policies of our decided government and lay out some solutions to improve environmental situation in Vietnam greener and greener. We also lay out some solution to improve our environmental situation and how government control and treat environment-law-broken companies. If they don't obey the law, authorities will take them to "black book", at that time their companies may be closed or buyers won't purchase their products. In the other hand, they will be come to ''green book". We think that if this principle is put into application in all over the world, our environment will be better.The development of a background database, which will be used for the LCI analysis, it-as carried out in respect of 83 process data concerning 29 kinds of chemicals. The mass balance of carbon, hydrogen, chlorine nitrogen, and oxygen was taken on input and output of process data, and process data, which adjusted the mass balance, was developed. Using developed inventory data, the effect of allocation method on the CO., emission was compared. It is clear that the difference of the allocation method is influenced in the inventory, data, And it is necessary, to set up the standard method when the weight of product changes by the concentration of product. In addition to it, process data of xylene, toluene and benzene produced by the BTX extraction was discussed for the developed database of LCI. Considering the purpose of this present chemical process, the allocation, which is suitable for the put-pose of the object process, should be adopted to the inventory, data, which reflect the products value. It is suggest that when the inventory, data is developed, setting of standard allocation method and clarification of the method to the users are very important.A working group of the Society of Chemical Engineers of Japan (SCEJ) attempted to propose a new design concept for chemical products by analyzing and investigating chemical industries, recent development of computer science and life cycle assessment method. The keys of the proposed concept are the first to introduce multi-recycle system for the individual chemical product and the second to introduce computer science to design the product from the molecular level, taking into account not only its function but also recycability.Multiple perspectives are presented on failure-event-chain analysis and failure cause categorization followed by description of a systems engineering framework for failure evaluation. The framework consists of engineering and organizational elements typically within the program manager span of control. The systems engineering lens is then used to evaluate 50 space system failures. The high level mapping of failure attributes (causal root structure) indicates the need for across the board systems engineering rigor. That is, failure can propagate from virtually every critical activity in a space system life cycle. Analysis results show strong implication of design, design verification & test, manufacturing/production, and manufacturing/production verification & test as recurrent causal factors in space system failures. The Failure Space perspective reminds one of the need for thorough and complete risk management and assurance process implementation over the life of a project as well as, increased emphasis on lessons learned and recurrent monitoring of critical process fidelity.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a basis to compare fjord-crossing options with respect to selected environmental parameters. Three types of crossings are compared; bridge, tunnel and ferry. Environmental parameters in focus are electricity consumption, fossil fuel consumption and emissions of CO2 and NOx to air.The future of the lead industry and of others facing similar challenges depends to a significant degree on their ability to develop and implement appropriate strategies and means to argue their environmental case and manage their environmental effects. These strategies and means need to be significantly more 'holistic' and integrated than previously. MIM Holdings, Ltd., an Australian-owned international company, and Britannia Refined Metals, Ltd., a United Kingdom-based metal-refining company in the MIM group, have sponsored an environmental assessment of their refined primary lead products. A major output from this research is an integrated series of environmental life-cycle assessment-based models with multiple foci, ranging from the whole 'cradle-to-gate' life-cycle to the individual process. From these models environmental inventories and potential environmental impacts may be calculated with relative ease. The technical, methodological and epistemological uncertainties inherent in such modelling necessitate that their potential influence be assessed and incorporated in any assertions that may be made. Graphs of selected inventories and potential impacts are presented and the interpretations are accompanied by such assessments. Finally, conclusions are drawn on the benefits and limitations of such modelling and assessment approaches, as well as on areas for further development.Issues of sustainability, being economy, ecology and equity (social issues) require a paradigm shift. The reserves of fossil fuel are limited, consequently the days of cheap oil are coming to an end. Secondly, there is mounting evidence for climate change due to greenhouse gases and thirdly, oil is coming from politically unstable areas. All told, we do have to move in a much more decisive manner heading in the direction of using much less energy and developing renewables. The paper illustrates briefly what can be done in order to enhance fuel economy of cars and continues with data about life cycle analysis of different fuels, from well-to-wheel for fuel cell powered cars. Last but not least legislation is briefly touched illustrating what can be done without fuel economy legislation and where it might be needed.This article presents a proposal of methodology for conducting such research and development. The data/statistics waste collection statistics phase must cover geographical distribution, seasonal variations on production rates, waste management practices, current applications and their related costs and revenues. Waste characterisation must be comprehensive with physical, environmental and chemical aspects, including waste variability and waste contamination from shipping, handling and storage activities. Based on the previous results a broad forecast of potential applications must be developed based on very simple rules like minimisation of transportation distances and energy consumption; etc. Marketing evaluation is a very important step, frequently neglected when choosing the best applications for a particular waste. Other steps are product development and performance evaluation. Environmental evaluation of the new technology is very important because not all recycling is environmentally sound. This evaluation must be based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) and has to consider the environmental benefit of avoiding landfill disposal of the waste, and could include leaching or other specific tests or simulations. Also, the technological transference phase must be carefully planned and developed. Each proposed step is discussed, examples are given and needs for further research emphasised. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.A two-stage study "Life cycle analysis of road construction and earthworks" was part of a, more extensive Finnish research project "Assessment of the applicability of secondary products in earthworks". In the first stage of this work a life-cycle impact assessment procedure for the comparison and evaluation of alternative road and earth constructions was developed. Additionally, a database containing the environmental burdens of the most significant construction materials and unit operations was constructed. In order to evaluate the applicability of the procedure, the use of coal ash, crushed concrete waste and granulated blast-furnace slag in road construction was evaluated in case studies. The use of these secondary products was also compared with the use of natural materials in corresponding applications. The aim of the second stage was to transfer the assembled data for utilisation as a practical model by creating an inventory analysis program to calculate and compare the life cycle impacts of the most common road constructions and foundation engineering methods. The data obtained in the first stage was also augmented to the extent necessary for this purpose. The results of case studies indicate that the production and transport of the materials used in road constructions produce the most significant environmental burdens. Production of the bitumen and cement, crushing of materials and transport of materials are the most energy consuming single life-cycle stages of the construction. A large part of the emissions to atmosphere originates from energy production. In the expert assessment, consumption of natural materials and leaching behaviour were also regarded as being of great significance. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The various emissions to water, air and soil from the municipal wastewater treatment plant of Avedore Wastewater Service Company are accounted for and quantified in terms of the environmental impacts to which they contribute: global warming, acidification, eutrophication, space demand for controlled deposition of residues, as well as persistent toxicity, human toxicity and eco-toxicity. The impacts are expressed on the same scale, namely as fraction of the total per capita loads in a national scenario 1990, also called the person equivalent or PE1990. This provides a compact and informative overview of the environmental impacts and allows for a holistic prioritisation in the operation and management of the plant. The accounting shows that the resulting emissions per person in the catchment area of the plant correspond to 0.5-5.0% of the average Danish PE1990 for the impacts in question.The role of biosolids management continues to gain priority in terms of holistic waste management/reuse, Recommended options should lead to simple and safe management alternatives that stress reclamation of resources. This paper addresses current sustainability strategies, priorities and future direction of waste management as it relates to residuals and in particular to sludges/biosolids. Sludge management and resource recovery approaches must be diversified and flexible. They should be based on actual needs of the affected society and community. It is also important that the chosen strategy be appropriate to the conditions of the site under consideration. Processes which promote sustainability will become viable options for resource management if conversion into a "value-added product" can be realized.To enable decision makers to select sustainable wastewater treatment systems, insight into the sustainability of a wide variety of systems should be provided in a transparent way leaving room for adaptation and interpretation according to the local situation. To provide this insight a structured methodology comparing wastewater treatment systems with respect to sustainability is defined. Similar to life cycle assessment (LCA) three phases can be distinguished: (I)goal and scope definition, (2) inventory analysis, and (3) optimisation and results. In the goal and scope definition we set the system boundaries to include most of the water cycle and part of the food cycle. Furthermore, we defined a multi-disciplinary set of sustainability indicators including technical. economic, environmental, and socio-cultural aspects. In the inventory analysis these sustainability indicators are quantified using simple static models of wastewater unit operations. Selection of unit operations results in a model of a complete wastewater treatment system. In the optimisation phase the decision maker can weigh the different sustainability indicators and select sustainable options through integer programming.In an environmental systems analysis of four wastewater systems. the environmental aspects were prioritised by normalisation of predicted impacts from the studied systems to the total impacts from society. Priority Group 1 (highest priority) consisted of discharges (flows) of nitrogen, cadmium. lead and mercury to water, recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus to arable land and flows of heavy metals to arable land. A conventional wastewater system (A) was compared to irrigation of energy forest with biologically treated wastewater (B), liquid composting of toilet wastewater (C) and a conventional system supplemented with urine separation (D). Analysing the aspects in priority group one, systems B-D improved the management of plant nutrients and decreased the flow of heavy metals to water, while the flow to arable land increased, especially for system B. The suggested method is useful in municipal environmental planning and when choosing a wastewater system. Urban metabolism measures quantitatively a city's load on the natural environment. We update the Newcombe et al. (3) pioneering study of Hong Kong's urban metabolism in 1971, highlighting trends in resource consumption and waste generation. Per capita food, water and materials consumption have surged since the early 1970s by 20%, 40%, and 149%, respectively. Tremendous pollution has accompanied this growing affluence and materialism, and total air emissions, CO2 Outputs, municipal solid wastes, and sewage discharges have risen by 30%, 250%, 245%, and 153%. As a result, systemic overload of land, atmospheric and water systems has occurred. While some strategies to tackle deteriorating environmental quality have succeeded, greater and more far-reaching changes in consumer behavior and government policy are needed if Hong Kong is to achieve its stated goal of becoming "a truly sustainable city" in the 21(st) century.In this the third article in the series exploring, the teaching and learning potential of models in urban geography, a prospective viewpoint is adopted to consider the problems and prospects for cities and city life in the twenty-first century The article comprises two sections. The first examines the principles of sustainable urban development and the concept of urban metabolism with particular reference to the basic issues of waste production and energy consumption. The second section evaluates a range of models of future urban form including the green city, dispersed city, compact city, transit metropolis, regional city, network city, informational city and virtual city, and considers the geographies of cities and city life in the third millennium.

 For over a century, Neandertal rib remains have engendered frequent discussions of "barrel-shaped" thoraces, largely in the absence of systematic comparison and hard data. We present here a description of the relatively complete ribcage of the Near Eastern Shanidar 3 Neandertal. We also furnish metric and non-metric comparisons of the Shanidar 3 ribs with other Near Eastern and European Neandertals, the Nariokotome (Homo erectus/ergaster) specimen, Levantine archaic/early modern humans, early and later European modern humans, and a sample of recent Euroamerican males, It is clear from these comparisons that Neandertals share with modem humans the fundamentally human thoracic "bauplan" that first evolved in the early Pleistocene. Yet it is also apparent that the ribcage of Neandertals differ in several anatomical details from those of fully modem humans. Rib curvature, posterior angle, mid-shaft cross-sectional size and shape, and muscle scarring varies considerably among Neandertals and across all samples when considered in isolated ribs. However, normalized metric and discrete patterning across the greater thorax clearly distinguishes Neandertals from our comparative samples. This is most marked in the inferior thorax where Neandertals (and probably earlier Homo) exhibit larger, more rounded and rugose ribs, and a greater costal area (thoracic volume). Greater lower rib cross-sectional robusticity and muscle scarring indicates relatively elevated ventilatory levels. Greater thoracic volume in Neandertals probably reflects greater body mass compared with modem humans since lung volume scales isometrically to body mass among mammals. Neandertal and modem human pulmonary capacity, normalized for body mass differences, was therefore roughly equivalent in the context of detailed differences in thoracic shape. To the extent that cold-climate adaptation is involved, Near Eastern Neandertals appear less "hyper-polar" in thoracic shape than their European counterparts as is also true for several other body proportion measures that are clinally distributed across the known Neandertal range. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.In this article, flood protection is considered in the context of sustainability. On the one hand, floods destroy human heritage and jeopardize sustainable development, which can be defined as 11 non-decreasing quality of life. " On the other hand, following the most common interpretation of sustainable development, one should not choose flood protection policies that could be rated by future generations as inappropriate options of flood defense. This is how several large structural flood defenses are often viewed. Non-structural measures are in better agreement with the spirit of sustainable development, being more reversible, commonly acceptable, and environment-friendly. Among such measures are source control (watershed/landscape structure management), laws and regulations (including zoning), economic instruments, an efficient flood forecast-warning system, a system of flood risk assessment, awareness raising, flood-related data bases, etc. As flood safety cannot be reached in most vulnerable areas with the help of structural means only, further flood risk reduction via non-structural measures is usually indispensable, and a site-specific mix of structural and non-structural measures seems to be a proper solution. Since sustainabiliiy requires thinking about the future generations, the climate change issue becomes important. Non-structural measures lend themselves well to application in climate change adaptation strategies. As uncertainty in the assessment of climate change impacts is high, flexibility of adaptation strategies is particularly advantageous. Management of trees in agroecosystems such as agroforestry, ethnoforests, and trees outside forests can mitigate green house gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Agroforestry systems are a better climate change mitigation option than oceanic, and other terrestrial options because of the secondary environmental benefits such as helping to attain food security and secure land tenure in developing countries, increasing farm income, restoring and maintaining above-ground and below-ground biodiversity, corridors between protected forests, as CH4 sinks, maintaining watershed hydrology, and soil conservation. Agroforestry also mitigates the demand for wood and reduces pressure on natural forests. Promoting woodcarving industry facilitates long-term locking-up of carbon in carved wood and new sequestration through intensified tree growing. By making use of local knowledge, equity, livelihood security, trade and industry, can be supported. There is need to support development of suitable policies, assisted by robust country-wide scientific studies aimed at better understanding the potential of agroforestry and ethnoforestry for climate change mitigation and human well-being. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.This paper provides an over-view of the treatment of technological change (TC) in economic models of environmental policy. Numerous economic modeling studies have confirmed the sensitivity of mid- and long-run climate change mitigation cost and benefit projections to assumptions about technology costs. In general, technical progress is considered to be a non-economic, exogenous variable in global climate change modeling. However, there is overwhelming evidence that TC is not an exogenous variable but to an important degree endogenous, induced by needs and pressures. Hence, some energy-economy-environment models treat TC as endogenous, responding to socioeconomic variables. Three main elements in models of technological innovation are: (i) corporate investment in research and development (R&D), (ii) spillovers from R&D, and (iii) technology learning, especially learning-by-doing. The incorporation of induced TC in different types of energy-environmental-economic models tends to reduce the costs of environmental policy, accelerates abatement and may lead to positive spillover and negative leakage. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Land-use change and forestry projects are considered a low-cost option for addressing climate change mitigation. In Canada, afforestation is targeted to sequester enough carbon to meet one-fifth of its international obligations, and at lower cost than emissions reduction. We examine economic aspects of the institutions and incentives needed to encourage landowners in Canada to adopt tree planting on a large scale. Based on data from a survey of landowners, the transaction costs of getting landowners to convert their land from agriculture to plantation forests appear to be a significant obstacle, possibly increasing the costs of afforestation projects beyond what conventional economic analysis suggests.Fossil-fuel burning and deforestation have emerged as principal anthropogenic sources of rising atmospheric CO2 and consequential global warming. Variability in temperature, precipitation, snow cover, sea level and extreme weather events provide collateral evidence of global climate change. I review recent advances on causes and consequences of global climate change and its impact on nature and society. I also examine options for climate change mitigation. Impact of climate change on ecology, economy and society the three pillars of sustainability - is increasing. Emission reduction, although most useful, is also politically sensitive for economic reasons. Proposals of the geoengineering for iron fertilization of oceans or manipulation of solar flux using stratospheric scatters are yet not feasible for scientific and environmental reasons. Forests as carbon sinks, therefore, are required to play a multifunctional role that includes, but is not limited to, biodiversity conservation and maintenance of ecosystem functions; yield of goods and services to the society; enhancing the carbon storage in trees, woody vegetation and soils; and providing social and economic well-being of people. This paper explores strategies in that direction and concludes that the management of multifunctional forests over landscape continuum, employing tools of conservation biology and restoration ecology, shall be the vital option for climate change mitigation in future.Korea, straddled between developing and developed country status, is facing challenges and opportunities in energy use and climate change mitigation potential. Unlike other OECD countries, Korea's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are expected to continue to grow for the next two decades. The responses Korea could take to lower emissions without hampering economic development have an important bearing on the global response to climate change. This paper summarizes and evaluates mitigation strategies and major options for Korea in the energy sector, a major contributor to GHG emissions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an example of how air pollution models can be used together with energy system models to study the impacts of climate change mitigation strategies on air pollution. As many mitigation measures of greenhouse gases (GHGs) affect the use of fossil fuels in energy production, they can have important side-effects on other air pollution problems. This paper studies on a national scale the impacts of the planned GHG reduction measures on multiple air pollution problems in Finland, concentrating on acidification of forest soils and lakes, tropospheric ozone levels harmful to humans and vegetation and on emissions of fine particles. The air pollutant emission scenarios with the alternative energy choices are calculated for about 200 large point sources, assuming the present emission limit legislation. Disperse emissions are treated at municipality level. The analysis extends to the year 2020. The implementation of the Kyoto protocol in Finland would induce notable reductions of multiple air pollutant emissions and related environmental impacts. A 6-11 % reduction in ecosystems threatened by acidification in Southern and Central Finland would be achieved with the Finnish Climate Strategy alone. Substantial improvement in ozone levels would be reached in all scenarios compared to the current situation. The measures of the Climate Strategy could reduce the harmful ozone levels by a further 3%. The measures of the Climate Strategy would not significantly affect the primary particulate emissions in the future because the emissions from large power plants are already effectively controlled. Contrary to the fuel choices of the large units, expanded use of small-scale wood combustion can result in considerable increases of both fine particulate and VOC emissions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The two project-based Kyoto mechanisms, joint implementation (JI) and the clean development mechanism (CDM), require a determination of the "baseline", the development of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the absence of the project. This paper examines, whether absolute (given in tCO(2) equivalent) or relative baselines ("benchmarks", given, e.g. in tCO(2) equivalent/MWh) should be applied for JI/CDM projects in the energy sector. Accuracy of the GHG emission reduction and manageability of GHG emission balances are used as evaluation criteria. The results show that relative baselines are a more accurate instrument for the estimation of emission reductions in JI/CDM projects in the energy sector without posing significant additional risks to the management of GHG emission balances for large entities. In comparison to absolute baselines, relative baselines indicate in a more realistic and conservative manner the amount of emission reductions obtained in the energy system and give more appropriate incentives to project sponsors. The additional risks of relative baselines are likely to be small compared to the normal deviation of the domestic/internal GHG emissions. The findings are in line with the Marrakesh Accords, which set restrictions to application of absolute baselines. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This review paper considers direct injection of industrial CO2 emissions into the mid-water oceanic column below 500 m depth. Such a process is a potential candidate for switching atmospheric carbon emissions directly to long term sequestration, thereby relieving the intermediate atmospheric burden. Given sufficient research justification, the argument is that harmful impact in both the Atmosphere and the biologically rich upper marine layer could be reduced. The paper aims to estimate the role that active intervention, through direct ocean CO2 storage, could play and to outline further research and assessment for the strategy to be a viable option for climate change mitigation. The attractiveness of direct ocean injection lies in its bypassing of the Atmosphere and upper marine region, its relative permanence, its practicability using existing technologies and its quantification, The difficulties relate to the uncertainty of some fundamental scientific issues, such as plume dynamics, lowered pH of the exposed waters and associated ecological impact, the significant energy penalty associated with the necessary engineering plant and the uncertain costs, Moreover, there are considerable uncertainties regarding related international marine law. Development of the process would require acceptance of the evidence for climate change, strict requirements for large industrial consumers of fossil fuel to reduce CO2 emissions into the Atmosphere and scientific evidence for the overall beneficial impact of ocean sequestration. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the flexible instruments Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) with regard to achieving CO2 emission reduction targets in a sustainable way. In a first step an optimizing energy and material flow model is used to elaborate emission reduction strategies for Germany. The same methodology is then applied to Indonesia in order to determine the emission baseline for this country, which is an indispensable requirement for the evaluation of project-based flexible instruments. Then models for Germany, Russia and Indonesia are linked using a decomposition algorithm with the aim to elaborate emission reduction strategies for Germany, including JI and CDM projects. The results show substantial potential to limit emission reduction costs by multilateral cooperation. The most favourable types of cooperation project for the considered countries are CO2 sequestration and power plant projects. Finally, an approach to how to include the criterion of sustainable development is described.Future global warming has close relationship with abatement potential of six greenhouse gases (GHGs), including carbon dioxide (CO2) methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). Among Non-CO2 gases, net reduction of CH4 and N2O is relatively effective from the potential contribution to the global warming. CH4 and N2O are endogenously assessed in terms of emissions amount and abatement cost. Non-CO2 GHG abatement potential and its economic effects are discussed using integrated assessment model.The US EPA is developing analyses to characterize the role of high GWP gases as part of a comprehensive GHG mitigation approach. The analysis will present global baseline emission estimates and marginal abatement cost data that can be used in macroeconomic analyses of climate change mitigation strategies. The costs of reducing high GWP gas emissions for each major source will be estimated and assembled into a marginal abatement curve (MAC) that shows the total emission reductions achievable at increasing monetary values of carbon.Sorption devices like: heat pumps, waste heat fired chillers, trigeneration or sorption devices integrated in total energy systems show a strong potential for GHG emissions abatement (from 30% to 50% reductions). Those devices will play an important role in climate change mitigation as soon as positive regulatory and energy rating measures will be taken. But, all sorption systems are not equally environmentally friendly: this is the case for gas fired chillers which, generally, are not environmentally friendly. Industrial ecology is an approach to industrial development which emphasizes material cycling and webs of producers, consumers, scavengers and decomposers, and encourages resource conservation and waste prevention that leads to improved efficiency, competitiveness and sustainability. This article first introduces the functions and roles of scavengers and decomposers in the natural ecosystem. Then, by using this natural system metaphor, it studies how the industrial world can realize closing loop operation by encouraging the development of scavenger and decomposer businesses. A case study of Burnside Industrial Park is employed to further help the reader understand how to analyze the roles and functions of different businesses in an industrial system.Industrial ecology involves turning wastes into raw materials- an art that chemical engineers have practiced for decades.To achieve more than incremental reductions in resource consumption and waste, it will be necessary to develop new approaches to the systematic use and re-use of materials in the kind of system termed an "industrial ecology". This paper presents a new methodology-CHAin Management of Materials and Products (CHAMP)-developed for modelling the flow of materials through a succession of uses with different performance requirements. Although developed specifically for polymers, the CHAMP approach is also applicable to other materials and products. Materials are characterised by a set of technical performance parameters, termed utilities. Geographical location is also treated as a utility to enable logistics-both distribution of products and collection of used products or waste-to be incorporated within the same modelling framework. Processing, transport and use are treated as activities through which a material can pass. The costs and environmental impacts of activities are included in the modelling framework, and are assessed on a life cycle basis by considering the complete supply chain of materials and energy used by each activity. The methodology includes acceptance criteria which determine whether a material is suitable for specific uses or activities. These criteria are applied within the model to guide selection of materials for specific applications and of successive uses for specific materials. A simple example of the CHAMP approach is given, to illustrate the kinds of problem to which it has been applied. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.'Industrial ecology' is one of the most influential perspectives to have emerged in recent years in the wider discourse on 'sustainable development'. The vast majority of industrial ecologists believe that past economic development was characterized by a linear system of extraction, use and disposal. One of their main goals is therefore to find ways to make modern industrial economies mimic ecosystems by transforming the waste of one firm into the valuable input of another. Historical evidence presented in this article, however, demonstrates that inter-firm recycling linkages were a dominant characteristic of past economic development. If this was the case, why do most writers on sustainability believe otherwise? I suggest two broad categories of explanation: a lack of research into the spontaneous formation of inter-firm recycling linkages; and the progressive and cumulative implementation of market distortions and regulatory barriers to resource recovery over the last century. One implication of these findings is that the most important task facing industrial ecologists is probably not the technical challenge of planning resource recovery between firms, but the development of an institutional framework that forces firms to 'internalize their externalities' while leaving them the necessary freedom to develop new and profitable uses for by-products.The use of waste as a raw material for manufacturing is hampered by the uncertainty associated with the availability of supply. Technological change and obsolescence further complicates the ability of decision makers to consider discarded durable products as a potential source of raw materials. This uncertainty complicates remanufacturing and industrial ecology. A problem since remanufacturing and industrial ecology need to be (and can be) profitable as well as environmentally desirable if they are to be encouraged. To address this problem the modelling of the waste flow of durable goods is considered. The disposal of televisions in the United States is used to illustrate the challenges and requirements for forecasting in an environment with supply uncertainty. This example is timely since the diposal of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) in municipal landfills is being banned and an alternate technology trajectory for televisions exists-the flat panel display and phase-out of analogue broadcasting in the US. This paper estimates the waste stream resulting from three different scenarios of CRT leaded-waste disposal patterns. The reuse of lead-containing CRT glass is found to offer potential. The elimination of this controversial waste stream, as a result of replacement by the adoption of flat panel television technology, is still decades away. The findings in this study indicate the range of the quantity of waste that will require an alternative infrastructure as it is displaced from municipal landfills. This study provides important information for both developing a collection infrastructure and processing alternatives to extract the residual value of the disposed of televisions.The quantitative assessment of stocks and flows of materials throughout the technological cycle, from resource extraction to final disposal, can inform resource policy; environmental science, and waste management. This paper describes the technological cycle of copper based on work by the Stocks and Flows Project of the Yale Center for Industrial Ecology. Of copper produced in the 20th century, as much as 85% remains in use today. The recycling rate, while high, leaves nearly as much in waste destined for disposal (e.g., over 40% in the United States). The copper in production wastes currently approaches the quantity in post-consumer wastes, but the latter will dwarf the former over time as large in-use stocks reach end of life.Plants and plant crops have always been, and will continue to be, of vital importance for humankind. They are an essential source of food, feed, raw materials, energy and pleasure. One of the main concerns in agriculture has always been to improve the quality of seed. Today, at the beginning of the 3rd Millennium, agriculture is confronted with a wide range of complex challenges. With diminishing availability of farming land, climatic changes and the threat of declining water resources, the task is to meet the growing demand for food, feed, fibre, fuel, industrial products and products based on 'functional' plants. Future-oriented, knowledge-based and added-value agriculture will have to become reality. This will mean reduced use and redisposition of resources - in other words, 'Do more with less!' Within this context, the possibilities offered by efficiency developments in conventional seed breeding, supported by gene technology and plant genomic research, will improve the prospects of being able to use our limited natural resources to best effect in the 21st Century. The appropriate use and timely development of these important aspects will ensure sustainable production of food, feed, fibre, fuel and industrial products in the future.To meet the goals of sustainability and to enable industrial ecology, green chemistry and engineering needs to be studied from a life-cycle perspective. When designed correctly, green chemistry and engineering can affect multiple stages of the life cycle of a product or process. Successful implementations of green chemistry and engineering research are improving the environmental impacts of chemical products and processes in every stage of the life cycle while also offering economic incentives. Analysis of new and existing green chemistry and engineering technologies with quantitative and qualitative metrics can identify and quantify these benefits. The examples presented illustrate the principles of life-cycle assessment as applied to green chemistry and engineering.Industrial estates (IE) are today perceived as an integral part of development strategies of many countries worldwide. The environmental impacts from a concentration of large number of industries in a small area or unplanned IE, can pose a serious threat to both local and global sustainable development initiatives. The formation of ecologically balanced industrial systems can result in numerous environmental and economic benefits. This paper examines the relevance of industrial symbiosis and carrying capacity concepts and proposes an integrated approach towards IE planning in India based on grouping combinations of industries based on carrying capacity, formation of green industrial townships, development of environmental impact assessment guidelines for IE and implementation of environmental management systems. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Consett, a small town in County Durham, is set within the northeast England coalfield, and its iron and steel plant was formerly reliant on the local supply of deep-mined coal. The steelworks closed in 1980. Since then the environmental legacy of the works has been addressed through an `industrial ecology' approach, the aims of which are to reuse the site for industrial purposes and so aid economic regeneration of the town.The copper flows and stocks of the European economy are investigated and evaluated over a 1-year period in the early 1990s. The method applied is statistical entropy, which quantifies the distribution pattern of a substance (e.g. copper) caused by a system (e.g. political economy). Contemporary copper management can be defined as a simple chain of four processes: production of refined copper from ore; manufacture and fabrication of products and goods; consumption, utilization and storage (infrastructure) of goods; and separation of copper from waste for recycling and finally, landfilling (waste management). Relevant recycling streams (new and old scrap) within or between production, manufacture, and waste management processes also characterize the system. Throughout the life cycle of copper the statistical entropy varies considerably among the above-mentioned processes and covers about 50% of the possible range between total dissipation and maximal concentration of the total throughput of copper. Nevertheless, present copper management does not show a clear entropy trend across its life cycle. The system as a whole neither dissipates nor concentrates copper significantly with regard to the original ore. Even a more optimized waste management system with higher recycling efficiency could not significantly change this finding since today's copper flows into waste management are small compared to the consumption of copper. The relatively limited impact on the entropy trend of contemporary waste management may increase in the future because the infrastructure, which has been established over the last few decades, will be continuously renewed and replaced. As a result of these larger waste streams, decreasing overall entropy trends will be realizable, provided efficient recycling technologies are applied. This indicates the possibility for long-term feasible (perhaps sustainable) copper management. The entropy approach improves our understanding of industrial metabolism and is a useful decision support and design tool, since complex systems can thereby be quantified by a single metric per substance. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.In several industrialised countries, there have occurred initiatives to establish eco-industrial parks. Originally, these were mainly based upon the exchange of resources between heavy industries in industrial complexes. These initiatives are generally referred to with the concepts of industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial parks. Since then, the concept of eco-industrial parks has been extended to another relevant type of industrial park, the so-called mixed industrial park, which consists of various small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), sometimes complemented by a small number of larger industries. Because of the resulting growing ambiguity in the significance of eco-industrial park initiatives, a typology is desirable for entangling the confusion that is introduced. It is argued that mixed industrial parks are poorly investigated although they have a major environmental and spatial impact, Starting from a general consideration of eco-industrial park initiatives, this paper describes the societal and environmental problems that are related to the mixed industrial parks, proposes solutions and discusses the counteracting factors. While our argument relates strongly to the traditionally industrialised countries, it is also relevant to newly industrialised countries, as they are faced with similar problems, or will encounter them in the near future. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Mankind and especially engineering is today facing one of the most se ere challenge ever. Present energy engineering leads to resource depletion and environmental destruction. Thus we need to develop an energy engineering in harmony with nature. This paper presents the conditions for this and in what ay the exergy concept may contribute to this development. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In keeping with the 'industrial ecology' metaphor. roads and railways should be regarded as forming an ecosystem with their surroundings, just like industrial systems (factory premises. manufacturing industries) that have had to start functioning as ecosystems in which the flow of energy, water. raw materials and waste products has been made to recycle as far as possible. In this type of system approach, the flow of material. transport, emissions and energy and the habitats of plants and animals are geographically, systematically and functionally integrated, especially when they are based on a greater degree of interweaving between man and nature than is currently the case. In short, a new way of looking at the meaning of ecology in relation to the physical infrastructure. In the article, examples are given about the practical implication of linking ecological patterns and processes within the design process of civil engineering object, as well as the possible art's contribution in forming infrastructural landscapes. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainability, industrial ecology, eco-efficiency, and green chemistry are guiding the development of the next generation of materials, products, and processes. Biodegradable plastics and bio-based polymer products based on annually renewable agricultural and biomass feedstock can form the basis for a portfolio of sustainable, eco-efficient products that can compete and capture markets currently dominated by products based exclusively on petroleum feedstock. Natural/Biofiber composites (Bio-Composites) are emerging as a viable alternative to glass fiber reinforced composites especially in automotive and building product applications. The combination of biofibers such as kenaf, hemp, flax, jute, henequen, pineapple leaf fiber, and sisal with polymer matrices from both nonrenewable and renewable resources to produce composite materials that are competitive with synthetic composites requires special attention, i.e., biofiber-matrix interface and novel processing. Natural fiber-reinforced polypropylene composites have attained commercial attraction in automotive industries. Natural fiber-polypropylene or natural fiber-polyester composites are not sufficiently eco-friendly because of the petroleum-based source and the nonbiodegradable nature of the polymer matrix. Using natural fibers with polymers based on renewable resources will allow many environmental issues to be solved. By embedding biofibers with renewable resource-based biopolymers such as cellulosic plastics; polylactides; starch plastics; polyhydroxyalkanoates (bacterial polyesters); and soy-based plastics, the so-called green bio-composites are continuously being developed.Solid waste treatment options (recycling, incineration, and landfilling; the two latter processes both with co-generation of heat and electricity) have been studied for cardboard, newspaper, polyethylene, poly(ethylene terephthalate), polypropylene, polystyrene, and poly(vinyl chloride) waste. The conversion processes have been analyzed in terms of the second law of thermodynamics. The analysis allows calculating the exergy (useful energy) embodied in conversion products that can be obtained from the required inputs for the treatment processes. Taking into account the waste materials and the resources to convert them, it proved that recycling is the most efficient option for polyethylene with an efficiency of 62.5% versus 43.6% for incineration and 0.9% for landfilling. Next, waste treatment has been put into the broader perspective of industrial ecology. Exergetic efficiencies of industrial metabolic options have been calculated. Here resources for manufacturing and converting solid products have been considered. Furthermore, selection of one type of conversion excludes the generation of other potential conversion products. Therefore, it has to be taken into account that these latter products still have to be produced starting from virgin resources. Recycling proved to be the most efficient strategy: the ratio eta between exergy embodied in all delivered products on one hand, and all exergy withdrawn from the ecosphere or from waste materials on the other hand, is the highest. For polyethylene, eta proved to be 0.568, whereas eta is 0.503 and 0.329 for incineration and landfilling, respectively. On the other hand, if R the ratio between exergy of delivered products on one hand and exergy of virgin materials on the other hand is calculated, the differences between the industrial metabolic options are larger. Recycling polyethylene showed a ratio R of 0.936, whereas ratios of 0.772 and 0.531 were found for incineration and landfilling, respectively. It has been shown that the exergy concept allows a quantitative comparison of different industrial metabolic options, contributing to a better assessment of sustainability of technology with respect to resource management.The emerging concept of industrial ecology (IE) has been applied in practice in few case studies on local/regional industrial recycling networks. Analogously to a natural ecosystem, the aim is to develop material cycles and energy cascades between local cooperative actors. An optimal resource basis of an industrial ecosystem is the Sustainable use of local renewable natural resources. In this paper, we consider the region of North Karelia in Finland, with 19 municipalities, and hence somewhat expand the system boundaries of an industrial ecosystem case study. The current situation and two scenarios of municipal heating energy production are presented. The heating system consists of individual, district and electric heating. The heat production and related greenhouse gas emissions are considered. The current fuel use is based on imported oil and regional fuels (peat, wood wastes). Also, shares for co-production of heat and electricity (CHP) are shown. In scenario one, we assume the majority of the fuel basis in oil and absence of CHP. Scenario two illustrates nearly complete dependence on regional wood wastes and firewood with the current share of CHP. The North Karelia region provides the IE theory with a fruitful case study because the supply of waste fuels and local renewables is vast and waste utilisation technologies (CHP, fluidized bed burning) constitute a significant part of energy production. Implications of the applied scenario approach are discussed in the context of regional decision making and, in particular, for its implementation with the concepts of a regional environmental management system (REMS) and a regional industrial ecosystem management system (RIEMS).In Industrial Ecology the core idea is to find symbiolic relationships where waste material from one company is being Used by other companies and industrial ecosystems are created. Although the idea is simple. fundamental challenges exist related to the quality of the material. stability of the system, etc. A core question is how to assess of the "goodness" of such a system. In this paper, it is shown how ecological input-output analysis metrics can be used to analyze flows.Regional differences on the strategy against crisis to environment make a common frame invisible to promote the effective directions toward significant reduction of total mass requirement or dematerialization. This overview summarizes the intimate discussions, proposals and advisable comments at the first US-Japan Workshop on the Environmentally Benign Manufacturing and Materials Processing at Hawaii on the October 5th, 2001. in order to integrate the state-of-the-art research activities in both countries. In the discussion over the recyclable materials, value/cost-quality diagram is used to redefine the recycling process and to characterize various processes in the environmentally benign manufacturing. Influence of light-weight material selection on the dematerialization is discussed to find out a new direction. Importance of the trade-off-balancing on the high performance for long term use is reconsidered to search for a solution in the design of innovative manufacturing and materials processing. Mass flow analysis in the life cycle assessment is recognized as a tool to make eco-system design for industrial ecology, Several issues for further research are also argued to promote the related activities to the environmentally benign manufacturing and materials processing.Sustainable development has emerged as a powerful, force that is reshaping the policies and practices of global manufacturing firms. The principle of sustainability states that as we strive for economic prosperity and growth, we must not compromise the quality of life for our descendants. For corporations, seeking sustainability involves designing environmentally and socially responsible technologies, products, and processes with a full awareness of their life cycle costs and benefits. The concept of industrial ecology (IE) provides a useful systems perspective to support sustainable development while assuring shareholder value creation. IE is a broad, holistic framework for. guiding the transformation of industrial systems from a linear model to a closed-loop model that resembles the cyclical flows of ecosystems. In particular, the field of green chemistry represents an important set of design strategies for achieving the goals of IE through fundamental innovations.The major growth seen in the biotechnology industry in recent decades has largely been driven by the exploitation of genetic engineering techniques. The initial benefits have been predominantly in the biomedical area, with products such as vaccines and hormones that have received broad public approval. In the environmental biotechnology and industrial ecology sectors, biotechnology has the potential to make significant advances through the use of genetically modified (GM) microbial inoculants that can reduce agri-chemical usage or remediate polluted environments. Although many GM inoculants have been developed and tested under laboratory conditions, commercial exploitation has lagged behind. Here, we review scientific and regulatory requirements that must be satisfied as part of that exploitation process. Particular attention is paid to new European Union (EU) regulations (Directives) that govern the testing and release of genetically modified organisms and microbial plant protection inoculants in the EU. With regard to the release of GM inoculants, the impact of the inoculant and the fate of modified genes are important concerns. Long term monitoring of release sites is necessary to address these issues. Data are reported from the monitoring of a site 6 years after release of GM Sinorhizobium meliloti strains. It was found that despite the absence of a host plant, the GM strains persisted in the soil for at least 6 years. Horizontal transfer and microevolution of a GM plasmid between S. meliloti strains was also observed. These data illustrate the importance of assessing the long-term persistence of GM inoculants.The concepts of industrial ecosystem, ecological industrial carrying capacity and the concept of ecological footprint are reviewed and discussed in the context of sustainable development. It is stressed that bioremediation is offering useful technological tools for Industrial Ecology and in particular for the ecological sustainability of mining activities.Industrial ecology (IE) has been characterized by a fragmented approach encompassing a number of different perspectives and analytical techniques. A uniform framework has yet to be established or proposed. This paper partially addresses this shortcoming by tracing some of the historical and intellectual antecedents of the field. providing a clear and concise lexicon of the biological analogue. and contrasting the two most promising analytical methods by which IE research may be carried out: life cycle assessment (LCA) and systems analysis. Although a number of comparative environmental metrics may be employed in cost-minimization or thermodynamic efficiency studies, no single measure is sufficiently developed to prioritize among qualitatively disparate types of environmental impacts. It is argued herein that the concept of chemical energy of mixing may be the most promising basis for the development of a uniform. broad-based measure of chemical pollution, and that such a measure could significantly advance a scientific approach to IE. Some theoretical background is presented, although the reasoning herein is intended to be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article, industrial ecology is used as a framework for analysing transport energy and its implication for products. The importance of the energy use for transport in a natural resource production system is analysed. By using fish as a case study, it is shown that the amount of energy for transport is highly dependent on the transport mode used. When applying industrial ecology principles for making assessments of the environmental impacts of products, the whole product chain is examined. This is an extended life-cycle approach, which also includes the transport of the finished products from the exporter to the importing country. This last part of the transport chain can be extremely energy demanding, as is shown for the case of fish transport. This finding has implications for the products, and for the form in which the products should be transported. Increasing the energy efficiency of production systems is an important industrial ecology principle, and must be taken into consideration when analysing product chains. A revision of today's practice of transporting large quantities of fresh whole fish by transcontinental airliners is bound to be necessary. This is a consequence of the demands for increased energy efficiency of tomorrow's industrial production systems. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of sustainable use is indefinite use of the planet by humankind. This objective, in turn, requires that the planet's ecological life support system, consisting of natural capital and ecosystem services, remains healthy for an indefinite period. Achieving sustainability will require a new view of the responsibilities of professionals, such as ecotoxicologists, to ensure a healthy ecological life support system. Because both human society and natural systems are complex and multivariate, a high degree of uncertainty will remain. Therefore, sound judgment will be needed in determining what, if any, precautionary measures should be taken until more robust information has been gathered. The role of ecotoxicologists in the quest for sustainable use of the planet is quite varied: 1) shifting goals and endpoints from an absence of harm to persuasive evidence of health; 2) increasing both temporal and spatial scales of ecotoxicological studies; 3) achieving a critical mass of qualified personnel; 4) including demographic change in ecotoxicological analysis and judgment; 5) developing new ecological thresholds; 6) being prepared for environmental surprises; 7) focusing on design for a quality environment; 8) developing ecosystem services as endpoints in ecotoxicological studies, and 9) being prepared for climate change and other events that might destabilize the biosphere and require major adjustments in the process of ecotoxicological testing. Both sustainable use of the planet and the field of ecotoxicology are rapidly developing fields that are mostly evolving in isolation from each other. To be successful, they must co-evolve. In the present work Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used in order to evaluate a chemical reaction from an environmental point of view. The objective is to assess the usefulness of this methodology as an environmental tool to be applied to green chemistry. As an example, two routes of obtaining maleic anhydride are compared using LCA, to ascertain which one is the most environmentally friendly. From the results obtained in this work it can be concluded that LCA seems to be a valuable tool for the environmental assessment of a chemical reaction, because it takes into account all the life cycle stages of the process and discusses the impact of the environmental burdens inventoried according to a diversity of impact categories.The development of methodologies to assess the effects of pesticides in a consistent way and to enable comparison with the impacts from other agricultural practices is urgently needed. This paper describes a life cycle assessment method to determine the impact of pesticides on human health and ecosystems. The approach considers a full-fate analysis and the exposure to toxic pollutants through different media and pathways, including residues in food, based on the behavior of the pesticides in air and the importance of transfers between soil and surface or ground waters. For human toxicity, estimates of pesticide residues show that food intake results in the highest toxic exposure, about 10(3) to 10(5) times higher than that induced by drinking water or inhalation. Better evaluation practices of pesticide residues in food need to be established in priority. For the "no effect concentration (NEC)" used as a reference for both terrestrial and aquatic ecotoxicity, extrapolation methods are developed on the basis of experimental data. Extrapolation coefficients for risk assessment are to be used with caution; an intra-species extrapolation factor of 10 explained the relationship between acute (LC50) and chronic (NOEC) ecotoxicity, whereas it was not suitable for inter-species extrapolation. The method is applied to a case study of five fungicides that have the same function on wheat. Results obtained for the 100 most commonly used pesticides in Switzerland are presented. It is demonstrated that the comparison of pesticides is feasible, the pollution sources of highest concern being identifiable and the best environmental management practices thereby promoted without penalizing the crop itself. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The building of the Solar Energy Laboratory (LESO) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne was erected in 1981 to allow "in situ" testing of experimental solar facades. In 1998, the building was the object of a significant restoration and a new southern facade was designed and built following the principles of sustainable development. This article describes the principles that guided this work, and presents the results obtained with regard to energy consumption, flow of matter, daylight, comfort and, lastly, a detailed life cycle assessment analysis: the various. environmental impacts related to the construction, exploitation and maintenance of the facade are presented and discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Exposure efficiency, the fraction of material released from a source that is eventually inhaled or ingested, is arguably the simplest of all possible descriptions of the link between pollutant emissions and population exposures. This paper, prepared in late 1999 for the SGOMSEC Workshop, notes that several groups of researchers independently developed the concept of exposure efficiency in the late 1980s and early 1990s but argues that the potential importance of exposure efficiency in risk analysis and life cycle assessment has only recently been appreciated. The paper reviews the history of the concept; discusses and summarizes previous estimates of exposure efficiency for particulate matter and other air pollutants; presents new values for fine particulate matter emitted from power plants and mobile sources in the United States; and illustrates how preliminary estimates of exposure efficiency might be developed. The authors assert that in order for the concept of exposure efficiency to achieve its full potential exposure efficiency estimates for a wide variety of pollutants and sources must be developed and that both the results and methods must be made widely available and accessible to the community of risk assessors and life cycle analysts. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In the past, the selection of all energy resource for electricity generation was dominated by finding the least expensive power generating plant. Although such all approach is essential, there is growing concern about other aspects of power generation such as social, environmental and technological benefits and consequences of the energy source selection. The aims of this paper are first to introduce a life cycle assessment (LCA) scheme with the aid of the NETS (Numerical Eco-load Total Standardization) method that we have newly proposed. This method provides a numerical measure for evaluating the quantitative load of any industrial activity on the environment, and has been used to analyze the energy flow and the environmental loads of various power generation systems. A second goal is to develop a computer program to examine the applicability, of technology options based oil cost performance and environmental load reduction. A filial goal of this work is to select the power system using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). As a result, environmental load and economical cost for various power generation systems are discussed from the LCA point of view for further ecological improvement.The environmental friendliness of building materials can be measured in life cycle assessments of the total energy inputs for the product, from cradle to grave. How do the environmental costs of wood compare with concrete and steel in housing construction? First we compare energy values for each material and for house components. Taking the viewpoint of a consumer, we then compare three typical houses in which steel, concrete, or wood is the dominant component. It appears that wood, wood components, and houses built primarily of wood require lesser amounts of energy in their manufacture, assembly, and operation. The robustness of the conclusions is shown by the degree of agreement among researchers and through an assessment of the impact of uncertainties in the analysis.This paper considers the technical feasibility of achieving NOx reductions through engine controls on existing oceangoing ships. International transport ships account for most of the NOx emissions from shipping globally and regionally (Corbett and Fischbeck 1997; Corbett et al. 1999). Recently, regulatory efforts to control NOx from ship propulsion have been adopted at the international level (IMO 1998)) along with related efforts at national levels (EPA 1998a; Lemieszewski 1999; National Swedish Maritime Administration 1996; Swedish Port and Stevedores Association 1999). The long working life of modern commercial ships, with world fleet averages greater than 20 years (UNCTAD 1995), implies that new-engine policies have limited value in meeting air-quality objectives in the near term. This has motivated efforts to control shipboard emissions with retrofit technologies. Nine technologies, demonstrated to control NOx from existing engines, are described in terms of their ability to reduce emissions at the lowest life-cycle costs. The costs for these technologies are within the cost range of similar controls proposed for new marine engines and within the cost ranges for various land-based NOx control efforts, suggesting that these are not only technically feasible but also are economically reasonable technologies for pollution control.Within the UK regulatory framework the radioactive and non-radioactive environmental impacts of nuclear facilities are regulated separately, preventing the nuclear industry from being regulated in a holistic manner. This paper demonstrates the application of life-cycle assessment in an attempt to address this situation with regard to the management of carbon-14 arising from the THORP nuclear reprocessing plant. Nevertheless, although the methodology proves useful for the analysis of the scientific aspect of decision-making, the need remains to develop techniques that allow for the integration of social factors into the decision-making process.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is becoming an effective tool for evaluating the environmental impacts of a product. Companies find on LCA a good support when defining their environmental strategies, since it applies an overall view to detect those phases of the product life cycle where major environmental effects occur. However, applying strictly this methodology can be a costly, time-consuming process, and sometimes the company does not know the accurate data necessary to apply the LCA methodology. That is why it is necessary to develop simplified methods that are more suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises, SME. In this paper, a streamlined method is proposed, making use of fuzzy logic to avoid the need for in-depth environmental knowledge and extremely accurate data to carry out the assessment, thus making LCA more applicable to small and medium sized enterprises. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.To achieve more than incremental reductions in resource consumption and waste, it will be necessary to develop new approaches to the systematic use and re-use of materials in the kind of system termed an "industrial ecology". This paper presents a new methodology-CHAin Management of Materials and Products (CHAMP)-developed for modelling the flow of materials through a succession of uses with different performance requirements. Although developed specifically for polymers, the CHAMP approach is also applicable to other materials and products. Materials are characterised by a set of technical performance parameters, termed utilities. Geographical location is also treated as a utility to enable logistics-both distribution of products and collection of used products or waste-to be incorporated within the same modelling framework. Processing, transport and use are treated as activities through which a material can pass. The costs and environmental impacts of activities are included in the modelling framework, and are assessed on a life cycle basis by considering the complete supply chain of materials and energy used by each activity. The methodology includes acceptance criteria which determine whether a material is suitable for specific uses or activities. These criteria are applied within the model to guide selection of materials for specific applications and of successive uses for specific materials. A simple example of the CHAMP approach is given, to illustrate the kinds of problem to which it has been applied. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents the environmental impacts of electricity generation systems, based on life-cycle assessments (LCAs). These assessments normally include impacts from extraction, processing and transportation of fuels, building of power plants and generation of electricity. The LCAs show that the following options have an excellent performance: hydropower (run-of-river and with reservoir), nuclear energy and windpower. Hydropower with reservoir does have high land requirements, but in spite of this, it is possible to conclude that it has the highest performance, if we consider 2 factors not always included in LCAs: firstly, reservoirs can provide secondary benefits such as irrigation or flood control; and secondly, hydropower has a high operating flexibility that can improve the reliability of electricity supply. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental implications of including structural changes in a wastewater treatment plant to decrease effluent concentrations of nitrogen were evaluated in this study. Environmental effects from these structural changes were assessed by using the Life Cycle Assessment theoretical framework. The wastewater treatment plant selected as a reference scenario had an activated sludge configuration. The Ludzack-Ettinger and Oxidation Ditch configurations were selected as modifications of the reference scenario. Results from this study show that the inclusion of nitrogen removal mechanisms in the configuration of the plant reduces the effect of the plant on the eutrophication, but simultaneously increases the effect on the consumption of abiotic resources, global warming, acidification and human toxicity. These general trends, however, vary depending on the configuration selected to remove nitrogen. Taking all the impacts together, the Oxidation Ditch configuration would cause less environmental impact than the Ludzack-Ettinger configuration, given the characteristics of the selected scenarios. (C) 2002 Society of Chemical Industry.Unplanned and unsustainable development (particularly rapid industrialisation) has placed great pressure in every dimension of the environment (air, water, soil, health, etc.). The resulting disturbance in the natural ecological balance is a serious concern. Sustainable development is the need of the hour; it can only be achieved through effective environmental management. Environmental management will become indispensable in the future as regulatory restrictions tighten and public expectations of environmental performance increase. The day is not far away when a customer will prefer to buy products produced by an environmentally committed organisation. In short, the environmental commitment of an organisation will become a market strategy. Environmental management is a set of actions based on a structured methodology to ensure that an organisation is committed to the environment and that the production process has minimal/no adverse affect on it. This article emphasises environmental management in the real engineering sense of the term, and discusses how to develop an effective environmental management system through life cycle assessment. It further demonstrates through a real life case study how an industry has achieved landmark success in managing its environment, production, as well as winning the good faith of society. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.A flexible pavement life-cycle model has been developed to yield an optimum maintenance and rehabilitation plan. The model incorporates into the optimization process both performance and cost associated with a life-cycle analysis period for a given pavement structure (project). A single life-cycle indicator called "life-cycle disutility" has been introduced and defined as the ratio of cost to performance. The optimum plan is the one associated with the minimum life-cycle disutility value. The model evaluates several potential maintenance and rehabilitaton plans generated according to two defined decision policy options. The first decision policy option requires a fixed analysis period, whereas the second one involves a variable analysis period. Both options require a specified number of major rehabilitation cycles. Pavement life-cycle cost includes initial construction, scheduled major rehabilitation cycles, and routine maintenance and added user cost. Pavement life-cycle performance is defined as the area under the life-cycle performance curve either generated from actual pavement distress data or based on an incremental analysis of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials basic design equation of flexible pavement.A simulation model, ORWARE (ORganic WAste REsearch) is described. The model is mainly used as a tool for researchers in environmental systems analysis of waste management. It is a computer-based model for calculation of substance flows, environmental impacts, and costs of waste management. The model covers, despite the name; both organic and inorganic fractions in municipal waste. The model consists of a number of separate submodels, which describes a process in a real waste management system. The submodels may be combined to design a complete waste management system. Based on principles from life cycle assessment the model also comprises compensatory processes for conventional production of e.g. electricity, district heating and fertiliser. The compensatory system is included in order to fulfil the functional units, i.e. benefits from the waste management that are kept constant in the evaluation of different scenarios. ORWARE generates data on emissions, which are aggregated into different environmental impact categories, e.g. the greenhouse effect, acidification and eutrophication. Throughout the model all physical flows are described by the same variable vector, consisting of up to 50 substances. The extensive vector facilitates a thorough analysis of the results, but involves some difficulties in acquiring relevant data. Scientists have used ORWARE for 8 years in different case studies for model testing and practical application in the society. The aims have e.g. been to evaluate waste management plans and to optimise energy recovery from waste. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Silicon carbide (SiC) heating elements (siliconits) are widely used at high-temperature fields. The raw materials, manufacture process and application fields of siliconits are all related to heavy energy consumption and pollutions, and bring high environmental loads. The resources consumption and pollution emissions in siliconit manufacture process were quantificationally estimated by input/output method. Difference between two traditional techniques to produce siliconits in China was also compared and analyzed. The results show that siliconit manufacture processes consume large quantities of resources because the furnace is open to environment and too much thermal-protection materials are used. For the thick-end technique is more complicated and the thick-end siliconits have a bigger size and mass, there are more resources and energy consumptions and pollution emissions for thick-end process than that for equal-diameter process. Some suggestions were introduced to improve the traditional techniques and a new process was designed. It is the most important that the open furnace should be replaced by close vacuum furnace. Sintering and siliconizing process can be combined into one high-temperature process. As results of process simplification and vacuum sintering, resources and energy consumption and wastes emission can be decreased remarkably. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a life cycle assessment comparing diesel buses with buses fueled by natural gas. The data for the emission of pollutants are based on the MEET Project of the European Commission (EC) supplemented by data measured for diesel and gas buses in Paris. The benefits of the gas fueled bus are then quantified using the damage cost estimates of the ExternE Project of the EC. A diesel bus with emissions equal to Standard EURO2 of the EC is compared with the same bus equipped with a natural gas engine, for use in Paris and in Toulouse. The damage cost of a diesel bus is significant, in the range of 0.4-1.3 Euro/km. Natural gas allows an appreciable reduction of the emissions, lowering the damage cost by a factor of about 2.5 (Toulouse) to 5.5 (Paris). An approximate rule is provided for transferring the results to other cities. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to evaluate the effect of the evolution of the emissions standard towards EURO3, 4 and 5, as well as the effect of uncertainties. Finally a comparison is presented between a EURO2 diesel bus with particle filter, and a gas fueled bus with the MPI engine of IVECO, a more advanced and cleaner technology. With this engine the damage costs of the gas fueled bus are about 3-5 times lower than those of the diesel with particle filter, even though the latter has already very low emissions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Aluminum (Al)/air batteries have the potential to be used to produce power to operate cars and other vehicles. These batteries might be important on a long-term interim basis as the world passes through the transition from gasoline cars to hydrogen fuel cell cars. The Al/air battery system can generate enough energy and power for driving ranges and acceleration similar to gasoline powered cars. From our design analysis, it can be seen that the cost of aluminum as an anode can be as low as US$ 1.1/kg as long as the reaction product is recycled. The total fuel efficiency during the cycle process in Al/air electric vehicles (EVs) can be 15% (present stage) or 20% (projected) comparable to that of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEs) (13%). The design battery energy density is 1300 Wh/kg (present) or 2000 Wh/kg (projected). The cost of battery system chosen to evaluate is US$ 30/kW (present) or US$ 29/kW (projected). Al/air EVs life-cycle analysis was conducted and compared to lead/acid and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) EVs. Only the Al/air EVs can be projected to have a travel range comparable to ICEs. From this analysis, Al/air EVs are the most promising candidates compared to ICEs in terms of travel range, purchase price, fuel cost, and life-cycle cost. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Electrical power plants are responsible for over one-third of the US emissions, or about 1.7 Gt CO2 per year. Power-plant flue gas can serve as a source of CO2 for microalgae cultivation, and the algae can be cofired with coal. The study objective was to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental impacts of electricity production via coal firing versus coal/algae cofiring. The LCA results demonstrate that there are potentially significant benefits to recycling CO2 toward microalgae production. As it reduces CO2 emissions by recycling it and uses less coal, there are concomitant benefits of reduced greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are also other energy and fertilizer inputs needed for algae production, which contribute to key environmental flows. Lower net values for the algae cofiring scenario were observed for the following using the direct injection process (in which the flue gas is directly transported to the algae ponds): SOx, NOx, particulates, carbon dioxide, methane, and fossil energy consumption. Lower values for the algae cofiring scenario were also observed for greenhouse potential and air acidification potential. However, impact assessment for depletion of natural resources and eutrophication potential showed much higher values. This LCA gives us an overall picture and impacts across different environmental boundaries, and hence, can help in the decision-making process for implementation of the algae scenario. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to evaluate and estimate the environmental impacts of nuclear fuel cycles and to support the decision-making of nuclear energy policy, relating to a selection of environmentally preferred nuclear fuel cycle for the environmentally sound and sustainable development of nuclear energy. To achieve this objective, life cycle assessment (LCA) as an environmental management tool is applied to the nuclear fuel cycle alternatives of a once-through fuel cycle, the direct use of PWR spent fuel in CANDU (DUPIC) cycle and recycling with plutonium and uranium recovery by extraction (PUREX) process. The assessments provide a comparison of the environmental impacts of the three nuclear fuel cycle options and the environmentally most significant stages of each nuclear fuel cycle are identified. As a result, the recycling with PUREX process turned out to impose less-significant environmental impact than did the DUPIC and once-through options. The environmentally dominant stage was found to be mining/milling stage and the most radiologically significant pathway could be an internal exposure. The results are useful for making a decision of nuclear energy policy by an estimation of environmental impacts of nuclear fuel cycle options and the application of LCA to nuclear energy is very significant eco-labeling according to the advent of international standard organization 14,000 series. Finally, this approach also makes it possible to obtain the environmental data relating to the nuclear energy and to examine the environmental impacts of chemical effluents discharged from a nuclear facility. From this result, therefore, the comparative assessment of nuclear and non-nuclear energy sources including radiological and non-radiological aspects may be further developed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Many companies have focused on pollution prevention initiatives including reducing the amount of energy required for production. However, many products consume orders of magnitude more energy and cause greater environmental emissions over the entire life cycle. With this in mind, a life cycle assessment of manufacturing and use-phase effects was done for a computer tape drive (TD) product. Quantum Corporation's Environmental Stewardship Group initiated an evaluation of the differential electricity and environmental impacts of its TD products that are shipped worldwide. This research showed that when internal corporate service functions were included in the evaluation, 60% more electricity was used than when only final assembly was considered. In addition, the consumption of electricity from external suppliers was nearly three times higher than internal use sources. Finally, use-phase electricity consumption was a factor of four higher than total manufacturing consumption. Better management of TD life cycle electricity use would serve to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers, while at the same time, reducing the global environmental impact of the product. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and comparative risk assessment (RA) use the same building blocks for analyzing fate and potential effects of toxic substances. It is tacitly assumed that emission-effect calculations can give uniform and decisive answers in debates on toxicity problems. For several decades, mainstream policy sciences have taken a different starting point when analyzing decision making on complex, controversial societal issues. Such controversies in essence are thought to be caused by the fact that different actor coalitions adhere to a different, but in scientific terms equally reasonable, conceptualization or "framing" of the problem. A historical, argumentative analysis of the Dutch chlorine debate and the Swedish PVC debate shows that this is also true in the discussions on toxic substances. Three frames have been identified, which were coined the "risk assessment frame." "the strict control frame," and the "precautionary frame." These frames tacitly disagree about the extent of knowledge/ignorance about the impacts of substances, the robustness/fallibility of emission-reduction schemes, and the robustness/vulnerability of nature. The latter frame, adhered to by environmentalists, seeks to judge substances mainly on their inherent safety. Under the current institutional arrangements and practices, RA and LCIA are executed mainly in line with the philosophy expressed, by the risk assessment frame. This article gives various suggestions for dealing with framing in debates on toxic substances. One of the options is elaborated in somewhat more detail, i.e., the development of multiple indicators and calculation schemes for RA and LCIA that reflect the different frames. An outline is given for a possible indicator system reflecting the precautionary principle.A third generation of environmental policy making and risk management will increasingly impose environmental measures, which may give rise to analyzing countervailing risks. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of all risks associated with the decision alternatives will aid decision-makers in prioritizing alternatives that effectively reduce both target and countervailing risks. Starting with the metaphor of the ripples caused by a stone that is thrown into a pond, we identify 10 types of ripples that symbolize, in our case, risks that deserve closer examination: direct, upstream, downstream,. accidental risks, occupational risks, risks due to offsetting behavior, change in disposable income, macro-economic changes, depletion of natural resources, and risks to the manmade environment. Tools to analyze these risks were developed independently and recently have been applied to overlapping fields of application. This suggests that either the tools should be linked in a unified framework for comparative analysis or that the appropriate field of application for single tools should be better understood. The goals of this article-are to create a better foundation for the understanding of the nature and coverage of available tools and to identify the remaining gaps. None of the tools is designed to deal with all 10 types of risk. Provided data suggest that, of the 10 types of identified risks, those associated with changes in disposable income may be particularly significant when decision alternatives differ with respect to their effects on disposable income. Finally, the present analysis was limited to analytical questions and did not capture the important role of the decision-making process itself.Modern technology, together with an advanced economy, can provide a good or service in myriad ways, giving us choices on what to produce and how to produce it. To make those choices more intelligently, society needs to know not only the market price of each alternative, but the associated health and environmental consequences., A fair comparison requires evaluating the consequences across the whole "life cycle"-from the extraction of raw materials and processing to manufacture/construction, use, and end-of-life-of each alternative. Focusing on only one stage (e.g., manufacture) of the life cycle is often misleading. Unfortunately, analysts and researchers still have only rudimentary tools to quantify the materials and energy inputs and the resulting damage to health and the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides an overall framework for identifying and evaluating these implications. Since the 1960s, considerable progress has been made in developing methods for LCA, especially in characterizing, qualitatively and quantitatively, environmental discharges. However, few of these analyses have attempted to assess the quantitative impact on the environment and health of material inputs and environmental discharges. Risk analysis and LCA are connected closely. While risk analysis has characterized and quantified the health risks of exposure to a toxicant, the policy implications have not been clear. Inferring that an occupational or public health exposure carries a nontrivial risk is only the first step in formulating a policy response. A broader framework, including LCA, is needed to see which response is likely to lower the risk without creating high risks elsewhere. Even more important, LCA has floundered at the stage of translating an inventory of environmental discharges into estimates of impact on health and the environment. Without the impact analysis, policymakers must revert to some simple rule, such as that all discharges, regardless of which chemical, which medium, and where they are discharged, are equally toxic. Thus, risk analysts should seek LCA guidance in translating a risk analysis into policy conclusions or even advice to those at risk. LCA needs the help of RA to go beyond simplistic assumptions about the implications of a discharge inventory. We demonstrate the need and rationale for LCA, present a brief history of LCA, present examples of the application of this tool, note the limitations of LCA models, and present several methods for incorporating risk assessment into LCA. However, we warn the reader not to expect too much. A comprehensive comparison of the health and environmental implications of alternatives is beyond the state of the art. LCA is currently not able to provide risk analysts with detailed information on the chemical form and location of the environmental discharges that would allow detailed estimation of the risks to individuals due to toxicants. For example, a challenge for risk analysts is to estimate health and other risks where the location and chemical speciation are not characterized precisely. Providing valuable information to decisionmakers requires advances in both LCA and risk analysis. These two disciplines should be closely linked, since each has much to contribute to the other.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and risk assessment are operationally different but share the common purpose of supporting decisions about reducing threats to human welfare. Both analysis methods also involve a complex mixture of science and value judgments reflecting epistemological as well as moral and esthetic values. The inability of risk assessment and LCA to be "value free" has been a source of considerable controversy, in both communities. Recognition of the contingent and social nature of human interpretation of the risks and environmental impacts created by public and private decisions has led to an increased appreciation of the importance of involving interested and affected parties in risk characterization. Comparison of the value-based nature of LCA and risk assessment demonstrates the need for participation in LCA. Although the need for participation by affected parties in decision-making processes is gaining acceptance, there is little agreement as to how participation should be structured. Risk assessment and LCA have a shared need for research examining the design and analysis of participation processes appropriate to a given decision context. A proposed framework recommends participation strategies designed to enhance the effectiveness of policy-driven analyses such as risk assessment and LCA based on the level of trust that interested and affected parties have for other policy participants.Quantitative risk assessment (RA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) are both analytical tools used to support decision making in environmental management. They have been developed and used by largely separate groups of specialists, and it is worth considering whether there is a common research agenda that may increase the relevance of these tools in decision-making processes. The validity of drawing comparisons between use of the tools is established through examining key aspects of the two approaches for their similarities and differences, including the nature of each approach and contextual and methodological aspects. Six case studies involving use of each approach in public decision making are described and used to draw out concerns about using RA and LCA in this context. The following categories of concern can be distinguished: philosophical approach of the tools; quantitative versus qualitative assessment; stakeholder participation; the nature of the results; and the usefulness of the results in relation to time and financial resource requirements. These can be distilled into a common policy research agenda focusing on: the legitimacy of using tools built on a particular perspective in decision making; recognition and role of value judgments in RA and LCA; treatment of uncertainty and variability; the influence of analytical tools in focusing attention on particular aspects of a decision-making situation; and understandability of the results for nonspecialists. It is concluded that it is time to bring together the experiences of RA and LCA specialists and benefit from cross-fertilization of ideas.We employ the intake fraction (iF) as an effective tool for expressing the source-to-intake relationship for pollutant emissions in life cycle analysis (LCA) or comparative risk assessment. Intake fraction is the fraction of chemical mass emitted into the environment that eventually passes into a member of the population through inhalation, ingestion, or dermal exposure. To date, this concept has been primarily applied to pollutants whose primary route of exposure is inhalation. Here we extend the use of iF to multimedia pollutants with multiple exposure pathways. We use a level III multimedia model to calculate iF for TCDD and compare the result to one calculated from measured levels of dioxin toxic equivalents in the environment. We calculate iF for emissions to air and surface water for 308 chemicals. We correlate the primary exposure route with the magnitudes of the octanol-water partition coefficient, K-ow, and of the air-water partitioning coefficient (dimensionless Henry constant), K-aw. This results in value ranges of K-ow, and K-aw where the chemical exposure route can be classified with limited input data requirements as primarily inhalation, primarily ingestion, or multipathway. For the inhalation and ingestion dominant pollutants, we also define empirical relationships based on chemical properties for quantifying the intake fraction. The empirical relationships facilitate rapid evaluation of many chemicals in terms of the intake. By defining a theoretical upper limit for iF in a multimedia environment we find that iF calculations provide insight into the multimedia model algorithms and help identify unusual patterns of exposure and questionable exposure model results.Refinements of methods for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) are directed at removing unjustified simplifications and quantifying and reducing uncertainties in results. The amount of uncertainty reduction that is actually achieved through LCIA method refinement depends on the structure of the life cycle inventory model. We investigate the general structure of inventory models using an economic input/output (I/O) life cycle assessment model of the US. economy. In particular, we study the results of applying a streamlining algorithm to the I/O LCA model. The streamlining algorithm retains only those "branches" of the process tree that are jointly required to account for a specified fraction of the total impacts upstream of each point in the tree. We examine the implications of these "tree pruning" results for site-informed LCIA. Percentiles are presented for U.S. commodities and several important pollutants, for the share of total upstream emissions contributed by the set of processes in each supply tier, that is, each set of processes that directly supply inputs to another set of processes. Capturing at least 90% of the total direct plus upstream emissions for criteria air pollutants and toxic releases for at least 75% of the commodities in the U.S. economy requires full modeling of direct emissions plus the first five supply tiers. The requirements for capturing a high percentage (e.g., >80%) of total emissions vary widely across products or commodities. To capture more than 60% of total emissions for more than half of all commodities requires models with more than 4,000 process instances. To well characterize the total impacts of products, life cycle impact assessment methods must characterize foreground process impacts in a site-informed way and mean impacts of far-removed processes in an unbiased way.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a framework for comparing products according to their total estimated environmental impact, summed over all chemical emissions and activities associated with a product at all stages in its life cycle (from raw material acquisition, manufacturing, use, to final disposal). For each chemical involved, the exposure associated with the mass released into the environment, integrated over time and space, is multiplied by a toxicological measure to estimate the likelihood of effects and their potential consequences. In this article, we explore the use of quantitative methods drawn from conventional single-chemical regulatory risk assessments to create a procedure for the estimation of the cancer effect measure in the impact phase of LCA. The approach is based on the maximum likelihood estimate of the effect dose inducing a 10% response over background, ED10, and default linear low-dose extrapolation using the slope beta(ED10) (0.1/ED10). The calculated effects may correspond to residual risks below current regulatory compliance requirements that occur over multiple generations and at multiple locations; but at the very least they represent a "using up" of some portion of the human population's ability to accommodate emissions. Preliminary comparisons are performed with existing measures, such as the US. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA's) slope factor measure q(1)*. By analyzing bioassay data for 44 chemicals drawn from the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database, we explore estimating ED10 from more readily available information such as the median tumor dose rate TD50 and the median single, lethal dose LD50. Based on the TD50, we then estimate the ED10 for more than 600 chemicals. Differences in potential consequences, or severity, are addressed by combining betaED(10) with the measure disability adjusted life years per affected person, DALYp. Most of the variation among chemicals for cancer effects is found to be due to differences in the slope factors (betaED(10)) ranging from 10(-4) up to 10(4) (risk,of cancer/mg/kg-day).In Part 1 of this article we developed an approach for the calculation of cancer effect measures for life cycle assessment (LCA). In this article, we propose and evaluate the method for the screening of noncancer toxicological health effects. This approach draws on the noncancer health risk assessment concept of benchmark dose, while noting important differences with regulatory applications in the objectives of an LCA study. We adopt the central tendency estimate of the toxicological effect dose inducing a 10% response over background, ED10, to provide a consistent point of departure for default linear low-dose response estimates (beta(ED10)). This explicit estimation of low-dose risks, while necessary in LCA, is in marked contrast to many traditional procedures for noncancer assessments. For pragmatic reasons, mechanistic thresholds and nonlinear low-dose response curves were not implemented in the presented framework. In essence, for the comparative needs of LCA, we propose that one initially screens alternative activities or products on the degree to which the associated chemical emissions erode their margins of exposure, which may or may not be manifested as increases in disease incidence. We illustrate the method here by deriving the betaED(10) slope factors from bioassay data for 12 chemicals and outline some of the possibilities for extrapolation from other more readily available measures, such as the no observable adverse effect levels (NOAEL), avoiding uncertainty factors that lead to inconsistent degrees of conservatism from chemical to chemical. These extrapolations facilitated the initial calculation of slope factors for an additional 403 compounds; ranging from 10(-6) to 10(3) (risk per mg/kg-day dose). The potential consequences of the effects are taken into account in a preliminary approach by combining the beta(ED10) with the severity measure disability adjusted life years (DALY), providing a screening-level estimate of the potential consequences associated with exposures, integrated over time and space, to a given mass of chemical released into the environment for use in LCA.Increasing residential insulation can decrease energy consumption and provide public health benefits, given changes in emissions from fuel combustion, but also has cost implications and ancillary risks and benefits. Risk assessment or life cycle assessment can be used to calculate the net impacts and determine whether more stringent energy codes or other conservation policies would be warranted, but few analyses have combined the critical elements of both methodologies. In this article, we present the first portion of a combined analysis, with the goal of estimating the net public health impacts of increasing residential insulation for new housing from current practice to the latest International Energy Conservation Code (IECC 2000). We model state-by-state residential energy savings and evaluate particulate matter less than 2.5 mum in diameter (PM2.5), NOx, and SO2 emission reductions. We use past dispersion modeling results to estimate reductions in exposure, and we apply concentration response functions for premature mortality and selected morbidity outcomes using current epidemiological knowledge of effects of PM2.5 (primary and secondary). We find that an insulation policy shift would save 3 x 10(14) British thermal units or BTU (3 x 10(17) J) over a 10-year period, resulting in reduced emissions of 1,000 tons of PM2.5, 30,000 tons of NOx, and 40,000 tons of SO2. These emission reductions yield an estimated 60 fewer fatalities during this period, with the geographic distribution of health benefits differing from the distribution of energy savings because of differences in energy sources, population patterns, and meteorology. We discuss the methodology to be used to integrate life cycle calculations, which can ultimately yield estimates that can be compared with costs to determine the influence of external costs on benefit-cost calculations.This paper deals with the scheduling problem of refinery processes considering environmental impacts. To keep abreast of rapidly changing business circumstances, the effective scheduling of the objective of which is to maximize the total profit is absolutely needed for large scale plants such as refinery processes. In addition, companies cannot avoid making an effort to reduce environmental impacts because now people have a much better understanding of the environment. However, the two objectives mentioned above are conflicting. There is no way to maximize the total profit and minimize environmental impacts simultaneously, but a tradeoff exists In this case, the best way is to obtain Pareto optimal solutions by multiobjective optimization. Plotting Pareto optimal solutions, decision makers are able to know the correlation between the two objectives. The selection of one of the Pareto optimal solutions depends largely on the decision makers. In this paper, a mixed-integer linear programming model is developed for solving the scheduling problem of actual size refinery processes. Critical Surface-Time 95 (CST95), an impact assessment methodology, is used for considering global environmental impacts. The E-constraint method is used in order to implement multiobjective optimization. Finally, this paper proposes Pareto optimal solutions and shows the optimal scheduling of an arbitrary point in Pareto optimal solutions compared with the total profit maximization problem.To meet the goals of sustainability and to enable industrial ecology, green chemistry and engineering needs to be studied from a life-cycle perspective. When designed correctly, green chemistry and engineering can affect multiple stages of the life cycle of a product or process. Successful implementations of green chemistry and engineering research are improving the environmental impacts of chemical products and processes in every stage of the life cycle while also offering economic incentives. Analysis of new and existing green chemistry and engineering technologies with quantitative and qualitative metrics can identify and quantify these benefits. The examples presented illustrate the principles of life-cycle assessment as applied to green chemistry and engineering.Although assessment models exist for evaluating buildings after they are designed, the problem is creating an appropriate tool for the design team to use during the design process to create sustainable (green) buildings. An integrated, life-cycle-oriented design tool (LEGOE) is proposed and its general criteria identified for use in practice including the scope of methods as well as their scalability over the manufacture, construction, use, cleaning, maintenance, refurbishment and recycling/waste cycles of the building and its components. The design tool is compared with assessment tools for green buildings. The integration of basic methods of life-cycle analysis (LCA), in particular energy and massflow analysis, into the normal practice environment (CAAD, specification and quantity surveying, energy need and building physics calculation, comfort and health risk appreciation) is considered. Feedback from the initial practical applications of the integrated tool is discussed. Conclusions concern the time-span for the development and diffusion of new integrated tools in the planning, design and specification processes.It is important to assess environmental impacts of materials or products properly. But the typical method called Life Cycle Assessment has many problems. Above all, it is crucial that various kinds of environmental impacts cannot be integrated. We present an attempt to use the exergy concept to express environmental impacts. Exergy has been used to analyze thermal efficiency of the production process. However, to apply exergy to environmental problems, exergy of materials is important since chemical reaction of the wastes cause environmental problems. Exergy expresses gap of free energy between a given state and that of environment. Thus, the concept of exergy gives potential of environmental impacts. We analyzed impacts of life cycle of both steel and aluminum cans as an example. We have proposed a new diagram that represents exergy and mass flow in a system. The diagram consists of triangles and arrows. The three sides of triangle represent inputs, products and wastes of a unit process. The length and width of arrow express the magnitudes of exergy and mass, respectively. It was estimated that the total exergy of material wastes from life cycle of one thousand cans made of aluminum and steel are 540 MJ and 305 MJ, respectively. If the recycling rate is 100 per cent, the amounts of exergy are reduced to 49 MJ and 10 MJ. It is concluded that the present analysis based on exergy is useful to evaluate potential environmental impacts caused by mass discarding of materials. But it is still insufficient to evaluate impacts of trace toxic chemicals such as dioxin.Vehicle refinishing body shops are concerned by the environmental policy against photochemical air pollution caused by VOC emissions. For supporting these small enterprises the mass and energy flow model IMPROVE has been developed. Based on an LCA-approach, the process steps of vehicle refinishing are modelled. The model IMPROVE helps to disseminate the consequences of product substitution in comparison to so far used products and techniques in the body shop. For the dissemination of experiences practical guidelines have been developed. Moreover, a comprehensible tool for the Solvent Balance is being offered. Thus, various means are available for consulting and also for strategic production planning for the SME in the sector.Recently, the US Environmental Protection Agency completed the development of the first version of the Metal Finishing Facility Risk Screening Tool (MFFRST) and has made this product available to the general public (http://www.epa.gov/ncea/mffrst.htm). MFFRST calculates the air emissions from a metal plating line and estimates the risk to both facility employees and the surrounding neighborhood from the air emissions. The next step in the development of MFFRST is to include solid and liquid wastes in the analysis. In order to accurately estimate the risks associated with these waste streams, the quantity of waste generated and the mass of hazardous substances they contain must be known. The second version of MFFRST will utilize process synthesis and integration techniques to simulate the metal finishing process. Process synthesis and integration devolve the process into simple structures that can then be combined to create a model of the metal plating line. The quantity and composition of waste streams can then be calculated using the model. The model can then be used to analyze the effect of process modifications on waste generation. The ultimate goal of the program is to enable the user to evaluate the process to analyze any of a number of factors, including quantity and composition of wastes generated, cost/benefit analysis of waste reduction processes and/or life cycle analysis of the metal finishing process.In this study a new approach of using life cycle assessment (LCA) in design situations is adopted. The environmental impact of the different sub-processes is simplified and expressed as a cumulative formation rate of environmental impact (expressed as ecopoints or equivalent). The LCA does not change over time but the LCA is dynamic due to its dependence of the chosen design parameters (residence time and temperature). Therefore, it is possible to environmentally optimise different systems such as energy systems. The method is applied to an energy system where a superheated steam dryer is integrated in a local district heat and power plant. Although some primary environmental data are uncertain in the analysis, it is clear that the externally produced electrical energy, due to the exergy losses of the steam used for drying, effects the environmental optimisation of the system. If it is assumed that any additional electricity that may be required in the total energy system is obtained from old Danish coal plants a lower drying temperature is preferred. The capital goods are not important in the environmental study but it is important in the economic study. Many environmental and economical effects are coupled. A dried biofuel will create lower losses during combustion, due to the flue gas, and will therefore make use of less biofuel, less transports, etc. The effects of organic losses of the biofuel are estimated to be of minor importance due to the optimisation of the system if the organic compounds from the exhaust steam are reduced inside the system. If combined economical and environmental optima are demanded it is possible that Pareto curves can support the decision making. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.There is a growing interest in utilizing renewable resources and exploiting biological reactions for environmentally friendly products and processes. We report the use of the enzyme tyrosinase to graft the natural phenol, catechin, onto the biopolymer chitosan. Chemical evidence for grafting was obtained by UV/visible spectrophotometry and electrospray mass spectrometry. Rheological measurements demonstrate that the catechin-modified chitosan behaves as an associative thickener. Specifically, the viscosity increases dramatically with concentration of this modified chitosan. Furthermore, when the catechin-modified chitosan is dissolved at low concentrations (0.6% w/w), steady shear measurements show shear thinning behavior, while oscillatory measurements show weak gel behavior. These results demonstrate the potential for utilizing renewable resources and biochemical processing to functionalize biopolymers to offer technically useful properties. To suggest the relative environmental impacts of chitosan derivatives with existing water-soluble polymers, we used the framework of a life cycle assessment.An environmental analysis of the used starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) batteries sector, based on the logistics involved in the recovery process and the tools available for measuring the environmental impact of such a process, is performed in this paper. The different phases of the reverse supply chain of used batteries are analysed, and the operations and practices involved are related with the impact on the environment, using a life cycle analysis. The analysis is exemplified by using the results of a case study. In addition, the situation in different countries from a legislative point of view is presented. Finally, the results of the analysis are summarised and several important issues arising from the analysis are discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.As demand for electricity increases, investments into new generation capacity from renewable and nonrenewable sources should include assessment of global (climate) change consequences not just of the operational phase of the power plants but construction effects as well. In this paper, the global warming effect (GWE) associated with construction and operation of comparable hydroelectric, wind, solar, coal, and natural gas power plants is estimated for four time periods after construction. The assessment includes greenhouse gas emissions from construction, burning of fuels, flooded biomass decay in the reservoir, loss of net ecosystem production, and land USE. The results indicate that a wind farm and a hydroelectric plant in an arid zone (such as the Glen Canyon in the Upper Colorado River Basin) appear to have lower GWE than other power plants. For the Glen Canyon hydroelectric plant, the upgrade 20 yr after the beginning of operation increased power capacity by 39% but resulted in a mere 1% of the CO2 emissions from the initial construction and came with no additional emissions from the reservoir, which accounts for the majority of the GWE.The advances in the knowledge of the interaction of human activities with the environment has enabled us to study systematically the available information and to develop assessment systems that permit to have reliable, useful and intercomparable results. A very useful tool for such scope is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which permits to follow stepwise all the interactions involved in a given manufacturing process, from extraction of natural resources up to the end of the useful life of the product and its return to environment. The ordered accumulation of information permits to deep into the so-called Minerals-Material Cycle (MMC), which describes the results of the superposition of anthropic and natural cycles. In the present work the application of LCA to the case of glass products manufacture is examined, in particular to glass containers, using the ISO Standards 14040 to 49. The opportunities and challenges that these procedures involve for the glass industries are also examinated.Activities related to refurbishment of the building stock as a percentage of all building work have been constantly growing in most central European countries over the last 20 years. The main argument in this paper is the need to improve knowledge about composition of the existing building stock, the dynamics of its transformation and to relate this to the different actors in property professions. A review is presented of traditional and new sectoral research approaches to partial or national building stocks to provide a context for assessing an integrated approach to the German building stock with methodological propositions for improving the synergy between different sectoral approaches. Detailed consideration is given to life cycle analysis, building product modelling, historical building research and new simulation techniques. Sustainability indicators and the integration of building stock, infrastructure and land use are discussed.A methodology for the evaluation of material recycling in the life cycle inventory (LCI) was established. In this study the concept of "material" is introduced, by which the system is extended to the cases that the materials are transferred from outside to inside or vice versa of the boundary of the system. The extension of the system should be performed by means of the same way of the circulation one, in accordance with the principle of consistency of the function unit and the each system boundary. Based on this method the environmental loads of recycled materials such as secondary aluminum, casting aluminum and EAF steel were reasonably calculated and the effect of recycling was properly evaluated.The coal-based power generation industry faces increased pressure from all sectors to improve its environmental performance. This is due to increased awareness of and concerns regarding greenhouse and acid-gas emissions, toxic metal releases (to both air and water) and water availability. A methodology to assess this industry's environmental performance is needed. Such a methodology should assess aft environmental impacts accurately, recognizing their spatial and temporal dependence, and taking into account the social acceptability of technologies employed. Here, we develop a methodology to determine the environmental impact associated with solid wastes generated by this industry, and apply this to the specific case of ash management. More specifically, the case study compares the environmental footprint of an ash deposit for a number of operational water management scenarios. The methodology considers leachate generation processes from ash impoundments to obtain a time-dependent concentration profile of mobile constituents at the interface between the ash impoundment and the surrounding environment. This leachate prediction modelling is subsequently linked to plume dispersion modelling tools to determine the fate and transport of leached components, predominantly salts, into groundwater. Together, these provide a measure of the extent to which a land mass is affected by leachate migration from the deposit. To determine the exact boundary between regions of acceptable and unacceptable risk to the environment, we use Ecological Risk Assessment concepts. In this way it is possible to obtain a time dependent affected land footprint which could be used as an indicator of the environmental impact of solid waste management practices. This information can be included in a set of environmental criteria which form the basis of an overall environmental impact assessment, using tools such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The value of LCA is that its structure is consistent with accepted models of environmental decision making, where different approaches to valuation in impact assessment assist in prioritizing impacts on the basis of their perceived significance. The proposed affected land footprint, metric represents a significant improvement over current LCA impact indicators for solid waste management practices.Amsterdam Water Supply produces 70 million m(3) drinking water per annum in its Leiduin plant and is considering increasing the plant capacity to 83 million m3 per annum. The existing plant is a conventional surface water treatment plant. For capacity expansion, two alternative treatment schemes, each using reverse osmosis, are being considered. In these considerations, environmental impact plays an important role. Environmental impact of the plant was assessed with life cycle analysis. The total impact for annual production from the existing and the two future alternative schemes are 2.89E+04, 3.65E+04 and 3.44E+04 eco-points respectively. The significant impact contributors are the use of conventional energy, softening and the granular activated carbon process. Impact reduction up to 73% may be achieved by the use of 100% green energy, the use of an alternative chemical [Na2CO3 in place of NaOH] in the softening process and doubling the carbon run time.Cruise tourism continues to be a major international growth area. In terms of achieving sustainable tourism it is, therefore, a subsector within which socio-economic, cultural and environmental considerations need to be continually analysed, addressed and monitored. The environmental impacts of cruise tourism are categorised in this paper and potential strategies that can be employed by both cruise line operators and cruise tourism destinations are explored. Secondary evidence of action by both parties suggests that the industry is taking a number of belated positive steps. However, decision-makers in cruise tourism destinations, particularly those outside North America, need to work closely with operators to facilitate both integrated waste management and intergenerational and intra-societal equity rather than merely accept the prospect of short-term economic gain. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Packaging is necessary in a,world dominated by marketing-based economies, which rely on it for the safe delivery of profitable products. It is different from many other functions because packaging has two faces and each face demands a special marketing approach. Also necessary to appreciate is that in the very marketing of all products packaging plays a vital part, yet it is still often treated as a necessary evil and is often used on an expediency basis by product manufacturers. Even the packaging manufacturers themselves still fall into the trap of providing what is asked for instead of designing what is really needed. To describe packaging as in a world of its own is no pretension,for wherever natural or manufactured products are produced, packaging is needed to contain, preserve and protect them in the journey to the market place. Food, drink, clothing, light engineering goods, china and glass, medicines and household chemicals - in all those industries it is packaging made of paper and board, glass, plastic and metal that serves them. The importance of properly designed packaging lies in the fact that it must meet the need for protection of the product from the hazards of damage and deterioration. At the same time it must also provide identification and at-tractive presentation and meet the appropriate environmental criteria, Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.Despite the fact that the structure and technology of most modem wind turbines differs little over a wide range of power ratings, results from existing life-cycle assessments of their energy and CO2 intensity show considerable variations. While the range of energy intensities reflects economics of scale, their scatter is due to discrepancies in the energy contents of materials and the analyses' methodology and scope. Furthermore, energy intensities depend crucially on the country of manufacture, turbine recycling or overhaul after the service life, and the choice of tower material. In addition, CO2 intensities vary with national fuel mixes. Measures of life-cycle energy or CO2 emissions can be employed in policy and planning, especially for comparative risk and sustainability assessments, and source switching and capacity growth scenarios. If these measures are to assist decision-making, uncertainties in life-cycle assessments should be minimised by compliance to a standardised methodology, and by use of input-output-based hybrid techniques. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Data uncertainty issues have constrained the widespread acceptance of life-cycle analysis (LCA) and related methods. This is particularly important in the LCA of fuels due to the wide range of available feedstocks and processing options. Despite recent attempts at standardization, there remain persistent doubts about the general validity of LCA results, often due to uncertainties about data quality. This paper demonstrates the application of possibility theory as a tool for handling life-cycle inventory data imprecision for the case of the net energy balance of coconut methyl ester (CME) as a biodiesel transport fuel. Results derived using a possibililistic computation are contrasted with those arrived at by probabilistic (Monte Carlo) simulation. The two approaches yield comparable results but possibilistic modelling offers significant advantages with respect to computational efficiency. The net energy balance of CME is estimated to be approximately 36 MJ kg(-1), significantly higher than the 28 MJ kg(-1) net energy typical of rapeseed oil methyl ester (RME) relevant to the U.K. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.This paper presents the process life cycle approach to the problem for retrofit of heat exchanger network (HEN). The main objective of HEN retrofit is to find the most economic way of reducing energy consumption in an existing network. However the HEN retrofit has to be considered in the life cycle context, i.e. simulation, conceptual design and detailed design. The first step when performing such a study is the extraction of data from an existing flowsheet to use in the conceptual design of HEN retrofit. The second step is to perform the HEN retrofit, i.e. to find a modification that reduces the energy consumption in the most economic way. Once an option for reduction in heating demand has been identified, the detailed design on heat exchangers that require additional area is performed. It is possible to automate these steps due to advances in software technology and a better understanding of the problem. Typically each step in HEN retrofit project is performed using individual software. The transition from one step to another requires both the flow of data and of knowledge. In our work, a set of rules and logic is used to automatically transfer knowledge between the steps. A design engineer is in complete control both within a step and during the transition from one step to another. A brief description of the existing methods will also be discussed. This will help to understand the strength of the proposed automated procedure in the context of life cycle analysis. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper the value of the exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA) has been analysed. The ELCA uses the framework of the life cycle assessment (LCA) and can be seen as the exergy analysis of a complete life cycle. The value of the ELCA besides the LCA has been discussed. It is shown that the ELCA is a more appropriate instrument to quantify the environmental problem of the depletion of natural resources. This has been tested with a case study of different waste wood treatment routes. In the first model waste wood is co-combusted in a coal power plant, while in the second model waste wood has been used to produce chipboard. The ELCA shows that the production of chipboard gives less depletion of natural resources. Furthermore, in model 3 and 4 coal for generating electricity has been replaced by green wood. The ELCA shows that replacing coal by green wood gives less depletion of natural resources than replacing the waste wood with green wood, while the waste wood is used for generating electricity. However, comparing the four models it can be seen that replacing coal by green wood causes more wasting of natural resources, while the depletion of natural resources decreases. It can be concluded that the ELCA can be used in two ways. First, the ELCA can be used to determine the consumption of natural resources and second, the ELCA can be used to calculate the depletion of natural resources. In the latter case, a distinction has been made between renewable and non-renewable exergy resources. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental consequences from sanitary landfill as well as incineration with power generation were compared in terms of life cycle analysis (LCA) for Laohukeng Waste-disposal Plant that is under consideration in Shenzhen. A variety of differences will be resulted from the two technologies, from which the primary issue that affects the conclusion is if the compensatory phase in power generation can be properly considered in the boundary definition of LCA. Upon the compensatory phase is taken into account in the landfill system, the negative environmental consequences from the landfill will be more significant than those from the incineration with power generation, although the reversed results can be obtained as the compensatory phase is neglected. In addition, mitigation of environmental impacts through the pollutant treatment in the incineration process will be more effective than in the landfill process.This article challenges certain tenets of the theories of reflexive law and ecological modernization. Although farsighted prevention-oriented and structural changes are needed, some proponents of these theories argue that the very industries and firms that create environmental problems can through continuous institutional learning, the application of life-cycle analysis, dialogue and networks with stakeholders, and implementation of "environmental management systems" be transformed into sustainable industries and firms. Although useful, these reforms are insufficient. It is not marginal or incremental changes that are needed for sustainability but rather major product, process, and system transformations-often beyond the capacity of the dominant industries and firms. This article also questions the alleged failure of regulation to stimulate needed technological changes and identifies the conditions under which innovation for sustainability can occur Finally, it discusses differences in needed policies for industrialized and developing countries.The consideration of environmental issues in manufacturing has taken on increased importance in terms of global competitiveness. Life-cycle assessment tools enable analysis of the environmental efficiency of industrial processes. Often these focus on the product, with standardized or customized data provided on current processing practice. Environmental management of the total materials cycle must provide tools to evaluate the effect of changes in processing or material substitutions on a global basis, where materials use, reuse, component remanufacture, and materials recycling can be considered and the overall costs and impacts assessed. In this article, two examples of net-shape processing are discussed from this total materials cycle perspective.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out in order to compare the environmental impacts of five alternative treatment scenarios of sewage sludge in the French context. The scenarios were composed of one main process (incineration, agricultural land application, or landfill), one stabilization process (lime stabilization, composting, or anaerobic digestion) and transports of sludge. Average data on literature, real site data and simulation result were used for accomplishing the assessment. The indicator results of environmental impact were normalized by reference contributions of one person in the West-Europe over I year in order to better understand their relative magnitude. The normalization results were finally weighted to give one aggregated result of the comparative LCA with sensitivity analysis on the weighing factors. The study result showed: the combination of anaerobic digestion and agricultural land application was most environmentally friendly tanks to less emissions and less consumption of energy; the most important substances contributing to human toxicity and ecotoxicity were heavy metals released from the atmospheric effluent of incineration and from the sludge applied to agricultural fields; finally appropriate tools were required to control the non-point-source pollutants like the methane of the dispersed landfill gas and the effluent gases of transport vehicles. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Bagasse is the fibrous residue generated during sugar production and can be a desirable feedstock for fuel ethanol production. Excess bagasse left after satisfying the mills' energy requirements can be used in a bioconvesion process to make ethanol. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to quantify the environmental benefits of diverting excess bagasse to ethanol production as opposed to disposing it through the current practice of open-field burning. The LCA results demonstrated lower net values for the ethanol scenario for the following: carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons (except methane), SOx, NOx, particulates, carbon dioxide, methane, and fossil energy consumption. Reduced carbon dioxide and methane emissions for the ethanol scenario also lower its greenhouse potential. Additional drivers are the lower values observed for the following impact assessment categories for the ethanol scenario: depletion of natural resources, air acidification potential. eutrophication potential, human toxicity potential, and air odor potential. Specifically, deployment of the bioethanol option, due to its significantly lower greenhouse potential, can be facilitated via the Clean Development Mechanism, as specified under the Kyoto Protocol. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) may well be powering millions of cars by 2020. At its end-of-life, each car will have a redundant PEMFC stack. The EU vehicle waste directive sets tough recycling and re-use requirements for the cars of the future. The criteria for assessing the end-of-life options are based on technical, economic and environmental feasibility. The optimum strategy will require stack dismantling and separation of the major components. Steel and aluminium parts can enter the general recycling stream, but the membrane electrode assembly and bipolar plates will require a specialised recycling process. One option is to shred the MEA, dissolve and recover the membrane, burn off the carbon, and recycle the platinum and ruthenium catalysts using solvent extraction. The heaviest part of the PEMFC stack is the bipolar plates. If carbon fibre based, the bipolar plates could enter a fluidised bed recovery process where the constituent materials are recovered for re-use. The EU vehicle waste directive sets high recycling targets based on weight, and thus it is strongly advisable for the relatively heavy bipolar plates to be recycled, even though energy recovery by incineration may be a cheaper and possible more environmentally benign option. The EU vehicle directive will put pressure on the end-of-life options for the PEMFC stack to be weighted towards recycling and re-use; it will have a significant impact on the design and end-of-life options for the PEMFC. The overall effect of this pressure on the end-of-life treatment of the PEMFC and the consequential contribution to environmental life cycle impacts is discussed. It is concluded that a range of external pressures influence the selection of a suitable end-of-life management strategy, and while opportunities for re-use of components are limited, all components of the PEMFC stack could in principle be recycled. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.An extensive R&D project-Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool for the Management of Environmental Issues in the Finnish Metals Industry-was carried out as part of the Finnish Environmental Cluster Research Programme 1998-2000. Life cycle inventory (LCI) data of the main product groups-steel plates and coils, steel bars. steel wires. stainless steel, copper, nickel, zinc and aluminium were produced and company specific environmental impact assessments were made based on these. The LCI data was interpreted by an impact assessment model based on decision analysis and methods used in life cycle impact assessment. The results revealed that the Finnish metals industry is far from homogenous as regards its environmental impacts. The life cycle assessment (LCA) data was also used to identify important areas of environmental protection needed in the industry from the standpoint of eco-efficiency. Notwithstanding the current good level of environmental protection in the Finnish metals industry, reduction of energy use, deposits, sludges, dusts and emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and metals needs to continue. It is possible to upgrade eco-efficiency by producing more metals and by-products from smaller amounts of raw materials and by recovering wastes. Increasing further the reusability and recyclability of metals is also a desirable trend. In the long term, eco-efficiency can best be improved by decreasing the use of metals by developing and better utilising their properties and by increasing the life times of metallic end products. There is also a need for R&D work on land use and landscape issues, as well as the environmental impacts of metals, which cannot currently be properly handled in LCAs. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.We present an assessment of installing a regional heating and cooling system in the Nishi(West)-Shinjuku area of Tokyo, Japan. In this assessment, we estimate the CO2 payback-time, when air source heat-pumps (ASHP) are replaced with a ground-source heat-pump (GSHP) system. We calculate CO2 emissions from transportation of the cooling tower, materials for the underground heat exchanger, and the digging loads and transportation loads incurred when the GSHP system is installed to replace the air source cooling system. The total CO2 emission from the installation of the GSHP system was estimated to be 67,701t-CO2, with 87% of the CO2 emissions resulting from the digging process. CO2 emissions from the operation of the GSHP system were estimated from the total energy-efficiency of the system and the heating and cooling demand in Nishi-Shinjuku area. Using the GSHP system, 33,935t-CO2 would be emitted per year. We estimate that using the GSHP system would result in a reduction of 54% of the CO2 emissions, or 39,519t-CO2 per year. From these results, the CO2 payback-time for replacing the conventional ASHP in the 1 km(2) studied region with the GSHP system is assessed to be 1.7 years. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a hierarchic framework for environmentally conscious design. The framework integrates both product designers and stakeholders to evaluate not only the product features but also its environmental burden. In evaluating the product's burden, a life cycle assessment of the product is conducted through input-output analysis so that a comprehensive inventory of the product's actions and reactions to the environment could be documented. The analytic hierarchy procedure (AHP) is used to develop priority indices for customer requirements to highlight key features that must be present in the product. Subsequently, the quality function deployment is used to match design requirements to customer requirements. A cost-effective design plan is then finally developed. This framework adopts a systemic approach and ensures that environmentally conscious products are designed and manufactured. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.Regional differences on the strategy against crisis to environment make a common frame invisible to promote the effective directions toward significant reduction of total mass requirement or dematerialization. This overview summarizes the intimate discussions, proposals and advisable comments at the first US-Japan Workshop on the Environmentally Benign Manufacturing and Materials Processing at Hawaii on the October 5th, 2001. in order to integrate the state-of-the-art research activities in both countries. In the discussion over the recyclable materials, value/cost-quality diagram is used to redefine the recycling process and to characterize various processes in the environmentally benign manufacturing. Influence of light-weight material selection on the dematerialization is discussed to find out a new direction. Importance of the trade-off-balancing on the high performance for long term use is reconsidered to search for a solution in the design of innovative manufacturing and materials processing. Mass flow analysis in the life cycle assessment is recognized as a tool to make eco-system design for industrial ecology, Several issues for further research are also argued to promote the related activities to the environmentally benign manufacturing and materials processing.Based on the review of ten years progress of ecomaterials' research and development, a barrier free processing is proposed as a next step of ecomaterials. In the first place, the development of ecomaterial is reviewed. The concept of ecomaterial has been widely spread in the design of materials as life-cycle thinking and has been realized in the various area as a form of consumer material, commodity material and energy-transmission material with the keyword of "hazardous substance free", "green environmental profile", "higher recyclability" and "higher materials efficiency". The importance of the connection of the ecomaterial with DfE (design for the environment) is emphasized as the next step, The existence of the barrier in the material processing technology between ecomaterial-selection and DfF is pointed out, The barrier on the input-flow of the process makes it difficult to use of environmental friendly raw materials. The barrier on the output-flow of the process prevents it from the flexible formability to give the shape to realize DIE, In order to solve those problems, a new research project, named as "Study on the Barrier-Free Processing of Materials for Life-Cycle Design for Environment", has been launched.In this study, the environmental impact of recycling portable nickel-cadraium (NiCd) batteries in Sweden is evaluated. A life cycle assessment approach was used to identify life cycle activities with significant impact, the influence of different recycling rates and different time boundaries for emissions of landfilled metals. Excluding the user phase of the battery, 65% of the primary energy is used in the manufacture of batteries while 32% is used in the production of raw materials. Metal emissions from batteries to water originate (96-98%) from landfilling and incineration. The transportation distance for the collection of batteries has no significant influence on energy use and emissions. Batteries manufactured with recycled nickel and cadmium instead of virgin metals have 16% lower primary energy use. Recycled cadmium and nickel metal require 46 and 75% less primary energy, respectively, compared with extraction and refining of virgin metal. Considering an infinite time perspective, the potential metal emissions are 300-400 times greater than during the initial 100 years. From an environmental perspective, the optimum recycling rate for NiCd batteries tends to be close to 100%. It may be difficult to introduce effective incitements to increase the battery collection rate. Cadmium should be used in products that are likely to be collected at the end of their life, otherwise collection and subsequent safe storage in concentrated form seems to offer the best solution to avoid dissipative losses. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.In the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, standards for risk assessment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been set. The criteria and information basis for the risk assessment of GMOs have been modified by the EU Directive 2001/18/EC. Various approaches to further improve the criteria for environmental risk assessment of GMOs are described in this study. Reports on the ecological impacts of the cultivation of certain non-transgenic crop plants with novel or improved traits as analogy models to transgenic plants showed that the effects of agricultural practice can be at least equally important as the effects of gene transfer and invasiveness, although the latter currently play a major role in risk assessment of transgenic crops. Based on these results the applicability of the methodology of 'Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)' for genetically modified plants in comparison with conventionally bred and organically grown crop plants was evaluated. The methodology was regarded as applicable with some necessary future improvements. In current projects, the assessment of toxicology and allergenicity of GM crops are analysed, and suggestions for standardization are developed. Based on results and recommendations from these efforts there are still the challenges of how to operationalize the precautionary principle and how to take into account ecologically sensitive ecosystems, including centres of origin and centres of genetic diversity. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.Long term growth and well being of the chemical industry requires economically and ecologically conscious process engineering. Traditional process engineering methods fall short of meeting this need due to their treating the environment as being secondary to economic objectives. Life cycle assessment and design methods broaden the scope of traditional methods, but focus primarily on the environmental impact of emissions while ignoring the contribution of ecological products and services. Taking nature for granted could provide misleading results since natural products and processes are a significant contributor to all industrial products and processes. Methods from systems ecology do account for ecological inputs, but ignore the impact of emissions. This paper presents an original approach for the joint analysis of industrial and ecological systems. This approach considers inputs from both ecological and economic resources, as well as the impact of emissions. It uses thermodynamics to exploit the synergy between methods from process systems engineering, systems ecology, and life cycle assessment to overcome the shortcomings of methods from each field. The approach is based on the fact that growth and sustenance of both industrial and ecological processes are limited by the available energy and its conversion to useful work. Thus, the embodied energy (emergy), that is, the energy used directly or indirectly to make a product or service is a thermodynamic measure of ecological investment or cost, while exergy loss provides a holistic measure of the impact of emissions. Together, emergy and exergy analysis can provide insight into the environmental performance and sustainability of the industrial process or product. The proposed framework is broadly applicable to assist decision making in chemical and other engineering tasks, Challenges and research opportunities for making this framework practical are identified. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.A novel Life-Cycle Assessment model (Fire-LCA) has been defined for the determination of the environmental impact of measures taken to attain a high level of fire safety. This study, which represents the first application of this LCA model, concentrates on a comparison between a TV with an enclosure manufactured with a flame retardant (FR) plastic (V0-rated high impact polystyrene, HIPS, typical for the US market) and one manufactured with a non-flame retardant (HB-rated HIPS, typical for the European market). A fire model has been defined based on international statistics, which indicate that use of V0 rated enclosure material essentially removes the risk of TV fires while approximately 165 TV fires occur per million TVs in Europe each year where the enclosure material is breached. The application of the model indicates that emissions of some key species (such as dibenzodioxins and PAH) are actually lower for the TV with the FR enclosure than for the TV with the NFR enclosure. This has direct reprercussions for the assessment of the environmental impact of the FR TV relative to that of the NFR TV. Finally, when considering the risk associated with the use of flame retardants, it is also important to consider the risk associated with fires. Based on the in-depth analysis of available fire statistics, conducted as a part of this study, it has been estimated that as many as 160 people may die each year in Europe as a direct result of TV fires and as many as 2000 may be injured in the same period. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.We analyse the wood and concrete designs of the Walludden building described by Borjesson et al. (Energy Policy 28 (2000) 575) in terms of their embodied energy, employing an environmentally extended input-output framework in a tiered hybrid life-cycle assessment. and in a structural path analysis. We illustrate the complexity of the inter-industry supply chains underlying the upstream energy requirements for the building options. Land demonstrate that higher-order inputs are difficult to capture in a conventional process analysis. Our Calculations show that Borjesson and Gustavsson's estimates of energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions are underestimated by a factor of about 2, and that corresponding greenhouse gas balances are positive at about 30 t C-eq. Nevertheless, Borjesson and Gustavsson's general result the concrete-framed building causing higher emissions still holds. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Current methods for life-cycle assessment are only partially in line with the precautionary principle.Two examples are considered in this work in order to show possible settings for decision making in the strategic field of energy: transport vehicles and wastewater treatment plant that are powered by a fuel cell, The environmental impact, measured by evaluating hydrogen life cycle as fuel, varies depending on the source of hydrogen, the process, and the complexity of the productive chain. Nowadays, starting from this point of view, it is possible to get a lot more benefits when hydrogen is directly produced in situ from renewable sources of energy and it is used to make a fuel cell work, as an alternative to an external electric energy source, Future work must be focalized to decrease technological development gap between fuel cells and clean hydrogen extraction, before use of fuel cell would be massive. (C) 2001 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of three different automotive paint scenarios: (a) solventborne primer-waterborne basecoat-solventborne clearcoat, (b) powder primer-waterborne basecoat-solventborne clearcoat, and (c) powder primer-waterborne basecoat-powder clearcoat were investigated. Scenarios (a) and (b) are in production by the U.S. automotive industry and scenario (c) is a potential future goal. The scenarios modeled assume a greenfield plant, considering a mid-size sport utility vehicle that is painted in two separate colors. A complete life cycle analysis of the materials and processes was carried out using commercial state-of-art software. The analysis showed that a transition from solvent-based to powder-based coatings for the primer and clearcoat leads to an improvement in the environmental performance of the paint processes. The decrease in total energy consumption, water usage, and sludge generation is 22%, 34%, and 27%, respectively. The paint scenario comprised of powder primer-waterborne basecoat-powder clearcoat will minimize the environmental impacts of the painting processes for all the metrics examined in this study.(T)he economics of renewable energy are the largest barrier to renewable penetration. Nevertheless, the strong desire to reduce environmental emissions is considered a great support for renewable energy sources. In this paper, a full analysis for the cost of the kWh of electricity generated from different systems actually used in Egypt is presented. Also renewable energy systems are proposed and their costs are analyzed. The analysis considers the external cost of emissions from different generating systems. A proposed large scale PV plant of 3.3 MW, and a wind farm 11.25 MW grid connected at different sites are investigated. A life cycle cost analysis for each system was performed using the present value criterion. The comparison results showed that wind energy generation has the lowest cost, followed by a combined cycle-natural gas fired system. A photovoltaic system still uses comparatively expensive technology for electricity generation; even when external costs are considered the capital cost of photovoltaic needs to be reduced by about 60% in order to be economically competitive. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the study was to assess the amount of energy input and emissions of CO2, CO, NOx, SOx, N2O, HC, CH4 and particles discharge to the environment in association to the following stages of a forwarder's life cycle; (1) material premanufacturing, (2) fabrication of individual components, (3) assembly of the vehicle, and (4) associated transports. The premanufacturing phase accounted for 65% of the total energy consumption, 70% of the CO2 emissions, 95% of CO emissions and 65% of the NOx emissions. Transports showed the smallest contribution to the environmental impact among the forwarder life cycle phases examined. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The elaborate characterisation. and specification of materials used for decorating statues and buildings can be achieved by means of complementary methods of investigation such as analytical light and electron microscopy, thermal analysis, X-ray and neutron diffractometry, and various types of spectroscopy. The results cannot only reveal the historically relevant exploration and refinement techniques of natural resources, but also the types of application on different supports. In addition deterioration and erosion processes can be monitored and eventually conservation and restoration procedures may be improved. Here, we present results of investigations on materials, i.e. pigments which have been applied for the decoration of Nefertete's bust and-practically in the same period-for the illumination of the so-called Talatat blocks of the then dismantled temple erected at Karnak under the reign of Akhenaten. Special attention was paid to the blue pigments, which-in both cases-could be identified unambiguously by means of X-ray diffractometry and Raman spectroscopy with the so-called Egyptian Blue, CaCuSi4O10. Other materials used in the polychromatic decorations are iron oxides (red), amorphous carbon/quartz (yellow) as well as the organic composite soot/bee wax mixtures (black). Obviously these mentioned pigments are chemically inert and therefore still visible, whereas other pigments such as green may have vanished more or less completely. In summary our investigations confirm and further reveal the skill of the Egyptian artisans and may elucidate a more detailed "life cycle analysis" of the used materials, spreading from the natural resources to the production and application and they finally may yield some useful hints for the advancement of our present reconstruction of historical developments in Egypt. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a method to calculate economic and ecological indicators to evaluate waste in regard to material recycling. As material recycling is still a preferred option for closing the loop of EEE it is important to have an indicator which offers the feasibility to evaluate the benefits and burdens of different recycling routes according to the contained materials and elements. Depending on the description of the economic and ecological potential of waste the requirements and calculation method will be discussed.The intelligent application of electronics may lead to reduced energy consumption and reduced environmental impacts, although electronics may have considerable environmental impacts and energy consumption during production and use. A LCA study, conducted together with Continental AG and Motorola, demonstrates this fact and points out how these effects can be quantified by suitable modeling and calculation. Subject-matter of this study was the comparison of the automotive starter-generator ISAD with a conventional system including separate starter and generator.Commercial and industrial activities are being found to have significant effects on natural ecological systems, increasing the importance of evaluating these activities in relation to the earth's "carrying capacity". Several types of environmental impact commonly associated with business activities have been selected,for evaluation. These include global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical ozone formation, resource depletion, human toxicity, and ecotoxicity. For each type of impact, numerous sources of information have been used to estimate the carrying capacity at the scale appropriate for the impact. Various scientific models also have been employed. The carrying capacity estimates are a primary input to the Sustainability Target Method (STM), an environmental performance metric that relates carrying capacity to individual products and services. The STM is a basis for using carrying capacity along with product impact and value to provide a practical sustainability target for businesses.The adoption of Information Technology (IT) affects energy demand. One component of this larger issue is changes in energy use driven by e-commerce. This work undertakes a case study of energy consumption in sales and distribution via b2c e-commerce and conventional retail for the Japanese book sector. The four factors considered are: packaging, transport from publisher to home or bookstore, consumer travel to and from the bookstore, and building consumption at home or bookstore. Results of the simulation of total energy use indicate that E-commerce consumes slightly more than traditional retailing, basically due to additional packaging. Although one might expect that substitution of personal automobile travel for courier services would favor e-commerce, the difference is small due to the multi-purpose use of cars. Energy use in bookstores is very similar to that for consumers making an online purchase at home. While overall consumption for both systems is quite similar, the structure of energy use is very different, suggesting new priorities for strategizing energy-efficiency. Important factors influencing the energy use of b2c E-commerce include packaging, loading factors of courier trucks, number of trips/delivery, and residential energy consumption.Green Design and Manufacturing is concerned to be the most important technology to realize sustainable development of manufacturing industry at present, but the lack of efficient evaluating tool to assess the environment impact of products' whole life cycle has become the bottleneck of green products' design and manufacturing technology. In addition, it can be found that most LCA tools cannot work together with, disassembly analysis; as a result, the conclusions of LCA sometimes are unconvincing. In this paper, at first, a series of model were built to describe and analysis the life cycle environment impact of products, such as the function model of life cycle environment impact assessment system, products' life cycle process tree model, information. describing model, and products' retirement decision simulation model, et al. In the information-describing model, by the use of object-oriented technology, it is convenient to define and describe the product life cycle environment characteristics. Moreover, in the retirement decision simulation model, Directed Graph Theory was used to describe the complex product disassembly structure, and thus the disassembly sequence and disassembly depth can be got easily. Based on the above models, the assessment system integrates the disassembly/recycle assessment and Life Cycle Assessment, and thus the evaluation result is more exact and practicable. Finally, a frame of Green Design Decision Supporting system was proposed And we are endeavoring to develop the software tool based on this frame.Industrial and commercial activities are being found to have significant effects on natural ecological systems, making it increasingly important to evaluate the environmental aspects of these activities in relation to the earth's "carrying capacity". The Sustainability Target Method (STM) utilizes carrying capacity estimates and economic information to provide a practical sustainability target for individual businesses and products. The carrying capacity is combined with economic and life cycle inventory data to determine the relative indicator Resource Productivity for environmental performance and the absolute indicator Eco-Efficiency for sustainability. The STM is applied to evaluate the production of common materials related to electronics products and the generation of electrical energy using various fossil fuel sources. The results are compared to two other methods.Environmental impacts associated with the manufacture of microchips are characterized through material and energy analysis of inputs into processes in the production chain. The total weight of secondary fossil fuel and chemical inputs to produce and use a single 2-gram 32MB DRAM chip are estimated at 1,600 grams and 72 grams, respectively. The production chain yielding silicon wafers from quartz uses 160 times the energy required for typical silicon, indicating that purification can be energy intensive. Due to its extremely low-entropy, organized structure, the materials intensity of a microchip is orders of magnitude higher than that of "traditional" goods. Future analysis of semiconductor and other low entropy high-tech goods needs to include the use of secondary materials, especially for purification.Ecological aspects have gained increasing attention during recent decades in urban land use planning and site development. However, relatively little attention has been paid so far to mass and energy flows of urban infrastructure and utility systems in particular, in spite of their significant contribution to the total mass. In the first part of this paper, the mass of water mains and sewers is, quantified in relation to the mass of buildings. The second part of the paper deals with the development of the stock of water mains and sewers from the past to the future. Future rehabilitation needs in terms of annual mileage of pipelines reaching the end of their service life are forecast with a cohort survival model. In the third part of the paper, some preliminary results are presented on the mass and energy flows of water mains and sewers. Conventional life cycle assessment methodology is applied to pipelines of different materials.This contribution focuses on the importance of sustainability in the building sector. The underlying idea being that sustainability and durability must be considered jointly. Different models are presented to determine the degree of sustainability, focussing on: the degradation factor, life cycle assessment, the Delft ladder of priorities, high-grade applications, design for recycling, design for disassembly, and the ecocost-value ratio. Examples are given of case studies in which these models have been applied successfully.Sustainability is becoming an increasing influence on the way buildings and infrastructure are designed, constructed and occupied. With its emphasis on the 'triple bottom line' issues of environmental protection, economic growth and social progress, the principle of sustainability forms the basis of an increasing number of mandatory and voluntary initiatives within the EC and its Member States. Within the UK, sustainable development, (and its implications for energy use, materials, resources and social equity), is encouraged by government through the use of sectoral strategies and its incorporation in government policy relating to construction. Within this policy context, this paper will consider the UK cement and concrete sector on a number of levels from compliance with European and national legislation to voluntary improvements to manufacturing performance. For example, the industry has been proactive in its early uptake of environmental management systems such as EMAS and ISO 14000 and its development of life cycle assessment of products. More recently, these have been extended to the inclusion of sustainability, and the development of company and sectoral sustainability strategies. However, with the construction industry producing almost 20% of the UK's waste and the occupation of buildings accounting for about 50% of UK CO2, this paper will also focus on efforts to reduce the burden on UK plc via good practice using cement and concrete in construction. There will be a discussion of the use of fabric energy storage capacity of concrete to reduce or remove the need for air conditioning in buildings, recycled or waste materials within concrete and various methods to reduce waste.During the design process of heating and air conditioning systems, the designer must analyse various factors in order to determine the best design options. Therefore, the environmental aspects of a product should be included in the analysis and selection of design options if an environmentally - aware design is to be produced. If one wishes to assess a product's environmental impact, its whole life cycle must be studied. The Life Cycle Assessment (or LCA) methodology is an example of one kind of environmental analysis which included the entire life-cycle of a product. However, this method has some limitations. It is unable to tackle the total environmental impact on a number of different levels (e.g. materials, energy, waste) at the same time. To overcome some problems in the LCA method, an alternative method, the so-called Eco-Indicator method has been proposed. Since it is based on a weighting method, only a single score for the total environmental impact is calculated. The application of this method for the optimisation of heating and air-conditioning systems is presented in this paper.There are many scales that can be employed to calculate net greenhouse gas emissions from bioenergy systems, ranging from single point source (stack gas) measurement, to full, multi-layered life cycle analyses considering all of the inputs and outputs throughout the economy. At an appropriate scale within these extremes, a method can be selected to support verification activities related to project-based trading of greenhouse gas emissions. The boundaries of the analysis must be carefully selected in order to meet the twin goals of the verification activity: (1) to meet scientific standards for emission balance quantification, and (2) to meet cost-effectiveness criteria of the emission trading community. A methodology is proposed for verifying greenhouse gas reductions arising from substitution of bioenergy fuel for fossil fuel in electric generation. The method utilizes an incremental progression through the fuel life cycle, pausing at each level to evaluate the potential benefits and uncertainties of a next-level expansion. A case study is analyzed for greenhouse gas benefits of switchgrass substitution for coal combustion in an existing electric generation facility. Using the incremental technique to set boundaries on the analysis, replacement of coal with switchgrass is found to provide a reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions at a rate of 102 g CO2-equivalent per million Joules (g/MJ) of switchgrass input. At full production, co-firing 5 percent switchgrass, the emission reduction would total more than 305,500 metric tons CO2-eq annually. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In several cases, life cycle assessment has been used as one supplementary tool in the planning of soil. remediation. Three life cycle assessment based software tools for soil remediation planning are compared. One example of soil treatment in a bioreactor is investigated by using the software "Umweltbilanzierung von Altlastensanierungsverfahren" (version 1999). The decision support tool "risk reduction - environmental merit - costs" (REC or RMK, internet version released in 2000) combines risk analysis, cost analysis with an approach, which is similar to life cycle assessment. The software "Umweltbilanzierung von Altlastensanierungsverfahren" ("Environmental balancing of soil remediation measures") of the German state Baden-Wilrttemberg compares the environmental burdens of the remediation with the results of a risk assessment. The software "Environmental/economic evaluation and the optimising of contaminated site remediation" analyses "environmental costs" and "Environmental benefits" with an life cycle assessment approach. The main innovative part in the three software products is the calculation of potential environmental burdens (Screening life cycle assessments) of soil remediation measures. The degree of transparency of the three different life cycle assessment approaches is discussed.This paper focuses on the use of Geographic. Information Systems (GIS) within the City of Los Angles (LA) municipal government in the context of eco-industrial redevelopment of brownfield sites. LA, like many cities around the world, has implemented a Brownfields Program to address the problem of urban blight arising from environmental impairment. The program has now expanded to consider eco-industrial concepts. The increasing and dual interests of quality job generation through industrial development and community-focused environmental protection have initiated investigative efforts on eco-industrial redevelopment by the City's Brownfields Team. Although the definition. and understanding of eco-industrial development varies, the City's efforts revolve around a broadly interpreted encouragement of networks among businesses to achieve maximum economic and environmental performance. This may include waste exchange, sustainable design, pollution prevention, service sharing, and life cycle analysis. The "Industrial Symbiosis" park in Kalundborg, Denmark, while exemplary, does not provide a model directly relevant to LA, with its different mix of industries and scarcity of undeveloped large tracts of land. Instead, the Brownfields Program may adapt the traditional model to its dense urban fabric by facilitating waste and materials exchanges among existing businesses and using redeveloping brownfields to fill-in the gaps in potential eco-industrial relationships. This approach extends the eco-industrial concept to, redevelopment by involving brownfields themselves as an integral component of the reclamation, recycling and reuse process-a scenario that is highly relevant to densifying urban settings with intermittent patterns of decline. The paper illustrates how demonstration GIS analyses on target areas will assess existing industrial conditions, facilitate optimal matching of businesses, and inform policy making for future sites.Within the context of sustainable development, it is important to always consider the impact of activities, such as the preparation of brownfield construction sites (subsurface remediation/demolition of buildings), on the environment. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the consideration of environmental impacts, including those resulting from the remediation of contaminated sites, is defined in the German Federal Soil Protection Act. To date, first "isolated" approaches for the environmental balancing of brownfield redevelopment measures exist which are comparable to the life-cycle assessment of industrial products. The Environmental Protection Agency of the Federal State of Baden-Wurttemberg (LfU) has developed a software tool for the environmental balancing of remediation techniques [1]; in Switzerland, investigations concerning the ecological impacts of building rubble disposal exist [2]. An examination or environmental balancing of complete brownfield redevelopment projects (subsurface remediation of the property, demolition of buildings, preparation of the site for new residence) has not been published so far. This may be due to the difficulties in obtaining the extensive data necessary for such a procedure. However, an extensive environmental balancing of brownfield redevelopment projects could be the basis for both an ecological and an economic optimization of brownfield redevelopment. At the research facility for subsurface remediation (VEGAS) at the Universitat Stuttgart, a research project regarding environmental balancing has been started with the aim of extensively balancing brownfield, redevelopment projects under ecological criteria. The main objective of the project is the development of a readily. applicable instrument for the estimation of the ecological impacts during the redevelopment of brownfield sites for construction purposes. This tool should help to determine the ecological consequences of civil works quickly and easily and serve as a basis for an ecological optimization of the projects. In order to reach this aim, numerous project examples are being examined and transferred into available environmental balancing tools. First results of these investigations show that the transport of contaminated soil and building rubble for off-site treatment or disposal has a high impact on the environment, which is reflected by the high total energy consumption and emissions resulting, amongst other things, from the distances to soil washing plants or to plants which recycle building debris. Furthermore, natural area is consumed if the excavated area is filled with clean gravel from a gravel pit or if the contaminated soil is deposited in a landfill. Under ecological criteria, in-situ and on-site remediation techniques have thus far proven to be better methods than off-site techniques. During further investigations, the ecological impacts of new innovative technologies for subsurface remediation will be determined.There is a risk-associated with most things in the world, and all things have a life cycle unto themselves, even brownfields. Many components can be described by a "cycle of life." For example, five such components are life form, chemical, process, activity, and idea, although many more may exist. Brownfields may touch upon several of these life cycles. Each life cycle can be represented as independent software; therefore, a software technology structure is being formulated to allow for the seamless linkage of software products, representing various life-cycle aspects. Because classes of these life cycles tend to be independent of each other, the current research programs and efforts do not have to be revamped; therefore, this unified life-cycle paradigm builds upon current technology and is backward compatible while embracing future technology. Only when two of these life cycles coincide and one impacts the other is there connectivity and a transfer of information at the interface. The current framework approaches (e.g., FRAMES, 3MRA, etc.) have a design that is amenable to capturing 1) many of these underlying philosophical concepts to assure backward compatibility of diverse independent assessment frameworks and 2) linkage communication to help transfer the needed information at the points of intersection. The key effort will be to identify 1) linkage points (i.e., portals) between life cycles; 2) the type and form of data passing between life cycles, and 3) conditions-when life cycles interact and communicate. This paper discusses design aspects associated with a unified life-cycle analysis, which can support not only brownfields but also other types of assessments.A new method for stochastic embodied greenhouse gas emissions modelling of construction materials is proposed. The method progressively integrates process analysis data into a prior probability distribution of embodied greenhouse gas emissions for a given material drawn from a disaggregated expansion of the UK Environmental Accounts. Current analyses of embodied CO2eq emissions, whether performed at the economic sector or individual building system boundary level, are deterministic. Such deterministic models do not allow for the easy analysis of potential CO2eq emissions reductions obtainable through preferential selection of low embodied CO2eq material suppliers within material supply chains. Such analyses are important for assessing the extent to which emissions reductions can be achieved through economic mechanisms which drive preferential selection of low embodied carbon materials back through the supply chain - such as carbon taxes. It is argued that the need for estimating both the uncertainty, and the variability, in embodied CO2eq data is best addressed through the development of a fully stochastic modelling framework, and that such frameworks are methodologically more appropriate for Kyoto Protocol compliance policy formulation.Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) present a unique challenge with regard to minimising their environmental impact. Apart from the packaging, which can potentially be recycled, the components are designed to be used (for nutrition, to clean, groom etc) and then disposed of to waste. How can the environmental impact of such products be minimised so as to ensure their sustainable use? The key is the application of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to understand where the major impacts of products are from cradle to grave (or cradle to cradle in a true sustainability sense) and to incorporate this understanding into product design and supply. In Unilever we recognise the need for good stewardship in the use of resources (i) to utilise ingredients which are safe in use and subsequently degrade to have no harmful environmental impact and (ii) to continuously reduce the environmental of our manufacturing operations. This is eco-efficiency applied to the consumption of materials, energy and water and emissions to land, water and air. In all aspects we seek to continuously improve performance. However the major environmental impacts of our products are in the raw material supply chain (agriculture for foods) and in use and disposal (home and personal care products): These impacts cannot be reduced by business operating alone but only in partnership with key stakeholders. These include suppliers, consumers and key opinion formers. The principle of partnership underpins the three major initiatives: Sustainable Agriculture Sustainable Fisheries Sustainable Water which drive the way to sustainable operations. They all include equally important aspects of corporate social responsibility. In addition, environmental impact considerations are becoming essential criteria with product innovation. "Design for Excellence" is a framework which integrates, inter alia, functionality, delighting consumers and environmental improvements into winning product design.Considerations of cost, high speed, high reliability, high manufacturability and environmental compatibility have to be taken into account in future product development of electronic products. To simulate the environmental compatibility, for example a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be performed. An electronic product usually consists of hundreds to thousands of electronic and mechanical components. To perform an LCA is very time consuming if a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is done for every single component. This is not needed because the unit processes in the upstream product system in some cases are the same for the ingoing components. In this paper a generic model for LCI is developed and applied to one product system (a business telephone). In this model, the components are divided into main groups and then into sub-groups that result in process modules for unit processes that are similar for the ingoing components. There already exist some models that describe the LCI of electronic products in other ways. This model takes the LCI strategy for the manufacturing phase one step further by identifying which processes constitute part of the common denominator of the upstream product system and proposes which ones should be inventoried first. The developed model makes it possible to obtain a higher resolution and level of understanding compared to earlier models with respect to both components and processes.The Royal Academy of Engineering has funded a project to produce case study teaching material relating sustainable development issues to undergraduate students within the School of Design, Engineering and Computing at Bournemouth University. This is a challenge because it is a complex wide-ranging subject matter and there is no unique solution. The principal learning vehicle is an interactive case study approach available to students through the Internet. This paper addresses the specific educational challenges of student-centred web-based learning and teaching strategies applied to the complex subject of sustainable development. Pedagogical components of variety, action, application, interaction, assessment, feedback and evaluation are discussed and related to the learning and teaching of the subject using the web. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) software is included as a teaching tool and its role when interfaced with case studies is discussed.Within recent research trends and an increased interest in targeting not only product modeling but product life cycle modeling as a whole, for feature technology used to support and enhance mainly computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, new dimensions of requirements arise. Further demands on higher automation, more flexibility, enhanced man-machine interaction and increased built-in knowledge of application systems, require sophisticated (system) interfaces and perhaps even local re-design of feature frameworks currently developed. To combine and relate data from both a product model and a life cycle inventory data base, currently several (in most cases manual, non optimized) methods were employed. However, they usually all ignore the potential of predefined structures and soft technologies now-a-days integrated within a product model. Within the scope of the work described in this paper, the focus will be on studying and discussing the approach to extend a feature model in order to explicitly utilize feature technology within product life cycle assessment. In particular methods and structures for two assessment approaches namely discrete and continuous life cycle assessment will be introduced and discussed.Recent concern for the environment and high competition in globalized markets pose eminent requirements to the producing industry, including small and medium sized enterprises. Envisioned goals of a eco-design combined with a drastical reduction of product development time and increase of customized features of products require new strategies and tools. One solution subject to international investigation is the development of modular products. This approach we enhance by integrating life cycle assessment. Work done in this field was concentrated on developing methods to define either a product's platform architecture or relationships between product modules and documented customer needs within the design analysis of product families. Unfortunately, all of these approaches failed to include a framework to enable also the integration of life cycle assessment. Within the scope of the work described in this paper, we target fundamental problems within the design of product families regarding the integration of life cycle assessment and economic application of information technology, suitable in terms of cost and performance for small and medium sized enterprises. The application field, where first case studies were undertaken and real product models implemented was within the design of parallel-shaft speed reducers.In preparing and justifying transportation policies. it is not uncommon to make use of emission factors. However, such factors are not used for cycling and walking because it is assumed that such activities have zero-valued emissions. This work suggests that this is an invalid approach and estimates UK-based carbon dioxide emission factors for such activities for a large number of individuals. When compared to emission factors for automobiles, the results Lire surprising. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, the authors have calculated the cumulative energy demand and cumulative greenhouse effect for three renewable energy technologies, namely, wind energy, solar photovoltaic, and solar water heating (SWH) system, corresponding to typical climatic conditions in India. The life cycle assessment of these systems (1.5 MW windmill, 35W (P) SPV, 2 m(2) and 100 lt. SWH systems) has yielded the parameters energy yield ratio (EYR) and emission coefficient. EYR for these three technologies are found to be from 9.59 to 31.11, 0.58 to 0.91, and 2.32 to 7.14, respectively. Variation of emission coefficients is from 2.40 to 7.86, 83.72 to 133.10, and 19.88 to 61.06 kg CO2 per GJ delivered from the three technologies, respectively. Their corresponding correlation has been fitted with an algebraic expression having a correlation coefficient of 0.91.In this study the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure to the synthesis of methanol is presented. Methanol has been selected for its large potential market and for its several applications in both the energy (either fuel or raw material for gasoline production) and chemical industry (intermediate). Four different synthetic routes have been considered, covering various options from Syngas to recovered carbon dioxide. The results of the LCA study are discussed and compared. Syngas has been produced either from steam- or dry-reforming of methane. In the latter case, CO2 recovered from thermal power plants has been considered for use as oxidant. The results show that heat recovery in the synthesis of methanol from Syngas has a very positive effect reducing the environmental impact and the energy consumption. The combination of steam and CO, reforming of methane produces an important reduction of the environmental impact with energy saving. The less polluting route is CO2 hydrogenation with H-2 produced by water electrolysis using electric energy from non carbon based fuels. The dominance analysis for the environmental index, reveals that the higher impact is on acidification and greenhouse effects. Alternative hydrogen sources have been considered in order to build up the best combination of processes, which responds to the environmental, energetic and economic principles. The results of the LCA study demonstrate the conditions in which it is advantageous the reuse of CO2.The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to develop strategic policies that can lead to a minimization of the environmental burden resulting from the provision of services or the manufacture, use, and disposal of products within the economy. We accomplish this aim by presenting a case study that evaluates the greenhouse gas contributions of each stage in the life cycle of containerboard packaging and the potential impact on emissions of various policy options available to decision-makers. Our analysis showed that, in general, the most useful strategy was to recycle the used packaging. However, our analysis also indicated that when measures are taken to eliminate sources of methane emissions, then recycling is no longer beneficial from a greenhouse perspective. This is because the process energy required in the form of gas and electricity is substantially greater for containerboard manufactured from recycled material than it is for virgin fiber.In recent years, significant attention and emphasis has been given to cleaner and,greener technologies in processes and product manufacturing. This is recognized as a key element in pollution prevention (P2) and development of sustainable strategies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a systematic approach that enables implementation of cleaner and greener product and process concepts in industry. In recent times substantial progress has been made in the use of LCA for product evaluation and selection. However, its use in cleaner and greener process design and decision-making has not been explored to a great extent. Process design and decision-making are challenging activities that involve trade-off of conflicting objectives, namely costs, technical feasibility and environmental impacts. These conflicting objectives can be analysed at the early design and decision-making stage by considering the full life cycle of a process or a product. A cleaner and greener process is the one that is cost optimal, technically feasible, and environmentally benign. To obtain these results LCA requires various tools and techniques in a systematic methodology. This paper proposes a holistic and integrated methodology GreenPro-I for process/product design by combining the traditional LCA approach with multi-criteria decision-making methods. This methodology is simple and applicable at the early design stage and is more robust against uncertainty in the data. Application of the methodology has been demonstrated in the paper through a urea production case study. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Decision-makers require useful tools, such as indicators, to help them make environmentally sound decisions leading to effective management of hazardous wastes. Four hazardous waste indicators are being tested for such a purpose by several countries within the Sustainable Development Indicator Programme of the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development. However, these indicators only address the 'downstream' end-of-pipe industrial situation. More creative thinking is clearly needed to develop a wider range of indicators that not only reflects all aspects of industrial production that generates hazardous waste but considers socio-economic implications of the waste as well. Sets of useful and innovative indicators are proposed that could be applied to the emerging paradigm shift away from conventional end-of-pipe management actions and towards preventive strategies that are being increasingly adopted by industry often in association with local and national governments. A methodological and conceptual framework for the development of a core-set of hazardous waste indicators has been developed. Some of the indicator sets outlined quantify preventive waste management strategies (including indicators for cleaner production, hazardous waste reduction/minimization and life cycle analysis), whilst other sets address proactive strategies (including changes in production and consumption patterns, eco-efficiency, eco-intensity and resource productivity). Indicators for quantifying transport of hazardous wastes are also described. It was concluded that a number of the indicators proposed could now be usefully implemented as management tools using existing industrial and economic data. As cleaner production technologies and waste minimization approaches are more widely deployed, and industry integrates environmental concerns at all levels of decision-making, it is expected that the necessary data for construction of the remaining indicators will soon become available.Life cycle analysis is one of the tools in the assessment of the sustainability of technological options. It takes into account all effects on the ecosystem and the population which may endanger the possibilities of current and future generations. However, the main bottleneck in current LCA methodologies is the balancing of different effects, being all quantified on different scales. In this work, a methodology is proposed, which allows one to quantify different effects of the production, consumption and disposal of goods, and services on a single scale. The basis of the methodology is the second law of thermodynamics. All production, consumption and disposal processes affecting the ecosystem and the population, are quantified in terms of loss of exergy. The exergy content of a material is the maximum amount of energy which can be transformed into work at given environmental conditions. Next to the elaboration of the methodology, the new approach is illustrated by examples of the production of synthetic organic polymers, inorganic building insulation materials and different waste gas treatment options.The classification scheme for human health indicators in life-cycle assessment (LCA) and other toxicity scores is proposed based on identifiable target or.-an or system toxicity. This scheme represents a compromise between a subjective single overall score and highly detailed toxic mechanisms of action. A case study was used to evaluate the proposed classification scheme. The data on 117 high production volume organic chemicals were extracted from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) integrated risk information system (IRIS) database. Based on the critical effect listed in the database, almost all chemicals were easily and clearly classified into the proposed categories. However, there were significant variations in test species, protocol, duration, toxicological parameter measured, etc., among different toxicity studies. Importantly, the toxicological critical effects observed, even for the same target organ or system, differed from chemical to chemical and were not equivalent. Using hepatotoxicity as an example, critical effects included changes in organ weight, a variety of different histopathological changes, and changes in circulating hepatic enzyme levels. Therefore, no universal, common basis was identified for biological equivalency in order to compare or to aggregate chemicals into an overall toxicity score. A recent proposal to develop a characterization system based on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) was also evaluated. No means were found to extrapolate animal critical effects data to predict any diminution in human lifetimes or the appearance and intensity of human disability. Still, LCA presents an ideal starting point for toxicological analysis by conducting a system-wide analysis that inventories and maps the sources of potentially important human pollutants. The LCA results could then facilitate initial toxicological and risk evaluations for those sources and chemicals and set the stage for a more detailed and informed analysis by professional toxicologists.Life Cycle assessment is becoming a successful methodology for improving products and processes design from the environmental viewpoint. However, important difficulties can be already found when applying the methodology in SMEs. In this paper, a software application for simplifying LCA in SMEs is proposed. The streamlining takes place in the assessment phase, where qualitative and quantitative inputs are introduced in a fuzzy inference system, for assessing the level of impacts provoked by evaluating a set of predefined fuzzy rules. These rules have been developed by a group of experts in Chemical Engineering.A multi-objective optimisation framework is used to identify trade-offs between various goals in flowsheet design/synthesis. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to handle the environmental considerations. The methodology is demonstrated using a vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) plant with varying degrees of heat integration as a case study.An environmental life cycle assessment was performed to investigate the environmental consequences of the life cycle of Hushallsost, a semi-hard cheese. The assessment identified those activities that contribute most to the cheese's environmental impact throughout its life cycle from extraction of ingredients to waste management. Milk production at the farm was identified as having the greatest environmental impact, followed by cheesemaking at the dairy, retailing, and the production of plastic wrapping. The environmental impact could be reduced by minimising wastage of milk and cheese throughout the life cycle, without any effect on the quality of the product. Increasing the yield of cheese would also bring about substantial improvements as less milk would have to be produced on farms. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Although there are many kinds of computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) packages available on the market, there is no educational system developed for the fundamental estimations of machining process parameters, such as cutting time, material removal rate (MRR), feed rate, and spindle speed. Having such a system is important for a number of reasons: cost estimation, life cycle analysis, machine programming, tool and workpiece selection, production rate, and number of machining steps, etc. In this paper a knowledge-based system (KBS) developed for the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) processes and its implementation in a junior level CNC class are presented.The option of weighting impact categories according to ISO 14042 on Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is particularly difficult for global organizations, as they have to consider a wide range of values. The motivation for employing weighting is usually based on the desire to simplify LCIA output, especially in circumstances where product system tradeoffs occur. Looking globally at regional variations in legislation, consumer values, monetary valuation, existing weighting sets and expert opinions, no globally agreed upon weighting set is likely to be derived. This is due to both the inherent subjectivity of weighting and local variations in environmental imperatives. Hence, the authors recommend that LCIA quantitative weighting, especially those provided in pre-packaged software instruments, should not be employed. Admittedly, to use a spectrum of LCIA results for internal design decisions, some kind of trade-off analysis has to be performed, especially if comparing competing design alternatives. However, this trade-off analysis should be done separately from the technical LCA study and should reflect values and visions of the global organization, as well as the circumstances of the targeted market, in a qualitative way. For any external communication, none of the quantitative weighting sets can be used.Establishing BAT (Best Available Techniques) for processes subject to IPPC is a new barrier and one that processes in the development stage need to be aware of. For multi-functional processes, the sectorial approach adopted under IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control) increases the potential problems. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an established tool to assist establishing BAT but is difficult to apply in its full form at the Research and Development (R&D) stage. A review of LCA in the context of a case study, the Trefoil kiln process, concludes that it has the flexibility to cope with multi-functionality and that use of key environmental issues and key indicators could overcome the informational gaps. Environmental burdens can be presented appropriately provided the research identifies appropriate allocation methods. The use of LCA thinking provided useful insight on the content of the research programme.A screening methodology is presented that utilizes the linear structure within the deterministic life cycle inventory (LCI) model. The methodology ranks each input data element based upon the amount it contributes toward the final output. The identified data elements along with their position in the deterministic model are then sorted into descending order based upon their individual contributions. This enables practitioners and model users to identify those input data elements that contribute the most in the inventory stage. Percentages of the top ranked data elements are then selected, and their corresponding data quality index (DQI) value is upgraded in the stochastic LCI model. Monte Carlo computer simulations are obtained and used to compare the output variance of the original stochastic model with modified stochastic model. The methodology is applied to four real-world beverage delivery system LCA inventory models for verification. This research assists LCA practitioners by streamlining the conversion process when converting a deterministic LCI model to a stochastic model form. Model users and decision-makers can benefit from the reduction in output variance and the increase in ability to discriminate between product system alternatives.The environmental profile of laundry detergents at three time points (1988, 1992, and 1998) were compared on the basis of two distinct, complementary approaches: Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) and Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). The results are presented in this paper and its accompanying paper in this issue (Part 1: Product Environmental Risk Assessment). Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) data from The Netherlands and Sweden were used for this retrospective analysis. The chosen time period studied (1988 - 1998) spans significant, multiple formulation and process change in laundry detergents, including the introduction of compact, then super-compact, granular detergents. Cradle-to-Gate LCAs based on 1 kg of finished product (from raw material supply to packaged finished product leaving the suppliers site) revealed no significant differences between the products themselves, as manufactured between 1988, 1992 and 1998. Cradle-to-Grave LCAs based on 1000 wash cycles (from raw material supply to disposal of used product) indicated that the consumption of raw materials and energy, as well as environmental emissions (air, water and solid waste), decreased after the introduction of compact detergents in 1988. The LCAs revealed that a number of category indicator values decreased (for acidification, aquatic toxicity greenhouse effects, eutrophication, toxicity, ozone depletion and smog). Furthermore, the results of the LCAs support the conclusion that the differences between The Netherlands and Sweden are due to (1) differences in electrical generation between the countries, (2) differences in energy consumption during consumer use, (3) differences in detergent dosage per wash and (4) differences in the wastewater treatment infrastructure.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to detect the environmental 'hot spots' in the chrome-tanned bovine leather industry. We have studied those stages in the life cycle of leather, which occur 'from cradle to gate'. The production chain studied starts with the agricultural products (fertiliser and pesticide production is also included) needed for cattle raising, it is followed by the slaughterhouse, and ends at the tanning industry gate. Main chemicals and waste flows in and out of this chain have also been included in the analysis. One of the main conclusions is that the tannery is an important stage in most of the impact categories, mainly due to the landfilling of the tannery wastes. Agriculture and - to a lesser extent - cattle raising also play a very important role in most of the impact categories; the former, due to the related energy consumption and use of fertilisers, and the latter due to the emissions associated with animal care. The Autonomous Government of Catalonia is using the results of this study to establish the environmental criteria that a leather product must fulfil in order to attain the Catalan eco-label.In recent years many workers have examined the implications of various sources of uncertainty for the reliability of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Indeed, the International Standardization Organization (ISO) has recognised the relevance of this work by including several cautionary statements in the ISO 14040 series of standards. However, in practice, there is a risk that the significance of these uncertainties for the results of an LCA could be overlooked as practitioners strive to complete studies on time and within budget. This paper presents the findings of a survey of LCA studies we made to determine the extent to which the problem of uncertainty had been dealt with in practice. This survey revealed that the significance of the limitations on the reliability of LCA results given in the standards has not been fully appreciated by practitioners. We conclude that the standards need to be revised to ensure that LCA studies include at least a qualitative discussion on all relevant aspects of uncertainty.Limitations of data quality and difficulties to assess uncertainty are long since acknowledged problems in LCA. During recent years a range of tools for improvement of reliability in LCA have been presented, but despite this there is still a lack of consensus about how these issues should be handled. To give basic understanding of data quality and uncertainty in LCA, key concepts of data quality and uncertainty in the context of LCA are explained. A comprehensive survey of methods and approaches for data quality management, sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty analysis published in the LCA literature is presented. It should serve as a guide to further reading for LCA practitioners interested in improving data quality management and uncertainty assessment in LCA projects. The suitability of different tools for addressing different types of uncertainty and future needs in this field is discussed.Life cycle assessment (LCA) will always involve some subjectivity and uncertainty. This reality is especially true when the analysis concerns new technologies. Dealing with uncertainty can generate richer information and minimize some of the result mismatches currently encountered in the literature. As a way of analyzing future fuel cell vehicles and their potential new fuels, the Fuel Upstream Energy and Emission Model (FUEEM) developed at the University of California - Davis, pioneered two different ways to incorporate uncertainty into the analysis. First, the model works with probabilistic curves as inputs and with Monte Carlo simulation techniques to propagate the uncertainties. Second, the project involved the interested parties in the entire process, not only in the critical review phase. The objective of this paper is to present, as a case study, the tools and the methodologies developed to acquire most of the knowledge held by interested parties and to deal with their eventually conflicted - interests. The analysis calculation methodology, the scenarios, and all assumed probabilistic curves were derived from a consensus of an international expert network discussion, using existing data in the literature along with new information collected from companies. The main part of the expert discussion process uses a variant of the Delphi technique, focusing on the group learning process through the information feedback feature. A qualitative analysis indicates that a higher level of credibility and a higher quality of information can be achieved through a more participatory process. The FUEEM method works well within technical information and also in establishing a reasonable set of simple scenarios. However, for a complex combination of scenarios, it will require some improvement. The time spent in the process was the major drawback of the method and some alternatives to share this time cost are suggested.The quantitative macroscopic model for the CO2 emission by Japanese passenger cars is proposed in which the CO2 emission in production, use and end of life stage is analyzed in a different manner from the internationally standardized LCA according to ISO 14040s. Passenger cars are classified into regular cars, compact cars and mini cars based on their air volume displacement. These cars are scrapped from society according to their scrapping rate distribution. The effect of the change in the usage pattern of passenger cars on the amount of CO2 emission is examined and it turns out that it is not effective enough. Moreover, how much improvement of fuel economy is necessary in order to achieve the goal of the CO2 emission reduction by COP3 is also estimated. Consequently, it turns out that it must be improved by 2.42 times of the fuel economy in 1995 by the year 2010.This article aims at estimating life cycle CO2 emissions from electric vehicles (EV) and gasoline vehicles (GV), although the estimation in this study is not an LCA according to ISO14040s. For this purpose, a mathematical tool called the Process-relational model was developed. The Process-relational model is used for establishing lifecycle inventories. The model has a structure which improved the principle of input-output analysis in econometrics that only one product is generated by one process. This model enabled us to overcome difficulties of LCA in retracing complicated repercussions among production systems. Then, life cycle CO2 emissions from electric vehicles (EV) and gasoline vehicles (GV) were estimated with this model. Estimated results indicated that the manufacture and driving of EV resulted in less CO2 emissions than those of GV. However, the difference between EV and GV dramatically changed depending on traffic situations. Namely, the difference became larger as the average velocity of the vehicles became lower. We also compared CO2 emission from manufacturing EV with that from driving EV. The share of manufacture was shown to increase in total CO2 emissions as the average velocity of the EV became higher. In conclusion, we clarified the direction of research and development of EV and GV for reducing the life cycle CO2.Unstable market systems and consumer preferences for Virgin oil have inhibited the development of waste oil re-refining in Japan. In this paper, comparative life cycle inventories were developed for re-refining waste oil and for the no-refining case in which the waste oil is incinerated and needs are supplied with virgin oil. Total energy, CO2, NOx, and SO2 emissions were included during the re-refining and consumption (incineration) stages; all are lower in the case of re-refined fuel use. In addition, by using a streamlined LCA matrix, we demonstrate that re-refining waste oil can reduce environmental impacts compared with the case in which virgin oil is chosen.A Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Assessment (LCA) database for laundry detergents of the Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) was constructed using SimaPro software. The input data needed to conduct a product LCT came from several different, supporting databases to cover supplier (extraction and manufacturing of raw materials), manufacturing of the detergent product, transportation, packaging, use and disposal stages. Manufacturing, packaging and transportation stages are usually representative of European conditions while the use and disposal stages are country specific and represent how consumers are using a specific product and how wastes are disposed of. The database has been constructed to allow Procter & Gamble managers to analyse detergent products from a system-wide, functional unit point of view in a consistent, transparent and reproducible manner. For demonstrative purpose, a life cycle inventory and a life cycle impact assessment of a P&G laundry detergent used in Belgium is presented. The analysis showed that more than 80% of the energy consumption occurs during the consumer use stage (mainly for heating of the water). Air and solid waste follow the same pattern, most of these being associated with the energy generation for the use stage. More than 98% of the biological oxygen demand, however, is associated with the disposal stage even after accounting for removal during treatment. Future challenges are the completion and/or updating of all detergent ingredient inventories.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out for milk production extending from the origin of the inputs to the agricultural step to the consumer phase and the waste management of the packaging. Three Norwegian dairies of different sizes and degree of automation were studied. The main objectives were to find any hot spots in the life cycle of milk, to determine the significance of the dairy size and degree of automation, and to study the influence of transport. The agriculture was found to be the main hot spot for almost all the environmental themes studied, although the dairy processing, packaging, consumer phase and waste management were also of importance. The consumer phase was the main contributor to photo-oxidant formation and important regarding eutrophication. The small dairy was found to have a greater environmental impact than the middle-sized and the largest dairies. The transport did not have any major influence.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background: Input-Output Analysis (IOA) has recently been introduced to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In applying IOA to LCA studies, however, it is important to note that there are both advantages and disadvantages. Objectives: This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of adopting IOA in LCA, and introduces the methodology and principles of the Missing Inventory Estimation Tool (MIET) as one of the approaches to combine the strengths of process-specific LCA and IOA. Additionally, we try to identify a number of possible errors in the use of IOA for LCA purposes, due to confusion between industry output and commodity, consumer's price and producer's price. Method: MIET utilises the 1996 US input-output table and various environmental statistics. It is based on an explicit distinction between commodity and industry output. Results and Discussion: MIET is a self-contained, publicly available database which can be applied directly in LCA studies to estimate missing processes. Conclusion: By adopting MIET results in existing, process-based, life-cycle inventory (LCI), LCA practitioners can fully utilise the process-specific information while expanding the system boundary. Recommendations and Outlook: MIET will be continuously updated to reflect both methodological developments and newly available data sources. For supporting information see http://www.leidenuniv.nl/cml/ssp/software/miet.The exclusion of site-specific data from the inventory phase of an LCA continues to be a point of controversy. Though the current simplified data collection strategy is widely supported by the LCA community, there are still many who are concerned about the implications this limitation has for the utility and reliability of LCA results. This is particularly relevant to practitioners who are attempting to draw conclusions about the environmental performance of different systems for the development of environmental policy. The current site-generic methodology introduces uncertainties into LCA results that have the potential to misdirect decisions on improvement measures. Therefore, in this paper we assess the practicality of collecting site-specific data and examine its value for study interpretation and decision-making. In our case study, we compare the contribution of a number of plastics-based packaging systems to photochemical oxidant formation. Our results demonstrate that the aggregation of photochemical oxidant precursor emissions into a single global parameter is an unreliable indicator of environmental burden and that the real significance of each packaging's contribution to the formation of photochemical smog in the atmosphere can only be understood after the addition of spatial and temporal information. We conclude that for non-global cumulative impact categories, additional spatial and temporal data should be collected, and that the benefits to decision makers far outweigh the additional effort needed to acquire this data for the LCA inventory.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background. To discuss the process of stakeholder involvement as undertaken in a post-consumer paper and packaging waste management LCA study conducted during 1997-2001 for the Melbourne Metropolitan Area Victoria, Australia. Secondly, to present the findings from a survey conducted with the stakeholder groups regarding their perception of involvement in the project. Objectives. To investigate the stakeholder's perception and value of being involved in the LCA study intended to generate quantitative environmental information to support debate, development and implementation of waste management practices. Methods. Stakeholders that were involved in the study, both actively and passively, were surveyed by questionnaire. Survey findings were analysed in conjunction with stakeholder interaction experiences obtained in the course of the study. Results and Discussion. Respondents to the survey believed there was a sufficient level of interaction between stakeholders and researchers during the course of the project. The advisory committee approach helped to timely recognize issues and deal with them appropriately. It further assisted in the collection of life cycle inventory data and in obtaining ownership of outcomes by the research team appropriately responding to the needs and issues raised by stakeholders. Recommendations and Outlook. General recommendations for the inclusion of stakeholders in future studies are to use stakeholder interactions, wherever it is possible and practical, which in turn play an educational role, engage stakeholders from the start of the process and allow additional time in the project plan for review stages, as well as ensuring that all relevant groups are represented - industry, industry associations, government and non-governmental organizations, and also provide sufficient material and progress for discussion at meetings.Linoleum is a floor covering consisting mainly of linseed oil, other vegetable oils, wood flour and limestone on a carrier of jute. Forbo-Krommenie B.V. commissioned the Centre of Environmental Science (CML) to carry out an Environmental Life Cycle Assessment for linoleum floors. The goal of this study was to assess the environmental performance of linoleum floors, indicating possible options for improvement, and assessing the sensitivity of the results to methodological choices. The functional unit was defined as: 2000 m(2) linoleum produced in 1998, used in an office or public building over a period of 20 years. The method followed in this study is based on a nearly final draft version of the LCA guide published by CML in corporation with many others, which is an update of the guide on LCA of 1992. From the contribution analysis, the main contributing processes became clear. In addition, the sensitivity analysis by scenarios showed that the type of maintenance during use and the pigments used can have a large influence on the results. Major data gaps of the study were capital goods and unknown chemicals. Sensitivity analysis also showed that these gaps can lead to an underestimation. Based on this study, some options to improve the environmental performance of linoleum were formulated and advice for further LCA studies on linoleum was given.In view of the upcoming 2002 World Summit in Johannesburg, sustainable development is a topic of high priority in South Africa. Although the South African competency in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) has grown to some extent over the last ten years, South African industry and government have been slow to realise the benefit of LCAs and LCE as tools to support cleaner production and sustainable development. However, the local application of these tools, as well as considerations during their use, differs from practices in developed countries. The applications of LCAs and LCE, the type of organisations involved and the limitations and common problems associated with these tools in South Africa are discussed.This paper presents a summary of the presentation given in a plenary session entitled 'Promoting a life-cycle approach' as part of the UNEP's 7th International High-Level Seminar on Cleaner Production (CP7) in Prague, Czech Republic on April 28-30, 2002.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background. BASF has developed the tool of eco-efficiency analysis to address not only strategic issues, but also issues posed by the marketplace, politics and research. It was a goal to develop a tool for decision-making processes which is useful for a lot of applications in chemistry and other industries. Objectives. The objectives were the development of a common tool, which is usable in a simple way by LCA-experts and understandable by a lot of people without any experience in this field. The results should be shown in such a way that complex studies are understandable in one view. Methods. The method belongs to the rules of ISO 14040 ff. Beyond these life cycle aspect costs, calculations are added and summarized together with the ecological results to establish an eco-efficiency portfolio. Results and Discussion. The results of the studies are shown in a simple way, the eco-efficiency portfolio. Therefore, ecological data are summarized in a special way as described in this paper. It could be shown that the weighting factors, which are used in our method, have a negligible impact on the results. In most cases, the input data have an important impact on the results of the study. Conclusions. It could be shown that the newly developed eco-efficiency analysis is a new tool, which is usable for a lot of problems in decision-making processes. It is a tool which compares different alternatives of a defined customer benefit over the whole life cycle. Recommendations and Outlook. This new method can be a helpful tool in different fields of the evaluation of product or process alternatives. It can be used in research and development as well as in the optimization of customer processes and products. It is an analytical tool for getting more sustainable processes and products in the future.Superior environmental performance has not traditionally been a goal of managers of telecommunications facilities, but there is now considerable pressure to go 'beyond compliance,' even for facilities that have been in existence for many years. In this regard, significant environmental improvement can be achieved by taking a life-cycle perspective. We have conducted a streamlined life-cycle assessment on two existing telecommunications facilities, one providing installation and maintenance services and the other network management services. With the results of this assessment as a basis, we propose a number of generic steps that can be taken to improve the environmental performance of most existing telecommunications facilities.Life cycle assessment is a powerful tool in the evaluation of the environmental performance. However, there is no generally accepted methodology. To develop a practical method, an accumulative model for the comparative life cycle assessment is established and applied in the two typical iron and steel processes, the DRI/EF process and the BF/BOF process. The results indicate that the method could quantitatively compare the alternatives. When the DRI/EF process is compared with the BF/BOF process, it is shown that the IREI (integrated relative environmental index) is 60.22% for the production of iron and 52.4% for the production of steel, respectively. The environmental performance of the DRI/EF process is superior to that of the BF/BOF process.1 Background. The U.S. Government has encouraged shifting from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) to alternatively fueled vehicles such as electric vehicles (EVs) for three primary reasons: reducing oil dependence, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing Clean Air Act criteria pollutant emissions. In comparing these vehicles, there is uncertainty and variability in emission factors and performance variables, which cause wide variation in reported outputs. 2 Objectives. A model was developed to demonstrate the use of Monte Carlo simulation to predict life cycle emissions and energy consumption differences between the ICEV versus the EV on a per kilometer (km) traveled basis. Three EV technologies are considered: lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, and nickel metal hydride batteries. 3 Methods. Variables were identified to build life cycle inventories between the EVs and ICEV. Distributions were selected for each of the variables and input to Monte Carlo Simulation software called Crystal Ball 2000(R). 4 Results and Discussion. All three EV options reduce U,S. oil dependence by shifting to domestic coal. The life cycle energy consumption per kilometer (km) driven for the EVs is comparable to the ICEV; however, there is wide variation in predicted energy values. The model predicts that all three EV technologies will likely increase oxides of sulfur and nitrogen as well as particulate matter emissions on a per km driven basis, The model shows a high probability that volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide emissions are reduced with the use of EVs. Lead emissions are also predicted to increase for lead-acid battery EVs. The EV will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially and may even increase them based on the current U.S. reliance on coal for electricity generation. The EV may benefit public health by relocating air pollutants from urban centers, where traffic is concentrated, to rural areas where electricity generation and mining generally occur. The use of Monte Carlo simulation in life cycle analysis is demonstrated to be an effective tool to provide further insight on the likelihood of emission outputs and energy consumption.We investigated the system expansion approach to net energy analysis for ethanol production from domestic corn grain. Production systems included in this study are ethanol production from corn dry milling and corn wet milling, corn grain production (the agricultural system), soybean products from soybean milling (i.e. soybean oil and soybean meal) and urea production to determine the net energy associated with ethanol derived from corn grain. These five product systems are mutually interdependent. That is, all these systems generate products which compete with or displace all other comparable products in the market place. The displacement ratios between products compare the equivalence of their marketplace functions. The net energy, including transportation to consumers, is 0.56 MJ(net)/MJ of ethanol from corn grain regardless of the ethanol production technology employed. Using ethanol as a liquid transportation fuel could reduce domestic use of fossil fuels, particularly petroleum. Sensitivity analyses show that the choice of allocation procedures has the greatest impact on fuel ethanol net energy. Process energy associated with wet milling, dry milling an the corn agricultural process also significantly influences the net energy due to the wide ranges of available process energy values. The system expansion approach can completely eliminate allocation procedures in the foreground system of ethanol production from corn grain.Salinity is an increasing environmental problem in agricultural ecosystems and is not adequately represented in conventional life cycle assessment (LCA) impact categories. It is often not the total quantity of salts emitted or the proportion of salt accumulated in the soil profile that is the primary mechanism for deteriorating soil conditions for irrigated salinity, rather the ratio of major cations in the soil matrix and the potential for colloid, dispersion and reduced permeability. A soil salinisation potential (SP) is proposed as an indicator for irrigated salinity and potential soil degradation from poor irrigation practices. The indicator uses the threshold electrolyte concentration concept that predicts the adjusted sodium adsorption ratio (SAR)/ Electrical conductivity (EC) ratio that soil will no longer flocculate, but potentially disperse. The SAR is converted to a threshold EC and compared to the measured EC in order to develop a site-specific irrigation equivalence factor (EF). This site/region/process specific EF is then used to weight the sodium load to soil and repeated for each stage throughout the entire life cycle to determine the overall Salinisation Potential (SP). The data required for calculating the SP is generally readily available either on site or from the water chemistry of the local watercourses. Preliminary calculations simply require the volume, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), alkalinity and the concentrations of Na, Ca, and Mg of the irrigation water. The site/process/region specific nature of the indicator ensures a quantitative measure to enable comparisons between different systems and is useful for identifying stages in the life cycle of a product (particularly food products), where the potential for soil salinisation and soil degradation is most severe.Reply to Patrick Hcfstefter 'The Value Debate: Ecodesign in a Global Context: Are there differences in global values and do they matter?' Int J LCA 7 (2) 62-63 (2002).UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED): Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3-14 June 1992. A major achievement of UNCED was Agenda 21, a thorough and broad-ranging programme of actions demanding new ways of investing in our future to reach global sustainable development in the 21st century. Its recommendations ranged from new ways to educate, to new ways to care for natural resources, and new ways to participate in designing a sustainable economy. The overall ambition of Agenda 21 was breathtaking - its goal was nothing less than to make a safe and just world in which all life has dignity and is celebrated. Ten years later, the UN Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD): Rio+10, Johannesburg, South Africa, 26 August - 4 September 2002 adjoins. This event will review the progress made in achieving a more sustainable development and will promote further steps in the implementation of Agenda 21. Chapter 30 of Agenda 21 'Strengthening the Role of Business and Industry' explicitly recognizes the important role of business in putting the objectives of sustainable development into practice. A vital community of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is crucial for achieving economic progress, human development, and effective environmental protection, thus sustainable in both developing and industrialized countries. In line with past International Business Forums, the CIDG's 7th International Business Forum addresses a set of issues of particular relevance to SMEs in sustainable development. Attention is given to the role business-to-business cooperation can play to build and strengthen capacity for sustainable development as well as to emerging principles and best practices guiding sustainability-oriented partnerships between business and government agencies or business, government agencies and civil society groups. In addition to these topics, the conference addresses a number of more specific issues. This includes environmental management systems, the emerging role of information technology, and the internet in helping SMEs in developing countries to implement effective environmental management systems and to achieve technological leap-frogging, as well as changes in the agricultural and tourism sectors, which both are vital to local economic development and effective environmental protection. The following sections of the background paper detail these topics, their relevance to achieving a more sustainable development, and the specific challenges involved for SMEs.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background. BASF has developed the tool of eco-efficiency analysis [1] to address not only environmental issues, but also issues posed by the marketplace, politics, product strategy and research. It is based on assessing environmental behaviour, environmental impact, possible effects on human health and ecosystems, and the costs of products and processes from the cradle to the grave. The goal of eco-efficiency analysis is to quantify the sustainability of products and processes. Objectives. Many LCAs do not conduct an assessment of the toxicity potential. But, to arrive at a comprehensive assessment of products and processes, it is specifically this criterion which constitutes an important factor with regard to the evaluation of sustainability. Methods. A comprehensive and easy-to-use model was developed to assess toxicity for eco-efficiency analysis. Our model uses the classifications for hazardous materials under EU law (31 R-phrases to describe different health effects). Moreover, eco-efficiency analysis requires an actual score of toxicity. This means that the following question has to be answered for every toxic effect, "How severe is a certain adverse effect compared to others? " This is a very personal judgement. We performed a survey with 40 toxicologists (industry and academia) and asked for a ranking and scoring of the toxic effects of 26 substances according to the personal opinion on how severe the toxic effects actually are considered to be. Based on the results, we developed a scoring system. Results and Discussion. The system summarises different health effects in six groups, each with a score between 0 and 1000; combinations of various effects and different exposure routes are also taken into account. A substance is attributed to a group by its R-phrases. The new toxicity assessment model has been used in eco-efficiency analysis and has stood the test for one year. However, the hazard has to be combined with exposure to describe the actual risk. A second model was developed to describe the exposure-using general use-categories and physico-chemical properties of the individual substances. The assessment of toxic effects has been a neglected in many LCAs. Conclusions. The new models allow the assessment of toxic effects in an appropriate and easy way. The significant impact of thorough toxicity assessments on the outcome of eco-efficiency analysis is demonstrated by a comparison of different assessment models. Recommendations and Outlook. LCA in combination with the evaluation of toxicity and risk-potentials will become more and more important in the future. This new methodology allows the calculation of toxicity potentials in a short time with a short set of input information. Those data as a part of the eco-efficiency analysis of BASF are useful to show the most important impacts over the whole life cycle. Decision-making processes with the eco-efficiency analysis will become much more useful by using this new assessment of toxicity factors.Thorough environmental observation and a series of life cycle consideration have been performed to underpin the development of the environmental criteria of a new EU Eco-label product group following the voluntary and selective European Environmental Award Scheme based on Regulation EC 1980/ 2000. Since April 2002, the European Eco-label is available for the Hard Floor Coverings product group, subsequently also called 'HFC'. The Eco-label translates environmental awareness on products for indoor and outdoor covering materials such as ceramic and clay tiles, concrete paving units, terrazzo, agglomerated and natural stones into a new market-based environmental policy tool. As a matter of fact, the HFC ecological criteria development has been positively concluded based on a the study of the Italian National Environment Protection Agency (ANPA, Agenzia Nazionale per la Protezione dell'Ambiente) with the technical support of Life Cycle Engineering (Turin, Italy), that had been entrusted with this task by the European Commission, DG Environment. The stakeholders involved in the 'Ad Hoc Working Group' activities included European Eco-label Competent Bodies, some of the most important manufacturers, consumers and environmental associations at a European level. In December 2001, after eighteen months of concerted work with all the interested parties in the European Union Eco-label Board (EUEB), the final vote of criteria by Member States enabled the publication of the EU-wide valid criteria and the elaboration of an application pack (user manual) in late March 2002.An LCA case study was conducted for the production of lead and zinc by an Imperial Smelting Process (abbreviated hereafter as ISP) in Shaoguan Smelter, China. The detailed inventory analysis was performed by allocating the Input/Output among the main products. The environmental impacts were assessed by using the following five Eco-indicators: Gross Energy Requirement (GER), Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Heavy Metal Toxicity (HMT) and Solid Waste Burden (SWB). This study is useful to address the environmental situation of the ISP practiced in this smelter, and provides a scientific basis for further improvement.The goal of this study was to calculate the average CO2 emissions for manufacturing three commodity plastics, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in Japan. The CO2 emissions were calculated from cradle to gate, excluding the calcination processes after use. As the results, the followings were observed: 1) The gross CO2 emissions for the manufacture of plastics in Japan were 1.3, 1.4, and 1.7 kg-CO2/kg-PE, PP, and PVC, respectively. These mainly reflected the difference of CO2 emissions for the in-house electricity generation. 2) The CO2 emissions for the electricity used for manufacturing PVC were higher than that used for PE and PP, because additional electricity was required for the electrolysis to produce chlorine. The gross electricity consumption for manufacturing PVC was 1.3 kWh/kg-PVC, and the other plastics consumed 0.5 kWh/kg-Products. In addition, the effects of energy saving were studied using a projected gas-diffusion electrode for the electrolysis of salt on the reduction of CO2 emissions. It was estimated that the reduction in CO2 emissions was 7% compared with the present PVC manufacturing processes.The objective of this study is to estimate the specific CO2 emissions related to the electricity consumption in the European primary aluminium production and to compare different choices of system boundaries of its electricity supply. The study covers all European aluminium smelters, except Russia and the Ukraine. The concepts of single power plant supply, contract mix, national mix and European grid mix are compared as alternative choices of system boundaries of the electricity supply. The calculations of the electricity consumption in the electrolysis are based on plant-specific information on technology, production and electricity supply. Detailed fuel and country-specific data on CO2 emissions of the relevant types of electricity generation are used with a 'from cradle to grave' perspective. The specific emissions calculated for Europe fall into the range of 6-7 kg CO2/kg Al depending on the choice of system boundaries.Goal and Background. The treatment of allocation in the descriptive LCA of wood-based products has been discussed for a long time and different solutions have been presented. In general, it is accepted that the influence of different allocation procedures on the results of LCA of wood-based products can be very significant. This paper is a result of the Cost Action E9 'Life cycle assessment of forestry and forest products' and represents the experience of involved Cost E9 delegates. Objective. Wood is a renewable material that can be used for wood products and energy production. Consistent methodological procedures are needed in order to correctly address the twofold nature of wood as a material and fuel, the multi-functional wood processing generating large quantities of co-products, and reuse or recycling of paper and wood. Ten different processes in LCAs of wood-based products are identified, where allocation questions can occur: forestry, sawmill, wood industry, pulp and paper industry, particle board industry, recycling of paper, recycling of wood-based boards, recycling of waste wood, combined heat and power production, landfill. Methodology. Following ISO 14 041 a step-wise procedure for system boundary setting and allocation are outlined. As a first priority allocation should be avoided by system expansion, thus adding additional functions to the functional unit. Alternatively, the avoided-burden approach can be followed by subtracting substituted functions of wood that are additionally provided. If allocation cannot be avoided, some allocations methods from case studies are described. Conclusions. The following conclusions for allocation in LCA of wood-based products are given. 1) Avoid allocation by expansion of system boundaries by combining material and energy aspects of wood, meaning a combination of LCA of wood products and of energy from wood with a functional unit for products and energy. 2) Substitute energy from wood with conventional energy in the LCA of wood products to get the functional unit of the wood product only, but identify the criteria for the substituted energy. 3) Substitution of wooden products with non-wooden products in LCA of bioenergy is not advisable, because the substitution criteria can be too complex. 4) If avoiding allocation is not possible, the reasons should be documented. 5) Different allocation procedures must be analysed and documented. In many cases, it seems necessary to make a sensitivity analysis of different allocation options for different environmental effects. It can also be useful to get the acceptance of the chosen allocation procedure by external experts. 6) Different allocation factors, e.g. mass or economic value, are allowed within the same LCA. 7) For allocation of forestry processes it is necessary to describe the main function of the forest where the raw material is taken out. In some cases different types or functions of forests must be considered and described. 8) Regarding the experiences from the examples, the following most practical allocation for some specific processes are identified: forestry: mass or volume; sawmill: mass or volume and proceeds; wood industry: mass and proceeds.Goal and Background. Geographical and technological differences in Life Cycle Inventory data are an important source for uncertainty in the result of Life Cycle Assessments. Knowledge on their impact on the result of an LCA is scarce, and also knowledge on how to manage them in an LCA case study. Objective. Goal of this paper is to explore these differences for municipal solid waste incinerator plants, and to develop recommendations for managing technological and geographical differences. Methodology. The paper provides a definition of technological and geographical differences, and analyses their possible impacts. In a case study, the differences are caused intentionally in 'games', by virtually transplanting incineration plants to a different location and by changing parameters such as the composition of the waste input incinerated. The games are performed by using a modular model for municipal solid waste incinerator plants. In each case, an LCA including an Impact Assessment is calculated to trace the impact of these changes, and the results are compared. Conclusions. The conclusions of the paper are two-fold: (1) reduce the differences in inventory data where their impact on the result is high; where it is possible reducing them to a great extent, and the effort for performing the change acceptable; in the case of incineration plants: Adapt the flue gas treatment, especially a possible DeNOx step, to the real conditions; (2) make use of modular process models that allow adapting plant parameters to better meet real conditions, but be aware of possible modelling errors. The paper invites the scientific community to validate the model used for a waste incinerator plant, and suggest putting up similar models for other processes, preferably those of similar relevance for Life Cycle Inventories.The impact assessment of the consumption of abiotic resources, such as fossil fuels or minerals, is usually part of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) in LCA studies. The problem with the consumption of such resources is their decreasing availability for future generations. In currently available LCA methods (e.g. Eco-indicator' 99/Goedkoop and Spriensma 1999, CML/Guinee 2001), the consumption of various abiotic resources is aggregated into one summarizing indicator within the characterization phase of the LCIA. This neglects that many resources are used for different purposes and are not equivalent to each other. Therefore, the depletion of reserves of functionally non-equivalent resources should be treated as separate environmental problems, i.e. as separate impact sub-categories. Consequently, this study proposes assigning the consumption of abiotic resources to separate impact sub-categories and, if possible, integrating them into indicators only according to their primary function (e.g. coal, natural gas, oil --> consumption of fossil fuels; phosphate rock --> consumption of phosphate). Since this approach has been developed in the context of LCA studies on agricultural production systems, the impact assessment of the consumption of fossil fuels, phosphate rock, potash salt and lime is of particular interest and serves as an example. Following the general LCA framework (Consoli et al. 1993, ISO 1998), a normalization step is proposed separately for each of the sub-categories. Finally, specific weighting factors have been calculated for the sub-categories based on the 'distance-to-target' principle. The weighting step allows for further interpretation and enables the aggregation of the consumption of different abiotic resources to one summarizing indicator, called the Resource Depletion Index (RDI). The proposed method has been applied to a wheat production system in order to illustrate the conceptual considerations and to compare the approach to an established impact assessment method for abiotic resources (CML method, Guinee 2001).We would like to report on an innovation to be incorporated in Int J LCA beginning with the January edition in 2003; it concerns the expansion of the journal by a section on LCM (Life Cycle Management). This new section will clearly be separated from the LCA 'nucleus', has an Editorial Board of its own and is peer-reviewed as well. This activity takes the latest developments into account that strive to find an overall concept in order to implement the ideas of 'Sustainability' and 'LC Thinking' in practice.It is common to have numerous alternatives and conditions that remain uncertain, but these need to be assessed in decision-making processes. Investigators introduce decision-makers' anticipations and assumptions into analysis when building strategies as a form of scenario. In such a way, scenario analysis is often used as a powerful vehicle for decision making. While a number of LCA case studies dealing with scenarios have been performed, structured frameworks integrating LCA with scenario analysis methodologies have not yet been established. in this paper, we first propose a general framework for scenario-based LCA. The framework provides retrospective and prospective studies with a clear structure. The most important characteristic of the structure is the recognition and separation of three modeling processes, lifecycle modeling, scenario modeling, and valuation modeling, to aim at an increase in reviewability of the entire study and reusability of the constructed models. Next, we introduce a tool, termed lifecycle modeling language (LCML), developed for modeling lifecycle systems and valuation procedures with its relevant scenarios within the proposed framework. LCML facilitates accumulating knowledge obtained from scenario-based LCA studies, by reusing the constructed models, or by applying the same patterns identified from the LCML description, and contributes to reducing the time and efforts needed for an investigation. An illustrative example is presented to show the functionality of LCML.If the complexity of real, socio-economic systems is acknowledged, life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) in life cycle assessment (LCA) cannot be considered as unambiguous, objective, and as an exclusively data and science based attribution of material and energy flows to a product. The paper thus suggests a set of criteria for LCI derived from different scientific disciplines, practice of product design and modelling characteristics of LCI and LCA. A product system with its respective LCI supporting the process of effective and efficient decision-making should ideally be: a) complete, operational, decomposable, non-redundant, minimal, and comparable; b) efficient, i.e., as simple, manageable, transparent, cheap, quick, but still as 'adequate' as possible under a functionalistic perspective which takes given economic constraints, material and market characteristics, and the goal and scope of the study into account; c) actor-based when reflecting the decision-makers' action space, risk-level, values, and knowledge (i.e. mental model) in view of the management rules of sustainable development; d) as site- and case-specific as possible, i.e. uses as much site-specific information as possible. This rationale stresses the significance of considering both (i) material and energy flows within the technosphere with regard to the sustainable management rules; (ii) environmental consequences of the environmental interventions on ecosphere. Further, the marginal cost of collecting and computing more and better information about environmental impacts must not exceed the marginal benefits of information for the natural environment. The ratio of environmental benefits to the economic cost of the tool must be efficient compared to other investment options. As a conclusion, in comparative LCAs, the application of equal allocation procedures does not lead to LCA-results on which products made from different materials can be compared in an adequate way. Each product and material must be modelled according to its specific material and market characteristics as well as to its particular management rules for their sustainable use. A generic LCA-methodology including preferences on methodological options is not definable.The impact category 'land use' describes in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology the environmental impacts of occupying, reshaping and managing land for human purposes. Land use can either be the long-term use of land (e.g. for arable farming) or changing the type of land use (e.g. from natural to urban area). The impact category 'land use' comprises those environmental consequences, which impact the environment due to the land use itself, for instance through the reduction of landscape elements, the planting of monocultures or artificial vegetation, or the sealing of surfaces. Important environmental consequences of land use are the decreasing availability of habitats and the decreasing diversity of wildlife species. The assessment of the environmental impacts of land use within LCA studies is the objective of this paper. Land use leads to a degradation of the naturalness of the area utilised. In this respect the naturalness of any area can be defined as the sum of land actually not influenced by humans and the remaining naturalness of land under use. To determine the remaining naturalness of land under use, this study suggests applying the Hemeroby concept. "Hemeroby is a measure for the human influence on ecosystems" (Kowarik 1999). The Hemeroby level of an area describes the intensity of land use and can therefore be used to characterise different types of land use. Characterization factors are proposed, which allow calculating the degradation of the naturalness of an area due to a specific type of land use. Since the resource 'nature/naturalness' is on a larger geographical scale by far not homogeneous, the assessment of land use needs to be regionalised. Therefore, the impact category 'land use has been subdivided into the impact sub-categoties 'land use in European biogeographic regions'. Following the general LCA framework, normalization values for the impact sub-categories are calculated in order to facilitate the evaluation of the characterization results with regard to their share in a reference value. Weighting factors, which enable an aggregation of the results of the different land use sub-categories and make them comparable to other impact categories (e.g. climate change or acidification) are suggested based on the assumption that the current land use pattern in the European biogeographic regions is acceptable.The environmental impact assessment existing in the Russian Federation at the present moment cannot provide potential scenarios of consequences for the environment from examined processes, since its goal is to calculate the money equivalent of emissions to the environment. Also, it cannot help the environmental specialist to choose the most environmentally sustainable scenario or process, proceeding from the whole life cycle of the object, because it is usually performed only for the use phase of an object. This study also aims to show possibilities for applying LCA methodology, as accepted in the ISO standards series 14040, and as applied to Russian conditions. The main purpose was to investigate a possibility of using the existing environmental impact assessment as the inventory stage in the LCA. As the minor goal, normalisation and weighting factor data for the Russian Federation were calculated on the basis of energy consumption extrapolation. In this paper, the environmental impacts are associated with a sewage wastewater facility. The inventory analysis is performed with data obtained from the MosvodokanalNIIproject (Moscow Research Institute for sewage wastewater treatment facilities) and supplemented with the SimaPro 5.0 database (the Netherlands). The environmental impact categories included and discussed in this study are eutrophication, global warming, landfill, acidification, ozone layer depletion and photochemical ozone creation. This study was performed for several design alternatives or scenarios of the wastewater facility. According to the LCA performed in this study, the most environmentally sustainable scenario is that which has the most effective and complicated treatment of sewage water and sludge.Background, Intention, Goal and Scope. The analytical laboratory is traditionally considered to be a service provider. This has resulted in laboratory environmental management being considered mostly from a pollution prevention and waste minimization perspective. There is a recognized need to view environmental performance of a laboratory service provider from a broader perspective. This broader perspective is inclusive of sampling, analysis and the potential for impacts to arise from the use of output information products. A generic methodology for the measurement and benchmarking of the overall environmental performance of an analytical laboratory and its outputs using the Laboratory Product Model (LPM) is described. Environmental performance indicators, relating to inputs and processing are proposed. Objectives. The project seeks to broaden the focus of environmental performance away from the individual analytical unit processes to a more encompassing 'cradle-to-grave' approach incorporating sample collection and results reporting and use. To support this approach, a functional unit of output for a laboratory has to be defined. Methods. A life cycle assessment approach, incorporating life cycle inventory considerations, is applied within the LPM conceptual framework. Results and Discussion. This approach facilitates a shift in thinking from laboratory service to the life cycle of laboratory product inputs and outputs. It enables LCA methodologies to be applied to environmental performance through the application of the LPM. The definition of a laboratory product output facilitates benchmarking and comparison of laboratories. Conclusions. The LPM approach assigns a critical role to the laboraiory for the sustainability of the laboratory operations from sample collection, through analysis to the use of its product outputs. Recommendations and Outlook. The application of the LPM offers a top down approach for the evaluation of the environmental performance of an analytical laboratory. It is expected to provide a useful tool for assessing and benchmarking the environmental performance of analytical laboratories.Preamble. This paper outlines in two parts to be published in the September and November edition of Int J LCA 2002. Part I [Int J LCA 7 (5) 295-300 (2002)] prepares the field by defining technological and geographical differences, and by exploring the differences for a case study of four municipal solid waste incinerators. Part II [Int J LCA 7 (6) 363-368 (2002)] will show the impacts of technological and geographical differences which are intentionally caused for the incinerator plants. The results allow clear recommendations on how to handle technological and geographical differences in future case studies.Preamble. The treatment of allocation is a crucial matter in the LCA of wood-based products, because the allocation method might influence the results significantly. This paper outlines in two parts. Methodology (Part 1) and Examples (Part 11) - practical experiences for the treatment Of allocations for LCAs of wood-based products that are the result of the Cost Action E9 'Life cycle assessment of forestry and forest products' and reflect the experience of Cost E9 delegates. Part I has been published in the September issue [Int J LCA 7 (5) 290-294 (2002)] [8a].The number of tools and approaches to develop sustainability is growing rapidly. Sometimes they are presented as if they are contradictory or in competition. However, a systems approach consistent with basic principles and the requirements of sustainability shows that these tools are complementary and can be used in parallel for strategic sustainable development. In fact. it is only when using these approaches outside of the systemic context of sustainability that they become contradictory. This paper is a collective effort of scientists who have pioneered some of these tools and approaches. The paper maps essential elements for developing sustainability and documents how these elements relate to the application of the respective tools. The objective is to show how these tools and approaches relate to each other and build on each other when used for planning for sustainability. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology (IE) has been characterized by a fragmented approach encompassing a number of different perspectives and analytical techniques. A uniform framework has yet to be established or proposed. This paper partially addresses this shortcoming by tracing some of the historical and intellectual antecedents of the field. providing a clear and concise lexicon of the biological analogue. and contrasting the two most promising analytical methods by which IE research may be carried out: life cycle assessment (LCA) and systems analysis. Although a number of comparative environmental metrics may be employed in cost-minimization or thermodynamic efficiency studies, no single measure is sufficiently developed to prioritize among qualitatively disparate types of environmental impacts. It is argued herein that the concept of chemical energy of mixing may be the most promising basis for the development of a uniform. broad-based measure of chemical pollution, and that such a measure could significantly advance a scientific approach to IE. Some theoretical background is presented, although the reasoning herein is intended to be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Significant environmental improvements can often be achieved by integrating environmental properties as an optimisation parameter in product development together with more traditional values such as production costs, functionality, aesthetics etc. This paper presents a professional method intended for managers based on quantitative life cycle assessment to identify environmental 'hot spots' in a reference product's life cycle and to select new environmentally optimised solutions for a new product. The paper takes its starting point in traditional procedures for product development (idea. analysis. goal definition, concept development and detail development) and shows step by stop how the environmental properties of the new product can be optimised and thus contribute to the overall competitiveness of the new product. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Flooring materials, particularly ceramic and marble tiles, play a relevant role in the Italian economy since this country covers respectively 23% and 18% of the world output in this sector. In this paper a comparative Life Cycle Assessment between these two flooring material,,; has been carried out in order to identify the one with the best environmental profile and the hot spots of the two systems, The analysis has shown a better environmental profile for the marble tile. a particular relevance of the energy consumption in both the system and, in the ceramic system, the critical point has been found in the raw material used for the glaze manufacturing which are responsible. during the firing process. for the relevant arsenic emissions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Identification and assessment of environmental aspects are crucial to an environmental management system, since significant aspects are decisive for other parts of the system. Stringency and transparency in identification and assessment are necessary if this process is to be reproducible. Reproducibility is in turn important for the credibility of the entire management system. A survey of the identification and assessment processes within the integrated forest product company Stora Enso has shown inadequacies regarding the reproducibility, Positive features and areas of improvement have been identified. The results of the survey are the basis for the development of a new, more reproducible method. This paper includes an approach for this new method that focuses on the identification process. The method is based on life cycle assessment methodology according to the international standards ISO 14040-42 and the documentation format in ISO 14048. The environmental aspects are aggregated in a classification and characterisation into impact categories. The categories are then used as operations environmental performance indicators. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Hybrid life-cycle assessment employing input-output analysis has advantages over conventional methods. In the inventory phase of a hybrid assessment. the data collection and the boundary selection can be tailored by using structural path analysis. This technique was applied to recent Australian data in order to determine environmentally important input paths in terms of energy consumption. land disturbance, beater use. and emissions of greenhouse gases, NOx, and SO2, for all Australian industry sectors. Due to the complexity of inter-industrial transactions, up to third-order paths can be top-ranking. The identification of such paths is considerably more labour-intensive in conventional life-cycle assessments. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is conducted for four types of plain bearings used for automotive engines. Equivalent CO2 emission (ECE) is used as the index of the environmental impact for global warming, and is compared among different chemical compositions and different manufacturing processes. Three types of aluminum alloy bearings, all of which are in the market, show little difference in ECE, irrespective of different lining constituents or the addition of an interlayer. Copper-lead alloy bearings with overlay, on the other hand, show an ECE value approximately 2.7 times as high as that for the aluminum bearings, the increment originating from the overplating process. If higher fatigue resistance of the aluminum alloy bearings is taken into consideration and their size could be reduced maintaining the same level of performance, further advantage would be found for their use.Life Cycle Analysis of Post Weld Treated Steel Welds. The post weld treatment of cyclically loaded weld seams is known to increase fatigue lifetime considerably. The potential of these measures is particularly made accessible in high cycle fatigue (HCF) and infinite life at and below the endurance limit. The availability of a complete analytical algorithm is desirable in order to benefit from post weld treatment already in the design phase. The transferability problem can only be solved by taking into account all relevant influences of the material and the component. A proposition of this kind is made considering the individual phenomena according to the current standard of knowledge: Size, surface, plastification and mean stress effects are of particular interest in this context. The required local stresses are taken from numerical analyses e.g. based on the Finite Element Method (FEM).Considering the stable supply of electric power for a long period, the assessment of long term sustainability beyond, at least, several cycles of a lifetime of power systems is studied. It is necessary to assess long-term trend of these technology from the view point of sustainability, before making any policies decision. The present study intends to show the concept and an example of the sustainability assessment of two typical renewable-energy plants, photovoltaic and wind power. The first step is to consider trend in the past and to predict the future based on it. And the second step is to propose a quantitative measure to express current quality and recycling energy of materials of a plant. This energy is named as usable energy. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.A life cycle assessment was conducted to analyse the contribution of organic dairy farming in the Netherlands to ecological sustainability. Emissions of green house gases (g CO2-equivalents) and acidification potential (g SO2-equivalents) per line of milk were 14 and 40% less for organic than for conventional dairy farming in the Netherlands, respectively. Organic dairy farming, however, required 42% more land per litre of milk. Farm economic analyses have shown consistently higher family incomes for organic than for conventional dairy fanning in the last 5 years. The response of agriculture to societal demands for sociocultural sustainability is partly observed in the concept of multifunctional land use. Functions like landscape and nature conservation, recreation, water management and drinking water production are combined with agriculture on a regional basis. In contrast to conventional dairy farming, organic dairy farming is perceived as a relatively open and extensive farming system that complements such other land use functions. Socio-cultural sustainability also relates to moral values, i.e. what is considered good and bad. Organic dairy farming is generally perceived as a "good" way of fanning with regard to production method and care for animals, plants and soil, in contrast to the general perception of conventional farming. Moreover, organic food is often seen as more natural and more authentic than conventional food.Increasing awareness of environmental burdens has led companies and designers to initiate design for the environment (DFE) programmes, which consider the design of products from the 'cradle to grave' and is also known as 'life-cycle design'. In this paper, the use of a novel environmental performance technique to be used at the early stage of product design is presented. This technique, which is to be used as a framework for green product design, is demonstrated in this paper by evaluating the environmental performance between plastic and steel fuel tanks. The fuel tank comparison can be divided into five steps. In the first four steps, a modified house of quality (HOQ) is used to analyse the performance of fuel tanks in terms of requirements of environmentally conscious design. The final step is an overall assessment that synthesizes the results from the previous four analyses. As a result, the comprehensive environmental effects in the whole life cycle of fuel tanks are captured in the early stage of design.Nowadays it is widely accepted that the active Solar Energy Systems (photovoltaics, solar thermal, solar power) provide significant environmental benefits in comparison to the conventional energy sources, contributing to the sustainability of the human activities. To cope with their potential environmental implications an EIA is applied by using the LCA method. Additionally the technologies and techniques used to alleviate the environmental intrusion are presented.In this paper a systems based approach is presented for the design of an industrial production process by simultaneously considering its economic and environmental performance. A holistic assessment of the plant's potential environmental impact is achieved by performing a life-cycle assessment (LCA) in accordance with the Eco-Indicator 99 methodology of damage modeling. The design task is formulated as a multi-objective nonlinear programming problem where the trade-off between the conflicting interests is determined using a parametric solution technique. Using the resulting set of alternative solutions, the principles of multi-criteria decision making is illustrated by selecting the design that tries to equally satisfy the objectives.This paper investigates the integrated use of life cycle analysis and design for manufacture tools for product development. A strategy is described for managing the link between these two design tools, facilitating the synthesis of their contradictory outcomes. Critical to the success of the method is the rapid delivery of information through the development of simple computer-based implementations based on industry standard packages. Design for manufacture is well refined and methods of producing results quickly and easily already exist. This is not the case with life cycle analysis and a spreadsheet-based approach is under development. The emphasis of the research has been on supporting teaching, but it has wider applications to design in practice.The authors have previously described (6) the theoretical implementation of environmental issues within engineering curricula development by the Schools of Design and Engineering at the Nottingham Trent University. This paper describes both the continuing development of a tricycle 'running frame' together with a parallel attempt at pragmatic implementation within the syllabus using the vehicle of Product Design. The author (Crisp) has over a period of five years researched the area of support mechanisms for disabled athletes, which has led to the design of a running frame for both athletic and social use. It is now seen as a viable alternative mode of transport, recent developments focussing on a battery driven version for the able bodied. The Product Design Specification (PDS) for the developed frame incorporates many of the issues relevant to environmental concerns and the teaching thereof e.g., reuse of materials, life-cycle analysis, sustainability, ethics and morals. It is therefore timely to ask students to further develop and fine tune the running frame with these issues at the forefront of their PDS and subsequently to analyse and disseminate their design solutions and their reactions to working with the athletes.In this paper a modelling and simulation of an absorption solar cooling system is presented. The system is modelled with the TRNSYS simulation program and the typical meteorological year file containing the weather parameters of Nicosia, Cyprus. Initially a system optimisation is carried out in order to select the appropriate type of collector, the optimum size of storage tank. the optimum collector slope and area, and the optimum thermostat setting of the auxiliary boiler. The final optimised system consists of a 15-m(2) compound parabolic collector tilted 30degrees from the horizontal and a 600-l hot water storage tank. The collector area is determined by performing the life cycle analysis of the system. The optimum solar system selected gives life cycle savings of Cpound1376 when a nonsubsidized fuel cost is considered. The system operates with maximum performance when the auxiliary boiler thermostat is set at 87degreesC. The system long-term integrated performance shows that 84,240 MJ required for cooling and 41,263 MJ for hot water production are supplied with solar energy. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability is the ultimate environmental claim for green marketing, as exemplified by light gauge steel studs and wood studs for residential construction. Comparing sustainability is challenging because it eludes precise definition and these two materials are vastly different in origin, service, and ultimate fate. Sustainability may be claimed through life cycle inventory (LCI) or life cycle assessment (LCA) of inputs for energy and other resources, and outputs for waste and pollution, This typically ignores the structure's significant usage phase and its disposal or recycling phase. Moreover, it does not provide a framework for evaluating sustainability relative to the effects of material production and construction on our natural environment for future generations. Now, however, the life-cycle stressor-effects assessment (LCSEA) methodology considers land use effects of material production on habitats and biodiversity (ecosystem disruption) as they impinge on sustainability. This paper discusses the final report of Scientific Certification Systems, Inc., "Analysis of Galvanized Steel Production Suitable for Residential Construction Based on Life-Cycle Stressor-Effects Assessment., A U.S. Case Study". Among its conclusions: the ecosystem disruption by steel production for residential steel studs is less than one percent of equivalent wood stud production. This demonstrates steel's contribution to sustainable construction for future generations.The methodology of Life Cycle assessment has been applied by the Ecobilan Group, a member company of PricewaterhouseCoopers to the sector of building. In the field of building, the choice of materials has to take Into account the whole building environmental balance, and not only the production of materials and construction phase impacts. At the use phase and end of life phases, the Impacts of the building are linked to the materials that have been chosen, taking Into account their performances, their life time, and their ability to be recycled The best choices of materials should be made considering the whole building en environmental balance, through L CA approach for example.This contribution focuses on the importance of sustainability in the building sector. The underlying idea being that sustainability and durability must be considered jointly. Different models are presented to determine the degree of sustainability, focussing on: the degradation factor, life cycle assessment, the Delft ladder of priorities, high-grade applications, design for recycling, design for disassembly, and the ecocost-value ratio. Examples are given of case studies in which these models have been applied successfully.While not a new idea, there has been considerable interest over the years in modelling waste management for decision support. Most current waste models fall into one of two categories: those based on multicriteria decision analysis and those based on life cycle assessment. For a waste management system to be sustainable, it needs to be environmentally effective, economically affordable and socially acceptable and must be accepted by the population affected by the waste management system. It has been identified in the literature that the applications of these models have limitations and none have considered the complete waste management cycle, from the prevention of waste through to final disposal. Most of the models identified assume that all options and decision criteria have already been identified and that the most important stage of the process is the actual evaluation of the alternatives using some form of multicriteria decision making technique or life cycle assessment. While this is important, for a waste management model or strategy to be sustainable, the identification of environmental, economic and social criteria and alternatives is a crucial stage of a successful waste management plan. Many of the waste management systems identified consider economic and environmental aspects, with very few considering social aspects. The outcome of these models also depends on who is making the decisions and on-the alternatives and criteria selected. In many cases, the community were not involved in the decision making process and the implementation of these models achieve limited success.The environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used in this study to calculate and compare the environmental burdens resulting from two different methods employed in the production of potable water in South Africa. One method employs conventional processes for the treatment of water and the other one is based on membrane filtration. All inputs (raw materials and energy) and outputs (products, by-products and emissions to air, water and soil) from the two methods were listed and quantified. These inputs and outputs cause different environmental impacts (global warming, ozone depletion, smog formation, acidification, nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity and human toxicity) and the contribution of each method to each of these impact categories has been quantified, resulting in a score. The ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) methodological framework for life cycle assessments guided this study. By using these methodologies and by tracing all the processes involved in the production of potable water to the interface with the environment, it was found that the main contributor to the overall environmental burden is the generation of electricity. This conclusion is valid for both methods investigated and in order to increase the environmental performance in the production of potable water the energy efficiency of waterworks should be increased.An industrial water recycling plant was recently commissioned in Durban, South Africa. As with any industrial activity there are environmental burdens associated with water recycling. To assess these burdens a relatively new environmental tool - the life cycle assessment (LCA) - was used. LCA is a systematic way to evaluate the environmental impact of a product or process. This study presents the environmental burdens associated with industrial water and identifies the areas for improvement for the processes involved for recycling water. It was shown that the majority of the environmental burdens for producing industrial water could be traced back to the consumption of electricity for the operation of the plant.In this paper, two fundamentally different urban wastewater systems are assessed from an environmental impact perspective. One system represents a centralised, high-tech, end-of-pipe structure c whereas the second system is primarily based on source-separation strategies. Using material flow analysis a in combination with evaluation methods based on life-cycle assessment the systems are evaluated by means of simulation and the results are discussed. A set of priority indicators for environmental assessments of urban water systems is suggested and applied in the analysis. Energy issues are also commented upon. The main intent of the paper is to present the principles of this type of assessment rather than detailed numbers for all possible environmental effects and hazardous substances emitted to air, water and soil. It represents one of several building blocks for a future multi-criteria decision-support system to evaluate urban water management from a sustainability perspective.Effects of urine separation on the environment and resource usage were estimated using the simulation package ORWARE. Measurements on the urine-separating system in the housing district Palsternackan in Stockholm and on the fertilising effect of the urine were used in the simulations. The tenants were at home 65% of the time and separated 65% of the urine. Under these conditions, urine separation decreased the waterborne emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus by 55% and 33% respectively. Compared to the conventional system, urine separation increased the flow from the wastewater system to agriculture of plant-available nitrogen by a factor of 28, phosphorus by a factor of 1.35 and potassium by a factor of 23. Urine is a well-balanced complete fertiliser with very low concentrations of heavy metals. Urine separation conserved energy as long as the urine was transported distances shorter than 221 km to the field with a truck and trailer. If all the urine had been separated and transported only 1 km, the energy saving would have been 36%. In this and in previous studies, urine separation proved to be an improvement over the conventional system as regards environmental effects and resource usage. A macroscopic assessment of the impacts of private and public transportation systems on the sustainability of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is undertaken from economic, environmental and social perspectives. The methodology draws upon the urban metabolism and sustainability indicators approaches to assessing urban sustainability, but compares modes in terms of passenger- kms. In assessing the economic sustainability of a city, transportation should be recognized as a product, a driver and a cost. In 1993, the traded costs of automobile use in the GTA were approximately balanced by the value of the automobile parts and assembly industry. But local transit costs 1/3 to 1/6 of the auto costs per person-km, in traded dollars, mainly because local labour is the primary cost. Public transportation is more sustainable from an environmental perspective. Automobile emissions are a major contributor to air pollution, which is a serious contemporary environmental health problem in Toronto. Public transportation modes are less energy intensive (including indirect energy consumption) and produce CO2 at an order of magnitude lower, although these benefits are partially undermined by under-utilization of transit capacity and the source of electricity generation. The social benefits of automobile use are likely more significant than costs in determining GTA residents' preferential mode choice. The speed and access of auto use provide important economic benefits, e.g. relating to employment and product choice. Nevertheless, offsetting the service attributes of private transportation are large social costs in terms of accidents. The costs of automobile insurance provide one tangible measure of such negative impacts. In order to improve the sustainability of the GTA, innovative approaches are required for improving the performance level of public transportation or substantially reducing the need for the service level provided by automobiles. Efforts such as greater integration of bicycles with public transit, or construction of light-rail systems in wide roadways, might be considered. But to be sustainable overall, a transportation system has to be flexible and adaptable and so must combine a mixture of modes.The Manchester urban area evolved rapidly in the early 19th century from a series of small towns to a major industrial conurbation with huge material flows and worldwide trade connections. A combination of the availability of nearby coalfields, canals, and free trade, which encouraged entrepreneurial enterprise, made Manchester into the 'shock' city of the industrial revolution. Rapid nucleated urban growth associated with industrialisation throughout the 19th century involved an exponential growth in materials transfers and in waste flows. The 20th century suburban dispersal of residential and industrial growth led to further increase in the impact of the urban metabolism, especially in terms of mass: distance of materials movement. The current post-industrial phase in Greater Manchester has to cope with the environmental and social legacies of its industrial past and with growing per capita materials consumption and increases in number of households despite a nearly static population of around 2.5 million. Changes in material flows, land usage and river morphology in Greater Manchester over the past 200 years have reflected changing technologies, industry, economics, social expectations and environmental legislation. Manchester had the first passenger railway, the first inter-basin domestic water transfer in the UK, the first urban smokeless zones and was part of a pioneering land reclamation partnership in the 1970s. Even so, the environmental legacy of industrial material flows constantly presents new challenges, from the cost of reclaiming contaminated brownfield sites to finding destinations for today's urban waste. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The paper addresses the issue of environmental sustainability of cities and proposes that Urban Design must simultaneously heed Ecology and deploy Technology. To achieve this, Urban Metabolism must become the central paradigm of both assessing urban unsustainability of the present cities and of seeking a model of the sustainable city of the future. The paradigm enables us to conceive of cities as dynamic negentropic systems whose sustainability can be enhanced by better organising their flows of environmental information. Ecologically inspired schools of urbanism have been with us for a long time but have tended to ignore technological solutions. Our reality is that human habitat is ever more artificial and that technology is all around us. Urbanists should embrace new technologies. A mix of clean environmental technologies (ET) with information (IT) and communication technologies (CT) is a key part of the solution. Information-rich, knowledge-intensive solutions are critical in enhancing the eco-efficiency of the city. An ecologically sound urbanism of the future will be both 'green' and 'smart'. Presently, the twin trends of 'ecologisation of urban technology' and 'technologisation of urban ecology' are contradictory and marginal. If correct political and consumer choices are made in the near future, the trends will converge and become mainstream. The anticipated intellectual, cultural, and economic shifts suggests the emergence a new design paradigm for all professions involved in the production of the physical urban environment - planners, engineers, architects, landscape architects. This paradigm - 'eco-tech design'- will set us free from the binary of the Natural vs the Artificial.

 Consideration of abrupt climate change has generally been incorporated neither in analyses of climate-change impacts nor in the design of climate adaptation strategies. Yet the possibility of abrupt climate change triggered by human perturbation of the climate system is used to support the position of both those who urge stronger and earlier mitigative action than is currently being contemplated and those who argue that the unknowns in the Earth system are too large to justify such early action. This paper explores the question of abrupt climate change in terms of its potential implications for society, focusing on the UK and northwest Europe in particular. The nature of abrupt climate change and the different ways in which it has been defined and perceived are examined. Using the example of the collapse of the thermohaline circulation (THC), the suggested implications for society of abrupt climate change are reviewed; previous work has been largely speculative and has generally considered the implications only from economic and ecological perspectives. Some observations about the implications from a more social and behavioural science perspective are made. If abrupt climate change simply implies changes in the occurrence or intensity of extreme weather events, or an accelerated unidirectional change in climate, the design of adaptation to climate change can proceed within the existing paradigm, with appropriate adjustments. Limits to adaptation in some sectors or regions may be reached, and the costs of appropriate adaptive behaviour may be large, but strategy can develop on the basis of a predicted long-term unidirectional change in climate. It would be more challenging, however, if abrupt climate change implied a directional change in climate, as, for example, may well occur in northwest Europe following a collapse of the THC. There are two fundamental problems for society associated with such an outcome: first, the future changes in climate currently being anticipated and prepared for may reverse and, second, the probability of such a scenario occurring remains fundamentally unknown. The implications of both problems for climate policy and for decision making have not been researched. It is premature to argue therefore that abrupt climate change-in the sense referred to here-imposes unacceptable costs on society or the world economy, represents a catastrophic impact of climate change or constitutes a dangerous change in climate that should be avoided at all reasonable cost. We conclude by examining the implications of this contention for future research and policy formation.The diagrammatic representation of climate change, adaptation and mitigation is important in conceptualizing the problem, identifying important feedbacks, and communicating between disciplines. The Synthesis Report of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report, 2001, uses a "cause and effect" approach developed in the integrated assessment literature. This viewpoint reviews this approach and suggests an alternative, based on stocks and flows. The alternative gives a much richer representation of the problem so that it includes the enhanced greenhouse effect, ancillary benefits of mitigation, the distinction between climate-change and other stresses on natural systems, and a more refined distinction between adaptation and mitigation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The winter tourism industry has been repeatedly identified as potentially vulnerable to global climate change. Climate change impact assessments of ski areas in Australia, Europe and North America all project negative consequences for the industry. An important limitation of earlier studies has been the incomplete consideration of snowmaking as a climate adaptation strategy. Recognising that snowmaking is an integral component of the ski industry, this study examined how current and improved snowmaking capacity affects the vulnerability of the ski industry in southern Ontario (Canada) to climate variability and change. A 17 yr record of daily snow conditions and operations from a primary ski area in the region was used to calibrate a ski season simulation model that included a snowmaking module with climatic thresholds and operational decision rules based on interviews with ski area managers. Climate change scenarios (2020s, 2050s, 2080s) were developed by downscaling climate variables from 4 general circulation models (using both IS92a and SIZES emission scenarios) with the LARS weather generator (parameterized to local climate stations) for input into a daily snow depth simulation model. In contrast to earlier studies, the results indicate that ski areas in the region could remain operational in a warmer climate, particularly within existing business planning and investment time horizons (into the 2020s), The economic impact of additional snowmaking requirements remains an important uncertainty. Under climate change scenarios and current snowmaking technology, the average ski season at the case study ski area was projected to reduce by 0-16 % in the 2020s, 7-32 % in the 2050s and 11-50 % in the 2080s. Concurrent with the projected ski season losses, the estimated amount of snowmaking required increased by 36-144 % in the scenarios for the 2020s. Required snowmaking amounts increased by 48-187 % in the scenarios for the 2020s. The ability of individual ski areas to absorb additional snowmaking costs and remain economically viable in addition to the relative impact of climate change on other nearby ski regions (Quebec, Michigan and Vermont) remain important avenues of further research. The findings reveal the importance of examining a wide range of climate change scenarios and the necessity of including snowmaking and other adaptation strategies in future climate change vulnerability assessments of the ski industry and winter tourism in other regions of the world. We present a framework for evaluating the risks of investments in climate change mitigation projects to generate emission credits. Risk factors that influence the quantity of emission credits are identified for six project types. Since not all project types are affected by the same factors, diversification is a viable risk reduction strategy. We propose a methodology for quantifying risk and return of such investments, discuss data requirements, and illustrate it using a sample of voluntary projects. In our sample, the returns of an optimally diversified low-risk portfolio are up to 10 times higher than those of single projects, holding risk exposure constant. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While quantification of the effects of NOx and water vapor is still at an early stage there is evidence that contrail formation could make a significant contribution to global warming. This paper builds on previous research that analyzed a policy of restricting air transport cruise altitudes to eliminate contrail formation. Our previous work [Transport. Res. D 7(6) (2002) 451], examined altitude restrictions in European airspace and concluded that this could be a beneficial policy for reducing climate change impacts from aviation. Since most of the flights in European airspace are short-haul flights, this paper evaluates the trade-offs between altitude restrictions, fuel burn and journey times for longer haul flights of up to 6000 nm. Our focus is on the North Atlantic and US airspace and we examine potential contrail fraction to determine optimal cruise altitudes for reducing contrail formation. Changes in fuel burn and travel times associated with flight levels of 18,000 and 31,000 ft for different aircraft types are analyzed. We find that, in most cases, CO2 emission increases would be unlikely to entirely counteract the benefit of possible reductions in contrail formation. For some aircraft types, the percentage increase in emitted CO2 was found to be strongly dependent on journey length. In general, journey times appear not to be a major issue except for some aircraft types. Our results suggest that reducing aircraft cruise altitudes could be a beneficial policy for mitigating climate change impacts from the aviation sector. This is clearly dependent on aircraft type and the distances traveled, but more importantly on ambient atmospheric conditions which can vary significantly between regions and due to daily variation. This suggests that real time flight planning to minimize contrail formation should be investigated as a possible climate mitigation policy. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.From a private investor's point of view transaction costs of project-based Kyoto mechanisms relate mainly to project management and interaction with government representatives. However, when analysing the cost effectiveness of project-based Kyoto mechanisms these transaction costs are often underestimated or completely ignored, due to limited data availability. This paper presents an analysis of transaction costs of project-based Kyoto mechanisms by applying cost estimates from comparable activities, for example, activities implemented jointly (AIJ). The findings show that transaction costs of AIJ projects range between 7% and more than 100% of production costs with 80% of projects lying between 14 and 89%. Furthermore the data clearly illustrate that "bigger" projects have lower specific project costs indicating the existence of economies of scale. Due to the fact that high transaction costs will push many promising projects out of the market, efforts should be undertaken to reduce transaction costs by improving procedures and business environments, for example, by standardisation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.We have developed a new version of the MERGE model, called MERGE-ETL, to analyse the dynamics of endogenous technological learning (ETL) in the energy system. This paper describes the basic formulation of MERGE-ETL, the solving techniques used for this model and some first numerical results in the context of policies designed to mitigate global climate changes.Policy enabling tropical forests to approach their potential contribution to global-climate-change mitigation requires forecasts of land use and carbon storage on a large scale over long periods. In this paper, we present an integrated modeling methodology that addresses these needs. We model the dynamics of the human land-use system and of C pools contained in each ecosystem, as well as their interactions. The model is national scale, and is currently applied in a preliminary way to Costa Rica using data spanning a period of over 50 years. It combines an ecological process model, parameterized using field and other data, with an economic model, estimated using historical data to ensure a close link to actual behavior. These two models are linked so that ecological conditions affect land-use choices and vice versa. The integrated model predicts land use and its consequences for C storage for policy scenarios. These predictions can be used to create baselines, reward sequestration, and estimate the value in both environmental and economic terms of including C sequestration in tropical forests as part of the efforts to mitigate global climate change. The model can also be used to assess the benefits from costly activities to increase accuracy and thus reduce errors and their societal costs. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Numerous studies have shown that international emissions trading can significantly lower the costs of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement. Economic models, however, ignore the substantial economic and political risks associated with investments in developing countries, where-according to these models-a large share of global GHG abatement takes place. We use a mean-variance approach to compute international portfolios of carbon abatement activities that balance low abatement costs and investment risks. Expected returns are derived from marginal abatement cost curves. The volatility of the growth rate of regional carbon dioxide emissions is used as an indicator of investment risk. We find, first, that well-diversified portfolios can significantly reduce investment risks. Second, the least-risk portfolio is distinct from the cost-efficient allocation based on equalization of marginal abatement costs, and much more costly to implement. This indicates that existing models which neglect investment risks overestimate the cost-savings due to international emissions trading. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Economic studies of climate change commonly discount the future at a rate equal to the long-run return on corporate stocks. Stock market returns, however, are dominated by a risk premium, while climate change mitigation measures would reduce important risks to future welfare. Drawing on the theory of investment behavior under uncertainty, this paper argues that the benefits of climate stabilization policies should be discounted at a rate equal to the annual return on risk-free financial assets, which attains an empirical value between 0 and 2.6%. In addition, expected benefits must be adjusted to account for the value of risk abatement.Fast growth tree plantations and secondary forests are considered highly I efficient carbon sinks. In northwest Patagonia, more than 2 million ha of rangelands are suitable for forestry, and tree plantation or native forest restoration could largely contribute to climate change mitigation. The commonest baseline is the heavily g razed gramineous steppe of Festuca pallescens (St. Yves) Parodi. To assess the carbon sequestration potential of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa (Dougl.) Laws) plantations and native cypress (Austrocedrus chilensis (Don) Flor. et Bond.), individual above and below ground biomass models were developed, and scaled to stand level in forests between 600 and 1500 annual rainfall. To calculate the carbon sequestration baseline, the pasture biomass was simulated. Also, soil carbon at two depths was assessed in paired pine-cypress-pasture sample plots, the same as the litter carbon content of both forest types. Individual stem, foliage, branch and root log linear equations adjusted for pine and cypress trees presented similar slopes (P > 0.05), although some differed in the elevations. Biomass carbon was 52.3 Mg ha(-1) (S.D. = 30.6) for pine stands and 73.2 Mg ha(-1) (S.D. = 95.4) for cypress forests, given stand volumes of 148.1 and 168.4 m(3) ha(-1), respectively,,Soil carbon (litter included) was 86.3 Mg ha(-1) (S.D. = 46.5) for pine stands and 116.5 Mg ha(-1) (S.D. = 38.5) for cypress. Root/shoot ratio was 19.5 and 11.4%, respectively. The low r/s value for cypress may account for differences in nutrient cycling and water uptake potential. At stand level, differences in foliage, taproot and soil carbon compartments were highly significative (P < 0.01) between both forest types. In pine stands, both biomass and soil carbon were highly explained by the rainfall gradient (r(2) = 0.94). Nevertheless, such a relationship was not found for cypress, possibly due to stand and soil disturbances in sample plots. The carbon baseline estimated in pasture biomass, including litter, was 2.6 Mg ha(-1) (S.D. = 0.8). Since no differences in soil carbon were found between pasture and both forest types, additionality should be accounted only by biomass. However, the replacement of pasture by pine plantations may decrease the soil carbon storage, at least during the first years. on the other hand, the soil may be a more relevant compartment of sequestered carbon in cypress forests, and if pine plantation replaces cypress forests, soil carbon losses could cause a negative balance. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.We demonstrate that when the future path of the discount rate is uncertain and highly correlated, the distant future should be discounted at significantly lower rates than suggested by the current rate. We then use two centuries of US interest rate data to quantify this effect. Using both random walk and mean-reverting models, we compute the "certainty-equivalent rate" that summarizes the effect of uncertainty and measures the appropriate forward rate of discount in the future. Under the random walk model we find that the: certainty-equivalent rate falls continuously from 4% to 2% after 100 years, 1% after 200 years, and 0.5% after 300 years. At horizons of 400 years, the discounted value increases by a factor of over 40,000 relative to conventional discounting. Applied to climate change mitigation, we find, that incorporating discount rate uncertainty. almost doubles the expected present value of mitigation benefits. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.Strategies to mitigate anthropogenic climate change recognize that carbon sequestration in the terrestrial biosphere can reduce the build-up of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. However, climate mitigation policies do not generally incorporate the effects of these changes in the land surface on the surface albedo, the fluxes of sensible and latent heat to the atmosphere, and the distribution of energy within the climate system. Changes in these components of the surface energy budget can affect the local, regional, and global climate. Given the goal of mitigating climate change, it is important to consider all of the effects of changes in terrestrial vegetation and to work toward a better understanding of the full climate system. Acknowledging the importance of land surface change as a component of climate change makes it more challenging to create a system of credits and debits wherein emission or sequestration of carbon in the biosphere is equated with emission of carbon from fossil fuels. Recognition of the complexity of human-caused changes in climate does not, however, weaken the importance of actions that would seek to minimize our disturbance of the Earth's environmental system and that would reduce societal and ecological vulnerability to environmental change and variability. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Examining the intersection of risk analysis and sustainable energy strategies reveals numerous examples of energy-efficient and renewable energy technologies that offer insurance loss-prevention benefits. The growing threat of climate change provides an added motivation for the risk community to understand better this area of opportunity. While analyses of climate change mitigation typically focus on the emissions-reduction characteristics of sustainable energy technologies, less often recognised are a host of synergistic ways in which these technologies also offer adaptation benefits, e.g. making buildings more resilient to natural disasters. While there is already some relevant activity, there remain various barriers to expanding these efforts significantly. Achieving successful integration of sustainable energy considerations with risk-management objectives requires a more proactive orientation, and coordination among diverse actors and industry groups.The. impetus for this paper is Canada's commitment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions as well as reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. Wood-based ethanol offers an excellent opportunity for greenhouse gas mitigation due to market potential, an ability to offset significant emissions from the transportation sector, a reduction of emissions from CO2-intensive waste-management systems, and carbon sequestration in afforested plantations. While there are technological and economic barriers to overcome, using wood-biomass as a source of ethanol can be an economically viable tool for reducing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. This paper examines the costs and mitigation potential of the production of ethanol from biomass supplied from industrial wood waste as well as from trees harvested from afforested land.Russian Kyoto related interests are economic and after the US withdrawal the mission of Russian actors has been to find new demand for Russian credits and allowances. Kyoto related benefits to Russia will be significantly smaller than earlier expected, however, the revenues are now more likely to be focused on climate change mitigation purposes. Competition in the Kyoto market has established buyers' market and Russia has to accommodate the interests of investors in order to gain benefits. The Russian initiative 'Green Investment Scheme' to recycle revenues from International Emissions Trading (IET) to further environmental activities would convene demand for Russian AAUs but experience the same problems than the previous initiatives: inadequate institutional arrangement, unclear division of responsibilities between domestic actors, prolonged ratification process and lack of eligibility strategy. These problems have prevented implementation of GIS so far. Therefore, these problems have to be addressed by high-level Russian policy-makers if serious benefits from Kyoto are sought. Actors building alliances with Russia should focus on assisting with solving these problems. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Besides climate change mitigation, policies encouraging the conversion of agricultural land to forest may generate additional environmental benefits. We estimate the reductions in agricultural externalities (soil erosion, nitrogen, and atrazine pollution) from an afforestation program in Wisconsin. Existing benefits estimates are used to quantify the value of reduced soil erosion and some benefits from enhanced wildlife habitat. These values are the same order of magnitude as the costs of the carbon sequestration policy, indicating that the co-benefits of forest carbon sinks are an important factor for countries to consider in designing a portfolio of climate mitigation strategies.The impetus for this paper is Canada's commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions as well as reducing dependency on fossil fuels. This research assesses the economic viability of using biomass from afforested lands and industrial wood waste as a feedstock for ethanol production to substitute for fossil fuels in the transportation sector. Afforestation can increase the size of the carbon sink and also provide a source of renewable energy. Ethanol offers an excellent opportunity for greenhouse gas mitigation due to market potential, an ability to offset significant emissions from the transportation sector, and reduce emissions from CO2-intensive waste-management systems. A case study of the economics of a hypothetical ethanol production facility found that a facility capable of producing 122 million litres of ethanol annually could have a net present value of CDN$245 million over a planning horizon of 36 years. This facility would require a supply of up to 960 oven-dry tonnes of wood-biomass per day and would result in net annual reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 349,000 tonnes of CO2. This includes the carbon sequestered through the afforestation as well as emissions avoided through fossil fuel substitution. Using biomass from afforested lands and industrial wood waste as a fuel for energy production can be an economically viable tool for reducing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and reducing the sensitivity of transportation fuel prices to changes in gasoline prices.This paper discusses the contribution of biomass in the future global energy supply. The discussion is based on a review of 17 earlier studies on the subject.. These studies have arrived at widely different conclusions about the possible contribution of biomass in the future global energy supply (e.g., from below 100 EJ yr(-1) to above 400 EJ yr(-1) in 2050). The major reason for the differences is that the two most crucial parameters-land availability and yield levels in energy crop production-are very uncertain, and subject to widely different opinions (e.g., the assessed-2050 plantation. supply ranges from below 50 EJ yr(-1) to almost 240 EJ yr(-1)). However, also the expectations about future availability of forest wood and-of residues from agriculture and forestry vary substantially among the studies. The question how an expanding bioenergy sector would interact with other land uses, such as food production, biodiversity soil and nature conservation, and carbon sequestration has been insufficiently analyzed in the studies. It is therefore difficult to establish to what extent bioenergy is an attractive option for climate change mitigation in the energy sector. A refined modeling of interactions between different uses and bioenergy, food and materials production-i.e., of competition for resources, and of synergies between different uses-would facilitate an improved understanding of the prospects for large-scale bioenergy and of future land-use and biomass management in general (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd., All rights reserved.Ambitious claims have been made about the development benefits of market-based policy instruments for climate mitigation. We examine the implications of forest carbon projects for different aspects of equity and sustainable development. We apply a stakeholder multi-criteria assessment to explore the range of stakeholders, their roles, interests and perspectives, to a case study in Mexico. Two elements of equity, access to markets and forests, and legitimacy in decision-making and institutions, are discussed. Robust cross-scale institutional frameworks are necessary to ensure that objectives for equity and sustainable development are met and that already marginalised sectors of society are not excluded. These institutions are still developing and their establishment brings together many different stakeholders from government, private sector and civil society. However, the ability of the "new carbon economy" to provide real benefits for sustainable development may ultimately be constrained by the nature of the market itself. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The tolerable windows approach (TWA) allows the climate policy formulation process to be safeguarded in the following way. First, guardrails are defined in order to exclude intolerable climate change impacts, on the one hand, and unacceptable socioeconomic consequences of climate change mitigation measures, on the other. Second, a scientific analysis is conducted to investigate the features of those emission paths that are compatible with the guardrail constraints. The fundamental methodology of the TWA is best described in terms of the theory of differential inclusions. This emerging mathematical theory already provides numerical methods applicable as long as the underlying integrated assessment models are of limited complexity. In order to identify emissions corridors, we propose a novel calculation scheme applicable also for large-scale integrated assessment models.Desertification, the term used to refer to land degradation in dry areas, is a neglected aspect of global environmental change. It could affect a quarter of the Earth's surface and, like global climate change, is the subject of an international framework convention. Yet while global climate change has been the target of an unprecedented international research effort desertification is under-researched, under-funded, and its very existence is even derided by some people as a myth. Greater convergence between the two fields of research would benefit both of them and global change research generally. Some features which the two fields have in common are identified and the reasons why so little is known about desertification are highlighted. Some of the scientific and policy benefits of bringing them closer together are listed. There is potential for greater synergy between research into desertification and global change against a background in which those bodies responsible for implementing the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), the Climate Change Convention (CCC) and the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) are also looking for synergies of mutual benefit. This article focuses, for convenience, only on links between desertification and global climate change, but thin does not imply that desertification does not also have important impacts on the loss of global biodiversity too. The features that desertification and global climate change have in common are identified and the scientific benefits of greater convergence are outlined. The links between combating desertification and global climate change mitigation are reviewed.Denmark has pursued an ambitious energy policy of climate change mitigation in the last dozen years. The country has good wind energy resources, and these are being tapped to increasing extents. With a Scandinavian climate, Denmark also has a substantial potential for CHP (cogeneration of heat and power) based district heating, which likewise has been applied to increasing extents over the years. Much of the CHP is in the form of small local plants thus putting Denmark in its current situation with a high proportion of its power generation being beyond the control of the central dispatch leading to problems with load balancing and large power flows in the transmission system. Previous analyses have revealed that if no systematic changes are implemented, continued expansion of wind power and CHP in Denmark would require the large power plants to retain their pivotal position as far as load balancing is concerned. However, production shares would steadily decrease whereas fixed costs would remain unaffected thereby increasing the specific costs. The transmission system would need expansion both domestically and internationally to accommodate even higher flows. Such expansion would be costly as well as likely to generate public opposition. Introduction of scattered load balancing where even small CHP plants and other equipment are subjected to some form of central control will enable expansion without relying on the balancing capabilities of large power plants and abundant transmission capacity. This article analyses power flows in the transmission system with scattered load balancing under various climatic conditions with uneven distributions of wind power and uneven temperatures and thus CHP conditions in the country. Through modelling of the energy system and the transmission system, it is demonstrated that requirements of the transmission grid are minimised if scattered load balancing is implemented in a way that ascertains load balance is kept locally and not just on an aggregate national level. Based on the technical analysis it is hence concluded that there must be incentive structures that address consumption and production differently in different geographic areas depending on e.g. momentary climatic conditions. A system with even incentive structures throughout the country as presently existing is thus not sufficient as it only ensures a macro-level load balance.The probability that long-term geologic storage or sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) will become an important climate change mitigation strategy will depend on a number of factors, namely (1) availability, capacity and location of suitable sites, (2) the cost of geologic storage compared to other climate change mitigation options, and (3) public acceptance. Whether or not a site is suitable will be determined by establishing that it can meet a set of performance requirements for safe and effective geologic storage (PRGS). To date, no such PRGS have been developed. Establishing effective PRGS must start with an evaluation of how much CO2 might be stored and for how long the CO2 must remain underground to meet goals for controlling atmospheric CO2 concentrations. These requirements then provide a context for addressing the issue of what, if any, is an "acceptable surface seepage rate"? This paper provides a preliminary evaluation Of CO2 Storage amounts, time-scales, and concordant performance requirements.As part of its climate change mitigation initiative, BP is evaluating technologies for the separation and capture of CO2 from combustion sources, for subsequent geologic storage. Ansaldo Fuel Cells S.pA. is developing Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (MCFC) technology targeted at industrial applications from 50 kW to 10MW. This paper describes the conceptual design of a hybrid MCFC system to generate power and simultaneously capture CO2 from small (<10MW) gas turbine exhaust streams. Initial modeling studies indicated that a 1.6MW MCFC could reduce the CO2 emissions from a 4.6MW gas turbine by 50% on a per kWh basis. Experimental studies are in progress to understand the system behaviour, operating envelope and impact of contaminants. Initial data from these investigations are presented, which confirm that the fuel cell can operate at sub-optimal CO2 levels with limited loss in power and efficiency.The establishment of bioenergy plantations on previously unforested land will generally involve carbon accumulation in aboveground biomass for some period before final use of the biomass for energy. The equilibrium level of aboveground carbon stock may be substantially larger than the level prior to the plantation establishment. Soil carbon may increase, decrease or remain approximately constant depending on plantation characteristics, climate, soil type and land use history. Thus, besides fossil fuel substitution, also changes in the carbon stock influence the climate change mitigation potential of bioenergy plantations. The Bonn agreement (COP6) opens up for the linking of biomass plantations with the crediting of plantation-induced carbon sinks. Our analysis of the case of Salix production in Sweden indicates that the revenues from such carbon credits could be substantial. Thus, the new opportunity for crediting of the carbon sink component of plantations can have implications for the economics of biomass energy. It will also favor longer rotation periods and some types of crops over others, with annually harvested crops such as energy grasses having less incentive than short rotation forests.The impact of proposed changes in field operations and land use on fossil fuel consumption on Canadian farms was analyzed using a computer model of the mechanics of farm machinery. The model predicted tractor/harvester power needs (kW), implement sizes and work required (kW-h) to complete each field operation on model farms in Canada's four farming regions. These predictions were integrated nationally using crop area statistics. Farm fieldwork predictions were converted to volume of fuel (l), consumed fuel energy (PJ) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Tg of CO2 equivalent). The model was used to assess the sensitivity of GHG emissions to reduced and zero tillage, removal of summer fallow from the Prairies, increased permanent cover (perennial forage), fuel type and timeliness strategies. These practices are all under consideration as carbon sequestration measures. While fossil fuel consumption is small in comparison to other terms in the agricultural GHG balance (such as nitrous oxide and ruminant methane), modeling on-farm fossil fuel consumption in response to these land management measures has a role to play in climate change mitigation strategies. The model and the sensitivity analysis described here can be applied in any country with mechanized agriculture. (C) 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.Two linked topics concerning environmental issues at the WTO and their implications for MNEs are considered - namely, international business in the environmental goods and services sector, and the relationship of the WTO to the emerging climate change regime, particularly the Kyoto Protocol. Liberalization of barriers to international trade and investment in environmental goods and services could expand market access and otherwise change competitive conditions for multinational firms. The relationship of the WTO to the Kyoto Protocol is on the broader agenda of environmental and economic diplomacy. Decisions concerning these two sets of issues during the next few years will affect multinational firms' competitive positions, strategies and operations in many industries. For instance, the liberalization of barriers to trade and FDI in the environmental goods and services industry creates new international market opportunities for firms that want to expand abroad; it also creates new competitive threats in home markets. The chapter was in press when the WTO Cancun ministerial meeting collapsed in mid-September 2003.Landowner behavior is a major determinant of land use and land cover changes, an important consideration for policy analysts concerned with global change. Study of landowner behavior aids in designing more effective incentives for inducing land use and land cover changes to help mitigate climate change by reducing net greenhouse gas emissions. Afforestation, deforestation, reforestation, and timber harvest are the most frequent land management practices that influence forest carbon stocks and flux. Research studies provide estimates of how private landowners respond to market signals and government programs and how they alter land management. For example, landowners have tended to retain subsidized afforested stands well beyond program life in the United States, suggesting that similar programs for climate change mitigation could result in high rates of retention. At the same time, policy makers need to be aware that unintended consequences of policies can lead to significantly different outcomes than envisioned, including leakage possibilities. A case is made for growth of a new metadiscipline of sustainability science and engineering. This new field integrates industrial, social, and environmental processes in a global context. The skills required for this higher level discipline represent a metadisciplinary endeavor, combining information and insights across multiple disciplines and perspectives with the common goal of achieving a desired balance among economic, environmental, and societal objectives. Skills and capabilities that are required to support the new metadiscipline are summarized. Examples of integrative projects are discussed in the areas of sustainability metrics and integration of industrial, societal, and environmental impacts. It is clear that a focus on green engineering that employs pollution prevention and industrial ecology alone are not sufficient to achieve sustainability, because even systems with efficient material and energy use can overwhelm the carrying capacity of a region or lead to other socially unacceptable outcomes.We define key research questions as a stimulus to research in the area of industrial ecology. The first group of questions addresses analytical support for green engineering and environmental policy. They relate to (i) tools for green engineering, (ii) improvements in life cycle assessment, (iii) aggregation of environmental impacts, and (iv) effectiveness of a range of innovative policy approaches. The second group of questions addresses the dynamics of technology, economics, and environmental impacts. They relate to (v) the environmental impacts of material and energy consumption, (vi) the potential for material efficiency, (vii) the relation of technological and economic development to changes in consumption patterns, and (viii) the potential for technology to overcome environmental impacts and constraints. Altogether, the questions create an intellectual agenda for industrial ecology and integrate the technological and social aspects of sustainability.This paper attempts to bridge business ethics to corporate social responsibility including the social and environmental dimensions. The objective of the paper is to suggest a conceptual methodology with which ethics of corporate environmental management tools can be considered. The method includes two stages that are required for a shift away from the current dominant unsustainable paradigm and toward a more sustainable paradigm. The first stage is paradigmatic, metaphoric and normative. The second stage is a practical stage, which in turn, is analytic, descriptive and positive. The method is applied to common industrial metabolism tools of ecological footprints (EF), environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and industrial ecology (IE). The application shows that all three tools can be used in business ethics, in particular, when the first stage of the method is applied to their use.Within the emerging concept of industrial ecology (IE) that belongs to the research and practical field of sustainable development (SD), the natural ecosystem evolution over time has been described as a metaphor that presents systems of type I, type II and type III ecology. Type I describes a situation when there was little life on earth and plenty of resources. In type II, the ecosystem starts to develop material cycles and energy cascades between organisms and species due to increasing amount of life and emerging scarcity of resources. In type III, the mature ecosystem stage, the system actors have developed nearly completely cyclic flows of matter, energy cascades and diverse interdependencies between them. This paper uses the metaphor in the three systems to develop practical models of type I, II and III industrial ecosystems for an economic system of heating energy and its evolution over time. First, the physical flows of matter and energy are described by using two contrasting case system characteristics, 'throughput' and 'roundput'. Throughput means linear material and energy flows. Roundput means material cycles, energy cascades and sustainable use of renewables, i.e., ecosystem type III. Second, the more structural and organisational features are considered with the characteristic of 'diversity' meaning diversity in resources, human involvement and economic actors and technology used. The case system development over time shown with our practical model of type I-III is radically different from the ecosystem evolution as described in the literature on the industrial ecosystem metaphor of type I-III. This conclusion as a research result, however, is tentative, because of the fuzzy and vague meaning assigned to a metaphor and its confusion with a practical model of industrial development in the industrial ecology literature.In her article 'Legacy of Waste or Wasted Legacy? The End of Industrial Ecology in Post-Socialist Hungary', Zsuzsa Gille [2000] documents the attempts and ultimate failures of Hungarian central planners to institute several decades ago an approach very similar to current industrial ecology and ecological modernisation perspectives. Gille deplores the fall of these institutions with the collapse of state socialism and suggests that current policy makers should adopt some of their features in an attempt to create a 'third road' industrial waste policy. This article suggests another interpretation of Gille's findings. We first demonstrate that industrial by-products recovery was widespread in market economics and that the central planning of industrial waste recovery had been advocated in previous decades in other countries. We then argue that Hungary's failure in this respect seems to conform to the so-called 'Austrian' critique of central planning. Implications for current policy-making are then derived from this analysis.Forestry, forest, pulp and paper industries provide important cases for environmental and ecological economics and for corporate environmental management, because of the large quantities of flows of material and energy that are derived from the natural ecosystem. Because of the natural capital intensive nature of its activity, the forest industry also offers a fruitful case study for industrial ecology (IE), the practical concern of which is the comparison of material and energy flows of nature to these same flows in economic and industrial systems. In this paper, the concept of an industrial ecosystem is reflected in a typical local forest industry system in Finland, known as 'a local forest industry integrate'. We present a material and energy flow model that can be used to study forest industry environmental management and for the planning of environmental policies directed to forest industry. Flows of matter (biomass), nutrients, energy and carbon are described, and the waste utilization possibilities are considered. A local forest industry system can be a fruitful case for IE development as the cuttings of forests in Finland are below the renewal rate, material cycles, nutrient cycles and energy cascades are developed and the carbon dioxide (CO2) binding capacity of the forest ecosystem is maintained. The difficulties and barriers in light of the industrial ecosystem vision of a materially closed local system include the high export rates of paper, energy intensive production and problem displacement in waste utilization efforts. The presented material and energy flow model of forest industry environmental management is compared with a case of a local agricultural and food industry system. For agro-food sector applications, a different emphasis on the flows may have to be adopted than in a forest industry application. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Industrial ecology represents an emerging interdisciplinary field of studying industrial systems in combination with their fundamental linkage with nature. An eye-catching characteristic at the basis of industrial ecology's scientific profile is its refreshingly unorthodox perspective of understanding nature as model, compared with other disciplines of understanding nature, e.g. in terms of 'sack of resources' or 'biophysical limit' as opposed to industrial systems. The idea of industrial ecology's appealing perspective is to balance the development of industrial systems with the constraints of natural ecosystems, analogous to an 'industrial symbiosis'. On the basis of initial efforts to conceptualize industrial ecology's underlying assumptions concerning nature, a philosophically focused approach of its characteristic perspective of understanding nature as model is presented. The contribution may provide industrial ecologists as well as other economists, engineers, scientists and policy-makers involved in the field of sustainability with an opportunity for accessible philosophical reflection, perhaps bringing to the surface their tacit frames regarding nature. Consequently, the goal is to gain greater conceptual clarity and to contribute to laying a solid foundation for industrial ecology's stimulating role when initiating change towards sustainability at large. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.In this article, I examine the relationships between new concepts of human activity in the environment and several prevention strategies used to plot a course toward sustainable use. Natural capitalism and industrial ecology are relatively new concepts that provide a framework for environmental management. Although the precautionary principle puts into policy a determination to prevent environmental damage before it occurs, natural capitalism and industrial ecology go beyond the prevention of environmental damage to the optimization of environmental interactions. The risk assessment tools necessary for preventive management continue to be essential. However, additional tools are needed to go beyond prevention to optimization. A holistic, scientific approach to the human place within the environment is needed, including both interdisciplinary and large-scale research.Industrial ecology (IE) studies the physical flows of matter and energy within, and most importantly, between the natural ecosystem and the human industrial system, aiming to reduce the environmental burden of the flows. One of the applications used is to transform the industrial system linear 'throughput' material and energy flow that relies on imported non-renewables, on virgin renewables and produces wastes and emissions dumped to nature toward a cyclical and cascading 'roundput' flow that relies oil local/regional renewables and wastes. The paper constructs a key function or an anchor activity that integrates the throughput material and energy flows and changes them into the roundput model in a local/regional agricultural and food industry system in Finland. This key activity is able to simultaneously utilise and process waste flows from the main steps in the food products' life cycle (value chain) and produce energy and fertiliser to the different processes in the life cycle by using waste as a fuel and as a resource with value. Difficulties in achieving this vision in practice are discussed. The paper uses national data from Finland, regional data from the Satakunta region in southwest Finland and local data from the municipality of Huittinen in Satakunta. A methodology in which environmental, economic and social variables are studied with different 'what if?' scenarios for the roundput model and for the throughput model is presented.A methodology for rating the suitability of sites for the location of industrial facilities is formulated and applied to the case of a coal-fired power plant location. The methodology comprises two major interlinked components: the environmental plant location indexing component, which involves the identification, scaling and weighting of environmental sensitivity factors; and the impact analysis component, which involves the superimposition of the pollution generation impacts of an industrial facility on spatially gridded zones of various environmental sensitivities. For each rectangular areal unit defined by a square grid, the Unit Pollution Potential Index is determined by the severity and distribution of key environmental sensitivity factors and the coverage of superimposed pollutant effects as determined by contaminant fate and transport models. For any alternative site of a planned facility, the summation of the unit indices over the area of influence of the facility provides the quantitative Pollution Index, which can be used as a basis for comparison of alternative sites for planned facilities. For this paper, this methodology is applied to the hypothetical case of the siting of a coal-fired power plant in the northeastern region of the United States, in which three alternative sites are considered. The three sites: A, B and C yielded indices of 47.83, 47.91 and 47.6, respectively, indicating that site C is the most suitable for siting the power plant.This research describes a framework and case study application that merges fuzzy set methods, pollution prevention, and sustainable production concepts. There is a direct linkage between industrial pollution prevention, sustainability, and the solution of large-scale environmental problems. This linkage stems from the inherent desire for economic production, while at the same time protecting the environment from further degradation. The methodology combines systems analysis under imprecise conditions with a life cycle assessment method that is able to accept imprecise data. Analysis of systems under imprecise conditions is accomplished through analysis of process flow diagrams using fuzzy set techniques. Introduction of imprecision into life cycle assessment is accomplished by integration of fuzzy set approaches into a decision support system utilizing multiple criteria decision making. The framework is described and a case study application of an industrial parts cleaning system using an open top vapor degreaser is presented. Results of applying the method show that: (1) It is well suited for analysis of complex systems in which input data is sparse and expensive to collect. (2) The proposed framework includes a decision support system that is able to consider life cycle assessment concepts, and is able to reconcile differing opinions on available options for modification of production systems, thereby leading to more sustainable solutions.In theory, industrial ecology is a powerful analytical tool that challenges us to think beyond a mechanistic, fragmented view of environmental problems (and solutions). Indeed, it provokes thinking about the holistic industrial system. Presently, however, the field tends to focus primarily on technical processes and quantitative, material-oriented analysis. This article invites a discussion about expanding industrial ecology's models by considering social systems analysis. Its purpose is not to argue for dismantling or replacing extant industrial ecology. Instead, by advocating that industrial ecologists link their perspectives with perspectives from social science, it is hoped that the existing strengths of the discipline can be augmented with an emphasis on social and broader systemic factors. This direction is consistent with more holistic thinking and the roots of the discipline.Nowadays, the urban utilities management is a real chaos. A systemic approach, defined by the researchers of the CREM as urbistics, can give to the public managers the tools for the sustainable city of tomorrow. Using microcomputers and the cabled TV network, the CREM manages a laboratory town at real scale. Every hour, various flows, like electricity, natural gas, district heating or drinking water are measured over 30 sites and visualized by a urban area network. This enable the urban utilities to better understand the consumption pattern and thus to improve the resources management. Nevertheless, the question was asked whether the environmental benefits of the management improvement overcome the impact of the necessary infrastructure of the monitoring. A life cycle environmental impact was performed to answer this question. In order to perform a first evaluation and to have the possibility to take into account the services, an Input-Output approach to Life Cycle Assessment has been used. The first task was to inventory the necessary infrastructure and to determine the effects of the monitoring system. The direct impacts are negative and include the necessary infrastructure: computers, electricity consumption, research funding, etc... The indirect impacts are mostly positive: resource management to enhance the efficiency of the network, avoided building of a water tank possibility to dialog with the customers, etc... The ecoindicator 99 coefficients were used to evaluate the environmental impact. All these coefficients were evaluated for both the necessary infrastructure and the avoided impacts of the monitoring. The results show that the avoided impacts are 3 to 25 times higher than the real impacts. More data are needed to decrease the uncertainty linked to the estimation made. More work is needed to overcome the difficulties encountered when evaluating the indirect effects and allocating them to the use of the monitoring system. The monitoring system set by the CREM together with the city of Martigny is very promising and could help cities on their way to sustainable development. In particular, it could be very useful for the development of new urban area.Green chemistry and engineering is the design of chemical manufacturing systems to minimize their adverse affects on the environment. Thus, a primary goal of green chemistry and engineering is to reduce the environmental impact of chemical processes and chemical manufacturing while simultaneously enhancing the overall process performance. Although it is beneficial to simply reduce the use of organic solvents in chemical processes, green chemistry and engineering goes further, in that it evaluates the entire manufacturing operation to identify techniques that can be applied to minimize the overall process hazard, while maintaining economic practicality. Evaluation of the environmental impacts of the manufacturing process requires a systems approach and appropriate metrics that permit quantitative assessment of environmental hazards. Thus, this chapter begins with a discussion of the drivers for green engineering and the metrics through which processes can be evaluated. Then, the hydroformylation process is used as a case study to illustrate the way in which green chemistry principles can be applied to real processes. Two elements, are specifically highlighted: (a) the use of catalysts to facilitate active and selective chemistry and the immobilization of said catalysts within the reactor system, and (b) the development of processes based on benign reaction solvents, and the benefits that can accrue from simplified separations operations.The purpose of this paper is to indicate some initiatives ushering in changes in the configuration of the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region Industrial Zoning System. During the last twenty years, the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR) has suffered many modifications: a high urban concentration process, an increasing number of land conflicts, the construction of important highways and infrastructure devices and the growing deterioration of environmental quality. In this period, the industrial location was based on an industrial zoning developed in 1976. Today, the industrial settlement of the RJMR reflects its disorderly development, shown by tightly clustered industries outside industrial zones, as well as the use of areas defined as industrial zones for other purposes, mainly residential. This scenario clearly indicates that innovative management mechanisms, must be sought, based on cooperative initiatives that are grounded on-industrial ecology. Through the concepts relating industrial ecology and interfaces with environmental issues, this paper-provides, inputs for discussions of re-designing the location of industries in the RJMR. In order to demonstrate the application of the concepts outlined above, an Industrial District in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region was selected as a case-study.Over the past decade, a new approach to environmental analysis has developed. Although the scope and definition are not yet completely fixed, the new field of "industrial ecology" focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of goods and services, on systems-based analysis of environmental problems, and on innovations that can significantly improve environmental performance. Industrial ecology has significant potential for U.S. environmental policy. But to establish a firm foundation for significant policy initiatives, there is a need for better understanding of the potential and limitations of a range of promising approaches including: (a) technological innovation, (b) voluntary and cooperative approaches to environmental management, (c) substitution of services for products, (d) recycling and reuse, (e) reduction in the amounts of materials used in products, and (f) substitution of scarce resources with those that are plentiful.Sustainability-a term originating from silviculture, which was adopted by UNEP as the main political goal for the future development of humankind-is also the ultimate aim of product development. It comprises three components: environment, economy and social aspects which have to be properly assessed and balanced if a new product is to be designed or an existing one is to be improved. The responsibility of the researchers involved in the assessment is to provide appropriate and reliable instruments. For the environmental part there is already an internationally standardized tool: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is the logical counterpart of LCA for the economic assessment. LCC surpasses the purely economic cost calculation by taking into account hidden costs and potentially external costs over the life cycle of the product. It is a very important point that different life-cycle based methods (including Social Life Cycle Assessment) for sustainablity assessment use the same system boundaries.During recent years the role of industrial ecology is growing up due to the fact that this branch of industry is dedicated to elaborate and improved engineering facilities of environmental impact, and to develop closed, wasteless process cycles and industry. The neutralization of industrial waste, including the alumina refineries was developed to create and improve the water sewerage and gas and dust scrubbing facilities at the final stages of process; less attention was paid to establishing waste free technology. The basis of wastefree production is a complex processing of the ore using its components. The comprehensive way of alkaline alumosilicate ore practically excludes the solid and liquid wastes, typical for Bayer process as well as for conventional technology to produce the by- products. It can be achieved through the entire use of the products involved in the process, wide product range and diversity of thermal and hydro chemical areas. Production of catalysts and components for their production to be used in chemical, petrol and gas processing industry is one of the most promising ways to solve this problem. Production of calcium aluminate cement, silica white, zeolites, actived aluminium oxides and hydroxides, concentrates of rare alkaline metals processing alkaline alumosilicate raw materials not only reduce the production cost but also decrease effluents normally connected to this kind of production.Back in 1992, Hardin Tibbs [1] stated that 'in its complexity the global environmental problem resembles an iceberg; well-publicized environmental problems are the visible one-tenth above the surface'. In the same year in Rio, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development admitted the non sustainable character of development and through the publication of Agenda 21 tried to find a balanced and integrated approach to environment and development questions. Similar insights have led to the concept of Industrial Ecology which involves designing infrastructures as if they were a series of interlocking manmade ecosystems interfacing with the natural global ecosystem. Industrial estates are a common feature of today's industrial landscape and an effective instrument for industrial and economic development in many countries. One of the main directions of Industrial Ecology is the idea of 'eco-industrial park' (EIP) which includes the transition of an industrial estate into a more sustainable form. This paper discusses this transition from a systemic point of view. We consider the industrial estate as a system which inter-relates natural sources, energy, raw materials, wastes, final products, and labor. The transition from the existing industrial estate to a sustainable EIP can be accomplished from interventions in the structure and content of the elements of the system, as well as their interactions. Towards this end, we provide a systematic framework for transition and we discuss its application in a specific industrial estate in Greece. We concentrate in the first stage of our framework with respect to the industrial estate of Patras. More specifically, we investigate the issues of landscape, access and infrastructures. We reveal topics of possible intervention along these axes, which include building construction, water, waste and energy management, the connection of the industrial estate with the city of Patras etc.The increasing customer demand for green products and the extended producer responsibility in combination with other regulation and opportunities for profit have introduced the environmental parameter in supply chain design. Environmental requirements may considerably affect the operation of supply chains. The logistical, economic and social dimensions of the recovery and re-use of used products, components and materials, in particular, may have prime importance for the company and society as well. Until lately the main environmental concerns were related with the manufacturing and the disposal phase. Although this approach has helped companies and communities in their efforts against environmental degradation, it has not affected the number of products per household, energy consumption and waste, which have increased significantly and have led to larger environmental impacts. As a consequence, environmental analysts and companies have shifted the environmental focus from the manufacturing processes and the disposal phase to the design of the total supply chain of products so as to minimize the environmental impacts in their whole life cycle. This paper investigates the environmental factors that contribute to the design and operation of closed-loop supply chains and the scientific approaches available for their analysis. The fundamental differences between the traditional (forward) supply and the reverse supply chains are analysed and discussed aiming at "closing the loop" in their ends and providing a framework for planning closed-loop supply chains. Indeed, the appropriate identification and planning of all life-cycle stages of a product, including its recovery and reuse, is necessary for the establishment and/or optimization of environmental policies. Any activity in the traditional supply chain may have an undesired impact on the reverse supply chain. And vice-versa, any disturbances in the ecological balance may affect production activities and social welfare in the long-term so that it is difficult to meet the strategic target of sustainable development. In this sense, the traditional supply chain is connected in both ends with the reverse supply chain to establish a perpetual cyclical operation. The analysis of the cost-effectiveness of schemes for the recovery of products is difficult; however, it is not sufficient to do so without looking at the whole process chain, combining the traditional supply chain aspects with the recovery ones. In this framework of analysis of environmental parameters in the design of closed-loop supply chains, the latter are viewed as an application field of Industrial Ecology and the analysis focuses on how they can benefit from each other.Engineering and economic considerations are typical driving forces behind the selection of specific chemicals used to manufacture consumer products. Only recently have post-consumer environmental impacts become part of the considerations during the initial phases of sustainable product design. Therefore, reactive rather than proactive strategies have dominated the consideration of environmental and health issues in this context. This study draws from case histories of Pb use in industrial sectors to produce guidelines for modeling possible outcomes of international initiatives to phase out Pb from electronics products where it is primarily used in solder alloys. Data are scarce on the fate and hazards associated with Pb in discarded products such as cell phones and computers, but the environmental health effects of Pb are well documented. Less is known about the fate and effects of proposed alternatives such as silver and bismuth alloys, but industrial convergence to Pb phase-out is deemed inevitable. Avoidance of hazardous alternatives requires quantitative assessment of trade-offs among product reliability, recycling potential, economic costs, public health, and environmental quality. Potential trade-offs are identified to avoid the loop holes that have plagued similar international initiatives to phase out Pb from other industrial processes under conditions of scientific uncertainty about alternative metals.Reuse of by-products in road construction is most often environmentally evaluated from the narrow perspective of the material itself, i.e. the material level. In this article, we argue that the current mainstream environmental evaluation of reuse of by-products in road construction should use wider system boundaries. In order to illustrate the importance of system boundaries to the final result, three additional levels that complement the material level, are applied to the environmental evaluation of reuse of by-products. In total these four levels of evaluation are, firstly, the material itself, mainly studied by leaching tests, secondly, the road environment studied by substance flow analysis, furthermore, a narrow life-cycle perspective and, finally, the industrial system level that. addresses the reuse of by-products in a broader sense. Methods and tools applied to different levels emphasise different environmental aspects and consequently they are appropriate for addressing different questions. However, especially for the evaluation of environmental aspects on the industrial system level, there is a need to develop the methods. To apply these four levels to the evaluation would broaden the knowledge about the environmental impacts of the reuse of by-products. We argue that current leaching tests have to be complemented by the broader system boundaries used in substance flow studies and in life-cycle assessments in order to discuss the use of resources and environmental impacts from a wider perspective. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Developed from chemical engineering principles and energy analysis, the life cycle assessment is an internationally standardized method that is able to account for upstream and downstream inputs and emissions related to the life cycle of a product or a service. It is generally considered the best environmental management tool that can be used to obtain an objective quantification of all the environmental impacts related with different solid waste management scenarios. In this study, it is used to assess the environmental performance of alternative solid waste management options that could be used in an area of the South of Italy suffering from a situation of weighty solid waste emergency. The extreme delicacy of the decision-making process to which the results have to contribute suggested increasing the reliability of the assessment conclusions by using a high quality of data and a deepened analysis of technical processes. An analytical comparison between three selected scenarios is reported with reference to some crucial environmental impact categories. The results quantify the relative advantages and disadvantages of different management schemes and suggest some possible improvements in design and operating criteria. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.One of the detrimental effects caused by the urban warming phenomena is the increase of energy consumption due to the artificial air-conditioning of buildings in summer. In greater Tokyo, the temperature sensitivity of the peak electricity demand reaches up to 3%/degreesC in recent years, and about 1.5 GW of new demand is required as the daily maximum temperature increases by 1.0degreesC. This huge demand for summer electricity is considered to be one of the common characteristics of big cities in Asian countries. In order to simulate this increase in cooling energy demands and to evaluate urban warming countermeasures from the viewpoint of buildings' energy savings, a numerical simulation system was developed adopting a new one-dimensional urban canopy meteorological model coupled with a simple sub-model for the building energy analysis. Then, the system was applied to the Ootemachi area, a central business district in Tokyo. Preliminary verification of the simulation system using observational data on the outdoor and indoor thermal conditions showed good results. Simulations also indicated that the cut-off of the anthropogenic heat from air-conditioning facilities could produce a cooling energy saving up to 6% with the outdoor air-temperature decrease by more than 1degreesC in the summer urban canopy over Ootemachi area. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The toxicity of o,p'-DDE (1, 1-dichloro-2-(p-chlorophenyl)-2-(o-chlorophenyl) ethylene) was evaluated in embryos of medaka (Oryzias latipes) following a one time exposure via nanoinjection. Medaka eggs (early gastrula) were injected with 0.5 nl of triolem (vehicle control) or 0.5 nl of 4 graded doses (0.0005-0.5 ng/egg) of o,p'-DDE in triolein. Embryos were allowed to develop, and fry were reared. Embryonic survival was monitored daily during the first 10 d until hatching and thereafter, on a weekly basis until day 59, at which time the fish were monitored for sexual maturity until day 107. In general, o,p'-DDE caused a dose- and time-dependent mortality. No changes in mortality were observed between the last two time points (day 38 and 59, respectively), and hence a 59 day-LD50 of 346 ng o,p'-DDE/egg was derived from the linear dose-response relationship. Prior to late stage death, only isolated cases of cardiovascular lesions and spinal deformities were observed, but were not dose-dependent. The lowest observable adverse effect level (LOAEL), based on upper 95% CI for regression line = 0.0018 mg/kg, and the LOAEL based on exposure doses = 0.5 mg/kg. Likewise, the no observable adverse effect level (NOAEL) based on linear extrapolation to 100% survival = 0.0000388 mg/kg, while the NOAEL based on exposure doses = 0.05 mg/kg. The nanoinjection medaka model has potential in the study of hormonally active compounds in the environment. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial applications of supply chain cost management, along with life cycle costing of goods and services, are increasing. Several industrial sectors, in particular the automotive, electronics, and primary materials, have engaged in programs to coordinate upstream and downstream activities to reduce environmental burdens. At the same time, there is an increasing need to pass on information on product, material, and energy flows along the supply chain, as well as to provide data on the use and end-of-life phases of goods and services. Therefore, methods to analyze, assess, and manage these flows, from an economic as well as an environmental perspective, are of essential importance, particularly in established large-scale industries where suppliers are increasingly challenged to provide comprehensive cost and environmental information. in this context, a life cycle costing analysis (LCC) conducted aspart of life cycle management activities, can provide important opportunities. Therefore, this paper focuses on a life cycle assessment (LCA)-based LCC method, which utilizes an LCA model as a basis for cost estimations in product development and planning. A case study on life cycle costing of wastewater treatment illustrates the practical use and benefits of the method.Resource conservation and waste management have become two sides of the same argument. According to the Institute for Local Self Reliance in the U.S., the recycling revolution begun in the 1960s was a reaction "to the levels of waste in our economy and the pollution and suffering these habits cause worldwide" [1, 2]. However, the recycling target-setting of the early 1990s was focused on diversion from landfill, and it has taken another 10 years for the focus to shift back to the resource values approach, driven largely by the application of Life Cycle Assessment to the waste management system. This paper examines materials in the waste stream to determine the "value proposition" in each material group, and to examine options for efficient resource use and recovery. Specifically, it discusses waste management issues associated with clean fill, food waste, timber waste, concrete and bricks, green waste, paper and board, metals, plastics, and glass.The overall aim of this paper is to provide an understanding of the environmental issues involved in the early stages of product development, and the capacity of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques to address these issues. The paper aims to outline the problems for the designer in evaluating the environmental benignity of a product from the outset, and to provide a framework for decision support based on the performance evaluation at different stages of the design process. The barriers that prevent product developers from using LCA are presented, as well as opportunities for introducing environmental criteria in the design process by meeting the designer's information requirements at the different life cycle stages. This can lead to an in-depth understanding of the attitudes of product developers towards the subject area, and an understanding of possible future directions for product development. This paper introduces an Environmentally Conscious Design method, and presents trade-offs between design degrees of freedom and environmental solutions. Life cycle design frameworks and strategies are also addressed. The paper collects experiences and ideas around the state-of-the-art in eco-design, from literature and personal experience, and provides eco-design life cycle assessment strategies. The end result of this presentation is to define the requirements for performance measurement techniques, and the environment needed to support life cycle evaluation throughout the evaluation of early stages of a product system.The movement to buy "environmentally-friendly" products was recently reinvigorated by the signing of the 2002 Farm Act that requires all federal agencies to give preference to products made, in whole or significant part, from bio-based material. This paper addresses the reality behind widely held beliefs regarding "green" issues, and shows bow complex it can be to choose among alternative products. Examples are presented in which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) used different approaches, all based on life cycle assessment (LCA), to evaluate the environmental trade-offs of bio-based alternatives. These examples incorporate various combinations of life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The first example presents results of a USEPA Office of Research & Development (ORD) project called the Framework for Responsible Environmental Decision-Making (FRED). The FRED framework uses a set of impact categories in an LCIA. Motor oil, wall insulation, and asphalt coating alternatives were all studied using FRED. The second example is a pilot study in the USEPA's Environmentally Preferable Purchasing program. Using a mix of LCI and LCIA, transformer oil and bard surface cleaner alternatives were evaluated. Finally, the paper presents preliminary LCI results of another ORD effort comparing fuel additives ethanol and MTBE. These examples demonstrate that the move to bio-based products is not an across-the-board "win" for the environment. While LCAs cannot, at this time, provide a definitive answer as to the prefer-ability of bio-based products, it is the best tool to identify environmental trade-offs, thereby providing additional information to support decision-making.We define key research questions as a stimulus to research in the area of industrial ecology. The first group of questions addresses analytical support for green engineering and environmental policy. They relate to (i) tools for green engineering, (ii) improvements in life cycle assessment, (iii) aggregation of environmental impacts, and (iv) effectiveness of a range of innovative policy approaches. The second group of questions addresses the dynamics of technology, economics, and environmental impacts. They relate to (v) the environmental impacts of material and energy consumption, (vi) the potential for material efficiency, (vii) the relation of technological and economic development to changes in consumption patterns, and (viii) the potential for technology to overcome environmental impacts and constraints. Altogether, the questions create an intellectual agenda for industrial ecology and integrate the technological and social aspects of sustainability.We examine the possibilities for a "greener" car that would use less material and fuel, be less polluting, and would have a well-managed end-of-life. Light-duty vehicles are fundamental to our economy and will continue to be for the indefinite future. Any redesign to make these vehicles greener requires consumer acceptance. Consumer desires for large, powerful vehicles have been the major stumbling block in achieving a "green car". The other major barrier is inherent contradictions among social goals such as fuel economy, safety, low emissions of pollutants, and low emissions of greenhouse gases, which has led to conflicting regulations such as emissions regulations blocking sales of direct injection diesels in California, which would save fuel. In evaluating fuel/vehicle options with the potential to improve the greenness of cars [diesel (direct injection) and ethanol in internal combustion engines, battery-powered, gasoline hybrid electric, and hydrogen fuel cells], we find no option dominates the others on all dimensions. The principles of green design developed by Anastas and Zimmerman and the use of a life cycle approach provide insights on the key sustainability issues associated with the various options.Annual plastic flows through the business and consumer electronics manufacturing supply chain include nearly 3 billion lb of high-value engineering plastics derived from petroleum. The recovery of resource value from this stream presents critical challenges in areas of materials identification and recycling process design that demand new green engineering technologies applied together with life cycle assessment and ecological supply chain analysis to create viable plastics-to-plastics supply cycles. The sustainable recovery of potentially high-value engineering plastics streams requires that recyclers either avoid mixing plastic parts or purify later by separating smaller plastic pieces created in volume reduction (shredding) steps. Identification and separation constitute significant barriers in the plastics-to-plastics recycling value proposition. In the present work, we develop a model that accepts randomly arriving electronic products to study scenarios by which a recycler might identify and separate high-value engineering plastics as well as metals. Using discrete event simulation, we compare current mixed plastics recovery with spectrochemical plastic resin identification and subsequent sorting. Our results show that limited disassembly with whole-part identification can produce substantial yields in separated streams of recovered engineering thermoplastics. We find that disassembly with identification does not constitute a bottleneck, but rather, with relatively few workers, can be configured to pull the process and thus decrease maximum staging space requirements.This paper attempts to bridge business ethics to corporate social responsibility including the social and environmental dimensions. The objective of the paper is to suggest a conceptual methodology with which ethics of corporate environmental management tools can be considered. The method includes two stages that are required for a shift away from the current dominant unsustainable paradigm and toward a more sustainable paradigm. The first stage is paradigmatic, metaphoric and normative. The second stage is a practical stage, which in turn, is analytic, descriptive and positive. The method is applied to common industrial metabolism tools of ecological footprints (EF), environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and industrial ecology (IE). The application shows that all three tools can be used in business ethics, in particular, when the first stage of the method is applied to their use.In the early phases of the product life cycle, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is recently used to support the decision-making for the product concepts, and the best alternative can be selected based on its estimated LCA and benefits. Both the lack of detailed information and time for a full LCA for a various range of design concepts need a new approach for the environmental analysis. This paper explores a new approximate LCA methodology for the product concepts by grouping products according to their environmental characteristics and by mapping product attributes into environmental impact driver (EID) index. The relationship is statistically verified by exploring the correlation between total impact indicator and energy impact category. Then, a neural network approach is developed to predict an approximate LCA of grouping products in conceptual design. Trained learning algorithms for the known characteristics of existing products will quickly give the result of LCA for newly designed products. The training is generalized by using product attributes for an EID in a group as well as another product attributes for the other EIDs in other groups. The neural network model with back propagation algorithm is used, and the results are compared with those of multiple regression analysis. The proposed approach does not replace the full LCA but it would give some useful guidelines for the,design of environmentally conscious products in conceptual design phase.Sustainability in the development and manufacture of new products is a strategy that is widely accepted in principle, although not yet widely practiced. The integration of environmental requirements throughout the entire lifetime of a product needs a new way of thinking and new decision tools to be applied. This paper describes the concept of an approach to product development, based on a paradigm for sustainable manufacturing. Four examples of methodologies and decision tools are discussed, representing the most important sources of environmental impacts of a product. The emphasis lies on the integrating concept rather than on the details of the methodologies. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Directive 1994/62 concerning packaging and packaging waste and Directive 1999/31 related to waste disposal will substantially modify the management and treatment of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in Europe. In this study, a life cycle analysis has been carried out of the different possibilities of managing Municipal Solid Waste in Asturias. The "Integrated Waste Management" (IWM-1) model was employed, analysing the different alternatives for collection and treatment of MSW This model predicts overall environmental burdens of MSW management systems and includes a parallel economical model. The sources of costs in the different systems of collection and treatment of MSW were considered in the economical analysis, as well as the Sources of resource gathering that may be obtained via the sale of recovered materials. What emerges from this Study is the soundness of management strategies based on biological treatment technologies in comparison with thermal treatments, together with the need to increase the level of collection at source.In this study, we compare and contrast the impact of recent technological developments in large biomass-fired and natural-gas-fired cogeneration and condensing plants in terms of CO2 mitigation costs and under the conditions of a competitive electricity market. The CO2 mitigation cost indicates the minimum economic incentive required (e.g. in the form of a carbon tax) to equal the cost of a less carbon extensive system with the cost of a reference system. The results show that CO2 mitigation costs are lower for biomass systems than for natural gas systems with decarbonization. However, in liberalized energy markets and given the socio-political will to implement carbon extensive energy systems, market-based policy measures are still required to make biomass and decarbonization options competitive and thus help them to penetrate the market. This cost of cogeneration plants, however, depends on the evaluation method used. If we account for the limitation of heat sinks by expanding the reference entity to include both heat and power, as is typically recommended in life-cycle analysis, then the biomass-based gasification combined cycle (BIG/CC) technology turns out to be less expensive and to exhibit lower CO2 mitigation costs than biomass-fired steam turbine plants. However, a heat credit granted to cogeneration systems that is based on avoided cost of separate heat production, puts the steam turbine technology despite its lower system efficiency at an advantage. In contrast, when a crediting method based on avoided electricity production in natural-gas-fired condensing plants is employed, the BIG/CC technology turns out to be more cost-competitive than the steam turbine technology for carbon tax levels beyond about $150/t C. Furthermore, steam turbine plants are able to compete with natural-gas-fired cogeneration plants at carbon tax levels higher than about $ 90/t C. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comprehensive case study life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted of a 7300 m(2), six-story building with a projected 75 year life span, located on the University of Michigan campus. The bottom three floors and basement are used as classrooms and open-plan offices; the top three floors are used as hotel rooms. An inventory of all installed materials and material replacements was conducted covering the building structure, envelope, interior structure and finishes, as well as the utility and sanitary systems. Computer modeling was used to determine primary energy consumption for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, hot water and sanitary water consumption. Demolition and other end-of-life burdens were also inventoried. The primary energy intensity over the building's life cycle is estimated to be 2.3 x 10(6) GJ, or 316 GJ/m(2). Production of building materials, their transportation to the site as well as the construction of the building accounts for 2.2% of life cycle primary energy consumption. HVAC and electricity account for 94.4% of life cycle primary energy consumption. Water services account for 3.3% of life cycle primary energy consumption, with water heating being the major factor, due to the presence of hotel rooms in this building. Building demolition and transportation of waste, accounts for only 0.2% of life cycle primary energy consumption. All impact categories measured (global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, acidification potential, nutrification potential and solid waste generation) correlate closely with primary energy demand. The challenges in developing a life cycle model of a complex dynamic system with a long service life are explored and the implications for future designs are discussed. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The life cycle inventory (LCI) of the electric power generation plays a vital role on LCIs of the industrial products. However there are no formal life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in Indonesia so far due to limited number of LCA expertise and lack of sufficient databases relevant to domestic conditions. The objective of this study is to introduce life cycle assessment (LCA) method for Indonesian electric power generation systems and to establish LCI for electricity grid mix of Indonesia. In this paper, the emissions of CO2, SO2, NOx, CO, CH4, NMHC, N2O, Dust (SPM), Ni, As, Cd, Cr, Hg, Pb, Zn per kWh of electricity generated were estimated for the systems using a combined method of process analysis and input-output analysis. Additional analyses on the impacts of emerging and future technologies as well as the influences of changes of various assumptions are helpful for a better understanding. As the result, the LCA evaluations are discussed for further ecological improvement.There are several options for the use of recycled materials in constructions. For every option a number of technical and environmental aspects are relevant. This paper describes several models which can be used to take the optimal decision. In general the world-wide used Life Cycle Assessment can be used as a multi-parameter model for the environmental effects. A new single indicator model, the Eco-costs/Value ratio simplifies the decision process. For waste management the model called Delft Ladder is developed. The approach called Design for Recycling can be used to optimize design or constructions for later reuse. In the same way, the Design for Disassembly can be used for demolition. For the technical aspects two models were developed concerning degradation processes and high-graded applications.Civil engineering infrastructure is generally maintained in accordance with safety, economic and technical issues. But what of the environmental impact of such activities? Regular maintenance can have a significant environmental impact-particularly in the case of bridges, where closure can result in traffic jams and lengthy detours. Higher cost but lower maintenance components and transfer of structures to lower-grade sites are Possible answers which, until now, have been difficult to assess. This paper reports on a life-cycle assessment method developed to factor environmental impact into bridge maintenance strategy. Though developed for bridges, it has potential application throughout the facilities management sector.The environmental performance of hemp based natural fiber mat thermoplastic (NMT) has been evaluated in this study by quantifying carbon storage potential and CO2 emissions and comparing the results with commercially available glass fiber composites. Non-woven mats of hemp fiber and polypropylene matrix were used to make NMT samples by film-stacking method without using any binder aid. The results showed that hemp based NMT have compatible or even better strength properties as compared to conventional flax based thermoplastics. A value of 63 MPa for flexural strength is achieved at 64% fiber content by weight. Similarly, impact energy values (84-154 J/m) are also promising. The carbon sequestration and storage by hemp crop through photosynthesis is estimated by quantifying dry biomass of fibers based on one metric ton of NMT. A value of 325 kg carbon per metric ton of hemp based composite is estimated which can be stored by the product during its useful life. An extra 22% carbon storage can be achieved by increasing the compression ratio by 13% while maintaining same flexural strength. Further, net carbon sequestration by industrial hemp crop is estimated as 0.67 ton/h/year, which is compatible to all USA urban trees and very close to naturally, regenerated forests. A comparative life cycle analysis focused on non-renewable energy consumption of natural and glass fiber composites shows that a net saving of 50 000 MJ ( similar to 3 ton CO2 emissions) per ton of thermoplastic can be achieved by replacing 30% glass fiber reinforcement with 65% hemp fiber. It is further estimated that 3.07 million ton CO, emissions (4.3% of total USA industrial emissions) and 1.19 million m(3) crude oil (1.0% of total Canadian oil consumption) can be saved by substituting 50% fiber glass plastics with natural fiber composites in North American auto applications. However, to compete with glass fiber effectively, further research is needed to improve natural fiber processing, interfacial bonding and control moisture sensitivity in longer run. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.In certain fleet systems, the environmental impacts of operation are, to some extent, a controllable function of vehicle routing and scheduling decisions. However, little prior work has considered environmental impacts in fleet vehicle routing and scheduling optimization, in particular, where the impacts were assessed systematically utilizing life-cycle impact assessment methodologies such as those described by the Society of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. Here a methodology is presented for the joint optimization of cost, service, and life-cycle environmental consequences in vehicle routing and scheduling, which we develop for a demand-responsive (paratransit or dial-a-ride) transit system. We demonstrate through simulation that, as a result of our methodology, it is possible to reduce environmental impacts substantially, while increasing operating costs and service delays only slightly. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The extending trade with agricultural products and food stuff has, caused by the transport of these goods, an increasing effect on the environment and human health. To analyse the effects of transport on regional, national, European and global level a life cycle assessment model for trading is developed. On this basis the life cycle assessment of a supraregional standard basket is elaborated. In contrast the routes of transportation of a regional standard basket, based on the range of food stuffs of a retail enterprise, are captured in a life cycle assessment. The regional standard basket causes merely a third to half of the damage to the environment in each category of effects, compared to the supraregional standard basket. The potentials to reduce these effects can be seen in direct correlation to the trade structure of the investigated enterprise. The negative effects on the environment can be diminished if the efficiency of the means of transport is increased or the distances of transporting are reduced. As the investigated example illustrates, the regional trade with food stuff and agricultural products offers a large potential for a reduced usage of resources and the protection of the environment. Through co-operation with the food retail trade this potential could be acquired by many regional initiatives as well.Age-specific demographic data are not available for many species of conservation concern, and conservation biologists must rely on incomplete demographic data which can be collected much more easily. Models that allow demographic analyses based on incomplete demographic data have recently received substantial attention. Such models (hereafter, partial life-cycle models) are particularly appropriate for situations where age-specific demographic data are not available, and when perturbation analyses involving ages at first and last reproduction are desired. Here, I present a partial life-cycle model appropriate for the analyses of incomplete demographic data collected from post-breeding censuses when estimates of age at last reproduction are not available. Using example calculations, I have shown that results of the simple model resemble those obtained from corresponding age-structured models, and that ignoring age at last reproduction for demographic analyses of long-lived organisms results in little or no loss of information. These results justify the use of the simple model presented here, and should be encouraging to investigators working on long-lived organisms for which estimates of age at last reproduction are rarely available. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper deals with the exergy analysis (EXA) of plaster materials and ranks the environmental burdens due to the production of such materials. The calculation of the exergy loss during the whole examined process represents a relevant index, looking at the technology improvement of a process, as a suitable tool in aid of the trade-off of alternative materials in the decision making. A life cycle inventory is performed for building plaster products and the matrix method is used. The authors extend the application of EXA to life cycle assessment, conducting an,exergetic life cycle assessment, and propose an exergetic index in the framework of multi-criteria decision making., An exergy balance, accounting for energy and material flows, is applied to calculate the exergy losses and efficiencies for each stage of the examined processes: resources extraction, materials processing, transport and product manufacturing. Furthermore, exergy values are calculated for the pollutants and wastes. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Reducing and recycling automobile shredder residue (ASR) are important to improve the recycling rate of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). In this paper, we discuss the concept of applying life cycle assessment (LCA), LCA case studies (landfill of ASR, energy recovery of ASR), and LCA issues concerning ELVs, and we introduce trends in LCA application to new technologies, aimed at achieving a recycling rate of 95%. (C) 2003 Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc. and Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.New method of environmental load estimation for scraps and by-products production in Life cycle inventory (LCI) based on Input-Output table (I/O table) has been developed. And a new description method of I/O table with scraps and by-products sections for the estimation is developed. In this study, both scraps and by-products are regarded as products, and are dealt with as an independent section in I/O table, respectively. By means of this method, the energy consumption and CO2 emission of process-scrap steel production are estimated as an example study. And a weighted average value of energy consumption and that of CO2 emission with consideration to the monetary amounts of production of process-scrap steel were calculated by using the estimated data, respectively. Moreover, a reliability of the estimated data is analyzed. And LCI of converter steel and EAF steel are done in order to evaluate an influence by differences of data. As a result, when the value of a process scrap was assumed to be zero, the energy consumption rates of zero against the maximum is estimated 0.5% for the converter steel, and 20.4% for the EAF steel, respectively. Therefore, in case of converter, it is possible to treat the environmental load of a process scrap for nothing in approximation.Different options for wastewater treatment have different performance characteristics and also different direct impacts on the environment. These impacts occur over the whole life cycle of the treatment system. Natural wastewater systems such as the reedbed may offer reduced whole life cycle environmental impacts compared to systems with more technical and material sophistication. This paper describes a study of the life cycle impacts of two options for smallscale wastewater treatment which are a horizontal flow reedbed system and a package bio-filtration plant. The study is limited to impacts during the construction and operation phases. Energy use, CO2 emission and solid emissions were chosen as the environmental aspects. It was found that overall the reedbed and conventional systems were quite similar in terms of life cycle energy use. Transport occurring during construction and operational maintenance was a key contributor to energy use and CO2 emissions. The environmental impact of the reedbed reduced if the soil excavated on site was suitable for re-use in the infill. The effect on the results of the different assumptions made during the study was checked using sensitivity analysis. This analysis also helped us to identify recommendations for reducing the life cycle impact of the reedbed system. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.The socio-economic studies of fusion from various aspects are performed by Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) and its collaborators in Japan, where steady-state tokamaks have been designed as a promising candidate. Energy model analysis estimates the significant contribution of fusion in the latter half of the century under the global environment constraints if it will successfully developed and introduced into the market. Application to fuel production process such as hydrogen by utilizing heat is designed to increase possible contribution for energy supply further. Operation without initial tritium loading liberates fusion from fuel supply constraints, and has an effect to rapidly increase fusion share. Externality of fusion energy is analyzed by CO2 emission, impact pathway of tritium, rad-waste, and some social impacts. These results are expected to answer the questions on significance of fusion development, and improve the plant design and development strategy to maximize the benefit of fusion research. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In Switzerland, communities are encouraged to define and to report on local Agenda 21. This paper presents an analysis framework to help local communities set sustainable development priorities and to follow through with appropriate actions. Four Swiss communities, from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, actively follow the project: Lausanne (114 304 citizens),Vevey (15 364 citizens), Mannens-Grandsivaz (505 citizens) and Essertines/Yverdon (666 citizens). The analysis framework developed is constituted of four interdependent fields: the societal characteristics, the individual or collective behaviours, the end objectives or sustainability impacts and the inhabitant's perception of these three fields. The link between society and behaviour can be studied through sociological analyses. The link between behaviour and environmental impact can be established thanks to Life Cycle analysis and Input/Output analyses. At each level, sustainable development indicators can be defined. As an application of the framework, the citizen energy consumption has been studied and expressed in energy slaves (= 3150 MJ/Year). A Swiss citizen needs altogether 69 slaves, 20 for his private consumption of goods and services, 19 for housing, 11 for transport, 11 for food and 8 for his consumption of public goods. If one fifth of the inhabitants of Lausanne, wanting to live closer to nature, actually moved out of town, the region would need 10 436 more slaves for 3500 persons happily living in the countryside.Gate-to-gate process energy for 86 chemical manufacturing processes is presented. The estimation of the process energy follows design-based methodology. Results show that the gate-to-gate process energy for half of organic chemicals ranges from 0 to 4 MJ per kg, and for half of inorganic chemicals ranges from -1 to 3 MJ per kg. The main energy source in both organic and inorganic processes is steam energy followed by potential recovered energy. In organic chemicals, the fractions of heating oil and electricity use are relatively low, but these fractions are higher in the inorganic chemicals than in the organic chemicals. Furthermore, about 50% of the energy consumed in chemical processes is used for purifying the product, byproduct or recycled stream, which indicates that there are large opportunities for improving the process energy in chemical processes. The information presented in this study is very important for those in the life cycle assessment community in order for them to identify inaccurate information or information not based on actual process design. However, the range for the entire range of chemicals is very substantial and thus reflects the need of the life cycle inventory to separately evaluate the chemistry and degree of purity for chemical products. (C) 2003 Society of Chemical Industry.Cement industry accepts many kinds of wastes from other industries, and contributes to prolong the garbage dump life. It is one of the important roles of cement and concrete industry. From the aspect of circulation, however, it is questionable, because we postpone the problem of wastes. For finding a solution for this problem, it is essential to evaluate the environmental impacts of cement production. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of use of wastes and by-products to cement production. In this study, we used three methods for the evaluation: LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), exergy analysis, and TMR (Total Materials Requirement). Ecocement production is evaluated as an example in this study. Besides, a presumed cement production process, in which the wastes used in cement industry are accepted in average, is evaluated. The treatment of disposal was insufficient in conventional LCA. It considered only the environmental load accompanied by energy consumption when the used products are transferred and wasted. In contrast, "zero emission" type system boundary is used in our LCA, in which disposal of materials is assumed to be in completely harmless substances. Moreover, the environmental impacts are evaluated by exergy analysis, in which a measure of the exergy of wasted materials is calculated as potential impact, and by TMR, in which the amounts of direct and indirect materials engaged by mining and discarding of the products are estimated.Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as an important method of evaluating environmental loads of a product or technology, it is difficult in conventional LCA to evaluate the effect of discarding appropriately. It is because there is a problem in setting of the system boundary of waste disposal. It is not taken into account that the waste which is reclaimed into land does influence to environment over many years by the reaction with the atmosphere or rain water. Recently, it is proposed to set the system boundary of a zero emission type that presumes the processing of harmlessness technologies of waste. In this study, we simulated the car disposal system as an example based on the system boundary of zero emission. As a result, the environmental loads for the vehicle system in this assessment are much larger than those in the conventional LCI. Besides, the environmental loads when the Pb-Sn plating steel board for the fuel tank was substituted for the Zn-Sn-Ni plating one were compared with the case by the old model. In the evaluation by old model, the effect of decrease in the environmental loads due to the heavy metal substitution was as low as 0.01 kg of CO2 in the disposal stage. On the other hand, it counted 0.38 kg in the evaluation based on virtual processes of harmlessness technology. It is concluded that the influence of a heavy metal on the environment was properly estimated by using the system boundary of a zero emission type.Public sewage treatment plants in Japan consume 6.3 billion kWh of electricity and produce 350 million tons of sludge annually, with serious impacts on the local and global environment. In this study, a Life Cycle Inventory of a sewage treatment plant for domestic wastewater was done to assess the environmental effects using data from statistics and previous studies. The system boundaries include sewage pipe construction and operation, sewage treatment plant construction and operation, material production and sludge treatment. The functional unit is defined as the treatment system of wastewater produced by one person in one year. Energy consumption and global warming are studied as the environmental parameters. The following conclusions have been drawn from the results. 1) Energy consumption and emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) increase exponentially as the population density decreases. 2) If the actual population is less than the planned population, the operation efficiency of the sewage treatment plant decreases. 3) The energy consumption per person per year is 1,026 MJ, and CO2 equivalent emission factor is 89 kg. 4) Energy consumption for sewage treatment plant operation accounts for 78% of the total energy consumption. Under the assumption that 20% of the total carbon in the sludge is converted to CH4, the CH4 emitted from sludge landfill and the N2O generated by sludge incineration contribute respectively 35% and 14% to global warming. These results also show that further development of sludge recycling technology is desirable to decrease GHGs.The framework of the International Standard Organization's (ISO) 14040 series provides the practitioner with rules to deal with different aspects of analysis and assessment of the life cycle of products. The standard emphasizes the importance of accurate data to perform a valid analysis. This premise lets LCA (life cycle assessment) studies become time-consuming and expensive. But, sound decision-making by management in enterprises can be done even in cases where data are incomplete or vary, when the eco-efficiency analysis methodology is used that has been developed and applied by BASF in more than 150 projects during the last five years.Electricity generation in Australia has been almost entirely derived from combustion of its abundant fossil fuel resources. The consumption of these resources, and the emissions produced consequently, are known to impact upon the health of the local, regional, and global environment. To assist in planning Australia's future electricity supply, the environmental impacts from a number of likely fossil electricity production systems have been quantified using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, and conclusions about their suitability derived. Extended systems from cradle to delivery have been defined for brown coal, black coal, and natural gas, utilizing both currently practised and advanced electricity generation technology. The export of black coal and natural gas (as LNG) for power generation overseas was also considered. For currently practised technologies, no one-fuel system has the most significant contribution to all impacts, and no single impact dominates. The most significant impacts were climate change for brown coal systems, acidification, eutrophication, and solid waste generation for black coal systems, and photochemical smog for natural gas systems. For each fuel, advanced technology systems showed reduced impacts compared with conventional technology systems, elucidating the considerable potential for environmental benefits from technological substitution. For immediate implementation, natural gas CCGT systems have distinct advantages for most impact categories.In a transition towards a sustainable petrochemical industry, its systemic structure and functions must be considered degrees-of-freedom in the search for and the specification of development options that reach beyond traditional research and development (R&D) and beyond the optimization of proven technology, proven system concepts and established process networks. Functional modelling allows technology-free specification of systems, generalization of system concepts, and recalibration of the use or value of substances in a petrochemical network. It facilitates moving up or down the ladder of system aggregation levels, which allows one to 'step out of the box' to the plant or chemical complex level, or alternatively to connect to the unit-operation level. Application to the aromatics industry serves to illustrate that thereby the abstraction from present system content and from proven technology is achieved, which allows the specification of the desired content of technological inventions that enable or rely upon changes in system structure: process system innovations. The realization of trigenerate functions through the petrochemical industry involves a paradigm-shift. Rather than considering the industry a threatening source of pollution, safety and health risks, it is an enabler of global CO2 emission reduction.his paper explores the role of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the evolutionary design of minerals processes. Use is made of a modified hierarchical approach to process design, taking into account the specific features of minerals technologies, and the challenges these accord to process synthesis and detailed process design. These include linked reactor-separator combinations, as well as complex recycle structures which are integrated with the selection and operation of waste management technologies. Process synthesis is posed as a design problem with multiple objectives, and consideration is given to how design decisions are informed by valuation choices, specifically where these relate to environmental performance. The discussion is couched in the context of decision support tools which promote the sustainability of the industry, and some guidance is offered to designers on which multi-criteria decision support tools have value as the design evolves from concept to detailed engineering stages. The approach is illustrated for a particular base metals design study. It is demonstrated that combinations of technologies, rather than the usual vendor-specified discrete technology choices, can offer enhancements in both economic and environmental performance, and are thus consistent with the push to more sustainable practices within the resources sector.The environmental profiles of five different Procter & Gamble (P&G) laundry detergents on the UK market in 2001 are analysed using Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). Products analysed are: regular powder (RP), compact powder (CP), powder tablet (PT), compact liquid (CL) and liquid unit-dose system (LT). The analysis represents a 'cradle-to-grave' LCA for 1 wash under UK conditions for wash habits and infrastructure. Under the studs conditions, it is concluded that compact detergents (both powder & liquid) are environmentally preferable detergent formulations, mainly due to the lower use of chemicals, resulting in benefits on aquatic toxicity, eutrophication, ozone depletion and photochemical smog. Less pronounced benefits for CP and CL are also observed on energy requirements and on impact categories such as acidification, human toxicity and climate change. For most indicators, the outcome of the study is dominated (> 70% contribution) by the use stage (washing machine), which is common to all product formulations. Because of this, no significant differences are observed between scenarios using different laundry products. Hence, the present study demonstrates that for the 'cradle-to-grave' approach there is no single detergent formulation that is clearly outperforming all others on all indicators.This paper presents environmental profiles of various Procter & Gamble (P&G) laundry detergents in the UK over a time period from 1988 to 2001 using Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). Detergent formulations studied are regular powder (RP), compact powder (CP), powder tablet (PT), dilute liquid (DL), compact liquid (CL) and liquid unit-dose (LT). The functional unit of the present study is 1 wash under representative conditions of formulation, packaging, wash habits and sewage treatment infrastructure for the respective years. The analysis shows considerable environmental improvements on most indicators within the powder and liquid category between 1988 and 2001. Key drivers behind these environmental improvements were reduced wash temperature and dosage. Reduced wash temperature was made possible through innovative technologies, improved formula design and washing machine improvements. Innovative manufacturing processes and improved formula design allowed for dosage reduction. Combining market share data for the different detergent formulations with corresponding LCA results leads to an environmental fingerprint of an "average" wash with P & G laundry detergents ("wash equivalent"). The evolution of wash equivalents over time clearly demonstrates a continuous improvement for all LCA indicators between 1988 and 2001.A life cycle assessment has been done to compare the potential environmental impacts of various gasoline blends that meet octane and vapor pressure specifications. The main blending components of alkylate, cracked gasoline, and reformate have different octane and vapor pressure values as well as different potential environmental impacts. Because the octane and vapor pressure values are nonlinearly related to impacts, the results of this study show that some blends are better for the environment than others. To determine blending component compositions, simulations of a reformer were done at various operating conditions. The reformate products of these simulations had a wide range of octane values and potential environmental impacts. Results of the study indicate that for lowoctane gasoline (95 Research Octane Number), lower reformer temperatures and pressures generally decrease the potential environmental impacts. However, different results are obtained for high-octane gasoline (98 RON), where increasing reformer temperatures and pressures increase the reformate octane values faster than the potential environmental impacts. The higher octane values for reformate allow blends to have less reformate, and therefore high-octane gasoline can have lower potential environmental impacts when the reformer is operated at higher temperatures and pressures. In the blends studied, reformate and cracked gasoline have the highest total impacts, of which photochemical ozone creation is the largest contributor (assuming all impact categories are equally weighted). Alkylate has a much lower total potential environmental impact but does have higher impact values for human toxicity by ingestion, aquatic toxicity, terrestrial toxicity, and acidification. Therefore, depending on environmental priorities, different gasoline blends and operating conditions should be chosen to meet octane and vapor pressure specifications.By reducing the energy and materials required to provide goods and services, nanotechnology has the potential to provide more appealing products while improving environmental performance and sustainability. Whether and how soon this potential could be realized depends on phrasing the right research and development (R&D) questions and pursuing commercialization intelligently. A sufficiently broad perspective at the outset is required to understand economic and technical feasibility, estimate life cycle environmental implications, and minimize unanticipated negative impacts. The rapid rise in federally funded nanotechnology R&D dictates that consideration of societal benefits will have a large role in setting the R&D agenda. We estimate potential selected economic and environmental impacts associated with the use of nanotechnology in the automotive industry. In particular, we project the material processing and fuel economy benefits associated with using a clay-polypropylene nanocomposite instead of steel or aluminum in light-duty vehicle body panels. Although the manufacturing cost is currently higher, a life cycle analysis shows potential benefits in reducing energy use and environment discharges by using a nanocomposite design.For energy security and environmental improvement reasons, the Chinese government is developing biomass ethanol as one of its transportation fuels. Cassava is a good feedstock to produce this ethanol because it has a high starch content and it is abundant in the southern provinces. A computer-based cost model has been developed to assess the life cycle economics of ethanol produced from cassava. The results are compared to gasoline as a base-line case. Although ethanol fuel is not currently competitive with conventional gasoline, these life cycle cost results indicate that, at present market prices, ethanol has the potential to be competitive if there are incentives and improved cassava yields. In addition, this renewable energy could help to alleviate poverty, improve land utilization and bring energy independence in Guangxi province in southeast China. This computer model will be an important tool for the energy policy makers to understand whether an energy alternative is cost-competitive, as well as providing a way to find appropriate measures throughout the entire life cycle that optimizes the process and removes the economic barriers. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Mt. Oyama, a volcano in Miyakejima Island, became active at the end of June 2000 and began emitting volcanic fumes with a high amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) at the end of August 2000. Emission of volcanic fumes was still observed in August 2002. We aimed at analyzing the soil, properties in Kumagaya in relation to the effect of the volcanic fumes from Mt. Oyama. A soil survey was conducted in a deciduous secondary forest in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, Japan in September 2001, and the physical and chemical properties of the soil were analyzed. The soil in the research plot consisted of volcanic ash soil. However, the properties were markedly different between the topsoil and subsoil. For example, the base saturation values in the A and Bw1 horizons were very low, 1.7 and 0.85%, respectively, while the value in the Bw2 horizon was 29%. The soils in the A and Bw1 horizons displayed a considerable anion exchange capacity (AEC) under the field conditions, and the amount of exchangeable sulfate (SO42-) accounted for 37% of the AEC in the A horizon. The AEC of the A horizon was considered to have brought about a delay in the changes in the SO42- concentration in the soil solution at the depth of 10 cm compared to the changes in the SO42- concentration in the throughfall (TF). One of the major features of the soil in the research plot was that it had already adsorbed a large amount of SO42- compared with the annual deposition load of SO42- from the atmosphere; the ratio of the adsorbed SO42- pool to the annual SO42- deposition was approximately 60 in the Bw1 horizon. Therefore, the volcanic fumes with a high amount of SO2, from Mt. Oyama were considered to have exerted a negligible effect on the soil properties in the research plot, whereas the fumes affected the properties of atmospheric deposition and upper soil solution in the research plot.In multimedia mass-balance models, the soil compartment is an important sink as well as a conduit for transfers to vegetation and shallow groundwater. Here a novel approach for constructing soil transport algorithms for multimedia fate models is developed and evaluated. The resulting algorithms account for diffusion in gas and liquid components; advection in gas, liquid, or solid phases; and multiple transformation processes. They also provide an explicit quantification of the characteristic soil penetration depth. We construct a compartment model using three and four soil layers to replicate with high reliability the flux and mass distribution obtained from the exact analytical solution describing the transient dispersion, advection, and transformation of chemicals in soil layers with different properties but a fixed boundary condition at the air-soil surface. The soil compartment algorithms can be dynamically linked to other compartments (air, vegetation, groundwater, surface water) in multimedia fate models. We demonstrate and evaluate the performance of the algorithms in a model with applications to benzene, benzo[a]pyrene, MTBE, TCDD, and tritium.The Polish energy industry is facing challenges regarding energetic safety, competitiveness, improvement of domestic companies and environmental protection. Ecological guidelines concern the elimination of detrimental solutions, and effective energy management, which will form the basis for sustainable development. The Polish power industry is required to systematically increase the share of energy taken from renewable sources in the total energy sold to customers. Besides the economic issues, particular importance is assigned to environmental factors associated with the choice of energy source. That, is where life-cycle assessment (LCA) is important. The main purpose of LCA is to identify the environmental impacts of goods and services during the whole life cycle of the product or service. Therefore LCA can be applied to assess the impact on the environment of electricity generation and will allow producers to make better decisions pertaining to environmental protection. The renewable energy sources analysed in this paper include the energy from photovoltaics, wind turbines and hydroelectric power. The goal and scope of the analysis,comprise the assessment of environmental impacts of production of 1 GJ of energy from the sources mentioned above. The study will cover the construction,, operation and waste disposal at each power plant. Analysis will cover the impact categories, where the environmental influence is the most significant, i.e. resource depletion, global warmth potential, acidification and eutrophication. The LCA results will be shown on the basis of European and Australian research. This analysis will be extended with a comparison between environmental impacts of energy from renewable and conventional sources. This report will conclude with an analysis of possibilities of application of the existing research results and LCA rules in the Polish energy industry with a focus on Poland's future accession to the European Union. Definitions of LCA fundamental concepts, its methodology and application are described in the ISO 14040-14049 series of standards. These standards have already been introduced in some countries, but in Poland they are still at the stage of translation into Polish. Nevertheless some companies in Poland try to assess how their products influence-the environment and what are the possibilities of technology improvement in the existing production process reduce their environmental impact. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental improvement in the building sector will be crucial for the societies ecological sustainability development. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the well-known tools used ad hoc for ecological sustainable development. In the implementation of a generic LCA methodology applicable on constructions, the most complex abstraction level for the functional output will focus on the building operation usefulness, which regards services rather than construction properties. Furthermore, constructions or parts of it can be regarded as a streamlined application of an LCA methodology operating on the more complex service building level. A number of significant characteristics valid for a generic LCA methodology for buildings have been put forward and then checked in accordance with "today's practice", represented by five different LCA concepts utilised for buildings. On this basis, current practice but also development needs have been identified on the following themes; service coverage, life-cycle definition, time dependence (coverage), life-cycle inventory and life-cycle impact assessment. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.A new and simple concept is proposed for the systematic and quantitative assessment of the technical, economic and ecological aspects of the ecological compatibility of materials and products. This concept can serve for prospective accounting of eco-compatibility in research and development, and for comparisons of alternative technological solutions. It is based on considering six stages of the life cycle and six efficiency parameters for each stage. The ensuing matrix elements can be selected for qualitative or quantitative analysis. The elementary quantitative treatment is based on suitably defined efficiency parameters. This concept alleviates the treatment of a complete life cycle analysis and inventory computation and is particularly useful when a simple and yet concise insight into selected aspects of eco-compatibility of a material or product is required. Economical aspects are introduced regarding minimum energy and material requirements and as a cost difference parameter in comparative treatments. Examples are given to demonstrate the appropriate selection of aspects to be analysed for a particular assessment and to introduce the specific formulation of pertinent efficiency parameters. Thus, the simplicity and transparency of the method and its results is demonstrated.Ecomaterials were categorized based on their life cycle and eco-efficiency. Taking ecomaterials in their broadest sense, as "materials for the environment", there are "function materials for environmental protection" and "materials for advanced energy systems". These materials improve services such as maintaining the living environment, or rendering energy. "Materials of life-cycle design" which are ecomaterials in the strict sense, are characterized by the stages in life-cycle where the focus of reduction of the environmental burden is given to: "materials with a green environmental profile", "materials of higher material efficiency", "materials of higher recyclability", "materials of hazardous substance free". On the basis of this classification, the present state of Website home pages and commercialized ecomaterial described in the environmental report book of the enterprise was investigated. There were many "materials of higher material efficiency" and "materials of hazardous substance free", and these were respectively 39%, and 31% of the total. "Materials of green environmental profile" composed 21%, and "materials of higher recyclability" gleamed 5%. The "materials of life-cycle design" are obviously well represented in the market, appealing as they do to the consumer.It is essential to evaluate the environmental impacts of materials or products properly for improving the global environment. However the typical method called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has many problems. Especially, it is crucial that various kinds of environmental impacts cannot be integrated. We present an attempt to use the exergy concept to integrate them. We classified the different types of exergy and analyzed the impact of the life cycle of beverage containers (aluminum can, PET bottle) and generation of electricity as examples, focusing on chemical and nuclear materials.According to increase in a waste scrap, a process is noticed in which a waste scraps is consumed for sheet steel production within severe restriction of impurities concentration. In this study, evaluation of the effect on environmental load decline by LCA is applied to this new recycling technology. Target of this study is not for closed loop recycling system like aluminum can for drink but for open loop recycling system in which many industries are concerned. Authors suggest taking the interindustry-relations table for open loop recycling system. Evaluation made in this research is based on it. By setting up I/O boundary, though increase of environmental load is predicted to be high comparing to those which are assumed as non-open recycling system, still there is a sufficient effect for it. As the result of the analysis, curtailment was estimated that energy consumption and CO, emission are 16.8 GJ per ton waste scrap and 1.2 t per ton waste scrap, respectively.The Integrated Product Policy (IPP), one of the most recent initiatives of the European Commission in the field of sustainable products and services development, considers Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as natural tool to provide environmental product declarations and verified environmental labels. The need of transparency of environmental performance is getting more importance also in the field of corrosion protection technology. First results of a Life Cycle Assessment on a 'hot-dip zinc galvanising process' for generic steel products are here reported to present a set of environmental sustainability indicators of that industrial sector and to support the preparation of a document with an environmental declaration. The study has been carried out according to ISO 14040 standard and the system referred to an average process resulting from two Italian medium-size plants (about 12.000 metric tons of galvanised steel per year each). Different frameworks such as poles and pylons for energy transportation have been considered from a cradle-to-grave (eco-profile) point of view, adding up to energy and environmental results also on the basis of the steel product service life within different corrosion scenarios.A model is presented for evaluating waste management systems for their contribution to a sustainable development, including environmental, economic and social aspects. The model was tested in a case-study, where groups of long-term unemployed people were offered both education on environmental issues and practical work with the recovery and recycling of building and demolition waste as a form of vocational development. Application of the suggested model revealed the overall effects on sustainability of different methods of waste management. In addition, negative aspects of the systems analysed were identified, which led to discussions about possible improved practices within the waste management systems. Two of the waste management systems investigated (the recycling of steel and re-use of sanitary porcelain) showed a potential contribution to sustainable development in all of the aspects studied. Preparing bricks for re-use showed the largest potential for eco-efficiency, but had negative effects on sustainability from the social perspective of health and the working environment. The possibility of further use of the model and the remaining obstacles to such analyses are discussed. One observation is that the data collection needed to perform this kind of sustainability analysis is resource-demanding, and that it would therefore be better to identify a smaller number of key indicators. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental life-cycles assessments conducted in South Africa to date have made use of published equivalency (or characterisation) factors for characterising ecotoxicity effects. These factors are calculated using environmental fate and effect models do not adequately characterise the effects of common ions associated with salinty impacts. Salinisation of South African water resources is of strategic concern, and the need for life-cycle assessments to be able to incorporate salinity effects is apparent. There are sufficiently clear cause-effect relationships between the sources and impacts of salinity, and impacts are sufficiently different in nature from existing categories to warrant a seperate salinity impact category. A conceptual method is proposed for creating a new salinity impact category for life-cycle assessment and for calculating salinity equivalency factors. The proposed method meets the international requirements for creating new impact categories and it is recommended that the method be developed further.A brief review of the recent advances in the field of ecomaterials in China is presented, giving opinions on the current activities and suggesting possible future courses of action. The past 10 years has seen the development of the concept of ecomaterials involving practical research and development of environmentally conscious materials, and the establishment of related systems including national programs and laws. It has been an important period for the development of materials science and the goal of creating a sustainable society in China. It has now become clear that ecomaterials, which exhibit high performance whilst being environmentally benign in their life cycle, are evolving from being only materials for end-of-pipe applications to include all materials being designed on the basis of life-cycle thinking. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A number of life-cycle assessment studies have compared the environmental impacts of material recycling and incineration of waste paper. They have shown that, in most cases, a recycling scenario results in lower total energy use, but greater use of fossil fuels. If waste paper and fossil fuels are complements, parts of the environmental argument for recycling is abolished. This paper estimates a cost function for the Swedish paper industry. If the cost shares are co-integrated, an error correction model will be used to model the dynamics. Short- and long-run elasticities are then calculated to address the relationship between waste paper and the other inputs: capital, labor, purchased pulp, fiber, fossil fuels and electricity. Contrary to the life-cycle assessment studies, the results show that waste paper and fossil fuels are substitutes, and that waste paper and electricity are complements.The evaluation of uncertainty is relatively new in environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA). It provides useful information to assess the reliability of LCA-based decisions and to guide future research toward reducing uncertainty. Most uncertainty studies in LCA quantify only one type of uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty due to input data (parameter uncertainty). However, LCA outcomes can also be uncertain due to normative choices (scenario uncertainty) and the mathematical models involved (model uncertainty). The present paper outlines a new methodology that quantifies parameter, scenario, and model uncertainty simultaneously in environmental life-cycle assessment. The procedure is illustrated in a case study that compares two insulation options for a Dutch one-family dwelling. Parameter uncertainty was quantified by means of Monte Carlo simulation. Scenario and model uncertainty were quantified by resampling different decision scenarios and model formulations, respectively. Although scenario and model uncertainty were not quantified comprehensively, the results indicate that both types of uncertainty influence the case study outcomes. This stresses the importance of quantifying parameter, scenario, and model uncertainty simultaneously. The two insulation options studied were found to have significantly different impact scores for global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, and eutrophication. The thickest insulation option has the lowest impact on global warming and eutrophication, and the highest impact on stratospheric ozone depletion.How to compare the environmental damage caused by vehicles with different fuels and drive trains? This paper describes a methodology to assess the environmental impact of vehicles, using different approaches, and evaluating their benefits and limitations. Rating systems are analysed as tools to compare the environmental impact of vehicles, allowing decision makers to dedicate their financial and non-financial policies and support measures in function of the ecological damage. The paper is based on the "Clean Vehicles" research project, commissioned by the Brussels Capital Region via the BIM-IBGE (Brussels Institute for the Conservation of the Environment) (Van Mierlo et al., 2001). The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (ETEC) and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (CEESE) have jointly carried out the workprogramme. The most important results of this project are illustrated in this paper. First an overview of environmental, economical and technical characteristics of the different alternative fuels and drive trains is given. Afterward the basic principles to identify the environmental impact of cars are described. An outline of the considered emissions and their environmental impact leads to the definition of the calculation method, named Ecoscore. A rather simple and pragmatic approach would be stating that all alternative fuelled vehicles (LPG, CNG, EV, HEV, etc.) can be considered as 'clean'. Another basic approach is considering as 'clean' all vehicles satisfying a stringent emission regulation like EURO IV or EEV. Such approaches however don't tell anything about the real environmental damage of the vehicles. In the paper we describe "how should the environmental impact of vehicles be defined?", including parameters affecting the emissions of vehicles and their influence on human beings and on the environment and "how could it be defined ?", taking into account the availability of accurate and reliable data. We take into account different damages (acid rain, photochemical air pollution, global warming, noise, etc.) and their impacts on several receptors like human beings (e.g.: cancer, respiratory diseases, etc); ecosystems, or buildings. The presented methodology is based on a kind of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in which the contribution of all emissions to a certain damage are considered (e.g. using Exposure-Response damage function). The emissions will include oil extraction, transportation refinery, electricity production, distribution, (Well-to-Wheel approach), as well as the emission due to the production, use and dismantling of the vehicle (Cradle-to-Grave approach). The different damages will be normalized to be able to make a comparison. Hence a reference value (determined by the reference vehicle chosen) will be defined as a target value (the normalized value will thus measure a kind of Distance to Target). The contribution of the different normalized damages to a single value "EcoScore" will be based on a panel weighting method. Some examples of the calculation of the Ecoscore for different alternative fuels and drive trains will be calculated as an illustration of the methodology.This paper compares individual (split) and central systems of air-conditioning in a life cycle perspective, taking into account the environmental impacts and resource consumption during resource extraction, material production, production of the air-conditioning units, their use, disposal and recycling. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used in conducting this comparison. Central systems have a longer lifetime than individual systems, lower electricity consumption and maintenance requirements during the use phase, and a higher recycling potential during the disposal phase. However, to transfer cool air, central systems use a large quantity of water pipes or air ducts, the production of which contributes significantly to resource use. The LCA study reveals that, on the whole, the central systems generally use less resources than split systems and result in lower environmental impacts. The paper suggests a need for producers of air-conditioners to consider a change from being suppliers of air-conditioning hardware to being suppliers of cool air in order to overcome the initial cost constraints of central systems and realize their environmental and economic improvement potential to the benefit of the environment, and the industry as well as customers.High efficiency, environmental friendliness, low operation and maintenance costs, and the lowest possible impact on the environment are some of the requirements of sustainable energy production. In the selection of new power generation systems, a number of steps have to be taken into account in order to meet these requirements. Here, the first law analysis has been implemented and investigated, followed by a combination of the first and second law analyses (exergy analysis), and thermoeconomics. Finally, an exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA) has been carried out for two different power cycles to show how the irreversibility of a process is coupled to environmental issues. The study involves two cycles, a two-pressure level combined cycle and a humid cycle, to demonstrate the usefulness of the three. methods mentioned above in a pre-purchase process. The main goal of this study is to point out the advantages and the difficulties related to the implementation of each and every method, and to identify the target groups that can gain knowledge and information by using these methods. Since the operators of power plants often do not have access to detailed information about component materials, characteristics, etc., of the power cycle, assumptions have to be made when comparing different cycle configurations with each other. These limited types of data and information have also been used here to create a plausible scenario of how different pre-purchase methods can differ from each other.Based on the principle of life cycle assessment, CO2 and SO2 emission of Imperial-Smelting Process in a certain zinc-lead smelter was analyzed by life cycle inventory method. According to the system expansion and substitution method, the environmental impacts of co-products were allocated among the main products of zinc, lead and sulfuric acid. The related impacts were assessed by use of Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Acidification Potential (ACP). The results show that the GWP index from 1998 to 2000 is 11. 53, 11. 65, 10. 93 tCO(2)-eq/tZn respectively, the ACP index decreases from 14. 88 kgSO(2)-eq/tZn in 1998 to 10. 99 kgSO(2)-eq/tZn in 2000. Power and electricity generation, followed by smelting and zinc distillation, are mainly responsible for GWP. Sintering individually affects ACP. Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of the ISP may come from energy conservation measures rather than from technological developments. And recycling more secondary Pb and Zn materials effectively treated by ISP, and reducing the amount of primary metal are the main ways to Put SO2 emission under control.The assessment of the current state and the prediction of the future condition of deteriorating structures are crucial processes in the management of civil infrastructure systems. Not only time-varying loads and resistances but also a series of maintenance interventions that are applied to keep structural systems safe and serviceable make the prediction process very difficult. In order to perform a realistic life-cycle analysis of deteriorating structures under different maintenance scenarios the uncertainties involved in this process have to be considered. This paper considers these uncertainties by providing a reliability-based framework and shows that the identification of the optimum maintenance scenario is a straightforward process. This is achieved by using a computer program for Life-Cycle Analysis of Deteriorating Structures (LCADS). This program can consider the effects of various types of actions on the reliability index profile of a group of deteriorating structures. Only the effect of maintenance interventions is considered in this study. However, any environmental or mechanical action affecting the reliability index profile can be considered in LCADS. Most input data are represented by random variables. In this manner, the uncertainties included in maintenance interventions, reliability index profiles, and cost evaluations are all taken into account. The present value of the expected cumulative cost associated with maintenance interventions can be evaluated for both an individual structure and a group of similar structures. Optimization and parametric analysis modules help the identification of the maintenance strategy that best balance cost and reliability index profile over a specified time horizon. Numerical examples of deteriorating bridges are presented to illustrate the capability of the proposed approach. Further development and implementation of this approach are recommended for future research.NatureWorks(TM) polylactide (PLA)(1) is a versatile polymer produced by Cargill Dow LLC. Cargill Dow is building a global platform of sustainable polymers and chemicals entirely made from renewable resources. Cargill Dow's business philosophy is explained including the role of life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool used for measuring environmental sustainability and identifying environmental performance-improvement objectives. The paper gives an overview of applications of LCA to PLA production and provides insight into how they are utilized. The first application reviews the contributions to the gross. fossil energy requirement for PLA (54 MJ/kg). In the second one PLA is compared with petrochemical-based polymers using fossil energy use, global warming and water use as the three impact indicators. The last application gives more details about the potential reductions in energy use and greenhouse gasses. Cargill Dow's 5-8 year objective is to decrease the fossil energy use from 54 MJ/kg PLA down to about 7 MJ/kg PLA. The objective for greenhouse gasses is a reduction from +1.8 down to -1.7 kg CO2 equivalents/kg PLA. (C) 2003 Cargill Dow B.V. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.A higher conversion efficiency of photovoltaic modules does not automatically imply a lower environmental impact, when the life-cycle of modules is taken into account. An environmental comparison is carried out between the production and use phase, except maintenance, of an indium-gallium-phosphide (InGaP) on multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) tandem module, a thin-film InGaP cell module and a mc-Si module. The evaluation of the InGaP systems was made for a very limited industrial production scale. Assuming a fourfold reuse of the GaAs substrates in the production of the thin-film InGaP (half) modules, the environmental impacts of the tandem module and of the thin-film InGaP module are estimated to be respectively 50 and 80% higher than the environmental impact of the mc-Si module. The energy payback times of the tandem module, the thin-film InGaP module and the mc-Si module are estimated to be respectively 5.3, 6.3 and 3.5 years. There are several ways to improve the life-cycle environmental performance of thin-film InGaP cells, including improved materials efficiency in production and reuse of the GaAs wafer and higher energy efficiency of the metalorganic chemical vapour deposition process. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.Activities within waste management systems, such as energy and material recovery, can lead to indirect environmental impacts that occur outside of waste management systems. In this paper, the effect of including indirect greenhouse-gas emissions on the choice of waste management solutions on a national level is explored. The global warming potentials (GWPs) of future waste management solutions for Sweden are compared. These include direct and indirect GWPs resulting from recovering power, heat, biogas, materials and nutrients. Furthermore, two of the assumptions that are presumed to be crucial for determining the indirect GWPs are examined in sensitivity analyses. It was found that indirect GWPs of waste management could be large when comparing a range of waste management solutions. Including indirect GWPs may even change the ranking of the solutions. However, the estimates of the indirect GWs are sensitive to the assumptions made. Including them involves large uncertainties. Despite this, some general conclusions regarding the preferability of the respective solutions can be drawn. Including indirect environmental impacts is important when providing information to support strategic planning that involves choosing among waste management solutions. Ultimately, it is a question of improving the ability of waste management planners to design environmentally sustainable and robust waste management systems. increased knowledge of the indirect environmental impacts of waste management can contribute to providing such an improvement. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Integrated product policy (IPP) and life cycle assessment (LCA), one of the analytic tools used in IPP, focus traditionally on environmental impacts. However, in an attempt to consider other sustainability criteria and to avoid a shift from environmental health impacts to occupational health impacts one may want to include occupational health in IPP. Should and can occupational health impacts be included in LCA and IPP? Using published and unpublished occupational health data for injuries and illnesses and an economic input-output model of the United States, we provide attributional occupational health impacts measured in disability adjusted life years per dollars output for 491 industry sectors including supply chain impacts. Estimates for the "true" number of United States occupational health impacts suggest that this initial analysis underestimates the total impact 3-7-fold. A comparison suggests that United States occupational health impacts are about 10 times smaller than environmental health impacts and are, relatively speaking, important only for sectors with hazardous working environments but low environmental impacts. A consequential rather than attributional view suggests that a method to assess true consequences on long-term health impacts by product policies needs to be able to predict effects from present-day work place exposure and to account for likely changes in the labor market, including changes in unemployment rates and other substitution mechanisms.A hybrid chilled water/ice thermal storage plant for the Lucile Erwin Middle School in Loveland, Colo., has saved more than $18,000 in energy costs annually. After an evaluation of alternatives and life-cycle analysis, the local power authority offered low-interest financing for the system to the Thompson School District.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an environmental assessment tool generally applied to products but also to processes. Features of the LCA of processes are presented in this paper. This approach was used to compare two flue gas cleaning processes: the typical wet-type process and the new transported droplets column process. The LCA result shows that the global environmental burden is similar between the two processes, which confirms the viability of the transported droplets column. The distribution of the environmental burden, however, is different between the two processes. The weak points of the transported droplets column are the pollution transfer from air to water and a larger volume to stabilize. Its strong point: it is more efficient in capturing dust particles and toxic pollutants. This process could be improved from an environmental standpoint by adding an electrostatic filter upstream of the transported droplets column to capture the particles. The laboratory results of the transported droplets column need, however, to be confirmed at a larger scale. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the most common problems arising from the application of life cycle assessment is the allocation of environmental loads in processes yielding several useful products. This is the case for cogeneration plants, and in general, for any energy plant producing more than one useful energy flow. Since traditional solutions to the problem are unsatisfactory, two new approaches for this kind of allocation are presented in this report, both of them based on thermoeconomics. In the first one, allocation is based on the exergetic cost of the products, so that the formation process of energy flows is taken into account. The second one, which has been called 'method of the exergoenvironmental costs', is a refined version of the first solution. It differs as each environmental vector is incorporated in the balance at the exact point in the plant where it comes into play. These methods are a generalisation of thermoeconomics, extending the applicability of its propositions to the allocation of environmental burdens. A comparison between the different allocation methods and a discussion pertaining to their suitability are made. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Green is a concept to express the degree of environmental burden caused by a product or service. Environmental burden is usually evaluated by 3 factors, i.e., by the bad effects on human health, by the bad effects on ecosystem and by the effects on depletion of energy and resources. This implies that it is necessary to have an integrated system with combined concept of life cycle assessment and risk assessment, but current methods/systems are far from perfect and new methods must be created by further efforts. Two kinds of criteria were used to evaluate technological/scientific values in Green & Sustainable Chemistry Awards in Japan; (1) an LCA like method to express lower burden on environment, (2) reduction of the use of highly hazardous substances.This research describes a framework and case study application that merges fuzzy set methods, pollution prevention, and sustainable production concepts. There is a direct linkage between industrial pollution prevention, sustainability, and the solution of large-scale environmental problems. This linkage stems from the inherent desire for economic production, while at the same time protecting the environment from further degradation. The methodology combines systems analysis under imprecise conditions with a life cycle assessment method that is able to accept imprecise data. Analysis of systems under imprecise conditions is accomplished through analysis of process flow diagrams using fuzzy set techniques. Introduction of imprecision into life cycle assessment is accomplished by integration of fuzzy set approaches into a decision support system utilizing multiple criteria decision making. The framework is described and a case study application of an industrial parts cleaning system using an open top vapor degreaser is presented. Results of applying the method show that: (1) It is well suited for analysis of complex systems in which input data is sparse and expensive to collect. (2) The proposed framework includes a decision support system that is able to consider life cycle assessment concepts, and is able to reconcile differing opinions on available options for modification of production systems, thereby leading to more sustainable solutions.LCAccess is an E.P,A-sponsored Web site intended to promote the use of Life Cycle Assessment (ICA) in business decision-making by facilitating access to data sources useful in developing a life cycle inventor (LCI). Whil LCAccess does not, itself, contain data, it is a searchable global direction of potential data sources, and serves as a central source for LCA information.Based on the analysis of cross sections of railroad ties, which were in use for up to 46 years, inventory, emission factors and total yearly emissions of creosote, PAH and phenols from the Swiss railway network were determined. During the service time of a railroad tie of 20 to 30 years, roughly 5 kg creosote are emitted. PAH emissions are in the order of about 0.5 kg (sum of 16 EPA-PAH) and occur as emissions of the volatile 2- and 3-ring PAH (such as naphthalene, acenaphthylene, acenaphthene, anthracene, fluorene, and phenanthrene). Emissions of phenolic compounds are in the range of 10 g for each tie. According to our study, about 1710 t of creosote components, 139 t of EPA-PAH and 4 t of phenolic compounds are emitted by the creosoted ties of the Swiss railway network, every year. Based on these results and on a previous study on environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of railway ties made of creosoted beech, prestressed concrete and sectional steel, the environmental effects caused by wooden ties were compared with the environmental effects of rail and road traffic. The PAH emissions from wooden ties have an enormous influence on the two effect oriented impact categories photochemical ozone creation and human toxicity. For all other impact categories, the PAH emissions are not relevant. If the road traffic (including its upstream processes) is included in the LCA, it is clearly dominating all impact categories. The use of new creosotes according to the WEI-C standard (lower benzo[a]pyrene content, less evaporation) improves the rating in the impact category photochemical ozone creation. Less than 14% of the total impact are caused by PAH emissions if creosote WEI-C is used, compared to more than 50% for creosote WEI-A. The LCA also demonstrates that the most effective measure to reduce the potential of photochemical ozone creation and human toxicity is a reduction of the road traffic.The huge amount of wastes produced by modern and developed countries involves important aspects of economical, social and technical fields and also of the environment. For this reason, different technologies have been proposed for trying to reduce the impact of waste management and disposal. Generally waste management system consists of different steps like selective collection, recycling and reuse operation, energy recovery from waste and landfilling. A new technology proposed for thermal waste treatment is the plasma pyrolysis vetrification (PPV). This system seems to have interesting perspective due to the possibility of thermal treatment of dangerous slag or waste producing inactivate vetrified substances that can be landfilled or used as building materials with no impact on the environment. In this study, the effect of the application of a PPV plant on an existing waste management system was evaluated with a life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis. All the activities connected to the existing system have been carefully analysed by collecting a large quantity of experimental data. Some assumptions have been made, in particular, on the PPV plant performance. LCA analysis results illustrate how the environmental benefits arising from the adoption of the new technology, concerns only few aspects of the whole system. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.Coffee production has grown by nearly 200 percent since 1950; after oil it is the most important traded commodity in the world. Although it is only grown in tropical and equatorial areas (it is the primary export of many developing countries), the majority of coffee is consumed in the developed world (the United States and the European Community combined import two out of every three bags of coffee produced in the world). Considering that the coffee chain is very wide-ranging, involving many companies of different types and sizes, each environmental decision, at any point of the coffee chain, should be taken under a "life cycle thinking" perspective. It was with this intention that Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied to analyse the environmental impacts connected to a coffee business located in Sicily. System boundaries were defined to include all life cycle steps: from coffee growing through to its distribution to consumers, consumption and disposal. The aim of the study was to identify the "hot spots" in the stages of the product's life cycle in which environmental improvements were easily achievable and to suggest alternatives to minimise the environmental impact of production phases, thereby improving processes and company performance.The main objective of the paper is to present a methodology of eco-designing of multi-layer composites using a design of conveyor belts as an example. In the present article, the methodology of designing of multilayer conveyor belts has been shown, experimental results of strength of designed belts have been presented, the eco-indicator 99 according to the SimaPro 5 methodology has been calculated and the methodology of optimisation of strength properties regarding various belts and their impact on the environment during the entire product life cycle has been presented. Changing physical and mechanical properties of layers constitute belt results in changing of rigidity and flexibility of the belt, which determine required exploitation properties of the belt. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, the pressure on the environment might be evaluated with respect to the category of human health, resources and quality of ecosystem. Defining objective function (selection criteria) allows to optimise the mechanical strength of the composite being taken into account and also its impact on environment using the life cycle assessment. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.How to assess the greenness of products from the viewpoint of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is one of the important issues in PLCA (Products Life Cycle Analysis). In this report, we present a non-uniform assessment method for greenness assessment of products based on DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) model after analyzing the shortcomings of the existing comprehensive assessment methods for green products. This method not only assesses the greenness of given products with regard to technical reference product constructed by means of the information of products, but also illustrates how to improve the greenness of products quantitatively by utilizing the project theory on DEA efficient frontier of DMU (Decision Making Unit). Finally we take a numerical example concerning greenness assessment of refrigerators to show how to use the established method and prove its availability.An environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure is constructed to compare the total emissions from different techniques for managing livestock wastes. Life Cycle Assessment is a method of holistically and systematically accounting for the environmental benefits and burdens of the production of goods and services including consequential burdens generated elsewhere. As waste emissions are very variable, the methodology is extended to include the uncertainty in the estimates in order to indicate the significance of differences between techniques. The object is to inform policy of whether options are better for the environment by quantifying potential emissions abatement, by highlighting priority environmental impacts and by revealing compromises for further investigation. This paper reports comparative LCAs for several pig waste management options. For example, various slurry application techniques, including: splash plates, band spreaders and injection. If the splash-plate system is taken as a reference, the injector system causes only 64% of the environmental acidification and 71% of the eutrophication of surface waters. The benefits must be offset against the increase in nitrate leaching of 50%. In contrast, the band spreader system offers 28% of the benefits of injection. The environmental impacts have also been expressed as a proportion of the UK national emissions. This gives each impact a weighted-value that enables direct comparisons of disparate impacts. Although band spreader systems showed an aggregated, or total, environmental impact reduction of almost 10%, the reduction is not significant when uncertainty is taken into account. Using an anaerobic digester shows few overall benefits due to the fugitive losses of methane. However, if these can be eliminated the global warming potential from waste management is reduced close to zero. (C) 2003 Silsoe Research Institute. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.A novel life-cycle assessment (LCA) model has been developed for the investigation of the environmental impact of the choice of material in cable production. In the first application polyolefin based material and PVC material is used. In both cases equivalent fire behaviour is assumed and a fire model is established based on existing fire statistics. This study represents the second full application of the fire-LCA model. In this paper the new 'cables fire-LCA' model will be presented together with the results of this first application. Aspects such as end-of-life scenarios, fire statistics, and fire scenarios and large scale fire performance of cables are discussed together with details of the straw LCA model defined for cables and the results of four different end-of-life scenarios. Copyright (0 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.In many Asian cities the public water Supply is characterised by low pressure, frequent interruptions and occasional contamination. Hence, private households have to store water and increase pressure individually to ensure an uninterrupted supply at sufficient pressure and water for drinking has to be boiled or supplied separately in bottles. In this study the present water supply system in Hanoi and a number of modification options were analysed from an environmental point of view through life cycle assessment (LCA) in order to identify the most sustainable solutions for future water supply. It was found that the boiling of water for drinking was the largest source of impacts in the present system. Impacts could be reduced significantly if the public supply network was improved and private pumping and storage could be avoided and if the water could be used directly for drinking. It was also found that impacts could be reduced if consumers used bottled water for drinking instead of boiling tap water. Finally, it was demonstrated that even if drinking water cannot be supplied directly through the public network, a reliable public water supply at high pressure is environmentally advantageous. Sensitivity analyses revealed that the conclusions of this study are likely to be applicable to other cities with similar water supply systems.Current trends in the development of the world packaging market and the place of ecological tendencies in them suggest the need to analyse the present status of studies on the ecological assessment of packaging materials and packaging. The aim of this study is to present some aspects of ecological assessment of packaging. The methods and criteria of ecological assessment of packaging, including Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and ecological classification of packaging proposed by COBRO (Polish Packaging Research and Development Centre) in Warsaw were used. The considerations presented in the paper related to the general assumptions of ecological assessment of packaging materials and packaging point to the complexity of the problem and, at the same time, to the immediate interest and importance of studies in this field, particularly in terms of implementing a specific environmental protection policy.This paper describes the LCA environmental impacts resulting from fuel fired co-generation systems using our NETS (Numerical Eco-load Total Standard-[1]) scheme having GUI (Graphic User Interface). Following a brief introduction of the NETS evaluation method, firstly the total eco-load from commercial electricity power plants in Japan is numerically calculated in the NETS unit. We take here almost all factors into account including fuel mining, transportation and processing, plant manufacturing, assembling and its building construction, fuel consumption and maintenance during twenty durable years, plant dismantling and waste processing, thermal efficiency and delivery loss, etc. This evaluation greatly helps in the eco-load estimation of co-generation plants when electricity purchase is needed during the plant operation with a minimum eco-load. Next, co-generation systems are paid attention to their ecological effiectiveness. Here, we select different fuel fired co-generation plants of natural gas, heavy oil, and coal. Environmental impacts resulting from the respective plants include fossil fuel depletion and natural resources depletion, global warming due to green house gases, ozone layer depletion due to CFC type gas emission, various water and air pollution, rain acidification due to NOx and SOx, waste processing, recycling etc. Each item can be successfully calculated from the inventory database accumulated by authors. Hourly energy demands of electricity and heat (steam, hot water and cold water) are set to a typical model for eight office buildings and two hotels. The NETS method is applied to the co-generation model, resulting in the best cost-operating scheme of co-generation plants with a minimum environmental impact.The environmental impact of individuals, namely, how much they pollute and what resources they consume, is of paramount importance. However, even environmental psychologists rarely study levels of pollution or resource and energy savings. The present paper aims to ecologically validate 52 behaviors of a well-established self-report measure of ecological conduct (i.e. the General Ecological Behavior scale; Kaiser, J. Appl. Social Phychol. 28 (1998) 395, using the items' environmental consequences. Our objective is to contrast a behavior's environmental consequences with the comparable effect of a reasonable alternative. By means of applying data from available Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) literature and databases, two LCA experts were able to compare each of 52 performance pairs' overall environmental impact. None of the 30 presumably ecological behaviors of the scale turned out to be less environmentally effective than its alternative, and none of the 22 unecological behaviors turned out to be more environmentally effective than its alternative. The correspondence between a behavior's environmental consequences and its scale-incorporated, presumed, impact falls between 79% and 100%, both being statistically significant. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Organic agriculture addresses the public demand to diminish environmental pollution of agricultural production. Until now, however, only few studies tried to determine the integrated environmental impact of conventional versus organic production using life cycle assessment (LCA). The aim of this article was to review prospects and constraints of LCA as a tool to assess the integrated environmental impact of conventional and organic animal production. This aim was illustrated using results from LCAs in the literature and from a pilot study comparing conventional and organic milk production. This review shows that LCAs of different case studies currently cannot be compared directly. Such a comparison requires further international standardisation of the LCA method. A within-case-study comparison of LCAs of conventional and organic production, however, appeared suitable to gain knowledge and to track down main differences in potential environmental impact. Acidification potential of milk production, for example, is for 78-97% due to volatilisation of ammonia, which is not reduced necessarily by changing from conventional to organic milk production. Eutrophication potential per tonne of milk or per ha of farmland was lower for organic than for conventional milk production due to lower fertiliser application rates. Global warming potential of milk production is for 48-65% due to emission of methane. Organic milk production inherently increases methane emission and, therefore, can reduce global warming potential only by reducing emission of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide considerably. Organic milk production reduces pesticide use, whereas it increases land use per tonne of milk. Conclusions regarding potential environmental impact of organic versus conventional milk production, however, are based largely on comparison of experimental farms. To show differences in potential environmental impact among various production systems, however, LCAs should be performed at a large number of practical farms for each production system of interest. Application of LCA on practical farms, however, requires in-depth research to understand underlying processes, and to predict, or measure, variation in emissions realised in practice. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.The increasing demand for efficient management of used products after the end of their life cycle stems from the increasing awareness of modern society about possible threats against the environment. Used starter or lead-acid batteries contain lead up to 65%, which is also valuable after the end of their life cycle. Recycling of lead gives rise to some environmental problems associated with its collection, processing and recycling and, finally, entering the main (forward) supply chain. In this paper, the lead recovery from old batteries is examined using life cycle inventory analysis (LCIA). The reverse supply chain of used starter or lead-acid batteries is outlined and analyzed. A model for this product system is formulated, which is used to identify the lead emissions as well as all the environmental exchanges through materials balance. The proposed model formulation, which is appropriately adapted to the needs of the reverse supply chain, is used as a tool in a LCIA in order to identify those stages in the battery life cycle that give rise to the greatest environmental burdens. A similar analysis is also made for the case of disposal. The model may be used in order to assess all the associated impacts in an in-depth life cycle analysis (LCA). A preliminary comparison between the two end-of-life scenarios in terms of their environmental inputs and outputs is also attempted. Thus, based on several assumptions, an inventory analysis referring to the above chains has been conducted whose results have been summarized in an Inventory table, which produces comprehensive information about each life stage of the examined end-of-life scenarios. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.A carbon balance assessment for containerized Larix gmelinii seedlings in the Russian Far East determined that the level of carbon emitted to the atmosphere as a result of inputs used in the seedling growing process exceeded the volume of carbon sequestered by the seedlings at a ratio of approximately 1:40 (one part sequestered carbon to 40 parts carbon emissions). Seedlings were raised at the Nekrasovka Greenhouse Complex, Khabarovskii krai, Russian Federation, during 1998-2000. The amount of carbon sequestered by the seedling growth prior to out-planting was determined by mass spectrometry. Seedling production resulted in an initial carbon deficit, defined as the net carbon released to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2). On average, each seedling raised at the greenhouse complex brought about the emission of 76.4 g of carbon dioxide from production inputs, the equivalent of 20.8 g of carbon per seedling. Averaged over three, I year production cycles, the carbon content of the seedlings was approximately 0.516 +/- 0.078 g per seedling, resulting in a 20.28 g carbon deficit per seedling (equivalent to a 74.36 g atmospheric carbon dioxide deficit). To offset this initial deficit, seedlings would need to grow to an estimated 74.68 cm in total tree height after out-planting. In boreal forests of the Russian Far East, this would require approximately 3-10 years with time varying depending on specific site conditions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.The energy and environmental implications of applying different conservative technologies in school buildings in and Andean regions of Mendoza-Argentina have been assessed in this work using life cycle assessment. The case studied is a school building which has recently been built in Lavalle, a county in northern Mendoza's province. The obtained results show that almost all the environmental effects investigated are improved when the conservative technologies are implemented, except for the photochemical ozone formation potential. The use of wood in an uncontrolled combustion as the energetic source for brick baking has been identified as the responsible process of that unintended negative effect. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.One important aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of delayed harvest of miscanthus on biomass yield and quality. Miscanthus field trials were therefore carried out at three locations in south Germany. The plants were harvested at different dates, and the yields and chemical composition of the biomass were measured. Another aim is to investigate the effects of delayed harvest of miscanthus on the net primary energy balance, total emissions of greenhouse gases, and total emissions of acidifying gases in the case of a large-scale heat generation from this biomass. Thus, life cycle assessment (LCA) for a theoretical large-scale heat generation from this specially grown and harvested miscanthus was carried out. Since no standard data set was available, two different model approaches (A and B) were applied within LCA to describe the energy consumption of biomass drying. Results of the field trials show an energy yield of 187-528 GJ ha(-1) harvest from miscanthus in December. With delayed harvest, bioenergy yields decreased by 14-15% between December and February and by a further 13% between February and March. This was accompanied by a significant decrease in water content and in the concentrations of ash, nitrogen, chloride and sulphur in the biomass. The decline in energy yield, however, cannot be traded off by a reduced total primary energy consumption due to a reduced need for drying. The amount of total CO2 equivalent emissions of theoretical heat generation from miscanthus varies between 10.3 and 36.1 kg CO2 equivalents GJ(-1) depending on the harvest time, production site and drying process model used. A clear effect of delayed harvest on total CO2 equivalent emissions per GJ was not found. The amount of total SO2 equivalent emissions varied between 44 and 213 g GJ(-1). Here, results of both drying models show a clear decrease of SO, equivalents with delayed harvest. In addition, energy generation from miscanthus emits less CO2 and SO2 equivalents than conventional heat generation from light heating oil. It can be concluded that an early harvest of miscanthus maximises energy yield and finite primary energy savings per hectare. It may also maximise CO2 equivalent savings per energy yield when energy consumption of the drying processes can be kept low. To gain certainty on this point, more robust data bases for the LCA are needed. On the other hand, late harvest reduced total SO, equivalent emissions of an energetic use of miscanthus and it also recommended for economic reasons. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) perform traditional architectural functions of walls and roofs while also generating electricity. The displacement of utility generated electricity and conventional building materials can conserve fossil fuels and have environmental benefits. A life cycle inventory model is presented that characterizes the energy and environmental performance of BIPV systems relative to the conventional grid and displaced building materials. The model is applied to an amorphous silicon PV roofing shingle in different regions across the US. The electricity production efficiency (electricity output/total primary energy input excluding insolation) for a reference BIPV system (2kW(p) PV shingle system with a 6% conversion efficiency and 20 year life) ranged from 3.6 in Portland OR to 5.9 in Phoenix, AZ indicating a significant return on energy investment. The reference system had the greatest air pollution prevention benefits in cities with conventional electricity generation mixes dominated by coal and natural gas, not necessarily in cities where the insolation and displaced conventional electricity were greatest. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.A 100 MW very large-scale photovoltaic power generation (VLS-PV) system is designed assuming that it will be installed in the Gobi desert, which is one of the major deserts in the world. Array arrangement, array support, foundation, wiring, and so on are designed in detail. Then energy payback time (EPT), life-cycle CO2 emission rate and generation cost of the system are estimated based on the methodology of life-cycle analysis. As a result of the estimation, 1.7 year of EPT and 12 g C/kWh of CO2 emission rate are obtained. These show that VLS-PV in the Gobi desert would be very promising for the global energy and environmental issues. The generation cost is calculated at 8.6cent/kWh assuming that PV module price is one US $/W and system lifetime is 30 years. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of sewage sludge management in a Danish municipality (Aalborg), with 160,000 inhabitants using alternative methods for aggregation of environmental impacts was performed. The purpose is to demonstrate the use of SEA in relation to sludge management and to improve SEA methodology. Six different scenarios for management of sewage sludge within the Aalborg municipality involving thermal treatment, composting and landfilling of sludge were evaluated. Environmental impact categories considered were global warming, non-renewable resources (nutrients and fossil fuels) and land use. Impact categories human health, ecotoxicity and soil quality were excluded as methodology for their assessment is not yet fully developed. Thermal sludge treatment with energy utilisation was shown to be a promising option for sewage sludge management in Aalborg. Sensitivity of the relative environmental impacts with respect to calculation methodology and input parameter values were evaluated to identify important parameters and calculation methods. The analysis showed that aggregation procedures, sludge biogas potential and sludge production were very important whereas sludge transport was not.The scope of the presented project was to illuminate and describe the potential environmental impacts which are caused by the production and application of a coating material using epoxidised derivatives. Therefore an appropriate comparative eco-balance in collaboration with the company BIOMEL GmbH located in Dessau (Germany) shall be conducted. Problem definition, approach and results will be given.The life cycle inventory (LCI) data of the electric power generation plays a vital role on LCIs of the industrial products. However there are no formal life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in Indonesia so far due to limited number of LCA expertise and lack of sufficient databases relevant to domestic conditions. Therefore, the aim of this study is, firstly to introduce life cycle assessment (LCA) method for Indonesian electric power generation systems, and, secondly to establish LCI data for electricity grid mix of Indonesia compared with three selected countries, Japan, Thailand and China. Finally, to analyze and to investigate the environmental burdens for these four selected countries from a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) point of view using the proposed LCA-NETS (Numerical Eco-load Total Standard) method. As the results, the LCA evaluations are discussed for further ecological improvement.There is a recognition that one of the best ways to reduce waste and pollution towards zero is to prevent them from occurring in the first place. This can be done by focusing at the early aspect of designing products and processes. Ecological loss function which is adapted from Taguchi's quality loss function is developed in this paper to aid in the environmental assessment and design of techniques. Ecological loss function relates the expected monetary losses and the environmental quality (emission) attributes of a system. Based on the calculated expected losses, techniques are ranked to determine the best available one. The proposed function is applied in three fictitious techniques in primary aluminum industry and could provide suggestions which of the techniques that have to be benchmarked for continuous environmental performance improvement. Additionally, this paper reported which emitted substances have to be addressed first during the design improvement phase in the primary aluminum industry.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is becoming increasingly more important as an assessment tool within the design of modern products. LCA may be used to minimize the environmental impact of a design during the entire life cycle of a product, and to highlight weak points and areas requiring special attention and improvement. However, obtaining the life cycle inventories (LCI) required for LCA is often too expensive, as data is difficult to obtain and the amount of data required is very considerable. This paper introduces a framework for the integration of data from a product model and an LCI data base. Within the approach taken, efficient access to the LCI-relevant data is realized by utilizing feature technology as a means to relate with a sound semantics framework and a geometrical model linked to individual product properties.The objective of this research is to compare the greenhouse gas emissions between recycling of MSW recyclable value wastes and landfilling in Thailand. Methane emmissions from the organic fraction of waste in landfill contribute to global warming whereas for recycling, the global warming potential comes from the energy consumption of the recycling process. The whole life cycle of the two scenarios is considered, including transportation. The recycling option reduces the methane emissions from landfill due to diversion of waste. The study shows that this reduction more than offsets the increase due to energy consumption in the recycling process. Apart from the reduction in global warming potential, recycling also contributes to resource conservation. Thailand has high potential for recycling since a large proportion of the waste currently going to the landfill is actually recyclable. Two case studies of ecodesign are also considered to highlight the increase in recyclability and thus the benefits thereof.In this paper, a framework of evaluation of the product life cycle in the closed loop manufacturing is discussed The framework provides a procedure to organize a system of environmental indicators and to carry out the evaluation in the process of designing product life cycles in the closed loop manufacturing. For constructing the system of indicators, a structured set of basic indicators is proposed It consists of "goal" indicators and "measure" indicators. The measure indicators are related to the life cycle options, which should be selected according to the product life cycle strategy represented by the goal indicators. The relationship between two sets of indicators can be analyzed by means of life cycle simulation combined with life cycle assessment. The paper also presents an illustrative example of constructing the system of indicators and the analysis of product life cycle of mobile phones by means of the life cycle simulation. This example indicates complex relations between the goal indicators and the measure indicators and, therefore, implies that the life cycle simulation is quite useful for supporting the life cycle design.An industrial activity like manufacturing products inevitably results in some load on the environment such as the fossil fuel depletion, global warming, air pollution and etc. Owing to the new sensitivity arising towards the environment, reuse and recycle for products have to be regarded as important. However, no numerical environmental impact analyses of reuse and recycle have been expressed. As a tool that estimates numerical environmental impacts caused by different environmental problems through the entire life cycle (cradle to grave) of industrial products, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been greatly paid attention. In this paper, we have evaluated environmental impacts of reuse for vending machine and recycling for PET bottle by the aid of the LCA-NETS (Numerical Eco-load Total Standard) software that we have newly proposed as a LCA scheme to analyze quantitatively environmental loads of any industrial products. As the result, it is clarified that LCA-NETS software is found to be a powerful tool to analyse the quantitative LCA environmental loads for various industrial products and that reuse and recycling of products are greatly needed for ECP (environmentally conscious products).Trucks exhaust 95% of CO2 in traveling. Therefore improvement of fuel efficiency is most effective to reduce environmental loads and lightening vehicle bodies is the best way for it So we categorized trucks: small, midsize, and large trucks, and calculated efficiency of lightening each truck by life cycle assessment (LCA). We use carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) for weight saving instead of steal. Since making CFRP needs much larger energy than steal, following the three ways are effective in lightening trucks by CFRP: To reduce basic unit of producing CFRP To lengthen total mileage. To increase load capacity by the amount of weight saving.The choice of end of life option for damaged products affects the products' environmental impact. In this study recycling and refurbishing of household appliances are ecologically and economically compared. The comparisons were conducted by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Activity Base Costing (ABC), which both are reliable methods. The results from the analyses show that the refurbishment scenario is preferable from both economic and ecological standpoint. Refurbishment could also be used to a greater extent when the aim is to save nature or to decrease the economic losses that accrue from product defects. Having products refurbished in a central facility gives the manufacturer the opportunity to enhance knowledge about their products' performance throughout its entire life cycle.The environmental aspects of electrical and electronic equipments (EEEs) have emerged as a matter of primary concern and, thus, eco-design is being conducted actively. In order to identify the significant environmental aspects of a product system, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used widely. However, a full scale LCA study is usually very detailed, expensive and time-consuming. In this study the development of a simplified LCA (SLCA) that can be applied to EEEs was attempted to efficiently identify their significant environmental aspects for ecodesign.This paper develops two types of simplified life cycle assessment method for LCA evaluation during innovative design stage. The fast method is qualitative LCA using matrix approach This method uses a pre-defined scoring list combine with streamlined LCA and matrix approach, to provide innovative design engineers an environmental impacts evaluating tool when they publish their idea of innovative product designs Another method is pattern-based qualitative LCA approach It uses the results of previous product LCA to categorize six different environmental impact maps based on different product characteristics Furthermore, weighting method is used to obtain qualitative LCA result of innovative products by combination of associated environmental impact maps Innovative design engineers can use these results to evaluate their new ideas of innovative products during innovative design stage.In a competitive and globalized business environment, the need for the green products becomes stronger. To meet these trends, the environmental assessment besides delivery, cost and quality of products should be considered as an important factor in new product development phase. In this paper, a knowledge-based approximate life cycle assessment system (KALCAS) for the collaborative design environment is developed to assess the environmental impacts in context of product concept development. It aims at improving the environmental efficiency of the product using artificial neural networks consisting of high-level product attributes and LCA results. The overall framework of the collaborative environment including KALCAS is proposed The architecture for the collaborative design environment is used to the CO(TM) environment to allow users on a wide variety of platforms to access the product data and other related information. It enables us to trade-off the evaluation results between the objectives of design alternatives including environmental impacts in the collaborative design environment.The environmental impact of a Japanese telephone directory was studied using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method Most telephone directories are published, delivered and collected by the telephone company; this makes their life cycle unlike that of other magazines. We analyzed several environmental burdens, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission, and evaluated several environmental effects. Most of the environmental burdens were caused during the paper production process.In order to effectively integrate the environmental aspects into the product design and development processes, it is crucial to identify the environmental aspects related to a product system within a relatively short period of time by using appropriate assessment tools. In this study, a simplified LCA (SLCA) and the environmentally responsible product assessment matrix (ERPA) methods were evaluated and the usefulness as a tool for identifying the. environmental aspects of products in eco-design was examined. The case studies of the cellular phone and vacuum cleaner systems showed that the SLCA and the ERPA methods provided different information but they complement each other to some extent. While the SLCA generates more information on the inherent environmental characteristics of a product system so that it may be useful for new design/eco-innovation, the ERPA gives more information on the potentials for improvement in the product so that it can be effectively used in eco-redesign.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been proposed as a method of grasping the environmental load, occurring especially in product manufacturing, in order to design and manufacture products with better environmental performance. LCA is a technique. for computing the environmental load of a product over the total product life cycle by performing inventory analysis of each life cycle process and summing up the results. However since LCA computes environmental load based on a static database, it is difficult to consider dynamic changes of a life cycle in its calculation. In this research, we propose the new environmental load evaluation system, which can consider dynamic changes of each life cycle process by connecting external calculating modules to the LCA system.To study the most appropriate design for mobile telecommunications networks, we conducted a life cycle assessment of second-generation cellular phone networks (2G networks) and Personal Handyphone System networks (PHS networks) in Japan. Our results show that, for the same number of subscribers, without considering differences in communication quality, 2G networks, which use a smaller number of higher power base stations (BSs), produce less CO2 emission than PHS networks, which use a larger number of lower power BSs. An effective way of reducing network CO2 emission would be to design BSs that consume less power, thus reducing their emission at the use stage. It would also be effective to design easily re-useable handsets composed of fewer components and materials to reduce their emission at the production stage.Innovative technologies. are required to offset increasing consumption and declining stocks of non-renewable resources. Misleading estimates of pollution prevention, performance, and cost of promising new environmentally conscious technologies might result when process design and LCA methods do not account data variability and uncertainty. This research attempts to develop novel assessment methodology for evaluation of risks and potential pay-offs of new technologies that avoid pollutant production; and demonstrate the methodology via case study of gasification technology by simultaneous characterizing data variability and uncertainty. Thus, assessments of advanced process technologies that are in early developmental stages should be based on proper understanding and representation of uncertainties.Now the electronics industry is due to substitute lead-free solder for conventional solder. Substitution of lead-bearing solders can bring out reduction of the toxicity of solders caused by lead, but according to Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), it may cause increase of energy consumption in the soldering process. We investigated the energy consumption of the soldering process at production sites of various companies and compared the values of the energy consumption of mounting process using conventional solder with that using lead-free solder. In results, the increase rate of the energy consumption caused by the substitution of lead-free solder is lower than that calculated by LCA. Therefore the energy consumption of soldering process can hold the status quo.This paper compares and contrasts two methods for calculating life-cycle human and aquatic toxicity impacts. A hazard value (HV) approach and a toxicity potential (TP) approach are used to calculate toxic impacts of three wave solder alloys: tin/lead (SnPb), tin/copper (SnCu), and tin/silver/copper (SAC). TPs are based on a more sophisticated model than the HV method; however, the TP method is less comprehensive in the number of potentially toxic chemicals it includes. Both methods resulted in similar overall conclusions regarding the relative difference in impacts for each solder alternative; however, the inventory data that drive the impact results differ for the two impact assessment methods.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a key technique to achieve green design. But it isn't applied widely because of its defects. In order to enhance the operability of LCA in green design, A LCA tool, named Green Product Life Cycle Design (GPLCD) is described in this paper. The paper is divided into four sections: first, based on the analysis of the existing LCA method and the product design activities, the functional model of the LCA tool is built with IDEF0 methods. And then through analyzing the product and its life cycle activities, product's life cycle model is proposed and the functional unit class and process class are presented with Object oriented design. Third, aimed to the problems of the data management of product's life cycle, product configuration management is integrated into GPLCD. Finally, a case on choosing material of impeller is given to testify how to use the LCA tool to support green design.We have undertaken an evaluation of the environmental impact of fixed-line telephone networks in Japan. We chose the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method for this evaluation because it can assess the environmental burden quantitatively. Prior to the evaluation, we developed a telecommunication network model including end-user terminals, access facilities, end-offices, repeater stations and transmission facilities. The model for these facilities represents typical networks in the Tokyo metropolitan area. We have evaluated the environmental burden imposed by more than 50 pieces of equipment using life cycle inventory analysis. We found that throughout the entire life cycle, the CO, emissions emanating from fixed-line telephone networks during the use stage accounted for about 77% of the total. The emissions from customers' equipment were particularly heavy. We also estimated the potential recovery available by recycling equipment and facilities and the effect was a reduction of about 6% in CO2 emissions.Telecommunication providers and telecommunication manufacturers arc getting ready to implement the third generation (3G) mobile telecommunication systems known as UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) in Europe. Next to the technical problems involved, no statement regarding the sustainability of the UMTS can yet he made. In a joint effort Motorola, Swisscom, Deutsche Telekom and ESU-services have carried out an evaluation of the environmental sustainability of the UMTS mobile communication system in Switzerland by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A baseline environmental impact profile across the full life cycle of the UMTS mobile communication system and its predecessor, the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) is presented. The baseline assessment was a necessary first step to evaluate the environmental impacts of the mobile communication systems use and growth and thus permitting the evaluation of its environmental sustainability. The analysis showed that the manufacturing of electronic components, the life time of the appliances and energy consumption are key parameters influencing the environmental profile most. From this baseline, necessary environmental improvement strategies on the technical level, such as Design for Environment for products (e.g. cellular phone and base stations) and LCA improvement assessments (e.g. combined devices) are developed so as to show ways towards sustainable mobile communication.Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are rapidly developing and will shape our future society. In understanding the shape of the future information era, it is also important to identify the environmental aspects of ICTs. However, Life Cycle Assessment (L CA), a systematic evaluation tool for products and services, often lacks ability to capture services inputs and capitals, which is crucial in ICTs. In this study we employed input-output analysis besides traditional process LCA to overcome this problem and to identify environmental impacts of Internet infrastructure within the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). This study aims at detailing the Internet infrastructure and evaluates the environmental impact of its various components. The methodology developed starts with a first screening performed with an Input-Output LCA software (MIET). This has been done starting from the detailed expenditures allocated to the Internet infrastructure within the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland Data from other LCA studies and databases were then included using an hybrid approach. It permits to better evaluate environmental impacts of complex systems. In particular it enables to assess overhead services and infrastructure, which have received less attention in traditional LCAs. The results of the first screening show that the electricity and the manufacturing of personal computers are dominating. But other contributions like maintenance, paper, management and computational services in case of computer breakdown have significant impacts, showing that an environmental friendly computer is also a reliable one. The inclusion of process data on electricity consumption, computer manufacturing, computational services and particular characteristics of the Institute's energy consumption were then combined in a process technology matrix. The results change significantly showing that the first screening of the methodology is use it to point out what should be more detailed but gives results that should be interpret with grate care.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is a quantitative method to evaluate the environmental impacts involved with a certain product over its whole life cycle by calculating the inputs and outputs of the system. However, it has some limitations unavoidable hypothesis, incomplete data, weak adaptability and high cost etc. Consequently, several simple LCA methods came into being. In order to make the LCA method more practical, a new evaluation method named "the most of the most" is introduced in this paper, and the feasibility of it is demonstrated through case studies comparing with the traditional method.Nowadays, the urban utilities management is a real chaos. A systemic approach, defined by the researchers of the CREM as urbistics, can give to the public managers the tools for the sustainable city of tomorrow. Using microcomputers and the cabled TV network, the CREM manages a laboratory town at real scale. Every hour, various flows, like electricity, natural gas, district heating or drinking water are measured over 30 sites and visualized by a urban area network. This enable the urban utilities to better understand the consumption pattern and thus to improve the resources management. Nevertheless, the question was asked whether the environmental benefits of the management improvement overcome the impact of the necessary infrastructure of the monitoring. A life cycle environmental impact was performed to answer this question. In order to perform a first evaluation and to have the possibility to take into account the services, an Input-Output approach to Life Cycle Assessment has been used. The first task was to inventory the necessary infrastructure and to determine the effects of the monitoring system. The direct impacts are negative and include the necessary infrastructure: computers, electricity consumption, research funding, etc... The indirect impacts are mostly positive: resource management to enhance the efficiency of the network, avoided building of a water tank possibility to dialog with the customers, etc... The ecoindicator 99 coefficients were used to evaluate the environmental impact. All these coefficients were evaluated for both the necessary infrastructure and the avoided impacts of the monitoring. The results show that the avoided impacts are 3 to 25 times higher than the real impacts. More data are needed to decrease the uncertainty linked to the estimation made. More work is needed to overcome the difficulties encountered when evaluating the indirect effects and allocating them to the use of the monitoring system. The monitoring system set by the CREM together with the city of Martigny is very promising and could help cities on their way to sustainable development. In particular, it could be very useful for the development of new urban area.It's a dogma that a long product lifetime is always an environmental benefit. But this is not always so in the case of electronics. The electronics sector contains active products, i.e. they consume electricity during use. A lower energy consumption in a new product may therefore "pay" for the total "fixed burden" of producing and disposing both the new and old products. The dynamics of this mechanism has been investigated by an LCA screening of four product groups: televisions, PC's, mobile phones and frequency converters. Two product generations into the future were included in terms of the prevailing expectations for technological innovation. The environmental effects of new technology on these four product groups were assessed to determine the best environmental choice between the following two scenarios: Buy a new product and dispose of the old one, OR Prolong the life of the product through repair. This paper will discuss methods and results, including the best purchase strategy or the best repair strategy.Process-based, generic, parametric modules are used to manage wafer fabrication life-cycle inventory data in order to stream-line life cycle analysis activities, accommodate rapidly changing technologies, and accurately reflect the highly significant role that warfer fabrication processes have in the life cycle of an integrated circuit.This paper presents the findings of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of two different book options - electronic and print. This study compared the life-cycle burdens and impacts of a college student reading 40 scholarly textbooks and the equivalent amount of digitized information (53.6-MB) using a dedicated e-book reading device. Total primary energy, material and water requirements, air and water pollutant emissions, and solid wastes for each system were evaluated By comparing these two book options, this study provides industry, consumers, and policy makers with valuable information necessary to make environmentally informed decisions regarding e-book technologies.There is an increasing pressure from the economic regulator in England and Wales for water companies to ensure that their capital maintenance decisions reflect an understanding of the long-term impact on their operational costs and risks. This implies that decisions must not only reflect the costs borne now but the likely costs in the future, and how these might be optimised. It is noteworthy that within the construction and transport industries, asset management decisions which have been driven in this direction utilise a whole life costing (WLC) methodology. This paper addresses the implications of transferring the concept of WLC to-service-based assets such as water systems. A WLC approach to distribution network management aims to achieve the lowest network provision and operating cost when all costs are considered to achieve standards enforced by regulation. Cognisance is to be taken of all relevant costs-direct and indirect, private and societal-in order to balance the needs of the service supplier,the customer, society and the environment in a sustainable manner. A WLC analysis thus attempts to develop a cost profile over the life of the asset. Accounting for the costs over this period is achieved through a combination of activity based costing (ABC) and a life cycle assessment (LCA) used to identify potential social and, environmental costs. This process means that each of these identified costs must be linked to some physical parameter that itself varies over-time due to changing demands on the system, the different operation I strategies available to the operator and natural deterioration of the fabric of the system. The links established between the cost and activities of the operator provide the basis for the development of a WLC decision tool (WiLCO) for application to water distribution network management.A map depicting the major elements, interactions, and life cycle analysis issues of a typical water distribution system is presented as a network labyrinth. From this, focus is placed on the influence of leaks on energy and water consumption as well as the dissipation of hydraulic transients. Straightforward analytical expressions-are derived in order to relate the energy efficiency of a leaky pipe to leak location and orifice properties. The ability of leaks to relieve pressure during hydraulic transients is briefly discussed CD with several challenges and issues surrounding the quantification of this attenuation effect being put forward. Considered from the broader perspective of the network labyrinth, a better understanding of leak related effects has implications for pipe rehabilitation models, system economics and environmental sustainability.Water utility companies in the UK maintain asset databases as a fundamental requirement for system management and understanding. In addition water companies maintain customer service records providing information relating to bursts leakage and water quality complaints. Typically these recorded data sets have been utilised independently as the rigorous integration of such information sources was not feasible due primarily to the method of recording data. With advances in data manipulation, and analysis systems, in particular the integration of geographical information systems (GIS), it is now possible to explore relationships between data. This paper presents details of the techniques that may be employed to rigorously filter data and establish data base associations. Using such associations it is possible to perform advanced analysis to examine relationships between the data. These associations can be used to enhance cost based and performance models associated with sustainability and life cycle analysis. Derivation of these types of relationship and the confidence in the methodologies used in defining them are essential to the water industry, in particular for the development of efficient and effective operation and maintenance strategies. Examples of these enhanced relationships are presented and the implications of the resulting trends discussed.The employment of renewable energy sources can represent a useful way to reduce air emissions released by conventional ones. In this paper we describe the results of a Life Cycle Analysis performed upon one of the most world-wide diffused renewable technologies: the solar thermal collectors for warm sanitary water. Two domestic solar plants have been investigated: mono-familiar plant with a passive flat collector and a large solar plant with forced fluid circulation. The first step has been the evaluation of direct and indirect emissions related to the production and use of plants. The main emissions have been categorised in three of the most important indicators (Global Warming Potential, Acidification Potential and Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential) and successively we have estimated the emission saving. Considering that a solar plant works with an auxiliary heater, the pollutants that would be produced by the conventional part of the plant without the employment of collectors are the "emission saving". These avoided atmospheric releases depend on the typology of the used conventional system. The case studies of electric and gas heaters have been investigated. The final aim is to perform a global balance between the air emissions related to the production and use of the solar plants and the emissions saved during their useful-life. These results are synthesised by various indicators that contain useful information to evaluate the environmental efficiency of the studied renewable technology.Green chemistry and engineering is the design of chemical manufacturing systems to minimize their adverse affects on the environment. Thus, a primary goal of green chemistry and engineering is to reduce the environmental impact of chemical processes and chemical manufacturing while simultaneously enhancing the overall process performance. Although it is beneficial to simply reduce the use of organic solvents in chemical processes, green chemistry and engineering goes further, in that it evaluates the entire manufacturing operation to identify techniques that can be applied to minimize the overall process hazard, while maintaining economic practicality. Evaluation of the environmental impacts of the manufacturing process requires a systems approach and appropriate metrics that permit quantitative assessment of environmental hazards. Thus, this chapter begins with a discussion of the drivers for green engineering and the metrics through which processes can be evaluated. Then, the hydroformylation process is used as a case study to illustrate the way in which green chemistry principles can be applied to real processes. Two elements, are specifically highlighted: (a) the use of catalysts to facilitate active and selective chemistry and the immobilization of said catalysts within the reactor system, and (b) the development of processes based on benign reaction solvents, and the benefits that can accrue from simplified separations operations.Widespread observations of organic pollutant compounds in vegetation, soil, animals, and human tissue have motivated research on more accurate characterizations of chemical transport over regional, continental, and global scales. Efforts to assess human and ecosystem exposure to contaminants from multiple environmental media have been evolving over the last several decades. In this review, we summarize the development and evolution of the multimedia mass-balance approach to pollutant fate and exposure evaluation and illustrate some of the calculations used in multimedia assessments. The concepts that form the foundation of Mackay-type mass-balance compartment models are described, and the ongoing efforts to use multimedia models to quantify human exposures are discussed. A series of case studies of varying complexity are used to illustrate capabilities and limitations of selected multimedia approaches. We look to the future and consider current challenges and opportunities in the field of multimedia contaminant fate and exposure modeling.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is a new tool for environmental management. The most important property of the LCA is the "cradle-to-grave" perspective as the analysis focuses on a single product - from raw materials extraction to the final disposal of wastes. LCA associates the energy and materials that go into the studied system with the wastes and pollution it generates. System represents a set of single operations related to a product. LCA is a tool that many producers in the world could use in decision-making processes and which can lead to a reduction in the amount of waste produced or to technology changes. Besides obvious environmental advantages, the reduction of negative environmental impact improves a producer's image and competitiveness on the world market. In the mining industry environmental aspects are very important, as all mining and metallurgical activities influence the environment to a substantial extent.The environmental performance of willow biomass crop production systems in New York (NY) is analyzed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The base-case, which represents current practices in NY, produces 55 units of biomass energy per unit of fossil energy consumed over the biomass crop's 23-year lifetime. Inorganic nitrogen fertilizer inputs have a strong influence on overall system performance, accounting for 37% of the non-renewable fossil energy input into the system. Net energy ratio varies from 58 to below 40 as a function of fertilizer application rate, but application rate also has implications on the system nutrient balance. Substituting inorganic N fertilizer with sewage sludge biosolids increases the net energy ratio of the willow biomass crop production system by more than 40%. While CO2 emitted in combusting dedicated biomass is balanced by CO2 adsorbed in the growing biomass, production processes contribute to the system's net global warming potential. Taking into account direct and indirect fuel use, N2O emissions from applied fertilizer and leaf litter, and carbon sequestration in below ground biomass and soil carbon, the net greenhouse gas emissions total 0.68 g CO2 eq. MJ(biomass produced)(-1). Site specific parameters such as soil carbon sequestration could easily offset these emissions resulting in a net reduction of greenhouse gases. Assuming reasonable biomass transportation distance and energy conversion efficiencies, this study implies that generating electricity from willow biomass crops could produce 11 units of electricity per unit of fossil energy consumed. Results from the LCA support the assertion that willow biomass crops are sustainable from an energy balance perspective and contribute additional environmental benefits. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioenergy has an important role in the implementation of the Kyoto agreement in Finland. The main sources of wood residues for energy production are logging areas and sawmills. The use of forest chips can be of great significance in reducing carbon dioxide emissions by replacing fossil fuels. Increasing the use of forest chips has environmental benefits, but it also includes possible environmental disadvantages. Therefore, system research is needed to assess the forest chip utilisation prospects for their environmental quality to secure sustainable forest management. Life-cycle methodology was developed and applied to assess environmental burdens and impacts of the logging and sawmill residues throughout the whole fuel chain from the forest to energy production. According to the study, the energy efficiencies of the forest chip systems are quite high. Net CO2 emissions of the systems are low owing to the low input of external primary energy required to operate the systems. Although wood energy is renewable, it has many similarities with fossil fuels, e.g. as the emissions of the conversion phase are significant. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.It is commonly assumed that solar hot water systems save energy and reduce greenhouse emissions relative to conventional fossil fuel-powered systems. Very rarely has the life-cycle greenhouse emissions (including the embodied greenhouse emissions of manufacture) of solar hot water systems been analysed. The extent to which solar hot water systems can reduce emissions compared with conventional systems can be shown through a comparative life-cycle greenhouse emissions analysis. This method determined the time it takes for these net greenhouse emissions savings to occur, or the 'emissions payback period'. This paper presents the results of a life-cycle greenhouse emissions analysis of solar hot water systems in comparison with conventional hot water systems for a southern (Melbourne) and a northern (Brisbane) Australian city. The life-cycle costs of these hot water systems were also analysed to determine the financial payback period. The fuel source and solar fraction determined the emissions resulting from the energy used for operating hot water systems. The solar systems provide net emissions savings compared with the conventional systems after 2.5-5 years in Melbourne and after 2.5 years in Brisbane, depending on the auxiliary fuel. The life-cycle cost analysis also revealed that the financial payback period for solar hot water systems is more than 10 years in Melbourne and around 10 years for an electric-boosted system in Brisbane. This suggests the need for greater subsidies to increase market take-up for solar systems, especially where electricity is the only available fuel.Simplified Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies are very useful tools in the early design stages for estimating the environmental impacts of product alternatives and for predicting environmental costs or burdens for manufacturers. A new methodology, presented in this paper, is based on the analysis of full LCA case studies. It calculates the product's Environmental Performance Indicator by using two sets of energy-based and material-based Impact Drivers. Further simplification can be achieved by grouping the products according to their material/energy ratio and by using simple regression equations. A wide range of case studies is used to compare the simplified results with the full LCA results.We will discuss a radically new approach to production planning. Building on the success of supply chain management practices and life cycle analysis, we propose to perform an overall optimisation of production requirements. In particular, we will study the manufacturing needs for survival, omitting "luxury" production such as home electronics and entertainment. The approach will reduce the vulnerability of the society, thus greatly reducing the potential impact of natural disasters or terrorist actions. As an example, we use known data on available resources on the moon, mapping these against a first level breakdown of human survival requirements. The resulting process flowchart is presented, featuring essential processes such as life support, mining/processing, manufacture and power/transport. A conclusion is that manufacturing capacity needed for sustained human life on the moon can be built on mainly quite standard technology. Further, the experiences gained from a full-scale "survival production" exercise will not only give valuable insights in the needs for large scale human space exploration, but will also be highly applicable in many terrestrial applications, including supply chain optimisation and disaster relief.The technology acceleration of the ITRS Roadmap has many implications on both the semiconductor supplier community and the manufacturers. This work examines the impact of technology acceleration on the manufacturers and the resultant supplier impact. This work begins with an overview of the forces in the industry that are driving the acceleration. Providing an analysis of the drive behind the acceleration, the impact on total production is developed. This acceleration results in more functionality per unit area in a shorter time frame. Based on a constant growth of devices, the technology acceleration reduces the requirements for manufacturing capacity increases. This fact has a direct impact on the supplier community. An additional factor is introduced, which is time to market. An analysis of the impact of "winning" the time to market race provides insight into a key industry driver. This work provides an improved understanding of the market forces that drive the semiconductor industry.The technology acceleration of the ITRS Roadmap has many implications on both the semiconductor supplier community and the manufacturers. This work examines the impact of technology acceleration on the suppliers, the manufacturers of tools, materials, and masks. From an Industry perspective, the development and product life cycle are examined with respect to the resources required and the return on investment. Historical information is available regarding the length of time required to develop a manufacturing worthy product. Resource requirement estimates are available, so it is possible to develop an investment curve for product development. Similarly, estimates of total product sales provide the basis of the investment recovery scenario. From these evaluations, the Industry return on investment can be projected. It is possible to evaluate the impact of changes in technology on suppliers as the industry moved from 248nm to 193nm.As part of a sustainable development, the environmental efficiency of industry must increase by a factor four to ten. This engenders attention to the environmental impact of products and technical systems over their entire life cycle. The last decade has seen the development of a number of methodologies and tools for life cycle assessment and development of more eco-efficient products, from complex to simplified, catering to the needs of especially small and medium-sized enterprises. The tools and data are in place, but dissemination lacks behind. Propagation of life cycle thinking and life cycle engineering to larger parts of industry is attempted by strengthening the market pull through integrated product policy measures, and at the same time pushing through information activities, training and dissemination of tools. Experience hitherto shows that these forces are insufficient and that stronger legislation is warranted.This paper discusses an approach to teaching Engineering students about the environmental aspects of design. The course includes subject matter such as Green House Gases, Carbon Trading, Streamlined Life Cycle Analysis [SLCA], combining Functional profiles and Environmental profiles, alternative energy sources [wind, fuel cells and solar], EcoDesign techniques, DFMA and DFD methods and ISO 14000 management standards. These will be described briefly as part of the description of how they are integrated into the course.Sustainable Development encompasses three aspects: care for the environment, responsible social concern and economic viability. How can these principles be incorporated into product design? Historically it is the third principle, economic viability, which has driven the agenda. Classically the challenge has been to optimise the three "P"s - promise, performance, price. Today, the other two principles must be factored into the design process if products are to be successful in the market-place and ensure the sustainability of the business which created them. Environmental design principles are built around life cycle assessment (LCA) understanding the environmental impacts throughout the whole value chain "from cradle to grave". Social factors to be considered include sourcing policies for raw materials, health and safety at work in manufacture, health and safety in use and disposal. Regulation is an increasingly important design driver. For example, European Directives on Packaging Waste, End of Life Vehicles, and Waste Electronic Equipment are setting new constraints and opportunities. Also society and the investment community are looking for measures of environmental and social performance in addition to the traditional financial measures. Indices such as Dow-Jones SAM and Business in the Environment (BiE), underpinned by criteria developed through the Global Reporting Index (GRI) are being used to discriminate business performance in sustainable development.The environmental impacts of a product are mostly determined within the product design process. In order to integrate the instrument of life cycle assessment into the design process the whole life cycle of a product has to be modeled by the designer. The Collaborative Research Center 392 "design for environment - methods and tools" at the Darmstadt University of Technology was formed in 1996. The aim of the research group is to develop the methods and tools necessary for the designer. At the Institute W.A.R. the impact assessment methods for the tools are developed and improved.This paper reviews steps being taken to reduce the automotive industry's impacts on the environment by reducing vehicle weight. The paper refers to a EU-funded research programme (DILIGHT) to develop a new generation of ductile cast iron for light weight automotive components. A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) must be conducted to compare the environmental impacts of specific cast automotive components produced in conventional cast iron, aluminium alloy and the proposed DILIGHT alloy. The paper presents the preliminary results for the LCA, which suggest that a vehicle must complete 300,000 kin before obtaining the environmental advantage of aluminium's lower density.Given the growing demand from Governments, financial institutions, customers and the general public for a more responsible approach by companies to sustainable development, it is accepted that businesses must become more sustainable. It is therefore essential, particularly in product design and manufacture that sustainable development thinking and assessment is practised. The particular areas explored are: Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) in which the importance of materials selection, recycling and disposal are assessed Consumption reduction is a major direction resulting from the Johannesburg Summit i.e. waste minimisation and prevention Identification of Risks and Opportunities from sustainable product development assessment within companies In addition sustainable development concepts, tools, background and sources of information are provided on an interactive website for use by manufacturers and design students. This work is sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering as part of the Visiting Professors Sustainable Design scheme for Engineering design students.To help companies address the requirements of the European take-back and producer responsibility legislation a novel systems analysis tool has been developed: CHAin Management of Materials, Products and Processes (CHAMP). CHAMP combines elements of process and design engineering with life cycle assessment to enable the user to explore the technical, economic and environmental consequences of selecting alternative materials, processes and technologies and different strategies for material recovery and recycling. This paper applies the CHAMP methodology to a case study concerning fibre optic cable which is being redesigned to increase the material recyclability potential. The current cable design is sufficiently complex that dismantling and subsequent recycling is not possible. Changes to the design have been suggested that would improve the recycling potential of the component materials and CHAMP has been utilised to assess the life cycle impact of these design changes both economically and environmentally.The SPIn-Eco project has been proposed and funded with the aim of studying the Province of Siena (Italy) and the Communes in which it is divided from the viewpoint of sustainable development. Several sustainability indicators, especially originating from holistic approaches, are used. These indicators point out the weak and strong points for the territory with respect to sustainability and the results will be offered to the policy makers as tools for planning. Indicators which will be used are the result of the following methodologies: Ecological Footprint Exergy analysis Emergy evaluation Natural capital and ecosystems services accounting Greenhouse gases balance Remote sensing data analysis Life Cycle Assessment.Today, transportation relies almost entirely on oil-based fuels and about 30% of the world's fossil fuel consumption is related to transports. The reduction of fossil energy reserves and the associated environmental impact are the two main reasons that lead to consider the use of alternative fuels in transportation. Fuels derived from biomass, also referred to as biofuels, are not only potentially renewable, but are also sufficiently similar to fossil fuels to provide direct substitution. It seems also to be the only realistic alternative to fossil fuel in the short term. This article focuses on the potential of bioethanol as an alternative to conventional fossil fuels in terms of non-renewable energy use as well as reduction of carbon emissions.The total production processes of a biomass gasification combined-cycle power plant, a coal-fired, power plant, and a co-combustion power plant of fuel gases from biomass gasification and coal were analyzed by means of LCA. The emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, CH4, N2O, acid rain gases, such as SOx, NOx, CO, trace metal, trace organic matter were calculated. The results show that, in the whole life cycle of 1kW. helectricity generation, the emission of CO2, NOx, SOx, CH4 in the biomass gasification combined-cycle power plant are less than that in the coal-fired power plant. Respectively, that in the former is 9.2%, 15.3%, 2.7%, and 94.6% of that in the latter. But the emission of CO, N2O in the former is slightly greater than that in the latter. Additionally, the emission in the co-fired power plant of fuel gases from biomass gasification and coal is less than that in the coal-fired power plant.In order to provide useful references for China to establish the scheme of hydrogen source for fuel cell vehicles in the near future and facilitate the hydrogen energy system assessment in China, the paper for the first time designs four feasible plans of hydrogen source via natural gas steam reforming for fuel cell vehicles, then uses energy, environmental and economic life cycle assessment as the tool to evaluate the energy, environmental and economic performances of those four plans and picks out the best plan. The results show that the best plan of hydrogen source is: hydrogen is produced by natural gas steam reforming in the central factory, then transported to the refueling stations in the hydrogen gas cylinders by the trucks, at last filled into the fuel cell vehicles which use hydrogen gas.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and comprehensive models represent, at present, two powerful tools to support decision-makers in the definition of environmental recovery strategies. Their integration can therefore represent an essential step for defining an advanced methodology to perform a robust multicriteria decision analysis which enables the individuation of the best compromise solution. In particular, LCA is useful for representing and analysing in more detail the different life steps of products, processes and activities, with their related burdens. On the other hand, optimising models allows users to individuate, with a global approach, the least cost technology configuration corresponding to exogenous constraints, and to estimate its overall economic and environmental impact. The integration of comprehensive and LCA models is thus envisaged to perform a deeper analysis of the whole anthropogenic system, taking into account different possible scenarios for the development of socio-economic and environmental boundaries. Moreover it can enable the choice of Best Practicable Environmental Options (BPEO) by using a minimum cost criterion. The ongoing research deals with a combined use of the LCA SimaPro software and the comprehensive MARKAL- Val d'Agri model for the analysis of the energy transformation sector of Val d'Agri, located in Basilicata Region (Southern Italy), in order to define a sustainable and economically affordable configuration of the local energy activities.The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for materials/product design is increasing in relevance at the European building industry level. The possibility to investigate the environmental burden of materials and products for building construction, either for civil or industrial use, is a practice that can help the designer in the selection of solutions able to provide lower environmental impacts during construction and the use phase. Taking into account the wide availability of different materials, their selection in the case of buildings is a particularly difficult performance issue because a single building results from the combination of many possibilities. First of all the designer has to select functions that can be realised with the use of different materials and this constitutes the basis for the application of the LCA methodology, with particular regard to the comparison and simulation stage. The passage from a subjective choice of ecological materials, based on the perception of natural characteristics, to an objective identification and absolute measure of environmental burden, linked to the specific material production in a life-cycle perspective, constitutes the main feature of the revised bio-architectural approach that foresees sustainability as a key element for a successful project. This paper reports the application of eco-design methodology to an Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) situated in a rural area in the North-West of Italy which has been financed by the European Commission.An exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA) and a classical environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) have been performed for three carbon dioxide low emission power cycles. The configuration of the power cycles are: a semi-closed gas turbine combined cycle with CO2 reduction from the exhausts by means of amine solution chemical absorption; an integrated gasification combined cycle with CO2 reduction from the synthesis gas by means of amine solution chemical absorption; and O-2/CO2 innovative cycle where, burning methane in oxygen, CO2 becomes the cycle working fluid, and the CO2 excess, produced in the combustion, is removed in liquid phase without any additional system. The LCA is mainly focussed on CO2 production during the three phases of construction, operation and dismantling of the plants. This is necessary to verify if the process is effective in terms Of CO2 reduction. Besides the classic LCA, also an ELCA was performed, whose aim is to assess the cost, in terms of exergy losses, of the life cycle of the plants. The CO2 reduction is effective during the lifetime, and a sort of classification of the studied plant is obtained. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Introduction of zero emission concepts has opened the way for possible commercial markets for battery-powered electric vehicles (EV). In comparison to gasoline-powered cars, these vehicles produce CO2 emission half of that gasoline-powered and almost similar amount in comparison to hybrid electric vehicles over their useful lives. Since most of the emissions in electric vehicles are most likely attributable to production of their very large batteries, environmental consequences of producing and disposing of EV batteries may be significant. This study aims to analyze environmental impacts associated with recycling and waste management of four electric battery technologies likely to be used in the near future. Secondly, it aims to select the most environmentally benign battery technology by considering their manufacturing, political and social viability, environmental impacts and exposure and toxicity potential issues. The EVs' battery technologies considered here are lead acid (PbA), nickel-cadmium (NiCd), nickel metal hydride (NiMH) and sodium-sulfur (NaS). In this study, we compared potential health and environmental impacts of four battery technologies and focused on recycling and waste disposal life stages, with an emphasis on design factors that could prevent or increase impacts. With regard to the evaluation of battery technologies, since the data used are often contradictory, variable, uncertain and sometimes impossible to validate independently, fuzzy linguistic approach is explored here to address this data ambiguity and its results are also being compared to the ranking obtained using a known Promethee-Gaia (PG) approach. Based on PG evaluation, the recycling assessment ranks the batteries studied in the following preferential order: NiMH>NaS>NiCd >PbA. In terms of disposal, NiMH and NaS batteries are of greater concern because of landfill impacts while both NiCd and PbA batteries are considered the most favorable. Almost similar results were also obtained using fuzzy linguistic approach (FLA). But due to the toxic characteristics of cadmium and lead metals, it is still recommended that NiCd and PbA batteries should be recycled instead.The generation of electricity in China resulted in nearly 1,200 megatonnes of carbon dioxide and 8 megatonnes of sulphur dioxide in 2000, approximately 40% of the total national emissions of these two gases respectively. Emissions of sulphur dioxide contribute significantly to the environmental degradation and pollution that plague China. These have been estimated to be as high as 8% of GDP. However, electricity demand is expected to undergo continued growth into the future as China's economy develops and industrializes. As such, emissions of sulphur dioxide are expected to grow to 9.4 megatonnes by 2015 and as high as 15.7 megatonnes in 2030, while emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to grow to 1,935 megatonnes by 2015 and as high as 2,654 megatonnes in 2030. In this study the electrical energy system in China is assessed in an integrative assessment framework to the year 2030. Here multiple environmental and economic variables are considered across the entire lifecycle of the energy system. This provides suggestions on the economic and environmental characteristics of different scenarios of electricity supply. First, lifecycle analysis is undertaken to calculate the total emissions of coal and natural gas production systems. Secondly, electricity demand and supply is projected to the year 2030 on a regional basis. Here, different factors impacting electricity demand are considered. Thirdly, we present the environmental and economic impacts of various paths for the development of electricity supply required to meet this above demand. Considered are scenarios for the development of natural gas and clean coal electricity generation. The research considers the economics of capital construction, operations and maintenance costs, and costs associated with environmental externalities. The scenario analysis shows that significant reductions in emissions of both carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide can be made with the power options considered. On a cost per tonne of emissions reduced basis, development of the natural gas electricity capacity seems to be most cost effective.The inability of existing process design and life-cycle analysis (LCA) methods to account for variability and uncertainty may contribute to misleading estimates of pollution prevention, performance, and cost of potentially promising new environmentally conscious technologies. It is hypothesized that the quantification of variability and uncertainty, in combination with detailed process simulation, LCA and integrated assessment, yield new insights regarding how to minimize the risks and maximize the pay-offs of such technologies. The objectives of this work are to develop a novel assessment methodology for evaluation of the risks and potential pay-offs of new technologies that avoid pollutant production; and demonstrate the methodology via a case study of high-temperature waste gasification technology. In this study, a methodology for simultaneous characterization of both variability and uncertainty based upon previous work in emissions estimation, exposure assessment, and risk assessment is employed. To represent uncertainties in any process technology, a probabilistic modeling has been applied. Probabilistic simulation is performed using Latin hypercube sampling, a variance reduction technique based on a stratified sampling approach. The key features of the method include (1) the development of a consistent set of engineering performance and cost models for each technology to be evaluated, (2) the characterization of uncertainties in specific parameters of the engineering models, (3) application of the models in a probabilistic modeling environment to characterize uncertainties in model outputs, and (4) analysis of model results for the purposes of technology evaluation and research planning. Waste gasification is investigated as case study which is a promising approach for clean and efficient power generation as well as for polygeneration of a variety of products, such as steam, sulfur, hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, and others. Hence, assessments of advanced process technologies that are in early stages of development should be based on a proper understanding and representation of uncertainties. Probabilistic analysis has implications for the development of more realistic cost estimates that capture the notion of "cost growth" often experienced with innovative process technologies.Over the past decade, a new approach to environmental analysis has developed. Although the scope and definition are not yet completely fixed, the new field of "industrial ecology" focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of goods and services, on systems-based analysis of environmental problems, and on innovations that can significantly improve environmental performance. Industrial ecology has significant potential for U.S. environmental policy. But to establish a firm foundation for significant policy initiatives, there is a need for better understanding of the potential and limitations of a range of promising approaches including: (a) technological innovation, (b) voluntary and cooperative approaches to environmental management, (c) substitution of services for products, (d) recycling and reuse, (e) reduction in the amounts of materials used in products, and (f) substitution of scarce resources with those that are plentiful.Methods for life cycle assessment of products (LCA) are most often based on the general prevention principle, as opposed to the risk minimization principle. Here, the desirability and feasibility of a combined approach are discussed, along with the conditions for elaboration in the framework of LCA methodology, and the consequences for LCA practice. A combined approach provides a separate assessment of above and below threshold pollution, offering the possibility to combat above threshold impacts with priority. Spatial differentiation in fate, exposure, and effect modelling is identified to play a central role in the implementation. The collection of region-specific data turns out to be the most elaborate requirement for the implementation in both methodology and practice. A methodological framework for the construction of characterization factors is provided. Along with spatial differentiation of existing parameters, two newly introduced spatial parameters play a key role: the sensitivity factor and the threshold factor. The practicability of the proposed procedure is illustrated by an example of its application. Providing a reasonable data availability, the development of separate LCA characterization factors for the respective assessment of pollution levels above and below environmental threshold values seems to be a feasible task that may add to LCA credibility.Environmental measures have sometimes unintended side effects. The paper focuses on side effects that are the result of relations and feedback mechanisms between economic activities and industries in production-consumption chains. The theoretical framework of the chain analysis tools, life cycle assessment and substance flow analysis is used to define five different types of environmental measures: volume measures (1), efficiency measures (2), end-of-pipe emission reduction measures (3), re-use and recycling (4) and useful application of waste products (5). Each of these types of measures can re-direct substance flow in a different process, thus causing pollutant emissions to the environment to shift to similar or other emissions upstream or downstream in the economic chain. Using this categorization, the occurrence of a number of different processes that can lead to side effects can be predicted. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.With increasing frequency, individuals deliberately choose specific actions that they hope will lessen environmental impact. Given the complexity of modem society, it is not always easy to know how to minimize environmental harm without undue sacrifice. Government policies can have a role in helping individuals make decisions and encouraging them to act in certain ways. Recycling of solid waste materials is a personal choice made by many people in the USA guided by the belief that recycling is not only good for the environment but that it constitutes a major contribution to improving environmental quality. By using energy usage as a proxy for overall environmental impact. we show that the impact reduction achieved through recycling varies for different materials. It is small but significant for some materials, such as aluminum. and minimal for other materials, such as plastic, especially when compared to other choices that individuals have direct control over, such as the type of vehicle they drive or the amount they drive. While the recycling of certain materials, such as aluminum, does result in measurable energy savings, the net benefit of recycling is orders of magnitude smaller than the gains that can be achieved from switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Despite this, perception and policy in the USA have focused on recycling rather than personal vehicle choice and increased reliance on public transportation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper describes the development of two teaching modules that support the concept of 'Engineering Design for Sustainable Development', with particular emphasis on the incorporation of LCA. The first module, entitled 'Engineering Design for Sustainable Development', was developed as an intensive, one-week module for a long-standing postgraduate MSc course in Engineering Design. The second, entitled 'Sustainable Product Design', was developed exclusively for the final (fourth) year of an MEng degree in Product Design and Manufacture. The paper summarises the teaching and learning experiences associated with the incorporation of LCA in the modules and provides guidelines for those teachers who would like to incorporate LCA in their courses.A new more efficient solar heating / cooling system has been developed for houses and buildings by an EU co-financed SOLASTORE (5FW ENERGIE) project with a consortium of partners from France, Spain, Portugal and the UK. It is targeting a considerable reduction Of CO2 emission by improvement of the solar energy system efficiency and the extended utilization of the solar energy using reversible chemical reactions as energy storage. Although solar energy is considered environmentally friendly, the whole life cycle of a solar energy production has to be evaluated. The production targets for the SOLARSTORE system are potentially thousands units. This makes it very important to explore the total environmental impacts caused during its whole life cycle. This work employs Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), an ISO 14040 based technique for evaluating the total environmental impacts associated with a product, to analyse the total environmental impacts of SOLARSTORE system during its whole life cycle. The standard LCA methodology has been extended and modified to cope successfully with this task. The LCA results show the total environmental impacts to achieve 1 GJ energy by using SOLARSTORE system: global warming potential ranging in 6.3 - 10 kg CO2, acidification potential in 46.6 - 70 9 SO2, eutrophication in 2.1 - 3.1 g phosphate and photochemical oxidant in 0.99 - 1.5 9 C2H4. The raw material acquisition processes contribute 99% to the total environmental impacts. A LCA based comparison has been made analysing the total environmental impacts of a traditional solar heating system, a traditional fossil fuel heating system and SOLARSTORE system. It shows that SOLARSTORE provides a better solution for reduction of negative environmental impacts by using solar energy.The proper design criteria for a modern utility plant should include both environmental and economic requirements. In other words, not only the capital and operating costs of a utility plant but also the corresponding utility wastes must be minimised. The paper presents a systematic multicriteria process synthesis approach for designing sustainable and economic utility systems. The proposed approach enables the design engineer to systematically derive optimal utility systems which are economically sustainable and economic by embedding Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles within a multiple objective optimisation framework. It combines the merits of total site analysis, LCA, and multi-objective optimisation techniques.The estimation of persistence and range belongs to the most urgent tasks with regard to the environmental assessment of chemicals which have the potential to distribute ubiquitously. The most direct proof for the ubiquitous occurrence of anthropogenic chemicals is their analytical detection in remote areas; this is not practicable, however, due to the great number of chemicals in question. For a preselection, multimedia models of differing complexity seem to be suitable. The most powerful model with regard to resolution in time and space is based on a global circulation model. This model has been tested with a set of model compounds. The work done by the authors, aimed at testing simpler models with the same set of substances in order to find out, whether the results give at least the same tendency compared to the complex model. The models chosen for this purpose include Chemrange 1.0 + 2.1 and SimpleBox 2.0. The results presented here are restricted to a comparison between the two evaluative models and to persistence under different use pattern scenarios. The model compounds include alpha-HCH, gamma-HCH, atrazine, DDT, PCB-28, -52, -101 and benzo[a]pyren (BaP). The results agree well for the first four compounds, but much less so for the PCBs and BaP.This article describes a procedure for evaluating the environmental soundness of new propulsion systems and new fuels in the road transport sector. Life-cycle assessment was supplemented by cost-benefit analyses to assess passenger cars with different propulsion systems, based on the current environmental situation in road transport, which is strongly dominated by the exhaust and CO2-emission problem. For this purpose, a model was developed, with which the examined vehicles were analysed regarding weight, consumption and further environmental and cost-related characteristics. Different propulsion, fuel and exhaust standard variants for compact passenger cars were assessed with respect to their absolute environmental effects and their effects in comparison to a reference vehicle (petrol engine, suction tube injection, EURO 4). The cost-benefit ratio was calculated on the basis of a static abatement cost approach, in which the costs over the service life of the vehicles are compared with the environmental benefits (e.g. lower emissions compared to the reference vehicle) over the same period. All evaluations take into account vehicle use, fuel production and vehicle manufacture.In the two European funded demonstration projects CUTE (Clean Urban Transport for Europe) and ECTOS (Ecological City Transport System) hydrogen as future fuel for the transportation sector is assessed. 30 fuel cell buses in 10 European cities are regarded in daily utilisation under real boundary conditions. Of special interest are the environmental impacts of the new propulsion system. As concrete results of CUTE and ECTOS will be published later, exemplary results of other studies are presented here. The ecological comparison of different hydrogen production chains and diesel has been conducted. Also a future scenario of the economic consideration of hydrogen infrastructure in Stuttgart is shown.We analyzed "the fuel energy cycle system covering the CO2 capture technology from exhaust gas of coal power plant" using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) according to the scenario based on the calculation of the criteria from fuel production, transportation, power generation, to CO2 recovery and storage, focused on coal. The energy and environmental performances were analyzed for mass (carbon) and heat (energy) balance and three cases were compared for the entire fuel cycle. These are based on the pulverized coal fired plant (PCF). The "Base case" is power generation only; in the other cases, CO2 recovery processes are added; one is the "NEDO case" - that is conventional CO2 recovery technology. The second case is the "MHI case" - that is improved CO2 recovery technology developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI). The conclusion of LCA is that direct CO2 emission from power generation or the CO2 recovery in the operation phase, influences greatly their environmental load. In the energy balance, net power generating efficiency for the "base case" is 40.6%. Results from the study showed a reduction, caused by the CO2 recovery, to 33-30%, and total life cycle electricity generation efficiency including off-site energy consumption was 32-29%; it was recognized that off-site energy consumption was very limited. In the carbon balance, when the CO2 capture ratio of 90% was applied, the CO2 emission reductions were 86-85% on the entire fuel cycle, including off-site emission. It was shown that the "MHI CO2 recovery technology" was a higher energy efficiency system than "conventional technology".We have developed a prototype model for optimizing regional energy supply systems in a city. This model calculates the energy demand in a region and then finds the combination of energy supply systems that meets a required CO2 emission limit with minimum cost. We carried out an assessment of installing energy supply systems around Shinagawa area in Tokyo where waste heat from sewerage and garbage incineration is expected to be available. In this assessment, we estimate costs and CO2 emissions when the energy supply systems are installed. We conclude that 17% of CO2 emissions from energy supply could be reduced with the same annual total cost as the current combination of energy supply systems in the Shinagawa area. Also, we show that increasing the power generation efficiency of co-generation systems is effective for further reduction of CO2 emissions.In this paper, we evaluated life cycle CO2 (LCCO2) emissions by comparing biomass power plants with a coal power plant of the CO2 removal system. For the concrete investigation of the biomass life cycle analysis (LCA), we selected the reforestation sites in Eastern Highland Province and Madang Province in Papua New Guinea (PNG) as model areas. Then, Casuarina oligodon (C. oligodon) and Eucalyptus deglupta (E. deglupta), which are fast growing trees, were adopted as biomass materials. Especially, C. oligodon has the characteristics of nitrogen fixation from air. As the result, nitrogen fixation to soils is expected to mitigate LCCO2 emissions and direct and indirect energy input in the biomass LCA. The biomass energy system consists of two subsystems, the cultivation process and the energy conversion process. In the cultivation process, we constructed the nutrient circulation model in reforestation area. Nutrients losses by soil erosion are evaluated in this process. In this study, it is assumed that their nutrients are newly supplemented for the purpose of considering the sustainable forest management, and that they are equivalent to chemical fertilizer. In the energy conversion process, we design the Biomass Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (B#IGCC) in PNG. In this study, it is assumed that the plant scale is approximately 59 or 110 MW. Especially, using the basic experimental chemical data, we calculate the performance of gasification. Consequently, we estimated that LCCO2 emissions of BIGCC are 4.4 to 107.2 g-CO2/kWh (E. deglupta) and 2.1 to 63.5 g-CO2/kWh (C. oligodon), while that of Coal-IGCC with CO2 removal equipment is 50.5 g-CO2/kWh.Environment Management Plans use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of various products for development of clean technologies, resource conservation and eliminating areas/activities where there are chances of environmental degradation or pronounced emissions at any stage of extraction of raw materials, transfer, storage or use in manufacturing of product or by-product development. LCA considers the environmental impacts along the continuum of a product's life (i.e. from cradle to grave) from raw materials acquisition to production, use, and disposal or recovery. The environmental impacts considered include resource depletion, human health, energy use and ecological health. The concept of life cycle thinking is a unique way of addressing environmental problems from a system or holistic perspective. In this way a product is evaluated or designed with a goal of reducing environmental impacts over its entire life cycle. Automobile sector in the Indian scenario had taken a long time to transform with the changing scenario. The need for overall cleaner means of transportation was acutely felt in the metropolis of the country. This provoked environmentalist and public to trigger activities with the help of judiciary to set up stringent norms so that precious lives are protected. Some of the well known environmental interventions used LCA of various products, to set up and trigger action planning for introduction of clean fuel to reduce emission of Green House Gases and other pollutants even at the cost of restricting/withdrawing non conforming vehicles especially public transport which is the major contributor to the pollution in the cities.As an implementation strategy of the federal retroreflectivity standards requirement for pavement markings, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (DOT) evaluated its 3-year fixed-schedule restriping strategy, to determine if it is consistent with the actual service life of the pavement markings. The methodology and results of the study are presented., Two types of data were collected: measured retroreflectivity by using LaserLux and subjective ratings from a survey conducted with the participation of the New Jersey driving public along a 32-mi circuit. Multiple regression techniques were used to correlate the average scores reported by the study participants for each specific roadway section with the corresponding measured retroreflectivity. The results suggested that the threshold value of an acceptable versus unacceptable level of retroreflectivity appeared to be between 80 and 130 mcd/m(2)/lux for New, Jersey drivers younger than 55 and between 120 and 165 mcd/m2/lux for drivers older than 55. These results are consistent with conclusions reached by other investigators in similar research, where results generally ranged between 70 and 170 mcd/m(2)/lux. Interim visibility indices were developed for each age group per pavement-marking type. New Jersey DOT used the indices to determine and prioritize needs and to quantify needed related resources, on the basis of the threshold between acceptable retroreflectivity and unacceptable retroreflectivity, when it developed its pavement-marking management system. This approach also allows for cost-benefit and life-cycle analysis for different pavement marking materials.Milk, an example of staple food, has an outstanding demand by consumers as it is considered a prescription for good health. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an excellent tool of environmental management and it provides a widespread knowledge on the environmental burdens associated to a product or to a human activity. In this study, a simplified methodology of LCA has been applied to analyse a representative scheme of milk production in Galicia (Spain), where a reliable inventory is still lacking. High quality data for the inventory was obtained in different representative fodder factories, farms and dairies for time periods over two years. The analysis of these data by LCA has permitted to quantify the potential impact associated to milk production and also to determine the reductions attained by the application of different improvement actions, such as the most adequate formulation of cattle feed and the implementation of treatment systems for water and air emissions. The consideration of these actions can lead to a maximum reduction of almost 22% of the global normalised impact. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Background. In Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), decision makers are often faced with tradeoffs between current and future impacts. One typical example is waste incineration, where immediate emissions to the air from the incineration process have to be weighted against future emissions of slag landfills. Long-term impacts are either completely taken into account or they are entirely disregarded in case of a temporal cut-off. Temporal cutoffs are a special case of discounting. Objective. In this paper, discounting is defined as valuing damages differently at different points of time using a positive or negative discount rate. Apart from temporal cut-offs, discounting has rarely been applied in LCA so far. It is the goal of this paper to discuss the concept of discounting and its applicability in the context of LCA. Methods. For this purpose, we first review the arguments for discounting and its principles in economic sciences. Discounting in economics can be motivated by pure time preference, productivity of capital, diminishing marginal utility of consumption, and uncertainties. The nominal discount rate additionally includes changes in the price level. These arguments and their justification are discussed in the context of environmental impacts harming future generations. Results and Discussion. It is concluded that discounting across generations because of pure time preference contradicts fundamental ethical values and should therefore not be applied in LCA. However, it has to be acknowledged that in practice decision makers often use positive discount rates because of pure time preference - either because they might profit from imposing environmental damage on others instead of themselves or because people in the far future are not of immediate concern to them. Discounting because of the productivity of capital assumes a relationship between monetary values and environmental impact. If such a relationship is accepted, discounting could be applied. However, future generations should be compensated for the environmental damage. It is likely that they would demand a higher compensation if the real per capita income increases. As both the compensation and the discount rate are related to economic growth, the overall discount rate might be close to zero. It is shown that the overall discount rate might even be negative considering that the required compensation could increase (even to infinite) if natural assets remain scarce, whereas the utility of consumption diminishes with increasing income. Uncertainties could justify both positive and negative discount rates. Since the relationship between uncertainties and the magnitude of damage is generally not exponential, we recommend to model changes in the magnitude of damage in scenario analysis instead of considering it in discounting (which requires an exponential function of time in the case of a constant discount rate). We investigated the influence of discounting in a case study of heavy metal emissions from slag landfills. It could be shown that even small discount rates of less than 1% lead to a significant reduction of the impact score, whereas negative discount rates inflate the results. Conclusions and Recommendations. Discounting is only applicable when temporally differentiated data is available. In some cases, such a temporal differentiation is necessary to take sound decisions, especially when long emission periods are involved. An example is the disposal of nuclear or heavy metal-containing waste. In these cases, the results might completely depend on the discount rate. This paper helps to structure arguments and thus to support the decision about whether or not discounting should be applied in an LCA.The site-generic approach currently adopted by the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology introduces uncertainties into the impact assessment phase of an LCA study. These uncertainties are greatest for localised and short-lived problems but are less significant for long lasting, cumulative environmental effects. Indeed, the reliability of LCA results is high for problems that manifest at a global scale. Nevertheless, even though these results are considered accurate, it is still often unclear as to their relevance in terms of policy development and decision-making. Therefore, this paper demonstrates how LCA can be used to determine the efficacy of policies aimed at reducing a product system's contribution to global environmental problems. We accomplish this aim by presenting a case study that evaluates the greenhouse gas contributions of each stage in the life cycle of container board packaging and the potential impact on emissions of various policy options available to decision makers. Our analysis showed that in general the most useful strategy was to recycle the used packaging. However, our analysis also indicated that when measures are taken to eliminate sources of methane emissions and encourage the use of plantation timber then recycling is no longer beneficial from a greenhouse perspective. This is because the process energy required in the form of gas and electricity is substantially greater for container board manufactured from recycled material than it is for virgin fibre.Goal and Background. LCIA procedures that have been used in the South Africa manufacturing industry include the CML, Ecopoints, EPS and Eco-indicators 95 and 99 procedures. The aim of this paper is to evaluate and compare the applicability of these European LCIA procedures within the South African context, using a case study. Methods. The five European methods have been evaluated based on the applicability of the respective classification, characterisation, normalization and weighting approaches for the South African situation. Impact categories have been grouped into air, water, land and mined abiotic resources for evaluation purposes. The evaluation and comparison is further based on a cradle-to-gate Screening Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) case study of the production of dyed two-fold wool yarn in South Africa. Results and Discussion. Where land is considered as a separate category (CML, Eco-indicator 99 and EPS), the case study highlights this inventory constituent as the most important. Similarly, water usage is shown as the second most important in one LCIA procedure (EPS) where it is taken into account. However, the impact assessment modelling for these categories may not be applicable for the variance in South African ecosystems. If land and water is excluded from the interpretation, air emissions, coal usage, ash disposal, pesticides and chrome emissions to water are the important constituents in the South African wool industry. Conclusions. In most cases impact categories and procedures defined in the LCIA methods for air pollution, human health and mined abiotic resources are applicable in South Africa. However, the relevance of the methods is reduced where categories are used that impact ecosystem quality, as ecosystems differ significantly between South Africa and the European continent. The methods are especially limited with respect to water and land resources. Normalisation and weighting procedures may also be difficult to adapt to South African conditions, due to the lack of background information and social, cultural and political differences. Recommendations and Outlook. Further research is underway to develop a framework for a South African LCIA procedure, which will be adapted from the available European procedures. The wool SLCA must be revisited to evaluate and compare the proposed framework with the existing LCIA procedures.Goal, Scope and Background. The purpose of the present study was to perform an environmental assessment for the entire life cycle of a seafood product and to include fishery-specific types of environmental impact in inventory and assessment. Environmental data for a frozen block of cod fillets was collected and used for a Life Cycle Assessment, including the fishery-specific environmental aspects seafloor use and biological extraction of target, by-catch and discard species. The fishery takes place in the Baltic Sea where cod is mainly fished by benthic trawls and gillnets. Methods. The functional unit was a consumer package of frozen cod fillets (400 g) reaching the household. Data was gathered from fishermen, fishery statistics, databases, companies and literature. Fishery-specific issues like the impact on stocks of the target and by-catch species, seafloor impact and discarding were quantified in relation to the functional unit and qualitative impact assessment of these aspects was included. Results. Findings include the fact that all environmental impact categories assessed (Global Warming Potential, Eutrophication Potential, Acidification Potential, Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential and Aquatic Ecotoxiciy) are dominated by the fishery. Around 700 m(2) of seafloor are swept by trawls and around 50 g of under-sized cod and other marine species are discarded per functional unit. The phases contributing most to total environmental impact following fishery were transports and preparation in the household. The process industry and municipal sewage treatment cause considerable amounts of eutrophying emissions. Conclusions. Conclusions are that there are considerable options for improvement of the environmental performance of the seafood production chain. In the fishery, the most important environmental measure is to fish sustainably managed stocks. Speed optimisation, increased use of less energy-intensive fishing gear and improved engine and fuel technology are technical measures that would considerably decrease resource use and environmental impact caused by fishery. Due to the importance of fishery for the overall results, the most important environmental improvement option after landing is to maintain high quality and minimise product losses. Recommendations and Outlook. The need for good baseline data concerning resource use and marine environmental impact of fisheries in order to perform environmental assessment of seafood products was demonstrated. LCA was shown to be a valuable tool for such assessments, which in the future could be used to improve the environmental performance of the seafood production chain or in the development of criteria of eco-labelling of seafood products originating in capture fisheries.Background. Small and medium sized enterprises in developed regions, as well as larger 'Southern' firms are more exposed to risk in regards to allocation decisions. This includes expenditures on fixed as sets, R&D and environmental management, as well as the choice of suitable markets for the product or service at hand. For either type of firm, the consequences of not selecting, or timing, suitable markets can lead to bankruptcy. Objectives. This paper examines means for SMEs to expand internationally given the current fiscal climate, and rapid advances in certain enabling technologies. The goal is to identify a set of criteria which smaller firms can use to globalize which reduce risk and increase access to capital. Methods. Case studies are presented of a European Start-Up as well as a century-old Latin American firm, both in the water-treatment sector. The similarities in the risk-reward profiles are used to identify some key strategic guidelines for enterprises wishing to be, selectively, multinational. Results and Discussion. Selective multinationality is an immediate plan for international expansion which identifies the most appropriate markets, independent of their proximity to the firm's production base or headquarters. At the base of selective multinationality, is the goal to impose the firm's product in regions of high growth, high selling price and low risk of price dumping. Therefore, this requires the to resist the temptation to expand to markets based on merely geographical proximity. The globalization strategy should be established, along with environmental management, from the outset of the creation of the firm. It will be shown, herein, to be a key driver in the valuation of High Tech industrial SMEs, in particular those with high risk-high reward tradeoffs. Selective multinationality can best be implemented if the firm in question has a technology which addresses unmet needs in niche markets, where there is an expanding customer base focusing on client relationships and cost effectiveness, and where the multinationals enter from outside the sector via resellers. It will be demonstrated to be effective for startups from developed regions, as well as SMEs from developing/emerging countries, to both of whom the consequences of sub-optimal resource allocation can risk the future of the firm itself. Therefore, SMEs can, with appropriate planning and the integration of marketing and environmental strategies, become, selectively, global firms, with better credit access and sales growth, concomitant with lower risks. The High Tech industrial SME will succeed better if, from the outset, they behave like the organization they want to become, with globalization a key element of strategy, from the business plan foreword. Two case studies are presented, one documenting the water sector and the other the cost savings possible by integrating environmental management into the firm's strategy.Aim, Scope and background. Given the communication limitation of a damage-oriented approach, the question addressed in this paper is how normalisation can be developed instead. Normalisation of product service systems without value choices is, in accordance to ISO 14042, suitable for external communication. Reason normalisation approaches use a geographically-defined baseline year of emissions, optionally combined with politically established target emissions (Guinee 2002, Stranddorf et al. 2001). In contradiction to these approaches, this paper aims to draw up the general structure of an alternative normalisation procedure. The normalisation procedure suggested here is based on environmental quality objectives (EQO), in order to streamline the result to include as few output parameters as possible, without compromising the scientific robustness of the method. Main Features. This article describes a normalisation procedure based on environmental quality objectives. Comparison between this approach and a damage-oriented approach is conducted. The relevant working area concerning dose and effect is evaluated. Then a discussion is conducted focusing on the trade-off necessary to achieve an integrated category indicator, covering the following issues; model reliability, user applicability and the unambiguously of the result. Result. A damage-oriented approach will have to take into account all the defined consequences from all impact categories that affect the safeguards in parallel. In other words, each impact category indicator and its potential effects on all safeguards must be evaluated and accounted for. In the case where a single category indicator cannot be found without utilising value choices, a number of category indicators will then have to constitute an intermediate category indicator result, where weighting must be applied in order to streamline the result. In contrast to the above approach, the suggested normalisation procedure utilises the precautionary principle with respect to the essential EQO in order to achieve a category indicator result, called a critical load category indicator result. In practice, this means that the number of figures in an LCIA-profile based on critical load will always be the same as the number of impact categories. Conclusions. The suggested EQO normalisation procedure forms a set of critical loads per impact category, where each is defined by a critical load function where linearity is defined between a zero load and the critical load. This procedure will affect the temporal resolution and the field of application of the LCIA method. The positive aspect is that the suggested normalisation procedure renders the method applicable for long-lived products like, for example, buildings or other infrastructures. This aspect is gained by reducing the damage-oriented resolution. Consequently, for long-lived products where the main environmental loads will appear in the future, it is hard to assess by a damage-oriented LCIA method (if all boundary conditions are not assumed to be fixed). The EQO normalisation method will, in this respect, improve the overall reliability of the outcome of an LCA when long-lived products are assessed. For short-lived products, adequate boundary conditions can be achieved, and for this reason a damage-oriented approach will have the possibility to address current consequences. Nevertheless, a damage-oriented approach working area is not applicable beneath thresholds unlike the EQO normalisation procedure. The most effective decision support of short-lived products is therefore achieved when both approaches are applied. Outlook. A complementary paper will be produced where the described normalisation procedure is exemplified in a case study, with special interest on assessment of chemical substances.Background and Objectives. Multiple Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) methods may be employed in a great number of fields. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a specific method among the MCDA Methods. A stage of MCDA methods to be respected in LCA is the comparative evaluation of the environmental impacts. This stage is the most difficult to implement because it is a question of estimating the global environmental impact of the life cycles studied. To achieve this purpose, it is necessary to model the environmental impacts and to apply a Multicriteria Analysis (MCA) method. The problem is to choose the most suitable among the available MCA methods. The objective of this paper is to help the LCA practitioner to make this choice. Methodology. The MCA methods are compared according to their non-compensatory degree, their sensitivity to thresholds, their practicability and their workability. Results and Conclusion. The protocol presented in this paper allows to choose the most appropriate MCA method for a given LCA according to the four previous criteria. This choice will depend on the priorities of the decision maker with concern to the comparison criteria.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background, Objectives. Environmental effects caused by the railway transport services have rarely been investigated in depth from a systemic point of view. A screening LCA, called ecology profile, of the German high-speed passenger train system, the ICE, is presented here, based on a study conducted by the University of Halle and the Deutsche Balm AG, the major German rail operator. In this study, the resource consumption caused by traction, manufacturing and maintenance of ICE trains, as well as construction and operation of the supporting, rail infrastructure and buildings, have been evaluated using cumulative energy demand (CED), cumulative material input per service unit (MIPS) and CO2 emissions as indicators. Methods. Approximately 200 items of inventory data were collected from DB AG experts, manufacturers, site balances and the associated literature. They were allocated in order to derive 100-person-kilometre-related mass and energy consumption figures. The appropriate CED, MIPS and CO2 factors were applied in order to quantify the indirect efforts associated with the inventory data. Conclusions. For the reference high-speed route investigated, Hanover-Wuerzburg, the railroad infrastructure does not contribute the high share of resource consumption to the life cycle of the transport service which was expected from other studies. For the reference route, the CED of the infrastructure contributes 13% to the total CED per 100 person kilometres, whilst the energy demand of the traction process dominates the life cycle. Within the railway infrastructure, the construction of tunnels and the heating of rail points during winter time are significant primary-energy active components, whereas the energy requirement for maintaining the railway stations is a minor factor in comparison. The environmental impact of new technologies for designing rail tracks have also been analysed. The new ballastless slab track technology investigated needs higher absolute resource inputs in the construction phase compared with the traditional gravel bed, but due to higher life expectancy, it competes favourably at the 100-person-kilometre level, at least in terms of material requirements. Efforts to reduce the traction energy consumption of the ICE train will have the greatest impact on the CED of the transport system. In summary, a total of 48 kg of solid primary resources are needed for a passenger to travel 100 kin by ICE. Recommendations/Outlook. The results presented can be used for modelling other high-speed railway transport systems. A comparison of the ecology profiles of the German, French and Japanese high-speed train systems would be of interest in order to identify potential areas for improvement. Additional studies are needed to evaluate the short-hop, commuter train service. Further efforts should be directed to comparing the infrastructure of the high speed train and that of highway road traffic.Goal, Scope and Background. The object of the study is the Italian system of plastic packaging waste recycling, active until 2001, that collected and mechanically recycled the post-consumer PE and PET liquid containers. The phases of collection, compaction, sorting, reprocessing and refuse disposal were individually analysed and quantified in terms of energy and material consumptions as well as of emissions in the environment. The work is the result of a joint research project with the Italian Consortium for Packaging (CONAI), carried out in co-operation with the main Italian companies active in the field. The main aim was the quantification of the real advantage of plastic container recycling and the definition of criteria, at the same time environmentally compatible and economically sustainable, for their management. Main Features. For each of the unit processes, and in order to increase the data quality, all the data of interest were collected during technical visits to several selected plants active in Italy or deduced by official documents and certificate declarations of the same companies. To allow comparison of resource consumption and environmental pollution from different management scenarios producing different products, the basket of products method was applied. Results. The results indicates that the production of 1 kg of flakes of recycled PET requires a total amount of gross energy that is in the range of between 42 and 55 MJ, depending on whether the process wastes (mainly coming from sorting and reprocessing activities) were sent or not to the energy recovery. The same quantiry of virgin PET requires more than 77 MJ. The energetic (and then environmental) saving is so remarkable, even for PE, being 40-49 MJ for the recycled polymer and about 80 MJ that for the virgin polyolefin. The calculations were made with the reasonable assumption that the final utilisation can use the virgin or the recycled polymer without any difference. Conclusions and Outlook. The analysis defined and verified a suitable tool in the field, based on objective data, for comparing different coherent scenarios of waste management politics. This allows one to propose the extension of the tool under different collection schemes, as well as for different systems of packaging recycling. As an immediate consequence of the success of the present study, the joint-research programme with CONAI has been extended for another three years. The focus will be the Italian system for paper and paperboard recycling and that for all plastic packagings. In parallel, a different study has been scheduled with reference to the integrated solid waste management of the Regione Campania, the largest and most populated area in the South of Italy.Intention and Background. This paper outlines guidelines for the treatment of energy in LCAs of forest products. The paper is a result of the Cost Action E 9 'Life cycle assessment of forestry and forest products' and reflects the experience of Cost E9 delegates, contributing to Working Group 'End of life-recycling, disposal and energy generation'. Objectives. After overviewing different aspects of energy in LCA of forest products, the most important aspects are identified: 1) energy and carbon balance, 2) energy generation, 3) energy substitution and 4) comparison with other waste management options. For these aspects, guidelines are developed and examples are given to demonstrate the practical application of recommended guidelines. Conclusions. Beside the proper treatment of the above mentioned aspects, the following conclusions for the LCA practitioners are given: 1) Draw attention to losses of potential energy in carbon flows. 2) Compared to heating value of biomass the auxiliary energy need is low (< 10%). 3) The substitution rate (bioenergy for fossil fuel) might be lower than 100%, depending on technical systems available. 4) A high substitution rate might be an optimisation criterion for LCA. 5) A sensitivity analysis of different substitution criteria should be made. 6) Compare energy generation to other waste management options. 7) Use of bioenergy might be 'CO2-neutral', but not 'CO2-free'. 8) Most important benefit of bioenergy is greenhouse gas reduction by substituting fossil energy.Goal, Scope and Background. Two methods of simplified LCA were evaluated and compared to the results of a quantitative LCA. These are the Environmentally responsible product assessment matrix developed by Graedel and Allenby and the MECO-method developed in Denmark. Methods. We used these in a case study and compared the results with the results from a quantitative LCA. The evaluation also included other criteria, such as the field of application and the level of arbitrariness. Results and Discussion. The MECO-method has some positive qualities compared to the Environmentally responsible product assessment matrix. Examples of this are that it generates information complementary to the quantitative LCA and provides the possibility to consider quantitative information when such is available. Some of the drawbacks with the Environmentally responsible product assessment matrix are that it does not include the whole lifecycle and that it allows some arbitrariness. Conclusions. Our study shows that a simplified and semi-quantitative LCA (such as the MECO-method) can provide information that is complementary to a quantitative LCA. In this case the method generates more information on toxic substances and other impacts, than the quantitative LCA. We suggest that a simplified LCA can be used both as a pre-study to a quantitative LCA and as a parallel assessment, which is used together with the quantitative LCA in the interpretation. Recommendations and Outlook. A general problem with qualitative analyses is how to compare different aspects. Life cycle assessments are comparative. The lack of a quantitative dimension hinders the comparison and can thereby hinder the usefulness of the qualitative method. There are different approaches suggested to semiquantify simplified methods in order to make quantitative comparisons possible. We think that the use of fabricated scoring systems should be avoided. If quantitative information is needed, one should consider performing a simplified quantitative LCA instead.Scope. In this study, a dynamic model was built in which LCA and PBM were integrated to quantitatively assess the total environmental impacts induced by the product population in a society over time. Specifically, a determination was carried out concerning how Japan's air conditioner population is used (lifetime distribution, number of units, etc.) and an assessment was made concerning the Global Warming Potential (GWP) associated with the air conditioner population. Methods. The proposed dynamic model was applied to air conditioners for analyzing the total GWP caused by the air conditioner population in Japan from 1990 to 2010. To create a trend forecast model for future environmental load, scenarios for air conditioner production up to 2010 were formulated and the total GWP from the air conditioner population was predicted. Conducted also were sensitivity analyses whose parameters were air conditioner performance, lifetime and the rate of refrigerant recovery when retired units are processed. Results and Discussion. Applying the PBM to the air conditioner population in 2000, it was found that 81.5 million units consumed 5.94 x 10(10) kWh in that year, which was a 6.1% increase in the total annual power consumption in 1990. In both a stationary scenario and a steady growth (1.5% annual increase), it was found that the total GWP would be 27.7% higher than in 1990 under the stationary scenario and 37.8% higher under the steady growth scenario. The improvements in air conditioner performance will have a small effect on reducing the total GWP from that population. Furthermore, in connection with the average lifetime, it was found that the GWP, due to refrigerant releases when units are disposed of, would be relatively large in 2000 and the following years. Conclusions. Thus, shorter product lifetimes will spur a replacement of air conditioners with new units, a situation that will only lead to the reduction of GWP if the recovery rate of refrigerant is to be achieved to more than 50% under the stationary scenario. Recommendations and Outlook. To meet COP3 targets for Japan in 2010 (i.e. to reach the same level as in 1990 for household appliances), our study shows that it will be vital to raise the refrigerant recovery rate. If the number of air conditioners in use remains unchanged, recovery would have to be 45.7%, but under the steady growth scenario it would have to be at least 60.4%. Therefore, it will be difficult to meet COP3 targets unless the refrigerant recovery rate is strongly increased. This method is applicable to assess not only the GWP of air conditioners, but also other environmental impacts caused by a variety of product populations, which will be quite effective for setting targets of products' performance, policymaking, etc.Objective, Scope, Background. A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment was conducted on bio-ethanol produced using a new process that converts cellulosic biomass by enzymatic hydrolysis. Options for sourcing the feedstock either from agricultural and wood waste, or, if the demand for bio-ethanol is sufficient, from cultivation are examined. The main focus of the analysis was to determine its potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a 10% blend of this bio-ethanol with gasoline (E10) as a transportation fuel. Methods. SimaPro 4.0 was used as the analysis tool, which allowed a range of other environmental impacts also to be examined to assess the overall relative performance to gasoline alone. All impacts were assigned to the fuel because of uncertainties in markets for the by-products. This LCA therefore represents a worst case scenario. Results, Conclusion. It is shown that E10 gives an improved environmental performance in some impact categories, including greenhouse gas emissions, but has inferior performances in others. Whether the potential benefits of the bio-ethanol blend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be realized is shown to be particularly sensitive to the source of energy used to produce the process steam required to break down the cellulose to produce sugars and to distil the final product. One key area where improvements in environmental performance might be derived is in enzyme production. Recommendations and Outlook. The LCA profile helps to highlight those areas where positive and negative environmental impacts can be expected. Technological innovation can be directed accordingly to preserve the benefits while minimizing the negative impacts as development progresses to commercial scales.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background. Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are increasingly used in the building sector as a decision-support tool in the design phase of buildings to enable environmentally sound choices of materials and products. The practice in Europe of today regarding product choices is mainly based on cradle to gate LCAs and is quite commonly disregarding the usage phase. The main reason for this is the fragmented structure of the building sector in which the application of specific materials and products is unknown to the manufacturer. The environmental information supplied by the manufacturers to the designers of buildings only relates to the production phase, limited to typical cradle to gate data. A specific material or product choice can however have a considerable impact during the usage phase. Predicting the magnitude of an environmental load originating in the usage phase, as the result of a building product can in some cases be based on information on both product- and building level. To date there are no structured procedures for the inclusion of this information in LCA-studies, even-though it is desirable to include the full product fife cycle when including environmental parameters in a product choice. Objective. A procedure for assessing the relevance and the possibility to include the usage phase in a structured way is proposed. Considerable effort has also been put into explaining the underlying obstacles of today's practice in handling the connection between the choice of building products and its resulting impacts in the usage phase. Methods. The proposed procedure is primary based on experiences and findings from a comprehensive study on maintenance of floor coverings, together with an inventory of the state of the art regarding LCA in the building sector. Results and Discussion. The procedure is divided into two steps where the first step is a preliminary estimate of the relevance of the usage phase in a building product comparison. Based on this step, step two can be entered. Step two is a judgement of the possibility to quantify the potential environmental loads that can occur in the usage phase. For step one, four different types of sources of potential environmental loads have been found; emissions from the product to the indoor environment, emissions from the product to the outdoor environment, influence on the resource flow in a building, and finally the demands for maintenance, leading to other recurring loads. For step two, the focus in this article is on maintenance, for which a model structure is proposed as a base for the development of a model to estimate the environmental loads. The three other sources of environmental loads are handled more briefly. Conclusions. The usage phase should to a larger extend be regarded in a product choice situation, when LCA is used as a tool. First, the relevance of including the usage phase should be assessed. Second, the possibility to estimate the environmental loads should be considered. The reason for an exclusion of the usage phase should more clearly be explained, if it is due to lack of relevance or data/models. Recommendation and Outlook. The proposed procedure shall be regarded as a way to obtain preliminary estimates of the relevance and possibilities to include the usage phase in a product choice situation. Thereby, the handling of the usage phase by the suggested procedure is not a method for estimating the environmental loads but rather a procedure for an inventory of the relevance and possibility to estimate the environmental loads.Goal, Scope and Background. China is one of the main producers of metallic zinc and its annual production has been becoming the largest in the world since the year 2000. To improve the environmental situation of zinc production in China, a life cycle assessment was performed for hydro and pyro-metallurgical processes, based on the case study of Zhuzhou Smelter and Shaoguan metallurgical plant, respectively. Methods. The system is modeled into several sub-modules so as to identify the source of environmental impacts. Results and Discussion. The main results of LCA study are summarized as follows: (1) Hydro-metallurgical process is superior to pyro-metallurgical process in GWP and inferior to pyro-metallurgical process in GER and ACR (2) Compared with the advanced foreign zinc metallurgical process, the GWP, ACP and HME of the zinc metallurgical process in China are much higher. (3) In hydro-metallurgical processes, residue treatment and auxiliary processes are the main contributors of ACP and GWP, which are the key sub-modules, and should be improved. In pyro-metallurgical processes, the main sub-modules needing improvement are smelting, power and electricity generation. (4) Electricity is the main energy consumption in the hydro-metallurgical processes, accounting for 60% of GER. In pyro-metallurgical process, main energy sources are metallurgical coke and anthracite, both also accounting for 60% of GER. Conclusions. According to the discovery of LCA study, three main measures to improve the environmental performance of zinc products were proposed: 1) Regulating the structure of energy sources of Shaoguan Smelter, 2) removing SO2 in low concentration from flue gas by absorption with zinc oxide, and 3) adjusting the material structure of Walze rotary furnace.Sustainability-a term originating from silviculture, which was adopted by UNEP as the main political goal for the future development of humankind-is also the ultimate aim of product development. It comprises three components: environment, economy and social aspects which have to be properly assessed and balanced if a new product is to be designed or an existing one is to be improved. The responsibility of the researchers involved in the assessment is to provide appropriate and reliable instruments. For the environmental part there is already an internationally standardized tool: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is the logical counterpart of LCA for the economic assessment. LCC surpasses the purely economic cost calculation by taking into account hidden costs and potentially external costs over the life cycle of the product. It is a very important point that different life-cycle based methods (including Social Life Cycle Assessment) for sustainablity assessment use the same system boundaries.Aim, Scope and Background. The interest in environmental questions has increased enormously during the last decade. Environmental protection has become an issue of strategic importance within the manufacturing industry and many companies are now working in the field of Design for Environment (DFE). The main purpose of DFE is to create products and services for achieving a sustainable society. Designers are widely believed to have a key role in adapting products to a sustainable society and one of the major instruments in the context of Design for Environment is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, product development creates particular challenges for incorporating environmental issues that combine functional and environmental assessment. A natural and important part of product design is to define and analyse the functions of the product. Consequently, the functional unit in LCA is a core issue in DFE. Most recent research in DFE has focused on how to reduce the environmental impact of products throughout their life-cycle by addressing environmental aspects, while little attention has been given to the functionality of the product. Additionally, early product development phases, so called re-think phases, are considered to have the influence on major changes in products in general. These phases have thus the highest potential for changing products and product systems towards a sustainable development. Main Features. This paper discusses an extended functional representation in design for environment methods to evaluate sustainable design solutions, especially in early (re-think) phases of product design. Based on engineering-design science and several case studies, a concept has been developed describing how functional preferences can be visualised in design for environment and product development. In addition, the functional unit in LCA is discussed. The concept is called Functional Profile (FP) and is additionally exemplified in a case study on radio equipment. Discussion. The new functional characterisation concept helps identify functional priorities in design for environment. The Functional Profile is a structured, systematic and creative concept for identifying the necessary functions of a new product. The FP is envisioned to complement existing design for environment methods, not to replace them. Instead of being a product-development tool or method, the concept is an approach that increases understanding of inter-reactions between functional characteristics of products and their environmental characteristics, which furthermore facilitates trade-off decisions. One of the objectives behind the concept is to highlight the importance of balancing functional requirements and environmental impacts, presenting both the advantages and disadvantages of the product. Outlook. A second paper will be produced to complement the functional-environmental characterisation concept in early product development phase, presenting the environmental characterisation part and illustrating correlations between the functional and environmental sides.Background. In developing products various requirements have to be integrated including functionality, quality, affordability as well as environmental aspects. Often conflicting requirements have to be fulfilled. Therefore, multi-dimensional decision support approaches are necessary. Methods. Here, one approach is to relate the conflicting requirements to each other. Life Cycle Costing (LCC) has the potential to support the trade-off between some environmental targets and overall affordability targets by including all monetary flows along the product life cycle (going beyond the well-known costs of ownership by integrating also long-term use and end-of-life costs). Those solutions can be identified that (a) have the highest efficiencies (where do we get most environmental improvements per E) and (b) have the highest affordability for the customer along the life cycle. Furthermore, on-costs in the design phase can be justified in terms of future savings either for the customer or for the recycling of the products. These represent real business cases for environmental actions. Three types of environmental business cases can be differentiated. Results and Discussion. This paper presents various examples where LCC is integrated into product design. However, there are a number of open issues in the implementation of LCC within real product development including data availability and uncertainty (future costs/savings), level of discounting, accounting and compensation. Various internal case studies done in the last years showed that already few changes in the costs structure can significantly affect the identified future costs. Recommendation and Outlook. Uncertainties in LCC are higher than in LCA and highest when applied in the stage of product development, i.e. used to support DfE action. As a consequence, the resulting figures can only be seen as directional. Therefore, the use of LCC in Design for Environment cannot be recommended without major restrictions in terms of guidance, experience/training. The linkage between LCC and DfE can either be established via (1) experts supporting design teams or (2) as part of a DfE tool. The DfE tool has to include detailed guidance for interpretation, and its application should be based on a solid training for DfE engineers.Background, Goal and Scope. A complete life cycle assessment (LCA) always requires several itemizations of goal/scope definitions, inventory analysis and impact analysis. This requires the retrieval and collection of: inventory information on all processes with which a product or any part of it comes into either direct or indirect contact. As a result, the data required for LCA is vast, uncertain and, therefore, complex. Up until now, unfortunately, and as far as the authors are aware, there has not been much computer-assisted aid available from any of the systems currently used in either academia or industry to support any fife cycle (LC) related data representation, other than the traditional methods of tables, xy-graphs, bar charts, pie charts and various 3-D variants of those which are difficult for humans to interpret. Main Features. Benefiting from the synergy of latest developments in both visualization techniques and computer technology, the authors are able to introduce a new information representation approach based on glyphs. These exploit the human perceptual capability for distinguishing spatial structures and shapes presented in different colors and textures. Within this approach, issues of representing life cycle related information at a glance, filtering out data so as to reduce the information load, and representation of data features, such as uncertainty and estimated errors, are targeted. Results. Advanced information visualization, the process which transforms and maps data to a visual representation, employs the glyphs rendered here to create abstract representations of multi-dimensional data sets. Different parameters describing spatial, geometrical and retinal properties of such glyphs, and defining their position, orientation, shape, color, etc., can be used to encode more information in a comprehensible format, thus allowing multiple values to be encoded in those glyph parameters. The natural function of glyphs, linking (mapped) data within a known context with the attributes that in turn control their visualization, is believed capable of providing sufficient functionality to interactively support designers and LCA experts performing life cycle inventory (LCI) information analysis so that they can operate faster and more efficiently than at present. Conclusions. Within this paper, the first of a small series on efficient information visualization in LCA, the motivation for and essential basic principles of the approach are introduced and discussed. With this technique, the essential characteristics of data, relationships, patterns, trends, etc. can be represented in a much better structured and compact manner, thus rendering them clearer and more meaningful. It is hoped that a continuing interest in this work combined with an improved collaboration with industrial partners will eventually provide the grounds for translating this novel approach into an efficient and reliable tool enhancing applied LCA in practice on a broader base. Outlook. More technical details of the approach and its implementation will be introduced and discussed in the following papers, and examples will be offered demonstrating its application and first experimental translation into practice.Goal, Scope and Background. A number of impact assessment methodologies are available to the LCA practitioner. They differ, and often there is not one obvious choice among them. The question therefore naturally arises: 'Does it make any difference to my conclusions which method I choose?' To investigate this issue, a comparison is performed of three frequently applied life cycle impact assessment methods. Methods. The three life cycle impact assessment methods EDIP97 [1], CML2001 [2] and Eco-indicator 99 [3] are compared on their performance through application to the same life cycle inventory from a study of a water-based UV-lacquer. EDIP97 and CML2001 are both midpoint approaches and hence quite similar in their scope and structure, and this allows a comparison during both characterisation and normalisation. The third impact assessment method Eco-indicator 99 is an endpoint method and different in scope and structure from the other two. A detailed comparison can not be done but a comparative analysis of the main contributors to the Eco-indicator 99 results and the weighted and aggregated EDIP97 results is performed. Results and Discussion. Following a translation into common units of the EDIP97 and CML2001 output, differences up to two orders of magnitude are found for some of the indicator results for the impact categories describing toxicity to humans and ecosystems, and there is little similarity in the patterns of major contributors among the two methods. For human toxicity the CML2001 score is dominated by contribution from metals while the EDIP97 score is caused by a solvent and nitrogen oxides. For aquatic ecotoxicity, metals are the main contributors for both methods but while it is vanadium for CML2001, it is strontium for EDIP97. After normalisation, the differences are reduced but still considerable. For the other impact categories, the two methods show only minor differences. The comparison of the main contributors to the Eco-indicator 99 results and the weighted and aggregated EDIP97 results identifies nitrogen oxides as the main contributor for both methods. It is, however, much more dominant for Eco-indicator 99 while the EDIP97 score represents important contributions from a number of different substances, and furthermore, the analysis reveals that the aggregated scores for the two methods come from different impacts. It is thus difficult to extend the findings for these two methods to other inventories. Conclusion. For EDIP97 and CML2001, it mainly matters which method is used if the chemical impacts on human health and ecosystem health are important for the study. For the other impact categories, the differences are minor for these two methodologies. For EDIP97 and Eco-indicator 99, the patterns of most important contributors to the weighted and aggregated impact scores are rather different, and considering the known differences in the underlying framework and models, the results of the two methods may well go in opposite directions for some inventories even if the conclusion is the same for the inventory studied in this paper. Recommendations and Outlook. Particularly for the impact categories representing toxic impacts from chemicals, the study demonstrates the need for more a detailed analysis of the causes underlying the big differences revealed between the methods.Aim and Background. Electronic media are spreading rapidly and some of the services they offer are similar to traditional media. Frequently, credit is given to electronic media for causing less environmental impact, however, looking at it more closely little is known about the comparability of the environmental impact of both kinds of media. Main reasons for this lack of knowledge are difficulties in defining an adequate functional unit for a comparison of usually multifunctional media, as well as problems in gathering large amounts of inventory data for complex electronic goods. Objective. Here an LCA case study was conducted for reading or watching the daily news in an online and a printed newspaper as well as on TV. Aim of this study was to find an adequate functional unit as well as to quantify the environmental impact of each of the media, including recommendations for the reduction of their impact. In order to account for the multifunctionality of the investigated media as well as for ISO 14040ff. guidelines for the definition of the functional unit, several functional units were chosen. The selected functional units cover a spectrum of close functional equivalence to an altogether different approach in comparing entire activities. Results. Compared on the basis of an average news item, the internet newspaper causes far more environmental impact than a TV news cast, which, in turn, causes more impact than a cutting of a newspaper. Major contributions to the high environmental impact of the internet newspaper are the manufacturing of the computer as well as operation of the necessary infrastructure for running the internet, in particular operation of the telephone network. Comparing media on the basis of consuming the daily news as a whole leads to less environmental impact for both of the electronic media in relation to a printed newspaper, even if shared amongst several readers. The comparative environmental advantage of the electronic media depends on a set of conditions: 1. No online information is printed. 2. Internet surfing is directed towards specific goals and therefore limited in time. 3. Power consumption is based to a large extent on renewable energy sources. This still holds true for the underlying national electricity mix of Switzerland with a high share of hydropower. A comparison of the average per capita time of watching TV with surfing in the internet and average paper consumption of free and bought print products also shows that most of the environmental impact results from print products. Interpretation. Summarising the previously shown results, different perspectives on media and, with it, different functional units lead - not surprisingly - to different results. Relations between the environmental impact of the three media change between approaches. A final conclusion on a qualitative level is drawn. The first functional unit stands for close functional equivalence, however, itdoes not resemble options of the consumer in real life. The cuttings of a newspaper cannot be bought as such and the consumer is normally not interested in a single news item. The second functional unit is more of a representation of real life choices and is a typical example of a consumer's choice that frequently has to decide between options which are not exactly functionally equivalent. Finally, the last approach, based on entire activities, supports the result of the previous approach. Perspective. The case study has shown that a comparison of multifunctional products or services excludes relevant environmental aspects, if functional equivalence is chosen as the unique reference unit. Thus, it is recommended to apply several approaches in order to do justice to the multifunctionality of the investigated products or services. ISO/TR 14049, with its concept of user acceptance, offers such a possibility to compare products or services which are still considered equivalent by the user.Goal, Scope and Background. There is a competition between wet and thermal routes for phosphate fertilizers manufacture. In the Brazilian case, the thermal route is represented by thermophosphate. This fertilizer is considered the most adequate one for Brazilian agricultural conditions; its main restriction is the intensive consumption of energy necessary for its production. The wet route uses sulfuric acid to directly produce the single superphosphate (SSP) or the intermediate phosphoric acid, which will be used to result in triple superphosphate (TSP) and ammonium phosphate production. The main restriction of the wet route is the large amount of phosphogypsum generated in phosphoric acid production. Envisaged is an environmental comparison of both routes using LCA methodology. This paper presents the LCA for SSP production. The goal of the study is to establish the Environmental Profile of this fertilizer. Eight impact categories were selected for the study. The system boundaries was defined for a 'cradle to gate' approach, including extraction of natural resources, intermediate products, and production. The SSP System. The SSP system (single superphosphate) comprises the stages of mining and concentration of the phosphate rock, elemental sulfur extraction, production of sulfuric acid, and manufacture of single superphosphate. SSP LCI. The LCI was performed considering the production of 1.0 ton of SSP (single superphosphate) as a Functional Unit. The data collected were developed for different producing companies, all of them located in the same regional area. Allocation criteria of energy and mass were applied to the production of sulfuric acid and manufacture of single superphosphate. The transportation step included either the transport of the mined phosphated rock to the concentration plant or the transport of the phosphate concentrate to the SSP unit. Conclusion, Recommendation and Perspective. The accomplishment of an LCA to SSP production identified the GWP and EP as its meaningful environmental impacts. In reference to global warming, the transportation step was the greatest contributor agent, while the losses of PO4- from the SSP manufacturing were the main cause of ER The most important contribution in terms of water consumption was observed in the concentration step. Finally, the self sufficiency of the sulfuric acid production in energetic terms must be highlighted. The knowledge of the environmental profile of fertilizers is necessary to support LCA studies of agricultural products, a relevant raw material source for many industrial sectors. The method used here may be important for modelling other LCA fertilizer studies. As most of the agricultural raw materials are transferred among different countries, comparisons of the environmental profiles of fertilizers in developed and developing countries are needed.Background, Goal and Scope. For the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to provide maximum benefit for decision makers, the uncertainty of its results should be reported. Several methods for assessing uncertainty have been developed, but despite recent efforts, there remains disagreement about their merits. Objectives. The objectives of the study were to review several assessment methods for estimating numerical and qualitative uncertainty of impact scores and recommend an appropriate uncertainty assessment scheme. The methods review has been conducted on the basis of an LCA case study regarding the comparison of the use of either brown or black coals in Australian electricity generation. Results and Discussion. Each assessment method indicated greater uncertainty in the impact scores calculated for black coal use than for brown coal use. Due to overlap of the uncertainty ranges in calculated impact scores neither of the coals could be regarded environmentally preferred. Conclusions. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were found to provide useful information about the uncertainty of calculated impact scores for the case study. Methods that combine qualitative and quantitative uncertainty provided no additional benefits, and obscured much of the information gained from using qualitative methods. Recommendation and Outlook. It is recommended that LCA results should include separate numerical (using Monte-Carlo simulation) and qualitative uncertainty assessments. When the ranges of calculated impact scores for compared options overlap, the normalised difference method is recommended.Goal, Scope and Background. Performing a life cycle assessment (LCA) has been a rather resource and time-consuming business. The method of data collection may be problematic, and the quality of the final results can be influenced by the reliability of the data. Therefore, it is helpful to utilize an on-line data gathering system to save time and to improve the reliability of the collected raw data. Main Features. We have developed an LCA software package for a steel company. The software consists of two major parts: an LCA tool kit and an interface program. The LCA tool kit is a user interface for handling an LCA database server. It has powerful functions to execute systematic analysis, not only for the amount of energy and raw materials, but also for the volume of pollutants generated by each component. The latter is an interface program between a data handling system and an on-line data gathering system. This interface program is linked with three enterprise database systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), an environmental management system (EMS) and an energy server system (ESS). In this study, we compared three different ways of performing LCA. Two of them are on-line methods, and another is manual. Results and Discussion. Among the three methods, the best method was on-line LCA linked with ERP, EMS and ESS. Case studies in steel works have shown that the current method is superior to manual data gathering in terms of time and cost (man-month) savings, data reliability and other applications. Results of life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment for steel products have shown monthly fluctuations due to fuel usage ratio, which have not been detected before using manual data gathering. Conclusions. An LCA can be performed quickly, if one is to employ the on-line data gathering system we have developed. The system consists of an LCA software package including the interface program and LCA tool kit, and the enterprise database systems. Case studies for LCA with the on-line system have shown superior performance to that carried out using the manual data entry method. Recommendations and Perspective. This system enables an enterprise to take Type III and conduct benchmarking to other companies or societies within a short time. Also, combining this tool with an environmental performance evaluation or accounting system can allow one to achieve a more progressive environmental management.Aim and Background. Many analytical tools have been developed to support the implementation of sustainable development. Principal among these are the ones that are based on physical aspects such as life cycle assessment (LCA), while others focus on non-physical aspects, namely on monetary concepts, such as life cycle costing and total cost assessment. Each kind of tool is designed to assess a specific aspect (environmental or economic) of the entire life of a good or a service. Unfortunately, even if the literature clearly states the advantage of combining these tools, case studies with global conclusions considering both aspects are still rare. Most often, studies conclude separately on each aspect; environmental impact and cost assessment. Definitions. The already published concept of Return on Environment (ROE), inspired from return on investment, is a first step in the right direction for combining these tools and hence, achieving better alternative comparisons. Considering some limitations as to the ease with which it compares two or more similar goods, two new indexes are suggested here. The first one, called the Environmental Return (ER), focuses only on environmental aspects. It allows the comparison on an environmental basis of several goods or services fulfilling the same function. The second definition, called the Econo-Environmental Return (EER), is an index created by the combination of the environmental impact assessment results (such as an LCIA) and those from an economic assessment (such as an LCC or a TCA). From a simple decision rule, a decision-maker can compare several goods on both environmental and economic aspects. Discussion and Conclusion. A simplified case study is used to present a numerical application of these two definitions and to interpret their different results and conclusions. Two different types of broadloom carpet, PET (recycled polyester) and nylon, are compared. When they are only compared on an LCIA basis, the PET carpet is preferred over the nylon one, while the opposite is true when they are compared on both economic aspect and environmental impact bases. The major advantage of the Econo-Environmental Return is that two goods can be compared without requiring a specific industrial sector reference value.Aim, Scope and Background. The data-intensive nature of life cycle assessment (LCA), even for non-complex products, quickly leads to the utilization of various methods of representing the data in forms other than written characters. Up until now, traditional representations of life cycle inventory (LCI) data and environmental impact analysis (EIA) results have usually been based on 2D and 3D variants of simple tables, bar charts, pie charts and x/y graphs. However, these representation methods do not sufficiently address aspects such as representation of life cycle inventory information at a glance, filtering out data while summarizing the filtered data (so as to reduce the information load), and representation of data errors and uncertainty. Main Features. This new information representation approach with its glyph-based visualization method addresses the specific problems outlined above, encountered when analyzing LCA and EIA related information. In particular, support for multi-dimensional information representation, reduction of information load, and explicit data feature propagation are provided on an interactive, computer-aided basis. Results. Three-dimensional, interactive geometric objects, so called OM-glyphs, were used in the visualization method introduced, to represent LCA-related information in a multi-dimensional information space. This representation is defined by control parameters, which in turn represent spatial, geometric and retinal properties of glyphs and glyph formations. All relevant analysis scenarios allowed and valid can be visualized. These consist of combinations of items for the material and energy inventories, environmental items, life cycle phases and products, or their parts and components. Individual visualization scenarios, once computed and rendered on a computer screen, can then interactively be modified in terms of visual viewpoint, size, spatial location and detail of data represented, as needed. This helps to increase speed, efficiency and quality of the assessment performance, while at the same time considerably reducing mental load due to the more structured manner in which information is represented to the human expert. Conclusions. The previous paper in this series discussed the motivation for a new approach to efficient information visualization in LCA and introduced the essential basic principles. This second paper offers more insight into and discussion on technical details and the framework developed. To provide a means for better understanding the visualization method presented, examples have been given. The main purpose of the examples, as already indicated, is to demonstrate and make transparent the mapping of LCA related data and their contexts to glyph parameters. Those glyph parameters, in turn, are used to generate a novel form of sophisticated information representation which is transparent, clear and compact, features which cannot be achieved with any traditional representation scheme. Outlook. Final technical details of this approach and its framework will be presented and discussed in the next paper. Theoretical and practical issues related to the application of this visualization method to the computed life cycle inventory data of an actual industrial product will also be discussed in this next paper.Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) frequently do not contribute to sustainable development because product alternatives with a truly low environmental burden are not included in the assessment. As a result, environmentally-friendly alternatives are not uncovered, although much effort has been put into collecting inventory data and making an impact assessment. Part of this problem is caused by the defensive use of LCAs. Companies eager to show that their product is not too bad for the environment prefer to compare their product with alternatives that are not very promising in an environmental sense. To (mis)use LCAs in this way is quite easy, because the LCA methodology and handbooks provide few guidelines and little advice on how to generate and select adequate alternatives. An analysis of the problems related to the alternatives is given using insights drawn from the field of policy analysis - a field in which methodological rules for the generation of alternatives in policy studies have been developed - ecodesign and the LCA discipline, and measures to reduce the problems are developed. Explicating the different steps in the determination of alternatives in the goal and scope formulation stage of an LCA process, and the development of a toolbox for this activity, would certainly improve the quality of the selection of alternatives. Furthermore, involving stakeholders and a group of experts in the generation and selection process will increase the variety and relevance of alternatives, and the social support for alternatives.Goal Scope and Background. Qualitative valuation methods carefully try to avoid an aggregation across impact categories. However, such an aggregation often helps in obtaining a clear result for the valuation (which product scores better?). This article presents a new valuation method that uses an iterative approach. The application is demonstrated by the help of a case study for electric motors in trains. Methods / Main Features. The approach combines two existing, unique valuation methods described earlier in literature, which both are of a rather non-aggregating nature, in line with ISO requirements, and were designed to be performed by LCA experts. The method is implemented in a computer software. Besides constants used within the method, the software needs as input solely indicator values from the Impact Assessment. Results and Discussion. The iterative nature of these methods itself, and especially the combination of these methods, helps in achieving a valuation result for the LCA with not more subjective and aggregating elements than necessary. Subjective elements are clearly separated from others. The algorithm seems highly sensitive to changes in impact categories regarded as important ones. The implementation in software greatly eases the application of the method by transferring routine work from LCA experts to a machine. It ensures a reproducible result and prevents erroneous steps in a rather complicated valuation procedure. It further helps in hiding the complexity of the method from the user. Conclusion. The approach of combining valuation methods in LCAs seems a fruitful one, and shows benefits when implemented in computer software, in terms of usability, and in terms of a more reproducible application. Care has to be taken to make sure users know what they do when performing an automated valuation procedure. Outlook. We see three ways for extending the approach, namely: (i) become part of a toolbox of different valuation procedures; (ii) explicitly cope with uncertainty, and (iii) include different values for normalisation, in different regions worldwide. The software will be made available also in a stand alone version.Goal, Scope and Background. Assessing future energy and transport systems is of major importance for providing timely information for decision makers. In the discussion of technology options, fuel cells are often portrayed as attractive options for power plants and automotive applications. However, when analysing these systems, the LCA analyst is confronted with methodological problems, particularly with data gaps and the requirement of an anticipation of future developments. This series of two papers aims at providing a methodological framework for assessing future energy and transport systems (Part 1) and applies this to the two major application areas of fuel cells (Part 2). Methods. To allow the LCA of future energy and transport systems forecasting tools like, amongst others, cost estimation methods and process simulation of systems are investigated with respect to the applicability in LCAs of future systems (Part 1). The manufacturing process of an SOFC stack is used as an illustration for the forecasting procedure. In Part 2, detailed LCAs of fuel cell power plants and power trains are carried out including fuel (hydrogen, methanol, gasoline, diesel and natural gas) and energy converter production. To compare it with competing technologies, internal combustion engines (automotive applications) and reciprocating engines, gas turbines and combined cycle plants (stationary applications) are analysed as well. Results and Discussion. Principally, the investigated forecasting methods are suitable for future energy system assessment. The selection of the best method depends on different factors such as required ressources, quality of the results and flexibility. In particular, the time horizon of the investigation determines which forecasting tool may be applied. Environmentally relevant process steps exhibiting a significant time dependency shall always be investigated using different independent forecasting tools to ensure stability of the results. The results of the LCA (Part 2) underline that principally, fuel cells offer advantages in the impact categories which are typically dominated by pollutant emissions, such as acidification and eutrophication, whereas for global warming and primary energy demand, the situation depends on a set of parameters such as driving cycle and fuel economy ratio in mobile applications and thermal/total efficiencies in stationary applications. For the latter impact categories, the choice of the primary energy carrier for fuel production (renewable or fossil) dominates the impact reduction, With increasing efficiency and improving emission performance of the conventional systems, the competition regarding all impact categories in both mobile and stationary applications is getting even stronger. The production of the fuel cell system is of low overall significance in stationary applications, whereas in automotive applications, the production of the fuel cell power train and required materials leads to increased impacts compared to internal combustion engines and thus reduces the achievable environmental impact reduction. Recommendations and Perspectives. The rapid technological and energy economic development will bring further advances for both fuel cells and conventional energy converters. Therefore, LCAs at such an early stage of the market development can only be considered preliminary. It is an essential requirement to accompany the ongoing research and development with iterative LCAs, constantly pointing at environmental hot spots and bottlenecks.Goal, Scope and Background. The goal of this paper is to present the modeling of life cycle inventory (LCI) for electric energy production and delivery in Brazil for the reference year 2000 by application of ISO 14040. Site specific data along with sector production data have been combined to construct an energy production model, which has been applied to emissions estimation. Background-data of all the inputs and outputs from the system have been inventoried as follows: gross electric energy generation, installed nameplate capacity, flooded area, losses, emissions to air / water, process waste, used fuel, efficiency and land use. Main Features. In Brazil, electricity is supplied to the various regions by an interconnected system composed of 418 electric companies, consisting of 389 hydraulic power plants and 29 thermal power stations. Due to this enormous number of companies, life cycle inventory for the electricity grid mix was developed on the basis of the following hierarchy: information received from companies (15), data from Brazilian Industrial Information System for the energy Sector (SIESE) and Brazilian Ministries. The functional unit was 1,000 MJ (278 kWh) of electricity distributed to electricity users. The main emissions from power stations, as well as those from fuel production, were investigated. The hydraulic process was not considered emission-free - a model was proposed where emissions of renewable CO2 and CH4 (hydro) are attributed to the degradation of plants submerged in the reservoir areas. Result. The production and distribution of 1,000 MJ of electricity by the interconnected system in Brazil requires approx. 1,600 MJ of process energy, 230 kg of water (evaporated at thermal plants), 116 m(3) of waterflow through the turbines, 13 kg of coal, 5 kg of biotic reserves and 0.25 m(2) a of land use. Emissions related to the 1,000 MJ electricity distributed were 18 kg of non-renewable CO2 17 kg of renewable CO2, 540 g of CH4, 575 g of NOx, 116 g of SO2, 149 g of CO2 among others. Thermal power stations are the main contributors to these emissions, except for CH4 and renewable CO2 being contributions from coal production and hydraulic power plants, respectively. Conclusions. In spite of considering the emissions of CO2 and CH4 by the submerged plants in the flooded area of dams in hydropower stations, it has been shown that electric energy production is a very clean process due to the characteristics of the electric energy production in Brazil - 93.5% hydraulic. This means 1,000 MJ of delivered electricity produces approx. 34 kg of CO2, being 18 kg (53%) of non-renewable CO2 emitted by fossil fuel burning at thermal power plants that participate with only 6.5% of the electric energy production in Brazil. This was the first tentative model to express electric energy generation and distribution in Brazil in terms of LCA. In future, a more detailed study should be made in order to improve this model. Outlook. A complementary paper will be produced in which future scenarios of the Brazilian electricity grid mix will be discussed, including possible alternatives to minimize the environmental impacts of hydropower plants.Goal, Scope and Background. In this article, the Life Cycle Impact Assessment of the average passenger vehicle of the Netherlands is performed, with emphasis on the current dismantling and recycling practice in this country. From calculations on recovery rates of the several material streams from ELV (End-of-Live Vehicle) recycling, it seems that attaining the European ELV legislation recycling targets (Directive 2000/53/EC 2000) is very difficult, even for countries with advanced collection and recycling infrastructures such as the Netherlands. An LCA of the current average passenger vehicle of the Netherlands, including a detailed modelling of the recovery and recycling should form a sound basis for comparison with alternative automotive life cycle designs and legislation efforts. Model and System Definition. An average passenger vehicle is defined, having average weight and material composition. A cradle to grave approach is taken, including all relevant upstream processes for the production of materials and fuels, and the return of the recycled materials to the material cycles in the EOL (End-of-Life) phase. A particularity of this model is the detailed description of the Dutch collection and recycling infrastructure, with current data for the shredding, separation and metallurgical recycling processes (ARN 2000, Barkhof 1998, Chapman 1983, Pilchert et al. 1994, Worrel et al. 1992). Results and Discussion. According to the Eco-indicator 99 (EI99) (Ministerie van V.R.O.M 1999), the largest environmental impact of the passenger vehicle's life cycle occurs in the use phase over 90% -, due to the combustion and depletion of fossil fuels. This is in agreement of previous studies (Kasai 2000, Kanesaki 2000). Also in the other life cycle phases, the use of fossil fuels is the dominant impact, even for the production phase. Resource depletion due to the use of the materials employed in the vehicle causes a comparatively lower environmental impact, namely due to the high recovery rate and efficiency of the metallurgical recycling, that balances for about 30% the total impacts of the materials production and use. NOx emission was one of the smallest emissions to air in quantity, but was responsible for 36% of the impact of the life cycle, while CO2 was the largest emission to air but caused only 6% of the environmental impact. Conclusion and Recommendation. Although there is a growing awareness and concern on increasing the recyclability of vehicles, the use phase still has the largest environmental impact of the vehicle's life cycle. A life cycle assessment can be a Sound basis to evaluate and compare design alternatives to increase the sustainabiliry of passenger vehicles. The ASR (Automotive shredder residue) is currently the greatest concern with regard to the recovery targets. It is a large amount of materials (about 32 wt.%), difficult and costly to recycle, and thermal recovery is limited to a maximum of lSwt.% in 1015 by the European ELV legislation. joint efforts from the automotive industry and legislative institutions are required to find a sensible solution. LCA can be a useful tool to support legislative decisions, as purely weight-based recovery definitions are not adequate to evaluate the sustainability of the automobile life cycle.The new IMPACT 2002+ life cycle impact assessment methodology proposes a feasible implementation of a combined midpoint/ damage approach, linking all types of life cycle inventory results (elementary flows and other interventions) via 14 midpoint categories to four damage categories. For IMPACT 2002+, new concepts and methods have been developed, especially for the comparative assessment of human toxicity and ecotoxicity. Human Damage Factors are calculated for carcinogens and non-carcinogens, employing intake fractions, best estimates of dose-response slope factors, as well as severities. The transfer of contaminants into the human food is no more based on consumption surveys, but accounts for agricultural and livestock production levels. Indoor and outdoor air emissions can be compared and the intermittent character of rainfall is considered. Both human toxicity and ecotoxicity effect factors are based on mean responses rather than on conservative assumptions. Other midpoint categories are adapted from existing characterizing methods (Eco-indicator 99 and CML 2002). All midpoint scores are expressed in units of a reference substance and related to the four damage categories human health, ecosystem quality, climate change, and resources. Normalization can be performed either at midpoint or at damage level. The IMPACT 2002+ method presently provides characterization factors for almost 1500 different LCI-results, which can be downloaded at http://www.epfl.ch/impactAim, Scope and Background. When materials are recycled they are made available for use for several future life cycles and can therefore replace virgin material more than just once. In order to analyse the optimal waste management system for a given material, the authors have analysed the material flows in a life cycle perspective. It is important to distinguish this approach for material flow analysis for a given material from life cycle analysis of products. A product life cycle analysis analyses the product system from cradle to grave, but uses some form of allocation in order to separate the life cycle of one product from another in cases where component materials are recycled. This paper does not address allocation of burdens between different product systems, but rather focuses on methodology for decision making for waste management systems where the optimal waste management system for a given material is analysed. The focus here is the flow of the given material from cradle (raw material extraction) to grave (the material, or its inherent energy, is no longer available for use). The limitation on the number of times materials can be recycled is set by either the recycling rate, or the technical properties of the recycled material. Main Features. This article describes a mathematical geometric progression approach that can be used to expand the system boundaries and allow for recycling a given number of times. Case studies for polyethylene and paperboard are used to illustrate the importance of including these aspects when part of the Goal and Scope for the LCA study is to identify which waste management treatment options are best for a given material. The results and discussion examine the different conclusions that can be reached about which waste management option is most environmentally beneficial when the higher burdens and benefits of recycling several times are taken into account. Results. In order to assess the complete picture of the burdens and benefits arising from recycling the system boundaries must be expanded to allow for recycling many times. A mathematical geometric progression approach manages to take into account the higher burdens and benefits arising from recycling several times. If one compares different waste management systems, e.g. energy recovery with recycling, without expanding the system to include the complete effects of material recycling one can reach a different conclusion about which waste management option is preferred. Conclusions. When the purpose of the study is to compare different waste management options, it is important that the system boundaries are expanded in order to include several recycling loops where this is a physical reality. The equations given in this article can be used to include these recycling loops. The error introduced by not expanding the system boundaries can be significant. This error can be large enough to change the conclusions of a comparative study, such that material recycling followed by incineration is a much better option than waste incineration directly. Recommendations and Outlook. When comparing waste management solutions, where material recycling is a feasible option, it is important to include the relevant number of recycling loops to ensure that the benefits of material recycling are not underestimated. The methodology presented in this article should be used in future comparative studies for strategic decision-making for waste management. The approach should not be used for LCAs for product systems without due care, as this could lead to double counting of the benefits of recycling (depending on the goal and scope of the analysis). For materials where the material cycle is more of a closed loop and one cannot truly say that recycled materials replace virgin materials, a more sophisticated approach will be required, taking into account the fact that recycled materials will only replace a certain proportion of virgin materials.Goal, Scope, and Background. Despite documentation of product lifetime, performance, and system dependency issues, requirements for specifying functional units and reference flows in LCA have not been developed. The ISO standards simply note that selection between functions is dependent on the goals and scope of the study, that the functional unit must be clearly defined and measurable, and that the reference flows are the amount of product necessary per functional unit. The goal of this work is to suggest and demonstrate the use a set of requirements for specifying the functional unit and reference flows for comparative LCAs. Methods. The suggested requirements were developed to address the lifetime, performance, and system dependency issues described in LCA literature and to ensure adequate information is available for the interpretation of results. Also, well developed methods for conceptual design were used to formulate aspects of the requirements to improve comparability of alternatives. A case study demonstrates the use of the requirements in materials selection for aircraft design. In the case study, functional units are specified for the component being designed and for the aircraft. Similarly, reference flows for the component, component interfaces, and the aircraft are quantified based on parametric and linear estimation models. Finally, an interpretation of data quality, uncertainty, assumptions, and limitations are presented. Results and Discussion. The requirements are shown to be particularly important when the product be assessed operates as part of a larger system and when there are performance differences among alternatives. The case study illustrates the importance of including consideration of system and interface materials and energy flows in the comparison of aircraft components. Specifically, because the mass of interface materials is estimated as more than the difference in subsystem masses, differences in the variable mass of the aircraft and the lifetime fuel consumption are accounted for in the reference flows. Conclusions. Some practitioners have recognized difficulties in accounting for product lifetime, performance, and system dependencies in LCA, even though a set of requirements has not been included in literature or in the ISO standards. The suggested requirements presented in this work were found to be useful in accounting for differences in materials and energy flows and in providing a transparent presentation, assessment, and interpretation of reference flows and ultimately in the LCA results. Recommendations and Outlook. This work is significant because the specification of the functional unit and the definition of the reference flows dictate the materials and processes included in the LCA. Future work is needed to test the general applicability of the suggested requirements to a wide variety of product systems.Background, Goal and Scope. System expansion is a method used to avoid co-product allocation. Up to this point in time it has seldom been used in LCA studies of food products, although food production systems often are characterised by closely interlinked sub-systems. One of the most important allocation problems that occurs in LCAs of agricultural products is the question of how to handle the co-product beef from milk production since almost half of the beef production in the EU is derived from co-products from the dairy sector. The purpose of this paper is to compare different methods of handling co-products when dividing the environmental burden of the milk production system between milk and the co-products meat and surplus calves. Main Features. This article presents results from an LCA of organic milk production in which different methods of handling the co-products are examined. The comparison of different methods of co-product handling is based on a Swedish LCA case study of milk production where economic allocation between milk and meat was initially used. Allocation of the co-products meat and surplus calves was avoided by expanding the milk system. LCA data were collected from another case study where the alternative way of producing meat was analysed, i.e. using a beef cow that produces one calf per annum to be raised for one and a half year. The LCA of beef production was included in the milk system. A discussion is conducted focussing on the importance of modelling and analysing milk and beef production in an integrated way when foreseeing and planning the environmental consequences of manipulating milk and beef production systems. Results. This study shows that economic allocation between milk and beef favours the product beef. When system expansion is performed, the environmental benefits of milk production due to its co-products of surplus calves and meat become obvious. This is especially connected to the impact categories that describe the potential environmental burden of biogenic emissions such as methane and ammonia and nitrogen losses due to land use and its fertilising. The reason for this is that beef production in combination with milk can be carried out with fewer animals than in sole beef production systems. Conclusion, Recommendation and Perspective. Milk and beef production systems are closely connected. Changes in milk production systems will cause alterations in beef production systems. it is concluded that in prospective LCA studies, system expansion should be performed to obtain adequate information of the environmental consequences of manipulating production systems that are interlinked to each other.Goal, Scope and Background. An extensive life cycle inventory of the maintenance of floor coverings has been carried out for the professional cleaning sector in Sweden. Different maintenance methods for linoleum and PVC were inventoried. The objective has been to develop a model for estimating the resource use in the Swedish professional floor cleaning and maintenance sector. Several important actors involved in the Swedish professional cleaning sector participated in the inventory. An agreement could be reached for a limited number of methods and products. The result can be regarded as representative for the maintenance of linoleum and PVC in respect to professional maintenance in Sweden. Methods, Results and Discussion. The maintenance was divided into two different types: periodical and frequent maintenance. It showed that 36 maintenance systems were relevant (each system is a combination of periodical and frequent maintenance) and that the expected impacts from maintenance could be found through an inventor), of these 36 systems. The resource use for each system was inventoried and pertaining LCI data was collected. However, it showed that the resource use for the maintenance systems could not be quantified without estimating three so called 'application-specific context parameters', which were not depending on the maintenance system but related to the specific type of premises. The three parameters were: the frequency of the periodical maintenance (P); the frequency of the frequent maintenance (P), and; the estimated service life (L) of the floor covering. The prediction of a specific resource use for maintenance of a specific floor covering could thereby not be carried out without the knowledge of the three application-specific parameters. However, all collected data were supplied to a specifically developed calculation program, which made it possible to estimate the impact from the 36 maintenance systems for different choices of estimated service life and maintenance intervals for the periodical and frequent maintenance. Approximately 1300 different scenarios were provided, using different values for F, P and L, respectively, and compared in order to answer several questions of concern to the professional cleaning sector in Sweden. Conclusions. Some of the most important conclusions generated from the scenarios were: The impacts from maintenance proved to be significant compared to the impacts from the floor. In several cases, wax-based systems turned out to be preferable to polish systems. However, the result is sensitive to the chosen cleaning method. When polish systems are chosen, the choice of floor covering may influence the usage phase in a significant way. Recommendation and Outlook. A framework has been provided as a base for further development. Possibly, the data could be improved and supplied with data of other products and materials. Even other types of floor coverings may be considered. The focus has primarily been on energy use and emission of chemicals recorded as dry substance. It is desirable with a development of a method for quantitative assessment of the actual chemicals.Goal, Scope and Background. Assessing future energy and transport systems is of major importance for providing timely information for decision makers. In the discussion of technology options, fuel cells are often portrayed as attractive options for power plants and automotive applications. However, when analysing these systems, the LCA analyst is confronted with methodological problems, particularly with data gaps and the requirement of forecasting and anticipation of future developments. This series of two papers aims at providing a methodological framework for assessing future energy and transport systems (Part 1) and applies this to the two major application areas of fuel cells (Part 2). Methods. To allow the LCA of future energy and transport systems, forecasting tools like, amongst others, cost estimation methods and process simulation of systems are investigated with respect to the applicability in LCAs of future systems (Part 1). The manufacturing process of an SOFC stack is used as an illustration for the forecasting procedure. In Part 2, detailed LCAs of fuel cell power plants and power trains are carried out including fuel (hydrogen, methanol, gasoline, diesel and natural gas) and energy converter production. To compare it with competing technologies, internal combustion engines (automotive applications) and reciprocating engines, gas turbines and combined cycle plants (stationary applications) are also analysed. Results and Discussion. Principally, the investigated forecasting methods are suitable for future energy system assessment. The selection of the best method depends on different factors such as required ressources, quality of the results and flexibility. In particular, the time horizon of the investigation determines which forecasting tool may be applied. Environmentally relevant process steps exhibiting a significant time dependency shall always be investigated using different independent forecasting tools to ensure stability of the results. The results of the LCA underline that, in general, fuel cells offer advantages in the impact categories usually dominated by pollutant emissions, such as acidification and eutrophication, whereas for global warming and primary energy demand, the situation depends on a set of parameters such as driving cycle and fuel economy ratio in mobile applications and thermal/total efficiencies in stationary applications. For the latter impact categories, the choice of the primary energy carrier for fuel production (renewable or fossil) dominates the impact reduction. With increasing efficiency and improving emission performance of the conventional systems, the competition in both mobile and stationary applications is getting even stronger. The production of the fuel cell system is of low overall significance in stationary applications, whereas in vehicles, the lower life-time of the vehicle leads to a much higher significance of the power train production. Recommendations and Perspectives. In future, rapid technological and energy economic development will bring further advances for both fuel cells and conventional energy converters. Therefore, LCAs at such an early stage of the market development can only be considered preliminary. It is an essential requirement to accompany the ongoing research and development with iterative LCAs, constantly pointing at environmental hot spots and bottlenecks.The subcommittee for Life Cycle Assessment of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (Verband der Automobilindustrie - VDA) developed a Data Collection Format for Life Cycle Assessment which has been adopted by the VDA Environmental Management Committee, representing not only the German automobile manufacturers, but also their development partners, the suppliers, and manufacturers of trailers, body superstructures and containers. This paper introduces the background and some main aspects of the VDA LCA data collection format. All documents including a manual, a checklist and the data collection format as such can be downloaded from the VDA website (http://www.vda.de/ en/vda/intern/organisation/abteilungen/umwelt_04.html).Great efforts have recently resulted in increasing the environmental performance of industrial products. However, to obtain more sustainable solutions, environmental properties must meet customer requirements. This paper introduces a novel approach for identifying environmental improvement options by taking into account customer preferences. The Life Cycle Assessment methodology is applied to evaluate the environmental pro le of a product, using eco-Indicator99 as the impact assessment method. A fuzzy approach based on the House of Quality in the Quality Function Deployment methodology provides a more quantitative method for evaluating the imprecision of the customer preferences. Experimental membership functions have been obtained directly from users and design team members through an opinion poll. The proposed methodology has been applied to identify environmental improvement options by taking into account customer opinions of an office table and identifying three product components where the environmental performance of the table could be improved.In this paper, the Life Cycle Assessment.(LCA) methodology is applied to Portuguese printing and writing paper in order to compare the environmental impact of the use of two kinds of fuels (heavy fuel oil and natural gas) in the pulp and paper production processes. The results of inventory analysis and impact assessment show that the pulp and paper production processes play an important role in almost all of the analysed parameters, which do not always result in an important contribution to the corresponding impact categories. The substitution of heavy fuel oil by natural gas in the pulp and paper production processes seems to be environmentally positive. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle design (LCD) framework for enhancing design analysis and decision making is demonstrated through a collaborative effort between the University of Michigan, a cross functional team at Ford, and the US Environmental Protection Agency. The LCD framework was used to evaluate three air intake manifold designs: a sand cast aluminum, brazed aluminum tubular, and nylon composite. Life cycle inventory, life cycle cost and product/process performance analyses highlighted significant tradeoffs among alternative manifolds, with respect to system design requirements. The life cycle inventory indicated that the sand-cast aluminum manifold consumed the most life cycle energy (1798 MJ) compared to the tubular brazed,aluminium (1131 MJ) and nylon composite (928 MJ) manifolds. The cast aluminum manifold generated the least life cycle solid waste of 218 kg per manifold, whereas the brazed aluminum tubular and nylon composite manifolds generated comparable quantities of 418 kg and 391 kg, respectively. Material production accounted for 70% of the total life cycle solid waste for the brazed tubular manifold, while auto shredder residue was responsible for half the total waste for the nylon composite design. The life cycle cost analysis estimated Ford manufacturing costs, customer gasoline costs, and end-of-life management costs. The nylon composite manifold had the highest estimated manufacturing costs but the least use phase gasoline costs. Significant end-of-life management revenues from aluminum recycling would accrue to Ford under automobile take back legislation. A total of 20 performance requirements were used to evaluate each design alternative. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to analyse the environmental impact of future supply chains for dairy products. A scenario technique was chosen because scenarios can yield information about the environmental consequences of certain lines of action or developments in a system. To quantify the effects of future systems, a mathematical model of the milk supply chain was constructed and used to simulate possible scenarios. The model was based mainly on life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The results show that any consideration of the environmental effects of the milk supply chain must consider the entire chain. The amount of packaging materials used is an important factor, as is the transportation of the dairy products to households. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In the present study, the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) for the comparison of two egg packages, from polystyrene and recycled paper, is presented. The input and output streams of mass and energy are examined and the environmental impacts associated with the two systems are analyzed. The application of LCA by using EcoIndicator 95 has made possible the comparison of the environmental impacts of two egg packages. The results of this LCA study are discussed and reveal that the PS packages contribute more to acidification potential, winter and summer smog, while recycled paper egg packages contribute more to heavy metal and carcinogenic substances impact. Nevertheless, it seems that paper eggcups have less environmental impact than the polystyrene ones with the assumption that the accuracy of the results is confined by the credibility of European databases used for primary data. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This Australian study presents the findings of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) that examined whether a re-use and recycle strategy for a plastic-based packaging that substantially reduces the quantity of waste to landfill would also reduce the overall environmental burden. The resources and environmental effects assessed over the life of each of the packagings included fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and photochemical oxidant precursors. The results demonstrate that recycle and reuse strategies for plastic-based products can yield significant environmental benefits. The study also includes some interesting findings regarding the relative contributions of transportation and construction energy, and the potential benefits of adjusting the impact assessment results to take into account the spatial variation in the significance of some environmental effects. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Normalisation provides a measure of the relative contribution from a product system to one or more environmental problems. Total yearly emissions for a reference year in a reference region are normally used to calculate normalisation figures. This paper provides up-to-date normalisation figures for the Netherlands in 1997/1998, Western Europe in 1995 and the world in 1990 and 1995. Impact categories considered were depletion of abiotic resources, land competition, global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical ozone formation, radiation and toxicity. In all cases, a limited set of emissions or extractions are dominant contributors to the normalisation scores. Although much effort was spent on collecting emissions data and characterisation factors, particularly normalisation scores for radiation and toxicity remain considerably uncertain. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.In a life cycle assessment (LCA) study, the identification and quantification of the inputs and outputs of unit processes or gate-to-gate modules are essential. In general, however, many chemical industries are composed of very complex systems with internally recurring unit processes where the upstream input to a unit process may include the downstream output from a latter unit process. Therefore, it is rather difficult to identify and quantify the inputs/outputs for those internally recurring unit processes, respectively, for life cycle inventory analysis purposes. In this study, several calculation methods which are applicable to complex systems with internally recurring unit processes are proposed as follows: (1) Determination of the inputs/outputs associated with each unit process by using simultaneous equations. In this proposal, any parameter linked to an upstream process is treated as a 'variable' and the set of other parameters is considered to be a 'constant'. (2) Determination of the inputs/outputs by using appropriate cut-off criteria based on the cumulative total mass contribution. (3) Determination of the inputs/outputs by using appropriate cut-off criteria based on the number of occurrences of an individual recurring set of unit. processes. The results from these methodologies are analyzed using a hypothetical example and an actual case from the petrochemical industry. These methods enhance the reliability and consideration of on-site information in recurring unit processes. In particular, the determination of the inputs/outputs associated with each unit process by Using simultaneous equations does not add assumptions regarding cut-off criteria selection and provides the advantages of time conservation, consistency and affinity to on-site consideration. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents the main results of a recent study on sustainable use of products. It reveals that strategies of use intensification and useful life extension are environmentally beneficial. Moreover, analysis of household washing and winter sports illustrated that successful implementation of sustainable use patterns occurs as a shift of use regimes. Such regimes are the result of a complex interplay of supply and demand side factors, relationship among actors, technical trajectories, organisational structures etc. One decisive factor is the presence of strategic players, so called "change agents". In addition, four user types have been identified in a representative survey ("ownership-oriented", "open-minded", "consumption-oriented", "low interest") to which use intensification and useful life extension can be targeted. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is conducted for two types of aluminum alloy bush bearings used for automotive transmissions. Equivalent CO2 emission (ECE) is used as the index of the environmental impact for global warming, and is compared through their manufacturing processes. Two types of bush bearings, which are in the market, show little difference in ECE, irrespective of different lining structure if comparison is made by taking a single piece of bearing as the functional unit. However, when the functional unit is defined so that relative life of the bearings based on their anti-wear potential is taken into account, reduction of environmental impact by higher wear resistance of the bearing material and by improved formation of lubricating oil can be estimated quantitatively. This LCA procedure is expected to be a useful tool for an environmentally friendly design of tribo-components.One side effect of the concentration in the dairy sector caused by increasing competition is the creation of larger production holdings. The question arises whether the longer transport distances for raw materials and end products also lead to higher environmental pollution. Life cycle analysis is a good instrument for describing the effects of the dairy factory capacity on ecologically relevant parameters like raw material consumption, air pollution/emissions, etc.. For a summarizing assessment of such descriptions, possibly including ecological effects, several goal dimensions have to be taken into account within the frame of a Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making. For a methodical improvement of the more or less subjective methods applied up to now the use of a methodology from the Data Envelopment Analysis is presented and implemented at the example of model dairies of different sizes. In a first step all pareto-optimal problem solutions are detected to be classified in a second step with the aid of goal weights. These goal weights can be represented by scaling the different goal measuring dimensions. Simultaneously they fulfill the function of opportunity costs of a simple decisional problem. The represented method delivers a complete solution of the exemplary problem and can be used for further issues in the frame of MCDM.Four Cleaning-In-Place (CIP) methods for dairies were compared using life cycle assessment (LCA). The methods were conventional alkaline, acid cleaning with hot ater disinfection, one-phase alkaline cleaning with acid chemical disinfection, enzyme-based cleaning with acid chemical disinfection and the conventional method with disinfection by cold nitric acid at pH 2. Production of detergents, transport, the user phase in the dairy and waste management of containers were included. The user phase was found to be the most important part of the life cycle. The CIP methods with small volumes and low temperatures. Such as enzyme-based cleaning and one-phase alkaline cleaning. turned Out to be the best alternatives for the impact categories energy use. global warming, acidification, eutrophication and photo-oxidant Formation. Milk residues flushed out in the rinsing phase ere the main contributor to eutrophication, but the phosphorus and nitrogen in the detergents also influenced the results. Evaluation of toxic substances poses a methodological problem in LCA. In this study. detergents partly composed of toxic substances ere included. and the overall assessment vas that the one-phase alkaline cleaning method was preferable from an environmental point of A qualitative assessment of toxicity was performed. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. on behalf of Swiss Society of Food Science and Technology.The materials included in this paper were originally produced as contributions to Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development, a project of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, UK. The project was made possible by the support of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). The RED and the WBCSD own the copyright. Extracts from these documents may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes without permission provided full acknowledgement of the copyright holders is given.This paper is adapted from the Europena Aluminium Association (EAA) document 'Key features: How to treat aluminium in LCAs, with special regard to recycling issues', which can be found at www.aluminium.org/environment/lca&methodology.asp. It is reprinted with permission.Weighting in LCIA (life cycle impact assessment) can be classified into two types: midpoint and endpoint. To improve the transparency and reliability of impact assessment, the development of the endpoint approach has been required internationally in recent years. A methodology that enables the assessment of physical damage for Japanese products has to be developed, because the actual damage is dependent on the emission area and exposed area. Regarding LCIA for materials, though some studies have already been performed, there is no consensus among the results of various methods because of the lack of reliability and transparency in conventional methodologies. This paper describes the results of a case study for steel sheets applying the Japanese endpoint-type LCIA method. We adopted the DALY concept to indicate the damage to human health. It is found that the subjective judgments can be reduced maximally by applying the endpoint approach.The environmental impact assessment of the Imperial Smelting Process for metallic zinc and lead production in Shaoguan Smelter, China, was carried out by the life cycle assessment method. The detailed inventory analysis of the Input/Output in the process during 1998-2000 was conducted and the allocation was done among the main products of zinc, lead and sulfuric acid, according to the system expansion and substitution principle. The environmental impacts were assessed by using the following five Eco-indicators: Gross Energy Requirement (GER), Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Heavy Metal Toxicity (HMT) and Solid Waste Burden (SWB). The results from this study are useful to address the environmental situation of the technology practice in this smelter, and provide a scientific basis for the further improvement.One aspect of decision making in water recycling is the need to evaluate the environmental performance of different treatment technologies. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is identified here as a suitable initial tool that can be used to address a wide range of potential environmental impacts caused by each technology under study over their life-time. In this paper, the results of a case study in which LCA is used in evaluating three water recycling technologies are reported. One of the findings from the case study is that LCA fails to account for the potential accumulation of toxic substance which is a major concern in water recycling, particularly when applications such as irrigation are of interest. A Toxic Substance Accumulation (TSA) prediction method is described which was tested with the same treatment technologies assessed in the LCA case study. The information on land use impacts obtained from the LCA study including Terrestrial Ecotoxicity Potential (TETP) and Salinisation Potential (SP) is compared with the information derived from the TSA method. It is found that the additional information obtained from the TSA method adds value to the environmental impact assessment of water recycling at both process and policy making levels and also assists in addressing the issue of sustainability of water recycling practice.A case study was done in order to investigate which of two compared technologies for chemical recovery in the pulp industry is environmentally favourable. The means to answer this question was to compare life cycle inventory, LCI, data of a recovery boiler (RB) system, to that of black liquor gasification (BLG) system, with the help of life cycle assessment, LCA, methodology. The chemical recovery processes by themselves are not the dominant contributors to the life cycle environmental effects. Instead, the production chains of the chemical and energy inputs to the processes dominate. An analysis based on current life cycle impact assessment, LCIA, environmental performance indices gives an unequivocal answer to the main question, although the strength of the answer varies between different impact assessment methods. However, the BLG system is better for the environment. If the BLG system would switch from oil to biofuel in its causticising plant, it would become clearly superior.An LCA of organic potatoes cultivated in southern Sweden was carried out to gain more knowledge about the environmental impact and resource use along the food chain. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method for analysis and assessment of the potential environmental impact caused by products (ISO 14040). Included in the study were the production of inputs to agriculture, agricultural production, sorting and packaging, distribution and the household phase. The use of energy, water and other resources were also included as well as basic environmental impact categories such as global warming, acidification, eutrophication, toxicity, ozone depletion and photo-oxidant formation. A major finding was that the agricultural production accounted for almost all the emissions contributing to eutrophication and acidification. Other findings were that agricultural production, production of packaging materials and the household phase were the main contributors to global warming, while the energy use was rather evenly distributed among the life cycle stages. The primary improvement options identified in the study were to reduce nitrogen emissions contributing to acidification and eutrophication and to reduce potato losses due to poor quality. The organic potato yields are generally very low, typically about 60% of the conventional levels. Increased yields would be beneficial from an environmental point of view.When you consider the future of our planet, energy problem and environmental problem will appear. The authors propose its solution, which is utilization of deserts for power plant by PV technology. 100 MW VLS-PV systems which arc fixed flat plate system in the world deserts and sun-tracking system in the Gobi desert are assumed and evaluated in detail by using Life Cycle Assessment. It means that the VLS-PV systems are evaluated in terms of its input and output from cradle to grave. As a result, 5.4 Cent/kWh cost, 1.6 years energy payback time, and 12 g-C/kWh CO2 emission rate for Sun tracking system are obtained in the Gobi desert case. Of cause, fixed flat plate systems get the low cost and low energy requirement. The Very Large-Scale sun tracking Photovoltaic power generation system is very promising for the energy resource saving and environmentalSustainable development is one of the focus issues in modem society, and its kernel is to keep society and economy development harmonious with nature resources and environmental quality. As a main wealth of human beings, buildings impact environment significantly and thus take significant responsibility in global sustainable development, so we must diminish the building environmental impact when we construct a benign living and working environment, in which building environmental assessment occupies a crucial position. This paper gives a brief overview about existing environmental assessment methodologies for buildings and the tools that support them in advanced countries, especially the key issues of life cycle assessment method which employed for buildings and their services systems, the discrepancies compared with common environment assessment, and the problems still persisting in existing methodologies. Finally, several advices about building environmental assessment are put forward, which will lead to a great improvement for the practicability of building sustainable development.Introduction of zero emission concepts nowadays has opened the way for possible commercial markets for battery-powered electric vehicles (EV). In comparison to gasoline-powered cars, these vehicles produce CO2 emission half of that gasoline-powered and almost similar amount in comparison to hybrid electric vehicles over their useful lives. Since most of the emissions in electric vehicles are most likely attributable to production of their very large batteries, environmental consequences of producing and disposing of EV batteries may be significant. The present study aims to analyze environmental impacts associated with recycling and waste management of four electric battery technologies likely to be used in the near future using abridged life cycle assessment (LCA) which produces easily comprehended information about each life stage of a product. Secondly, it aims to select the most environmentally benign battery technology by considering their manufacturing issues (e.g. process and materials compatibility, resource consumption, cost/economic feasibility), political and social viability (e.g. regulatory status, community impacts, global impacts), environmental impacts (e.g. local air, water, soil, solid waste) and exposure and toxicity potential (e.g. community exposure, occupational exposure, environmental exposure, human acute and chronic toxicity). The EVs' battery technologies considered here are lead acid (PbA), nickel-cadmium (NiCd), nickel metal hydride (NiMH) and sodium-sulfur (NaS). In this study, we compared potential health and environmental impacts of four battery technologies and focused on recycling and waste disposal life stages, with an emphasis on design factors that could prevent or increase impacts. With regard to the evaluation of battery technologies, since the data used are often contradictory, variable, uncertain and sometimes impossible to validate independently, fuzzy linguistic approach is applied here to address this data ambiguity and its results are also being compared to the ranking obtained using the well-known analytical hierarchy planning (AHP) approach. Based on AHP evaluation, the recycling assessment ranks the batteries studied in the following preferential order: NiMH > NaS > PbA > NiCd. In terms of disposal, NiMH and NaS batteries are of greater concern because of landfill impacts while both NiCd and PbA batteries are considered the most favourable. Almost similar results were also obtained using fuzzy linguistic approach.The technical and environmental performance of a solar water heater (SWH) is examined using the method of life cycle analysis (LCA). The present LCA study quantifies the environmental benefits of the installation of a SWH. Solar thermal heating produces no emissions during operation but some small levels of emissions are produced during the manufacture and installation of components and systems, The study examines the manufacturing stages of the SWH and records resource consumption and waste streams to the environment. The system boundary includes the production of raw materials such as steel, glass, copper, aluminium, glass fibber and polyurethane insulators, the manufacturing of the various parts of the SWH such as the solar collector and the heat storage tank, and finally the assembly process. The functional unit chosen is 1 MW of produced hot water. The environmental impacts consider in the study are the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, heavy metals, carcinogens, winter and summer smog. The impacts are normalised and evaluated based on weighting factors. The acidification effect has the largest contribution to the total environmental score impact. LCA is a powerful tool in the evaluation of the environmental efficiency of processes. The produced results can be very useful in decision-making by providing a quantification basis for assessing potential improvements in environmental performance of an energy system throughout its life cycle.The presented project, which aims at the development of tools to support waste management planning and optimisation in European cities, in particular cities from EU Accession Countries, has been initiated within the European Commission's Fifth Framework Programme: Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development Work Programme - Key action: City of tomorrow and Cultural Heritage. The Consortium of this project consists of twelve Partners, both from the European States well as EU Accession States, with TU Darmstadt as a coordinator. Although the project is supported by the European Commission, the content provided here is a responsibility of the project partners and does not necessarily represent the opinion of the European Community. The main objective of the project is to develop two tools: (i) a prognostic model to predict quantity and composition of municipal waste and (ii) a performance assessment system for alternative waste management scenarios. The latter will consist of a set of qualitative sustainability criteria along with quantitative impact indicators enabling assessment of waste management strategies. The three sustainability aspects to be considered are environmental, economic and social aspects. Targeted end-users are municipalities, as decision makers in waste management planning. Deliveries of the project, both a waste prognostic model and a waste management system assessment model will be verified in six cities in Southern and Eastern Europe. In this paper the concept of the assessment model is described in more detail. Model development within the project consortium is split to three areas of assessment: environmental, economic and social, each supervised by another project partner. In this paper solely the undertaken approach of the environmental assessment is presented. One of the major challenges of the EU Accession Countries in waste management area is to comply with the European waste legislation. However, the targets of EU waste policy can be achieved in more or less efficient ways. The goal of waste management system is to effectively manage waste through resource conservation, optimise the use of waste treatment technology and limit waste disposal. The proposed assessment method will be based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach i.e. the borders of assessment will be extended to account for all relevant aspects resulting from a waste management system. The LCA methodology typically used for environmental assessment of a product is complex and its results are difficult to interpret for a non expert. Therefore, in this project an attempt will be made to developThe international effort for the protection and restoration of the environment includes serious intervention on the energy system, exploitation of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) being the most important among others. Until now solar domestic hot water systems (DSHWS) have been the most widely used RES system in Greece. Although solar energy is a "clean" energy form, during the life cycle of solar systems (raw materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use and disassembly) important environmental transactions take place, as the use of energy and also the use of the solar systems is accompanied by the emission of air pollutants and the production of liquid and solid waste. Therefore, a complete evaluation of the solar energy technology demands the assessment of the indirect environmental impact that occurs and furthermore an analysis of solar systems based on their life cycle (use of natural resources and energy, air pollution and solid-liquid wastes). In this paper we conduct a Life Cycle Assessment for solar thermosiphonic systems according to the international standards and guidelines. The main objective is the evaluation of the location's influence on alternative energy systems and their comparison with conventional energy forms. To achieve this we use the methodology and the database of the "Eco-Indicator '99", that covers the greatest spectrum of processes and impacts, compared with other known methodologies. As an example a typical solar thermosiphonic system with a 4 m(2) collector area and a capacity of 150 It, which covers the hot water needs of a three person family, is analyzed for nine different locations in Greece. The main objective of the analysis is the calculation of the environmental benefits for various locations from the use of a DSHWS in substitution of electricity during the whole life span of the DSHWS. All the materials that are used and processes that are imposed in the construction of the selected solar system are taken into account. The impact is given for each component of the solar system (collector area, boiler, mounting base, appurtenances box, transportation to installation area) as well as for each material used (steel, copper, aluminum, glass, insulation, others).The implementation of the concept of Sustainable Development presupposes no further overspending and deterioration of natural resources. This can only be achieved by the implementation of various environmentally friendly strategies that will lead to the design of environmentally friendly products. The great capabilities that the computer technology offers lead to a great speed and accuracy of results. The software tools that are available for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Ecodesign (1) are many and although each has its own features, almost all of them are based on the same methodology and have many common characteristics. Their range of uses varies throughout product's development phases - from the product's concept conceiving to the phase that a product is ready for the market and to the phase that is disassembled and ready for reuse or final disposal. The analysis done in this work refers to more than 30 software tools and databases that are the most widely known and used and is aimed at raising the awareness and knowledge of researchers in the field of analysis and design of products and processes. The main specifications of these software tools have been identified. On this basis (i.e. using the specifications given by the software developers at their web site instead of a direct evaluation - benchmark because this would have been very costly and time consuming since not all developers release a demo of their software) a comparison was applied showing their main common specifications and differences.Energy production from biomass presents environmental benefits, since it is a renewable source and a CO2 neutral fuel that can be used in a variety of applications (power production, transportation, etc.). However, biomass production and handling may be accompanied by negative ecological side-effects. In this paper, a hypothetical power production system using biomass from a cardoon energy plantation, was analysed using the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), in order to assess its environmental impacts. Fossil energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, N2O and CH4) as well as SO2 and NOx emissions were assessed for the whole system on the basis of 1 kWh of electricity produced. The methodology of LCA has been developed to evaluate the environmental burdens over the whole life cycle of a product or service taking into account all processes from raw material extraction until waste disposal. According to ISO standards for LCA (14040 - 14043) an LCA comprises of 4 interconnected phases: (1) goal and scope definition; (2) inventory analysis; (3) impact assessment and (4) interpretation. The system under consideration was divided into three subsystems: (a) biomass production; (b) transportation and storage; (c) power production. The nominal capacity of the power plant was set to 20 MWe, and the biomass required is produced from the cultivation of a total area of 1.270 ha. The obtained results show that the energy balance of the system is positive and 1 unit of fossil energy is required to produced 2,3 units of electricity. The biomass production stage contributes significantly to the total energy consumption and to CO2 and SO2 emissions, the combustion stage to the total CH4, N2O and NOx emissions, while the contribution of biomass transportation and storage to all parameters considered in the study is relatively small. A sensitivity analysis shows that the efficiency of the power plant has the largest influence on the results, followed by fertilisation and the yield of the energy crop. Transportation distances had a minor influence.Without any dispute, textile industry is one of the most economically powerful industries on the globe. Subsequently, textile industry due to its intensive production composes a sector with high environmental impact. Hence, the necessity for integrated and sophisticated environmental management systems (EMS) for those companies belong to that industrial sector looks quite apparent. It has been widely accepted that a company's goals that have been set under the notion of Sustainable Development can be met only if those companies shift from the current "strictly" product-related environmental management systems to the more integrated and comprehensive corporation-related environmental management systems. That is a system, which screens and considers the company as a unified system, trying to cover every aspect of its activity. However, radical changes regarding a company's environmental behavior and performance demand deep understanding of the implications and interactions between the different sectors of that company and its surrounding environment, as well as, a concrete picture of what the final scope of that change might be. Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) could the optimum mean for a company to put under the spotlight the patterns of that change and additionally LCT should be the basis for every company's activities aim at managing company's operations and supplier networks and incorporating Design for Environment principles into every stage. In the Literature, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the management tool, which tries to evaluate and bring on surface any potential environmental burden a product might cause at any stage of its whole life cycle. Furthermore, LCA composes the management tool, which could reveal spaces for improvement either in the input or the output phase of a product. On the other hand ISO 14000 is one of the most widely known and used certified environmental management systems which requires an evaluation of environmental aspects and those aspects which would be considered "significant", and thus, making a company to potentially investigate its supply chain due to the possible "influence". The aim of this paper is to briefly analyze the importance and contribution of Life Cycle Thinking to the drawing and implementation of any integrated EMS such as ISO 14000 in textile industry.This paper presents a number of exergy-based concepts and methods, e.g. efficiency concepts, exergy flow diagrams, exergy utility diagrams (EUDs), life cycle exergy analysis (LCEA) and exergy economy optimization (EEO). These tools are useful in order to describe, analyse and optimize energy conversion systems.A comprehensive methodology has been developed to compare the environmental damage caused by vehicles with different alternative fuels, such as CNG, LPG, etc., and drivetrains, such as electric and hybrid drives. This paper describes how the environmental effect of vehicles should be defined and includes parameters concerning vehicle emissions and their influence on human well-being and the environment. It then describes how the environmental effect of vehicles could be defined, taking into account the availability of accurate and reliable data. Rating systems are analysed as a means of comparing the environmental effect of vehicles, allowing decision-makers to dedicate their financial and non-financial policies and measures as a function of the ecological damage. Different types of pollution (acid rain, photochemical air pollution, noise pollution, etc.) and their effect on numerous receptors such as ecosystems, buildings and human beings (e.g. cancer, respiratory diseases, etc.) and global warming are considered. The methodology described, known as Ecoscore, is based on a methodology similar to life cycle assessment (LCA) which considers the part played by emissions in certain types of damage (e.g. by using the exposure-response damage function). Total emissions involve oil extraction, transport and refinery. fuel distribution and electricity generation and distribution (well-to-wheel approach). Emissions due to the production, use and dismantling of the vehicle (cradle-to-grave approach) should also be considered. The different types of damage are normalized to make comparisons possible. Hence. a reference value (determined by a chosen reference vehicle) will be defined as a target value (the normalized value will thus measure a kind of distance to target). The contribution of the different normalized types of damage to a single value-Ecoscore-is based on a panel weighting method. This new approach differs from other methodologies in that it has been especially developed for the assessment of the environmental effect of vehicle emissions in an urban context, such as the Brussels Capital Region. Additionally, this methodology not only considers conventional vehicles but can also evaluate all alternative fuels and drivetrains with new vehicle technologies. Some examples of Ecoscore calculation are illustrated.Protected cultivation is aimed at obtaining higher yields by modifying and improving natural climatic conditions. In spite of the fact that Mediterranean horticulture is mainly based on low technology cold greenhouses, protected cultivation has a negative environmental impact. Nowadays, efforts are being made to improve the sustainability level of this cultivation system. This paper presents the adaptation of a known methodology, Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, to determine the environmental burdens associated with protected cultivation. LCA is a tool for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product or a system. It considers the entire life cycle of a product from resource extraction to waste disposal. According to ISO standardisation guidelines, an LCA study can be divided into four steps: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation. In the goal and scope definition, the aim and the subject of an LCA study are determined and a 'functional unit' is defined, for instance, yield per square meter. In the inventory analysis, all extractions of resources and emissions of substances attributable to the studied functional unit are listed. In the impact assessment, the magnitude of the potential impact of individual substances within each impact category is determined. Impact categories correspond to environmental problems, such as human toxicity or ozone depletion. The final step in an LCA study is the interpretation of the results from the previous three steps, to draw conclusions and to formulate recommendations. This powerful tool can be used to identify the part of the whole production process in which the most important environmental damages are found and consequently apply the best technologies to mitigate them. LCA can also be applied to compare two different procedures to cultivate a crop, and decide which one has the best environmental behaviour considering its whole life cycle.This paper first provides an overview of the financial state of the process industry, major issues it currently faces, and job placement of chemical engineers in the U.S. These facts combined with an expanded role of Process Systems Engineering, are used to argue that to support the "value preservation" and "value growth" industry three major future research challenges need to be addressed: Product Discovery and Design, Enterprise and Supply Chain Optimization, and Global Life Cycle Assessment. We provide a brief review of the progress that has been made in these areas, as well as the supporting methods and tools for tackling these problems. Finally, we provide some concluding remarks.In this paper, a methodology is presented for the explicit inclusion of environmental impact assessment criteria as part of strategic investment decisions related to supply chain networks. At this level, the earliest opportunities exist for a company to influence both its future market competitiveness and environmental performance. Trying to give consideration to not only the traditional economic criteria, but also to the multiple environmental concerns, inevitably results in the design task being formulated as a multi-objective optimisation problem. In this way, the simultaneous consideration of multiple selection criteria provides an ideal platform for exploring trade-offs upon which environmentally conscious business decision-making can be based.This paper presents the use of process simulation and the eco-matrix methodology to obtain the environmental impacts of a chemical process. The case study was the i-pentane purification process from the REPSOL-YPF refinery (Tarragona, Spain). First, the model was validated with plant data. Second, the key results establish the life cycle inventory, where the consumption of natural resources and the releases to the environment were quantified. The environmental aspects included in the eco-vector were divided into two categories: consumption of natural resources and wastes. The environmental loads were evaluated and compared for eight alternative scenarios of electricity generation and steam production. Cogeneration and heat recovery were the best alternatives from the environmental point of view. Although the life cycle approach does not allow the differentiation between local and global impacts, it is a valuable tool for strategic decision-making at a managerial level.Major challenges on process industries from environment protection and sustainable development contribute to the emergence and development of green process systems engineering (PSE). This paper is trying to make a survey of the efforts of Green PSE responding these challenges in the last two decades, including what this term means, what have been done, and what are likely to be done.In order to improve the environmental performance of chemical industry, process engineering needs to incorporate environmental issues in a broader scope. In this work, a design procedure which incorporates LCA into the design phase of chemical processes was developed, and newly required activities, tools and information which are prerequisites to fulfill these activities were identified. A case study on the chemical recycling process of PET bottles was used to demonstrate the methodology.Currently, the approach of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been widely used for product and process environmental management. However, when an enterprise or an industrial park makes product decision, the economic and social performance should also be considered besides environmental impact. So an approach that can be applied for economic, environmental and social LCA is in need now. In order to meet this kind of need, one LCA index system considering product economic, environmental and social performance is established in this paper. Using the composite index method, product overall economic, environmental and social index can be calculated. When multiple products are to be compared, these indexes can be applied as the criterion. Also in this paper this assessment index system is combined with optimization technology of process system to optimize one organic silicone product structure. This approach can make compositive assessment of product and give an enterprise. or industrial park proper product design, guaranteeing best economic, environmental and social overall performance.The concept of cumulative exergy consumption for treatment of emissions (CExCT) is proposed based on an acceptable level of the environmental impact. The concept of equivalent cumulative exergy consumption (ECExC) is presented as the objective function for total environmental impact analysis of industrial processes and thus providing information of how effective a process is regarding the consumption of natural resources. The amount of resources and energy required to operate and construct a process can be investigated and quantified from the viewpoint of ECExC. A heat pump distillation process is taken as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method. Moreover, a comparison is made with the results obtained from economic optimization. It appears that this method may be particularly useful for environmental impact minimization of industrial processes.We examine the life cycle implications of a wide range of fuels and propulsion systems that could power cars and light trucks in the US and Canada over the next two to three decades ((1) reformulated gasoline and diesel, (2) compressed natural gas, (3) methanol and ethanol, (4) liquid petroleum gas, (5) liquefied natural gas, (6) Fischer-Tropsch liquids from natural gas, (7) hydrogen, and (8) electricity; (a) spark ignition port injection engines, (b) spark ignition direct injection engines, (c) compression ignition engines, (d) electric motors with battery power, (e) hybrid electric propulsion options, and (f) fuel cells). We review recent studies to evaluate the environmental, performance, and cost characteristics of fuel/propulsion technology combinations that are currently available or will be available in the next few decades. Only options that could power a significant proportion of the personal transportation fleet are investigated. Contradictions among the goals of customers, manufacturers, and society have led society to assert control through extensive regulation of fuel composition, vehicle emissions, and fuel economy. Changes in social goals, fuel-engine-emissions technologies, fuel availability, and customer desires require a rethinking of current regulations as well as the design of vehicles and fuels that will appeal to consumers over the next decades. The almost 250 million light-duty vehicles (LDV; cars and light trucks) in the US and Canada are responsible for about 14% of the economic activity in these countries for the year 2002. These vehicles are among our most important personal assets and liabilities, since they are generally the second most expensive asset we own, costing almost $100 000 over the lifetime of a vehicle. While an essential part of our lifestyles and economies, in the US, for example, the light-duty fleet is also responsible for 42 000 highways deaths, and four million injuries each year, consumes almost half of the petroleum used, and causes large amounts of illness and premature death due to the emissions of air pollutants (e.g. nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and particles). The search for new technologies and fuels has been driven by regulators, not the marketplace. Absent regulation, most consumers would demand larger, more powerful vehicles, ignoring fuel economy and emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases; the vehicles that get more than 35 mpg make up less than 1% of new car sales. Federal regulators require increased vehicle safety, decreased pollution emissions, and better fuel economy. In addition, California and Canadian regulators are concerned about lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Many people worry about the US dependence on imported petroleum, and people in both countries desire a switch from petroleum to a more sustainable fuel. The fuel-technology combinations and vehicle attributes of concern to drivers and regulators are examined along with our final evaluation of the alternatives compared to a conventional gasoline-fueled spark ignition port injection automobile. When the US Congress passed laws intended to increase safety, decrease emissions, and increase fuel economy, they did not realize that these goals were contradictory. For example, increasing safety requires increasing weight, which lowers fuel economy; decreasing emissions generally decreases engine efficiency. By spending more money or by reducing the performance of the vehicle, most of the attributes can be improved without harming others. For example, spending more money can lighten the vehicle (as with an aluminum frame with greater energy absorbing capacity), improving performance and safety; a smaller engine can increase fuel economy without diminishing safety or increasing pollution emissions, but performance -- We discuss methods needed to evaluate the attractiveness of vehicles employing alternative fuels and propulsion systems including: 1. Predicting the vehicle attributes and tradeoffs among these attributes that consumers will find appealing; 2. assessing current and near term technologies to predict the primary attributes of each fuel and propulsion system as well as its externalities and secondary effects; 3. applying a life cycle assessment approach; 4. completing a benefit-cost analysis to quantify the net social benefit of each alternative system; 5. assessing the comparative advantages of centralized command and control regulation versus the use of market incentives; 6. characterizing and quantifying uncertainty. An especially important feature of the analysis is ensuring that vehicles to be compared are similar on the basis of size, safety, acceleration, range; fuel economy, emissions and other vehicle attributes. Since it is nearly impossible to find two vehicles that are identical, we use the criterion of asking whether consumers (and regulators) consider them to be comparable. Comparability has proven to be a difficult task for analysts. No one has managed a fully satisfactory method for adjustment, although some have made progress. Absurd comparisons, such as comparing the fuel economy of a Metro to that of an Expedition, have not been made because of the good sense of analysts. However, steps should be taken to achieve further progress in developing methods to address this issue. Comparing fuels and propulsion systems require a comprehensive, quantitative, life cycle approach to the analysis. It must be more encompassing than 'well-to-wheels' analysis. Well-to-wheels is comprised of two components, the 'well-to-tank' (all activities involved in producing the fuel) and 'tank-to-wheel' (the operation/driving of the vehicle). The analyses must include the extraction of all raw materials, fuel production, infrastructure requirements, component manufacture, vehicle manufacture, use, and end-of-life phases of the vehicle. Focusing on a portion of the system can be misleading. The analysis must be quantitative and include the array of environmental discharges, as well as life cycle cost information, since each fuel and propulsion system has its comparative advantages. Comparing systems requires knowing how much better each alternative is with respect to some dimensions and how much worse it is with respect to others. Since focusing on a single stage or attribute of a system can be misleading, e.g. only tailpipe emissions, we explore the life cycle implications of each fuel and propulsion technology. For example, the California Air Resources Board focused on tailpipe emissions in requiring zero emissions vehicles, neglecting the other attributes of battery-powered cars, such as other environmental discharges, cost, consumer acceptance and performance. The necessity of examining the whole life cycle and all the attributes is demonstrated by the fact that CARB had to rescind its requirement that 2% of new vehicles sold in 1998 and 10% sold in 2003 be zero emissions vehicles. No one fuel/propulsion system dominates the others on all the dimensions in Table 8. This means that society must decide which attributes are more important, as well as the tradeoffs among attributes. For example, higher manufacturing cost could be offset by lower fuel costs over the life of the vehicle. Changes in social goals, technology, fuel options, customer desires, and public policy since 1970 have changed vehicle design, fuel production, manufacturing plants, and infrastructure. In particular, gasoline or diesel in an internal combustion engine (ICE) is currently the cheapest system and is likely to continue to be the cheapest system through 2020. These vehicles will continue to evolve with improvements in performance; safety, fuel economy, and lower pollution emissions. However, if society desires a more sustainable system or one that emits significantly less greenhouse gases, consumers will have to pay more for an alternative fuel or propulsion system. We review a dozen life cycle studies that have examined LDV, comparing different fuels and/or propulsion systems. The studies are summarized in Tables 4 and 5. The studies vary in the fuel/propulsion options they consider, the environmental burdens they report, and the assumptions they employ, making it difficult to compare results. However, all of the studies include the 'well-to-tank' and 'tank-to-wheel' activities and the majority of the studies include a measure of efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions associated with these activities. We limit our comparison to these activities and measures. The life cycle studies match most closely for the well-to-tank portion and for conventional fossil fuels. See Table 6 for a summary of the ranges of efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions reported in the studies for the well-to-tank portion for the various options. For the well-to-tank portion for the production of electricity, renewable fuels, and hydrogen, differing, fuel production pathways are most important. Due to the range of different production options for these fuels (as well as other issues such as study assumptions), results are much more variable. In addition, there is less experience with producing these fuels, resulting in more uncertainty. It is important to distinguish between total and fossil energy required for production when comparing efficiencies among the fuels. Petroleum-based fuels have the highest efficiency for the well-to-tank portion when;total energy is considered. However, if only fossil energy is considered, biomass-based fuels such as ethanol become more attractive. The tank-to-wheel portions are more difficult to compare. Each study uses its selected vehicle (e.g. conventional sedans, light-weight sedans, pickup trucks); many present assumptions regarding the vehicle efficiencies. However, the studies do not generally report the range of assumptions or test conditions. The well-to-wheel results (the sum of the well-to-tank and tank-to-wheel activities) of the studies are still more difficult to compare. The baseline vehicle (with a few exceptions) is a current gasoline fueled ICE port fuel injection vehicle; it combines an efficient well-to-tank portion with a relatively inefficient tank-to-wheel portion. A direct injection diesel vehicle is considerably more efficient and therefore results in lower emissions of carbon dioxide even though the carbon content in the diesel is higher than that in gasoline. Fuel cell vehicles have a high theoretical efficiency but generally a low efficiency well-to-tank portion, which offsets some of the vehicle efficiency, benefits. Table 7 shows the ranges of values reported in the life cycle studies for the well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions. All of the fossil fuel options result in emissions of large amounts of greenhouse gases. Ethanol and hydrogen have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly. However, this is highly dependent on the pathways for ethanol and hydrogen production, especially the amount of fossil fuel inputs during production. Some of the hydrogen options result in higher greenhouse gas emissions than those of a gasoline ICE vehicle. Results for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are dependent on the efficiency improvements over conventional vehicles that are assumed. As noted above, Table 8 summarizes our best judgment as to how each fuel/propulsion system combination would be evaluated on each attribute desired by consumers or society. No one system beats the alternatives on all dimensions. The most desirable system is defined by the properties that the evaluator thinks are most important. Despite the many difficulties and complexities, there are some broad conclusions regarding LDV for the next two to three decades. The vehicle options likely to be competitive during the next two decades are those using improved ICES, including HEVs burning 'clean' gasoline or diesel. An extensive infrastructure has been developed to locate, extract, transport, refine, and retail gasoline and diesel. Any alternative to petroleum would require a new infrastructure with attendant disruption and costs running to trillions of dollars. The current infrastructure is a major reason for continuing to use gasoline and diesel fuels. Absent a breakthrough in electrochemistry, battery-powered vehicles will remain expensive and have an unattractive range. The failure to produce a breakthrough despite considerable research does not give much hope that vastly superior, inexpensive batteries will be produced within our time frame. Fuel cell propulsion systems are unlikely to be competitive before 2020, if they are ever competitive. Although, fuel cells have high theoretical efficiencies, and do not need a tailpipe and therefore have vehicle emissions benefits over conventional vehicles, generating the hydrogen and getting it to the vehicle requires large amounts of energy. The current well-to-wheel analyses show that using a liquid fuel and onboard reforming produces a system inferior to gasoline powered ICEs on the basis of efficiency and environmental discharges. Storage of the hydrogen onboard the vehicle is another challenge. Fischer-Tropsch liquids from natural gas and ethanol from biomass may become widespread. The Fischer-Tropsch liquids will penetrate if there are large amounts of stranded natural gas selling for very low prices at the same time that petroleum is expensive or extremely low sulfur is required in diesel fuel. Ethanol could become the dominant fuel if energy independence, sustainability, or very low carbon dioxide emissions become important-or if petroleum prices double. Absent major technology breakthroughs, a doubling of petroleum prices, or stringent regulation of fuel economy or greenhouse gas emissions, the 2030 LDV will be powered by a gasoline ICE. The continuing progress in increasing engine efficiency, lowering emissions, and supplying inexpensive gasoline makes it extremely difficult for any of the alternative fuels or propulsion technologies to displace the gasoline (diesel) fueled ICE. This conclusion should not be interpreted as one of despair or pessimism. Rather, the progress in improving the ICE and providing gasoline/diesel at low price has obviated the need for alternative technologies. Many of the technologies that we examine, such as cellulosic ethanol or Fishcher-Tropsch fuels from natural gas or HEVs are attractive. If there were no further progress in improving the gasoline/diesel fuel ICE or the fuel became more expensive, one or more of these options would take over the market. Thus, the fact that the current fuel and technology is so hard to displace means that society is getting what it wants at low cost. Extensive progress has been made by analysts in examining the life cycles of a range of fuels and propulsion systems for personal transportation vehicles. The most important contribution of these methods and studies is getting decision-makers to focus on the important attributes and to avoid looking only at one aspect of the fuel cycle or propulsion system or at only one media for environmental burdens. The current state of knowledge should avoid the recurrence of the fiasco of requiring battery-powered cars on the grounds that they are good for the environment and will appeal to consumers. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Japanese annual oil consumption is about 300 GL (giga liter) and energy related CO2 emission is about 300 MtC (mega ton carbon). Among them, transport vehicles consume one third of the oil, 100 GL/year, and emit 20 percent of the CO2, 61 MtC/year. Then, the substitution of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) for the structural material of transport vehicle is quite effective in lightening, fuel efficiency and hence the mitigation of global warming. In this paper, life cycle CO2 emission and energy consumption of the ultra lightweight automobile using CFRP are presented first. Then, the effect of lightweight and fuel cell automobiles on the mitigation of global oil consumption and CO2 emission is estimated under the assumption of Asian motorization.A computer-based model for the evaluation of energy use in mechanized wood harvesting systems (EnergyCalc) was developed with aid of life cycle analysis methodologies. The system boundaries were determined "from stump to roadside" with wood volume over bark (m(3)) as the functional unit. The computer model (based on a database system) used a Visual Basic program, and the energy audit was based on fuel and oil consumption, and the energy consumed in the manufacture of the machines and replacement parts. The general scenario from the literature, results from Sweden and a preliminary study from Ireland are presented. In the overall energy audit of mechanized wood harvesting systems in Ireland, fuel consumption was the most significant item (82%), followed by oils (7%) and machine repairs and replacement (11%). The mean energy use from the data for Ireland was found to be 16% higher than the equivalent in Sweden (120 vs 103 MJ m(-3)). An energy reduction strategy that has the potential to reduce overall energy consumption for Irish systems by up to 13% was suggested.In my experience as an energy management instructor and energy auditor, I have found that certain items always seem to be included in the list of energy saving recommendations. These items are included because they typically have a reasonable payback for the effort. I have put together a list of what I have found to be the "top ten" of these energy saving measures. These measures tend to be more applicable to commercial buildings, but some of them, particularly the motor recommendations and utility concerns, may be appropriate for industrial facilities. This list can be used as a general guide as to what to examine first when looking at ways to save energy and reduce operating costs. The paybacks shown are of a "first cut" accuracy, and do not reflect maintenance or capital expenditure savings that can be included in a life cycle analysis. Further and more detailed analysis is recommended prior to the implementation of any of these measures. These paybacks shown are based on a range of average electrical and gas costs, and assume a capital cost for the energy conservation measure. The top ten items discussed include: converting standard fluorescent lighting systems to T8s systems with electronic ballasts; utilizing compact fluorescent lamps to replace incandescents; replacing exit signs containing incandescent or fluorescent lamps with LED exit signs; installing occupancy sensors for lighting control; using programmable thermostats for setback/setup control; replacing standard motors with energy efficient models; purchasing new energy efficient motors in lieu of rewinding, and converting water heating from electric to gas. Also addressed are understanding utility rates, tracking utilities, and the benefits of forming a working relationship with the utility representative.Manufacturing methods like turning or milling, which treat the workpiece individually or in defined numbers, generally allow an accurate allocation of the environmental impact resulting from the process. Due to the changing batch sizes of the normally used batch process in surface treatment, such allocation is only possible after the actual treatment and lacks the required precision. For financial accounting purposes this situation is unsatisfactory, because important cost factors like energy consumption, fuel costs, costs of sewage water, disposal of wastes and secondary treatment of emissions are among the impacts resulting from the process. If different workpieces are treated within one batch, it is almost impossible to allocate which resulting impacts depend on the single workpiece. The type and number of workpieces within a batch are therefore of central importance for an evaluation of a process. While a downstream evaluation of the actual process can lead to justifiable results, there is no method for a preliminary evaluation based on a single workpiece as needed for preliminary costing or preliminary life-cycle assessment. Such a method is to be developed in the scope of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 392. "Design for Environment methods and tools" of TU Darmstadt. In the research program, CRC 392, methods and instruments are developed for supporting the designer in all phases of product development. These methods and instruments enable the designer to assess and minimize the environmental impact of a (virtual) product in advance while taking into account technical and economic criteria. This paper is aimed to illustrate the economic and ecological consequences of the problem, and to explain the practical use of the method. Different systematic approaches are presented and evaluated regarding their practicability. The characteristics of different manufacturing processes and their influence on composition and size of the load are considered.A Life-Environment project (AQUASAVE), funded by the European Commission, with the aim of implementing an integrated system for saving, recycling and reusing water in an apartment building, has been recently concluded. For evaluating the environmental sustainability of introducing water-saving devices, rain-water harvesting and grey-water reusing technologies in domestic water cycle, the global environmental impact of existing drinking and wastewater treatment systems of Bologna city has been estimated by means of LCA methodology. In each technical process of Bologna water cycle the energy, chemicals and materials flows and the related emissions to air water and soil have been evaluated. The results have been compared with an "innovative" scenario in which the existing domestic water cycle has been modified by introducing AQUASAVE techniques. For a correct comparison of the two studied alternatives, the use of rain water in washing machines and the subsequent potential reduction of detergent consumption has been included in the systems boundaries. Life cycle impact assessment results confirm that the dominant process for the most important environmental impact categories, except eutrophication, is the production of electric energy needed for drinking and wastewater pumping. In this paper, after a short description of the AQUASAVE project, the analysed systems are described, the methodological approach and the final results of the study are discussed.This paper describes the steps used to couple results from a dynamic Material Flow Analysis (MFA) of the UK steel construction sector, with the results from a recent Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of the UK steel construction sector (European Commission. 2002) Information on the historical consumption of construction steel, typical lifetimes, statistical end-of-life distributions and re-use and recycling rates, have been used to develop a dynamic model of the yearly flows of steel within the construction sector. The data from the dynamic MFA model are coupled with the LCA results to determine the total annual energy consumption of the UK steel construction sector. Results show that 81% of the energy consumed by steel construction products in 1998 was by the production of finished steel for the sector.The environmental design of office buildings holds a particular interest for many stake holders in society, but at the moment it is still difficult to find comprehensive life cycle-based environmental data from offices. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to determine the significant environmental aspects of a new office building. Those aspects of the office identified as the most significant were the heat lost in ventilation and conduction; the electricity used in outlets, lighting and HVAC systems; the manufacture and maintenance of steel, paints and non-ferrous metals; and the use of water and wastewater services. The most significant environmental aspects were quite dominant, since with 5% of all aspects they covered over 50% of the studied life cycle impacts.Difficulties arise in attempting to measure quality and making life cycle assessments. An owner must consider a trade-off between design and construction costs and operating and ownership costs. A case study of buildings regarding the cost-effectiveness of rehabilitating older structures in lieu of new construction is described. This particular study showed that, depending upon the design of the building and its structural soundness, it is equally cost effective to consider the option of rehabilitation over new construction. Another study of roofing assets at two public sector organizations showed that planned routine and preventative maintenance can have a significant impact on prolonging the life cycle of facilities. Without a quality maintenance programme, the best-designed building will fail to reach its service life.The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for materials/process/product design is becoming increasingly important in the coating treatments industrial, where the methodology may be used to supply management strategies with particular attention to the choice between alternative processes. Automotive is one of the sectors where the LCA methodology is extensively employed because of the problem of environmental impact reduction related to fuel consumption that has primarily to be solved; in the same sector it is also important the possibility of extending the useful life of components by means of proper coating processes. Following these main lines, this paper presents the preliminary activities performed for NANOMAG ("Development of Innovative Nanocomposite Coatings for Magnesium Casting Protection" - Growth Programme n. 40548), a research project sponsored by the European Commission whose aim is to develop innovative solutions with an environmental friendly life-cycle perspective.The main emphasis of this study is to evaluate the potential environmental impact of diecasting process, which is one of well organized and kind of green technologies in casting processes. Material life cycle assessment (MLCA) was carried out in actual diecasting factory that produces various lightweight aluminum and magnesium components to obtain life cycle inventory data, quantify environmental impacts and finally try to get solutions for environmental improvement. In diecasting process, most of environmental impacts come from melting of raw materials for abiotic resource depletion and global warming due to burning gas and electricity used. The problem of photochemical oxidant creation is induced by spraying and lubricating steps.Environmental considerations have led to the phase out of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants from the domestic refrigeration industry. One intriguing aspect is that the chlorine in CFCs is a good lubricating agent and any deterioration of system performance may adversely influence other environmental considerations. Based on this consideration, the aim of this research is to address the sustainable development of domestic refrigeration systems using the replacement refrigerant HFC-134a. The work focuses on the emissions that may arise if the electrical consumption of the product deteriorates or its durability is curtailed. Tribological characteristics on compressor components influence both of these product attributes and therefore a thorough system analysis was carried out. An in-house built experimental test fig, which monitored slight variations in the electrical power drawn by a reciprocating hermetic compressor, was used under different experimental conditions. Furthermore, a detailed life cycle assessment on a domestic refrigerator was performed to help quantify the ensuing environmental burdens. In this way, a relation between tribological characteristics, power consumption and environmental impact was studied. This paper shows that the CFC substitute will increase friction and wear characteristics on the aluminium alloy connecting rod and the steel gudgeon pin. These characteristics may contribute to the observed increase in the electrical energy consumption of the compressor such that the indirect global warming implications rise with HFC-134a. If the sustainable development of this product is to be ascertained then a change in refrigerants alone will not suffice.Three water-immiscible coolants are compared due to their environmental burdens using LCA methodology. Main focus lies on an animal fat ester based product that is compared to a plant seed oil (rape) and a mineral oil based ester. All indicators show that the animal fat product cause the lowest potential impact on the environment whereas results for plant seed ester based and conventional coolants are ambiguous and don't allow for a clear preference of the one or the other. Advantage of native ester products is very clear in energy balance and abiotic resource depletion but in some impact categories scores of plant seed esters clearly exceed those of mineral oil.The project of boosting the Florence segment of the main Italian highway, linking the northern regions with the southern ones, has been evaluated in this work, by means of Life Cycle Assessment. Basically, the project consists in building a third lane, for both north and south directions, for the highway segment which bypasses the Florence urban area. This route - 22,5 km long between the two outermost Florence highway exits - is intensively used also as alternative local traffic way in spite of urban area crossing. Because of the large traffic flows, slowing-downs and jams are frequently reported, especially during rush hours. Beyond annoyances as comfort reduction, time wastes, and noises, this situation strongly contributes to environmental quality reduction in the suburban area, in the highway neighbourhoods. The present situation and the future scenario of third lane addiction have been compared in terms of environmental effects on a life cycle horizon. Moreover, further hypotheses of lane widening were proposed and assessed and an improvement in the car pool composition - considering low emission vehicles, according to the latest EC directives - was evaluated. Results showed that the third-lane project realisation allows 31% overall environmental load reduction with respect to the present situation scenario. The environmental impact due to the construction and maintenance phases is negligible when compared with the operation phase. The proposed theoretical further lane widening doesn't add an), substantial environmental load variation. When considering car pool composition improvement, the third-lane scenario results even in higher environmental load percentage reduction with respect to the present situation scenario.Carbon dioxide is the most abundant waste produced by human activities. Its further accumulation in the atmosphere must be avoided in order to prevent risky situations derived by the reinforcement of the greenhouse effect, to which CO2 is estimated to be the major contributor. The energy production short- and medium-term scenarios, demonstrate that fossil fuels will be the major energy source for the coming 30-40 years. Therefore, our Society has to cope with the increase of the carbon dioxide emission, if more energy has to be used for ameliorating the standard of life of emergent and developing country populations. New technologies for carbon dioxide control are necessary, that imply its recovery from various sources. Effective separation technologies are available, and their cost is known to depend upon the concentration and quality of the source gas, and the required efficacy of separation. Also, the end use of recovered carbon dioxide depends on its quality. For example, use for the food (drink) sector, demands carbon dioxide characterized by a high degree of purity, without toxic pollutants. Only selected, pure sources can, thus, be used to this end. Supercritical carbon dioxide is now finding larger and larger utilization in several industrial sectors, as solvent and reagent. The use Of CO2 for methane reforming is an interesting application that would avoid CO2 separation after extraction of LNG. In fact, should it be found a suitable catalyst or a technology for low temperature, effective conversion of CH4, and CO2 into syn-gas, the direct conversion of LNG at the extraction site into liquid fuels as methanol or gasoline would reduce the distribution costs with respect to methane separation and pumping. The utilization of carbon dioxide by other sectors of the chemical industry may contribute to implement greener synthetic technologies with respect to existing ones, and to reduce the carbon dioxide emission in terms of waste reduction at source, solvent shift, more direct synthetic procedures, energy saving. Mimicking natural processes for synthetic purposes can also address the development of innovative syntheses with CO2 emission reduction. The fixation Of CO2 by algae (micro and macro) is a promising area that is worth to investigate for assessing the potential of aquatic biomass as source of fuels. The assessment of the real amount of avoided carbon dioxide is not an easy and simple exercise. It is not only represented by the amount of recycled/fixed CO2: the fraction of carbon dioxide not produced by implementing an innovative synthetic technology must also be taken into account. The Life Cycle Assessment methodology is the proper toot for such evaluation. Incentives are needed for running appropriate integrated programmes aimed at assessing the potential of the utilization option.There is increasing concern about landfilling of biodegradable wastes. Therefore, biological treatment processes such as composting and biogasification have been considered as alternative strategies for managing those wastes. In this work, life cycle assessment was employed to compare the environmental impacts of landfilling, composting, and biological treatment of municipal solid waste in Sao Paulo City, Brazil. Energy consumption, recovered resources, and emissions to air and water were quantified and analyzed in terms of their potential contribution to global warming, acidification, and nutrient enrichment impact. The results demonstrated that processes that require high levels of energy consumption, such as wastewater treatment, play an important role in the outcome of environmental impact potentials. It was found that the landfilling of all waste is generally the worst strategy from an environmental point of view. However, significant reductions in the resulting impacts can be accomplished through biogasification and composting of the biodegradable fraction. Regarding composting, the application of a biofilter for gas treatment reduced significantly the gaseous emissions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Analysis of economic data pertinent to the existing municipal wastewater treatment plants (MWTP) in Greece is presented. This information is important when budgeting for future plants. The data include land usage and the costs for construction, operation and maintenance of the form y = ax(b), where a and b are calculated coefficients. Equations for cost and land use were produced for specific systems. Personnel and energy aspects are analysed as they are major contributors to operational cost. A life cycle analysis (LCA) of plants is undertaken. The results of such an analysis should suggest the most preferable technology under given circumstances. Thus, under high energy costs and low level of automation and operation, at low F/M ratios, conventional activated sludge systems are relatively not cost effective. In addition, for cost of land less than US$30 per m(2), waste stabilisation ponds are cost effective subjected to minor earthworks.The analysis of different removal and recovery techniques for nutrients in urine shows that in many cases recovery is energetically more efficient than removal and new-production from natural resources. Considering only the running electricity and fossil energy requirements for the traditional way of wastewater treatment and fertiliser production, the following specific energy requirements can be calculated: 45 MJ kg(N)(-1) for denitrification in a WWTP, 49 MJ kg(P)(-1) for P-precipitation in a WWTP, 45 MJ kg(N)(-1) for N-fertiliser and 29 MJ kg(P)(-1) for P-fertiliser production. These numbers are higher than the values derived for thermal volume reduction of urine (35 MJ kg(N)(-1) for eliminating 90% water) or production of struvite (102 MJ kg(N)(-1), including 2.2 kg P). Considering only the electricity and fossil energy for the traditional way of wastewater treatment and fertiliser production, the energy value of 1 PE urine is 0.87 MJ PE-1 d(-1) (fertiliser value: 0.44, wastewater treatment: 0.43 MJ PE-1 d(-1)). A more detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) of the entire urine collection system, including the required materials and the environmental burden, support the energy analysis. The LCA compares conventional denitrification in a wastewater treatment plant with collecting urine in households, reducing the volume by evaporation and using it as a multi-nutrient fertiliser. The primary energy consumption for recovery and reuse of urine, including the nutrients N, P and K, is calculated with 65 MJ kg(N)(-1), compared with 153 MJ kg(N)(-1) derived for the conventional 'recycling over the atmosphere'.In this paper the sustainability of current available and future nitrogen removal systems has been investigated. For the assessment of the sustainability six indicators were used; sludge production; energy consumption, resource recovery; area requirement and N2O-emission. For the evaluation of the position of the individual nitrogen removal systems in the anthropogenic nitrogen cycle a broad outline for a life-cycle analysis has been presented.In the wastewater industry, decision-makers lack access to an environmental tool that can assist in further informing the non-financial analysis of a system. Such a tool should incorporate impacts beyond the effluent quality and look at the supporting processes of a plant as well as plant specific operations. Life Cycle Assessment can provide the means to fill a gap in pertinent information towards more sustainable decision-making. The project "Best Practice LCA in the Wastewater Industry" is commissioned by the CRC for Waste Management and Pollution Control at UNSW with representatives from Sydney Water Corporation (SWC), NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation and the NSW Department of Public Works. Two case studies were researched to provide a post-implementation review of changes in wastewater treatment. Case study 1: The conversion from chlorine gas to hypochlorite and UV disinfection has been completed for several inland wastewater plants at SWC. A review of operational data for each of the options has been incorporated into an LCA of each technology. Under efficient dosing conditions, disinfection with the hypochlorite system has the minimum environmental impact. Case study 2 deals with the conversion from anaerobic to aerobic digestion. Aerobic digestion minimises release of nutrients into a sidestream to be further treated in the plant. However conversion results in more biosolids production and higher electricity requirements. This study includes a consideration of the environmental impacts of biosolids production and application. On the basis of the extended system boundary including consideration of reflux composition, energy requirements and biosolids quality to potentially offset fertiliser production, anaerobic digestion performs best in 6 out of 9 impact categories. These results suggest that environmental LCA has a role in informing decision-making on unit process and treatment train selection by quantifying aspects on non-financial criteria. Also, improvement potentials are foreshadowed but not detailed.The search for sustainable ways of living has necessitated a new look at the way in which water services are provided. The new paradigm includes whole-system perspectives for each of the primary criteria groups: social, environmental and economic. Whilst Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) techniques have been used successfully for products, they are much less used to assess processes. Nonetheless there is much to learn from the use of LCA for a much wider range of applications. An application is described whereby LCA has been used to determine energy, mass flows and environmental impacts for a number of sewer-related options for handling sewer solids, using the SimaPro software. This work has been part of a wider study to provide enhanced decision support systems for water utilities. The metabolism of a city can be seen as the process of transforming all the materials and commodities for sustaining the city's economic activity. This paper attempts to incorporate resource and material flow analysis to investigate Taipei area's urban sustainability due to urban construction. The material flows (sand and gravel, cement, asphalt, and construction waste) during the past decade for constructing major urban engineering projects such as roads, bridge, MRT, flood prevention projects, storm drainage and sewerage pipes, and buildings are analyzed for Taipei metropolis. In order to evaluate the contributory value of material flows to the ecological economic system, emergy (spelled with an M; previously known as embodied energy) evaluation is incorporated in this research. A framework of indicators including categories of: (1) intensity of resource consumption; (2) inflow/outflow ratio; (3) urban livability; (4) efficiency of urban metabolism; and (5) emergy evaluation of urban metabolism is developed for measuring the effect of urban construction on Taipei's sustainability. The consumption of sand and gravel is approximately 90% of the total construction material used, and the generation of construction waste in Taipei exceeds 30 x 10(6) ton per annum. The emergy value of construction materials in Taipei is equivalent to 46% of total emergy use. Although the livability in Taipei has improved, the significant amount of construction waste remains an important environmental issue. The recycling and reuse of construction waste can not only create circular pattern of urban metabolism but is also vital to the sustainable development of Taipei. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.An urban metabolism analysis is a means of quantifying the overall fluxes of energy, water, material, and wastes into and out of an urban region. Analysis of urban metabolism can provide important information about energy efficiency, material cycling, waste management, and infrastructure in urban systems. This paper presents the first urban metabolism of a Canadian urban region, and possibly the first for a North American city. It also makes a first attempt at comparing the urban metabolisms of a few cities worldwide. The most noticeable feature of the Greater Toronto Area metabolism is that inputs have generally increased at higher rates than outputs over the study years (1987 and 1999). The inputs of water and electricity have increased marginally less than the rate of population growth (25.6%), and estimated inputs for food and gasoline have increased by marginally greater percentages than the population. With the exception of CO2 emissions, the measured output parameters are growing slower than the population; residential solid wastes and wastewater loadings have actually decreased in absolute terms over the 12 year period from 1987 to 1999.

 Among other foci, recent research on adaptation to climatic variability and change has sought to evaluate the merit of adaptation generally, as well as the suitability of particular adaptations. Additionally, there is a need to better understand the likely uptake of adaptations. For example, diversification is one adaptation that has been identified as a potential farm-level response to climatic variability and change, but its adoption by farmers for this reason is not well understood. This paper serves two purposes. The first is to document the adoption of crop diversification in Canadian prairie agriculture for the period 1994-2002, reflect upon its strengths and limitations for managing a variety of risks, including climatic ones, and gauge its likely adoption by producers in response to anticipated climate change. The second purpose is to draw on this case to refine our current understanding of climate change adaptation more generally. Based upon data from over 15 000 operations, it was determined that individual farms have become more specialized in their cropping patterns since 1994, and this trend is unlikely to change in the immediate future, notwithstanding anticipated climate change and the known risk-reducing benefits of crop diversification. More broadly, the analysis suggests that 'suitable' and even 'possible' climate change adaptations need to be more rigorously assessed in order to understand their wider strengths and limitations.In order for a scientific innovation to reach a wide audience it needs to travel through diverse networks and be understandable to a variety of people. This paper focuses on networks of stakeholders involved in the diffusion of seasonal climate forecasts. It is argued that understanding stakeholder networks is key to determining the opportunities and barriers to the flow of forecast information, which could enable more focused forecast dissemination. Lesotho is used as a case study where Stakeholder Thematic Networks (STNs) are used as a novel method for investigating forecast dissemination. STNs enable qualitative information to be analysed through semi-quantitative mapping of relationships that enable the networks and scales of linkages to be visualised. This illustrates the types of nodes and channels of seasonal forecast information flow and so enables existing or emerging patterns of dissemination to be uncovered. Sub-networks that exist for purposes other than climate information dissemination are identified as salient sub-networks for focusing development of future forecast dissemination. These existing sub-networks enable stakeholder needs to be addressed and decrease the need for new networks to be established. By using these sub-networks, information relating to climate variability can be mainstreamed into existing development pathways. This is critical to recognise if innovations relating to climate information are to be used to improve climate change adaptation.The fact that climate change has been so neglected by the mainstream development community should not be a surprise. Not only because most environmental issues have yet to be effectively mainstreamed within development policy and practice, but because climate change raises a series of uncomfortable challenges for the theory and practice of development. By not thinking beyond convenient frames of interpretation, we miss an important opportunity to effect more substantive change in preventing climate change from further immiserising the lives of the poor, by critically revisiting the role of conventional development strategies in producing the problem in the first place. The article develops this Argument by looking at the importance of policy coherence in relation to the policies and, by implication, ecological footprint, of bilateral and multilateral development institutions, the private sector and finally turns to the potential and limitations of the contemporary popularity among donors of climate adaptation strategies.In this paper we develop economic measures of vulnerability to climate change with and without adaptation in agricultural production systems. We implement these measures using coupled, site-specific ecosystem and economic simulation models. This modeling approach has two key features needed to study the response of agricultural production systems to climate change: it represents adaptation as an endogenous, non-marginal economic response to climate change; and it provides the capability to represent the spatial variability in bio-physical and economic conditions that interact with adaptive responses. We apply this approach to the dryland grain production systems of the Northern Plains region of the United States. The results support the hypothesis that the most adverse impacts on net returns distributions tend to occur in the areas with the poorest resource endowments and when mitigating effects of CO2 fertilization and adaptation are absent. We find that relative and absolute measures of vulnerability depend on complex interactions between climate change, CO2 level, adaptation, and economic conditions such as relative output prices. The relationship between relative vulnerability and resource endowments varies with assumptions about climate change, adaptation, and economic conditions. Vulnerability measured with respect to an absolute threshold is inversely related to resource endowments in all cases investigated.Seasonal climate forecasts have been promoted as a means to increase the resilience of marginal groups in Africa. The manifestations of this are still to be seen. This paper argues that successful dissemination and adoption of the forecast requires an in-depth profile of the characteristics and needs of user groups. The case study of a mountainous village in southern Lesotho is used to highlight the decisions which one group of marginal users-smallholder farmers-might make in response to the forecast. A participatory role-play exercise explores what information households presently receive and how new climate forecast information could be integrated into seasonal decision making. Results show that there are a number of low-input options available to these farmers for responding to the forecast. Adoption, however, is going to require repeated exposure to the forecast in conjunction with forecast development that is suited to users' needs. The case study is linked back to the larger scale by suggesting paths that seasonal climate forecast development could take if it is to contribute to improving livelihood sustainability among marginal groups.Range expansion from Pleistocene refugia and anthropogenic influences contribute to the present distribution pattern of Arabidopsis thaliana. We scored a genome-wide set of CAPSs and found two markers with an east-west geographic distribution across the Eurasian range of the species. Regions around the two SNPs were sequenced in 98 accessions, including newly collected plants from Middle Asia and Western Siberia. These regions correspond to a gene (similar to1500 bp) and a noncoding region (similar to500 bp) 300 kbp apart on chromosome 2. Nucleotide diversities, pi, of the two sequenced fragments were 0.0032 and 0.0130. The haplotypes of both sequences belonged to one of two groups: a rather uniform "Asian" and a more variable "European" haplotype group, on the basis of non-disjunct clusters of SNPs. Recombination between "Asian" and "European" haplotypes occurs where they meet. Especially in the "European" haplotype, many rare SNP variants representing independent mutations are scattered among the shared haplotype-specific SNPs. This agrees with previous suggestions of two large haplotype groups in A. thaliana and the post-glacial colonization of central Europe from the east and the west. A clear correlation between climatic factors and the haplotype distribution may reflect the dispersal history rather than local climate adaptation. The pattern of SNIP variation within the contiguous sequences explains why only a minority of SNPs selected across the genome show evidence of this geographic pattern.Estimating the likelihood of future climate change has become a priority objective within the research community. This is the case because of the advancement of science, because of user demand and because of the central role played by climate prediction in guiding adaptation policy. But are probabilities what climate policy really needs? This article reviews three key questions: (1) Why might we (not) need probabilities of climate change? (2) What are the problems in estimating probabilities? (3) How are researchers estimating probabilities? These questions are analysed within the context of adaptation to climate change. Overall, we conclude that the jury is still out on whether probabilities are useful for climate adaptation policy. The answer is highly context dependent and thus is a function of the goals and motivation of the policy analysis, the unit of analysis, timescale and the training of the analyst. Probability assessment in the context of climate change is always subjective, conditional and provisional. There are various problems in estimating the probability of future climate change, but reflexive human behaviour (i.e. actions explicitly influenced by information) is largely intractable in the context of prediction. Nonetheless, there is considerable scope to develop novel methodologies that combine conditional probabilities with scenarios and which are relevant for climate decision-making.There is growing concern for the capacity of urban and rural communities to manage current water shortages and to prepare for shortages that may accompany predicted changes in climate. In this paper, concepts relating to the notion of climate adaptation and particularly "capacity building" are used to elucidate several determinants of community-level capacity for water management. These concepts and criteria are then used to interpret empirically derived insights relating to local management of water shortages in Ontario, Canada. General determinants of water-related community capacity relate to upper tier political and institutional arrangements; the characteristics of, and relationships among, pertinent agencies, groups, or individuals involved in water management; and the adequacy of financial, human, information, and technical resources. The case analysis illustrates how general factors play out in local experience. The findings point to geographically specific factors that influence the effectiveness of management. Key factors include collaboration between water managers, clarification of agency roles and responsibilities, integration of water management and land-use planning, and recognition and participation of both urban and rural stakeholders, whose sensitivities to water shortages are spatially and temporally variable.A newly developed method for sprinkling (climate-adaptation) at woodyards was tested in a two-part spruce pulpwood-storage experiment during the summer 2001. Four storage alternatives were evaluated during a storage period of eight weeks: climate-adapted sprinkling and dry-stored storage of debarked and undebarked spruce pulpwood. The quality of the pulps made from logs stored under sprinkled conditions were generally comparable to pulp made from fresh pulpwood with one important exception, they provided lower brightness. The majority of the brightness losses occurred during the last four weeks of storage while brightness changes during the First four weeks were relatively small. The pulps made from dry-stored pulpwood suffered also from decreased brightness but the strength properties were also generally worse. The experiments were done by application of a new method for experimental grindings on an industrial scale, which was found to work well. It was easy to identify and handle the individual experimental logs.An apple breeding program has been in existence at Balsgard since the late 40 ' s, resulting in several commercially grown cultivars. The most successful among these is ' Aroma ', which has become the second most important cultivar in Sweden. In 1988, pollen of the American apple selection P.R.I. 1858/102 was sent to Balsgard, and applied to emasculated ' Aroma ' flowers. The resulting seedlings proved to have remarkable fruit quality, and several of them were selected for observation trials at Balsgard as well as in some commercial apple orchards. Two of these selections were named ' Frida ' and ' Fredrik ' in May 2003. ' Fri ' means free in Swedish and alludes to the fact that these new cultivars have Vf-based scab resistance, which has so far held up very well in Sweden. Both cultivars produce very aromatic fruits that are picked in late September or early October, reach peak eating quality in November-December and can be stored throughout April. ' Frida ' produces medium-sized fruits with a bright red blush and a somewhat more acidic and refreshing taste then ' Aroma ' itself. ' Fredrik ' produces somewhat smaller fruits that are greenish yellow with orange-red stripes and blush, and an aromatic, somewhat spicy and nutty flavour. Despite great advances in carbon cycle research during the past decade the climatic impact of terrestrial ecosystems is still highly uncertain. Although contemporary studies suggest that the terrestrial biosphere has acted as a net sink to atmospheric carbon during the past two decades, the future role of terrestrial carbon pools is most difficult to foresee. When land use change and forestry activities were included into the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the requirements for scientific precision increased significantly. At the same time the political expectations of carbon sequestration as climate mitigation strategy added uncertainties of a social kind to the study of land-atmosphere carbon exchange that have been difficult to address by conventional scientific methods. In this paper I explore how the failure to take into account the effects of direct human activity in scientific projections of future terrestrial carbon storage has resulted in a simplified appreciation of the risks embedded in a global carbon sequestration scheme. I argue that the social limits to scientific analysis must be addressed in order to accommodate these risks in future climate governance and to enable continued scientific authority in the international climate regime.This paper discusses the limitations, omissions and value judgements of the application of conventional economic analysis in the evaluation of climate change mitigation policies. It is argued that these have biased the result of the assessment models towards the recommendation of less aggressive mitigation strategies. Consequently, this paper questions whether they provide appropriate policy recommendations. The unequal distribution of rights implicitly assumed in conventional economic analyses applied to climate change is questioned and an alternative approach considering a distribution of rights consistent with sustainable development is put forward. Finally, the points that an analysis consistent with sustainable development should take into account are presented.Sequestration of Carbon in Soil Organic Matter (SOCSOM) in Senegal is a multi-disciplinary development project planned and refined through two international workshops. The project was implemented by integrating a core of international experts in remote sensing, biogeochemical modeling, community socio-economic assessments, and carbon measurements in a fully collaborative manner with Senegal organizations, national scientists, and local knowledge and expertise. The study addresses the potential role developing countries in semi-arid areas can play in climate mitigation activities. Multiple benefits to smallholders could accrue as a result of management practices to re-establish soil carbon content lost because of land use changes or management practices that are not sustainable. The specific importance for the Sahel is because of the high vulnerability to climate change in already impoverished rural societies. The project focuses on four objectives in specific locations across the agroecological zones of Senegal. These objectives are: use of soil sampling and biogeochemical modeling to quantify the biophysical potential for carbon sequestration and to determine the sensitivity of the carbon stocks to various management and climate scenarios, to evaluate the socio-economic and cultural requirements necessary for successful project implementation directed toward an aggregation of smallholders to sequester around 100,000 t carbon (C), to support capacity building to develop a Carbon Specialist Team, and to initiate extrapolation from site-specific project areas to the Sahel region and the national level. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As part of its climate change mitigation initiative, BP is evaluating technologies for the separation and capture of CO2 from combustion sources, for subsequent geologic storage. Ansaldo Fuel Cells S.p.A. is developing molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) technology targeted at industrial applications from 50 kW to 10 MW. This paper describes the conceptual design of a hybrid MCFC system to generate power and simultaneously capture CO2 from small (<10 MW) gas turbine exhaust streams. Initial modeling studies indicated that a 1.6 MW MCFC could reduce the CO2 emissions from a 4.6 MW gas turbine by 50% on a per kWh basis. Experimental studies are in progress to understand the system behaviour, operating envelope and impact of contaminants. Initial data from these investigations are presented, which confirm that the fuel cell can operate at sub-optimal CO2 levels with limited loss in power and efficiency. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Calculating greenhouse gas emissions reductions from climate change mitigation projects requires construction of a baseline that sets emissions levels that would have occurred without the project. This paper describes a standardized multiproject methodology for setting baselines, represented by the emissions rate (kg C/kWh), for electric power projects. A standardized methodology would reduce the transaction costs of projects. The most challenging aspect of setting multiproject emissions rates is determining the vintage and types of plants to include in the baseline and the stringency of the emissions rates to be considered, in order to balance the desire to encourage no- or low-carbon projects while maintaining environmental integrity. The criteria for selecting power plants to include in the baseline depend on characteristics of both the project and the electricity grid it serves. Two case studies illustrate the application of these concepts to the electric power grids in eastern India and South Africa. We use hypothetical, but realistic, climate change projects in each country to illustrate the use of the multiproject methodology, and note the further research required to fully understand the implications of the various choices in constructing and using these baselines. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.There are two main policy responses to climate: prevention of climate change (mitigation) through reducing emissions and coping with its effects (adaptation). Mitigation has been given more priority in climate negotiations to date. Because the impacts of climate change are likely to increase in the coming years and there is growing realisation that vulnerable countries and communities will be disproportionately adversely affected, much more attention is now being paid to adaptation than was previously the case, particularly by development organisations. Defining climate change and adaptation carefully is critical to ensuring the success of actions promoting how adaptation can be mainstreamed in development. Narrow definitions of climate change, which ignore climate variability and donor focus on looking at the "global environmental benefits" of adaptation will mean that the adaptation needs of the most vulnerable will not be met.Forestry-based carbon sinks are an important option for improving rural livelihoods, while also mitigating global climate change. Yet they are strongly opposed by major environmental organisations as an ineffective distraction that could hurt the poor. This article argues that insights into the social aspects of forestry can be used to design sink interventions that have the potential to bring huge benefits to rural people, their basic land, water and biomass resources, climate change mitigation and resilience to the impacts of global warming. These benefits would be enhanced by various changes to the rules that apply to sinks under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.The focus of the present paper is on joint implementation (JI) projects between countries in Western and Eastern Europe and especially on the problems of constructing credible references (baselines). A number of the present EU countries are anticipated to have severe problems in meeting their greenhouse gas reduction commitments and they have already announced that they shall take advantage of JI in this connection. As stated in the Kyoto Protocol, JI emission reductions must be real and measurable. However, in most cases the reductions obtained by a JI project do not occur at the project site but elsewhere in the energy system. Therefore, when a number of JI projects are implemented concurrently and other changes in the energy system take place over time, there is no way to measure the reductions obtained by individual projects. Because the emission reduction obtained is a property of the entire energy system, it cannot be estimated a priori on the basis of a project baseline alone. A baseline must refer to the national energy system of which the project is a part. It is argued in this paper that baselines should be derived from national energy systems databases and models, which serve to ensure that JI projects effectively contribute to the fulfillment of the Kyoto Protocol objectives. In addition, they should provide governments with comprehensive energy information systems needed to address long-term climate mitigation and energy demand and supply issues in a rational, least-cost manner. Compared to other climate mitigation costs and the costs of failure to meet the Kyoto commitments the costs involved in the preparation of the databases needed and the implementation of systems analysis and documentation programs will be small. If these costs are carried by national governments, the investors in JI projects will benefit from lower transaction costs. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Soil carbon sequestration could meet at most about one-third of the current yearly increase in atmospheric CO2-carbon, but the duration of the effect would be limited, with significant impacts lasting only 20-50 years. Coupled with this limited duration, increases in population and per-capita energy demand mean that soil carbon sequestration could play only a minor role in closing the difference between predicted and target carbon emissions by 2100. However, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations are to be stabilized at reasonable levels (450-650 ppm), drastic reductions in carbon emissions will be required over the next 20-30 years. Given this, carbon sequestration should form a central role in any portfolio of measures to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations over this crucial period, while new energy technologies are developed and implemented. International agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol, encourage soil carbon sequestration and could be used to formulate soil carbon sequestration polices. Such policies need to take account of other environmental impacts as well as political, economic and societal needs, so that they form part of a raft of measures encouraging sustainable development. Of the carbon sequestration options available, those of a 'win-win' nature, that is, those that increase carbon stocks at the same time as improving other aspects of the environment, and those that protect or enhance existing stocks ('no regrets' implementation) show the greatest promise in meeting these goals.One of the most contentious issues in the debate over global climate change is the perceived divide between interests and obligations of developed and developing countries. Equity demands that developed countries act first to reduce emissions. That principle is embedded in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding emission targets for developed countries only. With the Protocol now likely to enter into force, the focus will turn increasingly to the question of developing country emissions. Turkey's high rate of energy-related carbon emissions growth is expected to accelerate, with emissions climbing from 60 million tons in 2002 to almost 220 million tons in 2020. Carbon intensity in Turkey is higher than the western developed country average. Energy-intensive, inefficient industries remain under government control with soft budget constraints, contributing to undisciplined energy use. Planned industrial privatizations may close the oldest and most inefficient operations and modernize surviving ones. Elimination of energy price subsidies could stimulate energy conservation, reducing energy and emissions growth below current projections. This article reviews energy consumption and climate change mitigation in Turkey.This paper describes the research actions put in place by the Directorate General of Research of the European Commission (EC) in the field of the mitigation of CO2 emissions. Global policy for climate change mitigation and the associated energy policy considerations are presented. The use of renewables and fossil fuels within the overall energy mix are discussed, leading to European Union research policy for fossil fuel carbon management options. The European Union's (EU) current and proposed RTD project portfolio for CO2 capture and sequestration is then given. An overview of the involvement by the EC in complementary international cooperation and coordination activities is also presented.Chemical process synthesis methods and tools developed over the last several decades have reached a level of maturity that have provided advantage to practitioners in an environment of increased costs and shrinking margins. Future growth within the chemical process industries is likely to involve even keener competition with greater impact from factors such as raw material and energy availability, climate change mitigation, sustainability, and inherent security. The future will probably see an expanded role for the systematic generation process synthesis paradigm, including an increased interdependency with process and catalytic chemistry on one hand and operability and control expertise on the other. Advances from artificial intelligence may inspire new process synthesis paradigms incorporating more effective representations of the underlying physical sciences and engineering art, new social concerns, new design strategies, and new computerized implementations. The future may also see a collaboration of the systematic generation and superstructure optimization process synthesis paradigms in which systematic generation is used to create the superstructure for simultaneous discrete and continuous variable optimization. As the resulting process designs will certainly be evaluated from additional points of view including social considerations, superstructure optimization will need to produce families of good designs for multi-criteria Pareto optimization. There are many challenges, but continued progress will be made and these challenges will be met. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper outlines a methodological framework for the economic evaluation Of CO2 emissions abatement policies and measures in the residential sector, taking into consideration both economic and social costs/benefits. The approach includes two stages: first, the measures under consideration are evaluated on the basis of a cost effectiveness analysis, which takes into account only the related net financial costs, thus highlighting win-win actions (i.e. measures presenting an economic benefit for end users without the provision of any economic subsidies or other similar policies); and second, the measures are re-evaluated using an integrated cost benefit analysis (where both the private and external costs/benefits are taken into account). The economic performance of the measures examined incorporates the effects of a variety of parameters, such as the region's climate, size and age of buildings, etc., which significantly affect the resulting ranking. The implementation of this framework in the Greek residential sector identified and prioritized a significant emissions reduction potential, which could be achieved with win-win measures and/or interventions that present a net social benefit. Measures with negative economic cost but positive net social benefit for the majority of the buildings examined include: (i) regular inspection of central heating boilers, (ii) use of thermostats in central heating boilers, (iii) scaling of openings, (iv) installation of solar collectors for hot water etc. The monetization of environmental benefits is shown to provide a powerful tool for highlighting priority actions in the context of a climate change mitigation policy. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All tights reserved.Consequences in the distant future-such as those from climate change-have little Value today when discounted using conventional rates. This result contradicts our "gut feeling" about such problems and often leads to hoc application of lower rates for valuations over longer horizons-a step facilitated by Confusion and disagreement over the correct rate even over short horizons. We review the theory and intuition behind the choice of discount rates now and. importantly. the impact of likely variation in rates in the future. Correlated changes in future rates imply that the distant future Should be discounted at much lower rates than suggested by the Current rate, thereby raising the value of future consequences - regardless of Opinions concerning the current rate. Using historic data to quantity the likely changes and correlation in changes in future rates. we find that future valuations rise by a factor of many thousands at horizons of 300 years or more, almost doubling the expected present Value of climate mitigation benefits relative to constant 4% discounting. Ironically,, uncertainty about future rates reduces the ratio Of valutions based oil alternate choices of the current rate. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Equity and efficiency dimensions of global time flexibility in GHG emission reduction are analyzed with an integrated assessment model. Global time flexibility is justifiable to some extent as found in previous studies by Wigley et al. Nevertheless, it does not necessarily serve as a rationale to delay emission reduction commitment and efforts of developed countries as they suggested. The time flexibility can be saved for developing countries, and it must be so in equity consideration; early reduction by developed countries eases burden of developing countries in both time and emission quantity dimensions. This equity-oriented argument is robust against time and spatial efficiency consideration, since the apparent benefits that might accrue to developed countries from delaying reductions will by no means be transferred to far distant future developing countries for mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. The analysis thus support entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol without participation of key low income developing countries such as China and India with legally binding quantified targets in the First Commitment Period from 2008 to 2012. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrialized countries may reduce their costs of meeting carbon constraints if they penalize fuels not only on the basis of their carbon intensity but also on the basis of their import-export status. Simulations of these policies show that participating industrialized countries can reduce their costs and hence increase their willingness to participate. However, they will impose higher costs on the world, because the most carbon-intensive fuels will not be taxed most heavily. Such a bias creates a "how" inefficiency in addition to the "where" and "when" inefficiency created by current international agreements to control greenhouse gas emissions. Although countries have always had such incentives, these considerations must be more fully acknowledged in today's energy markets, after September 2001. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.Stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will require significant cuts in electric sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The ability to capture and sequester CO2 in a manner compatible with today's fossil-fuel based power generation infrastructure offers a potentially low-cost contribution to a larger climate change mitigation strategy. The extent to which carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies might lower the cost of CO2 control in competitive electric markets will depend on how they displace existing generating units in a system's dispatch order, as well as on their competitiveness with abatement alternatives. This paper assumes a perspective intermediate to the more common macro-economic or plant-level analyses of CCS and employs an electric system dispatch model to examine how natural gas prices, sunk capital, and the availability of coal plant retrofits affect CCS economics. Despite conservative assumptions about cost, CCS units are seen to provide significant reductions in baseload CO2 emissions at a carbon price below 100$/tC. In addition, the ability to retrofit coal plants for post-combustion CO2 capture is not seen to lower the overall cost of CO2 abatement. (C) 2002 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biospheric carbon sinks and sources can be included in attempts to meet emission reduction targets during the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. Forest management, cropland management, grazing land management and re-vegetation are allowable activities under Article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol. Soil carbon sinks (and sources) can, therefore, be included under these activities. In this paper, the role of croplands in the European carbon budget and the potential for carbon sequestration in European croplands are reviewed. The global context is then considered. Croplands are estimated to be the largest biospheric source of carbon lost to the atmosphere in Europe each year, but the cropland estimate is the most uncertain among all land-use types. It is estimated that European croplands (for Europe as far east as the Urals) lose 300 Mt C per year. The mean figure for the European Union is estimated to be 78 (S.D. 37) Mt C per year. There is significant potential within Europe to decrease the flux of carbon to the atmosphere from cropland, and for cropland management to sequester soil carbon, relative to the amount of carbon stored in cropland soils at present. The biological potential for carbon storage in European (EU15) cropland is of the order of 90-120 Mt C per year with a range of options available including reduced and zero tillage, set-aside, perennial crops and deep rooting crops, more efficient use of organic amendments (animal manure, sewage sludge, cereal straw, compost), improved rotations, irrigation, bioenergy crops, extensification, organic farming, and conversion of arable land to grassland or woodland. The sequestration potential, considering only constraints on land-use, amounts of raw materials and available land, is up to 45 Mt C per year. The realistic potential and the conservative achievable; potentials may be considerably lower than the biological potential due to socioeconomic and other constraints, with a realistically achievable potential estimated to be about 20% of the biological potential. As with other carbon sequestration options, potential impacts on non-CO2 trace gases need to be factored in. If carbon sequestration in croplands is to be used in helping to meet emission reduction targets for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the changes in soil carbon must be measurable and verifiable. Changes in soil carbon can be difficult to measure over a five-year commitment period and this has implications for Kyoto accounting and verification. Currently, most countries can hope to achieve only a low level of verifiability during the first commitment period, whilst those with the best-developed national carbon accounting systems will be able to deliver an intermediate level of verifiability. Very stringent definitions of verifiability would require verification that would be prohibitively expensive for any country. Carbon sequestration in soil has a finite potential and is non-permanent. Soil carbon sequestration is a riskier long-term strategy for climate mitigation than direct emission reduction and can play only a minor role in closing carbon emission gaps by 2100. However, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations are to be stabilised at reasonable levels (450-650 ppm), drastic reductions in carbon emissions will be required over the next 20-30 years. Given this, carbon sequestration should form a central role in any portfolio of measures to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the next 20-30 years, whilst new energy technologies are developed and implemented. Given that improved agricultural management often has a range of other environmental and economic benefits in addition to climate mitigation potential, such "win-win" strategies to improve soil carbon storage are attractive and should be implemented as part of integrated sustainability policies. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change issues have been considered some of the most complex and messy situations which the decision sciences face. In the last decade many countries have carried out studies related to climate change mitigation. The relevance of the outcomes of such studies depends on how well technical analysis, the priorities of the decision makers and technical/political feasibility are integrated. This paper focuses on a framework suggested by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to study the costs and impacts of national policies for abating greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. It illustrates how the quest for the inclusion of MCDA assessment in national greenhouse abatement costing studies can, without departing from the established analysis framework, be a pretext to provide a process which enhances stakeholder participation, validation, and ownership of the planning process. Such a process was used in a national study in Peru. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change seeks to achieve climate stability and sustainable development through global cooperation. Even with spectacular advances in climate science, projected economic and health benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation, and presence of all the key elements for an effective treaty in the Kyoto Protocol, climate change negotiations remain inconclusive. Arguably, this is so because a widespread concern on equity is yet to be resolved. Here I reexamine the equity in climate change treaty. Political leadership, scientific community and civil society in several nations have maintained that the democratic norms for climate governance are a prerequisite for crafting a successful climate change treaty. Principle of equal p er capita emission entitlements is now emerging as the key option beyond current impasse. Although not required under the Kyoto Protocol, several developing nations are taking responsible action to mitigate climate change. Principle of equal per capita emission entitlements is a just solution to successfully implement climate treaty aimed at climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development. Without a full and unequivocal commitment to equity and democratic governance by a cohesive humanity, any international climate change treaty will have only limited utility.The overall objectives of energy-related environmental policies in Turkey are to ensure sufficient, reliable and economic energy supplies to support sustainable economical and social development while protecting and improving the environment. The country's environmental policy considers that energy policy should take into account environmental problems and that a balance should be found between increases in energy demand are required for economic development and environmental concerns. Turkey's high rate of energy-related carbon emissions growth is expected to accelerate, with emissions climbing from 60 million tons in 2002 to almost 220 million tons in 2020. Carbon intensity in Turkey is higher than the western developed country average. Energy-intensive, inefficient industries remain under government control with soft budged constraints, contributing to undisciplined energy use. Planned industrial privatisations may close the oldest and most inefficient operations and modernize surviving ones. Elimination of energy price subsidies could stimulate energy conservation, reducing energy and emissions growth below current projections. This paper reviews energy consumption and climate change mitigation in Turkey.This contribution to the Journal of Cleaner Production special issue 'Applications of Industrial Ecology' is based upon an extensive literature review. which produced four criteria to characterise research on the concept of industrial ecology (IE). The criteria are (1) material and energy flows, (2) systems improvement, (3) systems adaptation and (4) change management. The criteria were analysed against the six subject areas of the Technology and Climate Change (CLIMTECH) Research Programme in Finland to identify the applications of the concept of industrial ecology. The results of the analysis contribute (a) to the debate on the characteristics of the emerging concept of IE, (b) show IE characteristics of a large Finnish research project in the field of climate change mitigation and (c) invite scholars in the field to study the observed unclear and fuzzy role of the concept of IE in practical research project work. Responses to this article are encouraged for publication in the future issues of Journal of Cleaner Production. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The current century-an era of environmental awareness-requires energy resources to satisfy the world's future energy demands. We can use current energy use scenarios to help us to understand how energy systems could change. Such scenarios are not an exercise in prophecy; rather they are designed to challenge our thinking in order to make better decisions today. The conventional modeling approach tends to extrapolate changes in energy consumption from historical trends; however, technology innovation sometimes causes drastic reforms in energy systems in the industrial, commercial, residential and transportation sectors. The economic aspects are another key issue to be considered in order to understand future changes in energy systems. The quantity of the energy supply is set to meet the price of the energy demand of end users. This occurs on the condition that the price of the energy supply equates with the price on the demand side under the market mechanism. This paper reviews the various issues associated with the energy-economic model and its application to national energy policies, renewable energy systems, and the global environment. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The global atmosphere is a chemically complex and dynamic system, interacting both internally, mostly within the troposphere and stratosphere, and with the oceans, land, and living organisms. Its composition is changing today, and has also changed markedly over the last 400,000 yr. Current understanding of this complex system resulting from recent observations, theory, and laboratory and modeling studies is reviewed. Also, results are presented from the Integrated Global System Model (IGSM). This is a coupled model of economic development, atmospheric chemistry, climate dynamics and ecosystem processes that explores possible future changes in atmospheric composition and climate. The results of an uncertainty analysis involving hundreds of runs of the IGSM imply that, without specific mitigation policies, the global average surface temperature may rise between 1.0 and 4.9degreesC from 1990 to 2100 (95% confidence limits). Polar temperatures, absent policy, are projected to rise from about 1 to 12degreesC (95% limits) with obvious great risks for high latitude ecosystems and ice sheets at the high end of this range. Analysis of the Kyoto Protocol, and a more stringent climate mitigation policy, shows the difficulties in accounting simply for the effects of other greenhouse gases relative to carbon dioxide. Also, the greatest effect of these policies is to lower the probability of extreme changes as opposed to lowering the medians.The present paper aims to make the energy saving potential provided by waste recycling in Brazil evident by pointing out more specifically the benefits regarding climate change mitigation. In this case, based on the energy saved due to the recycling process of an exogenous amount of waste, we have built two scenarios in order to show the potential for indirectly avoiding CO2 emissions in the country as a result of the recycling process. According to the scenario, 1 Mt and 3.5 Mt of CO2, respectively, would be avoided per year due to solid waste recycling. The international context for greenhouse gas emissions reduction, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol has been taken into account. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. An increasing number of firms in Asia, Europe, and North America engage in voluntary or mandatory end-of-life product management. Since developments in product take-back are driven by a. mixture of environmental concerns and economic opportunities, the most promising corporate end-of-life strategies create both economic and environmental value. This article introduces a framework that can help managers identify and assess such supply loop strategies. The usefulness of the framework is demonstrated by applying it to two specific supply loops, recycling and reuse of. structural steel sections in the UK construction sector. The case study highlights the importance of supply chain constraints and also shows how lack of data can be a major obstacle to the evaluation of, potential win-win supply loops.Western industrialized societies are inberently unsustainable in their present form because they depend almost exclusively on a finite supply of nonrenewable minerals and fossil fuels. In addition, the resulting wastes cause various environmental problems ranging from widespread ecosystem disruptions to global warming. The most common response to these problems has been to promote technological improvements in eco-efficiency, which Welford defined as "adding maximum value with minimum resource use and minimum pollution." Although constructive, improvements in eco-efficiency alone will not guarantee sustainability of industrialized societies because the limited supplies of nonrenewable minerals cannot be extended indefinitely by recycling and substitution, and a transition to renewable and nuclear energy sources would result in significant negative environmental impacts, particularly if deployed on a large scale. In addition, according to the second law of thermodynamics, industrial production technologies have inherently unavoidable environmental impacts. Finally, any hard-won improvements in eco-efficiency will soon be negated if growth in population and consumption is allowed to continue. Consequently, long-term industrial sustainability can be achieved only through a transition to a steady-state economy where the total throughput of matter-energy is kept at a constant and sustainable level. This requires not only improvements in eco-efficiency but also a reassessment of fundamental societal values that erroneously equate material consumption and economic growth with well-being and happiness. (C) 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 23: 264-270, 2004Three key aspects of the concept of ecomaterials were discussed in the context of material science and industrial ecology. Based on a conceptual framework of industrial ecology (IE), the role of ecomaterials in the tide of sustainable development was determined as a technical operational tool. The discussion about the scope of ecomaterials showed the different standpoints of material science and IE's, which perhaps is the key to the argument about the concept of ecomaterials. Finally, the kernel of ecomaterials was briefly discussed and a generic guideline for ecomaterial design was proposed.Planning transition from conventional mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal society to JUNKANGATA-SHAKAI (recycling-oriented society), requires detailed and accurate information concerning material flows, especially from the viewpoint of dematerialization. However, as is well known, it is nearly impossible to observe every material flow directly. Hence, the importance of Material Flow Accounting model has increased. In this study, a Material Flow Accounting model using input-output technique is developed for Japanese metal flows. Since the model uses the Input-Output framework, it can be easily integrated with the MIOT (Monetary Input-Output Table) I for further simulation. However, the scope of this study is limited to static framework, because the primal goal is accuracy. The data for year 20 is organized with the developed framework, and gives the following results. Firstly, scraps play significant roles already. Second, non-ferrous metals can be grouped into two types. The first group's destination is mainly construction and machinery and these non-ferrous metals shown the similar pattern of destination as iron. This indicates that the flows can be roughly predicted from the iron flows. The other group shows no uniform trend so that the flows are more difficult to predict than the first group.Exergy analysis is a thermodynamic approach used for analyzing and improving the efficiency of chemical and thermal processes. It has also been extended for life cycle assessment and sustainability evaluation of industrial products and processes. Although these extensions recognize the importance of capital and labor inputs and environmental impact, most of them ignore the crucial role that ecosystems play in sustaining all industrial activity. Decisions based on approaches that take nature for granted continue to cause significant deterioration in the ability of ecosystems to provide goods and services that are essential for every human activity. Accounting for nature's contribution is also important for determining the impact and sustainablility of industrial activity. In contrast, emergy analysis, a thermodynamic method from systems ecology, does account for ecosystems, but has encountered a lot of resistance and criticism, particularly from economists, physicists, and engineers. This paper expands the engineering concept of Cumulative Exergy Consumption (CEC) analysis to include the contribution of ecosystems, which leads to the concept of Ecological Cumulative Exergy Consumption (ECEC). Practical challenges in computing ECEC for industrial processes are identified and a formal algorithm based on network algebra is proposed. ECEC is shown to be closely related to emergy, and both concepts become equivalent if the analysis boundary, allocation method, and approach for combining global energy inputs are identical. This insight permits combination of the best features of emergy and exergy analysis, and shows that most of the controversial aspects of emergy analysis need not hinder its use for including the exergetic contribution of ecosystems. Examples illustrate the approach and highlight the potential benefits of accounting for nature's contribution to industrial activity.A lack of understanding of the waste flow of durable goods complicates decision making, especially in the face of technological change and obsolescence. To address the problem, this study considers the modeling of the waste flow of durable goods, using televisions to illustrate the requirements for forecasting and the magnitude of the associated uncertainty. A combination of laws in various jurisdictions and the emergence of alternate technology trajectories for televisions-the flat panel display and phase-out of analogue broadcasting make this example particularly timely. The findings suggest that the reuse of lead-containing cathode ray tube (CRT) glass is worth consideration, even though the adoption of flat panel TV technology will eliminate this controversial waste stream at some point in the future. The findings also indicate the range of the quantity of waste that can be displaced from municipal landfills and requires an alternative collection infrastructure, important information for both developing a collection infrastructure and processing alternatives to extract the residual value of the discarded televisions.The ability to achieve urban sustainability has become an indication of the competence of a municipal government aiming to gain world class status for the city. While both Guangzhou and Hong Kong are Chinese cities having their own formulation of urban sustainability, the implementation details and the actual sustainability blueprints are very different. As a result, the outcomes and prospects for urban sustainability are also different. Hong Kong has adopted a less integrative and more institutionally-oriented approach for urban sustainability. Guangzhou has used the conventional approach to formulate an integrated sustainability programme for its local Agenda 21. Hong Kong's action plan emphasizes improving coordination, making objective assessments and achieving consistency in policy-making. Guangzhou, on the other hand, emphasizes the meeting of concrete environmental targets. Unfortunately, the new institutional arrangement and monitoring tools adopted by Hong Kong have not been able to achieve the original intent and neither is there the intention to go too far beyond the weak sustainability approach. On the contrary, Guangzhou has planned and attempted to incorporate industrial ecology in its development regime while heavily investing into pollution control programmes and pushing forward a green community programme at the grass-roots level.A methodology is described for the hierarchical design and evaluation of processes to make waste-recycled feeds that can be exchanged, thereby furthering efforts aimed at industrial ecology. The methodology consists of nine hierarchy levels that include identifying, transporting, handling, sorting, converting, and purifying the waste-recycled feeds. These levels provide the designer with a systematic procedure for developing waste-to-feed processes. Evaluations at each level show whether a process for recycling a waste is economically and/or environmentally beneficial, or if costs or environmental impacts are actually greater than those saved from using a waste stream. The systematic procedure for designs and evaluations allows one to look for other alternatives immediately when costs or impacts are found to be too high. An example for styrene tar waste shows how the method can be used to design and evaluate waste-to-feed processes. In addition, any part of the process that is currently yet to be designed can use the intermediate results of economic and environmental impact values as targets for the remainder of the design. These targets let the designer know what monetary and impact values to remain below for the process to be economically and environmentally beneficial. In the future, this methodology can be used to analyze specific recycling processes of interest and evaluate their economic and environmental viability.This paper contains an editorial to the special issue of Ecological Modelling devoted to the relevant materials presented at the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (IEMSs) 2002 meeting in Lugano, Switzerland. Fifteen papers were selected for publication after rigorous peer review. Thus, this special issue consists of a set of high quality articles and reflects the contemporary advance of current research in Ecological Modelling. The work presented here relates to both aquatic and terrestrial ecology. as well as theoretical ecological analysis. In addition, one of the papers is devoted to specific case studies of industrial ecology. Analysis of indirect effects is a recurrent issue of a number of papers presented here. A couple of papers are devoted to the investigations of indirect effects specifically. However, examples of how Ecological Modelling has been helpful for eliciting, indirect interactions could be found in other papers presented here as well. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Roundput [Int. J. Sustainable Dev. World Ecol. 8 (2001) 29] is one of the most important principles of the development of both natural and industrial ecosystems, and is especially important for analysis of an ecosystem's dynamics and overall functioning. as it is related to an extent to which energy and matter are recycled and used in a cascade-type operation. Here we argue. using two modelling case studies from the UK and Switzerland, that increasing recycling rates for plastic and glass would improve the energy budget of waste management programmes, and, therefore, benefit the corresponding industrial ecosystems. In the first case study we show that the major source of energy savings from glass recycling is through increased use of cullet in glass manufacture (5.4% reduction in total energy consumption with 100% glass recycling when compared to the present-day situation). In terms of energy consumption, recycling is the preferred waste management option, even if a large proportion of the recycled glass is diverted for use as aggregates. Further energy savings could be achieved by introduction of a city-wide kerbside collection scheme, which would result in an estimated maximum reduction (100% recycling rate) of 7.6% in energy consumption for processing of the Southampton household glass wastes. In the second case study we compare the situation in which all wastes are burnt at a MSWI plant with two scenarios assuming that 8.1 % of the plastic is diverted into a cement Kiln (mixed plastics; scenario 1) or a mechanical recycling plant (polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene; scenario 2). The resulting net primary energy consumption values for both scenario 1 (5.85E8 MJ or 60% relative to the reference scenario) and 2 (7.46E8 MJ or 76.6% relative to the reference scenario) use less primary energy than the reference scenario (9.74E8 MJ). This means that, from the point of view of resource consumption, the diversion of plastics waste away from the MSWI plant has a beneficial effect. Therefore, the increased recycling of glass and plastic would benefit the industrial ecosystems in terms of energy savings. This is similar to the patterns observed in most natural ecosystems, and a careful consideration of this similarity within a framework of industrial ecology should help to reduce the conflict between the two systems. (C) 2004, Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Complexity issues in the ecological aspects of chemical engineering are of two kinds: the mutual interactions of many multi-scale systems and the lack of consilience in the objectives of different disciplines that consider the economic, philosophical, cultural, and scientific and engineering aspects, respectively. This paper discusses the second kind of complexity and the ecological issues in the different disciplines. Economic value, as expressed by market price, depends on whether limits on resources and the Earth's services due to the scale of human technological activities are taken into account. Human activities relative to the Earth's ecology require sustainability consideration. Two important stands on sustainability are discussed. Mainstream sustainability is a stand for continued economic growth to foster advances in technology to overcome the limits of the Earth. It requires technological activities to follow green chemistry and green engineering principles to develop innovations that are ecologically considerate. Environmental sustainability is a stand to stay within forecasted limits in the resources and renewability capacity of the Earth. The technology for this further includes using the principles of industrial ecology to locate ways to use wastes and recycle products as source materials for other processes to make and close material cycles. Chemical engineering innovations for increased atomic utilization of reactants, efficiency in energy use, dematerialization, non-toxicity, recyclability, and creative systemic cycling of materials for waste management are good for the ecology. Case studies are given showing the utility of following the principles developed for good ecological practice. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New legislation has been passed in an attempt to minimize industrial waste and promote recycling. What does this mean for materials science?Rapidly industrializing Asian countries (RIACs) face both development and environmental challenges. The increasing resource and environmental pressures have impeded RIACs' efforts to quickly promote their people's quality of life, while protecting their natural environment. Due to lack of resources, technologies and capital, RIACs need to seek a more integrated development strategy. Industrial ecology may be one solution, as it aims at optimizing the use of materials and energy in products, processes, industrial sectors and economies by systemically mimicking natural systems in an industrial setting. The relevant practices and experiences in the developed world have proved that there is a degree of effectiveness and efficiency to development through the application of industrial ecology. It is even more critical to applying the principles of industrial ecology in RIACs with fewer resources. However, compared with the developed nations, RIACs face different environmental, economic and social constraints. Therefore, RIACs have to adopt different approaches to implement the concept of industrial ecology. In this paper, we first introduce the environmental, economic and social constraints in RIACs and imply that RIACs need a sustainable industrial development strategy, namely, 'producing more with less'. Then, we review the current practices on eco-industrial development in RIACs. As a specific case study, due to its size and increasing influence on the global economy and politics, China will be examined in detail with regard to its eco-industrial development practices. Through these approaches, the challenges to applying industrial ecology to RIACs will be analyzed and recommendations are provided.The design aspects of energy selection and energy efficiency are described. These topics are key components of Design for Environment, and thus are important considerations in industrial ecology. In the article, background material is presented on energy forms, sources, carriers and conversion technologies. Then, energy use in countries, regions and sectors is discussed, and the impact of energy use on the environment described. Efficiencies and other measures of merit for energy use are presented, and design for energy selection and for energy efficiency are described, highlighting energy-related design factors for pollution prevention. Finally sustainable development and its relation to energy and efficiency are discussed, and a case study is presented.The modem technological society mobilizes and uses a very large number of materials. These substances are derived from rocks, sediments, and other natural repositories, and most undergo transformation prior to use. A large fraction of the materials is eventually returned to the environment. Natural processes do the same but not necessarily with the same suite of materials. For purposes of better understanding industrial development and potential environmental impact, it is important to know, even approximately, the elemental cycles of all materials potentially useful for modem technology. In this review, we examine and summarize cycle information for 77 of the first 92 elements in the periodic table. Mobilization calculations demonstrate that human activities likely dominate or strongly perturb the cycles of most of the elements other than the alkalis, alkali earths, and halogens. We propose that this pattern is ultimately related to the aqueous solubilities of the predominant chemical forms of the elements as they occur in nature: Human action dominates the cycles of the elements whose usual forms are highly insoluble, nature those that are highly soluble. Examples of the utility of anthropogenically dominated cycle determinations for resource supply analyses, environmental impact assessment, and public policy are presented and discussed. If the rapid rise in the use of materials by the technological society in the twentieth century continues into the next century, anthropogenic dominance of the cycling of a majority of the elements of the periodic table will only increase.As manufacturing industries become more cognizant of the ecological effects that their firms have on the surrounding environment, their waste streams are increasingly becoming viewed not as materials in need of disposal, but rather as resources that can be reused, recycled, or reprocessed into valuable products. Within the food processing sector there are many examples of value-added use of processing residues, although many of these focus solely on utilization as livestock feed ingredients. In addition to livestock feed, though, many other potential avenues exist for food processing waste streams, including food grade as well as industrial products. Unfortunately, the challenge to food processors is actually conducting the byproduct development work. In fact, no clear delineation exists that describes necessary components for an effective byproduct development program. This paper describes one such strategic methodology that could help fill this void. It consists of identifying, quantifyirig, characterizing, developing, analyzing, optimizing, and modeling the waste stream of interest. This approach to byproduct development represents an inclusive strategy that can be used to more effectively implement value-added utilization programs. Not only is this methodology applicable to food processing operations, but any industrial or manufacturing firm could benefit from instituting the formal components described here. Thus, this methodology, if implemented by a manufacturer, could hold the potential for increasing the probability of meeting the goals of industrial ecology, namely, that of developing and operating sustainable systems.One of the biggest challenges for China is how to retrofit the industrial processes, which are based on obsolete technology, within financial, institutional and legal constraints. Ecological Industrial Parks (EIPs), based on the principles of material and energy recycle and cleaner production, has been planned and constructed, and is recognized as the third-generation industrial park in China. In this paper, several EIPs in the mainland of China are presented, and the characteristics and experiences of Guigang National Demonstration EIP, Tuopai brewing EIP, Nanhai National Demonstration Regional EIP and Tianjin Economic Development Zone are discussed.This paper explores tools which have the potential to promote and assess the formation of partnerships between the minerals and energy industries to enhance the economic, environmentally responsible and socially acceptable use of energy. There is a need to look at energy provision and energy services in an integrated manner with key drivers for economic development - both locally and regionally. The minerals sector will remain highly significant to regional economic development in a number of globally significant regions in the medium term. Furthermore, mining, minerals and metals' projects are both consumers and, in sonic cases (potential), generators of large amounts of energy (electricity included). It is therefore appropriate to focus on the promotion of partnerships between energy providers and the minerals sector which seek to improve resource efficiency within the combined minerals/energy envelope, guided by the tenets of Sustainability. Whilst there has been considerable development of systems analysis tools in recent years to address this sort of complex systems' analysis (Life Cycle Management, Cleaner Production and Industrial Ecology arguments for example), there is no effective roadmap available to decision makers to guide the selection and exploitation of these tools in different contexts. Our previous work developed a Decision Support Framework (DSF) which provides some guidance here, but only within the context of coal-based power generation. The DSF employs the tools of Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), within which trade-offs between competing objectives are explored in such a way that alternatives can be compared without necessarily reducing all the different cost and benefits to a common basis (eg a monetary basis). Even if the existing DSF is extended to include all aspects of supply-side management, it is still lacking the necessary tools to analyse energy providers as dynamic network partners within minerals projects (or indeed any resource or manufacturing sector). New models are required for this, which firstly, seek to characterise such network structures, and secondly, enable the application of the necessary analytic tools to exploit these partnerships and networks for optimal performance. This paper explores the development of such an integrated set of network analysis tools, and their relation to the DSF. Due consideration is given to the choice of the attributes needed to characterise partnership linkages and network integrity (eg security of supply of electricity), and the efficiency of material transformations within any node of the network (as a function of energy consumption), and the impact that this has on the viability of other linkages (eg due to reduced availability of raw materials). We discuss how these perspectives help shape the form of objectives to be considered by MCDA.This multiple-case study, which combined diverse data collection methods, evaluated the impacts of waste policy instruments on 14 mainly large Finnish industrial companies in the 1990s. The management response to waste policy in the firms appeared to be small and most of the interviewees felt that the primary pressure to upgrade environmental performance came from their customers. The waste policy instruments were not considered to have contributed to waste prevention in the case companies. In contrast, the recovery and safe final disposal of wastes had developed favourably. In order to promote the source reduction of waste, the scope of policy should be drastically shifted from waste management to society's overall cycles of materials and products. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.This article discusses the need to integrate scientific research with the concept of Industrial Ecology, acting as support for the development of Eco-technologies. In order to proceed with the discussion, an initial section presents the concepts. A new and more accurate position concerning the extension of Eco-technologies in the context of Industrial Ecology is proposed. Emphasis on the role of academic scientific research as a way to propose and support specific solutions for local problems. Thus, alternative solutions based on the application of non-conventional technologies, which explore the unique regional characteristics of a Brazilian region, are examined. The sharing of waste streams generated by two polluting industries, mining and leather tanning, can lead to lower environmental impact if compared with separate management of their wastes. A comprehensive bibliographic review of non-conventional technologies related to heavy metal attenuation is included. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a recent article of this journal, Robert et al. [Journal of Cleaner Production 10 (2002) 197] define five hierarchical and interdependent levels for a systems approach for strategic sustainable development (SSD) to move toward the desired outcome, the state of sustainability. This paper evaluates the concept of industrial ecology (IE) by considering its application and use in terms of the strategic sustainable development model. The author argues that the applications of the concept of IE can contribute to all five levels in the hierarchical model. However, the paper shows that if IE is used outside the systems model, four risks and difficulties are generated that can lead to suboptimal solutions, problem displacement and problem shifting. Recommendations derived from ecological economics and environmental management are made for ways to proceed with the integration of IE into the broader SSD concepts and approaches. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the 10 years since industrial ecology first became a topic of academic interest, it has grown as a field of inquiry and has produced a community of practice in several sectors including academia, business, and government. Even as the shape of industrial ecology becomes clearer, questions remain as to its lasting power beyond the metaphor that gave it its distinctiveness. This paper examines the development of industrial ecology and assesses its progress towards becoming a field of academic inquiry. And, in a related analysis. I look at the progress industrial ecology has made in establishing itself as an institutional (cultural) basis for action in the above sectors. Ideas like industrial ecology must become institutionalized if they are to have much effect on the reality of everyday activities. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The electronics industry is generally recognized as a leader in clean production practices. Industrial ecology, however, encourages a systemic approach to sectoral behavior, which means that not just production, but also the role of electronics products and services in supporting an information culture should be considered as part of a comprehensive analysis. The eventual goal should be the production of social practices and systems that provide the desired functionality and quality of life in an environmentally acceptable manner. A conceptual framework for such an analysis of information infrastructure is presented, although the analyses and data required for a full understanding remain limited and preliminary in many ways. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a non-equilibrium thermodynamic model of industrial development. With an underlying argument of homology rather than analogy, the aim is to reconcile understanding, in physics, biology, ecology, and the industrial process. Hypotheses of homology are tested on the emergent patterns found in both natural and industrial systems-patterns in energy intensities, production and recycling, diversification, organisational life histories and selection pressures, and systemic stability. Preliminary support for the model is found in existing databases and in the literature. Some potential problems and model qualifications are highlighted. The model is then used to examine regional decline and sustainable industrial regeneration in the South Yorkshire region of the UK. Areas for further research, such as classification schemes, are identified. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial economics ingest materials, energy and information to produce goods and services and excrete wastes and emissions. Wastes can be minimized and the relative amounts of resources, which go into goods and services, as opposed to waste, are essential to clean production and to the sustainability of the production system. A regression model based on empirical data is presented that provides a partition coefficient expressing the ratio of energy (or material) resources invested in goods to energy going to waste. Partition coefficients are developed for five countries and are shown to be related to GDP, energy and material consumption and energy and waste intensities. Higher partition coefficients mean higher productivity and lower energy, waste and material intensities. In addition, energy use/capita and pollution/capita is lower. The price of energy to the industrial sector is related to the partition coefficient. The policy implications are that partitioning of resources to goods should be maximized and waste minimized for economic as well as environmental reasons. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology is sometimes referred to as the science of sustainability, but unlike mature sciences, it has yet to establish reliable modes of inquiry or a uniform framework for dialogue-partly because sustainability is difficult to characterize, and partly because industry-environment interactions are difficult to model quantitatively. A number of sustainability metrics have recently been proposed that partially address the quantification problem, but inevitably oversimplify the problem of sustainability characterization. This paper proposes an overarching taxonomy for classifying the quantitative criteria of sustainability as financial. thermodynamic, environmental, ecological, socio-political or aggregated. Several examples are presented. Pollution potential, which is an environmental metric related to the ideal thermodynamic work (of mixing) per mole required to remove pollutants from the environment, is discussed in particular. However, because no single metric can capture sustainability per se, industrial ecology may be limited to elucidating the trade-offs that exist between different types of complementary (rather than substitutable) criteria. The life cycle of polyurethane foam insulation in freezer applications is presented as a quantitative example of how different environmental criteria can lead to different design recommendations. Lastly, the framework proposed herein suggests a research agenda for industrial ecology, especially regarding the linkages between different measures of sustainability and cross-comparison of the investigative methods found in different sciences related to sustainability. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Chemical process simulation (CPS) software has been widely used by chemical (process) engineers to design, test, optimise, and integrate process plants. It is expected that industrial ecologists to bring these same problem-solving benefits to the design and operation of industrial ecosystems can use CPS. This paper provides industrial ecology researchers and practitioners with an introduction to CPS and an overview of chemical engineering design principles. The paper highlights recent research showing that CPS can be used to model industrial ecosystems, and discusses the benefits of using CPS to address some of the technical challenges facing companies participating in an industrial ecosystem. CPS can be used to (i) quantitatively evaluate and compare the potential environmental and financial benefits of material and energy linkages; (ii) solve general design, retrofit, or operational problems; (iii) help to identify complex and often counter-intuitive solutions; and (iv) evaluate what-if scenarios. CPS should be a useful addition to the industrial ecology toolbox. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Local authorities are important actors in the transition towards sustainable development. They can play important roles for the promotion of industrial ecology systems oriented management of resources and pollutants on the local and regional level. In this context, the method of substance flow analysis (SFA) has been argued to be supportive to municipal environmental management, although, performing an SFA is often time consuming and demands great deal of work. It may be a task hard to fulfil on a regular basis for many local authorities. A crucial issue is, then, to what extent it is possible to learn from other SFA studies? Aiming to contribute to this understanding, this paper analyses comparative results of SFA case studies of the cadmium metabolism in three structurally different municipalities in Sweden. The analyses illustrate that in addition to specific knowledge gained from a single case study, there is also general knowledge that may constitute important information for environmental decision-making in other local authorities. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Substance flow analysis is one of the analytical tools applied in the research field of industrial ecology. This paper presents practical experiences on implementing substance flow analysis to support integrated environmental policy in the Flemish region of Belgium. We have studied the case of chromium flows within the regional economic system, within the regional ecosystem and among these interdependent systems. During the project, a bookkeeping account and a static model were constructed. Origin analyses and sensitivity analyses were used and calculations on the effects of potential policy measures were carried out. The analyses and calculations show that many difficulties exist in connection with the substance being studied on the one hand and the reigion under investigation on the other. The contribution as well as the practical difficulties and limitations of applying substance flow analysis are presented. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Eco-industrial developments with a special focus o n material cycles are usually concentrated on the level of the industrial estate/industrial park. However, the results of completed and ongoing research projects in Germany's Rhine-Neckar region indicate that larger reigional areas may be more suitable for closing material loops and creating sustainable industrial ecosystems. Nonetheless, this larger size also presents new challenges for industrial ecosystem development, such as establishing the necessary trust and coordination among actors, homogenizing and collecting data to enable comparisons within and between firms, and minimizing the transaction costs involved in searching for appropriate partners. Practical solutions and IT-tools suggested as a means of supporting eco-industrial development that emphasizes positive synergy effects for industrial actors. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since the introduction of the industrial ecology concept by Frosch and Gallopoulos in 1989, and the apparent Success of the Kalundborg, Industrial Symbiosis project, attention to planned eco-industrial park (EIP) development projects has grown all over the world. This article includes data from six of these EIP development projects. Three of the projects discussed are located in the Netherlands and three in the US. This article compares the differences in project approach and results on a national level. The approach suggested is derived from the available EIP development literature. Initial research indicates that the Dutch EIP projects are more successful than their US counterparts. This difference in success can be, mostly, attributed to the fact that the US projects are initiated by local and regional governments that see the project as a way to improve the local/regional economy with access to substantial government funds. Because of this heavy government involvement, US companies are, in general, not interested in the project. The more Successful Dutch projects, on the other hand, are mostly initiated by the companies themselves with financial and advisory support from the local and regional government. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Eco-industrial parks (ElPs) provide a basis for applying the concept of industrial ecology. In Australia, eco-industrial parks are new and are being considered by state governments as a way of achieving more sustainable industrial development. However, for many firms, local government and communities, industrial ecology is a concept that is misunderstood and treated with suspicion. This paper uses research undertaken to investigate the application of industrial ecology to ensure more sustainable industry development in the State of Queensland, Australia, to develop a set of principles and planning guidelines for use by governments to facilitate the development of eco-industrial parks. Synergy Park, 22 km west of Brisbane, is Australia's first planned eco-industrial park to be built. The planning and development of this eco-industrial park was a significant challenge to the developer and public agencies concerned with this project. The case study presented in this document provides useful lessons and advice for planners and developers involved with the planning and development of eco-industrial parks. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The application of ecological concepts to the industrial setting has been touched upon by literature across several disciplines. Two emerging ecological planning approaches, landscape ecology and industrial ecology, are applied here to look at alternative ways of planning industrial parks. As an emerging field, landscape ecology provides different viewpoints from the traditional approach of natural conservation, which mainly focuses on the protection of nature. The approach of landscape ecology regards the environment as a land mosaic, a mixture of natural and urban environment, which concerns a manageable human-scale environment across one or two human generations. Industrial ecology, on the other hand, goes beyond the traditional "end of pipe" idea of pollution control and learns from the ecosystem concept. The current paper is an attempt to reconcile these two fields as an integrated approach to the planning of industrial areas. Using a case study of Singapore's Jurong Island industrial park. two fundamental issues behind the idea of landscape ecology and industrial ecology are raised. If raw materials, energy and by-products are more easily replaced or reused by technology and management, then research on industrial ecology and related knowledge will be crucial for developing natural resource substitution by innovative technology and new ways of environmental management. Where it is difficult to substitute natural resources, the skills of planning and managing natural resources will take priority over other strategies. In this situation, the knowledge of landscape ecology needs to be applied to the prediction, design and evaluation of ecologically optimum resource uses, patterns and processes in the mixture of natural, urban and industrial environment. A new concept, "nurtured landscape", is proposed for mediating between the natural ecosystem and the urban/ industrial environment. The nurtured landscape provides a basis for the development of new ecological technology using landscape to ameliorate the polluting effects of the urban/industrial neighbourhood. The planning of Singapore's Jurong Island industrial park provides a test of applying the principles of landscape ecology and industrial ecology to the possible transformation of an industrial area. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology is an emerging concept for the establishment of ecologically sustainable industrial development of industrial zones and estates in China. Optimizing materials and energy flows among facilities within specific regions or industrial ecosystems is a basic industrial ecology strategy. As such, life cycle analysis and management and green supply chain management are related approaches. The Guitang Group, a Chinese sugar complex, has developed an embryonic eco-industrial development by applying an integrated approach to green supply chain management. This paper describes the Guitang Group and its evolving integrated green supply chain management model. After summarizing experiences of the application of the Group's model, the paper analyzes challenges and then introduces possible solutions. Some conclusions are developed on the basis of this analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on the current situation in the adaptation and adoption of industrial ecology in Asian Developing Countries (ADCs). The objective of this paper is to consider the possibilities to develop an eco-industrial development (EID) strategy for these developing countries. We review the regional indigenous resources of ADCs and use the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) grouping to classify the preconditions of industrial ecology in ADCs. The authors of this paper argue that unlike the usual way of applying industrial ecology as a technical tool or a practical instrument, ADCs need to adopt industrial ecology as a strategic vision and as a strategic approach to plan the economic, social and ecological development of their national economies. In this way, it can be possible for the ADCs to avoid the same problems that occurred when the developed countries experienced industrialization and rapid economic growth, and move toward more sustainable development. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The study seeks to demonstrate the potential role that industrial ecology could play towards energy poverty reduction and environmental conservation in Kenya through sustainable charcoal production and consumption. This is achieved through an exploration of the application of the life cycle management (LCM) concept that identifies various opportunities for technological intervention for energy and environmental conservation and reduction of material and energy losses. It also identifies opportunities for income generation at various stages of the product's life cycle; an aspect critical in poverty reduction in developing countries. The study finds that applying LCM in the charcoal trade in Kenya can deliver social, economic and environmental benefits to developing country communities and should, therefore, be promoted. However, appropriate legal, policy and institutional frameworks must exist in these countries for this to occur. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within industrial ecology. the life cycle or chain of activities forms an important basis for analysing and reducing environmental impacts. This has led to the development of integrated chain management. A comprehensive analysis must take the actors and their interaction in chain management into account. By assessing integrated and supply chain management, this paper is designed to contribute to future development of industrial ecology, in that it addresses the importance of actors along the chain as well as their interaction. Five case studies from the textile industry are used to illustrate the differences between the objectives of the single actors in the chain and the overall chain. This illustrates that co-operation is the only way for companies to improve the competitiveness of the chain while reducing environmental burdens. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology is a label under which many linkages between production and consumption processes are grouped. This article is based on a social science approach, ranging from organisational learning to the analysis of industrial districts, ill reflection to the techno-economic approach of the developments in the industrial ecology projects 'INES 1994-1997 and INES Mainport 1999-200' in the Rotterdam harbour and industry complex. In relation to the growing attention for regional types of industrial ecology, the article aims to provide a useful social science analytical framework for investigating regional industrial ecology, and to develop a prescriptive approach that can stimulate such industrial ecology. Regional industrial ecological systems meet with static and dynamic issues as a result of specific system boundaries of their decision-making levels. The analytical framework provides insight into these issues through a focus on three phases of (regional) industrial ecology, the production of collective goods, and governance mechanisms. We find that the INES Mainport project is still in the first phase of industrial ecology. To go beyond this phase, the Rotterdam harbour and industry region faces the limits of system boundaries of the decision-making levels within the reigional management. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This contribution to the Journal of Cleaner Production special issue 'Applications of Industrial Ecology' is based upon an extensive literature review. which produced four criteria to characterise research on the concept of industrial ecology (IE). The criteria are (1) material and energy flows, (2) systems improvement, (3) systems adaptation and (4) change management. The criteria were analysed against the six subject areas of the Technology and Climate Change (CLIMTECH) Research Programme in Finland to identify the applications of the concept of industrial ecology. The results of the analysis contribute (a) to the debate on the characteristics of the emerging concept of IE, (b) show IE characteristics of a large Finnish research project in the field of climate change mitigation and (c) invite scholars in the field to study the observed unclear and fuzzy role of the concept of IE in practical research project work. Responses to this article are encouraged for publication in the future issues of Journal of Cleaner Production. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the fact that all successful, documented cases of industrial symbiosis to this day have been self-organizing, some authors and development officials have suggested that increased public planning might deliver better results in this respect than spontaneously evolved market coordination. This paper takes an historical approach to suggest that comprehensive planning is unlikely to live up to the expectations of its proponents. The essay is structured as follows. The first section provides short case studies of industrial symbiosis in highly different economic and institutional settings, the essentially free-market regime of Victorian England and communist Hungary (1948-1989). The available evidence suggests that market coordination proved much more favorable to the emergence of industrial symbiosis, despite the elaboration of a comprehensive policy to that effect in Hungary. Insights derived from the so-called "Austrian" critique of central planning are then used to explain this paradox. The analysis presented suggests that the Hungarian planners' failure was not so much the result of the bad implementation of sound policies, but the logical outcome of a top-down approach's shortcomings. Policy implications for the public planning of industrial symbiosis in a mixed economy are then derived and the case for self-organization is found more compelling. The creation of more innovative institutions that will force firms to "internalize their externalities"' while leaving them the necessary freedom to innovate is viewed as an urgently needed and promising path towards increased, sustainable reuse of industrial by-products. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Natural ecosystems and human societies built upon them have evolved in many diverse ways. Human systems have been more materials and energy efficient in earlier periods than they are now. What can we learn from natural ecosystems that can help us to improve upon the materials and energy efficiency of our societies and thus help us to make real progress in the direction of sustainable societies? The author explores many diverse facets of our current processes and proposes ways for societal learning from nature and for applying these lessons to improve the quality of life for humans and for the ecosystem upon which we are all dependent. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Applying the theory of industrial ecology into the paper, the authors analyze the creating mechanism, and conduct a comparative research on the patterns of industrial symbiosis in the process of the establishment of EIP from ecology and economics. Through the introduction of the two typical examples----Kalunborg Eco-park in Denmark and Lubei group EIP in China, the authors explain two industrial symbiosis patterns: Individual Entity Symbiosis and Comprehensive Entity Symbiosis. The authors explore the operation law of them, and provide theoretical support to and reference for the establishment of EIP in China.Along with the rapid development of national economy in China, 85 to 95% of the energy resources and industrial raw materials come from mineral resources, but the reservation of mineral resources is scarce, especially the resources concerning the stable national economic development, such as oil, iron ore, manganese ore, copper ore, chromites, pyrites and Sylvie etc. Safety-ecology mine garden will be a new concept to build a perfect safety-ecology mine environment. Based on the theory of industrial safety and industrial ecology, Mining enterprise can engage in safe, clean and harmless production in the exploitation of mining resources, the administration of environment resources and the management of ecological safety, thus attaining the most profit. The optimum production and issues concerned are discussed as: (1) Sustainable model for mineral resources(2) Types of the safety-ecology mine garden (Whole-new plan-type in safety-ecology; Up-graded plan type in safety-ecology; Mine garden for ritual safety-ecology); (3) Plan for the safety-ecology mine garden (Safe green plan; Ecological green plan); (4) Assessing system for the safety-ecology mine garden (ISO 14000 system and OSHMS 18000 system etc.).The southern and central regions of The Netherlands are part of the Northwest-European Delta Metropolis. The demands placed by modem, urban society on the agricultural sector are numerous. Not only are the environment, animal welfare, and food hygiene and quality at stake here, but also must these demands be met in a period of a structural decline in economic yields and under the permanent pressure of a shortage of available land. Intensification and increase of scale, which have characterized European agriculture for a long time, are set to continue in the future. As a direct consequence of these developments five perspectives can be described that together have considerable implications for spatial planning in the rural areas. These perspectives are: (1) The development of knowledge for the benefit of the agro-food sector. (2) The development of agro-production parks based on the principles of industrial ecology. (3) Large-scale, intensive, heavily specialized land-based agriculture. (4) 'Dreams and folk stories' that either relate to traditional production methods or are the product of modem marketing. (5) Specialized management of nature and landscape. The pressure on the agrarian cultural landscape, for centuries a by-product of traditional agriculture, is rapidly increasing as a result of these developments. In this paper it is argued that the problems of the future of the landscape in Northwestern Europe should be tackled outside the traditional framework of the agrarian production.Industrial Ecology is a rapidly evolving field with substantial policy implications. It provides an overview of the complex relationships between the environment and the sustainable development of an industrialized world. As the development of modem industry and the advance of technology, these reused wastes will be becoming a renewal resource in view of industrial ecology. Therefore the economic behaviors do material-reuse firms use these waste as a resources become a focal issue of industrial ecology. Economic behaviors of waste as renewal resource reused in industrial ecosystem by material-reuse firms are firstly analyzed in this paper. Logistic growth model is applied to studying the dynamic relationship of waste as resources to be reused and material-reuse firms. Finally, this paper gives out two study results: the optimum resource recovery rate of a material-reuse firm in industrial ecosystem and the essential condition of industrial ecosystem to use these waste as resources.This paper reviews the impacts of industrialization to the ecological system and discusses the general principles and approaches of industrial ecology.Many activities labeled "industrial ecology" are as ancient as human society (e.g. reusing materials, using waste, from one process to fuel another). The idea, however, that industrial ecology is the "science of sustainability" has gained prominence only in recent decades. Within this landscape, industrial ecology is becoming more formalized - there is a journal, an international society and increasing numbers of educational efforts dedicated to the topic. While industrial ecology has become a fairly common reference in various types of literature, its inclusive nature makes it difficult to define - much like the concept it strives to support - sustainability. Hence, while there is general agreement among practitioners that education dedicated to industrial ecology is important, there is not agreement on the specific direction this should take. The metaphor-applying ecological principles to industrial systems - is de facto interdisciplinary. This creates philosophical and administrative conflict when designing courses and programs. There are several approaches evolving that employ the industrial ecology concept, but each has quite distinct foci. A simplified delineation of these approaches might include: 1) Focus on developing innovative technology/models; 2) Focus on quantifying processes and identifying "best" technologies and/or best uses for technology/models; 3) Focus on societal factors (economic, behavioral, paradigmatic) to find alternative ways to do things using existing technologies. The ideal approach is likely some combination of these three. However, in designing a formal curriculum, it is not feasible (nor necessarily desirable) to cover all three in depth. For industry leaders (and policy-makers) understanding the values and limitations in each is important. If industrial ecology is to promote sustainability, then decisions about how it is taught will greatly influence efforts to define and reach sustainability. Understanding the tradeoffs and opportunities inherent in the diverse directions that industrial ecology education is moving is important if we wish to continue to identify and clarify pathways to sustainability.The UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR), while not originally conceived to include urban areas, was intended to include sites representing all significant ecosystems with the goal of support for sustainable development locally and globally. Drawing on the example of the New York Metropolitan Region (NYMR), which has a population of 21.4 million, it is argued here that the eventual inclusion of the largest of the world's cities in WNBR not only is within the logic of the biosphere reserve concept, but would also benefit the network and its goals. The ecological significance of the NYMR, its role as a driver for global environmental change, as well as the efforts under way in the city to improve urban environmental management and governance are all examined. Potential added value to the WNBR of including megacities such as the NYMR is considered, in particular, regarding the sharing of best practices, lessons learned, and the strengthening of links between megacities and their global natural resource bases. This paper first provides an overview of the financial state of the process industry, major issues it currently faces, and job placement of chemical engineers in the US. These facts combined with an expanded role of process systems engineering, are used to argue that to support the "value preservation" and "value growth" industry three major future research challenges need to be addressed: product discovery and design, enterprise and supply chain optimization, and global life cycle assessment. We provide a brief review of the progress that has been made in these areas, as well as the supporting methods and tools for tackling these problems. Finally, we provide some concluding remarks. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper deals with improvements on environmental significant activities related to the life supporting function "building and housing", using life cycle assessment (LCA). In the calculation, back-casting technique is utilised and implies to a future scenario, based on known technology. Besides heating, waste water treatment is a significant issue, according to the definition of building and housing function practised. The main conclusions from the assessment are that rebuilding is an environmentally better choice than the construction of a new building, if the same essential environmentally related functional performance is reached. Furthermore, the case study and the national estimates performed prove that the potential environmental impact can be reduced by about 70% for the heating service and 75% for the waste water system, if the suggested measures are performed. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article details the planning, implementation, and assessment of a worldwide electronics packaging take-back system by a key supply chain partner. The take-back system was a financial and environmental tradeoff between reducing cardboard packaging against increased use of ground and water transportation. Through Internet-enabled life cycle analysis, the new system was shown to significantly reduce waste as well as energy and environmental impacts: If such methods were introduced more formally in the electronics industry, $150 million as well as billions of pounds of waste could be saved per year.The purpose of the underlying research for this paper was to obtain a better understanding of the eco-efficiency improvements of a crop protection product from the perspective of the crop protection industry in the context of sustainable agricultural development. The environmental impacts of an innovated and a traditional fungicide treatment were explored by applying two different product-oriented environmental life cycle analysis methods. One method (product life cycle-oriented energy balance) assessed the use of resources during the whole product life cycle, whereas the other method focused on the potential damage of the active ingredients for the environment and for humans. The functional unit and basis for comparison was defined as 'treating 1 ha of citrus crop for foot- and root rot and trunk cankers' during one crop season. Treatment with the innovated product resulted in relatively higher impacts per tonnage within the crop protection industry itself. However, outside the crop protection industry relatively fewer resources are needed and there are fewer potential releases into the environment. The innovated product fulfills its function more eco-efficiently or more sustainable than the traditional product. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As environmental awareness increases, industries and businesses have responded by providing 'greener" products and using ''greener" processes. Many companies have found it advantageous to explore ways of moving beyond compliance, using pollution prevention strategies and environmental management systems, to improve their environmental performance. One such way is life-cycle assessment (LCA). This concept considers the entire life cycle of a product, process, or an activity. Evaluating environmental impacts holistically from raw material acquisition, through manufacture, use, and disposal using a life-cycle perspective is gradually being viewed by environmental managers and decision makers as an important element in achieving environmental sustainability. The use of a holistic, life cycle approach can help industry and government avoid the unintended trading of one environmental problem for another. this paper addresses ongoing research in LCA methodology in the US EPA's National Risk Management Research Laboratory. Two key areas of this research include life-cycle inventory (LCI) data availability and life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) modeling. To address the issue of data availability, EPA developed a website entitled LCAccess. Although LCAccess does not itself contain data, it is a searchable global directory to potential data sources. LCAccess also serves as a central source for LCA information. In addition, EPA developed TRACI (the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts), which allows the characterization of ozone depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, tropospheric ozone (smog) formation, ecotoxicity, buman Particulate effects, human health, fossil fuel depletion, and land use effects. TRACI can be used with life-cycle inventory to further analyze and understand the data. (C) 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog.Metric identification has received growing attention as more alternatives become available,for quantifying the sustainability-oriented performance of a target human activity. Failure to tackle the diversity in these alternatives has given rise to significant difficulties in comparing and interpreting the assessment results obtained from using various metrics. This paper explores some bottlenecks in identifing "appropriate" environmental sustainability metrics that specifically meet the needs of a sustainability assessor. A new conceptual hierarchy "stressor-status-effect-integralio-well-being" (SSEIW) for metric classification is proposed. This hierarchy categorizes the full range of metrics into five levels, each of which measures the interested environment manner. This paper shows that the proposed hierarchy can be applied within the framework of life-cycle assessment (LCA), which provides a promising solution to "best-practice" metric identification as well as expanding the LCA applications to the sustainability field. (C) 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog.Industrial progress toward sustainability requires meaningful practical, and scientifically sound metrics. Most existing metrics rely on information about material and energy inputs and emissions from the main process and selected processes in its life cycle. Such metrics often result in multiple conflicting variables, making it difficult to use them for decision making. Furthermore, sustainability metrics need to be scientifically rigorous and capable of evaluating the broader economy and ecosystem scale impacts of selected processes and products. This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the environmental sustainability of industrial processes that satisfies these needs. This framework uses energy analysis to combine different types of material and energy streams in a thermodynamically sound manner. Energy analysis is also combined with end-point life-cycle impact assessment methods for evaluating the impact of emissions. This results in metrics for a selected system with different levels of aggregation ranging from multiple to single dimensions. The challenge of analyzing a process at life cycle and coarser spatial scales is met by combining energy analysis, life cycle assessment, input-output analysis, and both economic and ecological aspects. The result is a doubly nested hierarchy, which analyzes processes at multiple spatial scales of process, life cycle, economy, and ecosystem. Each scale contains another hierarchy based on the degree of aggregation of the metrics. A case study of the ammonia process illustrates the characteristics of the proposed approach. (C) 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog.SRI Consulting's Process Economics Program (PEP) was commissioned by its clients to undertake a lifecycle assessment (LCA) for the purpose of comparing a biodegradable polymer with a conventional commodity polymer in packaging applications. Biodegradable polymers offer the potential of addressing a wide range of environmental concerns associated with conventional polymers such as greenhouse gas emissions and sustainability. LCA is a tool specifically developed for assessing the overall environmental burden of a product including the system used for manufacturing it and its end-of-life treatment. This paper provides a cradle-to-grave LCA of two polymers that may be used in food packaging applications: polylactide (PLA), which is a biodegradable polymer derived from corn; and polypropylene (PP), which is primarily derived from natural gas in the United States. An inventory analysis of the PLA and PP systems is presented. An impact assessment focused on global warming is also provided. Although measured field or facility data are preferred for a rigorous LCA, PEP data can provide a reasonable basis when measured data are unavailable. Energy inventories and greenhouse gas emissions are readily derived from PEP data, but other potentially relevant impact indicators are not. (C) 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.Pulp and paper manufacturing constitutes one of the largest industry segments in the United States in term of water and energy usage and total discharges to the environment. More than many other industries, however, this industry plays an important role in sustainable development because its chief raw material-wood fiber-is renewable. This industry provides an example of how a resource can be managed to provide a sustained supply to meet society's current and future needs. The objective of this work is to present streamlined environmental life-cycle assessments (LCA) between chemical (kraft-sulfate), mechanical (or thermomechanical), and biopulping processes. This LCA would help us to evaluate the industry's current experience and practices in terms of environmental stewardship, regulatory and nonregulatory forces, life cycles of its processes and products, and future developments. The pulping industry has been traditionally using mechanical or chemical pulping methods, or a combination of the two, to produce pulps of desired characteristics. Mechanical pulping accounts for about 25% of the wood pulp production in the world today. Mechanical pulping, with its high yield, is viewed as a way to extend the forest resources. However, mechanical pulping is electrical energy-intensive and yields paper with less strength compared to that produced by the chemical pulping process. These disadvantages limit the use of mechanical pulps in many grades of paper. Chemical pulping accounts for about 75% of the wood pulp production in the world. This process produces paper with very high strength. However, the process has the disadvantages of being capital- and energy-intensive, giving relatively low yields, producing troublesome waste products, and producing by-products that are of relatively low values. (C) 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.The subject of this study is a spent pot lining (SPL) landfill. The aim of this study was to identify the site remediation option, among four alternatives, that minimizes overall environmental impacts based on: 1) a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA); and 2) modeling of contaminant transport in groundwater. The four options were: leaving the landfill in place (Option 1); excavation of the landfill, with on-site disposal of the excavated materials in a secure cell (Option 2); excavation of the landfill, with treatment of the SPL fraction (Option 3); and excavation of the landfill, with incineration of the SPL fraction in a cement kiln (Option 4). The LCA was performed following the guidelines provided by the International Standard Organization (ISO). Furthermore, to improve the relevance of LCA to site remediation sector, impacts caused by residual in-situ contamination were assessed by applying a simulation of contaminant transport in groundwater, using site-specific data. The LCA identified Option 1 as having the least environmental impacts. However, the transport modeling concluded that contaminant concentrations 50 years from the present could be approximately 30 to 40 times the regulatory criteria if this option is retained. In addition, this study demonstrated that LCA can be used as a screening tool to help identify significant environmental issues; the LCA identified acute and chronic water ecotoxicity categories as being the dominant impact categories of the environmental profile and consequently, it is recommended that a complete environmental risk assessment (ERA) be performed for Option 1.Sustainable product development of an automotive structure requires a balanced approach towards technological, economical and ecological aspects. Current paper shows the application of a structural optimization system to the optimal choice of foams as a core material for sandwiches with aluminum alloy faces, for the use as floor panels in the bottom structure of a concept car. The minimization problem for the weight of the entire bottom structure under static load conditions, including stiffness, strength and buckling constraints, is formulated and solved for each material application. In addition to optimal (minimized) mass and materials' price used for selection of foams, the assessment of an environmental impact of materials-candidates during the entire life cycle of the structure is considered. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.SiC ceramics are widely used at high-temperature fields. The raw materials, manufacture process and application fields of SiC are all related to heavy energy consumption and pollutions, and bring high environmental loads. The resources consumption and pollution emissions in RB-SiC manufacture process were quantificationally estimated by input/output method. Difference between traditional technique and the new technique to produce SiC ceramics in China was also compared and analyzed. The Results show that SiC processes consume large quantities of resources because the furnace is open to environment and too much thermal-protection materials are used. Some suggestions were introduced to improve the traditional techniques and a new process was designed. It is the most important that the open furnace should be replaced by close vacuum furnace. Sintering and siliconizing process can be combined into one high-temperature process. As results of process simplification and vacuum sintering, resources and energy consumption and wastes emission were decreased remarkably.The authors carried out the life cycle assessment for metallic copper produced by the pyrometallurgical processes based on the investigations. Using single copper ore and copper-nickel coexistence ore the metallurgical processes were chosen separately to investigate the energy consumption and various emissions in the life cycle of the metallic copper. The assessments indicate that the energy consumption and the emission of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide in the processes of using the copper-nickel coexistence ore are more than those in the processes of using the single copper ore. However, the emissions of solid waste are due to ore grade and dilution rate. The sewage is mainly due to mining geological structure, regional rainfall and circulating utilization or recycling rate of water. The differences of the energy consumption and the carbon dioxide emission are mainly due to the difference of refilling technologies and metallurgical processes used in the two processes.LCA is a technique that can be usually integrated with technical, market and economic assessment in the evaluation of products and process technology. The results of LCA of products can be used for providing the environmental aspects information, provide scientific evidence for product innovation and policy strategies. Our group has done great efforts on Life Cycle Assessment, which include: LCIA methodology, case study, LCA database development and application of LCA in materials selection.Alternatives to cyanide for leaching gold from gold bearing ores/concentrates can be divided into different groups according to their donor elements with gold in aqueous solution. The donor elements with gold during dissolving are classified into carbon group (C-) donor, nitrogen and phosphorus group (N-, P-) donor, sulfur group (S-) donor and chloride group donor. It is a high time to evaluate all the alternatives to cyanide from the viewpoint of life-cycle-assessment (LCA) for material production. By introducing utility function of assessment index and setting the data base, a quantitative calculation or comparative assessment of the environmental impacts, including resources consumption, energy consumption and pollution resulted from the waste water and the gases of the leaching processes by six sulfur bearing reagents including thiosulfate, thiourea, polysulfide, LSSS, modified LSSS and thiocyanate with those of cyanide are carried out for the first time. The comparison results are valuable to choose reasonable reagents for leaching gold, the way of calculation and the mathematic model in this study based on the LCA principles can be applied to many similar processes or methods for leaching gold as well as leaching other metals.The authors carried out the life cycle assessment (LCA) for metallic nickel produced by pyrometallurgy processes based on the investigations. The production processes of nickel, which use nickel-copper coexistence ore as the raw material, are a complex production system and deal with nickel, copper and other metals production; therefore, the LCA study is rather complicated. The environmental impacts are distributed to each product, according to the mass flow combined with the energy consumption, and a LCA case study for the complex metallurgical processes is offered. The assessment indicates that the processes, which cause the largest energy consumption and waste gases emission, are mining, ore preparation and electrolysis processes. The processes, which cause the largest amount of waste water and solid waste, are mining process. The improving ways of them are also discussed.Eco-building material is still in the developing stage in our country. Because testing technology is relatively backward in comparison with fast development of eco-building material, up to now there is not a complete evaluation method, and eco-building material market is in disorder, which also restricts the research and development of eco-building material. A comprehensive assessment project is put forward for the eco-building material products first time in this paper, and a comprehensive assessment system is founded. At the same time, we research and develop a comprehensive assessment software in order to solve the difficult problem, which at present is unable to evaluate the eco-building material products in the round and quantitatively. This system includes basic environment parameters of eco-building material at first and environment accordant function factors, at the same time include the basic use factors and lifecycle environment load factors. On the basis of system engineering and math method theory, we found a scientific assessment method for the eco-building material products and the software for their application. This comprehensive system of four subsystems, that is, product fundamental function subsystem, environment accordant function subsystem, environment protect function subsystem, and lifecycle environment load subsystem. Each subsystem covers ten to twelve kinds of factors, including to almost all kinds of the function parameters. According to the evaluating system for eco-building material, it makes the eco-evaluation maneuverable, evaluation results systematic, scientific and impartial. At the same time, we can evaluate completely and quantitatively common eco-building material products. This system also plays an important role in regulating eco-building material market and guiding the development of eco-building material. It also provides a forceful evaluating method for our country setting national standard for eco-building material and promoting green environment sign, green environment Olympic materials selection.A Chinese LCA software package, which follows LCA methodology and data documentation format defined by ISO14040f, is briefly introduced. This program features a typical Windows graphical user interface, with which users can construct a flow chart to denote the life cycle of any product system. With a flow chart, users can easily turn to the data documentation of each process and the result of computation can be shown in the flow chart. Thus, the flow chart plays a central role in assessment procedures to make them visual and easily understood. using three-kinds of graphic elements, i.e. boxes, links and feedback links, users can illustrate a product system with internal loops. And matrix algorithm is adopted for LCA computation. Hence, this program can manipulate the computation of environmental Input/Output Analysis (IOA) as well. The localization of data documentation format is also discussed in this paper.The aim of this study is to compare material recovery to waste incineration with energy recovery from the criteria of energy efficiency. Material recovery saves virgin material and also energy since production processes using recovered material are less energy intensive than processes using virgin material, whereas energy recovery saves other fuels that differ among various energy systems. Optimisations are made for the district heating systems in two Swedish municipalities, showing that it is profitable for the energy utilities in the municipalities to invest in plants using waste as a fuel for electricity and heat production. The fuels replaced by the waste differ between the municipalities. For one it is mostly wood chips, and for the other, a lot of biomass is replaced, but the largest saving is in oil. Energy savings by material recycling of the waste are calculated. Non-combustible waste, such as metals and glass save energy in various extensions when material recycled, but give no heat contribution when incinerated. It is more complicated to compare material and energy recovery of combustible waste fractions, such as cardboard, paper, plastics and biodegradable waste since they can be recycled in both fashions. For these fractions it is important to consider the configuration of the energy system. The conclusions from the two municipalities are that even if there is a district heating system able to utilise the heat, from the energy-efficiency view point; paper and hard plastics should preferably be material recovered, whereas cardboard and biodegradable waste is more suited for energy recovery through waste incineration. These calculations are done with the assumption that biomass should be regarded as a limited resource and when saved eventually eliminates fossile fuel combustion in other facilities. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Next to economic viability, the holistic energy balance of electricity generation options is a factor of major importance. All aspects of the energy balance, i.e. all expenditures and all revenues, are compared in a life cycle analysis. This turns out to be a complex task, especially because of the large number of input quantities to be determined, including the balancing limits to be taken into account. The article presents in detail the findings of analyses of energy balances for various types of nuclear power plants as well as electricity generation in fossil-fired power plants, and for renewable energies. The analyses and their databases are discussed. Moreover, the findings are presented for the energetic amortization periods and the amounts of CO2 emissions specific to the respective generating technologies.The reduction of greenhouse gases' emissions (especially CO2) from power plants is a subject of great debate. In order to design sustainable electricity production scenarios, the reduction options have to be assessed from an environmental life cycle perspective. In this paper, a life cycle assessment of (i) four scenarios of coal based electricity production, including coal and biomass (waste or cultivated) co-firing and combustion, flue gas CO2 capture and coal ash valorisation and (ii) one hypothetical scenario of biomass combustion were conducted. The results showed that biomass co-combustion is always environmentally better than the sole CO2 capture and/or biomass combustion. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.All nations of the world depend on fossil fuels for their energy needs. However the obligation to reduce CO2 and other gaseous emissions in order to be in conformity with the Kyoto agreement is the reason behind which countries turn to non-polluting renewable energy sources. In this paper the pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels is initially presented followed by a study on the environmental protection offered by the two most widely used renewable energy systems, i.e. solar water heating and solar space heating. The results presented in this paper show that by using solar energy, considerable amounts of greenhouse polluting gasses are avoided. For the case of a domestic water heating system, the saving, compared to a conventional system, is about 80% with electricity or Diesel backup and is about 75% with both electricity and Diesel backup. In the case of space heating and hot water system the saving is about 40%. It should be noted, however, that in the latter, much greater quantities of pollutant gasses are avoided. Additionally, all systems investigated give positive and very promising financial characteristics. With respect to life cycle assessment of the systems, the energy spent for manufacture and installation of the solar systems is recouped in about 1.2 years, whereas the payback time with respect to emissions produced from the embodied energy required for the manufacture and installation of the systems varies from a few months to 9.5 years according to the fuel and the particular pollutant considered. Moreover, due to the higher solar contribution, solar water heating systems have much shorter payback times than solar space heating systems. It can, therefore, be concluded that solar energy systems offer significant protection to the environment and should be employed whenever possible in order to achieve a sustainable future. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to quantify the non-renewable energy use and global warming potential in electricity generation from a typical oil fired steam turbine plant in Singapore. As the conventional LCA does not include any cost analysis, which is a major criterion in decision making, the cost of power generation is estimated using a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) tool. It is estimated that the hidden processes consumed about 9% additional energy on top of the fuel embedded energy, while the hidden GHG emission is about 12%. A correlation is established to estimate the life cycle energy use and GHG emissions directly from the power plant net efficiency. The study methodology, results and the empirical relations are presented, together with a brief overview of the Singapore power sector. It also highlights the need for consideration of the reserves availability in the pricing mechanism and how such cost indices could be developed based on the LCA-LCCA. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With greater awareness of the impacts of gasoline-powered nonhandheld equipment, such as lawn mowers, on atmospheric pollution, the consumer is encouraged today to choose alternative electric models powered by battery (cordless) or electricity (corded). This choice has historically been driven by the differences in emissions during use and not over the entire life cycle of the products. This study compared impacts of 12 gasoline-powered lawn mowers and one battery- and one electricity-powered lawn mower using life cycle analysis methods. With the exception of lead emissions released in greatest quantity from the life cycle of the battery-powered mower, the gasoline-powered models emitted the highest amounts of all contaminants, as much as 1,500 times more carbon monoxide, 31 times more hydrocarbons and nitrogen dioxides, and 18 times more carbon dioxide, released in largest quantity from the life cycle of all three mower types. The results of this study show that gasoline- and battery-powered lawn mowers pose specific threats to environmental and human health, whereas the corded models are the most benign in all impact categories and scenarios considered.We develop indicators showing the relative environmental burdens that human activities place on locales for a given level of economic benefits. The main purpose is to develop tools that allow us to examine the potential vulnerabilities within economies to changes in resource conditions. The indicators of pollution emission or resource consumption per job can be used to identify potential challenges to resource and industry managers and to compare areas in terms of their ability to adapt to change. For example, if a large number of area jobs are dependent on abundant water, this indicates a vulnerability to a reduction in water availability for industrial use. We develop a case study for 23 counties and 1 city in Maryland to examine the usefulness and limitations of the indicators. Our case study demonstrates that the indicators provide an informative view into patterns of local economic activity and use of an area's environmental goods and services. In contrast to patterns for total environmental burdens (e.g., total SO(2) emissions) that are typically reported, the rates of environmental burden per job are not simply correlated with high or low economic output. Thus, the indicators represent distinct patterns of environmental burdens per job that reflect reliance on environmental services. The indicators have some limitations when used at this fine scale because they can misrepresent conditions in counties in which economic sectors are dominated by one or a few businesses. For this reason, the indicators are best used as a regional screening tool.The use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel is gaining more and more acceptance as the environmental impact of hydrocarbons becomes more evident. A life cycle assessment study has been carried out to investigate the environmental aspects of hydrogen production. Production by natural gas steam reforming and production upon renewable energy sources are examined. Hydrogen is selected as a future alternative fuel because of the absence of CO2 emissions from its use, its high-energy content and its combustion kinetics, A very large number of environmental burdens result from he operation of the different hydrogen production routes. A complete and accurate identification and quantification of the environmental emissions has been attempted. The use of wind, hydropower and solar thermal energy for the production of hydrogen are the most environmental benign methods. The benefits and the drawbacks of the competing hydrogen production systems are presented. (C) 2004 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecomaterials were categorized based on their life cycle and eco-efficiency. Ecomaterials in their broadest sense are classified into "Functional materials of the environment", "Materials for the advanced energy" and "Materials of life cycle design". The materials in the first two categories improve such services as the maintenance of living environment and the efficiency in energy supply. "Materials of life cycle design" can be referred to as ecomaterials in the strict sense and are further devided into four categories according to the focus on stage in life-cycle, namely, "Materials with green environmental profile", "Materials of higher material efficiency", "Materials of higher recyclability" and "Materials of hazardous substance free". Based upon this classification, current Website home pages and environmental report books of enterprises were investigated in search of commercialized ecomaterials. There are many "Materials of higher material efficiency" and "Materials of hazardous substance free" reaching the high 39% and 31% of the total respectively. "Materials with green environmental profile" gains 21%, and "Materials of higher recyclability" shows only 5%. The "Materials of life-cycle design" are obviously well represented in the market reflecting manufacturers' determined response to the increasing appeal to consumers.This study examines the life cycle economics, environment impacts, and energy consumptions of Chinese automobiles fueled by bio-ethanol blends, utilizing life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques, and puts forward C, Env, En, EEE indicators to assess the economics, combined environmental impacts, energy consumption, and the balance of the three, as a means to evaluate whether the energy utilization efficiency and the domestic environment improvement are achieved at the lowest cost possible. A generic gasoline fueled car is used as a baseline case, and the cassava-based E85 fueled FFV in Guangxi is used as a case study. On the life cycle basis, the cost of cassava-based E85 fueled FFV is about 15% higher than that of gasoline fueled car, of which the two key factors are the price of cassava and gasoline, through a cost breakdown analysis. It also has lower life-cycle emissions of CO2, CO, HC, and PM pollutants, higher NOx emissions, while about 20% combined environment indicator is lower than that of the gasoline fueled car. And, it is higher in total energy consumption, lower in fossil fuels and petroleum consumptions, and has a better combined energy indicator. Lastly, the EEE indicator of the cassava-based E85 fueled FFV is about 29% less than that of the gasoline fueled car. Hence, E85 fueled FFV is a better vehicle than the gasoline fueled car, taking the balance of all the 3 "E"s, the energy, environmental and economical aspects, into considerations. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Though oxygen demands are critical measurements for waste water treatment plant operation and water quality management, they are of little relevance to assess or rank the environmental quality of detergents. It is argued that: (1) No accurate measurements of the oxygen demand of bleach detergents can be made, because these products release oxygen during the measurement. (2) When waste water is adequately treated, under normal operating conditions the oxygen demand (organic loading) of the raw sewage has no influence on river quality. (3) Oxygen demand values are narrowly focused on environmental exposure, while they do not take into account the potential for ecotoxicological effects. (4) Short-term biological oxygen demand measurements are useful for the monitoring of 'average sewage', but they are unreliable to assess the biodegradability of more specific substances or products. Instead of oxygen demands, more holistic evaluations based on risk assessment or on life cycle analysis are scientifically preferred.Fuel cells are recognized by all the scientific community to be ultra low emission energy conversion systems, because the pollutants associated with their operation are very low in concentration, compared to traditional energy systems. On the other hand, fuel cells are mainly fed with hydrogen, a chemical component that is not available as a pure component, but it must be extracted from other compounds. This practice involves energy consumption and emissions related to extraction of fuel, hydrogen conversion, transportation and clean up. In order to evaluate the environmental impact related to the energy production by the use of a fuel cell it is imperative to consider all the processes related to the fuel cell operation, and not only the FC operation itself. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a unique approach for evaluating the environmental impact related to the whole life of the system, i.e. considering all the processes associated to the system itself, including construction and decommissioning. In the present study a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) system for electric energy production is considered and the related life-cycle environmental impact is considered. Finally a comparison between traditional energy conversion systems and the MCFC systems is conducted, in order to evaluate which are the advantages and the disadvantages that each supposed scenario can lead to. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Requirements for the design of HVAC systems with low environmental impact have become accepted in the past decade. However, the environmental performance is complicated to evaluate, because the process is affected by several parameters. This paper presents a case study, in which a previously established method for environmental evaluation is adapted. Two alternative air handling units were analysed using life cycle assessment including the weighting step. The results, according to the weighting method applied as well as the material assumptions, show that the user stage of the life cycle of both units is the critical part of the overall impact. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All, rights reserved.Life cycle assessment has been used to compare different processes for the end life treatment of exhausted tyres: combustion in a conventional waste-to-energy (WtE) process; substitution of conventional fuel in the cement clink process and two different hypotheses of reuse as filling material based on a cryogenic pulverisation process (CPP) or on a mechanical pulverisation process (MPP). The analysis shows that the fuel substitution in cement production and the use in WtE processes allow an interesting result in terms of avoided effects, mainly because of the avoided use of conventional fuels. Between these two alternatives, a better result is obtained with the fuel substitution in cement clink process. CPP and MPP for reuse as filling materials show worse results in terms of environmental impact with respect to the other alternatives, because of the high energy consumption related to the pulverisation processes. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Performance analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) fed with biomass with upstream CO2 chemical absorption has been carried out. The main working conditions have been determined by mean of partial exergetic analysis. A sensitivity analysis with respect to the CO2 absorbing solution composition has also been carried out. The reachable efficiency ranges between 35% and 36%, depending on gas turbine technology level. In comparison with efficiency values previously found for an IGCC fed with coal with upstream CO2 chemical absorption (38-39%), the configuration studied seems to be attractive because of the possibility of operating with a simplified scheme (without H2S removal process) and at atmospheric pressure and for the possibility of using biomass in a more efficient way with respect to conventional combustion systems. Due to the lower efficiency, the specific CO2 emission results higher (170 kg/MW h) with respect to the cycle fed with coal and CO2 removal (130 kg/MW h). Moreover, the CO2 balance has been determined with respect to the entire life cycle of the plant, including the construction, operation, dismantling and the biomass growing phases. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need for a practical, economic and environmentally sound solution for waste wood arises from the requirements for resource conservation and recent regulations. Co-firing with coal is a promising option for the thermal recycling of waste wood. The overall environmental impact caused by the co-utilisation of waste wood with coal was evaluated by using life cycle assessment as established by Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) [A technical framework for life cycle assessment. Washington, DC: SETAC, USA; 1991, Guidelines for life cycle assessments: A code of practice. Brussels: SETAC, Europe; 1993]. This provides opportunities to evaluate direct environmental impact, to identify possible improvements, and to reduce energy resource consumption. In this work, the environmental impact of co-utilising lignite and waste wood in an industrial steam boiler was evaluated. Results obtained showed that co-utilisation is technically feasible and can meet strict environmental standards. A net decrease Of CO2 emissions can be achieved by the thermal use of waste wood, as well as conservation of fossil fuel resources, minimisation of waste disposal and reduction of impacts on health. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Studies of popular renewable energy systems show that cumulative energy demand (CED) can be understood as a kind of simplifying life cycle assessment [1] where the accounting of energy and material inputs is seen as part of an inventory analyses and the calculation of CED as a rough form of impact assessment. Within this research project, three grid-connected photovoltaic systems (sc-Si, pc-Si and a-Si based) are examined in regard to CED and cumulative emissions. The production of these systems was chosen to take place in seven European countries: Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Austria and Sweden. Due to the fact that electricity demand does play a major role in production of photovoltaics and that power generation differs throughout these countries CED varies from about 23,200 to 65,200 MJ/kWp. The cumulative emissions (CEm) were found to lie between about 900 and 4000 kg CO2/kWp, 1.9 and 5.5 kg NOx/kWp and 2.4 and 4.8 kg SO2/kWp. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During the design process of heating and air conditioning systems, the designer must analyse various factors in order to determine the best design options. Therefore, the environmental aspects of a product should be included in the analysis and selection of design options if an environmentally aware design is to be produced or selected. The comparison between three different heating systems was made with the Eco-indicator 95 method. The study included the environmental impact at the production phase of the system, because alternative production methods have different kinds of environmental burdens. The results showed that the three different concepts of heating systems with different construction materials varied the Eco-indicator value. For radiator heating system the Eco-indicator value is far superlative than for floor or fan coil convector heating system. Copper pipes and other copper parts contribute to the greatest environmental impact. Radiator heating Eco-indicator showed three times higher value for copper pipes than for the steel pipes despite smaller dimensions. The lowest values are obtained for floor heating systems. Reasonable values are obtained for fan coil units; analysis shows up, that heat exchanger contributes the main part of the value. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Although intuitively it is apparent that population-level exposure to contaminants dispersed in the environment must be related to the persistence of the contaminant, there has been little effort to quantify this link formally. In this paper we investigate the relationship between overall persistence and/or overall residence time in a multimedia exposure environment and the population-level intake of contaminants as expressed by intake fraction (iF), the cumulative fraction of chemical emitted to the environment that is taken up by members of the population. We demonstrate that for any given contaminant and emission scenario the definition of iF implies that it is directly proportional to the overall multimedia persistence (P-OV), or the overall multimedia residence time (T-OV). The proportionality constant has dimensions of time and represents the characteristic time for population intake (CTI) of the chemical from the environment. We then apply the CalTOX fate and exposure model to explore how T-OV and CTI combine to determine the magnitude of iF. We find that CTI has a narrow range of possible values relative to T-OV across multiple chemicals and emissions scenarios. We use data from the Canadian Environmental Protection Act Priority Substance List (PSL1) Assessments and multimedia P-OV to show that exposure assessments based on empirical observation are consistent with interpretations from the model. Results indicate that P-OV derived from screening-level assessments of persistence, bioaccumulation potential, and toxicity (PBT) is a useful indicator of the potential for population-level exposure.This analysis presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) carried out on six alternative options for the recycling of water at a Danish industrial laundry for workwear. The study focuses on the handling and disposal of the wet residues generated when wastewater is treated for recycling, and in accounting for long-term potential toxicity impacts. The analysed options are a combination of two water-upgrading technologies: biofilter and ultrafiltration, and three residue disposal alternatives: biogas followed by incineration of sludge at local wastewater treatment plant, thermal vitrification treatment for production of vitrified sand, and mineralization in a sludge bed. It is concluded from the results that with the current Danish environmental policy priorities, the environmental impacts of highest priority are the toxicity effects derived from the presence of heavy metals in the residues. Heavy metals originate from the dirt in the workwear that is washed in the laundry. It is further concluded that the studied water treatment technologies satisfy both the need of clean water for recycling and simultaneously help controlling a safe disposal of pollutants by concentration of the residues. The results of the study also confirm the potential of LCA as a decision-support tool for assisting water recycling initiatives and for residue handling management. The handling of residues has been identified as a stage of the water recycling strategy that bears important environmental impacts. This holistic perspective provided by LCA can be used as input for the definition of environmental management strategies at an industrial laundry, and the prioritization of investments to the environmental profile of laundry processes. In this case-study, the results of the LCA are made operational by, for example, selecting the water treatment technology which is associated wih a safe disposal of the wet residue. It is important to bear in mind that such prioritization depends on national boundary conditions. In the case study analysed, the boundary conditions steer the weighing of the environmental impacts, following the current Danish environmental policy priorities.Incorporation of ecological considerations in decision-making is essential for sustainable development, but is hindered by inadequate appreciation of the role of ecosystems, and lack of scientifically rigorous techniques for including their contribution. This paper develops a novel thermodynamic accounting framework for including the contribution of natural capital via thermodynamic input-output analysis. This framework is applied to the 1992 US economy comprising 91 industry sectors, resulting in delineation of the myriad ways in which sectors of the US economy rely on ecosystem products and services. The contribution of ecosystems is represented via the concept of ecological cumulative energy consumption (ECEC), which is related to emergy analysis but avoids any of its controversial assumptions and claims. The use of thermodynamics permits representation of all kinds of inputs and outputs in consistent units, facilitating the definition of aggregate metrics. Total ECEC requirement indicates the extent to which each economic sector relies directly and indirectly on ecological inputs. The ECEC/money ratio indicates the relative monetary versus ecological throughputs in each sector, and indicates the relationship between the thermodynamic work needed to produce a product or service and the corresponding economic activity. This ratio is found to decrease along economic supply chains, indicating industries that are higher up in the economic food chain price ecosystem contribution more than the basic infrastructure industries such as mining and manufacturing. The ratio of CEC with and without inclusion of ecosystems indicates the extent to which conventional thermoeconomic analysis underestimates the contribution of ecosystems. Such ratios, made available for the first time, provide unique insight into the importance of natural capital, and are especially useful in hybrid thermodynamic life cycle analysis of industrial systems. The approach, data compiled in this work, and the resulting insight provide a more ecologically conscious tool for environmental decision-making, and has potential applications at micro as well as macro scales.It is generally well known that the reliability of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) studies depends upon exact, complete and sharp input data that, unfortunately, are not always available. Furthermore, when available, the input data are affected by uncertainty whose importance is not always adequately taken into consideration. This paper describes the software F.A.L.C.A.D.E. (Fuzzy Approach to Life Cycle Analysis and Decision Environment): a tool designed for the calculation of the eco-profile of products, based on a fuzzy logic approach. The originality of the method already treated in other papers is to use the fuzzy representation to manage the complex relationships that arise in compiling an eco-balance. In particular, the model allows to give further attributes to the numerical data of the inventory based to the expert knowledge. The uncertainty of data is clearly defined by means of four fuzzy linguistic variables: the age of the data, the kind of technology to which data are referred to, the statistical and geographic representativeness of the data. The main model's strength is transparency. Many LCA tools appear, unfortunately, as "black boxes" leaving the actual influence of the algorithms upon the final results unclear. On the other hand, with F.A.L.C.A.D.E. the user is able to observe and control all the calculation steps from the input of data to the final results. For instance, F.A.L.C.A.D.E. uses a linear sub-model that, starting from the inventory matrixes, allows to calculate an eco-profile together with a conditioning number "CN", which describes how sensitive is the linear model to errors when solving the system of equations. Finally, the software present a set of tables summarising the results obtained with the fuzzy model. These results can be compared with those obtained with other methods. The software represents therefore a tool to evaluate the quality of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) study. F.A.L.C.A.D.E. has been developed using an object-oriented programming. The result is a flexible tool whose structure can be easily changed by the user (variables, linguistic rules, domains of the fuzzy groups, etc.). As case study, the software has been applied to the LCA of a plaster material commonly used in building construction. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Multiple environmental factors may act synergistically to influence demographic characteristics, and ultimately the dynamics, of biological populations. Using prospective and retrospective analyses of demographic data from a 40-year study of individually marked animals, we investigated the demographic mechanisms of the temporal and spatial dynamics of a yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) population. Prospective elasticity analyses indicated juvenile survival (P-j) would have the largest relative influence on the projected population growth rate (lambda). Relative magnitudes of elasticities did not differ between years characterized by positive (lambda > 1.0) and negative (lambda < 1.0) population growth. However, retrospective analyses of a life table response experiment (LTRE) revealed that changes in fertility (F), followed by age of first reproduction (&alpha;) made the largest contributions to observed annual changes in &lambda;. Changes in F and &alpha; made the largest contributions to annual declines in &lambda;, whereas changes in P-j also were important to cause increases in &lambda;. Population dynamic differences among marmot colonies were due primarily to spatial variations in &alpha; and P-j. Our results indicate that changes in reproductive parameters (a and F) primarily drive the temporal dynamics of our study population, and that demographic mechanisms of population increases might differ from those of population declines. Studies of the regulation of yellow-bellied marmot populations should focus on the factors or processes influencing reproductive parameters.Since the last petroleum shortages, environmental aspects are becoming more important. This has driven the scientific community to find new environmentally friendly solutions that help to minimize exhaust emissions and natural resources depletion. To achieve this, the environmental implications as well as critical points involved in each process must be analyzed, making possible the design of the best environmental strategies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) consists of an ultimate tool that provides a comparison between products, process, or services, thus helping to develop environmental improvements. In the present work, an LCA of a building air conditioning air-air heat pump has been carried out. To accomplish this objective, two methodologies have been tested-the Eco-Indicator99 and the EPS2000. Emissions and environmental impact determination, including those produced during the heat pump manufacture as well as the ones produced during the heat pump functioning were the primary analyzed parameters. Finally, a comparative long-term profitability study between a heat pump and a gas boiler has been carried out. External costs due to the environmental impact were also considered. Results show that EPS2000 is mainly focused on the energetic and nonenergetic resources decrease, while the Eco-indicator99 methodology is mainly focused on human health. The main impacts are due to resources depletion, life expectancy, and refrigerant (EPS2000), and to respiratory effects of inorganic substances, carcinogenesis, and climatic change (Eco-indicator99). Also, long-term profitability studies reveal better results for the heat pump compared to the boiler. The longer the life expectancy, the higher the economic profitability of the heat pump. Furthermore, the heat pump provides an alternative that does not need any additional investment for cooling requirements during summertime, while the boiler does. This factor could double the boiler investment costs.Investigating the environmental sustainability of any recycling process demands full understanding and objective quantification of all the associated environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment is an internationally standardized method that is able to account for upstream and downstream inputs and emissions over the complete supply chain providing a product or service. It is generally considered the best environmental management tool that can be used to move from a generic statement about the environmental benefit of a given recycling or disposal system to reach an objective quantification of its environmental sustainability. In this study, it is used to assess and compare the environmental performances of three alternative options (landfilling, recycling, and combustion with energy recovery) that could be used in Italy to manage paper and board packaging waste. The results confirm that material recycling may not be the best environmental option. In this specific case, they show that paper use should be viewed in the context of the international trade in biofuels.New method of environmental load estimation for scraps and by-products production in Life cycle inventory (LCI) based on Input-Output table (I/O table) has been developed. And a new description method of I/O table with scraps and by-products sections for the estimation is developed. In this study, both scraps and by-products are regarded as products, and are dealt with as an independent section in I/O table, respectively. By means of this method, the energy consumption and CO2 emission of process-scrap steel production are estimated as an example study. And a weighted average value of energy consumption and that Of CO2 emission with consideration to the monetary amounts of production of industrial-scrap steel were calculated by using the estimated data, respectively. Moreover, a reliability of the estimated data is analyzed. And LCI of converter steel and EAF steel are done in order to evaluate an influence by differences of data. As a result, when the value of industrial scrap was assumed to be zero, the energy consumption rates of zero against the maximum is estimated 0.5% for the converter steel, and 20.4% for the EAF steel, respectively. Therefore, in case of converter, it is possible to treat the environmental load of a process scrap for nothing in approximation.This study has shown that the environmental impact from the various studied coatings are the dependent criteria on their service lives. The dependence of these criteria has been studied with the help of the integrated design model, developed in this study especially for coatings on exterior wood. The integrated design for the overall performance showed that the water-borne acrylic coating and the water-borne acrylic stain are the best choice as regards the environmental impact and durability of the coatings. The discussed surface coating systems were a solvent-borne alkyd coating, a water-borne acrylic coating, a water-borne acrylic stain, a solvent-borne alkyd stain and alkyd oil.Two rating systems assessing the environmental damage caused by vehicles are compared: a Brussels one, ECOSCORE and a European one, CLEANER DRIVE. Both vehicle rating systems were developed for the assessment of vehicles with alternative types of fuels as well as different types of drive train, such as electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles. A simplified life cycle assessment following a well-to-wheel approach is used to compare the methodologies. Total emissions involve oil extraction, transport and refinery, fuel distribution and electricity generation and distribution as well as tailpipe emissions from the use phase. Different types of pollution such as acid rain, photochemical air pollution, noise pollution and global warming are examined and their impact on numerous receptors such as ecosystems, buildings and human beings (cancer, respiratory diseases, etc.) are investigated. Examples illustrate both methodologies and sensitivity analysis is used to examine the robustness of the systems. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Desalination technologies require high energy consumption. As a consequence, the environmental load associated with the operating stage is much higher (more than 90%) than that associated to plant construction, maintenance and final disposal. This paper analyzes the evolution of environmental impact by means of the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique, caused by the most common commercial desalination technologies used worldwide - multi-stage flash, multi-effect evaporation and reverse osmosis - when integrated with different energy production systems, also taking into account the origin and sources of the energy used. SimaPro 5.0 software, developed by Dutch PRe Consultants, was used as the LCA analysis tool, and three different evaluation methods were applied: CML 2 baseline 2000, Eco-Points 97 and Eco-Indicator 99.Pesticide leaching from agricultural fields to groundwater is an environmentally relevant and highly variable process. In the present paper, leaching scenarios typical in European agriculture are defined. These scenarios consider important sources of pesticide leaching variability, namely site factors, farming practice, and substance properties. The logic-tree method was used to structure these scenarios. For each scenario, leached fractions of pesticide applied in agriculture were calculated with data and models used in the registration process of the European Union (EU). Contributions of all parameters to variability were calculated for 11 pesticides. Substance properties (K(OC) and DT(50,soil)) contributed the most to variability, followed by site, weather, season of application, crop, and macropore flow. The results of the variability assessment may be directly applied in policy making or they may be used in the environmental assessment of pesticides, e.g. with the life-cycle assessment (LCA) method. Several approaches are suggested for how the variability assessment presented in this paper may be incorporated in LCA. The application of these approaches is illustrated by a case study on atrazine.Environmental impacts associated with the manufacture of semiconductor devices are characterized from two perspectives: a qualitative survey of key issues and quantitative analysis of energy and entropy associated with the processes in the production chain. The main issues of environmental concern are emissions from fabs, health effects on line workers and high energy and material use. Results of analysis of material use in the production chain suggest that total weight of secondary fossil fuel and chemical inputs to produce and use a single 2-g 32MB DRAM chip are 1600 and 72 g, respectively. Secondary inputs of fossil fuels to manufacture a chip total 600 times its weight, high compared to a factor of 1-2 for an automobile or refrigerator. Due to its extremely low-entropy, organized structure, the materials intensity of a microchip is orders of magnitude higher than that of "traditional" goods. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Understanding the environmental burdens associated with aquafeeds is a critical component for assessing and improving the environmental performance of aquaculture. The aim of the study was to assess the environmental impacts associated with feeds for rainbow trout production in France, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The stages assessed are: the extraction of the raw materials, the production and transformation of the primary ingredients used, the manufacturing of the feeds, the use of the feeds at the farm, transport at all stages, and the production and use of energy resources. The assessment revealed that the use of fishery resources (such as biotic resource use) and nutrient emissions at the farm (such as eutrophication potential) contribute most to the potential environmental impacts of salmonid aquafeeds. Improvements in feed composition and management practices seem to be the best ways for improving the environmental profile of aquafeeds.Renewable energy systems, such as photovoltaic and wind-turbine energy systems, are considered to be environmentally sound from the viewpoint of carbon-dioxide emissions and resource depletion. The cost of energy supplied from renewable energy systems is higher than that of conventional fossil-fuel systems, and this hinders the wider spread of renewable-energy systems. Global environmental problems, however, are becoming more obvious. There is a movement to defray the additional cost of electricity generated in environmentally-sound processes. In this paper, we report the results of a survey using the contingent valuation method (CVM) of the willingness of Japanese households to pay more, in the form of a flat monthly surcharge, for renewable energy. The median value of willingness to pay for renewable energy by Japanese households is estimated at about 2000 yen (around 17 US$ with the exchange rate 115 yen/US$) per month per household. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) defines the potential environmental impacts throughout a product's life, from raw material acquisition through production, use and disposal. Research funded by Dairy Australia has defined the life cycle environmental impacts for a range of dairy products. The study has shown that it is important to adopt a Life Cycle Thinking approach to environmental decision making. In the future, the greatest gains will be achieved by dairy manufacturers working with suppliers and customers to encourage continuous environmental improvement throughout the supply chain. Triple bottom line sustainability requires a good understanding of the economic, environmental and social impacts of the industry's activities, and these must all be considered when addressing environmental issues. LCA is a useful tool in building understanding of the total environmental impact associated with the production of dairy products.Using life cycle assessment, metrics for calculation of the input energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions from utility scale energy storage systems have been developed and applied to three storage technologies: pumped hydro storage (PHS), compressed air energy storage (CAES) and advanced battery energy storage (BES) using vanadium and sodium polysulphide electrolytes. In general, the use of energy storage with electricity generation increases the input energy required to produce electricity, as well as the total greenhouse gas emissions. Despite this increase, the life cycle GHG emission rate from storage systems when coupled with nuclear or renewable sources is substantially lower than from fossil fuel derived electricity sources. GHG emissions from PHS when coupled with nuclear and renewable energy systems are lower than those from BES or CAES. When coupled with fossil generation, CAES has significantly lower net GHG emissions than PHS or BES. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A direct reduction process for refractory oxides and a life cycle analysis comparison with conventional pelletising and sintering process for chargechrome are presented. The new route has potential to reduce the environmental impact of the ferroalloy industry and to extend the use of non-renewable resources by utilising waste that is not economically recoverable by conventional technologies; increasing metal recoveries; significantly reducing CO2 emissions; reducing or eliminating the use of coke; and reducing electricity consumption during smelting.According to increase in a waste scrap, a process is noticed in which a waste scraps is consumed for sheet steel production within severe restriction of impurities concentration. In this study, evaluation of the effect on environmental load decline by LCA is applied to this new recycling technology. Target of this study is not for closed loop recycling system like aluminum can for drink but for open loop recycling system in which many industries are concerned. Authors suggest taking the interindustry-relations table for open loop recycling system. Evaluation made in this research is based on it. By setting up I/O boundary, though increase of environmental load is predicted to be high comparing to those which are assumed as non-open recycling system, still there is a sufficient effect for it. As the result of the analysis, curtailment was estimated that energy consumption and CO2 emission are 16.8 GJ per ton waste scrap and 1.2 t per ton waste scrap, respectively.This paper describes the material flows and emissions in all the life stages of CdTe PV modules, from extracting refining and purifying raw materials through the production, use, and disposal or recycling of the modules. The prime focus is on cadmium flows and cadmium emissions into the environment. This assessment also compares the cadmium environmental inventories in CdTe PV modules with those of Ni-Cd batteries and of coal fuel in power plants. Previous studies are reviewed and their findings assessed in light of new data. Published by Elsevier Ltd.China is the largest producer of magnesium in the world. and supplies currently 40-50% of the world demand for magnesium. The current growth in the demand for magnesium is primarily driven by automotive industry for light weighting automobiles to reduce emissions. Magnesium production in China is based on a thermal process, known as the Pidgeon process that was originally invented in Canada in the 1940s. The raw material used is dolomite, which is initially calcined, and the calcined dolomite is reduced using the Pidgeon process by supplying ferrosilicon and thermal energy to produce pure magnesium crowns. The magnesium crowns are then melted and cast as pure magnesium ingots, which are then exported from China to meet the growing world demand. With a focus on the global warming impact, a cradle-to-gate life cycle study is conducted using averaged data for magnesium production in China. Calculations show that the cradle-to-gate global warming impact of Chinese magnesium ingots is 42 kg CO2 eq/kg Mg ingot, within an uncertain range of 37-47 kg CO2 eq/kg Mg ingot. The value of impact for the magnesium produced in China is similar to60% higher than the global warming impact of aluminium, a competing material that is also produced in China in abundance. The calculated impact for magnesium is discussed in the context of the future magnesium products value chain that may have a strong dependence on the magnesium produced in China. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Basic requirements of any agricultural implements are the desired combination of hardness and wear resistance properties. Heat treatment plays an important role in order to achieve these mechanical properties. Conventionally high carbon (similar to0.70C) steel hardened by oil quenching (38-45 HRC) is being used but in desert areas and places having black soil higher hardness (45-52 HRC) is required. So for these applications medium carbon (similar to0.30C) steels with microadditions of chromium or boron had been used. Present investigation characterized the mechanism of wear for these three experimental grades of steel. Preferred microstructures of the steel had been determined and the influence of surface hardness and other mechanical properties had been considered for their possible applications in the agricultural sector like tillage discs, soil-engaging components, etc. Predictions of the volume loss during progressive wear for any particular linear distance travelled was compared with the actual obtained by experiments. This in turn assessed the metallurgical life cycle of the agricultural implements made by particular grade of steel in desired soil conditions. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Assessment on net energy, external cost of carbon dioxide (CO,) emissions and cost of using cassava-based ethanol as an alternative automotive fuel has been conducted based on its holistic life-cycle, from feedstock production (source) to fuel combustion. And, a new indicator, figure of merit (FM), is proposed for grading conventional gasoline (CG) and cassava-based ethanol (CE): it links net energy yield, external cost of CO' emissions, and production cost (the higher the FM reading, the better the total performance). On the life-cycle basis, the net energy yield of CE is found to be 0.37 MJ/MJ, i.e. about 49% that of CG. The external cost to society of CO, emission of CE is about 83% of CG's, and the production cost of CE is 0.14 RMB/MJ, i.e. about 200% of CG's. The FM of CE is 0.37, i.e. 46% lower than that of CG. From the standpoint of these indicators, CE is currently not competitive with CG, but it has great potential to be improved in the future. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impact assessment is becoming indispensable for the design and operation of chemical plants. Structured and consistent methods for this purpose have experienced a rapid development. The more rigorous and sophisticated these methods become, the greater is the demand for convenient tools. On the other hand, despite the incredible advances in process simulators, some aspects have still not been sufficiently covered. To date, applications of these programs to quantify environmental impacts have been restricted to straightforward examples of steady-state processes. In this work, a life-cycle assessment implementation with the aim of process design will be described, with a brief discussion of a dynamic simulation for analysis of transient state operations, such as process start-up. A case study shows the importance of this analysis in making possible operation at a high performance level with reduced risks to the environment.First the basics of ecobalancing are briefly explained. In this connection the main focus is set on material flow networks. In the software tool Umberto(R), material flow networks are used to model material flows, which are necessary for creation of inventory analysis. Furthermore, data defects in material flow networks are classified, and causes and consequences of these data defects are pointed out. Afterward, possible solutions with their benefits and drawbacks are proposed. A case study (life-cycle assessment of a coating material) shows both data defects and some solution attempts. Finally a short outlook outlines some other approaches, which should be investigated in future work.Sustainable development requires methods and tools to measure and compare the environmental impacts of human activities for the provision of goods and services (both of which are summarized under the term "products"). Environmental impacts include those from emissions into the environment and through the consumption of resources, as well as other interventions (e.g., land use) associated with providing products that occur when extracting resources, producing materials, manufacturing the products, during consumption/use, and at the products' end-of-life (collection/sorting, reuse, recycling, waste disposal). These emissions and consumptions contribute to a wide range of impacts, such as climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, tropospheric ozone (smog) creation, eutrophication, acidification, toxicological stress on human health and ecosystems, the depletion of resources, water use, land use, and noise-among others. A clear need, therefore, exists to be proactive and to provide complimentary insights, apart from current regulatory practices, to help reduce such impacts. Practitioners and researchers from many domains come together in life cycle assessment (LCA) to calculate indicators of the aforementioned potential environmental impacts that are linked to products-supporting the identification of opportunities for pollution prevention and reductions in resource consumption while taking the entire product life cycle into consideration. This paper, part I in a series of two, introduces the LCA framework and procedure, outlines how to define and model a product's life cycle, and provides an overview of available methods and tools for tabulating and compiling associated emissions and resource consumption data in a life cycle inventory (LCI). It also discusses the application of LCA in industry and policy making. The second paper, by Pennington et al. (Environ. Int. 2003, in press), highlights the key features, summarises available approaches, and outlines the key challenges of assessing the aforementioned inventory data in terms of contributions to environmental impacts (life cycle impact assessment, LCIA). (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Providing our society with goods and services contributes to a wide range of environmental impacts. Waste generation, emissions and the consumption of resources occur at many stages in a product's life cycle-from raw material extraction, energy acquisition, production and manufacturing, use, reuse, recycling, through to ultimate disposal. These all contribute to impacts such as climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, photooxidant formation (smog), eutrophication, acidification, toxicological stress on human health and ecosystems, the depletion of resources and noise-among others. The need exists to address these product-related contributions more holistically and in an integrated manner, providing complimentary insights to those of regulatory/process-oriented methodologies. A previous article (Part 1, Rebitzer et al., 2004) outlined how to define and model a product's life cycle in current practice, as well as the methods and tools that are available for compiling the associated waste, emissions and resource consumption data into a life cycle inventory. This article highlights how practitioners and researchers from many domains have come together to provide indicators for the different impacts attributable to products in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase of life cycle assessment (LCA). (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is useful as an information tool for the examination of alternative future scenarios for strategic planning. Developing a life cycle assessment for a large water and wastewater system involves making methodological decisions about the level of detail which is retained through different stages of the process. In this article we discuss a methodology tailored to strategic planning needs which retains a high degree of model segmentation in order to enhance modeling of a large, complex system. This is illustrated by a case study of Sydney Water, which is Australia's largest water service provider. A prospective LCA was carried out to examine the potential environmental impacts of Sydney Water's total operations in the year 2021. To our knowledge this is the first study to create an LCA model of an integrated water and wastewater system with this degree of complexity. A "base case" system model was constructed to represent current operating assets as augmented and upgraded to 2021. The base case results provided a basis for the comparison of alternative future scenarios and for conclusions to be drawn regarding potential environmental improvements. The scenarios can be roughly classified in two categories: (1) options which improve the environmental performance across all impact categories and (2) options which improve one indicator and worsen others. Overall environmental improvements are achieved in all categories by the scenarios examining increased demand management, energy efficiency, energy generation, and additional energy recovery from biosolids. The scenarios which examined desalination of seawater and the upgrades of major coastal sewage treatment plants to secondary and tertiary treatment produced an improvement in one environmental indicator but deteriorations in all the other impact categories, indicating the environmental tradeoffs within the system. The desalination scenario produced a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to coal-fired electricity generation for a small increase in water supply. Assessment of a greenfield scenario incorporating water demand management, on-site treatment, local irrigation, and centralized biosolids treatment indicates significant environmental improvements are possible relative to the assessment of a conventional system of corresponding scale.Exergy analysis is a thermodynamic approach used for analyzing and improving the efficiency of chemical and thermal processes. It has also been extended for life cycle assessment and sustainability evaluation of industrial products and processes. Although these extensions recognize the importance of capital and labor inputs and environmental impact, most of them ignore the crucial role that ecosystems play in sustaining all industrial activity. Decisions based on approaches that take nature for granted continue to cause significant deterioration in the ability of ecosystems to provide goods and services that are essential for every human activity. Accounting for nature's contribution is also important for determining the impact and sustainablility of industrial activity. In contrast, emergy analysis, a thermodynamic method from systems ecology, does account for ecosystems, but has encountered a lot of resistance and criticism, particularly from economists, physicists, and engineers. This paper expands the engineering concept of Cumulative Exergy Consumption (CEC) analysis to include the contribution of ecosystems, which leads to the concept of Ecological Cumulative Exergy Consumption (ECEC). Practical challenges in computing ECEC for industrial processes are identified and a formal algorithm based on network algebra is proposed. ECEC is shown to be closely related to emergy, and both concepts become equivalent if the analysis boundary, allocation method, and approach for combining global energy inputs are identical. This insight permits combination of the best features of emergy and exergy analysis, and shows that most of the controversial aspects of emergy analysis need not hinder its use for including the exergetic contribution of ecosystems. Examples illustrate the approach and highlight the potential benefits of accounting for nature's contribution to industrial activity.This paper compares available options for the aquatic ecotoxicological effect factor component in life-cycle assessment (LCA). The effect factor is expressed here as the change in risk per unit change in cumulative exposure, Deltaeffect/Deltaexposure. The comparison is restricted to approaches linked, implicitly as well as explicitly, to species-sensitivity distributions (SSDs). This draws on recent insights for chemical mixtures and identifies the implications of different model choices. In spite of the many options, assumptions, and areas for further research, it is concluded that a single effect factor basis represents the best available practice for use in LCA at this time, DeltaPAF(ms)/DeltaC = 0.5/HC50, where DeltaPAF(ms) is the change in the (potentially affected) fraction (PAF) of species that experiences an increase in exposure above a specified effect level, accounting for the presence of complex background mixtures (ms), DeltaC is the change in cumulative exposure concentration of the chemical of interest, and HC50 is the median, chronic hazardous concentration for regional, multiple-species systems. The resultant aquatic effect factors are risk-based and can be estimated readily for many chemicals using available methods, without the need to describe the entire SSDs and without the need for additional data. For example, the octanol-water partitioning coefficient provides a sufficient estimation basis for about 50% of existing chemicals that have a narcosis mode of action. This also is relevant in LCA for chemicals that are at low concentrations in the environment, concentrations below the biological thresholds at which more specific modes of action would be of relevance.The greening of new product development process has been under scrutiny by researchers, but the attention has been limited to consumer products. Based on a survey, this paper investigates the environmental responsiveness in industrial new product development in 82 industrial firms. In comparison to traditional NPD process in the extant literature, the findings revealed additional activities in the greening of industrial NPD. These activities fall under the broader scope of life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental impact including supplier evaluation and design for environment issues. The paper also investigates the relative impact of organizational antecedents on greening of industrial NPD activities. Organizational antecedents include functional interface of environmental specialists with design and product managers, environmental product policy, and top management support. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a very useful tool of management, which is been speedy developed in Europe, United State and some countries of Asia. The objective of this paper is investigating the use of this tool in the country's organizations, specialty in the industries. For this purpose a general scanning about its characteristics is done. Complementarity, an analysis of the consequences of the international standardization of Ecolabelling Type III is carried out. This Ecolabelling demands the use of LCA. The conclusions of the paper show the LCA is a suitable tool of environmental management, which must be applied the from process engineering point of view. The use of LCA is very important, because it lets see all the product manufacturing process. Besides, it could be very interesting to join information to design public policies. From the international trade point of view, the non-implementation of this tool may constitute an obstacle to sell products to other markets in the future At lost, the principal impediment for the applications of LCA in Uruguay is the lack of information.The objectives of this study were to evaluate the environmental impacts of a beef-fattening system using the life-cycle assessment (LCA) method and to investigate the effects of feeding length on the LCA results. The functional unit was defined as one animal, and the stages associated with the beef-fattening life cycle, such as feed (concentrate and roughage) production, feed transport, animal management, animal body (i.e., biological activity of cattle), and the treatment of cattle wastes, were included in the system boundary. Our results suggest that enteric or gut CH4 emissions of cattle were the major source in the impact category of global warming (2,851 kg Of CO2 equivalents), whereas NH3 emissions from cattle waste were the major source in the impact categories of acidification (35.1 kg Of SO2 equivalents) and eutrophication (6.16 kg Of PO4 equivalents). Feed production also contributed a great deal to all categories. A shorter feeding length resulted in lower environmental impacts in all the environmental impact categories examined in the current study, such as global warming and acidification, although there was a difference in effect of reducing environmental impacts among the categories.There is ongoing debate concerning the possible environmental and human health impacts of growing genetically modified (GM) crops. Here, we report the results of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) comparing the environmental and human health impacts of conventional sugar beet growing regimes in the UK and Germany with those that might be expected if GM herbicide-tolerant (to glyphosate) sugar beet is commercialized. The results presented for a number of environmental and human health impact categories suggest that growing the GM herbicide-tolerant crop would be less harmful to the environment and human health than growing the conventional crop, largely due to lower emissions from herbicide manufacture, transport and field operations. Emissions contributing to negative environmental impacts, such as global warming, ozone depletion, ecotoxicity of water and acidification and nutrification of soil and water, were much lower for the herbicide-tolerant crop than for the conventional crop. Emissions contributing to summer smog, toxic particulate matter and carcinogenicity, which have negative human health impacts, were also substantially lower for the herbicide-tolerant crop. The environmental and human health impacts of growing GM crops need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis using a holistic approach. LCA is a valuable technique for helping to undertake such assessments.The environmental and economic consequences of four recycling and disposal options for municipal sewage sludge have been assessed. The four options were: agricultural application, co-incineration with waste, incineration combined with phosphorus recovery (Bio-Con) and fractionation including phosphorus recovery (Cambi-KREPRO). Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to assess the environmental consequences, while effects in the district heating system were analysed using the energy system model MARTES. Co-incineration had the best energy balance, but without recovery of phosphorus. In the Bio-Con and Cambi-KREPRO processes both phosphorus and energy could be recovered. Compared to Cambi-KREPRO, Bio-Con was more effective in most respects, but suffered from higher emissions to air. Spreading sludge on agricultural land was the least preferable option from an environmental point of view. Energy was required for transportation, spreading and pasteurisation of the sludge, whereas the other three options enabled energy recovery. Spreading also caused release of nutrients and acidifying substances and transferred the content of heavy metals in the sludge to agricultural soil. The economic assessment showed that agricultural application had the lowest cost of the options, whereas co-incineration had the highest cost. The difference in cost between Bio-Con and Cambi-KREPRO was small, but since the technologies are new and untried in a commercial context, these results are uncertain. This study has shown that two sludge handling options, incineration and direct application to agricultural soil, have respectively economic and environmental restrictions. The development of relatively low cost phosphorus recovery technologies has the potential to reconcile the environmental and economic aspects of sustainability. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental aspects of using supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) to treat sewage sludge were studied using a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The system studied is the first commercial scale SCWO plant for sewage sludge in the world, treating sludge from the municipal wastewater treatment facility in Harlingen, TX, USA. The environmental impacts were evaluated using three specific environmental attributes: global warming potential (GWP), photo-oxidant creation potential (POCP) and resource depletion; as well as two single point indicators: EPS2000 and EcoIndicator99. The LCA results show that for the described process, gas-fired preheating of the sludge is the major contributor to environmental impacts, and emissions from generating electricity for pumping and for oxygen production are also important. Overall, SCWO processing of undigested sewage sludge is an environmentally attractive technology, particularly when heat is recovered from the process. Energy-conserving measures and recovery of excess oxygen from the SCWO process should be considered for improving the sustainability potential. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of this work is to evaluate the contribution of the several household water heating systems to global warming using the life cycle analysis. The systems studied were the electric showerhead, the passage gas heater and the solar heater. The water heating systems can pollute the environment through the emission of greenhouse gases which occurs during the generation of electric power for manufacturing the components of these systems and the use of the electric showerheads and resistances of the boilers of the solar systems, and during the combustion of fossil fuels gas heaters and transport of the heating system's components. The results show that, for the adopted parameters, the electric showerhead consumes the most electric power and emits the most pollutants during its life cycle. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The principles of the Rio Conference (1992) and Agenda 21 address the pressing problems of today and also aim at preparing the world for the challenges of this century. The conservation and management of resources for development are the main foci of interest, to which chemistry will have to make a considerable contribution. Since base chemicals are produced in large quantities and important product lines are synthesized from them, their resource-saving production is especially important for a sustainable development. New processes based on renewable feedstocks are significant here. Most products that are obtained from renewable raw materials may, at present, not be able to compete with the products of the petrochemical industry, but this will change as oil becomes scarcer and oil prices rise. The design of chemical products should make sustainable processing and recycling possible, and should prevent their bioaccumulation. Methods and criteria to assess their contribution to a sustainable development are necessary. The time necessary to introduce the new more sustainable processes and products has to be diminished by linking their development with operational innovation management and with efficient environmental-political control procedures. (C) 2004 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.The role of life cycle analysis (LCA) in identifying and measuring the environmental impact of extended supply chains, i.e., chains involving both forward and reverse activities, is very important. Particularly, in the case of alternative supply chain management policies or scenarios, life cycle analysis may significantly help to quantify the environmental result of these alternatives for the purpose of comparison and decision making. It is debatable, however, whether such comparison is always possible. Indeed, life cycle analysis has often raised discussion and disagreements, especially regarding the stage of Impact Assessment (valuation), and, until now, there is no generally accepted framework of analysis. In this paper, different models are used in order to extend the usability of the Environmental Design of Industrial Products method of Impact Assessment. Furthermore, research results that are produced by applying different methods of Impact Assessment are examined in the cases of the recovery and disposal chains of lead-acid batteries. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) devices can utilize either a conventional copper magnet or a superconducting NbTi magnet. In this study, copper and NbTi large bore magnets were designed by numerical optimization procedure for optimum wire length. The optimized magnets represent roughly the main coils of an MRI system. Then, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to compare the environmental impact of these two types of magnets. LCA is an established tool to investigate the interaction between a product and the environment. In the inventory phase of LCA all material inputs, energy consumption, wastes and emissions to air and water are assessed, beginning from the extraction of raw materials and ending to the delivery of products from the factories. The optimization results showed that the construction of the copper magnet requires much more wire than the NbTi one. However, the manufacturing of NbTi/Cu wire requires more raw materials and is more energy-intensive than the manufacturing of copper wire per unit ton. Thus, more wastes and emissions to air and water are generated during the production of NbTi/Cu wire, but when the magnets were compared the results became reversed.Environmental considerations have led to the phase out of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants from the domestic refrigeration industry. One intriguing aspect is that the chlorine in CFCs is a good lubricating agent and any deterioration of system performance may adversely influence other environmental considerations. Based on this consideration, the aim of this research is to address the sustainable development of domestic refrigeration systems using the replacement refrigerant HFC-134a. The work focuses on the emissions that may arise if the electrical consumption of the product deteriorates or its durability is curtailed. Tribological characteristics on compressor components influence both of these product attributes and therefore a thorough system analysis was carried out. An in-house built experimental test rig, which monitored slight variations in the electrical power drawn by a reciprocating hermetic compressor, was used Under different experimental conditions. Furthermore, a detailed life cycle assessment on a domestic refrigerator was performed to help quantify the ensuing environmental burdens. In this way, a relation between tribological characteristics, power consumption and environmental impact was studied. This paper shows that the CFC substitute will increase friction and wear characteristics on the aluminium alloy Connecting rod and the steel gudgeon pin. These characteristics may contribute to the observed increase in the electrical energy consumption of the compressor such that the indirect global warming implications rise with HFC-134a. If the sustainable development of this product is to be ascertained then a change in refrigerants alone will not suffice. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a system's engineering model for the strategic planning of an integrated solid waste management at local level and more specifically in an island with touristic development. The model was developed for the island of Corfu, but it can also be implemented in other touristic islands all over the world. It combines the worth benefit utility analysis (WBU) with the life cycle analysis (LCA), taking into account environmental, financial, technological and social criteria. The model's implementation in the island of Corfu demonstrates that the most efficient method for the waste disposal in Corfu is the combination of the material sorting at the waste source and the production of compost from the organic fraction. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Because of the toxic characteristics of lead, the lead industry is potentially faced with a significant constriction of its future markets if it fails to satisfy regulators and communities that its products will be dealt with in ways that offer the highest level of safety. Legislation banning various lead products in different countries continues to expand, particularly within Europe. Denmark has banned the use of lead compounds. The lead industry is currently coordinating (through the London-based Lead Development Association International) the voluntary lead risk assessment in Europe. This assessment is providing valuable research data associated with the ecotoxicity of lead. Building on this, and addressing the issue of changing and improving practices associated with lead, the green lead project is being created as a product stewardship initiative of the lead industry. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.To reduce environmental damage, the properties of environmental issues must be understood. Most previous research has performed relevant assessment either qualitatively or quantitatively. This paper provides a new comprehensive evaluative framework to integrate these two types of approaches. Three methods are combined: (1) life cycle assessment (LCA), a quantitative method, to assess environmental loading, (2) analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a qualitative method, to obtain opinions from experts, and (3) cluster analysis to integrate the results of the former two methods. This new framework could provide integrated information and avoid a bias towards either qualitative or quantitative approach. To present the process of this new evaluative framework, packaging materials are selected as the case study in this paper. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Landfill-gas (LFG) is produced as result of the biological reaction of municipal solid waste (MSW). This gas contains about 50% of methane, therefore it cannot be released into the atmosphere as it is because of its greenhouse effect consequences. The high percentage of methane encouraged researchers to find solutions to recover the related energy content for electric energy production. The most common technologies used at the present time are internal combustion reciprocating engines and gas turbines. High conversion efficiency guaranteed by fuel cells (FCs) enable to enhance the energy recovery process and to reduce emissions to air, such as NO, and CO. In any case, in order to investigate the environmental advantages associated with the electric energy generation using fuel cells, it is imperative to consider the whole "life cycle" of the system, "from cradle-to-grave". In fact, fuel cells are considered to be zero-emission devices, but, for example, emissions associated with their manufacture or for hydrogen production must be considered in order to evaluate all impacts on the environment. In the present work a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) system for LFG recovery is considered and a life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted for an evaluation of environmental consequences and to provide a guide for further environmental impact reduction. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the next future coal will play an increasing important role in electricity production due to the abundant reserves worldwide. In order to design new production scenarios. environmental issues have to be carefully considered. We used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare, from an environmental point of view, six scenarios of electricity production by combustion of coal, coal cleaning by-products, biomass and petroleum coke. considering two existing combustion plants, de-NO, and de-SOx processes and coal ash valorisation options. The results showed that the more environmentally responsible scenarios include biomass co-combustion and gas treatment techniques and enlightened some options for further improvements. Finally the results confirmed the usefulness of LCA in the environmental innovation of industrial systems. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on the treatment of household waste by waste-to-energy conversion. It assesses, in particular, both technical and environmental implications of a waste pre-sorting that may affect the treatment process. To this end, a life cycle assessment study has been undertaken. The scope of the study encompassed material recycling, incineration of household waste, treatment of flue gases, energy recovery, recycling of bottom ash, treatment of fly ash and final disposal of waste. The study showed that material recycling leads to an improvement of the working conditions with respect to the incinerator. However, material recycling leads to a decrease of the energy recovery so that it is necessary to use additional boilers to meet the initial energy demand. The related impacts tend to offset the environmental benefits derived by the waste recycling itself. The study also demonstrated that the life cycle approach is a useful tool for the study of technical and environmental aspects of an energy system. Moreover, those aspects in the process that are open to improvement have been identified. (C) 2003 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.Essential requirements for biofuel are that (a) it should be produced from renewable raw material, and (b) it should have a lower negative environmental impact than that of fossil fuels. Apart from direct assessment of the engine emissions, environmental impact is also determined by performing life cycle analysis. Life cycle energy balance depends on specific climatic conditions and the agro- and processing technologies used. Rapeseed oil methyl ester life cycle energy ratios in Lithuanian conditions have been calculated as a function of rapeseed productivity, oil pressing and transesterification technologies used. Opportunities to improve biodiesel fuel life cycle energy efficiency, by implementing new technologies in agriculture as well as in industrial processing, were reviewed. The effectiveness of new technologies was evaluated on the basis of energy balance comparison. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The selection of an appropriate "optimal" recycling alternative has to take into consideration both the ecological and economic effects of the entire life-cycle. The aim of this paper is to compare different waste management systems by means of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) and a cost comparison. The analysis uses data regarding the amount of household waste generated, collected and treated in a selected area in Austria. For this purpose, model-based scenarios with recycling and separate collection as well as scenarios without recycling were created. The database covers the amounts of household waste generated in the different collection schemes, the transport distances by private delivery and by regional waste management companies and data on the waste treatment processes that are widely employed throughout Austria and Germany. The resulting life-cycle inventories have been assessed according to three impact categories relevant to this topic-the global warming potential (GWP), the acidification potential (AP) and the net energy use (NEU). The results include ecological impact analyses and cost comparisons for the overall waste management systems and the waste management systems for the individual waste types-waste paper, plastic packaging, metal packaging and waste glass. Finally, a sensitivity analysis should prove the validity of the results for regions with transport distances differing from those in the area under analysis. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to propose a model that allows us to add value for customer to a product, by means of the integration of the environmental, cost and customer valuation during its design process. This model is based on the combination of three methodologies: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate the environmental requirements, Life Cycle Cost (LCC) to examine the internal and external costs of the product, and Contingent Valuation (CV) to quantify the customer's value in terms of his/her willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a product that incorporates certain environmental improvements. As a result, it can be concluded that the product value can be increased with the use of a design that reduces simultaneously the environmental impact and external costs besides allowing manufacturer company to follow the maximum profit strategy. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.Vehicles typically deteriorate with accumulating mileage and emit more tailpipe air pollutants per mile. Although incentive programs for scrapping old, high-emitting vehicles have been implemented to reduce urban air pollutants and greenhouse gases, these policies may create additional sales of new vehicles as well. From a life cycle perspective, the emissions from both the additional vehicle production and scrapping need to be addressed when evaluating the benefits of scrapping older vehicles. This study explores an optimal fleet conversion policy based on mid-sized internal combustion engine vehicles in the US, defined as one that minimizes total life cycle emissions from the entire fleet of new and used vehicles. To describe vehicles' lifetime emission profiles as functions of accumulated mileage, a series of life cycle inventories characterizing environmental performance for vehicle production, use, and retirement was developed for each model year between 1981 and 2020. A simulation program is developed to investigate ideal and practical fleet conversion policies separately for three regulated pollutants (CO, NMHC, and NO,) and for CO2. According to the simulation results, accelerated scrapping policies are generally recommended to reduce regulated emissions, but they may increase greenhouse gases. Multi-objective analysis based on economic valuation methods was used to investigate trade-offs among emissions of different pollutants for optimal fleet conversion policies. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is an attractive analogy between nature and industry, based on the similarity of natural functions and certain industrial activities. For instance, animals ingest (eat) and digest food. Finally, there are metabolic wastes. Firms are analogous to organisms in several respects, insofar as they consume material resources, process (digest) them and produce output products and excrete wastes. Firms, like organisms, also compete with each other for resources. Curiously enough, one of the apparent differences between natural and man-made systems is actually not one; like the industrial system, the natural system does not recycle everything. However. there are at least four real and important differences between the biosphere (ecology) and the technosphere (economy). First, there is no primary producer in the economic system analogous to what photosynthesizers play in the biosphere. Inputs to the economy are mostly natural resources, capital services and labor. Second, in the economic system, output is a heterogeneous mix of manufactured products and services. Labor, in economics, is an input but not an output. The economic system recycles much less than the ecological system but utilizes a far greater suite of elements. In the biosphere, there are no products as such. Growth is tantamount to accumulation of embodied solar exergy in the form of cellulose, sugars, lipids and proteins. The biosphere produces only wastes and more of itself plus dead matter. Third, in the biosphere, there are no markets, there is no medium of exchange (like money) and there is nothing analogous to paid labor. Exchanges are involuntary (i.e., by predation, parasitism or theft.) Fourth, evolution in nature is driven by differentiation by random mutations of the genome and Darwinian selection based on reproductive success. In economics, differentiation is based on discovery, invention and innovation by intelligent economic agents and selection is based on competition at the individual or firm level. Either way, the economic system is not closely analogous to an ecosystem. Attempts to use ecological concepts in an economic context are often misleading and unjustified. The paper discusses the implications of the eco-eco mismatch for resource accounting and life cycle analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In contrast to macroscopic tools, life cycle assessment (LCA) starts from the microstructure of an economic system: the production and consumption of functional flows. Due to the level of resolution required for function-level details, the model used for LCA has relied on process-specific data and has treated the product system as a stand-alone system instead of a system embedded within a broader economic system. This separation causes various problems, including incompleteness of the system and loss of applicability for a variety of analytical tools developed for LCA or economic models. This study aims to link the functional flow-based, micro-level LCA system to its embedding, commodity-based, meso- or macro-level economic system represented by input-output accounts, resulting in a comprehensive ecological-economic model within a consistent and flexible mathematical framework. For this purpose, the LCA computational structure is reformulated into a functional flow by process framework and reintroduced in the context of the input-output tradition. It is argued that the model presented here overcomes the problem of incompleteness of the system and enables various analytical tools developed for LCA or input-output analysis (IOA) to be utilised for further analysis. The applicability of the model for cleaner production and supply chain management is demonstrated using a simplified product system and structural path analysis as an example. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Globally designers are concentrating on minimising the impact their buildings make on the environment. Although many claim their buildings to be sustainable, unless an objective analysis is carried out, it is not possible to determine the impact that a particular building has on the environment. This paper describes a method that has been developed at the University of Auckland for a detailed life cycle analysis of an individual house in New Zealand based on the embodied and operating energy requirements and life cycle cost over the useful life of the building. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Complexity issues in the ecological aspects of chemical engineering are of two kinds: the mutual interactions of many multi-scale systems and the lack of consilience in the objectives of different disciplines that consider the economic, philosophical, cultural, and scientific and engineering aspects, respectively. This paper discusses the second kind of complexity and the ecological issues in the different disciplines. Economic value, as expressed by market price, depends on whether limits on resources and the Earth's services due to the scale of human technological activities are taken into account. Human activities relative to the Earth's ecology require sustainability consideration. Two important stands on sustainability are discussed. Mainstream sustainability is a stand for continued economic growth to foster advances in technology to overcome the limits of the Earth. It requires technological activities to follow green chemistry and green engineering principles to develop innovations that are ecologically considerate. Environmental sustainability is a stand to stay within forecasted limits in the resources and renewability capacity of the Earth. The technology for this further includes using the principles of industrial ecology to locate ways to use wastes and recycle products as source materials for other processes to make and close material cycles. Chemical engineering innovations for increased atomic utilization of reactants, efficiency in energy use, dematerialization, non-toxicity, recyclability, and creative systemic cycling of materials for waste management are good for the ecology. Case studies are given showing the utility of following the principles developed for good ecological practice. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste disposal represents an important aspect of the policies of politics of developed countries. It is well known that waste management entails several social, economical and environmental aspects. Many different technical solutions have been proposed and evaluated, more or less complicated, from a social and economic point of view, but the environmental burden linked to these solutions still remains an open problem not definitively resolved yet. One of the most promising ways for investigating and comparing the environmental consequences connected to different human activities seems to be represented by the LCA analysis. In this work the LCA analysis of a micro-pyrolysis with micro-gas turbine waste to energy plant, has been performed with the aid of a commercial simulation code. The scenario is analysed with regard to a small, isolated, Italian town. A comparison between the current and proposed case has also been carried out. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.In this paper, the results of an exergetic well-to-wheels analysis of a number of hydrogen production and hydrogen storage systems for automotive applications are given. A total of eight different fuel chains is exergetically analysed. Exergy analysis is shown to have considerable additional value compared to conventional energetic well-to-wheels analyses based on the lower or higher heating value of fuels under consideration. Exergy can be used for both fuel and non-fuel resources and can play an important role in the quantification of resource depletion in fuel chains. With exergy analysis, it is possible to determine thermodynamic limits of processes and to locate and interpret process losses. Exergy analysis is therefore a useful tool in process improvement and process comparison. Furthermore, exergy can play a role in the quantification of the effort it would take to abate or recycle waste streams. (C) 2003 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the past, environmental activities in the food industry used to be focused on meeting the requirements set by authorities on waste and sewage disposal and, more recently, regarding emissions to air. Today environmental issues are considered an essential part of the corporate image in progressive food industries. To avoid sub-optimization, food waste management should involve assessing the environmental impact of the whole food chain. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ISO-standardized method to assess the environmental impact of a food product. It evaluates the resources used to perform the different activities through the chain of production from raw material to the user step. It also summarizes the emission/waste to air, water, and land from the same activities throughout the chain. These emissions are then related to the major environmental concerns such as eutrophication, acidification, and ecotoxicity, the factors most relevant for the food sector. The food industry uses the LCAs to identify the steps in the food chain that have the largest impact on the environment in order to target the improvement efforts. It is then used to choose among alternatives in the selection of raw materials, packaging material, and other inputs as well as waste management strategies. A large number of food production chains have been assessed by LCAs over the years. This will be exemplified by a comparison of the environmental impact of ecologically grown raw materials to those conventionally grown. Today LCA is often integrated into process and product development, for example, in a project for reduction of water usage and waste valorization in a diversified dairy.This article presents an analysis of the environmental impact of the materials and processes typically used in the wood based furniture manufacturing sector. Life cycle assessment methodology was applied to different kinds of wood based boards, surface and edge coverings, and their respective manufacturing processes. For each of these, a life cycle inventory was completed and the environmental impact generated was analysed by applying the Eco-Indicator'99 method. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment was employed to compare the environmental impact of incineration and the landfilling of municipal solid waste in Sao Paulo City, Brazil. Incineration with energy recovery and landfilling treatment systems were assessed in five different scenarios. Three incineration scenarios with different ash treatment systems were evaluated: incineration with ash disposal, with ash melting, and with an ash reuse system (brick production). Two landfilling scenarios were evaluated, namely, with and without energy recovery. Energy consumption, recovered resources, and emissions to the air and water were quantified and analyzed in terms of their impact potentials. Global warming, acidification, and nutrient enrichment were assessed as environmental impact categories. Electricity generation in these waste treatment systems did not result in a significant reduction in overall environmental impact, because Brazilian electricity is mainly hydro-based. Incineration with ash disposal to a landfill site resulted in the lowest impact values for all impact categories assessed in this study. Among the incineration scenarios, the reuse of ash for brick production resulted in a higher environmental impact due to an increase in energy consumption. Landfilling had a higher environmental impact than incineration. Landfilling with energy recovery had a slightly lower environmental impact than the landfillingwithout energy recovery. Finally, it was demonstrated that significant reductions in environmental impact could be obtained through a change in the solid waste management of Sao Paulo City. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In Part 1 of the series, it was shown that there is-sufficient justification for the creation of a separate salinity impact category. In this paper, the fundamental basis of environmental life cycle assessments (LCA) is examined. The generalised model, and model simplifications on which the, life cycle assessment methodology is based is examined. the formulation of a characterisation model for salinity, which is a local or regional problem, requires the development of environmental fate models. An environmental late model currently in use to,calculate equivalency factors for toxicity effects is evaluated in terms of its applicability, for use as is, or in some modified form, to calculate equivalency factors for salinity. It is concluded that this model cannot be used, and a conceptual environmental fate model for salinity is proposed. The proposed conceptual model follows the same approach as models currently in use. It is proposed that a "unit South African catchment" be defined, and that non-steady state hydrological models currently in use in the country be used to predict the fate of salts in the various compartments defined for the "unit catchment".In Part 2 of this series of papers, a conceptual characterisation model was proposed for the inclusion of salinity impacts into environmental life cycle assessments. In this, the final part of the series, the results of a detailed characterisation model are presented. The methodologies used to define the "unit South African catchment" are discussed, as are the methods used to predict salt concentrations in the various compartments, from which fate factors are derived. The effect factors used in the study are presented, and in combination with the fate factors, salinity potentials are derived for emissions into the various initial release compartments. The total salinity potentials for emissions into the various initial release compartments are as follows: Initial release compartment Total salinity potential (kg TDS equ./kg) Atmosphere 0.013 Surface water 0.165 Natural surfaces 0.031 Agricultural surfaces 1.000 An additional impact category for salinity effects is therefore proposed, and the derived salinity potentials (also known as characterisation factors or equivalency factors) can be used in the classification and characterisation steps of conducting an environmental life cycle assessment to calculate the score for the impact category. The salinity potentials are only relevant to South African conditions, and their use in LCA in other countries may not be applicable. When applying the salinity potentials, the LCA practitioner should take care to prevent double accounting for certain impacts. Currently, this is simple because no equivalency factors exist for common ions, or for total dissolved salts as a lumped parameter.A representative leather tannery industry in a Latin American developing country has been studied from an environmental point of view, including both technical and economic analysis. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology has been used for the quantification and evaluation of the impacts of the chromium tanning process as a basis to propose further improvement actions. Four main subsystems were considered: beamhouse, tanyard, retanning, and wood furnace. Damages to human health, ecosystem quality, and resources are mainly produced by the tanyard subsystem. The control and reduction of chromium and ammonia emissions are the critical points to be considered to improve the environmental performance of the process. Technologies available for improved management of chromium tanning were profoundly studied, and improvement actions related to optimized operational conditions and a high exhaustion chrome-tanning process were selected. These actions related to the implementation of internal procedures affected the economy of the process with savings ranging from US$ 8.63 to US$ 22.5 for the processing of 1 ton of wet salt hides, meanwhile the global environmental impact was reduced to 44-50%. Moreover, the treatment of wastewaters was considered in two scenarios. Primary treatment presented the largest reduction of the environmental impact of the tanning process, while no significant improvement for the evaluated impact categories was achieved when combining primary and secondary treatments.The objective of this study is to show how a life cycle assessment approach can be used to direct the development of technical activities according to environmental considerations. The case study deals with the remediation of a soil contaminated by sulfur in an industrial context. The environmental merits of four treatment techniques are compared by taking into account the raw materials and energy consumption, air and water emissions and waste production. First results are discussed criterion by criterion. It is shown that bio-leaching is the most energy-consuming technique, whereas liming requires the highest quantity of materials. Furthermore, results related to atmospheric emissions highlight the importance of transportation operations in the environmental balance especially in the case of offsite landfilling. As regards waste production, treatment techniques may be divided into two groups: on the one hand, liming and onsite containment which lead to great quantities stored onsite, on the other hand, offsite landfilling and bio-leaching for which waste is transported out of the site. Then, a multicriteria analysis enables to aggregate inventory results, avoiding compensation phenomena. Based on this analysis, onsite containment appears to be the most environmentally-friendly technique, whereas bio-leaching and offsite landfilling result in the most important environmental burdens. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Typically, in simulating the dynamic processes in buildings, data modeling efforts require the modeling of the building geometry, its components and the relationship between these components, as well as the modeling of the process that is under study. For example, in simulating the life cycle of a building, one must simulate the flow of materials as well as the flow of information as part of the process modeling, while a component model is needed to represent the building as an artefact. A third aspect of this modeling effort constitutes the simulation of human intervention, i.e. the decision process that might affect the nature of the building itself as well as the process that acts upon it. For example, the decision to remodel a certain component clearly affects both the component itself as well as the process of aging, when the life cycle of buildings is simulated. This paper looks at the data modeling requirements of the simulation of building life cycle within the context of the three parameters mentioned above: data model for buildings, process models, and decision models. Temporal issues in data modeling, such as versioning for components, keeping track of data that are related to change and remodeling, and buildings as temporal-spatial entities for life cycle analysis purposes are also addressed. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become a common and accepted too] for quantifying the environmental impact of products. It is frequently used in some industrial sectors but this is not the case for construction products like cement. Reliable LCA require the use of reliable Life-Cycle Inventories (LCI); this is an important point because in Spain reliable LCI are scarce. An analysis of available LCI of different European cements is presented in this paper. This analysis includes the strengths and weaknesses of such inventories.Intake fractions (iFs) for emissions to air, water, and soil for 17 PCDDs/DFs and 12 Co-PCBs were calculated with a level III multimedia model and a food-chain exposure model in succession. The two integrated models were tested by comparing the predicted and measured concentrations in the environment and by comparing intakes through food. Measurement-based iFs were also calculated and compared with the model-based iFs. The air concentrations predicted by the fate model were close to the median of the observed concentrations, whereas the predicted soil and water concentrations were one-third to one-tenth the observed concentrations. This difference was large in case of PCDDs and Co-PCBs, which was explained by the past pollution such as commercial PCB products and PCDD impurities in chloronitrofen (CNP) and pentachlorophenol (PCP). For fish, the predicted and observed exposures agreed well each other. For meat and milk, the predicted exposures were about 10 times the observed exposures for PCDDs/DFs, whereas the predicted and observed values agreed well for Co-PCBs. When the model was modified to consider feeding of fish meal to livestock and geographic bias in feed-grass production, the predicted congener profile was comparable to the measured profile. The comparison also suggested that chickens should be modeled separately from other terrestrial livestock. The model-based iFs for air emission of OCDD and 2378-TCDD were 0.001% and 0.1%, respectively. The iFs of most Co-PCBs were higher than those of PCDDs/DFs. These iF differences suggest the importance of the fate factor in assessing emissions of the 29 congeners. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the paper the future of hydrogen infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles in China is discussed. It is believed that, China should make different plans of hydrogen infrastructure during different periods and in different regions. Besides, a case of application in Beijing is studied to find the best plan for Beijing to develop hydrogen infrastructure in 2008 when Olympic Games will be held. In the study of that case, 11 feasible plans are designed at first according to the current technology of production, storage and transportation of hydrogen in China. After that, the energy, environmental and economic performances of these plans are evaluated with "life cycle assessment". Finally, the best plan in the case is picked out from all the aspects of energy, environment and economy. (C) 2003 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article explores the relevance of sustainable business development for society and the state. Sustainability of enterprises can be defined as demonstrating the ability to be capable of continuing the same type of business in the lifetime of the next generation. In the case of Swiss dairy farms, this type of sustainability may also depend on the willingness of the government and society to make the necessary financial adjustments. Sustainability indicators for such farms are, therefore, related to ecological and social benefits rather than simply to economic success. To evaluate the role of Swiss dairy farms, a system with economic, ecological and social indicators for measuring their sustainability would be valuable. This approach creates an integration of sustainability life-cycle assessment factors of enterprises, on the one hand, and purely economic business indicators, on the other. The approach developed in this article would be of interest to all sectors that depend on public support.A streamlined (simplified) life cycle assessment of a conventional wooden pallet and an all-weather, washable, re-usable and fully recyclable plastic bulk transit packaging system used to transport empty yoghurt pottles, has been conducted using surrogate/proxy data from the Environmental Priorities Strategy (EPS) 2000 Default Method. This paper accounts for the life cycle inventory for each material used in the two transit packaging systems and their associated fabrication processes. The life cycle assessment was simplified by ignoring common factors such as the common nylon strap of both packaging systems, the common in-house transportation, and the manufacture and maintenance of capital equipment. The system boundaries and assumptions made are also discussed. The functional unit adopted was the Environmental Load Units (ELU) of the EPS 2000 Default Method. The grand overall ELU for the wooden pallet and plastic packaging system are computed by considering the weight of the material, the volume of inventory and the distance travelled. The ELU of the wooden pallet was 18.455, while that for the plastic packaging was 4.574 at a 96.5% level of certainty. In the case of the wooden pallet, truck transport, the corrugated cardboard boxes and the LDPE liner and shrinkwrap impacted the environment most, while for the plastic packaging system truck transport and the LDPE liner were significant. The plastic packaging has a lower environmental impact than the wooden pallet for various reasons. It is lighter in weight, has more re-usable parts and can transport more yoghurt pottles per trip. It has a long service life and is virtually fully recyclable. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.A life cycle assessment was conducted to evaluate the environmental performance of the yogurt product delivery system used by Stonyfield Farm. A life cycle model was developed which included material production, manufacturing and disposition for primary and secondary packaging, as well as the related transportation links between these stages and filling, retail and the point of consumption. Product delivery systems (PDS) that utilized 4, 6, 8 and 32 oz polypropylene (PP) cups and 2 oz linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) tubes were analysed. Ten strategies for improving the environmental performance of these systems were proposed and their impacts on the total life cycle burden were analysed. The life cycle energy consumption for the 2, 4, 6, 8 and 32 oz containers was 4050, 4670, 5230, 4390 and 3620MJ/1000lb yogurt delivered to market, respectively. Material production of the primary packaging accounted for 58% of the life cycle energy, while Distribution 3 (yogurt delivery to distributors/retailers) alone accounted for one-third of the life cycle total energy. The life cycle solid waste profile showed that as the container size decreased, the solid waste burden increased, from 27.3 kg (32 oz) to 42.8 kg (6 oz) per 1000 lb yogurt delivered to market. This relationship was even more pronounced for the 4 oz (47.5 kg) and 2 oz (56.2 kg) product delivery systems. The greatest potential improvements in the environmental performance of the PDS are achievable through redesigning the primary packaging and using alternative manufacturing techniques for the yogurt cups. Shifting from injection moulding to thermoforming of 32 oz container reduces the life cycle energy and solid waste by 18.6% and 19.5%, respectively, primarily due to light-weighting. Elimination of lids for 6 oz and 8 oz containers provided similar benefits. Consumers purchasing yogurt in 32 oz instead of 6 oz containers can save 14.5% of the life cycle energy and decrease solid waste by 27.2%. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.A CO2 comprehensive balance within the life-cycle of a photovoltaic energy system requires careful examination of the CO2 sinks and sources at the locations and under the conditions of production of each component, during transport, installation and operation, as well as at the site of recycling. Calculations of the possible effect on CO2 reduction by PV energy systems may be incorrect if system borders are not set wide enough and remain on a national level, as can be found in the literature. For the examples of Brazil and Germany, the effective CO2 reductions have been derived, also considering possible interchange scenarios for production and operation of the PV systems considering the carbon dioxide intensity of the local electricity grids. In the case of Brazil also off-grid applications and the substitution of diesel generating sets by photovoltaics are examined: CO2 reduction may reach 26,805 kg/kW(p) in that case. Doing these calculations, the compositions of the local grids and their CO2 intensity at the time of PV grid injection have to be taken into account. Also possible changes of the generation fuel mix in the future have to be considered: During the operation time of a PV system, different kinds of power plants could be installed that might change the CO2 intensity of the grid. In the future also advanced technologies such as thin films have to be considered. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life-cycle assessment of a single product can produce substantially varying results that depend on the location of production. It is the aim of this study to provide an example of this geographical variability by examining the energy and CO2 embodied in a particular wind-turbine manufactured in Brazil and in Germany. Our results demonstrate the importance of adequately considering the background system of the local economy. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During the last decades there has been an increasing interest in environmental assessments of the built environment. As a result, we can find several qualitative and quantitative assessment tools. With an increasing understanding of cities and the built environment as systems metabolising matter and energy, the use of quantitative tools are expected to increase, making it relevant to ask for their status of development. Aiming to give an overview of the present status of quantitative tools, as a basis for further research and development, this paper describes and compares five different tools for quantitative environmental assessment of the built environment. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this paper is to assess the relative impacts of pest-control methods in greenhouses, based on current LCA tools. As a case study, the relative impacts of two tomato production methods, chemical pest management (CPM) and integrated pest management (IPM), are assessed. The amount of the active ingredients applied, the fate of the ingredients in the various greenhouse and environmental compartments, the human exposure routes via the various compartments and the inherent toxicity of the ingredients were taken into account in the relative impact calculations. To assess the importance of model selection in the assessment, pesticide-specific fate and exposure factors for humans and aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, used to aggregate pesticide emissions, were calculated with two different models: (1) the USES-LCA model, adapted in order to calculate the pesticide transfer from greenhouse air and soil to fruits, and (2) the empirical model critical surface time (CST). Impact scores have in general shown a higher level of potential contamination in greenhouses treated with CPM compared to IPM (a factor of 1.4 to 2.3). Relative impacts have been shown highly dependent on the selection of specific pesticides and crop stage development at the moment of pesticide application. This means that both CPM and IPM could be improved by a careful selection of pesticides. In order to improve the relative impact calculations, future research in pesticide transfer to food will be necessary. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a method for evaluating the environmental impacts of products holistically, including direct and supply chain impacts. The current LCA methodologies and the standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) impose practical difficulties for drawing system boundaries; decisions on inclusion or exclusion of processes in an analysis (the cutoff criteria) are typically not made on a scientific basis. In particular, the requirement of deciding which processes could be excluded from the inventory can be rather difficult to meet because many excluded processes have often never been assessed by the practitioner, and therefore,their negligibility cannot be guaranteed. LCA studies utilizing economic input-output analysis have shown that, in practice, excluded processes can contribute as Much to the product system under study as included processes; thus, the subjective determination of the system boundary may lead to invalid results. System boundaries in LCA are discussed herein with particular attention to outlining hybrid approaches as methods for resolving the boundary selection problem in LCA. An input-output model can be used to describe at least a part of a product system, and an ISO-compatible system boundary selection procedure can be designed by applying hybrid input-output-assisted approaches. There are several hybrid input-output analysis-based LCA methods that can be implemented in practice for broadening system boundary and also for ISO compliance.A new life cycle assessment (LCA) method is presented, which is specifically tailored to plant nutrition in arable crop production. Generally, LCA is a methodology to assess all environmental impacts associated with a product or a process by accounting and evaluating its resource consumption and emissions. In LCA studies the entire production system should be considered, i.e. for crop production systems the analysis includes not only the on-field activities, but also all impacts related to the production of raw materials (minerals, fossil fuels) and farm inputs like fertilizers, plant protection substances, machinery or seeds. The LCA method developed in this study evaluates the impact of emissions and resource consumption associated with crop production on the following environmental effects: depletion of abiotic resources, land use, climate change, toxicity, acidification, and eutrophication. In order to enable conclusions on the overall environmental impact of alternative crop nutrition systems, an aggregation procedure to calculate indicators for resource depletion (RDI) and environmental impacts (EcoX) has been developed. The higher the EcoX value, the higher is the overall environmental burden associated with the product under investigation. An environmental analysis of arable crop production systems based on this LCA method is especially appropriate in order to: (1) detect environmental hot spots in the system; (2) trace back environmental impacts of arable farming products to their sources and on that basis to suggest options for improvement; and (3) contribute to the debate on the environmental preference of alternative cropping systems in an informed way. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examined the environmental impact of different nitrogen (N) fertilizer rates in winter wheat production by using a new life cycle assessment (LCA) method, which was specifically tailored to crop production. The wheat production system studied was designed according to,"good agricultural practice". Information on crop yield response to different N rates was taken from a long-term field trial in the UK (Broadbalk Experiment, Rothamsted). The analysis considered the entire system, which was required to produce 1 ton of wheat grain. It included the extraction of raw materials (e.g. fossil fuels, minerals), the production and transportation of farming inputs (e.g. fertilizers) and all agricultural operations in the field (e.g. tillage, harvest). In a first step, all emissions and the consumption of resources connected to the different processes were listed in a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and related to a common unit, which is 1 ton of grain. Next a Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) was done, in which the inventory data are aggregated into indicators for environmental effects, which included resource depletion, land use, climate change, toxicity, acidification, and eutrophication. After normalization and weighting of the indicator values it was possible to calculate summarizing indicators for resource depletion and environmental impacts (EcoX). At N rates of 48, 96, 144 or 192 kg N/ha the environmental indicator "EcoX" showed similar values per ton,of grain (0.16-0.22 Ecox/ton of grain). At N rates of zero, 240 and 288 kg N/ha the EcoX values were 100-232% higher compared with the lowest figure at an N rate of 96 kg N/ha. At very low N rates, 'land use' was the key-environmental-factor, whereas at high N rates 'eutrophication' was the major problem. The results revealed that agronomical optimal arable farming does not necessarily come into conflict with economic and environmental boundary conditions. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved..Exergy analysis is shown to be an important tool for achieving sustainable development. By noting that energy can never be "lost," as it is conserved according to the first law of thermodynamics, while exergy can be lost due to internal irreversibilities, the study suggests that exergy losses, particularly due to the use of nonrenewable energy forms, should be minimized to attain sustainable development. Furthermore, several key thermodynamic concepts and the potential usefulness of exergy analysis are discussed, the linkages between exergy and environmental impact and sustainable development are introduced; and several key issues regarding sustainability and its consequences are addressed. Several case studies highlight the insights revealed using exergy and exergetic aspects of sustainability. It is concluded that the potential usefulness of exergy analysis in addressing sustainability issues and solving environmental problems is substantial.The decision of selecting building structures with respect to the environmental demand is an issue commonly addressed in environmental management. In this paper, the importance of considering the decision analysis technique value-focused thinking in the environmental selection of wall structures is investigated. In this context, a qualitative value model is developed in which the external and internal environmental factors are considered. The model is applied on a case study in which a decision should be made on three categories of exterior wall structures: wood, masonry and concrete. It is found that the wall structure made of wood is the most compatible option with respect to the external and internal environmental requirements of building structures. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) has been attracted and been already spread to the public as a technique evaluating the environmental impacts of product life cycle. LCA case study for lead-free solder, which is expected as eco-material has already been performed, but most of these studies are focused on LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) and characterization in LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment). In the case of the assessment of solder, the trade-off relationship between the human toxicity caused by the exposure of lead and global warming caused by the increase of energy use seems important. Conventional LCA case studies are difficult to solve this trade-off relationship, because LCI and characterization will not compare the seriousness of these environmental impacts. Based on the above background, we conducted LCIA case study of lead-free solder using LIME (Life-cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling). We concentrated on the damage assessment for human health in order to solve the trade-off relationship between the impact categories. DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Year) is applied as the damage indicator in this study. It can be concluded that damage assessment enables to evaluate reasonably with comparing the several health impacts based on the scientific knowledge.This paper presents a systematic and hierarchical approach for incorporating environmental considerations into all stages of chemical process design. The complexity of the environmental and economic assessments increases as the design proceeds. The design method integrates computer-aided process simulation with a suite of environmental impact, economic, and decision analysis software tools. At the earliest design stage, the environmental assessment includes emission estimates from major process equipment, considers pollution control efficiency, and generates nine risk-based environmental impact indices. The economic assessment is based on the cost of raw materials and reaction stoichiometry. This assessment method was applied to the selection of alternative feedstocks for a reaction step: benzene versus n-butane for maleic anhydride (MA) production. Using known yields and selectivities, the n-butane route was shown to be superior to the benzene route in both the raw material cost and environmental impacts. After synthesis of a process flowsheet and simulation, a series of "process diagnostic summary" tables was generated to identify early process improvement strategies. An "improved" base-case flowsheet was developed, simulated, and assessed for profitability and environmental impacts. The improved n-butane process flowsheet after implementation of heat integration yielded an 80% reduction in utility costs and a 13% reduction in the aggregate environmental index compared to the base-case flowsheet. Then, several design tasks, such as equipment sizing, scaled gradient analysis, and multiobjective optimization using a genetic algorithm, were applied. After optimization, the economic performance of both the n-butane and benzene flowsheets was substantially bettered over the previously improved base-case flowsheets. The aggregate environmental index for the n-butane process was decreased to the greatest extent as a result of early design activities and negligibly as a result of detailed design and optimization. The opposite was observed for the benzene process. The reasons for this difference in system behavior are explained. The early screening environmental and economic assessment methods were shown to be accurate when compared to the more rigorous assessment methods. Optimum operating conditions of the processes (reaction temperature and pressure, mass separating agent flow rate, etc.) change significantly when the objective function for optimization is either an aggregate environmental index or a profitability index.The 1 billion gal of used oil generated in the U.S. each year are managed in three primary ways: rerefined into base oil for reuse, distilled into marine diesel oil fuel, and marketed as untreated fuel oil. Management of used oil has local, regional and global impacts. Because of the globally distributed nature of fuel markets, used oil as fuel has localized and regional impacts in many areas. In this paper, the human health and environmental tradeoffs of the management options are quantified and characterized. The goal of this study was to assess and compare the environmental impacts and benefits of each management method in a product end-of-life scenario using a life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach. A life-cycle inventory showed that 800 mg of zinc and 30 mg of lead air emissions may result from the combustion of 1 L of used oil as fuel (50-100 times that of crude-derived fuel oils). As an example, up to 136 Mg of zinc and 5 Mg of lead air emissions may be generated from combustion of over 50 M gal of California-generated used oil each year. While occurring elsewhere, these levels are significant (of the same magnitude as reported total stationary source emissions in California). An impact assessment showed that heavy metals-related toxicity dominates the comparison of management methods. Zinc and lead emissions were the primary contributors to the terrestrial and human toxicity impact potentials that were calculated to be 150 and 5 times higher, respectively, for used oil combusted as fuel than for rerefining or distillation. Low profits and weak markets increasingly drive the used oil management method selection toward the untreated fuel oil market. Instead, both the rerefining and distillation methods and associated product markets should be strongly supported because they are environmentally preferable to the combustion of unprocessed used oil as fuel.A product design system is considered from sustainability point of view. Information infrastructure is essential for life cycle assessment and life cycle cost evaluation. Take back is also based on useful information on the product life. This all was considered in the design of a complex informational infrastructure for sustainable product design. Here the basic concepts will be given together with some basic results already obtained.In modern design, environmentally conscious issues such as energy saving, recycling properties and maintenance etc must be considered in the product development process. Useful environmentally conscious information can be captured, analyzed and organized as design knowledge. Early design intent of a designer can be propagated to down stream design activities using this knowledge as an evaluation index. In this context, a design intent management (DIM) module associated with a life-cycle assessment (LCA) inventory, a feature coding design knowledge base, and an automatic function-to-form mapping module are developed concurrently and embedded in an Integrated Environmentally Conscious Design (IECD) system being developed in the Design Technology Research Centre of School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. A case study involving the design intent management module, the propagation module to follow-up design activities and a design knowledge base supporting decision making in engineering design process are presented in this paper. The capabilities of the current system being implemented are highlighted.Biopower (biomass-to-electricity generation), a proven electricity generating option in the United States and with about 11 GW of installed capacity, is the single largest source of non-hydro renewable electricity. The electricity production from biomass is being used and is expected to continue to be used as base-load power in the existing electrical distribution system. A series of case studies will be discussed for the three conversion routes for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) applications of biomass-direct combustion, gasification, and co-firing. The cost of electricity and cost of steam as a function of variables such as plant size and feed cost are estimated using a discounted cash flow analysis.The Mini-cold Storage, a new type of cold storages in producing field which is suitable to the present agriculture producing system in China, is the first step of the cold storage chain. Using LCA (life cycle assessment) method, the equation calculating the optimum thickness of the thermal insulating layer in life cycle was derived, and the optimum thickness of two thermal insulating layers made from two different insulators was calculated. Then the reducing time of mini-cold storage was introduced, and the equation calculating the reducing time was derived. The time was tested by the experiment. The results show that the optimum thickness has no relationship with the volume of mini-cold storage, and the reducing time will increase with the decrease of the heat conductivity coefficient of insulators.Power production systems are responsible for most local air pollutants as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable energy technologies allow one to reduce atmospheric pollution, but their total environmental impact (all life cycle phases) should be carefully assessed to avoid environmental degradation. The aim of this work was to characterise with a quantitative criterion the environmental impact of the in-use technologies for power production and to develop a methodology based on a statistical approach that detects the cause-effect relationships. A general purpose methodology, based on the integration of LCA and MDA, was then implemented and applied for analysing the technological options provided by the Energy Plan of Basilicata Region (Southern Italy). An inventory analysis of the air pollutants emitted by these technologies was carried out using LCA. The inventory matrices were normalised and subsequently analysed by Cluster Analysis and Principal Component Analysis. In this way, the initial data were aggregated into statistically homogeneous groups and the principal components were individuated, characterising the relationships between technologies and pollutants. The integration of the two methods allows for improvement of the informative content of LCA results, broadening its possible fields of application.No other industry in the United States uses more materials by weight than the construction industry. Because of its economic strength and societal importance, it is also a significant polluter and a target of growing stakeholder scrutiny. This review offers an extended, supply chain inclusive framework for the study of the construction industry that serves all the life-cycle stages of society's infrastructure Systems, and it summarizes selected literature on the life-cycle environmental assessment of construction materials, designs, and processes. On the basis of identified knowledge gaps, a research agenda is discussed for lesser-studied questions in order to first understand and then eventually reduce the environmental impacts of construction materials, processes, and activities.We review the economics of electricity generated, or conserved, from a diverse range of fossil-fuel, nuclear, and renewable energy sources and energy efficiency options. At the same time, we survey the methods used to compute the costs of generated and delivered electricity and power, including bus bar costs; wholesale and retail marketplace costs; life-cycle accounting systems; premiums associated with political, social, and environmental risks; costs that reflect explicit and implicit subsidies; costs inclusive of externalities calculated by a variety of means; and net costs, including a range of proposed and potential environmental tax regimes. These diverse and at times conflicting analytic methods reflect a wide range of assumptions and biases in how the inputs for energy generation as well as how the subsidies and social and environmental costs are computed or, is often the case, neglected. This review and tutorial provides side-by-side comparisons of these methods, international cost comparisons, as well as analysis of the magnitude and effects of a range of technological, market-based, and subsidy-driven costs on the final price of electricity. Comparability of costs between supply and conservation technologies and methods in the energy sector has consistently been a problem, and the diversity of energy cost accounting schemes provides significant opportunity for very different arguments to be made for specific technologies, regulatory and market regimes, and a wide range of social and environmental taxes. We provide a review of the tools and a commentary on how these methods are used to determine the cost of energy services. The conclusion contains an analysis of how these methods of energy valuation are similar, how they differ, as well as an analysis of the explicit and implicit assumptions that underlie each approach.The objective of this study was to investigate the closely related species of currant aphid Aphis grossulariae Kalt. and Aphis triglochinis Theob.. Host plant specificity and life cycle analysis of these currant-inhabiting species are presented. We carried out experiments under natural conditions. Differences in life cycle were found between clones of A. grossulariae and clones of A. triglochinis preferred different secondary host plants. Our study revealed some clones of A. grossulariae that were capable of propagation on Ribes spp. throughout the season. These clones also colonized the secondary host, but mainly males and only a few gynoparae were produced. This confirms the existence of androcyclic clones in A. grossulariae. Secondary hosts of A. triglochinis belong to non-related plant families and this aphid species apparently discriminates between different herbaceous hosts. The existence of host races in A. triglochinis is possible. In order to investigate the differences between clones of the same species, we compared morphology and karyotype of typical host alternating clones of A. grossulariae with others. We found significant correlated differences between the life cycle mode, host plant and some morphological characters. A preliminary comparison of relative lengths of chromosomes suggested that there might be interclonal differences between clones of A. grossulariae, having different host plant relationships.In the past two decades the global metalliferous mineral industry has trended away from pyrometallurgical (pyromet) and towards hydrometallurgical (hydromet) technologies including biometallurgical (biomet) processes. Pyromet, biomet and hydromet technologies have all developed considerably over this period. New projects have been biased or directed by legislation towards supposedly cleaner and greener hydromet and biomet technologies. The environmental cost and energy cost of pyromet production processes for copper and cobalt are compared with comparable hydromet processes' using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The 'real cost' of the global warming obsession and negative public perception of pyrometallurgy include greater carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption per unit, associated with current hydromet technologies. Specific examples for copper and cobalt produced via the different routes are provided. The poor science involved with the global warming hypothesis is discussed. The use of LCA with sensitivity analysis as a decision making tool for mineral processing projects and technology developers is discussed.Production of rape methyl ester (RME) can be carried out with different systems solutions, in which the choice of system is usually related to the scale of the production. The purpose of this study was to analyse whether the use of a small-scale RME production system reduced the environmental load in comparison to a medium- and a large-scale system. To fulfil this purpose, a limited LCA, including air-emissions and energy requirements, was carried out for the three plant sizes. For small plants and physical allocation, the global warming potential was 40.3 g CO2-eq/MJ(fuel), the acidification potential 236 mg SO2-eq/MJ(fuel), the eutrophication potential 39.1 Mg PO43--eq/MJ(fuel), the photochemical oxidant creation potential 3.29 Mg C2H4-eq/MJ(fuel), and the energy requirement 295 kJ/MJ(fuel). It was shown that the differences in environmental impact and energy requirement between small-, medium- and large-scale systems were small or even negligible. The higher oil extraction efficiency and the more efficient use of machinery and buildings in the large-scale system were, to a certain degree, outweighed by the longer transport distances. The dominating production step was the cultivation, in which production of fertilisers, soil emissions and tractive power made major contributions to the environmental load. The results were, however, largely dependent on the method used for allocation of the environmental burden between the RME and the by-products meal and glycerine. This indicates that when different biofuels or production strategies are to be compared, it is important that the results are calculated with the same allocation strategies and system limitations. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide inventory implications of a biodiesel program in the Philippines are assessed. Biodiesel is assumed to be the methyl ester of coconut oil. Different scenarios for the use of agricultural residues as fuel for heat or power generation are analyzed. Reduction in net CO2 emissions are estimated at 77-104 g/MJ of diesel displaced by biodiesel. These benefits are found to be particularly sensitive to the extent to which residues are utilized. The predicted reductions in CO2 emissions are much greater than values reported in recent studies on biodiesel derived from other vegetable oils, due both to the large amount of potential fuel in the residual biomass and to the low-energy inputs in traditional coconut fanning techniques. However, agricultural productivity constraints suggest that by 2010, the maximum level of biodiesel substitution for the entire country is only 8%. At this level of utilization reductions of 2.85-3.85% in the Philippines' projected 130 x 10(6) tons of carbon dioxide emissions per annum can be realized. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The design of a building facade influences internal thermal and lighting conditions and energy use associated with the provision of these conditions. Key decisions about the building facade are usually taken during the concept design stage of a building, while decisions about the method of providing the environmental conditions are often made later in the design process. This dilemma is addressed by the development of a concept design tool that allows the design team to investigate the effect of facade design on the resulting internal environmental conditions, energy use and environmental impact. The concept design tool was developed by performing detailed thermal, lighting and environmental modelling for a number of generic office building facade designs and a range of parameters that affect directly the environmental performance of an office building. The results are presented in a user-friendly interface requiring a minimum number of inputs. Key parameter outputs (such as temperature, lighting levels, heating/cooling energy demand, embodied energy and eco-points) can then be viewed, while a more detailed analysis can also be created for specified facade designs. A parametric analysis of the summary result outputs for selected facade parameters indicates that natural ventilation and cooling can reduce the environmental impact of offices by up to 16%, although heating energy demand could increase significantly. Improving the construction standard of the facade and reducing the internal heat loads can reduce the environmental impact by up to 22%. Use of this tool at early design stages will benefit the design team through an improved understanding of the dynamics between facade design and building services and assist with a more integrated approach.Natural fibers are emerging as low cost, lightweight and apparently environmentally superior alternatives to glass fibers in composites. We review select comparative life cycle assessment studies of natural fiber and glass fiber composites, and identify key drivers of their relative environmental performance. Natural fiber composites are likely to be environmentally superior to glass fiber composites in most cases for the following reasons: (1) natural fiber production has lower environmental impacts compared to glass fiber production; (2) natural fiber composites have higher fiber content for equivalent performance, reducing more polluting base polymer content; (3) the light-weight natural fiber composites improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions in the use phase of the component, especially in auto applications; and (4) end of life incineration of natural fibers results in recovered energy and carbon credits. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main opportunities for SME's in Partners nations today are: 1. To increase the significance of SME's in the solving of Sustainable Development Tasks (Economy, Ecology and Social Problems in Integrity) 2. Processes of SME Restructuring, Privatization and Military Conversion in countries with transitional economies, taking account of market conditions. 3. Technological Business Incubation (TBI) as the tool and method of SME development. Here the most usable directions (approaches) are Technological Business Incubator ("Warmhouse") Technology as the tool and method of SME development. 4. Modern Information and Internet Technologies for SME development and cooperation. 5. Education and Training of military-oriented SME staff in Sustainable Development, Cleaner Production, Pollution Prevention, Energy Saving, Industrial Symbiosis and Life-Cycle Assessment directions. 6. Advanced Technologies for SME development.The Schools of Industrial Engineering and Civil Engineering teamed to develop a multi-disciplinary graduate course in Sustainable Design at Purdue University which was introduced fall 2003. In this paper, we show how to integrate industrial engineering and environmental engineering perspectives into a valuable sustainable design curriculum. References to sustainable design teaching materials and efforts are briefly summarized. The course curricula included design principles related to material selection and pollution prevention in process design, energy efficiency, consumer impacts, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling. In addition, educational modules on product life-cycle assessment, environmental regulations, environmental costing, and corporate sustainability goals are discussed. Next, innovative teaching exercises to help students learn how to translate sustainable design concepts into practice are described. Student feedback on perceived changes in knowledge of sustainable design topics is reviewed. The paper concludes with recommendations for sustainable design curricula and teaching modules.One of the great challenges in the distributed enterprise computing is providing software systems with expected Quality-of-Service (QoS). For this purpose, it is very important to include QoS aspects in all the phases of the system development life cycle (analysis, design, deployment, etc.). This is enforced by the new approaches to system design, such as the model-driven approach called MDA (Model Driven Architecture). MDA is a modeling framework that improves the efficiency and decreases the complexity of the development of software system by allowing to model functional aspects independently of the underlying platform and the generation of its models in a target platform. In this context, this paper studies the model-driven development of distributed component-based so are applications with QoS support, which includes QoS specification and QoS monitoring. The proposal consists of applying the MDA principles to specify QoS aspects of component-based applications in parallel to the traditional design of the functional aspects. For this purpose, we define the following elements: a) a QoS catalogue to characterize a software component from the QoS point of view; b) a UML profile for modeling QoS contracts of component-based applications, and c) a UML profile for modeling the monitoring mechanisms employed to monitor that QoS. In addition to the description of all these elements, the paper will introduce a real scenario in which the proposed ideas have been tested and partially validated.Results from a joint US EPA and US electronics industry- funded life-cycle assessment of lead- and several lead-free alternative solders are presented. Impact scores are reported in 16 different environmental categories for reflow soldering applications. Solder pastes evaluated include tin-lead, tin-silver-copper, tin-silver-copper bismuth, and bismuth-tin-silver. During reflow applications, tin-lead solder paste was determined to have higher impact scores than the lead-free solders in six categories, while having lower impacts in five. The use/application stage was the dominant contributor to most impact categories, while upstream and end-of-life processes also made significant contributions to specific impact categories, depending on the solder. Sensitivity analyses of the effect of silver production as well as energy consumption during application are also presented for reflow soldering applications.According to the RoHS, from July 2006, the use of lead in electronics solders will be restricted for new products. EFSOT is an IMS-project, funded in the European Community within the FP5 GROWTH Programme, aiming at developing system solutions for advanced and sustainable lead-free soldering. Lead-free soldering and finish-materials are thought to be less toxic than lead-containing ones. But what about the environmental performance along the whole life cycle? Lead-free materials often contain precious metals. The environmental impact associated to the consumption of these metals is high. Additionally, the application of lead-free solders requires more energy. The present study includes a novel approach to modelling recycling in the field of LCA, as well as an inventory for the production of metals, which considers the interconnections between metal cycles. A comparison is made between lead-free and lead-containing solder materials. Finally, a guide of the major driving forces of the life cycle assessment is included, as well as an analysis of the role of recycling rates.D-Lamps are high intensity discharge lamps for car headlights, which are the new generation of automotive lighting for tomorrow, but available now. Because of their importance with respect to the materials used, a life cycle assessment has been performed, to identify and quantify energy, material used and wastes released to the environment. In this report, data collections of raw materials, manufacturing processes, and end-of-life of products were accumulated step by step based on self-developed checklists. The manufacturing process is complex and composed of several unit operations, a product inventory cannot be optimally determined by simple measures. Therefore, this study is based specifically on its own system boundaries and hypotheses. The interpretation of the environmental impact was displayed, by the used of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software tool, in terms of impact categories such as greenhouse effect, acidification, eutrophication etc., thus environmental conclusions can then be drawn from the study.One of the main obstacles of directing process design/optimization with LCA is the disconnect between the two despite significant overlapping of information needed for both analyses. To bridge this gap, an integrated system with a process modelling environment, an LCA model, an uncertainty analysis tool, and chemical databases are proposed. The process modelling environment allows easy accumulation of process models that can be used across the academia and the industry. A case study of the chamber cleaning process using existing commercial software illustrated the system. The global warming potentials (GWP) induced by different etch rate requirements were compared. The physical and chemical databases that are part of the commercial program Aspen Plus (R) ease the data collection effort in process modelling. These databases and the LCA database need to be connected by sharing the same primary key.Although many methodologies and tools for green product design have already been developed, how to combine different tools effectively have not been discussed enough. There exist two characteristic tools for green design support; one is LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), and the other is QFDE (Quality Function Deployment for Environment) developed by the authors. While LCA is quantitative and applicable in a later stage of design, QFDE is semi quantitative and applicable at an earlier stage. This paper analyzes how designers obtain different types of implications from LCA and QFDE through case studies on an identical product, a pump. As a result from the analysis, outputs from QFDE were proved to imply the importance factors of components considering their functional roles from the environmental viewpoint, which mean functionalities decreasing environmental impacts. This type of implication supports designers effectively but cannot be obtained by the outputs only from LCA. On the other hand, the results produced by LCA are indispensable for obtaining quantitative and objective environmental performance of a product.Pervasive Computing stands for the embedding of microelectronics into everyday's objects, wireless networking and ubiquitous computing. Components for Pervasive Computing will be equipped with sensors, enabling them to collect data from their environment without the user's active intervention or even consciousness. The paper sheds light on the impacts of Pervasive Computing on human environment and health from various perspectives: technology assessment [1], comparative life cycle assessment [2] and modelling of the future environmental impact [3]. With regard to the environment special attention is drawn to arising issues for waste policy, the importance of infrastructure and an assessment of rebound effects. The main focus of the impacts on health is on the exposition to non-ionizing radiation and stress. The presentation will conclude with an outlook and policy recommendations from the perspective of the precautionary principle.At Philips Electronics simple indicators (e.g., product weight, weight of hazardous substances and energy use) and a screening life cycle assessment (LCA) with the Eco Indicator method are used for environmental product assessment. Until 2003 the Eco Indicator 95 method was used. Consecutively, the Eco Indicator 99 method is used for impact assessment. In this paper the consequences for the environmental assessment of Philips products by this transition to the new modified Eco Indicator 99 impact assessment method will be discussed. In general, analysis with both methods leads to similar conclusions on the environmental impact of products. Only in case a product contains precious metals, the results of both methods may be different. This is due to high resource depletion values for these metals.Life-Cycle Analysis is considered an important tool, which is able to incorporate environmental considerations into decision-making. It is used for the development of strategies, which should lead to a lesser overall environmental impact. These conventional environmental assessment calculations focus on the use of annualized average produced emissions. This paper shows an improved determination of environmental impacts for a crucial process in the end-of-life chain of electronic products: a copper smelter, as part of an integrated metals smelter and refinery. This paper proposes a statistically based LCA evaluation comprising of four steps (Plant Measurements/Data Reconciliation/Model Validation and LCA Statistics). This streamlined approach is necessary to determine whether one can reliably propose strategies to minimize the environmental impact. It is vital to incorporate an operational and in this case a metallurgical perspective. LCA predictions, without this perspective, statistical basis and standard deviations will prove to be inaccurate and should not serve as a basis to state an optimization strategy, because they fail to incorporate the effects of a changing feed strategy, or changing consumer goods properties, on the process (e.g. changing split factors) and the recycling chain.This paper describes a Life Cycle Assessment study of 3(rd) Generation mobile phone: Nokia 7600. The study covers the life cycle stages of raw materials and production up to factory gate, product use phase, and transport steps for the handset, charger and Li-ion battery. Product sales packaging and of end-of-life phase was excluded from this study. Results show that in relation to earlier studies of GSM terminals, energy used in manufacture of components is still a dominant area of the life cycle, although data gaps exist for several key components. The energy consumed in the use phase is decreasing, despite increased product functionality. This is partly due to more efficient no-load power consumption of the charger. Comparison is made to results of similar publicly available studies.Printed circuit boards (PCB) are the basic material for almost any kind of electronics. Unfortunately, currently existing thermosetting PCB in most cases require toxic flame retardants and are not mechanically recyclable. On the other hand, however, the legislative environment for ICT application is getting more and more dynamic since the EU directives concerning Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and the Restriction of the use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) have been adopted. Thus, within a joint research project of the Oko-Institut, other research establishments and various industrial partners funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) PCB based on foamed high temperature thermoplastics (HTT) are developed. The project aims to present a flexible concept for a broad spectrum of appliances. By developing different fully functional specimen applications this objective has been proved. Compared to conventional concepts the major ecological advantage of the used high-temperature thermoplastics is that no flame retardant systems are needed. Additionally, due to the foaming process material and energy flows are reduced already during production. Furthermore, post-consumer thermoplastic PCB can be recycled on a high level. In order to evaluate the ecological performance of the new concept a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was carried out. According to this study, HTT boards cause only half of the environmental burden when compared with conventional PCB like FR-4 boards. Beyond those ecological advantages the new materials endue technological benefits as well. Examples are the low weight, high use temperatures and excellent HF properties, which are almost as good as PCB based on PTFE. Besides that, the base material of HTT boards can be produced continuously and due to the used material the board could be post-formed after its processing. All these features open up new potentials for cost saving. In summary, HTT boards incorporate ecological, technological as well as economical benefits and thus are designed to be an ideal base material for future electronics.The increasing semiconductor functionality relies on more complex integrated circuits with higher component densities. Miniaturisation and its implications on resource consumption in semiconductor facilities have been fairly well explored in a number of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, which show that, in spite of the growing product complexity, resource intensities per product unit are gradually falling. However, increasingly advanced circuits demand high-purity materials, but the impacts of these trends on resource intensities in upstream manufacturing stages remain unknown. The growing use of high-grade materials may contribute to shifting the centre of manufacturing-related environmental impacts from circuit fabrication to raw material production stages. Unfortunately, cannot be seen in the existing LCA studies, which due to the lack of data are not able to quantify upstream and provide an incomplete picture of semiconductor environmental aspects. The paper illustrates the problem discussing energy demands for manufacturing ultra-pure wet chemicals. The paper examines the feasibility of using material price as a proxy for production energy intensity and proposes a framework for collecting chemical manufacturing related energy data. The authors suggest that by mapping the patterns of chemical usage and focusing on high-grade materials consumed in large volumes it is possible to reduce data collection efforts and improve the existing energy estimates.The environmental information of the whole life cycle of a product is needed in design for environment (DfE). Therefore, LCA results are possible starting points for the ME, but the results need to be summarized for a company staff in ME education. The reliability of results must be taken into consideration, particularly when going into the details of a product. Those issues were examined when the manufacturing phase of the product of Vaisala company was assessed using two different LCA software tools and inventory databases. Differences between the methods and data had an influence on differences of the results. Comparing of those differences helped to show the main reliability issues of LCA for the staff. It was found out that as a background the LCA results were sufficient, whereas LCA based design rules needed further simplification of the results. In that connection, reliability issues and increased subjectivity must be emphasized.The major trends in Printed Wiring Board (PWB) development have focused on reducing the size and increasing the capacity of the PWB. These tendencies have led to technologies such as multi-layer, surface mounting, fine pitch, micro via or embedded components. Embedded components became almost state-of-the-art in mounted PWB design. An assumed step in the near future will be the technology shift from embedded components to embedded systems. This step into further miniaturisation is supposed to be environmentally friendly, but evidences are neither public available nor based on generally proofed facts. Some ecologically contradictory developments need an environmental roadmap to ensure sustainable products in a highly innovative field. It is necessary to investigate strengths and weak points of those developments in order to allow direct influence at the right aspects. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an appropriate measure to show environmental effects in a quantified manner. The results from the ecological assessment lead into an environmental roadmap of miniaturisation in electronics industry. Against the background of the proposal for an EuP directive, the project also serves as an exemplary case study to demonstrate how enterprises can show EuP compliance. It will start soon and will be co-ordinated by PE Europe as a multi client study with OEMs and participants from the supply chain.For future electronics applications e.g. smart cards will be more frequently used, especially in the developing countries. This calls for attention which environmental load possible production methods brings about, as the production phase usually dominates the environmental load for relatively short-lived consumer electronics. At Chalmers University of Technology a novel manufacturing process using embedded chip technology has been developed as alternative to wire bonding and flip chip connection technologies. Using epoxy based conductive adhesive to fix it a silicon chip is embedded in a liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrate and the copper deposition is done using plating technology. This paper focuses on the manufacturing life cycle phase of a functional module. The decision on inclusion or exclusion of unit processes within the process flow diagram is discussed, and based on earlier work the upstream process contribution was estimated. The methods used for compiling the life cycle and to compare different processes within the system boundaries were the ProTox screening approach developed by Fraunhofer IZM and process-based cradle-to-gate-Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Our suggestion for preferable environmental assessment methods is a two-step approach where first ProTox is used and then the life-cycle approach. The indications for the embedded technology are that shorter curing time for epoxy glue and recycling of hazardous waste arising from electro-less copper plating, would help overall environmental performance. As problematic process materials were identified, the process toxicity would decrease if wet bench processes could be avoided or at least optimised.This paper presents a concurrent and hierarchical approach to life cycle analysis and design of building energy system. The integrated design of building envelope and energy conversion as well as utilization system are emphasized. To support data sharing, the STEP-based data model for building and entity-reiationship database are discussed which can facilitate data sharing between design tools. Finally.. a simple case study is given to demonstrate the use of and benefit of the method.In this paper are presented the most relevant results of a comparative Life Cycle Assessment of the Ebro River Water Transfer considered in the Spanish National Hydrologic Plan, versus the production by desalination of the same amount of diverted water (1050 hm(3)/year). The most common commercial desalination technologies used worldwide (Multi-Stage Flash, MSF; Multi-Effect Evaporation, MED; and Reverse Osmosis, RO) have been considered, in order to obtain a broad outlook as well as to establish a first approach as much as global, rigorous and objective as possible, about the less aggressive water production technology for the environment. The software SimaPro 5.0, developed by Dutch PRe Consultants, has been used as the analysis tool in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and three different evaluation methods have been applied: CML 2 baseline 2000, Eco-Points 97 and Eco-Indicator 99.While environmental issues are playing more and more important role in decision making of energy sector, it is very imperative to assess the environmental impacts exactly for the various energy resources utilization. Since all energy resources lead to some environmental impact and biosphere has buffering capacity for certain pollution material, it is suggested that a sustainable development can be achieved by controlling the total pollutants load down to the corresponding natural purification degree. In this paper, Pollution exergy was defined for a quantitative potential assessment of environmental impacts. As a measure of the departure state of a system from that of environment, the tic between exergy and environment makes exergy as an appropriate measure for environmental impacts of waste emissions such as heat, chemical material and so oil. However, the quantitative relation between exergy and environmental impacts hasn't come into focus so far. This paper defined Pollution exergy to assess environmental impacts, which fully considered the impacts of dissipated rates, reference concentration as well as its lifetime in the atmosphere of different forms exergy. It followed that waste emission won't cause large harm under the buffering capacity. When the buffering capacity was exceed; the environmental harm grows over time as pollutant accumulates in the biosphere, which is consistent with Pollutant exergy. In addition, the potential environmental impacts of the constant emission are dependent upon the reference concentration and atmospheric lifetime of the pollutant. Furthermore, an environmental impacts assessment model integrated with life cycle analysis has been developed, and Pollution exergy was performed for two power plants. The results are compared to LCA. It followed that Pollution exergy a reliable methodology for the assessment of environmental impacts, when Pollution exergy integrated with life cycle analysis, current and potential environmental impact of lifetime waste emission for various industry possess was obtain, which will be an important toot for environmental-benign waste emission control, policy decision-making, and assessment of sustainability.An assessment is made of the atmospheric emissions from the life cycle of fuel ethanol coupled with the cogeneration of electricity from sugarcane in Brazil. The total exergetic loss from atmospheric emission substances produced by the life cycle of fuel ethanol is 10.0 x 10(6) KJ/ton of C2H5OH. Compared with the chemical exergy of 1 ton of ethanol (calculated as 34.56 x 10(6) kJ), the exergy loss from the life cycle's atmospheric emission represents 29% of the product's exergy. The activity that most contributes to atmospheric emission exergy losses is the harvesting of sugarcane through the emitted substance CO. Suggestions for improved environmental quality and greater efficiency of the life cycle of fuel alcohol with cogenerated energy are: sugarcane should be harvested without prior burning; alternative fuels should be used in the transportation vehicles instead of fossil fuel, and the transportation of products and input should be logistically optimized.Increased use of biofuels for transport is emerging as an important policy strategy to substitute petroleum-based fuels. However, the extent to which biofuel can displace fossil fuels and net emissions of CO depends on the efficiency with which it can be produced. To demonstrate that biofuel has a positive energy balance - i.e. more energy is contained in than is used in the production - a life cycle approach must be employed, allowing quantification of the renewability of biofuel delivered to consumers. A novel indicator is proposed - the energy renewability efficiency - aiming at characterizing the renewability of (bio)energy sources. ERE measures the fraction of final fuel energy obtained from renewable sources. The LCEA for bioethanol in France has been investigated. Assessing the (fossil and non-fossil) energy used throughout the life cycle and calculating the renewability of two alternative bioethanol product systems are important goals. Physical and economic data was collected and a systemic description of the bioethanol chains has been implemented. Inventory results - calculated using four different allocation approaches and ignoring co-product credits - are analyzed in order to understand the effect of allocation in the overall energy efficiency and renewability of bioethanol. Sensitivity analysis shows that the choice of the allocation procedure has a major influence on the results. In fact, ERE values for ethanol can vary more than 50%, depending on the allocation used. Finally, we conclude that, in general, ethanol produced from sugar beet or wheat in France is clearly favorable in primary energy terms. In particular, a maximum ERE value of 55% was obtained for wheat based ethanol (mass allocation), meaning that 55% of the biofuel energy content is indeed renewable energy.Aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of an innovative high efficiency steam power plant by means of two "life cycle approach" methodologies, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the "Extended Exergy Analysis" (EEA). The plant object of the analysis is a hydrogen-fed steam power plant in which the H2 is produced by a "zero CO2 emission" coal gasification process (the ZECOTECH (c) cycle). The CO, capture system is a standard humid-CaO absorbing process and produces CaCO3 as a by-product, which is then regenerated to CaO releasing the CO, for a downstream mineral sequestration process. The steam power plant is based on an innovative combined-cycle process: the hydrogen is used as a fuel to produce high-temperature, medium-pressure steam hat powers the steam turbine in the "topper" section, whose exhaust is used in a heat recovery boiler to feed a traditional steam power plant. The environmental performance of the ZECOTECH (c) cycle is assessed by comparison with four different processes: power plant fed by H2 from natural gas steam reforming, two conventional coal- and natural gas power plants and a wind power plant.in this paper the modernisation of the existing district heating system and the maintenance of the network were investigated by evaluating the influence of renovation of end users and the depreciation of pipes. The criterion of "twofold benefit" was applied for the calculation of the optimal variant of the end user renovation, the graph theory was used for optimisation of pipe diameters and the method of life cycle analysis was applied for estimation of the periodicity of the network maintenance works.A composite software model for the comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA) of 10 different fuel options for the Philippine automotive transport sector was developed. It is based on the GREET fuel-cycle inventory model developed by the Argonne National Laboratory for the United States Department of Energy. GREET 1.5a is linked to an impact assessment submodel using the Danish environmental design of industrial products (EDIP) method. This combined inventory-impact assessment model is enhanced further with possibilistic uncertainty propagation (PUP) and possibilistic compromise programming (PCP) features that allow the 10 alternatives to be ranked in the presence of multiple criteria and uncertain data. Sensitivity and scenario analysis can also be performed within the composite model. Some current and anticipated Philippine conditions, including electricity generation mix, are incorporated in the prototype's built-in database. The software model, designated as POLCAGE 1.0 (possibilistic LCA using GREET and EDIP), is coded in Microsoft Excel and Visual Basic. The model's capabilities and features are demonstrated using a case study based on its default scenario. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since 1970's, the environmental protection movement has challenged industries to increase their investment in Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing (ECM) techniques and management tools. Social considerations for global citizens and their descendants also motivated the examination on the complex issues of sustainable development beyond the immediate economic impact. Consequently, industrial enterprises have started to understand sustainable development in considering the Triple Bottom Line (TBL): economic prosperity, environmental quality and social justice. For the management, however, a lack of systematic ECM methodologies hinders their effort in planning, evaluating, reporting and auditing of sustainability. To address this critical need, this research develops a framework of a sustainable management system by incorporating a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of industrial operations with the TBL mechanism. A TBL metric system with seven sets of indices for the TBL elements and their complex relations is identified for the comprehensive evaluation of a company's sustainability performance. Utilities of the TBL indices are estimated to represent the views of various stakeholders, including the company, investors, employees and the society at large. Costs of these indices are also captured to reflect the company's effort in meeting the utilities. An optimization model is formulated to maximize the economic, environmental and social benefits by the company's effort in developing sustainable strategies. To promote environmental and social consciousness, the methodology can significantly facilitate management decisions by its capabilities of including "non-business" values and external costs that the company has not contemplated before.Nearly all life cycle assessment tools available today are high priced, comprehensive and quantitative models requiring a significant amount of data collection and data input. In addition, most of the available software packages require a great deal of training time to learn how to operate the model software. Even after this time investment, results are not guaranteed because of the number of estimations and assumptions often necessary to run the model. As a result, product development, design teams and enviromnental specialists need a simplified tool that will allow for the qualitative evaluation and "screening" of various design options. This paper presents the development and design of a generic, qualitative life cycle screening model and demonstrates its applicability and ease of use. The model uses qualitative environmental, health and safety factors, based on site or product-specific issues, to sensitize the overall results for a given set of conditions. The paper also evaluates the impact of different population input ranking values on model output. The final analysis is based on site or product-specific variables. The user can then evaluate various design changes and the apparent impact or improvement on the environment, health and safety, compliance cost and overall corporate liability. Major input parameters can be varied, and factors such as materials use, pollution prevention, waste minimization, worker safety, product life, environmental impacts, return of investment, and recycle are evaluated. The flexibility of the model format will be discussed in order to demonstrate the applicability and usefulness within nearly any industry sector. Finally, an example using audience input value scores will be compared to other population input results.In several countries, due to the increasing cost and shortage of water, textile finishing industries are looking for non conventional water resources. The use of reclaimed wastewater appears a technically feasible solution and is gaining a growing consensus. A European Union research project (TOWEF0, Towards effluent zero) with the aim of elaborating a multicriteria integrated and coherent methodology to support the implementation of sustainable water reuse in textile finishing processes has been recently concluded. In order to achieve an optimal compromise between minimization of environmental impacts of the production processes and maximum recovery of resources, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to selected textile products manufactured within Belgian and Italian textile finishing companies. The study identified the key environmental issues within the finishing processes of a variety of natural (cotton, silk) and man-made (polyester, acetate, viscose) fibers and fabrics and analyzed alternative water reuse scenarios. Significant margins exist for impressive reductions in water consumption with almost no additional environmental impact adopting in situ membrane filtration technology. In this paper the methodological approach and the results of the LCA analyses applied to a flax-polyester product are presented and discussed.eLCA is a European Commission financed project aimed at realising "On line green tools and services for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)". Knowledge and use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by SMEs are strategic to introduce the Integrated Product Policy (IPP) in Europe, but methodology simplification is needed. LCA requires a large amount of validated general and sector specific data. Since their availability and cost can be insuperable barriers for SMEs, pre-elaborated data/meta-data, use of standards and low cost solutions are required. Within the framework of the eLCA project an LCA software - eVerdEE - based on a simplified methodology and specialised for SMEs has been developed. eVerdEE is a web-based tool with some innovative features. Its main feature is the adaptation of ISO 14040 requirements to offer easy-to-handle functions with solid scientific bases. Complex methodological problems, such as the system boundaries definition, the data quality estimation and documentation, the choice of impact categories, are simplified according to the SMEs' needs. Predefined "Goal and Scope definition" and "Inventory" forms, a user-friendly and well structured procedure are time and cost-effective. The tool is supported by a database containing pre-elaborated environmental indicators of substances and processes for different impact categories. The impact assessment is calculated automatically by using the user's input and the database values. The results have different levels of interpretation in order to identify the life cycle critical points and the improvement options. The use of a target plot allows the direct comparison of different design alternatives.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used, to.,assess the environmental impacts of field production of fibre hemp and seven other crops in France. The production of 1 ha of hemp yielded a eutrophication potential of 20.5 kg PO4-equivalents, a global warn-ling potential,of 2330 kg CO2-equivalents, an acidification potential of 9.8 kg SO2-equivalents, a terrestrial ecotoxicity potential of,2 3 kg, 1, A-dichlorobenzene-equivalents, an energy use of 11.4 GJ, and a land use of 1.02 ha.year. A comparison of hemp (low impacts), wheat (intermediate impacts) and sugar beet (high impacts) revealed that the crops were similar for the relative contributions of emitted substances and resources used to impacts, and for the relative contribution of processes to impacts. A reduction of the impacts of hemp production should focus on eutrophication, and consider the reduction of climate change, acidification and energy use as secondary objectives. Given this objective, the overall environmental effect of the substitution of mineral fertiliser by pig slurry is negative. The introduction of reduced tillage is of interest, as it decreases energy use, acidification and climate change. Measures leading. to a reduction in NOS leaching are highly interesting, as they strongly decrease euttophication Implications for hemp breeding are discussed.Fuel cells are considered to be ultra-clean energy conversion systems because the pollutants emitted during their operating time are very low in concentration. For this reason, fuel cells can represent the answer to several environmental issues. What is important, however, is to carefully evaluate it the problem is really being solved, or just shifted. In other words, it is vital to consider not only the operating life, but also the pollution related to the construction, the disposal, the conversion of primary fuel into hydrogen and all the other related operations and systems. The present study is the first step for evaluating the environmental impact related to the whole life cycle of a fuel cell system. In this paper, in tact, the authors, making use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, analyze the impact associated with a Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell Stack. Since the MCFC construction can be considered a novel practice, this study can provide a significant indication for pollution reduction in the stack construction phase.A traditional approach used to evaluate clean-up technologies, in which only plant discharges are considered, is contrasted with a sustainability assessment. The sustainability of any technology can be assessed from three complementary points of view: economic, environmental and social. As such, this paper presents a comprehensive scheme that can be applied to any process, product or technology. In addition, the use of chemical engineering tools such as process design, process modelling and simulation represent a baseline for the sustainability assessment of technologies, as presented in a case study. The optimal granular activated carbon adsorption process design is used as a model system to demonstrate the advantages of sustainability approaches over traditional approaches. A mathematical model that describes the performance of the process at various design options was developed. This model includes cost equations that were used to estimate the total cost of each alternative under different plant designs and two waste scenarios ( a benzene and a 1,2-dichloroethane discharge). Life Cycle Assessment tools were applied to generate an inventory of emissions and the impact assessment measured as Photochemical Ozone Creation (POC) and Global Warming Potential (GWP). The model examined trade-offs between pollutants discharged into the atmosphere and pollution associated with the adoption and operation of the technology. One of the main results from the technology assessment is that the environmental impact, measured in terms of GWP proved to be higher for the technology operation than for the untreated waste streams themselves, and therefore suggested that the streams should not be treated. However, the social impact evaluation ( measured as risk assessment) conducted as part of this work proved that it was morally and legally mandatory to treat them due to the adverse effects on human health that they may represent. As such, a triple bottom line sustainability assessment was demonstrated to be one of the most important frameworks for decision making. The evaluation scheme presented in this work can also be applied to other areas such as the identification of the most sustainable process design and different green chemistry route alternatives.In this paper, we present a process design methodology for identifying opportunities where step-change improvements in both process economics and environmental impact can be achieved. In particular, the use of computer aided molecular design techniques is proposed as a method for identifying alternative processing materials that can lead to improved designs. Fundamental to the overall approach is the formulation of environmental performance objectives to drive the process design decisions. For this task, a recently developed method of damage modelling for life cycle impact assessment is used to derive an explicit environmental performance metric. Trying to give consideration to not only the traditional financial objectives, but also the multiple environmental concerns, inevitably results in the process design task being formulated as a multi-criteria decision-making process. Using multi-objective optimization techniques, a set of alternative trade-off designs is established that reflect the conflict between the economic and environmental concerns. Accepting that this inherent conflict exists, whereby one objective can not be improved without sacrificing another, the next task is to modify the process through the use of alternative materials in search of superior designs. Focussing specifically on liquid - liquid extraction operations, extensions to our previously developed methodology for designing solvents that are both environmentally benign and cost effective are presented as part of the overall methodology.Suitable environmental assessment tools are needed for the development of sustainable chemical products and processes. In this paper, three methods for the environmental assessment of chemicals with different focus, fields of application, and data requirements are presented. The first method aims to identify potential environmental, health and safety hazards in the early phases of chemical process design. The second approach is to calculate screening indicators for unwanted environmental exposure to chemicals in terms of persistence and spatial range. The third approach is to perform a full life-cycle assessment. The differences between the methods are discussed, first, on a theoretical basis and then within a case study of 13 solvents. The results of all three methods indicate that the use of chlorinated solvents should be avoided, while solvents such as methanol, isopropanol, toluene and xylene are less problematic. Moreover, there are results that are unique to each method: in addition to the chlorinated solvents, nitrobenzene has a potential for long-lasting and widespread exposure; concerning environmental, health and safety aspects, care should be taken with respect to formaldehyde, benzene, and acetic acid; according to the life-cycle assessment, energy use makes up for a large fraction of the impact for solvents such as aniline. In the case study, the three methods provide consistent results both in the overall environmental assessment of the chemicals and with regard to single aspects such as degradability or toxicity. Since not all aspects are considered in all methods, the methods also provide complementary results.Life cycle analysis of cotton towels by Richard Blackburn and John Payne has ascertained the impact of domestic laundering on the life cycle of cotton articles. It was found that any process or treatment that could reduce the washing frequency of that product would be likely to effect a significant reduction in energy, water and chemical consumption over a given time for that product, hence providing a greener life cycle for the product; one recommendation to achieve this, by reducing washing frequency, is through the use of anti-microbial finishes such as poly(hexamethylenebiguanide).Strategies and achievements in the Asian steel industry to construct industrial ecological chain are reviewed largely in the case of Japan, Korea and China. Emphasis is placed on the development of resource circulatory system for the minimisation of various wastes and emissions of green house gases (GHG), toxic gases and polluting particulates. The minimisation includes: 1. Rationalisation of iron and steelmaking processes: 2. Implementation of available relevant measures/technologies 3. Life cycle assessment in designing steel from semis to assembled products; 4. Reduction, reuse and recycling of materials and energies: and 5. Utilisation of core competence technologies to process domestic and industrial wastes. In view of global nature of the above wastes- and emission-issues, inter-industrial linkage and international cooperation across the borders in the Asian countries have become more important. Inter-industrial linkage definitely serves to cut back the wastes and emissions. Examples of such linkage and factors influencing the sustainability of the linkage are described with expectation for further development of the linkage. Importance of international cooperation cannot be overstressed under the circumstances where steel production in China exceeded 220 Mt and world production exceeded 945 Mt in 2003 and is still increasing. Practical measures are discussed to enhance the linkage and cooperation for effectively promoting the reduction, reuse and recycling, including implications for the nonferrous industry.Titanium has the potential to become the third wave of light metals used in high volume applications, following on from aluminium and magnesium. These light metals have functional attributes that can meet many of the goals needed for society's transition to sustainable development. CSIRO has initiated a Light Metals Flagship to focus additional R&D efforts in support of the light metals industry. The vision of the Light Metal Flagship is for Australia to lead the Light Metals Age by reducing the costs and environmental impacts through innovative technologies for these metals. Life cycle principles will be used to identify novel technology pathways for metal production and product manufacture that are more energy efficient, less capital intensive and incorporating eco-efficient material flow chains. Under the auspices of the Light Metal Flagship, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of titanium metal production was carried out with mineral sands mining of ilmenite as the starting point. Upgrading of the ilmenite to synthetic rutile by the Becher process and titanium metal production by the conventional Kroll process were the processing routes considered. Two alternative processes for titanium metal production, the FFC Cambridge process involving direct electrochemical deoxygenation of titanium dioxide, and a plasma process for producing titanium powder from titanium tetrachloride were also examined using LCA methodology and compared to the Kroll process. The environmental impacts included in the LCA were greenhouse gas emissions (Global Warming Potential, GWP) and acid rain gas emissions (Acidification Potential, AP). The Gross Energy Requirement (GER) of each process was also determined. These results for titanium, along with those from previous LCA studies by CSIRO on aluminium, magnesium, steel and stainless steel production, were used to show that despite the relatively large amounts of primary energy required for the production of these light metals, their special properties (eg corrosion resistance, strength and light weight) mean that these metals offer potential GER and GWP reductions compared to other competing materials in a number of applications, when viewed on a life cycle basis. Two applications considered in the paper are the lightweighting of motor vehicles and chemical plant equipment manufacture.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a decision-support tool within mining and minerals processing and metals production, However, a number of initiatives have highlighted the current limitations of LCA to accurately reflect the environmental performance of minerals and metals. These programs include: the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable development project (Stewart, 200 1); the United Nations Environment Programmme/Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (UNEP/SETAC) workshop on LCA and metals (NRCan, 2002); the UNEP SETAC Life Cycle Initiative: and the review of the existing ISO 14 040 set of environmental management standards. Together, these initiatives highlighted concerns relating to the ability of LCA to engage with and support metals recycling, to adequately reflect the impacts associated with products from a multi-product orebody, the ability to adequately reflect the toxicity potential of metals in the natural environment and the fact that resource depletion focuses on mining (and not consumption) as the depleting activity in the life cycle of a metal. Additional impact categories to be included in LCA were also suggested. In this paper we demonstrate how existing initiatives are addressing LCA limitations. Finally we present the state of the art in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) for two impact categories: resource depletion; and impacted land footprint for solid wastes.This paper presents a method to calculate economic and ecological indicators to evaluate waste regarding material recycling. As material recycling is still a preferred option for closing the loop of electric and electronic equipment (EEE), it is important to have an indicator that offers the feasibility to evaluate the benefits and burdens of different recycling routes according to the contained materials and elements. Depending on the description of the economic and ecological potential of waste, the requirements and calculation method will be discussed.Aim, Scope and Background. Acquisition and analysis of huge amounts of data still pose a challenge, with few options available for solutions and support. Life cycle assessment (LCA) experts face such problems on a daily basis. However, data do not become useful until some of the information they carry is extracted , and most important, represented in a way humans can both recognize efficiently and understand and interpret as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, information representation techniques as used in this field are still based on traditional low-dimensional information spaces, featuring only a few basic choices to represent life cycle (LC) related data. We must part from those traditional techniques and shift to visual representations that are easier for us to understand due to the human capability for detecting spatial structures and shapes represented in different colors and textures. Then all the advantages of modern, advanced information visualization can be applied and exploited. Main Features. With the introduction of a new glyph-based information representation and visualization approach to LCA, current issues of representing LC-related information efficiently at a glance are being tackled. These new techniques support reduction of information load by providing tools to select and summarize data, assist in making explicit and transparent data feature propagation, and provide a means of representing data errors and uncertainty. In this approach the human perceptual capability for easily and quickly recognizing and understanding graphical objects in different colors and textures is exploited for the design and application of highly structured and advanced forms of multi-dimensional information representation. Results. Now in the example presented in this paper, OM-glyphs were used to represent LCA-related information for an industrial product and its compiled life cycle inventory under conditions normal for LCA. To demonstrate the application and benefits of the approach introduced, several different visualization scenarios were computed and presented. These were illustrated with a selection of generated glyph-based displays containing spherical glyph clusters for environmental items such as air pollutants and water pollutants, and inventory glyph matrices related to components and to LC phases. Where appropriate, to further aid understanding and clarity, displays were additionally shown with various orientations and in enlarged form. This is a functional feature of interactive 3D OM-glyph based information visualization that can be used in practice to efficiently navigate through displays while at the same time adjusting rendered scenes to the needs of the user at any given time. Due to the huge amount of data acquired and compiled, only a small fraction of the glyph-based displays could be shown, and, in consequence, only a fraction of the data properties, patterns and features available could be discussed in detail. However, it is believed that the basic principles and methods of this approach, as shown in a real application, could be clearly conveyed, and, most important, that the benefits and potential could be displayed in a convincing manner. This technology will support a marked increase in efficiency, speed and quality in LC information analysis. Conclusions. This paper concludes our short series on efficient information visualization in LCA. A new approach to efficient information visualization has been introduced, together with its basic principles. This background was enriched with discussions on and further insights into technical details of the approach and the framework developed. The first practical examples were provided in the previous paper, demonstrating the mapping of LCA-related data and their contexts to glyph parameters. In this paper the application of the approach was presented using data for an actual industrial product. During the discussions, and with the various glyph-based displays shown, it could be convincingly demonstrated that all data features, trends, patterns, relationships, and data imperfections detected and examined, and sometimes traced, could be quickly and efficiently recognized in a short time. Even basic data features, such as small gaps in the data propagation of related values, could be easily seen using OM-glyphs. In the case of traditional data representation, using for example LCI tables, this would require the identification and comparison of several thousand numerical entries. As is the case with all new technology, however, it is still difficult to obtain the interest of the experts, and to convince them that such new ideas will eventually change the face of industry. Outlook. A new, advanced and efficient information representation and visualization approach has been introduced to the LCA community. Hopefully, through this small series of papers, some interest will have been generated in the field of advanced information visualization. For the first time this area has been related to LCA, and some seeds for interdisciplinary research may have been sown. Now it is up to individuals, the experts in the various fields related to those issues, to respond. The desired results will be stimulating discussions, an exchange of ideas, further initiated multilateral, interdisciplinary efforts, and improved collaboration between partners from academia and industry. At that point, efficient information visualization will finally have arrived at, and received, its deserved place within LCA.Background. Acidification is one of the important impact categories for life cycle impact assessment. Although its characterization has progressed during this decade through the employment of midpoint approaches, only limited studies of endpoint approaches have been performed. Objective. This study aimed at developing damage function of acidification for terrestrial ecosystems in Japan. Damage function expresses a quantitative relationship between the inventory and endpoint damage. Methods. The geographical boundary was limited in Japan both for emission and impact. In this study, sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen monoxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) (NO and NO2 collectively mean NOx), hydrogen chloride (HCl), and ammonia (NH3) were considered as major causative substances of acidification. Net primary production (NPP) of existing vegetation was adopted as an impact indicator of terrestrial ecosystems. The aluminum toxicity was adopted as the major factor of effect on terrestrial ecosystems due to acidification. The leachate concentration of monomeric inorganic aluminum ions was selected to express the plant toxicity of aluminum. Results and Discussion. The results of damage function gave utilizable factors both for a midpoint approach and an endpoint approach; Atmospheric Deposition Factor (ADF) and Damage Factor (DF) applicable to the former and the latter, respectively. The ADF indicates an increase of H+ deposition per unit area to an additional emission of causative substance. The additional emission corresponds to some alternatives in industry, not the baseline emission. The DF indicates the total NPP damage in all of Japan due to the additional emission of causative substances. The derived NPP damage is on the order of one millionth of the NPP itself. HCl and NH3 showed larger ADFs and DFs than that of SO2 and NOx. The reason was ascribed to the relatively large source-receptor relationships (SRR) of HCl and NH3. However, since the method applied to determine the SRR of HCl and NE, has larger uncertainties than that of SO2 and no attention is needed to handle the difference. Conclusion. The damage function easily defines the concrete NPP damage due to an additional emission. The impact indicator, NPP, also has an advantage in its mass unit that is directly summable through the entire impact categories. Expansion of endpoints, such as in aquatic ecosystems, material degradation, human health, and biodiversity aspects of terrestrial ecosystems, is an important subject for future work. Further, uncertain analyses for major parameters will provide helpful information on the reliability of damage function.Goal, Scope and Background. In the recently published (Dutch) Handbook on LCA, economic allocation is advised as baseline method for most allocation situations in a detailed LCA Although the Handbook on LCA aimed to provide a 'cookbook' with operational guidelines for conducting each step of an LCA, this was not completely achieved for the allocation step. The guidelines for allocation largely remained at the level of principles. This restricted elaboration of economic allocation may hamper application in practice. Therefore, this paper elaborates some examples applying economic allocation. Method. Two concepts are of particular importance when applying economic allocation: functional flow and multi-functional process. The definitions of these concepts are presented and discussed. The basic principle of economic allocation is that having determined the various functional flows of a multi-functional process, all other flows need to be allocated to these functional flows according to their shares in the total proceeds. Proceeds are based on prices and these are not always easy to determine for a process. A summary of possible solutions for different problems when determining prices is given. Results and Discussion. The examples presented focus on co-production and various recycling situations. All examples are hypothetical in order to avoid discussions on the data. The examples show that the prices of the functional flows determine the allocation results. It is of importance to have correct information on the relative prices of the functional flows at stake, especially whether they are negative or positive. Learning from these examples, we establish a decision tree for economic allocation. The decision tree is meant for identifying and handling multi-functionality situations starting from a defined (product) system. This decision tree is with minor adaptations also applicable to other allocation methods and has a more general value than for the economic allocation method only. Conclusions and perspective. The examples have helped us to establish a decision tree for handling the multi-functionality problem by economic allocation. The examples can be broadened to other materials and allocation situations. We would encourage others to provide other examples and experiences as we expect that these will help to further improve and refine the guidelines and decision tree for economic allocation in future.Aim, Scope, and Background. Studies to evaluate the energy and emission impacts of vehicle/fuel systems have to address allocation of the energy use and emissions associated with petroleum refineries to various petroleum products because refineries produce multiple products. The allocation is needed in evaluating energy and emission effects of individual transportation fuels. Allocation methods used so far for petroleum-based fuels (e.g., gasoline, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas [LPG]) are based primarily on mass, energy content, or market value shares of individual fuels from a given refinery. The aggregate approach at the refinery level is unable to account for the energy use and emission differences associated with producing individual fuels at the next sub-level: individual refining processes within a refinery. The approach ignores the fact that different refinery products go through different processes within a refinery. Allocation at the subprocess level (i.e., the refining process level) instead of at the aggregate process level (i.e., the refinery level) is advocated by the International Standard Organization. In this study, we seek a means of allocating total refinery energy use among various refinery products at the level of individual refinery processes. Main Features. We present a petroleum refinery-process based approach to allocating energy use in a petroleum refinery to petroleum refinery products according to mass, energy content, and market value share of final and intermediate petroleum products as they flow through refining processes within a refinery. The approach is based on energy and mass balance among refining processes within a petroleum refinery. By using published energy and mass balance data for a simplified U.S. refinery, we developed a methodology and used it to allocate total energy use within a refinery to various petroleum products. The approach accounts for energy use during individual refining processes by tracking product stream mass and energy use within a refinery. The energy use associated with an individual refining process is then distributed to product streams by using the mass, energy content, or market value share of each product stream as the weighting factors. Results. The results from this study reveal that product-specific energy use based on the refinery process-level allocation differs considerably from that based on the refinery-level allocation. We calculated well-to-pump total energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for gasoline, diesel, LPG, and naphtha with the refinery process-based allocation approach. For gasoline, the efficiency estimated from the refinery-level allocation underestimates gasoline energy use, relative to the process-level-based gasoline efficiency. For diesel fuel, the well-to- pump energy use for the process-level allocations with the mass- and energy-content-based weighting factors is smaller than that predicted with the refinery-level allocations. However, the process-level allocation with the market-value-based weighting factors has results very close to those obtained by using the refinery-level allocations. For LPG, the refinery-level allocation significantly overestimates LPG energy use. For naphtha, the refinery-level allocation overestimates naphtha energy use. The GHG emission patterns for each of the fuels are similar to those of energy use. Conclusions. We presented a refining-process-level-based method that can be used to allocate energy use of individual refining processes to refinery products. The process-level-based method captures process-dependent characteristics of fuel production within a petroleum refinery. The method starts with the mass and energy flow chart of a refinery, tracks energy use by individual refining processes, and distributes energy use of a given refining process to products from the process. In allocating energy use to refinery products, the allocation method could rely on product mass, product energy contents, or product market values as weighting factors. While the mass- and energy-content based allocation methods provide an engineering perspective of energy allocation within a refinery, the market-value-based allocation method provides an economic perspective. The results from this study show that energy allocations at the aggregate refinery level and at the refining process level could make a difference in evaluating the energy use and emissions associated with individual petroleum products. Furthermore, for the refining-process-level allocation method, use of mass - energy content - or market value share-based weighting factors could lead to different results for diesel fuels, LPG, and naphtha. We suggest that, when possible, energy use allocations should be made at the lowest subprocess level - a confirmation of the recommendation by the International Standard Organization for life cycle analyses. Outlook. The allocation of energy use in petroleum refineries at the refining process level in this study follows the recommendation of ISO 14041 that allocations should be accomplished at the subprocess level when possible. We developed a method in this study that can be readily adapted for refineries in which process-level energy and mass balance data are available. The process-level allocation helps reveal some additional energy and emission burdens associated with certain refinery products that are otherwise overlooked with the refinery-level allocation. When possible, process-level allocation should be used in life-cycle analyses.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background. A new paradigm called System-In-a-Package (SIP) is expected to represent the wave of future microsystem packaging and integration. No environmental assessment has been made of manufacturing processes for SIP and the purpose of this paper is to assess the upstream environmental impact of the process used by Chalmers to manufacture an electronic product using the SIP technology. Objectives. This paper aims at an environmental assessment of a gallium arsenide (GaAs) Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) Switch Product based on a so-called SIP concept on a Liquid Crystalline Polymer (LCP) substrate. This study focuses on the identification of environmentally substantial upstream processes from cradle-to-gate for this product. Methods. This work is based on a life cycle inventory model that has been developed earlier by the authors, and this model is now applied to the system including the straight-line manufacturing processes in the facilities of the Microtechnology Centre (MC2) at Chalmers University of Technology and the manufacturing processes of raw materials in the upstream processes. A main scenario was built in the LCA software EcoLab corresponding to the linear process in MC2 and other manufacturing processes were identified in the upstream which were used to develop the upstream process tree. Results and Discussion. The spin coating of photoresistant material has the highest environmental impact within the system boundaries and the uncertainty of the results is estimated to be small. The exposure and development as well as deposition stages also give impacts, both for the copper and resistant material deposition. In the manufacturing processes inside MC2, the electricity consumption clearly dominates. The results predominantly reflect energy use, whereas toxicological aspects could not be reliably assessed due to lack of data and reliable methods, and therefore needs separate attention. Nevertheless, a toxicology assessment has been made with the Toxic Potential Indicator (TPI), which, compared to a telephone, showed a relatively large value for the switch. The toxic potential of the switch is higher per mass unit than a digital telephone. Conclusions. The previously developed LCA data collection model worked well for the SIP product. The electricity consumption for the deposition machine and the solvent consumption spin coating are the two most important hot spots. For greenhouse warming potential the acetone consumption in the spin coating steps is the most significant contributor, and the copper consumption in the copper deposition step dominates for abiotic resource depletion. Recommendations and Outlook. It is recommended that the machines in the MC2 process lab used to manufacture the SIP product are studied for a longer period of time as it would make the electricity consumption figures more accurate. More electronic packaging concepts, such as System-on-a-chip (SOC) and multichip modules (MCM), should be evaluated and compared to SIP.Insulation of buildings in order to save heating energy is an important technology for enabling sustainable development. This paper summarises the results of a comparative LCA study according to ISO 14040 standard series of HT stone wool, flax representing crop grown products and paper wool representing recycled products applied for roof insulation. As the three materials have vastly different lifecycles, yet fulfil the same function cycles, the methodology used should be of general interest. Part 1 consists of the project background, goal and scope definition, a detailed life cycle inventory analysis with sensitivity analysis, impact assessment and interpretation. The actual comparison of the results from the life cycle assessments of the three products, in which an attempt is made to answer the question of whether the biological products flax and paper wool are more environmentally preferable than the mineral product stone wool representing more traditional insulation materials, is discussed in Part 2.Background, Aims and Scope. Transport noise represents an environmental problem that is perceived by humans more directly than the usual chemical emissions or resource uses. In spite of this, traditional LCA applications still exclude noise - probably due to the unavailability of an appropriate assessment method. In order to fill the gap, this article presents a study proposing a new computational procedure for the determination of health impairment resulting from noise emissions of road vehicles. Main Features. The magnitude of health impairment due to noise is determined separately for each vehicle class (cars, trucks,..) and is calculated per vehicle-kilometre driven during the day or at nighttime on the Swiss road network. This health impairment is expressed in cases of sleep disturbance or communication disturbance, and furthermore aggregated in DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years) units representing the number, duration and severity of the health cases. The method is modelling the full cause-effect chain from the noise emissions of a single vehicle up to the health damage. As in some other modern concepts of environmental damage assessment, the analysis is subdivided into the four modules of fate analysis, exposure analysis, effect analysis and damage analysis. The fate analysis yielding the noise level increment due to an additional road transport over a given distance is conducted for transports with known or with unknown routing, the latter case being more important in LCA practice. The current number of persons subject to specific background levels of noise is determined on the basis of the road traffic noise model, LUK, developed by the Swiss canton of Zurich. The number of additional cases of health impairment due to incremental noise is calculated with data out of the Swiss Noise Study 90. An assessment of the severity of sleep disturbance and communication disturbance, in comparison to other types of health impairment, was performed by a panel consisting of physicians experienced in the field of severity weighting of disabilities. Results and Discussion. The quantities of health cases and of DALY units are given per 1'000 truck or car kilometres on Swiss roads, and the range of the confidence interval is estimated. A plausibility check is made by a quantitative comparison of the results with health damage due to traffic accidents in Switzerland, and with health damage due to traffic noise in the Netherlands. Conclusions and Outlook. The method is ready for use in LCA practice. However, the temporary solution for transports outside of Switzerland should be replaced by feeding country specific data into the fate and exposure model. Further, a comparable assessment for rail transport would facilitate decisions on road or rail transport. A decisive element of transport noise assessment is the availability of robust links between noise level and medical conditions. Whilst the number of the corresponding studies is sufficiently large, a design for better pooling of study results is desirable.Goal, Scope and Background. The main aim of this paper is to present some methodological considerations concerning existing methods used to assess quality of the LCA study. It relates mainly to the quality of data and the uncertainty of the LCA results. The first paper is strictly devoted to methodological aspects whereas, the second is presented in a separate article (Part II) and devoted mainly to a case study. Methods. The presented analysis is based on two well-known concepts: the Data Quality Indicators (DQIs) and the Pedigree Matrix. In the first phase, the Sensitivity Indicators are created on the basis of the sensitivity analysis and then linked with the DQIs and the Quality Classes. These parameters indicate the relative importance of input data and their theoretical quality levels. Next, the Weidema's Pedigree Matrix (slightly modified) is used to establish the values of the new parameter called the Data Quality Distance (DQD) and to link them with the DQIs and Quality Classes. This way the information about the "real" quality levels is provided. Further analysis is performed using the probabilistic distributions and Monte Carlo simulations. Results and Discussion. Thanks to this approach it is possible to make a comparison between two types of the quality factors. On the one hand, the sensitivity analysis allows one to check the importance of input data and to determine their required quality. It is done according to the following relation: the higher the sensitivity indicator, the higher the importance of input data and the higher quality should be demanded. On the other hand, the data have a certain real quality, not always in accord with the demanded one. To make possible a comparison between these two types of quality, it is necessary to find and develop a common denominator for them. Here, for this purpose the DQIs and Quality Classes are used. Conclusions. In the further stage of the assessment the DQIs are used to perform the uncertainty analysis of the LCA results. The results could be additionally analysed by using other techniques of interpretation: the sensitivity-, the contribution-, the comparative-, the discernability- and the uncertainty analysis. Recommendations and Outlook. The presented approach is put into practice to conduct the comparative LCA study for the industrial pumps by using the Ecoindicator99 method. Thanks to this, complex analysis of the credibility of the results is carried out. As a consequence, uncertainty ranges for the LCA results of every product system can be determined [1].Aim, Scope and Background. Aquatic eutrophication is a widespread problem in inland and coastal waters around the world and it should therefore be one of the impact categories to be considered in LCA studies of products and services. In LCAs there are several impact assessment methods to determine characterisation factors for eutrophying nutrients, but few methods have been developed to model fate and spatial aspects. One such method was developed as part of an LCA application of the Finnish forest industry. The aim of this study was to present this characterisation method in which the potential contributions of nitrogen and phosphorus to eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems are calculated. The use of the method was demonstrated by producing site/sector-specific characterisation factors and by constructing a reference value of aquatic eutrophication for Finland. A discussion of sensitivity and uncertainty aspects related to input data is also presented. Methods. The potential contribution to eutrophication from a product system is calculated as a result of the nutrient inputs causing increased production of biomass within aquatic systems. Accordingly, direct nitrogen and phosphorus emissions as well as nitrogen and phosphorus deposition into the watercourses can be included. In the method, characterisation factors for nitrogen and phosphorus emissions are generated by multiplying commonly used equivalency factors by transport and effect factors. Transport and effect factors of the nutrient sources are case-specific and can be determined for each substance individually on the basis of scientific models, empirical data or expert judgements. In this paper, transport and effect factors are determined for different sectors (forest industry, field cultivation, fish farming, etc.) in Finland. In addition, temporal aspects can be taken account of in the model by coefficients representing the proportion of nutrient load in the productive period of the total annual load. The model uncertainty was studied by using three different scenarios based on different input data and assumptions. Uncertainties within the input data were assessed as ranges and the effects of input data uncertainty on the results were studied by varying maximum and minimum values of each input variable in the same time. Results and Discussion. The characterisation method developed was applied to provide characterisation factors of aquatic eutrophication for different sectors in Finland. The magnitude of these sector-specific characterisation factors varied greatly. For this reason, the method results were easily differentiated from those commonly used, site-generic characterisation factors produced in LCIAs. Furthermore, reference values of aquatic eutrophication for normalisation purposes in LCIA were generated on the basis of sector-specific nutrient emissions and characterisation factors. Different scenarios produce alternative pictures of the contributions of various sectors to aquatic eutrophication. By examining the scores of different sectors, it can be concluded that uncertainties in the emission estimates of field cultivation and fate of nitrogen originating from deposition have the greatest effect on the results. In the average scenario, the uncertainty range for the reference value was estimated to be +/- 40% due to all uncertainties in input variables. Conclusions. The results of the work reveal the importance of site-specific characterisation approach in the context of aquatic eutrophication. Furthermore, differentiation of nutrient forms in various sectors means that the question of determination of chatacterisation factors is also related to sector-specific issues. The method demonstrated is flexible, and it can be applied to geographical areas rather than to Finland as a whole. The use of sensitivity and uncertainty analysis is recommended for the interpretation of results, because there is no empirical test applicable for evaluation of the validity of results. In order to reduce uncertainty in results, further research is needed, in particular on the roles of different nutrient forms as sources for aquatic biota, on spatial differentiation of nitrogen and phosphorus as production-limiting factors, and on fate of nitrogen in catchments. Outlook. The weakness of the method is related to the accessibility of input data, restricting to construct the characterisation model of aquatic eutrophication, for example, on the European level. However, it seems that legislative requirements of the European Union to study 'target nutrient loads' of aquatic eutrophication in the catchments of each Member State can improve the situation of the accessibility of input data in the near future.Goal, Scope, Background. To improve the environmental performance of chemical products or services, especially via comparisons of chemical products, LCA is a suitable evaluation method. However, no procedure to obtain comprehensive LCI-data on the production of fine and speciality chemicals is available to date, and information on such production processes is scarce. Thus, a procedure was developed for the estimation of LCIs of chemical production process-steps, which relies on only a small amount of input data. Methods. A generic input-output scheme of chemical production process-steps was set up, and equations to calculate inputs and outputs were established. For most parameters in the resulting estimation procedure, default values were derived from on-site data on chemical production processes and from heuristics. Uncertainties in the estimated default values were reflected as est-case and worst-case scenarios. The procedure was applied to a case study comparing the production of two active ingredients used for crop protection. Verification and a sensitivity analysis were carried out. Results and Discussion. It was found that the impacts from the mass and energy flows estimated by the procedure represent a significant share of the impacts assessed in the case study. In a verification, LCI-data from existing processes yielded results within the range of the estimated best-case and worst-case scenarios. Note that verification data could not be obtained for all process steps. From the verification results, it was inferred that mass and energy flows of existing processes for the production of fine and speciality chemicals correspond more frequently to the estimated best-case than to the worst-case scenario. In the sensitivity analysis, solvent demand was found to be the most crucial parameter in the environmental performance of the chemical production processes assessed. Conclusion. Mass and energy flows in LCIs of production processes for fine and speciality chemicals should not be neglected, even if only little information on a process is available. The estimation procedure described here helps to overcome lacking information in a transparent, consistent way. Recommendations and Outlook. Additional verifications and a more detailed estimation of the default parameters are desirable to learn more about the accuracy of the estimation procedure. The procedure should also be applied to case studies to gain insight into the usefulness of the estimation results in different decision-making contexts.Background, Goal and Scope. The research presented here represents one part of GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) efforts to identify and improve the life cycle impact profile of pharmaceutical products. The main goal of this work was to identify and analyze the cradle-to-gate environmental impacts in the synthesis of a typical Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API). A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of a commercial pharmaceutical product is presented as a case study. Methods. Life cycle inventory data were obtained using a modular gate-to-gate methodology developed in partnership with North Carolina State University (NCSU) while the impact assessment was performed utilizing GSK's sustainability metrics methodology. Results and Discussion. Major contributors to the environmental footprint of a typical pharmaceutical product were identified. The results of this study indicate that solvent use accounts for a majority of the potential cradle-to-gate impacts associated with the manufacture of the commercial pharmaceutical product under study. If spent solvent is incinerated instead of recovered the life-cycle profile and impacts are considerably increased. Conclusions. This case study provided GSK with key insights into the life-cycle impacts of pharmaceutical products. It also helped to establish a well-documented approach to using life cycle within GSK and fostered the development of a practical methodology that is applicable to strategic decision making, internal business processes and other processes and tools.Part 2 summarises the results of a comparative LCA study of HT stone wool, flax representing crop grown products and paper wool representing recycled products applied for roof insulation, in which an attempt is made to answer the question of whether the biological products flax and paper wool are more environmentally preferable than the mineral product stone wool representing more traditional insulation materials. Of the three products compared, paper wool has, in general, the lowest global and regional environmental impacts and flax insulation the highest, with stone wool falling in between. A notable exception is the total energy use, where stone wool has the lowest consumption, followed by cellulose and flax. The study also addresses occupational health, using an approach similar to that used for risk assessment. Here, the modern less biopersistent stone wool products are seen as the safest alternatives, because of a low potential for exposure, sufficient animal testing and the absence of carcinogenic properties. Overall, the differences between the investigated products are of minor environmental significance compared to that achieved by their use, namely insulation of buildings, which saves energy corresponding to more than 100 times the environmental impacts incurred in their manufacture. The main conclusion is that the quality and fitness for use of an insulation product throughout its useful life span is the most important aspect in the life cycle of insulation materials.Goal, Scope and Background. District heating, the utilization of centrally produced heat for space heating and domestic hot water generation, has the potential to contribute to the eco-efficient use of energy resources in the parts of the world where space heating is needed. In literature, environmental studies on district heating mainly consider the emissions from heat generation; the environmental impact from the distribution system is seldom discussed. This paper presents a life cycle assessment of the production of district heating pipes, based on a cradle-to-gate life cycle inventory commissioned by the Swedish District Heating Association. No external review has been performed but a reference group of district heating experts familiar with the practice was involved in the choice of cases as well as in reviewing parts of the study. Methods. Manufacturing of district heating pipes at Powerpipe Systems AB, Goteborg, Sweden, was studied. Prefabricated polyurethane insulated district heating pipes were considered, with a steel tube and a protective casing made of high-density polyethylene. Production of pipes during the time period 1999-2000 was investigated. The functional unit used in the study is production of one district heating pipe unit. The studied pipes are: a twin pipe of the dimension DN25 (12m long) and single pipes of the dimensions DN25 (12m), DN100 (12m) and DN500 (16m). Results and Discussion. A short description of the inventory, some inventory results and a life cycle impact assessment are presented. Characterizations according to GWP, AP, POCP and resource depletion are given as well as two weightings: Ecolndicator99 and Ecoscarcity. If the life cycle is grouped into 'Materials production', 'Transports', 'Manufacturing' and 'Waste management', the 'Materials production' gives rise to a dominating part of the environmental impact. Recommendation and Perspective. To use materials in the pipes as efficiently as possible is the most important feature in order to reduce the environmental impact from production of district heating pipes. Twin pipes can be a more material efficient solution than single pipes. It is important to make sure that environmental improvements from changes in the pipe production phase are not offset by other effects in the total life cycle of the district heating pipe.The development of the LCIA programme of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative started with a global survey of LCA practitioners. There were 91 LCIA-specific responses from all global regions. Respondents gave an indication of how they use LCA with respect to both the stage of LCA that they base decisions on (LCI, LCIA or a combination of both) as well as the types of decisions which they support with LCA information. The issues requiring immediate attention within the UNEP SETAC Life Cycle Initiative identified from this User Needs analysis are the need for transparency in the methodology, for scientific confidence and for scientific co-operation as well as the development of a recommended set of factors and methodologies. Of interest is the fact that results from the different regions highlighted the need for different impact categories. Based on this information proposals were made for new impact categories to be included in LCA (and thus LCIA). The LCIA programme aims to enhance the availability of sound LCA data and methods and to deliver guidance on their use. More specifically, it aims to 1) make results and recommendations widely available for users through the creation of a worldwide accessible information system and 2) establish recommended characterisation factors and related methodologies for the different impact categories, possibly consisting of sets at both midpoint and damage level. The work of the LCIA programme of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has been started within four task forces on 1) LCIA information system and framework, 2) natural resources and land use, 3) toxic impacts, and 4) transboundary impacts. All participants willing to contribute to these efforts are invited to contact the LCIA programme manager or to join the next LCIA workgroup meeting that will take place in at the world SETAC congress in Portland on Thursday 18 November 2004.Goal, Scope and Background. A consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) is designed to generate information on the consequences of decisions. This paper includes a comprehensive presentation of the consequential approach to system boundaries, allocation and data selection. It is based on a text produced within the SETAC-Europe working group on scenarios in LCA. For most of the methodological problems, we describe ideal methodological solutions as well as simplifications intended to make the method feasible in practice. Method. We compile, summarize and refine descriptions of consequential methodology elements that have been presented in separate papers, in addition to methodological elements and general conclusions that have not previously been published. Results and Conclusions. A consequential LCA ideally includes activities within and outside the life cycle that are affected by a change within the life cycle of the product under investigation. In many cases this implies the use of marginal data and that allocation is typically avoided through system expansion. The model resulting from a consequential life cycle inventory (LCI) also includes the alternative use of constrained production factors as well as the marginal supply and demand on affected markets. As a result, the consequential LCI model does not resemble the traditional LCI model, where the main material flows are described from raw material extraction to waste management. Instead, it is a model of causal relationships originating at the decision at hand or the decision-maker that the LCI is intended to inform.Goal and Background. Current Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) procedures have demonstrated certain limitations in the South African manufacturing industry context. The aim of this paper is to propose a modified LCIA procedure, which is based on the protection of resource groups. Methods. A LCIA framework is introduced that applies the characterisation procedure of available midpoint categories, with the exception of land use. Characterisation factors for land occupation and transformation is suggested for South Africa. A distance-to-target approach is used for the normalisation of midpoint categories, which focuses on the ambient quality and quantity objectives for four resource groups: Air, Water, Land and Mined Abiotic Resources. The quality and quantity objectives are determined for defined South African Life Cycle Assessment (SALCA) Regions and take into account endpoint or damage targets. Following the precautionary approach, a Resource Impact Indicator (RII) is calculated for the resource groups. Subjective weighting values for the resource groups are also proposed, based on survey results from the manufacturing industry sector and the expenditure trends of the South African national government. The subjective weighting values are used to calculate overall Environmental Performance Resource Impact Indicators (EPRIIs) when comparing life cycle systems with each other. The proposed approaches are evaluated with a known wool case study. Results and Discussion. The calculation of a RII ensures that all natural resources that are important from a South African perspective are duly considered in a LCIA. The results of a LCIA are consequently not reliant on a detailed Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and the number of midpoint categories that converge on a single resource group. The case study establishes the importance of region-specificity, for LCIs and LCIAs. Conclusions. The proposed LCIA procedure demonstrates reasonable ease of communication of LCIA results. It further allows for the inclusion of additional midpoint categories and is adaptable for specific regions. Recommendations and Outlook. The acceptance of the LCIA procedure must be evaluated for different industry and government sectors. Also, the adequate incorporation of Environmental Performance Resource Impact Indicators (EPRIIs) into decision-making for Life Cycle Management purposes must be researched further. Specifically, the application of the procedures for supply chain management will be investigated.Goal, Scope and Background. This paper is the second part of the publication which is devoted to comparative LCA analysis of the industrial pumps. The previous paper deals with the methodological aspects concerning quality assessment and forms an independent work. This paper uses practically only the methodological suggestions made there. The main aim of the presented study is to make a comparison between the industrial pumps which are based on two different technologies. The Life Cycle Assessment method is used to check whether the differences of the manufacturing processes influence the level of the potential environmental impact during the whole life cycle of the analysed products. Methods. The Life Cycle Assessment is carried out using the Ecoindicator99 method. Additionally, an extensive quality analysis of the LCA study is made (Part 1). To make the process of an,identification of the data easier and faster, they are assigned to a special data documentation form. To ensure the credibility of the LCA results different methods of interpretation are used. Results and Discussion. The LCA analysis shows clear superiority of the pumps manufactured using modern technology. It seems that this superiority results not only from the differences in the emissions, but also from different characteristics of effectiveness in the usage stage. Thanks to the uncertainty analysis, each LCA result is provided with the range of uncertainty. Conclusions. The LCA results are supported by different techniques of interpretation: the sensitivity-, the contribution-, the comparative-, the discernability- and the uncertainty analysis. There is strong evidence of the superiority of the pumps based on the modern technology. Recommendations and Outlook. The main source of the environmental impact in the case of pumps is the usage stage and the consumption of energy. That is why it should be the main area to improve. The LCA results show that actions taken in the usage stage and energy consumption can lead to a considerable reduction of the environmental impacts.Goal, Scope and Background. Photochemical ozone creation potentials (POCPs) typically used in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) to address the impact category 'photo-oxidant formation' only provide factors for particular volatile organic compounds and do not take into account background concentrations and meteorological conditions. However, the formation of ozone from volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) is highly dependent on the background pollutant concentrations and meteorological conditions. Some LCIA manuals therefore recommend working with potentials for high background concentrations of NOx (Derwent 1998), and potentials for low background concentrations of NOx (Andersson-Skold 1992). Objectives. This study has introduced an improved set of POCPs independently of meteorological and emission conditions specific to a given period or location. Whereas current POCP values may be relevant to estimate the photo-oxidant formation over a certain (temporally and spatially well-defined) domain, this study has further introduced more relevant values with respect to potential impacts of ozone on human health and environment. Methods. For the computation of POCP values on the scale of Western Europe, independently of meteorological and emission conditions specific to a given period or location, a Euterian chemistry-transport numerical model (CHIMERE-continental) has been implemented over three summer seasons. POCPs have been evaluated for ten VOC species (including the whole VOC group), CO and NOx. The coherence of this new set of POCP values with previous studies has been checked. The spatial representativity of POCP values over the simulation domain in Europe has also been addressed. The robustness of these POCP values to changes in the implemented chemical mechanism used in our model has been checked. Results and Discussion. The POCPs computed in this study were generally lower than the POCPs calculated in previous studies. In the previous studies, but not here, the POCPs have been calculated with particular meteorological conditions (during anticyclonic, fair weather conditions) or emission levels (high polluted backgrounds) known to be optimal with respect to ozone formation. Despite the quantitative variations in the POCP values, we have found a good agreement in the relative ranking of the pollutant species between this study and previous studies. It was also shown that POCP values display significant spatial variability over Western Europe (the largest spatial differences were obtained for NOx where the sign of the POCP value even changes from region to region). Conclusions. Finally, the temporally and spatially averaged values obtained here for the POCP index update previous values and represent an attempt to generate the most appropriate and accurate scale for European conditions independently of meteorological and emission conditions specific to a given period or location. Recommendations and Outlook. These new PCOPs should be useful to LCIA-practitioners in further life cycle impact assessment. However, for the NOx species, we do not recommend the use of the POCP value for LCIA.Background. Many types of weighting methods, which have integrated the various environmental impacts that are used for life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA), were proposed with the aim of developing the methodology as a useful information resource for decision making, such as in the selection of products. Economic valuation indexes, in particular, have attracted attention, as their assessment results are easy to understand and can be applied in conjunction with other assessment tools, including life-cycle costing (LCC) and environmental accounting. Conjoint analysis has been widely used in market research, and has recently been applied to research in environmental economics. The method enables us to provide two types of assessment results; an economic valuation and a dimensionless index. This method is therefore expected to contribute greatly to increasing the level of research into weighting methodology, in which an international consensus has yet to be established. Conjoint analysis, however, has not previously been applied to LCIA. Objective. LCA National Project (METI/NEDO/JENIAI) has conducted a study aimed at the development of a Japanese version of the damage-oriented impact assessment method called LIME (Lifecycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling), in order to enhance its reliability and transparency. This study aimed at the application of conjoint analysis to the step of weighting in LIME. An ultimate goal of the research is to determine an amount of willingness to pay (WTP) for avoiding a unit quantity of damage of every safeguard subject (endpoint). Methods. Potential annual damages of four safeguard subjects (human health, biodiversity, social assets, and primary production), known as normalization values in LCIA, were used as fundamental information in this study. These data can he obtained through damage assessment. Taking this background into account, we performed a comparison of importance among the four safeguard subjects defined in LIME by applying conjoint analysis. A choice-based type of questionnaire was prepared for the interview with the respondents selected by random sampling. Pre-tests were conducted for 108 respondents in advance of the main survey. After we confirmed that the analyzed results of the pre-test were revealed to be statistically significant, the main surveys were conducted for 400 respondents by interviewing. WTP per quota can be determined by statistical simulation based on the random utility theory reflecting the responses to the questionnaires by random sampling. Results and Discussion. The values of one unit (standard) of attributes were significant statistically at the 1 % level (all of the p value for coefficients of safeguard subjects were less than 0.0001). Based on the calculated results, two types of weighting factors, an economic valuation and a dimensionless index were obtained. The capability of generating two kinds of weighting factors is unique to conjoint analysis. A relative comparison of importance among the four categories indicates that human health gains the highest recognition, biodiversity gains the second highest recognition, and the weight of primary production and social assets have been estimated to be relatively smaller than the other two safeguard subjects. Conclusion. It is desirable to prepare a small number of attributes when conducting a conjoint analysis, because the efforts of respondents have to be reduced as far as possible. We confirmed that the damage-oriented method, which minimizes the number of attributes, is suitable to the requirement of conjoint analysis, because the results of comparisons among safeguard subjects were statistically significant, and showed that the contents of the questionnaires were well understood among the respondents. judging from the results of this study, where statistical significance has not even been fully verified in the conventional research on the development of weighting coefficients for LCIA, it can be concluded that the weighting factors derived from this study based on the economic theory have a possibility to reveal the impact of environment on society.Goal and Background. Uncertainty is commonly not taken into account in LCA studies, which downgrades their usability for decision support. One often stated reason is a lack of method. The aim of this paper is to develop a method for calculating the uncertainty propagation in LCAs in a fast and reliable manner Approach. The method is developed in a model that reflects the calculation of an LCA. For calculating the uncertainty, the model. combines approximation formulas and Monte Carlo Simulation. It is based on virtual data that distinguishes true values and random errors or uncertainty, and that hence allows one to compare the performance of error propagation formulas and simulation results. The model is developed for a linear chain of processes, but extensions for covering also branched and looped. product systems are made and described. Results. The paper proposes a combined use of approximation formulas and Monte Carlo simulation for calculating uncertainty, in LCAs, developed primarily for the sequential approach. During the calculation, a parameter observation controls the performance of the approximation formulas. Quantitative threshold values are given in the paper. The combination thus transcends drawbacks of simulation and approximation. Conclusions and Outlook. The uncertainty question is a true Jigsaw puzzle for LCAs and the method presented in this paper may serve as one piece in solving it. It may thus foster a sound use of uncertainty assessment in LCAs. Analysing a proper management of the input uncertainty, taking into account suitable sampling; and estimation techniques; using the approach for real case studies, implementing it in LCA software for automatically applying the proposed combined uncertainty model and, on the other hand., investigating about how people do decide, and should decide, when their decision relies on explicitly uncertain LCA outcomes - these all are neighbouring puzzle pieces inviting to further work.Background and Objective. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a highly data intensive undertaking, where collecting the life cycle inventory (LCI) data is the most tabour intensive part. The aim of this paper is to show a method for representing the LCI in a simplified manner which not only allows an estimative, quantitative LCA, but also the application of advanced analysis methods to LCA. Procedure and Method. The method is based on two main components: Firstly the parameterisation of the life cycle inventory for complete product ranges, e.g. relative material composition (the parameterisation factor is product mass or product volume), relative manufacturing inputs and wastes (the parameterisation factor is production output, in number of items, mass or volume), inputs, wastes and emissions during use (the parameterisation factors are efficiency, emissions per unit energy converted, etc.). Secondly, the parameterisation factors are related to design parameters, e.g. the efficiency of three-phase induction motors increase as the torque output increases and decreases with the number of poles, while the mass of the same induction motor increases with torque. Determining these relationships is initially labour-intensive, but only has to be done once for a product type and it is just a matter of fitting appropriate models after the collection of the relevant data. Also, required data is not impossible to come by, and respective industries publish many of the relevant data for marketing and design purposes. Due to the wide variety of products - whereby here the term 'product' is used in the widest sense and can be a component, an assembly, a consumer product or service - the relationships are represented as ranges with upper and lower limits. One of the limits represents 'the best practically possible' and is a good indication of what the technologies' capabilities are at the time. Top-down approaches allow the approximate determination of manufacturing inventories for product ranges. Bringing the two components together, the LCA analyst can use known design parameters and so quickly determine an estimate of the life cycle inventory, after which it is then a relatively simple step to carry out the full, approximate LCA. Furthermore, this method can be extended to include life cycle costing as an extension, to simultaneously assess economic aspects of the design. Case Study. The method is further illustrated using a 3-phase asynchronous motor as an example and it is shown how the changing needs during the design process are utilised. Discussion and Conclusion. The paper introduces the concept of parameterised inventories for the use in LCA, describes the general procedure of determining the relationships of the parameterised inventories to design parameters and outlines future developments enabled by this method of inventory representation. The novel parts of the method are a simplified, but quantitative LCA method. For the first time this enables parametric studies and sensitivity analysis, not only for varying material compositions, but varying the underlying design parameters in complex interactions, and finding optimised sets of solutions for those design parameters to achieve one or more optimised criteri(on)a. Perspective. The full potential of the method as an analysis tool, especially in the early design phases, will be reached in an integrated engineering environment, where relevant LCA and cost data are automatically and systematically exchanged along the supply chain.Goal, Scope and Background. In 2001, a new law on the recycling of end-of-life electric home appliances (EL-EHA) was put into effect in Japan; it was the first legislation of its sort in the world, and deserves to be called the 'Japan model.' This article is concerned with the LCA of alternative life-cycle strategies for EL-EHA, which consist of recycling as prescribed by the law, 'ecodesign' strategies such as the implementation of design for disassembly (DfD) and the extension of product life (EPL), with and without ex-post functional upgradability, and the once-dominant treatment methods such as landfilling and simple shredding. Methods. We use the waste input-output (WIO) analysis, a new method of hybrid LCA that was developed by the authors [I]. The WIO extends the conventional input-output analysis to explicitly take into account the interdependence between the flow of goods and the flow of waste in the whole economy, and. hence provides an optimal platform for LCA involving waste treatment and recycling. Furthermore, the WIO enables us to evaluate not only environmental impacts, but also economic: impacts such as sectoral output and employment. Our analysis is based on the WIO table for 1995 and detailed process data. on recycling. Results and Discussion. Recycling was found to outperform the 'traditional' treatment method strategy with regard to the reduction of CO2 emission, landfill consumption, and the demand for abiotic resources. Thanks to efficient utilization of the existing retail network system, it was also found to be more efficient economically. Additional implementation of DfD and the associated increase in the quality of recovered materials (plastics) were found to augment the positive environmental impacts of recycling. The EPL without upgrading resulted in a significant reduction in the environmental impacts, but also in the level of employment. On the other hand, the EPL with upgrading was found to outperform the recycling strategy in terms of environmental impacts without having significant negative economic impacts. Conclusion and Recommendation. Recycling of EL-EHA, as prescribed by the Japanese law on the recycling of EL-EHA, was found to be effective in reducing CO, emission, depletion of abiotic resources, generation of waste, and landfill consumption, provided the rate of retrieval remains at a high level. Our results also indicate the possible effectiveness of ecodesign strategy toward the realization of a sustainable economy.Global Scope and Background. The study was aimed at presenting the methodology of the process eco-indicator, in relation to hard coal mines, and thereby making evaluation of the impact of the mine's coal extraction process on the environment. The life cycle of a mine is made up of three phases: opening and developing the mine's deposit, extraction of the mine's deposit, closing the mine. Methods. The assessment of environmental influence of mining operation of a colliery was executed on a basis of the life cycle analysis, in accordance with the standard series PN-EN 14040. The environmental loads caused by individual unit processes were calculated by means of the aforementioned methodology with division into the basic influence categories: human health, ecosystem quality and natural resources. The obtained values of eco-indicators for the individual unit processes made it possible to compare the unit-process-caused environmental loads. Mean values of the eco-indicators of the individual unit processes were calculated by means of the inventory analysis covering 38 collieries. Next, these indicators were used to compare environmental load values by each similar process in a colliery. A total eco-indicator was calculated for colliery by summing up the eco-indicators of the individual unit processes. The eco-indicators, structured as above, were calculated for the phase of opening out a deposit and for the phase of extraction. Results and Discussion. The model mine in the phase of extraction of a deposit causes a total environmental load which expressed in points of the eco-indicator 99 amounts to 23.9 [MEw]. In the 'human health' category losses amount to 8.4 per cent, in the 'quality of ecosystem' 0.6 per cent and in the 'resourses' category 91 per cent. The greatest losses in all categories are caused by the process of getting body of coal and the next greatest ones are: In the 'human health'category - cleaning coal at a preparation plant (250.0 kEw), In the 'quality of ecosystem' category - cleaning coal at a preparation plant (25.0 kEw), In the 'resources' category - entry driving by means of explosives (745.7 kEw). Value of the eco-indicator 99 per 1 Mg (tonne) of coal extracted at the model mine amounts to 9.55 Ew. On a basis of this methodology, calculations of the value of the eco-indicator 99 were performed for a real working colliery (extraction of 1.23 million tonnes in 2001). An inventory of characteristic quantities of individual unit processes connected with the extraction of this colliery was prepared. The total environmental load of this mine was 11.14 MEw (in the 'human health' category losses amounted to 7.9 per cent, in the 'quality of ecosystem' category 0.5 per cent, and in the resources' category 91.6 per cent). The greatest losses in all categories were caused by the process of getting body of coal which amounted to 10.8 MEw, and next the process of driving a heading by means of heading machine which amounted to 130.9 kEw. The value of the eco-indicator 99 for 1 Mg (tonne) of coal extracted in 2001 at the above-mentioned mine amounts to 9.06 Ew and is lower than the value of the eco-indicator 99 calculated for the model mine. Conclusion. By means of the presented methodology it is possible to calculate environmental loads caused by individual unit processes with division into the basic categories of influence: human health, quality of ecosystem and natural resources. The calculated values of the eco-indicators of the individual unit processes enable to make comparisons of environmental loads and eventual decision making on changes in the ecological policy of a mine. Recommendation and Perspective (Outlook). The presented LCA methodology can be used to compare the operation of individual mines in the aspect of their influence on the environment. If the data of the same type with regard to unit processes are at disposal, then the mines can be ranked. Based on the LCA's results, it is possible to make capital decisions connected with modernisation of specific production processes.Goal, Scope and Background. Agricultural production includes not only crop production, but also food processing, transport, distribution, preparation, and disposal. The effects of all these must be considered and controlled if the food chain is to be made sustainable. The goal of this case study was to identify and review the significant areas of potential environmental impacts across the whole life cycle of cane sugar on the island of Mauritius. Methods. The functional unit was one tonne of exported raw sugar from the island. The life cycle investigated includes the stage of cane cultivation and harvest, cane burning, transport, fertilizer and herbicide manufacture, cane sugar manufacture and electricity generation from bagasse. Data was gathered from companies, factories, sugar statistics, databases and literature. Energy depletion, climate change, acidification, oxidant formation, nutrification, aquatic ecotoxicity and human toxicity were assessed. Results and Discussion. The inventory of the current sugar production system revealed that the production of one tonne of sugar requires, on average, a land area of 0.12 ha, the application of 0.84 kg of herbicides and 16.5 kg of N-fertilizer, use of 553 tons of water and 170 tonne-km of transport services. The total energy consumption is about 14235 MJ per tonne of sugar, of which fossil fuel consumption accounts for 1995 MJ and the rest is from renewable bagasse. 160 kg of CO2 per tonne of sugar is released from fossil fuel energy use and the net avoided emissions of CO2 on the island due to the use of bagasse as an energy source is 932,000 tonnes. 1.7 kg TSP, 1.21 kg SO2,1.26 kg NO, and 1.26 kg CO are emitted to the air per tonne of sugar produced. 1.7 kg N, 0.002 kg herbicide, 19.1 kg COD, 13.1 kg TSS and 0.37 kg PO43- are emitted to water per tonne of sugar produced. Cane cultivation and harvest accounts for the largest environmental impact (44%) followed by fertilizer and herbicide manufacture (22%), sugar processing and electricity generation (20%), transportation (13%) and cane burning (1%). Nutrification is the main impact followed by acidification and energy depletion. Conclusions. There are a number of options for improvement of the environmental performance of the cane-sugar production chain. Cane cultivation, and fertilizer and herbicide manufacture, were hotspots for most of the impact categories investigated. Better irrigation systems, precision farming, optimal use of herbicides, centralisation of sugar factories, implementation of co-generation projects and pollution control during manufacturing and bagasse burning are measures that would considerably decrease resource use and environmental impacts. Recommendation and Outlook. LCA was shown to be a valuable tool to assess the environmental impacts throughout the food production chain and to evaluate government policies on agricultural production systems.Goal, Scope and Background. Nowadays, every strategy must be developed taking into account the global impact on the environment; if this aspect is forgotten, a change of environmental loads or their effect will be caused and no reduction will be attained. For instance, a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), which is considered a priori as an ecological treatment system, gives rise to an environmental impact due to its energy consumption, use of chemical compounds, emissions to the atmosphere and sludge production, the post-treatment of which will also have diverse environmental effects. The goal of this study is to evaluate the potential environmental impact corresponding to a municipal WWTP and to identify the hot spots associated with the process. Methods. In this study, the Centre of Environmental Science (CML) of Leiden University methodology has been considered to quantify the potential environmental impact associated with the system under study. A comprehensive analysis of the WWTP was evaluated for the physico-chemical characterisation of the wastewaters as well as the inventory of all the inputs (energy, chemical compounds,...) and outputs (emissions to air, water, soil and solid waste generation) associated with the global process. Regarding Life Cycle Inventory Assessment, SimaPro 5.0 was used and in particular CML factors (updated in 2002) were chosen for characterisation and normalisation stages. Results and Discussion. A comprehensive inventory of empirical data from water, sludge and gas flows during 2000 and 2001 was obtained. Two impact categories arise due to their significance: eutrophication and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Consequently, the aspects to be minimised in order to reduce the environmental impact of the system are the pollutant load at the watercourse discharge (mainly NH3, PO43- and COD, even when all of them are below legal limits) and the emissions to soil (mainly Cr, Hg and Zn, even when they are present in low concentrations) when the sludge is used for agricultural application. Conclusions. As far as the environmental impact is concerned, differentiation between humid and dry season is not required as results are practically equal for both situations. Water discharge and sludge application to land have turned out to be the main contributors in the environmental performance of a WWTP Regarding the former, the removal of nitrogen by means of a nitrification-denitrification system coupled to conventional biological aerobic treatment implies a high environmental impact reduction and, as for the latter, bearing in mind the proposed legislation, heavy metals as well as pathogens are supposed to be the key parameters to define the most adequate treatment strategies for the generated sludge. Recommendations and Outlook. This study can serve as a basis for future studies that can apply a similar policy to a great number of wastewater facilities. Besides, features such as different treatment systems and capacities can provide additional information with the final aim of including the environmental vector in the decision-making process when the operation of a WWTP is intended to be optimised. Moreover, sludge must also be a focus of attention due to the expected increase and its major contribution to the global environmental impact of a WWTP, which can determine other treatment alternatives.Goal, Scope and Background. Gipuzkoa is a department of the Vasque Country (Spain) with a population of about 700,000 people. By the year 2000 approximately 85% of municipal solid waste in this area was managed by landfilling, and only 15% was recycled. Due to environmental law restrictions and landfill capacity being on its limit, a planning process was initiated by the authorities. LCA was used, from an environmental point of view, to assess 7 possible scenarios arising from the draft Plan for the 2016 time horizon. Main Features. In each scenario, 9 waste flows are analysed: rest waste, paper and cardboard, glass containers, light packaging, organic-green waste, as well as industrial/commercial wood, metals and plastics, and wastewater sludge. Waste treatments range from recycling to energy recovery and landfilling. Results. Recycling of the waste flows separated at the source (paper and cardboard, glass, light packaging, organic-green waste, wood packaging, metals and plastics) results in net environmental benefits caused by the substitution of primary materials, except in water consumption. These benefits are common to the 7 different scenarios analysed. However, some inefficiencies are detected, mainly the energy consumption in collection and transport of low density materials, and water consumption in plastic recycling. The remaining flows, mixed waste and wastewater sludge, are the ones causing the major environmental impacts, by means of incineration, landfilling of partially stabilised organic material, as well as thermal drying of sludge. With the characterisation results, none of the seven scenarios can be clearly identified as the most preferable, although, due to the high recycling rates expected by the Plan, net environmental benefits are achieved in 9 out of 10 impact categories in all scenarios when integrated waste management is assessed (the sum of the 9 flows of waste). Finally., there are no relevant differences between scenarios concerning the number of treatment plants considered. Nevertheless, only the effects on transportation impacts were assessed in the LCA, since the plant construction stage was excluded from the system boundaries. Conclusions. The results of the study show the environmental importance of material recycling in waste management, although the recycling schemes assessed can be improved in some aspects. It is also important to highlight the environmental impact of incineration and landfilling of waste, as well as thermal drying of sludge using fossil fuels. One of the main findings of applying LCA to integrated waste management in Gipuzkoa is the fact that the benefits of high recycling rates can compensate for the impacts of mixed waste and wastewater sludge. Recommendations and Outlook. Although none of the scenarios can be clearly identified as the one having the best environmental performance, the authorities in Gipuzkoa now have objective information about the future scenarios, and a multidisciplinary panel could be formed in order to weight the impacts if necessary. In our opinion, LCA was successfully applied in Gipuzkoa as an environmental too] for decision making.This article is the preamble to a set of articles describing initial results from an on-going European Commission funded, 5th Framework project called OMNIITOX, Operational Models aNd Information tools for Industrial applications of eco/TOXicological impact assessments. The different parts of this case study-driven project are briefly presented and put in relation to the aims of contributing to an operational life cycle-impact assessment (LCIA) model for impacts of toxicants. The present situation has been characterised by methodological difficulties, both regarding choice of the characterisation model(s) and limited input data on chemical properties, which often has resulted in the omission of toxicants from the LCIA, or at best focus on well characterised chemicals. The project addresses both problems and integrates models, as well as data, in an information system - the OMNIITOX IS. There is also a need for clarification of the relations between the (environmental) risk assessments of toxicants and LCIA, in addition to investigating the feasibility of introducing LCA into European chemicals legislation, tasks that also were addressed in the project.Coal Scope Background. The main focus in OMNIITOX is on characterisation models for toxicological impacts in a life cycle assessment (LCA) context. The OMNIITOX information system (OMNIITOX IS) is being developed primarily to facilitate characterisation modelling and calculation of characterisation factors to provide users with information necessary for environmental management and control of industrial systems. The modelling and implementation of operational characterisation models on eco and human toxic impacts requires the use of data and modelling approaches often originating from regulatory chemical risk assessment (RA) related disciplines. Hence, there is a need for a concept model for the data and modelling approaches that can be interchanged between these different contexts of natural system model approaches. Methods. The concept modelling methodology applied in the OMNIITOX project is built on database design principles and ontological principles in a consensus based and iterative process by participants from the LCA, RA and environmental informatics disciplines. Results. The developed OMNIITOX concept model focuses on the core concepts of substance, nature framework, load, indicator, and mechanism, with supplementary concepts to support these core concepts. They refer to the modelled cause, effect, and the relation between them, which are aspects inherent in all models used in the disciplines within the scope of OMNIITOX. This structure provides a possibility to compare the models on a fundamental level and a language to communicate information between the disciplines and to assess the possibility of transparently reusing data and modelling approaches of various levels of detail and complexity. Conclusions. The current experiences from applying the concept model show that the OMNIITOX concept model increases the structuring of all information needed to describe characterisation models transparently. From a user perspective the OMNIITOX concept model aids in understanding the applicability, use of a characterisation model and how to interpret model outputs. Recommendations and Outlook. The concept model provides a tool for structured characterisation modelling, model comparison, model implementation, model quality management, and model usage. Moreover, it could be used for the structuring of any natural environment cause-effect model concerning other impact categories than toxicity.Background and Objective. In the OMNIITOX project 11 partners have the common objective to improve environmental management tools for the assessment of (eco)toxicological impacts. The detergent case study aims at: i) comparing three Procter & Gamble laundry detergent forms (Regular Powder-RP, Compact Powder-CP and Compact Liquid-CL) regarding their potential impacts on aquatic ecotoxicity, ii) providing insights into the differences between various Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods with respect to data needs and results and iii) comparing the results from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with results from an Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA). Material and Methods. The LCIA has been conducted with EDIP97 (chronic aquatic ecotoxicity) [1], USES-LCA (freshwater and marine water aquatic ecotoxicity, sometimes referred to as CML2001) [2, 3] and IMPACT 2002 (covering freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity) [4]. The comparative product ERA is based on the EU Ecolabel approach for detergents [5] and FUSES [6], which is based on the Technical Guidance Document (TGD) of the EU on Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) of chemicals [7]. Apart from the Eco-label approach, all calculations are based on the same set of physico-chemical and toxicological effect data to enable a better comparison of the methodological differences. For the same reason, the system boundaries were kept the same in all cases, focusing on emissions into water at the disposal stage. Results and Discussion. Significant differences between the LCIA methods with respect to data needs and results were identified. Most LCIA methods for freshwater ecotoxicity and the ERA see the compact and regular powders as similar, followed by compact liquid. IMPACT 2002 (for freshwater) suggests the liquid is equally as good as the compact powder, while the regular powder comes out worse by a factor of 2. USES-LCA for marine water shows a very different picture seeing the compact liquid as the clear winner over the powders, with the regular powder the least favourable option. Even the LCIA methods which result in the same product ranking, e.g. EDIP97 chronic aquatic ecotoxicity and USES-LCA freshwater ecotoxicity, significantly differ in terms of most contributing substances. Whereas, according to IMPACT 2002 and USES-LCA marine water, results are entirely dominated by inorganic substances, the other LCIA methods and the ERA assign a key role to surfactants. Deviating results are mainly due to differences in the fate and exposure modelling and, to a lesser extent, to differences in the toxicological effect calculations. Only IMPACT 2002 calculates the effects based on a mean value approach, whereas all other LCIA methods and the ERA tend to prefer a PNEC-based approach. In a comparative context like LCA the OMNIITOX project has taken the decision for a combined mean and PNEC-based approach, as it better represents the 'average' toxicity while still taking into account more sensitive species. However, the main reason for deviating results remains in the calculation of the residence time of emissions in the water compartments. Conclusion and Outlook. The situation that different LCIA methods result in different answers to the question concerning which detergent type is to be preferred regarding the impact category aquatic ecotoxicity is not satisfactory, unless explicit reasons for the differences are identifiable. This can hamper practical decision support, as LCA practitioners usually will not be in a position to choose the 'right' LCIA method for their specific case. This puts a challenge to the entire OMNIITOX project to develop a method, which finds common ground regarding fate, exposure and effect modelling to overcome the current situation of diverging results and to reflect most realistic conditions.Goal, Scope and Background. The aim of this study has been to come up with recommendations on how to develop a selection method (SM) within the method development research of the OMNIITOX project. An SM is a method for prioritization of chemical emissions to be included in a Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) characterisation, in particular for (eco) toxicological impacts. It is therefore designed for pre-screening to support a characterisation method. The main reason why SMs are needed in the context of LCIA is the high number of chemical emissions that potentially contribute to the impacts on ecosystems and human health. It will often not be feasible to cover all emissions with characterisation factors and, therefore, there exists a need to focus the effort on the most significant chemical emissions in the characterisation step. Until now not all LCA studies include toxicity-related impact categories, and when they do there are typically many gaps. This study covers the only existing methods explicitly designed as SMs (EDIP-selection, Priofactor and CPM-selection), the dominating Chemical Ranking and Scoring (CRS) method in Europe (EURAM) and in the USA (WMPT) that can be adapted for this purpose, as well as methods presenting novel approaches which could be valuable in the development of improved SMs (CART analysis and Hasse diagram technique). Methods. The included methods are described. General guidance principles established for CRS systems are applied to SMs and a set of criteria for good performance of SMs is developed. The included methods are finally evaluated against these criteria. Results and Discussion. Two of the most important performance criteria include providing consistent results relative to the more detailed, associated characterisation methods and the degree of data availability to ensure broader chemical coverage. Applicability to different chemical groups, user friendliness, and transparency are also listed amongst the important criteria. None of the evaluated methods currently fulfil all of the proposed criteria to a degree that excludes the need for development of improved selection methods. Conclusion and Recommendations. For the development of SMs it is recommended that the general principles for CRS systems are taken into account. Furthermore, special attention should be paid to some specific issues, i.e. the emitted amount should be included, data availability should enable broad chemical coverage, and when identifying priority chemicals for the characterisation, the developed SM should generate few false positives (chemical emissions classified wrongly as being of high concern) and no (significant) false negatives (classified wrongly as being of low concern) as compared to the associated characterisation method. These recommendations are not only relevant for a stand alone SM, but also valuable when dealing with simple characterisation methods associated with a more detailed characterisation method. Outlook. There are several questions that need to be answered before an optimal SM can be developed, inter alia: Is it optimal to just use simple measured data with high availability or are QSAR estimates of more complex, relevant data better? Which key parameters to include and how? Is a statistical approach, like linear regression of characterisation factors or CART analysis, the best solution?Goal, Scope and Background. The EU 5(th) framework project OMNIITOX will develop models calculating characterisation factors for assessing the potential toxic impacts of chemicals within the framework of LCA. These models will become accessible through a web-based information system. The key objective of the OMNIITOX project is to increase the coverage of substances by such models. In order to reach this objective, simpler models which need less but available data, will have to be developed while maintaining scientific quality. Methods. Experience within the OMNIITOX project has taught that data availability and quality are crucial issues for calculating characterisation factors. Data availability determines whether calculating characterisation factors is possible at all, whereas data quality determines to what extent the resulting characterisation factors are reliable. Today, there is insufficient knowledge and/or resources to have high data availability as well as high data quality and high model quality at the same time. Results. The OMNIITOX project is developing two inter-related models in order to be able to provide LCA impact assessment characterisation factors for toxic releases for as broad a range of chemicals as possible: 1) A base model representing a state-of-the-art multimedia model and 2) a simple model derived from the base model using statistical tools. Discussion. A preliminary decision tree for using the OMNIITOX information system (IS) is presented. The decision tree aims to illustrate how the OMNIITOX IS can assist an LCA practitioner in finding or deriving characterisation factors for use in life cycle impact assessment of toxic releases. Conclusions and Outlook. Data availability and quality are crucial issues when calculating characterisation factors for the toxicity impact categories. The OMNIITOX project is developing a tiered model approach for this. It is foreseen that a first version of the base model will be ready in late summer of 2004, whereas a first version of the simple base model is expected a few months later.Scope and Background. This paper presents the preliminary results from an ongoing feasibility study, investigating potential application of elements from the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework in European chemicals' policy. Many policy areas affect manufacturing, marketing and use of chemicals. This article focuses on the general chemical legislation, especially issues related to regulatory risk assessment and subsequent decisions on risk reduction measures. Method. Current and upcoming chemical regulation has been reviewed and empirical knowledge has been gained from an ongoing case study and from dialogues with various stakeholders. Results and Discussion. LCAs are comparative and more holistic in view as compared to chemical risk assessments for regulatory purposes'. LCAs may therefore potentially improve the basis for decisions between alternatives in cases where a risk assessment calls for risk reduction. In this process, LCA results might feed into a socio-economic analysis having similar objectives, but some methodological aspects related to system boundaries need to be sorted out. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of toxic effects has traditionally been inspired by the more regulatory-orientated risk assessment approaches. However, the increasing need for regulatory priority setting and comparative/ cumulative assessments might in the future convey LCIA principles into the regulatory framework. The same underlying databases on inherent properties of chemicals are already applied in both types of assessment. Similarly, data on the use and exposure of chemicals are needed within both risk assessments and LCA, and the methodologies might therefore benefit from a joint 'inventory' database. Outlook. The final outcome of the feasibility study will be an implementation plan suggesting incorporation of core findings in future chemical regulation and related policy areas.Goal, Scope and Background. Waste associated with the manufacture, use, and disposal of electronic products, or e-waste, is a growing threat to the environment. IT procurement professionals can have a positive affect against that threat through careful consideration of the environmental awareness of their vendors. Method. Consideration of three case studies from the City of Seattle illustrates the challenges in gathering information from vendors on their environmentally sustainable practices; the reasons that this information is important; and possible solutions. Conclusions and Recommendations. We owe it to ourselves, our planet and our progeny to encourage sustainable practices in electronics manufacturing, use and recycling. This paper suggests some beginning steps that purchasers of electronics can take toward that end.The goal of the different national and supranational ecolabelling programs is to encourage consumers to choose products which are the least damaging to the environment. It is clear that the involvement of product and service users is essential to the establishment of sustainable consumption patterns. For this reason, ecolabelling must necessarily limit any risks of uncertainty. To this end, labels must take into account all the impacts of a product's life cycle and use a reliable and verifiable evaluation method. In general, the organizations in charge of ecolabelling programs claim that a multi-criteria approach is used to define the exact labelling criteria appropriate for the product categories in question. These organizations generally maintain that their approach is based on the completion of exhaustive and complete life cycle analyses, which take into account all of the impacts caused by a product throughout its life cycle. And yet, the real situation is often far less clear-cut, and these simplified approaches, which tend to reconcile economic realism and methodological coherence, constitute the usual procedure for criteria definition. Thus, the procedures involved in criteria development often rely on a 'semi-qualitative' approach to the life cycle which uses both qualitative and quantitative data in order to identify the product's significant stages on the environment. Presently, the ecolabel is a 'non-verifiable expert property' for the consumer. The ecolabel's lack of objectivity in its criteria and its lack of transparency, resulting from non standardized methods whose accuracy cannot be measured, can only damage this sustainable development tool's credibility. In effect, the primary hindrance to ecolabel development lies precisely within this difficulty of finding a compromise between economic feasibility and the scientific and methodological rigor which are indispensable to the label's credibility and veracity.In 1998, the Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) launched a five-year national project entitled 'Development of Life Cycle Impact Assessment for Products' (commonly known as 'the LCA Project'). The purpose of the project is to develop common LCA methodology as well as a highly reliable database that can be shared in Japan. Activities over these five years have resulted in the supply of LCI data on some 250 products. Industrial associations voluntarily provided data. The results of these activities are currently being made available on the Internet on a trial basis in the form of an LCA database. In addition, a method entitled 'Life-cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling (LIME)' was developed. It is expected that these results will be widely used in Japan in the future. This paper presents an outline of the results of the research and development that has been conducted in the LCA Project in Japan.Reliability of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results depends on the availability and quality of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data. In order to provide high-quality LCI data for background systems in LCA and to make it applicable to a wider range of fields, harmonization strategies for already existing datasets and databases are required. In view of the high significance of LCI data as a basis of major fields of action within a sustainability strategy, the German Helmholtz Association (HGF), under the leadership of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) has taken up this issue in its research programme. In 2002, the FZK conducted a preliminary study on 'Quality Assurance and User-oriented Supply of a Life Cycle Inventory Data' funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Within the framework of this study, a long-term concept for improving the scientific fundamentals and practical use of LCI data was developed in association with external experts. The focus is on establishing a permanent German 'Network on Life Cycle Inventory Data' which will serve as the German information and cooperation platform for all scientific and non-scientific actors in the field of life cycle analysis. This network will integrate expertise on LCA in Germany, harmonise methodology and data, and use the comprehensive expert panel as an efficient basis for further scientific development and practical use of LCA. At the same time, this network will serve as a platform for cooperation on an international level. Current developments address methodological definitions for the initial information infrastructure. As a novel element, user needs are differentiated in parallel according to the broad application fields of LCI-data from product declaration to process design. Case studies will be used to define tailored interfaces for the database, since different data quality levels will be encountered.Data acquisition to perform LCA is time and capital consuming. There is already international data about environmental aspects in several processes. This study aims to verify the possibility of adapting international data to Brazilian conditions. Therefore, a Life Cycle Inventory was conducted to compare the use of national and international data for steel used in automobiles. This was done in three steps: objective and scope definition, inventory analysis and interpretation. LCI is a simplification of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as impact assessment is not taken into account. Even so, LCI takes into account all life cycle stages of a product, that is, from its extraction through its deposition. In this study, three phases of the life cycle were considered: steel manufacturing, automobile use and disposal. In the case studied, the amount of steel evaluated was 263 kg, which would be possible to be replaced by other materials in a 1,300 kg automobile. Resources and energy consumption, atmospheric emissions and solid residues production were taken into account within the analysis done. Results show that automobile use and materials manufacturing are responsible for the bulk of energy and resources consumption. Solid residues occur mainly in the discard phase, due to the low level of recycling. Several differences were also achieved between national and international data, which implies the need of environmental databases development.Goal and Scope. The potential environmental impacts associated with two landfill technologies for the treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW), the engineered landfill and the bioreactor landfill, were assessed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool. The system boundaries were expanded to include an external energy production function since the landfill gas collected from the bioreactor landfill can be energetically valorized into either electricity or heat; the functional unit was then defined as the stabilization of 600 000 tonnes of MSW and the production of 2.56x10(8) MJ of electricity and 7.81x10(8) MJ of heat. Methods. Only the life cycle stages that presented differences between the two compared options were considered in the study. The four life cycle stages considered in the study cover the landfill cell construction, the daily and closure operations, the leachate and landfill gas associated emissions and the external energy production. The temporal boundary corresponded to the stabilization of the waste and was represented by the time to produce 95% of the calculated landfill gas volume. The potential impacts were evaluated using the EDIP97 method, stopping after the characterization step. Results and Discussion. The inventory phase of the LCA showed that the engineered landfill uses 26% more natural resources and generates 81% more solid wastes throughout its life cycle than the bioreactor landfill. The evaluated impacts, essentially associated with the external energy production and the landfill gas related emissions, are on average 91% higher for the engineered landfill, since for this option 1) no energy is recovered from the landfill gas and 2) more landfill gas is released untreated after the end of the post-closure monitoring period. The valorization of the landfill gas to electricity or heat showed similar environmental profiles (1% more raw materials and 7% more solid waste for the heat option but 13% more impacts for the electricity option). Conclusion and Recommendations. The methodological choices made during this study, e.g. simplification of the systems by the exclusion of the identical life cycle stages, limit the use of the results to the comparison of the two considered options. The validity of this comparison could however be improved if the systems were placed in the larger context of municipal solid waste management and include activities such as recycling, composting and incineration.Goal, Scope and Background. Green Productivity (GP) is a new paradigm in sustainable manufacturing where resource conservation and waste minimization constitute the strategy in simultaneously enhancing environmental performance and productivity. This productivity approach to the sustainability of industries requires the adoption of clean production technology and the development of appropriate indicators and instruments to measure environmental performance in a continuous improvement strategy that focuses on the manufacturing stage of the product life cycle. The analysis may be expanded to include the entire life cycle with increasing details on impacts, improvement strategies and indicators. Methods. The study proposes a methodology for GP assessment that integrates the essential components of life cycle assessment (LCA) and multicriteria decision analysis specifically the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). LCA provides a systematic and holistic perspective for GP analysis that spans inventory, impact and improvement assessment. The AHP is utilized as a decision framework and valuation tool for impact and improvement assessment to come up with priority weights. Indicators are derived and measured from a streamlined LCA focused on a number of parameters within the gate-to-gate analysis to demonstrate the GP concept in relation to resource utilization and waste minimization. An input-output approach using a suitable material balance in a scenario analysis provides the basis of GP performance measurement. Results and Conclusion. The diagnostic model is applied on a semiconductor assembly/packaging operation. From the streamlined life cycle inventory, impact factors were derived for water resource depletion (WRD), energy resource depletion (ERD), human toxicity-air (HTA), human toxicity-land (HTL), human toxicity-water (HTW), aquatic ecotoxicity (ETA) and terrestrial ecotoxicity (ETT). Valuation of impact factors using the AHP showed the high significance of ETT, HTL, WRD and ERD. This especially reflects the impact of the industry on the solid waste problem as a result of emissions to land associated with human toxicity and ecotoxicity effects and the intensive use of water and energy resources. Using scenario analysis, the effect of implementing a process-based improvement technique on a product-specific operation was determined and the highest values in GP are for energy utilization, water utilization and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Recommendation and Perspective. Expert system technology was explored in developing a diagnostic prototype that emulates how human experts diagnose green productivity of manufacturing processes. The aim was to investigate how such a diagnosis could be performed in an intelligent fashion that it is also easily accessible as a decision support for industries. The expert system model will provide flexibility in testing the relationships of environmental performance and productivity parameters as well as in preserving and disseminating valuable human expertise in GP program implementation. This is a continuing research effort that is building the knowledge base for GP assessment. It will include case studies over a wider range or level of detail regarding the impacts and improvement techniques and the other stages of the product life cycle.Goal, Scope and Background. The Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) system has been installed at the biggest lignite-fired power generation plant in Thailand to reduce the large amount of SO, emission. In order to understand the costs and benefits, both in ecological and economic terms, the lignite-fired plant was studied both before and after the installation of the FGD system. The focus of this study is to consider not only the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) outcome but also the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) factors. The results can provide valuable information when selecting appropriate technologies to minimize the negative impact that lignite-fired power plants have on the environment. Methods. The Life Cycle Assessment - Numerical Eco-load Total Standardization (LCA-NETS) system was used to evaluate the impact on the environment of both the lignite-fired plant and the FGD system. Life Cycle Costing (LCC) was used to provide a comparison between alternative before and after installation of FGD. LCC, a powerful analytical tool, examines the total cost, in net present value terms, of a FGD system over its entire service lifetime. Results and Discussion. The results of the study are shown in the eco-load values over the entire life cycle of the lignite-fired plant. Comparative models of the power plant, before and after the installation of the FGD system, are evaluated using the LCA-NETS system. The results indicate that the installation of the FGD system can reduce the acidification problem associated with lignite-fired plants by approximately 97%. The LCC estimation shows the major costs of the FGD system: capital investment, operating and maintenance, and miscellaneous costs. The LCC provides the decision-making information when considering the cost of the FGD system in terms of protecting the environment. Conclusion and Outlook. LCA is an important decision-making tool for environmental policies, especially with regard to the selection of pollution control equipment for lignite-fired plants. Green coal technologies and strategies to reduce the negative impact on the environment are essential to produce more environmentally-friendly power plants with a sustainable future.Background, Aims and Scope. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods can be grouped into two families: classical methods determining impact category indicators at an intermediate position of the impact pathways (e.g. ozone depletion potentials) and damage-oriented methods aiming at more easily interpretable results in the form of damage indicators at the level of the ultimate societal concern (e.g. human health damage). The Life Cycle Initiative, a joint project between UNEP1 and SETAC(2), proposes a comprehensive LCA framework to combine these families of methods. The new framework takes a world-wide perspective, so that LCA will progress towards a tool meeting the needs of both developing and developed countries. By a more precise and broadly agreed description of main framework elements, the Life Cycle Initiative expects to provide a common basis for the further development of mutually consistent impact assessment methods. Main Features. Inputs to the LCIA midpoint-damage framework are results of Life Cycle Inventory analyses (LCI). Impact pathways connect the LCI results to the midpoint impact categories with the corresponding indicators, as well as to the damage categories at the level of damages to human health, natural environment, natural resources and man-made environment, via damage indicators. Midpoint impact categories simplify the quantification of these impact pathways where various types of emissions or extractions can be aggregated due to their comparable impact mechanisms. Depending on the available scientific information, impact pathways may be further described up to the level of damage categories by quantitative models, observed pathways or merely by qualitative statements. In the latter case, quantitative modelling may stop at midpoint. A given type of emission may exert damaging effects on multiple damage categories, so that a corresponding number of impact pathways is required. Correspondingly, a given damage category may be affected jointly by various types of emissions or extractions. It is therefore an important task of the Life Cycle Initiative to carefully select damage indicators. The content of the midpoint and of the damage categories is clearly defined, and proposals are made on how to express the extent of environmental damage by suitable indicator quantities. Conclusions and Outlook. The present framework will offer the practitioner the choice to use either midpoint or damage indicators, depending on modelling uncertainty and increase in results interpretability. Due to the collaboration of acknowledged specialists in environmental processes and LCIA around the globe, it is expected that - after a few years of effort - the task forces of the Life Cycle Initiative will provide consistent and operational sets of methods and factors for LCIA in the future.Goal, Scope and Background. The automotive industry has a long history in improving the environmental performance of vehicles - fuel economy and emission improvements, introduction of recycled and renewable materials, etc. The European Union also aims at improving the environmental performance of products by reducing, in particular, waste resulting from End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) for example. The European Commission estimates that ELVs contribute to approximately 1% of the total waste in Europe [9]. Other European Union strategies are considering more life cycle aspects, as well as other impacts including resource or climate change. This article is summarizing the results of a European Commission funded project (LIRECAR) that aims at identifying the environmental impacts and relevance for combinations of recycling / recovery and lightweight vehicle design options over the whole life cycle of a vehicle - i.e. manufacturing, use and recycling/recovery. Three, independent and scientific LCA experts reviewed the study according to ISO 14040. From the beginning, representatives of all Life Cycle Stakeholders have been involved (European materials & supplier associations, an environmental Non-Governmental Organization, recycler's association). Model and System Definition. The study compared 3 sets of theoretical vehicle weight scenarios: 1000 kg reference (material range of today's end-of-life, mid-sized vehicles produced in the early 1990's) and 2 lightweight scenarios for 100 kg and 250 kg less weight based on reference functions (in terms of comfort, safety, etc.) and a vehicle concept. The scenarios are represented by their material range of a broad range of lightweight strategies of most European car manufacturers. In parallel, three End-of-Life (EOL) scenarios are considered: EOL today and two theoretical extreme scenarios (100% recycling, respectively, 100% recovery of shredder residue fractions that are disposed of today). The technical and economical feasibility of the studied scenarios is not taken into consideration (e.g. 100% recycling is not possible). Results and Discussion. Significant differences between the various, studied weight scenarios were determined in several scenarios for the environmental categories of global warming, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidant creation (summer smog), abiotic resource depletion, and hazardous waste. However, these improvement potentials can be only realized under well defined conditions (e.g. material compositions, specific fuel reduction values and EOL credits) based on case-by-case assessments for improvements over the course of the life cycle. Looking at the studied scenarios, the relative contribution of the EOL phase represents 5% or less of the total life cycle impact for most selected impact categories and scenarios. The EOL technology variations studied do not impact significantly the considered environmental impacts. Exceptions include total waste, as long as stockpile goods (overburden, tailings and ore/coal processing residues) and EOL credits are considered. Conclusions and Recommendations. LIRECAR focuses only on lightweight/recycling, questions whereas other measures (changes in safety or comfort standards, propulsion improvements for COD user behavior) are beyond the scope of the study. The conclusions are also not necessarily transferable to other vehicle concepts. However, for the question of end-of-life options, it can be concluded that LIRECAR cannot support any general recommendation and/or mandatory actions to improve recycling if lightweight is affected. Also, looking at each vehicle, no justification could be found for the general assumption that lightweight and recycling greatly influence the affected environmental dimension (Global Warming Potential or resource depletion and waste, respectively). LIRECAR showed that this general assumption is not true under all analyzed circumstances and not as significant as suggested. Further discussions and product development targets shall not focus on generic targets that define the approach/technology concerned with how to achieve environmental improvement (weight reduction [kg], recycling quota [%]), but on overall life cycle improvement). To enable this case-by-case assessment, exchanges of necessary information with suppliers are especially relevant.Electronic commerce is expected to influence a wide range of supply chain systems and thus lead to unidentified environmental impacts. Current studies discussing the impacts have a problem that they arrive at conflicting results or ungeneralisable works. This article addresses the issue of methodology and proposes an assessment model for the resolution of this problem. In the meantime, this article shows that research on the subject of 'Greening supply chains' is in need of a new focus and direction, which involves building a new set of constructs for decision making whose benefits are addressed. Our model, proposed in this paper, represents a meeting point of the need for renewal of this subject, and the need to evaluate large-scale issues such as electronic commerce.Petroleum fuels, which are not sustainable and which contribute substantially to greenhouse gas emissions, power nearly all light-duty vehicles. We review the North American literature on alternative fuels such as natural gas, ethanol from corn and biomass, and hydrogen and electricity from renewable resources, as well as propulsion systems including internal combustion engines, electric motors, and fuel cells. Vehicle characteristics including emissions, safety and consumer attributes such as range and power are examined. Results for greenhouse gas emissions and energy use for the well-to-wheel (fuel production and vehicle operation) aspects of the life cycles of the fuel/vehicle combinations are evaluated. While fuel cells and batteries might some day be attractive, in the near term they cannot replace the internal combustion engine. We focus on ethanol and explore its potential to replace nearly all gasoline used in the United States and Canada. We conclude that ethanol produced from biomass is an attractive near/midterm fuel among those that are sustainable.The paper present the results of Life Cycle Assessment conducted for the spray drying process in lab and industrial scale. The analysis indicates that for the installation working in the industrial conditions, both process and environmental optimisation aims at minimalising energy consumption in the operational phase.The paper presents the main development trends of technological studies and technical - management tasks resulting from Sustainable Development policy when restructurization of domestic chemical industry. The need of integrative activities was shown to be necessary to achieve emission standards according to BAT-the Best Available Techniques for the new plants, with the consideration of regulation of EC policy in trade and application of chemicals and taking into account the procedure of LCA-Life Cycle Analysis of product in technological design.The moisture distribution near the ground surface in and around the Japanese cities of Osaka and Kyoto was investigated. From the analysis of observed data, the atmosphere over the suburban areas between coastal Osaka and inland Kyoto was drier than that over Osaka and Kyoto during the daytime hours. This feature differs from results in previous studies and from expectations based on urban and suburban surface heat budgets. To understand the drying mechanism, numerical experiments were performed, using a simplified geometrical model consisting of a straight coastline, a square urban area on the coast, a square inland urban area, and a plateau mountain surrounding the urban areas. The following main results were obtained. First, suburban drying during the daytime was mainly caused by a valley circulation that developed over the surrounding mountain area. In addition, the two heat island circulations that developed over the two urban areas also caused suburban drying. As a consequence, the coexistence of mountain and urban areas caused more notable suburban drying. Second, the amount of suburban drying was greatest when the urban distance was 40-50 km, which is roughly equal to the actual distance between the Osaka and Kyoto urban areas. Last, temporal changes in moisture and those of suspended particulate matter, SO2, and NOx concentrations decreased before the arrival of the sea-breeze front. Thus, it is argued that moisture and pollutants were transported by the two heat island circulations that developed over Osaka and Kyoto and by the valley circulations and then were modified by the sea-breeze circulation.The environmental impact of land-use can be expressed in terms of a change in biodiversity of flora. We present two models that characterize the negative effects of land-use: a model on the basis of species richness; a model on the basis of the rarity of ecosystems and their vascular plants. Each of those models may serve in the EIA (environmental impact assessment) of the urban and rural planning of expanding cities, industrial areas, road infrastructure, etc. Moreover, these models might be applied by Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) practitioners to incorporate the aspect of land-use in the environmental assessment of a specific product design. The results of both models have been applied in practice. Maps of The Netherlands are provided for both models. The map based on the rarity of ecosystems differentiates the best of what experts (biologists and ecologists) define as botanical quality of nature; the methodology is operational in The Netherlands and might be applied to other countries as well, however, detailed botanical information is required. The map based on species richness has a weaker compliance with the botanical quality of nature, however, the model can more easily be applied to a wider area of the world, since indicative data about species richness is available on a global scale. The so called 'eco-costs of land conversion' is proposed as a single indicator, being the marginal costs of prevention (or compensation) of the negative environmental effects on biodiversity caused by change of land-use. These 'eco-costs of land conversion' for the botanical aspects are part of the much broader model of the eco-costs/value ratio, which has recently been published in this journal [Vogtlander et al., Journal of Cleaner Production 2002; 10:57-671]. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important technique in the successful implementation of a process or product development in the context of environmental sustainability. Attempts have been made to incorporate LCA in public and corporate processes and product related decision-making. The European Union's eco-labeling schemes and the United Kingdom's Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive have tried to integrate life cycle thinking with policy making. However, these efforts still have not made LCA an integral part of process and product selection and design. The absence of an easy to use tool for rapid reconnaissance is a basic limitation of the LCA application. A new life cycle indexing system - LInX - is proposed, which will facilitate the LCA application in process and product evaluation and decision-making. The LInX is comprised of four important sub-indices or attributes - environment, health and safety (EHS), cost, technical feasibility, and socio-political factors. Further, each attribute contains a number of basic parameters, e.g. EHS consists of 11 parameters. Quantification of each basic parameter is performed for the complete life cycle of a proposed process or product. An analytical hierarchy process is used to compute the weights for each basic parameter and sub-indices. A composite process is used to determine the final overall index. This paper explains the methodology for computation of the new indexing system and demonstrates it with an application. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment is very dependent on data of good quality. LCA data should ideally be accessible, relevant and reliable. Common sources of data for LCA-practitioners are databases of different kinds. The use of the information in databases for LCI introduces an epistemological uncertainty-since the system where the data is to be used (the unit process in question for the LCA) may differ from the system where the data was generated (the unit process in the database). Information about data, metadata, is often used to provide knowledge about the applicability and relevance of data, but the practitioner has limited possibilities to evaluate any differences between the required data and the available data. An analysis is made in this article where the problem is treated from two sides, the compiler of information (the database compiler) and the receiver of information (LCA-practitioner). To structure the relevance aspect of LCI-data, a methodology is suggested where the most frequent LCI-emissions are considered to have three different phases; primary emission mechanism, conversion in process, and end-of-pipe measures. An analysis is made for each of these stages with its governing parameters, which regulates the amount of the emission. A table is presented with all the common LCI emissions with their governing parameters. The methodology enables the practitioner to evaluate differences between unit processes and also gives information about the spread in emission factors between different variants of a unit process. The methodology is then applied to cement production, showing how the knowledge of governing parameters should be handled. A set of questions is compiled which elucidates the epistemological uncertainty for cement production. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The measurement framework of the green productivity (GP) of a product system, or process, and its improvement are discussed. Two types of GP indicators are developed to help understand the practical concept and executive approaches of GP, using environmental management tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and total cost assessment (TCA). GP index is defined as the ratio of productivity of a system to its environmental impacts. This index is intended for estimating the GP performance of an existing product or process and comparing it with other equivalents. Specifically, the GP index is a measure of the GP performance of a product system throughout its entire life cycle. The "overall" GP index can be divided into a "direct" GP index and an "indirect" GP index which are intended to analyze the GP performances of direct production processes and indirect upstream processes, respectively. For internal managerial decision, GP ratio is developed to select one alternative out of a list of contenders in order to improve the GP performance of an existing system. In addition, GP portfolio is drawn up to check the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives. A case study of a petrochemical company in Korea is provided as an example for illustrating the feasibility of the indicators developed here (GP index and GP ratio) for the measurement of GP and its improvement. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology is sometimes referred to as the science of sustainability, but unlike mature sciences, it has yet to establish reliable modes of inquiry or a uniform framework for dialogue-partly because sustainability is difficult to characterize, and partly because industry-environment interactions are difficult to model quantitatively. A number of sustainability metrics have recently been proposed that partially address the quantification problem, but inevitably oversimplify the problem of sustainability characterization. This paper proposes an overarching taxonomy for classifying the quantitative criteria of sustainability as financial. thermodynamic, environmental, ecological, socio-political or aggregated. Several examples are presented. Pollution potential, which is an environmental metric related to the ideal thermodynamic work (of mixing) per mole required to remove pollutants from the environment, is discussed in particular. However, because no single metric can capture sustainability per se, industrial ecology may be limited to elucidating the trade-offs that exist between different types of complementary (rather than substitutable) criteria. The life cycle of polyurethane foam insulation in freezer applications is presented as a quantitative example of how different environmental criteria can lead to different design recommendations. Lastly, the framework proposed herein suggests a research agenda for industrial ecology, especially regarding the linkages between different measures of sustainability and cross-comparison of the investigative methods found in different sciences related to sustainability. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Industrial ecology is an emerging concept for the establishment of ecologically sustainable industrial development of industrial zones and estates in China. Optimizing materials and energy flows among facilities within specific regions or industrial ecosystems is a basic industrial ecology strategy. As such, life cycle analysis and management and green supply chain management are related approaches. The Guitang Group, a Chinese sugar complex, has developed an embryonic eco-industrial development by applying an integrated approach to green supply chain management. This paper describes the Guitang Group and its evolving integrated green supply chain management model. After summarizing experiences of the application of the Group's model, the paper analyzes challenges and then introduces possible solutions. Some conclusions are developed on the basis of this analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique that is used worldwide by clients and their design team to assess the impact of their projects on the environment. The main advantage of LCA is in supporting decision making with quantitative data. LCA inventories can be either fully developed or streamlined. Fully developed LCAs are time-consuming and costly to prepare. Streamlined LCAs can be used as an effective decision-making tool when considering environmental performance during the design process, but with a loss of inventory completeness. Acknowledging the advantages and disadvantages of both types of LCA, this paper proposes a hybrid LCA method that uses input-output data to fill in those gaps routinely left in conventional LCA inventories. The developed hybrid LCA method is demonstrated using a life-cycle energy study of eight different road designs, including vehicle manufacture, maintenance, replacement, and operation. It was found that the road construction process was initially the most important, but in the long run the manufacture, use, and maintenance of vehicles using the road (which are an inevitable consequence of road construction) became paramount.The life cycle assessment of the mobile phone housing in Motorola (China) Electronics Ltd. was carried out, in which materials flows and environmental emissions based on a basic production scheme were analyzed and assessed. In the manufacturing stage, such primary processes as polycarbonate molding and surface painting are included, whereas different surface finishing technologies like normal painting, electroplate, IMID and VDM etc. were assessed. The results showed that housing decoration plays a significant role within the housing life cycle. The most significant environmental impact from housing production is the photochemical ozone formation potential. Environmental impacts of different decoration techniques varied widely, for example, the electroplating technique is more environmentally friendly than VDM. VDM consumes much more energy and raw material. In addition, the results of two alternative scenarios of dematerialization showed that material flow analysis and assessment is very important and valuable in selecting an environmentally friendly process.LIFE CYCLE COSTING.Eco-efficiency analysis according to BASF is a tool for investigating environmental and economic impacts of plastics over their whole life cycle. The procedure of economic analysis is determined by process or product comparison as well as the sort of products analysed. Alongside life cycle assessment, life cycle costing is becoming the second pillar of determining sustainability.Paper is concerned with methodology for design of environmentally sustainable structural systems. It is proposed that whole life performance should be analysed in terms of environmental cost. Due to extensive uncertainties, associated with properties and deterioration models, constrained probabilistic approach is proposed for this life-cycle analysis.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is widely used to assess the environmental impacts generated during the entire life cycles of products. The traditional process-based LCA (P-LCA), however, has some weaknesses. One of them is incompleteness resulting from the omission of environmental loads on the higher upstream orders of product system. This problem is called "truncation error." There are some relatively new initiatives to combine the conventional P-LCA with the economic Input Output Analysis (IOA) in one general approach defined as a hybrid LCA. It allows solving different problems, even those which seemed to be unsolvable until now.This study aimed to present a clear definition of life cycle analysis, LCA, and bring perspective to practical applications of LCA. A comparison was made between Mazout and natural gas as a fuel oil in electrical power station. It was also clarified which of the two systems (Mazout/natural gas) had least environmental impact. The amounts of Mazout, equivalent to natural gas, which required producing 100 MW of electricity and their impact on the environment were determined. Abu-Qir power station was selected as a case study because of its dual use of mazout and natural gas as a fuel for boilers. The data were gathered starting from extraction of crude oil, its distillations, until it becomes Mazout, and then transportation to power stations, which burn it to produce electricity. The same procedure was applied to natural gas: extraction, purification, and then pumping to power station to produce energy. The inputs of energy and water were calculated systematically using ton/fuel oil as a functional unit. The output emission was calculated also as gas and water emission. The final conclusion of the study revealed that the total energy required producing 100 MW of electricity from Mazout was 23.4-t fuel oil. While natural gas needs 20-t, fuel oil from the extraction of natural gas until it reaches the boilers.This case study is a presentation of systematic development of an awareness and communication multimedia package in solid waste management that was produced for Egyptian technical secondary schools. Representative teachers were very much involved in the design and pretesting of the technical content of the package. They even suggested and influenced the format of the produced materials. The awareness and education materials, to be included in the package, were classified into four main sections: (a) Environmental concepts: basic definitions, environmental spheres, identification of the environmental systems, (b) Environmental issues: international, national, and local, (c) Solid waste management: sources of waste, life cycle analysis, recycling, technological aspects, environmental auditing, legislation for solid waste management, and (d) Case studies: including specific success stories on solid waste management in various parts of Egypt. The threading skeleton of this package was a set of 25 extra-curricula activities. These were specially designed to help clarify the environmental concepts, convey the messages for the environmental protection, and identify the required attitudes to help sustainable development. The multimedia package is composed of an activity book equipped by concept papers and fact sheets, a set of transparencies for overhead projector (or power point illustrations), a video film that stresses the economic and environmental benefits of recycling, and a compact disc that contains all the components of the package. It is interesting to note that while developing this package with the technical help of the Academy of Educational Development, the basic criteria for excellence in environmental education and communication were fully observed. The feedback from the pilot schools was collected to monitor the implementation and impact of this package. The package was adopted by the Ministry of Education and was distributed to technical secondary schools in Egypt.Biobased resources have played a major role throughout human history. Even the earliest humans learned to Use these resources to make shelters, cook food, construct tools, make clothing, keep records and produce weapons. Collectively, society learned very early the great advantages of a resource that was widely distributed, multifunctional, strong, easy to work, aesthetic, biodegradable and renewable. Composites made of biobased resources are being "rediscovered" in the 21(st) century. Many concepts are circulating in the press, at scientific meetings, in discussions and on web new sites all over the world on the advantages of using a "green", "low cost", "biodegradable "renewable", "recyclable", and "sustainable" resource to produce composites. While these are powerful concepts, they are often misapplied, misused, and misunderstood. These are not just "buzz" concepts that are used in a grant to get funding. They are part of the reason biobased composites are getting more attention in the materials world. The largest single potential growth in the use of biobased resources is in the composites sector. More specifically, in housing components. Issues to be considered in this sector include land use. resource supply, carbon sequestration, reduced energy use, utilization of mixed resources, recycling, competing materials, durability, life cycle assessment, quality assurance, codes and standards, tradition, marketing, and appropriate use.The potential environmental burdens over the whole life cycle of printing and writing paper produced in Portugal from Eucalyptus globulus were quantified, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The main stages considered in the life cycle were: forest, pulp production, paper production, final disposal, energy production, chemical production and transports. The results suggest that pulp production processes have an important contribution to water emissions, resulting in a major contribution to eutrophication. Besides, it plays a major role in renewable energy consumption. Energy production in the grid, printing and writing paper production and transports contribute significantly to air emissions and to non-renewable energy consumption, and, consequently to global warming, acidification and non-renewable resource depletion. Wastepaper landfilling assumes the predominant role in photochemical oxidant formation.Information and communication technology (ICT) services are attracting great interest because they have the potential to overcome many of the complications of conventional systems and to save money and/or time. Moreover, ICT services are expected to reduce burdens on the social environment. We have reported the environmental impact of some ICT services and clarified the potency of our approach to its reduction. However, ICT services are said to generate rebound effects such as inducing greater demand for merchandise or new activities. These rebound effects can lead to new environmental impacts. This paper presents a new concept for the evaluation of ICT environmental rebound effects. This concept includes model analysis, which was based on a user questionnaire, and the LCA method. As an example this method was applied to a videoconference. The environmental rebound effect was estimated to be smaller than the total environmental burden. We believe this approach provides a convenient method for evaluating the total environmental impact of ICT services.There is a growing awareness of the business value of sustainable practices. Life cycle tools can be used to design and continually improve future products as well as provide bottom line cost savings, increase the recycled content and recyclability of products, and reduce or eliminate the hazardous substance content in products. Data collection and management procedures and tools as well as advanced life cycle technologies have been developed and implemented to meet the global market demands to increase the recycled content and recyclability and reduce the hazardous substance content in products. European legislation such as the End of Life Vehicle (ELV), Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and the Restriction of use of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directives, as well as strict domestic and international labeling and reporting requirements have prompted automotive and electronics manufacturers to aggressively evaluate their products and processes to determine the recyclability and recycled content of their products and identify the presence of regulated and restricted substances. The automotive industry was the first to be faced with the challenge of meeting End of Life (EOL) requirements with the ELV Directive. Similarly, the electronics industry must now develop strategies to meet the demands of WEEE and RoHS and improve their product recyclability, eliminate the presence of certain hazardous substances, and implement take-back programs in a cost-effective manner. Companies that are proactive in implementing data collection and management procedures throughout their corporation and the supply chain will be better positioned to meet EOL reporting requirements, design future products that have less impact on the environment, workers, and the global community, and potentially provide an economic advantage. Strategic planning that includes tactical tools for data collection and management, supplier management, and life cycle analysis (LCA) can help move a company toward sustainability. Two tools are presented in this paper.An evaluation method to assess recycling potential considering both the environmental and economic aspects was suggested for the material recovered from waste home appliances. Life cycle assessment (LCA) method was applied to obtain the environmental score (S-Env), and the actual value & static economic model was used to obtain the economic score (S-Env). The S-Env of recycled glass and circuit board showed the highest value (11.97), followed by copper (9.37), iron (6.77), and plastic (3.67). The S-Env of recycled copper showed the highest value (6.97), followed by aluminum (5.23), iron (5.15), plastic (4.82), and glass and circuit board (3.50). The recycling potentials for the recyclable materials were calculated by weighting S-Env and S-Env with the factors obtained from analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. As the result, the recycling potential of copper was the highest, followed by iron, glass, and circuit board, and aluminum. This calculated data and methodology would provide a useful data for decision makers and product designers in the design for environment (DfE).Using hybrid assessment that combines process and economic input-output methods, the total energy and fossil fuels used in producing a desktop computer with 17-inch CRT monitor are estimated at 7,320 megajoules (MJ) and 290 kg respectively. This indicates that the network of industries for manufacturing computers is energy intensive: the ratio of fossil fuel use to product weight for a computer is 12, an order of magnitude larger than the factor of 1-2 for many other manufactured goods. In contrast with many home appliances, life cycle energy use of a computer is dominated by production (83%) as opposed to operation (17%). The yearly life cycle cost of owning a computer is about 3, 000 MJ/year, half again that of a refrigerator, a much larger appliance that uses far more electricity in operation. The short lifespan of computers and the variety of computing needs of users suggests that extension of lifespan, for example by promptly reselling to users who need less computing power, is a promising approach to mitigating environmental impacts.A methodology to perform a hybrid approach to evaluate semiconductor life cycle impacts is developed. This methodology uses (i) bottom-up process models and data to develop inventories for semiconductor manufacturing, and for specialty semiconductor chemicals items and (ii) an economic input-output method for generic inventory items. The approach attempts to overcome several semiconductor LCA challenges and is illustrated through a case study in life cycle environmental impacts of an interconnect module in a logic device.Existing methodologies for conducting an environmental impact assessment of alternative technologies have some limitations: some cannot detect the full range of important impact categories involved in all of the life cycle stages; some cannot focus on major important impacts at the early stages; some lack the mechanism to transparently reflect the values of different stakeholders. This paper presents a new approach for environmental impact assessment in a multi-attribute framework by using a modified Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology. We have applied this hybrid methodology to a previously published Life Cycle Assessment on computer displays. Our focus is on the evaluation and comparison of life-cycle environmental impacts, cost and performance attributes for cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and liquid crystal displays (LCDs). From a methodological aspect, our approach is aimed at considering all of the life cycle stages and several important impact categories with coherent treatment of the basic data in a matrix-based QFD structure. Concurrently, some statistical methods and different sets of models (such as Median Ranks, Prioritization Matrix and Analytical Hierarchy Process) are incorporated into the weighting and rating process. This allows us to elaborate the specific assessment steps and to provide a valid and systematic analysis. Our objective is to provide a feasible and easily accessible methodology so that display technology selection matrices can be developed on the basis of different stakeholders' values. The limitations and challenges associated with this methodology are also identified and discussed in this paper.This paper describes a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of an efficient lighting system for commercial buildings using a distributed sensor network. This lighting system is controlled by intelligent software that uses miniaturized wireless networked sensors - motes - for sensing and actuation. The mote network is an experimental wireless sensor network that aims to be smaller, more efficient, less expensive and more versatile than other network alternatives. The LCA described in this paper shows the new lighting system has the potential to achieve environmental benefits in comparison to existing systems. The environmental impacts of the proposed intelligent lighting system are 18 to 344 times smaller than those of the conventional lighting system for the different environmental impact categories considered: acidification, global warming potential, carcinogenicity, non-cancer potential, ecotoxicity, photochemical smog, eutrophication, ozone depletion potential, and fossil fuel depletion. This case study also provides insight for design choices in the sensor network, such as what type of battery should be used or which materials should be minimized.The growing complexity of integrated circuits and increasing component density place higher requirements for raw material and clean room standards, which demand significant amounts of energy. In spite of these developments, semiconductor facilities managed reducing their energy intensity measured per product unit. At the same time, the impact of increasing circuit integration on upstream life cycle stages, such as chemical manufacturing, is not clear. Due to a lack of data, most of the existing LCA studies do not include chemicals-related process into their system boundaries, which leads to an incomplete picture of semiconductor environmental aspects. The increasing material purity requirements may contribute to shifting the centre of manufacturing-related environmental impacts from circuit fabrication to raw material production stages. The article points to insufficient knowledge of environmental issues related to ultra pure chemical manufacturing. The problem is illustrated by an example of energy demands for silicon chain and wet chemicals. The paper discusses the feasibility of using material price as a proxy for production energy intensity and proposes a framework for collecting process related energy data. The author suggests that by mapping the patterns of chemical usage and focusing on high-grade materials consumed in large volumes it is possible to reduce data collection efforts and improve the existing energy estimates.This paper introduces the concept of using sustainability as a fundamental measure of supply line risk and hence business continuity risk for companies. A novel approach that integrates the Sustainability Target Method (STM) and Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Analysis (EIO-LCA) has been developed to evaluate supply line sustainability and business environmental risk. The objective is to assess sustainability and risk associated with various classifications of supply line commodities. The EIO-LCA tool is used to quantify the environmental impact or 'footprint' for fifteen industry sectors that contribute to the United Technologies Corporation (UTC) supply line, specifically the immediate sectors from which production parts are obtained. Each commodity sector consists of one or more SIC codes, which can be cross referenced to Commerce Sector and NASIC designations. The STM links environmental impact with economic value by uniquely defining Resource Productivity (RP) and Eco-Efficiency (EE). In essence, it requires that the economic value of products and services be proportionally not less than the environmental burden they cause. This provides EE = 100% as a practical sustainability target for individual businesses that will lead to a sustainable economy. The STM is used to evaluate commodity sectors for risk by deriving the risk-adjusted sector Eco-Efficiency, EE(R). This relates naturally to EE and provides a target threshold for risk that is analogous to the sustainability target, allowing unique insight into the relationship of sustainability and business risk.With the increased attention to the significant impact on the environment, consideration of the extent to which building impacts the environment is becoming a topical issue. In this paper, the emphasis was given to the development of a quantitative life-cycle environmental impact of building assessment system termed BEPAS (Building Environmental Performance Analysis System). BEPAS assesses quantitatively the environmental impact in the whole life cycle. BEPAS divides the model into three functions - facility operation, building material and site layout. By this system, two synthesis indices-pollution strength and economic pollution strength can be obtained, which can help the designers to optimize the design that strike a balance between environmental and economic performance This paper also presents a case to illustrate how BEPAS works.With the improvement of residential environment, human beings are paying attention to environmental problems. This paper analyzed the relationship between residential construction and environment, and explored detailed environmental protection measures that should be taken in a life cycle analysis (LCA) of residential construction based on some principals. Then, objective system of environmental impact factors is proposed. Finally, impacts on the environment in the life cycle are presented for developers to construct the human-oriented community.In this paper, a brief introduction of limitations has been give to the assessment of environmental impact (EIA) of buildings. Emphasis was given to the on the development of quantitative assessment model of environmental impact (EI) for building during planning and designing phases, the assessment procedures, and the availability of data and parameters. Although what we argue in this paper is only a framework for EIA, however, it still can offer us a general overview how to applying the life-cycle assessment (LCA) theory into lifetime EIA of building.This paper analyses six typical heating systems including thermoelectric (coal), hydroelectric, nuclear electric, coal burning, natural gas burning and solar heating system with Cumulative Energy, Cumulative Exergy and Emergy analysis theory based on Life Cycle Assessment. Resource utilization of each heating system is computed and analyzed. By comparing evaluation indexes of each analysis approach, this paper illuminates that more comprehensive and more objective analysis or evaluation can be obtained using Emergy Analysis.A research route was established on an evaluation system of the waste heat recovery in this paper. By the combination of the life cycle analysis and the theory of thermoeconomics, a series of corresponding evaluating parameters were chosen, which could be used to evaluate the waste heat recovery system in the aspects of technology, economics and environment. Finally, the research route was applied to the hot method phosphoric acid production system as a case study.Materials research from the view of industries is given from the standpoint of a steelmaking researcher in the steel industry. The aim of materials research in the industry is to develop value added, preferably "only one" products. One of the present directions of value addition is environment conscious products. Materials research is not only targeted to materials themselves but also total solutions for customers and collaborative research between the industry and its customers is frequently conducted. Control of the steelmaking process was for yield increase and energy saving in the past, but it is now for adding value to products. Shape control of inclusions was intended to prevent their harmful effects on products, but has come to be used in enhancing materials performance by, for example, improving toughness through ferrite grain refinement by intra granular precipitation of ferrite on controlled oxides. Prevention of surface defects is also not necessarily only for the increase of yield and the elimination of surface scurfing, but might also be directed to achieving the attractive surface quality attained by the unscurfed first solidified fine layer. It is also considered to be important to realize good LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) indexes for the products to occupy a competitive position in "green procurement" by customers, by energy saving and emission reduction in materials production.When reviewing an environmentally conscious product or process, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been proven a good tool in evaluating alternative options. It is important to know to what extent the outcome of an LCA is affected by uncertainties, as it may be helpful for decision makers in better judging the significance of differences between options. However, conventional inventory data model uses averages among identified factories in the scope of LCA. This data model cannot incorporate the effects of uncertainty into the LCA result because the information of variance is lost. In this paper, a new model for inventory data and method of inventory analysis is presented. This data model reflects the differences of input/output per unit production between comparable factories which produce the same product into the LCA results, without publishing individual data from industry. This paper uses a case study which illustrates the selection of chemical recycling system for PET bottles and shows how the model enables decision makers to consider the alternatives with uncertainty.UNIDO Cleaner Production Programme has established more than 30 National Cleaner Production Centres and Programmes in developing countries, with the main focus on fostering the implementation of Cleaner Production practices, mainly through environmentally sound technologies and productivity increase. When addressing companies, the services delivered by the Centres generally start from the conduction of an in-plant assessment, for the definition of the CP potentials. The Uganda Cleaner Production Centre, within the Eco-Benefits programme, trained the company staff in the conduction of their in-plant assessments and in the collection and evaluation of environmental data. This information, which originally has been used to identify the CP measures to be implemented in order to improve the companies' environmental performance, has been elaborated in order to go one step forward. Environmental, production and economic indicators stimulated the company to rethink and redesign its products, in order to achieve reduction of costs and emissions, together with the customers' satisfaction. Besides the well-established data collection aiming at the conduction of in-plant assessment, the NCPCs and NCPPs started to define data collection procedures for life cycle analysis and for the calculation of macroeconomic indicators.Reliability of LCA results crucially depends on the availability and quality of LCI data. In order to provide high-quality LCI data for background systems in LCA but also for a larger variety of possible application fields harmonization strategies for already existing data sets and data bases are required. In view of the high significance of life cycle inventory data as a basis of major fields of action within a sustainability strategy, the German Helmholtz Association under the leadership of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) has taken up this issue in its research programme. In 2002, the FZK conducted a preliminary study on "Quality Assurance and User-oriented Supply of a Life Cycle Inventory Data" funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Within the framework of this study, a long-term conception for improving the scientific fundamentals and practical use of life cycle inventory data was developed together with external experts. The focus is on establishing a permanent German "Network on Life Cycle Inventory Data". This network shall integrate expertise on life cycle assessment in Germany. it shall harmonise methodology and data, and it shall use the comprehensive expert panel as an efficient basis of further scientific development and practical use of LCA. At the same time, this network shall serve as a platform for cooperation on an international level. Current developments address methodological definitions for the initial information infrastructure. As a novel element user needs are differentiated in parallel according to the broad application fields of LCI-data from product declaration to process design. Case studies will be used to define tailored interfaces for the data base which have to encounter different quality levels.Over the last decade, enormous strides have been made in creating engineered cementitious composites (ECC) with extreme tensile ductility, on the order of several hundred times that of normal concrete or fiber reinforced concrete (FRC). Current ECC investigations include load carrying structural members in new infrastructure systems, as well as for repair and retrofitting of existing structures. ECC design has been built on the paradigm of the relationships between material microstructures, processing, material properties, and performance. This paradigm has worked very well in creating various versions of ECC that can be processed by self-consolidated casting, spraying, and extrusion. This paper describes preliminary results of an initial attempt at creating green ECCs, ECCs that maintain the tensile ductility characteristics, but which also incorporate sustainability considerations in the design of these materials for infrastructure applications. Sustainable material design integrates microstructure tailoring with life cycle analysis based on social, environmental, and economic (SEE) indicators. The framework of green ECC development is described. Some preliminary experimental results of the effect of cement substitution and fiber substitution with industrial by-products on the mechanical properties are reported. It is demonstrated that the concept of green ECC for sustainable infrastructures is feasible, although an extensive amount of research remains ahead.In many countries, there is a growing amount of deteriorating concrete infrastructures that not only affect the productivity of the society, but also has a great impact on resources, environment and human safety. The poor and uncontrolled durability with repairs and maintenance of all these concrete structures are consuming much energy and resources and are producing a heavy environmental burden and large quantities of waste. Therefore, the increasing amount of repairs and maintenance of concrete structures is not only a question of technical performance and economy, but also a question of impact to the environment. In the present paper, the framework and methodology for quantifying the environmental burden of various repair materials and systems for maintenance of concrete structures are briefly outlined. This includes materials and energy consumption, waste generation and emission to the environment.Society is increasingly concerned about the implications of manufactured products for the environment, public health, and future costs. How does a product affect global warming, smog, fossil fuel depletion, and human toxicity? How about its costs over time? Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) addresses these questions by measuring the life-cycle environmental and economic performance of construction products. Used by thousands of designers worldwide, BEES measures environmental performance using the life-cycle assessment approach specified in the ISO 14040 series of standards. All stages in the life of a product are analyzed raw material acquisition, manufacture, transportation, installation, use, and recycling and waste management. Twelve environmental impacts are assessed: global warming, acidification, eutrophication, fossil fuel depletion, indoor air quality, habitat alteration, si-nog, ozone depletion, ecological toxicity, human health, criteria air pollutants, and water intake. Economic performance is measured using the American Society for Testing and Materials, International (ASTM) standard life-cycle cost method, which covers the costs of initial investment, replacement, operation, maintenance and repair, and disposal. Environmental performance and economic performance are combined into an overall performance measure using the ASTM standard for Multiattribute Decision Analysis. The paper will explain the BEES approach and illustrate its application to alternative concrete products with and without supplementary cementitious materials.Material selection is an important part of bridge design and is usually determined by the economic criteria of the design project. As more environmental problems have attracted the attention of the construction industry, there is a need to design our bridges to be more environmental friendly. The "green design" concept requires an assessment of the entire life cycle of a structural system in order to identify the system that has the least environmental impact. In this project, two bridge alternatives that have the same location and function but are made of different construction materials are studied. Activities associated with the life cycle of the bridge are examined and a life cycle inventory analysis is performed concentrating on the boundary definition for this project. From the results of this study, the life cycle analysis induces a conflict in bridge design which indicates that the actually built steel bridge has higher environmental effects than that of the concrete bridge. However, results from a LCA study should always be carefully evaluated due to the limitations of the analysis model and it is of great importance that a standardized procedure and guideline for "sustainable thinking in bridge design" should be established and incorporated in the future.Personal Development, which is the most important issue of the whole society, which has the relation with Gross Sustainable Development (GSD) has been discussed in this project. Actual ways of Sustainable development, which is nothing but cradle to grave life cycle analysis, should be started from ecological resources to zero waste. The research work focus on scientific analysis of the personal development related to the total sustainability approach. A model based approach has been super imposed for the idea of personal development What is the obstacle of the personal development, what are the stages, how can it be calculated, and what are their stages? Not only that valuation method of GSD and personal development is matter of concerned here. Cradle to grave life cycle analysis is required to be all society personally developed and for a complete green peace. - is the hide idea of this research work.According to the characteristics of green product, evaluation indices system on product green degree is established. To the disadvantages of general data envelopment analysis (DEA) models in flexible weights and un-prioritizing all products, a ranking DEA model with preference information is presented to facilitate green degree evaluation. The model is achieved by applying weight constraints and introducing an ideal decision making unit in general DEA models. The weight constraints are determined with the help of fuzzy numbers, which is more accurate than that with crisp numbers. Finally, an example is given to illustrate feasibility and validity of the presented method for product green degree evaluation.Disposable expanded polystyrene (EPS) fast food container is one of the main causes of "white pollution. " A study on the life cycle of EPS fast food containers has been carried out using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The LCA results show that the environmental impacts of EPS fast food container are mostly originated from production stage, and the main impacts are resources damage. A comparison study on waste disposal scenarios shows that collecting and recycling has less environmental impacts than incinerating or landfilling of EPS fast food container. Some suggestions on eco-design of EPS fast food container are put forward.Design for environment (DFE) or Design For Cost (DFC) is one of the branches in DFX. Both of them concern some product life cycle factors in design. The former emphasis is greenness or environmental protection; the later emphasis is life cycle cost (LCC). Using DFE, LCC must be considered. Using DFC, environmental protection must be also considered. By analysis of the relationship between DFE and DFC, the method that integrated them can be found. Namely, LCC estimation methods can be used in DFE; Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used in DFC; the other way is that design is evaluated using Design Compatibility Analysis (DCA) in DFX.Recently, emulsion polymers have grown in interest. On the one hand, environmental pressures are jeopardizing the use of hazardous volatile compounds, favoring the industrial practice of emulsion polymerization. On the other hand, emulsion polymerization is long known for its outstanding capacity to produce products with a myriad of properties. Emulsion polymers are the base of a well-established industry. Synthetic rubbers alone account for the production of over 8000 million tonnes per year of emulsion polymers. It is widely recognized how technical progresses on the polymerization field can benefit companies. Nevertheless, not much has been said about the environmental impact of those progresses. This work intends to shed light into this promising field, using the principle of the inventory step of the life cycle assessment analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Drainage characteristics have a significant effect on pavement performance. Pavements with poor subsurface drainage properties prematurely exhibit distress and have higher life-cycle cost. Shorter service life and higher maintenance cost are some of the reasons for the higher lifecycle cost. It has been proved in the last 20 years that subsurface drainage increases the pavement service life and reduces its life-cycle cost. A case study demonstrates and quantifies the benefits of providing subsurface drainage through reduction of moisture in daylighted base layers of flexible pavements. The effect of higher base course moisture content on the pavement in situ structural capacity was assessed through the analysis of deflection tests performed with the falling weight deflectometer. In this analysis, a structural adequacy index was used to assess the pavement structural service life. This information was then fed into a life-cycle analysis module to determine the effect of the higher moisture content on the pavement life-cycle cost. An increase in base course moisture content from 16% to 45% resulted in the reduction of pavement service life from 13 to 7 years. For a 40-year period, this translates to a three-fold increase in life-cycle cost for a 250-ft-long pavement section. Reducing moisture retention through various means, thereby improving the subsurface drainage quality of flexible pavement systems, can achieve substantial long-term savings.Remediation of contaminated sites provides a cleaner local environment, but may also have negative environmental impacts on the local, regional, and global scales. Methods based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are designed to take the negative effects into consideration when deciding how to treat a site, and to improve the environmental efficiency of remediation techniques. This paper reviews nine case studies that use LCA tools to evaluate alternative remediation techniques to summarize the findings of methodologies and results. The methodologies were found to differ in the limitation of the LCA for space, time and secondary processes. This strongly influenced the results. Bioremediation was the worst when the secondary process of producing electron acceptors was included; otherwise it was the best. The choice of impact categories heavily affected the results. Inclusion of land use was especially important in site remediation studies. In general, the negative impact of site remediation was due to energy consumption. For excavation combined with ex-situ treatment, the transport of contaminated soil to the treatment facility or landfill required the most energy. For in-situ treatment of soil and groundwater pumping consumed the most energy. It is proposed that different methods be applied to the same site.In this paper a simplified Life Cycle Assessment for the evaluation of environmental impacts of horticultural production systems is presented. Two production systems with different production intensities (outdoor cropping, protected cultivation in a greenhouse) have been investigated with respect to the environmental impact associated with these production systems. In the open field production system the transport processes on-field and field-to-farm are contributing most to the environmental impact. In closed greenhouse production systems the lighting and heating processes are dominating the environmental impact. The system analysis performed in this study allows for the identification of those process steps in horticultural production that are major contributors to environmental impact. Therefore, the results can help the growers to improve the environmental performance of their production system.Sustainability, people, planet and profit are currently modern issues. Our societies are asking for products and services that are produced and delivered in sustainable ways. However the concept of sustainability is very broad and has to be made more concrete at this time. With a top-down/bottom-up approach the concept of sustainability, a set of sustainabitity aspects can be identified that have the support of the various stakeholders and that can be determined with the use of indicators. The availability of information/data and the organisation of information to use indicators is a main aspect in the determination of sustainability aspects. Analyses of chain information systems showed that these systems provide several linkages that can be helpful in the assessment of sustainability. However, chain information systems are currently most applicable for determination of the environmental dimension of sustainability and readily linked to a product, much like an environmental Life Cycle Assessment. To realize such a combination, information in chain information systems have to be transformed, by model or database, to create the right information output. The social dimension is not very easily determined; it is more concerned with processes instead of products. As such the determination of social sustainability requires additional research.This paper compares the sensitivity in the operation of conventional and alternatively fuelled Public Service Vehicles (PSVs) in operation across Merseyside; Each fuel is compared on a life cycle assessment (LCA) basis, with the addition of landfill gas (LFG) as a viable alternative. On a complete life cycle basis, LFG powered vehicles compare favourably with gas-powered vehicles and generally cause less pollution than the liquid-fuel powered vehicles, with electric vehicles generally producing the least pollution overall. In the majority of cases, the sensitivity analysis has revealed that the most significant stage in the life cycles of each fuel and vehicle is the end-use (fuel combustion) stage. In some cases this stage alone contributes to 90% of the total life cycle emissions. Daily and annual changes in vehicle operation have a large influence on the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere.The purpose of this paper is to review the types of models that are currently being used in the area of municipal waste management and to highlight some major shortcomings of these models. Most of the municipal waste models identified in the literature are decision support models and for the purposes of this research, are divided into three categories-those based on cost benefit analysis, those based on life cycle assessment and those based on multicriteria decision making. Shortcomings of current waste management models include that they are concerned with refinements of the evaluation steps (e.g. stage four of AHP or the improvement of weight allocations in ELECTRE) rather than addressing the decision making process itself. In addition, while many models recognise that for a waste management model to be sustainable, it must consider environmental, economic and social aspects, no model examined considered all three aspects together in the application of the model. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Incinerator emissions still represent an important issue of public environmental concern. The application of Life Cycle Assessment to a municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerator is an important instrument for the identification of the main environmental impacts on the entire ecosystem. Beside this, an Integrated Environmental Monitoring System can be applied in order to understand the most direct contamination in the surrounding territory. This approach can integrate ordinary chemical monitoring instruments, together with biomonitoring methodologies, and can give an interesting understanding of the interaction of the various pollutants with the environmental matrices. The application of both tools provided useful results: by using LCA it was possible to understand that the incineration process, besides reducing the amount of waste which must be landfilled, decreases the environmental impact related to some categories, due to energy recovery which avoids the consumption of non-renewable fuels; by monitoring, many interesting correlations were found between heavy metals (chosen as environmental indicators) both in gas emissions and in natural matrices in the surroundings (in particular, depositions). The joint employment of these two instruments can lead researchers and decision makers to understand the most critical steps of the whole incineration process, indicating the greatest global, regional environmental and local impacts.Taiwan, an island with dense population but limited resources, bears a heavy environmental burden. Although industries in Taiwan have been booming for decades, the escalation of waste generation has never ceased and will profoundly affect the lifestyles and the living standards for generations to come. Therefore, how to use resources wisely, to achieve a sustainable society, has become an ever more serious issue that is concerning both the government and the people of Taiwan. As the natural resources are waning and the costs of garbage disposal is constantly rising over time, waste disposal policies have shifted from traditional disposal methods, such as sanitary landfills and waste incineration, to new methods, such as minimization at the source, sorting, separation of dry and wet garbage, pre-treatment, and transferring of garbage from remote areas. Moreover, with the policies of front-end prevention (restricting the use of plastic shopping bags and plastic disposable dishes) and the back-end per-bag trash collection fee, households are rewarded to reduce the amount of garbage. Communities are also encouraged to set up garbage self-disposal systems or other flexible and diversified methods, which are aiming to ease the pressure on the end-of-pipe treatment and induce recycling and reuse of materials. With the principle of "extended producer responsibility," businesses and institutions are required to work on the "green design" and "life cycle analysis," and to set up an "environment management system" to meet the future needs of environmental protection from international markets. The government will also assist the Center for the Exchange of Industrial Waste Information and the promotion of environmental management systems, and subsidize the R&D of the new environmental technologies. All of these measures will be taken to help businesses establish corporate images and thereby increase their competitiveness in the international markets. Although the adoption and the implementation of the strategies and policies of "zero waste" will encounter certain obstacles, we should still actively strive to establish concrete policies and objectives for campaigns, strict law enforcement and the encouragement of innovation and trials. What we will need to achieve this will be: understanding and support of the general public, the cooperation of private sectors, as well as the open-mindedness of the public sectors. Our natural resources are so scarce and precious that we must work in tandem with the global trend to achieve a "zero waste" world.Japan legislated the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law in 1995; the law was put into effect gradually and became effective totally in 2000. In this law, each municipality can choose how many items they collect for recycling, so that not all the municipalities in Japan collect all containers and packaging still now. In particular, big cities whose populations are more than I million can not collect all items, because the cost for recycling all items is too much and they do not have appropriate recycling routes. This study examines the effect on the reduction of the amount of waste and on the environmental effects by the method of Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment, through Nagoya city practices. Nagoya city has a population of more than 2 million. In the city, the law has been in force since 2000. Nagoya city is only one big city that collects all items of containers and packaging in Japan. So it is important to study Nagoya practice to evaluate the success of the law. Accordingly, the surveys of material flow and discharge amount Of CO2 and NOx were made in the years 1998 and 2001, then each year's data was compared. By the study, it is observed that the amount of municipal waste discharge reduced by more than 266,000 ton and the amount of landfill reduced to almost half after enforcement of the law. On the other hand, the amount of collected containers and packaging gained 63,002 ton, and it multiplied about 3 times. Considering the environmental impact from the waste management system of Nagoya city including containers and packaging recycling, the amount of total discharge Of CO2 and NOx reduced by more than 34%. Therefore, the effects on the environment obviously improved. The law has accelerated the separating of containers and packaging from the waste going to landfill, and it not only has reduced the amount of waste but also has changed the contents of waste going for incinerating, causing more reduction of landfill. As a result, it clearly shows that the recycling based on the law has succeeded in reducing both the amount of waste going to landfill sites and the environmental effects.Persistent polar pollutants (P3) are difficult to degrade in standard waste water treatment plants. As a result, they end up in the effluent and are emitted to the surface water. In some areas, this problem is aggravated through "closed loop recycling", causing concentrations of P3 in surface water to build up over time. This could cause violation of (future) EU regulations. In the P-THREE project, various alternative waste water treatment techniques are investigated regarding their effectiveness in eliminating these substances, especially membrane bioreactor treatment and advanced oxidation processes, MBR and AOP. The integrated systems analysis which is the subject of this paper assesses these techniques in a broader systems context: (1) the life-cycle of the P3, (2) the life cycle of the WWTPs, and (3) the WWTP life cycle costs. The paper traces the emergence of urban environmental history first in the United States and since the 1990s increasingly also in Europe. It identifies the development of large technical networks which provide cities with water and energy and which serve to take problematic Substances and waste out of urban areas as a central theme of this new subfield where scholars from urban history, environmental history and history of technology converge. The concepts of 'path dependence' and 'urban metabolism' are introduced as useful heuristic devices to assess long-term effects of these infrastructures in a holistic manner. The paper shows that the implementation of networks and related household technologies was accompanied by comprehensive processes of social and cultural adaptation which fundamentally altered the attitudes and behavioural patterns towards resource use. Lessons of urban environmental history are seen in providing long-term horizons to current debates over urban technologies and their environmental consequences.The metabolism of a city can be seen as a process of transforming all the materials and commodities for sustaining the city's economic activity. This paper attempts to incorporate the analysis of emergy and material flow for investigating Macao's urban sustainability in the light of Macao's environment and economy. In order to evaluate the contribution of material flows to the ecological economic system, emergy (spelled with an M; previously known as embodied emergy) evaluation is incorporated in this paper. Emergy evaluation of urban metabolism is analyzed for measuring the effect of Macao's sustainability. The purchased emergy from outside Macao is 160 x 10(20) sej in 2003, while the output emergy is about 196 x 10(20) sej. Tourism is the biggest industry of Macao, it bring 5.82 billion US dollars to Macao economy, the en/dollar emery equals to 119.7 x 10(20) sej, it is the most important source to sustain the balance of the urban emergy flows. With the analysis of the tourism in Macao and its contribution to Macao urban development, a new indicator (the ratio of tourism emery contributions to emery impact) is proposed. Through use of the indicators of the emery, the sustainability of Macao is discussed.Considering the city as a peculiar kind of ecosystem, this paper explores the potential of a metabolic approach to urban development interpretation, proposing an enhanced metabolic urban model. This new metabolic model strongly focuses on the influence that institutional activities have on urban sustainability. Such activities - like planning and other decisional processes - are considered as an important feedback of urban dynamics. This last updating aims at connecting the conceptual modelling to urban governance.

 The global mean surface temperature has already increased by 0.6 +/- 0.2 degrees C over the last century, and warming in Korea is approximately twice as large as the global average. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the majority of warming over the past 50 years could be attributed to human activities (IPCC, 2001a). In addition, the global surface temperature is expected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C depending on the greenhouse gas emission scenarios during the 21st century Climate change resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations has the potential to harm societies and ecosystems. Reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and their concentration in the atmosphere will reduce the degree and likelihood of significant adverse conditions due to the anticipated climate change. Mitigation policy has generally been the primary focus of public attention and policy efforts on climate change. However, some degree of climate change is inevitable due to the combination of continued increases in emissions and the inertia of the global climate system. Adaptation actions and strategies are needed for a complementary approach to mitigation. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) currently addresses vulnerability and adaptation in the context of climate change negotiations and in future adaptation may be an important element of work under the Kyoto Protocol. There are several on-going programs to develop effective adaptation strategies and their implementation. But in general, many other countries are still on an initiating stage. The climate change science programs of the United States, Japan, England, and Germany are initiated to understand the current status of climate change science and adaptation researches in the developed countries. In this study, we propose the improvement on systems in policy and research aspects to effectively perform the necessary functions for development of nation-wide adaptation measures and their implementation. In policy aspect, the Korean Panel on Climate Change (KPCC) is introduced as a coordinating mechanism between government organizations related with climate change science, impact assessment and adaptation. Also in research aspect, there is a strong consensus on the need for construction of a national network on climate change research as trans-disciplinary research network.Tourism in island states is vulnerable to climate change because it may result in detrimental changes in relation to extreme events, sea level rise, transport and Communication interruption. This study analyses adaptation to climate change by tourist resorts in Fiji, as well as their potential to reduce climate change through reductions ill carbon dioxide emissions. Interviews, site visitations, and an accommodation survey were undertaken. Many operators already prepare for climate-related events and therefore adapt to potential impacts resulting from climate change. Reducing emissions is not important to operators; however, decreasing energy costs for economic reasons is practised. Recommendations for further initiatives are made and synergies between the adaptation and mitigation approaches are explored. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We assessed the influence of control for air pollution and respiratory epidemics on associations between apparent temperature (AT) and daily mortality in Mexico City and Monterrey. Poisson regressions were fit to mortality among all ages, children (ages 0-14 years) and the elderly (ages 65 years). Predictors included mean daily AT, season, day of week and public holidays for the base model. Respiratory epidemics and air pollution (particulate matter <10 mm in aerodynamic diameter and O-3) were added singly and then jointly for a fully adjusted model. Percent changes in mortality were calculated for days of relatively extreme temperatures [cold (10-11C) for both cities and heat (35-36C) for Monterrey], compared to days at the overall mean temperature in each city (15C in Mexico City, 25C in Monterrey). In Mexico City, total mortality increased 12.4% [95% confidence interval (CI) 10.5%, 14.5%] on cold days (fully adjusted). Among children, the adjusted association was similar [10.9% (95% CI: 5.4%, 16.7%)], but without control for pollution and epidemics, was nearly twice as large [19.7% (95% CI: 13.9%, 25.9)]. In Monterrey, the fully adjusted heat effect for all deaths was 18.7% (95% CI: 11.7%, 26.1%), a third lower than the unadjusted estimate; the heat effect was lower among children [5.5% (95% CI: -10.1%, 23.8%)]. Cold had a similar effect on all-age mortality as in Mexico City [11.7% (95% CI: 3.7%, 20.3%)]. Responses of the elderly differed little from all-ages responses in both cities. Associations between weather and health persisted even with control for air pollution and respiratory epidemics in two Mexican cities, but risk assessments and climate change adaptation programs are best informed by analyses that account for these potential confounders.The articles in this IDS Bulletin present insights from the Linking Climate Adaptation (LCA) Project that aimed to ensure that poor people benefit from adaptation processes, rather than bearing greater burdens by, for example, having the risks caused by climate change shifted in their direction. The key research aim of the LCA Project was to determine what kind of procedural and institutional frameworks are needed to ensure that locally determined adaptation needs are linked "upwards" to national and international policy and institutional structures. The overview brings together policy relevant insights on this question whilst also explaining the conceptual underpinnings of the project, focusing on the nature of vulnerability and adaptation and policy processes to support community-led adaptation. The key conclusions are that climate change is a serious, ongoing threat to development and will add burdens to those who are already poor and vulnerable, and that climate vulnerability analysis should be incorporated systematically into the three main policy and institutional frameworks relevant for adaptation: development, disaster relief and climate change. Ways of fostering conceptual, operational and institutional linkages between these three domains are described, focusing on how these can help communities take centre stage in conducting vulnerability analysis and implementation to enhance their long-term capacities for adaptation.Increased temperature, floods, droughts, extreme events and changes in precipitation pose additional risks for developing countries and vulnerable communities striving to alleviate poverty and to achieve sustainable development. Knowledge and experience of adapting to climatic conditions has been built up over a millennia by communities in many parts of the world, including developing countries, often on the basis of experimentation initiated by communities. The synthesis brings together the main insights and conclusions from case studies describing examples of successful community-led interventions in six countries: China, India, Bangladesh, Senegal, Kenya and Zimbabwe. The climate impacts studied include "headline-grabbing" extreme events, such as national floods, and quieter forms of climatic disaster such as long-term aridity/drought, temperature increase and wind-related land degradation. The synthesis examines the roles played by formal and informal institutions, policy champions, donors, knowledge and research in decreasing vulnerabilities and supporting community-led adaptation to climate change.This article provides a brief overview of the rationale, functioning and future plans of the Linking Climate Adaptation Network which was one of the final components; of the DFID-funded Linking Climate Adaptation (LCA) Project. The core objective for the Network was to assist communities and adaptation experts share theoretical, policy and experiential knowledge to support community-led adaptation in developing countries. For many reasons, communities are not well connected to formal scientific and policy processes. Knowledge system approaches that analyse how knowledge and information is generated, shared, negotiated and transformed into policy partly explain why the knowledge, preferences and perspectives of the poor are not fully taken into account. Allowing geographically dispersed communities with fewer resources to communicate better "upwards" with those engaged in formal scientific and policy responses was thus considered an important objective of the LCA Project. This article sets out how this objective was achieved through the LCA Network by explaining the rationale for the Network, its current operation and plans for its further elaboration.Apart from the case studies, an additional output of the Linking Climate Adaptation (LCA) Project was to identify the longer-term research agenda needed to support community-led adaptation. One aim of sharing this agenda here is to catalyse discussions among a wider group active in the climate change, development and disaster/humanitarian relief communities about how best to support community-led adaptation. As set out in the Conceptual Overview in this IDS Bulletin, one of the main conclusions of the LCA Project is to suggest strengthening research, policy and operational linkages between these three, currently quite separate, communities. The selection and formulation of research questions reflects a judgement on the part of the authors. The questions are broadly defined to allow elaboration, challenges, re-framings and add-ons, as we may have neglected issues outside our frame of focus: how community-led adaptation in vulnerable countries can be supported through the generation, dissemination and use of research. For convenience, the research agenda is structured around three overarching issues: (1) the sources, nature and dynamics of vulnerability, (2) the costs and benefits of adaptation, and (3) integration of climate change adaptation into disaster risk reduction and development. A separate concluding section sets out cross-cutting methodological issues that are particularly germane to how future adaptation research should be conducted, by whom and across what time frames.Globally we face serious challenges from the effects of climate change. The causal link between global warming and increased greenhouse gas emissions is well established. Carbon dioxide levels are at a higher level than at any time in the past 750 000 years at least, and it is too late to stop further warming and consequent impacts on UK and global societies. Here I summarize the latest scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming and outline strategies for adapting to its impacts and mitigating the effects in the longer term.1. Climate change is recognized as a major threat to the survival of species and integrity of ecosystems world-wide. Although considerable research has focused on climate impacts, relatively little work to date has been conducted on the practical application of strategies for adapting to climate change. Adaptation strategies should aim to increase the flexibility in management of vulnerable ecosystems, enhance the inherent adaptability of species and ecosystem processes, and reduce trends in environmental and social pressures that increase vulnerability to climate variability. 2. Knowledge of the specific attributes of climate change likely to impact on species or habitats is central to any adaptive management strategy. Temperature is not the only climate variable likely to change as a result of anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases. In some regions changes in precipitation, relative humidity, radiation, wind speed and/or potential evapotranspiration may be more marked than for temperature. 3. Uncertainty exists in the response of species and ecosystems to a given climate scenario. While climate will have a direct impact on the performance of many species, for others impacts will be indirect and result from changes in the spatiotemporal availability of natural resources. In addition, mutualistic and antagonistic interactions among species will mediate both the indirect and direct effects of climate change. 4. Approaches to predict species' responses to climate change have tended to address either changes in abundance with time or in spatial distribution. While correlative models may provide a good indication of climate change impacts on abundance, greater understanding is generated by models incorporating aspects of life history, intra- and interspecific competition and predation. Models are especially sensitive to the uncertainty inherent in future climate predictions, the complexity of species' interactions and the difficulties in parameterizing dispersal functions. Model outputs that have not been appropriately validated with real data should be treated with caution. 5. Synthesis and applications. While climate impacts may be severe, they are often exacerbated by current management practices, such as the construction of sea defences, flood management and fire exclusion. In many cases adaptation approaches geared to safeguard economic interests run contrary to options for biodiversity conservation. Increased environmental variability implies lower sustainable harvest rates and increased risks of population collapse. Climate change may significantly reduce habitat suitability and may threaten species with limited dispersal ability. In these cases, well-planned species translocations may prove a better option than management attempts to increase landscape connectivity. Mathematical models, long-term population studies, natural experiments and the exploitation of natural environmental gradients provide a sound basis for further understanding the consequences of climate change.Future climate change will affect society's ability to use forest resources. We take account of climate in forest management and this will help us adapt to the effects of climate change on forests. However, society will have to adjust to how forests adapt by changing expectations for the use of forest resources because management can only influence the timing and direction of forest adaptation at selected locations. There will be benefits as well as loses and an important component of adaptation will be balancing values. Adaptation options to respond to impacts on the timber supply in Canada for the next 50 to 100 years are limited mainly to forest protection and wood utilisation because these forests are already in the ground. Adaptation through reforestation will focus on commercial tree species. It is important to start developing adaptation strategies now. These include assessing forest vulnerability to climate change, revising expectations of forest use, determining research and educational needs, development of forest policies to facilitate adaptation, and determining when to implement responses. Government agencies should take the lead in creating an environment to foster adaptation in forestry and in developing the necessary information required to respond.Protected areas arc the most common and most important strategy for biodiversity conservation and are called for under the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity. However, most protected areas have been designed to represent (and in theory protect for perpetuity) specific natural features, species and ecological communities in-situ, and have not taken into account potential shifts in ecosystem distribution and composition that could be induced by global climatic change. This paper provides an overview of the policy and planning implications of climate change for protected areas in Canada, summarizes a portfolio of climate change adaptation options that have been discussed in the conservation literature and by conservation professionals and provides a perspective on what is needed for the conservation community in Canada to move forward on responding to the threat posed by climate change.Issues of equity and justice are high on international agendas dealing with the impacts of global climate change. But what are the implications of climate change for equity and justice amongst vulnerable groups at local and sub-national levels? We ask this question for three reasons: (a) there is a considerable literature suggesting that the poorest and most vulnerable groups will disproportionately experience the negative effects of 21st century climate change; (b) such changes are likely to impact significantly on developing world countries, where natural-resource dependency is high; and (c) international conventions increasingly recognise the need to centrally engage resource stakeholders in agendas in order to achieve their desired aims, as part of more holistic approaches to sustainable development. These issues however have implications for distributive and procedural justice, particularly when considered within the efforts of the UNFCCC. The issues are examined through an evaluation of key criteria relating to climate change scenarios and vulnerability in the developing world, and second through two southern African case studies that explore the ways in which livelihoods are differentially impacted by (i) inequitable natural-resource use policies, (ii) community-based natural-resource management programmes. Finally, we consider the placement of climate change amongst the package of factors affecting equity in natural-resource use, and whether this placement creates a case for considering climate change as 'special' amongst livelihood disturbing factors in the developing world. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The article examines the role institutions play in climate adaptation in Norway. Using examples from two municipalities in the context of institutional responses to floods, we find, first, that the institutional framework for flood management in Norway gives weak incentives for proactive local flood management. Second, when strong local political and economic interests coincide with national level willingness to pay and provide support, measures are often carried out rapidly at the expense of weaker environmental interests. Third, we find that new perspectives on flood management are more apparent at the national than the municipal level, as new perspectives are filtered by local power structures. The findings have important implications for vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in terms of policy options and the local level as the optimal level for adaptation. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The typical categories for measuring national adaptive capacity to climate change include a nation's wealth, technology, education, information, skills, infrastructure, access to resources, and management capabilities. Resulting rankings predictably mirror more general rankings of economic development, such as the Human Development Index. This approach is incomplete since it does not consider the normative or motivational context of adaptation. For what purpose or toward what goal does a nation aspire, and in that context, what is its adaptive capacity? This paper posits 11 possible national socio-political goals that fall into the three categories of teleological legitimacy, procedural legitimacy, and norm-based decision rules. A model that sorts nations in terms of adaptive capacity based on national socio-political aspirations is presented. While the aspiration of maximizing summed utility matches typical existing rankings, alternative aspirations, including contractarian liberalism, technocratic management, and dictatorial/religious rule alter the rankings. An example describes how this research can potentially inform how priorities are set for international assistance for climate change adaptation. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The most recent climate change predictions for the UK indicate a warming of between 2 and 5 degrees C by the end of this century, with drier summers and wetter winters also anticipated across the majority of the country. Changes are predicted to be more extreme in the southern half of the UK, where severe summer droughts will become commonplace. Although rising atmospheric CO2 levels are likely to increase productivity through 'fertilizing' photosynthesis, water limitation in southern England is likely to lead to an overall reduction in growth and increase in drought-induced mortality. Incorporation of, the climate change scenarios within the GIS model Ecological Site Classification indicates that in isolation, the effects of climate change will result in significant changes in species suitability. Under current definitions the majority of native broadleaf species are predicted to become unsuitable for commercial timber production in southern England. Genetic variability in local native populations may enable a degree of adaptation. Existing trials of ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) suggest that the best performing provenances are those from regions with a climate similar to that of the trial site. The selection of a provenance for climate change adaptation should be from a region with a current climate well matched to a planting site's predicted climate of the future. Climate matching analysis indicates that coastal areas of western France experience a climate similar to that predicted for southern England by 2050, while the more extreme scenarios predict climates better matched to the Mediterranean region at high elevation by the end of the century. The scale of climate change predictions indicates that, in southern England, native broadleaf species may be unsuitable for timber production on some soils. The planting of non-native species may need to be considered to maintain woodland cover and ensure a viable hardwood timber industry.Seasonal climate forecasts provide probabilistic information on future climate on time-scales of two to three months. Where this information is not presently used it is difficult to evaluate the impact it might have. In order to justify disseminating the information to marginal groups it is important that the potential impact of the forecast is explored so that the negative and positive effects are at least partially appreciated before use of the information is widely promoted. We use an agent-based social simulation model, based on empirical evidence from field work in Lesotho, to assess the impact of using seasonal forecasts among smallholder farmers. The impact of using the forecast depends on the agents' initial household characteristics, what options they choose in responding to the forecast and the trust they place in the forecast (which in turn depends on their ability to learn and to follow their neighbours). Interaction of climate, crop productivity and social factors determines how much household-agents benefit or lose, evaluated in terms of crop yields and likelihood of exhausting food storage. Adoption of the forecast has the potential to decrease starvation among marginal household-agents but poor forecasts may do more harm than good. This work suggests that if forecasts are not correct more than 60-70% of the time, then they are unlikely to benefit poor farmers. Poor forecasts, or forecasts that fail badly, when they do fail, lead to longer adoption timescales for forecast use. Further investigation into the impact of the forecast at the village level is encouraged before dissemination is actively pursued without appreciating potential impacts. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Typical problem areas associated with weather-protective flashing are identified. based on a comprehensive investigation of building damage cases in Norway. A total of 175 assignment reports associated with damaged flashing for the period between 1963 and 2001 are analysed. The investigation clearly shows that certain faults and deficiencies are recurring items. Windowsill/weatherboard flashings comprise as much as 41% of the building damage cases associated with weather-protective flashing. Damage in connection with parapet flashing comprises 27% of all cases included in this investigation. With few exceptions, instances of damage are located in Norway's coastal areas. Existing flashing solutions in the Norwegian Building Research Institute's Building Research Design Sheets have been further developed, based on the results from the analysis. Improved high-performance flashing solutions are presented for a number of typical problem areas. An illustrated summary of problems frequently encountered with different flashing variants is also presented. Finally, recommended best-practice flashing solutions for a number of typical problem areas are provided. The results will be implemented in the Building Research Design Sheets. and will also be used as a basis for the carrying out of new field studies and laboratory investigations.Climate has always been changing, is changing, and will continue to change. Since the 1960s, however, the pace of change of greenhouse gas concentrations, resulting radiative forcing, and climatic response has been, and will continue to be, more rapid than previously known in geological history. As a result, biomes, species distributions, hydrology, and the cryosphere will undergo profound changes. Protected areas management cannot contribute significantly to mitigation of this issue, but it can help the natural world adapt to it and help educate society about its causes and consequences. I propose a range of actions for consideration by park managers, organized under the acronym ALARM: Awareness of staff, Leading by example, Active ecosystem management, Research, and Monitoring. I counsel for adjusting park boundaries but not for moving parks in pursuit of migrating biomes, manipulating park resources to provide buffers or insurance against natural disasters, and modifying natural region boundaries where they guide park establishment policy.The linkages between climate change and sustainable development are multiple and profound. Nonetheless, their respective policy regimes have so far evolved along parallel, if not competing, paths. What is lacking to date is a detailed conceptual understanding of the practicability of their integration through cross-sectoral policies and programmes. We propose a synergistic adaptive capacity (SAC) framework that places adaptive capacity and equity at the centre of current policy debates. This framework, based on social vulnerability as a linking element between climate change adaptation and poverty reduction, goes beyond current attempts to 'mainstream' adaptation and mitigation into national development priorities. We outline guidelines on how to operationalize the SAC framework and, at the end, define the role of the EU in promoting and implementing these synergies within the post-2012 climate policy regime.This article reviews the European Union's stance and policies on climate change adaptation and argues that developing a coherent long-term European strategy on climate change post-2012 will require the European Union to focus more strongly on adaptation issues than has hitherto been the case. It suggests that the EU should examine the dissonance between its prescriptions for integrating adaptation within the EU with its prescriptions to developing countries to mainstream adaptation. The EU should avoid a carrot-and-stick approach to adaptation funding and should focus on identifying common institutional and learning challenges with developing countries.This article sets out a series of rationales for public policy related to adaptation to the impacts of climatic change in the EU. It begins by arguing that both mitigation and adaptation are necessary parts of a coordinated policy response to the problem of climatic change, However, the 'problem structure' of adaptation is significantly different from that of mitigation. For instance, adaptation may generate private benefits that are likely to be experienced over the short term, relative to benefits associated with the impacts of mitigation actions which are public and experienced over the longer term. This divergence influences public policy rationales for adaptation and poses challenges for the integration of mitigation and adaptation in climate policies. Five key challenges facing climate adaptation are identified, and these are used as a basis for proposing rationales for policy action on climate adaptation. These relate to: information provision and research; early warning and disaster relief, facilitating adaptation options; regulating the distributional impacts of adaptation; and regulating infrastructures. The article concludes by arguing that the real integration problem for adaptation policy relates to how it is embedded in sectoral policies such as agriculture and transport, rather than how to achieve integration with mitigation policies.Climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions made by governments are usually taken in different policy domains. At the individual level however, adaptation and mitigation activities are undertaken together as part of the management of risk and resources. We propose that a useful starting point to develop a national climate policy is to understand what societal response might mean in practice. First we frame the set of responses at the national policy level as a trade off between investment in the development and diffusion of new technology, and investment in encouraging and enabling society to change its behaviour and or adopt the new technology. We argue that these are the pertinent trade-offs, rather than those usually posited between climate change mitigation and adaptation. The preference for a policy response that focuses more on technological innovation rather than one that focuses on changing social behaviour will be influenced by the capacity of different societies to change their greenhouse gas emissions; by perceived vulnerability to climate impacts; and by capacity to modify social behaviour and physical environment. Starting with this complete vision of response options should enable policy makers to re-evaluate the risk environment and the set of response options available to them. From here, policy makers should consider who is responsible for making climate response decisions and when actions should be taken. Institutional arrangements dictate social and political acceptability of different policies, they structure worldviews, and they determine the provision of resources for investment in technological innovation and social change. The importance of focussing on the timing of the response is emphasised to maximise the potential for adjustments through social learning and institutional change at different policy scales. We argue that the ability to respond to climate change is both enabled and constrained by social and technological conditions. The ability of society to respond to climate change and the need for technological change for both decarbonisation and for dealing with surprise in general, are central to concepts of sustainable development. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation to climate change and mitigation of climate change are policy substitutes, as both reduce the impacts of climate change. Adaptation and mitigation should therefore be analysed together, as they indeed are, albeit in a rudimentary way, in cost-benefit analyses of emission abatement. However, adaptation and mitigation are done by different people operating at different spatial and temporal scales. This hampers analysis of the trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation. An exception is facilitative adaptation (enhancing adaptive capacity), which, like mitigation, requires long-term policies at macro level. Facilitative adaptation and mitigation not only both reduce impacts, but they also compete for resources. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change presents a risk to the composition, health, and vitality of Canada's forests and forest sector. Effects may be either negative or positive, and will interact in complex ways over many spatial and temporal scales depending on such factors as physical geography, forest type, and forest management practices. Given the apparent vulnerability of forests and the forest sector to climate change, it is prudent that forest and forest-based community managers begin to develop adaptive strategies to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of climate change. A flexible planning framework that incorporates key principles of structured decision-making and risk management is presented as a practical way to integrate climate change adaptation into forest management planning.Within the Collaborative Research Centre 389 ACACIA (Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa), interdisciplinary investigations were carried Out in the Great Sand Sea of Egypt and in the Farafra Sand Sea during four expeditions from 1996 to 2002. The middle sections of both Sand Seas, analysed in this study, consist of Pleistocene megadunes (draa) and Holocene dunes (silk) of comparable dimensions and ages. There exist however, differences in the human occupation during the Holocene climatic optimum: Whereas in the Great Sand Sea important prehistoric sites are situated in the vicinity of playa remnants, no comparable traces were found in the Farafra Sand Sea, in spite of its close proximity to the ancient oases and the NileValley. As a main reason, the lower land-use potential in the Farafra Sand Sea, which is located farther to the north, is suggested. In addition to less favourable edaphic conditions, the amount of precipitation during the Holocene climatic optimum, here seems to have been insufficient for playa formation in the interdraa corridors.Agricultural activity has always included,adaptation to a number of diverse stresses and opportunities-elements that continue influencing developments in the agri-food sector. Climate and weather conditions are a good example of factors that require on-going adaptation. With climate change they take on even more significance. Based oil data from Canadian producers, this article identifies several climate and weather risk adaptation strategies currently in use and notes their close links to sustainable agriculture practices. The article concludes that the mutually supportive relationship between sustainable agriculture and climate change adaptation could be used to justify more government support for sustainable agriculture policies and programs.The second version of the modified TOMGRO model was used to simulate the production of a tomato crop in 8 hypothetical greenhouse adaptations in the Bogota Plateau; near to the equator and at 2650 m above sea level. An inflatable polyethylene tube, a thermal screen, heating and CO2 fertilisation were evaluated. With these strategies a range of average temperatures between 14.7 and 20.0 degrees C was calculated, using some basic assumptions that were deduced from literature and from previous experiments. The maximum productivity and gross income increased as the average greenhouse temperature increased, despite small decreases in greenhouse transmissivity due to the installation of a PE tube or climate screen. The maximum productivity without CO2 fertilisation was obtained in a treatment heated to maintain a minimum temperature of 18 degrees C, resulting in a fruit yield of 41.7 kg center dot m(-2) for a 300-day growth period. For each climate treatment, a combination of planting density and fruit pruning can be selected to obtain the desired average fruit weight in a range of nearly 25 g, without affecting gross income. Only a small effect of CO2 fertilisation was detected, due to the opening of the greenhouse during most of the day. The simulation model showed reasonable results, in accordance to data from the growers, and can thus be used for calculating other hypothetical climate adaptation strategies and evaluate micro-climates in the high altitude tropics.Current climate variability and anticipated climate change challenge our water systems and our financial resources. The sharing of economic losses due to weather related hazards and the sharing of costs that result from protecting lives and property take place in different forms, but are currently insufficient. In this paper we discuss three different rationales for financing disaster losses through public and private arrangements, as well as options for financing adaptation, with a special focus on water management. We propose that financial arrangements for risk sharing and climate change adaptation should be reconsidered, in a more structured approach, to be able to deal with both disaster losses and the costs that arise because of climate change adaptation, e.g. for water management, in both developing and developed countries. The global distribution of tropospheric ozone (O-3) depends on the emission of precursors, chemistry, and transport. For small perturbations to emissions, the global radiative forcing resulting from changes in O-3 can be expressed as a sum of forcings from emission changes in different regions. Tropospheric O-3 is considered in present climate policies only through the inclusion of indirect effect of CH4 on radiative forcing through its impact on O-3 concentrations. The short-lived O-3 precursors (NOx, CO, and NMHCs) are not directly included in the Kyoto Protocol or any similar climate mitigation agreement. In this study, we quantify the global radiative forcing resulting from a marginal reduction (10%) in anthropogenic emissions of NOx alone from nine geographic regions and a combined marginal reduction in NOx, CO, and NMHCs emissions from three regions. We simulate, using the global chemistry transport model MOZART-2, the change in the distribution of global O-3 resulting from these emission reductions. In addition to the short-term reduction in O-3, these emission reductions also increase CH4 concentrations (by decreasing OH); this increase in CH4 in turn counteracts part of the initial reduction in O-3 concentrations. We calculate the global radiative forcing resulting from the regional emission reductions, accounting for changes in both O-3 and CH4. Our results show that changes in O-3 production and resulting distribution depend strongly on the geographical location of the reduction in precursor emissions. We find that the global O-3 distribution and radiative forcing are most sensitive to changes in precursor emissions from tropical regions and least sensitive to changes from midlatitude and high-latitude regions. Changes in CH4 and O-3 concentrations resulting from NOx emission reductions alone produce offsetting changes in radiative forcing, leaving a small positive residual forcing (warming) for all regions. In contrast, for combined reductions of anthropogenic emissions of NOx, CO, and NMHCs, changes in O-3 and CH4 concentrations result in a net negative radiative forcing (cooling). Thus we conclude that simultaneous reductions of CO, NMHCs, and NOx lead to a net reduction in radiative forcing due to resulting changes in tropospheric O-3 and CH4 while reductions in NOx emissions alone do not.The global mean surface temperature has already increased by 0.6 +/- 0.2 degrees C over the last century, and warming in Korea is approximately twice as large as the global average. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the majority of warming over the past 50 years could be attributed to human activities (IPCC, 2001a). In addition, the global surface temperature is expected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C depending on the greenhouse gas emission scenarios during the 21st century Climate change resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations has the potential to harm societies and ecosystems. Reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and their concentration in the atmosphere will reduce the degree and likelihood of significant adverse conditions due to the anticipated climate change. Mitigation policy has generally been the primary focus of public attention and policy efforts on climate change. However, some degree of climate change is inevitable due to the combination of continued increases in emissions and the inertia of the global climate system. Adaptation actions and strategies are needed for a complementary approach to mitigation. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) currently addresses vulnerability and adaptation in the context of climate change negotiations and in future adaptation may be an important element of work under the Kyoto Protocol. There are several on-going programs to develop effective adaptation strategies and their implementation. But in general, many other countries are still on an initiating stage. The climate change science programs of the United States, Japan, England, and Germany are initiated to understand the current status of climate change science and adaptation researches in the developed countries. In this study, we propose the improvement on systems in policy and research aspects to effectively perform the necessary functions for development of nation-wide adaptation measures and their implementation. In policy aspect, the Korean Panel on Climate Change (KPCC) is introduced as a coordinating mechanism between government organizations related with climate change science, impact assessment and adaptation. Also in research aspect, there is a strong consensus on the need for construction of a national network on climate change research as trans-disciplinary research network.The last few years have witnessed important advances in our understanding of time preference and social discounting. In particular, several rationales for the use of time-varying social discount rates have emerged. These rationales range from the ad hoc to the formal, with some founded solely in economic theory while others reflect principles of intergenerational equity. While these advances are to be applauded, the practitioner is left with a confusing array of rationales and the sense that almost any discount rate can be justified. This paper draws together these different strands and provides a critical review of past and present contributions to this literature. In addition to this we highlight some of the problems with employing DDRs in the decision-making process, the most pressing of which may be time inconsistency. We clarify their practical implications, and potential pitfalls, of the more credible rationales and argue that some approaches popular in environmental economics literature are ill-conceived. Finally, we illustrate the impact of different approaches by examining global warming and nuclear power investment. This includes an application and extension of Newell and Pizer ['Discounting the benefits of climate change mitigation: how much do uncertain rates increase valuations?' Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 46 (2003) 52] to UK interest rate data.The Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research on Climate aims to explore the predictability, variability, and risk of climate change. The Paul Scherrer Institute, which is involved in this program, uses integrated assessment models to simulate policies for climate-change mitigation under uncertainty. We report here selected results of the model for evaluating the regional and global effects (MERGEs) of greenhouse-gas emissions with endogenous technological learning (ETL), known as MERGE-ETL. The novelty of the approach is the application of an heuristic algorithm to solve the non-linear and non-convex MERGE problem where 'learning-by-doing' is adopted for a set of energy technologies. The study presents numerical examples showing the implications of endogenous-learning for the timing of carbon-abatement that stabilizes carbon concentrations (e.g. at 550 ppmv), as well as the implications of this in terms of cost/benefit (C/B) analysis. The endogenous-learning formulation is contrasted with the version of the model without ETL. The improved methodology indicates a potential for significant reduction in carbon-abatement cost and economic losses. The method, which is basically in favor of late actions in abatement, implicitly assumes early R&D support and learning investments in carbon-free systems to help these new technologies follow their learning curves. The endogenous treatment of learning already shows significant reductions of carbon emissions in the baseline case and indicates that low-carbon concentrations and improved environmental performance can be obtained when policies are followed that compensate for externalities related to climate change. More precisely, MERGE-ETL gives C/B-optimal carbon-emission trajectories near the 590-ppmv-concentration level. Moreover, the imposition of constraints on the rate of temperature change (e.g. 0.21 degrees C per decade) demands early actions in carbon mitigation. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emissions from the transport sector represent the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. There is little prospect that this situation will be resolved with a single technological fix. As developing nations quickly move to catch up with the motorization levels of developed nations, the sheer number of private vehicles may overwhelm any advances made by cleaner fuels. By 2030, there is projected to be more vehicles in the developing world than in developed nations. Despite the growth in developing-nation transport emissions, the sector has produced relatively few mitigation projects within the mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. However, a few developing cities, such as Bogota, Colombia, have demonstrated innovation in low-cost solutions to reducing emissions. This research employs scenario analysis to examine the size and cost of potential emission reduction options from the urban transport sector of developing nations. In particular, the analysis compares the cost of greenhouse gas emission reductions from fuel technology options to reductions from measures promoting mode shifting. This comparative analysis indicates that a diversified package of measures with an emphasis on mode shifting is likely to be the most cost-effective means to greenhouse gas emission reductions.Energy services are fundamental determinants of the quality of life as well as the economic vitality of both industrialized and developing nations. Few analytic tools exist, however, to explore changes in individual, household, and national levels of energy consumption and utilization. In order to contribute to such analyses, we extend the application of Lorenz curves to energy consumption. We examined the distribution of residential electricity consumption in five countries: Norway, USA, El Salvador, Thailand, and Kenya. These countries exhibit a dramatic range of energy profiles, with electricity consumption far more evenly distributed across the population in some industrialized nations than others, and with further significant differences in the Lorenz distribution between industrialized and industrializing economies. The metric also provides critical insights into the temporal evolution of energy management in different states and nations. We illustrate this with a preliminary longitudinal study of commercial and industrial electricity use in California during the economically volatile 1990s. Finally, we explore the limits of Lorenz analyses for understanding energy equity through a discussion of the roles that variations in energy conversion efficiency and climate play in shaping distributions of energy consumption. The Lorenz method, which is widely employed by economists to analyze income distribution, is largely unused in energy analysis, but provides a powerful new tool for estimating the distributional dimensions of energy consumption. Its widespread use can make significant contributions to scientific and policy debates about energy equity in the context of climate change mitigation, electric power industry deregulation and restructuring, and the development of national infrastructure. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Field measurements and model results have recently shown that aerosols may have important climatic impacts. One line of inquiry has investigated whether reducing climate-warming soot or black carbon aerosol emissions can form a viable component of mitigating global warming. We review and acknowledge scientific arguments against considering aerosols and greenhouse gases in a common framework, including the differences in the physical mechanisms of climate change and relevant time scales. We argue that such a joint consideration is consistent with the language of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We synthesize results from published climate-modeling studies to obtain a global warming potential for black carbon relative to that Of CO2 (680 on a 100 year basis). This calculation enables a discussion of cost-effectiveness for mitigating the largest sources of black carbon. We find that many emission reductions are either expensive or difficult to enact when compared with greenhouse gases, particularly in Annex I countries. Finally, we propose a role for black carbon in climate mitigation strategies that is consistent with the apparently conflicting arguments raised during our discussion. Addressing these emissions is a promising way to reduce climatic interference primarily for nations that have not yet agreed to address greenhouse gas emissions and provides the potential for a parallel climate agreement.Under a voluntary agreement with the Government, the Swiss private sector proposes to lauch an innovative Climate Penny Fund. Oil importers agree to contribute CHF 0.01-0.02 for each liter of gasoline and diesel sold. The measure will generate at least CHF 70 million annually to finance climate protection projects domestically and abroad, enabling Switzerland to eliminate the anticipated transport sector compliance gap and to fulfill its greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations. At reasonable cost, the Climate Penny buys time to implement transport sector policies, develop low-emission technologies/infrastructure and facilitate behavioral changes, while still delivering real, measurable and long-term climate mitigation results. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biogeomorphology has developed into a well-established research field over the past 15 years, with studies examining a range of two-way interrelations between organisms and geomorphology in a variety of terrestrial and marine environments. This paper starts by defining, the core biogeomorphological processes-bioerosion, bioprotection and bioconstruction. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of bioconstructional forms; providing a clear definition, examples of bioconstructions, and, crucially, examining important interactions between bioconstruction and bioerosion. Three key areas where biogeomorphological research can directly contribute to the emerging field of geobiology are identified: (1) the use of biogeomorphological approaches, combined with palaeoecological investigations and predictive modelling, in the growing field of carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation; (2) providing geomorphological expertise to support the emerging field of astrobiology and (3) the potential contributions of biogeomorphology to the blossoming field of bio-geoengincering. Some key research directions and challenges for future biogeomorphological research include: exploring how biogeomorphological studies can contribute to and benefit from collaborations with other fields of geobiology, and assisting in the development of a useful, effective interdisciplinary toolbox of methods to improve quantification of geobiological processes. Importantly, suggestions are made for potentially fruitful collaborations with geomicrobiologists, geochemists and palaeoecologists. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present paper briefly explores the scientific, technical and economical characteristics of Zero Emission Technologies, with a particular emphasis on the E-MATIANT cycle. It is shown that this latter provides a cost-effective option to mitigate CO2 emissions, with a cost of electricity generation comparable to the one of advanced coal/gas fired powerplants with CO2 capture and competitive with renewable wind energy. The important energy policy question of whether it is more cost-effective to upgrade an existing plant with a capture unit or to build a ZET is also addressed by introducing the concept of Mitigation Cost.This paper describes the economically optimal adoption and operation of distributed energy resources (DER) by a hypothetical California microgrid (mu Grid) consisting of a group of commercial buildings over an historical test year, 1999. The optimization is conducted using a customer adoption model developed at Berkeley Lab and implemented in the General Algebraic Modeling System. A mu Grid is a semiautonomous grouping of electricity and heat loads interconnected with the existing utility grid (macrogrid) but able to island from it. The mu Grid minimizes the cost of meeting its energy requirements (consisting of both electricity and heat loads) by optimizing the installation and operation of DER technologies while purchasing residual energy from the local combined natural gas and electricity utility. The available DER technologies are small-scale generators (< 500 kW), such as reciprocating engines, microturbines, and fuel cells, with or without combined heat and power (CHP) equipment, such as water and space heating and/or absorption cooling. By introducing a tax on carbon emissions, it is shown that if the mu Grid is allowed to install CHP-enabled DER technologies, its carbon emissions are mitigated more than without CHP, demonstrating the potential benefits of small-scale CHP technology for climate change mitigation. Reciprocating engines with heat recovery and/or absorption cooling tend to be attractive technologies for the mild southern California climate, but the carbon mitigation tends to be modest compared to purchasing utility electricity because of the predominance of relatively clean central station generation in California.High concentrations of pollution particles, including "soot" or black carbon,,exist over the Indian Ocean, but their sources and geographical origins are not well understood. We measured emissions from the combustion of biofuets, used widely in south Asia for cooking, and found that large amounts of carbonaceous aerosols are emitted per kilogram of fuel burnt. We calculate that biofuel combustion is the largest source of black carbon emissions in India, and we suggest that its control is central to climate change mitigation in the south Asian region.The objective of this study is to analyze the economic viability of carbon-offset projects that avoid logging in Guyana's forests. The results of this case study illustrate the cost effectiveness of alternative land-use options that reduce deforestation and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This analysis demonstrates that using Guyana's rainforests for climate change mitigation can generate equivalent revenue to that of conventional large-scale logging without detrimental environmental impacts. At a 12% discount rate, the break-even price for carbon is estimated to be about US$ 0.20/tC. This estimate falls toward the low range of carbon prices for existing carbon offset projects that avoid deforestation. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The probability that storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in deep geologic formations will become an important climate change mitigation strategy depends on a number of factors, namely (1) public acceptance, (2) the cost of geologic storage compared to other climate change mitigation options, and (3) the availability, capacity, and location of suitable sites. Whether or not a site is suitable will be determined by establishing that it can meet a set of performance requirements for safe and effective geologic storage. To date, no such performance requirements have been developed. Establishing effective requirements must start with an evaluation of how much CO2 might be stored and for how long the CO2 must remain underground to meet goals for controlling atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Answers to these questions provide a context for setting performance requirements for geologic storage projects. According to the results presented here, geologic storage could be an effective method to ease the transition away from a fossil-fuel based economy over the next several centuries, even if large amounts of CO2 are stored and some small fraction seeps from storage reservoirs back into the atmosphere. An annual seepage rate of 0.01% or 10(-4)/year would ensure the effectiveness of geologic carbon storage for any of the projected sequestration scenarios explored herein, even those with the largest amounts of storage (1,000 s of gigatonnes of carbon-GtC), and still provide some safety margin. Storing smaller amounts of carbon (10 s to 100 s of GtC) may allow for a slightly higher seepage rate on the order of 0.1% or 10(-3)/year. Based on both the large capacity of geologic storage formation and the likelihood of achieving leakage rates much lower than the rates estimated here, geologic storage appears to be a promising mitigation strategy.Willingness-to-pay for climate change mitigation depends on people's perceptions about just how bad things will get if nothing is done. Individual subjective distributions for future climate conditions are combined with stated choices over alternative climate policies to estimate individual option prices (the appropriate ex ante welfare measure in the face of uncertainty) for climate change mitigation. We find statistically significant sensitivity of estimated option prices to both expected future conditions and uncertainty about future conditions. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The range of possibilities for future climate evolution(1-3) needs to be taken into account when planning climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. This requires ensembles of multi-decadal simulations to assess both chaotic climate variability and model response uncertainty(4-9). Statistical estimates of model response uncertainty, based on observations of recent climate change(10-13), admit climate sensitivities - defined as the equilibrium response of global mean temperature to doubling levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide - substantially greater than 5 K. But such strong responses are not used in ranges for future climate change(14) because they have not been seen in general circulation models. Here we present results from the 'climateprediction.net' experiment, the first multi-thousand-member grand ensemble of simulations using a general circulation model and thereby explicitly resolving regional details(15-21). We find model versions as realistic as other state-of-the-art climate models but with climate sensitivities ranging from less than 2 K to more than 11 K. Models with such extreme sensitivities are critical for the study of the full range of possible responses of the climate system to rising greenhouse gas levels, and for assessing the risks associated with specific targets for stabilizing these levels.With entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, climate change negotiators are turning their attention to the question, 'Where do we go from here?. A key component of answering this question is in understanding the implications for society of alternative long-term goals for greenhouse gas concentrations. One challenge in ongoing negotiations is whether and how to deal with meanings of 'dangerous interference' as outlined in Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This study addresses Article 2 by suggesting the use of long-term goals to guide decisions about the stringency and timing of future climate change commitments. Focusing on mitigation policy benefits and, in particular, on avoiding long-term climate impacts, a number of management approaches and their implications are highlighted. After discussing some challenges of using scientific knowledge to monitor and manage progress, we look at what we can learn from current climate change global impact literature. Solid benchmark indicators appear to be available from global mean temperature change, ecosystems and coastal zone impacts information. We conclude by arguing for global goal-setting based on climate change effects and the use of indicators in these areas as part of post-2012 climate change negotiations. Aggregate global impacts suggest that 3-4 degrees C of global mean temperature increase by 2100 (compared to a reference period of 1990) may be a threshold beyond which all known sector impacts are negative and rising with increasing levels of warming. However, marginal benefits may accrue at lower levels of mean change. Thus, a prudent policy might aim for significantly lower levels and slower rates of global warming.Europe has positioned itself as a front runner for climate mitigation policy globally. However, to reach climate mitigation targets that go far beyond Kyoto commitments, climate policy must become more integrated with sectoral policies such as energy, transport and agriculture. To achieve such policy integration, policy refraining and dilemma sharing among sectoral actors are important mechanisms. This article proposes the basic elements of an integrated policy agenda based on an assessment of achievements to date in three sectors as well as an outlook for the future of some overarching framework conditions. The analysis of existing and emergent dilemmas and opportunities suggests that a policy agenda must be vigorously pursued internally within the EU as well as with its neighbours and the outside world. Basic elements of this agenda include innovation policies, structural change pressures, and a concerted and coherent international policy agenda where trade policy, foreign policy, climate policy and agricultural policy are working in the same direction.This article reveals the contribution of woodland expansion in Ukraine to climate change mitigation policies. The opportunities for climate change mitigation of three policy scenarios: (1) carbon storage in forests, (2) carbon storage and additional wood-for-fuel substitution, and (3) carbon storage with additional sink policy for wood products, are investigated by using a simulation technique, in combination with cost-benefit analysis. The article concludes that the Ukraine's forests and their expansion offer a low-cost opportunity for carbon sequestration. Important factors that influence the results are the discount rate and the time horizon considered in the models. The findings provide evidence that the storage climate change mitigation forest policy scenario is most viable for the country, under the assumptions considered in this research.This article is based on an analysis of the results of more than 40 public opinion surveys taken during the period from 1989 through 2004, with special attention given to surveys taken during the period 2000-2004. The data indicate that a substantial majority of the US public wants the government to do more about the problem of global warming, and they do not support key elements of the Bush administration policies. In particular, they would like the USA to participate in the Kyoto Protocol. Further, a majority prefers mandatory, rather than voluntary, emission reductions by industry; and a majority supports US economic assistance for mitigation projects in developing countries. The level of US public concern has been nearly as high as among European publics. Gaps between US public opinion and US leaders' opinions had been evident in earlier years, with the public exhibiting more concern and more support for new policies; but evidence from 2004 suggests that support among US leaders for the Kyoto Protocol may have risen to approximate the level of public support. Yet, there is also evidence that many US leaders remain unaware of the extent of public support for more action, and of public opposition to recent US administration policies. Altogether, these findings and others reported in the article indicate that there is already a public consensus. However, the national administration during 20012004 and many members of Congress have not only been outside that public consensus but are perhaps not even aware of it. The consensus-building process for support for climate change mitigation thus appears to have progressed more than is commonly recognized. A more widespread recognition of the state of public opinion, especially by members of Congress and their staff as well as business leaders, would fundamentally alter the political dynamics of climate change policymaking in the USA.As policymakers and stakeholders increasingly consider relative merits and complementarities of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, it is important to improve analytical capacities to support this process. Because a single analytical approach is unlikely to fit all needs, this paper explores potentials for an integrated analytical framework that incorporates both top-down and bottom-up approaches. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions made by governments are usually taken in different policy domains. At the individual level however, adaptation and mitigation activities are undertaken together as part of the management of risk and resources. We propose that a useful starting point to develop a national climate policy is to understand what societal response might mean in practice. First we frame the set of responses at the national policy level as a trade off between investment in the development and diffusion of new technology, and investment in encouraging and enabling society to change its behaviour and or adopt the new technology. We argue that these are the pertinent trade-offs, rather than those usually posited between climate change mitigation and adaptation. The preference for a policy response that focuses more on technological innovation rather than one that focuses on changing social behaviour will be influenced by the capacity of different societies to change their greenhouse gas emissions; by perceived vulnerability to climate impacts; and by capacity to modify social behaviour and physical environment. Starting with this complete vision of response options should enable policy makers to re-evaluate the risk environment and the set of response options available to them. From here, policy makers should consider who is responsible for making climate response decisions and when actions should be taken. Institutional arrangements dictate social and political acceptability of different policies, they structure worldviews, and they determine the provision of resources for investment in technological innovation and social change. The importance of focussing on the timing of the response is emphasised to maximise the potential for adjustments through social learning and institutional change at different policy scales. We argue that the ability to respond to climate change is both enabled and constrained by social and technological conditions. The ability of society to respond to climate change and the need for technological change for both decarbonisation and for dealing with surprise in general, are central to concepts of sustainable development. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential for developing synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation has become a recent focus of both climate research and policy. Presumably the interest in synergies springs from the appeal of creating win-win situations by implementing a single climate policy option. However, institutional complexity, insufficient opportunities and uncertainty surrounding their efficiency and effectiveness present major challenges to the widespread development of synergies. There are also increasing calls for research to define the optimal mix of mitigation and adaptation. These calls are based on the misguided assumption that there is one single optimal mix of adaptation and mitigation options for all possible scenarios of climate and socio-economic change, notwithstanding uncertainty and irrespective of the diversity of values and preferences in society. In the face of current uncertainty, research is needed to provide guidance on how to develop a socially and economically justifiable mix of mitigation, adaptation and development policy, as well as on which elements would be part of such a mix. Moreover, research is needed to establish the conditions under which the process of mainstrearning can be most effective. Rather than actually developing and implementing specific mitigation and adaptation options, the objective of climate policy should be to facilitate such development and implementation as part of sectoral policies. Finally, analysis needs to focus on the optimal use and expected effectiveness of financial instruments, taking into account the mutual effects between these instruments on the one hand, and national and international sectoral investments and official development assistance on the other. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In its Third Assessment Report (IPCC 2001), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that climate policies designed to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions area win-win proposition. They relied on models that predict climate policy will bring significant benefits for developed countries, and even larger benefits for developing countries. The rationale behind these findings is that climate policies will reduce fossil fuel consumption and their associated local air pollution, hence reducing health impacts of poor air quality yielding "ancillary benefits" (i.e. indirect or side benefits) offsetting, and at times exceeding, the mitigation costs. IPCC's assertions are reflective of conditions where fossil fuel consumption is the major determinant of urban outdoor air quality, and indoor and outdoor air quality are strongly correlated. Our research examines the validity of the ancillary benefit models in developing countries where the continued use of biomass and household coal determine indoor air quality and are estimated to result in 1.6 million deaths annually. We use a case study analysis for India to illustrate linkages between climate mitigation policy and household indoor air pollution. The significance of this research is to incorporate biomass, non-commercial household energy sources, and indoor air pollution in the analysis of international climate policy impacts.The Kyoto Protocol (KP) requires signatories to reduce CO2-equivalent emissions by an average of 5.2% from 1990 levels by the commitment period 2008-2012. This constitutes only a small proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions. Importantly, countries can attain a significant portion of their targets by sequestering carbon in terrestrial ecosystems in lieu of emission reductions. Since carbon sink activities lead to ephemeral carbon storage, forest management and other activities that enhance carbon sinks enable countries to buy time as they develop emission reduction technologies. Although many countries are interested in sink activities because of their presumed low cost, the analysis in this paper suggests otherwise. While potentially a significant proportion of required CO2 emission reductions can be addressed using carbon sinks, it turns out that, once the opportunity cost of land and the ephemeral nature of sinks are taken into account, costs of carbon uptake could be substantial. Carbon uptake via forest activities varies substantially depending on location (tropical, Great Plains, etc.), activity (forest conservation, tree planting, management, etc.), and the assumptions and methods upon which the cost estimates are based. Once one eliminates forestry projects that should be pursued because of their biodiversity and other non-market benefits, or because of their commercial profitability, there remain few projects that can be justified purely on the grounds that they provide carbon uptake benefits.Woodpellets are regarded as one of the substitutes for fossil fuels like coal and oil for heating and co-generation. Wood pellets are a successful example of market penetration of renewable energy in some countries in Europe, e.g., Sweden. An analysis process is proposed in this paper and used to conduct a techno-economic assessment of wood pellets production and applications in some areas in China with the consideration of technology transfer from Sweden by examining their market competitiveness with coal in these areas. Financial indices such as net present value (NPV), internal return rate (IRR) and year-to-positive cash flow are calculated to investigate the profitability of the technology transfer. Four locations of applications in China have been considered as case studies. The result indicates that in the market-only-based scenario, wood pellets production will not be profitable in all selected areas. New scenarios from the analysis process show that reducing investment and increasing the amount of bank loan will be helpful to increase the project's profitability in general; adding taxes on coal could be effective, but it depends on Chinese government's future efforts on climate change mitigation; carbon credits on wood pellets through the clean development mechanism (CDM) might make wood pellet projects profitable giving wood pellets a nich-market. The potential global environment benefits of CO2 emission reduction by using wood pellets to replace coal in a 7 MWth coal-fired industrial boiler with a thermal efficiency of 80% and 5000 hours of operation time are also presented.The first decision to apply underground storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from natural gas - as a climate change mitigation effort - was taken by Statoil (operator) and partners in the Sleipner North Sea licence in 1990. The second such decision was taken by Statoil (operator) and partners in the Snohvit licence in the Barents Sea in the fall of 2001. A third project of this type was put in operation in the In Salah field in Algeria. This paper presents these injection projects and possible solutions to how CO2 can be turned into a business opportunity. The whole chain of CO2 management will be covered, including capture, transportation, storage and end use of CO2. Industrial ecology has mainly been concerned with improving the efficiency of production systems. But addressing consumption is also vital in reducing the impact of society on its environment. The concept of sustainable consumption is a response to this. But the debates about sustainable consumption can only really be understood in the context of much wider and deeper debates about consumption and about consumer behavior itself. This article explores some of these wider debates. In particular, it draws attention to a fundamental disagreement that runs through the literature on consumption and haunts the debate on sustainable consumption: the question of whether, or to what extent, consumption can be taken as "good for us." Some approaches assume that increasing consumption is more or less synonymous with improved well-being: the more we consume the better off we are. Others argue, just as vehemently, that the scale of consumption in modern society is both environmentally and psychologically damaging, and that we could reduce consumption significantly without threatening the quality of our lives. This second viewpoint suggests that a kind of "double dividend" is inherent in sustainable consumption: the ability to live better by consuming less and reduce our impact on the environment in the process, In the final analysis, this article argues, such "win-win" solutions may exist but will require a concerted societal effort to realize.This article argues that in the global North a successful path to sustainability will entail a stabilization of consumption through reductions in hours of work, a solution that neither ecologists nor economists have addressed seriously. The article presents data on the slowdown of hours reductions in many countries and discusses the need for policy intervention to counter firm-level disincentives to reducing hours of work. It then discusses the potential popularity of work-hour reductions with consumers. It ends with an argument that technological changes will be insufficient to achieve sustainable consumption patterns and that averting continued increases in the scale of consumption through trading income for time is imperative.Sustainable consumption is unlikely to be achieved as long as the quantity of household waste generated in industrial nations continues to rise. One factor underlying this trend is the life span of household goods. This article contributes to recent advances in life-cycle thinking by highlighting the significance of product life spans for sustainable consumption and exploring the current state of research. A theoretical model is developed to demonstrate how, by contributing to efficiency and sufficiency, longer product life spans may secure progress toward sustainable consumption, Empirical research undertaken in the United Kingdom on consumer attitudes and behavior relating to the life spans of household products is reviewed and factors that influence the market for longer-lasting products are discussed. A need is identified for further research on product life spans and some themes are proposed.A key challenge in attaining regional sustainability is to reduce both the direct and the indirect environmental impacts associated with economic and household activity in the region. Knowing what these flows are and how they change over time is a prerequisite for this task. This article describes the early development of an integrated regional materials flow accounting framework The framework is based on a hybrid (material and economic) multiregional input-output model. Using readily available economic and materials data sets together with transport and logistics data, the framework attempts to provide estimates of household resource flows for any U.K. region at quite detailed levels of product and material disaggregation. It is also capable of disaggregating these flows according to specific socioeconomic criteria such as income level or occupation of the head of household. Allied to appropriate energy and life-cycle assessment data sets, the model could, in addition, be used to map both direct and indirect environmental impacts associated with these flows. The benefits of such an approach are likely to be a considerable reduction of uncertainties in ( 1) our knowledge of the household metabolism, and hence our predictions of regional household waste generation; (2) our assessment of the impacts of contemplated changes in industrial process siting, and thereby on other aspects of local and regional planning; and (3) our understanding of the impacts of changes in the pattern of demand for different materials and products. It is concluded that the use of such an integrated assessment tool has much to contribute to the debate on regional sustainability.Measures taken to protect the environment often have other, unintended effects on society. One concern is that changed behavior may offset part of the environmental gain, something that has variously been labeled "take-back" or "rebound." In energy economics, the rebound effect encompasses both the behavioral and systems responses to cost reductions of energy services as a result of energy efficiency measures. From an industrial ecology perspective, we are concerned about more than just energy use. Any given efficiency measure has several types of environmental impacts. Changes in the various impact indicators are not necessarily in the same direction. Both co-benefits and negative side effects of measures directed to solve one type of problem have been identified. Environment is often a free input, so that a price-based rebound effect is not expected, but other indirect effects not connected to the price, such as spillover of environmental behavior, also occur. If the costs and impact of products that are already environmentally friendly are reduced, the "rebound" can be in the opposite, desired direction. Furthermore, I identify technical spillover effects. Hence a number of related effects, often producing positive results, are not as well understood. Household environmental impact assessments and eco-efficiency assessments take into account the rebound effect, but they do not necessarily take into account these other effects. The analysis hence indicates that the current focus on the rebound effect is too narrow and needs to be extended to cover co-benefits, negative side effects, and spillover effects.This article describes the integration of life-cycle assessment methods with a new input-output model of the world economy to analyze the environmental and economic implications of alternative future diets. The article reviews findings by industrial ecologists about the energy and land required for the production and consumption of alternative foods and diets in several European countries. It also reviews attributes of foods and diets identified by nutritionists as reducing the risks of obesity and major chronic diseases related to the diets of the affluent. The predominantly plant-based Mediterranean-type diet emerges as a dietary scenario that could satisfy both sets of concerns. The likely implications for, agriculture and for farm policies of a shift toward this diet from the current average diet in the United States are discussed and shown to be substantial. The one-country studies reviewed in the article provide substantial insights into the potential ramifications of dietary change. Many of the limitations of these studies could be overcome by conducting the analysis in a global framework that represented the relationships among consumption, production, and trade and the physical constraints within which they operate. Analysis of the environmental and economic implications of alternative scenarios describing healthy diets can help stimulate more intensive dialogue, debate, and action among the interested parties; such analysis can both benefit from and contribute to initiatives such as the World Health Organization's global strategy on diet and health, which intends to enlist the support of governments, corporations, and civil society.This article analyzes nongovernmental organization (NGO) "market campaigns" that seek to motivate changes in global consumption and production patterns. Through campaigns targeting products as diverse as paper, shoes, and computers, advocacy groups seek to use existing concerns of consumers to influence producers, and simultaneously, to expand and deepen consumer demand for more sustainable products and services. NGOs deploy both negative information to critique leading brands, and positive information to help build new markets for improved products. Successful market campaigns construct networks of actors that identify points of leverage within global production and trading -egimes; coordinate research, exposure, direct action, and negotiations with brands; identify solutions; advance new multi-stakeholder standards and monitoring and certification schemes; build new nongovernmental regulatory institutions; and occasionally attempt to strengthen state regulation. Through an assessment of three market campaigns focused on Staples, Nike, and Dell, this article describes the nature of these campaigns, discusses how they function, assesses their central strategies and tactics, and they are actually having an impact. The article concludes by discussing the relevance and implications of these campaigns for the field of industrial ecology, and how industrial ecology might support future efforts to advance more sustainable producticn and consumption.Industrial ecologists have modeled with precision the material foundations of industrial systems, but given less attention to the demand for products and the drivers of structural changes in these systems. This article suggests that time use data complement data on monetary expenditure and can be used to elucidate the everyday life context in which the changes in the economy take place. It builds upon the claim that goods are not direct sources of utility, but enter specific household activities as inputs. A second argument for the proposed approach is that it can be used to introduce and foster human agency in analyses of production systems. The article uses Finnish time use survey data, consumption expenditure data, and data on the sectoral energy intensities of financial output in the Finnish economy. First, a measure of the energy intensity of octivities is derived by relating consumer time use and the required direct and indirect energy requirements. Second, the results include a decomposition of changes in the energy requirements of private consumption in Finland during the 1990s. It is shown that although the same activities on average require increasing energy inputs per unit of time, Finns have simultaneously changed the structure of their everyday life toward less energy-intensive activities.This article describes a method for determining the environmental load of Dutch private consumption. The method generates detailed information about consumption-related envronmental impacts. The environmental load of households (direct) and production (indirect) was determined for 360 expenditure categories reported in the Dutch Expenditure Survey. The indirect environmental load was calculated with linked input-output tables covering worldwide production and trade. The environmental load per Euro turnover of industries was linked to consumer expenditures. With this method we can quantify several types of environmental load per expenditure category and per economic production region. It was found that food production, room heating, and car use are the most important elements in the environmental load of Dutch private consumption. The impacts taking place abroad were-with the exception of emission of greenhouse gases and road traffic noise-found to be larger than domestic impacts. Most land use was found to take place in developing (non-OECD) countries, whereas most emissions occur in industrialized (OECD) countries.Input-output modeling is a useful tool for tracing environmental impacts of consumption. Because it includes impacts originating from production layers of infinite order (capturing the entire economy), input-output modeling is highly relevant for studies operating in a life-cycle context. In this article we show how the input-output approach can be used to enumerate the problem of sustainable consumption. Based on a literature survey including research done by the authors we present measures of the emissions of carbon dioxide at different spatial levels: nation, city, and household. Further, we take more environmental effects into account and introduce the concept of environmental efficiency by combining input-output modeling and data envelopment analysis. Finally, we discuss the policy relevance of the different measures. The article demonstrates that input-output modeling has a wide range of life-cycle oriented applications when combined with other data sources such as detailed trade statistics, foreign input-output and environmental statistics, and household expenditure data.China's development over the last few decades has been characterized by high rates of economic growth, large-scale migration from rural areas to the fast-growing cities accompanied by changes in lifestyles, and steady population growth. These developments have left deep marks on resource availability and quality. In this article we conduct a scenario analysis of how lifestyle changes and other major developments might affect water resources. China has the longest tradition in river and water resource management in the world. Its civilization has sought to control the effects of floods and drought for thousands of years and has utilized water flows for irrigation and navigation. In the last century, competing uses such as domestic, municipal, and industrial water consumption have also become reasons for the regulation of and large-scale abstraction of water. To investigate the major changes in economy and society and their effects on the water situation in China, a set of scenarios is developed and analyzed within a structural economics framework. A hydrological model that. represents water flows in the major watersheds is linked to a regional input-output model that represents socioeconomic activities in the major economic-administrative regions of China. The regional analysis shows that the North and Northwest regions are waterscarce and that lifestyle changes and technical shifts are the most important factors driving future water consumption.The extension of the waste input-output (WIO) model to analyze households' sustainable consumption patterns is presented in this article. We estimate direct and indirect emission loads induced by household consumption by the WIO model. The WIO model is much more suitable for the analysis of sustainable consumption than the conventional input-output model because it can deal with the disposal stage of consumed goods as well as the purchase and use stages. A simple method for evaluating income rebound effects is also introduced. As indicators of environmental loads, we estimate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and landfill consumption induced by household consumption. The model is applied to some typical sustainable consumption scenarios: shifting transportation modes from a private car 70 public transportation, the longer use of household electric appliances, and eating at restaurants instead of cooking at home. We found that the income rebound effects should be considered to evaluate environmental loads induced by different consumption patterns.The objective of this article is to explore the potential for lowering household energy use given existing local support systems, in this case in the Stockholm inner city with the aid of the Dutch energy analysis program (EAP) that was adapted to Swedish conditions and that portrays total energy use for 300 consumption categories. Previously such modeling for Sweden was carried out using only Dutch databases. Our case-study area is well equipped with food stores, local markets, public transportation, and entertainment facilitating some energy-efficient consumption choices. With maintained expenditure levels but changed consumption patterns, current reduction potentials are on the order of 10-20%. Options concerning diet can lower food indirect energy use by up to 30%, whereas options in other areas have a lower potential. Further reductions will require enhanced local support systems, external as well as internal, The Results indicate that it is risky not to use nationally adapted figures for energy efficiency in the production sectors when modeling household energy use, because potential for change may be overlooked. Future work should include foreign energy intensities when modeling imported goods; otherwise, results may be less reliable. The Swedish EAP needs further work before it can be put to use as a modeling tool for everyday behavior, but it is already generating important possibilities for producing reliable data that can be used by local energy counselors.Synthetic organic chemicals are ingredients of many consumer products used daily. Consumers are therefore constantly exposed to a broad spectrum of synthetic organic chemicals, which might be irritants or have other effects harmful to human health, in the consumption phase of the product life cycle. Relevant examples are the polycyclic musk fragrances that make up an important group of synthetic fragrance compounds. Using a scenario-based approach, we simulate various product uses and calculate the resulting dermal exposure to the musk fragrances 6-acetyl-1,1,2,4,47-hexamethyltetraline and hexahydro-hexamethyl-cyclopenta(gamma)-2-benzopyran for a wide spectrum of consumer products. The product spectrum was selected from scented personal care products and household cleansing agents. Exposure to musk fragrances is calculated with two dermal exposure models, and results are presented for female and male European consumers, The variability of required inputs is accounted for by assuming minimal, average or median, and maximal values for important model parameters. The study identifies a limited number of types of scented consumer products as significantly contributing to daily dermal consumer exposure to musk fragrances. Exposure levels resulting from the simultaneous use of these products and the number of exposed consumers are investigated.Bringing about more sustainable consumption patterns is an important challenge for society and science. In this article the concept of household metabolism is applied to analyzing consumption patterns and to identifying possibilities for the development of sustainable household consumption patterns. Household metabolism is determined in terms of total energy requirements, including both direct and indirect energy requirements, using a hybrid method. This method enables us to evaluate various determinants of the environmental load of consumption consistently at several levels-the national level, the local level, and the household level. The average annual energy requirement of households varies considerably between the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Sweden, as well as within these countries. The average expenditure level per household explains a large part of the observed variations. Differences between these countries are also related to the efficiency of the production sectors and to the energy supply system. The consumption categories of food, transport, and recreation show the largest contributions to the environmental load. A comparison of consumer groups with different household characteristics shows remarkable differences in the division of spending over the consumption categories, Thus, analyses of different types of households are important for providing a basis for options to induce decreases of the environmental load of household consumption. At the city level, options for change are provided by an analysis of the city infrastructure, which determines a large part of the direct energy use by households (for transport and heating). At the national level, energy efficiency in production and in electricity generation is an important trigger for decreasing household energy requirements.As house size increases, resource use in buildings goes up, more land is occupied, increased impermeable surface results in more storm-water runoff, construction costs rise, and energy consumption increases. In new, single-family houses constructed in the United States, living area per family member has increased by a factor of 3 since the 1950s, In comparing the energy performance of compact (small) and large single-family houses, we find that a small house built to only moderate energy-performance standards uses substantially less energy for heating and cooling than a large house built to very high energy-performance standards. This article examines some of the trends in single-family house building in the United States and provides recommendations for downsizing houses to improve quality and resource efficiency.Commercial forests in many parts of the world are deficient in nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrient-deficient forests often exist in close proximity to large animal feeding operations, meat processing and other food, textile, or other biomass-processing plants, and municipal waste treatment facilities. Many of these facilities produce large surpluses of nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic matter as gaseous ammonia, urea, uric acid, phosphorus compounds, bacterial sludges, and partially treated municipal wastewaters. These co-existing and substantial nutrient deficiencies and surpluses offer ready-made opportunities for discovery, demonstration, and commercial development of science-based, technology-facilitated, environmentally sound, economically viable, and socially acceptable "win-win alliances" among these major industries based on the principles of industrial ecology and sustainable development. The major challenge is to discover practical means to capture the surplus nutrients and put them to work in forest stands from which value-added products can be produced and sold at a profit.Animal production systems convert plant protein into animal protein. Depending on animal species, ration and management, between 5% and 45 % of the nitrogen (N) in plant protein is converted to and deposited in animal protein. The other 55%-95% is excreted via urine and feces, and can be used as nutrient source for plant (= often animal feed) production. The estimated global amount of N voided by animals ranges between 80 and 130 Tg N per year, and is as large as or larger than the global annual N fertilizer consumption. Cattle (60%), sheep (12%) and pigs (6%) have the largest share in animal manure N production. The conversion of plant N into animal N is on average more efficient in poultry and pork production than in dairy production, which is higher than in beef and sheep production. However, differences within a type of animal production system can be as large as differences between types of animal production systems, due to large effects of the genetic potential of animals, animal feed and management. The management of animals and animal feed, together with the genetic potential of the animals, are key factors to a high efficiency of conversion of plant protein into animal protein. The efficiency of the conversion of N from animal manure, following application to land, into plant protein ranges between 0 and 60%, while the estimated global mean is about 15%. The other 40% -100% is lost to the wider environment via NH3 volatilization, denitrification, leaching and run-off in pastures or during storage and/or following application of the animal manure to land. On a global scale, only 40%-50% of the amount of N voided is collected in barns, stables and paddocks, and only half of this amount is recycled to crop land. The N losses from animal manure collected in barns, stables and paddocks depend on the animal manure management system. Relative large losses occur in confined animal feeding operations, as these often lack the land base to utilize the N from animal manure effectively. Losses will be relatively low when all manure are collected rapidly in water-tight and covered basins, and when they are subsequently applied to the land in proper amounts and at the proper time, and using the proper method (low-emission techniques). The efficiency of the conversion of N from animal manure, following application to land, into plant protein ranges between 0 and 60%, while the estimated global mean is about 15%. The other 40% -100% is lost to the wider environment via NH3 volatilization, denitrification, leaching and run-off in pastures or during storage and/or following application of the animal manure to land. On a global scale, only 40%-50% of the amount of N voided is collected in barns, stables and paddocks, and only half of this amount is recycled to crop land. The N losses from animal manure collected in barns, stables and paddocks depend on the animal manure management system. Relative large losses occur in confined animal feeding operations, as these often lack the land base to utilize the N from animal manure effectively. Losses will be relatively low when all manure are collected rapidly in water-tight and covered basins, and when they are subsequently applied to the land in proper amounts and at the proper time, and using the proper method (low-emission techniques). There is opportunity for improving the N conversion in animal production systems by improving the genetic production potential of the herd, the composition of the animal feed, and the management of the animal manure. Coupling of crop and animal production systems, at least at a regional scale, is one way to high N use efficiency in the whole system. Clustering of confined animal production systems with other intensive agricultural production systems on the basis of concepts from industrial ecology with manure processing is another possible way to improve N use efficiency.This paper focuses upon the sustainability of the economy in relation to nature and natural ecosystems. There are two main aspects to this relationship: consumption of natural resources; and generation of pollution and wastes because of economic practices of production, exchange and consumption. The paper addresses the extent to which both consumption of natural resources and production of pollution and wastes can be reduced and the economy and its constituent practices and spaces be made more sustainable, recognizing that sustainability involves cultural, political-economic and social dimensions as well as the impact of human activity on nature. A close and critical reading of the literatures on industrial ecology, industrial metabolism and natural capitalism provides an entry point into these issues. These literatures help identify the 'natural limits' to economic practices but are themselves limited in their approach to issues of sustainability. The paper explores these latter limits and their implications. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Resource sharing among co-located firms-referenced in the industrial ecology literature as "industrial symbiosis" engages traditionally separate industries in a collective approach to business and environmental management involving the physical exchanges of materials, energy, water, and byproducts. While industrial symbiosis is seen hypothetically as a win-win situation, there are few analyses of the economic and environmental consequences for the individual participants in multi-faceted exchanges. In this article, the nascent industrial symbiosis network in Guayama, Puerto Rico, is explored from environmental, economic, and regulatory perspectives of the individual participants and the community. A coal-fired power plant, owned and operated by the AES Corporation, draws five million gallons per day of process waterfrom nearby sources thus avoiding freshwater withdrawals and, through steam sales, significantly reduces emissions from a nearby refinery. This article quantifies economic and environmental costs and benefits for the symbiosis participants, concluding that there are substantial benefits to engaging in symbiosis, although these benefits fall unevenly on participating organizations. Policy intervention can be a viable means of motivating more regular occurrences of resource exchanges among groups of firms.Eco-efficiency is an instrument for sustainability analysis, indicating an empirical relation in economic activities between environmental cost or value and environmental impact. This empirical relation can be matched against normative considerations as to how much environmental quality or improvement society would like to offer in exchange for economic welfare, or what the trade-off between the economy and the environment should be if society is to realize a certain level of environmental quality. Its relevance lies in the fact that relations between economy and environment are not self-evident, not at a micro level and not at the macro level resulting from micro-level decisions for society as a whole. Clarifying the why and what of eco-efficiency is a first step toward decision support on these two aspects of sustainability. With the main analytic framework established, filling in the actual economic and environmental relations requires further choices in modeling. Also, the integration of different environmental effects into a single score requires a clear definition of approach, because several partly overlapping methods exist. Some scaling problems accompany the specification of numerator and denominator, which need a solution and some standardization before eco-efficiency analysis can become more widely used. With a method established, the final decision is how to embed it in practical decision making. In getting the details of eco-efficiency better specified, its strengths, but also its weaknesses and limitations, need to be indicated more clearlyEco-efficiency has been defined as a general goal of creating value while decreasing environmental impact. Leaving out the normative part of this concept, the empirical part refers to a ratio between environmental impact and economic cost or value. Two basic choices must be made in defining practical eco-efficiency: which variable is in the denominator and which is in the numerator; and whether to specify environmental impact or improvement and value created or cost. Distinguishing between two situations, the general one of value creation and the specific one of environmental improvement efforts, and leaving the numerator-denominator choice to the user, as diverging practices have developed, four basic types of eco-efficiency result: environmental intensity and environmental productivity in the realm of value creation; and environmental improvement cost and environmental cost-effectiveness in the realm of environmental improvement measures.We develop and apply a valuation methodology to calculate the cost of sustainability capital, and, eventually, sustainable value creation of companies. Sustainable development posits that decisions must take into account all forms of capital rather than just economic capital. We develop a methodology that allows calculation of the costs that are associated with the use of different forms of capital. Our methodology borrows the idea from financial economics that the return on capital has to cover the cost of capital. Capital costs are determined as opportunity costs, that is, the forgone returns that would have been created by alternative investments. We apply and extend the logic of opportunity costs to the valuation not only of economic capital but also of other forms of capital. This allows (a) integrated analysis of use of different forms of capital based on a value-based aggregation of different forms of capital, (b) determination of the opportunity cost of a bundle of different forms of capital used in a company, called cost of sustainability capital, (c) calculation of sustainability efficiency of companies, and (d) calculation of sustainable value creation, that is, the value above the cost of sustainability capital. By expanding the well-established logic of the valuation of economic capital in financial markets to cover other forms of capital, we provide a methodology that allows determination of the most efficient allocation of sustainability capital for sustainable value creation in companies. We demonstrate the practicability of the methodology by the valuation of the sustainability performance of British Petroleum (BP).Aggregation of environmental pressures into a single environmental damage index is a major challenge of eco-efficiency measurement. This article examines how the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method can be adapted for this purpose. DEA accounts for substitution possibilities between different natural resources and emissions and does not require subjective judgment about the weights. Although DEA does not require subjective or normative judgment, soft weight restrictions can be incorporated into the framework The proposed approach is illustrated by an application to assessing eco-efficiency of road transportation in the three largest towns of eastern Finland.To provide valuable support for successful decision-making, managers need a balanced set of financial and nonfinancial measures that represent different requirements, strategic goals, strategies, resources, and capabilities and the causal relationships between these domains. The balanced scorecard is such a measurement system. As an open system the balanced scorecard facilitates the consideration of sustainability issues. But enhanced balanced scorecards require a new type of data. This is where eco-efficiency analysis comes into play. This article discusses the relationship between so-called sustainability balanced scorecards and eco-efficiency analysis. Eco-efficiency analysis not only provides a data source for sustainability balanced scorecards; in the perspective of environmental information systems it also serves as a link between the balanced scorecard and corporate environmental accounting systems so that eco-efficiency as a component of an environmental information system becomes an adapter with two interfaces, which are characterized in this article. The main focus is on the principle of cause and effect, its different forms, and the implications for the design of appropriate information system components.Eco-efficiency implies environmental improvement at the lowest possible cost. When several environmental measures are possible, these can be ranked according to their cost per unit of environmental improvement, after which an eco-efficient set of measures can be selected that yields a given level of environmental improvement at least cost. This procedure can be visualized as a supply curve for environmental improvement. Such a curve plots cumulative cost or cost per unit of environmental improvement against cumulative environmental improvement, with measures ordered according to increasing cost per unit of environmental improvement. This paper presents supply curves for environmental improvement on the basis of a set of possible environmental measures for a company in the Dutch oil and gas producing industry. To measure aggregated potential environmental improvement for a given measure, different environmental impacts are lumped together using weighting factors. We compare five methods for weighting environmental impacts, covering a wide range of current practices. The supply curves that were determined for each of the five weighting methods show relatively small differences, except for one (the distance-to-target method). The ranking of measures differs significantly, though, and as a result, so do the measures that are selected if total costs are restricted to a certain budget. Also, the consequent reduction in emissions of specific substances, in particular nitrogen oxides (NOx), depends on the weighting method selected.A maximum abatement cost (MAC) method is proposed as a means of assessing preferential purchasing of products with multiple environmental effects. Using the MAC method, cost-effectiveness of the introduction of a product with less emissions of some substances than conventional products can be assessed. In the MAC method, the reduction of a pollutant is multiplied by the MAC, the maximum unit cost of the measures taken elsewhere in society aiming to reduce the pollutant, and is added up over the relevant pollutants. The total sum, called avoidable abatement cost (AAC), is compared with the additional private cost of the product for the purchaser When the additional private cost is smaller than the AAC, the product is regarded as relatively eco-efficient. The MAC method is illustrated with an assessment of industrial pumps. The advantages and limitations of the method are discussed.The eco-efficiency analysis method developed and used by the Oko-Institut analyzes different alternatives that fulfill a defined consumer need, from an environmental as well as an economic perspective. Like life-cycle assessment (LCA), eco-efficiency analysis makes possible the setting of priorities in purchasing decisions or can be used to show optimization potentials in product development processes. Eco-efficiency analysis builds upon two methods: LCA, according to ISO 14040 ff. (to assess the environmental aspects of products and processes), and life-cycle costing. Life-cycle costing results in a single figure-the total costs of ownership to one or several actors. The environmental impacts can be evaluated and aggregated as a single score or the impact category indicator results can be kept separate. In either case two single scores can be compared: the total environmental burden or the impact category indicator results, and the total costs of ownership of the alternatives under consideration. The results can then be plotted in two-dimensional graphs that show the effectiveness of certain measures in environmental and economic terms. The efficiency is expressed as a numerical ratio of environmental savings to difference in costs. Together with furnishing more detailed results and a discussion of additional benefits or potential barriers, eco-efficiency analysis broadens the basis for decision-making processes.The concept of eco-efficiency is commonly referred to as a business link to sustainable development. In this article, eco-efficiency is examined at a regional level as an approach to promoting the competitiveness of economic activities in the Finnish Kymenlaakso region and mitigating their harmful impacts on the environment. The aim is to develop appropriate indicators for monitoring changes in the eco-efficiency of the region. A starting point is to produce indicators for the environmental and economic dimensions of regional development and use them for measuring regional eco-efficiency. The environmental impact indicators are based on a life-cycle assessment method, producing different types of environmental impact indicators: pressure indicators (e.g., emissions of CO2), impact category indicators (e.g., CO2 equivalents in the case of climate change), and a total impact indicator (aggregating different impact category indicator results into a single value). Environmental impact indicators based on direct material input, total material input and total material requirement of the Kymenlaakso region are also assessed. The economic indicators used are the gross domestic product, the value added, and the output of the main economic sectors of Kymenlaakso. In the eco-efficiency assessment, the economic and environmental impact indicators are monitored in the same graph. In a few cases eco-efficiency ratios can also be calculated (the economic indicators are divided by the environmental indicators). Output (= value added + intermediate consumption) is used as an economic indicator related to the environmental impact indicators, which also cover the upstream processes of the region's activities. In the article, we also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of using the different environmental impact indicators.Eco-efficiency at the product level is defined as product value per unit of environmental impact. In this paper, we present a method for quantifying the eco-efficiency using quality function deployment (QFD) and life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA). These well-known tools are widely used in the manufacturing industry. QFD, which is one of the methods used in product development based on consumer preferences, is introduced to calculate the product value. An index of the product value is calculated as the weighted average of improvement rates of quality characteristics. The importance of customer requirements, derived from the QFD matrix, is applied. Environmental impacts throughout a product life cycle are calculated based on an LCIA method widely used in Japan. By applying the LCIA method of endpoint type, the endpoint damage caused by various life-cycle inventories is calculated. Willingness to pay is applied to integrate it into a single index. Eco-design support tools, namely the life-cycle planning (LCP) tool and the life-cycle assessment (LCA) tool, have already been developed. Using these tools, data required for calculation of the eco-efficiency of products can be collected. The product value is calculated based on QFD data stored in the LCP tool and the environmental impact is calculated using the LCA tool. Case studies of eco-efficiency are adopted and the adequacy of this method is clarified. Several advantages of this method are characterized.At various levels of environmental policy-making there is a demand to translate polluting emissions into monetary units. In the so-called reduction cost approach, based upon policy targets, polluting emissions are expressed in monetary terms by determination of the marginal unit reduction cost at the emission target level. This approach provides shadow prices for emissions by which it can be established whether a certain measure or technology belongs to the most efficient set of measures by which the policy targets can be reached. This article argues that, if clear (generic) government targets such as national emission reduction targets exist for an emission, shadow prices derived by this method are to be preferred to shadow prices derived by other methods for decisions at the project (implementation) level. By application of the reduction cost approach, implementation decisions can be made that are both cost-effective and consistent with government policyEco-efficiency has been established as a crucial concept for corporate environmental management. Most approaches deal with eco-efficiency on the level of the company or the product. However, given that companies have special budgets earmarked for environmental operations or investments, the question arises as to which operation within which domain is the most eco-efficient. This article presents an approach to supporting these decisions by calculating eco-efficiency on the operational level. The procedure is demonstrated using a case study of the Swiss National Railway Company Investments and operations in the domains of energy production, landscape and nature conservation, noise protection, and contaminated soil remediation are assessed and compared. Decision-makers seeking an eco-efficient corporate investment policy will find, in this concept, a guideline for prioritizing various domains of operation as well as the operations within a domain.Measures of eco-efficiency-broadly understood as "getting more from less"-often include an economic and an environmental variable. The latter is often seen as the more problematic variable, particularly when used in relation to impacts of public concern. But an analysis of resource and value trends in the U.K. steel and aluminum industries over the last 30 yr showed that there are significant problems associated with using economic variables in measures of eco-efficiency at the sectoral level. The research found that the U.K. steel and aluminum industries have improved the effectiveness with which they use natural resources, but that this has been accompanied by a decline in the economic output (value added) per unit of material or energy consumed. These seemingly contradictory results can be explained by the fall in the price of metals in real terms, and by the competitive pressures that necessitate the cutting of production costs and indirectly lead to a fall in the measure of economic output of the relevant industry. The research also suggests a logical terminology to bring consistency and coherence to the broad field of eco-efficiency indicators, with an important distinction made between measures that examine the value output per unit of physical input, and measures that examine the physical output per unit of physical input. Both these types of indicators are important, as they highlight different aspects of eco-efficiency.The concept of eco-efficiency is increasingly being applied to judge the combined environmental and economic performance of product systems, processes, and/or companies. Eco-efficiency is often defined as the ratio of economic value added to environmental impact added. This definition is not appropriate for end-of-pipe treatment technologies because these technologies aim at improving the environmental performance of technical processes at the cost of financial expense. Therefore, an indicator for the assessment of end-of-pipe technologies has been proposed. This indicator, called environmental cost efficiency (ECE), is defined as the ratio of net environmental benefits to the difference in costs. ECE is applied to four end-of-pipe technologies for the treatment of municipal solid waste: sanitary landfill, mechanical-biological treatment, modern grate incineration, and a staged thermal process (pyrolysis and gasification). A life-cycle assessment was performed on these processes to quantify the net environmental benefit. Moreover, the approximate net costs (costs minus benefits) were quantified. The results show that, relative to grate incineration, sanitary landfills and mechanical-biological treatment are less costly but environmentally more harmful. We calculated the ECE for all combinations of technologies. The results indicate that the staged thermal process may be the most environmentally cost-efficient alternative to all other treatment technologies in the long run, followed by mechanical-biological treatment and grate incineration.The closing of material loops is a critical challenge in industrial ecology. It relies mainly on the utilization of recovered materials/parts/products in the original and principal production system while their original function is retained at the highest level possible. In this study, advanced loop-closing systems for the recycling of end-of-life vehicles and electric household appliances are first designed in "Hyogo Eco-town." Second, a methodology for evaluating the eco-efficiency of these systems is developed. Finally, the eco-efficiency of the designed advanced loop-closing strategies for the two products is evaluated, based on the results of materials flow analysis and life-cycle assessment. The results show that, compared with conventional recycling systems, when an industrial complex and an advanced loop-closing system for end-of-life vehicles are established, the total economic value increases by 114% and the eco-efficiency in terms of the amount of direct material input is improved by 57%. This system permits the utilization of the by-products, wastes, and recovered materials that originate from other industrial sectors as input to production activities. In the case of end-of-life electric household appliances, an advanced loop-closing strategy to lengthen the product life with parts reuse improves the eco-efficiency in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 4% compared with the conventional replacement of the appliance with a new product along with the material recycling option.A simple method of representing the eco-efficiency (E/E) of a product system has been developed and applied to a pollution prevention program at a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME). Cost-side and environment-side indicators were derived using total cost accounting and life-cycle assessment, respectively The derived indicators were subsequently normalized to reference values representing the current cost and environmental situation. By combining these normalized indicators, the E/E of a product system can be expressed on a simple graph. The method was applied in a case study carried out at a South Korean SME producing components for electronic equipment such as mobile communication base stations. A silver-plating process was identified as one of the key processes driving a substantial fraction of the total cost and aggregate environmental impact of the product system. Focusing on the key issues identified, a series of alternative processes, including use of a product insulation cover, a sieve-type ancillary electrode, a balanced-uniform plating technique, stream segregation, and noncyanice electroplating, were proposed. The feasibility of these alternatives was validated against product specifications as well as the company's financial and spatial capacity The potential improvements accruing from these alternatives are presented as a simple graph that can be used by decision makers to readily identify trade-offs between economic and environmental issues.The main purpose of industrial ecology is to evaluate and minimize impacts from economic activities. Tourism, as an economic activity, results in a full range of environmental impacts and should be regarded as any other industry. Hence, the application of industrial ecology in tourism was investigated to enhance environmental management of catering. More specifically, boxed food in Taiwan was taken as a case study to demonstrate this new approach. The framework for studying boxed food was based on material flow analysis. Boxed food analysis can be divided into two parts: the meal box and the contents. Meal boxes were inventoried with a life cycle assessment (LCA). According to the findings of this study, environmental impacts from a PP meal box production were more expensive than others, while those from a PS meal box production were the lowest. The life cycle inventory analysis of the contents will be investigated with a new approach system in the next phase of our work. This new approach is an integration of the LCA with the Hazard Analysis Control Point (HACCP) system. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the widespread incorporation of sustainable development into policy discourses, actually achieving the `win-win-win' scenario of economic, environmental and social development continues to be problematic. Advocates of industrial ecology suggest that by shifting the basis of industrial production from a linear to a closed loop system, these gains can be achieved. In recent years, concepts drawn from industrial ecology have been used to plan and develop eco-industrial parks (EIPs) that seek to increase business competitiveness, reduce waste and pollution, create jobs and improve working conditions. Despite a growing interest in EIPs, there have been few empirically informed studies that seek to explore the potential contribution such Ell's may make to sustainable development. This paper contributes to a developing sympathetic critique of industrial ecology by focusing on the key problems and dilemmas that arise in the course of developing eco-industrial parks, drawing upon empirical work conducted in the USA. The paper draws upon both an extensive survey of EIPs and in-depth interviews conducted with a range of stakeholders at ten US sites. As the paper reveals, EIPs in the USA are in their early stages and likewise their contribution to both economic development and environmental policy, let alone social policies, is complicated and inchoate. The empirical material reveals that key features of industrial ecology such as inter-firm networking and collaboration in the form of materials interchange and energy cascading are either absent or in the early planning stages. In each of the ten cases what is emerging is a form of EIP partly determined by the geographic setting and broader economic realities of the locality. While collaborative behaviour between firms is central to EIP development if the potential benefits of industrial ecology are to be realised, it is important to realise that such behaviour is difficult to develop from scratch through policy intervention. In conclusion, the paper suggests that expectations must be realistic for the community and location in question. As part of that realism, EIP projects must be designed to allow for a gradual approach, and each phase needs to be financially viable. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Printer and letter quality paper represents a high-value component of the waste from commercial premises. Around large cities, exemplified by London, the paper flows are sufficiently large to sustain a dedicated logistics network and plant to recover and recycle graphics-quality paper. Analysis of the fibre flows around the supply system for paper recovery and recycling shows that, given the present low proportion of recycled fibre graphics paper used in the UK, other sources of fibre are not needed to maintain the supply and quality of the recycled material. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the recycling system shows that its environmental performance is dominated by energy use and greenhouse-warming emissions. Although the detailed results depend on how waste fibre and biomass are otherwise used, this emerges as a case in which recycling really does give environmental benefits. LCA also enables possible changes in the system for recovering and reprocessing paper to be examined, leading to new concepts for more sustainable local management of resource flows.This article explores the potential of industrial ecology to inform the redesign of an existing industry: that which is concerned with the production, sale, and support of automobiles. In so doing, it brings together the concepts embedded in industrial ecology with issues of economic scale, product design or technology, process technology, and the way in which new combinations of these features can result in an alternative structure for the automotive industry that has the potential to enhance sustainability performance. In so doing, the article advances the general argument that the economic, technical, and spatial organization of production and consumption are co-determined in a manner that collectively shapes the industrial ecology of an industry. In contradistinction to the prevailing industry, the article then advances the concept of micro factory retailing as an alternative framework for the industry that would result in significantly different performance in terms of industrial ecology.New advances in Internet technologies and computer modeling provide opportunities for collaborative systems to support research and development in the field of industrial ecology. In particular, new information technologies such as semantic search engines based on ontologies could help researchers to link fragments of knowledge generated at research centers from around the world. Using a storyline of four imaginary researchers who hope to find collaborators in order to develop their research findings, we illustrate two levels of a four-level architecture for an Internet-based knowledge integration and collaboration environment for integrated environmental assessment. The foundation of the proposed architecture is a belief that computational models are an effective medium for conveying expert knowledge of various phenomena. Drawing from this premise, the first level of the architecture stands on a base of computational models that in some way represent the expert knowledge of the model builder. At the second level, we provide markup and interface definition tools to describe the type of knowledge contained in each model, together with the types of information services that can be provided. The results of research at these two levels of an Internet-based knowledge integration environment for integrated environmental assessment in industrial ecology are presented in this article. Our work on the third level of model searching and matching and the fourth level of parametric model integration and solving will be presented in subsequent articles.A common feature distinguishing between parametric/statistical models and engineering economics models is that engineering models explicitly represent best practice technologies, whereas parametric/statistical models are typically based on average practice. Measures of energy intensity based on average practice are of little use in corporate management of energy use or for public policy goal setting. In the context of company- or plant-level indicators, it is more useful to have a measure of energy intensity that is capable of indicating where a company or plant lies within a distribution of performance. In other words, is the performance close to (or far from) the industry best practice? This article presents a parametric/statistical approach that can be used to measure best practice, thereby providing a measure of the difference, or "efficiency gap;' at a plant, company, or overall industry level. The approach requires plant-level data and applies a stochastic frontier regression analysis used by the ENERGY STAR (TM) industrial energy performance indicator (EPI) to energy intensity. Stochastic frontier regression analysis separates energy intensity into three components: systematic effects, inefficiency, and statistical (random) error. The article outlines the method and gives examples of EPI analysis conducted for two industries, breweries and motor vehicle assembly. In the EPI developed with the stochastic frontier regression for the auto industry, the industry median "efficiency gap" was around 27%.A comprehensive annual cycle for stocks and flows of zinc, based on data from circa 1994 and incorporating information on extraction, processing, fabrication use discard recycling,,,, and landfilling, was carried out at three discrete governmental unit levels-54 countries and I country group (which together comprise essentially all global anthropogenic zinc stocks and flows), nine world regions, and the planet as a whole. All of these cycles are available in an electronic supplement to this article, which thus provides a metadata set on zinc flows for the use of industrial ecology researchers. A "best estimate" global zinc cycle was constructed to resolve aggregation discrepancies. Among the most interesting results are the following: (I) The accumulation ratio, that is, addition to in-use stock as a function of zinc entering use, is positive and large (2/3 of zinc entering use is added to stock) (country, regional, and global levels); (2) secondary input ratios (fractions of input to fabrication that are from recycled zinc) and domestic recycling percentages (fractions of discarded zinc that are recycled) differ among regions by as much as a factor of six (regional level); (3) worldwide, about 40% of the zinc that was discarded in various forms was recovered and reused or recycled (global level); (4) zinc cycles can usefully be characterized by a set of ratios, including, notably, the utilization efficiency (the ratio of manufacturing waste to manufacturing output: 0.090) and the prompt scrap ratio (new scrap as a fraction of manufacturing input: 0.070) (global level). Because capturable discards are a significant fraction of primary zinc inputs, if a larger proportion of discards were recaptured, extraction requirements would decrease significantly (global level). The results provide a framework for complementary studies in resource stocks, industrial resource utilization, energy consumption, waste management, industrial economics, and environmental impacts.A comprehensive multilevel contemporary cycle for stocks and flows of zinc is analyzed by the tools of exploratory data analysis. The analysis is performed at three discrete organizational levels-country (53 countries and I country group that together comprise essentially all anthropogenic stocks and flows of zinc), world region (9 world regions), and the planet as a whole. The results demonstrate the following: (1) Exploratory data analysis provides valuable and otherwise unobtainable information about material flows, especially those across multiple spatial levels. (2) All distributions of country-level zinc stock and flow data are highly skewed, a few countries having large magnitudes, many having small magnitudes. (3) Rates of fabrication of zinc-containing products for the countries are poorly correlated with rates of extraction, reflecting the fact that many countries that extract zinc do not fabricate products from zinc to any significant degree, and vice versa. (4) Virtually all countries are adding zinc to stock in the use phase (in galvanizing applications, zinc castings, etc.). These rates of addition are highly correlated with rates of zinc entering use in all regions, and are higher in regions under vigorous development. (5) With weak confidence, the rate of zinc landfilling by countries appears to be highly correlated with the rate of discard. (6) The statistical distributions of regional-level zinc cycle parameters are approximately log normal. (7) The extremes of normalized statistical distributions of zinc flow values are broader at lower spatial levels (country versus region, for example), but regional interquartile ranges for zinc entering use and zinc discards are higher at regional level then at country level.Concerns about access to oil supplies have encouraged the exploration of renewable fuel and energy sources. Industrial ecology offers tools to compare the energy implications and benefits of differing strategies, but using botanical sources of raw materials to replace nonrenewable ones also requires appreciation of plant science, especially the variation in genetic potential within species. Whereas cultivation methods determine whether genetic potential is realized, different methods impact the environment to varying degrees. Experience with barley variety mixtures, aimed at reducing chemical input, has shown them to improve yield and reduce disease, while maintaining or even enhancing quality. Yield improvements still occurred in the absence of disease and increased in proportion to the number of component varieties. Because other research showed mixtures to be similarly effective in wheat, a protocol to grow and exploit a complex mixture of soft wheat is proposed, offering a cost-effective and energy efficient feedstock for a possible bioethanol industry in the United Kingdom. Ethanol would be produced initially from grain, with the straw used for heating or electricity generation. Fertilizer production and use and vehicle fuels have been shown as the main forms of energy consumption in growing a crop, and targets for enhancing the energy balance, by growing mixtures under an integrated farming system, are postulated. A close but negative association between grain protein and alcohol yield is demonstrated and a mixture giving comparable grain yield, but superior alcohol yield, to its best component is identified. Mixing varieties differing in plant morphology may also increase total biomass yield and, therefore, the energy generated from the crop. Pesticide reduction has another positive, though small, effect on the energy balance, from using mixtures. Eliminating prophylactic spraying also reduces vehicle fuel consumption, and may provide the low-toxicity benefits of organic agriculture without the yield penalty. A range of alternative uses for straw and other by-products is also discussed.Environmental policy is oriented toward integrated pollution prevention, taking into consideration all environmental media (air, water, land) and energy consumption. Therefore, methods for assessing environmentally relevant installations are needed which take economic, technical, and especially ecological criteria into account simultaneously. Mass and energy flow models are used for the representation of production processes and form the basis for the inventory phase in life-cycle assessment (LCA). For the interpretation of LCA results and the weighting of the aggregated impact assessment indicators, approaches of multicriterion analysis (MCA) have been proposed. These can analyze ecological aspects as well as economic and technical criteria. Recent developments in LCA focus on decision support for policy makers or decision boards. Appropriate support for investment decisions on environmentally relevant installations, however, is rare. Based on a case study of the sector called surface coating, an MCA of environmentally relevant installations is described. With the help of a mass and energy flow management system, alternative scenarios, depicting the use of solvent-reduced materials and environmentally friendly techniques, are modeled for the job coater processes in case studies of coating of mobile phones and coating of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) parts destined for the automobile industry. The modeled scenarios are further analyzed by using a multicriterion decision support module. The application of the outranking approach PROMETHEE is illustrated. A further investigation of the derived ranking can be obtained through sensitivity analyses. Moreover, the results derived by PROMETHEE are compared with the outcomes of the multicriterion approaches multiattribute utility theory and analytical hierarchy process.To date the most common measures of environmental performance used to compare industries, and by extension firms or facilities, have been quantity of pollution emitted or hazardous waste generated. Discharge information, however, does not necessarily capture potential health effects. We propose an alternative environmental performance measure that includes the public health risks of toxic air emissions extended to industry supply chains using economic input-output life-cycle assessment. Cancer risk to the U.S. population was determined by applying a damage function to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) as modeled by CaITOX, a multimedia multi-pathway fate and exposure model. Risks were then translated into social costs using cancer willingness to pay. For a baseline emissions year of 1998, 260 excess cancer cases were calculated for I 16 TRI chemicals, dominated by ingestion risk from polycyclic aromatic compounds and dioxins emitted by the primary aluminum and cement industries, respectively. The direct emissions of a small number of industry sectors account for most of the U.S. population cancer risk. For the majority of industry sectors, however, cancer risk per $1 million output is associated with supply chain upstream emissions. Ranking industries by total (direct + upstream) supply chain risk per economic output leads to different conclusions about the relative hazards associated with these industries than a conventional ranking based on emissions per economic output.In February 2003, European Union (EU) policy makers implemented a Directive that will make producers responsible for waste electrical and electronic equipment at end-of-life (known as the "WEE" Directive). Under this new legislation, producers are required to organize and finance the take-back, treatment, and recycling of WEEE and achieve mass-based recycling and recovery targets. This legislation is part of a growing trend of extended producer responsibility for waste, which has the potential to shift the world's economies toward more circular patterns of resource use and recycling. This study uses life-cycle assessment and costing to investigate the possible environmental effects of the WEEE Directive, based on an example of printer recycling in the United Kingdom. For a total of four waste management scenarios and nine environmental impact categories investigated in this study, results varied, with no scenario emerging as best or worst overall compared to landflling. The level of environmental impact depended on the type of material and waste management processes involved. Additionally, under the broad mass-based targets of the WEEE Directive, the pattern of relationships between recycling rates, environmental impacts, and treatment and recycling costs may lead to unplanned and unwanted results. Contrary to original EU assumptions, the use of mass-based targets may not ensure that producers adapt the design of their products as intended under producer responsibility. It is concluded that the EU should revise the scope of consideration of the WEEE Directive to ensure its life-cycle impacts are addressed. In particular, specific environmental objectives and operating standards for treatment and recycling processes should be investigated as an alternative to mass-based recycling and recovery targets.This article presents a modeling framework that enhances our ability to analyze the implications of policy for future sustainability of industrial systems. The framework quantifies the relationship between physical input and waste flows, capital vintage, and investment behavior in the U.S. pulp and paper industry. A regional vintage model is developed that simultaneously incorporates investment decisions, vintage structure of the capital stock, and physical material and energy flows, in addition to paper demand. Each capital vintage is specified by size, output structure, and age-specific retirement rates, as well as fiber use and energy intensities. Both embodied and disembodied technological change are incorporated, as well as greenhouse gas emissions from fuel use, and decomposition and incineration of waste. Estimated equations are used to simulate industrial futures until 2020, from a system of nonlinear differential equations. Our results demonstrate the economic and physical interdependence between material and energy flows and the central role energy prices have in decision-making. For instance, an increase in average energy prices, ceteris paribus, will on average discourage paper recycling, which has implications for greenhouse gas emissions as well as for changes in energy intensity. The analysis of the data reveals diminishing rates of energy self-generation, and the immense longevity of capital, which hampers rapid change in input and carbon intensity. This stresses the importance of investment-led strategies in facilitating faster capital turnover to enhance future sustainability of the system.This paper presents a systems analysis perspective that extends the traditional process design framework to green process design and industrial ecology leading to sustainability. For green process design this involves starting the design decisions as early as chemical and material selection stage on one end, and managing and planning decisions at the other end. However, uncertainties and multiple and conflicting objectives are inherent in such a design process. Uncertainties increase further in industrial ecology. Combining AI approaches with optimization methods, and constraining the system using thermodynamics and physics can provide a way to address this problem. The concept of overall sustainability goes beyond industrial ecology and brings in time dependent nature of the ecosystem and multi-disciplinary decision making. Optimal control methods and theories from financial literature can be useful in handling the time dependent uncertainties in this problem. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article presents an overview of trends relevant for the long-term development of Rotterdam's port complex and resulting opportunities for this complex. These trends resulted from a literature review and conversations with 20 professors in fields relevant for port development. Nine trends that can be expected to become increasingly important in the next decades are discussed. These trends include the rise of manufacturing and logistics platforms, higher land efficiency, increasingly mixed land use in port areas, and rising importance of a "regional innovation system" in ports. Opportunities and concerns for the port of Rotterdam resulting from the trends are discussed.Increasingly, concepts such as sustainable development and ecological modernization have entered into local and regional economic policies and strategies. However, integrating environmental and economic aims has proved difficult, despite arguments that sustainability enables solutions. Eco-industrial development is a recent policy initiative that attempts to integrate economic, social and environmental aims in I concrete form. Derived from concepts of industrial ecology, eco-industrial developments seek to increase business competitiveness, reduce waste and pollution, create jobs, and improve working conditions. While these initiatives are said to offer a new basis for local and regional development, there has been little critical evaluation of eco-industrial development.Descriptions are given of the design and technical characteristics of a cassette dust trap.To prevent rapid climate change, it will be necessary to reduce net anthropogertic CO2 emissions drastically. This likely will require imposition of a tax or tradable permit scheme that creates a subsidy for negative emissions. Here, we examine possible niche markets in the cement and steel Industries where it is possible to generate a limited supply of negative emissions (carbon storage or sequestration) cost-effectively. Ca(OH)(2) and CaO from steel slag or concrete waste can be dissolved in water and reacted with CO2 in ambient air to capture and store carbon safely and permanently in the form of stable carbonate minerals (CaCO3). The kinetics of Ca dissolution for various particle size fractions of ground steel slag and concrete were measured in batch experiments. The majority of available Ca was found to dissolve on a time scale of hours, which was taken to be sufficiently fast for use in an industrial process. An overview of the management options for steel slag and concrete waste is presented, which indicates how their use for carbon sequestration might be integrated into existing industrial processes. Use of the materials in a carbon sequestration scheme does not preclude subsequent use and is likely to add value by removing the undesirable qualities of water absorption and expansion from the products. Finally, an example scheme is presented which could be built and operated with current technology; to sequester CO, with steel slag or concrete waste. Numerical models and simple calculations are used to establish the feasibility and estimate the operating parameters of the scheme. The operating cost is estimated to be US$8/t-CO2 sequestered. The scheme would be important as an early application of technology for capturing CO, directly from ambient air. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Telework (or telecommuting) has been proposed as a way of reducing transportation externalities such as congestion and passenger vehicle energy use. While there is contention among sources about the secondary induced transportation effects, many studies have estimated net benefits as a result of transportation reductions. Analyses including effects from shifts in commercial and residential building energy use, however, are not as visible. It is expected that commercial building energy use would decrease, and residential energy would increase as a result of telework adoption. We estimate macrolevel energy effects across these three energy intensive sectors (transportation, commercial, and residential buildings) to help characterize the potential of telework as a policy initiative to improve national energy efficiency. For current estimated teleworking populations and practices in the United States and Japan, we estimate national level energy savings of only 0.01-0.4% in the United States and 0.03-0.36% in Japan. In a future scenario with pervasive adoption of teleworking, where 50% of information workers telecommute 4 days per week, United States and Japan national energy savings are estimated at only about 1% in both cases. These energy savings are quite modest compared with currently available policy options to mitigate energy demand. By comparison, an improvement in average vehicle fuel efficiency of 20% would save 5.4% of total United States energy demand, suggesting that the direct benefits of adopting telework are relatively small given the large degree of behavioral and structural change required. Still, presuming that future work practices tend to favor greater adoption, the potential energy savings may merit direction towards environmentally beneficial implementation. If trends in the workplace favor more telework in the future, we suggest that maximizing environmental benefits merits greater attention to how telework is adopted. Obviously the increased number of avoided commutes is a factor, but more importantly, elimination of office space due to virtual offices yields energy savings that rival those from reduced commuting. Future analyses and implementation of telework should thus give greater attention to energy use in buildings and residences.The nature of the waste flows for durable goods are considered from the perspective of management options for inventory control if one wishes to use disposed durable goods as an input in the production of products. Television CRTs are used as an example, since they are a durable good and are the focus of recent regulation in many different countries. Inventory policy is found to be important, since there is great uncertainty in the quantity of product available both from year to year or within an actual year. Uncertainty in volume is not a problem, if only a small percentage of the waste stream is desired. Consequently, a strategy of postponement is recommended. However, if it is anticipated that a high percentage of the waste stream will be utilized, then inventory policy becomes more complex. Due to storage behavior, it is possible that a postponement policy may also be used by controlling disposal rates through encouraging or discouraging disposal at different times based on the need for material inputs. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper focuses on the environmental component of sustainability of technology, taking into account the role of industrial ecology. Assessment of environmental sustainability of technology traditionally focuses on immediate impact of technology on the environment through quantifying resource extraction and generated emissions. However, technology does not only exchange materials with the environment but also with the industrial society as a whole, the so-called industrial metabolism. A higher compatibility of a specific technology with the industrial system, as studied in industrial ecology, can result in lower resource extraction and reduced waste emission, indirectly contributing to a better environmental sustainability. Starting from the considerations above and based on the second law of thermodynamics, the paper presents a set of five environmental sustainability indicators for the assessment of products and production pathways, integrating industrial ecology principles. The indicators, all scaled between 0 and 1, take into account: (1) renewability of resources; (2) toxicity of emissions; (3) input of used materials; (4) recoverability of products at the end of their use; (5) process efficiency. The applicability of the elaborated set of indicators is illustrated for different production pathways of alcohols (petrochemical and oleochemical based), polyethylene end-of-life options and electricity production from non-renewable (natural gas and fossil oil) and renewable resources (hydropower, photovoltaic conversion of solar irradiation). (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article is building the theory for the scientific field of industrial ecology. For this, the industrial ecosystem (IE) concept is used. IE uses the model of sustainable ecosystems in unsustainable industrial systems for making progress towards the vision of the industrial ecosystem. Six controversies are revealed and identified as research challenges. I invite all those who are interested in industrial ecology to respond to this contribution.Industrial ecology and the industrial ecosystem approach (IE) are emerging concepts in ecological economics, environmental policy and corporate environmental management. The natural ecosystem model of diverse recycling and cascading material and energy flow systems has been used in industrial systems that are contrasting to this, operating with linear flows and unsustainable. Understanding the evolution of industrial systems over time toward sustainable or unsustainable ways of operating is important for learning about environmental performance analyses as well as for future planning of policy and management. The evolution over time of the Uimaharju forest industry park in Eastern Finland is studied. First, the system development is described by identifying the number of IE-type 'roundput' material and energy flows denoting waste utilisation and sustainable use of renewables. Second, development of the system over time is shown in terms of the number of the actors involved. This structural characteristic is termed system 'diversity'. Third, the relation of the two is considered. Fourth, the drivers of the case system development are discussed. Fifth, an initial effort is made to calculate some of the environmental effects of the system during its development. An increase in roundput and diversity over time is observed. Diversity is affecting roundput. The park tends to enlarge its activities outside the industrial park boundary over time. While the system illustrates high roundput and high diversity, we can only speculate if these characteristics contribute to sustainability, because of difficulties in system boundary definition. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Designs and characteristics are given for sleeve filters with explosion-protected design which have been developed by the NIIOGAZ.Several recent studies have shown that significant quantities of leaded wastes recovered from the disposal of television cathode ray tubes (CRTs) will be entering the waste stream over the next 50 years in a form that is ideal for post-consumer remanufacturing. Furthermore, numerous countries have recently enacted legislation requiring industrial systems to engage in the practice of industrial ecology by having all discarded, returned, or otherwise spent products from manufacturing processes become raw material inputs in subsequent manufacturing operations. Therefore legislation banning CRT disposal together with mandated remanufacturing requirements could lead to numerous potentially attractive business ventures for reprocessing and recycling the high lead content found in this waste. This paper examines inventory issues related to the effective management of these leaded CRT wastes and the nature of the waste flows is considered from the perspective of different management options for inventory control through the use of supply contracts. An effective inventory management policy is extremely important when there is great uncertainty and variability in the year-to-year or within-year quantity of product available - as is the case with the supply of CRT wastes. If it is anticipated that a high percentage of the waste stream will be utilized, then an effective inventory policy proves absolutely essential - but also proves to be an extremely complex process. Consequently, the supply contract approach can be employed to reconcile different pricing preferences with the varying delivery time horizons of different customers.This paper reviews the energy development strategy, impacts of industrialization to the ecological system, general principles of industrial ecology, and the challenge to electric machines systems.In the 1980s, the concept of sustainable economic development emerged to try to deal with the complex and pervasive aspects of the environmental problem. However, an ecological perspective of sustainability requires taking a holistic approach that uses the ecosphere as a frame of reference. This paper describes the anthroposystem model that philosophically views the notion of sustainability in terms of a human-ecological system functioning within the ecosphere with some considerations on its implications.For many years, the problem to be resolved by those charged with achieving local economic development has been 'How does this locality become competitive against other localities?' The processes of economic and spatial integration, understood generally as globalisation, have only served to broaden the definition of those localities that could be described as competitors. Equally, the policy prescriptions that surround this discourse follow an internal logic dominated by market liberalisation in the context of creating some form of competitive advantage over other localities. The research and policy-making process involves scouring the world for examples of best practice to measure, codify, emulate and transfer. Inevitably, under this conceptualisation, most localities are doomed to fail. More recently, the concept of eco-industrialisation has come into prominence as a means to achieve sustainable local development, but again the discourse is one dominated by place promotion and a narrowly determinist interpretation of the ecology metaphor. That is, eco-industrialism as local development has been difficult to distinguish from other forms of place promotion. This paper argues that sustainable local development requires an innovative discourse predicated on the ecological metaphors of diversity, difference and 'fit' with unique local characterisations. It is a discourse that must reach beyond the confines of contemporary economic rationality, and in so doing lay the foundations for a radically redefined concept of local development.Purpose - Green supply chain management (GSCM) has emerged as a key approach for enterprises seeking to become environmentally sustainable. This paper aims to evaluate and describe GSCM drivers, practices and performance among various Chinese manufacturing organizations. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a literature review, four propositions are put forward. An empirical study using survey research was completed. The survey questionnaire was designed with 54 items using literature and industry expert input. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to derive groupings of GSCM pressures, practice and performance from the survey data which included 314 responses. A categorical and descriptive nature of the results is then presented with an evaluation and comparative analysis with previous research findings. Findings - Chinese enterprises have increased their environmental awareness due to regulatory, competitive, and marketing pressures and drivers. However, this awareness has not been translated into strong GSCM practice adoption, let alone into improvements in some areas of performance, where it was expected. Research limitations/implications - The investigation and its findings are still relatively exploratory. Future research can investigate relationships identified in this work, as well as tease out mediating and moderating relationships. A more broadly-based and random sample study across China would also provide a better picture of this GSCM situation. Practical implications - Efforts made by Chinese enterprises together with the Chinese government have established a good foundation for further development. After China's entry into the WTO, a win-win relationship between foreign companies and Chinese manufacturers is still possible. Green supply chain management 449 Received March 2003 Revised September 2004 Accepted November 2004This paper considers the potential contribution of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) networks in fostering environmental innovation at the local or regional level. Drawing on literature from innovation studies and innovation in spatial proximity, we outline three factors that are important for the innovation process and identify where the effects from IS networks can be explored. We use observations from the first IS programme in Sweden to provide examples of previously hypothesised effects. The implications of this inquiry are discussed in terms of design and development of IS programmes and for further research into the innovation effect of IS networks. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper is a progress report on the development of an undergraduate course in environmental design and manufacturing. The importance of the topic is clear from National Academy of Engineering statements regarding the need to incorporate content on sustainable technology. The multidisciplinary team includes academic faculty from engineering, science, liberal studies, and business in collaboration with industry partners. The team's approach is to create a case-based course by adapting existing educational modules from Ford Motor Company. The group has received National Science Foundation funding for this project (DUE-0511322), and the project is currently in its beginning phases.Power system generation scheduling has been an active research area over the years because of its significant economic and environmental impact Better planning and optimum operation of electric power generation systems will not only reduce the cost of the operation but also the consumption of natural resources, improve industrial ecology, and protect the environment. The objective of this project is to develop an efficient and realistic algorithm to handle generation scheduling of large power systems with the following characteristics: ( 1) largeness (with respect to time and states); (2) mixed (integer and real) variables; (3) nonlinearity; and (4) uncertain environments. A mathematical model for the scheduling problem is formulated. This model is to minimize the total fuel cost (coal or oil) of a power system, subject to the power balance, hydro generation, reservoir dynamics, and other bound constraints. Recurrent Artificial Neural Networks are used for load forecasting, and parallel processing is used to solve the scheduling problem.In this paper, we firstly analyze status quo of Wuhan's industrial structure from some related datum, and define its stage of development as the middle and late period. We construct an ecological evaluation index system of industry by using the method of AHP. And then, we compare wuhan with shanghai in collecting some useful and reliable datum, and using this evaluation index system. On the basis of results analysis, we propose the train of thought on developing circulation economy in Wuhan in four aspects, such as ecological circulation mode of industry, developing economizing economy, technical support system, circulation economy mode, etc.Access to resources and energy, but also policy and historical development, shape the industrial structure of countries. This implies that some countries specialize in energy-intensive and pollution-intensive products. National environmental regulation and international agreements are also expected to shape the global patterns of production, as the concern about "carbon-leakage" under the Kyoto Protocol indicates. Most empirical investigations of the energy and pollution embodied in trade have assumed that imports are produced with the same technology as exports. These investigations were able to reflect differences in the composition of imports and exports, but not differences in pollution control technology, efficiency, or energy mix. We calculate the energy and pollution embodied in trade for Norway, taking into account the energy and pollution intensity of important trading partners. Our investigations indicate that Norwegian exports are more energy intensive than imports. In contrast, due to Norways energy mix and technology, Norwegian exports are often less pollution intensive than imports. This leads us to the hypothesis that, for the case of Norway, there are environmental benefits from trade and a specialization in energy-intensive production is environmentally preferable.The present work is based on the application of Industrial Ecology with the vision of the solid waste management in a medium size lumber company. This organization this located in the municipal district of Ponta Grossa, State of Parana, south of Brazil. The sawmill's activity is the production of fences from reforested pine, that are destined to the North American and European markets. The daily amount of residues generated in the production process is of approximately 50m(3), generating a monthly volume of 1200m(3). The fact of not practicing a segregation process of the residues makes this reuse unfeasible for processes such as the production of OSB and MDF in local industries. A great amount of this material is dispersed in an open field at the sawmill's perimeter and set fire to without producing any benefits. This only brings safety risks to the low-income population that lives in the neighborhood and also a great amount of pollution, due to smoke that is dispersed over the area that is constituted by low-income residences. The objective of this work was in finding an economical solution that reduced the environmental pollution via the vision of Industrial Ecology. The results found result were the generation of electric power in a local thermo-electrical facility. Utilizing domestically produced cellulose-derived ethanol for the light-duty vehicle fleet can potentially improve the environmental performance and sustainability of the transport and energy sectors of the economy. A life cycle assessment model was developed to examine environmental implications of the production and use of ethanol in automobiles in Ontario, Canada. The results were compared to those of low-sulfur reformulated gasoline (RFG) in a functionally equivalent automobile. Two time frames were evaluated, one near-term (2010), which examines converting a dedicated energy crop (switchgrass) and an agricultural residue (corn stover) to ethanol; and one midterm (2020), which assumes technological improvements in the switchgrass-derived ethanol life cycle. Near-term results show that, compared to a RFG automobile, life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are 57% lower for an E85-fueled automobile derived from switchgrass and 65% lower for ethanol from corn stover, on a grams of CO2 equivalent per kilometer basis. Corn stover ethanol exhibits slightly lower life cycle GHG emissions, primarily due to sharing emissions with grain production. Through projected improvements in crop and ethanol yields, results for the mid-term scenario show that GHG emissions could be 25-35% lower than those in 2010 and that, even with anticipated improvements in RFG automobiles, E85 automobiles could still achieve up to 70% lower GHG emissions across the life cycle.Appreciating the reliance of industrial networks on natural capital is a necessary step toward their sustainable design and operation. However, most contemporary accounting techniques, including engineering economics, life cycle assessment, and full cost accounting, fail in this regard, as they take natural capital for granted and concentrate mainly on the economic aspects and emissions. The recently developed "thermodynamic input-output analysis" (TIOA) includes the contribution of ecological goods, ecosystem services, human resources, and impact of emissions in an economic input-output model. This paper uses TIOA to determine the throughputs of natural and economic capitals along industrial supply networks. The ratios of natural to economic capitals of economic sectors reveals a hierarchical organization of the U.S. economy wherein basic infrastructure industries are at the bottom and specialized value-added industries constitute the top. These results provide novel insight into the reliance of specific industrial sectors and supply chains on natural capital and the corresponding economic throughput. Such insight is useful for understanding the implications of corporate restructuring on industrial sustainability metrics and of outsourcing of business activities on outsourcer, outsourcee, and global sustainability. These implications are discussed from the standpoints of weak and strong sustainability paradigms. The calculated ratios can also be used for hybrid thermodynamic life cycle assessment.Current awareness of environmental pollution of animal production in Western Europe has triggered research on development of environmental indicators at farm level. Only when the environmental impact of commercial farms can be quantified effectively, important differences in impact can be demonstrated among contrasting systems, which subsequently can contribute to reducing the environmental impact from animal production. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental indicators derived from three methods used widely in animal production, i.e., input-output accounting, ecological footprint analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA). Evaluation of the effectiveness of indicators was based on an assessment of their relevance, quality and availability of data. Such a systematic evaluation of these environmental indicators has never been performed yet. To evaluate the effectiveness of the 13 environmental indicators, data from eight organic, commercial dairy farms in the Netherlands were used. Results show that indicators derived from input-output accounting are effective, because of their high relevance, good quality and easy availability of data. These indicators, however, do not include all environmental impact categories (e.g., land use, energy use, global warming potential), and focus on on-farm emission. The environmental indicator derived from ecological footprint analysis is not effective for land and fossil energy use, because of its limited relevance and low quality, whereas LCA resource-based indicators are effective because of their high relevance, good quality and availability of data. LCA indicators for global warming, acidification and eutrophication potential are effective also, because of their good relevance and good quality. Data of these LCA indicators are difficult to collect. To give a good insight into the environmental impact of a dairy production system, besides input-output accounting indicators, LCA indicators are required. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Long-living wood products can contribute to the mitigation of climate change in many ways. On the one hand, they act as a carbon pool during their service life, as they withdraw CO(2) from its natural cycle. After their service life, they can substitute for fossil fuels if they are incinerated in adequate furnaces. On the other hand, wood products can substitute for more energy intense products made of `conventional' materials. This paper quantifies the substitution and carbon pool effects of an increased use of wood in the building sector in Switzerland for the years 2000 - 2130. For this purpose, life cycle data on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 12 wood products and their substitutes is used as proxies for the most important groups of building products used in construction and in interior works; this data is linked to the forecasted wood flows for each group of building products in a cohort-model. For the political assessment, GHG effects occurring abroad are distinguished from GHG effects occurring in Switzerland. The results show that the C-pool effect of an increased use of wood products with long service life is of minor importance; the substitution effects associated with the thermal use of industrial and post-consumer waste wood as well as with the substitution of `conventional' materials are much more relevant, especially on a long-term. For construction materials, the Swiss share of the GHG effect related to the material substitution is relatively high, as mainly nationally produced concrete, mineral wool, and bricks are substituted for. For products used in interior works, the Swiss share of the GHG effect related to the material substitution is rather small (or even negative for single products) because mainly imports are substituted, such as ceramic tiles or steel produced in the EU. The results are rough estimates. Nonetheless, these calculations show that an increased use of wood in the building sector is a valid and valuable option for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and for reaching GHG emission targets on a mid- to long-term basis. Still, the carbon storage and substitution capacity of an increased use of wood is relatively small compared to the overall greenhouse gas emissions of Switzerland.A life cycle analysis performed on biogas co- or tri-generation units shows that the environmental impact depends on the fraction of heat (or cold) used, the distance for crops collection, the efficiencies of the unit and on the NOx emissions. A high efficiency unit (eta(el) = 0.4 and eta(g) = 0.8) and low NOx content (80 mg/N m(3)) based on 20 km crops collection will save CO2 emissions and act in a CO2 sink resulting in one of the very few technologies capable of reducing atmospheric CO2 concentration. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water reclamation and reuse is playing an increasingly important role in sustainable water resources management. But is water reuse sustainable? To be sustainable, a water reuse project must serve its long-term functional roles without shifting environmental burdens to future generations or producing adverse socio-economic effects. In this paper, we review sustainability assessment methods to aid decision makers in comparing alternative systems, improving environmental performance, and tracking progress toward sustainability. We discuss concerns regarding long-term environmental effects of water reuse systems, including energy demands, impacts on irrigated land, and accumulation and health effects of trace contaminants. We also suggest socio-economic considerations that are key to maintaining long-term benefits of water reuse systems.This paper constitutes a continuation of "Alternative scenarios analysis concerning different types of fuels used for the coverage of the energy requirements of a typical apartment building in Thessaloniki, Greece. Part 1: fuel consumption and emissions". It is concerned with the application of life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology to the model of the apartment building determined in Part I. The examination here includes emissions of light heating oil EL refining, transportation and combustion, of natural gas transportation and combustion and of electricity generation and use (lignite, natural gas, diesel oil and kerosene originated). All data used were collected from a typical power station in Greece. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When is it better to retrofit a building as opposed to demolishing and rebuilding it? Life cycle environmental and economic analyses are used to address this question through the study of a typical four bedroom detached house in Toronto. Three vintages of the reference house are used: 1930s solid masonry; 1960s wood frame; and post oil crisis, 1980s wood frame. Retrofit studies considered include insulating the attic and basement walls and air leakage sealing. Over a 40-year life cycle, the rebuild option has lower life cycle energy, global warming potential, and air pollution, which are predominantly associated with building operation. But the retrofit options have lower water pollution, solid waste generation, and weighted resource use, associated with material flows. The retrofit options also have lower life cycle economic costs than rebuilding. In this respect, the preferred options are basement plus air leakage sealing retrofit for the 1930s house, basement retrofit for the 1960s house, and no change for 1980s house. There are ways to overcome the trade-off in negative environmental impacts between retrofitting and rebuilding, such as use of renewable energy sources or re-use and recycling of deconstruction and demolition materials in new construction.This paper presents the results of evaluation ofbiogas generation from cattle manure, under German conditions, and conversion of biogas to electricity using energetic and life cycle analysis, A range of capacities from about 70 to 250 kW for digester and co-generation set are considered including benefits for heat utilization. It is found that the energy balance without heat benefits would be 40 to 140 times the energy input. Within the LCA selected environmental categories, CO2-reduction potentials, cost of CO2-equivalent-reduction, internal and external costs and energetic payback periods are computed and discussed.A key challenge in attaining regional sustainability is to reduce both the direct and the indirect environmental impacts associated with economic and household activity in the region. Knowing what these flows are and how they change over time is a prerequisite for this task. This article describes the early development of an integrated regional materials flow accounting framework The framework is based on a hybrid (material and economic) multiregional input-output model. Using readily available economic and materials data sets together with transport and logistics data, the framework attempts to provide estimates of household resource flows for any U.K. region at quite detailed levels of product and material disaggregation. It is also capable of disaggregating these flows according to specific socioeconomic criteria such as income level or occupation of the head of household. Allied to appropriate energy and life-cycle assessment data sets, the model could, in addition, be used to map both direct and indirect environmental impacts associated with these flows. The benefits of such an approach are likely to be a considerable reduction of uncertainties in ( 1) our knowledge of the household metabolism, and hence our predictions of regional household waste generation; (2) our assessment of the impacts of contemplated changes in industrial process siting, and thereby on other aspects of local and regional planning; and (3) our understanding of the impacts of changes in the pattern of demand for different materials and products. It is concluded that the use of such an integrated assessment tool has much to contribute to the debate on regional sustainability.This article describes the integration of life-cycle assessment methods with a new input-output model of the world economy to analyze the environmental and economic implications of alternative future diets. The article reviews findings by industrial ecologists about the energy and land required for the production and consumption of alternative foods and diets in several European countries. It also reviews attributes of foods and diets identified by nutritionists as reducing the risks of obesity and major chronic diseases related to the diets of the affluent. The predominantly plant-based Mediterranean-type diet emerges as a dietary scenario that could satisfy both sets of concerns. The likely implications for, agriculture and for farm policies of a shift toward this diet from the current average diet in the United States are discussed and shown to be substantial. The one-country studies reviewed in the article provide substantial insights into the potential ramifications of dietary change. Many of the limitations of these studies could be overcome by conducting the analysis in a global framework that represented the relationships among consumption, production, and trade and the physical constraints within which they operate. Analysis of the environmental and economic implications of alternative scenarios describing healthy diets can help stimulate more intensive dialogue, debate, and action among the interested parties; such analysis can both benefit from and contribute to initiatives such as the World Health Organization's global strategy on diet and health, which intends to enlist the support of governments, corporations, and civil society.This article describes a method for determining the environmental load of Dutch private consumption. The method generates detailed information about consumption-related envronmental impacts. The environmental load of households (direct) and production (indirect) was determined for 360 expenditure categories reported in the Dutch Expenditure Survey. The indirect environmental load was calculated with linked input-output tables covering worldwide production and trade. The environmental load per Euro turnover of industries was linked to consumer expenditures. With this method we can quantify several types of environmental load per expenditure category and per economic production region. It was found that food production, room heating, and car use are the most important elements in the environmental load of Dutch private consumption. The impacts taking place abroad were-with the exception of emission of greenhouse gases and road traffic noise-found to be larger than domestic impacts. Most land use was found to take place in developing (non-OECD) countries, whereas most emissions occur in industrialized (OECD) countries.Inventory analysis of manufacturing system for both former Pb-free bronze made from virgin materials and new Pb-free bronze made by removing Pb from scrap Pb-bronze was assessed from the view point of life cycle assessment (LCA). The result shows that new manufacturing system of Pb-free bronze made by removing Pb from scrap Pb-bronze reduces such environmental impacts as global warming, acidification, energy consumption, resource consumption significantly. Thus, in LCA perspective, the new manufacturing system using a recycling Pb-free bronze is superior to the former one using virgin materials.To promote the recycling of copper alloy scrap, we developed a new technique for removing Pb from copper alloy scrap containing 2-6 mass% Pb. However, we must evaluate quantitatively the level of environmental impact reduction that can be obtained using this new technology. In this study, a manufacturing system that produces Pb-free copper alloy products using copper alloy scrap was assessed by means of life cycle assessment (LCA). The superiority of the new manufacturing system that uses Pb-free copper alloy scrap over the conventional one that uses virgin materials was investigated from the viewpoint of environmental impact. LCA software (JEMAI-LCA) was used to assess environmental impacts such as global warming, acidification, energy Consumption and resource consumption. We assessed the raw material acquisition and casting process of Pb-free copper alloy products. The subsequent processes such as machining. assembling, transportation, use and recycling/waste processing are not taken into account in the environmental impact assessment. The results show that the conversion of the conventional system that uses virgin materials into the new one that uses Pb-free copper alloy scrap decreases the environmental impact, significantly. This is attributed to the nonutilization of virgin materials and the decrease in energy consumption during the casting process.Fires in residential and commercial properties are not uncommon. If such fires involve the roof, photovoltaic arrays mounted on the roof will be exposed to the flames. The amount of cadmium that call be released in fires involving CdTe PV and the magnitude of associated health risks has been debated. The current study aims in delineating this issue. Previous thermogravimetric studies of CdTe, involved pure CdTe and single-glass PV modules. The current study is based on glass-glass CdTe PV modules which are the only ones in the market. Pieces of commercial CdTe photovoltaic (PV) modules, sizes 25 x 3 cm, were heated to temperatures up to 1100 degrees C to simulate exposure to residential and commercial building fires. The temperature rate and duration in these experiments were defined according to standard protocols. Four different types of analysis were performed to investigate emissions and redistribution of elements in the matrix of heated CdTe PV modules: (1) measurements of sample weight loss as a function of temperature; (2) analyses of Cd and Te in the gaseous emissions; (3) Cd distribution in the heated glass using synchrotron X-ray fluorescence microprobe analysis; and (4) chemical analysis for Cd and Te in the acid-digested glass. These experiments showed that almost all (i.e., 99-5%) of the cadmium content of CdTe PV modules was encapsulated in the molten glass matrix; a small amount of Cd escaped from the perimeter of the samples before the two sheets of glass melted together. Adjusting for this loss in full-size modules, results in 99-96% retention of Cd. Multiplying this with the probability of occurrence for residential fires in wood-frame houses in the US (e.g., 10(-4)), results in emissions of 0-06mg/GWh; the probability of sustained fires and subsequent emissions in adequately designed and maintained utility systems appears to be zero. Published in 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Stainless steels are corrosion resistant alloys which are widely used in consumer goods and industrial equipments. Stainless steels contain scarce and energy intensive elements such as Ni, Cr, Mo, etc. So, closed loop recycling is preferable for sustainable production of stainless steel. However, some parts of stainless steel are not separate from ordinal steel scraps in recycling processes and not recycled as "stainless steel". The objective of this study is to analyze the dynamic material flow of stainless steels in Japan and assess CO2 emissions reduction potentials by promotion of closed loop recycling of stainless steels in the future. First, the authors analyzed material balance of input elements, i.e. Fe, Ni and Cr, in the production of stainless steels in 2002 to figure out the material flow of stainless steel which can not be obtained from statistics. The amount of post-consumer stainless steel that would come into society in the future was estimated by PBM (Population Balance Model). It was found that only 2% of post-consumer stainless steel of Fc-Cr alloys was collected as stainless steel scraps and the rest was collected as ordinal steel scrap. On the other hand, approximately 95% of post-consumer stainless steel of Fe-Ni-Cr alloys was collected as stainless steel scraps. CO2 emissions reduction potential by the increase of 1% in closed loop recycling of stainless steel scraps of Fe-Cr alloys was estimated at 75000 t/year by using LCA.This paper presents the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of alternative building materials from forest resource regeneration or mineral extraction through product manufacturing, the assembly of products in constructing a residential home, Occupancy and home repairs, and the eventual disposal or recycle. A unique feature of this study's LCA framework is that temporal distribution of events and associated environmental effects during the seed to demolition life cycle were considered by extending the scope to include forest growth through to demolition of the builidng. Our approach was to first conduct LCIs that quantified the energy, resource use, and emissions associated with a particular product, service, or activity. We followed this activity with the assessment of the house, and investigated the potential environmental consequences of energy and resource consumption and waste emissions. Finally we identified improvement opportunities for future research.This study compares the cradle-to-gate total energy and major emissions for the extraction of raw materials, production, and transportation of the common wood building materials from the CORRIM 2004 reports. A life-cycle inventory produced the raw materials, including fuel resources and emission to air, water, and land for glued-laminated timbers, kiln-dried and green softwood lumber, laminated veneer lumber, softwood plywood, and oriented strandboard. Major findings from these comparisons were that the production of wood products, by the nature of the industry, uses a third of their energy consumption from renewable resources and the remainder from fossil-based, non-renewable resources when the system boundaries consider forest regeneration and harvesting, wood products and resin production, and transportation life-cycle stages. When the system boundaries are reduced to a gate-to-gate (manufacturing life-cycle stage) model for the wood products, the biomass component of the manufacturing energy increases to nearly 50% for most products and as high as 78% for lumber production from the Southeast. The manufacturing life-cycle stage consumed the most energy over all the products when resin is considered part of the production process. Extraction of log resources and transportation of raw materials for production had the least environmental impact.To perform a life-cycle analysis, a life-cycle inventory is needed. Data from surveys of manufacturers are presented for the energy and materials required to produce 1.623 m(3) (1 mbf) of planed, dry, dimension lumber from logs in the western and southern U.S. In the West and South, 53 and 41 % of the log volume (3.05 and 3.92 m(3)) leaves the mill as planed, dry dimension lumber, respectively. A much greater portion of the energy used for production in the South is produced on site from wood fuels. CO2 emissions were greater in the South because of the wood fuel, 574 kg versus 419 kg per 1.623 m(3) produced.A life-cycle inventory (LCI) Study is conducted of softwood plywood manufacturing. This gate-to-gate study includes all materials, fuels, and electricity inputs to produce plywood, co-products and emissions. Data were collected through surveys of manufacturing facilities in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast. SimaPro software, a program to conduct life-cycle inventory studies, is used to process the data and determine environmental impacts in terms of material use and emissions. The data are allocated on a mass basis to plywood based on their contribution to the mass sum of all product and co-products. All data are provided on a production unit basis of 1.0 m(3) and 1.0 MSF 3/8-inch basis, the U.S. industry standard. In addition to LCI data, carbon flow data are also given. The LCI data are publicly available through reports, this publication, and the U.S. LCI Database Project. The data are useful for generating cradle-to-gate product LCIs when combined with the LCIs to produce logs for the mills and material transportation impacts, and are useful as a benchmark for assessing process performance, for conducting life-cycle analysis of wall, floor, and roof assemblies consisting of plywood and other products, and of residential structures.A life-cycle inventory (LCI) study is conducted of wood composite 1-joists manufacturing. This gate-to-gate study includes all materials, fuels, and electricity inputs to produce 1-joists, co-products, and emissions. The inputs included the laminated veneer lumber (LVL) used for the 1-joists flanges and the oriented strandboard (OSB) used for the web, but it excluded the LCI for their input logs. Data were collected through Surveys Of Manufacturing facilities in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast. In addition to LCI data, transportation distances for delivery of materials are also provided. SimaPro software, a program to conduct life-cycle inventory and assessment Studies, is used to process the data and determine environmental impacts in terms of material and energy use, and emissions. The impact data are allocated on a mass basis to 1-joist based on their mass contribution to the sum of all product and co-product generated during the manufacturing process. All data are provided on a production unit basis of 1.0 km and 1.0 MLF (one thousand linear feet), the U.S. industry practice. In addition to LCI data, carbon How data are also given. These LCI data are publicly available through comprehensive reports, this summary publication, and the U.S. Life-Cycle Inventory Database Project. The data are useful for generating cradle-to-gate product LCIs when combined with the LCIs to produce logs for the mills and material transportation impacts, and are useful as a benchmark for assessing process performance, and for conducting life-cycle analysis of floor and roof assemblies and residential Structures using 1-joists.The study utilized the results from a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of housing construction to analyze forest products' role in energy displacement and carbon cycling. It analyzed the behavior of three carbon pools associated with forest products: the forest, forest products, and fossil fuel displaced by forest products in end-use markets. The LCA provided data that allowed us to create an accounting system that tracked carbon from sequestration to substitution in forest product end-use markets. The accounts are time-dependent since the size of the carbon pools is influenced by harvest timing; hence the size of each pool is estimated under alternative harvesting scenarios and presented over time. The analysis of the alternative harvesting scenarios resulted in shorter harvest cycles and provided the largest carbon pools when all three pools were considered together. The study concluded that forest products led to a significant reduction in atmospheric carbon by displacing more fossil fuel-intensive products in housing construction. The result has important policy implications since any incentive to manage forest lands to produce a greater amount of forest products would likely increase the share of lands positively contributing to a reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.This paper deals with improvement on environmental significant activities related to the life supporting function "building and housing", using life cycle assessment. In the calculation, back-casting technique is utilised and implies to a future scenario, based on known technology. Besides heating, wastewater treatment is a significant issue, according to the definition of building and housing function practised. The main conclusions from the assessment are that rebuilding is an environmentally better choice than the construction of a new building, if the same essential environmentally related functional performance is achieved. Furthermore, the case study and the national estimates performed prove that the potential environmental impact can be reduced by about 70% for the heating service and 75% for the wastewater system, if the suggested measures are performed. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since buildings have considerable impacts on the environment, it has become necessary to pay more attention to environmental performance in building design. However, it is a difficult task to find better design alternatives satisfying several conflicting criteria, especially, economical and environmental performance. This paper presents a multi-objective optimization model that could assist designers in green building design. Variables in the model include those parameters that are usually determined at the conceptual design stage and that have critical influence on building performance. Life cycle analysis methodology is employed to evaluate design alternatives for both economical and environmental criteria. Life cycle environmental impacts are evaluated in terms of expanded cumulative exergy consumption, which is the sum of exergy consumption due to resource inputs and abatement exergy required to recover the negative impacts due to waste emissions. A multi-objective genetic algorithm is employed to find optimal solutions. A case study is presented and the effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated for identifying a number of Pareto optimal solutions for green building design. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper deals with a global environmental analysis of the integration of renewable energy-wind energy, photovoltaic energy and hydro-power-with different desalination technologies--Multi-Stage Flash, Multi-Effect Distillation and Reverse Osmosis. This paper continues the way of a research work, whose main aim consists on performing the environmental assessment, by means of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique, of different desalination technologies in order to establish with a broad perspective and in a rigorous and objective way the technology provoking lower environmental load. The software SimaPro 6.0, developed by Dutch PRe Consultants, has been used as the LCA analysis tool, and three different evaluation methods-CML 2 baseline 2000, Eco-Points 97 and Eco-Indicator 99-have been applied.Sustainability has been enshrined as a goal of society to ensure that the satisfaction of present needs does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is thus a social objective, achievable only where all areas of society co-operate in fulfilling the associated demands. Ecological sustainability is, in turn, a basic prerequisite for sustainable economic and social development. The first step in formulating an effective response to this challenge, focused solely on the environmental issues, entails a quantification of the contribution required from the various areas of human activity for the achievement of sustainable development. Without binding sub-targets for the different sectors, it will be all but impossible to move systematically towards a sustainable society. These benchmarks for sustainable construction therefore set out to define the requirements to be met by buildings and structures in contributing to the achievement of a sustainable society. The permissible impact of buildings, in terms of energy demand and pollutant loads, during construction, maintenance and operation is determined. The analysis focuses on identifying the permissible levels of loads based on the specific energy consumption per in 2 and year for heating, hot water, electricity and construction. A conscious attempt is made to combine existing methods with the general political consensus by taking account of: the ecological scarcity method [G. Brand, A. Scheidegger, O. Schwank, A. Braunschweig, Bewertung in Okobilanzen mit der Methode der okologischen Knappheit (Life cycle analysis using ecological scarcity method), Environmental Publication no. 297, Swiss Agency for the Environment, Forests and Landscape (SAEFL), 1997] used to define critical pollutant loads: the limitation of greenhouse gas emissions specified by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001, IPCC Third Assessment Report, www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/]: the demands of the 2000 W society [Leichter leben - Ein Verstandnis fur unsere Ressourcen als Schlussel zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung - die 2000-Watt-Gesellschaft (Easier living - understanding our resources as the key to sustainable development - they resources. 2000 Watt society), novatlanis, sia, energieschweiz, January 2005] for the conservation of energy The study shows that buildings designed to the Passive House standard just about comply with the requirements for sustainable construction, provided electricity generation is based largely on renewable or low-CO2 resources (Swiss power supply mix). The targets are substantially harder to meet where mainly fossil-fuel-generated electricity (European supply mix UCTE) is used. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.v. All rights reserved.The bio-mechanical treatment of Municipal Solid Waste is an increasing option in Europe either as a pre-treatment before landfilling or as a pre-treatment before combustion. The present work deals with the problem of assessment of significant data related to emissions to air from bio-mechanical treatments. Reliable data are necessary for the development of: a) Life Cycle Assessment studies; b) verification of compliance with existing regulations; c) environmental impact studies assessment. In order to point out some lack of knowledge about bio-mechanical treatments, some results of a Life Cycle Assessment study on Municipal Solid Waste bio-stabilization treatment have been reported and analysed. Indeed, during the development of that Life Cycle Assessment, some problems were found regarding the availability and the quality of emission data from Municipal Solid Waste mechanical biological treatment. Concerning existing regulations, in Europe we can find both countries with enhanced approaches, and countries with a soft approach. In the second case, for instance, a few Italian regions adopted local regulations in order to improve the quality of the environmental regulation as the national one has been considered inadequate. The environmental impact assessment of bio-mechanical treatments is not still as developed as options such as incineration. The reason is that the impact of a bio-mechanical treatment plant is considered low. On the contrary it can be demonstrated that a greater attention must be paid in the case of non optimised technologies and large plants.The environmental impacts of fishing go well beyond their direct effect on targeted stocks and associated ecosystem components and functions. Here we employ life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the scale and importance of emissions that result from the range of industrial activities associated with contemporary Spanish purse seine fisheries for Skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis) and Yellowfin (Thunnus albacares) tunas. Our analysis encompassed operational inputs to fishing activities along with major inputs to vessel construction and maintenance and post-harvest transport of carcasses to ports in Galicia, Spain. Data were acquired from fishing operations based in each of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, permitting the characterization of both average and basin of origin-specific environmental impacts. Our results indicate that the production and use of diesel fuel while fishing accounts for more than half of the total impacts in six of the seven impact categories analyzed. After fuel inputs, post-harvest transport of carcasses made substantial contributions to each of the environmental dimensions evaluated. In contrast, the use of anti-fouling paint only made a substantial contribution to marine eco-toxicity potential. Comparing the performance of fisheries in the three oceans, Pacific-based operations resulted in the highest emissions across all impact categories modelled. This was largely the result of markedly higher fuel consumption rates together with relatively long post-harvest transport distances. Finally, we modelled two scenarios to quantify the environmental benefits associated with improving tuna abundance and availability. In doing so, we found that efforts to rebuild stocks, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean would not only help reverse the decline of aquatic ecosystems but could result in improvements in the environmental performance of the Spanish tuna fishery. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Knowledge of the environmental impact of the materials and processes typically used in a specific industrial sector is a key factor in enabling companies to improve their products from an environmental perspective and thus expedite their introduction into the growing market for "green" products. Environmental factors should be taken into account at the earliest possible stage of product development and design. The establishment of criteria for selecting materials with low environmental impact during the design of wood-based furniture design is an important aspect for furniture manufacture. This article presents an analysis of the environmental impact of the materials and processes typically used in the wood-based furniture manufacturing sector in Turkey. A life-cycle assessment methodology (LCA) was applied to different kinds of wood-based panels, surface and edge treatments, and their respective manufacturing processes. For each of these, a life-cycle inventory was completed and the environmental impact generated was summarized by applying the Eco-Indicator'99 method. According to the results, standard particleboard had an environmental impact lower than standard fiberboard (72% improvement). For surface and edge finishes, a low-density laminate is preferred to a high-density laminate (36% improvement).A future fusion reactor will use deuterium and tritium as fuel. The former is found in abundance in seawater, while the latter is not available naturally due to its short lifetime. Present developments in the context of fusion propose generating tritium in a blanket based on the reaction n + (6)Li -> T + He. This paper will review the issue of the reserves and resources of lithium as the fuel for fusion energy. We describe the available reserves and resources and their chemical forms. We analyze the present production and consumption for industrial uses, completing this over-view by referring to a life cycle analysis in the case of the lithium production from brine. The lithium extraction from seawater is also described. Taking into account the previous data and the requirements estimated for fusion plants, we propose scenarios for future lithium consumption, and we conclude on the lithium availability over the next centuries dealing with the different hypothesis considered. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Coal, Scope and Background. In industrialized Countries such as the Netherlands, the concentration Of Pollutants originating from building materials in the indoor environment his shown art increasing trend during the last decades due to improved isolation and decreased ventilation of dwellings. These pollutants may give rise to negative impacts on human health, ranging from irritation to tumours. However, such negative impacts oil health are not included ill Current life cycle assessments of dwellings. In this Study, damages to the health Of Occupants caused by a number of organic compounds and by radioactivity emitted by building materials, including those due to indoor exposure, have been calculated for a number of categories of common building materials. The total damage to human health due to emissions occurring in the use phase of the Dutch reference dwelling is compared with the total damage to human health associated with the rest of the life cycle of the same dwelling. Methods. Human health damage scores per kilogram Of building material for compartments of the Dutch reference dwelling hive been calculated using the methodology described ill part I of this research. This Methodology includes the calculation of the fate, effect and damage factors, based oil disability adjusted life years (DALYs), and has been applied assuming average concentrations Of Pollutants in building materials. Damage scores for health impacts of exposure to Pollutants emitted during the production and the disposal phase Of the same building materials were calculated using standard LCIA methodology. Results and Discussion. Human health damage scores due to emissions Of Pollutants Occurring in the use phase Of building materials applied at the first or second floor are Lip to 20 times lower or higher than the corresponding damage scores associated with the rest of the life cycle of the same building materials. The damage scores due to emissions Occurring ill the use Phase Of building materials applied in the crawlspace are tip to 105 times lower than those of building materials applied ill the other compartments. The total damage to human health due to emissions occurring in the use phase of the Dutch reference dwelling has the same order of magnitude as the total damage to human health associated with the rest of the life cycle of the same dwelling. At a dwelling level, radon and gamma radiation are dominant in the human health damage score among the pollutants Studied. Conclusion. Health damages due to indoor exposure to contaminants emitted by building materials cannot be neglected for several materials when compared with damage scores associated with the rest of the life cycle of the same building materials. Indoor exposure to pollutants emitted by building materials should be included in the life cycle assessment of dwellings in order to make the assessment better reflect full impact of the life cycle.Background and Objectives. Values in the known weighting methods in Life Cycle Assessment are mostly founded by the societal systems of developed countries. What source of weights and which weighting methods are reliable for a big developing country like China? The purpose of this paper is to find a possible weighting method and available data that will work well for LCA practices conducted in China. Since government policies and decisions play a leading role in the process of environmental protection in developing countries, the weights derived from political statements may be a Consensus by representatives of the public. Methods. 'Distance-to-political target' principle is used ill this paper to derive weights of five problem-oriented impact categories. The critical policy targets are deduced from the environmental policies issued in the period of the Ninth Five-year (1996-2000) and the Tenth Five-year (2001-2005) Plan for the Development of National Economy and Society of China. Policy targets oil two five-year periods are presented and analyzed. Weights are determined by the quotient between the reference levels and target levels of a certain impact category. Results and Discussion. Since the Tenth Five-year Plan put forward the overall objective to reduce the level of regional pollution by 2005, the weights for All, EP and POCP for 2000-2005 are more than 1. By comparison between the Ninth Five-year and Tenth Five-year period, the results show that the weights obtained in this paper effectively represent Chinese political environmental priorities in different periods. For the weights derived from China's political targets for the overall period 1995-2005, the rank order of relative importance is ODP>AP>POCP>EP>GWP. They are recommended to the potential users for the broader disparity among the five categories. By comparison with the weights presented by the widespread EDIP method, the result shows that there's a big difference in the relative importance of ozone depletion and global warming. Conclusion. The weighting factors and rank order of impact categories determined in this Study represent the characteristics of the big developing Country. The derived weighting set can be helpful to LCA practices of products within the industrial systems of China.Goal, Scope and Background. Decision-makers demand information about the range of possible outcomes of their actions. Therefore, for developing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a decision-making tool, Life Cycle Inventory, (LCI) databases should provide uncertainty information. Approaches for incorporating uncertainty should be selected properly contingent upon the characteristics of the LCI database. For example, in industry-based LCI databases where large amounts of up-to-date process data are collected, statistical methods might be useful for quantifying the uncertainties. However, in practice, there is still a lack of knowledge as to what statistical methods are most effective for obtaining the required parameters. Another concern from the industry's perspective is the confidentiality of the process data. The aim of this paper is to propose a procedure for incorporating uncertainty information with statistical methods in industry-based LCI databases, which at the same time preserves the confidentiality of individual data. Methods. The proposed procedure for taking uncertainty in industry-based databases into account has two components: continuous probability distributions fitted to scattering unit process data, and rank order correlation coefficients between inventory flows. The type of probability distribution is selected using statistical methods such as goodness-of-fit statistics or experience based approaches. Parameters of probability distributions are estimated using maximum likelihood estimation. Rank order correlation coefficients are calculated for inventory items in order to preserve data interdependencies. Such probability distributions and rank order correlation coefficients may be used in Monte Carlo simulations in order to quantify Uncertainties in LCA results as probability distribution. Results and Discussion. A case Study is performed on the technology selection of polyethylene terephthalite (PET) chemical recycling systems. Three processes are evaluated based on CO, reduction compared to the conventional incineration technology. To illustrate the application of the proposed procedure, assumptions were made about the uncertainty of LCI flows. The application of the probability distributions and the rank order correlation coefficient is shown, and a sensitivity analysis is performed. A potential use of the results of the hypothetical case study is discussed. Conclusion and Outlook. The case study illustrates how the uncertainty information in LCI databases may be used in LCA. Since the actual scattering unit process data were not available for the case study, the uncertainty distribution of the LCA result is hypothetical. However, the merit of adopting the proposed procedure his been illustrated: more informed decision-making becomes possible, basing the decisions on the significance of the LCA results. With this illustration, the authors hope to encourage both database developers and data Suppliers to incorporate uncertainty information in LCT databases.Goal and Scope. Primary and secondary environmental impacts associated with bioremediation of diesel-contaminated sites were assessed using a retrospective life cycle assessment (LCA) as a function of the duration of treatment and the achievement of regulatory criteria. The case study consisted of the remediation of diesel-contaminated soil using biopiles of 8,000 m(3) of subsurface soil impacted with an average of 6,145 mg of diesel fuel/kg soil over a two-year period. Methods. Two scenarios were compared; the construction of a single-use treatment facility oil site or the use of a permanent treatment center that can accept 25,000 m(3) soil/year. Moreover, since bioremediation is never 100% efficient, different efficiency scenarios, including the transportation of partially treated soil to landfill were analyzed. The primary impact of residual soil contamination was determined by developing a specific characterization factor (ecotoxicity and human toxicity categories in the EDIP method) based on the toxic components of diesel. Secondary impacts were assessed with an LCA software. Results and Discussion. One major observation was the fact that the soil itself is responsible for an important fraction of the system's total impact, suggesting that it is beneficial to reach the highest level of remediation. The reutilizition of the treatment facility is also an important issue in the overall environmental performance of the system. In the case of a single-use treatment center, the analysis showed that site preparation and site closure were the major contributing stages to the overall impact, mainly due to the asphalt paving and landfilling processes. Results indicated that off-site transport and the biotreatment process did not contribute notably to the level of environmental impact. The use of a permanent treatment center is preferred since it allows a significant decrease of the secondary impact. However, when soil had to be transported for a distance greater than 200 km from the site, global impacts increased significantly. Conclusion. Results from this study allowed identifying several process optimizations in order to improve the environmental performance of the biopile technology including: the achievement of low level of residual contaminants, the minimization of asphalt or the use of a permanent treatment center. Recommendation and Outlook. LCA was found to be an efficient tool to manage contaminated soil in a sustainable way. However, because of the major contribution of residual soil contamination, additional spatial and temporal data should be collected and integrated in the substance characterization models.Goal, Scope, and Background. The main goal of the study is a comprehensive life cycle assessment of kerosene produced in a refinery located in Thessaloniki (Greece) and used in a commercial jet aircraft. Methods. The Eco-Indicator 95 weighting method is used for the purpose of this study. The Eco-Indicator is a method of aggregation (or, as described in ISO draft 14042, 'weighting through categories') that leads to a single score. In the Eco-indicator method, the weighing factor (We) applied to an environmental impact index (greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, etc.) stems from the 'main' damage caused by this environmental impact. Results and Discussion. The dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions is from kerosene combustion in aircraft turbines during air transportation, which contributes 99.5% of the total CO2 emissions. The extraction and refinery process Of Crude oil contribute by around 0.22% to the GWP. This is a logical outcome considering that these processes are very energy intensive. Transportation of crude oil and kerosene have little or no contribution to this impact category. The main source of CFC-II equivalent emissions is refining of crude oil. These emissions derive from emissions that result from electricity production that is used during the operation of the refinery. NOx, emissions contribute the most to the acidification followed by SO2 emissions. The main source is the use process in a commercial jet aircraft, which contributes approximately 96.04% to the total equivalent emissions. The refinery process of crude oil contributes by 2.11% mainly by producing SO2 emissions. This is due to the relative high content of sulphur in the input flows of these processes (crude oil) that results to the production of large amount of SO2. Transportation of crude oil by sea (0.76%) produces large amount of SO2 and NOx due to combustion of low quality liquid fuels (heavy fuel oil). High air emissions of NOx, during kerosene combustion result in the high contribution of this subsystem to the eutrophication effect. Also, water emissions with high nitrous content during the refining and extraction of crude oil process have a big impact to the water eutrophication impact category. Conclusion. The major environmental impact from the life cycle of kerosene is the acidification effect, followed by the greenhouse effect. The summer smog and eutrophication effect have Much less severe effect. The main contributor is the combustion of kerosene to a commercial jet aircraft. Excluding the use Phase, the refining process appears to be the most Polluting process during kerosene's life cycle. This is due to the fact that the refining process is a very complicated energy intensive process that produces large amounts and variety of pollutant substances. Extraction and transportation of crude oil and kerosene equally contribute to the environmental impacts of the kerosene cycle, but at much lower level than the refining process. Recommendation and Perspective. The study indicates a need for a more detailed analysis of the refining process which has a very high contribution to the total equivalent emissions of the acidification effect and to the total impact score of the system (excluding the combustion of kerosene). This is due to the relative high content of sulphur in the input flows of these processes (crude oil) that results to the production of large amount of SO2.Goal, Scope and Background. In a district heating network, hot water is transported from a central heat generation plant to buildings where the heat is utilised for space heating and domestic hot water generation. This paper presents a life cycle assessment of the construction of district heating pipe networks, based on a gate-to-gate life cycle inventory commissioned by the Swedish District Heating Association. In the literature, environmental studies oil district heating mainly consider emissions from heat generation; environmental impacts from construction of the distribution system are seldom discussed. The purpose of the study is to identify environmentally significant parts in the construction of district heat distribution networks and to provide information for a larger study including more parts of the life cycle of such district heat distribution. No external review has been performed, but a reference group of district heating experts familiar with the practice was involved in the choice of systems to be studied as well as in reviewing parts of the study. Methods. The Study covers construction Of the Main Pipe system according to the guidelines from the Swedish District Heating Association. Construction of the pipe system was assumed to take place in Sweden by Swedish entrepreneurs during the time period 1999-2000. Transport of the district heating pipes from the factory to the excavation site is included in this Study, but not the production of the pipes. The functional unit used in the study is 100 metres of pipe system (flow and return pipe). The studied systems are: twin pipe of the dimension DN25 and single pipes of the dimensions DN25, DN100 and DN500. Two different surroundings were Studied: urban environment, characterised by the need to break open and to restore asphalt cover and to remove excavated material from the site, and green areas, Without my asphalt and where some of the excavated material might be left at the site and reused. Results and Discussion. A short description of the inventory, some inventory results and life cycle impact assessments are presented. Characterisations according to GWP, AP, POCP and resource depletion are given as well as two weightings: Eco-Indicator99 and Ecoscarcity. Emissions from production and use of the diesel needed for excavation of the pipe trench gives rise to a dominating part of the environmental impact. Recommendations and Perspective. To minimise the need for excavation is the most important feature in order to reduce the environmental impact from construction of the district heating pipe network. A twin pipe uses a narrower pipe trench than the equivalent two single pipes, and is an already available option. CO-utilising the trenches with cables for electricity, for instance, will not make the environmental impact from the trench any smaller, but will decrease the total need for excavation in society. It is important to make Sure that environmental improvements from changes ill the network construction phase are not off-set by other effects in the total life cycle of district heat distribution.Background, Aims, and Scope. As products are, directly and indirectly, main sources for ecological impact, the overall enhancement of products' ecological behaviour is an important contribution to the protection of the Earth's biosphere. This is especially important in a world where the major economical system is based on a constant rise in industrial production, consumption, and disposal of products. The true ecological performance of a product can only be determined by consideration of the impact arising from the entire lifecycle, and by including all known impacts into the assessments. The state of technology provides a standardized framework for such life cycle assessments (LCA) in the ISO 14040 series (see ISO 1997), and numerous databases and software tools are available to support the conduction of LCA. To integrate ecological indicators into decisions of everyday product development as natural as it is the case today with finite items, design, an costs, indicators based on a consideration of the product's entire life have to be generated with little effort and in short time. Methods. This article describes the fundamental principles of a technology designed to integrate lifecycle information into common 3-dimensional product models, like the ones used within modern Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems. Thereby, ecological assessments can be effectively undertaken during product development, where most of the environmental lock-in of a product is defined (see Lewis et al. 2001). Overall effects of alterations in materials or other product properties can be assessed instantly, supporting on the spot decisions to reach an improved product design. Results. Next to an information model that manages the product and process representation, the research on which this article is based also deals with the calculation of resulting indicators, database access to ecological indicators, a graphical user interface, and a synchronisation tool for the CAD system Pro/Engineer(1). The developed concepts have been implemented as a prototype software(2) and validated in different stages. Conclusions. The concepts described in this article are a foundation for tools that integrate ecological assessments into everyday product development, on the basis of 3-dimensional CAD systems. Reuse of existing CAD data, an improved understanding of the assessment structure by product developers, and an automated calculation of resulting indicators are approaches to largely enhance the efficiency of product-related ecological assessments.Within the framework of the Sustainable and Innovation Centre (STIC) an institutional capacity building process for Indonesian intermediary business organisations representing companies interested in 'sustainable trade' (integration of environmental and social dimensions), both as vendors - as far as the European market is concerned and buyers - as far as the Indonesian domestic market is concerned and reinforcement of their networking with the STIC-Europe hub. The programme includes, for business familiarisation and valorisation of market opportunities, one workshop in Ball and participation in champions and leaders networking initiatives facilitated by STIC for the agro-food, textile and electronic sectors as well as a website for creation of information links and exchange of matchmaking opportunities and exploration of opportunities to build a similar process for the ASEAN region.This paper presents a methodology and a software tool to establish an eco-design concept of a product and its life cycle by assigning appropriate life cycle options to the components of the product. The product life cycle planning (LCP) methodology provides the following systematic procedures. First, the medium- or long-term production and collection plan for the product family is clarified. Next, target values for the product and its life cycle are set in the process of determination of customer-oriented specification and eco-specification. Then, eco-solution ideas to realize reasonable resource circulation are generated by using various life cycle option analysis charts. Finally, an eco-design concept which involves eco-solution ideas is evaluated for decision-making at early stages of product development. A design support tool was made for efficiently planning product life cycles by using quality function deployment and life cycle assessment data. Based on case studies, it was verified that the proposed methodology and tool are useful for developing multi-generational eco-products.The paper addresses the use of Life Cycle Assessment as a tool for analysing freight transport activity in product supply chains. Published works that have assessed freight transport energy use in supply chain operations are reviewed and their results summarized. A case study of the energy use in the supply chains for jeans sold in both the UK and France is presented. The results of this case study indicate that the location from which cotton is sourced can have a major impact on the total energy used in commercial transport in the jeans supply chain. However, overall, this has a limited impact on the total energy used in producing and supplying jeans. This is because the vast majority of total energy used in the supply chain is consumed during cotton cultivation, denim production and jeans manufacture. The work also demonstrates that the amount of energy used by consumers transporting jeans to their homes by car can be greater than the total commercial transport energy used in the supply chain (per kg of jeans transported).This study examines the potential change in primary emissions and energy use from replacing the current U.S. fleet of fossil-fuel on-road vehicles (FFOV) with hybrid electric fossil fuel vehicles or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCV). Emissions and energy usage are analyzed for three different HFCV scenarios, with hydrogen produced from: (1) steam reforming of natural gas, (2) electrolysis powered by wind energy, and (3) coal gasification. With the U.S. EPA's National Emission Inventory as the baseline, other emission inventories are created using a life cycle assessment (LCA) of alternative fuel supply chains. For a range of reasonable HFCV efficiencies and methods of producing hydrogen, we find that the replacement of FFOV with HFCV significantly reduces emission associated with air pollution, compared even with a switch to hybrids. All HFCV scenarios decrease net air pollution emission, including nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, ammonia, and carbon monoxide. These reductions are achieved with hydrogen production from either a fossil fuel source such as natural gas or a renewable source such as wind. Furthermore, replacing FFOV with hybrids or HFCV with hydrogen derived from natural gas, wind or coal may reduce the global warming impact of greenhouse gases and particles (measured in carbon dioxide equivalent emission) by 6, 14, 23, and 1%, respectively. Finally, even if HFCV are fueled by a fossil fuel such as natural gas, if no carbon is sequestered during hydrogen production, and 1% of methane in the feedstock gas is leaked to the environment, natural gas HFCV still may achieve a significant reduction in greenhouse gas and air pollution emission over FFOV. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.Actions to moderate the major emission contributors of enteric fermentation, fertiliser and manure management on farms should not simply move the emissions elsewhere in the system, but actually reduce them. Life cycle assessment methodology was used to provide an objective framework for estimating emissions and to evaluate emission management scenarios with respect to kg CO2 eq emitted per unit of milk produced. An average dairy unit was defined and emissions were compartmentalised to calculate a total emission of 1.50 kgCO(2) eq kg(-1) (energy corrected milk) yr(-1) and 1.3 kgCO(2) eq kg(-1) yr(-1) with economic allocation between milk and meat. Of the total emissions, 49% was enteric fermentation, 21% fertiliser, 13% concentrate feed, 11% dung management and 5% electricity and diesel consumption. Scenario testing indicated that more efficient cows with extensive management could reduce emissions by 14-18%, elimination of non-milking animals could reduce emissions by 14-26% and a combination of both could reduce emissions by 28-33%. It was concluded that the evolution of the Irish dairy sector, driven by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), should result in reduced GHG emissions. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.One of the greatest problems associated with greenhouse horticulture is the amount of solid waste e. g. steel, plastics and non-yield biomass, that it produces. In this study, we used life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with crop processes and to investigate the relative importance of different waste management options applied in protected horticulture. Four waste management scenarios were analysed: (a) non-yield biomass was composted and other materials were disposed of in landfill; (b) all waste was disposed of in landfill; (c) all waste was incinerated; and (d) non-yield biomass was composted and other materials were incinerated. The study revealed that source segregation followed by the composting of biodegradable matter was the best way of managing waste to improve the impact assessment for most impact categories considered. Segregation of non-yield biomass and its composting reduced the environmental burden for most of the impact categories considered, reaching its maximum value in the category of climate change, which it was possible to reduce by between 40% and 70% depending, respectively, on the option considered; landfill or incineration.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is known to entail multiple objective decision-making in the analysis of tradeoffs between different environmental impacts. The work of Azapagic and Clift in the late 1990s illustrates the use of multiple objective linear programming (MOLP) in the context of LCA. However, it will be noted that their approach yields a range of Pareto optimal alternatives from which the decision-maker Must ultimately select the final solution. An alternative approach making use of Zimmermann's symmetric fuzzy linear programming method is proposed and illustrated with a simple case study. The procedure effectively yields a single, optimal compromise solution. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims to assess all environmental impacts "from cradle to grave". Nevertheless, existing methods for Life-Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) generally do not consider impacts from chemical exposure at the workplace. This is a severe drawback, because neglecting occupational health effects may result in product or process optimizations at the expense of workers' health. We adapt an existing LCIA method to consider occupational health effects from the use of perchloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE) in dry cleaning and metal degreasing. The results show that, in applications such as metal degreasing and dry cleaning, long-term (steady-state) concentrations at the workplace are up to 6 orders of magnitude higher than ambient air levels. Legal threshold values may be exceeded, depending on machine technology, size, and surrounding working conditions. The impact from workplace exposure to the total human-toxicity potential of the complete life cycle of PCE and TCE (including use, production, and disposal) is accordingly high. We therefore conclude that occupational health effects need to be considered in LCA to prevent overlooking key environmental-health impacts in LCA.This paper gathers a number of significant results where nanotechnology was satisfactorily applied to improve packaged food quality and safety by increasing the barrier properties to oxygen of an ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH) in dry and under humid conditions and of a poly(lactic acid) (PLA) biopolymer. The nanodispersion in the polymer matrix of modified monolayers of clays included in positive lists for food-contact applications is an adequate methodology to increase packaged food shelf-life. In spite of the fact that, in principle, there is no reason to believe that 'adequately' modified nanocomposites making use of substances in positive lists can impose any immediate risk threat for food-contact applications, further studies concerning potential migration issues and life-cycle analysis have to still emerge within the overall field of nanotechnology to corroborate the fact.A Life Cycle Assessment study was carried out for evaluating the potential of utilizing marine biomass for energy production. Macro-algae obtained from the Adriatic and Jonian seas have been selected and tested for our initial case. Different techniques (supercritical CO2, organic solvents, and pyrolysis) were utilized in this study for the extraction of biofuel. Supercritical CO2 appears to be the most effective. A computing software has been developed which allows to evaluate various options and can be used with either aquatic or terrestrial biomass. It has been used in our studies to make an energetic evaluation of selected marine macro-algae. The results of the energetic assessment are presented here. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To achieve a sustainable power generation industry it is necessary to study the environmental impacts and economic costs of all aspects of a power generation plants' lifecycle - from mining to electricity distribution, and, ultimately, decommission (from cradle to grave). One key component in improving and maintaining quality of life for consumers is the application of the Green Productivity Index (GPI) in order to evaluate the related factors of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). The goal of this research is to appraise the efficacy of decision-making tools in accurately assessing the potential results of 'green' improvements to coal-fired and natural gas-fired power plants in both ecological and economic terms. The recently developed Numerical Eco-load Total Standardization (LCA-NETS) evaluates environmental impacts by identifying and quantifying input energy and output waste released to the environment throughout the life cycle of a power plant. Environmental impacts caused by global and regional environmental issues are numerically calculated in the units of NETS. Environmental assessment tools such as LCA, LCC and GPI can be used to improve the 'environmental friendliness' of electricity generation by demonstrating the future sustainability of 'green' power generation plants and their contribution to the quality of life of consumer.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is environmental evaluation of products, materials, and processes over their life cycle. Truncation uncertainty and corresponding uncertainty are main problems occurred in process life cycle assessment (PLCA) modeling and economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIOLCA) modeling. Through combination of these two modelings in different life cycle stage and use of an uncertainty reduction strategy, a hybrid life cycle assessment modeling method was proposed in this study. Case studies were presented on gasoline powered motorbikes (M-bike) and electricity-powered electric bike (E-bike). Web-based software was developed to analyze process environmental impacts. Results show that the largest part of life cycle energy (LCE) is consumed at use stage. Less energy is consumed in life cycle of E-bike than that of M-bike. GWP (Global Warming Potential), CO (Carbon Monoxide), PM10 (particulate matter) emission of M-bike are higher than that of E-bike, especially at use stage, AP (acidification Potential) emission of E-bike is higher than that of M-bike. Comprehensively, E-bike is energy efficient and less emitting, and better choice for urban private transportation.The life cycle index of remanufactured engines was assessed by using the method of life cycle assessment (LCA). A remanufactured engine of a certain domestic brand was taken as researching object. Engine reproducing engineering was investigated from three aspects which were energy, material and environment. The application of LCA on remanufacturing engines was discussed in detail with a practical case. The results indicate that remanufacturing an engine can save 55 kg steels, 8.3 kg aluminum and 113 kW (.) h electric powers and reduce emissions of 565 kg CO2, 6.09 kg CO, 1.01 kg NOx, 3.985 kg SOx and 288.725 kg solid waste. The remanufacturing of engines possesses great economic value and practicability.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an environmental assessment method that has come into wide use. The LCA method has been used to assess the environmental impact of various products from domestic articles like plastic trays to large buildings. However, few LCA studies on domestic lumber have been conducted because of regional and other differences in forestry methods, distribution, etc. In this study, to obtain basic knowledge on the environmental impact of sugi lumber products, we investigated energy consumption, amount of waste, and volume of product in processes from felling to sawmilling. From the obtained data, emissions of environmental load substances were quantified and evaluated by LCA. The main results obtained are as follow: CO2, CO, NOx, and SO2 were emitted in large quantities from the sawmill subprocess. This is probably due to the large electricity consumption of sawmill equipment. The amount Of CO2 emissions depends on the yield of the sawmill and the distance from market of the sawn-till. Therefore, effective means to reduce the CO2 emissions were suggested as follow: the sawmill equipment can be rationalized to improve the yield in sawmill subprocess, and the sawmilling line can be made more highly effective; in addition, it is important to plan construction of sawmills so that the distance from the sawmill to the market will be shortest. Global warming and acidification comprise almost the entire result of the impact assessment of both sawmills. The substances that contributed to global warming and acidification were CO2, NOx, SO2(,) and CH4 and each substance was emitted most in the sawmill subprocess. Overall, this study showed that the sawmill subprocess has the greatest role in the environmental load of lumber products.Sustainable industrial development which can minimize an ecological effect by the mankind exertion is recently interested due to an environmental contamination and a resource exhaustion problem. An eco-industrial park (EIP) is a community of manufacturing and service businesses seeking enhanced environmental and economic performance through collaboration in managing environmental and resource issues, including energy. water, and materials. EIP developments which improve a production plant within an eco-friendly greenfield and design a new industrial ecosystem are accomplished recently. which can efficiently re-use the waste and resources from each company within EIP. In this review, the outside and domestic case studies of El P and cornerstone technologies to develop the EIP. such as energy integration, waste reuse, mass flow analysis, water pinch, and life cycle assessment, are summarized.Environmental performance of different water recycling technologies is compared on the basis of the associated potential environmental impacts using the technique of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The LCA method is used here to support decision making in water recycling in terms of (1) comparison and selection of suitable technology and (2) identification of opportunities to enhance the environmental performance of the water recycling train. In addition to the conventional impact categories used in LCA, a new soil salinisation potential is included. The environmental impact contribution from the construction phase of each technology is estimated using the Missing Inventory Estimation Tool (MIET) approach which relies on the input-output analysis technique. LCA results are reported and discussed in detail in this paper and areas of potential improvement are identified including: (1) sludge quality and quantity, and (2) energy consumption. The suitability of using the LCA technique in the context of water recycling is discussed and the limitations of LCA for this particular purpose are outlined and further research needs identified.This paper describes a practical approach to site-dependent life-cycle analysis (SDLCA) that differentiates site-dependent environmental impacts from a system's processes by considering the geographical conditions of each process. This approach converts an environmental output into its impacts by using site-dependent characterization factors (SDCFs). This approach defines an area-the Spatial Area of iMpact Equivalency (SAME)-within the boundaries of the geographical system during site-dependent life-cycle inventory (SDLCI) analysis and calculates an environmental output from a process for the SAMEs. Each SAME represents a collection of geographical areas with internally homogeneous environmental impacts and can be mapped using a geographic information system. Preparing a SDLCI and SDCFs based on SAMEs facilitates the implementation of SDLCA by permitting the use of fewer regions during SDLCI. To demonstrate application of the SAME approach, an embodied impact intensity was formulated; it quantifies the impact directly and indirectly on the basis of the unit activity of a sector by means of input-output analysis with SDCFs. The validity of using SAMEs for SDLCA is demonstrated through two case studies: one studying suspended particulate matter, and one studying benzene. In both cases, the impact intensities are calculated using the SAME approach and the results are compared with those of site-generic LCI.This paper presents a life cycle analysis of several policies for improving housing affordability for first home owner-occupiers in Australia: the First Home Owner Grant, housing equity partnerships and deposit loans. The analysis is by simulation of a housing tenure choice model in which a representative adult household makes a lifetime plan concerning the timing of the first home purchase, and the amount of housing and non-housing consumption in each period. An insight from the life cycle framework is that policies to improve housing affordability can have a life cycle timing effect on housing demand and house prices.Goal, Scope and Background. Methodologies based on life cycle assessment have been developed to calculate the environmental impact of dwellings. Human health damage due to exposure to substances emitted to indoor air are not included in these methodologies. In order to compare this damage with human health damages associated with the rest of the life cycle of the dwelling, a methodology has been developed to calculate damages to human health caused by pollutants emitted from building materials. Methods. Fate, exposure and health effects are addressed in the calculation procedure. The methodology is suitable for organic substances, radon and elements emitting gamma radiation. The (Dutch reference) dwelling used in the calculation was divided in three compartments: crawl space, first floor and second floor. Fate factors have been calculated based on indoor and outdoor intake fractions, dose conversion factors or extrapolation from measurements. Effect factors have been calculated based on unit risk factors, (extrapolated) effect doses or linear relationship between dose and cancer cases. Damage factors are based on disability adjusted life years (DALYs). Results and Discussion. Characterisation factors have been calculated for 36 organic compounds, radon and gamma radiation emitted by building materials applied in a Dutch reference dwelling. For organic compounds and radon, the characterisation factors of emissions to the second floor are 10-20% higher than the characterisation factors of emissions to the first floor. For the first and second floor, the characterisation factors are dominated by damage to human health as a result of indoor exposure. The relative contribution of carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic effects to the characterisation factors is generally within one order of magnitude, and up to three orders of magnitude for formaldehyde. Conclusion. Health effects due to indoor exposure to pollutants emitted from building materials appear to be dominant in the characterisation factors over outdoor exposure to such pollutants. The health effects of emissions of organic compounds and gamma radiation in the crawl space are very small compared to the health effects of emissions into the other compartments. Using the characterisation factors calculated in this study, it is possible to calculate the human health damage due to emissions of substances and radiation emitted to indoor air and compare this damage with damages to human health associated with the rest of the life cycle of the material. This is the subject of part 11 of this research.Goal and Scope. This study compared two different approaches to general inventory data in LCA, one involving the process-based ETH 96 database and the other an environmentally extended Input-Output table for the US, referring to MIET (Missing Inventory Estimation Tool) 2.0. The purpose of the present paper is to highlight and explain some of the differences between the two approaches, in order to give LCA practitioners a clearer idea of the advantages and limitations of using Input-Output analysis combined with process LCA. Methods. The comparison was made despite substantial differences between the two approaches, through a reduction and reclassification of the ETH process technology matrix to fit the Input-Output classification scheme and by concentrating on the structure of the processes rather than their absolute values. The structure is described in terms of the percentage of the CO, contribution to the total emission by all processes involved in the supply chain. An input and output structure comparison was carried out between ETH 96 and MIET 2.0, to extract information about their structures. Results and Discussion. The results of the study show that, despite their methodological differences, MIET 2.0 and ETH 96 show substantial similarities in their overall structures. There are also differences in the structure of the two databases, and most of them have occurred randomly, while, for certain particular sectors, the differences are rather persistent. Especially the contributions by capital goods are constantly lower in ETH 96 database and vice versa. The results imply possible systematic truncation in process LCA databases, especially for a few sectors such as capital goods. Recommendation and Perspective. Hybrid analysis can overcome the problem of incompleteness in process LCA, while avoiding such disadvantages of IOA as aggregation problem.Background. Toots and methods able to cope with uncertainties are essential for improving the credibility of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a decision support tool. Previous approaches have focussed predominately upon data quality. Objective and Scope. An epistemological approach is presented conceptualising uncertainties in a comparative, prospective, attributional LCA. This is achieved by considering a set of cornerstone scenarios representing future developments of an entire Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) product system. We illustrate the method using a comparison of future transport systems. Method. Scenario modelling is organized by means of Formative Scenario Analysis (FSA), which provides a set of possible and consistent conerstone scenarios. Unit processes scenarios are generated for those unit processes of an LCI product system which are time dependent and of environmental importance. Unit process scenarios are combinations of levels of socio-economic and technological impact variables. Two core elements of FSA are applied in LCI scenario modelling. So-called impact matrix analysis is applied to determine the relationship between unit process specific socio-economic variables and technology variables. Consistency Analysis is employed to integrate various unit process scenarios into the overall cornerstone scenarios, based on pair-wise ratings of the consistency of the levels of socio-economic impact variables of all unit processes. Two software applications are employed which are available from the authors. Results and Discussion. The study reveals that each possible level or development of a technology variable is best conceived of as the impact of a specific socio-economic (sub-) scenario. This allows for linking possible future technology options within the socio-economic context of the future development of various background processes. In an illustrative case study, the climate change scores and nitrogen dioxide scores per seat kilometre for three technology options of regional rail transport are compared. Similar scores are calculated for a future bus alternative and an average Swiss car. The scenarios are deliberately chosen to maximise diversity. That is, they represent the entire range of future possible developments. Reference data and the unit process structure are taken from the Swiss LCA database 'ecoinvent 2000'. The results reveal that rail transport remains the best option for future regional transport in Switzerland. In all four assessed scenarios, two technology options of future rail transport perform considerably better than regional bus transport and car transport. Conclusions and Recommendations. The case study demonstrates the general feasibility of the developed approach for attributional prospective LCA. It allows for a focussed and in-depth analysis of the future development of each single unit process, while still accounting for the requirements of the final scenario integration. Due to its high transparency, the procedure supports the validation of LCI results. Furthermore, it is well-suited for incorporation into participatory methods so as to increase their credibility. Outlook and Future Work. Thus far, the proposed approach is only applied on a vehicle level not taking into account alterations in demand and use of different transport modes. Future projects will enhance the approach by tackling uncertainties in technology assessment of future transport systems. For instance, environmental interventions involving future maglev technology will be assessed so as to account for induced traffic generated by the introduction of a new transport system.Background, Aims and Scope. Huge amounts of sewage sludge, that need to be handled, are generated all around the world from wastewater treatment plants and its management in an economically and environmentally acceptable way has become a matter of increasing importance during the last few years. In this paper, we make use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare biological and thermal processes, that is to say, anaerobic digestion versus pyrolysis and incineration. This paper will complete the analysis performed in a wastewater treatment plant, where sludge post-treatment was identified as one of the main contributors to the environmental impact on the global system. Methods. LCA is a tool for evaluating the environmental performance of goods as well as processes or services (collectively termed products). ISO 14040 defines LCA as a compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a system throughout its life cycle: from the production of raw materials to the disposal of the waste generated. In this study, data relating to the actual scenario from an existent wastewater treatment plant were considered. Both bibliographical and real data from existing facilities were used for the thermal processes proposed. The Centre of Environmental Science (CML) of Leiden University's methodology was chosen to quantify the potential environmental impacts associated with the different scenarios under study. The software SimaPro 5.1 was used and CML factors (updated in 2002) were chosen for characterisation and normalisation stages. Results and Discussion. In a previous study, sewage sludge was found to be a critical point in the environmental performance of a wastewater treatment plant, so different alternatives have been tackled here. Anaerobic digestion followed by land application of pasty sludge comprises both energy recovery and nutrient recovery. Other thermal processes, such as incineration or pyrolysis, allow energy recovery (both electrical and thermal) and, although nutrients are lost, new co-products are produced (tar and char at pyrolysis). Here, the most adverse case (that is to say, the total amount of heavy metals is supposed to be released from the sludge and reach the environment) was applied to consider the most negative impact due to sludge spreading in agricultural soils; so more research is required in order to establish the precise amount of heavy metals that is effectively uptaken by the plants and crops as well as the amount that is transferred to another phase as a leachate. Thermal processes are presented here as a good option to recover energy from the sludge; although the value of nutrients is lost. Tar and char, co-products from pyrolysis, are good examples that were evaluated here, recycling of bottom ashes from sludge incineration or manufacture of ceramic materials from sludge are other options to be studied in the near future. Conclusion. During the last few years, several opinions have been declared in favour of land application, incineration or pyrolysis, but many voices have also spoken out against each one. To obtain general conclusions for an overall comparison of different post-treatment of urban wastewater sludge is not easy as there are many contradictory aspects. The most effective utilisation of sewage sludge implies both energy and material reuse, but this is not always possible. Nevertheless, we think that land application of digested sludge is an acceptable option, probably not the best but at least a good one, for sludge treatment as long as efforts are focused on the minimisation of heavy metal content in the final cake.Intention, Goal and Background. In this paper some relevant results of a research work are presented, the main aim of which consists of performing the environmental assessment of different water production technologies in order to establish, in a global, rigorous and objective way, the less aggressive technology for the environment for supplying potable water to the end users. The scope of this paper is mostly oriented to the comparative Life Cycle Assessment of different water production technologies instead of presenting new advancements in the LCA methodology. Based on the results obtained in Part 1 (LCA of most widespread commercial clesalination technologies), the particular case of a big hydraulic project, which is the Ebro River Water Transfer (ERWT) considered in the Spanish National Hydrologic Plan, versus the production by desalination of the same amount of water to be diverted, is compared in Part 2. The assessment technique is the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which includes the entire life cycle of each technology, encompassing: extraction and processing raw materials, manufacturing, transportation and distribution, operation and final waste disposal. Methods and Main Features. The software SimaPro 5.0, developed by Dutch PR6 Consultants, has been used as the analysis tool, because it is a well known, internationally accepted and validated tool. Different evaluation methods have been applied in the LCA evaluation: CML 2 baseline 2000, Eco-Points 97 and Eco-Indicator 99. Data used in the inventory analysis of this Part 2 come from: a) desalination: data obtained for existing plants in operation; b) ERWT: Project approved in the Spanish National Hydrologic Plan and its Environmental Impact Evaluation and; c) data bases implemented in the SimaPro software - BUWAL 250, ETH-ESU 96, IDEMAT 2001. Different scenarios have been analyzed in both parts in order to estimate not only the potential of reduction of the provoked environmental loads with the present state of the art of technology, but also the most likely future trend of technological evolution. In Part 1, different energy production models and the integration of desalination with other productive processes are studied, while the effect of the most likely technological evolution in the mid-term, and the estimation of the environmental loads to the water transfer during drought periods are considered in Part 2. Results and Discussion. As proven in Part 1, RO is a less aggressive desalination technology for the environment. Its aggression is one order of magnitude lower than that of the thermal processes, MSF and MED. The main contribution to the global environmental impact of RO comes from the operation, while the other phases, construction and disposal, are almost negligible when compared to it. In thecase of the ERWT, the contribution of the operation phase is also the most important one, but the construction phase has an important contribution too. Its corresponding environmental load, with the present state of the art of technology, is slightly lower than that provoked by the RO desalination technology. However, the results obtained in the different scenarios analyzed show that the potential reduction of the environmental load in the case of the ERWT is significantly lower than that in the case of the RO. The effect of drought periods in the assessed environmental loads of the water transfer is not negligible, obtaining as a result an increasing environmental load per m(3) of diverted water. Conclusion. The environmental load associated with RO, with the present state of the art of technology, is slightly higher than that provoked by the ERWT. However, considering the actual trend of technological improvement of the RO and the present trend of energy production technology in the address of reducing the fossil fuels' contribution in the electricity production, the environmental load associated with RO in the short mid-term would be likely to be lower than that corresponding to the ERWT. Recommendations and Outlook. Although desalination technologies are energy intensive and provoke an important environmental load, as already explained in Part 1, they present a high potential of reducing it. In respect to ERWT, the results indicate, when the infrastructure of ERWT is completed (by 2010-2012), that the LCA of RO will be likely to be against the water transfer. With the present technological evolution of water production technologies and from the results obtained in this paper, it seems, from an environmental viewpoint, that big hydraulic projects should be considered the last option because they are rigid and long-term infrastructures (several decades and even centuries of operation) that provoke important environmental loads with only a small margin for reducing them.Background. The analysis of a wastewater treatment technology, under a expanded boundaries system which includes both the technology and the inputs required for its operation, quantifies the overall environmental impact that may result from the treatment of a wastewater stream. This is particularly useful for environmental policy makers being that a expanded boundaries system tends to provide a holistic view. The former view can be highly enriched with the use of process engineering tools, such as mathematical process modelling, process design, performance assessment and cost optimised models. Main Features. The traditional approach used to assess waste treatment technologies is contrasted with a life cycle analysis (LCA) approach. The optimal design of a granular activated carbon adsorption (GAC) process is used as a model system to demonstrate the advantages of LCA approaches over traditional approaches. Further sections of the paper describe a mathematical framework for the assessment of technologies, design considerations applied in the cost optimised carbon adsorption model, the use of LCA techniques to perform an inventory of all emissions associated to the process system and, some of its environmental impacts. Results. Economic and environmental considerations regarding the optimum process design are introduced as a basis for decision towards the selection and operating conditions of wastewater treatment technologies. Moreover, the use of LCA has revealed that the environmental burden associated with the wastewater treatment may produce a higher environmental impact than one that can be caused by untreated discharges. Conclusion. The paper highlights the string advantages that environmental policy makers may have by combining LCA and process engineering tools. Furthermore, this approach can be incorporated into other existing treatment processes or for process designers.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background. BASF has developed the eco-efficiency analysis tool to address not only strategic issues but also issues posed by the marketplace, politics and research. The goal was to develop a tool for supporting decision-making processes, which is useful for many of applications in the Chemical and other industries. A part of the eco-efficiency analysis involves the evaluation of the toxicity and the ecotoxicity potential. Objectives. Many life cycle analyses do not include an assessment of the toxicity potential nor the ecotoxicity potential. However, in order to arrive at a comprehensive assessment of products and processes, it is often the ecotoxicity potential, which constitutes an important factor with regard to the evaluation of sustainability. The cradle-to-grave approach is also important for this calculation and will be done based on a database that will be discussed also in this paper. Methods. The method used for the determination of the ecotoxicity potential follows the basic rules of the European Union Risk Ranking System (EURAM). The other criteria of the ecological fingerprint are combined with the economical results in the eco-efficiency portfolio. Results and Discussion. The results of the studies are shown in a simple diagram, the eco-efficiency portfolio. Therefore ecological data are summarized in a special manner as described previously. It has been shown that the weighting factors, which are used in our method, have a negligible impact on the results. In most cases, the input data have the dominant impact on the results of the study. The ecotoxicity assessment will be a part of the ecological calculation. Because of the cradle-to-grave approach, substances of the whole life cycle can be identified that might have a toxic impact to the environment. The results can be used for optimization of the process. Conclusions. The new calculation model allows the assessment of eco-toxicological substances in an appropriate and easy way. In most of the cases the data from a European safety data sheet are sufficient for the calculation. The normalized data can be incorporated very easily in the ecological fingerprint and in the drawing of the eco-efficiency portfolio. Recommendations and Outlook. LCA in combination with the evaluation of the ecotoxicity potential will for reasons of optimizing for least impact become more important in certain cases. Especially in those systems where water emissions are likely, the use of the evaluation system in the eco-efficiency analysis is recommended. This new methodology allows the calculation of ecotoxicity potentials in a short time with a small set of input information. The analytical eco-efficiency tool helps in implementing more sustainable processes and products in the future.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle cost analysis (LCC) techniques are used to study a 25-year operational life cycle for plumbing fixtures and water-consuming appliances for four different multioccupant building scenarios: an apartment, a college dormitory, a motel, and an office building. Both analysis methodologies suggest that the specification of higher-efficiency fixtures and appliances is environmentally and economically justified for the scenarios considered. Additionally, both the LCA and LCC results suggest that natural gas should be used insted of electricity for water heating when both energy sources are practical options. The study found the dominant environmental impacts of domestic water consumption to be attributable to water intake, global warming potential, and fossil-fuel depletion. The dominant life-cycle cost component is for maintenance, repair, and replacement. The results of this study can be especially beneficial to long-term building owners, such as universities, because operational costs savings can be realized.The eco-efficiency analysis method developed and used by the Oko-Institut analyzes different alternatives that fulfill a defined consumer need, from an environmental as well as an economic perspective. Like life-cycle assessment (LCA), eco-efficiency analysis makes possible the setting of priorities in purchasing decisions or can be used to show optimization potentials in product development processes. Eco-efficiency analysis builds upon two methods: LCA, according to ISO 14040 ff. (to assess the environmental aspects of products and processes), and life-cycle costing. Life-cycle costing results in a single figure-the total costs of ownership to one or several actors. The environmental impacts can be evaluated and aggregated as a single score or the impact category indicator results can be kept separate. In either case two single scores can be compared: the total environmental burden or the impact category indicator results, and the total costs of ownership of the alternatives under consideration. The results can then be plotted in two-dimensional graphs that show the effectiveness of certain measures in environmental and economic terms. The efficiency is expressed as a numerical ratio of environmental savings to difference in costs. Together with furnishing more detailed results and a discussion of additional benefits or potential barriers, eco-efficiency analysis broadens the basis for decision-making processes.The concept of eco-efficiency is commonly referred to as a business link to sustainable development. In this article, eco-efficiency is examined at a regional level as an approach to promoting the competitiveness of economic activities in the Finnish Kymenlaakso region and mitigating their harmful impacts on the environment. The aim is to develop appropriate indicators for monitoring changes in the eco-efficiency of the region. A starting point is to produce indicators for the environmental and economic dimensions of regional development and use them for measuring regional eco-efficiency. The environmental impact indicators are based on a life-cycle assessment method, producing different types of environmental impact indicators: pressure indicators (e.g., emissions of CO2), impact category indicators (e.g., CO2 equivalents in the case of climate change), and a total impact indicator (aggregating different impact category indicator results into a single value). Environmental impact indicators based on direct material input, total material input and total material requirement of the Kymenlaakso region are also assessed. The economic indicators used are the gross domestic product, the value added, and the output of the main economic sectors of Kymenlaakso. In the eco-efficiency assessment, the economic and environmental impact indicators are monitored in the same graph. In a few cases eco-efficiency ratios can also be calculated (the economic indicators are divided by the environmental indicators). Output (= value added + intermediate consumption) is used as an economic indicator related to the environmental impact indicators, which also cover the upstream processes of the region's activities. In the article, we also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of using the different environmental impact indicators.Eco-efficiency at the product level is defined as product value per unit of environmental impact. In this paper, we present a method for quantifying the eco-efficiency using quality function deployment (QFD) and life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA). These well-known tools are widely used in the manufacturing industry. QFD, which is one of the methods used in product development based on consumer preferences, is introduced to calculate the product value. An index of the product value is calculated as the weighted average of improvement rates of quality characteristics. The importance of customer requirements, derived from the QFD matrix, is applied. Environmental impacts throughout a product life cycle are calculated based on an LCIA method widely used in Japan. By applying the LCIA method of endpoint type, the endpoint damage caused by various life-cycle inventories is calculated. Willingness to pay is applied to integrate it into a single index. Eco-design support tools, namely the life-cycle planning (LCP) tool and the life-cycle assessment (LCA) tool, have already been developed. Using these tools, data required for calculation of the eco-efficiency of products can be collected. The product value is calculated based on QFD data stored in the LCP tool and the environmental impact is calculated using the LCA tool. Case studies of eco-efficiency are adopted and the adequacy of this method is clarified. Several advantages of this method are characterized.The concept of eco-efficiency is increasingly being applied to judge the combined environmental and economic performance of product systems, processes, and/or companies. Eco-efficiency is often defined as the ratio of economic value added to environmental impact added. This definition is not appropriate for end-of-pipe treatment technologies because these technologies aim at improving the environmental performance of technical processes at the cost of financial expense. Therefore, an indicator for the assessment of end-of-pipe technologies has been proposed. This indicator, called environmental cost efficiency (ECE), is defined as the ratio of net environmental benefits to the difference in costs. ECE is applied to four end-of-pipe technologies for the treatment of municipal solid waste: sanitary landfill, mechanical-biological treatment, modern grate incineration, and a staged thermal process (pyrolysis and gasification). A life-cycle assessment was performed on these processes to quantify the net environmental benefit. Moreover, the approximate net costs (costs minus benefits) were quantified. The results show that, relative to grate incineration, sanitary landfills and mechanical-biological treatment are less costly but environmentally more harmful. We calculated the ECE for all combinations of technologies. The results indicate that the staged thermal process may be the most environmentally cost-efficient alternative to all other treatment technologies in the long run, followed by mechanical-biological treatment and grate incineration.The closing of material loops is a critical challenge in industrial ecology. It relies mainly on the utilization of recovered materials/parts/products in the original and principal production system while their original function is retained at the highest level possible. In this study, advanced loop-closing systems for the recycling of end-of-life vehicles and electric household appliances are first designed in "Hyogo Eco-town." Second, a methodology for evaluating the eco-efficiency of these systems is developed. Finally, the eco-efficiency of the designed advanced loop-closing strategies for the two products is evaluated, based on the results of materials flow analysis and life-cycle assessment. The results show that, compared with conventional recycling systems, when an industrial complex and an advanced loop-closing system for end-of-life vehicles are established, the total economic value increases by 114% and the eco-efficiency in terms of the amount of direct material input is improved by 57%. This system permits the utilization of the by-products, wastes, and recovered materials that originate from other industrial sectors as input to production activities. In the case of end-of-life electric household appliances, an advanced loop-closing strategy to lengthen the product life with parts reuse improves the eco-efficiency in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 4% compared with the conventional replacement of the appliance with a new product along with the material recycling option.A simple method of representing the eco-efficiency (E/E) of a product system has been developed and applied to a pollution prevention program at a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME). Cost-side and environment-side indicators were derived using total cost accounting and life-cycle assessment, respectively The derived indicators were subsequently normalized to reference values representing the current cost and environmental situation. By combining these normalized indicators, the E/E of a product system can be expressed on a simple graph. The method was applied in a case study carried out at a South Korean SME producing components for electronic equipment such as mobile communication base stations. A silver-plating process was identified as one of the key processes driving a substantial fraction of the total cost and aggregate environmental impact of the product system. Focusing on the key issues identified, a series of alternative processes, including use of a product insulation cover, a sieve-type ancillary electrode, a balanced-uniform plating technique, stream segregation, and noncyanice electroplating, were proposed. The feasibility of these alternatives was validated against product specifications as well as the company's financial and spatial capacity The potential improvements accruing from these alternatives are presented as a simple graph that can be used by decision makers to readily identify trade-offs between economic and environmental issues.According to the life cycle assessment and the environmental design method of industry production, a quantitative assessment, model for the embodied environmental impact of concrete with or without fly ash was proposed. The environmental burden impact indicator (EBII), the resources depletion impact indicator (RDII), and the environmental impact comprehensive indicator (EICI) are defined. The specific-environmental impact values of different grade concretes with or without fly ash were presented. In the embodied process of concrete with, or without. fly ash, the key potential environmental impact categories are global warming and dust emission, aim] it is an effective way for reducing the embodied environmental impact of concrete to mix fly ash and lower grade cement. The method presented in this paper makes it possible to quantitatively assess the embodied environmental impact of concrete with or without fly ash. The results calculated in. this paper can be used to quantitatively assess the life cycle environmental impact of construction materials and buildings.Different types of assessment tools have been developed in Europe with the purpose of determining the environmental impact of various livestock production systems at farm level. The assessment tools differ in terms of which environmental objectives are included and how indicators are constructed and interpreted. The paper compares typical tools for environmental assessment of livestock production systems, and recommends selected indicators suitable for benchmarking. The assessment tools used very different types of indicators ranging from descriptions of farm management and quantification of input to estimates of emissions of, e.g., nitrate and ammonia. The indicators should be useful in a benchmarking process where farmers may improve their practices through learning from farms with better agri-environmental performance. An example of this is given using data on P-surplus on pig farms. Some indicators used the area of the farm as the basis of the indicator-e.g. nitrogen surplus per hectare-while others were expressed per unit produced, e.g. emission of greenhouse gasses per kilogram milk. The paper demonstrates that a comparison of organic vs. conventional milk production and comparison of three pig production systems give different results, depending on the basis of the indicators (i.e. per hectare or per kilogram product). Indicators linked to environmental objectives with a local or regional geographical target should be area-based-while indicators with a global focus should be product-based. It is argued that the choice of indicators should be linked with the definition of the system boundaries, in the sense that area-based indicators should include emissions on the farm only, whereas product-based indicators should preferably include emissions from production of farm inputs, as well as the inputs on the actual farm. The paper ends with recommendations for choice of agri-environmental indicators taking into account the geographical scale, system boundary and method of interpretation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Despite growing interest, rhetoric and research on ecological design in landscape architecture, practitioners in the US are not implementing as many ecological design strategies as might be expected. To better understand this phenomenon, the Green Building Practice Survey (GBPS) was carried out among landscape architects practicing varying degrees of ecological design to determine: (1) the frequency of use of common ecological design landscape strategies; (2) the obstacles and challenges that contribute to non-use; (3) significant characteristics of the firms; and (4) methods of project delivery. Phase I of the Green Building Practice Study, an online survey undertaken in association with the American Society of Landscape Architects, measured ecological design strategy use, identified unique characteristics of US ecological design practice in landscape architecture, and quantitatively revealed many challenges and constraints that practitioners face as they try to implement strategies. Phase 11 of the study, discussed in a separate publication, targeted a representative sample of 44 respondents with standard-questionnaire phone interviews to elucidate methods and techniques of ecological design practice. The study revealed high-frequency use of native plants, local materials, and site protection strategies; while use of green roofs, on-site wastewater treatment and material life-cycle analysis was quite low among the respondents. Commonly cited challenges were: issues of cost; lack of information, testing and data on performance of strategies; time available for research; and resistance by project stakeholders, other consultants and code officials. The results of this study highlight a strong need for research demonstrating the economic and performance advantages of ecological design; strengthened information dissemination forums for practitioners; and marketing and education efforts directed to all project stakeholders. This paper will present the survey results, relate them to similar studies in allied fields, discuss strategy use and challenges within the framework of Classical Diffusion Theory, and identify opportunities and forums where the challenges might be addressed. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study uses life-cycle analysis to examine the net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the Canadian peat industry for the period 1990-2000. GHG exchange is estimated for land-use change, peat extraction and processing, transport to market, and the in situ decomposition of extracted peat. The estimates, based on an additive GHG accounting model, show that the peat extraction life cycle emitted 0.54 X 10(6) t of GHG in 1990, increasing to 0.89 X 10(6) t in 2000 (expressed as CO2 equivalents using a 100-y time horizon). Peat decomposition associated with end use was the largest source of GHGs, comprising 71% of total emissions during this 11-y period. Land use change resulted in a switch of the peatlands from a GHG sink to a source and contributed an additional 15%. Peat transportation was responsible for 10% of total GHG emissions, and extraction and processing contributed 4%. It would take approximately 2000 y to restore the carbon pool to its original size if peatland restoration is successful and the cutover peatland once again becomes a net carbon sink.The main research objective was establishing a simple but reliable methodology for the building design stage that would yield environmentally optimal buildings. A three-step methodology is proposed: (1) design variable grouping-four distinct groups were recognized according to their stage of major influence (production and construction, operational energy, maintenance to demolition, and an Integrated Group relevant to several life cycle stages), (2) generating the within group optimization methodology, and (3) integration. This paper presents the methodology developed for the grouping procedure, and its testing and application on a simple generic office module. Sensitivity analysis highlights the significance of electricity production fuel. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents the results of a life cycle analysis (LCA) of greenhouse gas emissions from power generation systems in order to understand the characteristics of these systems from the perspective of global warming. Nine different types of power generation systems were examined: coal-fired, oil-fired, LNG-fired, LNG-combined cycle, nuclear, hydropower, geothermal, wind power and solar-photovoltaic (PV). Life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission per kW h of electricity generated was estimated for the systems using a combined method of process analysis and input-output analysis. First, average power generation systems reflecting the current status in Japan were examined as base cases. Second, the impacts of emerging and future nuclear, wind power and PV technologies were analyzed. Finally, uncertainties associated with some assumptions were examined to help clarify interpretation of the results. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.A life cycle assessment was performed to quantify the non-renewable (fossil) energy use and global warming potential (GWP) in electricity generation from a typical gas fired combined cycle power plant in Singapore. The cost of electricity generation was estimated using a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) tool. The life cycle assessment (LCA) of a 367.5 MW gas fired combined cycle power plant operating in Singapore revealed that hidden processes consume about 8% additional energy in addition to the fuel embedded energy, and the hidden GWP is about 18%. The natural gas consumed during the operational phase accounted for 82% of the life cycle cost of electricity generation. An empirical relation between plant efficiency and life cycle energy use and GWP in addition to a scenario for electricity cost with varying gas prices and plant efficiency have been established. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar power generation and, in particular, space solar power generation seem to be one of the most promising electric power generation technologies for reducing emissions of global warming gases (denoted collectively as CO2 emissions below). Calculating the precise amount of net reduction in CO2 emissions of a solar power system over other alternative power systems requires careful life cycle considerations. For example, emissions from a space solar system must include the emissions from consuming rocket fuel during the launching the satellites, and the emissions from the energy consumed while producing the solar panels. In this paper, we calculate the CO2 emissions observed through the life cycle of a solar,power satellite (SPS). This life cycle consists of the production of rocket fuel and solar panels and the construction of a Rectenna (power receiving antenna), satellite, and all other equipment listed in the Department of Energy/NASA reference system. The calculation also includes indirect CO2 emissions that occur in various stages of production of these materials. Our baseline scenario shows that the life cycle CO2 emissions for an SPS system per unit of energy generated are almost the same as the emissions for nuclear power systems and are much less than the life cycle emissions for LNG-fired and coal-fired power generation systems. Furthermore, our SPS-Breeder scenario, in which SPSs supply electricity for producing further SPS systems, shows significantly lower CO2 emissions. As electrical power generation constitutes one fourth of Japan's total CO2 emissions, reducing emissions from electric power generation is one of the most important issues on Japan's policy agenda for dealing with global warming. Our findings suggest that the SPS is the most effective alternative power generation technology.This paper describes the life cycle assessment (LCA) for photovoltaic (PV) power plants in the new ecoinvent database. Twelve different, grid-connected photovoltaic systems were studied for the situation in Switzerland in the year 2000. They are manufactured as panels or laminates, from monocrystalline or polycrystalline silicon, installed on facades, slanted or flat roofs, and have 3 kW(P) capacity. The process data include quartz reduction, silicon purification, wafer, panel and laminate production, mounting structure, 30 years operation and dismantling. In contrast to existing LCA studies, country-specific electricity mixes have been considered in the life cycle inventory (LCI) in order to reflect the present market situation. The new approach for the allocation procedure in the inventory of silicon purification, as a critical issue of former studies, is discussed in detail. The LCI for photovoltaic electricity shows that each production stage is important for certain elementary flows. A life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) shows that there are important environmental impacts not directly related to the energy use (e.g., process emissions of NOx from wafer etching). The assumption for the used supply energy mixes is important for the overall LCIA results of different production stages. The presented life cycle inventories for photovoltaic power plants are representative for newly constructed plants and for the average photovoltaic mix in Switzerland in the year 2000. A scenario for a future technology (until 2010) helps to assess the relative influence of technology improvements for some processes. The very detailed ecoinvent database forms a good basis for similar studies in other European countries or for other types of solar cells. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.For the realization of a sustainable society, the number of environmentally friendly products introduced in the recent decades has increased in iron and steel products. Such products are compatible with environmental regulations, are preferable from the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) viewpoint and save energy when used in the final products because of their improved properties. Hydro-forming technology simplifies the production process, of automotive parts and reduces the parts' weight, contributing to an improvement in the fuel consumption rate of automobiles. In the steel-refining process, reduction of slag emission is a key issue and is accomplished by improvements in dephosporization efficiency and the recycling of the refining slag as in the multiple refining converter (MURC) process. Electromagnetic casting reduces the number of defects in hot coils produced from the slab cast by its application and has the possibility of eliminating the slab surface treatment, which saves energy. Control of nonmetallic inclusions and segregation are now utilized for the generation of steel properties more suitable for environmental concerns. Hydrogen gas generation by using coke oven gas and waste plastic recycling by using a coke oven also contribute toward creating a sustainable society.The main purpose of industrial ecology is to evaluate and minimize impacts from economic activities. Tourism, as an economic activity, results in a full range of environmental impacts and should be regarded as any other industry. Hence, the application of industrial ecology in tourism was investigated to enhance environmental management of catering. More specifically, boxed food in Taiwan was taken as a case study to demonstrate this new approach. The framework for studying boxed food was based on material flow analysis. Boxed food analysis can be divided into two parts: the meal box and the contents. Meal boxes were inventoried with a life cycle assessment (LCA). According to the findings of this study, environmental impacts from a PP meal box production were more expensive than others, while those from a PS meal box production were the lowest. The life cycle inventory analysis of the contents will be investigated with a new approach system in the next phase of our work. This new approach is an integration of the LCA with the Hazard Analysis Control Point (HACCP) system. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study the use of 'cleaned' end of life (EOL) cathode ray tube (CRT) glass as a raw material in ceramic glazes is described. At present, the recycling and industrial utilization of CRT, a glass material from TV and computer sets, is a subject of intense research with particular regard to the so-called open-loop recycling, namely cycles different from that of the origin. However, the use of CRT glass as a secondary raw material is strictly related to the demand of high-quality raw material. The good preliminary results reached by introducing clean TV and PC monitor panel and cone glass into ceramic glaze formulations pushed research toward the setting-up of a base glaze that is exploitable for the production of pigmented, silk-screened and flame-hardened glazes (products used industrially for coating floor tiles). The aesthetic and chemical characterization of the tiles glazed by this product showed an extremely similar behaviour to originals that did not contain CRT glass. The good technical results achieved have been supported by the life cycle assessment analysis, which has demonstrated a reduction of the environmental impact of the CRT glass-containing ceramic glaze with respect to the standard one.Sustainable development relies on the eco-efficient use of all flows in society; more value created out of each resource unit. Supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) can be used for treatment of wet organic waste. The technology has been under development for over 20 years but has not yet been fully commercialized. SCWO allows for complete oxidation of all organics in sewage sludge and almost complete recovery of the inherent energy, essentially without harmful emissions. In this paper, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of sewage sludge SCWO (Aqua-Critox) is presented and the results are compared with LCA results for other sludge handling options: agricultural use, co-incineration with municipal solid waste, incineration with subsequent phosphorus extraction (BioCon) and sludge fractionation with phosphorus recovery (Cambi-KREPRO). For SCWO, beneficial utilization of the heat of reaction is of crucial importance for the outcome. The electricity consumed by pumping and the nitrous oxide produced are other important parameters. The best sludge handling option from an environmental point of view depends on what aspect is considered more important in the impact assessment. Regarding global warming, the energy recovery methods perform better than agricultural use.The objectives of this study were to evaluate and compare the environmental load of two different concentrate feed supply systems to the Japanese domestic livestock industry using the Life-cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The current system was defined as that requiring 11.469 million tons of corn imported from the US by sea transport and supplied as concentrate feed to the Japanese domestic livestock industry The new system proposed by Kaku et al. in 2004 was defined as where 802,830 tons of US imported corn would not be planted in US and would be replaced by barley planted in 278 thousand ha of Japanese domestic land left fallow for the past year. In this case, 909,000 tons of domestic harvest barley would have been supplied as concentrate feed to the Japanese domestic livestock industry in 2000. The activities taken into account within the two system boundaries were three stages: concentrate feed production, feed transportation and gas emission from the soil by chemical fertilizer. Finished compost was regarded as organic fertilizer and was put instead of chemical fertilizers within the system boundary Adoption of this new concentrate feed supply system by the Japanese domestic livestock industry could reduce 78,462 tons CO2-equivalents of global warming potential, 347 tons SO2-equivalents of acidification potential, 54 tons PO4-equivalents of eutrophication potential and 0.842 million GJ as energy consumption below 2,000 levels. This LCA study comparing two Japanese domestic livestock concentrate feed supply systems showed that the stage of feed transport contributed most to global warming and the stage of emission from the soil contributed most to acidification and eutrophication. The Japanese domestic livestock industry could participate in emissions trading with CO2-equivalents reduced by shifting from some imported US corn as a concentrate feed to domestic barley planted in land left fallow. In that case the Japanese government could launch emissions trading in accordance with Kyoto Protocol in the future.This study compares life-cycle (cradle-to-gate) energy consumption and environmental impacts for producing ethanol via fermentation-based processes starting with two lignocellulosic feedstocks: virgin timber resources or recycled newsprint from an urban area. The life-cycle assessment in this study employed a novel combination of computer-aided tools. These tools include fermentation process simulation coupled with an impact assessment software tool for the manufacturing process life-cycle stage impacts. The process simulation file was provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and was modified slightly to accommodate these different feedstocks. For the premanufacturing process life-cycle stage impacts, such as the fuels and process chemicals used, transportation, and some preparatory steps (wood chipping, etc.), a life-cycle inventory database (the Boustead Model) coupled with an impact assessment software tool were used (the Environmental Fate and Risk Assessment Tool). The Newsprint process has a slightly lower overall composite environmental index (created from eight impact categories) compared to the Timber process. However, the Timber process consumes less electricity, produces fewer emissions in total, and has less of a human health impact. The amount of life-cycle fossil energy required to produce ethanol is 14% of the energy content of the product, making the overall efficiency 86%. Process improvement strategies were evaluated for both feedstock processes, including recycle of reactor vent air and heat integration. Heat integration has the greatest potential to reduce fossil-derived energy consumption, to an extent that fossil-derived energy over the life cycle is actually saved per unit of ethanol produced. These energy efficiency values are superior to those observed in conventional fossil-based transportation fuels.Based on the results of previous studies, the efficiency of a Brayton/Hirn combined cycle fuelled with a clean syngas produced by means of biomass gasification and equipped with CO2 removal by chemical absorption reached 33.94%, considering also the separate CO,) compression process. The specific CO2, emission of the power plant was 178 kg/MW h. In comparison with values previously found for an integrated coal gasification combined cycle (ICGCC) with upstream CO2 chemical absorption (38-39% efficiency, 130kg/MWh specific CO2 emissions), this configuration seems to be attractive because of the possibility of operating with a simplified scheme and because of the possibility of using biomass in a more efficient way with respect to conventional systems. In this paper, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted with presenting the results on the basis of the Eco-Indicator 95 impact assessment methodology. Further, a comparison with the results previously obtained for the LCA of the ICGCC was performed in order to highlight the environmental impact of biomass production with fossil fuels utilisation. The LCA shows the important environmental advantages of biomass utilisation in terms of reduction of both greenhouse gas emissions and natural resource depletion, although an improved impact assessment methodology may better highlight the advantages due to the biomass utilisation. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The technical performance and energy requirements for production and transportation of a stand alone photovoltaic (PV)-battery system at different operating conditions are presented. Eight battery technologies are evaluated: lithium-ion (Li-ion), sodium-sulphur (NaS), nickel-cadmium (NiCd), nickel-metal hydride (NiMH), lead-acid (PbA), vanadium-redox (VRB), zinc-bromine (ZnBr) and polysulfide-bromide (PSB). In the reference case, the energy requirements for production and transport of PV-battery systems that use the different battery technologies differ by up to a factor of three. Production and transport of batteries contribute 24-70% to the energy requirements, and the PV array contributes 26-68%. The contribution from other system components is less than 10%. The contribution of transport to energy requirements is 1-9% for transportation by truck, but may be up to 73% for air transportation. The energy requirement for battery production and transport is dominant for systems based on NiCd, NiMH and PbA batteries. The energy requirements for these systems are, therefore, sensitive to changes in battery service life and gravimetric energy density. For systems with batteries with relatively low energy requirement for production and transportation (Li-ion, NaS, VRB, ZnBr, PSB), the battery charge-discharge efficiency has a larger impact. In Part 11, the data presented here are used to calculate energy payback times and overall battery efficiencies of the PV-battery systems. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy return factors and overall energy efficiencies are calculated for a stand-alone photovoltaic (PV)-battery system. Eight battery technologies are evaluated: lithium-ion (nickel), sodium-sulphur, nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride, lead-acid, vanadium-redox, zinc-bromine and polysulphide-bromide. With a battery energy storage capacity three times higher than the daily energy output, the energy return factor for the PV-battery system ranges from 2.2 to 10 in our reference case. For a PV-battery system with a service life of 30 yr, this corresponds to energy payback times between 2.5 and 13 yr. The energy payback time is 1.8-3.3 yr for the PV array and 0.72-10 yr for the battery, showing the energy related significance of batteries and the large variation between different technologies. In extreme cases, energy return factors below one occur, implying no net energy output. The overall battery efficiency, including not only direct energy losses during operation but also energy requirements for production and transport of the charger, the battery and the inverter, is 0.41-0.80. For some batteries, the overall battery efficiency is significantly lower than the direct efficiency of the charger, the battery and the inverter (0.50-0.85). The ranking order of batteries in terms of energy efficiency, the relative importance of different battery parameters and the optimal system design and operation (e.g. the use of air conditioning) are, in many cases, dependent on the characterisation of the energy background system and on which type of energy efficiency measure is used (energy return factor or overall battery efficiency). (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. At the same time this also means that the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) will continue to increase in the coming decades. As it is crucial to obtain more knowledge about the environmental consequences of the different WEEE treatment options, a study examining the two Swiss take-back and recycling systems of SWICO (for computers, consumer electronics and telecommunication equipment) and S.EN.S (household appliances) has been conducted. The two systems, which are based on an advanced recycling fee, are well established within Switzerland. With a combined approach of material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), the environmental impacts of these two systems have been estimated, including all further treatment steps, which transform the fractions either into secondary materials or into waste for final disposal. As a baseline, we have used a scenario assuming that no WEEE is recycled and hence only primary production for the similar amount of raw materials. The impact assessment is based on characterization factors according to the Dutch CML methodology. The results show that throughout the complete recycling chain the sorting and dismantling activities of companies are of minor interest; instead the main impact occurs during the treatment applied further downstream to turn the waste into secondary raw materials. Within the two systems in Switzerland, the collection of WEEE seems much more relevant than the sorting and dismantling activities. When comparing the environmental impact of WEEE recycling with that derived from the baseline scenario (incineration of all WEEE and primary production of the raw materials), WEEE recycling proves to be clearly advantageous from an environmental perspective. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was carried out based on a detailed life cycle inventory for a typical GSM 900 mobile phone network and related End of Life (EOL) treatment infrastructure. The environmental relevance of the three life cycle phases: production, use and EOL treatment was analysed using IMPACT2002+. The environmentally preferable EOL treatment alternative was identified on the basis of six previously developed EOL treatment scenarios. The results indicate that the environmental impacts attributable to the use phase dominate the environmental impacts incurred over the entire life cycle of the network. The impacts of the production phase are primarily attributable to the energy intensive manufacturing of printed wiring boards (PWB). The EOL phase dominates the impacts on ecosystem quality. In particular the longterm emissions of heavy metals have critical effects. Detailed analysis of the EOL phase shows that recycling of network materials in general leads to a two fold reduction of environmental impacts: in the EOL phase itself as well as by means of the avoided primary production of materials recovered in the EOL phase. An increase in the material quality of the secondary precious and rare materials leads to a significant reduction in the impacts on human health. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is generally considered one of the best environmental management tools that can be used to compare alternative ecoperformances of recycling or disposal systems. It considers the environment as a whole, including indirect releases, energy and material consumption, emissions in the environment, and waste disposal and follows each activity from the extraction of raw materials to the return of wastes to the ground (cradle-to-grave approach). The study refers to the whole Italian system for recycling of household plastic packaging wastes. The aim was to quantify the overall environmental performances of mechanical recycling of plastic containers in Italy and to compare them with those of conventional options of landfilling or incineration and of a couple of innovative processes of feedstock recycling, low-temperature fluidized bed pyrolysis, and high-pressure hydrogenation. The results confirm that recycling scenarios are always preferable to those of nonrecycling. They also highlight the good environmental performance of new plastic waste management schemes that couple feedstock and mechanical recycling processes. (c) 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog.The 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg called for a comprehensive set of programs focusing on sustainable consumption and production. According to world leaders, these programs should rely on life cycle assessment (LCA) to promote sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Cleaner production is a well-established activity, and it uses LCA. UNEP, the European Union, and a number of national organizations have now begun to work on sustainable consumption. In developing sustainable consumption policies and activities, the use of LCA presents interesting opportunities that are not yet well-understood by policy makers. This paper reviews how life cycle approaches, primarily based on input-output analysis, have been used in the area of sustainable consumption: to inform policy making, select areas of action, identify which lifestyles are more sustainable, advise consumers, and evaluate the effectiveness of sustainable consumption measures. Information on consumption patterns usually comes from consumer expenditure surveys. Different study designs and a better integration with consumer research can provide further interesting insights. Life-cycle approaches still need to be developed and tested. Current research is mostly descriptive; policy makers, however, require more strategic analysis addressing their decision options, including scenario analysis and backcasting.Chemical fate, effect, and damage should be accounted for in the analysis of human health impacts by toxic chemicals in life-cycle assessment (LCA). The goal of this article is to present a new method to derive human damage and effect factors of toxic pollutants, starting from a lognormal dose-response function. Human damage factors are expressed as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Human effect factors contain a disease-specific and a substance-specific component. The disease-specific component depends on the probability of disease occurrence and the distribution of sensitivities in the human population. The substance-specific component, equal to the inverse of the ED50, represents the toxic potency of a substance. The new method has been applied to calculate combined human damage and effect factors for 1,192 substances. The total range of 7 to 9 orders of magnitude between the substances is dominated by the range in toxic potencies. For the combined factors, the typical uncertainty, represented by the square root of the ratio of the 97.5th and 2.5th percentile, is a factor of 25 for carcinogenic effects and a factor of 125 for noncarcinogenic effects. The interspecies conversion factor, the (non) cancer effect conversion factor, and the average noncancer damage factor dominate the overall uncertainty.Goal, Scope and Background. Although LCA is traditionally a site-independent tool, there is currently a trend towards making LCA more site-dependent if not site-specific. For Europe, site-dependent impact factors have been calculated on a country basis for acidification, terrestrial eutrophication and toxicological impacts. It is, however, an open question whether this is the Optimum level for site-dependent factors. The aim of this paper is to develop site-dependent characterisation factors for different parts of Sweden for air emissions of NO., SO and particulates regarding ecosystem and human health impacts. Based on experiences from a case-study, the usability of the site-dependent factors for LCA are discussed, as well as the appropriate level of site-dependency for ecosystem and human health impacts. Methodology. The Ecosense model is used for calculating site-dependent factors for some atmospheric pollutants. Characterisation factors are calculated for four different places in Sweden with two different stack heights. Results and Conclusions. The characterisation factors for ecosystem impacts show fairly small differences between different parts of Sweden (within a factor of two). For health impacts, the differences between different parts of the country were larger and more significant (up to one order of magnitude). Also the difference between low and high stack heights may be relevant, especially in densely populated areas. These results suggest that for ecosystems, site-dependent characterisation factors for the considered atmospheric pollutants on a country level may be sufficient for most applications. However, for health impacts, site-dependent factors on a country level may be inappropriate. Beside LCA, the calculated factors and the methodology used should also be useful for other environmental system analysis tools, such as Strategic Environmental Assessment, Cost-Benefit Analysis and Environmental Management Systems.Background. The quantification of resource depletion in Life Cycle Assessment has been the topic of much debate; to date no definitive approach for quantifying effects in this impact category has been developed. In this paper we argue that the main reason for this extensive debate is because all methods for quantifying resource depletion impacts have focussed on resource extraction. Aim and Scope. To further the state of the debate we present a general framework for assessing the impacts of resource use across the entire suite of biotic and abiotic resources. The main aim of this framework is to define the necessary and sufficient set of information required to quantify the effects of resources use. Methodology. Our method is based on a generic concept of the quality state of resource inputs and outputs to and from a production system. Using this approach we show that it is not the extraction of materials which is of concern, but rather the dissipative use and disposal of materials. Using this as a point of departure we develop and define two key variables for use in the modelling of impacts of resource use, namely the ultimate quality limit, which is related to the functionality of the material, and backup technology. Existing methodologies for determining the effects of resource depletion are discussed in the context of this framework. Results. We demonstrate the ability of the general framework to describe impacts related to all resource categories: metallic and non-metallic minerals, energy minerals, water, soil, and biotic resources (wild or domesticated plants and animals). Recommendations focus on suggestions for a functionality measure for each of these categories; and how best the two modelling variables derived can be determined.Introduction. Statistical information for LCA is increasingly becoming available in databases. At the same time, processing of statistical information is increasingly becoming easier by software for LCA. A practical problem is that there is no unique unambiguous representation for statistical distributions. Representations. This paper discusses the most frequently encountered statistical distributions, their representation in mathematical statistics, EcoSpold and CMLCA, and the relationships between these representations. The distributions. Four statistical distributions are discussed: uniform, triangular, normal and lognormal. Software and examples. An easy to use software tool is available for supporting the conversion steps. Its use is illustrated with a simple example. Discussion. This paper shows which ambiguities exist for specifying statistical distributions, and which complications can arise when uncertainty information is transferred from a database to an LCA program. This calls for a more extensive standardization of the vocabulary and symbols to express such information. We invite suppliers of software and databases to provide their parameter representations in a clear and unambiguous way and hope that a future revision of the ISO/TS 14048 document will standardize representation and terminology for statistical information.Goal, Scope and Background. In the first part of this paper, we developed a methodology to incorporate exposure and risk concepts into life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). We argued that both risk assessment and LCIA are needed to consider the impacts of increasing insulation for single-family homes in the US from current practice to the levels recommended by the 2000 International Energy Conservation Codes. In this analysis, we apply our model to the insulation case study and evaluate the benefits and costs of increased insulation for new housing. Results and Discussion. The central estimate of impacts from the complete insulation manufacturing supply chain is approximately 20 premature deaths, 500 asthma attacks, and 8,000 restricted activity days nationwide for one year of increased fiberglass output. Of the health impacts associated with increased insulation manufacturing, 83% are attributable to the supply chain emissions from the mineral wool industry, which is mostly associated with the direct primary PM2.5 emissions from the industry (98%). Reduced energy consumption leads to 1.2 premature deaths, 30 asthma attacks, and 600 restricted activity days avoided per year, indicating a public health 'payback period' on the order of 14 years. About 90% of these benefits were associated with direct emissions from power plants and residential combustion sources. In total, the net present value of economic benefits over a 50-year period for a single-year cohort of new homes is $100 million with a 5% discount rate, with 40 fewer premature deaths in this period. Conclusion, Recommendation and Outlook. We have developed and applied a risk-based model to quantify the public health costs and benefits of increased insulation in new single-family homes in the US, demonstrating positive net economic and public health benefits within the lifetimes of the homes. More broadly, we demonstrated that it is feasible to incorporate exposure and risk concepts into I-O LCA, relying on regression-based intake fractions followed by more refined dispersion modeling. The refinement step is recommended especially if primary PM2.5 is an important source of exposure and if stack heights are relatively low. Where secondary PM2.5 is more important, use of regress ion-based intake fractions would be sufficient for a reasonable risk approximation. Uncertainties in our risk-based model should be carefully considered; nevertheless, our study can help decision-makers evaluate the costs and benefits of demand-side management policy options from a combined public health and life cycle perspective.Background, Aims and Scope. A strategy of local incineration with 17 small incinerators (Scenario L) is compared to a strategy of 3 centralized waste incinerators (Scenario Q for the region of Central Norway, in order to assess differences in environmental performance. Rough calculations of costs are also included. The functional unit is the treatment of municipal, commercial and special waste not recycled, plus the heating of a specific number of households, for the period of 2002 to 2020. Methods. Data on large and small scale incinerators were obtained from technology providers. LCA databases were used for transportation and heating, while cost estimates and Norwegian input-output tables were used for the construction of the facilities. The CML2 method was used to evaluate the impacts. Results and Discussion. Transportation is a major contributor to aquatic toxicity and acidification as well as CO2 emissions. Impacts from construction are considerable for photochemical oxidation, while incineration is important for terrestrial toxicity and CO2 emissions. Conclusion. Construction and operation of treatment facilities are, together with transportation, the main processes making a difference between the two strategies. Substantial gains will come from the reduction in transportation need when introducing a local incineration strategy. When considering a time span of two decades, the centralized scenario is about 2.5 to 5 times the impact potential of the local scenario for most impact categories, in terms of cumulative results. Cost estimates for the two solutions support these findings, as cumulated costs also favors a local solution. Recommendation and Outlook. Transportation is a major contributor to several impact categories, and especially the transportation of special waste should become more efficient in terms of transportation distances. Cost estimates support the environmental assessment, but a more comprehensive economic study of the system would be valuable.Background. This article describes two projects conducted recently by Sound Resource Management (SRMG) - one for the San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority (SLO IWMA) and the other for the Washington State Department of Ecology (WA Ecology). For both projects we used life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with collection and management of municipal solid waste. Both projects compared environmental burdens from curbside collection for recycling, processing, and market shipment of recyclable materials picked up from households and/or businesses against environmental burdens from curbside collection and disposal of mixed solid waste. Methodology. The SLO IWMA project compared curbside recycling for households and businesses against curbside collection of mixed refuse for deposition in a landfill where landfill gas is collected and used for energy generation. The WA Ecology project compared residential curbside recycling in three regions of Washington State against the collection and deposition of those same materials in landfills where landfill gas is collected and flared. In the fourth Washington region (the urban east encompassing Spokane) the WA Ecology project compared curbside recycling against collection and deposition in a waste-to-energy (WTE) combustion facility used to generate electricity for sale on the regional energy grid. During the time period covered by the SLO study, households and businesses used either one or two containers, depending on the collection company, to separate and set out materials for recycling in San Luis Obispo County. During the time of the WA study households used either two or three containers for the residential curbside recycling programs surveyed for that study. Typically participants in collection programs requiring separation of materials into more than one container used one of the containers to separate at least glass bottles and jars from other recyclable materials. For the WA Ecology project SRMG used life cycle inventory (LCI) techniques to estimate atmospheric emissions of ten pollutants, waterborne emissions of seventeen pollutants, and emissions of industrial solid waste, as well as total energy consumption, associated with curbside recycling and disposal methods for managing municipal solid waste. Emissions estimates came from the Decision Support Tool (DST) developed for assessing the cost and environmental burdens of integrated solid waste management strategies by North Carolina State University (NCSU) in conjunction with Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA)(1). RTI used the DST to estimate environmental emissions during the life cycle of products. RTI provided those estimates to SRMG for analysis in the WA Ecology project(2). For the SLO IWMA project SRMG also used LCI techniques and data from the Municipal Solid Waste Life-Cycle Database (Database), prepared by RTI with the support of US EPA during DST model development, to estimate environmental emissions from solid waste management practices(3). Once we developed the LCI data for each project, SRMG then prepared a life cycle environmental impacts assessment of the environmental burdens associated with these emissions using the Environmental Problems approach discussed in the methodology section of this article. Finally, for the WA study we also developed estimates of the economic costs of certain environmental impacts in order to assess whether recycling was cost effective from a societal point of view. Conclusions. Recycling of newspaper, cardboard, mixed paper, glass bottles and jars, aluminum cans, tin-plated steel cans, plastic bottles, and other conventionally recoverable materials found in household and business municipal solid wastes consumes less energy and imposes lower environmental burdens than disposal of solid waste materials via landfilling or incineration, even after accounting for energy that may be recovered from waste materials at either type disposal facility. This result holds for a variety of environmental impacts, including global warming, acidification, eutrophication, disability adjusted life year (DALY) losses from emission of criteria air pollutants, human toxicity and ecological toxicity. The basic reason for this conclusion is that energy conservation and pollution prevention engendered by using recycled rather than virgin materials as feedstocks for manufacturing new products tends to be an order of magnitude greater than the additional energy and environmental burdens imposed by curbside collection trucks, recycled material processing facilities, and transportation of processed recyclables to end-use markets. Furthermore, the energy grid offsets and associated reductions in environmental burdens yielded by generation of energy from landfill gas or from waste combustion are substantially smaller then the upstream energy and pollution offsets attained by manufacturing products with processed recyclables, even after accounting for energy usage and pollutant emissions during collection, processing and transportation to end-use markets for recycled materials. The analysis that leads to this conclusion included a direct comparison of the collection for recycling versus collection for disposal of the same quantity and composition of materials handled through existing curbside recycling programs in Washington State. This comparison provides a better approximation to marginal energy usage and environmental burdens of recycling versus disposal for recyclable materials in solid waste than does a comparison of the energy and environmental impacts of recycling versus management methods for handling typical mixed refuse, where that refuse includes organics and non-recyclables in addition to whatever recyclable materials may remain in the garbage. Finally, the analysis also suggests that, under reasonable assumptions regarding the economic cost of impacts from pollutant emissions, the societal benefits of recycling outweigh its costs.Intention, Goal and Background. In this paper, some relevant results of a research work are presented, the main aim of which consists of performing the environmental assessment of different water production technologies in order to establish, in a global, rigorous and objective way, the less aggressive technology for the environment of potable water supply to the end users. That is, the scope of this paper is mostly oriented to the comparative Life Cycle Assessment of different water production technologies instead of presenting new advancements in the LCA methodology. In Part 1, the environmental loads associated with the most widespread and important commercial desalination technologies all over the world - Reverse Osmosis (RO), Multi Effect Desalination (MED) and Multi Stage Flash (MSF) - are compared. The assessment technique is the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which includes the entire life cycle of each technology, encompassing: extraction and processing raw materials, manufacturing, transportation and distribution, operation and final waste disposal. Methods and Main Features. The software SimaPro 5.0, developed by Dutch PRe Consultants, has been used as the analysis tool, because it is a well known, internationally accepted and validated tool. Different evaluation methods have been applied in the LCA evaluation: CML 2 baseline 2000, Eco-Points 97 and Eco-Indicator 99. Data used in the inventory analysis of this Part 1 come from: a) existing plants in operation; b) data bases implemented in the SimaPro 5.0 software -BUWAL 250, ETH-ESU 96, IDEMAT 2001. Different scenarios have been analyzed in both parts in order to estimate, not only the potential of reduction of the provoked environmental loads with the present state of the art of technology, but also the most likely future trend of technological evolution. In Part 1, different energy production models and the integration of desalination with other productive processes are studied, while the effect of the most likely technological evolution in the midterm, and the estimation of the environmental loads to the water transfer during drought periods are considered in Part 2. Results and Discussion. The main contribution to the global environmental impact of desalination technologies comes from the operation, while the other phases, construction and disposal, are almost negligible when compared to it. Energy is very important in desalination, for this reason the environmental loads change a lot depending on the technology used for providing the energy used in the desalination process. Among the different analyzed technologies, RO is the least aggressive desalination technology (one order of magnitude lower than the thermal processes, MSF and MED) for the environment. When integrating thermal desalination with other productive processes taking advantage of the residual heat, the environmental loads of thermal desalination technologies is highly reduced, obtaining similar loads to that of RO. The environmental loads of desalination technologies are significantly reduced when an energy model based on renewable energies is used. Taking into account the technological evolution, which is experiencing the RO, a reduction of its environmental load by about 40% is to be expected in the mid-term. Conclusion. The main conclusion of Part 1 is that, with the present state of the art of the technology, RO is clearly the desalination technology with a reduced environmental load (one order of magnitude lower than the thermal processes, MSF and MED). In the case of thermal desalination technologies, their environmental load can be highly reduced (about 1,000 times less) when integrated with other industrial processes. In the case of RO, the scores and the airborne emissions obtained from an electricity production model based on renewable energies are about 65-70 times lower than those obtained when the electricity production model is mainly based on fossil fuels. Recommendations and Outlook. Although desalination technologies are energy intensive and provoke an important environmental load, they present a high potential in being reduced since: a) in the mid-term, it is to be expected that the different technologies could improve their efficiency significantly, b) the environmental loads would be highly reduced if the energy production models were not mainly based on fossil fuels and c) the energy consumption, particularly in the case of thermal desalination, can be drastically reduced when integrating desalination with other productive processes. The results presented in this paper indicate that a very interesting and promising field of research is available in order to reduce the environmental load of these vigorous and increasing desalination technologies.Goal and Scope. This study estimates the life cycle inventory (LCI) of the electricity system in the United States, including the 10 NERC (North American Electric Reliability Council) regions, Alaska, Hawaii, off-grid non-utility plants and the US average figures. The greenhouse gas emissions associated with the United States electricity system are also estimated. Methods. The fuel mix of the electricity system based on year 2000 data is used. The environmental burdens associated with raw material extraction, petroleum oil production and transportation for petroleum oil and natural gas to power plants are adopted from the DEAM (TM) LCA database. Coal transportation from a mining site to a power plant is specified with the data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which includes the mode of transportation as well as the distance traveled. The gate-to-gate environmental burdens associated with generating electricity from a fossil-fired power plant are obtained from the DEAM (TM) LCA database and the eGRID model developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. For nuclear power plants and hydroelectric power plants, the data from the DEAM (TM) LCA database are used. Results and Discussion. Selected environmental profiles of the US electricity system are presented in the paper version, while the on-line version presents the whole LCI data. The overall US electricity system in the year 2000 released about 2,654 Tg CO2 eq. of greenhouse gas emissions based on 100-year global warming potentials with 193 g CO2 eq. MJe(-1) as an weighted average emission rate per one MJ electricity generated. Most greenhouse gases are released during combusting fossil fuels, accounting for 78-95% of the total. The greenhouse gas emissions released from coal-fired power plants account for 81% of the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity generation, and natural gas-fired power plants contribute about 16% of the total. The most significant regions for the total greenhouse gas emissions are the SERC (Southeastern Electric Reliability Council) and ECAR (East Central Area Reliability Coordination Agreement) regions, which account for 22% and 21% of the total, respectively. A sensitivity analysis on the generation and consumption based calculations indicates that the environmental profiles of electricity based on consumption are more uncertain than those based on generation unless exchange data from the same year are available because the exchange rates (region to region import and export of electricity) vary significantly from year to year. Conclusions and Outlook. Those who are interested in the LCI data of the US electricity system can refer to the on-line version. When the inventory data presented in the on-tine version are used in a life cycle assessment study, the distribution and transmission losses should be taken into account, which is about 9.5% of the net generation [1]. The comprehensive technical information presented in this study can be used in estimating the environmental burdens when new information on the regional fuel mix or the upstream processes is available. The exchange rates presented in this study also offer useful information in consequential LCI studies.Printer and letter quality paper represents a high-value component of the waste from commercial premises. Around large cities, exemplified by London, the paper flows are sufficiently large to sustain a dedicated logistics network and plant to recover and recycle graphics-quality paper. Analysis of the fibre flows around the supply system for paper recovery and recycling shows that, given the present low proportion of recycled fibre graphics paper used in the UK, other sources of fibre are not needed to maintain the supply and quality of the recycled material. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the recycling system shows that its environmental performance is dominated by energy use and greenhouse-warming emissions. Although the detailed results depend on how waste fibre and biomass are otherwise used, this emerges as a case in which recycling really does give environmental benefits. LCA also enables possible changes in the system for recovering and reprocessing paper to be examined, leading to new concepts for more sustainable local management of resource flows.Recycling of waste materials has been analysed from a life cycle perspective in a number of studies over the past 10-15 years. Publications comparing the global warming impact and total energy use of recycling versus incineration and landfilling were reviewed in order to find out to what extent they agree or contradict each other, and whether there are generally applicable conclusions to be drawn when certain key factors are considered. Four key factors with a significant influence on the ranking between recycling, incineration, and landfilling were identified. Producing materials from recycled resources is often, but not always, less energy intensive and causes less global warming impact than from virgin resources. For non-renewable materials the savings are of such a magnitude, that apparently the only really crucial factor is what material is replaced. For paper products, however, the savings of recycling are much smaller. The ranking between recycling and incineration of paper is sensitive to for instance paper quality, energy source avoided by incineration, and energy source at the mill. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.v. All rights reserved.Food production chains can be organised in a variety of ways. Conventional 'industrial' agricultural practices are based on advanced breeding techniques and major inputs of chemical fertilisers, and pesticides. Food produced in this way is transport-intensive, requires high-energy processing, relies on modem retailing systems and demands high-tech kitchens. Many argue that the industrialised systems should be dismantled and replaced with alternative methods of agriculture, food processing and distribution that emphasise social and environmental sustainability. This paper looks at the environmental and social sustainability of different strategies for food systems by analysing the whole chain of production, processing, distribution and consumption activities of the production of frozen peas, a vegetable that is 'symbolic' of modem food systems and the UK diet. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.To study future, sustainable production systems, a stepwise method was used to create three future scenarios for pig production based on different sustainability goals. The first scenario focused on animal welfare and the natural behavior of the animals. The second targeted low impacts on the environment and the efficient use of natural resources. The third scenario aimed at product quality and safety. Each scenario fulfilled different aspects of sustainability, but there were goal conflicts because no scenario fulfilled all sustainability goals. The scenarios were then parameterized. The environmental impact was calculated using the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, and the economic cost was calculated from the same data set. The cost per kilo of pork was highest for the animal welfare scenario and similar for the other two scenarios. The environmental scenario had the lowest environmental impact, and the product-quality scenario the highest. The results are discussed based on different future priorities.Two scenarios for future pig meat production were constructed. The first was a "business as usual" scenario, where the pig feed was based on domestic grain and imported soy-meal, and no efforts were made to reduce pesticide use. The second scenario had a strong environmental focus, and both peas and rapeseed were grown at pig-farm level to produce grain and protein feed. Preventive measures, such as a more diverse crop rotation and mechanical weed control, were combined to reduce pesticide use. The two scenarios were environmentally assessed by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and a pesticide risk indicator model (PRI-Farm). The results showed environmentally sound possibilities to reduce pesticide dependency and risks by using altered plant protection strategies in pig-feed production. Organizing on-farm feed production so that protein feed crops are integrated with grain crops contributes to a more diverse crop rotation.Today there is a strong trend in Sweden for industrially processed meals to replace homemade meals. In the public debate this is often claimed to increase the environmental impact from foods. In the study presented in this article, we used life-cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impact of three meals: homemade, semiprepared, and ready-to-eat. The differences in environmental impact between the meals were small; the ready-to-eat meal used the most energy, whereas the homemade meal had higher emissions causing eutrophication and global warming. The dominating contributor to the environmental impact was agriculture, accounting for 30% of the impact related to energy and 95% of that related to eutrophication. Industry, packaging, and consumer home transport and food preparation also contributed significantly. Important factors were raw material use, energy efficiency in industry and households, packaging, and residue treatment. To decrease the overall environmental impact of food consumption, improvements in agriculture are very important, together with raw-material use within industry and households.Since solar energy systems feed on a 'clean' energy source, they do not produce polluting emissions during their operation. However, they carry the environmental weight of other phases in their life cycle. In order to analyze the energy and environmental profile of these systems, it is necessary to expand the system boundaries, taking into account also the 'hidden impacts' related to production, transportation and system disposal at the end of its technical life. Here, the life cycle assessment methodology is applied to derive a complete and extended energy and environmental profile of photovoltaic systems. As reference case, a conventional multi-crystalline building integrated system is selected, retrofitted on a tilted roof, located in Rome (Italy) and connected to the national electricity grid. Then improved configurations of the reference system are assessed, focusing on building integration issues and the operational phase (considering an experimental hybrid photovoltaic system with heat recovery). Environmental 'pay back times' of the assessed systems are then calculated for CO2 equivalent emissions and embodied energy. All the analyzed configurations are characterized by environmental pay back times one order of magnitude lower than their expected life time (3-4 years vs. 15-30 years). Thanks to a wider exploitation of photovoltaic potential during its 'zero emission operation', these results are further lowered by photovoltaic hybrid systems (environmental pay back times, depending on heat recovery configuration, go down to 40-50% of the values calculated for the reference case). (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Windows are important in the workplace for both environmental and psychological reasons. Good glazing design can reduce energy outputs by lowering the requirements for heating or cooling; frame design can utilise more sustainable materials and those with lower embodied energy, such as timber and aluminium-clad timber. Windows are also important for the provision of daylight and a view, both of which have known psychological benefits, although glare and passive solar gain can be problematic. Three studies were undertaken to look at sustainability and comfort issues for a number of different types of multi-glazed windows. Focus groups and interviews with professionals were used to examine issues of sustainability and productivity. Four case study buildings were surveyed to examine the level of energy use for different glazing specifications. A post-occupancy survey was then used to examine the level of comfort in these buildings. Results showed that architects consider comfort and productivity in their designs, but consider sustainability less often. Surveys of energy usage showed that building design can influence the efficiency of multi-glazed windows; this result was mirrored in the post-occupancy survey where design factors influenced occupant comfort. The research concludes that comfort and productivity in the workplace is related more to design factors than to sustainability factors. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study explores the boundaries of electric industry fuel switching in response to US carbon constraints. A ternary model quantifies how supply side compliance alternatives would change under increasingly stringent climate policies and continued growth in electricity use. Under the White House Climate Change Initiative, greenhouse gas emissions may increase and little or no change in fuel-mix is necessary. As expected, the more significant carbon reductions proposed under the Kyoto Protocol (1990-7 % levels) and Climate Stewardship Act (CSA) (1990 levels) require an increase of some combination of renewable, nuclear, or natural gas generated electricity. The current trend of natural gas power plant construction warrants the investigation of this technology as a sustainable carbon-mitigating measure. A detailed life-cycle assessment shows that significant greenhouse gas emissions occur upstream of the natural gas power plant, primarily during fuel-cycle operations. Accounting for the entire life-cycle increases the base emission rate for combined-cycle natural gas power by 22 %. Two carbon-mitigating strategies are tested using life-cycle emission rates developed for US electricity generation. Relying solely on new natural gas plants for CSA compliance would require a 600 % increase in natural gas generated electricity and almost complete displacement of coal from the fuel mix. In contrast, a 240 % increase in nuclear or renewable resources meets the same target with minimal coal displacement. This study further demonstrates how neglecting life-cycle emissions, in particular those occurring upstream of the natural gas power plant, may cause erroneous assessment of supply side compliance alternatives. (c) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new multisubstance potentially affected fraction (msPAF)-based method for calculating ecotoxicological effect factors for life-cycle assessment is introduced and compared to two other available methods of calculation. The new method is based on marginal increase of the msPAF of species. The method follows concentration-additive rules for pollutants with the same toxic mode of action (TMoA) and response-additive calculation rules for pollutants with independent action, and it combines a TMoA-specific factor, which is calculated differently in different methods, and a substance-specific factor, which is common to all methods. For 261 substances in 22 toxic modes of action, ecotoxicological effect factors for freshwater ecosystems have been calculated by different methods. Method-related differences appear to be rather small. Intersubstance differences in effect factors stem from differences in substance-specific toxic potencies, which span eight orders of magnitude, rather than from differences in TMoA-specific factors, which span only three orders of magnitude. Based on these insights, the choice of a calculation method seems to be a matter of personal (scientific) preference. The new hybrid msPAF method was greatly sensitive to data that usually are not known with sufficient certainty. Its use is recommended, entirely for reasons of scientific consistency, under strict conditions. When such conditions are not met or if necessary parameter values are unavailable, use of a fixed value for the TMoA-specific component is recommended.Bagasse, the waste from sugar processing, is one of the biomass residues used as fuel. It can thus be a useful renewable resource for energy which also promises to avoid the environmental emissions of power generation from fossil fuels. Nevertheless, it should be confirmed that power production from bagasse is friendlyfor the environment. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a very useful tool for such an evaluation. In this study, the LCA methodology is used for the environmental assessment of energy production from bagasse at Ratchasima Sugar Mill, Thailand. The sugar mill processes 30,000 tons of sugarcane per day. The power plant, attached to the sugar mill, is of cogeneration type. The energy and water balance show that 272 tons of bagasse can produce 342 tons ofsteam at 420 C used in the sugar process and about 25.5 MWh of electricity. Since the carbon in bagasse is part of the global carbon cycle, the CO2 emission from the combustion of bagasse does not contribute to global warming. Therefore, the study focuses on the acidifying gases, NOx and SOx which are also of concern in fossil-based power generation. A low amount of nitrogen (1.82%) and sulphur (< 1%) in bagasse and low combustion temperatures contribute to low NOx and SO2 formation. Consequently, bagasse can be an environmentally-friendly raw material for power generation and has high potential as an alternate, renewable source of energy.One of the main goals in decision-making for sustainable development is to identify and choose the most sustainable option among different alternatives. This process usually involves a large number of stakeholders with multiple, often conflicting objectives. Facilitating and resolving such difficult decision situations can be complex, so that a more formal and systematic approach to decision-making may be necessary. This paper proposes an integrated multiple criteria decision-support framework specifically developed to provide a systematic, step-by-step guidance to decision-makers. The framework, which is suitable for both corporate and public policy-making in the context of sustainable development, comprises three steps: problem structuring, problem analysis and problem resolution. This paper concentrates on problem analysis and resolution, where decision-makers articulate their preferences for different decision criteria. A suitable Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) technique, such as multi-objective optimisation, goal programming, value-based and outranking approaches, is then used to model the preferences. These techniques are discussed here in some detail, to provide guidance oil the choice of the most appropriate MCDA method. Based on the Outcome of preference modelling, which estimates the overall 'value' of each alternative being considered, decision-makers can then choose the 'best' or most sustainable option. Such an integrated decision-support framework is useful for providing structure to the debate, ensuring dialogue among decision-makers and showing trade-offs between conflicting objectives. In this way, it may be possible to create shared understanding about the issues, generate a sense of common purpose and, often, resolve 'difficult' decision problems.Strategies and achievements in the Asian steel industry in constructing an industrial ecological chain are reviewed, largely for the cases of Japan, Korea and China. Emphasis is placed on the development of a resource recycling system for the minimisation of various wastes and emissions of greenhouse gases, toxic gases and polluting particulates. The minimisation strategy includes: &BULL; rationalisation of ironmaking and steelmaking processes implementation of available relevant measures/technologies &BULL; life cycle assessment in designing steel from semis to assembled products &BULL; reduction, reuse and recycling of materials and energies &BULL; utilisation of competent core technologies to process domestic and industrial wastes. In view of the global nature of the above waste and emission issues, interindustrial linkage and international cooperation across the borders among Asian countries have become more important. Interindustrial linkage definitely serves to cut back wastes and emissions. Examples of such linkage and factors influencing the sustainability of the linkage are described, with expectation of further development of the linkage. The importance of international cooperation cannot be overstressed under the circumstances where steel production in 2004 exceeded 260 Mt in China and 1 Gt worldwide and is still increasing. Practical measures are discussed to enhance the linkage and cooperation for effectively promoting reduction, reuse and recycling, including implications for the nonferrous industry.This papers attempts to bridge business ethics to corporate social responsibility including the social and environmental dimensions. The objective of the paper is to suggest an improvement of the most commonly used corporate environmental management tool, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The method includes two stages. First, more phases are added to the life-cycle of a product. Second, social criteria that measure the social performance of a product are introduced. An application of this "extended" LCA tool is given.Environmental policy is oriented toward integrated pollution prevention, taking into consideration all environmental media (air, water, land) and energy consumption. Therefore, methods for assessing environmentally relevant installations are needed which take economic, technical, and especially ecological criteria into account simultaneously. Mass and energy flow models are used for the representation of production processes and form the basis for the inventory phase in life-cycle assessment (LCA). For the interpretation of LCA results and the weighting of the aggregated impact assessment indicators, approaches of multicriterion analysis (MCA) have been proposed. These can analyze ecological aspects as well as economic and technical criteria. Recent developments in LCA focus on decision support for policy makers or decision boards. Appropriate support for investment decisions on environmentally relevant installations, however, is rare. Based on a case study of the sector called surface coating, an MCA of environmentally relevant installations is described. With the help of a mass and energy flow management system, alternative scenarios, depicting the use of solvent-reduced materials and environmentally friendly techniques, are modeled for the job coater processes in case studies of coating of mobile phones and coating of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) parts destined for the automobile industry. The modeled scenarios are further analyzed by using a multicriterion decision support module. The application of the outranking approach PROMETHEE is illustrated. A further investigation of the derived ranking can be obtained through sensitivity analyses. Moreover, the results derived by PROMETHEE are compared with the outcomes of the multicriterion approaches multiattribute utility theory and analytical hierarchy process.To date the most common measures of environmental performance used to compare industries, and by extension firms or facilities, have been quantity of pollution emitted or hazardous waste generated. Discharge information, however, does not necessarily capture potential health effects. We propose an alternative environmental performance measure that includes the public health risks of toxic air emissions extended to industry supply chains using economic input-output life-cycle assessment. Cancer risk to the U.S. population was determined by applying a damage function to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) as modeled by CaITOX, a multimedia multi-pathway fate and exposure model. Risks were then translated into social costs using cancer willingness to pay. For a baseline emissions year of 1998, 260 excess cancer cases were calculated for I 16 TRI chemicals, dominated by ingestion risk from polycyclic aromatic compounds and dioxins emitted by the primary aluminum and cement industries, respectively. The direct emissions of a small number of industry sectors account for most of the U.S. population cancer risk. For the majority of industry sectors, however, cancer risk per $1 million output is associated with supply chain upstream emissions. Ranking industries by total (direct + upstream) supply chain risk per economic output leads to different conclusions about the relative hazards associated with these industries than a conventional ranking based on emissions per economic output.In February 2003, European Union (EU) policy makers implemented a Directive that will make producers responsible for waste electrical and electronic equipment at end-of-life (known as the "WEE" Directive). Under this new legislation, producers are required to organize and finance the take-back, treatment, and recycling of WEEE and achieve mass-based recycling and recovery targets. This legislation is part of a growing trend of extended producer responsibility for waste, which has the potential to shift the world's economies toward more circular patterns of resource use and recycling. This study uses life-cycle assessment and costing to investigate the possible environmental effects of the WEEE Directive, based on an example of printer recycling in the United Kingdom. For a total of four waste management scenarios and nine environmental impact categories investigated in this study, results varied, with no scenario emerging as best or worst overall compared to landflling. The level of environmental impact depended on the type of material and waste management processes involved. Additionally, under the broad mass-based targets of the WEEE Directive, the pattern of relationships between recycling rates, environmental impacts, and treatment and recycling costs may lead to unplanned and unwanted results. Contrary to original EU assumptions, the use of mass-based targets may not ensure that producers adapt the design of their products as intended under producer responsibility. It is concluded that the EU should revise the scope of consideration of the WEEE Directive to ensure its life-cycle impacts are addressed. In particular, specific environmental objectives and operating standards for treatment and recycling processes should be investigated as an alternative to mass-based recycling and recovery targets.In order to create an environmentally-conscious building, the environmental impacts of the entire service life must be known. Life-cycle assessment (LCA), which evaluates the impacts from all life-cycle phases, from "cradle to grave," is the best method to achieve this goal. In this paper, LCA is used to quantify the energy use and the environmental emissions during the construction phase of two typical office buildings, one with a structural steel frame and one with a cast-in-place concrete frame, and then these are put in the perspective of the overall service life of each building. The concrete structural-frame construction has more associated energy use, CO2, CO, NO2, particulate matter, SO2, and hydrocarbon emissions due to more formwork used, larger transportation impacts due to a larger mass of materials, and longer equipment use due to the longer installation process. In contrast, the steel-frame construction has more volatile organic compound (VOC) and heavy metal (Cr, Ni, Mn) emissions due to the painting, torch cutting, and welding of the steel members. The energy use and the environmental emissions of the two buildings are comparable if the total impacts from materials' manufacturing, construction, transportation, use, maintenance, and demolition are considered. Energy use and environmental emissions from office buildings can be reduced through a careful selection of embedded and temporary materials and construction equipment.The renewable energy sources are often presented as 'clean' sources, not considering the environmental impacts related to their manufacture. The production of the renewable plants, like every production process, entails a consumption of energy and raw materials as well as the release of pollutants. Furthermore, the impacts related to some life cycle phases (as maintenance or installation) are sometimes neglected or not adequately investigated. The energy and the environmental performances of one of the most common renewable technologies have been studied: the solar thermal collector for sanitary warm water demand. A life cycle assessment (LCA) has been performed following the international standards of series ISO 14040. The aim is to trace the product's eco-profile that synthesises the main energy and environmental impacts related to the whole product's life cycle. The following phases have been investigated: production and deliver of energy and raw materials, production process, installation, maintenance, disposal and transports occurring during each step. The analysis is carried out on the basis of data directly collected in an Italian factory. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The prediction of a realistic life cycle and the extension of the service life is an important task in reducing costs of civil engineering structures in the future. The paper first gives an overview of the necessary steps of the overall procedure of a precise life cycle assessment. The knowledge of the existing, inherent damage of a structure is an essential prerequisite for life cycle prediction. A theoretical and an experimental approach to determine the inherent damage is described. The paper concludes with the presentation of a fairly precise method to assess the fatigue life cycle of steel bridges. The methods are developed besides others at the Collaborative-Research-Center "Monitoring of Structures" at the Technical University at Braunschweig, Germany.The methods currently used for assessing the environmental impact of agriculture on the scale of a farming region cover a wide range of objectives, users and concepts. To illustrate this variety, this article provides an analysis of six main types of method: environmental risk mapping, life cycle analysis, environmental impact assessment, multi-agent system, linear programming and agro-environmental indicators. Eleven case studies, in which one of the six methods was applied, are used as data in this review. All methods are based on a set of environmental objectives. Some methods also take account of economic and social objectives to produce a more wide-ranging assessment of the sustainability of the agricultural system studied. Each method relies on indicators serving as criteria to evaluate whether the objectives have been attained. These indicators take account of local impacts such as noise, regional impacts such as eutrophication, or global impacts like the greenhouse effect. The characteristics required to develop a method for the environmental impact assessment of a farming region are discussed. The analysis of the interactions between farms is indispensable at this scale of analysis. Indicators based on the environmental effects of farming practices should take precedence over those based on the practices themselves, which do not provide a direct evaluation of environmental impact. Indicators which express an impact both per kg of product and per unit of land area used bring together the essential functions of agriculture, namely production and the occupation of the countryside. The assessment methods should include an analysis of the uncertainty associated with the results. Lastly, the method should be validated with respect to (i) the conception of the method and its indicators, (ii) the consistency of the values of the indicators in relation to observed values, and finally (iii) the suitability of the indicators and more generally of the assessment method for the end users. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.How can the property and construction industry meet the current and forthcoming challenges posed by sustainable development? The perception of property as a commodity is changing to emphasize building characteristics and performance as major determinants of a property's worth and market value, thereby requiring new ways of assessing worth and value. Commercial property valuation represents a major mechanism that could allow environmental and social considerations to be more closely aligned with economic return. In particular, the rationale and initial considerations are explored for the incorporation of environmental and social issues into valuation theory and practice. A system that allows for the description, measurement and assessment of various aspects of building performance is conceptualized. Possible sustainability key performance indicators are identified and the basic principles for assessing performance along the life cycle of buildings are explained. It is argued that the environmental and building research community has a central role in determining a standardization of terminology and improving the exchange of ideas between financial and environmental research disciplines. Then, the simultaneous consideration of economic, environmental and social issues can provide a more profound knowledge about property characteristics and associated performance. This will create a more robust assessment approach and lead to greater reliability of assessment results. Finally, the opportunities afforded by the synergies between sustainable design and risk management are identified and implications for property risk assessment for lending and insurance purposes are highlighted.This study focused on the development of a decision support system (DSS) for waterproofing of below-grade structures. The objective was to formulate an optimal solution for waterproofing of below-grade structures according to their parameters and based upon engineering and economic criteria. The model examines the environmental, structural, economic, and service life planning aspects of waterproofing in an integrated manner. The decision support model was based on the following four phases: input interface, preliminary classification, advanced classification, and output interface. The output phase consists of an interactive accessory that provides design details and quality assurance guidelines for each particular case, as well as economic parameters such as life cycle costs and risk of failure. The major contribution of this DSS is its development of a methodological application of integrated decision process, achieved by the use of engineering, economic, and service life criteria. Application of the DSS to several case studies revealed that a number of near-optimal alternatives exist, which differ from one another in terms of constructability, capital costs, and labor inputs. Cost of failure plays a major role in life cycle assessment, and may be a salient factor in the selection of the optimal solution.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing environmental burdens of products or processes on a cradle-to-grave basis. The impact assessment phase necessitates use of decision analysis methods to account for multiple environmental criteria in the comparison of technological alternatives. Valuation or weighting of the impact criteria is usually accomplished by eliciting relative or absolute scores from an expert. This paper presents an alternative streamlined approach wherein heuristic rules are derived from a set of training data in the form of example alternatives ranked in order of preference by the expert. These decision rules are generated using an induction process based on rough set theory. The heuristic rules can subsequently be used to compare and rank new alternatives, and lead to a decision consistent with the expert preferences embodied in the training data. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to effectively integrate environmental attributes into the product design and development processes, it is crucial to identify the significant environmental aspects related to a product system within a relatively short period of time. In this study, the usefulness of life cycle assessment (LCA) and a matrix method as tools for identifying the key environmental issues of a product system were examined. For this, a simplified LCA (SLCA) method that can be applied to Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) was developed to efficiently identify their significant environmental aspects for eco-design, since a full scale LCA study is usually very detailed, expensive and time-consuming. The environmentally responsible product assessment (ERPA) method, which is one of the matrix methods, was also analyzed. Then, the usefulness of each method in eco-design processes was evaluated and compared using the case studies of the cellular phone and vacuum cleaner systems. It was found that the SLCA and the ERPA methods provided different information but they complemented each other to some extent. The SLCA method generated more information on the inherent environmental characteristics of a product system so that it might be useful for new design/eco-innovation when developing a completely new product or method where environmental considerations play a major role from the beginning. On the other hand, the ERPA method gave more information on the potential for improving a product so that it could be effectively used in eco-redesign which intends to alleviate environmental impacts of an existing product or process. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The recycling of waste metallic aluminum with high chemical exergy, which consumes a large quantity of electricity in the refining process, is insufficient. In particular, the so-called dross generated during the remelting process a part of recycling requires expensive treatment, particularly when the metallic concentration is less than 20%, before it can be landfilled. The purpose of this study is to produce hydrogen from waste aluminum sources. such as dross, using an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide in a beaker and an autoclave. During the study, the effects of temperature of the aqueous solution on the rate of hydrogen generation are to be chiefly examined. The result obtained from an XRD analysis showed that the white product that precipitated during the experiments contained aluminum hydroxide, the rate of hydrogen generation significantly increased with the concentration of sodium hydroxide and temperature of the aqueous solution. and the activation energy was 68.4kJ mol(-1). In the autoclave experiments, hydrogen is released quickly, along with an increase in the inner pressure to a minimum of 1.0 MPa and an increase in the temperature above 473 K. The results suggested a possibility of a new cost effective process of hydrogen production from waste aluminum along with the by prodution of sodium hydroxide. The life cycle assessment (LCA) of the proposed process for producing not only I kg of hydrogen but also 26 kg aluminum hydroxide from waste aluminum was carried out to assess the energy requirement and amount of carbon dioxide emissions. Results suggest that the energy requirement of our process is only 2% and the amount of carbon dioxide emissions is 4%, in comparison to a conventional method.This paper focuses on the analysis of the total environmental impact of industrial processes in terms of cumulative exergy consumption (CExC). It proposes the concepts of cumulative exergy consumption for treatment of emissions (CExCT) and equivalent cumulative exergy consumption (ECExC) based on an acceptable level. The general formulation of the objective function of ECExC is presented. A detailed formulation of the objective function is used to demonstrate the means of the optimization of the parameters of a heat pump distillation, providing the merits of ECExC compared with economics.Hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) solar systems provide a simultaneous conversion of solar radiation into electricity and heat. In these devices, the PV modules are mounted together with heat recovery units, by which a circulating fluid allows one to cool them down during their operation. An extensive study on water-cooled PV/ T solar systems has been conducted at the University of Patras, where hybrid prototypes have been experimentally studied. In this paper the electrical and thermal efficiencies are given and the annual energy output under the weather conditions of Patras is calculated for horizontal and tilted building roof installation. In addition, the costs of all system parts are included and the cost payback time is estimated. Finally, the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied to perform an energy and environmental assessment of the analysed system. The goal of this study, carried out at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' by means of SimaPro 5.1 software, was to verify the benefits of heat recovery. The concepts and results of this work on energy performance, economic aspects and LCA results of modified PV and water-cooled PV/T solar systems, give a clear idea of their application advantages. From the results, the most important conclusion is that PV/T systems are cost effective and of better environmental impact compared with standard PV modules. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A life cycle assessment (LCA) study has been carried out to investigate the environmental aspects of two types of aviation fuel, kerosene that is presently used and hydrogen. Hydrogen is selected as a future aircraft fuel because of the absence of CO2 emissions from its use, its high energy content and its combustion kinetics. The life cycle of aviation fuel includes the production and the use of the aviation fuel in different types of aircraft. Hydrogen production by natural gas steam reforming and production upon renewable energy sources (RES) are examined. A very large number of environmental burdens result from the operation of the different fuel cycles. Air pollution is by far the biggest environmental problem that is resulting from hydrogen and kerosene production and use. This work has been mainly concentrated with this environmental impact category. It is shown that the production of hydrogen from RES has significantly lower environmental impact as compared to that of kerosene. However, the use of different RES carries different environmental impacts among them. The production of hydrogen resulting from the use of photovoltaics to capture solar energy carries the biggest environmental impact among the other RES, wind, hydropower, biomass and solar thermal. &COPY; 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of this research was to quantify the environmental credit of the granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) recycling, and then to propose a recycling option best suited for the maximization of the environmental credit. The most appropriate method for the quantification of the environmental credit resulting from the recycling of byproducts is the system expansion method. The system expansion method was applied to the recycling of GBFS from the iron and steel manufacturing process for the quantification of its environmental credit. GBFS has been recycled to raw materials for Portland cement, slag cement, slag powder and silicate fertilizer. Environmental credit of each recycling application was calculated from three different perspectives: life cycle inventory on CO2, characterized impact on global warming, and weighted impact of the product system based on the Eco-indicator 99 method. Maximum environmental credit of the GBFS recycling occurs when recycled to raw materials for slag cement and Portland cement. &COPY; 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mastitis is defined as an inflammatory reaction of udder tissue to bacterial, chemical, thermal or mechanical injury, which causes heavy financial losses and milk wastage throughout the world. Until now, studies have focused on the economic aspects from which perspective mastitis can generally be considered as the most serious disease in dairy cows; however, costs are not the only negative consequence resulting from the infection. The environmental impact is also significant; milk is discarded, which means lower efficiency and hence a greater environmental impact per produced liter of milk. Less milk is produced, which leads to an increased need for calf feed, and meat production is also affected. The main aim of this paper was to quantify the environmental impact of mastitis incidence. A standard scenario (representative of present-day reality in Galicia, Spain) and an improved scenario (in which mastitis incidence rate is reduced by diverse actions) have been defined and compared using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Among the impact categories studied, acidification, eutrophication and global warming were found to be the most significant environmental impacts. In all these categories, it was revealed that a decrease in mastitis incidence has a positive influence as the environmental impact is reduced. Even if the quantitative results cannot show a considerable decrease in the environmental burden, the impact cannot be regarded as negligible when the total consumption or total production of a region is considered. For example, the outcome of the proposed improvement measures for Spain's greenhouse gas emissions can be quantified as 0.06% of total emissions and 0.56% of emissions by the agricultural sector. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Technical constraints can leave a considerable freedom in the design of a technology, production or service strategy. Choosing between economical or ecological decision criteria then characteristically leads to controversial solutions of ideal systems. For the adaptation of granular-activated carbon (GAC) fixed beds, various technical factors determine the adsorber volume required to achieve a desired service life. In considering carbon replacement and recycling, a variety of refill strategies are available that differ in terms of refill interval, respective adsorber volume, and time-dependent use of virgin, as well as recycled GAC. Focusing on the treatment of contaminant groundwater, we compare cost-optimal reactor configurations and refill strategies to the ecologically best alternatives. Costs and consumption of GAC are quantified within a technical-economical framework. The emissions from GAC production out of hard coal, transport and recycling are equally derived through a life cycle impact assessment. It is shown how high discount rates lead to a preference of small fixed-bed volumes, and accordingly, a high number of refills. For fixed discount rates, the investigation reveals that both the economical as well as ecological assessment of refill strategies are especially sensitive to the relative valuation of virgin and recycled GAC. Since recycling results in economic and ecological benefits, optimized systems thus may differ only slightly. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) offer the potential of ultra-low emissions combined with high efficiency. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells being developed for vehicles require hydrogen as a fuel. Due to the various pathways of hydrogen generation, both onboard and off-board, the question about which fuel option is the most competitive for fuel cell vehicles is of great current interest. In this paper, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) model was made to conduct a comprehensive study of the energy, environmental, and economic (3E) impacts of FCVs from well to wheel (WTW). In view of the special energy structure of China and the timeframe, 10 vehicle/fuel systems are chosen as the study projects. The results show that methanol is the most suitable fuel to serve as the ideal hydrogen source for fuel cell vehicles in the timeframe and geographic regions of this study. On the other hand, gasoline and pure hydrogen can also play a role in short-term and regional applications, especially for local demonstrations of FCV fleets. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.Sustainable development and environmental protection require green products, processes, and waste management strategies. The selection and design of green and clean processes and products involve handling a huge set of data related to the environment, economics and technologies. Therefore, it is essential to employ a comprehensive technique to guide decision-making under uncertainty that can incorporate these factors. The paper presents decision-making under uncertainty based on life cycle analysis and considering environmental, technological, and economical drivers in the analysis. The methodology, GreenPro-1, is applicable at any stage of a process design and can be used to evaluate the environmental burdens of a product or a process throughout its life cycle, and to identify and assess opportunities to make improvements. A weighting scheme is used to integrate various criteria and policies so that a most appropriate alternative can be selected. The GreenPro-1 methodology is applied to a case study for offshore produced water management. In the first stage, 14 best available technologies (BAT) for treatment of produced water are evaluated individually using cradle-to-gate life cycle analysis. In the second stage, seven treatment strategies are developed from BAT and are further investigated. A treatment strategy that combines a hydrocyclone and produced water re-injection proved to be the best system among selected strategies. The combination of hydrocyclone and adsorption was found to be the next best treatment strategy. Two other noteworthy strategies were membrane and centrifuge combination, and down-hole separation and injection. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With their missions and access to disposal sites changing over the last decade, radioactive waste management and decommissioning practice in the U.S. commercial and federal nuclear markets has evolved to keep pace. This paper reviews the changes that have occurred and the differing waste management practices that have resulted depending on whether a nuclear facility is Situated on federally owned or privately owned property in the United States, confirming that the cost of disposal generally dictates waste management and decommissioning practices. Of the 123 utility-owned licensed commercial reactors in U.S., 19 are undergoing decommissioning, with the balance of 104 reactors focusing on plant life extension, power upgrades, and power generation. As a result almost all of the approximately $400 million in annual expenditures on waste processing and disposal comes from waste generated from operations. In contrast, the U.S. Department of, Energy (DOE), under its Environmental Management (EM) program, is focused on decommissioning the facilities, tanks, and ground contamination resulting from 50-years of Cold War activities and spending about S 7 billion a year on these activities. Other than spent fuel, U.S. federal law precludes disposal of commercial nuclear power plant radioactive wastes at DOE disposal sites. In contrast to the commercial disposal market, which must go through extensive public hearings and decision-making, the DOE has a much freer hand in siting new disposal capacity on federal land. As a result, the DOE has ample disposal capacity, "routinely" opens new disposal sites, and enjoys disposal pricing well below the commercial market. Waste composition, volume, and activity levels drive disposal costs, which is the key lifecycle parameter in determining radioactive waste management practice. Differences in these parameters drive the differences in how radioactive waste management practice is performed in the commercial and DOE markets. Given that DOE disposal costs are about 1/10th to 1/100th that of commercial costs, the differences in disposal costs result in disposal avoidance as key utility LLW management approach and direct disposal as the key US DOE LLW management approach. In conclusion, it appears that, given the same regulatory environment, the cost of disposal generally dictates waste management and decommissioning practices due to the strong impact on life cycle analysis.Environmental assessments in pesticide product development are generally restricted to plant uptake and emissions of active ingredients. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) enables a more comprehensive evaluation by additionally assessing the impacts of pesticide production and application (e.g. tractor operations). The use of LCA in the product development of pesticides, in addition to the methods commonly applied, is therefore advisable. In this paper a procedure for conducting LCA in early phases of product development is proposed. In a case study, two plant-growth regulators from different product generations were compared regarding their application in intensive production of winter wheat. The results showed that the reduced emissions from active ingredients of the newer pesticide were compensated by higher impacts from the production process. The authors draw the conclusion that it is important to consider environmental objectives in the procurement of precursors, in addition to the classical goals of increasing the efficacy and reducing the nontarget effects of pesticides. Moreover, the case study showed that decisions based on uncertain results in early stages of product development may need to be revised in later stages, e.g. based on investigations of pesticides' effects on crop yield.The contribution of consumer purchases of non-essential products to environmental pollution is characterized. Purchase decisions by consumers induce a complex sequence of economy-wide production interactions that influence the production and consumption of chemicals and subsequent exposure and possible public health risks. An economic input-output life-cycle analysis (EIO-LCA) was used to link resource consumption and production by manufacturers to corresponding environmental impacts. Using the US Department of Commerce's input-output tables together with the US Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory and AIRData databases, the economy-wide air discharges resulting from purchases of household appliances, motor homes, and games and toys were quantified. The economic and environmental impacts generated from a hypothetical 10,000 US dollar purchase for selected consumer items were estimated. The analysis shows how purchases of seemingly benign consumer products increase the output of air pollutants along the supply chain and contribute to the potential risks associated with environmental chemical exposures to both consumers and non-consumers alike.Producer responsibility and take-back legislation in Europe place responsibility on the manufactures for the recovery and recycling of end-of-life products. This will inevitably require the manufacturers to rethink the way products are designed and manufactured in order to improve their recyclability. This paper illustrates on the case of a fibre optic cable how this can be achieved in a practical and relatively easy way, leading to both environmental and economic benefits. The case study compares the current design the 96 fibre optic cable with several proposed design modifications with the aim of identifying the design option that would enable an easy end-of-life disassembly and recycling of component materials. The designs are evaluated on a life cycle basis for both economic and environmental impacts using the CHAin management of Materials and Products (CHAMP) methodology. CHAMP combines elements of process and design engineering with life cycle approaches to enable the user to explore technical, economic and environmental consequences of different material, process and technological options, including material recovery and recycling. CHAMP is therefore particularly well suited for addressing the requirements of the take-back and producer responsibility legislation. The results of LCA and life cycle costing obtained by using CHAMP show that cable re-design can reduce the environmental impacts by between 30 and 60% and can lead to a 40% reduction in economic costs. This is achieved by changing the internal structure of the cable, by removing some of the cable components (e.g. aluminium and organic gels) and by recycling some of the materials. Transport (including reverse logistics), processing and landfill also contribute to the overall impacts, but their contribution is less significant than that from the materials used to manufacture the cable. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A main reason for the persistence of current water pollution lies in the diffuse character of many of its sources. For a large part such diffuse pollution is related to the production, use and waste of various kinds of products. For the reduction of this pollution, a product-oriented policy strategy, based on interaction with stakeholders could be more successful than the traditional measures of direct regulation that were devised for point source reduction. In this article we identify different types of product policy, and explore the potential benefits and costs for water quality management. The methods that can be used in a product policy approach are illustrated with some examples. Although the specific advantages for water quality management have not been quantified yet, governments increasingly recognise the potential positive effects. In this context, the European Water Framework Directive, in stimulating product policy by enhancing public and stakeholders' participation, can be considered to be part of a general development towards interactive water management.The traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) does not perform quantitative uncertainty analysis. However, without characterizing the associated uncertainty, the reliability of assessment results cannot be understood or ascertained. In this study, the Bayesian method, in combination with the Monte Carlo technique, is used to quantify and update the uncertainty in LCA results. A case study of applying the method to comparison of alternative waste treatment options in terms of global warming potential due to greenhouse gas emissions is presented. In the case study, the prior distributions of the parameters used for estimating emission inventory and environmental impact in LCA were based on the expert judgment from the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) guideline and were subsequently updated using the likelihood distributions resulting from both national statistic and site-specific data. The posterior uncertainty distribution of the LCA results was generated using Monte Carlo simulations with posterior parameter probability distributions. The results indicated that the incorporation of quantitative uncertainty analysis into LCA revealed more information than the deterministic LCA method, and the resulting decision may thus be different. In addition, in combination with the Monte Carlo simulation, calculations of correlation coefficients facilitated the identification of important parameters that had major influence to LCA results. Finally, by using national statistic data and site-specific information to update the prior uncertainty distribution, the resultant uncertainty associated with the LCA results could be reduced. A better informed decision can therefore be made based on the clearer and more complete comparison of options. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Today the chemical and process engineering especially involving chemical reactor engineering has to answer to the changing needs of the chemical and related process industries such as petroleum, petrochemical, bituminous, pharmaceutical and health, agro and food, environment, iron and steel, building materials, paints, glass, surfactants, electronics, cosmetic and perfume, etc., and to meet market demands. So being a key to survival in globalisation of trade and competition, the evolution of chemical engineering is thus necessary. And to satisfy both, the market requirements for specific end-use properties of the products manufactured in (bio)chemical reactors and the social and the resource-saving and environmental constraints of the industrial-scale processes and technologies, it is shown that a necessary progress is coming via a multidisciplinary and time and length multiscale approach. In such a frame the future for the science and technologies of new materials can be summarized by four main objectives: (1) a total multiscale control of the process (or the procedure) to increase selectivity and productivity, i.e., nanotailoring of materials with controlled structure; (2) a design of novel equipment based on scientific principles and new operation modes and methods of production: process intensification; (3) product design and engineering: manufacturing end-use properties with a special emphasis on complex fluids and solids technology; (4) an implementation of the multiscale and multidisciplinary computational chemical engineering modelling and simulation to real-life situations: from the molecule to the overall complex production scale into the entire production site. Moreover, chemical and process engineering will also be increasingly involved and concerned with the application of life cycle assessment to new material design and production and its use but also to the plant and the equipment together with the associated services. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.Land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) offer domestic and international opportunities to accomplish the targets set by the Kyoto Protocol. Design and selection of successful forestry projects are complex decision processes based on information of the carbon dioxide mitigation potential, the environmental impacts and the cost efficiency of selected scenarios. In this paper, a decision support framework to evaluate forestry scenarios for greenhouse gas emission reduction is presented and tested on five scenarios (existing and new multifunctional forest in Flanders, Belgium, bioenergy crop with short rotation poplar and with elephant grass in Flanders, Belgium, plantation forestry in the subtropics, and, conservation of tropical rainforest). The framework is organized as a serial connection of a carbon accounting module, an environmental impact module and an economic module. Modules include a combination of models and quantitative assessment procedures. In order to make scenarios comparable, the environmental and economic modules calculate their outputs on a functional unit basis of 1 t CO(2) emission reduction. The framework is universally applicable and straightforward, transparent and quantitative. The level of data requirement is medium, but the application is fairly complex due to the interdisciplinary character of the tool. Further developments would require automated data flows between models and a user interface. Results of the test application showed that the only attractive domestic option is the establishment of new multifunctional forests. This scenario even yields a net benefit because it replaces the generally loss-making agriculture and, in addition, it provides other environmental and recreational benefits. The establishment of bioenergy plantations is a very efficient way of reducing CO(2) emissions as far as land occupation and environmental impacts per functional unit are concerned. However, it also turns out to be a very expensive option. Plantation forestry in the tropics is advantageous when evaluated over longer periods of time. Conservation of tropical forest is not eligible as a clean development mechanism (CDM) project, although it would be economically attractive for Flanders since the cost per tonne CO(2) emission reduction is close to the expected world market price. This option is thus promising for the voluntary market and for future commitment periods of the Kyoto Protocol. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Research linking accounting to the emerging concept of sustainability surfaced in the early 1990s and has received continuing attention in academic and professional accounting literature. This paper tracks this brief history through to the release of the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002, consolidating the various approaches into a sustainability accounting framework. The result is a comprehensive reporting model that presents an enormous challenge to business organisations, requiring a significant commitment of resources to achieve widespread implementation. Failure to meet this challenge enables business organisations to continue to avoid accountability for their continuing unsustainability. The paper concludes with a personal view as to how implementation of the sustainability accounting framework could proceed. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A technology assessment of thermal treatment technologies for wastes was performed in the form of scenarios of chains of technologies. The Swedish assessment tool, ORWARE. was used for the assessment. The scenarios. of chains of thermal technologies assessed were gasification with catalytic combustion. gasification with flame combustion, incineration and landfilling. The landfilling scenario was used as a reference for comparison. The technologies were assessed from ecological and economic points of view. The results are presented in terms of global warming potential. acidification potential. eutrophication potential, consumption of primary energy carriers and welfare costs. From the simulations. gasification followed by catalytic combustion with energy recovery in a combined cycle appeared to be the most competitive technology from an ecological point of view. On the other hand, this alternative was more expensive than incineration. A sensitivity analysis was done regarding electricity prices to show which technology wins at what value of the unit price of electricity (SEK/kWh). Within this study, it was possible to make a comparison both between a combined cycle and a Rankine cycle (a system pair) and at the same time between flame combustion and catalytic combustion (a technology pair). To use gasification just as a treatment technology is not more appealing than incineration. but the possibility of combining gasification with a combined cycle is attractive in terms of electricity production. This research was done in connection with an empirical R&D work on both gasification of waste and catalytic combustion of the gasified waste at the Division of Chemical Technology., Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to advances in nanotechnology, the approach to catalytic design is transitioning from trial-and-error to planned design and control. Expected advances should enable the design and construction of catalysts to increase reaction speed, yield, and catalyst durability while also reducing active species loading levels. Nanofabrication techniques enabling precise control over the shape, size, and position of nanoscale platinum-group metal (PGM) particles in automotive catalysts should result in reduced PGM loading levels. These reductions would decrease energy consumption, improve environmental quality, and contribute to sustainable resource usage. We estimate the amount of PGM required to meet U.S. vehicle emissions standards through 2030 based on current catalysttechnology. We then estimate the range of PGM that could be saved from potential nanotechnology advances. Finally, we employ economic input-output and process-based life cycle assessment models to estimate the direct and life cycle benefits from reducing PGM mining and refining.Life cycle assessments of a range of wastewater treatment processes have been undertaken. At lower consent standards rotating biological contactors and biological filters exhibit lower environmental burdens for the required functionality than other process options. However, at tighter consents this distinction becomes less clear. Attempts to reduce environmental burdens should focus on operational energy requirements (which dominate burden profiles and, where appropriate, on synthetic materials used for bio-mass growth). However, differences between dry and operational weight, and the consequent size of necessary foundation structures are likely to limit opportunities for reducing overall burden profiles through material substitution. Comparison of processes across population equivalents suggests economies of scale may favour adopting larger scale plant, although there are additional factors yet to be included in this analysis. Further-more, adopting different waste disposal routes during the demolition phase is unlikely to have a distinct impact on burden profiles.This article gives a state of the art overview on quantitative analyses from Norway and Sweden of Life cycle analyses (LCA), which compare the environmental impacts of substitution between wood and alternative materials, with emphasis on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, economics and methodological issues. In all studies referred to this overview, wood is a better alternative than other materials with regard to GHG emissions. Furthermore, wood is causing less emissions of SO2 and generates less waste compared to the alternative materials. Preservative treated wood, on the other hand, might have toxicological impacts on human health and ecosystems. Impacts on acidification, eutrofication and creation of photochemical ozone vary in different comparisons. Amount of greenhouse gases avoided due to substitution between wood and steel is in the range of 36-530 kg CO2-equivalents per in 3 input of timber with 4% discount rate; depending on waste management of the materials, and how carbon fixation on forest land is included. This amount is 93-1062 kg CO2-equivalents for substitution between wood and concrete, if the wood is not landfilled after use. Many of the LCAs could be considerably improved, if the analyses were done with several alternative assumptions regarding boundaries of the system used in the LCA. This is important, not least to map what are the main assumptions for the results obtained and to compare with other studies. It is also important to consider the time-profile of the GHG emissions and other impacts over the life-cycle-it is surprising that this is not taken more seriously. Wood as a building material is competitive on price in those studies that include costs. It is a weak point of many LCAs that costs as well as other economic aspects influencing product substitution are not included, and a major research challenge is to combine traditional LCA with economic analysis in order to make both more policy relevant. In particular, one should develop dynamic input/output models where price and income substitutions as well as technological changes and cost components are included endogenously. (c) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.European Union agri-environmental schemes aim to reduce the environmental impact of agricultural production, but were developed before consideration of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Life cycle assessment methodology provided a framework for comparing emissions as kg CO2 equivalent per kg of energy corrected milk (ECM) (kg CO2 kg(-1) ECM yr(-1)) and per hectare (kg CO2 ha(-1) yr(-1)) for farms both within and outside the Irish agri-environmental scheme. The agri-environmental scheme farms operate extensive systems from 40 to 120 cows producing between 3032 and 5946 kg ECM cow(-1) lactation(-1). The cows are fed on grass, conserved silage, and concentrates. Supplementation ranged between 250 and 620 kg cow(-1) yr(-1). The conventional farms had between 30 and 77 milking cows producing 4736 to 6944 kg ECM cow(-1) lactation(-1). Supplementation ranged from 400 to 1000 kg cow-' yr-1. The emissions from each unit were estimated using published emissions factors and possible error was evaluated by using ranges for each factor. Calculated emissions ranged from 0.92 to 1.51 kg CO2 kg(-1) ECM yr(-1) and 5924 to 8323 kg CO2 ha(-1). On average, total emissions from conventional farms were around 18% (p = 0.01) greater than the agri-environmental scheme farms and emissions per hectare (total area required) were 17% greater (p = 0.02) but there was no significant difference (p = 0.335) in terms of emission per unit milk produced. To evaluate greenhouse gas emissions for each farm in terms of the system intensity it was necessary to define a measure of intensification and area per liter of milk produced that was best.Concrete infrastructure represents an enormous investment of materials, energy, and capital, and results in significant environmental burdens and social costs. There is an ongoing effort to identify material alternatives to conventional concrete. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important tool to evaluate the environmental performance of alternative infrastructure materials and systems. Here, we present a comparative LCA of two bridge deck systems over a 60 year service life: one using conventional steel expansion joints and the other based on a link slab design using a concrete alternative, engineered cementitious composites (ECC). The ECC link slab design is expected to extend the bridge deck service life and reduce maintenance activities. A life cycle model was developed that accounts for materials production and distribution, construction and maintenance processes, construction-related traffic congestion, and end-of-life management. Results indicate that the ECC bridge deck system has significant advantages in environmental performance: 40% less life cycle energy consumption, 50% less solid waste generation, and 38% less raw material consumption. Construction related traffic congestion is the greatest contributor to most life cycle impact categories.With heightened public concern about the environmental impacts (e.g. global warming, ozone layer depletion) of products and manufacturing processes, the evaluation of environmental impacts during the lifecycle of the products has become a crucial issue. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed to evaluate environmental impact of existing products and existing manufacturing processes, but the current LCA tools are not suitable for the evaluation of whole product lifecycles and cannot evaluate the logistics of product lifecycles, which are crucial factor in designing feasible and efficient product lifecycles. This paper proposes a modelling and simulation environment called Green Production and Logistics Simulator (GPLS) for evaluation and design of green product lifecycles. The proposed environment employs the concepts of modular modelling, model template, Multi-Dimensional Formalism (MDF) and process inventory, and has the ability to model costs, qualities and logistics. MDF defines a paradigm for the explicit representation of physical, behavioural, and operational perspectives or dimensions of the plant, process, and product. This is the basis for the development of simulation environments in which various product lifecycle alternatives are explored with the same simulation models. The case study, in which the PET bottle resin lifecycle was modelled and simulated, was implemented as a software tool and was shown to be convenient and efficient means to evaluate various product lifecycle alternatives.The contribution of rice production to the three major greenhouse gases CO2, CH4 and N2O in 1990, the base year of the Kyoto protocol is investigated for Japan. For the CO2 assessment, we use a top-down life cycle approach, CH4 is assessed using the Japanese GHG emission inventory and N2O is assessed according to the ratio of rice area divided by the total area of agricultural soils. In total, 1.6% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 1990 originated from rice production. Next, we assess regional variations in nine rice-producing regions, based on the CO2 data of 1990. General trends in rice production from 1960 to 2000 and data from the Japanese GHG emission inventory since 1990 are used to assess variations in time. The rice-related GHG emissions decreased to 1.05% of the total GHG emissions in 2001 and will be less than half the 1990 level in 2012, mainly due to the decrease in rice production. Contrary to the trend in GHG emissions of rice, overall GHG emissions increased as rice production fulfils important roles, in mitigating global warming and in adapting to changing climates. The protection of rice production is required to counter the increase of GHG emissions in transportation, waste and domestic sectors and to minimize problems related to landscape, water and natural hazard management.The philosophy underlying the green and sustainable chemistry and EPA's definitions of green chemistry, green engineering, and sustainable chemistry are described, quant. measures of sustainable chemistry are presented and societal aspects are discussed. 67 refs.Life-cycle modeling for design (LCMD) is a methodology for assessing the life-cycle impacts for a complex product with many individual components starting from initial design phases when few design specifications have been made. The methodology combines life-cycle assessment (LCA) with probabilistic design methods in a way that forecasts attributes of possible final designs yet reduces information needs. Specifically, LCMD is a methodology for generating arrays of design scenarios that communicate the range of designs being considered by a design team, and estimating missing data for those design scenarios. The main contribution to enhancing standard LCA is the incorporation of methods to estimate physical attributes of individual components for various design options and in four analyses for evaluating the arrays of design scenarios. An automotive case study presented in part 2 of this work demonstrates one application of LCMD.Life cycle modeling for design (LCMD) facilitates the incorporation of life cycle modeling into product design by including consideration of uncertainty in a product's final specifications. The methodology combines Life Cycle Assessment with probabilistic design methods in a way that reduces information needs. Part 1 of this article presents the basic LCMD methodology. Here, in Part 2, LCMD is used to evaluate material substitution opportunities to reduce resource consumption, reduce life cycle air emissions, and increase the recyclable mass for a Ford C-class sedan. In addition to further illustrating LCMD, the case study identifies vehicle design scenarios that offer modest improvements in environmental performance and related cost tradeoffs.This paper compares the life cycle energy use of a cast-aluminum, rear liftgate inner and a conventional. stamped steel liftgate inner used in a minivan. Using the best available aggregate life cycle inventory data and a simple spreadsheet-level analysis, energy comparisons were made at both the single-vehicle and vehicle-fleet levels. Since the product manufacture and use are distributed over long periods of time that, in a fleet, are not simple linear combinations of single product life cycles. Thus, it is all the products in use over a period of time, rather than a single product, that are more appropriate for the life cycle analysis. Using a set of consistent data, analyses also examine sensitivity to the level of analysis and the assumptions to determine the most favorable materials with respect to life cycle energy benefits. As expected, life cycle energy impacts of aluminum are lower than steel at a single-vehicle level energy savings are determined to be 1.8 GJ/vehicle. Most energy savings occur at the vehicle operation phase due to improved fuel economy from lightweighting. The energy benefits are realized only very close to the average vehicle life of 14 years. With the incremental growth of the vehicle fleet, it takes longer-about 21 years-for aluminum to achieve life cycle equivalence with steel. The number of years aluminum needs to achieve equivalence with steel was found to be quite sensitive to aluminum manufacturing energy and fuel economy. As the steel industry races to compete with other materials for automotive lightweighting, a systems approach, instead of part-to-part comparison, is more appropriate in the determination of viability of aluminum substitution from an energy perspective. Published by Elsevier B.V.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ISO standardized method designed to evaluate the impact of human activities on the environment using objective and measurable indicators. To be effective an LCA analysis should be cost-efficient in data gathering and the methods used for calculating the impact categories ought to be universally applicable. The land use impact category of an LCA deals with impacts of land occupation and land use change on water balance, soil and vegetation. This paper proposes to use a modelling approach to generate indicators for the land use impact Of CO2 emission reduction projects on the ecosystem water balance. The rate variables of the water balance selected to describe the land use impacts are evapotranspiration, surface runoff, discharge, groundwater recharge and soil loss through water erosion. They are simulated making use of the SWAT model. The paper describes the application of the proposed methodology for two locations with different site characteristics and land use patterns. Special attention was paid to aspects of data availability and reliability. Comparison of the simulation results with literature data revealed that SWAT provides reasonable results, which can be used for assessing the land use impact in LCA. The sensitivity analysis indicated low dependency of the model output to minor and moderate changes in model input, with the exception of changes in precipitation and leaf area index (LAI). The study also indicated that the land use library in SWAT needs further development to become universally applicable for LCA purposes. A scenario analysis allowed us to predict the impact of land occupation on the hydrology and erosion of both study areas. Finally, the LCA indicators giving the impact on the water balance per functional unit were calculated by expressing the SWAT outputs per kilogram Of CO2 emission reduction. Copyright (C) 2005 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.Pig production systems often depend to a large extent on concentrated feed imported from outside the farm. This study used the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method to assess major environmental impacts associated with the production and on-farm delivery of concentrated feed for pigs. Feed composition was based on average data for Bretagne (France) in 1998 and on published data for wheat-based, maize-based and co-product based feeds. As crop and feed production practices in Bretagne are similar to those in most of western Europe, we conclude that the results of this study apply more largely for western Europe. Depending on feed composition and fertilisation practise for crop-based feed ingredients, the production and delivery of one kg of feed for finishing pigs will produce a eutrophication potential between 3.8 and 9.3 g PO4-equivalents, a global warming potential between 472 and 792 g CO2-equivalents, an acidification potential between 3.0 and 6.3 g SO2-equivalents, a terrestrial ecotoxicity potential between 0.4 and 8.7 g 1,4-dichlorobenzene-equivalents, an energy use between 3.3 and 6.1 MJ, and land use between 1.44 and 2.07 m(2) year. These impacts are mainly due to the production of crop-based ingredients. The contribution of transport processes was substantial for climate change, acidification and energy use. A feed containing mainly co-products had higher energy use and lower terrestrial ecotoxicity than feeds consisting mainly of non-processed crop-based ingredients. Hypotheses with respect to the fertilisation practices for the feed's main ingredients have a major effect on its impact values. The effect of uncertainty concerning the emissions of N2O, NH3, and NO3 was very large for climate change, and large for acidification and eutrophication. The environmental burdens associated with the production and delivery of pig feed can be decreased by: optimising the fertilisation of its crop based ingredients, using more locally produced feed ingredients, reducing concentrations of Cu and Zn in the feed, and using wheat-based rather than maize-based feeds. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fluoro-nitric acid-used in the semiconductor industry as a washing agent is of high purity and high concentration (fluoric acid: 23.3%, nitric acid: 16.6%). It is recovered using separation and control in the semiconductor industry. A technology-for utilizing this acid by product as-a pickling. solution for stainless steel sheets in the steel industry was developed. The results of a, Life-Cycle. Assessment study showed that a cascade of 10 tons of acid byproducts reduces-energy consumption by 4.0 tons in crude oil conversion value, CO2 emissions by 4.3 tons, and sludge generation-by 24.8 tons. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a method using building materials' environmental profiles to assess their environmental impacts based on the life-cycle assessment (LCA) framework. In this method, the environmental impacts are categorized and the "green tax" is used to study the inter-seriousness across different categories. The green tax including the pollutant tax and resource tax is the shadow price of pollutants or resources, revealing the social willingness-to-pay (WTP) for them. The green tax of a specific pollutant could be modified if the local special preference is considered. The final assessment result produced by this method represents the social WTP for the environmental impacts of the building material. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental and human health impacts of engineering activities have reshaped the way engineers make decisions. Increasingly, engineering decision-making is taking into consideration the full life cycle implications of engineering activities. This paper details the development and application of a national economic input-output-based life cycle assessment model, a tool for guiding engineering decision-making, for the Canadian economy. The model consists of 61 industries and 103 commodities and incorporates economic and environmental-resource data, including marginal resource consumption, energy use, releases of National Pollutant Release Inventory compounds, and emissions of greenhouse gases. The model is useful for evaluating various development strategies and analyzing the potential direct and indirect impacts of alternative public policies on the Canadian economy and environment. The model is applied to various sectors of the Canadian economy, and the life-cycle implications of demands for different commodities are determined, including demand for electricity and construction materials for highway design.Research in the area of sustainable urban infrastructure reflects the need to design and manage engineering systems in light of both environmental and socioeconomic considerations. A principal challenge for the engineer is the development of practical tools for measuring and enhancing the sustainability of urban infrastructure over its life cycle. The present study develops such a framework for the sustainability assessment of urban infrastructure systems. The framework focuses on key interactions and feedback mechanisms between infrastructure and surrounding environmental, economic, and social systems. One way of understanding and quantifying these interacting effects is through the use of sustainability criteria and indicators. A generic set of sustainability criteria and subcriteria and system-specific indicators is put forward. Selected indicators are quantified in a case study of the urban water system of the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Petroleum sludge is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, water, metals, and suspended fine solids. The objective of this research was to develop a technique that will lead to the separation of phases ready for further reuse. A study was carried out to investigate a combination of various systems of electrokinetic cells, to which oily sludge, conditioning liquids, and different electrical potentials were applied. The developed electrokinetic phase separation is a new cost-effective technology, which in turn will permit the revitalization of petroleum sludge. This method can significantly reduce the amount of wasted sludge and can recover new fuels free of metals and water. Life cycle analysis of the recovered fuel shows that a new petroleum waste management protocol might reduce emissions of major greenhouse gases such as CO2, CH4, and N2O by 40 026 000, 1057, and 566 kg, respectively, per refinery per year.This study applies Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to present an eco-balance of a recycling plant that treats spent lead-acid batteries. The recycling plant uses pyrometallurgical treatment to obtain lead from spent batteries. The application of LCA methodology (ISO 14040 series) enabled us to assess the potential environmental impacts arising from the recycling plant's operations, Thus, net emissions of greenhouse gases as well as other major environmental consequences were examined and hot spots inside the recycling plant were identified. A sensitivity analysis was also performed on certain variables to evaluate their effect on the LCA study. The LCA of a recycling plant for spent lead-acid batteries presented shows that this methodology allows all of the major environmental consequences associated with lead recycling using the pyrometallurgical process to be examined. The study highlights areas in which environmental improvements are easily achievable by a business, providing a basis for suggestions to minimize the environmental impact of its production phases, improving process and company performance in environmental terms.In life-cycle assessment (LCA) and comparative risk assessment, potential human exposure to toxic pollutants can be expressed as the population intake fraction (iF), which represents the fraction of the quantity emitted that enters the human population. To assess the influence of model differences in the calculation of the population iF ingestion and inhalation iFs of 365 substances emitted to air, freshwater, and soil were calculated with two commonly applied multimedia fate and exposure models, CalTOX and the uniform system for evaluation of substances adapted for life-cycle assessment (USES-LCA). The model comparison showed that differences in the iFs due to model choices were the lowest after emission to air and the highest after emission to soil. Inhalation iFs were more sensitive to model differences compared to ingestion iFs. The choice for a continental seawater compartment, vertical stratification of the soil compartment, rain and no-rain scenarios, and drinking water purification mainly clarify the relevant model differences found in population iFs. Furthermore, pH correction of chemical properties and aerosol-associated deposition on plants appeared to be important for dissociative organics and metals emitted to air, respectively. Finally, it was found that quantitative structure-activity relationship estimates for superhydrophobics may introduce considerable uncertainty in the calculation of population intake fractions.Fuel cells are still a new technology, and the scientific community is in dire need for reliable data on their environmental performance. In this paper a multi-criteria life cycle assessment of a prototype molten carbonate fuel cells plant is performed; the results are subject to a systematic sensitivity analysis and compared to those for three natural gas turbine plants. Results indicate an overall good environmental performance, even when compared to modem gas turbines. Possible further improvements should focus on reducing the requirement for the employed metals (e.g. Ni, Cr), as well as increasing fuel cell life time and centralising the natural gas reforming phase. (C) 2004 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Expanded polystyrene (EPS) and corrugated paperboard (CPB) are used in many industrial applications, such as containers, shock absorbers or simply as inserts. Both materials pose two different types of environmental problems. The first is the pollution and resource consumption that occur during the production of these materials; the second is the growing landfills that arise out of the excessive disposal of these packaging materials. Life cycle assessment or LCA will be introduced in this paper as a useful tool to compare the environmental performance of both EPS and CPB throughout their life cycle stages. This paper is divided into two main parts. The first part investigates the environmental impacts of the production of EPS and CPB from 'cradle-to-gate', comparing two inserts-both the original and proposed new designs. In the second part, LCA is applied to investigate various end-of-life cases for the same materials. The study will evaluate the environmental impacts of the present waste management practices in Singapore. Several 'what-if' cases are also discussed, including various percentages of landfilling and incineration. The SimaPro LCA Version 5.0 software's Eco-indicator 99 method is used to investigate the following five environmental impact categories: climate change, acidification/eutrophication, ecotoxicity, fossil fuels and respiratory inorganics. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The amount of municipal waste related to food packaging systems, with respect to the whole mass of municipal waste, is ever increasing. For this reason, a selection of different packaging systems has to be made from the start of production not only to favour food conservation, but also to reduce packaging mass and increase the use of recyclables. This paper presents a comparison between impacts associated with alternative packaging systems on the supply of coffee, with the aim of showing how their values change depending on the materials and processes commonly in use. To compare impacts, Life Cycle Assessment methodology was considered. This approach, which is widespread use in many different production sectors, is defined in detail in the ISO 1404x norm. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.LCA (life cycle assessment) is an environmental evaluation tool for a product system based on life cycle thinking. After ISO14040 established in 1997, seven years have passed, and LCA has begun to be use in business. However, it is difficult to evaluate an open-loop recycling system or a system which produces several kinds of products. It seems to be a cause that a conventional LCA is an evaluation tool for a product system with single function unit. In this study, a new LCA method for a system with multi-function units was developed, which was based on matrix LCA method.Automobile industry aims breakaway from oil system fuel vehicle, and develops hybrid, electric, and fuel cell vehicles for reduction of green house gas emissions. This report assessed the energy consumption and CO2 emission for a fuel cell vehicle (FCV) in comparison with compressed natural gas vehicle (CNGV) and gasoline vehicle (GV) by LCA. In FCV, the stage of fuel manufacture accounts for a large part of life cycle, together with that of membrane production. In GV and CNGV, the stage of running accounts for a large part of life cycle. The total CO2 emission of life cycle for FCV is 36 percent smaller than those of GV and CNGV, whereas the total energy, consumption of FCV is 35 percent larger than those of the others.Starting from the results of a life cycle assessment of solar thermal collector for sanitary warm water, an energy balance between the employed energy during the collector life cycle and the energy saved thanks to the collector use has been investigated. A sensitivity analysis for estimating the effects of the chosen methods and data on the outcome of the study was carried out. Uncertainties due to the eco-profile of input materials and the initial assumptions have been analysed. Since the study is concerned with a renewable energy system, attention has been focused on the energy indexes and in particular the "global energy consumption". Following the principles of Kyoto Protocol, the variations of CO2 emissions have also been studied. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.After ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, Canada's Kyoto greenhouse gas (GHG) emission target is 571 Mt of CO2 equivalent emitted per year by 2010; however, if current emission trends continue, a figure of 809 Mt is projected by 2010 (Cote C. Basic of clean development mechanism-joint implementation and overview of CDM project cycle, 2003 regional workshop on CDM-JI, February 2003, Halifax). This underscores the need for additional reduction of 240 Mt. The Federal Government Action Plan 2000 aims to reduce this gap from 240 to 65 Mt (Cote C. Basic of clean development mechanism-joint implementation and overview of CDM project cycle, 2003 regional workshop on CDM-JI, February 2003, Halifax). In order to accomplish this goal, renewable energy use in all sectors will be required, and this type of energy is particularly applicable in power generation. Traditional power generation is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions after industrial and transportation sectors (Environment Canada. Canada's Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990-1998. Final submission to the UNFCCC Secretariat, 2002 [Available from: http://www.ec.gc.ca/climate/resources_reportes-e.html]. Although wind energy, solar power and other forms of renewable energy are non-GHG emitting in their operation, there are GHG emissions in their different stages of life cycle (i.e. material extraction, manufacturing, construction and transportation, etc.). These emissions must be accounted for in order to assess accurately their capacity to reduce GHG emission and meet Kyoto targets. The current trend in electricity generation is towards integrated energy systems. One such proposed system is the wind-fuel cell integrated system for remote communities. This paper presents a detailed Life Cycle Analysis of the wind-fuel cell integrated system for application in Newfoundland and Labrador. The study confirms that wind-fuel integrated system is a zero emission system while in operation. There are significant emissions of GHGs during the production of the various components (wind turbine, fuel cell and electrolyzer). However, the global warming potential, (GWP) of wind-integrated system is far lower (at least by two orders of magnitude) than the conventional diesel system, presently used in remote communities. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a study where sustainable development indicators (SDIs) for sludge handling and wastewater treatment systems were constructed in co-operation with a large Swedish water company. Results from a life cycle assessment, a risk assessment. an economic assessment and an uncertainty assessment were used as inputs for ranking technical options of sludge handling by use of multi-criteria analysis (MCA). The MCA included assessment of the different technical options, valuation of different, and often conflicting, aspects of sustainability and weighting of various criteria. On basis of the preferences expressed in the MCA, a number of SDIs and when possible, targets for sustainable development, were formulated. The resulting SDIs reflected economic, environmental, technical and social aspects of sustainable development of sludge handling systems. Where possible, the coverage of the indicators was extended to the entire wastewater system. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Weighting model is the only valuation model of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) profile now. It simplifies evaluation function into linear function, and makes the determination of weighting factor complicated. Therefore the valuation of LCIA profile is the most critical and controversial step in life cycle assessment (LCA). Development on valuation models, which are understood easily and accepted widely, is urgently needed in the field of LCA. The modeling approaches for the linear evaluation function were summed up. The modeling approaches for the nonlinear evaluation function were set up by function approximation theory, which include choosing preference products, forming preference data, establishing artificial neural network(ANN) and training ANN by preference data. By selecting 7 material products as preference product, experience was done with modeling approaches of the nonlinear evaluation function. The results show that the modeling approaches and valuation model of the nonlinear evaluation function are more practical than the weighting model.Based on recently published studies on the life cycle analysis of several chemicals, and the CO2 emissions associated with their production, a new approach to the selective oxidation of light hydrocarbons is discussed. By nature, selective oxidations are also producing CO2 as the end product, much preferred by the thermodynamics. New technologies such as the circulating fluid bed reactor in selective oxidation, could be considered to propose a solution to reduce the CO2 emissions both with respect to the yield improvement, but also as a solution to recover CO2 from a high partial pressure recycling loop. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The life cycle analysis method was used to determine the environmental impacts associated with the production of an electrochromic (EC) glazing (called ECD). This paper describes the inventory analysis for all the basic materials used during the manufacture of the ECD, i.e. K-Glass, tungsten oxide (WO3) poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA), propylene carbonate (PC), lithium perchlorate (LiClO4) and acetic silicone sealant. K-Glass, PC and PMMA account for the 98% of the total device mass and the CO, emissions during their production processes are 810 g. The total embodied energy was estimated to be 49 MJ/ECD, with 32.1 MJ/unit of them derived from the K-Glass. The comparison of the total embodied energies of the ECD and various insulating glass units concluded that mass-produced EC glazings could easily compete with them in terms of environmental performance, anticipating cost attenuation and overall thermal and optical behavior. The above analysis could be implemented for the reduction of the embodied energy of the ECD life cycle, since it is proposed as an energy saving device. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Fuel cell-based auxiliary power units (APUs) are devices meant to reduce fuel consumption and pollutant emissions when the vehicle engine is used for non-propulsion purposes (space conditioning/heating, refrigeration, lighting, etc.). This paper examines for this new technology the life cycle assessment (LCA) and the comparison with the existing technology, which is commonly idling of diesel engines. Life cycle assessment provides the cumulative impact resulting from all the stages of the product life. Through this analysis it was possible to demonstrate that life cycle emissions cannot be neglected in the impact assessment of fuel cell-based auxiliary power units. However, even considering those emissions, the total amount of pollutant that is released is much less than in the case of idling of diesel engines. SOFC-based APUs showed great potential in terms of human health and environmental impacts reduction if compared to the existing technology and the payback period has been estimated in just a little more than two years. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Auxiliary power units (APUs) are devices that can provide all or part of the non-propulsion power of a vehicle. They do not replace the main internal combustion engine, but they complement it offering low consumption, high comfort and low emissions during the idling periods of the vehicle. This work presents an integrated framework to evaluate the trade-offs between cost effectiveness, efficiency and health and environmental impacts of fuel cell power systems considering various stages of the life cycle of the device. The integrated framework has six main components, namely system level modeling, cost modeling, environmental impact assessment, health impact assessment, life cycle assessment and multi-objective optimization. In part I of these two papers, concerning the integrated framework, the first two components are described and applied to a solid oxide fuel cell-based auxiliary power unit. All the results are validated with experimental data or other published models. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Auxiliary power units are devices that can provide all or part of the non-propulsion power for vehicles (space conditioning/heating, refrigeration, lighting, etc.). In the first part of this series of two papers on this topic, an integrated framework to identify and quantify trade-offs between cost effectiveness, efficiency, and environmental and health impacts of fuel cell power systems has been introduced. The present work concludes the description of the framework analyzing the components not discussed in part 1: environmental impact assessment, health impact assessment, life cycle assessment (LCA), and multi-objective optimization. At the end of the paper the results obtained from the simulation of a base case design are presented and discussed. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Eco-design is a frequently applied concept, but mostly as a case study or based on a given product, which has to be improved. Rarely design for environment is used as part of the development of a new product, because environmental assessments usually need a sound data basis, see e.g. common life cycle analysis concepts. Hence, this paper presents an integrated approach, how to deal with environmental issues during product design, when knowledge about the later product is still fairly limited - and the possibility to implement major changes is still given. The approach presented focusses on lean and smart measures, which work without additional extensive data acquisition and scenarios. However, they impose uncertainties, but remain applicable for the designer. This approach is shown for one of the most advanced tasks in electronics: Design of micro systems technology (MST) devices, known also as micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS). Furthermore, overlaps with other disciplines, such as microelectronics design is inevitable.This paper presents a first-order life cycle analysis of different Combined Heat and Power (CUP) concepts in an air-cooled data center. The study finds that the benefits availed by implementing CHP may be small in the short run and depend largely on the size and configuration of the data center infrastructure. However, under certain operating circumstances, both environmental and economic gains can be realized.Two of the major barriers for integrating comprehensive environmental evaluation methods such as the life cycle analysis (LCA) into technology selection in the semiconductor industry are: (1) due to the large amount of data requirement, the time needed for a in-depth LCA does not match with the fast pace of innovation cycle of the industry; (2) with new materials constantly being introduced into testing and production, environmental, safety, and health data of these new material are often lacking. To address these two barriers, it is proposed that analyses should start with simplified models and low-quality data, then based on the uncertainty range of the analysis results, the decision maker will decide on whether to refine the models and collect more data, and which input factors to refine. To enable this., the uncertainty in the results and the contributions of the inputs to this uncertainty need to be quantified. This paper describes the uncertainty analysis and sensitivity methods that can be used for the above purpose. A case study of comparing two chamber cleaning gases is used to illustrate the methods.Results from a joint US EPA and US electronics industry-funded life-cycle assessment of lead and two lead-free alternative solders are presented. Impact scores are reported in 16 different environmental categories for wave soldering applications. Bar solders evaluated include tin-lead, tin-silver-copper, and tin-copper. Tin-lead solder was determined to have higher impact scores than the lead-free solders in four categories, while having lower impacts in five. The use/application stage was the dominant contributor to most impact categories, while upstream and end-of-life processes also made significant contributions to specific impact categories, depending on the solder. Sensitivity analyses of the effect of silver production as well as landfill leachate data are also presented.There is growing international pressure on original equipment manufacturers of electronic products to reduce the environmental impact of their products. Hence a conscious effort is being made by them to evaluate the environmental impact of their products and thus identify aspects leading to the environmental burden. This paper presents a recent research aimed to develop an environmental impact evaluation framework for electronic products based on existing Environmental Assessment (EIA) software systems. A comprehensive evaluation and comparison of select software systems, is presented using relevant case studies of standard computer products. The paper also evaluates a framework for extending the environmental evaluation to the end-of-life scenario of these products.Societal concerns on pollution, hazardous materials, global warming and sustainability provoke responses from society. Public policy or changes in consumer behavior are specific examples. For electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) the released EU directives such as the WEEE (Directive on Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment) and RoHS (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances in EEE) and future directives such as EuP (Ecodesign of energy-using Products) are already having and will have a significant impact on how products are designed, built, used and treated at their end of life. To bear this challenge, measurable and understandable criteria for assessing and demonstrating the environmental performance of products are needed. Key methodology for a holistic and reliable environmental evaluation of products is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This scientifically established approach leads to useful and reliable results regarding environmental evaluation of the entire life cycle of products. From the acquisition of raw materials, over the use of the products to the end of life management all life cycle stages are considered. Product characteristics (such as weight and materials used, energy consumption during use) and all relevant inputs and outputs (such as energy, raw materials, emissions) occurring throughout the entire life cycle are regarded. To improve products from an environmental point of view, ecodesign recommendations for product designers need to be reliable and easy to handle. Environmental performance indicators based on technical product characteristics and based on LCA permits to efficiently ameliorate the environmental profile of a product. Efficiently, since only a fraction of information input is needed, this approach provides a tailored and simplified method using environmental performance indicators. This paper introduces a consistent methodology for the development of environmental performance indicators for information and communication technologies (ICT) products.Since at least three decades tributyltin had been commonly used in paint formulations to protect ship hulls and submersed surfaces from fouling. This has resulted in negative effects to the marine environment due to its high toxicity towards non-target organisms and to its accumulation in sediments, especially near point sources of pollution. Even if a ban of TBT for its application in anti-fouling paints is enforced the problem of TBT-contaminated sediments will remain for the coming years due to the low degradation rates of organotin in sediments. In this work an electrochemical process at a pilot scale to destroy TBT in sediments was investigated. Previous experiences at a laboratory and technical scale have demonstrated the potential of this process to electrolytically degrade organotin species in sediments. This article deals with the optimisation of the pilot plant performance in terms of organotin degradation and operation costs monitoring additionally the effect of the electrochemical treatment on other pollutants such as heavy metals, PCBs, and PAHs. The aim was to investigate by means of a parametric study the range of operating conditions required to destroy TBT down to concentrations lower than 100 mug/kg; to determine the influence of those parameters on the performance of the process; and to evaluate the operation costs associated to the process. It was determined that it was possible to destroy 2 and chloride TBT down to 100 mug/kg at current densities in the range of 4.4 to 6.6 mA/cm(2) concentrations of least of 0.2 mol/L with operation costs of 13 to 18 EUR/m(3).Product development tends to strive towards radical innovations of products to gain an advantage in a competitive market. Which tool should be used to evaluate environmental performance in order to reach the market faster with radically improved products? This paper discusses radical and incremental innovation and combines them with tools for evaluating environmental performance of products. The environmental tools examined or used in this paper are design handbook, life cycle assessment (LCA), and environmental effect analysis (EEA). This paper is based on a literature review in the field of innovation and environmental research. Primarily journal articles and conference papers have been used but also books and dissertations. The result of the discussion is that a radical innovation should use EEA as a supporting tool, and incremental innovation should use LCA. This is based on known facts about EEA and LCA. A design handbook can easily be used as a support for both types of innovation.Current intensive pig production is often associated with environmental burdens. However, very few studies deal with the environmental performance of both current and alternative systems of pig production. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the environmental impacts of three contrasting pig production systems using the life cycle assessment method and to identify hot spots for each system. The scenarios compared were conventional good agricultural practice (GAP) according to French production rules, a French quality label scenario called red label (RL) and a French organic scenario called organic agriculture (OA). For each of the three scenarios a "favourable" and an "unfavourable" variant was defined; these variants were used as indicators of uncertainty with respect to key parameters for technical performance and emissions of pollutants. The environmental categories assessed were: eutrophication, climate change, acidification, terrestrial toxicity, energy use, land use and pesticide use. Two functional units (FU) were used to express impacts: 1 kg of pig produced and 1 ha of land surface used. The scenarios were examined with particular emphasis on their contribution to eutrophication and acidification. Given this perspective, the RL scenario can be an interesting alternative to GAP on the condition that its emission of greenhouse gases can be reduced. The results for OA were very dependent on the choice of the FU. Per kg of pig, eutrophication and acidification were similar for OA and GAP, while OA had less eutrophication and acidification than GAP when expressed per ha. For the three scenarios, environmental hot spots and important margins of improvement were identified. Finally, the uncertainty analysis indicated that efforts should be made to produce more reliable estimations of emission factors for NO3, NH3 and N2O in the field. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Under a clean technologies research initiative at the University of New Orleans (UNO), an advanced air quality monitoring, analysis, modeling, and management system has recently been established. This initiative included the design and construction of an Emissions Test Facility along with the necessary instrumentation for source testing, analysis of metals/organics, and particle sizing. The initial objective of this initiative is to assist the maritime industry and then follow up to assist other industry sectors such as power generation, chemical manufacturing, and petroleum refining. Maritime industry has several processes such as blasting, painting, welding, metal cutting, and others which are important with respect to their emission potential of airborne pollutants. Emission factors are not available for all processes and process conditions. USEPA has published emission factors for certain processes but this data has low quality ratings. UNO is currently using the clean technologies center to promote generation of emission factor data and identification of clean technologies (materials, processes, and process conditions) with the help of maritime industry and regulatory agencies. In addition to identifying low emission clean technologies, the UNO research approach emphasizes mathematical modeling for source emission potential and atmospheric dispersion for ambient air quality prediction. Performance parameters such as the productivity, raw material, and natural resources consumption are important in the selection of clean technologies as they influence energy consumption and costs. The continuum approach to air pollution control involves development of decision support systems and tools for life cycle costing, life cycle assessment, and inhalation-induced health risk evaluation. UNO's clean technologies center will assist in designing various production alternatives to achieve high productivity and lower consumption of natural resources as well as emissions, thus minimizing costs and reducing the environmental burden. This paper presents UNO's new research initiative that will result in developing environmentally friendly technologies through optimized process conditions.For several decades now, plastic components have been used more and more in the automotive industry, both for supporting and for aesthetic elements. For such uses, goals like reduction of weight and of production costs, improvement of production plant flexibility, have assumed ail ever increasing importance and have been considered important for companies to define their capability on answering to market requirements and challenges. Also the reduction of environmental impacts related to production, use and disposal of these components, was considered as ail important goal during recent years. With the aim of investigating some alternative production cycles of plastic components, the paper shows the process and the results of comparison between some different ways to develop the molding and plating processes using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Such approach is introductory to the following evaluation of a specific component, a car trim, which has not a complex geometry but that was considered useful to initial targets of a comparison involving a plethora of possible different solutions.ATLAST (Aircraft Total Life-Cycle Assessment Software Tool) was developed to support life-cycle logistics impact forecasting for new and aging weapon-system fleets. ATLAST simulates airframe operations, using tail numbers and operation profiles, to predict unscheduled and scheduled removal events according to location and age of components over time. It then administers a capacity-constrained maintenance and logistic support process that returns assets back to serviceable conditions. The latest version of ATLAST consists of a "Deployment & Push Pack Spares" optimization module. The module utilizes a hybrid analytical-simulation optimization approach to rank spare parts by their effectiveness in increasing availability. Decision makers can use ATLAST to determine the optimal level of spares for the deployment of aircraft at a specific location. Detailed mathematical formulation and three numerical examples are presented in this paper.A life cycle assessment of different cropping systems emphasizing corn and soybean production was performed, assuming that biomass from the cropping systems is utilized for producing biofuels (i.e., ethanol and biodiesel). The functional unit is defined as 1 ha of arable land producing biomass for biofuels to compare the environmental performance of the different cropping systems. The external functions are allocated by introducing alternative product systems (the system expansion allocation approach). Nonrenewable energy consumption, global warming impact, acidification and eutrophication are considered as potential environmental impacts and estimated by characterization factors given by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA-TRACI). The benefits of corn stover removal are (1) lower nitrogen related environmental burdens from the soil, (2) higher ethanol production rate per unit arable land, and (3) energy recovery from lignin-rich fermentation residues, while the disadvantages of corn stover removal are a lower accumulation rate of soil organic carbon and higher fuel consumption in harvesting corn stover. Planting winter cover crops can compensate for some disadvantages (i.e., soil organic carbon levels and soil erosion) of removing corn stover. Cover crops also permit more corn stover to be harvested. Thus, utilization of corn stover and winter cover crops can improve the eco-efficiency of the cropping systems. When biomass from the cropping systems is utilized for biofuel production, all the cropping systems studied here offer environmental benefits in terms of nonrenewable energy consumption and global warming impact. Therefore utilizing biomass for biofuels would save nonrenewable energy, and reduce greenhouse gases. However, unless additional measures such as planting cover crops were taken, utilization of biomass for biofuels would also tend to increase acidification and eutrophication, primarily because large nitrogen (and phosphorus)-related environmental burdens are released from the soil during cultivation. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used in this paper to assess the environmental impacts of residential ventilation units over a 50 year life cycle in Finland. Quantifying the consumption of the energy and material resources during the life cycle permits the estimation of the harmful emissions into the environment (air, water and soil) and the potential changes in the environment (climate change, acidification and ozone production). Two different ventilation units are evaluated, both of which include air-to-air energy exchangers. The research demonstrates that a residential ventilation unit, with a function of providing 501/s of outdoor ventilation air, but not heating the air, has a net positive impact on the environment when it is equipped with a air-to-air energy exchanger with an effectiveness greater than 15%. The greater the effectiveness, the greater the positive impact on the environment. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite its potential to change products and processes widely across industries, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are often overlooked by political and popular attention. In this study it is shown how patent information call lie used to analyse the evolution and the present stage of this particular technology. The statistics ire obtained from patent documentation databases available at the Europe in Patent Office, (EPO). We perform a life cycle analysis as well is a patent citation network analysis of the technology. Due to tire interrelatedness and complexity of the MEMS technology the latter performs rather better to map the evolution of the technology.The paper reviews the current state of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) introducing the central elements of the methodology and the latest developments in assessment of the environmental, economic and social impacts along the product chain. The central role of LCA in Integrated Product Policy (IPP) is substantiated describing the different tools of the [PP. An overview is given on Design for Environment (DIFE), presenting central findings from the latest decade of research and reviewing different DFE tools which have been developed. Describing the DFX's of Design for environment, a specific focus is devoted to the tools for design for disassembly. Life Cycle Engineering is defined, and a systematic hierarchy is presented for the different levels at which environmental impacts from industry can be addressed by the engineer in order to improve the eco-efficiency of the industry. The role of industry in meeting the sustainability challenge to our societies is discussed, and it is concluded that industry must include not only the eco-efficiency but also the product's environmental justification and the company ethics in a life cycle perspective in order to become sustainable. In the outlook it is concluded that current drivers seem insufficient to create a strong move of particularly the small and medium-sized enterprises in the direction of sustainability, and a need for stronger legislation and for education and attitude building among future citizens and engineers is identified.Many companies are beginning to change the way they develop products due to increasing awareness of environmentally conscious product development. To copy with these trends, designers are being asked to incorporate environmental criteria into the design process. Recently Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to support the decision-making for product design and the best alternative can be selected based on its estimated environmental impacts and benefits. Both the lack of detailed information and time for a full LCA for a various range of design concepts need the new approach for the environmental analysis. This paper presents an artificial neural network (ANN) based approximate LCA model of product concepts for product groups using a product classification method. A product classification method is developed to support the specialization of ANN based LCA model for different classes of products. Hierarchical clustering is used to guide a systematic identification of product groups based upon environmental categories using the C4.5 decision tree algorithm. Then, an artificial neural network approach is used to estimate an approximate LCA for classified products with product attributes and environmental impact drivers identified in this paper.High impact publications recently depicted PV technologies as having higher external environmental costs than those of nuclear energy and natural-gas-fueled power plants. These assessments are based on old data and unbalanced assumptions, and they illustrate the need for LCA data describing the continuously improving photovoltaic systems and the inclusion of social benefits in this comparison.Short-rotation woody crops (SRWC) along with other woody biomass feedstocks will play a significant role in a more secure and sustainable energy future for the United States and around the world. In temperate regions, shrub willows are being developed as a SRWC because of their potential for high biomass production in short time periods, ease of vegetative propagation, broad genetic base, and ability to resprout after multiple harvests. Understanding and working with willow's biology is important for the agricultural and economic success of the system. The energy, environmental, and economic performance of willow biomass production and conversion to electricity is evaluated using life cycle modeling methods. The net energy ratio (electricity generated/life cycle fossil fuel consumed) for willow ranges from 10 to 13 for direct firing and gasification processes. Reductions of 70 to 98 percent (compared to U.S. grid generated electricity) in greenhouse gas emissions as well as NOx, SO2, and particulate emissions are achieved. Despite willow's multiple environmental and rural development benefits, its high cost of production has limited deployment. Costs will be lowered by significant improvements in yields and production efficiency and by valuing the system's environmental and rural development benefits. Policies like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), federal biomass tax credits and renewable portfolio standards will make willow cost competitive in the near term. The avoided air pollution from the substitution of willow for conventional fossil fuel generated electricity has an estimated damage cost of $0.02 to $0.06 kWh(-1). The land intensity of about 4.9 x 10(-5) ha-yr/kWh is greater than other renewable energy sources. This may be considered the most significant limitation of willow, but unlike other biomass crops such as corn it can be cultivated on the millions of hectares of marginal agricultural lands, improving site conditions, soil quality and landscape diversity. A clear advantage of willow biomass compared to other renewables is that it is a stock resource whereas wind and PV are intermittent. With only 6 percent of the current U.S. energy consumption met by renewable sources the accelerated development of willow biomass and other renewable energy sources is critical to address concerns of energy security and environmental impacts associated with fossil fuels.Identification and exploitation of non-conventional water sources is a priority for many industrial sectors, especially for the textile finishing industry. Therefore a multicriteria integrated and coherent methodology to support the implementation of sustainable water reuse is essential. The methodology conceived within the EU project TOWEF0 (TOWards EFfluent zero) is presented in this paper, together with the tools to carry out all the steps required by its application. A process data collection for technical/economical evaluation in textile companies was performed and integrated with a characterisation of the process effluents in terms of treatability and reusability. Feasibility evaluations of effluents treatment for reuse were performed and reuse tests in textile processes were carried out. These information allowed for the design of optimised water reuse schemes by Water Pinch application, whereas the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) permitted the evaluation and comparison of water reuse scenarios. Physical-chemical and eco-toxicological monitoring campaigns of textile discharges and receiving water bodies were conducted as well. All these specific results, valuable and applicable independently, when integrated into the TOWEF0 methodology, generate viable solutions in accordance with the fundamentals of the IPPC Directive.To comply with the growing demand for life cycle environmental effect, life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out for producing A356 aluminum alloy and AZ91D magnesium alloy diecastings. The main emphasis was placed on the improvement assessment for aluminum and magnesium diecasting processes and the comparison between the two competitive processes. The process evaluated was based on yields of finished parts relative to the metal input. This is important both from the environmental point of view and the commercial point of view because the environmental data are sensitive to the design of cast parts and the efficiency of the diecasting operation.LCA was applied to paddy rice fanning with a relatively low livestock production area on a mid-river basin scale in Japan. Conventional farming, standard application of chemical fertilizer and manure, and low chemical fertilizer input and forage production scenarios were tested. The aquatic eutrophication potential and the global warming potential per unit of crude protein production were lower for low chemical fertilizer input and forage production than for conventional fanning, although terrestrial eutrophication was not reduced. These results indicated that reduced input would be effective in areas with contamination of ground and surface water and regulation of nutrient input would be reasonable. Abiotic resource use was also lower for low chemical fertilizer input and forage production than for conventional fanning. Recycling of livestock excreta would be viable in non-intensive livestock production areas.CANMET-MMSL and Penguin Automation Systems Inc have been exploring how process simulation and ventilation modelling software, when combined, can be used to optimise hard-rock/metal mine ventilation systems. In combination, it is anticipated that this methodology will facilitate the exploration of mine design options that affect ventilation requirements and ultimately cost. Such integrated mine design could limit, and possibly reverse, the drivers that under current practices would generally dictate increased ventilation, power consumption, cost and greenhouse gas emissions. It is believed that the mining industry needs such process models to develop better business cases. For example, the implementation of optimised ventilation systems will undoubtedly require significant investment and mines are often reluctant to try such conservational measures unless they can be proven cost-effective. In general, Canadian hard-rock mines know their ventilation systems are providing too much air and consuming power unnecessarily. This is because their systems are designed to provide maximum production flexibility, based upon peak demand, which may be at some future time, and operated continuously at that level regardless of actual need. Simplistic analyses have shown electrical energy savings can range from 30 per cent through to 90 per cent (Hardcastle, Gangal and Leung, 1998). These savings depend upon such factors as the intensity and continuity of the production schedule as opposed to non-productive time. Where these savings occur is also important, if limited to either the primary or auxiliary ventilation systems, they could be negligible in a mine's total energy consumption. The problem these mines face is determining what level of ventilation is required in real-time and then the relative benefits. Such parameters as varying electricity costs, heating fuel options, different design criteria and their complex inter-relationship can effect the selection of an optimal system, depending on whether energy, environment or cost is the prime driver. The use of process simulators in underground mining is in its infancy; to date they have been used to show the benefits over the life of a mine under different mining methods, such as a comparison of tele-remote mining from surface against conventional manned operation (Baiden, 2000). This ongoing development advances the use of such simulators into a new and potentially important area, namely modelling the life-cycle ventilation requirements of a mine. This paper shows how such a life-cycle analysis as opposed to peak demand can provide the basis for optimising the design of ventilation systems and their control.Energy conservation has become an issue of global significance, which is a focus reflected in the Australian housing industry's renewed emphasis on energy-efficient design. The Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) has proposed to increase the stringency of the Building Code of Australia (BCA) to ensure the industry adopts energy efficient measures, including the enhancement of thermal performance and greater recognition of thermal mass in energy rating schemes. However, this proposal's potential to effect energy savings in tropical housing is yet to be assessed. In order to determine its relative merits under tropical conditions, a standardised house design used in the Tiwi Islands of the Northern Territory (NT) was subjected to life cycle analysis, including analysis of embodied energy, the efficiency of energy saving measures and the resulting active energy consumption. This standardised house, like others in the NT, is designed for retrofitting within 10 years, which reduces the time available for savings in operational energy to exceed energy invested in installing these measures. Housing lifespan would, therefore, significantly impact upon potential benefits resulting from changes to the BCA. In addition, the spatial distances between population settlements in the NT greatly increases embodied energy values. It was found that adopting the proposed measures would result in an increase in energy efficiency through a reduction in the need for refrigerative air conditioner use, and that the embodied energy payback period would fall within the lifespan of the house. Therefore, for this specific tropical design, the BCA's proposed measures for saving energy were found to be beneficial.Most Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) research has been preoccupied with SEA as a procedure and there are relatively few developments and tests of analytical methodologies. This paper applies and tests an analytical framework for an energy sector SEA. In a case study on a policy proposal for waste-to-energy taxation in Sweden, it studies changes in the energy system as a result of implementing the suggested tax by testing three analytical pathways: an LCA pathway, a site-dependent pathway, and a qualitative pathway. In addition, several valuation methods are applied. The assessment indicates that there are some overall environmental benefits to introducing a tax, but that benefits are modest compared to the potential. The methods are discussed in relation to characteristics for effective policy learning and knowledge uptake. The application shows that in many ways they complement each other rather than substitute for each other. The qualitative pathway is useful for raising awareness and getting a comprehensive view of environmental issues, but has limited potential for decision support. The precision increased as we went to LCA and to site-dependent analysis, and a hierarchy emerged in which the qualitative pathway filled rudimentary functions whereas the site-dependent analysis gave more advanced decision support. All methods had limited potential in supporting a choice between alternatives unless data was aggregated through a valuation exercise. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The examination and comparison of the environmental impacts of the recycling system and the disposing of recyclable materials in the waste disposal system (landfill) were conducted using life cycle assessment (LCA). The stages of classification and characterization in the LCA were analyzed to examine the environmental impact of alternative systems in terms of specific environmental problems such as global warming, acidification, nitrification, and energy use. For each system, the stages of collection and processing of materials were individually studied to make a comparison of the environmental impact results. The LCA methodology is then extended to incorporate a multicriteria evaluation of the environmental impacts defined as the criteria for the recycling of four materials: plastics, glass, metals, and P&CB being designated as the alternatives. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) multicriteria method uses established procedures to capture the best rank from judgments through weighting. The decision process is the synthesized into a hierarchy by which it is used to compare alternatives, one at a time, in the context of priorities. In this research, the AHP method is used to derive a single environmental score based on the process emissions for each of the recycled materials considered as alternatives for the evaluation. Based on the resulting environmental scores, the materials are ranked with respect to their environmental merits. The results of the life cycle impact assessment for the case study in counties in North Carolina indicate that despite the same transportation distance for either recycling or landfilling of materials in all counties, the impacts from landfilling the recyclable materials produce far greater environmental impact than recycling the materials. This proves that recycling activities are not only beneficial in saving precious land space but also beneficial in terms of protecting the environment. The multicriteria evaluation with the consideration of environmental impacts as the criteria for the evaluation of the four recycled materials resulted in the determination of a single environmental score (SES). The results of the environmental scores indicate that metals (ferrous and non-ferrous combined) are the environmentally preferred choice.This commentary compares the primary energy requirement for apples (cultivar 'Braeburn'), which were either imported or locally-grown in Meckenheim, Germany. Imported apples of the same cultivar were grown in a Southern hemisphere winter in Nelson, Southland, New Zealand, and were picked at the end of March with subsequent 28 d transport by sea for sale in April in Germany. Locally-grown apples (cultivar 'Braeburn') were picked in mid-October and required a primary energy of nearly 6 MJ/kg of fruit including 0.8 MJoule/kg for five months CA storage at 1 degrees C during a Northern hemisphere winter until mid-March. This compared favourably with 7.5 MJoule/kg for overseas shipment from New Zealand, i.e. a ca. 27% greater energy requirement for these imported fruits. Overall, the primary energy requirement of regional produce, stored several months on-site, partially compensated for the larger energy required to import fresh fruit from overseas. This result is in marked contrast to reported overestimates of a reported up to 8-fold energy requirement for domestic versus imported apple juice concentrate [7]. Our own findings of less primary energy required for domestic apple fruit is discussed with respect to providing local employment, fruit orchards preserving the countryside, quality assurance systems for local fruit such as QS and EUREP-GAP, networking and other factors favouring regional production.Background. LCA is the only internationally standardized environmental assessment tool (ISO 14040-43) for product systems, including services and processes. The analysis is done 'from cradle-to-grave', i.e. over the whole life cycle. LCA is essentially a comparative method: different systems fulfilling the same function (serving the same purpose) are compared on the basis of a 'functional unit' - a quantitative measure of this function or purpose. It is often believed that LCA can be used for judging the (relative) sustainability of product systems. This is only partly true, however, since LCA is restricted to the environmental part of the triad 'environment/ecology - economy - social aspects (including intergenerational fairness)' which constitutes sustainability. Standardized assessment tools for the second and the third pillar are stilt lacking, but Life Cycle Costing (LCC) seems to be a promising candidate for the economic part. Social Life Cycle Assessment still has to be developed on the basis of known social indicators. Method and Limitations. LCA is most frequently used for the comparative assessment or optimization analysis of final products. Materials and chemicals are difficult to analyse from cradle-to-grave, since they are used in many, often innumerable product systems, which all would have to be studied in detail to give a complete LCA of a particular material or substance! This complete analysis of a material or chemical is evidently only possible in such cases where one main application exists. But even if one main application does exist, e.g. in the case of surfactants (chemicals) and detergents (final products), the latter may exist in a great abundance of compositions. Therefore, chemicals and materials are better analysed 'from cradle-to-factory gate', leaving the analysis of the final product(s), the use phase and the 'end-of-life' phases to specific, full LCAs. Conclusion. A comparative assessment of production processes is possible; if the chemicals (the same is true for materials) produced by different methods have exactly the same properties. In this case, the downstream phases may be considered as a 'black box' and left out of the assessment. Such truncated LCAs can be used for environmental comparisons, but less so for the (environmental) optimization analysis of a specific chemical: the phases considered as 'black box' and left out may actually be the dominant ones. A sustainability assessment should be performed at the product level and contain the results of LCC and social assessments. Equal and consistent system boundaries will have to be used for these life cycle tools which only together can fulfil the aim of assessing the sustainability of product systems.Society today is faced with many environmental issues, and many decision analytic techniques and methodologies are offered to support their resolution. The literature to date, however, has not explored the appropriateness of the different methods in relation to the different contexts to which they might be applied. As a beginning, we take three categories of environmental decisions as exemplars with regard to contextual issues, such as problem dimensions, social circumstances and cognitive factors. Then, we turn to analytic methodologies and reflect on their suitability for application to the three exemplars. Finally, we will draw more general conclusions to help others in developing appropriate decision analysis and support processes for environmental problems. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A methodology is presented to calculate the optimum operating conditions of a petrochemical plant utility sector, to minimize the overall Life Cycle Environmental Impact. The battery limits of the system studied are extended to include the relevant environmental impacts corresponding to the electricity imported generated in thermoelectric., hydroelectric and nuclear plants. The Overall Environmental Impact is calculated as a weighted sum of the following Potential Environmental Impact categories: Global Wan-ning, Acidification, Eutrophication, Photochemical Oxidation, Ozone Depletion, Human Toxicity and Ecotoxicity. The contribution of each component emission to these environmental categories is evaluated multiplying its flow rate by the corresponding Heijungs factor. A Mixed Integer Non Linear Programming problem is formulated and solved in GAMS. Global Warming is the most relevant contribution. Significant reductions in the Overall Environmental Impact and particularly in Global Warming are achieved selecting the pressure and temperature of high, medium and low pressure headers and the optional drivers that can be electrical motors or steam turbines. Improvements are also reported in the operating cost, natural gas, water and electricity consumption.We assessed the life-cycle of packaging materials designed to protect large-scale integration devices from shock and static electricity when they are transported from semiconductor factories to printed-circuit-board factories. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted during production and incineration was reduced by 11% when embossed plastic tape packaging made from non-renewable sources was replaced by material made from bio-based polymer.There have been a growing number of tools and methodologies for management and monitoring of sustainable development. Like the cleaner production, life cycle assessment, eco-design, eco-efficiency, factor 4, factor 10, zero emission, the natural step framework etc. They have been supported by a number of organizations and programs. This variety has led to some confusion regarding to the connotation, differences, linkage and how to apply them systematically. This study intended to elaborate the sustainability management model of ecomaterial by investigating the concepts and linkage between related tools and methodologies.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a world wide established tool for the evaluation of environmental sustainability. Although LCA-methods have been developed and improved, it is still difficult to interpret the results correctly. Just like the holistic consideration of the product system during the inventory analysis, results of the impact assessment have to be analysed from different points of view. Actual studies show that general assertions have to be scrutinized. To understand the correlations of a product's environmental performance every life cycle stage has to be submitted to a careful examination.The present legislation of the European Union as well as the environmental responsibility will increase the number of companies, who want to execute Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of their product in order to full fill future legislative requirements or to improve the environmental soundness of their products. The current instruments for LCAs are only isolated solutions and not integrated in the product development processes. The integration into the day to day development work can only be realised by using information and data which is already kept in the company. This article describes an approach for an LCA Tool integrated into the SAP E-Business Solutions.We have developed an LCA database based on the latest Input-Output table (IOT) for Japan, which was released in 2004, with three types of modification. First, hybrid analysis was applied to estimate the total environmental loads. The ten main import goods have been evaluated by the process analysis method and added to environmental loads inside Japan calculated based on the Japanese IOT. Second, thirty types of inventory have been estimated. Consideration of various environmental loads makes it possible to evaluate the total environmental impacts comprehensively. Third, several categories in the IOT have been divided so as to estimate emissions intensities of embodied greenhouse gases accurately.Corporations are asked to strategically cope with global environmental changes using LCA or eco-design practices. RoHS, EuP and other EU directives are booming up environmental concerns and facilitating environmental management of green procurement and environmental risk management among Korean companies. We have tried to develop a LCA based management framework enhancing product competitiveness by proactively comply with global regulations and integrating environment into a product strategy. The purpose of paper is to introduce the new approach of LCA towards a product and corporate strategy or value creation, which is named as LCA2ValueTM. The Samsung Techwin Co. adopted this initiative in 2004.Recently, resource optimization (energy and material) and environmental issues in life-cycle context are taken very seriously by both the general public and government agencies. Also, some governments have set up official eco-labeling schemes, which are used to inform consumers of Eco (ecology and economic) design products. In the past, several environmental impact analyses and evaluation tools are significantly developed to apply on the Eco design products. However, these Eco design products are not favorable in the marketplace as expected even though they sound more environmental friendly and economical. This may be due to they are focused solely on environmental impact analysis without regarding to the customer need and the cost consideration. As a procedure to incorporate customer needs into product concepts in product planning, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a proven methodology to achieve total customer satisfaction. Therefore, a fuzzy theoretic modeling approach to the Eco QFD is developed and illustrated to aid the design team in choosing target levels for engineering characteristics based on the environmental concern in this research. Unlike two valued Boolean logic, fuzzy logic is multi-valued. It deals with degrees of membership and degrees of truth. The Eco design product development problem was formulated as a fuzzy multi-objective model based on the QFD planning. This model not only considers the overall customer satisfaction, but also enterprise satisfaction with the environment committed to the product. With the interactive approach, the best. balance between environmental satisfaction and overall customer satisfaction can be obtained. Finally, a case study illustrating the appliance of the proposed model is also given.The sustainable development of our societies is one of the priorities of the European Commission. Through its new Integrated Product Policy (IPP), the European Commission is developing a series of measures that influence the supply and demand of environmentally soundproducts. Some IPP tools are based on product and process self-declarations, while others require the performance of a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) data availability is the fundamental premise in order to be able to perform an LCA. In this paper we report the work we have done to investigate the diffusion of required LCA data along the supplier chain with the aim of identifying strategies to increase the awareness of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in respect to LCA, to suggest methodologies to facilitate the collection of sound LCI data and to test available low-cost software tools to support LCA, with particular reference to the production phase.This paper presents a life cycle assessment of seven different recycling alternatives for cable plastic waste: "Mechanical recycling in the Vinyloop process", "Chemical recycling in the Stigsnaes process", "Energy recovery in a garbage incineration facility", "Energy recovery in a cement kiln", "Open burning in China", "Granulation and energy recovery in China" and "Cable stripping in China". The functional unit is one ton of cable plastic waste after metal separation. The conclusion is that the Chinese alternatives are not preferred from an environmental point of view due to the large energy consumption and emissions output from the transport by ship from Sweden to China. From this the conclusion can be drawn that regardless of the method used in Sweden, or in the near vicinity of Sweden, the recycling of plastics from Sweden in China is less desirable from an environmental point of view. Of the alternative methods, the Vinyloop process is somewhat better for the environment than the Stigsnaes process, but only because the existing Vinyloop plant is located in Italy. The Stigsnaes process is still preferred until a Vinyloop plant is constructed nearer to or in Sweden.This paper presents the approach and first results of the project "EuP-Implementation", which started in January 2005 as a co-operation of the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Hilti Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (hereafter Hilti). The key goal of this project is the integration of ecodesign methods into the general development process based on the prospective investigation of the potential impact of the EuP-Directive on the company. This paper introduces the reader to this far reaching directive and to the project, which acts as a case study for the practical implications of the directive. An analysis of several typical products serving as example helps to determine the state of the art regarding the likely requirements of the directive in order to identify measures necessary to be taken. The analysis is conducted with various simplified LCA methods, namely Cumulated Energy Demand (KEA), Ecoindicator '99 (EI'99) and the Eco-design of EuP methodology (MEEuP). The aim is twofold: 1. the use of various methods provides an insight in the expressiveness of the results (i.e. whether the results of different methods point to the same direction), 2. it is an opportunity to test the methods on applicability, user-friendliness, quality etc. in order to choose the most suitable method for further analyses throughout the project.This paper presents an integrated framework to implement Sustainable Product Development (SPD). The focus is on integrating environmental sustainability in manufacturing firms with control over key product development processes, particularly the early phases, since they are the key players in designing and manufacturing products. From an analysis of the best available developments by researchers and industry, appropriate tools and activities are linked to three implementation levels as enablers for implementing SPD. The proposed approach combines strategic and operational approaches in a single framework. The aim of linking tools and activities to different implementation levels differentiates the proposed framework from other less comprehensive approaches.In practice, enabling technologies, along with digital models and computer-aided/computer-based systems, are still not sufficiently integrated to make life cycle modeling and life cycle assessment methods and technologies suitable tools for designers and engineers. For example, life cycle assessment is becoming more and more an integral tool in today's product design and design evaluation during analysis and optimization. However, approaches and tools that still feature old fashioned paradigms and structures in critical areas such as human-computer interaction and information representation are somewhat counter-productive, considering the increase of both the complexity of the problem and the quantities of data to be handled. In this paper we aim at presenting, in a transparent way, the motivations, structure, and consequences of one approach leading to solutions which overcome such obstacles. This approach also supports the application and successful translation into practice of one modern methodology which is central for the cradle-to-grave evaluation used to improve environmentally conscious products and service designs.mThe most advanced ICT companies in Japan have started to apply the eco-efficiency concept as their performance evaluation and/or sales and marketing tools. In this paper, the concept of eco-efficiency applied for ICT is described firstly. Second, an overview of joint activities led by those ICT companies is explained, which is a project to develop eco-efficiency evaluations that can help companies to measure environmental reduction and impact caused by ICT services. Finally, an ICT ecoefficiency guideline that has been developed recently is introduced The guideline is intended to assist companies in explaining their environmental activities connected to ICT introduction strategically. It explains the possibilities in a practical way and looks at simple and effective services that can be used in their environmental management activities and ICT adoption. It describes methodologies and calculation processes based on life cycle analysis (LCA).We constructed a recycling plant for waste home appliances and operated from April 2000. A life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare recycling scenarios was conducted using the data from the operation. The results of the assessment show that it was effective from not only the reduction in the amount of the final disposal but also the point of the reduction in the environmental loads. Last EcoDesign2004, we reported the environmental load reduction effect in 2002. In this report, it evaluates by LCA again based on the data in 2004 that improves the recycling process based on the previous evaluation result, and it reports on the effect of the improvement.Polylactic acid (PLA) is a resin that is synthesized by fermenting the raw plant material (biomass) that has been fixed within living plants such as corn and potatoes by photosynthesis. PLA is biodegradable and does not generate harmful gases during combustion. Also, because it is derived from plants, it can be produced using only small amounts of fossil fuel. PLA, therefore, is a material with a low environmental burden. We developed a PLA-based material for the housings of notebook computers using flameproofing and polymer-alloy technologies. This material has optimal physical properties for use in notebook computer housings. We use this material in the FMV-BIBLO NB notebook computer that went on sale in January 2005. This paper describes the development of this material and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluation.Eco-efficiency is one of the many indicators for measuring damage to the environment. The Eco-efficiency Factor is a quantitative indicator that enables us to evaluate changes in service performance and the environmental burdens that are imposed. This paper presents a case study of two notebook personal computers manufactured eight years apart. To evaluate service value, core hardware specifications such as CPU clock speed, memory size, and hard disk drive size were compared. The results show that the more recent notebook has about 24.6 times the service value of the older one. The results of inventory analysis from EcoLeaf, which is a Japanese Type III labeling program based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), are used as environmental burdens. Then, we used LIME (Life cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling) to integrate the inventory data of EcoLeaf. The integrated result showed that environmental burdens have dropped about 22%. It is concluded that the Eco-efficiency Factor has increased about 32 times in 8 years. Due to the usefulness of the Eco-Efficiency Factor, it could become an important communication tool between manufactures and green consumers in the near future.This paper aims to propose a methodological framework for quantifying the reduction and increase of health risks associated with urban wastewater systems. A risk assessment model was used to quantify reduction in disease burden while a life cycle assessment approach was used to quantify increasing risks by environmental loading. Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) was used to quantify health risks. This framework was applied to a hypothetical watershed to evaluate health risks by installation of wastewater treatment systems. In this hypothetical case, 55 DALYs per year of health risk would be reduced for 200,000 people in the downstream community by constructing wastewater systems for 200,000 people, while a range from 1.9 to 22 DALYs per year of health risks would generate by materials and energy consumption for construction and operation of wastewater systems. However this result would significantly change, depending on the parameters used in this analysis. The proposed methodology should be improved to get more precise result, but it will suggest the useful information to discuss the overall effects due to installation of various types of urban wastewater systems.Motivated by the prevailing need for a sustainable development and taking the principles of Green Chemistry as a starting point, the present paper describes new and updated findings regarding a sustainable product design for ionic liquids. The focus is on environmental risk. Nevertheless, cytotoxicity testing and first indicative results from a genotoxicity study extend present knowledge also with regard to possible effects on humans. The structural variability of commercially available ionic liquids as well as the abundance of theoretically accessible ionic liquids is illustrated and the consequences for an integrated risk assessment accompanying the development process are discussed. The side chain effect on toxicity for imidazolium type ionic liquids was confounded by more complex biological testing. Also, an influence of an anion on cytotoxicity is shown for the first time. Testing of presumed metabolites of the imidazolium type cations showed a significantly lower biological activity in cytotoxicity studies than their parent compounds. The importance of a purity assessment for ionic liquids is pointed out and a collection of methods that is believed to be adequate is presented. In addition to risk analysis, the use of life cycle analysis for the multi-objective problem of designing ionic liquids is sketched and an eco-design scheme for ionic liquids is proposed. In conclusion, the paper illustrates the complex nature of the development processes ionic liquids are currently undergoing and provides guidance on which aspects have to be kept in mind.Integration of IAQ concerns in so-called sustainable designs has suffered from a lack of a comprehensive, science-based assessment methodology for building environmental performance. Guidance and rating systems for "green" buildings fail to address systematically the trade-offs necessary for assessment of the overall performance of a building or its design. This paper presents a framework constructed on the basis of Building Ecology for such an assessment. Using the environmental capacity concept developed and used in the Netherlands in the early 1990s, environmental performance targets can be established. Specific environmental goals including those for indoor air quality can be articulated and targets established for use with life cycle assessment tools. The overall result is an approach to building design and evaluation of completed buildings that can create better indoor environments as well as reduced impacts on the general environment with appropriate and clearly-articulated emphasis on the local context as well as global environmental concerns.Building industry has made significant contribution to economic development of China, but meanwhile it has harmed the environment to a severe extent, which aroused broad recognition. Since building is an interactive integration of building materials and products instead of a simple collection and environmental impacts of buildings are various and long-term, how to assess and quantify in which way the buildings affect the environment becomes a worth concerning topic. In this study, through a perspective of a life-long span, we will analyze the environmental impacts of a building within its every stage, propose some hypothesis and simplification according to Chinese particular conditions, and advance the framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aimed at buildings, especially for residential buildings. By using this framework and relative toolkits developed for research, not only can the environmental impacts of existed buildings be observed, but guidance for architectural designs is provided. Consequently, it contributes to green or ecological design and assessment of buildings. Further more, an LCA case study on residential building fabrics design and construction effecting on the environment energy and resource consumption is introduced.On 24 September 2003, life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners and decision makers gathered at the InLCA/LCM Conference in Seattle, Washington, USA (see http://www.lcacenter.org/InLCA-LCM03/index.html) to discuss the role of LCA in management, product design, process development, and regulatory/policy development decisions and to compare life cycle-based methods and tools with traditional product evaluation methods and tools. This article is a summary of that meeting and was prepared by the organizers as an overview of the many different technical, regulatory policy, and decision-making policy perspectives presented to an international gathering of participants representing academia and the industrial and regulatory communities.As extended producer responsibility gains ascendancy in sustainable development, proper management of the life cycle of a product is becoming more and more important. This paper presents a general overview of product life cycle assessment (LCA) and sustainable product packaging over the last four to five years. The review of life cycle assessment includes on overview of LCAs conducted over the last six to seven years for a wide variety of products. The application of the LCA methodology to the formulation of regulatory and public policies, especially in the USA and the Netherlands, and the outcome of the five-year national Japanese LCA initiative, are presented. The key issues and limitations confronting LCA, notably the role of weighting factors, are summarised. Some of these include the unequal treatment of qualitative and quantitative measures and the absence of a semantic ontology to unify the practice. Finally, the merits and shortcomings of a streamlined (abridged) (SLCA) are briefly reviewed. The review of sustainable product packaging is confined to the LCA of packaging systems and new, innovative environmentally-benign packaging materials, for example, biodegradable agricultural (compostable) polymers. The outcome of any packaging LCA should always be interpreted in light of the prevailing technology and the function of the packaging. Also discussed are the life cycle assessment of some packaging systems, new active or intelligent packaging materials, and initiatives across the manufacturing and service industry at dematerialising packaging. The ramifications of the landmark EU Directive on Packaging Waste 94/62/EU and its corresponding regulations in EU member states and some reasons for the varying degrees of success are presented. A more wide-ranging integrated approach, encompassing economic, social and environmental considerations, in conjunction with more efficient packaging designs, which economise on material and are recyclable, is the key to sustainable packaging.Introduction. This paper provides an overview on the content of the ecoinvent database and of selected metholodogical issues applied on the life cycle inventories implemented in the ecoinvent database. Goal, Scope and Background. In the year 2000, several Swiss Federal Offices and research institutes of the ETH domain agreed to a joint effort to harmonise and update life cycle inventory (LCI) data for its use in life cycle assessment (LCA). With the ecoinvent database and its actual data v1.1, a consistent set of more than 2'500 product and service LCIs is now available. Method. Nearly all process datasets are transparently documented on the level of unit process inputs and outputs. Methodological approaches have been applied consistently throughout the entire database content and thus guarantee for a coherent set of LCI data. This is particularly true for market and trade modelling (see, for example, electricity modelling), for the treatment of multioutput and of recycling processes, but also for the recording and reporting of elementary flows. The differentiation of diameter size for particulate matter emissions, for instance, allows for a more comprehensive impact assessment of human health effects. Data quality is quantitatively reported in terms of standard deviations of the amounts of input and output flows. In many cases qualitative indicators are reported additionally on the level of each individual input and output. The information sources used vary from extensive statistical works to individual (point) measurements or assumptions derived from process descriptions. However, all datasets passed the same quality control procedure and all information relevant and necessary to judge the suitability of a dataset in a certain context are provided in the database. Data documentation and exchange is based on the EcoSpold data format, which complies with the technical specification ISO/TS 14048. Free access to process information via the Internet helps the user to judge the appropriateness of a dataset. Concluding Remarks. The existence of the ecoinvent database proves that it is possible and feasible to build up a large interlinked system of LCI unit processes. The project work proved to be demanding in terms of co-ordination efforts required and consent identification. One main characteristic of the database is its transparency in reporting to enable individual assessment of data appropriateness and to support the plurality in methodological approaches. Outlook. Further work on the ecoinvent database may comprise work on the database content (new or more detailed datasets covering existing or new economic sectors), LCI (modelling) methodology, the structure and features of the database system (e.g. extension of Monte Carlo simulation to the impact assessment phase) or improvements in ecoinvent data supply and data query. Furthermore, the deepening and building up of international co-operations in LCI data collection and supply is in the focus of future activities.Goal, Scope and Background. The energy systems included in the ecoinvent database v1.1 describe the situation around year 2000 of Swiss and Western European power plants and boilers with the associated energy chains. The addressed nuclear systems concern Light Water Reactors (LWR) with mix of open and closed fuel cycles. The system model 'Natural Gas' describes production, distribution, and combustion of natural gas. Methods. Comprehensive life cycle inventories of the energy systems were established and cumulative results calculated within the ecoinvent framework. Swiss conditions for the nuclear cycle were extrapolated to major nuclear countries. Long-term radon emissions from uranium mill tailings have been estimated with a simplified model. Average natural gas power plants were analysed for different countries considering specific import/export of the gas, with seven production regions separately assessed. Uncertainties have been estimated quantitatively. Results and Discussion. Different radioactive emission species and wastes are produced from different steps of the nuclear cycle. Emissions of greenhouse gases from the nuclear cycle are mostly from the upstream chain, and the total is small and decreasing with increasing share of centrifuge enrichment. The results for natural gas show the importance of transport and low pressure distribution network for the methane emissions, whereas energy is mostly invested for production and long-distance pipeline transportation. Because of significant differences in power plant efficiencies and gas supply, country specific averages differ greatly. Conclusion. The inventory describes average worldwide supply of nuclear fuel and average nuclear reactors in Western Europe. Although the model for nuclear waste management was extrapolated from Swiss conditions, the ranges obtained for cumulative results can represent the average in Europe. Emissions per kWh electricity are distributed very differently over the natural gas chain for different species. Modern combined cycle plants show better performance for several burdens like cumulative greenhouse gas emissions compared to average plants. Recommendation and Perspective. Comparison of country-specific LWRs or LWR types on the basis of these results is not recommended. Specific issues on different strategies for the nuclear fuel cycle or location-specific characteristics would require extension of analysis. Results of the gas chain should not be directly applied to areas other than those modelled because emission factors and energy requirements may differ significantly. A future update of inventory data should reconsider production and transport from Russia, as it is a major producer and exporter to Europe. The calculated ranges of uncertainty factors in ecoinvent provide useful information but they are more indications of uncertainties rather than strict 95% intervals, and should therefore be applied carefully.Goal, Scope and Background. This paper describes the modelling of two emerging electricity systems based on renewable energy: photovoltaic (PV) and wind power. The paper shows the approach used in the ecoinvent database for multi-output processes. Methods. Twelve different, grid-connected photovoltaic systems were studied for the situation in Switzerland. They are manufactured as panels or laminates, from mono- or polycrystalline silicon, installed on facades, slanted or flat roofs, and have a 3kWp capacity. The process data include quartz reduction, silicon purification, wafer, panel and laminate production, supporting structure and dismantling. The assumed operational lifetime is 30 years. Country-specific electricity mixes have been considered in the LCI in order to reflect the present situation for individual production stages. The assessment of wind power includes four different wind turbines with power rates between 30 kW and 800 kW operating in Switzerland and two wind turbines assumed representative for European conditions - 800 kW onshore and 2 MW offshore. The inventory takes into account the construction of the plants including the connection to the electric grid and the actual wind conditions at each site in Switzerland. Average European capacity factors have been assumed for the European plants. Eventually necessary backup electricity systems are not included in the analysis. Results and Discussion. The life cycle inventory analysis for photovoltaic power shows that each production stage may be important for specific elementary flows. A life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) shows that there are important environmental impacts not directly related to the energy use (e.g. process emissions of NO, from wafer etching). The assumption for the used supply energy mixes is important for the overall LCIA results of different production stages. The allocation of the inventory for silicon purification to different products is discussed here to illustrate how allocation has been implemented in ecoinvent. Material consumption for the main parts of the wind turbines gives the dominant contributions to the cumulative results for electricity production. The complex installation of offshore turbines, with high requirements of concrete for the foundation and the assumption of a shorter lifetime compared to onshore foundations, compensate the advantage of increased offshore wind speeds. Conclusion. The life cycle inventories for photovoltaic power plants are representative for newly constructed plants and for the average photovoltaic, mix in Switzerland in the year 2000. A scenario for a future technology helps to assess the relative influence of technology improvements for some processes in the near future (2005-2010). The differences for environmental burdens of wind power basically depend upon the capacity factor of the plants, the lifetime of the infrastructure, and the rated power. The higher these factors, the more reduced the environmental burdens are. Thus, both systems are quite dependent on meteorological conditions and the materials used for the infrastructure. Recommendation and Perspective. Many production processes for photovoltaic power are still under development. Future updates of the LCI should verify the energy uses and emissions with available data from industrial processes in operation. For the modelling of a specific power plant or power plant mixes outside of Switzerland, one has to consider the annual yield (kWh/kW(p)) and if possible also the size of the plant. Considering the steady growth of the size of wind turbines in Europe, the development of new designs, and the exploitation of offshore location with deeper waters than analysed in this study, the inventory for wind power plants may need to be updated in the future.Goal, Scope and Background. The present paper describes the goal and scope of building material inventories in the ecoinvent database and gives an overview of its content. The ecoinvent database provides generic life cycle inventories for building material production and related processing. They can be used as background data for different LCA applications. Their geographical and temporal scope is Switzerland or Europe and the year 2000. Methods. Data is inventoried as unit processes. Consistency throughout different sources is heeded by systematically estimating missing data. Infrastructure is consequently considered. Different disposal options are modelled. Results and Conclusion. The ecoinvent data provide a harmonised basis for different kinds of building materials. Even though not all datasets could be established on the same quality level, the results generally are believed to be comparable. Since data are generic, they are, however, not suitable to directly compare specific products. Disposal is relevant for the environmental burdens of uses of building materials. Complete life cycles have to be assessed. For this purpose, cumulative energy demand (CED) is not a suitable indicator. Recommendation and Perspective. In future versions of ecoinvent, data quality could be further improved. The database should be extended to include further building materials from secondary materials. To do so, the methodological treatment of secondary materials needs special attention.Goal, Scope and Background. The ecoinvent database provides harmonised generic life cycle inventories for metal production and processing. They can be used as background data for different LCA applications. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the metals inventoried in ecoinvent. Beside, some methodological background information is given. The focus lies on a new methodology developed to inventorying joint resources. The implementation is shown in a case study of the production of primary copper on a global average. The respective process is assessed with Eco-indicator 99 (H,A) to identify dominant impacts within the production chain. Methods. In ecoinvent, a coupled production is inventoried in multi output unit processes. For database calculation, an allocation by economic revenue is applied. Elementary flows for resources, especially joint resources, include information oil type and quality of the resources. Results and Conclusion. With the presented method, the extraction of resources can be valuated based on the cost of restoration or the change in the future impact due to the extraction of a specific resource. The case study indicates, for copper / molybdenum production, that the mineral extraction is of minor importance compared to the metallurgical step according to the LCIA results. Air emissions of heavy metals are identified as main impacts. Also, the resource depletion shows a notable impact. The environmental impacts of metals from sulphidic ores, however, are underestimated by neglecting emissions from tailings for lack of reliable data. Recommendation and Perspective. Impact assessment methods will have to be updated to account for different grades of ore. The ecoinvent database should be enlarged by more inventories of technically important metals and alloys, e.g. by gold, silver, solders, etc. for the electronics industry and by specific steel and aluminium alloys. Reliable composition data of sulphidic tailings and transfer coefficients for their disposal considering Acidic Rock Drainage (ARD) are to be developed as well.Goal, Scope and Background. This paper gives an overview on how the wood and packaging material production is inventoried in ecoinvent. Packaging materials have been a very important topic in the area of Life Cycle Assessment for more than twenty years. Wood is the most important renewable material and regenerative fuel used worldwide, and an important raw material for paper / board. Several methodological problems arising when inventorying wood for material and energetic uses in a generic database are discussed in more detail. Within the ecoinvent project, the Swiss data base for life cycle inventory data, two reports are dedicated to these two important topics - report No. 9 for wood and report No. 11 for packaging materials. Methods. The whole wood chain has been modeled in a consistent way. This allows one to use this data for LCAs of building materials, bioenergy or paper production. The data represent average technologies used in Central Europe in the year 2000. A revenue-based co-product allocation approach is used for the different outputs. Correction factors are introduced for the consistent modeling of mass-based, material inherent wood properties such as solar energy, carbon uptake and land use. For packaging materials, the datasets represent European average data for the most often used materials as well as specific datasets for the production of actual packaging boxes and containers. Results and Discussion. For wood, revenue-based allocation and the use of the correction factors for mass-related wood properties are shown and explained. For packaging materials, the importance of the raw material wood to the total load is shown. Furthermore trends in the data inventories for board packaging materials over the last two decades are discussed: mainly due to the increased comprehensiveness of the data, higher cumulative emissions can be observed. Conclusion. For wood, the database ecoinvent provides consistent datasets for the entire chain from forestry to intermediate products such as timber, different types of wood-based boards, chips, pellets, etc. For packaging materials, the number of datasets of basic materials has been extended. A modular concept for actual packaging container datasets allows the user an easy modeling of various types of packaging containers/boxes. In the area of paper and board, a comprehensive database for the production of various types of pulp, paper and board is provided, which is representative for the average European production situation. Outlook. Since wood is only limited and representative data for Europe is therefore not included, an update in the near future would be reasonable. Possible further extensions in the future could include various, final wooden products. For the data on paper/board, different levels of quality are observed, requiring a selective up-date of these data. Future extensions could include datasets for the import of pulp from overseas - especially from South America and Canada.Goal, Scope and Background. In contrast to inventory data of energy and transport processes, public inventory data of chemicals are rather scarce. Chemicals are important to consider in LCA, because they are used in the production of many, if not all, products. Moreover, they may cause considerable environmental impacts. For these reasons, it was one goal of the new ecoinvent database to provide LCI data on chemicals. In this paper, the methods and procedures used for establishing LCIs of chemicals in ecoinvent are presented. Methods. Three different approaches are suggested for situations of differing data availability. First, in the case of good data availability, the general quality guidelines of ecoinvent can be followed. Second, a procedure is proposed for the translation of aggregated inventory data (cumulative LCI results) from industry into the ecoinvent format. This approach was used, if adequate unit process data was not available. Third, a procedure is put forward for estimating inventory data using stoichiometric equations from technical literature as a main information source. This latter method was used if no other information was available. The application of each of the three procedures is illustrated with the help of a case study. Results and Conclusion. When sufficient information is available to follow the general guidelines of ecoinvent, the resulting dataset is characterized by a high degree of detail, and it is thus of high quality. For chemicals, however, the application of the standard procedure is possible in only a few cases. When using industrial data, the main drawback is the fact that those data are often available only as aggregated data, thus being out of tune with the quality guidelines of ecoinvent and its main aim, the harmonization of LCI data. As a third approach, the use of the stoichiometric reaction equation is used for the compilation of LCI datasets of chemicals. This approach represents an alternative to neglecting chemicals completely, but it contains a high risk to not consider important aspects of the life cycle of the respective substance. Outlook. Further work in the area of chemicals should focus on an improvement of datasets, so far established by either of the two estimation procedures (APME method; estimation based on technical literature) described. Besides the improvement of already established inventories, the compilation of further harmonized inventories of specific types of chemicals (e.g. solvents) or of chemicals for new industrial sectors (e.g. electronics industry) are in discussion.Goal, Scope and Background. Life cycle inventories (LCIs) of agricultural products, infrastructure, inputs and processes are required to optimise food supply chains. In the past, the use of LCA was hindered by the limited availability of databases with LCIs for such agricultural inputs, processes and products in combination with LCIs of other major economic sectors. The ecoinvent database covers this need for the Swiss, and to an extent, the European context. A suitable approach bad to be outlined for defining representative datasets for products from arable crops, since there was no comprehensive survey of agricultural production. Methods. No single data source was available for defining representative datasets for arable crops. It was therefore decided to define model crops on the basis of a variety of sources in collaboration with experts on the crops in question. The datasets were validated by experts and by comparison with literature. Field emissions were calculated using a set of models taking into account situation-specific parameters. Data defined by this procedure are more generally usable, bur their definition is also more laborious. Results and Discussion. Selected results (inventories and impact assessment) are presented for infrastructure (buildings, machinery), work processes, fertilisers, pesticides, seed and arable crop products. Infrastructure has a higher share of environmental impacts than in typical industrial processes, often due to low utilisation rates. Energy use is dominated by mechanisation, the use of mineral fertilisers (particularly nitrogen) and grain drying. Eutrophication is caused mainly by nitrogen compounds. In general, field emissions are of decisive importance for many environmental impacts. Conclusion and Outlook. The ecoinvent database provides representative agricultural data for the Swiss, and to an extent, the European context. It also provides the meta-information necessary for deciding whether a dataset is suitable for the purpose of a particular LCA study. To further improve the representativeness of the datasets, an environmental farm monitoring network is required.Goal, Scope and Background. The disposal phase of a product's life cycle in LCA is often neglected or based on coarse indicators like 'kilogram waste'. The goal of report No. 13 of the ecoinvent project (Doka 2003) is to create detailed Life Cycle Inventories of waste disposal processes. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the models behind the waste disposal inventories in ecoinvent, to present exemplary results and to discuss the assessment of long-term emissions. This paper does not present a particular LCA study. Inventories are compiled for many different materials and various disposal technologies. Considered disposal technologies are municipal incineration and different landfill types, including sanitary landfills, hazardous waste incineration, waste deposits in deep salt mines, surface spreading of sludges, municipal wastewater treatment, and building dismantling. The inventoried technologies are largely based on Swiss plants. Inventories can be used for assessment of the disposal of common, generic waste materials like paper, plastics, packaging etc. Inventories are also used within the ecoinvent database itself to inventory the disposal of specific wastes generated during the production phase. Inventories relate as far as possible to the specific chemical composition of the waste material (waste-specific burdens). Certain expenditures are not related to the waste composition and are inventoried with average values (process-specific burdens). Methods. The disposal models are based on previous work, partly used in earlier versions of ecoinvent/ETH LCI data. Important improvements were the extension of the number of considered chemical elements to 41 throughout all disposal models and new landfill models based on field data. New inventories are compiled for waste deposits in deep salt mines and building material disposal. Along with the ecoinvent data and the reports, also Excel-based software tools were created, which allow ecoinvent members to calculate waste disposal inventories from arbitrary waste compositions. The modelling of long-term emissions from landfills is a crucial part in any waste disposal process. In ecoinvent long-term emissions are defined as emissions occurring 100 years after present. They are reported in separate emission categories. The landfill inventories include long-term emissions with a time horizon of 60'000 years after present. Results and Discussion. As in earlier studies, the landfills prove to be generally relevant disposal processes, as also incineration and wastewater treatment processes produce landfilled wastes. Heavy metals tend to concentrate in landfills and are washed out to a varying degree over time. Long-term emissions usually represent an important burden from landfills. Comparisons between burdens from production of materials and the burdens from their disposal show that disposal has a certain relevance. Conclusion. The disposal phase should by default be included in LCA studies. The use of a material not only necessitates its production, but also requires its disposal. The created inventories and user tools facilitate heeding the disposal phase with a similar level of detail as production processes. The risk of LCA-based decisions shifting burdens from the production or use phase to the disposal phase because of data gaps can therefore be diminished. Recommendation and Perspective. Future improvements should include the modelling of metal ore refining waste (tailings) which is currently neglected in ecoinvent, but is likely to be relevant for metals production. The disposal technologies considered here are those of developed Western countries. Disposal in other parts of the World can differ distinctly, for logistic, climatic and economic reasons. The cross-examination of landfill models to LCIA soil fate models could be advantageous. Currently only chemical elements, like copper, zinc, nitrogen etc. are heeded by the disposal models. A possible extension could be the modelling of the behaviour of chemical compounds, like dioxins or other hydrocarbons.Background, Goal and Scope. The ecoinvent database is a reference work for life cycle inventory data covering the areas of energy, building materials, metals, chemicals, paper and cardboard, forestry, agriculture, detergents, transport services and waste treatment. Generic inventories are available for freight and passenger transport including air, rail, road, and water transport. The goal of freight transport modelling is to provide background data for transport services, which occur between nearly any two process steps of a product system. This paper presents and discusses the model structure, basic assumptions and results for selected freight transport services. Main Features. Transport services are divided into several datasets referred to as transport components. In addition to vehicle operation (comprising vehicle travel and pre-combusrion), infrastructure processes such as vehicle maintenance, manufacturing and disposal, as well as transport infrastructure construction, operation and disposal, are also modelled. In order to link the various transport components to the functional unit of one tonne kilometre (tkm), so-called demand factors are determined. In the case of transport infrastructure that is not exclusively used by freight transport, allocation is essential. The respective allocation parameters employed for line infrastructure construction/disposal and operation datasets (including land use) are yearly Gross-tonne kilometre performance (Gtkm) and kilometric vehicle/train performance. Results are presented for selected environmental exchanges related to gaseous emissions (climate change gases, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons), heavy metal (zinc and cadmium) emissions to soil and air, as well as BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand), and land use. Particle emissions are further distinguished into fine (PM2.5) and coarse (diameter between 2.5 and 10 mum) particles. The results presented comprise both an intra- and intermodal comparison. Results and Discussions. A comparison of Swiss and European rail transport reveals considerably lower emissions from Swiss rail transport due to the almost exclusive use of hydropower as traction energy. For gaseous emissions, freight transport by water or rail exhibits considerably better performance than road transport (65-92% less gaseous emissions). As far as zinc and cadmium emissions to soil are concerned, water and rail transport produce less than 1% of the emissions resulting from road transport for either pollutant. For zinc and cadmium emissions to air, road transport has the highest emissions; however, the emissions due to water and rail transport range from 2 to 18% of the emission levels arising from road transport. Particle emissions show a more diverse pattern. Whilst fine particle emissions due to water and rail transport are considerably lower than road transport, rail transport with respect to coarse particles performs worse than road transport. Dominance analysis reveals the importance of infrastructure processes. For instance, the NMHC-emissions of infrastructure processes account for 40%, 30% and 50% of emissions for road, rail and barge transport, respectively. For the demand factor of infrastructure operation, a sensitivity analysis of the employed allocation factor was performed, revealing no sensitivity for gaseous emissions and particles. On the other hand, considerable changes in both emission levels and in the ranking of transport modes is observed for land occupation. Finally, we varied selected operation parameters for road transport, resulting in considerable reductions of CO2 and NOx emissions of Lip to 60%. In one extreme case (load factor: 100%), NOx emissions for vehicle operation of a lorry are lower than for inland water transport. Only as a result of the considerably higher NOx emissions occutting in infrastructure processes does road transport score worse than water transport, with the ranking remaining the same as for the generic data presented in ecoinvent 2000. Conclusions and Perspectives. The provided datasets allow for a preliminary screening of the importance of transport processes within a product life cycle. In the cases for which transport processes are identified as sensitive for the overall outcome of certain product life cycle or for transport specific comparisons, the modular structure and transparent documentation of demand factors allows for an easy and transparent integration of more case-specific data for selected transport components.Background. The critical review is an important, though not always well understood and correctly applied element of Life Cycle Assessment studies. It is the intention of this paper to analyse the relevant standards and to present personal experiences in conducting critical reviews. Results and Discussion. A peer review for LCA-studies was first proposed in the SETAC guidelines 'A Code of Practice' (1993). The ISO standard 14040 (1997) describes three types of 'Critical review' which are optional in general, but mandatory 'for LCA studies used to make a comparative assertion that is disclosed to the public'. For this purpose, the most comprehensive form according to section 7.3.3, the panel method, has to be ('shall' in ISO terminology) be used. From personal experience, this method is found to be the most frequently performed in practice (60%), the average panel size being three experts. Large panels with more than 4 experts are rare. Recommendation. Personal experience leads to supporting the recommendation by SETAC of the accompanying or 'interactive' critical review, which should be preferred, over the review,a posteriori', which offers considerable risks in regards to the duration and costs of an LCA study. ISO 14040, on the other hand, does not recommend one or the other way of performing the critical review.Goal, Scope and Background. To strengthen the evaluative power of LCA, life cycle interpretation should be further developed. A previous contribution '(Heijungs & Kleijn 2001) elaborated five examples of concrete methods within the subset of numerical approaches towards interpretation. These methods were: contribution analysis, perturbation analysis, uncertainty analysis, comparative analysis, and discernibility analysis. Developments in software have enabled the possibility to apply the five example methods to explore the much-used ecoinvent '96 database. Discussion of Methods. The numerical approaches implemented in this study include contribution analysis, perturbation analysis, uncertainty analysis, comparative analysis, discernibility analysis and the newly developed key issue analysis. The data used comes from a very large process database: ecoinvent '96, containing 1163 processes, 1181 economic flows and 571 environmental flows. Conclusions. Results are twofold: they serve as a benchmark to the usefulness and feasibility of these numerical approaches, and they shed light on the question of stability and structure in an often-used large system of interconnected processes. Most of the approaches perform quite well: computation time on a moderate PC is between a few seconds and a few minutes. Only Monte Carlo analyses may require much longer, but even then it appears that most questions can be answered within a few hours. Moreover, analytical expressions for error propagation are much faster than Monte Carlo analyses, while providing almost identical results. Despite the fact that many processes are connected to each other, leading to the possibility of a very unstable system and very sensitive coefficients, the overall results show that most results are not extremely uncertain. There are, however, some exceptions to this positive message.Goal, Scope and Background. Whilst initially designed for industrial production systems, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) has recently been increasingly applied to agriculture and forestry projects. Several authors suggested that the standard LCA methodology needs to be refined to cover the particularities of agri- and silvicultural production systems. Until now, water quantity received little attention in these methodological revisions, notwithstanding the well-known impact of agriculture and forestry on issues like water availability, drought and flood risk. This paper proposes an add-on to existing LCA methods in the form of an indicator set that integrates water quantity impacts of agri- and silvicultural production. Method. First, system boundaries are discussed in order to identify the water flows between the production system and the environment. These flows are attributed to impact categories, linked to environmental burdens and to the areas of protection. Appropriate indicators are selected for each potential burden. Results and Discussion. At the present, two input related impact categories deal with water quantity: Abiotic resource depletion and land use. The list of output related impact categories presented by Udo de Haes et al. (1999) does not include water quantity impacts like flood and drought risk. A new impact category 'regional water balance' is introduced to cover these risks. Exceedance probabilities are used as indicators for these temporal variations in streamflow. Conclusion and Outlook. The method presented in this paper can bring a life cycle assessment closer to real world concerns. The main drawback, however, is the increasing data requirement that might hinder the feasibility of the method. Future research should focus on this problem; for instance by applying a relatively simple numerical model that can calculate the indicator scores from more easily accessible data.Background. The Swiss chemical industry produces large amounts of organic waste solvents. Some of these solvents cannot be recovered. A common option for the treatment of such organic waste solvents is the incineration in hazardous waste incinerators. Alternatively, the waste solvents can be used as fuel in cement production. On the one hand, solvent incineration in cement kilns saves fossil fuels such as coal and heavy fuel oil. On the other hand, fuel-bound emissions may change as well. These emission changes can either have a negative or a positive net ecological impact, depending on the chemical nature of the waste solvent used. Goal and Scope. The aim of our work was to develop a multi-input allocation model, which allows one to calculate life cycle inventories for specific waste solvents. These LCIs can then be used in further applications, e.g. a comparison of different waste solvent treatment options. Results and Discussion. A multi-input allocation model was developed that takes into account the physico-chemical properties of waste solvents such as elementary composition and net calorific value. The model is based on a set of equations and data on fuel mix, fuel composition as well as transfer coefficients for heavy metals. The model calculates 'avoided inputs' and 'changes in emissions' which arise from substituting fossil fuels with waste solvents. Life cycle inventories can be calculated for specific waste solvents if the elementary composition and the net calorific value are known. The application of the model is illustrated in a case study on four waste solvents. The results show that solvent incineration in cement kilns generally reduces the overall impact of clinker production because fossil fuels are replaced. A sensitivity analysis revealed that the model is especially sensitive to the fuel mix and coal properties, such as net calorific value as well as the content of nitrogen and carbon. The transfer coefficients are also uncertain, but this uncertainty is not relevant as the amount of heavy metal emitted into the atmosphere is small. Conclusions and Outlook. The proposed model serves to calculate inventory data for the combustion of liquid alternative fuels such as waste solvents in cement kilns. Although our model represents Swiss cement production conditions, it can be applied to other countries by fitting the most sensitive parameters of fuel mix and coal properties. In case the technology used is very different to the Swiss situation, the transfer coefficients also need to be adapted.Goal, Scope and Background. Due to the limited spatial possibilities for the extraction of coarse sand available from land sources, and the abundant availability of finer sands in land and marine sources, the Dutch government aims to allow for the use of finer sand used in the Netherlands. The application of finer sand in concrete requires adaptations in the concrete composition (additional cement, additional superplasticiser, or other aggregates) to maintain workability. In order to examine if these adaptations result in shifts from (the expected) land use effects to other environmental effects, an LCA of finer sand in concrete was carried out. Methods. Besides the common CML-method, an experimental characterisation method for land use, was applied. Results and Discussion, Conclusion. The results show that the application of finer sand indeed results in lower land use effects. Compositions with additional cement and other aggregates result in somewhat higher scores on the usual CML impact categories. Compositions with extra superplasticiser result in roughly similar environmental effects as the current compositions. Recommendation and Perspective. The conclusions were used to formulate recommendations for the national policy on fine sand in concrete. Due to a change in priorities, it is not sure if and which organisation will use the conclusions.Goal and Background. The LCA methodology is used to compare the potential environmental benefits of an emerging biotechnology, enzyme-bleaching, with those of elemental chlorine free (ECF) bleaching, an existing technology that is widely used in paper making. Through the use of biodegradable enzymes to supplement, or eventually to replace, chemicals in the bleaching process to extract lignin, enzyme bleaching processes are aimed to reduce the use of chlorine based bleaching chemicals and to achieve cost savings by circumventing investment into oxygen delignification or ozone bleaching technology. Scope and Method. The assessment is conducted using SimaPro 4.0 and focuses on the processes within the bleach plant stage. For this study, ECF is replaced by enzyme bleaching only in the first stage of the bleaching process. Because this is a comparative study, all upstream and downstream processes are excluded. The impact categories based on Eco-indicator 95 are used to characterize the inventory data in this study. Other methodologies, such as Eco-indicator 99 and CML 2000, have not been chosen as they are more region-specific and are not yet fully applicable to the Canadian environmental condition. A new initiative to develop a Canadian Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) Method is ongoing at the Interuniversity Reference Center for the Life Cycle Assessment, Interpretation and Management of Products, Processes and Services (CIRAIG), Ecole Polytechnique, Canada. Results and Conclusion. The analysis shows that the introduction of enzyme bleaching into the ECF process significantly improves the overall environmental performance in the majority of the impact categories. Extending the substitution of enzyme bleaching for chlorine dioxide is warranted. Of the three impact categories where increased impact was noted, two of these which increased emissions of greenhouse gases and increased incidence of summer smog, would be completely eliminated if the enzyme mediator was manufactured at the point of use. There remains a potential for increased impact from eutrophication, which would need to be managed. Recommendations and Outlook. With the only partial substitution of ECF by enzyme bleaching examined here, chlorine dioxide consumption, energy consumption, NaOH consumption, and transportation remain the key hot spots and warrant further research. Anything that can be done to replace or reduce chlorine dioxide consumption will benefit the environment.Goal, Scope and Method. The purpose of this environmental system analysis was to investigate the impact of feed choice in three pig production scenarios using substance flow models complemented by life cycle assessment methodology. The function of the system studied was to grow piglets of 29 kg to finished pigs of 115 kg. Three alternative scenarios of protein supply were designed, one based on imported soybean meal (scenario SOY); one based on locally grown peas and rapeseed cake (scenario PEA) and one based on Swedish peas and rapeseed meal complemented by synthetic amino acids (scenario SAA). The environmental impact of both feed production as such and the subsequent environmental impact of the feed in the pig production sub-system were analysed. The analysed feed ingredients were barley, wheat, peas, rapeseed meal, rapeseed cake, soybean meal and synthetic amino acids. The crude protein level of the feed affected the nitrogen content in the manure, which in turn affected nitrogen emissions throughout the system and the fertilising value of the manure, ultimately affecting the need for mineral fertiliser application for feed production. Results and Discussion. The results showed that feed production contributed more than animal husbandry to the environmental burden of the system for the impact categories energy use, global warming potential and eutrophication, whereas the opposite situation was the case for acidification. The environmental impacts of scenarios SOY, PEA and SAA were 6.8, 5.3 and 6.3 MJ/kg pig growth; 1.5, 1.3 and 1.4 kg CO2-eq/kg pig growth; 0.55, 0.55 and 0.45 kg O-2-eq/kg pig growth; and 24, 25 and 20 g SO2-eq/kg pig growth, respectively. The results suggested that scenario SAA was environmentally preferable, and that the reason for this was a low crude protein level of the feed and exclusion of soybean meal from the feed. Conclusions. Feed choice had an impact on the environmental performance of pig meat production, not only via the features of the feed as fed to the pigs, such as the crude protein content, but also via the raw materials used, since the environmental impact from the production of these differs and since feed production had a large impact on the system as a whole.Goal, Scope and Background. Country-dependent characterisation factors for acidification have been derived for use in life cycle assessments to describe the effect on ecosystem protection of a change in national emissions. They have recently also been used in support of European air pollution abatement policies and related cost benefit analyses. We demonstrate that the characterisation factors as calculated to date are unstable due to being derived from the non-smooth and highly varying part of the underlying emission-impact functions. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the currently available characterisation factors and to propose a modification that makes use of the full range of the underlying functions. Method. The characterisation factors derived in this paper are based on updates of data used to support European air pollution agreements under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) and the European Commission. The focus in this paper is on the analysis of characterisation factors for acidification. The analysis of characterisation factors for terrestrial eutrophication from nitrogen compounds is a simple extension of the methods described here. The analysis is conducted for 25 European nations, i.e. for 23 EU countries plus Norway and Switzerland; Cyprus and Malta are excluded due to lack of data on critical loads. Results and Conclusions. We show that a linear model which is calibrated to emission changes of -50% is generally more reliable than characterisation factors which are based on emission changes of plus or minus 10%. Application of these characterisation factors are justified for emission reductions up to 30% in total European emissions, compared to 2000. This is within the range of currently agreed upon emission reductions in 2010 relative to 2000. Therefore, characterisation factors can be used in LCA as well as for the support of the revision of existing European air pollution agreements.Goal, Scope, and Background. Uncertainty analysis in LCA is important for sound decision support. Nevertheless, the actual influence of uncertainty on decision making in specific LCA case-studies has only been little studied so far. Therefore, we assessed the uncertainty in an LCA comparing two plant-protection products. Methods. Uncertainty and variability in LCI flows and characterization factors (CML-baseline method) were expressed as generic uncertainty factors and subsequently propagated into impact scores using Monte-Carlo simulation. Uncertainty in assumptions on production efficiency for chemicals, which is of specific interest for the case study, was depicted by scenarios. Results and Discussion. Impact scores concerning acidification, eutrophication, and global warming display relatively small dispersions. Differences in median impact scores of a factor of 1.6 were sufficient in the case study for a significant distinction of the products. Results of toxicity impact-categories show large dispersions due to uncertainty in characterization factors and in the composition of sum parameters. Therefore, none of the two products was found to be significantly environmentally preferable to the other. Considering the case study results and inherent characteristics of the impact categories, a tentative rule of thumb is put forward that quantifies differences in impact scores necessary to obtain significant results in product comparisons. Conclusion. Published LCA case-studies may have overestimated the significance of results. It is therefore advisable to routinely carry out quantitative uncertainty analyses in LCA. If this is not feasible, for example due to time restrictions, the rule of thumb proposed here may be helpful to evaluate the significance of results for the impact categories of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, and photooxidant creation.Goal, Scope and Background. Incorporation of exposure and risk concepts into life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is often impaired by the number of sources and the complexity of site-specific impact assessment, especially when input-output (I-O) analysis is used to evaluate upstream processes. This makes it difficult to interpret LCIA outputs, especially in policy contexts. In this study, we develop an LCIA tool which takes into account the geographical variability in both emissions and exposure, and which can be applied to all economic sectors in I-O analysis. Our method relies on screening-level risk calculations and methods to estimate population exposure per unit of emissions from specific geographic locations. Methods. We propose a simplified impact assessment approach using the concept of intake fraction, which is the fraction of a pollutant or its precursor emitted that is eventually inhaled or ingested by the population. Instead of running a complex site-specific exposure analysis, intake fractions allow for the accounting of the regional variability in exposure due to meteorological factors and population density without much computational burden. We calculate sector-specific intake fractions using previously-derived regression models and apply these values to the supply chain emissions to screen for the sectors whose emissions largely contribute to the total exposures. Thus, the analytical steps are simplified by relying on these screening-level risk calculations. We estimate population exposure per unit emissions from specific geographic locations only for the facilities and pollutants that pass an initial screening analysis. We test our analytical approach with reference to the case of increasing insulation for new single-family homes in the US. We quantify the public health costs from increasing insulation manufacturing and compare them with the benefits from energy savings, focusing on mortality and morbidity associated with exposure to primary and secondary fine particles (PM(2.5)) as well as cancer risk associated with exposure to toxic air pollutants. We estimate health impacts using concentration-response functions from the published literature and compare the costs and benefits of the program by assigning monetary values to the health risks. In the second part of this paper, we present the results of our case study and consider the implications for incorporating exposure and risk concepts into I-O LCA. Conclusions. We have presented a methodology to incorporate regional variability in emissions and exposure, into input-output LCA, using reduced-form information about the relationship between emissions and population exposure, along with standard input-output analysis and risk assessment methods. The location-weighted intake fractions can overcome the difficulty in incorporation of regional exposure in LCIA.Goal and Scope. This study attempts to estimate the environmental performance of Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), from agricultural production through the PHA fermentation and recovery process - 'cradle to gate'. Two types of PHA production systems are investigated: corn grain based PHA and corn grain and corn stover based PHA. Methods. Corn cultivation data are taken from 14 counties in the Corn Belt states of the United States - Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The environmental burdens associated with the corn wet milling process, in which dextrose, corn oil, corn gluten meal and corn gluten feed are produced, are allocated to dextrose and its coproducts by the system expansion approach. Greenhouse gases include carbon taken up by soil, nitrous oxide (N2O) released from soil during corn cultivation, carbon contents in biobased products as well as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide released from industrial processing. The soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics in corn cultivation are predicted by an agro-ecosystem model, the DAYCENT model. The environmental performance of the PHA production system is compared to that of a conventional polymer fulfilling an equivalent function. The environmental performance is addressed as nonrenewable energy and selected potential environmental impacts including global warming, photochemical smog, acidification, and eutrophication. The characterization factors are adapted from the TRACI model (Tools for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts) developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Results and Discussion. Global warming associated with corn grain based PHA is 1.6-4.1 kg-CO2 eq. kg(-1). The primary contributing process to most environmental impacts except for photochemical smog and eutrophication is the PHA fermentation and recovery process. For photochemical smog and eutrophication, the primary contributing process is corn cultivation due to nitrogen related burdens from soil. The trend of PHA fermentation development shows that the PHA fermentation technology is still immature and continues to improve, thereby also decreasing the environmental impacts. PHA produced in an integrated system, in which corn stover is harvested and used as raw material for PHA along with corn grain, offers global warming credits (negative greenhouse gas emissions), ranging from -0.28 to -1.9 kg-CO2 eq. kg(-1), depending on the PHA fermentation technologies employed and significantly reduces the environmental impacts compared to corn based PHA. The significant reductions from the integrated system are due to 1) less environmental impacts in corn cultivation and wet milling, and 2) exporting surplus energy from lignin-rich residues in corn stover process. Conclusions and Outlook. Under the current PHA fermentation technology, corn grain based PHA does not provide an environmental advantage over polystyrene. Corn grain based PHA produced by the near future PHA fermentation technology would be more favorable than polystyrene in terms of nonrenewable energy and global warming due to improvement in the PHA fermentation and recovery process. However, corn grain based PHA produced in even the near future technology does not provide better profiles for other environmental impacts (i.e., photochemical smog, acidification and eutrophication) than polystyrene. One of the primary reasons for high impacts of PHA in photochemical smog, acidification and eutrophication is the environmental burdens associated with corn cultivation. Thus other approaches to reduce these burdens in the agricultural process (e.g., use of buffer strips, etc.) are necessary to achieve better profiles for photochemical smog, acidification and eutrophication associated with corn cultivation. PHA produced in the integrated system is more favorable than polystyrene in terms of most environmental impacts considered here except for eutrophication.Aim, Scope and Background. Metal die casting is a highly energy-intensive industry. In addition to that, the production of primary zinc by smelting consumes huge amounts of energy as well as generates many types of pollution. This paper uses LCA to investigate the environmental performance of a zinc cast product. The areas of environmental concern are focused on the direct and indirect air emissions that arise from the Zinc Smelting, Casting and Recycling, as well as transportation. Main Features. The LCA case study employs a cradle-to-gate approach, which starts with the purchasing of primary zinc from abroad, casting, inspection, and ends when the scrap metal is sent back for recycling by truck. Based on a 'generic' zinc casting product, the objective of the LCA was to compare the air emissions from the material cycle due to: i) the increased content of recycled metal in the final cast product; and ii) the choice of selecting between two Remelters (A and B), the first located near the company and the other in a neighbouring country, to send zinc scrap for recycling. The LCA SimaPro software (version 5.0) Eco-indicator '99 method is used to perform an impact assessment for Climate Change, Acidification, Ecotoxicity, Respiratory Inorganics, and Respiratory Organics was performed. Results. The results from direct (process) and indirect (power plants) air emissions confirmed that the major air pollution occurs during Zinc Smelting, that is up to approximately 65-70%. Although an increase in recycling rates resulted in higher levels of air pollution from transportation as well as heavy metals from dross, these two issues were insignificant compared to the huge amount of energy consumed for primary metal production. Based on air pollution from transportation alone, a significant reduction of greenhouse gases and VOCs of 90% each was appreciated when Remelter A was selected. Conclusion. The results verified that efforts to recycle zinc and consume the material in a more sustainable manner have become highly important. Also, a second LCA investigation that was made to compare zinc cast products that consists of: 100% primary zinc, mixtures of 50-50% and 40-60% primary-to-recycled zinc, and finally 100% recycled zinc; further emphasized the need for using recycled metal, as opposed to using primary metal.Goal, Scope and Background. Obviously, people assume that the regional production and distribution of food requires less energy turnover, compared with global transports of food. Politicians claim the term 'regionaliry', maintaining that regionaliry is a medicine against wasting so much energy for the global food distribution. Additionally the energy turnover is causing pollution. But remarkably, there is a lack of empirical data to support this idea. At the same time, nobody really requires regional origin for non-food items, e.g. for bicycles, dishwashers, furniture or cars etc. The public mainstream asks for regional origin merely for food. Hence, the first scientific issue worked out in this paper is how the energy turnover of comparable food items can be measured, regarding the lifecycle of food in total. That means to investigate the partial systems of crop or breed, of food production, of packaging including transport and distribution up to the point of sale. Secondly, it has to be checked, if the assumed coincidence of low energy turnover and regional origin can be verified. The specific energy turnover, calculated in the unit [kWh per kg] or [kWh per 1] of food, is investigated by comparing regional with global process chains for different food items. Two examples of food - fruit juices and lamb meat - are researched, by personal investigation worldwide. Firstly, fruit juices of high grade quality from Brazil, from European origin and from local German farmers are compared, in terms of energy. Secondly, a comparison of lamb meat from New Zealand and lamb meat from local German farmers is conducted. Lamb meat has been investigated, because it is shipped around the world as frozen natural food, not concentrated like juices. In addition, the business size of the food producers is researched for both examples. Methods. As a part of LCA the energy turnover of each process step from the very beginning up to the point of sale is investigated., These primary results are the basic empirical data, in order to allocate the energy turnover at the food items as functional units. The results of regional, European-continental and of global process chains are compared. In addition, the issue is investigated, whether the specific energy turnover depends upon the business size. Results and Discussion. Surprisingly, the data in both cases demonstrate a strong degressive relation of the specific energy turnover and the business size. Here it is not important, if the business is regional or not. Merely the efficiency and logistics of the production and the operations determine the specific energy turnover. These findings seem closely connected with the business size, because small companies are not able to invest in energy recovering and saving technology. The regional juices business is worsened by the huge number of small-sized transports of the crop and the nearly bottle-wise distribution. Regarding lamb meat we once more find the disadvantages of comparably small farms again. In addition, the German farmers need daily shepherds, fences by night, stables and usually additional feed during the wintertime. All these efforts are not necessary in New Zealand, where the climatic conditions and the open countryside with low population allow rather easy and low energy breeding of lamb. Conclusion. The coincidence of economic and ecological facts is obvious. As a matter of fact, in economics there is a strong degressive relation between the production costs and the number of produced items. This relation is very well known as 'Economy of Scale.' Our findings lead to similar conclusions, in terms of ecology. That means, the production ecology depends on the number of produced items. Additionally, our results demonstrate a minimum business size, so that we can claim an 'Ecology of Scale' as well. However, on the other hand, the reported data and the conclusions are valid for the investigated food items - fruit juices and lamb meat - only. Nevertheless, one conclusion is already evident: The most popular claims for regional food production and distribution instead of global process chains are not generally valid. Small farmers basically need much more energy to produce and distribute their products, compared with bigger units. Both food items demonstrate clearly, that the ecological quality is mainly influenced by the operational efficiency and not by the marketing distance itself. Recommendation and Outlook. Much more detailed data of all the investigated operational units, processing fruit juices and lamb meat, have been published (Fleissner 2001). As a further example, we investigate wine from different countries as a further example. Different from fruit juices, which can be shipped as a concentrate, and different from lamb meat, which is shipped as frozen food, wine of high grade quality is always bottled close to the place of origin. That means, that not only the food, but also the heavy weight packaging is transported around the world. So, we are very curious about the results, which we expect for 2004.Four model technologies of coal preparation have been characterised with the aim to evaluate the effects of coal preparation on the natural environment. Using the LCA method (in accordance with the PN EN 14040 standard) the charge of the natural environment has been calculated for each of the cleaning models, taking into account principal categories of the effects, that is human health, quality of the ecosystem and natural resources. With the aim to calculate the eco-indexes, the so-called process tree has been developed for the analysed technologies, as well as the inventory tables that collect necessary data to make the computations possible. As a functional technological unit in the analyses performed, an amount of 1000 Mg of cleaned coal has been assumed. An analysis of the values of calculated eco-indexes has shown that the highest charge of the environment, as a consequence of coal preparation, takes place in the "mineral resources" category, while the lowest one results in using the technology marked M1.We present the thermal and optical evaluation of a 40 cm x 40 cm electrochromic window prototype mounted on an Insulating Glass Unit (double glazed window with a low emittance coating). The favorable optical performance of the electrochromic part combined with the excellent thermal protection of the advanced Insulating Glass Unit provides a product suitable for energy efficient applications. The environmental evaluation of the prototype was assessed by implementing the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Energy savings up to 5608 MJ per unit can be achieved when the electrochromic device is used in cooling dominated areas and buildings with large facades. This corresponds to cooling and heating savings of 127.1 kWh/m(2) glass per year and 94.3 MJ/m(2) glass per year respectively. The reduction in building energy needs reaches 55.7% and the energy pay back time is only 0.8 years since the embodied energy represents only 3.3% of the energy saved during its life cycle. The net greenhouse gas emissions reduction is estimated to be 630 kg CO2 equivalent, while only 0.5 years of operation are required to compensate the lifecycle emissions. Net human toxic emissions reduction can reach 358 kg 1,4-DCB equivalent, compensating its life cycle toxic emissions already from 0.25 years of operation.The most fundamental aspect in the ISO 14001 standard Environmental management systems - Specification with guidance for use is to find out ways by which an organisation influences environment to a significant degree. This paper examines environmental data from companies manufacturing products mainly from metals and/or polymers. The data were collected in a uniform way by use of special guidelines. Weighting or valuation methods often used in life cycle assessments were used to quantitatively compare and rank environmental aspects. The study results suggest that, in general, the largest environmental impact in the investigated manufacturing sub-sector can be associated with product use and/or disposal phases. This in turn shows a need for more attention on environmental work on the design for environment than what the ISO 14001 standard requires. It is further suggested that weighting or valuation methods can aid in determining the significance of environmental impacts and aspects in the context of ISO 14001. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The overall goal of the present study is to evaluate different strategies for treatment of solid waste in Sweden based on a life cycle perspective. Important goals are to identify advantages and disadvantages of different methods for treatment of solid waste, and to identify critical factors in the systems, including the background systems, which may significantly influence the results. Included in the study are landfilling, incineration, recycling, digestion and composting. The waste fractions considered are the combustible and recyclable or compostable fractions of municipal solid waste. The methodology used is life cycle assessment (LCA). The results can be used for policy decisions as well as strategic decisions on waste management systems. A waste hierarchy suggesting the environmental preference of recycling over incineration over landfilling is often put forward and used in waste policy making. LCAs can be used to test the waste hierarchy and identify situations where the hierarchy is not valid. Our results indicate that the waste hierarchy is valid as a rule of thumb. The results also suggest that a policy promoting recycling of paper and plastic materials, preferably combined with policies promoting the use of plastics replacing plastics made from virgin materials, leads to decreased use of total energy and emissions of gases contributing to global warming. If the waste can replace oil or coal as energy sources, and neither biofuels nor natural gas are alternatives, a policy promoting incineration of paper materials may be successful in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the present paper, the validity of the waste hierarchy for treatment of solid waste is tested. This is done by using the tool life cycle assessment on recycling, incineration with heat recovery and landfilling of recyclable waste for Swedish conditions. A waste hierarchy suggesting the environmental preference of recycling over incineration over landfilling is found to be valid as a rule of thumb. There are however assumptions and value choices that can be made that make landfilling more preferable. This is the case for some waste fractions and for some of the environmental impacts studied when only a limited time period is considered. When transportation of waste by passenger car from the households is assumed for the other treatment options but not for landfilling, landfilling also gains in preference in some cases. The paper concludes that assumptions made including value choices with ethical aspects are of importance when ranking waste treatment options. Uncertainties related to the assessment of toxicological impacts can also influence the conclusions. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Different waste treatment options for municipal solid waste have been studied in a systems analysis. Different combinations of incineration, materials recycling of separated plastic and cardboard containers, and biological treatment (anaerobic digestion and composting) of biodegradable waste, were studied and compared to landfilling. The evaluation covered use of energy resources, environmental impact and financial and environmental costs. In the study, a calculation model (ORWARE) based on methodology from life cycle assessment (LCA) was used. Case studies were performed in three Swedish municipalities: Uppsala, Stockholm, and Alvdalen. The study shows that reduced landfilling in favour of increased recycling of energy and materials lead to lower environmental impact, lower consumption of energy resources, and lower economic costs. Landfilling of energy-rich waste should be avoided as far as possible, partly because of the negative environmental impacts from landfilling, but mainly because of the low recovery of resources when landfilling. Differences between materials recycling, nutrient recycling and incineration are small but in general recycling of plastic is somewhat better than incineration and biological treatment somewhat worse. When planning waste management, it is important to know that the choice of waste treatment method affects processes outside the waste management system, such as generation of district heating, electricity, vehicle fuel, plastic, cardboard, and fertiliser. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines some possibilities and limitations of linking economic information to an life cycle assessment, LCA, when studying municipal waste management systems. A terminology and methodology for economic assessment of municipal waste management systems is proposed and tested through a case study. The methodology consists of a financial LCC, life cycle costing, (which is used in parallel with an LCA) and an environmental LCC (functioning as a consecutive, weighting tool). In the case study, the financial LCC covers all the costs incurred by the extended waste management system, as though the LCA system was a single economic actor. The environmental LCC uses three different weighting methods to monetarise environmental effects such as emissions and resource use. As both LCCs use the same unit of account, they can easily be added together to a welfare economic tool. This step-by-step aggregation leads to a transparent, reproducible analysis method. A conclusion is that the methodology facilitates the analysis, but that problems remain as municipal waste management often diverge from existing economic systems. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article discusses the ORWARE tool, a model originally developed for environmental systems analysis of waste management systems, and shows its prospect as a tool for environmental technology chain assessment. Different concepts of technology assessment are presented to put ORWARE into context in the discussion that has been going for more than two decades since the establishment of the US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). An even-handed assessment is important in different ways such as reproducibility, reliability, credibility, etc. Conventional technology assessment (TA) relied on the judgements and intuition of the assessors. A computer-based tool such as ORWARE provides a basis for transparency and a structured management of input and output data that cover ecological and economic parameters. This permits consistent and coherent technology assessments. Using quantitative analysis as in ORWARE makes comparison and addition of values across chain of technologies easier. We illustrate the application of the model in environmental technology chain assessment through a study of alternative technical systems linking waste management to vehicle fuel production and use. The principles of material and substance flow modelling, life cycle perspective, and graphical modelling featured in ORWARE offer a generic structure for environmentally focused TA of chains and networks of technical processes. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This environmental assessment of alternative means for managing food waste is based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. It covers the service provided by a household in-sink food waste processor (FWP) unit, and alternatives to it. The three alternatives considered are home composting, landfilling food waste with municipal waste ("codisposal") and centralised composting of green (food and garden) waste. The functional unit is defined as management of the food waste produced by a Sydney household in one year. The environmental assessment includes eight environmental indicators and impact categories. This LCA study identifies an environmentally preferable option as well as the key environmental issues. If operated aerobically, home composting has the least environmental impact in all impact categories. The environmental performance of the codisposal option is relatively good, except with respect to climate change and eutrophication potential. The FWP performed well in terms of energy usage, climate change and acidification potentials, although it makes a large contribution to eutrophication and toxicity potentials. Demonstration of the relatively high water consumption of the FWP is an important outcome of this LCA study, as Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Compared with the other three options, centralised composting has a relatively poor environmental performance due to the energy-intense waste collection activities it requires. Implementing a separate collection and transportation system for organic waste results in relatively high environmental impacts due to the frequency of collections and the small quantities of green waste collected per household. Compared with European cities, significantly larger distances have to be travelled in Sydney, differentiating this LCA from previous work. Non-recurrent impacts of the FWP are identified as causing large contributions to the overall result for this waste management option due to the types of materials used and the low operational capacities of the FWP. Finally, although home composting is clearly the best option in terms of the categories examined in this LCA, there is an important caveat to this result. If operated without due care, home composting loses its allure due to the high greenhouse gas emissions consequent to anaerobic methano-genesis. Although home composting has the capacity to be the best food waste management option, it can also perform worst in relation to a subject in which Australia is already at the bottom of its class. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compares six wastewater sludge treatment scenarios applied to a 300,000 equivalent-inhabitant (eq. inh) wastewater treatment plant: agricultural spreading, fluidised bed incineration, wet oxidation, pyrolysis, incineration in cement kilns and landfill. The study focuses on energy and emissions contributing to global warming over the whole treatment life cycle. As a result, avoided burdens by coproducts are very important in terms of energy consumption and pollutants' emissions. The energy balance suggests that incineration and agricultural spreading have the lowest non-renewable primary energy consumption. For global warming, incineration in cement kilns has the best balance; landfill and agricultural spreading the worst. Results are now being extended to digested sludges and to impacts on human health and ecosystems. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies show that landfills have a large impact on the environment if long-term time horizons are considered. In this paper, the authors use new site-dependent models for slag landfills and transport in soils to estimate the emissions of heavy metals to the groundwater. The results suggest that landfills remain a risk to the environment for very long time periods. The long-term emissions might be valued differently than current emissions, for instance, as a result of a changing background concentration in the environment. A scenario analysis was performed to calculate the future background contamination of the Swiss groundwater with Cd2+ and Cu2+. The environmental impacts of slag disposal were assessed considering this changing background contamination (method applied: Swiss Method of Ecological Scarcity). The impacts of the Cu2+ emissions from the slag landfill to the groundwater were found to be more important than in previous analysis, where the landfill emissions had been assumed to enter the surface water and where the background contamination was assumed to be constant over time. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Managing waste sustainably requires an assessment of the environmental costs and benefits of alternative waste management practices on a more sound and objective basis. The International Expert Group on life cycle assessment for integrated waste management (IEG) is a leading group of environmental experts with an interest in using Life Cycle techniques to inform waste management decision-making. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technique that can be used to provide information about the likely polluting emissions and predicted environmental impacts of alternative designs for products or services. LCA for waste management specifically focuses on the environmental consequences of discarding waste materials and consumer products, identifying the costs of waste collection, treatment and any potential benefit of utilising the discarded material. Through iterative examination of various treatment alternatives for wastes, LCA can help identify optimal environmental solutions for managing wastes, without risking that the choice of decisions will result in a worsening of the overall impact. The IEG holds biannual workshop-style meetings to share international knowledge in the research area and to progress research activities. The meetings consist of presentations on life cycle modeling, LCA case studies for municipalities and specific waste streams, as well as pioneering research on decision-making and interpretation. Technical matters and issues of consistency of approach are also addressed during meetings through the knowledge and research activities of members and through the invitation of guest experts to meetings. This article provides an introduction to the work of the IEG and a summary of discussions from the 11th meeting of the group. Crown Copyright (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In spite of many recent advances in the impact assessment of emissions to air, surface water, and upper-soil layers, methods for emissions to deep soil layers and the groundwater are still missing for assessment tools such as life-cycle assessment (LCA). The goal of this paper is to provide such a method for assessing the fate of heavy metals in soils. The method was developed for the emissions from slag landfills but could, in principle, also be used in other applications. Our guidelines serve to estimate the transport time needed for a heavy metal to reach the groundwater as a function of spatial parameters such as infiltration rate, macropore flow, pH value, content of organic material, and distance to the groundwater. Default values for these parameters are suggested for typical landfill sites in Switzerland. The application of the method is illustrated in three case studies of actual landfill sites in Switzerland. The results of these case studies indicate that the retardation of heavy metals varies greatly depending on the local properties of the soil considered. Moreover, it is illustrated how the suggested procedure can be integrated into existing multimedia-fate models used in LCA. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A case study of beer production in Greece has been performed. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) has been used to identify and quantify the environmental performance of the production and distribution of beer. LCA methodology provides a quantitative basis for assessing potential improvements in environmental performance of a system throughout the life cycle. The system investigated includes raw material acquisition, industrial refining, packaging, transportation, consumption and waste management. Energy use and emissions are quantified and some of the potential environmental effects are assessed. The impact categories most affected by the beer production. are the earth toxicity, or heavy metals, and the category of smog formation. Bottle production, followed by packaging and beer production are found to be the subsystems that account for most of the emissions. Thus, the attempt to minimize the adverse environmental impacts caused by the beer production should focus on the minimization of the emissions produced during these subsystems. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production of aluminum billets-starting from the conversion of bauxite to alumina, the processing of alumina to aluminum, and the final cast product-is studied using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The aluminum supply chain consists of a refinery, a smelter, and a casting plant. In the LCA model, the environmental loads of four different case scenarios were investigated. The scenarios included various approaches employed for improving the environmental performance of the system for the production of I ton of aluminum metal. The final impact assessment results for the overall environmental loads of the supply chain showed cumulative decreases of 2.2% and 3.8% for Scenarios 2 and 3, respectively. In Scenario 2, scrap metal was reduced from the casting plant. For Scenario 3, the reduction of scrap metal from casting was accompanied by improvements of both energy efficiency and reject rates at the smelter. A significant cumulative decrease of 32.8% was obtained in Scenario 4, which was mainly due to the reduction of red mud from the refinery by about 50%. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A three-day workshop was held in October 2001 to discuss life cycle inventory data for electricity production. Electricity was selected as the topic for discussion since it features very prominently in the LCA results for most product life cycles, yet there is no consistency in how these data are calculated and presented. Approximately 40 people attended all or part of the meeting to discuss issues of data modeling and collection. Attendees included recognized experts in the electricity generation and life cycle assessment fields. Five main topics of discussion were identified before the meeting began: (1) modeling the response of the energy supply system to demand (i.e. marginal versus average data); (2) defining the breadth and width of system boundaries to adequately capture environmental flows and data that are needed for impact modeling; (3) allocating environmental burdens across co-products that come from the same process; (4) modeling new and non-traditional technologies in which the data are highly uncertain; and (5) including transmission and distribution in modeling of electricity generation. Breakout groups addressed the first four topic areas in individual discussion groups and reported the results in a plenary session on the last day of the workshop (it was decided during the meeting to include "transmission and distribution" in other discussions). A key success of the workshop was the creation of the larger network of LCA and electricity production experts which will provide a good foundation for continued discussions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Waste solvent incineration is an important issue in life cycle assessments (LCAs) dealing with chemical products and/or processes. Nearly all chemical products and processes involve organic solvents, and incineration is often the favoured solution to waste solvent treatment as it can deal with a large variety of solvent types and quantities. At present, there are no generic models for waste solvent incineration which allow integrating this technology as a unit process in LCA. As waste solvents as a rule are incinerated as a mixture of several solvents, an allocation problem occurs: measurements of the consumption of ancillaries and energy carriers, and of emission of pollutants and generation of co-products, always refer to the mixture of waste solvents. However, in LCAs usually waste specific data is needed. To solve this problem we developed a multi-input allocation model of the incineration process. A comprehensive case study on a waste solvent incineration plant from chemical industry provided the necessary data. The results from the multi-input allocation modelling are consumption and emission factors which facilitate the calculation of solvent specific life cycle inventory results. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) provides information on the environmental consequences of individual actions. Retrospective LCA provides information about the environmental properties of the life cycle investigated and of its subsystems. In this paper we analyse the links between the choice of methodology and different theories of normative moral philosophy. The choice of electricity data in an LCA of a conference site with local hydropower production is discussed as an illustration. The two types of LCA can be related to different theories on the characteristics of a good action. Each type of LCA, as well as each of the moral theories, can be criticised from the alternative point of departure. Decisions based on retrospective LCA can have environmentally undesirable consequences. On the other hand, prospective LCA can appear unfair and result in environmentally sub-optimised systems. Both types of LCA also have methodological limitations. We cannot conclude that one type is superior to the other, but the choice of methodology should be consistent with the information sought in the LCA. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are decision situations where environmental impacts need to be compared with other costs or benefits that by their nature are expressed in terms of money. Supporting these decisions may require the expression of environmental impacts in monetary units. Using the example of health impacts from road noise we apply five different monetization approaches and quantify the monetary values of one year of sleep disturbance (CHF 2500-16000) and interference with communication (1500-10000). In Life Cycle Assessment many health endpoints need to be evaluated at the same time. Therefore, we illustrate here the transferability problem between health impacts measured in disability adjusted life years (DALYs) and monetized health impacts, using the example of health impacts due to 1000 truck kilometres. It is concluded that available monetization methods need careful adaptation for their use to monetize environmental health impacts, that the DALY accounting system may support the systematic monetization and the selection of relevant health endpoints, and that it may well be justified for LCA purposes to perform some novel primary willingness to pay studies. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper a generic model for life cycle inventory (LCI) data collection is presented and applied to a product system of a Digital System Telephone (DST). It is shown that the intermediate unit processes (IUPs) are of global warming importance. Compared to earlier efforts in the field of environmental life cycle assessment of electronic products, this model enables a more partitioned LCA result, with respect to both components and processes. In our model the components are first divided into main groups and then into sub-groups. This division results in process modules for unit processes, some of which are similar to the ongoing components, thus, reducing the computational effort. The model is demonstrated for a "cradle-to-gate" calculation focusing on greenhouse gas emissions. Using scenario analysis for integrated circuits and printed wiring boards, the possible contribution from IUPs was analysed. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Final impact results from an industry-wide environmental life-cycle assessment of cathode ray tube (CRT) and liquid crystal display (LCD) computer monitors are presented for 20 environmental impact categories. Considering the entire life cycle of each monitor, water eutrophication and aquatic ecotoxicity impacts for the baseline analysis were greater for the LCD while all other impact categories (e.g., resource use, energy, ozone depletion, landfill space use, human health toxicity) were greater for the CRT. Energy inputs from CRT glass manufacturing, for which there was some uncertainty in the data, drive many of the CRT impacts. Modifying the glass energy data based on comparison to secondary data resulted in nine of the 20 impact categories having greater relative life-cycle impacts for the LCD than the CRT. When comparing the manufacturing stages of each monitor type in the baseline scenario, the LCD has greater relative burdens on the environment in eight categories. Energy, global warming, and human health toxicity impacts are also presented in greater detail, showing contributions from each life-cycle stage. This study's results can allow industry to focus on frit manufacturing, PWB manufacturing improvements can be made. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Solar thermal systems feed on a "clean" energy source. However, a complete analysis of the environmental performance of solar thermal collectors should take into account not only their operation phase, but also their whole life cycle. This paper reports the results of a life cycle assessment of a solar thermal collector with integrated water storage. The study, carried out by means of SimaPro 5.0 software, aims at drawing a thorough environmental profile of the collector, highlighting the most relevant contributions to the total impacts, measured by means of a set of aggregate environmental indicators. In order to evaluate the possible improvements of the system configuration, several sensitivity analyses were performed, for different phases of its life cycle. Thanks to this optimization, the reduction of the impacts could be up to 40%. Environmental pay back times were calculated as well. Their values range from 5 to 19 months, remarkably lower than the expected lifespan of the systems (15-20 years). (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of eco-efficiency, product or service value per environmental influence, was applied to define "total CO2 efficiency", "direct CO2 efficiency" and "indirect CO2 efficiency" using Input-Output (I-O) table analysis for the evaluation of companies and industries. The result shows that the analysis of the efficiency was useful to characterize industries according to CO2 efficiency. The comparison of company-based CO2 efficiency against I-O-based CO2 efficiency was possible for beer companies and petroleum companies because they almost completely belong to a single type of industry sectors. However, generally such comparison was difficult for the companies that belong to many industry sectors. Therefore, we proposed the new method "integrated CO2 efficiency index for company evaluation (ICEICE)" which makes it possible to compare the environmental performances of all the companies regardless of the number of industry sectors they belong to. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to perform an environmental comparison between the phosphate fertilizers fused magnesium phosphate (FMP) and triple superphosphate (TSP). In order to perform the comparison a functional unit (FU) of 41.66 kg P2O5, which corresponds to 208 kg FMP (20% P2O5) and 93 kg TSP (45% P2O5) was defined. Concerning the product systems a "cradle to gate" approach was used in both cases. In order to perform the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) the impact categories: global warming potential (GWP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), human toxicity potential (HTP), fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity potential (FWAETP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP) were selected. The development of this step was accomplished using CML 2 baseline 2000 method, with the help of the computational tool SimaPro 5, version 5.1.0.21. The study identified that in the case of FMP, the extensive electricity dependence is the main source of potential negative environmental impacts. On the other hand, for the TSP, the great distances between the phosphate rock mines and the main manufacture centers for both H3PO4 and TSP together with the transportation model adopted in this country appear as the main causes of environmental impacts. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle management (LCM) aims at expanding the scope of the environmental management system of a company to address the up- and downstream impacts associated with the activities of its suppliers and customers. It is based on a perspective that focuses on products and the corresponding processes in addition to facilities and production sites. Therefore, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology plays a central role in implementing LCM. At Alcan, one of the world's leading producers of aluminum materials and products, as well as composite components and packaging solutions, LCA as a core element of LCM is being used for a variety of applications. In order to achieve the objectives of LCM and to ensure efficient decision support, the LCAs are performed in a simplified mode. Simplifications predominantly concern up- and downstream processes outside of Alcan's direct control as well as impact assessment procedures, the reuse of internal life cycle inventory analysis modules, and the aggregation and presentation of the results for top-management and other internal decision-makers. A recently completed LCA from the automotive sector demonstrates the ongoing implementation of LCA at Alcan. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.LCAccess is an EPA-sponsored web-site intended to promote the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) in business decision-making by facilitating access to data sources that are useful in developing a life cycle inventory (LCI). While LCAccess does not itself contain data, it is a searchable global directory of potential data sources. In addition to directing users to relevant data sources, LCAccess also serves as a central source for LCA information. To find the LCAccess web-site go to: http://www.epa.gov/ORD/ NRMRL/lcaccess. LCAccess is soliciting organizations that have completed LCI/LCA studies to provide their data sources for reference in LCAccess. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the late 1990s, members of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) launched several international working groups with the task to discuss and, if possible, harmonise different aspects of the methodology for life-cycle assessment. The reports from these working groups were published in 2002-2005. Edited summaries of these reports are included below. The summaries are reprinted, with kind permission, from the SETAC publications, Code of life-cycle inventory practice, Life-cycle impact assessment: striving towards best practice, Working environment in life-cycle assessment, Scenarios in life-cycle assessment, Life-cycle assessment of metals: issues and research directions, Life-cycle assessment in building and construction, and Life-cycle management. Copyright: SETAC, Pensacola, Florida, USA. (c) 2005 SETAC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, a mathematical programming-based methodology is presented for the explicit inclusion of life cycle assessment (LCA) criteria as part of the strategic investment decisions related to the design and planning of supply chain networks. By considering the multiple environmental concerns together with the traditional economic criteria, the planning task is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. Over a long-range planning horizon, the methodology utilizes mixed integer modelling techniques to address strategic decisions involving the selection, allocation and capacity expansion of processing technologies and assignment of transportation links required to satisfy the demands at the markets. At the operational level, optimal production profiles and flows of material between various components within the supply chain are determined. As such, the formulation presented here combines the elements of the classical plant location and capacity expansion problems with the principles of LCA to develop a quantitative decision-support tool for environmentally conscious strategic investment planning. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An ECO-optimized reuse of process liquors addresses the financial gain and the effective use of resources. In processes that have a potential for process liquor recovery, the minimization of both economic and environmental burdens can be realised by an ECO-optimal design of reuse and recycling network (RRN). In this paper, a procedure for synthesizing such an RRN for a metal finishing process is investigated. The simultaneous analysis of environmental impact sensitivity (SAEIS) based on a superstructure approach, combined with multi-objective optimization is performed by mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). This allows an "eco-eco" trade-off i.e. total annualized cost and environmental impacts are minimized simultaneously. By varying the weighting factor, different RRN alternatives were generated. A replacement of the standard and closed-loop system by these solutions, even for the environmentally friendliest case, yielded a reasonable cost saving on raw material's inputs. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental awareness is increasingly important to society, government, and industry, and there is a strong demand for sustainable development practices. The importance of supply chain management is critical, as it characterizes and influences the life cycles of all products. Within the major logistics trends, outsourcing has a significant potential to increase sustainability in the supply chain as third-party logistics providers (3PLs) focus on improving resource utilization and making processes more efficient. However, their motivation is largely economic, and an environmental perspective is rarely seen in 3PLs. As consumers demand greener alternatives and, subsequently, environmental regulatory measures are implemented, 3PLs will have to become more environmentally and socially aware in order to develop sustainability goals. This study compares two scenarios using life-cycle assessment (LCA): one where logistics functions are handled in-house, and an alternative scenario where such functions are outsourced to a 3PL. The impacts of logistics outsourcing on energy utilization, global warming potential, and fatalities are first quantified in the supply chain of an automobile. Even though vehicle operation, responsible for most of the impacts considered, is outside the domain of logistics functions, logistics outsourcing nonetheless has the potential to reduce energy use and global warming potential by 0.4-2% and fatalities by 0.8-3.3% throughout the entire life cycle of a typical automobile. Road and air transportation are found to account for most of the impacts in all selected metrics. Analyzing logistics outsourcing in the other sectors of the U. S. economy revealed the same trend as observed in the supply chain of an automobile.Technological advancements of Internet communications and the recent evolution of e-commerce have created a viable, emerging framework to conduct business electronically. Undetermined at this point is the environmental impact of the new digital economy and the economic profile of resulting distribution networks. This study develops and employs an integrated modeling framework to compare the environmental impacts of a traditional business strategy with an e-commerce strategy for the personal computer industry. Ecological factors are evaluated to provide an overall comparison of the 2 business strategies over the product's life cycle. Of particular importance are factors relating to the distribution of products through their supply chains. This study's integrated modeling framework includes a simulation component to address the stochastic modeling environment caused by business uncertainty. Also included is an environmental input-output life cycle assessment model to quantify the full direct and indirect impacts of different business strategies. Outputs from this model include measures of electricity, natural gas, fuel and packaging expended, retail and warehouse space used, energy expenditures, vehicle emissions, and 20 different pollutants resulting from different business strategies. Results of the study suggest 40% to 50% reduction in life cycle energy and pollutant expenditures with e-commerce in the personal computer industry.Background, Aims and Scope. Sediments in harbours and nearby shipyards demonstrate widespread contamination with tributyltin (TBT). Therefore, reuse and relocation of dredged material from these locations are prohibited. Even if the International Marine Organization (IMO) convention concerning TBT-based paints is ratified (Champ 2003) the TBT problem in sediments will continue to remain for many years due to the persistence of TBT. Methods. An electrochemical process has been developed to treat polluted sediments. Dredged materials with high and low TBT-contents were studied on a technical and a pilot scale. The treatment process was assessed by chemical analysis and a biotest battery. Additionally, an economic analysis was performed to check the economic feasibility of the process to treat dredged material from two different locations at different operating conditions. Furthermore an up-scaling estimation was performed to evaluate treatment costs at a larger scale, i.e. for a plant having a capacity of 720,000 t/a. Results and Discussion. Butyltin species and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) were decomposed due to electrochemically-induced oxidation, while the treatment did not alter heavy metal and PCB concentrations. The bacteria luminescence test indicated a reduced toxicity after the electrochemical treatment, while the algae growth inhibition test and bacteria contact test did not confirm these results. Based on a small consumer price of euro 0.12/kWh, treating the high-contaminated sediment in the pilot plant would cost Euro 21/m(3) and Euro 31/m(3) for the low contaminated sediment, respectively. Assuming an industrial consumer price of Euro 0.06/kWh for electricity in an up-scaled process with a capacity of 720,000 t/a, the total treatment costs for the low contaminated sediment would be Euro 13/m(3). Conclusion. The results of treating dredged material from Bremerhaven and the fine-grained fraction from the METHA plant show that the effectiveness of the process performance is more related to the binding form and sediment composition than to the initial concentration of TBT. The electrochemically treated material complies with chemical criteria for relocation of dredged material, but post-treatment, e.g. washing and/or reduction of remaining oxidants with Fe-II-salts, is needed to fulfil ecotoxicological criteria for relocation. Economic investigations have shown that the electrochemical treatment might be a technical option to treat TBT contaminated, dredged material. However, the technique is not fully developed and cannot remove all chemicals of concern, e.g. heavy metals. The decision as to whether this technique can be applied is site-specific and should be taken based on the case-by-case approach. Recommendation and Outlook. Since biotests integrate the effects of all contaminants present in a sample, process-accompanying evaluation procedures need additional assessment methods such as TIE (toxicity identification evaluation) as a second tier following ecotoxicological tests, in which the reasons for the effects are identified. For reasons of sustainability, a much more effect-oriented and long-term cost effective approach should be applied in future to avoid the release of harmful substances into the environment. Life cycle assessment should be carried out to identify and quantify impacts of sediment treatment processes in order to take into account both the distant effects of local actions and local effects of distant actions.The article is a road map of contemporary trends in protection of the environment from pollution, as seen by screening the open literature. Due to a great number of data and a huge number of references only the identification of trends was posible, defying any attempts to form a coherent reference system. The article is but an annotated bibliography of the most important (by the author's assessment) papers. The article deals with the following topics: cleaner production, life cycle assessment, the environmental Kuznets curve, and ethics in development investments. The main message of the article is that scientific data need translation into forms usable by decision makers. The article aims to prove the need for multidisciplinary approach to problems: technics and technology are but tools to materialize innovative trends; decisions are being made through political considerations in harmony with economic laws and sociological assessments.During aluminium production, frequent failure of copper anode bar was observed. The average life cycle of the bar was found to reduce from 50 cycles to 20 cycles during a specified time span. While reduction, it was observed that both stiffener and the bar were continuously exposed to flue gas. Failure in the vicinity just above the MS stiffener takes place due to gradual reduction in cross-sectional area of the Cu-bar as a result of oxidation, pitting and crack formation. Microstructural analysis also reveals that the presence of pits/voids are also responsible for such failure. In fact, the failure is attributed mostly due to the intergranular mode. In order to prevent such failure, a few remedial measures are suggested. Among them, stringent quality control of the copper metal before and after the fabrication of bar as well as also increasing the height of the stiffener could well be explored.Purpose - From a methodological point of view, life cycle costing (LCC) is well developed with respect to conventional costs. However, when it comes to costs related to environmental issues, neither the items nor their estimation have been well developed. This paper aims at investigating the possibilities of using life cycle assessment (LCA) results to identify and estimate environmental costs or benefits in an LCC. Design/methodology/approach - The paper begins by looking at the driving forces for introducing environmental costs in companies, continues by identifying external and internal environmental cost issues, and concludes with an attempt to estimate the internal costs. Findings - Some of the items of an LCC have to do with increased/decreased sales, others with good will. Both are difficult to estimate, but LCA or LCA-like investigations may be helpful in identifying relevant issues. Future costs to the product system may also be estimated, for example, with a distance-to-target type of weighting. LCA may be helpful in roughly estimating risks, especially together with those LCA impact assessment methods that model damage. Such an item in LCC can be dealt with as an insurance fee or, if the risk is too high, as a way of including necessary preventive actions. Research limitations/implications - The literature on the subject is limited and not sufficient to aid in estimation of environmental costs and benefits for a company. It seems reasonable to begin an improvement of the methodology by looking at future costs and benefits. Practical implications - This paper may help in structuring the task of using LCA information for estimating environmental costs in LCC. Originality/value - There has been increased interest recently in the integration of LCA and LCC, such as in the SETAC (Society for Ecotoxicology and Chemistry) working group on LCC. This paper contributes with new outlooks and structures for that work.Purpose - To provide a tool to evaluate the economic and ecological feasibility of new and existing mining projects using a combination of environmental goals expressed in life cycle assessment (LCA) results with economic goals expressed within life cycle costing (LCC). Design/methodology/approach - Sustainability is developing into a target for an increasing number of industries and governments. As a consequence focus has shifted from the production process to the entire life cycle. LCA is a tool that can help producers make better decisions concerning environmental protection, whereas the aim of LCC analysis is to create a cost-effective model for environmental impact assessment. Findings - Study of the influence of the environmental cost of projects should be based on long-term analysis of environmental investment. Using the life cycle net present value (LCNPV) method it is possible to compare different investment options, and this method can be treated as a tool that can help producers to make better decisions pertaining to environmental protection. Research limitations/implications - Internalisation of external costs and valuation of environmental costs are the biggest problems for LCC calculations. Practical implications - Mining producers can reasonably expect that implementation of LCA and LCC will lead to minimisation of environmental impact of their activities and to more effective environmental, cost and waste management. This means savings through reducing the amount of waste emissions and a decrease in fees and fines. Originality/value - The use of the tools described in this paper will increase the efficiency of the decision-making process, demonstrating the connection between activity and devastation of the environment.Purpose - To present the EU project DANTES (Demonstrate and Assess New Tools for Environmental Sustainability), conducted by Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry AB, ABB, Stora Enso and Chalmers University of Technology. One of the project's goals is to assess and demonstrate tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA), environmental risk assessment (ERA) and life cycle costing (LCC). Design/methodology/approach - Different strategies for eco-efficiency evaluation based on existing tools as well as case study results are demonstrated through the project's web site (see www.dantes.info) and through several information campaigns during the project period. The paper presents an overview of environmental assessment tools and strategies for using these tools and methods. Findings - Provides information on the use of sustainability tools and methods, indicating the problems that can be addressed by the application of the tool as well as how and who can use the tool. The results from the project were translated into strategies for eco-efficiency evaluation based on existing tools. Practical implications - Implementation of the strategies demonstrated in the project reduces costs by increasing the performance of products, processes and services, as well as the drive and awareness of companies' personnel in environmental issues. It also promotes good practices. Originality/value - This paper describes the DANTES project, which is aimed at educating industries on how to use sustainability tools to address environmental problems. It offers practical help to different departments within companies.Purpose - Aims to investigate the contribution of life cycle assessment to global sustainability reporting of organizations. Design/methodology/approach - Assesses the current state of global sustainability reporting and points out future trends of reporting within the three dimensions of economy, environment and society. Findings - The internal and external communication of the corporate performance is a very important company way to sustainable development. The communication of the corporate performance comprises the strategic and operational goals, the corporate performance data on inventory level, the translation of the inventory data to sustainability core indicators as well as the performance evaluation in terms of sustainability. The future trends on policy level and in customer demands are moving towards a product-related consideration of sustainability issues, the inclusion of indirect effects over the life cycle in addition to the site-related effects of companies' activities, the analysis of results on impact level as well as the automation of data administration. Originality/value - The methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) provides the main starting-point for global sustainability reporting including the emerging future trends in this context. This paper shows that results of impact assessments as central parts of an LCA are a good basis for creating significant indicators for sustainability reports.The paper gives an overview of the main issues of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a product. The types and main components of LCA are briefly discussed. The holistic approach of LCA of any product is outlined. The main categories of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) are highlighted. The modem approach of ship Design for Environment is presented. The LCA of ships is addressed to clarify energy consumption and environmental impacts. Particular emphasis is placed on the methods commonly used to reduce energy consumption and environmental impacts over the three stages of ship construction, ship operation and ship scrapping. The rationalization of materials used in shipbuilding and ship scrapping is emphasized. The solid waste management hierarchy is presented. The importance of using LCA to determine the environmental performance of ships is highlighted.Three water-immiscible coolants are compared due to their environmental burdens using LCA methodology. Main focus lies on an animal fat ester based product that is compared to a plant seed oil (rape) based ester and a mineral oil product. All indicators show that the animal fat product causes the lowest potential impact on the environment, whereas results for plant seed ester based and conventional coolants are ambiguous and do not allow for a clear preference of the one or the other. Advantage of native ester products is very clear in energy balance and abiotic resource depletion but in some impact categories scores of plant seed esters clearly exceed those of mineral oil. &COPY; 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The New Zealand dairy industry faces political and commercial pressure to improve its environmental performance while maintaining commercial competitiveness in a global marketplace. In response to such pressures, the industry has taken some steps to improve the environmental management practices of dairy farmers. Despite significant effort, however, the dairy sector remains highly influenced by global competition, and continues to subordinate environmental sustainability to economic productivity. Furthermore, government institutions have had limited control over farm management practices, or the extent to which public policies militate against the relentless rise in land use intensification. As a consequence of its environmental impacts, dairy farming has received widespread public criticism over the past decade. The dairy industry has responded by bringing environmental concerns within the ambit of dairy farm management. The aim of this paper is to assess the concept of ecological modernisation, as an environmental policy model, with reference to New Zealand's dairy industry. The focus of the paper will be on the management of dairy effluent and water quality, because environmental initiatives by the industry and policy actions by regional and central government have focused most strongly on these elements. Ecological modernisation as a term has been variously applied to several separate phenomena. They include a growing body of theoretical literature in environmental sociology, political and industrial programmes concerned with improving the environmental performance of industry through rational environmental management, 'reconciling economic development and environment'. Examples of representative practices include 'strategic environmental management', 'cleaner production', 'industrial life cycle analysis', and 'environmental quality assessment' systems such as ISO 14001. Some proponents of ecological modernisation view it as synonymous with sustainable development. According to ecological modernisation theorists, it as a social practice offers the means by which industrial society can hope to make a transition toward ecologically sustainable production. They espouse greener technologies, 'polluter pays', and 'ecological rationality'. Socio-political practices and policies that promote such change should be encouraged, including knowledge-based institutions, innovation and the application of sophisticated new technologies. However, despite the promise of new environmental management policies and practices by the regional councils and dairy industry, the continuing decline of water quality in many parts of New Zealand suggests that ecological modernisation is unlikely to prevent the gradual, unremitting, environmental deterioration, so long as the main drivers behind agricultural intensification continue. New Zealand is also experiencing a fundamental and seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the economic dynamic of capitalist production for food, and protection of the nation's natural environment and habitats. As critics of official environmental policies have often argued, the current mismatch between green objectives and the planning approach has allowed politicians to claim the possibility of win-win solutions. Policy simulation modelling may thus become politically sensitive if it makes this mismatch between green agendas and the rational planning approach apparent. Set against this stark background, current trends suggest that the ecological modernisation of New Zealand's dairy industry is not likely to compensate for the environmental consequences created by the expansion of the dairy industry.During the last two decades, several research groups as well as consultants have been analysing the environmental impacts of incineration in comparison to other waste treatment options. Methods and models for describing these systems have been developed. Systems studies on local, regional and national level have been performed using a wide range of different modelling approaches. The aim of this paper is to describe the environmental performance of incineration with energy recovery in Europe in comparison with other options for waste treatment/recovery. This includes identifying key factors that largely affect the outcome from environmental systems studies where such comparisons are made. The paper focuses on mixed solid waste and on waste fractions where there has been a lot of controversy whether the material should be recycled, incinerated or treated biologically (e.g. paper, plastics, compostable material). The paper is based on a meta-study, where the above research field is mapped out in order to gather relevant systems studies made on local, regional and national levels in Europe. By thoroughly examining these studies, conclusions are drawn regarding the environmental performance of incineration with energy recovery and regarding key factors affecting the environmental results.The development of electricity technology from the environmental aspect has become the key factor for competitiveness, i.e., environmental friendliness is one of the most important considerations for technology development. Under the monopolised electric industry of the past, there was little motivation for individual companies to actually manage their company. However, because of the increasing demand for energy and the concerns for the environment, energy policies are shifting towards a sustainable development, which considers both the economics and environmental protection. According to the paradigm shift of the energy policy, it is necessary to compare two major electricity sources from the view of enviromnental management issues. It is effective with the common dimensionless unit concerning the various environmental categories including the radiological and non-radiological points of view, which can be realized by the new environmental impact assessment methodology such as the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This study aims at a comparison of the environmental impacts of the nuclear and coal power generation systems using the LCA methodology. These results are very preliminary ones, however, this study will be helpful in making a decision on a long term electricity plan and the energy mix optimization when considering the environmental aspect in Korea and also the power generation companies could enhance their images by showing off their willingness to improve the environmental quality.Decision-making by life-cycle-approaches is a matter of responsibility and plays a substantial role in corporate identity of innovative companies. The use of customised tools and databases is growing. In product optimisation, the decisions can be based on available life-cycle information and a sustainable decision with a company's perspective can be drawn. Green procurement decision-making can be especially demanding because the 'best available decisions' from the viewpoint of the (often diverse thinking) public may be required. The presentation shows various effects of life-cycle-related decision-support in product optimisation and green procurement by applying and modifying successful approaches. Databases already available can be adapted to specific situations and offer an ideal basis for effective decision support. This issue is presented using PVC as an example. PE Europe is the leader of an international consortium working on a report for the European Commission, sorting and structuring available LCA facts about PVC for decision support in future PVC policy. The way of structuring available information led to a discussion of the pros and cons of different solutions, which will be shown. The overview of different aspects enables prioritisation using Life Cycle Assessment, to support decision making effectively and to avoid omitting important facts. Professionals in companies and in (public) procurement fields may be inspired to base their decisions on life-cycle related information and may be encouraged to take immediate steps towards sustainability. Academics obtain feedback on the most important topics in 'public' decision-support that will inspire further target-oriented life-cycle research.Recently more and more consumers apply Web-Based decision support systems in practice, because more people have gained the possibility to use the Internet. Also, special requirements for such system's development have been applied. Therefore, traditional models of ethical decision-making cannot always be directly applied in such systems. In this paper the Web-Based Model of Multiple Criteria Ethical Decision-Making is developed by the authors that is based on ethical (autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice and fidelity) and decision-making (life-cycle analysis, multi-variant design and multiple criteria analysis, etc.) principles. This Model can help stakeholders to make the best feasible decision in given circumstances. The proposed Model does not make ethical decisions, but explains a process for investigating a situation.This paper discusses the development of a methodology proposed to be used as an assessment tool in sustainable engineering management, SMET is sustainable Management of Engineering technologies, aims to provide an assessment tool for engineers of projects and technologies alike in an comprehensive manner which includes, sustainability in all fascists of design, environment (EIS), Life cycle assessment (LCA), social consequences, human interaction and resource management.This paper focuses on the presentation of MIPEL (Optimum Management of Industrial Products at the End of their useful Life), a research project which aims at the application of environmental tools, such as "Life Cycle Analysis" and "Design for Environment", for the optimisation of the environmental management of industrial products (focusing on electrical and electronic equipment). The strategic goal is to decrease the volume of waste, with the use of the following: Optimisation of the environmental management of industrial products at the end of their useful life, with the use of the existing infrastructure. Introduction of new technologies on the disassembly and environmental management of the industrial products at the end of their useful life. Redesign of the industrial products in order to become environment friendly. Exploitation of the parts and materials of the industrial products at the end of their useful life. Environmentally sound disposal of the parts which are not further exploitable. Decrease of the hazardous materials, raw materials and natural resources that are utilised for the production of such products. The above mentioned environmental tools are applied to "NetMod", which is used as a case study in the bounds of the project. "NetMod" is an ISDN Network Terminal that has been developed by INTRACOM S.A., one of the project's partners.Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a procedure used as an analytical tool for the evaluation of the environmental impact caused by a material, a manufacturing process or product. For an end product, LCA requires both the identification and quantification of materials and energy used in all stages of the product's life, together with their environmental impact. It requires therefore a huge amount of data about materials, components, manufacturing processes, energy consumption and the relevant environmental impacts. For this reason, a number of software and databases has been developed, in order to facilitate LCA users. These are the so-called Eco-Tools, used in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of a product from the materials and the energy used for production. In this paper, LCA is conducted for solar thermosyphonic systems, with the aid of three commercially available Eco-Tools, usually used by LCA practitioners, namely: Eco-It, GEMIS and SimaPro, and the results are compared. Although all three tools claim accordance with the international standards and guidelines, some differences do exist. Eco-It is the simplest of all and its use is restricted solely as a tool for designers in their search for more environmental friendly designs. A small database of materials and processes is included while the values used originate from the Eco-Indicator 99 methodology and can be regarded as dimensionless figures. GEMIS on the other hand, was developed as a tool for the comparative assessment of environmental effects of energy and it includes an extensive database of materials and processes. It can perform complete life-cycle computations for a variety of emissions, and can determine resources used; it allows also for cost analysis and environmental assessment. Emission standards, various material process chains and transport services data are available in the GEMIS database. SimaPro includes several inventory databases with a large variety of materials and processes, plus the most important impact assessment methods. It can be used either as a tool for designers, like the Eco-It, or as a tool for the comparative assessment of environmental effects, like GEMIS. In the current analysis SimaPro results are used as comparison basis. A typical solar thermosyphonic system (DSHWS) with a 4 m(2) collector area and a capacity of 150 It that covers the hot water needs of a three person family in Thessaloniki is used as case study. The results of the three tools are compared for each component of the solar system as well as for each material used and for the conventional energy substituted by the system.Through the new approach of Integrated Product Policies (IPP), the European Union is developing measures that influence the supply and demand of environmentally sound products and services. The peculiarity of the Italian production, characterized by the presence of very small enterprises distributed in productive zones, make rather significant the spreading of IPP tools. The wood furniture district of Marche region represents a very interesting case because of its importance for number of enterprises, homogeneity of production typology (and consequently repetition of the actions) and concentration in a bounded area. In this context, the European LIFE project LAIPP "Dissemination of IPP tools in the furniture industry", (October 2004 - April 2007), of which ENEA is a partner, has the following objectives: Survey on a large number of firms of furniture sector to generate a database for benchmarking on environmental performances; Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on two productive sectors (office furniture and kitchen furniture, aspiration hood included) that will involve six important firms and the respective product chains, with the target to develop sector specific LCA database and to analyse life cycle critical phases; Use by a sample of firms of two specialised softwares tailored for Small and Medium Enterprises: eVerdEE (LCA tool) and TESPI (ecodesign tool); Development of Product Category Rules (PCRs) for two product groups and assignment of an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD); Proposal of a model (and implementation) in the same firms of a Product Oriented Environmental Management System (POEMS). The project foresees three kinds of partners: 1) Public bodies and entrepreneurial Institutions: Marche Region, Municipality of Pesaro, SVIM (a mixed joint-stock company, aiming at implementing public administration action), and the Industrial Associations of Pesaro and Urbino; 2) Scientific and technical bodies: ENEA, University of Ancona, Cosmob (consortium of furniture manufacturers) and Meccano (centre of competence for the mechanical industry); 3) Important companies operating in the wood furniture sector Upper, Grossi Lamiere, Mobilpref, Scavolini and Elica. Awareness and training activities on IPP themes and dissemination of the project results within the main furniture districts in Italy and in some European countries will be carried out during the project, involving companies, public organizations, category associations, research centres.It is well known that the building sector significantly contributes in the percentage of total consumption of energy and to associated environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, toxic air emissions, etc. Consequently, the reduction of the cooling and heating energy consumption in buildings is both of environmental and economical concern. Advanced glazing can have a significant role towards this direction. According to the presented analysis, the building energy consumption can be reduced by 55% when the electrochromic device is used in cooling dominated areas. More than 30 MJ are saved per MJ consumed during its lifecycle, the corresponding CO2 emissions reduction is more than 500 kg CO2 equivalent, while the reduction of toxic emissions can reach 45 kg 1,4-DCB equivalent, when the lifecycle is extended to 25 years. If the lifecycle is extended above 20 years and the device price is reduced to 200 EURO/m(2), each MJ saved would cost less than the current electricity price in Greece (1.07 cent/MJ). The above results indicate the high environmental performance of the EC glazing, their environmental benign nature and enhance their use as energy saving devices adjusted to the building envelope.the construction stage has a great impact on environment. Many countries are now paying great effort to study on standard models and procedures for their application in practical environmental impact assessment. In this paper, in accordance with the LCA (Life-Cycle Assessment) and the conception of working procedure unit, the emphasis was given to develop a new EIA technique framework for environmental impact assessment in construction stage of construction projects. Through the construction procedure analysis and input-output analysis of unit procedure, environmental factors in construction phase are identified and assessed, and the impacts can be aggregated using a weighting system. By this paper, a feasible assessment model may be established to evaluate the environmental impacts of the construction process. The use of the framework is hoped to improve construction environmental performance and sustainability of construction projects.The environmental impact produced in the residential sector is among the biggest in modem society. The energy consumption in this sector accounts for about 40 % of the total energy consumed in a country. Windows are among the main responsible of the energy losses and gains in buildings, affecting both their summer and winter energy balances, and being responsible for up to 25-50 % of the energy consumption due to thermal conditioning purposes, depending on the climate conditions. Modern technology have produced a variety of models aimed at controlling these energy transfers, like double and triple glazed windows filled with heavy inert gases, low-emittance coatings, thermal breaks in frames, etc. However, the fabrication of these new windows requires new consumptions and releases new emissions, and their real environmental and economic benefits are not always guaranteed. For instance, the production of heavy inert gasses like Ar, Kr and Xe requires huge amounts of energy, and therefore is responsible for the associated emissions of pollutants. In this paper, the environmental and economic assessment of the application of double-glazed windows filled with air, Ar, Kr and Xe in typical houses of the Andean and region of western Argentina is performed. The methodology used for the evaluation of the environmental impact is Life Cycle Assessment, while the economic assessment is performed using the Life Cycle Costing method.A comparative hybrid life cycle assessment was conducted to assess two different methods for hydrogen production. Environmental impacts from nuclear assisted thermochemical water splitting are compared to hydrogen production from natural gas steam reforming with CO2-sequestration. The results show that the two methods have significantly different impacts. The nuclear alternative has lower impacts on global warming potential, acidification and eutrophication, and much higher impacts from radiation and human toxicity. A weighting procedure is not applied, hence no overall "winner" can be proclaimed. The relative importance of different impacts remains a challenge for eventual decision makers. Further, the assessment has demonstrated the importance of including economic inputs in a comparative assessment; ordinary process-LCA may produce distorted results since a larger fraction life cycle impacts may occur in one study compared to another.The depletion of the limited non-renewable resources is one of the most important factor for the future existence of mankind. Exergy can be applied as a measure of the quality of limited natural resources. The thermoecological cost can be defined as cumulative exergy consumption of non-renewable natural resources connected with the production of some particular product and the additional cumulative exergy consumption connected with prevention and compensation of environmental losses. The paper presents the analysis of the thermoecological cost of electricity production in coal-fired steam power plants. The methodology of evaluating the thermoecological cost taking into account life cycle of considered product is discussed. The paper includes also the description of the method of calculation of the thermoecological cost resulting from rejection of harmful substances to natural environment. In this case two methods are discussed: the first method is based on monetary indices of harmful impacts of the waste products rejected to natural environment and the second is based on the idea of abatement cost. Results of calculations of the thermoecological cost of electricity taking into account life cycle of installation have been presented. Calculations have been made for Polish conditions, where majority of electricity is produced in coal fired (energy hard coal and lignite) steam power plant.On the condition of lack of resource and energy, research and application of green technology and remanufacturing technology are active and realistic, green manufacture and green remanufacture, which people focused on relate each other more closer than that of the difference between them. In this paper, on the basis of description of green product and remanufacturing product life cycle (LC) design factors which determine the result of remanufacturing process are analyzed together with the important status of design stage in a product life cycle; a hierarchical architecture model of green remanufacturing process facing to a product life cycle is put forward; with purpose of saving resource, saving energy and do most possibly less harm to environment, parts and components disposal methods and their optimal selection strategy in different stages during the whole green remanufacturing process are indicated; a design effect field of LC-based green remanufacture is given. According to requests of LC green remanufacture, an upstream hierarchical design strategy and relations between layers within the model are brought forward, a cluster of design criteria is presented. Current design theories with a key of life cycle assessment method associated with green remanufacture are not suitable commonly, the primary reason of imperfection of domestic applicable theory in this field is considered to be the lack of public statistic data, a continuous improvement on the theory offered in this paper is oriented.This paper addresses issues raised by the sub-title of the conference "Geotechnology in harmony with the global environment" and considers how harmony may be assessed. It is argued that harmony with the environment cannot be achieved without sustainability and therefore sustainability must be considered as a first step. An attempt is made to develop a procedure to assess sustainability using life cycle assessment as a model and taking into account human values.This paper investigates the environmental impact of electric energy generation by using a PEMFC and an MCFC system. Fuel cells are considered to be ultra-clean energy conversion devices, since pollutants emissions during operation have a very low concentration, compared to those of traditional energy systems. In order to understand the real environmental impact of fuel cells, this is not enough and it is necessary to study their "cradle-to-grave" life, starting from the construction phase, to the operational life and eventually to its disposal. In fact, it is not really correct to say that fuel cells are almost zero-emission systems, because they produce not-negligible emissions during manufacturing and to produce hydrogen. The method used in this paper is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which has been calculated with the software SimaPro 5.0. The functional unit chosen in this study is the production of 1 kWh of electric energy by a PEMFC and an MCFC. Thanks to this approach, the critical process related to the production of energy by the previous fuel cell systems, (i.e. the production of hydrogen by natural gas steam reforming), has been determined. After a separated LCA of the PEMFC and the MCFC, a comparison was made between the two systems, considering the environmental impact of electric energy generation. Finally, the production of electric energy by a PEMFC and an MCFC systems is compared to that by conventional energy conversion systems.Recycling should be promoted to protect the global environment; however, it is difficult to determine its quantitative impact. A life cycle assessment (LCA) becomes currently the most popular method to estimate the impact. The metal-plated resin is the popular material for the parts of the car and furniture. However, it is a difficult material for recycling as the composite material of resin and metal. Recently, the recycling method, which was used by grinding and separation, was developed by Idemitsu Technofine Co., Ltd.. The environmental impact such as the CO2 emission and the yield of waste was estimated for the recycling process by LCA. As a result, it became clear that the recycling process was efficient for the environment.Recently, RDF (refuse derived fuel) has been of importance in the treatment of municipal solid waste in view of environmental aspects as well as energy recovery. In this study, a technical assessment of the RDF production process was carried out using the RFTF (recovery factor transform function) method. Various configurations of the RDF processing circuit were evaluated in terms of heat value, mass yield and costs. As a result, the optimum RDF processing line was identified. Currently, the environmental impacts of the process are being evaluated using LCA (Life Cycle Assessment).Fuel Cells seem to constitute one of the most essential solutions in the enormous environmental problem that our planet faces. A Fuel Cell is an energy transforming appliance that changes the gas chemical energy directly to electric energy and heat, without the need of the intermediate combustion stage, achieving much greater effectiveness in comparison with all the other thermo mechanical methods. The basic idea of Fuel Cells operation is identical with this of batteries, with one difference, that Fuel Cells do not need recharge. One of the advantages of the Fuel Cells is the small percentage of emissions that originate in the use phase. Based on this, Fuel Cells seem to be one of the best solutions for the continuous protection of the environment. The application of Life Cycle Assessment has identified all the emissions and waste that occur during the following stages: manufacturing, use and disposal. It has been found that the stage of manufacturing has the highest environmental impact. The advantages of the Solid Oxide Fuel Cells can be summarised in the following ascertainments: The Fuel Cells that function with clean hydrogen (seldom), do not have emissions, beyond flow of electricity and heat. The Fuel Cells that function with hydrogen, which emanates from natural gas, have low emissions of carbon dioxide. When they are combined with thermal units for the exploitation of waste heat, they present exceptional output and are friendly for the environment. The heat that the Fuel Cells produce can be used for heating and refrigeration of internal spaces. Fuel Cells are a clean and reliable technology that will play a significant role in the near future. Basic presupposition for the achievement of this plan is the continuation of the research in the technology of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells but also the intention of the world community in changing the energy production pattern.Consumers have become increasingly interested in the origin and the quality of their food, including the source of food's raw materials, its safety and nutritional value and most recently the environmental impacts of the production systems adopted in producing and delivering the food. Flour is the main ingredient of bread, cakes, pastries and other bakery products which are considered as the base of modern healthy diet worldwide. Moreover, in Mediterranean countries these products have an outstanding acceptance by consumers. In Greece, wheat is cultivated in significant quantities and a number of milling industries supply the food industries and small bakeries with many different types of flour. The national demand for various products of flour-producing industries presented a mean annual increase rate of about 1.5% for the years 1999-2000, while the demand for the year 2000 was 753.000 tons. For the same year the national production ranged up to 825.000 tons. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a relatively new, cutting edge environmental decision support tool recently standardised by the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO). LCA is an excellent tool for environmental management, as it provides important information about the environmental burdens associated to a product, a process or any human activity. In this study, a simplified LCA following the "cradle-to-gate" approach has been applied to identify the critical points of the flour production in Greece. The SimaPro software was used for analyzing the main inventory data and estimating the environmental impacts of the overall system (from wheat grain to flour production). The system investigated includes agricultural production of soft wheat, transportation, industrial milling and packaging of the flour. Energy use, material use and emissions were quantified and the main potential environmental effects were assessed. The application of fertilizers, transportation and electrical energy consumption were found to be the 'hot spots' for many, but not all, of the impact categories investigated and specific actions were proposed in the aim to improve the environmental profile of the final product.The article describes and discusses to some detail a method for computing the cost of a commodity in terms of its resource-base equivalent value (as opposed to its monetary cost). The method is called the extended exergy accounting technique (EEA), and its proper application enables the analyst to perform more complete and meaningful assessments of a complex production system, including of course energy conversion processes. The novelty as well as the decisive advantage of EEA consists in its being entirely and uniformly resource-based the so-called externalides (labor, capital and environmental remediation costs) are included in the system balance by means of their equivalent exergetic fluxes, which represent the gross amount of primary exergy required to locally generate the specified amount of capital, the specified number of work-hours, or to reduce the emissions below a certain specified level. EEA owes some of its structural formalism to Sraffa's "network" representation of the economic production of commodities by means of other commodities, which it extends by accounting for the unavoidable energy dissipation in every productive chain. The method has also borrowed several definitions, concepts and procedures from Georgescu-Roegen's classical work on the economic implications of irreversibility on production chains, from Daly's pioneering work in resource-oriented economics and from Szargut's "cumulative exergy content" method. The representation of a general energy conversion process by means of its extended exergy flow diagram is discussed in this article, and it is argued that some of the issues that are difficult to address with a purely monetary approach can be properly resolved by EEA. It is also shown how EEA, being intrinsically "localized" both in time and in space, can account for the non-uniformity of societal conditions without the need of patching the theory with artificial features external to its paradigm. In the conclusions, some indications are given as to the possibility of using the extended exergy accounting technique to supplement and substantially improve Thermo-Economics on one side and Life-Cycle Assessment or Environmental Footprint Analysis on the other side.The objective of this study was to quantitatively evaluate the environmental impact of tomato production in passive greenhouses and to identify the most relevant environmental issues. The LCA approach was used in this study. A tomato crop was cultivated in a steel-framed greenhouse; plants were grown in a closed-loop irrigation system in which the substrate was perlite bags. With the exception of the toxicity indicators, the main sources of environmental impact were fertilizer production and the process for manufacturing the materials used for the greenhouse structure and the auxiliary equipment, substrate, irrigation and recirculation equipment. The relatively short life span of plastic covered greenhouse structures and the minimal input of external energy involved in the production process are the most important factors related with the production process. The study compared the use of two cladding materials: rigid PC sheet with a lifespan of 10 years and flexible LDPE film with a life of three years. The types of cladding compared in this study (PC sheet and LDPE film) are not particularly relevant for environmental analysis.Greenhouse crops, one of the most innovative examples of modern agriculture, are considered to be one of the highest man-made forms of agricultural activity, due to the high level of both technological and bio-agronomic input. Greenhouse crops are characterised by the use of structures and equipment as well as increased energy resources and water use efficiency in the production processes. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is an instrument which provides a quantitative estimate of all flows of matter and energy related to the realisation of a product, providing an evaluation of the environmental compatibility and end result of each productive choice. The LCA method can be applied not only to industrial processes but also to agricultural production such as that carried out in greenhouses. The productive choices of the growers in regards to input and materials utilised are principally based on financial factors. The changes brought about as a result of these choices have a long-term effect in terms of the quantity of residuals and quality of the agricultural environment. This paper presents the results of an LCA study conducted on the outcome and importance of critical management and engineering choices in greenhouse agriculture in West European territory. The goal of this research is to provide an objective comparison of the environmental compatibility of horticultural production carried out in varying typology of greenhouses. For this study the three main forms of greenhouses used in Italy have been considered. The three typology of greenhouse are: a pitched roof structure in zinc-coated steel with glass covering; a vaulted roof structure in zinc-coated steel with plastic film covering; and a pitched roof structure in wood with plastic film covering. In order to best analyse the environmental sustainability of greenhouse production, research has been carried out with the active participation of Italian growers in order to acquire credible information regarding the actual consumption of energy and renewable and/or non-renewable resources utilised in greenhouse cultivation of tomatoes.While numerous examples of 'sustainable houses' have been designed and constructed, typically as one-off projects by architects, the volume housing market has been slower to respond to an emerging interest in green housing. However, large-scale transformation of housing stock will not be possible without the engagement of this industry segment. This chapter outlines a recently commenced research project to support the volume housing market in moving towards more sustainable practice. The project aims to determine the life cycle environmental performance of the 'EcoHome', a relatively standard home designed for the volume housing market but with a range of easily-adopted modifications incorporated to improve its environmental performance. A comparison of a range of environmental rating tools for houses was conducted to identify the most commonly used indicators of sustainability. These will inform the development of a methodology for rating the EcoHome's performance. Monitoring of a range of parameters will be conducted post-construction and the results will also contribute to an overall evaluation of performance. Life cycle assessment and embodied energy analysis will also be used to quantify impacts.This chapter discusses development of eco-decision support tools and databases designed to facilitate corporate management in sustainable development and construction processes. Such tool developer's alignment of their products with best practice asset management frameworks is critical if they are to be integrated into corporate management systems. Real world asset management issues include discontinuities in work sequencing, multi-layered communications across stakeholders and between policy, procurement and construction development procedures and timelines. CASE studies are shown from two new Government buildings developed to achieve star ratings for Ecologically Sustainable Fitout of Office Accommodation using asset management decision support tools based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods and databases. Using these two studies a comparative assessment is drawn of the application of Australian ecodesign tools, based on quantitative and qualitative LCA. Such tools and assessments are discussed to facilitate eco-efficient building design as well as fitout and refurbishment. The scope of work of the qualitative tool is based upon an asset management framework covering policy, planning, design and documentation, procurement, demolition, construction and pre-occupancy assessments. The quantitative tool exploits more construction detail over a shorter scope of work from acquisition, manufacture and supply of building products and systems through to construction and building operation. Results of a gap analysis are presented to illustrate potential outcomes from each tool and that potential uptake of either tool type can best be appreciated in the wider context of sustainable asset and construction management. Background In the Australian built environment, there is depletion of natural reserves of freshwater, clean air, naturally productive land and pollution of urban air to an extent that it can be detrimental to the health of both human communities and natural ecosystems. The global scale of habitat deterioration and destruction, climate change and depletion of natural resources elicited responses from the United Nations with the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depletion in 1987, the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change in 1997 [1]. Subsequently the Council of Australian Governments' National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (NS ESD) defined ESD as using, conserving, and enhancing community resources so that ecological processes on which life depends are maintained and the total quality of life now and in the future can be increased [2]. A further national commitment to ESD endorsed in 1996 was the National Greenhouse Response Strategy (NGRS) [3]. Responding to the NS ESD, the national 'CGI-97 Directions Forum' recognized that the total buildings' share of escalating global environmental deterioration was significant and that incorporation of ESD into asset management practices would support such national and global initiatives [4-7]. In 1997 this Forum launched the Built Environment Protocol on issues of: ecologically sustainable procurement in building construction, fitout and use communication and education to promote improved building products and practices minimized building resource use, wastage and emissions to air, land and water improved environmental health performance of buildings/products and services [8].Emergy (spelled with an m) is the energy of one kind, usually solar energy, which is required to make a service or product. The yearly emergy con sumption/production of a building is evaluated considering the Solar Energy Laboratory (LESO) building on the campus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (Switzerland). This experimental building was constructed according to special environmental considerations, such as important the use of passive gains (heat emitted from solar radiations, electric appliances and building users). It is therefore characterized by a very low energy consumption, equal to 232 MJ/m(2) year. The LESO building is occupied by faculty and students. Undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty represent information inputs to the system with their emergy accounting for 94.6% of the emergy inputs to the building, equal to 3.3E18 sej/year (solar emjoules per year). "Educated students" (students who have completed a semester project, master's or PhD research in the laboratory), publications, courses and services are the main outputs of the system. The four outputs are considered as co-outputs, as such the total energy associated to the operation of the building as a structure is entirely assigned to each of them. The evaluation established that a student leaving the LESO building has a transformity (emergy per unit energy) equal to 2AE8 sej/J, which is about three times higher than the one which he/she had upon arrival, representing the knowledge gained through conferences and interactions with other students and professors. Considering only energy and materials inputs, electricity was established to be the largest input to the system (2.7E16 sej/year). The total emergy of the material inflows was determined to equal 1.7E16 sej/year, paper being the largest material input (5.7E15 sej/year). The specific emergy (per mass) of some common building materials was also evaluated and compared to NRE (non-renewable energy). Finally, the question of uncertainties related to the determination and use of average transformities and emergy per mass values is addressed, and advantages and drawbacks of the emergy method are discussed in relation to other common evaluation methodology (exergy, embodied energy, life-cycle analysis). (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work a comparative environmental assessment of different advanced oxidation processes (AOP's) is performed. Two energy scenarios have been considered according to the energy source used: solar energy and electricity (UVA lamp). A life cycle assessment (LCA) is carried out in order to quantify the environmental impacts of the AOP's. The treatments considered are heterogenous photocatalysis, photo-Fenton reactions, the coupling of heterogeneous photocatalysis and photo-Fenton, and heterogeneous photocatalysis in combination with hydrogen peroxide. These AOP's are applied to the treatment of kraft mill bleaching wastewaters. The system under study includes the production of the catalysts, reagents as well as the production of electricity; eight environmental impact categories are assessed for each AOP: global warming, ozone depletion, aquatic eutrophication, acidification, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic toxicity, photochemical ozone formation, and abiotic resource depletion. the results of the LCA show that the environmental impact of AOP's is caused mainly by the amount of electricity consumed, whereas the impact of producing the reagents and catalysts is comparatively low. For this reason, the solar energy scenario reduces the impact more than 90% for almost all AOP's and impact categories. None of the solar driven AOP's can be identified as the best in all impact categories, but heterogenous photocatalysis and photo-Fenton reactions obtain better results than the remaining treatments, since these treatments do not consume simultaneously both TiO2 and H2O2, the chemicals with highest environmental burdens in the system. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Larger widespread public concern about sustainability as an answer to the huge pressure put on the medium by the accelerated degree of development is bringing about the emergence of analytical tools with the purpose of assessing environmental damage relating to industrial products or activities in general. According to this project's vocation a new experimental tool, based on generic LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) software aided by a process simulator, is developed to carry out the assessments of several scenarios of waste valorization in the cement process. Starting from a preset base case of zero alternative material usage, the program recalculates environmental impacts of the evolved process taking into account deviations in pollutant emission levels and benefits of waste recovery versus new resource consumption. The results of these analyses will help with decision-making issues concerning the selection and dosage of most adequate waste according to comparison between data obtained from the different scenarios proposed, assuring in this way the minimisation of environmental impact in the recovery/valorization of these alternative materials.This paper describes the development of a Life Cycle Assessment tool for commercial buildings in Hong Kong. The study was commissioned by the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department in the interest of promoting sustainable construction. A computing tool was developed that facilitates building professionals to input the required data to model building design; perform calculations of the environmental impacts, operating energy and life cycle cost of the building; and to compare the impacts and costs of alternative designs. The tool features a user-friendly processing template, with design-oriented data-entry sheets and informative reporting documents for the application of the construction industry in Hong Kong.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to evaluate environmental impacts associated with products during their life cycle. However, it has been recognized that LCA has a limitation in assessing open cycle recycling of materials because of inevitable subjective judgments in setting system boundary. According with the enforcement of recycling laws, there has been a rapid increase in recycling ratio of materials at the end-of-life of products in Japan. So, materials' life cycle is getting more complicated, which makes it difficult to quantify the environmental impacts of materials used in a product in an appropriate way. This paper reviews this limitation of conventional LCA and suggests a new methodology for assessing open cycle recycling of materials. The new tool is called "Strategic Integrated LCA Technology for sustainable society, SILT", in which LCA is integrated with population balance model and pinch technology. This tool deals with dynamic aspects of recycling materials and has macro point of view. One can assess the maximum recyclable ratio of the scrap materials and total environmental impacts caused by the material production in a society in each year. In addition, reduction potential of environmental impacts by the introduction of new technology, such as WE, can be quantified by this tool.Steel cans are characterized by high strength to withstand internal pressures and low environmental load because of their high suitability for recycling. The annual consumption of steel cans is 910,000 tons, with a recycling ratio of 87.5% (2003). This recycling ratio is high compared to containers of other materials, which is also at the highest level, internationally. Moreover, if the further recycling of cans, other than standard scraps, being made after incineration is taken into consideration, the recycling ratio rises more than 90%. This report attempts to give a detailed description of the actual state and characteristic features of steel-can recycling. As a result of the LCA (life cycle assessment) of steel cans, based on the fact of "steel products being used cyclically in steel products," it has been proved that steel cans are environment-friendly containers with low CO2 emissions and energy consumption during life cycle. If people associated with steel continue to advocate the above characteristics of steel cans vigorously and widely for the benefit of general consumers, even higher consumption and recycling ratios can be expected.Environmental impact and cost of waste plastics utilization in the steel industry as feedstock materials for blast and electric furnaces were evaluated using scenario-based life cycle assessment technique. These processes were compared with conventional processes including liquefaction and incineration with electric power generation. Since existent process inventory data do not include an input flow of plastic materials and cannot be used for the analysis of scenarios varying plastics flow rate, new process inventory models, which have an input flow of plastics and have other input/output flows depending on the flow rate of plastics, were developed. A case study of the utilization of the industrial waste plastics from Aichi district was performed using our life cycle model. Total emission of carbon dioxide and total energy consumption were used as environmental indices and costs of transportation, investments and utilities were estimated as well. We found that every process is effective from the view point of the reduction of carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption. Especially, the blast furnace has large potential to reduce carbon dioxide emission. The transportation does not have significant contribution to environmental impacts and total cost. As a result, waste plastics utilization in the steel industry is an effective technology to reduce environmental impacts.Many industrial strategies have been developed in order to promote manufacturers' environmental responsibility and consumer's consciousness over the few last decades. However, not many of these efforts have involved the service industries. Information about environmental performance of services is becoming increasingly important nowadays. One of the most extensive tools used to assess the environmental impact of a product, process or activity is LCA (life cycle assessment). It is an iterative process for assessing the consumption of resources, environmental impacts and waste generation associated with the whole life cycle. This methodology has been standardised by different institutions (CEN, ISO and SETAC), and has been applied successfully in a great number of companies. This paper presents a LCA applied to the passengers' transportation service using SIMAPRO 5.1, comparing the impacts of using public road transport with those associated with the use of particular cars for a regional short-distance trajectory. To apply it, we must consider the typical stages identified in the performance of a service: service preparation, service production and consumption, which are simultaneous, and activities after the service (mainly maintenance activities). To sum up, this study helps to support those theories that promote the use of public transport against private. This solution attempts to improve traffic between cities and to improve our environment. In this paper we confirm that cars cause a greater environmental impact than buses on a global scale by making a precise evaluation of the comparatives figures. On the other hand, areas where the bus has a more negative impact can be improved using good environmental practices, for example, recycling materials or components.This two-part paper assesses four strategies for energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW) by dedicated waste-to-energy (WTE) plants generating electricity through a steam cycle. The feedstock is the residue after materials recovery (MR), assumed to be 35% by weight of the collected MSW. In strategy 1, the MR residue is fed directly to a grate combustor. In strategy 2, the MR residue is first subjected to light mechanical treatment. In strategies 3 and 4, the MR residue is converted into RDF, which is combusted in a fluidized bed combustor. To examine the relevance of scale, we considered a small waste management system (WMS) serving 200,000 people and a large WMS serving 1,200,000 people. A variation of strategy 1 shows the potential of cogeneration with district heating. The assessment is carried out by a Life Cycle Analysis where the electricity generated by the WTE plant displaces electricity generated by fossil fuel-fired steam plants. Part A focuses on mass and energy balances, while Part B focuses on emissions and costs. Results show that treating the MR residue ahead of the WTE plant reduces energy recovery. The largest energy savings are achieved by combusting the MR residue "as is" in large scale plants; with cogeneration, primary energy savings can reach 2.5% of total societal energy use. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This two-part paper assesses four strategies for energy recovery from Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) by dedicated Waste-To-Energy (WTE) plants. In strategy 1, the residue of Material Recovery (MR) is fed directly to a grate combustor, while in strategy 2 the grate combustor comes downstream of light mechanical treatment. In strategies 3 and 4, the MR residue is converted into Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), in a fluidized cumbuster bed. The results of Part A, devoted to mass and energy balances, clearly show that pre-treating the MR residue in order to increase the heating value of the feedstock fed to the WTE plant has marginal effects on the energy efficiency of the WTE plant. When considering the efficiency of the whole strategy of waste management, the energy balances show that the more thorough the pre-treatment, the smaller the amount of energy recovered per unit of MR residue. Starting from the heat/mass balances illustrated in Part A, Part B examines the environmental impacts and economics of the various strategies by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Results show that treating the MR residues ahead of the WTE plant does not provide environmental or economic benefits. RDF production worsens almost all impact indicators because it reduces net electricity production and thus the displacement of power plant emissions; it also increases costs, because the benefits of improving the quality of the material fed to the WTE plant do not compensate the cost of such improvement. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The identification of significant pollutants emitted from the contamination source is the first step in evaluating the impact associated with anthropic activity. Municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerators are still generally perceived as great pollutant sources, in particular due to their gaseous emissions from the stack, which constitute the major effluent from the plant. In this work a life cycle assessment and an integrated environmental monitoring system were applied together, in order to obtain complete information about the incineration process and its environmental impact. The former is a proven methodology, but its application to waste management systems constitutes a relatively new field of application with a great developmental potential. The contribution of the incineration process to the different environmental impact categories was investigated, finding many avoided impacts due to energy recovery. The latter is an innovative approach that allows a remarkable understanding of impact due to a contamination source; interesting correlations were found between heavy metals both in gas emissions and in natural matrices in the surroundings. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This chapter is concerned with waste recycling and also discusses waste reduction and re-use. Municipal solid waste and industrial and commercial waste recycling in Europe are reviewed in detail. Examples of recycling of particular types of waste, i.e., plastics, glass, paper, metals and tyres are also discussed. Economic considerations of recycling are discussed, together with consideration of life-cycle analysis of waste recycling.Sydney Water selected life cycle assessment (LCA) to inform a review of its overall strategic planning document: WaterPlan 21. This assessment covered the entire business and has enabled ecological sustainability to be assessed in terms of quantitative indicators. The LCA was performed by firstly examining a base case which would eventuate if Sydney Water maintained its current operations with only the modifications, augmentations and upgrades planned for implementation between now and 2021. We then performed a number of scenario analyses to examine the benefits of additional demand management, energy efficiency, energy generation, supply augmentation and effluent quality initiatives. The results indicated significant improvements are available and that some of these measures are more desirable than others. We also examined a scenario for the alternative delivery of water and wastewater services in new urban areas. This showed quantitatively that, since connecting new fringe suburbs to the existing system requires significant expenditure on energy for pumping, major improvements in the sustainability of water and wastewater systems can be achieved by using localised, water-saving alternatives.In order to obtain more detailed information for better decision making in future biogenic waste treatment, different processes to treat biogenic wastes in plants with a treatment capacity of 10,000 tons of organic household wastes per year as well as agricultural codigestion plants were compared by life cycle assessments (LCA). With the tool Ecolndicator, anaerobic digestion is shown to be advantageous as compared to composting, incineration or a combination of digestion and composting, mainly because of a better energy balance. The management of the liquid manure in agricultural codigestion of organic solid wastes causes increased gaseous emissions, which have negative effects on the LCA, however. It is recommended to cover the slurry pit and to use an improved manure management in order to compensate for the additional gaseous emissions. In the LCAs, the quality of the digester output could only be taken into account to a small extent; the reasons are discussed.Biological treatment processes including anaerobic digestion (biogasification) and composting are increasingly being considered by waste management officials and planners as alternatives for managing the mainly organic residues of municipal solid wastes (MSW). The integrated waste management model which is based upon the application of life-cycle analysis was employed to compare the environmental burdens of landfilling, composting and anaerobic digestion of MSW at a mid-sized Canadian community. Energy consumption (or recovery), residue recoveries and emissions to air and water were quantified. Scenario comparisons were analyzed to demonstrate that the environmental burdens associated with anaerobic digestion are reduced in comparison with the alternative options. The major benefit occurs as a result of the electricity produced from burning the biogas and then supplying the 'green power' to the local electrical grid.The life cycle analysis can be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a process and at the same time to propose improvements to mitigate these impacts. These improvements can be evaluated using the pinch technology, which improves the efficiency of the process. Combining these methodologies is possible to improve the environmental and technological performance of the process, having as a tool a calculation leaf of excel for the material and energy balances development of the process. This paper presents the evaluation of the environmental impacts taken place in a stage of the production process of gassy drinks, which has an impact on the resources category, due to high water consumption in the laundry of manufacturing equipments at this stage. Measures have been proposed to improve the environmental and technological performance of the process as part of the fourth phase of life cycle analysis, in order to mitigate the environmental impact produced. On the obtained results, an alternative evaluated with the pinch technology is presented, which indicates the minimum water flow that should be used for this operation, reducing the fresh water quantity needed. The interrelationships between energy and civilization was proposed in the late 19th century [see Martinez-Alier, J., 1987. Ecological Economics. Blackwell, Oxford]. Geddes [Geddes, P., 1915. City in Evolution. Williams and Norgate Ltd., London] also proposed the concept of linking energy flow with urban development in the early 20th century. Many recent studies of the relationship between urban development and energy have been limited to the use of fossil fuels; energy theories have seldom been used to study the evolution of urban systems. The purpose of this paper is to help develop theories of urban energetics and contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms of urban development. We use the concepts from systems ecology [Odum, H.T., 1983. Systems Ecology. Wiley, New York] and emergy theory [Odum, H.T., 1996. Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making. Wiley, New York] to relate the driving energies of urban systems to their structure, economy and organization. Hypotheses of urban energetics including changes in the diversity of emergy sources, changes in urban metabolism, energy hierarchy, and relation between emergy and money flows are proposed and tested based on past research results on Taiwan cities (Huang, S.-L., Odum, H.T., Chang, S.-L., 1996. Ecological energetic evolution of urban system, A Report to the Chiang Ching-Kuo International Scholar Exchange Foundation (RG008-D-'92). Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Chung-Hsing University, Taipei, Taiwan (in Chinese); Huang, S.-L., 1998a. Urban ecosystems, energetic hierarchies, and ecological economics of Taipei metropolis. J. Environ. Manage. 52, 39-51; Huang, S.-L., Lai, H.-Y., Lee, C.-L., 2001. Energy hierarchy and urban landscape system. Landscape Urban Plan. 53, 145-161]. Thereafter a system model of urban ecosystem is developed to investigate the relationships between energy flows and urban development. The preliminary findings of this research indicate that intensive and diversified emergy sources build up the structure and enhance metabolism in urban areas. Four mechanisms of urban energetics are also addressed as a result of simulations: energy convergence; urban-subsidized environmental flows; external-dependency system; maximum power system. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A macrolevel approach for integrating regional economic models with urban metabolism models is developed. Challenges with consistency and aggregation persist in the integration of urban models between socioeconomic and environmental systems, and between the micro and macro scale. Using an econometric model as a foundation offers a flexible structure, with low data requirements, that might potentially be integrated with microlevel process models. Such an econometric model is developed and verified for the economy of the Toronto region. The economic model is integrated with a greenhouse gas emission model that simulates emissions from the residential, transportation, and solid waste sectors. Emissions are simulated to 2010 for optimistic and pessimistic exogenous economic climates. In the absence of technological change, emissions will increase in the order of 30%, largely as a result of population growth (22%-23%), which is relatively insensitive to economic growth. The potential to decrease emissions through changing land-use development and increased recycling of solid waste is examined.The sustainability is applied in urban systems throught an integrated treatment, analysing the well-being conditions in the urban areas and surroundings. The challenge of the urban sustainability tries to solve the problems inside and outside. The first world, the sustainability of the cities implies different issues: unsustanaible of the urban metabolism and landscape fragmentation, with negative effects in the sustanaible process of the natural systems and changing environmental connectivity. The Local Agenda 21 (LA21) is a model of diagnosis and a tool to make sustainable political programmes, among environmental, social and economical issues. The methodology and objectives imply sustainability indicators (IDS) with an independent monitoring and multidisciplin observatory, as to obtain tendencies and priorities and produce an action plan.A great deal of work has been accomplished on the physical aspects of the sustainable city, but relatively little has been done to explore the alternatives for financing sustainability in the urban context. This paper examines what has been accomplished already to encourage sustainability through the application of financial instruments such as traffic congestion charges, user fees for stormwater management, materials recycling, and similar initiatives. Together these instruments may be seen as constituting the field of 'urban environmental finance' which may be defined as consisting of financial instruments which encourage a transition towards behaviour which supports the sustainability of urban systems. Whereas many examples exist of particular innovations in this area, no urban government appears to have approached the challenge in a comprehensive way using the framework of sustainable urban development. The reasons why this has not yet happened are not difficult to find. For example, politicians are usually reluctant to propose new charges even if they can promise that they will be revenue-neutral. Second, in many countries the urban level of government has very limited powers to impose such charges. Third, some schemes require significant costs for data collection and other implementation costs. Examples will be drawn from Canada, the United States, Europe and South-East Asia, with a focus on transportation, water and emissions to the air.

 Cranial morphology is widely used to reconstruct evolutionary relationships, but its reliability in reflecting phylogeny and population history has been questioned. Some cranial regions, particularly the face and neurocranium, are believed to be influenced by the environment and prone to convergence. Others, such as the temporal bone, are thought to reflect more accurately phylogenetic relationships. Direct testing of these hypotheses was not possible until the advent of large genetic data sets. The few relevant studies in human populations have had intriguing but possibly conflicting results, probably partly due to methodological differences and to the small numbers of populations used. Here we use three-dimensional (3D) geometric morphometrics methods to test explicitly the ability of cranial shape, size, and relative positionJorientation of cranial regions to track population history and climate. Morphological distances among 13 recent human populations were calculated from four 3D landmark data sets, respectively reflecting facial, neurocranial, and temporal bone shape; shape and relative position; overall cranial shape; and centroid sizes. These distances were compared to neutral genetic and climatic distances among the same, or closely matched, populations. Results indicate that neurocranial and temporal bone shape track neutral genetic distances, while facial shape reflects climate; centroid size shows a weak association with climatic variables; and relative position/orientation of cranial regions does not appear correlated with any of these factors. Because different cranial regions preserve population history and climate signatures differentially, caution is suggested when using cranial anatomy for phylogenetic reconstruction.The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) is novel because it integrates water quality, water resources, physical habitat and, to some extent, flooding for all surface and groundwaters and takes forward river basin management. However, the WFD does not explicitly mention risks posed by climate change to the achievement of its environmental objectives. This is despite the fact that the time scale for the implementation process and achieving particular objectives extends into the 2020s, when climate models project changes in average temperature and precipitation. This paper begins by reviewing the latest UK climate change scenarios and the wider policy and science context of the WFD. We then examine the potential risks of climate change to key phases of the River Basin Management Process that underpin the WFD (such as charactelisation of liver basins and their water bodies, risk assessments to identify pressures and impacts, programmes of measures (POMs) options appraisal, monitoring and modelling, policy and management activities). Despite these risks the WFD could link new policy and participative mechanisms (being established for the River Basin Management Plans) to the emerging framework of national and regional climate change adaptation policy. The risks are identified with a view to informing policy opportunities, objective setting, adaptation strategies and the research agenda. Key knowledge gaps have already been identified during the implementation of the WFD, such as the links between hydromorphology and ecosystem status, but the overarching importance of linking climate change to these considerations needs to be highlighted. The next generation of (probabilistic) climate change scenarios will present new opportunities and challenges for risk analysis and policy-making. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All lights reserved.Within cetartiodactyl species, both New and Old World camelids are uniquely adapted to the extremely hot and dry climates of African-Asian territories and to the high altitude cold and hypoxic environment of the whole Andean area. In order to investigate the potential association between these particular adaptations and mitochondrial aerobic energy production, we examined the camelid genes of cytochrome c oxidase subunits I, II, and III and the replacement of amino acids inferred. We found that all subunits had undergone a number of replacements in sites otherwise conserved in other cetartiodactyls. Changes of COXI and COXIII were mainly located in the transmembrane helices of proteins. For COXII, although most of the changes did not occur in sites directly involved in electron transfer, a shift of D by T at 115 position of Old World camelid might modify electrostatic interactions with cytochrome c. COXII also showed an increased relative evolutionary rate respect to other cetartiodactyls compared.The relationship between building materials, structures and climate is complex and there is an urgent need for more accurate methods to assess building performance. For example, the lifetime of wooden cladding is strongly dependent on the local-level climatic impact. A national map of the potential for decay in wood structures in Norway is presented based on Scheffer's climate index formula. Weather data are used from 115 observing stations for the reference 30-year period 1961-90. The climate index distribution allows for geographically differentiated guidelines on protective measures. Detailed scenarios for climate change for selected locations in Norway are used to provide an indication of the possible future development of decay rates. Climate indices allowing for the quantitative assessment of building enclosure performance may be an important element in the development of adaptation measures to meet the future risks of climate change in different parts of the world. Established quantified relations between climatic impact and material behaviour or building performance can be used as a tool for the evaluation of the need for changes in functional requirements. The presented work represents an example of a first step towards such measures. Ways to improve the reliability of the index further are also suggested.This paper describes two case studies of demand-side water management in the Okanagan region of southern British Columbia, Canada. The case studies reveal important lessons about how local context shapes the process of adaptation; in these cases, adaptation to rising and changing water demand under a regime of increasingly limited supply in a semi-arid region. Both case studies represent examples of water meter implementation, specifically volume-based pricing in a residential area and as a compliance tool in a mainly farming district. While the initiative was successful in the residential setting, agricultural metering met with stiff resistance. These cases suggest many factors shape the character of the adaptation process, including: interpretation of the signal relative to context, newness of the approach, consumer values, and local and provincial political agendas. Although context has been explored in resource management circles, thus far climate change adaptation research has not adequately discussed the embeddedness of adaptation. In other words, how context matters and what aspects of context, unrelated to climate change, could encourage or thwart the act of adapting. This study is a simple illustration of the potential drivers, barriers and enabling factors that have influenced the adaptation process of water management decisions in the Okanagan.The growth performances, phenological and pomological characteristics of four loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) cultivars, 'Kanro', 'Baffico', 'Dr. Trabut', and 'Gold Nugget', were studied between 1996 and 2000 in the Mediterranean climate in Kirikhan, Hatay, Turkey. Among the loquat cultivars tested, the biggest trunk diameter and annual shoot growths were measured in 'Kanto' whereas 'Baffico' was found to be the earliest, and 'Kanro' to be the latest ripening cultivar. The largest fruit size was obtained from 'Dr. Trabut', whereas the smallest fruit size from 'Baffico'. 'Dr. Trabut' had the highest seed number and seed weight, and the lowest value of the flesh/seed ratio was calculated in this cultivar. The ratio of flesh to seed was highest in 'Kanro'. The highest total soluble solids (TSS) content was observed in 'Baffico' (11.77%), whereas the lowest TSS was recorded in 'Kanto' (9.09%). The results suggest that these cultivars can be successfully grown in a Mediterranean climate. Adaptation of the cultivars to the region is also most likely to increase the production and quality of loquat.For over a decade, the scientific community and park professionals have recognized that climate change will have critical implications for park conservation policy and management (International Union for Conservation of Nature, 1993; Welch, 2005). The implications of global climate change for nature-based park tourism has only recently begun to be assessed. Nature-based tourism and related outdoor recreation are strongly influenced by climate. Climate can affect the physical resources that define the foundation of many tourism and recreation activities as well as the length and quality of tourism and recreation seasons. Any changes in the length and quality of tourism and recreation operating seasons brought about by changes in the climate would have considerable implications for visitation and related aspects of park management Canada's national parks are a major resource for nature-based tourism, with approximately 16 million person visits in 2003. Visitation to Canada's national parks is highly seasonal and greatly affected by the country's regional climates. This paper examined the potential impact of climate change on the annual number of visitors and the seasonal pattern of visitation in Canada's national parks. Multivariate regression analysis using four climate variables and monthly visitation data for 1996 to 2003 was used to develop a monthly climate-visitation model for 15 high-visitation parks. Each park-specific model was then run with two climate change scenarios to assess potential changes in park visitation under a range of climatic conditions projected for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s. Results indicate that Canada's national parks could experience an increase in visitors under climate change due to a lengthened and improved warm-weather tourism season. In the 2020s, overall visitation levels were projected to increase 6% to 8%, with a number of parks projected to experience larger increases (+12% to 30%). The largest increases in visitation occur during the spring and fall months. Visitation was projected to increase between 9% and 29% system-wide in the 2050s and between 10% and 41% in the 2080s. Perhaps more importantly, the affects of climate change will be combined with other factors influencing park visitation in the future. When the potential affects of climate change were combined with those of demographic change (population, ageing and ethnic diversity) total person visits for the mid-2020s were projected to be at least three times greater (+20% to 23%) than that projected under climate change alone. If these findings are indicative of the impacts of climate change on future visitation, the implications for tourism and park management are substantive. Management implications of the findings include a probable need for more intensive visitor management strategies, especially in parks where visitor increases could significantly stress natural resources or lead to the escalation of conflicts among user groups. Although the primary focus of climate change adaptation within Parks Canada has thus far been the maintenance of ecological integrity, this research suggests that changes in visitor management strategies will be a required component in the development of Parks Canada's climate change adaptation framework.Most European assessments of climate change impacts have been carried out on sectors and ecosystems, providing a narrow understanding of what climate change really means for society. Furthermore, the main focus has been on technological adaptations, with less attention paid to the process of climate change adaptation. In this article, we present and analyze findings from recent studies on climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in Norway, with the aim of identifying the wider social impacts of climate change. Three main lessons can be drawn. First, the potential thresholds and indirect effects may be more important than the direct, sectoral effects. Second, highly sensitive sectors, regions, and communities combine with differential social vulnerability to create both winners and losers. Third, high national levels of adaptive capacity mask the barriers and constraints to adaptation, particularly among those who are most vulnerable to climate change. Based on these results, we question complacency in Norway and other European countries regarding climate change impacts and adaptation. We argue that greater attention needs to be placed on the social context of climate change impacts and on the processes shaping vulnerability and adaptation.Over the past few decades, four distinct and largely independent research and policy communities-disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, environmental management and poverty reduction-have been actively engaged in reducing socio-economic vulnerability to natural hazards. However, despite the significant efforts of these communities, the vulnerability of many individuals and communities to natural hazards continues to increase considerably. In particular, it is hydro-meteorological hazards that affect an increasing number of people and cause increasingly large economic losses. Arising from the realisation that these four communities have been largely working in isolation and enjoyed only limited success in reducing vulnerability, there is an emerging perceived need to strengthen significantly collaboration and to facilitate learning and information exchange between them. This article examines key communalities and differences between the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction communities, and proposes three exercises that would help to structure a multi-community dialogue and learning process.This paper examines the topic of financing adaptation in future climate change policies. A major question is whether adaptation in developing countries should be financed under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or whether funding should come from other sources. We present an overview of financial resources and propose the employment of a two-track approach: one track that attempts to secure climate change adaptation funding under the UNFCCC; and a second track that improves mainstreaming of climate risk management in development efforts. Developed countries would need to demonstrate much greater commitment to the funding of adaptation measures if the UNFCCC were to cover a substantial part of the costs. The mainstreaming of climate change adaptation could follow a risk management path, particularly in relation to disaster risk reduction. 'Climate-proofing' of development projects that currently do not consider climate and weather risks could improve their sustainability.Community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP) approaches are increasingly important elements of vulnerability reduction and disaster management strategies. They are associated with a policy trend that values the knowledge and capacities of local people and builds on local resources, including social capital. CBDP may be instrumental not only in formulating local coping and adaptation strategies, but also in situating them within wider development planning and debates. In theory, local people can be mobilised to resist unsustainable (vulnerability increasing) forms of development or livelihood practices and to raise local concerns more effectively with political representatives. This paper focuses on the potential of CBDP initiatives to alleviate vulnerability in the context of climate change, and their limitations. It presents evidence from the Philippines that, in the limited forms in which they are currently employed, CBDP initiatives have the potential both to empower and disempower, and warns against treating CBDP as a panacea to disaster management problems.The changing climate will impact infrastructure through gradual changes in weather patterns, increasing variability and potential increases in extremes. Although most concerns have focused on changing extremes, the changes in day-to-day weathering processes may be equally important. These significant day-to-day weathering processes include wind-driven rain, freeze-thaw cycles, frost penetration, wetting and drying, wind-driven abrasive materials, the action of broad spectrum solar radiation and ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and atmospheric chemical deposition on materials. Adaptation options need to be developed to consider changing weathering processes, including more frequent freeze-thaw cycles in colder regions, potentially increased atmospheric chemical deposition, initially increasing UV levels and changes to precipitation regimes. Since buildings are particularly vulnerable to weathering impacts that compromise their durability and resilience to extremes over time, it will become increasingly important in future to ensure that building envelopes and enclosures are able to resist wind actions and to prevent moisture from entering the structure. Many of the required adaptation actions may take the form of different formulations for materials or different engineering practices to ensure greater durability or requirements in standards for preventative maintenance.Several signs indicate an ongoing global warming and scenarios show that the warming will continue. According to climate change scenarios the annual temperature in Sweden will increase by 2.5-4.5 degrees C in the next century. In most of Sweden the annual precipitation will increase by 5-30% in the next century. The expected sea level increase is ca 1-2 mm/year. In the south of Sweden this will result in an increased coastal sea level of approximately 0.5 in in less than 100 years. Erosion along coastal areas will increase due to changes in the sea water level, storm-waves and by wind itself. Erosion in open watercourse areas will increase due to increased water flows. Rough calculations have been done, as a first estimate, of the impact of increased precipitation on hillside slide risks. Reduced safety, for all types of hillsides included in this investigation, is to be expected. Additional risks such as the higher frequency of mudflows due to increased precipitation are expected. Along rivers there is often industrial activity and contaminated ground due to historical industrial activities. Increased ground water levels will make many of the soil pollutants more movable and possibly more biologically available. The leaching of eutrophic species from farming will increase due to increased water flows, especially under heavy rainfalls. An important influence of the increased precipitation is the leaching conditions of landfills. Simplistic predictions show that the percolation and thereby the leaching of pollutants will increase.The methods, tools and outputs of the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) show how building adaptive capacity to climate change can be embedded within a wide range of organizations. UKCIP has been operating since 1997 to support decision-makers' assessments of their vulnerability to climate change so that they can plan how to adapt. Whilst stakeholder engagement is now generally regarded as vital to ensure that research meets the needs of decision-makers for information, this usually means that stakeholders are positioned in a 'consultative' role in research. In contrast, the UKCIP aims to bridge the gap between research and policy so that decision-makers take control to produce research in ways that are useful to them. The Programme has been flexible and was developed incrementally, with increased scientific understanding, taking advantage of collaborative funding and facilitating long-standing partnerships. Whilst the core framework of scenarios and tools has been developed centrally, most studies have been stakeholder-funded and led. The Programme's results suggest that if decision-makers are supported, capacity is built for assessments, and crucially, research outputs are directly applicable to their ongoing work and strategic planning. This capacity-building has worked across scales and sectors and is an effective route to mainstreaming climate change adaptation. The implication, therefore, is that more support should be given by funding agencies to develop institutional capacity to support adaptation to climate change in both the private and public sectors.There is growing interest in the potential role that insurance-related instruments can play in the implementation of climate-change adaptation, particularly for the areas most affected and least able to absorb the negative effects of extreme weather events. Sufficient climate adaptation efforts will require funding at two or three orders of magnitude above the current levels. For rapid-onset climate events, current ex post disaster finance does not offer strong incentives for risk reduction. This article suggests that insurance-related instruments can be a tool to help in adapting to and ameliorating the negative impacts of climate change for those countries likely to be most negatively affected by climate change. One possibility for an insurance-related mechanism would be a scheme that allows countries (or regions in large developing countries) most affected by climate change to purchase insurance-like coverage for defined climate-related risks. This article refers to such a scheme as the Climate Change Finance Mechanism (CCFM). The attempt to design and implement such an insurance-related mechanism requires careful consideration of several issues, including technical and political challenges. We outline a way to indemnify countries that are likely to suffer most from global climate change and consider what the key design elements would be.Although the potential impacts of climate change on tourism has been examined with respect to tourism destinations and resorts there is a dearth of information on the attitudes and behaviours of small firm entrepreneurs even though such enterprises make up by far the bulk of the tourism industry by number of businesses. The attitudes and adaptation and mitigation behaviours of New Zealand entrepreneurs towards climate change is reported in a longitudinal qualitative study of 43 rural tourism businesses. Climate change was regarded as potentially significant in the future but in the short-term ranked well below other business concerns. Significantly, where enterprises had been affected by extreme weather events attitudes and behaviours towards climate change differed markedly from those unaffected, although opposition to regulatory approaches with respect to climate change continued. Overall, adaptation rather than mitigation appeared to be the favoured strategies of tourism businesses.It is widely acknowledged that promoting the long-term sustainability of rural areas requires an assessment of their capacity to handle stress from a host of external and internal factors such as resource depletion, global trading agreements, service reductions and changing demographics, to name but some. The sustainability literature includes a number of approaches for conducting capacity evaluations but is sparse regarding effective methods and empirical examples. This article provides one approach for assessing community capacity and gives results from its application to a specific Canadian rural community. The authors use general capacity variables and indicators to focus on a particular stress, namely impacts from climate change, and on one type of capacity, namely the capacity to adapt (to such climatic change). A basic framework and profiling tool ('amoeba') for describing the resources underlying community adaptive capacity are offered. The researchers provide a set of indicators reflecting social, human, institutional, natural and economic resources and relate them to climate change adaptation at the community level. Although the indicators cannot be replicated exactly for other rural communities, the essentials of the framework and the profiling tool can. In fact it is hoped that the ideas and example found in this article will encourage researchers to enhance and improve on the methods and results for work on community capacity.Climate change is a major issue for all levels of government, global, national and local. Local authorities' responses to climate change have tended to concentrate on their role in reducing greenhouse gases. However, the scientific consensus is that we also need to adapt to unavoidable climate change. Spatial planning at a local level has a critical anticipatory role to play in promoting robust adaptation. This paper reviews the shift in local authorities' planning policies for climate change adaptation in the UK since 2000, and provides evidence of underlying attitudes amongst planning professionals to climate change. It shows that, while the issue of climate change is becoming recognized with respect to flood risk, the wider implications (for instance, for biodiversity and water resources) are not yet integrated into plans. The reasons for this lie in lack of political support and lack of engagement of the planning profession with climate change networks. But the paper also argues there are difficulties in acknowledging the need for adaptation at the local level, with the short-term horizons of local plans at odds with perceptions of the long-term implications of climate change.Low-chill peach (Prunus persica L. Batsch) cultivars adapted for subtropical climates and tropical highlands have been developed by the University of Florida deciduous fruit breeding program. Cultivars requiring approximately 100 to 150 chill units have been evaluated in south Florida and Puerto Rico. Chilling has been accomplished in Florida by changing latitude and in Puerto Rico by changing altitude. Four cultivars (Flordaprince, TropicBeauty, Flordaglo, UFGold) have been evaluated in two localities of the central mountainous region of Puerto Rico. Parameters of tree growth, flowering time and formation, fruit development, and fruit quality have been evaluated. Preliminary results show trees fruit with commercial crops maturing in April and May with fruit 5 to 8 cm diameter weighing 80 to 130 gram during an optimum market window when there are no other peaches available. Three of the four low-chill peach cultivars are adapted to climatic conditions prevailing in the central mountainous region of Puerto Rico. The recommended cultivars are high quality and suitable for commercial, u-pick, and home planting.A breeding program was initiated in Pelotas, Brazil, in the late 1950s to develop peaches adapted to the mild winter and high relative humidity conditions. The program has evaluated and crossed a wide range of local and foreign accessions. During the first years the main goal was the extension of the 15-day-only harvest season and the cultivars released from the program extended this period to more than 90 days. Pronounced tip in fruits was also a problem, not present in the recently introduced cultivars. Presently, the priorities of the program are: 1) Climate adaptation. 2) Resistance to brown rot and bacterial spot: 'Bolinha' and some of its selections by open pollinations, and a few others are among the less susceptible to Monilinia fructicola, whereas selections 'Conserva 930', 'Cascata 1020' and the old cultivar 'Cristal Taquari' show some resistance to bacterial spot and are being extensively used for cross breeding. 3) Fruit size: 'Granada', 'Maciel' and 'Santa Aurea' and several selections represent one step ahead towards this objective. 4) Overall quality with emphasis on flavor. 5) Productivity: newer cultivars and selections can produce from 20 to 30 tons/ha, depending on the soil and orchard management. 6) Time of ripening, with emphasis on early ripening. The need to decompose CO2 emission intensity is predicated upon the need for effective climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. Such analysis enables key variables that instigate CO2 emission intensity to be identified while at the same time providing opportunities to verify the mitigation and adaptation capacities of countries. However, Most CO2 decomposition analysis has been conducted for the developed economics and little attention has been paid to sub-Saharan Africa. The need for such an analysis for SSA is overwhelming for several reasons. Firstly, the region is amongst the most vulnerable to climate change. Secondly, there are disparities in the amount and composition of energy consumption and the levels of economic growth and development in the region. Thus, a decomposition analysis of CO2, emission intensity for SSA affords the opportunity to identify key influencing variables and to see how they compare among countries in the region. Also, attempts have been made to distinguish between oil and non-oil-producing SSA countries. To this effect a comparative static analysis Of CO2 emission intensity for oil-producing and non oil-producing SSA countries for the periods 1971-1998 has been undertaken, using the refined Laspeyres decomposition model. Our analysis confirms the findings for other regions that CO2 emission intensity is attributable to energy consumption intensity, CO2 emission coefficient of energy types and economic structure. Particularly, CO2 emission coefficient of energy use was found to exercise the most influence on CO2, emission intensity for both oil and non-oil-producing sub-Saharan African countries in the first sub-interval period of our investigation from 1971-1981. In the second subinterval of 1981-1991, energy intensity and structural effect were the two major influencing factors on emission intensity for the two groups of countries. However, energy intensity effect had the most pronounced impact on CO, emission intensity in non-oil-producing sub-Saharan African countries, while the structural effect explained most of the increase in CO2 emission intensity among the oil-producing countries. Finally, for the period 1991-1998. structural effect accounted for much of the decrease in intensity among non-oil-producers, while CO2 emission coefficient of energy use was the major force driving the decrease among oil-producing countries. The dynamic changes in the CO2 emission intensity and energy intensity effects for the two groups of countries suggest that fuel switching had been predominantly towards more carbon-intensive production in oil-producing countries and less carbon-intensive production in non-oil-producing SSA countries. In addition to the decomposition analysis, the article discusses policy implications of the results. We hope that the information and analyses provided here would help inform national energy and climate policy makers in SSA of the relative weaknesses and possible areas of strategic emphasis in their planning processes for mitigating the effects of climate change. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The extent and timing of cost-reducing improvements in low-carbon energy systems are important sources of uncertainty in future levels of greenhouse-gas emissions. Models that assess the costs of climate change mitigation policy, and energy policy in general, rely heavily on learning curves to include technology dynamics. Historically, no energy technology has changed more dramatically than photovoltaics (PV), the cost of which has declined by a factor of nearly 100 since the 1950s. Which changes were most important in accounting for the cost reductions that have occurred over the past three decades? Are these results consistent with the notion that learning from experience drove technical change? In this paper, empirical data are assembled to populate a simple model identifying the most important factors affecting the cost of PV. The results indicate that learning from experience, the theoretical mechanism used to explain learning curves, only weakly explains change in the most important factors-plant size, module efficiency, and the cost of silicon. Ways in which the consideration of a broader set of influences, such as technical barriers, industry structure, and characteristics of demand, might be used to inform energy technology policy are discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy crops currently contribute a relatively small proportion to the total energy produced from biomass each year, but the proportion is set to grow over the next few decades. This paper reviews the current status of energy crops and their conversion technologies, assesses their potential to contribute to global energy demand and climate mitigation over the next few decades, and examines the future prospects. Previous estimates have suggested a technical potential for energy crops of similar to 400 EJ yr(-1) by 2050. In a new analysis based on energy crop areas for each of the IPCC SRES scenarios in 2025 (as projected by the IMAGE 2.2 integrated assessment model), more conservative dry matter and energy yield estimates and an assessment of the impact on non-CO2 greenhouse gases were used to estimate the realistically achievable potential for energy crops by 2025 to be between 2 and 22 EJ yr(-1), which will offset similar to 100-2070 Mt CO2-eq. yr(-1). These results suggest that additional production of energy crops alone is not sufficient to reduce emissions to meet a 550 mu mol mol(-1) atmospheric CO2 stabilization trajectory, but is sufficient to form an important component in a portfolio of climate mitigation measures, as well as to provide a significant sustainable energy resource to displace fossil fuel resources. Realizing the potential of energy crops will necessitate optimizing the dry matter and energy yield of these crops per area of land through the latest biotechnological routes, with or without the need for genetic modification. In future, the co-benefits of bioenergy production will need to be optimized and methods will need to be developed to extract and refine high-value products from the feedstock before it is used for energy production.Production and use of energy is the main source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in developed countries. In the Baltic States, climate change mitigation policies and measures implemented have been driven mainly by efforts to reach EU accession standards, and all EU environmental directives relating to the energy sector have now been implemented. This has had a significant impact on the reduction of GHG emissions. This article presents a comparative review of the general framework for climate change mitigation in the energy sector of the Baltic States. It compares and analyses measures already implemented in the three countries - legal, fiscal and voluntary - and market based tools to reduce GHG emissions, and evaluates the impact of EU environmental and energy directives on the reduction of GHG emissions. Some descriptive sections of the article come from the Nordic Council of Ministers study "Challenges of Kyoto commitments for the Baltic States' energy sectors".In this paper we discuss long-term least cost CO2 stabilization scenarios based on the SRES AIM A1B scenario in the context of an international burden-sharing regime. Starting from a stabilization target, regional emission caps are formulated dynamically on the basis of past emissions. With these regional caps, the cost-optimal supply fuel mix in the energy sector in the four SRES world regions is calculated, and lower bounds on the volume of traded carbon are estimated. The allocation scheme provides incentives for early mitigation action. We estimate additional regional costs incurred by the allocation scheme, and assess the sensitivity of results to changes in the concentration ceiling, discount rates, and start date for burden sharing. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Security of energy supply and climate change are central concerns for policy makers and important dimensions of the long-term quest for a sustainable global energy system. This paper examines the role of several policy instruments in managing energy security and climate risks and stimulating technological change towards a more secure and climate-benign global energy system in the long-term future. The analysis has been conducted with ERIS, a multi-regional energy-systems "bottom-up" optimization model with technology learning. Our analysis provides some policy insights and identifies synergies and trade-offs relating to the potential for security of supply policies to promote the uptake of new technologies, reduce the cost of pursuing climate change mitigation policies, and facilitate a possible transition to a hydrogen economy. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Institutional barriers and bridges to local climate change impacts adaptation affecting small rural municipalities and Conservation Authorities (CAs are watershed agencies) in Eastern Ontario (Canada) are examined, and elements of a community-based adaptation strategy related to water infrastructures are proposed as a case-study in community adaptation to climate change. No general water scarcity is expected for the region even under unusually dry weather scenarios. Localized quantity and quality problems are likely to occur especially in groundwater recharge areas. Some existing institutions can be relied on by municipalities to build an effective adaptation strategy based on a watershed/region perspective, on their credibility, and on their expertise. Windows of opportunity or framing issues are offered at the provincial level, the most relevant one in a federal state, by municipal emergency plan requirements and pending watershed source water protection legislation. Voluntary and soon to be mandated climate change mitigation programs at the federal level are other ones.As the European Union greenhouse gas emission trading scheme (ETS) is emerging, it seems interesting to look back on previous experiments and to bring together a few elements of reflection about the pertinence of ETS as a new policy tool to regulate industrial pollution. So far, several regulatory tools have been used to decrease pollution. This article focuses on two of them, command-and-control (CAC) and ETS. There is no simple answer to which one is more efficient. It depends strongly on the context. Given a few elements outlined in this paper, the choice of an ETS to abate industrial emissions of greenhouse gases in the European Union (EU) can be considered pertinent. But, ultimately, what makes a scheme environmentally efficient is not the tool in itself (ETS or CAC) but the ambition of the target. Hence the design of the National Allocation Plans setting the emission caps are of paramount importance. They will make the EU ETS either a useless mess or an effective climate change mitigation policy tool. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over 250 respondents - graduate students in law and public policy - assessed the risks of climate change and valued climate-change mitigation policies. Many aspects of their behavior were consistent with rational behavior. For example, respondents successfully estimated distributions of temperature increases in Boston by 2100. The median value of best estimates was 1-3 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, people with higher risk estimates, whether for temperature or related risks (e.g., hurricane intensities) offered more to avoid warming. Median willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid global warming was $0.50/gallon, and 3% of income. And important scope tests (e.g., respondents paid more for bigger accomplishments) were passed. However, significant behavioral propensities also emerged. For example, accessibility of neutral information on global warming boosted risk estimates. Warming projections correlated with estimates for unrelated risks, such as earthquakes and heart attacks. The implied WTP for avoidance was much greater when asked as a percent of income than as a gas tax, a percent thinking bias. Home team betting showed itself; individuals predicting a Bush victory predicted smaller temperature increases. In the climate-change arena, behavioral decision tendencies are like a fun-house mirror: They magnify some estimates and shrink others, but the contours of rational decision rmain recognizable.This paper extends the arguments surrounding carbon lock-in elaborated in Unruh (Energy Policy 28 (2000) 817; 30 (2002) 317) to countries currently undergoing industrialization. it argues that, for numerous reasons, industrializing countries are unlikely to leapfrog carbon intensive energy development. On the contrary, carbon lock-in may be globalizing and could further constrain climate change mitigation options. It is then argued that many policy recommendations ignore carbon lock-in, possibly limiting their potential for successful implementation. The paper then discusses four policy approaches that appear to have advantages given lock-in conditions. It is recognized, however, that relative ease of implementation does not necessarily equate with superiority. Instead, it is merely a path dependent outcome of past development decisions. Pursuing policies on the basis of relative implementation ease may help address the issue of climate change, but could also result in sub-optimal outcomes along other dimensions of sustainable development. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Forest environmental conditions are affected by climate change, but investments in forest environmental quality can be used as part of the climate change mitigation strategy. A key question involving the potential use of forests to store more carbon as part of climate change mitigation is the impact of forest investments on the timing and quantity of forest volumes that affect carbon storage. Using an economic optimization model, we project levels of U.S. forest volumes as indicators of carbon storage for a wide range of private forest investment scenarios. Results show that economic opportunities exist to further intensify timber management on some hectares and reduce the average timber rotation length such that the national volume of standing timber stocks could be reduced relative to projections reflecting historical trends. The national amount of timber volume is projected to increase over the next 50 yr, but then is projected to decline if private owners follow an economic optimization path, such as with more forest type conversions and shorter timber rotations. With perfect foresight, future forest investments can affect current timber harvest levels, with intertemporal linkages based on adjustments through markets. Forest investments that boost regenerated timber yields per hectare would act to enhance ecosystem services (e.g., forest carbon storage) if they are related to the rate of growth and extent of growing stock inventory.We explored the climate impacts for two land-use change scenarios, aimed at mitigating the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Using the integrated assessment model IMAGE 2.2, we found that the large-scale implementation in the extratropics of either carbon-sequestration or modern-biomass plantations decreases the CO2 concentration with 70-80 ppmv by the year 2100 compared to a nonmitigation baseline. In a coupled land/atmosphere/ocean/sea-ice model this moderates global warming over the 21st century by 10%. However, the carbon-sequestration option raises the absorption of solar radiation due to a lower albedo compared to the scenario involving modern-biomass plantations (for biofuels production). The albedo-induced difference in global mean temperature is as large as the mitigation by CO2 changes in the two scenarios compared to the baseline. Further, an atmospheric circulation change in the carbon-plantation scenario weakens the supply of moisture from the oceans to North Africa and central Eurasia. In our model this decreases annual mean precipitation over North Africa by up to 10% and further increases summer temperatures over Eurasia. These findings lead us to conclude that other climate impacts than just CO2 changes have to be taken into account when discussing climate-change mitigation options that involve land-use changes.Slowing tropical deforestation can reduce global carbon emissions and prevent climate change. This article estimates the costs of preserving the carbon sequestration and storage services of tropical forests in the Philippines, and compares the costs of this approach to mitigating climate change with the costs of alternative abatement options in the developed world. Unlike most previous studies, the analysis estimates costs based on opportunity costs and includes non-market activities such as subsistence agriculture. The analysis finds that while the opportunity costs for the Philippines are significant, countries like the U.S. may find paying the Philippines for forest conservation to be a cost-efficient alternative to reducing emissions within their own borders. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Land use plays a vital role in the earth system: it links human decision-making to the terrestrial environment and is both driver and target of global environmental changes. However, decisions about how much land to use where and for what purpose (and the related consequences) are still poorly understood. This deficit is in contrast to the fundamental need for global analysis of future land-use change to answer pressing questions concerning, e.g. future food security, biodiversity and climate mitigation and adaptation. In this review, we identify major achievements, deficits and potentials of existing continental to global scale land-use modeling approaches by contrasting current knowledge on land-use change processes and its implementation in models. To compare the 18 selected modeling approaches and their applications, we use the integration of geographic and economic modeling approaches as a guiding principle. Geographic models focus on the development of spatial patterns of land-use types by analyzing land suitability and spatial interaction. Beyond, they add information about fundamental constraints on the supply side. Economic models focus on drivers of land-use change on the demand side, starting out from certain preferences, motivations, market and population structures and aim to explain changes in land-intensive sectors. Integrated models seek to combine the strengths of both approaches in order to make up for their intrinsic deficits and to assess the feedbacks between terrestrial environment and the global economy. Important aspects in continental to global modeling of land use are being addressed by the reviewed models, but up to now for some of these issues no satisfying solutions have been found: this applies, e.g. to soil degradation, the availability of freshwater resources and the interactions between land scarcity and intensification of land use. For a new generation of large-scale land-use models, a transparent structure would be desirable which clearly employs the advantages of both geographic and economic modeling concepts within one consistent framework to include feedbacks and avoid redundancies. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.For thousands of years, the Huang-Hai Plain in northeast China has been one of the most productive agricultural regions of the country. The future of this region will be determined in large part by how global climatic changes impact regional conditions and by actions taken to mitigate or adapt to climate change impacts. One potential mitigation strategy is to promote management practices that have the potential to sequester carbon in the soils. The IPCC estimates that 40 Pg of C could be sequestered in cropland soils worldwide over the next several decades; however, changes in global climate may impact this potential. Here, we assess the potential for soil C sequestration with conversion of a conventional till (CT) continuous wheat system to a wheat-corn double cropping system and by implementing no till (NT) management for both continuous wheat and wheat-corn systems. To assess the influence of these management practices under a changing climate, we use two climate change scenarios (A2 and B2) at two time periods in the EPIC agro-ecosystent simulation model. The applied climate change scenarios are from the HadCM3 global climate model for the periods 2015-2045 and 2070-2099 which projects consistent increases in temperature and precipitation of greater than 5 degrees C and up to 300 mm by 2099. An increase in the variability of temperature is also projected and is, accordingly, applied in the simulations. The EPIC model indicates that winter wheat yields would increase on average by 0.2 Mg ha(-1) in the earlier period and by 0.8 Mg ha(-1) in the later period due to warmer nighttime temperatures and higher precipitation. Simulated yields were not significantly affected by imposed changes in crop management. Simulated soil organic C content was higher under both NT management and double cropping than under CT continuous wheat. The simulated changes in management were a more important factor in SOC changes than the scenario of climate change. Soil C sequestration rates for continuous wheat systems were increased by an average of 0.4 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) by NT in the earlier period and by 0.2 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) in the later period. With wheat-corn double cropping, NT increased sequestration rates by 0.8 and 0.4 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) for the earlier and later periods, respectively. The total C offset due to a shift from CT to NT under continuous wheat over 16 million hectares in the Huang-Hai Plain is projected to reach 240 Tg C in the earlier period and 180 Tg C in the later period. Corresponding C offsets for wheat-corn cropping are 675-495 Tg C. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Six Earth system models of intermediate complexity that are able to simulate interaction between atmosphere, ocean, and land surface, were forced with a scenario of land cover changes during the last millennium. In response to historical deforestation of about 18 million sq km, the models simulate a decrease in global mean annual temperature in the range of 0.13-0.25 degrees C. The rate of this cooling accelerated during the 19th century, reached a maximum in the first half of the 20th century, and declined at the end of the 20th century. This trend is explained by temporal and spatial dynamics of land cover changes, as the effect of deforestation on temperature is less pronounced for tropical than for temperate regions, and reforestation in the northern temperate areas during the second part of the 20th century partly offset the cooling trend. In most of the models, land cover changes lead to a decline in annual land evapotranspiration, while seasonal changes are rather equivocal because of spatial shifts in convergence zones. In the future, reforestation might be chosen as an option for the enhancement of terrestrial carbon sequestration. Our study indicates that biogeophysical mechanisms need to be accounted for in the assessment of land management options for climate change mitigation.Climate change and spatial planning are connected in two ways. On the one hand, spatial planning can contribute to mitigating climate change, i.e. to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, spatial planning also plays an important role in the adaptation to climate change impacts. This article examines by the example of Germany the potential role regional and land-use planning can play in climate change mitigation and adaptation.Present woodfuel usage in Britain is negligible. Historically, Britain has been fortunate in having abundant coal, oil and gas. At an EU level, biomass is seen as an important element of energy, environment and agriculture/forestry policy. In the European context, biomass is taken to include agricultural and industrial wastes in addition to forest woodfuel, and it is regarded as a potential source of heat, fuels and electricity. In the UK, energy policy as a whole is based on four considerations-environment, energy reliability and security, affordability for the poorest in society and competitive pricing for businesses, industries and households. Within UK policy, the dominant driver for greater use of biomass as a renewable source of energy is climate change mitigation; energy security is an emerging driver; all other potential benefits of biomass as a renewable resource are of limited significance. At the moment, the UK focus is narrower than in Europe. National targets are set only for electricity generation. Furthermore, expansion of energy crops, which are defined in the major regulations as 'crops planted since 1989 and grown primarily for the purpose of being used as a fuel' and, therefore, do not include material from extant forests, is seen as the main way to ensure energy security and minimise carbon expended to transport the raw material to the point of end use. Nevertheless, woody biomass from forests, sawmills, urban areas and transportation corridors is already available in vastly greater quantities than 'energy crops'. At a regional and local scale, global environmental issues are of lower relative importance and a much wider range of potential benefits tend to be taken into consideration. For example, the economic benefits of woodfuel heating in areas without connections to the gas grid have been an important consideration in the steady increase in woodheat developments. In other areas where there is a less obvious financial driver, rural development is a powerful determinant of support for woodfuel projects. Crown Copyright (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.So far, climate change mitigation pathways focus mostly on CO2 and a limited number of climate targets. Comprehensive studies of emission implications have been hindered by the absence of a flexible method to generate multi-gas emissions pathways, user-definable in shape and the climate target. The presented method 'Equal Quantile Walk' (EQW) is intended to fill this gap, building upon and complementing existing multi-gas emission scenarios. The EQW method generates new mitigation pathways by 'walking along equal quantile paths' of the emission distributions derived from existing multi-gas IPCC baseline and stabilization scenarios. Considered emissions include those of CO2 and all other major radiative forcing agents (greenhouse gases, ozone precursors and sulphur aerosols). Sample EQW pathways are derived for stabilization at 350 ppm to 750 ppm CO2 concentrations and compared to WRE profiles. Furthermore, the ability of the method to analyze emission implications in a probabilistic multi-gas framework is demonstrated. The probability of overshooting a 2 degrees C climate target is derived by using different sets of EQW radiative forcing peaking pathways. If the probability shall not be increased above 30%, it seems necessary to peak CO2 equivalence concentrations around 475 ppm and return to lower levels after peaking (below 400 ppm). EQW emissions pathways can be applied in studies relating to Article 2 of the UNFCCC, for the analysis of climate impacts, adaptation and emission control implications associated with certain climate targets. See www.simcap.org for EQW-software and data.The absence of US national action oil global climate change policy has prompted initiatives by the US Congress, cities, states, and regions toward what is likely to become it long-term, collaborative effort to harmonize national energy and climate policies. This upward evolution in the face of it reluctant administration is historically consistent with the development of national legislation on other environmental and social issues in the US. At the heart of this movement is the need to resolve conflicts between high-intensity use of low-cost fossil energy Supplies, and the dominating impact of carbon dioxide emissions oil global climate change. US states are among the largest carbon dioxide emitters in the world and play a critical role in supplying and transforming energy, its well as consuming it, for economic advantage. State governments are also likely to have to shoulder some of the cost of potentially extensive climate damages and bear the brunt of the cost of implementing future federal mandates. As a result, many are taking proactive stances oil the development of climate mitigation policy to prepare for, accelerate, and/or guide national policy. As US states show leadership on addressing greenhouse gas emissions, they also play an important role in forging policies and measures that reduce economic conflict between energy and climate goals. A number have launched or completed greenhouse gas mitigation plans and other major policies in the past few years that address these conflicts through: (1) finding ways to reduce mitigation costs, including the use of incentive-based policy instruments; (2) promoting ail open and democratic policy process that includes major stakeholders; (3) promoting equity across socioeconomic groups, regions, and generations; and (4) promoting interregional cooperation. The results are promising and suggest that the state arena for climate and energy policy is evolving quickly and constructively toward alternatives that reduce conflict. Regional efforts are also unfolding, along with greater congressional attention to the lessons learned and commitments made by sub-federal actions. In the next few years many national energy and climate conflicts are likely to be tested and addressed by states. Among these, Pennsylvania is likely to be an important player due to its high profile of energy production and potential for leadership. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents emission scenarios for India, constructed following the IPCC SIZES framework. Analysis spans 21st century and is centered on energy sector CO2 emission. Scenario stories presume no explicit climate intervention; however differences in endogenous profiles of key drivers like technologies have profound indirect impact on GHG emissions. Across scenarios, aggregate emission trajectories vary significantly, thus proving that endogenous development choices are key determinants of emission paths. The paper therefore argues that development policies and actions, which alter profiles of key drivers of development should be essential elements of climate mitigation strategies. Scenario results show that India's per capita emission during the century would rank amongst the lowest. Stabilization at a 550 ppmv CO2 concentration would induce significant changes in energy and technology mix and economic losses in India. Stabilization burden would be lower in scenarios where underlying development paths are sustainable. The near-term energy choices, given their path dependence, could deliver sustained development and climate benefits. Aligning development and climate actions, therefore, is advisable and feasible. The regime instruments, the paper concludes, should aim to first support endogenous climate-friendly actions and then to induce climate centric actions in addition.In the context of the international market for greenhouse gas emissions, I examine applications of portfolio theory for investment decisions regarding biological carbon sequestration projects. Using ecosystem-scale eddy correlation carbon flux measurements, I show how to determine how much financial risk of carbon is diversifiable. This method allows a quantitative assessment of the potential for geographical diversification of carbon sink investments. In a case study of six ecosystems in the temperate Northern hemisphere, a significant benefit from diversification is demonstrated even among sites that seem to have broadly similar characteristics. This benefit derives in part from differences in ecosystem response to varying weather conditions and differences in ecosystem type, both of which affect the sites' covariances. In providing a quantitative common language for scientific and corporate uncertainties, the concept of carbon financial risk provides an opportunity for expanding communication between these elements essential to successful climate policy. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the idea of carbon capture and storage (CCS) has rapidly evolved from a relatively obscure concept to an increasingly recognized potential climate change mitigation approach that could contribute to stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, environmental advocacy groups have been engaged in a limited, but growing, capacity in public discussions related to carbon storage. Given the critical role that environmental advocacy groups play in shaping public perceptions of different potential approaches to solving environmental problems and given the recognition that public perception of CCS will influence its advancement, this paper reviews the perspectives and positions of several prominent environmental advocacy groups related to CCS. While several environmental organizations have taken strong positions in favor of biological carbon storage and against the idea of oceanic carbon storage, most environmental groups have been cautiously hesitant in their public stance and assessment of the more advanced concept of injecting captured CO2 underground into natural geologic reservoirs. Concerns that CCS may detract from efforts and funds to support increased use of other existing energy technology alternatives as well as apprehension about ill-defined risks and impacts associated with storing CO2 underground have contributed to the hesitancy to support CCS.When climate change mitigation strategies are discussed in reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in 2001 (Metz et al., 2001), the authors inevitably center on reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases and, to a lesser extent, reduction in aerosol emissions such as black carbon aerosols. Reductions of carbon emissions to the atmosphere includes strategies to not only capture and store carbon emissions from, for example, coal fired power plants, but also includes strategies such as increasing energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy sources, and greater use of fuels that do not contain carbon (such as nuclear) or are carbon-neutral. Over the next several centuries most or all of the earth's fossil fuel reserves (about 4000 Gt-C) may be consumed, with the hope that carbon capture and storage (CCS) will minimize future greenhouse gas emissions to levels that are not dangerous to the planet. However, as discussed in this paper, it may not be possible for repositories to reliably store the massive amounts of carbon generated without imposing environmental risks. Further, while control of global warming is of immediate concern, possibilities of other types of climate change exist. Abrupt changes could be triggered that, for example, might reduce the deep North Atlantic circulation and produce a cooling over much of the earth. Second, the earth has been in an interglacial warm period for over 10,000 years, and if the climate cycles observed in the previous 500,000 years continue, it is possible that the earth will return to a colder period. Ultimately, control of global cooling may be a more challenging problem than control of global warming. If reduction of greenhouse gas emissions turns out not to be the complete solution to climate change mitigation requirements (which may involve both warming and cooling periods), what is? In this paper, earth-based and space-based techniques are explored that are designed to supplement greenhouse gas reduction approaches. While the strategies presented here may be futuristic and expensive, they do provide us with an outlook on controlling global climate change that may spawn ideas for other mitigation techniques. General design considerations are presented based on a global energy balance model to predict global temperature changes not only in response to changing greenhouse gas concentrations, but also to changing conditions in the earth system, such as the net incoming solar radiation or the planetary albedo. The approaches are intended to perturb the earth's energy balance in a controllable manner. Today, for example, data show that the earth is not in an equilibrium energy state. About 1.0 W/m(2) more energy is coming into the earth than is leaving, indicating that the earth is '' committed '' to this amount of global warming and its attendant consequences, even if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere do not continue to increase. This energy imbalance is equivalent to a further warming of 0.5 degrees C to 1 degrees C, comparable to the observed global warming that has occurred over the past century. One benefit of the supplemental mitigation techniques would be to help '' uncommit '' earth from such energy imbalances, as well as to provide a basis for addressing future climate change.This article explores various opportunities for government procurement practices that could contribute to achieving the European Kyoto targets and the diffusion of innovative energy technologies. It examines the potential for conflict between 'climate-friendly' public purchasing, on the one hand, and the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) and the European Directives on public procurement, on the other. The main arguments put forward are, firstly, that the climate mitigation potential of government procurement is significant; and, secondly, that the potential for conflict between climate-friendly procurement and the GPA is limited because of the restricted membership and scope of this agreement. The broader scope of the EU procurement Directives arguably increases the potential for conflict, but it is shown that these rules do not hinder climate-friendly procurement if public entities specify, at an early stage, exactly what they intend to procure, and adhere to the general principles of non-discrimination and transparency. Thirdly, a problem might occur if a public entity wishes to purchase innovative products for which no standard specifications exist and for which there are only a few suppliers. Finally, it is recommended that climate-friendly procurement should be implemented to the fullest extent possible.Fossil fuel combustion is the largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As a result of combustion, essentially all of the fuel carbon is emitted to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), along with small amounts of methane and, in some cases, nitrous oxide. It has been axiomatic that reducing anthropogenic GHG emissions requires reducing fossil-fuel use. However, that relationship may no longer be as highly coupled in the future. There is an emerging understanding that CO2 capture and storage (CCS) technology offers a way of using fossil fuels while reducing CO2 emissions by 85% or more. While CCS is not the 'silver bullet' that in and of itself will solve the climate change problem, it is a powerful addition to the portfolio of technologies that will be needed to address climate change. The goal of this Commentary is to describe CCS technology in simple terms: how it might be used, how it might fit into longer term mitigation strategies, and finally, the policy issues that its emergence creates. All of these topics are discussed in much greater detail in the recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (SRCCS) (IPCC, 2005).Carbon capture and storage (CCS) could achieve drastic cuts in the CO2 emissions associated with fossil fuels in the near to medium term and has been promoted as a significant climate change mitigation option. As the profile of this family of technologies grows rapidly, there remain many uncertainties relating to its viability, effectiveness and desirability. In this paper we begin to map out some of the key issues associated with CCS, using a multi-criteria approach to explore how an (admittedly small) selection of stakeholders perceive alternative storage options and energy scenarios. We present five long-term scenarios describing alternative ways in which the UK energy system could develop and which deploy different levels of carbon storage. The key storage options considered are oil and gas fields (both disused and with enhanced oil recovery), traps in saline aquifers, saline aquifers outside traps and on-shore sites. The relative performance of the scenarios and the storage reservoirs included within them have been assessed against a set of socio-economic, technical and environmental criteria by a small selection of stakeholders to the carbon storage debate. Whilst we cannot make strong conclusions regarding precise stakeholder opinions at this stage due to the small size of the sample, the broad delineation of the arguments for and against CCS are evident. Multi-criteria assessment (MCA) appears to hold much potential as a useful tool for characterising and better understanding differences in stakeholder assessments of CCS and its implications, and for identifying options around which greater consensus on the desirability (or otherwise) of CCS as a mitigation strategy might emerge.The non-CO2 greenhouse gases have so far jointly contributed around 40 percent to overall global warming. In this paper we examine the role of non-CO2 greenhouse gases in meeting long-term climate change targets. For this purpose, we develop climate mitigation scenarios aimed at achieving long-term stabilization of global radiative forcing. We use the MESSAGE model for a thorough bottom-up representation of the six Kyoto greenhouse gases and corresponding mitigation technologies. This approach endogenizes energy feedback effects from mitigation of non-CO2 gases and takes into account the interplay and side benefits that exist across GHGs. We analyze two mitigation scenarios that stabilize global radiative forcing at 4.5 W/m(2) as compared to pre-industrial times-one allowing only for CO2 mitigation and another with multigas mitigation. In addition, we also investigate a lower stabilization level of 3 W/m(2) and look into the implications this has for abatement strategies. Our approach helps us to identify a portfolio of measures in the energy, industry and agricultural sectors for achieving a proposed climate target. We find that considering the full basket of GHGs improves the effectiveness of the mitigation portfolio resulting in significantly lower costs, especially in the short term. In the long run, the bulk of the emissions reductions are still found to come from CO2 and this effect becomes more pronounced under the more stringent climate target. This emphasizes the importance of a diverse mitigation portfolio that includes both CO2 and non-CO2 related abatement options in meeting long-term climate targets.Future global warming may depend strongly on the potential for abating emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Flexibility in implementing climate change mitigation policies can significantly reduce mitigation costs and has three dimensions; space, time and gas species. Therefore, multiple greenhouse gas reduction flexibility should be considered. The emission and reduction potential of CO2 and non-CO2 GHGs are assessed here using an integrated assessment model under climate change targets. The implications on gas life as well as abatement timing uncertainty on costs, technological availability, etc. are discussed. The introduction of additional multigas reductions will cut the economic burden of achieving a given climate change target. The conclusions are threefold; (1) Multigas mitigation is a cost effective strategy compared to CO2-only mitigation under the same climate target, (2) CO2 mitigation is expected to lead to ancillary reductions in CH4, N2O and SOx emissions, and (3) There is great uncertainty in the assessment of non-CO2 GHG mitigation opportunities.This paper examines the role of climate forcing agents other than carbon dioxide using the MiniCAM integrated assessment model for both no-climate-policy and policy emissions scenarios. Non-CO2 greenhouse-gas forcing is dominated by methane and tropospheric ozone. Assumptions about the prevalence of methane recovery and local air pollution controls in the no-policy cases are a critical determinant of methane and ozone-precursor emissions. When these factors are considered, emissions are substantially reduced relative to earlier estimates. This reduces their potential as climate mitigation agents through specific climate policies. Nevertheless, the addition of non-CO2 greenhouse gas and ozone precursor abatement options significantly reduces mitigation costs in the first half of the 21(st) century (by up to 40%) compared to the case where only CO2 abatement options are pursued. While the influences of aerosols are small by the end of the century, there is a significant interaction in the early 21(st) century between policies to reduce CO2 emissions and SO2 emissions, even in the presence of SO2-related pollution control policies. The attendant reduced aerosol cooling can more than offset the reduction in warming that accrues from reduced CO2. When non-CO2 gases are included in the policy, the net effect is that global-mean climate change to 2050 is practically unaffected by mitigation policy.The projections of energy related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) serve as point of departure for an assessment of plausible ranges of CO2 emissions that could be avoided through CO2 capture and storage measures. Scenario and time dependent, sector and fuel specific capture factors are developed for eleven world regions to estimate the proportion of CO2 resulting from fossil fuel and biomass combustion/conversion that might be practical to capture and store. The capture factors are applied to the original CO2 emissions scenarios at a highly disaggregated level. The results are summed up and presented. The results indicate that it might be possible to capture and store a significant quantity of energy related CO2, especially in the second quarter of this century. Yet the amounts of CO2 still being emitted remain considerable, suggesting that other technologies will also be needed if the threat of climate change requires large reductions of CO2 emissions over the next few decades. The international handbook on integrated environmental and economic accounting (SEEA-2003) provides a detailed overview of environmental accounting approaches that have been developed in parallel with the system of national (economic) accounts. In addition to natural resource stock accounts and environmental protection expenditure accounts, SEEA-2003 pays considerable attention to physical flow accounting. Expanding the national economic accounts with physical data sets facilitates the joint analysis of environmental and economic policy issues. This article discusses the main characteristics of national accounts-oriented physical flow accounting approaches and provides an overview of the kind of indicators they may put forward. Although this article is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive review of macro-oriented physical flow accounting approaches, the analytical advantages of national accounts-oriented physical flow accounts are illustrated.If the technosphere and the biosphere are divided into cells, the presence and turnover of a substance in a study area can be summarized in a vector of stocks and a matrix of flows between different pairs of cells. Likewise the stocks and flows of several substances or materials in one or more time periods can be summarized in multidimensional data cubes. In this article, we provide a theoretical framework for handling physical flow data, and we demonstrate how a set of matrix operations can facilitate exploratory analysis and quality assessment of such data regardless of the number of substances, materials, and time periods considered. In particular, we show how matrices and cubes of flow data can be recalculated when the collection of cells is modified by joining cells, and also what information is required to recalculate flows when cells are split. Furthermore, we illustrate how and under what circumstances substance-flow data originating from different studies with different collections of cells can be compared or merged. The generic character of the given formulae facilitates the development of software for physical flow data.Sustainable management of materials and products requires continuous evaluation of numerous complex social, ecological, and economic factors. A number of tools and methods are emerging to support this. One of the most rigorous is life-cycle assessment (LCA), But LCAs often lack a sustainability perspective and bring about difficult trade-offs between specificity and depth, on the one hand, and comprehension and applicability, on the other. This article applies a framework for strategic sustainable development (often referred to as The Natural Step (TNS) framework) based on backcasting from basic principles for sustainability. The aim is to foster a new general approach to the management of materials and products, here termed "strategic life-cycle management." This includes informing the overall analysis with aspects that are relevant to a basic perspective on (1) sustainability, and (2) strategy to arrive at sustainability The resulting overview is expected to help avoid costly assessments of flows and practices that are not critical from a sustainability and/or strategic perspective and to help identify strategic gaps in knowledge or potential problems that need further assessment. Early experience indicates that the approach can complement some existing tools and concepts by informing them from a sustainability perspective-for example, current product development and LCA tools.As industrial ecology (IE) solidifies conceptually and methodologically, and as it gains visibility and legitimacy in academia, industry and government, it is important that the IE community periodically evaluate the status of its emerging institutional arrangements. At the same time, industrial ecologists should assess the political relations developing between the field and the larger world. We analyze four institutional criteria: professional legitimacy, viable clientele, entrepreneurial acumen, and occupational opportunities, as well as a more controversial fifth measure-political relevance. Drawing a comparison with the field of ecology, we argue that efforts to foster IE institutionally can, ironically, conflict with the objective of seeing IE become "the science and engineering of sustainability" The article concludes by reflecting on the importance of this kind of critical appraisal and on why many observers of the field remain hopeful.Contemporary cycles for copper and zinc are coanalyzed with the tools of exploratory data analysis. One-year analyses (circa 1994) are performed at three discrete spatial levelscountry (52 countries that comprise essentially all anthropogenic stocks and flows of the two metals), eight world regions, and the planet as a whole-and are completed both in absolute magnitude and in per capita terms. This work constitutes, to our knowledge, the first multiscale, muitilevel analysis of anthropogenic resources throughout their life cycles. The results demonstrate that (1) A high degree of correlation exists between country-level copper and country-level zinc rates of fabrication and manufacturing, entry into use, net addition to in-use stocks, discard, and landfilling; (2) Regional-level rates for copper and zinc cycle parameters show the same correlations as exist at country level; (3) On a per capita basis, countries add to in-use stock almost 50% more copper than zinc; (4) The predominant discard streams for copper and zinc at the global level are different for the two metals, and relative rates of different loss processes differ geographically, so that resource recovery policies must be designed from metalspecific and location-specific perspectives; (5) When absolute magnitudes of life-cycle flows are considered, the standard deviations of the data sets decrease from country level to regional level for both copper and zinc, which is not the case for the per capita data sets, where the statistical properties of the data sets for both metals approach being independent of spatial level, thus providing a basis for predicting unmeasured per capita metal flow behavior.A number of potential explanatory variables for the stocks and flows of copper and zinc in contemporary technological societies are co-analyzed with the tools of exploratory data analysis. A one-year analysis (circa 1994) is performed for 50 countries that comprise essentially all anthropogenic stocks and flows of the two metals. The results show that (1) The key explanatory variable for metal use is gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (purchasing power parity, PPP). By itself, GDP explains between one-third and one-half of the variance of per capita copper and zinc use. Other variables that were significantly correlated with copper and zinc use included stock of passenger cars and television sets (per 1,000 people); two infrastructure variables, wired telephone connections, urban population, and value added in manufacturing. The results do not provide evidence supporting the Kuznets curve hypothesis for these metals. (2) Metal use per capita can be estimated using multiple regression equations. For copper, the natural logarithm of use is related to the explanatory variables GDP (PPP), value added in manufacturing, and urban population. This model explains 80% of the variance among the different countries (r(2) = 0.79). The natural logarithm of zinc use is related to GDP (PPP) and value added in manufacturing with an r 2 of 0.75; (3) For both metals, rates of metal fabrication, use, net addition to stock, and discard in low- and high-income countries differ significantly from each other Our statistical analyses thus provide a basis for estimating the potential development of metal use, net addition to stock, and discard, using data on explanatory variables that are available at the international level.Three established life-cycle inventories of agricultural operations were used to generate air emissions data for soybean production: the greenhouse gases, regulated emissions, and energy use in transportation (GREET) model; the economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) model; and SimaPro software equipped with the Franklin database. EIO-LCA and GREET baseline data were compared to evaluate differences in boundary definitions that apply specifically to U.S. soybean agriculture and processing, which resulted in several major findings. The DO model estimated for emissions of particulate matter less than 10 micrograms (PM10) resulting from wind erosion that were not included in GREET, but neglected indirect nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from fertilizer application. DO also assumed significantly lower process energy requirements and lower volatile organic compounds (VOC) for soybean crushing and oil extraction. The GREET and SimaPro models were compared using identical boundary and assumption data, to reveal major discrepancies in fundamental assumptions of energy inventories. Key emission factors varied by several orders of magnitude for basic energy generation and combustion processes, potentially impacting results for any inventory analysis that contains significant energy consumption. The Franklin database assumed VOC and sulfur oxides (SO2) emissions more than an order of magnitude higher than GREET for all categories investigated, with significantly lower N2O and methane (CH4) emission factors.Energy budgets for agricultural production can be used as building blocks for life-cycle assessments that include agricultural products, and can also serve as a first step toward identifying crop production processes that benefit most from increased efficiency. A general trend toward increased energy efficiency in U.S. agriculture has been reported. For wheat cultivation, in particular, this study updates cradle-to-gate process analyses produced in the seventies and eighties. Input quantities were obtained from official U.S. statistics and other sources and multiplied by calculated or recently published energy coefficients. The total energy input into the production of a kilogram of average U.S. wheat grain is estimated to range from 3,1 to 4.9 MJ/kg, with a best estimate at 3.9 Mj/kg. The dominant contribution is energy embodied in nitrogen fertilizer at 47% of the total energy input, followed by diesel fuel (25%), and smaller contributions such as energy embodied in seed grain, gasoline, electricity, and phosphorus fertilizer. This distribution is reflected in the energy carrier mix, with natural gas dominating (57%), followed by diesel fuel (30%). High variability in energy coefficients masks potential gains in total energy efficiency as compared to earlier, similar U.S. studies. Estimates from an input-output model for several input processes agree well with process analysis results, but the model's application can be limited by aggregation issues: Total energy inputs for generic food grain production were lower than wheat fertilizer inputs alone, possibly due to aggregation of diverse products into the food grain sector.Water and energy are two primary natural resources used by building occupants. A life-cycle assessment (LCA) is performed for water-consuming plumbing fixtures and water-consuming appliances during their operational life for four different building types. Within the cycle studied, water is extracted from the natural environment, subjected to water treatment, pumped to buildings for use, collected for wastewater treatment, and discharged back to the natural environment. Specifically, the impacts of water use, electricity and natural gas generation, energy consumption (for water and wastewater treatment, and for water heating), and the manufacture of water and wastewater treatment chemicals are evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively on a generalized national level in the United States of America. It is concluded that water use and consumption within buildings have a much larger impact on resource consumption than the water and wastewater treatment stages of the life cycle. To study this more specifically, the resource consumption of four different building types-an apartment building, a college dormitory, a motel, and an office building-is considered. Of these four building types, the apartment has the highest energy consumption (for water and wastewater treatment, and for water heating) per volume of water used, whereas the office building has the lowest. Similarly, the calculated LCA score for the apartment building is typically greater than those of the other three building types.Improving eco-efficiency can contribute to sustainable development. This article defines the societal services and environmental impacts of the lead-acid battery (LAB) system and offers definitions of eco-efficiency, resource efficiency, and environmental efficiency in the context of LAB systems. Based on the actual lead-flow in the LAB system, we develop a model that considers changes in production, the time interval between production and disposal, direct linkages between the final product and the societal service it provides, and the fiscal year as the statistical period. From this model, equations for eco-efficiency are derived and changes in eco-efficiency are predicted. The results show, not surprisingly, that increased lead recycling and reduced lead emissions will both improve eco-efficiency. The resource and environmental efficiencies for LAB in China are 1 19 and 13 1 kilowatt-hour-years per metric tonne (kWh (.) yr/t), respectively, versus a value for both of 15,800 kWh (.) yr/t in Sweden. The difference results from a lower lead recycling rate (only 0.312 tonne/tonne, which means that nearly 70% of the old lead scrap is not recycled based on official statistics) and higher lead emissions (0.324 tonne/tonne, which means that nearly 33% of the lead inputs used in the LAB system were lost into the environment) in China. Further analysis shows that these problems result from inefficient management of lead scrap, poor quality lead ore, and an abundance of small-scale lead-related plants. Ways to improve eco-efficiency are proposed.Ecological footprints (EF) have been used for more than 15 yr as an aggregate measure of sustainability of geographical regions, but also for certain products and activities. EF analysis measures the bioproductive areas required to produce resources such as crops and timber, the directly occupied areas for infrastructure, and areas for absorbing waste flows (mostly limited to carbon dioxide) in a given year for a defined population. The need to extend ecological footprint analysis to electronic products arose because so far, mobile phones have mainly been evaluated using life-cycle assessments with a focus on toxicity, end-of-life management, and energy use, thus ignoring the wider sustainability implications. This article presents the footprint results from three mobile phone case studies. To establish the land areas consumed by the mined materials used in electronic products, a database was developed based on literature data and on approximations from the density and overburden of materials. The relationship between abundance and overburden values was used in a regression analysis to estimate energy requirements in materials extraction where other data were not available. Using a life-cycle assessment approach, environmental burdens for producing and using a mobile phone were calculated and transformed into the instantaneous rate of resource consumption. Key results were that different electronic products have different ecological footprints and that the methodology proved sensitive enough to reveal differences in small electronic products and for monitoring technologies that use bioproductive space efficiently.In this article we discuss the interplay between extended producer responsibility (EPR) and technological change and innovation (TCI) in Norway. We ask whether Norwegian EPR policy has an effect on TO and, if so, whether it makes any difference how the EPR policies are designed. By carrying out a comparative study between the plastic packaging (PP) sector and electrical and electronic (EE) sector in Norway, we conclude that there is a correlation between Norwegian EPR policy and TO, but the causality is rather weak, EPR has an effect on downstream activities through increased recycling and indirectly through institutional innovation and learning. It does not, however, make a significant difference how the policies are designed, because they are considered similar by a majority of actors contributing financially to the EPR schemes, As for technological change and innovation upstream, the role of Norwegian EPR policies in the observed trends is not significant. Other factors such as the EPR-based Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive promulgated by the European Union (EE sector) and the need for competitiveness (PP sector) seem far more important. In order to make collective EPR policies more powerful in inducing technological change and innovation, decision-makers should consider more specific measures that directly address the core businesses of the producers.As a subdiscipline of industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis is concerned with resource optimization among colocated companies. The industrial symbiosis complex in Kalundborg, Denmark is the seminal example of industrial symbiosis in the industrial ecology literature. In spite of this, there has been no in-depth quantitative analysis enabling more comprehensive understanding of economic and environmental performances connected to this case. In this article some of the central industrial symbiotic exchanges, involving water and steam, in Kalundborg are analyzed, using detailed economic and environmental data. It is found that both substantial and minor environmental benefits accrue from these industrial symbiosis exchanges and that economic motivation often is connected to upstream or downstream operational performance and not directly associated with the value of the exchanged by product or waste itself. It is concluded that industrial symbiosis, as viewed from a company perspective, has to be understood both in terms of individual economic and environmental performance, and as a more collective approach to industrial sustainability.How successful are multinational corporations in extending their firm-based environmental standards to their subsidiaries and those subsidiaries' local suppliers in their global production networks in developing countries? We address this question through an in-depth case study of how Motorola, a prominent multinational electronics firm with an extensive global production network, is using a set of firm-based standards to meet several new stringent European Union environmental directives. The case study demonstrates that these firm-based standards appear to be enabling a major subsidiary and its suppliers in one developing economy to reduce the environmental intensities of their production activities. This finding suggests that the firm-based environmental standards of multinationals with extensive global production networks might contribute to a leveling up of environmental standards in subsidiaries and their local suppliers, rather than a "race to the bottom," thus reinforcing the technique or intensity effects associated with open trade, investment, and technology policies.The number and diversity of chemicals produced and used in society today are growing in conjunction with the both evident and uncertain environmental impacts associated with the life cycles of these chemicals. Chemical management services (CMS) is a business strategy based on a strategic, long-term contract, according to which the supplier of chemical management services accepts the responsibility for managing chemicals and strives to reduce the associated costs and risks. This strategy also has the potential for reducing the environmental impacts of chemicals. This article provides an overview of the existing advantages and barriers for CMS providers and customers in the European context identifies conflicts of interest between them, and highlights important lessons regarding the role of CMS in shaping these markets. It reports on findings from interviews with European chemical producers and other stakeholders of chemical management services and is directed toward industry professionals interested in chemical management services. It concludes that economic and environmental advantages of CMS are not automatically guaranteed and lists factors that are critical for developing a win-win CMS for both providers and customers. Finally, ways of fostering CMS dissemination in Europe are suggested.One engine that drives the United States' economic growth is an ever-increasing demand for manufactured products, both at home and abroad. This increase has created a major concern for the environment in terms of disposing used goods and ensuring that these products are safe. As environmental concerns grow, however, renewable resources are gaining increasing attention, especially as industrial ecology and product biodegradability gain importance. Added to this, biological materials are increasingly being utilized to replace traditional materials in manufacturing. To aid both educators as well as researchers, this paper examines several considerations that are essential for manufacturing plastic products that contain biomaterials. These include the selection of materials, the selection of manufacturing processes, manufacturing costs, and the quality of final products. Additionally, several standard methods that are commonly used for the determination of mechanical and physical properties are compiled; thus this paper should be a useful resource for both educators and researchers. The trends discussed here and their implications are critical for those involved in manufacturing, because contrary to conventional wisdom, simultaneously meeting the material production needs of our society, as well as that of the environment are not mutually-exclusive.Increasing attention is being given now a days to developing environmental management (EM) strategies for the supply chain. This research: (1) investigates the factors leading to the development of a closed-loop supply chain, (2) describes the closed-loop supply chain design, (3) focuses on the collection challenges companies have been facing. More specifically, this paper tends to (4) show that manufacturers can create value by implementing a partnership with an eco-non-profit community organization in the collection process of used products for the closed-loop supply chain. This study focuses on the reuse-a-shoe program of Nike and the creation of Throwplace.com to point out the benefits of strategic alliances between manufacturers and eco-non-profit organizations. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The project of industrial ecology is to offer guidance to the industrial systems, in order that they function in a cyclic way. After having developed the principal arguments which militate in favour of industrial ecology and having offered an exemplary case, I will examine the limits of the analogy between industrial systems and ecological systems,thus expressing the circumstances and the factors which preclude the former to function at least roughly like the latter. The exemplary case having shown that technological effectiveness is not enough to grant a competitive advantage, I will finish by offering support to the contention that one can regard industrial ecology as a form of Utopia.Electrodialysis with bipolar membranes (EDBM) is a kind of technology that integrates solvent and salt dissociation. It can realize salt conversion without second salt pollution or provide H+ and OH-/alkoxide ions in situ without salt introduction. Thus, it inherently possesses economical and environmental benefits. Moreover, its technological compatibility gives rise to new functions when it couples with other technologies, such as complexion, ion exchange, extraction, and adsorption. In view of the above peculiarities, EDBM has found many interesting applications in chemistry, food processing, biochemical industries, and environmental protection. However, its development has been restricted by such factors as lack of recognition of its contribution to industrial ecology, high membrane cost, insufficient research investment, and scarce operation experience. This paper compiles an introduction to this technology from the perspective of industrial ecology and conducts an extensive examination into EDBM applications. Its purpose is to gather synergic strength from academia, industry, and government to perfect EDBM for sustainable development.Materials flow analysis (MFA) generates highly aggregated indicators for the material "scale" of national economies. Similarly, transport statistics operate with indicators for the scale of freight transport activity. This article presents a model that seeks to predict the scale of freight transport from material flows. In the first part, the model MEFASPACE is developed conceptually and formally, as a linear and static ("mechanistic") model linking biophysical variables by,defined causalities ("white box"). The key prediction is that transport volume (TV in metric tons) relates to direct material input (DMI) by a reloading factor, which, for thermodynamic reasons, varies very little, Transport work (TW in metric ton kilometers), the most common indicator for transport activity, depends on TV and distance per haul. In a second part, we probe this model with transport statistics from European countries for the past four decades. Whereas for road and rail transport statistical indicators exist for many countries and years and comply with our model's theoretical definitions, they are either lacking or not complying well for other modes. The results were encouraging, nevertheless. In the past four decades, DMI corresponded very closely to TV as predicted, with a reloading factor that is in the expected range (1-3) and fairly stable across countries and time. At the same time, distances per haul showed a much more dynamic pattern, with quite a bit of variation between countries and a clear tendency to increase over time. Thus, MFA opens a new path for projections and scenario building for freight transport, but needs to be coupled to knowledge from other fields to generate a full picture of transport distances and, finally environmental pressure.Integrated environmental assessment of technologies and processes associated with industrial ecology requires the sharing of expert knowledge from a wide range of domains of research. A concept for an Internet-based platform that uses Internet and communication technologies to support knowledge sharing in the form of numerical model computational services for solving complex problems related to large-scale systems such as urban ecosystems has been proposed. Here, a software prototype that has been developed for sharing and discovery of expert knowledge from domains related to industrial ecology is described. The prototype uses the combination of a generic upper level ontology and a specific domain level ontology to provide a semantic layer for the process of searching and matching knowledge requests with knowledge advertisements. Knowledge advertisements are provided in the form of semantic descriptions of computational model service capabilities. The prototype uses a multiagent system to support the realization of a distributed knowledge-sharing marketplace on the Internet, populated by agents that advertise model services, agents that make requests on behalf of system users, agents that supply ontologies, agents that conduct searches on behalf of other agents, and agents that manage address and function repositories for other agents. A proof of concept demonstration of the prototype is provided, using a hypothetical scenario of four researchers around the world who have knowledge that could aid each other's research efforts.Changes in food consumption and related processes have a significant impact on the flow of nitrogen in the environment. This study identifies both flows within the system and emissions to the hydrosphere and atmosphere. A case study of an average inhabitant of the city of Linkoping, Sweden, covers the years 1870, 1900, 1950, and 2000 and includes changes in food consumption and processing, agricultural production, and organic waste handling practices. Emissions to the hydrosphere from organic waste handling increased from 0.57 kilograms of nitrogen per capita per year (kg N/cap per year) to 3.1 kg N/cap per year, whereas the total flow of nitrogen to waste deposits grew from a negligible amount to 1.7 kg N/cap per year The largest flow of nitrogen during the entire period came from fodder The input of chemical fertilizer rose gradually to a high level of 15 kg N/cap per year in the year 2000. The total load per capita disposed of to the environment decreased during these 130 years by about 30%.Disposal of end-of-life vehicles (EM) is a relatively new focus of the European policy community. Technical requirements for car design and minimum reuse and recovery rates for end-of-life vehicles are the subject of a recent European Union directive on ELVs. This directive is expected to induce changes in the infrastructure required for ELV processing, and presents a substantial challenge to maintaining such an infrastructure as economically viable. This paper assesses current and emerging ELV recycling technologies, in order to provide guidelines for the development of future ELV recycling strategies. Emphasis is given to technologies dedicated to automobile shredder residue (ASR) recovery, as an alternative/complement to more labor-intensive dismantling activities. The ultimate goal is to develop a vision of the type of ASR processing technology that could emerge in the future. The analysis is based on a model developed to simulate ELV processing infrastructures, and shredding data are taken from full-scale experiments. The results obtained show that ASR mechanical separation and recycling technologies may enable more extensive recycling and contribute to achieving European Union recycling targets, and can thus be considered as far more promising than technologies based on energy recovery.As of I January 2006 all automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and component manufacturers operating within the European Union will need to comply with the End-of-Life Vehicle Directive (referred to hereafter as the EU ELV Directive). The EU ELV Directive compels all OEMs to take back and dismantle all motor vehicles for domestic use at the end of their useful lives. Each component part will then be either reused or recycled. To this end, the ultimate goal of the EU ELV Directive is that all motor vehicles for domestic use will have a reuse or recyclable content of 85% at the end of their useful lives, moving toward 95% by 2015. The burden of the EU ELV Directive falls on both the OEMs and their component manufacturers, forcing them to innovate and "design for disassembly" This being the case, it offers a unique real world example with which to test the Porter Hypothesis. Porter asserts that strict, correctly formulated environmental regulation can offer a firm secondary benefits through improved product design and the reduction of waste. This in turn allows the firm to offset the cost of compliance. Because the EU ELV Directive has been fashioned to force firms into a process of innovation and redesign, the magnitude of these so-called offsets can be judged. This article employs Rugman and Verbeke's 1998 strategic matrix of firm response to environmental regulation to examine qualitative details of the strategic response of automotive component manufacturers and OEMs in the United Kingdom to the demands of the directive to judge the volume of offsets generated. This analysis shows no support for the Porter Hypothesis and challenges the assumptions of Rugman and Verbeke's model.This article presents a scenario analysis for a life-cycle model of service sector companies. The model is based on six case companies and it is applied to test the influence of 32 management scenarios. The scenarios simulate feasible options for environmental management measures in companies, and the life-cycle assessment method is used to model their relevance in terms of the total environmental impact of the company. The study found that the bulk of tested scenarios had only a minor influence on the total environmental impact of the company. Some individual management scenarios, though, turned out to have a major influence on the organization's environmental performance. The scenarios with greatest influence were those related to the procurement of electricity, building energy consumption, commuting vehicle mix, space usage efficiency, and refurbishment periods of the building. All of these management scenarios had an influence of more than 10% on the environmental impact of the model organization.This article presents an account of global resource extraction for the year 1999 by material groups, world regions, and development status. The account is based on materials flow analysis methodology and provides benchmark information for political strategies toward sustainable resource management. It shows that currently around 50 thousand megatons of resources are extracted yearly on a global scale, which results in a yearly global average resource use of around 8 tonnes per capita. Assuming further growth in world regions not yet close to the levels of resource use in the industrial cores-such as India or China-numbers could easily double once these parts of the world come to fully incorporate the industrial mode of production and consumption. This article contributes to information on resource use indicators, complementing and enriching information from economic accounting in order to facilitate political measures toward a sustainable use of resources.This article presents an assessment of energy inputs of the European Union (the 15 countries before the 2004 enlargement, abbreviated EU-15) for the period 1970-2001 and the United States for 1980-2000. The data are based on an energy flow analysis (EFA) that evaluates socioeconomic energy flows in a way that is conceptually consistent with current materials flow analysis (MFA) methods. EFA allows assessment of the total amount of energy required by a national economy; it yields measures of the size of economic systems in biophysical units. In contrast to conventional energy balances, which only include technically used energy, EFA also accounts for socioeconomic inputs of biomass; that is, it also considers food, feed, wood and other materials of biological origin. The energy flow accounts presented in this article do not include embodied energy. Energy flow analyses are relevant for comparisons across modes of subsistence (e.g., agrarian and industrial society) and also to detect interrelations between energy utilization and land use. In the EU-15, domestic energy consumption (DEC = apparent consumption = domestic extraction plus import minus export) grew from 60 exajoules per year (I Ej = 10(18) J) in 1970 to 79 Ej/yr in 2001, thus exceeding its territory's net primary production (NPP, a measure of the energy throughput of ecosystems). In the United States, DEC increased from 102 Ej/yr in 1980 to 125 Ej/yr in 2000 and was thus slightly smaller than its NPP Taken together, the EU-15 and the United States accounted for about 38% of global technical energy use, 3 1 % of humanity's energetic metabolism, but only 10% of global terrestrial NPP and I I % of world population in the early 1990s. Per capita DEC of the United States is more than twice that of the EU-15. Calculated according to EFA methods, energy input in the EU and the United States was between and one-third above the corresponding value reported in one-fifth. conventional energy balances. The article discusses implications of these results for sustainability, as well as future research needs.This commentary responds to the study "The Energetic Metabolism of the European Union and the United States: Decadal Energy Input Time-Series with an Emphasis on Biomass" by Halberl and colleagues, published in this issue. Their article provides an analysis based on a set of data that could be very useful for discussing the sustainability of economic processes in terms of resource flows and societal relations to nature. The authors' choice to adopt a reductionist analysis of the metabolism of societies in energetic terms-that is, an analysis based on a single-scale and single-variable indicator such as "joules of energy input metabolized per year for the whole society"-is a controversial one. Such a choice implies the aggregation of different types of data (referring to nonequivalent categories of energy inputs) into a single overall assessment. That is, in their study the authors are adopting an old and controversial solution for aggregating different types of forms: applying a set of flat conversion factors (calorimetric equivalent) to the different types of energy inputs considered. This commentary discusses the trade-off entailed by any method of aggregation of energy forms of different quality: (i) compression-reducing the number of indices used-versus (ii) relevance-maintaining a diversity of categories needed for the usefulness of the analysis. A brief history of the main strategies adopted, so far, for dealing with the problem of aggregation suggests implications for the approach adopted by Haberl and colleagues.In the late 1990s, office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, Inc., entered into a collaboration with architect William McDonough to create a system for designing cradle-to-cradle products. This collaboration led to the creation of a tool-the Design for Environment (DfE) product assessment tool-that evaluates progress towards cradle-to-cradle products. The first product Herman Miller designed using the DfE product assessment tool was the Mirra chair Over the course of the chair's development, the DfE process generated a number of design changes, including selecting a completely different material for the chair's spine, increasing recycled content in chair components, eliminating all PVC (polyvinyl chloride) components, and designing the chair for rapid disassembly using common tools, The areas of greatest success in designing the Mirra chair for the environment were the increased use of recyclable parts and increased ease of disassembly, whereas the areas of greatest challenge were increasing recycled content and using materials with a green chemistry composition. The success in recyclability reflects the use of metals, materials that have a well-established recycling infrastructure. The success in disassembly reflects the high degree of control that Herman Miller has over product assembly. The challenge to increasing recycled content is the use of plastics in chairs. Unlike the metals, which all contain some recycled content, most plastics are made from virgin polymers. The challenge to improving materials chemistry is the limited range of green chemicals and materials on the market, The Mirra chair exemplifies the value of incorporating the environment into design and the need for tools to benchmark progress, as well as the challenges of creating a truly cradle-to-cradle product. Herman Miller recognizes that working toward cradle-to-cradle products is a journey that will involve continuous improvement of its products.Students in Dr. Klementina Khait's class, "Industrial Ecology of Materials and Products," at Northwestern University get a new take on the "Three Rs": The revised version-Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.This paper presents the methodology of value chain analysis developed for a study which combined a material flow analysis of the UK iron and steel sector with a consideration of the economic dimension of those material flows, in order to shed light on concepts such as resource productivity and dematerialisation of the economy. The methodology is used in this paper to map the current value chain of iron and steel flows through the UK, noting the high value of scrap arisings at different stages of the production and use chain, and the substantial cost of disposing of iron and steel as waste; to examine the residual outputs generated by this industry and the value of applying industrial ecology principles; to contrast the environmental impacts of different categories of materials with their values; and to discuss the findings in terms of the global environmental burden of this sector of the economy, with particular attention paid to international trade aspects. It was found that while imports are substantial, net imports are, in terms of both weight and value, a rather small part-just under 20%-of total UK iron and steel production and use (defined as domestic production plus net imports). The findings show that value chain analysis is a robust methodology for exploring various aspects of the economy-environment interface, and a useful complement to material flow or life cycle analyses with a potentially very widespread applicability. The value chain analysis also provides a framework for coherent and integrated responses by industry as well as policy-makers, through its focus on linkages within different stages and actors in a chain and on the potential for systemic efficiencies. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Animal husbandry industry in Jilin Province is developing rapidly toward the one in large-scale, standardization and industrialization. It is upgrading to a higher level. This lays the foundation for the industry to practice ecological industry. Following the policies of Chinese Government, more and more enterprises are being engaged in seeking the effective ways of circular-economy. This paper does some researches on the projects of two major enterprises in this industry, redesigns the eco-industrial chains using principles of industrial ecology, and provides two models of circular-economy, namely vertical circulation and horizontal combination. After that, it analyzes the technological and economic effectiveness of the two designing plans. At the end, it summaries the traits of suitable circular-economy models adopted in the industry.Ecological modernization provides a theoretical framework for situating the emergence of new technology-intensive modes of environmental reform such as industrial ecology, environmentally conscious manufacturing, and ecological design. These forms of professional engineering practice all seek to exploit opportunities for aggressive innovation to achieve rigorous improvements in the environmental performance of industrial processes and consumer goods. Despite the potential of this approach, the American environmental movement has not offered much active support. This reticence is attributable to the historical development of organized environmentalism in the United States and its general tendency to privilege the interests of landscape and wildlife protection over concerns about public health and industrial pollution. There also exists within major segments of the country's environmental movement an inertia that stems from an institutionalized preference for litigation and lobbying and a wariness about technologically intensive policy programs. Novel initiatives launched by Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council over the past decade however provide some instructive lessons for coming to terms with a more innovation-driven future. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article analyzes the environmental effects of resource consumption at a subnational level (by Cardiff, the capital city of Wales), using the Ecological Footprint as a measure of impact assessment. The article begins by providing a short critique of the Footprint methodology and the limitations of methods traditionally used to calculate national Footprint accounts. We then describe the Footprint methodology developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute to overcome some of these problems and used as the basis of the Reducing Wales' Ecological Footprint project, of which the Cardiff study has been a part. The main portion of this article focuses on presenting and discussing the Footprint results for Cardiff. The Ecological Footprint of household consumption in Cardiff will be presented using the international Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP). Based on the results, we found that the areas of consumption that are a priority for Cardiff in terms of reducing resource use are food and drink, passenger transport (car and aviation), domestic fuel consumption, waste, and tourism. We also discuss how these findings have been presented to the Cardiff Council. We report on the initial reactions of policy officers to the Footprint results and how the Council plans to use them to influence policy decisions relating to sustainability. Finally, in the Conclusions section, we briefly explain the value of applying the Ecological Footprint at a subnational level and its value as an evidence-based tool for sustainability decision making.In a German case study, environmental input-output analyses (eIOA) combined with NAMEA-type tables were conducted for eleven selected environmental pressure variables. (NAMEA is an acronym for national accounts matrix including environmental accounts.) The analyses were conducted to derive the production-cycle-wide resource use and environmental impact potentials of final-demand product groups. The methodology permits identification and preliminary ranking of 10 product chains along which about two-thirds of German production-born environmental pressures arise. The most relevant product groups are construction work, food, motor vehicles, basic metals, and electricity. The ten product groups are characterized by both high resource requirements and high residual outputs (air emissions, wastes). The EU policy areas of integrated product policy and sustainable use of natural resources may address these product chains as a priority in order to identify and explore the possibility of reducing the environmental impacts from products throughout their life cycles and to decouple environmental impacts from resource use.The present study shows the results and methodology applied to the study of the identification of priority product categories for Belgian product and environmental policy The main goal of the study was to gather insight into the consumption of products in Belgium and their related life-cycle environmental impacts. The conclusions of this project on the product categories with major environmental contributions can be used to start up working groups involving stakeholders and initiate detailed product studies on the impact reduction potential that could be achieved by means of implementing product policy measures. Several ways of assessing product category environmental impacts and the effects of policy measures have been developed; 'bottom-up' or'market-life-cycle assessment' is one of these, and we tried this approach for the situation in Belgium. Simplified life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies were conducted for representative average products within each function-based product category and the results were multiplied with market statistics. Using this approach, we found that building construction, building occupancy, and personal transport are among the major categories for Belgium. The major drawbacks of this approach are the system-level limitations and the existence of a broad spectrum of nonharmonized methods and clatasets from which a sound preliminary selection had to be made. Consequently, the retrieval and selection of data was very time consuming and due to this we had to accept some major limitations in the study design. Nevertheless, the study has contributed to the development of a methodology for market-LCA and elements that can be picked up in currently ongoing and future work. The study concludes that to improve the feasibility and acceptance of this type of study there is a need for the development of a harmonized methodology on market-LCA, policy-relevant impact indicators as well as a harmonized and stakeholder-agreed-upon LCA databases.This article quantifies and ranks the environmental pressure caused by different product groups consumed in Sweden. This is done using information from economic and environmental statistics. An analysis for the year 1998 is performed for approximately 50 product groups using input-output analysis. This type of analysis has some major advantages for integrated product policy (IPP) purposes: the underlying data are regularly updated, the data systems are being harmonized by international standards, and the connection between environmental goals and IPP goals can be investigated. This article summarizes two Swedish reports, one for the Producer Responsibility Committee and one for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency The results show that the volume of consumption is an important factor in environmental pressure from products as well as impact intensities. The most important product categories for private consumption are petroleum products, electricity, construction, and food and beverages, as well as transport. Possibilities of building indicators for IPP are also discussed.To focus Danish product-oriented environmental policy, a study applying extended input-output analysis has been performed, identifying the most important product groups from an environmental perspective. The environmental impacts are analyzed from three different perspectives-the supply perspective, the consumption perspective, and the process perspective-cliffering primarily in their system delimitation. The top ten environmentally most important product groups (out of 138 industry products and 98 final consumption groups) are listed for each of the three perspectives, using both total environmental impact and environmental impact intensity as ranking principles. The study covers all substances that contribute significantly to the environmental impact categories of global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, nutrient enrichment, photochemical ozone formation, ecotoxicity human toxicity, and nature occupation. The differences in results between the three perspectives are elaborated and their policy relevance discussed. The top ten product groups account for a surprisingly large share of the total environmental impact of Danish production and consumption (up to 45%, depending upon the perspective). This implies that product-oriented environmental policy may achieve large improvements by focusing on a rather small number of product groups. Both imported products and products produced for export in general cause more environmental impact than products produced in Denmark for the Danish market. Especially noticeable are the export of meat and ship transport. This leads to the recommendation to include specific policy measures targeting both foreign producers and foreign markets. Because of its relatively large input of labor, public consumption is found to have a much smaller environmental impact intensity than private consumption. The results confirm results of other similar studies, but are more detailed and have lower uncertainty, due to a number of improvements in data and methodology. A short presentation of the methodology is provided as background information, although this is not the main focus of this article.A promising way to reduce environmental impacts of consumer expenditure is through the encouragement of more sustainable consumption patterns. Consumers cause environmental impacts both directly, such as by fuel use in personal cars, and indirectly, by paying for the production of consumables. With increased international trade, the indirect environmental impacts are difficult to determine because a portion of the emissions occurs in different geographical regions. Many previous studies have unrealistically assumed that imports are produced using domestic production technology. For countries with diverging technology and energy mixes the likely errors are significant. This study applies a methodology that explicitly includes technology differences to the case of Norwegian households. It is found that a significant portion of pollution is embodied in Norwegian household imports. Further, a disproportionately large amount of pollution is embodied in imports from developing countries. Overall, as in previous studies, we find that mobility and food are most important in terms of household environmental impacts. By analyzing the imports in more detail we find that for some sectors the majority of emissions occur in foreign regions; in particular, this is true for food, business services, clothing, chemicals, furniture, cars, agriculture, textiles, and most manufactured products.The 1990s policy trend of intervening at the specification level over a broad range of products has ended. Today's environmental product policies focus, rather, on a few arbitrary product groups. Selectiveness should serve absolute environmental impact reduction, which asks for a rational product-selection and target framework. The authors propose "life-cycle impact per consumer expenditure" as a key criterion. This criterion helps to connect macro environmental impact reduction aims with product innovation targets, even under continuous economic growth, consumption pattern shifts, and rebound threats. The authors analyze the Dutch economy as an exercise. This results in 44 product groups, labeled "Hyenas" by the authors, that need to improve their ratio score drastically between now and 2040. Some magnitudes of desired change are given. Finally, intervention processes at the Hyena group level along the lines of sustainable transition management are proposed. joint visioning, experimental portfolios, interaction between micro, meso, and macro change levels, and gradual pressure building are crucial elements in this concept of complex change management.For developing product policy, insight into the environmental effects of products is required. But available life-cycle assessment studies (LCAs) are hardly comparable between different products and do not cover total consumption. Input-output analysis with environmental extensions (EEIOA) of full consumption is not available for the European Union. Available country studies have a low sector resolution and a limited number of environmental extensions, This study fills the gap between detailed LCA and low-resolution EEIOA, specifying the environmental effects of household consumption in the European Union, discerning nearly 500 sectors, while specifying a large number of environmental extensions. Added to the production sectors are a number of consumption activities with direct emissions, such as automobile driving, cooking and heating, and a number of postconsumer waste management sectors. The data for Europe have been constructed by using the sparse available and coarse economic and environmental data on European countries and adding technological detail mainly based on data from the United States. A small number of products score high on environmental impact per Euro and also have a substantial share of overall consumer expenditure. Several meat and dairy products, household heating, and car driving thus have a large share of the total environmental impact. Due to their sales volume, however, products with a medium or low environmental score per Euro may also have a substantial impact. This is the case with bars and restaurants, clothing, residential construction, and even a service such as telecommunications. The limitations in real European data made heroic assumptions necessary to operationalize the model. One conclusion, therefore, is that provision of data in Europe urgently needs to be improved, at least to the level of sector detail currently available for the United States and Japan.Integrated product policy, according to the European Union, requires reliable data on the impact of consumer products along their life cycles. We argue that this necessarily requires the development of an information tool for hybrid analysis, combining aspects of life-cycle assessment and input-output analysis. A number of requirements in the development of such a hybrid information tool are identified, mainly concerning data and computational structure. For the former, some important points of attention are discussed, whereas for the latter, operational formulas are developed.Environmental effects of economic activities are ultimately driven by consumption, via impacts of the production, use, and waste management phases of products and services ultimately consumed. Integrated product policy (IPP) addressing the life-cycle impacts of products forms an innovative new generation of environmental policy Yet this policy requires insight into the final consumption expenditures and related products that have the greatest life-cycle environmental impacts. This review article brings together the conclusions of 11 studies that analyze the life-cycle impacts of total societal consumption and the relative importance of different final consumption categories, This review addresses in general studies that were included in the project Environmental Impacts of Products (EIPRO) of the European Union (EU), which form the basis of this special issue. Unlike most studies done in the past 25 years on similar topics, the studies reviewed here covered a broad set of environmental impacts beyond just energy use or carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The studies differed greatly in basic approach (extrapolating LCA data to impacts of consumption categories versus approaches based on environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) tables), geographical region, disaggregation of final demand, data inventory used, and method of impact assessment. Nevertheless, across all studies a limited number of priorities emerged. The three main priorities, housing, transport, and food, are responsible for 70% of the environmental impacts in most categories, although covering only 55% of the final expenditure in the 25 countries that currently make up the EU. At a more detailed level, priorities are car and most probably air travel within transport, meat and dairy within food, and building structures, heating, and (electrical) energy-using products within housing. Expenditures on clothing, communication, health care, and education are considerably less important. Given the very different approaches followed in each of the sources reviewed, this result hence must be regarded as extremely robust. Recommendations are given to harmonize and improve the methodological approaches of such analyses, for instance, with regard to modeling of imports, inclusion of capital goods, and making an explicit distinction between household and government expenditure.The research and analysis presented in this special issue shows that the same limited number of consumption categories are consistently revealed to be responsible for the largest share of environmental impact: mobility (automobile and air transport), food (meat, poultry, fish, and dairy followed by plant-based food), and residential energy use in the house (heating, cooling, electrical appliances, and lighting). It appears that differences in impact per euro between the product groupings are relatively limited, so it is essential to reduce the life-cycle impacts of products as such, rather than to shift expenditures to less impact-intensive product groupings. Furthermore, the effectiveness of expenditure on material products to improve quality of life leaves much room for improvement. Environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) tables probably form, in this field, the most appropriate information support tool for priority setting, prospective assessment of options, scenario analysis, and monitoring. A clear benefit would result from integrating the input-output (10) tables in the report to Eurostat of the 25 individual countries that make up the European Union (EU), with other officially available information on emissions and resources use, into a 60-sector EEIO table forthe EU. This, obviously, would be the first step toward more detailed tables. Three strategies are suggested to realize the additional, desirable detail of 150 sectors or more, each achievable at an increasing time horizon and with increasing effort: (1) developing further the current CEDA EU25 table; (2) building a truly European detailed inputoutput table accepting the restrictions of existing data gathering procedures; and (3) as (2), but developing new, dedicated data gathering and classification procedures. In all cases, a key issue is harmonizing classification systems for industry sectors, consumer expenditure categories, and product classifications (as.. in import/export statistics) in such a way that data sets may adequately be linked to input-output tables.Telework has emerged as a possible solution to transportation-related air pollution problems. This paper analyzes, both deterministically and probabilistically, a California-based 1-day telework scenario, and explores how the mode of transportation and other parameters such as vehicle miles traveled, vehicle model, occupancy rate, telecommuting frequency, and season (heating or cooling) affect the air pollution effects of telework programs when energy consumption-related emissions due to heating, cooling, lighting, and the use of electronic and electrical equipment (in the home and company office) are accounted for. Among others, the study found that total telework-related CO2 emissions during the cooling season and SO2, NOx, and hydrocarbon emissions in both seasons appear to be lower than nontelework emissions for all modes of transportation (except for light rail with higher NOx emissions and urban transit buses with roughly equal NOx emissions in the heating season). Light rail also has higher telework N2O and CH4 emissions. However, given the uncertainties in the data, the differences may be negligible. Urban transit buses and commuter express buses were found to be associated with more telework than nontelework CO emissions in both seasons. For these two modes, telework PM10 emissions are higher in the cooling and about the same in the heating season than nontelework emissions. Natural gas-powered ferries have more telework PM10 emissions than nontelework emissions. The study also found that for low-frequency telework programs energy use impacts could overturn transportation-related emission reductions independent of the mode of transportation used. Avoiding more polluting modes of transportation, increasing occupancy rates, substituting longer commutes and especially increasing telecommuting frequency could counteract these negative effects.Exergy analysis of eco-industrial systems reflects the thermodynamic characteristics of resource utilization by studying complicated material flow patterns to an industrial system. Different indicators based on exergy analysis are presented, such as system exergy depletion index, cycling ratio of material exergy, etc. which can be used to evaluate the efficiency of resource utilization and the environmental potential effect. The interrelations of these exergy indicators and their interpretation on industrial ecology are further discussed. Finally, the result of case study suggests effectiveness of exergy analysis methods and practicability of these exergy estimate indices.However excellent a product may be environmentally, it would not come into wide use in the economy to realize its environmental load reducing potential unless it is also economically affordable. Life-cycle costing (LCC) is a tool to assess the cost of a product over its entire life cycle, and can be regarded as an economic counterpart of LCA. A combined use of LCA and LCC would be imperative for assessing the sustainability of a product or product systems in the economy. This paper presents a new methodology of LCC which gives the cost and price counterpart of the hybrid LCA tool (Waste Input-Output, WIO) that was developed by Nakamura and Kondo (2002) [Nakamura, S., Kondo, Y., 2002. Input-output analysis of waste management. Journal of Industrial Ecology 6 (1), 39-63.1]for LCA of waste management. Building upon the preceding LCA study by Kondo and Nakamura (2004) [Kondo, Y., Nakamura, S., 2004. Evaluating alternative life-cycle strategies for electrical appliances by the waste input-output model. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 9 (4), 236-246.], the applicability of the methodology is illustrated by a case study of electric appliances under alternative end-of-life scenarios: landfilling, intensive recycling that is consistent with the Japanese law on the recycling of appliances, and an advanced form of intensive recycling augmented by Design for Disassembly (DfD). Application of the proposed LCC methodology indicates that while the life-cycle cost is the highest under intensive recycling and the lowest under landfilling, the cost of recycling can be reduced by appropriate implementation of MD. The possible introduction of a carbon tax is also found to significantly reduce the cost disadvantage of recycling against landfilling. Given the high level of environmental load associated with landfilling and the possible introduction of carbon taxes, Design for Environment or EcoDesign emerges as a strategy of vital importance to achieve the sustainability of appliances. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Chapter 7 of the Pearce Report (2003) elaborates succinctly on the role that technical progress should fulfil within a construction sector committed to the sustainable generation of social and economic value. Caught between technological macro-analysis and policy-steering objectives, and possibly overwhelmed by the difficulty of treating the subject within the limited scope of the report and time available, the chapter offers a few aggregate industrial data and some commendable, albeit generic, recommendations about innovation. Yet, as part of work conceived under the aegis of a strategic and development initiative, the chapter underplays the opportunity of highlighting two issues that have and should condition the policy debate on construction innovation in the future. The first issue is concerned with the project-based nature of the sector and its consequent ability to spur or thwart change. The second involves the definition or indication of practical institutional strategies that can trigger the changes foreseen or promoted within such a context. Based on this critique, a rationale is developed in the present paper for the strategic creation of technical progress by drawing attention to two specific elements: (1) the cost-benefit equation in the generation of new knowledge, and (2) the possible qualitative distribution of research investment opportunities in the industry. It is shown that although construction-related innovation and project-based innovation are naturally connected, a critical difference exists between the two. For the latter to develop and have an impact on the industry, both political support and wilful patronage are required.The notion that industrial systems can be redesigned to reflect 'lessons from nature' has led to the emergence of a new discipline known as 'industrial ecology'. In this paper I provide a brief overview of the principles that underpin the discipline, and provide a critical evaluation of the extent to which it is guided by ecology or simply uses the label for rhetorical support. I suggest that simply appealing to ecological analogies is not sufficient to ensure that the impacts of industrial activities are reduced. Further, I propose that the technical process of industrial design needs to be embedded in legitimate social processes if social acceptability is to be attained.Industrial ecology is frequently regarded as the organizing framework for studying interactions of technological societies with the environment. A theme central to industrial ecology is the way that materials are used which, in turn, relates to environmental and resource availability concerns. The material fluxes seen between the production of raw materials, the manufacture and use of products, and their fate at their end of life are quantified using material flow analysis, the record keeping of atoms mobilized by humans within a bounded system. The Stocks and Flows project at Yale University examines the full life cycle of anthropogenically mobilized material on a variety of spatial levels, including city-, country-, regional-, and global-level cycles. Different temporal levels are also examined, with research conducted on historical studies, contemporary studies, and scenario development. Material cycles have been completed for copper, zinc, and silver, with current work including iron and steel, chromium, nickel, tungsten, tin, and lead cycles. Such results illuminate the numerous and diverse drivers for constructing technological material cycles: global and local material scarcity, human health and ecosystem effects, energy and water consumption, high unit value of the material, pertinent regulations, waste management strategies, and economic considerations. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of selected topics in the field of industrial ecology, to gather from diverse literature key results from the Stocks and Flows project, and to introduce novel analyses related to environmental losses and waste streams that result from anthropogenic use of materials. This is done with the intent to emphasize to the environmental engineering and science audience what may be termed "forward-looking" environmental engineering.This article presents a new methodology for the management of dredging operations. Partly derived from existing methodologies (OECD, UNEP, AIPCN), its aim is to be more complete, by integrating the qualities and complementarities of former methodologies. Moreover, it was carried out in a context of sustainable development. Indeed, it supports, according to a framework of industrial ecology, the development and the implementation of solutions of waste improvement of dredged materials, in order to minimize the environmental impact of dredging. It also uses a tool of MultiCriteria Decision-Making Aid (M.C.D.M.A.), in order to integrate local characteristics. In addition, this tool, called DRAGSED, allows to a dialogue to be established between all the parties concerned with a dredging project (harbour's authorities, industrialists, municipalities, administrations, populations, associations....). Thus, the implementation of this methodology enables consensus to be reached for the dredging solution retained. It also proposes an environmental follow-up, which will allow an evaluation during its application.This paper presents the new methodology of management of dredging operations. Derived partly from existing methodologies (OECD, PNUE, AIPCN), it aims to be more comprehensive, mixing the qualities and the complementarities of previous methodologies. The application of the methodology has been carried out on the site of the Port of Dunkirk (FRANCE). Thus, a characterization of the sediments of this site has allowed a zoning of the Port to be established in to zones of probable homogeneity of sediments. Moreover, sources of pollution have been identified, with an aim of prevention. Ways of waste improvement have also been developed, to answer regional needs, from a point of view of competitive and territorial intelligence. Their development has required a mutualisation of resources between professionals, research centres and local communities, according to principles of industrial ecology. Lastly, a tool of MultiCriteria Decision-Making Aid (M.C.D.M.A.) has been used to determine the most relevant scenario (or alternative, or action) for a dredging operation intended by the Port of Dunkirk. These applications have confirmed the relevance of this methodology for the management of dredging operations.The broad range of definitions for sustainability has led to the development of several sustainability evaluation frameworks that have emphasized facets of sustainability but have not encompassed all aspects found at the industry and regional level. The aim of this study was to address the broader issues of sustainability of agro-industrial systems. Rather than exclusively focusing on the environmental and social aspects of those economic activities that take place within the boundaries of industrial systems, it should be recognized that they belong to a broader system. The various types of sustainability are highlighted and current sustainability frameworks are evaluated. A comprehensive sustainability model that adequately takes into consideration the various types of sustainability within industrial systems was developed. The proposed framework considered indicators that provide descriptions of the systemic nature of industry and incorporates two-dimensional indicators instead of solely focusing on indicators that provide a one-dimensional, piecemeal evaluation of economics, environment, social and institutional sustainability. By evaluation of the boundaries of each arena, it provides comprehensive understanding of the system. The sustainability of the Costa Rican coffee industry within the context of the new framework is discussed. The framework presented integrates concepts such as industrial ecology and cleaner production, along with the more traditional EMS and social justice programmes, to promote sustainability. The development of employment and economic returns that benefit the local and regional systems through the generation of additional value-added products are promoted through the integration of eco-efficiency into the framework.This paper briefly reviews key insights from natural resource and environmental economics, ecological economics and industrial ecology in an effort to identify the major contributions of these fields to the understanding and promotion of sustainable development. Each is based on overlapping worldviews, methods and tools. Their synthesis and extension-subsumed under the rubric of 'Natural Economics'-is suggested as a new thrust in environmental research, offering valuable guides to policy making. An early illustration of the application of natural economics in New Zealand is presented. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The UK Sustainable Development Strategy requires that society strive to make prudent use of natural resources so as to protect the environment and maintain high and stable levels of economic growth and employment. The Waste Strategy for England and Wales emphasises the need to reduce the amount of waste produced through the adoption of waste minimisation methodology. Waste minimisation clubs have been a key element in the UK programme to introduce more sustainable practice into industry and commerce. Northamptonshire, a county in the East Midlands of England, has benefited from 20 waste minimisation/resource efficiency projects, within a county programme, that have run between 1997 and 2004. This is the largest number in any county in England. This has been possible because of the formation of a large and inclusive partnership that contains all the key Local and Regional players. Performance Indicators have been developed to direct the county programme as it strives to introduce more sustainable waste management practice. The Northamptonshire model has led to a catalysed uptake of sustainable waste management practice in some 574 companies, some 13.4% of participating companies in England in same period, thereby contributing to the maintenance of stable levels of economic activity. However, an inherent limit has been reached with waste minimisation club provision. Future provision for resource efficiency must include the movement towards Industrial Symbiosis (IS) and ultimately Industrial Ecology (IE). The radical shift towards IS and IE will occur as a response to the increased quantification of the resource flows, in a given UK economic area, and the deeper understanding of the diversity and complexity of the systems. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Decision-making on waste infrastructures is difficult because waste management is a complex, politically loaded and emotionally charged issue that is neither well structured, nor well understood. While sustainability is the ultimate goal of the EU environmental policy, there is no commonly accepted approach for its realisation. Industrial ecology has been suggested as a roadmap to sustainability. Its prescriptive tier can provide organising principles for more sustainable practices: closed material cycles, cascaded energy use and flexible system configuration. The engineering concepts, grade and recovery, provide a simple yet powerful means to assess policies and infrastructure concepts with respect to sustainability. When combined, industrial ecology and engineering yield sound infrastructure design specifications and decision-making support for waste infrastructure. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc.The methodological approach underlying industrial ecology allows an exhaustive appraisal of the flow of materials and energy necessary for the "metabolism" of various economic activities. Study and analysis of these data enable more accurate assessment of activities now underway. They make it possible to look, both in-house and elsewhere, at the effects of complementarity and synergy. Finally, they help to define the strategy that will best enhance resources, by optimizing its economic impact while identifying more clearly its ecological consequences. Using examples from cotton activity, the author demonstrates the value of the concept of industrial ecology in developing sustainable production.This paper presents a design concept originally developed to suit the needs of the agro-industrial sector in the developing economies. It also highlights how this concept fits into other green design paradigms and to the goals of industrial ecology. The need to design for multi-lifecycles arose from the need for durable, easily maintained agri-processing machines in these economies. Most of the available machines are typically imported from countries of entirely different technological, climatic and socio-cultural conditions. Many become unmanageable after only a few years of use because of lack of technical know-how. Consequently, they become environmental problems and sources of economic drain for farmers, processors, regional and municipal authorities. There is therefore a need to develop a design concept that considers all prevalent local techno-economic and socio-cultural conditions, as well as develop design features that promote multi-lifecycle use of such agri-industrial machinery. This design concept incorporates DfX paradigms such as design for modularity, cost, assemblability, manufacturability, disassemblability, maintainability, reusability, and remanufacturability. This concept has been used to design and develop a cassava processing machine. The performance evaluation of the machine compares with the imported ones. By incorporating all the aforementioned DfXs, this design concept promotes resource use optimization, pollution prevention and cost minimization which are among the goals of industrial ecology. It is believed that this design concept can be applied to other areas of need in the industrial and agricultural sectors, and that using this design concept will go far in complementing various efforts aimed at reducing total environmental impact of our industrial activities.The increasing awareness of sustainable development concept and its economic benefits are making environmentally proactive companies to consider how they can achieve eco-efficiency improvement through material exchange and by partnering with academic, governmental and non-governmental agencies. This paper reports the experiences and achievements of a tripartite partnership initiated by the author with a number of companies in Calgary and a Calgarian NGO. The network is a form of eco-industrial network that is being developed to benefit the participating companies and to develop industrial ecology students' skill in eco-industrial network modeling. The paper highlights the initial difficulties, how they were overcome and a conceptual model developed for assessing the sustainability of the material exchange loop. The preliminary results obtained revealed that the companies are enthusiastic in taking part if it will help them achieve waste management cost reduction, improvement in their corporate environmental performance and corporate goodwill, and protection of their proprietary information. It also reveals that such corporate exposure to students develop their skills in balancing their academic view with what works in the corporate world.Concrete is in desperate need of revitalisation in the 21st century due to growing durability, maintenance and environmental concerns. Improving the cement within concrete is an essential part of addressing these concerns. While Portland cement manufacture and use can still undergo slight environmental improvements, great opportunities lie in the utilisation of cements based on alternative compositions, binding-phases and green chemistry. This allows cement to be synthesised from a variety of materials including recycled resources and mineral wastes, which reduces the energy demands during production. The present work introduces industrial ecology and the principles of green chemistry as a means of driving the research, development and commercial attractiveness of alternative and sustainable cements. Three promising alternative cements are reviewed (alkali-activated cements, magnesia cements and sulfoaluminate cements) and compared to blended ordinary Portland cements in terms of their chemistry and properties. Emphasis is given to the material properties, durability, performance and applications of the "greener'' alternative cements. It is clear that alternative cements have considerable potential in terms of environmental, engineering and economic properties.The Kwinana (Western Australia) and Gladstone (Queensland) industrial areas are among the few dozens of heavy industrial areas globally that demonstrate significant levels of regional resource synergies. Such synergies are also referred to as 'industrial ecology' or 'industrial symbiosis'. Fundamentally they involve the exchange of by-products or sharing of utilities between companies in close geographic proximity to achieve competitive advantage and environmental benefit. A concerted research effort is currently underway to foster greater realisation of regional resource synergies in minerals processing intensive regions, in Australia and internationally. This paper summarises current insights from the foundation research into engineering tools and technologies and enabling mechanisms for regional resource synergy developments. Regional resource synergy developments were reviewed for 16 international and two Australian regions. It was found that Kwinana and Gladstone compare favourably with the well-regarded international examples of regional synergy development. Given the fairly strong evidence that self-organisation is critical for regional synergy developments, an implementation model has been proposed that captures entry points for synergy developments at the level of platform (industry collaboration), process (developing synergy opportunities) and project (assessing and implementing specific synergies). It was also found that regional synergies have so far developed in the absence of specific methods for identification and screening of synergy opportunities. Moreover, very limited attention has been paid to the associated technological and engineering challenges. The current technical research effort therefore targets: 1. the development of a toolset for the identification and development of potential synergy opportunities; and 2. assessment of technology needs and opportunities for regional synergies involving water, energy and materials recovery and reuse.Whether or not upper and lower enterprises can build the practical industrial ecological linkages depends mainly on the respective consideration for their own benefit and the mutually appropriate strategy choosing under the hypothesis of limited rationality. This literature picks up the 'who assumes the responsibility of industrial waste's treatment' between upper and lower enterprises as the point of departure to analyze the industrial ecological linking mechanism through adopting the 'duplication dynamic model' of quantitative ecology and evolution game theory. A main conclusion drawn from the literature is that the ecology oriented enterprises' development appears self sustained, and the current proportion of the ecology oriented enterprise in economy cluster, the degree of lower enterprise depends on upper enterprise for material supply and environment protection laws etc. have obvious influence on ecological linkage's forming in economy cluster.Energy use as a single indicator or in a set of few indicators is often used in applied research in the building, transportation and energy sectors. However, the environmental relevance of energy indicators is seldom questioned. The relation between environmental relevance and energy indicators might seem obvious. Nevertheless, how this is obvious has not been thoroughly discussed. The aim of this paper is to investigate the environmental relevance of the energy indicator and discuss implications for its use. The approach is to express environmental pressure in different environmental impact categories and determine the contribution to these from energy use. Because not all impact categories are closely linked to energy indicators, the aim and context in which it is used must be apparent. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chromic oxide (Cr2O3) is an important chemical with numerous industrial applications. The traditional process used for manufacturing chromic oxide from chromite ore has low resources and energy efficiency. Moreover, large quantities of chromium-containing toxic solid wastes are discharged, posing serious pollution concerns. To reduce the environmental impact of this procedure, a new cleaner process was developed by the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, PR China, based upon the 3Rs (Reduce, Recycle, Reuse) principles of cleaner production and industrial ecology; this new cleaner process utilizes resources more efficiently, and does not discharge emissions of chromium-containing waste residue. A demonstration plant featuring this process, as well as an Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) has been built in He'nan Province, PR China. The new cleaner process is a promising advancement for the industrial production of chromic oxide (Cr2O3) as well as other chromium compounds such as potassium chromate (K2CrO4) and potassium dichromate (K2Cr2O7). (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology (IE) is an emerging framework adopted in the manufacturing, construction, and process industries to provide innovative solutions in strategic planning, leading to cleaner operation and production. An IE framework integrates a large number of processes, economic constraints, and environmental, health and safety considerations for optimized resource utilization. This paper provides a review of environmental management practices in the mining and minerals industry, emphasizing two concepts: IE and cleaner production. The mining and minerals industry provides primary materials for industrial activities; as such, it is an important component in the "industrial ecosystem." This industry is subject to very stringent social and environmental scrutiny, while providing society with required natural resources to meet essential sustainable development requirements. The implementation of an IE framework in the sector will contribute to sustainable development. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.To assure the comparability of the results of the measurements done for the transboundary pollution quantification, the results must to be obtain using standardised/reference methods or own methods which were validated. Accredited until 2002 by RENAR - The Romanian Accreditation Association, in concordance with ISO EN 45001 and ISO Guide 25, Air Pollution Laboratory from National Research and Development Institute for Industrial Ecology - ECOIND will recently obtain the ISO/CEI 17025 accreditation for 37 laboratory tests in the field of emission and air quality measurements. When a laboratory has developed its own methods these method must to be validated that means to asses: the detection limit, the quantification limit, the working range and the linearity, the sensitivity, the recovery and the accuracy (trueness and precision) of the methods. The precision (repeatability and reproducibility) can be estimated/calculated on the results obtained in a collaborative inter-laboratory experiment. The results obtained for the validation of couples chemical methods developed by the laboratory: hydrochloric acid (inorganic chloride compounds), ammonia, chromium(VI), phenol are presented.On the basis of analysis that industrial ecology chain and green supply chain are two models to achieve sustainable development for manufacturing enterprises, this paper gives an explanation that effective supply chain management and industrial ecology chain building are favorable to Industrial Ecology Engineering. Then, the paper mainly compares and analyzes the merits and faults of industrial ecology chain and green supply chain, as in realized form, transaction costs or stability etc., In the meantime, their structure models are established separately. Finally, with the discussion of their merits and faults, the most ideal mode of sustainable development for industrial manufacturing enterprises is that we put two modes together.The concept of industrial ecology (IE) follows the ideal of environmental balanced industrial complexes and perceives an industrial system not apart from its surrounding systems but in interaction with them. The methodological consequence of this assertion is to investigate the flows of materials and energy in industrial cycles and consumer activities, the effects of these flows on the environment and how they are influenced by economic, political, regulatory and social factors, in order to evaluate and, finally, to optimize these flows. Industrial ecology has been developed by engineers and thus the claim for scientific objectivity is strong. Considering political and social factors implies, however, to reflect about changes of operations and attitudes. Therefore one might ask about a methodological connection of engineering skills with political and ethical reasoning. This paper has the objective to argue for such a connection in some domains of industrial ecology. The presumption for the value of this endeavour is that IE has a normative potential for the design of a possible sustainable world, which stands next to its advanced technological features. In order to argue for a methodological connection between analytical and argumentative skills, section two and three of this paper will examine sustainable development as a framework for IE and discuss the theoretical basis of the IE concept. Section four and five analyse industrial metabolism as a core principle of IE and discuss IE tools and applications. The sixth section associates empirical and normative elements in IE with help of two domains and three different application levels and exemplifies the possibility for interdisciplinary cooperation within the field. The goal of this association is to make clear that the question today is no longer: Is IE is an objective science or not, but rather: how to assemble methods from the "two cultures" in the most beneficial manner?Industrial Symbiosis (IS) deals with the exchange of byproducts energy, water and emissions among closed situated firms. It is perhaps the best applications of Industrial Ecology. The most prominent examples of industrial symbiosis is Kalundborg in Denmark. Based on the concept of Kalundborg, different countries has employed or designed different IS mode, especially in North America and Europe. Contrary to the many detailed cases in North America and Europe, there are lack of detailed descriptions and figures for some of the IS systems in developing countries. In order to understand the status of the IS developement in developing countries, based on the best avaiable information, we listed some important industrail cases in developing countries for detailed analysis and concluded- some characteristics of developing countries regional industrail symbiosis. The benefits /opportunities and barriers for IS systems development in developing countries were analyzed in detail. This paper also analyzed the synergy complexities for three cases in China, India and Mexico. At the end, we introduced some important international organisations,which had contributed much to the progress of industrial symbiosos in developing countries. The analysis in this paper provides helpful information and guidance for industrail symbiosis systems established in developing countries.A new approach for the understanding and shaping of the evolution of Large Scale Socio-Technical systems is presented. A proof-of-concept knowledge application has been developed, based on the industrial Rotterdam-Rijnmond case. The knowledge application includes the design of a model of industry-infrastructure evolution. Such networks are modeled via a system decomposition, formalization in an ontology and implementation of an Agent Based Model. In simulation runs several network metrics are presented. The results provide insights in real world system behavior and show the validity and potential of the approach.From the perspective of industrial ecology, we make a study of co-evolution to industrial ecosystem on the ground of co-evolution phenomenon and inspiration of biological system in this paper. Then, we mainly analyze the evolutionary game theory, and establish the evolution game model of industrial ecosystem compared with the evolution game theory of complex system theory. Finally, taking pollution prevention of cleaner production technologies as a sample, which was first developed in industrial ecology engineering, we carry on an application study and verify the theoretical method is very effective in practice.Purpose - To provide a comprehensive state of the art review of environmental impact assessment (EIA) of existing rapid prototyping (RP) and rapid tooling (RT), and identify prospective research needs. Design/methodology/approach - The sparse literature on the EIA of RP and RT is balanced by that of the comparatively mature field of industrial ecology (IE). Hence, the review emphasizes portable IE measurement and evaluations methods. As RP and RT can also be viewed as design tools and mass customization manufacturing, other EIA may be needed. Findings - The scarcity of research to date combined with rapid technological advances leaves a large number of unresolved issues. in addition, the special character of RP and RT, as design and manufacturing enablers implies that future research is needed. Research limitations/implicabons - This review is drawn from a technology in rapid evolution. Hence, unresolved issues focus on technologies that already are on the market and the research needs are formulated in terms of state of the art process research. Practical implications - As technological advances multiply, so does the number of unresolved environmental problems. The review of unresolved issues points to a pressing need to assess the consequences of RP and RT while identified research needs point the way to anticipated areas where further assessment methods will be needed. Originality/value - This paper intends to raise awareness about the potential environmental impacts from RP and RT, by presenting the problems associated with current methods for measuring environmental effects and discussing some of the most urgent unresolved issues, specifically with respect to materials. Indirect effects of other uses of RP and RT are discussed only briefly for lack of available data.Cities are a key driver of environmental and climatic change, and at the same time significantly impacted by that change. Vulnerability varies spatially and over time, and the complex relationships among climate, ecosystem health, and socioeconomic development call for an integrated theoretical framework within which to study the world's cities. Advances in the fields of industrial ecology, urban metabolism and urban ecology shed light on these relationships. However, much of the current research is found in the form of case studies. Though detailed and relevant, the lack of a cohesive theory precludes standardization of and comparison between methodical experiments pertaining to the relationship between urban systems and global climate change. Aiming to identify and connect underlying issues, and to drive research forward, this study is a synthesis of key emergent theories and continuities in the body of research surrounding urban systems and global change. Thinking of cities as complex open systems integrated within a larger environmental and social context brings us closer to understanding how cities impact/are impacted by climate change and variability. The physical realism and interdisciplinary nature of a unified urban systems theory will facilitate more grounded and effective policy to shape and govern our cities.Designing an ecologically responsible EcoCity of 550,000 people begins by confining it to 8500 ha, which spares surrounding land for farming and for Nature. Because an American diet requires 126,000 ha and even a survival diet needs more cropland than can be found inside its boundaries, EcoCity will cast shadows of farming outside its limits. EcoCitizens will cast wider shadows if farmers grow food with the less intensive methods of simpler times, and they will cast narrower shadows if farmers use the more intensive methods of today. Cheap transportation scatters the shadows that, in the days of oxcarts, Von Thunen imagined would fall in concentric zones of farming and forestry. Industrial ecology, pleasing landscapes, coworkers along its sidewalks, and finally warm fellowships at its tables justify the bother of planning EcoCity. (C) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this article, the issue of firms collaborating in the joint representation for sustainable development in urban aeras is examined, by placing it within the problematics of natural resources management. The convergence between urban and economic practices bound to ecological rationality will be emphasised. Then, the definition of collective action integrating the inevitable conflicts on the values that the actors in urban development attach to natural resources will be insisted on. The environmental impacts of a water re-circulating system for fish farming were studied through the case study of an inland turbot farm located in Brittany (France). Life Cycle Assessment methodology was used to evaluate the potential environmental impact through the following indicators: Eutrophication Potential, Acidification Potential, Global Warming Potential, Net Primary Production Use and Non Renewable Energy Use. Two methods were used to assess the farm's nitrogen, phosphorus and solids emissions: nutrient measurement accounting and nutrient balance modelling. The two methods gave similar results for solids and phosphorus emissions, while for nitrogen the measurement-based approach resulted in half the emissions predicted by the model. The uncertainty regarding the potential gaseous nitrogen emissions led us to assess impacts according to three scenarios, differing with respect to emissions of N-2, N2O and NH3. This approach illustrates that the uncertainty concerning nitrogenous emissions to the atmosphere leads to uncertainty with respect to the production system's Eutrophication Potential and its Global Warming Potential. The comparison of our results with similar results for large rainbow trout production in a flow-through system points out the impacts associated with the high level of energy consumption in the studied re-circulating system (i.e. Non Renewable Energy Use, Global Warming potential, Acidification Potential). The nitrogenous gas emissions of re-circulating systems require further studies, in order to precisely identify the substances involved and the technological solutions allowing reduced impacts. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.Aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of an innovative high-efficiency steam power plant by means of two "life cycle approach" methodologies, the life cycle assessment (LCA) and the "extended exergy analysis" (EEA). The plant object of the analysis is a hydrogen-fed steam power plant in which the H-2 is produced by a "zero CO2 emission" coal gasification process (the ZECOTECH (c) cycle). The CO2 capture system is a standard humid-CaO absorbing process and produces CaCO3 as a by-product, which is then regenerated to CaO releasing the CO2 for a downstream mineral sequestration process. The steam power plant is based on an innovative combined-cycle process: the hydrogen is used as a fuel to produce high-temperature, medium-pressure steam that powers the steam turbine in the topping section, whose exhaust is used in a heat recovery boiler to feed a traditional steam power plant. The environmental performance of the ZECOTECH (c) cycle is assessed by comparison with four different processes: power plant fed by H-2 from natural gas steam reforming, two conventional coal- and natural gas power plants and a wind power plant. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are expected to play an increasingly important role in the transportation market, as we search for ways to reduce fossil fuels depletion and emissions. However, the extent to which biofuel can displace petroleum-based fuels depends on the efficiency with which it can be produced. To demonstrate that biofuel has a positive energy balance-i.e. more energy is contained in the fuel than is used in the production-a life-cycle approach must be employed. This paper presents a Life-Cycle Energy Analysis of bioethanol (from sugar beet or wheat) and bioETBE systems in France. Physical and economic data was collected. A systemic description was implemented and the energy used throughout was calculated. A novel indicator aiming at characterizing the renewability of (bio)energy sources is proposed-the energy reneivability efficiency (ERenEt). ERenEf measures the fraction of final fuel energy obtained from renewable sources. Inventory results-calculated using four different allocation approaches and ignoring co-product credits-are analyzed in order to understand the effect of allocation in the energy efficiency and renewability results. Sensitivity analysis shows that allocation has a major influence in the results. This research concludes that bioethanol produced in France is clearly favorable in terms of primary energy. A maximum ERenEf value of 48% was obtained for wheat-based ethanol (mass allocation), meaning that 48% of the biofuel energy content is indeed renewable energy. Fossil energy savings when gasoline is displaced by bioethanol, bioETBE or E5 are calculated. In particular, pure bioethanol may save up to 0.70 MJ, depending on whether wheat or sugar beet is used and on the allocation procedure adopted. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Sustainable management of materials and products requires continuous evaluation of numerous complex social, ecological, and economic factors. A number of tools and methods are emerging to support this. One of the most rigorous is life-cycle assessment (LCA), But LCAs often lack a sustainability perspective and bring about difficult trade-offs between specificity and depth, on the one hand, and comprehension and applicability, on the other. This article applies a framework for strategic sustainable development (often referred to as The Natural Step (TNS) framework) based on backcasting from basic principles for sustainability. The aim is to foster a new general approach to the management of materials and products, here termed "strategic life-cycle management." This includes informing the overall analysis with aspects that are relevant to a basic perspective on (1) sustainability, and (2) strategy to arrive at sustainability The resulting overview is expected to help avoid costly assessments of flows and practices that are not critical from a sustainability and/or strategic perspective and to help identify strategic gaps in knowledge or potential problems that need further assessment. Early experience indicates that the approach can complement some existing tools and concepts by informing them from a sustainability perspective-for example, current product development and LCA tools.Three established life-cycle inventories of agricultural operations were used to generate air emissions data for soybean production: the greenhouse gases, regulated emissions, and energy use in transportation (GREET) model; the economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) model; and SimaPro software equipped with the Franklin database. EIO-LCA and GREET baseline data were compared to evaluate differences in boundary definitions that apply specifically to U.S. soybean agriculture and processing, which resulted in several major findings. The DO model estimated for emissions of particulate matter less than 10 micrograms (PM10) resulting from wind erosion that were not included in GREET, but neglected indirect nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from fertilizer application. DO also assumed significantly lower process energy requirements and lower volatile organic compounds (VOC) for soybean crushing and oil extraction. The GREET and SimaPro models were compared using identical boundary and assumption data, to reveal major discrepancies in fundamental assumptions of energy inventories. Key emission factors varied by several orders of magnitude for basic energy generation and combustion processes, potentially impacting results for any inventory analysis that contains significant energy consumption. The Franklin database assumed VOC and sulfur oxides (SO2) emissions more than an order of magnitude higher than GREET for all categories investigated, with significantly lower N2O and methane (CH4) emission factors.Water and energy are two primary natural resources used by building occupants. A life-cycle assessment (LCA) is performed for water-consuming plumbing fixtures and water-consuming appliances during their operational life for four different building types. Within the cycle studied, water is extracted from the natural environment, subjected to water treatment, pumped to buildings for use, collected for wastewater treatment, and discharged back to the natural environment. Specifically, the impacts of water use, electricity and natural gas generation, energy consumption (for water and wastewater treatment, and for water heating), and the manufacture of water and wastewater treatment chemicals are evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively on a generalized national level in the United States of America. It is concluded that water use and consumption within buildings have a much larger impact on resource consumption than the water and wastewater treatment stages of the life cycle. To study this more specifically, the resource consumption of four different building types-an apartment building, a college dormitory, a motel, and an office building-is considered. Of these four building types, the apartment has the highest energy consumption (for water and wastewater treatment, and for water heating) per volume of water used, whereas the office building has the lowest. Similarly, the calculated LCA score for the apartment building is typically greater than those of the other three building types.Ecological footprints (EF) have been used for more than 15 yr as an aggregate measure of sustainability of geographical regions, but also for certain products and activities. EF analysis measures the bioproductive areas required to produce resources such as crops and timber, the directly occupied areas for infrastructure, and areas for absorbing waste flows (mostly limited to carbon dioxide) in a given year for a defined population. The need to extend ecological footprint analysis to electronic products arose because so far, mobile phones have mainly been evaluated using life-cycle assessments with a focus on toxicity, end-of-life management, and energy use, thus ignoring the wider sustainability implications. This article presents the footprint results from three mobile phone case studies. To establish the land areas consumed by the mined materials used in electronic products, a database was developed based on literature data and on approximations from the density and overburden of materials. The relationship between abundance and overburden values was used in a regression analysis to estimate energy requirements in materials extraction where other data were not available. Using a life-cycle assessment approach, environmental burdens for producing and using a mobile phone were calculated and transformed into the instantaneous rate of resource consumption. Key results were that different electronic products have different ecological footprints and that the methodology proved sensitive enough to reveal differences in small electronic products and for monitoring technologies that use bioproductive space efficiently.Design and construction industries, along with owners, have an increasing interest in and responsibility for the environmental impacts of buildings. Since the environmental impacts of a building's life cycle are considerable, quantification of all phases is important, especially the construction phase, which is often glossed over. This research focuses on the construction phase of a building project. Generally, the life-cycle inventory created in performing a life-cycle assessment (LCA) is developed using either a process or input-output approach; however, both techniques have distinct advantages and disadvantages. A hybrid approach combining both methods' advantages has been proposed and will be demonstrated. Existing hybrid models are reviewed, along with a recommendation of a hybrid model for construction. A preliminary case study of a precast concrete parking garage's construction using hybrid LCA methodology is presented. Preliminary investigations indicate transportation, equipment activity, and support functions have the largest effects on the environment.This article reviews the public health and environmental regulations applicable to nanotechnology using a life cycle model from basic research through end-of-life for products. Given nanotechnology's immense promise and public investment, regulations are important, balancing risk with the public good. Trading zones and earth systems engineering management assist in explaining potential solutions to gaps in an otherwise complex, overlapping regulatory system.Eco-efficiency is critical for organisations that seek to be both environmentally conscious and profitable. It helps to "produce more out of less" to avoid wasting natural resources and to reduce emissions and damage to the environment. The textile coating and laminating industry, utilising solvent or water-based polymeric mixtures, is one of the industries coming under extreme environmental pressure to replace traditional procedures and use eco-efficient coating agents. In this study, eco-efficiency analysis was used to compare the eco-effectiveness of two different coating agents, polyacrylate and polyurethane, each in organic solution as well as aqueous dispersion forms. The "ecological fingerprint" and eco-efficiency portfolio were graphically illustrated for these coating agents based on the customer benefit, defined as coating one square meter of a textile fabric in a conventional laminating unit. According to the analysis results, polyacrylate dispersion in water was the most eco-efficient coating agent whilst polyurethane resin dissolved in organic solvent was found as the coating agent with the least acceptability as an eco-efficient product.Recently, some activities for environmental protection have been attempted to reduce environmental burdens in many fields. The manufacturing field also requires such reduction. Hence, a prediction system for environmental burden for machining operation is proposed based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) policy for the future manufacturing system in this research. This system enables the calculation of environmental burden (equivalent CO2 emission) due to the electric consumption of machine tool components, cutting tool status, coolant quantity, lubricant oil quantity and metal chip quantity, and provides accurate information of environmental burden of the machining process by considering some activities related to machine tool operation. In this paper, the development of the prediction system is described. As a case study, two Numerical Control (NC) programs that manufacture a simple shape are evaluated to show the feasibility of the proposed system.Recently, each country has been trying to promote Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) development for industrial sustainability. Technological modeling is required to realize EIP practically even though the project contains the political concerns for many companies, government, and self-governing bodies. The four main technologies of the EIP developments include energy exchange, material flow analysis, water pinch, and life cycle assessment. Material flow analysis (MFA) methodology can be utilized in EIP modeling in view of the fact that the analysis of material flows and the optimized modeling are major purposes for the technological modeling of EIP. Through MFA methodology in POHANG EIP project, how to apply MFA modeling to EIP modeling and how to utilize software for MFA modeling are shown in this research.A review covering biodiesel life cycle assessment, energy in/output at FAME production, and CO2 balance sheet concerning rapeseed vegetation (C passing into atm., soil, roots, seeds and oil, and consumed by microorganisms). Emission of CO2 in prepg. a blodiesel is estd. at 3.22 kg/kg biodiesel (+ ca. 0.7 kg/kg in the agricultural area).This paper detailed introduces the related work for building Chinese National Database, Sinocenter, of materials life cycle assessment (MLCA) and developing the environmental burden dataset of materials. The MLCA database was built in 2004, and the basic framework mainly includes LCA methodology, materials environmental dataset about energy consumption, resource input and environmental emissions. Nowadays, the database contains about fifty-thousand records of the main materials industries, such as cement, iron and steel, nonferrous metal, etc., and also includes the primary LCI data of fossil fuels and electricity grid in China. At the same time, the LCA method localization work is going on, for instance, calculated the resource characterization factors of 42 kinds of metal and 58 sorts of nonmetal, and also obtained some heavy metal impact factors in water. Based on the database, the iron and steel dataset has been developed with the data quality analysis, and some environmental burden data could be queried in our website, www. cnmlca. com, in the future. Lastly, according to the framework of the ISO 14040 series standards, the antitype of Chinese LCA evaluation system was developed to support materials and products LCA evaluation in China.Biological and mechanical treatment (BMT) is a newly developed integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management pretreatment process. Based on recommended BMT-based integrated MSW management system, life cycle assessment is employed to compare the environmental impact potential (EIP) of three BMT based waste treatment strategies (BMT-compost, BMT incineration and BMT landfill) with traditional landfill and incineration in Pudong New Area of Shanghai. The results show that the incineration process of MSW presents the highest acidification potential, and landfill presents both the highest global warming potential and eutrophication potential. Meanwhile, EIP of BMT-compost, BMT-incineration and BMT landfill are all decreased greatly when BMT technology is introduced into municipal solid waste management. The total environmental impact potential (TEIP) of landfill is 1.5 times larger than that of BMT-landfill. And the TEIP of incineration is also 1.5 times larger than that of BMT incineration while the TEIP of BMT compost is the lowest. The result verifies that BMT-based MSW management model would be environmentally reasonable and helpful to develop integrated MSW management system in Pudong. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Common maintenance strategies applied to wind turbines include 'Time- Based' which involves carrying out maintenance tasks at predetermined regular-intervals and 'FailureBased' which entails using a wind turbine until it fails. However, the consequence of failure of critical components limits the adequacy of these strategies to support the current commercial drivers of the wind industry. Reliability-Centred Maintenance (RCM) is a technique used mostly to select appropriate maintenance strategies for physical assets. In this paper, a hybrid of an RCM approach and Asset Life-Cycle Analysis technique is applied to Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines to identify possible failure modes, causes and the resultant effects on system operation. The failure consequences of critical components are evaluated and expressed in financial terms. Suitable Condition-Based Maintenance activities are identified and assessed over the life-cycle of wind turbines to maximise the return on investment in wind farms.The objective of this study is to put forward a full analysis of the impact of the difference between the Canadian and American energy realities on the life cycle of fuel cell vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles. Electricity is a major type of energy used in the transportation sector. Electricity is needed in the production of feedstock of fuel, the production of the fuel, the production of the vehicle material and the assembly of the vehicles. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the impact of the electricity mix difference between Canada and the United States. In the analysis, the life cycle of the fuel consists of obtaining the raw material, extracting the fuel from the raw material, transporting and storing the fuel as well as using the fuel in the vehicle. Four different methods of obtaining hydrogen were analyzed; using coal and nuclear power to produce electricity and extract hydrogen through electrolysis and via steam reforming of natural gas in a natural gas plant and in a hydrogen refueling station. It is found that fuel cell vehicle fuelled by hydrogen has lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions than internal combustion engine vehicle fuelled by conventional gasoline except for hydrogen production using coal as the primary energy source in Canada and the United States. Using the Canadian electricity mix will result in lower carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption than using the American electricity mix. For the present vehicles, using the Canadian electricity mix will save up to 215.18 GJ of energy and 20.87 t Of CO2 on a per capita basis and 26.53 GJ of energy and 6.8 t Of CO2 on a per vehicle basis. Similarly, for the future vehicles, using the Canadian electricity mix will lower the total carbon dioxide emissions by 21.15 t and the energy consumed is reduced by 218.49 GJ on a per capita basis and 26.53 GJ of energy and 7.22 t Of CO2 on a per vehicle basis. The well-to-tank efficiencies are higher with the Canadian electricity mix. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An environmental study using life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied to three bench-scale wastewater treatments for Cibacron Red FN-R hetero-bireactive dye removal: artificial light photo-Fenton process, solar driven photo-Fenton process and artificial light photo-Fenton process coupled to a biological treatment. The study is focused on electricity and chemicals consumption, transports and atmosphere and water emissions generated by the different processes involved. Results show that the artificial light photo-Fenton process is the worst treatment in terms of environmental impact. On the other hand, both solar driven and coupled to biological photo-Fenton processes reduce significantly the environmental damage, although none can be identified as the best in all impact categories. The major environmental impact is attributed to the H2O2 consumption and to the electrical energy consumption to run the UVA lamp. An economic analysis of the different photo-Fenton processes has also been performed and the results are discussed together with those obtained from the environmental assessment. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The study fills a gap in existing literature by comparing process-based and EIO-based life cycle assessment (LCA) methods empirically in service industries. Despite the numerous methodological differences, the methods were found mostly to produce the same environmentally significant processes for the case organization: the use of electricity in the premises, the construction of the premises, the business travel by cars, the heating of the premises, and the business flights. However, the process-based LCA could not be used to assess the environmental impacts of purchased services properly. The study also recognized most of the theoretical differences listed in the literature, and found the ones related to the cut-offs in purchased services, the price inhomogeneity, and the industry-atypical electricity production have the greatest influence on results.Energy use is one of the key indicators for developing more sustainable agricultural practices. For this reason, energy use in the production of conventional and organic milk and rye bread in Finland was studied by conducting a life cycle inventory (LCI). The product systems of milk and rye bread consisted of farming, production of fuels, electricity and fertilisers, as well as the processing phases of milk and bread, i.e. the dairy and the bakery. Transportation of fuels, raw materials and the final products was also taken into account. Primary energy consumption was 6.4 GJ in average conventional milk production and 4.4 GJ in average organic milk production, calculated per 1000 1 of milk. For rye bread the values were 15.3 GJ (conventional) and 13.3 GJ (organic) per 1000 kg of rye bread. The proportion of renewable energy in the product systems studied,varied between 7 and 16% of the total primary energy use, being somewhat higher in organic production. In milk production, energy use efficiency can be increased, by favouring organic production. Making changes in the energy use patterns of bakeries would be the fastest way to affect the energy profile of bread, because bakery is responsible for 70 and 80% of the total energy consumption in conventional and organic bread production, respectively. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper discusses the potential of bamboo as a building material for Western countries. In the study presented, bamboo culms were environmentally and financially assessed and compared to building materials more common in Western Europe, e.g., steel, concrete and timber. Furthermore, a case study was done of temporary European bamboo buildings, structures and bridges, in order to determine factors of success and failure of building with bamboo. This paper presents the results of these studies, which indicate that within certain boundary conditions and with consideration of the recommendations following the case study, bamboo is a very sustainable building material for Western countries and can be competitive to materials more commonly used. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.By means of energetic life cycle assessment, innovative fuel cell (FC) powertrain systems and the respective fuels are examined and compared with conventional systems. The basis for this research is process chain analyses for the supply of conventional and alternative fuels at the point of consumption in Germany, e.g. compressed natural gas, methanol or hydrogen. To complete the integrated view, the use of these fuels in vehicles with internal combustion engines and FCs is examined. Within the scope of this study, special attention is paid to a system breakdown and energetic assessment of the FC powertrain. For the purpose of a full life cycle assessment, energy requirements and CO2-emissions for the production, maintenance and disposal of the vehicles are included. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energetic utilisation of agricultural residues is considered to be an important element in any strategy to achieve renewable energy targets. In the approximately 80 cane-sugar producing countries there is potential to make better use of the fibrous residue known as bagasse. Subject to improved energy efficiency, sugar producers could supply energy either as "green", co-generated electricity, or as fuel ethanol through cellulose hydrolysis followed by fermentation. This paper compares their projected environmental benefits from a life-cycle perspective, using South African data. Mass and energy analyses were prepared for the two systems and a base case (producing sugar with current methods), relative to the annual sugarcane production on one hectare. In both cases, the environmental burdens avoided by replacing an equivalent amount of fossil energy were included. The results obtained confirm that for all the impact categories considered, both "bioenergy" products result in environmental benefits. The cogeneration option results in lower energy-related emissions (i.e. lower global warming, acidification and eutrophication potentials), whereas the fuel ethanol option is preferred in terms of resource conservation (since it is assumed to replace oil not coal), and also scores better in terms of human and eco-toxicity if assumed to replace lead-bearing oxygenates. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.How much carbon was emitted due to consumption of electricity in each US state in 1999? This paper presents three alternative methods for answering this question, each of which is conceptually sound and sums to the same national total, yet each produces very different estimates of individual state emissions. These differences result from alternative assumptions taken to account for emissions associated with interstate electricity trade-power, and hence emissions, produced in one state but consumed in another. The methods described here demonstrate large effects that alternative methodological choices can have on our understanding of a state's carbon emissions levels, and on the incentive structures for states to enact supply and/or demand-side carbon reduction policies. Of the three methodologies, one is characteristic of standard carbon emissions accounting practice, one of life-cycle assessment, and one is an integrated approach, of which I argue that it is superior because it registers state carbon emissions change arising from change in both electricity production and consumption, thus creating incentive for states to enact a full range of progressive energy policies. Though developed here at the state scale, the issues engaged are relevant to carbon analysis and policy formation at scales ranging from the local to the international. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The focus in environmental research is shifting from emission abatement to critical process analysis, including assessment of resource consumption. The exergy theory offers a thermodynamic methodology to account for the consumption of natural resources. However, exergy data on mineral resources available in the literature are inadequate to apply to exergetic life cycle analysis, due to incompleteness, inconsistencies, and a dated thermochemical basis. An uncertainty assessment of the data has to be performed as well. In this work, three recent thermochemical databases were applied to evaluate the chemical exergy of 85 elements and 73 minerals, 21 of which had not yet been quantified in the literature. The process required the choice of a new reference species for aluminum. Muscovite was selected, giving rise to a chemical exergy of 809.4 kJ/mol for aluminum. The theory proved to be robust for the exergy of chemical elements, as exergy values differing by 1.2% on average from most recent literature were found. On the contrary, the exergy values for minerals differed by factors up to 14 from literature values, due to the application of recent thermochemical values and consistently selected reference species. The consistent dataset of this work will enable straightforward resource intake evaluation through an exergetic life cycle assessment.Environmental impact assessment (EIA) problems are often characterised by a large number of identified environmental factors that are qualitative in nature and can only be assessed on the basis of human judgments, which inevitably involve various types of uncertainties such as ignorance and fuzziness. So, EIA problems need to be modelled and analysed using methods that can handle uncertainties. The evidential reasoning (ER) approach provides such a modelling framework and analysis method. In this paper the ER approach will be applied to conduct EIA analysis for the first time. The environmental impact consequences are characterized by a set of assessment grades that are assumed to be collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive. All assessment information,. quantitative or qualitative, complete or incomplete, and precise or imprecise, is modelled using a unified framework of a belief structure. The original ER approach with a recursive ER algorithm will be introduced and a new analytical ER algorithm will be investigated which provides a means for using the ER approach in decision situations where an explicit ER aggregation function is needed such as in optimisation problems. The ER approach will be used to aggregate multiple environmental factors, resulting in an aggregated distributed assessment for each alternative policy. A numerical example and its modified version are studied to illustrate the detailed implementation process of the ER approach and demonstrate its potential applications in EIA. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Assessing public utilities, such as urban water systems, can be extremely complicated because of the difficulties in quantifying system attributes. A framework for developing and aggregating performance indicators can assist the measurement and assessment process. In this article, research involving an integrated set of performance indicators applied to the urban water system of Tehran, Iran, is discussed. Specifically, a fuzzy inference model was used to aggregate indicators into an overall system-performance index, which can be used to make comparisons among a large number of competing water system alternatives. The approach proposed in this article can also be applied to the assessment of other urban public utilities.The nuclear energy driven thermochemical cycle is one of the potential water-splitting processes for producing hydrogen, presumed to be the transportation fuel of the future. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of one such system, which utilizes nuclear energy to drive the ISPRA Mark 9 thermochemical cycle, is presented in this paper. The results of the LCA are presented in terms of the emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalent) and acid gases (SO2-equivalent). The contributions of the thermochernical plant to the emissions were determined through the estimation of material and energy requirements for chemical inventory, raw materials consumption and plant fabrication/installation. The greenhouse gas emissions from the system are 2515 g CO2-equivalent kg(-1) H-2 produced and acid gas emissions 11.252 g SO2-equivalent kg(-1) H-2 produced. A comparison of this hydrogen production route with other routes, including steam reforming of methane and high-temperature electrolysis, is also presented in the paper. (c) 2006 Society of Chemical IndustryMembrane technology is being increasingly used in the treatment of waters and wastewaters. The two main costs associated with the adoption of membrane filtration are the membrane module cost and the energy cost. Tradeoffs between selection of membrane capital cost and energy cost are usually identified for process optimisation; however, environmental tradeoffs associated with different operating conditions have received less attention. In order to ensure the sustainable use of membrane filtration, environmental considerations should also influence the choice of operating conditions. Here, we report on application of the method of life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental performance of different operating conditions of a microfiltration membrane (MF) process. Different membrane chemical cleaning options are compared in the sensitivity analysis component of the study. The results show that operating the MF process at a low flux with a high maximum transmembrane pressure (TMPmax) offers the most environmentally favourable outcome. The sensitivity analysis results show that in the low flux range, the choice of chemical cleaning frequency can affect the overall environmental performance of the process. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Microgeneration is being promoted as a means of lowering carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by replacing electricity from the grid with production from small domestic generators. One concern over this drive is that the use of smaller plant could lead to the loss of economies of scale. Partly, this relates to cost but also in terms of energy consumed and CO2 emitted over the life cycle of the microgenerator. Here, an analysis is presented of a life-cycle audit of the energy use and CO2 emissions for the 'SWIFT', a 1.5 kW rooftop-mounted, grid-connected wind turbine. The analysis shows that per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by the turbine, the energy intensity and CO2 emissions are comparable with larger wind turbines and significantly lower than fossil-fuelled generation. With energy and carbon intensities sensitive to assumed levels of production, assessments were carried out for an annual production range of 1000-4000 kWh, representing capacity factors of 8-31 per cent. For the manufacturer's estimated production of 2000 to 3000 kWh and, giving credit for component recycling, the energy payback period was found to be between 17 and 25 months, whereas the CO2 payback was between 13 and 20 months. Across the full production range, the energy and carbon payback periods were 13-50 months and 10-39 months, respectively. A key outcome of the study is to inform the manufacturer of the opportunities for improving the energy and carbon intensities of the turbine. A simple example is presented showing the impact of replacing one of the larger aluminium components with alternative materials.LCA is used for the assessment of opportunities to improve the environmental performance of newsprint production. A cradle-to-gate LCA baseline model for the production of I admt newsprint from TMP and DIP was developed, and used to examine the impact from increased DIP production capacity and co-generation. It was found that a 20-40% reduction in Global Warming Potential could be achieved, and the fuel mix for power generation was found to be a critical factor.A life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed in this study in order to evaluate the environmental implications of the management of the fermentable fraction of waste in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (BMA), comparing the present management system with the system proposed for the future. The energy and water consumption were quantified, as well as the used area and the emissions to the atmosphere and water. The software TRACI was used in order to assess the potential impact on the categories of acidification, eutrophication, toxicity and harm to the human health (under the criteria of cancer, non-cancer and pollutants), global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, formation of photochemical smog, water use, land use and fossil fuel use. The results show that the management system proposed for the future reduces 7 out of the 12 potential impacts analyzed, due mainly to the change in the technology of landfill (baling-wrapping landfill). However, this system requires of further research to assess the impacts on a long term. The worst option for biowaste management is the traditional landfill, based on the multibarrier concept. The results of this work suggest that the future biowaste management system is better in environmental terms than the present system. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of two solar-driven advanced oxidation processes, namely heterogeneous semiconductor photocatalysis and homogeneous photo-Fenton, both coupled to biological treatment, is carried out in order to identify the environmentally preferable alternative to treat industrial wastewaters containing nonbiodegradable priority hazardous substances. The study is based on solar pilot plant tests using alpha-methyl-phenylglycine as a target substance. The LCA study is based on the experimental results obtained, along with data from an industrial-scale plant. The system under study includes production of the plant infrastructure, chemicals, electricity, transport of all these materials to the plant site, management of the spent catalyst by transport and landfilling, as well as treatment of the biodegradable effluent obtained in a conventional municipal wastewater treatment plant, and excess sludge treatment by incineration. Nine environmental impact categories are included in the LCA: global warming, ozone depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic toxicity, photochemical ozone formation, acidification, eutrophication, energy consumption, and land use. The experimental results obtained in the pilot plant show that solar photo-Fenton is able to obtain a biodegradable effluent much faster than solar heterogeneous photocatalysis, implying that the latter would require a much larger solar collector area in an industrial application. The results of the LCA show that, an industrial wastewater treatment plant based on heterogeneous photocatalysis involves a higher environmental impact than the photo-Fenton alternative, which displays impact scores 80-90% lower in most impact categories assessed. These results are mainly due to the larger size of the solar collector field needed by the plant. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sizing agents, belonging to the group of functional chemicals, represent the second largest group after the coating binder of specialty chemicals for the paper manufacturing. Rosin size, Alkylketendimer(AKD), Alkenylsuccinicanhydride (ASA) and Polymeric Sizing Agents (PSA) are the main representatives of that group. The aim of this paper is to wrap up the information of preceding articles published in this serie supplemented with newer insights and to give an overview of the fate and behaviour of sizing agents in the environment. Rosin size, AKD and ASA are traditionally added to the wet end, which subsequently results in an product retention which is strongly dependent on the wire retention of the Paper Machine. Solely PSA which was developed ad hoc for the purpose of surface treatment is retained quantitatively with the produced paper The continuance of wet end sizing agents in paper vary under compliance with technical parameters between 70 to 90 % and thus result in an ecologically reasonable and gentle utilisaztion of resources Sometimes the yield is deliberately much lower also sometimes it happens to be much lower unbeknownst to somebody. The life cycle assessment depends for AKD and ASA strongly on the effective use and a low level of undesired interactions. The common understanding that AKD and ASA were known as low respectively not biodegradeable has changend recently. Newest investigation on AKD showed that this substance is biodegradeable when tested under application relevant conditions. Subsequently the former labeling for this product class could be abolished. To what extend this correlates with A SA is so far not experimentally proven under OECD relevant conditions but from the chemical constitution it can be concluded by analogy that it should even be better biologically disposable. For all wet end sizing agents the destination in the effluent show values below 1 %, in the case of surface sizing agents a changeover to the effluent is negligible and product residues leave the Mill only attached on solid material.Rainbow trout is economically the most important cultivated fish in Finland. In this study, new knowledge on the energy consumption, emissions and environmental impacts caused by the production of rainbow trout in Finland was generated. Methodologically the work was based on life cycle assessment (LCA) beginning from the extraction of raw materials and ending with the delivery of gutted fish to the retailers or for further processing. The environmental performances of production methods with different feeds, feed coefficients and technical emission reduction measures were assessed. The environmental impact assessment revealed that atmospheric emissions - originating mainly from the feed raw material production, feed manufacturing and transportation - make only a minor contribution to the total environmental impacts caused by the production of rainbow trout in Finland. Phosphorus and nitrogen emissions from fish farms to waters are the most significant emissions from the point of view of the total environmental impacts. By using new, environmentally friendly feeds with increased feed efficiency it is possible to decrease the nitrogen and phosphorus loads significantly. Technical measures to decrease nutrient emissions to the waters reduce the phosphorus load but have only a minor effect on nitrogen. Energy consumption and the use of renewable energy sources proved to be one of the key indicators for developing more sustainable aquacultural practices in Finland, although the major share of energy consumption associated with the production of rainbow trout takes place outside Finland.Life cycle assessment (LCA) involves assessment of resource consumption and emissions caused by the provision of a given service over the whole life cycle of the products it involves, from the cradle to the grave. The quantification of exchanges with the environment during the life cycle of a product or service is a specific element of LCA termed life cycle inventory (LCI). Estimation of chemical emissions in agricultural LCA is typically based on standard emission factors which at best are determined by a few physical-chemical substance properties and the use scenario of the chemical compound. Dynamic and realistic models capable of predicting compartment specific mode of entry fractions for various chemicals and uses under specific temporal and use circumstances are scarce. This lack of appropriate models to estimate emission fractions results in a lower accuracy when accounting for one of the major corner stones in any LCA, chemical emissions, and it inevitably influences the outcome of the impact assessment, where the environmental impacts are normally assumed proportional to the emissions in LCA. PestLCI is a modular model for estimation of pesticide emissions from field application to the different environmental compartments. It estimates the fractions of the applied quantity which is emitted to the air, surface water, and groundwater compartment based on information which will normally be available to the model user about: type and time of application, crop species and development stage, geological and meteorological conditions and the area of application, and properties of the active ingredients of the pesticide. The use and capability of the model is illustrated through two realistic Danish case studies, but the modular structure of the model will allow adaptation to conditions valid for other regions of the world. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) type method was used to quantify greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from Irish suckler-beef production. The methodology was used as a systems analysis tool to quantify GHG emissions from a typical Irish beef production system and to evaluate a number of alternative management scenarios. The LCA methodology can be used to decide whether a management strategy will reduce GHG emissions or transfer them elsewhere in the emission basket. Scenarios were developed that examined using both beef-bred animals (Charolais, Simmental and Limousin) and dairy-bred animals (Holstein-Fresian). By scaling total GHG emissions relative to a functional unit (FU) of live weight per year (kg CO2 kg LW yr(-1)), it was possible to estimate both the emissions and the potential for emissions reduction by adopting alternative management. The typical suckler-beef system was estimated to produce 11.26 kg CO2 LW yr(-1). For beef-bred animals the cow contributed a large amount to the total emissions whereas for dairy-bred beef production the allocation from the cow was much less. In terms of dietary supplementation for GHG emissions reduction, a broad range of supplement combinations were evaluated and showed no major reduction potential compared to, or within, the grass-dominated system. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Social, technological, economic and environmental issues should be considered comprehensively for the evaluation of global-warming mitigation options. Existing integrated assessment models include assessment of quantitative factors; however, these models do not explicitly consider interactions among qualitative factors in the background - for example, introductions of nuclear power stations interact with social acceptability. In this paper, we applied a technological forecasting method - the cross-impact method - which explicitly deals with the relationships among relevant factors, and we then developed narrative scenarios having consistency with qualitative social contexts. An example of developed scenarios in 2050, assuming the global population and the gross domestic product are the same as those of the A1 scenario of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, tells us that: (1) the Internet will be extensively used in all regions; (2) the global unified market will appear; (3) regional cultures will tend to converge; (4) long-term investments (of more than 30 years) will become difficult and therefore nuclear-power stations will not increase so remarkably; (5) the self-sufficient supply and diversification of primary energy sources will not progress so rapidly; and (6) due to the widespread use of the Internet, people will be more educated in global environmental issues and environmental costs will be more socially acceptable. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper introduces a novel design and performance prediction tool for the ground source heat pump (GSHP) system. This tool features, a user-friendly interface for data input and graphical output. First, an outline of this tool was described. Next, the authors validated temperature variation calculated by theoretical method of the developed tool compared with one measured in the thermal response test. The thermal response test was carried out in a house garden in Sapporo. Giving the calculated conditions, the calculated temperature variation almost traced the measured value. The developed tool's preciseness was proved with the results. In final, performance prediction and feasibility study of a residential GSHP system in Sapporo was performed with this tool as an example. Results of the calculations show that the life cycle CO2 emission (LCCO2) of the GSHP system is 2038 kg-CO2/year and it is less than half compared to conventional oil boiler systems. Also, the GSHP system can reduce life cycle cost (LCC) by 50,000-90,000 Japanese-yen/year. The payback time for increased investment cost of the GSHP system is about 9-14 years in comparison with other conventional systems. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work, a comparison of the commonly deployed commercial desalination technologies worldwide-multistage flash (MSF), multieffect evaporation and reverse osmosis (RO)-is assessed by applying life cycle analysis (LCA). LCA, a powerful, and internationally accepted tool used to examine environmental cradle-to-grave consequences of making and using products and services, identifies and quantifies energy and material usage and waste discharges. The International Standard Organization (ISO) 14000 impact factors, which are internationally accepted standard indicators for environmental impact assessment, have been evaluated, and different evaluation methods (Centre for Environmental Studies (CML) 2 baseline 2000, Eco-Points 97 and Eco-Indicator 99) have been applied to different scenarios. The assessment includes the entire life cycle of each desalination process, encompassing extraction and processing raw materials, manufacturing, transportation and distribution, plant operation and final reject disposal. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CO2 fixation technologies such as mineral sequestration-that is, the storage of CO2 as carbonate rocks-are beginning to emerge as means to mitigate global climatic change. In this study, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach is applied to quantify the effective systemwide environmental impacts of CO2 sequestration in mineral rocks. Five alternative processes for mineral sequestration are compared in combination with various CO2 recovery technologies. SimaPro's Eco-indicator ' 99 ("Hierarchist-Average" version) is used for generating the impact assessment results and sensitivity analysis was carried out to compare the results with other possible weighting options. Finally, the sequestration effectiveness parameter was calculated for the various combinations of CO2 recovery and mineral sequestration options.Goal, Scope and Background. Societal assessment is advocated as one of the three pillars in the evaluation of, and movement toward, sustainability. As is the case with the well established LCA, and the emerging LCC, societal life cycle assessment should be developed in such as way as to permit relative product comparisons, rather than absolute analyses. The development of societal life cycle assessment is in its infancy, and important concepts require clarification including the handling of the more than two hundred social indicators. Therefore, any societal life cycle assessment methodology must explain why it is midpoint- or endpoint-based as well as its reasons to be complimentary with, or included within, life cycle assessment. Methods. A geographically specific midpoint based societal life cycle assessment methodology, which employs labour hours as an intermediate variable in the calculation has been developed and evaluated against an existing LCA comparing two detergents. The methodology is based on using an existing life cycle inventory and, therefore, has identical system boundaries and functional units to LCA. The societal life cycle assessment methodology, much like LCA, passes from inventory, through characterisation factors, to provide an ultimate result. In analogy to economics and cost estimation, societal life cycle assessment combines, into its statistics, both data as well as estimates, some of which are correlated to elements of the LCI. It focuses on the work hours required to meet basic needs. Results. The societal life cycle assessment of an appended case study indicates that Detergent 2 generates, relative Detergent 1, approximately 20% less employment in Russia, 35% less in France, and approximately five times more in Canada and South Africa, the latter derived from its higher aluminium content. There is essentially no difference in the employment in the use country (Switzerland) nor in Morocco, where some of the waste disposal was assumed to take place. Discussion. Given that housing is more affordable, in terms of shelter units per labour hour, in South Africa, compared to Europe, it is, therefore, of no surprise that Detergent 2 provides a societal benefit in terms of housing. Detergent 2 does, however, result in dematerialization, in that its environmental impact is lower (LCI). Therefore, as less resources are employed and labour required, in extraction, production and transport, the societal benefits in health care, education and necessities, a grouped variable, are lower for Detergent 2. This is despite the employment shift away from Europe and to less 'developed' regions. Conclusions. The assessment of societal impacts involves several hundred specific indicators. Therefore, aggregation is, if not impossible, at least heavily value laden and, therefore, not recommended. The impact of a societal action, derived from a product purchase or otherwise, is also highly local. Given this, societal life cycle assessment, carried through to the midpoints, and based on an existing LCI, has been developed as a methodology. The results, for an existing LCA-detergent case, illustrate that societal life cycle assessment provides a means to investigate how policy and policy makers can be linked to sustainable development. The sensitivity analyses also clarify the decisions in regards to product improvement. Recommendations and Perspectives. The goal of societal life cycle assessment is not to make decisions, but rather to point out tradeoffs to decision- or policy-makers. This case, and the methodology that it is based on, permit such a comparison. Substituting Detergent 2 for Detergent 1 reduces resource use at the expense of an increase in atmospheric and terrestrial emissions. Access to housing is improved, though at the expense of education, health care and necessities. As a recommendation, one would look at the fact that the majority of indicators are superior for Detergent 2 relative to Detergent land seek to improve the aqueous emissions in Detergent 2 via a change in the formulation. An energy or fossil fuel substitution at the site of production could also improve the societal benefits in terms of education and health care. While societal life cycle assessment remains in its infancy, a methodology does exist. The field can, therefore, be viewed in a similar way to LCA in the early 1990s, with a need to validate, consolidate and, ultimately, built toward a standard. The contribution is aimed at contributing to such a discussion and therefore proposes that a societal life cycle assessment be LCI-derived, geographically specific, based on mid-points, and use employment as an intermediate variable.Goal, Scope and Background. In Japan, the abatement of CO, emission by households is a significant problem. Hence, it is necessary to formulate a long-term policy on the use of long-life and highly-insulating technologies for houses; these technologies are expected to reduce CO, emission. The conventional LCA methodology can evaluate the environmental impact of these technologies, while not necessarily providing sufficient information to support policy-making because of its analytical perspective. The aim of the present study is to first develop a new methodology to examine the optimal use of technologies to formulate an environmental policy by considering dynamic socioeconomic conditions. Second, as a demonstration, such a developed methodology is applied to explore an environmentally conscious housing policy for CO, abatement in Japan. Methods. A new methodology was developed, considering the context of a society where technologies are introduced, in order to determine the optimal configuration of technologies to minimize the cumulative environmental burden over time on a social scale. An inter-temporal linear programming model using an input-output table was formulated to make the methodology operational. Using the new model, the optimal use of long-life and thermal-insulating technologies for houses is examined to minimize CO, emissions across the entire life cycle of all the houses in Japan. Results and Discussion. The results of the model simulation indicate that not only long-life and highly-insulating technologies, but also short-life and poorly-insulating technologies, are required to minimize CO, emissions over a long period. According to the conventional LCA, a house with a short life is inferior to that with a long life, and a house with poor insulation is inferior to that with high insulation. However, houses with a short life and/or poor insulation are introduced in a transition phase to a certain extent before the final stage is reached that is completely dominated by highly-insulated houses with a long life. In other words, the existing houses that were built in the past are gradually replaced with highly-insulated houses with a long life after first building houses with a short life and/or poor insulation. It is not always feasible or not necessarily an optimal solution on a social scale to introduce only a technology that is best evaluated by using the conventional LCA. Inferior technologies can also play a significant role because of various socio-economic conditions and requirements, e.g. population decline, limited housing budgets, and employment stability. Dynamic socio-economic conditions significantly influence the optimal mix of technologies for CO, minimization in the entire society. Conclusions and Recommendations. The present study suggests that it is critical to consider dynamic socio-economic conditions when examining technologies for selection with the aim of a long-term reduction of the environmental burden. The new methodology proposed can provide valuable information to support policy-making toward a sustainable society.Goal, Scope and Background The weighting of environmental impacts and damages on the safeguard subjects Human Health, Ecosystems, and Resources is a significant step of full aggregated LCIA. Panel surveys have become a common approach in LCIA research to investigate the preferences of stakeholders on environmental impacts and damages. Despite the numerous studies, the knowledge on how to elicit reliable weights is still poor and inconsistent. We present a questionnaire study with 58 environmental science students to investigate so-called framing effects in panel surveys. Main Features. The study investigates the significance of different framings, which were provided by three references. In addition, the significance of quantitative information provided in the questionnaire is tested. The references are (a1) safeguard subjects without specified additional information, (a2) damages in Europe as they are perceived by the panelist, and (a3) quantified scenarios derived from Eco-indicator99. All participants ranked and rated the importance of the safeguard subjects three times, once within each reference system. According to a test-of-scope study, quantitative information given to the panelist was varied. One level (b1) included data from the Ecoindicator99 methodology, whereas the other group (b2) received data with significantly higher Human Health damages and lower Ecosystem damages, ceteris paribus. This design allows testing the influence of quantitative data on the rating. Results. The weighting of the safeguard subjects (a1) reveals that Human Health is considered a slightly more important safeguard subject than Ecosystems. However, both are judged to be significantly more important than Resources. This picture changes for the references (a2) and (a3) where damages were weighted. For both references, the respondents rated damages to Ecosystems as most important followed by Resources and Human Health, showing by far the lowest weights. Therefore, the framing of the reference that was weighted played a significant role. The ratings of the subgroups (b1) and (b2) did not differ with respect to the importance of damages, though substantially different quantitative information was given. Conclusions and Recommendations. The participants of the study were obviously insensitive with respect to quantitative information provided. This raises three questions, which are discussed. What is the mental model upon which respondents base their beliefs and values? Can we expect that 'more sophisticated' subjects would respond differently? Which prerequisites should an empirical weighting procedure fulfill in order to incorporate numerical data? We propose different approaches for future procedures in order to accurately analyze these questions.Background, Aims and Scope. Several authors have shown that spatially derived characterisation factors used in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) can differ widely between different countries in the context of regional impact categories such as acidification or terrestrial eutrophication. Previous methodology studies in Europe have produced country-dependent characterisation factors for acidification and terrestrial eutrophication by using the results of the EMEP and RAINS models and critical loads for Europe. The unprotected ecosystem area (UA) is commonly used as a category indicator in the determination of characterisation factors in those studies. However, the UA indicator is only suitable for large emission changes and it does not result in environmental benefits in terms of characterisation factors if deposition after the emission reduction is still higher than the critical load. For this reason, there is a need to search for a new category indicator type for acidification and terrestrial eutrophying in order to calculate site-dependent characterisation factors. The aim of this study is to explore new site-dependent characterisation factors for European acidifying and eutrophying emissions based on accumulated exceedance (AE) as the category indicator, which integrates both the exceeded area and amount of exceedance. In addition, the results obtained for the AE and UA indicators are compared with each other. Methods. The chosen category indicator, accumulated exceedance (AE), was computed according to the calculation methods developed in the work under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP). Sulphur and nitrogen depositions to 150x150 km(2) grid cells over Europe were calculated by source-receptor matrices derived from the EMEP Lagrangian model of long-range transport of air pollution in Europe. Using the latest critical load data of Europe, the site-dependent characterisation factors for acidification and terrestrial eutrophication were calculated for 35 European countries and 5 sea areas for 2002 emissions and emissions predicted for 2010. In the determination of characterisation factors, the emissions of each country/area were reduced by various amounts in order to find stable characterisation factors. In addition, characterisation errors were calculated for the AE-based characterisation factors. For the comparison, the results based on the use of UA indicator were calculated by 10% and 50% reductions of emissions that corresponded to the common practice used in the previous studies. Results and Discussion. The characterisation factors based on the AE indicator were shown to be largely independent of the reduction percentage used to calculate them. Small changes in emissions (<= 100 t) produced the most stable characterisation factors in the case of the AE indicator. The characterisation errors of those characterisation factors were practically zero. This means that the characterisation factors can describe the effects of small changes in national emissions that are mostly looked at in LCAs. The comparison between country-dependent characterisation factors calculated by the AE and UA indicators showed that these two approaches produce differences between characterisation factors for many countries/areas in Europe. The differences were mostly related to the Central and Northern European countries. They were greater for terrestrial eutrophication because the contribution of ammonia emission differ remarkably between the two approaches. The characterisation factors of the AE indicator calculated by the emissions of 2002 were greater than the factors calculated by the predicted emissions for 2010 in almost all countries/sea areas, due to the presumed decrease of acidifying and eutrophying emissions in Europe. Conclusions and Recommendations. In this study, accumulated exceedance was shown to be an appropriate category indicator in LCIA applications for the determination of site-dependent characterisation factors for acidification and terrestrial eutrophication in the context of integrated assessment modelling. In the future, it would be useful to calculate characterisation factors for emissions of separate parts of large countries and sea areas in Europe. In addition, it would also be useful to compare the approach based on the AE indicator with the method of the hazard index, as recommended in the latest CML guidebook.Goal, Scope and Background. Taking into account the location of emissions and its subsequent, site-dependent impacts improves the accuracy of LCIA. Opponents of site-dependent impact assessment argue that it is too time-consuming to collect the required additional inventory data. In this paper we quantify this time and look into the added value of site-dependent LCIA results. Methods. We recalculated the acidifying impact for three existing LCA studies: linoleum, stone wool, and water piping systems. The amount of time needed to collect the required additional data is reported. The EDIP2003 methodology provides site-generic and site-dependent acidification factors. We used these factors to recalculate acidification for the case studies. We analyzed differences between site-generic and site-dependent acidification and reported problems experienced. Results and Discussion. Finding the location of processes and emissions was easy. The reports of the three case studies contained most of this information. Far more time was needed to disaggregate processes to the level where emissions can be localized. Although the overall conclusions with regard to acidification did not change in the case studies, the relative importance of processes shifted when considering sub-levels. This is especially important for improvement analysis. Site-dependent acidification Assessment was hampered in the linoleum case study where about 40% of the acidification originates from non-European emissions. However, EDIP2003 provides no site-dependent factors for these countries and site-generic factors had to be used instead. Thus, calculating site-dependent acidification is only feasible for LCA studies in which the majority of the emissions originate in Europe. We could not reproduce all parts of the three case studies using the report and additional public resources. This hindered our recalculation. In fact, any additional analysis will be hampered by this lack of reproducibility. ISO recommends such reproducibility for comparative assertion disclosed to the public. Conclusion. Spatially differentiated acidification is feasible for each of the three case studies. Finding the location of processes and emissions was easy, but quite some time was needed to disaggregate processes and emissions to the appropriate level. Overall conclusions on acidification remained the same for the case studies, but the relative contribution of basic processes changed when applying site-dependent impact assessment. Though the three case studies were all rather detailed and complete, none of them was fully reproducible. This complicated recalculation of acidification, and will in fact make any additional analysis difficult.Goal, Scope and Background. Telephony as well as remote data transfer is increasingly performed via mobile phone networks. However, the environmental consequences, in particular of the End-of-Life (EOL) treatment, of such network infrastructures have been investigated insufficiently to date. In the present report the environmental implications of the EOL treatment of a single GSM 900 antenna rack have been analysed. Methods. Based on comprehensive inventories of a GSM 900 antenna station rack and currently applied EOL treatment, the environmental impacts related to the EOL treatment of the rack are investigated. Six different EOL treatment scenarios are developed to find an environmentally safe treatment alternative. System expansion, i.e. inclusion of the production phase, is applied to all scenarios in order to consider different amounts of regained materials. Results and Discussion. The production of primary rack materials, especially that of palladium (accounts for almost 40% of the ecotoxicity impact category), to substitute lost materials dominates the overall environmental impact. Releases of heavy metals from landfilled rack components/materials and of by-products to the environment greatly influence the overall impacts on human health and ecosystem quality. The final disposal of rack components contributes to about 70% of the non-carcinogenic effects. Landfilled dust from steel production contributes to nearly 11% of this impact category. Conclusions. The results suggest that all precious metals containing electronic scrap should be treated in specially equipped metal recovery plants. A complete rack disassembly before processing in high-standard metal recovery plants is not necessary. An elaborated pre-treatment and fractionation of the scrap prior to precious material recovery does not lower the environmental impacts and is not mandatory and would only become environmentally interesting if high recovery of heavy metals is achieved. To avoid the formation and release of volatile and toxic heavy metal, incineration of electronic scrap as of by-products prior to landfilling should be avoided. To reduce the overall environmental load, a standardisation of the sizes of rack components, facilitating their re-use, is recommended.Goal, Scope and Background. The idea of district heating is to transport centrally produced heat to buildings where it is used for space heating and for domestic hot water generation. Water is used as a heat carrier. Many different heat sources are used to supply district heating networks with hot water. In literature, environmental studies on district heating mainly consider emissions from the heat generation; environmental impacts from the distribution system are seldom discussed. This paper is the third in an article series on the environmental impacts from the district heat distribution system. The paper presents an evaluation of the use phase of district heat distribution, focusing on long-term thermal performance of different district heating pipes. An overall discussion, in which environmental impacts from the different life cycle phases of district heat distribution are compared, is also presented. Methods for the Use Phase Study. Environmental impacts from use of district heat distribution systems were evaluated based on heat losses from the networks, which depend on the long-term thermal performance of the district heating pipes. The heat losses cause environmental impacts from extra heat generation needed to cover the losses. The long-term thermal performance of preinsulated bonded district heating pipes with steel tube, polyurethane foam insulation and polyethylene casing, depends on the thickness and quality of both the insulation and the casing. One important attribute of the foam is the blowing agent used. The blowing agent influences both the initial insulating capacity of the foam and the ageing characteristics, due to differences in migration rates of different substances through the materials. Heat losses were calculated for different district heating pipe dimensions (DN25 twin pipe, and DN25, DN100 and DN500 Series 2 single pipes). Pipes with two different foam blowing agents (cyclopentane and carbon dioxide) were studied, taking into account the differences in long-term thermal performance of the foams. Concerning emissions from heat generation, two heat sources were considered: heat generation according to the average district heating fuel mix used in Sweden in the year of 2000, and heat generation using natural gas heat only boilers. The functional unit used is 100 m of district heat distribution network during 30 years of use. Results and Discussion on the Use Phase. A short description of the inventory, some inventory results and a life cycle impact assessment are presented. Characterizations according to GWP, AP, POCP and resource depletion are given as well as two weightings: EcoIndicator99 and Ecoscarcity. The DN25 twin pipe network has about 25% lower environmental impacts from use than the DN25 Series 2 single pipe network. The district heating pipes insulated with cyclopentane blown polyurethane foam have a better environmental performance during use compared to those insulated with carbon dioxide blown foam (6-13%). This is partly dependent on a higher initial insulating capacity of the cyclopentane blown foam, but also due to a slower deterioration of the insulating capacity over time. For the two heat sources considered, different impact assessments give different indications to which option that is environmentally preferable. Overall Results and Discussion on Pipe Production, Network Construction and Network Use Phases. A comparison of the three life cycle phases studied in this article series was made concerning four emissions, the four characterizations and the two weightings. The use phase represents over half of the total environmental impact for most, but not all, environmental parameters studied. It is important to keep the heat losses from the network down and to strive for heat sources with low environmental impacts. The larger the pipe, the larger is the relative impact from pipe production. The network construction phase has a relatively small contribution to the total environmental impact in most systems studied. However, the emissions during network construction often occur in residential areas and may therefore not be neglected when immediate nuisances and health aspects are considered. A very small change of the material flows in the production phase, the change between two different blowing agents (cyclopentane and carbon dioxide), can give dramatic results for the total environmental outcome for the district heating network because of a large change in influence on environmental impacts during use. The DN25 twin pipe network proves to be environmentally advantageous compared to the DN25 Series 2 single pipe network during all of the studied life cycle phases. Recommendations and Perspectives. It is important to make sure that improvements in the production and construction phases do not lower the insulating capacity of the district heating system. A good initial insulating capacity, maintained over time, is important for the environmental performance of a district heat distribution network. Using DN25 twin pipes instead of DN25 Series 2 single pipes is a better choice, when possible, regarding all studied life cycle phases. The environmental impact from use of the district heat distribution system depends heavily on the type of energy source that is utilized to supply the network with heat.A comparative hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to evaluate two different methods for hydrogen production. The environmental impacts from nuclear assisted thermochemical water splitting are compared to hydrogen production from natural gas steam reforming with CO2 sequestration. The results show that the two methods have significantly different impacts. The nuclear alternative has lower impacts on global warming potential, acidification and eutrophication, and much higher impacts from radiation and human toxicity. A weighting procedure is not applied, hence no overall "winner" can be proclaimed. The relative importance of the different impacts remains a challenge for decision makers. Further, the assessment has demonstrated the importance of including services in a comparative assessment. Ordinary process LCA may produce distorted results, since a larger fraction of life cycle impacts may occur outside the system boundaries in one study compared to another due to different fractions of service inputs.Volcanic soil can be used to remove metals from wastewaters. Once used, it is disposed in landfills. The utilization of this material in the cement industry as an alternative raw material was evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. This possibility has been studied from an environmental point of view in a Chilean cement facility, representative of the current operation state of art, including both technical and economic analysis. Two scenarios were compared: Scenario 1, which corresponds to the existing cement production process, and Scenario 2, which represents cement production using spent volcanic soil. With the exception of the categories of carcinogens (C) and minerals (M), the comparative results are favourable to Scenario 2, specially regarding to the category of ecotoxicity (E), mainly due to the avoided landfilling emissions of the volcanic soil. When considering the damage assessment, damage to human health (HH), ecosystem quality (EQ) and resources (R) are lower in Scenario 2. In addition, sensitivity analyses were performed to study the influence of particular parameters (i.e., transport of spent volcanic Soil, CO2 emissions from the clinkerization process and heavy metals leaching from the spent volcanic soil) on the results of the assessment. The use of alternative raw materials (in this case, spent volcanic soil), which present the advantage to be wastes from other technical systems, appear to allow the development of cement production in a more sustainable way, slightly improving the economy of the process. The spent volcanic soil can be treated with zero cost for the wastewater treatment plant with savings of 0.23EURO for each tonne of clinker production. Establishing a sound management way for the spent volcanic soil could foment its possible use as mineral adsorbent in industrial wastewater treatment facilities. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Both the general public and governmental agencies highly prioritize resource optimization (energy and material) and environmental issues such as ozone, acid rain and global warming in the life-cycle context. Disassembly and recycling are also increasingly important in most industrial countries due to the significant increase in the quantity of used products being discarded. Disassembly of used products has been recognized as necessary to make recycling economically viable in current state-of-the-art reprocessing technology. This emerging trend requires incorporating environmental considerations into design strategies. This study presents a graph-based heuristic method for disassembly analysis of end-of-life products, which incorporates the Eco-Design concept. Product components and their assembly relationships from the bill of material BOM are adopted to split the graph into sub-graphs denoting modular sub-assemblies. The life-cycle analysis LCA is then used to analyze disassembly trees, from which a disassembly sequence can be derived. Designers can use the analytical results to evaluate the dis-assemblability and recyclability of products when they are designed. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the supply of an important form of rural tourism, agrotourism, at a level of each of the four provinces on the island of Sardinia (Italy). Importantly, an analysis is undertaken on the impact that legislation has had on the life cycle. The analysis is framed into three main section s-firstly, the main legislative interventions introduced in Sardinia by the local government that were aimed at regulating the supply of agrotourism are presented; secondly, a life cycle description is given based upon a literature review and a methodology presented; thirdly, the life cycle analysis and legislative impacts are combined using an econometric approach in terms of trend factors of the Sardinian businesses over an extended period from 1986 to 2003. The analysis identifies that regional legislative actions have indeed had a significant impact in the evolution and dynamics of the supply of agrotourism on the island. The quantitative methodology identifies some heterogeneity in modelling the trend for each of the four Sardinian provinces, and evidence exists indicating that agrotourism is entering a stagnation stage. On the basis of the economic results obtained, suggestions are given to both the private sector and public policy makers in agrotourism. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conventional oil and natural gas production were compared with two case studies of enhanced resource recovery along with the potential for CO2 sequestration applications. The first case study is a Norwegian enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project, and the second focuses on enhanced coal-bed methane (ECBM) recovery in Japan. Both cases or systems involved the recovery of CO2 gases from a coal-fired power plant, followed by compression, transportation, and final injection of the greenhouse gas into geological formations as a solution to mitigate global warming. A life-cycle assessment (LCA) method was applied to measure how each system, conventional as well as enhanced recovery methods, impacts the environment. The first set of results presented were the inventory of air emissions (CO, CO2, CH4, SOx, NOx, NH3, Pb, Hg, etc.), wastewater-containing acids and sulfides, and solid wastes released because of both fossil fuel production and energy usage from the power plant. The impact assessment results because of the accumulated pollutants from all of the systems were calculated for the following set of common impact measures: global warming potential, acidification, human toxicity, eutrophication, wastes, and resources. The final (combined) scores of the entire system were also generated. These final scores, which included the normalization and weighting steps, allowed for overall comparisons for verifying the final benefits or drawbacks of a system. For the proposed EOR project, the greatest two environmental benefits (total impacts prevented) were calculated to be -9.8 x 10(-2) and -9.7 x 10(-2). As for ECBM, the best scores were projected to be -1.0 x 10(-1) followed by -8.70 x 10(-2).Hydrogen fuel cell (FC) vehicles are receiving increasing attention as a potential powerful technology to reduce the transportation sector's dependence on petroleum and substantially decrease emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) at the same time. This paper projects energy use and GHG emissions from different FC vehicle configurations and compares these values to the projected characteristics of similarly sized and performing gasoline and diesel fueled automobiles on a life cycle, well to wheels and cradle to grave basis. Our analysis suggests that for the next 20 or more years, new internal combustion engine (ICE) hybrid drive train vehicles can achieve similar levels of reduction in energy use and GHG emissions compared to hydrogen FC vehicles, if the hydrogen is derived from natural gas. The fleet impact of more fuel-efficient vehicles depends on the time it takes for new technology to (i) become competitive, (ii) increase its share of the new vehicles produced, and finally (iii) penetrate significantly into the vehicle fleet. Since the lead times for bringing improved ICE vehicle technology into production are the shortest, its impact on vehicle fleet energy use and emissions could be significant in 20-30 years, about half the time required for hydrogen FC vehicles to have a similar impact. Full emission reduction potential of FC vehicles can only be achieved when hydrogen is derived from zero or very low-carbon releasing production processes on a large scale-an option that further increases the impact leadtime. Thus, a comprehensive short- and long-term strategy for reducing automobile energy use and emissions should include both the continuous improvement of ICE vehicles and simultaneous research and development of hydrogen FC cars. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the last decade, researchers paid much attention to concepts such as Design for Environment, Extended Producer Responsibility, Responsible Chain Management, and Eco-design. Many management tools and standards (such as EMAS, ISO 14001, LCA, EPD, Ecolabel) have been developed to support companies in the evaluation and management of their environmental performance and to pursue continual environmental improvement. The more recent development of the aforesaid fields looks at interorganizational environmental management. Such an approach can complement the more traditional intraorganizational corporate environmental management approaches and tools. A typical example of this new trend is the Product Oriented Environmental Management System (POEMS), which represents the natural evolution of the above-mentioned tools, combining the features of EMS, EPD and Ecolabel. Although the structure of the POEMS is still not standardized, many experimental applications have yet been carried out in Europe. In developing a POEMS, a company needs to determine all of the environmental impacts caused at all life-cycle stages of the product and, ideally, to reduce all of them through a continual commitment. The aim of the present study was to perform a survey of the developed POEMS models and to analyze their peculiarities and drawbacks in the application to Small and Medium Enterprises. A case study regarding an Italian winery company is presented. The study analyzes the structure and the activities of the examined firm, in order to estimate direct and indirect environmental impacts following a life-cycle approach. The chosen functional unit is a 0.75-L bottle of red wine. The article also suggests some solutions to improve the environmental performances of the firm's products.Public concern that wood-frame construction overly stresses the forest resource has led some to advocate a reduction in the use of wood. Possible activity toward that objective includes total substitution of wood with alternative materials, a design choice already invalidated on an environmental basis by life cycle assessment (LCA). Another response has been the reinvigoration of the optimum value engineering (OVE) concept, also called advanced framing. This is a careful approach to wood design meant to reduce the volume of wood in a building, and to reduce waste. Advocates of OVE assume an environmental benefit from any wood reduction; however, OVE has never been scientifically established as environmentally preferable to conventional framing; literature on OVE has only quantified the cost savings in materials. This LCA study compared a best-practice Canadian house with one using up to 50 percent less wood, and found little or no environmental benefit; an important factor in these results was the need to incorporate non-renewable products to replace the functionality of the removed wood. Next, a house that combined some elements of efficient framing with maximum use of renewable content (e.g., cellulose insulation in place of fiberglass, wood windows in place of aluminum windows, and wood siding in place of vinyl siding) was compared to the conventional house, and showed strong environmental benefits. These data provide a good argument for maintaining, not decreasing, the renewable content in a house, provided that public confidence in sustainable forestry in North America is continually improved.The importance of renewable resources in technical applications has increased. Within the framework of the studies, a bus body component based on natural fibres and PTP(R), a vegetable based thermoset resin, is produced with the sheet-moulding-compound technology (SMC). Hitherto, the conventional component was produced of glass fibre reinforced polyester resin. The mid-term results of the studies show that it is possible to optimise the production of this textile semi-finished part by selecting qualified hemp fibres and developing a technically matured PTP(R)-SMC variant in such a way that the component production process based on the semi-finished parts need not be changed. All in all, it was possible to produce a homogeneous body part with the hemp/PTP(R)-prepreg due to the flow ability that was achieved for the natural fibres. The technical feasibility of producing an SMC-component based on renewable resources was demonstrated. The properties of the component, e.g. tensile strength, burning behaviour and water absorption, are shown and compared to the results of the series component. An assessment of the component from the end-user perspective is presented. According to the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation, there is no advantage in components based on renewable resources over components based on petrochemical resources. However, the application of renewable resources has advantages in terms of recycling technologies, which are accepted for SMC and which will become economically more important in the future. In comparison with the polyester system, the life-cycle assessment of the polymer material PTP(R) shows lower values in nearly all impact categories. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Japan imports almost all of the energy resources with 40% of them used for electricity generation. Electricity is generated mainly by five types of power plants (LNG-fired, LNG-CC, oil-fired, coal-fired, and nuclear), which have various environmental impacts, for example, fossil fuel depletion, global warming, acid rain, etc. The purpose of this paper is to make a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the electricity generating processes of power plants in Japan and to suggest some concrete measures to reduce the environmental impacts. Our study proceeds as follows. We focus on the fuel procuring process reflecting Japan's import of fuel resources and then the whole electricity generating process of the different types of power plants. Firstly, we quantify the environmental loads resulting from each type of plant by Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis. Secondly, Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method is applied to evaluate the total impacts of each type of plant. Thirdly, we make some concluding remarks on reduction of the environmental impacts. LCI analysis and LCIA evaluation are done with use of the 'LCA-NETS' scheme we have developed. Our LCIA evaluation shows that in the fuel procuring process nuclear plants rank top, coalfired plants second, oil-fired plants third, and LNG-fired plants bottom in the ascending (better) order of the 'NETS/MJ' values, and that in the whole electricity generating process LNG-CC plants rank top, LNG-fired and coal-fired plants second, oil-fired plants third and nuclear plants last in the ascending (better) order of the 'NETS/kWh' values. Our findings about the fuel procuring process imply that if LNG-fired plants can find an effective usage of their byproduct of cold energy or import natural gas without liquefaction directly from nearby countries, they will rank up next to nuclear plants and that if any legal regulations of desulfurization are imposed on sea transportation the impacts of crude oil and coal will be reduced a great deal. It follows from the total evaluation of the whole electricity generating process that if coalfired plants can reduce the total impacts by 20% by introducing a technology of coal gasification they will be superior to LNG-CC plants and that if nuclear plants can adopt a technology of recycling uranium to reduce the total impacts by 50% they will be as good as LNG-CC plants.Goal, Scope and Background. Calculating LCA outcomes implies the use of parameters, models, choices and scenarios which introduce uncertainty, as they imperfectly account for the variability of both human and environmental systems. The analysis of the uncertainty of LCA results, and its reduction by an improved estimation of key parameters and through the improvement of the models used to convert emissions into regional impacts, such as eutrophication, are major issues for LCA. Methods. In a case study of pig production systems, we propose a simple quantification of the uncertainty of LCA results (intra-system variability) and we explore the inter-system variability to produce more robust LCA outcomes. The quantification of the intrasystem uncertainty takes into account the variability of the technical performance (crop yield, feed efficiency) and of emission factors (for NH3, N2O and NO3) and the influence of the functional unit (FU) (kg of pig versus hectare used). For farming systems, the inter-system variability is investigated through differentiating the production mode (conventional, quality label, organic (OA)), and the farmer practices (Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) versus Over Fertilised (OF)), while for natural systems, variability due to physical and climatic characteristics of catchments expected to modify nitrate fate is explored. Results and Conclusion. For the eutrophication and climate change impact categories, the uncertainty associated with field emissions contributes more to the overall uncertainty than the uncertainty associated with emissions from livestock buildings, with crop yield and with feed efficiency. For acidification, the uncertainty of emissions from livestock buildings is the single most important contributor to the overall uncertainty. The influence of the FU on eutrophication results is very important when comparing systems with different degrees of intensification such as GAP and OA. Concerning the inter-system variability, differences in farmer practices have a larger effect on eutrophication than differences between production modes. Finally, the physical characteristics of the catchment and the climate strongly affect the results for eutrophication. In conclusion, in this case study, the main sources of uncertainty are in the estimation of emission factors, due both to the variability of environmental conditions and to lack of knowledge (emissions of N2O at the field level), but also in the model used for assessing regional impacts such as eutrophication. Recommendation and Perspective. Suitable deterministic simulation models integrating the main controlling variables (environmental conditions, farmer practices, technology used) should be used to predict the emissions of a given system as well as their probabilistic distribution allowing the use of stochastic modelling. Finally, our simulations on eutrophication illustrate the necessity of integrating the fate of pollutants in models of impact assessment and highlight the important margin of improvement existing for the eutrophication impact assessment model.Goal, Scope and Background. This paper is concerned with a life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCQ by the use of the waste input-output (WIO) quantity- and price model of air conditioners with different energy efficiency at the use phase (high-end, lowend and average models) that were available in Japan as of winter 2002. The functional unit is an air conditioner of the 2.5kW type that is used for 10 years, and then subjected to an end-of-life (EoL) process that is consistent with the Japanese law on the recycling of appliances. Methods. This is the first simultaneous application of the WIO methodology to an LCA and LCC over the entire life-cycle of a product including the use phase, and represents a methodological extension (in the sense of considering the use phase) and integration (in the sense of a simultaneous application) of previous studies by us (Kondo and Nakamura, Int J LCA 2004, Nakamura and Kondo, Ecol Econ 2006). The main body of data is provided by the WIO table for the year 2000, an update of the previous table for 1995 that was used in the above WIO studies. Compared with the WIO table for 1995 that consisted of only about 80 industry sectors, the current one consists of about 400 industry sectors, and includes air conditioner as a separate sector. The data on the purchase price and efficiency of air conditioners indicate wide variations: the cheapest one (the lowend model) costs half of the most expensive one (the high-end model), but its efficiency is about half of the latter. Results and Discussion. When the cost in the use and EoL phases is included, the low-end model becomes the most expensive one, and the high-end model with the highest purchase cost the least expensive. This reversal of the relative cost levels is attributed to the difference in the efficiency in the use phase. A sensitivity analysis indicates that a reduction of the electricity price in the use phase by about 40% does not alter the significant superiority of the high-end model over the low-end model. In spite of the largest amount of input in the production phase, the high-end model performs the best in terms of both global warming potential (GWP) and landfill, while the low-end model performs the worst. The use phase generates the largest amount of waste for landfill across the three models, the largest component of which is flyash generated from coal firing power plants. A possible internalization of externality in the form of carbon tax was found to work in favor of the high-end model. The cost advantage of the high-end model, however, is sensitive to the rate of discounting of future costs: discounting at 15% diminishes its advantage over the low-end model. Recommendation and Perspective. The results indicate the effectiveness of the pricing based on the life cycle cost for achieving sustainability, that is, for promoting the shift of the demand away from appliances with low environmental performance to the one with higher environmental performance. Acceptance by society of pricing based on life cycle costing would require, among other things, an economywide standardization of the LCC concept (in a manner analogous to ISO-LCA) that can be used complementary to ISO-LCA.Goal, Scope and Background. Sustainability is a well recognised goal which is difficult to manage due to its complexity. As part of a series of sustainability management tools, a Product Sustainability Index (PSI) is translating the sustainability aspects to the organization of vehicle product development of Ford of Europe, thus allocating ownership and responsibility to that function. PSI is limiting the scope to those key environmental, social and economic characteristics of passenger vehicles that are controllable by the product development organisation. Materials and Methods. The PSI considers environmental, economic and social aspects based on externally reviewed life cycle environmental and cost aspects (Life Cycle Assessment, Cost of ownership / Life Cycle Costing), externally certified aspects (allergy-tested interior) and related aspects as sustainable materials, safety, mobility capability and noise. After the kick-off of their product development in 2002, the new Ford S-MAX and Ford Galaxy are serving as a pilot for this tool. These products are launched in Europe in 2006. The tracking of PSI performance has been done by engineers of the Vehicle Integration department within the product development organization. The method has been translated in an easy spreadsheet tool. Engineers have been trained within one hour trainings. The application of PSI by vehicle integration followed the principle to reduce the need for any incremental time or additional data to a minimum. PSI is adopted to the existing decision-making process. End of 2005, an internal expert conducted a Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) study for verification purposes using commercial software. This study and the PSI have been scrutinized by an external review panel according to ISO 14040 and, by taking into consideration the on-going SETAC, work in the field of LCC. Results. The results of the Life Cycle based indicators of PSI as calculated by non-experts are fully in line with those of the more detailed expert study. The difference is below 2%. The new Ford Galaxy and Ford S-MAX shows significantly improved performance regarding the life cycle air quality, use of sustainable materials, restricted substances and safety compared to the previous model Galaxy. The affordability (Life Cycle Cost of Ownership) has also been improved when looking at the same engine types. Looking at gasoline versus diesel options, the detailed study shows under what conditions the diesel options are environmentally preferable and less costly (mileage, fuel prices, etc.). Discussion. The robustness of results has been verified in various ways. Based also on Sensitivity and Monte-Carlo Analysis, case study-specific requirements have been deduced defining criteria for a significant environmental improvement between the various vehicles. Only if the differences of LCIA results between two vehicles are larger than a certain threshold are the above-mentioned results robust. Conclusions. In general terms, an approach has been implemented and externally reviewed that allows non-experts to manage key environmental, social and economic aspects in the product development, also on a vehicle level. This allows mainstream functions to take ownership of sustainability and assigns accountability to those who can really decide on changes affecting the sustainability performance. In the case of Ford S-MAX and Galaxy, indicators from all three dimensions of sustainability (environment, social and economic) have been improved compared to the old Ford Galaxy. Recommendations and Perspectives. Based on this positive experience, it is recommended to make, in large or multinational organizations, the core business functions directly responsible and accountable for managing their own part of environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability. Staff functions should be limited to starting the process with methodological and training support and making sure that the contributions of the different main functions fit together.Goal, Scope and Background. The new European legislation concerning End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) will allow, in 2015, the landfilling of only 5% of the average vehicle weight, which means that the automotive industry must make a great effort in order to design their products taking into account their recyclability when they become waste. In the present work, LCA is used to assess an existing automotive component, a plastic door panel, and to compare it with a designed-for-recycling prototype panel, based on compatible polyolefins. Main Features. A 'cradle to grave' LCA is carried out for the panel currently produced and the prototype. The following scenarios are analyzed for plastic waste: landfilling (current practice in Spain), energy recovery in a MSW incinerator or in a cement kiln, and mechanical recycling. Results and Discussion. The production and use phases together contribute more than 95% in most impact indicators. When the current and prototype products are compared, a decrease in the environmental impact appears for the prototype in the production phase and also at end-of-life if recycling is considered with full substitution of virgin polymers. The overall impact reduction ranges from 18% in the toxicity indicators to 80% in landfill use. Energy recovery in cement kilns appears as a good alternative to recycling in some indicators, such as landfill use or resource depletion. A sensitivity analysis is performed on the quality of recycled plastic, and the results suggest that the benefits of recycling are substantially reduced if full substitution is not achieved. Conclusion. LCA has been shown to be a very useful tool to validate from an environmental point of view a redesigned automotive component; in addition, it has allowed one to identify not only the benefits from increased recyclability, but also improvements in other life cycle phases which were not previously expected. Recommendation and Perspective. From this case study several recommendations to the company have been drawn in order to design environmentally friendly components for car interiors, and ecodesign is expected to be introduced in the company procedures.Goal, Scope and Background. This paper discusses the merging of methodological aspects of two known methods into a hybrid form applied to water supply systems. Water shortages are imminent due to scarce supply and increasing demand in many parts of the world. In California, this is caused primarily by population growth. As readily available water is depleted, alternatives that may have larger energy and resource requirements and, therefore, environmental impacts must be considered. In order to develop a more environmentally responsible and sustainable water supply system, these environmental implications should be incorporated into planning decisions. Methods. Comprehensive accounting for environmental effects requires Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a systematic account of resource use and environmental emissions caused by extracting raw materials, manufacturing, constructing, operating, maintaining, and decommissioning the water infrastructure. In this study, a hybrid LCA approach, combining elements of process-based and economic input-output- based LCA was used to compare three supply alternatives: importing, recycling, and desalinating water. For all three options, energy use and air emissions associated with energy generation, vehicle and equipment operation, and material production were quantified for life-cycle phases and water supply functions (supply, treatment, and distribution). The Water-Energy Sustainability Tool was developed to inform water planning decisions. It was used to evaluate the systems of a Northern and a Southern California water utility. Results and Discussion. The results showed that for the two case study utilities desalination had 2-5 times larger energy demand and caused 2-18 times more emissions than importation or recycling, due primarily to the energy-intensity of the treatment process. The operation life-cycle phase created the most energy consumption with 56% to 90% for all sources and case studies. For each water source, a different life-cycle phase dominated energy consumption. For imported water, supply contributed 56% and 86% of the results for each case study; for desalination, treatment accounted for approximately 85%; for recycled water, distribution dominated with 61% and 74% of energy use. The study calculated external costs of air pollution from all three water supply systems. These costs are borne by society, but not paid by producers. The external costs were found to be 6% of desalinated water production costs for both case studies, 8% of imported water production costs in Southern California, and 1-2% for the recycled water systems and for the Northern California utility's imported water system. Conclusion. Recycling water was found to be more energy intensive in Northern than in Southern California, but the results for imported water were similar. While the energy demand of water recycling was found to be larger than importation in Northern California, the two alternatives were competitive in Southern California. For all alternatives in both case studies, the energy consumed by system operation dominated the results, but maintenance was also found to be significant. Energy production was found to be the largest contributor in all water provision systems, followed by materials production. The assessment of external costs revealed that the environmental effects of energy and air emissions caused by infrastructure is measurable, and in some cases, significant relative to the economic cost of water. Recommendation and Perspective. This paper advocates the necessity of LCA in water planning, and discusses the applicability of the described model to water utilities.Goal, Scope, Background. As of July V, 2006, lead will be banned in most solder pastes used in the electronics industry. This has called for environmental evaluation of alternatives to tin-lead solders. Our life cycle assessment (LCA) has two aims: (i) to compare attributional and consequential LCA methodologies, and (ii) to compare a SnPb solder (62 % tin, 3 6 % lead, 2 % silver) to a Pbfree solder (95.5% tin, 3.8% silver, 0.7% copper). Methods. An attributional LCA model describes the environmental impact of the solder life cycle. Ideally, it should include average data on each unit process within the life cycle. The model does not include unit processes other than those of the life cycle investigated, but significant cut-offs within the life cycle can be avoided through the use of environmentally expanded input-output tables. A consequential LCA model includes unit processes that are significantly affected irrespective of whether they are within or outside the life cycle. Ideally, it should include marginal data on bulk production processes in the background system. Our Consequential LCA model includes economic partial equilibrium models of the lead and scrap lead markets. However, both our LCA models are based on data from the literature or from individual production sites. The partial equilibrium models are based on assumptions. The life cycle impact assessment is restricted to global warming potential (GWP). Results and Discussion. The attributional LCA demonstrates the obvious fact that the shift from SnPb to Pb-free solder means that lead is more or less eliminated from the solder life cycle. The attributional LCA results also indicate that the Pb-free option contributes 10 % more to the GWP than SnPb. Despite the poor quality of the data, the consequential LCA demonstrates that, when lead use is eliminated from the solder life cycle, the effect is partly offset by increased lead use in batteries and other products. This shift can contribute to environmental improvement because lead emissions are likely to be greatly reduced, while batteries can contribute to reducing GXW, thereby offsetting part of the GWP increase in the solder life cycle. Conclusions. The shift from SnPb to Pb-free solder is likely to result in reduced lead emissions and increased GXW. Attributional and consequential LCAs yield complementary knowledge on the consequences of this shift in solder pastes. At present, consequential LCA is hampered by the lack of readily available marginal data and the lack of input data to economic partial equilibrium models. However, when the input to a consequential LCA model is in the form of quantitative assumptions based on a semi-qualitative discussion, the model can still generate new knowledge. Recommendations and Outlook. Experts on partial equilibrium models should be involved in consequential LCA modeling in order to improve the input data on price elasticity, marginal production, and marginal consumption.Goal, Scope and Background. It has been recognized that LCA has a limitation in assessing open cycle recycling of materials because of inevitable subjective judgments in setting system boundary. According with the enforcement of recycling laws, there has been a rapid increase in recycling ratio of materials at the end-of-life of products in many industrialized countries. So, materials' life cycle is getting more complicated, which makes it difficult to quantify the environmental impacts of materials used in a product in an appropriate way. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology to calculate the average number of times a material is used in a society from cradle to grave. The method developed in this paper derives the average number of times material is used; this value could be used for allocation of environmental burdens of virgin material as well as an indicator for assessing the state of material,use in a certain year, based on material flow of material in that year. Main Features. Our methodology is based on Markov chain model using matrix-based numerical analysis. A major feature of this method is that it creates transition probability matrices for a material from the way in which the material is produced, consumed, and recycled, making it possible to simply elicit indicators that assess the status of material use in products in society. Our methodology could be an alternative method to derive the average number of times material is used, which could be used for allocation of environmental burdens of virgin material. Results and Discussions. The methodology was applied to hypothetical examples of material flows, in which a virgin material was produced and used in products, recycled and finally landfilled. In some cases, closed loop and open loop recycling of materials existed. The transition probability matrix was created for each material flow, and how many times a virgin material is used in products until all of the elements are ultimately landfilled. Conclusions. This methodology is applicable to a complicated material flow if the status of residence of a material and its flow in a society can be figured out. All the necessary data are the amount of virgin material production, amount of the material used in products, recycling rate of the material at the end of life of each product, the amount of scrap of the material that are used for products. In Part 2 of this paper, case studies for steel were conducted.Goal, Scope and Background. On June 12-13 June 2006 in Guildford (UK) an international workshop was held to address indicators to incorporate land use impacts in LCA. It provided an interdisciplinary forum where soil scientists and biologists met with LCA experts and users to discuss the challenges of including land use impacts in LCA and potential approaches to addressing these challenges. The discussion used as starting point the definitions framed in the past work on land use impacts within the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (Mila i Canals et al. 2006). However, the presence of soil quality and biodiversity experts allowed for a more in-depth consideration of the nature of land use impacts. Main Features. The discussions. were focused on three main themes: general methodological issues to be addressed in including land use impacts in LCA; recommendations for soil quality indicators; and recommendations for biodiversity indicators. Results and Discussion. There is a conflict between the levels of detail at which LCA should assess land use impacts: a coarse assessment may allow the detection of hotspots from a life cycle perspective, whereas a more detailed assessment might allow the distinction between land management modes (e.g. organic vs. conventional agriculture). Different land use processes need to be modelled in consequential and attributional LCA. Land use effects on biodiversity and soil quality are non-linear and also depend on the scale of land use, which is difficult to address in LCA. Soil is multi-functional and many threats affect its quality, which results in a case-specific selection of the most adequate indicator. In the case of biodiversity, two main options for defining indicators were identified at species and ecosystem levels. The main advantage of the former is data availability, but the election of a particular taxon may be arbitrary. Ecosystem level indicators include a higher degree of subjectivity but may be more relevant than species level ones. Conclusions. Land use impacts need to be considered in LCA for all life cycle stages in all types of products. An urgent need for LCA is to incorporate land use impacts particularly in comparisons of systems which differ substantially in terms of land use impacts. The main differences between consequential and attributional LCA are the need for the consideration of off-site effects and marginal vs. average land uses in consequential LCA. In order to define the marginal effects of land use a similar approach to the description of the electricity grid and its marginal technology may be followed. 'Dose-response' functions need to be defined for land use interventions and their effects. The main soil degradation processes (considering soil's vulnerability to different threats) should be captured in a spatial -dependent way in LCA. Criteria and examples to select biodiversity indicators at species and ecosystem levels were proposed in the workshop. Recommendations and Perspectives. The conduction of LCA case studies for relevant systems (especially fossil energy compared to bio-energy systems involving different eco-regions to account for potential international trade) may provide a good platform to further develop the workshop suggestions.The fate of manure nutrients in beef cattle (Bos taurus) feedlots is influenced by handling treatment, yet few data are available in western Canada comparing traditional practices (fresh handling, stockpiling) with newer ones (composting). This study examined the influence of handling treatment (fresh, stockpiled, or composted) on nutrient levels and mass balance estimates of feedlot manure at Lethbridge, Alberta, and Brandon, Manitoba. Total carbon (TC) concentration of compost (161 kg Mg-1) was lower (P < 0.001) than stockpiled (248 kg Mg-1), which was in turn lower (P < 0.001) than fresh manure (314 kg Mg-1). Total nitrogen (TN) concentration was not affected by handling treatment while total phosphorus (TP) concentration increased with composting at Lethbridge. The percent inorganic nitrogen (PIN) was lower (P < 0.01) for compost (5.1%) than both fresh (24.7%) and stockpiled (28.9%) manure. Composting led to higher (P < 0.05) dry matter (DM) losses (39.8%) compared to stockpiling (22.5%) and higher (P < 0.05) total mass (water + DM) losses (65.6 vs. 35.2%). Carbon (C) losses were higher (P < 0.01) with composting (66.9% of initial) than with stockpiling (37.5%), as were nitrogen (N) losses (46.3 vs. 22.5%, P < 0.05). Composting allowed transport of two times as much P as fresh manure and 1.4 times as much P as stockpiled manure (P < 0.001) on an "as is" basis. Our study looked at one aspect of manure management (i.e., handling treatment effects on nutrient concentrations and mass balance estimates) and, as such, should be viewed as one component in the larger context of a life cycle assessment.Nearly 2.5 million ft(2) of barracks must be removed from military facilities throughout the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 4. While integration of manual deconstruction with traditional mechanical demolition methods has been shown to be comparable to traditional demolition methods in terms of cost and time requirements, the life cycle impacts of manual deconstruction on the environment and public health are unknown. To this end, life cycle assessment was applied to extend previous deconstruction studies of barracks at Ft. McClellan in Anniston, Alabama. Four scenarios were compared with varying degrees of time required for manual deconstruction of the barracks-100% Manual, 44% Manual, 26% Manual, and 100% Mechanical Data were collected directly from the site and applied using SimaPro modeling software (Pre Associates, The Netherlands), considering two post-deconstruction options. Materials salvaged using either 100% or 44% Manual deconstruction and reused within a 20-mile radius of the deconstruction site yielded the most favorable environmental and health impacts. The significant impacts involved in the life cycle of diesel fuel required for transportation emphasize the need for developing reuse strategies for deconstructed materials at the regional level.This article presents a scenario analysis for a life-cycle model of service sector companies. The model is based on six case companies and it is applied to test the influence of 32 management scenarios. The scenarios simulate feasible options for environmental management measures in companies, and the life-cycle assessment method is used to model their relevance in terms of the total environmental impact of the company. The study found that the bulk of tested scenarios had only a minor influence on the total environmental impact of the company. Some individual management scenarios, though, turned out to have a major influence on the organization's environmental performance. The scenarios with greatest influence were those related to the procurement of electricity, building energy consumption, commuting vehicle mix, space usage efficiency, and refurbishment periods of the building. All of these management scenarios had an influence of more than 10% on the environmental impact of the model organization.Performance of a 160 m(2) photovoltaic installation at the Napier University's Merchiston Campus, situated 3 km from Edinburgh's city centre, is presented. The alternative current and direct current electrical outputs were recorded since the installation of the facility was completed in April 2005. An analysis of the efficiency of the facility, as well as energetic, environmental, and monetary life cycle assessments, using long-term meteorological data is presented in this article.It has been shown that there is an urgent need for emissions data in the chemical sector. Since part of the problem is the confidentiality of this data, it has been proposed to create a set of modules for basic chemical reactions that could be incorporated in software simulation tools. Using mass and energy balances, proper emission calculations in mass units could be determined. An example using polyurethane is used to illustrate the objective of this work. Although theoretical, it is better than non-verifiable data, not to say non-existing data. This tool is a clear need for any type of assessment that requires emissions data such as LCNs, as well as for environmental policy, public awareness, and industry itself. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Two scenarios are assessed in a new life cycle assessment model, ROAD-RES, developed at the Technical University of Denmark for road construction and recycling of residues. The scenarios concern a I km asphalted road in Denmark with a service life of 100 years: Scenario A was a road with natural materials only, while Scenario B was a similar road, where municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash is used as sub-base layer replacing gravel beneath the lanes. The assessment included resource and energy consumption, and emissions associated with production of road's materials, transport, construction of the road and operation and maintenance of the road during the roads life as well as leaching of heavy metals and salts from the bottom ash, and salts used for road salting. The assessment showed that the difference between the scenarios was marginal in terms of environmental impacts and resource consumption. The majority of the environmental impacts were related to emissions from combustion of fossil fuels. Potential pollution of groundwater due to leaching of salts appeared to be important potential resource consumption, primarily due to road salting. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the implementation of life cycle assessment to investigate the environmental impact of 20 technologies suitable for treating extensive volumes of water produced during the oil and gas extraction processes. Data on the physical and operational attributes of technologies under consideration were assembled and their life cycle environmental impacts estimated over 15 year time period. The results were then incorporated in a decision support system which allows identification and prioritisation of potential technology combinations capable of producing water for nine designated industrial and agricultural end uses. In total, more than 618 technology combinations were investigated for their environmental impacts. The identification and prioritisation of technologies were done on the basis of their environmental and technical performance. This analysis showed that dissolved air flotation, absorbents, dual media filtration and reverse osmosis technologies offer relatively low environmental impact parts of systems for cleaning such process waters. Furthermore, the environmental assessment combined within the decision support system has revealed potentially valuable indirect downstream "benefits" from effects such as evaporative losses from wetlands in terms of the overall environmental impact of a treatment system. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.The challenge for environmental assessment tools, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is to provide a holistic picture of the environmental impacts of a given system, while being relevant both at a global scale, i.e., for global impact categories such as climate change, and at a smaller scale, i.e., for regional impact categories such as aquatic eutrophication. To this end, the environmental mechanisms between emission and impact should be taken into account. For eutrophication in particular, which is one of the main impacts of farming systems, the fate factor of eutrophying pollutants in catchments, and particularly of nitrate, reflects one of these important and complex environmental mechanisms. We define this fate factor as: the ratio of the amount of nitrate at the outlet of the catchment over the nitrate emitted from the catchment's soils. In LCA, this fate factor is most often assumed equal to 1, while the observed fate factor is generally less than 1. A generic approach for estimating the range of variation of nitrate fate factors in a region of intensive agriculture was proposed. This approach was based on the analysis of different catchment scenarios combining different catchment types and different effective rainfalls. The evolution over time of the nitrate fate factor as well as the steady state fate factor for each catchment scenario was obtained using the INCA simulation model. In line with the general LCA model, the implications of the steady state fate factors for nitrate were investigated for the eutrophication impact result in the framework of an LCA of pig production. A sensitivity analysis to the fraction of nitrate lost as N(2)O was presented for the climate change impact category. This study highlighted the difference between the observed fate factor at a given time, which aggregates both storage and transformation processes and a "steady state fate factor", specific to the system considered. The range of steady state fate factors obtained for the study region was wide, from 0.44 to 0.86, depending primarily on the catchment type and secondarily on the effective rainfall. The sensitivity of the LCA of pig production to the fate factors was significant concerning eutrophication, but potentially much larger concerning climate change. The potential for producing improved eutrophication results by using spatially differentiated fate factors was demonstrated. Additionally, the urgent need for quantitative studies on the N(2)O/N(2) ratio in riparian zones denitrification was highlighted. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Currently, oil based fuels are the primary energy source of road transport. The growing need for oil independence and CO2 mitigation has lead to the increasing importance of alternative fuel usage. CO2 is produced not only as the fuel is used in the vehicle (tank-to-wheel contribution), but also upstream, from the fuel extraction to the refueling station (well-to-tank contribution), and the life cycle of the ftiel production (well-to-wheel contribution) must be considered in order to analyse the global impact of the fuel utilization. A road vehicle tank-to-wheel analysis tool that may be integrated with well-to-tank models was developed in the present study. The integration in a demonstration case study allowed to perform a life cycle assessment concerning the utilization of diesel and natural gas fuels in a specific network line of a bus transit company operating in the city of Porto, Portugal. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In a recent paper in this journal, Suh [Suh, S., 2004. Functions, commodities and environmental impacts in an ecological-economic model. Ecological Economics 40 (4), 451-467.] presented a model combining life cycle assessment (LCA) with input-output analysis (IOA); termed "integrated hybrid LCA". In this paper, we discuss various issues relating to the use of the integrated hybrid LCA approach. In particular, the interpretation of the downstream feedback term, C-d, is discussed with particular focus on practical implementation. In this paper, two interpretations of C-d are suggested depending on the particular LCA data used. If the LCA data is designed for a demand on the functional unit only, then it is argued that the C-d term is negligible in many applications. If the LCA data is compatible with an arbitrary demand, then it is argued that in many cases the consistent use of the C-d term implies data requirements that may not be justified by the potential gains. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the comment by Peters and Hertwich (Peters, G.P., Hertwich, E., 2006-this issue), the authors provide two interpretations on one of the block matrices that is a part of the integrated hybrid Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework presented in Suh (2004a) (Suh, S., 2004a. Functions, commodities and environmental impacts in an ecological economic model. Ecological Economics 48 (4), 451-467). The authors argue that the contribution of the downstream cut-off matrix to the overall results might be small, or the amount of resources needed to compile the matrix will be too high, depending on the type of the LCA databases that the authors distinguish. in this response, I confirm that the contribution of the downstream cut-off matrix is generally minor, which can be easily recognized from the structure of the system. However, one should realize that there are the cases when it is not, leaving little reason to automatically preset the downstream cut-off matrix as a zero matrix. A set of conditions under which a downstream cut-off matrix becomes an important part is discussed, and a practical method for checking the potential importance of a downstream cut-off matrix before actually compiling data is presented. The method is tested using the numerical example shown in Suh (2004a). The distinction of LCA databases based on their capabilities of handling arbitrary demands, which is proposed by Peters and Hertwich, is discussed from an LCA practitioner's point of view, and it is argued that the actual process of data collection for the downstream cut-off matrix is far from what the authors suggest. Finally, a step-wise strategy for an efficient data collection under the budget and time constraints is discussed. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper summarises some recent work exploring the development of a multi-criteria optimisation tool for achieving sustainable solutions for municipal solid waste management systems (MSWMS). The aim of the project was to provide a new methodological background for the regional solid waste management modelling taking into account spatial and temporal patterns of waste generation and processing, environmental as well as economic impacts of the system development with a particular emphasis on public health and biodiversity. The research has focused on integrating three different approaches to the spatial-temporal analysis of the MSWMS, namely a life cycle inventory analysis, which helps to identify emission patterns within the MSWMS, a multi-criteria optimisation approach, which helps to find compromise solutions among environmentally and economically preferred options, and a geographic information systems approach, which provides a tool for identifying waste management facilities, transportation environmental and social impacts, as well as analysis of environmental impacts on valuable ecosystems. A Russian methodology for calculating environmental damage was used to weight the importance of different sub-territories covered by the system as well as simplifying the analysis of emissions from the waste treatment plants. The approach provides a new perspective for the analysis of municipal solid waste management systems at the regional scale. The principal novelty of the proposed complex MSW strategic management model is an integration of the different types of data-geographical, environmental and economic-using relational database technology. Simulations using the dataset for Gloucestershire were performed on a simplified version of the model. Simulations were undertaken to explore the potential effects on waste management infrastructure of introducing the EU Landfill Directive. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the methods utilised has suggested that a relatively affordable and easy to use tool can be developed for strategic analysis of the municipal solid waste management system in a region, giving useful support to the decision-maker regarding the potential development paths and trade-offs between economic and environmental performance of a proposed waste management system. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As they are easy to recycle and consume little natural resources, polymers have been considered as environmentally friendly for a long time. Significant evolutions have been observed, in the field of polymers from biomass for example, and at least 15% of world research on polymers are connected with environmental questions. To address these questions, it seems that multidisciplinary research has to be carried out considering the synthesis, formulation, processing and the characterization of polymers. Similarly, training in chemistry and materials is more and more concerned by sustainable development.We conducted a mobility chains, or well-to-wheels (WTW), analysis to assess the energy and emission benefits of cellulosic biomass for the U. S. transportation sector in the years 2015-2030. We estimated the life-cycle energy consumption and emissions associated with biofuel production and use in light-duty vehicle (LDV) technologies by using the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model. Analysis of biofuel production was based on ASPEN Plus model simulation of an advanced fermentation process to produce fuel ethanol/protein, a thermochemical process to produce Fischer-Tropsch diesel (FTD) and dimethyl ether (DME), and a combined heat and power plant to co-produce steam and electricity. Our study revealed that cellulosic biofuels as E85 (mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline by volume), FTD, and DME offer substantial savings in petroleum (66-93%) and fossil energy (65-88%) consumption on a per-mile basis. Decreased fossil fuel use translates to 82-87% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across all unblended cellulosic biofuels. In urban areas, our study shows net reductions for almost all criteria pollutants, with the exception of carbon monoxide (unchanged), for each of the biofuel production option examined. Conventional and hybrid electric vehicles, when fueled with E85, could reduce total sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions to 39-43% of those generated by vehicles fueled with gasoline. By using bio-FTD and bio-DME in place of diesel, SOx emissions are reduced to 46-58% of those generated by diesel-fueled vehicles. Six different fuel production options were compared. This study strongly suggests that integrated heat and power co-generation by means of gas turbine combined cycle is a crucial factor in the energy savings and emission reductions.Air-cooled chillers are commonly used to provide cooling energy for air-conditioned buildings at the expense of considerable electricity. This paper examines the life cycle electricity cost of these chillers with the improved condenser features of condensing temperature control (CTC), evaporative pre-coolers (EC) and variable speed condenser fans (VSF). A validated model for an air-cooled screw chiller was used to ascertain how the individual and mixed features influence the annual electricity consumption of chillers in various operating conditions. It is estimated that the life cycle electricity cost savings range from HKS 2,099,742 with EC to HK$6,399,564 with all the three features, with regard to a chiller plant serving an office building for 15 yr. The life cycle analysis reported here provides important insights into how to reap the benefits of energy efficient technologies for air-cooled chillers. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The assessment of Renewables-to-Electricity Systems is a complex, time-consuming task and requires skilled, experienced engineers. This paper describes the on-going research effort that takes place in the development of a new Intelligent Approach, all efficient decision making tool in this problem based on the employment of the Expert Systems and Fuzzy Logic techniques. As far as expert knowledge representation is concerned, the proposed approach is based on Expert System techniques (rule-based methodology). Moreover, trying to assess a Renewables-to-Electricity project or several alternative ones, the analysis has to face, in general, a series of uncertainties. To handle effectively these uncertainties, a new methodology is proposed (by use of Fuzzy Sets Theory and Fuzzy Logic Techniques). The proposed Fuzzy Project Priority Index for each Renewables-to-Electricity System is very useful especially in decision-makers. In order to demonstrate the proposed intelligent fuzzy analysis-based approach a simple case study is provided, supposing that a legal entity is to assess and finally select/propose an electricity production system, which uses RES (wind energy OR solar energy to photovoltaic OR small hydro). As fuzzy variables are concerned the Life Cycle Analysis (versus equipment production, plant preparation, operation and decommissioning) and the Development Cost (versus firm capabilities, spillover effects and potential downside damage). (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Source separation, composting and anaerobic digestion, with associated land application, are increasingly being considered as alternative waste management strategies to landfilling and incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW). Environmental life cycle assessments are a useful tool in political decision-making about waste management strategies. However, due to the diversity of processed organic MSW and the situations in which it can be applied, the environmental impacts of land application are very hard to determine by experimental means. In the current study, we used the agroecosystem model Daisy to simulate a range of different scenarios representing different geographical areas, farm and soil types under Danish conditions and legislation. Generally, the application of processed organic MSW resulted in increased emissions compared with the corresponding standard scenarios, but with large differences between scenarios. Emission coefficients for nitrogen leaching to the groundwater ranged from 0.03 to 0.87, while those for nitrogen lost to surface waters through tile drains ranged from 0 to 0.30. Emission coefficients for N2O formation ranged from 0.013 to 0.022 and for ammonia volatilization from 0.016 to 0.11. These estimates are within reasonable range of observed values under similar conditions. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis showed that the estimates were not very sensitive to the mineralization dynamics of the processed organic MSW. The results show that agroecosystem models can be powerful tools to estimate the environmental impacts of land application of processed MSW under different conditions. Despite this, agroecosystem models have only been used to a very limited degree for this purpose.The environmental and socio-economic impacts of biomass utilization by co-firing with brown coal in an existing thermoelectric unit in Greece or through its pure combustion in a new plant were studied and evaluated in this work. The 125 MW, lignite-fired power plant in Ptolemais Power Station (Western Macedonia) was used as reference system. The environmental benefits of the alternative biomass exploitation options were quantified based on the life cycle assessment methodology, as established by SETAC, while the BIOSEM technique was used to carry out socio-economic calculations. The obtained results showed clear environmental benefits of both biomass utilization alternatives in comparison with the reference system. In addition, co-firing biomass with lignite in an existing unit outperforms the combustion of biomass exclusively in a new plant, since it exhibits a better environmental performance and it is a low risk investment with immediate benefits. A biomass combustion unit requires a considerably higher capital investment and its benefits are more evident in the long run. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Aluminium is the most-used metal in the world after steel, with a wide range of applications in the industrial field owing to its physical and mechanical properties. The aim of this study was environmental and economic analysis of secondary aluminium. In particular, this study demonstrated that aluminium recycling offers many advantages to both consumers and industry: Increased energy savings compared to primary aluminium production; " Recovery and reuse of raw materials for future production avoids consumption of non-renewable resources; Reduction in landfill waste and consequent environmental damage; " Reduction in bauxite mining which, in turn, will reduce the socio-economic impact on populations of those countries, mainly underdeveloped, that contain mines; " Economic advantages for Italy, the first European producer of secondary aluminium, which lacks bauxite mines and has high energy costs. This study used the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, the modified Eco-indicator 99 method for damage calculation, and the SimaPro calculation code. The study examined secondary aluminium production by ICMET, based in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The economic and environmental evaluation utilised environmental information supplied by the company.A life cycle assessment (LCA) case study was conducted on the processing of soybeans to soybean oil. Three stages of soybean oil processing are studied in detail: preprocessing, extraction and separation, and postprocessing. For extraction, hexane (current industrial process) and supercritical CO2 (research and development [R & D] laboratory-scale process) methods are compared in detail. The initial life cycle comparison found that the laboratory-scale CO2 system was not as good in life cycle impacts as the hexane system. However, reasonable engineering improvements typical of scale-up practices would make the CO2 technology better than hexane and eliminate the hexane emissions. Utilization of membrane techniques to separate the small molecular CO2 from the soybean oil hydrocarbon appears to be a much better R & D direction for development. This article illustrates the ability to use life cycle as an aid to R & D to select more advantageous directions for process improvement.The electrical power generated by a polycrystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) module mounted on an unglazed transpired solar collector (UTC) has been studied and compared to that of a PV module without UTC for a quantitative analysis of electrical output and its role in reducing the simple payback periods of photovoltaic electrical systems. A 75 W polycrystalline silicon PV module was fixed on an UTC in front of the ventilation fan, and effectiveness of cooling by means of the forced ventilation at the rate of 160 CFM was monitored. The temperature reduction under forced ventilation was in the range of 3-9 degrees C with a 5% recovery in the electrical output power on a typical day of the month of February 2005. The simulated and measured electrical power outputs are in reasonable agreement with root-mean-square error of 2.40. The life cycle assessment of a hypothetical PV system located at Daejeon, South Korea and consisting of 3 kW PV modules fixed on a 50 m(2) UTC shows that with a possible reduction of 3-9 degrees C in the operating temperatures, the system requires three 75 W fewer PV modules. The simple payback period of PV system is reduced from 23 years to 15 years when integrated into an UTC air heating system.Techniques of environmental appraisal and valuation play an important role in the context of sustainability assessment. They are at the heart of methods for quantifying economic and social costs and benefits, as well as the direct ecological impacts that are an inevitable side-effect of material 'progress'. Concepts such as the physical life cycle of products and processes, and the need for clearly defined system boundaries, are key elements in environmental problem-solving. However, some economists would claim that, as a 'normative' discipline, their methods can be extended to incorporate all of society's environmental concerns. In contrast, engineers and environmental professionals have at times argued that economic techniques (such as cost-benefit analyses) may well obscure the impacts of different courses of action, and that decision makers consequently become less well informed rather than the reverse. Aggregate decision criteria, for example, often conceal the weighing of various impacts. By contrast, the sort of 'prescriptive' analytical tools emanating from engineering and the physical sciences can provide alternative insights that complement those that spring from economics. These include thermodynamic (energy and exergy) analysis and environmental life-cycle assessment. A range of interrelated environmental project appraisal techniques is therefore examined in order to determine their relative merits. Practical examples involving resource (energy and hydraulic oil) use, pollutant emissions, and waste disposal and recycling (of hydraulic oils) indicate that many of these methods can play an important evaluative role as part of an interdisciplinary toolkit within a general systems framework. Nevertheless, caution needs to be used when adopting economic and engineering analysis techniques so as to ensure that they are fit for their sustainability purpose.The study performed a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) plant for marine applications. The results are compared to a benchmark conventional diesel engine (DE) which operates as an auxiliary power generating unit. The LCA includes manufacturing of MCFC and DE, fuel supply, operation and decommissioning stages of the system's life cycle. As a new technology in its very early stages of commercialisation, some detailed data for the FC systems are not available. In order to overcome this problem, a series of scenario analysis has also been performed to evaluate the effect of various factors on the overall impact, such as change in power load factors and effect of recycling credit at the end of life cycle. Environmental benefits from fuel cell operation are maximised with the use of hydrogen as an input fuel. For the manufacturing stage of the life cycle, input material and process energy required for fuel cell stack assemblies and balance-of-plants (BOP) represent a bigger impact than that of conventional benchmark mainly due to special materials used in the stack and the weights of the BOP components. Additionally, recovering valuable materials through re-use or re-cycle will reduce the overall environmental burden of the system over its life cycle. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recently there has been a move towards environmentally conscious manufacturing with an emphasis on life-cycle assessment. The intention is that life-cycle assessment be integrated into a holistic or systemic approach to product design. Such an approach allows consideration of the total energy expended, the resources used, and the waste created. Hence, enabling the entire environmental impact to be determined and minimised. Hadley Industries PLC [1] is a master in utilising the cold roll forming process to produce an increasingly wide range of products. The question considered in this paper is how a cold roll forming company mid-way along the value adding chain, a sub-contractor, not involved in final product designs and hence product life-cycle assessments can ensure they are a sustainable and environmentally conscious manufacturer. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper summarizes a framework for a systematic comparative evaluation of the sustainability of energy systems and includes a comprehensive application of this framework to major electricity generating technologies and the associated fuel cycles in Germany. Main efforts have focussed on the generation of quantitative, technology-specific, economic, environmental and social indicators. A number of methods have been employed, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Risk Assessment (RA), and the Impact Pathway Approach (IPA). Two methods of indicator aggregation were used: namely, the estimation of total (internal and external) costs, and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Use of MCDA is motivated principally by the acknowledgement of the role of value judgments in decision-making.In this study, micro-level data from wood energy producers in Hedmark County were gathered and analysed. The aim was to find how much greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions various kinds of wood energy cause (not only CO2, but also CH4 and N2O), which energy they substitute, their potential to reduce GHG emissions, and the major sources of uncertainty. The method was life cycle assessment. Six types of wood energy were studied: fuel wood, sawdust, pellets, briquettes, demolition wood, and bark. GHG emissions over the life cycle of the wood energy types in this study are 2-19% of the emissions from a comparable source of energy. The lowest figure is for demolition wood substituting oil in large combustion facilities, the highest for fuel wood used in dwellings to substitute electricity produced by coal-based power plants. Avoided GHG emissions per in 3 wood used for energy were from 0.210 to 0.640 tonne CO2-equivalents. Related to GWh energy produced, avoided GHG emissions were from 250 to 360 tonne CO2-equivalents. Avoided GHG emissions per tonne CO2 in the wood are 0.28-0.70 tonne CO2-equivalents. The most important factors were technology used for combustion, which energy that is substituted, densities, and heating values. Inputs concerning harvest, transport, and production of the wood energy are not important. Overall, taking the uncertainties into account there is not much difference in avoided GHG emissions for the different kinds of wood energy. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of presently operated GSM and UMTS networks was analysed concentrating on the environmental effects of the End-of-Life (EOL) phase using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The study was performed based on comprehensive life cycle inventory and life cycle modelling. The environmental effects were quantified using the IMPACT2002+ method. Based on technological forecasts, the environmental effects of forthcoming mobile telephone networks were approximated. The results indicate that a parallel operation of GSM and UNITS networks is environmentally detrimental and the transition phase should be kept as short as possible. The use phase (i.e. the operation) of the radio network components account for a large fraction of the total environmental impact. In particular, there is a need to lower the energy consumption of those network components. Seen in relation to each other, UMTS networks provide an environmentally more efficient mobile communication technology than GSM networks. In assessing the EOL phase, recycling the electronic scrap of mobile phone networks was shown to have clear environmental benefits. Under the present conditions, material recycling could help lower the environmental impact of the production phase by up to 50%. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the benefits, primarily from reduced energy consumption, resulting from the addition of a green roof to an eight story residential building in Madrid. Building energy use is simulated and a bottom-up LCA is conducted assuming a 50 year building life. The key property of a green roof is its low solar absorptance, which causes lower surface temperature, thereby reducing the heat flux through the roof. Savings in annual energy use are just over 1%, but summer cooling load is reduced by over 6% and reductions in peak hour cooling load in the upper floors reach 25%. By replacing the common flat roof with a green roof, environmental impacts are reduced by between 1.0 and 5.3%. Similar reductions might be achieved by using a white roof with additional insulation for winter, but more substantial reductions are achieved if common use of green roofs leads to reductions in the urban heat island.We compare calculated greenhouse gas emissions for a North American beef feedlot operation, which includes biogas production by anaerobic digestion with subsequent electricity generation (the AD case), to the emissions for a "business as usual" case, which includes both a feedlot and an equivalent amount of grid-generated electricity. Anaerobic digestion, biogas production and electricity production are the major sources of differences in emissions. Fertilizer production, crop production, manure collection and spreading, as well as the associated transport stages are also considered within the LCA system boundaries; impacts on life cycle emissions from these sources are lower. Running a feedlot and producing electricity using typical grid power plants produces 3,845 kg CO2-eq/MWh while running a feedlot, which generates biogas to produce electricity, produces 2,965 kg CO2-eq/MWh. This savings of 880 kg CO2-eq/MWh arises because the net power generation in the AD case emits about 90% less life cycle GHG emissions compared to grid-average electricity. The high overall emission levels arise due to emissions associated with enteric fermentation in beef cattle as the main source of GHG emissions in both the "business as usual" and the AD cases. It contributed 57% of total emissions for the feedlot /biogas /electricity system and 44% of total emissions for the feedlot /grid electricity system.Background, Aims and Scope. Noise impacts are rarely assessed in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), probably due to lack of data, to the difficulty of setting up an appropriate assessment method including relevant uncertainties and vagueness and to their site-dependent nature. The evaluation, as well as for odour, cultural and aesthetic impacts, seems to be closely related to human judgements and perception based. Although fuzzy-sets have been developed for this purpose since the late '60s and their usefulness has been proven by successful applications, noise impact assessment approaches have been essentially crisp so far. The aim of this paper is to present a method for noise impact assessment based on fuzzy sets with an application to a simple example. Methods. The fuzzy noise impact assessment involves: 1) the quality assessment of the site concerned by the noise impact before the occurrence of noise emissions; quality is expressed by a crisp (i.e. non-fuzzy) function depending on variables (the so-called 'primitives'), which are relevant for the evaluation (e.g. the population density, the type of land use,...); 2) the fuzzy representation of the primitives, e.g. their evaluation by means of linguistic variables (such as 'the population density is high') and by fuzzy numbers; 3) the fuzzy representation of the quality, by fuzzifying the crisp function defined in 1) and 4) the fuzzy representation of the noise impact. In the example, the noise impacts of three processes of coal mining and combustion are assessed. Results and Discussion. The application example proved the operationability of the method. Primitives and noise impact assessment results are represented by fuzzy numbers and intervals that are more informative than crisp numbers for the interpretation of results The quality and impact assessment results obtained seem to be coherent with the nature of the processes involved and of the variables characterizing them. Conclusion and Outlook. Fuzzy intervals and numbers could be more informative and closer to human judgements and perceptions than crisp numbers are, thus improving the pertinence and the interpretation of the results. Despite the increase in sophistication and the fact that the representation of the variables involved in calculations should be developed further (e.g. on the basis of consensus gained in an expert panel), the fuzzy approach seems to be promising for the assessment of noise impacts in LCA.Goal, Scope and Background. This study provides a life-cycle inventory of air emissions (CO2, NOx, PM10, and CO) associated with the transportation of goods by road, rail, and air in the U.S. It includes the manufacturing, use, maintenance, and end-of-life (EOL) of vehicles, the construction, operation, maintenance, and EOL of transportation infrastructure, as well as oil exploration, fuel refining, and fuel distribution. Methods. The comparison is performed using hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA), a combination of process-based LCA and economic input-output analysis-based LCA (EIO-LCA). Results are summed by means of a common functional unit of grams of air pollutant per ton-mile of freight activity. Results and Discussion. Results show that the vehicle use phase is responsible for approximately 70% of total emissions of CO, for all three modes. This confirms that tailpipe emissions underestimate total emissions of freight transportation as infrastructure, pre-combustion, as well as vehicle manufacturing and EOL account for a sizeable share of total emissions. Depending on mode and pollutant, differences between tailpipe emissions and total systemwide emissions can range from only 4% for road transportation's CO emissions to an almost tenfold difference for air transportation's PM, emissions. Conclusion. Rail freight has the lowest associated air emissions, followed by road and air transportation. Depending on the pollutant, rail is 50-94% less polluting than road. Air transportation is rated the least efficient in terms of air emissions, partly due to the fact that it carries low weight cargo. It emits 35 times more CO2 than rail and 18 times more than road transportation on a ton-mile basis. It is important to consider infrastructure, vehicle manufacturing, and pre-combustion processes, whose life-cycle share is likely to increase as new tailpipe emission standards are enforced. Recommendation and Outlook. Emission factors, fuel efficiency, and equipment utilization contribute the most to uncertainty in the results. Further studies are necessary to address all variables that influence these parameters, such as road grade, vehicle speed, and vehicle weight. A focus on regional variation, EOL processes, fuel refining processes, terminals, as well as more accurate infrastructure allocation between freight and passenger transportation would strengthen the model.Background, Aims and Scope. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a tool for design for environment (DfE) to improve the environmental performance of the Mercedes Car Group products. For the new S-Class model a brochure including an environmental certificate and comprehensive data for the product was published for the first time. The paper explains the use of LCA for these applications and presents exemplary results. Methods. The environmental certificate brochure reports on processes, data and results based on the international standards for life cycle assessment (ISO 14040, ISO 14041, ISO 14042, ISO 14043), for environmental labels and declarations (ISO 14020, ISO 14021) and for the integration of environmental aspects into product design and development (ISO 14062), which are accepted by all stakeholders. Results and Discussion. The compliance with these international standards and the correctness of the information contained in the certificate were reviewed and certified by independent experts. The global warming potential (GWP 100 years) of the new S-Class vehicle was reduced by 6%, the acidification potential by 2%, the eutrophication potential by 13% and the photochemical ozone creation potential by 9%. In addition, the use of parts made from renewable materials was increased by 73 percent to a total of 27 parts with a weight of about 43 kilograms. A total of 45 parts with a weight of 21.2 kilograms can be manufactured using a percentage of recycled plastics. Conclusion. The application of LCA for WE is fully integrated as a standard function in the vehicle development process. The DfE/LCA approach at the Mercedes Car Group was successful in improving the environmental performance of the new S-Class. It is shown that the objective of improving the environmental performance of the new S-Class model, compared to the previous one, was achieved. Recommendation and Outlook. Vehicles are complex products with very complex interactions with the environment. Therefore, simple solutions, e.g. pure focus on fuel economy or light weighting or recycling or single material strategies, are bound to fail. It is a main task of DfF and LCA to take this fact into account and come up with more intelligent solutions. The application of LCAs for WE and their integration as standard practice in the product development process is both the most demanding and the most rewarding. It requires a substantial effort to acquire the know-how, the data, the experience and the tools needed to generate meaningful results just in time. However, this is the way how LCA and DfE can add value - they have to be 'built' into the product.Goal, Scope and Background. Although a large number of life cycle inventory (LCI) analyses for steel-making processes or steel products have been conducted, the allocation of process gases generated from the steelworks has not yet been clearly solved. The most consistent settlement for avoiding the allocation problem has been generally known as a system expansion method. However, the existing subtracted operations for the process gases in that method are inconsistent to a system in which those gases are consumed at their unbalanced consumption ratio. The goal of this study is to suggest a more reasonable substitute for the process gases in the system expansion method and a modified system expansion method resettling the amount of process gases used. Methods. To seek a more suitable one as a substituted operation of the process gas, a kind of by-product gas, in the system expansion method, it is necessary to analyze the composition of whole fuel consumed within a steelworks. Because the steelworks is supplied with a gap of electricity from the national grid electricity other than home power plants, we should also consider various carbon fossil fuels consumed in the external electric-power production. From this procedure, a composite fuel, which is composed of coal, heavy fuel oil and LNG, is derived as the alternative of the process gases such as BFG, COG, CFG, and LDG. In the sequential manufacturing line, IO(gas), which is the ratio of the quantity used to the quantity produced of each process gas, is increased as a functional unit proceeds to a following steel product of the next process. In the LCI system, where IO(gas) is higher than one, the IO(gas) is adjusted to nearly one. The adjustment of IO is conducted in the order of the amount of process gas used in the whole steelworks on the basis of the functional unit. Results and Discussion. LCI analyses were carried out focusing on the alternative of the process gases for five steel products. As a functional unit goes down a lower stage, IO(gas) is increased due to the high consumption of those gases. We found a phenomenon that IO(gas) had a critical influence on the LCI results between no allocation and system expansion for the process gases through sensitivity analysis. To reduce this influence and adjust for the real situation of IO(gas), we applied an improved system expansion method to the process gases. That is, we partly substituted a process gas with LNG and rearranged the ratio between internal and external electricity (RIEE) as close as the values of IO(gas) to one. Conclusion. As the alternative fuel for the process gases, a composite fuel was derived in the system expansion method. In addition to the composite fuel, which consisted of coal, HFO and LNG, an improved system expansion method was revised by adjusting a modified IO(gas) to nearly one, not the high value of IO(gas) for each process gas. Recommendation and Outlook. This improved system expansion method can be applicable in the chemical industry as well as the steel industry, which have multi-function systems. Optimal LCI analysis may be achieved through the redistribution and optimization in the usage of process gases.Goal, Scope and Background. Ecodesign requires environmental assessment methods, which are often time consuming and cost intensive. In this paper we proposed a method that combines top-down (e.g. LCA) and bottom-up (e.g. UNEP) approaches that allow one to generate ecodesign ideas by identifying what to improve, how much to improve, and how to improve within a short period of time. The proposed method incorporates an environmental assessment method for use in the ecodesign of consumer electronics that employs the top-down and bottom-up approaches simultaneously. Method. The proposed method consists of five modules: A. life cycle thinking for a product, B. environmental benchmarking, C. checklist method, D. ecodesign strategies, and E. environmental design information. A key life cycle stage with significant environmental impact is identified in module A. When the identified key life cycle stage is not product manufacturing, environmental benchmarking is used; however, a checklist method is applied if product manufacturing is identified as the key life cycle stage. Ecodesign strategies for consumer electronics are obtained in module D. Environmental design information is produced by linking both the top-down and bottom-up information in module E. Results and Discussion. The applicability of the proposed method was evaluated using mobile phones. First, the key life cycle stage of the mobile phone was identified as the raw material acquisition stage. Next, environmental benchmarking was carried out for 10 parameters belonging to the raw material acquisition stage. Environmental target specifications for the 10 parameters were set, ranging from 14% to 60%. Finally, environmental design information for the mobile phone was determined by linking the target specifications of the environmental benchmarking parameters and the corresponding ecodesign strategies. The proposed method was also compared with the LCA and the UNEP/promising approaches, which are representative examples of the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach, respectively. Based on the results of this comparison, the proposed method was judged to be an advanced method in facilitating the generation of ecodesign ideas. Environmentally significant benchmarking parameters correspond to what to improve, target specifications on how much to improve, and ecodesign strategies on how to improve. It was found that the use of the proposed method minimizes the time and money expenditure by confining the identification of environmental weak points within the key life cycle stage. Conclusion and Outlook. An environmental assessment method for consumer electronics in ecodesign was proposed and applied to mobile phones. The advantages of the proposed method are as follows: it is efficient and cost-effective, and it allows designers to generate ecodesign ideas more easily and effectively by simultaneously identifying the specific environmental weak points of a product and corresponding ecodesign strategies. The proposed method can be envisaged as a useful ecodesign approach when electronic companies identify the environmental aspects of their products and integrate them into product design and development process.Goal, Scope and Background. Goal of this study is an evaluation of the environmental sustainability of the UMTS mobile communication system in Switzerland by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A baseline environmental impact profile across the full life cycle of the UNITS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) and its predecessor, the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) is presented. The baseline assessment was a necessary first step to evaluate the environmental impacts of the mobile communication systems use and growth, thus permitting the evaluation of its environmental sustainability. Main Features. Two functional units are defined: a data set of 1 Gbit (1.000.000 kbit), and the yearly mobile communication of an average customer. In the UNITS, both data packages and calls can be conveyed. In order to be able to standardize the results, an equivalence between these two kinds of transmission is formed. Two different options are defined, which represent different ways of transferring the data: mobile phone to mobile phone, and mobile phone to fixed network. All components of the UMTS network like the mobile phones, base stations, antennae, switching systems and the components of the landline like cable system and switching centers, are assessed. The environmental impacts are assessed taking into account all major life cycle phases like raw material extraction, manufacturing, use, disassembly and disposal of the product and the needed infrastructure. Electronic components like printed wiring boards and integrated circuits are assessed using a simple model based on the size (for IQ or number of layers (for PWB), respectively. Mining of precious metals (gold, silver) is included. The study was carried out by ESU-services, Motorola, Swisscom and Deutsche Telekom. Thanks to the industrial partners it can rely on primary data for the production of mobile phone and base station, and for the operation of the networks. As the UNITS network is still being built, no actual data of network operation is available. Data from the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) were used in case of data gaps. Results and Conclusions. About 25 kg CO2 are emitted and 800 MJ-eq (non-renewable) primary energy are required for the transfer of 1 Gbit information from mobile phone to mobile phone in the UNITS network. For a transfer from mobile to fixed network, these values are 20 kg CO2 and 640 MJ-eq, respectively. On the other hand, the fixed network requires more resources like copper (0.07 kg for the mobile to mobile option vs. 0.12 kg for mobile to fixed network). From an environmental point of view, the mobile telephone is the most important element of the mobile communication network (UMTS and GSM). The short service life of the mobile phone plays a substantial role. Increasing the utilization period of the mobile phone (e.g. by leasing, re-use, extension of the innovation cycles, etc.) could thus represent a large potential for its improvement. The second most important components are the base stations. In the assessment mainly the use phase proved to be important. The lower environmental impact (per Gbit data transfer) as compared to the mobile phone can be explained by the longer service life (around factor 8). Main impacts are caused by the electricity consumption, in particular the energy needed for cooling the base stations. By choosing an environmentally benign electricity mix and/or by increasing the portion of renewable sources of energy, the network operators have a substantial potential of lower the environmental impacts (in particular the greenhouse gas emissions) of mobile telecommunication. Furthermore, the manufacturing of electronic components, the life time of the appliances and energy consumption are key parameters influencing the environmental profile of the networks most. Given its larger data transfer rate, the UNITS is ecologically more favorable in terms of data transfer rate than its predecessor, the GSM system. The higher energy consumption and the more complex production of the devices in the UNITS system are compensated by the faster data transmission rate. Per customer, the result is inverse, however, since the higher efficiency is compensated by the higher data communication per user in the UNITS system. The UMTS network in its state of 2004 according to the 2001 planning and with the accordingly calculated number of customers and data transfer causes 2.1 times more CO2 emissions and requires 2.4 times more (non-renewable) primary energy per customer than for the GSM system in its current state. It must be noted, however, that the UNITS technology supports other services than the GSM system. The development of the UNITS is accompanied with an increased consumption of resources and emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases regarding the entire system for mobile telephone communication. The GSM system is a mature technology, while the UNITS is still at the beginning of its learning curve. Thus, it can be safely assumed that large improvement potentials are still present for the UMTS network components concerning expenditures and emissions both at production and by the use of the devices. This study provides the necessary information where such improvements are most effective in environmental terms.Intention, Goal, Scope, Background. It has gained growing acceptance in recent years that there are values in LCA, and several authors have discussed how value orientations can influence LCA models and results. The aim of this article is to continue this discussion and to focus on value choices in LCA. Objectives. To find a way of describing value orientations in relation to choices in LCA. Methods. This objective has been pursued in this paper by investigating the relationship between values and traditional science, exploring the concept of values, investigating the relationship between values and choice, and suggesting a way to describe the value base for specific choices in LCA. Results and Discussion. Research on how to improve the environmental performance of products resembles peace research in that it aims to achieve a certain value-laden situation in society. The epistemological basis for peace research also seems to apply to LCA research. The term value has many meanings. There are several classification methods for values and I claim that one is more suitable for choices in LCA than the others. The correlation between values and choice is not straightforward, and values can only partially explain choices. Conclusions. Describing the value base for choices in LCA increases the consistency and transparency of the value choices and offers a means of justifying them. Recommendations and Outlook. It is recommended that the value base is described in terms of 1) what is included in the concern for the environment 2) how tradeoffs are made and 3) how uncertainty is handled.Goal, Scope and Background. Task Force 1 of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative prepared a report on the available Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases around the world. The group also aims to capture the global status of LCA through the report. Results. An update of a previous summary prepared in May 2002 (Norris and Notten 2002), the global LCI resources report identifies LCI databases including public and proprietary, or restricted-access, databases. It includes descriptions of activities that aim to develop publicly-available databases in Africa, the APEC region and Asia, Europe, and the Americas (Canada, USA and Latin America). Because of their close association with the distribution of LCI data, LCA software programs that contain inventory data are also included in this effort. The report also lists institutions or organisations that provide LCI data in a less formal way, as this is important to get a feel for the global spread of LCI data. Also with the aim of facilitating access to global LCI data resources, the report provides information on regional LCA networks and societies. The focus of the report is on LCI databases and LCI data providers. It therefore does not list general environmental or process data sources (i.e. data must be in the form of life cycle inventories), nor does it list institutions working solely with LCA methodology development. Discussion. The LCI data resources are surnmarised in the report in a series of tables. One table provides an overview of the global spread of LCI data resources, and essentially provides a top-level summary of the subsequent tables, whilst another lists LCA societies and networks. Other LCI databases are listed in the report in four tables, including national database projects, industry databases, other data sources, and LCA software. The appendix presents brief descriptive paragraphs of all the data sources and organisations mentioned in the report. Recommendation. The full report is available upon request from the Task Force via Mary Ann Curran; readers are asked to provide updated or additional information that will improve the accuracy of the report.Most forest carbon assessments focus only on biomass carbon and assume that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from forestry activities are minimal. This study took an in-depth look at the direct and indirect emissions from Pacific Northwest (PNW) Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirbel) Franco] forestry activities to support or deny this claim. Greenhouse gas budgets for 408 "management regimes" were calculated using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. These management regimes were comprised of different combinations of three types of seedlings (P + 1, 1 + 1, and large plug), two types of site preparation (pile and burn, and chemical), 17 combinations of management intensity including fertilization, herbicide treatment, precommercial thinning (PCT), commercial thinning (CT), and nothing, and four different rotation ages (30, 40, 50, and 60 yr). Normalized to 50 yr, average direct GHG emissions were 8.6 megagrams (Mg) carbon dioxide equivalents (CO(2)e) ha(-1), which accounted for 84% of total GHG emissions from the average of 408 management regimes. Harvesting (PCT, CT, and clear cuffing) contributed the most to total GHG emissions (5.9 Mg CO(2)e per 700 m(3) harvested timber), followed by pile and burn site preparation (4.0 Mg CO(2)e ha(-1) or 32% of total GHG emissions) and then fertilization (1.9 Mg CO(2)e, ha(-1) or 15% of total GHG emissions). Seedling production, seedling transportation, chemical site preparation, and herbicide treatment each contributed less than 1% of total GHG emissions when assessed per hectare of planted timberland. Total emissions per 100 m(3) averaged 1.6 Mg CO(2)e ha(-1) over all 408 management regimes. An uncertainty analysis using Monte Carlo simulations revealed that there are significant differences between most alternative management regimes.More than 50 000 wastewater treatment plants are operating in the European Union, producing more than 7.9 million tons of dry solids per year. The amount of sewage sludge will continue to increase as the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directives continues to be implemented in the different member countries. It is now undeniable that various toxic organic compounds, such as surfactants, hydrocarbons and residues derived from plastics are found in sewage sludge. The BIOWASTE project, under the EU 5th framework programme, offers an integrated study of xenobiotics throughout sludge recycling, using a combination of complementary approaches such as biotechnology, eco-toxicology, plant toxicology, analytical chemistry, microbiology, mathematical modelling, life cycle costing and life cycle analysis. This paper presents an overview of the results as well as their implication on the current EU regulatory work in progress concerning sewage sludge application. Particularly, two major findings are here detailed: the isolation, characterization and use of anaerobic xenobiotic-degrading microorganisms, and the modelling of the fate and impact of xenobiotics on anaerobic digestion.Most adverse environmental impacts result from design decisions made long before manufacturing or usage. In order to prevent this situation, several authors have proposed the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) at the very first phases of the design of a process, a product or a service. The study in this paper presents an innovative thermal drying process for sewage sludge called fry-drying, in which dewatered sludge is directly contacted in the dryer with hot recycled cooking oils (RCO) as the heat medium. Considering the practical difficulties for the disposal of these two wastes, fry-drying presents a potentially convenient method for their combined elimination by incineration of the final fry-dried sludge. An analytical comparison between a conventional drying process and the new proposed fry-drying process is reported, with reference to some environmental impact categories. The results of this study, applied at the earliest stages of the design of the process, assist evaluation of the feasibility of such system compared to a current disposal process for the drying and incineration of sewage sludge.In this article an economic and environmental study is carried out on PV solar energy installations connected to the Spanish electrical grid system. The study has been performed on installations situated in the city of Zaragoza (with an irradiation value approximately equal to the average value for Spain). Initially, an economical study is performed, proposing different scenarios where different values of interest rate and energy tariffs are considered. The following parameters are used to determine the profitability of a PV installation: the Net Present Value and the Pay-Back Period. Furthermore, the environmental benefits of PV systems connected to the grid have been evaluated. This has been accomplished using the Life Cycle Analysis theory of the systems, calculating the recuperation time of the invested energy, the contamination or emissions avoided and the externality costs. Finally the possible effects of the application of the Kyoto Protocol have been studied. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We analyze the economic incentive structure as well as the environmental implications of the current national policy for recycling notebook computers (NB's) in the nation of Taiwan. Using cost-benefit analysis and formal life cycle assessment (LCA) we critique the current program and recommend future improvements. The current policy requires manufacturers to, pay a recycling fee for each unit sold domestically. These payments are channeled to third party recycling agents as well as consumers that return used NB's. While sound in principle, the arrangement falls short of providing incentives for sustaining the domestic recycling infrastructure, scarcely covering operating costs and leaving little capital to develop new recycling technologies. The current program also fails to induce widespread consumer participation by relying on an economic incentive that compares poorly with the value obtainable from resale on the second-hand market. An environmental assessment of various end-of-life disposal options for NBs reveals that recycling for some components actually leads to greater negative environment impacts than the alternatives. Economic efficiency of the program was analyzed by integrating the life cycle assessment and the cost-benefit analysis. Our assessment suggests that a revised policy should hold manufacturers directly responsible for the development of recycling technologies and encourage changes in the design phase of the commercial life cycle rather than stressing recovery and recycling. Because of Taiwan's premier position in global NB manufacturing, and in light of numerous international initiatives mandating electronic waste recycling, national policies should coordinate domestic manufacturing with foreign programs to reduce the environmental impact from NBs across the life cycle in nations around the globe. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to carry out comparative evaluation of four decision-making methods that involves consideration of both environmental and economic aspects in the end-of-life stage of a washing machine, and to suggest priorities for recycling and ecodesign of the washing machine. The four methods chosen were: two-dimensional diagram, eco-efficiency, monetary method and multi-attribute decision-making (MADM). A life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to quantify the environmental aspects of components in a defined product system, and sales prices as well as costs associated with the disposal of the components were considered for the evaluation of their economic aspects. The two-dimensional diagram, the monetary method and the MADM all showed similar results. However, the results of the eco-efficiency method were quite different. When making decisions that consider both environmental and economic aspects of a component in its end-of-life stage, it is recommended to use all these four methods concurrently because all four methods have their own pros and cons. By applying several methods simultaneously, decision makers are in a better position to make decisions about choosing components that are environmentally friendly and economically efficient. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recycling of plant nutrients in sewage products to arable land is considered to be a step towards a more sustainable society. Sewage sludge is the predominant sewage fertiliser product available today, but the use of sewage sludge in agriculture has been questioned as regards hazardous substances. In this respect, blackwater from separating systems seems to better fulfil agricultural requirements regarding fertiliser products. The objective of this paper was to analyse the environmental impact and resource use in a life cycle perspective for three systems, each including both wastewater handling and agricultural production. In the reference system, food waste disposers were installed in houses. Milled food waste and wastewater were treated in a wastewater treatment plant and the sewage sludge was used for producing a soil conditioner. In the sludge utilisation system, food waste from households was composted, wastewater was treated conventionally and sewage sludge was used in oat production. In the blackwater system, toilet water from low-flush toilets and milled organic waste were digested together and spread in growing oats. Data on the wastewater system were derived from simulations by the substance-flow model URWARE/ORWARE. The blackwater system required slightly more primary energy than the other two systems. In particular, construction of storage facilities contributed considerably to energy use. The emissions of greenhouse gases and SO2 were of the same magnitude for all three systems, while the eutrophying emissions were reduced significantly in the blackwater system. As regards NH3 and NOx, the emissions were highest for the blackwater system. High substitution of mineral fertiliser, optimal spreading technique and well-designed collection and storage facilities were important factors for the environmental outcome in the blackwater system. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An experimental study of road building and recycling of used pavement has been conducted within the framework of a Life Cycle Analysis. Four equivalent asphalt concretes made with different recycling rates have been investigated during road construction. Airborne emissions, pollutant release over time and odor production related to asphalt laying have all been determined and compared among the various recycling rates. All of the results (VOC, PAH and odors), expressed in terms of concentrations and fluxes, exhibit quite monotonic variations with respect to the recycling rate. These results, however, did not reveal the same trend as a function of the recycling rate (increases or decreases), depending on the selected target parameter (VOC or PAH). Indicators have been proposed for a discussion of results that take into account: (i) raw material emissions with respect to the reference defined in the case of pavement without reclaimed asphalt; and (ii) emissions in each case from all material production sources. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.Industries are becoming progressively more aware of the environmental and social liabilities pertaining to their operations and products, with associated financial effects. Uncertainties in measuring these financial effects can be addressed by using environmental evaluation and accounting techniques. Environmental accounting assists in expressing environmental and social liabilities as environmental costs. While environmental accounting systems now form part of industrial decision making in first world countries, there is a lack of similar systems in South Africa. The EEGECOST model was developed to promote environmental accounting in South Africa. Implementation of the model will provide South African industries with the framework for corporate evaluation of alternative investments, projects and processes and for estimating economic and environmental performance at present and especially in the future. The model identifies, records and allocates internal and external environmental costs to five identified cost types, categorised into several environmental media groups. It also assists in the capital budgeting process for alternative investments. Applicability of the model was tested in a case study conducted on the life cycle assessment of a functional unit of one million cigarettes. The model indicated that Type V costs (external costs, with Types I to W being different internal cost types) contributed 12% of the total production costs of a functional unit of cigarettes. As Type V costs are subjective, it is recommended that further research be conducted to structure an objective framework to evaluate and determine cost factors involved in the development of Type V costs. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Integrated fruit production (IFP) has been practiced in Switzerland on a large scale basis since the late 1980s, with the aim of improving sustainable fanning. The guidelines of IFP emphasise an ecosystem approach that is based on scientific knowledge about self-regulatory mechanisms at the tree and orchard level. Empirical studies at the farm level are rare. An understanding of the relationship between income and environmental impacts at the farm level is a prerequisite for devising a robust system for orchard portfolio management. An income analysis based on full cost principle and environmental life cycle assessment were applied to 445 annual data sets of apple orchards, recorded on 12 specialised fruit farms over a period of 4 years. The main result was that environmental impacts such as ecotoxicity, eutrophication and non-renewable energy use did not necessarily increase when farms increased their income. A higher input level of pesticides, fertilisers and machinery did not lead to increased yields and receipts. In contrast, the choice of apple cultivars and high investment in pre-harvest labour hours were significantly correlated with high eco-efficieney and high farm income. The results of this study were summarised in a pyramid-shaped management model, providing key issues of successful orchard farming and attributing management rules to master them. The management pyramid indicates that cognitive competences such as distributional, conditional and non-linear thinking are crucial when knowledge from tree and orchard management is integrated at the farm level. A main recommendation is that more attention should be paid to improving management competence in order to contribute to sustainable farming. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Life Cycle Assessment of four CO2 recovery technologies, combined with nine CO2 sequestration systems, serves to expand the debate of CO2 mitigation methods beyond a single issue-prevention of global warming-to a wider range of environmental concerns: resource depletion, acidic and toxic gases, wastes, etc, so that the overall, and unexpected, environmental impacts may be revealed.In order to evaluate alternative agricultural production methods that may reduce environmental impacts, assessment tools are required that measure the consequences of changing systems. This paper explores the usefulness of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in identifying environmental improvement opportunities in horticultural systems. LCA has been applied to three commercial apple (Malus x domestica, Borkh.) orchards and two reference orchards, representing standard practices according to expert advice, in New Zealand. Variability observed in the results suggests growers' technique exerts considerable impact on the LCA results, introducing variances of 30-50% in energy consumption and other environmental impacts when performing the same field operation. Despite a small sample size, the origins of the environmental impacts resulting from these examples of Integrated Fruit Production (IFP) were observed to be generally similar. Human toxicity related impacts were dominated by emissions of the synthetic pesticides used in IFP, and were thoroughly modelled in the study. The production of pesticides and agricultural machinery was found to be significant in the overall energy consumption of the orchard; pesticide production represented 10-20% of energy consumption, while machinery production accounted for 7-12% of energy consumption in all study sites. The application of LCA helped to identify improvement opportunities to reduce environmental impacts within this and related production systems, and demonstrated its usefulness in setting priorities to realise these opportunities. LCA is a holistic approach that measures the different environmental impacts from agriculture and is useful for the development of certification schemes such as EUREP GAP, or the assessment of the environmental soundness of agricultural technologies. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study we assessed to what extent management of apple-growing within a well defined fanning system affects environmental impacts. A four-year data set of 12 fruit farms from eastern Switzerland was analyzed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method to evaluate the variability of different environmental impacts. For the total of 445 annual data sets of apple orchards eight impact categories were assessed. A principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to group the eight impact categories according to their correlation. A three component solution turned out to be adequate. It indicated that the three impact categories energy use, aquatic ecotoxicity and aquatic eutrophication were influenced independently of each other to a high degree. These three key impacts can be managed by keeping the inputs of machinery, pesticides and fertilizers low. Production constraints were highly homogeneous within the sample. Because of this, we were able to define the management influence on environmental impacts as the ratio of the maximum and minimum observed. On a per hectare basis, the effect of management for energy use was factor 2, for aquatic ecotoxicity factor 4 and for aquatic eutrophication factor 1.1. In contrast, when measured per receipts, the management influence was greater than per hectare, indicated by a range of factor 6 for each of the three key impact categories. Further insight into the effect of management was attained by statistical risk assessment. A positive and significant correlation between mean value (M) and the coefficient of variance (CV) indicated that the expected risk could be reduced by a low level of variability. Such a M-CV correlation was found for the two key impact categories energy use and aquatic eutrophication if calculated per receipts. No M-CV correlation was found for aquatic ecotoxicity. It was on the other hand observed that farms with low aquatic ecotoxicity also practiced low energy use and low eutrophication on a per receipt basis. We conclude that the promotion of environmentally sound apple-growing is not only a question of choosing one or the other fanning system (e.g. organic versus integrated fanning) but that an understanding of the system specific management influence is crucial. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study quantifies the possible impacts of urban heat-island countermeasures upon buildings' energy use during summer in Tokyo metropolis. Considering the dependency of the buildings air temperature upon the local urban canopy structure, Tokyo urban canopies were classified in the city-block-scale using the sky-view factor (svf). Then, a multi-scale model system describing the interaction between buildings' energy use and urban meteorological conditions was applied to each classified canopy. In terms of urban warming alleviation and cooling energy saving, simulations suggested that the reduction in the air-conditioning anthropogenic heat could be the most effective measure in office buildings' canopies, and that vegetative fraction increase oil the side walls of buildings in residential canopies. Both measures indicated daily and spatially averaged decreases in near-ground summer air temperature of 0.2-1.2 degrees C. The simulations also suggested these temperature decreases could result in the buildings' cooling energy-savings of 4-40%, indicating remarkable savings in residential canopies. These temperature drops and energy savings tended to increase with the decrease of the svf of urban canopies. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Designing more sustainable processes is one of the key challenges for sustainable development of the chemical industry. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires translating the theoretical principles of sustainable development into design practice. At present, there is no general methodology to guide sustainable process design and almost no practical experience. In an attempt to contribute to this emerging area, this paper proposes a new methodology for integrating sustainability considerations into process design. Underpinned by life cycle thinking, the methodology guides the process designer through different design stages to enable integration of technical, economic, environmental and social criteria. The approach is illustrated on a design case study of the vinyl chloride monomer process. The case study shows how to identify relevant sustainability criteria, how to assess the level of sustainability and how to use the obtained information to make the design more sustainable.Linkages between Human and Environmental Risk Assessment (HERA) and Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be analyzed at three levels: the basic equations to describe environmental behavior and dose-response relationships of chemicals; the overall model structure of these tools; and the applications of the tools. At level 1 few differences exist: both tools use essentially the same fate and effect models, including their coefficients and data. At level 2 distinctive differences emerge: regional or life-cycle perspective, emission pulses or fluxes, scope of chemicals and types of impacts, use of characterization factors, spatial and temporal detail, aggregation of effects, and the functional unit as basis of the assessment. Although the two tools typically differ in all these aspects, only the functional unit issue renders the tools fundamentally different, expressing itself also in some main characteristics of the modeling structure. This impedes full integration, which is underpinned in mathematical terms. At level 3 the aims of the tools are complementary: quantified risk estimates of chemicals for HERA versus quantified product assessment for LCA. Here, beneficial synergism is possible between the two tools, as illustrated by some cases. These also illustrate that where full integration is suggested, in practice this is not achieved, thus in fact supporting the conclusions.In life-cycle assessment (LCA), it is desirable to compare quantities of chemicals released into the environment in terms of the risk and consequences of toxicological effects. Many current methods rely directly on adaptations of regulatory-orientated approaches. The resultant hazard-based indicators reflect differences in maximum likely individual exposure in the region for an emission and differences in regulatory limits. Such regulatory hazard-based indicators, however, may not provide a consistent basis for relative comparison across chemicals in terms of toxicological risk, as they were not designed for this application purpose. It is therefore essential to consider other methods in LCA to provide comparative estimates, taking into account the full extent of toxicological risks and differences in consequences. This article provides a step-by-step description of the methodological similarities and differences between such risk and hazard based indicators for LCA. An example for benzo[a]pyrene demonstrates a risk-based methodology, highlighting relationships with regulatory approaches and problems that remain in current practice.We describe a composite freshwater Aquatic Toxicity Index (ATI) for chronic toxicity conditions that can be easily computed for a broad range of chemicals. The ATI expresses the potential toxic impact of chemicals on the ecosystem, scaling the potency of each chemical with respect to a reference compound (1,4 dichlorobenzene). It is based on a simple stochastic process model and a few inherent properties of each chemical, such as chronic toxicity, adsorption coefficient to sediments, and Henry's Law constant. Our goal is to provide a simple compartmental model for obtaining a rough quantitative assessment of the life-cycle environmental impact of life-cycle emissions inventory data. To illustrate the potential of our approach we compare the ATI index, for a small set of chemicals, with comparable measures of freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity potential and freshwater sediment ecotoxicity potential obtained by others using the European-based impact assessment tool USES-LCA, which is based on a more elaborate fate and transport model. The rank correlation between the ATI and USES-LCA indices is greater than 0.85, showing surprisingly good agreement given the simple nature of our model. More analysis of the differences between ATI and the results of other models is needed, but these results suggest that our model may be useful for priority setting and meta-modeling applications.The historical parallels, complementary roles, and potential for integration of human health risk assessment (RA) and Life-Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) are explored. Previous authors have considered the comparison of LCA and risk assessment recognizing the inherent differences in LCA and risk assessment ( e.g. , LCA's focus on the functional unit, and the differences in perspective of LCA and risk assessment), and also the commonalities ( e.g. , the basis for the modeling). Until this time, however, no one has proposed a coordinated approach for conducting LCA and risk assessment using models consistent with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA's) handbooks, policies, and guidelines. The current status of LCIA methodology development can be compared to the early days of human health RA when practitioners were overwhelmed with the model choices, assumptions, lack of data, and poor data quality. Although methodology developers can build on the shoulders of the giant, LCIA requires more innovation to deal with more impact categories, more life-cycle stages, and less data for a greater number of stressors. For certain impact categories, LCIA can use many of the guidelines, methodologies, and default parameters that have been developed for human health RA, in conjunction with sensitivity and uncertainty analysis to determine the level of detail necessary for various applications. LCIA can then identify "hot spots that require the additional detail and level of certainty provided by RA. A comparison of the USEPA's Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts (TRACI) and the USEPA's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) will be explored.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for evaluating various health and environmental impacts throughout a product's life. When used as a screening tool, LCA can potentially identify the processes and materials most likely to pose a threat to human health and the environment, and to determine where a risk assessment is warranted. The European Union has issued a ban on lead-based solder from use in electronic equipment beginning in July 2006. In response, the Lead-Free Solder Partnership, involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, several electronics manufacturers, and the University of Tennessee afforded a vehicle for conducting a thorough LCA of leaded and lead-free solders used in the electronics industry. Sixteen impact categories were evaluated in the LCA, including human toxicity. A primary conclusion of the assessment for human and aquatic toxicity, across the entire life cycle of tin-lead solder, was the potential for impacts derived from the landfilling of lead. These results, based on broad assumptions about exposure, suggest that a more detailed risk assessment of the landfilling process would assist in better understanding the potential for health and environmental risks. We believe LCA data can be used to identify the need for focused risk assessments, allowing the two tools to effectively complement one another. Use of both methods could assist in understanding the effectiveness of the European ban on lead solder and its potential to improve public health.One of the ways in which risk assessment can inform life-cycle analysis (LCA) is by providing a mechanism to translate midpoint categories into common endpoints. Although this analytical step is complex and often highly uncertain, it can allow for prioritization among disparate midpoints and subsequent analytical refinements focused on the endpoints that dominate policy decisions. In this article, we present an approach to address three widely differing impact categories-particulate matter air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and personal income. We use the case of increased residential insulation as a measure to reduce energy consumption, which implies economic and public health tradeoffs across all three categories. We apply previously developed models that combined input-output LCA and risk assessment to address public health impacts from particulate matter, and extend the framework to address greenhouse gases and the public health consequences of changes in income. For a hypothetical loan program applied to both new and existing single-family homes, we find a payback period of approximately one year for the particulate matter and greenhouse gas-related midpoints and endpoints, with the structure of the loan implying that no economic payback is required. Our central estimates for avoided disability adjusted life years (DALYs) for a 50-year period are approximately 200,000 for particulate matter, 900,000 for greenhouse gases, and 300,000 for income changes, although values are highly dependent on discount rates and other model assumptions. We conclude that all three impact categories are potentially significant in this case, indicating that analytical refinements should be considered for all three impact categories to reduce model uncertainties. Our study demonstrates how LCA and risk assessment can work together in a framework that includes multiple impact categories, aiding in the evaluation of the net impacts of an energy policy change on society.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of one proposed method of hydrogen production-the high temperature electrolysis of water vapor-is presented in this paper. High temperature electrolysis offers an advantage of higher energy efficiency over the conventional low-temperature alkaline electrolysis due to reduced cell potential and consequent electrical energy requirements. The primary energy source for the electrolysis will be advanced nuclear reactors operating at temperatures corresponding to those required for the high temperature electrolysis. The LCA examines the environmental impact of the combined advanced nuclear-hi h temperature electrolysis plant, focusing upon quantifying the emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides per kilogram of hydrogen produced. The results are presented in terms of the global warming potential (GWP) and the acidification potential (AP) of the system. The GWP for the system is 2000g carbon dioxide equivalent and the AP, 0.15g equivalents of hydrogen ion equivalent per kilogram of hydrogen produced. The GWP and AP of this process are one-sixth and one-third. respectively, of those for the hydrogen production by steam reforming of natural gas, and are comparable to producing hydrogen from wind- or hydro-electricity powered conventional electrolysis. (c) 2005 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study shows the results and methodology applied to the study of the identification of priority product categories for Belgian product and environmental policy The main goal of the study was to gather insight into the consumption of products in Belgium and their related life-cycle environmental impacts. The conclusions of this project on the product categories with major environmental contributions can be used to start up working groups involving stakeholders and initiate detailed product studies on the impact reduction potential that could be achieved by means of implementing product policy measures. Several ways of assessing product category environmental impacts and the effects of policy measures have been developed; 'bottom-up' or'market-life-cycle assessment' is one of these, and we tried this approach for the situation in Belgium. Simplified life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies were conducted for representative average products within each function-based product category and the results were multiplied with market statistics. Using this approach, we found that building construction, building occupancy, and personal transport are among the major categories for Belgium. The major drawbacks of this approach are the system-level limitations and the existence of a broad spectrum of nonharmonized methods and clatasets from which a sound preliminary selection had to be made. Consequently, the retrieval and selection of data was very time consuming and due to this we had to accept some major limitations in the study design. Nevertheless, the study has contributed to the development of a methodology for market-LCA and elements that can be picked up in currently ongoing and future work. The study concludes that to improve the feasibility and acceptance of this type of study there is a need for the development of a harmonized methodology on market-LCA, policy-relevant impact indicators as well as a harmonized and stakeholder-agreed-upon LCA databases.The 1990s policy trend of intervening at the specification level over a broad range of products has ended. Today's environmental product policies focus, rather, on a few arbitrary product groups. Selectiveness should serve absolute environmental impact reduction, which asks for a rational product-selection and target framework. The authors propose "life-cycle impact per consumer expenditure" as a key criterion. This criterion helps to connect macro environmental impact reduction aims with product innovation targets, even under continuous economic growth, consumption pattern shifts, and rebound threats. The authors analyze the Dutch economy as an exercise. This results in 44 product groups, labeled "Hyenas" by the authors, that need to improve their ratio score drastically between now and 2040. Some magnitudes of desired change are given. Finally, intervention processes at the Hyena group level along the lines of sustainable transition management are proposed. joint visioning, experimental portfolios, interaction between micro, meso, and macro change levels, and gradual pressure building are crucial elements in this concept of complex change management.For developing product policy, insight into the environmental effects of products is required. But available life-cycle assessment studies (LCAs) are hardly comparable between different products and do not cover total consumption. Input-output analysis with environmental extensions (EEIOA) of full consumption is not available for the European Union. Available country studies have a low sector resolution and a limited number of environmental extensions, This study fills the gap between detailed LCA and low-resolution EEIOA, specifying the environmental effects of household consumption in the European Union, discerning nearly 500 sectors, while specifying a large number of environmental extensions. Added to the production sectors are a number of consumption activities with direct emissions, such as automobile driving, cooking and heating, and a number of postconsumer waste management sectors. The data for Europe have been constructed by using the sparse available and coarse economic and environmental data on European countries and adding technological detail mainly based on data from the United States. A small number of products score high on environmental impact per Euro and also have a substantial share of overall consumer expenditure. Several meat and dairy products, household heating, and car driving thus have a large share of the total environmental impact. Due to their sales volume, however, products with a medium or low environmental score per Euro may also have a substantial impact. This is the case with bars and restaurants, clothing, residential construction, and even a service such as telecommunications. The limitations in real European data made heroic assumptions necessary to operationalize the model. One conclusion, therefore, is that provision of data in Europe urgently needs to be improved, at least to the level of sector detail currently available for the United States and Japan.Integrated product policy, according to the European Union, requires reliable data on the impact of consumer products along their life cycles. We argue that this necessarily requires the development of an information tool for hybrid analysis, combining aspects of life-cycle assessment and input-output analysis. A number of requirements in the development of such a hybrid information tool are identified, mainly concerning data and computational structure. For the former, some important points of attention are discussed, whereas for the latter, operational formulas are developed.Environmental effects of economic activities are ultimately driven by consumption, via impacts of the production, use, and waste management phases of products and services ultimately consumed. Integrated product policy (IPP) addressing the life-cycle impacts of products forms an innovative new generation of environmental policy Yet this policy requires insight into the final consumption expenditures and related products that have the greatest life-cycle environmental impacts. This review article brings together the conclusions of 11 studies that analyze the life-cycle impacts of total societal consumption and the relative importance of different final consumption categories, This review addresses in general studies that were included in the project Environmental Impacts of Products (EIPRO) of the European Union (EU), which form the basis of this special issue. Unlike most studies done in the past 25 years on similar topics, the studies reviewed here covered a broad set of environmental impacts beyond just energy use or carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The studies differed greatly in basic approach (extrapolating LCA data to impacts of consumption categories versus approaches based on environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) tables), geographical region, disaggregation of final demand, data inventory used, and method of impact assessment. Nevertheless, across all studies a limited number of priorities emerged. The three main priorities, housing, transport, and food, are responsible for 70% of the environmental impacts in most categories, although covering only 55% of the final expenditure in the 25 countries that currently make up the EU. At a more detailed level, priorities are car and most probably air travel within transport, meat and dairy within food, and building structures, heating, and (electrical) energy-using products within housing. Expenditures on clothing, communication, health care, and education are considerably less important. Given the very different approaches followed in each of the sources reviewed, this result hence must be regarded as extremely robust. Recommendations are given to harmonize and improve the methodological approaches of such analyses, for instance, with regard to modeling of imports, inclusion of capital goods, and making an explicit distinction between household and government expenditure.In this paper. the methodology of life-cycle assessment was applied to an ethanol production process based on fermentation. The purpose of the assessment was to quantify environmental performance of the process and to prepare a basis for environmental comparisons with the ethanol production process based on catalytic reaction. The assessment was carried only on the stages of raw material acquisition through ethanol manufacture since it was assumed that ethanol from both processes had the same environmental impacts through its use and discard. The assessment results showed that the major environmental impact came from the sub-process of producing starch from corn and the most severe burden was generated in the form of acidification and greenhouse effect.In this paper. the methodology of life-cycle assessment was applied to an ethanol production process based on catalytic reaction. The environmental performance of the process was quantified and compared with that of the fermentation process. The purpose of the assessment was to develop design guidelines for the environmentally better ethanol production. The assessment was carried only on the stages of raw material acquisition through ethanol manufacture since it was assumed that ethanol from two processes had the same environmental impacts through its use and discard. The inventory analysis of the catalytic process resulted in that carbon dioxide from methanol production was the major environmental impact. The impact assessment showed that the fermentation process was environmentally better than the catalytic one. Suggestions for environmental improvement of the catalytic process were prepared based on the assessment results.Presented in this paper is an integrated approach of computer-aided product development, process design and operation analysis based on a kilo-plant. The implemented kilo-plant, as a research platform to manufacture product in kilogram-scale, was designed especially for fine and specialty chemicals. The characteristics of product synthesis, process operation and product quality control are investigated coupled with computer-aided monitoring, online modeling, simulation and operation process optimization. In this way, chemical product discovery, process design and operation are integrated in a systematic approach, in the aim to respond to rapid changing marketplace demands to new products.The total crude steel production in Asian countries was 500 million t in 2004, which accounted for 47% of the total crude steel production in the world. There have been a large demand of steel scraps in Asian countries, which Japan exported 2.5 million t of steel scrap to China, 1.91 million t to Korea and 0.9 million t to Taiwan in 2003. According to our previous studies, steel scrap generation in Japan will increase until 2030. Change in steel scrap demand in Asian countries in the future will make a great influence on the amount and quality of Japan's steel scrap domestic consumption and export. In this work, estimated was the quality change in domestic steel production (Electric Arc Furnace steel for buildings & constructions) by steel scrap exports. The method based on population balance model and material pinch analysis was applied to assess the quality of domestic steel production and steel scrap consumption. The data concerning the quality (copper content) of steel scraps and recovery ratio of steel scrap from post consumer products were updated. It was found that quality requirements on steel scraps to other countries could have large influence on the quality of domestic steel.However excellent a product may be environmentally, it would not come into wide use in the economy to realize its environmental load reducing potential unless it is also economically affordable. Life-cycle costing (LCC) is a tool to assess the cost of a product over its entire life cycle, and can be regarded as an economic counterpart of LCA. A combined use of LCA and LCC would be imperative for assessing the sustainability of a product or product systems in the economy. This paper presents a new methodology of LCC which gives the cost and price counterpart of the hybrid LCA tool (Waste Input-Output, WIO) that was developed by Nakamura and Kondo (2002) [Nakamura, S., Kondo, Y., 2002. Input-output analysis of waste management. Journal of Industrial Ecology 6 (1), 39-63.1]for LCA of waste management. Building upon the preceding LCA study by Kondo and Nakamura (2004) [Kondo, Y., Nakamura, S., 2004. Evaluating alternative life-cycle strategies for electrical appliances by the waste input-output model. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 9 (4), 236-246.], the applicability of the methodology is illustrated by a case study of electric appliances under alternative end-of-life scenarios: landfilling, intensive recycling that is consistent with the Japanese law on the recycling of appliances, and an advanced form of intensive recycling augmented by Design for Disassembly (DfD). Application of the proposed LCC methodology indicates that while the life-cycle cost is the highest under intensive recycling and the lowest under landfilling, the cost of recycling can be reduced by appropriate implementation of MD. The possible introduction of a carbon tax is also found to significantly reduce the cost disadvantage of recycling against landfilling. Given the high level of environmental load associated with landfilling and the possible introduction of carbon taxes, Design for Environment or EcoDesign emerges as a strategy of vital importance to achieve the sustainability of appliances. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a building environmental performance analysis system-BEPAS, which was developed based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. In BEPAS, environmental impacts were investigated in three main aspects of a building that were closely related to environmental performance-building facilities, building materials and location. In addition, a set of environmental databases were developed, covering the environmental performance profiles of these environmental aspects. The BEPAS can be used to assess the environmental performance of a new or existing building. This paper also discusses a case project in order to illustrate the assessment procedures and test the effectiveness of the system in application. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this short overview paper is to set out the basic meaning of the concept of sustainable development and the challenges it poses for society. The paper also explores the complexities that surround attempts to operationalize sustainability principles. What decision-makers at various levels in society require is a decision support system that includes methods and techniques capable of measuring sustainable development progress ( or the lack of it). However, because sustainability itself is a multifaceted concept and process, a range of often divergent perspectives (worldviews) may all be judged relevant to the translation of the ideas into practice. The as yet unanswered question is how can decision-makers be offered a comprehensive yet consistent and coherent package of decision-making aids in order to facilitate the sustainability transition.This paper presents a multicriteria decision-making model for lifespan energy efficiency assessment of intelligent buildings (IBs). The decision-making model called IBAssessor is developed using an analytic network process (ANP) method and a set of lifespan performance indicators for IBs selected by a new quantitative approach called energy-time consumption index (ETI). In order to improve the quality of decision-making, the authors of this paper make use of previous research achievements including a lifespan sustainable business model, the Asian IB Index, and a number of relevant publications. Practitioners can use the IBAssessor ANP model at different stages of an IB lifespan for either engineering or business oriented assessments. Finally, this paper presents an experimental case study to demonstrate how to use IBAssessor ANP model to solve real-world design tasks. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.Sustainability of biomass based fuel use requires that in biomass production erosion and water usage do not exceed addition to stocks of soil and water and that levels of nutrients and organic matter in soils do not decrease. Levels of volatile carbon compounds and N2O in the atmosphere should remain unaffected. To maintain ecosystems services of nature useful to mankind, restriction of biomass production to degraded and currently fallow land is to be preferred. Also sustainability of biomass-for-energy use requires a high efficiency recycling of nutrients present in ashes and low emissions of persistent organics, acidifying compounds and heavy metals due to biomass combustion. Meeting such conditions requires major efforts. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background. Stratospheric ozone depletion is one of the important environmental issues for LCIA. The National LCA Project of Japan has developed a framework of LCIA since 1998, which tackles the issue employing an endpoint approach. Although the basic components were available in 2000, it was required that the target endpoints should be expanded in particular. Objective. This study aimed at expanding the scope of damage function of ozone depletion in the LCIA framework of LIME. Damage function gives potential and quantitative damage for each endpoint per unit emission of ODS. Methods. Marginal damage due to the unit emission of ODS was calculated for 13 substances for which quantitative information was available as follows: (1) the increase of UVB radiation at the earth's surface per unit emission of ODS was estimated, (2) the increase of potential damage per unit increase of UVB radiation was estimated, (3) the increase of potential damage per unit emission of ODS was determined by connecting the two relationships, and (4) correcting by the atmospheric lifetime of ODS, so that the damage function was then obtained. For other ODSs regulated by the Montreal Protocol, their damage functions were estimated by multiplying the ratio of ODP compared to the corresponding reference substance by the damage function of this reference substance. Results and Discussion. The damage function of ozone depletion included the following endpoints: skin cancer and cataract for human health, crop production and timber production for social assets, and terrestrial NPP and aquatic NPP for primary productivity. And damage factors for each safeguard subject were also obtained. Conclusion. The damage function of ozone depletion could cover all ODSs regulated by the Montreal Protocol and also cover important endpoints. Uncertainty of damage function is also an important point to be elucidated. Preliminary studies of uncertainty analysis have begun for the damage function of ozone depletion. However, further analysis is required to comprehensively evaluate the uncertainty of the damage function.Goal and Background. Current Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) procedures have demonstrated certain limitations in the South African manufacturing industry. The aim of this paper is to propose new characterisation and normalisation factors for classified mined abiotic resource depletion categories in the South African context. These factors should reflect the importance of mined resources as they relate to region-specific resource depletion. The method can also be applied to determine global factors. Methods. The reserve base (as in 2001) of the most commonly produced minerals in South Africa is used as basis to determine characterisation factors for a non-renewable mineral resources category. The average production of these minerals from 1991 to 2000 is compared to economically Demonstrated and Demonstrated Marginal Reserves (and not ultimate reserves) to obtain the characterisation factors in equivalence units, with platinum as the reference mineral. Similarly, for a non-renewable energy resources category, coal is used in South Africa as equivalent unit as it is the most important fossil fuel for the country. Crude oil and natural gas resources are currently obtained from reserves elsewhere in the world and chatacterisation factors are therefore determined using global resources and production levels. The normalisation factors are based on the total economic reserves of key South African minerals and world non-renewable energy resources respectively. A case study of the manufacturing of an exhaust system for a standard sedan is used to compare LCIA results for mined abiotic resource categories that are based on current LCIA factors and the new South African factors. Results and Discussion. The South African LCIA procedure differs from current methods in that it shows the importance of other mined resources, i.e. iron ore and crude oil, relative to PGMs and coal for the manufacturing life cycle of the exhaust system. With respect to PGMs, the current characterisation factors are based on the concentrations of the metals in the ores and the ultimate reserves, which are erroneous with respect to the actual avaitability of the mineral resources and the depletion burden placed on these minerals is consequently too high. Conclusions. The South African LCIA procedure for mined abiotic resources depletion shows the significance of choosing a method, which is inline with the current situation in the mining industry and its limitations. Recommendations and Outlook. It is proposed to similarly investigate the impacts of the use of other natural resource groups. Water, specifically, must receive attention in the characterisation phase of LCIAs in South African LCAs.Goal, Scope and Background. The goal of the study is a life cycle assessment according to ISO 14040-14043 for wood floor coverings (solid parquet, multilayer parquet, solid floor board and wood blocks). The representative study covers approximately 70% of all wood flooring production in Germany. The comparison of the floor coverings among each other was not the aim. Instead the study provides basic data for all wood floor coverings for a possible comparison with other floor coverings later on. The main focus was a hot spot analysis to help the involved industry partners to improve their environmental performance, and to use the results for marketing purposes. Inventory Analysis. The study covers the whole life cycle from forest management, sawmilling, manufacturing, laying and surface finishing through to refurbishment and end-of-life. The end-of-life scenario is the thermal utilisation of the floor coverings. The energy gained in the end-of-life scenario is accounted for by system expansion (avoided burden approach). Impact Assessment. In the Impact Assessment the following categories were considered: global warming (GW), acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), ozone depletion (ODP) and photooxidant formation (POCP) following the CML baseline 2000 method. Furthermore the use of primary energy is presented. The low emissions of greenhouse gases during the life cycle can lead to a negative contribution to the global warming potential if more emissions are avoided through the substitution process than are emitted during the life cycle of the product. Mainly energy consumption and the use of solvents influence the environmental impacts of the systems under analysis. The most relevant unit processes for the issue of energy consumption are 'production' and for photo-oxidant formation 'laying', 'surface finishing' and 'refurbishment'. These are therefore the unit processes with the greatest potential for improvement. Normalisation and Sensitivity Analysis. The normalisation results show that the photo-oxidant formation potential is most significant in comparison to the other impact categories. Improvement options and the choice of the functional unit have been further explored in a sensitivity analysis. Discussion and Conclusions. The most important opportunities for improvements are located in the unit processes laying, surface finishing and refurbishment. The POCP result can be reduced significantly depending on the choice of glue and varnish at each of these stages. The results of the sensitivity analysis showed a potential for improvement in this category. No data for the production of an oil and wax finish was available. This option would be interesting to consider at in a further study. The time aspect of storing CO2 for a period of time is not considered in this paper, but will be addressed in a forthcoming paper (Nebel and Cowell 2003).Aim, Scope and Background. The environmental and energy parameters of Photovoltaic systems play a very important role when compared to conventional power systems. In the present paper, a typical PV-system is analyzed to its elements and an assessment of the material and energy requirements during the production procedures is attempted. An LCA is being performed on the system of production of photovoltaics. Main Features. A complete and accurate identification and quantification of air emissions, water effluents, and other life-cycle outputs is performed. The emissions analysis is extended to the production of the primary energy carriers. This allows having a complete picture of the life cycle of all the PV-components described in the present study. Methods and Tools. In order to obtain concrete results from this study, the specific working tool used is the Eco-Indicator '95 as being reliable and has been widely applied within LCA community A process that relates inventory information with relevant concerns about natural resource usage and potential effects of environmental loadings is attempted. Conlusions. The analysis of all previous impact categories has shown that large-scale PV-systems have many advantages in comparison with a conventional power system (e.g. diesel power station) in electricity production. As a matter of fact, PV-systems become part of the environment and the ecosystems from the moment of their installation. Burdens are released from the PV-systems only during their manufacturing procedures. Recommendation. Technological improvements need to be done in the manufacture of BOS-components which consume during their life cycle almost equal amounts of energy as the photovoltaic modules.Goal, Scope and Background. Many disciplines, amongst them LCIA, environmental impact and external cost assessments, are often faced with evaluating trade-offs between two or more alternative options in terms of a range of incommensurable indicators. Using process modeling and valuation, these indicators are quantified at mid- or endpoint levels. Recent discussion amongst LCA experts showed that because of the mutually exclusive aspects of uncertainty and relevance, the midpoint/endpoint debate is controversial and difficult to reconcile. This article is aimed at a more quantitative analysis of mid- and endpoint impacts, and the implications of uncertainty for decision-making. Methods. The consequences for decision-making of uncertainties of endpoints are analysed quantitatively for the example of ExternE results, by employing statistical hypothesis testing. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is then used to demonstrate the use of multi-criteria techniques at midpoint levels. Results and Discussion. Statistical hypothesis testing at the endpoint level shows that for the ExternE example, probabilities of mistakenly favouring one alternative over another when they are in reality indistinguishable can be as high as 80%. Therefore, the best estimate of external cost is inadequate for most policy making purposes. Indicators at midpoint levels are more certain, but since they are only 'proxy attributes', they carry a hidden uncertainty in their relevance. Conclusion. If endpoint information is too uncertain to allow a decision to be made with reasonable confidence, then the assessment can be carried out in midpoint terms. However, midpoint indicators are generally further removed from people's experience, and less relevant to the question that people actually want to solve. Nevertheless, if this ultimate question is unanswerable (within the certainty required by the decision-maker), a decision can be made on the basis of stakeholders' subjective judgments about the more certain midpoint levels. The crucial point is that these judgments are able to intuitively incorporate many aspects that impact modeling and valuation has trouble quantifying, such as perceived risk, distribution of burdens and benefits, equity, ethical, moral, religious and political beliefs and principles, immediacy and reversibility of potential impacts, voluntariness, controllability and familiarity of exposure, or perceived incompleteness of human knowledge.Coal, Scope and Background. Procurement in public and nonpublic organisations has the potential to influence product development towards more environmentally friendly products. This article focuses on public procurement with procurement in Swedish defence as a special case. In 2003, public procurement in Sweden was 28% of the GDP. In the Swedish defence sector the amount was 2% of the GDP. The total emissions from the sector were of the same order of magnitude as from waste treatment (2% of Sweden's emissions). According to an appropriation letter from the Ministry of Defence in 1998, the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) and the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) are required to take environmental issues into consideration during the entire process of acquiring defence materiel. Environmental aspects are considered today, but without a life-cycle perspective. The aims of this article are to recommend suitable tools for taking environmental concerns into account, considering a product's life-cycle, in the procurement process for defence materiel in Sweden; to make suggestions for how these tools could be used in the acquisition process; and to evaluate these suggestions through interviews with actors in the acquisition process . The procurement process does not include aspects specific to Swedish defence, and it is therefore likely to be comparable to processes in other countries. Methods. The method involved a study of current literature and interviews with various actors in the acquisition process. The life cycle methods considered were quantitative Life Cycle Assessments, a simplified LCA-method called the MECO method and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). Results and Discussion. Methodology recommendations for quantitative LCA and simplified LCA are presented in the article, as well as suggestions on how to integrate LCA methods in the acquisition process. We identified four areas for use for LCA in the acquisition process: to learn about environmental aspects of the product; to fulfil requirements from customers; to set environmental requirements and to choose between alternatives. Therefore, tools such as LCAs are useful in several steps in the acquisition process. Conclusion. From the interviews, it became clear that the actors in the acquisition process think that environmental aspects should be included early in the process. The actors are interested in using LCA methods, but there is a need for an initiative from one or several of them if the method is to be used regularly in the process. Environmental and acquisition issues are handled with very little interaction in the controlling and ordering organisation. An integration of environmental and acquisition parts in these organisations is probably needed in order to integrate environmental aspects in general and life-cycle thinking in particular. Other difficulties identified are costs and time constraints. Recommendation and Perspective. In order to include the most significant aspects when procuring materiel, it is important to consider the whole life-cycle of the products. Our major recommendation is that the defence sector should work systematically through different product groups. For each product group, quantitative, traditional LCAs or simplified LCAs (in this case modified MECOs) should be performed for reference products within each product group. The results should be an identification of critical aspects in the life-cycles of the products. The studies will also form a database that can be used when making new LCAs. This knowledge should then be used when writing specifications of what to procure and setting criteria for procurement. The reports should be publicly available to allow reviews and discussions of results. To make the work more cost-effective, international co-operation should be sought. In addition, LCAs can also be performed as an integrated part of the acquisition process in specific cases.There are a lot of metrics for evaluating the performance of supply chains. However, they may be aggregated as leadtime, customer service, cost, and quality. In this connection the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States issued in 2000 a practical guide called "The Lean and Green Supply Chain". The purpose of the guidebook is to demonstrate the opportunities for improving both financial and environmental performance and to briefly review specific tools and methods. In this paper, we first extend the range of the supply chain to include re-use and recycling throughout the life cycle of products and services. Using our definition, we propose the multiple attribute utility theory method for assessing a supply chain. We consider this approach to be one of the "the lean and green supply chain" methods. We can then evaluate the performance of a supply chain not only from a managerial viewpoint but also from an environmental performance viewpoint. Secondly, we apply this technique to an application study and confirm the efficiency of the proposal. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Designers need practical tools to aid decision making at the conceptual stage of building design. The aim of this paper is to investigate, using the early design model, the comparative impact of varying building parameters on the cost of non-domestic buildings. Cost comprises of the cost of operational energy, capital, and embodied energy (EE). Integrated assessment of cost as a function of the following parameters has been carried out: overall heat loss coefficient, obstruction, depth of room, lighting level, installed illuminance, room temperature, rate of infiltration, efficiency of heating plant, incidental heat gain, glazing ratio, cost of windows, and coefficient of performance of cooler. For the specific non-domestic building considered, inclusion of EE in the analysis does not significantly influence design but may have an impact on material choices.Metal recycling from automobiles, appliances and scrap steel occurs at dedicated metal shredding operations. Shredder residue (SR) consists of glass, rubber, plastics, fibers, dirt, and fines that remain after ferrous and nonferrous metals have been removed. The over 3 million tonnes of SR generated in the U.S. each year are managed by landfilling. Material recovery or energy recovery alternatives to landfilling can be beneficial because of conservation of non-renewable resources and reduction of waste disposal. In this study, the human health and environmental impacts of landfilling and three recovery options (supplemental fuel and mineral feed for cement manufacturing, hydrolysis to light fuel oil, and material recovery for recycling) were quantified and characterized using a lifecycle assessment (LCA) approach. Comparisons were carried out after characterization of emissions relative to potential impact categories of global warming, freshwater aquatic toxicity, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, photochemical oxidant creation, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. SR recovery in cement manufacturing could result in 1 million tonnes of coal conservation each year for the U.S. Compared to landfilling, recovery of the fuel and mineral value of SR in cement manufacturing provides net benefits for all environmental impact characteristics considered primarily due to avoided coal mining and landfilling impacts. As much as 750,000 tonnes of recyclable materials could be recovered from SR. Material recovery system impact results were very sensitive to process energy requirements as well as the assumptions of percent recovery and the specific material types recovered. Hydrolysis of SR could produce 250 million gallons of light fuel oil equivalent per year. The hydrolysis process requires a significant amount of electricity, the impacts of which are somewhat offset by the avoided impacts of producing fuels from crude oil resources. Primarily due to high electricity consumption, both the hydrolysis and material recovery scenarios yielded trade-offs (some net benefits and some net higher impacts) compared to landfilling. The results of this end-of-life impact assessment showed that the supplement for cement manufacturing option was environmentally beneficial to the current practice of landfilling and appears better in comparison to the other management methods studied. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Growing awareness of environmental problems during recent years has led to increased demand for environmental information about seafood products. In particular, this report is an attempt to evaluate the manufacturing process of canned-tuna products. Bearing in mind the lifestyles of people in the 21st century, canned products are one of the commonest ways in which seafood products are presented. Spain is the second largest exporter of processed tuna in the world, behind Thailand. The fish and shellfish canning industry is mainly grouped in Galicia where 65% of the total production takes place. To this aim, the method used to study the environmental impact of these products is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which follows a product through its entire life cycle. The system under study includes landing at harbour, transport to the factory, processing inside the factory, final product distribution to markets and use in households. The results show that processing accounted for the greatest percentage in all the impact categories, except human toxicity potential. Inside the factory, the production and transportation of tinplate was identified as the most significant contributor and, consequently, improvement actions were proposed and evaluated, such as an increase in the percentage of the recycled tinplate used and the substitution of tinplate by another packaging material. Both proposals would diminish the adverse environmental effects of this process; however they imply a change in the final appearance of the product to be consumed and, therefore, acceptance by consumers is a fundamental factor in their success. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The transportation sector is responsible for a great percentage of the greenhouse gas emissions as well as the energy consumption in the world. Canada is the second major emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. The need for alternative fuels, other than petroleum, and the need to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions are the main reasons behind this study. In this study, a full life cycle analysis of an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) and a fuel cell vehicle (FCV) has been carried out. The impact of the material and fuel used in the vehicle on energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions is analyzed for Canada. The data collected from the literature shows that the energy consumption for the production of 1 kg of aluminum is five times higher than that of I kg of steel, although higher aluminum content makes vehicles lightweight and more energy efficient during the vehicle use stage. Greenhouse gas regulated emissions and energy use in transportation (GREET) software has been used to analyze the fuel life cycle. The life cycle of the fuel consists of obtaining the raw material, extracting the fuel from the raw material, transporting, and storing the fuel as well as using the fuel in the vehicle. Four different methods of obtaining hydrogen were analyzed; using coal and nuclear power to produce electricity and extraction of hydrogen through electrolysis and via steam reforming of natural gas in a natural gas plant and in a hydrogen refueling station. It is found that the use of coal to obtain hydrogen generates the highest emissions and consumes the highest energy. Comparing the overall life cycle of an ICEV and a FCV, the total emissions of an FCV are 49% lower than an ICEV and the energy consumption of FCV is 87% lower than that of ICEV. Further, CO2 emissions during the hydrogen fuel production in a central plant can be easily captured and sequestrated. The comparison carried out in this study between FCV and ICEV is extended to the use of recycled material. It is found that using 100% recycled material can reduce energy consumption by 45% and carbon dioxide emissions by 42%, mainly due to the reduced use of electricity during the manufacturing of the material. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This research compares the use of natural gas, methanol, and hydrogen as transportation fuels. These three fuel chains start with the extraction and processing of natural gas in the Norwegian North Sea and end with final use in Central Europe. The end use is passenger transportation with a sub-compact car that has an internal combustion engine for the natural gas case and a fuel cell for the methanol and hydrogen cases. The life cycle assessment is performed by combining a process based life-cycle inventory with economic input-output data. The analysis shows that the potential climate impacts are lowest for the hydrogen fuel scenario with CO2 deposition. The hydrogen fuel chain scenario has no significant environmental disadvantage compared to the other fuel chains. Detailed analysis shows that the construction of the car contributes significantly to most impact categories. Finally, it is shown how the application of a hybrid inventory model ensures a more complete inventory description compared to standard process-based life-cycle assessment. This is particularly significant for car construction which would have been significantly underestimated in this study using standard process life-cycle assessment alone.At the global, national, and subnational levels, many policies have been created or are in the process of development to deal with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly CO2, CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is an option available to governments and industry to help meet emission reduction levels. In addition to increasing the production of oil, the CO2 can be stored in the oil reservoir for a very long period of time. However, CO2 capture and CO2 EOR operation result in significant costs and energy penalties, for example, CO2 capture from a point source, transportation to the site of use, and recycling produced CO2. This article evaluates the life cycle Of CO2 storage from delivery to the oil field through the production, transportation, and refining of the oil and identifies opportunities for optimization. Information from the IEA GHG Weyburn Monitoring and Storage Project is used to provide baseline information for the storage of CO2. The value of this life-cycle study lies in the development of an understanding of the "carbon" economics of the EOR process and the impact on net storage of changes to the value of different components in the chain. These results provide a mechanism whereby environmental consequences can be evaluated within economic decision-making.In a traditional business, although products are supplied to consumers, essentially services or functions are supplied. The supply of services or functions to consumers does not necessarily involve the sale of a product. In such a situation, it is possible to reduce environmental loads by reusing a product without the consumer owning a product. In this study, we developed a life cycle simulation system for establishing a business in which a product is reused. By using this simulation system, environmental and economic evaluation based on material flow and cash flow can be executed. In this paper, a reuse business is defined as a business model in which products are collected and reused, and a sales business is defined as a current business model in which products are sold and not recovered. For supporting an actual business, an evaluation model of mixed business in a transition state from a sales business to a reuse business in which reused products are launched into different market segments is implemented. The usefulness of the developed system is shown by the application example of reusing personal computers. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a competitive and globalized business environment, the need for the green products becomes stronger. To meet these trends, environmental impact assessment besides delivery, cost and quality of products should be considered as an important factor in new product development stage. In this paper, a knowledge-based approximate life cycle assessment system (KALCAS) is developed to assess the environmental impacts of product design alternatives. It aims at improving the environmental efficiency of a product using artificial neural networks, which consist of high-level product attributes and LCA results. The overall framework of a collaborative design environment involving KALCAS is proposed, using engineering solution CO (TM) based on the distributed object-based modeling and evaluation (DOME) system. This framework allows users to access the product data and other related information on a wide variety of application. This paper explores an approximate LCA of product design alternatives represented by solid models in a collaborative design environment. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although a priori thinking would suggest that a low intensity crop is environmentally favourable, this assumption ignores the effect of reduced productivity which could simply lead to pollution shifting to other places. A life cycle assessment of the wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production system for breadmaking was performed to optimise fertilization. In European temperate climate conditions, fertilizing with nitrogen mostly influences the intensity of field production systems, the quality of agricultural products and the environmental degradation. To assess and compare environmentally relevant impacts of different intensities of production, adequate functional units were developed to take into account the main functions of agricultural activity: production and upkeep of agricultural landscape. The limits of these functional units were identified and the influence of the choice of functional unit was analysed. Assessment of the wheat production system shows that increased fertilization needs a sufficient increase in yield to justify additional emissions and to be environmentally favourable. This requirement relies on the variability among varieties concerning grain yield and quality. To compare different systems of production managed by fertilization intensities, it is necessary to consider both the yield and the quality of the product. A level of 13% protein in dry grain corresponds to a good quality for breadmaking, satisfying bakery requirements. For a consistent comparison, a correction in yield is necessary to obtain an equivalent quality at each level of fertilization intensity. Grain yields at different fertilizer rates that gave 13% protein content in a wheat production system were assessed. This new functional unit identified high fertilization intensity as favourable for most impact categories and demonstrated sufficient yield increases with a change in variety at each level of fertilizer application rate. On the other hand, the impact of wheat production per hectare increases with more intensive fertilizer for all environmental categories except land utilisation. This functional unit helps to explicitly highlight impacts caused by agricultural activity: energy consumption, greenhouse effect, acidification, terrestrial ecotoxicity and human toxicity. The assessment of fertilizers exposed important differences between types and improvement potentials due to heavy metals content, impact on terrestrial ecotoxicity and human toxicity. Optimal combinations of variety, fertilization and land utilisation are discussed to design best production strategies from an environmental perspective. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Different solid waste management system scenarios were developed and compared for the Municipal Solid Waste Management System of Ankara by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The solid waste management methods considered in the scenarios were collection and transportation of wastes, source reduction, Material Recovery Facility (MRF)/Transfer Stations (TS), incineration, anaerobic digestion and landfilling. The goal of the study was to determine the most environmentally friendly option of MSWM system for Ankara. The functional unit of the study was the amount of solid waste generated in the system area of concern, which are the districts of Ankara. The life cycle inventory analysis was carried out by IWM Model-1. The inputs and outputs of each management stage were defined and the inventory emissions calculated by the model were classified in to impact categories; non-renewable energy sources exhausting potential, final solid waste as hazardous and nonhazardous, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and human toxicity. The impacts were quantified with the weighing factors of each category to develop the environmental profiles of each scenario. In most of the categories, Source Reduction Scenario was found to be the most feasible management method, except the global warming category. The lowest contribution to G-AT was calculated for the anaerobic digestion process. In the interpretation and improvement assessment stage, the results were further evaluated and recommendations were made to improve the current solid waste management system of Ankara. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Intensive agricultural systems are largely responsible for the increase in global reactive nitrogen compounds, which are associated with significant environmental impacts. The nitrogen cycle in agricultural systems is complex and highly variable, which complicates characterization in environmental assessments. Appropriately representing nitrogen inputs into an ecosystem is essential to better understand and predict environmental impacts, such as the extent of seasonally occurring hypoxic zones. Many impacts associated with reactive nitrogen are directly related to annual nitrogen loads, and are not adequately represented by average values that de-emphasize extreme years. To capture the inherent variability in agricultural systems, this paper employs Monte Carlo analysis (MCA) to model major nitrogen exports during crop production, focusing on corn-soybean rotations within the U.S. Corn Belt. This approach yields distributions of possible emission values and is the first step in incorporating variable nutrient fluxes into life cycle assessments (LCA) and environmental impact assessments. Monte Carlo simulations generate distributions of nitrate emissions showing that 80% of values range between 15 and 90 kg NO3- N/ha (mean 38.5 kg NO3- N/ha; median 35.7 kg NO3- N/ha) for corn fields and 5-60 kg NO3- N/ha (mean 20.8 kg NO3- N/ha; median 16.4 kg NO3- N/ha) for soybean fields. Data were also generated for grain and residue nitrogen, N2O, NOx, and NH3.Results indicate model distributions are in agreement with available measured emissions.The objective of this study was to integrate a bioenergetics-based modeling approach into a population stage structure to enhance life-cycle toxicity assessments of the effects of waterborne arsenic (As) on the population dynamics of the tilapia Oreochromis mossambicus. The proposed mathematical model links a Leslie matrix population model and a universal ontogenetic growth model embedding the population-level growth rate and stage-specific modes of toxic action. We present data analyses of key parameters and distributions and discuss the processes of data capture and analysis and the impact of acute/chronic As toxicity responses on population-level effects. We employed a three-parameter Hill equation model to describe the relationship between tilapia whole-body burden and mortality in order to estimate the probability of stage-specific vital rate of survival. Using the DEBtox theory, we distinguished three modes of toxic action (MOA): direct effects on growth and indirect effects via maintenance and food consumption on inhibition by arsenic of the growth of a tilapia population. The asymptotic population growth rate decreased from lambda = 1.0027 for the control group to lambda = 0.9935 for tilapia population exposed to 4 mu g mL(-1) As, indicating a potential risk of population intrinsic growth rates for tilapia exposed to higher levels of waterborne As. Our results estimated that an As concentration of 1.02 mu g mL(-1) would cause a 50% reduction in the tilapia population. We found that the interplay between external stressors of waterborne As concentration and internally generated modes of action decreasing feeding in the juvenile stage and increasing the maintenance cost in the adult stage had a pronounced influence on the population stage structure of tilapia. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Goal, Scope and Background. CML has contributed to the development of life cycle decision support tools, particularly Substance / Material Flow Analysis (SFA respectively MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Ever since these tools emerged there have been discussions on how these tools relate to each other, and how they relate to more traditional tools. Remarkably little, however, has been published on these relationships from an empirical side: which combinations of tools have actually been used, and what is the added value of combining tools in practical case studies. In this paper, we report on CML's experience in this field by presenting a number of case studies with their related research questions, for which different tools were deployed. Methods. Three case studies are discussed: 1) Waste water treatment: various options for waste water treatment have been assessed on their eco-efficiency, using SFA to comment on the influence of these options on the flows of certain substances in the water system of. a geographical area and a combination of LCA and life cycle costing (LCC) to assess the life-cycle impacts and costs of these options; 2) Prioritization of environmental policy measures: A methodology has been developed to prioritize environmental policy measures and investments within companies based on both the environmental impacts and the costs of these measures; and 3) Environmental weighting of materials: to add an environmental dimension to standard MFA accounts, materials were weighted with cradle-to-grave impact factors based on LCA data and impact assessment factors. Results and Discussion. For each of these cases, the research questions at stake, the tools applied, the results and the added value, limitations and problems of combining the tools are reported. Conclusions and Perspective. Based on these experiences, it is concluded that using several tools to address a complicated problem is not only a theoretical proposal, but also something that has been applied successfully in a variety of practical situations. Furthermore, using several tools in combination does not necessarily lead to an increased information supply to decision-makers. Instead, it may contribute to the comprehensibility and ease of interpretation of the information that would have been provided by using a single tool. Finally, it is concluded that there is not one generally valid protocol for which tools to use for which question. The essential idea of using a combination of tools is exactly the fact that research questions are not simple by nature and cannot be generalized into protocols.Goal, Scope and Methodology. This paper describes a case study carried out as part of a wider programme to provide Support for environmental decision-making in the highway maintenance programme of a local government body: Surrey County Council (SCC). UK local authorities are required to demonstrate that sustainable development principles are addressed in service provision, by improving environmental, economic or social wellbeing and improving public consultation. A methodological approach was developed to meet these requirements by using life cycle assessment (LCA) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) through the process of decision conferencing. Results. In projects requiring strategic decisions, difficulties arise in identifying relevant sustainable development criteria and in evaluating maintenance options against these criteria where the context for decision-making is complex and characterised by uncertainty, where multiple public policy objectives compete and a number of decision-makers and key players are affected by the outcome. Clearly, a structured process is needed to engage such stakeholders in the decision process, utilising quantitative and qualitative information. The approach described proved to be capable of fulfilling these requirements. Conclusions and Recommendations. The approach of combining LCA with MCDA through decision conferencing is capable of further development to support other strategic decision-making activities. However, this illustrative case study has revealed a need for methodological developments in LCA for local, project-level decisions.Goal, Scope and Background. More and more national and regional life cycle assessment (LCA) databases are being, established satisfying the increasing demand on LCA in policy making (e.g. Integrated Product Policy, IPP) and in industry. In order to create harmonised datasets in such unified databases, a common understanding and common rules are required. This paper describes major requirements on the way towards an ideal national background LCA database in terms of co-operation, but also in terms of life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) and impact assessment (LCIA) methodology. Methods. A classification of disputed methodological issues is made according to their consensus potential. In LCI, three main areas of dissent are identified where consensus seems hardly possible, namely system modelling (consequential versus attributional), allocation (including recycling) and reporting (transparency and progressiveness). In LCIA the time aspect is added to the well-known value judgements of the weighting step. Results and Discussions. It is concluded that LCA methodology should rather allow for plurality than to urge harmonisation in any case. A series of questions is proposed to identify the most appropriate content of the LCA background database or the most appropriate LCI dataset. The questions help to identify the best suited approach in modelling the product system in general and multioutput and recycling processes in particular. They additionally help to clarify the position with regard to time preferences in LCIA. Intentionally, the answers to these questions are not attributed to particular goal and scope definitions, although some recommendations and clarifying explanations are provided. Recommendations and Perspective. It is concluded that there is not one single ideal background database content. Value judgements are also present in LCI modelling and require pluralistic solutions; solutions possibly based on the same primary data. It is recommended to focus the methodological discussion on aspects where consensus is within reach, sensible and of added value for all parties.Background Aims and Scope. Access to abiotic resources is vital for modern life styles. Except for ozone depletion, no other environmental threat has a potentially larger impact on our everyday lives than shortage of abiotic resources. In 'Limits to Growth' the Club of Rome identified depletion of ores and minerals as becoming a major problem during the first or second decades of the twenty-first century, and the idea was widely spread. Since then, the attitude to the problem has shifted, and many institutions, such as the European Commission, do not consider the problem acute and does not give it priority in their present action plans. Regardless of when it happens, however, the social consequences of a shortage of abiotic resources will be a major problem and the significance and nature of the problem will depend on what the world looks like then at the time and afterwards. This article discusses existing LCIA methods in relation to their views on the depletion problem. Method. Review of existing LCIA methods in relation to depletion problem definitions. Results and Discussion. Existing methods for characterisation and weighting of abiotic resources appear to be based on four types of problem definitions, although not always explicit: 1) assuming that mining cost will be a limiting factor, 2) assuming that collecting metals or other substances from low-grade sources is mainly an issue of energy, 3) assuming that scarcity is a major threat and 4) assuming that environmental impacts from mining and processing of mineral resources are the main problem. In addition to differences in assumptions about what will be the limiting factor, there are different views on what time scales are of interest and how to integrate the issue in LCA. Conclusion. The main dividing line in views on abiotic resources has to do with time perspective. If only caring for the next hundred years or so, abiotic resources is a manageable problem. In taking an historic perspective with tens of thousands of years, abiotic resources become a major problem. Recommendations and Outlook. Today there seems to be some consensus on focusing on developing characterisation methods based on future increase of impacts from using lower grade resources with consideration of resource functionality. It is essential that the choice of temporal focus is given enough attention.Goal and Scope. This paper aims to develop continental characterization factors for the human toxicity impacts of emissions released to air in different continents and to analyze under which conditions this spatial distinction makes a significant difference compared to generic characterization factors. Methods. The IMPACT 2002 multimedia and multipathways model has been parameterized to define 6 continental box-models, each of them nested in a world box in order to capture impacts of emissions leaving the initial continent. Applying the model to a test set of 31 heterogeneous chemicals emitted to air, intake fractions and human toxicity characterization factors were calculated for each continent and compared. Results and Discussion. For a given chemical, characterization factors can vary of typically a factor 5 to 10 between continents (max 10(2)), mainly as a function of population density for inhalation and as a function of the total agriculture production per km(2) for ingestion. This is significant but still limited compared to the variation between substances, of 10(6) in intake fraction and of 10(12) in cumulative risks. Conclusion. The variation amplitude is limited for persistent chemicals and decreases with the fraction of the chemical advected out of the continent. Moreover, the ranking between continents remains almost the same for all chemicals. Therefore generic characterization factor for air emissions calculated at continental level, such as the one proposed by the common life cycle assessment method, are in most cases suitable for comparative purposes in any other continent. However, continent specific characterization factors are required if one is interested in evaluating absolute values or in comparing impact between scenarios with emissions in very different continents. For this purpose, a simplified but accurate correlation is determined to extrapolate continent specific intake fractions and characterization factors of a wide range of substances for Oceania, Africa, South America, North America and Asia, starting from the results of Europe as a base continent. Recommandation and Perspectives. Further research should focus on linking the different continental boxes to obtain a global spatial model including major climatic phenomenon such as the air transport by jet stream. The level of spatial resolution, however, has to be carefully selected to capture significant differences, but at the same time to avoid unnecessarily requirement efforts for data gathering and calculation capabilities.Goal, Scope and background. Methodologies based on life cycle assessment have been developed to calculate the environmental impact of dwellings. Human health damages due to exposure of occupants to substances and noise emitted by road traffic are not included in these methodologies. In this study, a methodology has been developed to calculate damages to human health of occupants caused by substances and noise emitted by neighbourhood car traffic. The goal of this study is to assess the influence of the location of the dwelling on the health of the occupants, compared to the damage to human health associated with the rest of the life cycle of that dwelling. Methods. Fate, exposure and human health effects were addressed in the calculation procedure. The methodology takes into account road traffic noise and four hazardous substances emitted by cars. Chemical fate factors were calculated with an outdoor exposure model for traffic pollutants, air entrance rates and indoor intake fractions. Fate factors for noise were based on noise levels generated by traffic. Effect factors for substances were based on unit risk factors and extrapolated dose-effect relationships. Effect factors for noise were based on linear relationships between noise level changes and health effects, while taking into account threshold values for noise levels for negative impacts. Damage factors were calculated on the basis of disability adjusted life years (DALYs). Human health damage scores for changes in traffic situations have been calculated for differences in three traffic scenarios in residential areas and for the Dutch reference dwellings. Results and Discussion. For the Dutch reference dwelling and the traffic situations considered and taking into account noise, particulate matter (PM10), sulphur dioxide, benzene and benzo[a]pyrene, communication disturbances and sleep disturbances due to noise and health effects of PM10 appear to be dominant in the total damage to human health of occupants caused by neighbourhood car traffic. A sensitivity analysis has shown that a reduction of the car and truck density and of the distance of the facade of the dwellings to the road axis has the largest positive effect on the human health of the occupants, and that a decrease of speed by traffic impediments has only a marginal or even a negative effect. Differences in overall indoor health damage due to different traffic scenarios may be 1.5 to 2 times higher than the total health damage associated with the dwelling life cycle. Conclusion. Within the limitations of this study, damages to human health of occupants due to indoor exposure to road traffic noise and pollutants appear to be in the same order of magnitude when compared with damages associated with the life cycle of dwellings. This emphasizes the importance to include the location of dwellings in the life cycle assessment of the dwelling.Background, Aims and Scope. In the life cycle of a product, emissions take place at many different locations. The location of the source and its surrounding conditions influence the fate of the emitted pollutant and the subsequent exposure it causes. This source of variation is normally neglected in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), although it is well known that the impacts predicted by site-generic LCIA in some cases differ significantly from the actual impacts. Environmental impacts of photochemical ozone (ground-level ozone) depend on parameters with a considerable geographical variability (like emission patterns and population densities). A spatially differentiated characterisation model thus seems relevant. Methods and Results. The European RAINS model is applied for calculation of site-dependent characterisation factors for Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds (NMVOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) for 41 countries or regions within Europe, and compatible characterisation factors for carbon monoxide (CO) are developed based on expert judgement. These factors are presented for three emission years (1990, 1995 and 2010), and they address human health impacts and vegetation impacts in two separate impacts categories, derived from AOT40 and AOT60 values respectively. Compatible site-generic chatacterisation factors for NMVOC, NOx, CO and methane (CH4) are calculated as emission-weighted European averages to be applied on emissions for which the location is unknown. The site-generic and site-dependent characterisation factors are part of the EDIP2003 LCIA methodology. The factors are applied in a specific case study, and it is demonstrated how the inclusion of spatial differentiation may alter the results of the photochemical ozone characterisation of life cycle impact assessment. Discussion and Conclusions. Compared to traditional midpoint characterisation modelling, this novel approach is spatially resolved and comprises a larger part of the cause-effect chain including exposure assessment and exceeding of threshold values. This positions it closer to endpoint modelling and makes the results easier to interpret. In addition, the developed model allows inclusion of the contributions from NO., which are neglected when applying the traditional approaches based on Photochemical Ozone Creation Potentials (POCPs). The variation in site-dependent characterisation factors is far larger than the variation in POCP factors. It thus seems more important to represent the spatially determined variation in exposure than the difference in POCP among the substances.Goal, Scope and Background. The weighting phase in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is and has always been a controversial issue, partly because this element requires the incorporation of social, political and ethical values. Despite the controversies, weighting is widely used in practise. In this paper we will present an approach for monetisation of environmental impacts which is based on the consistent use of ecotaxes and fees in Sweden as a basis for the economic values. The idea behind this approach is that taxes and fees are expressions of the values society places on resource uses and emissions. An underlying assumption for this is that the decisions taken by policy-makers are reflecting societal values thus reflecting a positive view of representative democracy. Methods. In the method a number of different ecotaxes are used. In many cases they can directly be used as valuation weighting factors, an example is the CO2-tax that can be used as a valuation of CO2-emissions. In some cases, a calculation has to be made in order to derive a weighting factor. An example of this is the tax on nitrogen fertilisers which can be recalculated to an emission of nitrogen which can be used as a weighting factor for nitrogen emissions. The valuation weighting factors can be connected to characterisation methods in the normal LCA practise. We have often used the Ecotax method in parallel to other weighting methods such as the Ecoindicator and EPS methods and the results are compared. Results and Discussion. A new set of weighting factors has been developed which has been used in case studies. It is interesting to note that the Ecotax method is able to identify different environmental problems as the most important ones in different case studies. In some cases, the Ecotax method has identified some interventions as the most important ones which lack weighting factors in other weighting methods. The midpoint-endpoint debate in the LCA literature has often centred on different types of uncertainties. Sometimes it is claimed that an advantage with having an endpoint approach is that the weighting would be easier and less uncertain. Here we are however suggesting a mid-point weighting method that we claim are no less uncertain than other often used weighting methods based on a damage assessment. This paper can therefore be seen as a discussion paper also in the midpoint-endpoint debate. Conclusion and Recommendation. The Ecotax method is ready to use. It should be further updated and developed as taxes are changed and new characterisation methods are developed. The method is not only relevant for LCA but also for other environmental systems analysis. The Ecotax method has also been used as a valuation method for Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and within the context of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).Goal, Scope and Background. Although both cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) have developed from engineering practice, and have the same objective of a holistic ex-ante assessment of human activities, the techniques have until recently developed in relative isolation. This has resulted in a situation where much can be gained from an integration of the strong aspects of each technique. Such integration is now being prompted by the more widespread use of both CBA and LCA on the global arena, where also the issues of social responsibility are now in focus. Increasing availability of data on both biophysical and social impacts now allow the development of a truly holistic, quantitative environmental assessment technique that integrates economic, biophysical and social impact pathways in a structured and consistent way. The concept of impact pathwavs, linking biophysical and economic inventory results via midpoint impact indicators to final damage indicators, is well described in the LCA and CBA literature. Therefore, this paper places specific emphasis on how social aspects can be integrated in LCA. Methods and Results. With a starting point in the conceptual structure and approach of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), as developed by Helias Udo de Haes and the SETAC/UNEP Life Cycle Initiative, the paper identifies six damage categories under the general heading of human life and well-being. The paper proposes a comprehensive set of indicators, with units of measurement, and a first estimate of global normalisation values, based on incidence or prevalence data from statistical sources and severity scores from health state analogues. Examples are provided of impact chains linking social inventory indicators to impacts on both human well-being and productivity. Recommendation and Perspective. It is suggested that human well-being measured in QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years) may provide an attractive single-score alternative to direct monetarisation.Background, Aims and Scope. Social impacts in supply chains and product life cycles are of increasing interest to policy makers and stakeholders. Work is underway to develop social impact indicators for LCA, and to identify the social inventory data that will drive impact assessment for this category. Standard LCA practice collects and aggregates inventory data of the form "units of input or output (elementary flow) per unit of process output." Measurement of social impacts within workplaces as well as host communities and societies poses new challenges not heretofore faced by LCA database developers. Participatory measurement and auditing of social impacts and of workplace health issues has been shown to provide important benefits relative to external auditor-based methods, including greater likelihood of detecting rights abuses, and stronger support of subsequent action for improvement. However, nonstandardized auditing and metrics poses challenges for the supply chain-wide aggregation and comparison functions of LCA. An analogous challenge arises in the case of resource extractive processes, for which the certification of best management practices provides an important and practical environmental metric. In both the social and resource extraction examples, it may be that attributes of the process are more valuable metrics to measure and incentivize than measured quantities per unit of process output. But how to measure, how to aggregate across life cycles, how to compare product life cycles, and how to incentivize progress as with product policy? Methods. A methodology is presented and demonstrated which estimates the health impacts of economic development stemming from product life cycles. This methodology does not introduce new social indicators; rather, it works with the already common LCA endpoint of human health, and introduces and applies a simplified empirical relationship to characterize the complex pathways from product life cycles' economic activity to health in the aggregate. Results. A simple case study indicates that the health benefits of economic development impacts in product life cycles have the potential to be very significant, possibly even orders of magnitude greater than the health damages from the increased pollution. While the simple macro model points up the dramatic importance of socio-economic pathways to health in product life cycles, it lacks any sensitivity to the vitally important, context-specific attributes of the economic development associated with each process. This result begs the question of how to measure, aggregate, compare, and stimulate society-wide improvement of context-dependent attributes within and across product life cycles in LCA.\ Discussion. Before attempting an answer to the question noted above, a brief reconsideration is offered concerning life cycle assessment. Namely, where does it come from, and what does it bring? Recommendations and Outlook. Finally, the paper concludes by sketching a life cycle approach to promoting localized assessments, to summarizing their results over supply chains and life cycles, and to comparing product life cycles in terms of their results. Often, localized assessments will yield information on the attributes of a process, rather than (or in addition to) the traditional form of life cycle inventory information, which is,,units of something per unit of process output." The methodology can enable product policy users to promote reporting of basic attributes of processes within supply chains, together with local measurement and reporting of context-relevant impacts. For attributes linked to progress on impacts of local and global concern, promotion of these attributes within supply chain processes will bring strong benefits. In addition, over time it may be possible for researchers to develop and refine models that estimate, based on cross-sectional and time series analysis of attributes and impacts, relationships between attributes and impacts. In any case, while local impacts across supply chains may not be precisely knowable - let alone controllable - by a microdecision maker at the time of their product-related decision, life cycle attribute analysis may give such decision makers an opportunity to empower progress throughout life cycles and supply chains, which is after all a motivating goal of LCA.Goal, Scope and Background. Life cycle assessment has emerged into a useful tool to assess and potentially reduce the environmental impacts per functional unit. This has contributed to increase eco-efficiency but not necessarily to decrease absolute pollution per capita. The number of functional units is increasing and new functions add to the impacts of consumption. Despite the attempts to use different levels of definitions for the functional unit and applying LCA in the field of lifestyle studies there has been little success to grasp the consumption side of sustainable production and consumption. This contribution aims to tackle the consumption side by at least two extensions: the function of products, services, and activities is assessed with a multi-attribute need function and the propensity to cause both psychological and physical rebound effects are considered in the design phase. Methods. We develop a checklist approach with an evaluation and assessment table. The elements of the checklist are rooted in a number of independent fields of science: needs matrix, happiness enhancing factors, a number of limiting factors that can cause rebound effects, and streamlined LCA. Results and Conclusion. For illustration purposes we comparatively evaluate gardening, having a dog, a weekend house, and starting yoga classes and show that the new analysis framework is able to make transparent and operable the inclusion of a number of additional factors that remained so far implicit or neglected. The additional factors considered can be grouped into factors that may cause rebound effects through psychological or physical mechanisms. The assessment table combines the degree of satisfying needs and enhancing happiness in a psychological rebound score. The physical rebound score considers six factors that may constrain consumption: Costs, time, space, other scarce resources, information, and skills. This allows predicting the potential for rebound effects that would increase total impacts from consumption. In addition, it gives also a handle on how to use the knowledge on rebound effects to not only reduce the impacts of the product or activity at hand but also reducing other consumption that in turn might have adverse impacts. Recommendation and Perspective. Many assumptions in selecting and quantifying the additional factors and the final assessment procedure remain conceptual and therefore provisional. This contribution opens new avenues of investigations that need both further refinements of the theories and empirical evidence. Consumerism and materialism has undermined much of the success stories of improved eco-efficiency and LCA. We suggest using some of the very same psychological and physical mechanisms to foster sustainable consumption.Background. Life cycle assessments have been performed using different methods before the name was coined since about 1970 in several countries of North America and Europe. It was the merit of SETAC to start a standardization process which culminated in the LCA-guidelines ('A code of practice') in 1993. It is the aim of this paper to trace back this and further LCA-related achievements by SETAC on the basis of documents and personal memories. It may be subjective in the selection and weighting of some events, but objectivity is strived for with regard to the whole and, in my view, singular development. Results and Discussion. Starting 1990 with two workshops in Smuggler's Notch (Vermont) and Leuven (Belgium), SETAC and SETAC Europe organized several workshops during which important topics (framework, impact assessment, data quality, etc.) were treated and published in the form of reports which are still available. The main contribution by CML and its head, Helias Udo de Haes, was a practical method of impact assessment, transforming the formerly more "technocratic" LCA (energy, resources, waste) into an instrument of environmental assessment of product systems. In addition, important contributions to the allocation problem were made. Starting in 1993, ISO took over the leadership in standardization and SETAC started the famous working groups in North America and Europe, often dealing with the same topics in parallel. Due to the different cultures, the results were frequently complimentary rather than harmonic. The CML-method of LCIA, widely accepted in Europe, had to wait for about 10 years to be accepted at the other side of the Atlantic. It was helpful that SETAC - meanwhile a global organization looked for a partner in order to implement LCA all over the world. This partner was found in the 'United Nations Environmental Programme' (UNEP) and the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative was officially launched by Klaus Topfer in Prague in April 2002. SETAC also assumed an important role in communicating LCA via publications: workshop and conference reports, the 'code of practice', working group results and LCA News Letters. The annual meetings offered forums for LCA scientists, practitioners and users, well prepared by the LCA Steering Committee (SETAC Europe) and the LCA Advisory Group (SETAC North America). Recommendations. The main recommendation to SETAC is to adhere to LCA as the main environmental assessment tool for products and to expand it to a true sustainability assessment tool by adding Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and a still to be invented 'Social Life Cycle Assessment'. SETAC is to remain the scientific arm within the UNEP/SETAC LC Initiative, without loosing its identity. Working groups should be global rather than regional in the future, as suggested by the SETAC Europe LCA Steering Committee at the 2004 World Congress in Portland, Oregon.UNEP DTIE, through its Life Cycle Initiative, aims to enhance the skills of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries on Life Cycle Management (LCM). This is part of its contribution to the 10-year framework of program on Sustainable Consumption and Production as a follow-up of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002). Apart from the potential of improving their environmental performance, life cycle thinking and the use of LCA can be a business opportunity for SMEs. The development of environmental management expertise may help them to position themselves as reliable suppliers. The Life Cycle Initiative has promoted and facilitated the establishment of regional life cycle networks, and UNEP has started a training program on LCM targeted at National Cleaner Production Centers (NCPCs) and other national institutes that are able to pass on the information to the target groups. Some multinational companies have started to provide capacity building on life Cycle management for suppliers in developing countries. More companies could use this approach to help developing countries to tackle environmental requirements in the supply chain and thus the private sector may contribute significantly to eco-efficiency, cost savings and finding new markets for sustainable products and services in developing countries. Life cycle thinking applied to basic services such as water, waste and energy could be another way to directly contribute with life cycle management to human development.This paper analyses different alternatives for solid waste management that can be implemented to enable the targets required by the European Landfill and Packaging and Packaging Waste Directives to be achieved in the Valencian Community, on the east coast of Spain. The methodology applied to evaluate the environmental performance of each alternative is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The analysis has been performed at two levels; first, the emissions accounted for in the inventory stage have been arranged into impact categories to obtain an indicator for each category; and secondly, the weighting of environmental data to a single unit has been applied. Despite quantitative differences between the results obtained with four alternative impact assessment methods, the same preference ranking has been established: scenarios with energy recovery (1v and 2v) achieve major improvements compared to baseline, with scenario I v being better than 2v for all impact assessment methods except for the EPS'00 method, which obtains better results for scenario 2v. Sensitivity analysis has been used to test some of the assumptions used in the initial life cycle inventory model but none have a significant effect on the overall results. As a result, the best alternative to the existing waste management system can be identified. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar energy itself is generally considered as environmentally friendly, nevertheless it is still important to take into consideration the environmental impacts caused by production of thousands of solar thermal systems. In this work the standard LCA methodology has been extended to analyse the total environmental impacts of a new more efficient solar thermal system SOLARSTORE during its whole life cycle. This system is being developed by a 5th Framework EC project. The LCA results show that to produce 1 GJ energy with SOLARSTORE system will result in global warming potential of 6.3-10 kg CO2, acidification potential of 46.6-70 g SO2, eutrophication of 2.1-3.1 g phosphate and photochemical oxidant of 0.99-1.5 g C2H4. The raw material acquisition and components manufacturing processes contribute 99% to the total environmental impacts. In comparison with traditional heating systems, SOLARSTORE system provides a considerably better solution for reduction of negative environmental impacts by using solar energy more efficiently. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Modelling of environmental impacts from the application of treated organic Municipal solid waste (MSW) in agriculture differs widely between different models for environmental assessment of waste systems. In this comparative Study five models were examined concerning quantification and impact assessment of environmental effects from land application of treated organic MSW: DST (Decision Support Tool, USA), IWM (Integrated Waste Management, UK), THE IFEU PROJECT (Germany), ORWARE (ORganic WAste REsearch, Sweden) and EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technologies, Denmark). DST and IWM are life cycle inventory (LCI) models, thus not performing actual impact assessment. The DST model includes only one water emission (biological oxygen demand) from compost leaching in the results and IWM considers only air emissions from avoided production of commercial fertilizers. THE IFEU PROJECT, ORWARE and EASEWASTE are life cycle assessment (LCA) models containing more detailed land application modules. A case Study estimating the environmental impacts from land application of 1 ton of composted Source sorted organic household waste was performed to compare the results from the different models and investigate the origin of any difference in type or magnitude of the results. The contributions from the LCI models were limited and did not depend on waste composition or local agricultural conditions. The three LCA models use the same overall approach for quantifying the impacts of the system. However, due to slightly different assumptions, quantification methods and environmental impact assessment, the obtained results varied clearly between the models. Furthermore, local conditions (e.g. soil type, farm type, climate and legal regulation) and waste composition strongly influenced the results of the environmental assessment.A model capable of quantifying the potential environmental impacts of agricultural application of composted or anaerobically digested source-separated organic municipal solid waste (MSW) is presented. In addition to the direct impacts, the model accounts for savings by avoiding the production and use of commercial fertilizers. The model is part of a larger model, Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technology (EASEWASTE), developed as a decision-support model, focusing On assessment of alternative waste management options. The environmental impacts of the land application of processed organic waste are quantified by emission coefficients referring to the composition of the processed waste and related to specific crop rotation as well as soil type. The model contains several default parameters based on literature data, field experiments and modelling by the agro-ecosystem model, Daisy. All data can be modified by the user allowing application of the model to other situations. A case study including four scenarios was performed to illustrate the Use of the model. One tonne of nitrogen in composted and anaerobically digested MSW was applied as fertilizer to loamy and sandy soil at a plant farm in western Denmark. Application of the processed organic waste mainly affected the environmental impact categories global warming (0.4-0.7 PE), acidification (-0.06 (saving)-1.6 PE), nutrient enrichment (-1.0 (saving)-3.1 PE), and toxicity. The main contributors to these categories were nitrous oxide formation (global warming), ammonia volatilization (acidification and nutrient enrichment), nitrate losses (nutrient enrichment and groundwater contamination), and heavy metal input to Soil (toxicity potentials). The local agricultural conditions as well as the composition of the processed MSW showed large influence on the environmental impacts. A range of benefits, mainly related to improved soil quality from long-term application of the processed organic waste, could not be generally quantified with respect to the chosen life cycle assessment impact categories and were therefore not included in the model. These effects should be considered in conjunction with the results of the life cycle assessment.Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is an environmental management tool, which is increasingly used for decision-support in the South African manufacturing industry, e. g. for cleaner production purposes. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase of LCAs evaluates the potential environmental impact profiles of industrial activities throughout the life cycles of products and processes. The LCIA procedure is dependent on a comprehensive life cycle inventory (LCI) of the evaluated life cycle system. Water usage is included in LCIs, and is incorporated in LCIA procedures as direct extraction from available resources. However, the environmental burdens associated with water supply extend beyond extraction and include non-renewable energy use, materials use, land use, and pollution of air, soil and water resources. A LCA study was subsequently undertaken to identify key environmental aspects that should be considered where water is used in the manufacturing sector of South Africa, and to identify possible shortcomings in the LCA tool. It is concluded that the extraction of the required water from nature to supply potable water is in fact the most important consideration, and water-losses in the supply system must receive attention, especially in the municipal-controlled part. Water quality impacts are also important, although through supporting processes, and specifically electricity generation. The boosting requirements attribute most to the electricity dependency of the studied life cycle system. However, a number of data gaps were identified and recommendations are made to improve such future LCA studies in South Africa.One of the most commonly used elements in ephemeral architecture is a particleboard panel. These types of wood products are produced from wood wastes and they are used in temporary constructions such as trade fairs. Once the event is over, they are usually disposed into landfills. This paper intends to assess the environmental effects related to the use of these wood wastes in the end-of-life stage. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of two scenarios was performed, considering the recycling of wood waste for particleboard manufacture and energy generation from non-renewable resources (Scenario 1) versus the production of energy from the combustion of wood waste and particleboard manufacture with conventional wooden resources (Scenario 2). A sensitive analysis was carried out taking into account the influence of the percentage of recycled material and the emissions data from wood combustion. According to Ecoindicator 99 methodology, Damage to Human Health and Ecosystem Quality are more significant in Scenario 2 whereas Scenario I presents the largest contribution to Damage to Resources. Between the two proposed alternatives, the recycling of wood waste for particleboard manufacture seems to be more favorable under an environmental perspective. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A novel post-synthesis analysis tool is presented which evaluates quality of the organic preparation based on yield, cost, safety, conditions and ease of workup/purification. The proposed approach is based on assigning a range of penalty points to these parameters. This semi-quantitative analysis can easily be modified by other synthetic chemists who may feel that some parameters should be assigned different relative penalty points. It is a powerful tool to compare several preparations of the same product based on safety, economical and ecological features.The sustainable development and consumption need more efficient use of natural resources. As a consequence, the use of industrial solvents demands their recovery instead of end-of-pipe treatment. It is not always clear, however, which treatment alternative should be applied. Based on an industrial case study, the environmental and economic evaluation and comparison of the treatment alternatives of a non-ideal solvent mixture containing azeotropes is investigated for determining the preferable option. For the recovery of the industrial solvent mixture, two different separation alternatives are evaluated: a less effective alternative and a novel design based on hybrid separation tools. An end-of-pipe treatment alternative, incineration, is also considered and the split of the solvent mixtures between recovery and incineration is investigated. The environmental evaluation of the alternatives is carried out using 'Eco-indicator 99 life-cycle impact assessment methodology'. Economic investigation is also accomplished. The economic features clearly favour the total recovery, however, the environmental evaluation detects that if a recovery process of low efficiency is applied, its environmental burden can be similar or even higher than that of the incineration. This motivates engineers to design more effective recovery processes and reconsider the evaluation of process alternatives at environmental decision making. (C) Central European Science Journals Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment of hydrogen and gasoline vehicles, including fuel production and utilization in vehicles powered by fuel cells and internal combustion engines, is conducted to evaluate and compare their efficiencies and environmental impacts. Fossil fuel and renewable technologies are investigated, and the assessment is divided into various stages. Energy efficiencies and greenhouse gas emissions are evaluated in each step for crude oil and natural gas pipeline transportation, crude oil distillation and natural gas reformation, wind and solar electricity generation, hydrogen production through water electrolysis, and gasoline and hydrogen distribution and utilization. The results indicate that, when taking into account fossil fuel energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, the efficiency of a fuel cell vehicle employing hydrogen from natural gas should be at least 25-30% higher than a gasoline one to be competitive. Wind electricity generation to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, and its application in a PEMFC vehicle, has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel energy consumption. However, the economic attractiveness of renewable wind technology is shown to depend significantly on the ratio in costs between hydrogen and natural gas; when this ratio is 2:1, a financial investment to produce hydrogen via natural gas is about five times more profitable than to do so via wind energy. (c) 2005 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background, Aims and Scope. The development of the international standards for life cycle assessment (ISO 14040:1997, ISO 14041:1999, ISO 14042:2000, ISO 14043:2000) was an important step to consolidate procedures and methods of LCA. Their contribution to the general acceptance of LCA by all stakeholders and by the international community was crucial. Currently, the process of the revision of this first generation of LCA standards is close to completion. The paper explains the Outline as well as formal and technical changes of the coming new international standards of LCA, i.e. the new ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. Methods. The paper refers to life cycle assessment based on the international standards for LCA (ISO 14040:1997, ISO 14041:1999, ISO 14042:2000, ISO 14043:2000). The content relates to the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) versions of the new ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. Results and Discussion. With the publication of the two new standards, ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, the existing four standards ISO 14040:1997, ISO 14041:1999, ISO 14042:2000 and ISO 14043:2000 are technically revised, cancelled and replaced. According to the scope of the revision, the core part of the technical contents remains unchanged. Improved readability and the removal of errors and inconsistencies was the focus of the revision. However, despite the fact that the main technical content was confirmed to be still valid, some relevant formal and technical changes were made. On the technical side these include e.g. the addition of principles for LCA, the addition of an annex about applications, the addition of several definitions (e.g. product, process, etc.), clarifications concerning LCA intended to be used in comparative assertions intended to be disclosed to the public, clarifications concerning the critical review panel, clarifications concerning system boundary, etc. On the formal side, changes include the reduced number of standards, a reduced number of annexes, a reduced number of pages that contain requirements, alignment of definitions and clarification of compliance with the standards. Conclusion. The two new standards, ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, reconfirm the validity of the main technical content of the previous standards. Errors and inconsistencies were removed and the readability was improved. The added technical content is in line with the previous requirements and serves mainly as a clarification of the technical content. The unanimous vote on the Draft International Standard versions proved that this was achieved on the basis of the broadest possible international consensus. Recommendation and Outlook. Currently the national member bodies undertake the final voting on the FDIS-versions of the standards. Based on the voting results at the previous stages of the documents, a positive result is expected. The publication of the new international standards for life cycle assessment (ISO 14040 and ISO 14044) is expected around mid-2006. For the sake of the international and stakeholder acceptance of LCA, it is recommended that the new standards serve as core reference documents for the users and practitioners of LCA.Goal, Scope and Background. To enhance the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool in business decision-making, a methodology for Social life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is being developed. Social LCA aims at facilitating companies to conduct business in a socially responsible manner by providing information about the potential social impacts on people caused by the activities in the life cycle of their product. The development of the methodology has been guided by a business perspective accepting that companies, on the one hand, have responsibility for the people affected by their business activities, but, on the other hand, must also be able to compete and make profit in order to survive in the marketplace. Methods. A combined, bottom-up and top-down approach has been taken in the development of the Social LCIA. Universal consensus documents regarding social issues as well as consideration for the specific business context of companies has guided the determination of damage categories, impact categories and category indicators. Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. The main results are the following: (1) Impacts on people are naturally related to the conduct of the companies engaged in the life cycle rather than to the individual industrial processes, as is the case in Environmental LCA. Inventory analysis is therefore focused on the conduct of the companies engaged in the life cycle. A consequence of this view is that a key must be determined for relating the social profiles of the companies along the life cycle to the product. This need is not present in Environmental LCA, where we base the connection on the physical link which exists between process and product. (2) Boundaries of the product system are determined with respect to the influence that the product manufacturer exerts over the activities in the product chain. (3) A two-layer Social LCA method with an optional and an obligatory set of impact categories is suggested to ensure both societal and company relevance of the method. The obligatory set of impact categories encompasses the minimum expectations to a company conducting responsible business. (4) A new area of protection, Human dignity and Well-being, is defined and used to guide the modelling of impact chains. (5) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights serves as normative basis for Social LCA, together with local or Country norms based on socio-economic development goals of individual countries. The International Labour Organisation's Conventions and Recommendations, and the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, support development of the impact pathway top-down, starting from & normative basis. (6) The obligatory part of Social LCA addresses the main stakeholder groups, employees, local community and society. Recommendations and Outlook. Social LCA is still in its infancy and a number of further research tasks within this new area are identified.Goal, Scope and Background. This paper presents a new LCA method of technology evolution (TE-LCA), and its application to the production of ammonia, the second largest chemical product in the world, over the last fifty years. The TE-LCA of a chemical process is the procedure in which historical information on a process, mainly the evolution of technical parameters, is translated by simulation to mass and energy balances as a function of time. These mass and energy balances are then transformed into environmental impact indicators using common LCA approaches. Finally, the evolution of environmental impact resulting from the investigated process can be related to its technical and other, i.e. legislative, developments. Methods. The technological evolution of the production of ammonia was compiled according to three basic Sources of information: patents, publications and industry data. From these sources in a first step, the major technological advances of the process were identified as a function of time delivering different process variants that were modelled using the simulation software Aspen Plus (R). In a second step, the evolution of environmental regulations is studied. For those energy related emissions that were regulated, e.g. SOx and NOx, it was assumed that threshold values defined in legislation were realized immediately. The aggregation of both steps allows the calculation of the emissions resulting from the production (cradle to gate view) of the investigated chemical as a function of time. Results and Discussion. The application of the TE-LCA to the production of ammonia revealed when and to which extent technological and legislative developments resulted in the reduction of energy related emissions in the production of this chemical compound. Overall, the reduction of emissions from ammonia production was highly influenced by the technological development and only to a lower extent by environmental regulations. Conclusion. The results obtained from the TE-LCA method is useful to reveal how the environmental performance of a process developed in the past and to identify the reasons for this development. The investigated case Study of ammonia production shows that investment in technological development also paid off in terms of being ahead of tightened environmental legislation that might bear potential cost consequences such as carbon dioxide tax. Outlook. The presented method can be easily extended by including an economic analysis, which provides additional information on why certain technological developments were enforced and which the economic consequences of changes in environmental legislation were. The new methodology has to be applied to additional case studies, i.e. to other chemical sectors than basic chemicals and to other branches than chemicals. In other chemical sectors, toxic emissions from the production process might have to be considered and trade-offs between these and the overall energy consumption might result.Goal, Scope and Background. Wood has many applications and it is often in competition with other materials. Chipboard is the most common item of wood-based materials and it has attained the highest economical development in recent years. Relevant up-to-date environmental data are needed to allow the environmental comparison of wood with other materials. There are several examples of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluations of some wood products and forest-technology systems, but no comprehensive Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data for particleboard manufacture is available in the literature. The main focus of this study is to generate a comprehensive LCI database for the manufacture of resin-bonded wood particleboards. Methods. In this work, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards and Ecoindicator 99 methodology were considered to quantify the potential environmental impact associated to the system under study. A Spanish factory considered representative of the 'state of art' was studied in detail. The system boundaries included all the activities taking place inside the factory as well as the activities associated with the production of the main chemicals used in the process, energy inputs and transport. All the data related to the inputs and outputs of the process were obtained by on-site measurements. Results and Discussion. LCI methodology was used for the quantification of the impacts of the particleboard manufacture. The inventory data of the three defined subsystems are described: Wood preparation: a comprehensive inventory of data including storage, debarking, particle production, storage and measurement of particles, drying and combustion of the bark for energy purposes. Board shaping: data related to particle classification, resin mixing, mattress formation and the pressing stage. Board finishing: cooling data, finishing, storage and distribution of the final product. The system was characterised with Ecoindicator 99 methodology (hierarchic version) in order to identify the 'hot spots'. Damage to Human Health was mainly produced by the subsystem of Board finishing. The subsystem of Board shaping was the most significant contributor to damage to the Ecosystem Quality and Resources. Conclusions. With the final aim of creating a database to identify and characterise the manufacture of particleboard, special attention was paid to the inventory analysis stage of the particleboard industry. A multicriteria approach was applied in order to define the most adequate use of wood wastes. Environmental, economic and social considerations strengthen the hypothesis that the use of forest residues in particleboard manufacture is more sustainable than their use as fuel. Recommendations and Outlook. In this work, particleboard was the product analysed, as it is one of the most common wood-based materials. Future work will focus on the study of another key wood board: Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF). Moreover, factors with strong geographical dependence, such as the electricity profile and final transport of the product, will be analysed. in addition, the definition of widespread functional unit to study the use of wood wastes at the end-of-life stage may be another issue Of Outstanding interest.Background, Aims and Scope. The problem of the evaluation of practitioner's belief and belief-related uncertainties on LCA results obtained from different methodological choices has been addressed so far by scenario modeling, Cultural Theory perspectives and probabilistic simulation. The direct evaluation of belief and related uncertainties could be of interest, e.g. when the information available (resulting from classical uncertainty analysis or the application of the precautionary principle) do not allow one to choose between methodological alternatives leading to different LCA results and conclusions. The difficulty of modeling belief arises from the additive nature of classical measures, e.g. probabilities. Since the 1960s, non-additive measures (e.g. possibilities) have been developed and applied to model belief in real world problems. The aim of this paper is to discuss the application of possibility measures in LCA for uncertainty analysis in complement to classical approaches. Methods. The nature and the meaning of possibilities are briefly introduced by comparison with probabilities (subjective or not) in order to enlighten strengths, drawbacks and complementarities. A tentative possibilistic approach based on the evaluation of a posteriori possibilities of final LCA results depending on a priori possibilities of the methodological choices behind the calculations is described, also by means of an application example. Results and Outlook. A new approach for the modeling of practitioner's belief and belief-related uncertainties in complement of classical methods of uncertainty analysis has been proposed for discussion. Uncertainty can be characterized by confidence intervals and indexes that could help practitioners in making methodological choices and could improve the interpretation and reliability of LCA results, still increasing its sophistication.Goal and Scope. The environmental performance of two ethanol fuel applications (E10 and E85) is compared (E10 fuel: a mixture of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline by volume, and E85 fuel: a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline by volume). Methods. Two types Of functional units are considered here: An ethanol production-oriented perspective and a traveling distance-oriented perspective. The ethanol production-oriented functional unit perspective reflects the fact that the ethanol fuel Supply (arable land or quantity of biomass used ill ethanol fuel) is constrained, while the traveling distance-oriented functional unit implies that the ethanol fuel supply is unlimited. Results and Discussion. In the ethanol production-oriented functional unit perspective, the E10 fuel application offers better environmental performance than the E85 fuel application in terms of natural resources used, nonrenewable energy and global warming. However, in the calculations based oil the traveling distance perspective, the E85 fuel application provides less environmental impacts in crude oil consumption, nonrenewable energy and global warming than the E10 fuel application. Conclusions and Outlook. The choice of functional units significantly affects the final results. Thus the functional unit ill a descriptive LCA should reflect as nearly as possible the actual situation associated with a product system. Considering the current situation of constrained ethanol fuel supply, the E10 fuel application offers better environmental performance in natural resources used, nonrenewable energy and global warming unless the fuel economy of all E85 fueled vehicle is close to that of an E10 fueled vehicle.Background, Aims and Scope. Telecommunication and information technology, dramatically emerged during the last decade, has generated environmental problems by accelerating mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal of personal computers (PCs) in Korea. In addition, it has led the Korean new economy. The Korean government has encouraged researchers and industry to study the environmental impact, adequate disposal treatment, and the reasonable recycling rate of an end-of-life personal computer. The main purpose of this research is to investigate the life cycle environmental impact of PCs and to determine the desirable or feasible recycle rate of in end-of-life PC. An LCA on a PC was performed based on different recycling scenario. Target audiences are new product developers, designers, product recovery managers and environmental policy makers who are interested in the environmental impact of PCs and recycling of end-of-life products. Methods. A target product is a Pentium W personal computer made in Korea in 2001, excluding the monitor and peripheral equipment. The procedure of the LCA followed the ISO14040 series. System boundary includes the entire life cycle of the product, including pre-manufacturing (the electrical parts and components manufacturing), manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal. The LCI and impact assessment database for a PC was constructed using SIMAPRO version 4.0 software and LCI information was compiled by site-specific data and the Korean national database. The LCA was performed on different recycling scenarios: one being that of the current recycling rate of 46%, and the other being the ideal condition of a 100% recycling rate. Results and Discussion. Abiotic depletion, global warming, ecotoxicity, human toxicity, acidification, ozone layer depletion, photo-oxidant formation, and eutrophication are adopted as the impact categories. The pre-manufacturing stage was a significant stage for all of the environmental parameters, besides human toxicity potential. PC manufacturing consists of rather simple processes such as assembly and packaging. For improving the environmental performance of PCs, environmental management approaches of design for the environment and green procurement are recommended. The use stage had a significant potential due to the electricity consumption produced by burning fossil fuel. The disposal stage's contribution to environmental impact was largest in human toxicity, and second largest in ozone layer depletion potential. The PC recycling was shown to inhibit all environmental impacts with the exception of the ozone depletion and ecotoxicity potential. The increase of light oil, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and deoxidating agent consumption during the recycling process contributes to the environmental impact of ozone and ecotoxicity parameters. Current recovery and recycling technologies should be taken into account for enhancing the benefits of recycling. Anyway, the effectiveness of recycling was highlighted by this study. PC recycling reduces the total environmental impact of the product. The PC recycling is recommended to be raised up to at least 63% in order to reduce the environmental burdens of a PC in other life cycle stages. Conclusion and Recommendation. This study implies that design for the environment (DfE) in the product design stage and green procurement are recommended for improving the entire environmental performance of electronic equipment such as PCs. The recycling of waste PCs clearly reduces the environmental burden. There are, however, trade-offs among environmental parameters according to the PC recycling rate. Current recycling methods are not effective in reducing ozone depletion and ecotoxicity environmental impact. The product recovery is another key for efficient recycling. Efficient reverse logistics to collect and transport end-of-life PCs should be taken into account to enhance recycling effects. There were several electrical parts not included in this assessment, due to the unavailability of adequate data. Further studies with more detail and reliable inventories for electrical parts and sub-components are recommended. Furthermore, costs of recycling should also be treated in further research.Aim, Scope and Background. The environmental and energy parameters of Photovoltaic systems play a very important role when compared to conventional power systems. In the present paper, a typical PV-system is analyzed to its elements and in assessment of the material and energy requirements during tie production procedures is attempted. An LCA is being performed on the system of production of photovoltaics. Main Features. An energy analysis is extended to the production of the primary energy carriers. This allows having a complete picture of the life cycle of all the PV-components described in the present study. Four different scenarios are examined in detail providing every possible aspect of scientific interest involving multicrystalline PV systems. Methods and Tools. In order to obtain concrete results from this study, the specific working tools used are: the energy payback time (EPBT) and the electricity production efficiency (EPE). A process that relates inventory information with relevant concerns about natural resource usage is attempted. Conlusions. As a final stage of this work, it is assumed that photovoltaics are used in a small island economy, with the hypothesis of a total replacement of the existing conventional power diesel unit. A comparison between the two power systems shows the benefits of an extended use of PV-systems. EPBT and EPE results indicate PV-systems' great potential in producing electricity using limited resources during the several steps of their life cycle. Recommendation. Technological improvements need to be done in the manufacture of BOS-components which consume during their life cycle almost equal amounts of energy as the photovoltaic modules.Organisations today face increasing environmental constraints, e.g. in the form of legal and customer requirements; the defence sector is no exception. There is a need to evaluate and limit environmental effects of defence activities and materiel. In this study we used quantitative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and a method for simplified LCA (the Material, Energy, Chemicals and Others (MECO) method) to assess the environmental impacts of a grenade. The aims of the study are to identify aspects in the grenade's life-cycle that have the largest environmental impact, suggest improvement possibilities, make a comparison between different approaches for waste management of munitions, and to perform a demonstrative case for the application of LCA to munitions. Significant environmental aspects of the grenade's life-cycle include use of metals, use of fossil fuels, and detonation outdoors. The study shows that an LCA can be used to analyse environmental impacts from munitions. The simplified LCA gave information that is complementary to the quantitative LCA. (c) 2005 Society of Chemical IndustryInfluence of soil properties and aging on Cu partitioning and toxicity was assessed on 10 artificial soils constituted using a statistical design considering pH (5.5 and 7.5), organic matter (1-30% [w/w]), and clay content (5-35% [w/w]). Total Cu as well as water-, CaCl2-, and diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA)-extracted Cu fractions were determined for each soil mixture. Ecotoxic effect was assessed by determining growth inhibition of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and compost worm (Eisenia fetida) mortality. Analyses were repeated after a 16-wk aging period of the soils at pH 7.5 (8 x 2-wk wetting and drying cycle). Results indicated that pH was the main factor controlling Cu partitioning, ahead of organic matter and clay content. Calcium chloride (0.5 M)-extracted Cu fractions showed the best correlation with toxic responses (r = 0.55-0.66; p < 0.05), while total and DTPA-extracted Cu concentrations could not explain differences in toxicity. Direct regressions between toxicity and soil properties (pH, organic matter, and clay content) provided better explanation of variance: r(2) = 0.50 (p = 0.00006) for compost worm mortality, r(2) = 0.77 (p < 0.00001) for barley shoot inhibition, and r(2) = 0.92 (p < 0.00001) for barley root inhibition. Copper toxicity was mainly influenced by pH and, to a lesser extent, by organic matter and clay content. Aging in organic soils revealed a slight reduction in ecotoxicity while an increase was observed in soils with low organic matter content. Further investigation using longer aging periods would be necessary to assess the significance of this observation.Office buildings are thought to be significant sources of energy use and emissions in industrialized countries, but quantitative assessments of all of the phases of the service life of office buildings are still quite rare. In order to enable environmentally conscious design and management, this paper presents life-cycle assessments of newly constructed European and U.S. office buildings from materials production through construction, use, and maintenance to end-of-life treatment. The significant environmental aspects indicate the dominance of the use phase in the quantified environmental categories, but draw attention to the importance of embedded materials and expected maintenance investments throughout the assumed 50-year service life, especially for particulate matter emissions. The relevance of the materials, construction, maintenance, and end-of-life phases relative to the use of buildings is expected to increase considerably as functional obsolescence of office buildings becomes more rapid, and complete reconstruction and reconfiguration become more frequent. By quantifying the energy use and environmental emissions of each life-cycle phase in more detail, the elements that cause significant emissions can be identified and targeted for improvement.This paper describes the application of life cycle assessment for evaluating various waste management options in Singapore, a small-island city state. The impact assessment method by SimaPro is carried out for comparing the potential environmental impacts of waste treatment options including landfilling, incineration, recycling, and composting. The inventory data include gases and leachate from landfills, air emissions and energy recovery from incinerators, energy (and emission) savings from recycling, composting gases, and transport pollution. The impact assessment results for climate change, acidification, and ecotoxicity show that the incineration of materials imposes considerable harm to both human health and the environment, especially for the burning of plastics, paper/cardboard, and ferrous metals. The results also show that, although some amount of energy can be derived from the incineration of wastes, these benefits are outweighed by the air pollution (heavy metals and dioxins/furans) that incinerators produce. For Singapore, landfill gases and leachate generate minimal environmental damage because of the nation's policy to landfill only 10% of the total disposed wastes. Land transportation and separation of waste materials also pose minimal environmental damage. However, sea transportation to the landfill could contribute significantly to acidification because of the emissions of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides from barges. The composting of horticultural wastes hardly imposes any environmental damage. Out of all the waste strategies, the recycling of wastes offers the best solution for environmental protection and improved human health for the nation. Significant emission savings can be realized through recycling.This study provides an empirical assessment of energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emmissions associated with high and low residential development. Three major elements of urban development are considered: construction materials for infrastructure (including residential dwellings, utilities, and roads), building operations, and transportation (private automobiles and public transit). Two case studies from the City of Toronto are analyzed. An economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) model is applied to estimate the energy use and GHG emissions associated with the manufacture of construction materials for infrastructure. Operational requirements for dwellings and transportation are estimated using nationally and/or regionally averaged data. The results indicate that the most targeted measures to reduce GHG emissions in an urban development context should be aimed at transportation emissions, while the most targeted measures to reduce energy usage should focus on building operations. The results also show that low-density suburban development is more energy and GHG intensive (by a factor of 2.0-2.5) than high-density urban core development on a per capita basis. When the functional unit is changed to a per unit of living space basis the factor decreases to 1.0-1.5, illustrating that the choice of functional unit is highly relevant to a full understanding of urban density effects.The overall goal of this study was to evaluate the environmental performance of the process currently used to package and palletize ceramic floor and wall tiles, and to propose and analyse improvements from an environmental point of view. After developing a life cycle inventory of the primary and tertiary packaging, the life cycle assessment was applied according to mandatory and optional elements of ISO 14042. The results are presented in three parts: the first quantifies the environmental behaviour of the current packaging system, the second examines strategies focused on minimizing the environmental burdens of such critical elements, and the third quantifies the environmental improvements, compared with the initial situation, that are obtained with the application of each improvement. The simultaneous incorporation of all the proposed improvements into the packaging system can reduce impact within the 18-45% range, depending on the impact method that is applied. Copyright (C) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This study is a life-cycle analysis of the balance of system (BOS) components of the 3.5 MWP multi-crystalline PV installation at Tucson Electric Power's (TEP) Springerville, AZ field PV plant. TEP instituted all innovative PV installation program guided by design optimization and cost minimization. The advanced design of the PV structure incorporated the weight of the PV modules as all element of support design, thereby eliminating the need for concrete foundations. The estimate of the life-cycle energy requirements embodied in the BOS is 542 MJ/m(2), a 71% reduction front those of all older central plant; the corresponding life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are 29 kg CO2 eq./m(2). From field measurements, the energy payback time (EPT) of the BOS is 0.21 years for the actual location of this plant, and 0.37 years for average US insolation/temperature conditions. This is a great improvement from the EPT of about 1.3 years, estimated for all older central plant. The total cost of the balance of system components was $940 US per kW(P) of installed PV, all other milestone in improvement. These results were verified with data from different databases and further tested with sensitivity- and data-uncertainty analyses. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Many companies are beginning to change the way they develop products due to increasing awareness of sustainable development. Designers, who play a key role in product development, are being asked to incorporate environmental criteria into the design process. The need for analytically based conceptual design methods for integrated life-cycle assessment (LCA) has motivated the development of an approximate life-cycle assessment concept based upon learning algorithms. Although preliminary tests on general approximate models showed promise, it was observed that grouping products to create specialized learning surrogate LCA models for different classes of products might further improve results. This paper presents work to develop an automated classification system to support the specialization of surrogate LCA models for different groups of products. Hierarchical clustering is used to guide a systematic identification of product groups based upon environmental categories. These groupings are then used to create automated classification schemes using the C4.5 decision tree algorithm. Although further data are needed to induce good generalization performance, resulting product classification systems are considered to be a viable approach to support specialized learning surrogate LCA models for different classes of products. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The paper compares selected life cycle-based (well-to-wheel) studies of fuel/propulsion alternatives for light-duty vehicles with a focus on lignocellulose-derived fuels (hydrogen, Fischer Tropsch liquids, and ethanol). Inter- and intra-study comparisons are completed and analyses are conducted to account for the variability due to differing assumptions surrounding energy accounting and vehicle characteristics. For lignocellulose-derived fuels used in relevant propulsion systems, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions are on average 96% lower for hydrogen, 91% lower for Fischer Tropsch liquids and 86% lower for ethanol as compared to the reference gasoline pathway. Key issues found to impact study results are assumptions regarding feedstock characteristics, vehicle propulsion system efficiency, land use changes and associated carbon sequestration, nitrous oxide emissions due to agricultural practices, co-product allocation, energy accounting practices, and expected progress on commercial-scale fuel production processes and associated infrastructure. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Saving of bath chemicals and freshwater Consumed within metal finishing systems and the reduction of wastewater produced can be important steps towards more sustainable processes. Furthermore, the application of regenerators is usually energy intensive. Accordingly, in an "eco-eco" (ECO) trade-off, importance should be given to both economic benefits as well as to several ecological measures. The approach presented here is the synthesis of in ECO-optimal reuse and recovery network (RRN) based on a simultaneous multi-objective system optimization model with dynamically chosen environmental objective. It includes a conventional cost objective and the potential environmental impact of the system. This second objective is represented by the maximal relative increase of indicator results. This, in turn, derives from a sensitivity analysis of life cycle inventory analysis (LCIA) integrated into mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). This means, the LCA-rule, which claims that environmental indicators must not be aggregated, can be adhered strictly. In the case study, the synthesis procedure for eco-optimal design is applied to a large scale phosphating. Depending on the weighting ratio for the representative impact factor and the cost in the objective function, Pareto-optimal solution sets were calculated allowing to assess different eco-optimal RRN alternatives and to find a way out of the main dilemma between the contradicting behavior of energy demand and wastewater production. Up to 74% improvement in tennis of environmental indicators could be realized at low cost increase. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The impact assessment phase of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has received much criticism due to lack of consistency. While the ISO standards for LCA did make great strides in advancing the consensus in this area, ISO is not prescriptive, but has left much room for innovation and therefore inconsistency. To address this lack of consistency, there is currently an effort underway to provide a conceptual framework for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and a recommended practice to include a list of impact categories, category indicators, and underlying methodologies. This is an enormous undertaking, especially in light of the current fundamental lack of consensus of the basic elements to be included in a LCIA (e.g., impact categories, impacts, and areas of protection). ISO 14042 requires selection of impact categories that "reflect a comprehensive set of environmental issues" related to the system being studied, especially for "comparative assertions" that involve public marketing claims. To be comprehensive, it is necessary to have a listing of impacts that "could" be included within the LCIA before entering into discussions of impacts that "should" be included. In addition to providing a critical analysis of existing and emerging impact assessment approaches, this paper will formulate a structured representation that allows more informed selection of approaches. The definitions and relationships between midpoint, endpoint, damage, and areas of protection will be presented in greater detail, along with the equations that are common to many of the approaches Finally, a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of displaying results at various stages in the environmental models will be presented in great detail.Groundwater remediation technologies, such as pump-and-treat (PTS) and funnel-and-gate systems (FGS), aim at reducing locally appearing contaminations. Therefore, these methodologies are basically evaluated with respect to their capability to yield local improvements of an environmental situation, commonly neglecting that their application is also associated with secondary impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) represents a widely accepted method of assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts related to a product, process or service. This study presents the set-up of a LCA framework in order to compare the secondary impacts caused by two conceptually different technologies at the site of a former manufactured gas plant in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. As a FGS is already operating at this site, a hypothetical PTS of the same functionality is adopted. During the LCA, the remediation systems are evaluated by focusing on the main technical elements and their significance with respect to resource depletion and potential adverse effects on ecological quality, as well as on human health. Seven impact categories are distinguished to address a broad spectrum of possible environmental loads. A main point of discussion is the reliability of technical assumptions and performance predictions for the future. It is obvious that a high uncertainty exists when estimating impact specific indicator values over operation times of decades. An uncertainty analysis is conducted to include the imprecision of the underlying emission and consumption data and a scenario analysis is utilised to contrast various possible technological variants. Though the results of the study are highly site-specific, a generalised relative evaluation of potential impacts and their main sources is the principle objective rather than a discussion of the calculated absolute impacts. A crucial finding that can be applied to any other site is the central role of steel, which particularly derogates the valuation of FGS due to the associated emissions that are harmful to human health. In view of that, environmental credits can be achieved by selecting a mineral-based wall instead of sheet piles for the funnel construction and by minimising the steel consumption for the gate construction. Granular activated carbon (GAC) is exclusively considered as the treatment material, both in-situ and on-site. Here it is identified as an additional main determinant of the relative assessment of the technologies since it is continuously consumed. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A district heating (DH) system usually covers a local heat market only. Each system is characterised. by a unique size, load profile and set of heat supply technologies. This diversity makes it difficult to analyse changes in the DH sector of a country as a whole. In national energy systems modelling and in life cycle assessment (LCA), the DH systems are typically, for practical reasons, aggregated to one national system, which is then subjected to changes. In order to investigate if this aggregated systems level indeed is sufficient for policy analysis purposes, two commonly used aggregation methods are validated against a third, newly developed model, here denoted the HEATSPOT model, covering 99% of the Swedish DH production. The approach used in this model is that all DH systems are described system by system and rational responses of the systems to changes in e.g. fuel prices or policy measures are calculated locally for the respective systems before the results are aggregated to a national level. The validation is carried out using results from a study on expansion of waste-fuel based DH production in Sweden in terms of changes in fuel supply and CO2-emissions. The work clearly shows that the resulting changes in fuel supply deviate considerably with choice of method. Regarding for example the change in biomass supply, the deviations are between - 23 and + 9% compared to the HEATSPOT results dependent on aggregation method used. The deviations in resulting fuel supply between the methods will, in turn, also lead to considerable deviations in CO2-emissions from the DH sector. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The appropriateness of the fossil Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) as an indicator for the environmental performance of products and processes is explored with a regression analysis between the environmental life-cycle impacts and fossil CEDs of 1218 products, divided into the product categories "energy production", "material production", "transport", and "waste treatment". Our results show that, for all product groups but waste treatment, the fossil CED correlates well with most impact categories, such as global warming, resource depletion, acidification, eutrophication, tropospheric ozone formation, ozone depletion, and human toxicity (explained variance between 46% and 100%). We conclude that the use of fossil fuels is an important driver of several environmental impacts and thereby indicative for many environmental problems. It may therefore serve as a screening indicator for environmental performance. However, the usefulness of fossil CED as a stand-alone indicator for environmental impact is limited by the large uncertainty in the product-specific fossil CED-based impact scores (larger than a factor of 10 for the majority of the impact categories; 95% confidence interval). A major reason for this high uncertainty is nonfossil energy related emissions and land use, such as landfill leachates, radionuclide emissions, and land use in agriculture and forestry.Recycling is an important activity of our developed economies, which creates a dynamic resource of secondary raw materials that behaves as a mine continuously replenished with new iron units. Because recycled materials (e.g. steel scrap) are usually chemically close to the material, to the cycle of which they contribute (steel), they also require less energy and have a lesser impact on the environment than the same materials if they were produced from virgin sources (iron ore). Recycling is especially important in developed countries with a historical background of industrial activities, as they can help reduce the dependency on primary raw materials that are concentrated in a few far-away geographical locations in the world. All of this applies to iron and steel. Paradoxically though, recycling is not fully integrated in the tool which is most commonly used as a metric of the environmental impact of human activities on the environment, i.e. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). There is much freedom left to the LCA practitioner to choose how he wants to take recycling into account, which is somewhat of a conundrum as LCA is often used to define policy in government, business and society circles and, as such, ought to be based on a sound, objective, extensive and unbiased description of recycling as a practice, not as a future development or a commitment for the future. This paper proposes a methodology for taking recycling into account within LCA tools with the view of meeting these reality criteria. The reasoning for choosing the methodology is exposed step by step, as the reader is led through various methods that are possible and/or available for doing it and a criticism of each of them is proposed on the way. The final proposal is centered on the multiple-recycling model, which best describes the practical way that materials are actually recycled in the economy. The model centers on a set of iron units, which originate from virgin raw material, an iron ore mine as far as iron is concerned, are then used in the economy and are finally recycled over and over again, with a recycling rate less than unity. Some material is "lost" at each step for recycling, but not for the Life Cycle Inventory, as it goes through its end-of-life (EOL) whenever it leaves the recycling loop. For example, 1 ton of iron produced from iron ore will produce 5 t of steel used several times in the economy (with a recycling rate of 80%) and eventually a cumulated I t of EOL iron. This is what constitutes the functional unit on which the LCA is carried out. From a practical standpoint, the results obtained for this complex functional unit are attributed to steel on the basis of a specific value (e.g. t of CO, per t of steel), which amounts to averaging the impact over the various steps of the recycling process on a weighted average basis, depending on the amount of material recycled at each step. The paper proposes the detailed method for carrying this out, while identifying the fairly large number of parameters that describe the recycling practice. Of course, the expert LCA practitioner can implement the methodology in all its complexity by himself, but it would be simpler and more user-friendly to pre-calculate the effects of recycling and to include them in the Life Cycle Inventory of Steel. This is what we propose as the best solution for the future.Contaminated sediments and other sites present a difficult challenge for environmental decisionmakers. They are typically slow to recover or attenuate naturally, may involve multiple regulatory agencies and stakeholder groups, and engender multiple toxicological and ecotoxicological risks. While environmental decision-making strategies over the last several decades have evolved into increasingly more sophisticated, information-intensive, and complex approaches, there remains considerable dissatisfaction among business, industry, and the public with existing management strategies. Consequently, contaminated sediments and materials are the subject of intense technology development, such as beneficial reuse or in situ treatment. However, current decision analysis approaches, such as comparative risk assessment, benefit-cost analysis, and life cycle assessment, do not offer a comprehensive approach for incorporating the varied types of information and multiple stakeholder and public views that must typically be brought to bear when new technologies are under consideration. Alternatively, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) offers a scientifically sound decision framework for management of contaminated materials or sites where stakeholder participation is of crucial concern and criteria such as economics, environmental impacts, safety, and risk cannot be easily condensed into simple monetary expressions. This article brings together a multidisciplinary review of existing decision-making approaches at regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe and synthesizes state-of-the-art research in MCDA methods applicable to the assessment of contaminated sediment management technologies. Additionally, it tests an MCDA approach for coupling expert judgment and stakeholder values in a hypothetical contaminated sediments management case study wherein MCDA is used as a tool for testing stakeholder responses to and improving expert assessment of innovative contaminated sediments technologies.A new model has been developed for evaluating the overall resource consumption and environmental impacts of municipal solid waste management systems by the use of life cycle assessment. The model is named EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technologies) and is able to compare different waste management strategies, waste treatment methods and waste process technologies. The potential environmental impacts can be traced back to the most important processes and waste fractions that contribute to the relevant impacts. A model like EASEWASTE can be used by waste planners to optimize current waste management systems with respect to environmental achievements and by authorities to Set Guidelines and regulations and to evaluate different strategies for handling of waste. The waste hierarchy has for decades been governing waste management but the ranking of handling approaches may not always be the most environmentally friendly. The EASEWASTE model can identify the most environmentally sustainable solution, which may differ among waste materials and regions and can add valuable information about environmental achievements from each process in a solid waste management system.A new computer based life cycle assessment model (EASE-WASTE) was used to evaluate a municipal solid waste system with the purpose of identifying environmental benefits and disadvantages by anaerobic digestion of source-separated household waste and incineration. The most important processes that were included in the study are optical sorting and pre-treatment, anaerobic digestion with heat and power recovery, incineration with heat and power recovery, use of digested biomass on arable soils and finally, an estimated surplus consumption of plastic in order to achieve a higher quality and quantity of organic waste to the biogas plant. Results showed that there were no significant differences in most of the assessed environmental impacts for the two scenarios. However, the use of digested biomass may cause a potential toxicity impact on human health due to the heavy metal content of the organic waste. A sensitivity analysis showed that the results are sensitive to the energy recovery efficiencies, to the extra plastic consumption for waste bags and to the content of heavy metals in the waste. A model such as EASE-WASTE is very suitable for evaluating the overall environmental consequences of different waste management strategies and technologies, and can be used for most waste material fractions existing in household waste.In this work, the authors intend to introduce to the scientific community a novel integrated approach to environmental impact assessment, appropriately named SUstainability Multicriteria Multiscale Assessment (SUMMA). Its main objective is to overcome the inherent shortcomings of all single-criterion approaches, which constitute the vast majority of the Life Cycle Assessments performed to date in the scientific literature, and which invariably lead to partial and often misleading results. Furthermore, SUMMA is structured so as to enable a consistent sensitivity analysis of all the calculated impact indicators, a procedure that is of crucial importance for assessing the variability and reliability of the results, but which is only rarely adopted. The suggested framework is applied to selected case studies (coal gasification, bauxite mining, aluminium production and fuel cell manufacture), the results of which are discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Although re-refining of spent lubricating oils (used oils) has been practiced with varying technical and commercial success for over the past 50 years, a sustainable processing technology has yet to become widely accepted. Poor on-stream efficiency, inconsistent product quality, and careless management of feedstock contaminants and byproducts have often resulted in widespread environmental problems and poor economics. Environmentally-conscious design of processes and products is increasingly viewed as an integral strategy in the sustainable development of new refining and chemical processes. Life cycle assessment is becoming the preferred methodology for comparing the environmental impacts of competing processes. A life cycle analyses of a promising new re-refining technology, the HyLube (TM) process, has been undertaken to quantify the intrinsic benefits of HyLube re-refining over the current practice of recovering used oils for fuel value.The principles regarding the conversion of solar thermal power have been known for more than a century, however its commercial exploitation and the construction of plants on an industrial scale did not occur until the mid 1980's. The first pilot plants that were built in various countries around the world tested their technological, economic and environmental performance and gave highly encouraging results. One of the emerging technologies of the solar thermal sector is the so-called Dish - Stirling system which transmits thermal energy, collected by a paraboloidal dish reflector, to a Stirling engine connected up to an alternator. That renewable energy technologies, particularly in the production phase, are currently those that generate a lower environmental impact compared to traditional fossil fuel systems is now well-established. Despite this, many studies fail to include an evaluation of the impacts generated by systems designed and built for energy production over their entire life cycle. The aim of this paper is to provide, with the aid of LCA, a preliminary environmental assessment analysis of a paraboloidal dish solar thermal power plant.Implementation of renewable wind and solar energy sources instead of fossil fuels to produce such energy carriers as electricity and hydrogen facilitates reductions in gaseous emissions. Unlike for traditional fossil fuel technologies, greenhouse gas emissions from renewable technologies are associated mainly with the construction of a power plant. With present costs of wind and solar electricity, it is shown that, when electricity from renewable sources replaces electricity from natural gas, the cost of greenhouse gas emissions abatement is about four times less than the cost if hydrogen from renewable sources replaces hydrogen produced from natural gas. When renewable-based hydrogen is used instead of gasoline in a fuel cell vehicle, the cost of greenhouse gas emissions reduction approaches the same value as for renewable-based electricity only if the fuel cell vehicle efficiency exceeds significantly (i.e., by about two times) that of an internal combustion vehicle. It is also shown that when 6000 turbines (Kenetech KVS-33) with a capacity 350 kW and a capacity factor of 24% replace a 500-MW gas-fired power generation plant with an efficiency of 40%, annual greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 2.3 megatons. The incremental additional annual cost is about $280 million (US). The results provide a useful approach to an optimal strategy for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation.This paper examines the definition of a CO2 credit within the context of geological storage. At present, there is no international standard in place for the calculation Of CO2 emission reduction credits from geological storage. The determination of the gross storage of CO2 in a geological setting is relatively easy through the use of standard metering systems at the wellhead. This does not account for the many factors that could be considered to affect the net storage of CO2. Net calculations will require the development of standards that are consistent with other forms of storage (biological storage for example) and will include surface leakage, length of time storage is required, definition of the injection zone, subsurface CO2 migration, recycling penalties, etc. The CO2 credit may well be less than the gross amount of CO2 injected because of any CO2 penalty that might be imposed. This could be considered as a discount factor that would be applied to each tonne of CO2 stored in the subsurface. Determining a discount factor will require a complete understanding of the lifecycle of the CO2 injected into the subsurface, including projections of the fate of this CO2 over time. Allocation of emissions at various stages of the lifecycle will be achieved by application of a clear set of definitions that will allow these emissions to be inventoried. There will need to be a clear understanding of what is meant by leakage and of how the inventories will be developed. This paper focuses on the assessment of net and gross storage calculations for the CO2 to be injected into the subsurface, with a brief review of some of the issues requiring definition to assess subsurface net storage calculations.Greenhouse gas and criteria air contaminants associated with motor vehicles are major items in the national inventories of these emissions. While exhaust after-treatment technology has achieved dramatic reductions in the emissions of criteria air contaminants (CC, HQ NOx, PM), alternative technologies for comparable GHG emission reductions are much more challenging. The use of renewable energy forms, or alternative fuels with lower carbon intensity are engineering responses that require careful assessment on a location specific basis before the emission reductions benefits can be accurately assessed. Life-cycle analysis tools such as NRCan's GHGenius model have been developed to serve as analytical frameworks and assist in such assessment This paper starts by reviewing the issues involved in the life-cycle analysis of alternative transportation technologies, and the available life-cycle tools such as Life Cycle Emissions Model (LEM), GHGenius and Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model. The paper then examines the case of compressed natural gas (CNG) vs. diesel from the perspective of a hypothetical Clean Development mechanism (CDM) project for the CNG transit bus fleet in Beijing that was completed as part of the Canada-China Cooperation for Climate Change program.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a "cradle-to-grave" (or "well-to-wheels') approach for assessing industrial systems. "Cradle-to-grave" begins with the gathering of raw materials from the earth to create the product and ends at the point when all materials are returned to the earth. LCA evaluates all stages of a product's life from the perspective that they are interdependent (i.e. meaning that one operation leads to the next). LCA enables the estimation of the cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in the product life cycle, often including impacts not considered in more traditional analyses (e.g. raw material extraction, material transportation, ultimate product disposal). By including the impacts throughout the product life cycle, LCA provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of the product or process and a more accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs in product selection. The GHGenius model has been developed for Natural Resources Canada over the past seven years. It is based on the 1998 version of Dr. Mark Delucchi's Lifecycle Emissions Model (LEM). GHGenius is capable of analyzing greenhouse gas (GHG) and many criteria air contaminant emissions associated with the production and use of traditional and alternative transportation fuels. Additionally, it considers a few circumstances where the fuels could be used in stationary applications rather than for transportation. GHGenius can estimate air emissions for past, present and future years (through to 2050). This is done using historical data and correlations that are stored in the model for changes with time. GHGenius can perform LCA either for specific regions (east, central or west) of Canada, the United States and Mexico or for each country as a whole. The most comprehensive data in GHGenius is for Canadian applications.Historically, cost has been the primary factor driving the specification of building envelope components and systems. Recent trends towards environmentally conscious design and construction have resulted in a focus on the environmental impacts of material selection, with emphasis on a life cycle approach. This paper will demonstrate how one might use a life cycle analysis approach to determine optimal insulation levels with a sole focus on environmental impact. The demonstration will include an analysis of commercial roof insulation and residential attic insulation taking into consideration their respective environmental life cycle burdens and operating energy environmental impacts. Embodied environmental material impacts will be estimated using ATHENA's Environmental Impact Estimator software. The ATHENA software is a Canadian developed and internationally recognized means of obtaining comprehensive and reliable environmental life cycle burdens of building assemblies. It covers building material and system life cycle stages from the "cradle" (natural resource extraction or recycling facility) through to its "end-of-life" (grave). For this paper, results reporting of material effects will include embodied energy and global warming potential as indicators of environmental burden. For this paper, two Ottawa buildings will be simulated several times. Each of the simulations will have identical building properties, with the exception of roof or attic insulation, which will vary by amount for each simulation. The analysis will focus on the operational differences between the various roof insulation options, and the development of the operational environmental effects of these different options. For the commercial building, operational energy will be estimated using a DOE 2.2 based whole building operating energy simulator such as EQUEST or EE-4. The building used for the modeling will be an existing two-storey commercial office building. The residential building will be simulated using HOT 2000 software from NRCan. These simulation software systems will allow detailed analysis of building materials and systems including the effects of HVAC systems, envelope systems, geometry, size and location. The paper will present "payback periods " based not on cost, but on environmental effects, for different amounts of insulation. We will demonstrate a method to determine the level of insulation at which the material environmental burden of the insulation exceeds the operational benefits of the insulation. The process used will demonstrate a method to allow building designers the opportunity to base their decision making with respect to roof or attic insulation on environmental effects rather than cost.The production of ceramic tiles has significant influence to environment due to consumption of energy sources, raw material, emission and waste that emerges throughout the production. The life cycle assessment method is used to show and test the possibility of decreasing the influence of contemporary manufacturing process of ceramic tiles to environment. The ceramic tiles are produced in monofiring production technology as a part of integrated management system using international accepted standards for quality ISO 9001 and for management environment ISO 14001. The influence of life cycle phases of ceramic tiles and total influence to environment is determined by usage of EKO indicator 99. We tested the possibility of using data obtained by evaluation to management decisions about the decreasing the influence of production process as a life cycle phase through the decreasing of energy consumption and natural resources. The consumption of energy sources as gas and electricity was reduced by using the projects for increasing the power efficiency. The savings in gas consumption are achieved by building in unit for supplying with waste warm from oven to atomizer and electronic equipment for atomizer automatic control. The procedures for decreasing the electricity consumption are also used.The Systems and Information Engineering Department at the University of Virginia has teamed with the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services since 2000 to develop WebCAT, the Web-based Crime Analysis Toolkit. WebCAT provides crime analysts with a tool to access Virginia's statewide crime data and effectively analyze it. The authors have prepared WebCAT for deployment by finishing its development, conducting an integrated system performance evaluation, and performing a life cycle analysis. Regarding deployment, the data acquisition, query time efficiency, and spatial mapping capabilities have been improved. A performance evaluation assessed the effectiveness of WebCAT's developments to ensure that it is now a more efficient tool. Finally, the life cycle analysis provided a methodology for maintaining WebCAT after deployment. The work done this year guarantees that WebCAT is not only ready for deployment, but also that it will be a sustainable toolkit that will aid in crime prevention in years to come.Nanotechnology is a rapidly growing field fraught with uncertainty due to the still nascent efforts to understand its potential health risks and ecosystem dynamics. Yet, nanotechnology, like other still-emerging technologies, provides fertile territory for establishing an "upstream" management system that minimizes future risks while still in research and design. Thus, to identify the characteristics of such a proactive nano management system, gap analyses were performed on the sustainable engineering frameworks: Twelve Principles of Green Engineering, Earth Systems Engineering and Management, Life Cycle Assessment, and Cradle to Cradle, with economic, socio-cultural, environmental, and technical criteria, using buckyballs (endohedral metallofullerenes), as a case study nanomaterial. It was determined that, partly due to the unavailability of most quantitative life cycle data, and the need for modifications of these frameworks to function both as proactive as well as nano-specific, it is premature to identify a specific optimal framework. Thus, a "hybrid" framework made partly from the tools, principles, and values of the existing methods like the ones analyzed here is proposed.Ethanol is a renewable fuel that can be produced in small farm-scale plants as well as in medium- and large-scale industrial plants for use in e.g. heavy diesel engines. The purpose of this study was to analyse whether the use of a small-scale production system reduced the environmental load in comparison to a medium- and a large-scale system. Therefore, a limited life cycle assessment (LCA), including air emissions and energy requirements, was carried out for the three plant sizes. For the small plant and with physical allocation, the global-warming potential was 31.5 g CO2-eq/MJ(fuel), the acidification potential was 198 mg SO2-eq/MJ(fuel), the eutrophication potential was 30.9 mg PO43--eq/MJ(fuel), the photochemical ozone creation potential was 13.8 mg C2H4-eq/MJ(fuel) and the energy requirement 359 kJ/MJ(fuel). It was shown that the differences in environmental impact and energy requirement between small-, medium- and large-scale systems were small. The longer transport distances to a certain degree Outweighed the higher energy efficiency and the more efficient use of machinery and buildings in the large-scale system. The dominating production step was the cultivation, in which production of fertilisers, followed by soil emissions and tractive power, made major contributions to the environmental load. The choice of allocation method had a certain influence on the difference between the scales, whereas the influence Of uncertainty in input data and of some alternative production strategies was small. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to show the effectiveness of porous residential buildings in hot and humid regions in the light of cooling load and CO2 emission reductions. Thermal and Airflow Network analysis and LCA analysis are used for these simulations. Two scales of voids, namely building-scale voids and component-scale voids are considered. In the previous paper (Hirano et at. Building and Environment, forthcoming), it was revealed that building-scale voids are substantially effective in terms of reducing the cooling load. This paper firstly focuses on the cooling load reduction effects of component-scale voids, then moves on to the CO2 emission reduction effects of both component- and building-scale voids. Additionally, other environmentally friendly techniques are examined in order to assess the feasibility of the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) charter, which sets the target that new buildings should extend their service life up to 100 years as well as reduce Life-Cycle CO2 (LCCO2) emission by 30%. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability of building construction and its services is increasingly drawing attention. In this respect CIBSE has issued a number of calls to industry. Solar water heating systems are now economically competitive and are being used throughout the world. Following earlier work of the present authors on the life cycle assessment (LCA) for building components,(1,2) this work presents a monetary, energy usage and environmental impact assessment for solar water heaters. It has been shown herein that for a developing country like Pakistan where large amounts of hot water are required within industry, solar water heating offers favorable payback periods on each of the above three counts. It has been estimated that under the tested conditions, the embodied energy payback period for the plain and finned heater is equivalent to 185 days and 169 days respectively. It has also been found that the amount of carbon released during the construction process of plain and finned water heaters is 27.9 kg and 29.7 kg respectively. Annual carbon saving for the plain and finned water heaters has been calculated to be equivalent to 59.5 kg and 69.6 kg respectively, which in turn gives a carbon payback period of 156 days and 171 days. The monetary payback period for the plain and finned heater has been found to be equivalent to 6.7 years and 6.1 years respectively.Purpose - This paper proposes an integrated methodology for process design to guide decision making under uncertainty by combining life cycle assessment (LCA) with multi-criteria decision-making tools. Design/methodology/approach - Cleaner and greener technologies for process and product selection and design have gained popularity in recent years. The LCA is a systematic approach that enables selection of cleaner and greener products and processes. Recently, significant progress has been made for the use of LCA for product/process evaluation and selection. However, its use in process design and environmental decision making has not been fully exploited. The proposed methodology GreenPro-I is a systematic approach to estimate environmental risks/impacts associated with life cycle of products, processes and services. It evaluates environmental burdens by quantifying energy and materials used and waste released into the environment. It identifies and evaluates opportunities, which affect environmental improvements. The assessment includes the extraction/excavation and processing of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation and distribution, use, recycle, and final disposal. Findings - GreenPro-I overcomes many of the problems faced in the conventional approaches and establishes a link between the environmental risks/impacts, cost, and technical feasibility of processes. Originality/value - GreenPro-I provides a comprehensive decision-making tool for designers, regulatory agencies, business organizations and other stakeholders.Different advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have been applied to remove the organic carbon content of a paper mill effluent originating from the Kraft pulp bleaching process. The considered AOPs were: TiO(2)-mediated heterogeneous photocatalysis, TiO(2)-mediated heterogeneous photocatalysis assisted with H(2)O(2), TiO(2)-mediated heterogeneous photocatalysis coupled with Fenton, photo-Fenton, ozonation and ozonation with UV-A light irradiation. The application of the selected AOPs all resulted in a considerable decrease in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) content with variable treatment efficiencies depending upon the nature/type of the applied AOP. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was used as a tool to compare the different AOPs in terms of their environmental impact. Heterogeneous photocatalysis coupled with the Fenton's reagent proved to have the lowest environmental impact accompanied with a moderate-to-high DOC removal rate. On the other hand, heterogeneous photocatalysis appeared to be the worst AOP both in terms of DOC abatement rate and environmental impact. For the studied AOPs, LCA has indicated that the environmental impact was attributable to the high electrical energy (power) consumption necessary to run a UV-A lamp or to produce ozone. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In contrast to most widely-used electricity generation technologies, photovoltaic (PV) systems produce little or no environmental pollution at the point of use, contributing to their market status as an environmentally preferable product. However, there are numerous materials and energy inputs that go into the fabrication of the components of PV systems that may carry significant environmental burdens. As the PV industry attempts to scale from the global production of gigawatts to the global production of terawatts, it will become increasingly important to minimize these other impacts. The objective of this study is to take a full life-cycle view of the environmental impacts of photovoltaic (PV) energy production, and to present a best-case system design representing the most preferable choices in PV manufacturing, design and installation. In this effort, we systematically examine the technology possibilities and design options from feedstock to integration in order to identify current and future opportunities for minimizing environmental impacts. Adherence to these choices can further strengthen the environmental stance of the PV industry.In this paper, several typical assessment tools on product green degree are introduced and compared with one another, models, data, enable tools and frameworks of those methods and their application processes are analyzed, general applicability of these methods is presented together with the following four shortcomings: fuzzy boundary of life cycle, immaturity and un-accessibility of assessment data, uncertainty of assessment and distortion of dynamic manufacturing system description. To solve these problems preparatorily, a concept of Panel Method (PM) and Panel Method (PM) enabling model is formed, a PM -based weighting coefficient ensuring approach is carried out to construct a practical green degree assessment tool. Under the circumstance of lack of statistic data on national level, the method could be regarded as a practical and feasible method. Further more, a network-based implementation platform of PM is put forward. Finally, some important problems of LCA process and bottleneck of green technology development are discussed.Modular and parielized construction techniques have the potential of significantly reducing environmental impact - although much of that potential is unrealized among prefab homebuilders in the United States today. The ecoMOD project at the University of Virginia School of Architecture is intended to create a series of ecological, modular and affordable house prototypes. The goal is to demonstrate the environmental potential of prefabrication, and to challenge the modular and manufactured housing industry in the U.S. to explore this potential. In the context of this research and design/build project, an interdisciplinary group of architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, business, environmental science, planning and economics students are participating in the design, construction and evaluation phases of the project. The project is imbedded in the curriculum of the university. Working with non-profit affordable housing organizations, the built homes will be sold to low-income families with subsidies for down payments and financing. The first completed house is currently being evaluated as part of a process to determine the environmental impact of the homes during their life cycle; perceptions of the homes by the owners and neighbors; the energy efficiency of the design and equipment; the feasibility of their transfer to the modular housing industry; the life cycle costs; and the financial viability of taking the prototypes into production. The results of the evaluations will influence later designs, and the evaluation methods and recommendations will be made publicly available. The project is mostly funded, and will continue through to 2010 at a minimum.Despite the variety of toolkits, life cycle analysis, models, and other forms of guidance on sustainable resource use in architecture, the amount of energy used and waste created in the industry is going up on a global basis. The conventional approach to promoting sustainable specification clearly isn't working. This paper offers a new approach based on a recent qualitative case study of people's attitudes, associations and understanding of key construction materials in housing. The findings suggest that people have a deep tacit knowledge of materiality which draws on the ecological "affordances" offered by materials and are very clear about which materials they want, where, and why. These affordances, identified in Gibson's theory of ecological perception, transcend the usual subject/object divide and challenge designers to do likewise. This tacit knowledge appears uniquely related to people's place of upbringing as well as their occupation. It supports the notion that a bioregional approach should be adopted for material and product specification which empowers users to take more responsibility for the materiality of the buildings they live and work in. The emotional "endearment" of materiality in architecture to the users is argued as a key factor in potentially reducing maintenance costs and subsequent resource impacts. Currently, architecture is conceived primarily as the design of space using construction resources. Refraining architecture as the design of resource use in place, draws on users' local knowledge and an implaced, more natural materiality. Design and research are thus challenged to focus on a more limited palette of materials, based on the findings of the study, and work to the edge of technology in developing building elements related to these. This way of working can then be closely linked into the eco-systemic processes which underlie any sustainable design endeavour that aims to harmonise with nature.In this paper the environmental impact of the most important materials used for the production of technical equipments in buildings is assessed. The analysis is performed according to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The LCA of a product is conducted by compiling an inventory of relevant inputs and outputs, and by evaluating the potential environmental impact associated with them. In the evaluation phase different impact categories are defined; normalisation and weighting are also performed to obtain a single score. All these phases, except inventory, can be carried out in different ways, according to different impact assessment methodologies (LCIA). For this reason, it is useful to compare the results provided by some of the most used methods, namely Eco-indicator 99 and EPS 2000, in order to understand how the assessment can be influenced by the choice of the methodology. In addition, three different cultural perspectives (Egalitarian, Hierarchist, Individualist) are considered when using the Eco-indicator 99 method, since this choice influences calculation and weighting processes. In conclusion, this study will provide an environmental ranking of the most important materials used in technical equipments of buildings, according to different methods and calculation hypotheses. The results will be useful for future analyses concerning the impact of technological systems in buildings.The design stage of a building project is very important. Design impacts the site, physical massing, material selection, potential reuse, and energy performance. This paper addresses issues of durability of building systems in relationship to the life of a building. The spatial planning and systems selection during the design stage, with particular focus on the sustainability and life cycle of systems and materials, are essential to the potential to prolong the building's and its components life by adaptive reuse or by dismantling for reuse at other location or component reuse. Most buildings are designed by current codes to last 30 to 100 years at most. This means that a building built today will consume energy and resources for the replacement of its components and for its maintenance for at least the same time span. If no action is taken today, then our environment is at risk during this entire period, if not longer. It is very important to consider the impact on future generations of what is being done today. Considerations of life cycle evaluation and costing over the entire life of the building are the only reasonable way to evaluate a project. As the refurbishment of buildings has potentially the least environmental impact, it is important to consider the implications of designing at least some elements, notably the structure, to provide flexibility and potential for alternative use.In recent years the use of technological systems in buildings has considerably grown; the components are produced by industrial processes whose energetic and environmental impact is outstanding. The aim of this paper is the evaluation of the environmental impact and the energetic cost related to technological systems (heating, air conditioning, waterworks, fire-proofing, etc.). To this aim the Life Cycle Assessment approach is used; the environmental damage is assessed by means of the Eco-indicator 99 method. For every component (pipes, ducts, wires, radiators) different solutions and materials are considered, corresponding to the current technologies, in order to find out the best and less impactive solution. A case study is then considered to show the environmental benefit achievable by means of a proper design. The technical equipment of a real building is taken into account, and an "ecological" version is defined, by choosing the best solution for every component. The score of the whole apparatus in the ecological version is then compared to the one of the actual installation, showing that an outstanding reduction of the environmental impact can be obtained.In order to solve problems modular type camshafts have, that is, reducing weight, increasing oil filling time and designing multi-valve system, research was initiated about feasibility for WE (Desing for Environment) about ultralight camshaft. Through LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and properties and process evaluation, an attempt has been made to develop cost-effectvie process for ultiralight aluminum camshaft without the problems modular type camshaft have. The results clearly show 50% weight reduction achieved and better environmental impact of the ultralight aluminum camshaft compared with that of modular camshafts.This paper illustrates the exergy determination of over 70 minerals, which enables the straightforward application of exergy resource accounting within life cycle approaches. Three recent thermochemical databases were applied, 2 of which are internally consistent. The revision of the chemical exergy of 85 elements, yielding an average difference of only 1.2% relative to the most recent tabulation, is discussed. The exergy values of minerals were then determined which yielded larger differences with the values cited in literature, up to a factor 14. The results for aluminum compounds led to the selection of a new reference species for aluminum. Whenever possible the uncertainties on the results were determined; the scatter in values deduced from different databases proved to give a better view on data uncertainty. The analysis shows the importance of using accurate thermochemical data in the evaluation of mineral exergies.The aim of this study is to compare the environmental effects, through the Life Cycle Assessment approach, of three hydrogen production methods: methane steam reforming, water electrolysis fed by photovoltaic electricity, water electrolysis fed by mini-hydroelectric electricity. The assumptions are based on the "HBUS Firenze" project in progress in Florence (Italy) for the introduction of hydrogen minibuses in the city centre. The inventory of the,compared productive cycles has been performed using literature data and direct data obtained from the device manufactures. The impact analysis has been carried out using two methods, the Ecoindicator'95 and the Ecoindicator'99 also with the intention of qualitatively comparing the results. Besides the "basic option" an improvement has been proposed focusing on the weak points of the productive cycles. In particular concerning photovoltaic and mini-hydroelectric, the construction phase showed a high contribution to environmental load, so some improvements were proposed. The results of the basic option and the improved one have been compared. According to the initial assumptions and the proposed changes, the best option for hydrogen production has been highlighted.The paper presents the results of a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) of the electric generation by means of photovoltaic panels. It considers mass and energy flows over the whole production process starting from silica extraction to the final panel assembling, considering the most advanced and consolidate technologies for polycrystalline silicon panel production. Some considerations about the production cycle are reported; the most critical phases are the transformation of metallic silicon into solar silicon and the panel assembling. The former process is characterised by a great electricity consumption, even if the most efficient conversion technology is considered, the latter by the use of aluminium frame and glass roofing which are very energy intensive materials. Moreover, the Energy Pay Back Time (EPBT) has been evaluated, considering three geographic collocations of the photovoltaic plant with different values of solar radiation.The greenhouse effect, due to carbon dioxide emissions in atmosphere, is partly responsible for climatic changes. This work intends to take into account the greenhouse impact at the level of industrial process design and optimization. Oil industry belongs to carbon dioxide producing sectors and the tools which enable to analyze their environmental impact are life cycle assessment and exergy analysis. Their combination will be applied to gas-oil catalytic hydrotreatment.The polygeneration considered from the point of view of comprehensive optimizations a highly flexible and cross-sector integrated system of resources, energy and environment. Using coal, petrocoke or heavy oil residues with high sulfur content as feedstock syngas (the main components being CO and H2) is produced through oxygen-blown gasification. Syngas has diverse ways of use. The polygeneration could increase the adaptability and robustness of energy-service companies in the marketplace, providing them with flexibility in meeting demands in different market segments while achieving lower production costs and, reducing the risks of reliance on a single feedstock. In addition, with the possibility of achieving high conversion efficiencies and low polluting emissions and facilitating carbon capture, they could deliver high-quality energy services in a cost-effective way while meeting severe environmental requirements. Up to now, through designing and simulation, the efficiency, exergy, economic performance of a series liquid fuel-electricity of polygeneration based coal gasification have been studied. In this paper, Life Cycle Assessment and Emergy Synthesis are jointly used in order to evaluate the environmental performance of a polygeneration system in China. In fact, Life Cycle Assessment focuses primarily on the environmental impact of emissions while ignores the contribution of ecological services. On the other hand, methods from systems ecology do account for ecological inputs, but ignore the impact of emissions, Two cases, coal-based polygeneration system yielding electricity and methanol, and separate methanol plant and IGCC are evaluated and compared. Results indicate that the polygeneration system has better environmental performance, is more sustainable and is less stressful on the environment in comparison with separate plants for methanol and electricity production.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies of products with a major part of their life cycle in biological production systems (i.e. forestry and agriculture) are often incomplete because the assessment of the land use impact is not operational. Most method proposals include the quality of the land in a descriptive way using rank scores for an arbitrarily selected set of indicators. This paper first offers a theoretical framework for the selection of suitable indicators for land use impact assessment, based on ecosystem thermodynamics. According to recent theories on the thermodynamics of open systems, a goal function of ecosystems is to maximize the dissipation of exogenic exergy fluxes by maximizing the internal exergy storage under form of biomass, biodiversity and complex trophical networks. Human impact may decrease this ecosystem exergy level by simplification, i.e. decreasing biomass and destroying internal complexity. Within this theoretical framework, we then studied possibilities for assessing the land use impact in a more direct way by measuring the ecosystems' capacity to dissipate solar exergy. Measuring ecosystem thermal characteristics by using remote sensing techniques was considered a promising tool. Once operational, it could offer a quick and cheap alternative to quantify land use impacts in any terrestrial ecosystem of any size. Recommendations are given for further exploration of this method and for its integration into an ISO compatible LCA framework. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method aimed at identifying the environmental effects connected with a given product, process or activity along its life cycle. This paper presents results of the application of LCA method in order to evaluate the environmental advantages of natural gas over other fossil fuels and to have advanced techniques for analysing the environmental aspects of the gas industry. The evaluation of published studies and the application of the method to electricity production with fossil fuels, by using data from published databases and data collected by the gas industry, demonstrate the importance and difficulties of having reliable and updated data required for a significant LCA. Results show that the environmental advantages of natural gas over the other fossil fuels in the final use stage increase still further if the whole life cycle of the fuels, from production to final consumption, is taken into account. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As fossil fuel reserves become depleted, alternative energy sources will be required. One of the preferred options for an energy vector for the transportation sector is hydrogen. Hydrogen is considered as a clean fuel since its end use in fuel cell is virtually ernission-free with a resulting significant improvement on urban air quality. However, the life cycle environmental impacts of hydrogen use depend strongly on the primary energy resources used and the process chain between the feedstock and its end use. In this study, an integrated decision support framework that combines the analytic hierarchy process and a life cycle analysis (LCA) criterion is proposed for the assessment and ranking of hydrogen production pathways. The LCA criterion was divided into energy consumption, fossil fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions. The pathways use electrolysis and steam methane reforming (SMR) as the technology for the production of hydrogen. A total of 11 hydrogen production pathways are compared and ranked using the proposed framework. The overall ranking in this analysis was found to be (1) electrolysis using renewable resources as a source of energy, (2) SMR, and (3) electrolysis using electricity mixes or fossil fuel electrical generation. The most preferred pathway was found to be electrolysis with hydroelectric power as the source of energy.This article summarizes the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Risk Management Research Laboratory's Fuel Cell Program (www.epa.gov/ORD/ NRMRL/std/fuelcell) and presents interim findings of an ongoing project aimed at quantifying how clean fuel cell technology is from "cradle-to-grave" compared to conventional power generation processes. Data and data sources will be reviewed by fuel cell type ( polymer exchange membrane, phosphoric acid fuel cell, solid oxide fuel cell, molten carbonate fuel cell, etc.) and life cycle stage ( manufacture, use, end of life). Data gaps will also be identified as well as proposed EPA strategies for filling these "knowledge" gaps regarding the environmental attributes of fuel cells.Reinforced concrete structures are often conceived for a certain time span of serviceability. Due to the superposition of different kinds of loads and particularly due to the presence of aggressive substances the resistance of construction materials is insufficient in numerous cases. Hence, many structures have to be repaired before the end of their designed life span. In case of reinforced concrete structures these repair measures are not only very expensive but they also consume high amounts of energy and materials which causes strong environmental impacts. The main challenge in developing reliable concrete technologies is the capability to enhance the life span of new and already repaired structures to a reasonable maximum. When aiming this objective not only durability related material properties have to be accomplished but their environmental impact has to be minimized simultaneously. This paper evaluates different concrete technologies and materials from diverse perspectives: Durability (simulating expected life span using numerical analyses), ecology (product life cycle and environmental impact assessments) and economy (estimating life cycle costs by investment appraisals). This kind of combined analysis facilitates the efficient design of structural elements and repair measures and provides the possibility to significantly increase the life span of new and repaired concrete structures.Due to limited territory for landfills in Singapore, incineration is given top priority for the treatment of wastes that are not recovered, reused or recycled. Unfortunately, incineration emissions contain gases which possess high polluting characteristics that can severely affect human health in the long run. In this paper, a pyrolysis-gasification technology is introduced and compared with an existing incinerator operating in Singapore. Pyrolysis-Gasification technologies have received increasing attention because the process can produce high quality fuels, such as Syngas. A life cycle assessment approach was employed to study the stream of MSW - from generation to its final conversion. The economic considerations, including social costs of air emissions associated with the stream of MSW at each stage, as well as, the economic values of the final products (electricity or Syngas), was evaluated. It was projected that the existing incineration and proposed plants' annual values (p(Total)) were nearly similar - approximately 70 million/year without considering the social or economic costs of pollution. When the costs of air emissions were taken into account, the new pyrolysis-gasification technology displayed a significant advantage over Incineration. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the time to "pay back" the capital expenditure for the proposed plant changed considerably with fluctuations in the amount of Syngas produced and operating costs, but less with capital costs.This paper presents a novel framework to aid assessment and selection in certain technology investments projects. Since most of the methods available for this purpose consider factors that seem to focus almost exclusively on what creates most net value to the buyer of a technology system, ignoring the external costs associated with this system, the technique proposed here has been developed in order to provide a tool for the integration of the environmental externalities in the assessment and selection process. This toot uses the findings of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and especially the outcomes of the LCA Polygon approach in order to consider for each possible alternative its environmental performance together with any economic aspects, and to result into a single "score", i.e. the relative external cost. This value could be used as the exclusive basis for the comparative appraisal of the candidates, or it could be easily integrated in most of the existing decision methods. A relevant case Study is also included in the paper to illustrate the proposed framework. It is about the assessment of an investment concerning five different vehicle technologies. The result of this application can be easily incorporated in almost any common decision-making model, which intends to take into consideration the externalities of its choice.This paper proposes a new performance evaluation approach to an inventory management system based on an environmental conscious manufacturing system such as a remanufacturing system with consideration for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). We here formulate an inventory system with single item based on newsboy problem. The system is evaluated by the total cost that includes the holding, the backlogged, the disposal and the CO2 penalty costs. In this approach, we consider two types of inventories: one is the actual product inventory in a factory whereas the other is the LCA inventory that denotes CO2 emission for all the life cycle of the product. This model also includes disposal and recycle rates. Using the suggested model, we can obtain the total inventory cost with consideration for the environment. Numerical examples are considered to illustrate the implementation of the methodology.Increased efficiency of building information flow depends on clearly defined data in the information package to be exchanged. IFC goes a long way to provide this, but falls short in many important scenarios that deals with product information. IFD, or the buildingSMART ontology, brings us one step closer to 100% standardization of the information, and will together with the IDM initiative and IFCs allow an efficient building information exchange. This paper demonstrates how the IFD standard is able to standardize the information in a language agnostic way, and provide the whole building process with new possibilities within the area of product information exchange, knowledge systems, and life-cycle analysis. We will also describe our technical solution to the challenge and refer to the actual implementation of the solution, running on the internet today.In civil engineering, utilization and maintenance are two of the determining ecological and economical factors in a building's life cycle, compared to the construction and demolition phases. From the planning point of view, a rational approach is to estimate and reduce the required resources as far as possible during the early design phase. For this purpose, the Munich Institute of Computational Civil and Environmental Engineering has developed software tools in cooperation with the German consulting and engineering company COPLAN AG. The aim is to automate and accelerate the creation of numerical models for life-cycle analysis and assess construction and maintenance costs taking various time scales into account. Our product model-based approach is of considerable advantage as it makes it possible to estimate the consumption of energy and resources over the entire life cycle of a building and the building occupancy expenses by providing the means to access all relevant data.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to biobased 1,3-propanediol (PDO) production The cradle-to-factory gate system includes growing of corn, corn milling, converting cornstarch to glucose and fermentative production of PDO using a genetically modified biocatalyst The LCA is of a preliminary biobased process design and is used to identify system improvement targets and benchmark life-cycle environmental performance The analysis indicates that approximately 70% of nonrenewable energy is used in producing PDO from glucose Of this, the largest part is used in purifying PDO Biobased PDO is predicted to have significantly lower cradle-to-factory gate nonrenewable energy and climate change potential than PDO derived from ethylene oxide PDO converted to polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT) is predicted to outperform Nylon 6 in these same categories and also have lower NOx emissions.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an increasingly important evaluation tool for decision making and stakeholder discussion New methodological aspects arising with the application of LCA on products from renewable resources that are by-products or waste of other processes are reflected on the basis of a LCA of biodiesel from tallow (TME) and used vegetable oil (UVO) Two different impact assessment methods (Sustainable Process Index SPI and CML-method) show largely concordant results The SPI gives 'a bigger picture" of the environmental impacts and will be helpful in decision making Depending on the setting of system boundaries the ecological footprint (SPI) is between -1,2 to 4,8 m(2)a/MJ for UVO, between 0,85 to 8,3 m(2)a/MJ for TME compared to 26,1 m(2)a/MJ for fossil diesel.In this paper, life cycle assessment methodology has been used to assess the variations in water use associated with different metal production and processing routes and provide insights into the value derived from water usage in the minerals sector. Using water consumption data derived from the literature it has been shown that the 'cradle-to-ptc' water consumption (or embodied water) for production of the various metals considered in the study ranged from 2.9 m(3)/t for steel up to 252 087 m(3)/t for gold. The results largely reflect the grade of the initial ore used to produce each metal, and can be approximated by the following equation: W = 167.7 G(-0.9039) where W = embodied water (m(3)/t refined metal) G = grade of ore used to produce metal (per cent metal) The study showed that indirect water consumption in the metal production life cycle, in particular that due to electricity generation, can make a significant contribution to the embodied water value, eg aluminium production. When expressed in terms of m(3)/t ore, the results for all metals considered indicated that the embodied water is roughly, on average, three times the water consumption of the mining and concentration stage. It was also shown that the economic value per m(3) of water consumed for the minerals industry exceeds that for the agricultural and industrial sectors, supporting the view that allocating water resources to the minerals industry has a strong underlying economic basis. Water reforms currently taking place in Australia aim to address issues such as competition for water access, reduced security of supply and increase in cost. Consequently the minerals industry, along with others, can be expected to come under increasing pressure to reduce fresh or raw water use and to integrate water use across sectors. While water recycling is an obvious candidate to help reduce water consumption in the minerals industry, issues such as water quality, among others, will influence the extent to which this can be achieved. In addition, wastewater volumes can be minimised using techniques such as pinch analysis to establish and use the minimum water requirement for the process. The use of dry or near-dry processing technologies, for which the demand for water is small or zero, may be a more radical solution to the water consumption problem; however, it is possible that the introduction of dry processing would bring with it a new set of problems, including dust.A study was carried out to compare the environmental impacts of the two major iron ore agglomeration processes, sintering and pelletising, using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The following agglomeration processing routes, with the fuel options shown, were investigated: sintering with combined natural gas/coke breeze or charcoal as fuel, grate-kiln pelletising with combined natural gas/coke breeze as fuel, and straight-grate pelletising with combined natural gas/coke breeze as fuel. Inventory data for each process derived from the literature, and in some instances supplemented by additional simulations and calculations, were used in the study and the environmental impact categories considered were gross energy requirement (GER), global warming potential (GWP) and acidification potential (AP). The results of the study showed that the GER, GWP and AP for a sinter plant are higher than those for a pellet plant for the same amount of metallic iron in the agglomerated products. These results are partly due to higher consumption of solid fuel and flux in the sintering process. However, it should be pointed out that the study only compared substantially fluxed sinters with acid pellets that may require additional flux (and hence potentially more greenhouse gases emissions) to be a balanced blast furnace feedstock. Extending the LCA to the blast furnace process stage was beyond the scope of the current study. Within the sinter plant, the sintering stage itself is the largest contributor to the GER, GWP and AP. In the case of pellet plant, the pellet induration stage is the largest contributor to the various environmental impacts. The GER and GWP of a straight-grate pellet plant are marginally higher than those of a grate-kiln pellet plant due to the higher electrical power required by the straight grate system. The substitution of coke breeze with charcoal in the sintering process results in an increase in GER but a decrease in GWP. However, a substantial proportion of the GER is derived from renewable sources (wood), resulting in a decrease in the non-renewable components of this environmental impact. Given the source of the inventory data and the assumptions and approximations made in carrying out the LCAs, it is emphasised that the results presented in this paper should be considered as indicative rather than as definitive results for the two iron ore agglomeration processing routes considered.International policy documents call for the application of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in the development of sustainable patterns of consumption and production. We describe how LCA, in combination with input-output analysis and household consumption data can be used to determine the environmental impact of consumption patterns. We shortly review results from studies focussing on CO2 emissions as environmental indicator. This household environmental impact (HEI) assessment can be used to analyse differences among households according to socioeconomic variables, age, settlement characteristics, and lifestyles. The change of the total environmental impact over time can be attributed to underlying variables such as efficiency gains, changes in consumption levels, structural changes, and changes in the population. This provides an understanding of causal factors influencing the development of HEIs, which can be used in scenario modelling. In addition, we describe how HEI assessment can be used to inform policy implementation, both through ex-ante analysis of the possible effect of an intended measure and through the ex-post evaluation of implemented policy measures.The present research work concerned the study of eco design methodologies able to lead designers in planning the entire life cycle of products in the early stages of design and development activities, also including marketing and management aspects. In order to make the use of traditional eco-tools more efficient we tried to develop a streamlined life cycle approach, based on the Life Cycle Assessment criteria, aimed at investigating the end of life of products, throughout the development of several different scenarios which take into account the main phases of the product life cycle. With this aim in mind, an attempt was made to integrate the Life Cycle Modelling approach in the first phases of the Methodical Design process by means of the development of a design technique, called "Screening Life Cycle Modelling" (SLCM).The Eco-PaS methodology supports anticipative weak point analysis of a product's life cycle environmental impact. Using quantitative information on functional parameters available in early design stages, the order of magnitude of an environmental indicator is estimated. This result is obviously influenced by a number of uncertain factors. However, a critical analysis of these factors allows to point the designer at promising design directions at a time of the design process when many degrees of freedom remain available. This paper recapitulates the principles of the Eco-PaS methodology, and applies the method to a design concept of an electric fruit juicer. The validity of the Eco-PaS approach is assessed by comparing the results with a streamlined Life Cycle Assessment study performed on a detailed product design.Although many methodologies and tools have been developed to design environmentally friendly products, life cycle cost aspects have barely been included and likewise there has been no significant discussion on how to effectively combine different tools. There are specific tools supporting environmentally friendly design such as LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), and tools supporting cost optimisation such as Target Costing and Life Cycle Costing. A combination of these tools is necessary to minimise costs along the whole product life cycle while simultaneously fulfilling environmental requirements. The Target Life Cycle Costing (TLCC) method was developed by the Fraunhofer IPA, concentrating on Design for Environment and on optimising product functionalities by decreasing environmental costs. This paper analyses how designers can optimise costs and conduct product redesign by Target Life Cycle Costing, providing case studies on two products: a medical appliance and a washing machine. The analysis shows that implementing TLCC facilitates cost reduction by product redesign considering functional roles of product components from both an environmental and an economic point of view. This type of combination supports designers effectively, whereas a single tool could not achieve the same results.Reuse and recycling of building material is a growing area of interest and concern in many parts of the USA. Current practices and trends in the building material waste management area are examined from a building life cycle standpoint or cradle to reincarnation concept. Strategies include zero waste, integrated recycling, international approaches, reuse of materials, resource optimisation, waste reduction, and deconstruction. Examination of the waste management hierarchy and life cycle management of material is used to improve the understanding of reuse and recycle opportunities. Other considerations include cost, economic factors, social factors and environmental factors. All of these assessments are needed to develop a comprehensive waste management plan for a specific project. Four case studies are also presented to illustrate the benefits that can be derived from effective building material reuse and recycle.Use of thermal engineering appliances, especially refrigerators and air conditioners has increased enormously in both industrial and in domestic sectors. They cause considerable environmental pollution due to the release of a large quantity of refrigerant (chlorofluorocarbons) and the use of a large quantity of power, generated mainly from low quality domestic coal. Also available energy or exergy is lost due to the use of badly maintained and inefficient equipment. The introduction of Exergy Analysis (EA) based Entropy Added Tax (EAT) proportional to the entropy added or exergy lost in a component will force the manufacturers to improve the efficiency of the component. Analytical calculation of EA based environmental tax using exergy loss, weightage factor and degree of difficulty for reducing exergy loss and also calculation of the tax using nomogram are presented in this paper.Goal, Scope and Background. The importance of the social dimension of sustainable development increased significantly during the last decade of the twentieth century. Industry has subsequently experienced a shift in stakeholder pressures from environmental to social-related concerns, where new developments in the form of projects and technologies are undertaken. However, the measurement of social impacts and the calculation of suitable indicators are less well developed compared to environmental indicators in order to assess the potential liabilities associated with undertaken projects and technologies. The aim of this paper is to propose a Social Impact Indicator (SII) calculation procedure based on a previously introduced Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) calculation procedure for environmental Resource Impact Indicators (RIIs), and to demonstrate the practicability of the SII procedure in the context of the process industry in South Africa. Methods. A framework of social sustainability criteria has been introduced for the South African process industry. The social sub-criteria of the framework are further analyzed, based on project and technology management expertise in the South African process industry, to determine whether the criteria should be addressed at project or technology management level or whether they should rather form part of an overall corporate governance policy for new projects and technologies. Furthermore, the proposed indicators for criteria that are considered appropriate for project or technology evaluation purposes are constrained by the type of information that is available, i.e. the calculation methodology relies on the availability of regional or national social information where the project will be implemented, as well as the availability of project- or technology-specific social information during the various phases of the project or technology development life cycle. Case studies in the process industry and statistical information for South Africa are subsequently used to establish information availability for the SII calculation procedure, demonstrate the SII method together with the RII method, and determine the practical use of the SII method. Results and Conclusion. The case studies establish that social footprint information as well as project- and technology social data are not readily available in the South African process industry. Consequently, the number of mid-point categories that can be evaluated are minimal, which results in an impaired social picture when compared to the environmental dimension. It is concluded that a quantitative social impact assessment method cannot be applied for project and technology life cycle management purposes in industry at present. Recommendation and Perspective. Following the outcomes of the case studies in the South African process industry, it is recommended that checklists and guidelines be used during project and technology life cycle management practices. Similar to the environmental dimension, it is envisaged that such checklists and guidelines would improve the availability of quantitative data in time, and would therefore make the SII procedure more practical in the future.Goal, Scope and Background. Brazil is the world's biggest producer of coffee beans with approx. a 30% market share. Depending on climate conditions, approx. 30 million bags of coffee beans are exported annually from Brazil, while domestic consumption is around 10 million bags, which makes Brazil the world's third largest coffee-consuming country. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to present the LCA of green coffee produced in Brazil for the reference crops 2001/02 and 2002/03 in order to generate detailed production inventory data as well as to identify the potential environmental impacts of its tillage in order to realize how to reduce those impacts and increase the environmental sustainability of this product. Only the inputs and outputs relative to the coffee tillage were considered. The production of fertilizers, correctives and pesticides were not included in the boundary, but only their amounts. The functional unit selected for this study was 1,000 kg of green coffee destined for exportation. Methods. The LCI was performed according to the ISO 14040 standard series. All information considered in this study (use of water, fossil based energy, fertilizers and chemicals) were taken up in in-depth data collection and evaluation by questionnaires applied on a farm level and/or received by mail. Four Brazilian coffee producer regions were evaluated: Cerrado Mineiro, South of Minas Gerais State, the Marilia and Alta Mogiana regions in Sao Paulo State. These regions have the following geographic coordinates: 44 to 50 degrees W longitude and 18 to 24 degrees S latitude. The data refer to a production of 420,000 coffee bean bags and a productive area of approx. 14,300 ha. The varieties of coffee beans considered in this study were Mundo Novo, Catuai (yellow and red), Icatu (yellow and red), Catucai (yellow and red) and Obata. Farm specific data along with agricultural production data have been combined to elaborate a coffee cultivation inventory, which will be applied in an emissions estimation. Results and Conclusion. The production of 1,000 kg of green coffee in Brazil requires approx. 11,400 kg of water, 94 kg of diesel, 270 kg of fertilizers as NPK, 900 kg of total fertilizers, 620 kg of correctives, 10 kg of pesticides and 0.05 hectare of annual land use. Outputs related to these functional units are approx. 3,000 kg of waste water from coffee washing, 8,500 kg of waste water from the wet method and 750 kg of organic residue that is reincorporated to the tillage as fertilizer. The publication of an LCI of agricultural products is a fundamental step for understanding the potential environmental impacts of each tillage and then establishes the basis for product sustainability. In this way, this work is the first Brazilian initiative for applying LCA to coffee cultivation. Recommendation and Perspective. Different agricultural practices demonstrate different environmental profiles. The amount of agricultural pesticide is directly related to agricultural practices as tillage rotation, density of plants, etc. This study supplied important results for a better correlation of the agricultural practices and potential environmental impacts of coffee. Future updates of this study will show the evolution of the natural resource management such as land use, new agricultural practices, lower fertilizers and chemicals use.Background, Aim and Scope. The usual route for improvement of agricultural practice towards sustainability runs via labelling schemes for products or farm practices. In most approaches requirements are set in absolute terms, disregarding the variation in environmental performance of farms. Another approach for promoting sustainable farming concerns the concept of benchmarking, which takes into account competition among farmers. The individual agricultural performance is characterized by quantitative criteria and compared with scores of other relevant farms. Methods. Therefore, a pilot study has been conducted in the Netherlands concerning benchmarking among arable farmers in the Internet involving crop protection. A voluntary Dutch benchmark initiative in the Internet is described including farmers' perception regarding the tool. Results. The results show that the benchmark tool in the Internet allows farmers to compare their environmental and economic performance anonymously and securely in a large-scale open-access environment. The pilot group of farmers responded positively to the instrument. An important factor in success is the ease and speed with which data can be entered into the benchmark tool. Conclusions. A benchmark tool for comparing the environmental performance among farmers can form the basis for agreements between farmers and their costumers. An application involving food industry and retailers is discussed.Goal, Scope and Background. The Apeldoorn Workshop (April 15,h, 2004, Apeldoorn, NL) brought together specialists in LCA and Risk Assessment to discuss current practices and complications of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) ecological toxicity (ecotox) methodologies for metals. The consensus was that the LCIA methods currently available do not appropriately characterize impacts of metals due to lack of fundamental metals chemistry in the models. A review of five methods available to perform ecotox impact assessment for metals has been prepared to provide, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practitioners with a better understanding of the current state of the science and potential biases related to metals. The intent is to provide awareness on issues related to ecotox impact assessment. Methods. In this paper two case studies, one a copper based product (copper tube), the other a zinc-based product (gutter systems), were selected and examined by applying freshwater ecological toxicity impact models - USES-LCA, Eco-indicator 99 (El 99), IMPACT 2002, EDIP 97, and CalTOX-ETP. Both studies are recent, comprehensive, cradle-to-gate, and peer-reviewed. The objective is to review the LCIA results in the context of the practical concerns identified by the Apeldoorn Declaration, in particular illustrating any inconsistencies such as chemical characterization coverage, species specificity, and relative contribution to impact results. Results and Discussion. The results obtained from all five of the LCIA methods for the copper tube LCI pointed to the same substance as being the most important - copper. This result was obtained despite major fundamental differences between the LCIA methods applied. However, variations of results were found when examining the freshwater ecological toxicity potential of zinc gutter systems. Procedural difficulties and inconsistencies were observed. In part this was due to basic differences in model nomenclature and differences in coverage (IMPACT 2002+ and EDIP 97 contained characterization factors for aluminium that resulted in 90% and 22% contribution to burden respectively, the other three methods did not). Differences were also observed relative to the emissions source compartment. In the case of zinc, air emissions were found to be substantial for some ecotox models, whereas, water emissions results were found to be of issue for others. Conclusions. This investigation illustrates the need to proceed with caution when applying LCIA ecotox methodologies to life cycle studies that include metals. Until further improvements are made, the deficiencies should be clearly communicated as part of LCIA reporting. Business or policy decisions should not without further discussion be based solely on the results of the currently available methods for assessing ecotoxicity in LCIA. Outlook. The outlook to remedy deficiencies in the ecological toxicity methods is promising. Recently, the LCIA Toxic Impacts Task Force of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has formed a subgroup to address specific issues and guide the work towards establishment of sound characterization factors for metals. Although some measure of precision of estimation of potential impact has been observed, such as in the case of copper, accuracy is also a major concern and should be addressed. Further investigation through controlled experimentation is needed, particularly LCIs composed of a variety of inorganics as well as organics constituents. Support for this activity has come from the scientific community and industry as well. Broader aspects of structure and nomenclature are being collectively addressed by the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. These efforts will bring practical solutions to issues of naming conventions and LCI to LCIA flow assignments.Goal, Scope and Background. This case study describes the development and utilization of a global, quantitative model of current and projected aluminium and life cycle inventory mass flows. The model and key results were developed to be shared with global aluminium industry technical experts, executives, and external stakeholders to better understand potential paths to more global sustainable aluminium. Methods. The model is based on annual statistical data since 1950 provided by government agencies and regional aluminum associations and on the most recent life cycle inventory intensity data (year 2002) complied for the global industry by the International Aluminium Institute. Modeling of future aluminium and resource flows are based on literature and industry expert projections of future product shipment demand. The availability of recycle flows to meet these market demands are based on projected utilization, yield, and melt loss recovery rates, post-consumer recycling rates, and anticipated future product lifetimes. The model was developed with quantitative 'what-if' capability to determine the positive impact of enhanced recycling, lower resource intense production, and product usage scenarios. Results and Conclusion. The model provides the first quantitative assessment of annual global aluminium and life cycle inventory flows. Results include a quantitative estimate by major market of global aluminium product inventory, system losses, recycle rates, and selected resource requirements and air emissions implications. Recommendation and Perspective. Model results and scenarios have been reviewed and shared with global aluminium technical leaders, executives and key external stakeholders in support of the International Aluminum Institute's new voluntary global objective to better monitor and enhance aluminium recycling and sustainable development initiative.Goal, Scope and Background. In this study, the major flows of cadmium in the U.S. economy are quantified and the primary sinks are identified to gauge the need for additional policy to minimize the potential human health and ecosystem risks associated with these flows. Because of the concurrent occurrence of cadmium and zinc in ore, we also consider the relevant portions of the material cycle of zinc. Methods. We estimated the flows of cadmium through U.S. manufacturing using a mass balance approach with data provided by the U.S. Geological Survey's Minerals Yearbook. Cadmium emissions factors were created using facility specific information found in the U.S. Toxics Release Inventory and were used to model future losses. Data gaps were filled through review of relevant literature. We modeled the import and sales of nickel-cadmium batteries with rechargeable battery usage trends and estimates of market share by battery chemistry. Results and Conclusion. Primary cadmium in the U.S. is almost exclusively produced as a co-product of zinc. Almost all zinc and cadmium mined in the U.S. is exported to foreign smelters as ore concentrate. We estimate that the bulk of cadmium consumed in the U.S. economy (similar to 90%) is imported in the form of nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries. These batteries can be divided into the larger wet-cells and portable rechargeable batteries (PRB). The collection rate for the recycling of large wet cells was found to be high (80%) while the collection rate for PRBs is low (5-20%). The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) is responsible for the collection of these batteries which are recycled exclusively by the International Materials Reclamation Company (INMETCO). The remaining PRBs are generally disposed of in,municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. This study provides a detailed substance flow analysis of U.S. stocks and flows of cadmium in products, however additional research is needed to better quantify the associated exposures and risks. Recommendation and Perspective. Based on our analysis, we make four recommendations. First we suggest that if cadmium is to be used, it should be used in long-lived products that can be easily collected and recycled with minimal losses. Second, continued cadmium use should be coupled with renewed efforts on the part of policy-makers to encourage the collection and recycling of cadmium-bearing products. At present, consumers do not see the environmental cost associated with the proper disposal of the cadmium content of NiCd batteries. Policy options for improving recycling rates include collecting deposits and providing rewards for the return of spent batteries, taxing or otherwise discouraging discarding PRBs in municipal solid waste, and providing incentives for extended producer responsibility. Third, we highlight the importance of the connection between zinc mining and the supply of cadmium in designing an effective policy to manage the risks associated with cadmium. Fourth, we recommend that policy measures be taken to provide the necessary data required to improve our understanding of the flow of cadmium into the U.S. in the form of product imports and the amount of cadmium lost or disposed of by recycling processes.Goal, Scope and Background. The goal of the present paper is to demonstrate how environmental product declarations (EPDs) are developed based on a set of product category rules (PCRs) in accordance with the requirements in the ISO 14025-standard. This is demonstrated by examples from the furniture industry in Norway, where several case models are evaluated. To ease the capability of developing EPDs in this industry, a database with specific environmental data for materials in furniture is developed. The database is used to produce the LCA for selected furniture models, and further, the database is the backbone of a data-assistance tool used to create the EPDs. Methods. The LCA-data are produced based on traditional LCA-methodology. The PCR is based on a stakeholder analysis and the proposed methodology in the ISO 14025-standard. The EPDs developed so far, are results of close collaboration between companies and research centres in the Nordic Countries. For the verification of the EPDs, auditing methodologies are used as a part of the audit of the companies' environmental management systems (EMS). Results and Conclusion. Based on a hearing of a set of suggested PCRs, a consensus document for seating accommodation is developed. This is further the model for how to develop PCR-documents for all types of furniture, for example sleeping accommodations. Likewise, the database shall contain the most important data for the parts of a furniture model. Within the goal of the project period, EPDs will be developed for 80% of Norwegian furniture. The verification of the EPDs is done as a part of the certification procedures of EMS in accordance with the ISO 14001. Recommendation and Perspective. The results presented in the paper are mainly for the pilot models in the project. However, the results will be further tested and the data-tool will be developed as a part of a product design tool where environmental requirements will be combined with quality requirements. The product design tool will be implemented in the furniture industry. Information on how to use EPDs in public purchasing will also be a part of future work.Goal and Scope. The goal of this study is to explore the potentials and limitations of using LCA as the basis for setting ecolabelling criteria in developing countries. The practicality of using LCA for this purpose, as required by ISO 14020, has been criticised as lacking in transparency and scientific rigour. Furthermore, ecolabelling is not widespread in developing countries. The application of LCA has therefore been illustrated by using the specific case of shrimp aquaculture in Thailand, as a basis for ecolabelling criteria for a typical product intended for export from a developing country. Method. For the LCA case study, the functional unit is the standard consumer-package size, containing 1.8 kg of frozen shrimp produced by conventional intensive aquaculture in Thailand, subject to an appropriate environmental management system. The impact assessment method used in this study is CML 2 Baseline 2000. Results. According to the results from the LCA study, farming appears to be the key life cycle stage generating the most significant environmental impacts: abiotic depletion and global warming, which arise mainly from the use of energy; and eutrophication caused by wastewater discharged from the shrimp ponds. It is possible to cover these impacts by quantitative ecolabelling criteria. Other important impacts could not be quantified by the LCA: depletion of wild shrimp broodstock, impacts of trawling on marine biodiversity and the choice of suitable farm sites. These impacts, which are also related to the farming stage, must be covered by 'hurdle criteria'. Conclusions and Recommendations. For the present case, LCA provides a basis for quantifying a number of important ecolabelling criteria related to the use of abiotic resources and to emissions. Other important issues, connected with the use of biotic natural resources and land, are not quantifiable by current LCA methodology, but were also revealed and clarified by using an LCA framework for the analysis. Thus, focussing the assessment on life cycle considerations, as required by ISO 14024, was effective in identifying all key environmental issues. In the light of this case study, main limitations and barriers associated with the application of LCA to setting ecolabelling criteria particularly in developing countries are discussed, including recommendations on how to overcome them.Goal, Scope and Background. The objective of this study was to assess environmental impacts of Norwegian cod fishing and salmon farming and compare these with chicken farming in order to find reference levels for environmental performance and identify problem areas and potentials for improvements. Methods. A Life Cycle Screening following the production of 0.2 kg fillets as a functional unit through the respective food chains is performed for all 3 products. The analysis is partly quantitative and qualitative focusing on energy use, antifouling and land use impacts. Case studies are performed to investigate potentials for improvements within the fisheries and aquaculture industry. Results and Conclusions. It can be concluded that the fishing phase for the cod and the feeding phase for both salmon and chicken dominate for all environmental impacts considered. Chicken is most energy effective followed by salmon and cod, which are almost on the same level. The area of sea floor affected by bottom trawling is around 100 times larger than the land area needed to produce the chicken feed for production of the 0.2 kg fillet. The case studies show potentials for improvement of environmental performance, both for salmon farming and cod fishing, especially when it comes to energy use. The environmental impacts on the sea floor imposed by bottom trawling are not fully explored, but based on the precautionary principle a reasonable conclusion is that bottom trawls with less impact on the sea floor should be developed. Recommendation and Perspective. LCA methods have initially been developed for land based industrial applications. More effort should be given to adapt these to fishing applications in order to obtain more accurate assessment of environmental impacts from seafood products. It is recommended to put more emphasis in finding improved indicators for impacts imposed by over-fishing, fuel emission from combustion at sea, use of antifouling and seafloor ecosystem disturbance.Goal, Scope and Background. This article presents the main results from a PhD dissertation about environmental impacts from Danish fish products. The focus is on LCA results for flatfish, but the article also gives an overview of screenings of other fish species. Furthermore, it includes an analysis of the energy consumption in the fishing stage - as a function of fish species and fishing methods. Alternative impact categories that have not been included in the quantitative LCA and policy perspectives are elaborated in the discussion part of the paper. Methods. The study represents a consequential LCA approach (opposed to attributional) and the functional unit is one kg consumed flat fish filet in units,of 300 gram (cardboard boxes). Data are obtained from statistics, interviews, literature, and databases - mainly ETHESU 96 and the Danish LCA food database. The EDIP 97 method has been applied for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and the results have been verified by Ecoindicator 99. Results. The results of the flatfish LCA show that the fishing stage has the largest impact potential for the investigated impact categories. This is mainly due to a relatively high fuel consumption and significant emissions of biocides from anti-fouling agents (contributing to ecological toxicity). But large reductions in fuel intensity (fuel consumption per kg caught fish) can be obtained by changing the type of fishing gear - particularly in flatfish fisheries. The consumption and retail stages represent significant impact potentials as well, while processing is insignificant. LCA screenings of other fish species show the same picture, but there are cases (herring, mackerel and mussels) where the fishing stage is less important, while the opposite is the case for processing - mainly due to energy intensive packaging materials. Discussion. A limited number of impact categories have been investigated, but a 'qualitative' LCA, focusing on other fishery specific impacts, emphasises that the fishing stage is indeed the overall most important. In this regard, it is argued that fuel requirements in many cases are proportional to environmental impacts related to 'discard' and 'seafloor damage'. Hence, it is worth focusing on energy for many reasons. In a policy context, it is a paradox that mainly the fish processing industry has been subjected to environmental regulations. Recommendation and Perspective. Future scenarios indicate that energy consumption will remain one of the most important environmental aspects in the fishing stage - partly due to regulations of antifouling biocides (e.g. TBT) and partly because of the continued depletion of fish stocks. From an environmental policy perspective, it is therefore recommended to broaden the perspective of existing fishery regulations and increase the focus on fishing gear and energy in the primary production (fishing stage).The development, state-of-the-art and application of exergy concept to sustainability are discussed. Thermodynamic indicators, based on exergy, are proposed for the design and optimisation of energy systems. Efficiency of energy systems is determined using energy and exergy. This paper presents a methodology study of thermodynamic indicators for integrated sustainability assessment and its application to geotechnic system analysis. Information, obtained from thermodynamic indicators, is proposed to be used for managing the natural resources and reducing the environmental degradation caused by interaction between an energy system and environment. Life cycle analysis on the basis of exergy flow calculations is considered for assessment of total environmental impact on all stages of energy system life cycle. Integrated exergetic assessment, based on exergy analysis and thermoeconomics, is recommended for comparisons of alternative technical solutions and decision making for energy system design. Application of thermoeconomics to sustainable buildings is examined.The paper presents the methods and results of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) applied to the production of maize grain from a conventional variety compared with maize grain from a variety genetically modified to be herbicide tolerant and insect protected and to contain an enhanced oil and lysine content, and its impact when fed to broiler chickens. The findings show that there are both environmental and human health benefits of growing GM maize including lower impacts on global warming, ozone depletion, freshwater ecotoxicity and human toxicity. However, when considered in terms of the use of maize as a feed input to broiler chicken production, the benefits of the GM alternative become negligible compared to the use of conventional maize.The environmental impact of the tanning industry is generally significant with outputs of wastes, i.e. high concentrations of organics, salts and heavy metals (chromium compounds), both in solid and liquid form, as a result. In order to bring the tanning industry more in line with present environmental thinking, various methods have been devised to reduce impacts. The underlying study proposes a modification of the method for unhairing-liming of hides where the unhairing-liming liquids are reused several times after being recharged by reduced quantities of chemicals. The study, therefore, aims at reducing both the economic and environmental costs of the unhairing-liming process. Experiments were carried out at lab scale with a simulation apparatus designed for the purpose. Life cycle assessment was used to evaluate the net environmental benefits of the modified method. The present value approach was used to evaluate the economic feasibility of the modified method. The quality of the produced leather was assessed by experts from the tanning sector (tanners). On the environmental level, the modified method reduced the environmental impact of the process by 24%, COD was reduced by 50% as well as sulfide which was reduced by 73% when the process water was recycled four times. The modified method requires some investment in new equipment and is a little more labor intensive as compared with the conventional method but does permit for savings in water up to 58% and chemicals up to 28% as well as wastewater treatment cost which was reduced by 58%. The modified method allowed for four times reuse of the unhairing-liming liquor without visibly affecting the quality of the final product of leather. It was concluded that both the economic and the environmental costs of the unhairing-liming process were reduced relative to the same of the conventional method. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new method is proposed for the identification of environmental impact category weights using a panel approach and a Multi-Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) for use within the weighting step in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). Seven environmental criteria were assessed by panellists and weights were obtained. The weighting factors of 10 impact categories were calculated according to a four-step procedure: (1) criteria definition; (2) scoring of each impact category (scale of 1-100, 100 causing the most damage) according to seven environmental criteria (human health, ecosystem health, resource consumption as well as scale, duration, reversibility and "distance-to-target") by a panel of Canadian citizens; (3) assessment of each criterion's importance using a "resistance to change" approach; and (4) criteria aggregation (through MCDA) which allowed the calculation of a final weighting score for each impact category. The greatest advantage of this procedure is the case with which it can be implemented in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study whatever the LCIA method is used. Integrating weighting factors specific to the Canadian environmental context into a site-dependant LCIA method will contribute to the progress of LCA in Canada. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two experiences related to pollution prevention (P2) curricula are described: An active learning course in environmental engineering (EE) for ChE students, and the development of "modules" for pollution prevention in an international mobility program. The first is approached in collaborative learning oriented to pollution prevention through process and product analysis and life cycle assessment; the second attempts to design and develop up to 17 modules around process integration tools in an exchange program involving eight institutions from three countries of North America, some 12 professors and up to 42 students. Modules support in-class and distance learning using a web-based platform. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is common practise in mining Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies to use a predefined set of data to represent mining production systems. Besides this, very little is added to improve data quality, and essential mining process details which affect the ultimate environmental impacts is rarely taken into account. Some significant omissions include exploration and development work, mining method used, production, ore losses, location and the mining/processing method dependent factors that govern the nature of discharges to the environment. The mining system is often represented as a black-box, not lending itself to the interpretation of different processes used in minerals production. The generic data used are often inadequate for a mining LCA, and cannot be used as an accurate account of mining environmental burdens contributing to more complex systems "down-stream", such as metals, building, chemical or food industries. Therefore, the main objective of the mining LCA model presented in this paper was to develop a tool that is able to represent the mining system in a comprehensive way. To attain this objective, the mining system was studied in more detail. as it is commonly practised during mine feasibility and design stages. It (LICYMIN) was developed as part of an international research project led by Imperial College London. The model integrates the mine production, processing, waste treatment and disposal, rehabilitation and aftercare stages of a mine's life within an LCA framework. The development work was carried out in collaboration with several industrial partners in Europe, including Bakonyi Bauxitbanya Kft. in Hungary. The model structure, database development and examples of field applications from industrial sites are presented. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mexico ranks among the I I major producer countries of minerals worldwide; its open pit and underground systems arc 500 years old. This paper presents an overview of the Mexican mining industry from technological development, historical and economic perspectives. The efforts made by mining companies to address issues or environmental management and sustainable development expressed in national and international frameworks, as well as the Mexican environmental regulatory framework for the mining sector, are analyzed. Since, among others, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been recognized as a key topic to promote sustainable development in the Latin American and Caribbean region, this paper also examines the application of LCA in mining. Two life cycle approaches are presented: a national life cycle inventory for base metals, and an integral life cycle model for the management of mining processes. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper underlines and debates the importance of developing specific guidelines and checklist per product typology, as tools to make eco-efficient design become a reality. The argumentation is accompanied by the description of a project commissioned by the NECTA Vending Solutions (the European leader of drinks & food vending machines) to the DIS research unit (Design and Innovation for environmental Sustainability, Politecnico di Milano University - The DIS research unit of Politecnico di Milano University is offering, since 10 years, applied researches and company consulting on Life Cycle Design and eco-efficiency improvement. Typical consulting activities are: Life Cycle Assessment; handbook for LCD and eco-efficient product, service and product-service system development; procedure and tools to integrate environmental requirements into company existing product, service and product-service system development process; courses on LCD), resulting in such tools, currently integrated into the company product development process. The considerations are based upon on primary data and experiences. The final results of this project are two handbooks of guidelines and checklists for the eco-efficient development of two types of vending machines: one for Snack & Food (spirals model), the other for Hot & Cold drinks. In order to achieve these results an LCA has been developed and a system to prioritize guidelines has been adopted; this system has led to a procedure which moves from general to specific guidelines and checklist. Finally these tools have been integrated within the company procedure. The method adopted by DIS in this applied research is described, highlighting the observed key success factors in a project between a University research unit and a company. Final considerations expand upon the matured experiences to demonstrate the importance and efficacy to go from general methods and tools to more specific ones (e.g. specific guidelines and checklist), in order to implement Life Cycle Design principles, in the real company practices and culture. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Eco-design tools ought to be made more useful, so that they become effectively used in companies to support improvements of product systems. This article discusses the interconnections between environmental analysis and integrative cooperation in the product development processes. The study focuses on two different assessment tools, life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental effect analysis (EEA), in three different combined uses. The discussion of the Eco-design methods focuses on integration in product development processes considering the relation to a product competitiveness perspective. The interviews indicate that the interconnection of methods is important as a key to real transformation of design practices. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Researchers have found that some system design activities for users are effective in terms of satisfaction and commitment (13), user involvement and user attitude (12) and performance (12, 13). As Markus and Mao (19) suggest, activities in different stages of the life cycle and participants should be clearly defined and studied. Many researchers (7, 16, 20, 30) suggest that user participation in the analysis stage should be more important to system success than user participation in the design stage. Most of these studies have focused only on those project team members who have been assigned formal responsibility within the project scope instead of on the operational users who have no formal responsibility within the project scope but their work life will be affected by the system. The relative contribution of operational end user participation, in the different stages has, to date, not been empirically investigated. This study reports the results of a laboratory experiment to investigate the impact of operational end user participation in two important stages of the system development life cycle: analysis and design on perceived participation, intention to use, process satisfaction and perceived ownership. There were 210 students from 3 universities in the United States who voluntarily participated in this experiment. The General Linear Model and a Structural Equation Modeling technique were used to analyze the data collected to test the hypotheses. The major findings indicate that when users are not assigned any formal project development responsibility, user participation and desire to participate still has a significant influence on perceived participation and perceived participation has a significant influence on intention to use, process satisfaction and perceived ownership. In both stages, users perceiving higher participation perceived higher process satisfaction, ownership, and intention to use than users who perceived lower participation. Further, user participation in the analysis activities led to higher, but not significant perceived participation than user participation in the design activities. This study showed preliminary evidence that after meaningful participation in one stage of analysis or design activities, further material participation in other stages may not be necessary to promote user satisfaction with the process. The results of this study suggest a basis for resource allocation with regard to end user participation in systems development projects.The problems of overproduction within the European Union countries and the environmental impact of agriculture have lead to the introduction of schemes that aim to reduce both. Beef (Bos taurus) production forms a large component of the Irish agricultural industry and accounts for more than one quarter of agricultural economic output. Recently, the European CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) has been re-evaluated to include supplementary measures that encompass the environmental role of agriculture rather titan just the production role. A life cycle assessment (LCA) method was adopted to estimate emissions per kilogram of CO, equivalent per kilogram of live weight (LW) leaving the farm gate per annum (kg CO2 kg(-1) LW yr(-1)) and per hectare (kg CO2 ha(-1) yr(-1)). Fifteen units engaged in suckler-beef production (five conventional, five in an Irish agri-environmental scheme, and five organic units) were evaluated for emissions per unit product and area. The average emissions from the conventional units were 13.0 kg CO2 kg(-1) LW yr(-1), from the agri-environmental scheme units 12.2 kg CO2 kg(-1) LW yr(-1), and from the organic units 11.1 kg CO2 kg LW yr(-1). The average emissions per unit area from the conventional units was 5346 kg CO, ha(-1) yr(-1), from the agri-environmental scheme units 4372 kg CO2 ha(-1) yr(-1), and from the organic units 2302 kg CO2 ha(-1) yr(-1). Results indicated that moving toward extensive production could reduce emissions per unit product and area but live weight production per hectare would be reduced.This paper presents a model that is developed to optimize the selection and operation of energy systems in commercial buildings based on their environmental performance. The model can be used for decision support regarding infrastructure in both design and operation of building energy systems. The approach is composed of energy simulation to generate building's energy demand, life cycle assessment (LCA) to model different energy systems, and optimization model to optimize the selection and operation of these energy systems. The energy systems that are discussed in this paper are cogeneration systems, average electric grid, gas boilers, and absorption and electric chillers. The performance criteria presented in this paper are primary energy consumption (PEC) and tropospheric ozone precursor potential (TOPP).Carotenoid pigments are widely used as feed additives in the poultry sector and in salmonid and crustacean aquaculture. In these applications the egg, skin or flesh of the target species are pigmented in order to improve marketability. The poultry feed producer is able to Source these carotenoids (or indeed, xanthophylls) either from chemical synthesis or from processed plant materials. This study examined the ecological impact of the application of chemically synthesized pigments and their plant-derived Counterparts. A cradle-to-grave assessment, studying all aspects of the production chain, revealed that the products derived through synthetic chemistry had the least impact on the environment.Product sustainability approaches, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC), are becoming increasingly critical to influence product decisions tor all lifecycle stages. However, LCA and LCC methods must be integrated into the product lifecycle processes for sharing their data semantics with other applications in order to support decisions in the technical, ecological and economic aspects of products. Semantics sharing has raised big challenges in understanding and interpreting the intended meaning of LCA, LCC and other product data. This paper presents an ontology-driven, standard-based approach to the explicit capture and reuse of product data semantics for heterogeneous information sharing across lifecycle processes in computer aided design, quality assurance, LCA and LCC analysis, and product development process management. The approach incorporates object-based product data modeling, interoperability standardization, and ontology engineering to address the product data semantics sharing issues. A software implementation of the approach with a use scenario is also discussed in the paper.DaimlerChrysler plans to replace the current paint shop of the rear axles by a new one. It is the goal to design the new paint shop representing the latest technology for paint shops and overspray handling and to consider ecological, technical and economic aspects from a life cycle perspective during the design process. Therefore the Life Cycle Engineering approach (LCE) has been chosen to give a broad view and compare the different. options. The application of LCE within the design phase has shown that the reaction time for feedback is reasonable for designers and therefore it can be applied within the planning of new production facilities. The LCE study showed that there is no direct relation between the economic cost and the ecological performance of a design option. While all considered recycling systems have better economics than the options considered at the present time that allow energy recovery of the collected overspray, there is no general preference regarding pro/contra recycling from an ecological point of view.Fuel cells have the potential to offer an alternative propulsion system to convential internal combustion engines used in transportation at the present time. As a result fuel cells may provide consumers a cleaner and more efficient technology. Fuel cells are powered with hydrogen fuel which can be produced from various energy sources, which include renewable sources of energy or conventional fossil fuel. Thus, the emerging hydrogen infrastructure needs to be addressed carefully. A consortium of industries, research institutes and several European cities launched the EU-project CUTE (Clean Urban Transport in Europe), whose aim is not only to develop and demonstrate 30 fuel cell busses and the accompanying infrastructure in 10 European cities, but also assess the environmental impacts. Within the project scope the potential of fuel cell powered transport systems for reducing environmental influences such as greenhouse effect, improving the quality of the atmosphere and conserving fossil resources is assessed. This first large scale test run of fuel cell transportation systems is the best possible information base to give real life numbers about environmental impacts of a fuel cell system including hydrogen used as fuel. Meanwhile the use of hydrogen fuel is mostly considered as environmentally friendly. However, a statement about the actual environmental impacts is only possible by regarding the entire Life Cycle of the hydrogen, which includes its production and use. Within CUTE different routes of the hydrogen production have been assessed: hydrogen production via electrolysis and steam reforming, considering different boundary conditions, e.g. country specific energy production/supply, different ways for electricity production (e.g. wind power, geothermal energy etc.) etc. This presentation will show the environmental footprint of these routes (Life Cycle Assessment results), which enable the comparison of the environmental impacts of the different hydrogen production routes and the transportation system considering the total life cycle, (production of FC bus, operation and end of life) along with diesel and natural gas as "conventional" fuels for bus operation.The integration of environmental, social, and economic (ESE) objectives into business decisions and future planning is the path towards sustainable development. The goal of this paper is to address the environmental component of sustainable development within the automotive industry based on the Life Cycle Analysis and Well-to-Wheels approach. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is very relevant for making the concept of environmental sustainability operational because environmental impacts have to be examined from a 'cradle-to-grave' perspective. Life cycle analysis is an analytical tool that quantifies energy consumption and emissions associated with the raw material extraction, processing of materials, manufacturing, use phase, and end-of-life (reuse, recycling, and disposal) of products. The potential impact of current production and consumption patterns, on the future availability of non-renewable resources, can also be evaluated within the LCA framework. Thus, LCA provides an effective way for industry to support better management of natural resources, in order to maximize economic benefits and minimize environmental burdens. Well-to-Wheel (WtW) analysis is a subset of a complete LCA because it quantifies the environmental burdens associated only with the fuel production and its consumption during the driving time of a vehicle. Well-to-Wheel studies mainly provide energy use and air emissions inventories. This paper provides the results obtained from two major studies conducted at General Motors R&D Center. The first is a LCA study that assesses the environmental emissions associated with four alternative automotive paint processes and seven different paint formulations. The second is a WtW study that addresses 18 different combinations of alternative fuels and vehicle engines. Considering that the use phase of the vehicle contributes more than 80% of its life cycle energy consumption, and that the automotive paint process is the most energy intensive component of the manufacturing phase in any given vehicle, the results presented in this paper are noteworthy for environmental sustainability considerations relevant to the automotive industry.A systematic study of current European electricity and heat systems performed in the frame of the Swiss LCA project ecoinvent was extended to a few new technologies and used as a basis for comparison and ranking using External Costs Assessment and one selected Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method. The energy systems include full process chains from extraction of resources through waste disposal. The external costs from airborne emissions were estimated using the most recent findings of the ExternE series on the average damage factors for Europe. Current fossil electricity systems exhibit the highest LCIA scores as well as the. highest external costs, unless greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are valued very low (sensitivity) and advanced technologies are applied. Alpine hydropower always exhibits the lowest score. Environmental performance of current renewables is generally better than fossil but LCIA ranking for wind and PV may worsen when increased importance is attributed to abiotic resource depletion. Wood cogeneration has a relatively poor score compared to other renewables. Nuclear shows generally good environmental performance, unless the high radioactive wastes are given subjectively high negative value. For heating systems, oil has higher external costs than natural gas, with conventional wood in between. External costs of heat pumps strongly depend on the origin of the electricity supplied. Sensitivity analyses were performed for external costs to reflect uncertainties of impacts and variations in monetary valuation. Fossils remain worst performers. External costs of nuclear remain low. Using allocation by exergy, electricity by diesel and natural gas cogeneration ranks worse than oil and natural gas combined cycle, respectively, and never better than renewables or nuclear.The front cover of Motorola cellular phone housings were ground to the same size as original particles prior to use by a knife mill. The mixtures contained 15.2 wt% metals, 1.9 wt% foams, 1.4 wt% rubbers and 81.4 wt% thermoplastics where the major component was a polycarbonate (PC)/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) blend. The separation of the thermoplastic scraps was performed using the sink-float process in water and salt solution. The impact modification of all housing containing six thermoplastic parts was carried out by the addition of a polyolefin elastomer called as the functionalized polyethylene (PE). Unprinted glass fiber reinforced epoxy circuit boards were size reduced and pulverized using the knife mill and hammer mill. The ground epoxy circuit boards were then classified with a set of testing sieves using Gyro sifter, and their mean diameters were calculated by means of particle size distribution analysis. Izod impact strengths at two temperatures, tensile tests, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) on the fracture surfaces, and dynamic mechanical spectroscopy were performed to characterize the alloys and mixtures compounded by a batch mixer and a twin screw extruder.Together with 11 European and US photovoltaic companies an extensive effort has been made to collect Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data that represents the status of production technology for crystalline silicon modules for the year 2004. These data can be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of photovoltaic solar energy systems. The new data covers all processes from silicon feedstock production via wafer- and cell- to module manufacturing. All commercial wafer technologies are covered, i.e multi- and monocrystalline wafers as well as ribbon technologies. For monocrystalline silicon wafer production further improvement of the data quality is recommended.Together with a number of PV companies an extensive effort has been made to collect Life Cycle Inventory data that represents the current status of production technology for crystalline silicon modules. The new data cover all processes from silicon feedstock production to cell and module manufacturing. All commercial wafer technologies are covered, that is multi- and monocrystalline wafers as well as ribbon technology. The presented data should be representative for the technology status in 2004, although for monocrystalline Si crystallisation further improvement of the data quality is recommended. On the basis of the new data it is shown that c-Si PV systems are in a good position to compete with other energy technologies. Energy Pay-Back Times of 1.7-2.7 yr are found for South-European locations, while life-cycle CO2 emissions are in the 30-46 g/kWh range. Clear perspectives exist for further improvements of roughly 40-50%.The life cycle of the thin film CdTe PV modules in the U.S. have been investigated based on materials and energy inventories for a commercial 25 MW/yr production plant. The energy payback times (EPBT) of these modules are 0.75 years and the GHG emissions are 18 gCO(2). eq/kWh for average U.S. solar irradiation conditions. Adding the impact of an optimized ground-level balance of system (BOS), result in a total EPBT of 1.2 years and total life-cycle GHG emissions of 24 gCO(2).eq/kWh.Since June 2003 Deutsche Solar AG is operating a recycling plant for modules with crystalline solar silicon cells. The aim of the process is to recover the silicon wafers so that they can be reprocessed and integrated in modules again. The aims of the Life Cycle Analysis of the mentioned process are (i) the verification if the process is beneficial regarding environmental aspects, (ii) the comparison to other end-of-life scenarios, (iii) the ability to include the end-of-life phase of modules in future LCA of photovoltaic modules. The results show that the recycling process makes good ecological sense, because the environmental burden during the production phase of reusable components is higher than the burden due to the recycling process. Moreover the Energy Pay Back Time of modules with recycled cells was determined.The development of a hydrogen infrastructure has been identified as a key barrier to implementing hydrogen as for a future transportation fuel. Several recent studies of hydrogen infrastructure have assessed near-term and long-term alternatives for hydrogen supply. In this paper, we discuss how improvements in current hydrogen storage technologies could change how a future hydrogen infrastructure is designed. Using a simplified engineering/economic model for hydrogen infrastructure design and cost, we explore some potential impacts of near-term advances in storage performance and cost, in terms of system design, cost, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. We find that the characteristics of hydrogen storage play a major role in the design, cost, energy use, and CO2 emissions of hydrogen supply infrastructure.Aspects of the hydrogen economy are addressed by quantifying impacts and costs associated with a hydrogen-based energy infrastructure. It is recommended that hydrogen (H-2) is produced from Solar Thermochemical (STC) Cycles and Wind Electrolysis, with the possible use of Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) to aid in the creation of a hydrogen infrastructure. Despite high impact assessment results from SimaPro, the external costs associated with Biomass gasification are shown to be comparable with those for Wind Electrolysis. Thus, biomass-produced hydrogen could also be a viable alternative, especially in areas ideally suited to the growth of energy crops. Finally, the most influential life cycle stages are the Manufacturing of the FCV and Hydrogen Production (except for the environmentally benign wind electrolysis). For the Wind/Electrolysis case, the majority of impacts come from plant construction.The majority of the world energy consumption is derived from fossil fuels. Furthermore, the United States (US) consumption of petroleum vastly exceeds its production, with the majority of petroleum being consumed in the transportation sector. The increasing dependency on foreign fuel resources in conjunction with the severe environmental impacts of a petroleum-based society dictates that alternative renewable energy resources be developed. The US Department of Energy's (DOE'S) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Office of Basic Energy Sciences are currently promoting a vehicular hydrogen-based energy economy. However, none of the current on-board storage technologies are suitable for practical and safe deployment. Significant scientific advancement is therefore still required if a viable on-board storage technology is to be developed. A detailed discussion of the benefits of transitioning to a hydrogen-powered automotive fleet as well as the tremendous technical hurdles faced for the development of an on-board hydrogen storage system are provided here. A novel class of theoretically predicted nanostructured materials that could revolutionize hydrogen storage materials is also presented.This paper presents a framework for guiding the design of new materials to enhance the sustainability of systems that utilize these materials throughout their production, use and retirement. Traditionally, materials engineering has focused on the interplay between material microstructure, physical properties, processing, and performance. Environmental impacts related to the system's life cycle are not well integrated into the materials engineering process. To address this shortcoming, a new methodology has been developed that incorporates social, economic, and environmental indicators - the three dimensions of sustainability. The proposed framework accomplishes this task and provides a critical tool for use across a broad class of materials and applications. Material properties strongly shape and control sustainability performance throughout each life cycle stage including materials production, manufacturing, use and end-of-life management. Key material parameters that influence life cycle energy, emissions, and costs are highlighted. The proposed framework is demonstrated in the design of engineered cementitious composites, which are materials being developed for civil infrastructure applications including bridges, roads, pipe and buildings. This research is part of an NSF MUSES (Materials Use: Science, Engineering and Society) Biocomplexity project on sustainable concrete infrastructure materials and systems (http://sci.umich.edu).This paper presents information regarding a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA), including scenario and data uncertainty, based on a hypothetical drink product for which we evaluate three main container material alternatives: (1) a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle; (2) an aluminum can; and (3) a polylactide (PLA) bottle. The scope of results included energy, water use and two characterized impacts are included: global warming potential (GAP) and ozone depletion potential (ODP). The results presented in this study demonstrate that LCI parameter uncertainty seems to have a dominant effect in the outcome of the LCA results considered. Indeed, in most cases there is overlap in the uncertainty intervals (at 95% confidence level), indicating that the three systems under study appear to have similar indicator values, at least with regard to the environmental indicators included here.Over the years considerable research has been conducted on masonry mortars regarding their compatibility with under restoration structures. The environmental dimension of these materials may sometimes be a prohibitive factor in the selection of these materials. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to assess the environmental impact of the materials. LCA can be a very useful tool in the decision making for the selection of appropriate restoration structural material. In this work, a comparison between traditional type of mortars and modern ones (cement-based) is attempted. Two mortars of traditional type are investigated: with aerial lime binder, with aerial lime and artificial pozzolanic additive and one with cement binder. The LCA results indicate that the traditional types of mortars are more sustainable compared to cement-based mortars. For the impact assessment, the method used is Eco-indicator 95.The front covers of Motorola cellular phone housings, which were composed of 62.2 wt% of polycarbonate (PC)/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), were ground and separated from the undesired materials using sink-float methods. The sink-float methods in water and salt were used to remove the floating materials such as the adhesive strips and the foams, and to separate the metal parts where the recovery ratios were 92.8 and 40.5%, respectively. The separation of residual wires and button rubbers, which could not be done by the sink-float process in water, was preformed using V-Stat Triboelectric Separator (Outokumpu Technology) of a roll separator that also provided the effective methods to separate the ground metals that had existed in the printed circuit boards where the recovery weight ratio of metal parts was 19 wt%. The separated PC/ABS's could be compounded with the ground circuit boards or the thermoplastic elastomer called Engage (R), or the reactive species of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA).The concept of life cycle assessment (LCA) is build upon the object of assessment, namely the functional unit, i.e. all impacts ete. are related to a specific service or function in the society. In a LCA context, the assessment of emerging technologies like Nanotechnology is challenging due to a number of knowledge gaps. It may not be known exactly what is the function (or functional unit) or what the technology may substitute and production may still be at an experimental level, raising questions about technology or materials choice. For prospective LCA studies methodologies like "consequential LCA" may be useful because future changes are taken into account. However, it still does not suffice for emerging technologies. In a recent "Green Technology Foresight" project a methodology was developed based on five elements: Life-cycle thinking, systems approach, a broad dialogue based understanding of the environment, precaution as a principle and finally, prevention as preferred strategy. When assessing emerging technologies three levels should be considered. First order effects are connected directly to production, use and disposal. Second order are effects from interaction with other parts of the economy from more intelligent design and management of processes, products, services, product chains etc. and the effect on the stocks of products. An example could be dematerialisation. Rebound effects may be considered as third order effects, like when efficiency gains stimulate new demands, which balances or overcompensates the savings.With the passage of the National Nanoscale Initiative in 2001 there has been increasing attentionand funding given to nanomaterial research. This has led to a number of new materials developed at the nanoscale (< 100 nm) level, which often possess chemical and physical properties distinct from those of their bulk materials. These unique qualities are proving to be quite useful in a number of new applications. For example, biological applications in imaging, treatment, and drug delivery are particularly promising as well as the increasing engineering potential of nanocircuitry and materials science. As the number of applications increases however, so too does the potential for human exposure to nanomaterials through a number of routes: dermal, ingestion, inhalation, and even injection. Interestingly, some of the properties of these nanomaterials that make them useful in these emerging technologies are the same properties that can increase their toxic potential. This is leading to an emerging discipline nanotoxicology, which can be defined as safety evaluation of engineered nanostructures and nanodevices. Nanotoxicology research will not only provide information for risk assessment of nanomaterials based on data for hazard identification, dose response relationships and biokinetics, but will also help to further advance the field of nanoresearch by providing information to alter undesirable nanomaterials properties. Although nanotoxicology is in its infancy, there are some preliminary studies with newly developed materials that provide some insight into potential effects, which when coupled with older studies provides information on how these nanomaterials impact the biological system. The following text summarizes results of studies with nanosized particles with a focus on the respiratory system and skin as portals of entry. The ability of particles to trauslocate from their site of entry, their ability to elicit biological responses, and their presumed mechanisms of action will be highlighted. This will be an attempt to illustrate how pervasive these materials can be, which may or may not be detrimental. With proper toxicological assessment this potential may be harnessed leading to breakthroughs at the nanotechnology-biology interface.There are numerous potential environmental risks of engineered nanoparticles that are not yet well-characterized or understood. Nanoparticles may be introduced into aquatic environments during production processes and also as a result of release following their use in electronic and biological applications. The objectives of these studies were to characterize the behavior of quantum dots (QD) in water, and the accumulation of and toxicity to potential biological receptors in aquatic ecosystems. There are natural differences in environmental factors that may affect the degradation rates of QD's as well as their toxicity, including temperature, salinity, and pH conditions. To assess the responses under different pH conditions, nonfunctionalized QD's composed of a Cd/Se core surrounded by a ZnS shell (Evident Technologies) were added to distilled water, at pHs of 4, 6, and 8, and the changes in fluorescent emission spectra over time were determined. Likewise, to determine the effects of salinity on degradation rates, QD's were added to 0.22 filtered seawater samples of different salinities (10, 20, and 30 parts per thousand). The accumulation and potential toxicity of QD's were evaluated using hepatopancreas cells of oysters, Crassostrea virginica. Fluorescent spectroscopy studies with water and cell samples indicated some degradation in low pH and high salinity waters, but did not indicate that there was increased degradation of QD's accumulated in cells. Fluorescent confocal microscopy verified that QD's were accumulated into the hepatopancreas cells. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies verified cellular accumulation, and also indicated some limited degradation of the QD's by the cells over the short time periods (e.g. hours) used in these preliminary studies. Using a lysosomal destabilization assay, there was some evidence of toxicity to hepatopancreatic cells. These kinds of basic studies are essential for characterizing potential cellular toxicity and addressing the potential impacts of nanoengineered particles on aquatic organisms and basic cellular responses.The fuel additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) has been used in an effort to improve air quality in the United States, but other undesirable effects, particularly the contamination of water resources, were eventually judged to outweigh any air quality benefits it may have offered. The experience with MTBE offers many lessons, including the need to evaluate potential positive and negative environmental impacts associated with fuel choices using a comprehensive approach that combines a product life-cycle perspective with the risk assessment paradigm. Such an approach, referred to as "comprehensive environmental assessment" (CEA), is illustrated here by highlighting some of the issues evaluating reformulated gasoline (RFG) produced with MTBE, ethanol, or no oxygenate.Environmental damage is one of the main justifications for continued efforts to reduce energy consumption and to shift to cleaner sources such as solar energy. In recent years there has been much progress in the analysis of environmental damages, in particular thanks to the Extern-E (External Costs of Energy) Project of the European Commission. This article presents a summary of the methodology and key results for the external costs of the major energy technologies. Even though the uncertainties are large, the results provide substantial evidence that the classical air pollutants (particles, No-x and SOz) from fossil fuels impose significant public health costs, comparable to the cost of global warming from CO2 emissions. The total external costs are relatively low for natural gas (in the range of about 0.5-1 eurocents/kWh for most EU countries), but much higher for coal and lignite (in the range of about 2-6 eurocents/kWh for most EU countries). By contrast, the external. costs of nuclear, wind, and photovoltaics are very low. The external costs of hydro are extremely variable from site to site, and the ones of biomass depend strongly on the specific technologies used and can be quite large for combustion.Purpose - Recycling of non-renewable resources serves both in reducing the consumption of virgin supplies and the discharge of associated residuals back into the natural environment. On the other hand, recycling has been criticized because of its environmental impacts. The aim of the present paper is to identify and quantify the environmental effect of recycling of a glass bottle. Design/methodology/approach - For this purpose, the life cycle assessment polygon framework is being used. This framework has been developed for evaluating the results of a life cycle inventory analysis using critical volume aggregation and polygon-based interpretation. Findings - Recycling strategies can, in most cases, reduce the total environmental burden of the glass container examined. However, this reduction may considerably vary in relation to each " ecological parameter" (consumption of energy, consumption of water, air emissions, waterborne waste and solid waste), depending mainly on the "recycling mix" (the percentage of recycled material used in production and the percentage of product waste that goes for recycling). Research limitations/implications - The extent to which these findings could be generalized to other materials and products could be confirmed by more applications of the framework. Practical implications - This paper may help in developing recycling strategies. Originality/value - A conceptual framework for the environmental evaluation of recycling, considering, not only general recycling targets, but also the particular interests or conditions that may exist, is introduced.Solid Oxide fuel Cells, SOFCs, have attracted worldwide attention from wide applicability in a large-sized power plant, a distributed power supply, and an efficient cogeneration apparatus With extremally high efficiency of power generation. Doped-lanthanum gallate (La(Sr)Ga(Mg)O-3), which has been recently proposed as I new solid electrolyte, replaces Yttria Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ), lowers the operating, temperature of SOFC and then improves the mechanical reliability of the cells. In this Study, the doped-lauthanum gallate was produced by combustion synthesis and its sintering behavior, the electrical conductivity. and life cycle assessment of this process from energy requirement and it carbon dioxide emission were analyzed by comparing with the conventional solid-state method, In the experiments of the combustion synthesis, lanthanum oxide, strontium carbonate, gallium oxide, metallic magnesium, and sodium perchlorate were well mixed with different Substitution ratios of gallium by magnesium: 80. 60, 40, and 30 mole%, by using a hall mill and were ignited at one end of the mixture at nitrogen atmosphere to complete the combustion wave propagation of the exothermic reaction to the other end without any additional energy. As, a result, all of the products, except the 80 mole% magnesium-containing lot, showed definite peaks of intermediates containing lanthanum gallate in X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) patterns. Most significantly, the product containing 30 mole% magnesium. which wits completely sintered at 100 K lower temperature (1673 K) compared to the solid state method (1773 K), showed the highest electrical conductivity, 0.08 Scm(-1) at 1073 K without the dependency of oxygen partial pressure, being almost the same as the world record. The results demonstrated that the combustion synthesis of SOFC electrolyte had the possibility of an innovative production process with several benefits, Such as shortening of processing time, minimizing energy requirement and carbon dioxide emission. and deriving the excellent property of SOFCs.Five popular adhesives of urea resin (UF), melamine-urea cocondensed resin (MUF), phenol resin (PF), phenolresorcinol resin (PRF), and aqueous polymer isocyanate (API) for wood based materials were analyzed by the inventory analysis. It was calculated that energy consumption and emissions of CO2, NOx and SOx for production of 1 kg resin using unit processes from oil drilling for material's production to resin production. It became clear that MUF and PRF consumed the largest amount of energy and exhausted maximum amount of SOx among five adhesives. On the other hand, UF consumed the least energy and exhausted minimum SOx which are equivalent to the range of 57 and 67 percents of those of MUF and PRF, respectively PF and API were recognized to be medium ones among five adhesives analyzed. CO2 and NOx emissions of API were remarkably large in such a condition that these amounts were more than six times as long as other resins. It was highly recommended that environmental loads of an adhesive should be judged by not the weight unit but the functional unit in case of life cycle assessment of wood based materials.Among the many ocean energy technologies under development, the tidal turbine farm has been proposed as an environmentally friendly ocean energy converter application. Although the technology and capital costs of ocean energy turbines are understood, the economics of operating a gang of turbines as an energy farm has yet to be analyzed. In this paper, a planning, operation and maintenance model for tidal turbine farms is proposed. The system is modeled using life-cycle assessment, incorporating a variety of time-dependent variables. Model components include farm construction and planning, operation strategy, regular maintenance, and emergency maintenance. Preliminary numerical simulation results are shown in a case study for a potential site.It is becoming increasingly necessary in life-cycle analysis (LCA) of infrastructure assets, including pavements, to take a longer-term approach than has been used, mainly to ensure sustainability and assess the impacts of today's decisions accurately. LCA can include primarily life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA), but it also can include considerations of resource conservation, environmental impacts, energy balance, and so forth, and it can involve short-, medium-, and long-term periods. It is thus possible to develop a context for LCA of likely and uncertain societal activities, including transportation, over these periods. Conventional LCCA is directed toward comparing competing alternative investment strategies and can involve a range of stakeholders. Of the methods available, present worth of costs is almost exclusively used in the pavement field. However, when medium- to longer-term life-cycle periods are involved, rate-of-return and cost-effectiveness formulations can be applicable. A numerical example shows how an agency can determine the internal rate of return for two investment alternatives involving different pavement designs and a life-cycle period of 50 years. In addition, a cost-effectiveness example is provided for a sidewalk network, again with a life-cycle period of 50 years. Conventional LCCA for calculating present worth of costs will undoubtedly continue to be used in the pavement field as a primary tool. However, using a rate-of-return or cost-effectiveness formulation, especially for medium- to longer-term life-cycle periods, should be given more consideration.Sustainability is important for the projects because if not that may result to a huge impact on the environment. As a result there is a pressure in order to examine projects more sustainably, so that they meet the needs of society without compromising the needs of others or jeopardizing the future survival of humanity on earth. In the current context Value can no be no longer intentified with profit to the stakeholders if environmental and social criteria are, not taken into consideration in the decision making process. Until now several applications have been reported the main aim of which was to increase the sustainable value of industry products. The objective of this paper is to investigate and evaluate the significance of different,policies in Greece suggested for the application of sustainability indices in various phases of projects' value during its life cycle. The application of tools such as Life Cycle Assessment used to estimate the Sustainable Development of projects within Value Analysis framework according to the existing Legislation is also under research. A Questionnaire survey of was carried out in order to obtain experience of project stakeholders academics and government employees involved in implementing sustainability issues. The findings indicate that although sustainability criteria are recognised as essential their use is limited.A survey of Life Cycle Assessment practitioners and a review of related methodological advances and capacity building activities are used to understand LCA advancements for evolutionary and revolutionary electronic products. Issues and recommendations for database, tool development, and methodological issues specific to electronics products are highlighted and discussed. We conclude that electronics sector participation in current LCA initiatives can highlight issues in a way that fosters advancement.Manufacturers in the electronics industry are faced with product shelf life counted in months [1], [2]. Traditionally, this has made it very difficult to make a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a product, since the product would be obsolete by the time the LCA was completed. New concepts in LCA allow specialists in things other than LCA to rapidly create both a model and generate "what-if" scenarios that will allow even manufacturers of short shelf life products take advantage of the benefits of LCA. Results can be used internally for decision-making and can also enable manufacturers submit information for environmentally preferable purchasing, eco-labels, and so-on.Some of the outstanding challenges faced by traditional LCA include the following. LCA is mainly an "output side" method due to its focus on emissions and their impact, but such data are often difficult to find, particularly for emerging technologies. Furthermore, although an important goal of LCA is to evaluate the environmental sustainability of technological alternatives, the very ecosystem goods and services that sustain all economic activities are usually ignored. This paper describes how thermodynamics can complement and enhance LCA by addressing these challenges. Ecosystem goods and services may be represented as the cumulative exergy consumed in ecological processes necessary for producing them. This may be calculated via methods in systems ecology and combined with engineering thermodynamics for joint analysis of industrial and ecological systems. A Thermodynamic Input-Output model of the US economy is developed based on this approach, and is used for hybrid LCA. Accounting for ecosystem goods and services is likely to provide a reasonable proxy to life cycle impact even without knowing details about emissions and their impact. This is because as per the second law, exergy is not conserved, but is lost in each transformation step. The exergy lost to the surroundings creates disorder in the environment, which should be related to the impact of emissions. This implies that among alternatives with similar utility, the process with a higher life cycle thermodynamic efficiency should have a smaller life cycle environmental impact. This talk will present some examples as preliminary support of this hypothesis and describe challenges and on-going work for obtaining a more rigorous statistical validation.The inclusion of modular functional units is often used as an example of how environmental considerations can be incorporated in the design stage of electronic products. The assumption is that the functional units can can be reused at end of life to perform the same task in a different product. The environmental benefit from this practice is only accrued if the feedback loop from recovery to remanufacture is completed. The barriers to the completion of this loop are numerous and concern compatability, reliability, functionality, flexibility and cost inter alia. This paper discusses the concept of modular digital electronic circuits based on programmable logic device technology and examines their suitability for use in the scheme of an overall Eco-design methodology based on the re-use of such modular units. A comparative streamlined life cycle assessment between this methodology and conventional digital electronics is also conducted to inspect the environmental benefits across the whole life cycle.A life cycle inventory for comparative assessment of assorted semiconductor device types is assembled using a library of process step-related information. In this paper, we present the structure of this library of energy use, material inputs and emissions data at the process equipment-level and facilities-scale, normalized per wafer. Selected results from a case study of a 130nm node CMOS device are presented and compared with a previous study of a comparable chip. Comparative production impacts of 6-layer and 8-layer CMOS devices are shown.The question surrounding "greener" products has always been, "at what cost?" Several decades ago, it was assumed that the product that was easier on the environment would cost more to produce, yet would not command a higher price. Regulations, such as the European WEEE directive, and emissions trading are ways in which governments have changed the market paradigm, rewarding lower polluting manufacturers.The challenges of competing business interest in production process as determined factor for quality products, environment protection, production machinery condition, required parameters for machining and elaborateness for given accuracy. One of solution is the implementation of modern simulating devices and applications of analogy in production practice.Fuel cells in power system use H-2 and O-2 as inputs. H2O, heat and electrical energy are outputs. At first sight it seems that it is total environmental clear technology, without emissions of CO2, CH4, NO2 and other greenhouse gases. But, this is only partly true. Analyzing this energy balance between inputs and outputs, however, is complex. Energy, which is lost to building fuel cell and for hydrogen's production must be taken into account. During that process, greenhouse's gasses are emitted. It is also essential to know which stationary fuel cell system produces the best return on the energy invested in them. This is part of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). This paper provides a comparison of fuel cells and competing conventional systems and points out strengths and weakness using each of them according to environment.Greenhouse cultivation in the high altitude tropics is an important economical activity and the interest to invest in greenhouse technology to improve yield and quality is increasing. The evaluation of the energy use and other burdens associated with protected cultivation have to be accounted for in order to increase sustainability. The aim of this paper was to make a contribution to the applicability of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology in high tropics tomato greenhouse production as tool to identifity energy use and some environmental impacts, studying a case in the BogotA Plateau (Colombia). Overall energy costs for tomato production were calculated at 1108.7 MJ.ton(-1), which is extremely low when compared to the energy use in northern Europe. The land use indicator was estimated at 38.5 m(2).y(-1) .t(-1) and a water consumption of 28 L-kg(-1). High potential emissions of N and P were estimated in relation with high concentrations applied in nutrient solutions and an elevated water use. Improvements in tomato yields and water use efficiency, enhancing the level of technology, are the key factors for reducing environmental impact. The adaptation of impact indicators will be necessary to apply LCA methodology in high tropical farming systems.With the rapid development of technologies and the turbulent market environment, manufacturing industry is challenged with the task of designing customized products in a timely and cost-efficient manner. Systematically capturing and transforming customer, competitor, and manufacture's own information into various product development stages became vital for a manufacture stays in a competitive position. The purpose of this research is to establish a manufacturer-centralized environment for manufacturer to stay in a competitive position with particular focus on the issues of product life cycle, supplier selection and knowledge allocation. To effectively analysis information and to provide solutions, multiple techniques including Quality Function Deployment, Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, and Analytical Hierarchy Process/Analytical Network Process have been integrated with the Web Service and Enterprise JavaBeans technologies to implement the environment.In recent years there has been an expansion in protected horticulture in Mediterranean countries. This expansion has resulted in important economic advances, especially for marginal areas. Searching to improve yields and production quality, some growers have introduced different climate management systems such as cooling, forced ventilation and fog systems. However, the incorporation of this equipment has led to an increase in the consumption of energy and other resources. The aim of this paper is to quantify the environmental impact, investment and yield necessary to justify this major investment in energy and materials from an environmental and economic point of view. A naturally ventilated greenhouse with a sweet pepper crop was taken as a reference. Life Cycle Assessment tools were used to evaluate the environmental performance of the different cooling systems. We evaluated impact categories such as energy consumption, climate change and the depletion of non-renewable resources. Our results showed that the incorporation of cooling control equipments could generally only be justified, from an environmental and economic point of view, by an increase in production that was not always possible to achieve in our climate conditions. Forced ventilation had the greatest impact upon most of the environmental categories. Furthermore, improving natural ventilation by increasing the opening surface of the ventilators could represent an efficient way of supplying more environmental friendly produce.A life-cycle analysis facilitates generation of cost-effective competitive solutions for designing and managing civil infrastructure systems from a long-term perspective. With this approach, one can appropriately balance several competing objectives, such as reducing life-cycle cost and enhancing lifetime performance. In this paper, several innovative techniques for life-cycle assessment and life extension of structures are reviewed. These include work developed at the University of Colorado at Boulder and at the Technical University of Braunschweig.The fatigue behaviour of welded structures depends on local characteristics of the weldment within the geometry of the weld, the cyclic material properties of the different weld zones and residual stresses, so that welded joints can often turn out as failure-relevant weak points. In the presented project different measurement techniques were examined with the aim to use the related parameters in a simple life prediction model. A laser triangulation sensor was used to examine the notch geometry in order to identify possible crack initiation sites. X-ray diffraction was used to analyse the residual stresses due to the welding processes and their alteration during fatigue loading. Additionally the change of different micromagnetic parameters like the Barkhausen noise and the coercivity were controlled with an easy to handle magnetic multi parameter device with the aim to correlate the magnetic parameters with different stages of fatigue damage. The results of the experiments with different types of specimens show a rather good agreement between the predicted and the real life time.A business model of simulation-oriented process design is presented, including life cycle assessment (LCA) and related activities such as mulit-objective decision making. Type-zero method of integrated definition language (IDEF0) is employed as an activity modelling tool to describe the entire business model. The whole design procedure is described hierarchically With focus oil LCA related activities i.e., perform LCA is defined as a sub-activity of evaluate processes which is further a part of the top level activity, design chemical process. The economic evaluation is defined as an activity concurrent to LCA, enabling multi-objective evaluation and optimization of the process. The roles of decision-support activities Such as sensitivity or uncertainty analysis are discussed in detail. Use of IDEF0 enabled detailed and at the same time transparent definition of the whole design procedure. A case study is performed oil the design of chemical recycling processes of beverage PET bottles, which is currently an important topic in Japan. The proposed design procedure is demonstrated step by step, with focus on the multi-objective process assessment. Among several alternatives the Pareto-optimal ones are identified.An alternative and cost-effective solution to building integrated PV systems is to use hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) solar systems. These systems consist of PV mod ales with an air channel at their rear surface, where ambient air is circulating in the channel for PV cooling and the extracted heat can be used for building thermal needs. To increase the system thermal efficiency, additional glazing is necessary, but this results in the decrease of the PV module electrical output from the additional optical losses of the solar radiation. PV/T solar systems with air heat extraction have been extensively studied at the University of Patras. Prototypes in their standard form and also with low-cost modifications have been tested, aiming to achieve improved PV/T systems. An energetic and environmental assessment for the PV and PV/T systems tested has been performed by the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. implementing the specific software SimaPro 5.1 regarding the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology applied. In this paper electrical and thermal energy output results for PV and PV/T systems are given, focusing on their performance improvements and environmental impact, considering their construction and operation requirements. The new outcome of the study was that the glazed type PVIT systems present optimum performance regarding energy, cost and LCA results. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new qualitative method that is theoretically underpinned by cognitive anthropology. This research strategy is introduced to further advance the understanding of complex green consumer behavior-in this case life-cycle analysis. Design/methodology/approach - This paper examines the contextual aspects of problem-solving behavior of green, environmentally concerned consumers. Cognitive anthropology develops a different, yet complementary, understanding of consumer cognition to a psychological approach. Through the concepts of practical thinking and bricolage, cognition and behavior are conceptualized on a contextual basis. Such an approach encourages a reassessment of how consumer research has traditionally conceptualized problem framing, information search, information processing and related concepts. The paper draws upon in-depth, qualitative interviews with a wide range of green consumers from both the UK and Germany. Findings - The findings provide some interesting clues regarding the nature of information search and information processing. In the sample, the green consumers of the top clusters were able to see and retrieve life-cycle information as it was offered by a shopping context and it was this context, as it is perceived by the bricoleur that ultimately limits information search and processing. Within the "objective" bounds of a choice context, skilful practical thinking and bricolage was shown in different degrees amongst the clusters, with considerable creativity shown in "seeing" life-cycle information. Research limitations/implications - Given that the research outlined in this paper is mono-paradigmatic, it is suggested that a future avenue for research in green consumer behavior would be the use of a multiple paradigm approach. Practical implications - The paper outlines a stepping approach to marketing communications directed towards the green, or potentially green consumer, suggesting that some form of community based social marketing program might be a useful educational tool given the findings presented. Originality/value -The introduction of a new research strategy-cognitive anthropology to the study of green consumer behavior.The use of different materials for the same energy system component affects both the system efficiency and tire amount of CO2 released during production and utilization. In most cases however, the environmental impact is influenced mainly by system utilization and to a lesser extent by the materials used for system production. The main objective of this paper is the implementation of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as a way to reduce the CO2 released from a product during its life cycle. Domestic Solar Hot Water Systems (DSHWS) employing different materials for the solar collector will be used as an example.Before new technologies enter the market, their environmental superiority over competing options must be asserted based on a life cycle approach. However, when applying the prevailing status-quo Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to future renewable energy systems, one does not distinguish between impacts which are 'imported' into the system due to the 'background system' (e.g. due to supply of materials or final energy for the production of the energy system), and what is the improvement potential of these technologies compared to competitors (e.g. due to process and system innovations or diffusion effects). This paper investigates a dynamic approach towards the LCA of renewable energy technologies and proves that for all renewable energy chains, the inputs of finite energy resources and emissions of greenhouse gases are extremely low compared with the conventional system. With regard to the other environmental impacts the findings do not reveal any clear verdict for or against renewable energies. Future development will enable a further reduction of environmental impacts of renewable energy systems. Different factors are responsible for this development, such as progress with respect to technical parameters of energy converters, in particular, improved efficiency; emissions characteristics; increased lifetime, etc.; advances with regard to the production process of energy converters and fuels; and advances with regard to 'external' services originating from conventional energy and transport systems, for instance, improved electricity or process heat supply for system production and ecologically optimized transport systems for fuel transportation. The application of renewable energy sources might modify not only the background system, but also further downstream aspects, such as consumer behavior. This effect is, however, strongly context and technology dependent. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A methodology for enabling engineering-valid optimal design of sustainable construction is presented. It includes a research step: Design-variable Grouping, and two design steps: Generating the Within-group Optimization, and Solution Integration. The first step separates the design-variables into several distinct groups, enabling splitting the total all-encompassing optimization problem into several smaller optimization activities, while ensuring that superposition of the distinct sets of optimal solutions provides the optimal combination for the entire building. Four groups were recognized: production & construction, operational energy, maintenance to demolition, and an integrated group. For each group the most suitable objective function was established. The grouping is based on the range of environmental damage associated with every design variable's alternatives. Application, including a sensitivity analysis, demonstrated that for an office module grouping depends on climate characteristics and type of fuel used for electricity production, whereas for the same fuel, electricity production technology does not alter it.In the UK, between 4 and 5% of the municipal solid waste stream is composed of clothes/textiles, Approximately 25% of this is recycled by companies such as the Salvation Army Trading Company Limited (SATCOL) who provide a collection and distribution infrastructure for 'donated' clothing and shoes. Textiles can be reused or undergo a processing stage and enter a recycling stream. Research was conducted in order to quantify the energy used by a reuse/recycling operation and whether this resulted in a net energy benefit. The energy footprint,IS quantified using a streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA), an LCA restricted in scope in order to target specific aspects of the footprint. in this case energy consumption. Taking into account extraction of resources, manufacture of materials. electricity generation, clothing collection, processing and distribution and final disposal of wastes it was demonstrated that for every kilogram of virgin cotton displaced by second hand clothing approximately 65 kWh is saved, and for every kilogram of polyester around 90 kWh is saved. Therefore, the reuse and recycling of the donated clothing results in a reduction in the environmental burden compared to purchasing new clothing made from virgin materials. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A model for building integrated photovoltaic systems has been developed and implemented in a dynamic simulation tool. This tool takes into account the thermal interactions between the PV collector and the building. The influence of the type of integration upon the PV collector efficiency has been evaluated and hybrid PV/air collectors have been studied. An overall efficiency is defined, including the production of electricity and heat. A case study has been performed on two different typical buildings. In the case of a multi-crystalline silicon PV collector integrated on the roof of a single family house located in Paris, the efficiency of unventilated PV modules fixed on the roof is 14%. If the PV collector is used to preheat the ventilation air, the efficiency reaches 20%. A proper building integration also improves the environmental balance of PV technologies over their life cycle. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In life cycle assessment (LCA) of solar PV systems, energy pay back time (EPBT) is the commonly used indicator to justify its primary energy use. However, EPBT is a function of competing energy sources with which electricity from solar PV is compared, and amount of electricity generated from the solar PV system which varies with local irradiation and ambient conditions. Therefore, it is more appropriate to use site-specific EPBT for major decision-making in power generation planning. LCA and life cycle cost analysis are performed for a distributed 2.7 kW(p) grid-connected monocrystalline solar PV system operating in Singapore. This paper presents various EPBT analyses of the solar PV system with reference to a fuel oil-fired steam turbine and their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and costs are also compared. The study reveals that GHG emission from electricity generation from the solar PV system is less than one-fourth that from an oil-fired steam turbine plant and one-half that from a gas-fired combined cycle plant. However, the cost of electricity is about five to seven times higher than that from the oil or gas fired power plant. The environmental uncertainties of the solar PV system are also critically reviewed and presented. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A complex interdisciplinary approach to the reliability assessment of reinforced concrete structures is introduced and demonstrated on a real existing structure. The reliability index of the structure drops down during its life cycle due to material degradation. A retrofitting to the desired reliability level should be performed. This procedure is modelled by advanced life-cycle computer simulation. The main feature of the presented approach is the nonlinear finite element analysis of the structure employed for the realistic assessment of structural behaviour. A suitable technique of statistical sampling, which allows relatively small number of simulations, is used in this context. Analytical deterioration models combined with in situ monitoring are used to launch the degradation process. The presented methodology for advanced life-cycle analysis integrated in an innovative decision-making tool that supports maintenance planning of bridges and in general of engineering structures.The greening of product innovation process has been under study by researchers, but mostly it is at an anecdotal level. Extant literature asks for empirical study to explore how to make greener products more successful at the market place. This paper reports on a survey of environmental new product development (ENPD) projects in North America wherein influences on the market performance are investigated. New activities such as design for environment/life cycle analysis and supplier involvement for environmental responsiveness are identified in the ENPD process. The paper uses hierarchical regression method to find relative and incremental impact of eco-innovation activities in ENPD projects on market performance. Factors that influence market performance of greener products are found to be cross-functional co-ordination between new product development professionals and environmental specialists, supplier involvement, market focus and life cycle analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A rating system, used to compare the environmental damage caused by vehicles, in order to allow decision-makers to draw (non-)fiscal policies and measures taking into account their impact on the environment, is analysed and evaluated. The analysis of rating systems comprises the study of the effects on numerous receptors such as ecosystems, buildings, and human beings (e.g. cancer, respiratory diseases, etc.) caused by different types of pollutions (acid rain, photochemical air pollution, noise pollution, and global warming, etc.). The methodology described, known as Ecoscore, is based on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach which considers the contribution of emissions to certain types of damage (e.g. by using the Exposure-Response damage function). Total emissions include oil extraction, transport and refinery, fuel distribution, and electricity generation and distribution (Well-to-Wheel approach). Emissions due to the production, use, and dismantling of the vehicle (Cradle-toGrave approach) could be considered as well. Assessment is made possible by normalising the different types of damage. A reference value assigned to a predetermined reference vehicle is defined as a target value (the normalised value thus determines a kind of 'distance to target' consideration). The contribution of the different normalised types of damage to a single value, Ecoscore, is based on a panel weighting method. This new approach has been especially developed for the evaluation of the environmental damage caused by vehicle emissions in an urban context, such as the Brussels Capital Region and differs in that option from other methodologies. Additionally this methodology does not only consider conventional vehicles, but it can also assess all alternative fuels and propulsion systems with new vehicle technologies, such as electric and hybrid vehicles. A detailed description of the methodology itself can be found in reference [1]. In this paper the methodology is summarised and illustrated by some examples of Ecoscore calculation. Additionally new recent amendments of the methodology are highlighted. Finally, a sensitivity analysis demonstrates the robustness of the Ecoscore model.Assessment of long-term leaching from MSWI air-pollution-control (APC) residues is discussed with respect to use in environmental impact assessment, such as life-cycle assessment (LCA). A method was proposed for estimating leaching as a function of the liquid-to-solid (L/S) ratio in a long-term perspective (L/S 5000 l/kg). Data for changes in residue pH as a function of L/S was used in combination with pH dependent leaching data to predict leachate concentrations of Al. Ca. Cd. Ba. Mg. Ni. Pb. S, Pb. V and Zn as a function of L/S. Mass balance calculations were used to determine the element fractions leached with respect to L/S. The estimated long-term leaching from a semi-dry residue and a fly ash was compared with short-term leaching determined by batch tests at L/S 10 l/kg, both carbonated and non-carbonated versions of the residues were investigated. Generally, very high L/S ratios above 2000 l/kg were required to leach 20-30% of the solid contents. However. Ca and S were depleted at L/S 200-900 l/kg. The long-term leachate concentrations were round to either remain at the same level as the initial leaching determined by the L/S 10 batch test. or to significantly decrease compared with the initial leaching. Only Al and Zn were found to show higher leachate concentrations at L/S ratios above 3000-5000 l/kg. Carbonation generally prolonged the time needed for depletion from the solid residues: however. Ca and S were depleted faster than in the case of non-carbonated residues. This Study shows that uncritical use of batch leaching data for assessing the potential leaching is highly problematic, and evaluations of residue disposal should include scenario specific quantification Of the long-term leaching. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Leachate emissions from landfill sites are of concern. primarily due to their toxic impact when released unchecked into the environment, and the potential for landfill sites to generate leachate for many hundreds of years following closure. Consequently. economically and environmentally sustainable disposal options are a priority in waste management. One potential option is the use of soil-plant based remediation schemes. In many cases, using either trees (including short rotation coppice) or grassland. phytoremediation of leachate has been Successful. However, there are a significant number of examples where phytoremediation has failed. Typically, this failure can be ascribed to excessive leachate application and poor management due to a fundamental lack of understanding of the plant-soil system. On balance, with careful management. phytoremediation can be viewed as a sustainable. cost effective and environmentally sound option which is capable of treating 250 m(3) ha(-1) yr(-1). However. these schemes have a requirement for large land areas and must be capable of responding to changes in leachate quality and quantity, problems of scheme establishment and maintenance. continual environmental monitoring and seasonal patterns of plant growth. Although the fundamental underpinning science is well understood, further work is required to create long-term predictive remediation models, full environmental impact assessments. a complete life-cycle analysis and economic analyses for a wide range of landfill scenarios. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the development of the Waste Analysis Software Tool for Environmental Decisions (WASTED) model. This model provides a comprehensive view of the environmental impacts of municipal solid waste management systems. The model consists of a number of separate submodels that describe a typical waste management process: waste collection, material recovery, composting, energy recovery from waste and landfilling. These submodels are combined to represent a complete waste management system. WASTED uses compensatory systems to account for the avoided environmental impacts derived from energy recovery and material recycling. The model is designed to provide solid waste decision-makers and environmental researchers with a tool to evaluate waste management plans and to improve the environmental performance of solid waste management strategies. The model is user-friendly and compares favourably with other earlier models. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste from traditional markets in Indonesia is the second largest stream of municipal solid waste after household waste. It has a higher organic fraction and may have greater potential to be managed on a business scale compared to household wastes. The attributed reason is that in general the wastes generated from traditional markets are more uniform, more concentrated and less hazardous than waste from other sources. This paper presents the results of environmental and economic assessments to compare the options available for traditional market waste disposal in Indonesia. The options compared were composting in labour intensive plants, composting in a centralised plant that utilised a simple wheel loader, centralised biogas production and landfill for electricity production. The current open dumping practice was included as the baseline case. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was used for environmental analysis. All options compared have lower environmental impacts than the current practice of open dumping. The biogas production option has the lowest environmental impacts. A cost-benefit analysis, which considered greenhouse gas savings, was used for the economic assessment. It was found that composting at a centralised plant is the most economically feasible option under the present Indonesian conditions. The approach reported in this study could be applied for 'a pre-feasibility first cut comparison' that includes environmental aspects in a decision-making framework for developing countries even though European emission factors were used. Crown Copyright (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, life cycle assessment methodology has been used to assess the variations in water use associated with different metal production and processing routes and provide insights into the value derived from water usage in the minerals sector. Using water consumption data derived from the literature it has been shown that the 'cradle-to-gate' water consumption (or embodied water) for production of the various metals considered in the study ranged from 2.9 m(3)/t for steel up to 252 087 m(3)/t for gold. The results largely reflect the grade of the initial ore used to produce each metal, and can be approximated by the following equation: W = 167.7 G(-0.9039) where: W = embodied water (m(3)/t refined metal) G = grade of ore used to produce metal (per cent metal) The study showed that indirect water consumption in the metal production life cycle, in particular that due to electricity generation, can make a significant contribution to the embodied water value, eg aluminium production. When expressed in terms of m3/t ore, the results for all metals considered indicated that the embodied water is roughly, on average, three times the water consumption of the mining and concentration stage. It was also shown that the economic value per m(3) of water consumed for the minerals industry exceeds that for the agricultural and industrial sectors, supporting the view that allocating water resources to the minerals industry has a strong underlying economic basis. Water reforms currently taking place in Australia aim to address issues such as competition for water access, reduced security of supply and increase in cost. Consequently the minerals industry, along with others, can be expected to come under increasing pressure to reduce fresh or raw water use and to integrate water use across sectors. While water recycling is an obvious candidate to help reduce water consumption in the minerals industry. issues such as water quality, among others, will influence the extent to which this can be achieved. In addition, wastewater volumes can be minimised using techniques such as pinch analysis to establish and use the minimum water requirement for the process. The use of dry or near-dry processing technologies. for which the demand for water is small or zero, may be a more radical solution to the water consumption problem; however, it is possible that the introduction of dry processing would bring with it a new set of problems, including dust.This paper aims to propose a methodological framework for quantifying the reduction and increase of health risks associated with urban wastewater systems. A risk assessment model was used to quantify reduction in disease burden while a life cycle assessment approach was used to quantify increasing risks by environmental loading. Disability adjusted life years (DALYs) was used to quantify health risks. This framework was applied to a hypothetical watershed to evaluate health risks by installation of wastewater treatment systems. In this hypothetical case, 55 DALYs per year of health risk would be reduced for 200,000 people in the downstream community by constructing wastewater systems for 200,000 people, while a range from 1.9 to 22 DALYs per year of health risks would be generated by materials and energy consumption for construction and operation of wastewater systems. However, this result would significantly change, depending on the parameters used in this analysis. The proposed methodology should be improved to obtain more precise results, but it will suggest useful information to discuss the overall effects due to the installation of various types of urban wastewater systems.In this paper we aim at the process to increase the reliability of a product green degree assessment as a research object, analyze the assessment system function structure from the conceptual design point of view, then we present a concept of Autonomous Work Unit(AWU), which to be the building blocks to construct an experts collaborative work model. With an example of AHP method to implement Life Cycle Assessment(LCA), we introduce a reverse-judgment method into the assessment process to increase the quality of experts' data. On implementation, we carry out an experts-collaborative work platform model with a reverse-judgment mechanism, and discuss some key technologies in the model. Models above compose the conceptual framework for Product Green degree collaborative Assessment. This framework acts as the groundwork of a concept and method to increase the quality of the assessment, and, besides of the application of green degree assessment, this framework can also be used in all phases during a product life cycle such as design, manufacturing, servicing, maintenance and so on. The objective of this study is to measure and evaluate the interactions among various variables in the complex urban ecosystem (CUE), through employing an equilibrium model, a metabolism model and a harmonious development model. Based on a theory of the complex urban ecosystem (including society economy and nature) with metabolic function, a system of indicators is developed for evaluating urban ecosystem, through using factor analysis (FA), the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and a synthetic index. The urban metabolism model and the urban harmonious development model are constructed and then are employed to measure and evaluate the interactions among various variables for Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Shenzhen. The urban metabolism model illustrates how the conversion of resources into useful products and wastes is similar to human metabolic processes or those of an ecosystem, and accounts for how the basic metabolic concept has been extended to include the livability of the CUE from a human perspective so that the socioeconomic aspects of sustainability are integrated with the environmental aspects. This means that the best way to reduce the impacts of socioeconomic development would be reduction of the resource inputs. On the other hand, the sustainability of development of a city is not only simply reduction of the metabolic flows (resource inputs and waste outputs), but also increase of the livability of the city, measured here by the recycling degree. There are two potential ways to purify the metabolites produced by the CUE: (1) reclamation of wastes, (2) making wastes harmless for the natural ecosystem. The harmonious development model presents the urban developmental trends by the developmental degree and the harmonious degree in response to the relationships between development pressure and carrying capacity in CUE. This model shows that the socioeconomic development pressure and the carrying capacity of the natural ecosystem are competing processes, and that ecological improvement is most possible when the socioeconomic development pressures are small and the carrying capacity of the natural ecosystem is large. At last some conclusions drew about the recycling degree, developmental degree, and the harmonious degree in six Chinese cities show that the key factors of urban sustainable development are the decrease of socioeconomic development pressure, the protection of natural ecosystem, and the raising of urban metabolism function. To reach such goals, each city must strengthen its potential for sustainable development, and must consider the recycling degree and the harmonious degree to define the break-even point for improving the health and livability of CUE.Although strategies to tackle obesity have led to renewed debate about the relationship between the body and urban form the (im)mobilities of fat through bodies, cities, and infrastructure reveal a complex web of urban metabolisms. We argue that, to understand the mobilities of fat in a city context, metaphors of urban metabolism become important. The relationships between different flows are contingent and the mobilities of fat in bodies (as individuals), cities (as a collective site of action), and sewers (as infrastructure), we argue, highlight a multiplicity of urban metabolisms, each with different interconnectivities and forms of instability. In the paper we show how, in North America, in response to the rising numbers of 'obese bodies' there has been the mobilisation of the concept of 'fat cities', involving renewed debate about the relationship between bodies and the city, provoked largely by the innovative representations of Mens Fitness magazine. However, we shift focus to highlight the problems of fat in infrastructure, focusing specifically on the experience in US cities of sewer blockages that reveal quite different sets of processes within which fat is embedded. Strategies of intervention at the level of the body, the city collective, and the sewer involve prevention, removal, and acceptance, each revealing a multiplicity of metabolisms as well as the partial interconnections between them.Cities are a key driver of environmental and climatic change, and at the same time significantly impacted by that change. Vulnerability varies spatially and over time, and the complex relationships among climate, ecosystem health, and socioeconomic development call for an integrated theoretical framework within which to study the world's cities. Advances in the fields of industrial ecology, urban metabolism and urban ecology shed light on these relationships. However, much of the current research is found in the form of case studies. Though detailed and relevant, the lack of a cohesive theory precludes standardization of and comparison between methodical experiments pertaining to the relationship between urban systems and global climate change. Aiming to identify and connect underlying issues, and to drive research forward, this study is a synthesis of key emergent theories and continuities in the body of research surrounding urban systems and global change. Thinking of cities as complex open systems integrated within a larger environmental and social context brings us closer to understanding how cities impact/are impacted by climate change and variability. The physical realism and interdisciplinary nature of a unified urban systems theory will facilitate more grounded and effective policy to shape and govern our cities.

 This paper examines future economic damages from tropical cyclones under a range of assumptions about societal change, climate change and the relationship of climate change to damage in 2050. It finds in all cases that efforts to reduce vulnerability to losses, often called climate adaptation, have far greater potential effectiveness to reduce damage related to tropical cyclones than efforts to modulate the behaviour of storms through greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies, typically called climate mitigation and achieved through energy policies. The paper urges caution in using economic losses of tropical cyclones as justification for action on energy policies when far more potentially effective options are available.Background and Aims Leaf responses to environmental conditions have been frequently described in fruit trees, but differences among cultivars have received little attention. This study shows that parameters of Farquhar's photosynthesis and Jarvis' stomatal conductance models differed between two apple cultivars, and examines the consequences of these differences for leaf water use efficiency. Methods Leaf stomatal conductance (g(sw)), net CO(2) assimilation rate (A(n)), respiration (R(d)) and transpiration (E) were measured during summer in 8-year-old 'Braeburn' and 'Fuji' apple trees under well-watered field conditions. Parameters of Farquhar's and Jarvis' models were estimated, evaluated and then compared between cultivars. Leaf carbon isotope discrimination (Delta(13)C) was measured at the end of the growing season. Key Results A single positive relationship was established between V(Cmax) (maximum carboxylation rate) and N(a) (leaf nitrogen concentration per unit area), and between J(max) (maximum light-driven electron transport rate) and N(a). A higher leaf R(d) was observed in 'Fuji'. The g(sw) responded similarly to increasing irradiance and leaf temperature in both cultivars. g(sw) responded to lower vapour pressure deficit in 'Fuji' than in 'Braeburn'. Maximal conductance (g(swmax)) was significantly smaller and A(n) was more limited by g(sw) in 'Braeburn' than 'Fuji'. Lower g(sw), E and higher intrinsic water use efficiency were shown in 'Braeburn' and confirmed by smaller leaf Delta(13)C compared with 'Fuji' leaves. Conclusions The use of functional model parameters allowed comparison of the two cultivars and provided evidence of different water use 'strategies': 'Braeburn' was more conservative in water use than 'Fuji', due to stomatal limitation of A(n), higher intrinsic water use efficiency and lower Delta(13)C. These physiological traits need to be considered in relation to climate adaptation, breeding of new cultivars and horticultural practice.Assessing and adapting to the impacts of climate change requires balancing social, economic, and environmental factors in the context of an ever-expanding range of objectives, uncertainties, and management options. The term decision support describes a diverse class of resources designed to help manage this complexity and assist decision makers in understanding impacts and evaluating management options. Most climate-related decision support resources implicitly assume that decision making is primarily limited by the quantity and quality of available information. However, a wide variety of evidence suggests that institutional, political, and communication processes are also integral to organizational decision making. Decision support resources designed to address these processes are underrepresented in existing tools. These persistent biases in the design and delivery of decision support may under-mine efforts to move decision support from research to practice. The development of new approaches to decision support that consider a wider range of relevant issues is limited by the lack of information about the characteristics, context, and alternatives associated with climate-related decisions. We propose a new approach called a decision assessment and decision inventory that will provide systematic information describing the relevant attributes of climate-related decisions. This information can be used to improve the design of decision support resources, as well as to prioritize research and development investments. Application of this approach will help provide more effective decision support based on a balanced foundation of analytical tools, environmental data, and relevant information about decisions and decision makers. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The disintegrative process of freezing and thawing of porous, mineral materials represents a significant challenge in the design and construction of building enclosures. In this paper, we present a simple method for assessing the relative potential of a climate to accelerate frost decay based on multi-year records of daily air temperatures and rainfall, with special emphasis on masonry. Distributions of 4-day rainfall prior to days with freezing events provide quantitative information on the geographically dependant frost decay risk in porous, mineral building materials in a given climate. Data from 168 weather stations in Norway are analysed, using weather data from the reference 30-year period 1961-1990. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Northeast China comprises Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning Provinces, with a total area of 790,000 km(2) and a population of about 107 million. Northeast China, located at relatively high latitudes, (from about 39 to 53 degrees N), is one of the coolest regions in China with long and cold winters, a short growth season and frequent cold extreme events, which are adverse to agricultural production. However, since the 1980s, Northeast China has experienced significant warming with annual mean temperature rising by 1.0-2.5 degrees C. The increase of accumulated temperature, the extension of the growth period and the recession of summer cool disasters all contributed to improved conditions for crop growth and led to a northward movement of the agricultural climate zone. In addition, the adaptation to warming including the adjustment of crop composition and structure as well as the adoption of advanced technologies greatly facilitated agricultural development. As a result, total grain production in the region increased rapidly. This paper describes in detail climate change, adaptation measures and final agricultural outcomes, alongside with economic and political factors and the role of different political actors in Northeast China.Climate change will pose increasing challenges to forest managers working to achieve sustainable forest management in the boreal forest. To date, discussions around when, where and how to consider adaptation in forest management plans for the boreal forest have been limited. As a starting point, specific objectives for climate change adaptation need to be articulated, which we consider to be synonymous with the criteria for conservation and sustainable management of boreal forests as defined by the Montreal Process. Secondly, because forest management plans are hierarchal - there are higher level strategic plans and lower level operational plans - it is important to distinguish at which planning level adaptation options are most appropriately considered. The purpose of this paper is to put forward a range of alternative adaptation options that forest managers working in the boreal zone could consider during the development of strategic and operational forest management plans in order to achieve sustainability as defined by the Montreal Process.Forestry practitioners in the Yukon and Northwest Territories of Canada were asked to complete a questionnaire examining the likely impacts of climate change on forest sector sustainability and adaptation options to climate change. Practitioners were asked to self-assess their knowledge on various aspects of climate change and ranked their level of knowledge as generally only poor to fair, despite past educational efforts in this area. Changes in the intensity, severity or magnitude of forest insect outbreaks, changes in extreme weather events, and changes in the intensity, severity or magnitude of forest fires were the three impacts most frequently identified as having had an impact on sustainability. More than half of the respondents indicated that commodity prices, availability of timber, trade policies, environmental regulations, and the ability to secure needed capital as presently having more of a negative impact on sustainability than climate change. The assessment of 65 potential adaptation options was structured according to the criteria of the Montreal Process. The majority of respondents considered the goals of adaptation to be synonymous with the criteria of sustainable forest management, indicating the Montreal Process criteria provide a suitable framework for assessing adaptation options in the forest sector. The intensity, severity and magnitude of forest insect outbreaks under future climate conditions, forest growth and productivity, precipitation, climate variability and the intensity, severity and magnitude of forest fires were ranked as the most important areas where further information would be of assistance to decision-making.The standard approach to predicting climate change, assessing its impacts and planning mitigation strategies tends to be compartmentalized, leading to inadequate or incomplete advice for climate policy. Climate models used for future global warming predictions and attribution of past changes generally consider only global climate drivers, ignoring local drivers, such as land use change and urban effects. Impacts studies are generally carried out in isolation from each other and hence ignore interactions between different impacts sectors, such as hydrology, natural ecosystems and agriculture. Feedbacks from impacts to climate change, which often involve land ecosystem- atmosphere interactions, are often neglected. This can result in representations of global changes that are at best inconsistent and at worst completely misleading. Moreover, a number of climate change mitigation strategies, such as carbon sequestration and biofuels involve changes in land ecosystems. In addition to affecting climate through the exchange of carbon with the atmosphere, these land ecosystem changes may affect climate change or its impacts through a variety of additional processes, such as surface albedo change or changes in the surface moisture budget. Failure to account for these may have consequences that are potentially at odds with the aims of climate change mitigation.In Nunavik, chlorine-treated water is delivered daily, by tank truck, to the houses, where it is stored in tanks. A large part of the Inuit population continues to depend on an untreated water supply, however. This traditional activity poses certain risks in a region with an abundant presence of migratory animals. Nunavik has also experienced significant climate warming since the beginning of the last decade. The main goal of this study, which took place in 2003 and 2004, was to evaluate drinking habits that may place Nunavik residents at an increased risk of gastroenteric diseases in the context of climate change. During the Amundsen cruise in fall 2004, we observed that raw water from the collection sites most frequently visited (brooks, takes, rivers) was of good quality in most of the villages. Regular monitoring of these sites is necessary, however, and the public should be warned when the sites become contaminated. Of particular concern was the water from the individual storage containers, which was much more contaminated than the water at the collection sites. To develop or improve the climate change adaptation strategies in this area, we propose 1) establishing an appropriate environmental monitoring system, 2) improving wastewater disposal and municipal water systems, 3) involving nursing staff in microbiological testing of the water at community sites, 4) raising public awareness of the risks related to raw water consumption, and 5) gathering strategic health information during the periods of the year when cases of gastroenteric diseases are most frequent, in order to establish whether there is a link between these disorders and water quality.While the relations between climate variables and sectoral water demand have been well established in the literature, few studies have attempted to quantify changes in urban water usage with climate change. Concentrating on the city of Hamilton, New Zealand, we investigate possible water use and infrastructure needs for a range of climate and population projections. We find that water demand (at the monthly aggregate level) is largely driven by changes in population, and not significantly affected by changes in climate. However, as population increases, the effect of climate variables on per capita consumption will be magnified. Monthly aggregate changes may further mask potenially significant short-term shortages. In several scenarios, water supply shortages in 2030 occur with a 30--40% probability, suggesting needs for long-term capacity expansion or aggressive demand side management, rather than implementation of short-term management of water demand.For over a decade, the international scientific community and protected areas professionals have recognized that climate change will have critical implications for protected areas policy, planning and management. However, only a limited literature to date has focused on the implications of climate change for specific protected areas jurisdictions (i.e., national and/or provincial/territorial parks systems). This paper provides an overview of the potential impacts of climate change on Canada's system of boreal protected areas, highlighting the cross-jurisdictional policy, planning and management sensitivities in this biome. Results of a nation-wide climate change survey with protected area organizations are also presented, which reveal a strong incongruity between the perceived salience of climate change for protected area policy and management and a lack of available resources to provide capacity to deal with.the challenge of climate change adaptation. To safeguard against the limitations of traditional protected areas system planning, and to ensure. the persistence of boreal ecodiversity over the 21(st) century and beyond, we call for more rigorous and practical discussion. by Canadian protected areas agencies and organizations on the issue of climate change and for a collective and proactive management response.This study presents the results of a second-generation climate change assessment for three key ski regions of Quebec incorporating snowmaking as a climate adaptation strategy. Potential economic ramifications for ski operators are assessed separately for the main revenue-generating period and shoulder seasons. The paper concludes that climate change does not pose a threat to the Quebec ski industry under 2020s scenarios and that, while adequate snow base can be maintained with additional snowmaking under even the warmest scenario for the 2050s, the combined economic impact of lost revenue opportunities from a shortened ski season and increased snowmaking costs will likely prove prohibitive for some ski operators. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Previous studies have proposed that selection has been involved in the differentiation of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and climate was the main driving force. This viewpoint, however, gets no support from the subsequent studies and remains controversial thus far. To clarify this issue, a total of 237 complete mtDNA sequences belonging to autochthonous lineages from South Asia, Oceania, and East Asia were collected to seek for the imprint of selection. Based on nonsynonymous (N) and synonymous (S) substitutions analysis, our results confirmed that purifying selection was the predominant force during the evolution of human mtDNA. However, no significant and extensive difference was detected among these three regions, which did not support the climate adaptation hypothesis but preferred random genetic drift to be the main factor in shaping the current landscape of human mtDNA, at least those from Asian and Oceanian regions. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Land use and land cover interact with atmospheric conditions to determine current climate conditions, as well, as the impact of climate change and environmental variability on ecological systems. Such interactions are ubiquitous, yet changes in LULC are generally made without regard to their biophysical implications. This review considers the potential for LULC to compound, confound, or even contradict changes expected from climate change alone. These properties give LULC the potential to be used as powerful tools capable of modifying local climate and contributing significantly to the net impact of climate change. Management practices based modifications of LULC patterns and processes could be applied strategically to increase the resilience of vulnerable ecological systems and facilitate climate adaptation. These interventions build on the traditional competencies of land management and land protection organizations and suggest that these institutions have a central role in determining the ecological impact of climate change and the development of strategies for adaptation. The practical limits to the use of LULC-based tools also suggest important inflection points between manageable and dangerous levels of climate change.Virtually intractable matters characterized by uncertainty over consequences, diverse and multiple engaged interests, conflicting knowledge claims, and high stakes, call for post-normal policy responses. This paper explores how two such responses have been implemented in the UK through the management of specific aspects of anthropogenic climate change and human genetics, which we argue can be described as "wicked" or post-normal issues. To address these, approaches require that a broader range of epistemic positions and worldviews be recognized as valid in the policy development process. We suggest that the concept of boundary organisations is well suited to examine some of the institutions that have been set up in the UK to deal with the two post-normal issues we consider here. This paper explores the extent to which the UK Climate Impacts Programme and the Human Genetics Commission respond to a post-normal policy approach and their achievements in overcoming epistemological boundaries and effecting integrated management responses. We conclude by considering the insights such an analysis offers into operationalising post-normal policy approaches. As intermediaries and facilitators, we suggest the two organisations can be considered forerunners in applying a post-normal approach to climate change adaptation and human genetics, respectively. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public participation is commonly advocated in policy responses to climate change. Here we discuss prospects for inclusive approaches to adaptation, drawing particularly on studies of long-term coastal management in the UK and elsewhere. We affirm that public participation is an important normative goal in formulating response to climate change risks, but argue that its practice must learn from existing critiques of participatory processes in other contexts. Involving a wide range of stakeholders in decision-making presents fundamental challenges for climate policy, many of which are embedded in relations of power. In the case of anticipatory responses to climate change, these challenges are magnified because of the long-term and uncertain nature of the problem. Without due consideration of these issues, a tension between principles of public participation and anticipatory adaptation is likely to emerge and may result in an overly managed form of inclusion that is unlikely to satisfy either participatory or instrumental goals. Alternative, more narrowly instrumental, approaches to participation are more likely to succeed in this context, as long as the scope and limitations of public involvement are made explicit from the outset.Geographical scale is a factor in interactions between climate change and sustainable development, because of varying spatial dynamics of key processes and because of varying scales at which decision-making is focused. In a world where the meaning of 'global' and 'local' is being reshaped by technological and social change, a challenge to sustainable development is realizing the impressive, but often elusive, potentials for climate-change-related actions at different scales to be complementary and reinforcing. Climate change adaptation is suggested as an example.The need to address both poverty and vulnerability to climate change can be considered two of the major challenges facing human society in the 21st century. While the two concepts are closely interconnected, they are nonetheless distinct. A conceptual understanding of the relationship between vulnerability and poverty is presented, and the types of responses that can address both of these challenges are identified. An empirical example from Kenya is used to show how climate change adaptation can potentially reconcile the objectives of both poverty reduction and vulnerability reduction. Significantly, each and every poverty reduction measure does not reduce vulnerability to climate change, just as each and every adaptation measure does not automatically contribute to poverty reduction. It is argued that adaptation measures need to specifically target vulnerability-poverty linkages. Although most adaptation efforts have been focused on reducing risk, there is a need to address local capacity to adapt, as well as the societal processes generating vulnerability. An implication is that the mode of implementing adaptation measures must capture the specificity of both the vulnerability and poverty context. Furthermore, adaptation is not simply a local activity, since targeting the processes generating vulnerability and poverty often entails addressing political and economic structures.Structured decision-making concepts and tools have been broadly applied in a wide range of policy contexts to help advance clear, creative and pluralistic decision processes. Policies to link climate change adaptation and mitigation with sustainable development must address a number of complexities which include linkages across scales and irreducible uncertainties. Decision support tools such as objectives networks and influence diagrams are useful for structuring these complex decision problems. These tools and their underlying rationale are described, and then applied to a concrete example to illustrate their relevance for linking adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development decisions. The example used is a major transportation infrastructure programme in British Columbia, Canada, with clear impacts on both climate change and regional sustainability.The integration of climate change adaptation considerations into management of the coast poses major challenges for decision makers. This article reports on a case study undertaken in Christchurch Bay, UK, examining local capacity for strategic response to climate risks, with a particular focus on issues surrounding coastal defense. Drawing primarily on qualitative research with local and regional stakeholders, the analysis identifies fundamental disjunctures between generic concerns over climate change and the adaptive capacity of local management institutions. Closely linked with issues of scale, the problems highlighted here are likely to have broad and continuing relevance for future coastal management elsewhere.SMITH, T. F., BROOKE, C., PRESTON, B., GORDDARD, R., ABBS, D., MCINNES, K. WITHYCOMBE, G. and MORRISON, C., 2007. Managing for Climate Variability in the Sydney Region. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 50 (Proceedings of the 9th International Coastal Symposium), 109 - 113. Gold Coast, Australia, ISSN 0749.0208 Coastal research and management often has an issue-specific focus, with little attention paid to the interdependencies between those issues. Climate variability is one such issue that is impacted by, and impacts on, several other areas (e.g. coastal processes, infrastructure, health and regional economies). These interdependencies create challenges for local governments to scale-up so as to tackle these issues at a regional scale. Critical to this process of scaling-up is the adaptive capacity of local governments. A method to assist local governments deal with climate variability in the Sydney region is being developed by CSIRO and the Sydney Coastal Councils Group through the Australian Greenhouse Office National Climate Change Adaptation Program. The method consists of: (i) creating vulnerability mapping templates; (ii) working with local governments to determine collective and local vulnerabilities; (iii) analysis of local government priorities and capacity for adaptation; and (iv) assessment of transferability of the method to other regions.This paper directs attention to conditions for climate adaptation as an important part of governing climate change in the local arena. Empirical focus is put on attempts to manage flood risks by means of risk management and planning in two Swedish municipalities. Following the need to widen our understanding of how, when and under what conditions climate adaptation occurs, three challenges are particularly emphasized from the case studies: facing the safety vs. scenery conflict where political priorities and reducing societal vulnerabilities prove difficult; the process of deciding what to adapt to, in which the troublesome role of knowledge is striking; and finally, taking responsibility for measures of flood protection. At the end of the paper, analytical generalizations illustrate the need to give increased attention to institutional challenges and challenges emanating from the science- policy interface in order to come to terms with the implementation deficit in governing climate change in the local arena.Purpose - Headlines of increasing financial losses caused by natural hazards and the potential impact of climate change on these raise broad interest in risk management. This paper seeks to claim that the existing decision-making support, for example through spatial planning, can easily integrate risk assessment schemes. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is based on the results of two EU funded research projects and further applications of those - as well as on conclusions drawn from presentations and discussions at the International Disaster Reduction Conference. Findings - Discussion around risk governance highlights the role of integration. This discussion is still very much in need of further development and successful ways to implement integrative, participatory governance. Practical implications - The research results presented have been elaborated in close cooperation with stakeholders. One example is based on a commissioned EU task that analyzed the effectiveness of European Regional Fund projects in the case of environmental risks. The other one describes how a town council took a decision which was based on information drawn from a project focusing on climate change adaptation. Originality/value - The paper describes two examples of successful implementation which make us ask if new approaches are actually required or whether current spatial planning and development practices might be sufficient, when properly applied and fine-tuned, to respond towards natural hazards and climate change impacts.By using both passive and active thermal energy storage (TES) systems, a significant portion of the on-peak cooling can be shifted to the off-peak period and thus the energy costs associated can be considerably reduced. This paper summarizes the results of a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of optimal and conventional control strategies for combined passive (i.e., pre-cooling building thermal mass) and active (i.e., charging ice storage tanks) TES systems for typical commercial buildings in the US. Specifically, the paper examines the impact of selected design and operating factors on the performance of optimal control strategies for combined passive and active TES systems. Among the factors analyzed include building shape, climate, adaptation of optimization control, TES systems control, and utility rate structure. The analysis is performed using a detailed simulation energy program (EnergyPlus) modified to incorporate TES models and various optimization algorithms. The results of the analysis indicate that optimal TES priority controls can achieve up to 35% in on-peak electricity demand reduction and up to 30% in total electrical energy cost savings. Presently, the European Union (EU) is promoting bioenergy. The aim of this paper is to study the prospects for using domestic biomass resources in Europe and specifically to investigate whether different policy objectives underlying the promotion of bioenergy (cost-effective climate change mitigation, employment creation and reduced dependency on imported fuels) agree on which bioenergy options that should be used. We model bioenergy use from a cost-effectiveness perspective with a linear regionalized energy- and transport-system model and perform supplementary analysis. It is found that the different policy objectives do not agree on the order of priority among bioenergy options. Maximizing climate benefits cost-effectively is in conflict with maximizing employment creation. The former perspective proposes the use of lignocellulosic biomass in the stationary sector, while the latter requires biofuels for transport based on traditional agricultural crops. Further, from a security-of-supply perspective, the appeal of a given bioenergy option depends on how oil and gas import dependencies are weighed relative to each other. Consequently, there are tradeoffs that need to be addressed by policyrnakers promoting the use of bioenergy. Also, the importance of bioenergy in relation to employment creation and fuel import dependency reduction needs to be further addressed. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an integrated multi-criteria analysis method for the quantitative evaluation of climate change mitigation policy instruments. The method consists of: (i) a set of criteria supported by sub-criteria, all of which describe the complex framework under which these instruments are selected by policy makers and implemented, (ii) an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) process for defining weight coefficients for criteria and sub-criteria according to the preferences of three stakeholders groups and (iii) a Multi-Attribute Theory (MAUT)/Simple Multi-Attribute Ranking Technique (SMART) process for assigning grades to each instrument that is evaluated for its performance under a specific sub-criterion. Arguments for the selected combination of these standard methods and definitions for criteria/sub-criteria are quoted. Consistency and robustness tests are performed. The functionality of the proposed method is tested by assessing the aggregate performances of the EU emission trading scheme at Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and United Kingdom. Conclusions are discussed. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines future economic damages from tropical cyclones under a range of assumptions about societal change, climate change and the relationship of climate change to damage in 2050. It finds in all cases that efforts to reduce vulnerability to losses, often called climate adaptation, have far greater potential effectiveness to reduce damage related to tropical cyclones than efforts to modulate the behaviour of storms through greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies, typically called climate mitigation and achieved through energy policies. The paper urges caution in using economic losses of tropical cyclones as justification for action on energy policies when far more potentially effective options are available.This paper examines climate change mitigation and adaptation from an insurance industry perspective, with particular reference to London and the USA. It illustrates how British insurers are increasingly shaping public policy and using new technology to manage the risks from climate change impacts and makes a plea for society to make more use of insurance expertise in future decision making. In particular, more dialogue is needed between architects, planners and insurers to adapt our buildings and cities for climate change impacts. The paper is an abbreviated and updated version of the paper presented by the author in Houston, Texas, in 2005.One of the major issues in climate change policy is how to deal with the considerable uncertainty that surrounds many of the elements. Some of these uncertainties will be resolved through the process of further research. This process of learning raises a crucial timing question: should society delay taking action in anticipation of obtaining better information, or should it accelerate action, because we might learn that climate change is much more serious than expected. Much of the analysis to date has focussed on the case where the actions available to society are just the mitigation of emissions, and where there is little or no role for learning. We extend the analysis to allow for both mitigation and adaptation. We show that including adaptation weakens the effect of the irreversibility constraint and so, for this model, makes it more likely that the prospect of future learning should lead to less action now to deal with climate change. We review the empirical literature on climate change policy with uncertainty, learning, and irreversibility, and show that to date the effects on current policy are rather small, though this may reflect the particular choice of models employed. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this paper, we examine how an increased use of biomass could efficiently meet Swedish energy policy goals of reducing carbon dioxide (C0(2)) emissions and oil use. In particular, we examine the trade-offs inherent when biomass use is intended to pursue multiple objectives. We set up four scenarios in which up to 400 PJ/year of additional biomass is prioritised to reduce C0(2) emissions, reduce oil use, simultameously reduce both C0(2) emission and oil use, or to produce ethanol to replace gasoline. Technologies analysed for using the biomass include the production of electricity, heat, and transport fuels, and also as construction materials and other products. We find that optimising biomass use for a single objective (either C0(2) emission reduction or oil use reduction) results in high fulfilment of that single objective (17.4 Tg C/year and 350 PJ oil/year, respectively), at a monetary cost of 130-330 million epsilon/year, but with low fulfilment of the other objective. A careful selection of biomass uses for combined benefits results in reductions of 12.6 Tg C/year and 230 PJ oil/year (72% and 67%, respectively, of the reductions achieved in the scenarios with single objectives), with a monetary benefit of 45 million epsilon/ year. Prioritising for ethanol production gives the lowest C0(2) emissions reduction, intermediate oil use reduction, and the highest monetary cost. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fossil fuel combustion is the single largest human influence on climate, accounting for 80% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This paper presents trends in world carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion worldwide, based on the estimates of the International Energy Agency (IEA) [IEA, 2006a. CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion 1971-2004. International Energy Agency, Paris, France]. Analyzing the drivers of CO2 emissions, the paper considers regions, types of fuel, sectors, and socioeconomic indicators. The paper then examines the growing body of climate change mitigation policies and measures, both multinational and federal. Policies discussed include the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, and the potential measures to be implemented in 2012 and beyond. CO2 emissions of recent years have grown at the highest rates ever recorded, an observed trend incompatible with stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and avoiding long-term climate change. Within this aggregate upward trend, a comparison of emissions sources proves dynamic: while industrialized countries have so far dominated historical emissions, rapid growth in energy demand of developing economies, led by China, may soon spur their absolute emissions beyond those of industrialized countries. To provide context for the drivers of CO2 emissions, the paper examines fuel sources, from coal to biofuels, and fuel use in the production of heat and electricity, in transport, in industrial production and in households. The sectoral analysis illustrates the primacy, in terms of emissions growth and absolute emissions, of two sectors: electricity and heat generation, and transport. A discussion of several socio-economic emissions drivers complements the paper's analysis of mitigation mechanisms. As illustrated, emissions per capita and emissions per unit of economic production, as measured in gross domestic product (GDP), vary widely between regions. In this context, the paper examines the constraints and choices of energy use in two prominent developing economies: China and Brazil. This analysis of long-term trends in CO2 emissions from fuel combustion will prove useful for policyrnakers and energy policy analysts alike. Understanding the sources and drivers of greenhouse gas emissions is essential to their worldwide management and to the mitigation of climate change. (C) 2007 OECD/IEA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The U.S. and China are the world's largest and second largest CO2 emitters, respectively, and to what extent the U.S. and China get involved in combating global climate change is extremely important both for lowering compliance costs of climate mitigation and adaptation and for moving international climate negotiations forward. While it is unavoidable that China will take on commitments at some specific point of time in the future, this paper has argued that the proposal for joint accession by the U.S. and China is not a way forward. For various reasons, such a proposal is in the U.S. interest, but is not in the interest of China. Given the U.S. political reality and institutional settings on the one hand and China's over-riding concern about economic growth and poverty reduction on the other, the two countries are unlikely to take on emissions caps under an international regime, at least for the time being. Therefore, we need to explore the area where cooperation between the two countries to address climate change seemsbest. The research, development and deployment of clean technology is the area that is in the best interests of the two countries. The U.S. has adopted a technology-oriented approach to climate issues, and has launched the four multilateral initiatives on technology cooperation and the Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate (APP). China has participated in all these U.S.-led initiatives, and is a partner to the APP. Strengthened technology cooperation between the two countries through these initiatives and the APP has led some tangible benefits. However, it should be pointed out that while technology is a critical ingredient in a climate policy package, efforts such as the APP can only be part of the solution. They alone cannot ensure that best available technologies are always deployed in the marketplace, and that new technologies will roll out at the pace and on the scale that we need. in order to have such technology-oriented approach to play a full role, we do need a coordinated policy framework agreed via the Kyoto Protocol or a follow-up regime or the parent United Nations Framework Convention. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Union has played a leading role in pushing for the establishment, ratification, and meaningful implementation of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, although it still has significant efforts to make to achieve its target of an 8 percent cut of greenhouse gas by 2008-2012 relative to the 1990 level. This article explores the political factors behind continued EU leadership in climate change. It argues that a few individual states (including Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and the UK) played an essential role in establishing the EU's agenda in this domain. However, the decentralized governance structure of the EU has also encouraged a process of mutual reinforcement, whereby individual states, the European Commission, and the European Parliament are competing for leadership.Common lands are known for the management problems they experience as well for their unique contributions to local communities cultural heritage. Forest knowledge and management of the commons represents a relevant component of this heritage that is being progressively lost when critical management problems are not solved. Sustainable development actions that, through participatory processes, involve the community in strategy design and implementation, offer a great opportunity to preserve commons cultural heritage and take best advantage of available knowledge. ForEnCarb is a pilot project financed by the Sustainable Development Service of Sardinia's regional administration, with scientific support of Sassari University. The project goal is to promote sustainable development of Seneghe, a local community of inner Sardinia, by effectively implementing provisions of the international agreements to combat climate change through forest planning programs. Most of Seneghe's forest area is in common land. For countless generations its residents have been entitled to collect wood, to hunt and to graze their cattle and sheep on these lands. In support of a process towards sustainable forest management, our study focused on the social and cultural heritage of the local community and the historical development of its territorial identity, with specific reference to forest-related knowledge. The paper presents the first results of an analysis of forest service archive documents and town council deliberations found in municipal and state archives. The sources used include the documentation from the 19th and 20th centuries, but enlighten only fragments of history since a large number of potentially useful documents have been lost or destroyed. Results include a time series analysis of allowances for cattle access, wood withdrawal and occurrence of forest fires. We conclude that woodlands subject to common rights carry a high symbolic value for this community, but social sensitivity concerning forest management practices, while necessary, is not sufficient to encourage sustainable practices. Integration in sustainable development processes, such as this climate change mitigation project, offers hope to reverse such a cultural decline. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The challenges of how to respond to climate change and ensure sustainable development are currently high on the political agenda among the world's leading nations. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is part of the global carbon market developing rapidly as part of the Kyoto response towards the mitigation of global warming. One of the aims of the CDM is to achieve sustainable development in developing countries, but uncertainty prevails as to whether the CDM is doing what it promises to do. Close to 200 studies on the CDM have been carried out since its birth in 1997 including peer-reviewed articles and reports from the grey literature. This review of the literature serves to assess the state of knowledge on how the CDM contributes to sustainable development (SD) including poverty alleviation. The main finding of the review is that, left to market forces, the CDM does not significantly contribute to sustainable development.Since 2001, in order to enhance ethanol's cost competitiveness with gasoline, the Thai government has approved the exemption of excise tax imposed on ethanol, controlling the retail price of gasohol (a mixture of ethanol and gasoline at a ratio of 1:9) to be less than that of octane 95 gasoline, within a range not exceeding 1.5 baht a litre. The policy to promote ethanol for transport is being supported by its positive effects on energy security and climate change mitigation. An analysis of energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) balances and GHG abatement cost was done to evaluate fuel ethanol produced from cassava in Thailand. Positive energy balance of 22.4MJ/L and net avoided GHG emission of 1.6 kg CO2 eq./L found for cassava-based ethanol (CE) proved that it would be a good substitute for gasoline, effective in fossil energy saving and GHG reduction. With a GHG abatement cost of US$99 per tonne Of CO2, CE is rather less cost effective than the many other climate strategies relevant to Thailand in the short term. Opportunities for improvements are discussed to make CE a reasonable option for national climate policy. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The United States has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, restricting the ability of forests from participating internationally as greenhouse gas (GHG) emission offset projects. As a result, a proliferation of different registry and program rules is occurring in the United States, providing an opportunity for the US forestry community to mitigate GHG emissions. This article addresses the Kyoto Protocol principles of additionality, permanence, and leakage, and challenges the way that these principles are being used to qualify forest offset projects as climate change mitigation measures. Policy initiatives are proposed for challenging policymakers and the forestry community to rethink sustainably managed forest offset project rules as the United States considers GHG emission reduction legislation.This paper presents an overview of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions scenarios that form the analytical backbone for other contributions to this Special Issue. We first describe the motivation behind this scenario exercise and introduce the main scenario features and characteristics, in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Altogether, we analyze three 'baseline' scenarios of different socio-economic and technological developments that are assumed not to include any explicit climate policies. We then impose a range of climate stabilization targets on these baseline scenarios and analyze in detail the feasibility, costs and uncertainties of meeting a range of different climate stabilization targets in accordance with Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The scenarios were developed by the IIASA Integrated Assessment Modeling Framework that encompasses detailed representations of the principal GHG-emitting sectors-energy, industry, agriculture, and forestry. The main analytical findings from our analysis focus on the implications of salient uncertainties (associated with scenario baselines and stabilization targets), on feasibility and costs of climate stabilization efforts, and on the choice of appropriate portfolios of emissions abatement measures. We further analyze individual technological options with regards to their aggregated cumulative contribution toward emissions mitigation during the 21st century as well as their deployment over time. Our results illustrate that the energy sector will remain by far the largest source of GHG emissions and hence remain the prime target of emissions reduction. Ultimately, this may lead to a complete restructuring of the global energy system. Climate mitigation could also significantly change the relative economics of traditional versus new, more climate friendly products and services. This is especially the case within the energy system, which accounts for the largest share of emissions reductions, but it also the case in the agriculture and forestry sectors, where emissions reduction and sink enhancement measures are relatively more modest. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper analyses how delayed participation by regions can affect international climate regimes in terms of the feasibility, costs, timing, magnitude and nature of the long-term mitigation response. We use the energy-systems optimization model MESSAGE to construct several climate change mitigation scenarios with various levels of regional participation in short-to-mid term. By comparing these with a global scenario that assumes full spatial and temporal flexibility throughout the century, we are able to evaluate how participatory decisions affect the mitigation response as well as the costs and technology choices. We find that short-term postponement of participation from some regions can often lead to a delay of mitigation measures on the global level. However, if the regional delay lasts until mid-century, participants of the regime are likely to increase their efforts in the short term. Mitigation costs are found to substantially increase as a result of delayed participation-the extent of the increase depends on the relative importance of the region that postpones its participation, the stringency of the climate target and the ability to reorganize mitigation measures. Our analysis also shows that a region's decision to delay its participation in an international climate regime can lead to accumulated inertia in its energy system and thus to a delayed 'technological transition' toward a low-carbon future. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This study aims to determine whether carbon sequestration policies could present a significant contribution to the global portfolio of climate change mitigation options. The objective is to model the effects of policies designed to induce landowners to change land use and management patterns with a view to sequester carbon or to reduce deforestation. The approach uses the spatially explicit Dynamic Integrated Model of Forestry and Alternative Land Use (DIMA) to quantify the economic potential of global forests. The model chooses which of the land-use processes (afforestation, reforestation, deforestation, or conservation and management options) would be applied in a specific location, based on land prices, cost of forest production and harvesting, site productivity, population density, and estimates of economic growth. The approach is relevant in that it (1) couples a revised and updated version of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios with the dynamic development of climate policy implications through integration with the Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact (MESSAGE); (2) is spatially explicit on a 0.5 degrees grid; and (3) is constrained by guaranteeing food security and land for urban development. As outputs, DIMA produces 100-year forecasts of land-use change, carbon sequestration, impacts of carbon incentives (e.g., avoided deforestation), biomass for bioenergy, and climate policy impacts. Themodeling results indicate that carbon sequestration policies could contribute to a significant part of the global portfolio of efficient climate mitigation policies, dependent upon carbon prices. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Potential changes in global and regional agricultural water demand for irrigation were investigated within a new socio-economic scenario, A2r, developed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) with and without climate change, with and without mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Water deficits of crops were developed with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)-IIASA Agro-ecological Zone model, based on daily water balances at 0.5 degrees latitude x 0.5 degrees longitude and then aggregated to regions and the globe. Future regional and global irrigation water requirements were computed as a function of both projected irrigated land and climate change and simulations were performed from 1990 to 2080. Future trends for extents of irrigated land, irrigation water use, and withdrawals were computed, with specific attention given to the implications of climate change mitigation. Renewable water-resource availability was estimated under current and future climate conditions. Results suggest that mitigation of climate change may have significant positive effects compared with unmitigated climate change. Specifically, mitigation reduced the impacts of climate change on agricultural water requirements by about 40%, or 125-160billion m(3) (Gm(3)) compared with unmitigated climate. Simple estimates of future changes in irrigation efficiency and water costs suggest that by 2080 mitigation may translate into annual cost reductions of about 10billion US$. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Is there a role for investments in climate change mitigation despite low expected return? We use a model of intertemporal expected utility maximisation to analyse this question. Similar to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) the rate of return depends on the correlation of risk between the return on investments in climate change mitigation and the market portfolio, but in contrast to the classical CAPM we admit the fact that economic and environmental systems are jointly determined, implying that environmental risk is endogenous. Therefore, investments in climate change mitigation may reduce risk via self-protection and self-insurance. If risk reduction is accounted for in cost-benefit evaluations, climate investments may be justified despite low expected return. These aspects of climate investments are not, however, communicated via standard cost-benefit analyses of climate policy. Optimal climate policy may therefore be more ambitious than previously considered.Despite growing evidence for an effect of species composition on carbon (C) storage and sequestration, few projects have examined the implications of such a relationship for forestry and agriculture-based climate change mitigation activities. We worked with a community in Eastern Panama to determine the average above- and below-ground C stocks of three land-use types in their territory: managed forest, agroforests and pasture. We examined evidence for a functional relationship between tree-species diversity and C storage in each land-use type, and also explored how the use of particular tree species by community members could affect C storage. We found that managed forests in this landscape stored an average of 335 Mg C ha(-1), traditional agroforests an average of 145 Mg C ha(-1), and pastures an average of 46 Mg C ha(-1) including all vegetation-based C stocks and soil C to 40 cm depth. We did not detect a relationship between diversity and C storage; however, the relative contributions of species to C storage per hectare in forests and agroforests were highly skewed and often were not proportional to species' relative abundances. We conclude that protecting forests from conversion to pasture would have the greatest positive impact on C stocks, even though the forests are managed by community members for timber and non-timber forest products. However, because several of the tree species that contribute the most to C storage in forests were identified by community members as preferred timber species, we suggest that species-level management will be important to avoiding C-impoverishment through selective logging in these forests. Our data also indicate that expanding agroforests into areas currently under pasture could sequester significant amounts of carbon while providing biodiversity and livelihood benefits that the most common reforestation systems in the region - monoculture teak plantations - do not provide. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Palaeoclimate data show that the Earth's climate is remarkably sensitive to global forcings. Positive feedbacks predominate. This allows the entire planet to be whipsawed between climate states. One feedback, the 'albedo flip' property of ice/water, provides a powerful trigger mechanism. A climate forcing that 'flips' the albedo of a sufficient portion of an ice sheet can spark a cataclysm. Inertia of ice sheet and ocean provides only moderate delay to ice sheet disintegration and a burst of added global warming. Recent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate chan-e that could run out of our control. with great dangers for humans and other creatures. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the largest human-made climate forcing, but other trace constituents are also important. Only intense simultaneous efforts to Slow CO2 emissions and reduce non-Co-2 forcings can keep climate within or near the range of the past million years. The most important of the non-CO2 forcings is methane (CH4), as it causes the second largest human-made GHG climate forcing and is the principal cause of increased tropospheric ozone (03), which is the third largest GHG forcing. Nitrous oxide (N2O) should also be a focus of climate mitigation efforts. Black carbon ('black soot') has a high global warming potential (approx. 2000, 500 and 200 for 20, 100 and 500, years, respectively) and deserves greater attention. Some forcings are especially effective at high latitudes, so concerted efforts to reduce their emissions could preserve Arctic ice, while also having major benefits for human health, agricultural productivity and the global environment.Profitable energy-efficiency potentials are often not exploited in industry since management tends not to focus on energy issues. Sharing experiences between companies reveals possibilities for reducing the transaction costs involved. For this purpose, regionally or locally-organised learning networks of companies have been established. Social mechanisms are used to motivate management to pay more attention to energy efficiency in Switzerland and Germany. The main elements of the activities include initial consultation for each company with an experienced engineer, agreement on a common target for energy-efficiency improvement, regular meetings with technical presentations and an exchange of experiences, yearly control of energy consumption and CO2 emissions as well as scientific monitoring and evaluation of the process. The results of some evaluations show that substantial progress has been made in implementing organisational measures and investments in energy efficiency in the participating companies. The reasons for these achievements are discussed and conclusions drawn about the opportunities and limits of this instrument. Finally, a recommendation is made to implement this instrument on a broader level. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The standard approach to predicting climate change, assessing its impacts and planning mitigation strategies tends to be compartmentalized, leading to inadequate or incomplete advice for climate policy. Climate models used for future global warming predictions and attribution of past changes generally consider only global climate drivers, ignoring local drivers, such as land use change and urban effects. Impacts studies are generally carried out in isolation from each other and hence ignore interactions between different impacts sectors, such as hydrology, natural ecosystems and agriculture. Feedbacks from impacts to climate change, which often involve land ecosystem- atmosphere interactions, are often neglected. This can result in representations of global changes that are at best inconsistent and at worst completely misleading. Moreover, a number of climate change mitigation strategies, such as carbon sequestration and biofuels involve changes in land ecosystems. In addition to affecting climate through the exchange of carbon with the atmosphere, these land ecosystem changes may affect climate change or its impacts through a variety of additional processes, such as surface albedo change or changes in the surface moisture budget. Failure to account for these may have consequences that are potentially at odds with the aims of climate change mitigation.Through a dynamic model of energy system change the paper examines the role of innovation in bringing about a low carbon energy system. The processes of innovation and technological substitution are cumulative, dynamic, and highly non-linear processes such that how the energy system evolves in the long term is extraordinarily sensitive to the strength and duration of the initial policies. It is possible, under some policy assumptions, that energy systems would continue to depend on fossil fuels for so long as fossil fuels remain abundant and the least cost resource; and under other assumptions, after allowing for the unavoidable lags associated with investment and the building up of a new capital stock, that fossil fuels would become almost wholly displaced by the non-carbon alternatives. The implication is that the external benefits of innovation, which include the creation of options and the reduction of costs arising directly from innovation itself, and the reduction of environmental damage, are far greater, perhaps by orders of magnitude, than the traditional cost-benefit models used for the analysis of climate change mitigation. The analysis suggests why a focus on discovery and innovation offers a promising way forward for national and international policies on climate change.This paper presents a framework that encompasses a full range of options for including land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) within future agreements under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The intent is to provide options that can address the broad range of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals as well as to bring the broadest possible range of nations into undertaking mitigation efforts. We suggest that the approach taken for the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period is only one within a much larger universe of possible approaches. This larger universe includes partially or completely "cle-linking" LULUCF commitments from those in other sectors, and allowing commitments specified in terms other than tonnes of greenhouse gases. Such approaches may provide clarity and transparency concerning the role of the various sectors in the agreements and encourage participation in agreements by a more inclusive, diverse set of countries, resulting in a more effective use of LULUCF in addressing climate change. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Three soil carbon models (RothC, CANDY and the Model of Humus Balance) were used to estimate the impacts of climate change on agricultural mineral soil carbon stocks in European Russia and the Ukraine using detailed spatial data on land-use, future land-use, cropping patterns, agricultural management, climate and soil type. Scenarios of climate were derived from the Hadley Centre climate Version 3 (HadCM3) model; future yields were determined using the Soil-Climate-Yield model, and land use was determined from regional agricultural and economic data and a model of agricultural economics. The models suggest that optimal management, which entails the replacement of row crops with other crops, and the use of extra years of grass in the rotation could reduce Soil organic carbon (SOC) loss in the croplands of European Russia and the Ukraine by 30-44% compared to the business-as-usual management. The environmentally sustainable management scenario (SUS), though applied for a limited area within the total region, suggests that much of this optimisation could be realised without damaging profitability for farmers.We investigated preferences for climate change mitigation policies and factors contributing to higher levels of policy support. The sample was comprised of 316 Michigan and Virginia residents, all of whom completed mail surveys. Of the eight policies proposed to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, respondents overwhelmingly indicated they would not support a gas tax, while support was highest for shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy strategies. With the exception of taxes on gasoline and "gas guzzlers," a majority of respondents supported all other mitigation policies. Multivariate analyses revealed that greater trust in environmentalists and less trust in industry, greater recognition of the consequences of climate change, higher income, being black, and older age were predictive of greater policy support. Personal values (e.g., altruism), future orientation, and political affiliation were strong predictors of policy support but only indirectly via worldviews and environmental beliefs.We examine the cost-side income distribution impacts of a carbon tax in the Susquehanna River Basin (SRB) Region of the United States utilizing a computable general equilibrium model. We find the aggregate impacts of a $25/ton carbon tax on the SRB economy are likely to be negative but modest-an approximately one-third of 1% reduction in Gross Regional Product (GRP) in the short-run and double that amount in the long-run. However, unlike many previous studies, we find that the carbon tax is mildly progressive as measured by income bracket changes, per capita equivalent variation, and Gini coefficient changes based on expenditure patterns. The dominant factors affecting the distributional impacts are the pattern of output, income and consumption impacts that affect lower income groups relatively less than higher income ones, an increase in transfer payments favoring lower income groups, and decreased corporate profits absorbed primarily by higher income groups. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to confront economic models of climate change with the reality that limited information exists with which to form expectations about the evolution of the climate. A key element in the tension between those who believe we should impose aggressive climate change mitigation policies and those who do not is the question of if we are merely in a long period of shock-induced, above average temperatures or if observed increases in temperature are a result of carbon emissions. This paper characterizes learning dynamics resulting from the use of observations of temperature to update beliefs about two key characteristics of global climate: the persistence of natural trends and the sensitivity of temperature to atmospheric carbon levels. This paper shows that, contrary to predictions in the literature that uncertainty may be resolved very quickly, the time to learn the true processes may be in the order of thousands of years. Further, this paper shows the effects of uncertainty on the likelihood that observations from the statistical record lead to important estimate and policy errors. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The prevention of deforestation and promotion of afforestation have often been cited as strategies to slow global warming. Deforestation releases CO2 to the atmosphere, which exerts a warming influence on Earth's climate. However, biophysical effects of deforestation, which include changes in land surface albedo, evapotranspiration, and cloud cover also affect climate. Here we present results from several large-scale deforestation experiments performed with a three-dimensional coupled global carbon-cycle and climate model. These simulations were performed by using a fully three-dimensional model representing physical and biogeochemical interactions among land, atmosphere, and ocean. We find that global-scale deforestation has a net cooling influence on Earth's climate, because the warming carbon-cycle effects of deforestation are overwhelmed by the net cooling associated with changes in albedo and evapotranspiration. Latitude-specific deforestation experiments indicate that afforestation projects in the tropics would be clearly beneficial in mitigating global-scale warming, but would be counterproductive if implemented at high latitudes and would offer only marginal benefits in temperate regions. Although these results question the efficacy of mid- and high-latitude afforestation projects for climate mitigation, forests remain environmentally valuable resources for many reasons unrelated to climate.The article spells out four domains of international distributive justice and the consequent criteria of equity, the purpose being to identify a pluralistic normative ethical framework for climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Justice and equity should play a major role in favouring collective action against climate change, because the more the various dimensions of such action are just, the more any international climate initiative is feasible in principle. As far as mitigation is concerned, the definition of a just initial allocation of endowments focuses on the criterion of differentiated equality, taking account of undeserved inequalities as suggested by Rawls' theory of justice as fairness. With regard to the subsequent exchange of endowments, the Pareto principle, supplemented by the envy-freeness one, is a viable option. Possibly a sound reference for the just financing of adaptation activities is the criterion of differentiated historical responsibility, backed by Rawls' theory of justice as fairness. As regards the allocation of adaptation resources, the criterion of lack of human security, as substantiated in Sen's capability approach, seems promising.The relations between building material competitiveness and economic instruments for mitigating climate change are explored in this bottom-up study. The effects of carbon and energy taxes on building material manufacturing cost and total building construction cost are modelled, analysing individual materials as well as comparing a wood-framed building to a reinforced concrete-framed building. The energy balances of producing construction materials made of wood, concrete, steel, and gypsum are described and quantified. For wood lumber, more usable energy is available as biomass residues than is consumed in the processing steps. The quantities of biofuels made available during the production of wood materials are calculated, and the cost differences between using these biofuels and using fossil fuels are shown under various tax regimes. The results indicate that higher energy and carbon taxation rates increase the economic competitiveness of wood construction materials. This is due to both the lower energy cost for material manufacture, and the increased economic value of biomass by-products used to replace fossil fuel. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Several CO2 storage demonstration projects are needed in a variety of geological formations worldwide to prove the viability Of CO2 capture and storage as a major option for climate change mitigation. China has several low-cost CO2 sources at sites that produce NH3 from coal via gasification. At these plants, CO2 generated in excess of the amount needed for other purposes (e.g., urea synthesis) is vented as a relatively pure stream. These CO2 sources would potentially be economically interesting candidates for storage demonstration projects if there are suitable storage sites nearby. In this study a survey was conducted to estimate CO2 availability at modern Chinese coal-fed ammonia plants. Results indicate that annual quantities of available, relatively pure CO2 per site range from 0.6 to 1.1 million tonnes. The CO2 source assessment was complemented by analysis of possible nearby opportunities for CO2 storage. CO2 sources were mapped in relation to China's petroliferous sedimentary basins where prospective CO2 storage reservoirs possibly exist. Four promising pairs of sources and sinks were identified. Project costs for storage in deep saline aquifers were estimated for each pairing ranging from $15-21/t of CO2. Potential enhanced oil recovery and enhanced coal bed methane recovery opportunities near each prospective source were also considered. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon storage in forests can be increased to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We use a joint production model of timber production and carbon sequestration to analyse the financially optimum silvicultural strategies for Scots pine and Norway spruce at the stand level in Finland. This study expands the earlier analyses by taking into account thinnings as measures to increase carbon stocks in forests, in addition to lengthening the rotation age. The results indicate that, in joint production, both the growing stock level and rotation length are increased, compared to pure timber management. The results show clearly the importance of including thinnings in the analysis. For Scots pine stands, a major share of the increase in average carbon storage during the rotation period was obtained by modifying thinnings while lengthening the rotation age had a minor impact, with carbon prices of 10 and 20 empty set/t CO2. On the other hand, in the case of Norway spruce, delaying the clearcutting provided most of the increase in average carbon storage. The carbon tax/subsidy programme was found to increase discounted net revenues to the forest owners considerably. The carbon tax/subsidy programme had a positive impact on the average timber yield in a fully regulated forest framework due to the considerable increase in the yield of sawlog, whereas the yield of pulpwood was somewhat decreased. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Given the dominance of power plant emissions of greenhouse gases, and the growing worldwide interest in CO2 capture and storage (CCS) as a potential climate change mitigation option, the expected future cost of power plants with CO2 capture is of significant interest. Reductions in the cost of technologies as a result of learning-by-doing, R&D investments and other factors have been observed over many decades. This study uses historical experience curves as the basis for estimating future cost trends for four types of electric power plants equipped with CO2 capture systems: pulverized coal (PC) and natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) plants with post-combustion CO2 capture; coal-based integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants with pre-combustion capture; and coal-fired oxyfuel combustion for new PC plants. We first assess the rates of cost reductions achieved by other energy and environmental process technologies in the past. Then, by analogy with leading capture plant designs, we estimate future cost reductions that might be achieved by power plants employing CO2 capture. Effects of uncertainties in key parameters on projected cost reductions also are evaluated via sensitivity analysis. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is a relatively new technology in the context of climate change mitigation strategies, and its legal and regulatory implications are not yet broadly understood. This paper takes a brief look at international environmental law principles relevant to CCS, identifies key environmental and safety risks associated with the technology, and highlights significant legal frameworks that pose challenges to the implementation of CCS within the EU under EU and international law. It then notes continuing regulatory gaps that will need to be addressed for large-scale CCS to take place. The paper concludes that the clear inclusion or exclusion of CCS activities from the range of relevant legal frameworks will increase transparency, provide regulatory certainty and ultimately facilitate CCS in appropriate contexts. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During the next three decades, Asia will remain the largest food consumer (increasing from 40 to 55% of the global consumption between 2000 and 2015) and the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) from agriculture (about 50% of the total emissions). The growth of food demand in Africa and South America will cause substantial increase in GHG emissions by the agri-food sector, unless improved management systems are adopted. The higher food consumption rate (kJ person(-1) day(-1)) around the world is primarily a result of improved crop production and higher percentage of animal products in diet. The latter will, however, result in more CH4 emissions. The growing use of N fertilizers is also a concern. The part not taken up by crops (more than 50%) is either lost through leaching or released to the atmosphere as N gases including nitrous oxide. Between 2000 and 2030, the total GHG emissions are expected to increase by about 50%, with further impact on weather and climate. Mitigation techniques such as improved feed quality for a better digestibility, improved manure management, greater N use efficiency, better water management of rice paddies and/or by increasing the role of agro-forestry in agriculture, have to be considered in order to minimize the impact of agriculture on climate. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study evaluates the overall effects of the present Italian Renewable Energy Supply of Electricity (RES-E) obligation and compares the contribution of each expected RES-E to the economic equilibrium mix resulting from computable economic equilibrium scenarios. The impact of the policies has been evaluated by means of a model of the Italian energy-environment system built with the MARKAL/TIMES methodology, which has been developed by the Energy Technology Systems Analysis Project of the International Energy Agency (IEA/ETSAP). Since the development of RES-E helps energy security, climate mitigation and the distribution of energy production revenues across the country, this study evaluates also an alternative scenario assuming a progressive increase of the RES-E obligation. Both scenarios are then compared with the targets fixed for each RES by the Italian White Paper on renewable energy source. Eventually the effectiveness of the RES-E policies implemented through the green-certificate mechanism are compared with the obligation to improve the efficiency of end-use devices fed by electricity and natural gas. Contrary to green-certificates policies, White certificates obligations increase energy security and GDP at the same time, because in principle they force end users to more rational choices. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is a rapidly changing and developing region which is making the transition to a market based economy. Along with economic reforms, the countries of the region are engaged in substantial environmental reforms, including climate change mitigation activities. Mitigation of and adaptation to, the consequences of climate change are costly processes. It is therefore of great importance that the national and international mechanisms addressing these problems use methods both environmentally sound and economically efficient. Through two case studies that address the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the Former Yagoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the Green Investment Scheme (GIS) in Romania, this paper explores challenges, related tasks and main problems in the establishment of mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol in Central and Eastern Europe.The paper industry's climate change gas emissions are growing. This article considers how to reduce emissions from cut-size office paper by bypassing stages in its life cycle. The options considered are: incineration, which cuts out landfill; localisation, which cuts out transport; annual fibre, which cuts out forestry and reduces pulping; fibre recycling, which cuts out landfill, forestry and pulping; un-printing, which cuts out all stages except printing; electronic-paper, which cuts out all stages. Un-printing may offer the greatest climate change emission reduction. There are uncertainties in this result, particularly in estimating the proportion of waste office paper would be suitable for un-printing. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In 2001-2002 the UK began taxing vehicles according to CO2 emission rates. Since then, there has been a significant increase in consumer choice of small cars and diesel engines. We estimate CO2 reductions and air quality impacts resulting from UK consumers switching from petrol to diesel cars from 2001 to 2020. Annual reductions of 0.4 megatons (Mt) of CO2 and 1 million barrels of oil are estimated from switching to diesels. However, diesels emit higher levels of particulate matter estimated to result in 90 deaths annually (range 20-300). We estimate 570, 460, and 0 additional deaths per Mt of CO2 abated, for Euro III, Euro IV, and post-Euro IV emission class vehicles, respectively. CO2 policies are suspected to have contributed substantially to diesel growth, but the magnitude of impact has yet to be quantified rigorously. To the extent that CO2 policies contribute to diesel growth, coordinating CO2 controls with tightening of emission standards would save lives. This research shows that climate policy, while reducing fuel use and CO2, does not always ensure ancillary health benefits. Lessons from the UK can help inform policies designed elsewhere which strive to balance near-term ambient air quality and health with long-term climate mitigation.Economics and climate change science have a lot in common. Both rely on sound predictions of what the future will bring, these being largely based on what has gone before. Just, though, as you can only make an educated guess at what the housing market will do next year, you cannot be wholly sure how emissions of greenhouse gas will increase in years to come, and exactly how the planet's climate will then react;. Bring all these unknowns together, by attempting on the one hand to calculate the economic impacts of climate change and on the other the costs of climate change mitigation, and the range of possible outcomes is almost limitless. Given such uncertainty, both the environmental lobby and the oil lobby can use economic arguments to justify their differing stance on climate change mitigation. Existing cost-benefit analyses of greenhouse gas reduction policies are examined; with a view to establishing whether my such global reductions are currently worthwhile. The potential for, and costs of, cutting our own individual greenhouse gas emissions is also assessed. I find that a host of abatement strategies are able to deliver significant emission reductions at little or no net cost; when the full economic impacts of climate change are considered. Additionally, I find that there is great potential for individuals to simultaneously reduce their climate impact and save money. I conclude that the use of economics to excuse political inaction on greenhouse gas emissions is not justified.An overview of climate change mitigation opportunities in the world's buildings is presented, based on the key building-specific findings of the Fourth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. Buildings and the building stock can play a major role in mitigating climate change in the short- to medium-term, since substantial reductions in CO2 emissions from their energy use can be achieved over the coming years. A significant portion of these savings can be achieved in ways that reduce life cycle costs, thus providing reductions in CO2 emissions that have a net negative cost. There are indications that the building stock has the highest share of negative- and low-cost greenhouse gas reduction potential among all sectors. Based on 80 collected national or regional studies estimating CO2 mitigation potential in five continents, the global potential for CO2 reductions through buildings is analysed and estimated. The co-benefits associated with the implementation of these measures are also substantial, helping policy-makers justify actions even in the absence of a strong climate commitment. Since the barriers to unlocking the high potentials in the residential and commercial sectors are especially strong, no single instrument can make a large impact. Instead, portfolios of targeted policies tailored to local conditions, combined with strong compliance and enforcement regimes, are needed.Much of the debate on climate policy in the USA focuses on the gain or loss to the macroeconomy of alternative policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the economy is made up of multiple individuals, not a single representative agent. This article reports the results of alternative ways of distributing emissions allocations across citizens. Macroeconomic effects interact with the policy for distribution, but the distributional weights are more important for the welfare of individual agents than the economy-wide effects of the emissions reductions. Egalitarian distributions of the emissions allowances have the potential to increase the welfare of most people, even if significant emissions reductions are mandated. Focusing on the distribution of emissions allowances (or the revenues generated from an emissions tax) rather than on aggregate GDP may provide guidance in identifying and implementing politically viable solutions to the climate change mitigation problem.Terrestrial carbon sinks and sources were introduced into climate change mitigation related policy relatively late in the design of the architecture of those policies. Much literature addresses how terrestrial sources and sinks differ from emissions from fossil fuel combustion and, hence, is a possible justification for differential treatment of them in policy design. Late introduction in climate policy discussions and perceived differences appear to have resulted in very different policy approaches for sinks versus fossil emission sources. The attempt to differentiate has generated complexity in policy design and likely inefficiency in the operation of these policies. We review these issues and find that the characteristics claimed to apply to sinks apply as well to fossil sources, and differences that do exist are often more a matter of degree than of kind. Because cap-and-trade has gained momentum as the instrument of choice to control fossil emissions, we use as a starting point, how such a cap-and-trade system could be altered to include terrestrial carbon sinks and sources.Climate change presents a choice for public policy: mitigate our contribution to it or attempt to adapt to a changing world. In its most radical form, adaptation accepts as a given fundamental changes to our environment caused by a warming climate and consequently demands similarly fundamental adaptations in our ways of life. Those adaptations could entail widespread and severe environmental impacts, complementing and enhancing the primary environmental consequences of climate change. While environmental law has, if haltingly, moderated our environmental impacts in the recent past, this Article suggests that we should not assume that its successes will be repeated in a warmer world. Climate change threatens to exacerbate some of the problems of capacity that have limited environmental law, particularly the inability to plan comprehensively to minimize environmental effects Climate change may also undermine the public support that has been integral to the creation and sustenance of environmental law by reorienting human relationships with the natural-world. The environmental changes caused by a warming climate may convert "the environment" from an endowment to be protected to a hostile and unpredictable force to be controlled and from which we demand protection. Although pessimistic about the prospects for environmental protection in a world of unchecked climate change, the Article concludes with some optimism about our ability to avoid the worst of adaptation's consequences through a policy of climate change mitigation.The Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM) was established in 1997 with the dual purposes of assisting non-Annex I Parties in achieving sustainable development and assisting Annex I Parties in achieving compliance with their quantified greenhouse gas (GHG) emission commitments. This paper looks at the development of the CDM portfolio as well as achievements of the CDM to date in the context of wider private and public flows of investment into developing countries. These achievements include the development of 325 (by May 2005) proposed CDM projects which are together expected to generate more than 79 Mt CO2-eq credits/year during 2008-2012, increasing awareness of climate change mitigation options among possible investors and others that may facilitate transactions (i.e. governments), and the strengthening of climate-relevant institutions within countries. The paper also draws lessons from this experience to date, and outlines what changes may be needed to transform the CDM concept to a broader scale after the end of the first commitment period in 2012. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The global climate change mitigation policies and their stress on sustainable development have made electrification of rural mountainous villages, using small hydro, an attractive destination for potential clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. This invariably involves judging the additionality of such projects. The paper suggests a new approach to judge the additionality of such stand-alone small hydropower projects. This has been done by breaking up additionality into two components: external and local. The external additionality is project developer dependent. For determining the local additionality, the paper takes into account the probability of a village getting electrified over a period of time, which is kept equal to the possible crediting period. This is done by defining an electrification factor (EF) whose value depends on the degree of isolation, financial constraints and institutional constraints encountered while electrifying a mountainous village. Using this EF, the additionality of a CDM project can be judged in a much easier and accurate way. The paper is based on the data and inputs gathered during site visits to many isolated villages located in the eastern Indian Himalayas. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Thailand's rate of energy consumption has been growing at a fast pace due to its economic development with a corresponding rapid increase in CO2 emissions. Given the widely accepted fact between CO2 emissions and climate change, mitigation policies in Thailand become an essential part. The analysis is aimed at studying the effects of Thailand's CO2 emissions mitigation options on the energy system and at determining the possible CO2 emissions reduction. In the paper we analyse that the imposition of a carbon tax in the region $20/tonC could reduce CO2 emissions by 5% up to the year 2020.Recent amendments to key international legal regimes and the proposed introduction of an enabling legislative framework within Europe, have highlighted the importance of CCS as a climate mitigation option for the European Union and its Member States. This paper seeks to analyse these developments and provide an up-to-date examination of the issue of regulatory options for CCS and further proposals for the resolution of legal ambiguity.Land surface temperature (LST), which is heavily influenced by urban surface structures, is a significant parameter in urban environmental analysis. This study examined the effect impervious surfaces (IS) spatial patterns have on LST in Beijing, China. A classification and regression tree model (CART) was adopted to estimate IS as a continuous variable using Landsat images from two seasons combined with QuickBird. LST was retrieved from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image to examine the relationships between IS and LST. The results revealed that CART was capable of consistently predicting LST with acceptable accuracy (correlation coefficient of 0.94 and the average error of 8.59%). Spatial patterns of IS exhibited changing gradients across the various urban-rural transects, with LST values showing a concentric shape that increased as you moved from the outskirts towards the downtown areas. Transect analysis also indicated that the changes in both IS and LST patterns were similar at various resolution levels, which suggests a distinct linear relationship between them. Results of correlation analysis further showed that IS tended to be positively correlated with LST, and that the correlation coefficients increased from 0.807 to 0.925 with increases in IS pixel size. The findings identified in this study provide a theoretical basis for improving urban planning efforts to lessen urban temperatures and thus dampen urban heat island effects.South Africa, being a developing nation, is faced with many challenges, including poverty and one of the world's highest HIV/AIDS infection rates. It is within this context that this paper presents an overview of the role played by major stakeholders in climate change mitigation policies, with the focus on two South African cities, namely Cape Town and Johannesburg. This paper aims to identify the internal and external factors that act as barriers to, or promote, climate change mitigation policy development and implementation in South African cities. These may take the form of the city's internal structures, political interventions and support, and external factors including partnerships with outside organizations, including all tiers of government, non-governmental organizations and academic institutions. The media and an energy crisis in the Cape prove to play an unexpected role in assisting Cape Town to implement climate change mitigation measures.While US climate change mitigation policy has stalled at the national level, local and regional actors are increasingly taking progressive steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Universities are poised to play a key role in this grassroots effort by targeting their own emissions and by working with other local actors to develop climate change mitigation programmes. Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University have collaborated with university administrators and personnel to inventory campus emissions and develop mitigation strategies. In addition, they have facilitated a stakeholder-driven climate change mitigation project in one Pennsylvania county and started an ongoing service-learning project aimed at reducing emissions in another county. These campus and community outreach initiatives demonstrate that university-based mitigation action may simultaneously achieve tangible local benefits and develop solutions to broader challenges facing local climate change mitigation efforts. Outcomes include improved tools and protocols for measuring and reducing local emissions, lessons learned about service-learning approaches to climate change mitigation, and methods for creating climate change governance networks involving universities, local governments and community stakeholders.The focus of this article is the Swedish experience of local governance and climate change, including mitigation and adaptation. The municipal response to these two challenges is set within a broader policy context that acknowledges Sweden as a pioneer in environmental governance, including its comparatively high ambitions with regard to the reduction of greenhouse ga emissions. Central-local relations in climate policy are analysed, and climate change mitigation and adaptation are exemplified by some snapshots of municipal initiatives, including the popular habit of networking between municipalities within as well as across national borders. In conclusion we briefly evaluate the Swedish local governance experience of climate change mitigation and adaptation to date as characterized by radical rhetoric and ambitious goals combined with a lot of promising initiatives, although still with fairly modest results in terms of tangible outcomes. Finally, we reflect upon what we consider to be the most important questions for future research on local governance and climate change.The impact of various climate change scenarios has been modelled on the water system of all the river basins across Victoria. Importantly, this analysis has been undertaken in combination with calculations of scenarios of Victorian demography, land-use and electricity generation. We employ a detailed physical account of these sectors using the Victorian Regional Stocks and Flows Framework (VRSFF). The results from the collection of scenarios in VRSFF show the significant impact that some climate scenarios may have on the water system. For example, if predictions of high climate change eventuate and major dam levels are maintained to support urban and rural water use, then our work shows that many of the 29 major river systems in Victoria will be significantly stressed, some dropping to less than 1/3 of their usual flow by mid to late this century. Factoring in possible yearly variations in climate means these river systems, such as the Thomson River and the Murray River entering the neighbouring state of South Australia, may intermittently stop flowing. We also explore potential climate change mitigation and adaptation options, which may also have negative impacts on water security but may be preferable to the alternative of not mitigating. In one scenario, reducing CO2 emissions from electricity generations to 50% of 1990 levels (i.e., not quite reaching a 60-90% target) by 2050 requires per capita consumption rates of goods and energy to be decreased from about 2.0% per year to 0.4%, while also increasing brown coal station efficiency by 25% and replacing most brown coal stations with low or near-zero emission technology, such as biomass, wind, and gas. This scenario produces the lower curve in Figure 1. This analysis clearly indicates the importance of combining technological options with reduced consumption for achieving proposed reductions in greenhouse emissions to avoid dangerous climate change. It also indicates the substantial extent of the change required, especially in terms of avoiding a "rebound" effect if energy end-use efficiencies are proposed as a means of reducing consumption. [GRAPHICS] .Urban environmental management and urban sustainability are highly related to spatial planning models and several other long term and strategic action plans at the local, metropolitan, regional or national levels depending also on their coordination. Local policies for urban environmental protection, GHG mitigation policies focused within city's area and therefore, urban sustainability policies undertaken by local authorities are also strongly correlated. The EU Thematic Strategy for Urban Environment sets that out and considers urban transport and construction the main sectors for climate mitigation local policies; those and also, sustainable urban design and management are the big issues considered in the EU Strategy to enhance policy cooperation at the different administrative levels in order to reach urban sustainability. Spanish local authorities (CCLL) over 50.000 people are legally dealing with environmental urban matters. Some CCLL - over and under that threshold-signed the Aalborg Commitments in favour of local sustainability; besides, some belongs to Spanish Cities for Climate Network (RECC). The paper shows absolute and relative data on those respects - in relation to the amount of municipalities and population figures, in aggregated and regional terms- in order to asses on the formal involvement degree for CCLL with local sustainability and climate GHG mitigation for urban sources. Finally, additional information is considered on the CCLL integration on Spanish regional or departmental networks for local sustainability as well as other information on local planning initiatives or cross cutting environmental issues related to urban areas.Climate change is nothing new, what is really new is that this change is due, at least in good part, to human societies. There is a vulnerability to social change in the fields of economy, health, etc. which we had not experimented until now. The changes that we face, moreover, are not just related to climate. Other changes in the relationship with our environment may have direct consequences for our society and it may be that human societies are paying more attention to the process of climate change mitigation than to the vulnerability and adaptation to its results. Since 1989, efforts to understand the nature of interfirm resource sharing in the form of industrial symbiosis and to replicate in a deliberate way what was largely self-organizing in Kalundborg, Denmark have followed many paths, some with much success and some with very little. This article provides a historical view of the motivations and means for pursuing industrial symbiosis-defined to include physical exchanges of materials, energy, water, and by-products among diversified clusters of firms. It finds that "uncovering" existing symbioses has led to more sustainable industrial development than attempts to design and build eco-industrial parks incorporating physical exchanges. By examining 15 proposed projects brought to national and international attention by the U.S. President's Council on Sustainable Development beginning in the early 1990s, and contrasting these with another 12 projects observed to share more elements of self-organization, recommendations are offered to stimulate the identification and uncovering of already existing "kernels" of symbiosis. In addition, policies and practices are suggested to identify early-stage precursors of potentially larger symbioses that can be nurtured and developed further. The article concludes that environmentally and economically desirable symbiotic exchanges are all around us and now we must shift our gaze to find and foster them.The Guitang Group (GG), which operates one of China's largest sugar refineries, has been developing and implementing an internal and external industrial symbiosis strategy for more than four decades. The GG first invested in developing its own collection of downstream companies to utilize nearly all byproducts of sugar production. This strategy has generated new revenues and reduced environmental emissions and disposal costs, while simultaneously improving the quality of sugar. Internally, the GG's complex consists of interlinked production of sugar, alcohol, cement, compound fertilizer, and paper and includes recycling and reuse. Externally, the GG has established a strong customer base as a result of its product quality, has worked to maintain and expand its supply base through technological and economic incentives to farmers (and even to competitors), and has had to react to a strong government presence that fundamentally affects its operations. Operations to date support some of the fundamental concepts of industrial symbiosis. Significant challenges exist, though, if the company is to continue to prosper in the volatile globalized sugar market.Industrial ecology has emerged as a key strategy for improving environmental conditions. A central element of industrial ecology is the concept of closing the loop in material use (cycling) by directing used material and products (wastes) back to production processes. This article examines the issue of geographic scale and loop closing for heterogeneous wastes through an analysis of the location and materials flows of a set of recycling, remanufacturing, recycling manufacturing, and waste treatment (RRWT) firms in Texas. The results suggest that there is no preferable scale at which loop closing should be organized. RRWT firms are ubiquitous and operate successfully throughout the settlement hierarchy. The cycling boundaries of RRWT firms are dependent primarily upon how and where their products are redirected to production processes rather than the firm's location in the settlement hierarchy. In other words, loop closing is dominated by the spatial economic logic of the transactions of the firm involved. These results suggest that we cannot assign loop closing to any particular spatial scale a priori nor can we conceive of closing the loop via RRWT firms in terms of monolithic networks bounded in space or place with internal material flows.The realization of regional synergies in industrial areas with intensive minerals processing provides a significant avenue toward sustainable resource processing. This article provides an overview of past and current synergy developments in two of Australia's major heavy industrial regions, Kwinana (Western Australia) and Gladstone (Queensland), and includes a comparative review and assessment of the drivers, barriers, and trigger events for regional synergies initiatives in both areas. Kwinana and Gladstone compare favorably with well-known international examples in terms of the current level and maturity of industry involvement and collaboration and the commitment to further explore regional resource synergies. Kwinana stands out with regard to the number, diversity, complexity, and maturity of existing synergies. Gladstone is remarkable with regard to unusually large geographic boundaries and high dominance of one industry sector Many diverse regional synergy opportunities still appear to exist in both industrial regions (particularly in Kwinana), mostly in three broad areas: water, energy and inorganic by-product reuse. To enhance the further development of new regional synergies, the Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing (CSRP), a joint initiative of Australian minerals processing companies, research providers, and government agencies, has undertaken several collaborative projects. These include research to facilitate the process of identifying and evaluating potential synergy opportunities and assistance for the industries with feasibility studies and implementation of selected synergy projects in both regions. The article also reports on the progress to date from this CSRP research.Industrial ecology rests historically-even in a short lifetime of 15 years or so-on the metaphorical power of natural ecosystems. Its evolution parallels the rise of concerns over unsustainability, that is, the threats to our world's ability to support human life, as well as the emergence of sustainability as a normative goal on a global scale. This article examines the relationships between industrial ecology and sustainability and argues that, in its historical relationship to classical ecology models, the field lacks power to address the full range of goals of sustainability, however defined. The classical ecosystem analogy omits aspects of human social and cultural life central to sustainability. But by moving beyond this model to more recent ecosystem models based on complexity theory, the field can expand its purview to address sustainability more broadly and powerfully Complexity models of living systems can also ground alternative normative models for sustainability as an emergent property rather than the output of a mechanistic economic model for society's workings.Fluorine is an essential element to human health and to the chemical industry. In spite of our dependence on fluorine and fluorine compounds, we have yet to learn to use them wisely Our fluorine history, which spans about a hundred years, has had negative effects such as hydrofluoric acid pollution caused by aluminum smelters and ozone depletion due to chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions. More recent concerns center on greenhouse effects from CFCs, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). In this article we note also that fluorine is a nonrenewable resource that is nonsubstitutable for many purposes. This article tracks fluorine from sources through conversion processes to end uses, most of which are dissipative. We present a stock-flow model of the fluorine system. Based on this model we consider some possible measures that could be taken to increase the degree of recovery. To mention one example, a large percentage of the world demand for fluorspar could be supplied by the phosphate rock (fertilizer) industry, which currently dissipates a great deal of recoverable fluorine in waste phospho-gypsum.In producing power, humans move the nutrients nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from their long-term geological and biological stocks and release or emit them in soil, water, and the atmosphere, In Finland, peat combustion is an important driver of N and P fluxes from the environment to human economy. The flows of N and P in the Finnish energy system were quantified with partial substance flow analysis, and the driving forces of emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) were analyzed using the ImPACT model. In the year 2000 in Finland, 140,000 tonnes of nitrogen entered the energy system, mainly in peat and hard coal. Combustion released an estimated 66,000 tonnes of N as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and nitrous oxides (N2O) and another 74,000 tonnes as elemental N-2. Most of the emissions were borne in traffic. At the same time, 6,000 tonnes of P was estimated to enter the Finnish energy system, mostly in peat and wood. Ash was mainly used in earth construction and disposed in landfills; thus negligible levels of P were recycled back to nature. During the twentieth century, fuel-borne input of N increased 20-fold, and of P 8-fold. In 1900-1950, the increasing use of hard coal slowly boosted N input, whereas wood fuels were the main carrier of P Since 1970, the fluxes have been on the rise. NO, emissions leveled off in the 1980s, though, and then declined in conjunction with improvements in combustion technologies such as NOx removal (de-NOx) technologies in energy production and catalytic converters in cars.The concept of sustainable development concerns not only the natural environment but also human societies and economies. The method of economy-wide material flow accounting and analysis (EW-MFA) is internationally recognized as a valuable tool for studying the physical dimensions of economies. EW-MFA has been carried out in many industrialized countries, but very little work has been done for developing China; this article can be regarded as one of the first attempts to study China's economy in terms of material flows. In this article we have compiled material flow accounts for China during the time series 1990 to 2002 and derived indicators associated with international comparison. Results show that the annual material consumption of China's economy continuously increased except for a slump around 1998, whereas the material efficiency exhibited a three-phase trend reflecting different macropolicies of the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth FiveYear Plans implemented by the central government. Based on this experience with EW-MFA for China, suggestions for methodology development and further research are given for improving EW-MFA as a more effective tool for environmental management.Materials flow analysis (MIFA) is one of the central achievements of industrial ecology, One direction in which one can move MIFA beyond mere accounting is by putting the material flows in their social context. This "socially extended MFA" may be carried out at various levels of aggregation. In this article, specific material flows will be linked to concrete actors and mechanisms that cause these flows-using the action-in-context (AiC) framework, which contains, inter alia, both proximate and indirect actors and factors. The case study site is of Tat hamlet in Vietnam, set in a landscape of paddy fields on valley floors surrounded by steep, previously forested slopes. Out of the aggregate MIFA of Tat, the study focuses on material flows associated with basic needs and sustainability. The most important actors causing these material flows are farming households, politicians, traders, and agribusiness firms-of which local politicians turned out to be pivotal. The study shows the value of combining MFA with actor-based social analysis. MIFA achieves the balanced quantification of the physical system, thus helping to pinpoint key processes. Actor-based analysis adds the causal understanding of what drives these key processes, leading to improved scenarios of the future and the effective identification of target groups and instruments for policy making.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners build models to quantify resource consumption, environmental releases, and potential environmental and human health impacts of product systems, Most often, practitioners define a model structure, assign a single value to each parameter, and build deterministic models to approximate environmental outcomes. This approach fails to capture the variability and uncertainty inherent in LCA. To make good decisions, decision makers need to understand the uncertainty in and divergence between LCA outcomes for different product systems. Several approaches for conducting LCA under uncertainty have been proposed and implemented. For example, Monte Carlo simulation and fuzzy set theory have been applied in a limited number of LCA studies. These approaches are well understood and are generally accepted in quantitative decision analysis. But they do not guarantee reliable outcomes. A survey of approaches used to incorporate quantitative uncertainty analysis into LCA is presented. The suitability of each approach for providing reliable outcomes and enabling better decisions is discussed. Approaches that may lead to overconfident or unreliable results are discussed and guidance for improving uncertainty analysis in LCA is provided.This article presents an integrative approach to calculating the weight of potential biowaste and collected biowaste materials, as the basis for a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of biowaste management. Biowaste contains kitchen and garden (yard) waste of households. This approach could be used for waste management planning and for the implementation of biowaste schemes. Case studies and examples in the literature are analyzed to model the mass of the flow of biowaste. This article defines relevant operands, presents the main assumptions, and describes the calculation principles. Spatial aspects and the uncertainties related to the inclusion of this aspect are explicitly considered in the calculation of the weight of the potential biowaste. We also present the calculation principles for obtaining the weight of (1) biowaste used in home composting, (2) the organic portion of residual waste, (3) biowaste separately collected by a bring system, and (4) biowaste separately collected by curbside collection (known in some areas as kerbside collection). By choosing the biowaste potential in kilograms per capita year (kg/cap yr) as the functional unit, previously ignored options within the biowaste system could be assessed. For example, widening the system boundaries allows LCA studies to assess the contribution of private and public transport of waste to ecological impact categories. It allows examining the effects of supporting home composting through financial incentives and the introduction of a separate collection system. This study focuses on the comparison of different collection types and on the characteristics of the area under investigation. It also incorporates the behavior of the inhabitants of households and includes a sensitivity analysis of relevant operands. This approach is being included in an LCA assessing biowaste management options.A growing worldwide movement is seeking to promote the greening of the construction sector. At the design level, proponents of frameworks such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) seek to motivate designers and building owners to employ environmentally desirable materials. A prominent component of this approach is boosting availability of "green" building materials through programs that will certify to buyers that materials meet environmental standards. For wood products, this has resulted in several forms of "green certification" for forest management. Increasingly large areas of forest are now being certified worldwide. Yet it remains difficult for designers of green buildings, or consumers seeking green furniture, to obtain certified wood products. Many, if not most, of the logs now being harvested on green certified forest land worldwide are not reaching the store shelf with a certified label. Marketing certified wood all the way to the retail shelf has proved to be much harder than initially thought by proponents of certified products. This article explains the sources of these difficulties and outlines an approach to identifying products with high potential for marketing as certified products. Because of complex, multilevel supply chains for many wood products, support is required at all processing and distribution levels for a product to reach the retail customer with its green label, Market participants' purchase size and frequency, basis for product selection, buying influences, and price sensitivity are evaluated to identify product and market approaches likely to increase success rates for certified wood products. The article concludes with recommendations for expanding markets for green building materials.The layout of an experimental unit is given for determining the hydraulic resistance and efficiency. of a cyclone with a height to diameter ratio of 1.81. Equations are provided for calculating parameters zeta and eta. It is demonstrated that experimental and calculated values are in good agreement.It is widely accepted that firms play an important stewardship role in addressing sustainable development concerns. A key challenge in this role is to balance the often conflicting pressures created by sustainable development-firm-level economic performance versus environmental degradation and social disruption. Drawing on complexity theory, risk management, stakeholder theory and the innovation dynamics literature, we discuss the problems of integrating sustainable development concerns in the supply chain, specifically the applicability of life cycle assessment (LCA). Many authors have emphasized the importance of the "cradle to grave" approach of LCA in optimizing closed-loop supply chains, improving product design and stewardship. Based on two case studies (an agricultural biotechnology and an oil and gas company) with supporting data collected from key stakeholders, we argue that sustainable development pressures have increased complexities and presented ambiguous challenges that many current environmental management techniques cannot adequately address. We provide a framework that addresses these deficiencies and discuss implications for practitioners and management theory. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Batch and column kinetics of methylene blue adsorption on calcium chloride, zinc chloride, magnesium chloride and sodium chloride treated beech sawdust were simulated, using untreated beech sawdust as control, in order to explore its potential use as a low-cost adsorbent for wastewater dye removal. The adsorption capacity, estimated according to Freundlich's model, the Langmuir constant K-L and the adsorption capacity coefficient values, determined using the Bohart and Adams' bed depth service model indicate that salts treatment enhanced the adsorption properties of the original material. Since sawdust is an industrial waste/byproduct and the salts used can be recovered as spent liquids from various chemical operations, this process of adsorbent upgrading/modification might be considered to take place within an 'Industrial Ecology' framework. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Obtaining reliable results from life-cycle assessment studies is often quite difficult because life-cycle inventory (LCI) data are usually erroneous, incomplete, and even physically meaningless. The real data must satisfy the laws of thermodynamics, so the quality of LCI data may be enhanced by adjusting them to satisfy these laws. This is not a new idea, but a formal thermodynamically sound and statistically rigorous approach for accomplishing this task is not yet available. This article proposes such an approach based on methods for data rectification developed in process systems engineering. This approach exploits redundancy in the available data and models and solves a constrained optimization problem to remove random errors and estimate some missing values. The quality of the results and presence of gross errors are determined by statistical tests on the constraints and measurements. The accuracy of the rectified data is strongly dependent on the accuracy and completeness of the available models, which should capture information such as the life-cycle network, stream compositions, and reactions. Such models are often not provided in LCI databases, so the proposed approach tackles many new challenges that are not encountered in process data rectification. An iterative approach is developed that relies on increasingly detailed information about the life-cycle processes from the user A comprehensive application of the method to the chlor-alkali inventory being compiled by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory demonstrates the benefits and challenges of this approach.The software tool ecosolvent is presented that allows for comparative environmental assessment of treatment technologies for specific, user-defined, waste-solvent mixtures. The tool is composed of models for waste-solvent distillation as well as for thermal treatment in hazardous waste-solvent incinerators and cement kilns. It was designed with a tiered structure in order to allow for a high flexibility regarding informational needs. The life-cycle assessment method was used to assess the environmental impact. The applicability of the tool is shown with two case studies from industry. In these case studies, various waste-solvent treatment technologies are compared for two specific waste-solvent mixtures. Potential use of the ecosolvent tool for its role in practical decision making in chemicals industries is illustrated by two case studies of waste-solvent systems. In the ethyl acetate case study, the tool indicates that solvent recovery by distillation is clearly better than incineration of the waste solvent. The results from the methanol case study are less clear-cut. In the subsequent article (part 11), the ecosolvent tool will be used to derive general rules of thumb and specific recommendations for 45 important solvents used in chemical industries. Additionally, a framework will be presented that provides quick and easy decision support regarding environmentally optimized waste-solvent management.In an article on the role of temporal information in life-cycle assessment in this journal, Field and colleagues argued that frequently it is not the single product but the "fleet" (or cohort) of products that "is the appropriate unit of analysis," and that in focusing on the fleet one "explicitly introduces the notion of time as a critical element of comparative life-cycle assessments...." Major transitions, such as replacement of one fleet of products by an alternative fleet, correspond to a system in a transient rather than steady state, and explicit consideration of time is central to transient analysis. One tool increasingly used as part of life-cycle assessment, economic input-output (EIO) analysis, at best deals with time in an implicit fashion. This article illustrates how the sequential interindustry model (SIM), a formulation of the DO model that explicitly represents time, might be utilized in life-cycle assessment. SIM introduces this temporal component by explicitly accounting for the time required by production activities and the resulting sequencing of the inputs. This can be thought of as engineering rather than accounting information. The data demands of such a model are not likely to be met at present or at any time in the near future. Even so, simulation methods and the use of so-called synthetic data have a history of productive use in a number of fields, including the social sciences. SIM also utilizes the contribution of Joshi on the application of the EIO model to environmental impact and the inclusion of the use as well as the production phases of a product in DO analysis. The possibility of accounting for discounting of future events, with its impact on decision making, is also briefly discussed.A general analytical model of materials flow analysis (MFA) incorporating physical waste input-output is proposed that is fully consistent with the mass balance principle. Exploiting the triangular nature of the matrix of input coefficients, which is obtained by rearranging the ordering of sectors according to degrees of fabrication, the material composition matrix is derived, which gives the material composition of products. A formal mathematical definition of materials (or the objects, the flow of which is to be accounted for by MFA) is also introduced, which excludes the occurrence of double accounting in economy-wide MFAs involving diverse inputs. By using the model, monetary input-output (IO) tables can easily be converted into a physical material flow account (or physical input-output tables [PIOT]) of an arbitrary number of materials, and the material composition of a product can be decomposed into its input origin. The first point represents substantial saving in the otherwise prohibitive cost that is associated with independent compilation of PIOT. The proposed methodology is applied to Japanese IO data for the flow of II base metals and their scrap (available as e-supplement on the JIE Web site).Various toxic, useful, and/or scarce metals in waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) have rarely been assessed due to low data availability, except for the four metals regulated by the European Union's Directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS). This article describes the results of screening 36 metals in WEEE using simple assessment methods for cases where the decision makers do not know for which substances in a product countermeasures should be taken and where data cannot be easily obtained. First, this study examines the decision-making process and prerequisites for screening, classifies existing assessment methods, and presents three simple indices for screening (resource consumption, water pollution affecting human health, and aquatic biota conservation) so that screening can be readily started for many (20-36) metals. Following this, a case study is conducted for waste TV sets, revealing which metal in which product module or component should be targeted by environmental countermeasures. Finally, the screening results are compared with those of six other methods using diagrams devised to indicate the superiority of screening methods, and several screening techniques are discussed. The conclusions are that the EU RoHS Directive does not necessarily cover all of the toxic metals that could be of concern and the screening methods presented could help identify such metals; the selection of methods is critical; and a more detailed method does not necessarily provide more accurate results.Life-cycle assessment is an established tool for industrial ecology. An analysis of the energy use in the chemical and other energy-intensive industries is still under discussion in this field. We argue that the concept of exergy can play a role in industrial ecology, using a recent Norwegian power production policy question as illustration. The question is whether to build a standard natural gas- or a hydrogen-fired gas-turbine combined-cycle power plant to meet increased needs for electricity in Norway. Several indicators are relevant for this discussion, and we calculate three based on exergy calculations, as proposed in the literature. The indicators are exergy renewability, exergy efficiency, and environmental compatibility. We show how these indicators can be used to evaluate paths for sustainable power production in two gas-fired combined-cycle power plants. We found that the two plants in question were equivalent, as judged by their exergy renewability and their environmental compatibility, but not by their exergy efficiency. This indicator favored the standard power plant, possibly in combination with carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration in a depleted gas reservoir. The analysis suggested that the present situation for power production in gas-fired combined-cycle power plants is such that one may have to choose in general between power production with a high exergy efficiency, but low renewability indicator, or the opposite, low exergy efficiency and high renewability indicator. The general importance of exergy analysis was demonstrated by this example. It enables communication between different professional groups. The technological details, understood by the engineers, can be transposed to meaningful aggregated indicators for decision makers.Coal tar was used in Sweden for the production of asphalt and for the drenching of stabilization gravel until 1973. The tar has high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), some of which may be strongly carcinogenic. Approximately 20 million tonnes of tar-containing asphalt is present in the public roads in Sweden. Used asphalt from rebuilding can be classified as hazardous waste according to the Swedish Waste Act. The cost of treating the material removed as hazardous waste can be very high due to the large amount that has to be treated, and the total environmental benefit is unclear. The transport of used asphalt to landfill or combustion will affect other environmental targets. The present project, based on three case studies of road projects in Sweden, evaluates the consequences of four scenarios for handling the material: reuse, landfill, biological treatment, and incineration. The results show that reuse of the coal tar-containing materials in new road construction is the most favorable alternative in terms of cost, material use, land use, energy consumption, and air emissions.A case study of the chlor-alkali industry in Western Europe and Japan is presented examining the effects of environmental regulation on technological change. In Western Europe, standards were set for mercury emissions from chlor-alkali plants, which were gradually tightened subsequently Research and development (R&D) efforts were directed to end-of-pipe technologies as well as process improvements for reducing mercury emissions, rather than to clean technologies, which eliminate mercury from within the production process. With a significant reduction in mercury emissions with end-of-pipe technologies, new plants continued to be built that relied on the mercury process. As long as these relatively new plants could be utilized, technological transition to the clean ion-exchange membrane process remained slow. The success in reducing mercury emissions with end-of-pipe technologies, in effect, helped to prolong the lifetime of the existing mercury process. In Japan, the government introduced policies to phase out the existing mercury process. The strict approach encouraged innovative companies to make R&D efforts on clean technologies, instead of end-of-pipe technologies for pollution abatement. Applied in a hasty and inflexible way, however, the stringent regulation initially induced most of the chlor-alkali producers to choose the diaphragm process, which later turned out to be inappropriate. After the regulatory schedule was modified to allow more time for process conversion, the remaining mercury-based plants were converted directly to the most efficient ion-exchange membrane process. The technological transition, however, was costly as most of the diaphragm-based plants introduced following the regulatory mandate were operated only for a, short period of time, with the large investment wasted.Net additions to stock (NAS) are an indicator based on economy-wide material flow accounting and analysis. NAS, a measure of the physical growth rate of an economy, can be used for estimates of future waste flows. It is calculated using two methods: The indirect method of calculation is a simple difference between all input and output flows, whereas the direct method involves measuring the amounts of materials added to particular categories of physical stock and the amounts of waste flows from these stocks. The study described in this article had one leading objective: to make available direct NAS data for the Czech Republic, which could later be used for predicting future waste flows. Two additional objectives emerged from the first: (1) to develop a method for direct NAS calculation from data availability in the Czech Republic; (2) to calculate NAS directly, compare the results with those achieved in indirect NAS calculation, and discuss the identified differences. The NAS for the Czech Republic calculated by the direct method is equal to approximately 65 million tonnes on average in 2000-2002 and is approximately 27% lower than the NAS acquired by the indirect method of calculation. The actual values of directly calculated NAS and its uncertainties suggest that the indirect NAS is more likely to be an overestimation than an underestimation. Durables account for about 2% of the total direct NAS, whereas the rest is attributed to infirastructure and buildings. The direct NAS is dominated by nonmetal construction commodities such as building stone and bricks, which equal approximately 89% of the total direct NAS. Calculation of NAS by the direct method has been proved to be feasible in the Czech Republic. Moreover, uncertainties related to direct NAS are lower than those related to indirectly acquired NAS.This paper presents the methodology of value chain analysis developed for a study which combined a material flow analysis of the UK aluminium sector with a consideration of the economic dimension of those material flows, in order to shed light on concepts such as resource productivity and dematerialisation of the economy. The methodology is used in this paper to map the current value chain of aluminium flows through the UK; to examine the residual outputs generated by this industry and the value of applying industrial ecology principles; to contrast the environmental impacts of different categories of materials with their values; and to discuss the findings in terms of the global environmental burden. specifically greenhouse gas emissions, of this sector of the economy, with particular attention paid to international trade aspects. It was found that the majority - over three quarters - of total greenhouse gas emissions associated with UK aluminium production and use (defined as domestic production plus net imports), actually come from domestic production. The findings show that value chain analysis is a robust methodology for exploring various aspects of the economy-environment interface, and a useful complement to material flow or life cycle analyses, with a potentially very widespread applicability. The value chain analysis also provides a framework for coherent and integrated responses by industry as well as policy-makers, through its focus on linkages within different stages and actors in a chain and on the potential for systemic efficiencies. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Within the natural world, diversity refers to the variety and variability among living organisms and the ecological complexes in which they occur. Its complexity is measured in terms of variations at genetic, species and ecosystem levels. It plays a critical role in meeting human needs while maintaining the ecological processes upon which our survival depends. This paper agues that such a natural metaphor should be considered in industrial systems in order to realise sustainable development. This article begins by describing natural biodiversity, emphasising its definition and value, and its maintenance. Next, the paper discusses the rationale and mechanisms for encouraging industrial diversity. The authors suggest that this natural metaphor provides a useful guide on how businesses in an industrial system can evolve towards greater resilience and sustainability.Thermodynamic methods of (energy and exergy) analysis are employed to illustrate energy use in industry. The scope for increasing energy efficiency, and the extent of exergetic `improvement potential' are examined. Poor thermodynamic performance is principally the result of exergy losses in combustion and heat-transfer processes. The late Professor Willem van Gool (a distinguished Dutch physical chemist) was at the forefront of the development and application of energy and exergy methods. He also explored the link between energy and economics. The work of van Gool and others researchers who laid down the foundations of industrial energy analysis are reviewed. These contributions are placed in the broader context of the modern paradigm of sustainable development, and their implications for the future direction of European Union energy and environmental strategies are discussed. Thermodynamic concepts have been utilised by practitioners in a variety of disciplines with interests in environmental sustainability, including ecology, economics and engineering. Widespread concern about resource depletion and environmental degradation are common to them all. Van Gool was instrumental in stimulating a dialogue across the economic and physical sciences. Some researchers view thermodynamic parameters as mirroring energy transformations within society. However, it is argued (after Hammond GP. Engineering sustainability: thermodynamics, energy systems, and the environment. Int J Energy Res 2004;28:613639.) that they may simply reflect a weak analogy or metaphor, rather than representing thermodynamic limits in a physical sense. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.After more than 7, 000 years of widespread use, lead is figuratively sinking in contemporary industrial ecology and global societal commerce. But, despite the long research history of documenting the detrimental impacts of lead use, and of legislative initiatives to phase lead out of various products and processes, the United States currently has no federal mandate comparable to the European Union's '' restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment '' banning the sale of new electrical and electronic equipment containing specified levels of six major toxic materials, including lead. Without a strong environmental agenda leaning toward preventive strategies, concerns about demonstrated public health effects often prove to be strong motivators of U.S. materials use policy. This article assesses various ways in which universal adoption of lead-free solders, coupled with additional material restrictions, may have tangible benefits for public health and the environment, and how these benefits may help secure true innovation in material selection and product design for the environment.This paper presents a detailed account of the supply chain for iron and steel in the UK, using material flow analysis. Due to the lack of a universally agreed methodology of material flow analysis, we include an explanation of the accounting methodology employed in the study. Data for the supply chain has been collected reaching back three decades, enabling analysis of trends in production and consumption of iron and steel over the years. This first part of a series of two papers quantifies the iron and steel flows through the UK economy including the annual amount of iron and steel embodied in all final goods that enter the use phase in the UK. The second part explores the more elusive flows of scrap generation and recycling. In this first paper we show that the UK no longer has the capacity to recycle the scrap it collects and is increasingly relying on foreign economies to do so. We also observe that trade in iron and steel products and ferrous metal containing final goods has increased dramatically over the years, but remained relatively balanced. Today, one-half of UK's iron and steel production is exported, whereas one-half of the iron and steel entering the UK use phase comes from imported final goods. The efficiency with which the UK iron and steel industry transforms iron ore and scrap into iron and steel products has increased substantially. However, there is no significant downward trend in the absolute level of iron and steel use in the UK. Between 1970 and 1981 the annual amount of steel put to use dropped from 16.4 to 10.7 million metric tonnes but climbed back up to 15 million metric tonnes twice since then. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents an analysis of the use of iron and steel in the UK and explores how much of the iron and steel is recycled when it becomes obsolete after use. The first part of this paper series investigated production and consumption trends of iron and steel in the UK, whereas this paper focuses on scrap generation and recycling. Information on the amounts of iron and steel going into different groups of goods, together with values for their estimated lifetimes, have enabled modelling of the annual release of iron and steel from the use phase in the form of end-of-life scrap. This is an application to material flow accounting of the theory of residence time distributions used routinely in chemical reaction engineering. By comparing modelled generation of scrap with actual scrap consumption in the UK, we obtain estimates of loss or accumulation of iron and steel scrap in the UK. The model indicates that as much as 30% of the scrap that was potentially available in 2001 as end-of-life scrap has either been accumulated within the economic system or lost to landfill. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Contemporary cities are unsustainable, compromising the health and well-being of coming generations. How can geographers help imagine and build cities that hold more promise for the future? I suggest that the answer lies in addressing three fundamental challenges facing society today: restoring the city's ecological integrity, redesigning systems of production and consumption, and recasting urban citizenship to promote social and ecological justice. Using the example of the Los Angeles River, I explore how multidisciplinary urban geographic research can help us think about these challenges, and contribute to the development of greener, more sustainable cities.The cement industry uses a variety of secondary materials and fuels, thus fulfilling the role of "scavenger" in industrial ecology (IE). The use of wastes in cement production has been advocated to reduce cement production costs and to achieve the degradation and immobilization of hazardous compounds. In dealing with hazardous elements contained in the wastes, this development has side effects such as relatively significant stack emissions of heavy metals and leaching of hazardous compounds during the life cycle of cement-derived products. Emissions and leaching potential may be substantially lowered by reducing levels of hazardous elements in wastes before they are included in cement production and by selectively capturing mercury from stack gases. An analogy to metabolic functions of selective uptake, sequestration, and selective excretion is presented.Current waste generation from the construction and demolition industry (C&D industry) in Norway is about 1.25 million tonnes per year. This article presents a procedure for projection of future waste amounts by estimating the activity level in the C&D industry, determining specific waste generation factors related to this activity, and finally calculating projections on flows of waste materials leaving the stocks in use and moving into the waste management system. This is done through a simple model of stocks and flows of buildings and materials. Monte Carlo simulation is used in the calculations to account for uncertainties related to the input parameters in order to make the results more robust, The results show a significant increase in C&D waste for the years to come, especially for the large fractions of concrete/bricks and wood. These projections can be a valuable source of information to predict the future need for waste treatment capacity, the dominant waste fractions, and the challenges in future waste handling systems. The proposed method is used in a forthcoming companion article for eco-efficiency modeling within an evaluation of a C&D waste system.This study compares equity funds that are managed according to sustainability goals with conventionally managed funds with respect to their environmental impacts. Overlap in the portfolios of sustainable equity funds and conventional equity funds can be very large. Further, the sector allocation of both types of funds is generally very similar, because portfolio managers follow a chosen benchmark to minimize risk. These two effects may result in no difference existing between the two types of funds in terms of their environmental impact and damage (null hypothesis of this research). This study comparatively assesses the environmental impact of portfolios of 26 investment funds: 13 sustainable investment funds and 13 conventional funds, which are managed according to the benchmark MSCI World. The study applies input output life-cycle assessment (IO-LCA) in combination with a simulation of company-specific environmental performance. The environmental impact is evaluated per functional unit for each fund, measured as the risk-adjusted financial performance. The statistical analysis showed that the analyzed sustainable investment funds performed better with respect to environmental impact assessment but worse in economic risk-adjusted performance (RAP) over the period 2000-2004. In 2004, however, the RAP of the selected sustainable investment funds showed better performance. Both samples considerably overlap for the environmental and economic parameters. The results suggest that the environmental impact of sustainable investment funds in the sample is slightly less than that of conventional funds.Mercury-containing products release mercury (Hg) throughout their lifecycles, frequently in ways that are difficult to measure directly, Therefore, there are considerable uncertainties about the magnitude of mercury releases associated with products, about which products and which release pathways contribute the most to mercury releases, and about the likely impact on mercury releases of various possible interventions in the mercury content of products or in the management of mercury-containing wastes. This article presents an effort to use substance flow analysis to develop improved estimates of the environmental releases caused by mercury-containing products and to provide policy-makers with a better understanding of opportunities for reducing releases of mercury caused by products.This study is a comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA) of two competing digital video disc (DVD) rental networks: the e-commerce option, where the customer orders the movies online, and the traditional business option, where the customer goes to the rental store to rent a movie. The analytical framework proposed is for a customer living in the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. The primary energy and environmental performance for both networks are presented using a multicriterion LCA. The package selected by the traditional network is responsible for 67% of the difference in total energy consumption of the two alternatives. Results show that the e-commerce alternative consumed 33% less energy and emitted 40% less CO2 than the traditional option. A set of sensitivity analyses test the influence of distance traveled, transportation mode, and reuse of DVD and DVD packaging on the final results. The mode of transportation used by the customer in the traditional business model also affects global emissions and energy consumption. The customer walking to the store is by far the best option in the traditional network; however, the e-commerce option performed comparatively better despite all transportation modes tested. A novel economic indicator, ESAL, is used to compare different transportation modes based on the level of stress exerted on the pavement. The two networks are compared on the basis of cost accounting; consistent with its energy and environmental advantages, the e-commerce network also exerts lesser economic impact, by $1.17, for the functional unit tested.Throughout the short history of industrial ecology, issues of implementation have been heavily emphasized. Less attention has been given to the ways in which the technical models of industrial ecology interact with social processes. Yet the practitioners of industrial ecology frequently encounter challenges pertaining to contextualization when embedding a general model in different local contexts. In addition, there are reasons to believe that the models of industrial ecological systems become politically meaningful only when they are carefully contextualized and linked to localized needs, In this article, we aim at a better understanding of the political embedding of industrial ecology. In order to demonstrate some general mechanisms of embedding, we first conduct a frame analysis of complex utilization-a scientific policy instrument analogous to industrial ecology, developed in the Kola Peninsula, Russia. We identify five frames in which complex utilization has been promoted between 1935 and 2005. These frames are then compared to six frames identified in the industrial symbiosis in Kalundborg, Denmark. We find that effective political embedding relies on frames that function both on a general level and in specific contexts. General frames, such as efficiency, economy, and environment, need to be aligned with localized perceptions of particular issues. What is more, sensitivity to purely context-specific frames is necessary for effective political embedding. Finally, the political processes of framing also shape the scientific-technical models that are being promoted.Extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation, making producers responsible for financing and organizing take-back and recycling of waste batteries, packaging, end-of-life vehicles (ELVs), and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), has been or is currently in the process of being implemented in 29 different countries in Furope following introduction of European Union directives. This article reviews the potential impacts of EPR for waste batteries, packaging, and WEEE on producers distributing products in Europe through a case study of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE)-responsible for marketing and distribution of PlayStation products. There are presently more than 250 producer responsibility organizations (PROs) established to meet EPR obligations in Europe, which contrasts to the single national recycling schemes founded in the late 1990s. SCEE estimates it avoided a net cost of Euro408,000 in 2005 by introducing competitive review of PRO services (against a total net take-back cost of Euro401,000). To meet increasingly extensive compliance obligations, SCEE has initiated new activities, with considerable implications for the company's legal, sales data administration, procurement, accounting, and product and packaging approval practices. Considering the ultimate aim of EPR to establish economic incentives for improved product design, several significant political and practical obstacles are described from SCEE's case and industry situation, Although the principle of EPR is indeed interesting, its practical application in Europe may require refinement. Producers, given adequate support by policy makers, still have opportunities to develop new processes under the WEEE Directive to facilitate design for the environment.This article examines the changing food production and consumption system of yogurt in the United Kingdom, focusing on the environmental impact of the yogurt processing stage from a technological perspective. Based on interviews with key industry stakeholders, we describe the evolution of the yogurt industry since the 1950s, characterized by a shift toward industrialized mass production and increased product diversity We explain how new technologies, sociopolitical trends, and industrial strategies have shaped the evolution of the industry over this period. Moreover, we argue that the environmental impact of the current yogurt production and consumption system has been determined to a large extent by technological change. The article explores the future of the yogurt production and consumption system, considering the environmental implications of increased production of more differentiated yogurt products and how technological change may mitigate some of those impacts. The analysis reveals that to appreciate the environmental impact of the yogurt industry, policy makers should not focus simply on the primary stage of production but on all stages of the yogurt production and consumption system, Minimizing waste and improving resource efficiency at the yogurt processing stage are found to be particularly important. Transformation to an alternative yogurt production and consumption system with substantially lower environmental impacts requires significant commitment to change across the industry and the wider sociotechnical landscape.China requires industrial ecology (IE) skills and knowledge to deal with the contradiction between rapid economic growth and subsequent environmental pollution and resource depletion. Industrial ecology education was introduced in China in 1997 and now a few Chinese universities offer IE courses. Wuhan University is one of them and since 1999 has committed itself to promoting IE education. The university offers different curricula for different majors at all levels: undergraduate, master's, and doctoral. Between 1999 and 2004 more than 5,000 students received IE education at Wuhan University Although inadequate human resources and a lack of relevant textbooks present challenges to further developing IE education in China, as more universities pay attention to IE, more courses will be developed. It is believed that IE education in China will blossom in the near future.This paper presents a methodology to combine environmental assessment information and knowledge on supplier relationships. The work is based on a case study of production of a chair. The methods used are shown to be effective to reduce the number of suppliers that should be managed from an environmental point of view and also obtain an overview over which suppliers that can be influenced. It is also shown how suppliers with the presumably highest potential for improvements are identified. The end-producer can thus obtain control over most of the environmental impact originating from upstream activities through a limited number of suppliers. In the case study the number of suppliers that should be managed is reduced to 3. Small and medium sized enterprises have often limited possibilities to influence the suppliers, but in this paper it is demonstrated how this problem can be overcome by cooperative purchasing within a branch of industry with a common demand for information from the suppliers.China is a large densely populated country undergoing rapid industrialization and is becoming one of the world's biggest consumers of natural resources. This circumstance provides a sharp contrast with other countries. As China is so significant in the global economy, studies of its eco-industrial development are very important. In this study we examined the state of eco-industrial development in China and have drawn conclusions from this analysis about some of the future prospects for sustainable development. In the analysis, we investigated the application of industrial ecology concepts by reference to several case studies. We have therefore described the current environmental situation in China, and have provided an overview of eco-industrial development and its implementation. Constraints to industrial sustainability in China have also been examined. We consider that eco-industrial development in China is in its infancy, and that closed loops involving chains and industrial symbiotic webs are the technological key and core of successful initiatives in the application of industrial ecology. In the case studies, we found that each system has different characteristics and management concerns. Our major conclusion is that even though China's Agenda 21 highlights the principles and sets the directions for eco-industrial development, these have not yet become essential ingredients in the country's industrial policy and practice for implementing Agenda 21. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Computer display technology is currently in a state of transition, as the traditional technology of cathode ray tubes is being replaced by liquid crystal display flat-panel technology. Technology substitution and process innovation require the evaluation of the trade-offs among environmental impact, cost, and engineering performance attributes. General impact assessment methodologies, decision analysis and management tools, and optimization methods commonly used in engineering cannot efficiently address the issues needed for such evaluation. The conventional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) process often generates results that can be subject to multiple interpretations, although the advantages of the LCA concept and framework obtain wide recognition. In the present work, the LCA concept is integrated with Quality Function Deployment (QFD), a popular industrial quality management tool, which is used as the framework for the development of our integrated model. The problem of weighting is addressed by using pairwise comparison of stakeholder preferences. Thus, this paper presents a new integrated analytical approach, Integrated Industrial Ecology Function Deployment (I2-EFD), to assess the environmental behavior of alternative technologies in correlation with their performance and economic characteristics. Computer display technology is used as the case study to further develop our methodology through the modification and integration of various quality management tools (e.g., process mapping, prioritization matrix) and statistical methods (e.g., multi-attribute analysis, cluster analysis). Life cycle thinking provides the foundation for our methodology, as we utilize a published LCA report, which stopped at the characterization step, as our starting point. Further, we evaluate the validity and feasibility of our methodology by considering uncertainty and conducting sensitivity analysis. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within recent times EIPs (eco-industrial parks) have been touted as one approach through which companies can network to reduce their waste, recover value and achieve economies of scale in their production processes. Using a literature review this study under-takes an assessment of EIPs. The review covers their conceptual grounding, development and analyses their major advantages and disadvantages. Whilst there are substantial economic and environmental benefits to be had, there are also several inherent limitations that first have to be overcome. Recommendations for improving their successful development and long-term viability are suggested towards the end of the paper. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial Ecology is looking for new tools to combine social and economic dimensions with the already well developed physical flow analysis of the human economic system. This article introduces a tool from social network analysis as complementary to the existing multilevel substance flow analysis by exploring the concept of space and region, in which substance flows happen. We use the blockmodel from network analysis in the characterization of the multilevel anthropogenic copper cycle to group countries according to their structural equivalence in the international trade networks related to copper, instead of using a priori aggregation standards, such as geographical proximity, GDP per capita, or widely accepted classification of industrial/developing countries. This approach depicts the patterns of material movement through trade, which reflects the inherent structure of the world system regarding copper production and consumption. The results highlight the uneven distribution of global copper stocks and flows across countries in the middle 1990s, and illustrate the core-peripheral structure among different country groups, in which a close interconnected core exist with sparse ties to peripheral groups, and copper are flowing from the peripheral to the core in terms of net flows. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Due to the growing numbers of cities and urban residents, cities have increasingly contributed to global environmental issues. Many studies have pointed out that the city administrative level is a crucial level at which to address global issues. Nevertheless, integrating global concerns into local management remains a difficult task for the majority of cities. Building on existing theoretical and empirical studies, this article explores the obstacles that impede cities from addressing global environmental concerns, the opportunities for removing the obstacles, and strategies for bringing global issues onto the local level. Many of the obstacles are reflections of contradictory perceptions, concerns, interests, and priorities, which are presented in the form of two arguments, namely the scale argument and the readiness argument, in this article. The close linkages between global and local environmental issues and the potential economic benefits arising from addressing global concerns at the local level may provide opportunities and incentives for cities to take action earlier. The author further argues that although empirical studies in developed cities suggest that the most effective way to get municipal governments to address global concerns is by not talking about the "global," an overly localized policy might not always result in a net gain in a developing city settingIn investigating the relationship between urbanization and sustainability in cities of developing countries, many researchers have looked to rising incomes as a driver for environmental improvement. This article challenges the transition and evolutionary models of urban environmental development that suggest that as cities grow in per capita income, their local environmental problems will diminish. The transition model is outcomes-based, and a competing model based on greater attention to participation in setting sustainability goals and assessing the progress toward those goals is presented. Consensus on appropriate sustainability, indicators is a key element, albeit a challenging one, in the task of pursuing urban sustainability. This is due to the contested nature of the concept of sustainability and also the fact that much of the work done on sustainability has been conducted among countries or on a national scale. A brief review of health, urban transport, air quality, and sewerage indicators suggests that cities do not necessarily see more progress as the per capita income increases. Low-income cities in Southeast Asia that are performing well are likely to see a deterioration in standards with rapid economic and population growth.Data from urban metabolism studies from eight metropolitan regions across five continents, conducted in various years since 1965, are assembled in consistent units and compared. Together with studies of water, materials, energy, and nutrient flows from additional cities, the comparison provides insights into the changing metabolism of cities. Most cities studied exhibit increasing per capita metabolism with respect to water, wastewater, energy, and materials, although one city showed increasing efficiency for energy and water over the 1990s. Changes in solid waste streams and air pollutant emissions are mixed. The review also identifies metabolic processes that threaten the sustainability of cities. These include altered ground water levels, exhaustion of local materials, accumulation of toxic materials, summer heat islands, and irregular accumulation of nutrients. Beyond concerns over the sheer magnitudes of resource flows into cities, an understanding of these accumulation or storage processes in the urban metabolism is critical. Growth, which is inherently part of metabolism, causes changes in water stored in urban aquifers, materials in the building stock, heat stored in the urban canopy layer, and potentially useful nutrients in urban waste dumps. Practical reasons exist for understanding urban metabolism. The vitality of cities depends on spatial relationships with surrounding hinterlands and global resource webs. Increasing metabolism implies greater loss of farmland, forests, and species diversity; plus more traffic and more pollution. Urban policy makers should consider to what extent their nearest resources are close to exhaustion and, if necessary, appropriate strategies to slow exploitation. It is apparent from this review that metabolism data have been established for only a few cities worldwide, and interpretation issues exist due to lack of common conventions. Further urban metabolism studies are required.The way urbanization unfolds over the next few decades in the developing countries of Asia will have profound implications for sustainability. One of the more important opportunities is to guide urbanization along pathways that begin to uncouple these gains in well-being from rising levels of energy use. Increasing energy use for transport, construction, climate control in houses and offices, and industrial processes is often accompanied by increasing levels of atmospheric emissions that impact human health, ecosystem functions, and the climate system. Agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry alter carbon stocks and fluxes as carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon. In this article we explore how carbon management could be integrated into the development strategies of cities and urbanizing regions. In particular, we explore how changes in urban form, functions, and roles might alter the timing, aggregation, spatial distribution, and composition of carbon emissions. Our emphasis is on identifying system linkages and points of leverage. The study draws primarily on emission inventories and regional development histories carried out in the regions around the cities of Manila, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, New Delhi, and Chiang Mai. We find that how urban functions, such as mobility, shelter, and food, are provided has major implications for carbon emissions, and that each function is influenced by urban form and role in distinct ways. Our case studies highlight the need for major "U-turns" in urban policy.This article evaluates, from an industrial ecology (IE) perspective, the energy performance of the services inside an urban system and determines their global environmental impact. Additionally, this study determines which are the most energy demanding services and the efficiency of their energy use per visitor and per surface area unit. The urban system under study is the Montjuic urban park in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, which can be considered a services system. In this case study we distinguished the different patterns of consumption among the service fields and, by studying each field individually, found the most efficient facilities and identified the most critical services based on energy use per visitor or per square meter. These findings are based on the use of energy flow accounting (EFA), life-cycle assessment (LCA), and the energy footprint to analyze the Park's technical energy consumption. Electricity consumption represents nearly 70% of the total energy consumed by the services at Montjuic Park. The forest surface area required to absorb the CO2-equivalent emissions produced by the life cycle of the energy consumed at Montjuic Park represents 12.2 times the Park's surface area. We conclude this article by proposing the incorporation of the methods of IE within the study of parks containing multiple services to improve energy management, and as a result, to raise the global environmental performance of the service sector.The volume of China's recent additions to its urban-built environment is unprecedented. China now accounts for half of all new building area in the world. Increases in building stocks of all types have occurred during an extended period of accelerated growth of the national economy This expansion promises to continue through 2030. As a result, the rapid conversion of land from low-density agricultural and light manufacturing to new urban zones of high density and material-intensive commercial and residential buildings has consumed enormous quantities of domestic and imported resources and has irreversibly altered the Chinese landscape. This article examines the consumption of material resources dedicated to Chinese building construction through a survey and analysis of the material intensity of three major building types. This provides a basis for outlining the emerging life-cycle issues of recent additions to the built environment and of continued construction. With this as the starting point, the field of industrial ecology can work toward formulating strategies for a circular economy that include a resource-efficient urban China.Because human population and socioeconomic activity are both increasingly concentrated in cities, an improved understanding of the environmental consequences of urbanization is needed. A 41-year annual time series of direct material flows was compiled for Singapore, representing a case of fast, export-driven industrialization. Results show that the spectacular economic growth of Singapore by a factor of 20 was associated with a similar expansion of domestic material consumption (DMC). DMC remained closely coupled to economic activity, increasing from below 4 tonnes per capita annually in 1962 to more than 50 tonnes annually in 2000. Despite economic structural changes and a growing service sector, no significant improvements in overall material productivity have been observed.Residential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area are spatially analyzed to determine the impact of urban form on emission-causing activities. The key finding is that over the entire region, emissions from private auto use are on par with those from fuel use for building heating. Once beyond the transit-intensive central core, private auto emissions surpass the emissions from building operations. Variation in total auto- and building-related emissions is quite significant between census tracts, ranging from 3.1 to 13.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Of all tracts, the top ten in terms of GHG emission are located in the lower-density suburbs, and their high emissions were largely due to private auto use.The increasing resource and environmental pressures have impeded China's efforts to quickly promote its people's quality of life, while protecting its natural environment. Due to lack of resources, technologies and capital, China needs to seek a more integrated development strategy. Industrial ecology (IE) may be one solution as it aims at optimizing the use of materials and energy in products, processes, industrial sectors and economies by systemically mimicking natural systems in an industrial setting. The relevant practices and experiences in the developed world have proved that there is a degree of effectiveness and efficiency to development through the application of IE. It is even more critical to apply the principles of IE in China, where resources are scarce. However, compared with developed nations, China faces different environmental, economic and social constraints. Therefore, China has to adopt different approaches to implement the concept of I E. In this paper, we first review the current practices in eco-industrial development in China. Then the advantages and barriers to applying IE in China are analyzed and recommendations are provided. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Understanding eco-industrial park formation requires a multidisciplinary viewpoint [Haskins, Syst Eng 9 (2006b)] that includes systems thinking, industrial ecology, organizational dynamics, logistics, and supply chain theory. The most often referenced eco-industrial park found in Kalundborg, Denmark, serves as an ideal, and is typified by tight interdependency between industrial partners, green logistics, and closed-loop supply chains. But the planet is in crisis [Atiyah and Press, joint statement from The Royal Society and the Hational Academy of Sciences on Population Growth and Sustainability, February 1992] and cannot afford to wait 30 years for more of these parks to emerge. Systems engineering has been found to be effective when bringing together stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and experts from multidisciplinary engineering and technical backgrounds to coordinate the creation of complex systems. This paper uses literature drawn from multidisciplinary sources to investigate the attributes of eco-industrial parks, and then proposes a systems engineering framework, iFACE, for the formation of eco-industrial parks. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 10: 83-97,2007.The chemical industry plays an important role in Flanders. The practice of cleaner production in the chemical industry in Flanders is illustrated by examples from BASF Antwerp, the largest integrated chemical production centre of Belgium. Due to a combination of end-of-pipe measures, process integrated measures and industrial ecology (product- and energy-'verbund', product and energy network), the overall environmental impact of BASF Antwerp decreased by a factor of 3.0 over the period 1985-2004, whereas production increased by 3.4. This corresponds to an overall gain in eco-efficiency by a factor of 10. For the Flemish chemical industry as a whole, a striking increase in eco-efficiency is noticed, exceeding by far the increase for the total Flemish industry.Sustainable development objectives now form a central part of the local economic development practitioner's remit. So an understanding of the concepts used and the tools required to mainstream sustainability is vital. The paper reviews economic, environmental and social conceptualisations of sustainability as these relate to local development practice. It distinguishes between weak sustainability 'no-regrets' policy instruments (such as ecological modernisation, industrial ecology and eco-taxes) and the ecological and social implications of a strong formulation of the concept. Strategic environmental assessment is then evaluated as an important new part of the sustainability tool-kit, which can help practitioners shape the development process in a sustainable fashion, allowing more environmentally-just outcomes.A detailed inventory shows that an average resident of the City of New Haven depends on a per capita capital stock of 9200 kg/c of iron and 144 kg/c of copper in the city infrastructure, buildings, transportation systems, and equipment. Of the iron stock 28% is in items such as rail cars and ships in ocean trade not permanently within the city, and 22% is devoted to receiving and delivering oil fuel to the city and its surrounding communities. Copper is principally used in the distribution of electric power and in water piping within buildings. The city's 9200 kg/c of iron stock-in-use is less than the 13,000 kg/c national average due to New Haven's lack of heavy industry and relatively small number of large buildings. The 144 kg/c of copper stock-in-use is only 58% of the overall value for the United States, but is comparable to that in cities such as Stockholm, Sweden. Attainment of a level of iron and copper services with contemporary technology in less developed countries to the level enjoyed in New Haven would require consumption of the presently identified world copper resources. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The early development process of products imposes to fulfill numerous types of requirements simultaneously. Those requirements are often qualitative and imprecise. The main tasks of a development team consist of grasping and understanding customer needs, refining these needs, synthesizing concepts of solutions, evaluating and selecting appropriate solutions. Evaluating and selecting solutions is a critical stage because various types of metrics are used to measure performances of concepts. This paper presents both theoretical contributions and practical implementations. This article presents a theoretical analysis of resource consumption and environmental impact from the viewpoint of exergy. In addition, this article provides a theoretical answer to the issue of qualitative modeling of early design concepts of solutions. This article opens a fruitful perspective for combining heterogeneous requirements in a coherent and systematic manner by using dimensional analysis calculus.This paper is concerned with a new integrated analytical model for evaluating environmental loads induced by consumer behavior. The model consists of two components: One is the waste input-output (WIO) model that is a consistent framework for the hybrid life-cycle assessment and life-cycle costing. The other is an economics model of consumer behavior within the constraints of limited income and time based on the concept of consumption 'technologies.' Because consumers are regarded as industrial sectors in the newly developed model, not only time and income rebound effects but also a part of the so-called economy-wide rebound effects is accounted for.Incorporating environmental costs and considerations into corporate decision- making becomes a challenging task nowadays. Decision- making techniques, such as input - output models and multicriteria decision- making tools, have been developed over the past decades, which help to create a system- wide industrial ecology philosophy in many industrial communities. In response to emerging environmental regulations and policies, the impact of environmental costs on a production program should be realized with regard to the level and extent of compliance. This paper, which presents the first part of the study, illustrates the miniaturized level framework of greening accounting for an individual company. The case study applies an input - output analysis model to assess the environmental cost impacts due to the required pollution charges and resources conservation fees faced in a textile- dyeing firm in Taiwan. Based on a production process designed for generating two types of textile products in this factory, the case study demonstrates how the input - output analysis model can be used to support environmental cost allocation among interacting departments in the participating company. On the other hand, such allocation also reflects the contemporary enterprisers' challenges with regard to the 'corporate environmentalism' in response to the varying and evolving environmental management system in a developing country. The findings from this research clearly indicate that the designed input - output model is capable of providing an input - output structure of the textile-dyeing firm to aid in advanced decision analysis. Apart from the concern of environmental cost allocation, enterprises facing the challenge of dealing with the optimal production planning with respect to varying production and environmental requirements may gain comparative advantages via integrating the input - output model with the multi-objective evaluation model to be presented in a companion paper subsequently.The aim of this paper is to analyse metabolic interaction between Paris and the Seine during the industrial era, 1790-1970, a period marked by strong population growth, technological changes, and the absence of specific legislation on environmental issues. The viewpoint focuses on exchanges of waters and wastes between city and river, quantifying them and tracing their evolution in the light of the strategies implemented by the stakeholders in charge. The study combines industrial ecology, local history and the history of technology. From 1790 to 1850, waste matters, and especially excreta, were considered as raw materials, not refuse: they generated real profits. The removal of human excreta aimed not only at improving urban hygiene, but at producing the fertilizers needed in rural areas. Discharging them into the river was out of the question. But after the 1860s, several factors upset this exploitation, notably domestic water supply: night soil became more and more liquid, difficult to handle and to turn into fertilizer; once utilised, the water had to be removed from the house; at the same time, the sewerage system developed and had negative impacts on the river. Even so, Parisian engineers continued to process sewage using techniques that would not only ensure hygiene but also conciliate economic and agricultural interests: combined sewerage system and sewage farms. Both of these early periods are thus noteworthy for a relative limitation of the river's deterioration by urban wastes. Not until the 1920s, when domestic water supply had become the standard and excreta came to be considered as worthless waste, was the principle of valorisation abandoned. This led to important and long-lasting pollution of the Seine (despite the construction of a treatment plant), aggravating the industrial pollution that had been in evidence since the 1840s. Analysing the priorities that led to the adoption of one principle or another in matters of urban hygiene and techniques, with the causes and consequences of such changes, enables us to understand the complex relations between Paris and the Seine. From raw material to waste matter, from river to drain, the concept of quality in environment remains the underlying theme.In this contribution the emerging body of Industrial Ecology theory is organized in a unifying architecture. This basic architecture is illustrated in the form of a pyramid and built upon four basic layers (I-IV) or contexts respectively: (I) context of statements, (H) context of phenomena, (III) context of instruments, and (IV) context of basics. The architecture has its methodological basis in tools of philosophy. It is particularly based on a framework used in epistemology. This generic framework is further conceptualized through a document analysis identifying certain issues that are prototypical for the Industrial Ecology community and literature. Due to its solid structure, the basic architecture is Proposed for Industrial Ecology education and communication what is distinctive for the field.This paper begins by describing the evolution of the concept of green design over the last several decades. In its earliest form, the focus was on reducing waste, pollution, and resource use. In its current form, it includes the concepts of sustainability and industrial ecology, adding in a focus on nature and the future. This reflects a shift to renewable resources as well as considering the impact of technology on society. The author recommends two additional principles that need to be more explicitly incorporated into green design: ecological constraints and natural systems as models. A succinct definition of green design is proposed: green design means practicing engineering with the inclusion of natural systems, both as a model and as a fundamental consideration, for the improvement of the quality of all life. Following this introduction is a description of how these principles have been incorporated into first-year engineering courses. In the author's course, students are introduced to key concepts through readings, videos, lectures, and exercises, and then they apply the concepts to hands-on projects including cardboard furniture and loudspeaker redesign. A comprehensive summary of tools, resources and techniques is presented.A new sequence of courses at Carnegie Mellon University exposes students to concepts in the emerging discipline of Sustainable Engineering and prepares them to play leadership roles in the years ahead. This sequence includes four half-semester courses: (1) Introduction to Sustainable Engineering; (2) Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering Design; (3) Life Cycle Assessment, and (4) Case Studies in Sustainable Engineering. Students successfully completing this sequence have an appreciation for the myriad ways in which engineering decisions can affect the environment and for the responsibilities of engineers in helping society cope with future challenges.Technical innovation is necessary but should not be overestimated on the way towards sustainability. Asking ourselves what kind of knowledge and skills engineers need for a more sustainable design of technologies, processes and products, we came to at least three answers: 1) Knowledge about targets and impacts: scientific knowledge about possible impacts on health, safety and the environment and on 'carrying capacities' of socio-ecological systems (sources and sinks); 2) Knowledge about technologies and interventions: methods to analyse and evaluate technologies, processes and products and to design more sustainable and robust solutions; 3) Knowledge about innovation processes, about the complexity of socio-economic systems (e.g. innovation systems) and knowledge about the options for engineers to influence processes within these systems, as well as skills that lend the ability to make optimal use of these options. The curriculum development in the Division of Technological Design and Development at the University of Bremen's Production Engineering Department can thus be summarized by the terms 'impacts', 'methods' and 'innovation processes', with a scope that is influenced strongly by the emerging field of industrial ecology. One of the strengths of our research and course programme is the full integration with the rest of the engineering department making both very practice orientated. We attach special importance to the taught knowledge being relevant in everyday engineering practice and implement this, among other things, by complementing our lectures and seminars with field trips, guest speakers from academia and industry, and interdisciplinary student projects in co-operation with other divisions and industry partners.Industrial processes have different levels of impact on the environment and there is a need to foster knowledge of the environmental consequences of industrial activities. One of the ways of achieving this is by the application of the concepts of industrial ecology (a multidisciplinary research approach) to industry's day-to-day activities. Another possible way of pursuing this goal is to use environmental education as a tool for increasing awareness with regard to the social, political and economic relevance of as well as the need for, environmentally sound industrial methods. Technical universities in the Baltic. Sea region, under the framework of the BALTECH consortium, have decided to develop and implement a new MSc Programme in Environmental Management and Cleaner Production, based on an integrated approach to industrial ecology towards current and long term/strategic environmental goals. The programme focuses on technologies and concepts in environmental planning and management for sustainable industrial development. The programme began at Kaunas University of Technology in September 2002. The Institute of Environmental Engineering (APINI), which is the main organisation responsible for the Environmental Management and Cleaner Production MSc programme in Kaunas University of Technology, treats the multidisciplinary approach as the main priority in the design of curricular models and views it as a strategic device in training graduates who will succeed in the labour market. This paper outlines a new educational model that provides students with both a systemic perspective and a more technical attitude for handling environmental multidimensionality.The dissemination and implementation of the Industrial Symbiosis projects in the Rotterdam Harbour and Industry Complex can be characterised by break-through projects on the basis of long-term industrial ecology projects. The first 4-year Industrial Symbiosis programme started in 1994 and generated the basis for 15 projects that were further developed in a second 4-year programme that started in 1999 and merged into a 8-years Sustainable Enterprises programme in 2003. This development at the system level is created through the activities of individual organisation in a dynamic, loosely coupled network. The concept of sustainability capabilities is used to analyse the way in which these activities lead to the development of the system.Determining the economic, social and environmental effects of business is a laudable goal. It is often difficult in practice, however, especially if a firm is not in a resource sector, where material and energy flows dominate impacts, but is in a service sector, where technology, culture, and social and environmental impacts are more important. Some of the potential issues involved in such cases can be illustrated by considering the information and communications technology industry, from production of artifacts to services and deeper cultural implications.Circular economy is a new economy development paradigm of the 21st century, developing circular economy has becoming an important way to realize the sustainable development strategy in China. Recycling and reuse of industrial materials is an important research field of industrial ecology as one of theory basis of sustainable development strategy. This paper will provide a perspective for Chinese industry sustainable development to the whole process of industrial metabolism in order to gain eco-efficiency and economic benefits by technology innovations. Now Chinese manufacturing industry is implicating industrial restructuring in accordance with the principles of industrial metabolism because the "pollute now, clean up late" principle is already not longer adopted into Chinese industrial development strategy. We think it is necessary to implicating "better" environmental policy by the way of technology innovation. Technology innovation as a means of Chinese industry sustainable development is been applying (or has been applied) into the implicating processes of industrial restructuring in China. Hence, our main studies are to focus on: (i) Technology Innovation faced to the Environmental Challenge of Industrial Sustainable Development; (ii) Environmental Technological Innovation to Chinese Industry Sustainable Development; (iii) Innovation and Diffusion of Environmental Technology based on Recycling and Reuse of Industrial Materials. These study results show that industrial systems have a positive attitude towards the implementation of technology innovation used in industrial restructuring processes.' Technology innovation in the industrial metabolisms is considered as a driver for industry sustainable development.In light of the theoretical implications from ecological economics and industrial ecology, increased efforts should be undertaken by policy makers to make consumption "reasonable". To remain sustainable, "reasonable" decisions should take into account the long-term survival of ecosystem and acknowledge the fact that the existence of human species ultimately depends on it. Two additional objectives should complement "reasonable" consumption: (1) changing product systems so that products are properly managed at the end of their useful lives. (2) making products more environmentally friendly. A case study of the Integrated Product Policy of the European Union reveals that it addresses the above objectives selectively. The general conclusions are that "reasonable" behaviour is challenged by conflicting interests of various market actors, that economic reasoning should complement environmentally "reasonable" behaviour, and that "reasonable" consumption should indeed be discussed in conjunction with "reasonable" production. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The proliferation of sustainability assessment principles, strategies, actions, and tools has created confusion about pathways forward for companies. It is unclear how existing approaches are complementary or distinct. How does a company assess current products and materials? How could designers create more sustainable products? What criteria, principles, approaches, and tools should be applied? Why? Is there a practical "road map" to guide product designers and product development managers in integrating sustainability issues into their decision-making processes? This article builds on previous frameworks for understanding the interconnections between various assessment principles, strategies, actions, and tools related to industrial ecology, human and labor rights, and corporate social responsibility [Waage S, Geiser K, Irwin F, Weissman A, Bertolucci M, Fisk P, et al. Fitting together the building blocks for sustainability: a revised model for integrating ecological, social, and financial factors into business decision-making. Journal of Cleaner Production 2005;13(12):1117-206; Robert K-H, Schmidt-Bleek B, Aloisi de Larderel J, Basile G, Jansen JL, Kuehr R, et al. Strategic sustainable development-selection, design and synergies of applied tools. Journal of Cleaner Production 2002; 10(3):197-214; Robert K-H. Tools and concepts for sustainable development, how do they relate to a framework for sustainable development, and to each other? Journal of Cleaner Production 2000;8(3):2,13-54]. Expanding on past work, this piece suggests a "road map" for application by product designers and product development managers. A four-phase process is offered for integrating systems and sustainability, perspectives into product design, manufacturing, and delivery decisions. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a consequence of the introduction of limits on exhaust gas emissions and a target agreement between the Swiss association of car importers (auto-schweiz) and the Swiss government calling for a reduction in the specific fuel consumption, a considerable reduction of exhaust emissions of newly registered Swiss passenger cars occurred in the last 10 years. Also, for the near future an ongoing reduction of exhaust emissions of newly registered vehicles is expected. However, applying the concept of life cycle thinking, exhaust emission reductions may be outbalanced with an increase in specific car manufacturing expenditures and/or a longer use of the car. Thus, from the point of view of an individual car owner, a prolonged car use may be the environmentally preferable option. In order to investigate this question, a comprehensive analysis of the environmental performance of newly registered diesel and petrol passenger cars in the time period from 2000 to 2010 has been performed. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been employed focusing on three transport components: 'vehicle travel' (exhaust and abrasion emissions), 'fuel chain' (supply of fuels) and 'car infrastructure' (manufacturing, maintenance and disposal of cars). The presented model aims to gain insight into the issue of longevity and prolonged car use for the Swiss case, rather than giving ultimate recommendations. The analysis focuses on classical road pollutants (NO, and PM2.5) as well as on fuel consumption reduction and CO2. Moreover, impact assessment has been applied, employing a common approach: Eco-Indicator (EI) 99. The ranking of different car replacement options revealed prolonged car use as the environmentally better option. As a consequence of the continuous use of the car representing 2000 average technology, the components 'vehicle travel' and 'fuel chain' show a 10% and 9% higher performance, respectively. This effect is compensated by savings in 'car infrastructure' (26%). Uncertainty analysis has been performed by additional model runs with different parameter settings. Despite the fact that a considerably prolonged car use scores best for all additional model runs, the resulting differences between options further decrease. This holds particularly true, if a higher yearly average fuel reduction rate of 3% is assumed. Furthermore, applying an avoided burden concept for infrastructure modeling (Value Corrected Substitution (VCS)) shows the same effect. In both cases the resulting scores differ merely marginally between the considered options and would not allow for discrimination. As a consequence of these outcomes, it is not possible to give any general recommendation to Swiss car owners to extend the use of their cars, in the short term. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The COST Action 628 was established to produce first hand, industrial environmental data of textiles in Europe, as well as to suggest tools for comparisons of present technologies and practices With cleaner applications, including the economic effects. The Action network also suggested criteria for ISO (Type 111) Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) standards. It was concluded that new emerging cleaner technologies are in a key position when striving towards zero emissions in textile processing. It is also important to identify the most polluting stages of textile processing, with the help of life cycle assessment methodology, in order to focus the development of new technologies correctly. LCA was used to set up criteria for an Environmental Product Declaration for textile products. Unique, first hand industrial data were collected from five European textile industries. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Firms engaged in industrial ecology hope to reduce environmental impacts and costs, improve resource efficiency, and create symbiotic relationships that reduce transaction costs and enhance information flow. However, current LCA tools do not explain firms' incentives to implement the principles of industrial ecology, or how an individual or firm can affect the products and processes at other firms. Game theory, on the other hand, allows investigation of the willingness of producers and consumers to seek strategies that promote the common interest of the system while not harming their own interests. This paper applies game theory to the lifecycle of bottle packaging, and presents a framework for analysis of the choice between refillable and disposable bottles. Although refillable bottles may be more cost effective in the long run, bottlers only have incentive to use refillable bottles when they are sure that consumer return rates will be reasonably high. It has been found that consumers who keep or dispose of refillable bottles, or respond to deposit/refund return incentives by reducing their demand, may drive costs up and encourage adoption of disposables. A simple model is provided which finds the optimal bottler strategy as a function of the bottler's expectations for consumer cooperation. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Ecosystem theory has been developed during recent decades, thereby a series of concepts are hypothesized to describe principles inherent to the "natural" function of biological systems at various levels of hierarchy. It seems that a universal trend exists, through evolutionary time and space that allows us to establish indicators that may be used to observe patterns in evolution, even at high levels of hierarchy such as the ecosystem level. The functional principles of ecosystems have evolved over a period of time corresponding to the existence of life on earth say 3-4 billion years. The obvious question immediately arises whether we could team something from observing these principles. Could we possibly improve our existence by living in accordance with these principles practiced in nature, as exemplified by ecosystems? In this paper, a comparison between natural systems on the one side and industrial-societal systems on the other side is made using 10 target areas as entrance points. It turns out that even though industrial ecologists are aware of and are practicing some points in ecosystem theory, far from all principles, have been exploited. It is suggested that society should increase attention to some of the features where natural systems and societal systems differ greatly. It is hypothesized that industry and society, both in terms of economy and sustainability, would benefit from exploiting these natural principles, even more. This would lead to an intended and deliberate development of the industrial sectors and society in general accordance with the natural ecosystem principles. This led the author to propose the eco-mimetic development of our society. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper investigates whether eco-industrial parks (EIPs) offer possibilities to implement sustainable development policies. ElPs are based upon industrial ecology principles that suggest industrial systems can operate in a similar fashion to natural ecological systems. Drawing upon a survey of all identifiable ElPs in the USA and Europe and in-depth interview surveys of 16 ElPs, the research discovered few examples of networking between firms or processes using wastes and materials recycling. Most ElPs are at a very early stage of development, where linkages are potential rather than real. The problems encountered in developing ElPs from scratch suggests that a more fruitful approach is to build upon existing and potential linkages within a locality, assisted by a pro-active policy to encourage interchanges. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Material flow analysis (MFA) has become a useful tool for industrial ecology (IE) to analyze the metabolism of social systems, such as countries and regions. This paper proposes to use the indicators derived from MFA, complemented with water and energy indicators, to analyze the efficiency and the materialization ranks of industrial areas. The methodology is applied to a case study of an industrial area located in Catalonia (Spain). Despite the heterogeneity of the area, by using simple data the indicators detect companies with high consumption or inefficiency. These companies have many opportunities to improve on these aspects and the indicators can measure and reflect their evolution. In addition, the results show the importance that some flows such as water inputs (1.5 times higher than material inputs) and indirect flows associated with imports, which often are omitted, can have in some study cases. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to examine the current coffee production and processing system in Costa Rica in order to maximize its sustainability through cost and risk reductions and identification of new opportunities. A two-year field investigation was performed for assessing resource, energy and water uses, characterizing by-products, and evaluating training, management and industry structure, with the aim of identifying opportunities for the implementation of Cleaner Production (CP) and industrial ecology (1E) strategies. The application of industrial ecology has been implemented in a piecemeal fashion and has not, therefore, been widely accepted by the industry at large. The broader coffee production system in Costa Rica does not encourage the practice of environmentally sustainable methods within production or processing, and does not encourage the exploration of niche markets that reward high-valued coffee in terms of quality or socio-environmental consciousness. Changes in industrial throughput, operational design, and management attitudes are needed to ensure sustainability within the industry. A number of opportunities for maximizing the sustainability of the coffee industry exist through: (a) strategic application of Cleaner Production, (b) effective use of resources, (c) alternative use of by-products, (d) efficient operational design, (e) training, (f) introduction of basic environmental management concepts, and (g) changes to industry structure. The paucity of data regarding research into the specific barriers to innovations within the coffee industry requires investigation. The specific barriers to the application of environmental innovations need to be identified and understood. This must include the social, cultural and institutional aspects governing the industry in addition to the technical and economic aspects normally addressed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Four principles for a systems approach to sustainability, which have been suggested as prescriptive, normative and desirable, are analysed. Limitations in the principles are observed. The four principles are developed into descriptive indicators, metrics or tools that can be used in sustainability systems analysis to study important properties of all complex systems. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The detection of pharmaceutical chemicals in the environment is viewed with concern because of their biological activity, although thus far no measurable risks to human health have been demonstrated from their presence in the environment. The particulate nature of pharmaceutical chemicals, especially solid and semisolid dosage forms, has received considerable attention from the point of view of raw material and finished product quality, but little attention from the point of view of their ecosystem effects. Therefore, research in support of the interaction of particulate pharmaceuticals and environmental matrices is much needed. The current state of understanding on this subject is summarized in this review with discussions on life cycle of pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceutical supply chain management activities on waste minimization, and potential environmental exposure during manufacture, use, and disposal. The distribution, dilution, and degradation in various environmental matrices are explained and illustrated in flowcharts.As a subdiscipline of industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis (IS) is concerned with resource optimization among collocated companies. Economic and environmental motivation of IS is often referred to in contemporary literature. In spite of this, there has been no in-depth quantitative analysis enabling more comprehensive understanding of economic and environmental performances connected to IS. In this article a set of new emergy indices has been developed to assess the economic and environmental status by considering waste production and subsequent waste treatment and its recovery. With the application of new emery indices, economic and environmental performances of 2 plants at different cases (without internal recycle and waste reuse/with internal recycle/industrial symbioses) have been quantified. It is concluded that IS, as viewed from a company perspective, has to be understood both in terms of individual economic and environmental performance, and as a more collective approach to industrial sustainability.Printed wiring boards (PWBs), also known as printed circuit boards, represent the prevailing interconnect technology for electronics and a key opportunity for making significant environmental improvements. Materials presently used in PWBs may negatively impact human health and the environment during manufacturing and electronic waste disposal. We propose a more sustainable design based on renewable resources. For material selection we considered environmental issues and industry-standard criteria for cost, performance, and reliability. A matrix formulation based on biological resins and environmentally-benign additives was optimized using experimental design techniques. Flax fibers were impregnated with the optimized matrix formulation based on industry-standard coating techniques. Prototype PWB laminates were manufactured from the pre-impregnated fibers. The resulting PWB design is a viable alternative with potentially lower environmental impacts and costs than currently used PWBs.The growing stockpiles of electronic waste (e-waste) pose a threat to human and environmental health if improperly disposed because of the hazardous materials in e-waste. The number of recycling programs across the U.S. is increasing, yet little is known about household e-waste recycling preferences. Our survey of California households indicates that most prefer curbside recycling, but drop-off recycling at regional collection centers also has widespread support. Most importantly, we find that it is important to include information on environmental attitudes and behaviors when estimating willingness to pay (WTP) for e-waste recycling; neglecting environmental attitudes can result in a biased WTP. Other key predictors of WTP include age, gender, ethnicity, and attitudes toward the role of business in protecting the environment.Material and energy flows and land use in North America have shifted dramatically in the last several decades and even more dramatically over the last few centuries. As concerns mount regarding the environmental, economic, and social costs of imported energy sources; feasibility studies of energy independence are one tool for guiding energy policy decisions. This paper reviews the changes in land use, material flows, and energy flows in South Carolina over the past 400 years; showing the shift from a near hunter gatherer society, to an export based agrarian society, to the current fossil fuel dependent society. These phases and their impacts are compared and an analysis is carried out to determine the feasibility of maintaining the current system without the input of materials or energy from outside the geographic borders of the state. Historical data is combined with geospatial data sets to determine levels and limits of energy use and availability. Results include an assessment of the feasibility of using biomass, solar thermal, and solar photovoltaic technologies to maintain the current levels of consumption. [GRAPHICS]An experiment done in Geneva on the river Rhone with a push boat gave the practical frame of a comparative study between 3 fuels: diesel, biodiesel and vegetable oil. Further more in this concrete case the VO used, came from frying oil waste constitutes an interesting illustration of industrial ecology. The asset of this study on environmental impacts analysis done here is to have used practical measurements of emissions from an engine in function on the push boat in complement to bibliographic sources and Data Base. Investigating the sensibility of such analysis shows that there are still questions to be answered and that this field is still subject for research. Finally, it confirms that the environmental gains of biofuels scenarios are not as important as expected, if their vegetable raw material is produced uniquely for energy as in the transport function. They are much more interesting when used in an industrial ecology context where a first cooking function allows dispatching of the production's impacts.Industrial ecology uses the structure and processes of natural ecosystems as a model for organizing industrial activities, seeking to integrate wastes and by-products into the production process thus reducing the need for material extraction and waste disposal. In this paper we discuss the theory and practice of industrial ecology as developed in the former centrally planned economies, and make observations on the suitability of industrial ecology in current transition countries. We describe the Soviet concepts of "combined production" and "waste-free technology", and show that Soviet scientists were familiar with many fundamental elements of modern industrial ecology. Although the potential environmental benefits of industrial ecology were recognized by central planners, industrial ecology was pursued primarily as a means to increase production. We then discuss issues specific to the (re) implementation of industrial ecology in transition countries, such as appropriate policy instruments, the relation between economic growth and environmental impacts, the question of central planning versus spontaneous organization of industrial interactions, the valuation of resources and environmental externalities, and the underlying goals of industry and society in tile context of changing material aspirations among the populations of transition countries. This paper proposes a risk-based environmental assessment approach (E-Green) for evaluating different process options at an early design or a retrofit stage. The approach splits the cradle-to-gate life cycle into two domains: the raw materials production and supply domain and the process domain or gate-to-gate domain. It allows an analyst to investigate adverse impacts of the process activity on each domain separately and results in a more manageable assessment of process design alternatives. It is a risk-based approach contrary to the existing hazard-based approaches. E-Green replaces the conventional normalization step of the impact assessment phase of a life cycle assessment (LCA) with a ranking step, which compares the effect scores of all the impact categories for different options and gives a relative score to each option. This eliminates the complexity and bias of the conventional normalization step in the evaluation phase and enables the analyst to perform the effective evaluation easily. The applicability of the E-Green has been illustrated in the assessment of two solvent options in an acrylic acid manufacturing plant. E-Green methodology is implemented by combining an Aspen-HYSYS process simulator and a quantitative exposure assessment tool (E-Fast).Water network synthesis has been used to conserve water resources and reduce costs. The objective of this study was to verify the higher eco-efficiency of a water network system (WNS), and to identify principal contributors to environmental burdens and economic costs using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). The WNS was compared to the conventional water system (CWS). LCA and LCC results showed that the total environmental burdens and life cycle cost of the WNS were lower than those of the CWS. The consumptions of industrial and ionized water were principal contributors to the environmental and economic burdens. The third principal contributor to the environmental burdens was electricity consumption, but that to the economic costs was piping cost. These principal contributors can be employed to obtain the simple and practical mathematical optimization models synthesizing the most environmentally friendly, economical, or sustainable WNSs. (c) 2007 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 53: 3253-3262, 2007.Hydrogen has been proposed as a low polluting alternative transportation fuel that could help improve urban air quality. This paper examines the potential impact of introducing a hydrogen-based transportation system on urban ambient ozone concentrations. This paper considers two scenarios, where significant numbers of new hydrogen vehicles are added to a constant number of gasoline vehicles. In our scenarios hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) are introduced in Sacramento, California at market penetrations of 9% and 20%. From a life cycle analysis (LCA) perspective, considering all the emissions involved in producing, transporting, and using hydrogen, this research compares three hypothetical natural gas to hydrogen pathways: (1) on-site hydrogen production; (2) central hydrogen production with pipeline delivery; and (3) central hydrogen production with liquid hydrogen truck delivery. Using a regression model, this research shows that the daily maximum temperature correlates well with atmospheric ozone formation. However, increases in initial VOC and NOx concentrations do not necessarily increase the peak ozone concentration, and may even cause it to decrease. It is found that ozone formation is generally limited by NOx in the summer and is mostly limited by VOC in the fall in Sacramento. Of the three hydrogen pathways, the truck delivery pathway contributes the most to ozone precursor emissions. Ozone precursor emissions from the truck pathway at 9% market penetration can cause additional 3-h average VOC (or NOx) concentrations up to approximately 0.05% (or 1%) of current pollution levels, and at 20% market penetration up to approximately 0.1% (or 2%) of current pollution levels. However, all of the hydrogen pathways would result in very small (either negative or positive) changes in ozone air quality. In some cases they will result in worse ozone air quality (mostly in July, August, and September), and in some cases they will result in better ozone air quality (mostly in October). The truck pathway tends to cause a much wider fluctuation in degradation or improvement of ozone air quality: percentage changes in peak ozone concentrations are approximately -0.01% to 0.04% for the assumed 9% market penetration, and approximately -0.03% to 0.1% for the 20% market penetration. Moreover, the 20% on-site pathway occasionally results in a decrease of about -0.1% of baseline ozone pollution. Compared to the current ambient pollution level, all three hydrogen pathways are unlikely to cause a serious ozone problem for market penetration levels of HFCVs in the 9-20% range. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Jatropha curcas is a multipurpose, drought-resistant, biofuel tree originating from Central and South America, but now growing pantropic. The tree produces seeds containing 27-40% inedible oil, which is easily convertible into biodiesel. Although even some basic agronomic characteristics of J. curcas are not yet fully understood, the plant enjoys a booming interest, which may hold the risk of unsustainable practice. Our qualitative sustainability assessment, focusing on environmental impacts and strengthened by some socio-economic issues, is quite favorable as long as only wastelands or degraded grounds are taken into J. curcas cultivation. Preliminary lifecycle energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balances are positive, but the GHG balance is expected to be much dependent on the type of land use which is converted to J. curcas. Removing natural forest will have a severe impact on the global warming potential of the jatropha biodiesel. The cultivation intensity and the distance to markets are expected to have a significant impact on the GHG balance as well. Similar reasoning applies for the impact on soil, water, vegetation structure and biodiversity, although the latter will always depend on local circumstances. Next to biodiesel production and wasteland reclamation, J. curcas also hosts socio-economic development potential. The multipurpose character of the plant and the labor-intensive production chain are thought to be the main drivers for rural development, but are uncertain. In order to achieve best results with respect to both environmental and socio-economic issues, decisions have to be based on local environmental, economical, cultural and social characteristics. (C) 2007 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdA life cycle assessment and financial analysis of mixed culture PHA (PHA(MC)) and biogas production was undertaken based on treating an industrial wastewater. Internal rate of return (IRR) and non-renewable CO(2)eq emissions were used to quantify financial viability and environmental impact. PHA(MC) was preferable to biogas production for treating the specified industrial effluent. PHA(MC) was also financially attractive in comparison to pure culture PHA production. Both PHA production processes had similar environmental impacts that were significantly lower than HDPE production. A large potential for optimisation exists for the PHA(MC) process as financial and environmental costs were primarily due to energy use for downstream processing. Under the conditions used in this work PHA(MC) was shown to be a viable biopolymer production process and an effective industrial wastewater treatment technology. This is the first study of its kind and provides valuable insight into the PHA(MC) process. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to comply with European Union objectives, France has set up an ambitious biofuel plan. This plan is evaluated on the basis of two criteria: tax exemption on fossil fuels and greenhouse gases (GHG) emission savings. An economic marginal analysis and a life cycle assessment (LCA) are provided using a coupling procedure between a partial agro-industrial equilibrium model and an oil refining optimization model. Thus, we determine the minimum tax exemption needed to place on the market a targeted quantity of biofuel by deducting the biofuel long-run marginal revenue of refiners from the agro-industrial marginal cost of biofuel production. With a clear view of the refiner's economic choices, total pollutant emissions along the biofuel production chains are quantified and used to feed an LCA. The French biofuel plan is evaluated for 2008, 2010 and 2012 using prospective scenarios. Results suggest that biofuel competitiveness depends on crude oil prices and demand for petroleum products and consequently these parameters should be taken into account by authorities to modulate biofuel tax exemption. LCA results show that biofuel production and use, from "seed to wheel", would facilitate the French Government's compliance with its "Plan Climat" objectives by reducing up to 5% GHG emissions in the French road transport sector by 2010. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) aims at evaluating the significance of potential environmental impacts. With the objective to identify the main critical points of the process and their impact on the environment, the LCA of PHB (Polyhydroxybutyrate) was made. On the basis of the obtained results, alternatives systems for the critical stages were proposed. The modified systems showed substantial improvements compared to the original process. The economical evaluation showed that it was possible not only to improve the environmental performance of the process, but also reduce the production cost and the basic capital of the process.To assess and justify the beneficial utilization of hazardous wastes, a product-oriented model was established based on the methodology of life cycle assessment, which was composed of four first level indexes including product performance, environmental influence, economic performance and potential market and a series of second level indexes. Both national standards and expert expertise were adopted to elaborate the basis for assessing and judging the feasibility of beneficial utilization. Municipal solid wastes (MSW) incineration fly ash's utilization as a partial substitution of the raw material of ceramic brick was drawn on to demonstrate the successful application of the model. The results of assessment by the model show that fly ash's utilization may be quite feasible when the environmental effects during production are clear.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is largely associated with the municipal solid waste (MSW) management. In order to analyze the MSW management practices, and their influences on greenhouse gas emission in Chongqing city, China, the waste reduction model(WARM); a specialized model by US EPA, was used to quantify the GHG reduction potentials of various MSW treatment options. Based on the Master Planning for the MSW Treatment Facilities in Chongqing (2005-2020), 2006 plan, 2010 plan and 2020 plan were constructed as the three scenarios of MSW treatment in Chongqing city. These three scenarios work as the baseline scenarios in the corresponding years and as alternative scenarios in the other two planning years. The results show that for the year of 2006, 2010 and 2020, the optimal MSW treatment options in Chongqing city could be 2020 plan, 2010 plan and 2020 plan respectively in terms of GHG emission reduction. As a whole 2020 plan has the largest average. of GHG emission reduction capacity, and the reduction capacity of 2006 plan is the lowest among the three.In this article, life cycle assessment was used to evaluate the environmental performances of the production and the distribution of durum wheat pasta, in the Italian market. In accordance with a cradle-to-grave approach, the environmental impact of the whole manufacturing process was assessed, taking into account the energetic flows, the consumption of materials and the emissions of pollutants. Results revealed that the agricultural production (i.e., cultivation of wheat) and the production of durum wheat semolina were the subprocesses that accounted for most of the environmental load. Therefore, to improve the environmental performance, an alternative production system was designed in which organic agriculture was used to produce wheat; recyclable cardboard was used as the only packaging material, and a more efficient dust collecting system was installed at the mill (for semolina production). The obtained environmental improvements were finally presented and further discussed.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners build models to quantify resource consumption, environmental releases, and potential environmental and human health impacts of product systems, Most often, practitioners define a model structure, assign a single value to each parameter, and build deterministic models to approximate environmental outcomes. This approach fails to capture the variability and uncertainty inherent in LCA. To make good decisions, decision makers need to understand the uncertainty in and divergence between LCA outcomes for different product systems. Several approaches for conducting LCA under uncertainty have been proposed and implemented. For example, Monte Carlo simulation and fuzzy set theory have been applied in a limited number of LCA studies. These approaches are well understood and are generally accepted in quantitative decision analysis. But they do not guarantee reliable outcomes. A survey of approaches used to incorporate quantitative uncertainty analysis into LCA is presented. The suitability of each approach for providing reliable outcomes and enabling better decisions is discussed. Approaches that may lead to overconfident or unreliable results are discussed and guidance for improving uncertainty analysis in LCA is provided.This article presents an integrative approach to calculating the weight of potential biowaste and collected biowaste materials, as the basis for a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of biowaste management. Biowaste contains kitchen and garden (yard) waste of households. This approach could be used for waste management planning and for the implementation of biowaste schemes. Case studies and examples in the literature are analyzed to model the mass of the flow of biowaste. This article defines relevant operands, presents the main assumptions, and describes the calculation principles. Spatial aspects and the uncertainties related to the inclusion of this aspect are explicitly considered in the calculation of the weight of the potential biowaste. We also present the calculation principles for obtaining the weight of (1) biowaste used in home composting, (2) the organic portion of residual waste, (3) biowaste separately collected by a bring system, and (4) biowaste separately collected by curbside collection (known in some areas as kerbside collection). By choosing the biowaste potential in kilograms per capita year (kg/cap yr) as the functional unit, previously ignored options within the biowaste system could be assessed. For example, widening the system boundaries allows LCA studies to assess the contribution of private and public transport of waste to ecological impact categories. It allows examining the effects of supporting home composting through financial incentives and the introduction of a separate collection system. This study focuses on the comparison of different collection types and on the characteristics of the area under investigation. It also incorporates the behavior of the inhabitants of households and includes a sensitivity analysis of relevant operands. This approach is being included in an LCA assessing biowaste management options.Given the rising concerns over scarce energy resources and global climate change, life-cycle inventories focusing on energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were developed for the City of Toronto municipal water treatment system (WTS). Three processes within the facility use phase of the life cycle were considered: Chemical production, transportation of materials, and water treatment plant operation. The impacts of chemical manufacturing were estimated using the economic input-output life-cycle assessment model, while the inventories for transportation and operational environmental effects were based on data from the GHGenius model and regionally averaged data. Operational burdens, 60% of which are attributed to on-site pumping, accounted for 94% of total energy use and 90% of GHG emissions. By contrast, transportation-related energy use and emissions were deemed insignificant. The normalized energy use of the studied WTS was found to be between 2.3 and 2.5 MJ/m(3) of water treated. Water conservation practices are recommended as abatement strategies for the energy use and GHG emissions associated with water treatment. The limitations and uncertainties introduced by selected model parameters and through combining various estimation methodologies are discussed, as is the model's relevance.Two different sized hydropower projects in China, one with a capacity of 44 MW and the other of 3,600 MW, were examined through life-cycle assessment (LCA) from the perspective of both sustainability and environmental impact and the influence of project scale. Using the economic input-output based LCA approach, energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were quantified. The resulting energy payback ratios were found to be 7 and 48, whereas the normalized GHG emissions were 44 and 6 g CO2 equivalent per kW h of electricity production, both in favor of the larger project. Compared with published data on other renewable and nonrenewable options, temperate hydropower, particularly large hydropower, is indicated as an efficient electrical source with relatively low GHG emissions.The basis of organic farming is that it is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable, and it aims, wherever possible, to use renewable resources in the production system and avoid waste. Thus this review considers the use of nutrient, energy and water within the farming systems, and indices that are used to evaluate the use of these resources and hence their impact on the environment. It is crucial that the delineation of system boundaries in both time and space, including both the vertical and horizontal dimensions, is defined to assess the resources used within the system. There is increasing interest in the emergy concept, which permits different forms of energy to be compared on the same basis. Across all farming systems, there is no direct link between nutrient surplus and nutrient loss. It is important to recognise that the choice of tool used to assess the environmental consequences of the farming system, as well as whether the results are expressed on a product or an area basis, may have implications for how emissions are attributed to different parts of the production system. In order for indicators to be useful, they must be influenced by the farmer's management practices. (c) 2007 Society of Chemical Industry.In Germany the legal obligation to add a growing quota of biofuels to gasoline and diesel fuel exists since I January 2007. While some ecological impacts of the biofuels, e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, are examined intensively by life cycle assessment (LCA) the question is raised increasingly whether effects should be examined as well which the crop growing for these fuels exerts on biodiversity. In this context in the present paper the results of a literature survey are reported. Based on this it was investigated how far the impacts of the cultivation of energy plants for biofuels on biodiversity are considered in LCA's. The literature study is part of a current joint project of the Institute of Technology and Biosystems Engineering of the Federal Agricultural Research Centre and the Institute of Environmental Planning of the Leibniz University of Hanover. This project deals with possibilities of the incorporation of biodiversity aspects in LCA's of biofuels and is promoted by the German Research Foundation. In this publication we analyse how far LCA studies consider the consequences of the cultivation on biodiversity. First the focus rests on LCA's of biofuels, then on LCA's in the range of cultivation of biomass and finally on LCA's generally in the subject area agriculture. Because the assessments accomplished so far don't have satisfactory results for a solution of the problem, at last the LCA approach by itself is under examination, if it supplies suitable modules to investigate biodiversity impacts. Although there already exist some attempts, in the end, however, it must be stated that no applicable handling is available.Micro wind energy systems are evaluated in the current article for their potential utilization in urban areas. The techno-economic analysis of such energy systems is undertaken, as well as their life cycle assessment. The energy system consists of wind turbine generator as the main power source, lead-acid batteries as the medium of electricity storage, and other essential devices such as an inverter. Electrical needs for a family living under normal conditions of comfort are modelled and used within simulation of the system performance, with an average daily load of approximately 9.0 kWh. To demonstrate the use of the present model, the system's performance simulations are carried out with typical yearly wind speed data from five different sites in Turkey. The typical years are selected from a total of 6 years data for each site. A life cycle cost analysis is also carried out for a wind energy system with a 25-year life span. The system performance is analysed as a function of various parameters such as wind power density and energy production. The environmental life cycle assessment of the energy system described is also carried out to determine the impact of the energy system under evaluation. it is shown that, with the conservative European average electricity mix, the energy pay back time is 1.4 years and the CO2 payback time is 0.7 years for the given system. The CO2 emission per kW he generated is 20.5 g.The world's first commercial wave farm will feature the 'Pelamis' wave energy converter developed by Ocean Power Delivery. With potential for the manufacture of significant numbers of such devices, there is a need to assess their environmental impact and, in particular, their life cycle energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) performance. The current paper presents an analysis of the life cycle energy use and CO2 emissions associated with the first generation of Pelamis converters. With relatively conservative assumptions, the study shows that at 293 kJ/kWh and 22.8 gCO(2) /kWh the respective energy and carbon intensities are comparable with large wind turbines and very low relative to fossil-fuelled generation. The energy payback period is approximately 20 months and the CO2 payback is around 13 months. Material use is identified as the primary contributor to the embodied energy and carbon with shipping (including maintenance) accounting for 42 per cent. Improving the Pelamis' environmental performance could be achieved by increasing structural efficiency, partial replacement of the steel structure with alternative materials, particularly concrete, and the use of fuel-efficient shipping.Feed provision accounts for the majority of material and energetic inputs and emissions associated with net-pen salmon farming. Understanding and reducing the environmental impacts of feed production is therefore central to improving the biophysical sustainability of salmon farming as a whole. We used life cycle assessment (with co-product allocation by gross energy content) to compare the cradle-to-mill gate life cycle energy use, biotic resource use, and global warming, acidifying, eutrophying and aquatic ecotoxiticy impacts associated with producing ingredients for four hypothetical feeds for conventional and organic salmon aquaculture in order to assess the benefits, if any, associated with a transition to organic feed use. Fish and poultry-derived ingredients generated substantially greater impacts than crop-derived ingredients. Despite the fact that organic crop ingredients had markedly lower life cycle impacts compared to equivalent conventional ingredients, substituting organic for conventional crop ingredients therefore resulted in only minor reductions to the total impacts of feed production because the benefits of this substitution were effectively overwhelmed by the much larger impacts associated with animal-derived ingredients. Replacing fish meals/oils from dedicated reduction fisheries with fisheries by-product meals/oils markedly increased the environmental impacts of feed production, largely due to the higher energy intensity of fisheries for human consumption, and low meal/oil yield rates of fisheries by-products. Environmental. impacts were considerably lower when feeds contained reduced proportions of fish and poultry-derived ingredients. These results indicate that current standards for organic salmon aquaculture, which stipulate the use of organic crop ingredients and fisheries by-product meals and oils, fail to reduce the environmental impacts of feed production for the suite of impact categories considered in this study. This information should be of interest to feed producers and aquaculturists concerned with improving the biophysical sustainability of their products, and bodies responsible for aquaculture certification, ecolabeling, and consumer awareness programs. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The production of bulk chemicals from biomass can make a significant contribution to solving two of the most urgent environmental problems: climate change and depletion of fossil energy. We analyzed current and future technology routes leading to 15 bulk chemicals using industrial biotechnology and calculated their CO2 emissions and fossil energy use. Savings of more than 100% in nonrenewable energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are already possible with current state of the art biotechnology. Substantial further savings are possible for the future by improved fermentation and downstream processing. Worldwide CO2 savings in the range of 500-1000 million tons per year are possible using future technology. Industrial biotechnology hence offers excellent opportunities for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and decreasing dependence on fossil energy sources and therefore has the potential to make inroads into the existing chemical industry.During the last decade, there have been remarkable changes in food waste management in Korea following a ban on direct landfilling. To evaluate the environmental impacts of food waste management systems, we examined individual treatment systems with the LCA approach - landfill, incineration, composting, and feed manufacturing - and estimated the change from 1997 to 2005. The efficient system was different in each impact category, but it was evaluated that landfill is the main contributor to human toxicity and global warming (based on fossil (CO2). In contrast, due to the increase of food waste recycling, acidification, eutrophication, and fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity impact was increased. Especially, the high energy consumption and generated residue in recycling systems caused the large burdens in toxicity categories. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study uses life-cycle assessment (LCA) to compare greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dominant agricultural land uses, and peat and coal electricity generation, with fuel-chains for Miscanthus and short-rotation-coppice willow (SRCW) electricity. A simple scenario was used as an example, where 30% of peat and 10% of coal electricity generation was substituted with co-fired Miscanthus and SRCW, respectively. Miscanthus and SRCW cultivation were assumed to replace sugar-beet, dairy, beef-cattle and sheep systems. GHG emissions of 1938 and 1346 kg CO2 eq. ha(-1) a(-1) for Miscanthus and SRCW cultivation compared with between 3494 CO2 eq. ha(-1) a(-1) for sugar-beet cultivation and 12,068CO(2)eq.ha(-1)a(-1) for dairy systems. Miscanthus and SRCW fuel chains emitted 0.131 and 0.132 kg CO2 eq. kWh(-1) electricity exported, respectively, compared with 1.150 and 0.990 kg CO2 eq. kWh(-1) electricity exported for peat and coal fuel chains. 1.48 Mt CO2 eq. a(-1) was saved from electricity production, and 0.42 Mt CO2 eq.a(-1) was saved from displaced agriculture and soil C-sequestration. The total reduction of 1-9 Mt CO2 eq.a(-1) represents 2.8% of Ireland's 2004 GHG emissions, but was calculated to require just 1.7% of agricultural land area and displace just 1.2% of the dairy herd (based on conservative Miscanthus and SRCW combustible-yield estimates of 11.7 and 8.81 tha(-1) a(-1) dry matter, respectively). A 50% increase in cultivation emissions would still result in electricity being produced with an emission burden over 80% lower than peat and coal electricity. Lower yield assumptions had little impact on total GHG reductions for the scenario, but required substantially greater areas of land. It was concluded that energy-crop utilisation would be an efficient GHG reduction strategy for Ireland. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using mineral oil based coolants for the machining of metals causes environmental problems. Besides plant seed oil, animal fat and used cooking oil proved to be raw material sources for alternative ester based coolants which can be used as substitutes for mineral oil. In this paper their properties are compared from a life cycle perspective with those of mineral oil and plant seed oil ester products regarding technical, ecological and economical aspects. In this context grinding tests, Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing were performed. The three disciplines are brought together in a material flow model and, therefore, results are well harmonized.The global electricity supply from non-hydro renewables, mainly wind and solar, is currently growing at a high rate, and it is expected that this trend persists. In the near-to-medium term, the power produced by breakthrough fossil fuel technologies might also grow intensively. These expansion patterns can be optimized in a regional context, which translates into a multidimensional problem. As part of the solution, a procedure to determine maximum allowable growth rates for alternative power-generation technologies is developed and exemplified in this paper. The model applies a dynamic exergy analysis based oil the cumulative exergy-consumption concept, expanded to include emissions abatement. A Gompertz sigmoid growth is assumed and constrained by both exergetic self-sustenance and regional energy resource availability. Far West Texas is the selected study region. The deployment of alternative technologies (wind turbines, photovoltaics, hybrid solar thermal parabolic troughs, and solid oxide fuel cells) to meet the regional power demand is projected assuming backup capacity by a conventional technology (natural gas combined cycle). The results show that during the next decades the new capacity demand may largely be met by deploying alternative technologies, with a cost in primary resources that can be minimized through a proper allowance for exergy reinvestment. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.English farmers are subsidised by the UK government to plant (short rotation coppice - SRC) willow as an energy crop. This study incorporates the outputs of techno-economic and environmental life cycle assessment modelling of bioenergy power and combined heat and power (CHP) plants within a simple spreadsheet model that enables users to partially modify bioenergy scenarios for SRC willow. The model is intended as an opinion-elicitation device. It is restricted in scope, reflecting the electrical power emphasis of the first phase of the Supergen Biomass and Bioenergy research programme. Bioenergy policy stakeholders in North West (NW) England were asked to use the model to develop 2030 scenarios for SRC willow fuelling eight types of bioenergy power and CHP plant. Users allocate finite land inputs to the different power and CHP plant types and the sheet outputs the energy supply, environmental and agricultural employment implications. Policy stakeholders are shown to hold widely differing views of how the bioenergy heat and power sector might and should look in 2030. If the policy stakeholders' 2030 scenarios prove accurate, the percentage of regional households likely to be electrically supplied by willow coppice grown in NW England will be small, at some 3.6%. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background, Aim and Scope. We revised the results of approx. 20 years of international research on the environmental impact of the life cycle of wood products used in the building sector compared to functionally equivalent products from other materials. Main Features. Original studies either technical reports or scientific papers in English or German were considered. This literature was obtained via an extensive literature review (February 2006), via a consultation of compilations of life cycle assessments (LCA) of wood products (e.g. elaborated during the COST action E9) and from secondary literature. The resulting list of literature is considered to be quite complete and therefore covers the most relevant original comparative LCA studies of wood products in the building sector in Europe, Northern America and Australia. The documentation of the studies differs considerably in terms of completeness (life cycle stages included, assessment methods), transparency (description of methodological assumptions, characteristics of the products, available data, etc.) and scientific rigor (e.g. related to the functional equivalency). All encountered original studies are cited and their scope and transparency is shortly described. For the environmental ranking of wood products compared to functionally equivalent products, only quantitative, transparently described studies with no obvious methodological flaws were included, preferably covering the whole life cycle and conducted according to the ISO series of standards 14'040ff. For the assessment, the contribution of each product to an impact category was compared to the mean of all functionally equivalent products included in a study. Results and Discussion. Among the most important results are: fossil fuel consumption, potential contributions to the greenhouse effect and quantities of solid waste tend to be minor for wood products compared to competing products; impregnated wood products tend to be more critical than comparative products with respect to toxicological effects and/or photosmog depending on the type of preservative; incineration of wood products can cause higher impacts of acidification and eutrophication than other products, whereas thermal energy can be recovered; although composed wood products such as particle board or fibreboard make use of a larger share of wood of a tree compared to products out of solid wood, there is a high consumption of fossil energy associated with the production of fibres and particles/chips as well as with the production of glues, resins, etc. In LCAs of whole buildings, the materials used outside the areas of applicability of wood dominate the environmental profile of the building; current methods used for the impact assessment do not allow to consider (also favourable) impacts of forests, such as land occupation, impacts on biodiversity, purification of air, etc. Conclusions. Wood products that have been installed and are used in an appropriate way tend to have a favourable environmental profile compared to functionally equivalent products from other materials. For the dispersion and application of these conclusions, it is necessary to adapt LCA to a form, which can be used on a regular basis for the decision making of different actors in the construction sector. Perspectives. LCA methodology in general (the series of standards ISO 14'040ff) and for the environmental assessment of wood products in particular have been developed and consolidated considerably in Europe and Northern America during the last decade; the more and more representative and reliable LCI data for wood products and competing products has become available. For the future use of the environmental value of wood products within sustainable development, the general perception of the beneficiary use of wood products has to be increased at various stages of decision-making.Background, Aim and Scope. As Life Cycle Assessment is being increasingly applied to study fisheries and aquaculture systems, the LCA methodology must be adapted to address the unique aspects of these systems. The focus of this methodological paper is the specific allocation problems faced in studying seafood production systems and how they have been addressed to date. Main Features. The paper begins with a literature review of existing LCA research of fishing and aquaculture systems with a specific focus on 1) identifying the key allocation problems; 2) describing the choice of allocation procedures; and 3) providing insight on the rationale for those choices where available. The allocation procedures are then discussed in the context of ISO recommendations and other published guidance on allocation, followed by a discussion of the key lessons to be learned from the reviewed studies and recommendations for future LCAs of seafood production systems. Literature Review. The literature review suggests that allocation problems are most likely to arise when dealing with: landed by-catch within the context of capture fisheries, the use of co-product feed ingredients in aquaculture feeds, multiple outputs from fish farms, and the generation of by-products when seafood is processed. System expansion and allocation according to physical causality were not applied in most cases, while economic allocation was the most widely used approach. It was also observed that the level of detail and justification provided for allocation decisions in most published reports was inconsistent and incomplete. Discussion. The results of this literature review are consistent with other reviews of allocation in LCA in that allocation according to economic value was found to be the most frequently applied approach. The application of economic allocation when system expansion is not feasible is consistent with ISO guidance. However, economic allocation is not the most appropriate method in seafood production LCAs because it does not reflect the biophysical flows of material and energy between the inputs and outputs of the production system. Conclusions, Recommendations and Perspectives. More effort needs to be invested in developing allocation procedures appropriate to seafood production systems. Allocation based on gross energy content is proposed as one potential alternative means of allocating environmental burdens in some instances in seafood production LCAs. A standard set of requirements for how to describe and justify allocation decisions in published reports is needed to make these studies more robust and transparent.Background, Aims and Scope. In LCA the valuation step is very controversial since it involves value judgments. In order to strengthen the valuation step, this work establishes a new method, which includes normalization and weighting. Inspired by the proposal of Seppala and Hamalainen (2001), and based on the fuzzy sets theory (Zadeh 1965), this methodology permits information to be processed under uncertainty and subjectivity. The method proposed is applied to valuate five biowaste management system scenarios in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. Methods. The valuation methodology proposed consists of the acquisition of partial environmental impact indicators, calculated on the basis of a characterized impact indicator (results from an LCA), an emissions inventory of the studied region, as well as the political targets and sustainability thresholds for a given area. Next, the partial indicator obtained is transformed to obtain a fuzzy linguistic descriptor, which permits the construction of a preference order amongst a series of alternatives. Results. The proposed methodology permits the LCA normalization and weighting to be considered using a mathematically strengthened approach. It considers a semantic scale with eleven terms, which permits the gradual definition of the performance of alternatives according to their level of membership. Discussion. This consideration deals with the uncertainty and subjectivity inherent in the data used. The results reveal that the worst biowaste management option is the scenario where all biowaste is collected selectively and treated only with biological processes. The preferred biowaste management scenario is the one in which direct uses of biowaste are considered. Conclusions. The fuzzy approach considered improves the theoretical strength of the value obtained by the Distance to Target (DtT) method and its modification in accordance with Multi-Attribute Value Theories (MAVT). This permits the evaluation of complex systems, which are frequently placed in the field of subjectivity and uncertainty. This is therefore a good method of supporting the decision-making process, based on life cycle impact assessment results. In addition, the order of preferences obtained is consistent with the characteristics of each of the scenarios analyzed. Recommendations and Perspectives. As future work, it is recommended that this methodology be applied to other situations, both in order to analyze its functionality and to compare the process defined with other fuzzy approaches, which may be appropriate for the valuation step in LCA.Goal, Scope and Background. The principal aim of this paper is to evaluate the environmental attributes and consequences of a 'rehabilitation for residential redevelopment' scenario. It is contrasted to a non-intensive and low-cost 'exposure minimization' scenario, assumed to be the default intervention option to obtain compliance. This paper also aims to (1) quantitatively evaluate the relative environmental significance of primary, secondary and tertiary impacts, and (2) to compare conclusions obtained from attributional and from consequential LCA of the same decision. Main Features. An attributional LCA (ALCA) and a consequential LCA (CLCA) are used to compare the two radically different intervention options. The rehabilitation for residential redevelopment scenario involves 'dig and dump' remediation, infrastructure material recycling and site backfilling. The 'exposure minimization' scenario consists in covering the site with clean soil and subsequently idling the site. The functional unit allowing this comparison is the 'legal and appropriate intervention on 1 ha of the tracked brownfield'. The inventory analyses are done following the proposals in Part 1. The LCIA is done using IMPACT 2002+ method. Results and Conclusions. The ALCA results show no clear preference for either intervention option because of the trade-off between the benefits of decontamination and the impacts of the rehabilitation service system. The CLCA, on the other hand, unequivocally supports rehabilitation if it is followed by residential reuse, as long as the development of suburban sites is avoided. In these cases, tertiary environmental benefits dominate other types of impacts. It is concluded, that, when brownfield intervention decisions can affect the fate of the site, the scope of brownfield management LCA should always be expanded to account for tertiary impacts. Perspectives. The methodology proposed was restricted to a single site and to residential redevelopment. It is suggested that the general approach could be used for other types of brownfield redevelopments and for decisions affecting multiple brownfields.Goal, Scope and Background. Ronozyme (R) P5000 CT is an industrially produced enzyme product (phytase) which is able to degrade naturally occurring phytate in animal feed and release the phytate's content of phosphorus for pig's growth. Ronozyme P5000 CT (hereafter called Ronozyme Phytase) can be used as an alternative to inorganic phosphorus supplementation to feed and the study addresses the environmental implications of substituting inorganic phosphorus with Ronozyme Phytase in intensive pig production in Denmark. Methods. Life cycle assessment is used as an analytical tool, and modelling of the two considered systems is facilitated in SimaPro 6.0 software. The study addresses changes induced by switching from the one alternative to the other, and all significant processes influenced by the change are included in the study. Results and Conclusions. Application of Ronozyme Phytase in intensive pig production is justified by major advantages in terms of avoided contributions to global warming, acidification, photochemical ozone formation and particularly nutrient enrichment and by significant energy savings and particularly phosphate savings. A single trade-off in terms of agricultural land use for enzyme production is small and unimportant unless use of agricultural land is given very large relative weight. Recommendations and Perspectives. Hundreds of enzyme products are commercially available on the market today, each with a range of different applications. There are several indications that enzymes like Ronozyme Phytase can play an important role in a transition to a more sustainable society, and more focus should be addressed to the evolving enzyme technology in environmental research.Goal, Scope and Background. The environmental sustainability is one of the current priorities of the Portuguese pulp and paper industry. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was the methodology chosen to evaluate the sustainability of the printing and writing paper production activity. This paper grade represents about 60% of the total production of paper in Portugal and its production is expected to increase in the near future. The main goal of this study was to assess the potential environmental impacts associated with the entire life cycle of the printing and writing paper produced in Portugal from Eucalyptus globulus pulp and consumed in Germany, in order to identify the processes with the largest environmental impacts. Another goal of this study was to evaluate the effect on the potential environmental impacts of changing the market where the Portuguese printing and writing paper is consumed: German market vs. Portuguese market. Methods. The main stages considered in this study were: forestry, pulp production, paper production, paper distribution, and paper final disposal. Transports and production of chemicals, fuels and energy in the grid were also included in these stages. Whenever possible and feasible, average or typical data from industry were collected. The remaining data were obtained from the literature and specialised databases. A quantitative impact assessment was performed for five impact categories: global warming over 100 years, acidification, eutrophication, non-renewable resource depletion and photochemical oxidant formation. Results. In the German market scenario, the paper production stage was a remarkable hot spot for air emissions (non-renewable CO2, NOx and SO2) and for non-renewable energy consumption, and, consequently, for the impact categories that consider these parameters: global warming, acidification and non-renewable resource depletion. These important environmental impacts are due to the energy requirements in the printing and writing paper production process, which are fulfilled by on-site fuel oil burning and consumption of electricity from the national grid, which is mostly based on the use of fossil fuels. The pulp production stage was identified as the largest contributor to water emissions (COD and AOX) and to eutrophication. Considering that energy consumed by the pulp production processes comes from renewable fuels, this stage was also the most contributing to renewable energy consumption. Discussion. The paper distribution stage showed an important contribution to NOx emissions, which, however, did not result in a major contribution to acidification or eutrophication. The final disposal stage was the main contributor to the photochemical oxidant formation potential due to CH4 emissions from wastepaper landfilling. On the other hand, paper consumption in Portugal was environmentally more favourable than in Germany for the parameters/impact categories where the paper distribution stage has a significant contribution (non-renewable CO2, NOx, non-renewable energy consumption, acidification, eutrophication and nonrenewable resource depletion) due to shorter distances needed to deliver paper to the consumers. For the remaining parameters/impact categories, the increase observed in the final disposal stage in the Portuguese market was preponderant, and resulted from the existence of significant differences in the final disposal alternatives in the analysed markets (recycling dominates in Germany, whereas landfilling dominates in Portugal). Conclusions. The pulp and paper production stages were found to be of significance for almost all of the inventory parameters as well as for the impact assessment categories. The paper distribution and the final disposal stages were only of importance for some of the inventory parameters and some of the impact categories. The forestry stage played a minor role in the environmental impacts generated during the paper life cycle. The consumption of paper in Portugal led to a decrease in the environmental burdens of the paper distribution stage, but to an increase in the environmental burdens of the final disposal stage, when compared with the consumption of paper in Germany. Recommendations and Perspectives. This study provides useful information that can assist the pulp and paper industry in the planning of future investments leading to an increase in its sustainability. The results of inventory analysis and impact assessment show the processes that play an important role in each impact category, which allow the industry to improve its environmental performance, making changes not only in the production process itself, but also in the treatment of flue gases and liquid effluents. Besides that concern regarding pollution prevention, other issues with relevance to the context of sustainability, such as the energy consumption, can also be dealt with.Background, Aims and Scope. During the combustion of municipal solid waste (MSW), energy is produced which can be utilized to generate electricity. However, electricity production from incineration has to be evaluated from the point view of the environmental performance. In this study, environmental impacts of electricity production from waste incineration plant in Thailand are compared with those from Thai conventional power plants. Methods. The evaluation is based on a life cycle perspective using life cycle assessment (LCA) as the evaluation tool. Since MSW incineration provides two services, viz., waste management and electricity production, the conventional power production system is expanded to include landfilling without energy recovery, which is the most commonly used waste management system in Thailand, to provide the equivalent function of waste management. Results. The study shows that the incineration performs better than conventional power plants vis-a-vis global warming and photochemical ozone formation, but not for acidification and nutrient enrichment. Discussion. There are some aspects which may influence this result. If landfilling with gas collection and flaring systems is included in the analysis along with conventional power production instead of landfilling without energy recovery, the expanded system could become more favorable than the incineration in the global warming point of view. In addition, if the installation of deNO(x) process is employed in the MSW incineration process, nitrogen dioxide can be reduced with a consequent reduction of acidification and nutrient enrichment potentials. However, the conventional power plants still have lower acidification and nutrient enrichment potentials. Conclusions. The study shows that incineration could not play the major role for electricity production, but in addition to being a waste management option, could be considered as a complement to conventional power production. To promote incineration as a benign waste management option, appropriate deNO(x) and dioxin removal processes should be provided. Separation of high moisture content waste fractions from the waste to be incinerated and improvement of the operation efficiency of the incineration plant must be considered to improve the environmental performance of MSW incineration. Recommendations. This study provides an overall picture and impacts, and hence, can support a decision-making process for implementation of MSW incineration. The results obtained in this study could provide valuable information to implement incineration. But it should be noted that the results show the characteristics only from some viewpoints. Outlook. Further analysis is required to evaluate the electricity production of the incineration plant from other environmental aspects such as toxicity and land-use.Goal, Scope and Background. The eco-efficiency analysis and portfolio is a powerful decision support tool for various strategic and marketing issues. Since its original academic development, the approach has been refined during the last decade and applied to a multitude of projects. BASF, as possibly the most prominent company using and developing this tool, has applied the eco-efficiency approach to more than 300 projects in the last 7 years. One of the greatest difficulties is to cover both dimensions of eco-efficiency (costs or value added and environmental impact) in a comparable manner. This is particularly a challenge for the eco-efficiency analyses of products. Methods. In this publication, an important approach and field of application dealing with product decisions based on the combination of Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is described in detail. Special emphasis is put on the quantitative assessment of the relation of costs and environmental impacts. In conventional LCA an assessment of environmental impact categories is often made by normalization with inhabitant equivalents. This is necessary to be able to compare the different environmental impact categories, because of each different unit. For the proposed eco-efficiency analysis, the costs of products or processes are also normalized with adapted gross domestic product figures. Results and Discussion. The ratio between normalized environmental impact categories and normalized costs (R-E,R-C) is used for the graphical presentation of the results in an eco-efficiency portfolio. For the interpretation of the results of an eco-efficiency analysis, it is important to distinguish ratios R-E,R-C which are higher than one from ratios lower than one. In the first case, the environmental impact is higher than the cost impact, while the inverse is true in the second case. This is very important for defining which kind of improvement is needed and defining strategic management decisions. The paper shows a statistical evaluation of the R-E,R-C factor based on the results of different eco-efficiency analyses made by BASE For industries based on large material flows (e.g. chemicals, steel, metals, agriculture), the R-E,R-C factor is typically higher than one. Conclusions and Recommendations. This contribution shows that LCC and LCA may be combined in a way that they mirror the concept of eco-efficiency. LCAs that do not consider LCC may be of very limited use for company management. For that very reason, corporations should install a data management system that ensures equal information on both sides of the eco-efficiency coin.Life cycle inventories of four industrial carbon dioxide production processes are reported. The inventory data were calculated using design-based methodology. Energy consumptions and critical emissions of the four processes are compared. Quasi-microscopic allocation was applied to processes with multiple products. The inventory data of this study are transparent and can be used in other life cycle studies. (C) 2007 Society of Chemical IndustryConsideration is given to the convergence of supply chains and sustainability. In doing so, the focus on environmental management and operations is moved from local optimization of environmental factors to consideration of the entire supply chain during the production, consumption, customer service and post-disposal disposition of products. This is a critical and timely topic that captures increasing concerns over sustainability, whether driven by current legislation, public interest, or competitive opportunity. As such, sustainable development is a rich area for academic research that is still in its infancy and has the potential to affect future government policy, current production operations, and identify new business models. This paper provides a background to better understand current trends in this multidisciplinary field that intersect with operations management, and the research opportunities and challenges it presents. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It is widely accepted that firms play an important stewardship role in addressing sustainable development concerns. A key challenge in this role is to balance the often conflicting pressures created by sustainable development-firm-level economic performance versus environmental degradation and social disruption. Drawing on complexity theory, risk management, stakeholder theory and the innovation dynamics literature, we discuss the problems of integrating sustainable development concerns in the supply chain, specifically the applicability of life cycle assessment (LCA). Many authors have emphasized the importance of the "cradle to grave" approach of LCA in optimizing closed-loop supply chains, improving product design and stewardship. Based on two case studies (an agricultural biotechnology and an oil and gas company) with supporting data collected from key stakeholders, we argue that sustainable development pressures have increased complexities and presented ambiguous challenges that many current environmental management techniques cannot adequately address. We provide a framework that addresses these deficiencies and discuss implications for practitioners and management theory. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to performance data from 1997-2002 to evaluate the environmental impacts of the energy input, airborne emission, waterborne emission, and solid waste inventories for Taiwan's electric power plants. Eco-indicator 95 was used to compare the differences among the generation processes and fuel purification. To better understand the environmental trends related to Taiwan's electric power industry, three fuel scenarios were selected. for LCA system analysis. Results indicate that there are differences in characteristic environmental impact among the 13 power plants. Scenario simulation provided a basis for minimizing environmental impacts from fuel selection targets. Fuel selection priority should be a gas-fired combined cycle substituted for a coal-fired steam turbine to be more environmentally friendly, particularly in the areas of the greenhouse effect, acidification, winter smog, and solid waste. Furthermore, based purely on economic and environmental criteria, it is recommended that the gas-fired combined cycle be substituted for the oil-fired steam turbine.The host cell protein cyclophilin A (CypA) binds to CA of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and promotes HIV-1 infection of target cells. Disruption of the CypA-CA interaction, either by mutation of the CA residue at G89 or P90 or with the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine (CsA), reduces HIV-1 infection. Two CA mutants, A92E and G94D, previously were identified by selection for growth of wild-type HIV-1 in cultures of CD4(+) HeLa cell cultures containing CsA. Interestingly, infection of some cell lines by these mutants is enhanced in the presence of CsA, while in other cell lines these mutants are minimally affected by the drug. Little is known about this cell-dependent phenotype of the A92E and G94D mutants, except that it is not dependent on expression of the host factor TRIM5 alpha. Here, we show that infection by the A92E and G94D mutants is restricted at an early postentry stage of the HIV-1 life cycle. Analysis of heterokaryons between CsA-dependent HeLa-P4 cells and CsA-independent 293T cells indicated that the CsA-dependent infection by A92E and G94D mutants is due to a dominant cellular restriction. We also show that addition of CsA to target cells inhibits infection by wild-type HIV-1 prior to reverse transcription. Collectively, these results support the existence of a cell-specific human cellular factor capable of restricting HIV-1 at an early postentry step by a CypA-dependent mechanism.A systems approach is used to model the urban water cycle. A model for analyzing the flows of water, energy, and chemicals and associated greenhouse -as emissions through the urban water infrastructure system is developed. A model is constructed to represent the City of Toronto urban water system from 2001 up to the year 2010. Scenarios are developed to assess the system-wide impacts of water distribution pipe renewal, sewer relining, demand management strategies, and energy recovery from anaerobically digested wastewater biosolids. Initiatives targeted at the early stages of the urban water cycle have greater positive downstream impacts on selected environmental indicators. Specifically, strategies aimed at reducing water demand produce more significant system-wide benefits. Demand management strategies aimed at reducing demand by 15% result in savings on the order of 12-18% for all environmental indicators. Demand management is also one of the most cost effective options.In this paper life-cycle assessment (LCA) is studied and a brief review and classification of databases and inventories is given. The factors affecting the dissimilar results in various databases are examined and discussed. The main obstacles to LCA and life-cycle energy studies, and their sources, are discussed, together with the role of data in inventory analysis. Embodied energy results are reviewed and compared, and the causes of dissimilarities and variations in these studies are presented. This paper focuses on methodologies developed and adopted for data processing, and inventory analysis for building materials. The data-LCA relationship is investigated, and the importance and role of data in LCA is reviewed. A case study of steel as a building material is introduced and a number of life cycle energy assessment studies are evaluated. The paper concludes by outlining a number of issues which need to be handled with care when performing a life-cycle study, and which warrant further qualitative and quantitative analysis.Life-cycle air emission factors associated with road, rail, and air transportation of freight in the United States are analyzed. All life-cycle phases of vehicles, infrastructure, and fuels are accounted for in a hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA). It includes not only fuel combustion, but also emissions from vehicle manufacturing, maintenance, and end of life, infrastructure construction, operation, maintenance, and end of life, and petroleum exploration, refining, and fuel distribution. Results indicate that total life-cycle emissions of freight transportation modes are underestimated if only tailpipe emissions are accounted for. In the case of CO2 and NOx, tailpipe emissions underestimate total emissions by up to 38%, depending on the mode. Total life-cycle emissions of CO and SO2 are up to seven times higher than tailpipe emissions. Sensitivity analysis considers the effects of vehicle type, geography, and mode efficiency on the final results. Policy implications of this analysis are also discussed. For example, while it is widely assumed that currently proposed regulations will result in substantial reductions in emissions, we find that this is true for NOx emissions, because fuel combustion is the main cause, and to a lesser extent for SO2, but not for PM10 emissions, which are significantly affected by the other life-cycle phases.How one models the input and output data for a life-cycle assessment (LCA) can greatly affect the results. Although much attention has been paid to allocation methodology by researchers in the field, specific guidance is still lacking. Earlier research focused on the effects of applying various allocation schemes to industrial processes when creating life-cycle inventories. To determine the impact of different allocation approaches upon product choice, this study evaluated the gas- and water-phase emissions during the production, distribution, and use of three hypothetical fuel systems (data that represent conventional gasoline and gasoline with 8.7 and 85% ethanol were used as the basis for modeling). This paper presents an explanation of the allocation issue and the results from testing various allocation schemes (weight, volume, market value, energy, and demand-based) when viewed across the entire system. Impact indicators for global warming, ozone depletion, and human health noncancer (water impact) were lower for the ethanol-containing fuels, while impact indicators for acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, human health criteria, and photochemical smog were lower for conventional gasoline (impacts for the water-related human health cancer category showed mixed results). The relative ranking of conventional gasoline in relation to the ethanol-containing fuels was consistent in all instances, suggesting that, in this case study, the choice of allocation methodology had no impact on indicating which fuel has lower environmental impacts.The President's Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI), launched in 2006, addresses the challenges of energy supply and demand facing our Nation by supporting research and development of advanced technologies for transportation and stationary power generation. The AEI portfolio includes clean coal, nuclear and renewable energy technologies (solar and wind) for stationary power generation and advanced battery technologies, cellulosic ethanol as a fuel and hydrogen fuel cells for transportation. These research and development programs are underpinned by comprehensive life-cycle analysis efforts using models such as Hydrogen Analysis (H2A) and Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) to enable a better understanding of the characteristics and trade-offs associated with advanced energy options and to help decision makers choose viable pathways for clean, reliable and affordable energy. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.Environmentally-conscious design of processes and products is increasingly viewed as an important strategy in the sustainable development of new refining and chemical processes. This paper discusses a new process technology developed by UOP and Eni S.p.A; the UOP/Eni Ecofining (TM) process to produce green diesel from vegetable oil. This novel process utilizes catalytic saturation, hydrodeoxygenation, decarboxylation and hydroisomerization reactions to produce an isoparaffin-rich diesel fuel from renewable feedstock containing triglycerides and fatty acids. The resultant biofuel product has a high cetane value, a lower gravity, good cold flow properties and excellent storage stability. Green diesel is completely compatible for blending with the standard mix of petroleum-derived diesel fuels, thus providing significant value to the refiner. The process for producing green diesel operates at mild operating conditions and integrates well within existing petroleum refineries. In contrast to fatty acid methyl esters, where fuel properties depend on feed origin and process configuration, green diesel product is independent of feed origin and the fully deoxygenated biofuel is readily blended with conventional diesel fuel. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of this promising new biofuel production technology has been undertaken to quantify the intrinsic benefits of green diesel production over the current practice of converting various forms of lipids to fatty acid methyl esters. This paper will describe the technology, discuss the results of the LCA study and summarize the advantages this new technology can offer over other processing routes.The environmental impact of bioenergy production from biomass strongly depends on the crop cultivation. This study looks into the ecological optimisation of biomass cultivation answering following three questions: What is the environmental advantage of organic over integrated farming? Which crops are suited for biomass production? What other key factors have to be considered for a ecological production? The LCA was carried out using the SALCA-methodology (Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment) of Agroscope Reckenholz-Tanikon Research Station ART. Per kg harvested product (dry matter, starch for bioethanol crops, oil for biodiesel crops respectively) organic farming of energy crops is preferred to integrated production for corn, silage maize and soy cultivation. For cereals and rapeseed cultivation organic farming has advantages and drawbacks. The lowest environmental impacts for biogas show extensive grassland. Together wit sugar beets it also has the lowest environmental impact for bioethanol. There is not a preferable crop for biodiesel.We assessed agricultural bioenergy pathways using existing and newly developed life cycle energy analyses so as to compare the potential of these pathways to replace fossil fuel in Canada. Energy gains after subtracting life cycle fossil energy inputs (E-g) and the ratio of fuel energy to life cycle fossil energy input (ER) were calculated. Results varied widely, reflecting differences in regional yields and study assumptions. Grasses and coppiced willow processed to electricity and heat exhibited Egs of 29-117 GJ ha(-1) yr(-1) and ERs of 4-17. These crops processed to lignocellulosic ethanol showed E-g(s) of 22-114 GJ ha(-1) yr(-1) and ERs of 5-13. Grain ethanol and oilseed biodiesel showed E-g(s) from -15 to 32 GJ ha(-1) yr(-1) and ERs from 0.8 to 3.7. Assuming 20% of Canada's cleared agricultural land could be dedicated to annual biofuel crops, grain ethanol or oilseed biodiesel could displace up to 10 or 50%, respectively, of national road gasoline or diesel demand. If instead 40% of cleared agricultural land could be dedicated to perennials, the feedstocks could displace up to 52% of road gasoline demand if processed to lignocellulosic ethanol or 100% of utilities' and industries' fossil fuel demand for electricity and steam production. Our analyses showed that a goal of fossil fuel displacement favors the production of perennial crops for electricity and heating.Biodiesel is currently produced in Canada mostly from recycled oils and animal fats. If biodiesel is to supply 5% of diesel usage, a government objective, first-time vegetable, likely from canola and soybean, oil will also be required to provide adequate feedstocks. In this review, we estimate the life cycle energy balances for biodiesel produced from soybean and canola oil under Canadian conditions. The three broad areas of energy inputs were crop production, oil extraction, and transesterification of the vegetable oil into biodiesel. Per unit seed yield, farm production energy inputs for canola were about three times higher than for soybean, mostly because of higher nitrogen fertilizer requirements for canola. Energy required for processing and oil extraction, per unit oil, was higher for soybean. Energy allocation for co-products was allocated using a system expansion approach. Protein meal was assigned about 12% of the energy expended for canola to grow the crop and extract the oil, and about 37% for soybean. Glycerine produced during the transesterification process was allocated energy on a weight basis (11.4%). The ratio of biodiesel energy produced per energy input ranged from 2.08 to 2.41. The energy ratio was similar for soybean and canola; soybean required less energy inputs, but also produced less oil than canola, for a given weight of seed.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from hydroelectric dams are often portrayed as nonexistent by the hydropower industry and have been largely ignored in global comparisons of different sources of electricity. However, the life cycle assessment (LCA) of any hydroelectric plant shows that GHG emissions occur at different phases of the power plant's life. This work examines the role of decommissioning hydroelectric dams in greenhouse gas emissions. Accumulated sediments in reservoirs contain noticeable levels of carbon, which may be released to the atmosphere upon decommissioning of the dam. The rate of sediment accumulation and the sediment volume for six of the ten largest United States hydroelectric power plants is surveyed. The amount of sediments and the respective carbon content at the moment of dam decommissioning (100 years after construction) was estimated. The released carbon is partitioned into CO2 and CH4 emissions and converted to CO2 equivalent emissions using the global warming potential (GWP) method. The global warming effect (GWE) due to dam decommissioning is normalized to the total electricity produced over the lifetime of each power plant. The estimated GWE of the power plants range from 128-380 g of CO(2)eq./kWh when 11% of the total available sediment organic carbon (SOC) is mineralized and between 35 and 104 g of CO(2)eq./kWh when 3% of the total SOC is mineralized. Though these values are below emission factors for coal power plants (890 g of CO(2)eq./kWh), the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the sediments upon dam decommissioning is a notable amount that should not be ignored and must be taken into account when considering construction and relicensing of hydroelectric dams.This paper analyzes how integrating environmental criteria into the design and manufacture of products can reduce the impact those products could have during their life cycle, since raw material is obtained until they are thrown to a rubbish dump.With life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, a life cycle model of coal-based dimethyl ether (CBDME) as a vehicle fuel is established for China. Its life cycle from well to wheel are divided into three phases. They are feedstock extraction, fuel production and fuel consumption in vehicle. The primary energy consumption (PEC) and global warming potential (GWP) of CBDME pathway are analyzed and compared with coal-based diesel (CBD) as a latent rival to replace conventional petroleum-based diesel (CPBD). This study demonstrates that the LCA methodology is very suitable and effective for the choice of vehicle fuels. One result is that the greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission of coal-based vehicle fuel pathways is usually concentrated on fuel production stage. The percentages of CBDME and CBD pathways both exceed 60%. The application of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is helpful for coal-based vehicle fuel pathways to improve their global warming effect dramatically. Compared with CBD pathway, CBDME pathway consumes less PEC and emits less GHGs emission as well. Even though the CCS and CH4-fired generation are used, the advantages of CBDME are still kept. For saving petroleum energy and reducing global warming effect, CBDME has greater potential than CBD to substitute CPBD under current fuel synthesis technologies. If the hurdles such as the maturity of engine and vehicle technologies, corresponding regulations and standards and infrastructures are reliably solved, CBDME will have better prospect in China. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The curbing of greenhouse gases (GHG) is an important issue on the international political agenda. The substitution of fossil fuels by renewable energy sources is an often-advocated mitigation strategy. Wind energy is a potential renewable energy source. However, wind energy is not reliable since its electricity production depends on variable weather conditions. High wind energy penetration rates lead to losses due to power plant operation adjustments to wind energy. This research identifies the potential energetic benefits of integrated hydrogen production in electricity systems with high wind energy penetration. This research concludes that the use of system losses for hydrogen production via electrolysis is beneficial in situations with ca. 8 GW or more wind energy capacity in the Netherlands. The 2020 Dutch policy goal of 6 GW will not benefit from hydrogen production in terms of systems efficiency. An ancillary beneficial effect of coupling hydrogen production with wind energy is to relieve the high-voltage grid. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy crises in the latter part of the 20th century, as well as the current increase in the cost of oil, emphasize the need for alternate sources of energy in the United States. Concerns about climate change dictate that the source be clean and not contribute to global warming. Hydrogen has been identified as such a source for many years and the transition to a hydrogen economy was predicted to occur from the mid-1970s to 2000. This paper reports on the status of this transition in the year 2006. Instead of being a clean source of energy, most of the hydrogen produced in the US results from steam reforming of fossil fuels, releasing CO2 and other pollutants to the atmosphere. Nuclear process heat is ideally suited for the production of hydrogen, either using electricity for electrolysis of water, or heat for thermochemical hydrogen production or reforming of fossil fuels. However, no new nuclear plants have been ordered or built in the United States since 1979, and it may be many years before high-temperature nuclear reactors are available for production of hydrogen. Considerable research and development efforts are focused on commercializing hydrogen-powered vehicles to lessen the dependence of the transportation sector on imported oil. However, the use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV) in 2006 is two orders-of-magnitude less than what has been predicted. Although it makes little sense environmentally or economically, hydrogen is also used as fuel in internal combustion engines. Development of hydrogen economy will require a strong intervention by external forces. (C) 2007 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper introduces environmental balances for three different thermal insulation concepts (evacuated multi-foils, evacuated glass fibers, and a conventional foam insulation) of a 300 L LN2 storage tank. The calculations are based on material consumptions in the manufacturing phase and thermal losses of the tank during the use phase. Materials consumption is identified from the design of the tank taking into account stainless steel containers, thickness of container walls, mechanical supports, bellows, getter, and insulation materials. Thermal losses are calculated using finite element methods. It is demonstrated that evacuated multi-foil insulation is, from energetic and environmental considerations, by far superior to evacuated glass fibers and to conventional foam insulation. Its environmental "amortization time" (a return on investment when outbalancing environmental impacts by corresponding savings) is in the order of 80-160 weeks of operation. This also demonstrates that it is important to apply an environmental life cycle perspective, and not analyze only the energetic and materials aspects, when new technologies are assessed.In order to promote the recycling of copper alloy scrap, we developed a new technique for removing Pb from copper alloy scrap containing 2-6 mass% Pb. However, we must evaluate quantitatively the level of environmental impact reduction that can be obtained using this new technology. In this study, a manufacturing system that produces Pb-free copper alloy products from copper alloy scrap containing Pb was assessed by means of life cycle assessment (LCA). The superiority of the new manufacturing system that uses copper alloy scrap containing Pb over the conventional one that uses virgin materials was investigated from the viewpoint of environmental impact. LCA software (JEMAI-LCA) was used to assess environmental impacts such as global warming, acidification, energy consumption and resource consumption. We assessed the raw material acquisition and casting process of Pb-free copper alloy products. The subsequent processes such as machining, assembling, transportation, use and recycling/waste processing are not taken into account in the environmental impact assessment. The results show that the conversion of the conventional system that uses virgin materials into the new one that uses copper alloy scrap containing Ph decreases the environmental impact, significantly. This is attributed to the non-utilization of virgin materials and the decrease in energy consumption during the casting process.The accelerating pace of waste generation from used electrical and electronic equipment is of growing global concern. Within this waste stream, computer hardware is quite significant in terms of both volume and risk to the environment because of the hazardous materials within it. The waste management hierarchy of prevention, reuse, recycle, treatment and disposal in landfill is accepted as a universal guideline for waste management. The contemporary concept of integrated solid waste management is very complex comprising of not only the environmental aspects or the technical aspects of the waste management hierarchy, but also incorporating economic, institutional, perceived risk and social issues in the context of complete life cycle of waste. Moreover, when to shift from one stage of hierarchy to another, is an involved decision warranting inclusion of several case specific issues. This paper presents a life cycle based multi-objective model that can help decision makers in integrated waste management. The proposed model has been applied to a case study of computer waste scenario in Delhi, India, which apart from having computer waste from its native population receives large quantities of imported second hand computers. The model has been used to evaluate management cost and reuse time span or life cycle of various streams of computer waste for different objectives of economy, perceived risk and environmental impact. The model results for different scenarios of waste generation have been analyzed to understand the tradeoffs between cost, perceived risk and environmental impact. The optimum life cycle of a computer desktop was observed to be shorter by 25% while optimizing cost than while optimizing impact to the environment or risk perceived by public. Proposed integrated approach can be useful for determining the optimum life cycle of computer waste, as well as optimum configuration of waste management facilities, for urban centers where computer waste related issues are of growing concern. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article describes the development and application of a generic approach to the comparative assessment of risks related to the production of organic chemicals by petrochemical processes versus white biotechnology. White biotechnology, also referred to as industrial biotechnology, typically uses bio-based feedstocks instead of the fossil raw materials used in the petrochemical sector. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the production of chemicals by means of white biotechnology has lower conventional risks than their production by petrochemical processes. Conventional risks are the risks of well-established processes, and not those related to genetically modified microorganisms and plants. Our approach combines classical risk assessment methods (largely based on toxicology), as developed by the life cycle assessment (LCA) community, with statistics on technological disasters, accidents, and work-related illnesses. Moreover, it covers the total process chain for both petrochemical and bio-based products from cradle to grave. The approach was applied to five products: the plastics polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT), polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), and ethanol. Our results show that the conventional risks related to the white biotechnology products studied are lower than those of the petrochemical products. However, considering the uncertainties with respect to the ranges of input data, the (incomplete) coverage of emissions by the environmental priority strategies (EPS) 2000 method, and the uncertainties of the assumptions made in this study (i.e., large to very large), the differences in results between bio-based and petrochemical products fall into the uncertainty range. Because of this, future research is necessary to decrease the uncertainties before we can conclude that the conventional risks of biotechnologically produced chemicals are lower than those of fossil-fuel-derived chemicals.The scenarios for conventional puddling and no-tilling rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivation were compared in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from paddy fields, fuel consumption and manufacturing of invested materials using a life cycle inventory (LCI) based analysis. Only the differences between the scenarios were examined. The no-tilling scenario omitted both tilling and puddling, but included spraying of a non-selective herbicide and used a transplanter equipped with a rotor. Fertilization was a basal single application of controlled release fertilizer in nursery boxes for all scenarios. After transplanting, there were no differences in machine work, invested materials or rice yields between the scenarios. The no-tilling scenario saved on fuel consumption, totaling carbon dioxide (CO2) output of 42 kg ha(-1), which was equal to the 6% reported GHG emissions from fuel consumption by operating machines during rice production in Japan. Methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from the paddy fields were also monitored and compared for the scenarios. Methane has a major effect on global warming as part of the GHG emitted from paddy fields. The cumulative CH4 emissions from the no-tilling cultivation were 43% lower than those from conventional puddling cultivation because the plow layer was more oxidative in no-tilling cultivation. The N2O emissions were not significantly different between the cultivation scenarios. There were no significant differences in soil respiration, soil carbon contents or straw yields between the cultivation scenarios. The effect of tillage on CO2 flux in the paddy fields did not seem to be significant in this study. Consequently, the GHG emissions from the no-tilling field counted as CO2 using global warming potentials were 1,741 kg CO2 ha(-1) lower than those from the conventional puddling field. In conclusion, no-tilling rice cultivation has the potential to save 1,783 kg CO2 ha(-1) calculated using the sum of fuel consumption and GHG emissions from paddy fields. No-tilling rice cultivation is considered to be environmentally friendly agriculture with respect to reducing GHG emissions.A broad review of disciplines and technologies concerning the last-decade-advances and state-of-the-art in the understanding and application of sustainability from a Chemical Engineering viewpoint is presented. Up to now it was hard to find useful sustainability criteria and ready-to-use guidance tools for the design of products, processes and production systems. Fortunately, in the last decade a range of practices and disciplines have appeared transforming the way in which traditional disciplines were conceived. Firstly, a review of the concept of sustainability and its significance for the chemical and process industry is presented. Then, several inspiring philosophies and disciplines which are the basis of the new trends in design are briefly reviewed, namely, The Natural Step, Biomimicry, Cradle to Cradle, Getting to Zero Waste, Resilience Engineering, Inherently Safer Design, Ecological Design, Green Chemistry and Self-Assembly. The core of the manuscript is a deep review of what has been done in Green Engineering so far, including its main definitions and scope of application, different guiding principles, frameworks for design and legislative aspects. A range of illustrative industrial applications and several tools oriented to GE are analysed. Finally, some educational considerations and training opportunities are included, providing education at academic and university levels allows for the creation of a critical mass of engineers and scientists to foster green engineering and sustainable development in the future. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool in order to identify sustainable alternatives in process engineering. In this work, the LCA of two fluoride effluent treatment processes in the aluminium trifluoride (AlF3) manufacture has been carried out. Two scenarios have been considered: (i) chemical precipitation for fluoride removal, leading to a water-rich sludge, which has poor dewatering properties and therefore, must be managed in inert waste landfills, and (ii) the recovery of fluoride by crystallization as synthetic fluorite to be reused in the hydrogen fluoride (HF) manufacture. The LCA software SimaPro 7 (PRe Consultants BV) makes it possible to compare in terms of different methodologies like Eco-Indicator 99 and CML 2 Baseline 2000. Environmental metrics developed by IChemE were included in the software. The crystallization process in a Fluidized Bed Reactor allows reductions in the range of 20-40% for most metrics because of the recycled synthetic fluorite to the HF manufacture.There is growing interest in the utilization of unused, but possible, energy sources to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and fossil-energy consumption, and especially to comply with the Kyoto Protocol which came into effect in 2005. Detailed considerations of plant location, land use and life cycle analysis, however, have not yet been fully estimated with a view to confirming the advantages of the new energy-source usage. A model for heat energy from river water and treated sewage water, and waste-heat energy from municipal solid-waste incineration plants was built and applied to the Tokyo urban area in Japan, considering the spatial and time-related distribution of demands and supplies, the shapes of buildings in the demand area, and life-cycle analysis. The model selected areas were those which should use these energies without prejudice, and sometimes the areas were far from the energy-source point. The reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions resulting from new energy-sources was about 8% of the reduction target for Tokyo in 1990. The model was able to precisely evaluate the new energy-usage, using data from both supply and demand sides. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides a preliminary life cycle assessment (LCA) of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell powered automobile. Life cycle of PEM fuel cell automobile not only includes operation of the vehicle on the road but also include production and distribution of both the vehicle and the fuel (e.g. hydrogen) during the vehicle's entire lifetime. Assessment is based on the published data available in the literature. The two characteristics of the life cycle, which were assessed, are energy consumption and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions considered in the present assessment are CO2 and CH4. In addition, conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile is also assessed based on similar characteristics for comparison with PEM fuel cell automobile. It is found that the energy utilized to generate the hydrogen during fuel cycle for the PEM automobile is about 3.5 times higher than the energy utilized to generate the gasoline during its fuel cycle. However, the overall life cycle energy consumption of PEM fuel cell automobile is about 2.3 times less than that of ICE automobile. Similarly, the GHGs emissions of PEMFC automobile are about 8.5 times higher than ICE automobile during the fuel cycle, but the overall life cycle GHGs emissions are about 2.6 times lower than ICE automobile. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the application of cumulative exergy theory based on life cycle analysis and the consideration of environmental impacts of emissions released from the production process, equivalent cumulative exergy analysis is performed for an experimental hydrogen production system where glucose is gasified in supercritical water. The unilateral influence on equivalent cumulative exergy from various factors such as temperature, pressure, concentration of solution, resident time and inner diameter of a reaction tube is analyzed first. In addition, multifactor optimization is conducted using an orthogonal table in which three complicated influence factors including concentration of solution, resident time and inner diameter of a reaction tube are considered. Optimal parameters are obtained to maximize the cumulative degree of perfection, and the results are in general consistent with the experimental results. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This manuscript reviews and compares the results of recent greenhouse gas (GHG) emission life-cycle analyses. Specific attention is paid to fossil energy technologies, nuclear and renewable energy technologies (RETs), as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and energy storage systems. Analysing up- and downstream processes and their associated GHG emissions, which arise upstream and downstream of the power plant (i.e., electricity generation stage), is important; otherwise, the GHG emissions resulting from electricity generation of the various fuel options are underestimated. For fossil fuel technology options upstream GHG emission rates can be up to 25% of the direct emissions from the power plant, whereas for most RETs and nuclear power upstream and downstream GHG emissions can account for way over 90% of cumulative emissions. In economies where carbon is being priced or GHG emissions constrained, this may provide an advantage to technologies with trans-boundary upstream emissions over technologies without significant life-cycle emissions arising outside the legislative boundaries of GHG mitigation policies. It is therefore desirable for GHG emissions under national, regional and international mitigation policies to be accounted for over its entire life-cycle. The results presented here indicate that the most significant GHG avoidance (in absolute terms) can be made from technology substitution. The introduction of advanced fossil fuel technologies can also lead to improvements in life-cycle GHG emissions. Overall, hydro, nuclear and wind energy technologies can produce electricity with the least life-cycle global warming impact. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper develops a thermodynamic input-output (TIO) model of the 1997 United States economy that accounts for the flow of cumulative exergy in the 488-sector benchmark economic input-output model in two different ways. Industrial cumulative exergy consumption (ICEC) captures the exergy of all natural resources consumed directly and indirectly by each economic sector, while ecological cumulative exergy consumption (ECEC) also accounts for the exergy consumed in ecological systems for producing each natural resource. Information about exergy consumed in nature is obtained from the thermodynamics of biogeochemical cycles. As used in this work, ECEC is analogous to the concept of emergy, but does not rely on any of its controversial claims. The TIO model can also account for emissions from each sector and their impact and the role of labor. The use of consistent exergetic units permits the combination of various streams to define aggregate metrics that may provide insight into aspects related to the impact of economic sectors on the environment. Accounting for the contribution of natural capital by ECEC has been claimed to permit better representation of the quality of ecosystem goods and services than ICEC. The results of this work are expected to permit evaluation of these claims. If validated, this work is expected to lay the foundation for thermodynamic life cycle assessment, particularly of emerging technologies and with limited information. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since 2001, in order to enhance ethanol's cost competitiveness with gasoline, the Thai government has approved the exemption of excise tax imposed on ethanol, controlling the retail price of gasohol (a mixture of ethanol and gasoline at a ratio of 1:9) to be less than that of octane 95 gasoline, within a range not exceeding 1.5 baht a litre. The policy to promote ethanol for transport is being supported by its positive effects on energy security and climate change mitigation. An analysis of energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) balances and GHG abatement cost was done to evaluate fuel ethanol produced from cassava in Thailand. Positive energy balance of 22.4MJ/L and net avoided GHG emission of 1.6 kg CO2 eq./L found for cassava-based ethanol (CE) proved that it would be a good substitute for gasoline, effective in fossil energy saving and GHG reduction. With a GHG abatement cost of US$99 per tonne Of CO2, CE is rather less cost effective than the many other climate strategies relevant to Thailand in the short term. Opportunities for improvements are discussed to make CE a reasonable option for national climate policy. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is an important and challenging issue for sustainable development. It is also one of the most controversial problems and a subject of an ongoing debate between different interested parties. A particularly controversial issue is MSW incineration (with or without energy recovery) which has in many countries become a socially unacceptable option for dealing with solid waste. On the other hand, the increasing amounts of waste each year demand immediate and practical solutions to the problem which currently cannot be solved by recycling alone. This paper addresses the issue of using MSW as an energy resource and attempts to identify a more sustainable technological option for energy recovery. The question posed here is: is it environmentally more sustainable to use a large-scale centralized incineration or a small-scale distributed pyrolysis/gasification of waste? The two options are evaluated and compared on a life cycle basis, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool. The LCA results show that the choice of a more sustainable option depends on the motivation for thermal treatment of MSW. If, for example, the main aim is to reduce the amount of solid waste being landfilled (while still recovering energy) and so comply with the EU Landfill Directive, then large-scale incineration appears to be an environmentally more sustainable technology overall. If, on the other hand, the main aim is to recover energy from waste, small-scale pyrolysis with gasification is an environmentally better option.Background and Aims. Recently, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been recognized as an effective tool for evaluating the environmental impacts of regional activities. The main issue, when applying LCA to region-based studies, is how best to consider and reflect the regional characteristics, as they need to be as close to reality as possible. Several Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) studies have been undertaken to study site-specific considerations. However, due to practicalities, very few attempts have been made at identifying the regions affected by regional activities and consider their regional characteristics. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to suggest the direction of a forthcoming study by showing the necessity of regional characteristic consideration in regional evaluation, and to suggest a synthetic, region-based LCA method which can reflect the differences of regional characteristics for direct and indirect effects of regional activities. Methods. In this study, the Life Cycle Region-specific Assessment Method (LCRAM) was proposed as a new site-specific LCA method. As an example, we used LCRAM to observe the effects of 4 environmental burdens (CO2, NOx, SOx, and SPM) to human health (DALY) in 47 regions (prefectures in Japan). LCRAM consists of a regional database and an analysis method (EIOM). In order to reflect the regional characteristics, including structural (regional production and consumption, interregional trade, and the structure of energy consumption) and environmental features (geographical location, climate, natural conditions, and population density), we first constructed a regional database. This includes an Interregional Trade Matrix (ITM), Regional Environmental Burden Coefficients (REBC), and Regional Damage Factors (RDF). Second, for considering the regional characteristics by using the regional database to the each region, it is a necessary to identify the environmental burden emitting regions (Emitting Regions) of indirect effects due to regional activity. To do this, we developed the Expanded Interregional Input Output Method (EIOM) to take the place of the Multi-Regional Input Output method (Multi-Regional IO) by applying the Two-Regional IO method and the ITM. This is because it is difficult to apply Multi-Regional IO to many regions and industries owing to practical constraints. Results and Discussion. Upon comparison between the regional database, it was found to show considerable differences due to regional characteristics. It is possible to identify how much the difference of REBC influences the evaluation results by calculating the Deviation Effect Index with REBC and, thus, it was found that the effects from the iron and steel, and electric power industries were more than three times that of other industries. Also the size of RDF varies according to the property of the Environmental Burden (EB) and region; and the more site-specific EB, such as SPM in this study shows, the more distinct the difference.,Therefore, it seems reasonable to recommend that the proper regional database is applied to the Emitting Regions. Meanwhile, a comparison with a 9-region IO table (a Multi-Regional IO table made by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan) was performed to verify the reliability of EIOM. The results indicated a high consistency of over 95%, which verifies that EIOM can be used instead of a Multi-Regional IO method. Finally, as a comparison between LCRAM and Region-Generic Method (RGM) for nine activity regions, we confirmed that the results produced by RGM may be an underestimation or overestimation; as an example, the largest difference among the regions for DALY reached 48% of the RGM result. Conclusions and Outlook. In this study, it was clearly shown that the evaluation results will be different depending on the structure and environmental features of each region. It is necessary to reflect the proper regional characteristics to evaluate the actual regional activity. LCRAM is an efficient method to consider the regional characteristics for direct and indirect effects to regions, through all stages of the activities. Also, it is possible to apply a regional evaluation for more regions and more detail in the industry classification. Furthermore, it discusses the interdependence and transportation effects due to interaction between the regions. Thus, it may enable us to make an appropriate decision in region-based evaluations such as nourishment and inducement of industry, infrastructure, recycle system, etc. Finally, it is also expected that further discussion and continuous examination will contribute to enabling us to frame an actual and efficient policy based on the regional structural features and environmental features for a sustainable community.Background, Aims and Scope. Life cycle assessment models typically use product-specific, plant-level or national aggregate data. However, many decisions by regional policy makers would be better informed by local or regional aggregate data. This research is intended to construct and apply a regional US economic input-output analysis-based life cycle assessment (REIO-LCA) model based upon publicly available datasets. The model uses Gross State Product (GSP) estimates to calculate regional economic multipliers and then link them to regional electricity and fuel use, and air emission factors. Target audiences are governmental decision makers, industry experts and researchers concerned,with the regional economic and environmental effects of public and private decisions. Methods. A regional version of the existing US EIO-LCA model was developed using-regional economic multipliers and state environmental data. The national model is based on the US 491 by 491 economic input-output model, and uses sectoral energy consumption and emission factors to approximate the environmental effects of production and services. The proportion of the regional value added (Gross State Product) to the national value added for each sector was used to develop economic multipliers to allocate the output of industries to individual states and multi-state regions. Inter-sectoral transaction matrices were constructed for eight regions. Regional environmental emission and resource use factors were formed based upon publicly available data of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy. The Toxics Release Inventory include facility location parameters, enabling the estimation of sectoral toxic emissions for the regions. The national electricity and fuel use, air pollutants (CO, NOx, PM10, SO2 and VOC) and greenhouse gas emissions used by the EIO-LCA model were proportioned based upon state totals for each sector. Results. A regional economic input-output model was created for US regions; and sectoral energy use and environmental emission factors were estimated for Pennsylvania, the Far West (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) and the Mideast (Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania) economic areas. The use of the framework for regional IO-LCA model is demonstrated through two case studies. Discussion. As a validation exercise, the regional outputs of petroleum refineries were calculated using the regional input-output matrices and the outcomes were compared to the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) Petroleum State Profile data. The model results show that approximately 70% of the total national sectoral production takes place in three regions, i.e., South West, South East and Far West, which corresponds with the EIA statistics. The REIO-LCA model constructed for the Far West is used to conduct a second case study estimating the annual toxic air emissions of power plants in the region in 2003. The results are evaluated by comparison to data provided by the US EPA. The estimated pollutions do not differ significantly from those presented in the Toxics Release Inventory reports. Conclusions. The usefulness of IO LCA models can be improved through the incorporation of local economic and environmental characteristics. Wiht the lack of US regional sectoral data, the allocation of national industrial production to regions can provide a framework to create smaller scale IO models. The results of case studies support the assumption that the GSP multipliers may be used to allocate the sectoral production to the regions, and show that the framework IO LCA model provides a reasonable approximation of supply chain economic activities and environmental effects caused by production and services. Recommendations and Perspectives. The quality of data, e.g., age and level of aggregation, and the assumed linearity between sectoral outputs and environmental emissions represent the main sources of uncertainty in the model. The results show that the GSP estimates are appropriate to construct a framework for a regional economic input-output and environmental assessment model. However, further research is recommended to construct more specific state-level input-output matrices incorporating interstate commodity flows, and state environmental factors in order to mitigate the parameter uncertainties. Further, the model might be improved by updating it regularly, as more recent data become available.Goal, Scope, and Background. As Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Input-Output Analysis (IOA) systems increase in size, computation times and memory usage can increase rapidly. The use of efficient methods of solution allows the use of a wide range of analysis techniques. Some techniques, such as Monte-Carlo Analysis, may be limited if computational times are too slow. Discussion of Methods. In this article, I describe algorithms that substantially reduce computation times and memory usage for solving LCA and IOA systems and performing Monte-Carlo analysis. The algorithms are based on well-established iterative methods of solving linear systems and exploit the power series expansion of the Leontief inverse. The algorithms are further enhanced by using sparse matrix algebra. Results and Discussion. The algorithms presented in this article reduce computational time and memory usage by orders of magnitude, while still retaining a high degree of accuracy. For a 3225 x 3225 LCA system, the algorithm reduced computation time from 70s to 0.06s while retaining an accuracy of 10(-3)%. Storage was reduced from 166 megabytes to 1.8 megabytes. The algorithm was used to perform a Monte-Carlo analysis on the same system with 1,000 samples in 90s. I also discuss various issues of power series convergence for general LCA and IOA systems and show that convergence will generally hold due to the mathematical structure of LCA and IOA systems. Conclusions. By exploiting the mathematical structure of LCA and IOA iterative techniques substantially reduced the computational times required for solving LCA and IOA systems and for performing Monte-Carlo simulations. This allows more widespread implementation analysis techniques, such as Monte-Carlo analysis, in LCA and IOA. Recommendations and Perspectives. It is suggested that algorithms, such as the ones described in this article, should be implemented in LCA packages. Various checks can be used to verify that computational errors are kept to a minimum.Goal, Scope and Background. The usefulness of power series expansion for an LCA system has often been doubted; as those systems may not possess the unique properties that enable power series expansion and analyses based on the power series. This paper surveys the existing literature on power series expansion of monetary input-output system and discusses how the power series expansion can be utilized for more general systems including the LCA model. Methods. The inherent properties of matrices that are capable of producing power series forms for their inverse and, further, can utilize structural path analysis are analyzed. Using these analyses, the way how a matrix that is not eligible for structural analyses is converted into an eligible form is investigated. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the findings. Results. The necessary and sufficient condition for an indecomposable, real square technology matrix can be expressed using power series was identified. Two additional conditions for a technology matrix to be utilized for structural analyses using power series expansion are discussed as well. It was also shown that an LCA system that fulfills the Hawkins-Simon condition can be easily converted into the form that is eligible for structural analysis by resealing the columns and rows. Discussion. As a numerical example, an application of accumulative structural path analysis for an LCA system is shown. The implications of the results are discussed in a more plain language as well. Conclusions. The survey presented in this paper provides not only the conditions under which a linear system is expressed using a power series form but also the way to appropriately convert a system to utilize the rich analytical tools using power series expansion for structural analyses. Recommendations and Perspectives. Widely used LCA databases and software tools have employed the linear systems approach as the basis. Much of these developments in the domain of LCA have been made, however, in isolation of the rich findings of IOA. There will be much to benefit LCA through an active dialogue between the two disciplines. There are rich analytical tools available through the use of power series expansion. The current survey will help software developers and LCA practitioners to apply such tools in LCA.Goal, Scope and Background. The primary goal of this paper is to present a LCI modelling approach that allows the inclusion of all three types of impacts. The approach is based on consequential LCA (CLCA) rather than more common attributional LCA (ALCA). In CLCA, system boundaries are expanded in order to include all significantly affected activities. In addition we show how changing from an attributional to a consequential approach alters how the impacts are evaluated, and discuss the applicability of these two distinct approaches to brownfield rehabilitation decision support. The paper is restricted to urban and contaminated brownfields that are the result of industrial use and whose rehabilitation is aimed at allowing residential redevelopment. Main Features. The approach is based on an analogy between the open-loop recycling of material resources and brownfield rehabilitation. Brownfield rehabilitation is associated with two functions: (1) managing the legacy of past occupations on the site, analogous to a waste management function, and (2) providing redevelopable land, analogous to a commodity production function. The consequential system is expanded to cover the subsequent occupation life cycle of the brownfield and the effects on the occupation life cycles of other sites. The proposed model quantifies effects on sites competing to supply the same occupation function. Two approaches are proposed to determine the nature of the sites that are affected and to what extent they are affected: the first resembling a closed-loop approximation, and the second based on economic partial-equilibrium models. Results and Conclusions. The scope of the CLCA is far more complex than that of the ALCA. It requires additional data that are associated with important sources of uncertainty. It does allow, however, for the inclusion of tertiary impacts, making it suitable for the evaluation of the often cited environmental benefits of reintegrating the site in the economy. In addition, the ALCA methodology seems to be inappropriate to compare brownfield management options that result in different subsequent uses of the site. Since the effects of this fate are included within the scope of CLCA, however, virtually any brownfield management option available to a decision-maker can aptly be compared. The evaluation of primary and secondary impacts also differs when the consequential approach is used rather than the attributional approach. It is impossible to anticipate the effects of these methodological differences on the results based on the qualitative discussion presented in this paper. Perspectives. The complexity and uncertainty introduced by switching to a consequential approach is very high: it is therefore recommendable to evaluate the significance in the gain of environmental information in an actual case study to determine if system expansion is recommendable. Such a case study is presented in Part II to this paper.Goals, Scope and Background. Eutrophication and hypoxia, which are already serious environmental issues in the Midwestern region of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico, could worsen with an increase emphasis on the use of corn and soybeans for biofuels. Eutrophication impacts from agriculture are difficult to integrate into an LCA due to annual variability in the nutrient loads as a factor of climatic conditions. This variability has not been included in many relevant energy or row crop LCAs. The objective of this research was to develop a relatively simple method to accurately quantify nutrient loadings from row crop production to surface water that reflects annual variations due to weather. A set of watersheds that comprise most of eastern Iowa was studied. Ample data describing cornsoybean agriculture in this region and nutrient loadings to the Mississippi River enabled the development, calibration and validation of the model for this particular region. Methods. A framework for estimating lifecycle inventory data for variable nutrient loading from corn-soybean agriculture was developed. The approach uses 21 years of county-average data for agricultural and annual rainfall for 33 counties that approximate three major watersheds in eastern Iowa. A linear equation describes the relationship between the fraction of the applied nutrients that leach into the surface water and the annual rainfall. Model parameters were calibrated by minimizing the error in the difference between actual and modeled cumulative discharge to the Mississippi River over the period 1988-1998. Data from 1978-1987 were used to validate the method. Two separate approaches were then used to allocate the nutrient flows between the corn and soybeans. Results and Discussion. The total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) leaching models provide good representation of the variability in measured nutrient loads discharged from eastern Iowa watersheds to the Mississippi River. The calibrated model estimates are within 1.1% of the actual 11-year cumulative TN load and 0.3% of the TP load. In contrast, a standard method used in other lifecycle assessments for estimating nutrient leaching based on a constant fraction of the nutrients leached provides a reasonable average, but does not capture the annual variability. Estimates of the TN load that can be allocated to corn range from 60 and 99% between two allocation methods considered. This difference sterns from a poorly understood symbiosis of nitrogen flows within the corn-soybean rotation that is difficult to integrate into an LCA. Conclusions. Lifecycle inventories can include improved estimates non-point source nutrient flows to surface waters by incorporating climatic variability. Nutrient discharges to surface water are estimated with emission factors as a linear function of the annual rainfall rate. Water quality data is required to calibrate this model for a given region. In comparison with a standard approach that uses an average emission factor, the model presented here is superior in terms of capturing the variability that is correlated to an increase in the size of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Recommendations and Perspectives. Lifecycle inventories quantifying nutrient discharges from corn-soybean production should include the variability in these flows that occur due to climatic conditions. Failure to do so will reduce the LCA's capability of quantifying the very significant eutrophication and hypoxia impacts associated with wet years.Goal, Scope and Background. A methodological approach for representing agricultural products in terms of life cycle inventory is suggested in this paper. This approach was developed during the conduction of an LCA study for two perennial crops of important Brazilian exportation products: green coffee and orange juice, which included tillage cultivation by commercial farms, harvest, as well as product processing when pertinent. The published papers on agricultural products LCA usually discuss the final results in terms of LCIA, being not very clear what methodology or principles were applied on the LCI phase. The aim of this paper is to present a simple methodology that would be employed by different stakeholders as farmers, environment managers and decision makers for evaluating the environmental performance of their products. In recent years, many researchers have tried to make a worldwide effort in order to reach comparable results of LCA studies developed in different countries. So, the proposed methodology has also the aim of isolating the site-dependency of the results that are not strictly related to the agricultural production. The time coverage suggested is the period can be considered as an average for the specific tillage under evaluation, usually two crops, since there is a large variation on the inputs in every other crop, including the higher and subsequent lower productive periods. Method. The functional unit recommended is 1,000 kg of the specific product, being recommended to distinguish the energy used for the cultivation from that used by the processing stage. There are several specific considerations to transform the data collected through the questionnaires in an inventory data set of fertilizers (macro and micro nutrients), correctives, fillers and pesticides further detailed. Water used for chemicals preparation, in the cleaning and processing stages of the harvested crop is also considered. Land use refers to the area used land for cultivation divided by the medium life period of the tillage. The stoichiometric balance is performed based on the elementary composition of the products. An average carbohydrate formula is established for the products considering the relationship among the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen contents of them. The carbohydrate formula (output) is balanced with carbon dioxide and water (inputs) according to the basic principles of the photosynthesis reaction. The differences among the mineral composition of the products and the total content of these elements (N, P, K, Ca, Mg and micronutrients elements) for all the crop inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, correctives) are allocated as outputs of the system. The pesticides is counted in two forms: grouped in classes (herbicide, fungicide, acaricide, bactericide and inseticide) and specified by the chemical name of the active ingredient. Results and Discussion. A simplified inventory useful for different purposes is generated with the principles described in this paper. The exact fate of each pesticide, fertilizer or corrective or assumptions can be further associated to impact categories as nutriphication, human health, natural resources depletion, ecological toxicity, etc. In this approach the mass balance was focused in the grain or fruit growth and not in the plant or tree as a whole, considering basically the elementary composition of the product and the photosynthesis principle. Despite agricultural LCAs performed in different countries have been published, neither of them considers the carbon capture by the agricultural products during their growth. Conclusions. This method is based on well accepted universal principles of stoichiometry applied to the grain or fruit growth. Minimum estimations were introduced in this approach, which produces 'clean inventories', with comparable results between different studies. The generated inventory can be gradually improved as the understanding about each emission fate is known, producing a valid methodology for actual and future knowledge about the fate of tillage emissions. The inventory results of this method can be employed by different stakeholders as farmers environment managers, decision makers and traders, with valuable environmental parameters for evaluating the environmental performance of their products and also for introducing improvements on their systems, without however to exhibit any particular data.Goal, Scope and Background. In face of continued declines in global fisheries landings and concurrent rapid aquaculture development, the sustainability of seafood production is of increasing concern. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers a convenient means of quantifying the impacts associated with many of the energetic and material inputs and outputs in these industries. However, the relevant but limited suite of impact categories currently used in most LCA research fails to capture a number of important environmental and social burdens unique to fisheries and aquaculture. This article reviews the impact categories used in published LCA research of seafood production to date, reports on a number of methodological innovations, and discusses the challenges to and opportunities for further impact category developments. Main Features. The range of environmental and socio-economic impacts associated with fisheries and aquaculture production are introduced, and both the commonly used and innovative impact categories employed in published LCA research of seafood production are discussed. Methodological innovations reported in agricultural LCAs are also reviewed for possible applications to seafood LCA research. Challenges and options for including additional environmental and socioeconomic impact categories are explored. Results. A review of published LCA research in fisheries and aquaculture indicates the frequent use of traditional environmental impact categories as well as a number of interesting departures from the standard suite of categories employed in LCA studies in other sectors. Notable examples include the modeling of benthic impacts, by-catch, emissions from anti-fouling paints, and the use of Net Primary Productivity appropriation to characterize biotic resource use. Socio-economic impacts have not been quantified, nor does a generally accepted methodology for their consideration exist. However, a number of potential frameworks for the integration of such impacts into LCA have been proposed. Discussion. LCA analyses of fisheries and aquaculture call attention to an important range of environmental interactions that are usually not considered in discussions of sustainability in the seafood sector. These include energy use, biotic resource use, and the toxicity of anti-fouling paints. However, certain important impacts are also currently overlooked in such research. While prospects clearly exist for improving and expanding on recent additions to environmental impact categories, the nature of the LCA framework may preclude treatment of some of these impacts. Socio-economic impact categories have only been described in a qualitative manner. Despite a number of challenges, significant opportunities exist to quantify several important socio-economic impacts. Conclusion. The limited but increasing volume of LCA research of industrial fisheries and aquaculture indicates a growing interest in the use of LCA methodology to understand and improve the sustainability performance of seafood production systems. Recent impact category innovations, and the potential for further impact category developments that account for several of the unique interactions characteristic of fisheries and aquaculture will significantly improve the usefulness of LCA in this context, although quantitative analysis of certain types of impacts may remain beyond the scope of the LCA framework. The desirability of incorporating socio-economic impacts is clear, but such integration will require considerable methodological development. Recommendations and Perspectives. While the quantity of published LCA research for seafood production systems is clearly increasing, the influence this research will have on the ground remains to be seen. In part, this will depend on the ability of LCA researchers to advance methodological innovations that enable consideration of a broader range of impacts specific to seafood production. It will also depend on the ability of researchers to communicate with a broader audience than the currently narrow LCA community.Background, Aims and Scope. Over the last five decades, the nature of food retailing has undergone an enormous transformation. Macro level economic, structural and technological developments have led to a major increase in the level of world trade. These developments have helped retailers to meet modern consumer expectations, but benefits have not been achieved without some drawbacks. This paper seeks to explore the environmental impacts associated with fresh produce supply chains, in order to understand the relative significance of transport as compared to other supply chain activities. Methods. Life Cycle Assessment was used to estimate the potential environmental impacts of three fresh produce items sourced from six countries and sold in Marks and Spencer stores: royal gala apples from Brazil, Chile, Italy and the UK; runner beans from Kenya (and extrapolated for Guatemala and the UK); and watercress from the UK and USA (and extrapolated for Portugal). Analysis was also conducted to evaluate the likely impacts of extending the storage period for UK apples thus negating the need to import, against the current strategy of importing fruit from the Southern hemisphere for six months of the year. In addition, the impacts of conventional as compared to organic cultivation were considered for watercress in both the UK and USA. Results and Discussion. The results for all three products reveal similar dominating impacts. A clear distinction arises in terms of the activities which contribute most to environmental impact and the magnitude of this impact, depending on the country in which the product is cultivated; i.e. global, regional (European) or local (British) sources of supply. Conclusion. Transport (or distance between production and consumption) is therefore an important factor in determining the environmental sustainability of food supply chains (though for long distance haulage, there is a significant distinction between air-freight and shipping). Electricity consumed for storage and packing operations is also significant, and the associated environmental impact is lower in countries where a large proportion of electricity is generated from renewable fuels. However, where this occurs in countries distant from the UK, transport impacts overshadow the environmental savings achieved from the more favourable electricity generation mix. Recommendations and Perspectives. The results of this study suggest that when in season it is generally preferential, on environmental grounds, for UK consumers to buy British produce rather than produce imported from overseas. Cultivation overseas is necessary to ensure year-round availability and in these circumstances it is preferable that processing activities also occur overseas if environmental benefits can be derived from local factors (e.g. a favourable electricity generation mix). Overall, the findings should be evaluated in the context of managing wider sustainability interests (including social and economic issues), for which further research is required.Goal, Scope and Background. Enzymes are biological catalysts with an enormous capacity to increase the speed of a huge variety biochemical reactions. Industrially produced enzymes are used in a broad variety of sectors to increase quality, speed and yield of processes, and reduce energy consumption and use of hazardous chemicals. The present paper provides a methodological framework for analysing environmental impacts of enzyme products and environmental data for five characteristic enzyme products. Methods. Life cycle assessment is used as an analytical tool and modelling of enzyme production is facilitated in SimaPro 6.0 software. Detailed data on enzyme production are derived from Novozymes' production facilities in Denmark. Data on ingredients are derived from the literature, publicly available databases and from Novozymes' suppliers. Results and Conclusions. Cradle-to-gate environmental data for five representative enzyme products produced by Novozymes in Denmark have been determined, and a basis for further assessments of more of Novozymes' enzyme products has been established. Environmental impacts induced by producing the considered enzyme products vary by a factor 10 or more depending on the impact category considered. Contributions to global warming range, for example, between one and ten kg CO2-equivalents per kg final product. The variation is explained by differences in fermentation time, formulation type, production yield and strength of the final product. The main sources of environmental impact are usually fermentation processes due to electricity and ingredient consumption. Enzyme production has been the subject of significant optimisation during the past decades by implementation of e.g. gene modified production strains, and the provided environmental data are only representative to enzyme products produced by Novozymes at the present optimisation stage. Recommendations and Perspectives. Novozymes produces more than 600 enzyme products for use in a variety of sectors, and the established framework for environmental assessment will be used for assessing more products in order to provide a broad basis for environmental comparison of enzyme assisted technologies and conventional technologies.Background, Goal and Scope. The ceramic tile industry is one of the most important industries in Spain, with the highest concentration of firms to be found in the province of Castellon on the Mediterranean coast. The basic input material for this industry is red clay. The aim of this study was to carry out an LCA of the process of mining, treating and marketing this clay in order to identify the stages and unit processes that have the greatest impact on the environment. This LCA examines all the stages of the red clay from cradle to the customer's gate, including the process of mining and treating the clay in the mining facilities and its later distribution to end users. Methods. Life cycle inventory (LCI): An exhaustive LCI was performed by collecting data from the mine run by Watts Blake Bearne Spain, S.A. (WBB-Spain) in Castellon. Inputs and outputs were collected for, all the unit processes involved in the mining, treatment and marketing of the clay: - Mining the clay, which embraces the unit processes of removing the layer of vegetation covering the chosen area, preparing the area to allow access for the firm's vehicles, and boring or blasting the place the clay is to be extracted from. - Treating the clay that is mined to make the finished product, which entails all unit processes required to separate out the waste material and transport it to the tip (which will later be reconditioned), excavating and transporting the clay to the crushing plant and later storing it in heaps before delivery to customers. All the internal transport that takes place between each unit process has also considered. - Distribution of the final product, where the clay is loaded onto dumper trucks and delivered to the customer. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA): According to ISO 1404X standards, the LCIA is performed at two levels. Firstly, the emissions accounted for in the inventory stage are sorted into impact categories to obtain an indicator for each category (mandatory elements). Secondly, the weighting of environmental data to a single unit is applied (optional elements). In compliance with ISO 14042, a sensitivity analysis is performed and three different impact assessment methods (Eco-Indicator'95, Eco-Indicator'99 and EPS'2000) are applied in order to analyse their influence on the results. Results. The processes that involve the movement of clay within the mine (excavation and loading and transport to the crushing facilities and heaps) are the ones that make the greatest contribution to impact categories for pollutant emissions. As weighting methods in LCA remain a controversial issue, a recommendation when robust results are required, can be to use several methods to examine the sensitivity of the results to different values and worldviews. In our application case, in spite of the differences between the three impact assessment methods applied (Eco-Indicator'95, Eco-Indicator'99 and EPS'2000), the same conclusions can be established from the environmental point of view and we can conclude that the ultimate results are not sensitive in the transformation of mid-points to end-points. Discussion. Taking into account the characteristics of the product being analysed, in addition to the impact categories for pollutant emissions that are traditionally considered in LCA studies, environmental parameters related to resource use (fuel, electricity and water consumption), waste generation (dangerous and non-dangerous wastes) and land use (natural resource appreciation and land use efficiency) and its later rehabilitation (degree of rehabilitation) have been defined. These parameters can be used as additional criteria for an environmental product declaration or criteria for a future eco-labelling of red clay. Conclusion. The results of this study made it possible to identify the unit processes that make the greatest contribution to environmental impact that being, specifically, excavation and loading and transport to the crushing facilities and heaps. Such processes are directly related to the fuel consumption, category that faithfully reproduces the environmental profile of most of the impact categories related to pollution emissions. Special interest has the consideration of additional parameters to quantify the land use and its later rehabilitation. Recommendations. The ceramic tile industry has a basis to market and promote tile products with improved environmental impacts. Given that transport and extraction are dominant underlying issues, it is quite likely that such environmental improvements are also win-win in the economic sense. The availability of exhaustive life cycle inventories is the key to allow this industry to, rapidly, incorporate LCA during product development. Complimentary life cycle costings would also be relatively minimal in terms of effort. Perspectives. Although this study performs the LCI for the basic raw material (clay), future studies should be conducted to complete an LCI for the remaining elements employed by the ceramic tile industry, with the aim of developing a characteristic LCI database for this industry. This includes data on raw materials (feldspar, silicious and feldspars sand, boron, glaze, frit, etc.) and processes (enamelling, firing, water waste treatment, etc.).Background, Aims and Scope. The interest in recycling materials at the end of their life is growing in the industry in general. As regards the Wastes of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), an appreciable increase of these materials has been noticed in the last decades, 117 10(3) tons of WEEE have been produced in Italy in 2002 according to Ecohitech [1] and the increase in this kind of waste is three times higher than that of the municipal waste according to the FISE ASSOAMBIENTE report [2]. Within WEEE, End-of-Life Cathode Ray Tube (EOL CRT) glass, the main part of TV sets and PC monitors, is here analysed using both a technical approach to establish a possible reuse of the glass in a open-loop recycling field (ceramic industry) and a methodology (LCA) capable of providing environmental evaluations. Methods. The technological characterization was performed by chemical resistance tests (UNI EN ISO 10545-13), staining tests (UNI EN ISO 10545-14) with blue methylene and potassium permanganate (KMnO4), and surface abrasion tests (UNI EN ISO 10545-7). The LCA study was conducted using the SimaPro 5.0 software and Eco-Indicator 99 as an evaluation method. Results and Discussion. The good technical results, reached by using cleaned EOL CRT panel glass inside a ceramic glaze formulation instead of a commercial frit, are supported by the environmental impact evaluation, which shows a decrease of the overall potential damage (measured in Points) of 36% and, in particular, a reduction of 53% in 'Human health', 31% in 'Ecosystem quality' and 24% in 'Resources'. Conclusions. This study has demonstrated that this new, open-loop recycling strategy for the CRT glass significantly reduces the environmental impact of the ceramic glaze production process. In fact, in all damage categories examined in this study, there is a minor impact. An improvement is evident in the respiratory inorganics sub-category related to the lowering of dusts mainly and to a lesser amount with NOx and SOx in the climate change sub-Category, due mainly to the reduction of CO2 emission correlated to the avoided combustion of the mixture which feeds melting furnaces in the frit production. Thus, the damage decrease in 'Ecosystem quality' is prevalently due to the lower NOx emissions by the kilns in the frit production that is evident in the acidification/eutrophication sub-category. Finally, the significant saving in the 'Resource' category is principally linked to the fossil fuels sub-category; thanks to the methane saving which stokes the melting furnaces. Perspectives. Furthermore, the decrease in CO2 emission (94.4%) evident in the climate change sub-category is a very important topic because it is in line with the Kyoto protocol (1997), where significant efforts' have been exerted for the reduction of the green house gases emission, notably CO2. The CO2 emission is correlated to the combustion of the mixture which feeds melting kilns in the frit production, therefore the recycling of secondary raw materials, already in a glass state, can reduce the emissions of this gas. This reduction can be termed as environmental credit and it is an example of an allocation of environmental loads in a open-loop recycling, where waste from one industrial system are used as raw materials in another product system.Obtaining reliable results from life-cycle assessment studies is often quite difficult because life-cycle inventory (LCI) data are usually erroneous, incomplete, and even physically meaningless. The real data must satisfy the laws of thermodynamics, so the quality of LCI data may be enhanced by adjusting them to satisfy these laws. This is not a new idea, but a formal thermodynamically sound and statistically rigorous approach for accomplishing this task is not yet available. This article proposes such an approach based on methods for data rectification developed in process systems engineering. This approach exploits redundancy in the available data and models and solves a constrained optimization problem to remove random errors and estimate some missing values. The quality of the results and presence of gross errors are determined by statistical tests on the constraints and measurements. The accuracy of the rectified data is strongly dependent on the accuracy and completeness of the available models, which should capture information such as the life-cycle network, stream compositions, and reactions. Such models are often not provided in LCI databases, so the proposed approach tackles many new challenges that are not encountered in process data rectification. An iterative approach is developed that relies on increasingly detailed information about the life-cycle processes from the user A comprehensive application of the method to the chlor-alkali inventory being compiled by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory demonstrates the benefits and challenges of this approach.The software tool ecosolvent is presented that allows for comparative environmental assessment of treatment technologies for specific, user-defined, waste-solvent mixtures. The tool is composed of models for waste-solvent distillation as well as for thermal treatment in hazardous waste-solvent incinerators and cement kilns. It was designed with a tiered structure in order to allow for a high flexibility regarding informational needs. The life-cycle assessment method was used to assess the environmental impact. The applicability of the tool is shown with two case studies from industry. In these case studies, various waste-solvent treatment technologies are compared for two specific waste-solvent mixtures. Potential use of the ecosolvent tool for its role in practical decision making in chemicals industries is illustrated by two case studies of waste-solvent systems. In the ethyl acetate case study, the tool indicates that solvent recovery by distillation is clearly better than incineration of the waste solvent. The results from the methanol case study are less clear-cut. In the subsequent article (part 11), the ecosolvent tool will be used to derive general rules of thumb and specific recommendations for 45 important solvents used in chemical industries. Additionally, a framework will be presented that provides quick and easy decision support regarding environmentally optimized waste-solvent management.In an article on the role of temporal information in life-cycle assessment in this journal, Field and colleagues argued that frequently it is not the single product but the "fleet" (or cohort) of products that "is the appropriate unit of analysis," and that in focusing on the fleet one "explicitly introduces the notion of time as a critical element of comparative life-cycle assessments...." Major transitions, such as replacement of one fleet of products by an alternative fleet, correspond to a system in a transient rather than steady state, and explicit consideration of time is central to transient analysis. One tool increasingly used as part of life-cycle assessment, economic input-output (EIO) analysis, at best deals with time in an implicit fashion. This article illustrates how the sequential interindustry model (SIM), a formulation of the DO model that explicitly represents time, might be utilized in life-cycle assessment. SIM introduces this temporal component by explicitly accounting for the time required by production activities and the resulting sequencing of the inputs. This can be thought of as engineering rather than accounting information. The data demands of such a model are not likely to be met at present or at any time in the near future. Even so, simulation methods and the use of so-called synthetic data have a history of productive use in a number of fields, including the social sciences. SIM also utilizes the contribution of Joshi on the application of the EIO model to environmental impact and the inclusion of the use as well as the production phases of a product in DO analysis. The possibility of accounting for discounting of future events, with its impact on decision making, is also briefly discussed.Various toxic, useful, and/or scarce metals in waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) have rarely been assessed due to low data availability, except for the four metals regulated by the European Union's Directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS). This article describes the results of screening 36 metals in WEEE using simple assessment methods for cases where the decision makers do not know for which substances in a product countermeasures should be taken and where data cannot be easily obtained. First, this study examines the decision-making process and prerequisites for screening, classifies existing assessment methods, and presents three simple indices for screening (resource consumption, water pollution affecting human health, and aquatic biota conservation) so that screening can be readily started for many (20-36) metals. Following this, a case study is conducted for waste TV sets, revealing which metal in which product module or component should be targeted by environmental countermeasures. Finally, the screening results are compared with those of six other methods using diagrams devised to indicate the superiority of screening methods, and several screening techniques are discussed. The conclusions are that the EU RoHS Directive does not necessarily cover all of the toxic metals that could be of concern and the screening methods presented could help identify such metals; the selection of methods is critical; and a more detailed method does not necessarily provide more accurate results.Life-cycle assessment is an established tool for industrial ecology. An analysis of the energy use in the chemical and other energy-intensive industries is still under discussion in this field. We argue that the concept of exergy can play a role in industrial ecology, using a recent Norwegian power production policy question as illustration. The question is whether to build a standard natural gas- or a hydrogen-fired gas-turbine combined-cycle power plant to meet increased needs for electricity in Norway. Several indicators are relevant for this discussion, and we calculate three based on exergy calculations, as proposed in the literature. The indicators are exergy renewability, exergy efficiency, and environmental compatibility. We show how these indicators can be used to evaluate paths for sustainable power production in two gas-fired combined-cycle power plants. We found that the two plants in question were equivalent, as judged by their exergy renewability and their environmental compatibility, but not by their exergy efficiency. This indicator favored the standard power plant, possibly in combination with carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration in a depleted gas reservoir. The analysis suggested that the present situation for power production in gas-fired combined-cycle power plants is such that one may have to choose in general between power production with a high exergy efficiency, but low renewability indicator, or the opposite, low exergy efficiency and high renewability indicator. The general importance of exergy analysis was demonstrated by this example. It enables communication between different professional groups. The technological details, understood by the engineers, can be transposed to meaningful aggregated indicators for decision makers.Coal tar was used in Sweden for the production of asphalt and for the drenching of stabilization gravel until 1973. The tar has high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), some of which may be strongly carcinogenic. Approximately 20 million tonnes of tar-containing asphalt is present in the public roads in Sweden. Used asphalt from rebuilding can be classified as hazardous waste according to the Swedish Waste Act. The cost of treating the material removed as hazardous waste can be very high due to the large amount that has to be treated, and the total environmental benefit is unclear. The transport of used asphalt to landfill or combustion will affect other environmental targets. The present project, based on three case studies of road projects in Sweden, evaluates the consequences of four scenarios for handling the material: reuse, landfill, biological treatment, and incineration. The results show that reuse of the coal tar-containing materials in new road construction is the most favorable alternative in terms of cost, material use, land use, energy consumption, and air emissions.In order to examine the risk to resource security in Japan, this paper quantifies the outflow of base metals (iron, aluminum, copper, lead, and zinc) through export of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) from Japan from 1988 to 2005 using the Trade Statistics of Japan and vehicles composition data. Estimates were also made for engine-related rare metals (manganese, nickel, chromium, and molybdenum), under statistical restrictions. This analysis shows that 24% of iron, 38% of aluminum, 13% of copper, 53% of lead, 11% of zinc, and 38% of rare metals in ELVs in Japan were not recycled and flowed out of the country, mostly in the form of used vehicle and parts. The destinations of these metals were mainly developing countries with rudimentary recycling technology. These results strongly indicate that many metal resources that could be utilized domestically from automobiles in Japan were instead scattered and lost overseas.The establishment of a market for CO2 emission rights in Europe leads oil-refining companies to add a cost associated with carbon emissions to the objective function of linear programming models used to manage refineries. These models may be used to compute the marginal contribution of each finished product to the CO2 emissions of the refinery. Babusiaux (Oil. Gas Sci. Technol., 58, 2003, 685-692) has shown that, under some conditions, this marginal contribution is a relevant means of allocating the carbon emissions of the refinery. Thus, it can be used in a well-to-wheel Life Cycle Assessment. In fact, this result holds if the demand equations are the only binding constraints with a non-zero right-hand side coefficient. This is not the case for short-run models with fixed capacity. Then, allocating CO2 emissions on a marginal basis tends to overvalue (or undervalue) the total volume of emissions. In order to extend the existing methodology, we discuss two distinct solutions to this problem, inspired by economic theory: adapting either the Aumann-Shapley cost sharing method (Values of non-atomic games, 1974, Princeton University Press) or the Ramsey pricing formula (Econ. J., 37, 1927, 47-61; J. Econ. Theory, 3, 1971, 219-240). We compare these two solutions, with a strong argument in favour of Ramsey prices, based on the determination of the optimal environmental tax rate to which imported finished products should be subject.In joint product industries such as an oil refinery, there does not exist a unique way to fully allocate the refinery's CO2 emissions to its oil products. Under certain conditions, however refinery linear programming (LP) models can provide a relevant and unique allocation procedure based on the marginal contribution of each oil product to the total CO2 emissions. In this particular case, the marginal CO2 allocations can be directly used for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) purposes. In this paper we apply the marginal allocation methodology to the oil refinery LP model developed by the Institut francais du petrole (IFP) to evaluate and compare the CO2 emissions associated with different oil products. We also study the consequences of the degeneracy phenomenon on the obtained results. Finally, the limitations of this approach for short-run decisions are discussed.Engineering for sustainable development (ESD) is an integrated systems approach, which aims at developing a balance between the requirements of the current stakeholders without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs. This is a multi-criteria decision-making process that involves the identification of the most optimal sustainable process, which satisfies economic, ecological, social criteria as well as safety and health requirements. Certain difficulties are encountered when ESD is applied such as ill-defined criteria, scarcity of information, lack of process-specific data, metrics and the need to satisfy multiple decision makers. To overcome these difficulties ESD can be broken down into three major steps, starting with the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the process, followed by generation of non-dominating alternatives, and finally selecting the most sustainable process by employing an analytic hierarchical selection process. This methodology starts with the prioritization of the sustainability metrics (health and safety, economic, ecological and social components). Then the alternatives are subjected to a pair-wise comparison with respect to each Sustainable Development (SD) indicator and prioritized depending on their performance. The SD indicator priority score and each individual alternative's performance score together are used to determine the most sustainable alternative. In this paper, the analysis approach and metrics for ESD are applied to bio-diesel production.No-tillage and conventional plough tillage have been compared since 1994 in a crop rotation without fallow period and with mineral fertilizer only, in the long-term field trial "Oberacker" at the Inforama Ruetti in Zollikofen (Switzerland) on a slightly humic sandy loam deep and nutrient-rich soil. Results obtained so far show continuous no-tillage of long duration to be an alternative to traditional plough tillage: no-tillage is ready for agronomical practice, leads to a biologically active soil of stable structure and thus of high load capacity, reduces risk of soil erosion, number of vehicle crossings and consumption of fuel and presents an overall more favourable life cycle assessment. After a seven-year conversion period, slightly higher plant yields of comparable quality were obtained in no-tillage, due to a better soil water preservation and continual supply to plant roots, as well as to a higher N-efficiency. Both cropping systems only received about 60% of the standard amounts of N-fertilizer. Both systems shall be tested further and optimised for environmental sustainability and energy consumption by introducing more legume crops, ammonium-based N-fertilizer, and by reducing glyphosate application in no-tillage and tillage intensity in conventional plough tillage.In response to the need for more sustainable business practices, this paper presents an approach to decision support based on the idea of "critical systems engineering". This requires, among others, the involvement of a potentially diverse array of stakeholders in interactive decision processes, the explicit consideration of all types of uncertainties, and the complementary, and informed, use of methodologies from several disciplines. The approach is based on multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA), but extends this by incorporating an integrated approach for the consideration of different types of uncertainties. The approach and associated tools are illustrated for two technology selection decisions associated with electrical power generation. Using the concept of "decision spaces", it is possible to show the relationship between these power generation decision contexts and more general decision making associated with process design. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.No-tillage and conventional plough tillage have been compared in a crop rotation without fallow period and application of mineral fertilizer only, in the long-term field trial "Oberacker" at the Inforanna Ruetti in Zollikofen (Berne) since 1994. The slightly humic sandy loam is a deep and nutrient-rich soil. The results obtained so far show continuous no-tillage of long duration to be an alternative to traditional plough tillage: no-tillage is ready to be put into agronomical practice, it leads to a biologically active soil of stable structure and thus of high load capacity, reduces the risk of soil erosion, the number of vehicle crossings and the consumption of fuel and presents an overall more favourable life cycle assessment. After a seven-year conversion period, slightly higher plant yields of comparable quality were obtained in no-tillage, due to more soil water being preserved and continually delivered to plant roots, as well as to a higher N-efficiency. In both cropping systems only about 60% of the standard amounts of N-fertilizer were applied. In the coming years both systems shall be tested further and optimised with regard to environmental sustainability and energy consumption by introducing more legume crops, applying ammonium-based N-fertilizer, and by reducing the application of glyphosate in no-tillage and the tillage intensity in conventional plough tillage.The objectives of this study were to evaluate the environmental impacts of a beef cow-calf system using a life cycle assessment (LCA) method and to investigate the effects of scenarios to reduce environmental impacts on the LCA results. The functional unit was defined as one marketed beef calf, and the processes associated with the cow-calf life cycle, such as feed production, feed transport, animal management, the biological activity of the animal and the treatment of cattle waste were included in the system boundary. The present results showed that the total contributions of one beef calf throughout its life cycle to global warming, acidification, eutrophication and energy consumption were 4550 kg of CO2 equivalents, 40.1 kg of SO2 equivalents, 7.0 kg of phosphate (PO4) equivalents and 16.1 GJ, respectively. The contribution of each process to the total environmental impact in each environmental impact category showed a similar tendency to the contribution of each process in each environmental category reported in the case of the beef fattening system as a whole. The results from this analysis showed that shortening calving intervals by 1 month reduced environmental impacts by 5.7-5.8% in all the environmental impact categories examined in the current study, and increasing the number of calves per cow also reduced environmental impacts in all the categories, although the effects were smaller.The energetic and environmental performance of production and distribution of the Brassica carinata biomass crop in Soria (Spain) is analysed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology in order to demonstrate the major potential that the crop has in southern Europe as a lignocellulosic fuel for use as a renewable energy source. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) including midpoint impact analysis that was performed shows that the use of fertilizers is the action with the highest impact in six of the 10 environmental categories considered, representing between 51 % and 68% of the impact in these categories. The second most important impact is produced when the diesel is used in tractors and transport vehicles which represents between 48% and 77%. The contribution of the R carinata cropping system to the global warming category is 12.7 g CO eq. MJ(-1) biomass produced. Assuming a preliminary estimation of the B. carinata capacity of translocated CO(2) (631 kg CO ha(-1)) from below-ground biomass into the soil, the emissions are reduced by up to 5.2 g CO eq. MJ(-1). The production and transport are as far as a thermoelectric plant of the B. carinata biomass used as a solid fuel consumes 0.12 MJ of primary energy per 1 MJ of biomass energy stored. In comparison with other fossil fuels such as natural gas, it reduces primary energy consumption by 33.2% and greenhouse gas emission from 33.1 % to 71.2% depending on whether the capacity of translocated CO(2) is considered or not. The results of the analysis support the assertion that B. carinata crops are viable from an energy balance and environmental perspective for producing lignocellulosic solid fuel destined for the production of energy in southern Europe. Furthermore, the performance of the crop could be improved, thus increasing the energy and environmental benefits. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an integrated life cycle methodology for mapping the flows of pollutants in the urban environment, following the pollutants from their sources through the environment to receptors. The sources of pollution that can be considered by this methodology include products, processes and human activities. Life cycle assessment (LCA), substance flow analysis (SFA), fate and transport modelling (F&TM) and geographical information systems (GIS) have been used as tools for these purposes. A mathematical framework has been developed to enable linking and integration of LCA and SFA. The main feature of the framework is a distinction between the foreground and background systems, where the foreground system includes pollution sources of primary interest in the urban environment and the background comprises all other supporting activities occurring elsewhere in the life cycle. Applying the foreground-background approach, SFA is used to track specific pollutants in the urban environment (foreground) from different sources. LCA is applied to quantify emissions of a number of different pollutants and their impacts in both the urban (foreground) and in the wider environment (background). Therefore, two "pollution vectors" are generated: one each by LCA and SFA. The former comprises all environmental burdens or impacts generated by a source of interest on a life cycle basis and the latter is defined by the flows of a particular burden (substance or pollutant) generated by different sources in the foreground. The vectors are related to the "unit of analysis'' which represents a modified functional unit used in LCA and defines the level of activity of the pollution source of interest. A further methodological development has also included integration of LCA and SFA with F&TM and GIS. A four-step methodology is proposed to enable spatial mapping of pollution from sources through the environment to receptors. The approach involves the use of GIS to map sources of pollution, application of the LCA SFA approach to define sources of interest and quantify environmental burdens and impacts on a life-cycle basis. This is followed by F&TM to track pollution through the environment and by the quantification of site-specific impacts on human health and the environment. The application of the integrated methodology and the mathematical framework is illustrated by a hypothetical example involving four pollution sources in a city: incineration of MSW, manufacture of PVC, car travel and truck freight.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is often used to compare alternative process options in terms of their overall impact on the environment to easily identify the most environmentally friendly alternative. In this work, a streamlined LCA study was conducted to assess three different residue utilization schemes for Tongkat Ali (Eurycoma longifolia) extract production. The case study was firstly simulated using a batch process simulation software. The results of mass and energy balances obtained from the simulation software were then subjected to life cycle analysis. By evaluating the different schemes for using the fibrous residue from the extraction process, the potential for environmental process improvement was identified. Overall, use of the residue as process fuel was found to be the most environmentally friendly option. It produces the least emissions and reduces resource usage per unit of product than the other options evaluated.A three-step methodology to assess the carbon sequestration and the environmental impact of afforestation projects in the framework of the Flexible Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol (Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism) was developed and tested using a dataset collected from the Jonkershoek forest plantation, Western Cape, South Africa, which was established with Pinus radiata in former native fynbos vegetation and indigenous forest. The impact of a change in land use was evaluated for a multifunctional, a production and a non- conversion scenario. First, the carbon balance was modelled with GORCAM and was expressed as (1) C sequestration in tC ha(-1) year(-1) in soil, litter, and living biomass according to the rules of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, and (2) CO2 emission reductions in tC ha(-1) year(-1), which includes carbon sequestered in the above-mentioned pools and additionally in wood products, as well as emission reductions due to fossil fuel substitution. To estimate forest growth, three data sources were used: (1) inventory data, (2) growth simulation with a process-based model, and (3) yield tables. Second, the effects of land use change were assessed for different project scenarios using a method related to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The method uses 17 quantitative indicators to describe the impact of project activities on water, soil, vegetation cover and biodiversity. Indicator scores were calculated by comparing indicator values with reference values, estimated for the climax vegetation. The climax vegetation is the site-specific ecosystem phase with the highest exergy content and the highest exergy flow dissipation capacity. Third, the land use impact per functional unit of 1 tC sequestered was calculated by combining the results of step 1 and step 2. The average baselines to obtain carbon additionality are 476 tC ha(-1) for indigenous forest and 32 tC ha(-1) for fynbos. Results show that the influence of the growth assessment method on the magnitude of C sequestration and hence on the environmental impact per functional unit is large. When growth rate is assessed with the mechanistic model and with the yield table, it is overestimated in the early years and underestimated in the long term. The main conclusion of the scenario analysis is that the production forest scenario causes higher impacts per functional unit than the multifunctional scenario, but with the latter being less efficient in avoiding CO2 emissions. The proposed method to assess impacts on diverse components of the ecosystem is able to estimate the general tendency of the adverse and positive effects of each scenario. However, some indicators, more specifically about biodiversity and water balance, could be improved or reinterpreted in light of specific local data about threat to biodiversity and water status.This research quantifies the extent to which the US has shifted the environmental impact associated with the goods it consumes to other countries through trade. To achieve this, we use a life-cycle, consumption-based approach to measure the environmental impacts embodied in US trade activities for global warming potential (GWP), energy, toxics, and the criteria air pollutants. We use these values to determine the amount of environmental impact "leaked" from current, production-based approaches to analyzing national environmental trends for the years 1998-2004. We find that in 2004, with reasonable assumptions about the environmental intensity of imports and exports, this leakage exceeds 10% for all studied impacts, exceeds 20% for GWP, energy, and most criteria air pollutants, and exceeds 80% for lead emissions and toxics. By including the environmental impacts embodied in trade activities into national environmental accounts, we provide consumption-based, US per capita, environmental impacts, which we use to evaluate the relationship between income and environmental impact. We find evidence for rising per capita environmental impacts over time in the US, contra the Environmental Kuznets Curve. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for international environmental policy of increasing embodied emissions in trade. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper is concerned with the results of a thorough energy and life cycle assessment (LIA) of CdTe and CIS photovoltaic modules. The analysis is based on actual production data, making it one of the very first of its kind to be presented to the scientific community, and therefore especially worthy of attention as a preliminary indication of the future environmental impact that the up-scaling of thin film module production may entail. The analysis is consistent with the recommendations provided by ISO norms 14040 and updates, and makes use of an in-house developed multi-method impact assessment method named SUMMA, which includes resource demand indicators, energy efficiency indicators, and "downstream" environmental impact indicators. A comparative framework is also provided, wherein electricity produced by thin film systems such as the ones under study is set up against electricity from poly-Si systems and the average European electricity mix. Results clearly show an overall very promising picture for thin film technologies, which are found to be characterised by favourable environmental impact indicators (with special reference to CdTe systems), in spite of their still comparatively lower efficiencies. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Brownfields are abandoned, idled, or underused sites whose reuse necessitates some sort of intervention. These sites are largely urban and are frequently contaminated. Brownfield management options can be associated with three types of environmental consequences: those resulting from changes in the site's environmental quality (primary impacts); those resulting from the actual intervention stage (secondary impacts); and, if the vocation of the site changes, those resulting from effects on regional land use (tertiary impacts). Different stakeholders and decision-making contexts will place a different importance on each of these types of impacts. This article proposes a framework for comparing brownfield management options in regard to these three types of environmental impacts and for interpreting these results from different perspectives. The assessment framework is based on consequential life cycle assessment (LCA), which is shown to provide environmental information on the three types of impacts. The results for a case study are presented, where a "rehabilitation" option allowing residential redevelopment is compared to an "exposure minimization" option not resulting in the site being reused. Calculated primary and tertiary impacts are favorable to the rehabilitation option, whereas secondary impacts are favorable to the exposure minimization option. A ternary diagram presents the favorable option for different stereotypical perspectives. Tertiary impacts are much greater than secondary impacts, and consequently all perspectives that consider tertiary impacts favor rehabilitation. The perspective that considers primary and secondary impacts receives conflicting information. The ternary diagram, showing results for all perspectives, could possibly be useful for consensus-building among stakeholders.Industrial wastewater-treatment systems need to ensure a high level of protection for the environment as a whole. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) comprehensively evaluates the environmental impacts of complex treatment systems, taking into account impacts from auxiliaries and energy consumption as well as emissions. However, the application of LCA is limited by a scarcity of wastewater-specific life-cycle inventory (LCI) data. This study presents a modular gate-to-gate inventory model for industrial wastewater purification in the chemical and related sectors. It enables the calculation of inventory parameters as a function of the wastewater composition and the technologies applied. For this purpose, data on energy and auxiliaries' consumption, wastewater composition, and process parameters was collected from chemical industry. On this basis, causal relationships between wastewater input, emissions, and technical inputs were identified. These causal relationships were translated into a generic inventory model. Generic and site-specific data ranges for LCI parameters are provided for the following processes: mechanical-biological treatment, high-pressure wet-air oxidation, nanofiltration, and extraction. The input- and technology-dependent process inventories help to bridge data gaps where primary data are not available. Thus, they substantially help to perform an environmental assessment of industrial wastewater purification in the chemical and associated industries, which may be used, for instance, for technology choices.Goal and Scope. Many life cycle assessment case studies neglect the production of capital goods that are necessary to manufacture a good or to provide a service. In ISO standards 14040 and 14044 the capital goods are explicitly part of the product system. Thus, it is doubtful if capital goods can be excluded per se as has been done in quite a number of case studies and LCA databases. There is yet no clear idea about if and when capital goods play an important role in life cycle assessments. The present paper evaluates the contribution of capital goods in a large number and variety of product and service systems. A classification of product and service groups is proposed to give better guidance on when and where capital goods should be included or can be neglected. Methods. The life cycle inventory database ecoinvent data v1.2 forms the basis for the assessment of the environmental importance of capital goods. The importance is assessed on the basis of several hundreds of cradle-to-gate LCAs of heat and electricity supply systems, of materials extraction and production, of agricultural products, and of transport and waste management services. The importance within product (and service) groups is evaluated with statistical methods by comparing the LCA results including and excluding capital goods. The assessment is based on characterised cumulative LCI results using the CML baseline characterisation factors of the impact categories of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, freshwater acquatic toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, ionising radiation, and land competition, based on proxy indicators (fossil and nuclear) cumulative energy demand, and based on the endpoint indicators Eco-indicator 99 (H,A) mineral resources, human health, eco system quality and totals. Results. The analysis confirms the fact that capital goods cannot be excluded per se. On one hand, toxicity related environmental impacts such as freshwater ecotoxicity or human toxicity are more sensitive towards an inclusion or exclusion of capital goods. On the other, certain products like photovoltaic and wind electricity are very much or even completely affected by capital goods contributions, no matter which indicator is chosen. Nuclear electricity, agricultural products and processes, and transport services often behave differently (showing a higher or lower share of capital goods contribution) than products from other sectors. Discussions. Some indicators analysed in this paper show a rather similar behaviour across all sectors analysed. This is particularly true for 'mineral resources', and - to a lesser extent - for 'Eco-indicator 99 total', 'acidification' and 'climate change'. On the other hand, 'land use' and 'freshwater ecotoxicity' show the most contrasting behaviour with shares of capital goods' impacts between less than 1% and more than 98%. Recommendations. Capital goods must be included in the assessment of climate change impacts of non-fossil electricity, agricultural products and processes, transport services and waste management services. They must be included in any sector regarding the assessment of toxic effects. Energy analyses (quantifying the non-renewable cumulative energy demand) of agricultural products and processes, of wooden products and of transport services should include capital goods as well. The mixing of datasets including and excluding capital goods is no problem as long as their share on total impacts is low and partial omissions do not lead to a significant imbalance in comparative assertions. Perspectives. If in doubt whether or not to include capital goods, it is recommended to check two things: (1) whether maintenance and depreciation costs of capital equipment form a substantial part of the product price (Heijungs et al. 1992a), and (2) whether actual environmental hot spots occur along the capital goods' supply chain.Background, Aims, and Scope. A significant shift towards services has occurred globally though service industry companies are still, typically, neglected when the significant environmental players in the society are listed. However, scientific evidence is increasingly showing that the service sector may produce a notable share of the environmental impact in the society. Unfortunately, very few quantitative studies exist that would have determined the environmentally significant processes of a service industry organization. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to quantify the environmental impact of selected service industry companies, and to identify the processes with the highest environmental contribution. Methods. A multiple case study method with life cycle assessment (LCA) framework using both process and input-output data was used to estimate the environmental impact of four service industry organizations in Europe and the U.S. The companies studied are all international or global companies, and the functional unit of the LCA is the yearly operation of the organization per employee. The firms chosen have noticeable differences in terms of size, location, and their line of business. Results. Regardless the significant differences in the size, location and line of business, the same activities were always found to contribute the most on the environmental impact of the organizations. The office premises clearly contributed the most (some 40%) to the environmental impact and commuting was the second most significant contributing factor (some 20%). The contribution of all the other activities, the business travel, the purchases services, the use of office equipment and the office supplies was found to be clearly less significant. The U.S. based case was found to produce constantly higher impact values than all the other cases. The range of differences between the U.S. case and the others were quite substantial: around two- to five-fold. Interestingly, it seemed that the differences in impacts were explained half by the differences in the surrounding infrastructure and supply chain, and half by the differences in the actual operating quantities of the studied organizations. Discussion. As the results were not particularly sensitive to the changes from company specific processes to the statistical averages in Finland, they could be expected to give a relatively good estimation of a typical Finnish organization in the relevant fields of services industry. However, services industry includes a broad scope of different kinds of companies, and thus the results would probably not apply for all services companies, for example, travel agencies and cleaning services. Conclusions. The result would imply that in several services sectors the office premises related processes could potentially produce significant amount of environmental impacts. In addition, it seems that the LCA method could produce added value for environmental management in services companies because, at the moment, the focus of the environmental objectives there appear biased toward activities not having high environmental importance. Recommendations and Perspectives. Based on the results, many organizations could start their environmental work by concentrating on the office premises related processes. In the future, the environmental significance of services industries in the society should be studied more thoroughly, as the services industry could, based on the results of the study, offer an untapped management potential for sustainable communities.Goal, Scope and Background. Companies have been calculating the eco-efficiency and factor X of their products by using their own methods, as no standardized method or detailed guidelines for calculating these indicators has yet been developed. When calculating eco-efficiency, in fact, there is a good deal of controversy about the meaning and the quantification method of the product value. To address this, we have devised four methods for determining product value and quantifying eco-efficiency at the product level, while applying them to digital cameras. We have also suggested reasonable application principles for eco-efficiency and factor X, allowing companies to measure the sustainability of a product. Methods. Four methods for the quantification of product value, the numerator of eco-efficiency, follow. In method A, one or two main quality attributes and the overall life-span of a product are considered. In method B, all quality attributes are integrated into one value as the average of their square roots.. Meanwhile, a linear transformation principle and the weighting factors of each attribute are used in method C, allowing for the integration for all quality attributes into one value. Lastly, a non-linear transformation principle, weighting factors for each attribute, and a quality-reduction ratio are considered in measuring the product quality in method D. As for the denominator of eco-efficiency, the same Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results are applied to each method in order to keep the focus of this study on product value and its quantification. Results and Discussion. The results show that factor X values were different depending on the method applied, even though the same products were used. This is mainly a result of the different methodological principles of the four methods. In case of method A, the calculation method was simple and the system boundaries of the numerator and denominator are the same with regard to the life span of a product. However, it was impossible to measure the improvement of other attributes. It was easy to calculate the factor X value and identify the improvement ratio of the numerator and denominator in method B. But, this method could not reflect the relative importance of each attribute. A linear normalization principle was used in method C. However, the relationship between actual values and normalized values is not always linear in reality. In the case of method D, the normalization step was carried out using non-linear value functions based pn a market situation. This effectively solved the problem of employing the linear normalization principle. It has also enabled us to identify the quality level of the chosen products by considering all those products within a market that have the same functions. In addition, it was possible to reflect the decreasing rate of product quality over the life span of a product and make the same system boundaries of the numerator and denominator by considering the quality-reduction ratio of a product. Conclusions and Perspectives. Based on our analysis results of the four methods, we created an application principle of eco-efficiency at the product level to be used when the eco-efficiency and factor X of reference and current models are exhibited to the public. First, eco-efficiency must be shown by multiplying the values of product quality to the quality-reduction ratio into a numerator, while using the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of a product as a denominator. Second, it is more reasonable to focus only on quantitative items such as the performance and features of a product where we can obtain reliable and quantifiable data. Third, when calculating the product quality, normalization based on non-linear value functions and the weighting factors of the attributes must be considered. Fourth, the whole environmental impact of a product has to be considered when calculating the denominator.Background, Aim and Scope. Type III Environmental declarations (Environmental product declarations, EPD) are intended to inform interested parties about the environmental performance characteristics of products. They are based mainly on LCA according to ISO 14040/44, provide its results as inventory or impact category indicators and, thus, describe the product system under investigation. ISO 14025 has been published in 2006. The concept of EPD has found a market in particular in the construction sector. It has a considerable part in the European Integrated Product Policy, e.g. documentation of improvement in design for environment, documentation of compliance with green procurement requirements. Main Features. EPDs are a means to communicate the results of an LCA-study according to ISO 14040/44 in a comparable and harmonised way. ISO 14025 describes how to develop and document consistent and comparable data sets. This report exemplifies three levels in the development of an EPD for which the standard provides requirements: Framework for the development of an EPD programme including verification procedures for EPD; Defining the rules for conducting the LCA according to ISO 14040/44, as well as additional information for defined product categories (product category rules); Development and documentation of an EPD according to the PCR. Results. After quite a few years of standardisation work, the new standard ISO 14025 will provide a systematic approach to documenting and communicating LCA results in an EPD. This will support propagating LCA from its academic origin to a practical tool for the assessment of the environmental performance of a product system. An essential part will be the participation of LCA experts in EPD programmes. Conclusions. An enormous effort for developing appropriate conventions will have to be undertaken by all interested parties in order to come up with consistent and comparable EPDs in different branches. In some areas, defining such conventions has been shown to be possible. An important part is the development of quality criteria for modelling as well as for the databases used to calculate the LCA. To find sufficient credibility at economically acceptable conditions with a minimum of bureaucratic effort more practical experience will have to be gained. This holds especially for the trust in the EPD results based on the independence of the review, transparency of procedures and the participation of interested parties. Perspectives. There is a demand on education for SME developing EPDs for their products as well as for the users of EPDs on how to document EPDs transparently and to apply them properly.Goal, Scope and Background. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a scoring system that evaluates the environmental friendliness of,buildings. It is composed of 69 credits, each one providing a score of one (i.e., one point) if implemented. However, since each credit does not always provide the same type and magnitude of benefits for the environment, a higher rating is not always synonymous with lower impacts. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the actual extent of the benefits and burdens of LEED, identify the critical credits and develop a new scale that will correct these miscorrelations. Methods. The various LEED credits are qualitatively analysed. It is possible to quantify the actual outcomes and thus perform a lifecycle assessment (LCA) on 45 credits applied to an actual California office building. This allows comparing the benefits of the different credits among each other. Commuting of the employees is included in the system. The LCA is performed with the help of SimaPro 7, combining the ecoinvent 1.2 inventory database and the impact assessment methodology IMPACT 2002+ v2.1, adapted to North America. Impacts are evaluated for human health, ecosystems quality, climate change, and resource consumption. Impacts of the different credits are aggregated in one indicator to allow the design of a new scoring system that assigns to the different credits an amount of points (i.e., a score) that are related to the actual benefits. A school and a residential building are also modeled in order to perform a sensitivity study. Results and Discussion. Operation, especially employee commuting and electricity consumption, dominates the impacts associated with the building. It appears that waste generation have limited but not negligible impacts, whereas water consumption has small impacts. Since the building is situated in California, heating is not an important source of impacts. As a result, credits that provide the most environmental benefits are the ones geared toward increasing the fraction of green electricity, reducing energy consumption, reducing employee commuting, and increasing waste recycling, along with the ones favoring the reuse and recycling of the building structure. The ones targeting reduction of water and land use, and recycling content in the furniture appear to be less beneficial. The scores of the different LEED credits range from -128 to 606. Negative credits are due to credits that lead to more burdens than benefits, for example, the one requiring the construction of a multifloor parking lot (with a score of -128). The most beneficial credit (with a score of 606) is the one requiring that electricity comes from at least 50% green power. Conclusions and Outlook. Comparing the new scale with the observations on site shows that the LEED credits actually implemented are not always the most beneficial for the environment. This issue should be addressed in order to make LEED more efficient. The proposed rating system should help correct these discrepancies. The amount of reduction in employee commuting that the related credits really achieve, actual impacts of land and water use, along with the benefits of improved indoor air quality are among the main future challenges of the present study.Background, Goal and Scope. The transport sector contributes significantly to the global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Among other measures, also light-weighting of vehicles is discussed as a way to reduce the energy consumption and, thus, also CO2 emissions of transport. Currently, most Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) use rough estimates on potential energy savings by light-weighting, which are not comparable due to different scopes and methodologies. This paper therefore presents a set of scientific data for use phase energy savings for different vehicle types for a harmonised and, thus, comparable weight reduction of 100 kg. Road and rail vehicles, ships and aircrafts are covered in this paper. Besides an analysis on a per vehicle basis, the potential contribution of light-weighting to a reduction of the global transport energy consumption is also estimated. All analysed energy savings are independent of the technical realisation of the weight reduction (e.g. new materials or improved design or logistics). The data can therefore be used in LCAs of different light-weighting technologies. Methods. Available data have been analysed in respect to system boundaries and methodologies. Several sources which are suitable for a comparable quantification of specific energy savings per vehicle-km or the use phase energy savings, for example, have been identified. In order to obtain more differentiated data and close the data gaps, specific modelling has also been undertaken for articulated trucks. Data have been checked for plausibility against the analysis of physical resistance factors and been converted to a harmonised and, thus, comparable weight reduction of 100 kg. Results and Discussion. The energy consumption per vehicle-km depends largely on the physical resistances which the vehicle has to overcome during its operation. Ground vehicles operated in urban areas, with frequent stops and accelerations, are generally capable of higher energy savings for a given weight reduction compared to vehicles on highways at steady speeds. The total use phase energy savings for a 100 kg weight reduction also depend on the total use phase transport performance. Road vehicles realise about the lowest use phase energy savings due to the limited use phase mileage. Rail cars commonly have a higher use phase mileage and can therefore achieve higher use phase energy savings. Even higher savings are estimated to be achieved by a weight reduction of high-speed ferries (about 10 times higher compared to rail vehicles) and aircraft (about 100 times higher compared to rail vehicles). On a global level, however, road vehicles and especially passenger cars could make the highest contribution to reduce energy consumption by light-weighting. This is due to the high share of these vehicles on the global energy consumption (because of the huge number of these vehicles) and also a considerable potential to realise a further weight reduction. Conclusion and Perspectives. Light-weighting is one way of reducing transport energy consumption in the use phase. The differences in use phase energy savings for a 100 kg weight reduction between the vehicle groups are considerable and allow for the identification of priorities for future light-weighting efforts. The contribution to a reduction of the global transport energy consumption, in turn, depends on the further potential for a weight reduction and on the number of vehicles which can be weight reduced. The OECD market of private passenger cars and trucks, for instance, offers a good perspective due to a high contribution to the global transport energy consumption, a considerable potential for weight reduction and a high turnover rate of the vehicle fleet. The benefits will be realised after a substantial replacement of the existing fleet with new, weight-reduced vehicles.Goal and Background. Allocation methodology for creating life cycle inventories is frequently addressed, yet the practice continues to be in a state of flux. Clearly there are many ways in which allocation can be carried out with no single method providing a general solution. ISO 14041 identifies a methodological framework, although it does not provide specific guidance on when and how to apply the steps that are outlined in the standard. An expansion, or elaboration, of the current ISO framework for allocation is needed. Method. A literature search was conducted on the various allocation schemes that are used to create life cycle inventories, with a focus on industrial processes. The results are grouped by 'general guidelines' and 'industry-specific' applications. Results and Discussion. The search uncovered procedures that support larger efforts, such as the U.S. Database Project and CML's Operational Guide. Other researchers conducted industry-specific studies to examine the effect of that varying inputs has on outputs. These studies typically attempt to demonstrate how allocation depends on a system's operation. Conclusions. A recurring theme is the need to match the methodological choice with the goal of the study. However, guidance remains lacking. While system expansion is the preferred approach and avoids allocation altogether, it leads to a larger, more complicated model that requires more data. Data accessibility, time, and effort become significant and bring the practicality of applying system expansion into question Recommendations and Perspectives. It would be useful to develop the range of allocation approaches aligned with different applications (i.e. goals). These approaches should be tested in various case studies for further discussion within the LCA community. Emphasis in these tests should be on the effect of modelling variations on the decision outcome when analyzing an entire system and not focus at the single process level.A life cycle assessment (LCA) method was used to examine the environmental impact of the winter wheat-summer maize production system on the North China Plain. The LCA considered the entire system required to produce 1 ton each of winter wheat and summer maize. The analysis included raw material extraction and transportation, agrochemical production and transportation, and arable farming in the field. First, all emissions and resource consumption connected to the different processes were listed in a life cycle inventory (LCI) and related to a common unit (1 ton of grain). Subsequently, a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) was conducted, in which the inventory data were aggregated into indicators for environmental effects, including energy depletion, climate change, acidification, aquatic eutrophication, human toxicity, aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicity. For winter wheat systems, energy depletion and acidification were the most relevant environmental impacts, and energy depletion and aquatic eutrophication were the primary concerns for summer maize systems. The results revealed that the most important source of environmental impact in the winter wheat-summer maize production system in Huantai County was the production and application of nitrogen fertilisers. The environmental impacts of winter wheat were much stronger than those of summer maize due to higher inputs and lower use efficiency of agrochemicals.Conductive adhesives are getting growing attention in the electronics industry as they constitute an alternative to lead-free solders and conventional solders. The purpose of the present research is to compare the 10Sn90Pb solder paste to an epoxy based isotropically conductive adhesive (ICA) containing pure silver. The study is done from a life cycle perspective in Japan using input data from literature and the inventory results are evaluated using the Life cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling (LIME) methodology. The findings are that the silver containing adhesive, excluding platings, are superior to the I 10Sn90Pb, and that trade-offs exist between 10Sn90Pb and silver-epoxy ICA. For surface platings palladium dominates the results. Overall, the results are dominated by various lead emissions, the silver resource consumption, and the sulfur oxide emissions from palladium production. The most important research limitations are the representativity of the metal production data and end-of-life scenario. The value of the present study is that so far no LIME-based life cycle impact assessment case study comparing 10Sn90Pb solder paste and silver-epoxy ICA including platings has been reported.Approximately 400,000 tons per year of aluminum dross are generated during a melting process of aluminum metal in Japan. The Al dross and the residue, which have high concentration of metallic Al, are mostly used as an Al resource for Al production or as a deoxidizer in the steel industry. On the other hand, the lower grade residue with the Al content less than 20%, is difficult to be recycled and is therefore landfilled. This paper deals with (1) a material flow analysis (MFA) of the domestic aluminum dross in order to achieve clear targets for recycling of aluminum dross and residue, and (2) an environmental assessment of newly developed technologies for its recycling, such as the process of hydrogen production from residue. The result of material flow analysis on the domestic aluminum dross in 2003 shows that 234.4 x 10(3) t of aluminum is recovered and 215.0 x 10(3) t of residue is generated from the dross. The residue is mostly used in the steelmaking process, whereas 50.0 x 10(3) t of residue is landfilled in the final disposal site. As the result of the environmental assessment through the material flow, there is a possibility of reduction of CO2 emission and waste emissions by using residue (Al content: 10%) as a hydrogen resource, which is presently landfilled.In our aim to decrease the consumption of materials and energy and promote the use of renewable resources, such as biofuels, rises the need to measure materials and energy fluxes. This paper suggests the use of Exergy How Analysis (ExFA) as an environmental assessment tool to account wastes and emissions, determine the exergetic efficiency, compare substitutes and other types of energy sources: all useful in defining environmental and economical policies for resource use. In order to illustrate how ExFA is used, it is applied to the process of biodiesel production. The results show that the production process has a low exergy loss (492 MJ). The exergy loss is reduced by using potassium hydroxide and sulphuric acid as process catalysts and it can be further minimised by improving the quality of the used cooking oil. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the past 20 years, municipal solid waste policies have changed in response to societal and environmental changes. Municipal solid waste policies in many countries become more complicated and numerous. This paper reviews several models developed to support decision making in the area of municipal solid waste management (MSWM). It has been discovered that many modem decision-making support systems are already partially considering social factor analysis in addition to expenses and benefits, environmental effects, technical issues, and management aspects. However, questions are raised as to whether these analyses are sufficient and whether they can predict future possible impacts. This research studies Taiwan's major municipal solid waste policies in the past 10 years and discovers that there is still a great deal of uncertainty associated with policy implementation, even when the effects of factors related to environmental, economic, social, technological, and management aspects have been considered. The purpose of this study is to develop a decision-making model of MSWM to resolve the insufficiencies in policy impact analysis used for decision-making. The policy impact potential analysis method is developed to predict the possible impacts of a policy on particular alternatives; subsequently, a novel decision-making model for waste management is formed. A case study of fly ash management in Taiwan is presented to demonstrate the practicality of this model. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Part I of this study presented a critical survey of life-cycle assessment (LCA) applications in the pulp and paper industry. The objective of Part II is to characterize and understand the methodologies that have been used in reported LCA studies, inclulding their limitations, and to identify opportunities for improvement of LCA methodologies. Factors examined include the type of LCA application, the source of the publication, the country of origin, the organization performing the study, the software used, and the degree of completeness of the study. We found that many LCA studies fail to include certain elements as defined by the standard International Organization for Standardization (ISO) methodology, in particular the quality assessment component. Most of the methodologies and databases used in the studies are appropriate for the European context, but not well adapted to North American specifics. There is, therefore, a need to develop North American methodologies and databases. Significant potential also exists for using LCA with other product and process analysis tools for enhanced decision-making.The Sustainable Transport Energy Programme (STEP) is an initiative of the Government of Western Australia, to explore hydrogen fuel cell technology as an alternative to the existing diesel and natural gas public transit infrastructure in Perth. This project includes three buses manufactured by DaimlerChrysler with Ballard fuel cell power sources operating in regular service alongside the existing natural gas and diesel bus fleets. The life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the fuel cell bus trial in Perth determines the overall environmental footprint and energy demand by studying all phases of the complete transportation system, including the hydrogen infrastructure, bus manufacturing, operation, and end-of-life disposal. The LCAs of the existing diesel and natural gas transportation systems are developed in parallel. The findings show that the trial is competitive with the diesel and natural gas bus systems in terms of global warming potential and eutrophication. Emissions that contribute to acidification and photochemical ozone are greater for the fuel cell buses. Scenario analysis quantifies the improvements that can be expected in future generations of fuel cell vehicles and shows that a reduction of greater than 50% is achievable in the greenhouse gas, photochemical ozone creation and primary enengy demand impact categories. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a form of chain analysis in which structural pathways in the economic system are delineated and connected to environmental problems. As such, it can be seen as an extension of, or a complement to, energy analysis. The main developments over the past 30 years are sketched in a perspective that puts an emphasis on standardization and scientific consensus creation. We end with a logical next development: a closer cooperation and harmonization with the domain of energy analysis, and an expected growing interest from the energy-application side. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As oil refining is a multiproduct industrial activity, there are innumerable ways to allocate a refinery's CO2 emissions among the various refined products. The linear-programming models used to manage refineries may serve to compute the marginal contribution of each finished product to the CO2 emissions of the refinery. We show that, under some conditions, this marginal contribution is a relevant means of allocating all the refinery's CO2 emissions. The application of this allocation rule leads to interesting results which can be used in a well-to-wheel life cycle assessment. In fact, this allocation rule holds rigorously if the demand equations are the only binding constraints with a nonzero right-hand side coefficient. This is certainly not the case for short-run models with fixed capacity of processing units. To extend the application field of our approach, we therefore suggest three distinct solutions, inspired by economic theory: applying the Aumann-Shapley cost-sharing method, or adapting the Ramsey pricing-formula, or using proportionally-adjusted marginal contributions. A numerical application to a simplified refining model is presented. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cradle-to-grave environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of a few poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) based composites has been performed and was compared to commodity petrochemical polymers. The end products studied are a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor housing (conventionally produced from high-impact polystyrene, HIPS) and the internal panels of an average car (conventionally produced from glass-fibers-filled polypropylene, PP-GF). The environmental impact is evaluated on the basis of nonrenewable energy use (NREU) and global warming potential over a 100 years time horizon (GWP100). Sugar cane bagasse (SCB) and nanoscaled organophilic montmorillonite (OMMT) are used as PHB fillers. The results obtained show that, despite the unsatisfying mechanical properties of PHB composites, depending on the type of filler and on the product, it is possible to reach lower environmental impacts than by use of conventional petrochemical polymers. These savings are mainly related to the PHB production process, while there are no improvements related to composites preparation. SCB-based composites seem to be environmentally superior to clay-based ones.This paper describes the life cycle environmental cost characteristics of intensive and extensive green roofs versus conventional roofs. A life cycle inventory and environmental impact assessment is used to document and analyze the similarities and differences in the environmental impacts of the fabrication, transportation, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal of all three roof systems. This is important because there are additional resources committed to green roofs from which environmentally relevant benefits, such as reduced electrical energy use for building cooling, are derived. The extensive green roof design for the case study presented here is from an actual 1115 m(2) (12,000 ft(2)) green roof project on a retail store in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. The case study includes a conventional ballasted roof, an extensive, or shallow growing medium green roof, and an intensive, or deep growing medium green roof. For the life cycle inventory and the material use, both the types of material used and the transportation distances to the site are with respect to this project. The study found that, for the Pittsburgh, PA climate, the energy use reduction that is realized because of the lower thermal conductivity of the roof due to the green roof growing medium is the critical factor in determining the relative magnitude of the environmental impact of the alternatives compared here. Although the energy use reduction is not very large in relation to the overall building energy use, it is significant for environmental impact over the life cycle of the building. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wooden type of housing is ubiquitous in Japan. It is the main structure for housing; however, due to the increase in residential developments, steel reinforced concrete houses are also on the rise. This paper assesses the environmental impacts of these two types of construction. An evaluation of the two types of construction in terms of energy usage and air emissions is done. A comparison of the damage costs due to the generated emissions is also considered. Four types of emissions generated are evaluated, namely carbon emissions (CO2) nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx) and suspended particulate matter (SPM). The life cycle of the two different housing construction types is traced and environmental impacts are determined. External costs are also calculated. Furthermore, different improvement assessment scenarios are simulated to ascertain several emission reduction possibilities. The study looks into the emitted emissions from the housing construction to its final disposal of a typical residential development in Saga, Japan. Results show that much of the environmental impacts from building a house are on the Global Warming Potential due to high carbon emissions. Moreover, the construction phase generated the highest pollutant emissions from nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and suspended particulate matter. Steel reinforced concrete (SRC) construction has a higher environmental impact compared to the wooden type of housing construction. A longer design life for a residential house gives a reduction of about 14% in carbon emissions. Using solar energy for the operation phase has gained a reduction of 73% in the total life cycle carbon emissions. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle impact assessment aims to translate the amounts of substance emitted during the life cycle of a product into a potential impact on the environment, which includes terrestrial ecosystems. This work suggests some possible improvements in assessing the toxicity of metals on soil ecosystems in life cycle assessment (LCA). The current available data on soil ecotoxicity allow one to calculate the chronic terrestrial HC50(EC50) (hazardous concentration affecting 50% of the species at their EC50 level, i.e. the level where 50% of the individuals of the species are affected) of nine metals and metalloids (As(III) or (V), Be(II), Cr(III) or (VI), Sb(III) or (V), Pb(II), Cu(II), Zn(II) and Ni(II)). Contrarily to what is generally advised in LCIA, the terrestrial HC50 of metals shall not be extrapolated from the aquatic HC50, using the Equilibrium Partitioning method since the partition coefficient (Kd) of metals is highly variable. The experimental ecotoxicology generally uses metallic salts to contaminate artificial soils but the comparison of the EC50 or NOEC obtained for the same metal with different salts reveals that the kind of salt used insignificantly influences these values. In contrast, depending on the metallic fraction of concern, the EC50 may vary, as for cadmium: the EC50 of Folsotnia candida, expressed as free Cd in pore water is almost 2.5 orders of magnitude lower than that expressed as total metal. A similar result is obtained with Eisenia fetida, confirming the importance of metals speciation in assessing their impact on soils. By ranking the metals according to the difference between their terrestrial and aquatic HC50 values, two groups are distinguished, which match the hard soft acids and bases (HSAB) concept. This allows to estimate their affinity for soil components and potential toxicity according to their chemical characteristics. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Estonia is the only country in Europe with significant environmentally intensive oil shale-based energy production. However, the legal obligations of the EU will make substantial changes over the coming years to current electricity production technology. Increasing the use of alternative energy carriers for responding to future requirements has also been in focus. In this study, three different future electricity supply scenarios for Estonia in 2020 are considered and compared to the situation in 2002. They are based on domestic oil shale, imported natural gas, and imported nuclear power. According to the aims of the national energy policy, renewable energy sources were raised to 10% in all scenarios. Using the LCA methodology, the least damaging impact on the environment occurs in the 'nuclear scenario', with nuclear energy as the main energy source. The best scenario, however, depends on the weight or acceptance of accidental releases or other impacts not defined in this context. The 'Oil shale scenario' would be a slightly more damaging alternative than the 'Natural gas scenario' even if new technical solutions will remarkably improve the environmental performance of oil shale electricity production. Land use and waste disposal are crucial issues, particularly for oil shale and nuclear electricity production. However, the depletion of oil shale is not as critical an issue as the depletion of natural gas and uranium. According to the significance analysis of impact categories, climate change is the most significant impact on the environment in the scenarios. Future decisions on the development of the Estonian energy sector are most likely to be based on technological, economical and political aspects. Political aspects are likely to be the most significant. However, this type of study can give additional value to the discussion due to the increasing role of sustainability in energy issues. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When assessing human health or ecosystem impacts of chemicals several calculation steps need to be addressed. Matrix algebra solving techniques are a useful approach to structure and solve the system of mass balance equations assessing chemical fate in environmental multimedia models. We suggest expanding this matrix approach towards a framework which includes the exposure, effect, and damage assessment for human health and ecosystems, also applicable to spatial modeling. Special emphasis is laid upon interpretation of the physical meaning of different elements within the matrices. The proposed framework provides several advantages such as simplified updating or extending of models to new impact pathways, possibility of covering various models within the same framework and transparency. Interpretation of intermediate and final results is facilitated, e.g., allowing for direct identification of dominating exposure pathways. Model comparability and evaluation is well supported, as the four matrices contain all intermediate results in a clear and interpretable way, independent from parameters, such as amount and place of emission. Multidisciplinary work is strongly facilitated enabling the linkage of different models from various disciplines together, since each of its modules defines a clear interface of intermediate results. This framework was reviewed by an independent expert panel within a UNEP/SETAC workshop, and adopted as starting-point for new advances in modeling environmental toxic releases within the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Goal, Scope and Background. The issue of whether food miles are a relevant indicator for the environmental impacts associated with foods has received significant attention in recent years. It is suggested here that issues other than the distance travelled need to be considered. The argument is presented by illustrating the case for the provision of apples. Materials and Methods. The effects of variability in primary energy requirements for apple cultivation and for other life cycle stages, seasonality (timing of consumption) and loss of produce during storage are studied in this paper, by comparing apples from different supplier countries for consumption in Europe. Results. Data sources for primary energy use (PEU) of apple production are identified ranging from 0.4-3.8 MJ/kg apples for European and Southern American countries and 0.4-0.7 MJ/kg for New Zealand. This variability is related to different yields and producer management practices in the different countries. Storage loss may range from 5% to 40% for storage periods between 4 and 10 months, and this has a significant effect on the results (e.g. increasing the total PEU by 8-16% when stored for 5-9 months in Europe as compared with a no loss and no storage situation). The storage periods and related storage losses change markedly through the year for imported (i.e. non-European) versus European apples. Discussion. The timing of consumption and related storage losses need to be included in the assessment, as this affects the order of preference for locally sourced versus imported apples. The variability in energy requirements in different life cycle stages, but particularly for the fruit production stage, is also significant in this comparative analysis. Conclusions. Overall, it seems that there are similarities in the total PEU ranges for European and New Zealand apples during the Southern Hemisphere's apple season (European spring and summer). However, during the European autumn and winter (Northern Hemisphere apple season) PEU values are generally higher for apples imported from the Southern Hemisphere compared with European apples consumed in Europe. However, this latter observation may not hold true where apples for consumption in one European country are imported from another European country, because energy use for road transportation has a significant influence on the result. Recommendations and Perspectives. Future studies comparing alternative sources of fresh produce need to account for ranges of data for the fruit production and storage stages, which reflect the seasonality of production.Nowadays, every chemical treatment must be developed taking into account its global impact on the environment. With this objective a life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used as a tool for the assessment of the environmental impact of three environmentally friendly processes for the removal of Diuron and Linuron herbicides from water: artificial light assisted photo-Fenton, photo-Fenton coupled to biological treatment and solar assisted photo-Fenton. The inventoried data has been classified considering the potential environmental impacts categories included in the CML 2 baseline 2000 method. Among the three scenarios considered, photo-Fenton coupled to biological treatment proved to have the lowest environmental impact in all the studied categories due to the lower hydrogen peroxide and electricity consumptions. The environmental impacts associated with hydrogen peroxide and electricity production imply more than 72% in all the impact categories of the three scenarios, except for aquatic eutrophication potential category, where the main impacts are related to nitrogen emissions.Life cycle analysis of climate and disturbance effects on forest net ecosystem productivity (NEP) is necessary to assess changes in forest carbon (C) stocks under current or future climates. Ecosystem models used in such assessments need to undergo well-constrained tests of their hypotheses for climate and disturbance effects on the processes that determine CO2 exchange between forests and the atmosphere. We tested the ability of the model ecosys to simulate diurnal changes in CO2 fluxes under changing air temperatures (T-a) and soil water contents during forest regeneration with eddy covariance measurements over boreal jack pine (Pinus banksiana) stands along a postclearcut chronosequence. Model hypotheses for hydraulic and nutrient constraints on C02 fixation allowed ecosys to simulate the recovery of C cycling during the transition of boreal jack pine stands from C sources following clearcutting (NEP from -150 to -200 g Cm(-2)yr(-1)) to C sinks at maturity (NEP from 20 to 80gCm(-2)yr(-1)) with large interannual variability. Over a 126-year logging cycle, annualized NEP, C harvest, and net biome productivity (NBP = NEP-harvest removals) of boreal jack pine averaged 47, 33 and 14 g Cm(-2)yr(-1). Under an IPCC SIZES climate change scenario, rising T,, exacerbated hydraulic constraints that adversely affected NEP of boreal jack pine after 75 years. These adverse effects were avoided in the model by replacing the boreal jack pine ecotype with one adapted to warmer T-a.. This replacement raised annualized NEP, C harvest, and NBP to 81, 56 and 25gCm(-2)yr(-1) during a 126-year logging cycle under the same climate change scenario.Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a procedure used as an analytical tool for the evaluation of the environmental impact caused by a material, a manufacturing process or product. For an end product, LCA requires both the identification and quantification of materials and energy used in all stages of the product's life, together with their environmental impact. It requires therefore a huge amount of data about materials, components, manufacturing processes, energy consumption and the relevant environmental impacts. For this reason, a number of software and databases have been developed, in order to facilitate LCA users. These are the so-called Eco-Tools, used in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of a product from the materials and the energy used for production. In this paper, LCA is conducted for solar thermosyphonic systems, with the aid of three commercially available Eco-Tools, usually used by LCA practitioners, namely: Eco-It, GEMIS and SimaPro, and the results are compared. Although all three tools claim accordance with the international standards and guidelines, differences do exist. A typical solar thermosyphonic system (DSHWS) with a 4 m(2) collector area and a capacity of 150 dm(3) that covers the hot water needs of a three person family in Thessaloniki is used as case study. The results of the three tools are compared for each component of the solar system as well as for each material used and for the conventional energy substituted by the system.Background, Aim and Scope. The issues of environmental impacts of concrete have become important since many major infrastructure owners are now requiring environmentally sustainable design (ESD). The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are often used as a rating tool to compare the environmental impact of different construction materials in ESD. Currently, the designers are forced to make estimates of CO2 emissions for concrete in ESD based on conjecture rather than data. The aim of this study was to provide hard data collected from a number of quarries and concrete manufacturing plants so that accurate estimates can be made for concretes in ESD. Materials and Methods. This paper presents the results of a research project aimed to quantify the CO2 emissions associated with the manufacture and placement of concrete. The life cycle inventory data was collected from two coarse aggregates quarries, one fine aggregates quarry, six concrete batching plants and several other sources. The results are presented in terms of equivalent CO2 emissions. The potential of fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) to reduce the emissions due to concrete was investigated. A case study of a building is also presented. Results. Portland cement was found to be the primary source of CO, emissions generated by typical commercially produced concrete mixes, being responsible for 74% to 81% of total CO2 emissions. The next major source of CO2 emissions in concrete was found to be coarse aggregates, being responsible for 13% to 20% of total CO2 emissions. The majority contribution of CO2 emissions in coarse aggregates production was found to from electricity, typically about 80%. Blasting, excavation, hauling and transport comprise less than 25%. While the explosives had very high emission factors per unit mass, they contribute very small amounts (< 0.25 %) to coarse aggregate production, since only small quantities are used. Production of a tonne of fine aggregates was found to generate 30% to 40% of the emissions generated by the production of a tonne of coarse aggregates. Fine aggregates generate less equivalent CO2 since they are only graded, not crushed. Diesel and electricity were found to contribute almost equally to the CO2 emissions due to fine aggregates production. Emission contributions due to admixtures were found to be negligible. Concrete batching, transport and placement activities were all found to contribute very small amounts of CO2 to total concrete emissions. Discussion. The CO2 emissions generated by typical normal strength concrete mixes using Portland cement as the only binder were found to range between 0.29 and 0.32 t CO2-e/m(3). GGBFS was found to be capable of reducing concrete CO2 emissions by 22% in typical concrete mixes. Fly ash was found to be capable of reducing concrete CO2 emissions by 13% to 15% in typical concrete mixes. Conclusions. The results presented are based on typical concrete manufacturing and placement methods in Australia. The data presented in this paper can be utilized to compare green house gas emissions due to concrete with those associated with alternative construction materials. Recommendations and Perspectives. The various rating schemes used to compare alternative construction materials should use models such as the one presented in this paper, based on hard data so that reliable comparisons can be made. A case study is presented in this paper demonstrating how the results may be utilized.Background, Aim and Scope. The Home Appliance Recycling Law (hereunder referred to as the Law) for used cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs, air conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines was enacted in April 2001 in Japan. The Law requires that retailers reclaim, and manufacturers and importers recycle such home appliances. Consumers are required to pay collection and recycling fees incurred in disposing of any of the four home appliances. Home appliances must, as a general rule, be managed in accordance with the Law. In reality, other routes exist, such as via local authorities, scrap processors, illegal dumping and exporting. At about the time the Law was enacted, the refrigerant used for air conditioners and refrigerators was replaced by more environmentally friendly substances such as isobutene. Local authorities had the responsibility of disposing of the appliances of households before the enactment of the Law. It was general practice for local authorities to dispose of home appliances in landfills after breaking them up and recovering valuable resources such as iron, copper and aluminum. Although they made efforts to recover refrigerant fluorocarbons, there were not required to do so. Materials and Methods. This study analyzed the material flow resulting from the Law and other processing flows to quantify the global warming effect caused by home appliance recycling using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. To evaluate the Law and to develop policy planning, the challenges of future efforts will be considered using time series data. For these reasons, we have assessed the Project Scenario, which corresponded to the present reality; the Baseline Scenario, which assumed that measures such as the Law were not implemented after 2000, and the Ideal Scenario, where all used products were recycled as prescribed by the Law. The environmental impacts for each scenario were estimated using value, which was obtained from multiplying the amount of reproduction and waste treatment by each inventory data. Results. It is estimated that emission reductions of 4.7E+4 t CO(2)e, subtracted the Project Scenario from the Baseline Scenario, were reduced for TVs in 2001 through recycling. The impact from recycling glass from cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions is significant. An improvement of 2.3E+4 t CO(2)e could be anticipated by upgrading to the Ideal Scenario in 2001. It was estimated that there was a reduction of 9.2E+5 t CO(2)e in 2001 for air conditioners. Although the effect of the recovery for refrigerants contributed greatly, some fluorocarbons that are still discharged have had a considerable impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Hypothetically, a reduction of 3.2E+6 t CO(2)e could be anticipated with the Ideal Scenario in 2001. A reduction of 2.6E+6 t CO(2)e was achieved for refrigerators in 2001. Although a further reduction can be anticipated through the Ideal Scenario, there will not be much difference with the Project Scenario by 2010. It was estimated that 3.8E+4 t CO(2)e were reduced for washing machines in 2001. Only a small improvement can be expected through the Ideal Scenario. Discussion. Since many assumptions were used in this study, a sensitivity analysis was carried out in order to grasp their impact. The findings of the sensitivity analysis are that the uncertainties are large, but the number of the greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions is still clear except for the difference between the Project Scenario and the Ideal Scenario for TVs. This analysis gives authenticity to the findings. Conclusions. Establishing a system for liquid crystal display and plasma display panel TVs is desirable because the absolute amount of used LCD/PDP TVs will rapidly increase as the usage of CRT TVs rapidly decreases from 2007. With regard to refrigerant recovery from air conditioners, a significant decrease in GHG emissions has been recorded. There is, however, still ample room for improvement. It will be necessary to switch to refrigerants with low global warming potentials (GWPs) or work more on improving the recovery rate in the future. Alternatives and recovery of fluorocarbons from refrigerators contributed greatly to GHG reductions. The GHG emissions from refrigerator recycling will be minimal whether used refrigerator will be processed legally or not because most used refrigerators will contain natural refrigerants in the near future. The improvement for washing machines was low because it was assumed that their main constituent steel has been previously recycled, and that the plastic recycling rate will not change significantly in the future. An improvement in the recycling technology itself is required. This study was carried out on four home appliance products, and it was found that the Home Appliance Recycling Law has brought significant reductions in GHG emissions. There is also room to make GHG reductions through improving the processing methods further. Recommendations and Perspectives. The impact on GHG emissions by fluorocarbons of air conditioners and refrigerators is the greatest. Adequate measures are particularly required for air conditioners that may continue to discharge GHGs in the future.Background, Aim and Scope. In accordance with the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocols, the refrigeration industry is currently evaluating the environmental performance of using HFCs and the so-called natural refrigerants, such as NH3 or CO2, as a long-term substitute for CFCs and HCFCs. The objective of this study is to quantify and compare the environmental impact throughout the life cycle of commercial refrigeration systems using HCFCs, HFCs and natural refrigerants. The function of the system under study is the refrigeration of a standard European supermarket with an average surface area of 2000 m(2), with a cooling duty of 130 kW over a period of 15 years. Different scenarios have been created involving a combination of the most common refrigerants (HCFCs (R-22), HFCs (R-134a, R-404A, R-407A, R-407C, R-410A, R-507A) and natural ones (R-744 and R-717)), with different commercial refrigeration systems (direct expansion, secondary loop and distributed), for medium and low temperature. For each scenario, an environmental evaluation was carried out, using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, to compare the influence of both the refrigerant and refrigeration system on the overall contribution to impact. Materials and Methods. According to ISO 1404X standards, the analysis is performed at the following two levels. 1) Firstly, the emissions accounted for in the inventory stage are sorted into impact categories according to CIVIL to obtain an indicator for each category (mandatory elements). 2) Secondly, the weighting of environmental data to a single unit is applied (optional elements). In compliance with ISO 14042, a sensitivity analysis is performed and three different impact assessment methods (Eco-Indicator'95, Eco-Indicator'99 and EPS'00) are applied in order to analyse their influence on the results. Results. The use of natural refrigerants such as R-744 and R-717 in direct expansion and secondary loop systems, respectively, is completely justified from the environmental point of view, taking into account that it offers better results for most impact categories and for all impact assessment methods. The need to promote the use of R-744 has to be stressed, despite the fact that it is presently in an experimental phase, and that its current installation outputs are low, since it has been demonstrated that it will perform better in direct expansion systems from an environmental point of view in a future scenario in which its efficiency equals that of R-404A, in the same way as what occurs with R-717 for secondary loop systems. The need to replace HCFCs by HFCs or natural refrigerants is clearly shown by the contribution to the ozone depletion category. Discussion. Energy efficiency of a refrigeration installation is a determinant parameter to assess pollutant emissions to the environment. If we assume a future scenario in which R-744 has an efficiency similar to that of R-404A, then R-744 is seen as the refrigerant which offers a better environmental behaviour in the direct expansion system. Conclusions. It can be concluded that this study demonstrates how using the so-called natural refrigerants as a long-term substitute for CFCs and HCFCs, even better than the use of HFCs, is environmentally feasible. Recommendations and Perspectives. More investment and research should be carried out with the aim of promoting the use of the so-called natural refrigerants to fulfil the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols. The technology used for R-744 is at a developmental stage, and presently, the efficiency of the installations operating with this refrigerant is lower than those others functioning with HFCs or R-717. In the near future, it will be demostrated that this natural refrigerant can replace the use of other HFCs.Background, Aim and Scope. The objective of this life cycle assessment (LCA) study is to develop LCA models for energy systems in order to assess the potential environmental impacts that might result from meeting energy demands in buildings. The scope of the study includes LCA models of the average electricity generation mix in the USA, a natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plant, a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) cogeneration system; a microturbine (MT) cogeneration system; an internal combustion engine (ICE) cogeneration system; and a gas boiler. Methods. LCA is used to model energy systems and obtain the life cycle environmental indicators that might result when these systems are used to generate a unit energy output. The intended use of the LCA analysis is to investigate the operational characteristics of these systems while considering their potential environmental impacts to improve building design using a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model. Results. The environmental impact categories chosen to assess the performance of the energy systems are global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), tropospheric ozone precursor potential (TOPP), and primary energy consumption (PE). These factors are obtained for the average electricity generation mix, the NGCC, the gas boiler, as well as for the cogeneration systems at different part load operation. The contribution of the major emissions to the emission factors is discussed. Discussion. The analysis of the life cycle impact categories indicates that the electrical to thermal energy production ratio has a direct influence on the value of the life cycle PE consumption factors. Energy systems with high electrical to thermal ratios (such as the SOFC cogeneration systems and the NGCC power plant) have low PE consumption factors, whereas those with low electrical to thermal ratios (such as the MT cogeneration system) have high PE consumption factors. In the case of GWP, the values of the life cycle GWP obtained from the energy systems do not only depend on the efficiencies of the systems but also on the origins of emissions contributing to GWP. When evaluating the life cycle AP and TOPP, the types of fuel as well as the combustion characteristics of the energy systems are the main factors that influence the values of AP and TOPP. Conclusions. An LCA study is performed to evaluate the life cycle emission factors of energy systems that can be used to meet the energy demand of buildings. Cogeneration systems produce utilizable thermal energy when used to meet a certain electrical demand which can make them an attractive alternative to conventional systems. The life cycle GWP, AP, TOPP and PE consumption factors are obtained for utility systems as well as cogeneration systems at different part load operation levels for the production of one kWh of energy output. Recommendations and Perspectives. Although the emission factors vary for the different energy systems, they are not the only factors that influence the selection of the optimal system for building operations. The total efficiencies of the system play a significant part in the selection of the desirable technology. Other factors, such as the demand characteristics of a particular building, influence the selection of energy systems. The emission factors obtained from this LCA study are used as coefficients of decision variables in the formulation of an MILP to optimize the selection of energy systems based on environmental criteria by taking into consideration the system efficiencies, emission characteristics, part load operation, and building energy demands. Therefore, the emission factors should not be regarded as the only criteria for choosing the technology that could result in lower environmental impacts, but rather one of several factors that determine the selection of the optimum energy system.Goal, Scope and Background. Combined heat and power (CHP) is a strategy aimed at reducing the impact of the energy sector on the climate by more efficient use of the energy content of the fuel. The implementation of CHP requires the utilisation of the heat produced. Space heating by means of district heating is one possible use for such heat. In countries such as Sweden, where district heating is already extensively used, many multiapartment buildings are connected to district heating. For increased use, the distribution systems will have to expand into suburbs with single family homes. However, the environmental impact and cost of the district heat distribution system increase when the pipe networks are extended into such areas. This is due to the production and installation of longer pipe networks and increased heat losses from the system. Attempts have been made to find new types of pipe constructions in order to lower the costs of connecting single family homes to district heating. These should be evaluated from an environmental perspective. The EPSPEX system is a distribution system intended for suburban areas. This system consists of cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) pipes in insulating blocks of expanded polystyrene (EPS). This paper presents a life cycle assessment of the EPSPEX district heat distribution system. In a second scenario, sub-stations were added. The results indicate areas that require improvement and provide a basis for comparison with other types of district heat distribution systems. Methods. Production, network construction and use of the district heat system were studied by means of life cycle methodology, employing specific data for the EPSPEX system and generic data for upstream impacts of the materials used. The system constructed in Vraen, Varnamo, Sweden, in 2002 was studied. The district heating used in Vraen is mainly based on biofuels. The functional unit was the use of one metre of an EPSPEX district heating system over a period of one year., The expected system life was 30 years. The results were characterised as global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential and the use of finite resources, as well as weighted by EPS 2000, ExternE and EcoIndicator 99. No external review was performed, but a reference group of district heating experts familiar with the practice has reviewed the study. Results. Heat losses are clearly the main environmental impact in all characterisations and weightings (71-92% of the total impact), despite the fact that the heat production studied was mainly based on biomass combustion, generally perceived to be environmentally friendly. Of the system components, the production of EPS insulation blocks had the largest environmental impact. Discussion. This impact, however, is compensated for by the fact that the need to produce less heat leads to a lower level of emissions. Several characterisation methods revealed that the production and combustion of diesel for excavating the pipe trench has a significant environmental impact. The jointing brass swaged coupling used for the PEX fluid pipes has a surprisingly high impact in terms of acidification and EPS 2000, considering the small amount of brass in the system. Conclusions. The life cycle environmental impact is dominated by the heat production needed to compensate for heat losses from the system, despite the fact that the EPSPEX system is relatively well insulated compared to a conventional district heating system. It is possible to shut down the heating circuit and only use the hot tap water circuit during the summer months; this reduces the heat losses and is an advantageous feature of the system. The second largest environmental impact of the EPSPEX system arises from the production of the EPS insulation blocks. A decrease in nitrogen oxide emissions, especially those caused by the excavation and filling of pipe trenches, would be beneficial. A rough comparison has been made with available literature data for conventional DN25 twin pipes. The results indicate that the environmental impact of the EPSPEX system is probably lower. However, the pipes are not identical, as the water delivery capacity of the conventional pipe is slightly lower. Recommendations and Perspectives. In Sweden, new types of pipes are being developed for district heating in suburban areas, and there is a need for an environmental comparison between such new alternatives and previous results for conventional polyurethane insulated steel pipes. This study reveals that biofuels, although perceived to be environmentally friendly, must be used with caution in order to ensure a satisfactory environmental performance. Heat loss from district heating should be minimized also when biofuels are used. The most immediate way to reduce such environmental impact is to increase the insulation. The environmental trade-off between lower heat losses achieved by the use of more insulation and the production of greater amounts of insulation material should be further studied.Background, Aims and Scope. Automotive electrical and electronic systems (EES) comprise an area that has grown steadily in importance in the past decade and will continue to gain relevance in the foreseeable future. For this reason, the SEES project (Sustainable Electrical & Electronic System for the Automotive Sector) aims to contribute to cost-effective and eco-efficient EES components. Scenarios for the recovery of automotive EES are defined by taking into consideration the required improvements in EES design and the development and implementation of new technologies. The research project SEES is funded by the European Commission (Contract no. TST3-CT-2003-506075) within the Sixth Framework Programme, priority 6.2 (see < www.sees-project.net > for more information). This paper presents the findings of an assessment of the environmental and economic improvements for automotive EES from a system perspective, taking into account all life cycle steps. Methods. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) case studies have been employed within the SEES project to define optimum design and end-of-life scenarios. These case studies have been applied to two selected EES components: an engine wire harness and a smart junction box, both manufactured by LEAR and assembled in an existing Ford car model. The component design has a significant impact on the product system and its processes, including its use and end-of-life (EOL) phase. For each of the analysed components, two potential design alternatives have been compared with the original design, based on designers' recommendations from the status quo scenario results. These include the use of alternative wiring systems with a reduced copper content (flat flexible cable), lead-free solder alloys and new fixation mechanisms to facilitate disassembly. The overall EOL scenario determines the technologies of processes that must be modelled within the EOL phase of a product system. The analysed end-of-life scenarios- include: status quo car recycling and two alternatives: 1. disassembly for specific EES component recycling; 2. advanced post-shredder recycling of shredding residues. The influences of the different design and EOL treatment scenarios on the LCA and LCC results have been analysed. Results. The most dominant life cycle phases for the LCA results are manufacturing (including raw material extraction and manufacturing of materials and components) and the use-phase. Similarly, manufacturing was the predominant phase during the LCC study. Disassembly costs were shown to be significant during the EOL phase. Among the analysed design alternatives, the highest environmental improvement potential were gained from the use of alternative wiring systems with reduced weight and copper content, but with slightly increased life cycle costs. Smaller differences of the results were determined for the different end-of-life scenarios. Discussion. The results of the EOL scenario depend on the component in question. The influence of variations in process data, model choices, e.g. which LCIA model was used for calculating the Human Toxicity Potential (HTP), which inventory data for copper production was used and other variables have been assessed in the sensitivity analysis. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates a strong dependency of results for HTP on the selected model. The presented results are based on a public report of the SEES project. The study has undergone a critical review by an external expert according to ISO 14040, S 7.3.2. Conclusions. The environmental impacts during the life cycle of the analysed products are generally most strongly influenced by material production and the use phase of the products. In comparison, improvements during the EOL phase have only a very limited potential to reduce environmental impacts. The studied design changes displayed clear environmental advantages for (lighter) flat, flexible cables. Whereas, the lead-free solder design alternatives showed a slight increase in some environmental impact categories. The application of these design changes has been limited in some cases by technical issues. Recommendations and Perspectives. Focussing only on end-of-life improvements cannot be recommended for automotive EES products. A life-cycle perspective should be utilised for assessing improvements in individual life cycle stages of a product. The presented, results will be an input for Eco-design guidelines for automotive EES, to be developed at a later stage within the SEES project.Background, Aims and Scope. In recent years, the automotive industry has been experiencing an increasing concern with environmental requirements. A particular focus, is being given to light-weighting of cars, to reducing fuel consumption and to the use of different recycling materials. Consequently, decisions on product design and development must involve economic and technological as well as environmental considerations. In adequate conditions, the LCA methodology enables one to assist an effective integration of the environmental considerations in the decision-making process [1]. In this paper, a multi-material car component which is part of the current automotive brake system, has been modified by its original manufacturer. Such a modification included the use of a new multi-material injection moulding process and the consumption of recyclable materials. The new and the current component were comparatively assessed throughout their life cycles in order to evaluate their respective environmental impacts and, thus, to verify if the new component offers a lower environmental load. The results described in this paper are part of the outcome of a broader research project involving industrial companies, university, technological centres and research institutes based in Portugal, Spain and Germany. Main Features. The car component under focus has four subcomponents whose base materials consist of steel and plastic. The LCA methodology is used to evaluate two scenarios describing the new car component, on the one hand, and the reference scenario, which consists of the existing car component, on the other. The former results from the selection of new subcomponents materials, aiming to use a new production process together with a recycling strategy. Results and Discussion. The inventory analysis shows a lower energy consumption in the alternative scenario (4.2 MJ) compared to the reference scenario (6.1 MJ). Most of that energy is still non-renewable, relating in particular to crude consumption in the car use phase and in the production phase (transports and plastics production). The life cycle inventory analysis indicates also that the alternative scenario has lower air emissions of COD CO, NOx, SOx, NM VOC and PM10, as well as lower solid wastes and water emissions of oils and BOD5. Otherwise, the water emissions of undissolved substances and COD are higher for the alternative scenario. Most of the energy consumed and the air pollutants inventoried occur as a consequence of the use phase. Otherwise, for most of the life cycle water emissions inventoried and solid wastes, the production phase is the major contributor. The impact assessment, performed with the CML method, allows one to conclude that the alternative scenario exhibits lower results in all the impact categories. Both scenarios have similar environmental profiles, being: (i) the use phase, the major contributor for the abiotic depletion, global warming, photochemical oxidation, acidification and eutrophication; and (ii) the production phase, the main contributor for ozone depletion, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity. The sensitivity analysis, with respect to the fuel consumption reduction value, the impact assessment method and the final disposal scenario, performed in this study allows one to confirm, as a main conclusion, that the alternative scenario is environmentally preferable to the reference scenario. Conclusion. The results obtained through the application of the LCA methodology enable one to conclude that the alternative component has a lower environmental load than the reference component. Recommendations and Perspectives. Considering that the time required for the inventory data collection is a critical issue in LCA practise, the insights provided by this particular case study are likely to be useful to product developers in the car component manufacturing industry, particularly to brake system manufacturers supporting the environmental design within the sector.There is increasing concern about feeds prepared from food residues (FFR) from an environmental viewpoint; however, various forms of energy are consumed in the production of FFR. Environmental impacts of three scenarios were therefore investigated and compared using life cycle assessment (LCA): production of liquid FFR by sterilization with heat (LQ), production of dehydrated FFR by dehydration (DH), and disposal of food residues by incineration (IC). The functional unit was defined as 1 kg dry matter of produced feed standardized to a fixed energy content. The system boundaries included collection of food residues and production of feed from food residues. In IC, food residues are incinerated as waste, and thus the impacts of production and transportation of commercial concentrate feeds equivalent to the FFR in the other scenarios are included in the analysis. Our results suggested that the average amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from LQ, DH, and IC were 268, 1073, and 1066 g of CO2 equivalent, respectively. The amount of GHG emissions from LQ was remarkably small, indicating that LQ was effective for reducing the environmental impact of animal production. Although the average amount of GHG emissions from DH was nearly equal to that from IC, a large variation of GHG emissions was observed among the DH units. The energy consumption of the three scenarios followed a pattern similar to that of GHG emissions. The water consumption of the FFR-producing units was remarkably smaller than that of IC due to the large volumes of water consumed in forage crop production.This study aims at evaluating the environmental impacts stemmed from End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) treatment system in Korea, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. In the process of the assessment, not only the environmental burdens originated from ELV dismantling processes and recycling processes but also the environment benefits obtained from the avoided effects of recycled materials on the environmental impacts associated with virgin materials are considered. The significant issues which are defined as the environmental aspects that contribute more than 1% to the total environmental impacts in each impact category are identified from the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). From the Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) and LCIA studies, it is shown that the significant environmental aspects are associated with recycling processes of ferrous metals, shredding processes of compressed car bodies and recycling processes of end-of-life engines. In particular, the recycling processes of ferrous metals appear to have the most significant environmental impacts in the ELV treatment system. Thus, it is required to improve the recycling processes of ferrous metals in order to make the current ELV treatment system more environmentally sound. This study also deals with ELV treatment scenarios as follows; reference is the current ELV treatment system with 78% of recycling rate, Scenario I takes into account of both the recycling of the additional automotive parts (85% recycling rate) and the collection of refrigerants, and Scenario 11 assumes energy recovery as well as 95% of recycling rate. It is found that scenario 11 has better ecological profiles than the others in the environmental impact categories such as Abiotic Resource Depletion (ARD), Global Warming (GW), Ozone Depletion (OD), Photochemical Oxidant Creation (POC), Eutrophication (EU) and Human Toxicity (HT).Multilayer films exhibit excellent properties for food packaging. However, existing products are not biodegradable. Conventional plastics, manufactured from fossil fuels, not only consume non-renewable and finite resources, but also impact heavily on waste disposal. For this reason, a new multilayer film has been developed in the Multibio Project for the production of food packaging. In this paper, the environmental impacts of the new biodegradable multilayer film-based on modified starch and polylactic acid (PLA)-and those of the conventional multilayer film-based on PP and PA6-are quantified in the categories of climate change, fossil fuel depletion, acidification and eutrophication. Conventional multilayer film has a 90% higher impact than the Multibio multilayer film. The main difference between the LCA presented and the cited literature is the inventory data obtained in the phase of polymer processing to obtain multilayer film, and the assessment of the disposal phase of the multilayer film wastes.This paper describes a study on the use of a polypropylene (PP)/layered silicate nanocomposite as packaging film, agricultural film, and automotive panels. The study's main question was "Are the environmental impacts and costs throughout the life cycle of nanocomposite products lower than those of products manufactured from conventional materials?" The conventional (benchmark) materials studied were pure polypropylene as packaging film, pure polyethylene as agricultural film, and glass fiber-reinforced polypropylene as automotive panels. In all three cases, the use of the PP nanocomposite resulted in a reduction of the amount of material used, while ensuring the same functionality. Material reduction was estimated using Ashby's material indices and amounted to -9% for packaging film, -36.5% for agricultural film, and -1.25% for automotive panels. It goes without saying that a product's impact on the environment will decrease when less material is used. The production and incorporation of nanoparticles, however, may have additional impacts. We found clear environmental benefits throughout the entire life cycle when the PP nanocomposite is used in the manufacture of agricultural film. We noted some cost benefits when the nanocomposite is used in the production of agricultural film and automotive panels. If the price of nanoclay is at most epsilon 5,000 tonne then the cost of nanocomposite packaging film is also lower than that of the conventionally produced product.Scientific uncertainty involved in evaluating potentially harmful properties of engineered nanoparticles complicates and hampers the implementation of proportionate regulative measures by legislators. The European Commission has adopted a so-called "incremental approach", which focuses on adapting existing laws to regulate nanotechnologies, and therefore this paper aims to test the effectiveness of the "incremental approach". Three commercially available products containing fullerenes (C-60 and carbon nanotubes) were analysed in a life cycle perspective in order to (1) map current applicable regulations, (2) analyse their applicability to nanomaterials, (3) identify their gaps, and (4) suggest proper solutions. After mapping the life cycle of the three products, we analysed applicable regulations in the order in which they became relevant in their life cycle, i.e.: The Safety at Workplace Directives, Directive 61/1996 on the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, The European Union's Directive on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals, and The Waste Management Directives. It was found that the applicability of environmental laws is limited due to difficulties in generating sufficient data on the nanomaterials residing in the products according to their life cycles. Further, metrology tools are unavailable; thresholds are not tailored to the nanoscale; and toxicological data and occupational exposure limits cannot be established with, existing methodologies. We conclude that the "incremental approach" can only be applicable with the implementation of due amendments. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for analyzing the environmental burden of products at all stages of the life cycle. In this study, LCA applications in the pulp and paper industry were reviewed and classified into six categories: comparison of products having the same function, identification of "hot spots," comparison of process technical options, comparison of waste management options, evaluation of new products, and strategic planning and evaluation. The most sensitive application to the subjective elements of LCA is the comparison of products with the same function, for example, the comparison of paper-based and polystyrene-based egg packaging. We found that process analyses, comparisons of process options, and comparisons of end-of-life scenarios have been performed most extensively. Because of the growing interest in environmentally conscious manufacturing, the pulp and paper industry has begun to expand its regulatory based environmental management systems to include a continuous improvement orientation. Evaluation of new products has not been reported as a major application of LCA thus far. Although only a few LCA studies related to strategic evaluation are available, this is increasingly being considered as a promising future area for LCA application. Application: This publication provides a survey of LCA applications in the pulp and paper industry.This paper reviews the use of environmental life-cycle assessments (LCAs) in the water industry internationally and locally. An LCA conducted on the water supply, treatment and recycling in the eThekwini Municipality is used for demonstrative purposes. Many of the LCAs reviewed, including the case study, have demonstrated that in the treatment of water (potable water and wastewater) most of the environmental impacts are traced back to the use of energy - in most cases the use of electricity. Therefore, it is proposed that for South Africa the electricity consumption of different water treatment processes can be used as an environmental indicator of impacts. Advantages and limitations in using electricity consumption as an indicator are also presented.A promising option to substitute fossil energy carriers by renewables is the production of synthetic natural gas (SNG) from wood, as this results in a flexible energy carrier usable via existing infrastructure in gas boilers or passenger cars. The comprehensive life cycle-based ecological impact of SNG is investigated and compared with standard fuels delivering the same service (natural gas, fuel oil, petrol/diesel, and wood chips). Life cycle impact assessment methodologies and external costs from airborne emissions provide measures of overall damage. The results indicate that the SNG system has the best ecological performance if the consumption of fossil resources is strongly weighted. Otherwise natural gas performs best, as its supply chain is energy-efficient and its use produces relatively low emissions. Wood systems are by far the best in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), where SNG emits about twice as much as the wood chips system. The main negative aspects of the SNG system are NO, and particulate emissions and the relatively low total energy conversion efficiency resulting from the additional processing to transform wood to gas. Direct wood combustion has a better ecological score when highly efficient particulate filters are installed. SNG performs better than oil derivatives with all the evaluation methods used. External costs for SNG are the lowest as long as GHG are valued high. SNG should preferably be used in cars, as the reduction of overall ecological impacts and external costs when substituting oil-based fuels is larger for current cars than for heating systems. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper assesses modeling parameters that affect the environmental performance of two state-of-the-art photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation technologies: the PVL136 thin film laminates and the KC120 multi-crystalline modules. We selected three metrics to assess the modules' environmental performance, which are part of an actual 33 kW installation in Ann Arbor, MI. The net energy ratio (NER), the energy pay back time (E-PBT), and the CO2 emissions are calculated using process based LCA methods. The results reveal some of the parameters, such as the level of solar radiation, the position of the modules, the modules' manufacturing energy intensity and its corresponding fuel mix, and the solar radiation conversion efficiency of the modules, which affect the final analytical results. A sensitivity analysis shows the effect of selected parameters on the final results. For the baseline scenario, the E-PBT for the PVL136 and KC120 are 3.2 and 7.5 years, respectively. When expected future conversion efficiencies are tested, the E-PBT is 1.6 and 5.7 years for the PVL136 and the KC120, respectively. Based on the US fuel mix, the CO, emissions for the PVL136 and the KC120 are 34.3 and 72.4 g of CO2/kW h, respectively. The most effective way to improve the modules' environmental performance is to reduce the energy input in the manufacturing phase of the modules, provided that other parameters remain constant. Consequently, the use of PV as an electricity source during PV manufacturing is also assessed. The NER of the supplier PV is key for the performance of this scheme. The results show that the NER based on a PV system can be 3.7 times higher than the NER based on electricity supplied by the traditional grid mix, and the CO2 emissions can be reduced by 80%. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) concerning two strategies for coupling advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) with biological treatment, namely solar-driven photo-Fenton and ozonation, is performed. In addition, these emergent technologies are compared to a reference technology, namely granular activated carbon (GAQ adsorption. The study is based on pilot plant and laboratory tests using alphamethyl-phenylglycine (MPG) as a target substance. The system under study includes production of infrastructure for the solar plant, chemicals, electricity, transport of all these materials to the plant site, management of the spent catalyst by landfilling and spent GAC by regeneration, as well as treatment of the obtained effluent in a conventional municipal wastewater treatment plant (MWWTP) and excess sludge treatment by incineration. Nine environmental impact categories are included in the LCA: global warming, ozone depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic toxicity, photochemical ozone formation, acidification, eutrophication, energy consumption, and land use. The experimental results obtained in the pilot plant show that both AOPs are able to obtain a biodegradable effluent, while GAC is able to adsorb almost 100% MPG. The results of the LCA show that none of the treatment options appears as preferable at the same time in all nine impact indicators. Nevertheless, in six of these indicators solar-driven photo-Fenton coupled to biological treatment obtains the lowest impact. From a weighted life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results perspective, solar-driven photo-Fenton appears as the most environmentally friendly alternative, even in locations with relatively low solar resources.SETAC Europe (http://www.setaceu.org/) is the umbrella organization for SETAC members residing in Europe as well as the Middle East and Africa. SETAC Europe has members in 53 countries. The three countries with the highest numbers of SETAC Europe members are Germany (18%), the United Kingdom (14%), and The Netherlands (8%). Local branches presently include the UK, German-speaking countries, Italy, Central and Eastern Europe, and Africa, which is associated with Europe at this initial stage of its membership. SETAC Europe's four Advisory Groups concentrate on Life Cycle Assessment, Dung Organism Toxicity Testing, bioaccumulation Soil, and Sediments.A comparative life cycle assessment examining soybean and petroleum-based lubricants is compiled using Monte Carlo analysis to assess system variability. Experimental data obtained from an aluminum manufacturing facility indicate significantly less soybean lubricant is required to achieve similar or superior performance. With improved performance and a lower use rate, a transition to soybean oil results in lower aggregate impacts of acidification, smog formation, and human health from criteria pollutants. Regardless of quantity consumed, soybean-based lubricants exhibit significant climate change and fossil fuel use benefits; however, eutrophication impacts are much greater due to non-point nutrient emissions. Fundamental tradeoffs in the carbon and nitrogen cycles are addressed in the analysis, demonstrating that a transition to soybean oil may result in climate change benefits at the expense of regional water quality.This study addresses economic aspects of introducing renewable technologies in place of fossil fuel ones to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike for traditional fossil fuel technologies, greenhouse gas emissions from renewable technologies are associated mainly with plant construction and the magnitudes are significantly lower. The prospects are shown to be good for producing the environmentally clean fuel hydrogen via water electrolysis driven by renewable energy sources. Nonetheless, the cost of wind- and solar-based electricity is still higher than that of electricity generated in a natural gas power plant. With present costs of wind and solar electricity, it is shown that, when electricity from renewable sources replaces electricity from natural gas, the cost of greenhouse gas emissions abatement is about four times less than if hydrogen from renewable sources replaces hydrogen produced from natural gas. When renewable-based hydrogen is used in a fuel cell vehicle instead of gasoline in a IC engine vehicle, the cost of greenhouse gas emissions reduction approaches the same value as for renewable-based electricity only if the fuel cell vehicle efficiency exceeds significantly (i.e., by about two times) that of an internal combustion vehicle. It is also shown that when 6000 wind turbines (Kenetech KVS-33) with a capacity of 350 kW and a capacity factor of 24% replace a 500-MW gas-fired power plant with an efficiency of 40%, annual greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 2.3 megatons. The incremental additional annual cost is about $280 million (US). The results provide a useful approach to an optimal strategy for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. Crown Copyright (C) 2006 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.On the occasion of the SETAC Europe 17th Annual Meeting in Porto, an Editors Meeting of the ScientificJournals took place. Prof. Maria Teresa Vasconcelos (ESPR Subject Editor) represented the University of Porto. It is due to Maria Teresa that we received the honour of celebrating the meeting at Circulo Universitario, the Guest House of the University. Hence the meeting as well as the reception on the evening before were embedded in an atmosphere of comfort, culture and Portuguese hospitality. Additionally, the University of Porto sponsored this event with 400 EUR. The editors of all journals wish to respectfully acknowledge the gracious support of the University and to warmly thank Maria Teresa for her personal attention and support to make the meeting a success. First, general issues relevant for all journals were discussed such as the continuing evolution of the ESS, the role of the Submission. Editors and Referees, the referee data base and how to improve it, the quality of the review process, the impact factor, the Open Access approach. Thereupon, the specific points of the individual journals were addressed, e.g. the frameworks and how to improve them, subject areas to be promoted, specific topics to be considered.This paper is a two-fold introduction. For one, it introduces a new, open source, LCA software. Second, it is to establish a new section in Int J LCA named 'LCA Software'. Herewith, the editors of the journal recognise the growing possibilities and the impact of software, meaning both databases and calculation as well as modelling software, for practical applications as well as for the scientific development in LCA. This section is designed to house a broad variety of papers to be LCA focused and related to ICT (Information and Communication Technology). In this sense, announcements (as this one), conference reports, but also peer-reviewed papers on methodology and case studies, are most welcome.Introduction. Normalization is an optional step in LCIA that is used to better understand the relative importance and magnitude of the impact category indicator results. It is used for error checking, as a first step in weighting, and for standalone presentation of results. A normalized score for a certain impact category is obtained by determining the ratio of the category indicator result of the product and that of a reference system, such as the world in a certain year or the population of a specific area in a certain year. Biased Normalization. In determining these two quantities, the numerator, the denominator, or both can suffer from incompleteness due to a lack of emission data and/or characterisation factors. This leads to what we call a biased normalization. As a consequence. the normalized category indicator result can be too low or too high. Some examples from hypothetical and real case studies demonstrate this. Consequences of Biased Normalization. Especially when for some impact categories the normalized category indicator result is right, for others too low, and for others too high, severe problems in using normalized scores can show up. It is shown how this may affect the three types of usage of normalized results: error checking, weighting and standalone presentation. Detection and Remedies of Biased Normalization. Some easy checks are proposed that at least alert the LCA practitioner of the possibility of a biased result. These checks are illustrated for an example system on hydrogen production. A number of remedies of this problem is possible. These are discussed. In particular, case-dependent normalization is shown to solve some problems, but on the expense of creating other problems. Discussion. It appears that there is only one good solution: databases and tables of characterisation factors must be made more completely, so that the risk of detrimental bias is reduced. On the other hand, the use of the previously introduced checks should become a standard element in LCA practice, and should be facilitated with LCA software.Background, Goal and Scope. The objective of this study was to produce detailed a life cycle inventory (LCI) for the provision of 1 kWh of electricity to consumers in China in 2002 in order to identify areas of improvement in the industry. The system boundaries were processes in power stations, and the construction and operation of infrastructure were not included. The scope of this study was the consumption of fossil fuels and the emissions of air pollutants, water pollutants and solid wastes, which are listed as follows:. (1) consumption of fossil fuels, including general fuels, such as raw coal, crude oil and natural gas, and the uranium used for nuclear power; (2) emissions of air pollutants from thermal power, hydropower and nuclear power plants; (3) emissions of water pollutants, including general water waste from fuel electric plants and radioactive waste fluid from nuclear power plants; (4) emissions of solid wastes, including fly ash and slag from thermal power plants and radioactive solid wastes from nuclear power plants. Methods. Data were collected regarding the amount of fuel, properties of fuel and the technical parameters of the power plants. The emissions of CO2, SO2, NO., CH,, CO, non-methane volatile organic compound (NMVOC), dust and heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Hg, Ni, Pb, V, Zn) from thermal power plants as well as fuel production and distribution were estimated. The emissions of CO2 and CH, from hydropower plants and radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants were also investigated. Finally, the life cycle inventory for China's electricity industry was calculated and analyzed. Results. Related to 1 kWh of usable electricity in China in 2002, the consumption of coal, oil, gas and enriched uranium were 4.57E-01, 8.88E-03, 7.95E-03 and 9.03E-08 kg; the emissions of COD SO2, NO., CO, CH4, NMVOC, dust, As, Cd, Cr, Hg, Ni, Pb, V, and Zn were 8.77E-01, 8.04E-03, 5.23E-03, 1.25E-03, 2.65E-03, 3.95E-04, 1.63E-02,1.62E-06,1.03E-08, 1.37E-07, 7.11E-08, 2.03E-07,1.42E-06, 2.33E-06, and 1.94E-06 kg; the emissions of waste water, COD, coal fly ash, and slag were 1.31, 6.02E-05, 8.34E-02, and 1.87E-02 kg; and the emissions of inactive gas, halogen and gasoloid, tritium, non-tritium, and radioactive solid waste were 3.74E+01 Bq, 1.61E-01 Bq, 4.22E+01 Bq, 4.06E-02 Bq, and 2.68E-10 m(3) respectively. Conclusions. The comparison result between the LCI data of China's electricity industry and that of Japan showed that most emission intensities of China's electricity industry were higher than that of Japan except for NMVOC. Compared with emission intensities of the electricity industry in Japan, the emission intensities of CO2 and Ni in China were about double; the emission intensities of NOx, Cd, CO, Cr, Hg and SO2 in China were more than 10 times that of Japan; and the emission intensities of CH4, V, Pb, Zn, As and dust were more than 20 times. The reasons for such disparities were also analyzed. Recommendations and Perspectives. To get better LCI for the electricity industry in China, it is important to estimate the life cycle emissions during fuel production and transportation for China. Another future improvement could be the development of LCIs for construction and operation of infrastructure such as factory buildings and dams. It would also be important to add the information about land use for hydropower.Aim, Scope and Background. The paper proposes the assessment of the environmental interventions resulting from the electrical energy production in Romania, a Central East European country, using the LCA technique limited to a Life Cycle Inventory study (an LCA without the Life Cycle Impact Assessment phase). Main Features. The following life cycles of the energy carriers employed in the production of the electrical energy are analysed according to their provenance: lignite (domestic) 31.2%, brown coal (domestic) 3.4%, brown coal (import) 0.4%, heavy oil (domestic, land) 4.2%, heavy oil (domestic, continental platform of the Black Sea) 0.4%, heavy oil (import) 3.6%, natural gas (domestic) 12.4%, natural gas (import) 6.1%, hydropower 27.8%, and nuclear energy 10.5% from the total of the electrical energy produced in Romania. The unit processes of the life cycles of these energy carriers are aggregated in two main stages: Pre-combustion (extraction, processing, transport and achievement of infrastructure) and Combustion (the production of electricity). The functional unit of the study is represented by 1 kwh. The spatial limits of the analysed system are extended as far as CIS countries for coal, Western Siberia (Russian Federation) for natural gas and the OPEC countries for oil. The temporal limits are included in the year 2000. Results and Discussion. The LCI study enabled us to quantify the interventions on the environment, which result from the electricity production in Romania, the independent use of different energy carriers and the different life cycle stages of the system. The use of the LCA technique in a prospective way shows the reduction of these interventions that could be achieved through the adoption of specific scenarios for the development of electrical energy production in the country. Conclusions. The main findings of this Life Cycle Inventory study, the first for Romania, are: the emissions of pollutant substances are prevailing in the combustion stage; for different energy carriers, the magnitude of environmental interventions decrease in the following order: coal, oil, natural gas, hydropower and nuclear energy. By comparison with other countries, the environment is more affected by the production of electricity in the case of Romania and only the promotion of alternative, renewable resources such as hydropower could substantially improve these interventions. Recommendations and Perspectives. Some important interactions with the environment, like land use or the risks of the nuclear energy, are not taken into consideration in the study because of the lack of particular data for Romania. We would like to continue the investigation in order to surpass the limits of the study, on the one hand by collecting data concerning the risk of nuclear power or land use at the national level for different energy carriers or, on the other hand, by taking into account some other renewable resources like wind or solar energy.Goal, Scope and Background. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) remains an important tool in Dutch waste management policies. In 2002 the new National Waste Management Plan 2002-2012 (NWMP) became effective. It was supported by some 150 LCA studies for more than 20 different waste streams. The LCA results provided a benchmark level for new waste management technologies. Although not new, operational techniques using combined pyrolysis/gasification are still fairly rare in Europe. The goal of this study is to determine the environmental performance of the only full scale pyrolysis/gasification plant in the Netherlands and to compare it with more conventional techniques such as incineration. The results of the study support the process of obtaining environmental permits. Methods. In this study we used an impact assessment method based on the guidelines described by the Centre of Environmental Science (CML) of Leiden University. The functional unit is defined as treatment of 1 ton of collected hazardous waste (paint packaging waste). Similar to the NWMP, not only normalized scores are presented but also 7 aggegated scores. All interventions from the foreground process (land use, emissions, final waste) are derived directly from the site with the exception of emissions to soil which were calculated. Interventions are accounted to each of the different waste streams by physical relations. Data from background processes are taken from the IVAM LCA database 4.0 mostly originating from the Swiss ETH96 database and adapted to the Dutch situation. Allocation was avoided by using system enlargement. The study has been peer reviewed by an external expert. Results and Discussion. It was possible to determine an environmental performance for the pyrolysis/gasification of paint packaging waste. The Life Cycle Inventory was mainly hampered by the uncertainty occurred with estimated air emissions. Here several assumptions had to be made because several waste inputs and two waste treatment installations profit from one flue gas cleaning treatment thus making it difficult to allocate the emission values from the flue gasses. Compared to incineration in a rotary kiln, pyrolysis/gasification of hazardous waste showed better scores for most of the considered impact categories. Only for the impact categories biodiversity and life support the incineration option proved favorable due to a lower land use. Several impact categories had significant influence on the conclusions: acidification, global warming potential, humanity and terrestrial ecotoxicity. The first three are related to a better energy efficiency for pyrolysis/gasification leading to less fossil energy consumption. Terrestrial ecotoxicity in this case is related to specific emissions of mercury and chromium (III). A sensitivity analysis has been performed as well. It was found that the environmental performance of the gasification technique is sensitive to the energy efficiency that can be reached as well as the choice for the avoided fossil energy source. In this study a conservative choice for diesel oil was made whereas a choice for heavy or light fuel oil would further improve the environmental profile. Conclusions. Gasification of hazardous waste has a better environmental performance compared to the traditional incineration in rotary kilns mainly due to the high energy efficiency. As was determined by sensitivity analysis the differences in environmental performance are significant. Improvement options for a better performance are a decrease of process emissions (especially mercury) and a further improvement of the energy balance by decreasing the electricity consumption for shredders and oxygen consumption or making more use of green electricity. Recommendations and Perspectives. Although the life cycle inventory was sufficiently complete, still some assumptions had to be made in order to establish sound mass balances on the level of individual components and substances. The data on input of waste and output of emissions and final waste were not compatible. It was recommended that companies put more emphasis on data storage accounted to particular waste streams. This is even more relevant since more companies in the future are expected to include life cycle impacts in their environmental performance.Goal and Scope. A comparison of in situ and ex situ treatment scenarios for a diesel-contaminated site was performed using an evolutive LCA. Treatment time along with primary (residual contamination left in soil or groundwater after treatment) and secondary (impacts due to remediation) environmental impacts were considered. The site under study had a Light Non Aqueous Phase Liquid (LNAPL) thickness of up to 1 m, a diesel soil concentration of 10,500 mg/kg and a residual contamination in groundwater. Methods. Four treatment scenarios to remove LNAPL and to treat soil and groundwater were compared: 1) pump and treat 2) bioslurping, bioventing and biosparging 3) bioslurping, bioventing and chemical oxidation and 4) ex situ treatment using biopiles. The technologies(1) design was performed using simulation tools and analytical equations. The LCA was evaluated for each year of treatment. Environmental impacts were assessed using the U.S. EPA Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) method. Results and Discussion. The biological in situ scenario (2) showed the least primary and secondary impacts but its treatment time was more than 4 times longer than that obtained for the ex situ scenario (4). The ex situ scenario showed the best treatment time but its secondary impacts were significantly higher than those found for the biological in situ scenario due to the pavement of the treatment area. The combined biological and chemical in situ scenario (3) was the worst in terms of secondary impacts while the pump and treat scenario (1) was the worst in terms of primary impacts. Two scenarios were selected: one based upon low environmental impacts and the other on the fastest treatment time. Conclusions. Even without excavation, an in situ treatment can generate more secondary impacts than an ex situ treatment. Low environmental impact scenarios require time while rapid treatment scenarios generate high environmental impacts. The selection of the best remediation scenario will depend on the site owner's priority. Recommendations. Better characterization factors for aggregated substances are required.Goal, Scope and Background. The objective of the study was to. determine the environmental effects of the reusable cup used during a major event (which took place in Barcelona, Universal Forum of Cultures, 2004), compared with a single-use cup of the same composition (polypropylene) but with different physical characteristics such as mass, shape and capacity. Methods. To perform the environmental evaluations and the comparison of both types of cups, the SimaPro software developed and marketed by PRe Consultants was used. The environmental evaluation of the reusable cup was compared with that of a single-use cup using the LCA methodology [6]. The functional unit used was: 'Serving 1000 liters of draught beverages'. The objective of the study was to find the minimum number of cycles the reusable cup has to do so that its environmental impact is smaller than that of the single-use cup. Results and Conclusions. Taking into account all the hypotheses put forward, the study drew the conclusion that the minimum number of uses of the reusable cup necessary for it to have a smaller environmental impact than the single-use cup is 10. The contribution of each process taking part in the entire life cycle of the cups was also studied in detail. In the case of the single-use cup, the most important contribution to all the impact categories is due to the production of polypropylene and the fabrication of the cup, except for the heavy metals category where it is due to the management of the waste coming from the cup's use. In the case of the reusable cup being used 10 times, the contribution to the different impact categories of the waste generated by the cup's use is negligible compared to the contribution of the fabrication and washing processes. In addition, the washing process is the one which contributes most to the ozone layer depletion, heavy metals and carcinogens categories. As the number of uses of the reusable cup increases, the contribution to all the environmental impact categories decreases. However, this reduction is not as significant for the ozone layer depletion, heavy metals and carcinogens categories. This is due to the washing process and the fact that the electrical consumption associated with it increases with the number of washing s and, consequently, of uses. Recommendations and Perspectives. From the environmental point of view, the reusable cup must be used at least 10 times to have less impact than the single-use cup. This is mainly due to the higher weight of the reusable cup and, therefore, the greater amount of raw material needed for its fabrication. If the LCA methodology had been introduced during the design of the reusable cup, its weight would have been lower. This modification would have resulted in a reduction of the environmental impact associated with the use of the reusable cup and, consequently, a smaller number of uses would have been necessary to attain the same level of impact as the single-use cup.Scope and Background. The environmental effectiveness of the Norwegian beverage sector has been studied in a Factor 10 perspective. The objective of the study was to identify strategies that could make the beverage sector radically more effective from an environmental and resource perspective, leading to a Factor 10 improvement. Another main purpose of the work was to test the potential for using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology on an economic sector with a network of product chains, rather than for a single product. Methods. Life Cycle Assessment data from STO's own studies and literature studies have been used as a basis for analysis of the environmental status of the beverage sector in Norway. The functional unit was defined as the amount of beverage products consumed per capita in Norway in the year 2000. The study includes raw material production, production of the beverage product, packaging manufacture, distribution, use and waste management of the products. The study has, for practical reasons, been limited to the environmental impact indicators total energy consumption and global warming potential. This was done as other types of data have been difficult to obtain for all of the products that were studied (tap water, coffee, milk, soft drinks, beer, squash, juice and bottled water). Results and Discussion. The study shows differences between the drinking products with respect to energy consumption and emissions that can contribute to global warming. Due to large uncertainties in the data, general conclusions regarding the differentiation of products based on environmental performance should be made with care. Production and distribution of tap water is, however, significantly less energy intensive than the other products. For the impact categories studied, production of raw materials was the most important part of the life cycle for most drinking products. Conclusions and Perspectives. The most significant contributions to achieving a Factor 10 development can be made by consuming more water, especially tap water, and through improving raw material production in the agricultural sector. Packaging and distribution is responsible for only a small part of the energy consumption and emissions leading to global warming. Optimal packaging sizes might however reduce loss of products in the user phase, which is important in order to improve the system. A Factor 10 level seems achievable only if the consumption of tap water is increased to a high level.Goal, Scope and Background. The mere existence of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and general acceptance of the life cycle philosophy is not enough to make their use widespread in industry. To gain a better understanding of factors shaping LCA studies and life cycle related practice, field studies of the development of LCA practice in two companies were carried out. Methods. In order to obtain a deeper understanding of LCA practice, the number of 'variables' was minimized and two similar companies were chosen for study: Stora Enso and SCA. Both companies are part of the Swedish forest products industry, are large multinational enterprises and have been working with LCA since the early 1990s. Both interviews and document studies were used to collect data regarding LCA work from its introduction until 2003. Results and Discussion. We found fundamental differences in LCA practice between two similar companies in regard to LCA studies per se (the number of studies undertaken and methodological preferences) and also in regard to the organisation of and approach to LCA work. By testing various theoretical explanations of these divergent LCA practices, we identified the actions of individuals and their understanding of the situation as important factors shaping LCA practice. Conclusions. Although sector-wide recommendations on LCA practice are common in the LCA community, this study indicates that companies use LCA differently despite similar structural conditions such as company size or sector affiliation. Recommendations and Perspectives. Since the understanding and actions of individuals are important in shaping LCA practice, people working with LCA in industry probably have greater scope for action than they recognise and than sector recommendations may imply when it comes to organising and carrying out their work. Thus, those working with life cycle issues, even in different sectors, can learn much from each other about ways of organising and benefiting from LCA work.Background, Aim and Scope. There is a clear need for simple methodology to deliver metrics that may be used to determine and benchmark the 'greenness' or relative sustainability of synthetic processes for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). Such methodology and metrics should facilitate more informed and sustainable business choices. This capability is particularly important at an early stage in R&D development activities when route and processes are being selected and detailed environmental data are not available. FLASC (TM) (Fast Life cycle Assessment of Synthetic Chemistry) is a web-based tool and methodology designed to meet these requirements. Materials and Methods. FLASC (TM) was developed from a detailed assessment of the cradle-to-gate life cycle environmental impacts associated with the, manufacture of materials used in a typical pharmaceutical process. Results. This paper describes the methodology used to develop FLASC (TM) and provides examples of the type of information and guidance FLASC (TM) provides. Discussion. Both Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were used for the statistical analysis during the development of FLASC (TM). Benchmarking within the pharmaceutical industry and use of normalization for molecular complexity were also integrated to the tool. Conclusions. FLASC (TM) represents an important part of the overall efforts of GIaxoSmithKline (GSK) to incorporate and maintain sustainable business practices for manufacture of APIs used in its pharmaceutical products. Recommendations and Perspectives. This tool is not intended to assess waste from GSK operations nor solvent recovery and currently does not incorporate specific chemical-related health and safety data. However, these are already routinely assessed within GSK R&D at appropriate milestones and the use of FLASC (TM) is complementary to these evaluations.This study compares equity funds that are managed according to sustainability goals with conventionally managed funds with respect to their environmental impacts. Overlap in the portfolios of sustainable equity funds and conventional equity funds can be very large. Further, the sector allocation of both types of funds is generally very similar, because portfolio managers follow a chosen benchmark to minimize risk. These two effects may result in no difference existing between the two types of funds in terms of their environmental impact and damage (null hypothesis of this research). This study comparatively assesses the environmental impact of portfolios of 26 investment funds: 13 sustainable investment funds and 13 conventional funds, which are managed according to the benchmark MSCI World. The study applies input output life-cycle assessment (IO-LCA) in combination with a simulation of company-specific environmental performance. The environmental impact is evaluated per functional unit for each fund, measured as the risk-adjusted financial performance. The statistical analysis showed that the analyzed sustainable investment funds performed better with respect to environmental impact assessment but worse in economic risk-adjusted performance (RAP) over the period 2000-2004. In 2004, however, the RAP of the selected sustainable investment funds showed better performance. Both samples considerably overlap for the environmental and economic parameters. The results suggest that the environmental impact of sustainable investment funds in the sample is slightly less than that of conventional funds.This study is a comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA) of two competing digital video disc (DVD) rental networks: the e-commerce option, where the customer orders the movies online, and the traditional business option, where the customer goes to the rental store to rent a movie. The analytical framework proposed is for a customer living in the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. The primary energy and environmental performance for both networks are presented using a multicriterion LCA. The package selected by the traditional network is responsible for 67% of the difference in total energy consumption of the two alternatives. Results show that the e-commerce alternative consumed 33% less energy and emitted 40% less CO2 than the traditional option. A set of sensitivity analyses test the influence of distance traveled, transportation mode, and reuse of DVD and DVD packaging on the final results. The mode of transportation used by the customer in the traditional business model also affects global emissions and energy consumption. The customer walking to the store is by far the best option in the traditional network; however, the e-commerce option performed comparatively better despite all transportation modes tested. A novel economic indicator, ESAL, is used to compare different transportation modes based on the level of stress exerted on the pavement. The two networks are compared on the basis of cost accounting; consistent with its energy and environmental advantages, the e-commerce network also exerts lesser economic impact, by $1.17, for the functional unit tested.inventory analysis of manufacturing system for both conventional Pb-free bronze made from virgin materials and new Pb-free bronze made by removing Pb from scrap Pb-bronze was assessed from the view point of life cycle assessment (LCA). The result shows that new manufacturing system of Pb-frec bronze made by removing Pb from scrap Pb-bronze reduces such environmental impacts as global warming, acidification, energy consumption, resource consumption significantly. Thus, in LCA perspective, the new manufacturing system using a recycling Pb-free bronze is economically superior to the conventional one using virgin materials.Greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4 and N2O) are emitted during livestock manure handling, including composting, storage and land application. However, published data on emission rates of these gases during storage are sparse. In this study, the levels of GHG emissions and N levels during compost storage were investigated. The compost materials were produced by composting livestock manure for 133 d with 0, 10, 20 and 30% phosphogypsum (PG) or 10, 20 and 30% sand amendment. These compost materials were then stored on a clay pad for 233 d. Results from this study indicated that TN content did not change but mineral N content increased significantly during the 233 d storage for all treatments. The higher mineral N content in compost increases its agronomic value. There were only trace amounts of CH4 and N2O emissions. The C loss during storage was mainly as CO2 and accounted for about 2.9 to 10% of total C initially in the compost. This information is vital to livestock manure life cycle analysis, and can be used to develop best manure management strategies that reduce GHG emissions from livestock production.In the industrial practice, the choice and evaluation of strategies of recycling and reuse of solid mineral wastes (thermal process residues, mining and quarrying wastes, construction and demolition wastes) could be based on ecological risk assessment (EcoRA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) studies also because of the substantial lack of regulations. Several methods and approaches of EcoRA and LCA have been developed so far and it is not always evident to consider a pertinent method for each application case. Furthermore, it is even less trivial to combine local and global scale results so to identify the best scenario from different alternatives. After a comprehensive review of recycling and reuse routes of mineral waste and relative legislation, this study addresses these issues by providing a detailed analysis and comparison of global and local scale impact assessment methods used in LCA and EcoRA, and finally an inventory of LCA and EcoRA studies already completed, to serve as a basis for further research. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) models are becoming the principal decision support tools of waste management systems. This paper describes our experience with the use of EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technologies), a new computerized LCA-based model for integrated waste management. Our findings provide a quantitative understanding of waste management systems and may reveal consistent approaches to improve their environmental performances. EASEWASTE provides a versatile system modelling facility combined with a complete life-cycle impact assessment and in addition to the traditional impact categories addresses toxicity-related categories. New categories dealing with stored ecotoxicity and spoiled groundwater resources have been introduced. EASEWASTE has been applied in several Studies, including full-scale assessments of waste management in Danish municipalities. These studies led to numerous modelling issues: the need of combining process-specific and input-specific emissions, the choice of a meaningful time horizon, the way of accounting for biological carbon emissions, the problem of stored ecotoxicity and aspects of crediting the waste management system with the savings inherent in avoided production of energy and materials. Interpretation of results showed that waste management systems can be designed in an environmentally sustainable manner where energy recovery processes lead to substantial avoidance of emissions and savings of resources.A large number of methods and approaches that can be used for supporting waste management decisions at different levels in society have been developed. In this paper an overview of methods is provided and preliminary guidelines for the choice of methods are presented. The methods introduced include: Environmental Impact Assessment, Strategic Environmental Assessment, Life Cycle Assessment, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Cost-effectiveness Analysis, Life-cycle Costing, Risk Assessment, Material Flow Accounting, Substance Flow Analysis, Energy Analysis, Exergy Analysis, Entropy Analysis, Environmental Management Systems, and Environmental Auditing, The characteristics used are the types of impacts included, the objects under study and whether the method is procedural or analytical The different methods can be described as systems analysis methods. Waste management systems thinking is receiving increasing attention. This is, for example, evidenced by the suggested thematic strategy on waste by the European Commission where life-cycle analysis and life-cycle thinking get prominent positions. Indeed, life-cycle analyses have been shown to provide policy-relevant and consistent results. However, it is also clear that the studies will always be open to criticism since they are simplifications of reality and include uncertainties. This is something all systems analysis methods have in common. Assumptions can be challenged and it may be difficult to generalize from case studies to policies. This suggests that if decisions are going to be made, they are likely to be made on a less than perfect basis.This study presents the effects of citizen participation on integrated solid waste management. Porto Alegre was chosen as the area of study since its system is a good example for developing countries, based on the partnership between local government and the former scavengers' association that implements selective collection in the city. A life-cycle approach was used to estimate environmental loadings and economic costs based on solid waste generation, and a survey assessment tool was used to analyse social aspects. The results showed a decrease in environmental and economic impacts in the current situation, allowing Porto Alegre to have one of the most affordable integrated solid waste management systems in Brazil. The survey assessment pointed out that public campaign changed the perceptions and practices of most of Porto Alegre's citizens regarding solid waste management. On the other hand, it also pointed out that citizens need more education to increase their participation. Therefore, more research is needed to increase cooperation among all stakeholders, improve citizen participation, and consequently, further decrease the environmental impacts and economic costs.Polymers based on olefins have wide commercial applicability. However, they are made from non-renewable resources and are characterised by difficulty in disposal where recycle and re-use is not feasible. Poly-beta-hydroxybutyric acid (PHB) provides one example of a polymer made from renewable resources. Before motivating its widespread use, the advantages of a renewable polymer must be weighed against the environmental aspects of its production. Previous studies relating the environmental impacts of petroleum-based and bio-plastics have centred on the impact categories of global warming and fossil fuel depletion. Cradle-to-grave studies report equivalent or reduced global warming impacts, in comparison to equivalent polyolefin processes. This stems from a perceived CO2 neutral status of the renewable resource. Indeed, no previous work has reported the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) giving the environmental impacts in all major categories. This study investigates a cradle-to-gate LCA of PHB production taking into account net CO2 generation and all major impact categories. It compares the findings with similar studies of polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE). It is found that, in all of the life cycle categories, PHB is superior to PP. Energy requirements are slightly lower than previously observed and significantly lower than those for polyolefin production. PE impacts are lower than PHB values in acidification and eutrophication. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We discuss the emissions of cadmium throughout all the life stages of CdTe PV modules, from extracting, refining, and purifying the raw materials to producing, using, and disposing or recycling of the modules. Then, we compare these emissions with those in the life cycle of three different types of crystalline Si PV modules. The energy requirement and energy pay back times (EPBT) of CdTe PV modules are considerably shorter than that of crystalline Si modules, although the latter exhibit higher efficiencies. This difference is primarily due to the energy used to process silicon, a fraction of which is derived from fossil fuels, inevitably producing Cd and many other heavy-metal emissions. The lower energy requirement of CdTe PV results in lower emissions of all pollutants, including cadmium. Published by Elsevier B.V.Life cycle assessment is extended to exergetic life cycle assessment and used to evaluate the exergy efficiency, economic effectiveness and environmental impact of producing hydrogen using wind and solar energy in place of fossil fuels. The product hydrogen is considered a fuel for fuel cell vehicles and a substitute for gasoline. Fossil fuel technologies for producing hydrogen from natural gas and gasoline from crude oil are contrasted with options using renewable energy. Exergy efficiencies and greenhouse gas and air pollution emissions are evaluated for all process steps, including crude oil and natural gas pipeline transportation, crude oil distillation and natural gas reforming, wind and solar electricity generation, hydrogen production through water electrolysis, and gasoline and hydrogen distribution and utilization. The use of wind power to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, and its application in a fuel cell vehicle, exhibits the lowest fossil and mineral resource consumption rate. However, the economic attractiveness, as measured by a "capital investment effectiveness factor," of renewable technologies depends significantly on the ratio of costs for hydrogen and natural gas. At the present cost ratio of about 2 (per unit of lower heating value or exergy), capital investments are about five times lower to produce hydrogen via natural gas rather than wind energy. As a consequence, the cost of wind- and solar-based electricity and hydrogen is Substantially higher than that of natural gas. The implementation of a hydrogen fuel cell instead of an internal combustion engine permits, theoretically, an increase in a vehicle's engine efficiency of about of two times. Depending on the ratio in engine efficiencies, the substitution of gasoline with "renewable" hydrogen leads to (a) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions of 12-23 times for hydrogen from wind and 5-8 times for hydrogen from solar energy, and (b) air pollution (AP) emissions reductions of 38-76 times for hydrogen from wind and 16-32 times for hydrogen from solar energy. By comparison, substitution of gasoline with hydrogen from natural gas allows reductions in GHG emissions only as a result of the increased efficiency of a fuel cell engine, and a reduction of AP emissions of 2.5-5 times. These data suggest that "renewable" hydrogen represents a potential long-term solution to many environmental problems. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bioassays can be used in aquatic toxicology to provide individual determinations, however ecotoxicology is now attempting to assess the impact of pollution on populations. The main issue is how to infer the impact on an entire population of the toxic effects observed in individuals. At the individual level, Dynamic Energy Budget in Toxicology (DEBtox) theory provides a set of mechanistic models of survival, reproduction and growth continuously as a function of time and exposure concentration, in which the parameters used have clear biological meanings. These models have been designed for the analysis of data provided by the internationally standardized toxicity tests, and sometimes make it clear which is the mode of action of the contaminant. Matrix population models directly yield the population growth rate, the most robust endpoint in risk assessment at the population level. By combining DEBtox theory and matrix population models, we extrapolate every effects of the toxic compound on the individual (reduced fecundity, growth and survival) to the population level. Both lethal and sublethal effects are integrated into a single parameter, the population growth rate, which is calculated continuously against exposure concentration. We can thus compare the consequences at the population level of choosing one or another assumption about the mode of action of the contaminant at the individual level. We used various complementary matrix population models, in order to perform a complete sensitivity analysis, highlighting critical demographic parameters in the evolution of population growth rate as a function of contaminant concentration. Here, we apply this method to a test organism commonly used in ecotoxicology, Daphnia magna, through a case study of cadmium contamination. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Historical changes in nitrogen flows of a municipality from 1912 to 2002 were analyzed to evaluate the relation between production and environmental pollution. The system comprised human, livestock and farmland subsystems. The indicators used in this study were production, surplus nitrogen (N) on farmland and total systems, and flow indices. Flow indices consist of cycling index (CI), export index (EI), and loss index (LI). CI was defined as the proportion of nitrogen cycled in the system to the total system throughflow, El as nitrogen exported from the system, and LI as nitrogen lost from the system (sum of field surplus nitrogen, nitrogen in non-utilized excreta, and N2O and NH3 emissions). Complex changes in N flow of human, livestock, and farmland subsystems were analyzed by comparing production to the surplus N on farmland and total systems and flow indices. The relations between production and other indicators were defined as eco-balance. A negative correlation is desirable between the indicators and production in the case of an indicator for environmental damage such as surplus N and LI, whereas a positive correlation is preferred in the case of benefits such as Cl and El. Flow indices simplified the complex changes inside the system. According to the analysis of eco-balance, the investigated period from 1912 to 2002 could be divided into three periods: manure-based period (MBP) from 1912 to 1957, transition period from manure-based to chemical-fertilizer-based period (TP) from 1958 to 1977, and chemical-fertilizer-based period (CBP) from 1978 to 2002. Driving forces of each period were extracted based on the eco-balance. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work describes the analysis of the uncertainty linked to the annual direct and indirect losses of different nitrogenous compounds at the scale of a group of farms. The nitrogen (N) forms taken into account are: ammonia (NH3), nitric oxide (NO), nitrous oxide (N2O), dinitrogen (N-2) and nitrate (NO3). The gaseous N emissions for the different components of the farms are estimated with a selection of adapted emission factors. The NO3 losses at the farm scale are calculated as the difference between the surplus of the farm-gate N balance and the gaseous N emissions. The feasibility of this method and the validity of the estimated NO3 losses have been demonstrated for a group of farms situated in the Naizin catchment area (Brittany, France) [Payraudeau, S., van der Werf, H.M.G., Vertes. F., 2006. Evaluation of an operational method for the estimation of emissions of nitrogen compounds for a group of farms. IJARGE 5 (2-3), 224-246]. Two sources of uncertainty were studied: (i) that associated with the terms of the farm-gate N balance and (ii) that associated with the different N emission factors. A Monte Carlo (MC) approach was used to assess the uncertainty associated with the calculated losses according to the uncertainty in the terms of the farm-gate N balance and in the emission factors used. The nitrogen losses are assessed, amongst others, to contribute to the establishment of an emissions inventory to be used in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of farming systems. Therefore, an analysis of the main problems limiting the implementation of the MC approach in LCA studies of agricultural production is proposed. The different stages in the implementation of the MC approach are described. The results reveal a greater sensitivity of emissions of NH3, N2O and N2 to the uncertainty associated with the emission factors than to that associated with the terms of the farm-gate N balance. The two sources of uncertainty contribute similarly to the uncertainty of NO3 losses. In spite of the occasionally large confidence intervals in the factors, the confidence intervals for the different direct losses are reasonably small. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the recent environmental challenges, especially with those concerning energy generation, it is essential to provide an integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) approach that considers environmental impacts of power plants. This work proposes a practical framework to conduct LCA on power plants, which considers the environmental life cycle impact assessment method (LIME). Activity models are defined for the LCA process and integrated LCA-LIME object model is defined and used to evaluate different environmental loads caused by power plants. Life cycle data from Japanese power plants are used to illustrate the proposed integrated framework. (c) 2007 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This overview draws attention to several reasons to encourage the design of new agronomic systems, shifting from conventional open or leaky systems to more closed, regenerative systems: Current systems cause over consumption of environmental resources, contribute to climate change, rely on increasingly expensive fossil fuel, and result in environmental (e.g., groundwater) contamination. Moreover, the agronomic-urban interface is growing, as are markets for ecologically friendly produce, the need for low-input farming systems in low-income regions, and disenchantment with the subsidization of conventional agriculture. There is reasonable biological and economic evidence to support advocacy for a shift to regenerative systems. Such a shift presents challenges-for example, although higher labor input enhances community well-being and rural social capital, it is costly. It also offers opportunities-for example, to adapt technologies to monitor and minimize wastage. Shifting to semiclosed systems would be accelerated by (a) routine life cycle analysis and costing; (b) calculation of the full costs to society of farm inputs such as pesticides; (c) food labeling and standards that draw attention to energy and other inputs; (d) government grants supporting the transition to semiclosed systems; (e) changing priorities for agronomic research; and (f) greater engagement of urban societies in agriculture through recreation and philanthropy.Brick constitutes one of the major materials used for the construction of buildings. The present study analyses the different stages followed during brick production and the materials and energy used in each stage. The purpose is to identify 'hot-spots', i.e. parts of the life cycle that are important to the total environmental impact. The analysis is performed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, which is a method used to identify and quantify the environmental performance of a process or a product from "cradle to grave". LCA methodology provides a quantitative basis for assessing potential improvements in environmental performance of a system throughout the life cycle. The system investigated includes raw material acquisition, industrial production, packaging and transportation. Energy use and emissions are quantified and the potential environmental effects are assessed. The main energy inputs to the production system are electricity, diesel and solid fuel (Pet-Coke). The environmental burdens that arise from the operation of a brick industry are mainly due to air emissions derived from fossil fuel utilization. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to examine the building's environmental performance through the insulation's material selection. Contemporary insulation materials achieve thermal conductivity values of less than 0.04W/mK, whilst a plethora of materials, which fulfil specific requirements like mechanical and physical features according to the object specific specifications, can be found in the market. Still, the latter is dominated by inorganic fibrous materials and organic foamy ones, which were the subject of this study. The two materials' production process was registered and evaluated based on environmental criteria with Life Cycle Analysis' implementation, which was supported by the GEMIS model. The results obtained were used to set operating performance indicators and environmental condition indicators based on the ISO 14031 standard and accomplish the Environmental Performance Evaluation for the two materials. Moreover, insulation materials' life cycle correlation to building's life cycle examined and expressed with energy consumption indicators. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is one of basic steps in life cycle assessment methodology (LCA). This paper presents a comparative study of the LCIA of different life cycle inventories (LCI) for EU cements. The analysis unit used is the manufacture of I kg of cement, from "cradle to gate". The impact categories considered are those resulting from the manufacture of cement and include greenhouse effects, acidification, eutrophication and summer and winter smog, amongst others. The results of the study highlighted some inconsistencies in existing inventories. As for the LCIA, the main environmental interventions related to cement manufacture were classified and characterised and their effect on different impact categories analysed. Differences observed in evaluation of the impact of cement type were essentially related to their clinker content. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Linear programming is widely used by multiproduct oil-refining firms, which minimize a refinery's variable cost under a set of constraints. In addition to operating costs, this variable cost can include the cost associated with the refinery's CO2 emissions. We suggest a quite general approach combining use of Aumann-Shapley cost-sharing method and breakdown of the objective function of the linear program. This approach determines an appropriate rule for the allocation of the refinery's CO2 emissions (or, in general, variable costs) among the various finished products, which can be used for purposes of Life Cycle Assessment. A numerical application to a simplified refining model is presented. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Waste management has evolved from the simple transportation of waste to landfills to complex systems, including waste prevention and waste recycling as well as several waste treatment and landfill technologies. To assess the environmental, economical and social effects of waste management systems, several tools have been developed. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is an approach for integrated assessment enhancing involvement in the planning of a decision supporting process. The aim of this paper is to show how SEA can be applied in a waste management context. For this purpose a case study is described where a SEA process was undertaken to develop a regional waste management plan. The approach from this case study is compared to other methods. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Preamble. ESPR was founded in 1994 by Prof. Dr. Otto Hutzinger as an international journal, closely connected to the German language Journal Umweltwissenschaften und Schadstoff-Forschung - Zeitschrift fur Umweltchemie und Okotoxikologie (USWF), which was established in 1989 (Hutzinger 2005, Hollert et al. 2005, Young et al. 2005). ESPR serves the international community in all areas of Environmental Science and related subjects with an emphasis on chemical compounds. It reports from a broad interdisciplinary outlook. In addition to scientific contributions in form of original research articles, short research communications and reviews, ESPR publishes news & views in context with research and technology, legislation and regulation, education, literature, institutions, organizations, and conferences. In 1996, ESPR and USWF were complemented by 'The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment' (Int J LCA) and, more recently, in 2001 by the 'Journal of Soils and Sediments/Protection, Risk Assessment and Remediation' (J Soils Sediments or JSS). As a consequence of the joint history and publishing policies, the four journals form a family, the Scientific Journals family.We characterize cumulative intakes of organophosphorus (OP) pesticides in an agricultural region of California by drawing on human biomonitoring data, California pesticide use reporting (PUR) data, and limited environmental samples together with outputs from the CalTOX multimedia, multipathway, source-to-dose model. The study population is the CHAMACOS cohort of almost 600 pregnant Latina women in the Salinas Valley region. We use model estimates of OP intake and urinary dialkylphosphate (DAP) metabolite excretion to develop premises about relative contributions from different exposure sources and pathways. We evaluate these premises by comparing the magnitude and variation of DAPs in the CHAMACOS cohort with those of the whole U.S. population using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This comparison supports the premise that diet is the common and dominant exposure pathway in both populations. Biomarker comparisons and model results support the observation that, relative to NHANES, the CHAMACOS population has a statistically significant (p < 0.001) added intake of OP pesticides with low inter-individual variability. We attribute the magnitude and small variance of this intake to residential nondietary exposures from local agricultural OP uses. These results show that mass-balance models can estimate exposures for OP pesticides within the range measured by biological monitoring.Anaerobic digestion (AD) of manure in mixed fanning areas can produce biogas from which electrical power or pipeline grade natural gas can be produced. In this study, the cost of power and gas and the carbon emission reduction from AD plants receiving manure from multiple sources is calculated for plants of varying scale. The study area is Red Deer County, Alberta, a typical mixed farming area. Costs are based on a detailed analysis of manure and digestate transport and processing costs at an AD plant; carbon emission reductions from power generation are calculated for displacement of coal and naturalgas sourced power. The required value of carbon credit in dollars per tonne of CO2 to cover the cost of AD power or gas is calculated for two cases:gas and power sale, and gas and power sale plus a subsidy plus, for the power generation cases, the sale of waste heat. The cost of power and gas shows a significant economy of scale, with the lowest cost coming from a single AD plant processing manure from the entire county. The required carbon credit to cover the cost of AD processing of manure is greater than $125 per tonne of CO2. These results show that AD treatment of manure from mixed farming areas is not economic given current values of carbon credits. Other factors that might motivate AD processing of manure from mixed farming areas are issues of water quality, odor control, and excess phosphate levels in soils.Goal, Scope and Background. Wood is the most important renewable material. The management of wood appears to be a key action to optimise the use of resources and to reduce the environmental impact associated with mankind's activities. Wood-based products must be analysed considering the twofold nature of wood, commonly used as a renewable material or regenerative fuel. Relevant, up-to-date environmental data are needed to allow the analysis of wood-based products. The main focus of this study is to provide comprehensive data of one key wood board industry such as the Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF). Moreover, the influence of factors with strong geographical dependence, such as the electricity profile and final transport of the product, is analysed. In this work, International Organization for Standardization standards (ISO 14040-43) and Ecoindicator 99 methodology have been considered to quantify the potential environmental impact associated to the system under study. Three factories, considered representative of the 'state of art', were selected to study the process in detail: two Spanish factories and a Chilean one, with a process production of around 150,000 m(3) per year. The system boundaries included all the activities taking place into the factory as well as the activities linked to the production of the main chemicals used in the process, energy inputs and transport. All the data related to the inputs and outputs of the process were obtained by on-site measurements during a one-year period. A sensitive analysis was carried out taking into account the influence of the final transport of the product and the dependence on the electricity generation profile. Life Cycle Inventory Analysis. LCI methodology has been used for the quantification of the impacts of the MDF manufacture. The process chain can be subdivided in three main subsystems: wood preparation, board shaping and board finishing. The final transport of the product was studied as a different subsystem, considering scenarios from local to transoceanic distribution and three scenarios of electricity generation profile were assessed. The system was characterised with Ecoindicator 99 methodology (hierarchic version) in order to identify the 'hot spots'. Damage to Human Health, Ecosystem Quality and Resources are mainly produced by the subsystem of Wood Preparation (91.1%, 94.8% and 94.1%, respectively). The contribution of the subsystem of Board Finishing is considerably lower, but also significant, standing for the 5.8% of the damage to HH and 5.5% of the damage to Resources. Conclusions. With the final aim of creating a database of wood board manufacture, this work was focused in the identification and characterisation of one of the most important wood-based products: Medium Density Fibreboard. Special attention has been paid in the inventory analysis stage of the MDF industry. The results of the sensitive analysis showed a significant influence of both the final transport of the product and the electricity generation profile. Thus, the location of MDF process is of paramount importance, as both aspects have considerable site-dependence. Recommendations and Perspectives. Research continues to be conducted to identify the environmental burdens associated to the materials of extended use. In this sense, future work can be focused on the comparison of different materials for specific applications.Background, Aims and Scope. Using renewable feedstock and introducing biocatalysts in the chemical industry have been suggested as the key strategies to reduce the environmental impact of chemicals. The Swedish interdisciplinary programme 'Greenchem', is aiming to develop these strategies. One target group of chemicals for Greenchem are wax esters which can be used in wood surface coatings for wood furniture, etc. The aim of this study was to conduct a life cycle assessment of four different wood surface coatings, two wax-based coatings and two lacquers using ultra violet light for hardening (UV lacquers). One of the two wax-based coatings is based on a renewable wax ester produced with biocatalysts from rapeseed oil, denoted 'green wax', while the other is based on fossil feedstock and is denoted 'fossil wax'. The two UV lacquers consist of one '100% UV' coating and one 'water-based UV coating. The scope was to compare the environmental performance of the new 'green' coating with the three coatings which are on the market today. Methods. The study has a cradle-to-grave perspective and the functional unit is decoration and protection of 1 m(2) wood table surface for 20 years'. Extensive data collection and calculations have been performed for the two wax-based coatings, whereas mainly existing LCI data have been used to characterise the production of the two UV lacquers. Results. For all impact categories studied, the '100% UV' lacquer is the most environmentally benign alternative. The 'waterbased UV is the second best alternative for all impact categories except EP, where the 'fossil wax' is slightly better. For GWP the 'fossil wax' has the highest contribution followed by the 'green wax'. For AP and EP it is the 'green wax' that makes the highest environmental impact due to the contribution from the cultivation of the rapeseed and the production of the rapeseed oil. For POCP the 'fossil wax' makes the highest contribution, slightly higher than the contribution from the 'green wax'. Also the energy requirements for the '100% U-V' lacquer is much lower than for the other coatings. The results from the toxicological evaluation conducted in this study, which was restricted to include only the UV lacquers, are inconclusive, giving different results depending on the model chosen, EDIP97 or USES. Discussion. The result in this study shows that the environmental benefits of using revewable feedstock and processes based on biocatalysis in the production of wax esters used in wood surface coatings are rather limited. This is due to the high environmental impact from other steps in the life cycle of the coating. Conclusions. Overall the '100% UV' lacquer seems to be the best alternative from an environmental point of view. This study shows that the hot spots of the life cycle of the coatings are the production of the ingredients, but also the application and drying of the coatings. The toxicity assessment shows the need for the development of a new model, a model which finds common ground in order to overcome the current situation of diverging results of toxicity assessments. The results in this study also point to the importance of investigating the environmental performance of a product based on fossil or renewable feedstock from a life cycle perspective. Recommendations and Perspectives. The results in this study show that an efficient way to improve the wood coating industry environmentally is to increase the utilization of UV lacquers that are 100% U-V-based. These coatings can also be even further improved by introducing biocatalytic processes and producing epoxides and diacrylates from renewable raw material instead of the fossil-based ones produced with conventional chemical methods in use today. In doing this, however, choosing a vegetable oil with good environmental performance is important. An alternative application of the 'green wax' analysed in this study may be as an ingredient in health care products, for example, which may result in greater environmental benefits than when the wax is used in wood coating products. The results in this study illustrate the importance of investigating the environmental performance of a product from cradle.-to-grave perspective and not consider it 'green' because it is based on renewable resources.Background. In product life cycle assessment (LCA), the attribution of environmental interventions to a product under study is an ambiguous task. This is due to a) the simplistic modeling characteristics in the life cycle inventory step (LCI) of LCA in view of the complexity of our techno-economic system, and b) to the non-tangible theoretical nature of the product system as a representation of the processes 'causally' linked to a product. Ambiguous methodological decisions during the setup of an LCI include the modeling of end-of-life scenarios or the choice of an allocation factor for the allocation of joint co-production processes. An important criterion for methodological decisions - besides the conformity with the relevant series of standards ISO 14 040 - is if the improvement options, which can be deduced from the LCI, are perceived by the decision-maker as to redirect the material flows at stake into more sustainable paths. Methods. From this functionalistic conception of LCA, this article develops a set of wood-specific requirements, an LCI of wood products has to fulfill to give adequate decision support under Central European conditions. These requirements serve as a basis for the evaluation of different allocation procedures in a case study related to the modeling of end-of-life scenarios in a product LCA of wood products. The case study discusses how the recycling and incineration of a creosote-treated railway sleeper (Am. tie) are modeled according to various methodological propositions for the solution of the allocation problems related to recycling and final disposal. A partial life cycle model of the railway sleeper demonstrates the effect of the different allocation procedures to the over-all result. Results and Discussion. The most important conclusion - apart from proposing a functionalistic approach to solve allocation problems - is that under Central European conditions both the material and energy aspects of wood and the related substitution and opportunity effects (opportunity 'cost') should be considered for the modeling of post-consumer waste wood in attributive product LCA, even when comparing products made of different materials.Goal, Scope and Background. As part of an LCA study comparing an average Dutch passenger car running on petrol with a similar car running on bio-ethanol and comparing an average Dutch passenger car running on diesel with a similar car running on biodiesel, the question raised to get more insight into the allocations made in fossil fuel chains in existing databases such as ecoinvent. Both biofuel and fossil fuel chains contain various allocation situations that have been approached differently by various authors leading to differing and incomparable results. For biofuel chains, stakeholders had obtained insight into the allocations in earlier studies, but for the allocations made for the fossil chains, this was not the case. Therefore, one part of the study, which is reported in this paper, focused on a quick scan of different allocation scenarios for fossil fuels chains using the Swiss ecoinvent v1.1 database. Methods. The quick scan focused on three different allocation scenarios for fossil fuel chains: economic allocation, physical allocation and the ecoinvent default allocation. There appeared to be 54 multi-output (MO) processes linked to both the passenger car and the diesel system in the ecoinvent v1.1 database. Based on contribution analyses identifying which multi-output processes contribute most to one of the environmental impact categories of the characterisation, seven multi-output processes were selected that have been further analysed with the three allocation scenarios mentioned. Results. The results show that although at the process level allocation factors may differ significantly (up to almost 250), the total results only differ modestly (1-1.5), at least for the present case. Discussion. There is no general rule between these two. They depend on the scaling factor and the environmental impact related to the resource extractions and emissions of a particular multi-output process and its upstream processes in the total system analysed. Conclusions. The results of this quick scan are mainly intended for illustrating and learning purposes focusing on the possible influence of different allocation scenarios for fossil fuel chains. Bearing these limitations in mind, it can be concluded that different allocation methods can generate large differences in allocation factors and thus also at the level of environmental impacts allocated to the derived single-output processes. Nevertheless, the aggregated results for the present case only differ modestly.Goal, Scope and Background. Exergy has been put forward as an indicator for the energetic quality of resources. The exergy of a resource accounts for the minimal work necessary to form the resource or for the maximally obtainable amount of work when bringing the resource's components to their most common state in the natural environment. Exergy measures are traditionally applied to assess energy efficiency, regarding the exergy losses in a process system. However, the measure can be utilised as an indicator of resource quality demand when considering the specific resources that contain the exergy. Such an exergy measure indicates the required resources and assesses the total exergy removal from nature in order to provide a product, process or service. In the current work, the exergy concept is combined with a large number of life cycle inventory datasets available with ecoinvent data v1.2. The goal was, first, to provide an additional impact category indicator to Life-Cycle Assessment practitioners. Second, this work aims at making a large source of exergy scores available to scientific communities that apply exergy as a primary indicator for energy efficiency and resource quality demand. Methods. The indicator Cumulative Exergy Demand (CExD) is introduced to depict total exergy removal from nature to provide a product, summing up the exergy of all resources required. CExD assesses the quality of energy demand and includes the exergy of energy carriers as well as of non-energetic materials. In the current paper, the exergy concept was applied to the resources contained in the ecoinvent database, considering chemical, kinetic, hydro-potential, nuclear, solar-radiative and thermal exergies. The impact category indicator is grouped into the eight resource categories fossil, nuclear, hydropower, biomass, other renewables, water, minerals, and metals. Exergy characterization factors for 112 different resources were included in the calculations. Results. CExD was calculated for 2630 ecoinvent product and process systems. The results are presented as average values and for 26 specific groups containing 1197 products, processes and infrastructure units. Depending on the process/product group considered, energetic resources make up between 9% and 100% of the total CExD, with an average contribution of 88%. The exergy of water contributes on the average to 8%, the total exergy demand, but to more than 90% in specific process groups. The average contribution of minerals and metal ores is 4%, but shows an average value as high as 38% and 13%, in metallic products and in building materials, respectively. Looking at individual processes, the contribution of the resource categories varies substantially from these average product group values. In comparison to Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) and the abiotic-resource-depletion category of CML 2001 (CML'01), non-energetic resources tend to be weighted more strongly by the CExD method. Discussion. Energy and matter used in a society are not destroyed but only transformed. What is consumed and eventually depleted is usable energy and usable matter. Exergy is a measure of such useful energy. Therefore, CExD is a suitable energy based indicator for the quality of resources that are removed from nature. Similar to CED, CExD assesses energy use, but regards the quality of the energy and incorporates non-energetic materials like minerals and metals. However, it: can be observed for non-renewable energy-intensive products that CExD is very similar to CED. Since CExD considers energetic and non-energetic resources on the basis of exhaustible exergy, the measure is comparable to resource indicators like the resource use category of Eco-indicator 99 and the resource depletion category of CML 2001. An advantage of CExD in comparison to these methods is that exergy is an inherent property of the resource. Therefore less assumptions and subjective choices need to be made in setting up characterization factors. However, CExD does not cover societal demand (distinguishing between basic demand and luxury), availability or scarcity of the resource. As a consequence of the different weighting approach, CExD may differ considerably from the resource category indicators in Eco-indicator 99 and CML 2001. Conclusions. The current work shows that the exergy concept can be operationalised in product life cycle assessments. CExD is a suitable indicator to assess energy and resource demand. Due to the consideration of the quality of energy and the integration of non-energetic resources, CExD is a more comprehensive indicator than the widely used CED. All of the eight CExD categories proposed are significant contributors to Cumulative Exergy Demand in at least one of the product groups analysed. In product or service assessments and comparative assertions, a careful and concious selection of the appropriate CExD-categories is required based on the energy and resource quality demand concept to be expressed by CExD. Recommendations and Perspectives. A differentiation between the exergy of fossil, nuclear, hydro-potential, biomass, other renewables, water and mineral/metal resources is recommended in order to obtain a more detailed picture of resource quality demand and to recognise trade-offs between resource use, for instance energetic and non-energetic raw materials, or nonrenewable and renewable energies.Goal, Scope and Background. This paper describes the influence of the choice of the functional unit on the results of an environmental assessment of different battery technologies for electric and hybrid vehicles. Battery, hybrid and fuel cell electric vehicles are considered as being environmentally friendly. However, the batteries they use are sometimes said to be environmentally unfriendly. At the current state of technology different battery types can be envisaged: lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride, lithium-ion and sodium-nickel chloride. The environmental impacts described in this paper are based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. One of the first critical stages of LCA is the definition of an appropriate and specific functional unit for electric and hybrid vehicle application. Most of the known LCA studies concerning batteries were performed while choosing different functional units, although this choice can influence the final results. An adequate functional unit, allowing to compare battery technologies in their real life vehicle application should be chosen. The results of the LCA are important as they will be used as a decision support for the end-of-life vehicles directive 2000/53/EC (Official journal of the European Communities L269/24 2000). As a consequence, a thorough analysis is required to define an appropriate functional unit for the assessment of batteries for electric vehicles. This paper discusses this issue and will mainly focus on traction batteries for electric vehicles. Main Features. An overview of the different parameters to be considered in the definition of a functional unit to compare battery technologies for battery electric vehicle application is described and discussed. An LCA study is performed for the most relevant potential functional units. SimaPro 6 is used as a software tool and Eco-indicator 99 as an impact assessment method. The influence of the different selected functional units on the results (Eco-indicator Points) is discussed. The environmental impact of the different electric vehicle battery technologies is described. A sensitivity analysis illustrates the robustness of the obtained results. Results and Discussion. Five main parameters are considered in each investigated functional unit: an equal depth of discharge is assumed, a relative number of batteries required during the life of the vehicle is calculated, the energy losses in the battery and the additional vehicle consumption due to the battery mass is included and the same lifetime distance target is taken into account. On the basis of the energy content, battery mass, number of cycles and vehicle autonomy three suitable functional units are defined: 'battery packs with an identical mass', 'battery packs with an identical energy content' and 'battery packs with an identical one-charge range'. The results show that the differences in the results between these three functional units are small and imply less variation on the results than the other uncertainties inherent to LCA studies. On the other hand, the results obtained using other, less adequate, functional units can be quite different. Conclusions. When performing an LCA study, it's important to choose an appropriate functional unit. Most of the time, this choice is unambiguous. However, sometimes this choice is more complicated when different correlated parameters have to be considered, as it is the case for traction batteries. When using a realistic functional unit, the result is not influenced significantly by the choice of one out of the three suitable functional units. Additionally, the life cycle assessment allowed concluding that three electric vehicle battery technologies have a comparable environmental impact: lead-acid, nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal hydride. Lithium-ion and sodium-nickel chloride have lower environinental impacts than the three previously cited technologies when used in a typical battery electric vehicle application. Recommendations and Perspectives. The article describes the need to consider all relevant parameters for the choice of a functional unit for an electric vehicle battery, as this choice can influence the conclusions. A more standardised method to define the functional unit could avoid these differences and could make it possible to compare the results of different traction battery LCA studies more easily.Goal, Scope and Background. The most common system for powering small items of electronics by both consumers and industry in Australia is simply to repeatedly buy and use disposable alkaline batteries. A growing practice however is to invest in a small battery charger and buy more expensive rechargeables such as nickel metal hydride batteries. This latter course is promoted as being better for the environment. This study evaluates this assertion to guide future practice by both consumers and industry. The study compares re-chargeable AA batteries of both nickel cadmium (NiCd) and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) chemistry, each used either 400 times or 50 times with the number of AA alkaline batteries required to provide 1 kWh of energy to a device being powered. The scope of the analysis includes the materials and processes used in the production, distribution, use and disposal of the batteries and the battery charger and includes consideration of partial recycling and disposal to landfill. Methods. The study is done by developing an inventory of the life cycle of each of the alternatives which in the case of re-chargeable batteries includes the charger and the discharge & re-charging process. Measurements were conducted of re-charging efficiencies of representative batteries and of battery charger energy efficiencies. Energy use in wholesale and retail parts of the distribution system are also accounted for. SimaPro LCA software and associated Australian databases are then used to analyse the data using the Eco Indicator 99 (E) model of environmental impact. Results. The relative impacts of the three alternative systems on the categories human health, ecosystem quality and resource use showed little difference between the NiCd and NiMH batteries except for human health where the toxicity of cadmium gave a 20% advantage to NiMH batteries. When comparing rechargeable batteries with alkaline batteries, the former caused less damage by factors varying from 10 to 131 for an optimistic scenario of 400 cycles of discharge and charge. Significant factors in the impact of the re-chargeable batteries were the production of batteries themselves, the electricity used for wholesaling and retailing, the transport to landfill and the copper and other components in the battery charger. For the disposable alkaline batteries the dominant impacts came from the electrical energy used for wholesaling and retailing the batteries, followed by the production of the batteries. Discussion. Most of the results are in line with expectations but somewhat surprisingly, the impact in most categories is dominated by the energy used in wholesaling and retailing, particularly for the alkaline batteries where the number involved is large. Also surprising is the fact that the cadmium present in the NiCd batteries was less significant than many other factors. The results however agree broadly with those of Lankey and McMichael (2000). Conclusions. Analysis results were overwhelmingly in favour of the re-chargeable battery option. This was true for every impact criteria studied and for less than optimistic scenarios of battery use such as significant shelf life or high discharge rates. Recommendations and Perspectives. Given the present very large market for disposable batteries in Australia, there is a need for education of the consumer population and, to a lesser extent, industry, of the environmental and economic advantages of moving to re-chargeable batteries.It is thought that the CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants contribute greatly to the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Ammonia solvent can be used to absorb the CO2, called ammonia scrubbing. However, as has been pointed out, the production of ammonia would emit CO2; therefore, the effectiveness of ammonia scrubbing is doubted. The paper focuses on the problem. Two systems are defined in the paper. System I is CO2 absorption by ammonia scrubbing, and system II is industrial production of ammonium bicarbonate. The total CO2 emissions of the two systems are calculated by means of life cycle assessment. The paper shows that the total CO2 emissions of ammonia scrubbing are less than that of the industrial production of fertilizer ammonium bicarbonate. It can be concluded that ammonia scrubbing is an effective way to reduce the anthropogenic CO2 emissions.Singapore is one of the most industrialised and urbanised economics in South-East Asia. Power supply is an important sub-system in its economy and heavily reliant on imported oil and natural gas. Due to its geographical area, clean/renewable energy sources for power generation are limited. At the same time, in its deregulated electricity market, the adoption of clean/renewable based power generation technology may be hindered by a market pricing mechanism that does not reflect externality costs. For a sustainable power supply, there is a need to change the conventional appraisal techniques. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) are good tools to quantify environmental impacts and economic implications. LCA and LCCA are performed for centralised and distributed power generation technologies in Singapore, namely, oil and Orimulsion-fired steam turbines, natural gas-fired combined cycle plant, solar PV and fuel cell systems. A life cycle energy, emission and cost inventory is established. The results are discussed from the perspectives of fuel security, environmental protection and cost effectiveness of future power generation strategies for Singapore. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The enhanced use of biomass for the production of energy, fuels, and materials is one of the key strategies towards sustainable production and consumption. Various life cycle assessment (LCA) studies demonstrate the great potential of bio-based products to reduce both the consumption of non-renewable energy resources and greenhouse gas emissions. However, the production of biomass requires agricultural land and is often associated with adverse environmental effects such as eutrophication of surface and ground water. Decision making in favor of or against bio-based and conventional fossil product alternatives therefore often requires weighing of environmental impacts. In this article, we apply distance-to-target weighing methodology to aggregate LCA results obtained in four different environmental impact categories (i.e., non-renewable energy consumption, global warming potential, eutrophication potential, and acidification potential) to one environmental index. We include 45 bio- and fossil-based product pairs in our analysis, which we conduct for Germany. The resulting environmental indices for all product pairs analyzed range from - 19.7 to +0.2 with negative values indicating overall environmental benefits of bio-based products. Except for three options of packaging materials made from wheat and cornstarch, all bio-based products (including energy, fuels, and materials) score better than their fossil counterparts. Comparing the median values for the three options of biomass utilization reveals that bio-energy (-1.2) and bio-materials (-1.0) offer significantly higher environmental benefits than bio-fuels (-0.3). The results of this study reflect, however, subjective value judgments due to the weighing methodology applied. Given the uncertainties and controversies associated not only with distance-to-target methodologies in particular but also with weighing approaches in general, the authors strongly recommend using weighing for decision finding only as a supplementary tool separately from standardized LCA methodology. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The performance and costs of several single-house PV off-grid systems were analyzed by detailed and realistic computer simulations. Input solar and climatic data were calculated using Meteonorm program. Optimization of the PV-system components, calculation of performance and cost-effectiveness of particular PV system were done by PVSYST and RETScreen programs. Detailed Life-Cycle-Analysis was done by software developed in our Institute. It has been found that, by using subsidies and incentives for RES available at islands (up to 50% off from commercial prices), the cost of a PV system of 1,2 kWp could be decreased below 4000 (sic), resulting in price of electricity lower than from diesel aggregate and much cheaper than bringing grid. The quantitative analysis showed that most effective incentive would be a favorable long-term loan for purchasing PV system. Installments for repayment of the loan would be lower than the cost of the replaced diesel fuel, with considerable positive financial balance till the end-life of PV system. Wider application of photovoltaics to satisfy basic electricity needs in off-grid locations in Croatian islands could ensure strong socio-economic development of many small islands and other off-grid maritime location in a sustainable way by production of electricity without pollution, noise and stress to the environment.The quality of life cycle inventory (LCI) data is crucial to the reliability of decisions made via life cycle analysis (LCA). However, many LCI data, be they from commercial software or public domain databases, violate the laws of thermodynamics due to errors, missing data, and other inconsistencies. The process engineering method of data rectification is appealing for improving the quality of LCI data, but applying this approach poses many new challenges that are not addressed in traditional rectification. One such challenge is due to the availability of life cycle data at multiple overlapping scales. This includes engineering data at the equipment and process scales, process LCA data at the value chain scale, and economic input-output and toxic release inventory data at the economy scale. This article develops a method for rectification of such multiscale data. Rectification is accomplished via a mixed integer optimization-based approach, and it is integrated with the existing computational methods for different types of traditional and hybrid LCA. The developed method may also be used for multiscale data from process engineering. It is applied to data for a caustic soda process from a public domain LCI database to illustrate the benefits of the proposed approach and identify further challenges. (c) 2007 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.Bioenergy cropping systems could help offset greenhouse gas emissions, but quantifying that offset is complex. Bioenergy crops offset carbon dioxide emissions by converting atmospheric CO(2) to organic C in crop biomass and soil, but they also emit nitrous oxide and vary in their effects on soil oxidation of methane. Growing the crops requires energy ( e. g., to operate farm machinery, produce inputs such as fertilizer) and so does converting the harvested product to usable fuels (feedstock conversion efficiency). The objective of this study was to quantify all these factors to determine the net effect of several bioenergy cropping systems on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. We used the DAYCENT biogeochemistry model to assess soil GHG fluxes and biomass yields for corn, soybean, alfalfa, hybrid poplar, reed canarygrass, and switchgrass as bioenergy crops in Pennsylvania, USA. DAYCENT results were combined with estimates of fossil fuels used to provide farm inputs and operate agricultural machinery and fossil-fuel offsets from biomass yields to calculate net GHG fluxes for each cropping system considered. Displaced fossil fuel was the largest GHG sink, followed by soil carbon sequestration. N(2)O emissions were the largest GHG source. All cropping systems considered provided net GHG sinks, even when soil C was assumed to reach a new steady state and C sequestration in soil was not counted. Hybrid poplar and switchgrass provided the largest net GHG sinks, > 200 g CO(2)e-C(.)m(-2) (.) yr(-1) for biomass conversion to ethanol, and > 400 g CO(2)e-C(.)m(-2) (.) yr(-1) for biomass gasification for electricity generation. Compared with the life cycle of gasoline and diesel, ethanol and biodiesel from corn rotations reduced GHG emissions by similar to 40%, reed canarygrass by similar to 85%, and switchgrass and hybrid poplar by similar to 115%.Lack of regulations and standards on mineral waste recycling makes Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) useful methods for environmental assessment of recycling scenarios. An unsolved problem arises whenever two scenarios of recycling have to be compared according to both ERA and LCA impact results considered simultaneously. A methodology to combine LCA and ERA results and tools toward Integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA) is proposed together with three application examples based on case studies. The most effective combination approach is to define further impact categories for ERA to be considered with the standard LCA ones. Then, the use of a multicriteria analysis method was proved to be an efficient way to rank alternative scenarios with respect to all the results. The key issues to be further researched are discussed and proposals are suggested. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Since the United States began a programme to develop ethanol as a transportation fuel, its use has increased from 175 million gallons in 1980 to 4.9 billion gallons in 2006. Virtually all of the ethanol used for transportation has been produced from corn. During the period of fuel ethanol growth, corn farming productivity has increased dramatically, and energy use in ethanol plants has been reduced by almost by half. The majority of corn ethanol plants are powered by natural gas. However, as natural gas prices have skyrocketed over the last several years, efforts have been made to further reduce the energy used in ethanol plants or to switch from natural gas to other fuels, such as coal and wood chips. In this paper, we examine nine corn ethanol plant types - categorized according to the type of process fuels employed, use of combined heat and power, and production of wet distiller grains and solubles. We found that these ethanol plant types can have distinctly different energy and greenhouse gas emission effects on a full fuel-cycle basis. In particular, greenhouse gas emission impacts can vary significantly - from a 3% increase if coal is the process fuel to a 52% reduction if wood chips are used. Our results show that, in order to achieve energy and greenhouse gas emission benefits, researchers need to closely examine and differentiate among the types of plants used to produce corn ethanol so that corn ethanol production would move towards a more sustainable path.For the option of "carbon capture and storage", an integrated assessment in the form of a life cycle analysis and a cost assessment combined with a systematic comparison with renewable energies regarding future conditions in the power plant market for the situation in Germany is done. The calculations along the whole process chain show that CCS technologies emit per kWh more than generally assumed in clean-coal concepts (total CO2 reduction by 72-90% and total greenhouse gas reduction by 65-79%) and considerable more if compared with renewable electricity. Nevertheless, CCS could lead to a significant absolute reduction of GHG-emissions within the electricity supply system. Furthermore, depending on the growth rates and the market development, renewables could develop faster and could be in the long term cheaper than CCS based plants. Especially, in Germany, CCS as a climate protection option is phasing a specific problem as a huge amount of fossil power plant has to be substituted in the next 15 years where CCS technologies might be not yet available. For a considerable contribution of CCS to climate protection, the energy structure in Germany requires the integration of capture ready plants into the current renewal programs. If CCS retrofit technologies could be applied at least from 2020, this would strongly decrease the expected CO2 emissions and would give a chance to reach the climate protection goal of minus 80% including the renewed fossil-fired power plants.Computer display technology is currently in a state of transition, as the traditional technology of cathode ray tubes is being replaced by liquid crystal display flat-panel technology. Technology substitution and process innovation require the evaluation of the trade-offs among environmental impact, cost, and engineering performance attributes. General impact assessment methodologies, decision analysis and management tools, and optimization methods commonly used in engineering cannot efficiently address the issues needed for such evaluation. The conventional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) process often generates results that can be subject to multiple interpretations, although the advantages of the LCA concept and framework obtain wide recognition. In the present work, the LCA concept is integrated with Quality Function Deployment (QFD), a popular industrial quality management tool, which is used as the framework for the development of our integrated model. The problem of weighting is addressed by using pairwise comparison of stakeholder preferences. Thus, this paper presents a new integrated analytical approach, Integrated Industrial Ecology Function Deployment (I2-EFD), to assess the environmental behavior of alternative technologies in correlation with their performance and economic characteristics. Computer display technology is used as the case study to further develop our methodology through the modification and integration of various quality management tools (e.g., process mapping, prioritization matrix) and statistical methods (e.g., multi-attribute analysis, cluster analysis). Life cycle thinking provides the foundation for our methodology, as we utilize a published LCA report, which stopped at the characterization step, as our starting point. Further, we evaluate the validity and feasibility of our methodology by considering uncertainty and conducting sensitivity analysis. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When calculating eco-efficiency, there are considerable confusion and controversy about what the product value is and how it should be quantified. We have proposed here a quantification method for eco-efficiency that derives the ratio of the multiplication value of the product quality and the life span of a product to its whole environmental impact based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In this study, product quality was used as the product value and quantified by the following three steps: (1) normalization based on a value function, (2) determination of the subjective weighting factors of the attributes, and (3) calculation of product quality of the chosen products. The applicability of the proposed method to an actual product was evaluated using digital cameras. The results show that the eco-efficiency values of products equipped with rechargeable batteries were higher than those products that use alkaline batteries, because of higher quality values and lower environmental impacts. The sensitivity analysis shows that the proposed method was superior to the existing methods, because it enables to identify the quality level of the chosen products by considering all products that have the same functions in the market and because, when adding a new product, the calculated quality values in the proposed method do not have to be changed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a robust methodology for the investigation of economic and environmental costs within a marine system. It describes the methods used to establish system life-cycle costs, and compares them with their environmental effects to establish the cost-benefit of reducing environmental hazards (Landamore et al. 2006: Life Cycle and Cost Benefit Analysis of Selected Technologies for Sustainable Inland Boating, Newcastle University, January). The case study is a small inland charter boat, operating on the Norfolk Broads, with varying options for powering, hull material, and graywater (GW) treatment. The principles described in this paper can be used to guide the efficient, cost-effective design of any system along sustainable principles. Environmental life-cycle analysis is performed, and the economic cost of each alternative is established. The results presented in the paper show that the majority of systems are cost effective for reducing environmental impact. In addition, a number of systems can be implemented without extra cost, though it is demonstrated that the high cost of the most environmentally effective technologies makes them an inefficient use of resources.This is an overview of a Special Issue that has been dedicated to the eighth conference on Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction-PRES'05. Six papers from the conference have been selected and peer-reviewed. They cover various subjects of sustainable production and conservation of resources. Advanced integration, life cycle assessment and optimal design are the novel methodologies used. These have been supplemented with case studies dealing with waste activated sludge. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle analysis (LCA) is becoming increasingly important information in the course of technological development. Comprehensive LCAs usually require large resources in terms of time and money. It is therefore necessary to include easily applicable tools into the technological development process that give an overall picture of environmental impacts of products and processes and on top of that offer insights into the steps of a life cycle that exert the largest environmental pressures and to convert this information into engineering optimisation guidelines. Life cycle assessment with the Sustainable Process Index (SPI), a member of the ecological footprint family, is well suited for this task. SPIonExcel was developed to bring this methodology into an easy applicable form. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Since the Brundtland Report [12] "Our Common Future" 1985 and the Earth Summit of Rio 1992 "Sustainable Development" is omnipresent in our society: "Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The transmission of this concept into the building sector is called "Sustainable Construction". Sustainable construction means to design and construct buildings with a holistic approach considering ecological economical and sociocultural aspects - a paradigm shift for the entire building sector. The "Austrian Steel Association" has commissioned the first mentioned author to point out in a pre-feasibility study a SWOT-analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) of steel for constructions as well as to identify a future call for action for the steel construction industry. Three office buildings with load bearings systems made of steel, timber and reinforced concrete were compared. For the ecological assessment a life cycle analysis (LCA) on the basis of the ONORM EN ISO 14040 [25] was undertaken. Recycling or dismantling can not be depicted by life cycle assessments based on recent ISO draft standards. Within this work the ecological datasets for EAF-steel (electric arc furnace) could be substantially improved.The focus of this study was the emissions from waste incineration plants using Darmstadt (Germany) waste incineration plant as an example. In the study the emissions generated by incineration of the waste were considered using three different approaches. Initially the emissions from the waste incineration plant were assessed as part of the impact of waste management systems on the environment by using a Municipal Solid Waste Management System (MSWMS) assessment tool (also called: LCA-IWM assessment tool). This was followed by a comparison between the optimal waste incineration process and the real situation. Finally a comparison was made between the emissions from the incineration plant and the emissions from a vehicle.Sustainability is becoming a very important issue in contaminated land remediation and should form one of the factors used in future selection of treatment technologies. In situ stabilisation/solidification (S/S) is a remediation technique that is increasingly being applied to the treatment of contaminated sites because of numerous advantages over other remediation techniques. This paper assesses and compares aspects of the technical sustainability of in situ S/S with landfilling. Criteria previously established for the assessment of the technical sustainability of the remediation of contaminated land are employed. The comparison is presented in the form of a case study based on a real remediation project in the UK. The analysis indicated that landfilling had a larger impact than S/S in the majority of areas investigated, such as waste production (1000kg waste/t soil remediated for landfilling compared to none for S/S), transportation (12.9km/t for landfilling, 0.4km/t for S/S) and use of raw materials (1005.5 kg/t for landfilling, 88.9 kg/t for S/S), although S/S had high greenhouse gas emissions (12.6 kg/t for landfilling, 40.9 kg/t for S/S). In addition, a multi-criteria/cost-effectiveness analysis gave cost effectiveness scores of -34.2 to S/S and -138.1 to landfill (where more positive is better). (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The implementation of renewable wind and solar energy sources instead of fossil fuels to produce such energy carriers as electricity and hydrogen facilitates reductions in air Pollution emissions. Unlike from traditional fossil fuel technologies, air pollution emissions from renewable technologies are associated mainly with the construction of facilities. With present costs of wind and solar electricity, it is shown that, when electricity from renewable sources replaces electricity front natural gas, the cost of air pollution emission abatement is more than ten times less than the cost if hydrogen from renewable sources replaces hydrogen produced from natural gas. When renewable-based hydrogen is used instead of gasoline in a fuel cell vehicle, the cost of air pollution emissions reduction approaches the same value as for renewable-based electricity only if the fuel cell vehicle efficiency exceeds significantly (i.e., by about two times) that of an internal combustion vehicle. The results provide the basis for a useful approach to an optimal strategy for air pollution mitigation. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The article provides a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a 3-bed room semi detached house in Scotland. Detailed LCA of five main construction materials i.e. wood, aluminium, glass, concrete and ceramic tiles have been provided to determine their respective embodied energy and associated environmental impacts. Embodied energy of various construction materials involved has been estimated to be equal to 227.4 GJ. It is found that concrete, timber and ceramic tiles are the three major energy expensive materials involved. It as been calculated that concrete alone consumes 65% of the total embodied energy of the home while its share of environmental impacts is even more crucial. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The EcoEffect method of assessing external and internal impacts of building properties is briefly described. The external impacts of manufacturing and transport of the building materials, the generation of power and heat consumed during the operation phase are assessed using life-cycle methodology. Emissions and waste; natural resource depletion and toxic substances in building materials are accounted for. Here methodologies from natural sciences are employed. The internal impacts involve the assessment of the risk for discomfort and ill-being due to features and properties of both the indoor environment and outdoor environment within the boundary of the building properties. This risk is calculated based on data and information from questionnaires; measurements and inspection where methodologies mainly from social sciences are used. Life-cycle costs covering investment and utilities costs as well as maintenance costs summed up over the lifetime of the building are also calculated. The result presentation offers extensive layers of diagrams and data tables ranging from an aggregated diagram of environmental efficiency to quantitative indicators of different aspects and factors. Environmental efficiency provides a relative measure of the internal quality of a building property in relation to its external impact vis-a-vis its performance relative to other building properties. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy is essential for human societies. Energy systems, though, are also associated with several adverse environmental effects. So far societies have been unable to successfully change their energy systems in a way that addresses environmental and health concerns. Lack of policy consensus often resulted in so-called 'stop-go' policies, which were identified as some of the most important barriers regarding successful energy transitions. The lack of policy consensus and coherent long-term strategies may result from a lack of knowledge of energy systems' meso-level dynamics. The meso-level involves the dynamic behaviour of the individual system elements and the coupling of individual technologies, resulting in interdependencies and regimes. Energy systems are at the meso-level characterised by two typical aspects, i.e. dynamics driven by interactions between actors, and heterogeneous characteristics of actors. These aspects give rise to the ineffectiveness of traditional energy policies, which is illustrated with examples from the transport sector and household electricity consumption. We found that analysis of energy systems at the meso-level helps to better understand energy systems. To resolve persistent policy issues, the traditional 'one size fits all' energy policies are not sufficient. In order to tackle the difficult issues, 'redesign of system organisation', 'tairget group approach', or 'target group induced system re-orientation' are needed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We strongly suggest an idea we call Global Scope Assessment (GSA) on the basis of popular Life Cycle Assessment and Environomics. It is used to justify the industry development pattern in a region (country) considering the specific regional resources conditions. In terms of GSA, the greatest synthetic benefit is expected while taking full advantage of regional comparative superiority and the worldwide distribution of related industry links. As an example, we choose Chinese paper industry to be the subject for application of GSA and the optimal industry links distribution among related countries is obtained. Our study indicates that the adjustment of industry structure should be a fair approach to relieve the pressure from environment and resources and to balance the contradiction between development and resources. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With increasing trade liberalization, attempts at accounting for environmental impacts and energy use across the manufacturing supply chain are complicated by the predominance of internationally supplied resources and products. This is particularly true for Canada and the United States, the world's largest trading partners. We use an economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) technique to estimate the economy-wide energy intensity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity for 45 manufacturing and resource sectors in Canada and the United States. Overall, we find that U.S. manufacturing and resource industries are about 1.15 times as energy-intensive and 1.3 times as GHG-intensive as Canadian industries, with significant sector-specific discrepancies in energy and GHG intensity. This trend is mainly due to a greater direct reliance on fossil fuels for many U.S. industries, in addition to a highly fossil-fuel based electricity mix in the U.S. To account for these differences, we develop a 76 sector binational EIO-LCA model that implicitly considers trade in goods between Canada and the U.S. Our findings show that accounting for trade can significantly alter the results of life-cycle assessment studies, particularly for many Canadian manufacturing sectors, and the production/consumption of goods in one country often exerts significant energy- and GHG-influences on the other.Goal, Scope and Background. The development of ecotoxicity effect indicators (EEIs) for use in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has only been going on for about two decades. Traditionally, noeffect indicators have been applied. In this paper we focus on the development of an effect-based (i.e. EC50-based) average indicator, the GM-troph. The indicator is estimated by use of the hazardous concentration for 50% of the covered species (HC50(EC50)) and is designed to work on a low substance data availability of only three acute data values, which is often required in LCIA. Methods. The study includes a theoretical description and a test on real data of three different effect-based average approaches (arithmetic mean, geometric mean and median) focusing on their statistical robustness. The data set used for the testing is composed of real ecotoxicity effect data for eleven different substances representing seven different toxic modes of action (TMoA). Results and Discussion. The theoretical considerations and the test on real data show that the geometric mean is the most robust average estimator for HC50(EC50), especially in the frequent situation where data availability is limited to a few data points. Test results indicate that in some cases of unequal representation of the different taxa (or trophic levels) in the underlying data set, estimations of average toxicity (i.e. HC50(EC50)) may be biased if each single test data (at a species level) is used as data points instead of averages at trophic levels. Conclusions and Recommendations. Based on these results, the following recommendations are given for the choice of estimation principle for the FEE The indicator shall be based on HC50(EC50) estimated as the geometric mean of three (average) EC50 values, covering the three main taxa, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, which represent the three trophic levels of the ecosystem, primary producers, primary consumers and secondary consumers. In practice, the EEI shall be based on data from laboratory tests with algae, invertebrates (crustaceans) and fish. Instead of using the often wide 95% confidence limits, it is recommended to use the range given by the observed maximum and minimum values as limits around the HC50(EC50). Further, it is recommended to use EC50(chronic) values when possible. Often, only acute data will be available, and here the use of best estimate assessment factors is recommended to extrapolate from acute to chronic values. As a starting point, an acute to chronic ratio of 2 between HC50(EC50)(acute) and HC50(EC50) (chronic) is recommended, but more research is certainly needed in this area. Due to the comparative framework of LCIA it is recommended only to use test results from laboratory tests, fulfilling certain standard conditions, i.e. applying standard organisms, and measuring well defined endpoints over restricted test durations. Perspectives. The ability of a geometric, mean-based HC50(EC50) to represent the toxicity of very toxic substances and toxicity towards very sensitive species has not been dealt with here, and further research is needed. However, on the basis of the results from the tests on real data, it may be anticipated that the GM-troph with its max-min limits to some degree accounts for the toxicity even to the most sensitive species among standard organisms, if representative toxicity data are available.Goal, Scope and Background. Canadian LCA practitioners currently use European or American methodologies when conducting comprehensive impact assessments, despite the fact that these methods may not be appropriate for Canadian conditions. Due to the lack of suitable models that are currently available, work has been undertaken to develop an LCIA method by adapting existing LCIA models to the Canadian context. This new method allows the characterization of 10 impact categories. Methods. This project is strongly based on preliminary outcomes from SETAC recommendations for the best available practices in LCIA. Models from 3 recent LCIA site-dependent methods, EDIP2003, IMPACT2002+ and TRACI, were used in this midpoint Canadian-specific method. Characterization models were chosen based on their level of comprehensiveness, scientific sophistication and the possibility of integrating site-specific values in the models. Results and Discussion. All regional and local impact categories in the method are site-differentiated. For aquatic eutrophication, (eco)toxicity and land-use impact categories, regionally-differentiated models taking into account fate and effect were already available: the parameters of these models were modified for the Canadian context. For acidification, aquatic and terrestrial eutrophication, existing models were spatially differentiated for fate: regionalization of the effect factor was also included, based on the level of sensitivity of each ecozone assessed with vulnerability factors. The default spatial resolution selected for this method was Canadian ecozones, which define spaces in an ecologically meaningful way where organisms and their physical environment evolve as a system. For each ecozone, 2334 site-dependent characterization factors have been calculated. Conclusion. This LCIA methodology proposes an attractive and useful set of site-dependent characterization factors for the 15 Canadian terrestrial ecozones. Recommendation and Outlook. Efforts are being carried out to extend the specificity of some factors used in eutrophication modelization. The transparency of the methodology will allow to recalculate site-dependent characterization factors for different regions and for additional substances.Goal, Scope and Background. The life cycles of many products including textiles contain chemicals for which process flow data are not known or are too time consuming to collect. Although each chemical may not contribute significantly to the LCA results of the product, which might justify excluding them, but together their contribution could be significant. Similarly, rough estimates of the process flows for the production of a single chemical may be very uncertain and considered meaningless, while the estimates of the cumulative data of process flows for several chemicals may be less uncertain and be a meaningful contribution to the quality of the LCA results. There are methods for estimation of process flows for different types of products, with varying demands regarding input data and time and with varying accuracy of the results. This work contributes to the available methods, focusing on simple estimations for production of chemical substances. The goal was to create a fast method for estimation of emissions, resource and energy flows (process flows) for the production of chemicals, based on easily available data on the properties of the chemicals. The process flows investigated were limited to those normally associated with process industries and contributing most to depletion of resources, to global warming, acidification, eutrophication and photochemical ozone production, i.e. use of energy, crude oil, coal, natural gas, uranium in ore and emissions of CO2, So(x), NOx, NMVOC, methane, BOD, COD and total N: Toxic substances were excluded, since toxic emissions are substance specific and cannot be included in a generalization. Method. Available data for the process flows for the production of chemicals of mainly fossil origin were correlated to properties of chemicals such as amount of carbon in the molecule, heat of formation and average number of chemical reaction steps in the production. The production procedures were found in readily available literature. Up to about six reaction steps were evaluated in the correlation study. The variations in the process flows among the chemicals studied were calculated. Results and Discussion. There were weak correlations between average number of chemical reaction steps in the production and energy use, COD measured in water emissions, and Sox and NO, emissions to air. For the remaining properties of chemicals and process flows, there were only weak correlations for share of double bonding in the molecule if only molecules containing double bondings were included. Conclusions. The precision in estimation of the process flows increases non-significantly when adding information on the number of reaction steps or share of double bonding for chemicals containing double bonding is added. Recommendations and Outlook. It seems reasonable to start with a simple grouping method to estimate the process flows for the production of a chemical of fossil origin. Further investigations might investigate whether there is a correlation between process flows and the costs of chemicals, and further study the correlations between process flows and share of double bonding for chemicals containing double bondings.Background, Aims and Scope. Allocation is required when quantifying environmental impacts of individual products from multi-product manufacturing plants. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recommends in ISO 14041 that allocation should reflect underlying physical relationships between inputs and outputs, or in the absence of such knowledge, allocation should reflect other relationships (e.g. economic value). Economic allocation is generally recommended if process specific information on the manufacturing process is lacking. In this paper, a physico-chemical allocation matrix, based on industry-specific data from the dairy industry, is developed and discussed as an alternative allocation method. Methods. Operational data from 17 dairy manufacturing plants was used to develop an industry specific physico-chemical allocation matrix. Through an extensive process of substraction/substitution, it is possible to determine average resource use (e.g. electricity, thermal energy, water, etc) and wastewater emissions for individual dairy products within multi-product manufacturing plants. The average operational data for individual products were normalised to maintain industry confidentiality and then used as an industry specific allocation matrix. The quantity of raw milk required per product is based on the milk solids basis to account for dairy 'by-products' that would otherwise be neglected. Results and Discussion. Applying fixed type allocation methods (e.g. economic) for all input and outputs based on the quantity of product introduces order of magnitude sized deviations from physico-chemical allocation in some cases. The error associated with the quality of the whole of factory plant data or truncation error associated with setting system boundaries is insignificant in comparison. The profound effects of the results on systems analysis are discussed. The results raise concerns about using economic allocation as a default when allocating intra-industry sectoral flows (i.e. mass and process energy) in the absence of detailed technical information. It is recommended that economic allocation is better suited as a default for reflecting inter-industry sectoral flows. Conclusion. The study highlights the importance of accurate causal allocation procedures that reflect industry-specific production methods. Generation of industry-specific allocation matrices is possible through a process of substitution/subtraction and optimisation. Allocation using such matrices overcomes the inherit bias of mass, process energy or price allocations for a multi-product manufacturing plant and gives a more realistic indication of resource use or emissions per product. The approach appears to be advantageous for resource use or emissions allocation if data is only available on a whole of factory basis for several plants with a similar level of technology. Recommendation and Perspective. The industry specific allocation matrix approach will assist with allocation in multi-product LCAs where the level of technology in an industry is similar. The matrix will also benefit dairy manufacturing companies and help them more accurately allocate resources and impacts (i.e. costs) to different products within the one plant. It is recommended that similar physico-chemical allocation matrices be developed for other industry sectors with a view of ultimately coupling them with input-output analysis.Goal, Scope and Background. The goal of this study is to determine the environmental impact of using one cubic metre of water in the Walloon Region. The whole anthropogenic water cycle is analysed, from the pumping stations to the wastewater treatment plants. The functional unit has been defined as one cubic metre of water at the consumer tap. This study was carried out in the context of the EU Water Framework Directive. It is part of a programme called PIRENE launched by the Walloon Region to fulfil the requirements of this Directive. Methods. A model of the whole anthropogenic water cycle in the Walloon Region was developed. The model is mainly based on sitespecific data given by the companies working in the field of water production and wastewater treatment. It was used to assess the environmental impact from the pumping station to the wastewater treatment plant using the Eco-Indicator 99 methodology. Eco-Indicator 99 has been adapted in order to better take into account environmental impact of acidification and eutrophication. Characterisation factors have been calculated for COD, nitrogen and phosphate emissions. From the reference model, different scenarios have been elaborated. Results and Discussion. On the basis of the inventory, the environmental impact of five scenarios has been evaluated. Acidification and eutrophication is the most important impact category. It is mainly caused by the wastewater that is discharged without any treatment, but also by the effluent of the wastewater treatment plant. So, this impact category has the lowest environmental load when the wastewater treatment rate is high. For the other impact categories, the impact generally increases with the wastewater treatment rate. During wastewater treatment, energy and chemicals are indeed consumed to improve the quality of the final outputs, and thus to reduce the environmental impact related to acidification and eutrophication. A comparison between the scenarios has also shown that the building of the sewer network has a significant contribution to the global environmental load and that the stages before the tap contribute less to the environmental impact than the stage after the tap. Conclusions. The three stages that contribute significantly to the global environmental load are: water discharge, wastewater treatment operation and, to a lesser extent, the sewer system. The results show that the wastewater treatment rate must be as high as possible, using either collective or individual wastewater treatment plants. Even a small water discharge without any treatment has a significant environmental impact. Operation of the wastewater treatment plants must also be improved to reduce the environmental impact caused by the effluent of the plants. For new wastewater treatment plants, building plants treating nitrogen and phosphorus should be encouraged. A sensitivity analysis was conducted and showed that the results of the study were not very affected by a modification of key parameters. Impact assessment using the CML methodology has confirmed the results obtained with Eco-Indicator 99.Background, Aims and Scope. This study aims to compare the energy requirements and potential environmental impacts associated with three different commercial laundry processes for washing microbiologically contaminated hospital and care home laundry. Thermal disinfection relies mainly on a 90 degrees C washing temperature and hydrogen peroxide, while the chernothermal disinfection uses a combination of chemicals (mainly peracetic acid) and 70 degrees C washing temperature. The chemical disinfection process relies on a combination of chemicals used at 40 degrees C. Currently, chernothermal processes are the most commonly used in professional laundries. Traditional chemical processes are uncommon due to drawbacks of longer residence time and high chemical requirements. However, the innovative Sterisan chemical process based on plithalimidoperoxyhexanoic acid (PAP) which is the key subject of this Life Cycle Assessment - was designed to overcome these technical limitations. Methods. This study is based on a screening Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) prepared in 2002 by Oko-Institut (Germany), which was carried out following the requirements of the ISO 14040 series standards. It includes energy resource consumption, water resource consumption, climate change, eutrophication and acidification potential as relevant environmental indicators. In 2004/2005, the study was further updated and broadened to include the aquatic eco-toxicity potential, photochemical oxidant formation and ozone depletion potential in order to represent the environmental burdens associated with the chemicals used. Based on available data, the system boundaries include detergent manufacturing, the professional wash process, waste water treatment, but excluding the laundry finishing process. The selected functional unit was 1 kg washed hygiene laundry. Results and Discussion. The LCA indicates that the Sterisan chemical process has a lower potential environmental impact than thermal or chernothermal treatment for six out of seven key indicators. This includes a 55% lower energy and a 46% lower water consumption. The global warming potential and acidification potential are approximately halved, while the photochemical oxidant formation potential and eutrophication potential are almost reduced to one third. By contrast, for the aquatic eco-toxicity, the thermal- and chernothermal processes have an approximately 17-fold lower impact. The worse aquatic toxicity score for the Sterisan process is mainly caused by a solvent component in the formulation. Conclusion. The comparison of the thermal, chernothermal and Sterisan commercial laundry processes shows that the Sterisan process allows for very substantial reductions in energy and water consumption, as well as significant reductions in climate change, photochemical oxidant formation potential, air acidification potential and eutrophication potential. Yet, Sterisan has a clear disadvantage with regards to aquatic eco-toxicity potential. Recommendation and Perspective. Based on a current hygiene laundry volume of approx. 584,000 tons of linen washed per year by commercial laundries in Germany, a full substitution of the market to the Sterisan process could potentially allow a primary energy saving of similar to 750,000 GJ/year (roughly equivalent to the residential primary energy consumption of 23,500 German citizens or the overall energy demand of approx. 6,000 German citizens). In terms of improvements to the respective processes, the chernothermal and thermal process could benefit from a reduction of water volume, and change of detergent composition to reduce the eutrophication potential. As the washing temperature is an essential factor, only slight improvements for the energy consumption indicator can be obtained, e.g. by choosing green electricity and reducing the amount of water to be heated. The Sterisan process could be improved by lowering the solvent use, although for perspective, the current aquatic eco-toxicity score of the Sterisan process is still lower than that of a typical domestic laundry product.Development of reliability-based management of inspection, monitoring, maintenance and repair (IMMR) of various types of offshore structures is described, with a focus on management of hull damage due to crack growth. Operational experiences are summarized, and recent developments relating to fatigue loading, resistance and reliability approaches are described. The interrelation between design criteria and IMMR is emphasized. It is shown how design for robustness-in terms of residual fatigue life and residual overload capacity, choice of inspection method and scheduling as well as repair strategy-needs to be implemented so as to obtain an acceptable risk for various types of offshore structures.This article evaluates, from an industrial ecology (IE) perspective, the energy performance of the services inside an urban system and determines their global environmental impact. Additionally, this study determines which are the most energy demanding services and the efficiency of their energy use per visitor and per surface area unit. The urban system under study is the Montjuic urban park in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, which can be considered a services system. In this case study we distinguished the different patterns of consumption among the service fields and, by studying each field individually, found the most efficient facilities and identified the most critical services based on energy use per visitor or per square meter. These findings are based on the use of energy flow accounting (EFA), life-cycle assessment (LCA), and the energy footprint to analyze the Park's technical energy consumption. Electricity consumption represents nearly 70% of the total energy consumed by the services at Montjuic Park. The forest surface area required to absorb the CO2-equivalent emissions produced by the life cycle of the energy consumed at Montjuic Park represents 12.2 times the Park's surface area. We conclude this article by proposing the incorporation of the methods of IE within the study of parks containing multiple services to improve energy management, and as a result, to raise the global environmental performance of the service sector.An experimental study was conducted on the effect of the addition of surfactants on hydrate formation kinetics. A series of surfactants with sodium sulfonic acid groups in common but with different carbon chain lengths (C4, C12, and C18) were tested, and the effects of the carbon chain length and concentration were systematically investigated. Hydrate formation rates were measured by a batch-type method with a high-pressure vessel made of stainless steel, with 100 mL inner volume, and the hydrate formation rate determined by the rate of pressure decrease caused by hydrate formation. The hydrate formation rate of xenon increased with the addition of the surfactants in the lower concentration range, and the acceleration showed a maximum at a certain concentration, but decreased with further concentration increases. For a given weight concentration, the surfactant with the shortest chain length (C4, butanesulfonic acid sodium salt) showed the highest acceleration (about 2.5 times larger than for pure water). The acceleration from the C4 surfactant was greater for methane hydrate formation, where the hydrate formation rate was about 5 times greater than that without surfactant. Energy saving potential was estimated when the C4 surfactant was applied to a natural gas transportation scenario in the form of hydrates; it was estimated that power consumption can be reduced by about 40% with the use of the C4 surfactant in the hydrate formation process. u(C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents an environmental comparison based on life cycle assessment (LCA) of the production under average European circumstances and use in The Netherlands of modules based on two kinds of III-V solar cells in an early development stage: a thin-film gallium arsenide (GaAs) cell and a thin-film gallium-indium phosphide/gallium arsenide (GaInP/GaAs) tandem cell. A more general comparison of these modules with the common multicrystalline silicon (multi-Si) module is also included. The evaluation of the both III-V systems is made for a limited industrial production scale of 0.1 MWp per year, compared to a scale of about 10 MWp per year for the multi-Si system. The here considered III-V cells allow for reuse of the GaAs wafers that are required for their production. The LCA indicates that the overall environmental impact of the production of the III-V modules is larger than the impact of the common multi-Si module production; per category their scores have the same order of magnitude. For the III-V systems the metal-organic vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE) process is the main contributor to the primary energy consumption. The energy payback times of the thin-film GaAs and GaInP/GaAs modules are 5.0 and 4.6 years, respectively. For the multi-Si module an energy payback time of 4.2 years is found. The results for the III-V modules have an uncertainty up to approximately 40%. The highly comparable results for the III-V systems and the multi-Si system indicate that from an environmental point of view there is a case for further development of both III-V systems. Copyright (C) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Large-scale global use of new renewable energy sources (RES) necessitates massive physical resources. Present study shows that more than 99.5% of the materials needed in new RES systems are basic construction materials and metals abundantly available. Special elements may constitute future bottle-necks in some PV technologies. The extra financial resources needed over traditional energy to achieve a breakthrough in PV and wind power range from 100 to 500 billion $ for a period of 20-30 years influenced by technology progress and speed of penetration, but in solar heating much less. This upfront support could be paid back within 15-25 years later through cheaper and cleaner energy. Compared to nuclear power the resource numbers estimated are of the same order of magnitude. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.No-tillage and conventional plough tillage have been compared on a soil of medium heavy texture in a crop rotation without fallow period at the Inforama Ruetti in Zollikofen (Berne) since 1994. For the crop rotation period from 1999 to 2005 the environmental impact of both systems was calculated via life cycle assessment. With regard to resources, nutrients and pollutant management, the environmental impact of the no-tillage system is more favourable than the conventional system involving periodical tillage operations, both per hectare of arable land and annum, and per kg of harvested dry matter. For the no-tillage system positive changes were also found in the assessment of soil quality. It is essential to follow up the impacts of the slightly higher herbicide requirement characterizing the no-tillage system. In both systems, however, pollutant management is strongly influenced by the choice of the active ingredient applied. According to model calculations in which slope gradient was varied, the risk of soil erosion and P-runoff remained constantly low up to a gradient of 18% in the no-tillage system. In contrast, the risk of runoff increased strongly with increasing slope gradient in the conventional tillage system.Using the Kyoto Protocol as a driver to find ways of reducing energy usage, a Life Cycle Analysis of producing copper, as an example of an energy intensive cycle, shows that if direct current plating of copper in rack plating of complex geometry parts is substituted by pulse reverse plating, not only is less copper deposited, and therefore consumed, but the energy efficiency of the process is also improved. In addition CO2 emission reduction throughout the product chain is likely to be significant, as are improvements in waste reduction and pollution prevention.This paper consists on a global environmental analysis of a waste water treatment (Conventional Activate Sludge System, CAS, designed for 13,200 population equivalent) and some possible additional tertiary treatments allowing water reuse to that purified waters (UF and immersed and external Membrane Biological Reactors, MBR). The environmental assessment of these water treatment technologies has been realized by means of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique, in order to establish with a broad perspective and in a rigorous and objective way the technology that provokes the lowest environmental load. The software SimaPro 5.1, developed by Dutch PRe Consultants, has been used as the LCA analysis tool, and three different evaluation methods-CML 2 baseline 2000, Eco-Points 97 and Eco-Indicator 99-have been applied. The results show that tertiary treatment does not increase significantly the environmental loads but provide new uses for that purified water, thus justifying the intensive use of water reuse techniques in water scarce areas.Assessing the public health benefits from air pollution control measures is assisted by understanding the relationship between mobile source emissions and subsequent fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure. Since this relationship varies by location, we characterized its magnitude and geographic distribution using the intake fraction (iF) concept. We considered emissions of primary PM2.5 as well as particle precursors SO2 and NOx from each of 3080 counties in the US. We modeled the relationship between these emissions and total US population exposure to PM2.5, making use of a source-receptor matrix developed for health risk assessment. For primary PM2.5, we found a median iF of 1.2 per million, with a range of 0.12-25. Half of the total exposure was reached by a median distance of 150 km from the county where mobile source emissions originated, though this spatial extent varied across counties from within the county borders to 1800 km away. For secondary ammonium sulfate from SO2 emissions, the median iF was 0.41 per million (range: 0.050-10), versus 0.068 per million for secondary ammonium nitrate from NOx emissions (range: 0.00092-1.3). The median distance to half of the total exposure was greater for secondary PM2.5 (450 km for sulfate, 390 km for nitrate). Regression analyses using exhaustive population predictors explained much of the variation in primary PM2.5 iF (R-2 = 0.83) as well as secondary sulfate and nitrate iF (R2 = 0.74 and 0.60), with greater near-source contribution for primary than for secondary PM2.5. We conclude that long-range dispersion models with coarse geographic resolution are appropriate for risk assessments of secondary PM2.5 or primary PM2.5 emitted from mobile sources in rural areas, but that more resolved dispersion models are warranted for primary PM2.5 in urban areas due to the substantial contribution of near-source populations. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.What is the best way to minimize the environmental impact of using a product such as paper? Three debating teams were formed within a university class. One team advocated increased recycling of paper. Another team pointed to evidence showing reduced environmental impact and lower net CO2 emissions if the paper is incinerated rather than recycled. A third team advocated the replacement of paper by items such as porcelain plates and video screens, cutting costs and reducing waste by multiple reuse.The aim of this study is to analyse and compare three variants of a family house in order to evaluate the total environmental impacts produced during the whole building life cycle. The first variant corresponds to the standard in force in Switzerland, the second alternative to the requirements of a quality control label for houses with low energy consumption and the third case is a very low energy consumption building. The three variants have the same architectural aspect but different insulation thicknesses and types, different energy production systems and the use of different renewable energies. The calculation of the environmental impacts is carried out by means of a life cycle analysis, which includes not only the impact related to the energy consumption during the occupancy stage, but also the materials manufacture, transport, replacement and elimination at the end of the building lifetime. The results are expressed with the Swiss and the UCTE (Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity) electricity mix to analyse how they influence the building impact. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The pros and cons of microreaction technology were investigated using life cycle assessment (LCA) for the first time. This evaluation method has the outstanding advantage that it takes into account the entire life cycle of a process or product from "cradle to grave". In this LCA, the ecological advantages associated with the transfer of a chemical synthesis from a macro-scale semi-continuous batch process to a continuous micro-scale setup were researched. The two-step synthesis of m-anisaldehyde from m-bromoanisole was taken as a model reaction. Because of its highly exothermic behavior, this synthesis can only be carried out under significant safety precautions and with a high cooling energy effort in conventional batch reaction equipment. A reaction temperature of T = 223 and 193 K, respectively, was chosen. The application of micro-structured devices allows a continuous isothermal reaction setup at T = 273 K. We analyzed two scales of producing m-anisaldehyde, the laboratory scale and the industrial scale, in order to get detailed information about possible ecological advantages of microreaction technology. Within the term "laboratory scale" a synthesis of 10kg m-anisaldehyde under laboratory conditions was defined. Two Cytose-Lab-System modules were chosen as reaction devices in the case of the microreaction mode. Otherwise, the synthesis of 1 t m-anisaldehyde under real production conditions is determined as "industrial scale" production. The production in the Cytos (R)-Pilot-System with 11 microreactors in parallel for each synthesis step serves as the basis of comparison with a conventional macro-scale batch production. The product mass flow of 0.06 kg/h per microreactor was the same on both scales. The results of the LCA clearly point out that the application of microreaction technology can lead to significant reductions of the environmental impact resulting from chemical production processes. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the increasing public consciousness on environmental issues, chemical products and process designs require simultaneous satisfaction and compromise of environmental and economical requirements. To fulfill the two conflicting while complementary objectives, a systematic approach for life cycle design of a chemical product is proposed in this article. Multiattribute decision-making is adopted in a trade-off consideration of both technical economical evaluation and environmental impacts assessment using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. On the basis of an evaluation of the relative importance of the criteria multicriteria decision making is performed. In this study, an AHP model is used to derive single a criteria score by analyzing the environmental impact and life cycle cost of a product, respectively. And a fluctuant weight analysis is put forth to calculate the integrated index of the product to enable products to be ranked or selected intuitionally and conveniently. The proposed AHP model has been applied to a case study, a comparative study on chamber cleaning with NF3 and C2F6. The results show that the proposed AHP model is capable of providing a rational and relevant evaluation.The aim of this consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) is to compare district heating based on waste incineration with combustion of biomass or natural gas. The study comprises two options for energy recovery (combined heat and power (CHP) or heat only), two alternatives for external, marginal electricity generation (fossil lean or intense), and two alternatives for the alternative waste management (landfill disposal or material recovery). A secondary objective was to test a combination of dynamic energy system modelling and LCA by combining the concept of complex marginal electricity production in a static, environmental systems analysis. Furthermore, we wanted to increase the methodological knowledge about how waste can be environmentally compared to other fuels in district-heat production. The results indicate that combustion of biofuel in a CHP is environmentally favourable and robust with respect to the avoided type of electricity and waste management. Waste incineration is often (but not always) the preferable choice when incineration substitutes landfill disposal of waste. It is however, never the best choice (and often the worst) when incineration substitutes recycling. A natural gas fired CHP is an alternative of interest if marginal electricity has a high fossil content. However, if the marginal electricity is mainly based on non-fossil sources, natural gas is in general worse than biofuels. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an approach for the integrated consideration of both technical and valuation uncertainties during decision making supported by environmental performance information based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Key elements of this approach include "distinguishability analysis" to determine whether the uncertainty in the performance information is likely to make it impossible to distinguish between the activities under consideration, and the use of a multivariate statistical analysis approach, called principal components analysis (PCA), which facilitates the rapid analysis of large numbers of parallel sets of results, and enables the identification of choices that lead to similar and/or opposite evaluations of activities. The integrated approach for the management of uncertainty is demonstrated for a technology selection decision for the recommissioning of a coal-based power station. The results of the case study decision suggest that stakeholder involvement in preference modelling is important, and that the "encoding" of value judgements and preferences into LCA environmental performance information is to be avoided. The approach presented in this paper provides a foundation for the consideration of the implications of diversity in values and preferences as part of an overall approach to promote effective decision making based on LCA environmental performance information. However, the approach is more universally applicable - it can be used wherever multiple criteria decision analysis is used to assist in the resolution of complex decision situations. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper presents a model structure aimed at offering an overview of the various elements of a strategy and exploring their multidimensional effects through time in an efficient way. It treats a strategy as a set of discrete events planned to achieve a certain strategic goal and develops a new form of causal networks as an interfacing component between decision makers and environment models, e.g., life cycle inventory and material flow models. The causal network receives a strategic plan as input in a discrete manner and then outputs the updated parameter sets to the subsequent environmental models. Accordingly, the potential dynamic evolution of environmental systems caused by various strategies can be stepwise simulated. It enables a way to incorporate discontinuous change in models for environmental strategy analysis, and enhances the interpretability and extendibility of a complex model by its cellular constructs. It is exemplified using an urban water management case in Kunming, a major city in Southwest China. By utilizing the presented method, the case study modeled the cross-scale interdependencies of the urban drainage system and regional water balance systems, and evaluated the effectiveness of various strategies for improving the situation of Dianchi Lake.This paper describes a new approach in life-cycle impact assessment to derive characterization factors for acidification in European forests. Time horizon dependent characterization factors for acidification were calculated, whereas before only steady-state factors were available. The characterization factors indicate the change in the potential occurrence of plant species due to a change in emission, and they consist of a fate and an effect factor. The fate factor combines the results of an atmospheric deposition model and a dynamic soil acidification model. The change in base saturation in soil due to an atmospheric emission change was derived for 20, 50, 100, and 500 year time horizons. The effect factor was based on a dose-response curve of the potential occurrence of plant species, derived from multiple regression equations per plant species. The results showed that characterization factors for acidification increase up to a factor of 13 from a 20 years to a 500 years time horizon. Characterization factors for ammonia are 4.0-4.3 times greater than those for nitrogen oxides (NOx), and characterization factors for sulfur dioxide are 1.4-2.0 times greater than those for NO,. Aggregation of damage due to acidification with other impact categories on the European scale becomes feasible with the applied approach.Materials flow analysis models have traditionally been used to track the production, use, and consumption of materials. Economic input-output modeling has been used for environmental systems analysis, with a primary benefit being the capability to estimate direct and indirect economic and environmental impacts across the entire supply chain of production in an economy. We combine these two types of models to create a mixed-unit input-output model that is able to better track economic transactions and material flows throughout the economy associated with changes in production. A 13 by 13 economic input-output direct requirements matrix developed by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis is augmented with material flow data derived from those published by the U.S. Geological Survey in the formulation of illustrative mixed-unit input-output models for lead and cadmium. The resulting model provides the capabilities of both material flow and input-output models, with detailed material tracking through entire supply chains in response to any monetary or material demand. Examples of these models are provided along with a discussion of uncertainty and extensions to these models.Objective: Recent studies support the hypothesis that plant-based diets are environmentally better than meat-based diets. This study aims to further explore this topic and to compare different environmental impacts resulting from different dietary patterns ( omnivorous, vegetarian, vegan) and methods of production ( conventional farming and organic agriculture). Design: Three weekly balanced diets, equivalent to one another for energetic and nutrient content, have been planned: an omnivorous one, a vegetarian one and a vegan one. For each one, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method has been applied in order to calculate the environmental impact, expressed in 'points'. Interventions: The software we selected to carry out the Inventory Analysis and the Impact Assessment is SimaPro5. The Assessment phase has been conducted using Ecoindicator 99, a damage-oriented method, which analyses the impact according to three large damage categories, each of them subsuming various impact categories.The generation of huge amounts of construction waste is anticipated due to the demolition of older structures such as power stations built more than 30 years ago. On the other hand, the reuse of construction waste is highly essential from the viewpoint of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and effective recycling of construction resources. In order to promote the reuse of construction waste, it is necessary to achieve three basic concepts: (1) assurance of safety and quality, (2) decrease of environmental impact, and (3) increase of cost effectiveness of construction. This paper outlines the development of a recycling system, application of recycled aggregate concrete produced by the aggregate replacing method, which is effective in reducing both cost and environmental impact from the viewpoint of LCA for concrete waste generated by the demolition of large-scale buildings such as powerhouses. Result of this study showed that recycled aggregate concrete using the aggregate replacing method can acquire sufficient quality as structural concrete and/or precast concrete products through material design based on the value of relative quality method. Moreover, with the adoption of the developed recycling system, it was confirmed possible to recycle concrete waste produced from the demolition buildings in a highly effective manner reducing both recycling cost and environmental impact.In the analysis of organism life cycles in ecology, comparisons of life cycles between species or between different types of life cycles within species are frequently conducted. In matrix population models, partitioning of the elasticity matrix is used to quantify the separate contributions of different life cycles to the population growth rate. Such partition is equivalent to a decomposition of the life cycle graph of the population. A graph theoretic spanning tree method to carry out the decomposition was formalized by Wardle [Ecology 79(7), 2539-2549 (1998)]. However there are difficulties in realizing a suitable decomposition for complex life histories using the spanning-tree method. One of the problems is the occurrence of life cycles that contain contradictory directions that defy biological interpretation. We propose an algorithmic approach for decomposing a directed, weighted graph. The graph is to be decomposed into two parts. The first part is a set of simple cycles that contain no contradictory directions and that consist of edges of equal weight. The second part of the decomposition is a subgraph in which no such simple cycles are obtainable. When applied to life cycle analysis in ecology, the proposed method will guarantee a complete decomposition of the life cycle graph into individual life cycles containing no contradictory directions.The environmental performance of two different hydrothermal processes, supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) and hydrothermal conversion (HTC), for treatment of waste biomass, were studied using life cycle assessment (LCA). Waste streams studied were sewage sludge and turkey food processing waste. The SCWO process completely oxidizes the waste stream, decomposing all organic contaminants, and makes possible heat recovery from wet biomass streams without need of drying. Artificial fertilizer can be produced from phosphorus extracted from the solid residue. The HTC process converts the biomass into liquid and gaseous fuels, fertilizer products and carbon. The two processes were found to perform differently in different energy infrastructures. Large environmental savings can be achieved when products from these processes replace existing products in society. The HTC process will sometimes prove to be the preferable option in the life cycle impact assessment because of the very large savings that result from the replacement of fossil diesel fuel.This paper presents a new assessment method, which is able to determine the practicality of opportunities to reuse wastes. In this study, the term-reuse has much wider concepts than simply recycling to a process. In other words, reuse in this case can include recycling, utilisation as a raw material for other processes, and particularly transformation of the waste to low or preferably high value added products. Preliminary opportunities for the reuse of a waste can be generated by various methods such as brainstorming, desk research, consultation with industrial and academic contacts, and the like. In this work, each preliminary solution is then assessed according to three different categories-technical, economic, and environmental and regulatory, in order to determine the viability for reuse. The responses of nine collaborating companies to questionnaires pertaining to the three categories were used to set up feasible boundaries of each category in terms of the reuse of their wastes. Based on the replies, lower bounds for each category were determined, and then the preliminary solutions generated were ranked. The approach was applied to several industrial examples. The ranking of the high-dimensional information was aided by visual representation on a parallel coordinate graphic plot. Although the selection or rejection of an opportunity was highly dependent on the boundaries obtained, the approach proposed! could provide a useful guideline to decision-makers for selection/rejection of the reuse opportunities available. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to provide a categorisation of sustainability assessment tools within the broader objective of lifting the understanding of sustainability assessment from the environmental-focused realm to a wider interpretation of sustainability. The suggested framework is based on three main categories: indicators/indices, product-related assessment, and integrated assessment tools. There is furthermore the overarching category of monetary valuation tools that can be used as a part of many of the tools listed in the three categories. The tools are also divided by their spatial focus and the level of nature-society system integration. Discussion focuses on if and how the tools fulfil the objectives from the more current understanding of sustainability assessment. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article describes an environmental assessment of Swedish agriculture, including upstream and downstream effects. The analysis is based on environmentally extended input-output analysis, but it is also supplemented with data from other sources. The analysis shows that direct effects by the Swedish agriculture are the most important, while indirect effects from other sources including mobile and impacts abroad are also considerable. The most important impacts from Swedish agriculture according to the analysis are eutrophication, global warming and resource use. The agricultural sector produces a large share of the Swedish emissions causing both global warming and eutrophication. In addition, current agricultural practice causes problems with loss of biodiversity. The most important actors in the sector are agriculture itself, but also all actors using fossil fuels: primarily the transport sector and the energy sector. In addition, consumers are important since they can influence the composition of agricultural production. The analysis shows the importance of including upstream and downstream effects when analysing the environmental impacts from a sector. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Presented paper focuses on the selection of appropriate process integration methodologies and their tuning for integrated management of resources in a cluster of small and medium enterprises (SME) allocated in close proximity. Proposed integration aims the improvement of industrial efficiency with strong emphasis on the environmental impact. The resources in question include in the first instance utilities, such as energy and water, but do not exclude transport, waste, services, IT, inventories, etc. Three major methodologies are proposed for direct implementation: The first one explores the concept of integration between areas of integrity, the second utilises the marginal value concept and the third one attempts to amalgamate two successful systems integration tools such as Pinch analysis (thermal, water and oxygen Pinch) and eMergy analysis entering the domain of multiple resources management, including environment consideration and elements of the life-cycle analysis.This work proposes a novel framework for the optimal design of chemical processes whose main novelty lies on the incorporation of environmental concerns based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Our approach applies mixed integer modelling techniques to the superstructure optimisation of process flowsheets. As such, the resulting mathematical formulation incorporates the environmental impact as an additional objective that is appended to the objective function in which an economic performance indicator is also taken into account. The environmental impact is measured through the Eco-Indicator 99, which reflects the advances in the damaged oriented method recently developed for Life Cycle Impact Assessment. The main advantages of our approach are highlighted through a case study (hydrodealkylation of toluene), for which the set of non dominated solutions in terms of cost and environmental criteria is computed. The obtained results show that an inherent trade-off naturally exists between both objectives and suggest also that significant environmental improvements can be achieved if the decision-maker is willing to compromise the economic benefit of the process.The potential of computer-aided process engineering (CAPE) tools to enable process engineers to improve the environmental performance of both their processes and across the life cycle (from cradle-to-grave) has long been proffered. However, this use of CAPE has not been fully achieved, largely because of the complexity of the systems being modeled. Traditional approaches to this problem often prove to be inadequate due to the inability of component simulations to interact and share data amongst various stakeholders. This current effort involves toward developing and implementing a data model that will enable users to conduct environmental evaluations not just of a single process, but on the entire supply chain. This project utilizes and expands emerging information technology paradigms such as web services, web agents and distributed computing for use by the various stakeholders to evaluate individual industrial facilities within the context of the industrial supply chain and across industrial sectors.Optimization of mass and energy flows of a chemicals company is an economic and ecologic need. A model of main material and energy flows at Cognis has been developed. The model shows the flows on different levels of complexity. It supports detection of energy and material saving potential, discloses flows of intermediates or end products in the whole company, and supports life cycle assessment (LCA).With the mission of "reliable power, at low cost, for generations", BC Hydro adopts the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach to investment decision making that considers economic, social and environmental issues in a comprehensive, systematic and integrated way. In this paper, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) Methodology developed for BC Hydro Distribution-Wires assets is introduced. In this methodology, the life-cycle assessment factors, defined as cost, environment and safety, which impact the investment decisions for the entire life-cycle of assets, are quantified. It integrates with asset management principle that balances three factors of investment, performance, and risks. The LCA methodology is applied into life-cycle analyses of power system distribution feeder reclosers. The main aim is to evaluate the feasibility and benefits for equipping existing manually operated reclosers with supervisory control functionality and derive the optimal recloser implementation strategy. Two different scenarios of reclosers as "keep the existing reclosers", and "upgrade the existing reclosers into SCADA" are evaluated and compared in term of all defined LCA factors. Life cycle cost assessment methodology is adopted to evaluate the cost effectiveness of upgrading reclosers based on if the long term benefits achieved in savings of vegetation management, shortened outage response and reduced recloser operation cost can cover the increased capital cost, operation and maintenance cost for recloser upgrade. Different from traditional approaches, it also considers the safety and environmental risks. Analysis results on existing reclosers are included to demonstrate the application and effectiveness of the LCA methodology.As biofuels are promoted to be used as additives and/or substitutes for conventional petroleum fuels, a life cycle analysis of different biofuels seems necessary. A study on the implications of different farming methods on the energetic and environmental impacts of ethanol produced from corn is presented.Suitable environmental indicators are a key for assessing and reducing the impact on the environment arising from manufacturing. While there are a number of environmental indicators, often they tend to be too complicated and there are a large number of them to deal with. Also, there are problems of weighting different aspects of environmental impacts into a single or a small set of indicators as general life cycle analysis does. To avoid these difficulties the concept of exergy is introduced to compute the eco-efficiency defined as the value of a product divided by its environmental impact over the whole life cycle. This concept computes the amount of useful work that is consumed in production for energy and materials and the work required for abatement of environmentally damaging emissions. Thus, exergy-based indicators avoid the problem of having to deal with a number of indicators and weighting. An Eco-efficiency indicator derived from this concept is developed and an application in the Australian aluminium industry is illustrated.It isn't that they can't find solutions, it is that they don't seethe problem Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936) Related to "cognitive engineering" and equivalent to LCA (Life Cycle Analysis), a dynamic "adaptive cycle" analysis is projected for "living systems". Cultural and technological `paradigm shifts" could be traced from (1) orientation and growth to (2) disorientation and crisis leading to breakdowns without (3) reorientation and (4) renewal. Established techniques, once they become closed-ended lose sight of tranformative open-ended and evolutionary requirements. The inablility to generate renewal relates to terminal disorientation. Methods no longer able to cope with sustainable demands have been identified as 'progress traps", "ingenuity gaps," and are potentially related to cognitive "mental traps. " A generic analytical tool tracing transformational and transactional interactions could preventively mitigate risks. The Two Cultures (C P. Snow, 1959) identify the (A) Humanities and the (B) Sciences in "mutual incomprehension" and opposition. Deficiencies in (AB) interactions diminish means that can guard against devolutionary and catastrophic disorders. Analogously, cultural certainties and uncertainties as a paradox in variance could be analyzed in terms of imbalance and optimal equilibrium, possibly with Dynamic Boolean Logic. "Without paradox, no progress" Niels Bohr (1885-1962).The increasing energy need, mainly provided by fossil fuel sources, has contributed to the increase of environmental impact. Global warming analysis, despite the uncertainties contained both in methodology and results, has caused high attention to energy production gas emission. Neglecting the used energy production technology, a power plant can be considered, together with the environment, as a close system. Ibis means that environment effects of energy production, normally neglected, can be considered and evaluated. Climate change gas emissions are, according to scientific community, the main problem related to energy production on global scale but, considering local effect too, it is possible to see that the climate change is not the only environment effect present. For example noise and electromagnetic emissions, waste production and component maintenance can have effect on local eco-systems and people too. This paper proposes the application of Life Cycle Assessment techniques and damage indicator evaluation in order to account the potential impact of electric energy production. The used impact indicators permits to evaluate, in addiction to climate change effects, other environmental impacts like effects on human healt and ecosystems. As a result it is possible to see that environmental aspects and energy-environment interaction can be analyzed with Life Cycle Assessment methods. In addiction, environmental performance of a specific plant can be outlined from the design stage and Life cycle assessment study can be used to review and enhance overall environmental performances.The method of life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the recycled glass. Besides, the fussy AHP is adapted in the process of the analysis. It is expected to point out the advantage and disadvantage in the present glass recycling technique through the result analysis. At last, some suggestions are given to encourage corresponding plants to recycle glass and to have a reform in the techniques.Environmental impact assessment of products has been a key area of research and development for sustainable product development. Many companies copy these trends and they consider environmental criteria into the product design process. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to support the decision-making for product design and the best alternative can be selected by its estimated environmental impacts and benefits. The need for analytical LCA has resulted in the development of approximate LCA. This paper presents an optimization strategy for approximate LCA using a hybrid approach which incorporate genetic algorithms (GAs) and neural networks (NNs). In this study, GAs are employed to select feature subsets to eliminate irrelevant factors and determine the number of hidden nodes and processing elements. In addition, GAs will optimize the connection weights between layers of NN simultaneously. Experimental results show that a hybrid GA and NN approach outperforms the conventional backpropagation neural network and verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.In order to identify and bring answers to the problematic of sustainable development posed to the industrials, we develop a methodology aiming at designing sustainable products, which we define as clean and recoverable. In order to help designers to integrate the environmental criteria in the decision making process which will lead to the choice of a design alternative, they need to have access to robust indicators based on environmental assessment of the product and its associated end-of-life scenario. In this article we propose in a first, part to model the product as an assembly of components lifecycles in order to build pertinent indicators for designers. Then we develop the concept of "lifecycle bricks" which permits to easily build the products life over many usage cycles, and thus allow on one hand to measure the benefits or loss of one strategy, and on the other hand to gradually focus until the environmental hot spots of the products have been revealed.The Interpretation phase of Life Cycle Assessment raises important issues, both from a theoretical and an application point of view, particularly if a decision-making procedure is involved during this phase. In this paper, an advanced web-based collaborative decision-making tool, which includes several argumentation and knowledge management features, will be presented. Argumentative discourses, which may be carried out through this tool, can be utilized in order to arrive at collaborative decisions. The paper will demonstrate the utilization of the tool for Life Cycle Interpretation.As experience in EcoDesign increases, academic and industry thinking is moving towards the more advanced stages of EcoDesign; moving away from product improvement and product redesign into the more holistic approaches of Alternative Function Fulfilment (AFF) and system innovation. This paper investigates how modularity concept, applied to product design, allow much degrees of freedom for the designer, more possibility to reduce environmental impact related to product life-cycle and increase the interaction between LCA and the earlier stages of the (Eco)design process. A method, based on the product modularity concept, to increase LCA usability for the designers is proposed in this paper.In 2004 the Vienna University of Technology and Siemens Transportation Systems in Vienna launched a project, called Green Line, focused on optimizing the environmental performance of metro vehicles. Green Line should create design strategies for a new generation of environmentally sound transport vehicles based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). As a reference project the new metro train for Oslo has been chosen. The improvement potentials indicated by the LCA are discussed in this paper to increase the environmental performance of the train. The recommendations given are discussed considering feasibility studies and prospective trends.The aims of the Ecodesign subject are to provide students with theoretical knowledge and practical skills in designing new engineering products in accordance with ecological criteria. In this paper, the evolution over time of the subject is discussed, from the "common sense" application of product life cycle analysis to quantitative tools for analyzing alternative solutions and evaluating the final design. The subject's syllabus, the organization of the classes, the projects carried out by the students and three examples of this subject are discussed. Finally conclusions drawn from the experience of teaching this free elective subject are put forward.Energy use is an important metric of environmental impact and manufacturing efficiency. However, a major component of energy analysis has yet to permeate life-cycle analysis methodology: the energy use associated with human labor. This paper presents a straightforward method of estimating the energy demands of an hour of industrial labor based on readily available national statistics. In the United States, this estimate yields 30 MJ of primary energy use per worker-hour (EPWH). These results can be applied to inform and expand the application of process-based and hybrid economic input-output life-cycle assessment.This article addresses the ecodesign of medium voltage electrical switchgear. These products are electrical units possessing particular specificities, associated with the conditions of use. They operate at elevated voltage and current, and are guaranteed for a minimum service life of twenty years. This demands a very high level of quality and implies the use of specific materials and manufacturing processes. This requirement makes it difficult to predict the end-of-life management. It is therefore important to examine the various alternatives for incorporating ecodesign in these units. This entails the assessment of the environment of existing products and the siudy of the design procedure employed. The approach described here is valid for other products in different sectors. It is based on the simplification of life cycle assessments to focus only on the most important life cycle phases and environmental indicators which offer a wider margin for improvement. For the case of medium voltage switchgear, stress is placed on the manufacturing and end-of-life phases.Electrically conductive adhesives (ECA) could soon constitute a realistic alternative to solders. The present reseaich compares 10Sn90Pb solder paste in Japan to an epoxy based and isotropical ECA containing pure silver. The findings are that the silver containing adhesive likely is environmentally more advantageous than 10Sn90Pb. Environmental trade-offs exist especially between the ecotoxicity of Sn1090Pb and the resource consumption of silver-epoxy ECA. Palladium is significant platings included. Overall, the next steps would be to use improved global LCI metal production models and also to compare the life cycle cost to the social cost.The use of conventional coolants at the machining of metals causes different environmental problems. Besides plant seed oil, animal fat and used cooking oil proved to be other possible raw material sources for alternative ester based coolants. In this paper their properties are compared with those of mineral oil and plant seed oil ester products regarding technical, economical and ecological aspects from a life cycle perspective. In this context grinding tests, Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing were performed. The three disciplines are brought together in a material flow model and therefore results are well harmonized.Taking processes under development into consideration, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis result of pilot plants, mini plants or laboratory experiments do not necessarily represent the environmental burdens which would be caused by a large scale plant (mass production). Especially for comparative LCA studies there is a necessity to analyse, whether there are influences on environmental burdens due to scale up. There are effects which should be taken into consideration for such scale-up prognosis in LCA. This paper reports on an innovative systematic procedure, which enables the industry to make prognosis for production scale plant based on LCA of pilot processes.This paper is concerned with a new integrated analytical model for evaluating environmental loads induced by consumer behavior. The model consists of two components: One is the waste input-output (WIO) model that is a consistent framework for the hybrid life-cycle assessment and life-cycle costing. The other is an economics model of consumer behavior within the constraints of limited income and time based on the concept of consumption 'technologies.' Because consumers are regarded as industrial sectors in the newly developed model, not only time and income rebound effects but also a part of the so-called economy-wide rebound effects is accounted for.Industrial products basically have to satisfy the customers' wants and needs as a basic input as well as technical and ecological requirements while providing maximum economic benefit throughout the life cycle. In the early stages of design and development all these requirements have to be considered in terms of their long-term impacts on the entire product life cycle. The approach discussed in this paper combines quality and value-driven tools with the methodology of life cycle costing including the assessment of environmental aspects. While traditional cost optimising was successful by streamlining operations and returning to core competencies, this approach allows for sustainable cost optimisation in the early stages of product development and correlates with quality planning as well as ecologic product assessment. Based on the Value-Oriented Life Cycle Costing method, product components are evaluated over their life cycle to identify those components incurring high life cycle costs compared to their functional value. In order to achieve an efficient and effective design to life cycle the methods of Quality Function Deployment and Value Analysis are aligned with the methods of Life Cycle Costing and Life Cycle Assessment to be integrated into a comprehensive approach. This paper describes the theoretical background and explains the practical implementation based on a case study. The results of the practical analysis conducted illustrate the optimisation potential to be realised when implementing the approach in comparison to traditional design solutions.Plastic carrier bags have gained popularity with Zimbabwean shoppers since they provide convenient carriage of groceries and related goods. However most of these have a short useful life and are often disposed into landfills or littered. This research was aimed at assessing the interaction between the High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) plastic carrier bag life cycle and the environment, hence identifying specific life cycle stages that pose significant threats to the environment. The study was conducted in accordance with the ISO 14040 based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The life cycle stages assessed include the extraction of HDPE, transportation of HDPE pellets, production of the bags, transportation of the finished goods to retailers and disposal scenarios. Improvement strategies were then identified to optimise the environmental performance of the plastic carrier bags.Viable alternatives to conventional newspapers, such as electronic papers, c-papers or e-readers, are intended to have many of the qualities of paper, such as reading using reflective light, high resolution, 180 degrees viewing angle. It has been suggested that the environmental impact of e-paper can be lower than for printed and internet-based newspapers. However, a life cycle perspective covering raw material acquisition, production, use and disposal should preferably be used to study the environmental performance of the different products. In this way any shift of environmental impact from one part of the life cycle to another can be avoided. In the present study a screening life cycle assessment was performed to describe the potential environmental impacts of three product systems; printed, internet-based and tablet e-paper newspapers. Results from the study show that the significant phases of the life cycle differed for the three product systems and that printed and internet-based newspapers with a longer reading time (i.e. 30 minutes/day) had a higher impact than tablet e-papers and internet-based newspapers with a shorter reading time (i.e. 10 minutes/day). Key aspects that may affect the resulting environmental performance of newspaper product systems were identified. These include number of readers per copy of printed and tablet e-paper newspapers; reading time for internet-based newspapers; lifetime of electronic devices and multi-use of electronic devices. It was concluded that tablet e-paper has the potential to decrease the environmental impact of newspaper consumption.The impacts of the 30 active substances, most used in Costa Rica (reference year 1998), are evaluated using two models originally developed to support comparative assertions in the context of the life cycle assessment: the multimedia fate, exposure and effect model Impact Assessment of Chemical Toxics 2002 (IMPACT 2002), and the Dynamic Model for Pesticides Residues in Plants. Results show that only five active substances - namely diazinon, mancozeb, chlorothalonil, terbutylazine and ethoprophos - contribute to more than 75% of the aquatic ecotoxicity and yet represent less than 40% of the amount used. More than 90% of the human toxicity is generated by only two active substances - namely terbufos and chlorothalonil - whereas they represent less than 10% of the total amount used. Overall, it would be possible to achieve a 90% reduction of human toxicity and a 75% reduction of aquatic ecotoxicity due to pesticide used in Costa Rica, focusing on only a few active substances. For instance, propiconazole or tridemorph could potentially be replaced by chlorothalonil; ametryn, diuron or paraquat by glyphosate; terbufos by cypermethrin; methyl bromide by metam sodium. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It is not known to what extent the outcome of studies assessing the environmental impacts of agricultural systems depends on the characteristics of the evaluation method used. The study reported here investigated five well-documented evaluation methods (DIALECTE, Ecological Footprint, Environmental Management for Agriculture, FarmSmart, Life Cycle Assessment) by applying them to a case study of three pig farm scenarios. These methods differ with respect to their global objective (evaluation of impact versus evaluation of adherence to good practice), the number and type of environmental issues they consider, the way they define the system to be analysed, the mode of expression of results (for the farm as a whole, per unit area or per unit product) and the type of indicators used (pressure, state or impact indicators). The pig farm scenarios compared were conventional good agricultural practice (GAP), a quality label scenario called red label (RL) and organic agriculture (OA). We used the methods to rank the three scenarios according to their environmental impacts. The relative ranking of the three scenarios varied considerably depending on characteristics of the evaluation method used and on the mode of expression of results. We recommend the use of evaluation methods that express results both per unit area and per unit product. Environmental evaluation methods should be used with great caution, users should carefully consider which method is most appropriate given their particular needs, taking into consideration the method's characteristics. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the last decade a great number of studies have been carried out on the possible use of biofuels in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among biofuels, biodiesel has gained considerable attention as the need to develop alternatives to traditional diesel fuel increases. The Italian parliament adopted directive 2003/30/CE from the European Parliament, in which the guidelines about future production and consumption of biofuels are reported: 1% and 2.5% of biofuels within 2005 and 2010 respectively. The aim of this work is to investigate the reduction in greenhouse gas emission obtained by using biodiesel in agricultural practises, and the role of renewable energy use at a local scale. Comparison between diesel and sunflower methyl ester was made from the point of view of an emission inventory, from production and combustion, by using different scientific tools, such as IPCC methodology and the Danish Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) EDIP Database. Results show that the use of sunflower methyl ester, other than the renewability of CO2 emitted, implies a general reduction Of CO2 equivalent emissions of up to 57%.Sustainability in the products development is a strategy that is widely accepted in principle, although not yet widely practiced The integration of environmental requirements throughout the entire life time of a product needs a new way of thinking and new decision tools to be applied. This paper presents a study case using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles in order to give an overview on the most important sources of environmental impacts of the product. Some aspects concerning the comparisons of two similar products by meaning of redesign solutions are also discussed, but the paper is focused on the integrating LCA concept, rather than on the details of the methodologies.Distributed generation (DG) is emerging as an alternative to a centralized electricity-generation system. The goals of DG include the minimization of the environmental impacts of energy production and introduction of new renewable energy-sources to the distribution network. Superconducting devices are also proposed for DG because of their high efficiencies as well as smaller size and more stable operation during peak loads. This study concentrates on the environmental benefits of superconducting machinery by comparing suitable devices with their competitors in DG-networks. Exploitable superconducting devices in DG include superconducting magnetic energy-storage (SMES), flywheels and cable systems. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a tool in comparisons of energy-storage devices suitable for DG: SMESs, flywheels and batteries. In LCA, all material inputs, energy consumptions, wastes, and emissions are assessed over the life-cycle of the product. Finally, a commercialization schedule for HTS-cables is presented and an unconventional concept for a DG-network is suggested for further examination. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a comparative analysis of feed phosphates production processes using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and process analysis in the quantification of cumulated calculation. Three feed phosphates production processes were compared: a modified thermal process and two different low temperature endothermic units (one working in the "Bonarka" Inorganic Works (BIW) in Cracow and the other in the Phosphoric Fertilizers Works (PFW) "Fosfory" in Gdansk). The LCA results indicated that the most advantageous technology is the feed phosphates production unit in "Fosfory". It was shown that LCA can be an efficient instrument for evaluating environmental impact, though it should be compared with other estimation methods.This paper outlines the expectations of a wide range of stakeholders for environmental assurance in the pastoral industries and agriculture generally. Stakeholders consulted were domestic consumers, rangeland graziers, members of environmental groups, companies within meat and wool supply chains, and agricultural industry, environmental and consumer groups. Most stakeholders were in favour of the application of environmental assurance to agriculture, although supply chains and consumers had less enthusiasm for this than environmental and consumer groups. General public good benefits were more important to environmental and consumer groups, while private benefits were more important to consumers and supply chains. The 'ideal' form of environmental assurance appears to be a management system that provides for continuous improvement in environmental, quality and food safety outcomes, combined with elements of ISO 14024 eco-labelling such as life-cycle assessment, environmental performance criteria, third-party certification, labelling and multi-stakeholder involvement. However, market failure prevents this from being implemented and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In the short term, members of supply chains (the people that must implement and fund environmental assurance) want this to be kept simple and low cost, to be built into their existing industry standards and to add value to their businesses. As a starting point, several agricultural industry organisations favour the use of a basic management system, combining continuous improvement, risk assessment and industry best management practice programs, which can be built on over time to meet regulator, market and community expectations.The purpose of this study is to evaluate the annual energy consumption of an existing house in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece. The software tool HOT2000 was employed for this purpose, This work involves the prediction of the annual energy cost in the monetary units of euro. Hence, the estimated outputs are compared to the actual values retrieved from the annual utility bills in order to check the accuracy of the estimated results with the real values during the year. In this work, life cycle analysis of the fuel used is included and the environmental impact assessment is being calculated. The emission of the electricity production are all recorded and used in the analysis. It has been shown that climatic conditions and the type of building materials play a crucial role in energy savings. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examines the potential life-cycle energy savings that may be achieved by combining an innovative alternative building material and a bioclimatic approach to building design under the distinctive environmental conditions of a desert region. A residential building in the Negev region of Israel is used as a model for the assessment. Designed with a number of climatically- responsive design strategies and conventional concrete-based materials, the building was energy-independent in terms of summer cooling and had only modest requirements for winter heating. As a second step to the assessment, the integration of an alternative building material based on industrial waste and local raw materials in the building's walls was considered through thermal simulation. The alternative materials are produced through a process developed to make productive utilization of fly-ash from oil shale and coal combustion. Material properties were analyzed using laboratory specimens, and it was established that high-quality building components could be produced using the developed technological procedure with standard manufacturing equipment. The consumption of both embodied and operational energy was analyzed over the building's useful life span, and this life-cycle analysis showed the clear advantage of integrating alternative materials in a building under environmental conditions in a desert environment.When undertaking urban renewal projects, decisions must be made between housing maintenance with some minor interventions, and total housing redevelopment entailing the demolition of the existing stock and replacement with new houses. Simple renovations are only possible if the quality of the existing dwelling is sufficient to fulfil current needs. In most urban renewal districts in the Netherlands the existing stock does not meet these current needs. That is why large-scale demolition and the construction of new dwellings are undertaken. However, renovation-based strategies could offer more sustainable alternatives. A comparison of the environmental impacts is made between the renewal options of maintenance, consolidation, transformation, and redevelopment for two typical cases of Dutch urban renewal. The environmental effects are calculated using the Life Cycle Assessment method. Results are presented according to the following environmental effects: the quantities of material, the energy and water used, waste, and environmental impacts. The use of environmental impacts gives a more complete picture than the use of quantities. The transformation of the existing housing stock is found to be a much more environmentally efficient way to achieve the same result than are demolition and rebuilding. The embodied and operational energy use is also compared. Due to the relatively short lifetime of post-war dwellings, the embodied energy can amount to 30% of the total energy use. This means that it is worth using construction methods that reduce embodied energy and designing new buildings so that they are flexible.The reduction of waste through the establishment of closed- loop material flows has an important role in creating a more sustainable built environment. Especially in deconstruction projects, participants could take advantage of the application of waste management and recovery strategies while adhering to the principle of ` sustainable construction'. The opportunity for materials recovery depends on the type of deconstruction technique applied at a building's end- of-life. An integrated deconstruction - recovery planning approach for deconstruction projects is developed to include ecological as well as economic benefits. This planning approach is an extension of the multi- mode resourceconstrained project- scheduling problem ( MMRCPSP) from operations research. Although the general MMRCPSP considers time - and resource - resource trade- offs, the proposed extension incorporates energy - time - resource tradeoffs. The energy - time - resource trade- offs reflect the realization of energy savings or costs over the life cycle of a building. Based on a life cycle energy analysis, recovery options can be selected for deconstructed components and materials dependent on the chosen deconstruction techniques ( e. g. demolition, selective deconstruction, manual deconstruction, and deconstruction using various resources).Building assessment systems, such as the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ( LEED) suite of standards, have been helpful in the initiation of a movement that is addressing the environmental impact of buildings. The approach utilized in these standards is in need of updating in order to address a number of potentially serious shortcomings. Among these are the lack of a quantifiable relationship between ` points' and environmental impacts, a ` one- size- fits- all' design for assessment, and an absence of consistent science underpinning LEED points. To address the last of these shortcomings, the potential use of The Natural Step ( TNS) could form the foundation for the next generation of building assessment tools, sometimes referred to as LEED Version 3. LEED is used as an example of the potential application of TNS to remedy some of the major shortcomings of building assessment systems. The same approach would apply to voluntary, market- based building assessment systems used in other countries, e. g. the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method ( BREEAM), the Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency ( CASBEE), and Green Star, to name but a few.A methodology was developed to calculate health damages due to exposure to radon emitted to indoor air for use in dwelling life cycle assessment. Fate factors were calculated based on dose conversion factors and effective outgoing airflows. Effect factors were calculated from linear relationship between dose and cancer cases. Damage factors are expressed in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs). Health damages due to emissions of radon from building materials in the use phase appeared to be 0.7 - 520% of health damages associated with the rest of the life cycle of the same materials. Health damages due to the emissions of radon from building materials in the use phase of the Dutch reference dwelling are about 50% of the health damages associated with the rest of the life cycle of the same dwelling. This methodology allows for better evaluation of health impacts of building materials and provisions for ventilation.Green building has come to be a goal of building design now. Since sustainable performance of building involves lots of aspects, an integrated index is needed to evaluate it comprehensively. Building environmental impact assessment (EIA) based on life cycle assessment (LCA) theory is a well-known method to do this. However, when it is used in China, two main difficulties should be overcomes lack of uniform assessment method and lack of basic data. Aiming at this and combining Chinese special situation, EIA based on damage oriented method is propounded and Building Environment Load Evaluation System (BELES) is founded. All of the environmental impacts are finally classified into four endpoints: Resource Exhaustion, Energy Exhaustion, Human Health Damage and Ecological Damage. Resource scarcity factor and energy quality coefficient are considered. Weight system is determined by investigation to national experts. This method and framework can be useful guidance to building design, especially to green building assessment.This paper explores effective means to opt for the optimum design solutions of commercial buildings through developing a Based-Simulation Design Support System (BSDSS). The system is established by the integration between EnergyPlus and Radiance software programs. The design alternatives of a typical private office are developed and evaluated based on multi-attribute life-cycle analysis. Results show that there is still a potential to improve the building design especially at the early stage.This paper presents the features of Eco-Bat, a computer program developed to assess the environmental impacts of buildings, including construction materials and energy consumed, during its life cycle. The methodology used to evaluate environmental impacts based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, compatible with ISO 14040 standards, is detailed. The data are mainly extracted from Ecoinvent (Anon A). Two applications are presented to illustrate the possibilities offered by Eco-Bat. The first one is a comparison of different variants of building facades. The second example shows the analysis of a whole building including its energy consumption.Models calculating the environmental benefits of renovation and retrofitting of buildings are generally based on energy calculations and don't take into account the environmental penalty of demolishing and replacing parts of the building and its equipment. The environmental effect embodied in these activities is neglected and only the environmental benefits of a lower building related energy use are taken into account. In addition, energy use cannot be considered an environmental problem in itself, but causes several environmental impacts, which are not necessarily linearly related to the energy use. In this paper, the author studies the relative values of the embodied environmental impacts and the operational environmental impacts, as well as the relationship between energy use and environmental impacts. The calculations are based on a tool for energy use calculations and on EcoQuantum, a tool for life cycle assessment. Results are presented in terms of environmental payback times. The results are discussed and clarified based on two case studies. Recommendations are made about the necessity of a dynamic simulation procedure.The utilization of plant oil renewable resources as raw materials for monomers and polymers is discussed and reviewed. In an age of increasing oil prices, global warming and other environmental problems ( e. g. waste) the change from fossil feedstock to renewable resources can considerably contribute to a sustainable development in the future. Especially plant derived fats and oils bear a large potential for the substitution of currently used petrochemicals, since monomers, fine chemicals and polymers can be derived from these resources in a straightforward fashion. The synthesis of monomers as well as polymers from plant fats and oils has already found some industrial application and recent developments in this field offer promising new opportunities, as is shown within this contribution. ( 138 references.)Environmental costs of products are closely related to their environmental impacts. This paper presents a methodology to estimate the environmental costs of products during the concept design phase by integrating a Simplified Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) methodology with Economic Valuation (EV) methods such as EPS2000d, EXMOD and Ecosense. The new methodology estimates the environmental performance indicators for each stage of the product life cycle by using the SLCA, and obtains the cost values from the most suitable EV method. A number of passive and active products were used to prove the concept and demonstrate the efficiency of the methodology.Design for X is commonly regarded as a systematic and proactive designing of products to optimize total benefits over the whole product life span (fabrication, assembly, test, procurement, shipment, delivery, operation, service, disposal), and meet target quality, cost, performance and time-to-market. DFX involves different methodologies for product design and optimization (like Design for: Manufacturing, Assembly, Variety, Serviceability, Environment, Reliability, Utilization, etc.), which provide useful results, however, they address only specific aspects of product life-cycle. In addition, various perspectives for business economics can often drive to contradicted conclusions, what makes the evaluation of both technical feasibility and product profitability more difficult. In this paper the framework for DFX analysis was proposed. In the described solution, the various product life-cycle analysis strategies are integrated, and profit calculations relay on common denominator - the present value of net benefit. This approach allows covering of all phases of a product life cycle not excluding e.g. complex environmental aspects. Based on the proposed framework, the DFX Platform was developed and implemented as a web service. The application of the system to a few product developments carried out within crossbordered manufacturing company showed its big positive impact on projects and their results.Sustainability is an emerging concept in product chains and integrates environmental, social, and economic aspects during the product's life cycle. Recently, the demand for environmental quality has required information about the products' life cycle. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) includes the inventory analysis, where the inputs, outputs and feedback mechanisms of matter and energy for each phase of the product life cycle are systematized, and the Life Cycle Impact Assessment, when the environmental impacts potentials are calculated. A powerful tool to describe the history, use, and location of a product is called geotraceability. This paper presents an environmental life cycle management for storing and retrieving product life cycle data within a food chain (tracing), as well as following the location of the product in real time (tracking), particularly for recall operations in case of a crisis. Information about inputs and outputs can be structured and integrated through LCA. Geographic information can be obtained from satellite imagery and positioning systems. The development and integration of these tools will add value to products and enhance food safety to consumers, as well as the environmental quality within the production area, fostering environmental sustainability to the product life cycle.Numerous practices and principles are available to improve the company's Product Development Process (PDP), including multifunctional teams, integrated development process, integration of market evaluation to product development, and product life cycle analysis. Indeed, the importance of PDP systematization and organization is widely recognized, and the existing reference models offer a representation of the PDP. However, most companies fail to incorporate these practices into their routine to improve their PDP, since the implementation of a reference model or the PDP transformation process are influenced by the companys organizational structure. This paper identifies and discusses several critical aspects of the PDP transformation process of SMEs, based on an analysis of the implementation of a reference model in a Brazilian S ME. The analysis of this experience enabled us to pinpoint various difficulties attending the transformation of the PDP, which we then compared with the literature on the transformation process. This comparison led to the identification of critical points for the SMEs structure and organization for PDP improvement. These observations are expected to support the design of PDP transformation models, thus helping SMEs to enhance their competitiveness.This paper evaluates the effect of the addition of silane treated- and untreated- talc as the fillers on the mechanical and physico-mechanical properties of poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/recycled newspaper cellulose fibers (RNCF)/talc hybrid composites. For this purpose, 10 wt% of a talc with and without silane treatment were incorporated into PLA/RNCF (60 wt%/30 wt%) composites that were processed by a micro-compounding and molding system. PLA is utilized is a bio-based polymer that made from dextrose, a derivative of corn. Talc is also a natural product. The RNCF and talc hybrid reinforcements of PLA polymer matrix were targeted to design and engineer biobased composites of balanced properties with added advantages of cost benefits besides the eco-friendliness of all the components in the composites. In this work, the flexural and impact properties of PLA/RNCF composites improved significantly with the addition of 10 wt% talc. The flexural and impact strength of these hybrid composites were found to be significantly higher than that made from either PLA/RNCF. The hybrid composites showed improved properties such as flexural strength of 132 MPa and flexural modulus of 15.3 GPa, while the unhybridized PLA/RNCF based composites exhibited flexural strength and modulus values of 77 MPa and 6.7 GPa, respectively. The DMA storage modulus and the loss modulus of the PLA/RNCF hybrid composites were found to increase, whereas the mechanical loss factor (tan delta) was found to decrease. The storage modulus increased with the addition of talc, because the talc generated a stiffer interface in the polymer matrix. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) thermograms of neat PLA and of the hybrid composites showed nearly the similar glass transition temperatures and melting temperatures. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrographs of the fracture surface of Notched Izod impact specimen of 10 wt% talc filled PLA/RNCF composite showed well filler particle dispersion in the matrix and no large aggregates are present. The comparison data of mechanical properties among samples filled with silane-treated- and untreated- talc fillers showed that the hybrid composites filled with silane treated talc displayed the better mechanical prosperities relative to the other hybrid composites. Talc-filled RNCF-reinforced polypropylene (PP) hybrid composites were also made in the same way that of PLA hybrid composites for a comparison. The PLA hybrid bio-based composites showed much improvement in mechanical properties as compared to PP-based hybrid counterparts. This suggests that these PLA hybrid bio-based composites have a potential to replace glass fibers in many applications that do not require very high load bearing capabilities and these recycled newspaper cellulose fibers could be a good candidate reinforcement fiber of high performance hybrid biocomposites. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing installation of biogas plants with co-fermentation of energy crops might lead to a regional oversupply of effluent due to nutrient import. Problems arise especially in regions with intensive livestock farming. If farm size is undersized in relation to the quantity of effluent, surplus material has to be transported over large distances to regions with nutrient deficits. Various treatments are known to increase the transportability of effluent. Objective of this study was to compare different treatments in terms energy demand and environmental impact. Four options have been chosen for comparison by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): (1) transport of untreated effluent, (2) separation into filtrate and filter cake, (3) solar drying and (4) production of fuel pellets. The LCA was structured in: the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and the weighting of the impact categories. The highest potential for substitution of carbon dioxide was found for the production of fertilizer by solar drying. Most environmental impacts are to be expected as 'Emissions to air' and as 'Emissions to water' for untreated effluent. Results of the LCIA showed considerable influence of different weighting methods. In 'Egalitarian' and 'Hierarchist' perception, separation and solar drying are most favourable. In 'Individualist' perception untreated effluent would be the preferred solution. The influence of different transport distances and the environmental impact of the 'Use phase' and 'End of life phase' will be subject of further research.Driven largely by the never ending quest for weight reduction to decrease fuel consumption and emission, the automotive industry is predicting significant growth in the use of aluminum alloys. Generally, cold chamber type die casting process is utilized for aluminum alloys. In order to comply with the growing demand for life cycle environmental effect, life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out for producing A356 aluminum alloy by cold chamber type die casting process, based on what has been experienced as needed for LCA study. The main emphasis of this study is to evlauate the effect of trial of improving die casting process and product quality on the environmental value obtained by LCA. Also the results will be compared by the trial of life cycle improvement. In LCA, the process evaluated was based on yields of finished parts relative to the metal input. This is important both in environmental point of view and in commercial point of view, because the environmental data are sensitive to the design of the cast part and the efficiency of the die casting operation.This research is a translation of the international Kyoto protocol into practical steps towards effective environmental planning in the building industry. This research develops a methodology to quantify environmental impacts of building materials to be used along with standard life cycle costing evaluation (LCC) resulting in total life cycle costing (TLCC). Based on the developed methodology, the economic LCC of building materials is calculated according to the ASTM's standard methodology, while their environmental impact is first quantified in tones of CO2, based on Global Warming Potential (GWP), and then translated into monetary value to be used in the environmental impact LCC. Quantification of studied materials emission is done with the help of "SimaPro", a professional life cycle assessment tool, considering their total life span. Monetary value of quantified CO2 emission is then taken from actual CO2 stock markets (i.e. Point Carbon: www.pointcarbon.com). Total life cycle costing (TLCC) is then calculated from both the estimated economic and the environmental impact LCCs. The methodology aims at a number of building professionals: 1) designers, 2) material specification writers and quantity surveyor, 3) permit authorities, 4) research groups, 5) developers, and 6) manufacturers. The methodology is supported with a web-based design tool named "EconoEnviroTLCC Tool". The tool's main goal is to put the developed methodology into practice by building professionals to better plan to achieve sustainable buildings. The tool enables its users to evaluate LCC, environmental LCC and total life cycle costing (TLCC) of partial and/or complete building envelope elements. The tool's results are presented in tabular and graphic formats.Semiconductor manufacturing has played an important role in the macro-economy of high technology industries in Taiwan. It also has an advantageous position in the global semiconductor industry's value chain. Despite this industry's prominence, environmental concerns include emissions from factories, health effects on workers and high energy and material consumption. The purpose of this study is to analyze the environmental impacts of the semiconductor industry by using life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA software SimaPro 5.1, including Eco-indicator 99 and EPS2000, was utilized to evaluate the environmental impacts caused by a DRAM manufacturing industry. In addition, results from these two methods were compared. From results of this study we find that the environmental impact was mainly from the photolithography process, followed by the etching, thin film, diffusion and CMP processes. As a whole, the most significant impacts are summer smog, depletion of energy and resources, heavy metals pollution and acidification. Furthermore, the damages from such processes are mainly caused by high energy and resource consumption of the semiconductor industry. Though the results from Eco-indicator 99 and EPS2000 have slightly different impact values in the characterization result, the overall results of these two methods are very consistent in the distribution trends and level of impact endpoints.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an environmental methodology for assessing the environmental effects associated with a product, process or activity and is useful as an information tool for the examination of different scenarios for future decision support strategies. This paper provides an overview of LCA and life cycle inventory (LCI) techniques for energy production proposed for the Power Plant of Mittal Steel Poland in Krakow, Poland. In this paper, an energy medium generation scenario is presented, including electric energy, technology practice steam, blast to iron blast furnace, hot water, demineralizing and degassing water for hot rolling mill, BOF blast oxygen furnace (BOF), cokery, as well as steel continuous casting and BOF. In this paper LCA is limited to the inventory analysis., i.e. the determination the environmental interventions. Environmental interventions are defined within the LCA-methodology as "the exchanges between the anthroposphere (economy) and the environment including resources use, emission to air, water, or soil" [5].This paper describes two kinds of renewable energy: photovoltaic (PV) solar energy installations connected to the Italian electrical grid system, and pure biodiesel (BD100) production by using sunflower oil. A comparison between them is proposed on the basis of. (A) greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and (B) land requirement. Point (A) is related to the emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2) methane (CH4) nitrous oxide (N2O) deriving from energy production and use, which are calculated in terms Of CO2 equivalent by their global warming potentials (GWP); point (B) is related to the area (hectares of biomass plantations and m(2) of photovoltaic panels) necessary for energy production. The results will be compared to those resulting from the use of fossil fuels.The objective of the paper is to present sustainability indicators for municipal solid waste management (MSWM). Sustainability implies environmental, economic and social acceptance. The complexity of the system-in-focus requires the employment of a systems (or cybernetic) approach: Acceptance implies clear objectives, from a specific point of view (here, the viewpoint of the municipal administration is taken), over a time horizon covering at least two generations, a life-cycle consideration, clear evaluation criteria for alternative MSWM systems, and finally specific and measurable indicators of the degree to which the objectives have been met. In this paper, a number of specific environmental indicators (abiotic depletion, human toxicity, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, photo-oxidant formation, etc.), economic indicators (cost per ton or per household or per person, revenue from recovered material and energy, MSWM system cost as % of GNP of the city, diversion between revenue and expenditures for MSWM, cost per capita as % of minimum wage, subsidies per person) and social indicators (odor, visual impact, comfort, required or used-up space, noise, system complexity, employment quality, etc.) are suggested for measuring the performance of municipal SWM systems. Specific real application is mentioned for a Greek city.The environment is the relations in life and all settings life is consist of A building is an artificial environment designed and built to meet the users' needs. These needs are fulfilled with the properties of building products that form the building. Building and building products are directly or indirectly in interaction with the environment during their life cycle process. There are some models like 'LEED', 'Athena', 'BEES', 'BRE', 'Analytica', 'Pre', 'GaBi', 'TEAM', 'GB Tool', 'Woolley', 'Curwell and March' developed by various corporations to assess environmental impacts of building or building products. In this study, these models are analyzed for; Definition of the models, Definition of the life cycle processes of the models, Determination of the environmental impact criterias of the models. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model including all of 'cause, process of effect, effect and result' should be designed in order to prevent negative environmental impacts of building and building products. The aims of the model for LCA of building and/or building products are; to make the understanding and practicing of model easy and correct for its users to evaluate impacts of building and building products on the environment during all life cycle processes.Background. Since the 1970s, at least 200 hectares (ha) of farmland has been polluted by the heavy metal cadmium (Cd). Consequently, the Cd pollution has led to contaminate the rice production and caused acute social panic. According to the recent investigation results performed by the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (TEPA), it is indicated that most of the Cd pollution incidents in Taiwan resulted from the wastewater discharge of stearate Cd factories. To prevent the Cd pollution incidents from spreading, the TEPA has either forced these factories to close down or assisted them in improving their production processes since the 1980s. Unfortunately, accidental incidents of Cd pollution still emerge in an endless stream, despite the strict governmental controls placed on these questionable factories. Whether this pollution has resulted from undetected or hidden pollution sources stemming from two decades ago or comes from some new source, will be an outstanding issue. Therefore, this study attempts to identify the pollution sources of Cd in soil in Taiwan as well as to find the solution to the above-mentioned, outstanding issue by way of a methodology termed Material Flow Analysis (MFA). Methodology. The MFA has proved to be a useful tool on providing quantitative information of the flow of substances through an economic to an environmental system. Based upon the supply-and-demand theory of MFA, researchers have successfully conducted an overview of the use of materials in many industries, the construction industry being one of these. Therefore, this study tries to establish a set of analytical processes by way of MFA for identifying the pollution source of Cd in soil in Taiwan. In addition, the spirit of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique was also employed to identify the materials, and products should be ignored as a crucial pollution source in this study. Results and Discussion. According to the MEA methodology applied in this study and on the basis of related studies performed by Taiwanese governmental authorities, we arrive at the following analysis results: (1) the total amount of Cd from the economic perspective of material and product flow was approximately 441.2 tons; (2) the wastewater directly discharged into irrigation water can be concluded to be the major pollution route of Cd in farmland soil in Taiwan; (3) material plastic stabilizer (cadmium oxide, CdO), Zn-Pd compounds and Cu compounds should be the crucial pollution sources to contaminate environment through the route of wastewater in Cd flow analysis; (4) the crucial pollution sources to contaminate environment through the route of wastewater in Cd flow analysis were five factories, Coin, Jili, Taiwan Dye, Guangzheng and Mingguan, and they were all categorized as stearate Cd industries; (5) the typical source of the Cd pollution in soil in Changhua County through the pollution route of wastewater should be the metal surfacing process industries. Conclusions. This study proved that MFA can be a good tool for identifying Cd flow as well as for recognizing the crux of the problem concerning incidents of Cd pollution. This study led to the conclusion that the causal relationship between farmland pollution caused by Cd and stearate Cd factories in Taiwan seemed quite close by way of MEA methodology. In addition, this study also found that the wastewater discharged from a single metal surfacing process factory will not cause remarkable farmland pollution. However, the wastewater simultaneously discharged from a group of pollution factories can result in a significant pollution incident. Recommendations and Outlook. This case study is only a small contribution to the understanding of the toxic material flow related to Cd in the environment. This study recommends that Taiwanese governmental authorities should not deal with problems on an ad hoc basis, but should instead deal with Cd pollution problems overall employing control measures. Finally, the more accurate information or data we can collect, the more reliable results we can identify. Therefore, the quality and quantity of related data used in this MFA model should be closely scrutinized in order to ensure the most correct and comprehensive investigation on the toxic material flow.The basic make-up of the majority of currently produced bulk explosives has changed little in the last 20 years. These explosives would be described as mature in a life cycle analysis. Therefore these explosive products and the practical rules for their use are well understood and well established. In recent years there has been interest in low density explosives, predominantly due to ammonium nitrate shortages and the associated increase in the cost of explosives. In the use of low density explosives some of the practical rules for the more commonly used bulk explosives do not apply. Therefore a shift in the thinking among users is required. At a number of mines low density explosives have been trialled or are being used, utilising the practical rules that apply to bulk explosive products. This has led to poor blast results in many situations. These poor blast results have often then led to a reduction in the use of low density explosives at the mine. This reduction does not acknowledge the advantages that can be gained from this product in the area of reduced cost of mining. This paper looks at low density explosives and discusses how and why these products work. Included in the paper are some practical ideas and examples of how low density explosives can be effectively used at the mine site.The applications of nanotechnology in environmental engineering are vast with emphasis in areas, such as pollution prevention, treatment and remediation. In water and wastewater treatment research has been shown that nanoparticles have expedited reactions, eliminated the use of expensive UV lights, and removed organic dyes and inorganic compounds, such as nitrates, efficiently. In case of groundwater remediation, refractory organic compounds have been treated more efficiently and with simpler infrastructure compared to conventional treatment methods. However, there is insufficient data pertaining to pilot or field scale studies. There is also a lack of complete life cycle analysis of the fate and transport of the nanoparticles in the environment, and their general effects on health implications. This review paper presents information on nanotechnology applications in water and wastewater treatment and groundwater remediation.Material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), along with characteristics of regional MFA, were applied to analyze fossil fuels flow in Hubei's economy system from 1991 to 2003. An internationally comparative study on material intensity and efficiency of fossil fuels was presented to illustrate their environmental impacts on Hubei province. The study shows that material efficiency of fossil fuels in Hubei was close to the average level in China, but far lower than that in the developed countries. Global warming potential (GWP) was the greatest one and occupied 41.4% of total environmental impact. Therefore, the key pathway to reduce environmental pollution was to improve the utilizing efficiency of fossil fuels, and to control the emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.This paper reports a detailed analysis of the resource intake necessary for the separation of a mixture of diastereoisomers (2R, 3R)-3-(3-methoxyphenyl)-N, N-2-trimethylpentanamine 6 and ( 2R, 3S)-3-(3-methoxyphenyl)-N, N-2-trimethylpentanamine 7 in the production of an active pharmaceutical ingredient. The resource intake analysis is based on exergy calculations of both material ( chemicals) and energy ( utilities) requirements. For two separation processes, crystallisation and preparative chromatography, analysis is not only carried out at the process level (alpha level), but also at the plant level (beta level) taking into account the 6 preceeding synthesis steps towards the diastereoisomers and the supporting processes, e. g. for delivering heating media from natural gas or treating waste gases. Finally, exergetic life cycle analysis allowed the inclusion of the overall industrial metabolism (gamma level) that is required to deliver all energy and materials to the plant to carry out the separation. The results show that, in this example, the large scale chromatography process is not the most resource efficient option because of its high utilities requirement, despite its lower chemical requirement ( 180 MJ versus 122 MJ total requirement per mol of the RR stereoisomer (2R, 3R)-3(3-methoxyphenyl)-N, N-2-trimethylpentanamine monohydrochloride 8) (alpha level). Due to its higher efficiency, the plant only requires 4.6% more resources when it selects chromatography instead of crystallisation ( 434 versus 415 MJ total requirement per mol of the RR stereoisomer 8) (beta level). Since the efficiencies of the overall industry depend on the type of materials and energy that it has to deliver to the plant, overall resource withdrawal from the environment differs by 4.2% for crystallisation and chromatography (883.7 and 920.6 MJ mol(-1) stereoisomer 8). The study has also shown that resource efficiency gain can be achieved by recycling solvents on the plant. Moreover, it is clear that there is more potential for resource efficiency improvement for the crystallisation than for chromatography because of the different nature of the resources consumed: chemicals, including solvents, versus utilities.This paper proposes the ECO (ecological and economic optimisation) method to accompany and optimise early stage development work in chemical research and development (R& D) regarding the principles of ecological and economic sustainability. The ECO method is a screening tool that uses a simplified life cycle assessment (SLCA) approach, in combination with an optimisation procedure. All life cycle stages from the production of reactants, solvents etc., synthesis and workup, recycling and disposal are considered within this methodology. They are evaluated regarding three main objectives: the factors for energy demand ( EF), risks concerning human health and environment (EHF) and costs (CF). During each process step, a variation of process parameters (e.g. T, t, c, n : n, solvent, reactant alternatives) will be compared using an outranking algorithm, in order to find the most efficient combinations. At this stage, all objectives will be assessed with respect to an input- benefit ratio. Using this approach, the search for sustainable chemical compounds, synthesis pathways, or processes can already be applied during the R& D stage. This will be demonstrated on the example of ionic liquids, which may have a remarkable potential to improve a wide range of chemical syntheses. Thus, their application may lead to environmental and cost improvements, when compared to commonly used volatile organic solvents. However, the preparation and work- up of ionic liquids are presently not environmentally benign. The application of the ECO method to ionic liquids R& D can help to overcome this problem.Responsibility to protect (R2P) is a concept advanced by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, and the theme of The Responsibility to Protect Report (2001). 1 It is based on the argument that states, and failing them the international community, have the responsibility to protect the human dignity and rights of people everywhere. The incremental normative consensus attained by the R2P concept is revealed by paras 138-39 in the Outcome Statement of the UN 2005 General Assembly Summit, and is reaffirmed in UN Security Council Resolution 1674. Security Council Resolution 1706 called for the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur by applying, for the first time, the R2P principle to a particular context. This essay begins by outlining the background to the R2P norm. Second, the etymology of R2P is addressed. Third, a life-cycle analysis contextualises R2P as an emerging international norm. Fourth, the crucial role played by civil society organisations is outlined. Finally, the operationalisation of the R2P norm is discussed with respect to the Darfur humanitarian tragedy. In the light of this and past conscience-shocking mass human rights violations, our common humanity demands that the R2P's three key elements should prevail over statist values and interests. Ultimately, state practice will enable the ripening of R2P into a rule of customary international law and an effective instrument for the protection of human dignity and rights.This chapter reviews the multicriteria analysis applied to the selection problems in agricultural systems. It also discusses life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) from the decision analytic framework. Special attention is paid to the attributes (evaluation criteria) used for evaluating agricultural systems by considering their impacts on the environment. Problem structuring in decision analysis, which is related to the definition of impact categories in LCIA, is also discussed to construct multiple objectives suitable for agri-environmental decision making.This paper presents the first results of the ecodesign problematic in case of one of the simplest electromagnetic energy converter: the single-phase electric transformer connected to a constant frequency and voltage power supply. The optimization of its sizes is led with the following objectives: the active mass and the global life cycle energy cost. We first compare optimization's results to those with "classic" mass versus power losses (copper and iron losses) optimization for several times of use ratio. This leads to recognition of the significant impact of the life cycle energy on the arrangement of the optimal Pareto fronts, explained by conflicting energy contribution in the life cycle global energy cost objective. Then we logically observe that the life cycle assessment impact is more significant when the real use duration is smaller than the lifetime. After that, the sensitivity of the optimization's results to the elementary raw materials energy costs is considered with the same times of use ratio. At last, some optimizations are run with a different raw material: aluminium instead of copper for the windings.We present experiences from using the EcoClass life cycle assessment tool in participatory product development. EcoClass is designed as an easily accessible, user-friendly tool providing data on three emissions categories during production and utilization of urban transport vehicles. In contrast to most other LCA models, EcoClass allows online modifications of vehicle utilization parameters to reflect changes in behavior. Its use with lay people revealed that the model in its current version is well suited to raise awareness and provide information, whereas it still needs improvement before it can be used for detailed production decisions.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most promising methodology to assess environmental impacts of products, services and processes. Its scope of application is constantly evolving, including e.g. application to regional scales and assessing societal consumption patterns. Apart from considering environmental impacts, extensions to the methodology including social and economic impacts are currently being discussed One of those impacts is resource consumption. It has been argued that the methods for assessing resource consumption in LCA must come from thermodynamics, and must take account of the second law of thermodynamics (entropy law). The challenge arising from this, especially in respect to its applications and software implementation, is the increase in data requirements. While already being a data intensive methodology, including a thermodynamic measure for resource consumption in LCA will increase the data that needs to be handled significantly. This can only be managed by employing thermodynamic data bases and combining these with dedicated LCA software. I will present an approach that makes use of the scriptability of commercial LCA software (Umberto (R)) and combines LCA data with thermodynamic data where values are stored in a parameterized form. The script then calculates the thermodynamically defined resource consumption and makes it available to the visualization and analysis tools in the LCA software. Processes from the metallurgical sector serve as an illustrative case study.Microgrids-generating systems incorporating multiple distributed generator sets linked together to provide local electricity and heat-are one possible alterative to the existing centralized energy system. Potential advantages of microgrids include flexibility in fuel supply options, the ability to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, and energy efficiency improvements through combined heat and power (CHP) applications. As a case study in microgrid performance, this analysis uses a life cycle assessment approach to evaluate the energy and emissions performance of the NextEnergy microgrid Power Pavilion in Detroit, Michigan and a reference conventional system. The microgrid includes generator sets fueled by solar energy, hydrogen, and natural gas. Hydrogen fuel is sourced from both a natural gas steam reforming operation and as a by-product of a chlorine production operation. The chlorine plant receives electricity exclusively from a hydropower generating station. Results indicate that the use of this microgrid offers a total energy reduction potential of up to 38%, while reductions in non-renewable energy use could reach 51%. Similarly, emissions Of CO2, a key global warming gas, can be reduced by as much as 60% relative to conventional heat and power systems. Hydrogen fuels are shown to provide a net energy and emissions benefit relative to natural gas only when sourced primarily from the chlorine plant. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Discussed in this paper are current environmental problems, potential solutions to these problems, possible future hydrogen energy-utilization patterns for better environment and sustainable development through life cycle assessment (LCA), and how the principles of thermodynamics via exergy can be beneficially used to evaluate hydrogen and fuel cell systems and their role in sustainable development. Throughout the paper current and future perspectives of hydrogen and fuel cell systems based on exergetic, LCA and sustainability aspects development are considered. The results will likely be useful to scientists, researchers and engineers as well as policy and decision makers. Two case studies on the LCA aspects of hydrogen and fuel cell systems are presented to highlight the importance of the hydrogen and fuel cell systems and show that these can help achieve better environment and sustainability. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A new sequence of courses at Carnegie Mellon University exposes students to concepts in the emerging discipline of Sustainable Engineering and prepares them to play leadership roles in the years ahead. This sequence includes four half-semester courses: (1) Introduction to Sustainable Engineering; (2) Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering Design; (3) Life Cycle Assessment, and (4) Case Studies in Sustainable Engineering. Students successfully completing this sequence have an appreciation for the myriad ways in which engineering decisions can affect the environment and for the responsibilities of engineers in helping society cope with future challenges.A course in 'Sustainability and Design for Environment' has engaged engineering, science, architecture, forestry, business administration law and public policy students at the University of Washington since 1998. The course is divided into two distinct phases. Phase 1 constructs a Design for Environment (DFE) knowledge base in each individual student through lecture and homework assignments. Topics have evolved to include interactions between technology and the environment, design and other types of decision making, energy efficiency, environmental management for industrial processes, materials selection in product design, product delivery and use, product design for recovery and disassembly, environmental and cost metrics and implementation issues. Phase 2 further develops DFE knowledge through an interdisciplinary team project. Evolution of the team project has taken students from the development of a business plan, a streamlined 'Life Cycle Assessment', or disassembly process design for a company that will collect, refurbish, disassemble and recover postconsumer electronic materials to the development of a rating system for a product, process or activity of their choice based on, for example, the LEED Green Building Rating System, the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star programme, or the US Department of Energy's Energy Guide programme. The five-fold growth in enrolment in the class that has occurred since its inception mirrors the growth in the number of environmentally focused courses and degree programmes on the campus. Co-listing the course in different units allows more students to use the course towards their degree and should ensure a continuing interdisciplinary mix of students.'Greening' the engineering curriculum is an important consideration for sustainable engineering education from fundamentals to design in the 21st century. This paper describes the latest advances in an educational project sponsored by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to integrate green engineering principles into the chemical engineering curriculum. This project has engaged faculty from engineering schools across the country to develop Web-based instructional modules to allow for the seamless integration for green engineering principles such as risk concepts, green chemistry, mass and energy integration, life-cycle assessment into chemical engineering courses. Faculty have contributed to chemical engineering core courses from material and energy balances to plant design. In addition, faculty have developed modules for multidisciplinary offerings such as freshman-level introduction to engineering and upper-level system dynamics and control. This paper will review some of the innovative modules developed and show how they can be used in the chemical engineering curriculum. This educational project's goal is to integrate green engineering concepts horizontally and vertically into the curriculum by taking existing courses and integrating topics as appropriate through examples, problems and case studies. Using green engineering principles at the start of the design process can lead to processes and products of a sustainable future.A course in Life Cycle Assessment has engaged graduate students in engineering, forestry, business administration, and public policy at the University of Washington since 2003. The course pedagogy is project-based and supported by discussion-rich lectures that provide 'just-in-time' knowledge for student projects. Project feedback is provided through three interim reports, the first describing the goal and scope of their project, the second describing and presenting their inventory analysis and the third describing their impact characterization. The final report combines these three interim reports (with responses to instructor comments), and adds the student's interpretation of the results. Students are encouraged to select projects related to their graduate research, which has contributed not only to the student experience but also to an understanding of LCA in research labs throughout the university. Although student projects are limited in scope and by simplifying assumptions, computational nuances and all steps in the LCA process are implemented.Research on urban development to date has tended to focus on buildings and their performance in terms of associated energy and environmental impacts. Although, many detailed studies of residential buildings have been carried out, these studies usually concentrate on the house itself without consideration of the infrastructure systems. Alternatives to traditional infrastructure systems are necessary due to increasing demand for sustainable development. Life cycle analysis is a tool which is capable of evaluating competing alternatives based on quantification of resource use over the useful life. This paper briefly examines the life cycle performance of reticulated water supply and rain tank systems used for urban residential developments in New Zealand and suggests that current consumption is an impediment to more sustainable choices. The analysis is based on life cycle energy, environmental impact and cost, using computer simulation.In this paper a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology is used to investigate the energetic and environmental impact of a Building Integrated Photovoltaic installation (BIPV) with reference to a roof installation case study. The results reveal that the roof integrated photovoltaic systems can bring both energy and environmental benefits even in areas characterised by medium values of insolation. It is demonstrated that the embodied energy consumed during manufacturing phases is normally recovered after few years of operation; the same can be said for pollutant emissions. On the contrary, the economic payback time is always higher than the energy payback time and sometimes exceeds the expected life of the systems.We have developed an LCA database based on the latest Input-Output (IO) tables for Japan, which were released in 2004. One of the features of this database is hybrid analysis. The ten main imported commodities have been evaluated by the process analysis method and added to environmental burdens inside Japan, calculated based on the Japanese IO tables. In this database, 30 types of inventory have been estimated, including emissions to the atmosphere and hydrosphere, as well as the amounts of resources consumed.Typically life cycle analyses of the fertiliser industry are based on averages of outdated technology. Sulphur is a major element, emerging as a primary nutrient on its own accord and as a feed for other fertiliser production, namely phosphoric acid. Recent developments sparked by governmental regulation have raised the validity of an assumption frequently overlooked. Through the desulphurisation of fossil fuels sulphur is invariably assigned a zero energy charge as originally assessed from Mudahar (1987). By applying the principles of an exergetic cradle-to-factory gate analysis sulphur will acquire a feedstock cost and the repercussions within the fertiliser industry are addressed.High energy consumption and the world population increase will lead to shrinking reserves of fossil fuels. Concern about carbon dioxide emissions may discourage widespread dependence on fossil fuels and encourage the development and use of renewable energy systems employing a variety of technologies Renewable energy systems have themselves an environmental impact. Land use and material employed are two areas that may have an adverse impact on the positive environmental picture of the renewable energy systems. The objective of this paper is to analyse these impacts with the use of a very powerful tool, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).Background, Aims and Scope. Land use by agriculture, forestry, mining, house-building or industry leads to substantial impacts, particularly on biodiversity and on soil quality as a supplier of life support functions. Unfortunately there is no widely accepted assessment method so far for land use impacts. This paper presents an attempt, within the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, to provide a framework for the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of land use. Main Features. This framework builds from previous documents, particularly the SETAC book on LCIA (Lindeijer et al. 2002), developing essential issues such as the reference for occupation impacts; the impact pathways to be included in the analysis; the units of measure in the impact mechanism (land use interventions to impacts); the ways to deal with impacts in the future; and bio-geographical differentiation. Results. The paper describes the selected impact pathways, linking the land use elementary flows (occupation; transformation) and parameters (intensity) registered in the inventory (LCI) to the midpoint impact indicators and to the relevant damage categories (natural environment and natural resources). An impact occurs when the land properties are modified (transformation) and also when the current man-made properties are maintained (occupation). Discussion. The size of impact is the difference between the effect on land quality from the studied case of land use and a suitable reference land use on the same area (dynamic reference situation). The impact depends not only on the type of land use (including coverage and intensity) but is also heavily influenced by the bio-geographical conditions of the area. The time lag between the land use intervention and the impact may be large; thus land use impacts should be calculated over a reasonable time period after the actual land use finishes, at least until a new steady state in land quality is reached. Conclusion. Guidance is provided on the definition of the dynamic reference situation and on methods and time frame to assess the impacts occurring after the actual land use. Including the occupation impacts acknowledges that humans are not the sole users of land. Recommendations and Perspectives. The main damages affected by land use that should be considered by any method to assess land use impacts in LCIA are: biodiversity (existence value); biotic production potential (including soil fertility and use value of biodiversity); ecological soil quality (including life support functions of soil other than biotic production potential). Biogeographical differentiation is required for land use impacts, because the same intervention may have different consequences depending on the sensitivity and inherent land quality of the environment where it occurs. For the moment, an indication of how such task could be done and likely bio-geographical parameters to be considered are suggested. The recommendation of indicators for the suggested impact categories is a matter of future research.Goal, Scope and Background. In the framework of LCA, land use is broadly accepted as an impact category. However, the methodology for the assessment of damages on the natural environment was and still is the subject of discussion. The main objective of this paper is to contribute to that discussion by providing a consistent methodological framework for the assessment of land occupation and transformation. Methods. We clarify the context of LCA relevant land use decisions. Based on that, we develop a formal model with damage functions and generic characterization factors for quantifying damages on ecosystems from land occupation and land transformation. The characterization factor for land occupation and land use change is labeled Ecosystem Damage Potential (EDP). We analytically address the substitutability of area and time occupied in order to produce a constant output. Results. Based on the proposed method, it is possible to calculate the damages from complex series of land transformation, land occupation, and land restoration. A main feature of the method is that land transformation is assessed based on a factual or virtual, restoration time. This means that the damage of land transformation is largest for land use types which are difficult to restore and need extremely long to develop (e.g. thousand of years and more for primary forest and peatbog). In addition, we could show that area and time of occupation are not substitutable. The more severe the damage potential of a specific land use type is, the better it is to minimize the area and maximize the duration of occupation. Discussion. An approach for the assessment of pure land occupation and land use change was developed in this paper, which is not geographically referenced. Developing geographically-referenced land use inventories and impact assessment methods can increase their accuracy. The information cost to provide geographically referenced data on land use for practical LCA applications, however, would increase enormously. Conclusions. An impact assessment method for land use with generic characterization factors improves the basis for decision-making in industry and other organizations. It can best be applied to marginal land use decisions; that is, to decisions in which the consequences are so small that the quality or quantity of environmental parameters of a region is not noticeably altered. Recommendations and Perspectives. One main problem to address is the development of reliable generic characterization factors, which express the ecosystem damage potential of specific land use types. The characterization factors should be developed on an empirical basis, which allow decision makers to get access to knowledge from environmental sciences in a very condensed form. In order to support decisions on distinct land use projects, methods should be developed, which allow accomplishing a generic assessment with site-dependent assessments.Goal, Scope and Background. The paper describes different ecotoxicity effect indicator methods/approaches. The approaches cover three main groups, viz. PNEC approaches, PAF approaches and damage approaches. Ecotoxicity effect indicators used in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) are typically modelled to the level of impact, indicating the potential impact on 'ecosystem health'. The few existing indicators, which are modelled all the way to damage, are poorly developed, and even though relevant alternatives from risk assessment exist (e.g. recovery time and mean extinction time), these are unfortunately at a very early stage of development, and only few attempts have been made to include them in LCIA. Methods. The approaches are described and evaluated against a set of assessment criteria comprising compatibility with the methodological requirements of LCIA, environmental relevance, reproducibility, data demand, data availability, quantification of uncertainty, transparency and spatial differentiation. Results and Discussion. The results of the evaluation of the two impact approaches (i.e. PNEC and PAF) show both pros and cons for each of them. The assessment factor-based PNEC approach has a low data demand and uses only the lowest data (e.g. lowest NOEC value). Because it is developed in tiered risk assessment, and hence makes use of conservative assessment factors, it is not optimal, in its present form, to use in the comparative framework of LCIA, where best estimates are sought. The PAF approaches have a higher data demand but use all data and can be based on effect data (PNEC is no-effect-based), thus making these approaches non-conservative and more suitable for LCIA. However, indiscriminate use of ecotoxicity data tends to make the PAF-approaches no more environmentally relevant than the a sessmcnt factor-based PNEC approaches. The PAF approaches, however, can at least in theory be linked to damage modelling. All the approaches for damage modelling which are included here have a high environmental relevance but very low data availability, apart from the 'media recovery-approach', which depends directly on the fate model. They are all at a very early stage of development. Conclusion, Recommendations and Outlook. An analysis of the different PAF approaches shows that the crucial point is according to which principles and based on which data the hazardous concentration to 50% of the included species (i.e. HC50) is estimated. The ability to calculate many characterisation factors for ecotoxiciry is important for this impact category to be included in LCIA in a proper way. However, the access to effect data for the relevant chemicals is typically limited. So, besides the coupling to damage modelling, the main challenge within the further development and improvement of ecotoxicity effect indicators is to find an optimal method to estimate HC50 based on little data.Goal, Scope and Background. The life cycle of steel begins with the mining of iron ore from the earth. Steel is produced in steel works and used in various products. Some of the steels are recycled at the products' end of life and used as a resource for the production of new steel in electric furnaces, while the remaining steel is used just once in products before being discarded (landfilled). In this paper, case studies were conducted to analyze the average number of times the element of iron is used and its residence time in society, in which the methodology developed in Part 1 of the paper was applied. CO, emissions caused by steel productions and recycling were allocated by the number of times the element of steel is used in a society. Results and Discussion. On the basis of the material flows of steel in Japan in 2000, it was calculated that at least 70% of the BF crude iron produced in Japan in 2000 was ultimately exported. On the assumption that steel is used in other countries in the same way as it is in Japan, the average number of times of use and the residence time of elemental iron in society are 2.67 and 62.9 years, respectively. Both of these values depend significantly on the recycling ratios of steel from construction and automobiles. Our model indicated that if the recycling ratio of steel from civil engineering and construction increased from 50% to 60%, the average number of times used would increase to 3.17 and the residence time of elemental iron in society would increase to 75.8 years. If CO2 emissions caused by steel productions and recycling are allocated by the number of times the element of steel is used in a society, it was calculated that steel use of one time generates in average an environmental burden of 1.03 t-CO2/t. Conclusion. A method was developed to calculate the average number of times a material is used in a society from cradle to grave. Our methodology is based on Markov chain model using matrix-based numerical analysis, and has been successfully applied to steel. The results obtained by this methodology, i.e. the average number of times the element of iron is used in society, could be used for allocation of environmental burdens of virgin material as well as an indicator for assessing the state of material use in a certain year, based on material flow of material in that year. Recommendation and Perspective. It is recognized that further researches must be conducted to gather data on steel production, use, and recovery in other countries and incorporate them into the transition probability matrix to obtain more precise results. Although this paper deals only with steel, this method can also be applied to other materials.Goal, Scope and Background. The aim of the present study is to evaluate, through LCA, the potential environmental impact associated to urban waste dumping in a sanitary landfill for four case studies and to compare different technologies for waste treatment and leachate or biogas management in the framework of the EPD (R) system. Specific data were collected on the four Italian landfills during a five-year campaign from 2000 to 2004. This work also analyses the comparability of EPD results for different products in the same product category. For this purpose, a critical review of PSR 2003:3, for preparing an EPD on 'Collection, transfer and disposal service for urban waste in sanitary landfills', is performed. Methods. PSR 2003:3 defines the requirements, based on environmental parameters, that should be considered in an LCA study for collecting and disposal service of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in a sanitary landfill. It defines functional unit, system boundaries towards nature, other technical systems and boundaries in time, cut-off rules, allocation rules and parameters to be declared in the EPD. This PSR is tested on four case studies representing the major landfills located from the farthest west to the farthest cast side of the Ligurian Region. Those landfills are managed with different technologies as concerns waste pretreatment and leachate or biogas treatment. For each landfill, a life cycle assessment study is performed. Results and Discussion. The comparison of the LCA results is performed separately for the following phases: transport, landfill, leachate and biogas. The following parameters are considered: Resource use (Use of non-renewable resources with and without energy content, Use of renewable resources with and without energy content, Water consumption); Pollutant emissions expressed as potential environmental impact (Global Warming Potential from biological and fossil sources, Acidification, Ozone depletion, Photochemical oxidant formation, Eutrophication, Land use, Hazardous and other Waste production). The comparison of the LCA results obtained for alternative landfill and biogas management techniques in the case studies investigated shows that the best practicable option that benefits the environment as a whole must be identified and chosen in the LCA context. For example, a strong waste pre-treatment causes a high biological GWP in the landfill phase, but a low GWP contribution in the biogas phase, due to the consequent low biogas production, evaluated for 30 years since landfill closure. Conclusion. The analysis of four case studies showed that, through the EPD tool, it is possible to make a comparison among different declarations for the same product category only with some modification and integration to existent PSR 2003:3. Results showed that different products have different performances for phases and impact categories. It is not possible to identify the 'best product' from an environmental point of view, but it is possible to identify the product (or service) with the lowest impact on the environment for each impact category and resource use. Recommendation and Perspective. In consequences of the verification of the comprehensiveness of existent PSR 2003:3 for the comparability of EPD, some modifications and integration to existent rules are suggested.Background, Goal and Scope. The palm oil industry is one of the leading industries in Malaysia. With a yearly production of more than 13 million tons of crude palm oil (CPO) and plantations covering 11% of the Malaysian land area it is an industry to be reckoned with, also when it comes to environmental impacts. One way to describe and present the environmental impacts is through a life cycle assessment, LCA. This assessment aims to introduce the concept of LCA and perform a screening LCA on crude palm oil production in Malaysia including the stages of plantation, transport and milling. The assessment is largely based on general data and is thus meant to function as an indication of the environmental threads posed by CPO production and as a guideline to CPO producers and local universities on how to perform an LCA on a palm oil scenario. Due to the general data background the results of this report should not be quoted directly for decision making. The Functional Unit, to which all masses and emissions in this assessment have been adjusted, is the production of 1000 kg of CPO in Malaysia. Method. Initially an overview of palm oil production was obtained and the outlines and borders of the assessment were determined along with the specific goal and scope of the assessment. The data for the assessment was collected from three different sources: 1. Earlier studies and statistics on palm oil production in Malaysia 2. Studies on similar processes, when palm oil related processes were not available 3. General data from the SimaPro 5 database The European Eco-Indicator 99 method and European databases included in the LCA software SimaPro 5 have been used for the impact calculations. Results and Discussion.The impact processes related to the plantation are the on-site energy use (mainly diesel) and the production of artificial fertilizer. Pesticide use contributes a minor impact due to widely used integrated biological poet management. For transportation the only impact is from combustion of diesel and at the mill the boiler is the sole significant contributor positively through electricity production and negatively by emissions from the boiler. Impacts from POME (Palm Oil Mill Effluent) are not dealt with in the main assessment, but touched upon in alternative scenarios. The results clearly show that fertilizer production is the most polluting process in the system followed by transportation and the boiler emissions at a tie. The most significant impacts from the system are respiratory inorganics and depletion of fossil fuels, of which the boiler emission is the main responsible for the prior and fertilizer production and transportation are responsible for the latter. It is also evident from the results that crude palm oil production is a significant environmental impact generator in Malaysia due to the vast production quantities. Alternative scenarios revealed that there are significant impact savings to be made by introduction of environmental investments, both regarding the overall impacts and in particularly regarding CO, emissions. Conclusion. A screening LCA was successfully conducted on the Malaysian crude palm oil production thus promising potentials for the palm oil industry to conduct their own inventories and assessments using specific company data. Crude palm oil production in Malaysia is responsible for app. 3.5% of the total environmental impacts in the country and must thus be given attention to reduce impacts. Alternatives such as optimized use of organic fertilizer, environmentally friendlier artificial fertilizer production, rail transport, approved filters at the mill boiler stack and biogas harvest from POME digestion must thus be promoted in the industry. Recommendations. The Malaysian palm oil industry should take steps towards introducing LCA. Exhaustive inventories are likely to open the eyes of many companies towards implementing environmental investments and improve the international competitiveness. In order to retrieve results with a greater accuracy in the future, databases must be created containing life cycle data from Malaysian scenarios and normalization and weighting factors must be designed to reflect Malaysian conditions. The Malaysian authorities must create incentives through increased tariffs on electricity and diesel and/or financial support for cleaner technology investments.Consolidation of knowledge, information and experiences in application of Design for Environment principles is done at various levels, ranging from easy to understand slogans to design guidelines, and even to tailor-made solutions. This brings about that dissemination of this knowledge should be done taking the intended audience and relevant contexts into account-especially when dissemination is done in the form of 'principles', which are usually presented without context at all. In this paper it is discussed how interpretations of consolidating principles can lead to misinterpretations and even counterproductive actions. At least three principles can be identified that should be taken into account when disseminating DFE knowledge, discussing ( 1) different perspectives of what is environmentally friendly, ( 2) the life-cycle perspective, and ( 3) the integration of environmental and economical considerations.This paper presents a novel redesign approach that allows integrating environmental requirements into product development, taking into account cost and customer preferences. The proposed methodology allows the identification of environmental improvement options and the study of the effect that the incorporation of these options has over other traditional product requirements. However, for the incorporation of environmental improvements to be feasible from the company perspective, a market for environmentally friendly products must exist where customers are willing to pay for such products. The primary idea is to compare the increase that the incorporation of the environmental improvements produces on the life cycle cost of the product to the additional money that the customer is willing to pay for perceiving environmental benefits. The proposed approach is focused on establishing a relationship between quality function deployment ( QFD), life cycle assessment ( LCA), life cycle cost ( LCC) and contingent valuation ( CV) techniques for evaluating customer, environmental and cost requirements and customer willingness-to-pay ( WTP), respectively.This study discusses a methodology for integrating Design for Environment ( DfE) and life cycle assessment ( LCA) techniques both into new product development and into the process of redesigning a set of existing products. The article explains the reasons for developing DfE in general, and pays particular attention to a specific, chosen product, a class of electrical distribution boards, to illustrate the concept. The main process steps in the development of the DfE are outlined, and the development of a LCA that satisfies the requirements of the ISO 14040 standard is illustrated. A major benefit of the DfE methodology proposed in this work is the possibility to use LCA data both during new product development and when modifying old products, with the aim of continuously reducing the overall environmental impact of products during their life cycle. This improvement cycle begins with the attempt to find new design solutions ( for assembly and set-up in the case of electrical distribution boards), continues with the calculation of the enviromental break even point ( BEP) and with the assessment of the BEP for the expenses incurred by the client. On the basis of these calculations and bearing in mind the technical specifications required by the clients and the work environment in which the product will be used, the designers will be able to make the most efficient choices from both the environmental and the economic point of view.As our society becomes more environmentally conscious, manufacturers must incorporate 'environmental qualities' into products. This paper proposes a general design methodology to effectively support environmentally consciousness design of products. The methodology employs three tools: LCA ( life cycle assessment), QFDE ( quality function deployment for environment), and TRIZ ( theory of inventive problem solving). QFDE is a tool developed by modifying and extending QFD, and is extended further in this paper. In addition, connecting two consecutive tools is realized by established relations among those tools. The presented methodology is proved through application to a hair dryer to effectively support the product planning and conceptual design stages. For instance, designers could utilize one of the LCA results that the product has a high impact on global warming through energy consumption during its use phase to define a requirement objectively in QFDE, 'reduce the energy consumption' with a high weighting. TRIZ allowed designers to generate four improvement solutions. The most highly evaluated was using resonance frequency on the motor. This was obtained from a QFDE result that 'dry quickly' and 'dry quietly' have a contradiction. The methodology has a larger benefit than is obtained from utilizing those three tools independently.Community concerns about the environmental impacts of packaging have prompted governments to introduce policies and regulations which impose eco-taxes or deposit-return systems, require companies to take-back and recover their packaging, or promote voluntary product stewardship programmes. Until recently these programmes have focused almost exclusively on consumer ( retail) packaging, but increasingly companies are starting to address the environmental impacts of industrial packaging. This is being driven as much by regulation as it is by the need to reduce costs and increase efficiency in supply chains. This paper argues that environmental innovation in industrial packaging systems requires a cooperative supply chain approach to ensure that environmental and commercial costs are reduced and efficiencies optimized for the chain as a whole. This is based on a review of the literature and an industrial packaging supply chain research and demonstration programme conducted between 2003 and 2005 in Australia.A life cycle is defined as the description of the distinct phases, through which each product or organism passes during its life. For example, State Transition Diagrams (STD) describe the dynamic behavior of objects over time, by modeling the lifecycles of the objects in each class. This paper discusses the life cycle pattern by building a Life Cycle Analysis Pattern, based on the Software Stability Model. The main objective of this paper is to generate a stable, generic, reusable, clear, concise and easily comprehensible Life Cycle Pattern, using a Stable Pattern Language and the Software Stability Model.The total crude steel production in Asian countries was 500 million t in 2004, which accounted for 47 % of the total crude steel production in the world. There has been a large demand for steel scrap in Asian countries; Japan exported 2.5 million t of steel scrap to China, 1.91 million t to Korea and 0.9 million t to Taiwan in 2003. According to our previous studies, steel scrap generation in Japan will increase until 2030. A future change in steel scrap demand from Asian countries will greatly influence the amount and quality of Japan's steel scrap domestic consumption and exports. In this work, the change of quality was estimated for domestic steel production (electric arc furnace steel for buildings and construction) by the influence of steel scrap exports. A method based on the population balance model and material pinch analysis was applied to assess both the quality of domestic steel production and steel scrap consumption. Previous data concerning the quality (copper concentration) of steel scrap and the recovery ratio of steel scrap from post consumer products were updated. It was found that the quality requirements of steel scrap to other countries could have a large influence on the quality of domestic steel.Stainless steels are corrosion resistant alloys that are widely used in consumer goods and industrial equipment. Stainless steels contain scarce and energy intensive elements such as Ni, Cr, Mo, which means that closed loop recycling is preferable for sustainable stainless steel production. However, some stainless steels are not separated from ordinary steel scraps in the recycling processes and cannot be recycled as "stainless steel". The objective of this study is to analyze the dynamic substance flow of stainless steels in Japan and assess the potential for reducing CO, emissions by promoting closed loop recycling of stainless steels in the future. First, the authors analyzed material balance of input elements, i.e. Fe, Ni and Cr, in the production of stainless steels in 2002 to determine which aspects associated with the material flow of stainless steel cannot be elucidated from available statistical data. The amount of post-consumer stainless steel that would enter into society in the future was estimated by employing a Population Balance Model (PBM). It was found that only 2 % of post-consumer stainless steel containing Fe-Cr alloys was collected as stainless steel scraps while the remainder was collected as ordinary steel scrap. Conversely, approximately 95 % of post-consumer stainless steel consisting of Fe-Ni-Cr alloys was collected as stainless steel scrap. A CO2 emission reduction potential for a 1 % increase in the closed loop recycling of stainless steel scraps of Fe-Cr alloys was estimated at 75 000 t/year by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).Chromium chemicals are made from sodium chromate, a basic intermediate product for the production of all other chromium compounds. This article presents application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to choose the best method of production of sodium chromate. Three variants of sodium chromate production were considered: the classic method with the use of dolomite (DM), the implemented method with chromic mud recycling (W1) and the target waste-free method (W2). The method for evaluating the impact of sodium chromate production on the environment proposes the subcategories that should be taken into consideration in order to establish the final impact of the production process on the environment. The LCA showed further possibilities for reducing the impact of sodium chromate process on the natural environment through the implementation of new technological solutions, especially those concerning the decrease of energy consumption. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment methodology was used to compare conventional wheat production with a scenario where source-separated human urine replaced mineral fertilisers. A change-orientated perspective was used, including differences in capital goods between the scenarios. An optimal fertilising strategy regarding application time, technique and substitution of mineral fertiliser was demonstrated to be important for energy use, global warming and acidification. For reducing the energy use, a well designed collection system for urine also proved important, while recovery of the urine was essential for reducing eutrophication. Applying an agricultural perspective when evaluating the system highlighted potential conflicts regarding nutrient utilisation. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, most people involved in the industrial engineering community (consultants, manufacturers, researchers and institutional actors) assert that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most successful tool to assess environmental considerations in the product design process. This assertion is addressed in this article through a simultaneous check of the potential of this tool and the environmental needs of the design team. After a comparison of this potential to these needs, the following assertions may be made: (1) LCA is not an adequate tool for the designer, because its utility in the design process is limited to an analysis of existing products or well defined products at the final stages of the design process, and (2) LCA is not useful in creating a learning dynamic (awareness) within the company, because it does not improve the legitimacy or the credibility of environmental considerations. Moreover, it may generate confusion within the design team while restricting the capacity for innovation within the company. This paper concludes that, in the product design field, the LCA tool should be considered as a specialized tool handled by a specific player (the environmental actor) and should be dedicated to the strategic evaluation of new concepts. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The trend of increasing the number of dairy products for sale affects their environmental impact in a life cycle perspective. During dairy processing, the production schedule is affected by more frequent product changes, hence also cleaning operations. This causes more milk waste, use of cleaning agents and water. The amount of milk waste depends on the product change technique used, which is determined by the characteristics of the product. A method was designed to calculate the sequence, which, for a given set of yoghurt products, minimises milk waste. A heuristic method, based on the strive to minimise production waste combined with production rules, was worked out. To determine whether the heuristic solution gives the best possible sequence from an environmental perspective, an optimisation was also made. The analytical method used for optimisation was able to handle 21 products and verified the heuristic method for a waste minimised sequence up to that level. It is also highly probable that for sequences including a greater number of items waste can be minimised with the same heuristic method. A successful demonstration of the possibility to make a more complete environmental assessment was fulfilled by connecting the sequencing model to conventional life cycle assessment methodology. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The importance of land use evaluation has recently been recognised in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Even so, there is still a considerable lack of definition, particularly concerning what parameters should be considered and - as a result - what particular methodology should be used. This paper presents a review of the different methods proposed for assessing the environmental impact of land use. The methodology is specially developed for assessing endpoint categories such as biodiversity and life support systems. We evaluated the environmental impact associated with protected horticulture and compared it with other forms of human activity. The study was carried out in the area of El Maresme. This has traditionally been an agricultural area, although it is now under heavy pressure from urban and industrial developments due to its proximity to Barcelona. On the basis of the results obtained in the case study, it was demonstrated that agricultural uses ranked at the same level or slightly below those of urban uses, and that both uses clearly scored lower than forest uses, from the point of view of biodiversity. When a productivity indicator was used, agricultural use registered a smaller environmental impact than urban use, but larger than for forestry. Finally, we discuss the problems and limitations encountered when these methods were applied in our case study. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been recognized in the EU in the context of 'Integrated Product Policy' (IPP) as providing "the best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products currently available." A study to promote the use of LCA-based product information was designed, with the following objectives: (a) to develop different benchmarks to which the LCA results of various products can be compared, (b) to study how consumers understand the different benchmarks and what proposals for improvement they have, and (c) to propose a few presentation formats and benchmarks for presenting LCA-based information in communications to consumers. Here we present the final results, i.e., the suggested benchmarks and presentation formats, 'eco-benchmark'. We also present some lessons derived from the feedback gained from consumers and other stakeholders, and point out future directions for improving the benchmarks and their utilization. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development is a basic state policy of China. Changing the unsustainable production and consumption patterns plays an important role in implementing this policy. In this paper, taking private traffic pattern of Beijing as an example, we compare the life-cycle environmental impacts of different scenarios. Assumptions which concern the role of both consumers and producers are taken in scenarios' development. Scenario results show that combing sustainable consumption and production patterns is essential for future. This paper gives some policy implications about the role of government in promoting sustainable private traffic patterns in Beijing. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Interest in producing ethanol from biomass in an attempt to make transportation ecologically sustainable continues to grow. In recent years, a large number of assessments have been conducted to assess the environmental merit of biofuels. Two detailed reviews present contrasting results: one is generally unfavourable, whilst the other is more favourable towards fuel bio-ethanol. However, most work that has been done so far, to assess the conversion of specific feedstocks to biofuels, specifically bio-ethanol, has not gone beyond energy and carbon assessments. This study draws on 47 published assessments that compare bio-ethanol systems to conventional fuel on a life cycle basis, or using life cycle assessment (LCA). A majority of these assessments focused on net energy and greenhouse gases, and despite differing assumptions and system boundaries, the following general lessons emerge: (i) make ethanol from sugar crops, in tropical countries, but approach expansion of agricultural land usage with extreme caution; (ii) consider hydrolysing and fermenting lignocellulosic residues to ethanol; and (iii) the LCA results on grasses as feedstock are insufficient to draw conclusions. It appears that technology choices in process residue handling and in fuel combustion are key, whilst site-specific environmental management tools should best handle biodiversity issues. Seven of the reviewed studies evaluated a wider range of environmental impacts, including resource depletion, global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human and ecological health, smog formation, etc., but came up with divergent conclusions, possibly due to different approaches in scoping. These LCAs typically report that bio-ethanol results in reductions in resource use and global warming; however, impacts on acidification, human toxicity and ecological toxicity, occurring mainly during the growing and processing of biomass, were more often unfavourable than favourable. It is in this area that further work is needed. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The Centre for Design at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia has developed various quantitative and qualitative tools to support decision-making by industry and government partners in product design and policy development. The aim, in general, is to support development of attractive, functional, marketable products while enhancing their environmental performance. Depending on the product, the project scope and the client, the tools that are used can be anything from a half-day char-rette, environmental checklist, to a one-year life cycle assessment (LCA). In this paper we describe our approach and the various tools that have been developed by the research team at the Centre over recent years with the use of case studies. The paper argues that it is important for tool development to be based on solid research and information, but the key to influencing product design decisions is the translation of this information into a usable format for the users. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The fate, exposure and effects model USES-LCA 2.0 has been adapted to calculate characterisation factors for toxic chemicals emitted under Australian conditions. Normalisation data for Australian ecotoxicity and human toxicity have been calculated using the emission data from the National Pollutant Inventory (2002/2003) and pesticide use information. National freshwater ecotoxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity impacts are dominated by pesticide use. Total marine ecotoxicity is dominated by fluoride, originating from air emissions from the electricity supply and non-ferrous metals' (and products) manufacturing industry sectors and water emissions from the sewerage treatment plants. The human toxicity is primarily attributed to the inhalation of toxic metal dust. There is a large diffuse component (primarily from road dust) and the remaining human toxicity contributions can be attributed to air emissions from the mining (non-ferrous metal ores), electricity supply and non-ferrous metals' (and products) manufacturing industry sectors. Future research should investigate the feasibility of combining NPI emissions with regional (climate) specific characterisation factors. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Because carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of a renewable fuel are not anthropogenic greenhouse gases, there are significant greenhouse gas benefits in using ethanol that is derived from sugar or wheat, especially from waste feedstock. However, if the ethanol is used as an additive (as in diesohol or petrohol) then some of these greenhouse gas benefits are lost because ethanol is less efficient as a fuel. The vapour pressure of petrohol is higher than that of either petrol or ethanol, so that it is unclear whether there are, or are not, air quality benefits associated with the use of ethanol. A measurement program that surveys a significant proportion of E10 altemative fuel vehicles should be undertaken, along with a parallel program to test the emission variations that result from the changes in the petrol. The performance of overseas models in relation to the Australian situation is unknown, and a combined modelling and measurement program is needed to determine its validity. Crown Copyright (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Evaluating both new and existing processes for primary metal production to assess their environmental impacts is often difficult due to the many inputs and outputs involved. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology that can be used for such purposes to identify those parts of the metal production life cycle that have significant environmental impacts. LCA has been used by CSIRO Minerals to assess the "cradle-to-gate" environmental impacts of a number of metal production processes practised either currently or potentially in Australia. The metals considered included copper, nickel, aluminium, lead, zinc, steel, stainless steel and titanium, by both pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical routes in some instances. The environmental profile included greenhouse and acid rain gas emissions, solid waste emissions and gross energy consumption. The results for various metals are compared in this paper. New process technologies for primary metal production can be expected to reduce the environmental impacts of metal production, and estimates of likely reductions for technologies involving stainless steel, titanium and aluminium are also presented in this paper. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Replacing glass fibers with natural fibers in the automobile industry can yield economic, environmental and social benefits. This article evaluates the prospective environmental impacts of automobile applications of curaua fiber (Ananas erectifolius), which nearly equates the physical properties of glass fibers. The study identified economic and social advantages of applying curaua fiber composites in car parts. Besides costing 50% less than fiber glass, the use of curaua fibers can promote regional development in the Amazon region. In order to realize significant environmental benefits, however, the curaui-based composites would have to be lighter than their glass fiber-based counterparts. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a consequence of the introduction of limits on exhaust gas emissions and a target agreement between the Swiss association of car importers (auto-schweiz) and the Swiss government calling for a reduction in the specific fuel consumption, a considerable reduction of exhaust emissions of newly registered Swiss passenger cars occurred in the last 10 years. Also, for the near future an ongoing reduction of exhaust emissions of newly registered vehicles is expected. However, applying the concept of life cycle thinking, exhaust emission reductions may be outbalanced with an increase in specific car manufacturing expenditures and/or a longer use of the car. Thus, from the point of view of an individual car owner, a prolonged car use may be the environmentally preferable option. In order to investigate this question, a comprehensive analysis of the environmental performance of newly registered diesel and petrol passenger cars in the time period from 2000 to 2010 has been performed. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been employed focusing on three transport components: 'vehicle travel' (exhaust and abrasion emissions), 'fuel chain' (supply of fuels) and 'car infrastructure' (manufacturing, maintenance and disposal of cars). The presented model aims to gain insight into the issue of longevity and prolonged car use for the Swiss case, rather than giving ultimate recommendations. The analysis focuses on classical road pollutants (NO, and PM2.5) as well as on fuel consumption reduction and CO2. Moreover, impact assessment has been applied, employing a common approach: Eco-Indicator (EI) 99. The ranking of different car replacement options revealed prolonged car use as the environmentally better option. As a consequence of the continuous use of the car representing 2000 average technology, the components 'vehicle travel' and 'fuel chain' show a 10% and 9% higher performance, respectively. This effect is compensated by savings in 'car infrastructure' (26%). Uncertainty analysis has been performed by additional model runs with different parameter settings. Despite the fact that a considerably prolonged car use scores best for all additional model runs, the resulting differences between options further decrease. This holds particularly true, if a higher yearly average fuel reduction rate of 3% is assumed. Furthermore, applying an avoided burden concept for infrastructure modeling (Value Corrected Substitution (VCS)) shows the same effect. In both cases the resulting scores differ merely marginally between the considered options and would not allow for discrimination. As a consequence of these outcomes, it is not possible to give any general recommendation to Swiss car owners to extend the use of their cars, in the short term. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the last 30 years the use of light weight, inexpensive, and durable plastics in automobiles has nearly tripled on a per vehicle basis. Although this has created benefits such as increased fuel efficiency and associated lower CO2 emissions, the growing disposition of plastics from end-of-life vehicles has put increasing pressure on North American landfill capacity. Financial and life cycle assessment models were developed and applied to the current and proposed recycling business operations of AADCO Automotive Incorporated (AADCO), a leading Canadian automotive dismantling company. By applying both kinds of models, two key questions are addressed. First, how much is it expected to cost AADCO to participate in a start-up automotive plastics recycling network? and second, by estimating greenhouse gas emissions and energy requirements, is recycling automotive plastics actually better for the environment compared to manufacturing virgin plastic resin within the boundaries set forth in this case study? The present study concluded that the proposed recycling network would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy requirements by nearly 50% when compared to the current operations at AADCO (equating to a reduction of 1063 tonnes Of CO2(eq) and 18 TJ, respectively). However, in spite of the environmental benefits, the magnitude of the added costs for AADCO to participate in the post-consumer automotive plastics recycling network resulted in an unprofitable value proposition for the company. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper investigates the possibilities of attaining zero-waste emissions in the case of sugar production. The case-studied sugar plant located in Slovenia reflected a typical plant, using traditional sugar production from beet. An investigation of the possible use of waste and by-products from sugar processing was carried out, in order to approach zero-waste from beet sugar processing. The sugar production process was simulated and optimization was carried out concerning energy utilization. Consumption of energy in the chosen sugar plant was lowered by simultaneous optimization of the evaporation and crystallization process. Changing the fuel type used in the case-studied sugar plant (replacement of heavy fuel oil with natural gas) produced a significant decrease in air emission. Opportunities in the sugar industry have been discovered for adapting to new market conditions through the optimization of combined sugar-ethanol production. The two proposed options have been economically and environmentally evaluated and compared. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The COST Action 628 was established to produce first hand, industrial environmental data of textiles in Europe, as well as to suggest tools for comparisons of present technologies and practices With cleaner applications, including the economic effects. The Action network also suggested criteria for ISO (Type 111) Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) standards. It was concluded that new emerging cleaner technologies are in a key position when striving towards zero emissions in textile processing. It is also important to identify the most polluting stages of textile processing, with the help of life cycle assessment methodology, in order to focus the development of new technologies correctly. LCA was used to set up criteria for an Environmental Product Declaration for textile products. Unique, first hand industrial data were collected from five European textile industries. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper mostly deals with the role of energy, matter and information flows within both environmental and human-dominated systems. Sustainable growth and development of both kinds of systems require optimum use of available resources for maximum power output, as suggested by Lotka's Maximum Power Principle [Lotka AJ. Contribution to the energetics of evolution. In: Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the United States of America, vol. 8. 1922, p. 147-50; Lotka AJ. Natural selection as a physical principle. In: Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the United States of America, vol. 8. 1922, p. 151-5.1, recently restated by Odum [Odum HT. Maximum power and efficiency: a rebuttal. Ecol Model 1983;20:71-82; Odum HT. Environmental accounting. Emergy and environmental decision making. N.Y.: John Wiley & Sons; 1996.] as Maximum Em-Power Principle within the framework of his Emergy Synthesis approach. In times of declining resources, this principle translates into increased efficiency and optimum use of any kind of waste and co-products. Ecosystems and any self-organizing systems always apply this strategy and their selection-evolution mechanisms are based on their ability of growing on any untapped resource available. In order to do so, they increase the number of components and patterns for resource degradation in order to optimize the resource throughput and power output. Such a strategy also applies to human-dominated, economic systems, where the ability of dealing with co-products and wastes by means of appropriate designs as well as reuse and recycling processes may lead to '' zero-emission '' patterns (increased complexity, optimal resource throughput, minimization of emissions, resource exchange among system's components) and be the key for successful and sustainable development. In this paper Life Cycle Assessment and Emergy Synthesis approaches are suggested as joint tools for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of progresses towards industrial symbiosis and more sustainable production and consumption patterns within a zero emission framework. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The comparison of the environmental performance of contrasting agricultural production systems using life cycle assessment (LCA) requires very specific data for each production mode, especially for direct emissions on the farm. In a case study of pig production, three contrasting production scenarios were defined: conventional good agricultural practice (GAP), organic agriculture (OA), and red label (RL). An expert panel produced methods for the estimation of emissions for key-processes of these scenarios. Clear differences were obtained for these emissions between the three scenarios. Finally, the summation of the main emissions for the entire life cycle allowed the identification of weak points for each scenario, which can be explained by the differences obtained for the emissions of the key-processes studied. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Degradation of soil quality is a major concern due to the scarcity of fertile land, and needs to be properly addressed in the environmental assessment of agro-forestry systems. This paper addresses the main issues arising in assessing the impacts of fertile land use on "Life Support Functions" in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). These issues include the assessment of occupation and transformation impacts, the references against which such impacts should be measured, and the concept of natural relaxation versus backup technology for recovery from the impacts. The alternative (or reference) situation is defined using the concept of consequential LCA, which facilitates clarification of the allocation issues arising due to successive land uses. This paper presents soil organic matter (SOM) as a robust indicator for soil quality; even though it does not fully consider all aspects of soil functioning, SOM has been often recognised as the best stand-alone indicator for soil quality. Impacts on biodiversity are not included in this indicator and should be assessed in parallel. Alternative data sources for practical implementation of the method are suggested in a hierarchical way, including locally specific data sets describing changes in SOM; mechanistic models for the prediction of SOM evolution; and general data sources for simplified analyses. Thanks to its flexibility in data collection the method is applicable to any agricultural or forestry LCA to fill an important gap in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of land use. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The world's natural gas consumption continues to grow, increasing its market share of total primary energy consumption. Among the major fuels, natural gas is expected to provide the greatest increase in energy consumption in the world energy sector, due to its relatively low environmental impact and high thermodynamic quality. Natural gas plays a significant role in the energy sector because of its environmental qualities and energy. We analyzed the natural gas life cycle by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare, from an environmental point of view, four sites of heat production by natural gas combustion. We determined the best site from an environmental point of view for a consumer and which stage (extraction, treatment, transportation, storage, combustion) of the natural gas life cycle pollutes the most. This study confirmed the utility of the LCA in the evaluation of the environmental impact in the energy sector. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment was performed to evaluate environmental impacts of two municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy schemes currently practiced in Thailand: incineration and anaerobic digestion. Potential impacts such as global warming, acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, and photo-oxidant formation were avoided due to net electricity production and also fertilizer production as by-products from the anaerobic digestion scheme. In addition, the anaerobic digestion resulted in the higher net energy output compared to the incineration scheme. However, the incineration had less potential impact for nutrient enrichment. The LCA results were also useful in determining where the improvements could be made for both the schemes. In order to adopt a sustainable waste management system elsewhere in the country, decision makers may need to consider a combination of techniques, or an integrated method of management. LCA could serve as an invaluable tool for such an analysis. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper we develop a typology of consequences that can be used for environmental assessments of investment in technologies. As an illustration we estimate how the inclusion of different cause-effect chains could affect the estimated greenhouse gas emissions resulting from buying and using a fuel cell bus today. In contrast to earlier studies, we include cause-effect chains containing positive feedback from adoption (e.g. economies of scale and learning). We discuss how our findings affect the usefulness and limitations of consequential life-cycle assessment (LCA) and how LCA methodology in more general can be used to support strategic technology choice. A major conclusion is that environmental assessments of investment in emerging technologies should not only include effects resulting from marginal change of the current system but also marginal contributions to radical system change. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Implementing sustainable development (SD) requires operationalizing this rather vague guiding principle in a socio-technological context. This paper refers to a notion of SD that stresses approaching SD from a systemic perspective. We first present the Function- S tructure-Context Framework to appraise if and how systemic characteristics are considered in assessments. The latter framework includes a functional, structural, and contextual dimension, as well as the interdependencies of these dimensions. We then analyze four currently applied landfill assessment methods with respect to this framework: i.e., MCEA (Modified Cost Effectiveness Ana, lysis), LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), RA (Risk Assessment), and TVA (Swiss Technical Ordinance Waste). With respect to the analyzed methods, we can reveal that each of them focuses on specific systemic dimensions in its assessment step, whereas none refers to the whole range of dimensions and interdependencies of the framework presented. We then propose the so-called Sustainability Potential Analysis (SPA) as an alternative comprehensive SD assessment approach, which has the potential to integrate the results of the other methods for achieving a systemic SD assessment. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecosystem theory has been developed during recent decades, thereby a series of concepts are hypothesized to describe principles inherent to the "natural" function of biological systems at various levels of hierarchy. It seems that a universal trend exists, through evolutionary time and space that allows us to establish indicators that may be used to observe patterns in evolution, even at high levels of hierarchy such as the ecosystem level. The functional principles of ecosystems have evolved over a period of time corresponding to the existence of life on earth say 3-4 billion years. The obvious question immediately arises whether we could team something from observing these principles. Could we possibly improve our existence by living in accordance with these principles practiced in nature, as exemplified by ecosystems? In this paper, a comparison between natural systems on the one side and industrial-societal systems on the other side is made using 10 target areas as entrance points. It turns out that even though industrial ecologists are aware of and are practicing some points in ecosystem theory, far from all principles, have been exploited. It is suggested that society should increase attention to some of the features where natural systems and societal systems differ greatly. It is hypothesized that industry and society, both in terms of economy and sustainability, would benefit from exploiting these natural principles, even more. This would lead to an intended and deliberate development of the industrial sectors and society in general accordance with the natural ecosystem principles. This led the author to propose the eco-mimetic development of our society. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using the concept of life cycle analysis, the whole life cycle of anthracite production in Vietnam was assessed and the environmental "hot-spots" were identified. These include (i) dust pollution at coal transfer points or piles in storage; (ii) noise pollution resulting from the usage of heavy equipment, and (iii) high volume of acid and turbid mine water discharged into the environment. Pollution prevention and treatment options were identified and discussed in this study which consists of wet treatment of dust, planning, collection and treatment of mine water, planting of trees for dust and noise reduction as well as minimization of erosion. Some recommendations are made for pollution abatement from coal production and improvement of anthracite production in the region. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We present a new analytical tool, called COMPLIMENT, which can be used to provide detailed information on the overall environmental impact of a business. COMPLIMENT integrates parts of tools such as life cycle assessment, multi-criteria analysis and environmental performance indicators. It avoids disadvantages and combines complementary aspects of these three tools. The methodology is based on environmental performance indicators, expanding the scope of data collection towards a life cycle approach and including a weighting and aggregation step. A case study on the Thai pulp industry illustrates the usefulness of COMPLIMENT. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from MSW landfill, and control methods to eliminate or minimize these impacts including energy recovery from landfill gas (LFG) of MSW landfill in Thailand have been evaluated. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as the analytical tool to evaluate the environmental consequences of landfilling holistically. The economic implications of the control methods are also briefly assessed. The results show that in terms of GHG emissions as well as in terms of economics, it is more advantageous to have a large centralized landfill and produce electricity from the LFG rather than having several small, localized landfills despite significantly lower transportation requirement for the latter case. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the global warming potential was sensitive to gas collection efficiency as well as methane oxidation rate in the landfill. This study shows the utility of a life cycle approach for evaluating LFG-to-energy (LFGTE) projects. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green barriers are one kind of non-tariff barrier (NTB). This paper points out that green barriers evolved from sustainable development theory and environmental protection, but are compatible with true comparative advantage. The best way to surmount green barriers for Chinese enterprises is to implement circular production processes and clean production techniques.The bridge management system (BMS) development work in Finland has given a good response, the BMS being a tool for optimal maintenance planning. It includes bridge age behavior modelling and both the network level and project level management systems. The quality improving methods of the inspection system and reliable project level management system have helped to almost double the money used for bridge MR&R in ten years. Optimal condition targets with budget scenarios steer the maintenance of bridges. The Markov Chain based LCC analysis, which is a combined analysis of performance, life cycle costs and life cycle ecology, is applied to optimization and planning of MR&R activity at both the network level and the project level life cycle management system (LMS). The development goes on. The intention is to find out the ways to improve the quality of the age behaviour models, predictions and-life-cycle analysis.Anew methodology for sustainable bridge management is proposed which encompasses whole life costing and life cycle assessment objectives under conditions of uncertainty Direct impacts from maintenance works themselves, as well as indirect impacts from traffic disruption and delay, can be taken into account in calculating whole life costs and environmental scores of alternative maintenance plans. Moreover, the multi-criteria decision analysis technique is used in order to calculate the most preferable maintenance plan in terms of a linear combination of whole life cost and environmental score based on each decision-maker's preference. The proposed methodology is demonstrated through a simple example of a deteriorating reinforced concrete bridge element.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of two projects aimed at testing market responses to the first-ever fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) independently certified as sustainable. Design/methodology/approach - The method used comprised three phases: independent sustainability certification of products using a full life cycle assessment; nationwide roll-out of seven certified household products in retail outlets throughout New Zealand, and trials of certified lamb meat in three butcher shops in Brisbane, Australia; and monitoring of sales data and consumer responses to certified products. Findings - Record sales averaging +52 per cent above historical were achieved and sustained for the seven household products over a period of 18 months. Certified lambmeat product was well received, with 95 per cent of customers surveyed indicating that they would consider buying certified meat in future. Practical implications - The paper indicates that there is consumer demand for products that are clearly identified as genuinely sustainable, even though they may be perceived to be more expensive than traditional products. The market for certified sustainable products may become more mainstream as consumer concern regarding sustainability increases, and product disclosure standards become more stringent. Originality/value - The paper describes the results of the first-ever market tests of independently certified sustainable products in the FMCG sector. It gives an early indication that some consumers will select independently certified sustainable products in preference to others, provided that the product is clearly labeled and well marketed. The results also indicate that sales of certified sustainable products can be sustained over time.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe a sustainability certification system and label based on an independent, full life cycle assessment of conventionally produced goods from "cradle to grave". Design/methodology/approach - The design approach used comprised five phases: review of presently available third party environmental certification systems regarding their suitability for use as a sustainability certification tool for conventionally produced goods; identification of desirable scientific and consumer design criteria for a sustainability certification system and label; identification of key performance indicators for sustainability; description of an independent sustainability certification system based on the desirable design criteria, in particular an independent full life cycle assessment; and market trials of the sustainability label to test consumer reactions and commercial benefits of independent sustainability certification using two commercial case studies in Australia and New Zealand. Findings - None of the third party environmental certification systems reviewed was suitable for use as a sustainability certification tool. Desirable design criteria for a sustainability certification system centred on an independent, full life cycle assessment of operations from "cradle to grave". A total of eight safety and 12 sustainability key performance indicators were proposed to specifically assess sustainability performance. An instantly recognizable logo comprising a "Green Tick" inside a circle, reminiscent of a government "stamp of approval", was used as a sustainability label. Market trials of certified household products and lamb meat in Australasia confirmed positive consumer reactions to the "Green Tick" label, and considerable commercial benefits for the companies that used it on their products. Practical implications - The "Green Tick(TM)" sustainability certification system and label addresses an identified gap in the market by providing an easily recognizable, independent, life cycle based sustainability certification of consumer products. Market trials indicated that there was measurable consumer support for independent sustainability labelling, and significant commercial benefits for companies whose products qualified for sustainability labelling. Originality/value - The paper describes the world's first-ever independent sustainability certification system and label. It is based on third party, full life cycle assessment of products, in accordance with the European Commission's view that sustainability labelling should be based on independent, full life cycle assessments of products. Market trials of the label in the Australasian FMCG sector indicated that consumers responded positively to an easily recognizable, independent sustainability label, and that independent sustainability certification and labelling have significant commercial potential for manufacturers of genuinely sustainable products.Important changes in the environment, reduced availability of natural resources and the increasing growth of waste means that new concepts and strategies to recycle technical consumer goods, such as household instruments, consumer electronics and passenger cars, are required instead of land filling, burning or steel production. In view of the large quantity and high personnel costs, an advanced disassembly technique is needed using more rational than traditional manual processes and cheaper than highly sophisticated fully automated high technology machines and devices. One of the biggest problems for the recycling or disposal of products besides the growing mass of waste is their complex composition. An economic, sustainable and ecological procedure is necessary to prepare and to refurbish products, therefore the disassembly is the first step to achieving a higher rate of recycling.Sustainable Development can be considered as a continuous process to reach Sustainability at a global level. For this transition to take place, societies need to deal with new complex problems that demand the adoption of new principles, ways of thinking and tools. This challenge must be met by all levels, including government bodies and private companies. In the past decade, an increasing number of concepts and managerial tools have been proposed for helping organisations understand and improve their sustainability performance. However, the plethora of tools has created confusion, thus inhibiting their effective application. The cybernetic Viable System Model has been tested and verified for its usefulness in a large variety of organisational contexts, ranging from small enterprises to whole countries. In this work, the Viable System Model is used in order to explore the interrelations and possible synergies of some managerial tools by organising them hierarchically. In particular, sustainability concepts such as the Five Capitals Model and tools such as Life Cycle Analysis are critically analysed and positioned within the Viable System Model organisational structure, in order to provide a set of principles for their interaction to be effective.How can we develop and produce more sustainable products? The author reviews current methods as well as presents models on how to develop sustainable products. Different methods for achieving products with as low environmental impact as possible are shown as well as principles for product development with special regards to materials selection, design, the product in use and recycling are given. Definition of a sustainable product, triple bottom line, dematerialisation, recycling, design considerations, ISO 14001 standard and the EMAS (Eco Management and Audit Scheme) regulation are examples of areas, which are reviewed in this article. Life cycle assessment, environmental impact, eco-efficiency, environmental space, market contacts, cultural aspects, fashion and trends are also reviewed. Guidelines for sustainable product development are presented with special regard to material, design and ecology. A description of materials selection and models for design based on a sustainable society is also presented. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Flame Retardants (FRs) play an important role on the product safety and reliability in our daily life and at workplace. A vast majority of plastics, textiles and other natural or synthetic materials are namely flammable, and most of them must consequently be treated with FRs to comply with fire safety regulations or industry standards. While nobody questions their benefits in terms of saved lives, avoided injuries or preserved property, FRs are increasingly challenged for chemical exposure issues and their potential impact on human health and wildlife. As a consequence of recent regulations and of the increasing pressure on brominated FRs, the markets have responded by increasingly shifting to halogen-free alternatives, which enjoyed an above-average growth in recent years. However remains the question if the alternative FRs are better than the currently used substances, and if they do bring the expected benefits in terms of health and environmental impact? To answer these legitimated questions, Clariant, togetherwith the German scientific institute Fraunhofer UMSICHT, have developed an innovative methodology to demonstrate the benefits brought by the newly introduced FRs based on metal phosphinates. Rather than using typical Life Cycle Assessment parameters, like energy consumption or global warming potential, a benchmark approach was adopted, comparing the performance of the new FRs versus currently employed FR systems, and also to the non-flame retarded polymers (glass reinforced PA 6 and 6,6, high temperature nylons and PBT). The release of FRs and degradation products was investigated over the key stages of the life cycle of FR plastics: processing by extrusion, use phase, accidental fires, incineration, mechanical recycling and end-of-life disposal.Traditional life-cycle assessments (LCAs) of consumer products such as computers, furniture, etc. do not consider the environmental impact of Fires involving such products. In so doing, LCA practitioners ignore any benefit from increased resistance to fire through the use of additives as a potential counter-weight to environmental costs of including said chemical. Conventional LCA models include additives and more complex production processes in consumer products only as a cost, i.e. the environmental benefit of the additive is not taken into account. Recently a Fire-LCA model was developed that also includes fires and their impact on the environment. This chapter describes how to perform a Fire-LCA.An important issue in the preliminary design of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) is the selection of the optimal dimensions for the vehicle (sizing). These dimensions are dependent on the characteristics of the mission, the operating environment and the chosen technology. This paper presents a computer-based design-tool, which integrates all major design parameters to allow an efficient and rapid trade-off analysis betNveen various options, for example different battery types, etc. In order to carry out fast modelling, different types of battery, fuel cell and semifuel cell options to power the AUV are pre-prograrnmed in the dimensioning module and can be selected by the designer. An integral part of the vehicle design is sustainability and this can be determined by performing a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on the vehicle. LCA refers to the compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle). For this purpose the SimaPro (R) system is used to model a modular AUV as a function of its external dimensions and the type of power supply. When the user is satisfied with the designed vehicle, the program can calculate the hydrodynamic variables of the vehicle and load these variables into the vehicle simulation package (DSTO V-Sim).The adoption of biodegradable polymeric materials is increasing in food and consumer goods packaging applications, due to concerns about the disposal of petroleum-based polymers and the increasing cost of petroleum-based polymer resins. Currently, poly(lactide) (PLA) polymers are the biggest commercially available bio-based polymeric packaging materials. As the main motivation for adopting biopolymers is environmental, there is a need to address the degradability and environmental performance of biodegradable packages. The aim of this study was to investigate and compare the degradation of two commercially available biodegradable packages made of PLA under real compost conditions and under ambient exposure, using visual inspection, gel permeation chromatography, differential scanning calorimetry and thermal gravimetric analysis. A novel technique to study and track the degradability of these packages under real compost conditions was used. Both packages were subjected to composting and ambient exposure conditions for 30 days, and the degradation of the physical properties was measured at 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 15 and 30 days. PLA bottles made of 96% L-lactide exhibited lower degradation than PLA delicatessen ('deli') containers made of 94% L-lactide, mainly due to their highly ordered structure and, therefore, their higher crystallinity. The degradation rate changed as the initial crystallinity and the L-lactide content of the packages varied. Temperature, relative humidity and pH of the compost pile played an important role in the rate of degradation of the packages. First-order degradation kinetics and linear degradation trends were observed for both packages subjected to composting conditions. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Both the assumptions and results of the work carried out within the framework of the research problem "Environmentally Friendly Polish Shipyard Industry" are presented in our work, which is a part of the project "Environmentally Friendly Ships for the Baltic Area" - BALTECOLOGICALSHIP. The aim of our research was to prepare selected companies belonging to the sector of productive, cooperative and supply shipbuilding industry (c.a. 50) to implement quality (if necessary) and environmental management systems. Swedish standards for implementation processes and experience were used. The direct results of one year work were that 13 companies finished reports on quality investigation and two companies were led to QMS certification, 26 companies finished reports on environmental investigation (environmental audit) and two companies were EMS certified. The project realization enabled indication of barriers to implementation of quality and environmental managemental systems, especially in small and medium sized enterprises.The environmental performance of new and existing buildings can best be improved by respecting the life cycle perspective. Conducting a Life Cycle Assessment efficiently Supports the identification of environmental improvement potentials. The research project "Environmental Improvement Potentials for Residential Buildings" (IM-PRO-Building) was initiated by the European Commission (JRC-IPTS). It aims at reducing the environmental impacts from residential dwellings throughout their life cycle, evaluating the current situation of residential buildings in the EU-25, before analyzing improvement options. A generic life cycle model for buildings has been developed to address this question efficiently. It is used to identify the environmental hotspots and to evaluate improvement options. More than 70 building types are assessed consistently. The LCA model makes a distinction between existing (use phase and end-of-life) and planned buildings (construction phase included as well), accounting for different perspectives. Results are demonstrated for examples of different building types from different geographical zones.In this paper, some environmental aspects of the maintenance of Dutch residential buildings are assessed quantitatively. The emphasis is on existing buildings, built by traditional Dutch building methods. Since there is no assessment method readily available to assess maintenance seenarios. an environmental assessment method has been developed based on existing environmental assessment methods, such as life cycle assessment (LCA). The aim of performing the assessments is threefold: they are used to further develop the assessment method for residential building maintenance in an iterative way; they are used to distinguish the type of environmental problems that building maintenance contributes to; and the factors that have the highest potential for improvement of the environmental performance of maintaining a building are identified. The development of the assessment method includes determining which activities should be taken into account, either because they occur frequently or because they are expected to cause a relatively high environmental impact.It is widely recognized in the field of Green Buildings that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a conceptually preferable method for determining the environmental effects of materials, rather than relying on singular material properties or attributes, such as recycled content or distances traveled after the point of manufacture. However, the LCA tools that are currently available are not widely utilized. This is exacerbated by the failure of popular green building rating systems to fully incorporate LCA. The Green Building Initiative is introducing LCA as a more prominent aspect of the material section in its Green Globes building assessment and rating system. In addition to developing an LCA tool for use within Green Globes, a generic version of the tool, Athena EcoCalculator, has been developed and made available free of charge so that LCA information can be easily incorporated into other guidelines and rating systems.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology by which the environmental impacts of a product or a process can be evaluated throughout its life cycle. The methodology can serve as a decision tool in the selection of construction materials and optimization of construction processes. The paper presents the theoretical background of a particular method, and to demonstrate its flexibility and capabilities, a case study of a reinforced concrete wall cast in situ is analysed. Based on the inventory of all materials and processes required for this wall, the LCA analysis is carried out. Various scenarios for the selection of the different constituent materials of the were considered, and the results show that the selection of different concrete constituent materials has a major influence upon the environmental parameters, in particular, energy use and global warming. The analysis clearly shows the selection of the cement type (in terms of supplementary cementing materials content) is the single most important component of a reinforced concrete structure in terms of its environmental impact.According to a life cycle analysis (LCA), proper selection of all building variables and components requires the calculation of their environmental impact throughout their entire life cycle, which leads to numerous calculations. The objective of this study was to establish a methodology for the identification of design variables with minimum environmental impact, yet using relatively simple calculation procedures. The methodology comprises three steps: (1) Grouping the variables into distinct, stand-alone groups that enable to break down the entire life cycle calculation into several independent optimization procedures; (2) Optimization of the variables within each group; (3) Integration of all the solutions. The methodology was applied to a typical office building. It was shown that the life cycle approach, combined with optimization tools, can successfully ascribe most of the design variables into three independent groups. Sensitivity analysis showed that variables allocation depends on regional characteristics (climate, energy production etc.).In this paper is discussed the life cycle Of Steel and reinforced concrete structures using a simplified life cycle analysis. The developed methodology consisted in quantification of a series of parameters both economic and environmental that characterize both reinforced concrete and metallic structures. Based in the life cycle analysis, five parameters were selected in order to make the assessment, in witch: energy Consumption, water, CO2, SO2, NOx. A database was developed into a software program that can perform life cycle analysis of these types of structures giving their physical properties. As a result the software outputs the total amount of emissions caused by the production of a given structural element as well as determines the structural costs giving in the end a global project analysis.The EcoBlock method is an environmental performance tool that allows the comparison of products, projects or organizations. It is based on seven indicators: water extraction, resource extraction, land use, greenhouse gases (GHG), other air pollution, water pollution, and waste. A simplified life cycle analysis approach is adopted. The indicators may be aggregated into a single index, inspired in the Ecological Footprint concept. In this case Study we compare the environmental performance of two hand-drying alternatives paper towels or electric dryers. Both techniques present similar results. The pattern of use was found to be a variable of key importance in the comparison: lesser use of towels per drying would tip the balance in favour of the towels, more efficient dryers or lower impact energy sources would tip the balance in favour of the dryers. Electricity consumption proved to be the largest pressure generator in both alternatives.The majority of worldwide structures use concrete as its main material. This happens because concrete is economically feasible, due to its undemanding production technology and case Of use. However, it is widely recognized that concrete production has a strong environmental impact in the planet. Natural aggregates use is one of the most important problems of concrete production nowadays, since they are obtained from limited, and in some countries scarce, resources. In Portugal, although there are enough stone quarries to cover coarse aggregates needs for several more years, Supplies of fine aggregates are becoming scarcer, especially in the northern part of the country. On the other hand, as concrete structures' life cycle comes to an end, an urgent need emerges to establish technically and economically viable solutions for demolition debris, other than for use as road base and quarry fill. This paper presents a partial life cycle assessment (LCA) of concrete made with fine recycled concrete aggregates performed with EcoConcrete tool. EcoConcrete is a tailor-made, interactive, learning and communications tool promoted by the Joint Project Group (JPG) on the LCA of concrete, to qualify and quantify the overall environment impact of concrete products. It consists of an interactive Excel-spreadsheet in which several environmental inputs (material quantities, distances from origin to production Site, production processes) and outputs (material, energy, emissions to air, water, soil or waste) are collected in a life cycle inventory, and are then processed to determine the environmental impact (assessment) of the analysed concrete, in terms of ozone layer depletion, smog or "greenhouse" effect.In the present paper, the influence of structural aluminium alloys in the sustainable character Of Structures, namely ecological and economical performance throughout their expected lifetime is presented. Aluminium alloys represent a series of relatively new structural materials that incorporate special characteristics in terms of sustainability. In particular, durability, recyclability, low maintenance costs and high reflectivity are some features among others that prove the environmental-friendly character of them. There is a large number of aluminium alloys which differ to each other clue to chemical composition and the process they have been Subjected to, thus each aluminium alloy exhibits a different behaviour. The scope of the present research effort is to present all the special characteristics of the most commonly used aluminium alloys and their effect on building applications regarding energy efficiency and conservation. The influence of material special features on the phases of Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) and their role in sustainability evaluation has been thoroughly discussed, while at the final part of the paper, special mention with respect to intelligent aluminium buildings and their interaction with the exterior environment has been made.Project developments for tourism resorts or hotels often endanger an untouched or sheltered landscape. The described project is situated along the Atlantic coast in the middle of Portugal on a 1350 ha protected area, whereby 200 ha are opened for commercial use and 33 ha of the site should be used as building area. By using the appropriate method of the integrated LCA during the design process the environmental benefits for the whole life cycle of such buildings have been made transparent. The advantage of the use of traditional materials and construction techniques is shown by the low environmental impacts and high thermal efficiency in Summer and winter climate. The element catalogue shows different types of constructions with their energetic and environmental performance and this information is the basis of the decision for investors, the design team and the buyers.In a life cycle analysis the end-of-life stage is probably the phase more difficult to quantify and therefore subjected to a high level of uncertainties. This is particularly important when the system under analysis has a long life span, which is the case of a building. Due to the high level Of uncertainties in the end-of-life stage of a building, usually scenarios are adopted to quantify the inventory data and impacts of the different construction waste materials. In the case of recyclable materials the allocation procedure should be carefully chosen as it can significantly affect the results of the assessment analysis. In this paper a life cycle analysis of a light weight steel dwelling is performed. For the end-of-life stage several scenarios are defined in order to assess the influence of the different options in the overall result of the analysis.The theory of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the main tools of environmental management in the 1990s. It is a kind of systematic method about the product or the service system, which measures the impact on the environment, the input and output of the material and the energy during the whole life cycle. Building is a sort of product of large volume, fixed location and high energy consumption, thus it has tremendous impacts on the surrounding environment. By applying LCA theory, this paper attempts to analyze the whole development process of the building product (which includes planning, designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, demolishing and recycling), and evaluate the key factors of affecting the environment in the every lifecycle phase of developing building product. The purpose is to reduce the environment pollution questions brought by building product. Moreover, the author gives some beneficial suggestions to implement this method, and hopes that the research can make the helpful exploration for building products developing in a green way in China.It is essential to provide an integrated life cycle assessment approach that considers environmental impacts of energy production plants. This research work proposes integrated framework to conduct life cycle assessment (LCA) on power plants with the considerations of environmental life cycle impact assessment method (LIME). Activity models are defined for LCA process and integrated LCA-LIME object model is defined and used to evaluate different environmental loads caused by power plants. Life cycle data from Japanese power plants are used to illustrate the proposed integrate framework.Distribution Management System has been implemented and utilized by utilities around the world to support the system operators in their decision making process especially when emergencies occur in the distribution system. The system can vary from utility to utility due to the complexity of each system. This inevitably leads to the importance of the Distribution Management System design in order to get the system life cycle assessment. This paper presents an advantage of using a knowledge engineering technique along with knowledge management theory as an alternative approach in designing the Distribution Management System for Metropolitan Electricity Authority, Thailand. The results of this paper show that knowledge engineering technique is suitable to solve the designing problems of the Distribution Management System. Furthermore, this framework can also help utility capture, utilize and update their existing knowledge in designing their own system. Moreover, the comparison with consultant study is also introduced.Nowadays the most often used chelating compounds in production of liquid fertilizers are ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA), which however are said to be insufficient biodegradability and accumulating in environment even by 15 years. Important it is searching complexing compounds characterizing good proprieties and simultaneously being easily biodegradable in natural environment. Supposes, that to compounds, being alternative for EDTA and DTPA mighty will be numbered methylglycinediacetic acid (MGDA). In this paper the degree of biodegradation of diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid and compound which is treating as substitute for DTPA and EDTA - methylglycinediacetic acid, was described. The determination of biodegradability was carried out the activated sludge method under kinetic conditions.This paper describes the general approach to sustainable energy development trialled in an international and multi-disciplinary project in six Chinese. villages. Methods used for evaluating baseline energy demand, exploring future energy scenarios, assessing possible energy efficiency improvements and establishing renewable energy prospects are explained. The participatory process of scenario-making by engaging villagers is introduced. Practical means for identifying energy efficiency savings and local renewable energy resources are summarised. Possible net carbon dioxide emissions savings, based on life cycle assessment data, are determined. Results are illustrated from the outcome of work in the villages.In recent years, a growing number of companies have been using eco-efficiency as an indicator of environmental performance in Japan. In 2006, Japan Environmental Efficiency Forum developed the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Eco-Efficiency Evaluation Guidelines, which activated implementation of eco-efficiency evaluations for ICT by Japanese industries. This presentation will focus on the state of knowledge of evaluation of environmental impact of ICT as well as the development of eco-efficiency guidelines for ICT in Japan. In addition, a comparative eco-efficiency case study for a videoconference and face-to-face meeting are presented.Authors have studied about assessment for ICT environmental impact and finally developed an assessment logic named SI-LCA(1) (System Integration LCA) that quantitatively evaluates whole life cycle environmental impact with CO2 emission for ICT solutions. SI-LCA is not only compliant with "Guideline for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Eco-Efficiency Evaluation" instituted by The Japan Forum on Eco-Efficiency in 2006 but also one of the most important basic logics for the guideline. In this paper, we show a case example of SI-LCA assessment and then show evaluation of ICT eco-efficiency and factor.The objective of this work is to understand the materials and energy requirements, and emissions associated with new semiconductor manufacturing technology nodes. Current and near-future CMOS technologies (for the 45-nm and 32-nm nodes) are investigated using an inventory based on bottom-up process data. The process flow of the CMOS chip is modeled by updating an existing inventory analysis (for 130 nm node devices) to include strained Si channels, metal gates, 10 layers of interconnect and high-k gate dielectrics used in 45-nm and 32-nm CMOS nodes. Conclusions are made concerning emissions of new materials and trends in life cycle energy consumption of logic devices.Life cycle assessment is a popular approach for evaluating environmental impact of technologies. However it is often difficult to apply, especially to emerging technologies due to the difficulty of finding accurate output-side emissions and impact data. Usually, input-side data are more readily available, even for emerging technologies, and may provide a reasonable proxy for predicting the environmental impact associated with emissions. In this paper this relationship is explored by case studies and regression of life cycle impact with input-side quantities of cumulative mass, energy, and exergy. As a single quantity, this study indicates that ecological cumulative exergy consumption may be best at predicting environmental impact. This work also confirmss that if the input variables are separated, then nonrenewable energy use dominates overall impact. However nonrenewable minerals and some renewable resources are also highly correlated with impact, and nonrenewable energy is only good at prediction of impact due to emission of CO2, SO2, and NO2. These preliminary results suggest the promise of using. input-side metrics to predict life cycle environmental impact, and identifies areas of future work.Forty-seven industrial products with verifiable records of life cycle energy consumptions over their manufacturing phases and usage phases provide the basis for this study. The environmental impacts for determination include global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, photochemical oxidants, acidification potential, and eutrophication potential. Correlations between these environmental impacts and the life cycle energy consumptions are the primary outputs of this study. It was determined that the energy consumption was an excellent indicator for many if not most of the environmental loads indicated above.Life Cycle Assessment of Nanotechnology has been suggested to evaluate claims about the potential benefits of this emerging technology. This paper presents one of the first LCAs and Life Cycle Energy Analysis of Vapor Grown Carbon Nanofibers (CNF) synthesis. Life Cycle inventory data is compiled with data reported in the open literature. CNFs are compared with traditional materials on an equal mass basis to quantify the life cycle energy intensity and environmental burden. The results of the study indicate significantly higher life cycle energy requirements and higher environmental impact of CNFs as compared to traditional materials like aluminum, steel and polypropylene. Savings in life cycle energy consumption and possibly a reduction in environmental burden are envisaged if higher process yields of these fibers can be achieved in continuous operations. Since the comparisons are performed on an equal mass basis, these results cannot be generalized for CNF based nanoproducts and quantity of their use may decide their cradle to grave impact. Specific CNF based applications need to be studied to evaluate their environmental performance and are the topics of future work.The EU's directive 2005/32/EC seeks to set eco-design standards for the life cycle of energy-using products (EuP). While not yet formally ratified like the WEEE and RoHS standards, this directive is expected to ride the same wave of momentum and go into effect in the next few years. WEEE and RoHS have gone beyond Europe and had similar application in other parts of the world, thus global EuP-like directives are also likely. If manufacturers want to continue to comply with this new wave of regulation, they will need to start exploring existing tools. A key need for compliance is the creation of global networks of shared environmental and energy profiles for products, which. could be led by the electronics industry. This paper discusses developments in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) over the last decade and how it can be a key too[ in meeting EuPlike standards, currently planned to go into effect in 2007.Energy saving of buildings is an important part of energy saving strategic planning for our country, and choosing the energy-saving technology scientifically is one of the core works in such process. Reasonable energy-saving technology for buildings will bring great influence in the aspect of effect and profit, and it is also the foundation of establishing feasible economic prompting policy. This paper will analyze the choosing principle of applicable energy-saving technology for buildings, put for-ward the evaluation mode with the guidance of sustainable development theory and environment economics theory, and give some advice to the work of energy saving of buildings.In order to meet the specific requirements of the construction industry, an appropriate beneficiation process aimed at enhancing technical characteristics of building aggregates is often required. As it usually occurs, natural raw materials undergo a primary abatement process by means of drilling and blasting or mechanical excavation, followed by one or more size reduction stages and finally wet or dry separation in order to remove unwanted materials. As the beneficiation process is carried on, the technical performances of building aggregates improve, but, on the other hand, production costs and energetic-environmental burdens increase, as well. The paper will analyse the main economic and energetic-environmental constraints which characterise the building aggregates production streamline, by paying attention to the contribution of the different beneficiation steps and making use of the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology. In the second part, the paper will deal with alternative low grade sources of building materials, namely secondary materials from building demolition and rubble recycling, as well as rock excavation waste, which could partially replace traditional building aggregates. Also in this case, an energetic-environmental profile of recycled aggregates will be outlined.In this article, a new and simplified life-cycle design system is presented. With feature-based modeling technology, this design system analyzes life-cycle inventory data and therefore generates life-cycle assessment (LCA) data. Then, the system can feed back the data to the design process in order to improve the machining plan. In the end of this article, an example is cited to improve the feasibility of the design system. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4347348The remanufacturing industry is rapidly becoming a source of economic growth and environmental benefit. In the past, researchers have presented cost and energy savings due to remanufacturing a variety of products, largely based on the results of industry-wide surveys. However, little or no effort has focused on the life cycle assessment of remanufacturing. In fact, no study has performed a life cycle assessment of engine components, comparing the original component manufacture with remanufactured components. In this paper, a comparison of the original manufacture and remanufacture of components from a typical Caterpillar diesel engine is described. The "gateto-gate" analysis considers components that represent a majority of the engine assembly by weight. The comparison is made in two measures of environmental performance: energy and material usage.The prediction of possible faults in gas turbines power systems can have a great impact on the maintenance program efficiency as they can allow generators optimize generation schedule and increase profits. This study provides an evaluation of the gas turbine life time during its operation over a life cycle and evaluates the risk involved in such assessment. A mathematical model was developed to calculate the principal variables that take part in life cycle assessment: time, temperature and stress loads. Because of stochastic nature of the failure mechanisms involved in life cycle assessment of gas turbines, a probabilistic risk analysis was carried out to properly evaluate the uncertainty involved. The work conditions of the gas turbine identify the mechanical failure mechanism that rules a gas turbine life. The risk analysis algorithm produces the expected window time in which the turbine blade is expected to failure and its respective probability. The gas turbine life cycle assessment and risk analysis described in this investigation are strategic and powerful tools for optimization of gas turbines power systems.This paper presents the results of a Life Cycle Assessment study processed to determine the environmental burdens associated with cut flowers and pot plants under greenhouse cultivation. The goal of this research is to provide an objective comparison of the environmental compatibility of ornamental production carried out in different cultivation systems. Research has been carried out funded by EU project "Ecoflower Terlizzi" (LIFF04 ENV/IT/000480) with ISO standardization guidelines, with the participation of Italian flower growers, in order to gather information regarding the floricultural production process. Fifteen farms of the greenhouse districts of Terlizzi, near Bari in the southern Italian region of Apulia, were chosen in order to analyse the environmental sustainability of soil and soil-less production. The results of the research, based on indexes calculated on environmental impact categories related to the comparison between hydroponic and in-soil cultivation, show that soilless greenhouse cultivation reduces the environmental impact due to lower levels of fertilizers and pesticides in the environment. The farmers completed a questionnaire on greenhouse typology (structure and covering), equipment (heating, electric, irrigation, etc.) crops (rose, Daisyflower), pesticides, fertilizers, substrate, irrigation on the soil and consumption of water, nutrient solutions distribution, assimilation of carbon dioxide, energy consumed for the cultivation and the running of solution distribution systems.IISI is developing a free award-winning Internet delivered e-learning resource on steel technologies, as part of its response to the global decline in metallurgy and materials science courses in universities and reduction in the number of graduates who have good knowledge about ferrous metallurgy - http://www.steeluniversity.org. At its heart is a series of linked, highly interactive, game-like simulations of the major steelmaking processes, in which the learner runs a virtual steelworks. A variety of steel grades can be made, each posing different technical challenges and requiring different solutions. Detailed feedback is given on the quality of the steel produced and the associated costs and timescales. Each simulation is supported by additional e-learning on the underlying scientific and engineering principles and kinetics and thermodynamics of the processes. To date, simulations are available on the Electric Arc Furnace, Secondary Steelmaking and Continuous Casting. During 2006, further simulations of the Basic Oxygen Furnace and Hot Rolling will be launched. They will be linked so that learners can simulate the production of steel products from the raw materials. Other modules deal with the selection of steels for different markets, including construction, automotive and engineering. Virtual on-line tensile, Charpy and hardness tests are available as part of a complex exercise in which the learner has to sample a steel plate and determine its properties. Strengthening mechanisms are dealt with in another module which ends with the learner designing a steel and process route for a high strength off-shore structure. Another module addresses the important issue of sustainability and introduces the principles and application of life cycle assessment.Transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics are increasingly used for broad-scale comparative analysis in the life sciences, forming important components of systems approaches to biological problems. This paper provides contemporary examples of the application of metabolite profiling and fingerprinting techniques to potato biology drawing on research carried out at the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI). With regard to biodiversity, data are presented to show that specific taxonomic groups can be separated both genetically and phytochemically using 73 accessions of wild Solanum species from the Common Potato Collection and that in adapted diploid species such as Solauum phureja, metabolite profiling can be used to generate hypotheses on the processes that differentiate phureja in terms of flavour. Relevant to the establishment of quality traits of commercial relevance are temporal changes in the metabolome, thus profiling is being used to develop an understanding of changes associated with key stages in the tuber life cycle (tuberisation, tuber development and maturation, storage and sprouting). Finally, SCRI is using metabolomics as a comparative analysis tool to assess "natural" phytochemical variation to provide an indication of the impact of geographical location, crop management (e.g., high input, organic) and breeding systems (e.g., conventional, genetically modified [GM]) on metabolite profiles. This will provide important information on, for example, the potential for unintended compositional changes in GM potato and the extent to which such changes fall within the background of conventional breeding and production systems. Such data are important to policymakers, risk assessors, regulators and consumers.In our research, life cycle analysis of a product is viewed as a superset of analysis methods focused on individual life cycle stages. Each of the analyses seeks to qualitatively and quantitatively measure product performance both at the local life cycle stage as well as across the total product life cycle. MP3 player has been identified to highlight the broad application of Product Life Management (PLM) techniques. It is intended to establish product usage modes and manufacturing capabilities of the product markets, and to model them using life cycle simulation. Based on the findings, new life cycle scenarios can be designed improving on the current situation of the markets, with the proposed scenarios being similarly analyzed with PLM tools.Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is becoming more and more important as a tool to evaluate the environmental impact of developed products. The role of LCA could be improved if it could be applied during the development process of new products. In order to achieve this target, an important issue to be faced is the data acquisition phase required to compile the Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI). The objective of our work is the classification of the different types of data required to compile LCIs and the definition of suitable methods to identify and extract the required data from the data bases used by the Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) systems. To demonstrate, verify, and evaluate the proposed approach, the first results obtained with a prototype system for data acquisition are presented and discussed.Product Life Cycle Design is a global design approach aimed to take into account the different factors that may influence the product technical performance and business competitivity Xue (1998). This approach attempts to bring solutions to enhance classical CAD systems that are mainly geometry and topology oriented. This evolution is due to the need to validate the product functionalities and to take care of the impact of the design solutions on the product behaviour with respect to the different criteria like maintainability, reliability. Such criteria are semantically specified and there evaluation evolves the use of approaches that can provide indicators at the early stage in the design process. In this paper we present a product design framework that supports product information along the lifecycle design process. After the introduction, we give in section two a general description of the Product Lifecycle and related data. In section three, we propose the Lifecycle Design Framework using a PLM system for recording reliability field data. In section four, we outline a Lifecycle Analysis procedure using a PLM system for updating reliability field data and maintenance documentation. In section five, an application is sketched for maintenance documentation customization from a generic one.Sustainable development in the textile industry is not a recent issue. Firstly, scientists and industrial actors were interested in researching new ways for cleaner production especially in the part of the supply chain concerning finishing treatments and dyeing. But nowadays, an analysis of the whole supply chain is needed to locate the most polluting parts and main social impacts, and to learn where and how it is preferable to intervene. Various methods and guidelines for a simplified and balanced LCA for textiles are proposed by European organisations. The authors' main research objective is the definition of a decision support system based on multi criteria analysis to evaluate environmental and social considerations within the whole textile chain. In this paper, the traditional textile production chain is presented and its critical points analysed following the sustainable development point of view. Then the paper proposes to design a green textile supply chain.In this paper, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology is applied to asses the environmental performance of the production and usage of an aspirator/compressor for zootechnical application. The processes were analysed to investigate the whole production system from "cradle to grave", considering the main phases: raw material production, component manufacturing, pump assembly, installation process, utilisation and disposal cycles. All the input-output streams of energy and mass were analysed and the environmental impact was rated with the aim of "Eco-Indicator '99" assessing method. The obtained results are evaluated and presented, and possible modifications of the system are suggested to obtain suitable improvements.The initial (i.e., at time t = 0) reliability index, the time-variant live load, and the resistance deterioration processes are some of the most important factors in conducting a reliability-based life-cycle analysis of a highway bridge structure. In such an analysis, at least for a newer structure, there is likely more confidence in the geometry and material properties of the structure that determine its capacity than there is in the various loading conditions and scenarios that will place demand upon the structure. Structural health monitoring (SHM) offers a potentially powerful means to obtain site-specific data. However, questions that must be addressed are: what information to collect? how often? and how it should be processed? This paper examines the potential of utilizing the statistics of extremes to answer these questions. By using on-site SHM and observing only the maximum daily peak strain values over time, it is determined that one can successfully modify an initial estimate of truck weight and volume to determine the actual distribution and volume observed at the site. Although a newly developed idea in this work and specific to an initial assumed Gumbel distribution, the method shows interesting potential in the monitoring and assessment of structural systems.This paper applies the product life cycle framework to analyze the impact of global trends on the Indian photovoltaic industry. The author believes that consolidation in the Indian industry simultaneous with exploiting its comparative advantage of flexible and low cost production techniques would help it stand on its own feet beyond the protectionist subsidy era. Service provision and financing are likely to represent significant revenue opportunities while dwindling margins on module manufacture would expedite formation of vertically integrated energy service delivery chains. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years the burdens that waste puts on the environment has been widely publicised. To address the earth's dwindling resources and the growing mountains of waste many countries have introduced statutory waste minimisation and recovery targets. The general public are generally more concerned with the effects that waste has on the environment. Whereas waste managers and planners need to consider the financial costs of collection, processing and disposal. This paper investigates and reports on the findings for both of these areas of concern. A case study area in a typical South Wales valley location was selected to model the environmental and economic impacts of a number of waste disposal scenarios. The environmental impacts of a number of waste management scenarios were compared using a life cycle assessment (LCA) computer model. An interactive microsoft excel spreadsheet model was also developed to examine the costs, employment and recovery rates achieved using various waste recovery methods including kerbside recycling and incineration. The LCA analysis showed the incineration option to be more favourable than the landfill and recycling/composting options. However, the economic modelling results showed higher running costs and lower associated jobs when compared to the other options such as recycling. The paper concludes by suggesting that integrated waste management will ultimately be the most efficient approach in terms of both economics and also environment benefits. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The potential positive and negative effects of nanotechnology on the environment are discussed. Advances in nanotechnology may be able to provide more sensitive detection systems for air and water quality monitoring, allowing the simultaneous measurement of multiple parameters and real time response capability. Metal oxide nanocatalysts are being developed for the prevention of pollution due to industrial emissions and the photocatalytic properties of titanium dioxide nanoparticles can be exploited to create self-cleaning surfaces that reduce existing pollution. However, while nanotechnology might provide solutions for certain environmental problems, relatively little is known at present about the environmental impact of nanoparticles, though in some cases chemical composition, size and shape have been shown to contribute to toxicological effects. Nanotechnology can assist resource saving through the use of lightweight, high strength materials based on carbon nanotubes and metal oxide frameworks as hydrogen storage materials. Other energy related applications include nanostructured electrode materials for improving the performance of lithium ion batteries and nanoporous silicon and titanium dioxide in advanced photovoltaic cells. It is important to develop an efficient strategy for the recycling and recovery of nanomaterials and methods are needed to assess whether the potential benefits of nanotechnology outweigh the risks. Life cycle analysis will be a useful tool for assessing the true environmental impacts. (c) 2006 NIMS and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose - Using two different conceptual approaches to environmental life-cycle assessment, attributional and consequential, the purpose was to test the hypothesis that a typical lead free solder paste Sn95.5Ag3.8CuO.7 is worse than Sn63Pb37 as far as global environmental impacts are concerned. Design/methodology/approach - Single index weighting indices within the impact methodology Life cycle Impact Assessment Method based on Endpoint Modelling (LIME) impact methodology, were applied to the flows of three life cycle inventory models and their globally related flows. The LIME results based on three environmental impact categories, i.e. resource consumption, global warming and ozonelayer depletion are presented and discussed. Findings - The attributional LCA (ALCA) results point towards a larger impact for Sn95.5Ag3.8Cu0.7 than Sn63Pb37 mostly due to the higher Sn and Ag content. This study confirms earlier similar ALCAs. The system expansion for the Consequential LCA (CLCA) did not change this conclusion. Research limitations/implications - The present study has not included the affected microelectronics packaging parts of electronic products, nor has it included toxic effects as they are local. ALCA was considered to be equal to CLCA for Sn95.5Ag3.8Cu0.7, where no Ag nor Sn recycling was included. Originality/value - For the first time a global environmental impact assessment of the shift to Pb-free solder paste using the LIME weighting method applied to a CLCA is reported. Environmental life-cycle investigations intended to support decisions of an ecological nature in the microelectronics packaging industry should benefit from the consequential approach.In a free-market society, business decisions are driven by economic incentives, i.e. mostly profit, subject to government regulations and interventions. Decisions about the use of recycled materials in construction are no exception. In fact, based on purely economic factors, virgin materials are usually preferable for various reasons. But the playing field is often skewed, because the US economy does not value sustainability issues such as disposal costs and life cycle assessment as it should. This becomes obvious when comparing the situation in the United States with that of Japan and many European countries with greatly different degrees of governmental interventions. This paper addresses some of the economic drivers that influence the extent to which recycled materials are utilized in the American construction industry. It examines the major differences between the United States and other developed countries, which have a number of root causes. Recommendations are made regarding actions necessary for the United States to "catch up" with countries such as Germany, The Netherlands or Japan.Noted sustainability authority Paul Hawken points out that nearly all production and distribution business models entirely ignore associated environmental burdens when calculating acquisition prices for goods and services; further, purchase prices rarely reflect true costs of the aftermath when remnants are disposed of, most often by landfilling. Does the current price of construction account for the damage inflicted on the environment through materials production, construction activities, and ultimately the disposal of facilities when their service life is exhausted? What are these ignored impacts and how does one begin to define and account for them? This paper acquaints the audience with the life-cycle consequences of generating and landfilling construction and demolition debris, and the benefits of salvaging, reusing, and recycling construction materials. The United States Army continuously upgrades it's infrastructure to meet current mission requirements. Wood framed barracks complexes constructed in World War 11 are being removed. Concrete and masonry complexes built during the Cold War are being replaced by contemporary facilities. In so doing, enormous quantities of debris materials are generated. These include wood, concrete, metals, asphalt materials, fibrous materials, masonry and other construction materials. Efforts to divert construction and demolition debris from landfills, and to recycle these materials for construction applications are described. By examining available Life Cycle Assessment data, a first approximation of the value of these recovered materials is presented; however, their value is expressed in terms of the reduction in burdens to the natural environment by virtue of the process. This information provides a piece of the sustainability puzzle, which is the determination of the "true costs" of goods and services which must incorporate the value of that part of the environment which was used to create the product.The Sustainable Process Index (SPI), a member of the ecological footprint family, is an ISO 14000 compatible tool for the evaluation of environmental impacts of processes. It allows the calculation of the relevant ecological pressures of a process including prechain and product usage. The SPI focuses on aspects of environmental sustainability and is aimed at engineers and the factors they can influence most effectively: material and energy flows that processes exchange with their environments. The data of these flows are roughly known early in process development. The corresponding data for natural systems are the sedimentation rate of carbon in oceans, the natural concentrations of substances in soil and water, the exchange rates per area unit of airborne pollutants between forests and air as well as the replenishment rates for soil and water. Most of the natural flow and quality data allow a certain "regionalization" of the SPI wherever that is needed. For a fast calculation of the SPI a computer program based on MS Excel has been developed. This tool has proven its usefulness in comparing different engineering options in view of their ecological impact. The most recent case studies are the investigation of the ecological and economical feasibility of small-scale ethanol production facilities that use corn or wheat as a raw material and the analysis of alternate usages of (by)products of the European sugar industry. The results of these case studies will be discussed here.When sustainability is the driving force in the creation of a building, specifiers and architects need additional knowledge to assist them in making decisions about the choice of building materials and the way in which they are used. This article brings together embodied energy values in different materials with a view to adjusting decisions made by specifiers and architects that will have the effect of extending the life of a building and increasing its environmental value. Embodied energy is the total non-renewable energy that goes into the manufacture of a material and plays a large role in the choice of building materials. It is an important factor to consider when assessing the life cycle of a building and it relates directly to the sustainability of the built environment. This paper examines embodied energy of the most dominant building materials/components such as cement, steel, and aluminium and assesses the source of the largest consumption of energy in the life cycle of the building material. Data is drawn from a variety of sources, mostly from the manufacturers' data of the specific building materials to assess the biggest cause of energy consumption. Previously scattered information known in specific industries is brought together for the building industry. The compilation of information provided will assist in the making of informed decisions when considering a sustainable approach to the life cycle of a building. To ignore the importance of embodied energy when doing a Life Cycle Assessment, the building's cost in the end could become very expensive because of the impact of maintenance and differential durability. With a little more planning to consider the life cycle and embodied energy of the materials used at the initial stage of creating a building, it could become far more sustainable.Life Cycle Assessment is an important instrument for evaluating environmental impacts of alternative materials and technical solutions to support design choice. In the building sector it is important to apply Life Cycle Assessment not only at material level, but also at building level, to evaluate alternative strategic design choices. In the building sector environmental quality of the product does not mean necessarily eco-efficiency of the product "in the building". For this reason, designers need to know the environmental profile of the product, together with other performance: thermal performance, acoustic performance, resistance performances are available, so it is necessary to also have the environmental profile of a product, as indicator at the moment of the design choice. Ecological information at product level can be important for the producer to understand how to reduce energy consumption, material consumption, waste production (reducing also economic cost), by optimisation of the production process. In business to business, ecological information can be an instrument of competition and can support the designer in material choice. But ecological information on products can also support design strategies if we use them at building level. Especially in temporary building, where we know exactly the life time expected, comparison of ecological information at production phase has to be integrated with comparison of performance information at use phase according with the specific needs of service life of the building. If the objective of the service life of the building changes, probably the best available technologies or the design strategies for eco-efficiency will also change.The majority of pollutants that effect wastewater are concentrated by treatment processes in sludge; it is therefore critical to have a suitable evaluation methodology of sludge management options to analyse if pollution is redirected from water to other media, such as air and soil. Life cycle assessment is one of the most widely known and internationally accepted methodologies to compare environmental impacts of processes and systems and to evaluate their sustainability in the entire life cycle. In this study the methodology was applied to assess and compare three scenarios of urban sewage sludge treatment and disposal: sludge anaerobic digestion followed by dedicated incineration, sludge incineration without previous digestion, and sludge anaerobic digestion followed by composting. The potential benefits of spreading the compost to soil were not included in the system boundaries even if due to its nutrients contents and soil improving,features, compost could partially replace the use of commercial products. The study was aimed at finding out the environmental critical points of the treatment alternatives selected and at providing a technical and scientific contribution for further debates with national and local authorities on the environmental optimisation of sewage sludge management. Life cycle assessment results confirmed the major contribution of electricity and methane consumption on several environmental impact categories. Incineration contributes more than sludge, composting to almost all categories, although the heavy metals content of urban wastewater sludge raises substantial concerns when composted sludge is spread to soil. In this paper the models adopted, the hypotheses assumed and the main findings of the study are presented and discussed.This paper reviews several models developed to support decision making in municipal solid waste management (MSWM). The concepts underlying sustainable MSWM models can be divided into two categories: one incorporates social factors into decision making methods, and the other includes public participation in the decision-making process. The public is only apprised or takes part in discussion, and has little effect on decision making in most research efforts. Few studies have considered public participation in the decision-making process, and the methods have sought to strike a compromise between concerned criteria, not between stakeholders. However, the source of the conflict arises from the stakeholders'complex web of value. Such conflict affects the feasibility of implementing any decision. The purpose of this study is to develop a sustainable decision making model for MSWM to overcome these shortcomings. The proposed model combines multicriteria decision making (MCDM) and a consensus analysis model (CAM). The CAM is built up to aid in decision-making when MCDM methods are utilized and, subsequently, a novel sustainable decision making model for MSWM is developed. The main feature of CAM is the assessment of the degree of consensus between stakeholders for particular alternatives. A case study for food waste management in Taiwan is presented to demonstrate the practicality of this model. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Transfer stations are an integral part of present-day municipal solid waste management systems. The main criteria used to decide on the location of a transfer station has traditionally been the minimization of transport costs, since it is cheaper to transport great amounts of waste over long distances in large loads than in small ones. In this study, we are going to consider the environmental factor in order to compare the feasibility of using a transfer station integrated within a waste management system. Applying the Life Cycle Assessment technique will enable us to obtain an objective parameter that quantifies the environmental impact of transportation and of operating a transfer station. Taking the current rates of solid wastes generation in the Plana region of Castellon (Spain) as our starting point, in this study we compare the environmental costs involved in the process of taking municipal wastes directly to the nearest waste treatment facility, with those involved in a waste management system integrating a transfer station. Comparing these two cases, an average reduction of 16.8% in the environmental impact can be obtained when a transfer station is incorporated in the waste management system. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new computer-based life-cycle assessment model (EASEWASTE) has been developed to evaluate resource and environmental consequences of solid waste management systems. This paper describes the landfilling sub-model used in the life-cycle assessment program EASEWASTE, and examines some of the implications of this sub-model. All quantities and concentrations of leachate and landfill gas can be modified by the user in order to bring them in agreement with the actual landfill that is assessed by the model. All emissions, except the generation of landfill gas, are process specific. The landfill gas generation is calculated on the basis of organic matter in the landfilled waste. A landfill assessment example is provided. For this example, the normalised environmental effects of landfill gas on global warming and photochemical smog are much greater than the environmental effects for landfill leachate or for landfill construction. A sensitivity analysis for this example indicates that the overall environmental impact is sensitive to the gas collection efficiency and the use of the gas, but not to the amount of leachate generated, or the amount of soil or liner material used in construction. The landfill model can be used for evaluating different technologies with different liners, gas and leachate collection efficiencies, and to compare the environmental consequences of landfilling with alternative waste treatment options such as incineration or anaerobic digestion. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In assessments of the environmental impacts of waste management, life-cycle assessment (LCA) helps expanding the perspective beyond the waste management system. This is important, since the indirect environmental impacts caused by surrounding systems, such as energy and material production, often override the direct impacts of the waste management system itself. However, the applicability of LCA for waste management planning and policy-making is restricted by certain limitations, some of which are characteristics inherent to LCA methodology as such, and some of which are relevant specifically in the context of waste management. Several of them are relevant also for other types of systems analysis. We have identified and discussed such characteristics with regard to how they may restrict the applicability of LCA in the context of waste management. Efforts to improve LCA with regard to these aspects are also described. We also identify what other tools are available for investigating issues that cannot be adequately dealt with by traditional LCA models, and discuss whether LCA methodology should be expanded rather than complemented by other tools to increase its scope and applicability. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many modern waste treatment processes and waste management systems are able to treat many different types of waste at the same time, and deliver a number of useful outputs (secondary materials' energy) as well. These systems are thus increasingly multi-functional. As such, in life cycle assessment studies, they create problems related to multi-functionality and allocation. Especially in LCAs of waste management systems, the solution in the form of system expansion or avoided burdens approach dominates the practice, and the partitioning approach plays a minor role. In this paper, we analyse the logic and problems of these two approaches. It appears that for the avoided burdens approach, the number of 'what-if' assumptions is so large that LCAs on the same topic lead to quite diverging results. Since 'what-if' questions cannot be answered in an unambiguous way, such questions should preferably be left outside of a primarily scientific tool. The partitioning approach is not free from arbitrary choices as well, but, in contrast to the 'what-if' approaches, it does not claim to predict what happens or what would have happened. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) launched the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) in 2002 to help reduce waste and move towards more sustainable resource consumption. The objective of the RCC is to help communities, industries, and the public think in terms of materials management rather than waste disposal. Reducing cost, finding more efficient and effective strategies to manage municipal waste, and thinking in terms of materials management requires a holistic approach that considers life-cycle environmental tradeoffs. The US EPA's National Risk Management Research Laboratory has led the development of a municipal solid waste decision support tool (MSW-DST). The computer software can be used to calculate life-cycle environmental tradeoffs and full costs of different waste management or materials recovery programs. The environmental methodology is based on the use of life-cycle assessment and the cost methodology is based on the use of full-cost accounting. Life-cycle inventory (LCI) environmental impacts and costs are calculated from the point of collection, handling, transport, treatment, and disposal. For any materials that are recovered for recycling, offsets are calculated to reflect potential emissions savings from use of virgin materials. The use of the MSW-DST provides a standardized format and consistent basis to compare alternatives. This paper provides an illustration of how the MSW-DST can be used by evaluating ten management strategies for a hypothetical medium-sized community to compare the life-cycle environmental and cost tradeoffs. The LCI results from the MSW-DST are then used as inputs into another US EPA tool, the Tool for the reduction and assessment of chemical and other environmental impacts, to convert the LCI results into impact indicators. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the MSW-DST can be used to identify and balance multiple criteria (costs and environmental impacts) when evaluating options for materials and waste management. This type of approach is needed in identifying strategies that lead to reduced waste and more sustainable resource consumption. This helps to meet the goals established in the US EPA's Resource Conservation Challenge. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This publication compares a selection of six different models developed in Europe and America by research organisations, industry associations and governmental institutions. The comparison of the models reveals the variations in the results and the differences in the conclusions of an LCA study done with these models. The models are compared by modelling a specific case - the waste management system of Dresden, Germany - with each model and an in-detail comparison of the life cycle inventory results. Moreover, a life cycle impact assessment shows if the LCA results of each model allows for comparable and consecutive conclusions, which do not contradict the conclusions derived from the other models' results. Furthermore, the influence of different level of detail in the life cycle inventory of the life cycle assessment is demonstrated. The model comparison revealed that the variations in the LCA results calculated by the models for the case show high variations and are not negligible. In some cases the high variations in results lead to contradictory conclusions concerning the environmental performance of the waste management processes. The static, linear modelling approach chosen by all models analysed is inappropriate for reflecting actual conditions. Moreover, it was found that although the models' approach to LCA is comparable on a general level, the level of detail implemented in the software tools is very different. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper outlines the most significant result of the project 'The use of life cycle assessment tools for the development of integrated waste management strategies for cities and regions with rapid growing economies', which was the development of two decision-support tools: a municipal waste prognostic tool and a waste management system assessment tool. The article focuses on the assessment tool, which supports the adequate decision making in the planning of urban waste management systems by allowing the creation and comparison of different scenarios, considering three basic subsystems: (i) temporary storage; (ii) collection and transport and (iii) treatment, disposal and recycling. The design and analysis options, as well as the assumptions made for each subsystem, are shortly introduced, providing an overview of the applied methodologies and technologies. The sustainability assessment methodology used in the project to support the selection of the most adequate scenario is presented with a brief explanation of the procedures, criteria and indicators applied on the evaluation of each of the three sustainability pillars. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.At the core of EU and Swedish waste policy is the so-called waste hierarchy, according to which waste should first be prevented, but should otherwise be treated in the following order of prioritisation: reuse, recycling when environmentally motivated, energy recovery, and last landfilling. Some recent policy decisions in Sweden aim to influence waste management in the direction of the waste hierarchy. In 2001 a governmental commission assessed the economic and environmental impacts of introducing a weight-based tax on waste incineration, the purpose of which would be to encourage waste reduction and increase materials recycling and biological treatments This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the waste incineration tax proposal. It was done in the context of a larger research project concerning the development and testing of a framework for Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The aim of this paper is to assess the life cycle environmental impacts of the waste incineration tax proposal, and to investigate whether there are any possibilities of more optimal design of such a tax. The proposed design of the waste incineration tax results in increased recycling, but only in small environmental improvements. A more elaborate tax design is suggested, in which the tax level would partly be related to the fossil carbon content of the waste. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.LCA as a decision-supporting tool in planning integrated municipal solid waste management is not, as yet, widely used in Italy. This paper presents a study concerning the application of the LCA methodology to support the development of the new waste management plan for the Bologna District. The main goal of the study was to show decision-makers at the political level the benefits obtainable with the use of LCA, in terms of the identification and quantification of the potential environmental impacts of different waste management strategies. The integrated waste management system of the Bologna District includes waste collection and transport, sorting, recycling, composting, incineration and landfilling. Three scenarios, referring to 2006 and assuming the presence of 950,000 inhabitants and the production of similar to 566,000 t of waste in the district, have been compared. A detailed model has been developed in order to capture effects related to the waste fraction from separated collection and to the different waste treatments. The discussion of the results has focussed in particular on the greenhouse effect and the acidification potential. On the basis of the results obtained, the analysis of an additional scenario characterised by a further increase in separated collection has been put forward. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper uses a life-cycle assessment (LCA) framework to characterize comparative environmental impacts from the use of virgin aggregate and recycled materials in roadway construction. To evaluate site-specific human toxicity potential (HTP) in a more robust manner, metals release data from a demonstration site were combined with an unsaturated contaminant transport model to predict long-term impacts to groundwater. The LCA determined that there were reduced energy and water consumption, air emissions, Pb, Hg and hazardous waste generation and non-cancer HTP when bottom ash was used in lieu of virgin crushed rock. Conversely, using bottom ash instead of virgin crushed rock increased the cancer HTP risk due to potential leachate generation by the bottom ash. At this scale of analysis, the trade-offs are clearly between the cancer HTP (higher for bottom ash) and all of the other impacts listed above (lower for bottom ash). The site-specific analysis predicted that the contaminants (Cd, Cr, Se and Ag for this study) transported from the bottom ash to the groundwater resulted in very low unsaturated zone contaminant concentrations over a 200 year period due to retardation in the vadose zone. The level of contaminants predicted to reach the groundwater after 200 years was significantly less than groundwater maximum contaminant levels (MCL) set by the US Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. Results of the site-specific contaminant release estimates vary depending on numerous site and material specific factors. However, the combination of the LCA and the site specific analysis can provide an appropriate context for decision making. Trade-offs are inherent in making decisions about recycled versus virgin material use, and regulatory frameworks should recognize and explicitly acknowledge these trade-offs in decision processes. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The waste hierarchy is being widely discussed these days, not only by cost-benefit analysts, but a growing number of life cycle assessments (LCA) have also begun to question it. In this article, we investigate the handling of waste paper in Denmark and compare the present situation with scenarios of more waste being recycled, incinerated or consigned to landfill. The investigations are made in accordance with ISO 14040-43 and based on the newly launched methodology of consequential LCA and following the recent guidelines of the European Centre on Waste and Material Flows. The LCA concerns the Danish consumption of paper in 1999, totalling 1.2 million tons. The results of the investigation indicate that the waste hierarchy is reliable; from an environmental point of view recycling of paper is better than incineration and landfilling. For incineration, the reason for the advantage of landfilling mainly comes from the substitution of fossil fuels, when incinerators provide heat and electricity. For recycling, the advantage is related to the saved wood resources, which can be used for generating energy from wood, i.e., from renewable fuel which does not contribute to global warming. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two disposal methods for MSWI bottom ash were assessed in a new life cycle assessment (LCA) model for road construction and disposal of residues. The two scenarios evaluated in the model were: (i) landfilling of bottom ash in a coastal landfill in Denmark and (ii) recycling of bottom ash as subbase layer in an asphalted secondary road. The LCA included resource and energy consumption, and emissions associated with upgrading of bottom ash, transport, landfilling processes, incorporation of bottom ash in road, substitution of natural gravel as road construction material and leaching of heavy metals and salts from bottom ash in road as well as in landfill. Environmental impacts associated with emissions to air, fresh surface water, marine surface water, groundwater and soil were aggregated into 12 environmental impact categories: Global Warming, Photochemical Ozone Formation, Nutrient Enrichment, Acidification, Stratospheric Ozone Depletion, Human Toxicity via air/water/soil, Ecotoxicity in water/soil, and a new impact category, Stored Ecotoxicity to water/soil that accounts for the presence of heavy metals and very persistent organic compounds that in the long-term might leach. Leaching of heavy metals and salts from bottom ash was estimated from a series of laboratory leaching tests. For both scenarios, Ecotoxicity(water) was, when evaluated for the first 100 yr, the most important among the twelve impact categories involved in the assessment. Human Toxicity(soil) was also important, especially for the Road scenario. When the long-term leaching of heavy metals from bottom ash was evaluated, based on the total content of heavy metals in bottom ash, all impact categories became negligible compared to the potential Stored Ecotoxicity, which was two orders of magnitudes greater than Ecotoxicity(water) was the constituent that gave the strongest contributions to the ecotoxicities. The most important resources consumed were clay as liner in landfill and the groundwater resource which was potentially spoiled due to leaching of salts from bottom ash in road. The difference in environmental impacts between landfilling and utilization of bottom ash in road was marginal when these alternatives were assessed in a life cycle perspective. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Treatment of solid waste continues to be on the political agenda. Waste disposal issues are often viewed from an environmental perspective, but economic and social aspects also need to be considered when deciding on waste strategies and policy instruments. The aim of this paper is to suggest flexible and robust strategies for waste management in Sweden, and to discuss different policy instruments. Emphasis is on environmental aspects, but social and economic aspects are also considered. The results show that most waste treatment methods have a role to play in a robust and flexible integrated waste management system, and that the waste hierarchy is valid as a rule of thumb from an environmental perspective. A review of social aspects shows that there is a general willingness among people to source separate wastes. A package of policy instruments can include landfill tax, an incineration tax which is differentiated with respect to the content of fossil fuels and a weight based incineration tax, as well as support to the use of biogas and recycled materials. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chromated copper arsenate (CCA)-treated wood is a preservative treated wood construction product that grew in use in the 1970s for both residential and industrial applications. Although some countries have banned the use of the product for some applications, others have not, and the product continues to enter the waste stream from construction, demolition and remodeling projects. CCA-treated wood as a solid waste is managed in various ways throughout the world. In the US, CCA-treated wood is disposed primarily within landfills; however some of the wood is combusted in waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities. In other countries, the predominant disposal option for wood, sometimes including CCA-treated wood, is combustion for the production of energy. This paper presents an estimate of the quantity of CCA-treated wood entering the disposal stream in the US, as well as an examination of the trade-offs between land-filling and WTE combustion of CCA-treated wood through a life-cycle assessment and decision support tool (MSW DST). Based upon production statistics, the estimated life span and the phaseout of CCA-treated wood, recent disposal projections estimate the peak US disposal rate to occur in 2008, at 9.7 million m(3). CCA-treated wood, when disposed with construction and demolition (C&D) debris and municipal solid waste (MSW), has been found to increase arsenic and chromium concentrations in leachate. For this reason, and because MSW landfills are lined, MSW landfills have been recommended as a preferred disposal option over unlined C&D debris landfills. Between landfilling and WTE for the same mass of CCA-treated wood, WTE is more expensive (nearly twice the cost), but when operated in accordance with US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) regulations, it produces energy and does not emit fossil carbon emissions. If the wood is managed via WTE, less landfill area is required, which could be an influential trade-off in some countries. Although metals are concentrated in the ash in the WTE scenario, the MSW landfill scenario releases a greater amount of arsenic from leachate in a more dilute form. The WTE scenario releases more chromium from the ash on an annual basis. The WTE facility and subsequent ash disposal greatly concentrates the chromium, often oxidizing it to the more toxic and mobile Cr(VI) form. Elevated arsenic and chromium concentrations in the ash leachate may increase leachate management costs. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle thinking is essential to consider the implications of different waste management systems beyond their traditional regional boundaries. Building on data provided by representatives of Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, the European Commission's DG JRC conducted a series of life cycle pilot studies in the context of municipal waste management. The results were presented in a JRC workshop in Malta, where the government representatives also outlined their national strategies focusing on the main related achievements. Proposed follow-up activities include a close interaction with the Commission's project, the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment, to develop straightforward European life cycle guidelines for the management of various wastes. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Emilia-Romagna region (Northern Italy) the integrated waste treatment system consists of material collection and recycling, incineration with energy recovery and landfill as final disposal. In particular, at least one incineration plant is working in almost every province of the region. In this work, a screening life cycle assessment approach is applied to seven different incinerators, to compare the different plant technologies and identify the most relevant environmental impacts and processes. The characterization method used in the life cycle impact assessment step is Eco-indicator 99. The functional unit is 1 ton of waste input. As a first result, it can be noted that while the combustion systems are rather similar, the main variables are ascribable to gas cleaning options and efficiency in energy recovery, which result in quite different environmental performances. Among heavy metals, particular attention must be paid to Cd and As, due to their high toxicity, despite their low quantities. The impact due to dioxin emission is orders of magnitude lower than other contaminants (e.g., heavy metals). Furthermore, a catalytic system could be useful for a complete removal of organic contaminants and for a more effective abatement of nitrogen oxides. Finally, the environmental impact assessment sorts the various plants according to their age, i.e., the most recent plants provide the best environmental performances for the same quantity of combusted waste. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Landfills at various stages of development, depending on their age and location, can be found throughout Europe. The type of facilities goes from uncontrolled dumpsites to highly engineered facilities with leachate and gas management. In addition, some landfills are designed to receive untreated waste, while others can receive incineration residues (MSWI) or residues after mechanical biological treatment (MBT). Dimension, type and duration of the emissions from landfills depend on the quality of the disposed waste, the technical design, and the location of the landfill. Environmental impacts are produced by the leachate (heavy metals, organic loading), emissions into the air (CH4, hydrocarbons, halogenated hydrocarbons) and from the energy or fuel requirements for the operation of the landfill (SO2 and NOx from the production of electricity from fossil fuels). To include landfilling in an life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach entails several methodological questions (multi-input process, site-specific influence, time dependency). Additionally, no experiences are available with regard to mid-term behaviour (decades) for the relatively new types of landfill (MBT landfill, landfill for residues from MSWI). The present paper focuses on two main issues concerning modelling of landfills in LCA: Firstly, it is an acknowledged fact that emissions from landfills may prevail for a very long time, often thousands of years or longer. The choice of time frame in the LCA of landfilling may therefore clearly affect the results. Secondly, the reliability of results obtained through a life-cycle assessment depends on the availability and quality of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data. Therefore the choice of the general approach, using multi-input inventory tool versus empirical results, may also influence the results. In this paper the different approaches concerning time horizon and LCI will be introduced and discussed. In the application of empirical results, the presence of data gaps may limit the inclusion of several impact categories and therefore affect the results obtained by the study. For this reason, every effort has been made to provide high-quality empirical LCI data for landfills in Central Europe. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the development of modern waste management systems in Western Europe, a remarkable increase in the distances for waste transportation has been observed. The question thus arises whether recycling with longer transport distances is ecologically advantageous or whether disposal without recycling is to be preferred. This situation was analysed using selected product and waste streams. This included refrigerators, paper, polyethylene films and expanded polystyrene. For each of these streams, a life cycle analysis was conducted with an emphasis on waste transport. The system boundaries were set in terms of the generation of waste to recycling or land-filling. The comparison included several scenarios with recycling and different transport distances. Landfilling was used as the reference scenario. The results obtained demonstrated how transport distances influence the ecological benefit of recycling. In the case of expanded polystyrene, the ecological boundaries are reached in practical situations, while with other materials these boundaries are far from being attained. In these cases, more complex and elaborate collection schemes, such as kerbside collection, which is economically convenient and shows the highest collection rates, can also be recommended. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wastewater reuse, along with wastewater treatment facilities are endowed with a number of risks that may inflect some serious damage to man and his environment. Decision construct and decision making of wastewater issues are of prime importance for sound use of wastewater and treatment processes. Equally important is the Sound economical attributes wastewater treatment and wastewater alternative methods and construction should manifest. Measures of common use in this respect are mostly dominated by environmental impact assessment, risk assessment, and cost benefit analysis. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the newly emerging techniques with wide application in the field of wastewater reuse and wastewater treatment facilities.Sustainability has strong implications on the practice of engineering. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an appropriate methodology for assessing the sustainability of a wastewater treatment plant design. The present study used a LCA approach for comparing alternative wastewater treatment processes for small and decentralised rural communities. The assessment was focused on two energy-saving systems (constructed wetland and slow rate infiltration) and a conventional one (activated sludge process). The low environmental impact of the energy-saving wastewater treatment plants was demonstrated, the most relevant being the global warming indicator. Options for reduction of life cycle impacts were assessed including materials used in construction and operational lifetime of the systems. A 10% extension of operation lifetime of constructed wetland and slow rate infiltration systems led to a 1% decrease in CO2 emissions, in both systems. The decrease in the abiotic depletion was 5 and 7%, respectively. Also, replacing steel with HDPE in the activated sludge tank resulted in a 1% reduction in CO2 emission and 1% in the abiotic depletion indicator. In the case of the Imhoff tank a 1% reduction in CO2 emissions and 5% in the abiotic depletion indicator were observed when concrete was replaced by HDPE.The main aim of this EU demonstration project was to test two new sanitation concepts to determine if these concepts are more sustainable, compared with the conventional sanitation system, particularly with regard to nutrient recycling. Two different sanitation concepts were tested. One concept comprised the use of gravity separation toilets, the other used vacuum separation toilets. Results from a lifecycle-.assessment investigation show that the new sanitation concepts are more sustainable. A cost analysis for an existing residential area did not prove lower costs for the new sanitation concepts in this special case. The experience from this demonstration project shows that prior to a widespread use of the new sanitation concepts, several improvements have to be made. One important issue is the improvement of separation toilets. Since nutrient recycling, water saving and reuse as Well energy reduction become more and more important, further research should be undertaken in this field.The experience from the EU demonstration project was used for a cost analysis of different sanitation systems with regard to nutrient recycling. The analysis was made for an existing residential area, for which the different sanitation systems have been applied. The cost calculations were made for a lifetime of 50 years. The multiple sewer systems cause higher investment costs, mainly for the installation of the additional facilities; the investment costs for the treatment are lower. The cost analysis did not prove lower costs for the new sanitation concepts in this special case in comparison with the conventional system. Economic benefits are demonstrated for the operation costs. The result will be reinforced by the consideration of an increase-of the energy costs. The revenues for the nutrient related products have only a very small impact on the result.This paper provides an overview of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) techniques for Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management (IMSW) under uncertainty. The importance of LCA methodology as the municipal solid waste decision support tool can be seen by the numerous books and survey articles. One project - scenario based upon advanced technology of MSW biomass fuel pyrolitic - gasification syngas production was developed. Scenario used the Australian pyrolysis process equipment. The investment profitability analysis based on the discounted cash-flow analysis (DCF) - net present value (NPV) and internal, rate of return (IRR) have been used to study the operational total costs for new incinerating plant project. The implementation of the case study using Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), the second step of the LCA methodology, will be done by designed the dynamic model and implemented using the MC simulation based on the Excel (R) spreadsheet modified to predict the NPV of the two scenarios for inputs given the probability distributions, means values, etc. Crystal Ball (R), a software package offered by Decisionnering, generates random numbers for a probability distribution and predicts which variables have the most influence on the study outcome will be used. Usually the overall uncertainty of a LCI is dominated by a few major uncertainties: (i) uncertainty of models and parameters, and (ii) uncertainty of the indicators interpretation. A nitrogen balance for the urban flow of food and pre- and post-consumption food wastes was developed to determine the impact of municipal waste management policies and programs on the recovery and recycling of imported nitrogen. A simple input, storage and output balance was used, with particular focus on the fate of waste outputs. The balance was done for the City of Toronto, Canada for 3 years in the 15-year period from 1990 to 2004. The balance revealed that at most, only 4.7% (in 2001) of food waste nitrogen in the urban system was recovered and/or recycled, despite several municipal waste diversion programs. The major losses of nitrogen occurred in the management of sewage wastes and potentially through in the landfill disposal of commercial food. The current focus of municipal waste management programs on the diversion of organic wastes from landfill rather than overall nutrient recovery, and the increasingly stringent regulation of land application of treated sewage wastes, has resulted a small decrease (from 3.35% in 1990 to 2.3% in 2004) in the percentage recovery and recycling of nitrogen in the flow of food and food wastes. Given the potential for the prevention of environmental problems caused by excessive nitrogen accumulation or mismanagement, and the opportunity for recycling food waste nitrogen to close the ecological nutrient cycle and reverse nutrient mining, the simple balance method provided a rapid assessment tool based on easily obtainable data to highlight the sources of major loss at which to target future municipal waste management strategies. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.A concept of a specifically "urban imaginary of nature" is developed through a dialectical (re)reading of Georg Simmel's and Louis Wirth's seminal texts on the nature of urbanism. We then examine how this urban imaginary is mobilized through the politics of nature in metropolitan Portland, Oregon. We demonstrate that the logic of Oregon's "Urban Growth Boundary" land-use policy promises the retrieval and spatial demarcation of a fading "nature" threatened by urbanization itself. We then examine how Portland's metropolitan planning agency ("Metro") imagines ways in which the urban growth boundary can reconcile and spatially delimit an "invisible line" where the urban ends and nature begins. These policies set the conditions through which Portland can market itself as the "green city." We conclude by arguing for a more radical and denaturalized political imaginary that takes into account the socioecological constitution of the urban "metabolism" itself.Drawing on recent interest in the environmental impacts of cities, and in the urban metabolism, this article examines efforts in late-eighteenth-century France and mid-nineteenth-century Britain to understand cities primarily as chemical systems, and accordingly, to see urban management as properly the province of the chemist. Drawing on historical-sociological studies of professionalization, the article also contrasts the failure of chemists to acquire cognitive authority over the city with the greater degrees of success of other professions: architecture; engineering; medicine; and the practitioners of the new entity, "urban planning," which came into existence at the end of the nineteenth century.The flows of foodstuffs (and the nitrogen they contain) through the city of Paris in the 19th and early 20th century were evaluated. Between 1801 and 1914, the fivefold increase in the population of Paris, as well as the threefold increase in the number of horses used in urban transport, gave rise to increased needs for food and feed. The corresponding inputs of nitrogen increased from 6000 tN/year in 1817 to 25,000 tN/year from the rural hinterland to the city. The corresponding per capita inflows were relatively stable throughout the period and may be divided into four more or less equal parts (flour, meat, other human foodstuffs, forage), each representing about 6 gN per inhabitant per day. In total, the demand for foodstuffs was of the order of 24 gN per inhabitant per day, one quarter of which was for transport. The fate of this dietary nitrogen after consumption changed a lot with the techniques used for exploiting urban excreta of all kinds, particularly of nitrogen, which was in great demand until the development of synthetic fertilizers. Dietary nitrogen flow diagrams are established for the years 1817, 1869 and 1913, and reveal an increasing improvement of the agricultural reuse (from 20 to 40% of the inflowing N). (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Data from urban metabolism studies from eight metropolitan regions across five continents, conducted in various years since 1965, are assembled in consistent units and compared. Together with studies of water, materials, energy, and nutrient flows from additional cities, the comparison provides insights into the changing metabolism of cities. Most cities studied exhibit increasing per capita metabolism with respect to water, wastewater, energy, and materials, although one city showed increasing efficiency for energy and water over the 1990s. Changes in solid waste streams and air pollutant emissions are mixed. The review also identifies metabolic processes that threaten the sustainability of cities. These include altered ground water levels, exhaustion of local materials, accumulation of toxic materials, summer heat islands, and irregular accumulation of nutrients. Beyond concerns over the sheer magnitudes of resource flows into cities, an understanding of these accumulation or storage processes in the urban metabolism is critical. Growth, which is inherently part of metabolism, causes changes in water stored in urban aquifers, materials in the building stock, heat stored in the urban canopy layer, and potentially useful nutrients in urban waste dumps. Practical reasons exist for understanding urban metabolism. The vitality of cities depends on spatial relationships with surrounding hinterlands and global resource webs. Increasing metabolism implies greater loss of farmland, forests, and species diversity; plus more traffic and more pollution. Urban policy makers should consider to what extent their nearest resources are close to exhaustion and, if necessary, appropriate strategies to slow exploitation. It is apparent from this review that metabolism data have been established for only a few cities worldwide, and interpretation issues exist due to lack of common conventions. Further urban metabolism studies are required.Residential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area are spatially analyzed to determine the impact of urban form on emission-causing activities. The key finding is that over the entire region, emissions from private auto use are on par with those from fuel use for building heating. Once beyond the transit-intensive central core, private auto emissions surpass the emissions from building operations. Variation in total auto- and building-related emissions is quite significant between census tracts, ranging from 3.1 to 13.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Of all tracts, the top ten in terms of GHG emission are located in the lower-density suburbs, and their high emissions were largely due to private auto use.The aim of this paper is to analyse metabolic interaction between Paris and the Seine during the industrial era, 1790-1970, a period marked by strong population growth, technological changes, and the absence of specific legislation on environmental issues. The viewpoint focuses on exchanges of waters and wastes between city and river, quantifying them and tracing their evolution in the light of the strategies implemented by the stakeholders in charge. The study combines industrial ecology, local history and the history of technology. From 1790 to 1850, waste matters, and especially excreta, were considered as raw materials, not refuse: they generated real profits. The removal of human excreta aimed not only at improving urban hygiene, but at producing the fertilizers needed in rural areas. Discharging them into the river was out of the question. But after the 1860s, several factors upset this exploitation, notably domestic water supply: night soil became more and more liquid, difficult to handle and to turn into fertilizer; once utilised, the water had to be removed from the house; at the same time, the sewerage system developed and had negative impacts on the river. Even so, Parisian engineers continued to process sewage using techniques that would not only ensure hygiene but also conciliate economic and agricultural interests: combined sewerage system and sewage farms. Both of these early periods are thus noteworthy for a relative limitation of the river's deterioration by urban wastes. Not until the 1920s, when domestic water supply had become the standard and excreta came to be considered as worthless waste, was the principle of valorisation abandoned. This led to important and long-lasting pollution of the Seine (despite the construction of a treatment plant), aggravating the industrial pollution that had been in evidence since the 1840s. Analysing the priorities that led to the adoption of one principle or another in matters of urban hygiene and techniques, with the causes and consequences of such changes, enables us to understand the complex relations between Paris and the Seine. From raw material to waste matter, from river to drain, the concept of quality in environment remains the underlying theme.Recent rapid economic growth in Asian emerging nations is bringing higher living standards to many people. However, this economic growth is usually accompanied by severe environmental degradation. Japan has improved its resource productivity through, among other initiatives, reduce, reuse and recycle (3R) programmes, eco-town promotion and green product and service design systems. In order to pursue the path toward a sustainable society, governments have to change or update their policies and engineering practices and enhance cooperative and comprehensive initiatives on a regional scale. This paper addresses both the national and regional initiatives to promote the transition toward a sustainable Asia.

 Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost federal state of Germany faces two seas: the North Sea to the west and the Baltic Sea to the east. In all, it has a coastline of 1,190 km and about 3,700 km(2) of flood-prone coastal lowlands. In these lowlands, that represent almost 25% of total surface area, 345,000 people live and economic assets worth of 47 billion Euros are concentrated. In recognition of the high assets at stake and of future climate change, the Schleswig-Holstein Government adopted in 2001 a master plan: Integrated Coastal Defence Management in Schleswig-Holstein. It contains the strategy and the financial concept for coastal defence in the coming decades. After a general overview of the coastal zones, this paper describes the coastal defence strategy in Schleswig-Holstein. Special consideration will be given to the climate change adaptation components in the master plan. The paper ends with an outlook towards the implementation of the EU Flood Directive.The need to adapt to climate change has become increasingly apparent, and many believe the practice of biodiversity conservation will need to alter to face this challenge. Conservation organizations are eager to determine how they should adapt their practices to climate change. This involves asking the fundamental question of what adaptation to climate change means. Most studies on climate change and conservation, if they consider adaptation at all, assume it is equivalent to the ability of species to adapt naturally to climate change as stated in Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Adaptation, however, can refer to an array of activities that range from natural adaptation, at one end of the spectrum, to sustainability science in coupled human and natural systems at the other. Most conservation organizations deal with complex systems in which adaptation to climate change involves making decisions on priorities for biodiversity conservation in the face of dynamic risks and involving the public in these decisions. Discursive methods such as analytic deliberation are useful for integrating scientific knowledge with public perceptions and values, particularly when large uncertainties and risks are involved. The use of scenarios in conservation planning is a useful way to build shared understanding at the science-policy interface. Similarly, boundary organizations-organizations or institutions that bridge different scales or mediate the relationship between science and policy-could prove useful for managing the transdisciplinary nature of adaptation to climate change, providing communication and brokerage services and helping to build adaptive capacity. The fact that some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are active across the areas of science, policy, and practice makes them well placed to fulfill this role in integrated assessments of biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change.We present a statistical dynamical Kalman filter and compare its performance to deterministic ensemble square root and stochastic ensemble Kalman filters for error covariance modeling with applications to data assimilation. Our studies compare assimilation and error growth in barotropic flows during a period in 1979 in which several large scale atmospheric blocking regime transitions occurred in the Northern Hemisphere. We examine the role of sampling error and its effect on estimating the flow dependent growing error structures and the associated effects on the respective Kalman gains. We also introduce a Shannon entropy reduction measure and relate it to the spectra of the Kalman gain.Neandertals have been characterized as possessing features indicative of cold-climate adaptation largely based on ecogeographical morphological patterning found in recent humans. Interestingly, one character that deviates from this pattern is a relatively wide nasal aperture. The ecogeographical patterning of the nasal aperture in recent humans would predict instead that Neandertals should exhibit reduced nasal breadth dimensions. To explain this apparent anomaly it has been argued that a reduction in Neandertal nasal breadth was not possible due to dentognathic constraints on their midfaces via large anterior palatal breadth dimensions, especially large intercanine distances. A complicating factor in understanding the relationship between anterior palate breadth and nasal breadth is that both measurements are also correlated with facial prognathism. It is, therefore, unknown to what degree the relationship between anterior palate breadth and nasal breadth in Neandertals is a function of the pleisiomorphic retention of a prognathic facial skeleton. We used path analysis to test for a causal relationship between intercanine breadth and nasal breadth taking into account the potential effect of facial projection and facial prognathism (i.e., basion-nasion length and basion-prosthion length) using a large sample of geographically diverse recent and fossil Homo. Additionally, we examined the ontogenetic relationship between nasal breadth and intercanine breadth using a longitudinal human growth series to determine whether these variables exhibit similar growth trajectories. The results of these analyses indicate a weaker association between intercanine breadth and nasal breadth than expected, and that more variation in nasal breadth can be explained through basion-prosthion length rather than anterior palatal breadth dimensions. Moreover, the ontogenetic development of anterior palate breadth does not correspond to the growth trajectory of the breadth of the nose. These results explain the apparent paradox of wide piriform apertures in generally cooler climate-adapted Neandertals without resorting to dentognathic constraints, and provide additional insight into both the adaptive and nonadaptive (i.e., neutral) basis for Neandertal facial evolution. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We introduce an approach to cross-sector project planning developed in the context of a climate change adaptation strategy being carried out in Ghana. The approach, which uses a simplified cross-impact approach, should be applicable in many cross-sector or cross-disciplinary studies in which the work is carried out by sector or discipline-specific teams. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An inevitable consequence of global climate change is that altered patterns of temperature and precipitation threaten agriculture in marry tropical regions, requiring strategies of human adaptation. Moreover, the process of management intensification in agriculture has increased and may exacerbate vulnerability to climate extremes. Although many solutions have been presented, the role of simple agroecological and agroforestry management has been largely ignored. Some recent literature has shown how sustainable management may improve agroecological resistance to extreme climate events. We comment specifically on a prevalent form of agriculture throughout Latin America, the coffee agroforestry system. Results from the coffee literature have shown that shade management in coffee systems may mitigate the effects of extreme temperature and precipitation, thereby reducing the ecological and economic vulnerability of many rural farmers. We conclude that more traditional forms of agriculture can offer greater potential for adapting to changing conditions than do current intensive systems.Durban is unusual among cities worldwide in having a municipal government that has developed a locally rooted climate change adaptation strategy. This paper considers how climate change came to be considered by local government against four institutional markers: the emergence of climate change advocates among local politicians and civil servants; climate change as a significant issue in municipal plans; staff and funds allocated to climate change issues; and a serious consideration of climate change issues within local government decision making. Considerable progress has been achieved on the second and third of these - but less so on the first and fourth. The paper highlights how climate change issues need to be rooted in local realities that centre on avoiding or limiting impacts from, for instance, heat waves, heavy rainfall and storm surges and sea-level rise, and also the ecological changes and water supply constraints brought about by climate change. To date, international agencies have paid little attention to adaptation, as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) has been prioritized. This paper also stresses the importance of building local knowledge and capacity about climate change risks and adaptive responses. Without this, decision makers will continue seeing environmental issues as constraints on development rather than as essential underpinnings of and contributors to development.We focused on a region encompassing a major maize domestication locus, Tb1, and a locus involved in the flowering time variation, Dwarf8 (D8), to investigate the consequences of two closely linked selective sweeps on nucleotide variation and gain some insights into maize geographical diffusion, through climate adaptation. First, we physically mapped D8 at similar to 300 kb 3' of Tb1. Second, we analyzed patterns of nucleotide variation at Tb1, D8, and seven short regions (400-700 bp) located in the Tb1-D8 region sequenced on a 40 maize inbred lines panel encompassing early-flowering temperate and late-flowering tropical lines. The pattern of polymorphism along the region is characterized by two valleys of depleted polymorphism while the region in between exhibits an appreciable amount of diversity. Our results reveal that a region similar to 100 kb upstream of the D8 gene exhibits hallmarks of divergent selection between temperate and tropical lines and is likely closer than the D8 gene to the target of selection for climate adaptation. Selection in the tropical lines appears more recent than in the temperate lines, suggesting an initial domestication of early-flowering maize. Simulation results indicate that the polymorphism pattern is consistent with two interfering selective sweeps at Tb1 and D8.The built environment, especially that of our largest cities, faces substantial change in the next twenty years if it is to meet the increasing demands for carbon neutrality, reduced water consumption and more efficient resource consumption. The industries that design, build, retrofit, manage and maintain the built environment face equally significant changes in organisation, working practices and skills development, approaches to design and construction and materials development if they are to meet these challenges. Equally, the institutional and governance structures within which they operate will need to undergo fundamental changes, not least in terms of changed regulatory and incentive structures to stimulate innovation and adaptation of new sustainability goals and outcomes. This paper reviews the key drivers of change facing the built environment and analyses the major challenges facing the built environment industry, broadly constituted, in adapting to these drivers.The relationship between tropical forests and global climate change has so far focused on mitigation, while much less emphasis has been placed on how management activities may help forest ecosystems adapt to this change. This paper discusses how tropical forestry practices can contribute to maintaining or enhancing the adaptive capacity of natural and planted forests to global climate change and considers challenges and opportunities for the integration of tropical forest management in broader climate change adaptation. In addition to the use of reduced impact logging to maintain ecosystem integrity, other approaches may be needed, such as fire prevention and management, as well as specific silvicultural options aimed at facilitating genetic adaptation. In the case of planted forests, the normally higher intensity of management (with respect to natural forest) offers additional opportunities for implementing adaptation measures, at both industrial and smallholder levels. Although the integration in forest management of measures aimed at enhancing adaptation to climate change may not involve substantial additional effort with respect to current practice, little action appears to have been taken to date. Tropical foresters and forest-dependent communities appear not to appreciate the risks posed by climate change and, for those who are aware of them, practical guidance on how to respond is largely non-existent. The extent to which forestry research and national policies will promote and adopt management practices in order to assist production forests adapt to climate change is currently uncertain. Mainstreaming adaptation into national development and planning programs may represent an initial step towards the incorporation of climate change considerations into tropical forestry.Recent interest in sustainable forest management planning in the Yukon has coincided with growing public awareness of climate change, providing an opportunity to explore how forestry plans are incorporating climate change. In this paper, the Strategic Forest Management Plans for the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory (CATT) and the Teslin Tlingit Traditional Territory (TTTT) are examined for evidence of adaptation to climate change. For each plan, management policies and practices that are also recognized as ways to adapt to climate change are identified to provide information on the incremental costs and benefits of additional adaptation efforts. A typology for classifying sustainable forest management plans according to how they address climate change is proposed and applied to the CATT and TTTT plans. This typology, which may be useful to any future retrospective assessments on how successful these or other sustainable forest management plans have been in addressing and managing the risks posed by climate change, consists of a matrix that categorizes plans into one of four types; (1) proactive-direct, (2) proactive-indirect, (3) reactive-direct, and (4) reactive-indirect. Neither of the plans available for the southern Yukon explicitly identifies climate change vulnerabilities and actions that will be taken to reduce those vulnerabilities and manage risks. However, both plans have incorporated some examples of 'best management practices' for sustainable forest management that are also consistent with appropriate climate adaptation responses. Even in a jurisdiction facing rapid ecological changes driven by climate change, where there is a relatively high level of awareness of climate change and its implications, forestry planning processes have yet to grapple directly with the risks that climate change may pose to the ability of forest managers to achieve the stated goals and objectives of sustainable forest management plans.The difference in timing between water supply and Urban water demand necessitates water storage. Existing reservoirs were designed based upon hydrologic data from a given historical period, and, given recent evidence for climatic change, may be insufficient to meet demand under future climate change scenarios. The focus Of this study is to present a generally applicable methodology to assess the ability of existing storage to meet urban water demand under present and projected future climatic scenarios, and to determine the effectiveness of storage capacity expansions. Uncertainties in climatic forcing and projected demand scenarios are considered explicitly by the models. The reservoir system in San Diego, California is used as a case study. We find that the climate change scenarios will be more costly to the city than scenarios using historical hydrologic parameters. The magnitude of the expected costs and the optimal investment policy are sensitive to projected population growth and the accuracy to which Our model can predict spills.Predicting how species distributions might shift as global climate changes is fundamental to the successful adaptation of conservation policy. An increasing number of studies have responded to this challenge by using climate envelopes, modeling the association between climate variables and species distributions. However, it is difficult to quantify how well species actually match climate. Here, we use null models to show that species-climate associations found by climate envelope methods are no better than chance for 68 of 100 European bird species. In line with predictions, we demonstrate that the species with distribution limits determined by climate have more northerly ranges. We conclude that scientific studies and climate change adaptation policies based on the indiscriminate use of climate envelope methods irrespective of species sensitivity to climate may be misleading and in need of revision.Urban areas are faced with distinctive, or 'systemic', issues arising from their unique social, environmental and economic characteristics. Examples include an altered energy exchange and hydrology which contribute to the urban heat island and an enhanced surface runoff; due, in part, to an altered surface cover, with more built and fewer vegetated surfaces. Landscape planning needs to protect urban ecosystem services and to enable this, all urban Characterisation which is meaningful for these properties is useful. This paper presents Such a characterisation for Greater Manchester which uses urban morphology type mapping and surface cover analysis. The results show that residential areas cover almost half of the 'urbanised' area of Greater Manchester. with medium density residential accounting for 37%. It is within this category, which represents the urban matrix, that 32% of all the evapotranspiring (i.e. vegetated and water) Surfaces are found. This will include private gardens and street trees which are often not represented by traditional mapping approaches. The methodology presented here is potentially useful for strategic urban planning in relation to climate change adaptation and for green infrastructure planning in particular. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change will impact coral-reef fishes through effects on individual performance, trophic linkages, recruitment dynamics, population connectivity and other ecosystem processes. The most immediate impacts will be a loss of diversity and changes to fish community composition as a result of coral bleaching. Coral-dependent fishes suffer the most rapid population declines as coral is lost; however, many other species will exhibit long-term declines due to loss of settlement habitat and erosion of habitat structural complexity. Increased ocean temperature will affect the physiological performance and behaviour of coral reef fishes, especially during their early life history. Small temperature increases might favour larval development, but this could be counteracted by negative effects on adult reproduction. Already variable recruitment will become even more unpredictable. This will make optimal harvest strategies for coral reef fisheries more difficult to determine and populations more susceptible to overfishing. A substantial number of species could exhibit range shifts, with implications for extinction risk of small-range species near the margins of reef development. There are critical gaps in our knowledge of how climate change will affect tropical marine fishes. Predictions are often based on temperate examples, which may be inappropriate for tropical species. Improved projections of how ocean currents and primary productivity will change are needed to better predict how reef fish population dynamics and connectivity patterns will change. Finally, the potential for adaptation to climate change needs more attention. Many coral reef fishes have geographical ranges spanning a wide temperature gradient and some have short generation times. These characteristics are conducive to acclimation or local adaptation to climate change and provide hope that the more resilient species will persist if immediate action is taken to stabilize Earth's climate.In the context of climate change, the poorest people are commonly seen as having the least capacity to adapt. However to date there has been a limited examination of the dynamic and differentiated nature of poverty Through bringing together both the chronic poverty and adaptation literature, this article presents a new pro-poor adaptation research agenda underpinned by a more nuanced understanding of poverty. While recognising that poverty reduction efforts are threatened by climate change, this article investigates ways in which proactive adaptation could offer opportunities to create pathways out of chronic poverty through targeted vulnerability reduction and adaptation efforts.With awareness of multiple identities and controversies associated with labelling people, this article assesses how policy-oriented reports are building the case for greater recognition and participation of groups often labelled as 'the most vulnerable' to climate change. Similar to how Tanner and Mitchell (this IDS Bulletin, 'Entrenchment or Enhacement') have identified opportunities to reduce the poverty of different groupings through climate change adaptation, this article explores the contribution of emerging literature differentiated by gender, ethnicity, age and physical disability to realising concepts of 'climate justice' and 'rights to adaptation'. It considers the rights-based and instrumental approaches being taken by those documenting the experiences, responses and rights of these groups to participation' in climate change adaptation at different scales. This analysis is essential to identifying how marginalised groups can influence climate policy in a period of breakneck negotiations, as well as understanding how emerging policy processes can be seized as opportunities for shifting power relations, reducing vulnerabilities and preventing mal-adaptation.Drawing on available literature on gender and climate change, this article examines the ways in which interlinkages between gender inequalities and multiple dimensions of poverty impact on the capacity of women and men to adapt to or mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. Cautioning against the tendency to fall back on assumptions of women as a homogenous, subjugated group, the article calls instead for more contextualised research drawing on women's and men's local realities and coping strategies. By developing more nuanced and concrete understandings of how gender-related constraints play out in particular contexts of environmental stress, we will be able to move away from generalisations to more appropriately inform adaptation policies and programmes of poor and marginalised people's needs and priorities.The rapid pace at which the climate change agenda is permeating wide-ranging arenas of established development practice and theory leaves little space and time for reflection on the implications this has for learning across agendas and literatures 'Adaptation' is a term that is increasingly reserved for processes that build the resilience of households, communities and sectors to changes in the climate. But, 'adaptation' always has, and arguably always should, refer to more than just responses to climate change. Reflections here make the case for climate change enthusiasts to engage with a broader agenda concerning how to enable poor and vulnerable people to move out of poverty and vulnerability. We focus on livelihood diversification as one possible adaptation strategy, and whether diversification as a climate adaptation option looks different from a poverty reduction option.The urban poor frequently live in the most hazardous urban locations - at risk from many environmental hazards and extreme events and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Reducing this vulnerability requires effective urban governance, involving municipal authorities, national governments, utility providers and civil society organisations. This article considers the role of these stakeholders in combining support for climate change adaptation and improving the social, physical and economic wellbeing of low-income urban residents. In particular, the article argues for the development and application of specific tools, methods and approaches to deliver pro-poor adaptation. Relevant case studies and examples are used to show that climate change adaptation requires solutions based in improved institutional capacity and better urban governance and that if properly applied, this can help to meet. the broader needs of the urban poor.As the number and diversity of climate change adaptation interventions (CCAI) increases, there is a growing need to evaluate their effectiveness. It is timely therefore to consider how pro-poor perspectives fit into emerging evaluation approaches. This article reviews the current state of evaluation of CCAI and identifies opportunities for evaluation processes to focus attention on the achievement of results, which benefit poor and vulnerable households. Both development and climate change adaptation communities urgently need to learn what helps to reduce poverty as efforts on adaptation are scaled up. Evaluation provides an established methodology for systematic assessment of aims and objectives and their achievement. The article reviews the main issues involved in evaluating CCAI. It examines what approaches and methods to adaptation evaluation have or could be used at different levels and considers where pro-poor perspectives fit in.Development actors are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of climate-related shocks and stresses on their activities. Accordingly, tools and methods are emerging to support decision-making to integrate climate adaptation concerns within poverty reduction plans, programmes and projects. These provide information and guidance to help assess risks and prioritise corresponding actions to enhance adaptation and disaster risk reduction. This article examines the use of climate adaptation decision tools for development, placing the range of tools and information platforms within the context of different adaptation approaches. It uses the case study of the ORCHID climate risk screening methodology to highlight the challenges and opportunities of integrating adaptation and disaster risk reduction into development cooperation. The article concludes that a focus on climate science rather than social vulnerability tends to support the conception of 'adaptation as output' rather than of 'adaptation as process', which the article argues is necessary for pro-poor outcomes.There is a need to facilitate the dissemination of information and ideas that can accelerate community-based adaptation to climate change. Increasingly affordable communication technologies may allow for extending the benefits of available knowledge to those who most need it. Audiovisual media, when combined with participatory processes for adaptation, offers potentially effective ways to raise awareness, scale-up capacity building, support community-level planning and develop innovative approaches to advocacy and institutional partner-ships. Importantly, video-mediated approaches can be designed to tackle the complex poverty-related aspects of adaptation in the work of humanitarian organisations, addressing the heterogeneity of vulnerable communities and giving a voice to the most marginalised members. This article outlines lessons learned from the use of audiovisual tools in health risk management, discusses recent and ongoing video projects by the Red Cross addressing climate change in Argentina, the Bahamas, Indonesia and Malawi, and recommends practical applications for organisations supporting pro-poor adalptation.Social protection initiatives in the context of agriculture are unlikely to succeed in reducing poverty if they do not consider the multiple risks and both short- and long-term shocks and stresses associated with climate change and natural disaster. By exploring linkages between climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and social protection in the agricultural sector, IDS researcher's have developed the concept of 'adaptive social protection'. Studying adaptive social protection involves examining the role of social protection in strengthening adaptation and for developing more climate-resilient social protection interventions.Climate change is understood as a threat to which the poor are acutely vulnerable. Microfinance services (MFS) are recognised as tools for helping to reduce the vulnerability of the poor. If this is indeed the case, then the possibility of linking MFS to climate change adaptation deserves careful consideration. MFS can provide poor people with the means to diversify, accumulate and manage the assets needed to become less susceptible to shocks and stresses and/or better able to deal with their impacts. Yet these links may not hold for everybody. MFS typically do not reach the chronically poor, may encourage short-term coping instead (or at the expense) of longer-term vulnerability reduction, or even increase vulnerability. These limitations and risks aside, MFS can still play an important role in vulnerability reduction and climate change adaptation among some of the poor, provided services better match client needs and livelihoods.The cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) has two subspecies, indica and japonica. The japonica rice germplasm has a narrower genetic diversity compared to the indica subspecies. Rice breeders aim to develop new varieties with a higher yield potential, with enhanced resistances to biotic and abiotic stresses, and improved adaptation to environmental changes. In order to face some of these challenges, japonica rice germplasm will have to be diversified and new breeding strategies developed. Indica rice improvement could also profit from more "genepool mingling" for which japonica rice could play an important role. Interesting traits such as low-temperature tolerance, and wider climate adaptation could be introgressed into the indica subspecies. In the past decade, huge developments in rice genomics have expanded our available knowledge on this crop and it is now time to use these technologies for improving and accelerating rice breeding research. With the full sequence of the rice genome, breeders may take advantage of new genes. Also new genes may be discovered from the genepool of wild relatives, or landraces of the genus Oryza, and incorporated into elite japonica cultivars in a kind of "gene revolution" program. Expectedly, new technologies that are currently being optimized, aiming for novel gene discovery or for tracking the regions under selection, will be suggested as new breeding approaches. This paper revisits breeding strategies successfully employed in indica rice, and discusses their application in japonica rice improvement (e.g. ideotype breeding, wide hybridization and hybrid performance).Seedling emergence from scarified seeds and mortality of different seedling cohorts of five African savanna woody species (Acacia polyacantha, A. sieberana, Bauhinia thonningii, Dichrostachys cinerea and Ziziphus abyssinica) were studied under field conditions at a site in central Zambia. The study was conducted over a 4-year period, from 2003 to 2007. The objectives of the study were to determine climate factors that significantly influence seedling emergence rate and mortality in order to assess likely responses of the studied species to a warmer climate. Mean seedling emergence rate was 12% in D. cinerea and Z. abyssinica, 17% in B. thonningii, 47% in A. poyacantha and 62% in A. sieberana. Climate factors did not significantly affect seedling emergence in A. sieberana while temperature significantly influenced seedling emergence rate in the other species. Under a 1 warmer climate, seedling emergence rate was predicted to decline in A. polyacantha, B. thonningii and Z. abysssinica but is likely to increase slightly in D. cinerea. Time of seedling emergence during the wet season did not appear to affect seedling survival. Temperature also significantly influenced seedling mortality in all the studied species such that under a warmer climate, mortality was predicted to increase in A. sieberana and D. cinerea but decrease in A. polyacantha, B. thonningii and Z. abyssinica. As the studied species exhibited differential optimum temperature conditions for seedling emergence and seedling survival, they are likely to respond to climate warming in different but predictable ways. The results of the study are useful to forest management and development of climate change adaptation strategies in southern Africa.This research was carried out in the framework of the Collaborative Research Centre for "Arid Climate Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa" (ACACIA/SFB 389) at the University of Cologne. The research centre was financed by the German Science Foundation (DFG) and included the study of landscape formation in north-western Namibia. One focus of our research was on the transitional area between the Namib Desert and the dry savannah in the Marienfluss Valley - Hartmann Valley region. When the research project was initiated, this region with a total area of approx. 5600 km(2) was 'terra incognita' from a geomorphological point of view. For this reason the entire recent Quaternary development of relief including current morphodynamics was studied. In the context of the issue of 'shifting desert margins', dune fields at the eastern margin of the Namib Desert in NW Namibia south of the Angolan border were studied during several years of field observation using geomorphological relief analysis in the field, aerial photographs and pictures taken when flying over the area. In the absence of meteorological stations, the genesis of the dunes has been inferred on the basis of calculated wind-flow patterns. In this way it was possible to show that the distribution of dunes in the study area is determined by a change in wind direction over the South Atlantic. The changes in dune forms since 1964 were identified by means of multi-temporal analysis of aerial photographs; reshaping by man through the beginnings of tourism in recent years could be observed directly. The transformation of dunes in heavy thunderstorms is also described.Land capability systems have been designed to evaluate and communicate biophysical constraints on land use, including climatic limitations. By grading land quality, the resulting information is particularly relevant for planners and managers, and for land valuation. Higher-grade land is more flexible and has more options for land Use. Using Scotland as a case study, a widely-Used land capability system was adapted to investigate the influence of recent and future climate change on land-use potential. The adapted method was applied to both interpolated gridded weather station data and to future climate change scenarios derived from the HadRM3 climate model. At a national scale, differing regional patterns of land capability were recognised, with changes in these patterns occurring in recent decades and projected to occur on a more substantial scale into the future. In general, climate change is acting to enhance land-use potential in Scotland, mainly in the drier east, while the west remains constrained by its wetter climate. These results demonstrate the key control directed by soil moisture values on land-use options, in addition to temperature change. Shifts in land-use potential have implications for both strategic resource planning and for developing anticipatory climate change adaptation actions. The land capability assessment highlights not. only potential changes in agriculture and other productive land uses, but also repercussions for biodiversity and terrestrial carbon stocks. Various amendments are suggested to the land capability procedures to reflect existing or emerging climate-related issues that were not considered necessary in the original system, notably excessive soil moisture deficits.A heat/health warning system (HHWS) was established in Germany as a climate change adaptation measure and as a direct consequence of the heat wave in 2003. The system used by the German weather service currently only provides information about outdoor conditions, i.e. no data on indoor climate - which may differ significantly from ambient conditions - are provided. This article describes an extension of the existing heat/health warning system based on a thermal building simulation model. It enables internal heat loads to be estimated based on predicted meteorological conditions. While the prediction model is limited to a worst-case scenario for practicability reasons, the information derived from the load values can nevertheless be very useful. The technique was used during summer 2007 in parallel with the conventional system, illustrating the added value.Policies to promote adaptation climate risks often rely on the willing cooperation of the intended beneficiaries. If these beneficiaries disagree with policy makers and program managers about the need for adaptation, or the effectiveness of the measures they are being asked to undertake, then implementation of the policies will fail. A case study of a resettlement program in Mozambique shows this to be the case. Farmers and policy makers disagreed about the seriousness of climate risks, and the potential negative consequences of proposed adaptive measures. A project to provide more information about climate change to farmers did not change their beliefs. The results highlight the need for active dialog across stakeholder groups, as a necessary condition for formulating policies that can then be successfully implemented. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable energy supply, climate change and poverty are three critical, interrelated global problems that require urgent action, including substantial investment. We examine the feasibility of using an international carbon tax to finance an integrated investment programme in sustainable energy technology (including climate change mitigation) and the reduction of poverty (including climate change adaptation). A simple evaluation of responsibility for anthropogenic climate change based on cumulative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to stabilisation per capita (using current populations) suggests that currently India and China remain under-spent by 99% and 78% for stringent, 445-490 ppm CO2-equivalent (CO2-eq) targets, respectively, whilst the USA and EC are already overspent for targets of 710-855 and 545-590 ppm CO2-eq, respectively. It would therefore appear equitable to charge the tax only in developed nations. The potential advantages and disadvantages of an integrated investment programme and available policy instruments for a tax of this type are discussed, drawing on relevant literature. Although a cost-benefit analysis using suitable simulations that include revenue recycling is required, revenues estimated from documented carbon tax simulations appear sufficient to meet a significant proportion of the estimated investment requirement. With increasing public awareness and an integrated campaign, obtaining agreement for this type of ambitious international measures could soon become realistic. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate changes, particularly global warming, are attributable to human activities, mainly fossil fuel burning which releases greenhouse gases such as CO2. The emissions Of CO2 continue to rise, and climate models project 1.1 degrees C to 6.4 degrees C rise of average surface temperature over the 21(st) century. Health effects from global warming range from increased mortality by extreme weather, floods, and storms to increase of diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and diarrhea. Korea is not immune to health impacts from global warming. Data on daily temperature of Seoul in 1994 showed a clear association with daily mortality. Rise of sea and surface temperatures also indicates possibility of increase in infectious diseases in Korea. Concentrations of ambient pollutants, particularly ozone, were shown to be associated with surface temperature. Therefore, we are already in the influence of climate change. Adaptation strategy to climate changes is basically a matter of public health, Well -prepared programs for responding to climate changes will minimize health risks. The most effective responses are strengthening of the key functions of environmental management, surveillance, and response to natural disasters and changes of disease patterns associated with global warming. We need to intensify our efforts in preventive public health, and ensure sustainable development and protection of ecosystem for human health.While climate change is inherently a global problem, its public health impacts will be experienced most acutely at the local and regional level, with some jurisdictions likely to be more burdened than others. The public health infrastructure in the U. S. is organized largely as an interlocking set of public agencies at the federal, state and local level, with lead responsibility for each city or county often residing at the local level. To understand how directors of local public health departments view and are responding to climate change as a public health issue, we conducted a telephone survey with 133 randomly selected local health department directors, representing a 61% response rate. A majority of respondents perceived climate change to be a problem in their jurisdiction, a problem they viewed as likely to become more common or severe over the next 20 years. Only a small minority of respondents, however, had yet made climate change adaptation or prevention a top priority for their health department. This discrepancy between problem recognition and programmatic responses may be due, in part, to several factors: most respondents felt personnel in their health department-and other key stakeholders in their community-had a lack of knowledge about climate change; relatively few respondents felt their own health department, their state health department, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had the necessary expertise to help them create an effective mitigation or adaptation plan for their jurisdiction; and most respondents felt that their health department needed additional funding, staff and staff training to respond effectively to climate change. These data make clear that climate change adaptation and prevention are not currently major activities at most health departments, and that most, if not all, local health departments will require assistance in making this transition. We conclude by making the case that, through their words and actions, local health departments and their staff can and should play a role in alerting members of their community about the prospect of public health impacts from climate change in their jurisdiction.To better understand the range of adaptation of maize (Zea mays L.) landraces, climatic adaptation intervals of 42 Mexican maize races were determined. A database of 4161 maize accessions was used to characterize altitudinal and climatic conditions where the 42 maize races grow, yielding ecological descriptors for each race. Using the geographical coordinates of the collection sites of each accession, their climatic conditions were characterized using the geographic information system IDRISI and a national environmental information system. Analyses of variance and cluster analyses of the racial ecological descriptors were performed to determine possible environmental groupings of the races. We found a very high level of variation among and within Mexican maize races for climate adaptation and ecological descriptors. The general overall climatic ranges for maize were 0 to 2900 m of altitude, 11.3 to 26.6 degrees C annual mean temperature, 12.0 to 29.1 degrees C growing season mean temperature, 426 to 4245 mm annual rainfall, 400 to 3555 mm growing season rainfall, and 12.46 to 12.98 h mean growing season day-length. These climatic ranges of maize surpass those from its closest relative, teosinte (Z. mays ssp. parviglumis litis and Doebley), indicating that maize has evolved adaptability beyond the environmental range in which ancestral maize was first domesticated.Convincing people that climate change is potentially as important as other problems in the region such as poverty, conflict, and corruption, is a significant challenge for climate change adaptation strategies. Many experts attribute the receding shorelines and apparent rise in sea levels around Pacific island countries to climate change. It is questionable whether ordinary people are making similar connections. Raising the level of concern about climate change is essential if this is to change. This paper argues that civil society, in the form of non-government organisations (NGOs), offers a very effective means for creating this change. Non-government organisations work closely with local communities, and can use this relationship to communicate the need to give urgent attention to climate change issues. NGOs also have access to policy makers, including government, which they can use to help align policies with community priorities.Quantitatively estimating the potential health impacts of climate change is facilitated by multi-determinant models that integrate micro- to macro-level exposures and processes that influence disease occurrence, including the public health responses, in order to identify regions and population groups that may be more vulnerable. Although progress has been made in constructing systems-based models, considerable work is required to address key issues of quantification of the climate-health associations and the factors that affect those associations; specification of model(s) appropriate to incorporate climate change, adaptation, and mitigation policies; incorporation of thresholds; incorporation of pathways of public health development; and quantification of uncertainties.There is a growing evidence that the climate change do has implications for drought vulnerable India with studies projecting future possible reductions in monsoon related rainfall in the country. The existing drought risk mitigation and response mechanisms were looked into and gaps were identified by drawing lessons from previous disasters and response mechanisms. In absence of reliable climate predictions at the scales that make them useful for policy level planning, the emphasis was on identifying no-regret adaptation options those would reduce current vulnerabilities while mainstreaming the adaptation in the long run. The most notable climate change implications for the drought vulnerable India are the enhanced preparedness with due emphasis to the community based preparedness planning, reviewing the existing monsoon and drought prediction methodologies, and establishing drought monitoring and early warning systems in association with a matching preparedness at the input level.In the mid-1930s, eastern Oklahoma, USA, suffered an unusually harsh mixture of droughts and extreme rainfall events that led to widespread crop failure over several years. These climatic conditions coincided with low commodity prices, agricultural restructuring and general economic collapse, creating tremendous hardship in rural and agriculturally dependent areas. Using a previously developed typology of agricultural adaptation, this paper reports empirical research conducted to identify the ways by which the rural population of Sequoyah County adapted to such conditions. Particular attention is given to categorizing the scale at which adaptation occurred, the actors involved and the constraints to implementation. The findings identify successes and opportunities missed by public policy makers, and suggest possible entry points for developing adaptation strategies for current and future, analogous situations that may arise as a result of climate change.This paper examines the impact of climate change on the decision of farmers to engage or not to engage in livestock activities and also on the choice of different livestock species in Kenya. To this end, cross-sectional household level data supplemented by long-term averages of climate data are used. The probit model is employed to derive the response of the probability of engaging in livestock activities to climate change. Probit and multivariate probit methods are employed to model the choice of different livestock species. Atmosphere-ocean global circulation models are used to project the impact of different climate scenarios on the probability of engaging in livestock activities and also of adopting different livestock species according to variations in climate. The results suggest that farmers adapt livestock management decisions to climate change. At low levels of temperature increase, the probability of engaging in livestock activities falls, but at higher levels of climate change, the probability rises. The results further show that as it gets hotter, farmers change their livestock choices from dairy cattle and sheep to beef cattle and goats.This paper considers the needed adaptation and mitigation agenda for cities in India - where the urban population is likely to grow by around 500 million over the next 50 years. It considers the likely changes that climate change will bring in temperature, precipitation and extreme rainfall, drought, river and inland flooding, storms/storm surges/coastal flooding, sea-level rise and environmental health risks, and who within urban populations are most at risk. It notes the importance for urban areas of an effective rural adaptation agenda especially in maintaining the productivity and functioning of rural systems. It highlights the importance of today's infrastructure investments, taking into account climate changes, given the long lifespan of most infrastructure, and the importance of urban management engaging with changing risk profiles. One important part of this is the need to connect official adaptation initiatives to the much-improved natural hazard risk assessment, management and mitigation capacity that responded to major disasters. The paper ends by describing a possible urban climate change adaptation framework, including changes needed at the national, state, city and neighbourhood levels, and linkages to mitigation.The Australian coastline is one of the longest and most diverse of any in the world, and Australian researchers have developed preliminary models of the behaviour of major coastal systems such as beaches and reefs. The Australian population is particularly focused along the coastline, especially in metropolitan centres; however, the population of regional centres along the coast is increasing steadily in response to a phenomenon termed seachange. Coastal systems are increasingly threatened by potential impacts as a result of climate change, as indicated by the successive assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Although Australia played a central role in applying a common methodology (CM), developed from IPCC guidelines in the 1990s, and in devising alternative approaches, which were initially trialled at nine sites on the Australian coast, there has not been a nationally co-ordinated approach to assessing the coastal vulnerability of Australia, and such an approach is only emerging now. Instead, there have been a series of different approaches adopted to look at the different parts of the Australian coast, including wetland mapping in northern Australia; geomorphic unit mapping in South Australia; storm surge vulnerability modelling in Queensland; probabilistic approaches to beach erosion in New South Wales; indicative mapping of potential coastal retreat in Tasmania. Additionally, there have been methods proposed by insurers and coastal engineers to meet their requirements. Since 2005, the Australian government has once again seen the need for a national coastal vulnerability assessment, and a series of studies are planned or under way to achieve the aims of a National Climate Change Adaptation Framework.This study analyzed determinants of farm-level climate adaptation measures in Africa using a multinomial choice model fitted to data from a cross-sectional survey of over 8000 farms from 11 African countries. The results indicate that specialized crop cultivation (mono-cropping) is the agricultural practice most vulnerable to climate change in Africa. Warming, especially in summer, poses the highest risk. It encourages irrigation, multiple cropping and integration of livestock. Increased precipitation reduces the probability of irrigation and will benefit most African farms, especially in drier areas. Better access to markets, extension and credit services, technology and farm assets (labor, land and capital) are critical for helping African farmers adapt to climate change. Government policies and investment strategies must support education, markets, credit and information about adaptation to climate change, including technological and institutional methods, particularly for poor farmers in the dry areas of Africa.Using cross-sectional data, this paper estimates a national energy model of fuel choice by both households and firms. Consumers in warmer locations rely relatively more heavily on electricity rather than natural gas, oil, and other fuels. They also use more energy. Climate change will likely increase electricity consumption on cooling but reduce the use of other fuels for heating. On net, American energy expenditures will likely increase, resulting in welfare damages that increase as temperatures rise. For example, if the US warms by 5 degrees C by 2100, we predict annual welfare losses of $57 billion. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Efforts are being made to develop new paradigms for climate change adaptation policy at both the national and the international levels. However, progress in vulnerability and adaptation research has not been matched by advancement on practical policy initiatives. The complexity of the challenge to develop methods and means to support adaptation to climate change necessitates a diversity of approaches. This diversity is healthy, and yet it is possible to define some key characteristics and tools that can promote practical outcomes. In this paper, some methodologies that have proved successful are reviewed. These include a mapping of contextual circumstances, an appreciation for multiple perspectives, and the importance of a "boundary object" in forging strong interactions among project participants. Further, a toolkit of approaches for natural scientists is presented. This toolkit can be used to organize work in collaboration with stakeholders and other participants and can help overcome barriers to a meaningful contribution to the policy process. Fundamentally, this challenge will require approaches that are more grounded in meaning, narration, and reflection.This paper explores the value of using community risk assessments (CRAs) for climate change adaptation. CRA refers to participatory methods to assess hazards, vulnerabilities and capacities in support of community-based disaster risk reduction, used by many NGOs, community-based organizations, and the Red Cross/Red Crescent. We review the evolution of climate change adaptation and community-based disaster risk reduction, and highlight the challenges of integrating global climate change into a bottom-up and place-based approach. Our analysis of CRAs carried out by various national Red Cross societies shows that CRAs can help address those challenges by fostering community engagement in climate risk reduction, particularly given that many strategies to deal with current climate risks also help to reduce vulnerability to climate change. Climate change can also be explicitly incorporated in CRAs by making better use of CRA tools to assess trends, and by addressing the notion of changing risks. However, a key challenge is to keep CRAs simple enough for wide application. This demands special attention in the modification of CRA tools; in the background materials and trainings for CRA facilitators; and in the guidance for interpretation of CRA outcomes. A second challenge is the application of a limited set of CRA results to guide risk reduction in other communities and to inform national and international adaptation policy. This requires specific attention for sampling and care in scaling up qualitative findings. Finally, stronger linkages are needed between organizations facilitating CRAs and suppliers of climate information, particularly addressing the translation of climate information to the community level. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Policy makers have now recognised the need to integrate thinking about climate change into all areas of public policy making. However, the discussion of 'climate policy integration' has tended to focus on mitigation decisions mostly taken at international and national levels. Clearly, there is also a more locally focused adaptation dimension to climate policy integration, which has not been adequately explored by academics or policy makers. Drawing on a case study of the UK, this paper adopts both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective to explore how far different sub-elements of policies within the agriculture, nature conservation and water sectors support or undermine potential adaptive responses. The top-down approach, which assumes that policies set explicit aims and objectives that are directly translated into action on the ground, combines a content analysis of policy documents with interviews with policy makers. The bottom-up approach recognises the importance of other actors in shaping policy implementation and involves interviews with actors in organisations within the three sectors. This paper reveals that neither approach offers a complete picture of the potentially enabling or constraining effects of different policies on future adaptive planning, but together they offer new perspectives on climate policy integration. These findings inform a discussion on how to implement climate policy integration, including auditing existing policies and 'climate proofing' new ones so they support rather than hinder adaptive planning. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Investments aimed at improving agricultural adaptation to climate change inevitably favor some crops and regions over others. An analysis of climate risks for crops in 12 food- insecure regions was conducted to identify adaptation priorities, based on statistical crop models and climate projections for 2030 from 20 general circulation models. Results indicate South Asia and Southern Africa as two regions that, without sufficient adaptation measures, will likely suffer negative impacts on several crops that are important to large food- insecure human populations. We also find that uncertainties vary widely by crop, and therefore priorities will depend on the risk attitudes of investment institutions.Interest in the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on regions throughout the world has taken on a new and more urgent focus in recent years. As attention has turned to understanding climate change adaptation, researches have begun considering the ways in which social vulnerability to climate related events can be understood and analysed so as to aid in policy development. This paper continues this growing research theme by developing a social vulnerability index for flood using the Gold Coast region as an example. Using data from a variety of sources the paper illustrates how when the social dimension of flood vulnerability is incorporated into an understanding of the physical threat of flood, a more meaningful focus on potential adaptation measures is attained.Adaptation to already discernible climate changes, particularly an increase in extreme events, is an urgent task for all nations. This article argues that adaptation is an urgent priority, especially for the developing world, to build a resilient society. For poor nations, poverty alleviation is the main policy driver, although changes in livelihood strategies are driven by a range of factors. Using a case study, direct and indirect adaptation is examined with reference to the specific livelihoods of the Chagga people on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Evidence suggests that coping strategies to maintain livelihood systems can work against long-term adaptation to climate change, unless there is linkage to poverty alleviation. Linking climate change adaptation to project development through notions of additionality does not carry sufficient leverage to simultaneously address poverty alleviation and climate change. It is suggested that, rather than micro-economic project management, a broader macro-economic frame be established. A rights-based approach is argued as a vital driver for informing financial, institutional, political and technological policies and instruments.The impact of climate change on European society is an issue of increasing concern on the agenda of European regional development policy. Using sea-level rise and changing flood-prone areas as an example of climate-change impact, this paper reviews all approach to stakeholder communication developed in the Baltic Sea Region. The application of climate- and sea-level change scenarios in spatial planning, as well as the communication between scientists and stakeholders, was integrated into a set of tools called the 'decision support frame' (DSF), which focuses especially on uncertainty aspects. By specifically addressing the communication process the DSF distances itself front pure computer-based decision-making. The city of Gdansk is a good example where it combination of climate-change models, maps and various discussion rounds led to a communication process that has integrated several planning authorities and decision-makers.In this paper it is argued that climate change adaptation poses different moral questions than mitigation. Proceeding from a 'hybrid' model recently advanced by Simon Caney, an analytical framework for determining responsibility, which is based on a distinction between causal and remedial responsibility as well as one between well-off and badly-off agents, is constructed and applied. It is concluded that whether the burdens are envisioned as ones of mitigation or adaptation makes a difference for how responsibility is assigned to various agents within this framework, suggesting that theorists need to be clear about which kind of burden their distributive principles concern. As the analysis is based upon some important substantive assumptions, the paper concludes with a critical discussion of our conclusions and an invitation for additional research into the largely unexamined distinction between adaptation and mitigation.Climate change adaptation assessments aim at assisting policy-makers in reducing the health risks associated with climate change and variability. This paper identifies key characteristics of the climate-health relationship and of the adaptation decision problem that require consideration in climate change adaptation assessments. It then analyzes whether these characteristics are appropriately considered in existing guidelines for climate impact and adaptation assessment and in pertinent conceptual models from environmental epidemiology. The review finds three assessment guidelines based on a generalized risk management framework to be most useful for guiding adaptation assessments of human health. Since none of them adequately addresses all key challenges of the adaptation decision problem, actual adaptation assessments need to combine elements from different guidelines. Established conceptual models from environmental epidemiology are found to be of limited relevance for assessing and planning adaptation to climate change since the prevailing toxicological model of environmental health is not applicable to many climate-sensitive health risks.This paper discusses adaptation, one of three strategies that can be used to manage climate change. The other two are mitigation and geoengineering. These three are orthogonal in the sense that each can be pursued independently of the others.(13) Climate change adaptation is a natural response to risk, a sort of extension of emergency preparedness, but it is more than that. Climate change adaptive actions are beginning to be taken in some parts of both the developing and the developed world, and they can be effective at various geographic scales but most often locally. Assessing risks against the costs and benefits of adaptive measures is an art that is just beginning to become practiced for climate change. Incorporation of adaptation policies into community, regional and national planning is also growing with U.N. encouragement and support. The net cost of adaptation will likely grow as greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere increase and adverse effects grow, and at some concentration the cost of adaptation may become a losing cause. Adaptation planning, policy adoption and actions will be driven at national, regional and local levels by perceived risks. Poor people particularly in vulnerable places will be at greatest risk. Each nation should take the adaptation strategy seriously and seek to increase adaptive capacity at various levels. This includes maintaining ecosystem health and the viability of important species. Sharing of information, resources, tools and experiences can make adaptation actions more effective and less expensive. Research may also lead to innovations that reduce the cost and effort of adapting. Sharing might be facilitated by an international system of www coupled research and information organizations funded from public and private institutions.Climate change adaptation presents particular challenges in urban areas, where historic and current investment in fixed stock and infrastructure might constrain adaptation. This paper explores how two elements of adaptive capacity-building that capacity and delivering adaptation actions-are likely to be constrained by wider social and economic factors affecting urban societies. Public open space in urban areas, although having a vital role to play under conditions of climate change, is already a contested policy area. Using the field of outdoor thermal comfort as an example of current adaptive behaviour, the paper reports on a study that examined the perceptions of thermal comfort of different users of public spaces in Manchester. It considers the implications of climate change scenarios for the ability to maintain thermal comfort in open spaces and examines the scope for physical intervention, such as through urban and built form design, to build adaptive capacity. However, it also explores possible scenarios of urban life under conditions of climate change and concludes that socio-economic determinants of access to and management of open space are likely to be of critical significance in delivering adaptation options, which are accessible to all and meet objectives of social justice.Whereas viticulture has been historically evolved in an empiric way, we are today confronted with a viticulture characterized more and more by technicality. The knowledge being increasingly complex and closer to interpreting the reality, viticultural zoning advances to answer more and more profound questions. Geographical indicators for grapes - soil, climate, adaptation of the grape varieties are one of the major contributions of viticultural zoning, which offers a whole range of practical applications. It is growing in importance, be it on account of the technical resources which are becoming more efficient and which make possible the development of an increasingly integrated, consistent and useful zoning, be it on account of a more and more globalized market. The article points out the importance of geographical indicators for table grape producing and for winegrowing regions. It deals with viticultural production, quality and typicity of the products with regards to their organoleptic characteristics. Some aspects of the contribution of zoning are detailed: site selection, the agroviticultural and enological management, the delimitation of the viticultural territories and zoning of regions with viticultural potential, including particularities of grape production in tropical regions. Methodologies for zoning studies are presented, such as the Geoviticulture Multicriteria Climatic Classification System; moreover, the text shows the indirect contributions regarding the table grape and wine market, the sustainable territory development and the possibility of the establishment of Geographical Indications in some cases. A new concept for some tropical wines is presented: the just-in-time quality.Mediterranean island case studies of Calvia, Mallorca, and Malta are used to examine how sustainable tourism policies do, do not, and should factor in climate change in order to reduce the vulnerabilities of the tourism sector to climate change. Data were collected from key actors responsible for policy implementation as well as tourism policy and planning documents from Malta's and Calvia's tourism industries. Tourism in both sites has significant vulnerabilities to climate change, but climate change was rarely stated as being an important tourism issue. That was the case even when policies include measures that contribute to climate change adaptation, although those policies were implemented for reasons other than climate change. Six policy suggestions are made for adapting to climate change in the case studies' tourism industries: Enacting effective control systems to ensure that policies are implemented and monitored; improving education and awareness on climate change and its potential impacts; placing sustainable tourism and climate change within broader policy frameworks; implementing economic incentives to encourage adjustment strategies; using accountable, flexible, and participatory approaches for addressing climate change in sustainable tourism policies; and filling in policy gaps while further integrating policies. Placing climate change into wider contexts reveals that some aspects of tourism might not be sustainable for small islands. Climate change should therefore be one dimension among many topics within sustainable tourism policies. That approach would provide impetus and support for pursuing strategies that should also be implemented for reasons other than climate change. One approach in climate-change policy is to set normative long-term targets first and then infer the implied emissions pathways. An important example of a normative target is to limit the global-mean temperature change to a certain maximum. In general, reported cost estimates for limiting global warming often rise rapidly, even exponentially, as the scale of emission reductions from a reference level increases. This rapid rise may suggest that more ambitious policies may be prohibitively expensive. Here, we propose a probabilistic perspective, focused on the relationship between mitigation costs and the likelihood of achieving a climate target. We investigate the qualitative, functional relationship between the likelihood of achieving a normative target and the costs of climate-change mitigation. In contrast to the example of exponentially rising costs for lowering concentration levels, we show that the mitigation costs rise proportionally to the likelihood of meeting a temperature target, across a range of concentration levels. In economic terms investing in climate mitigation to increase the probability of achieving climate targets yields "constant returns to scale,'' because of a counterbalancing rapid rise in the probabilities of meeting a temperature target as concentration is lowered.Previous studies have concluded that boreal forests warm the climate because the cooling from storage of carbon in vegetation and soils is cancelled out by the warming due to the absorption of the Sun's heat by the dark forest canopy. However, these studies ignored the impacts of forests on atmospheric aerosol. We use a global atmospheric model to show that, through emission of organic vapours and the resulting condensational growth of newly formed particles, boreal forests double regional cloud condensation nuclei concentrations (from approx. 100 to approx. 200 cm(-3)). Using a simple radiative model, we estimate that the resulting change in cloud albedo causes a radiative forcing of between -1.8 and -6.7 W m(-2) of forest. This forcing may be sufficiently large to result in boreal forests having an overall cooling impact on climate. We propose that the combination of climate forcings related to boreal forests may result in an important global homeostasis. In cold climatic conditions, the snow-vegetation albedo effect dominates and boreal forests warm the climate, whereas in warmer climates they may emit sufficiently large amounts of organic vapour modifying cloud albedo and acting to cool climate.Energy is used in dwellings to provide four services: space heating, hot water, lighting and to power appliances. This paper describes how the usage of energy in a UK home results from a complex interaction between built form, location, energy-using equipment, occupants and the affordability of fuel. Current models with standard occupancy predict that energy use will be strongly related to size and built form, but surveys of real homes show only weak correlations, across all types of dwelling. Recent research has given us insights into occupancy factors including preferred comfort, 'take-back' from thermal efficiency improvements, and patterns of electricity use. Space heating is on a downward trend and is low in new dwellings. Energy use for lights and appliances, which is only weakly related to built form, is increasing. Strong legislation, combined with low-carbon technologies, will be needed to counteract this trend. Future challenges discussed include increases in real energy prices and climate change mitigation efforts, which are likely to improve the existing stock. Challenging targets are now in place for new housing to move towards low or zero energy and carbon standards. In the longer term, dwellings will demand less energy. Alternatives to gas for space heating will be increasingly common, including ground source heat and local combined heat and power (CHP) from biomass, while electricity could come from a more decarbonised electricity system. However, these improvements must be set alongside a demand for many new homes, demographic trends towards smaller households, and a more holistic approach to overall carbon use including personal transport. (C) 2008 Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, forests in the northern hemisphere are a sink for carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, partly due to changes in forest management practice and intensity. Parties of the Kyoto Protocol had the option to elect to account for direct human-induced carbon (C) sources and sinks from land management activities since 1990. The effect of age-class structure of a forest landscape resulting from past practices and disturbances before the reference year 1990 should be excluded, but methods for "factoring out" the effects of this age-class legacy on carbon emissions and removals are lacking. The legacy effect can be strong and can even overwhelm effects of post-1990 management. It therefore needs to be "factored out", i.e., removed from the direct human-induced post-1990 effects. In this study we examine how the contributions to forest biomass carbon stock changes of (1) past (pre-1990) disturbances and harvest and (2) recent (post-1990) changes in forest management can be differentiated in present and future observable carbon dynamics in managed forest ecosystems. We also calculate the consequences of different accounting rules for the magnitude and direction of accountable C stock changes in European countries in the period 2013-2017. Different accounting approaches are compared in terms of applicability and their ability to provide incentives for management changes to increase carbon sinks and reduce carbon sources. We demonstrate implications of the various ways of accounting for a sample of European countries with different initial age-class structures. The current forest age-class distribution in countries determines whether and how many credits can be created by the various accounting approaches. We suggest an approach that includes a dynamic, forward-looking baseline as reference and list options to define such a baseline. Accounting of recent management change against such a baseline factors out the contribution of the legacy effect to accounting results and only rewards the effect of recent changes in forest management practices in support of climate change mitigation. We demonstrate that relatively simple, state-of-the-art forest models can factor out effects of past practices and past disturbances on present and future carbon stock changes. Factoring out of past practice effects is thus technically feasible but the numerical results are highly dependent on the choice of baseline which will be subject to negotiation. It is possible, however, to select a dynamic baseline thatrepresents "business-as-usual", and to isolate and account for only the changes in management. Changes in accounting rules will always be advantageous for some countries and disadvantageous for others, but using a dynamic "business-as-usual" baseline effectively removes the legacy of pre-1990 age-class effects, and thus overcomes one of the acknowledged shortcomings of the current accounting approach. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article provides a first step towards a better theoretical and empirical knowledge of the emerging arena of transnational climate governance. The need for such a re-conceptualization emerges from the increasing relevance of non-state and transnational approaches towards climate change mitigation at a time when the intergovernmental negotiation process has to overcome substantial stalemate and the international arena becomes increasingly fragmented. Based on a brief discussion of the increasing trend towards transnationalization and functional segmentation of the global climate governance arena, we argue that a remapping of climate governance is necessary and needs to take into account different spheres of authority beyond the public and international. Hence, we provide a brief analysis of how the public/private divide has been conceptualized in Political Science and International Relations. Subsequently, we analyse the emerging transnational climate governance arena. Analytically, we distinguish between different manifestations of transnational climate governance on a continuum ranging from delegated and shared public-private authority to fully non-state and private responses to the climate problem. We suggest that our remapping exercise presented in this article can be a useful starting point for future research on the role and relevance of transnational approaches to the global climate crisis.This article addresses possible approaches to solving the problem of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). It considers some of the core science on climate change, leading to a discussion of market failure, government failure and externalities. The European Union's emissions trading scheme (ETS) is cited as an example of a failure in an environment of both market failure and government failure. The discussion then focuses on carbon costing and pricing, the design features of a carbon tax and the main advantages of a carbon tax over an ETS. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector may be the most difficult aspect of climate change mitigation. We suggest that carbon neutral hydrocarbons (CNHCs) offer an alternative pathway for deep emission cuts that complement the use of decarbonized energy carriers. Such fuels are synthesized from atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon neutral hydrogen. The result is a liquid fuel compatible with the existing transportation infrastructure and therefore capable of a gradual deployment with minimum supply disruption. Capturing the atmospheric CO2 can be accomplished using biomass or industrial methods referred to as air capture. The viability of biomass fuels is strongly dependent on the environmental impacts of biomass production. Strong constraints on land use may favour the use of air capture. We conclude that CNHCs may be a viable alternative to hydrogen or conventional biofuels and warrant a comparable level of research effort and support.The oceans sequester carbon from the atmosphere partly as a result of biological productivity. Over much of the ocean surface, this productivity is limited by essential nutrients and we discuss whether it is likely that sequestration can be enhanced by supplying limiting nutrients. Various methods of supply have been suggested and we discuss the efficacy of each and the potential side effects that may develop as a result. Our conclusion is that these methods have the potential to enhance sequestration but that the current level of knowledge from the observations and modelling carried out to date does not provide a sound foundation on which to make clear predictions or recommendations. For ocean fertilization to become a viable option to sequester CO2, we need more extensive and targeted fieldwork and better mathematical models of ocean biogeochemical processes. Models are needed both to interpret field observations and to make reliable predictions about the side effects of large-scale fertilization. They would also be an essential tool with which to verify that sequestration has effectively taken place. There is considerable urgency to address climate change mitigation and this demands that new fieldwork plans are developed rapidly. In contrast to previous experiments, these must focus on the specific objective which is to assess the possibilities of CO2 sequestration through fertilization.Mitigating global climate change requires not only government action but also cooperation from consumers. Population-based, cross-sectional surveys were conducted among 1202 respondents in Portland OR and Houston TX between June and September 2007 regarding awareness, concern, and behavior change related to climate change. The data were subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Awareness about climate change is virtually universal (98% in Portland and 92% in Houston) with the vast majority reporting some level of concern (90% in Portland and 82% in Houston). A multivariate analysis revealed significant predictors of behavior change: individuals with heightened concern about climate change (p < 0.001); respondents with higher level of education (p = 0.03); younger compared with older individuals (p < 0.001); and Portlanders more likely to change behavior compared with Houstonians (p < 0.001). Of those who changed behavior, 43% reported having reduced their energy usage at home, 39% had reduced gasoline consumption, and 26% engaged in other behaviors, largely recycling. Qualitative data indicate a number of cognitive, behavioral, and structural obstacles to voluntary mitigation. Although consumers are interested in global climate change-mitigation strategies and willing to act accordingly, considerable impediments remain. Government policy must eliminate economic, structural, and social barriers to change and advance accessible and economical alternatives. Individual-level mitigation can be a policy option under favorable contextual conditions, as these results indicate, but must be accompanied by mitigation efforts from industry, commerce, and government.The most severe consequences of climate change will accrue to the poorest people in the poorest countries, despite their own negligible contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. In recent years, global health efforts in those same countries have grown dramatically. However, the emerging scientific consensus about climate change has not yet had much influence on the routine practice and strategies of global health. We review here the anticipated types and global distribution of health impacts of climate change, discuss relevant aspects of current global interventions for health in low-income countries, and consider potential elements of a framework for appropriately and efficiently mainstreaming global climate change-mitigation and -adaptation strategies into the ongoing enterprise of global health. We propose a collaborative learning initiative involving four areas: (1) increased awareness among current global health practitioners of climate change and its potential impacts for the most disadvantaged, (2) strengthening of the evidence base, (3) incorporation now of climate change-mitigation and -adaptation concerns into design of ongoing global health programs, and (4) alignment of current global health program targets and methods with larger frameworks for climate change and sustainable development. The great vulnerability to climate change of populations reached by current global health efforts should prompt all concerned with global health to take a leading role in advocating for climate change mitigation in their own countries.The article deals with indicators framework to monitor implementation of the main EU (European Union) directives and other policy documents targeting sustainable energy development. The main EU directives which have impact on sustainable energy development are directives promoting energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources, directives implementing greenhouse gas mitigation and atmospheric pollution reduction policies and other policy documents and strategies targeting energy sector. Promotion of use of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency improvements are among priorities of EU energy policy because the use of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency improvements has positive impact on energy security and climate change mitigation. The framework of indicators can be developed to establish the main targets set by EU energy and environmental policies allowing to connect indicators via chain of mutual impacts and to define policies and measures necessary to achieve established targets based on assessment of their impact on the targeted indicators representing sustainable energy development aims. The article discusses the application of indicators framework for EU sustainable energy policy analysis and presents the case study of this policy tool application for Baltic States. The article also discusses the use of biomass in Baltic States and future considerations in this field. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedIt is common practice to use changes in fluid transmission velocity to determine whether a fluid is in gas or liquid phase during pore pressure changes, but transmission amplitude also changes when fluid phase changes during pore pressure reduction. We used two sizes of glass beads in a low-pressure cell to simulate porous rock and conducted experiments with pore spaces filled with distilled water, and with distilled water in which 0.3 mol of CO2 was dissolved. Ultrasonic transmission tests above and below bubble point showed that transmission frequencies and amplitudes were higher for distilled water and the smaller beads. There was a greater reduction in frequencies and amplitudes when gas was liberated by scattering from the small gas bubbles associated with the small beads. The water-CO2 mixture produced higher transmission amplitudes than distilled wateralone, which is consistent with increasing fluid density in the pores. Although Henry's law was appropriate for predicting the onset of bubbles, the ultrasonic response sensed bubble nucleation before the pressure predicted by Henry's law was reached. We also found that transmission amplitudes and frequencies changed more quickly than transmission velocity, which changed little by comparison. Our study suggests that for time-lapse monitoring of CO2 sequestration operations, changes of transmission amplitude and frequency may provide a quantitative assessment of the amount of dissolved CO2 in connate water. Observations of ultrasonic transmission amplitude and frequency are more important in this regard than velocity observations. This knowledge can be applied where CO2 migrates or changes phase after sequestration, be it at depth, or as a result of near-surface leakage. Walk-away VSP data can provide a suitable monitoring tool for this purpose.Sequestration/enhanced oil recovery (EOR) petroleum reservoirs have relatively thin injection intervals with multiple fluid components (oil, hydrocarbon gas, brine, and carbon dioxide, or CO2), whereas brine formations usually have much thicker injection intervals and only two components (brine and CO2). Coal formations undergoing methane extraction tend to be thin (3-10 m) but shallow compared to either EOR or brine formations. Injecting CO2 into an oil reservoir decreases the bulk density in the reservoir. The spatial pattern of the change in the vertical component of gravity (G(z)) is correlated directly with the net change in reservoir density. Furthermore, time-lapse changes in the borehole G(z) clearly identify the vertical section of the reservoir where fluid saturations are changing. The CO2-brine front, on the order of 1 km within a 20-m-thick brine formation at 1900-m depth with 30% CO2 and 70% brine saturations, respectively, produced a -10-mu Gal surface gravity anomaly. Such an anomaly would be detectable in the field. The amount of CO2 in a coal-bed methane scenario did not produce a large enough surface gravity response; however, we would expect that for an industrial-size injection, the surface gravity response would be measurable. Gravity inversions in all three scenarios illustrate that the general position of density changes caused by CO2 can be recovered but not the absolute value of the change. Analysis of the spatial resolution and detectability limits shows that gravity measurements could, under certain circumstances, be used as a lower-cost alternative to seismic measurements.This paper delivers a conceptual framework for the ecological functioning and biodiversity patterns of lakes that is based on the floodpulse concept (FPC). The specific characteristics of rivers and lakes considering water-level fluctuations are compared, with respect to catchment linkages, temporal patterns, and hydraulic forces of flooding and drawdown. The influences of floodpulses on element cycles, biodiversity, and adaptations of lake biota are analyzed, and the importance of multi-annual flooding cycles is highlighted. The degree by which these water-level fluctuations influence lake ecosystems strongly depends on lake morphology, where shallow lakes or those with large shallow margins are the most sensitive. Although floodpulses play a major role for ecosystem services such as lake management and climate change mitigation schemes, this issue is only scarcely dealt with. Tenets of the extended FPC for lakes are formulated in order to overcome this problem.We consider a general equilibrium climate change model with two endogenous R&D sectors. First, we characterize the set of decentralized equilibria: to each vector of public tools - a carbon tax and a subsidy to each R&D sector - is associated a particular equilibrium. Second, we compute the optimal tools. Third, we perform various second-best analysis by imposing some constraints on one or several policy. The main results of the paper are the following: i) both a carbon tax and a green research subsidy contribute to the climate change mitigation; ii) R&D subsidies have a large impact on the consumption, and then on the social welfare, as compared with the carbon tax used alone; iii) those subsidies allow to spare the earlier generations who are, on the other hand, penalized by a carbon tax.The study is dedicated to the question, whether and if how, added value through the use of wood can be quantified. After a brief discussion of problems connected with this question (substitutions oil intermediate and finale consumption level, availability of "idle" complementary factors and existence of the respective demand) three necessary prerequisites have been derived. A quantification of the potential added value induced by the removal of one unit of roundwood must be restricted to those branches which (1) have access to a growing timber market (high export shave), (2) produce commodities with a relative high timber share (raw-, semi-finished wood products) and (3) are highly dependent on domestic timber availability (low import share of roundwood, wood products and pulp and paper). In Germany, forestry, the manufacturers of wood products and the manufacturers of pulp and paper comply with these criteria and are therefore further analysed. A partly closed input-output-model (type2) has been applied which allows to analyse the relationship between an additional foreign demand for wood products and pulp and paper oil the one hand and the production of roundwood oil the other hand. The model is calculated with the 2004 input-output-data of the Federal Statistical Office. Processing of one unit roundwood to wood manufactures for export creates a ten times higher added value than the roundwood value. In the case of processing the unit round wood to Pulp and paper the added value call rise up to almost 30 times of the round wood value. Due to the minor significance of timber based energy related to total energy production and consumption in Germany, even the recent input-output-tables show no relationship between the production of wood and the energy sector. For this reason the analysis Could not be extended to the effects on the added value in the energy sector. Finally, a comprehensive economic analysis would require consideration of external effects like climate change mitigation. However, data availability confines the Study to the presented results.Several economic reviews demonstrate the substantial costs related to climate change and consequently call for early action. These reviews, however, have been limited to measuring 'objective' risks and expected material damage related to climate change. The 'subjective' perceived risk of climate change and society's willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid these risks are expected to provide an important additional motivation for direct action. We investigate whether and why air travel passengers-an increasingly important source of greenhouse gas emissions-are supportive of measures that increase the cost of their travel based on the polluter pays principle and compensate the damage caused by their flight. Compared to the results of the few previous studies that have elicited WTP estimates for climate policy more generally, our results appear to be at the lower end of the scale, while a comparison to estimates of the social cost of carbon shows that the average WTP estimate in this study is close to the estimated marginal damage cost. Although significant differences are found between travellers from Europe, North America, Asia and the rest of the world, we show that there exists a substantial demand for climate change mitigation action. The positive risk premium over and above the expected property damage cost assessments should be accounted for more explicitly in economic reviews as it will add to the burden of proof of direct action. Measurements of passenger WTP will help policy makers to design effective financial instruments aimed at discouraging climate-unfriendly travel activities as well as to generate funds for the measures directed at climate change mitigation and adaptation. Based on stated WTP by travellers to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, funds in the order of magnitude of (sic)23 billion could be generated annually to finance climate change mitigation activities.Discerning the general public's support of climate change policies is a significant part of understanding the political and social dynamics of mitigating climate change. National level surveys are a useful tool for furthering this understanding but present multiple challenges, two of which are addressed in this paper. The first challenge is that the U.S. public's limited knowledge of climate change issues requires that information is provided in the survey, and that the content of this information is thought to be critical in eliciting accurate responses. Second, the use of national surveys may mask regional and state differences that result from the distribution of predicted climate change impacts and varying social contexts. We explore these issues by assessing the impacts of (a) the provision of information on climate change impacts at different scales (national and regional) and (b) the respondent's state of residence (Michigan or Virginia) on climate change policy support. We found a modest relationship between state of residence and policy support, with Michigan residents less likely to support climate change mitigation policies than residents of Virginia. The provision of information on the regional versus national level of predicted impacts of climate change did not influence climate change policy support.Policies for climate mitigation on land rarely acknowledge biophysical factors, such as reflectivity, evaporation, and surface roughness. Yet such factors can alter temperatures much more than carbon sequestration does, and often in a conflicting way. We outline a framework for examining biophysical factors in mitigation policies and provide some best-practice recommendations based on that framework. Tropical projects-avoided deforestation, forest restoration, and afforestation-provide the greatest climate value, because carbon storage and biophysics align to cool the Earth. In contrast, the climate benefits of carbon storage are often counteracted in boreal and other snow-covered regions, where darker trees trap more heat than snow does. Managers can increase the climate benefit of some forest projects by using more reflective and deciduous species and through urban forestry projects that reduce energy use. Ignoring biophysical interactions could result in millions of dollars being invested in some mitigation projects that provide little climate benefit or, worse, are counter-productive.Using a sample of 1,651 US households, we explore some determinants of willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation programs. Our mail survey had a relatively low response rate, so we first use several additional data sources to build a detailed sample selection model. This model uses features of the survey instrument, measures of geographic vulnerability to climate change, seasonality, the political mix in the county, attributes of the address or addressee, and a set of factor scores from an extensive factor analysis of all census tracts in the US. We estimate this model jointly with a model to explain climate policy preferences as a function of the domestic and international distribution of policy costs as well as the climate change impacts that each respondent believes will occur under a policy of business-as-usual. Despite statistically significant patterns of nonresponse, selectivity effects are minimal in this case. WTP for climate change mitigation is greater when the domestic incidence of mitigation costs is borne mostly through higher energy taxes. It is also greater when costs are understood to be shared internationally with other groups of countries, rather than being borne mostly by a country group including the US. People are generally more willing to pay for climate change mitigation if they believe that the harm caused by climate change impacts will be substantial, rather than just moderate.For clean utilization of coal, enhanced gasification by in situ CO2 capture has the advantage that hydrogen production efficiency is increased while no energy is required for CO2 separation. The unmixed fuel process uses a sorbent material as CO2 carrier and consists of three coupled reactors: a coal gasifier where CO2 is captured generating a H-2-rich gas that can be utilized in fuel cells, a sorbent regenerator where CO2 is released by sorbent calcination and it is ready for capture and a reactor to oxidize the oxygen transfer material which produces a high temperature/pressure vitiated air. This technology has the potential to eliminate the need for the air separation unit using an oxygen transfer material. Reactors' temperatures range from 750 degrees C to 1550 degrees C and the process operates at pressure around 7.0 bar. This paper presents a global thermodynamic model of the fuel processing concept for hydrogen production and CO2 capture combined with fuel and residual heat usage. Hydrogen is directly fed to a solid oxide fuel cell and exhaust streams are used in a gas turbine expander and in a heat recovery steam generator. This paper analyzes the influence of steam to carbon ratio in gasifier and regeneration reactor, pressure of the system, temperature for oxygen transfer material oxidation, purge percentage in calciner, average sorbent activity and oxidant utilization in fuel cell. Electrical efficiency up to 73% is reached under optimal conditions and CO2 capture efficiencies near 96% ensure a good performance for GHG's climate change mitigation targets. (C) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The establishment of deep-rooted perennial species and their processing for biomass-based products such as renewable energy can have benefits for both local and global scale environmental objectives. In this study, we assess the potential economic viability of biomass production in the South Australian River Murray Corridor and quantify the resultant benefits for local and global scale environmental objectives. We model the spatial distribution of economically viable biomass production in a Geographic Information System and quantify the model sensitivity and uncertainty using Monte Carlo analysis. The total potentially viable area for biomass production under the Most Likely Scenario is 360,728 ha (57.7% of the dryland agricultural area), producing over 3 million tonnes of green biomass per annum, with a total Net Present Value over 100 years of A$ 88 million. The salinity in the River Murray could be reduced by 2.65 EC (mu S/cm) over a 100-year timeframe, and over 96,000 ha of land with high wind erosion potential could be stabilised over a much shorter period. With sufficient generating capacity, our Most Likely Scenario suggests that economically viable biomass production could reduce carbon emissions by over 1.7 million tonnes per annum. through the production of renewable energy and a reduced reliance on coal-based electricity generation. Our analyses suggest that biomass production is a potentially viable alternative agricultural system that can have substantial local scale environmental benefits with complimentary global scale benefits for climate change mitigation. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to reduce the risks of climate change requires a major transition in society's energy infrastructure; yet despite a growing sense of urgency, deployment of alternative emerging energy technologies has been slow and uncertain. This paper proposes a systematic, interdisciplinary framework for the integrated analysis of regulatory, legal, political, economic, and social factors that influence energy technology deployment decisions at the state level to enhance awareness of the interconnections and enable improved energy policy and planning and accelerated change in society's energy infrastructure. This framework, Socio-Political Evaluation of Energy Deployment, (SPEED), integrates analysis of laws, regulations, institutions and policy actors as well as varying regional perceptions and levels of awareness about the risks and benefits of emerging energy technologies to facilitate improved understanding of the complex interconnected components of state energy systems. While this framework has been developed with U.S. states as a model, the SPEED framework is generalizable to other countries with different sub-national structures. We present three research methods that could be applied within the SPEED framework that could be particularly helpful in understanding the integrated socio-political influences on energy technology deployment: (1) policy review and analysis, (2) media analysis, and (3) focus groups and structured interviews with key stakeholders. By integrating the fields of technology diffusion, environmental policy, comparative analysis' of states, and risk perception, future empirical research conducted within this SPEED framework will improve understanding of the interconnected socio-political influences on energy technology deployment to enable energy modelers, policy-makers, energy professionals, state planners and other stakeholders to develop and implement more effective strategies to accelerate the deployment of emerging energy technologies. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Current economic instruments aimed at climate change mitigation focus on CO2 emissions only, but the Kyoto Protocol refers to other greenhouse gases (GHG) as well as CO2. These are CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6. Taxation of multiple greenhouse gases improves the cost-effectiveness of climate change mitigation. It is not yet clear, however, what the effect is of multigas taxation on the distribution of the tax burden across income groups. This paper examines and compares distributional effects of a CO2 tax and a comprehensive tax that covers all six GHG of the Kyoto Protocol. The study concentrates on the Netherlands in the year 2000. We established tax rates on the basis of marginal abatement cost curves and the Dutch policy target. The distributional effects have been determined by means of environmentally extended input-output analysis and data on consumer expenditures. our results show that taxation of multiple GHG improves not only the cost-effectiveness of climate change mitigation, but also distributes the tax burden more equally across income groups as compared to a CO2 tax. These findings are relevant for the debate on the role of non-CO2 GHG in climate change mitigation. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Emissions scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based on detailed energy system models in which demographics, technology and economics are used to generate projections of future world energy consumption, and therefore, of greenhouse gas emissions. We Propose in this paper that it is useful to look at a qualitative model of the energy system, backed by data from short- and medium-term trends, to gain a sense of carbon emission bounds, Here we look at what may be considered a lower bound for 21st century emissions given two assumptions: first, that extractable fossil-fuel resources follow the trends assumed by "peak oil" adherents, and second, that no climate mitigation policies are put in place to limit emissions. If resources, and more importantly, extraction rates, of fossil fuels are more limited than posited in full energy-system models, a supply-driven emissions scenario results; however, we show that even in this "peak fossil-fuel" limit, carbon emissions are high enough to surpass 550 ppm or 2 degrees C climate protection guardrails. Some indicators are presented that the scenario presented here should not be disregarded. and comparisons are made to the outputs of emission scenarios used for the IPCC reports. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extensive information on the greenhouse impacts of various human actions is important in developing effective climate change mitigation strategies. The greenhouse impacts of combustible fuels consist not only of combustion emissions but also of emissions from the fuel production chain and possible effects on the ecosystem carbon storages. It is important to be able to assess the combined, total effect of these different emissions and to express the results in a comprehensive way. In this study, a new concept called relative radiative forcing commitment (RRFC) is presented and applied to depict the greenhouse impact of some combustible fuels currently used in Finland. RRFC is a ratio that accounts for the energy absorbed in the Earth system due to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations (production and combustion of fuel) compared to the energy released in the combustion of fuel. RRFC can also be expressed as a function of time in order to give a dynamic cumulative picture on the caused effect. Varying time horizons can be studied separately, as is the case when studying the effects of different climate policies on varying time scales. The RRFC for coal for 100 years is about 170, which means that in 100 years 170 times more energy is absorbed in the atmosphere due to the emissions of coal combustion activity than is released in combustion itself. RRFC values of the other studied fuel production chains varied from about 30 (forest residues fuel) to 190 (peat fuel) for the 100-year study period. The length of the studied time horizon had an impact on the RRFC values and, to some extent, on the relative positions of various fuels.Global climate change mitigation requires the fossil fuel consumption substantially reduced. Space heating is an energy-consuming sector Despite the fact that the thermal efficiency of current space heating systems has achieved a value higher than 85%, corresponding to lower than 40 kg c.e./G.J, there is still a big potential for energy conservation. In order to realize the full potential, investigations of heating systems should appeal to reversibility/exergy analysis made on total energy concept basis. This paper starts with an introduction of the concept "reversible mode. of heating, leading the readers think of space heating in terms of reversibility. Right after, a systematic reversibility analysis on a "mine to home" basis is conducted to reveal the impact of any irreversibility of all subsystems or devices involved in the total energy system of heating on the fuel/monetary specific consumption of unit end-use heat. The paper points out that although combined heat and power (CHP) and electrically driven heat pump are both of "reversible mode, the former is far more favorable in terms of energy conservation. The recently ascent decentralized energy system provides the best circumstances for CHP implementation. The demand-side improvement is a topic of most importance but frequently neglected. This study reveals that. if properly engineered, this improvement together with adopting a direct type of heat grid might lower the fuel specific consumption of end-use heat of CHP to a level as low as 13-9 kg c.e./GJ.Wetland management in the United States has never been as challenging as in today's highly modified landscape. Initially, wetland science and management emerged as professions in response to widespread conversion of wetlands to other uses and concerns over negative impacts on wildlife populations, especially migratory birds. Consequently, wetland management was focused on wildlife, and the initial management technique was simply to protect wetlands. However, extensive conversion of lands for agricultural and urban expansion over the past 60 years has modified ecosystem processes at the landscape scale sufficiently to compromise wetland management activities on adjacent lands dedicated to conservation. Moreover, society now expects a broad suite of ecosystem services to be delivered. As a result, many previously used wetland management techniques are no longer appropriate because they do not take into account influences of adjacent land uses or other ecosystem services, such as ground-water recharge. Other early management approaches may have been ineffective because they were based on an incomplete understanding of wetland processes or social influences. Meanwhile, wetland losses continued, as well as loss of services provided by the remaining managed wetlands. Regulation starting in the 1970s and subsequent research attention on wetland functioning has led to new knowledge and a broader understanding of wetland processes and recognition of the full suite of services (e.g., water storage, water quality improvement, aquifer maintenance, climate mitigation). To be effective in today's highly modified landscape, knowledge of social choices, political influences, and dynamic wetland processes is required to meet wetland management objectives for a range of ecosystem services. We argue that adopting a process-based perspective is critical to develop strategies to optimize a suite of wetland services, including providing traditional wildlife habitat.Estimates of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions are needed to address a variety of climate-change mitigation concerns over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales, We compared two data sets that report power-plant CO2 emissions in the conterminous U.S. for 2004, the most recent year reported in both data sets. The data sets were obtained from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Environmental Protection Agency's eGRID database. Conterminous U.S. total emissions computed from the data sets differed by 3.5% for total plant emissions (electricity plus useful thermal output) and 2.3% for electricity generation only. These differences are well within previous estimates of uncertainty in annual U.S. fossil-fuel emissions. However, the corresponding average absolute differences between estimates of emissions from individual power plants were much larger, 16.9% and 25.3%, respectively. By statistical analysis, we identified several potential sources of differences between EIA and eGRID estimates for individual plants. Estimates that are based partly or entirely on monitoring of stack gases (reported by eGRID only) differed significantly from estimates based on fuel consumption (as reported by EIA). Differences in accounting methods appear to explain differences in estimates for emissions from electricity generation from combined heat and power plants, and for total and electricity generation emissions from plants that burn nonconventional fuels (e.g., biomass). Our analysis suggests the need for care in utilizing emissions data from individual power plants, and the need for transparency in documenting the accounting and monitoring methods used to estimate emissions.Ecosystems influence climate through multiple pathways, primarily by changing the energy, water, and greenhouse-gas balance of the atmosphere. Consequently, efforts to mitigate climate change through modification of one pathway, as with carbon in the Kyoto Protocol, only partially address the issue of ecosystem-climate interactions. For example, the cooling of climate that results from carbon sequestration by plants may be partially offset by reduced land albedo, which increases solar energy absorption and warms the climate. The relative importance of these effects varies with spatial scale and latitude. We suggest that consideration of multiple interactions and feedbacks could lead to novel, potentially useful climate-mitigation strategies, including greenhouse-gas reductions primarily in industrialized nations, reduced desertification in and zones, and reduced deforestation in the tropics. Each of these strategies has additional ecological and societal benefits. Assessing the effectiveness of these strategies requires a more quantitative understanding of the interactions among feedback processes, their consequences at local and global scales, and the teleconnections that link changes occurring in different regions.Sustainable energy supply, climate change and poverty are three critical, interrelated global problems that require urgent action, including substantial investment. We examine the feasibility of using an international carbon tax to finance an integrated investment programme in sustainable energy technology (including climate change mitigation) and the reduction of poverty (including climate change adaptation). A simple evaluation of responsibility for anthropogenic climate change based on cumulative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to stabilisation per capita (using current populations) suggests that currently India and China remain under-spent by 99% and 78% for stringent, 445-490 ppm CO2-equivalent (CO2-eq) targets, respectively, whilst the USA and EC are already overspent for targets of 710-855 and 545-590 ppm CO2-eq, respectively. It would therefore appear equitable to charge the tax only in developed nations. The potential advantages and disadvantages of an integrated investment programme and available policy instruments for a tax of this type are discussed, drawing on relevant literature. Although a cost-benefit analysis using suitable simulations that include revenue recycling is required, revenues estimated from documented carbon tax simulations appear sufficient to meet a significant proportion of the estimated investment requirement. With increasing public awareness and an integrated campaign, obtaining agreement for this type of ambitious international measures could soon become realistic. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is more woodland in Britain now than for many centuries and considering many international climate change mitigation policies, woodland cover, both in Britain and internationally, is being promoted. However, neither the management of existing woodlands nor their expansion should be at the expense of important archaeological evidence. Due to the large number of known archaeological sites, the large areas of land with uninvestigated archaeological potential and the expanding woodland cover, suitable mitigation strategies need to be developed to allow preservation in situ of important sites. An understanding of how woodland soils and the buried archaeological resource interact is, therefore, essential. This paper utilises ongoing environmental research into the mineral weathering rates in forest soils and considers its application to artefact preservation. The study concludes that soil water pH, its movement, and the saturation of dissolved ions in the soil solution are major factors determining both mineral and artefact longevity. A simple guide to artefact longevity based on these properties is proposed and a geochemical model for predicting loss is tested. These tools could be applied to any soil or individual horizon irrespective of land-use. Crown Copyright (c) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies can provide ancillary benefits in terms of short-term improvements in air quality and associated health benefits. Several studies have analyzed the ancillary impacts of GHG policies for a variety of locations, pollutants, and policies. In this paper we review the existing evidence on ancillary health benefits relating to air pollution from various GHG strategies and provide a framework for such analysis. Methods: We evaluate techniques used in different stages of such research for estimation of: (1) changes in air pollutant concentrations; (2) avoided adverse health endpoints; and (3) economic valuation of health consequences. The limitations and merits of various methods are examined. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for ancillary benefits analysis and related research gaps in the relevant disciplines. Results: We found that to date most assessments have focused their analysis more heavily on one aspect of the framework (e. g., economic analysis). While a wide range of methods was applied to various policies and regions, results from multiple studies provide strong evidence that the short-term public health and economic benefits of ancillary benefits related to GHG mitigation strategies are substantial. Further, results of these analyses are likely to be underestimates because there are a number of important unquantified health and economic endpoints. Conclusion: Remaining challenges include integrating the understanding of the relative toxicity of particulate matter by components or sources, developing better estimates of public health and environmental impacts on selected sub-populations, and devising new methods for evaluating heretofore unquantified and non-monetized benefits.Developing a method for secure sequestration of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in geological formations is one of our most pressing global scientific problems. Injection into deep-sea basalt formations provides unique and significant advantages over other potential geological storage options, including (i) vast reservoir capacities sufficient to accommodate centuries-long U.S. production of fossil fuel CO(2) at locations within pipeline distances to populated areas and CO(2) sources along the U.S. west coast; (ii) sufficiently closed water-rock circulation pathways for the chemical reaction of CO(2) with basalt to produce stable and nontoxic (Ca(2+), Mg(2+), Fe(2+))CO(3) infilling minerals, and (iii) significant risk reduction for post-injection leakage by geological, gravitational, and hydrate-trapping mechanisms. CO(2) sequestration in established sediment-covered basalt aquifers on the Juan de Fuca plate offer promising locations to securely accommodate more than a century of future U.S. emissions, warranting energized scientific research, technological assessment, and economic evaluation to establish a viable pilot injection program in the future.This study examines the factors motivating local jurisdictions in the United States (U.S.) to voluntarily adopt policies that mitigate the anthropogenic sources of climate change when there are powerful political and economic incentives to do otherwise. Specifically, we explain adoption of the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) program at the county level with indicators of climate change risk, climate stress, and opportunity for climate policy action. Statistical and spatial results indicate that counties with high risk, low stress, and high opportunity characteristics associated with climate change are significantly more likely to join the CCP campaign. Results also show that the odds of a locality joining the CCP are predictable by the landscape characteristics of spatial neighbors. Identifying a profile for likely adoption of climate change mitigation strategies can help decision makers effectively target local jurisdictions for recruitment into the CCP and similar programs in the future. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The article aims to evaluate the potential role of nuclear energy in Lithuania under various post-Kyoto climate change mitigation regimes. Seeking to achieve this target the analysis of possible energy sector development scenarios in Lithuania was performed and CO2 emission projections for these scenarios were developed. The analysis of post-Kyoto climate change mitigation architectures was performed and the requirements of these possible climate change mitigation regimes for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction in Lithuania were assessed. Based on these assessments the potential role of new nuclear power in Lithuania was identified under various future climate change mitigation regimes. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Heating and cooling in the industrial, commercial, and domestic sectors constitute around 40-50% of total global final energy demand. A wide range of renewable energy heating and cooling (REHC) technologies exists but they are presently only used to meet around 2-3% of total world demand (excluding from traditional biomass). Several of these technologies are mature, their markets are growing, and their costs relative to conventional heating and cooling systems continue to decline. However, in most countries, policies developed to encourage the wider deployment of renewable electricity generation, transport biofuels and energy efficiency have over-shadowed policies aimed at REHC technology deployment. This paper, based on the findings of the International Energy Agency publication Renewables for Heating and Cooling-Untapped Potential, outlines the present and future markets and compares the costs of providing heating and cooling services from solar, geothermal and biomass resources. It analyses current policies and experiences and makes recommendations to support enhanced market deployment of REHC technologies to provide greater energy supply security and climate change mitigation. If policies as successfully implemented by the leading countries were to be replicated elsewhere (possibly after modification to better suit local conditions), there would be good potential to significantly increase the share of renewable energy in providing heating and cooling services. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A simple climate model is used to calculate the benefit, over time, of geosequestration Of C02 that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere. The analysis is performed relative to two reference cases. The first case is defined by a C02 concentration profile leading to stabilisation at 500 ppm. The second case is defined by 'business -as -usual' (IS92a) C02 emissions until 2100. The benefits are considered in terms of incremental change (per unit of displaced emission) in temperature and its rate of change, concentrating on the period to 2200. An automatic differentiation procedure has proved a convenient way of performing the calculations. The 'temperature benefit' of avoided carbon emission is found to be of order I mK/GtC on the time-scale of decades to centuries. This result is model-specific and would scale in proportion to the climate sensitivity of the model. Because of non-linearities in carbon-climate processes, the results have a small dependence (of order 10-20%) on the future emission scenario with a rather smaller contribution to uncertainty arising from model calibration uncertainties that reflect uncertainties in the 20th century carbon budget. Analysis over the longer term, to 2500, considers the effect of leakage of geologically stored C02 to the atmosphere, and shows that even at 0.1% per annum leakage, about half the climate benefit remains after 500 years. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forests currently absorb billions of tons of CO2 globally every year, an economic subsidy worth hundreds of billions of dollars if an equivalent sink had to be created in other ways. Concerns about the permanency of forest carbon stocks, difficulties in quantifying stock changes, and the threat of environmental and socioeconomic impacts of large-scale reforestation programs have limited the uptake of forestry activities in climate policies. With political will and the involvement of tropical regions, forests can contribute to climate change protection through carbon sequestration as well as offering economic, environmental, and sociocultural benefits. A key opportunity in tropical regions is the reduction of carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation.Within the Kyoto Protocol, the clean development mechanism (CDM) is an instrument intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while assisting developing countries in achieving sustainable development, with the multiple goals of poverty reduction, environmental benefits and cost-effective emission reductions. The CDM allows for a small percentage of emission reduction credits to come from afforestation and reforestation (CDM-AR) projects. We conducted a global analysis of land suitability for CDM-AR carbon 'sink' projects and identified large amounts of land (749 Mha) as biophysically suitable and meeting the CDM-AR eligibility criteria. Forty-six percent of all the suitable areas globally were found in South America and 27% in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Asia, despite the larger land mass, relatively less land was available. In South America and Sub-Saharan Africa the majority of the suitable land was shrubland/grassland or savanna. In Asia the majority of the land was low-intensity agriculture. The sociologic and ecological analyses showed that large amounts of suitable land exhibited relatively low population densities. Many of the most marginal areas were eliminated due to high aridity, which resulted in a generally Gaussian distribution of land productivity classes. If the cap on CDM-AR were raised to compensate for a substantially greater offset of carbon emission through sink projects, this study suggests that it will be increasingly important to consider implications on local to regional food security and local community livelihoods. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The implicit hydrologic dimensions of international efforts to mitigate climate change, specifically potential impacts of the Clean Development Mechanism-Afforestation/Reforestation (CDM-AR) provisions of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) on global, regional and local water cycles, are examined. The global impact of the redistribution of water use driven by agriculture and land use change, of which CDM-AR can be a contributing factor, is a major component of ongoing global change and climate change processes. If converted to forest, large areas deemed suitable for CDM-AR would exhibit increases in actual evapotranspiration (AET) and/or decreases in runoff. Almost 20% (144 Mha) of all suitable land showed little or no impact on runoff and another 28% (210 Mha) showed only moderate impact. About 27% (200 Mha) was in the highest impact class, exhibiting an 80-100% decrease in runoff, and prevalent in drier areas (based on Aridity Index (AI)), the semi-arid tropics, and in conversion from grasslands and subsistence agriculture. Significant impacts on local hydrologic cycles were evident, however large impacts were not predicted at regional or global scale due primarily to the current limit on carbon offset projects under the Kyoto Protocol. Predicted decreases in runoff ranged from 54% in drier areas to less than 15% in more humid areas, based on four case studies located across a range of biophysical conditions and project scenarios in Ecuador and Bolivia. Factors other than climate, e.g. upstream/downstream position, were shown to be important in evaluating off-site impacts. This study demonstrates that it will become increasingly important to consider implications on local to regional water resources, and how the hydrologic dimension of CDM-AR impacts on issues of sustainability, local communities, and food security. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC Fourth Assessment report has highlighted the role of tropical forests in mitigating climate change. Deforestation, especially in tropical countries, contributes about 20 percent to total global greenhouse gas emissions. Development projects geared to reduce the rate of deforestation and forest degradation, and to establish forest plantations will help reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and significantly contribute to mitigating climate change. Three cases of forestry carbon projects underway in the Philippines are presented to illustrate the constraints facing project developers in undertaking these climate change mitigation efforts. Among the key lessons identified are: the difficulty in establishing land eligibility, the need for partners or buyers from industrialized countries to shoulder the transaction costs, and the crucial role of the local communities, including indigenous peoples, in the development effort.The economic benefits of a multi-gas approach to climate change mitigation are clear. However, there is still a debate on how to make the trade-off between different greenhouse gases (GHGs). The trade-off debate has mainly centered on the use of Global Warming Potentials (GWPs), governing the trade-off under the Kyoto Protocol, with results showing that the cost-effective valuation of short-lived GHGs, like methane (CH4), should be lower than its current GWP value if the ultimate aim is to stabilize the anthropogenic temperature change. However, contrary to this, there have also been proposals that early mitigation mainly should be targeted on short-lived GHGs. In this paper we analyze the cost-effective trade-off between a short-lived GHG, CH4, and a long-lived GHG, carbon dioxide (CO2), when a temperature target is to be met, taking into consideration the current uncertainty of the climate sensitivity as well as the likelihood that this will be reduced in the future. The analysis is carried out using an integrated climate and economic model (MiMiC) and the results from this model are explored and explained using a simplified analytical economic model. The main finding is that the introduction of uncertainty and learning about the climate sensitivity increases the near-term cost-effective valuation of CH4 relative to CO2. The larger the uncertainty span, the higher the valuation of the short-lived gas. For an uncertainty span of +/- 1 degrees C around an expected climate sensitivity of 3 degrees C, CH4 is cost-effectively valued 6.8 times as high as CO2 in year 2005. This is almost twice as high as the valuation in a deterministic case, but still significantly lower than its GWP(100) value.Tradable emissions allowance systems to reduce carbon emissions are increasingly promoted as means to mitigate climate change. This paper briefly reviews the application of such systems at the global, regional, and corporate scales. Given the recent expansion of cap-and-trade systems at the regional level, the paper concentrates on energy and economic implications at that level, using the decision of the State of Maryland, USA, to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as an illustration. The paper presents the results of an analysis of the implications for technology choice, generation capacity, energy reliability, and cost to ratepayers of that decision, combining a national electricity market model with a regional model that includes market power and an economic impact model. The results suggest several issues that will be key to the acceptability and effectiveness of cap-and-trade systems for regional climate change mitigation policy, including rules for distribution of allowances and subsidies for energy efficiency programs. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Historically, soils have lost 40-90 Pg carbon (C) globally through cultivation and disturbance with current rates of C loss due to land use change of about 1.6 +/- 0.8 Pg C y(-1), mainly in the tropics. Since soils contain more than twice the C found in the atmosphere, loss of C from soils can have a significant effect of atmospheric CO2 concentration, and thereby on climate. Halting land-use conversion would be an effective mechanism to reduce soil C losses, but with a growing population and changing dietary preferences in the developing world, more land is likely to be required for agriculture. Maximizing the productivity of existing agricultural land and applying best management practices to that land would slow the loss of, or is some cases restore, soil C. There are, however, many barriers to implementing best management practices, the most significant of which in developing countries are driven by poverty. Management practices that also improve food security and profitability are most likely to be adopted. Soil C management needs to considered within a broader framework of sustainable development. Policies to encourage fair trade, reduced subsidies for agriculture in developed countries and less onerous interest on loans and foreign debt would encourage sustainable development, which in turn would encourage the adoption of successful soil C management in developing countries. If soil management is to be used to help address the problem of global warming, priority needs to be given to implementing such policies.Rapid global economic growth, centred in Asia but now spread across the world, is driving rapid greenhouse-gas emissions growth, making earlier projections unrealistic. This paper develops new, illustrative business-as-usual projections for carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and other sources and for non-CO2 greenhouse gases. Making adjustments to 2007 World Energy Outlook projections to reflect more fully recent trends, we project annual emissions by 2030 to be almost double current volumes, 11 per cent higher than in the most pessimistic scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and at a level reached only in 2050 in the business-as-usual scenario used by the Stern Review. This has major implications for the global approach to climate-change mitigation. The required effort is much larger than implicit in the IPCC data informing the current international climate negotiations. Large cuts in developed country emissions will be required, and significant deviations from baselines will be required in developing countries by 2020. It is hard to see how the required cuts could be achieved without all major developing as well as developed countries adopting economy-wide policies.Various governments around the world are in the process of developing long-term climate change mitigation strategies. The British Labour government has been particularly active. In March 2007 it published a draft Climate Change Bill which provides a new legal framework designed to underpin efforts to mitigate climate change. Following public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny, a revised Bill was introduced into Parliament in November 2007; the new legislation is expected to become law during 2008. The key features of the Bill include a statutory target of reducing targeted greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050, the establishment of a new system of five-yearly 'carbon budgets' (set at least 15 years ahead), the creation of a powerful new expert Committee on Climate Change to advise, review and report on crucial climate change issues, and additional powers enabling governments to introduce new trading schemes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the Climate Change Bill and considers whether similar legislation should be adopted in other developed countries, such as New Zealand.Recent scientific findings, as presented in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), indicate that climate change in the Arctic is happening now, at a faster rate than elsewhere in the world, and with major implications for peoples of the Arctic (especially indigenous peoples) and the rest of the planet. This paper examines scientific and political representations of Arctic indigenous peoples that have been central to the production and articulation of these claims. ACIA employs novel forms and strategies of representation that reflect changing conceptual models and practices of global change science and depict indigenous peoples as expert, exotic, and at-risk. These portrayals emerge alongside the growing political activism of Arctic indigenous peoples who present themselves as representatives or embodiments of climate change itself as they advocate for climate change mitigation policies. These mutually constitutive forms of representation suggest that scientific ways of seeing the global environment shape and are shaped by the public image and voice of global citizens. Likewise, the authority, credibility, and visibility of Arctic indigenous activists derive, in part, from their status as at-risk experts, a status buttressed by new scientific frameworks and methods that recognize and rely on the local experiences and knowledges of indigenous peoples. Analyses of these relationships linking scientific and political representations of Arctic climate change build upon science and technology studies (STS) scholarship on visualization, challenge conventional notions of globalization, and raise questions about power and accountability in global climate change research.Disposal of acid gas, composed of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen sulfide (H,S), in deep underground formations is a means for reducing atmospheric emissions of toxic and greenhouse gases produced from sour-gas reservoirs that has been practiced for 18 years in North America and is currently being considered in other regions, such as the Middle East and central Asia. Acid-gas-injection operations constitute a commercial-scale analog to CO2 injection in geological media as a climate-change mitigation measure. Deep saline aquifers provide a very large capacity for the sequestration of acid and greenhouse gases, being found in all sedimentary basins around the world. Proper understanding of the relative permeability-displacement character of such systems is essential in ascertaining gas injectivity and migration, and in assessing the suitability, containment, and safety of prospective injection sites. Pure CO2 and H2S represent the compositional end members of acid and greenhouse gases, hence the interest in measuring their displacement properties. This paper presents the detailed experimental equipment and protocols along with the results of a series of relative permeability measurements conducted at full reservoir conditions using supercritical pure CO2 and H2S on samples of intercrystalline sandstone, carbonate, shale, and anhydrite rocks from the Wabamun and Zama areas in Alberta, Canada, where large CO2 sources and several acid-gas-injection operations exist. Results of the relative permeability measurements are presented for each fluid and rock type. The results provide a valuable data set for the evaluation and simulation of acid-gas disposal and CO2-sequestration projects.Loss of large areas of Amazonian forest, through either direct human impact or climate change, could exert a number of influences on the regional and global climates. In the Met Office Hadley Centre coupled climate-carbon cycle model, a severe drying of this region initiates forest loss that exerts a number of feedbacks on global and regional climates, which magnify the drying and the forest degradation. This paper provides an overview of the multiple feedback process in the Hadley Centre model and discusses the implications of the results for the case of direct human-induced deforestation. It also examines additional potential effects of forest loss through changes in the emissions of mineral dust and biogenic volatile organic compounds. The implications of ecosystem-climate feedbacks for climate change mitigation and adaptation policies are also discussed.Recent proposals to compensate developing countries for reducing emissions from deforestation ( RED) under forthcoming climate change mitigation regimes are receiving increasing attention. Here we demonstrate that if RED credits were traded on international carbon markets, even moderate decreases in deforestation rates could generate billions of Euros annually for tropical forest conservation. We also discuss the main challenges for a RED mechanism that delivers real climatic benefits. These include providing sufficient incentives while only rewarding deforestation reductions beyond business-as-usual scenarios, addressing risks arising from forest degradation and international leakage, and ensuring permanence of emission reductions. Governance may become a formidable challenge for RED because some countries with the highest RED potentials score poorly on governance indices. In addition to climate mitigation, RED funds could help achieve substantial co-benefits for biodiversity conservation and human development. However, this will probably require targeted additional support because the highest biodiversity threats and human development needs may exist in countries that have limited income potentials from RED. In conclusion, how successfully a market-based RED mechanism can contribute to climate change mitigation, conservation and development will strongly depend on accompanying measures and carefully designed incentive structures involving governments, business, as well as the conservation and development communities.The regional-scale carbon budget of East Asia was evaluated using a process-based model of terrestrial carbon cycle driven by high-resolution input data. The model was developed for integrating observational data and validated with net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE) data from AsiaFlux sites. For each 30-s x 30-s (about 1 km(2)) grid cell, the ecosystem model was used to simulate daily photosynthesis, respiration, decomposition, and ecosystem growth. Such high-resolution simulation allowed us to explicitly capture land surface heterogeneity and to ameliorate the scale-gap in comparison between simulated and observed fluxes. The simulated NEE was compared with data from three AsiaFlux sites (Tomakomai, Fujiyoshida, and Takayama) during the period 2000-2005, with results suggesting that the model retrieved the carbon budget characteristics, such as differences in seasonal sink/source variation among biome types. The regional simulation indicated that terrestrial ecosystems in East Asia had a net primary productivity of 996 Tg C year(-1) and a net ecosystem productivity of 58 Tg C year(-1) (1 Tg = 10(12) g), indicating a net carbon sink equivalent to 11% of regional anthropogenic emissions. Interannual variability in the carbon budget was evident: East Asian ecosystems absorbed more carbon in 2002, the warmest year with a longer growing period. Based on the regional result, the spatial representativeness of the AsiaFlux sites was investigated with regard to climatic condition and carbon budgets. This model provides a reliable means for scaling-up from site to regional scales, and the findings have implications for observational studies and ecosystem management related to carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We modify a model of climate and economy to address the effects of the reduction in atmospheric pollutants which occurs as a result of climate change mitigation policies. In particular, the reduction of sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions as a result of climate change policies leads to reduced statistical morbidity and infant mortality, but increased short term climate change. It remains the case, even with the consideration of secondary benefits, that there are welfare costs of GHG emission control to almost all working-age agents alive when the policies are imposed, which suggests that the consideration of secondary benefits alone may not be sufficient to provoke aggressive action on climate change.Industrialized countries agreed on a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Many countries elected forest management activities and the resulting net balance of carbon emissions and removals of non-CO(2) greenhouse gases by forest management in their climate change mitigation measures. In this paper a generic dynamic forestry model (FORMICA) is presented. It has an empirical basis. Several modules trace C pools relevant for the Kyoto Protocol and beyond: biomass, litter, deadwood and soil, and harvested wood products. The model also accounts for the substitution of fossil fuels by wood products and bioenergy. FORMICA was used to first study the model sensitivity and uncertainty based on data from Thuringia, a federal state of Germany, to determine the major sources of uncertainty in carbon accounting at different levels of carbon pool aggregation (biomass, ecosystem, forestry sector and enhanced forestry sector including the accumulated substitution effect). Rotation length and maximum increment contributed most to uncertainty in biomass. The influence of the latter did not diminish with higher level of pool aggregation. Uncertainty in the enhanced forestry sector was to a smaller degree controlled by product and substitution related parameters. Relative uncertainty decreased with the level of aggregation and comprehensiveness of the carbon budget. In a second step the model estimated the sink potential of the Thuringian forestry sector. The projected average biomass sink for the period of 2003-2043 of 0.6 t C ha(-1) year(-1) could be increased by 50% by broadening the perspective to the entire forestry sector, including substitution effects. A simulation of forest conservation on 20% of the forest area increased C fixation. However, even in the biomass C pool the expected C stock changes did not exceed the estimated uncertainty of 40%. A higher level of aggregation (i.e. the inclusion of soil and litter, product pool and substitution effects) decreases relative uncertainty but also diminishes differences between different management options. The analysis demonstrates that the choice of management mitigation options under an accounting scheme should include the impacts on forest products and of substitution effects. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In contrast to conventional carbon capture systems for power plants and other large point sources, the system described in this paper captures CO2 directly from ambient air. This has the advantages that emissions from diffuse sources and past emissions may be captured. The objective of this research is to determine the feasibility of a NaOH spray-based contactor for use in an air capture system by estimating the cost and energy requirements per unit CO2 captured. A prototype system is constructed and tested to measure CO2 absorption, energy use, and evaporative water loss and compared with theoretical predictions. A numerical model of drop collision and coalescence is used to estimate operating parameters for a full-scale system, and the cost of operating the system per unit CO2 captured is estimated. The analysis indicates that CO2 capture from air for climate change mitigation is technically feasible using off-the-shelf technology. Drop coalescence significantly decreases the CO2 absorption efficiency; however, fan and pump energy requirements are manageable. Water loss is significant (20 mol H2O/mol CO2 at 15 degrees C and 65% RH) but can be lowered by appropriately designing and operating the system. The cost of CO2 capture using NaOH spray (excluding solution recovery and CO2 sequestration, which may be comparable) in the full-scale system is 96 $/ton-CO2 in the base case, and ranges from 53 to 127 $/ton-CO2 under alternate operating parameters and assumptions regarding capital costs and mass transfer rate. The low end of the cost range is reached by a spray with 50 mu m mean drop diameter, which is achievable with commercially available spray nozzles.The paper analyzes how to comply with an emission constraint, which restricts the use of an established energy technique, given the two options to save energy and to invest in two alternative energy techniques. These techniques differ in their deterioration rates and the investment lags of the corresponding capital stocks. Thus, the paper takes a medium-term perspective on climate change mitigation, where the time horizon is too short for technological change to occur, but long enough for capital stocks to accumulate and deteriorate. It is shown that, in general, only one of the two alternative techniques prevails in the stationary state, although, both techniques might be utilized during the transition phase. Hence, while in a static economy only one technique is efficient, this is not necessarily true in a dynamic economy.The achievement possibilities of the EU 2 degrees C climate target have been assessed with the ETSAP TIAM global energy systems model. Cost-effective global and regional mitigation scenarios of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and F-gases were calculated with alternative assumptions on emissions trading. In the mitigation scenarios, an 85% reduction in CO2 emissions is needed from the baseline, and very significant changes in the energy system towards emission-free sources take place during this century. The largest new technology groups are carbon-capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power, wind power, advanced bioenergy technologies and energy efficiency measures. CCS technologies contributed a 5.5-Pg CO2 annual emission reduction by 2050 and 12 Pg CO2 reduction by 2100. Also large-scale forestation measures were found cost-efficient. Forestation measures reached their maximum impact of 7.7 Pg CO2 annual emission reduction in 2080. The effects of uncertainties in the climate sensitivity have been analysed with stochastic scenarios. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the past decade, human influence on the climate through increased use of fossil fuels has become widely acknowledged as one of the most pressing issues for the global community. For the United Kingdom, we suggest that these concerns have increasingly become manifest in a new strand of political debate around energy policy, which reframes nuclear power as part of the solution to the need for low-carbon energy options. A mixed-methods analysis of citizen views of climate change and radioactive waste is presented, integrating focus group data and a nationally representative survey. The data allow us to explore how UK citizens might now and in the future interpret and make sense of this new framing of nuclear power-which ultimately centers on a risk-risk trade-off scenario. We use the term "reluctant acceptance" to describe how, in complex ways, many focus group participants discursively re-negotiated their position on nuclear energy when it was positioned alongside climate change. In the concluding section of the paper, we reflect on the societal implications of the emerging discourse of new nuclear build as a means of delivering climate change mitigation and set an agenda for future research regarding the (re)fframing of the nuclear energy debate in the UK and beyond.Scientists and policy makers have long recognized the role that forests can play in countering the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) a greenhouse gas (GHG). In the United States, terrestrial carbon sequestration in private and public forests offsets approximately 11% of all GHG emissions from all sectors of the economy on an annual basis. Although much of the attention on forest carbon sequestration strategy in the United States has been on the role of private lands, public forests in the United States represent approximately 20% of the U.S. timberland area and also hold a significantly large share (30%) of the U.S. timber volume. With such a large standing timber inventory, these forested lands have considerable impact on the U.S. forest carbon balance. To help decision makers understand the carbon implications of potential changes in public timberland management, we compared a baseline timber harvest scenario with two alternative harvest scenarios and estimated annual carbon stock changes associated with each. Our analysis found that a "no timber harvest" scenario eliminating harvests on public lands would result in an annual increase of 17-29 million metric tonnes of carbon (MMTC) per year between 2010 and 2050-as much as a 43% increase over current sequestration levels on public timberlands and would offset up to 1.5% of total U.S. GHG emissions. In contrast, moving to a more intense harvesting policy similar to that which prevailed in the 1980s may result in annual carbon losses of 27-35 MMTC per year between 20 10 and 2050. These losses would represent a significant decline (50-80%) in anticipated carbon sequestration associated with the existing timber harvest policies. If carbon sequestration were valued in the marketplace as part of a GHG offset program, the economic value of sequestered carbon on public lands could be substantial relative to timber harvest revenues. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Triptych approach is a method for allocating future greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions among countries under a post-2012 international climate mitigation regime based on technological criteria at the sector level, and accounting for structural differences. The emission allowances are decomposed according to sectors, thereby enabling the link to real-world emission reduction strategies to be more concrete. The new Triptych approach presented here is a refinement of an earlier version in terms of an increased transparency and allowing a delayed participation for developing countries (initial participation of developing countries with incentives but no penalties through 'no lose' targets or sustainable development policies and measures). For this article we calculated the emission reductions for countries for two technology-oriented scenarios, which stabilize GHG concentrations at 450 and 550 ppm CO2-eq, respectively. The reductions are ambitious, but nonetheless compatible with existing technical reduction potentials as growth is allowed but efficiency has to be improved. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We assess different policies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and promoting innovation and diffusion of renewable energy. We evaluate the relative performance of policies according to incentives provided for emissions reduction, efficiency, and other outcomes. We also assess how the nature of technological progress through learning and research and development (R&D), and the degree of knowledge spillovers, affects the desirability of different policies. Due to knowledge spillovers, optimal policy involves a portfolio of different instruments targeted at emissions, learning, and R&D. Although the relative cost of individual policies in achieving reductions depends on parameter values and the emissions target, in a numerical application to the U.S. electricity sector, the ranking is roughly as follows: (1) emissions price, (2) emissions performance standard, (3) fossil power tax, (4) renewables share requirement, (5) renewables subsidy, and (6) R&D subsidy. Nonetheless, an optimal portfolio of policies achieves emissions reductions at a significantly lower cost than any single policy. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.A recent paper by Miko Kirschbaum (Mitigat Adapt Strategies Glob Change 11(5-6): 1151-1164, 2006) argues that temporary carbon (C) storage has "virtually no climate-change mitigation value.'' However, temporary carbon has value in delaying global warming that needs to be recognized in carbon accounting methodologies. The conclusions reached are very sensitive to any value that is attached to time. Basing analysis exclusively on the maximum temperature reached within a 100-year time frame ignores other important impacts of global warming that also need to be included when mitigation strategies are assessed. The relative weightings for long-term versus short-term impacts represent policy choices that result in a greater or a lesser value being attributed to temporary carbon, but that value should not be zero. Global warming is too formidable an enemy to allow us the luxury of discarding part of our arsenal in fighting against it. Both reducing fossil-fuel combustion and increasing biosphere carbon stocks are needed.Kirschbaum (Mitig Adapt Strat Glob Change 11:1151-1164, 2006) explores the climatic impact over time of temporarily sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. He concludes that temporary storage of carbon in the terrestrial biosphere "achieves effectively no climate-change mitigation''. His strongly worded statement begs for a response. This paper argues that Kirschbaum's conclusion is an artifact of the specific perspective of his analysis and his choice of a definition for climate-change impact. Even temporary sinks put us on a lower path for climate change, a path that will not otherwise be accessible. For carbon sinks in the terrestrial biosphere, we argue that sooner is better and longer is better, but even known temporary sinks have value.Within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Kyoto Protocol, countries have significant latitude to define a forest. The most important parameter affecting area designated as forest is the minimum crown cover which can be set between 10 and 30%. The choice will have implications for the amount of land available in a country for afforestation and reforestation activities within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM-AR). In this paper, we present an analysis of the regional differences in land availability for CDM-AR projects. We then examine how the choice of a high or low threshold value for crown cover will affect the area available for CDM activities and how the limitations imposed by this element of the definition compares to other factors that are likely to limit CDM activities. Results represent a global analysis that included all countries not included in Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol, and examined the effect on land availability of a range of crown cover thresholds ranging from 10-30%. Of the 140 Non-Annex One countries, 107 countries were found to have a potential for CDM-AR projects. Asia had the largest amount of combined area suitable for CDM-AR at the 10% crown cover threshold level. However, at 30%, South America had the greatest amount of land available, and a large change in available land area, which increased by almost five times compared to what was available at the 10% threshold. The area available in Africa increased by a factor of 5.5. Central America showed the largest increase, to almost 10 times more at the 30% threshold. By contrast, within Asia, the area increase was comparatively less, but still the area nearly doubled. Globally, a low threshold of 10% crown cover excluded almost 2/3 of the land identified that was eligible at 30%, over 5 million km 2. The spatial analyses showed not only the effects of the choice of the crown cover criterion, but also where the land was available for CDM activities within each country at different thresholds. Protected areas account for 10-20% of the CDM-AR eligible area in most countries.While greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are projected to rise primarily in the developing countries, the potential for developing new GHG mitigation technologies exists primarily in the industrialized countries. It is thus important, not only for predictions about future emission paths but also for climate change mitigation policies, to understand how the international diffusion of such technologies takes place and how it affects the energy infrastructure and GHG emissions in developing countries. This paper provides an overview of the channels through which these technologies diffuse and focuses on the empirical evidence pertaining to the effects these technologies have on GHG emissions in developing countries.We examine consequences of new energy technologies in the pulp and paper industry with respect to net CO2 emissions and oil use. The entire production chain from the extraction of primary resources is included in the analysis. Stand-alone production of electricity and transportation fuel from biomass is included to balance the systems compared, so that they produce the same CO2 emission and oil use reductions. The technologies considered are black liquor gasification (BLG) with electricity and motor fuels production in chemical pulp mills and increased energy efficiency in thermomechanical pulp mills. The technologies are evaluated with respect to net CO2 emission, oil use, primary energy use, biomass use and monetary cost. We find that BLG in chemical pulp mills is favourable compared to stand-alone production of fuels and electricity from biomass. It is more efficient to implement BLG with motor fuels production and stand-alone electricity production from biomass, than to implement BLG with electricity production and stand-alone production of motor fuels. Increased energy efficiency in refining of thermomechanical pulp gives CO2 savings more efficiently than stand-alone production of electricity from biomass. Sensitivity analysis indicates that our conclusions are robust with respect to energy and biomass prices and the choice of coal or natural gas for marginal electricity. Newsprint from thermomechanical pulp would require slightly less biomass and have lower costs than paper from chemical pulp, per metric ton (t) product, when the systems are also required to render the same oil use and CO2 emission reductions. Substituting mineral fillers for 25% of the chemical pulp changes the balance in favour of the chemical pulp paper. At an oil price of 40 US$/barrel, all studied pulp and paper mill technology improvements give unchanged or reduced monetary costs also when oil use and CO2 emissions are not balanced with stand-alone bioenergy plants. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Current international climate mitigation efforts aim to stabilize levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, human-induced climate warming will continue for many centuries, even after atmospheric CO2 levels are stabilized. In this paper, we assess the CO2 emissions requirements for global temperature stabilization within the next several centuries, using an Earth system model of intermediate complexity. We show first that a single pulse of carbon released into the atmosphere increases globally averaged surface temperature by an amount that remains approximately constant for several centuries, even in the absence of additional emissions. We then show that to hold climate constant at a given global temperature requires near-zero future carbon emissions. Our results suggest that future anthropogenic emissions would need to be eliminated in order to stabilize global-mean temperatures. As a consequence, any future anthropogenic emissions will commit the climate system to warming that is essentially irreversible on centennial timescales.A large carbon sink in northern land surfaces inferred from global carbon cycle inversion models led to concerns during Kyoto Protocol negotiations that countries might be able to avoid efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions by claiming large sinks in their managed forests. The greenhouse gas balance of Canada's managed forest is strongly affected by naturally occurring fire with high interannual variability in the area burned and by cyclical insect outbreaks. Taking these stochastic future disturbances into account, we used the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3) to project that the managed forests of Canada could be a source of between 30 and 245 Mt CO(2)e yr(-1) during the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period (2008-2012). The recent transition from sink to source is the result of large insect outbreaks. The wide range in the predicted greenhouse gas balance (215 Mt CO(2)e yr(-1)) is equivalent to nearly 30% of Canada's emissions in 2005. The increasing impact of natural disturbances, the two major insect outbreaks, and the Kyoto Protocol accounting rules all contributed to Canada's decision not to elect forest management. In Canada, future efforts to influence the carbon balance through forest management could be overwhelmed by natural disturbances. Similar circumstances may arise elsewhere if global change increases natural disturbance rates. Future climate mitigation agreements that do not account for and protect against the impacts of natural disturbances, for example, by accounting for forest management benefits relative to baselines, will fail to encourage changes in forest management aimed at mitigating climate change.This paper formally introduces the concept of mitigation as a stochastic control problem. This is illustrated by applying a digital state variable feedback control approach known as Non-Minimum State Space (NMSS) control to the problem of specifying carbon emissions to control atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the presence of uncertainty. It is shown that the control approach naturally lends itself to integrating both anticipatory and reflexive mitigation strategies within a single unified framework. The framework explicitly considers the closed-loop nature of climate mitigation, and employs a policy orientated optimisation procedure to specify the properties of this closed-loop system. The product of this exercise is a control law that is suitably conditioned to regulate atmospheric CO2 concentrations through assimilating online information within a 25-year review cycle framework. It is shown that the optimal control law is also robust when faced with significant levels of uncertainty about the functioning of the global carbon cycle.There is a gap between the increased scientific understanding of carbon pools and fluxes at individual trees/stand and that of forested landscape with complex structures (i.e. variety of species, age classes, site characteristic and management practices). The question about how results generated from a simulated physiologically distinct individual(s)/stands grown at a particular location (scale) can be extrapolated (scaling) across a diverse population in time and space with diverse environments, has been troubling scientists for many years. Scale and scaling present three problems in common: (a) spatial heterogeneity, (b) non-linearity in response and (c) disturbance regimes. Scale, in particular, presents other three problems: (d) threshold scale for processes, (e) dominant processes with scales and (f) emerging properties of the system. Scaling presents problems with (g) feedbacks between plants and environment and (h) plant interactions. The present study proposes a modeling framework linking a process-based model SECRETS - to overcome some of the scale and scaling problems (a, b, c, d and g) - to a C accounting model GORCAM - to integrate the effects of C stock in wood products and from fossil fuel substitution. The capabilities of the modeling framework are tested against three theoretical complex forested landscapes that combine some of the five following scenarios: existing multifunctional forest under (1) actual and (2) changing environmental conditions, and afforestation of an agricultural area with (3) a new multifunctional forest or with (4) a short rotation coppice (poplar) or with (5) an agricultural crop (miscanthus) for bioenergy production. Forest reserves calculations are included for completeness of the landscape C balance and as reference. Results, on the one hand, suggest that the framework is able to simulate C sequestration and stock in ecosystem pools, wood products and fossil fuel substitution of the scenarios under actual environmental conditions. However, comparison of results under changing environmental conditions, against specific plant literature suggest SECRETS formulation must be improved with recent development in photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and N balances. On the other hand, results also suggest that under actual environmental conditions, the optimum landscape scenario to sequester C and avoid fossil emissions to the atmosphere is composed by existing multifunctional forest, reserves and afforestation with short rotation coppice for bioenergy production.In this first part of a two-part article, the principal characteristics of the TIMES model and of its global incarnation as ETSAP-TIAM are presented and discussed. TIMES was conceived as a descendent of the MARKAL and EFOM paradigms, to which several new features were added to extend its functionalities and its applicability to the exploration of energy systems and the analysis of energy and environmental policies. The article stresses the technological nature of the model and its economic foundation and properties. The article stays at the conceptual and practical level, while a companion article is devoted to the more detailed formulation of TIMES equations. Special sections are devoted to the description of four optional features of TIMES: lumpy investments, endogenous technology learning, stochastic programming, and the climate module. The article ends with a brief description of recent applications of the ETSAP-TIAM model.Carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel use in many developed and developing countries are expected to be the major source of anthropogenic emissions for the foreseeable future. As a result, the potential to use CO2 capture and storage (CCS) for significant reductions in CO2 emissions from the use of coal (and other fossil fuels) at large point sources could become very important in determining the feasibility of climate change mitigation. Large-scale deployment of CCS in the EU from 2020 has been suggested, but this paper illustrates how time is very short if two complete learning cycles are to be achieved before a possible rollout in the early/mid 2020s. It also highlights some key differences between CO2 capture technologies that suggest that learning can be achieved more quickly with post-combustion capture than with other options. This might allow rollout to be accelerated by perhaps 5 years for post-combustion capture. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many diverse actions can be taken to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Increasingly in the United States, policy-makers at subnational levels are setting emission targets and implementing plans for sector-specific GHG reductions. In this paper, local, state, and regional policy actions in the US are inventoried and analyzed as to their potential effect on national emissions. The realization of all existing subnational initiatives, as of September 2007, could stabilize US emissions at 2010 levels by the year 2020. The scale of these many decentralized mitigation actions, and their tendency to follow consistent steps, provide a counterpoint to oft-cited drawbacks of decentralized environmental policy. It also indicates that the US has been more committed to climate change mitigation than is generally acknowledged. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The UK is witnessing a new line in political debate around new nuclear energy generation as one potential feature of future energy policy, specifically for contributing to climate change mitigation alongside energy security. Little is known about how ordinary citizens might be responding to this refraining. This paper reports the results from a major British survey (n = 1491) undertaken in the autumn of 2005. The consistent message is that while higher proportions of the British public are prepared to accept nuclear power if they believe it contributes to climate change mitigation, this is a highly conditional view, with very few actively preferring this over renewable sources given the choice. People see both climate change and nuclear power as problematic in terms of risks and express only a 'reluctant acceptance' of nuclear power as a 'solution' to climate change. The combined data from this survey can also be interpreted as an indication of the complexity surrounding beliefs about energy futures and the difficulty of undertaking simplistic risk-risk tradeoffs within any single framing of the issues; such as nuclear energy versus climate change. The results also indicate that it would be unwise, in the UK as elsewhere, to simplistically assume that there exists any single or stable public 'opinion' on such complex matters. We conclude with a discussion of the role and implications of the survey evidence for the policy process. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing the contribution of terrestrial carbon sequestration to climate change mitigation requires integration across scientific and disciplinary boundaries. A comprehensive analysis incorporating ecologic, geographic and economic data was used to develop terrestrial carbon sequestration estimates for agricultural soil carbon, reforestation and pasture management. These estimates were applied in the MiniCAM integrated assessment model to evaluate mitigation strategies within policy and technology scenarios aimed at achieving atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization by 2100. Terrestrial sequestration reaches a peak rate of 0.5-0.7 GtCyr(-1) in mid-century with contributions from agricultural soils (0.21 GtCyr(-1)), reforestation (0.31 GtC yr(-1)) and pasture (0.15 GtCyr(-1)). Sequestration rates vary over time and with different technology and policy scenarios. The combined contribution of terrestrial sequestration over the next century ranges from 23 to 41 GtC. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Few problems are as urgent and important as climate change. Climate change mitigation policies are geographically and culturally dependent given the variability of resources, of access to technology and of national political constraints such as ensuring energy security, affordability and social acceptability. Thus, climate change mitigation hinges on devising integrated policies involving many mutually reinforcing and coordinated efforts in order to exploit synergies between policy tools and to avoid policy conflicts.The manner in which we produce and consume energy is of crucial importance to sustainable development, as energy has deep relationships with each of its three dimensions-the economy, the environment and social welfare; energy is part of many environmental problems, including climate change, and must be part of the solution. Renewable energy increases diversity of energy supplies and can replace diminishing fossil fuel resources over the long run, their use in place of fossil fuels can substantially reduce greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Growth in demand for renewable energy in industrialised countries is leading to economies of scale; such growth enables increased access by the developing world, but numerous barriers remain and the cost of renewable energy technologies remains high, although it continues to fall. The deployment of renewable energy requires appropriate economic, market and regulatory instruments and the diffusion of new renewable energy technologies into markets are particularly important. New policies need to be developed to make energy an integral part of sustainable development and Governments can employ a number of strategies to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy. In order, the paper show the cost of solar collector plant, located near Rome (Italy), in relation to the costs of operation and maintenance too, because it is necessary to give, to the decision makers, the real cost and the feasibility of the renewable technologies, to improve their use and development trough the most accurate incentives, contributed to the climate change mitigation and the achievement of thresholds production by renewable resources.A supply-chain decision tool is outlined that will assess the life-cycle greenhouse gases and energy demand of solar energy technology using a hybrid LCA structure. Energy and greenhouse gas metrics appropriate for the climate change mitigation goals of solar energy are discussed. Applying this methodology to SolFocus Inc. concentrator systems, preliminary results indicate that the energy payback time of SolFocus Panels can vary from 0.6 to 5 years depending on manufacturing locations. The greenhouse gas payback time, a new metric for energy technologies, varies from 1.1 to 64 years depending on the same factors indicating that greenhouse gas metrics are more sensitive to installation and supply chain decisions than energy metrics.Following the steady demand growth and diminishing generation capacity margin due to lack of generation investment, Slovenia is already importing almost a quarter of electricity needed to cover its demand. Coupled with the deregulated electricity market and the European Union (EU) climate change mitigation measures implemented through EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), the economic as well as environmental factors limit the necessary power system development and endanger future security of supply. A framework is needed to assess the generation expansion options taking into account all the limitations and associated risks, and to propose the optimal policy measures to insure long-term security of supply in Slovenia. In the paper, the current energy balance status is investigated, followed by several development scenarios for the period up to 2030. The paper briefly describes the Day-Ahead Market Simulator (ELMASplus), developed at the University of Ljubljana that is used to simulate the electricity price development on the market for the purpose of forecasting energy policy impacts in Slovenia. The simulation results are presented covering the future primary energy supply mix, power system adequacy indices, electricity import dependency, CO(2) emissions, electricity market prices and other relevant indicators. The two most promising development generation development scenarios with different associated risks are introduced and evaluated. Based on the results, the appropriate policy measures are suggested.The aim of this panel session is to promote discussion on emergent challenges and the need for advancements in the theory, methodology, applications, education in M&S. The changing landscape in science and engineering (e.g., industrial and defense application, medicine, predictive homeland security, energy and environment) introduces new types of problems and challenges into the M&S domain. In light of these emergent needs how can M&S stay relevant as new critical fields such as global climate change mitigation, energy restructuring, genetic engineering impacts on society and universal health care emerge and come into prominence? Surely the systems point of view and the tools that M&S brings to the table are key to these new directions. So, what are the critical issues and challenges facing M&S community in the face of change and need for rapid discovery?The article deals with possibilities to apply Operational Research methodology in setting climate change mitigation policies in Lithuania. The most research subjects within Operational Research concentrate on decision making focusing on decision aiding tools such as Multi Criteria Decision Analysis, Group Decision Support Systems, Sustainability Appraisal, Life Cycle Assessment, Technology Assessment and Foresight, Logistic tools etc. Most of the research carried out in Operational Research focuses on the problem handling phases such as constructing scenarios, evaluating scenarios and suggesting interventions. Therefore before suggesting interventions and taking decisions it is necessary to evaluate how the phenomena and actors are related. Climate change is a complex societal phenomenon and climate change mitigation policies have impact on all society members and involve many actors and players in the field. The aim of the article is to apply Operational Research in setting climate change mitigation policies in Lithuania. The main tasks are to define the phases in problem handling process, the main actors and their responsibilities and tools for selecting the best solutions.The livestock agriculture of temperate grasslands is a major provider of meat and milk to the world. These areas also deliver important ecosystem services and are central to tourism, amenity, and leisure in many countries. However, they are also major sources of pollution of waterways and of greenhouse gas emissions. In this review, we focus on how the genetic improvement of some of the major crop species of temperate grasslands can contribute to reduced environmental impacts and climate change mitigation including the enhancement of carbon sequestration. The main species considered are the ryegrasses and fescues and the clovers. With regard to diffuse pollution of waterways, increasing the efficiency with which the plant utilizes nitrogen and phosphorus has significant potential to reduce the amounts available for leaching and overland flow. This also allows reduced fertilizer use, in itself representing a significant saving of greenhouse gas emissions. Changes in the composition of the plant diet have the potential to increase the efficiency of nitrogen use in the rumen and reduce the amount of methane produced by enteric fermentation. Carbon sequestration in temperate grasslands may potentially be enhanced by understanding and altering root architecture and turn over and also litter composition. The role of forage breeding in improving soil quality and flood defense is also considered and wider aspects of the role of persistent perennial species discussed. To fully realize the potential of genetic improvement, breeding programs need to incorporate state-of-the-art genomics and also to be guided by modeling studies. An integrated approach combining the skills of animal scientists, soil scientists, and plant breeders within the context of life cycle analysis is required to find sustainable solutions to the challenge of maintaining the productivity of livestock agriculture while reducing its environmental footprint.This chapter applies portfolio theory optimization concepts from the field of finance to produce an expository evaluation of the 2020 projected European Union business-as-usual (EU-BAU) electricity generating mix. Optimal generating portfolios are located that reduce cost and market risk as well as carbon dioxide emissions relative to the BAU mix. Optimal generating portfolio mixes generally include greater shares of wind, nuclear and other non-fossil technologies that often cost more on a stand-alone engineering basis, but overall costs and risks are reduced because of the effect of portfolio diversification. They also enhance energy security. The benefit streams created by these optimal mixes warrant current investments in the order of (sic)250-500 billion. The analysis further suggests that the optimal 2020 generating mix is constrained by shortages of wind, especially offshore, and possibly nuclear power, so that even small incremental additions of these two technologies will provide sizeable cost and risk reductions.The global motor vehicle population has grown very rapidly in the past half century and is expected to continue to grow rapidly for the next several decades, especially in developing countries. As a result, vehicles are a major source of urban air pollution in many cities and are the fastest-growing source of greenhouse emissions. Strategies exist to reduce both problems, but many countries emphasize one over the other rather than pursuing strategies that reduce both concerns. Using diesel as an example, this article illustrates that it is now possible not only to reduce carbon dioxide with the increased use of diesel vehicles but also to improve urban air pollution. Doing so requires both stringent emissions regulations and clean fuels. Several principles contained in the Bellagio, Memorandum are highlighted as guides for policy makers.Interventions in the energy sector offer significant opportunities for reducing both greenhouse and other health-damaging pollution, resulting in what are called "co-benefits." The health community plays a critical role in evaluating such interventions to optimize progress of both sorts because both affect health. In detail, analyses require sophisticated modeling and specific local information. As a starting point, however, we offer here a set of scoping methods for obtaining a quick assessment of these co-benefits for interventions in the energy sector, the arena with the highest potential for significant co-benefits. Thus we combine relevant methods developed separately in recent years for cost-effectiveness assessments in the climate change, health, and development communities. We offer sample calculations, which illustrate the apparent high degree of co-benefit effectiveness for targeted interventions in the household energy sector in developing countries.Climate change has been identified as one of the greatest challenge by all the nations, government, business and citizens of the globe. The threats of climate change on our green planet 'Earth' demands that renewable energy share in the total energy generation and consumption should be substantially increased as a matter of urgency. India's energy development programme has been put under severe pressure with the ever-increasing demand supply gap. Due to predominance of fossil fuels in the generation mix, there are large negative environmental externalities caused by electricity generation. So it has become imperative to develop and promote alternative energy sources that can lead to sustainability of energy and environment system. Renewable electricity has become synonymous with CO2 reduction. Present communication provides a brief description about such alternative and sustained energy sources, i.e., renewable energy resources, their potential and achievements in India. Also role as important tool for climate change mitigation.The Bali Roadmap, as the breakthrough on intergovernmental negotiation of climate change mitigation, having brought United States on track, is still a result of compromises. The major compromises of the Bali Roadmap are centered around three issues of quantifying emission reduction targets, developing countries' obligations as well as quantifying developed countries' financial assistance in developing countries' capacity building on climate change. It is found that the rationalities behind these compromises are the national interests. Due to the fact, achieving cohesion among all nations in climate change actions is very difficult. Therefore, the Bali Roadmap may lead to a tough way with distant hope. However, technology innovation and well-designed economic instruments would be helpful and supportive for further international negotiation and cooperation.The Bali Action Plan and many other authoritative recent climate reports point to expectations that additional financing will be central to future international agreements to address climate change. Several donor governments have announced commitments to contribute significant additional amounts of funding to support climate change financing in developing countries. However, the context for financing of climate change mitigation is evolving rapidly, with significant implications for climate policy. Two key changes are the dramatic improvement in access to capital in many of the most rapidly growing, large greenhouse-gas-emitting, developing nations and the increasing shift of wealth to oil-exporting countries and Asian central banks. Energy investment is fundamental to development and is capital-intensive, and access to finance is not equally available across countries and for different types of investments. Less carbon-intensive, clean energy investments frequently remain more difficult to finance, due to their smaller scale and innovative nature. Taking climate risk into account as an element of financing is potentially consistent with the investor's need to balance risks with expected returns, but the methodologies, geographical scale, and data required are not yet commensurate with the time periods and project scope typical of financing for developing countries. The policy challenge is in making the financing available commensurate with the scale and short time available for addressing climate change. Most of the likely targeted financing programmes will not be adequate for this purpose. Rather, policy makers need to focus on creating adequate signals that climate change will be an important and continuing factor in government policies for the foreseeable future in ways that will affect investor expectations of relative risk and reward. If this is done, financing will follow.A sectoral approach to GHG emissions reductions in developing countries is proposed as a key component of the post-2012 climate change mitigation framework. In this approach, the ten highest-emitting developing countries in the electricity and other major industrial sectors pledge to meet voluntary, 'no-lose' GHG emissions targets in these sectors. No penalties are incurred for failing to meet a target, but emissions reductions achieved beyond the target level earn emissions reduction credits (ERCs) that can be sold to industrialized nations. Participating developing countries establish initial 'no-lose' emissions targets, based upon their national circumstances, from sector-specific energy-intensity benchmarks that have been developed by independent experts. Industrialized nations then offer incentives for the developing countries to adopt more stringent emissions targets through a 'Technology Finance and Assistance Package', which helps to overcome financial and other barriers to technology transfer and deployment. These sector-specific energy-intensity benchmarks could also serve as a means for establishing national economy-wide targets in developed countries in the post-2012 regime. Preliminary modelling of a hybrid scenario, in which Annex I countries adopt economy-wide absolute GHG emissions targets and high-emitting developing countries adopt 'no-lose' sectoral targets, indicates that such an approach significantly improves the likelihood that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 can be stabilized at 450 ppmv by the end of the century.Evidence of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70 % between 1970 and 2004 and with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades. The increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations is very likely causing the warming of the climate system since the mid-20th century, as evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. The climate system and the water cycle are closely linked, so that any change in one of these systems induces a change in the other. Yet, the implications of climate variability and climate change have not been fully considered in current water policy and decision-making frameworks. This is particularly true in developing countries, where the financial, human and ecological impacts are potentially greatest, and where water resources may be already highly stressed, but the capacity to cope and adapt is weakest. This chapter outlines the impact of climate change on water resources in Middle Eastern countries, and discusses potential adaptive measures in this respect, with emphasis on virtual water trade, as a non-conventional demand management option for water resources.Nuclear energy is currently the largest low-CO2 energy source in the EU, which makes it an important contributor to the climate change mitigation. It also contributes significantly to alleviating the risks related to growing external dependency on imported fossil fuels, mainly coming from unstable regions. Growing energy demand and shutting down of ageing nuclear power reactors will require new nuclear power installations in the EU as well as life extension and increased capacity in existing plants.The burning of fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially CO2, possibly causing climate change. Environmentally friendly energy development has enormous implications for developing countries as major emitters due to their rapid economic and population growth. This paper presents an overview of Turkey's efforts to reduce GHG emissions by reforming energy pricing, promoting energy efficiency, and using renewable energy sources. With some possible options, the paper concludes that the reduction of emissions can only be achieved when policies are supportive and well targeted, standards and incentives are realistic and flexible, and the public is actively responsive to environmental degradation. Turkey's high rate of energy-related carbon emissions growth is expected to accelerate, with emissions climbing from 57 million tons in 2000 to almost 210 million tons in 2020. Carbon intensity in Turkey is higher than the western developed national average. Energy-intensive, inefficient industries remain under government control with soft budged constraints, contributing to undisciplined energy use in Turkey.Concerns about the cost of CO2 capture and sequestration, and the effectiveness of carbon abatement policies loom large in discussions on climate change mitigation. Several writers address the issue from various perspectives. This paper attempts to add relative realism to discussions on CO2 capture costs, and, the deployment of carbon capture technology in the UK by using publicly available company data on the long term capacity expansion and CO2 capture investment programmes of selected power plants in the UK. With an estimated 18 billion plan to install a generation capacity of 11 G W and capture capability of 44 MtCO(2)/year it is imperative to optimise this huge potential investment. A least-cost optimisation model was formulated and solved with the LP algorithm available in GAMS. The model was then applied to address a number of issues, including the choice of an optimal carbon abatement policy within the EU-ETS framework. The major findings of the study include (a) the long term total cost curve of CO2 capture has three phases - rising, plateau, rising; (b) alternative capture technologies do not have permanent relative cost advantages or disadvantages; (c) Government incentives encourage carbon capture and the avoidance of emission penalty charges; and (d) the goals of EU-ETS are more effectively realised with deeper cuts in the EUA ratios than merely hiking the emission penalty, as proposed in EU-ETS Phase II.Global climate change raises many questions for environmental political theorists. This article focuses on the question of identifying the agents that should bear the financial burden of preventing dangerous climate change. Identifying in a fair way the agents that should take the lead in climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as the precise burdens that these parties must bear, will be a key aspect of the next generation of global climate policies. After a critical review of four rival approaches to burden sharing, the paper argues that only a principled and philosophically robust reconciliation of at least three of these ('contribution to problem', 'ability to pay' and 'beneficiary pays') can generate a satisfactory mix of theoretical coherence and practical application.Since protected areas (PAs) comprise about twelve percent of the world's surface, PA managers are in a key position regarding in situ biodiversity conservation against the background of emerging climate change. PAs can exemplify progress in climate change mitigation and adaptation. What role do PA managers - and their risk perception and response - play in this context? A global survey with biosphere reserve (BR) managers investigated this issue using a combined quantitative and qualitative approach. Results suggest that climate change risk perception is largely linked to economic power: in non-high-income countries climate change was perceived as being significantly less relevant than in high-income countries. In non-high-income countries, other threats such as illegal activities are regarded as being much more important than climate change impacts. Thus, socio-political factors and the connection between management and science seem to play an important role in risk perception of BR managers. In situ biodiversity conservation efforts with regard to climate change mitigation and adaptation must inform BR managers about likely climate change impacts, involve them in transdisciplinary research activities, and speed up necessary mitigation and adaptation measures.Forests are closely linked to socio-economic systems in India. The projected climate change is likely to produce adverse impacts on forest ecosystems. India is one of the few countries with a documented forest policy from 1894. This conservation-based forest policy has prevented the diversion of forest. Joint forest management (JFM) promotes the participation of communities in the management of forest. Estimates of forest carbon stock (biomass and soil) are in the range of 8.58 to 9.57 gtC. The growing energy demand provide a strong basis for inclusion of a share of biomass energy in energy production and consumption. India's proposal for compensating forest conservation was included in the Bali Action Plan of COP 13 of UNFCCC. With this approach India can claim to be maintaining the baseline stocks (8.79 gtC), as well as the increment (0.96 gtC).Developing countries are expected to contribute to climate change mitigation efforts by reducing deforestation, with financial compensations for associated economic losses. These losses are due to foregone revenues and limited economic development, all of these labeled "opportunity costs". Their accurate estimation is strategic for at least two reasons: to determine fair compensations, and to prioritize low cost strategies to reduce emissions. However, numerous interpretations of the opportunity cost concept coexist in the literature and in influential reports (e.,o. Stern review), with differing estimated values for similar cases. This paper presents a framework to better identify relevant values to the calculations: profits / total national economic value, conservation site / downstream industries. When applied to the pulp sector in Indonesia, the framework yields contrasted opportunity costs. This contrast is due to several factors. including the heterogeneity of the pulp industry, or the availability of non-forested lands to displace activities. These values range from zero to one thousand dollars per hectare per year. To use such a framework Would help gain credibility and achieve fairness in negotiations between host countries and other stakeholders, in particular those who fund activities to reduce deforestation.Objectives and content of the journal special issue on 'Prospects for nuclear energy in the 21st century' are introduced. It is concluded that the main reasons for considering nuclear power in the national energy portfolios include hedging against supply security risks and high fossil energy prices in most countries, complemented by climate change mitigation in developed countries and by local and regional air pollution reduction in developing countries. Concerns over nuclear power include operation safety, nuclear weapon proliferation, economic performance, nuclear waste disposal and public acceptance. The relative importance of these factors diverges widely across regions and countries.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is widely acknowledged as a promising climate change mitigation option. In this article, we consider the current technology available, the latest legislative developments in the UK, the EU and internationally and, looking to the future, various options for funding CCS projects. We conclude that legal and commercial uncertainty needs to be resolved in the short term to ensure timely and widespread deployment of CCS.In order to evaluate ocean fertilization in the larger context of other proposed strategies for reducing the threat of the global warming, a wide range of different climate change mitigation approaches are compared in terms of their long-term potential, stage of development, relative costs and potential risks, as well as public acceptance. This broad comparative analysis is carried out for the following climate change mitigation strategies: supply-side and end-use efficiency improvements, terrestrial and geological carbon sequestration, CO2 ocean disposal and iron fertilization, nuclear power, and renewable energy generation from biomass, passive solar, solar thermal, photovoltaics, hydroelectric and wind. In addition, because of the inherent problems of conducting an objective comparative cost-benefit analysis, 2 non-technological solutions to global warming are also discussed: curbing population growth and transitioning to a steady-state economy.Ocean iron fertilization (OIF) is being considered as a strategy for mitigating rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. One model for implementation is the sale of carbon offsets. Modeling studies predict that OIF has the potential to produce a material difference in the rise of atmospheric CO2 over the next several decades, but this could only be attained by alteration of the ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles of much of the world's oceans. The efficacy of OIF on this scale has not been proven. However, the consequences of successful implementation must be considered now, for 2 important reasons: (1) to determine if the environmental effects would be predictable and verifiable, and if so, acceptable; and (2) to establish whether the basis for valuing carbon offsets-an accurate audit of net reductions in cumulative greenhouse gas potential over 100 yr-can be met. Potential side-effects of widespread OIF that must be considered include a reduced supply of macronutrients to surface waters downstream of fertilized regions, increased emissions of the potent greenhouse gases nitrous oxide and methane, and changes in the extent or frequency of coastal hypoxia. Given the uncertainties inherent in ocean models, predictions of environmental effects must be backed up by measurements. Thus, to go forward with confidence that the effects of rising CO2 could indeed be mitigated through OIF over the next century, and to establish the foundations for auditing carbon offsets, it must be explicitly demonstrated that methods exist to predict and detect downstream effects of OIF against the background of both climate variability and global warming. We propose that until the side-effects of widespread OIF can be shown to be verifiable-and there is good reason to believe that they cannot - OIF should not be considered a viable technology for climate mitigation.This article analyzes the Spanish GHG emissions actual balance and their trends from a regional perspective (NUTS 2 or CCAA), in the period 2005-2007, by sources: big fixed CO 2 emissions controlled by Directive 2003/87/CE and "Non Directive" sources - which are the main research subject, deriving conclusions on the heterogeneity between CCAA from this point of view and also, identifying the regions which concentrates the biggest share of diffuse/Directive emissions. Six CCAA belongs to each of those groups and four of them are included in both. The research deeply extends on the recent EU Commission proposal dealing with the effort of Member States to reduce up to 2020 their GHG emissions from non Directive sources, aiming to: a) identify the quantitative arguments insert on the proposal to deal with spatial equity principle, mentioned as the main distribution issue and b) generate a proposal to distribute the "diffuse sources" mitigation effort quantified for Spain, between CCAA, based on similar criteria embodied on COM (2008) 17. The paper offers a proposal for the Spanish commitments distribution between their 19 CCAA -attending regional equity and sustainable development criteria in congruence with the EU Proposal, and defends that a set of regional commitments to cope with the global one for Spain in 2020, would also improve efficiency and social collaboration.The ocean sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO(2)), direct injection of CO(2) into bathypelagic layers, is one of the climate change mitigation options. It is essential to assess the potential environmental impacts on the marine ecosystem. In bathypelagic layers, bacteria are dominant organisms and play significant roles in oceanic carbon cycling through utilization and transformation of organic matter. We performed laboratory experiments by acidifying bathypelagic seawater with CO(2) gas or buffer solutions to examine the impact on bacterial activities (abundance, production rate, and proportion of viable cells). In the laboratory experiments, we observed some potential effects by artificial changes in CO(2) concentration, pH, or both, on bacterial activities. It was suggested that trophic conditions of bacterial assemblage strongly influence the magnitude of the impacts on bacterial activities and metabolisms by CO(2) sequestration.Africa is a continent of many contradictions: rich in natural resources, yet underdeveloped with large populations of poor people. Many African countries are generously endowed with productive land and valuable natural resources, including renewable and non-renewable resources. Although Africa is the continent least responsible for climate change, it is particularly vulnerable to its effects, including reduced agricultural production, worsening food security, the increased incidence of both flooding and drought, spreading disease and an increased risk of conflict over scarce land and water resources. Although historically least responsible for the problem, yet, according to all scientific prognoses, African countries will be hardest hit. Climate change is a major threat to sustainable growth and development in Africa, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Africa will be unable to cope with climate mitigation and adaptation demands without substantially increasing its Use of its indigenous modem energy. Africa's capacity to respond to the challenges of climate instability will be expanded by improving overall resilience, integrating climate change goals into sustainable development strategies, increasing the use of modem energy systems with reduced carbon intensity, and strengthening international initiatives. A workable strategy must be concerned not just with how to design a future in which climate change and energy security concerns are met, but also with the pathway to get there. This Study aims to highlight climate change impacts and vulnerabilities, the required mitigation and adaptation policies to be adopted, strategies and policies for improving energy efficiency; applicable to Africa. The overarching goal is establishing a policy framework considering the complex and evolving links between climate change, energy security and sustainable development.Sweden has been one of the driving forces in establishing the new post-Kyoto agreement of the European Union (EU), with the goal of achieving a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 over the base year 1990. The Swedish national goal of emission reductions has been set even higher. Global tourism has recently been identified as an economic sector contributing significantly to emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly through transport, but there are as yet few comprehensive studies assessing its role in global warming on a national basis. In the light of this, this paper seeks to provide an estimate of emissions from tourism in Sweden, showing that these account for about 10% of Swedish emissions, and increase rapidly. National emission reduction goals are thus in stark contrast to emission growth in the tourism sector, but this is not addressed in the government's climate strategy. The paper concludes that it may be highly relevant for governments to consider emissions from tourism, and particularly aviation, in climate policy.To circumvent problems associated with even-aged, pure coniferous stands propagated outside their natural range alternative management strategies and conversion programs are currently discussed in Central Europe. However, a mainstreaming of such adapted silvicultural systems with climate change mitigation objectives is missing to date. In this study the objective was to assess in situ C storage under conditions of climate change in a secondary Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) forest management unit in Austria. Four management strategies (Norway spruce age class forestry, transition to continuous cover forestry with Norway spruce, conversion to mixed conifer/broadleaved stands, no management) were investigated under current climate and two transient climate change scenarios in a simulation study. By comparing the results of two independent forest ecosystem models (PICUS v 1.41, 4C) applied under identical forcings and boundary conditions we aimed at addressing uncertainties in model-based projections. A transition to continuous cover forestry increased C storage in all climate scenarios (+45.4 tC.ha(-1) to +74.0 tC-ha(-1) over the 100 year analysis period) compared to the approximately balanced C budget under the age class system. For the mixed conifer/broadleaved management variant predictions of the two models diverged significantly (+29.4 tC.ha(-1) and -10.6 tC.ha(-1) in PICUS and 4C respectively, current climate). With regard to climate change impacts both models agreed on distinct effects on productivity but lower sensitivity of C stocks due to compensation from respiration and adaptive harvest levels. In conclusion, considering the potential effects of silvicultural decisions on C stocks climate change mitigation should be addressed explicitly in programs advocating targeted change in management paradigms.In recent years, soft methods for treating uncertainties have reached the field of environmental risks. This paper presents some specific characteristics of this field and how they can affect the choice of methods and the way of representing results. Example applications illustrate the use of such methods in several areas of environmental risks: soil and groundwater contamination, health risks and risks related to the underground storage of carbon dioxide for climate change mitigation. A potential drawback of these methods in a decision-making framework is the fact that decision-makers do not like to work with multiple indicators, i.e. upper and lower bounds on the probability of exceeding a certain risk threshold. A way to avoid this difficulty is proposed, based on it weighted average of optimistic and pessimistic bounds on risk focal elements.A case study approach is applied in order to evaluate climate change mitigation measures in the energy sector in a SEE country with economy in transition. Starting point of the analyses were the findings and recommendations of the Working Group on Mitigation (WG3) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Bangkok, May 2007. The applied evaluating model is GACMO, which compares each mitigation option with the baseline and determines its economic and environmental effectiveness. Almost half of the considered options are shown to be of win-win type, which can be partially explained by the high energy intensity of the national economy, although their environmental effectiveness is relatively low. On the other hand, options with the largest mitigation potential are shown to be most difficult for implementation, mainly due to the lack of financing and low prospects for attracting foreign investments, as well as legislative and administrative barriers.The environmental protection represents the financially most demanding chapter of accession negotiations in the process of the EU accession of Croatia. The costs however do not appear high when compared with the expected benefits such as: better public health, more rational use of natural resources, higher quality of life and others. Some of the areas in which the largest funding is needed are waste management, waste water treatment, industrial pollution prevention and control, and climate change mitigation. According to the new Waste Management Plan, construction of county and regional waste management centers is envisaged where the waste will be processed in a sustainable manner (with material and energy recovery), in order to reduce the quantity of waste that is landfilled and decrease its reactivity. The existing landfills (mainly not in compliance with regulations) will be remedied and closed in five years period. Some of them will become transfer stations or recycling yards. The Republic of Croatia has recently ratified the Kyoto protocol after almost four years of negotiations, mainly about the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions level in the base year. By doing that Croatia has taken obligation to reduce its overall GHG emissions by at least 5% below the 1990 level during the commitment period 2008-2012. In order to reach that goal Croatia will have to implement different cost-effective measures such as use of renewable energy sources (mainly wind, biomass and solar energy), increase the energy efficiency in industry, service and building sector, introduce biofuels in transport etc. The activities on introducing the national emission trading scheme have already commenced in Croatia.We compared alternate uses of cereal straw (4.25 t dry matter ha(-1) containing 1.7 t carbon (C) for their effectiveness in relation to climate change mitigation. The scenarios were (1) incorporation into soil to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) content ("carbon sequestration") and (2) combustion to generate electricity. The Rothamsted Carbon Model was used to estimate SOC accumulation in a silty clay loam soil under the climatic conditions of north-west Europe. Using straw for electricity generation saved seven times more CO2 than from SOC accumulation. This comparison assumed that electricity from straw combustion displaced that generated from coal and used the mean annual accumulation of SOC over 100 yr. SOC increased most rapidly in the early years, but then more slowly as a new equilibrium value was approached. We Suggest that increased SOC from straw incorporation does not represent genuine climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. In Europe, most straw not already incorporated in the field where it is grown is subsequently returned elsewhere, e.g., after use for animal bedding and production of manure. Only additional retention of C in soil compared to the alternative use represents sequestration. Maintenance of SOC for soil functioning is a more appropriate rationale for returning straw to soil than climate change mitigation. This analysis shows that considerably greater climate change mitigation is achieved through saved CO2 emissions by burning straw for electricity generation, replacing some use of fossil fuel. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New Zealand is unique in that half of its national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory derives from agriculture - predominantly as methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O), in a 2:1 ratio. The remaining GHG emissions predominantly comprise carbon dioxide (CO(2)) deriving from energy and industry sources. Proposed strategies to mitigate emissions of CH(4) and N(2)O from pastoral agriculture in New Zealand are: (1) utilising extensive and riparian afforestation of pasture to achieve CO(2) uptake (carbon sequestration); (2) management of nitrogen through budgeting and/or the use of nitrification inhibitors, and minimizing soil anoxia to reduce N(2)O emissions; and (3) utilisation of alternative waste treatment technologies to minimise emissions of CH(4). These mitigation measures have associated co-benefits and co-costs (disadvantages) for rivers, streams and lakes because they affect land use, runoff loads, and receiving water and habitat quality. Extensive afforestation results in lower specific yields (exports) of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), suspended sediment (SS) and faecal matter and also has benefits for stream habitat quality by improving stream temperature, dissolved oxygen and pH regimes through greater shading, and the supply of woody debris and terrestrial food resources. Riparian afforestation does not achieve the same reductions in exports as extensive afforestation but can achieve reductions in concentrations of N, P, SS and faecal organisms. Extensive afforestation of pasture leads to reduced water yields and stream flows. Both afforestation measures produce intermittent disturbances to waterways during forestry operations (logging and thinning), resulting in sediment release from channel re-stabilisation and localised flooding, including formation of debris dams at culverts. Soil and fertiliser management benefits aquatic ecosystems by reducing N exports but the use of nitrification inhibitors, viz. dicyandiamide (DCD), to achieve this may under some circumstances impair wetland function to intercept and remove nitrate from drainage water, or even add to the overall N loading to waterways. DCD is water soluble and degrades rapidly in warm soil conditions. The recommended application rate of 10 kg DCD/ha corresponds to 6 kg N/ha and may be exceeded in warm climates. Of the N(2)O produced by agricultural systems, approximately 30% is emitted from indirect sources, which are waterways draining agriculture. It is important therefore to focus strategies for managing N inputs to agricultural systems generally to reduce inputs to wetlands and streams where these might be reduced to N(2)O. Waste management options include utilizing the CH(4) resource produced in farm waste treatment ponds as a source of energy, with conversion to CO(2) via combustion achieving a 21-fold reduction in GHG emissions. Both of these have co-benefits for waterways as a result of reduced loadings. A conceptual model derived showing the linkages between key land management practices for greenhouse gas mitigation and key waterway values and ecosystem attributes is derived to aid resource managers making decisions affecting waterways and atmospheric GHG emissions. Applications of optimization in the field of process systems engineering often involve dealing with nonlinearity and uncertainty, necessitating the Solution Of Stochastic nonlinear programming (SNLP) problems. However, the existing algorithms to solve such problems suffer from various limitations. The L-shaped BONUS algorithm, which is an integration of the BONUS (Better Optimization of Nonlinear Uncertain Systems) algorithm and the sampling-based L-shaped method, has been recently proposed to overcome some of these problems. It is shown to have desirable computational properties. This work further investigates the properties of the algorithm by applying it to the environmental problem of pollutant (nutrient) trading in the Christina River Basin. With environmental concerns being heightened, pollution abatement-related decisions are important for industry, making efficient solution techniques invaluable. The results confirm the computational efficiency of the L-shaped BONUS algorithm. Simultaneously, interesting aspects of the environmental trading problem are also explored, pointing toward the scope of implementing stochastic programming techniques for better decision making in the field of industrial ecology.To date, most work on water network synthesis has been focusing on a single water network. The increase of public awareness toward industrial ecology has inspired new research into interplant water integration (IPWI). In this context, each water network may be grouped according to the geographical location of the water-using processes or as different plants operated by different business entities. Water source(s) from one network may be reused/recycled to sink(s) in another network. In this work, two different IPWI schemes, that is, "direct" and "indirect" integration are analyzed using mathematical optimization techniques. In the former, water from different networks is integrated directly via cross-plant pipeline(s). A mixed integer linear program (MILP) model is formulated and solved to achieve a globally optimal solution. In the latter, water from different networks is integrated indirectly via a centralized utility hub. The centralized utility hub serves to collect and redistribute water to the individual plants, and may even function as a shared water regeneration unit. For the indirect integration scheme, a mixed integer nonlinear program (MINLP) is formulated and solved using a relaxation linearization technique to obtain an optimal solution.Relying on the multiple inputs of natural resource and energy as well as the transformation from a centrally planned economy to a market-based economy and open policy, China made a great economic growth in the last few decades and became one of the most important world economic powers. However, the rapid economic growth has engendered serious natural resource depletion and pollution. Pollution and ecological degradation are becoming essential obstacles for China's further growth. Under the situation, the concept of circular economy (CE) was promoted in China as a new development strategy to alleviate the shortage of resource supply by improving the resource productivity and the eco-efficiency of production and consumption, which will accelerate the economic transformation from economic growth to economic development. The difference of the two modes is that economic growth relies on a continuing increase of resource inputs while economic development relies on the improvement of efficiency (resource productivity and eco-efficiency). (C) 2008 American institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 27: 503-514,2008The aim of this project (part of the CICLE project) is to know the current waste recovery and recycling options in the Catalan leather sector and to identify environmental improvements following the Industrial Ecology principles. A diagnosis has been done to identify and quantity the different wastes obtained as well as their destination. The main results obtained were that the Catalan leather industry is very active searching for waste recycling options and that hide tanning wastes are more recycled than skin tanning ones. The main proposals are to promote the figure of a waste manager, whose economic activity consists on searching the best recycling option for any kind of waste, and to increase the information exchange between recyclers and tanners; to make more efficient recycling processes. Finally, the planning of a new sustainable industrial estate is proposed, thus helping to increase the synergies among this type of industries.A novel approach to Cr(VI)-contaminated wastewater treatment was investigated using microbial fuel cell technologies in fed-batch mode. By using synthetic Cr(VI)-containing wastewater as catholyte and anaerobic microorganisms as anodic biocatalyst, Cr(VI) at 100 mg/l was completely removed during 150 h (initial pH 2). The maximum power density of 150 mW/m(2) (0.04 mA/cm(2)) and the maximum open circuit voltage of 0.91 V were generated with Cr(VI) at 200 mg/l as electron acceptor. This work verifies the possibility of simultaneous electricity production and cathodic Cr(VI) reduction.This paper presents an industrial ecological insight into local waste management in Pielinen Karelia, Finland. There local system is experiencing major changes because of tightening EC waste legislation including the directives on waste incineration (2000/76/EC) and landfilling of wastes (1999/31/EC). Small local landfills are closing and most of municipal wastes will be transported 120-180 km to large-scale waste management centre in Kuopio. The paper applies three industrial ecosystem indicators, based on environmental, economic and employment impacts of different waste management technologies. Environmental indicator is CO2 equivalent emission, economic indicator is based on costs and revenues of waste management, and social (i.e. employment) indicator includes new jobs generated. The results indicate that waste incineration option in forthcoming regional cooperation could create emission savings up to 117-394 kg CO2 eqv./ton of municipal waste when compared to local landfilling. As economic impacts, new regional cooperation and long-distance transportations will increase the costs from previous 45.6-55.2 (sic)/ton in local landfilling to 97.4 (sic)/ton in regional landfilling and 120.8-126.9 (sic)/ton in regional REF-III incineration. In terms of employment, the new cooperation could create 2-6.5 new jobs. The regional cooperation results to rising operational costs but avoids investments to new local infrastructure. It also creates significant emission savings, maintains current employment in waste handling and creates new jobs in long-distance transportation.This paper analyses the relocation, following Industrial Ecology principles, of tanneries from Igualada, Spain to a new sustainable industrial estate. The tanning industry in Igualada has been located in the same river basin for more than 100 years. During the last decade, the city has been growing very fast and it is now beginning to force the industry to move to the outskirts. Environmental, social and economic aspects were analysed to assess the feasibility of the proposed move. Results clearly show that relocating the tanneries to a new industrial estate is absolutely necessary for these companies to achieve sustainability. This move is economically feasible, it will have important environmental benefits (compared to the present situation) and is agreed upon by all involved. However, a very important challenge was detected: there is no agreement on where to locate the new industrial estate. The current proposal made by Catalan authorities lacks the unanimous agreement of all involved. To solve this problem meetings among interested parties will soon take place. Otherwise, the future of this important cluster in Igualada is uncertain. This work helped the tanneries of the industrial cluster in Igualada, and could also help other similar clusters, e.g. to analyse the sustainability of a proposed move and to plan new sustainable industrial areas.Carbon nanotubes fabricated by the dc arc discharge method (ADCNTs) and chemical vapor deposition method (CVDCNTs) were oxidized with concentrated HNO3 to modify their surface chemistry. The materials were characterized using SEM, TEM, FTIR, XPS, potentiometric titration, and nitrogen adsorption. The initial and oxidized materials were used as adsorbents of cadmium from aqueous solutions with different pH. Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption models were applied to fit the isotherm data, and both models fit the experimental data very well. The acid oxidation resulted in an increase in the number of oxygen-containing groups without drastic changes in the texture of the adsorbents. Although the small volume of micropores is present, the nanotube structure can be considered as nonporous. The lack of developed microporosity in carbonaceous materials eliminates the inner surface diffusion problems and makes the vast majority of surface groups available for adsorption of cadmium. The availability of these centers depends on the pH of the solution, which controls the protonation level. In spite of the fact that the pH of the solution affects the speciation of cadmium to some degree, the surface chemistry is the predominant force for adsorption at the pH range adopted in the present study, while the texture of materials also affects the nanotube's cadmium-adsorbing performance.We present the concept of sociometabolic regimes and use it to analyze patterns of change in global social metabolism. Sociometabolic regimes represent dynamic equilibria of society-nature interactions and are characterized by typical patterns of material and energy flows (metabolic profiles). From this perspective, industrialization appears as a process of transition from the agrarian to the industrial regime. This article presents a global data set on the socioeconomic metabolism of 175 nations for the year 2000. We group the countries into six clusters differentiated by economic development and population density, reflecting the historical path of (agrarian) development and resource endowment. Our analysis reveals that per capita material and energy use in industrialized clusters is higher than in developing regions by a factor of 5 to 10. However, per capita use of natural resources differs significantly among industrialized clusters. A large fraction of the global population displays a metabolic profile somewhere in between the patterns typical for the agrarian and the industrial regimes. The sociometabolic transition from an agrarian to an industrial regime is thus an ongoing process with important consequences for future global material and energy demand. If we take a transition between regimes and the current characteristics of this transition as given, the global energy and materials demand is likely to grow by a factor of 2 to 3 during the coming decades. The most critical part of our findings relates to the cluster of high-density developing countries, as these countries already have a higher anthropogenic material and energy burden per unit of land area than, for example, industrial Europe, with pending further increases bound to surpass carrying capacities.In 2003, the Fundamental Plan for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society was developed; it established indicators and numerical targets for each of three aspects of material flows in Japan. One of the three indicators is resource productivity: Gross domestic product divided by direct material input (GDP/DMI). This article elucidates factors that have changed recent resource-use intensity (the inverse of resource productivity) in Japan. Specifically, the analysis emphasizes decomposing resource-use intensity into the factors of recycling, induced material-use intensity, demand structure, and average propensity to import. Conclusions drawn from analyses of data from the 1995-2002 period are as follows: (1) Changes in the structure of demand (i.e., the magnitude of the demand for a particular set of goods and services relative to total demand) produced the largest contribution to a reduction in resource-use intensity. In addition, the aggregate of the decline in induced material-use intensity and the improvement in recycling contributed as much as changes in the demand structure. (2) Final demand for construction declined steadily during the study period, resulting in the largest contribution to the decline in resource-use intensity. (3) Final demand for machinery and services increased, whereas their induced material-use intensity declined, contributing to the decline in resource-use intensity as a whole. (4) Although the effects of recycling are not great, the increased recycling of nonmetallic minerals contributed to the decline in resource-use intensity.Australia's export-oriented large natural resources sectors of agriculture and mining, the ways large-scale services, such as nutrition, water, housing, transport and mobility, and energy are organized, and the consumption patterns of Australia's wealthy urban households, create a unique pattern of overall resource use in Australia. In an attempt to contribute to a new environmental information system compatible with economic accounts, we represent Australia's resource use by employing standard biophysical indicators for resource use developed within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) context. We look at the last 3 decades of resource use and the economic, social, and environmental implications. We also discuss scenarios of future resource use patterns based on a stocks and flows model of the Australian economy. We argue that current extractive economic patterns have contributed to the recent economic boom in Australia but will eventually lead to negative social and environmental outcomes. Although there is currently little evidence of political support for changing the economic focus on export-oriented agriculture and mining industries, there is significant potential for improvements in socio-technological systems and room for more sustainable household consumption.Human-induced changes in global stocks and flows of carbon are major drivers of global climate change. This article presents a comprehensive and systemic account of a nation's carbon budget, comprising socioeconomic as well as ecological carbon flows in a historic time series. The example of Austria 1830-2000, for which excellent databases facilitate a comprehensive assessment, suggests that changes in socioeconomic metabolism during the agrarian-industrial transition are intimately linked with changes in land use and natural carbon flows. In the preindustrial agrarian colonization of Austria (during the thousands of years before 1830), a huge amount of carbon was released due to the expansion of agricultural land. At the dawn of Austria's industrialization (1830-1880), this process was terminated, and carbon inflows and outflows of ecosystems were approximately balanced. With rising fossil fuel consumption, Austria's socioeconomic system added growing amounts of carbon to the atmosphere each year. At the same time, fossil-fuel-powered surges in the productivity of agro-ecosystems facilitated the production of growing amounts of agricultural biomass on shrinking agricultural areas. This greatly enhanced ecological carbon flows and, together with decreasing pressures on forests, allowed ecosystems to recover from past depletion and absorb increasing amounts of carbon. The systematic interlinkage between the socioeconomic energy system and carbon flows in ecosystems, as documented in this study, underlines the need for comprehensive and consistent analyses of society-nature interaction to develop monitoring tools and support strategies aimed at a more sustainable future.In this article we compare the resource flows of Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru between 1980 and 2000. Our objective is to analyze the structure of social metabolism of extractive countries and the consequences of the neoliberal economic structural reforms on the use of natural resources. In two decades, the domestic extraction of materials increased considerably in the four countries, mainly due to the mining sector in Chile and Peru, biomass and oil in Ecuador, and construction minerals in Mexico. Imports and exports also increased, because of the increasingly deeper integration in international markets, prompted by liberalization policies implemented in the four countries between the late 1970s and the late 1990s. All four countries had a negative physical trade balance for most of the period analyzed, with exports exceeding imports in terms of weight. However, parallel growth of imports reduced the physical deficit in Chile, Mexico, and Peru. Ecuador's physical deficit was the highest and did not decrease during the last two decades. A diversification of exports away from bulk commodities could be observed in Chile and Mexico and to a lesser extent in Peru, whereas in Ecuador the export sector remained mainly based on oil and biomass. More research is needed to explore the environmental and social impacts of the neoliberal economic reforms. Also, the indirect flows associated with direct physical imports and exports deserve to be subjected to further analysis.This article examines the development of material consumption in three transition economies during the years 1990-2002. We compare the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland and benchmark their material consumption against average values for the 15 member states of the European Union (formation as of 1995) representing a typical market economy. The article compares consumption of materials in these countries and relates them to relevant socioeconomic variables, using the IPAT equation as a starting point. The article tries to answer whether there has been a convergence in per capita material consumption in these transition economies, in order to identify commonalities associated with the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy in terms of the development of material consumption. We investigate the relation between material consumption, population development, economic growth, and technological change during the transition. We show that the three transition economies, in general, experienced a convergence in per capita material consumption, including a common decrease in the consumption of biomass. Two out of three countries further recorded a decrease in the consumption of fossil fuels and an increase in the consumption of minerals. We found a general trend of increasing dependence on foreign resources during the transition. On the basis of the IPAT analysis, we found that the development of material consumption was mostly driven by the growth in consumption and by technological change. Although gross domestic product (GDP) growth contributed to a growth in material consumption, the influence of technology supported a reverse effect. In some of the countries, however, the factors decreasing material consumption (i.e., shifts to services and technological change) were not able to outweigh those factors causing material consumption to grow (i.e., increase in GDP).The transport of ore and refined metals into and from countries has long been quantified, both because of its financial implications and because of the relative ease of tracking those flows. This information says little, however, about the net trade of metal in all its forms, particularly "semiproducts," such as sheet and wire, and metal in traded products (MTP). A comprehensive analysis for the United States for copper, lead, zinc, chromium, and silver, in which all trade flows are included, demonstrates that MTP flows can often be a large factor in determining a country's import/export dependence, accounting for between 13% (zinc) and 57% (silver) of traded metal in all forms. A methodology was created to calculate the end user net import reliance, which is the net import of metal contained in ore, concentrate, refined forms, and semi-manufactured and finished products, plus any releases of metal from government or producer stocks, as a function of the flow of metal into end use by consumers. For all five metals, this calculation showed a higher reliance on imports than calculations that solely examine ore, concentrate, and refined metals. This suggests that the metal contained in semi-manufactured and finished products increases U.S. material import vulnerability. However, the in-use stocks of these metals contained in products may serve as a potential resource, serving to mitigate this vulnerability. Graphical representations of metal trade in all forms by geographical origin and destination are provided to characterize the nature of the trade and provide information that would be useful in characterizing U.S. import vulnerability.In this article, we analyze flows of the platinum group metals (PGMs) platinum, palladium, and rhodium and the environmental impacts associated with their supply in Europe. A model of the use of PGMs in Europe has been developed, and this is combined with a model of environmental pressures related to PGM production. Seven industrial sectors and product groups form the main users of PGMs in Europe, comprising the chemical, petroleum, and glass industries; jewelry, dentistry, electronic equipment, and car catalysts. Most relevant environmental impacts of secondary production in Europe and primary PGM production in South Africa, Russia, and Canada are taken into account, including emissions of sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide and total material requirement. The article quantifies the PGM flows to, from, and within Europe in 2004. The automotive industry is the single largest user of primary PGMs, and catalytic converters represent the major PGM end use. The chemical and glass industries also require large amounts of PGM but rely mostly on secondary metals. The environmental impacts of primary production exceed those of secondary production by far. An analysis of the use of car catalytic converters shows that as a result of efforts to reduce air pollutant emissions in Europe, other negative environmental impacts, such as point-source pollution and mining waste, are occurring elsewhere-for example, at extraction and refining sites in Siberia and South Africa.Studies of material cycles, which have a solid history in biogeochemistry, include characterization of technological materials cycles that quantify the way in which materials move through the economy and environment of a region. One of the most important aspects of historical technological materials cycles is determining how much material goes into various uses over time and modeling its lifetime in each use. A material flow analysis methodology is presented by which a historical (i.e., 1975 to 2000) study of tungsten use in the United States was constructed. The approach utilized in this study is twofold: the traditional approach by which material going into end-use sectors is approximated (the "end-use sector model"), and a second approach by which end-use products are specifically addressed (the "finished product model"). By virtue of the latter method, a detailed historical account of a material's end uses was developed. This study shows that (1) both models present a detailed treatment of trade of finished products over time for a variety of highly disaggregated products, (2) the end-use sector model provides a method to combine quantitative and qualitative data about products in various sectors to estimate domestic production for a metal about which little is known in terms of its end uses, and (3) the finished product model produces detailed estimates of domestic production for a large number of highly disaggregated products.Building a national system of material flow accounts in the United States could be an important step toward natural resource sustainability. But the task will not be as simple as "If you build it, they will come." The key to understanding the status of and prospects for official material flow accounts in the United States is to see the picture from the point of view of public sector and environmental innovation generally, rather than from the point of view of building the details of the accounts themselves. A simple model of public sector innovation helps explain what is happening and what needs to happen to make further progress. The model used here has four principal elements: methods, organizational capacity, demand, and actual use. The details and sequence of these elements vary in different situations, but all four must be present for successful innovations. Although aspects of culture, innovation, and government bureaucracy differ from country to country, the basic model appears to be similar across borders, at least in countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Seen this way, recent events in the United States indicate that (1) there is significant potential for such accounts; (2) the United States is moving toward creating them, although not in a systematic manner, which means that the progression and eventual outcome are uncertain; and (3) there are ways for the research community to participate very positively in the public process.This article describes Japan's adoption of the sound material-cycle society (SMC Society) as a key goal in its pursuit of sustainable development. An SMC Society is defined in Japanese law as a society wherein the consumption of natural resources is restrained and the environmental load is reduced as far as possible, through promotion of the 3Rs-reduction, reuse, and recycling-as well as the environmentally sound disposal of solid waste. The Fundamental Law for Establishing an SMC Society, enacted in 2000, requires the government to formulate a plan, two of which have been developed to date. The Fundamental Plans set quantitative targets for three indicators: resource productivity, cyclical use rate, and final disposal amount. Initial results indicate that resource productivity has increased because the increase in real gross domestic product (GDP) has been accompanied by a decrease in direct material input (DMI), the cycle use rate has increased-mainly because of the growth in the recycling rate of industrial waste-and the final disposal amount has been decreasing. These goals have also been pursued on a global scale through the Group of Eight (G8) process known as the 3R Initiative.A medium-scale (0.77 l) air-cathode, brush-anode microbial fuel cell (MFC) operated in fed-batch mode using xylose (20 mM) generated a maximum power density of 13 +/- 1 W/m(3) (673 +/- 43 mW/m(2)). Xylose was rapidly removed (83.5%) within 8 h of a 60-h cycle, with 42.1% of electrons in intermediates (8.5 +/- 0.2 mM acetate, 5.9 +/- 0.01 mM ethanol, 4.3 +/- 0.1 mM formate, and 1.3 +/- 0.03 mM propionate), 9.1% captured as electricity, 16.1% in the remaining xylose, and 32.7% lost to cell storage, biomass, and other processes. The final Coulombic efficiency was 50%. At a higher initial xylose concentration (54 mM), xylose was again rapidly removed (86.9% within 24 h of a 116-h cycle), intermediates increased in concentration (18.4 +/- 0.4 mM acetate, 7.8 +/- 0.4 mM ethanol and 2.1 +/- 0.2 mM propionate), but power was lower (5.2 +/- 0.4 W/m(3)). Power was increased by operating the reactor in continuous flow mode at a hydraulic retention time of 20 h (20 +/- 1 W/m(3)), with 66 +/- 1% chemical oxygen demand removal. These results demonstrate that electricity generation is sustained over a cycle primarily by stored substrate and intermediates formed by fermentation and that the intermediates produced vary with xylose loading.The dependency on carbon-based materials and energy sources and the emission of greenhouse gases have been recognized as major problems of the 21st century. Companies are central to the effort to grapple with these issues due to the large material flows they process and their capabilities for technological innovation. It is important, on the one hand, to determine the individual stake companies have in these issues and, on the other, to measure companies' performance. Since the results of studies thus far have been ambiguous, we define four comprehensive and systematic corporate carbon performance indicators: (1) Carbon intensity is physically oriented and represents a company's carbon use in relation to a business metric. (2) Carbon dependency illustrates the change in physical carbon performance within a given time period. (3) Carbon exposure reveals the financial implications of using and emitting carbon. (4) Carbon risk estimates the change in financial implications of carbon usage within a given time period. On the basis of these general definitions, we specify the indicators for a standardized application that can support two important stakeholders in their decision making: policy makers, who can include such information when evaluating current climate policies and formulating future ones, and investors and financial institutions, which can compare companies with respect to their carbon performance and corresponding financial effects.Emissions derived from human digestion of food and subsequent excretion are very relevant from a life cycle perspective, and yet they are often omitted from food life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. This article offers a simple model to allocate and include these emissions in LCAs of specific foodstuffs. The model requires basic food composition values and calculates the mass and energy balance for carbon, water, nutrients (mainly nitrogen [N] and phosphorus [P]), and other inorganic substances through different excretion paths: breathing, feces, and urine. In addition to direct excretion, the model also allocates some auxiliary materials and energy related to toilet use, such as flushing and washing and drying hands. Wastewater composition is also an output of the model, enabling water treatment to be modeled in LCA studies. The sensitivity of the model to food composition is illustrated with different food products, and the relative importance of excretion in a product's life cycle is shown with an example of broccoli. The results show that this model is sensitive to food composition and thus useful for assessing the environmental consequences of shifts in diet. From a life cycle perspective, the results show that postconsumption nutrient emissions may dominate the impacts on eutrophication potential, and they illustrate how the carbon cycle is closed with the human emissions after food preparation and consumption.Human activity has quadrupled the mobilization of phosphorus (P), a nonrenewable resource that is not fully recycled biologically or industrially. P is accumulated in both water and solid waste due to fertilizer application and industrial, agricultural, and animal P consumption. This paper characterizes the industrial flows, which, although smaller than the agricultural and animal flows, are an important phosphorus source contributing to the pollution of surface waters. We present he quantification of the network of flows as constrained by 'mass balances of the global annual metabolism of phosphorus, based on global consumption for 2004, all of which eventually ends up as waste and in the soil and water systems. We find that on a yearly basis, 18.9 million metric tons (MMT) of P is produced, of which close to 75% goes to fertilizer and the rest to industrial and others uses. Phosphoric acid is the precursor for many of the intermediate and end uses of phosphate compounds described in this study and accounts for almost 30% of all P consumed Eventually, all of the P goes to waste: 18.5 MMT ends up in the soil as solid waste, and 1.32 MMT is emissions to air and water Besides quantifying P flows through our economy, we also consider some possible measures that could be taken to increase the degree of recovery and optimization of this resource and others that are closely related, uch as the recovery of sulfur from gypsum and wastewater (sludge), and fluorine from wet phosphoric acid production.A dynamic substance-flow model is developed to characterize the stocks and flows of cement utilized during the 20th century in the United States, using the generic cement life cycle as a systems boundary. The motivation for estimating historical inventories of cement stocks and flows is to provide accurate estimates of contemporary cement in-use stocks in U.S. infrastructure and future discards to relevant stakeholders in U.S. infrastructure, such as the federal and state highway administrators, departments of transportation, public and private utilities, and the construction and cement industries. Such information will assist in planning future rehabilitation projects and better life cycle management of infrastructure systems. In the present policy environment of climate negotiations, estimates of in-use cement infrastructure can provide insights about to what extent built environment can act as a carbon sink over its lifetime. The rate of addition of new stock, its composition, and the repair of existing stock are key determinants of infrastructure sustainability. Based upon a probability of failure approach, a dynamic stock and flow model was developed utilizing three statistical lifetime distributions-Weibull, gamma, and lognormal-for each cement end-use. The model-derived estimate of the "in-use" cement stocks in the United States is in the range of 4.2 to 4.4 billion metric tons (gigatonnes, Gt). This indicates that 82% to 87% of cement utilized during the last century is still in use. On a per capita basis, this is equivalent to 14.3 to 15.0 tonnes of in-use cement stock per person. The in-use cement stock per capita has doubled over the last 50 years, although the rate of growth has slowed.Human activity has quadrupled the mobilization of phosphorus (P), a nonrenewable resource that is not fully recycled biologically or industrially. P is accumulated in both water and solid waste due to fertilizer application and industrial, agricultural, and animal P consumption. This paper characterizes the industrial flows, which, although smaller than the agricultural and animal flows, are an important phosphorus source contributing to the pollution of surface waters. We present the quantification of the network of flows as constrained by mass balances of the global annual metabolism of phosphorus, based on global consumption for 2004, all of which eventually ends up as waste and in the soil and water systems. We find that on a yearly basis, 18.9 million metric tons (MMT) of P is produced, of which close to 75% goes to fertilizer and the rest to industrial and others uses. Phosphoric acid is the precursor for many of the intermediate and end uses of phosphate compounds described in this study and accounts for almost 80% of all P consumed. Eventually, all of the P goes to waste: 18.5 MMT ends up in the soil as solid waste, and 1.32 MMT is emissions to air and water. Besides quantifying P flows through our economy, we also consider some possible measures that could be taken to increase the degree of recovery and optimization of this resource and others that are closely related, such as the recovery of sulfur from gypsum and wastewater (sludge), and fluorine from wet phosphoric acid production.In the first part of this series of two articles, an approach was presented that takes the entropy production associated with any process as a measure of the resource consumption of that process. Entropy production is thereby used to approximate the intuitive notion of consumption, which can best be described by the term "loss of potential utility." This article presents an application example from the metallurgical sector. The related concept of exergy analysis is discussed and compared against the entropy approach. It was found that the production of 1 ton of refined copper generates 90.2 megajoules per Kelvin of entropy. A comparison with exergy analyses of copper production processes from the literature shows agreement at least on the order of magnitude. While results in one case deviate from the entropy analysis by about 40%, in another case the deviation is about 160%. One can only speculate on the reasons for this discrepancy, without knowing the exact process specifications of the processes analyzed. For entropy production as a measure for resource consumption, a baseline for comparison and interpretation of the results based on natural entropy disposal and reduction mechanisms is suggested.Table 4reports the environmental damages of investing $1,000 into equity funds. The line for the ecosystem quality damage in Ecoindicator (EI) points shows incorrect figures. In the relational database used to generate this table, the variable for the nonnormalized damage was mistakenly used instead of that for normalized damage. Below, the table is shown with the corrected figures in italic letters.Industrial ecology is often promoted as a practice to close industrial production loops and reduce waste, thereby making better use of resources and preventing the overuse of raw materials. Eco-industrial parks (ElPs) are the spatial concentrations of businesses that use the by-products of one industrial process as inputs to another. Both sets of practices are based on particular tropes involving nature. This paper explores the use of various tropes in the literature of industrial ecology and ElPs. It highlights the need better to understand the pre-theoretical and theoretical bases of industrial ecology and to increase the potential for practical implementation by applying insights from the literatures of urban planning, social science and economic geography.The aim of this project (part of the CICLE project) is to know the current waste recovery and recycling options in the Catalan paper sector and to identify environmental improvements following the Industrial Ecology principles. A diagnosis has been done to identify and quantify the different wastes obtained as well as their destination. The solid waste from the gross solid filtration previous to waste water treatment is currently going to landfil, as well as the sludge, which mainly is not profitable either. The main proposals for environmental improvement are: the use of Rofire (R) technology to obtain energy from the first type of waste and the use of sludge as fuel in a cogeneration plant. The Rofire (R) technology would reduce 85,8% the CO(2) emissions and would be economically feasible when the price of dumping waste would be around 50,88 (sic)/t. The cogeneration option must be studied for each factory especifically.In recent years, industrial ecology has been the subject of both academic and policy interest, as a means of implementing sustainable development. For some academic researchers, industrial ecology is seen as the 'science of sustainability', while for policy-makers one aspect of industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis, has seemed to offer new opportunities to combine environmental improvement, economic development and local regeneration through the construction of eco-industrial parks. Industrial symbiosis uses metaphors drawn from natural ecosystems to suggest that industrial production can be reconfigured into an 'industrial ecosystem' where firms are interconnected through the exchange of wastes and energy. This article is intended to provide an introduction to some of the key ideas involved in industrial symbiosis and to the ways in which it has been used to inform policy.Energy supply and use is of fundamental importance to society. Although the interactions between energy and environment were originally local in character, they have now widened to cover regional and global issues, such as acid rain and the greenhouse effect. It is for this reason that there is a need for covering the direct and indirect economic and environmental impacts of energy acquisition, transport, production and use. In this paper, particular attention is directed to ways of resolving conflict between economic and environmental goals by encouraging a power plant to consider co-firing biomass and refuse-derived fuel (RDF) with coal simultaneously. It aims at reducing the emission level of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in an uncertain environment, using the power plant in Michigan City, Indiana as an example. To assess the uncertainty by a comparative way both deterministic and grey nonlinear mixed integer programming (MIP) models were developed to minimize the net operating cost with respect to possible fuel combinations. It aims at generating the optimal portfolio of alternative fuels while maintaining the same electricity generation simultaneously. To case the solution procedure stepwise relaxation algorithm was developed for solving the grey nonlinear MIP model. Breakeven alternative fuel value can be identified in the post-optimization stage for decision-making. Research findings show that the inclusion of RDF does not exhibit comparative advantage in terms of the net cost, albeit relatively lower air pollution impact. Yet it can be sustained by a charge system, subsidy program, or emission credit as the price of coal increases over time. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper shows the main limitations and difficulties in the efficiency argument of ecological modernization. Eight limitations in the concept of eco-efficiency are revealed. Recommendations to improve the use of eco-efficiency in ecological modernization policy and management are derived from the critique. Eco-efficiency serves as an important technical tool, practical instrument, or indicator in environmental policy and management, but is not suitable as the overall goal and strategic vision.China is pioneering a new sustainable development model which has the ability to overcome current environmental and resource management problems, while achieving improvements in resource productivity and eco-efficiency. This model, formally accepted in 2002 and termed the 'circular economy', is understood to mean the realisation of a closed loop of material flows in the Chinese economic system. Successful implementation of this model is seen as one way in which China can 'leapfrog' past environmental damage that is typically seen as economies industrialise. This paper introduces the development of the model in China, and presents the current situation of circular economy practice in China. The paper describes current measures being implemented in China for the long-term promotion of a circular economy, including the formulation of objectives, legislation, policies and measures, so that the country can 'leapfrog' its way from environmentally damaging development to a more sustainable path. The paper then identifies a series of barriers and challenges to the implementation of the concept in China. Finally, conclusions on the future of the circular economy concept are drawn. Data were derived primarily from an analysis of secondary sources (i.e. previously published papers). Additional primary data derived from the main author's personal involvement in several circular economy initiatives were also employed.Nanotechnology has great potential for revolutionizing the treatment of disease, optimizing manufacturing processes and consumer products, and remediating polluted environments. Increased use and disposal of products containing nanoparticles will inevitably result in their accumulation in aquatic ecosystems via direct input and runoff from contaminated soils. Aquatic organisms are particularly susceptible to pollutants due to their large, fragile respiratory epithelium. This potential toxicity can be exacerbated by common stressors, such as changes in water temperature, salinity, pH, and oxygen levels, and must be considered in environmental risk assessments. The unique properties of manufactured nanoparticles present serious problems for risk assessment strategies, and there is a concern in the regulatory community that standard toxicological methods may be inadequate to address these compounds. Our capacity to detect and quantify nanoparticles is extremely limited, especially in complex biological, soil, or water samples. The distinctive chemistry and physical structure of each nanomaterial will determine its bioavailability, and these parameters can be altered over time or with changes in water chemistry. The use of advanced analytical techniques, such as functional genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, can provide a global assessment of the biological response to a novel chemical and will be important in determining the potential toxicity of nanoparticles. Industry should adopt a proactive approach to identifying potential risks to aquatic ecosystems so that the benefits of nanotechnology can be fully realized.The release of hazardous substances is a matter of concern for nanotechnology. This may include some nanoparticles, reactants, by-products, and solvents. The use of low-hazard solvents may reduce the hazards from nanoparticle production and nanomaterial processing. The hazards of inorganic nanoparticles may be reduced by modifying their chemical composition, surface characteristics, or structure. In nanomedicine, optimizing the balance between persistence and excretion and preventing the release of toxic degradation products may reduce hazard. In applications of fixed inorganic nanoparticles, the focus should be on preventing the release of such particles and of hazardous compounds during the product life cycle. When, after exhaustion of known hazard reduction options, significant hazard remains, other approaches merit consideration.It is often assumed that nanotechnology (NT) holds the potential to provide a substantial contribution to the solution of various ecological problems, including high consumption of energy and materials and the generation of waste. However, problems surrounding the use and release of hazardous substances remain largely unexplored. For this reason, the Scientific Technical Option Assessment (STOA) Panel of the European Parliament initiated a study on "The Role of Nanotechnology in Chemical Substitution." The subject and aim of the study was an investigation into preexisting and potential applications of NT that could lead to a reduction in hazardous substances by providing substitutes for them. In terms of method, it was based on electronic searches of the literature, expert interviews, and an expert workshop. This article discusses the results of the project. It focuses on the methodological challenges and the principal problems resulting from a combination of the broad and ill-defined concept of NT and the specific concept of hazardous substances. The hazardous substances addressed had to be reduced to a manageable number, and the term substitution was understood according to the characteristics of NT and the way in which the latter could reduce the use of hazardous substances. Although several applications of NT were identified that could lead to a considerable reduction in the use of hazardous substances, ambiguities in both the concept of NT and the concept of substitution in relation to NT prevent a comprehensive assessment of the potential of NT in respect to substitution.Commercial and research interest in nanotechnology has exploded in recent years, with nearly US$9 billion in investment from public and private sources in 2005. While the list of potential applications for nanotechnologies continues to grow, there is increasing pressure from governments and researchers alike to understand the implications of this new class of materials. The emerging field of green nano applies green chemistry and engineering principles to the synthesis of nanomaterials. Here we outline several strategies for the development of green nano and review past policy and research activities in understanding nanotechnology's environmental implications. By means of the green chemistry metric of E-factor, an analysis is undertaken of the traditional syntheses of several specific nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, and metal nanoparticles. It was found that the E-factors of these production processes vary over several orders of magnitude, making it difficult to comment generally about the resource use efficiencies of nanomaterials production. For gold nanoparticles specifically, E-factors for six different production methods are found to range from 10(2) to 10(5), demonstrating that greener synthesis routes are possible and that environmental benefits can begin to be quantified. Expanding the analysis to include life-cycle stages upstream and downstream of production and to incorporate environmental health effects is encouraged, though significant data gaps exist.Sustainable development of nanotechnology will inevitably require incorporation of life cycle thinking to analyze environmental impacts of nanomanufacturing. While many concerns have been raised regarding the human and ecological health effects of and benefits from using nanoproducts, relatively little attention has been given to the manufacturing phase. Unlike many conventional manufacturing techniques, nanomanufacturing techniques require unique facility and process design as well as operation and control. Accordingly, the environmental burden of most nanomanufacturing techniques may be more profound than that of many other conventional techniques. This article reports on a comprehensive review of the current state of technologies used in the manufacture of nanostructured materials in order to identify those attributes that contribute to environmental impacts. It provides a preliminary analysis of significant attributes of commonly used nanomanufacturing techniques, including strict material purity requirements, less tolerance for defects, low process yields and material utilization efficiencies, repetitive processing steps, the need for specialized environments (such as high temperatures or cryogenic processing), the use of toxic chemicals and solvents, the need for moderate to high vacuum, the use or generation of greenhouse gases, high energy and water consumption, and the potential for chemical exposure.Energy requirements for fullerene and nanotube synthesis are calculated from literature data and presented for a number of important production processes, including fluidized bed and floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition (CVD), carbon monoxide disproportionation, pyrolysis, laser ablation, and electric arc and solar furnace synthesis. To produce data for strategic forward-looking assessments of the environmental implications of carbon nanoparticles, an attempt is made to balance generality with sufficient detail for individual processes, a trade-off that will likely be inherent in the analysis of many nanotechnologies. Critical energy and production issues are identified, and potential improvements in industrial-scale processes are discussed. Possible interactions with industrial ecosystems are discussed with a view toward integrating synthesis to mitigate the impacts of large-scale carbon nanoparticle manufacture. Carbon nanoparticles are found to be highly energy-intensive materials, on the order of 2 to 100 times more energy-intensive than aluminum, even with idealized production models.The environmental assessment of nanomanufacturing during the initial process design phase should lead to the development of competitive, safe, and environmentally responsible engineering and commercialization. Given the potential benefits and concerns regarding the use of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), three SWNT production processes have been investigated to assess their associated environmental impacts. These processes include arc ablation (arc), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and high-pressure carbon monoxide (HiPco). Without consideration of the currently unknown impacts of SWNT dispersion or other health impacts, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to analyze the environmental impact and provide a baseline for the environmental footprint of each manufacturing process. Although the technical attributes of the product resulting from each process may not be fully comparable, this study presents comparisons that show that the life cycle impacts are dominated by energy, specifically the electricity used in production. Under base case yield conditions, HiPco shows the lowest environmental impact, while the arc process has the lowest impact under best case yield conditions.Holistic understanding of nanotechnology using systems analysis tools is essential for evaluating claims about the potential benefits of this emerging technology. This article presents one of the first assessments of the life cycle energy requirements and environmental impact of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) synthesis. Life cycle inventory data are compiled with data reported in the open literature. The results of the study indicate relatively higher life cycle energy requirements and higher environmental impact of CNFs as compared to traditional materials, like primary aluminum, steel, and polypropylene, on an equal mass basis. Life cycle energy requirements for CNFs from a range of feedstock materials are found to be 13 to 50 times that of primary aluminum on an equal mass basis. Similar trends are observed from the results of process life cycle assessment (LCA), as conveyed by different midpoint and endpoint damage indicators. Savings in life cycle energy consumption and, hence, reductions in environmental burden are envisaged if higher process yields of these fibers can be achieved in continuous operations. Since the comparison of CNFs is performed on an equal mass basis with traditional materials, these results cannot be generalized for CNF-based nanoproducts. Quantity of use of these engineered nanomaterials and resulting benefits will decide their energy and environmental impact. Nevertheless, the life cycle inventory and the results of the study can be used for evaluating the environmental performance of specific CNF-based nanoproducts.Considerable uncertainty exists about occupational risks, future environmental health and safety (EHS) standards, and associated production and compliance costs for single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) manufacturing processes. We propose and illustrate the use of risk analysis Monte Carlo (MC) models to assess cost and exposure trade-offs of the high-pressure carbon monoxide (HiPco) SWNT manufacturing process given these uncertainties. Assumptions regarding the timing, frequency, magnitude, and expense of EHS standards are modeled as stochastic events and examined for their impact on the expected values, variances, and probability distributions of total production costs and occupational exposure. With a better understanding of associated risks, these models can help policy makers and manufacturers explore potential EHS benefits, consequences, and trade-offs. For example, results suggest that voluntary implementation of a low level of protection (rather than none at all) can lead to reduced cost and exposure uncertainty with insignificant increases in production costs, as well as lowering total manufacturing and liability costs, depending on the assumptions made. Conversely, slower implementation rates of higher standards produce greater uncertainty in long-term costs and exposure. More generally, the results of this study underscore three important observations: (1) Expected costs alone are insufficient for informed decision making; (2) the best level of standards, overall cost, and optimal voluntary standards are highly dependent on uncertain health effects; and (3) the resultant amount of uncertainty in total costs and exposure can be extreme.In order to realize the projected market potential of nanotechnology, the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) uncertainties posed by a nano-product (i.e., a nanotechnology-enabled product) need to be characterized through the identification of risks and opportunities in early stages of product development. We present a methodology to identify risks from nano-products using a scenario analysis approach that allows for expert elicitation on a set of preidentified use and disposal scenarios and what we have labeled "risk triggers" to obtain scores on their likelihood of occurrence and severity. Use and disposal scenarios describe product life-cycle stages that could result in risk attributed to the nano-product, whereas risk triggers are particular to nanoparticle properties. These are potential risks, as the risk assessment community is currently debating the specific risks attributed to nanotechnology. Through such a framework, our goal is to identify which products pose greater risks, where these risks occur in the product life cycle, and the impacts of these environmental risks on society. The comparison of risk triggers across nano-products allows relative risk ranking on axes of exposure- and hazard-related risk triggers. For the specific case of air fresheners, areas of acute risks resulted from bioavailability of nanoparticles in air release and water entrainment exposure scenarios; catalytic activity of nanoparticles in inhalation and air release exposure scenarios; the harmful effects due to the antibacterial property on useful bacteria particularly in susceptible populations; and, finally, risks from the lack of nanoparticle coating stability in air release scenarios.Voluntary initiatives by industry have been frequently proposed as one of the most promising ways to reduce potential negative impacts on human health and the environment from nanomaterials. In this study, we examined the industrial perceptions, internal procedures, and performance of the nanomaterial industry. We conducted a written survey of 40 companies in Switzerland and Germany. Most companies replied that nanoparticulate materials (NPMs) should be subject to some kind of regulation, but industry did not convey a clear opinion as to who should be responsible for managing the potential environmental health impacts or how to regulate NPMs throughout their life cycle. If NPM risks were to be identified, most of the companies surveyed do not have standardized procedures for changing production technology, substituting inputs, redesigning processes, or reformulating final products to reduce or eliminate risks of NPMs. However, a majority of the survey respondents found their existing routines regarding these procedures to be sufficient.Although proposed nanotechnology applications hold great promise, little is known about the potential associated risks. This lack of clarity on the level of risk associated with nanotechnology has forced people to make decisions about consumption with incomplete information. A national random digit dialing telephone survey (N = 1014) was conducted in the United States to assess knowledge of nanotechnology and perception of risk in August 2006. This investigation looks critically at individuals' responses to questions about the balance of risks and benefits of nanotechnology, both at the outset of the survey and after respondents were given a brief introduction to the potential benefits and risks of the technology. Models were created to characterzise respondents who said they did not know how nanotechnology's risks and benefits balanced in the "preinformation" condition but who, in the postinformation condition, had a different opinion. Respondents who were highly educated, members of the Republican Party, or male were more likely to switch from "don't know" in the preinformation condition to "benefits outweigh risks" in the postinformation condition, whereas respondents who were less educated, members of the Democratic Party, or female were more likely to switch from "don't know" in the preinformation condition to "risks outweigh benefits" in the postinformation condition. This is the first study to our knowledge to develop a significant model of nanotechnology risk perception change, specifically with regard to gender differences. The power of information provision to sway opinions is also supported, highlighting the importance of developing educational efforts targeting vulnerable populations.Recent developments in nanotechnology, especially in the area of nanoclay composites, are improving the technical performance of biobased polymers and moving them toward technical and economic competitiveness with petroleum-based polymers and conventional composites. We assess whether these developments also improve the environmental sustainability of biopolymers, by using a life cycle approach. We estimate energy use and emissions from the nanoclay production process and compare these with prior life cycle data for biopolymers as well as other fibers, and we find that nanoclay production results in lower energy use and greenhouse gas emissions than production of many common biopolymers and glass fibers. Nanoclay composites hence can improve the life cycle environmental performance of several common biopolymers. However, for some biopolymers the relative performance depends on the functional unit.In order to stabilize the global climate, the world's governments must make significant commitments to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One of the most promising methods of curbing GHG emissions is a world transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Solar photovoltaic (PV) cells offer a technically sustainable solution to the projected enormous future energy demands. This article explores utilizing industrial symbiosis to obtain economies of scale and increased manufacturing efficiencies for solar PV cells in order for solar electricity to compete economically with fossil fuel-fired electricity. The state of PV manufacturing, the market and the effects of scale on both are reviewed. Government policies necessary to construct a multi-gigaWatt PV factory and complementary policies to protect existing solar companies are outlined and the technical requirements for a symbiotic industrial system are explored to increase the manufacturing efficiency while improving the environmental impact of PV. The results of the analysis show that an eight-factory industrial symbiotic system can be viewed as a medium-term investment by any government, which will not only obtain direct financial return, but also an improved global environment. The technical concepts and policy limitations to this approach were analyzed and it was found that symbiotic growth will help to mitigate many of the limitations of PV and is likely to catalyze mass manufacturing of PV by transparently demonstrating that large-scale PV manufacturing is technically feasible and reaches an enormous untapped market for PV with low costs. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A case-control study of the car-free model housing project in Vienna was conducted to evaluate whether people living in this settlement have more 'sustainable lifestyles' than people living in comparable buildings in Vienna. Another aim was to identify the lifestyle characteristics and household activities which significantly influence the environmental impact of the residents of the car-free housing project and a control group. The control group, referred to as the reference settlement, was chosen from a nearby building complex, with similar characteristics, but without the car-free feature. Household consumption patterns were estimated based on interviews in combination with data from the Austrian consumer expenditure survey and the national accounts. The evaluation of household environmental impacts uses emissions estimates from the Austrian national accounting matrices including environmental accounts and data from life-cycle assessments. Households from the car-free settlement have substantially lower environmental impacts in the categories of ground transportation and energy use; their CO2 emissions of these two categories are less than 50% of those living in the reference settlement. The households in the car-free settlement have somewhat higher emissions in the categories air transport, nutrition, and 'other' consumption, reflecting the higher income per-capita. As a result, the CO2 emissions are only slightly lower than in the reference settlement, but the emissions intensity is 20% lower. Both household groups have significantly lower environmental impacts than the Austrian average reflecting less car use and cleaner heating energy in Vienna. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.over the last decades the concepts of Integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA) and Industrial Ecology (IE), both claiming to provide analyses and solutions for sustainability issues, have been developed separately as they emerged in response to questions from different policy-fields. In both fields, specific tools are used to support national and international environmental policy. The focus of IEA and IE tools, however, is different. IEA tools focus on one or a limited number of specific environmental issues. They often model the chain environmental processes with high spatial (and temporal) resolution, but have a low resolution for the material structure of the economy and only partly take into account indirect effects that occur via physical and socio-economic linkages. IE tools take into account all environmental issues related to a specific substance or product. They have a high resolution for the material structure of the economy and take into account indirect effects that occur via physical linkages, however, their environmental modelling is very limited. Both IE and IEA tools have proven to be very useful and neither is superior to the other. However, a combination of both can provide additional information that can be used for more effective policy making. We use the case of a hypothetical world-wide ban on PVC to show that a measure that is not directly related to climate change could still have significant climate effects. This indirect effect is a result of the linkages of material flows in society. We show that IEA tools are not well suited to include these types of effects and that IE tools can fill this gap partially. What is really needed is a broader systems perspective that takes into account the full range of possible side-effects of environmental policy measures. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A major claim of the work of Desrochers is that students of industrial ecology can learn a great deal from historical evidence on industrial practices regarding waste recovery. In this article, I argue that this requires that such evidence should be put into its institutional context, to prevent overly simple conclusions and naive policy prescriptions. In the first part of the article, I argue that the work of Desrochers suffers from a narrowly economic focus on interfirm recovery as well as a selective use of sources. The modern definition of industrial ecology requires that such recycling contributes to the reduction of ecological impact. Additional material from Desrochers's sources, as well as recent historical research on the meatpacking industry, shows that industrial practice in the 19th century does not support the claim that the market mechanism by itself is sufficient to promote such practices. In the second part of the article, I offer a perspective in which structural, cultural, and political factors are used to assess historical evidence of industrial ecology. This allows a more nuanced understanding of the development of industry's dealing with waste in the 19th century and helps to understand the complexity of promoting interfirm recycling in the present.The article suggests a measure to evaluate the thermodynamic maturity of industrial systems at the level of single process units. The measure can be quantified with reasonable confidence on the basis of entropy production as defined by irreversible thermodynamics theory. It quantifies, for one process unit, the distance between its actual state of operation and its state with minimum entropy production or optimum exergy efficiency, when the two states are constrained with a fixed production capacity of the process unit. We suggest that the minimum entropy production state is a mature state, or that processes that operate at this state are mature. We propose to call the measure "the thermodynamic maturity indicator" (pi), and we define it as the ratio between the minimum entropy production and the actual entropy production. We calculated pi on the basis of literature data for some examples of industrial process units in the chemical and process industry (i.e., heat exchanger, chemical reactor, distillation column, and paper drying machine). The proposed thermodynamic measure should be of interest for industrial ecology because it emerges from the entropy production rate, a dynamic function that can be optimized and used to understand the thermodynamic limit to improving the exergy efficiency of industrial processes. Although not a tool for replacing one process with another or comparing one technology to another, pi may be used to assess actual operation states of single process units in industrial ecology.The Sankey diagram is an important aid in pointing up inefficiencies and potential for savings in connection with resource use. This article, the second of a pair, examines the use of Sankey diagrams in operational material flow management. The previous article described the development of the diagram and its use in the past. Simple Sankey diagrams follow the requirement of conservation of energy or mass and allow a physical view of production systems. Advanced diagrams integrate stocks of materials beside the flows or show the different (ecological) quality of the materials. For the purpose of management, however, a further step is necessary: to illustrate the economic value of the energy and material flows and to use information from cost accounting. The use of flow charts showing added value or the costs of energy and material flows is particularly important for production systems. This article describes examples of each of these uses as well as assumptions that must be taken into account for Sankey diagrams to be used as an effective aid for decision-making in business and public policy.The gradual upward changes of standards in normal everyday life have significant environmental implications, and it is therefore important to study how these changes come about. The intention of the article is to analyze the social construction of normal expectations through a case study. The case concerns the present boom in bathroom renovations in Denmark, which offers an excellent opportunity to study the interplay between a wide variety of consumption drivers and social changes pointing toward long-term changes of normal expectations regarding bathroom standards. The study is problem-oriented and transdisciplinary and draws on a wide range of sociological, anthropological, and economic theories. The empirical basis comprises a combination of statistics, a review of magazine and media coverage, visits to exhibitions, and qualitative interviews. A variety of consumption drivers are identified. Among the drivers are the increasing importance of the home as a core identity project and a symbol of the unity of the family, the opportunities for creative work, the convenience of more grooming capacity during the busy family's rush hours, the perceived need for retreat and indulgence in a hectic everyday life, and the increased focus on body care and fitness. The contours of the emerging normal expectations are outlined and discussed in an environmental perspective.This article explores the potential of RFID (radio frequency identification device) for improving the current waste and resource management system in Switzerland. It presents the following three possible options for utilizing RFID tags to support waste management processes: "at source automation" (using a "smart" trash can), "end of pipe I" (combination of the current system with an additional separation of recyclables before incineration), and "end of pipe II" (replacement of the current recycling infrastructure by sorting at the incineration plant). These options tackle the waste and resource management chain during different processes (i.e., waste generation, waste separation, and treatment). Based on an MFA (material flow analysis), we performed a multicriteria assessment of these options with experts from the waste management sector. The assessment of ten experts in the waste management field regarding the proposed options for batteries and electrical appliances showed that, from an ecological perspective, the implementation of RFID in waste management would be desirable and would lead to an improvement in the current recycling rate in Switzerland for the goods studied. From an economic perspective, new investments would be required in the range of 1 to 5 times the maintenance costs of the current separate collection system. From a social perspective, the utilization of RFID tags in the waste management process was ambiguous. In particular, the end of pipe II option would, on the one hand, significantly improve convenience for consumers. On the other hand, experts see privacy and, what is more, social responsibility as being under threat. The experts considered the ecological and social aspects to be more relevant than the economic ones, preferring the end of pipe I option over the other options and the status quo.Human activities have significantly intensified natural phosphorus cycles, which has resulted in some serious environmental problems that modern societies face today. This article attempts to quantify the global phosphorus flows associated with present day mining, farming, animal feeding, and household consumption. Various physical characteristics of the related phosphorus fluxes as well as their environmental impacts in different economies, including the United States, European countries, and China, are examined. Particular attention is given to the global phosphorus budget in cropland and the movement and transformation of phosphorus in soil, because these phosphorus flows, in association with the farming sector, constitute major fluxes that dominate the anthropogenic phosphorus cycle. The results show that the global input of phosphorus to cropland, in both inorganic and organic forms from various sources, cannot compensate for the removal in harvests and in the losses by erosion and runoff. A net loss of phosphorus from the world's cropland is estimated at about 10.5 million metric tons (MMT) phosphorus each year, nearly one half of the phosphorus extracted yearly.Industrial ecology is a relatively new field of research and academic study and is well established in North America and in several Asian countries. However, it has not yet received the attention it deserves in some other important parts of the industrialized world, including Germany. This paper may contribute to a better appreciation of industrial ecology as a tool in the process of sustainable development of economies, social systems, and of aquatic and terrestrial biotopes under the pressure of rapidly changing conditions triggered by global warming and urban growth. For this reason, methods are needed to quantify the successful application of industrial ecology measures. The "Integrated Sustainability Triangle'' is introduced as a promising new possibility of quantification and monitoring. It enables justification of the contributions industrial ecology can make to sustainable development. The aggregation of individual economic contributions is assumed to create an overall impetus to the entire industrial sector including the sector of environmental engineering. Thus, the potential of industrial ecology is discussed from the macro-economic and the engineering perspective using the concept of sustainable development as a guiding principle. But the authors come to the conclusion that finding solutions to the pressing problems of our time requires more than collaboration of economy and engineering. It requires joint efforts of the whole spectrum of scientific disciplines in close collaboration with industrial and political stakeholders.Results are given from three test series on a ceramic filter for diesel exhausts. In the first and second series, use was made of diesel fuel (in the summer), while in the third series, we used the Standard Euro-4 fuel. A grain-size analysis is given for the dust. The filtration performance (with hot gases) is compared with experiments on filters made of ceramic materials.The ways for improving a cost-effective industrial production program described in an earlier paper primarily focused on the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) schemes within the manufacturing stage. However, industry with high demand of resources input must evolve the essential production strategies to meet the goals in an environmentally benign production program. This paper describes the method and procedure for optimizing a textile-dyeing manufacturing process with respect to the potential impact of pollution charges, resources conservation fees, production cost, inventory cost, and the limitations of production capacity simultaneously. The optimal production strategy concerning numerous screening processes of those production alternatives in terms of market demand, production technology, and resources allocation is treated as an integral part in the multi-objective decision analysis. Facing the growing impact of rising environmental costs and the awareness of implications of industrial ecology, the case-study designed for a textile-dyeing factory in Central Taiwan demonstrates the application potential of a multi-objective evaluation method. It also emphasizes that the employed cost-effectiveness assessment framework can not only consider the conventional costs but also include the hidden costs, such as emission/effluent charges and water resources conservation fees to address the impacts of economic instruments. The research findings clearly indicate that apart from the concern of conventional cost accounting, enterprises facing the challenge of new environmental regulations and policy, which are designed to internalize the external cost in the society, and changing production requirements should employ such an optimal production assessment to enhance their competitiveness.The development of industrial ecology has led company managers to increasingly consider their company's niche in the regional system, and to develop optimization plans. We used emergy-based, ecological-economic synthesis to evaluate two optimization plans for the Jiufa Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Plant, Shandong China. In addition, we performed economic input-output analysis and energy analysis on the system. The results showed that appropriately incorporating a firm with temporary extra productivity into its regional system will help maximize the total productivity and improve ecological-economic efficiency and benefits to society, even without technical optimization of the firm itself. In addition, developing a closer relationship between a company and its regional system will facilitate the development of new optimization opportunities. Small coal-based CHP plants have lower-energy efficiency, higher environmental loading, and lower sustainability than large fossil fuel and renewable energy-based systems. The emergy exchange ratio (EER) proved to be an important index for evaluating the vitality of highly developed ecological-economic systems. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The paper reports on an empirical study of the environmental and resource degradation observed in small-scale handicraft clusters in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. Most entrepreneurs in these clusters face important challenges, including depletion of natural resources, linked to acute shortages of capital and land. Such issues are identified as the main cause of overcrowding, poor working conditions and extreme environmental degradation. The study also highlights some industrial ecology practices at the enterprise level, and assesses the role played by the government in providing incentives for enterprises to invest in new technology and pollution control. Drawing from the analysis of a questionnaire survey of 56 handicraft enterprises, the study identifies the major constraints they encounter in adopting new environmentally clean technologies and engaging in environmental management. Shortage of capital and lack of knowledge about the benefits of new technologies were viewed as the most important barriers, followed by shortage of skilled workers, poor market conditions and scarcity of land appropriate for industrial production.This article presents a general framework for dynamic environmental performance analysis by generalizing the approach proposed by Kuosmanen and Kortelainen [Kuosmanen, T., Kortelainen, M., 2005. Measuring Eco-Efficiency of Production with Data Envelopment Analysis. journal of Industrial Ecology 9(4), 59-72.] from a static to a dynamic setting. For this purpose we construct an environmental performance index (EPI) by applying frontier efficiency techniques and a Malmquist index approach. Compared to other dynamic environmental productivity and efficiency analysis approaches based on these methods, our approach builds on the standard definition of eco-efficiency as it is presented in the ecological economics literature. Recognizing the importance to analyze the sources of environmental performance changes, we show how changes in overall environmental performance can be decomposed into changes in relative eco-efficiency and shifts in environmental technology, respectively. We apply the presented technique at the macro level to dynamic environmental performance analysis of 20 member states of the European Union in 1990-2003. According to the results, environmental technical change mostly explains the improvement in overall environmental performance, while relative eco-efficiency change has been minor for most countries during the sample period. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon footprinting has a much broader appeal than LCA.... In [carbon footprinting], things are kept simple, and a carbon footprint is easy to calculate online... and the calculated value can easily be grasped.... It is certainly an eye opener when you discover that your next trip from Copenhagen to San Francisco has a carbon footprint of roughly 2 tons of CO2 (equivalents), or 20% of the carbon footprint of an average European in an entire year.We do not, however, think there are enough LCA practitioners to meet the growing demand but recognize that the supply might follow.When analyzing the metabolism of our economy, the usual choice for a measure of resource consumption is the throughput of matter and energy. This, however, cannot be sufficient, since consumption by definition is always relating to the destruction or transformation, and hence a change in quality, not only in quantity, of material or energy flows. Here, an approach is presented that takes the entropy production associated with any process as a measure for the resource consumption of that process. Entropy production is thereby used to approximate the intuitive notion of consumption, which can best be described by the term loss of potential utility. This article delivers theoretical evidence for the validity of this choice, and a second article in a future issue will present an application taken from the metallurgical sector. The related concept of exergy analysis is discussed and compared against the entropy approach.This article presents an approach to estimate missing elements in hybrid life cycle inventories. Its development is motivated by a desire to rationalize inventory compilation while maintaining the quality of the data. The approach builds on a hybrid framework, that is, a combination of process- and input-output-based life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The application of Leontief's price model is central in the proposed procedure. Through the application of this approach, an inventory with no cutoff with respect to costs can be obtained. The formal framework is presented and discussed. A numerical example is provided in Supplementary Appendix S1 on the Web.Industrial symbiosis (IS) has been used to describe the physical exchange and shared management of input and output materials by geographically proximate firms. Firms that engage in IS are said to belong to an industrial ecosystem. Symbiosis has been found to be motivated by economic considerations, such as lowering costs for waste disposal, as well as by environmental ones, such as accessing limited water supplies. Communication and trust among managers are thought to play important roles in exchanges; however, empirical studies have not been previously conducted. This study used social network analysis (SNA) to identify the prevalence of industrial symbiosis linkages in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. The study quantified patterns in various relationships among firms and managers, including formal relations through supply chains, and informal ones through interpersonal interactions. SNA and statistical methods were used to explore how these ties correlate with observed industrial symbiosis activities. IS linkages were found to be less prevalent than product sales among firms and were concentrated among pharmaceutical firms at the core of the regional network. Trust among managers and position in the social hierarchy were found to be correlated with IS but not supply chain links. SNA was useful for examining the organization of different relationships in the industrial ecosystem, but contextual information is still needed to add meaning to its findings.In this article we have elaborated a consistent framework for the quantification and evaluation of eco-efficiency for scenarios for waste treatment of construction and demolition (C&D) waste. Such waste systems will play an increasingly important role in the future, as there has been for many years, and still is, a significant net increase in stock in the built environment. Consequently, there is a need to discuss future waste management strategies, both in terms of growing waste volumes, stricter regulations, and sectorial recycling ambitions, as well as a trend for higher competition and a need for professional and optimized operations within the C&D waste industry. It is within this framework that we develop and analyze models that we believe will be meaningful to the actors in the C&D industry. Here we have outlined a way to quantify future C&D waste generation and have developed realistic scenarios for waste handling based on today's actual practices. We then demonstrate how each scenario is examined with respect to specific and aggregated cost and environmental impact from different end-of-life treatment alternatives for major C&D waste fractions. From these results, we have been able to suggest which fractions to prioritize, in order to minimize cost and total environmental impact, as the most eco-efficient way to achieve an objective of overall system performance.The forestry sector is experiencing an increasing demand for documentation about its environmental performance. Previous studies have revealed large differences in environmental impact caused by forestry operations, mainly due to differences in location and forestry practice. Reliable information on environmental performance for forestry operations in different regions is thus important. This article presents a case study of forestry operations in Norway. Environmental impact and value added of selected operations were assessed. This was done with a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Main results, including a sensitivity analysis, are presented for a set of four impact categories. The production chain assessed included all processes from seedling production to the delivery of logs to a downstream user. The environmental impact was mainly caused by logging, transport by forwarders, and transport by truck. These three operations were responsible for approximately 85% of the total environmental impact. The contribution to value added and total costs were more evenly distributed among the processes in the value chain. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the difference in environmental impact between the worst case scenario and the best case scenario was more than a factor of 4. The single most important process was the transport distance from the timber pile in the forest to the downstream user. The results show that the environmental impact from forestry operations in boreal forests was probably underreported in earlier studies.The Sankey diagram is an important aid in identifying inefficiencies and potential for savings when dealing with resources. It was developed over 100 years ago by the Irish engineer Riall Sankey to analyze the thermal efficiency of steam engines and has since been applied to depict the energy and material balances of complex systems. The Sankey diagram is the main tool for visualizing industrial metabolism and hence is widely used in industrial ecology. In the history of the early 20th century, it played a major role when raw materials were scarce and expensive and engineers were making great efforts to improve technical systems. Sankey diagrams can also be used to map value flows in systems at the operational level or along global value chains. The article charts the historical development of the diagrams. After the First World War the diagrams were used to produce thermal balances of production plants for glass and cement and to optimize the energy input. In the 1930s, steel and iron ore played a strategic role in Nazi Germany. Their efficient use was highlighted with Sankey diagrams. Since the 1990s, these diagrams have become common for displaying data in life cycle assessments (LCAs) of products. Sankey diagrams can also be used to map value flows in systems at the operational level or along global value added chains. This article, the first of a pair, charts the historical development. The companion article discusses the methodology and the implicit assumptions of such Sankey diagrams.The challenge in working with environmental improvements is to select the action offering the most substantial progress. However, not all actions are open to all actors in a product chain. This study demonstrates how life cycle assessment (LCA) may be used with an actor perspective in the Swedish postfarm milk chain. The potential measures were identified, applied by the dairy, retailer, and household, that gave the most environmental improvement in a life cycle perspective. Improved energy efficiency, more efficient transport patterns, reduced milk and product losses, and organic labeling were investigated. Milk, yogurt and cheese were considered. After LCAs of the products were established, improvement potentials of the actors were identified and quantified. The quantification was based mostly on literature studies but also on assumptions. Then the LCAs were recalculated to include the estimated improvement potential. To find the action with the greatest potential, the environmental impacts of the modified and original LCAs were compared for each actor. No action was superior to any other from the dairy perspective, but reduced wastage lowered most impacts for all three products. For retailers, using less energy is the most efficient improvement. From the household perspective, reducing wastage gives unambiguously positive results. When households choose organic products, reductions in energy use and greenhouse gases are even larger, but eutrophication increases. Overall, households have greatest potential for improvement while yogurt is the product offering the most improvement potential.A comparison of various waste-solvent treatment technologies, such as distillation (rectification) and incineration in hazardous-waste-solvent incinerators and cement kilns, is presented for 45 solvents with respect to the environmental life-cycle impact. The environmental impact was calculated with the ecosolvent tool that was previously described in Part I of this work. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis was performed, and uncertainties were quantified by stochastic modeling in which various scenarios were considered. The results show that no single treatment technology is generally environmentally superior to any other but that, depending on the solvent mixture and the process conditions, each option may be optimal in certain cases. Nevertheless, various rules of thumb could be derived, and a results table is presented for the 45 solvents showing under which process conditions and amount of solvent recovery distillation is environmentally superior to incineration. On the basis of these results and the ecosolvent tool, an easily usable framework was developed that helps decision makers in chemical industries reduce environmental burdens throughout the solvent life cycle. With clear recommendations on the environmentally optimized waste-solvent treatment technology, the use of this framework contributes to more environmentally sustainable solvent management and thus represents a practical application of industrial ecology.As the negative environmental implications of a modern industrial economy have begun to be recognized, a growing comprehension of the key role of material flows in industrial systems has developed. To this end, several indices characterizing material cycling have been developed. Current indices of material cycling for industrial systems, however, do not effectively measure cycling due to the lack of consideration of both direct and indirect flows in a system. A physical flow modeling approach from ecology, input-output flow analysis, is used in this study to develop cycling indices to address the limited scope of existing measures. The input-output cycling metrics measure the percent of both direct and indirect flows in a system or in a particular process that are cycled. Including the effects of indirect flows is particularly important because their role (relative to direct flows) grows as cycling increases. The input-output cycling indices are compared to traditional industrial cycling metrics in this paper with a set of hypothetical cases. From these comparisons, the input-output cycling metrics are shown to measure cycling of both direct and indirect flows in complex systems while traditional metrics are shown to only account for direct flows. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In order to give a deep analysis on the strategy pathway of the Industrial ecosystem development, this paper takes the Nanning Sugar Group, a Chinese sugar complex, as a case to study. On the basis of a brief Introduction of the concept of industrial ecosystem, the paper describes the Nanning Sugar Group and its ecosystem model. After summarizing experiences of the application of the Group's model, it analyzes challenges and then introduces possible solutions. Some conclusions are developed on the basis of this analysis.Numerous energy policy proposals are being articulated and advanced that vary along many dimensions, including problem definition, disciplinary origination and focus, scope, scale, and comprehensiveness. This paper provides a framework that evaluates the wide range of energy proposals and transcends the particular approach used in a specific proposal. Proposals, if they are to be successful, must be examined within the context of the world energy system (WES), which is a complex, large-scale, integrated, open, sociotechnical system with sunk assets subject to uncertainty and the response to incentives of consumers and producers. Several categories are proposed in order to classify energy policies. Using this categorization scheme and the concept of a WES, generic limitations of various energy policies can be identified. They are the comprehensiveness, boundary, and feedback problems. The result is that policymakers have a toot to classify, understand, and critique energy proposals, enhancing their ability to evaluate them, and analysts have a framework to guide their work.This paper describes and discusses a module that addresses environmental and sustainability issues as they effect the electronics and IT industries using the Problem Based Learning (PBL) methodology. The module is designed to attempt to instill attitudes and values that are required in order to seek more sustainable solutions in the context of a career in these sectors. In the view of the author, the PBL methodology offers a more effective approach to learning and education for sustainable development than the traditional didactic method.The focus of this paper is on the use of established management decision-making tools to address some of the limitations in implementing conventional Life Cycle Assessment, for example, the evaluation and comparison of materials alternatives, the quantitative elicitation of stakeholders' preference structure as weighting factors, the simultaneous consideration of other economic and technological factors and the sensitivity analysis to examine the reliability of results. An integrated analytical approach, Integrated Industrial Ecology Function Deployment (I2-EFD), previously developed by the authors, is designed to assess the environmental behavior of materials alternatives in correlation with their performance and economic characteristics. The assessment for lead-free solder alternatives is used in this paper as a more complex case study to further develop our methodology through the modification and integration of various quality management tools (e.g., Quality Function Deployment, prioritization matrix), decision aid tools (e.g., Analytical Hierarchy Process), and statistical methods (e.g., Monte-Carlo simulation).This research developed the moisture-resistance of printed circuit board (PCB) laminate prototypes based on the non-toxic composite materials made from epoxidized linseed oil, melamine polyphosphate, and flax fibers. One of the key issues associated with using renewable base materials in composites is their sensitivity to moisture. A characterization of the properties of the 'green' printed circuit boards developed in the present study showed that moisture absorption for untreated fiber laminates (4.87% vs. established limit <0.8% for FR4 boards over a 24 hour submersion period) compromised electrical resistance and decreased dielectric breakdown to an unacceptable level. A theoretical model was used to target methods for reducing moisture absorption. Based on this model, we found that reductions in fiber diffusivity and fiber volume fraction substantially reduce composite diffusivity. Through the use of chemical treatment, moisture absorption over a 24 hour time period was reduced from 4.87% to 1.15%, which improved electrical properties. At the end of this study, 15 of 18 PCB property requirements were met, while 3 moisture-critical property targets were narrowly missed.The incorporation of roadways into a region's industrial ecology is an ideal method of managing some of the industrial by-products (IBPs) that may be generated. Current management of these industrial by-products is through beneficial use (for certain types of materials), but also stockpiling or landfilling, which have economic and environmental implications. IBPs (coal ash, foundry sand and slag) are compared here to virgin aggregate for use in the sub-base of roadway construction and/or repair in an optimization analysis to minimize the transportation impacts in the greater Pittsburgh urban region. The life cycle impacts associated with the choice of material (virgin or IBP) are also evaluated in this paper, and it is shown that IBP usage results in lower life cycle impacts in all categories. Additionally the transportation costs are 25% less for the IBP usage than for the use of virgin aggregates due to the closer proximity to the IBP source materials. The combination of reduced economic and environmental costs provide a strong argument for state transportation departments to develop symbiotic relationships with large IBP producers in their regions to minimize impacts associated with roadway construction and maintenance with the additional benefit of improved management of these materials.Ferrous and Non-ferrous industry in India is undergoing a transition to meet the growing demand and a new thrust to Research & Development (R&D) is mounting. On one hand, to meet the target laid by the policy in the Iron and Steel sector of 110 million tones production by 2020; on the other, innovations taking place in light metal production technology; both have necessitated greater attention to development of industrial ecological framework. Industrial ecology provides a number of new challenges as well as opportunities for the industry. The development and growth in a particular industry should have a trend towards reduced energy consumption, reduced resource consumption, thereby reducing the cost of production. Technology management strategies will have a key role in achievement of these targets. The paper describes recent developments in technology management, importance of R&D and case studies on adoption of energy efficient & CO2 reduction technologies in metal industry in India. In the end suggestions for future are made.Nanocomposites are polymers filled with particles the dimensions of which are in the nanometer range. Numerous approaches have been studied for the development of cost-effective adsorbents containing natural polymers like polysaccharides or their derivatives based on chitin, chitosan, starch and cyclodextrin. The polysaccharide materials are described and their advantages in the removal of pollutants from aqueous model solutions discussed. Natural fibers, biopolymers and biocomposites integrate the principles of sustainability, industrial ecology, eco-efficiency, green chemistry and engineering in the development of the new generation of materials, products and processes.Industrial ecology is a rapidly developing field of research and practice in which the sustainability of industrial systems is thought to be improved through closing of material and energy loops among firms. In this paper, I look at the developing practice around this concept from a self-organization perspective. A central question is the extent to which closing of material loops has to be planned and guided by governmental agencies. Based on a longitudinal case study of industrial ecology development in the Rotterdam harbor area (the Netherlands), the interplay between self-organization, external control, and vision development is analyzed.Integration of industrial chain is becoming a hot issue for management discipline and business communities. But research on coal industrial chain is still rare, study on coal industrial chain is a new perspective with the view of integration of industrial chain. Based on industrial Ecology and mineral resources economics, this paper carried on innovative study to integration of coal industrial chain, and set up the "3 +3 + 3" model of industrial chain integration. At last, it provided a number of policy recommendations for the ecological integration of industrial chain. It provided a set of study method and mentality for coal enterprise's industrial chain integration, and has vital practical significance to enhance ability of sustainable development of the coal enterprises.Exergy analysis can help integrate separate technologies following the principles of industrial ecology. An application of exergy analysis to calculate depletion numbers, which relate exergy destruction and total exergy use, is demonstrated for a gas turbine cycle combined with a hydrogen generation unit. The design includes a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) with internal natural gas reforming and a Membrane Reactor (MR) in place of a combustion chamber. The depletion number for the separate technologies is found to be more than two times greater than for the combined system, implying the latter is more environmentally benign and like an ecosystem.Concepts that until recently have been antagonistic to common business language, such as industrial ecology, are now being used in the stories that companies use to express their identity. In this article the relationship between the new, bold business language and environmental innovation is discussed. The analysis is based on a longitudinal case study of HAG - Norway and Scandinavia's leading office-chair manufacturer. The study suggests that incorporating industrial ecology into the corporate saga stimulates the incremental environmental innovations implied by the concept by contributing to the coherence of the story. The radical environmental innovation implied by industrial ecology is, however, hindered by such integration. Radical innovation takes discontinuity and confrontation with the dominating story of what a company is, has been and will be.The consequences of mass and energy conservation and the laws of thermodynamics for economic activity are analysed. As the objectives, for this content of the relations between thermodynamics and economics is critically investigated. First, the relations between mass and energy conservation and the Laws of Thermodynamics are discussed. Then the analysis of neoclassical economics attitudes to the Laws of Thermodynamics is given. After this the analysis of the concept of weak sustainability and the Laws of Thermodynamics are discussed. Methods of systematic scientific literature analysis, general and logical analysis, comparison and generalization were used as the methods of the research. The relation between Thermodynamics and Economics is a paramount issue in Ecological Economics. Basically, the Laws of Thermodynamics are relevant to the economy because economic activity is entropic. The integration between economics and thermodynamics at the substantive level is of crucial importance because economic processes obey thermodynamic laws and therefore a sound economic theory must be coherent with thermodynamics. When applying a systems perspective to resources and environmental issues, it is natural to start with thermodynamics. Many resources and environmental problems have their roots in fundamental aspect of conservation of matter. When we analyzing the environment-economy interaction and taking economy, there in each stage of the production process waste will arise. The amount of waste in any period is equal to the amount of natural resources used. The reason for this equivalence is the First Law of Thermodynamics. But some waste can be converted back to resources. Materials in goods can be recycled. But why not all waste is recycled? It is here that the Second Law of Thermodynamics become relevant. The materials that are used in economy tend to be used entropically and entropy places a physical obstacle, a 'boundary', in the way of redesigning economy as a closed and sustainable system. In recent years a new discipline Industrial Ecology, has emerged. This new discipline has been built, to a large extent, based on perceived analogies between economic and ecological systems. But the essential ecological difference between people and other species is that, in addition to our biological metabolism, people created enterprises with industrial metabolism. This stands as a crucial opposition to evolution of biosphere, which took many billions of years to evolve. Interpretations of strong and weak sustainability can also be justified by studying the possibilities of substituting supplies of nature's and economic capital or complementing each other. Strong sustainability requires both types of capital not to decrease for the benefit of one of significant indicators. The version of weak sustainability contains (making an unrealistic assumption about the perfect substitution of nature's and man-made capital) the sum of the forms of both capital - nature's and economic capital or any other aggregated unit of measurement, and requires it not to decline all the time.This paper presents the eco-efficiency of energy intensity, material consumption, water use, waste generation, and CO2 emission in terms of production value in net sales (US$) per environmental influence using empirical evaluation. Evaluation has been considered only within production process boundary of iron rod industry. Evaluation of eco-efficiency tried to couple the economic and environmental influences of industry to know economic and environmental excellence. Eco-efficiency of iron rod industry was quantitatively analyzed and determined that energy, material consumption, water use, waste generation, and CO2 emission eco-efficiency have been increased gradually along with increased production during analysis period of five years (2001-2005). It was possible due to installing heat recovery unit along with innovative processes modification. While comparing each year's eco-efficiency of all above-mentioned parameters, eco-efficiencies were increased that indicates less resource use and less waste released. As a general statement of overall comparison and characterization of eco-efficiencies of five years duration, iron rod industry was eco-efficient in all aspects. Eco-efficiency being an emerging trend has not yet been implemented in Nepal. It is further recommended to adopt the eco-efficiency evaluation in other industries. In addition, it is high time to augment the provision of eco-efficiency concepts in industrial policy and legislation concerned. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A continuing trend in outsourcing increases the complexity of supply chains. Global supply chains extend over numerous echelons of countless companies. in parallel, the company-internal view on corporate environmental responsibility is being challenged as customers and legislation alike broaden a company's environmental responsibility to include organisations' upstream as well as downstream in the supply chain. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine corporate environmental responsibility beyond corporate boundaries, i.e. in the supply chain. A cross-industrial study based on 16 case studies in Finnish trans-national corporations sheds light on various dimensions of corporate environmental responsibility upstream and downstream of product and process supply chains. Conclusions were drawn for corporate environmental responsibility as well as for the role of supply chain management in extending environmental demand over several echelons and diverse industries. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To gather data on the resource efficiency of the chemical sector, a questionnaire was sent to the chemical companies in the Northern Ostrobothnia region of Finland. Resource use optimisation was investigated by analysing measures and attitudes toward waste prevention. The survey revealed that legislation is the main driver for change in the chemical industry. The analysis showed a clear lack of monitoring practice as well as a lack of understanding of major concepts, such as that of the nature of waste. Process optimisation to reduce raw material losses and energy consumption is a key utilised practice. Practices aimed at water usage reduction are rarely employed. Lack of information, regulative restrictions set on waste materials and lack of human resources are barriers to waste reduction practice. Improving information, education and training of employees in waste issues and increasing environmental awareness are essential for companies in the Chemical Industry in Northern Ostrobothnia to move toward resource use optimisation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of south Texas is an agriculturally rich area supporting intensive production of vegetables, fruits, grain sorghum, and cotton. Modern agricultural practices involve the combined use of irrigation with the application of large amounts of agrochemicals to maximize crop yields. Intensive agricultural activities in past decades might have caused potential contamination of soil, surface water.. and groundwater due to leaching of pesticides in the vadose zone. In an effort to promote precision farming in citrus production, this paper aims at developing an airborne multispectral technique for identifying tree health problems in a citrus grove that can be combined with variable rate technology (VRT) for required pesticide application and environmental modeling for assessment of pollution prevention. An unsupervised linear unmixing method was applied to classify the image for the grove and quantify the symptom severity for appropriate infection control. The PRZM-3 model was used to estimate environmental impacts that contribute to nonpoint source pollution with and without the use of multispectral remote sensing and VRT. Research findings using site-specific environmental assessment clearly indicate that combination of remote sensing and VRT may result in benefit to the environment by reducing the nonpoint source pollution by 92.15%. Overall, this study demonstrates the potential of precision farming for citrus production in the nexus of industrial ecology and agricultural sustainability. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The effects of chemical oxygen demand and nitrogen (COD/N) ratio and dissolved oxygen concentration (DO) on simultaneous nitrification and denitrification (SND) were investigated using an airlift internal circulation membrane bioreactor (AIC-MBR) with synthetic wastewater. The results showed that the COD efficiencies were consistently greater than 90% regardless of changes in the COD/N ratio. At the COD/N ratio of 4.77 and 10.04, the system nitrogen removal efficiency became higher than 70%. However, the nitrogen removal efficiency decreased to less than 50%, as the COD/N ratio shifted to 15.11. When the operating DO concentration was maintained at 1.0 mg/L in AIC-MBR, a satisfying SND was achieved. Either low or high DO concentration could restrain SND.Problem: Emerging energy technologies are bringing planners a new set of issues. The supply-oriented framework from engineering economics within which energy planning has traditionally been conducted may be useful for siting large refineries, power plants, and transmission corridors, but it is not helpful for mitigating conflicts at the site level, encouraging new technology adoptions, managing the demand for energy, or, especially, coordinating the diverse users of smaller, local energy facilities. Purpose: I provide an alternative conceptual framework for thinking about emerging energy planning tasks. I highlight factors not considered in the traditional model, and introduce terminology for characterizing key characteristics of the changing energy economy. Methods: I draw on concepts from industrial ecology, urban metabolism, and ecological economics, and apply my new framework to a set of examples illustrating its advantages relative to the traditional approach to energy planning. Results and conclusions: I propose that planners use network models to think about energy systems and focus especially on nodes where energy is converted from one form to another. Understanding the scale, scope, commodification, and agency of such nodes, and whether and when these attributes are open to change, can improve energy planning decisions for traditional energy investments such as power plants and for energy initiatives such as wind farms, rooftop solar systems, energy-efficient buildings, cogeneration, compact growth, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Takeaway for practice: Planners should do more than just mitigate energy facility siting conflicts. They should also identify points of governmental leverage on private decision makers, keep track of evolving technologies, bundle energy users with different temporal demand profiles, and help build smarter energy networks. Focusing on energy networks and their nodes should help planners see how they can be most effective. Research support: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.As one of the world's biggest depositors of mine, China is undergoing rapid industrialization of mining. The nature of industrial economy was illustrated based on the theory of recycle economy. The new discipline of industrial ecology as an amalgam of concepts and techniques was introduced to provide the framework for stage-specific optimization of factors in mining. Conducted by the concept of industrial ecology, construction of recycle economy in typical mining area in Xuzhou city was investigated, and the constraints to mining industrial sustainability had also been analyzed. It showed that the Closed-loop chains and industrial symbiotic webs were the technological key and core of successful initiatives in the application of industrial ecology compared to the traditional technological support methods-cleaning production, waste reuse, pollution control etc. Besides, a higher compatibility of dematerialization, Ecology recovery technology with the industrial system, as studied in industrial ecology, can result in lower resource extraction and reduced waste emission, contributing to a better industrial sustainability. In addition, an effective decision-making tool on material and process substitution is needed in the design process.Under increasingly uncertain environment of long term life-cycle costs arising from such causes such as material price increases and carbon regulation, product development design decision makers need an improved method for evaluating project net present value under significant risks. This paper seeks to expose this need for an interdisciplinary design method capable of proactively managing long-term uncertainties and risks. First, the paper provides an overview of trends and uncertainties in material prices and environmental regulations. Second, we highlight a variety of existing work relevant to this research. The third section describes Customer Value Chain Analysis and Quality Function Deployment exercises towards addressing the nature of the challenge at hand. The study found that the primary customers for this research are engineering managers involved in strategic product development decisions. The most important aspects of a new methodology are to identify and characterize the uncertainties specific to a project, and to facilitate modeling. The final section describes a research path leading towards the development of a new design methodology. The paper concludes that a new framework will draw upon a variety of fields including Design For Reliability, Decision Analysis, Industrial Ecology, and Informatics.SME clusters play an important role in the economic development of Zhejiang Province, P. R. China. Due to resource shortage and environment protection, SME clusters in Zhejiang have to change from their traditional development model to further development. Ecological transformation of SME clusters originated from industrial ecology is one of solutions. SWOT analysis is applied to discuss the feasibility of ecological transformation of SME clusters in Zhejiang Province in the paper. Some measures are put forward to foster ecological transformation of SME clusters in Zhejiang Province.Chertow M. R., Ashton W. S. and Espinosa J. C. Industrial symbiosis in Puerto Rico: environmentally related agglomeration economies, Regional Studies. Industrial symbiosis, a sub-field of industrial ecology, examines the flow of water, energy, materials, and by-products across firms in geographic proximity. Environmentally related co-location benefits often result that have not been a focus of traditional agglomeration economies, but extend the basic theory. This paper conceptualizes the relationship between agglomeration economies and industrial symbiosis, finding that many negative environmental externalities can be reduced while increasing production efficiency. Four industrial regions of Puerto Rico, all with agglomeration economies, but only two with significant industrial symbiosis, highlight the contribution of symbiosis and how it can influence both static and dynamic agglomeration economies. [image omitted]Deutz P. and Gibbs D. Industrial ecology and regional development: eco-industrial development as cluster policy, Regional Studies. Aspects of industrial ecology fit closely with work in regional development investigating clustering, networking, and local economic development. However, there has been limited cross-fertilization between these bodies of literature. This paper uses an empirical focus on eco-industrial developments in the USA to postulate that industrial ecology can be viewed as a distinct cluster concept and to consider the implications of this for both industrial ecology and regional development policies. [image omitted]Hewes A. K. and Lyons D. I. (2008) The humanistic side of eco-industrial parks: champions and the role of trust, Regional Studies. Two leading advocates of eco-industrial parks (EIPs), Valdemar Christensen and Peter Lowitt, participated in a qualitative research study focused on their role in developing EIPs in Ukraine and Massachusetts, USA, respectively. Christensen formerly championed industrial symbiosis in Kalundborg, Denmark, and Lowitt shepherded the process at the Londonderry EIP in New Hampshire, USA. Based on the empirical data collected from the methods of ethnography and grounded theory, a systematic analysis of champion behaviour revealed emergent themes that champions of EIPs emphasize social relationships as opposed to technological connections. The repeating themes of trust and community embeddedness, proximity and the importance of the champion to the long-term viability of the project were highlighted. The foundation of the Champions' success was the ability to establish humanistic connections to advance the industrial ecology project. [image omitted]INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY SEEKS TO APPLY THE knowledge of systems in nature to the design and operation of industrial activities, to achieve integrated and sustainable relationships between the natural world and industry. Although the theoretical underpinning of the field corresponds in some ways to that of the emerging discipline of sustainability science, industrial ecology has evolved along two main directions that may be more practical for industry and policy-makers: 'eco-industrial parks' and islands of sustainability; and 'dematerialization-decarbonization' and the service economy. The opportunities and risks associated with applying the concepts of industrial ecology have been argued globally. This article provides an overview of how the concepts have already been applied to some extent in South Africa. We recommend how industrial ecology may be nurtured here, prioritizing areas where the field can be institutionalized.The load caused by growing volumes of collected residues produces a pressure both on the environment and on the population. Presently, wastes are no longer considered just simple residues, but also resources which can be reused or recovered. Various tools are now available to help compare the various options in waste management. These tools lead to a linear management of the systems. In addition, they generate a division of flow streams and do not allow an optimal use of the available materials. An industrial ecology perspective requires one to move towards a systemic approach. Based on the law of conservation of energy, the Dynamic Waste Management approach (DWM) studies the behaviour of systems to insure a constant supply of favourable waste management options (WMO) and to reduce the global load within these systems. The flow distribution in a global system rests on the principle that the available volumes and the transportation influence the validity of the hierarchical organisation of WMO. Adhering to the philosophy of industrial ecology, the DWM offers a dynamic and evolutionary alternative to reduce the impacts generated by inadequate waste management. The present article exposes the characteristics of the proposed approach, and presents an example of its application in order to demonstrate the advantages of the DWM. The objectives of this study were to assess and compare the environmental impacts of two types of dairy farming systems, one of which makes use of whole-crop rice silage and the other of which is conventional, using life cycle assessment (LCA). The functional unit was defined as 1 kg of 4% fat-corrected milk (FCM). The processes associated with the dairy farming life cycle, such as feed production, feed transport, animal management including biological activity of the animal, and waste treatment were included within the system's boundaries. Environmental impacts of the rice silage-using and conventional dairy farming systems were 987 and 972 g CO(2) equivalents for global warming, 6.87 and 7.13 g SO(2) equivalents for acidification, 1.19 and 1.23 g PO(4) equivalents for eutrophication, and 5.53 and 5.81 MJ for energy consumption, respectively. Our results suggest that the dairy farming system using rice silage in Japan has smaller environmental impacts for acidification, eutrophication, and energy consumption, and a larger impact for global warming compared with conventional farming. Further interpretation integrating these impact categories suggested 1.1% lower environmental impact of the rice silage-using dairy farming system as a whole.The interest in using Jatropha curcas L. (JCL) as a feedstock for the production of bio-diesel is rapidly growing. The properties of the crop and its oil have persuaded investors, policy makers and clean development mechanism (CDM) project developers to consider JCL as a substitute for fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, JCL is still a wild plant of which basic agronomic properties are not thoroughly understood and the environmental effects have not been investigated yet. Gray literature reports are very optimistic on simultaneous wasteland reclamation capability and oil yields, further fueling the Jatropha bio-diesel hype. In this paper, we give an overview of the currently available information on the different process steps of the production process of bio-diesel from JCL, being cultivation and production of seeds, extraction of the oil, conversion to and the use of the bio-diesel and the by-products. Based on this collection of data and information the best available practice, the shortcomings and the potential environmental risks and benefits are discussed for each production step. The review concludes with a call for general precaution and for science to be applied. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sugarcane is a highly suitable substrate for the production of bio-products. As well as producing high yields of sugar, much of the plant's fibre is also recovered and used as a source of renewable energy. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of sugarcane production and processing in Australia was performed to develop an environmental profile of sugarcane as a source of bio-products. The application examined was fermentation products from sugar. The sugarcane results were compared with results for other sugar producing crops-US corn and UK sugar beet-to gauge its relative environmental performance. The results show sugarcane to have an advantage in respect of energy input, greenhouse gas emissions and possibly acidification potential due to its high saccharide yield and the displacement of fossil fuels with surplus renewable energy from cane fibre (bagasse). However Australian sugarcane can exhibit high nitrous oxide emissions, which would reduce greenhouse gas advantages in some regions. For eutrophication, sugar beet provides advantages due to the avoided production of other agricultural crops displaced by the use of beet pulp as an animal feed. The three factors found to have the most influence on the environmental impacts of these agro-industrial systems were the commodities displaced by by-products, agricultural yields, and nitrogen use efficiency. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.in symbiosis with bacteria, legumes are able to biologically fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and therefore require less artificial nitrogen fertilizer. As the manufacturing of nitrogen fertilizers demands a lot of process energy, growing legumes may give large overall energy savings. The reduction of nitrogen fertilizer, however, gives a yield loss as the carbon-to-nitrogen efficiency is lower for inoculation than for the synthetic process. When brought into the realm of biomass for bioenergy, the energy savings obtained through less fertilizer input must be balanced with the loss of potential yield output. Twelve popular choice crops (including two legumes, two crops grown in mixture with legumes and one crop associated with mycorrhiza) were chosen to investigate the relationship between solar radiation input, fertilizer input and the resulting potential bioenergy output. A cradle-to-factory gate assessment was performed with cumulative energy and exergy values as the main indicators. The trade-off between lower fertilizer energy inputs to utilized solar radiation was assessed. Combined they relate to the land use efficiency, basically the energy relations per hectare. Our analysis shows that legumes do not present energy savings and do not contribute to sustainability when grown as bioenergy crops. The benefits of nitrogen fixation by legumes should be carefully assessed and best utilized within the emerging sector of non-food applications. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), a feature of the Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, is used in this work outside the LCA framework. as a means to quantify the potential environmental impacts on ecotoxicity and human toxicity of wastewater containing priority and emerging Pollutants. In order to do this, so-called characterisation factors are obtained for 98 frequently detected pollutants, using two characterisation models, EDIP97 and USES-LCA. The applicability of this methodology is shown in a case Study in which wastewater influent and effluent samples from a Spanish wastewater treatment plant located in the Mediterranean coast were analysed. Characterisation factors were applied to the average concentration of each pollutant, obtaining impact scores for different scenarios: discharging wastewater to aquatic recipient, and using it for crop irrigation. The results show that treated wastewater involves a substantially lower environmental impact when compared to the influent, and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are very important contributors to toxicity in this wastewater. Ciprofloxacin, fluoxetine, and nicotine constitute the main PPCPs of concern in this case study, while 2,3,7,8-TCDD, Nickel, and hexachlorobenzene are the priority pollutants with highest contribution. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that the new characterisation factors are based on very limited data, especially with regard to toxicology, and therefore they must be seen as a first screening to be improved in the future when more and higher quality data is available. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The midpoint impact assessment methodology and several weighting methods that are currently used by most building Life cycle assessment (LCA) researchers in China, still have some shortcomings. In order to make the evaluation results have better temporal and spatial applicability, the endpoint impact assessment methodology was adopted in this paper. Based on the endpoint damage oriented concept, four endpoints of resource exhaustion, energy exhaustion, human health damage and ecosystem damage were selected according to the situation of China and the specialties of the building industry. Subsequently the formula for calculating each endpoint, the background value for normalization and the weighting factors were defined. Following that, an endpoint damage oriented model to evaluate the life cycle environmental impact of buildings in China was established. This model can produce an integrated indicator for environmental impact, and consequently provides references for directing the sustainable building design.We used Life Cycle Assessment to scenario model the potential reductions in cumulative energy demand (both fossil and renewable) and global warming, acidifying, and ozone-depleting emissions associated with a hypothetical national transition from conventional to organic production of four major field crops [canola (Brassica rapa), corn (Zea mays), soy (Glycine max), and wheat (Triticum aestivum)] in Canada. Models of these systems were constructed using a combination of census data, published values, and the requirements for organic production described in the Canadian National Organic Standards in order to be broadly representative of the similarities and differences that characterize these disparate production technologies. Our results indicate that organic crop production would consume, on average, 39% as much energy and generate 77% of the global warming emissions, 17% of the ozone-depleting emissions, and 96% of the acidifying emissions associated with current national production of these crops. These differences were almost exclusively due to the differences in fertilizers used in conventional and organic farming and were most strongly influenced by the higher cumulative energy demand and emissions associated with producing conventional nitrogen fertilizers compared to the green manure production used for biological nitrogen fixation in organic agriculture. Overall, we estimate that a total transition to organic production of these crops in Canada would reduce national energy consumption by 0.8%, global warming emissions by 0.6%, and acidifying emissions by 1.0% but have a negligible influence on reducing ozone-depleting emissions.The interpretation phase of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies is often hampered by the number and the heterogeneity of impact assessment results as well as by the uncertainties arising from data, models and practitioner's choices. While decision-aiding methods have proven to support this key LCA phase, the inclusion of uncertainty evaluations in these methods is still a new topic in the LCA community. The fuzzy multicriteria method NAIADE [Munda G., 1995. Multicriteria Evaluation in a Fuzzy Environment. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.] has already been used in several LCA case studies and its framework is well suited for the consideration of uncertainty evaluations as well. This paper proposes a modified version of NAIADE, which conforms to the LCA requirements and to the type of uncertainties to be addressed, with an application example. The discussion of the rankings obtained showed how the integration of uncertainty results could help focusing on critical LCA issues and could be coupled with dominance, contribution and gravity analysis for the interpretation of LCA results, especially when the rankings are not fully consistent. This could support engineers and scientists working in LCA discipline as well as managers and decision-makers faced with decision-making problems based on LCA. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food processes generate large amounts of various waste types. The environmental impact of these wastes is generally high if disposed untreated due to their high BOD and COD contents. By utilizing the high potential energy available in food processing wastes, sustainable energy can be obtained while reducing the waste disposal costs and impact on the environment. According to the unique compositions of various food processing wastes, proper conversion methods must be selected to optimize the economic and environmental benfit. In this review, food processing wastes are categorized in six groups, and various energy conversion technologies are addressed in association with them. Future direction for better utilizing food process wastes in alternative energy generation is also suggested. (C) 2008 American Institute Of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 27: 524-537, 2008The 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories provide four accounting approaches to harvested wood products (HWP). These differ in the way they define system boundaries. Therefore, reported national carbon emissions differ according to the accounting approach used, and the implications of each accounting approach differ for different countries. This paper investigates four IPCC accounting approaches, as well as the 1996 IPCC default approach, to determine whether they provide incentives to achievement of major policy goals related to climate, forest, trade, and waste, taking into account indirect effects of wood use change (i.e., the effects on forest carbon stocks and on carbon emissions from the use of other fuels and materials). Conclusions are as follows: (1) The analyses produced many different results from those of previous studies. These differences appear to be attributable to whether or not the indirect effects of wood use change are taken into account and the reference scenarios that are assumed; (2) The best approaches for achieving each policy goal differ, and the best approaches for particular policy goals might pose problems for other policy goals; (3) Overall, the IPCC default approach is the best accounting approach from the viewpoint of greater compatibility with, or integration across, the array of policy goals, although it does not address the issue of an increasing global carbon stock in HWP. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A catastrophic failure of a Stacker-cum-Reclaimer led to loss of several days of service in one ore handling plant in India. The failure was severe enough to initiate an investigation into the possible causes of failure and estimation of the residual life for other units of Stacker-cum-Reclaimer of the same design and age, working in the plant. The failure analysis included a visual inspection of the failed structure, metallographic studies, static stress and stability analysis under normal operating conditions, stress analysis for a possible impact load on the structure, experimental stress analysis, and fatigue life cycle analysis. The results obtained indicate that the failure could be caused by an impact load arising out of some operational conditions resulting from the conditions of the rail track on which the machine travels. The material properties, the physical conditions of the material, and a fatigue analysis indicate that the existing system can work for several more decades, provided some checkpoints are planned and instituted to monitor the health of the structure at regular intervals.The design and construction industries have ail increasing interest ill and responsibility for a building's environmental effects over its entire life cycle. Quantification of all building phases is important in life-cycle assessments (LCAs). especially for the construction phase, which is often disregarded. This research uses an input-output-based LCA framework to create a more comprehensive estimate of the environmental effects of construction processes. The hybrid LCA model is, based oil Carnegie Mellon University's Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) tool and combines a new EIO-LCA "hybrid" interface with updated and reformulated environmental effect vectors for EIO-LCA's 13 construction sectors. Eight construction Project case studies modeled on the input-output (I-O)-based hybrid LCA framework demonstrate the model's broad applicability; gasoline. particulate matter. and global warming potential effects generally increased across all construction sectors and case studies. The I-O-based hybrid LCA model for construction is intended to help decision makers make more informed decisions regarding the Construction industry. adding environmental quality and sustainable development as project goals instead of unintentional benefits of economic decisions.The paper explores the connection between the urban form of water distribution networks and their energy use. Urban form corresponds to the network pipe configuration and the spatial distribution of water users. Ail analytical model is developed to quantify the energy use to fabricate pipes. to repair pipes, to PUMP water, and to dispose of pipes in a trunk line. Results show that only a 10% reduction ill annual per capita energy is achieved in the trunk line by increasing population density from 10 ca/ha to 275 ca/ha. The analysis is extended by computing energy use in networks with gridiron, radial, and satellite pipe configurations and uniform, monocentric, and polycentric population distributions. On average the radial/monocentric combination exhibits the lowest annual per capita energy use. The paper is Concluded by discussing Changes to the form of cities and water main infrastructure to reduce environmental impact.The European Resilient Floorcovering Manufacturers Institute includes manufacturers of floorings from vinyl, linoleum, rubber and synthetic thermoplastic and takes a leading role in the development of new European and international standards. The increased pressure to supply environmental as well as performance data has led European Resilient Floorcovering Manufacturers Institute to produce a set of environmental product declarations for a range of product types. The implications of drawing together data for 12 different types of flooring, with four different material types, using data from 13 separate companies in nine different countries, are discussed. The study has provided what is believed to be the most comprehensive survey available of the environmental impact of flooring, being derived from actual industry data. The end result of the project is, first, a document that can be used by designers to assess the impact of their choice of flooring and, second, a tool to assist member companies to improve the environmental performance of their products.Environmental impacts related to paper production can occur at all steps of the product chain, and these can be analyzed using life cycle assessment (LCA). This Study demonstrates the usefulness of LCA as a design tool, for the assessment of changes in life cycle environmental performance due to the implementation of energy-related process modifications at an integrated kraft pulp and paper mill. It was found that although the implementation of a de inking plant is somewhat beneficial when wastepaper is diverted from landfill, a different conclusion is reached if alternative usus of wastepaper,ire considered. It was also found that, for this mill, significant environmental benefits were achieved by successively implementing (a) steam use reduction projects inside the mill, and then (b) converting steam production to bark from coal.Landfilling is nowadays the most common practice of waste management in Italy in spite of enforced regulations aimed at increasing waste pre-sorting as well as energy and material recovery. In this work we analyse selected alternative scenarios aimed at minimizing the unused material fraction to be delivered to the landfill. The methodological framework of the analysis is the life cycle assessment, in a multi-method form developed by our research team. The approach was applied to the case of municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Rome, with a special focus on energy and material balance, including global and local scale airborne emissions. Results, provided in the form of indices and indicators of efficiency, effectiveness and environmental impacts, point out landfill activities as the worst waste management strategy at a global scale. On the other hand, the investigated waste treatments with energy and material recovery allow important benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction (among others) but are still affected by non-negligible local emissions. Furthermore, waste treatments leading to energy recovery provide an energy output that, in the best case, is able to meet 15% of the Rome electricity consumption. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The advisability of using incineration, among the other technologies in Municipal Solid Waste Management, is still a debated issue. However, technological evolution in the field of waste incineration plants has strongly decreased their environmental impacts in the last years. A description of a regional situation in Northern Italy (Emilia Romagna Region) is here presented, to assess the impacts of incinerators by the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and to stress the most impacting steps in incineration process. The management of solid residues and heavy metal emission resulted the most important environmental concerns. Furthermore, a tentative comparison with the environmental impact of land-fill disposal, for the same amount of waste, pointed out that incineration process must be considered environmentally preferable. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The fate and transport of organic pollutants in the environment is usually assessed with the help of multimedia models. A target variable calculated with these models is the environmental exposure to a substance. It indicates that part of the potential hazard of a chemical that is caused solely by the chemical's fate and transport behaviour, regardless of toxicological substance properties. So far, pulse-emissions are usually assumed in order to arrive at an easy-to-compute expression for exposure. Here, we show that exposure does not depend on the shape of the emission function Exposure calculated for the pulse release of a particular mass of contaminant is equal to exposure calculated for any arbitrary dynamic release of the same mass. This result extends the meaning of model evaluations at steady-state. It also allows for a more general interpretation of the persistence and the spatial range of a chemical, as well as of the toxicity potential used in life cycle impact assessment. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A number of environmentally adapted lubricants have been proposed in response to the environmental and health impacts of metalworking fluids (MWFs). The alternatives typically substitute petroleum with vegetable-based components and/or deliver minimum quantities of lubricant in gas rather than water, with the former strategy being more prevalent than the latter. A comparative life cycle assessment of water- and gas-based systems has shown that delivery of lubricants in air rather than water can reduce solid waste by 60%, water use by 90%, and aquatic toxicity by 80%, while virtually eliminating occupational health concerns. However, air-delivery of lubricants cannot be used for severe machining operations due to limitations of cooling and lubricant delivery. For such operations, lubricants delivered in supercritical carbon dioxide (ScCO2) are effective while maintaining the health and environmental advantages of air-based systems. Although delivery conditions were found to significantly influence the environmental burdens of all fluids, energy consumption was relatively constant under expected operating conditions. Global warming potential (GWP) increased when delivering lubricants in gas rather than water though all classes of MWFs have low GWP compared with other factory operations. It is therefore concluded that the possibility of increased GWP when switching to gas-based MWFs is a reasonable tradeoff for definite and large reductions in aquatic toxicity, water use, solid waste, and occupational health risks.The statistical entropy (SE) function has been developed as a methodology to rapidly benchmark the effectiveness of different waste management systems by determining the level to which specific substances are either concentrated or diluted. Past usage of SE has been confined to metals. In this paper, this method is extended to account for carbon-a key substance of interest. Accounting for carbon is complicated by the fact that reactions involving this substance are complex and their products are numerous. Through experiments on carbon-containing emissions from styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), natural rubber (polyisoprene, IR), and waste tires we demonstrate that a knowledge of carbon-containing species accounting for 90% (by mass) of gaseous emissions is sufficient. Next, we develop an extended SE calculation methodology and apply it to compare carbon flows through two different systems for municipal solid waste (MSW) management (landfills) and waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities. Our results indicate that while landfills perform better on a cursory analysis, they are roughly equal to WTE when carbon flows related to energy generation are accounted for, and underperform by a factor of 3 when considering global warming potential.One of the most important drawbacks of life cycle assessment (LCA)-related analysis is the generation of reliable data. In the proposed methodology, this drawback is addressed using data from process simulations, based on first-principles models in the LCA calculations. Furthermore, uncertainty that arises from industrial data and a simulation hypothesis are explicitly incorporated, using Monte Carlo sampling, which allows statistical information to be translated into a set of representative scenarios for which the LCA calculations are performed. The combined use of LCA, process simulation, and sampling techniques results in a powerful environmentally conscious quantitative tool whose objective is to guide decision-makers toward the adoption of more-sustainable process alternatives. The main objective of the methodology is to show the main differences between production options. This novel methodology is applied to the specific case of phosphoric acid (PA) production.Ammonium nitrate and calcium ammonium nitrate are the most commonly used straight nitrogen fertilisers in Europe, accounting for 43% of the total nitrogen used for fertilisers. They are both produced in a similar way; carbonate can be added as a last step to produce calcium ammonium nitrate. The environmental impact, fossil energy input and land use from using gasified biomass (cereal straw and short rotation willow (Salix) coppice) as feedstock in ammonium nitrate production were studied in a cradle-to-gate evaluation using life cycle assessment methodology. The global warming potential in the biomass systems was only 22-30% of the impact from conventional production using natural gas. The eutrophication potential was higher for the biomass systems due to nutrient leaching during cultivation, while the acidification was about the same in all systems. The primary fossil energy use was calculated to be 1.45 and 1.37 MJ/kg nitrogen for Salix and straw, respectively, compared to 35.14 MJ for natural gas. The biomass production was assumed to be self-supporting with nutrients by returning part of the ammonium nitrate produced together with the ash from the gasification. For the production of nitrogen from Salix, it was calculated that 3914 kg of nitrogen can be produced every year from 1 ha, after that 1.6% of the produced nitrogen has been returned to the Salix production. From wheat straw, 1615 kg of nitrogen call be produced annually from I ha, after that 0.6% of the nitrogen has been returned. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water network synthesis has been used to conserve water resources and reduce economic costs. In this study, all contributors to environmental burdens and economic costs of water network systems were estimated to analyze the effects of objective functions on their environmental and economic performances. A total freshwater flowrate-minimized water network system (FWNS) and a total freshwater cost-minimized water network system (CWNS) were independently synthesized. Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing were performed to evaluate and compare the environmental and economic performances of the two water network systems. The CWNS was more environmentally and economically friendly than the FWNS because the CWNS was synthesized by minimizing the consumption of deionized water, which has higher unit cost and unit environmental effect scores than industrial water. Also this study demonstrated that the consumption rates of freshwater and electricity, as well as their unit environmental effect scores, should be used as principal contributors and weighting factors for the formulation of an objective function to generate the most environmentally friendly water network system. while the costs of piping and freshwater. as well as their unit costs. should be included to generate the most economically friendly system. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The sensitivity of electricity consumption to air temperature and air humidity are effective indicators in evaluating the impacts of countermeasures against urban heat islands. The impacts of these countermeasures vary in time and space and so sensitivities based on finer resolution data are needed. Using actual hourly electric power consumption data from the business districts of Tokyo, we calculated the sensitivity of electric power consumption using multiple regression analysis. The sensitivities appear from 07:00 to 23:00 local standard time (LST) during weekdays during both winter and summer, mainly from 09:00 to 17:00 LST. The sensitivities to air temperature during winter are approximately 0.7-1.1 (W/floor-m(2))/degrees C on an average and those during summer are approximately 1.1-1.4 on an average; the sensitivities to air humidity are approximately 0.6-0.9 on an average. It was found that the sensitivities to air temperature are caused due to heating during winter and cooling during summer; further, the sensitivities to air humidity were caused by dehumidification not for conditioning the air humidity of the room but for the condensation around the air-conditioner's coils with cooling during summer. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle energy, environment and economic assessment for conventional diesel (CD) and soybean-based biodiesel (SB) in China was carried out in this paper. The results of the assessment have shown that compared with CD, SB has similar source-to-tank (StT) total energy consumption, 76% lower StT fossil energy consumption, 79% higher source-to-wheel (StW) nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions, 31%, 44%, 36%, 29%, and 67% lower StW hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM), sulfur oxides (SOx), and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, respectively. SB is thus considered to be much more renewable and cleaner than CD. However, the retail price of SB at gas stations would be about 86% higher than that of CD without government subsidy according to the cost assessment and China had to import large amount of soybean to meet the demand in recent years. Therefore, although SB is one of the most promising clean and alternative fuels, currently it is not a good choice for China. It is strategically important for China to diversify the feedstock for biodiesel and to consider other kinds of alternative fuels to substitute CD. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is widely accepted that improving the sustainability of seafood production requires efforts to reverse declines in global fisheries due to overfishing and to reduce the impacts to host ecosystems from fishing and aquaculture production technologies. Reflective of on-going dialogue amongst participants in an international research project applying Life Cycle Assessment to better understand and manage global salmon production systems, we argue here that such efforts must also address the wider range of biophysical, ecological, and socioeconomic impacts stemming from the material and energetic throughput associated with these industries. This is of particular relevance given the interconnectivity of global environmental change, ocean health, and the viability of seafood production in both fisheries and aquaculture. Although the growing popularity of numerous ecolabeling, certification, and consumer education programs may be making headway in influencing Western consumer perceptions of the relative sustainability of alternative seafood products, we also posit that the efficacy of these initiatives in furthering sustainability objectives is compromised by the use of incomplete criteria. An emerging body of Life Cycle Assessment research of fisheries and aquaculture provides valuable insights into the biophysical dimensions of environmental performance in alternative seafood production and consumption systems, and should be used to inform a more holistic approach to labeling, certifying, and educating for sustainability in seafood production. More research, however, must be undertaken to develop novel techniques for incorporating other critical dimensions, in particular, socioeconomic considerations, into our sustainability decision-making.Among the existing environmental assessments of bioethanol, the studies suggesting an environmental benefit of bioethanol all ignore the constraints on the availability of biomass resources and the implications competition for biomass has on the assessment. We show that toward 2030, regardless of whether a global or European perspective is applied, the amount of biomass, which can become available for bioethanol or other energy uses, will be physically and economically constrained. This implies that use of biomass or land for bioethanol production will most likely happen at the expense of alternative uses. In this perspective, we show that for the case of a new advanced bioethanol technology, in terms of reducing greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel dependency, more is lost than gained when prioritizing biomass or land for bioethanol. Technology pathways involving heat and power production and/or biogas, natural gas or electricity for transport are advantageous.Background, aim and scope In 2005, a comprehensive comparison of life cycle impact assessment toxicity characterisation models was initiated by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)-Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative, directly involving the model developers of CalTOX, IMPACT 2002, USES-LCA, BETR, EDIP, WATSON and EcoSense. In this paper, we describe this model comparison process and its results-in particular the scientific consensus model developed by the model developers. The main objectives of this effort were (1) to identify specific sources of differences between the models' results and structure, (2) to detect the indispensable model components and (3) to build a scientific consensus model from them, representing recommended practice. Materials and methods A chemical test set of 45 organics covering a wide range of property combinations was selected for this purpose. All models used this set. In three workshops, the model comparison participants identified key fate, exposure and effect issues via comparison of the final characterisation factors and selected intermediate outputs for fate, human exposure and toxic effects for the test set applied to all models. Results Through this process, we were able to reduce inter-model variation from an initial range of up to 13 orders of magnitude down to no more than two orders of magnitude for any substance. This led to the development of USEtox, a scientific consensus model that contains only the most influential model elements. These were, for example, process formulations accounting for intermittent rain, defining a closed or open system environment or nesting an urban box in a continental box. Discussion The precision of the new characterisation factors (CFs) is within a factor of 100-1,000 for human health and 10-100 for freshwater ecotoxicity of all other models compared to 12 orders of magnitude variation between the CFs of each model, respectively. The achieved reduction of inter-model variability by up to 11 orders of magnitude is a significant improvement. Conclusions USEtox provides a parsimonious and transparent tool for human health and ecosystem CF estimates. Based on a referenced database, it has now been used to calculate CFs for several thousand substances and forms the basis of the recommendations from UNEP-SETAC's Life Cycle Initiative regarding characterisation of toxic impacts in life cycle assessment. recommendations and perspectives We provide both recommended and interim (not recommended and to be used with caution) characterisation factors for human health and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts. After a process of consensus building among stakeholders on a broad scale as well as several improvements regarding a wider and easier applicability of the model, USEtox will become available to practitioners for the calculation of further CFs.Background, aim and scope Land filling of materials with content of toxic metals or highly persistent organic compounds has posed a problem for life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners for many years. The slow release from the landfill entails a dilution in time, which is dramatic compared to other emissions occurring in the life cycle, and with its focus on the emitted mass, LCA is poorly equipped to handle this difference. As a consequence, the long-term emissions from landfills occurring over thousands of years are often disregarded, which is unacceptable to many stakeholders considering the quantities of toxic substances that can be present. On the other hand, inclusion of all future emissions (over thousands of years) in the inventories potentially dominates all other impacts from the product system. The paper aims to present a pragmatic approach to address this dilemma. Materials and methods Two new impact categories are introduced representing the stored ecotoxicity and stored human toxicity of the contaminants remaining in the landfill after a 'foreseeable' time period of 100 years. The impact scores are calculated using the normal characterisation factors for the ecotoxicity and human toxicity impact categories, and they represent the toxicity potentials of what remains in the landfill after 100 years (hence the term 'stored' (eco)toxicity). Normalisation references are developed for the stored toxicity categories based on Danish figures to support comparison with indicator scores for the conventional environmental impact categories. In contrast to the scores for the conventional impact categories, it is uncertain to what extent the stored toxicity scores represent emissions, which will occur at all. Guidance is given on how to reflect this uncertainty in the weighting and interpretation of the scores. Results and discussion In landfills and road constructions used to deposit residuals from incinerators, less than 1% of the content of metals is leached within the first 100 years. The stored toxicity scores are therefore much higher than the conventional impact scores that represent the actual emissions. Several examples are given illustrating the use and potential significance of the stored toxicity categories. Conclussions and perspectives The methodology to calculate stored human and ecotoxicity is a simple and pragmatic approach to address LCA's problem of treating the slow long-term emissions at very low concentrations appropriately. The problem resides in the inventory analysis and the impact assessment, and the methodology circumvents the problem by converting it into a weighting and interpretation issue accommodating the value-based discussion of how to weight potential effects in the far future.Background, aim, and scope Beneficial use of coal combustion products (CCPs) in industrial or construction operations has the potential to minimize environmental and human health impacts that would otherwise be associated with disposal of CCPs in the life cycle of coal used for electricity generation. To assess opportunities for reducing impacts associated with four CCP materials considered in this study, fly ash, bottom ash, boiler slag, and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) material, this paper reports results of expanding a life cycle inventory of raw material and emissions (part 1 of this series of papers) by performing life cycle impact assessment on five scenarios of CCP management. Materials and methods SimaPro 5.1 software (PRe Consultants) was used to calculate comparative environmental impacts of all scenarios using CML2001 and Environmental Design of Industrial Products 1997 midpoint impact assessment methods and Heirarchist and Individualist levels of the Eco-indicator 99 end point method. Trends were compared for global and local environmental and human health impact categories of global warming, acidification, smog formation, human toxicity, and ecotoxicity. Results In each impact category, beneficial use of fly ash, bottom ash, and FGD material resulted in a reduced impact compared to disposal of these materials. The extent to which beneficial use reduced impacts depended on several factors, including the impact category in consideration, the magnitude of potentially avoided impacts associated with producing raw materials that CCPs replace, and the potential impact of CCP disposal methods. Global warming impacts were reduced by the substitution of fly ash for Portland cement in concrete production, as production of Portland cement generates large quantities of CO2. However, for categories of global warming, smog formation, and acidification, impact reductions from CCP beneficial use are small, less than 6%, as these impacts were attributable, in greater part, to upstream processes of coal mining, transportation, and combustion. Human toxicity and ecotoxicity categories showed larger but more varied reductions, from 0% to 50%, caused by diverting CCPs from landfills and surface impoundments. Discussion When comparing beneficial use scenarios, the four impact assessment methods used showed similar trends in categories of global warming, acidification, and smog formation. However, results diverged for human toxicity and ecotoxicity categories due to the lack of consensus among methods in classification and characterization of impacts from heavy metal release. Similarly, when assessing sensitivity of these results to changes in assumptions or system boundaries, human toxicity and ecotoxicity categories were most susceptible to change, while other impact categories had more robust results. Conclussions Impact assessment results showed that beneficial use of CCPs presented opportunities for reduced environmental impacts in the life cycle of coal combusted for electricity generation, as compared to the baseline scenario of 100% CCP disposal, although the impact reductions varied depending on the CCPs used, the ultimate beneficial use, and the impact category in consideration. Recommendations and perspectives As regulators and electric utilities increasingly consider viability and economics of the use of CCPs in various applications, this study provides a first-basis study of selected beneficial use alternatives. With these initial results, future studies should be directed towards beneficial uses that promise significant economic and environmental savings, such as use of fly ash in concrete, to quantify the currently unknown risk of these applications.Background, aim, and scope As a net oil importer, Thailand has a special interest in the development of biofuels, especially ethanol. At present, ethanol in the country is mainly a fermentation/distillery product of cane molasses, but cassava holds superior potential for the fuel. This study aims to assess the economics of cassava-based ethanol as an alternative transportation fuel in Thailand. The scope of the study includes the cassava cultivation/processing, the conversion to ethanol, the distribution of the fuel, and all transportation activities taking place within the system boundary. Materials and methods The life cycle cost assessment carried out follows three interrelated phases: data inventory, data analysis, and interpretation. The functional unit for the comparison between ethanol and gasoline is the specific distance that a car can travel on 1 L ethanol in the form of E10, a 10% ethanol blend in gasoline. Results The results of the analysis show, despite low raw material cost compared to molasses and cane-based ethanol, that cassava ethanol is still more costly than gasoline. This high cost has put an economic barrier to commercial application, leading to different opinions about government support for ethanol in the forms of tax incentives and subsidies. Discussion Overall, feedstock cost tends to govern ethanol's production cost, thus, making itself and its 10% blend in gasoline less competitive than gasoline for the specific conditions considered. However, this situation can also be improved by appropriate measures, as discussed later. Conclusions To make ethanol cost-competitive with gasoline, the first possible measure is a combination of increasing crop yield and decreasing farming costs (chemical purchase and application, planting, and land preparation) so as to make a 47% reduction in the cost per tonne of cassava. This is modeled by a sensitivity analysis for the cost in the farming phase. In the industrial phase of the fuel production cycle, utilization of co-products and substitution of rice husk for bunker oil as process energy tend to reduce 62% of the price gap between ethanol and gasoline. The remaining 38% price gap can be eliminated with a 16% cut of raw material (cassava) cost, which is more practical than a 47% where no savings options in ethanol conversion phase are taken into account. Recommendations and perspectives The life cycle cost analysis helps identify the key areas in the ethanol production cycle where changes are required to improve cost performance. Including social aspects in an LCC analysis may make the results more favorable for ethanol.Background, aims, and scope Food is a vital human need that not only provides essential nutrition but is also a key part of our social life as well as being a valued sensory experience. However, food, or rather the production chain of food, from primary production (agriculture/aquaculture/fishing) to consumer and beyond, also results in some form of environmental impact, as does transport between steps. There are several life cycle assessment studies of food products, most of them analysing the impact of the food chain of single food items. Still, detailed studies of complete meals are less frequent in the literature. In the Swedish study presented in this article, the environmental impacts of two different chicken meals (homemade and semi-prepared) were analysed. The aim of the study was to gain knowledge of the environmental impact of integrated food chains and also to explore the effect of improvement measures in the post-farm systems. To this end, two chicken meals were chosen for analysis, with two scenarios for each meal; the first scenario reflects the present conditions of the food chain, and the second scenario incorporates a number of improvement actions in the stages after the farm. Materials and methods Input data to the model were based mainly on previous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of Swedish food products and studies on wastage and consumer transport. Food engineering data and information from producing companies were used for modelling the industries. The improvement scenario was constructed using insight from a preceding LCA study of a meatball meal (Sonesson et al., Ambio, 34:411-418, 2005a) along with goals set out by a Swedish agreement between representatives from national and regional government, food industry sectors and retailers. The impact assessment was conducted according to Lindfors et al. (Nordic guidelines on life cycle assessment, The Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1995), and the following environmental effects were included: global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, and use of primary energy carriers and secondary energy. Results In terms of energy use, the largest part is used in the steps after the farm for both meal types. Hence, the changes made in the improvement scenario have a significant impact on the total energy use. For the homemade and semi-prepared meal, the reduction is 15% and 20% respectively, not only due to less consumer transport and packaging but also reduction in industry (semi-prepared). Agriculture is also a significant contributor to emissions of greenhouse gases and eutrophying emissions; for the homemade meal, around 40% of the greenhouse gases originate from agriculture, and for the semi-prepared meal, the figure is 50%. The improvement actions with the greatest reduction in greenhouse gases are, again, less consumer transport and, in the case of the semi-prepared meal, the reduction in energy use in industry. Regarding eutrophication, more than 90% of the emissions originate from agriculture. Hence, the only improvement action that has an effect here is the utilisation of raw material downstream in the production chain; a slight reduction in waste still gives a notable reduction in overall eutrophic emissions. Discussion There are two significant areas of research to reduce the impact of meals that are not explored in this study: choice of meal components and production methods in agriculture. However, the aim with this study was to explore if there are further ways of reducing the impact without going into these very complex areas, and our conclusion is that there are effective ways in the post-farm chain to cut emissions that, together with choices of diet and agricultural research, can significantly reduce the impact of our food consumption. Conclusions Actions in the post-farm chain that can significantly reduce the environmental impact of a meal are less food thrown away in the household, fewer car trips to the supermarket (e.g. only once a week) and, for semi-prepared food products, more efficient energy use in the food industry. The study shows that consumer actions prove just as important as industrial actions. Recommendations and perspectives Further research is needed to understand the mechanism for the disposal of food, i.e. the reasons for food being wasted, and the relationship between shopping frequency, retail location, size of packaging, etc. in order to reduce the impact of waste and consumer transport.Background, aim, and scope Analysis of uncertainties plays a vital role in the interpretation of life cycle assessment findings. Some of these uncertainties arise from parametric data variability in life cycle inventory analysis. For instance, the efficiencies of manufacturing processes may vary among different industrial sites or geographic regions; or, in the case of new and unproven technologies, it is possible that prospective performance levels can only be estimated. Although such data variability is usually treated using a probabilistic framework, some recent work on the use of fuzzy sets or possibility theory has appeared in the literature. The latter school of thought is based on the notion that not all data variability can be properly described in terms of frequency of occurrence. In many cases, it is necessary to model the uncertainty associated with the subjective degree of plausibility of parameter values. Fuzzy set theory is appropriate for such uncertainties. However, the computations required for handling fuzzy quantities has not been fully integrated with the formal matrix-based life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) described by Heijungs and Suh (2002). Materials and methods This paper integrates computations with fuzzy numbers into the matrix-based LCI computational model described in the literature. The approach uses fuzzy numbers to propagate the data variability in LCI calculations, and results in fuzzy distributions of the inventory results. The approach is developed based on similarities with the fuzzy economic input-output (EIO) model proposed by Buckley (Eur J Oper Res 39:54-60, 1989). Results The matrix-based fuzzy LCI model is illustrated using three simple case studies. The first case shows how fuzzy inventory results arise in simple systems with variability in industrial efficiency and emissions data. The second case study illustrates how the model applies for life cycle systems with co-products, and thus requires the inclusion of displaced processes. The third case study demonstrates the use of the method in the context of comparing different carbon sequestration technologies. Discussion These simple case studies illustrate the important features of the model, including possible computational issues that can arise with larger and more complex life cycle systems. Conclussions A fuzzy matrix-based LCI model has been proposed. The model extends the conventional matrix-based LCI model to allow for computations with parametric data variability represented as fuzzy numbers. This approach is an alternative or complementary approach to interval analysis, probabilistic or Monte Carlo techniques. Recommendations and perspectives Potential further work in this area includes extension of the fuzzy model to EIO-LCA models and to life cycle impact assessment (LCIA); development of hybrid fuzzy-probabilistic approaches; and integration with life cycle-based optimization or decision analysis. Additional theoretical work is needed for modeling correlations of the variability of parameters using interacting or correlated fuzzy numbers, which remains an unresolved computational issue. Furthermore, integration of the fuzzy model into LCA software can also be investigated.Background, aim, and scope The Canadian life cycle impact assessment method LUCAS proposes a characterization of the impact categories aquatic acidification and photochemical ozone formation using a resolution scale based on 15 terrestrial ecozones. Each ecozone represents areas of the country which can be identified easily by general living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) characteristics. The three main purposes of this research are to improve the characterization models of both impact categories including regional exposure and effect factors, to investigate what is the best resolution scale between Canadian provinces or ecozones, and to analyze the extent of spatial variability. Materials and methods A model framework accounting for variability in fate, exposure and effect factors has been elaborated. The same fate factor, based on Advanced Statistical Trajectory Regional Air Pollution matrices, applies to both impact categories. For the aquatic acidification impact category, the fate factor also accounts for the fraction of the deposition transferred to the aquatic ecosystem. The exposure factor for this impact category is considered to be 1 and the effect factor is based on the critical load exceedance, where the potential impacts are only considered in provinces or ecozones in which the critical load is exceeded. For the photochemical ozone formation impact category, the exposure factor is considered to be proportional to the population density in each province or ecozone, and the effect factor is represented by the chemical reactivity estimated with the maximum incremental reactivity model. The calculation of the new characterization factors using both a province-based and ecozone resolution scale was performed using a matrix which converts data from one resolution scale to another. Results Results with the inclusion of the effect and the exposure factors show that the spatial variability between provinces remains within a factor of 10 and 5 for aquatic acidification and photochemical ozone formation, respectively. Discussion Analysis of the results show that regionalization by province is preferable to regionalization by ecozone. It is more accurate in regard to atmospheric modeling and more representative of population distribution. However, averaging the fate factor and the population density over a whole province results in a serious limitation. Conclussions The spatial variability of characterization factors between provinces is in the same order of magnitude as the overall range between chemicals for aquatic acidification while much smaller for photochemical ozone formation. Hence, at this stage of knowledge, province-based regionalization seems to be more relevant for the aquatic acidification impact category than for photochemical ozone formation. Recommendations and perspectives Research must be pursued to integrate a better transport and deposition model with improved spatial capabilities and a successive modeling step properly describing the cause-effect chain up to the damage level, such as the biotic environment and the human population.Estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) balances of biofuels is subject to significant biases stemming from modelling choices about system definition and boundaries, functional unit, reference systems and allocation methods. This paper investigates extent to which these choices influence the results. After performing a comparison and constructive criticism of various modelling choices, life cycle assessment (LCA) of wheat-to-bioethanol was used as an illustrative case where bioethanol was blended with gasoline at various percentages (E5, E10 and E85). A large difference was observed in reduction of GHG emissions with a high sensitivity to method used to allocate impacts between co-products, type of reference systems, choice of functional unit and type of blend. The study recommends for basing estimation of energy and GHG balances of biofuels on principles of transparency, consistency and accuracy.Ethanol production from lignocellulosic residues has potential to significantly improve sustainability of biofuels for transport by avoiding land-use competition with food crops and reducing impacts related to agricultural inputs. However, high production costs remain bottleneck for large-scale development of this pathway. A huge potential exists in upgrading energy producing pathways into biorefineries in order to improve its economic performance and long-term sustainability. A promising general model for a lignocellulosic biochemical refineries (LCBR) is based on sugar-lignin platform, in which 5-carbon (C5) and 6-carbon (C6) sugars, resulting from lignocellulosic matrix fractionation, are converted into fuels and building block chemicals by biotechnological or chemical pathways. In this context, comprehensive, flexible and dynamic modelling approaches are needed to solve a problem with multiple optimization criteria (economic and environmental), high levels of uncertainty and dynamic behaviour. Process simulators and comprehensive databases of production processes can help to determine rigorous and thermodynamically consistent material and energy balances permitting robust scale-up and reducing uncertainty in economical and environmental impact evaluation in a dynamic context. This paper discusses the need for developing a modular platform for process synthesis aiming at selection of technically, economically and environmentally sound pathways for lignocellulosic biorefineries.The life cycle energy use and environmental impact of an installed in micro-wind turbine for domestic (residential) electricity generation has been determined. The turbine examined was a horizontal-axis wind turbine, which has a rotor diameter of 1.7 m, a power rating of 600 W at 12 m/s, and an assumed lifetime of 15 years. The system boundaries for the study encompass energy and material resources in the ground and extend to the point of delivery of electricity. The energy Output of the turbine in different terrains has been estimated via a dataset of hourly measured wind speeds, and the environmental impact of producing and maintaining the micro-wind turbine was determined. The environmental performance of the turbine was assessed by assuming that each unit of electricity generated displaces (avoids the use of) a unit of grid electricity. The whole life cycle performance of a micro-wind turbine was found to he dependant on a number of factors, primarily the geographical positioning of the turbine, the available wind resource, and the use of recycled materials within the production of the microturbine.Owing to concerns about energy security and because of increased environmental awareness, the biofuel industry is expanding worldwide. it is therefore extremely important to be able to quantify the sustainability of biofuels in order to determine their benefits over using conventional fossil fuel derived transport fuels. This study investigates the total energy requirement and global warming potential (GWP) of the production of biodiesel from oilseed rape in the UK, using life cycle analyses. Large- and small-scale productions are compared and the sensitivity of these environmental impacts to production variables investigated. Possible changes to the processes are considered, with a view to reduce the energy requirement and global warming potential. This research shows that the scale of the production of biodiesel from oilseed rape in the UK, and the transport involved in the various stages of manufacture, has little effect on its global warming potential. It is also shown that if the rape meal and glycerol were combusted in combined heat and power plants, and the rate of application of nitrogenous fertiliser were reduced from 211 kg/ha to 100 kg/ha, the energy requirement and global warming potential savings from using biodiesel rather than ultra low sulphur diesel would increase dramatically, to 170% and 120%, respectively, on a basis of equivalent net energy content. (c) 2008 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the potential for regional bioenergy recovery as electricity and heat by small-scale methane fermentation systems from organic waste matter generated from urban, industrial, and agricultural sectors. Biogas production functions of high-strength organic wastes are derived from data of implemented methane fermentation systems. The distributions of organic wastes from sewage, household, wholesale/retail, manufacturing, farming, and livestock activities in the Tokyo Bay region are calibrated into a disaggregated spatial database by compiling general activity statistics and emission intensity parameters using Geographic Information System (GIS). Three scenarios of organic matter circulation by co-digestion in sewage treatment plants (STPs) are designed and assessed. Surplus electricity and heat from methane fermentation systems are used for STP operations and household demand. The spatial database allows a preliminary examination for the suitability of locations for technology implementation from the aspects of bioenergy supply and balance. The results show that an additional 368,000-1,328,000 MW of electricity would be generated, and 1300-3600 TJ of heat could be used by households, reducing the annual emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels by 307,000-798,000 t. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent investigations have shown that bioethanol from grain and sugarbeet contributes far more to greenhouse gas reduction and causes far lower greenhouse gas avoidance costs than assumed in previous studies. Greenhouse gas balances, analogously to eco-balances, must encompass the entire life cycle of a product. In the case of biofuels, this includes, among other things, taking into account the direct and indirect effects (e.g. land utilization effects) of by-product production as well as the effects of the utilization phase (motor efficiency). Because biofuel production fundamentally involves the utilization of land, which is available only to a limited extent, the evaluation of the various biofuel routes must proceed - against the background of the discussion of food versus fuel - on the basis of their respective absolute greenhouse gas reduction per area unit employed (area utilization efficiency). Area balances show that bioethanol from grain and sugarbeet has the great advantage over other investigated bioenergy routes of achieving very high greenhouse gas reductions per area unit required. Compared with other biofuels and the same total area employed, these greenhouse gas savings are obtained without constraining food production. Taking this into account, bioethanol from grain and sugarbeet has advantages built into the system also over second-generation biofuels, such as wood-based from short-cycle plantations. The use of bioethanol in the form of low blends (e.g. blends of gasoline and bioethanol in a 90: 10 ratio = E 10) leads to higher motor efficiency which to a considerable degree compensates for the lower calorific value of bioethanol compared with gasoline. Furthermore, the greenhouse gas avoidance costs incurred in the use of bioethanol produced from biomass in the European Union (first and second generation) in the form of E10 in the transport sector are shown to be substantially lower than those cited in the literature. This rather conservative calculation only comprehends the effects of the utilization phase (motor efficiency). Also taking into account the direct and indirect effects (including land utilization effects) of by-product production - the methodologically more correct course - would further reduce the greenhouse gas avoidance costs incurred in the use of E10 in the transport sector. These costs are significantly lower than the avoidance costs resulting from changes in vehicle design aimed at reducing motor fuel consumption. By changing feeding customs in milk and meat production from cattle (starch and protein-rich fodder rations in place of pure pasture) the associated specific greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. per kilogramme of meat produced) can be roughly halved, compared with a pasture system. The feedstuffs produced in connection with the production of bioethanol from grain and sugarbeet make a valuable contribution to this end. Stabling also makes possible the treatment of the liquid manure in biogas plants, which is an additional contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in cattle fattening. Biofuel production has variously been associated with high water consumption. A life cycle analysis, however, reveals this consumption to be the utilization of the naturally occurring precipitation in western Europe within the natural water cycle. The use of biofuel in the transport sector in the form of bioethanol produced in Europe therefore constitutes a cost-effective option to achieve a high reduction in greenhouse gas with the simultaneous production of high-value feedstuffs.Polyhydroxybutyrates (PHB) are well-known biopolymers derived from sugars or vegetable oils. Cradle-to-gate environmental performance of PHB derived from corn grain is evaluated through life cycle assessment (LCA), particularly nonrenewable energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Site-specific process information on the corn wet milling and PHB fermentation and recovery processes was obtained from Telles. Most of energy used in the corn wet milling and PHB fermentation and recovery processes is generated in a cogeneration power plant in which corn stover, assumed to be representative of a variety of biomass sources that could be used, is burned to generate electricity and steam. County level agricultural information is used in estimating the environmental burdens associated with both corn grain and corn stover production. Results show that PHB derived from corn grain offers environmental advantages over petroleum-derived polymers in terms of nonrenewable energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, PHB provides greenhouse gas credits, and thus PHB use reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to petroleum-derived polymers. Corn cultivation is one of the environmentally sensitive areas in the PHB production system. More sustainable practices in corn cultivation (e.g., using no-tillage and winter cover crops) could reduce the environmental impacts of PHB by up to 72%.The current challenge concerning renewable energy sources resides in making them efficient and competitive in comparison with traditional ones without neglecting the appraisal of environmental performances. In particular, envisaging a sustainability perspective, this task must be accomplished from a wider, and then holistic, viewpoint. For this purpose, authors identified emergy analysis as a valid approach. Actually, during the implementation of a previous work, authors found incomplete (for the attainment of their aims) the information concerning emergy evaluation of energy production by sunlight. This study represents an attempt to fill this gap, aiming at supplying a starting basis to evaluate these technologies. Emergy parameters were then calculated for two suggested plants (a thermal and a photovoltaic one) and results were compared with traditional energy production systems. This comparison revealed that solar technologies imply a remarkable emergy saving (5.72E+15 sej/year for thermal and 4.77E+15 sej/year for photovoltaic). These evaluations make solar power technologies advisable in order to save non-renewable resources. Moreover, the analysis demonstrated recent and remarkable improvements in photovoltaic electricity production efficiency. This condition sets a positive scenario considering the expected and outstanding further improvements in solar technologies. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nitrate pollution due to excessive N fertirrigation in greenhouse tomato production is a persisting environmental concern in the Mediterranean region. Driven by productivity rather than sustainability, growers continue to use very high N concentrations of more than 11 mM in greenhouse tomato production. A greenhouse study was conducted in Barcelona, Spain, over two growing seasons to analyze the effect of N concentrations from 5 mM to 11 mM (control) on tomato yield and physical quality. The relative environmental impact was calculated by using the life cycle assessment method (LCA). Our results show that N concentration in the nutrient solution can be reduced from 11 mM (control) to 7 mM under a daily mean drainage volume of 30%. This finding implies a 70% decrease in nitrate leaching without reducing tomato yield or quality. According to life cycle assessment, a reduction of 36% in N fertilizers leads to a 60% decrease in the potential impact of eutrophication, 50% decrease in the potential impact of climate change, and 45% decrease in the potential impact of photochemical oxidants.Fires have been a part of our society both in term of controlled fires, or combustion, for heating purposes and uncontrolled accidental fires. Accidental fires cause a substantial amount of damage both economically and in terms of human lives. However, we need to better understand the relationship between these phenomena, and develop scientifically sound tools for identification of the hazard, the assessment of risk, and the implementation of fire prevention and protection measures. Such work is just beginning within ISO/TC92/SC3 under its mandate to consider not just the local effect of fire effluent on people but also its effect on the environment. A very limited number of papers have focussed on the environmental issues of fires consequently the environmental impact of fires has only recently come under scrutiny. It is, therefore, important to find a method which includes all the impacts of fires. Recently a novel LCA model, the so-called Fire-LCA model, was developed where the environmental effect of fires was incorporated into the overall treatment of the environmental impact of the product under study. The Fire-LCA model is essentially equivalent to a traditional LCA approach with the inclusion of emissions from fires as the most important modification. This model will therefore include modules to describe the fire behavior for the different types of fires. This paper presents an application of the Fire-LCA model to a refinery which is a system with a high level of fire safety. (c) 2008 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The increasing diffusion of small-scale energy systems within the distributed generation (DG) paradigm is raising the need for studying the environmental impact due to the different DG solutions in order to assess their sustainability. Addressing the environmental impact calls for building specific models for studying both local and global emissions. In this framework, the adoption of natural gas-fueled DG cogeneration technologies may provide, as a consequence of cogeneration enhanced overall energy efficiency and of natural gas relatively low carbon content, a significant reduction of global impact in terms of CO2 emissions with respect to the separate production of electricity and heat. However, a comprehensive evaluation of the DG alternatives should take into account as well the impact due to the presence of plants spread over the territory that could increase the local pollution. in particular due to CO and NOx, and thus could worsen the local air quality. This paper provides an overview on the characterization of the emissions from small-scale natural gas-fueled cogeneration systems, with specific reference to the DG technologies nowadays most available in the market, namely, microturbines and internal combustion engines. The corresponding local and global environmental impacts are evaluated by using the emission balance approach. A numerical case study with two representative machines highlights their different emission characteristics, also considering the partial-load emission performance. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Application of landfill gas (LFG) means a synergy between environmental protection and energy production. This paper presents a review of the status of LFG application. To more efficiently utilize the LFG in Hong Kong, a trigeneration scheme is proposed as a new way of LFG utilization. The feasibility of LFG trigeneration in Hong Kong is evaluated from the views of primary energy-saving and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction as well as economic benefit. The proposed scenario is compared with the conventional scenarios of LFG treatment and utilization. It is shown that LFG for trigeneration has a higher energy saving and GHG emission reduction potentials. The new scheme is also more economical than the conventional way of LFG utilization. Some policy recommendations are also given to promote the biomass energy utilization from waste landfills in Hong Kong. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During recent years, strict environmental regulations have been implemented by governments for the steelmaking industry in order to reduce their environmental impact. In the frame of the ULCOS project, we have developed a new methodological framework which combines the process integrated modelling approach with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method in order to carry out the Life Cycle Inventory of steelmaking. In the current paper, this new concept has been applied to the sinter plant which is the most polluting steelmaking process. It has been shown that this approach is a powerful tool to make the collection of data easier, to save time and to provide reliable information concerning the environmental diagnostic of the steelmaking processes. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment-based environmental product declarations (EPDs) require the inclusion of biodiversity impacts across the entire supply chain. The objective of this study is to test the applicability of a Scandinavian biodiversity assessment tool, developed specifically for use with EPD applications, in an African desert environment, linking the industry types power generation and mining. For this purpose, a GIS-based spatial analysis tool-the biotope method-was adapted to a framework approach which allowed the selection of more suitable, site-specific biodiversity indicators. The biotope method provides a step-by-step process of defining system boundaries, mapping biotopes, categorizing biotopes based on site-specific indicators, and evaluating change in biotope status "before" and "after" the impact. The development of site-specific indicators was piloted in this study and determined by the affected ecosystem and the status of knowledge on biodiversity in this geographic area. Thus plants were used as indicators for biodiversity, and red-list status and endemism constituted the prime criteria for conservation value of plants. This in turn represented the key criterion for classifying biotopes. The tested biodiversity assessment tool has potential for application in different environments and operational settings but leaves room for improvement by including secondary impacts in the assessment and using a wider range of taxa for indicators of biodiversity.This study explores possible future trends in the environmental impact of the Kraft pulp industry in Thailand between 2000 and 2020. Scenarios were developed to analyze the effect of different options to reduce the future environmental impact, and the costs associated with the implementation of these options. The analysis indicates that without currently applied reduction options the environmental impact would be twice as high as it currently is. For a Business-as-Usual scenario, in which no additional pollution reduction options are assumed to be implemented, the overall environmental impact is calculated to increase between 2000 and 2020 by a factor of two. Next, five Environmental Policy scenarios reflecting different strategies were defined to reduce the environmental impact. The results indicate that it is theoretically possible to reduce the overall environmental impact by almost 50% relative to the BAU 2020 levels. This scenario, however, may not be feasible because of the high costs involved. Four other Environmental Policy scenarios result in a reduction of the impact by 24-37% relative to the BAU scenario. Based on these results, it can be concluded that there are different ways to reduce the overall environmental impact by about one-third relative to BAU trends. Relatively large differences in the costs of the options included in the scenarios were also observed. We conclude that combining the most costeffective options may be the most interesting strategy for reducing the overall environmental impact of Kraft pulp industry in Thailand. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building and building components, particularly windows, have been the subject of numerous studies seeking to recognize and quantify the environmental impacts Caused by processes in the Product life cycle. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has provided a systematic scheme for evaluation and comparison of environmental burdens, of complex production processes. The design of windows LCAs reflects two distinct considerations, the comparison of manufacturing effects caused by various frame materials as well as the justification of increased manufacturing effects for improved performance during use. In all LCAs that considered Frame materials. wood had lower embodied energy than the market alternatives. PVC and aluminum (Citherlet et al. 2000, Asif et al. 2002, Menzies and Muneer 2003, Recio et at. 2005). Salazar and Sowlati (2008) did note that contemporary frame systems. PVC, aluminum clad wood, and fiberglass, are all comparable in cradle-to-gate emissions and that the primary determinant of a life cycle advantage stems from a longer service life and lower replacement frequency. The inclusion of use-phase energy amounts showed the relative insignificance of frame production (Entec 2000) and justified the increased resource use during manufacturing to achieve improved energy performance during occupancy (Citherlet et al. 2000, Asif et al. 2002, Kiani et al. 2004, Syrrakou et al. 2005).In this study the methodology of life cycle assessment has been used to assess the environmental impacts of three pulverized coal fired electricity supply chains with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS) on a cradle to grave basis. The chain with CCS comprises post-combustion CO2 capture with monoethanolamine, compression, transport by pipeline and storage in a geological reservoir. The two reference chains represent sub-critical and state-of-the-art ultra supercritical pulverized coal fired electricity generation. For the three chains we have constructed a detailed greenhouse gas (GHG) balance, and disclosed environmental trade-offs and co-benefits due to CO2 capture, transport and storage. Results show that, due to CCS, the GHG emissions per kWh are reduced substantially to 243 g/kWh. This is a reduction of 78 and 71% compared to the sub-critical and state-of-the-art power plant, respectively. The removal Of CO2 is partially offset by increased GHG emissions in up- and downstream processes, to a small extent (0.7 g/kWh) caused by the CCS infrastructure. An environmental co-benefit is expected following from the deeper reduction of hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride emissions. Most notable environmental trade-offs are the increase in human toxicity, ozone layer depletion and fresh water ecotoxicity potential for which the CCS chain is outperformed by both other chains. The state-of-the-art power plant without CCS also shows a better score for the eutrophication, acidification and photochemical oxidation potential despite the deeper reduction of SO, and NO, in the CCS power plant. These reductions are offset by increased emissions in the life cycle due to the energy penalty and a factor five increase in NH3 emissions. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The very potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N(2)O) is widely used as a mild anaesthetic for mothers in delivery work in Sweden. As a part of the Stockholm County Council environmental program it was decided in 2002 that the emissions should be drastically reduced. Different ways were theoretically evaluated, and catalytic splitting to nitrogen and oxygen gas (N(2) and O(2)) was chosen for a demonstration installation. A Japanese commercial unit for treatment of mixed anaesthetic gases (Anesclean (R) from Showa Denko K.K.) was thoroughly modified and installed at the Karolinska University Hospital at Huddinge in Stockholm in 2004. The destruction of N(2)O was optimised and studied for 2 years. Data from both collection and destruction are given in the article. Of the collected N(2)O more than 95% was split to N(2) and O(2) in the very stable system. The overall emission decrease was mainly dependent on the share that could be collected in the specific exhaustion system as compared to the normal room ventilation. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) were used to evaluate the actual environmental value and economical cost for the process. Important factors are pointed out.Demographic matrix models have become an integral part of population viability analysis for threatened and endangered species, but their use is often limited by data availability. A common solution to this problem is to assume constant annual rates within a multi-year stage. Partial life cycle analysis (PLC), which incorporates only juvenile and adult stages, is a noteworthy example of this approach because it has been described in the literature as a reliable approximation of age-structured populations. However, we predict from Jensen's Inequality that the required lumping of age classes leads to over- or underestimation of population fitness when survival rates are truly age-dependent. We illuminate this problem by comparing fitness estimates from Leslie matrix and PLC models for theoretical populations having different levels of age-dependence in their survival rates. We also propose a modification of the PLC approach to address this problem and demonstrate its applicability using data from a published long-term study of red deer Cervus elephas.Separate collection Of Municipal solid waste his overcome the 50% threshold in the Asti District in northern Italy, nearly one-third being composed of household and green organic waste. In order to address present and future Solutions, it becomes therefore fundamental to assess the environmental performances of the current management of organic waste from separate collection. A from-gate-to-cradle life cycle assessment (LCA) model has been developed by expanding system boundaries, in order to carry out the assessment in the context of the whole waste management streamline. The environmental performances of all existing aerobic plant were made available, based oil field measured data, by paying attention to the role and contribution of waste management subsystems. The need for actual and reliable data on materials and energy input. as well as gross and net gains from materials recovery, including benefits arising from use of compost in farming activities, was probably the major drawback that had to be faced. The study integrated the findings of different investigations from the literature with field measured data in order to obtain a more comprehensive framework representative of the area under study. The results may help public administrators to better understand the suitability of using LCA tools when dealing with solid waste management strategies. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The significance of technical data, as well as the significance of system boundary choices, when modelling the environmental impact from recycling and incineration of waste paper has been studied by a life cycle assessment focusing oil global warming potentials. The consequence of choosing a specific set of data for the reprocessing technology, the virgin paper manufacturing technology and the incineration technology, as well as the importance of the recycling rate Was Studied. Furthermore, the system was expanded to include forestry and to include fossil fuel energy substitution from saved biomass, in order to study the importance of the system boundary choices. For recycling, the choice of virgin paper manufacturing data is most important, but the results show that also the impacts from the reprocessing technologies fluctuate greatly. For the overall results the choice of the technology data is of importance when comparing recycling including virgin paper Substitution with incineration including energy Substitution. Combining an environmentally high or low performing recycling technology with an environmentally high or low performing incineration technology can give quite different results. The modelling showed that recycling of paper, from a life cycle point of view, is environmentally equal or better than incineration with energy recovery only when the recycling technology is at a high environmental performance level. However, the modelling also showed that expanding the system to include Substitution of fossil fuel energy by production of energy from the saved biomass associated with recycling will give a completely different result. In this case recycling is always more beneficial than incineration, thus increased recycling is desirable. Expanding the system to include forestry was shown to have a minor effect on the results. As assessments are often performed with a set choice of data and a set recycling rate, it is questionable how useful the results from this kind of LCA are for a policy maker. The high significance of the system boundary choices stresses the importance of scientific discussion on how to best address system analysis of recycling, for paper and other recyclable materials. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The meaning of sustainability in water resources management has changed through the time. Initially, meeting water demand was the dominant concern. While later quality issues became more important followed by wider water reuse, today sustainability must include a whole range of aspects (e. g., energy, pollution, persistent chemicals) on various spatial and time scales. New approaches to define sustainability metrics are needed that include three essential elements: the sphere of sustainability, its time horizon and its metric.Transitioning to more sustainable operations is widely considered to be among the premier challenges facing the chemical industry today. The motivators for such change include an increasingly tightening regulatory regime, increased consumer awareness, and inclination of investors to consider risks associated with lendings to hazardous material industries. As an effort to become "greener", chemical industries are making conscious efforts to reduce their resource intensities or footprints. Such efforts need to be supported by models that can quantify the broad economic and environmental implications of industrial decisions. This manuscript uses the recently developed Ecologically Based Life Cycle Assessment (EcoLCA) model of the United States economy to analyze resource intensities of chemical industry sectors, comparing them with each other and with other industry sectors. The raw numbers are normalized by national flows to gain insight into possible resource vulnerabilities of industrial sectors. These numbers are also aggregated based on their mass or exergy to reduce their dimensionality and permit easier interpretation. Ecological cumulative exergy consumption (ECEC) allows consideration of a wide variety of ecosystem goods and services, human resources and emissions and their impacts on a consistent basis, and is shown to provide unique insight in addition to conventional measures based on mass and Industrial cumulative exergy consumption (ICEC). Ratios of ECEC to money indicate the relative throughputs of natural to economic capital, and are used for investigating supply chains of selected sectors and identifying likely keystone sectors. The insights obtained by juxtaposing resource intensities of chemical industry sectors amongst themselves and with those of the rest of economy are used to identify opportunities for reducing resources intensities of chemical industry sectors that could enable improvement of their environmental sustainability. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are promising eco-friendly bioplastics that can be produced from cellulosic ethanol biorefineries as value-added coproducts. A cradle-to-factory-gate life cycle assessment is performed with two important categories: the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil energy requirement per kg of bioplastics produced. The analysis indicates that PHA bioplastics contribute clearly to the goal of mitigating GHG emissions with only 0.49 kg CO2-e being emitted from production of 1 kg of resin. Compared with 2-3 kg CO2-e of petrochemical counterparts, it is about 80% reduction of the global warming potential. The fossil energy requirement per kg of bioplastics is 44 MJ, lower than those of petrochemical counterparts (78-88 MJ/kg resin). About 62% of fossil energy is used for processing utilities and wastewater treatment, and the rest is required for raw materials in different life cycle stages.Guantifying the net climate change impact of automotive material substitution is not a trivial task. It requires the assessment of the mass reduction potential of automotive materials, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their production and recycling, and their impact on GHG emissions from vehicle use. The model presented in this paper is based on life cycle assessment (LCA) and completely parameterized, i.e., its computational structure is separated from the required input data, which is not traditionally done in LCAs. The parameterization increases scientific rigor and transparency of the assessment methodology, facilitates sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of the results, and also makes it possible to compare different studies and explain their disparities. The state of the art of the modeling methodology is reviewed and advanced. Assessment of the GHG emission impacts of material recycling through consequential system expansion shows that our understanding of this issue is still incomplete. This is a critical knowledge gap since a case study shows that for materials such as aluminum, the GHG emission impacts of material production and recycling are both of the same size as the use phase savings from vehicle mass reduction.Most published research concerning the environmental impacts of broiler poultry production is limited to assessments of on-farm gaseous and nutrient emissions. Here, ISO-compliant Life Cycle Assessment was used to predict the broader, macroscale environmental impacts of the material and energy inputs and emissions along the US broiler supply chain. It was found that feed provision accounts for 80% of supply chain energy use, 82% of greenhouse gas emissions. 98% of ozone depleting emissions, 96% of acidifying emissions and 97% of eutrophying emissions associated with the cradle-to-farm gate production of broiler poultry. On-farm inputs and emissions, largely related to heating and ventilation contribute on average only 9% of these impacts. These results underscore the fallacy of "landless farming" and the importance of full supply-chain environmental management for improving sustainability in the US poultry industry. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for individual cities is confounded by spatial scale and boundary effects that impact the allocation of regional material and energy flows. This paper develops a demand-centered, hybrid life-cycle-based methodology for conducting city-scale GHG inventories that incorporates (1) spatial allocation of surface and airline travel across colocated cities in larger metropolitan regions, and, (2) life-cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the embodied energy of key urban materials-food, water, fuel, and concrete, The hybrid methodology enables cities to separately report the GHG impact associated with direct end-use of energy by cities (consistent with EPA and IPCC methods), as well as the impact of extra-boundary activities such as air travel and production of key urban materials (consistent with Scope 3 protocols recommended by the World Resources Institute). Application of this hybrid methodology to Denver, Colorado, yielded a more holistic GHG inventory that approaches a GHG footprint computation, with consistency of inclusions across spatial scale as well as convergence of city-scale per capita GHG emissions (similar to 25 Mt CO(2)e/person/year) with state and national data. The method is shown to have significant policy impacts, and also demonstrates the utility of benchmarks in understanding energy use in various city sectors.Chemical synthesis is a complex and diverse procedure, and production data are often scarce or incomplete. A detailed inventory analysis of all mass and energy flows necessary for the production of chemicals is often costly and time-intensive. Therefore only few chemical inventories exist, even though they are essential for process optimization and the environmental assessment of many products. This paper introduces a new type of model to provide estimates for inventory data and environmental impacts of chemical production based on the molecular structure of a chemical and without a priori knowledge of the production process. These molecular-structure-based models offer inventory data for users in process design and optimization, screening life cycle assessment (LCA), and supply chain management. They can be applied even if the producer is unknown or the production process is not documented. We assessed the capabilities of linear regression and neural network models for this purpose. All models were generated with a data set of inventory data on 103 chemicals. Different input sets were chosen as ways to transform the chemical structure into a numerical vector of descriptors and the effectiveness of the different input sets was analyzed. The results show that a correctly developed neural network model can perform on an acceptable level for many purposes. The models can assist process developers to improve energy efficiency in all design stages and aid in LCA and supply chain management by filling data gaps.Air quality legislation is entering a transformation phase, shifting the concept of atmospheric emission control towards pollution prevention and emission minimization through a more integrated approach. This transformation, along with public pressure and increased foreign trade, is providing industries with incentives to consider their effect on the environment and to take action where required. To assist industries in determining what air pollution control technologies are best suited to power plants; an assessment of air pollution control technologies used in other countries was carried out. This assessment concluded that the best available technologies for power plants to control air emissions are electrostatic precipitators, low-NOx burners, selective catalytic reduction systems and wet flue gas desulphurization (limestone) systems. An assessment of the financial effects associated with air pollution control at power plants was conducted by completing a cost analysis. This analysis demonstrated that by increasing capital expenditure oil control technologies by US$0.25 billion, the external costs associated with producing electricity can be reduced by almost US$ 0.5 billion. Formulation of external cost factors and the development of a software database for the information obtained from the different countries, will promote future technology selections.Background, aim, and scope Cross-category weighting is one possible way to facilitate internal decision making when dealing with ambiguous impact assessment results, with simple additive weighting being a commonly used method. Yet, the question as to whether the methods applied today can, in fact, identify the most "environmentally friendly" alternative from a group perspective remains unanswered. The aim of this paper is to propose a new method for group decision making that ensures the effective identification of the most preferable alternative. Materials and methods Common approaches to deduce a single set of weighting factors for application in a group decision situation (e.g., arithmetic mean, consensus) are discussed based on simple mathematics, empirical data, and thought experiments. After proposing an extended definition for "effectiveness" in group decision making, the paper recommends the use of social choice theory whose main focus is to identify the most preferable alternative based on individuals' rankings of alternatives. The procedure is further supplemented by a Monte Carlo analysis to facilitate the assessment of the result's robustness. Results The general feasibility of the method is demonstrated. It generates a complete ranking of alternatives, which does not contain cardinal single scores. In terms of effectiveness, the mathematical structure of the procedure ensures the eligibility for compromise of the group decision proposal. The sensitivity analysis supports the decision makers in understanding the robustness of the proposed group ranking. Discussion The method is based upon an extended definition of effectiveness which acknowledges the eligibility for compromise as the core requirement in group decision contexts. It is shown that multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) methods in use in life cycle assessment (LCA) today do not necessarily meet this requirement because of their mathematical structure. Further research should focus on empirical proof that the generated group results are indeed more eligible for compromise than results generated by current methods that utilize an averaged group weighting set. This is closely related to the question considering under which mathematical constraints it is even possible to generate an essentially different result. Conclusions The paper describes a new multi-attribute group decision support system (MGDSS) for the identification of the most preferable alternative(s) for use in panel-based LCA studies. The main novelty is that it refrains from deducing a single set of weighting factors which is supposed to represent the panel as a whole. Instead, it applies voting rules that stem from social choice theory. Because of its mathematical structure, the procedure is deemed superior to common approaches in terms of its effectiveness. Recommendations and perspectives The described method may be recommended for use in internal, panel-based LCA studies. In addition, the basic approach of the method-the combination of MADM methods with social choice theory-can be recommended for use in all those situations where multi-attribute decisions are to be made in a group context.Background, aim, and scope Within life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), 'panel methods' has become a common term to denominate methods that elicit and measure stakeholders' stated preferences on environmental impact categories. Such panel procedures use different question formats to elicit information on weighting across impact categories from the stakeholders. The two most frequently used question formats are score allocation and choice between alternatives. The differences between these two question formats were analyzed in order to give advice on how to frame future panel procedures. Materials and methods A choice-based weighting procedure (choice experiment) for the three damage categories of human health, ecosystems quality, and resources was developed and executed. A logistic regression model was applied in order to estimate the weighting factors for the polled sample. Results from this choice-based procedure were compared to the results from an allocation-based procedure described in part 1 of this paper. Results When weighting factors are elicited by score allocation questions, panelists tend to distribute the scores more equally. A factor of 1.5 between the least and the most weighted damage category was found. Weighting factors from a choice experiment were more spread, i.e., the most important category was weighted considerably higher, whereas the other two categories were weighted less. Thus, for the choice experiment, the range between the most and the least weighted categories was considerably bigger-by about a factor of 4. Discussion A comparison of the two procedures revealed that the weighting of environmental damage categories is considerably influenced by the question of format. The reason for these variations may be different cognitive routines that are applied. In addition, several advantages and shortcomings of choice experiments are discussed. Conclusions The developed, choice-based procedure provided meaningful results. Thus, choice experiments, often used for the monetary valuation of environmental goods, can also be applied in LCIA to elicit nonmonetary weighting factors. Recommendations and perspectives Choice experiments form a new interesting approach for weighting procedures in the future as they have some advantages over the often used score allocation methods. They are simple and more realistic than other procedures, as panelists have practiced in choice tasks from everyday life. We, therefore, recommend such choice-based procedures for future panel studies.Background, aim and scope The methodological choices and framework to assess environmental impacts in life cycle assessment are still under discussion. Despite intensive developments worldwide, few attempts have been made hitherto to systematically present the role of different factors of characterisation models in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The aim of this study is to show how European average and country-dependent characterisation factors for acidifying and eutrophying emissions differ when using (a) acidifying and eutrophying potentials alone, (b) depositions from an atmospheric dispersion model or (c) critical loads in conjunction with those depositions. Furthermore, in the latter case, the contributions of emissions, an atmospheric transport model and critical loads to changes in characterisation factors of NO(2) are studied. In addition, the new characterisation factors based on the accumulated exceedance (AE) method are presented using updated emissions, a new atmospheric transport model and the latest critical loads. Materials and methods In this study, characterisation factors for acidifying and eutrophying emissions are calculated by three different methods. In the 'no fate' (NF) methods, acidifying and eutrophying potentials alone are considered as characterisation factors. In the 'only above terrestrial environment' (OT) approach, characterisation factors are based on the deposition of the acidifying or eutrophying substances to terrestrial land surfaces. The third method is the so-called AE method in which critical loads are used in conjunction with depositions. The results of the methods are compared both at the European and the country level using weighted mean, weighted standard deviation, minimum and maximum values. To illustrate the sensitivity of the AE method, changes in European emissions, employed atmospheric dispersion model and the critical loads database are conducted step-by-step, and the differences between the results are analysed. Results and discussion For European average characterisation factors, the three characterisation methods of acidification produce results in which the contributions of NH(3), NO(2) and SO(2) to the acidification indicator do not differ much within each method when 1 kg of each acidifying substance is emitted. However, the NF methods cannot describe any spatial aspects of environmental problems. Both OT and AE methods show that the spatial aspects play an important role in the characterisation factors. The AE method results in greater differentiations between country-dependent characterisation factors than does the OT method. In addition, the results of the AE and OT methods differ from each other for individual countries. A major shortcoming of the OT approach is that it does not consider the sensitivity of the ecosystems onto which the pollutants are deposited, whereas the AE approach does. In the case of the AE method, a new atmospheric dispersion model, new information on emissions and critical loads have a different influence on the characterisation factors, depending on the country. The results of statistics show that the change in the atmospheric dispersion model has a greatest influence on the results, since ecosystem-specific depositions are taken into account for the first time. Conclusions and recommendations The simple NF methods can be used in a first approximation to assess the impacts of acidification and terrestrial eutrophication in cases where we do not know where the emissions occur. The OT approach is a more advanced method compared with the NF method, but its capability to describe spatial aspects is limited. The AE factors are truly impact-oriented characterisation factors and the information used here represents the current best knowledge about the assessment practice of acidification and terrestrial eutrophication in Europe. The key message of this study is that there is no shortcut to achieving advanced characterisation of acidification and terrestrial eutrophication: an advanced methodology cannot develop without atmospheric dispersion models and information on ecosystem sensitivity.Background, aim, and scope Two fishing methods, creeling and conventional trawling, are used to target Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus), economically the second most important species in Swedish west coast fisheries. The goal was to evaluate overall resource use and environmental impact caused by production of this seafood with the two different fishing methods using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Materials and methods The inventory covered the entire chain starting by production of supply materials and the fishery itself, through seafood auctioning, wholesaling, retailing, to the consumer. That portion of the life cycle occurring on land was assumed to be identical for Norway lobsters regardless as to how they were caught. The functional unit was 300 g of edible meat (i.e., Norway lobster tails), corresponding to 1 kg of whole, boiled Norway lobsters. The seafloor impact of trawling was quantified using a recently developed methodology. Results Major differences were found between the fishing methods with regard to environmental impact: creeling was found to be more efficient than conventional trawling in all traditional impact categories and in the two additional fishery-related categories involving seafloor impact and discarding. Since the quality of the creel-caught Nephrops was higher, the difference was probably even higher than indicated here. Discussion Major improvement potential was identified in the more widespread use of creels and species-selective trawls. The only deficiencies of creel fishing were poorer working environment and safety, and a potentially higher risk of recruitment overfishing. However, these issues could be handled by technological development and fisheries regulations and should not hamper the development of creel fishery. Conclusions Improvement options were identified and quantified for the Swedish Nephrops fishery. The study demonstrates how LCA can be used to compare the environmental performance of different segments of a fishery. Recommendations and perspectives Shifting to creeling and species-selective trawling would lead to considerably lower discard, fuel use, and seafloor impact while providing consumers with the same amount of Norway lobsters.Background, aim, and scope To minimize the environmental impacts of construction and simultaneously move closer to sustainable development in the society, the life cycle assessment of buildings is essential. This article provides an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of a typical commercial office building in Thailand. Almost all commercial office buildings in Thailand follow a similar structural, envelope pattern as well as usage patterns. Likewise, almost every office building in Thailand operates on electricity, which is obtained from the national grid which limits variability. Therefore, the results of the single case study building are representative of commercial office buildings in Thailand. Target audiences are architects, building construction managers and environmental policy makers who are interested in the environmental impact of buildings. Materials and methods In this work, a combination of input-output and process analysis was used in assessing the potential environmental impact associated with the system under study according to the ISO14040 methodology. The study covered the whole life cycle including material production, construction, occupation, maintenance, demolition, and disposal. The inventory data was simulated in an LCA model and the environmental impacts for each stage computed. Three environmental impact categories considered relevant to the Thailand context were evaluated, namely, global warming potential, acidification potential, and photo-oxidant formation potential. A 50-year service time was assumed for the building. Results The results obtained showed that steel and concrete are the most significant materials both in terms of quantities used, and also for their associated environmental impacts at the manufacturing stage. They accounted for 24% and 47% of the global warming potential, respectively. In addition, of the total photo-oxidant formation potential, they accounted for approximately 41% and 30%; and, of the total acidification potential, 37% and 42%, respectively. Analysis also revealed that the life cycle environmental impacts of commercial buildings are dominated by the operation stage, which accounted for approximately 52% of the total global warming potential, about 66% of the total acidification potential, and about 71% of the total photo-oxidant formation potential, respectively. The results indicate that the principal contributor to the impact categories during the operation phase were emissions related to fossil fuel combustion, particularly for electricity production. Discussion The life cycle environmental impacts of commercial buildings are dominated by the operation stage, especially electricity consumption. Significant reductions in the environmental impacts of buildings at this stage can be achieved through reducing their operating energy. The results obtained show that increasing the indoor set-point temperature of the building by 2C, as well as the practice of load shedding, reduces the environmental burdens of buildings at the operation stage. On a national scale, the implementation of these simple no-cost energy conservation measures have the potential to achieve estimated reductions of 10.2% global warming potential, 5.3% acidification potential, and 0.21% photo-oxidant formation potential per year, respectively, in emissions from the power generation sector. Overall, the measures could reduce approximately 4% per year from the projected global warming potential of 211.51 Tg for the economy of Thailand. Conclusions Operation phase has the highest energy and environmental impacts, followed by the manufacturing phase. At the operation phase, significant reductions in the energy consumption and environmental impacts can be achieved through the implementation of simple no-cost energy conservation as well as energy efficiency strategies. No-cost energy conservation policies, which minimize energy consumption in commercial buildings, should be encouraged in combination with already existing energy efficiency measures of the government. Recommendations and perspectives In the long run, the environmental impacts of buildings will need to be addressed. Incorporation of environmental life cycle assessment into the current building code is proposed. It is difficult to conduct a full and rigorous life cycle assessment of an office building. A building consists of many materials and components. This study made an effort to access reliable data on all the life cycle stages considered. Nevertheless, there were a number of assumptions made in the study due to the unavailability of adequate data. In order for life cycle modeling to fulfill its potential, there is a need for detailed data on specific building systems and components in Thailand. This will enable designers to construct and customize LCAs during the design phase to enable the evaluation of performance and material tradeoffs across life cycles without the excessive burden of compiling an inventory. Further studies with more detailed, reliable, and Thailand-specific inventories for building materials are recommended.Background, aim, and scope In order to apply the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) to products or services, specific rules [Product Category Rules (PCR)] have to be issued to ensure comparability among different declarations within the same service group. The aim of the present study is to describe the reasons leading to each choice in the development of PCR applied to Collecting and Treatment Service of Municipal Wastewater and to evaluate, through life cycle analysis (LCA), their influence on the potential environmental impact of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), analysed as a case study. Specific data were collected during the year 2003 from an Italian active sludge treatment plant with separate wastewater and sludge treatment lines. Materials and methods The PCR 2005:5 (Collecting and treatment service of municipal wastewater (MWW). Product group/service type: refuse disposal, sanitation and similar activities, NACE code:90) document was prepared by the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering "G.B. Bonino" (University of Genoa, Italy). This PCR was tested on the Collection and Treatment Service of Municipal Wastewater in a wastewater treatment plant located in Savona, Italy (Consorzio per la Depurazione delle Acque di Scarico). The PCR 2005:5 document was issued in an open and participatory process between companies and organizations having good knowledge of the specific environmental aspects of the service to be included in the EPD (R) system. PCR, LCA, and EPD studies were developed according to the document "Requirements for an International EPD Scheme" (EU funded LIFE Env 2003 program, INTEND Project, www.intendproject.net). Results The following LCA-based information was considered in preparing the PCR: definition of service type, definition of functional unit, choice and description of system boundaries, choice of cutoff criteria, choice of allocation rules, description of quality requirements for data, choice of selected LCI results or other selected parameters for description of environmental performance to be included in the declaration, description of parameters contributing to each preset category, description of specific information to be included in the use stage of the declaration, other environmental information. Ecotoxicity characterization factors, evaluated by the model Uniform System for the Evaluation of Substances (USES-LCA), was added to the PCR as an Annex. The potential environmental impacts of the considered case study were evaluated separately for the following phases: sewer net and plant construction, sewer net and plant management, sludge management. Alternative sludge management techniques were investigated. Discussion PCR of Collecting and Treatment Service of Municipal Wastewater (MWW) was prepared in an open and participatory process between companies and organizations having in-depth knowledge of the specific environmental aspects of the service, in order to safeguard the provision and input of appropriate product-specific knowledge from relevant companies and branch organizations. The main problems characterizing the open consultation regarded are functional unit, system boundaries, boundary in time, parameters to be declared, and other information. Conclusions The annual amount of treated wastewater was considered as a functional unit. In order to evaluate water quality aspects, the request for additional information [biochemical oxygen demand (BOD)/chemical oxygen demand (COD) and nutrient removal] was added to the PCR document. These characteristics aim to complete the lack of information about wastewater quality due to the use of a fixed amount of wastewater as a functional unit. The following parameters were identified: resources use (use of nonrenewable resources, use of renewable resources, water consumption, electricity consumption), pollutant emissions as potential environmental impact (global warming, acidification, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, eutrophication), and new standard parameters (fresh aquatic ecotoxicity, fresh sediment ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, marine sediment ecotoxicity). The reference model used for the calculation of toxicity potentials was the global nested multimedia fate, exposure and effects model USES-LCA. The comparison of the LCA results obtained for the considered life cycle phases shows that sewer net and plant construction have less than 10% of the total impacts for all the considered categories. Plant management has a higher impact with respect to sewer net and sludge management. In general, sludge treatment for agricultural land application has a lower impact than its treatment in landfill, but the specific results depend on the impact categories. Recommendations and perspectives One of the most important properties of EPDs is that they provide possibilities to add up and accumulate information along the supply chain as well as to make comparisons between declarations with regard to the environmental performance of products and services. Therefore, the PCR 2005:5 document has been prepared to ensure comparability between declarations within collecting and treatment service of municipal wastewater. However, a new revised version of these rules has to be prepared according to the newly published ISO standard for EPD (ISO 14025) and to the incoming revision document of the international EPD (R) system.By using data available in the open literature, we expanded the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model developed by Argonne National Laboratory to include Brazilian-grown sugarcane ethanol. With the expanded GREET model, we examined the well-to-wheels (WTW) energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of sugarcane-derived ethanol produced in Brazil and used to fuel light-duty vehicles in the United States. Results for sugarcane ethanol were compared with those for petroleum gasoline. The sugarcane-to-ethanol pathway evaluated in the GREET model comprises fertilizer production, sugarcane farming, sugarcane transportation, and sugarcane ethanol production in Brazil; ethanol transportation to U.S. ports and then to U.S. refueling stations; and ethanol use in vehicles. Our analysis shows that sugarcane ethanol can reduce GHG emissions by 78% and fossil energy use by 97%, relative to petroleum gasoline. The large reductions can be attributed to the use of bagasse in sugarcane mills, among other factors. To address the uncertainties involved in key input parameters, we developed and examined several sensitivity cases to test the effect of key parameters on WTW results for sugarcane ethanol. Of the total GHG emissions associated with sugarcane ethanol, the five major contributors are open-field burning of sugarcane tops and leaves, N2O emissions from sugarcane fields, fertilizer production, sugarcane mill operation, and sugarcane farming. Brazil is going to phase out open-field burning in the future. This action will certainly help further reduce GHG emissions of sugarcane farming, together with reductions in emissions of criteria pollutants such as NOx and particulate matter with diameters smaller than 10 microns. The eventual elimination of open-field burning in sugarcane plantations will result in additional GHG emission reductions by sugarcane ethanol of up to 9 percentage points.Despite a rapid worldwide expansion of the biofuel industry, there is a lack of consensus within the scientific community about the potential of biofuels to reduce reliance on petroleum and decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although life cycle assessment provides a means to quantify these potential benefits and environmental impacts, existing methods limit direct comparison within and between different biofuel systems because of inconsistencies in performance metrics, system boundaries, and underlying parameter values. There is a critical need for standardized life-cycle methods, metrics, and tools to evaluate biofuel systems based on performance of feedstock production and biofuel conversion at regional or national scales, as well as for estimating the net GHG mitigation of an individual biofuel production system to accommodate impending GHG-intensity regulations and GHG emissions trading. Predicting the performance of emerging biofuel systems (e.g., switchgrass cellulosic ethanol) poses additional challenges for life cycle assessment due to lack of commercial-scale feedstock production and conversion systems. Continued political support for the biofuel industry will be influenced by public perceptions of the contributions of biofuel systems towards mitigation of GHG emissions and reducing dependence on petroleum for transportation fuels. Standardization of key performance metrics such as GHG emissions mitigation and net energy yield are essential to help inform both public perceptions and public policy.In this paper, we present activity models of chemical process design integrating environmental, health and safety (EHS) evaluation as a new element with conventional economic and technical considerations on the basis of the design framework, which defines different stages of early process design with appropriate indicators for multiobjective evaluation. The type-zero method of Integrated DEFinition language or IDEFO is selected as an activity modeling method for the hierarchical and transparent description of complex design activities. The viewpoint of the activity model is the user of this design framework, i.e. a design-project manager who leads a group of process chemists and engineers. A set of template models is developed, which describes how a manager executes a project step by step with providing instructions and resources appropriately. According to this template, IDEFO models of the design framework are created, and here EHS-related activities, tools and information are systematically defined as a part of (he whole design activity. As further analysis, sub-activities are presented in detail, where the manager allocates resources appropriately to different design stages, including methods of environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and EHS hazard evaluation. Another detailed analysis is on how design constraints, e.g., market situation, competitors' patents and company culture, affect different decision-making within the framework. The actual development of methyl methacrylate (MMA) processes is investigated as a case study. The paper finally presents important know-how for the design manager in executing the integrated design framework.Due to environmental Concerns and regulatory initiatives, electronics manufactures are replacing the tin/lead solder commonly used oil printed wire boards (PWBs) with alternative solders. To determine the potential waste management impacts of the alternative solders Versus the tin/led solder, two leaching tests on PWBs manufactured with five alternative types of solder were performed: the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) and the synthetic precipitation leaching procedure (SPLP). These tests arc commonly used in the US regulatory community to assess pollutant leachability in different disposal scenarios. The article discusses the application and limitations, of these tests. The five types of solders investigated were 63Sn/37Pb, 99.3Sn/0.7Cu. 95.5Sn/4Ag/0.5 Cu, 96Sn/2.5Ag/1Bi/0.5Cu and 42Sn/1Ag/57Bi. The leaching tests were conducted Oil four PWB sections. each with I unique configuration and solder density. The largest lead concentrations were observed front the PWBs containing Sn/Pb solder, with concentrations exceeding the hazardous waste toxicity charactcristic (TC) in TCLP leachates. Silver, the other regulated element used in the solders, was rarely detected. with none of the samples exceeding the TC limit for silver. High copper concentrations were observed and were determined to result from the PWB itself, not from the copper-containing solders. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An integrated life-cycle assessment and life-cycle cost analysis model was developed and applied to enhance the sustainability of concrete bridge infrastructure. The objective of this model is to compare alternative bridge deck designs from a sustainability perspective that accounts for total life-cycle costs including agency, user, and environmental costs. A conventional concrete bridge deck and an alternative engineered cementitious composite link slab design are examined. Despite higher initial costs and greater material-related environmental impacts on a per mass basis, the link slab design results in lower life-cycle costs and reduced environmental impacts when evaluated over the entire life cycle. Traffic delay caused by construction comprises 91% of total costs for both designs. Costs to the funding agency comprise less than 3% of total costs, and environmental costs are less than 0.5%. These results show life-cycle modeling is an important decision-making tool since initial costs and agency costs are not illustrative of total life-cycle costs. Additionally, accounting for construction-related traffic delay is vital to assessing the total economic cost and environmental impact of infrastructure design decisions.Ethanol and hydrogen are receiving considerable attention as alternative fuels for transportation. They are being promoted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve U.S. energy independence. This paper analyzes pipeline, rail, and truck distribution options for alternative fuels using the state of Iowa as a test case. By completely switching to E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) in Iowa, local ethanol production could replace 80% of gasoline use. Likewise, hydrogen derived from steam methane reforming at 7 facilities could replace all gasoline usage in the state. At 2006 gasoline prices, vehicles fueled with E85 would have comparable or lower fuel costs. The costs of hydrogen at the pump for both gas and liquid delivery are higher than those for gasoline and the ethanol scenarios. There are strong economies of scale in distribution paths, so a major shift to alternative fuels is needed to achieve the most cost effective distribution methods modeled in this analysis. There is considerable uncertainty in the cost estimates, particularly for the production costs of cellulosic ethanol, feedstock costs for hydrogen production, and the future price of petroleum.One feature that has not been analysed in the re-use of bauxite residue (or "red mud") is the comparison of its environmental benefits with competing products. The life cycle assessment (LCA) described in this article compares the use of seawater neutralised red mud to treat acid mine drainage (AMD) at Mount Morgan in Queensland, Australia with that of lime. The aim of the LCA is to evaluate the environmental merits of each neutralant by comparing the carbon dioxide emissions and the net energy use over their respective life cycles. Both life cycles involve the collection and processing of raw materials from Glad-stone in Central Queensland, their transportation to Mount Morgan (about 150 km away) and finally their application in a wastewater treatment plant. This plant, which currently uses lime as its treatment media, increases the pH of the acidic open cut pit water to acceptable levels for discharge. The results of the analysis revealed that seawater neutralised red mud would, over the entire life cycle, generate 20% of the carbon dioxide emissions and use 44% of the electricity compared with that of lime. This amounts to a saving of about 3500 kg of carbon dioxide for every 1000 m(3) of pit water treated. However, as red mud is a much weaker neutralant compared wit h lime oil a weight basis, significantly more red mud is required to perform the same duty; as a result the fuel usage in the red mud scenario is 12 times that compared with lime, which is primarily due to increased transportation requirements for red mud. The results of a sensitivity analysis demonstrated that even if the seawater neutralised red mud neutralisation capability was half the expected Value, seawater neutralised red mud Would still generate only 35% of the carbon dioxide and use 44% of the electricity compared with that of lime. The fuel usage for seawater neutralised red mud would, however, be nearly 24 times greater than that for lime. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study presents a greenhouse gas (GHG) life cycle assessment of 1 tonne of wheat transported to port in south-western Australia, including emissions from prefarm, onfarm and postfarm stages. The prefarm stage included GHG emissions from agricultural machinery, fertiliser and pesticide production. The onfarm stage included GHG emissions from diesel use, liming and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from N fertiliser applications. The postfarm stage included grain storage and transportation to the port. GHG emissions decreased from 487 to 304 kg carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents when we used regional-specific data for N2O emissions instead of the IPCC default value for the application of synthetic N fertilisers to land (1.0%). Fertiliser production in the prefarm stage contributed significantly (35%) to GHG, followed by onfarm CO2 emissions (27%) and emissions from transportation of inputs and wheat (12%). N2O emissions from paddock represented 9% of the total GHGs emitted. We recommend utilising regionally specific data for soil N2O emissions, rather than international default values, when assessing GHG for agricultural production systems.Because of increasing concern about global climate change and carbon emissions as a causal factor, many companies and organizations are pursuing "carbon footprint" projects to estimate their own contributions to global climate change. Protocol definitions from carbon registries help organizations analyze their footprints. The scope of these protocols varies but generally suggests estimating only direct emissions and emissions from purchased energy, with less focus on supply chain emissions. In contrast, approaches based on comprehensive environmental life-cycle assessment methods are available to track total emissions across the entire supply chain, and experience suggests that following narrowly defined estimation protocols will generally lead to large underestimates of carbon emissions for providing products and services. Direct emissions from an industry are, on average, only 14% of the total supply chain carbon emissions (often called Tier 1 emissions), and direct emissions plus industry energy inputs are, on average, only 26% of the total supply chain emissions (often called Tier 1 and 2 emissions). Without a full knowledge of their footprints, firms will be unable to pursue the most cost-effective carbon mitigation strategies. We suggest that firms use the screening-level analysis described here to set the bounds of their footprinting strategy to ensure that they do not ignore large sources of environmental effects across their supply chains. Such information can help firms pursue carbon and environmental emission mitigation projects not only within their own plants but also across their supply chain.Nitrogen fertilizer plays an important role in corn cultivation in terms of both economic and environmental aspects. Nitrogen fertilizer positively affects corn yield and the soil organic carbon level, but it also has negative environmental effects through nitrogen-related emissions from soil (e.g., N(2)O, NO(x), NO(3)(-) leaching, etc.). Effects of nitrogen fertilizer on greenhouse gas emissions associated with corn grain are investigated via life cycle assessment. Ecoefficiency analysis is also used to determine an economically and environmentally optimal nitrogen application rate (NAR). The ecoefficiency index in this study is defined as the ratio of economic return due to nitrogen fertilizer to the greenhouse gas emissions of corn cultivation. Greenhouse gas emissions associated with corn grain decrease as NAR increases at a lower NAR until a minimum greenhouse gas emission level is reached because corn yield and soil organic carbon level increase with NAR. Further increasing NAR after a minimum greenhouse gas emission level raises greenhouse gas emissions associated with corn grain. Increased greenhouse gas emissions of corn grain due to nitrous oxide emissions from soil are much higher than reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of corn grain due to corn yield and changes in soil organic carbon levels at a higher NAR. Thus, there exists an environmentally optimal NAR in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The trends of the ecoefficiency index are similar to those of economic return to nitrogen and greenhouse gas emissions associated with corn grain. Therefore, an appropriate NAR could enhance profitability as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with corn grain.An analysis of energy performance and supply potential was performed to evaluate molasses utilization for fuel ethanol in Thailand. The Thai government recently has set up a production target of 1.925 million litres a day of sugar-based ethanol. The molasses-based ethanol (MoE) system involves three main segments: sugar cane cultivation, molasses generation, and ethanol conversion. Negative net energy value found for WE is a consequence of not utilizing system co-products (e.g. stillage and cane trash) for energy. Taking into account only fossil fuel or petroleum inputs in the production cycle, the energy analysis provides results in favour of ethanol. A positive net energy of 5.95 MJ/L which corresponds to 39% energy gain shows that WE is efficient as far as its potential to replace fossil fuels is concerned. Another encouraging result is that each MJ of petroleum inputs can produce 6.12 MJ of ethanol fuel. Regarding supply potential, if only the surplus molasses is utilized for ethanol, a shift of 8-10% sugar cane produce to fuel ethanol from its current use in sugar industry could be a probable solution. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle analysis enables to investigate environmental performance of fuel ethanol used in an E10 fueled compact passenger vehicle. Ethanol is derived from corn grain via dry milling. This type of analysis is an important component for identifying practices that will help to ensure that a renewable fuel, such as ethanol, may be produced in a sustainable manner. Based on data from eight counties in seven Corn Belt states as corn farming sites, we show ethanol derived from corn grain as E10 fuel would reduce nonrenewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions, but would increase acidification, eutrophication and photochemical smog, compared to using gasoline as liquid fuel. The ethanol fuel systems considered in this study offer economic benefits, namely more money returned to society than the investment for producing ethanol. The environmental performance of ethanol fuel system varies significantly with corn farming sites because of different crop management practices, soil properties, and climatic conditions. The dominant factor determining most environmental impacts considered here (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions, acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical smog formation) is soil related nitrogen losses (e.g., N2O, NOx, and NO3-). The sources of soil nitrogen include nitrogen fertilizer, crop residues, and air deposition. Nitrogen fertilizer is probably the primary source. Simulations using an agro-ecosystem model predict that planting winter cover crops would reduce soil nitrogen losses and increase soil organic carbon levels, thereby greatly improving the environmental performance of the ethanol fuel system. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel is gaining more and more acceptance as the environmental impact of hydrocarbons becomes more evident. Hydrogen production is accomplished by steam reforming of natural gas and other fossil primary energy at approximately 97% of total. Thus, less than 3% is based on renewable energy sources. This work presents the environmental feasibility and efficiency of producing hydrogen from biomass via two processes. Biomass gasification followed by reforming of the syngas is compared to gasification followed by electricity generation and electrolysis. The technical and environmental performance of such systems is examined using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The systems under investigation are assumed to be located in an agricultural region of Greece. The classification of the inventory data to impact categories was made using the EcoIndicator 95 methodology. Although the gasification-steam reforming-PSA route is the most energy efficient the LCA study of the two biomass to hydrogen systems, indicates that the biomass-gasification-electricity-electrolysis route has a better environmental performance. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study tests an alternative method to the traditional unhairing method used during the process of tanning the hides. The new method is based on the substitution of sodium sulfide by hydrogen peroxide as an unhairing agent in both hair recovery and recirculation of the floats employed in the process. The properties of the hides obtained using the two methods have been compared and the results indicate that those hides have similar physical, chemical, and organoleptic properties. However, the differences existing from an environmental point of view are significant. These include reductions of water consumption (approx 70%), chemical oxygen demand (approx 35%), toxicity (98%) and total kjendhal nitrogen (50%). Also, the risk associated with the production of hydrogen sulfide is eliminated, which implies a great improvement in terms of safety for the workers. Given the large amounts of water and chemical pollution discharged in the process, the reductions in absolute Values represent a significant improvement. A financial assessment was carried out to demonstrate that the proposed new system is 16% more economic than the traditional one. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Poly-generation systems for combined production of manifold energy vectors such as electrilcity, heat at different enthalpy levels (for instance, in the form of hot water and steam), and cooling power from a unique source of primary energy (typically natural gas) are increasingly spreading, above all on a small-scale basis (below 1 MW,), owing to their enhanced energy, environmental and economic characteristics. Availability of suitable tools for assessing the performance of such systems is therefore fundamental. in this paper, a unified general model is proposed for assessing the energy and CO2 emission performance of any type of poly-generation system with natural gas as the energy input. In particular, the classical energy saving model for cogeneration systems is extended to include in the analysis further energy vectors by defining the novel PPES (Poly-generation Primary Energy Saving) indicator, In addition, equivalent efficiencies for CO2 emission assessment are defined and used in the formulation of the new PCO2ER (Poly-generation CO2 Emission Reduction) indicator, specifically introduced for environmental analysis. The formal analogy between the PPES and the PCO2ER indicators is highlighted. Numerical applications are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed models and to quantify the typical benefits that poly-generation systems can bring. In particular, the new indicators are of relevant interest for both energy planners and policy makers, above all in the outlook of formulating financial incentive strategies, as it already occurs for cogeneration systems, or of participating to specific energy-related markets such as the ones for trading white certificates or emission allowances. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increased urgency of dealing with mitigation of the looming climate change has sparked renewed interest in the nuclear energy option. There exists a substantial stream of research on the amount of embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear generated electricity. While conventional fossil fuelled power plants cause emissions almost exclusively from the plant site, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle are caused in processing stages upstream and downstream from the plant. This paper distils the findings from a comprehensive literature review of energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle and determines some of the causes for the widely varying results. The most popular reactor types, LWR and HWR, need between 0.1 and 0.3 kWh(th), and on average about 0.2 kWh(th) for every kWh ofw electricity generated. These energy intensities translate into greenhouse gas intensities for LWR and HWR of between 10 and 130 9 CO2-e/kWh(el), with an average of 65 g CO2-e/kW(el). While these greenhouse gases are expectedly lower than those of fossil technologies (typically 600-1200 g CO2-e/kWh(el)), they are higher than reported figures for wind turbines and hydroelectricity (around 15-25 9 C02-e/kWh,l) and in the order of, or slightly lower than, solar photovoltaic or solar thermal power (around 90 9 CO2-e/kWh,l). (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article screens 103 lifecycle studies of greenhouse gas-equivalent emissions for nuclear power plants to identify a Subset of the most current, original, and transparent studies. It begins by briefly detailing the separate components of the nuclear fuel cycle before explaining the methodology of the survey and exploring the variance of lifecycle estimates. It calculates that while the range of emissions for nuclear energy over the lifetime of a plant, reported from qualified studies examined, is from 1.4 g of carbon dioxide equivalent per kWh (g CO(2)e/kWh) to 288 9 CO(2)e/kWh, the mean value is 66 g CO(2)e/kWh. The article then explains some of the factors responsible for the disparity in lifecycle estimates, in particular identifying errors in both the lowest estimates (not comprehensive) and the highest estimates (failure to consider co-products). It should be noted that nuclear power is not directly emitting greenhouse gas emissions, but rather that lifecycle emissions occur through plant construction. operation, uranium mining and milling, and plant decommissioning. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper uses life cycle assessment to evaluate the potential of rice straw power plant implementation in Thailand in terms of GHG emission savings from avoided open burning and from implementing rice straw power production, which can substitute that from natural gas. Annually, 8.5-14.3 Mt rice straw burning contributes 5.0-8.6 MtCO(2)-eq which could be converted to 786-1325 MW of power, yielding a total greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction of 7.8-13.2 MtCO(2)-eq. Moreover, 1090-1837 Mm(3) of natural gas could be substituted annually. A total of 25 provinces in central Thailand have potential to generate electricity with a total capacity of 210-292 MW (plant efficiency 20-27%), resulting in an annual GHG emission savings of 2.3-2.6 MtCO(2)-eq, and with a provincial capacity of over 20 MW in 6 provinces, 10-20 MW in 7 provinces, 1-10 MW in 6 provinces and less than 1 MW in 6 provinces. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Air pollution is a serious public health problem throughout the world, especially in industrialized and developing countries. In industrialized and developing countries, motor vehicle emissions are major contributors to urban air quality. Hydrogen is one of the clean fuel options for reducing motor vehicle emissions. Hydrogen is not an energy source. It is not a primary energy existing freely in nature. Hydrogen is a secondary form of energy that has to be manufactured like electricity. It is an energy carrier. Hydrogen has a strategic importance in the pursuit of a low-emission, environment-benign, cleaner and more sustainable energy system. Combustion product of hydrogen is clean, which consists of water and a little amount of nitrogen oxides. Hydrogen has very special properties as a transportation fuel, including a rapid burning speed, a high effective octane number, and no toxicity or ozone-forming potential. It has much wider limits of flammability in air than methane and gasoline. Hydrogen has become the dominant transport fuel, and is produced centrally from a mixture of clean coal and fossil fuels (with C-sequestration), nuclear power, and large-scale renewables. Large-scale hydrogen production is probable on the longer time scale. In the current and medium term the production options for hydrogen are first based on distributed hydrogen production from electrolysis of water and reforming of natural gas and coal. Each of centralized hydrogen production methods scenarios could produce 40 million tons per year of hydrogen. Hydrogen production using steam reforming of methane is the most economical method among the current commercial processes. in this method, natural gas feedstock costs generally contribute approximately 52-68% to the final hydrogen price for larger plants, and 40% for smaller plants, with remaining expenses composed of capital charges. The hydrogen production cost from natural gas via steam reforming of methane varies from about 1.25 US$/kg for large systems to about 3.50 US$/kg for small systems with a natural gas price of 6 US$/GJ. Hydrogen is cheap by using solar energy or by water electrolysis where electricity is cheap, etc. (C) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background, aims, and scope Life cycle assessment (LCA) stands as the pre-eminent tool for estimating environmental effects caused by products and processes from 'cradle to grave' or 'cradle to cradle.' It exists in multiple forms, claims a growing list of practitioners and remains a focus of continuing research. Despite its popularity and codification by organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, life cycle assessment is a tool in need of improvement. Multiple authors have written about its individual problems, but a unified treatment of the subject is lacking. The following literature survey gathers and explains issues, problems and problematic decisions currently limiting LCA's impact assessment and interpretation phases. Main features The review identifies 15 major problem areas and organizes them by the LCA phases in which each appears. This part of the review focuses on the latter eight problems. It is meant as a concise summary for practitioners interested in methodological limitations which might degrade the accuracy of their assessments. For new researchers, it provides an overview of pertinent problem areas toward which they might wish to direct their research efforts. Having identified and discussed LCA's major problems, closing sections highlight the most critical problems and briefly propose research agendas meant to improve them. Results and discussion Multiple problems occur in each of LCA's four phases and reduce the accuracy of this tool. Considering problem severity and the adequacy of current solutions, six of the 15 discussed problems are of paramount importance. In LCA's latter two phases, spatial variation and local environmental uniqueness are critical problems requiring particular attention. Data availability and quality are identified as critical problems affecting all four phases. Conclusions and recommendations Observing that significant efforts by multiple researchers have not resulted in a single, agreed upon approach for the first three critical problems, development of LCA archetypes for functional unit definition, boundary selection and allocation is proposed. Further development of spatially explicit, dynamic modeling is recommended to ameliorate the problems of spatial variation and local environmental uniqueness. Finally, this paper echoes calls for peer-reviewed, standardized LCA inventory and impact databases, and it suggests the development of model bases. Both of these efforts would help alleviate persistent problems with data availability and quality.Background, aims and scope The goal of this work is to provide methodological information for modeling distance and backhaul for commodity transport in a life cycle inventory (LCI). The scope includes a review of modeling parameters accounted for in transport unit process models and accounted for in unit process models using transported materials. Assumptions related to backhaul (or return trip) and transport distance are characterized and evaluated. A case study explores the contribution of transport and the bearing of assumptions on the life cycle of select US-produced metals. Methods Backhaul and distance estimation assumptions and methods are described and applied. Commodity transport energy consumption and emissions (including life cycle fuel production) are estimated as a function of assumptions for distances traveled (based on data from a commodities transportation survey) and backhaul (based on a review of related literature) for transport unit processes and example US metal LCIs. The results estimate the contribution of transportation to life cycle total, fossil, and petroleum energy consumption and eight air emissions: CH(4), CO, CO(2), N(2)O, NO (x) , PM, SO (x) , and NMVOC for aluminum, brass, copper, iron, and carbon, and stainless steels. Results When evaluating transportation processes unincorporated into the metals LCIs, we find a 21-62% and a 61-91% increase in life cycle flows for the inclusion of distance data confidence intervals and the inclusion of backhaul, respectively. We presume that these results also apply to transport-dominated LCIs, such as those evaluating alternative uses for wastes. Next, when commodity transport is incorporated into the metal LCIs, we find the contribution to the metals life cycle to exceed 10% of the life cycle values of NMVOC emissions (aluminum, iron, and carbon steels), CO emissions (secondary aluminum), NO (x) emissions (aluminum, secondary copper, iron, and steels), N(2)O emissions (aluminum, brass, secondary copper, iron, and carbon steels), and SO (x) , CH(4), CO(2), and greenhouse gas emissions (basic oxygen furnaces (BOF) carbon steel) and to exceed 25% for NMVOC emissions (BOF steel), NO (x) emissions (secondary aluminum, iron, and carbon steels), and N(2)O emissions (BOF steel). Also, when commodity transport is incorporated into the metal LCIs, we find little variation in the results related distance confidence intervals and the inclusion of backhaul, seeing on average a 2% change in the contribution of commodity transport to the metal LCIs for variation in assumptions. Finally, our normalization revealed a very small, consistent commodity transport contribution of NO (x) for all metals and a small contribution to all emissions by carbon steel on a national scale. Thus, we find the importance of distance and backhaul assumptions on a sliding scale: we find travel distances, distance confidence intervals, and the inclusion of backhaul to be important to transportation processes and presumably, transport-dominated LCIs; we find travel distances to be important when commodity transport is incorporated into metal LCIs; and we find commodity transport not important to our normalized results for the metals studied. Discussion We presume all LCIs will fall somewhere on this sliding scale, and that the estimation methods presented here will be useful in future studies. To support transparency of results, LCI construction should clearly state transport assumptions and provide well-developed meta data noting regional vehicle/vessel energy and emission intensities; load factor; vehicle/vessel manufacturing, maintenance, and disposal; and infrastructure construction, operation/maintenance, and disposal for transport unit processes as well as load and distance for unit process models using transported materials. Finally, the diminishing returns of transportation data collection should be evaluated on the basis of whether the commodity transport distance can actually be changed. Conclusions Commodity transport can be important to un-normalized LCI results and can be sufficiently captured by representative (as opposed to a range of) distance assumptions for the metals studied. Because commodity transportation was found to be important in our un-normalized results, we note that, depending upon the goal of the study, intentional omission of commodity transport in metal LCIs, and until shown otherwise, other LCIs, without further investigation, may not be defensible. Recommendations and perspectives More attention is being paid to the contribution of transportation within system life cycles, particularly for food and bioproducts systems. Here, we note that well-documented assessments culminating in transparent results can be used to identify local sourcing or facility location priorities for metals and thus for materials beyond notorious transportation-oriented systems. Further, whereas it may be possible to develop reliable regional and commodity-specific rules-of-thumb for backhaul and distance/co-location that can be automated within the construction of a LCI, comprehensive commodity transport modeling remains dependent upon data for regional production mixes and the estimation of representative transport distances. Recommendations for future research include assessments beyond metals; assessment of a broader range of emissions, land use, and noise; and the inclusion of transportation from and to overseas destinations.Background, aims and scope The environmental aspects of companies and their products are becoming more significant in delivering competitive advantage. Formway Furniture, a designer and manufacturer of office furniture products, is a New Zealand-based company that is committed to sustainable development. It manufactures two models of the light, intuitive, flexible and environmental (LIFE) office chair: one with an aluminium base and one with a glass-filled nylon (GFN) base. It was decided to undertake a life cycle assessment (LCA) study of these two models in order to: (1) determine environmental hotspots in the life cycle of the two chairs (goal 1); (2) compare the life cycle impacts of the two chairs (goal 2); and (3) compare alternative potential waste-management scenarios (goal 3). The study also included sensitivity analysis with respect to recycled content of aluminium in the product. Materials and methods The LIFE chair models consist of a mix of metal and plastic components manufactured by selected Formway suppliers according to design criteria. Hence, the research methodology included determining the specific material composition of the two chair models and acquisition of manufacturing data from individual suppliers. These data were compiled and used in conjunction with pre-existing data, specifically from the ecoinvent database purchased in conjunction with the SimaPro7 LCA software, to develop the life cycle inventory of the two chair models. The life cycle stages included in the study extended from raw-material extraction through to waste management. Impact assessment was carried out using CML 2 baseline 2000, the methodology developed by Leiden University's Institute for Environmental Sciences. Results This paper presents results for global warming potential (GWP100). The study showed a significant impact contribution from the raw-material extraction/refinement stage for both chair models; aluminium extraction and refining made the greatest contribution to GWP100. The comparison of the two LIFE chair models showed that the model with the aluminium base had a higher GWP100 impact than the model with the GFN base. The waste-management scenario compared the GWP100 result when (1) both chair models were sent to landfill and (2) steel and aluminium components were recycled with the remainder of the chair sent to landfill. The results showed that the recycling scenario contributed to a reduced GWP100 result. Since production and processing of aluminium was found to be significant, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to determine the impact of using aluminium with different recycled contents (0%, 34% and 100%) in both waste-management scenarios; this showed that increased use of recycled aluminium was beneficial. The recycling at end-of-life scenarios was modelled using two different end-of-life allocation approaches, i.e. consequential and attributional, in order to illustrate the variation in results caused by choice of allocation approach. The results using the consequential approach showed that recycling at end-of-life was beneficial, while use of the attributional method led to a similar GWP100 as that seen for the landfill scenario. Discussion The results show that the main hotspot in the life cycle is the raw-material extraction/refinement stage. This can be attributed to the extraction and processing of aluminium, a material that is energy intensive. The LIFE chair model with the aluminium base has a higher GWP100 as it contains more aluminium. Sensitivity analysis pertaining to the recycled content of aluminium showed that use of aluminium with high recycled content was beneficial; this is because production of recycled aluminium is less energy intensive than production of primary aluminium. The waste-management scenario showed that recycling at end-of-life resulted in a significantly lower GWP100 than landfilling at end-of-life. However, this result is dependent upon the modelling approach used for recycling. Conclusions With respect to goal 1, the study found that the raw-material extraction/refinement stage of the life cycle was a significant factor for both LIFE chair models. This was largely due to the use of aluminium in the product. For goal 2, it was found that the LIFE chair model with the aluminium base had a higher GWP100 than the GFN model, again due to the material content of the two models. Results for goal 3 illustrated that recycling at end-of-life is beneficial when using a system expansion (consequential) approach to model recycling; if an attributional 'cut-off' approach is used to model recycling at end-of-life, there is virtually no difference in the results between landfilling and recycling. Sensitivity analysis pertaining to the recycled content of aluminium showed that use of higher recycled contents leads to a lower GWP100 impact. Recommendation and perspectives Most of the GWP100 impact was contributed during the raw-material extraction/refinement stage of the life cycle; thus, the overall impact of both LIFE chair models may be reduced through engaging in material choice and supply chain environmental management with respect to environmental requirements. The study identified aluminium components as a major contributor to GWP100 for both LIFE chair models and also highlighted the sensitivity of the results to its recycled content. Thus, it is recommended that the use of aluminium in future product designs be limited unless it is possible to use aluminium with a high recycled content. With respect to waste management, it was found that a substantial reduction in the GWP100 impact would occur if the chairs are recycled rather than landfilled, assuming an expanding market for aluminium. Thus, recycling the two LIFE chair models at end-of-life is highly recommended.Goal, Scope, and Background The paper describes the integration of the economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) model and the environmental fate and transport model (CHEMGL) with a risk assessment tool. Utilizing the EIO-LCA, instead of a traditional LCA, enables a rapid, screening-level analysis of an emerging chemical of concern, decabromodiphenyl ether (DecaBDE). The risk assessment in this study is evaluated based on the mass of chemical released, estimated concentrations, exposure, and chemical toxicity. Methods The relative risk from ten economic sectors identified within the EIO-LCA model, 55 chemicals utilized in those sectors and DecaBDE along with four potential DecaBDE breakdown products, were evaluated for the life cycle stages and exposure pathways. The relative risk (expressed as toluene equivalents) of the different chemicals, sectors, and life cycle stages were compared to assess those representing the greatest overall relative risks to humans (via inhalation and ingestion) and fish. Results The greatest overall risk to human health resulted from the manufacturing and production stages. For fish, the manufacturing stage represented virtually all of the risk. Of the 56 chemicals evaluated, DecaBDE represented the majority of the total risk to humans. However, DecaBDE posed the least risk compared to its potential breakdown products. Discussion The risk to humans from ingestion, which represented the greatest risk, from the production, manufacturing, and consumption stages can be controlled and reduced through various safety precautions in the workplace. Additionally, the increasing concentration of DecaBDE in anaerobic compartments represents a threat to humans and fish via the higher risk DecaBDE breakdown products. Conclusions Overall, the manufacturing and production life cycle stages pose the greatest risk to humans and fish. The sediment compartment received the highest DecaBDE concentration for the production, manufacturing, and consumption stages. This case study demonstrates that the integrated EIO-LCA with risk assessment is suitable for screening-level analysis of emerging chemicals due to rapid life cycle inventory analysis. Recommendations The production and manufacturing stages allow for greater industry control and government regulation, compared to the consumption stage, because there are fewer point sources. This integrated life cycle methodology may allow chemical designers to evaluate each stage and assess areas where risks can be minimized.Goal, scope and background The industrial packages sector has great importance for the transport sector in Europe. These containers, mainly wooden pallets and spools, are subject to European legislation, which promotes their reuse and recycling. This study uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impact of the current management system in this sector and the benefits and drawbacks of different reuse intensities as a waste prevention strategy as opposed to the recycling option. Materials and methods In this paper, four case studies located in Spain and representative of the wooden package sector in Europe are analysed: high reuse pallet, low reuse pallet, low reuse spool and null reuse spool. For the LCA study cases, the functional unit is that required to satisfy the transport necessity of 1,000 t by road. The impact and energy consumption assessment methods used are CML 2 Baseline 2000 and Cumulative Energy Demand. Data are mostly provided by the leading enterprises and organisations in this sector. Results The paper provides, as a first result, a comprehensive inventory of the systems under study. Secondly, our assessment shows that the systems with higher reuse intensity show a reduction in energy and wood consumption and all the environmental impact categories except for the global warming potential from 34.0% to 81.0% in the pallet study cases and from 50.4% to 72.8% in the spool ones. This reduction is at the expense of the maintenance stage, which on the contrary increases its impact, although it is still relatively small-less than 7% in all the impact categories and flow indicators of the study cases. The highest impact stages are transport, raw material extraction and the process chain. The final disposal and maintenance stages are the lowest impact, contributing at most to less than 30% of the impact in the pallet study cases and 10% in the spool cases. Discussion Wood consumption (WC), directly related to the number of containers needed to satisfy the functional unit, is the main factor in determining the impact of the stages, especially in the raw materials extraction and process chain stages, assuming that these are undertaken with the same technologies in all the case studies. Other variables, such as the management system, the maintenance index and the final disposal scenario, affect the impact of the remaining stages: transport, maintenance and final disposal. The global warming potential results obtained demonstrate the environmental benefits of using containers made of a renewable resource such as wood instead of using other materials, but these results are not expected to prioritise the lower reuse systems because of their better performance in this category. Conclusions Reuse, a strategy capable of reducing the environmental impacts of the wooden container systems, is preferable to recycling, while the package maintenance tasks are still feasible. Therefore, reuse, combined with recycling as final disposal, should be encouraged to reduce the demand for natural resources and the waste generated. Recommendations Based on these results, attention should be paid to the maintenance stage, which, being the lowest-impact one, could substantially reduce the impact of the remaining stages.Background, aim, and scope Today, the effective integration of life cycle thinking into existing business routines is argued to be the most critical step for more sustainable business models. The study tests the suitability of an input-output life cycle assessment (IO-LCA) approach in screening life cycle impacts of energy-using products in companies. It estimates the life cycle impacts of three products and assesses the suitability of such approach in a company environment. Materials and methods The multiple case studies evaluate the suitability of an IO-LCA method in a company environment. A comprehensive life cycle cost and impact study of three product systems (building ventilation system, information and communication technology (ICT) network product, and welding machine) is conducted and the life cycle phases with highest economical and environmental contribution are determined. Scenario analysis is performed in order to assess the sensitivity of the results to major changes in the studied systems. Finally, the usability of the IO-LCA approach for environmental evaluations in companies is assessed by collecting data on workload and interviewing the participating workers and managers. Results The results showed that the use phase with operating energy was environmentally important in all evaluated energy-using products. However, only in one case (ICT network product) the use was the single most significant life cycle phase. In two other cases, the sourcing was equally important. The results also indicated that the IO-LCA approach is much easier to adapt by current management of companies because it automatically links life cycle costs to environmental indicators and, by order of magnitude, reduces the workload in companies. Discussion It appears that the IO-LCA approach can be used to screen environmentally significant life cycle phases of energy-using products in companies by utilizing readily available accounting or other documented data. The IO-LCA approach produced comparable results with the ones published in traditional process-based LCA literature. In addition to the main results, some practical benefits of using the IO-LCA could also be suggested: the approach was very fast to use and would thus allow an easier adoption of environmental evaluations in companies as well as wider environmental testing of products in early conceptual design phase. Conclusions The results indicated that the IO-LCA approach could clearly offer added value to the environmental management of companies. The IO-LCA was found to provide a very fast access to the key life cycle characteristics of products. Similarly, it offered practical means to integrate life cycle thinking into existing business routines and to activate the decision makers in companies by giving them easily comprehendible results. Recommendations and perspectives The results would suggest that similar environmental IO tables, besides the US ones used here, would have value and should be collected for other major geographical and economical regions. The tables would enable a much larger share of companies to manage their environmental issues. It also seems that, because the user profile is so dominant in the case of energy-using products, more studies, both theoretical (How to valuate the future behavior in environmental studies?) and empirical (What really creates value for users?), should focus on the behavior of users.Background, Aim, and Scope The identification and assessment of environmental tradeoffs is a strongpoint of life cycle assessment (LCA). A tradeoff made in many product systems is the exchange of potential for occupational accidents with the additional use of energy and materials. Net benefits of safety measures with respect to human health are best illustrated if the consequences avoided and health impacts induced by additional emissions are assessed using commensurable metrics. Our aim is to develop a human health impact indicator for offshore crane lifts. Crane lifts are a major cause of accidents on offshore oil and gas (O & G) rigs, and health impacts from crane lift accidents should be included in comparative LCA of O & G technologies if the alternatives differ in the use of crane lifts. Materials and methods Accident records for mobile offshore petroleum installations were used to develop an empirical occupational health indicator for crane lifts in LCA. Probabilistic parameters were introduced in the procedure, and results were calculated by Monte Carlo simulation. The disability adjusted life years (DALY) framework was used to classify health outcome. The characterization factor for offshore crane lifts was applied in three comparisons to evaluate the significance of crane lifts to human health impacts from drilling technology. Results The mean occupational health impact per crane lift was 4.5.10(6) DALY, with cumulative percentiles {P (2.5), P (50), P (97.5)}={6.0.10(-7), 3.1.10(-6), 1.7.10(-5)}. Analogously, the fatal accident frequency was described by {P (2.5), P (50), P (97.5)}={7.6.10(-9), 3.9.10(-8), 2.0.10(-7)}, with mean 5.6.10(-8) lives lost per crane lift. Discussion The uncertainty in the results is caused mainly by the random nature of accidents, i.e., variability in accident frequency. Applications of the characterization factor indicate that although crane lifts may not be significant to the overall health impact of the life cycle of drilling fluids, they are important to the occupational safety of employees on offshore drilling rigs and contribute significantly to the life cycle health impact of loading technologies used to transport drilling waste to shore. A comparative LCA of technologies for loading and off-loading drilling wastes shows that a recently developed hydraulic system performs better than the traditional crane lift alternative in terms of human health impacts. Conclusions With the availability of statistics to assess the risk of single mechanical operations, safety aspects may well be included in LCA. For the case of offshore crane lifts, the uncertainty in the characterization factor compares favorably to what is indicated for other human health impact chains. In further work of quantifying occupational health impacts in DALY using accident statistics, it is advised to see if records of non-recoverable injuries (fatalities and amputation cases) can be used to simplify the damage assessment procedure as recoverable injuries were insignificant to the total burden from crane accidents. Recommendations and perspectives The characterization factor for crane lifts identifies contributions to life cycle health impact from loading technologies that otherwise would have been overlooked in LCA. While many contest the inclusion of occupational accidents in LCA, our results show that such impacts can be included and that their consideration adds valuable insights.The life-cycle inventory analysis step of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) may currently suffer from several limitations, mainly concerned with the use of incomplete and unreliable data sources and methods of assessment. Many past LCA studies have used traditional inventory analysis methods, namely process analysis and input-output analysis. More recently, hybrid inventory analysis methods have been developed, combining these two traditional methods in an attempt to minimise their limitations. In light of recent improvements, these hybrid methods need to be compared and validated, as these too have been considered to have several limitations. This paper evaluates a recently developed hybrid inventory analysis method which aims to improve the limitations of previous methods. It was found that the truncation associated with process analysis can be up to 87%, reflecting the considerable shortcomings in the quantity of process data currently available. Capital inputs were found to account for up to 22% of the total inputs to a particular product. These findings suggest that current best-practice methods are sufficiently accurate for most typical applications, but this is heavily dependant upon data quality and availability. The use of input-output data assists in improving the system boundary completeness of life-cycle inventories. However, the use of input-output analysis alone does not always provide an accurate model for replacing process data. Further improvements in the quantity of process data currently available are needed to increase the reliability of life-cycle inventories. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The synthesis of distributed wastewater treatment plants (WTPs) has been studied to reduce capital and operating costs associated with wastewater treatment. In this study, the environmental and economic feasibility of a total wastewater treatment network system (TWTNS) including distributed and terminal WTPs was estimated using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methods. Wastewater sources and existing distributed and terminal WTPs in an iron and steel plant were networked. The TWTNS was generated from the optimal solution to a mathematical optimization model and compared to a conventional wastewater treatment system (CWTS). The environmental effect scores of the TWTNS were from 29.6% to 68.3% higher than those of the CWTS because of higher electricity consumption required to pump wastewater to the networked WTPs. However, the life cycle cost of the TWTNS was lower than that of the CWTS by 10.1% because of the decrease of the labor cost resulting from the closing of three distributed WTPs. Overall, the TWTNS was no more eco-efficient than the CWTS because the increase of environmental burdens outweighed the decrease of economic costs. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The dependency on carbon-based materials and energy sources and the emission of greenhouse gases have been recognized as major problems of the 21st century. Companies are central to the effort to grapple with these issues due to the large material flows they process and their capabilities for technological innovation. It is important, on the one hand, to determine the individual stake companies have in these issues and, on the other, to measure companies' performance. Since the results of studies thus far have been ambiguous, we define four comprehensive and systematic corporate carbon performance indicators: (1) Carbon intensity is physically oriented and represents a company's carbon use in relation to a business metric. (2) Carbon dependency illustrates the change in physical carbon performance within a given time period. (3) Carbon exposure reveals the financial implications of using and emitting carbon. (4) Carbon risk estimates the change in financial implications of carbon usage within a given time period. On the basis of these general definitions, we specify the indicators for a standardized application that can support two important stakeholders in their decision making: policy makers, who can include such information when evaluating current climate policies and formulating future ones, and investors and financial institutions, which can compare companies with respect to their carbon performance and corresponding financial effects.Emissions derived from human digestion of food and subsequent excretion are very relevant from a life cycle perspective, and yet they are often omitted from food life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. This article offers a simple model to allocate and include these emissions in LCAs of specific foodstuffs. The model requires basic food composition values and calculates the mass and energy balance for carbon, water, nutrients (mainly nitrogen [N] and phosphorus [P]), and other inorganic substances through different excretion paths: breathing, feces, and urine. In addition to direct excretion, the model also allocates some auxiliary materials and energy related to toilet use, such as flushing and washing and drying hands. Wastewater composition is also an output of the model, enabling water treatment to be modeled in LCA studies. The sensitivity of the model to food composition is illustrated with different food products, and the relative importance of excretion in a product's life cycle is shown with an example of broccoli. The results show that this model is sensitive to food composition and thus useful for assessing the environmental consequences of shifts in diet. From a life cycle perspective, the results show that postconsumption nutrient emissions may dominate the impacts on eutrophication potential, and they illustrate how the carbon cycle is closed with the human emissions after food preparation and consumption.Table 4reports the environmental damages of investing $1,000 into equity funds. The line for the ecosystem quality damage in Ecoindicator (EI) points shows incorrect figures. In the relational database used to generate this table, the variable for the nonnormalized damage was mistakenly used instead of that for normalized damage. Below, the table is shown with the corrected figures in italic letters.Four on-site wastewater treatment systems with an end-of-pipe approach were compared for their relative environmental impacts and use of natural resources with the help of an environmental systems analysis (ESA) approach. The treatment techniques compared were infiltration, chemical precipitation, and P removal using the reactive filter media Filtra P and Filtralite (R) P. The chemical precipitation system attained the most favourable results from an environmental and resource conservation perspective. The reactive filter alternatives showed very high capacity for reduction of eutrophying substances. Both Filtralite (R) P and Filtra P, however, produce large environmental impacts in energy use related areas. The infiltration system attained low impact scores in all impact categories save eutrophication potential. However, the alternative possessed no nutrient recycling potential and its actual phosphorus removal capacity is highly uncertain, which makes it difficult to perform reliable comparisons with other alternatives. The reactive filter systems should be advantageous especially in very eutrophication-sensitive areas, where excess emissions of eutrophying substances under no circumstances can be tolerated. However, to limit the negative environmental impact in other areas, a topic for future research must be to improve the general performance of the reactive filter systems so that their lifespan can be increased. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper made a Global Scope Assessment on Chinese aluminum industry. The synthetic benefits of electrolyzed aluminum industry in China and in related countries were investigated. The results showed that the link-integrated production frame could contribute to improving the competitiveness of Chinese aluminum industry. It was also shown that the production using self-bake cell technology must be prohibited. In order to confirm a sustainable development of Chinese aluminum industry government should reform the present tax policy. The comparison of resources consumption and synthetic benefit between practical production situation and optimal development pattern of Chinese aluminum industry in 2005 was analyzed. It was shown that more synthetic benefit and less energy Consumption and pollution emission could be realized in optimal one. Although domestic tax revenue would be reduced in the optimal pattern, the positive effect from energy saving and environment protection was more attractive. The developing strategy for Chinese electrolyzed aluminum industry was also discussed in this paper. Chinese government should vigorously Compress the overheated investment in domestic electrolyzed aluminum industry. At the same time, China should take full advantage of the chance of global economy and the overseas resources to meet domestic demand on aluminum. China should also provide incentive policy to encourage the aluminum recovery industry. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bioenergy should play an essential part in reaching targets to replace petroleum-based transportation fuels with a viable alternative, and in reducing long-term carbon dioxide emissions, if environmental and economic sustainability are Considered carefully. Here, we review different platforms, crops, and biotechnology-based improvements for sustainable bioenergy. Among the different platforms, there are two obvious advantages to using lignocellulosic biomass for ethanol production: higher net energy gain and lower production costs. However, the use of lignocellulosic ethanol as a viable alternative to petroleum-based transportation fuels largely depends on plant biotechnology breakthroughs. We examine how biotechnology, such as lignin modification, abiotic stress resistance, nutrition usage, in planta expression of cell wall digestion enzymes, biomass production, feedstock establishment, biocontainment of transgenes, metabolic engineering, and basic research, can be used to address the challenges faced by bioenergy crop production.The aim of this paper is to introduce an easy-to-use environmental-economic index (EEI) which can be used for comparative purposes when assessing processes and services. The EEI differs from traditional ratio-based Eco-efficiency indicators, since it is defined instead as the sum of two components, one corresponding to environmental performance and the other to economic performance. In order to show the calculation of this index and its potential usefulness, it is used in an example where several Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) for wastewater treatment are compared based on their life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions and life-cycle cost. The options assessed are: solar-driven photo-Fenton, lamp-driven photo-Fenton, and ozonation. Solar-driven photo-Fenton appears as the preferable option from an integrated enviromnental-economic point of view, if the environmental and economic dimensions are equally weighed. The case study shows that EEI captures, in a single score, both environmental and economic information from a given set of alternative options, allowing us to assess their relative performance in a simple way.Large amounts of gaseous emissions are generated by combustion processes associated with the utility systems. The emissions include SOx, CO2, CO, NOx, CH4, and N2O. Such emissions can result in significant impact on the surrounding environment. As a result of serious concerns about environmental problems in recent years, the design criteria for a modern utility system should include both environmental and economic requirements. This work proposes a multi-objective optimisation (MOO) strategy to identify the sustainable design of utility systems that satisfies both economic and environmental goals. A MOO mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to combine the minimisation of costs with the minimisation of environmental impact that is assessed in terms of life cycle environmental burdens. Most of the gaseous emissions are addressed in the model. The resulting MOO problem is solved using lexicographic goal programming (LGP) techniques. The new strategy has been applied to a case study for the design of a utility system with specific utility demands. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of using recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST) in dairy production was examined on an individual cow, industry-scale adoption, and overall production system basis. An average 2006 U.S. milk yield of 28.9 kg per day was used, with a daily response to rbST supplementation of 4.5 kg per cow. Rations were formulated and both resource inputs (feedstuffs, fertilizers, and fuels) and waste outputs (nutrient excretion and greenhouse gas emissions) calculated. The wider environmental impact of production systems was assessed via acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), and global warming (GWP) potentials. From a producer perspective, rbST supplementation improved individual cow production, with reductions in nutrient input and waste output per unit of milk produced. From an industry perspective, supplementing one million cows with rbST reduced feedstuff and water use, cropland area, N and P excretion, greenhouse gas emissions, and fossil fuel use compared with an equivalent milk production from unsupplemented cows. Meeting future U.S. milk requirements from cows supplemented with rbST conferred the lowest AP, EP, and GWP, with intermediate values for conventional management and the highest environmental impact resulting from organic production. Overall, rbST appears to represent a valuable management tool for use in dairy production to improve productive efficiency and to have less negative effects on the environment than conventional dairying.This paper describes research using life cycle analysis assessment techniques to determine the environmental impacts associated with the use of present and possible alternative materials utilised in all aspects of high voltage electricity transmission. The study focuses on the National Grid system in England and Wales, where the majority of high voltage electricity is transmitted through steel and aluminium conductors supported above the ground by mild steel lattice type towers. A major aspect of the study is to address the effects of different corrosive environments to which the tower materials are exposed: namely rural, industrial and coastal locations. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste solvents/valuable products in the effluent stream are one of the major environmental problems in the chemical industry if not properly controlled. Separation processes are vital for the recovery of waste solvent/valuable product from the effluent stream to reduce the pollution along with improvement in economic performance. Among the various separation processes, distillation is most widely used. A number of environmental indicators, each satisfying researchers own need,and methodologies such as life cycle assessment (LCA), minimum environmental impact assessment (MEIM), waste reduction algorithm (WAR) and environmental fate and risk assessment (EFRAT) are available for evaluation of environmental performance of chemical processes. In this article, a systematic procedure, introducing an environmental performance index (EPI) based on potential environmental impact (computed from waste reduction algorithm (WAR)), energy consumption, resource conservation and fugitive emission, for evaluating environmental performance is presented. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used at two levels for the determination of weighting of individual categories. The procedure is applied for the study of environmental performance of distillation column (steam stripping column) from a real chemical plant for the recovery of acetone and HC's from the off gases of the distillation fraction (DF) plant. Alternatives are compared using environmental performance index and best alternative is selected. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is the method of inventorying, assessing, and interpreting environmental interventions caused by products and product systems through their life cycle. The ecotoxicity of metals has proven a challenge for LCA given metal characteristics such as reversibility of removal processes, speciation, and the effect on bioavailability and ecotoxic effect assessment. Our review focuses on the first part of the ecotoxic impact chain for metals, i.e., the release of metals from solid deposits. According to the principle of temporal justice, sustainability assessment tools such as LCA should account for emissions regardless of temporal location distribution. This is in LCA commonly interpreted as leaching until depletion of metals bound in solid wastes under the presumption that infinite time implies infinite weathering. This approach is risk conservative for metals and it hampers the use of LCA to assess remediation projects for soils and sediments contaminated by inorganic substances. We discuss metal significance and inventory issues in LCA, and review existing and proposed approaches to make LCA applicable to metal long-term emission.Existing methods used to screen chemical inventories for hazardous substances that may pose risks to humans and the environment are evaluated with a holistic mass balance modeling approach. The model integrates persistence (P), bioaccumulation (B), toxicity (T), and quantity (Q.) information for a specific substance to assess chemical exposure, hazard, and risk. P and B are combined in an exposure assessment factor (EAF), P, B, and T in a hazard assessment factor (HAF), and P, B, T, and Q. in a risk assessment factor (RAF) providing single values for transparent comparisons of exposure, hazard, and risk for priority setting. This holistic approach is illustrated using 200 Canadian Domestic Substances List (DSL) chemicals and 12 United Nations listed Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), Priority setting results are evaluated with those of multiple category-based screening methods employed by Environment Canada and applied elsewhere that use cutoff criteria in multiple categories (P, B, and T) to identify hazardous chemicals for more comprehensive evaluations. Existing methods have categorized the DSL chemicals as either higher priority (requiring further assessment, screened in) or lower priority (requiring no further action at this time; screened out). The priority setting results of the cutoff-based categorization are largely inconsistent with the proposed integrated method, and reasons for these discrepancies are discussed. Many chemicals screened out using existing methods have equivalent or greater risk potential than chemicals screened in. Decisions for screening assessments using binary classification on the basis of cutoff criteria can be flawed, and complementary holistic methods for priority setting evaluations such as the one proposed should be considered.This paper builds on previous research on end of life of products by synthesizing some,of the theories proposed in the literature and presenting a method for environmental decision-making related to buildings. This is achieved through different solutions, but most significantly through the use of hybrid life-cycle assessment and the definition of allocation boundaries in a way that decreases the uncertainty associated with technological forecasting. Results show that there is no significant difference between the results of two major end-of-life assessment approaches (attributional and consequential), and that the choice between the use of one or the other for buildings may not be a critical decision. Assessing the impacts of recycling polices requires accounting for product substitutions, market analysis, and the full supply chain impacts of the recycling chains. Increasing the recycling of concrete from deconstructed buildings from the current 27% rate to 50% could yield a 2-3% (2.7-5.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents) reduction in buildings' greenhouse gas emissions, or the equivalent of removing 408,000-847,000 typical cars from U.S. roads.Introduction: Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a global method for assessing the environmental burdens (greenhouse effect, acidification, resource depletion, etc.) associated with a product or activity over its entire life cycle. Today LCA methods for environmental impact assessment are being extended to the evaluation of the human health effects of these products and activities. These results, however, are very uncertain in view of the scale of evaluation - over the entire life cycle of the system - and the many assumptions and uncertainties associated with it. The aim of this article is to determine the validity and limitations of LCA as applied to health impact (health damage, in LCA terminology) assessment by impact 2002+, the most recent LCA method. Methods: LCA of health will be compared to the quantitative health risk assessment (QHRA), a validated and widely used assessment tool. After a comparison of the nature of both methodologies, their differences will be illustrated by a case study of coal power plants in France. Results: Despite their similar structures, LCA and QHRA often produce divergent results and differ in many ways, including ease of updating data (epidemiological, toxicological, and exposure), number Of Substances considered, population characteristics and the space-time scale. The case study also highlighted the risks inherent in the practice of LCA, including the double-counting of substances and the importance of the reliability of databases. Other weaknesses are more specific: to Impact 2002+. They include a lack of consistency and transparency in the development of certain effect factors, which limits their scientific relevance. Conclusion: LCA appears to be a tool complementary to QHRA that can be used for pre-diagnoses or to assess pollution transfers. LCA findings, however must be applied cautiously (that is, interpreted by an expert) for they cannot in any case be considered comparable to health risk scores.The current approach to the design, maintenance, and governance of service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions has focused primarily on flow-driven assembly and orchestration of reusable service components. The practical application of this approach in creating industry solutions has been limited, because flow-driven assembly and orchestration models are too rigid and static to accommodate complex, real-world business processes. Furthermore, the approach assumes a rich, easily configured library of reusable service components when in fact the development, maintenance, and governance of these libraries is difficult. An alternative approach pioneered by the IBM Research Division, model-driven business transformation (MDBT), uses a model-driven software synthesis technology to automatically generate production-quality business service components from high-level business process models. in this paper, we present the business entity life cycle analysis (BELA) technique for MDBT-based SOA solution realization and its integration into service-oriented modeling and architecture (SOMA), the end-to-end method from IBM for SOA application and solution development. BELA shifts the process-modeling paradigm from one that is centered on activities to one that is centered on entities. BELA teams process subject-matter experts with IT and data architects to identify and specify business entities and decompose business processes. Supporting synthesis tools then automatically generate the interacting business entity service components and their associated data stores and service interface definitions. We use a large-scale project as an example demonstrating the benefits of this innovation, which include an estimated 40 percent project cost reduction and an estimated 20 percent reduction in cycle time when compared with conventional SOA approaches.Ecological footprinting is widely accepted as a tool for awareness raising and environmental education on the one hand, on the other hand some objections are brought up against the original calculation method as it seems to have no policy advising component and that it is not possible to distinguish between different qualities of environmental impacts. In recent years some modifications of the footprint methods have been established that can overcome some of the weaknesses of the original model. They all include guidance for action and sonic of them consider different qualities of material and energy flows. Therefore, authors of the modifications claim that ecological footprinting is a valuable tool for shaping policies and preparing decisions on different levels. The aim of this article is to discuss the possible contributions of ecological footprinting to decision-making processes on behalf of the following examples: Local and Regional Agenda 21, Strategic Environmental Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Evaluating and enhancing construction material sustainability requires a life cycle perspective of the structures in which they are used, since material properties and durability can have a profound effect on overall infrastructure performance. A framework is proposed to evaluate and enhance the design of "greener" materials that integrates material design, structural design, and life cycle modeling of the built system. This framework is applied to engineered cementitious composite materials, a family of high performance fiber-reinforced composites used as link slabs in a concrete bridge deck. Modeling results show incorporating waste materials, such as fly ash, should be pursued only if the material retains adequate durability for the structural application where it is used. Additionally, traffic congestion resulting from bridge deck construction and rehabilitation events dominates environmental and economic life cycle results, consuming the most energy, producing the largest amount of pollutants, and generating the greatest life cycle costs.Metallic magnesium is mostly used in lightweight alloys, one of the main purposes of which being to decrease fuel consumption in automotive applications. Several different production processes are currently used worldwide, and the magnesium production scenario is changing rapidly, with Chinese production increasingly dominating the world market. For the purpose of this paper, a novel approach to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied, in which Material Flow Accounting (MFA) and energy-based methods (Embodied Energy, Exergy Analysis and Emergy Synthesis) are integrated and complemented by a detailed description of the environmental hazards associated with emissions from all the different processes. Furthermore, the findings of the assessment are applied to estimate the Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the Acidification Potential (AP) related to the world primary magnesium production in 2007, with an allocation to the producer countries. Results highlight the relevance in terms of environmental impact of the country where the Mg production process takes place, and clearly identify the dominating Chinese Pidgeon process as the least sustainable Mg production chain, despite its growing diffusion: it has the highest environmental burdens as well as material and energy consumption, and the lowest exergy efficiency. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Two stroke powered tricycles are a major source of air pollution in the Philippines. A fuel-cycle assessment of the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and direct injection retrofit technologies for these vehicles is conducted. The results when compared with carbureted two and four strokes units indicate that retrofitting the units to direct injection provides lower fossil energy depletion, global warming, human toxicity and photochemical ozone formation impact potentials compared to LPG fueled carbureted two stroke tricycles while the latter exhibits lower acidification and nutrification impact values. The direct injection retrofitted units show a lower aggregated impact score and dominance over four stroke units. The conversion to LPG revealed minimal environmental benefits compared to the gasoline run units. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we evaluate the potential environmental and health impact of dairy cattle livestock and manure management in the Czech Republic. We present a new approach for national assessments of the environmental impact of an agricultural sector. Emission estimates are combined with a country-specific set of indicators to assess the environmental impact in nine regions with specific environmental characteristics. We estimate the contribution of emissions of ammonia (NH(3)) and nitrogen oxides (NO) to acidification and terrestrial eutrophication, nitrate (NO(3)) and phosphate (PO(4)) to aquatic eutrophication, nitrogen oxides (NO), particulate matter (PM(10)) and (PM(2.5)) to human toxicity and methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (NO) to global warming. We present large regional differences in the environmental and health impact per unit of agricultural production. The regional acidifying, eutrophying and global warming impact of dairy cattle is calculated to be up to three times the national average, depending on the dairy cattle intensity. Aquatic eutrophication is found to be a problem in regions with relatively high eutrophying emissions per hectare of so-called nitrate vulnerable zones. Human toxicity problems caused by dairy cattle livestock and manure management are problematic in regions with a high population density in rural areas. The strength of our approach is the use of country-specific characterisation factors to assess the potential environmental and health impact of agriculture at the sub-national scale. We were able to analyse the potential environmental impact without explicit quantification of specific effects on humans and ecosystems. The results can be used to identify the most polluted areas as well as appropriate targets for emission reduction. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research. Nevertheless, much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages, neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics. Using consumer expenditure surveys and multi-country life cycle assessment techniques, this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of American household carbon footprint. We find that due to recently increased international trade, 30% of total US household CO2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the US. Further, households vary considerably in their CO2 responsibilities: at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high-impact households, with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total CO2 impact. The global location of emissions, which cannot be calculated using standard input-output analysis, and the variation of household impacts with income, have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change, such as carbon taxes. The effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions, rebound effects, and international trade affect them. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study evaluates economic feasibilities of the production and use of ethanol from cassava and sugarcane. Ethanol is a substitute for methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE). A comparative evaluation between an ethanol-blend fuel-gasohol 95 (E10) and a MTBE-blend fuel (benzene 95) is based on the life cycle assessment approach. The use of ethanol as a substitute for MTBE was found to be economically feasible. This is mainly due to MTBE import substitution, reflecting the benefits generated from using domestic fuel crops for ethanol production. Meanwhile the environmental benefit was in a small proportion.This paper presents a comparison of environmental impacts of two residential heating systems, a hot water heating (HWH) system with mechanical ventilation and a forced air heating (FAH) system. These two systems are designed for a house recently built near Montreal, Canada. The comparison is made with respect to the life-cycle energy use, the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the expanded cumulative exergy consumption (ECExC), the energy and exergy efficiencies, and the life-cycle cost. The results indicate that the heating systems cause marginal impacts compared with the entire house in the pre-operating phase. In the operating phase, on the other hand, they cause significant environmental impacts. The HWH systems with a heat recovery ventilator (HRV) using either electricity or natural gas have the lowest life-cycle energy use and lowest ECExC. The HWH and FAH systems using electricity as energy source have the lowest GHG emissions. Finally, the FAH systems have, on the average, a lower life-cycle cost than the HWH systems. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool to identify a building's environmental impact throughout its life cycle. However, LCA does have limits in practice because it does not consider the economic aspect of project implementation. In order to promote LCA application, a more comprehensive evaluation of building life cycle environmental and economic performance must be performed. To address these issues, we propose life cycle green cost assessment (LCGCA), a method that combines LCA with life cycle costing (LCC). In LCGCA the building's environmental loads are converted to environmental costs based on the trading price of CO(2) certified emission reductions (CERs). These environmental costs are then included into the building life cycle cost. Subsequently an evaluation index of green net present value (GNPV) for LCGCA can be obtained. A governmental office building in Beijing was studied using LCGCA. Several design options were compared and the sensitivity of the CER price was analyzed. The research also shows that conclusions reached by LCGCA may be different from those of traditional LCC, which does not include environmental costs. The application of LCGCA needs the support of environmental policies. A sound environmental tax mechanism is expected to be established in China soon, which will enable LCGCA to be a useful tool to guide sustainable building design efficiently.Assessment of process changes to reduce, recycle or avoid wastes requires attention to systems which are broader than the immediate process; that is, it is necessary to take a life cycle perspective. Definition of the system boundary for such an assessment can be problematic in itself. A real case study is presented to illustrate the problem of assessing clean technologies: possible modifications to an alkylation unit at a UK refinery. The process uses hydrogen fluoride as alkylation catalyst, and generates fluoridic wastes which are hazardous and require treatment both on-and off-site. Possible changes to avoid, reduce or enable partial recycling of the waste are identified, representing different levels of change in the process and therefore requiring assessment with different system boundaries. The different system definitions lead to differences in the ways data must be compiled for quantitative environmental life cycle assessment, and in the range of stakeholders explicitly or implicitly involved in assessing and implementing the changes. The case study demonstrates some of the less familiar challenges introduced by the "pollution prevention" or "clean technology" paradigms of chemical processing.This paper evaluates the contribution of (i) uncertainty in substance properties, (ii) lack of spatial variability, (iii) intermodel differences and (iv) neglecting sorption to black carbon (BC) to the uncertainty of Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) concentrations in European air, soil and fresh water predicted by the multimedia fate model Simplebox. Uncertainty in substance properties was quantified using probabilistic modeling. The influence of spatial variability was quantified by estimating variation in predicted concentrations with three spatially explicit fate models (Impact 2002, EVn BETR and BETR Global). Intermodel differences were quantified by comparing concentration estimates of Simplebox, Impact 2002, EVn BETR and the European part of BETR Global. Finally, predictions of a BC-inclusive version of Simplebox were compared with predictions of a BC-exclusive version. For air concentrations of BaP, the lack of spatial variability in emissions was most influential. For freshwater concentrations of BaP, intermodel differences and lack of spatial variability in dimensions of fresh water bodies were the dominant sources of uncertainty. For soil, all sources of uncertainty were of comparable magnitude. Our results indicate that uncertainty in Simplebox can be as large as three orders of magnitude for BaP concentrations in the environment and would be substantially underestimated by focusing on one source of uncertainty only. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development and deployment of Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) technology is a cornerstone of the Norwegian government's climate strategy. A number of projects are currently evaluated/planned along the Norwegian West Coast, one at Tjeldbergodden. CO2 from this project will be utilized in part for enhanced oil recovery in the Halten oil field, in the Norwegian Sea. We study a potential design of such a system. A combined cycle power plant with a gross power output of 832 MW is combined with CO2 capture plant based on a post-combustion capture using amines as a solvent. The captured CO2 is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). We employ a hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) method to assess the environmental impacts of the system. The study focuses on the modifications and operations of the platform during EOR. We allocate the impacts connected to the capture Of CO2 to electricity production, and the impacts connected to the transport and storage Of CO2 to the oil produced. Our study shows a substantial reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions from power production by 80% to 75 g.(kW.h)(-1). It also indicates a reduction of the emissions associated with oil production per unit oil produced, mostly due to the increased oil production. Reductions are especially significant if the additional power demand due to EOR leads to power supply from the land.This paper briefly describes the various stages used to perform the life cycle analysis (LCA) of a product or process. The analysis is simplified in its outputs in that it focuses only on energy usage and carbon and sulfur dioxide emissions. The main point however, is to provide examples to first year engineering and science students that illustrate the principle of LCA without the need for extensive spreadsheet analysis that is so often required. Two examples are given and are staged in their complexity. Firstly, the task of choosing which option for drying hands after washing is explored. Air drying, washable cloth towel and disposable paper towels are assessed based on their carbon dioxide emission. This example provides a quantitative approach to determining impacts as well as an introduction to creating flowsheets and manipulation of unit equations. The second example, dealing with the location of a manufacturing plant, extends the LCA approach to sulfur dioxide impacts at both a local and global scale. It introduces the not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) concept and how this might be overcome by an optimisation (minimisation) of impacts at both local and global scales. (C) 2008 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.High expansion of power demand is expected in the Upper Rio Grande region of far west Texas as a result of both electrical demand growth and decommissioning of installed capacity. On the supply side, a notable deployment of renewable power technologies can be projected owing to the recent legislation of a new energy policy in Texas, which attempts to reach 10,000 installed MW, of renewable capacity for 2025. Power generation fueled by natural gas might consistently expand due to the encouraged use of this fuel. In this context, the array of participating technologies can be optimized within a sustainability framework, which translates into a multi-objective optimization problem. In this paper, the problem is formulated and solved to determine supply shares for some chosen technologies based on both renewable power conversion and natural gas use. The exergetic and economic costs are established as primary competing factors. The deployment of renewable power technologies hypothetically follows the Gompertz growth model, which is constrained by exergetic self sustenance. The solution is given as a Pareto tradeoff front for arrays of optimal technologies and capacities. Additionally, the sustainability of these arrays is analyzed through indicators, and the current goal for renewable power technologies is discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to describe the energetic metabolism of a retail park service system tinder an integrative approach. Energy flow accounting was applied to a case study retail park in Spain, representative of the sector across Europe, after redefining the functional unit to account for both direct energy use (buildings, gardens and outdoor lighting) and indirect energy use (employee and customer transportation). A life cycle assessment (LCA) was then undertaken to determine energy global warming potential (GWP) and some energy intensity and greenhouse gases (GHG) emission indicators were defined and applied. The results emphasise the importance of service systems in global warming policies, as a potential emission of 9.26 kg CO(2)/purchase was obtained for the case study, relating to a consumption of 1.64 KOE of energy, of which 21.9% was spent oil buildings and 57.9% on customer transportation. Some strategies to reduce these emissions were considered: increased supply, energy efficiency, changes in distribution of modes of transport, changes in location and changes in the mix of land uses. A combination of all of these elements in a new retail park could reduce GHG emissions by more than 50%, as it is planning strategies, which seem to be the most effective. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar power offers a "greener" alternative to traditional methods such as electricity and hot water production. To quantify the benefits of solar power, a life cycle analysis (LCA) of thermal solar plants is necessary, which requires environmental impact assessments of all materials used in their fabrication. In this paper we report on an LCA of a thermal solar installation with flat collectors for domestic hot water production, built on the roof of a private house in Tudela de Duero, Valladolid (a city 190 km north of Madrid, Spain). In addition, the EPS2000 method (as willingness to pay to restore changes in the safe guard subjects) was used to find which one of the two concepts, conventional or solar installation, has the least impact on the environment. Thus, the financial and environmental profit of the solar power installation was analyzed in comparison with a natural gas boiler system to show their respective environmental impacts and the economics that make them more or less profitable at the end of their service life.The construction of a modern mountain hut near the mountains Matterhorn and Dufourspitze in the Swiss Alps is investigated from an environmental point of view. A prospective environmental assessment was performed to minimize the environmental impact already in the planning phase of the. new building; construction will start in autumn 2008. An energy balance of the existing hut was made to detect optimization potentials and to predict the necessary energy generating systems of the new building. In addition to energy supply, the environmental impacts of materials and processes were compared and evaluated with the help of Life Cycle Assessment Although energy use will increase in the new building, mainly due to the installation of a wastewater purification system, total greenhouse gas emissions will decrease.Hydrogen from renewable energy is considered a promising alternative to traditional petroleum-based transportation fuels. Potato steam peels can be used as feedstock to produce hydrogen through fermentation processes. Life cycle assessment is used as an analytical tool to evaluate the main environmental benefits and burdens of using potato steam peals to produce hydrogen rather than to feed animals. Inventory data are derived from the literature and ecoinvent. Impacts are evaluated using IMPACT 2002+. The results show that producing hydrogen from potato steam peels offers clear advantages over a direct use of peels to feed animals. A factor of two to three is observed in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, in the savings of non-renewable resources and in the reduction of human health impacts. The two-stage bioreactor is observed to consume around 25 MJ and to emit between 1000 and 15009 of CO2 per kilogram of hydrogen produced. (c) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background, aims, and scope Life cycle assessment (LCA) stands as the pre-eminent tool for estimating environmental effects caused by products and processes from 'cradle to grave' or 'cradle to cradle.' It exists in multiple forms, claims a growing list of practitioners, and remains a focus of continuing research. Despite its popularity and codification by organizations such as the International Organization for Standards and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, life cycle assessment is a tool in need of improvement. Multiple authors have written about its individual problems, but a unified treatment of the subject is lacking. The following literature survey gathers and explains issues, problems and problematic decisions currently limiting LCA's goal and scope definition and life cycle inventory phases. Main features The review identifies 15 major problem areas and organizes them by the LCA phases in which each appears. This part of the review focuses on the first 7 of these problems occurring during the goal and scope definition and life cycle inventory phases. It is meant as a concise summary for practitioners interested in methodological limitations which might degrade the accuracy of their assessments. For new researchers, it provides an overview of pertinent problem areas toward which they might wish to direct their research efforts. Results and discussion Multiple problems occur in each of LCA's four phases and reduce the accuracy of this tool. Considering problem severity and the adequacy of current solutions, six of the 15 discussed problems are of paramount importance. In LCA's first two phases, functional unit definition, boundary selection, and allocation are critical problems requiring particular attention. Conclusions and recommendations Problems encountered during goal and scope definition arise from decisions about inclusion and exclusion while those in inventory analysis involve flows and transformations. Foundational decisions about the basis of comparison (functional unit), bounds of the study, and physical relationships between included processes largely dictate the representativeness and, therefore, the value of an LCA. It is for this reason that problems in functional unit definition, boundary selection, and allocation are the most critical examined in the first part of this review.Background, aim and scope After China and India, Thailand is considered another emerging market for fuel ethanol in Asia. At present, ethanol in the country is mainly a fermentation/distillery product of cane molasses, although cassava and cane juice are considered other potential raw materials for the fuel. This study aims to evaluate the environmental impacts of substituting conventional gasoline (CG) with molasses-based gasohol in Thailand. Materials and methods The life cycle assessment (LCA) procedure carried out follows three interrelated phases: inventory analysis, characterization and interpretation. The functional unit for the comparison is 1 l gasoline equivalent consumed by a new passenger car to travel a specific distance. Results The results of the study show that molasses-based ethanol (MoE) in the form of 10% blend with gasoline (E10), along its whole life cycle, consumes less fossil energy (5.3%), less petroleum (8.1%) and provides a similar impact on acidification compared to CG. The fuel, however, has inferior performance in other categories (e.g. global warming potential, nutrient enrichment and photochemical ozone creation potential) indicated by increased impacts over CG. Discussion In most cases, higher impacts from the upstream of molasses-based ethanol tend to govern its net life cycle impacts relative to CG. This makes the fuel blend less environmentally friendly than CG for the specific conditions considered. However, as discussed later, this situation can be improved by appropriate changes in energy carriers. Conclusions The LCA procedure helps identify the key areas in the MoE production cycle where changes are required to improve environmental performance. Specifically, they are: (1) use of coal as energy source for ethanol conversion, (2) discharge of distillery spent wash into an anaerobic pond, and (3) open burning of cane trash in sugar cane production. Recommendations and perspectives Measures to improve the overall life cycle energy and environmental impacts of MoE are: (1) substituting biomass for fossil fuels in ethanol conversion, (2) capturing CH4 from distillery spent wash and using it as an energy supply, and (3) utilizing cane trash for energy instead of open burning in fields.Background, aim and scope The interest in the use of biomass as a renewable energy resource has rapidly grown over the past few years. In Singapore, biomass resources are mostly from waste wood. This article presents a few technological options, namely carbonization, for the conversion of woody biomass into a solid fuel, charcoal. Materials and methods In the first stage, a life cycle assessment (LCA) 'gate-to-gate' system was developed for a conventional carbonizer system, a modern carbonizer from Japan, and a proposed four-stage partial furnace carbonizer from Tunisia. The potential environmental impacts were generated for global warming potential, acidification, human toxicity and photochemical oxidant potential. Based on the first set of results, the second LCA investigation was carried out comparing the selected carbonizer from Japan and an existing incinerator in Singapore. The second LCA adopted a unique approach combining social costs of pollution with the economic factors of the two biomass conversion technologies. Results The carbonizer from Japan resulted in approximately 85% less greenhouse gases than the conventional carbonization system and 54% less than the proposed four-stage carbonizer from Tunisia. In terms of acidification and human toxicity, the carbonizers from Japan and Tunisia display nearly similar results-both were considerably lower than the conventional carbonizer. For photochemical oxidant potential, very minimal emissions are generated from the four-stage carbonizer and nearly zero impact is realized for the carbonization technology from Japan. Discussion From the first set of LCA results, the Japanese carbonizer is favored in terms of its environmental results. The highest environmental impacts from the conventional carbonizer were due to large and uncontrolled emissions of acidic gases, greenhouse gases (particularly CO(2) and CH(4)), particulates, and non-methane volatile organic compounds from both fugitive sources and energy requirements. The second LCA addressed the performance of the carbonizer from Japan against an existing incinerator in terms of environmental as well as cost performances. This unique approach translated pollution emissions into monetary costs to highlight the impacts of social health. Conclusions For the first LCA, the accumulated impacts from the Japanese carbonizer proved to display significantly lower environmental impacts, especially for global warming potential. The overall environmental performance of the four-stage carbonizer from Tunisia ranked slightly lower than the one from Japan and much higher than the conventional carbonizer. The second LCA results displayed a noteworthy improvement of 90% for human health from the modern Japanese carbonizer technology-when compared against conventional incinerators. Without considering health issues or social costs, the total value per ton of wood treated is nearly similar for both incinerator and carbonizer. Recommendations and perspectives The interest in biomass as raw material for producing energy has emerged rapidly in many countries. However, careful analysis and comparison of technologies are necessary to ensure favorable environmental outcomes. A full life cycle study, along with costs and the impact of pollution on society, should be performed before any large-scale biomass conversion technology is implemented. LCA can be applied to quantify and verify the overall environmental performance of a particular technology of interest as well as further explore the proposed technology in terms of costs and social implications.Background, aims and scope This paper is based on the results of a project sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and carried out by the Wood Technology Institute in Poznan, Poland. The main purpose of the project was to assess the environmental impact generated during the entire life cycles of chosen wood products. Most of the data came from the Polish wood industry, but some of it was taken from the ecoinvent database, particularly data relating to forest processes. The data were not used as presented in the database but were properly adapted. The aim of the paper is to show how the ecoinvent's initial assumptions have been changed and how the data were adapted. The influence of the adaptation on the characterization results is presented as well. Materials and methods The adaptation was performed in several steps: obtaining information about the principal assumptions of the ecoinvent database, gathering data appropriate to Polish conditions, changing the principal assumptions to include the Polish situation, calculating the new allocation and correction factors, forming the new inventory tables for round, industrial, and residual wood (softwood and hardwood), and calculating the characterization results to check the influence of the data adaptation on the life cycle assessment (LCA) final results. The following methods have been used: the economic allocation with the allocation correction to include mass, energy, and carbon dioxide uptake from nature and Ecoindicator99 method to assess the environmental impact. Results The study shows that differences exist between ecoinvent and Polish data for the wood production. Some of the differences are important and significantly impact the final results. The data differ in relation to many factors, for example: tree species, yield of forest, time from planting trees to final harvesting, length and width of forest roads or total area, and land use. The differences in the initial assumptions and further in the allocation factors result in changes of the inventory points and the characterization results. The relevant differences for round hardwood and residual hardwood are not observed. It is not, however, the case of the industrial hardwood where the visible difference exist. The results for all sorts of softwood are completely different and any similarities cannot be observed. Discussion At present, the total area of forest land in Poland is 9.0 million ha. This is equivalent to 28.8% of the country's area. This means that the forest processes are important for the country. The study could be a part of a more general discussion about the suitability of data recognized by the database's generators as representative for larger areas (Europe, Asia, the world). Conclusions The following conclusions could be formulated based on the results of the project: differences between countries always exist, and they can be a source of uncertainty, particularly if unspecific data are used. On the other hand, it is impossible to collect specific data for all inventory items included in the product system which is why LCA databases are needed. The following questions should be asked: how important is the discrepancy? What is its influence on the final results? Is it acceptable? There are some activities like electricity production where differences between countries can be crucial for the LCA final results. Recommendations and perspectives Two main recommendations could be formulated: the data taken from LCA databases should always be critically analyzed and reviewed to check if they are suitable for our case study, and, if possible, the adaptation to local or national conditions should be made. In Poland, the interest in LCA continues to grow; however, it is not easy for LCA practitioners to conduct LCAs because of companies' skepticism and their reluctance to provide data. LCA databases are important sources of information. A review of the most popular LCA databases could be a good line of further improvement to make LCA studies more relevant and reliable.Background, aim, and scope Using renewable feedstock and introducing biocatalysts in the chemical industry have been suggested as the key strategies to reduce the environmental impact of chemicals. The Swedish interdisciplinary research program "Speciality Chemicals from Renewable Resources-Greenchem" is aiming to develop these strategies. One target group of chemicals for Greenchem are wax esters which can be used in wood coatings to replace paraffin wax made from fossil crude oil. The aim of this study was to conduct a life cycle assessment of wax esters based on rapeseed oil produced by biocatalysts (enzymes). The scope was to compare the environmental performance of wax esters with paraffin wax produced by conventional methods. Materials and methods The study has a cradle-to-gate perspective and the functional unit is "1-kg wax product ready to use in a wood coating product." Extensive data collection and calculations have been performed for the wax esters, whereas existing life cycle inventory data have been used for the paraffin wax. Results The energy input into the wax ester production is about one third of the energy input in paraffin wax production. However, the wax ester has a higher contribution to the global warming potential (GWP) due to high emissions of nitrous oxide from rapeseed cultivation. Referring to a cradle-to-grave perspective, including waste incineration, the contribution to the GWP will, however, be 3.5 times higher from paraffin wax. Wax ester makes a higher contribution to the acidification and eutrophication potential, due to emissions from soil from rapeseed cultivation, but five times lower contribution to the photochemical ozone creation potential. From a land-use perspective and a global warming point of view, it is more efficient to produce paraffin wax and grow high-yielding, short-rotation coppice (Salix) to replace fuel oil than it is to grow rapeseed for wax ester production. Discussion Overall, this study shows the importance of studying the environmental performance of a product not only from a gate-to-gate perspective but, instead, considering the environmental performance from cradle-to-gate. The biocatalytic production of the wax ester consumes less energy than the conventional chemical method, but the raw material step, cultivation of rapeseed contributes much to both acidification and eutrophication. When the waste treatment step is included, the contribution to GWP, however, for paraffin wax will be 3.5 times higher than for the wax ester. Conclusions From a gate-to-gate perspective, replacing conventional chemical processes by biocatalysts using enzymes leads to energy savings and reduces emissions. However, from a cradle-to-gate perspective, the use of renewable feedstock, such as rapeseed oil, may counteract some of these benefits. Concerning the GWP benefit from using renewable feedstock instead of fossil feedstock, the final waste treatment step must be included, thereby applying a cradle-to-grave perspective. Recommendations and perspectives The introduction of biocatalysts as a key strategy in reducing the environmental impact from the chemical industry is supported by the results in this study. On the other hand, it is not obvious that the key strategy of using renewable feedstock in chemical production per se leads to benefits concerning all environmental impact categories. Thus, much more attention needs to be paid to the choice of potential renewable feedstock options, the minimization of energy inputs, and the biological emissions from the soil in the cultivation of feedstock crops, improved gas cleaning in nitrogen fertilizer production plants, and the alternative use of the arable land, in optimizing the overall environmental benefits of an increased use of renewable feedstock in the chemical industry.Background, aim and scope Different ways of performing a life cycle assessment (LCA) are used to assess the environmental burden of milk production. A strong connection exists between the choice between attributional LCA (ALCA) and consequential LCA (CLCA) and the choice of how to handle co-products. Insight is needed in the effect of choice on results of environmental analyses of agricultural products, such as milk. The main goal of this study was to demonstrate and compare ALCA and CLCA of an average conventional milk production system in The Netherlands. Materials and methods ALCA describes the pollution and resource flows within a chosen system attributed to the delivery of a specified amount of the functional unit. CLCA estimates how pollution and resource flows within a system change in response to a change in output of the functional unit. For an average Dutch conventional milk production system, an ALCA (mass and economic allocation) and a CLCA (system expansion) were performed. Impact categories included in the analyses were: land use, energy use, climate change, acidification and eutrophication. The comparison was based on four criteria: hotspot identification, comprehensibility, quality and availability of data. Results Total environmental burdens were lower when using CLCA compared with ALCA. Major hotspots for the different impact categories when using CLCA and ALCA were similar, but other hotspots differed in contributions, order and type. As experienced by the authors, ALCA and use of co-product allocation are difficult to comprehend for a consequential practitioner, while CLCA and system expansion are difficult to comprehend for an attributional practitioner. Literature shows concentrates used within ALCA will be more understandable for a feeding expert than the feed used within CLCA. Outcomes of CLCA are more sensitive to uncertainties compared with ALCA, due to the inclusion of market prospects. The amount of data required within CLCA is similar compared with ALCA. Discussion The main cause of these differences between ALCA and CLCA is the fact that different systems are modelled. The goal of the study or the research question to be answered defines the system under study. In general, the goal of CLCA is to assess environmental consequences of a change in demand, whereas the goal of ALCA is to assess the environmental burden of a product, assuming a status-quo situation. Nowadays, however, most LCA practitioners chose one methodology independent of their research question. Conclusions This study showed it is possible to perform both ALCA (mass and economic allocation) and CLCA (system expansion) of milk. Choices of methodology, however, resulted in differences in: total quantitative outcomes, hotspots, degree of understanding and quality. Recommendations and perspectives We recommend LCA practitioners to better distinguish between ALCA and CLCA in applied studies to reach a higher degree of transparency. Furthermore, we recommend LCA practitioners of different research areas to perform similar case studies to address differences between ALCA and CLCA of the specific products as the outcomes might differ from our study.Background, aim, and scope When dealing with system delimitation in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), two methodologies are typically referred to: consequential LCA and attributional LCA. The consequential approach uses marginal data and avoids co-product allocation by system expansion. The attributional approach uses average or supplier-specific data and treats co-product allocation by applying allocation factors. Agricultural LCAs typically regard local production as affected and they only include the interventions related to the harvested area. However, as changes in demand and production may affect foreign production, yields and the displacement of other crops in regions where the agricultural area is constrained, there is a need for incorporating the actual affected processes in agricultural consequential LCA. This paper presents a framework for defining system boundaries in consequential agricultural LCA. The framework is applied to an illustrative case study; LCA of increased demand for wheat in Denmark. The aim of the LCA screening is to facilitate the application of the proposed methodology. A secondary aim of the LCA screening is to illustrate that there are different ways to meet increased demand for agricultural products and that the environmental impact from these different ways vary significantly. Materials and methods The proposed framework mainly builds on the work of Ekvall T, Weidema BP (Int J Life Cycle Assess 9(3):pp. 161-171, 2004), agricultural statistics (FAOSTAT, FAOSTAT Agriculture Data, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (2006), http://apps.fao.org/ (accessed June)), and agricultural outlook (FAPRI, US and world agricultural outlook, Food and Agriculture Research Institute, Iowa, 2006a). The framework and accompanying guidelines concern the suppliers affected, the achievement of increased production (area or yield), and the substitutions between crops. The framework, which is presented as a decision tree, proposes four possible systems that may be affected as a result of the increased demand of a certain crop in a certain area. Results The core of the proposed methodology is a decision tree, which guides the identification of affected processes in consequential agricultural LCA. The application of the methodology is illustrated with a case study presenting an LCA screening of wheat in Denmark. Different scenarios of how increased demand for wheat can be met show significant differences in emission levels as well as land use. Discussion The great differences in potential environmental impacts of the analysed results underpin the importance of system delimitation. The consequential approach is appointed as providing a more complete and accurate but also less precise result, while the attributional approach provides a more precise result but with inherent blind spots, i.e. a less accurate result. Conclusions The main features of the proposed framework and case study are: (1) an identification of significant sensitivity on results of system delimitation, and (2) a formalised way of identifying blind spots in attributional agricultural LCAs. Recommendations and perspectives It is recommended to include considerations on the basis of the framework presented in agricultural LCAs if relevant. This may be done either by full quantification or as qualitative identification of the most likely ways the agricultural product system will respond on changed demand. Hereby, it will be possible to make reservations to the conclusions drawn on the basis of an attributional LCA.In the context of global warming, reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in oil and gas processes is an environmental and financial issue for process design and comparison. Environmental impact of a system can be determined by life cycle assessment (LCA). However this method presents limitations. Exergy is a thermodynamic function often chosen to complete LCA as it enables quantifying energetic efficiency of a process and takes into account the relation between the considered process and its environment. The aim of this work is to build a correlation between CO2 emissions and a thermodynamic quantity which depends on exergy. For the process under consideration, this correlation has the following asset: it enables CO2 emissions calculation without performing an LCA, when operating conditions are modified. The process studied here is naphtha catalytic reforming.Commercial and research interest in nanotechnology has exploded in recent years, with nearly US$9 billion in investment from public and private sources in 2005. While the list of potential applications for nanotechnologies continues to grow, there is increasing pressure from governments and researchers alike to understand the implications of this new class of materials. The emerging field of green nano applies green chemistry and engineering principles to the synthesis of nanomaterials. Here we outline several strategies for the development of green nano and review past policy and research activities in understanding nanotechnology's environmental implications. By means of the green chemistry metric of E-factor, an analysis is undertaken of the traditional syntheses of several specific nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, and metal nanoparticles. It was found that the E-factors of these production processes vary over several orders of magnitude, making it difficult to comment generally about the resource use efficiencies of nanomaterials production. For gold nanoparticles specifically, E-factors for six different production methods are found to range from 10(2) to 10(5), demonstrating that greener synthesis routes are possible and that environmental benefits can begin to be quantified. Expanding the analysis to include life-cycle stages upstream and downstream of production and to incorporate environmental health effects is encouraged, though significant data gaps exist.Energy requirements for fullerene and nanotube synthesis are calculated from literature data and presented for a number of important production processes, including fluidized bed and floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition (CVD), carbon monoxide disproportionation, pyrolysis, laser ablation, and electric arc and solar furnace synthesis. To produce data for strategic forward-looking assessments of the environmental implications of carbon nanoparticles, an attempt is made to balance generality with sufficient detail for individual processes, a trade-off that will likely be inherent in the analysis of many nanotechnologies. Critical energy and production issues are identified, and potential improvements in industrial-scale processes are discussed. Possible interactions with industrial ecosystems are discussed with a view toward integrating synthesis to mitigate the impacts of large-scale carbon nanoparticle manufacture. Carbon nanoparticles are found to be highly energy-intensive materials, on the order of 2 to 100 times more energy-intensive than aluminum, even with idealized production models.The environmental assessment of nanomanufacturing during the initial process design phase should lead to the development of competitive, safe, and environmentally responsible engineering and commercialization. Given the potential benefits and concerns regarding the use of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), three SWNT production processes have been investigated to assess their associated environmental impacts. These processes include arc ablation (arc), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and high-pressure carbon monoxide (HiPco). Without consideration of the currently unknown impacts of SWNT dispersion or other health impacts, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to analyze the environmental impact and provide a baseline for the environmental footprint of each manufacturing process. Although the technical attributes of the product resulting from each process may not be fully comparable, this study presents comparisons that show that the life cycle impacts are dominated by energy, specifically the electricity used in production. Under base case yield conditions, HiPco shows the lowest environmental impact, while the arc process has the lowest impact under best case yield conditions.Holistic understanding of nanotechnology using systems analysis tools is essential for evaluating claims about the potential benefits of this emerging technology. This article presents one of the first assessments of the life cycle energy requirements and environmental impact of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) synthesis. Life cycle inventory data are compiled with data reported in the open literature. The results of the study indicate relatively higher life cycle energy requirements and higher environmental impact of CNFs as compared to traditional materials, like primary aluminum, steel, and polypropylene, on an equal mass basis. Life cycle energy requirements for CNFs from a range of feedstock materials are found to be 13 to 50 times that of primary aluminum on an equal mass basis. Similar trends are observed from the results of process life cycle assessment (LCA), as conveyed by different midpoint and endpoint damage indicators. Savings in life cycle energy consumption and, hence, reductions in environmental burden are envisaged if higher process yields of these fibers can be achieved in continuous operations. Since the comparison of CNFs is performed on an equal mass basis with traditional materials, these results cannot be generalized for CNF-based nanoproducts. Quantity of use of these engineered nanomaterials and resulting benefits will decide their energy and environmental impact. Nevertheless, the life cycle inventory and the results of the study can be used for evaluating the environmental performance of specific CNF-based nanoproducts.Recent developments in nanotechnology, especially in the area of nanoclay composites, are improving the technical performance of biobased polymers and moving them toward technical and economic competitiveness with petroleum-based polymers and conventional composites. We assess whether these developments also improve the environmental sustainability of biopolymers, by using a life cycle approach. We estimate energy use and emissions from the nanoclay production process and compare these with prior life cycle data for biopolymers as well as other fibers, and we find that nanoclay production results in lower energy use and greenhouse gas emissions than production of many common biopolymers and glass fibers. Nanoclay composites hence can improve the life cycle environmental performance of several common biopolymers. However, for some biopolymers the relative performance depends on the functional unit.Life cycle inventory (LCI) is the heart of a life cycle assessment (LCA) study. LCA is a tool to determine the environmental impacts of a product at all stages of its life right from cradle to grave. In order to carry out a LCA, inventory data have to be collected and the raw data have to be extrapolated to produce a LCI. This study has a gate to gate system boundary. The inventory data collection starts at the oil palm fresh fruit bunch hoppers when the fresh fruit bunches are received at the mill up till the production of the crude palm oil in the storage tanks at the mill. For this study, 12 palm oil mills were selected. These palm oil mills were selected based on the type of mill which were either plantation- based mills or private mills and have different processing capacities of oil palm fresh fruit bunches ranging from 20 t hr(-1) up till 90 t hr(-1). The mills selected are all located at different zones in east and west Malaysia basically from north, mid south, south Peninsular Malaysia and east Malaysia. Inventory data collection consists of input and output of materials and energy. The input data basically are inputs of raw materials such as oil palm fresh fruit bunches, electricity, diesel, water,fuel for boiler etc. and the output consists of the biomass wastes, palm oil mill effluents,flue gases from stack, kernel etc. All data were collected for duration of three months from each mill. These inventory data were then calculated for the functional unit of every I t of crude palm oil produced at the palm oil mill.Inventorisation of inputs (chemicals and energy) for treating textile wastewater using pretreatment, reverse osmosis (RO) and evaporator for two representative textile wastewater treatment plants have been studied. All life cycle inventory data were recalculated per functional unit, which was defined as treatment of 1 m(3) of textile wastewater. Evaporator consumes 48% of electricity, which contributes for more global warming potential (GWP) than other treatments units. Total GWP for plant I and II are 4049 kg CO2 eq and 5.56 kg CO2 eq respectively. During electricity generation, CO2 emission is comparatively high (98.5% of total emissions). The results indicate that RO system of plant I and II consumes less energy and GWP are 8.9 x 10(-3) kg CO2 eq and 0.011 kg CO2 eq respectively. Human health impact is 7.4 E-05 for CO2 emission, which is less for other emissions. The results can be used for strategic decisions for minimizing environmental impacts of zero liquid treatment technologies.Growing international concern about the environment is a great threat to New Zealand access into high value markets. In particular the issue of climate change has grown in political importance as illustrated by the application of the Kyoto Protocol and public debate about issues such as 'food miles'. Whilst the paper concentrates upon the impact of the latter debates on United Kingdom and European Union markets, there is growing evidence that consumer concerns are not just an issue for those markets. Other markets are also showing increasing concern. Food miles is a concept which has gained traction with the popular press arguing that the further food travels, the more energy is used, and carbon emissions are greater. But what is the reality behind the political rhetoric? Using a food miles methodology, this paper compares New Zealand production shipped to the UK with a UK source. The study reported here found that, due to the different production systems, even when shipping was accounted for, New Zealand dairy products used half the energy of their UK counterparts, and in the case of lamb, a quarter of the energy. In the case of apples, the New Zealand source was 10 percent more energy efficient. In case of onions, whilst New Zealand used slightly more energy in production, the energy cost of shipping was less than the cost of storage in the UK, making New Zealand onions more energy efficient overall. In light of these findings, it is argued that climate change should be addressed through a trade policy focus on the more comprehensive task of reducing carbon footprints over time, rather than a narrower focus on carbon miles.In recent years, biobased polymers have gained attention from industries, consumers and governments as a way to reduce municipal solid waste. Much attention has been given to their production and implementation. However, these materials only reach their potential environmental benefits when they are recovered through recycling or composting and/or their energy is recovered by incineration. These end-of-life scenarios allow closing the carbon cycle loop. A lot of confusion and misunderstanding about these new materials and their end-of-life scenarios, particularly composting, have been generated. This paper addresses definitions and environmental performance of these materials and their compostability. Current methods for measuring biobased content and biodegradability of polymers and factors affecting it, such as exposure conditions and polymer characteristics, are discussed, and the use of life cycle assessment as a tool to evaluate the environmental performance of biopolymers is presented. Although there are some obstacles for the growth and implementation of biobased polymers, such as consumer adoption and available composting facilities accepting these materials, new opportunities are growing due to government regulation and business initiatives in the past five years. However, consumers' understanding of when the use of these materials provides environmental benefits and when not is still missing. Therefore, to adopt and to implement these new biopolymers cooperative work among industry, consumers and government is needed. (C) 2008 Society of Chemical Industry.In the UK, ballast track beds remain the most commonly constructed, partly because of relatively low initial costs. Concrete track beds, while more expensive to construct, can have lower life-cycle costs and are being actively promoted for use in the UK. This paper describes the results of environmental life-cycle analyses of ballast and generic concrete track beds, including cast-in sleeper and embedded track systems. The scope of the study includes the manufacturing, construction, maintenance, dismantling and recycling of the track bed components. Comparison of the life-cycle analyses of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions shows that concrete slab track beds are not associated with higher environmental burdens compared with ballast track bed. The limitations of the available data are also discussed.Based on the practice of magnesium production in China, a quantitative evaluation of the environment impact was carried out according to the theory and framework of life cycle assessment(LCA) study. The major gaseous pollutants including CO2, SO2, NOx, CH4, HF and particulates were calculated. The accumulative environmental performances of different energy use strategies and the characterization results, including abiotic depletion potential(ADP), global warming potential(GWP), acidification potential(AP) and human-toxicity potential(HTP) were compared. The results show that the direct emission of fuel combustion in the process is the major contributor to the pollutants emission of magnesium production. Global warming potential and acidification potential make the main contribution to the accumulative environmental impact. The different fuel use strategies in the practice of magnesium production cause much different impacts on the environmental performance. The accumulative environmental impact of coal burned directly is the highest, and that of producer-gas comes to the next, while that of coke-oven gas is the lowest.Cereal straw, a by-product in the production of agricultural crops, is considered as a potentially large source of energy supply with an estimated value of 47 x 10(18)J worldwide. However, there is some debate regarding the actual amounts of straw which could be removed from arable soils without jeopardizing their quality, as well as the potential trade-offs in the overall straw-to-energy chain compared to the use of fossil energy sources. Here, we used a deterministic model of C and N dynamics in soil-crop systems to simulate the effect of straw removal under various sets of soil, climate and crop management conditions in northeastern France. Model results in terms of nitrate leaching, soil C variations, nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions were subsequently inputted into the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of a particular bio-energy chain in which straw was used to generate heat and power in a plant producing bio-ethanol from wheat grains. Straw removal had little influence on simulated environmental emissions in the field, and straw incorporation in soil resulted in a sequestration of only 5-10% of its C in the long term (30 years). The LCA concluded to significant benefits of straw use for energy in terms of global warming and use of non-renewable energy. only the eutrophication and atmospheric acidification impact categories were slightly unfavourable to straw use in some cases, with a difference of 8% at most relative to straw incorporation. These results based on a novel methodology thereby confirm the environmental benefits of substituting fossil energy with straw. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Full greenhouse gas (GHG) life-cycle analysis of bio-energy production chains is often constrained by a lack of information on pre-harvest GHG costs and emissions during production of the energy crop. In this paper, we assessed pre-harvest GHG costs of production of short rotation coppice (SRC), Miscanthus and oil seed rape (OSR: for liquid bio-fuel production) when compared to a range of former land-use baselines. It was found that GHG costs are very low for Miscanthus and SRC but higher for OSR production, determined mainly by the need for nitrogen fertilisation. Compared to baseline land uses, SRC and Miscanthus have much lower GHG costs than arable cropping or intensively managed grasslands, with OSR production having similar GHG costs to arable cropping. Establishing broadleaved forests have low GHG costs, but 5-year GHG costs of Miscanthus and SRC are similar to forest. We show that former land use is of critical importance when determining if energy crops are a net source or sink of GHGs. Converting to SRC and Miscanthus are the most favourable energy crops in terms of GHG savings. Converting to OSR from arable cropping results in either small increases or decreases in GHG emissions, depending upon the former tillage practice on the arable land, but replacing either broadleaved woodland with OSR (mainly due to soil carbon loss and increased fertiliser-related N2O emissions), or grassland with OSR (mainly due to loss of soil carbon), greatly increases emissions. Policies to maximise GHG benefits from energy crops should encourage that they be established preferentially on croplands. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rightsTaking advantage of offshore wind power appears to be of special significance for the climate protection plans announced by the German Federal Government. For this reason, a comprehensive system analysis of the possible CO2 reduction including the consideration of all relevant processes has to be performed. This goal can be achieved by linking a life-cycle assessment model of offshore wind utilisation with a stochastic model of the German electricity market. Such an extended life-cycle assessment shows that the CO2 emissions from the construction and operation of wind farms are low compared with the substitution effects of fossil fuels. Additionally, ill the German electricity system, offshore wind energy is the main substitute for medium-load power plants. CO2 emissions from the modified operation and the expansion of conventional power plants reduce the CO2 savings, but the substitution effect outweighs these emissions by one order of magnitude. The assumptions of the model, shown here to be above all CO2 certificate prices, have a considerable influence oil the figures shown due to a significant effect oil the future energy mix. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the context of the world's energy crisis and environmental concerns, crop-based ethanol has emerged as an energy alternative, the use of which can help reduce oil imports as well as emissions of CO, and other air pollutants. However, a clear disadvantage of ethanol is its high cost over gasoline under the current pricing scheme that does not include externalities. The intent of this study is to perform a life cycle analysis comparing environmental and cost performance of molasses-based E10 with those of CG. The results show that although E10 provides reduction in fossil energy use, petroleum use, CO2 and NOx emissions, its total social costs are higher than those of gasoline due to higher direct production costs and external costs for other air emissions, e.g. CH4, N2O, CO, SO2, VOC and PM10. An analysis of projection scenarios shows that technological innovations towards cleaner production help maximize ethanol's benefits whilst minimizing its limitations. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.BACKGROUND: The farm animal sector is the single largest anthropogenic user of land, contributing to many environmental problems, including global warming and climate change. OBJECTTVES: The aim of this study was to synthesize and expand upon existing data on the contribution of farm animal production to climate change. METHODS: We analyzed the scientific literature on farm animal production and documented greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as various mitigation strategies. DISCUSSIONS: An analysis of meat, egg, and milk production encompasses not only the direct rearing and slaughtering of animals, but also grain and fertilizer production for animal feed, waste storage and disposal, water use, and energy expenditures on farms and in transporting feed and finished animal products, among other key impacts of the production process as a whole. CONCLUSIONS: Immediate and far-reaching changes in current animal agriculture practices and consumption patterns are both critical and timely if GHGs from the farm animal sector are to be mitigated.Not all environmental problems get the same level of policy attention. An interesting question is thus why certain aspects receive attention and others do not. This paper studies the level of policy attention given to different environmental aspects in agriculture and energy policy in Sweden and explores empirically some factors that can explain the level of attention. The first step was to explore the link between environmental issue characteristics and the level of policy attention. The level of policy attention was measured through a content analysis of Swedish government bills. The results from the content analysis are clear and stable over the studied time period. In the agriculture sector biodiversity and toxicity are in focus whereas in the energy sector climate change and resources are given the attention. Besides these aspects, the attention is limited. These results were compared with the results from sector-wide environmental assessments of the same sectors. These assessments were based on hybrid input-output analysis and life cycle assessment methodologies. A main finding from the study is that issue importance is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for policy attention. Other explanations are needed to understand which environmental issues get attention in sectoral policy. Our assessment showed that while the level of knowledge does not provide an explanation, the presence of strong and well-organised stakeholders within the sector, with an interest in having a certain issue on the agenda, might be decisive for issue attention. Path dependency and limited attention capacity are other important factors. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which use electricity from the grid to power a portion of travel, could play a role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transport sector. However, meaningful GHG emissions reductions with PHEVs are conditional on low-carbon electricity sources. We assess life cycle GHG emissions from PHEVs and find that they reduce GHG emissions by 32% compared to conventional vehicles, but have small reductions compared to traditional hybrids. Batteries are an important component of PHEVs, and GHGs associated with lithium-ion battery materials and production account for 2-5% of life cycle emissions from PHEVs. We consider cellulosic ethanol use and various carbon intensities of electricity. The reduced liquid fuel requirements of PHEVs could leverage limited cellulosic ethanol resources. Electricity generation infrastructure is long-lived, and technology decisions within the next decade about electricity supplies in the power sector will affect the potential for large GHG emissions reductions with PHEVs for several decades.Background, Aims and Scope. On 4-5 June 2007, an international conference was held in Copenhagen. It provided an interdisciplinary forum where economists and geographers met with LCA experts to discuss the challenges of modelling the ultimate land use changes caused by an increased demand for biofuels. Main Features. The main feature of the conference was the crossbreeding of experience from the different approaches to land use modelling: The field of LCA could especially benefit from economic modelling in the identification of marginal crop production and the resulting expansion of the global agricultural area. Furthermore, the field of geography offers insights in the complexity behind new land cultivation and practical examples of where this is seen to occur on a regional scale. Results. Results presented at the conference showed that the magnitude and location of land use changes caused by biofuels demand depend on where the demand arises. For instance, mandatory blending in the EU will increase land use both within and outside of Europe, especially in South America. A key learning for the LCA society was that the response to a change in demand for a given crop is not presented by a single crop supplier or a single country, but rather by responses from a variety of suppliers of several different crops in several countries. Discussion. The intensification potential of current and future crop and biomass production was widely discussed. It was generally agreed that some parts of the third world hold large potentials for intensification, which are not realised due to a number of barriers resulting in so-called yield gaps. Conclusions. Modelling the global land use implications of biofuels requires an interdisciplinary approach optimally integrating economic, geographical, biophysical, social and possibly other aspects in the modelling. This interdisciplinary approach is necessary but also difficult due to different perspectives and mindsets in the different disciplines. Recommendations and Perspectives. The concept of a location dependent marginal land use composite should be introduced in LCA of biofuels and it should be acknowledged that the typical LCA assumption of linear substitution is not necessarily valid. Moreover, fertiliser restrictions/accessibility should be included in land use modelling and the relation between crop demand and intensification should be further explored. In addition, environmental impacts of land use intensification should be included in LCA, the powerful concept of land use curves should be further improved, and so should the modelling of diminishing returns in crop production.Background, Aims and Scope. To all Member States, the European Union has imposed a minimum percentage of 2% of biofuels in the fuels consumed for road transport since 2005. This percentage is expected to reach 5.75% in 2010, and probably 10% in 2020. In this context, investments are made everywhere in Europe in local productions of biofuels. In Belgium, ethanol from sugar beet and rapeseed methyl ester (RME) ate generally supposed to be two of the more valuable possibilities. As these industries are growing, it is important to evaluate the environmental impacts of these productions and to highlight the main sources of these impacts using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. This evaluation will also lead to propositions of improvements of the environmental performances. A comparison with the impacts of the related fossil fuels (petrol and diesel) should also be conducted. Even if these fuels are different and used in different types of engines, it is important to determine which one offers the best environmental performances, as both require arable land, which is the limiting parameter in biofuel production. Methods. The system boundaries include cultivation, extraction, processing and final use of the biofuels. The system has been expanded to take into account valorization of by-products in substitution of animal feed (rapeseed meat or pulps from sugar beet) or chemicals (glycerin). No economical, mass or energetic allocation was made. The yields and fertilizer consumptions of the crops are those of the Belgian conditions. Simapro 7.1 databases and the Eco-Indicator 99 method have been used for the Life Cycle Impact Assessment. The functional unit was road transport over 100 km. Results. The results show that, without valorization of the by-products, the impacts of the two biofuels over their whole life cycle are not significantly lower than those of the related fossil fuels. However, the credits accorded thanks to the valorization of by-products lead to improvements of the environmental performances in comparison to fossil fuels, especially for RME. Discussion. The impacts of agriculture and production of the fertilizers are more important in the case of RME, because the yield per hectare is lower than in the production of ethanol from sugar beet. However, the extraction of the sugar from the beet, fermentation, purification of the ethanol and drying of the pulps and slops consume much more energy than extraction and esterification of rapeseed oil. Moreover, the by-products of RME (rapeseed meal and glycerin) are more valuable than those of ethanol from sugar beet (pulps). This induces a more important environmental benefit in the production of RME. These parameters lead to a global environmental impact that is higher for the production of ethanol than for RME. Conclusions. Life Cycle Assessment methodology has been successfully applied to two of the major ways of production of biofuels in Belgium using specific local data. The assessment of the environmental impacts reveals that rapeseed methyl ester allows a considerable improvement of the environmental performances compared to fossil diesel, while ethanol from sugar beet offers a more limited benefit compared to petrol. Recommendations. Arable land is a limited resource, especially in West-European countries like Belgium. Therefore, choices must be made to have the most valuable environmental benefit. Soil quality and crop rotations should also be taken into account before making a decision.Background, Aims and Scope. The traditional method of using Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) to assess the effects of climate change in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) does not account for indirect atmospheric effects like saturation effects and emissions of ozone precursors. The aim of this paper is to provide GWP values for LCA purposes of the most important climate related gases including indirect effects and assess whether these values are dependent of different background conditions and size of change in emissions fluxes. Methods. In order to reflect atmospheric interactions between direct and indirect greenhouse gases, an atmospheric climate and chemistry model needs to be used to determine GWP values. Here, the IMAGE model is used to determine GWP values for a time horizon of 100 years. Different runs were performed to test the outcomes against various background emission scenarios and various sizes in emission fluxes. Results and Discussion. The GWP values for CO2, N2O and CH4 depend on the chosen scenario and are lower under scenarios with higher background emissions. The GWPs of Halons, PFCs and SF6 are scenario and emission flux independent. The GWPs of HFCs increase with higher background emissions and higher additional emission fluxes, whereas GWPs of CFC are scenario independent, but change when other emission fluxes are applied. Finally, GWPs of HCFCs are higher in scenarios with higher background emission scenarios, and decrease when larger emission fluxes are applied. The GWP values calculated with IMAGE with direct effects only are comparable with IPCC values. Inclusion of the indirect atmospheric effects changes some of the values positively or negatively. For CFCs this results in a value up to 70% lower. For Halons this results in a value up to 1000% lower, resulting in a strong negative GWP. Inclusion of indirect effects increases the GWP of CH4 by 50%. Newly introduced greenhouse gases which have only indirect effects are given here a GWP. SO, has a negative GWP which depends on both the flux size and the chosen background scenario. CO and NMVOC have a positive flux-and-scenario dependent GWP. The GWP of NOx can, dependent on de chosen conditions, be positive or negative. Conclusions. The GWP values of this paper are a first attempt to provide a consistent set of GWP values for all direct and indirect greenhouse gases, including differences in GWP values per background scenario and flux size. The inclusion of indirect effects in GWP values causes large differences in some important greenhouse gases, which should not be ignored in LCA-analyses. We suggest for LCA purposes to use GWPs including indirect effects for marginal change and for the most realistic background scenario. However, existing uncertainties in the indirect effects of greenhouse gases demand for a better understanding of the importance of these effects.Background, Goal, and Scope. Currently, only 40%, or 44.5 million metric tons, of coal combustion products (CCPs) generated in the United States each year by electric utilities are diverted from disposal in landfills or surface impoundments and recycled. Despite promising economic and environmental savings, there has been scant attention devoted to assessing life cycle impacts of CCP disposal and beneficial use. The objective of this paper is to present a life cycle inventory considering two cases of CCP management, including the stages of coal mining and preparation, coal combustion, CCP disposal, and CCP beneficial use. Six beneficial uses were considered: concrete production, structural fills, soil amendments, road construction, blasting grit and roofing granules, and wallboard. Methods. Primary data for raw material inputs and emissions of all stages considered were obtained from surveys and site visits of coal-burning utilities in Florida conducted in 2002, and secondary data were obtained from various published sources and from databases available in SimaPro 5.1 (PRe Consultants, Amersfoort, The Netherlands). Results. Results revealed that 50 percent of all CCPs produced, or 108 kg per 1,000 kg of coal combusted, are diverted for application in a beneficial use; however, the relative amounts sold by each utility is dependent on the process operating parameters, air emission control devices, and resulting quality of CCP. Diversion of 50% of all CCPs to beneficial use applications yields a decrease in the total raw materials requirements (with the exception of gravel and iron) and most emissions to air, water, and land, as compared to 100% disposal. Discussion. The greatest reduction of raw materials was attributed to replacing Portland cement with fly ash, using bottom ash as an aggregate in concrete production and road construction in place of natural materials, and substituting FGD gypsum for natural gypsum in wallboard. The use of fly ash as cementitious material in concrete also promised significant reductions in emissions, particularly the carbon dioxide that would be generated from Portland cement production. Beneficial uses of fly ash and gypsum showed reductions of emissions to water (particularly total dissolved solids) and emissions of metals to land, although these reductions were small compared to simply diverting 50% of all CCPs from landfills or surface impoundments. Conclusions. This life cycle inventory (LCI) provides the foundation for assessing the impacts of CCP disposal and beneficial use. Beneficial use of CCPs is shown here to yield reductions in raw material requirements and various emissions to all environmental compartments, with potential tangible savings to human health and the environment. Recommendations and Perspectives. Extension of this life cycle inventory to include impact assessment and sensitivity analysis will enable a determination of whether the savings in emissions reported here actually result in significant improvements in environmental and human health impacts.Background, Aim and Scope. By using recycled aluminium or by disposing used aluminium products for recycling, it is normal LCA practice to give a credit for the avoided production of primary or recycled aluminium. Lately, consequential approaches have been suggested to qualify and quantify this credit in terms of market mechanisms. Depending on supply, demand and price elasticity of primary products and scrap products, a mixed share of primary and recycled material may be credited. Aluminium, having high energy consumption for its primary production and low energy consumption for recycling, is very sensitive concerning whether production of primary or recycled aluminium is avoided. This paper includes presentations of aluminium products which are typically made from primary and from recycled aluminium. This is essential concerning which production may be avoided. Examples of market mechanism parameters of aluminium for consequential LCA are given. Methods. A survey of aluminium products manufacturing is made to determine which products are made from primary and which from recycled aluminium. To estimate the price elasticity, statistics of supply and prices of primary aluminium and aluminium scrap are compiled and papers concerning supply, demand and price elasticity of aluminium are summarised. The parameters are suggested for performing consequential LCA. Results. The available amount of aluminium scrap covers only approx. 30-40% of the demand for aluminium, and hence approx. 60-70% of the demand is inevitably made from primary aluminium. Open loop recycled aluminium is primarily used for casting alloys, but closed loop recycling exists, for example, for aluminium cans. The open loop market for low-alloyed aluminium sheets and profiles is primarily covered by primary aluminium. It is therefore of no use to demand recycled aluminium of these qualities, but if the products are recycled after use, they should be credited for the avoided production. Discussion. The supply price elasticity of aluminium scrap is estimated to be rather inelastic, and the avoided production will hence primarily be of primary aluminium. This is in contradiction to a default recommendation for consequential LCA saying that a 50150 share of primary and recycled material is avoided by recycling most materials. Conclusions. An important conclusion of the paper is that, given the inelastic price elasticity of aluminium scrap, it is production of primary aluminium which is avoided by recycling. This conclusion is actually in agreement with the traditional systems expansion, which has been put under question by consequential LCA. Because primary aluminium is avoided by recycling, a credit of avoided production of primary aluminium should be given when a used product is recycled. Hence, a credit should not be given when demanding recycled aluminium, or aluminium with a certain recycled content. Recommendations and Perspectives. It is recommended that aluminium is considered price inelastic in consequential LCA, and that avoided production of primary aluminium is credited when recycling a used aluminium product. Avoiding primary material by recycling has great perspectives for aluminium with its high energy consumption for primary production and low energy consumption for recycling.Background, Aims and Scope. Life Cycle Assessment is a technique for evaluating the environmental performance of a given product by: identifying and quantifying the energy and raw materials used in its manufacturing process, as well as the emissions of pollutants to water, soil, and air inherent in this production, use and disposal, and evaluating the environmental impact associated with the use of energy and materials and the emissions of pollutants, thus identifying opportunities to improve the system in order to optimize the environmental performance of the product. CETEA (Packaging Technology Center) has conducted a Life Cycle Assessment - LCA study of aluminum can with emphasis in life cycle inventory, collecting data for the reference years 2000-2002. The goal of this paper is to present part of this complete study, focusing the influence of aluminum recycling rate on the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of aluminum beverage cans in Brazil. Methods. The adopted methodology was based on the recommendations of SETAC - Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and the ISO 14040 Standard, approved by the Sub-Committee 05 of the Environmental Administration Technical Committee, TC-207, from ISO - INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR STANDARDIZATION [1,2]. Data storage and modeling were performed by employing the PIRA Environmental Management System - PEMS [3]. Results. Taking into account the impact categories adopted in this study, it has been shown that recycling helps to improve the aluminum can environmental profile measured as LCI data. Discussion. For the transformed aluminum products, the recycling rate affects the values of the environmental parameters inventoried, but not in the same proportion, since the contribution of other stages of the product system life cycle and the recycling process remain unchanged, including the yield of this process. In general, the recycling balance is always positive due to the importance of the stages that precede the packaging production and the problem of increasing the municipal waste volume. Conclusions. The advantages of the recycling are obviously concentrated on the inventoried parameters related to the primary aluminum production and to the package disposal. The verified benefits of the recycling increase with the recycling rate enhancement. However, the effects on the inventory do not have the same magnitude of the recycling rate. This happens due to the relative contributions of the other life cycle stages, such as the transportation and sheet or can production. In agreement with the presented results, it is possible to conclude that the aluminum can recycling reduces part of the consumption of natural resources and the emissions associated to the stages previous to the production of the packaging. The parameters specifically related to the stage of aluminum production suffer reduction directly proportional to the increase of the recycling rate. In this way, all of the efforts made to increase the recycling rate will have a positive contribution to the LCI of the aluminum can. Recommendations. It is worth pointing out that LCA studies are iterative and dynamic. The data can always be refined, substituted or complemented with updated information in order to improve the representativeness of the analyzed sector. Perspectives. From this study, the aluminum sector in Brazil is able to quantify the benefits of future actions for environmental improvement of the Brazilian aluminum industry, as well as to contribute technically to Environmental Labeling initiatives regarding aluminum products..Background, Aims and Scope. Measuring Environmental Value for Natural Lawn and Garden Care Practices provides a life cycle assessment and impacts valuation methodology to quantify environmental (public health and ecological) and water conservation benefits from natural lawn and garden care practices in Seattle. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) initiated this study as part of a triple-bottom-line analysis of its Natural Lawn and Garden Care program. Methods. The study uses life cycle assessment (LCA) methods, including the Carnegie-Mellon Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIOLCA) tool publicly available on the Internet, to inventory pollutant generation from a synthetic nutrients and pesticide approach to lawn and garden care compared against a natural/organic care approach. The study applies US Environmental Protection Agency's TRACI (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts) climate change, acidification, eutrophication, and human health-criteria air pollutant stressor factors, along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's CalTOX risk assessment model's human and ecosystem toxicity potentials to roll up the numerous pollutant quantities into six environmental impact categories (global warming potential, human respiratory disease potential, human toxicity potential, ecological toxicity potential, acidification potential and eutrophication potential). The study develops cost valuation estimates for each impact category to produce a dollar estimate of the environmental cost of the two archetypical lawn and garden care methods. Results. Lawns and gardens account for 25% of Seattle's land area, so lawn and garden care methods potentially have substantial impacts on the city's land- and water-based ecosystems. LCA methods provide an informative methodology for comparing environmental impacts from lawn and garden care practices. These methods reveal the importance of more natural lawn and garden care practices. They also show that resource extraction and manufacturing impacts of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers dominate their on site use impacts in the case of global warming, but that the reverse holds for human and ecological toxicity, and eutrophication. In addition, releases of particulates, SO, and NO, associated with gasoline-powered lawn mowing are nearly an order of magnitude larger than releases of these pollutants as a result of the production of pesticides and fertilizers. Discussion. The study proceeds by using available data and research to build a desktop model that characterizes and contrasts two archetypical lawn and garden care practices: (1) Petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides, a gasoline-powered lawn mower, and substantial irrigation to maintain a traditional weed-free, always-green lawn and garden, versus (2) A backyard compost system to provide lawn and garden nutrients, supplemented moderately by purchased non-synthetic soil amendments, an electricity-powered mower, no pesticides, and drought tolerant lawn and garden species having little need for irrigation. Conclusions. The study concludes that each household converting from synthetic to natural practices produces nearly $75 in annual ongoing public health, ecological, water conservation and hazardous waste management benefits - between $16 and $21 of environmental benefits from reduced use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, $8 of environmental benefits for switching from gas to electricity for lawn mowing, $42 in cost savings due to reduced irrigation, and $5 or $6 from lower hazardous waste management costs. There also is a potential one time avoidance of $31 in construction costs resulting from reduced need for storm water detention and diversion capacity. Recommendations and Perspectives. This study's estimates of environmental value would benefit from comprehensive information on direct exposure to active ingredients in insecticides during their application. Estimates of impacts are based only on volatilization and runoff of active ingredients after application. Furthermore, the study would benefit from estimates of carbon sequestration in soils promoted by natural lawn and garden care techniques, and on the upstream pollutant releases from production of synthetic versus organic fertilizers. All three of these data gaps suggest that the estimated $75 per single family residence for environmental value is probably a lower bound on benefits from natural lawn and garden care versus more traditional pesticide-and-synthetic-fertilizer-based approaches.Background, Aims and Scope. The consequential approach to system delimitation in LCA requires that consideration of the technologies and suppliers included are 'marginal', i.e. that they are actually affected by a change in demand. Furthermore, co-product allocation must be avoided by system expansion. Vegetable oils constitute a significant product group included in many LCAs that are intended for use in decision support. This article argues that the vegetable oil market has faced major changes around the turn of the century. The aim of this study is to study the marginal supply of vegetable oil as it has shifted to palm oil and describe the product system of the new supply. Methods. The methods for identification of marginal technologies and suppliers and for avoiding co-product allocation are based on the work of Weidema (2003). The marginal vegetable oil is identified on the basis of agricultural statistics on production volumes and prices. A co-product from palm oil production is palm kernel meal, which is used for fodder purposes where it has two main properties: protein and energy. When carrying out system expansion, these properties are taken into account. Results. The major vegetable oils are soy oil, palm oil, rapeseed oil and sun oil. These oils are substitutable within the most common applications. Based on market trends, a shift from rapeseed oil to palm oil as the marginal vegetable oil is identified around the year 2000, when palm oil turns out to be the most competitive oil. It is recommended to regard palm oil and its dependent co-product palm kernel oil as the marginal vegetable oil. The analysis of the product system shows that the demand for 1 kg palm oil requires 4.49 kg FFB (oil palm fruit) and the displacement of 0.035 kg soybeans (marginal source of fodder protein) and 0.066 kg barley (marginal source of fodder energy). Discussion. The identification of the marginal vegetable oil and the avoidance of co-product allocation by system expansion showed that several commodities may be affected when using the consequential approach. Hence, the product system for vegetable oils is relatively complex compared to traditional LCAs in which average technologies and suppliers are applied and in which co-product allocation is carried out by applying an allocation factor. Conclusions. This article presents how the marginal vegetable oil can be identified and that co-product allocation between oils and meal can be avoided by system expansion, by considering the energy and protein content in the meal, which displaces a mix of the marginal sources of energy and protein for animal fodder (barley and soy meal, respectively). Recommendations and Perspectives. The implication of a shift in the marginal vegetable oil is significant. Many LCAs on rapeseed oil have been conducted and are being used as decision support in the bio energy field. Thus, based on consequential LCA methodology, it is argued that these LCAs need to be revised, since they no longer focus on the oil actually affected.Background, Aim and Scope. Soybean meal is an important protein input to the European livestock production, with Argentina being an important supplier. The area cultivated with soybeans is still increasing globally, and so are the number of LCAs where the production of soybean meal forms part of the product chain. In recent years there has been increasing focus on how soybean production affects the environment. The purpose of the study was to estimate the environmental consequences of soybean meal consumption using a consequential LCA approach. The functional unit is 'one kg of soybean meal produced in Argentina and delivered to Rotterdam Harbor'. Materials and Methods. Soybean meal has the co-product soybean oil. In this study, the consequential LCA method was applied, and co-product allocation was thereby avoided through system expansion. In this context, system expansion implies that the inputs and outputs are entirely ascribed to soybean meal, and the product system is subsequently expanded to include the avoided production of palm oil. Presently, the marginal vegetable oil on the world market is palm oil but, to be prepared for fluctuations in market demands, an alternative product system with rapeseed oil as the marginal vegetable oil has been established. EDIP97 (updated version 2.3) was used for LCIA and the following impact categories were included: Global warming, eutrophication, acidification, ozone depletion and photochemical smog. Results. Two soybean loops were established to demonstrate how an increased demand for soybean meal affects the palm oil and rapeseed oil production, respectively. The characterized results from LCA on soybean meal (with palm oil as marginal oil) were 721 g CO2 eq. for global warming potential, 0.3 mg CFC11 eq. for ozone depletion potential, 3.1 g SO2 eq. for acidification potential, -2 g NO3 eq. for eutrophication potential and 0.4 g ethene eq. for photochemical smog potential per kg soybean meal. The average area per kg soybean meal consumed was 3.6 m(2)year. Attributional results, calculated by economic and mass allocation, are also presented. Normalised results show that the most dominating impact categories were: global warming, eutrophication and acidification. The 'hot spot' in relation to global warming, was 'soybean cultivation', dominated by N2O emissions from degradation of crop residues (e.g., straw) and during biological nitrogen fixation. In relation to eutrophication and acidification, the transport of soybeans by truck is important, and sensitivity analyses showed that the acidification potential is very sensitive to the increased transport distance by truck. Discussion. The potential environmental impacts (except photochemical smog) were lower when using rapeseed oil as the marginal vegetable oil, because the avoided production of rapeseed contributes more negatively compared with the avoided production of palm oil. Identification of the marginal vegetable oil (palm oil or rapeseed oil) turned out to be important for the result, and this shows how crucial it is in consequential LCA to identify the right marginal product system (e.g., marginal vegetable oil). Conclusions. Consequential LCAs were successfully performed on soybean meal and LCA data on soybean meal are now available for consequential (or attributional) LCAs on livestock products. The study clearly shows that consequential LCAs are quite easy to handle, even though it has been necessary to include production of palm oil, rapeseed and spring barley, as these production systems are affected by the soybean oil co-product. Recommendations and Perspectives. We would appreciate it if the International journal of Life Cycle Assessment had articles on the developments on, for example, marginal protein, marginal vegetable oil, marginal electricity (related to relevant markets), marginal heat, marginal cereals and, likewise, on metals and other basic commodities. This will not only facilitate the work with consequential LCAs, but will also increase the quality of LCAs.Goal, Scope and Background. Food production systems invariably precipitate negative environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA), a standardised toot for evaluating the environmental costs of manufactured goods, is currently being expanded to address diverse product groups and production processes. Among these is food production, where the technosphere is tightly interlinked with the biosphere. The goal of this paper is to contribute to exploring the suitable functional units, system boundaries and allocation procedures for LCA in food production in general, and the product category rules (PCR) and environmental product declaration (EPD) for food products in specific. Main Features. A review of published scientific articles and conference papers treating LCA of food products is used to highlight and discuss different ways of defining the goal and scope of the LCA of food products, with an emphasis on defining the functional unit, setting the system boundaries and choosing a co-product allocation method. Results. Different ways of choosing the production system and system boundaries, functional unit and co-product allocation procedure are shown and discussed. The most commonly used functional unit is based on mass, but there are more sophisticated ways of expressing the functional unit for food products, like protein and energy content. A quality corrected functional unit (QCFU) is proposed. Discussion. Choice of the functional unit is highly dependent on the aim of the study. Mass or volume may be more relevant, as a basis for the functional unit, than land use. However, other qualities of the food product like nutrient content, like energy content, fat content, protein content or a combination thereof, would be a more sophisticated functional unit for food products. Conclusions and Recommendations. While LCA methodology is a valuable tool in conducting environmental impact assessments of food products, further methodological development to account for food-specific functions, like nutrient content, is needed. To facilitate a valid comparison between different products, system boundary description and functional units need further development and standardisation. A more sophisticated choice of a functional unit, taking nutrient content of the food into consideration in addition to mass, could both reflect the function of the food better and provide a solution to the co-product allocation problem that exists for some food products.Background, Aim and Scope. Quite often there is need for precise and representative parameters in LCA studies. Probably the most relevant have direct influence on the functional unit, whose definition is crucial in the conduct of any LCA. Changes in the functional unit show directly in LCI and LCIA results. In comparative assertions, a bias in the functional unit may lead to a bias in the overall conclusions. Since quantitative data for the functional unit, such as geometric dimensions and specific weight, often vary, the question arises how to determine the functional unit, especially if a comparative assertion shall be representative for a region or market. Aim and scope of the study is to develop and apply methods for obtaining precise and representative estimates for the functional unit as one important parameter in an LCA study. Materials and Methods. Statistical sampling is applied in order to get empirical estimates for the weight of yoghurt cups, as a typical parameter for the functional unit. We used a two-stage sampling design, with stratified sampling in the first stage and three different sampling designs in the second stage, namely stratified, clustered, and a posteriori sampling. Sampling designs are motivated and described. In a case study, they are each used to determine a representative weight for 150 g yoghurt cups in Berlin, at the point of sale and within a specific time. In the first sampling stage, food markets are randomly selected, while in the second stage, yoghurt cups in these food markets are sampled. The sampling methods are applicable due to newly available internet data. These data sources and their shortcomings are described. Results. The random sampling procedure yields representative estimates, which are compared to figures for market leaders, i.e. yoghurt cups with very high occurrence in the supermarkets. While single types of yoghurt cups showed moderate uncertainty, representative estimates were highly precise. Discussion results show, for one, the performance of the applied statistical estimation procedures, and they show further that adding more information in the estimation procedure (on the shape of the cup, on the type of plastic, on the specific brand) helps reducing uncertainty. Conclusions. As conclusions, estimates and their uncertainty depend on the measurement procedure in a sensitive manner; any uncertainty information should be coupled with information on the measurement procedure, and it is recommended to use statistical sampling in order to reduce uncertainty for important parameters of an LCA study. Recommendations and Perspectives. Results for market leaders differed considerably from representative estimates. This implies to not use market leader data, or data with a high market share, as substitute for representative data in LCA studies. Statistical sampling has been barely used for Life Cycle Assessment. It turned out to be a feasible means for obtaining highly precise and representative estimates for the weight of yoghurt cups in the case study, based on empirical analysis. Further research is recommended in order to detect which parameters should best be investigated in LCA case studies; which data sources are available and recommended, and which sampling designs are appropriate for different application cases.Background, Aims and Scope. In 1995, the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) began to develop a model, called GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation), for estimating the full fuel-cycle energy and emissions impacts of alternative transportation fuels and advanced vehicle technologies. The parametric assumptions used in the GREET model involve uncertainties. A new stochastic simulation tool, developed by Vishwamitra Research Institute (VRI), is built into the GREET model to address uncertainties. This paper presents the methodology and features of this new stochastic simulation tool and evaluates the performance of the sampling techniques in the tool. Methods. The new tool is interfaced through the graphical user interface (GUI) to perform the stochastic simulation. In general, five steps need to be followed to run a complete simulation: 1) Specify probability distribution functions; 2) Indicate the number of samples and the sampling technique; 3) Define the forecast variables; 4) Delete distribution functions (if necessary); and 5) Propagate the uncertainties and statistically analyze the outputs. The GREET model contains more than 700 default distribution functions for a wide variety of key parameters and as many as 3000 forecast variables. The stochastic simulation tool has been developed to incorporate 11 probability distribution function types for representing uncertain parameters and four sampling techniques (Monte Carlo sampling [MCS], Hammersley Sequence sampling [HSS], Latin Hypercube sampling [LHS] and Latin Hypercube Hammersley sampling [LHHS]) for stochastic simulation. To evaluate the performance of the four sampling techniques, 16 independent stochastic simulation runs were conducted in GREET and the output results were analyzed and compared. Results and Discussion. With the same number of samples, the output distribution curve simulated by HSS is the smoothest corresponding to the highest level of uniformity. To achieve the same level of smoothness as HSS with 1,000 samples, LHHS needs to be simulated with similar to 1500 samples and LHS and MCS with similar to 3,000 samples. As a result, HSS can achieve more than 200% reduction in running time compared to LHS or MCS without compromising the accuracy and quality of the prediction curves. The simulated mean values are close enough to the actual mean value (within +/- 1%) despite the selection of sampling technique and the number of samples (between 1,000 and 4,000). The standard deviation values from each other are close enough as well (within +/- 5%). It shows the trend that the increasing number of samples makes the simulated mean value marginally closer to the actual mean value; however, the improvement effect is negligible. The simulation time is strictly positive-correlated with the number of samples; therefore, the trade-off between extending simulation time and improving the smoothness of the output distribution curve needs to be carefully assessed. Conclusion. A new stochastic simulation tool has been developed to be built into Argonne's GREET model to enhance its capability for addressing uncertainty. This new tool guides the user in each step of the process through the user-friendly GUI windows. According to the performance comparison among the four sampling techniques, HSS was found to be the most efficient technique. Therefore, HSS was set as the default technique in GREET.Sorghum is a major cereal crop in the USA. However, sorghum has been underutilized as a renewable feedstock for bioenergy. The goal of this research was to improve the bioconversion efficiency for biofuels and biobased products from processed sorghum. The main focus was to understand the relationship among "genetics-structure-function-conversion" and the key factors impacting ethanol production, as well as to develop an energy life cycle analysis model (ELCAM) to quantify and prioritize the saving potential from factors identified in this research. Genetic lines with extremely high and low ethanol fermentation efficiency and some specific attributes that may be manipulated to improve the bioconversion rate of sorghum were identified. In general, ethanol yield increased as starch content increased. However, no linear relationship between starch content and fermentation efficiency was found. Key factors affecting the ethanol fermentation efficiency of sorghum include protein digestibility, level of extractable proteins, protein and starch interaction, mash viscosity, amount of phenolic compounds, ratio of amylose to amylopectin, and formation of amylose-lipid complexes in the mash. A platform ELCAM with a base case showed a positive net energy value (NEV) = 25,500 Btu/gal EtOH. ELCAM cases were used to identify factors that most impact sorghum use. For example, a yield increase of 40 bu/ac resulted in NEV increasing from 7 million to 12 million Btu/ac. An 8% increase in starch provided an incremental 1.2 million Btu/ac.Here we explore the utilization of Eichhornia crassipes, commonly known as water hyacinth, as a competitive source of biomass for conversion to fuel. Ecologically, E. crassipes is the most undesirable of a class of noxious and invasive aquatic vegetation. Water hyacinth grows rapidly on the surface of waterways, forming a dense mat which depletes the surrounding environment of essential nutrients. These properties, rarely encountered in other plant systems, are features of an ideal feedstock for renewable biomass. The high characteristic water content limits the range over which the material can be transported; however it also makes E. crassipes a natural substrate for rapid microbial metabolism that can be employed as a potentially effective biological pretreatment technology. We show through a life cycle analysis that water hyacinth is a competitive feedstock with the potential to be produced at a cost of approximately $40 per ton of dry mass.The optimum performance of an off-grid power system depends on economic and environmental criteria, and it belongs to the field of non-linear combinatorial multiobjective optimization. In this paper, the economic objective refers to the minimization of the total net present cost, while the environmental objective refers to the minimization of the total CO2 equivalent emissions during the life cycle of system's components, which can be wind turbines, photovoltaics, diesel generator and batteries. A binary evolutionary algorithm is proposed for the solution of the problem. The results show that in order to satisfy constraints related with system's initial cost and reliability performance, the energy supply has to be provided mainly by the diesel generator and secondarily by the wind turbines. The contribution of photovoltaics is negligible, but it can be improved significantly in the future through the evolution of their manufacturing procedure, which is expected to cause reduction in their cost and their total CO2 emissions.The objectives of the analysis reported in this paper are to evaluate the environmental impacts of the electricity produced in a 17 MW solar thermal plant with central tower technology and a 50 MW solar thermal plant with parabolic trough technology, to identify the opportunities to improve the systems in order to reduce their environmental impacts, and to evaluate the environmental impact resulting from compliance with the solar thermal power objectives in Spain. The methodology chosen is the life cycle assessment (LCA), described in the international standard series ISO 14040-43. The functional unit has been defined as the production of 1 kW h of electricity. Energy use needed to construct, operate, and dismantle the power plants is estimated. These results are used to calculate the "energy payback time" of these technologies. Results were around 1. yr for both power plants. Environmental impacts analyzed include the global warming impacts along the whole life cycle of the power plants, which were around 200 g/kW h generated. Finally, the environmental impacts associated with the compliance of the solar thermal power objectives in Spain were computed. Those figures were then used to estimate the avoided environmental impacts including the potential CO(2) emission savings that could be accomplished by these promotion policies. These savings amounted for 634 kt Of CO(2) equiv./yr.Agriculture, particularly intensive crop production, makes a significant contribution to environmental pollution. A variety of canola (Brassica napus) has been genetically modified to enhance nitrogen use efficiency, effectively reducing the amount of fertilizer required for crop production. A partial life-cycle assessment adapted to crop production was used to assess the potential environmental impacts of growing genetically modified, nitrogen use-efficient (GMNUE) canola in North Dakota and Minnesota compared with a conventionally bred control variety. The analysis took into account the entire production system used to produce 1 tonne of canola. This comprised raw material extraction, processing and transportation, as well as all agricultural field operations. All emissions associated with the production of 1 tonne of canola were listed, aggregated and weighted in order to calculate the level of environmental impact. The findings show that there are a range of potential environmental benefits associated with growing GMNUE canola. These include reduced impacts on global warming, freshwater ecotoxicity, eutrophication and acidification. Given the large areas of canola grown in North America and, in particular, Canada, as well as the wide acceptance of genetically modified varieties in this area, there is the potential for GMNUE canola to reduce pollution from agriculture, with the largest reductions predicted to be in greenhouse gases and diffuse water pollution.Massive volumes of construction waste will be generated by the demolition of older structures such as power stations that were built more than 30 years ago. It is essential to reuse such construction waste from a life-cycle assessment (LCA) perspective and for effective recycling of construction resources. In order to promote reuse, three concepts must be achieved: (a) assurance of safety and quality; (b) reduction in environmental impact; and (c) increase in cost-effectiveness of construction. This paper outlines a review of a system for recycled aggregate concrete produced by the aggregate replacement method, which reduces both the cost and environmental impact from an LCA perspective for concrete waste generated by the demolition of large-scale buildings, such as power stations.From August 2007, all member states of the European Union are required to enforce a new directive, 2005/32/EC, that affects any products that rely on any forms of energy as the source for operation. These products are referred to as energy-using products (EuPs), and the said directive (EuP directive) aims to achieve a higher level of environmental benefits by considering the environmental impacts throughout their whole life cycle. The EuP directive sets out to establish an outline for the eco-design requirements for EuPs. In this regard, environmental assessment, or more specifically life-cycle assessment, is the most fundamental tool to help manufacturers comply with the directive. This paper aims to discuss the background of the EuP directive and to propose a framework for assessment with respect to the directive, based on a pilot study with four products. One of these four products will be employed to demonstrate the application of the framework.This paper presents analytical hierarchical process (AHP) in combination with life cycle assessment (LCA) as a decision support tool for municipal solid waste (MSW) management. A proposed set of treatment plans and an array of impacts create a complex decision environment for MSW management in the city of Boston. AHP is utilized to incorporate the relative importance of the different impact categories and treatment plans into the decision scheme regarding stakeholder group's preferences. The use of biogasification and refuse derived fuel (RDF) technologies into different management plans is presented as an alternative to the actual management of household solid waste. The results of the AHP application show that between the impact categories presented, green house gas emissions and landfill capacity constrains are ranked higher rather than the cost associated to the operation of the plan and health damage associated to the treatment plans presented among the stakeholder groups. In a broader context, the use of a hierarchical approach on AHP to structure the decision problem allows the development of four different scenarios according to the contribution of each stakeholder group to the decision scheme. In this analysis, the use of biogasification was considered as the most suitable plan to follow. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A case-control study of the car-free model housing project in Vienna was conducted to evaluate whether people living in this settlement have more 'sustainable lifestyles' than people living in comparable buildings in Vienna. Another aim was to identify the lifestyle characteristics and household activities which significantly influence the environmental impact of the residents of the car-free housing project and a control group. The control group, referred to as the reference settlement, was chosen from a nearby building complex, with similar characteristics, but without the car-free feature. Household consumption patterns were estimated based on interviews in combination with data from the Austrian consumer expenditure survey and the national accounts. The evaluation of household environmental impacts uses emissions estimates from the Austrian national accounting matrices including environmental accounts and data from life-cycle assessments. Households from the car-free settlement have substantially lower environmental impacts in the categories of ground transportation and energy use; their CO2 emissions of these two categories are less than 50% of those living in the reference settlement. The households in the car-free settlement have somewhat higher emissions in the categories air transport, nutrition, and 'other' consumption, reflecting the higher income per-capita. As a result, the CO2 emissions are only slightly lower than in the reference settlement, but the emissions intensity is 20% lower. Both household groups have significantly lower environmental impacts than the Austrian average reflecting less car use and cleaner heating energy in Vienna. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The manufacturing of modern semiconductor devices involves a complex set of nanoscale fabrication processes that are energy and resource intensive, and generate significant waste. It is important to understand and reduce the environmental impacts of semiconductor manufacturing because these devices are ubiquitous components in electronics. Furthermore, the fabrication processes used in the semiconductor industry are finding increasing application in other products, such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), flat panel displays, and photovoltaics. In this work we develop a library of typical gate-to-gate materials and energy requirements, as well as emissions associated with a complete set of fabrication process models used in manufacturing a modern microprocessor. In addition, we evaluate upstream energy requirements associated with chemicals and materials using both existing process life cycle assessment (LCA) databases and an economic input-output (EIO) model. The result is a comprehensive data set and methodology that may be used to estimate and improve the environmental performance of a broad range of electronics and other emerging applications that involve nano and micro fabrication.The electrically conductive adhesives (ECA) are on the verge of a breakthrough as reliable interconnection materials for electronic components. As the ban of lead (Pb) in the electronics industry becomes a reality, the ECA's could be attractive overall alternatives to high melting point (HMP) Pb-based solder pastes, Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to estimate trade-offs between the energy use and the potential toxicity of two future types of ECA's and one HMP Pb-based. The probability is around 90% thatthe overall CO2 emissions from an ECA based on a tin-bismuth alloy are lowerthan for a silver-epoxy based ECA, whereas the probability is about 80% that the cumulative energy demand would be lower. It is more uncertain whether the tin-bismuth ECA would contribute to less CO2, or consume less energy, than a HMP Pb-based solder paste. Moreover, for the impact categories contributing to the life-cycle impact assessment method based on end point modeling (LIME) damage category of human health, the tin-bismuth ECA shows a 25 times lower score, and a silver-epoxy based ECA shows an 11 times lower score than the HMP Pb-based solder paste. In order to save resources and decrease CO2 emissions it is recommended to increase the collection and recycling of printed board assemblies using silver-epoxy based ECA.In recent years, many chemical companies have adopted the concept of sustainable development as a core business value. In this context and with focus on early phases, we present a novel design framework that comprises four stages of process modeling and multiobjective evaluation considering monetary and nonmonetary aspects. Each stage is characterized by the available information as a basis for process modeling and assessment. Appropriate modeling approaches, and evaluation indicators for economy, life-cycle environmental impacts, environment, health, and safety (EHS) hazard, and technical aspects are selected for each defined stage. The proposed framework is demonstrated on the design of a methyl methacrylate (MMA) process: considering 17 synthesis routes, the framework is mimicked step-by-step, to select the route with the best multiobjective performances, and to produce an optimized process flowsheet. As a validation of the framework, evaluation profile of six routes over all stages are compared, and crucial points are identified that should be estimated considerably well in early stages of the framework. (c) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.The objective of life cycle analysis is to determine the total environmental impact of any given product. The paper addresses the problem of branched production chains incorporating multi-product plant and inter-process recycle (or reuse). We show that in such chains no product can be assigned an unambiguous environmental impact. Furthermore, the traditional approaches to LCA can lead to some environmental impacts being assigned multiple times and others omitted altogether. The paper introduces the important mass-balance principle that the sum total of all actual environmental impacts should equal the sum total of impacts assigned to the range of products. We describe a method for ensuring material balance in integrated LCA over a multi-product branched production chain. The method is illustrated by application to a desulphurization process. The method allows operators to assign environmental cost to any product according to their own judgement. The judgement is akin to assigning costs to individual products from a multi-product facility. Nevertheless, no matter how the judgement is applied, material balance must be maintained. It is noted that nearly all production chains include multi-product facilities. Environmentally, multi-product facilities are frequently superior because they minimize waste production. However, in traditional LCA, such processes may score badly because their full environmental cost is assigned to more than one product stream. The methods put forward correct the imbalance. A note on recycle and reuse. The chemical industry differentiates between recycle and reuse. "Recycle" is applied to reuse within the same process. For example, unconverted raw material recycled to a reactor. The process design ensures that the recycled material is used on site without transportation, and that the production is exactly balanced with the use. "Reuse" is use of the waste from one process as an input to another process. Reused material may need to be transported and may need preliminary processing before it can be reused. Under this definition, domestic recycled waste is actually reused waste (such as reused waste paper). We follow the convention of differentiating between reuse and recycle. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is a large body of work on supply chain (SC) optimization in the chemical process industry (CM). However, some of the basic aspects of the optimization problem are not adequately handled by the models and solution strategies developed so far in the literature. This paper focuses on the underlying philosophy of our approach to supply chain management (SCM) in the CPI, which aims to overcome the challenges posed by this problem. Two main topics that offer great opportunities for improvement in SCM are discussed. These are the development of modeling approaches and solution strategies that reflect SC dynamics, the inclusion of environmental considerations, and the incorporation of novel business aspects and key performance indicators (KPI) into the existing formulations to enlarge the scope of SC analysis, which is currently rather limited. Our integrated solution strategy for SCM, which covers the aforementioned aspects and implements the ideas and concepts developed in our research, is also presented and its advantages are highlighted in a case study. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we performed an assessment of the environmental impact caused by the use of Spanish roads from 2004 to 2006. Subsequently, through the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, this impact was compared with the construction stage of roads, considering the following impact categories: global warming, formation of tropospheric ozone precursors and acidification. The results show the progressive increase of the emissions of the pollutants that cause global warming. Moreover, the importance of the environmental impact associated to the construction stage is reflected.over the last decades the concepts of Integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA) and Industrial Ecology (IE), both claiming to provide analyses and solutions for sustainability issues, have been developed separately as they emerged in response to questions from different policy-fields. In both fields, specific tools are used to support national and international environmental policy. The focus of IEA and IE tools, however, is different. IEA tools focus on one or a limited number of specific environmental issues. They often model the chain environmental processes with high spatial (and temporal) resolution, but have a low resolution for the material structure of the economy and only partly take into account indirect effects that occur via physical and socio-economic linkages. IE tools take into account all environmental issues related to a specific substance or product. They have a high resolution for the material structure of the economy and take into account indirect effects that occur via physical linkages, however, their environmental modelling is very limited. Both IE and IEA tools have proven to be very useful and neither is superior to the other. However, a combination of both can provide additional information that can be used for more effective policy making. We use the case of a hypothetical world-wide ban on PVC to show that a measure that is not directly related to climate change could still have significant climate effects. This indirect effect is a result of the linkages of material flows in society. We show that IEA tools are not well suited to include these types of effects and that IE tools can fill this gap partially. What is really needed is a broader systems perspective that takes into account the full range of possible side-effects of environmental policy measures. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The performance of a hybrid wind-solar power plant in southwestern Minnesota is modeled for a 2-yr period using hourly wind and solar insolation data. The wind portion of the plant consists of four interconnected wind farms within a radius of 90 km. The solar component of the plant is a parabolic trough solar thermal electric generating system using a heat transfer fluid that drives a steam turbine. The market value of energy produced, retail value of energy produced, and levelized cost of energy of the hybrid plant are compared to those of an energy equivalent wind-only plant. Results show that adding solar thermal electric generating capacity to a wind farm rather than expanding with additional wind capacity provides cost-benefit trade-offs that will continue to change as the two technologies evolve. At the present time, we find that capital cost and levelized cost of energy favor a wind-only plant while electric load matching favors a hybrid wind-solar plant. Regional differences in the solar resource in the US influence the economic viability of the hybrid plant, and a comparison using the present model is made with one location in the Southwest. The hourly data analysis presented here is a possible tool for evaluating the overall economic feasibility and generating characteristics for a hybrid wind-solar thermal electric power plant for any location with available wind, solar, electric load, and price data. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents a study on life cycle assessment (LCA) and its implications in the industrial systems. It considers the implementation scenario of traditional LCA in terms of LCDA (life cycle data acquisition). LCDA is considered as scheme or methodology to advocate sustainability and evolution of industrial systems or infrastructure. In this article an implementation possibility study of LCDA is carried out. The usefulness of the LCDA from various prospective are discussed and summarized. Low cost, high performance . small size microprocessor networked technology, and sensing techniques are used to implement LCDA. Since industrial systems are distributed in nature we select fieldbus type system, the control networking system '. as one of the main implementation tools. Two industrial platforms such as an autonomous guided vehicle and a material handling system are chosen as the study targets. (c) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 27: 66-78, 2008.As lite-cycle-thinking becomes more integrated into waste management, quantitative tools are needed for assessing waste management systems and technologies. This article presents a decision support model to deal with integrated solid waste management planning problems at a regional or national level. The model is called EASEWASTE (environmental assessment of solid waste systems and technologies). The model consists of a number of modules (submodels), each describing a process in a real waste management system, and these modules may combine to represent a complete waste management system in a scenario. EASEWASTE generates data on emissions (inventory), which are translated and aggregated into different environmental impact categories, e.g. the global warming, acidification, and toxicity. To facilitate a "first level" screening evaluation, default values for process parameters have been provided, wherever possible. The EASEWASTE model for life-cycle-assessment of waste management is described and applied to a case study for illustrative purposes. The case study involving hypothetical but realistic data demonstrates the functionality, usability, and flexibilities of the model. The design and implementation of the software successfully address the substantial challenges in integrating process modeling, life-cycle inventory (M), and impact assessment (LCIA) modeling, and optimization into an interactive decision support platform. (c) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 27: 133-142, 2008.To explore the effect of CO2 price on the effective cost of ethanol production we have developed a model that integrates financial and emissions accounting for dry-mill corn ethanol plants. Three policy options are modeled: ( 1) a charge per unit of life cycle CO2 emissions, ( 2) a charge per unit of direct biorefinery emissions only, and ( 3) a low carbon fuel standard ( LCFS). A CO2 charge on life cycle emissions increases production costs by between $ 0.005 and $ 0.008 l(-1) per $ 10 Mg-1 CO2 price increment, across all modeled plant energy systems, with increases under direct emissions somewhat lower in all cases. In contrast, a LCFS increases the cost of production for selected plant energy systems only: a LCFS requiring reductions in average fuel global warming intensity ( GWI) with a target of 10% below the 2005 baseline increases the production costs for coal-fired plants only. For all other plant types, the LCFS operates as a subsidy. The findings depend strongly on the magnitude of a land use change adder. Some land use change adders currently discussed in the literature will push the GWI of all modeled production systems above the LCFS target, flipping the CO2 price from a subsidy to a tax.Raw materials for animal feeding are highly deficient in Europe, which results in massive imports of soya beans from North and South America. These imports are connected with a number of environmental problems. Increasing the grain legume production in Europe could be a promising alternative. The impacts of introducing grain legumes into existing European crop rotations are investigated in this article. The environmental impacts are evaluated by using the SALCA (Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment) life cycle assessment method and the ecoinvent life cycle inventory database. Four regions with potential for increasing their grain legume area were chosen for this study: Saxony-Anhalt (Germany), Barrois (France), Canton Vaud (Switzerland) and Castilla y Leon (Spain). In each of these regions, two crop rotations were defined: a typical cereal-based rotation without grain leaumes and an alternative rotation including grain legumes. The production data were collected by the local project partners from statistics, surveys, literature, documents from extension services and using expert knowledge. The impacts of these two crop rotations were compared relative to three functional units representing different functions of agriculture: hectare per year as a measure of the land management function, E gross margin 1 for the financial function and GJ gross energy of the harvested biomass for the productive function. The following environmental impacts were analysed: demand for non-renewable energy resources, global warming potential, ozone formation, eutrophication, acidification, terrestrial and aquatic ecotoxicity as well as human toxicity. For Canton Vaud, the impacts on biodiversity and soil quality were assessed in addition. Analysed per unit of cultivated area, the introduction of grain legumes into intensive crop rotations with a high proportion of cereals and intensive N-fertilisation leads to a reduced energy use, global warming potential, ozone formation and acidification as well as eco- and human toxicity. The main reasons for this are a reduced application of N-fertilisers (no N to the grain legume and less N to the following crop), improved possibilities for using reduced tillage techniques and greater diversification of the crop rotation, which helps to reduce problems caused by weeds and pathogens (and therefore pesticide applications). The nitrate leaching potential tends to be higher in general, but can be reduced by including catch crops or early sowing of winter grain legumes, where possible. No differences were found for the impacts of crop management on soil quality and biodiversity (studied in Canton Vaud only). In the low-input crop rotation in Spain, the introduction of peas had no favourable environmental effect, mainly because little or no N-fertiliser can be saved. The analysis per sic gross margin 1 (financial function) leads to slightly more favourable results for the grain legume crop rotations compared to the analysis per ha and year. Due to the lower yields of grain legumes compared with cereals, the advantages of grain legumes are smaller when considered per GJ gross energy of the harvested products (productive function). However, the energy efficiency is higher in crop rotations with grain legumes. On the whole, introducing grain legumes into European crop rotations offers interesting options for reducing environmental burdens, especially in a context of depleted fossil energy resources and climate change. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper proposes a hazard-based environmental impact assessment approach (E-Impact), for evaluating the environmental impact during process design and retrofit stages. E-Impact replaces the normalisation step of the conventional impact assessment phase. This approach compares the impact scores for different options and assigns a relative score to each option. This eliminates the complexity of the normalisation step in the evaluation phase. The applicability of the E-Impact has been illustrated through a case study of solvent selection in an acrylic acid manufacturing plant. E-Impact is used in conjunction with Aspen-HYSYS process simulator to develop mass and heat balance data.Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be successfully applied to municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems to identify the overall environmental burdens and to assess the potential environmental impacts. In this study, two methods used for current MSW management in Phuket, a province of Thailand, landfilling (without energy recovery) and incineration (with energy recovery), are compared from both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission points of view. The comparisons are based on a direct activity consideration and also a life cycle perspective. In both cases as well as for both parameters considered, incineration was found to be superior to landfilling. However, the performance of incineration was much better when a life cycle perspective was used. Also, landfilling reversed to be superior to incineration when methane recovery and electricity production were introduced. This study reveals that a complete picture of the environmental performance of MSW management systems is provided by using a life cycle perspective. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This abstract includes global climate changes, potential effects of climate change on forests, preventing greenhouse gas emissions through wood substitution, biomass substitution, wildfire behavior modification, avoiding land-use change, reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions through sequestration, and markets for forest carbon offset projects.Apart from conventional uses of polysaccharide materials, such as food, clothing, paper packaging and construction, new polysaccharide products and materials have been developed. This paper reviews life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in order to gain insight of the environmental profiles of polysaccharide products (e.g. viscose or natural fibre polymer composites) in comparison with their conventional counterparts (e.g. cotton or petrochemical polymers). The application areas covered are textiles, engineering materials and packing. It is found that for each stage of the life cycle (production, use phase and waste management) polysaccharide-based end products show better environmental profiles than their conventional counterparts in terms of non-renewable energy use (NREU) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Cotton is an exception, with high environmental impacts that are related to the use of fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and high water consumption. The available literature for man-made cellulose fibres shows that they allow to reduce NREU and GHG emissions in the fibre production phase. No study has been found for the fabric production and the use phase of man-made cellulose textiles.A comparative assessment was carried out of the technical and environmental sustainability of five different contaminated land remediation projects completed in the UK between 1997 and 2002. The remediation technologies employed were in situ stabilisation/solidification, soil washing, ex situ bioremediation, cover system and excavation, and disposal to landfill. A further objective of the assessment was to highlight areas of sustainability concerns for the individual technologies and projects. The assessment is based around four principal criteria defined by the authors. Each project was assessed using both an overall multi-criteria analysis, detailed in this paper (Part 1), and a study of the detailed impacts on an individual project basis, detailed in Part 2.Turkey is a free market economy that is oriented towards Western markets. It also has strong ambitions to join the European Union and this factor has been beneficial as well taxing with respect to its changing economic situation. In terms of world textile strand production, on a production per capita basis, Turkey occupies the third place in the world. Thus, the economic importance of textile industry for Turkey and its need for consolidation within the world markets is essential. Turkey imports nearly 50% of its energy requirements. The country spends 40-50% of its total export income to import fuel, mainly crude oil and natural gas. The aim of this study is to investigate the possibility of exploitation of solar energy within the Turkish textile industry with particular reference to thermal application and critically examine the present opportunities and barriers. A discussion on the possible adoption of instruments that will help alleviate the barriers is also presented. Results of a detailed life cycle assessment and relevant economics of solar water heater have also been presented. As an addendum the potential for solar water heating within the domestic sector is also briefly discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent years have seen the development of significant research effort focusing on methodological issues regarding the analysis of environmental policies towards integrated pollution intervention and control. Such policies concerning the reverse supply chain of used products have different implications for the environment, which need to be assessed. In this paper, the environmental design of industrial products (EDIP) method, adapted to the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry's life cycle impact assessment (SETAC LCA) method, is used in order to assess the environmental implications in the case of two alternative EOL scenarios, namely, disposal and recovery of used lead-acid batteries. From the comparison of the two scenarios, conclusions are drawn regarding the environmental profile of the examined channels and the findings are analysed and discussed. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an environmental tool which allows the calculation of all the environmental loads related to a process/product/service. In the present work, LCA was applied to analyze the environmental impact of different technologies for wastewater treatment in small populations. In this study, 13 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) of less than 20,000 population equivalent (p.e.) located in Galicia (NW Spain) were inventoried. The results of the evaluation of the environmental impact are expressed in terms of diverse impact categories. Normalization identified eutrophication, mainly as P-PO43-, N-NH4+ and organic load as chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the treated effluent, and terrestrial ecotoxicity, due to the heavy metals content in the sludge, as the most significant categories for all WWTPs. Electricity use plays an important role in five of seven impact categories and presents the highest importance in four of them. When comparing technologies, secondary treatment technologies such as biodenipho and aerobic-anoxic treatment resulted in a lesser environmental impact than extended aeration. The operation of the plants has large contribution on the impact, especially for those that make use of extended aeration. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The methodology for evaluating the impacts and damage costs ('external costs') due to pollution from waste treatment is described and the results are presented, based on the ExternE project series of the European Commission. The damage costs of landfill and incineration of municipal solid waste are compared, with due account for energy and materials recovery, as well as possible differences in transport distance. We have not been able to quantify the total damage costs of leachates because of the complexity of the environmental pathways and of the long time horizon of some persistent pollutants, but we consider an extreme scenario to show that they are not worth worrying about in the sense that reducing the pollutants in leachates beyond current regulations would bring negligible benefit in comparison with the abatement of other sources of the same pollutants. The damage costs due to the construction of the waste treatment facility are negligible. The damage costs of waste transport, which are illustrated by an arbitrary choice of a 100 km round trip by a 16 tonne truck, are also negligible. The benefits of materials recovery make a small contribution to the total damage cost. The only significant contributions come from direct emissions (of the landfill or incinerator) and from avoided emissions due to energy recovery (from an incinerator). Damage costs for incineration range from about 4 to 21 (sic) tonne(waste)(-1), and they are extremely dependent on the assumed scenario for energy recovery. For landfill the cost ranges from about 10 to 13 (sic) tonne(waste)(-1); it is dominated by greenhouse gas emissions because only a fraction of the CH4 can be captured (here assumed to be 70%). Amenity costs (odour, visual impact, noise) are highly site-specific and we only cite results from a literature survey which indicates that such costs could make a significant contribution, very roughly on the order of 1 (sic) tonne(waste)(-1).Water network synthesis contributes to cost reduction and the conservation of water resources by reducing water consumption. A mathematical optimization model is developed in this study to synthesize an environmentally friendly water network system (WNS) by minimizing environmental impacts of a WNS. The concept of life cycle assessment (LCA) is integrated into the objective function of the model to evaluate the environmental effect scores (EESs) of principal contributors to the environmental impacts of a WNS and to optimize tradeoffs among their EESs. The mass balances are formulated from the superstructure model, and the constraints are formulated to take into account the real situation in industrial plants. A case study demonstrates the effect of the objective function on the configuration and environmental performance of a WNS and validates the mathematical optimization model. This model can be used for the design for environment (DfE) of WNSs in the context of sustainable development.Composites of polymers reinforced with natural fibres have received increasing attention. Natural fibres such as sisal, flax, jute and wood-fibres possess good reinforcing capability when properly compounded with polymers. These natural fibre-reinforced composites find a wide array of applications in the building and construction industry and the automobile industry The use of natural fibres in composite materials does not automatically make it a "sustainable material", i.e. "natural" may not necessarily equal "environment friendly". The literature in the field of natural fibre-reinforced composites with respect to their environmental standing is reviewed in this paper. A life cycle assessment has been carried out for wood-fibre-reinforced polypropylene composite preforms produced by compression moulding in comparison with those of polypropylene. Three levels of fibre contents, 10%, 30% and 50% by mass, have been used. The level of environmental impact caused by transportation is also studied. This study introduces a new term called "material service density", which is defined as the volume of material satisfying a specific strength requirement (tensile strength in this study). The rationale behind this is that specific volumes of different materials are required to withstand a given mechanical load (tensile load in this case). Comparison of the material service density for two materials: wood-fibre-reinforced composite and polypropylene are conducted. The results showed that when material service density is used as the functional unit, wood-fibre-reinforced composite demonstrated superior environmental friendliness compared to polypropylene. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Production of milk causes environmental side effects, such as emission of greenhouse gases and nutrient enrichment in surface water. Scientific evidence that shows differences in integral environmental impact between milk production systems in the Netherlands was underexposed. In this paper, two Dutch milk production systems, i.e. a conventional and an organic, were compared on their integral environmental impact and hotspots were identified in the conventional and organic milk production chains. Identification of a hotspot provides insight into mitigation options for conventional and organic milk production. Data of commercial farms that participated in two pilot-studies were used and refer to the year 2003. For each farm, a detailed cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle assessment, including on and off farm pollution was performed. Results showed better environmental performance concerning energy use and eutrophication potential per kilogram of milk for organic farms than for conventional farms. Furthermore, higher on-farm acidification potential and global warming potential per kilogram organic milk implies that higher ammonia, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions occur on farm per kilogram organic milk than for conventional milk. Total acidification potential and global warming potential per kilogram milk did not differ between the selected conventional and organic farms. In addition, results showed lower land use per kilogram conventional milk compared with organic milk. In the selected conventional farms, purchased concentrates was found to be the hotspot in off farm and total impact for all impact categories, whereas in the selected organic farms, both purchased concentrates and roughage were found to be the hotspots in off farm impact. We recommend to improve integral environmental performance of milk production by: (1) reducing the use of concentrates ingredients with a high environmental impact, (2) decreasing the use of concentrates per kilogram of milk, and (3) reducing nutrient surpluses by improving farm nutrient flows. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the major objectives of the current expansion in bioenergy cropping is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions for environmental benefit. The cultivation of bioenergy and biofuel crops also affects biodiversity more directly, both positively and negatively. Ecological impact assessment methods for bioenergy projects (including changes to policy and land use) should address not simply changes to species abundance at field level, but include larger scale issues, including changes to landscape diversity, potential impacts to primary and secondary habitats and potential impacts on climate change. Such assessments require a correspondingly broad range of scientific methods, including modelling of climate and land use as well as the observation of biodiversity and landscape indicators. It is also possible to adopt evidence-based guidelines for good practice for situations where comprehensive assessments are not available. These might include favouring projects and policies that avoid gene flow to wild relatives of crops in centres of diversity, that do not result in invasion by the crop into other habitats, that enhance field-scale biodiversity, that increase landscape diversity, that do not threaten valued habitats within the local landscape, that promote the sustainable management of biodiverse habitats, that do not increase the risk of loss of primary habitats and that result in a proportionately large reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.This paper presents the features of Eco-Bat, a computer program developed to assess the environmental impacts of buildings, including construction materials and energy consumed, during its life cycle. The methodology used to evaluate environmental impacts based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, compatible with ISO 14040 standards, is detailed. The data are mainly extracted from an environmental impacts database, Ecoinvent, which contains values for the manufacturing and elimination of numerous materials as well as other processes. Two applications are presented to illustrate the possibilities offered by Eco-Bat. The first one is a comparison of different variants of building facades. The second example shows the analysis of a whole building including its energy consumption.A process optimization method has been developed for the design of reverse osmosis (RO) processes. RO process configurations are systematically generated using a flexible superstructure and evaluated by economical (investment and operating costs), technical (energy requirement, water recovery rate) and environmental performance indicators (Life Cycle Assessment). The simultaneous optimization of the RO process layout and operating conditions constitutes a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, which is solved using a multi-objective optimization (MOO) approach. The MOO identifies the best technological alternatives for the set of selected objectives. In a given context, it allows to define a set of optimal solutions representing the trade-off between conflicting objectives such as economical costs and environmental impacts. As a case study, the methodology is applied on a brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) desalination project, for which the optimal design is characterized depending on the economical conditions.Environmental impact assessment will soon become a compulsory phase in future potable water production projects, especially when alternative treatment processes such as desalination are considered. An impact assessment tool is therefore developed for the environmental evaluation of potable water production. The evaluation method used is the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The quick and easy assessment of energetic and environmental performances contributes to determine the weak points of potable water production processes or the best suited treatment in a specific context. Studies of some potable water supply scenarios (groundwater treatment, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, seawater reverse osmosis and thermal distillation associated to water transfer) are presented in order to illustrate the environmental information drawn from this tool. The main source of impacts is shown to be electricity production for plant operation. Improvement levers are presented for impact reduction and for the objective comparison between alternative and conventional water treatment processes.Ionic liquids (ILs) have been claimed as "greener" replacements to molecular solvents. However, the environmental impacts of the life cycle phases and comparison with alternative methods have not been studied. Such a life cycle assessment (LCA) is essential before any legitimate claims of "greenness" can be made and is the subject of this paper. The model IL selected is 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([Bmim][BF4]) and its use as a solvent for the manufacture of cyclohexane and in a Diels-Alder reaction was assessed. These uses are compared with more conventional synthesis methods. The results indicate that processes that use IL are highly likely to have a larger life cycle environmental impact than more conventional methods. Sensitivity analysis shows that the result is robust to errors and variation in the data. For cyclohexane synthesis, the industrial gas phase process is the greenest, but the three solvents compared for the Diels-Alder reaction showed comparable life cycle impact. Although ILs are not the most attractive alternatives, the result may change if their separation efficiency, stability and recyclability are improved. Because there are many kinds of ILs,with many applications, two examples are not enough to reach any general conclusions about the greenness of all ILs. However, the life cycle data and approach of this study can be used for evaluating the greenness of more kinds of solvents, processes, and emerging technologies.Thailand has a plan to supply 3.0 million liters per day of ethanol to replace MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether) in Unleaded Gasoline 95 and to substitute some Unleaded Gasoline 91 by the end of year 2011. Presently, 45 ethanol factories have received the permit from the National Ethanol Board to produce ethanol as a fuel with the total capacity up to 11.115 million liters per day. However, there still exist a number of limitations; such as raw material supply, raw materials price, yield of ethanol production, efficiency of conversion technology etc. In this research, a life cycle assessment (LCA) of bio-ethanol production through three possible routes was made. In each route, it estimated the energy consumptions and emissions during the processes; which included farming, conversion, transportation and vehicle operation stages. The feedstocks used for this study were sugarcane, cassava, and lignocellulosic materials. It was found that bio-ethanol production from sugar feedstock with 80 Bar co-generation (steam and electricity) system using bagasses as the fuel provide the best result in term of reduction in fossil fuels consumption compared to cassava feedstock for all the cases studied under this research. In addition, these scenarios provided the added benefit of CO2 reduction due to the use of biomass for electricity and steam production. However, emission of N2O, VOC, CO, NOx, PM10, and SOx are higher compared to conventional gasoline. For the case of bio-ethanol productions from lignocellulosic materials (herbaceous and woody), it was found that a fermentation process with electricity co-production provide the best result in terms of less fossil fuels consumption and less emission compared to other cases investigated. Even though, it showed the negative impacts by increasing VOC, CO, NOx, and PM10, compared to conventional gasoline but predict a positive result on GWP and SOx reduction.Sustainable design and manufacturing must address economic, societal, and environmental dimensions simultaneously over the product life cycle, e.g., manufacturing, use, and end-of-life. While decision support tools have been developed to assist designers in creating more sustainable products, there is a dearth of tools for addressing the sustainability impacts of manufacturing during engineering design. To respond to this need, this paper examines how designers and planners can address key sustainable manufacturing measures such as energy use, resource consumption, waste production, and occupational health. As an illustration, the functional and life cycle performance of several alternatives for a steel component are analyzed. A sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the product and process variables with the greatest effect on the overall life cycle impact. Finally, the analysis considers how changes in the product/process design impact production economics and measures of sustainable performance.Background, Aims and Scope. Sustainability was adopted by UNEP in Rio de Janeiro (1992) as the main political goal for the future development of humankind. It should also be the ultimate aim of product development. According to the well known interpretation of the original definition given in the Brundtland report, sustainability comprises three components: environment, economy and social aspects. These components or 'pillars' of sustainability have to. be properly assessed and balanced if a new product is to be designed or an existing one is to be improved. Methods. The responsibility of the researchers involved in the assessment is to provide appropriate and reliable instruments. For the environmental part there is already an internationally standardized tool: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is the logical counterpart of LCA for the economic assessment. LCC surpasses the purely economic cost calculation by taking into account the use- and end-of-life phases and hidden costs. For this component, a guideline is being developed by SETAC as a basis for future standardization. It is a very important point that different life-cycle based methods (including Social Life Cycle Assessment 'SLCA') for sustainability assessment use consistent ideally identical - system boundaries. This requirement includes that in LCC the physical life cycle ('from cradle-to-grave') is used instead of the frequently used marketing life cycle ('from product development-to-end of market life'). Future Developments. SLCA has been neglected in the past, but is now beginning to be developed. The central problems seem to be how to relate the social indicators (social impact assessment) to the functional unit of the product-system and how to restrict the many social indicators proposed to a manageable number. Meanwhile, qualitative and semi-quantitative approaches are used as substitutes for a full, quantitative SLCA. It is hoped that new methods will be developed and finally standardized by ISO. The combination of LCA, LCC and SLCA will provide the much needed tool for sustainability assessment of products.Goal, Scope and Background. In recent years several different approaches towards Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) have been developed. The purpose of this review is to compare these approaches in order to highlight methodological differences and general shortcomings. SLCA has several similarities with other social assessment tools, although, in order to limit the expanse of the review, only claims to address social impacts from an LCA-like framework are considered. Main Features. The review is to a large extent based on conference proceedings and reports, which are not all easily accessible, since very little has been published on SLCA in the open literature. The review follows the methodological steps of the environmental LCA (ELCA) known from the ISO 14044 standard. Results. The review reveals a broad variety in how the approaches address the steps of the ELCA methodology, particularly in the choice and formulation of indicators. The indicators address a wide variety of issues; some approaches focus on impacts created in the very close proximity of the processes included in the product system, whereas others focus on the more remote societal consequences. Only very little focus has been given to the use stage in the product life cycle. Another very important difference among the proposals is their position towards the use of generic data. Several of the proposals argue that social impacts are connected to the conduct of the company leading to the conclusion that each individual company in the product chain has to be assessed, whereas others claim that generic data can give a sufficiently accurate picture of the associated social impacts. Discussion. The SLCA approaches show that the perception of social impacts is very variable. An assessment focusing on social impacts created in the close proximity of the processes included in the product system will not necessarily point in the same direction as an assessment that focuses on the more societal consequences. This points toward the need to agree on the most relevant impacts to include in the SLCA in order to include the bulk of the situation. Regarding the use of generic data as a basis for the assessment, this obviously has an advantage over using site specific data in relation to practicality, although many authors behind the SLCA approaches claim that reasonable accuracy can only be gained through the use of site specific data. However, in this context, it is important to remember that the quality of site specific data is very dependent on the auditing approach and, therefore, not necessarily of high accuracy, and that generic data might be designed to take into account the location, sector, size and maybe ownership of a company and thereby in some cases give a reasonable impression of the social impacts that can be expected from the company performing the assessed process. Conclusions. This review gives an overview of the present development of SLCA by presenting the existing approaches to SLCA and discussing how they address the methodological aspects in the ISO standardised ELCA framework. The authors found a multitude of different approaches with regard to nearly all steps in the SLCA methodology, thus reflecting that this is a very new and immature field of LCA. Recommendations and Perspectives. SLCA is in an early stage of development where consensus building still has a long way. Nevertheless, some agreement regarding which impacts are most relevant to include in the SLCA in order to cover the field sufficiently seems paramount if the SLCA is to gain any weight as a decision support tool. Furthermore, some assessment of the difference between site specific and generic data could give valuable perspectives on whether a reasonable accuracy can be gained from using generic data or whether the use of site specific data is mandatory and, if so, where it is most important.Goal, Scope and Background. Traditionally, comparative life cycle assessments (LCA) have not considered rebound effects, for instance in case of significant price differences among the compared products. No justifications have been made for this delimitation in scope. This article shows that price differences and the consequent effects of marginal consumer expenditure may influence the conclusions of comparative LCA significantly. We also show that considerations about rebound effects of price differences can be included in LCAs. Methods. The direct rebound effect of a price difference is marginal consumption. Based on statistical data on private consumption in different income groups (Statistics Denmark 2005a, 2005b), the present article provides an estimate of how an average Danish household will spend an additional 1 DKK for further consumer goods, when the household has gained money from choosing a cheaper product alternative. The approach is to use marginal income changes and the following changes in consumption patterns as an expression for marginal consumption. Secondly, the environmental impact potentials related to this marginal consumption are estimated by the use of environmental impact intensity data from an IO-LCA database (Weidema et al. 2005). Finally, it is discussed whether, and in which ways the conclusions of comparative LCAs can be affected by including the price difference between product alternatives. This is elucidated in a case study of a comparative LCA screening of two different kinds of Danish cheese products (Fricke et al. 2004). Results. Car purchase and driving, use and maintenance of dwelling, clothing purchase and insurance constitutes the largest percentages of the marginal consumption. In a case study of two cheeses, the including the impact potentials related to the price difference results in significant changes in the total impact potentials. Considering the relatively small price difference of the two products, it is likely also to have a significant influence on the results of comparative LCAs more generally. Discussion. The influence of marginal consumption in comparative LCAs is relevant to consider in situations with large differences in the price of the product alternatives being compared, and in situations with minor differences in the impact potentials related to the alternatives. However, different uncertainties are linked to determining the pattern for marginal consumption and the environmental impact potential related to this. These are first of all related to the method used, but also include inaccurate data of consumption in households, aggregation and weighting of income groups, aggregation of product groups, estimation and size of the price difference, and the general applicability of the results. Conclusion. Incorporating marginal consumption in consequential LCAs is possible in practice. In the case study used, including the rebound effects of the price difference has a significant influence on the result of the comparative LCA, as the result for the impact categories acidification and nutrient enrichment changes in favour of the expensive product. Recommendations and Perspectives. It is recommended that the rebound effects of price differences should be included more frequently in LCAs. In order to ensure this, further research in marginal consumption and investment patterns and 10 data for different countries or regions is required. Furthermore, this study does not consider the economic distributional consequences of buying an expensive product instead of a cheaper product (e.g. related to how the profit is spent by those who provided the product). It should also be noted, that more expensive products not necessarily result in less consumption, as those who provided the product also will spend the money they have earned from the sale. Ideally, these consequences should also be further investigated. Likewise, the development of databases to include marginal consumption in PC-tools is needed. In general, considerations of marginal consumption would favour expensive product alternatives, depending, however, on the type of consumer.Background, Aims and Scope. Although LCA is frequently used in product comparison, many practitioners are interested in identifying and assessing improvements within a life cycle. Thus, the goals of this work are to provide guidelines for scenario formulation for process and material alternatives within a life cycle inventory and to evaluate the usefulness of decision tree and matrix computational structures in the assessment of material and process alternatives. We assume that if the analysis goal is to guide the selection among alternatives towards reduced life cycle environmental impacts, then the analysis should estimate the inventory results in a manner that: (1) reveals the optimal set of processes with respect to minimization of each impact of interest, and (2) minimizes and organizes computational and data collection needs. Methods. A sample industrial system is used to reveal the complexities of scenario formulation for process and material alternatives in an LCI. The system includes 4 processes, each executable in 2 different ways, as well as 1 process able to use 2 different materials interchangeably. We formulate and evaluate scenarios for this system using three different methods and find advantages and disadvantages with each. First, the single branch decision tree method stays true to the typical construction of decision trees such that each branch of the tree represents a single scenario. Next, the process flow decision tree method strays from the typical construction of decision trees by following the process flow of the product system, such that multiple branches are needed to represent a single scenario. In the final method, disaggregating the demand vector, each scenario is represented by separate vectors which are combined into a matrix to allow the simultaneous solution of the inventory problem for all scenarios. Results. For both decision tree and matrix methods, scenario formulation, data collection, and scenario analysis are facilitated in two ways. First, process alternatives that cannot actually be chosen should be modeled as sub-inventories (or as a complete LCI within an LCI). Second, material alternatives (e.g., a choice between structural materials) must be maintained within the analysis to avoid the creation of artificial multi-functional processes. Further, in the same manner that decision trees can be used to estimate 'expected value' (the sum of the probability of each scenario multiplied by its 'value'), we find that expected inventory and impact results can be defined for both decision tree and matrix methods. Discussion. For scenario formulation, naming scenarios in a way that differentiate them from other scenarios is complex and important in the continuing development of LCI data for use in databases or LCA software. In the formulation and assessment of scenarios, decision tree methods offer some level of visual appeal and the potential for using commercially available software/traditional decision tree solution constructs for estimating expected values (for relatively small or highly aggregated product systems). However, solving decision tree systems requires the use of sequential process scaling which is difficult to formalize with mathematical notation. In contrast, preparation of a demand matrix does not require use of the sequential method to solve the inventory problem but requires careful scenario tracking efforts. Conclusions. Here, we recognize that improvements can be made within a product system. This recognition supports the greater use of LCA in supply chain formation and product research, development, and design. We further conclude that although both decision tree and matrix methods are formulated herein to reveal optimal life cycle scenarios, the use of demand matrices is preferred in the preparation of a formal mathematical construct. Further, for both methods, data collection and assessment are facilitated by the use of sub-inventories (or as a complete LCI within an LCI) for process alternatives and the full consideration of material alternatives to avoid the creation of artificial multi-functional processes. Recommendations and Perspectives. The methods described here are used in the assessment of forest management alternatives and are being further developed to form national commodity models considering technology alternatives, national production mixes and imports, and point-to-point transportation models.Background Aims and Scope. The pulp and paper (P&P) industry is traditionally known to be a large contributor to environmental pollution due its large consumptions of energy and chemicals. Enzymatic processing, however, offers potential opportunities for changing the industry towards more environmentally friendly and efficient operations compared to the conventional methods. The aims of the present study has been to investigate whether the enzyme technology is a more environmentally sound alternative than the conventional ways of producing paper. The study addresses five enzyme applications by quantitative means and discusses the environmental potential of a range of other enzyme applications by qualitative means. Methods. LCA is used as analytical tool and modelling is facilitated in SimaPro software. Foreground LCA data are production/company specific and collected from P&P technology service providers, specific P&P companies and P&P researchers. The background data on energy systems, auxiliary chemicals, etc. are primarily taken from the ecoinvent database. Results. The study shows that fossil energy consumption and potential environmental impacts (global warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment, photochemical smog formation) induced by enzyme production are low compared with the impacts that they save when applied in bleach boosting, refining, pitch control, deinking, and stickies control. Discussion. The general explanation is that small amounts of enzyme provide the same function as large amounts of chemicals and that enzymatic processes generally require less fossil energy inputs than conventional processes. Data quality assessments and sensitivity analyses indicate that this observation is robust for all processes except deinking, although the results are subject to uncertainty and much variation. Conclusions and Recommendations. The environmental improvements that can be achieved by application of enzymatic solutions in the P&P industry are promising. To get a greater penetration of enzymatic solutions in the market and to harvest the environmental advantages of biotechnological inventions, it is recommended that enzymatic solutions should be given more attention in, for instance, 'Best Available Technology' notes within the framework of the European Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC).Background, Aim and Scope. The increasing concern about environment protection and a broader awareness of the sustainable development issues cause more and more attention to be given to the environmental impacts of products through the different phases of their life cycle. Foods are definitely among the products whose overall environmental performance can be effectively investigated resorting to LCA. A LCA case study was performed in order to detect and quantify the environmental impacts deriving from the life cycle of a lager beer produced by an Italian small brewery, investigating and comparing two packaging options: beer in 20 L returnable stainless steel kegs and beer in 33 cL one way glass bottles. Materials and Methods. The investigated system included: production and acquisition of materials and energy, brewing process, packaging, transports, beer consumption and waste disposal. Data for the study were mostly collected from the Theresianer Brewery and completed on the basis of literature information. Data uncertainty was treated with a Monte Carlo analysis. Life Cycle Inventories were constructed for 1 L of beer in bottle and 1 L of beer in keg using the LCA software SimaPro and then assessed at the endpoint level according to the Eco-Indicator'99 method. Results. Inorganic emissions, land use and fossil fuel consumptions resulted to be the most critical environmental issues of both beer life cycles. Beer in keg turned out to cause a lower environmental load along its life cycle than bottled beer; this was mainly due to the higher emissions and the higher energy consumptions allocated to the glass bottles. Moreover, beer consumption phase, glass bottle production and barley cultivation were found to be the critical stages of the beer life cycle. Discussion. The brewing process did not result as a critical stage and therefore the company dimension may not be a crucial element for the overall impact quantification. On the contrary, beer consumption may have a significant impact mainly due to the consumer displacement. Conclusions. The analysis pointed out the relevance of the beer consumption phase and of the packaging choice within the beer life cycle and allowed to detect the other critical stages of the life cycle. It is worth to notice that producers and consumers can be active and responsible actors in pursuing the collective goal of the environmental sustainability. Recommendations and Perspectives. In order to improve the environmental performance of the beer life cycle, producers should set up marketing strategies in favour of reusable packaging and consumers should prefer draught beer and reduce car use. As beer consumption phase, bottle production and recycling and barley cultivation were found to be very significant stages of the life cycle of the. beer, deepening the analysis of these aspects in similar studies is suggested.Goal, Scope and Background. Despite the well-known advantages of recycling materials to reduce solid waste or save natural resources, the recycling stage is an additional process within the life cycle that has its own energy and input requirements, as well as specific emissions. The objective of the present paper is to analyze the life cycle inventory associated with the increase in recycling rate (from 2% up to 22% at present) of the cardboard contained in the aseptic packaging for long-life milk. The main aspects of the manufacturing of the Tetra Pak aseptic package, including the filling of the product, the distribution of the conditioned product, up to the final disposal and recycling rates, were considered. Materials and Methods. This study was conducted in accordance with the general directives of the ISO 14040 series. The packaging material system was assessed using 1000 liters of milk as a functional unit, in a packaging system containing 12 units of 1 L cartons each, placed on a corrugated paperboard tray wrapped in polyethylene shrink film and arranged onto one-way wooden pallets. Brazilian inventories for energy, carton, corrugated paperboard and aluminum, based on site-collected data were employed. The final disposal of used packages was modeled using the Average Brazilian Municipal Solid Waste Management data collected for the purpose of the census of the year 2000. Results. Comparison of the total energy consumption throughout the whole life cycle of two recycling scenarios (i.e. different recycling rates) analyzed shows that the higher recycling rate led to a 6% reduction of the total energy requirement for the long-life milk package material system. The most significant reductions in the consumption of natural resources were: 8% water, 11% wood and 10% land use savings. Greenhouse gases were the main reduced air emissions and contributed with a reduction of 9.7% in GWP. Most water emissions were reduced: 10% COD, 9% BOD and 6% TSS. A unique drawback directly caused by the increase of the recycling rate was an increase of 14.4 g in TDS emissions (57%). Discussion. The reduction in energy requirements are related and limited to the proportionality among the different materials that make up the packaging system. Most emission reductions result from the replacement of virgin materials with recycled materials in the packaging system. Although the average balance of water emissions is positive, the need to improve wastewater treatment processes in the paper recycling plants to reduce TDS is highlighted as a key issue. Conclusions. It may be concluded that the increase in the recycling rate brings about a series of benefits in terms of reduction of energy and natural resource consumption, air pollutants and most water emissions. In this case, the increase of the recycling rate improved the overall environmental performance of the aseptic Tetra Pak system for milk. Recommendations and Perspectives. The authors are currently analyzing alternative recycling scenarios that will enable one to evaluate maximum reduction in GWP. Further studies could include the agriculture stages, livestock and consumer phase to broaden the environmental evaluation.Goal and Scope. A well-to-wheel analysis has been conducted for cassava-based ethanol (CE) in Thailand. The aim of the analysis is to assess the potentials of CE in the form of gasohol E10 for promoting energy security and reducing environmental impacts in comparison with conventional gasoline (CG). Method. In the LCA procedure, three separate but interrelated components: inventory analysis, characterization and interpretation were performed for the complete chain of the fuel life cycle. To compare gasohol E10 and CG, this study addressed their impact potentials per gasoline-equivalent litre, taking into account the performance difference between gasohol and gasoline in an explosion motor. Results and Discussions. The results obtained show that CE in the form of E10, along its whole life cycle, reduces certain environmental loads compared to CG. The percentage reductions relative to CG are 6.1% for fossil energy use, 6.0% for global warming potential, 6.8% for acidification, and 12.2% for nutrient enrichment. Using biomass in place of fossil fuels for process energy in the manufacture of ethanol leads to improved overall life cycle energy and environmental performance of ethanol blends relative to CG. Conclusions and Outlook. The LCA brings to light the key areas in the ethanol production cycle that researchers and technicians need to work on to maximize ethanol's contribution to energy security and environmental sustainability.Background, Aims and Scope. Telework is associated with a number of costs and benefits, including reduced company overhead costs, need for office and parking space, office energy consumption, increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, retention of specialized employees, reduction in transportation-related fuel consumption and air pollution, and many others. This paper applies a systems model to telework and nontelework scenarios to quantify direct energy and fuel costs and external costs related to air emissions from transportation, heating, cooling, lighting, and electronic and electrical equipment use both at the company and the home office, including rebound effects. Methods. E-COMMUTair, a scalable web-based tool created by the authors and designed to assess the air pollution effects of individual or company telework programs versus nontelework is employed along with Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis. E-COMMUTair is using the latest available U.S. energy use and air emission factors. The external costs of air emissions are estimated. The role of telecommuting frequency is emphasized, and differences between various states are explored. The paper identifies the drivers of external costs, and presents an example breakeven analysis focused on CO, and key model parameters. Results and Discussion. Nontelework's external costs are equal to or higher than telework's costs for every model component, demonstrating that telework programs could provide benefits, including monetary benefits, to society. Transportation is the major contributor to the total costs, with home heating and cooling, and office cooling following. Most of the monetary costs associated with transportation are borne by individuals rather than society. Teleworking employees increase their home-related expenses but reduce their travel-related expenses, ending up with smaller total costs. Energy and fuel costs get reduced in the office space when telework programs are applied, resulting in benefits to companies. Energy and external costs decrease as telework frequency increases. When compared to not teleworking, 5-day telework scenarios on cooling days in California can have about 50-70% lower total costs. The probabilistic analysis confirms the results of the deterministic analysis. The sensitivity analysis reveals that for the nontelework scenario, transportation-related variables such as commuting distance and average number of passengers affect CO, CO, and NO, emissions, while for the telework part, frequency and the number of roundtrips are the most relevant. Conclusions. Both analyses show that telework programs have the potential to lower both energy and external costs creating a favorable bottom line for society, employees, and companies by decreasing tailpipe emissions, lowering transportation costs, and decreasing energy costs at the company office. However, important parameters such as telecommuting frequency, characteristics of the office and home space, climate patterns, and rebound effects that determine external costs along with the price of gasoline, electricity and natural gas in the state where the program is implemented can greatly influence the final results, and should be carefully examined. Recommendations and Perspectives. The effects of telework programs on people's daily lives are complex and difficult to predict and quantify. The current analysis showed that significant financial benefits can be expected from telework programs, but as seen often in environmental policy-making, the details of implementation will make or break the success of a program.Background, Aims and Scope. In the world there are more than thirty LCA software products, but they do not have inventories or an evaluation method either with regional applicability, especially for Colombia. A special software for Life Cycle Assessment and the Environmental Performance Evaluation has been developed, which considers the environmental impacts generated by products during their life cycle and processes involving productive activities. It accounts with inventories applicable to Colombia, for processes and services like electrical energy production, transport and waste disposition. The Ecoscarcity evaluation method was adapted to Colombia with national legislation and agreements for polluting reduction signed by country and the EPI (Environmental Points of Impact) was established for 353 substances. Methods. The software allows users to use the methodology which corresponds to the standard ISO 14030 and 14040 directives. The database uses the SPOLD international format. For ApeironPro software, database information used from monitoring air emissions and effluents on factories in the region were realized by the Environmental Research Group from Pontificia Bolivariana University and secondary type information has been obtained starting from studies realized by environmental organizations and factories in the country which are interested in the management of quality environmental indicators. The antiquity of the information was restricted from the last 5 years, 1998 to 2003, in order to possess temporal representativity. The Ecoscarciry method uses information of the Environmental Ministry and Environmental Institutes of Colombia for the actual current load (F), and target norm for total load (F-k), using information with national legislation and agreements for polluting reduction signed by the respective countries. The software was designed in Web ambience with the database in MySQL, while the programming language was JAVA from Sun Microsystem. Results. The software has inventories for energy (electricity from coal, natural gas, fuel oil, hydroelectricity) transport (mean air, truck, motor bus), processes (plastics, rubber, sugar, paints production, detergent production, combustion in heaters, foundry of copper, iron, gold), waste disposal (incineration and landfill). Discussion. The Ecoscarcity method was analyzed for seven impact categories: climate change, acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, photo-oxidant formation, eutrophication, ecotoxicity and depletion of abiotic resources (coal, oil, natural gas, copper, nickel). Conclusions. For Colombia, the highest environmental impact is associated with the ozone layer depletion (235.7 Ecopoints/g) while the lowest is associated with depletion of coal (8.6 x 10(-7) Ecopoints/g), although this is reasonable since Colombia is the tenth largest producer of coal in the world. Recommendations and Perspectives. Latin America and Colombia need more inventories for their processes and to identify the more significant environmental impacts of their industries. This work is an initial step in the research about Life Cycle Assessment and can also improve the work in ecolabels for Colombia.This paper discusses some crucial energetic, environmental and sustainability issues and the role of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies as one of the potential solutions to these issues. The commercialization plans in various industrialized countries (USA, Canada, Japan, etc.) for these technologies have started by identifying the most likely early markets for hydrogen as an energy carrier and fuel cells as power producing devices from micro-to macro-applications, and set realistic near-term and mid-term goals for selected market penetration. The plans outline the major barriers to achieving those goals and recommends activities to capitalize on the incentives and overcome the market barriers. The paper also presents possible future hydrogen energy-utilization patterns for better environment and sustainable development, and shows how the principles of thermodynamics via energy can be beneficially used to evaluate hydrogen and fuel cell systems and their role in sustainability. Throughout the paper, current and future perspectives regarding thermodynamics and sustainable development are considered. (C) 2008 Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. All rights reservedThis study investigates the environmental performance of kenaf fiber reinforced biocomposite (polyhydroxybutyrate/kenaf fiber) via life cycle assessment and compares its environmental performance to that of glass fiber reinforced composite (polypropylene/glass fiber). The system boundary in the analysis covers the entire life cycle of kenaf fiber reinforced biocomposite from cradle to grave. Two waste management scenarios are included in the analysis to determine the environmental effects due to waste management scenarios: landfill and composting. Using kenaf fiber reinforced biocomposite as a raw material for automobile parts instead of glass fiber reinforced composite can reduce nonrenewable energy consumption by 23-24% and greenhouse gas emissions by 6-16%. However, the kenaf fiber reinforced biocomposite product system produces more local environmental impacts such as photochemical smog formation, acidification and eutrophication than the glass fiber reinforced composite product system because of nutrient losses to the environment during biomass production. Among the environmental impacts considered in this study, only greenhouse gas emissions associated with the kenaf fiber reinforced biocomposite product system are significantly affected by the waste management scenarios. The composting scenario produces less greenhouse gas emissions than the landfill scenario because some of the carbon in kenaf fiber reinforced biocomposite is sequestered in soil as soil organic carbon when compost made from kenaf fiber reinforced biocomposite is applied to the land. The environmentally sensitive sub-processes for nonrenewable energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are polyhydroxybutyrate manufacturing, injection molding and kenaf fiber production processes. Polyhydroxybutyrate manufacturing and injection molding are energy intensive processes. The sodium hydroxide solution used in the fiber surface treatment is the primary environmentally sensitive parameter in kenaf fiber production process in terms of nonrenewable energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.Fuel cells are recognized as an emerging power generation system for the future. Fuel cells make use of mostly hydrogen gas as their input fuel, which is extracted from various processes involving emissions and energy consumption. A complete understanding of environmental impacts associated with fuel cell during its entire life cycle, starting from extraction of fuel, through manufacturing, operation and ultimately to the disposal stage is greatly required. The current paper reviews various life cycle analysis studies on fuel cell technology. Such an approach would demand the support of informatics tools to analyze and manage information. The paper aims at assessing various environmental informatics tools available to support the life cycle studies. The paper investigates, in particular, the environmental contributions of various components and materials during the production process of hydrogen fuel. Energy requirements and reduction in air emissions have been studied in comparison with alternative technologies such as IC engines, wind and solar energy.There is growing demand to develop methods that integrate environmental and economic assessment of more sustainable technologies incorporated into commercial and residential buildings. In this paper, we incorporate economic and energy use data obtained for a green roof operating in the Midwest U. S. at latitude 42.94N into an integrated approach to estimate and compare the economic and environmental impacts of an intensive (or extensive) green roof with a built-up roof. The life cycle stages included in the analysis were material acquisition life stage which including the transportation effects from material extraction through manufacturing to the finished products, and the use and maintenance life stage of the building. Environmental impact analysis indicates that green roof emits three times more environmental pollutants than built-up roofs in the material acquisition life stage. However, in the use and maintenance life stage, built-up roof emits three times more pollutants than a green roof. Overall, when emissions from both material acquisition life stage and use and maintenance life stage are combined, the built-up roof contributes almost 3 times more (or 46% more) environmental emissions than green roof over a 45 year building life span. Furthermore the overall energy use, specifically energy involved in the transportation from material extraction through to the finished product indicate that green roof uses 2.5 times less energy than a built-up roof. An Economic Input and Output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) was used to estimate the environmental impacts. The economic impact over an assumed 45 year building life was determined using life cycle costing, taking into account Net Present Value (NPV) calculations. Life cycle costing results indicate that green roof costs approximately 50% less to maintain over a 45 year-building life than a built-up roof A Monte Carlo simulation is also performed to account for any variability in cost data. In addition, the paper presents a method to quantify the value incentive that a decision-maker has in adopting green technology. Results from the study indicate that when a green roof is compared to the Midwest regional NPV of a built-up roof, wend that the cost to maintain it ($35 per square foot) lies well below the average regional NPV of $59 per square foot of a built-up roof.Complex decision contexts involving multiple (and often competing) policy objectives are common in both strategic and operational decisions encountered in engineering projects or programmes. The need to consider multiple objectives and to address the concerns of diverse stakeholders raises particular difficulties in applying sustainable development principles to defining and choosing an optimum project, process, product, policy or solution. This paper derives some fundamental characteristics of appropriate support for sustainable development decisions. Using these characteristics, three methodologies, which have been proposed as support tools for making strategic decisions and assessing policy choices for their contributions towards sustainable development, are reviewed critically with reference to their theoretical basis and informed by case studies of engineering applications. Recommendations are made to support best practice and to develop more effective support for such decisions in future.A revised methodology for calculating ecological footprints is proposed. The method considers anthropogenic disturbances at a finer level of geographical desegregation than previous methods; instead of a single national land area it considers 1408 smaller regions within Australia. It also addresses a previous gap in disturbance-based ecological footprint calculation, that is, the exclusion of ecotoxic emissions. The method is described and illustrated using a case study. The resulting ecological footprint is larger than previous calculations, but it avoids a current methodological problem in which the energy used to treat exhaust gases or wastewaters increases the ecological footprint of communities without any corresponding benefit associated with reduced emissions to the environment.Organic farming (OF) principles include the idea of reducing dependence of fossil fuels, but little has been achieved on this objective so far in Danish OF. Energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from an average 39 ha cash crop farm were calculated and alternative crop rotations for bio-energy production were modeled. Growing rapeseed on 10% of the land could produce bio-diesel to replace 50-60% of the tractor diesel used on the farm. Increasing grass-clover area to 20% of the land and using half of this yield for biogas production could change the cash crop farm to a net energy producer, and reduce GHG emissions while reducing the overall output of products only marginally. Increasing grass-clover area would improve the nutrient management on the farm and eliminate dependence on conventional pig slurry if the biogas residues were returned to cash crop fields.Polymerization strategies aiming at further reducing the environmental impact of the already "green" emulsion polymerization process were investigated. Life cycle assessment showed that non-isothermal strategies starting at low temperature resulted in an environmental impact lower than the isothermal ones. Nevertheless, the major part of the environmental impact was due to raw materials. The effect of the polymerization strategy on polymer microstructure was investigated.This work proposes a novel framework for the optimal design of chemical processes whose main novelty lies in the incorporation of environmental concerns based on the principles of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The approach presented applies mixed-integer modeling techniques to the superstructure optimization of sustainable chemical process flowsheets. As such, the resulting mathematical formulation simultaneously accounts for the minimization of the environmental impact and the cost. The environmental impact is measured through the Eco-indicator 99, which reflects the advances in the damage-oriented method recently developed for Life Cycle Impact Assessment. The incorporation of this environmental performance measure at the modeling stage causes a multiobjective mixed-integer nonlinear problem (moMINLP) that can be addressed by standard techniques for multiobjective optimization. The main advantages of our approach are highlighted through its application to a well-known design problem (the hydrodealkylation (HDA) of toluene), for which the set of trade-off solutions, in terms of cost and environmental criteria, is computed. The obtained results show that an inherent tradeoff naturally exists between both objectives and also suggest that significant environmental improvements can be achieved if decision makers are willing to compromise,the economic benefit of the process.We present and discuss ecological footprint (EF) calculations for a large number of products and services consumed in the western economy. Product-specific EFs were calculated from consistent and quality-controlled life cycle information of 2630 products and services, including energy, materials, transport, waste treatment and infrastructural processes. We formed 19 homogeneous product/process subgroups for further analysis, containing in total 1549 processes. Per group, the average contribution of two types of land occupation (direct and energy related) to the total EF was derived. It was found that the ecological footprint of the majority of products is dominated by the consumption of non-renewable energy. Notable exceptions are the EFs of biomass energy, hydro energy, paper and cardboard, and agricultural products with a relatively high contribution of direct land occupation. We also compared the ecological footprint results with the results of a commonly used life cycle impact assessment method, the Ecoindicator 99 (EI). It was found that the majority of the products have an EF/EI ratio of around 30 m(2)-eq. yr/ ecopoint +/- a factor of 5. The typical ratio reduces to 25 m(2) yr/ecopoints by excluding the arbitrary EF for nuclear energy demand. The relatively small variation of this ratio implies that the use of land and use of fossil fuels are important drivers of overall environmental impact. Ecological footprints may therefore serve as a screening indicator for environmental performance. However, our results also show that the usefulness of EF as a stand-alone indicator for environmental impact is limited for product life cycles with relative high mineral consumption and process-specific metal and dust emissions. For these products the EF/EI ratio can substantially deviate from the average value. Finally, we suggest that the ecological footprint product data provided in this paper can be used to improve the footprint estimates of production, import and export of products on a national scale and footprint estimates of various lifestyles. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the electric generation by means of photovoltaic panels. It considers mass and energy flows over the whole production process starting from silica extraction to the final panel assembling, considering the most advanced and consolidate technologies for polycrystalline silicon panel production. Some considerations about the production cycle are reported; the most critical phases are the transformation of metallic silicon into solar silicon and the panel assembling.. The former process is characterised by a great electricity consumption, even if the most efficient conversion technology is considered, the latter by the use of aluminium frame and glass roofing, which are very energy-intensive materials. Moreover, the energy pay back time (EPBT) and the potential for CO2 mitigation have been evaluated, considering different geographic collocations of the photovoltaic plant with different values of solar radiation, latitude, altitude and national energetic mix for electricity production. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the life cycle GHG emissions from existing UK pulverized coal power plants. The life cycle of the electricity Generation plant includes construction, operation and decommissioning. The operation phase is extended to upstream and downstream processes. Upstream processes include the mining and transport of coal including methane leakage and the production and transport of limestone and ammonia, which are necessary for flue gas clean up. Downstream processes, on the other hand, include waste disposal and the recovery of land used for surface mining. The methodology used is material based process analysis that allows calculation of the total emissions for each process involved. A simple model for predicting the energy and material requirements of the power plant is developed. Preliminary calculations reveal that for a typical UK coal fired plant, the life cycle emissions amount to 990 g CO2-e/kWh of electricity generated, which compares well with previous UK studies. The majority of these emissions result from direct fuel combustion (882 g/kWh 89%) with methane leakage from mining operations accounting for 60% of indirect emissions. In total, mining operations (including methane leakage) account for 67.4% of indirect emissions, while limestone and other material production and transport account for 31.5%. The methodology developed is also applied to a typical IGCC power plant. It is found that IGCC life cycle emissions are 15% less than those from PC power plants. Furthermore, upon investigating the influence of power plant parameters on life cycle emissions, it is determined that, while the effect of changing the load factor is negligible, increasing efficiency from 35% to 38% can reduce emissions by 7.6%. The current study is funded by the UK National Environment Research Council (NERC) and is undertaken as part of the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Consortium (UKCCSC). Future work will investigate the life cycle emissions from other power generation technologies with and without carbon capture and storage. The current paper reveals that it might be possible that, when CCS is employed. the emissions during generation decrease to a level where the emissions from upstream processes (i.e. coal production and transport) become dominant, and so, the life cycle efficiency of the CCS system can be significantly reduced. The location of coal, coal composition and mining method are important in determining the overall impacts. In addition to studying the net emissions from CCS systems, future work will also investigate the feasibility and technoeconomics of these systems as a means of carbon abatement. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this communication, a study is carried out to evaluate an annual thermal and exergy efficiency of a hybrid photovoltaic thermal (HPVT) air collector for different Indian climate conditions, of Srinagar, Mumbai, Jodhpur, New Delhi and Banglore. The study has been based on electrical, thermal and exergy output of the HPVT air collector. Further, the life cycle analysis in terms of cost/kWh has been carried out. The main focus of the study is to see the effect of interest rate, life of the HPVT air collector, subsidy, etc. on the cost/ kWh HPVT air collector. A comparison is made keeping in view the energy matrices. The study reveals that (i) annual thermal and electrical efficiency decreases with increase in solar radiation and (ii) the cost/kWh is higher in case of exergy when compared with cost/kWh on the basis of thermal energy for all climate conditions. The cost/kWh for climate conditions of Jodhpur is most economical. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle optimization model intended to potentially reduce the environmental impacts of energy use in commercial buildings is presented. A combination of energy simulation, life cycle assessment, and operations research techniques are used to develop the model. In addition to conventional energy systems, such as the electric grid and a gas boiler, cogeneration systems which concurrently generate power and heat are investigated as an alternative source of energy. Cogeneration systems appeared to be an attractive alternative to conventional systems when considering life cycle environmental criteria. Internal combustion engine and microturbine (MT) cogeneration systems resulted in a reduction of up to 38% in global warming potential compared with conventional systems, while solid oxide fuel cell and MT cogeneration systems resulted in a reduction of up to 94% in tropospheric ozone precursor potential (TOPP). Results include a Pareto-optimal frontier between reducing costs and reducing the selected environmental indicators.This study describes a model (MIKADO) to analyse options to reduce the environmental impact of aluminium die casting. This model will take a company perspective, so that it can be used as a decision-support tool for the environmental management of a plant. MIKADO can be used to perform scenario analyses to analyse the impact on the environment of different strategies, while taking into account both economical and ecological consequences of decision-making. The MIKADO approach is based on relevant parts of Life Cycle Assessment, environmental systems management and Multi-criteria Analysis. One of the strengths of MIKADO is the integrated approach that it takes in analysing, simultaneously, a set of eight environmental problems, including: human toxicity, abiotic depletion, global warming, solid waste production, acidification, terrestrial ecotoxicity, photochemical ozone formation and aquatic toxicity, caused by the aluminium die casting plant. The model is developed for and applied to a specific aluminium die casting plant supplying car manufacturers with aluminium die casting products. We present model results for a reference case, indicating that most of the environmental impact of the plant is associated with releases of compounds during the melting and casting of alloy, as well as with the use of natural gas. Finally, we present results of a partial sensitivity analysis, indicating the sensitivity of the model to changes in parameter values. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Distributed generation in micro cogeneration systems, e.g. reciprocating or Stirling engines and fuel cells, is of increasing interest in the energy market. This paper investigates environmental impacts of micro cogeneration by carrying out a detailed life cycle assessment and an analysis of local air quality impacts of micro cogeneration systems. Most micro cogeneration systems are superior, as far as the reduction of GHG emissions is concerned, not only to average electricity and heat supply, but also to state-of-the art separate production of electricity in gas power plants and heat in condensing boilers. The GHG advantages of micro cogeneration plants are comparable to district heating with CHP. Under the assumption that gas condensing boilers are the competing heat-supply technology, all technologies are within a very narrow range. Looking at the GHG reduction potential on the level of a supply object (e.g. a single-family house) by modeling the operation with a CHP optimization tool, the achievable mitigation potential is somewhat lower, because the micro cogeneration systems do not supply the whole energy demand. Here, fuel cells offer the advantage of a higher power-to-heat ratio. Environmental impacts other than those related to climate and resource protection relate more specifically to technology. in addition to investigating the emissions side, analysis of the air quality situation of a residential area supplied by reciprocating engines was carried out. The analysis shows that for the selected conditions, the additional emission of NO, due to the engines do not create severe additional environmental impacts. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A high-cycle fatigue constitutive model for concrete joint interfaces is proposed and the direct path-integral scheme for RC-PC structures with junction planes is presented. Both cyclic pullout and the associated dowel action of reinforcing bars are formulated at a crack/joint section in terms of the relative displacement derivatives of a pair of joint planes. The proposed differential formula is verified by high cycle fatigue experiments of dowel bars and pullout of reinforcement crossing a joint in structural concrete. In conducting the direct path integral of the constitutive equations, a logarithmic time integration method is adopted so as to achieve highly accelerated computation with reasonable accuracy. The scheme is applied to the assembly of pre-cast pre-stressed concrete members with reinforced concrete joints for the purpose of life-cycle assessment. A mechanics-based discussion is presented of the different fatigue life observed in pre-cast slabs with localized discrete joints and in monolithically constructed reinforced concrete, where dispersed cracking develops.This paper discusses the assessment and comparison of the life cycle energy impacts of paper-based and electronic environmental reports in the Japanese automotive industry. By January 2007, there were 129 031 ISO 14001 certified organisations and an additional 5389 certified to the European eco-management and audit scheme (EMAS). Energy use and the environmental burdens of environmental reporting by these companies, has grown and can no longer be ignored. Electronic systems are often portrayed as being more environmentally beneficial than traditional ones, for environmental reporting. However there are no known assessment methodologies that address this subject. This paper therefore creates a framework for analysing the two systems. Energy consumption models are developed within a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework and applied to the traditional and electronic systems respectively. A postal system model is developed for energy consumption in traditional mail distribution in Japan under six different scenarios. Data gaps in the Japanese automotive industry are compensated for by the use of justified assumption and sensitivity analysis of the variables concerned. Simulation results are analysed and some decision issues deciphered. A comparative analysis of electronic and traditional environmental reports identifies the necessary preconditions for reducing environmental burdens of the overall environmental management system (EMS).Carbon footprinting has a much broader appeal than LCA.... In [carbon footprinting], things are kept simple, and a carbon footprint is easy to calculate online... and the calculated value can easily be grasped.... It is certainly an eye opener when you discover that your next trip from Copenhagen to San Francisco has a carbon footprint of roughly 2 tons of CO2 (equivalents), or 20% of the carbon footprint of an average European in an entire year.When analyzing the metabolism of our economy, the usual choice for a measure of resource consumption is the throughput of matter and energy. This, however, cannot be sufficient, since consumption by definition is always relating to the destruction or transformation, and hence a change in quality, not only in quantity, of material or energy flows. Here, an approach is presented that takes the entropy production associated with any process as a measure for the resource consumption of that process. Entropy production is thereby used to approximate the intuitive notion of consumption, which can best be described by the term loss of potential utility. This article delivers theoretical evidence for the validity of this choice, and a second article in a future issue will present an application taken from the metallurgical sector. The related concept of exergy analysis is discussed and compared against the entropy approach.This article presents an approach to estimate missing elements in hybrid life cycle inventories. Its development is motivated by a desire to rationalize inventory compilation while maintaining the quality of the data. The approach builds on a hybrid framework, that is, a combination of process- and input-output-based life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The application of Leontief's price model is central in the proposed procedure. Through the application of this approach, an inventory with no cutoff with respect to costs can be obtained. The formal framework is presented and discussed. A numerical example is provided in Supplementary Appendix S1 on the Web.The forestry sector is experiencing an increasing demand for documentation about its environmental performance. Previous studies have revealed large differences in environmental impact caused by forestry operations, mainly due to differences in location and forestry practice. Reliable information on environmental performance for forestry operations in different regions is thus important. This article presents a case study of forestry operations in Norway. Environmental impact and value added of selected operations were assessed. This was done with a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Main results, including a sensitivity analysis, are presented for a set of four impact categories. The production chain assessed included all processes from seedling production to the delivery of logs to a downstream user. The environmental impact was mainly caused by logging, transport by forwarders, and transport by truck. These three operations were responsible for approximately 85% of the total environmental impact. The contribution to value added and total costs were more evenly distributed among the processes in the value chain. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the difference in environmental impact between the worst case scenario and the best case scenario was more than a factor of 4. The single most important process was the transport distance from the timber pile in the forest to the downstream user. The results show that the environmental impact from forestry operations in boreal forests was probably underreported in earlier studies.The challenge in working with environmental improvements is to select the action offering the most substantial progress. However, not all actions are open to all actors in a product chain. This study demonstrates how life cycle assessment (LCA) may be used with an actor perspective in the Swedish postfarm milk chain. The potential measures were identified, applied by the dairy, retailer, and household, that gave the most environmental improvement in a life cycle perspective. Improved energy efficiency, more efficient transport patterns, reduced milk and product losses, and organic labeling were investigated. Milk, yogurt and cheese were considered. After LCAs of the products were established, improvement potentials of the actors were identified and quantified. The quantification was based mostly on literature studies but also on assumptions. Then the LCAs were recalculated to include the estimated improvement potential. To find the action with the greatest potential, the environmental impacts of the modified and original LCAs were compared for each actor. No action was superior to any other from the dairy perspective, but reduced wastage lowered most impacts for all three products. For retailers, using less energy is the most efficient improvement. From the household perspective, reducing wastage gives unambiguously positive results. When households choose organic products, reductions in energy use and greenhouse gases are even larger, but eutrophication increases. Overall, households have greatest potential for improvement while yogurt is the product offering the most improvement potential.A comparison of various waste-solvent treatment technologies, such as distillation (rectification) and incineration in hazardous-waste-solvent incinerators and cement kilns, is presented for 45 solvents with respect to the environmental life-cycle impact. The environmental impact was calculated with the ecosolvent tool that was previously described in Part I of this work. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis was performed, and uncertainties were quantified by stochastic modeling in which various scenarios were considered. The results show that no single treatment technology is generally environmentally superior to any other but that, depending on the solvent mixture and the process conditions, each option may be optimal in certain cases. Nevertheless, various rules of thumb could be derived, and a results table is presented for the 45 solvents showing under which process conditions and amount of solvent recovery distillation is environmentally superior to incineration. On the basis of these results and the ecosolvent tool, an easily usable framework was developed that helps decision makers in chemical industries reduce environmental burdens throughout the solvent life cycle. With clear recommendations on the environmentally optimized waste-solvent treatment technology, the use of this framework contributes to more environmentally sustainable solvent management and thus represents a practical application of industrial ecology.A well-to-wheel analysis is conducted for solar hydrogen production, transport, and usage in future passenger car transportation. Solar hydrogen production methods and selected conventional production technologies are examined using a life cycle assessment. Utilization of hydrogen in fuel cells is compared with advanced gasoline and diesel powertrains. Solar scenarios show distinctly lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than fossil-based scenarios. For example, using solar hydrogen in fuel cell cars reduces life cycle GHG emissions by 70% compared to advanced fossil fuel powertrains and by more than 90% if car and road infrastructure are not considered. Solar hydrogen production allows a reduction of fossil energy requirements by a factor of up to 10 compared to using conventional technologies. Major environmental impacts are associated with the construction of the steel-intensive infrastructure,for solar energy collection due to mineral and fossil resource consumption as well as discharge of pollutants related to today's steel production technology.Tetra Pak, through intensive cooperation with its supply chain, increased the post-consumer recycling rate of the aseptic packaging for long-life milk in the last 10 years. In continuation of a previous study that presented a superior overall performance in terms of reduction of the consumption of natural resources, air emissions and most of the water emissions, the objective of the present work was to apply life cycle assessment (LCA) to measure the global warming potential (GWP). The system was assessed using as functional unit 1000 liters of milk packaged in Tetra Pak Aseptic containers. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions was calculated for recycling rates of 2%, 22%, 30%, 40% and 70% of the post-consumer residues in Scenarios I (only cardboard recycling) and II (total aseptic laminate recycling). Scenario I showed a 14% reduction in GWR representing 26 kg of avoided CO, equiv. emitted due to the efforts of Tetra Pak to increase the recycling rate front 2% (2000) to 22% (2004). If it will be possible to increase the recycling rate to 70% of post-consumer packages in the future, a 48% reduction of GWP could be attained. Methane exhibited the greatest mass reduction among the greenhouse emissions, since it is emitted during the production of cardboard and also as a result of anaerobic degradation in landfills. The total reduction of the energy requirements of the system due to the increase of the recycling rate (from 2% to 22%) is 154 MY 1000 liters, a saving of 7%. Scenario II (which considers additional polyethylene and aluminum recycling) has a smaller effect on GWP reduction than Scenario I, since PE/AL represent only 25% of the total mass of the container. The major benefit of the recycling of aseptic cartons is the reduction of the amounts of virgin materials required and the consequent reduction of air emissions. The results of this study can be used to encourage the collection of post-consumer milk cartons as part of environmental education programs. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the methodological context of the interpretation of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) results, a normalisation study was performed. 15 impact categories were accounted for, including climate change, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, ecotoxicity, depletion of fossil energy resources, and land use. The year 2000 was chosen as a reference year, and information was gathered on two spatial levels: the global and the European level. From the 860 environmental interventions collected, 48 interventions turned out to account for at least 75% of the impact scores of all impact categories. All non-toxicity related, emission dependent impacts are fully dominated by the bulk emissions of only 10 substances or substance groups: CO2, CH4, SO2, NOx, NH3, PM10, NMVOC, and (H)CFCs emissions to air and emissions of N- and P-compounds to fresh water. For the toxicity-related emissions (pesticides, organics, metal compounds and some specific inorganics), the availability of information was still very limited, leading to large uncertainty in the corresponding normalisation factors. Apart from their usefulness as a reference for LCA studies, the results of this study stress the importance of efficient measures to combat bulk emissions and to promote the registration of potentially toxic emissions on a more comprehensive scale. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The contribution of the agricultural sector to emissions of climate change gases is becoming better understood. At the same time, the potential role of the sector as a means through which to tackle climate change, widely neglected in the past, is becoming more widely acknowledged. The absorption potential of agricultural soils could contribute significantly to constraining growth in greenhouse gas emissions, while also contributing to improvements in soil quality in some areas. In addition to the measures listed above, other benefits of compost application may have some relevance. Some of these measures include replacement of chemical fertilizers (implying avoidance of greenhouse gases related to their production) reduced use of pesticides (avoiding emissions associated with their production), improved tilth and workability (less consumption of fuels). Typically, life-cycle analyses (LCAs) exhibit limitations related to assessing the effects of 'time-limited' carbon sequestration in soils. This has tended to obscure the potentially important effect of composting, in which biogenic carbon is held in soils for a period of time before the carbon is released. The paper seeks to understand these effects and offers comments on the contribution of biological treatments to tackling climate change issues. Key issues include the replacement of fertilizers, reduction of N2O emissions, and peat replacement.A model for life-cycle assessment of waste incinerators is described and applied to a case study for illustrative purposes. As life-cycle thinking becomes more integrated into waste management, quantitative tools for assessing waste management technologies are needed. The presented model is a module in the life-cycle assessment model EASEWASTE. The module accounts for all uses of materials and energy and credits the incinerator for electricity and heat recovered. The energy recovered is defined by the user as a percentage of the energy produced, calculated on the lower heating value of the wet waste incinerated. Emissions are either process-specific (related to the amount of waste incinerated) or input-specific (related to the composition of the waste incinerated), while mass transfer to solid outputs are governed by transfer coefficients specified by the user. The waste input is defined by 48 material fractions and their chemical composition. The model was used to quantify the environmental performance of the incineration plant in Aarhus, Denmark before and after its upgrading in terms of improved flue gas cleaning and energy recovery. It demonstrated its usefulness in identifying the various processes and substances that contributed to environmental loadings as well as to environmental savings. The model was instrumental in demonstrating the importance of the energy recovery system not only for electricity but also heat from the incinerator.The aim of the present work is to find out whether or not, and to what extent, the environmental impacts of reverse osmosis desalination are reduced when brackish groundwater is used instead of sea water. In order to answer this question, the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used, and two water production plants are compared. The brackish groundwater scenario is based on a plant located in Almeria (southern Spain), while the sea water scenario is based on literature data. Four impact categories and two environmental indicators, one of them related to brine discharge, are included. The results show that the key life-cycle issue of brackish groundwater desalination is electricity consumption, and since this is substantially reduced with regard to using sea water, the life-cycle impacts are found to be almost 50% lower. An uncertainty analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulation shows that these environmental savings are significant for all impact categories. Potential local impacts provoked by brine discharge are also found to be lower, due to a reduced content of salts. It is concluded that, when and wherever possible, exploitation of brackish groundwater resources should be assigned priority to sea water resources as an input for reverse osmosis desalination, although it must be taken into account that groundwater, as opposed to sea water, is a limited resource. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ethanol production via sugar juice fermentation has a serious problem related to the quantities and high organic content of its main residue i.e. vinasse or stillage. Awareness of the impact of vinasse disposal by fertirrigation caused the environmental agencies in Brazil to implement more rigorous conditions regarding this practice. In this paper, as possible disposal alternatives, the following were defined: conventional fertirrigation (base reference case); vinasse biodigestion and biogas use as fuel in factory boilers, vinasse dewatering up to 40-50% and its direct combustion in boilers; vinasse dewatering up-to 60% before fertirrigation in order to reduce transport costs. At the same time, environmental impacts characterization and weighting of the vinasse fertirrigation life cycle and the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative are presented. Graphs of normalized environmental effects for the evaluated alternatives are also presented.Pollution prevention (P2) strategy is receiving significant attention in industries all over the world, over end-of-pipe pollution control and management strategy. This paper is a review of the existing pollution prevention frameworks. The reviewed frameworks contributed significantly to bring the P2 approach into practice and gradually improved it towards a sustainable solution; nevertheless, some objectives are yet to be achieved. In this context, the paper has proposed a P2 framework 'IP2M' addressing the limitations for systematic implementation of the P2 program in industries at design as well as retrofit stages. The main features of the proposed framework re that, firstly, it has integrated cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) tool with other adequate P2 opportunity analysis tools in P2 opportunity analysis phase and secondly, it has re-used the risk-based cradle-to-gate LCA during the environmental evaluation of different P2 options. Furthermore, in multi-objective optimization phase, it simultaneously considers the P2 options with available end-of-pipe control options in order to select the sustainable environmental management option. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Although known for nearly a century in its modern version, wastewater reuse is not widely applied in the European countries where water is a scarce resource, i.e. the Mediterranean ones. There are several reasons for this lack of success, namely: a) the lack of full knowledge on the hazards associated to the practice; b) the lack of application of the precautionary principle by the water administration all over Europe; c) difficulties in the assessment of reclaimed real quality in real time; d) difficulties in the implementation of scientific methodologies for the needed epidemiological studies; e) bad management of the social aspects related to the practice; e.g. acceptability, marketing; f) a never-ending discussion among scientists on the acceptable level of the standards to be applied; 0 a real lack of accepted planning procedures for establishing reclamation and reuse in specific sites. Considering the issues mentioned, it is to indicate that the practical implementation of reclamation, recycling and reuse needs a pro-active policy from the interested stakeholders, devoted mainly to gain knowledge on the benefits of the practice, without forgetting its derived hazards and risks. The present activities in the field of reuse in the Mediterranean basin are based on gaining wider knowledge on the reuse possibilities and in the preparation and adaptation of environmentally-related tools, like life-cycle analysis (LCA), decision support systems (DSS), good reuse practices (GRP), impact assessment (IA) and hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP). Several of them are complementary or comprehensive, but were developed for other purposes and are being adapted to reclamation (as an industrial process) and reuse (as a practice, where e.g. agriculture, health and environmental sciences merge).The statistical entropy (SE) function has been applied to waste treatment systems to account for dilution or concentration effects on metals. We later extended it to account for carbon flows, especially in waste management systems involving thermal treatment. Now, a simple lifecycle "net energy" metric - encompassing the "lost energy" that would have been gained when high-calorific materials arc landfilled rather than combusted with energy recovery - is introduced to account for additional influxes of carbon when using landfilling as the primary disposal method. When combining net energy calculations and long terms effects of landfilling, waste to energy (WTE) becomes a more attractive option for dealing with non-recycled municipal solid waste (MSW). A greenhouse gas-forcing factor is also introduced to account for the entropy generating effects of methane. When incorporating forcing and lost energy, WTE performs notably better than landfills with respect to entropy generation and carbon.This work addresses the optimization of Supply Chain (SC) planning and design considering economical and environmental issues. The SC operations model applied does not require a superstructure definition a priori for the material flows. The strategic decisions considered in the model are facility location and equipment allocation. For the environmental aspects of the problem a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach is applied. IMPACT 2002+ methodology is selected to perform the impact assessment within the SC since it proposes a feasible implementation of a combined midpoint-endpoint evaluation. No aggregation of damage categories and analysis of partial environmental impacts for each of echelon are performed. The formulation leads to a multi-criteria MILP program. The criteria adopted as objective functions are damage categories impacts, overall impact factor and net present value (NPV). The main advantages of this model are highlighted through a case study of a maleic anhydride SC.Resources shortage and environment deterioration force logistics to weigh benefits between economics and ecosystem, as a result of which green logistics has become its necessary choice. In such a context, this paper firstly analyzes the relations between environment and logistics. And then combining environment tolerance capacity and demands of logistics along with the social development, this paper establishes two transportation mode selection models and their assessment index system based on "green logistics" adopting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) together with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). In the end, we testify the model with an example and analyze the results.Energy production and consumption cause unintended impacts. Their exclusion by the market leads to suboptimal resource allocations. Conventionally, the market correction is proposed through Pigouvian taxes or Coasian bargaining interventions that shift the equilibrium. The long-life of energy assets and their external impacts need interventions along the future time-path to correct the dynamic equilibrium. The energy modeling literature includes interventions that internalize externalities at the point of energy use, but miss other externalities of energy value chain such as land degradation and health damages from local pollutants (SO2, NOx) in coal mining, impacts on ecosystem during off and gas exploration and nuclear waste disposal. The life cycle analysis is deployed for full accounting of externalities of energy use for electricity production. A "bottom-up" partial equilibrium modeling framework ANSWER-MARKAL is used to internalize the external costs from the static fife cycle analysis to generate dynamic energy system equilibrium and to make comparative policy assessment for India's energy system.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), as an assessment tool for environmental performance, is used widely in decision-making of product design. However, apparently, it's not sufficient to make final decision only depending on environmental assessment results for profit-directed organizations. One of the main purposes of this research is to propose a methodology for integration of LCA and economic analysis tool-Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in order to get the integrated evaluation results. A framework of integration of LCA and LCC has been introduced, and a new inventory analysis algorithm based on matrix is designed to realize to take timing of effects into account in inventory analysis. Another aim of this paper is to propose an optimization method which takes mechanical product as the object of study to improve the initial product design to maximize the integrated environmental and economic benefit. A mathematic model is set up for environmental and economic subsystems. Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) is applied to optimize these models so that the initial mechanical product design can achieve the best environmental and economic performance result. A case study of type 4135G diesel engine is presented to validate the rationality and feasibility of this method.Consideration is given to achieving organisational sustainabitity through a holistic, integrated and multi stakeholders' participative approach. The notion of "optimizing production processes" to achieve sustainability is not sufficient since most of the unsustainable processes are found outside the certified manufacturing facility. Achieving sustainability requires a holistic consideration of business processes along the whole supply chain as well as the management systems. Conventional tools and techniques to integrate sustainability in business processes have environmental connotations and thus fail to encompass all aspects of sustainability. This paper proposes a framework that addresses sustainability at three frontiers which are life cycle analysis, operational excellence, and integration of management systems.For manufacturers, environmental sustainability is dependent upon decisions made throughout a product's life cycle which includes research, development and manufacturing processes. This paper briefly describes how environmental sustainability has become one of the main priorities in developing new manufacturing processes, facilities and products at Intel. The paper concludes with a call for collaboration since there remains a need for increased research and knowledge exchange in the field of environmental sustainability, specifically in the areas of life cycle assessment and environmental footprinting.Numerous Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) tools exist, each with different methodologies. These tools often provide different results, thus making it difficult for the LCA practitioner to determine which results yield the best or most likely estimate of impact. It is important, therefore, to understand the differences between LCIA tools to enable the clear and transparent portrayal of the impacts of a life cycle inventory. Differences among LCIA tools are compared by applying three impact assessment tools: IMPACT 2002+, TRACI, and CML to the life cycle inventory data for corn-soybean agricultural systems utilized to produce biofuels in the US. The agricultural system. has grown in importance in the US as the primary source of feedstock materials for biobased production. The sources of differences between characterization factors and thus the impact assessment results are not readily apparent to the average user of these tools. For example, chemical contribution to the effects on human health and photochemical oxidation, in particular, vary considerably among the tools compared due to fundamentally different methodologies for impact estimation. Other impacts especially relevant to US agriculture are also discussed, including eutrophication and ecotoxicity. Suggestions for improvements to the impact assessment models are made, such as drawing a distinction between urban and non-urban emissions as well as inclusion of heavy metal speciation. Understanding whir impact assessment tools provide different results can help agricultural and biobased LCA practitioners to choose the appropriate tool for their inventory.To quantify the total life cycle environmental impacts of consumption, an economy-wide assessment of goods and services is conducted using the Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (.EIO-LCA) model. This research includes an assessment of total "cradle to consumer" impacts of consumption, utilization of US Environmental Protection Agency's Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) in the EIO-LCA model, and the use of new modeling techniques for sectoral contribution analysis and subtotal supply chain impact of tier-1 supplier analysis. The results show that power generation contributes to nearly one fifth of the total embodied energy and greenhouse gas equivalent emissions in manufactured goods; and for the services and other institutions sectors, its contributions are more than one third. Sectoral contribution analyses show that mining is a major contributor of cancer effects for manufactured goods. Displacing mining production through recycling can help reduce life cycle cancer effects of goods. Consumer purchases of waste management services are found to contribute to nearly a quarter of all cancer and non-cancer impacts in the entire economy, signaling the need for producer responsibility policy aimed to reduce toxic materials that eventually enter the waste stream. Subtotal supply chain analysis of packaging materials found that on an energy basis, there exist opportunities to expand the existing applications of deposit-refund programs on beverage containers to other goods. Agencies, companies, and industry groups can use sectoral and supplier contribution analyses to identify opportunities for reducing the life cycle impacts of their products.Quantitative values for the environmental impacts of labor are needed to improve the accuracy and expand the decision making capabilities of life cycle analysis. We present a method of calculating the environmental impacts of a worker-hour, finding one worker-hour of industrial labor in the U.S. corresponding to 58 MJ of primary energy use, 82 gallons of water use, and 4.6 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions.A lift cycle approach is used to determine environmental requirements in the product development process. In that connection, a full-scale life cycle assessment (LCA) is a reliable method for the steering of ecodesign. However, in the electronics industry especially, LCA utilization in ecodesign has been found to be complicated, as it requires lot of working effort and data. In this study, the simplification options of LCA, or, more precisely, those of a life cycle inventory (LCI) model and a result indicator profile, producing reliable results for ecodesign were evaluated. Simplified LCA variations for three different electronic products were compared against more accurate and reference LCAs made.A general model for evaluating the economic and environmental performance of electronics recycling systems is developed. This model comprehends the three main functions in a recycling system - collection, processing, and system management - and aims to enable quantification of the impact of context and system architecture on the performance of electronics recycling: systems. Different modeling techniques are used, including process-based cost models, to evaluate economic performance, and life cycle assessment tools, to evaluate environmental performance. A case study, based loosely on Maine, is presented to show the utility of such a model in evaluating electronics recycling systems.In this study we connect life styles and spending patterns to environmental impacts and economic implications for people living in the United States. The results show that even the most modest life styles (Buddhist monk, homeless etc) have impacts much larger that the world average.The focus of this paper is on the use of established management decision-making tools to address some of the limitations in implementing conventional Life Cycle Assessment, for example, the evaluation and comparison of materials alternatives, the quantitative elicitation of stakeholders' preference structure as weighting factors, the simultaneous consideration of other economic and technological factors and the sensitivity analysis to examine the reliability of results. An integrated analytical approach, Integrated Industrial Ecology Function Deployment (I2-EFD), previously developed by the authors, is designed to assess the environmental behavior of materials alternatives in correlation with their performance and economic characteristics. The assessment for lead-free solder alternatives is used in this paper as a more complex case study to further develop our methodology through the modification and integration of various quality management tools (e.g., Quality Function Deployment, prioritization matrix), decision aid tools (e.g., Analytical Hierarchy Process), and statistical methods (e.g., Monte-Carlo simulation).In this paper, we consider interactions between life cycle emissions and materials flows associated with lightweighting automobiles. The study begins by developing scenarios for lightweighting a specific compact sized vehicle based on a Ford Focus. Both aluminum and high strength steel are used, and specific levels of lightweighting are considered between 6% and 23% based on literature references and discussions with industry experts. Using automotive simulations and literature estimations for cost, we estimate improvements in fuel economy and increases in cost relative to the baseline vehicle. By incorporating emissions factors associated with producing aluminum and high strength steel, over a range of possible values dependent for instance on region of the world where these materials are produced, we compare the increased emissions associated with producing the vehicle with the saved emissions during use following from lightweighting. This yields a calculation of how many years it takes to recover the extra greenhouse gas GHG emissions required in production to create the lightweight vehicle. We observe a 2-12 year GHG payback for the 6% lightweighting scenario, a 2-7 year GHG payback for the 11% lightweighting scenario, and a 4-9 year GHG payback for the 23% lightweighting scenario. We also observe that the cost to remove GHG emissions per kilogram by lightweighting is lowest for the 23% case. In principle, these payback times can be shortened for aluminum intensive vehicles by closed-loop recycling of wrought aluminum (i.e., using secondary wrought aluminum), which 6 not practiced today. However, over a 15-year time horizon this is unlikely to make much difference due to a lack of secondary wrought aluminum and the expected growth in the demand for vehicles. Cost analyses demonstrate that lightweight vehicles have favorable economics for consumers.World market energy consumption is projected to increase by 57% from 2004 to 2030. Worldwide efforts to meet these challenges include developing alternative energy sources, exploring renewable energy resources, and reducing energy consumption. In this paper, the authors presented a new design method for energy-saving product by means of two simple case studies, hair dryer and coffeemaker. The results show that the new design method is useful and applicable. However, there were some simplifications in the case studies, and further research need to be done by considering improving all the parts of the product.The methods of energy, exergy, and life cycle analysis are applied to a new nanomanufacturing process producing 40 nm titanium dioxide particles. The use of identical boundaries for each analysis allows for direct comparison of the results from each method. It was found that the thermodynamic methods identify spray hydrolysis as a significant sink in the process and life cycle analysis shows it to be the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Despite this agreement, there are some discrepancies between methods, and exergy analysis appears to give additional information that energy analysis overlooks. Of course the optimal method for a given application depends on the intended goals of the analysis.Wind turbine farms are an effective generator of electricity in windy parts of the world, with prices progressing to levels competitive with other sources. Choosing the correct turbine for a given installation requires significant engineering and the current trend leads towards groups of large horizontal axis turbines. Unfortunately, large wind turbines have to contend with large forces and other sources of failure. With the new push to move generation farms offshore where they are less accessible, the issue of reliability becomes more critical. This work investigates the impact of reliability in a life-cycle analysis simulation of a theoretical wind farm in Massachusetts based upon reliability information from a number of academic sources. The simulator, TurbSim, is designed with significant modularity to enable reliability simulation of any turbine with available wind information. Our simulation of a turbine indicated that reliability makes a small but noticeable impact of 1.24% in its output.Fluorescent lamp requires ballast to operate. In this study the environmental impacts of magnetic and electronic ballast are compared using life cycle assessment approach. The newly released Directives and Regulations on Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS), Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and Eco-design Requirements for Energy Using Products (EuP) require the study of environmental impact of electrical and electronic products for the improvement environmental performance of product and processes prior to acceptance in the European market Presently in Malaysia, there is a very limited data at the national level since the LCA studies of the electrical and electronic product have not been conducted in Malaysia. The ISO 14040 series were used as the reference for conducting this study. The functional unit chosen in this study is a 36 watt ballast used to operate one fluorescent lamp of 36 waft. Life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis showed that steel is a major component for both types of ballast; in magnetic ballast steel is mainly used for the production of the magnetic component in the magnetic ballast whilst it is used as a housing for the electronic ballast. In this study, Eco-indicator 99 was chosen to determine the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA).Three major impacts were identified; effect to human health, ecosystem quality and resource depletion. The most significant impact to the environment for both types of ballast is resource depletion particularly for the production and use phase.Production altermatives for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) such as chemical vapor deposition, laser, arc and flame, vary widely in material and energy yields, catalyst requirements and product characteristics. The overall environmental profile must be assessed relative to performance in a specific end-use application, such as lithium ion batteries for electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. Although in general SWCNT have several properties that make them attractive for transportation applications, production is a material- and energy-intensive process. High-yield synthesis pathways may be environmentally inefficient if extensive purification is required. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an approach to quantifying the environmental trade-offs engendered by technology substitution. However, it is essential to recognize that the results of LCA for one type of SWCNT may not be applicable to SWCNT of different purity, length, diameter, chirality or conductivity. This paper discusses sources of variability and uncertainty in production of SWCNT and makes several recommendations with regard to LCA of nanomaterials.Research into the holistic evaluation of emerging nanotechnologies using systems analysis is pivotal for guiding their safe and sustainable development. This work presents the first energetic life cycle assessment of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) that evaluates both thermoplastic and thermoset resins. Both simple carbon nanofiber (CNF) and carbon nanofiber-glass fiber (CNF-GF) hybrid nanocomposites are evaluated and compared with steel. The issue of life cycle inventory is tackled based on published literature and best available engineering information. A cradle-to-gate comparison reveals that CNF reinforced PNCs are 1.3-10 times more energy intensive than steel and thus the product use phase is likely to govern whether any net savings in life cycle energy consumption can be realized for PNC based products. A case study involving the use of CNF and CNF-GF reinforced PNCs in the body panels of automobiles is further presented and highlights that the use of PNCs with lower CNF loading ratios may result in net life cycle fossil energy savings relative to steel. Other factors such as cost, toxicity impact of CNF, and end-of-He issues specific to CNFs need to be considered to evaluate the final economic and environmental performance of CNF reinforced PNC materials. The results of this study can easily be used for evaluating other CNF based PNC applications.The incorporation of roadways into a region's industrial ecology is an ideal method of managing some of the industrial by-products (IBPs) that may be generated. Current management of these industrial by-products is through beneficial use (for certain types of materials), but also stockpiling or landfilling, which have economic and environmental implications. IBPs (coal ash, foundry sand and slag) are compared here to virgin aggregate for use in the sub-base of roadway construction and/or repair in an optimization analysis to minimize the transportation impacts in the greater Pittsburgh urban region. The life cycle impacts associated with the choice of material (virgin or IBP) are also evaluated in this paper, and it is shown that IBP usage results in lower life cycle impacts in all categories. Additionally the transportation costs are 25% less for the IBP usage than for the use of virgin aggregates due to the closer proximity to the IBP source materials. The combination of reduced economic and environmental costs provide a strong argument for state transportation departments to develop symbiotic relationships with large IBP producers in their regions to minimize impacts associated with roadway construction and maintenance with the additional benefit of improved management of these materials.The progress of aging of transmission equipment is becoming a crucial issue in Japan, and adequate maintenance strategies need to be developed in order to use existing equipment efficiently. In this paper, we propose the concept of a life-cycle risk map (LCRM) which shows the transition of aging risk of equipment from its installation to replacement, under a specific maintenance strategy that consider cost. The risk is evaluated based on expected energy not supplied (EENS) and the cost is represented by the economic lifetime when the annual average cost becomes a minimum. Using an acceptable level of aging risk, the optimal timing and cost of overhaul are determined. Numerical examples using a model system are shown and the potential applications of LCRM are also discussed.The article deals with possibilities to apply Operational Research methodology in setting climate change mitigation policies in Lithuania. The most research subjects within Operational Research concentrate on decision making focusing on decision aiding tools such as Multi Criteria Decision Analysis, Group Decision Support Systems, Sustainability Appraisal, Life Cycle Assessment, Technology Assessment and Foresight, Logistic tools etc. Most of the research carried out in Operational Research focuses on the problem handling phases such as constructing scenarios, evaluating scenarios and suggesting interventions. Therefore before suggesting interventions and taking decisions it is necessary to evaluate how the phenomena and actors are related. Climate change is a complex societal phenomenon and climate change mitigation policies have impact on all society members and involve many actors and players in the field. The aim of the article is to apply Operational Research in setting climate change mitigation policies in Lithuania. The main tasks are to define the phases in problem handling process, the main actors and their responsibilities and tools for selecting the best solutions.Energy efficiency improvement becomes a priority field of the European Union energy policy. In Lithuania the biggest energy saving potential exists in buildings. While renovating the buildings couple of problems are solved: reduction of energy consumption, restoration of premises comfort conditions, improvement of buildings physical state and also cost-effectiveness of the applied measures. Energy consumption in a building can be decreased to the minimum level while introducing the state-of-the-art measures. But it is not always reasonable. Goal of the research is to propose a methodology and according to the proposed methodology to estimate energy saving measures implementation impact on the life cycle energy consumption of building. Research results are presented via the exact example of the existing school building. While selecting energy saving measures, energy savings are estimated and cost-effectiveness of the implemented measures is calculated.This paper considers housing renovation from the perspective of the sustainable development. It integrates two main concepts: the concept of sustainable renovation and the concept of integrated knowledge management in renovation. The main purpose is to propose efficient IT based measures for renovation sustainability management. Paper consists of three parts: the first formulates the concept of sustainable renovation, the second presents the understanding of knowledge management in renovation and in the third part an integrated knowledge base model for sustainable housing renovation is created. Knowledge base model proposed by authors integrates economic, technical, social and ecological stakeholders' needs, both explicit and implicit knowledge, covers micro and macro environment conditions as well as building life cycle analysis. The model can be used for renovation projects multi-variant design and multiple criteria analysis.As the field of design automation and generative design systems (GDS) evolve, more emphasis is placed on issues of design evaluation. This paper focus on the presentation of different applications of GENE ARCH, an evolution-based GDS aimed at helping architects to achieve energy-efficient and sustainable architectural solutions. The system applies goal-oriented design, combining a genetic algorithm (GA) as the search engine, with the DOE2. 1E building energy simulation software as the evaluation module. Design evaluation is based on energy spent for heating, cooling, ventilation and artificial lighting in the building, and on sustainability issues like greenhouse gas emissions associated with the embodied energy of construction materials. The GA can work either as a standard GA or as a Pareto GA, for multicriteria search and optimization. In order to provide a broad view of the capabilities of the software, different applications are discussed: (1) standard GA: testing and validating the software; (2) standard GA: incorporation of architecture design intentions, using a building by architect Alvaro Siza; (3) Pareto GA: choice of construction materials, considering cost, building energy use, and embodied energy; (4) Pareto GA: application to Siza's building, considering thermal and lighting behavior separately; (5) standard GA:shape generation with single objective function; (6) Pareto GA: shape generation with multicriteria, evaluation; (7) Pareto GA: application to an urban and housing context. Overall conclusions from the different applications are discussed, as well as current challenges and limitations, and directions for further work. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The machinery used in coal thermoelectrical plants usually is submitted to erosive wear. The erosive wear occurs mainly in the metallic pipe set of heat exchangers due the flow of hot gases carrying erosive particles. Jorge Lacerda's thermoelectrical complex at Capivari de Baixo city holds seven power units, where two units use approximately 20 000 ASTM A178 heat pipes. The set is submitted to a semester maintenance schedule (preventive and corrective) where the damaged pipes are changed. So, in this work a set of erosive wear accelerated tests according ASTM G76 were performed in order to develop and specify materials and methods to diminish the erosive action caused by the combustion gases over the heat pipes. Specimens were coated with WC12Co and Cr3C2-25NiCr alloys using the HVOF technique and the coated specimens were tested at 450 degrees C, the heat pipes working temperature. Silica was used as abrasive material at 30 degrees and 45 degrees impact angles, simulating a harder erosive condition than the real condition. The best performance coating at laboratory scale was later used in field condition. The results showed the coated specimen performance is better than the ASTM A178 alloy. The erosion resistance of the Cr3C2-25NiCr and WC12Co coatings is eight times higher than the uncoated alloy, and the coatings also presented a better corrosion resistance. This feature is important, because despite the erosive action the circulating gases also present a large amount of sulfur in their composition. Sulfur at lower temperatures forms H2SO4, causing intense corrosion of the pipes located at the heat exchangers colder parts. Based on the results and considering the coating costs the Cr3C2-25NiCr alloy was selected to coat a set of pipes mounted at the region of the heat exchanger with the most intense erosive wear. At the moment these coated tubes are in field operation and under observation regarding their performance in comparison with the uncoated pipes located at the same heat exchanger. The real operation conditions of the coated pipes will be estimated from the field life cycle analysis, and after all the cost-benefit of the studied coating.The livestock agriculture of temperate grasslands is a major provider of meat and milk to the world. These areas also deliver important ecosystem services and are central to tourism, amenity, and leisure in many countries. However, they are also major sources of pollution of waterways and of greenhouse gas emissions. In this review, we focus on how the genetic improvement of some of the major crop species of temperate grasslands can contribute to reduced environmental impacts and climate change mitigation including the enhancement of carbon sequestration. The main species considered are the ryegrasses and fescues and the clovers. With regard to diffuse pollution of waterways, increasing the efficiency with which the plant utilizes nitrogen and phosphorus has significant potential to reduce the amounts available for leaching and overland flow. This also allows reduced fertilizer use, in itself representing a significant saving of greenhouse gas emissions. Changes in the composition of the plant diet have the potential to increase the efficiency of nitrogen use in the rumen and reduce the amount of methane produced by enteric fermentation. Carbon sequestration in temperate grasslands may potentially be enhanced by understanding and altering root architecture and turn over and also litter composition. The role of forage breeding in improving soil quality and flood defense is also considered and wider aspects of the role of persistent perennial species discussed. To fully realize the potential of genetic improvement, breeding programs need to incorporate state-of-the-art genomics and also to be guided by modeling studies. An integrated approach combining the skills of animal scientists, soil scientists, and plant breeders within the context of life cycle analysis is required to find sustainable solutions to the challenge of maintaining the productivity of livestock agriculture while reducing its environmental footprint.Fire-LCA was invented in response to the need for a more holistic LCA of products containing flame retardants. This chapter describes how to conduct a Fire-LCA, illustrated using three product-based case studies: TV sets, furniture and cables. In the TV-set study a US TV was compared with a European TV, the furniture study compared a Europeans of a with a UK sofa, while two cables with similar fire performance were compared in the cable study. Finally future trends in holistic assessment of modern products are outlined, including a newly developed cost-benefit methodology.Biofuels have been promoted as a way to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but it is questionable whether they indeed do so. The Study compared energy and GHG balances of transport biofuels produced in Finnish conditions. Energy and GHG balances were calculated from a life cycle perspective for biogas when timothy-c lover and reed canary grass silages and green manure of an organic farm were used as a raw material. The results were compared with published data on barley-based ethanol, rape methyl ester (biodiesel) and biowaste-based biogas. The energy input for biogas was 22-37% of the output depending on the raw material. The GHG emissions from field-based biogas were 21-36% of emissions from fossil-based fuels. The largest energy input was used in the processing of the biofuels while most of the greenhouse gases were emitted during farming. The GHG emissions of the field-based biogas were emitted mainly from fuels of fanning machinery, nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions of the soil and the production of ensiling additives. The energy efficiency was most sensitive to the methane yield, and GHG emissions to the N2O emissions. Biogas had clearly lower energy input and GHG emissions per unit energy output than domestic barley-based ethanol and biodiesel.Environmental impacts of agriculture cannot be always assessed by using direct measurements. Since the 1990s, numerous agri-environmental indicators were developed to assess the adverse effects of cropping and farming systems in the environment, such as water pollution, soil erosion, and emission of greenhouse gases. Here we present the different types of indicators developed during the last decade and review the progress of the methods used for their development. The application of different groups of indicators is discussed and illustrated by examples in the fields of nitrogen losses and pesticide risk: ( 1) indicators based on a single or a combination of variables related to farmer practices, ( 2) indicators derived from operational or more complex simulation models assessing emissions of pollutants, and ( 3) measured indicators linked directly to environmental impacts. The nitrogen indicator ( IN) of the INDIGO method and the MERLIN indicator will be presented and used to illustrate the methodological discussion. We show that a good identification of the end-users, of the practical objectives of the indicator, and of the spatial and temporal scales is essential and should be done at a preliminary step before designing the indicator itself. The possibilities of deriving an indicator from a model and of setting a reference value are discussed. Several methods are also presented to study the sensitivity and the validity of agri-environmental indicators. Finally, several practical recommendations are made. As only few data are usually available at the regional level, several simple indicators should be used for assessing a given impact at this level. When more detailed information is available, indicators based on operational models can be useful to analyse the effects of several factors related to soil, climate, and cropping system on an environmental impact. In experimental studies, we suggest using both measured indicators and model-based indicators.This paper explores the robustness of materials selection decisions when using various life-cycle assessment methods. Improving the environmental performance of vehicles is a topic of growing concern met by today's designer. One approach to this goal is through vehicle mass reduction, enabled through the implementation of a growing army of material candidates. While LCA methods are available to provide quantitative input into this selection decision, LCA applications are evolving and distinct. Specifically, this paper surveys the major analytical variations of LCA implementations and explores the implications of one major variant when applied to an automotive materials selection case study involving aluminum. This case study examines analytical variations in treatment of recycling by exploring allocation methods that affect product EOL. Preliminary results indicate that the choice of analytical method can have real impacts on individual metrics and there are sets of analytical variation over which strategic results are strongly affected.The selection of the technology and materials to make any product is an important decision and is important to consider, in this choice, all the environment aspects. The Life Cycle Assessment is the most comprehensive methodology to find out about the environmental impact. Sometimes, for a faster answer a simplified LCA tool is useful to use. The paper presents this type of methodology in the case of the pneumatic connector.Engineers are able to optimise the design using their knowledge of scientific principles. Decisions are made in the design process that have a considerable effect on the sustainability of the product, process or system. Engineers can also be involved in the design process as a representative of the organisation that commissions the design or the organisation that will use it. The core of the design process is the function of the product that is to be designed. Function does not only mean the technical function, but also any social, cultural, psychological and economic functions the product will perform.This paper describes the effects of the installation of various countermeasures against urban heat-island (UHI) and energy-saving measures on UHI and global warming. A UHI and energy-consumption simulation model was developed by combining the one-dimensional meteorological canopy and building energy use models; further, the proposed model was expanded to evaluate the year-round air temperature and annual energy consumption. The simulation results showed that the humidification and albedo increase at building-wall surfaces reduced the total number of hours for which the air temperature was more than 30 degrees C during the daytime by more than 60 (h) per year. The UHI countermeasures reduced the annual energy-consumption despite causing a small increase during the winter period. However, they may result in certain unfavorable conditions for pedestrians. Energy-saving measures, on the other hand, reduce the total number of hours for which the air temperature is more than 30 degrees C by only a few hours per year. Thus, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the UHI countermeasures and measures against global warming by extending the calculation period from summer to an entire year. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The relationship, on a global basis, between the amount of N fixed by chemical, biological or atmospheric processes entering the terrestrial biosphere, and the total emission of nitrous oxide (N2O), has been re-examined, using known global atmospheric removal rates and concentration growth of N2O as a proxy for overall emissions. For both the pre-industrial period and in recent times, after taking into account the large-scale changes in synthetic N fertiliser production, we find an overall conversion factor of 3-5% from newly fixed N to N2O-N. We assume the same factor to be valid for biofuel production systems. It is covered only in part by the default conversion factor for "direct" emissions from agricultural crop lands (1%) estimated by IPCC (2006), and the default factors for the "indirect" emissions (following volatilization/deposition and leaching/runoff of N: 0.35-0.45%) cited therein. However, as we show in the paper, when additional emissions included in the IPCC methodology, e.g. those from livestock production, are included, the total may not be inconsistent with that given by our "top-down" method. When the extra N2O emission from biofuel production is calculated in "CO2-equivalent" global warming terms, and compared with the quasi-cooling effect of "saving" emissions of fossil fuel derived CO2, the outcome is that the production of commonly used biofuels, such as biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), depending on N fertilizer uptake efficiency by the plants, can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings. Crops with less N demand, such as grasses and woody coppice species, have more favourable climate impacts. This analysis only considers the conversion of biomass to biofuel. It does not take into account the use of fossil fuel on the farms and for fertilizer and pesticide production, but it also neglects the production of useful co-products. Both factors partially compensate each other. This needs to be analyzed in a full life cycle assessment.The aim of this study was to use life cycle assessment methods to determine the environmental impacts of manure utilisation by a biogas plant and by a typical manure composting system. The functional unit was defined as the average annual manure utilisation on a dairy farm with 100 cows. The environmental impact categories chosen were emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and acidification gases (AG). The GHG emissions were estimated as: 345.9 t CO2-equivalents (e) for solid composting (case 1), 625.4 t CO2-e for solid and liquid composting (case 2), and 86.3-90.1 t CO2-e for the biogas plant system. The AG emissions were estimated as: 10.1 t SO2-e for case 1, 18.4 t SO2-e for case 2, and 13.1-24.2 t SO2-e for the biogas plant system. These results show that a biogas plant system produces low GHG emissions, but comparatively high AG emissions with land application. It is suggested that land application using band spread or shallow injection attachments will decrease AG emissions (NH3) from biogas plant systems.The life cycle assessment component of this multi-institutional project determined greenhouse gas emissions in pre-farm, on-farm and post- farm activities involved in the use of maize for the manufacture of corn chips. When the emissions were expressed in terms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO2-e), pre-farm emissions comprised similar to 6% of the life cycle emissions, on-farm activities comprised similar to 36% and post- farm activities accounted for similar to 58% of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. We used one 400 g packet of corn chips as the functional unit. The single largest source of greenhouse emissions was the emission of nitrous oxide on the farm as a result of fertiliser application (0.126 kg CO2-e per packet). The next largest was electricity used during the manufacture of the corn chips (0.086 kg CO2-e per packet). The manufacture of the packaging (box plus packet, being 0.06 kg CO2-e) was the next largest source and then the oil for frying the corn chips (0.048 kg CO2-e per packet). Greenhouse gas emissions from fertiliser application were primarily nitrous oxide (N2O), which has a global warming potential of 310 kg CO2-e/ kg N2O. In typical irrigated farm systems, these emissions, when converted to CO2-e, are almost three times more than the greenhouse gas emissions that result from energy used to pump water. However, pumping irrigation water from deep bores currently produces greenhouse gas emissions that are almost three times those from irrigation using surface waters. Greenhouse gas emissions from the use of tractors on typical farms are about one-third of the emissions from pumping water. Farm management techniques can be used to increase soil carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If farms that currently burn stubble were to implement stubble incorporation then, in the absence of other changes to the supply chain, they will achieve a 30% reduction in emissions from 'cradle to farm-gate'. In absolute terms, when the soil carbon dioxide is included (even though soil carbon dioxide in this instance is not counted as a greenhouse gas in national and international greenhouse gas inventories), our measurements indicate that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions from farms that produce maize using stubble incorporation are 56% lower than emissions from farms that burn their stubble. The pre-farm and on-farm operations add $0.40 value per kg of CO2-e greenhouse gas emitted. Post-farm processing added $2 value per kg of CO2-e greenhouse gas emitted. Processing maize for corn chips emitted more greenhouse gases than processing the same amount of corn for starch or ethanol.The soil nitrogen (N) dynamics of an irrigated maize system in which stubble retention and stubble burned treatments were superimposed over treatments of varying N fertiliser rate were studied. The field site was near Whitton, New South Wales, Australia, and the work described here is part a life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from maize project. The objective of this part of the work was to quantify the fate of fertiliser N applied at the site. Field measurements of denitrification, mineral N content and recovery of N-15-labelled urea from microplots with and without ammonium thiosulfate were complimented with laboratory studies of denitrification and nitrous oxide (N2O) flux. Significantly (P < 0.05) more fertiliser N was recovered in the grain from the stubble incorporated treatment than the stubble burned treatment and there was greater recovery of fertiliser N in the soil at the end of the experiment in the stubble burned treatment. This may indicate that fertiliser N applied to the stubble burned system may be more exposed to soil-N transformations. The reason for the difference in uptake and soil residual is not clear but may be related to soil structure differences leading to less plant accessibility of N in the burned treatment. This difference may lead to more nitrous oxide emission from soil in the stubble burned treatments. Short-term (1 h) static chamber measurements in the field found a strong N-rate dependence of N2O emission rate for fertiliser rates between 0 and 300 kg N/ha. Inclusion of ammonium thiosulfate in the fertiliser formulation did not appear to have a significant impact on fertiliser N recovery.The production of sustainable structural composites, using cellulosic fibres extracted from plants as a reinforcement, is discussed. Critical factors, including fibre extraction and treatment, impact properties, compatibility with polymer matrices, and selection of plant fibres are explored. Ideally, all of these aspects need to be integrated using a biomimetic approach, i.e. taking into account structural factors linked to the biology of plant fibres, such as the role of the cellular hollows and the presence of hierarchical levels, allowing the fibre to be built from the cell upwards. Fibers studied include celery and jute.An evaluation of the environmental impacts of an air-conditioning system which uses a bore-hole system for heating and cooling is the aim of this case study. To facilitate the evaluation, the bore-hole based air-conditioning system is compared with a reference system that uses a more traditional source of heat (district heating) and cooling energy (refrigeration). Environmental impacts of the system are examined by the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, including the weighting step. Results show that the bore-hole based system performs better in three of the four impact categories investigated: acidification, eutrofication, and global warming potential (GWP) with a 100-year horizon. This is mainly due to the fact that it uses less material in the production phase and less operating energy during the user stage. However, in the category of photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), it performs four times worse than the more traditional system. Nevertheless, the overall environmental impact of the bore-hole based system, evaluated by common weighting methods, is better than the more traditional system. The most dominant environmental impact of both systems arises from the operating energy, although the energy use in the building studied is low. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During China's rapid urbanization and modernization process, the energy and mass flows as well as the related environmental impacts of the Chinese building and infrastructure stocks deserve attention due to the high volume of construction activity, the possibly short lifespan of the new constructions, and the increasing need for energy and construction materials, which have already led to severe environmental impacts. The objective of this study is to model the energy and material input and output through the construction and operation activities in the reference year (2005) to estimate future development during the ongoing urbanization process (until 2050) under present conditions (Trend scenario) and to formulate alternative scenarios with reduced resource consumption and environmental impacts. An integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) model is proposed by taking into account the material and energy flows and the related environmental impacts through a combined bottom-up and top-down approach. The historical evolution from 1978 to 2005 is analysed as a basis for the forecasting projections. The different age classes of the stock are modelled as cohorts classified by use and by type (urban/rural). The transitions of the key parameters follow a logistic function. The results show the possibilities and limitations of alternative long-term developments. The limitations of the model both in structure and input data are discussed.The effect of energy efficiency measures is generally evaluated for one or only a few houses. While the energy and environmental optimization of a particular building design is crucial, this cannot easily draw generic conclusions for future building designs. A method is presented for considering the effect of building geometry in simplified energy and life cycle assessment studies. Based on architectural and functional considerations, realistic ranges were determined for the parameters describing the geometry of 'technically feasible' buildings and their relationships. These parameters include floor area, the number of storeys, the perimeter-to-floor area ratio, the ratio of the building envelope adjoining neighbouring heated buildings, the window ratio and frame factor, the density of partition walls, and the roof slope. An algorithm is developed for the random generation of a large building sample based on the realistic ranges of these geometric parameters. By analysing the results, it is possible to calculate the expected value, standard deviation and confidence interval of the sample. The application of the method is shown in an example. The cumulative non-renewable energy demand is calculated for the whole life cycle and for different building types.There are strong incentives to develop the production of fuels, chemicals and materials from biomass. However, the extensive use of biomass for industrial production, particularly for biofuels which involves high tonnages, raised environmental and ethical issues that may throw some doubts on the sustainability of these processes. The processing cost of biomass must be decreased by designing new processing routes and catalytic systems because those employed for hydrocarbons are not adopted to the molecular of biomolecules. To avoid competition with food supply, lignocellulosic feedstocks should be used rather than traditional agricultural crops particularly for biofuel production. Life-cycle assessment, which takes into account all the inputs and outputs of a process/product, should be carried out to evaluate the environmental impact of process and used as a decision-making tool for product development.The trade of wastes in the world has been increasing and China has become the largest importer of wastes. This paper examines the import trend of different wastes and finds out that the total import volume to China approved by the Chinese government keeps increasing and the illegal trade can not be banned despite repeated prohibitions; therefore, China is not only "a world factory", but actually "a global garbage dump". In order to well understand the implications of wastes import, this paper further analyzes the resource and environmental effects and risks of different wastes imports as well as the strong driving force of wastes imports. Based on these detailed analysis and solid data, policy recommendations are put forward to reduce the demand for raw materials, to further strengthen the inspection of and supervision over the international trade of the wastes that can be used as raw materials by using the life cycle analysis and risk analysis, to improve the environmental standards and strengthen the disposal capacity, to re-export the raw materials produced from the imported wastes, to develop the long-term planning for the import of wastes and to promote international cooperation.In our globalised economy, important stakeholder groups nowadays hold companies responsible for the social impacts they cause in their product chain through activities like child labour, corruption or discrimination of employees. Many companies thus see themselves in need of a tool which can help them make informed decisions about their social impacts throughout the life cycle of their products. The paper presents lessons learned from four years of work with industry on development of a methodology for Social Life Cycle Assessment and implementation in the industrial product chain. The Social LCA methodology supplements the traditional environment-oriented LCA and the life cycle costing tools in support of sustainability management addressing all three pillars of sustainability: people, planet and profit. (c) 2008 CIRP.PVC is often a material chosen for replacement when it comes to green products. This is due to PVC's chlorine content. Carcinogenic materials are used in making PVC and are released when it's combusted. Other toxic materials can leach out of the PVC while in use. Replacement materials are often chosen simply for not containing PVC. In this paper, a three metric system is developed for product replacement assessment and applied to PVC piping. The assessment metrics include functionality, economics and sustainability. Functionality is assessed using mechanical properties, economics by linear cost, and sustainability by life cycle assessment. Both off the shelf and reinforced plastics are compared to PVC piping using the three metric system. None of off the shelf plastics can compare to PVC's good mechanical properties and low cost. However, glass or natural fiber reinforced polypropylene has the potential to replace PVC based on all three metrics.Sustainability is rapidly increasing in emphasis among the world's leading companies. There is increasing pressures on companies to understand and be able to communicate the impacts of their products and activities. This pressure comes internally from executives, boards and shareholders as well as externally from customers, business partners and governments. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers a robust and comprehensive approach to quantify broadly-defined impacts, but is usually limited in scope to a set of products or services. At the level of the entire company, similar methods and tools are not readily available. This makes it difficult to answer simple questions such as: What is the overall impact or "footprint" of our company on the environment? What meaningful goals can we set for overall company sustainability? How can we achieve these goals? Are we being successful? Here we present a methodology for answering these questions by applying approaches developed in the field of LCA to the activities of entire companies. The methodology calculates the complete environmental impacts of material and service purchases, the company's on operations and activities, and the distribution, use and end-of-life of its products and/or services. The result is a complete and clear picture of the total environmental impacts in a format that is easily-understood and suitable for communications, setting and tracking of goals, and identifying actions to improve a company's performance in key sustainability metrics, such as climate change, ecological damage, and human health.Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have significant potential to enhance the microelectronics industry. However, prior to full-scale manufacturing of CNT products, the environmental and economic impacts of such an implementation must be assessed. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques, environmental attributes are assessed for fabricating CNT transistors and CNT-polymer composites used for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. Manufacturing cost will also be determined for these using process-based technical cost modeling. Such information on both cost and environmental impacts will enable more responsible nanomanufacturing.Public concern over the discharge of some nanomaterials to wastewater treatment systems has caused at least one product to be taken off the market. This paper explores the potential for nanomaterials to be included in the discharge of effluent to publicly owned treatment works, as well as water bodies generally, and the likely consequences of such releases. It uses a mass balance approach to quantify discharges for two case studies, to the extent possible. It also discusses regulatory restrictions that limit the discharges of nanomaterials. [1]The purpose of this work is to perform a feasibility analysis of co-gasification using waste materials, petcoke being specifically considered here. From a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) point of view co-gasification of coal with solid residues is seen beneficial because of transforming a residue into a raw material and further into power. The base work of this paper is a structured and validated conceptual model of an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant. It comprises steady state models of a Pressurized Entrained Flow (PRENFLO) gasifier, following gas cleaning operations, a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) and Combined Cycle (CC) unit operations. The model has been developed using Aspen Hysys (R) and Matlab, which is mainly used for Artificial Neural Network (ANN) training and parameters estimation for electrolytes models implemented in Aspen Plus (R). Predicted results of clean gas composition and generated power present a good agreement with industrial data.Aluminium alloys are a series of traditional materials applied in aerospace industry. Composite materials have been being used to replace some aluminium alloys in airframe structures. To select a cost-efficient material in aerospace design, a framework for systematic assessment of composites and aluminium is therefore suggested. Through evaluation of 3Ps which represent prices, properties and processing of material, life cycle assessment of aluminium and composite could be made. By comparison of and trade-off the listed baselines of 3Ps, ail economic, rational, available and useful material can be logically selected.The impact design oil the disposal process referred to as the late stage of the product life cycle, is becoming important. Product lifecycle management tools based on the 3Rs, reuse, recycle, and/or reduce, using exsiting design technologies is needed. To consider environmental loads at the early stages of product design leads to significant reductions in the environmental loads for the whole product life cycle. In the present paper, we propose an object-oriented design system that helps the designer to consider environmental loads at the early stage of product design using a combination of 3D-CAD and an application of evaluation methods for determining environmental loads. Our proposed system compiles existing evaluation formulae and material data for the environmental loads. Designers just create the 3D-CAD solid model which has the attribute information in the 3D-CAD model itself, such as designer's intention, disposal process, material properties, and so oil. The present study applies the proposed system to the evaluation of the environmental loads of in example problem, that is, an office chair model created using 3D-CAD.The design of environmentally friendly products requires data to assess the impact of the product on the environment throughout its life and the original design and manufacturing information that should accompany the product to manage the end-of-life process. Both of these requirements can be satisfied by the innovative combination of two groups of International Standards. The DEPUIS project provides e-learning systems to introduce the technology of data representation by standardised information models - product data technology - and shows how the information represented by data specified by these models can be used in Life Cycle Assessment to innovate life-cycle thinking in the design and manufacture of new products.Solar energy could play a significant role in the replacement of fossil fuels leading to a clean energy solution with almost zero environmental impact. However, solar energy systems have some environmental impact. The objective of this work is the investigation of the environmental impacts of the solar energy utilization, in a solar thermal concentrating system for electricity production, with the employment of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This work is investigating the environmental impacts for the production of 1MW of electricity in a solar power tower plant. The work will take into consideration the input and output in all life cycle stages, from the raw material excavation till the end of life stage. The material use, the energy use and the emissions produced will be investigated. The construction period is taken to be 3 years while the life time of the solar power plant is 30 years.Nowadays, the majority of the fuel use in transport comes from fossil fuels. Although there was an import of natural gas in public transportation, the gasoline and diesel oil remain the dominant vehicles' driving force. In the European Union it is estimated that almost 21% of the greenhouse gases are produced from the transportation. The oil price continuous increase adds economics constrains besides the environmental problems. The objective of this work is the environmental comparison of the biofuels production routing from four different biomass forms, utilizing the life cycle assessment analysis. The impact category to be investigated is the greenhouse effect while the biomass forms used in the biofuels production is the rapeseed, the sunflower, the wheat and the sugar beet. The life cycle stages under study start at the cultivation and end at the combustion of the produced biofuels in vehicles. Although biofuels require a lot of primary energy from fossil fuels, the sum of produced emissions of equivalent CO2 from them is much smaller.This paper presents the latest research project supported by the French research agency ANR regarding the bi-oleothermal treatment of wood at atmospheric pressure. Wood treatment by the "bi-oleothermal" process (combination of oil and heat treatment) is a well mastered alternative method for wood protection. The interest of this multi-functionnal process is to allow wood drying as well as wood treatment in a single step process. Nevertheless, there is still a need to work on the formulations of the oils used in order to adapt the performance of the treated wooden material (durability towards wood destroying organisms, fireproofing, etc...) to its end-use. Moreover, due to its alternative process, the up-grading and use of local timbers in new end-uses become possible and remain also one of the main objectives of this project. A large and precise environmental analysis (including life cycle assessment) will be also carried out during this project, for all stages of the process : from the oil formulations to the end of the life time of treated timbers. The main steps of this project can be mentionned as follow: process optimization by eco additives selection and linseed oils fonctionnalization multi scale process optimization, from lab to industrial plant grafting lab analysis on wood fibers environmental and societal analysis from the process to the treated timbersMost large-scale ecological footprint (EF) studies provide convincing evidence to state and regional elected officials that might result in regional or state-level environmental policy. This study seeks to address a much smaller scale of environmental policy and addresses a gap in the literature. It is targeted at local decision makers of the built environment including the professional design community of planners, urban designers, and architects and seeks to influence neighbourhood design and form. During our analysis, however, the findings revealed shortcomings in the data gathering method that produced inaccuracies in EF results at this smaller scale. The project therefore shifted its focus towards developing a data gathering method for future neighbourhood scale EF evaluations.The complexity of specifying textiles for environmentally-conscious commercial interiors has evolved as layers of evaluative criteria have been added. Increases in information require that designers understand more about textile design and manufacture, and use new processes for product selection. Textiles are the focus of this investigation for several reasons. They are an integral architectural and interior design element and embody an array of art, craft, design, and technology. Historically, the textile industry has been the source of environmental transgressions contributing to pollution on many levels. These characteristics are shared with other interior products, so new paradigms can generalize to other materials. The evolution of the textile industry is also the centerpiece for one of the most significant proposals targeting green product design, the "cradle-to-cradle" philosophy developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Finally, the commercial project emphasis is appropriate because products for this market are subject to rigorous review for compliance with regulatory and performance standards. Based on a review of sources from interior design education and practice, this study will identify and analyze the development of textile specification criteria for environmentally-conscious commercial textiles. This investigation occurs in the context of a burgeoning awareness of green products and suggests that new specification approaches are needed. Although any discussion of commercial textiles has global implications, this report primarily addresses interior design practice in the United States.The instances of sustainability in building construction have produced some particularly interesting research both at the level of "production" of architecture and at the level of "evaluation" of the technical solutions proposed. Sensitivity towards environmental problems seems to have reached the conscience of users and those working in the building sector; however it is proving hard to achieve an effective new approach to planning. But how can this new conscience be "built up"? The notes that follow are the synthesis of a study that is underway concerning an approach to planning that is aware of environmental criticality and indications to make more sustainable choices. The test is applied to a case study of the wealth of mud and earth buildings in the Abruzzo region. In particular reflections are made: a. to set out a planning method that moves from a careful analysis of the possibilities offered by the environment, in terms of a stratified building culture and awareness of physical phenomena. A reading of tradition provides a wide repertory of solutions that should in any case be carefully evaluated, adapted and developed, in a word, put into practice to then adapt it to contemporary needs, making the best use of the knowledge of the technology of materials, the physical technique, of physiology. b. to hint at the instruments to achieve the aim of a sustainable development (economic and social) - though self construction (limited only to cases of rebuilding or restoration) or industrial production - that takes into account the environmental questions. c. to lay out a test that can be applied in a minimum module, emblematic of the paradigm of the technical and environmental appropriateness of a dwelling system in relation to a determined physical-climatic context.The present paper develops a structural decomposition analysis with cumulative product lifetime distributions to estimate the effects of both product lifetime shifts and energy efficiency changes on the embodied energy consumptions. The empirical analysis focuses on automobile use (ordinary passenger vehicles, small passenger vehicles, and light passenger vehicles) in Japan during the period 1990-2000. It reveals that the lifetime extension of existing old vehicles during the study period was more beneficial to the environment than purchasing new passenger vehicles with a relatively high fuel economy, because the lifetime extension empirically contributed to reducing the embodied energy consumption at the production and end-use stages. We also found that the energy-saving impact of a one-year lifetime extension was approximately 1.3 times larger than that of the most significant technological improvement in the electric power generation sector.The introduction of environmentally friendly innovations in both transport and energy sectors are included in the list of priorities of the European Union political agenda. This paper investigates the environmental consequences of the introduction of hydrogen and fuel cells technology in the European economic system by applying environmental input-output analysis and life cycle assessment tools. Hydrogen is produced through the reforming of natural gas and it is employed in fuel cells buses that offer transport services to final consumers. We have built three scenarios based on different assumptions on the final demand. We have shown the results for three impact categories: global warming, photochemical oxidation and acidification. The results suggest that the use of hydrogen in fuel cells buses is only environmentally desirable if accompanied either by the employment of renewable sources or by carbon dioxide capture, or both.The paper presents a life cycle assessment of a kenaf-fibre insulation board following the international standards of the ISO 14040 series. Each life-cycle step has been checked, from kenaf production and board manufacture by an Italian firm, to use and disposal. The aim is to Assess the board eco-profile and to compare, on the basis of a life-cycle approach, the energy and environmental benefits and drawbacks related to its employment into a typical residential dwelling. A comparison among various insulating materials has been carried out. The study focuses also on processes and input materials which cause the main environmental impacts of the product, and points out critical issues and the life-cycle steps with the highest improvement potentials. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Heating and cooling systems consume the most energy and are the largest source of emissions in the entire life cycle of a house. This study compares the life cycle impacts of three residential heating and cooling systems-warm-air furnace and air-conditioner, hot water boiler and air-conditioner, and air-air heat pump over a 35-year study period. Simulation and life cycle assessment studies of the systems at four locations in the United States, namely Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas determine the effect of regional variations in climate, energy mix, and the standard building characteristics on the systems' environmental impacts. In Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Texas, the heat pump has the highest impacts whereas in Oregon the heat pump has the lowest impacts. A second scenario shows that substitution by high-efficiency equipment reduces the impacts of all systems but does not affect the order of relative performance by region. Another scenario examined the replacement of coal-generated electricity by renewable generation in regional grids. In order to reduce the impacts of the heat pump system to the lowest of the three systems, renewable sources would have to replace 42% of electricity generation in Minnesota, 1.5% in Pennsylvania, and 38% in Texas. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental quality has become increasingly affected by the built environment-as ultimately, buildings are responsible for the bulk of energy consumption and resultant atmospheric emissions in many countries. In recognizing this trend, research into building energy-efficiency has focused mainly on the energy required for a building's ongoing use, while the energy "embodied" in its production is often overlooked. Such an approach has led in recent years to strategies which improve a building's thermal performance, but which rely on high embodied-energy (EE) materials and products. Although assessment methods and databases have developed in recent years, the actual EE intensity for a given material may be highly dependent on local technologies and transportation distances. The objective of this study is to identify building materials which may optimize a building's energy requirements over its entire life cycle, by analyzing both embodied and operational energy consumption in a climatically responsive building in the Negev desert region of southern Israel-comparing its actual material composition with a number of possible alternatives. It was found that the embodied energy of the building accounts for some 60% of the overall life-cycle energy consumption, which could be reduced significantly by using "alternative" wall infill materials. The cumulative energy saved over a 50-year life cycle by this material substitution is on the order of 20%. While the studied wall systems (mass, insulation and finish materials) represent a significant portion of the initial EE of the building, the concrete structure (columns, beams, floor and ceiling slabs) on average constitutes about 50% of the building's pre-use phase energy. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A life-cycle inventory model for the office buildings is developed in this paper. The environmental effects of two different building structures, steel and concrete, are intercompared. The results show that the steel-framed building is superior to the concrete-framed building on the following two indexes, the life-cycle energy consumption and environmental emissions of building materials. It is found that the life-cycle energy consumption of building materials per area in the steel-framed building is 24.9% as that in the concrete-framed building, whereas, on use phase, the energy consumption and emissions of steel-framed building are both larger than those of concrete-framed building. As a result, lower energy consumption and environmental emissions are achieved by the concrete-framed building compared with the steel-framed building on the whole life cycle of building. The present study also provides a good method of assessing the performance of energy saving and environmental protection of different building structures based on a whole life cycle. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Use of biofuels is known,for as long as car industry itself. The first cars with internal combustion engines, developed by Rudolf Diesel and Nikolaus Otto, were adapted to biofuel use. Later, fossil fuels became cheaper. New introduction of liquid biofuel production concurs with changes of Brasilia's agricultural policy in the seventies of the last century. Recently they have, due to neutral greenhouse gases emission ascribed to these fuels, replaced fossil fuels, whose use is increasing. In the field of biofuel implementation, The EU has set ambitious goals. In recent years, numerous ethnical and environmental questions have been raised. This article focuses on an analysis of energy use for production of liquid biofuels and environmental impacts that are caused by the total production cycle of these energy carriers. Production and use of biofuels is evaluated considering energy ratio, impacts on environment and humans and ecological footprints.In order to orient the economy toward sustainable development, the energetic sector is probably the one which primarily needs changes in supply, production, distribution and utilization technologies, due to the influence it has on climate changes and fossil fuel saving. The need to join global energetic goals with the attention to local reality ("glocalization') gives particular relevance to Local Energetic and Environmental Planning (LEEP). The effectiveness of a plan is strongly influenced by the procedures and approaches that experts utilize during the plan redaction. As this concept is relatively new, in literature there are few the contributions into the matter, it is often referred to as specific actions and sectors of interest which lack generality and completeness. A more scientific approach during a LEEP development could guarantee the correct balance between the different areas involved, which is a winning point to convince the different actors to produce and/or accept the actions. Social acceptation of LEEP is the only requirement to allow actions, after planning, to be fully realized A methodological scientific procedure grants also that the plan could afterwards be efficiently used by administrative and politic authorities for a correct derivation and implementation of a trite environmental and energetic policy. This paper offers a contribution to give LEEP a scientific dimension, based on a quantitative procedure to evaluate the main correlations between each action planned and its direct/indirect effects on the goals that must be previously assessed. The sensitivities in terms of "performance" achieved vs different actions have been evaluated The application of the procedure to the Abruzzo Region is presented as a test case.Drawing on sustainability for chemical production processes demands the prior integration of sustainability aspects during process development, when further environmental impacts and production costs become predefined. Micro and milli process technologies provide novel ways for process improvement combined with ecological and economic advantages. This is demonstrated by current developments in this area. In this context, the idea of "Novel Process Windows'' is discussed referring to examples of actual research. A short overview on how to assess sustainability using established tools of evaluation is given as well. This is rounded up with a recent case study of the Kolbe-Schmitt synthesis, performed to disclose the key drivers of further green process development.Within the framework of life cycle assessment (LCA), a 3F-based integrated approach is proposed in this article. The 3F, i.e., material flow, energy flow, and pollutant flow, is investigated with two kinds of walling materials. First, pollutant intensity analysis (PIA) was conducted in the LCA. Second, the relationship between material consumption and pollutant production was studied using material intensity analysis (MIA). Third, the relationship between energy consumption and pollutant load was investigated in terms of energy intensity analysis (EIA). The results show that both energy consumption and pollutant production of hollow concrete bricks are lower than those of solid clay blocks, as are those for material consumption. Significant reduction of energy consumption and pollutant production would be expected in China by replacing the traditional solid clay bricks with the hollow concrete blocks. The energy consumption of walling materials is closely related to its potential pollutant production. Furthermore, the substantial difference between the produced pollutants is primarily attributed to the different energy consumption for the two concerned walling materials. The LCA results were further discussed by sensitivity analysis together with a Monte Carlo simulation.Marble represents an important component of Italian buildings, where it is often utilized as a covering for bottom surfaces, despite its relatively high price. Moreover, it characterizes several public buildings, for which it is by far the most important decorative material, also because of its structural features and its long durability. Unfortunately, marble quarrying is an energy intensive activity that requires relevant amounts of electric and thermal energy sources; in addition, the extraction of the marble blocks from the mountain sides does involve a noticeable quantity of explosives, particularly in sites where traditional working methods are utilized. Another important feature of the marble mining is represented by the high level of waste materials released during the quarrying process. Both these elements call for careful attention to the production of this material, aiming for a suitable reduction of the environmental impact exerted by the current working procedures. An energy audit analysis, moreover, could allow the singling out of the steps of the whole process where it would be possible to reach improved efficiency, in this way properly cutting the energy resources involved in the production of the functional unit of this natural stone. The feasibility of such considerations is verified by means of an application to a marble quarry in Sicily, the region where an important rate of the Italian domestic production is realized. The field energy audit, other than suggesting a general approach to the problem, does indicate the high inefficiencies actually present in the working chain of the Sicilian marble.Nowadays, various indicators of sustainability performance are used, usually grounded in economics, ecology, thermodynamics, and sociology. The main shortcoming of the commonly used indicators is their 'one-dimensional' character. This paper focuses on thermodynamic sustainability indicators, which also couple environmental and economic aspects. The performance of economic systems is evaluated using various indicators, ranging from exergy, which shows the thermodynamic efficiency, through Cumulative Exergy Consumption CExC, which couples exergy and life cycle analysis, up to Extended Exergy Accounting EEA, where also economic aspects are included. The analysis is illustrated for the Dutch energy sector and for the Dutch Society, including extraction, conversion, agriculture, industry, transportation, tertiary, and domestic sectors.Packaging wastes have a portion of 12-15% in total municipal solid waste (MSW) in Turkey, and they have to be evaluated from production to final disposal from the environmental point of view. The concern about the environmental impacts of packages has been dealt with using several approaches in environmental management, such as risk assessment, environmental impact assessment, environmental auditing, energy analysis, material flow analysis, and life cycle analysis (LCA). The main purpose of this research was to investigate the life cycle environmental impact of glass bottles and beverage cartons. This LCA study was performed by using SimaPro7 (PRe Consultants, The Netherlands) software. Individual and comparative life cycle analysis of two packages was performed depending on a consumer who lives in Eskisehir city. For that aim, SimaPro7 was used, and the data to run the software was gathered from package producers, the database of the software, and the literature. Life cycle comparisons of the two juice packages among themselves and also within themselves were carried out by using EcoIndicator 99 on the basis of climate change, ecotoxicity, acidification/eutrophication, and fossil fuels. Sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the effects of transportation. According to comparison figures, the environmental load of glass bottles is higher than beverage carton's load for all the impact categories. This result is also supported by the sensitivity analysis.This paper purpose is to demonstrate, as a case study, that the Sustainable Development must be seen and explained as a process which requires both the traditional engineering analysis and the further alternatives knowledge. There are taken into account the electric trains with traction induction motors fed from d.c. line, not simply in terms of technico-economical growth, but also as achievements of the Sustainable Development. The paper presents data regarding the materials and energies in a lateral wall manufacturing process and assess an exergetic analysis on basis of mathematical models and structural diagrams of the traction induction motor, the voltage-source inverter and line-side converter used on the trains fed from d.c. line. The overall structural diagram construction for the principle schemes corresponding to modern electric trains fed from d.c. line is also presented. Through its rational and meaningful approach, the Life Cycle Energy Analysis, and particularly an exergetic assessment will help improve and optimize the design, manufacture, operation and filial equipments deconstruction of a transportation system.Window-wall ratio is limited strictly according to the designing norm of a building in hot summer and cold winter region in China by which the energy consumption of building use phase is determined. Theoretically, all life-cycle phases of buildings should be studied to understand the total energy consumption and environmental emissions of different window-wall ratios. This paper discusses the relationship between environmental impact and window-wall ratio of several types of windows by the method of LCA based on one office building in Shanghai. The results showes that the window-wall ratio can be larger than the upper limit of the criterion, and the window-wall ratio of common type window has a great influence on the life-cycle environmental burden, especially as northward. But for the hollow glass window or Low-E hollow glass window. the window-wall ratio has a little influence on the life-cycle environment burden, and for Low-E hollow glass window southward, the environmental impact decreases with the increasing of the window-wall ratio. Improving window materials is more effective than controlling window-wall ratio for decreasing the life-cycle environmental impact. The life-cycle environmental impact of the building with low-E hollow glass window is about 25% less than that with monolayer glass window.In order to study the long term sustainability of the Chinese building stock, an integrated LCA model with a combined bottom-up and top-down approach is proposed to analyzed the material and energy flows and the related environmental impacts through construction and operation activities in the reference year (2005). And the future development during the ongoing urbanisation process (until 2050) is estimated based on an evolution model, taking the demographic increase, the urbanisation transformation, the need for surface and comfort and the relevant technology progress into consideration. The developing tendencies under present conditions (Trend scenario) are examined. Alternative scenarios with reduced resource consumption and environmental impacts are also formulated. The results show the possibilities and limitations of different developing strategies of the Chinese building stock.Though analyzing the problems in the building green degree of large-scale public sectors in China, this paper brings several evaluation targets from the perspectives of ecology, economy, functionality and comfortableness, at the same time, brings out a set of calculation method for integrate green degree. With the knowledge of AHP and fuzzy mathematics, this paper combines qualitative analysis with quantitative research to build a set of appraisal system to calculate large-scale public sectors' green value. Considering the importance of green ecology, the paper computes the value of green ecology though Life cycle Assessment. Large public buildings generally refers to the office building commercial building, tourism building, science education building, communications building and transportation building which construction area over 20,000 square meters. In recent years, with rapid development of China's construction industry, in particular the process of urbanization speeds up, building energy consumption is increasing, while the total construction area of less than 10 percent of large public buildings have been more than a quarter of its energy consumption. the data of Ministry of Construction shows the cur-rent National Government office buildings and large public buildings while construction accounted for only a total area of the city 4 percent, but its energy consumption has accounted for construction of the city 22 percent of the total energy consumption, electricity consumption for 70 similar to 300 kwh/m(2), In other words, its energy consumption per square metre is five times that of the general building, highest attainable or even 10 times. In response to this situation, strengthen the building energy efficiency, promotion of large-scale development of green public buildings has become an urgent problem that need to solve, but due to the lack of an effective building "green degree" quantitative criteria and evaluation system, greatly Restricted the construction of large public green development. Therefore, this article use AHP and fuzzy mathematics, establishment a large public buildings green degree comprehensive evaluation index system, Considering the importance of green ecology, the paper computes the value of green ecology though Life Cycle Assessment.Cities are dynamic systems. Understanding the role of time and the way it shapes the urban fabric and structure is crucial to assess urban flood vulnerability and to manage the capacity of cities to adapt to changes in demography as well as in climatic conditions. Consequently, cities have to team from the past and anticipate the future in order to develop and implement effective flood management approaches. They have to eliminate unsatisfactory practices through investigation, experimentation and evaluation. Urban renewal of buildings and infrastructure is one of the means by which cities adapt to long term changes, to correct old errors and to increase flood resilience. According to the latest climate change scenarios flood frequency is going to increase significantly over the lifetime of existing buildings. Therefore, the inclusion of pro-active retrofitting in regular urban renewal schemes and decreasing lifetime cycles of new buildings are likely sound and effective strategies to increase the robustness of the urban fabric to climate change. Since current building practices are based upon the assumption that the built environment will not experience significant change, these approaches will have major ramifications for investment levels and building methods. In order to account for the relatively rapid rate of substitution of buildings and other built structures it is argued in this paper that the life cycle assessment and full cost accounting of the building stock should be included in the development of effective UFM strategies.In the development of sustainable process lines, various aspects must be considered such as quality, microbiological risks and process economy as also environmental impact throughout the development phase of the process. A general process-driven simulation tool has been developed to facilitate the rapid and efficient evaluation of alternative processes, taking into account technological, environmental and microbiological aspects. The tool has been used to analyse a proposed process line for product in the form of a snack using brewers' spent grain (BSG) as one major ingredient. From simulations based on data from a pilot scale trail it could be concluded that the handling and choice of ingredients are critical steps from a microbiological and environmental point of view as well as from the point of view of costs. From a process point of view the drying step is the most critical due the large amount of energy required, which influences both costs and the environmental impact. By pressing the BSG before processing and possibly by drying the product at the brewery using e.g. excess steam from the brewing process the environmental impact as well as production costs can be decreased.The selection of the best available technology for the treatment of industrial wastewater requires a well structured and comprehensive methodology for the systematic evaluation of the alternative technologies. A suitable methodology for the selection of an integrated management system of industrial wastewater from the environmental and economic viewpoint has been developed and applied for the case of milk industry. In order to select the environmentally friendlier and most economic integrated treatment system, different industrial wastewater treatment technologies were considered. The treatment systems consisted of alternative pretreatment processes, biological treatment technologies (aerobic and anaerobic) and sludge treatment. A spreadsheet model that calculates the consumption of materials, energy, main consumables and emissions associated with both the construction and operation phases of the alternative treatment technologies was constructed. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was then used to quantify the potential environmental impacts in each case. Options based on anaerobic digestion were found to be the most environmentally friendly leading to fewer emissions.In this paper multivariate statistical techniques are used to analyze the data output of partial equilibrium energy models developed in the framework of the NEEDS Project, with the aim of emphasising their informational content and reducing redundancies. In particular, Cluster Analysis and Principal Component Analysis are applied to characterise final energy consumption and CO(2) emission by country for two different scenarios (Business as Usual - BAU and CO(2)_450ppmv), and with reference to years 2000, 2015 and 2050. The overall objective is to set up a general applicable procedure for characterizing data correlation structure and identifying suited indicators, in order to devise advanced tools for supporting decision making processes as well as for assessino, the sustainability of energy-environmental strategies.The Greek electricity generation system. mainly based on the use of local lignite and imported heavy-oil, is assumed responsible for more than 50% of the CO2, almost 80% of the SO2 and approximately 33% of the NOx emissions at national level. This fact, along with the considerable energy consumption increase during the last 25 years, results in serious difficulties on fulfilling the EU Directives concerning, the Large Combustion Plants and the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions for Greece. On the other hand. renewable energy sources (RES) -like hydro, wind and solar energy- used extensively for electricity production throughout the world, are practically air-pollution free based on a life cycle assessment (LCA). In this context. the objective of the present work is to quantify the pollution caused from the Greek electricity generation system as is now and that avoided with the exploitation of RES. More precisely. the present work investigates the specific air pollution emission factors related with the electricity production from fossil fuels in Greece. estimates the air pollution avoided due to the exploitation of the available hydro and wind potential on annual basis since 1990 and the corresponding potential contribution of RES to significantly reducing the above mentioned pollutants. The results of the work indicate that the RES may, in the near future, contribute significantly to minimizing the environmental impacts of the electricity generation sector, including the emissions of CO2 and other various harmful oases. at rational investment cost.Environmentally conscious design (ecodesign) is at present among the key issues for manufacturers. Although many tools for ecodesign exist, how to employ different tools in combination is unavailable. To reveal a way of combinatorial utilization of QFDE (Quality Function Deployment for Environment) and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), which are characteristic tools for ecodesign, this paper aims at analyzing how designers obtain and utilize different types of outputs from those two tools through a case study of QFDE and LCA on an identical product, an industrial pump. Outputs from QFDE were proved to include their functional roles such as that of an impeller, which supports designers effectively but cannot be obtained from LCA. In contrast, the results produced by LCA are indispensable for obtaining quantitative and objective information on the environmental aspect. Hence, a combinatorial usage of QFDE and LCA is suggested for effective ecodesign.The solvent performances and ecological (dis) advantages of different solvent systems for the Diels-Alder reaction of cyclopentadiene and methyl acrylate were investigated. Promising solvent alternatives, especially [C6MIM][BF4](1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium tetra. uoroborate), citric acid/N, N'-dimethyl urea as well as a solvent-free alternative were compared to the conventional solvent systems methanol, cyclohexane, acetone and methanol/water. By means of the ECO (Ecological and Economic Optimisation) method these solvent alternatives were evaluated already during an R&D (Research and Development) stage in a holistic approach. This method is a screening tool that employs a Simplified Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) approach in combination with an optimisation procedure. All life cycle stages from the production of reactants, solvents etc., synthesis and workup, recycling and disposal are considered within this methodology. With the help of the ECO method, some significant environmental issues depending on the solvent selection are compared in order to make a contribution to the assessment of the greenness of chemical processes and products during R&D.As typically represented by the popularization of the Internet, the rapid development of information technology (IT) is largely affecting all areas of activity as the foundation of societies with higher efficiency, making it really a tool for social innovation. On the other hand, along with the globalization of the economic activities and the related change of lifestyle with mass-energy and mass-material consumptions, the social concern and sense of crisis against global warming and other environmental problems have been more and more highlighted. Under these situations, much discussion is on with regard to the possibility that the features of IT that are considered to improve the efficiency of traditional activities could contribute to the solution of environmental problems, particularly in prevention of global warming. This way, the services and systems utilizing IT not only improve the traditional work efficiency but also reduce the energy and resource consumption for the activities, resulting in reduction of the amount of CO2 emission. In this article, the relation between IT and the environmental issues mentioned above are highlighted. Also, some ideas on how to evaluate the quantitative effects of CO2 reduction as the result of applied services and systems incorporating relevant IT programs, and tools and actual evaluation cases are introduced to show the potential of IT in tackling environmental issues. (C) 2007 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.The work shows a case study where LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) was used as a tool-driven in the development of a Brazilian vehicle, namely a Buggy. It analyzed the environmental advantages to employ vegetal fibers in development products by LCA focus using the software SIMAPRO V7.1 based on stages of vehicle. from raw material extraction to production. The results are presented by means of confrontation jute fiber and fiberglass based on Eco-Indicator95. They show that materials are both the base of LCA and also too important to build and support an environmental management of products and process.As part of the global trend towards sustainable development many industries are adopting "green" design practices in order to improve their products from the perspective of the "triple bottom line". This paper discusses the design for environment approach to sports products design and presents a case study of composite tennis racquets with life cycle assessment (LCA) used to evaluate their environmental load and design features. The flexibility of the LCA approach is examined and LCA variations are suggested that may be applicable for specific situations. Furthermore, this work identifies the importance of uncertainty management within LCA and presents preliminary findings that suggest how uncertainty management can enhance the value of LCA to the design engineer.In recent decades, an awareness of environmental issues has increased within society encouraging people to become more aware of the impact that human activity is having upon both the natural and built environments. There is also increasing awareness of the external and internal pressures being placed upon organizations to acknowledge, analyze and report upon environmental issues. The resulting general trend is for organizations to take more responsibility for the services, products and processes that they are responsible for. Specifying and selecting sports surfaces, involves the simultaneous evaluation of a multitude of performance factors. Increasingly, environmental impact is becoming an important component in such surface evaluations. Architects, specifiers and facility operators require objective, consistent and comprehensive data detailing the environmental impacts of materials and their associated manufacturing processes. The broad aim of this paper is to analyze the environmental impacts of various constructional styles of indoor playing surface on global warming, through the application of Life Cycle Assessment. To calculate the ecological footprint of an organisation's resource use activities, it is necessary to track how consumption patterns ultimately lead to emission impacts. The approach used has involved a process based analysis, which looks at each individual process in the playing surface supply chain, required to manufacture, install, maintain and ultimately dispose of various constructional styles of indoor sports surface.This study aimed to quantify major environmental impacts associated with the production of hemp yarn using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). A reference scenario of traditional hemp warm water retting was compared to: (1) bio-retting, i.e. hemp green scutching followed by water retting, (2) babyhemp, based on stand retting of pre-mature hemp, (3) dew retting of flax. overall, neither of the alternative scenarios was unambiguously better than the reference. The impacts of the hemp reference scenario and the flax scenario were similar, except for pesticide use (higher for flax) and water use during processing (higher for hemp). Bioretting had higher impacts than the reference scenario for climate change and energy use, due to higher energy input in fibre processing. Babyhemp had higher impacts than the reference scenario for eutrophication, land occupation and pesticide use. A reduction of the environmental impacts of hemp yarn should give priority to reduction of energy use in the fibre processing and yam production stages and to reduction of eutrophication in the crop production phase. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reservedThe objective of the present work is the analysis of the environmental impact of the construction materials used in the building of ten low cost houses constructed within the Program 10x10 With Roof-Chiapas, propose by the investigators of the lbero-American Program of Science and Technology for Development (CYTED), to verify if these technological proposals of roof are environmentally more sustainable than the constructive system of the roof most demanded in the central region of Chiapas. With the support of the environmental information provided in the database BEDEC PR/PCT of the Institute of the Construction of Catalonia (ITeC), and following the methodological pattern applied in the analysis of the environmental impact of the constructive materials in Lanzarote's island, there has been evaluated every constructive product of the above mentioned housings along their life cycle assessment (LCA), with the purpose of specifying the interaction of the products with the environment: the energy cost and emissions of CO, The obtained results show us that the technologies which material bases are the common brick and mortar, the concrete and the ferrocemento do not represent a significant saving in the employment of the quantities of materials in the roofs of arid, cement, steel and water, and in consequence, prove with similar environmental impacts to the reference housing. Using quantities of energy and generating emissions of CO, higher to the resultants in the construction of the roofs with wooden structures and ceramic tiles.Life cycle analysis (LCA) and Life cycle costing analysis (LCCA) as a means of choosing between alternatives of building or infrastructural solutions have meanwhile become an integral part in the project phases of major investment decisions. Most current LCA models are inadequate, and do not provide investors with a sufficient basis for making risk-based decisions. The LC NPV model developed at the Institute for Construction Engineering and Management of ETH Zurich is based on the economic minimum principle in pure consideration of expenditure or on the maximum principle in consideration of income and expenditure. The LC NPV model has clear system boundary conditions in terms of both content and time in line with system theory. Furthermore the utilization life cycle of the construction components/elements for repair and renewal was considered by life cycle curves. The uncertainty of future developments of payment flows, price increase and yielding of interest rates is incorporated into the model by probabilistic distribution. The LC NPV model therefore improves the decision-making basis for investors and property developers and, given a competent interpretation of the results, represents a powerful decision-making tool.Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA) is applied to a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) by activated sludge in order to demonstrate the environmental and exergetic effect of biogas recovery within the whole system boundaries. Two methods of recovery are compared: a simple burner ( Burner scenario) and a combined heat and power engine (CHP scenario). The results showed that biogas recovery reduces the depletion of natural resources and decreases ecological impacts. Eutrophication, toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts are not affected by biogas recovery in the Burner scenario and the change is not significant in the CHP scenario. Irreversibility is added to the system by biogas recovery. This is because of the nature of the burnt mixture, which is different from conventional fossil fuel and because of the addition of units such as CHP and heat exchangers. The CHP fed with the biogas cannot fulfill the total demand in thermal energy for heating and drying in comparison to the burner. Natural gas should be burnt additionally and a heat exchanger introduced. The irreversibility of the CHP scenario is larger than the Burner's one, but the former allows reducing electricity consumption by 22.7%. Moreover, exhaust gas has a positive effect from the exergy point of view. It contains an excess potential work which could be recovered in another function. Based on ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation, acidification and marine aquatic ecotoxicity impacts, biogas recovery with a CHP scenario is better than with a Burner scenario. But based on abiotic resources depletion, global warming potential, irreversibility and excess potential work the second strategy, with a Burner scenario, is the best one. In process optimization, the focus should not be only on potential impacts reduction. The decrease of the irreversibility produced by new functions introduced in the system should also be taken into account. The other subsystems within the system boundaries should be looked at especially those related to electricity production. The ELCA is a useful tool for system ecodesign and for finding the best way to promote renewable fuels versus fossil ones.Life-cycle engineering design (LCED) is expected to represent an important part of the design of manufacturing processes in the future, particularly as a means of minimising environmental impact. In most current life cycle assessment tools (LCAT), the sets of data and information within the numerous tools deployed at various stages of design process are not being properly exchanged among the tools, resulting in a lack of exchange of information available to the different actors along the entire value chain and thus leading to the ineffective and inefficient adoption of sustainable product development practices. This paper extends the NIST product core model to serve as the product information model supporting LCED of the product. We propose the disassembly-logic-network (D-L-N) to map the product and the life cycle activities to the abstract model. This model facilitates the evaluation of DFA, DFD, DFR and almost all the other phases of LCED. We develop a comprehensive LCAT using Microsoft Visual C vertical bar vertical bar. The main components of this tool, its methodology and the key technologies used to develop this LCAT are demonstrated in this paper. It is important that similar computer aided tools be developed for design for the environment (DFE).LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is a well known methodology to assess the impact on the environment over the life cycle of a product, process, or activity. This methodology is based on the LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) database, a data set of all resources (material and energy) that are consumed or emitted in order to produce 1 unit of the product. Because electricity is a basic infrastructure, a Thailand electricity grid LCI database is needed to assess the environmental impact not only for the product used in Thailand, but also for any product that is exported to other countries. A complete LCI database for the electricity grid in Thailand is not yet available, and the LCI database developed in this work applies from the fuel acquisition stage to the production stage. The analysis shows the unique characteristics of the Thailand electricity grid. An LCI database for each type of fuel and for each electricity generation system was developed. The characteristics of each type of fuel and electricity generation system are indicated in terms of Life Cycle GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions to reflect their global warming potential. Data on the Life Cycle GHG emission per kWh of electricity produced are also provided. The first Thailand LCI database for the fuels used in the electricity generation system was developed using data obtained from the EGAT (Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand), IPPs (Independent Power Producers), and PTT (Petroleum Authority of Thailand) during the Thai fiscal year 2005 (from October 2004 to September 2005). The database was used to analyze the current situation and the characteristics of the electricity generation system in Thailand and to compare it with the systems used in other developed countries.In spring 2006, Duke University piloted a new, interdisciplinary, service-learning course, in which undergraduate, graduate, and professional students conducted a life cycle analysis of natural disasters. Invited experts discussed: the range of meteorologic, hydrologic and geologic factors that cause disasters; explored how societies plan for and/or respond to the immediate and long-term physical, social, emotional and spiritual issues associated with survival; and presented case studies of response, recovery and reconstruction efforts. Students had the option to participate in either a service-learning exercise in an area ravaged by a natural disaster or to research a topic related to natural disasters. All students attended the lecture component of the course and completed on-line quizzes to demonstrate understanding of the material presented. Students who elected to undertake the service-learning experience participated in a trip over spring break to assist residents of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. During their time in Louisiana, they kept journals (audio and written) of their activities and upon their return wrote a brief synopsis, and made a group oral presentation of their experience. Students not participating in a service-learning project prepared one individual paper on a relevant topic and one group paper, the results of which were presented to the class. Additionally, as part of the Duke Digital Initiative, the course also relied on technology to enhance student learning. Twice-weekly lectures were recorded and provided in the form of Webcasts for future reference and students completed online quizzes based on these lectures. Also, students recorded interviews with hurricane survivors and volunteers on Duke issued iPods and used that audio content, interwoven with their own thoughts and experiences, to create audio journals about their service-learning experiences.The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique and of existing methods and databases. LCA is a technique to assess the potential environmental impact associated with a product or a service throughout its life cycle from raw material acquisition through production, use and disposal. The International ISO Standards provide principles, framework and methodological requirements for conducting LCA studies.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool has been developed to evaluate environmental impacts of building projects, from construction until demolition. The operation phase is essential, particularly energy processes: therefore LCA is linked to thermal simulation. Several alternatives can be studied. The results, in the form of environmental indicators (e.g., energy and water consumption, contribution in global warming, waste production), have been compared to eight similar tools developed in Europe. Some applications are presented hereunder: the renovation of a social housing apartment block, and a study of the occupants' influence on the performance of a building.This paper tries to compare the environmental impacts of energy production using agricultural biomass and energy production using traditional reactor systems (natural gas and fuel oil) by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. In order to make this comparison, the impact assessment methods CML 2 BASELINE 2000 (problem oriented method) and ECOINDICATOR 99 (damage oriented method) are used. The heat produced by cogeneration is intended to feed a heating network connected to 16 dwellings. The results show that the use of biogas reduces the emissions taking part in the global warming potential and reduces the global environmental impact.The incineration of biomass and waste is considered to produce water steam, which then would feed the High Temperature Electrolysis (HTE) process in order to produce hydrogen. For these energy sources, in a French context, results show that water steam production cost could be in a range of 0.02 to 0.06 euros per steam kilogram. Potentially 78 million vehicles could be fed with hydrogen coming from the steam produced by the incineration of the currently nonvalorised biomass and domestic waste. Furthermore, for each energy source the optimized hydrogen production cost estimation has been performed, including investment and operation costs.The LCA emissions from four renewable energy routes that convert straw/corn stover into usable energy are examined. The conversion options studied are ethanol by fermentation, syndiesel by oxygen gasification followed by Fischer Tropsch synthesis, and electricity by either direct combustion or biomass integrated gasification and combined cycle (BIGCC). The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of these four options are evaluated, drawing on a range of studies, and compared to the conventional technology they would replace in a western North American setting. The net avoided GHG emissions for the four energy conversion processes calculated relative to a business as usual case are 830 g CO2e/kWh for direct combustion, 839 g CO2e/kWh for BIGCC, 2,060 g CO2e/L for ethanol production, and 2,440 g CO2e/L for FT synthesis of syndiesel. The largest impact on avoided emissions arises from substitution of biomass for fossil fuel. Relative to this, the impact of emissions from processing of fossil fuel, e.g., refining of oil to produce gasoline or diesel, and processing of biomass to produce electricity or transportation fuels, is minor.Background, Aims and Scope. The actual land use consequences of crop consumption are not very well reflected in existing life cycle inventories. The state of the art is that such inventories typically include data from crop production in the country in which the crop is produced, and consequently the inventories do not necessarily consider the land ultimately affected in the systems being studied. The aims of this study are to analyse the mechanisms influencing the long-term land use consequences of changes in crop demand and to propose a methodological framework for identifying these consequences within a global scope. Materials and Methods. The study refers to the principles of consequential LCA, which means that the consequences of changes in consumption are studied from a market-based perspective. In this context, the study addresses the feasibility of using economic modelling to identify ultimate land use consequences of crop consumption. Results. Based on the current market trend for crops and an analysis of basic mechanisms in crop production, concepts for modelling how crop consumption affects the global agricultural area and the intensity of crop production are suggested. It is demonstrated how the assumptions concerning drivers for technological development have a profound influence on identification of the marginal response to crop consumption, and how the geographical location of crop consumption also influences the composition of the marginal production response in terms of cropland expansion and intensification. Discussion. Crop prices have been falling at a global scale and are projected to decline further. At the same time, crop yields per hectare are continuously increasing. This indicates that drivers other than crop demand have a strong influence on technological development in crop production. Conclusions. Economic modelling in combination with geographical information and agricultural statistics can be used to estimate long-term land use consequences of changes in crop consumption. The GTAP Model is a suitable tool although it requires implementation of land supply curves, adjustment of elasticities to reflect long-term changes, and possibly establishment of a link between crop demand and technological development. Through this approach, life cycle inventories for crops reflecting the actual land use consequences of consumption can be established. Recommendations and Perspectives. Further work (based on the methodological framework in this study) will address the practical modelling of land use changes induced by crop consumption in different regions with the purpose of including this in LCI.Goal, Scope and Background. Land use and changes in land use have a significant impact on biodiversity. Still, there is no agreed upon methodology for how this impact should be assessed and included in LCA. This paper presents a methodology for including land use impact on biodiversity in Life Cycle Impact Assessment and provides a case example from forestry operations in Norway. Materials and Methods. The methodology presented applies indirect assessments of biodiversity based on knowledge on what key factors are important for maintaining biodiversity in a boreal forest. These are used to construct an index on Conditions for Maintained Biodiversity. In addition the intrinsic quality of an area is assessed on the basis of the Ecosystem Scarcity and Ecosystem Vulnerability. Globally available data on ecoregions are here used. In addition the spatial and temporal impact is assessed based on the annual regrowth of the forest. Results. In the case study different forestry management regimes for the ecoregions 'Scandinavian and Russian taiga' and Scandinavian coastal coniferous forests' are compared. Based on the proposed methodology, the intrinsic quality difference of the two ecoregions is estimated to approximately 40% and the reduction in impact on biodiversity from land use by adopting new and realistic targets for the key factor 'areas set aside' is estimated to 20%. Discussion. The paper presents a new methodology for how land use impacts on biodiversity can be included in LCA. The methodologv is based upon a proposed framework and the results from the case study show that the methodology is capable to distinguish between different forestry management regimes and forestry in different ecoregions. The data used are readily available, but more research is needed to scale the proposed key factors and also include new key factors. It is at present not possible to validate the size of the differences. Conclusions. The importance of land use impact on biodiversity is of major importance and should be included in LCIA. The proposed methodology is developed within a framework developed within the UNTEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative and provides a methodology demonstrated to be able to distinguish between both similar activities in different ecoregions and different management practices within one ecoregion. Recommendations and Perspectives. More work is needed to establish a methodology for land use impact on biodiversity in LCIA and due to the importance this should be a prioritized task. The proposed application of indirect indicators to assess impact on biodiversity from land use changes in LCIA should be further explored, but the proposed methodology can already be applied with globally available data on ecoregions. The challenge is to develop sound key factors for the relevant ecosystems.Goal, Scope and Background. Land use is an economic activity that generates large benefits for human society. One side effect, however, is that it has caused many environmental problems throughout history and still does today. Biodiversity, in particular, has been negatively influenced by intensive agriculture, forestry and the increase in urban areas and infrastructure. Integrated assessment such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), thus, incorporate impacts on biodiversity. The main objective of this paper is to develop generic characterization factors for land use types using empirical information on species diversity from Central Europe, which can be used in the assessment method developed in the first part of this series of paper. Methods. Based on an extensive meta-analysis, with information about species diversity on 5581 sample plots, we calculated characterization factors for 53 land use types and six intensity classes. The typology is based on the CORINE Plus classification. We took information on the standardized alpha-diversity of plants, moss and mollusks into account. In addition, threatened plants were considered. Linear and nonlinear models were used for the calculation of damage potentials (EDPs). In our approach, we use the current mean species number in the region as a reference, because this determines whether specific land use types hold more or less species diversity per area. The damage potential calculated here is endpoint oriented. The corresponding characterization factors EDPs can be used in the Life Cycle Impact Assessment as weighting factors for different types of land occupation and land use change as described in Part 1 of this paper series. Results. The result from ranking the intensity classes based on the mean plant species number is as expected. High intensive forestry and agriculture exhibit the lowest species richness (5.7-5.8 plant species/m(2)), artificial surfaces, low intensity forestry and non-use have medium species richness (9.4-11.1 plant species/m2) and low-intensity agriculture has the highest species richness (16.6 plant species/m(2)). The mean and median are very close,indicating that the skewedness of the distribution is low. Standard error is low and is similar for all intensity classes. Linear transformations of the relative species numbers are linearly transformed into ecosystem damage potentials (EDPlinears). The inte gration of threatened plant species diversity into a more differentiated damage function EDPlinearStotal makes it possible to differentiate between land use types that have similar total species numbers, but intensities of land use that are clearly different (e.g., artificial meadow and broad-leafed forest). Negative impact values indicate that land use types hold more species per m(2) than the reference does. In terms of species diversity, these land use types are superior (e.g. near-to-nature meadow, hedgerows, agricultural fallow). Discussion. Land use has severe impacts on the environment. The ecosystem damage potential EDPS is based on assessment of impacts of land use on species diversity. We clearly base EDPs factors on alpha-diversity, which correlates with the local aspect of species diversity of land use types. Based on an extensive meta-analysis of biologists' field research, we were able to include data on the diversity of plant species, threatened plant species, moss and mollusks in the EDPS. The integration of other animal species groups (e.g. insects, birds, mammals, amphibians) with their specific habitat preferences could change the characterization factors values specific for each land use type. Those mobile species groups support ecosystem functions, because they provide functional links between habitats in the landscape. Conclusions. The use of generic characterization factors in Life Cycle Impact Assessment of land use, which we have developed, can improve the basis for decision-making in industry and other organizations. It can best be applied for marginal land use decisions. However, if the goal and scope of an LCA requires it this generic assessment can be complemented with a site-dependent assessment. Recommendations and Perspectives. We recommend utilizing the developed characterization factors for land use in Central Europe and as a reference methodology for other regions. In order to assess the impacts of land use in other regions it would be necessary to sample empirical data on species diversity and to develop region specific characterization factors on a worldwide basis in LCA. This is because species diversity and the impact of land use on it can very much differ from region to region.Background, Aims and Scope. Many feed ingredients are not fully digested by livestock. However, the addition of digestibility-improving enzymes to the feed can improve the absorption of e.g. energy and protein and thereby enhance the nutrient value of the feed. Feed production is a major source of environmental impacts in animal production, and it is obvious to assume that enzyme supplementation can help to reduce the environmental impact of animal production. The purpose of the study is, therefore, to assess and compare the environmental burdens of the supplements and compare them with the savings made when enzymes are used in animal production. The properties of enzymes vary considerably and the study takes as its starting point a particular enzyme product, Ronozyme WX CT. Ronozyme WX CT is a xylanase which depolymerises xylans (a group of dietary fibres found in cereal cell walls) into smaller units. The product is a widely accepted means of improving the energy value and the protein digestibility of pig and poultry feed. The study relates to Ronozyme WX CT used for fattening pigs produced in Denmark. Methods. Lifecycle assessment is used as the analytical method, and Ronozyme WX CT production and reductions in feed consumption are modelled using SimaPro 7.0.2. Data on Ronozyme WX CT production are derived from Novozymes' production facilities in Denmark. Other data are derived from the literature and from public databases. Changes in feed consumption are determined by modelling in AgroSoft (R) feed optimisation software. Guidelines from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are used to estimate reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases resulting from reduced manure generation and changed manure composition. Results. The study shows that the use of Ronozyme WX CT to increase the nutritional value of pig feed is justified by major advantages in terms of reduced potential contribution to global warming, acidification and photochemical ozone formation and reduced use of energy, and in most cases also nutrient enrichment and use of agricultural land. Ronozyme WX CT (xylanase) is often used together with Ronozyme P5000 CT (phytase) and together the two products can contribute considerably to reducing a broad range of environmental impacts from pig production. Discussion. Reduced contribution to acidification and nutrient enrichment is partly driven by reduced feed consumption and partly reduced N-emissions with manure resulting from reduced protein content of the feed. Sensitivity analyses of a range of parameters show that the observed advantages are generally robust although exact magnitudes of environmental advantages are associated with much variation and uncertainty. It should, however, be noted that changes (e.g. of feed prices) may turn contributions to nutrient enrichment and use of agricultural land into trade-offs. Conclusions. Improvement of energy and protein value of pigfeed by application of Ronozyme xylanase and following feed savings reduces impact on environment per unit of pig-meat produced, and the enzyme product contributes to a sustainable development the Danish pork meat supply. Recommendations. Digestibility-improving enzymes are a promising means of reducing the environmental impact of pig production. The greenhouse gas reducing potential of Ronozyme WX CT in Danish pig production has been estimated at 5% and in the order of 4 million tons of CO, equivalents if the results are extended to the whole of Europe. Use of Ronozyme WX CT is driven by overall cost savings in animal production, and it is therefore recommended that digestibility-improving enzymes are given more attention as a cost-efficient means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.Background, Aims and Scope. It is clear that a wastewater treatment plant brings about an enhanced quality of wastewater; however, it also implies such environmental side effects as material and energy consumption as well as involving the generation of waste. This study is maintained within the boundaries of a research project that aims at the evaluation, from an environmental perspective, of the most common technical options focused on the removal of the organic matter present in urban wastewater. In particular, the paper presents the results for four centres of population with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The differences present among the facilities on their configurations will allow their comparison and the definition of the less environmentally damaging scheme for the treatment of this type of wastewater. Methods. As done before, LCA was the tool used for the evaluation of the environmental performance of the systems under study. In particular, the Centre of Environmental Science (CML) of Leiden University methodology was considered. The collection and transportation of wastewater across the pipeline was considered to be unaffected by the operation of the WTP and therefore, these stages were excluded. Within the boundaries of the treatment plants, the analysis was limited to the operation stage and no considerations were given to the building phase. Average annual data from several years were provided to obtain the inventory data, avoiding extraordinary conditions such as flooding or prolonged stop of units. CML factors (updated in 2002) were chosen for the impact assessment stage. SimaPro 5.1 software was used to make the calculations easier and to provide the data for the background systems. Results and Discussion. The comparison performed showed that the different configurations entail variations on the impact categories under study. Although higher electricity consumption was reported for those facilities with secondary treatment, its implementation is recommended as better results are obtained for eutrophication, undoubtedly an important criteria when wastewater treatment systems are analysed. In particular, the discharge of ammonium and phosphorous was identified as the main contributor within this impact category. The digestion of the sludge entails several benefits as the sludge is partially stabilised, its volume significantly reduced and the impacts associated to its application to soil are minor. Concerning the several dewatering systems compared, the use of different chemicals to facilitate the water removal turned to have an influence on the environmental performance so attention to this should be paid in addition to the energy consumption associated. Conclusions and Recommendations. Four WWTPs of capacity ranging from 75,000 to 125,000 inhabitants were evaluated in order to get more knowledge of their environmental performance. Data on material and energy consumption as well as characterisation of the water and the sludge entering and leaving the facilities were collected from the facilities in order to build the inventory required to perform the environmental assessment. The comparison performed among the four facilities made possible the definition of a less environmentally damaging WWTP, where secondary treatment at the water line as well as filter band and anaerobic digestion at the sludge line should be included. As mentioned, this study is part of a research project in which twenty treatment plants (divided in groups according to their capacity of treatment) are being evaluating. At the present time only results from the study of those from the highest populated areas were considered. On-going research is focused on the analysis of the plants representative for less populated areas.Aim, Scope, and Background. Industrial and institutional (I and 1) floor maintenance activities require regular use of chemical products and equipment. Different floor care systems require different maintenance products, activities, and frequencies which consume different levels of energy and material for product manufacturing, maintenance, and application. Therefore, selecting between floor maintenance products and programs requires comprehensive analysis of the entire floor maintenance system as well as any site-specific factors that can influence human and environmental health. In this paper, a probabilistic model for comparing the environmental life cycle implications of I and I floor maintenance programs is presented. The primary interest is in comparing programs that use different water-based acrylic floor finishes and in particular, programs using zinc-containing floor finishes compared to zinc-free floor finish systems. Zinc, used in some acrylic polymers as a polymer cross-linking agent, is regulated in some communities to minimize its impact on the aquatic environment. Method. The life cycle assessment (LCA) model was developed in compliance with the ISO 14040 series of standards [1]. Furthermore, uncertain input variables were defined as probabilistic distributions and Latin Hypercube Sampling was used to propagate uncertainty through the model. The scope of the study includes the full life cycle of the materials, supplies, equipment, and activities associated with performing floor maintenance. The effects of maintaining higher lighting and temperature levels while performing floor maintenance are estimated using building energy system analysis. The life cycle inventory (LCI) element of the LCA was developed using product-specific data, publicly available data, and established life cycle inventory databases. Life cycle impact assessment was conducted using the Eco-Indicator 99 [2] and Impact 2002+ [3,4] impact assessment methods. Results. Two floor maintenance scenarios were developed and analyzed to compare the environmental impact of programs using zinc-containing and zinc-free floor finishes. The results discussed herein are presented for a hypothetical retail store located in the Midwest region of the United States. Given the scenarios examined, zinc-free floor finish systems reduced the release of zinc ions to the environment, but the overall impact in all life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) categories was greater for the zinc-free floor finish system primarily due to the increased frequency of maintenance. Discussion. The impacts associated with operating the facility were orders of magnitude higher than those associated with producing or using floor care products, supplies, or equipment. This leads to the conclusion that for critical impacts, floor care product development should focus research efforts on innovative products that reduce application and maintenance time if significant reduction in these impacts is sought. Conclusions. Adopting a stochastic modeling approach enabled incorporation of parameter uncertainty and analysis of uncertainty in model results. In the scenario shown here, the magnitude of overall impact in all LCIA categories was greater for the zinc-free floor finish system than the zinc-containing floor finish system. Perspectives. Use of decision modeling software provided flexibility for developing scenarios and assessing floor maintenance programs under various operational and site-specific conditions.Background, Goal and Scope. Today, after the technologically and commercially successful breakthrough of electronic telecommunication facilities, rapid and globally untrammelled information exchange has become an indispensable service in daily life. Associated with the tremendous growth in electronic telecommunication hardware (GSMAssociation 2005), however, was and continues to be an increasing awareness of the environmental effects related to both the operation and the production, as well as the End-of-Life (EoL) treatment of such communication equipment. Environmental concerns, for example, have resulted in various governmental regulations such as the WEEE- (CEC 2003b) and the RoHS-directives (CEC 2003a). To analyse, interpret and improve the environmental performance of electronic telecommunication equipment, life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly recognised as one promising analytical tool. Based on a thorough review of the scientific work and by discussing industrial views, this paper is intended to determine the key milestones achieved, to analyse the current research situation and to outline the key challenges concerning LCA and electronic telecommunication industries. Method. Starting with a brief reflection of the LCA approach, the particularities in context with telecommunication products' are discussed. Exemplary for various stakeholders participating in the supply chain of telecommunication means recent industry perspectives are also presented. Results. In the core section of the proposed paper, the pertinent scientific literature on LCA and electronic telecommunication means is reviewed and the most impressive achievements are documented. Particular attention is dedicated to subcomponents of individual electronic telecommunication devices (e.g. Printed Wiring Board Assemblies (PWBA) of mobile phones), components of mobile communication networks (e.g. Base Transceiver Stations (BTS)) and entire networks concentrating on product comparisons, inventory approaches, impact assessment method development, result interpretations and presentation, and usability of LCA in decision-making. Discussion. From the reviewed scientific literature and industry views, it was found that telecommunication products, in general, represent complex objects requiring a well thought-out performance of the LCA tool. It has been shown that today there is a lack of stakeholder involvement resulting in LCA studies which only partly fulfil the expectations of the contractors. In this spirit it was recognised, at present, that most of the LCA studies on telecommunication equipment result in bulky and stakeholder unspecific compilations of findings impossible to be used in rapid decision-making. This aspect may explain why LCA so far is not or only partly integrated into decision-making of globally integrated industries, such as in telecommunication industries. Conclusions. In summary, it can be stated that LCA represents a promising alternative to analyse, to interpret and essentially to adjust the environmental performance of electronic telecommunication products. The review showed that there is a need to focus research efforts in order to arrive at sound improvements of the LCA methodology. Perspectives. The conclusions from the presented review suggest concentrating in particular on further development of the LCA methodology with respect to efficiency, effectivity and flexibility. This challenge is associated with the need for LCA to be understood as a process rather than a discontinuously applicable tool, attending industrial processes, in essence to contribute to improved environmental performances of products. In this context, particular attention should be paid to proper stakeholder involvement and continuous exchange of concentrated information relevant for the respective stakeholder.In the present paper the energy impact of buildings' insulation materials in Italy is analyzed, taking into account both the savings in the annual climatisation and the energy consumed to produce them (Life Cycle Assessment, LCA); furthermore the economic matter is evaluated in an investment analysis (Life Cycle Cost, LCC).Following a brief introduction about the need for businesses to respond to climate change, this paper considers the development of the phrase 'carbon footprint'. Widely used definitions are considered before the authors offer their own interpretation of how the term should be used. The paper focuses on the contribution small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) make to the economy and their level of influence in stimulating change within organisations. The experience of an outreach team from the Engineering Department of a UK university is used which draws on the experience of delivering regional economic growth projects funded principally through the European Regional Development Fund. Case studies are used including the development of bespoke carbon footprints for SMEs from an initiative delivered by the outreach team. Limitations of current carbon footprints are identified based on this higher education-industry knowledge exchange mechanism around three main themes of scope, the assessment method and conversion factors. Evidence and discussions are presented that conclude with the presentation of some solutions based on the work undertaken with SMEs and a discussion on the merits of the two principally used methodologies: life-cycle analysis and economic input-output assessment.In this work, design for environment (DfE) methodologies have been used as a tool for the development of a more sustainable supply chain. In particular by combining life-cycle assessment (LCA) techniques and by using the quality function deployment (QFD) multi-criteria matrices, an 'environmental compromise' can be reached. In this work, the QFD matrices have been developed in a new way using an iterative process that involves the whole supply chain starting from the product life-cycle, taking into consideration the machines that make the product and their components. This methodology is compatible with the requirements of the various stakeholders, suppliers, manufacturers and clients, involved in the supply chain. To assess the validity of the proposed approach a specific supply chain was studied concerning packaging systems for liquid food substances (beverage cartons). Firstly all the stages which are most critical from the environmental point of view in the supply chain of packaging systems were identified and assessed. The starting point for the analysis of environmental aspects and impacts which characterise the supply chain was LCA, which proved to be useful for the identification and the environmental assessment of the various stages in a packaging system. Through the use of 'iterative QFD' it is possible to arrive at a definition of the engineering characteristics of all the machinery which is involved in the supply chain. In particular in this work the authors have tried to identify the critical points in the design of those machines which either make the beverage cartons or are involved in the filling process.Ford of Europe's Product Sustainability Index (PSI) is a sustainability management tool directly used by engineers, i.e., not by sustainability or life-cycle experts. PSI is looking at eight indicators reflecting environmental (life-cycle Global Warming Potential (GAT), life-cycle air quality potential, sustainable materials, restricted substances and drive by exterior noise), social (mobility capability and safety) and economic (life-cycle cost of ownership) vehicle attributes. Ford Galaxy and S-MAX are the first vehicles where this tool has been applied from the beginning of their development. The results show significant improvements compared to the predecessor. This has been externally reviewed according to ISO 14040.One of the key prerequisites of environmentally-friendly product design is a quantitative assessment of the environmental profile of product design options. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for evaluating the environmental performance of goods and services over the whole life cycle. Yet, the effort involved remains one major obstacle for its wide-spread use. It is well-known that collecting and processing the relevant data is the most time-consuming part while conducting an LCA study of complex systems. It is possible to reduce the workload significantly by automating these process steps, which also offers advantages in terms of LCA quality.In this paper, the results of a life-cycle assessment of different types of traction batteries for battery and hybrid electric vehicles arc presented. The life-cycle assessment approach allows the attribution of a single score to the various battery technologies. This analysis provides policy-makers with some clear information regarding the environmental impacts of the different battery technologies. When adding this information to the technical and economic information related to the different technologies, this allows decision-making based on some comprehensive and sound data.In Turkey most of the energy demand is imported. Therefore, energy savings obtained from heating applications play an important role in Turkey's economy. Insulation of buildings is an important technology for saving heating energy and for a sustainable development. Despite this fact, insulation in buildings is still uncommon. The insulation materials that are commonly used have standard sizes, so one must choose between the available sizes. In this study, two common materials namely glass wool and rock wool were used. Heating loads were calculated by means of the degree-day method. For the economical analysis, the optimum insulation thickness values were calculated by life cycle method, but naturally these values did not correspond with the available thicknesses. Also, an environmental analysis was performed by using these standard and optimum values. Feasibility of these materials for commercially available sizes and for different fuel types was assessed. Two different locations were chosen. Izmir was chosen as a city representing the milder climate of the coasts and for the colder climates of the interiors Ankara was chosen. It was found that for cheap heating systems such as systems using coal the payback periods become too long and sometimes even longer than the lifetime of the insulation material. Yet, when environmental issues are considered insulation should in any case be applied and promoted by governments.A durability mechanics tool based on the multi-directional fixed crack model for RC in which the material constitutive models are formulated in reference to micro mechanics and chemophysical events is presented. The rational of the simulation results by the computational system is verified by use of laboratory scale experiments on RC slabs subjected to fixed point pulsation and wheel-type moving fatigue loads under dry and moist conditions. Furthermore, its applicability is confirmed for the performance assessment and evaluation on the remaining functionality of damage RC beams.We can find numerous case studies showing eco-efficiency being used as an analytical tool in ecodesign. But, all of these studies show that eco-efficiency being used only as an evaluation tool for design alternatives, not as a tool for the identification of key ecodesign issues. Here, we propose that producer-based eco-efficiency and consumer-based eco-efficiency can be used in identifying key ecodesign issues, which encompass not only the environmental aspects of a product, but also other aspects such as product quality and consumer satisfaction. The applicability of the proposed method was evaluated using 19 digital cameras. The results show that it is possible to identify weak points of a product in relation to the environment, product quality, and consumer satisfaction. Furthermore, it is possible to design a product that is environmentally friendly, while still maintaining a high level of quality and consumer satisfaction. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Four handling options for sewage sludge were studied from an environmental system's perspective using life cycle assessment. The studied options were restoration of mining areas, composting with other biomatetials for use on golf courses, hygienisation through storage for agricultural use, and supercritical water oxidation with phosphorus recovery. The results are discussed in terms of impact on global warming, acidification, eutrophication, and the use of finite resources and primary energy. A very large impact of including biogeochernical emissions from sludge handling and spreading on land can be seen. System expansions for replaced artificial fertilizers also had a major influence on the results. It is clear that it is important for the environmental outcome of sludge treatment options that biogeochernical emissions from sludge are minimized and that nutrients and other resources are utilized efficiently. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This editorial introduces and provides an overview of this Special Issue dedicated to papers from the 7th conference Process Integration. Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction - PRES 2004. It contains 10 selected papers. The first three papers address important features of cleaner production renewable resources, CO2 emissions and Life Cycle Assessment. The second group of papers addresses cleaner production approaches to batch processed. The third set of papers studies reduction of emissions from industrial production including SOx and NOx. The last paper focuses upon minimisation of wastewater from industrial production. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article introduces a novel framework to deal with the scheduling problem concerning batch chemical plants. The main contribution of this work in comparison with previous approaches relies on the fact that it includes the environmental impact as an objective to be optimised, integrated with other more commonly used as makespan and/or financial performance. To address this problem, an advanced planning and scheduling tool (APS), which includes an environmental evaluation module based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) criteria, a temporisation algorithm and a financial module, coupled with a set of multiobjective genetic algorithms allows the computation of a set of non-dominated solutions in terms of the predefined criteria. This set of solutions can be used by the decision-maker in order to select the one that represents the right compromise among the different objectives. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an increasingly important evaluation tool for decision making and stakeholder discussion; especially when applied during the planning phase, it can pinpoint process steps with a high environmental impact and thus, provide guidance towards optimising the actual technology implementation. These aspects influencing the engineer's work are investigated on the basis of an LCA of the production of Biodiesel from Tallow and Used Vegetable Oil. Impact assessments with the Sustainable Process Index (SPI) and with the problem-oriented approach, show largely concordant results. The highly aggregated indicator SPI makes comparison between options possible. It provides "a bigger picture" of the environmental impacts and is helpful in decision making. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Chinese government is developing biomass ethanol as one of its automobile fuels for energy security and environmental improvement reasons. The cassava is an alternative feedstock to produce this ethanol fuel. Its performance of environmental impacts and energy efficiency is the critical issue. Life cycle assessment has been used to identify and quantify the environment emissions, energy consumption and energy efficiency of the system throughout the life cycle. This study investigates the entire life cycle from cassava plantation, ethanol conversion, transport, Fuel ethanol blending and distribution to its end-use. Product system of cassava-based ethanol fuel is described and it is divided into six unit processes. The environmental impacts and energy consumption of each unit process are quantified and some of the potential effects are assessed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to investigate the feasibility of achieving the high material and energy recovery targets imposed by EU legislation for post-consumer goods, a fundamental material and energy recovery optimisation model has been developed. This model is used to analyze the total recycling system with the end-of-life treatment system for the car used as example to illustrate the developed principles. The model allows construction, evaluation and optimisation of different end-of-life vehicle (ELV) recovery and treatment scenarios based on a fundamental quality description of each of the flows in the system. This description makes it possible to include the physics of separation, post-shredder treatment (PST), feedstock recycling, metallurgical and thermal processings on a first principles manner in order to evaluate the system on a technical and recyclate quality basis. This fundamental description of recycling systems questions the results of life cycle assessment and similar approaches that cannot capture the physical quality of recyclates. Evaluation of various end-of-life-vehicle (ELV) processings, recovery and treatment scenarios, including (i) restricted optimisation according to the legislation and (ii) unrestricted by legislation but more market and technology driven, have shown the large negative impact on the overall recycling performance if restriction of the flexibility of processing options is too large. Flexibility of the ELV recovery and processing system permits achieving high material and energy recovery quotas (rates) (over 95%) with the use of feedstock recycling and energy recovery for organic containing fractions if they cannot be suitably physically separated. The imposed legislative restriction on the amount of material that can be directed to thermal processing for energy recovery forces the system to include additional post-shredder treatment, with the result that material and energy recovery quotas are significantly lower at 88-91 %, hence creating complex waste fractions. It is interesting to note that these fundamental results support recent studies that propagate a more market driven and less quota driven system for ELV treatment. In view of complex innovative car designs it is essential that a balance is struck between feedstock recycling, physical separation, material and thermal recovery, due to the complex recyclates of possibly poor quality and economic value restricting processing. Therefore these results suggest that post-shredder treatment (PST) should be considered carefully before installing too much sophisticated separation technology in favour of energy recovery technology. PST should be attuned to future car designs and not to the present, since product complexity could make too much physical separation uneconomical. In essence, this paper argues that achieving high material and energy recovery quotas of de-polluted cars is possible if the limiting stipulation of 5 and 10% energy recovery (for 2006 and 2015, respectively) is dropped from legislation. This implies that legislation can impose high material and energy recovery quotas, but that the relevant amount of energy and material recovery should be left free to follow the dynamics of innovative product design and process operation (i.e. operational costs and market value of recyclates). Therefore the law should simply state: "Material and energy recovery from an automobile should together reach a technological defendable maximum which implies that good business practice and the market should determine how much material and energy are recovered from te various material fractions respectively." This should not be fixed by legislation. In addition, poor sampling statistics on data makes measurement of quotas difficult due to often lacking standard deviations, supporting such a conclusion further. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two treatment options, i.e. energy recovery and mechanical recycling of plastic wastes from discarded TV sets, were compared in the context of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. An estimate for the environmental burden of each option was calculated as the sum of the depletion of abiotic resources (ADP), the global warming potential (GWP), the acidification potential (AP), the photo-oxidant formation potential (POCP), the eutrophication potential (EP), and the human toxicity potential (HTP). After calculating the environmental burden of each treatment option, a sensitivity analysis was conducted. The ultimate aim was to indicate which parameters of the system have the strongest influence on the results of the LCA in order to find ways for lowering the environmental burden, and ultimately suggest a "design strategy" for TV sets. The main finding of this study was that mechanical recycling of plastics is more attractive treatment option in environmental terms than incineration for energy recovery, which generates a larger environmental burden. Finally, based on the results of sensitivity analysis, a "design strategy" was suggested, i.e. reducing the number of plastic types being used in the manufacturing process of TVs - preferably excluding the PVC. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this research, the environmental and financial impact of the existing water treatment-i.e. the drinking water production plant Weesper-karspel and its pre-treatment plant Loenderveen-are determined as a reference for future changes and for assessing opportunities for the reduction of the environmental impact. Environmental impact for Loenderveen and Weesperkarspel is found to be 8.61 milli-Eco-points/m(3) of drinking water, following life cycle assessment approach and assessing impact with the Eco-Indicator 99 method. Financial impact is 0.1345 Euros/m(3) It is assessed based on materials and energy flows and including other direct costs of production, like maintenance and direct labour costs. In both cases data from operation in 2002 are used. However, neither construction nor demolition phases are included. Coagulation at Loenderveen, softening and biological activated carbon filtration (BACF) at Weesperkarspel are the processes causing the largest part of environmental and financial impact. Alternatives to reduce environmental impact of the current treatment scheme are assessed, i.e. the use of ferrous sulphate as coagulant and the use of sodium hydroxide produced with green energy. It is concluded that environmental impact can potentially be reduced by 33% with the proposed alternatives. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Certified environmental product declarations (EPD) are beginning to be used in several countries. To date, user experience indicates that the EPD results are difficult for professional purchasers and salespeople to understand. In order to improve understanding, three interpretation keys have been developed. They recalculate the EPD results to other numbers, which are easier to value. One key calculates the degree of satisfaction of environmental goals, another calculates the damage cost and yet another compares with what is normal in economic activity. The three interpretation keys represent different ethical views of the environment. Intended users, people having some knowledge of environmental issues without being specialists, have tested the keys on several occasions after which the keys were redesigned. We concluded that the interpretation keys offer increased understanding. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Product-oriented policies gain more and more attention in environmental policies. In this framework, we studied cases (here presented only housing and computers and paper) in a life cycle perspective in order to determine their environmental impacts (in terms of GHG emissions, resource use and waste production) over the period 1990-2010. We also evaluated their potential for improvement up to 2010 by applying product-oriented strategies. We identified clear technical (theoretical) potential for improvement, especially for housing, packaging and computers and paper in offices. We then carried out a Delphi-based survey among stakeholders in order to investigate potential measures. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the 1980s, when PCs were first introduced, a vision arose of the "paperless office." Yet, it did not yield the anticipated environmental benefits. Nowadays, such optimism about the implications of information technology, and in particular, E-commerce continues to proliferate today. But will E-commerce turn out to be a success story, or another unrealised utopia? Drawing on content analysis and concept development methods, this paper discusses a number of observations of interest in the literature that, taken together, point out that eco-efficiency is not sufficient to be the leadership strategy of choice for forecasting and reducing environmental damage arising from the implementation of E-commerce. Rather, utilizing an emerging concept of eco-effectiveness together with eco-efficiency may offer a model for managing the environmental consequences of E-commerce. Yet, to wield more influence, the current concept of eco-effectiveness needs to be expanded in order to complement - and not to replace - eco-efficiency. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cradle to gate life cycle analysis (LCA) has been used to evaluate the consumption of raw materials and emissions of pollutants from olive oil production in Lythrodontas region in Cyprus, in order to identify the processes which give rise to the most significant environmental burdens. The system investigated includes the production of the chemical inputs used (fertilisers and pesticides), agricultural processes, the industrial processing and the transportation and waste management associated with olive oil production. Raw material and energy use as well as emissions were quantified on the basis of a functional unit of I I of extra virgin olive oil. The production of the inorganic fertilisers used in the agricultural stage of olive oil production and the disposal of liquid effluent from olive mills to evaporation ponds were found to be "hot-spot" processes not only in terms of resource consumption but also in terms of emissions into the environment. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study explores the possibilities of increasing customer satisfaction and reducing the environmental impact from food-packaging systems in a life cycle perspective using results from a study on consumers' demands on packaging based on Kano's Theory of Attractive Quality. It assesses the environmental effects of potential improvements in quality attributes. The results show that there are obvious potentials to increase customer satisfaction and at the same time decrease in the environmental impact of the food-packaging system, especially when the packaging design helps to decrease food losses. There were many connections between quality attributes and environmental impacts. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, the possibility of transforming the current status of tourism in the Balearic Islands (a region in Spain which has been under an enormous environmental pressure from conventional and massive tourism) to a sustainable tourism model is explored. Firstly, a general methodology for the conversion from standard to sustainable tourism is presented. The methodology consists of an initial audit, the selection of objectives and solutions proposed, the application of the selected solutions, an economical evaluation and a review of the obtained results. This methodology is then applied to the conversion of a real case study ("Sa Cova") and a complete evaluation of the transformation to sustainable tourism is presented, showing an important reduction in the environmental impacts associated with tourism development (especially in areas such as energy consumption, water and waste management). The results presented here can serve as an example for the application of sustainable tourism plans to other similar regions in Spain or other traditional tourist destinations with similar problems. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nanotechnology is one of the most prominent emerging technologies. It is heralded as a key technology for the 21st century that will contribute to economic prosperity and sustainable development by a broad alliance of policy-makers, scientists and industry representatives. But despite these strong claims, it remains still under question, whether nanotechnology can be made sustainable and how its potential can be assessed and realised. After a brief overview of the interdependences between technology development, innovation and sustainable development, the paper outlines some developments in nanotechnology that are considered as being relevant with regard to sustainability. Drawing from experiences in technology assessment and life cycle analysis, we will discuss research tasks and methodological challenges for a 'sustainability assessment' of nanotechnologies and propose a reflexive approach. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Technology assessment analyzes predicted or to-be-anticipated positive and negative effects of technologies, processes, and products using a well-established set of methods, including cost-benefit analysis, risk analysis, (eco-) toxicology, and life cycle assessment (LCA). These methods unfortunately require detailed information not only about the technology being investigated but also about the specific situation or application. In the case of an emerging technology such as nanotechnology, such information is generally lacking; therefore, a prospective assessment of nanotechnologies (opportunities as well as hazards) must find ways to adequately deal with the unknown. Striving to meet this challenge, we developed a three-tiered approach: 1. Technology characterization: Prospective assessment of nanotechnologies with respect to opportunities and hazards with a focus on the technology itself (in analogy to substance characterization in toxicology). 2. Eco-profiles: Evaluation of eco- and resource-efficiency potentials by application of life cycle assessment methods (extrapolating) to typical applications and comparison with existing products and processes. 3. Orientation through Leitbilder: Influencing the development of technologies, processes, and products through discursive explication of existing Leitbilder or vision statements that integrate the aspects of health, safety, and environment. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The unique properties of nanomaterials and structures and also production technologies on the nanometer scale are associated with presumably revolutionary contributions to sustainable development in terms of resource efficiency or health care. The obvious benefits and potentials are currently neither substantiated by an assessment of ecological and human health risks nor by a holistic assessment of all aspects along the life cycle of nano based products and services. Little work has been done, so far, to compare, e.g., the efforts of material production and recycling with the benefits in the use phase beyond economic considerations. In order to ease the application of life cycle thinking in the nanotechnology domain functions, materials and impacts have to be described adequately. Due to the lack of relevant data and the heterogeneity of current life cycle based studies it is recommended to carefully adjust environmental prospects to the system under study. Regarding the life cycle performance of the materials used the efforts in realizing nano functionalities, properties and recycling gain decisive importance to counterbalance obvious advantages in the use phase. The assessment of potential risks for the environment and human health due to intended and also accidental releases are still not possible in LCA, but should nevertheless be supported by a thorough description of potential releases. All these observations are discussed by means of two case studies, one on PVD coating and one on a CNT-based FED screen in order to substantiate and illustrate the need for a framework to harmonise existing, ongoing and future LCA applications in this field. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are expected to be applied in a wide range of industrial applications and consumer products. As a consequence of widespread usage and their supposed persistence against degradation, human and environmental exposure to CNT is likely to increase. There are still many open questions regarding the effects of human or ecological exposure. However, the results of toxicological studies suggest that nanotubes may affect human health. Here we study possible sources of CNT-release on the basis of two case studies. In order to investigate whether and under which conditions CNT may be released from applications, we track the CNT throughout their life cycle as part of two types of consumer products: lithium-ion secondary batteries and synthetic textiles. The findings of the case studies suggest that a release of nanotubes can occur not only in the production phase, but also in the usage and disposal phases of nanotube applications. The likelihood and form of release is determined by the way CNT are incorporated into the material. A considerable part of all CNT used may finally be dispersed somewhere in the technosphere or the environment, e.g. by cross-product contamination during recycling. As long as potential adverse effects of CNT cannot be ruled out, we recommend implementing precautionary measures along the value chain (including the end-of-life treatment) in order to reduce the release and possible negative environmental or human health effects of CNT. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents environmental impact of a fluorescent lamp (a long straight tube 36 watts, 200 g and 13,600 h for mean time before failure) when considering different disposal methods (recycle and non-recycle) of its spent fluorescent lamp (SFL). The study was applied for the case in Thailand using life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool. All materials, energy use, and pollutant emissions to the environment from each related process were identified and analyzed. Impact assessment was conducted for 10 environmental impact potentials: carcinogens, respiratory organics, respiratory inorganics, climate change, radiation, ozone layer, ecotoxicity, acidification/eutrophication, land use and minerals. The analysis followed Eco-Indicator 99 method, individualist version 2.1. The main focus of the study was to compare the impact of SFL recycling with non-recycling before landfilling. The impact intermittent activities, production of raw material and energy used in all the concerned processes were taken into account. However, transportation activities were excluded. The results showed that for all recycling rates, cement production is the main contributor to the environmental impacts, while sodium sulfide production is second and electrical production, the third. Mercury vapor emission showed a small contribution in carcinogens and ecotoxicity. The impacts are reduced when recycling rate is increased. The reduction of cement consumption in disposal processes or the process improvement of cement production may also help to reduce environmental impacts. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Facing the increase of environmental concern in the water treatment field, stakeholders need reliable decision support tools to assess environmental performances of urban and industrial wastewater systems. To discuss how life cycle assessment (LCA) can be applied to wastewater treatment projects, such an assessment has been performed through a case study on a full-scale plant. Methodological issues that had to be dealt with are briefly exposed. Five life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods have been used: CML 2000, Eco Indicator 99, EDIP 96, EPS and Ecopoints 97. Consistent assessment between these methods has been obtained for greenhouse effect, resources depletion and acidification. Eutrophication is correctly estimated if one looks at the potential impact of a treatment scenario but not at the characterization of the eutrophication state of a specific receiving stream. Work is needed concerning human toxicity as large discrepancies are noticed between the impact assessment methods. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tungsten carbide-cobalt (WC-Co) cermets have been widely used because of their high hardness and excellent wear-resistant properties. In this study, the environmental burdens related to WC-Co component fabrication were evaluated to compare the Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS (R)) process and the conventional powder metallurgy (P/M) process. Sensitivity analysis revealed that choice of weighting scheme does not significantly affect the final result; the LENS (R) process is more preferable if powder recycling is applied, part size is small, or part shape is complex; and the P/M process provides more benefits to produce large parts of simple shape. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chromic acid anodizing processes are currently being replaced in many industrial sectors because of the recognized adverse effect on the environment and health of used hexavalent chromium compounds. The environmental impacts of the existing processes must, however, be quantified in order to constitute a baseline against which the environmental performance of potential alternative options could be compared. The whole life cycle of the process should also be taken into account to ensure that the possible chosen solution for eliminating or lowering chromium (VI) emissions would not drastically damage the overall process performance in other environmental areas. In our study, we used a simplified life cycle assessment methodology that only took into account the key environmental issues of the considered industrial sector. Both the scope and the data needs were reduced by focusing only on significant flows and by using a generic database for steps other than the anodizing one. A precise literature review was carried out to evaluate bath atmospheric emissions. The results of the per-formed assessment confirmed that the only way to efficiently deal with hexavalent chromium compounds is to substitute the electrolyte used in the bath as the most Cr(VI) emissions are caused by other stages than the main one. Other specific issues, such as water and energy consumptions have, nevertheless, to be studied throughout the whole life cycle of the chemical substitute to monitor performance against CAA. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable resources have increasingly drawn the attention of agriculture, industry and politics. Their utilisation is considered to lead to ecological advantages compared to fossil resources and products. They, however, also come with ecological disadvantages, particularly due to intensive land use. In this paper, the environmental impacts of some utilisation options of Miscanthus and corn to produce energy and products are determined by life cycle assessment. The following life cycle comparisons were performed: (1) insulation material from Miscanthus vs. mineral wool; (2) Miscanthus as solid fuel vs. conventional energy carriers; (3) PLA drinking cups from corn vs. polystyrene drinking cups and (4) ethanol from corn vs. gasoline. The results of the comparisons between these products from renewable resources and their conventional counterparts do not support a clear-cut decision making in favour of or against products from renewable resources. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A fuzzy linear programming extension of the general life cycle model is described. The model is suitable for applications involving system design and optimization wherein fuzzy target levels for environmental flows or impacts are specified, and wherein multiple technological alternatives capable of providing equivalent products or services are present within the life cycle boundaries. Solving the model results in an optimal mix of technologies that embodies the best compromise of the fuzzy environmental targets specified. The model formulation is concise and consistent with the generalized matrix-based LCA model; its linearity also makes identification of the optimal solution straightforward. Applications of the model to two illustrative case studies are also given. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to compare inorganic and biological catalysis for the production of biodiesel by transesterification. The inorganic route, using catalysis by sodium hydroxide, has been compared with a conceptual biological one using enzymatic catalysis by the lipase produced by Candida antarctica. Although biological catalysis has not been used for industrial production of biodiesel to date, results from laboratory experiments suggest that it could have distinct advantages over the inorganic route, particularly with regard to a simplified flowsheet for purification and concomitant energy savings. Five flowsheet options have been included in the study to investigate the alkali and enzyme catalysed production routes from rapeseed oil, use of methanol or ethanol for transesterification and the effect of efficiency of alcohol recovery. The LCA shows that the enzymatic production route is environmentally more favourable. Improvements are seen in all impact categories. Global warming. acidification, and photochemical oxidation are reduced by 5%. Certain toxicity levels have more than halved. These results are mainly due to lower steam requirements for heating in the biological process. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All fights reserved.The implementation of new high-speed transport technologies re-shapes the demand balance between transport modes and rebound effects may occur. In this paper first a definition of environmental rebound effects of high-speed transport is presented and various cases are discussed. Second, a method is developed to determine and quantify the environmental rebound effects employing life cycle assessment. The method is illustrated in a case study by investigating the greenhouse gas emissions of a frequently discussed future underground maglev train system for Switzerland. The environmental rebound effect expresses the size of environmental impact changes due to demand corrections in relation to the plain substitution effect. The latter expresses efficiency substitution effects due to the substitution of existing transport services with a high-speed transport service; i.e. passenger-kilometre performance remains constant in a world with and without the new transport service. Demand corrections are determined employing the notion of the constant travel time budget, assuming that if travel speed increases, the time saved will be exclusively used to travel more and further. In order to quantify the environmental rebound effect we determined the environmental efficiency-including operation, energy supply, vehicle supply and infrastructure supply-for all important transport services of the current passenger transport system as well as for the new transport technology. In addition, we generated and quantified a set of cornerstone scenarios to address possible changes in mobility patterns and technological options of passenger car transport at the time when the new high-speed transport technology would be in operation. The results show an increase of per capita environmental impact for all considered scenarios even without accounting for additional transport demand due to time saving effects. All scenarios show additional environmental impacts due to rebound effects on top of pure substitution effects. The case study demonstrates that taking into account demand changes, i.e. rebound effects is essential to evaluate emerging transport technologies. New technologies allowing for higher travel speed, even if energy-efficient on a passenger-kilometre basis, might lead to higher environmental impacts. This is ignored by the traditional approach of environmental transport assessment, which compares environmental efficiency of each transport mode separately. The presented approach allows to better understand the consequences of new transport services, and facilitates the assessment of future transport technologies on the level of the transport system as a whole. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Plant operation is tightly linked with plant topology. Each operation task is executed in one or more structure units, which might be associated with negative environmental impacts. In order to design and manage environmentally conscious plant operation it is essential to provide systematic mechanism to model plant topology with respect to environmental measures. The selection of plant topology to perform certain operation requires understanding and evaluation of life cycle activities. In this research, model-based topology analysis is proposed and used to evaluate different operation scenarios in view of life cycle assessment and applied on a case study thermal power plant. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Optic fibre cable and copper cable are important media for data transfer, the latter especially for shorter distances. However, the environmental implications of this facility are rarely looked at. The present paper investigates and discusses the life cycle of a cat5e copper cable and that of a 4-core multimode optic fibre cable. It shows that the difference in the environmental impact depends on the type of end-of-life treatment and that there is no clear advantage to either type of cable. Moreover, the question is raised if providing the infrastructure for internet access will have a higher impact than the mode of data transmission. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Executives are increasingly paying attention to the importance of supply chain management [Lambert DM, Cooper MC. Issues in supply chain management. Industrial Marketing Management 2000;29(1):65-83; Hagelaar GJLF, van der Vorst JGAJ. Environmental supply chain management: using life cycle assessment to structure supply chains. International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 2002;4:399-412]. The management of the supply chain can be a central aspect of a company's competitive advantage [Preuss L. Rhetoric and reality of corporate greening: a view from the supply chain management function. Business Strategy and the Environment 2005;14:123-139]. SCM also offers considerable opportunities to reduce a company's environmental impact. The supply chains of three small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in the Burnside Industrial Park in Nova Scotia, Canada were investigated to explore the opportunities to improve environmental performance of SMEs linked in supply chains. This study confirmed that time and, to a lesser degree, financial resources to address solid waste and energy issues are the greatest limiting factors. Small suppliers, and even to a certain degree medium-sized enterprises, have difficulties in allocating resources to initiatives that are not viewed as directly related to their core function, namely manufacturing the product or providing the service. This study clearly demonstrated that opportunities exist to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste. Although, the benefits that would be gained from the implementation of any of the individual actions in the supply chains explored in this study are individually small, the cumulative benefits that could be achieved among supply chains and within industrial parks are substantial, given the number of small- and medium-sized enterprises. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper proposes the concept of cumulative eco-intensity with which environmental or sustainability indicators are related to the added value of economic activities. The intensities are passed on recursively from supplier to supplier and thus make it possible to include upstream and downstream effects along the supply and waste disposal chain. The process is applied to whole companies and (by contrast with LCA) not to individual products. At comparatively low expenditure for the individual companies, it allows vertical comparisons along the value-adding chain and horizontal comparisons among companies or production locations. This provides a decision-making aid for a company seeking to fulfil its ecological or sustainability responsibility in the entire production and supply chains. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the findings of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generated from the combustion of sugar cane bagasse in Mauritian sugar mills. The study arose from the identification of the need for to provide data for the development of an LCA profile for the electricity mix in Mauritius. The system is limited geographically to the island of Mauritius and is intended to be the representative of current agricultural techniques practiced and current manufacturing processes used by Mauritian sugar mills. The unit operations that make up the system are the growing and harvesting of sugar cane, the transport of the harvested cane to sugar mills, the production of bagasse as a by-product from the sugar milling process, and the combustion of bagasse to generate heat and electricity. The functional unit of the study is the generation of I GWh of electricity exported to the national electricity grid. The characterised data for I GWh of bagasse-derived electricity were compared with data for I GWh of coal-derived electricity, using the same set of characterisation factors. The results of this comparison indicate that bagasse-derived electricity performs well in the areas of greenhouse gas emissions, acidification, and non-renewable energy inputs, but performs poorly in relation to water consumption and eutrophication. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ghana is the world's second largest producer of cocoa beans. In addition to exporting raw cocoa beans, the country also processes some of its beans into finished and semi-finished cocoa products for both the local and international markets. This paper is aimed at providing a comprehensive picture of the environmental impacts associated with cocoa production and processing in Ghana by applying the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The analysis considered the entire system required to produce and process I kg of cocoa bean. It included the extraction of raw materials (e.g. fossil fuels, minerals), the production of fanning inputs (e.g. fertilizers and pesticides) and all agricultural operations in the field (e.g. tillage, fertilizer and pesticides application, harvest, etc.). Transportation of beans to processing factory and industrial processing of the beans into cocoa butter, liquor, cake and powder were also included. The study was conducted in accordance with the international ISO procedural framework for performing LCA in the ISO 14040-14043 series. The overall environmental impacts resulting from cocoa production and processing activities and improvement options towards the sustainability of the system studied are presented and discussed. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Single-use medical devices have been under close scrutiny for several years, especially the choice of plastic materials. Many different requirements such as medical safety, treatment functionality and efficiency, environmental performance, etc. have to be fulfilled. Today, the most commonly used materials for hydrophilic urinary catheters are polyvinylchloride (PVC) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). In this research study, these two materials' environmental performance was evaluated. In light of the knowledge gained in that study a new plastic material for use in urinary catheters was developed. The aim of the development of this new material was to design a high performance material with superior environmental performance. The newly developed plastic material is a polyolefin-based elastomer. The ecological environmental performance of the new material was evaluated and compared to the existing plastic materials. The study focused exclusively on the choice of plastic materials and their ecological environmental performance. The analysis has been performed using a system perspective and a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The functional unit has been set to the treatment of one patient during one year. The results from the LCA models have been presented both in terms of direct inventory data, such as energy use and formed emissions, and in terms of the results from four different impact assessment methods. Analysis of the results based on direct inventory data, i.e. common inventory results such as energy resource uses and emissions of CO,, NO, and SO, show an overall better environmental performance for the new polyolefin-based elastomer compared to the existing PVC and TPU plastic materials. The normalization and weighting steps in the analyzes have indicated the importance of energy resource uses and global warming as indicator for the environmental performance even if other impact categories also can play a role. In the environmental impact assessment, the polyolefin-based elastomer showed a clearly better environmental performance than the TPU material. Compared to PVC plastic material the new polyolefin-based elastomer showed an almost equivalent environmental performance. This can be mainly explained by the different materials' energy use. The new material has thus also shown to be an environmentally good alternative to PVC if a PVC-free material is requested. Basing the plastic formula, on simple bulk plastics with low energy use in the production of single-use medical devices, has been shown to be a successful method of producing high quality products with superior environmental performance. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to perform a life cycle analysis of the environmental benefits and limitations of using ethanol as an alternative transportation fuel in Thailand. In particular, the analysis compares the life cycle fossil energy use, air emissions and social costs of cassava-based gasohol E10 with those of gasoline. The results of the study show that, along its whole life cycle, E10 consumes less fossil oil (6.3%) and produces lesser amounts of CO2 (6.4%), CH4 (6.2%), CO (15.4%) and NOx (15.8%) than CG. Including externalities substantially changes the cost performance in favor of ethanol. After environmental costs are added, the cost of E10 and of gasoline become equal to each other whilst before that, E10 is more costly. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Continually increasing amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW) and the limited capacity of the existing waste management system in Phuket have led to the consideration of integrated waste management system (IWMS). Life cycle assessment (LCA) was employed to compare the greenhouse gas emissions expressed as global warming potential (GWP) of the existing waste management system (the base scenario) and other three IWMSs for Phuket MSW. Besides incineration and landfilling, the proposed scenarios include 30% source separation for recycling (scenario 2), anaerobic digestion (scenario 3) and both (scenario 4). The functional unit is set as 1 t of Phuket MSW treated. Results from the impact assessment of the base scenario shows that the net GWP is 1006 kg CO2 equivalent. Landfilling contributes to the highest potentials of this impact. The results from a holistic comparison show that scenario 4 is the best option among all the scenarios, contributing GWP of 415 kg CO2 eq., whereas the base scenario is the worst. The emission of greenhouse gas from landfilling is reduced by the introduction of landfill gas recovery and utilization for electricity production. By assumption, 50% recovery of landfill gas leads to the GWP reduction around 58% by total GWP of landfilling and 36% by the net GWP of the whole system in the base scenario. The study suggests that a policy that promotes source separation should be pursued, preferably combined with the application of landfill gas recovery for electricity. Policy promoting recycling is favorable over anaerobic digestion in the situation that both treatment systems could not be established at the same time. The major conclusion from the study is that results from the LCA can support Phuket Municipality for decision-making with respect to planning and optimizing IWMS. It can benefit other municipalities or policy makers to apply in their waste management projects. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The lack of reliable communication tools is anticipated to become an important barrier to design and sell products with improved environmental performance. In this paper, environmental product declarations. EPDs, and in particular a Stepwise EPD approach is investigated as a means to overcome the communication barrier. The experiences of ten European SMEs who have tried to use Stepwise EPDs for market communication and as a basis for eco-design are described and discussed. The experiences suggest that Stepwise EPDs based oil life cycle assessment can be a cost-efficient tool to improve the environmental performance of products. For normal marketing activities the Stepwise EPDs were disappointing. Using the underlying LCA as a platform for in-depth communication with selected parties in the supply chain showed more promise. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Materials selection is a multidisciplinary activity, which integrates a large number of knowledge fields and professional domains. In fact a material selection decision should capture not only the functional performance required for the application but should also consider the economical and environmental impacts originated all along the product life cycle. In this paper a life cycle engineering (LCE) approach is proposed to support material selection, integrating the performance of the material for the specific application in technological, environmental and economical dimensions throughout the duration of the product. The methodology proposed compares a set of candidate materials and, through the aggregation of the three dimensions (technical, economical and environmental), identifies the "best material domains". These "best material domains" are presented in a ternary diagram, which allows a global comparison of the candidate materials and supports an informed decision as regards the selection of the "best material" according to different business scenarios and corporate strategies. The methodology was applied to a case study aiming the use of new metallic materials (high strength steels and aluminium alloys) for an automobile fender currently made of mild steel and the evaluation of potential benefits as regards the global performance of the material. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An industrial cooked dish is one of the food products with the most complex agri-food chain. In this study, an eco-design pilot experiment has been performed as a way to develop more efficient and sustainable agri-food products throughout its whole life cycle. To achieve this, a life cycle assessment (LCA) has been carried out to identify and quantify the environmental performance of the production and distribution of a cooked tuna with tomato dish. The most important stages of the life cycle have been established taking into consideration the full environmental impact as well as the potential reductions achievable by the application of various improvements. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The UNEP/SETAC life cycle initiative has recently proposed a framework for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of land use. Still, a lack of appropriate LCIA-methods for assessing land use impacts exist in life cycle assessment (LCA). Most existing methods are either too coarse-grained regarding the differentiation between different land use types (e.g. conventional farming versus organic fanning), or they are too narrow regarding spatial coverage (e.g. only part of Europe). Therefore, the purpose of this article is to develop a method that overcomes these problems. A secondary goal is to develop a method for which it is possible to determine characterisation factors for any land use type in any region without the need for overwhelming data and data manipulation requirements. The developed method for LCIA of biodiversity focuses on species richness of vascular plants which can be determined from species-area curves. The category indicator is calculated as the multiplication of occupied area, the number of species affected per standard area (100 m(2)), the duration of occupation and renaturalisation from transformation, and a factor for ecosystern vulnerability. The main uncertainties of the method are related to the determination of renaturalisation times and the establishment species-area curves. The intention of the study presented in this article, i.e. to develop an applicable model with global coverage and no constraints on resolution regarding spatial and land use type differentiation, has widely been met. The limiting factor for applicability is the access to species richness surveys for the relevant regions and land use types. But still, the method shows that, with limited efforts, it is possible to calculate characterisation factors for a large range of land use types in different parts of the world. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A number of different tools for analysing environmental impacts of different systems have been developed. These include procedural tools such as strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and environmental management systems (EMS) as well as analytical ones such as life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and the system of economic and environmental accounts (SEEA) including input-output analysis (IOA). Descriptions or scenarios of the future are typically relevant elements in these tools, since they are often used to describe impacts in the future. For futures studies a number of different approaches and techniques have been developed. In an earlier paper we have presented a typology of different types of scenarios that respond to different types of questions. These include predictive scenarios, explorative scenarios and normative scenarios. The aim of this paper is to explore connections between selected tools for environmental systems analysis and different scenario types. Although there is a clear need for futures studies in several tools for environmental systems analysis, it is interesting to note that the literature on methodologies for and case studies of combinations of futures studies and environmental systems analysis tools is rather limited. This suggests that there is a need for further research in this area including both methodoloy and practical case studies. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper is based on an empirical survey of technological environmental innovations (TEIs), i.e. new products, processes and practices that come with benign environmental effects. The survey is based on product chain analysis and innovation life cycle analysis. It turns out that most TEIs occur upstream rather than downstream, i.e. chain-upwards in the beginning rather than in the end of product chains, and in early stages of technology or product development rather than in later, more mature stages. There are conclusions to be drawn for 'upstreaming' environmental activities and for focusing environmental policy upon innovation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper shows how different methods can be integrated in order to provide an organic evaluation of the environmental sustainability at the territorial level. A territory is a complex, dynamic and open system where a population develops, uses resources, produces Roods and services. consumes. depletes and finally obtains economic results. All these elements characterise human behaviour. which can be monitored. measured and compared to the capacity of the environment to sustain it in the long run. The SPln-Eco Project for the Province of Siena (Italy) is described as an example of an environmental sustainability assessment of an area, and its methods (Ecological Footprint, Greenhouse Gas Inventory; Extended Exergy Analysis, Emergy Evaluation, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Remote Sensing) are briefly introduced. This Project has been proposed and funded by the most important provincial administrative and financial institutions in the territory (the Administration of the Province of Siena and the Monte dei Paschi Foundation. respectively). and was designed and realised in 4 years (2001-2004) by a research team coordinated by the University of Siena. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to evaluate two agroindustrial productive processes in their entirety (one organic and one semi-industrial); focusing on the comparison of impacts derived from the inputs and outputs of the system (life cycle assessment, LCA), integrated with a physical evaluation of the resources and natural services; on a common basis (emergy). Methods based on the joint use of LCA and emergy evaluation are useful, as they measure the contribution of environmental services and products to the productive process thus focusing primarily on the environmental impact of emissions and non-renewable energy inputs. The complementarity of the methods used in this paper contributes important elements and information useful for the comprehension of the organization of agriculture within Siena's territory. The results show important elements and useful information: (1) for the comprehension of the two agroecosystems organization: (2) for the use of the energy flows that determine their development. Moreover, the combined use of emergy and LCA gives a comparative thermodynamic performance evaluation between organic and semi-industrial farming. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents a framework for the analysis of external costs of environmental burdens, namely an impact pathway analysis, often coupled with the inventory stage of life cycle assessment (LCA). The ground rule is: quantify as much as possible in terms of burdens (pollutant emissions, etc.), impacts, and their monetary equivalent, then use multi-criteria analysis (MCA) for any remaining impacts that are considered to be too uncertain or defy quanti. cation through to monetization. Although MCA could be used directly on estimates of burdens or impacts, monetary valuation provides a mechanism for consistent weighting of impacts categories based on assessment of public preference. Further advantages of extending LCA through detailed impact assessment combined with monetary valuation are that it greatly simplifies MCA by combining a large number of different environmental impact categories, thereby avoiding an unmanageably large number of criteria, and also facilitates cost benefit analysis (CBA). The risks are noted of inappropriate use of the tools or interpretation/use of the results, and recommendations are made for improved practice. These points are illustrated with examples. The key messages are: (1) that policies should be targeted correctly to give a clear signal which source of a burden should be reduced by how much; (2) that analysts should take into account the needs of policy makers and the link between the analysis and possible policy applications; and (3) that current LCA practice gives limited guidance in both areas, largely through a lack of consideration of the relative and absolute importance of different types of impact. However, this is precisely the strength of external costs analysis, particularly when used with MCA.The electronic waste (e-waste) is increasingly flooding Asia, especially China. E-waste could precipitate a growing volume of toxic input to the local environment if it was not handed properly. This makes the evaluation of environmental impact from electronics an essentially important task for the life cycle assessment (LCA) and the end-of-life management of electronic products. This study presented a quantitative investigation on the environmental performance of typical electronics. Two types of disposed mobile phones (MPs), as a representative of consumer electronics, were evaluated in terms of toxicity potential indicator (TPI) with an assumption of worst-case scenario. It is found that the composition and the percentages of constituents in MPs are similar. More than 20 metallic elements make up 35 wt.%-40 wt.% of the total weight, of which 12 elements are identified to be highly hazardous and 12 are less harmful. With the TPI technique, the environmental performance of Pb is attributed to be 20.8 mg(-1). The total TPIs of metallic elements in the old and new type MP is 255,403 and 127,639 units, respectively, which is equivalent to the effect of releasing 6.14 and 12.28 g Pb into the environment. The average TPI of the old and new type MP is 4.1 and 4.5 mg(-1), respectively, which suggests a similar eco-efficiency per unit mass. The new model of MP is more eco-effective than the old one, which is not due to a reduction in the type of hazardous elements, but rather due to a significant miniaturization of the package with less weight. A single MP can have a considerable toxicity to the environment as referred to Pb, which suggests a major concern for the environmental impact of the total e-waste with a huge quantity and a heavy mass in China.A complex interdisciplinary approach to the reliability assessment of reinforced concrete structures is introduced and demonstrated on a real existing bridge structure. The reliability index of the structure decreases during its life cycle due to material degradation. A retrofitting to the desired reliability level should be performed. This procedure is modeled by advanced life-cycle computer simulation. The main feature of the presented approach is the nonlinear finite-element analysis of the structure employed for the realistic assessment of structural behavior. A suitable technique of statistical sampling, which allows a relatively small number of simulations, is used in this context. Analytical deterioration models combined with in situ monitoring are used to launch the degradation process. The presented methodology for advanced life-cycle analysis is integrated in the innovative decision-making tool that supports maintenance planning of engineering structures.The application of renewable raw materials in the automotive sector became more and more interesting in the last years. For the first time, a material system based on natural fibers and PTP (R), a vegetable based thermoset resin, was produced and manufactured into a bus body component by Sheet-Moulding-Compound-technology. The Life Cycle Assessment on this component based on renewable raw materials shows advantages especially in the categories fossil resources and global warming. It can be expected that further concepts of development and optimization lead to a more efficient use of materials and so to an additional reduction of environmental impacts.Feed production accounts for a substantial proportion of the environmental impact of animal husbandry. To enable assessment of the sustainability of dairy-cow feeding systems, a life cycle assessment (LCA) as well as additional social indicators were incorporated at farm level in a linear optimization model. Various feeding strategies were investigated using different optimization options for multi-objective problems. The feeding of by products from the food industry can reduce the environmental impact of milk production, but such by products can only be used on a limited basis. Fairly significant reductions are possible by decreasing the use of concentrates and increasing the percentage of roughage. Incorporating the sustainability evaluation in the farm model allows us to selectively consider different multi-objective systems in the optimization process, and to define the Pareto-efficient solution space.There is a net emissions change when adopting new materials for use in civil infrastructure design. To evaluate the total net emissions change, one must consider changes in manufacture and associated life-cycle emissions, as well as changes in the quantity of material required. In addition, in principle one should also consider any differences in costs of the two designs because cost savings can be applied to other economic activities with associated environmental impacts. In this paper, a method is presented that combines these considerations to permit an evaluation of the net change in emissions when considering the adoption of emerging technologies/materials for civil infrastructure. The method factors in data on differences between a standard and new material for civil infrastructure, material requirements as specified in designs using both materials, and price information. The lifecycle assessment approach known as economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) is utilized. A brief background on EIO-LCA is provided because its use is central to the method. The methodology is demonstrated with analysis of a switch from carbon steel to high-performance steel in military bridge design. The results are compared with a simplistic analysis that accounts for the weight reduction afforded by use of the high-performance steel but assuming no differences in manufacture.The ever increasing attention to the environmental impact of the process industries imposes an obligation to constantly improve the global sustainability of the leather tanning process. Among the numerous phases of the tanning process, the beamhouse accounts for most of the total polluting charge, due to the use of sodium sulfide and lime during the manufacturing process of hides. Hence, the authors have recently developed an alternative unhairing process that eliminates the use of sulfides. The actual reduction of the environmental impact of this process, in relation with the traditional one, was evaluated performing a Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) using SimaPro 6, one of the most used software for LCA analysis. Environmental impacts were finally rated using "EDIP 97" assessing methodology. Since impact assessment methodologies were mainly developed for the manufacturing field, EDIP 97 was slightly modified and adapted to fit with the tannery industry.Approximately 400,000 tons per year of aluminum dross (Al dross) are generated during a melting process of aluminum metal in Japan. The Al dross and the residue, which have high concentration of metallic Al, are mostly used as an Al resource for Al production or as a deoxidizer in the steel industry. On the other hand, the residue with the Al content is less than 20%, is difficult to be recycled and is therefore land filled. This paper deals with (1) a material flow analysis (MFA) of the domestic Al dross in order to achieve clear targets for recycling of Al dross and residue, and (2) an environmental assessment of newly developed technologies for its recycling, such as the process of hydrogen production from residue. The result of material flow analysis on the domestic Al dross in 2003 shows that 2.344 X 10(5) t of aluminum is recovered and 2.150 X 10(5) t of residue is generated from the dross. The residue is mostly used in the steelmaking process, whereas 5.0 X 10(4) t of residue is landfilled in the final disposal site. As the result of the environmental assessment through the material flow, there is a possibility of reduction of CO2 emission and waste emissions by using residue (Al content: 10%) as a hydrogen resource, which is presently landfilled.Nowadays, we cannot avoid decreasing of availability of non-renewable energy resources, mostly fossil fuels, and environmental degradation, consequently. Sustainable Architecture, respectably answered those conditions by streamlining architecture as system. Beneficially, Information Technology ( IT) has all potencies needed to simplify Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), instrument for assessing sustainable product, which considered as being too complicated. Streamline computer software LISA, stands for LCA in Sustainable Architecture, offering an instrument to those extents particularly in regard with Construction Process. Besides simplifying the process, LISA will help reducing energy, cost, and environmental impacts that will be spent and occur along the so-called process.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) about a FCV (Fuel Cell Vehicle) is performed regularly, but these studies have not considered closely enough the safety issues that are important for practical, everyday use. In this study, we considered the safety of the FCV, GV (Gasoline Vehicle), HEV (Hybrid Electric Vehicle) and EV (Electric Vehicle), and estimated the vehicles in relation to environment and safety. As a result of LCA, FCV may not have a higher environmental performance than the other vehicles in the whole life cycle. So, it is important for FCV to reduce platinum catalyst and select more cleanly hydrogen production processes. They were effective against improving an environmental performance of FCV, but the improved environmental performance was inferior to that of the other vehicles.Purpose - Research deals with aspects of systemic thinking that explain environmental innovation in organizations, especially in the construction sector. The paper aims to address the issues. Design/methodology/approach - The research for this paper is based on the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, dialectal systems theory (DST), environmental management systems (EMS), life cycle analysis (LCA) and recycling. Findings - The research results show that systemic thinking (and environmental innovations) are still a novelty; it can be regarded as an engine for novel changes in social, economic and political arrangements in companies and other organizations as well as for society as a whole. Research is aimed at finding an answer to the question: what dialectal system approach can bring in the long-run sustainable development? Research limitations/implications - Research was limited to management of construction. Practical implications - Environmental innovation efficiency and processes in organizations with a systemic thinking can be innovated more easily. Originality/value - This paper breaks new ground in using systemic thinking to explain environmental innovation. In research, a model is proposed for recycling isolating materials, made of hard polyurethane and lightweight concrete with aggregates containing expanded glass, based on DST, EMS, LCA and recycling. This is the first attempt, to the best of one's knowledge, to make a new synergy of the dialectal systems theory, environmental management system and innovations supporting sustainable development, decision making and action.We give an overview of historical developments with respect to the price and the Energy Pay-Back Time of crystalline silicon photovoltaic modules. We investigate the drivers behind both developments and observe that there is a large overlap between them. Reduction of silicon consumption, improved cell efficiency and the production technology for solar grade silicon have been identified as major drivers for both cost and impact reductions in the past. Also we look into future prospects for reduction of environmental impacts. It is estimated that developments underway to reduce costs will also result in a reduction of the Energy Pay-Back Time of a PV installation (in South-Europe) from 1.5-2.0 year presently to well below I year.The authors have drafted three alternative scenarios for the technological improvement and market penetration of photovoltaics in the next four decades, based on the preliminary results of the EU FP6 Integrated Project NEEDS, Research Stream 1a. The long-term diffusion of PV is foreseen to depend on the achievable module efficiencies and on the maturity of the different technologies in terms of their manufacturing costs, energy pay-back times, additional BOS costs, and even raw material reserves. Last but not least, the co-evolution of a suitable energy storage network (e.g. hydrogen) is also foreseen to be a mandatory requirement. Cumulative installed capacity worldwide is projected to reach 9,000 GWp in 2050 in the most optimistic scenario, which is reduced to 2,400 GWp in the intermediate scenario. In the third "pessimistic" scenario the current economic incentives are not assumed to be sustained long enough to allow PV to become competitive with bulk electricity, resulting in a stunted market growth (500 GWp in 2050). ne resulting predictions in terms of costs range from 0.50 to 1.50 (sic)/Wp in 2050, respectively corresponding to 2 - 8 (sic)-cents per kWh in Southern Europe and 4 14 C-cents per kWh in Northern Europe. Within the framework of these three general scenarios, special attention is then put to the role that is likely to be played by thin film technologies, namely amorphous Si, CdTe and CIS/CIGS. These technologies are expected to collectively reach a market share of approximately 45% by as early as 2025 in all but the most pessimistic scenario, wherein the same goal is put off until 2050. Marked increases in module efficiencies and material and energy consumption are also expected, to varying degrees depending on the assumptions made in the three scenarios.Life cycle analysis is especially important for characterizing novel forms of material in new energy-generation technologies that are intended to replace or improve the current infrastructure of energy production. We propose a comparative life-cycle analysis framework for investigating the effect of incorporating nanotechnology in the life cycle of new photovoltaics, focusing on the differences between the new technologies and the ones that they may replace. Within this framework, we investigate the following parameters: Methods of synthesizing nanoparticles, physicochemical specifications of the precursors, material-utilization rates, deposition rates, energy-conversion efficiencies, and lifetime expectancy of the final product. We introduce the application of this framework by comparing nanostructured cadmium telluride and silicon films with their nano- and amorphous-structured equivalents.Recently, the data for photovoltaics in the ecoinvent database have been updated on behalf of the European Photovoltaics Industry Association and the Swiss Federal Authority for Energy. Data have been collected in this project directly from manufacturers and were provided by other research projects. LCA studies from different authors are considered for the assessment. The information is used to elaborate a life cycle inventory from cradle to grave for the PV electricity production in grid-connected 3 kWp plants in the year 2005. The inventories cover mono- and polycrystalline cells, amorphous and ribbon-silicon, CdTe and CIS thin film cells. Environmental impacts due to the infrastructure for all production stages and the effluents from wafer production are also considered. The ecoinvent database is used as background database. Results from the LCA study are presented, comparing different types of cells used in Switzerland and analysing also the electricity production in a range of different countries. It is also discussed how the environmental impacts of photovoltaics have been reduced over the last 15 years, using the CED indicator. The consistent and coherent LCI datasets for basic processes make it easier to perform LCA studies, and increase the credibility and acceptance of the life cycle results. The content of the PV LCI datasets is available via the website www.ecoinvent.org for ecoinvent members.In this work infrared thermography was used as a diagnostic tool for the performance assessment of a photovoltaic array integrated on the southern facade of NTUA's Chemical Engineering Building. This grid-connected 50 kWp solar photovoltaic array, installed under an EC Thermic Project (SE-142-97-GR-ES), operates in a standard and hybrid PV-Thermal configuration" meant to save conventional energy. The thermographic system used for the analysis covers the wavelength region 8-12 mu m. The thermal images obtained showed that there are notable temperature differences on number PV panels, which may be attributed to material defects, manufacturing faults, module malfunction, and external abuse.Since the publication of the 2003 report on Basic Energy Needs for the Hydrogen Economy, many important advances in hydrogen research have occurred, a cadre of enthusiastic researchers has entered the field with great interest shown by students, and private industry has made significant commitment to this technology and investment in its development worldwide. Concurrently, other energy technologies have made major strides forward. These technologies must be evaluated for their scalability, usability, cost and life cycle footprint on the environment. This overview discusses these topics and looks toward the role for the hydrogen economy into our energy future.An overview is given of the development of advanced nanoporous carbons as storage materials for natural-gas (methane) and molecular hydrogen in on-board fuel tanks for next-generation clean automobiles.' The carbons are produced in a multi-step process from corncob, have surface areas of up to 3500 m(2)/g, porosities of up to 0.8, and reversibly store, by physisorption, record amounts of methane and hydrogen. Current best gravimetric and volumetric storage capacities are: 250 g CH4/kg carbon and 130 g CH4/liter carbon (199 V/V) at 35 bar and 293 K; and 80 g H-2/kg carbon and 47 g H-2/liter carbon at 47 bar and 77 K. This is the first time the DOE methane storage target of 180 V/V at 35 bar and ambient temperature has been reached and exceeded. The hydrogen values compare favorably with the 2010 DOE targets for hydrogen, excluding cryogenic components. A prototype adsorbed natural gas (ANG) tank, loaded with carbon monoliths produced accordingly and currently undergoing a road test in Kansas City, is described. A preliminary analysis of the surface and pore structure is given that may shed light on the mechanisms leading to the extraordinary storage capacities of these materials. analysis includes pore-size distributions from nitrogen adsorption isotherms; spatial organization of pores across the entire solid from small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS); pore entrances from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM); H-2 binding energies from temperature-programmed desorption (TPD); and analysis of surface defects from Raman spectra. For future materials, expected to have higher H-2 binding energies via appropriate surface functionalization, preliminary projections of H-2 storage capacities based on molecular dynamics simulations of adsorption of H-2 on graphite, are reported.Adsorption of hydrogen and the occupancy of different binding sites as a function of hydrogen loading in MOF-74 are studied using inelastic neutron scattering (INS). Hydrogen molecules are observed to fully occupy the strongest binding site before populating other adsorption sites. The comparison of the INS spectra at 4 K and 60 K indicates that hydrogen adsorbed at the strongest binding site is strongly bound and localized. We also show that when two hydrogen molecules are adsorbed into a single, attractive potential well, the shortest inter-H-2 distance is about 3 A, consistent with our previous observation of inter-H-2 distance when adsorbed in two neighboring potential wells.The emergence of a Hydrogen Economy will require the development of new media capable of safely storing hydrogen with high gravimetric and volumetric densities. Metal hydrides and complex metal hydrides, where hydrogen is chemically bonded to the metal atoms in the bulk, offer some hope of overcoming the challenges associated with hydrogen storage. Many of the more promising hydrogen materials are tailored to meet the unique demands of a low temperature automotive fuel cell and are therefore either entirely new (e.g. in structural or chemical composition) or in some new form (e.g. morphology, crystallite size, catalysts). This proceeding presents an overview of some of the challenges associated with metal hydride hydrogen storage and a few new approaches being investigated to address these challenges.With its ultra-large specific surface area, a nanoporous material is an ideal, yet relatively unexplored, platform for accepting or actuating liquids, with potential performance gains for energy dissipation and output typical of disruptive technologies. Our experimental and theoretical results indicate either dramatically improved performance or unique combinations of properties and capabilities not attainable in conventional materials, which make the novel nanoporous structures studied herein very attractive as advanced protective intelligent systems.Experimental wet chemical approaches have been demonstrated in the synthesis of a new chainlike (C(60)-Fe-C(60)-Fe)(n) complex. This structure has been proposed based on (13)C solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic resonance, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, this structure has been shown to have unique binding sites for dihydrogen molecules with the technique of temperature-programmed desorption. The new adsorption sites have binding energies that are stronger than that observed for hydrogen physisorbed on planar graphite, but significantly weaker than a chemical C-H bond. Volumetric measurements at 77 K and 2 bar show a hydrogen adsorption capacity of 0.5 wt%. Interestingly, the BET surface area is similar to 31 m(2)/g after degassing, which is approximately an order of magnitude less than expected given the measured experimental hydrogen capacity. Nitrogen and hydrogen isotherms performed at 75 K also show a marked selectivity for hydrogen over nitrogen for this complex, indicating hidden surface area for hydrogen adsorption.High electrochemical capacity of alkaline boride anodes is presented. The alkaline anodes based on transition metal borides can deliver exceptionally high discharge capacity. Over 3800 mAh/g discharge capacity is obtained for the commercial available vanadium diboride (VB2), much higher than the theoretical capacity of commonly used zinc metal (820 mAh/g) alkaline anode. Coupling with the super-iron cathodes, the novel Fe6+/B2- battery chemistry generates a matched electrochemical potential to the pervasive, conventional MnO2-Zn battery, but sustains a much higher electrochemical capacity.ne mechanical effect on the oxygen ion mobility in zirconia stabilized with 8 mol% yttria was investigated in this study. A dynamic mechanical thermal analysis showed that the dynamic modulus decreased gradually with temperature while the mechanical loss had two peaks due to different relaxation mechanisms. From the comparison of activation energies between the ionic conductivity and the mechanical relaxation, the dominant factor for oxygen mobility was determined to be the migration of oxygen vacancies in the simple complexes. The result also illustrated the strong relationship between the modulus and the conductivity. An impedance analysis under mechanical tensile-loading conditions showed that the mechanical load improved the ionic conductivity by 6 % at maximum although the improvement was a temporary effect.The influence of chemical species, water vapor and SOx, included in air on the voltage drop of SOFCs was studied. La2O3 was formed on the surface of cathode and caused the significant voltage drop of cells under high water vapor concentrations at 800 degrees The voltage drop of cells also occurred with SO2 in air but was recovered with supplying SO2-free air into the cells. It was considered that the cell voltage drop caused by SOx was due to the adsorption of sulfur and/or the formation of sulfur compounds on the surface of cathodes.The consolidation and casting processes of fine silicon powders, by-product of high purity silicon rods making process in the current method, were systematically investigated for use as economical solar-grade feedstock. Morphology, size, and contamination type of the fine silicon powders were inspected by combined analysis of SEM, particle size analyzer, and FT-IR. Silicon powder compacts were tried to fabricate by a consolidation process without a binding agent and then their density ratio and strength were evaluated. Finally, the electrical resistivity of the specimens prepared by an electromagnetic casting method was examined for purity assessment.The NEEDS project of the European Commission (2004-2008) continues the ExternE series, aiming at improving and integrating external cost assessment, LCA, and energy-economy modeling, using multi-criteria decision analysis for technology roadmap up to year 2050. The LCA covers power systems suitable for Europe. The paper presents environmental inventories and cumulative results for selected representative evolutionary hard coal and lignite power technologies, namely the Ultra-Supercritical Pulverized Combustion (USC-PC) and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technologies. The power units are modeled with and without Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): The three main technology paths for CO2 capture are represented, namely pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxy-fuel combustion. Pipeline transport and storage in geological formations like saline aquifers and depleted gas reservoirs, which are the most likely solutions to be implemented in Europe, are modeled for assumed average conditions. The entire energy chains from fuel extraction through, when applicable, the ultimate sequestration Of CO2, are assessed, using ecoinvent as background LCA database. The results show that adding CCS to fossil power plants, although resulting in a large net decrease of the CO2 effluents to the atmosphere per unit of electricity, is likely to produce substantially more GHG than claimed by near-zero emission power plant promoters when the entire energy chain is accounted for, especially for post-combustion capture technologies and hard coal as a fuel. Besides, the lower net power plant efficiencies lead to higher consumption rate of non-renewable fossil fuel. Furthermore, consideration of the full spectrum of environmental burdens besides greenhouse gas (GHG) results in a less definite picture of the energy chain with CCS than obtained by just focusing on GHG reduction.It is well known that the transport sector causes significant environmental impacts worldwide and as a consequence influences the results of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies. Today's fuels are dominated by crude oil derived fuels. In Europe currently 98 % of the road transportation is based on such crude oil derived fuels. Similar ratios can be observed e.g. in the US and other countries. In addition to the environmental impacts, the high dependency on the imports of fossil fuels motivates most European countries to investigate in other than fossil fuel based transport systems. Therefore the European Commission presented an action plan including a strategy with the objective to substitute 20% of crude oil derived fuels by alternative fuel until 2020. To achieve these goals, actions to reduce the import dependency of fuels, the usage of non renewable (fossil) resources and the environmental burdens connected to the use of fuel / propulsion systems have to be addressed. Besides, the energy carrier mix has to be broadened. Especially alternative fuels from renewable resources, BtL (Biomass to Liquid) are supposed to have a high potential. Recent developments show, that there is a variety of options for fuels available as well as for propulsion technologies that utilize fuels based on renewable resources. It is therefore of key importance to select and promote the fuel/ propulsion system technology which is most beneficiary for a country or region from an environmental but also from an economic and social perspective. For such a sustainability evaluation it is essential to consider the local/regional boundary conditions such as availability of fuel resources, major pollution issues which need to be addressed, supply of secondary energy (e.g. power) etc. LCA is therefore a suitable approach to evaluate and compare different options, due to its transparent consideration of all life cycle stages. Besides the environmental impacts and resource consumption which are addressed in LCA considerations the needed land is another important aspect when talking about biomass as a resource. As land is a scarce resource that is used for all industry sectors there is a need to address this issue also in LCA. Up to now, no commonly agreed upon methods exist which allow the integration,of land use aspects in a consistent way into LCA Software and Database. Currently at LBP-GaBi, University of Stuttgart together with PE International, a method is developed to integrate land use aspects into LCA. Backward processes are now implemented in an applicable way into a LCA database system. This Paper describes the main approach, of the developed methodology for land use consideration within LCA.We investigate the area of land used and/or transformed during conventional (i.e., coal, natural gas and nuclear), and renewable fuel cycles (i.e., photovoltaics, wind, biomass, and geothermal). Both direct and indirect land use/transformation are examined in a life cycle framework. For average US insolation, the photovoltaic fuel cycle disturbs the least amount of land per GWh among renewable options, requiring less area than the coal fuel cycle. Renewable technologies could harvest infinite amount of energy per unit area and eliminates the need for restoring disturbed mine lands. Further investigations would be necessary for secondary and accidental land disturbance by conventional fuel cycles through transport of effluents and emissions to adjacent land.While the best energy solutions may seem obvious to the LCA community, we often see wind turbines voted down for aesthetics and policy makers leaning toward solutions that show poor return, kilojoule per kilojoule. If we are to move forward with Wise energy solutions, we will need to broaden our perspective to include the social impacts that influence policy-makers and communities, creating a decision-system that encompasses both social and environmental impacts. Starting with LCA and Total Cost Assessment, a case study of a biodiesel facility in Vermont begins to incorporate social goals with reduced environmental impacts. We'll then look at other energy systems and how these decision-making tools might be used to bring policy makers, environmentalists, and communities together making Wise energy choices for our future.The point of view taken here is that systems analysis is a kind of learning process, not data gathering, not decision making, but the production and effective communication of arguments relevant in a particular context. This idea, that the intended application of the result of an assessment has consequences for methodological choices, is beginning to spread in the LCA research community. One problem is that standard LCA methodology is developed to answer questions about environmental impacts of the current production and use of one unit of a product or minor product or process changes. When this methodology, unchanged, is used to provide answers to questions about strategic technology choice, i.e. not decisions that aim at improving a process within an existing technological environment, but with the long-term goal of changing large-scale technological systems, the result could be of little value or misleading. In many cases, LCAs produce more noise than knowledge. This observation seems to be of particular importance for LCAs of energy technologies and for how energy use is treated in all kinds of LCAs. Here, it is suggested that a better understanding of some critical methodological issues related to time, universality, cause-effect relationships, technical maturity and system innovation, could result in better studies that reveal fundamental environmental issues related to the objects of study and reduce the noise from irrelevant information. Examples are given from the technology fields of solar cells, fuel cells, batteries, renewable transport fuels and carbon nanoparticles.Based on operational experiences with offshore structures it is argued that adequate structural safety should be ensured by proper design, fabrication and operational criteria as well as by proper quality assurance and control through the life cycle. In this paper the focus is on design, inspection and repair procedures to ensure adequate safety with respect to degradation. While design and inspection criteria in modern codes have been calibrated on a generic basis, particular features of individual structures imply that it is necessary to update the initial inspection plan based on experiences obtained after fabrication and during operation. In this connection fatigue cracks are of special concern. Recent efforts to establish rational, reliability-based procedures for life cycle assessment of fixed offshore platforms are outlined. It is emphasized that the reliability methods should be calibrated to the semi-probabilistic approach that current codes are based on; as well as to operational experiences.The R/C load-carrying frameworks of multistorey buildings as arbitrary spatial rod systems, consisting of columns and crossbars, are considered in the paper. The floor slabs and wall panels can be also involved in joint work with the framework. These frameworks are a classical example of statically indeterminate composite structures. A proper analysis of a stress-strain state and setting the criteria of these systems stability require the accounting of both their physical and geometrical nonlinearity. It allows one to describe the R/C structure life-cycle more exactly and to give a real prediction of its durability.The decision-making tools for life-cycle analysis should capture the degradation and retrofitting processes in order to support maintenance of structures. Most of the current approaches to the life-cycle analysis are based on more or less simplified mechanical models or formulas. A more realistic reliability analysis can be achieved using non-linear FEM modeling. The particular methodologies are available and have been verified in practice. In the presented work they are integrated into an innovative tool for safety assessment of engineering structures throughout whole their service life. The life-cycle analysis combines modeling of nonlinearities in material and structure and degradation effects including uncertainties involved in all these phenomena. As the nonlinear structural analysis used for realistic prediction of structural response is computationally very demanding, a suitable technique of statistical sampling is employed in order to allow relatively small number of simulations. The proposed methodology allows evaluating structural safety using reliability index during and after the degradation and retrofitting processes in order to calculate the safety level for the service life conditions.Nowadays there has been a great interest in the use of probabilistic methods in problems related to electrical transmission lines. While different types of towers may be used along a transmission line, preference is usually given to guyed towers for its smaller weights and resulting smaller foundation costs. Due to the complex interaction soil-guy-tower, information on this subject is mostly obtained by experimental methods. In this work, experimental results are coupled to systems reliability techniques in the evaluation of failure probabilities of guyed towers foundations. These probabilities represent main ingredients in the estimation of risks associated with potential foundation failures. This is an important step towards the implementation of life cycle methods in the design, operation, and maintenance of electrical transmission lines.For predicting the life cycle of guyed structures under turbulent wind, a model-chain has to be applied including models for: the wind-loading, the structures mechanical behaviour and the fatique analysis. Each model affects the predicted life-time. Unsteady wind load models in the frequency domain require a linearisation of the structure's nonlinearities due to the sagging cables. Quasi-steady wind loading models for the time domain lead to forces that correspond to measurements only in high winds. In this paper, identified complex aerodynamic admittances in combination with nonlinear numerical simulations of guyed masts in the time-domain under turbulent wind are used for a life cycle analysis. The results indicate a reduction of the predicted damage compared with common quasi-steady simulations of the buffeting wind loads.Within the European Union, the construction and demolition wastes (C&DW) amount to at least 180 million tons per year. Roughly 75% of the waste is disposed to landfill, despite its major recycling potential. However, the technical and economical feasibility of recycling has been proven, thus enabling some Member States (in particular Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium) to achieve recycling rates of more than 80%. On the other hand the South European countries recycle very little of their C&DW. At present, recycled aggregates are mainly used untreated as obtained from demolition for excavation filling, roadbeds or floor foundation. However, several authors have studied the possibility of using recycled aggregates to manufacture structural concrete and in 2002, the CEN/TC 154 Technical Committee drew the EN 12620 "Aggregates for concrete" in which artificial or recycled aggregates are considered beside natural aggregates for use in concrete. The use of secondary raw materials in construction is highly essential from the viewpoint of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and effective recycling of construction wastes. In order to promote the reuse of C&DW in concrete, it is necessary to achieve three basic concepts: guarantee of safety and quality, decrease of environmental impact and increase of cost effectiveness of construction. Results of this study will show that recycled aggregate concrete can acquire satisfying quality as structural concrete and/or precast concrete elements through design by using materials conforming to all the related quality standards.This paper presents a life cycle evaluation strategy and its implementation to help ensure consistent, prudent life cycle decisions for naval waterfront structures. Planners and designers can use it to review both the impact that decisions have on life cycle cost and to determine alternatives that reduce life cycle cost of a waterfront facility First, a relational database is used to identify the impact a specific scoping, planning or design decision has on costs across life cycle stages. Next, interrelationships among these decisions are used to identify inconsistent or incompatible choices. Then, summary reports are generated that contain specifics on life cycle costs that are affected by these decisions and potentially imprudent choices that might have been made. This tool provides communication of design alternatives and serves as a conceptual design framework for all parties involved in the life cycle process.Pavement systems have significant impacts on the environment and economy due to large material consumption, energy input, and capital investment. To evaluate the sustainability of rigid pavement overlay designs, an integrated life cycle assessment and life cycle cost analysis model was developed to calculate the environmental impacts and costs of overlay systems resulting from material production and distribution, overlay construction and maintenance, construction-related traffic congestion, overlay usage, and end of life management. An unbonded concrete overlay system, a hot mix asphalt overlay system, and an alternative engineered cementitious composite (ECC) overlay system are examined. Model results indicate that the ECC overlay system reduces total life cycle energy by 15% and 72%, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 32% and 37%, and costs by 40% and 58% compared to the concrete overlay system and the HMA overlay system, respectively, over the entire 40 year life cycle. These advantages are derived from the enhanced material properties of ECC which prevent reflective cracking failures (discussed in a complementary paper). Material consumption, traffic congestion caused by construction activities, and roughness effects caused by overlay deterioration are identified as three dominant factors that influence the environmental impacts and costs of overlay systems.The outcome of a life cycle assessment (LCA) is heavily reliant on the input data acquired during the life cycle inventory (LCI), the approach utilized to construct the LCI, and the methods used to develop the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). LCI is generally developed using either a process or input-output (I-O) approach; both techniques have advantages and disadvantages. The main shortcoming of the process model is the subjectivity and inconsistencies of boundary selection, whereas the I-O method produces highly aggregated results. Additionally, neither typically incorporates uncertainty. By combining the two methods into a single framework the best aspects of each inventory approach are developed, while the weaknesses are minimized. Two case studies, corn production and on-site construction processes, are presented to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of LCA approaches. Although seemingly different, the case studies exemplify the use of hybrid LCA for disparate systems. The on-site construction case study explores the differences between process, I-O, and hybrid inventories. The corn production case study focuses on uncertainty in the inventory and impact assessment stages of LCA.This paper describes a multiobjective simulated annealing (MOSA) algorithm applied to the design of reinforced concrete framed structures typically used in building construction. The economic cost of the frames and their sustainability are the two objective functions considered. The sustainability objective function is evaluated by the Ecoindicator 99's life cycle assessment of the materials of the structure. The evaluation of solutions follows the Spanish Code for structural concrete. Stress resultants and envelopes of framed structures are computed by an internal matrix method program. Design loads are in accordance to the national codes for building structures. The example studied is a symmetrical building frame of 2 bays and 6 floors. This example has 115 design variables including 6 material types of concrete, the type of steel, 36 cross-section dimensions and 72 passive reinforcement bars following a standard setup in columns and beams. Pareto results of the MOSA algorithm indicate that more sustainable solutions that the lower cost solution are available at a cost increment acceptable in practice. It is concluded that MOSA optimization algorithms are a forthcoming option for improving the environmental and economic design of real RC building framed structures.Purpose - The aim of the paper is to understand the environmental performances of the current management activities of organic waste from separate collection. Design/methodology/approach - A computer based from gate-to-cradle life cycle assessment (LCA) model has been developed by setting up appropriate expanded system boundaries, in order to carry out the assessment in the context of the whole waste management streamline. Findings - The environmental performances of existing aerobic and anaerobic plants, based on field measured data, were made available, paying attention to the role and contribution of waste management subsystems. Research limitations/implications - The need for actual and reliable data on materials and energy input, as well as gross and net gains from materials and energy recovery is probably the major drawback that must be faced when dealing with LCA in the waste management sector. Practical implications - This paper may help public administrators in better understanding the suitability of using LCA when developing solid waste management strategies. Originality/value - The study integrated the findings of different investigations from the literature with field measured data in order to obtain a more comprehensive framework representative of the area under study.What kind of methodology would take into account the sustainability of a product? How to link all the dimensions and protagonists of sustainable development that are traditionally studied separately? Our work takes place in a "critical emancipatory action research" framework (McKerman, 1991) because of the integration of the actor's point of view. The aim of this paper is to present a methodology to evaluate the sustainability degree during the pre-design step (early stage) of a new product. We propose a three-steps approach. First, we characterize the sustainability by both interviewing the actors concerned by the product and reviewing regulations and standards applicated to it. Next, we build a method to evaluate sustainability and in the third step, we evaluate a product in terms of its sustainability. A model based on Life Cycle Assessment that we call Sustainable Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) illustrates our approach. Finally, we reveal an application of our methodology in the sector of wood furniture design in the East of France. The target audience of this study are managers of SMEs: with our methodology, they will be able to evaluate product innovation in a way that favours sustainable development.This paper presents an assessment of environmental impacts during the operational phase of two Ro-Ro/Pax ferries for Short Sea Shipping (SSS) differing in their design: an existing design and a new 'ad hoc' design to limit pollutants. The geographical areas covered are the metropolitan areas around Genoa and Palermo and the travel between Genoa and Palermo. The environmental impact will evaluate and analyze the amount of pollutants produced by auxiliary machinery during harbour stops and the amount of pollutants produced by the combination of propulsion engines and the auxiliaries of a ship during the trip. The proposed design solution was found to have less environmental impact in important issues such as acidification, eutrophication and human toxicity, mainly due to its lower emissions of SOx and NOx; the mooring phase turned out to be an important phase contributing to diminish the environmental load mainly due to use of fuel cells as electric generators.In this paper the authors have compared the technology using the natural gas and coal in order to produce the electricity. The objective of this paper consists in evaluation of the life cycle assessment of the natural gas and coal in order to compare its GHG emissions. Three systems with and without CCS were examined: one using the natural gas - the natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) and two using the coal: pulverized coal with sub-critical and super-critical parameters and integrated gasification combined cycle.The problem of obtaining all accurate forecast is becoming more and more significant as the production possibilities and technologies evolve. The accuracy of a forecast mainly depends oil the dataset used for forecasting as well as oil the methods employed. This study, is devoted to the time series analysis. A set of known methods and techniques are used for analysing the time series; one of them is the Kohonen's self-organising maps. The Time Warping techniques enable SOM to cluster time series of different length, which is highly significant in product life cycle analysis and phase switching tasks. The main goal of the research is to perform a set of experiments aimed to compare the efficiency of several Time Warping techniques and to study how the chosen topology of neurons in the Self-organising map influences the final forecasting result.The method of variant capital and operational cost estimation of belt conveyors based on LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) with usage of Monte Carlo simulation of belt and idlers replacements for given distributions of their operational time is described. It is proposed to evaluate different variants of conveyors through comparison of sums of discounted costs for generated in Crystal Ball v. 7.3 program stream of replacements of belts and idlers during the whole period of planned conveyor operation. Example calculation has been carried out for the hypothetical conveyor having the length 1000m. The method requires further development by addition of discounted costs of energy conveyor consumption and correlations among belt conveyor parameters and parameters of operational time distributions. Then it can be used by conveyor designers and users for comparison of different conveyor variants, optimisation of solutions, planning of conveyor maintenance expenses and optimisation of inventory policy.One of remarkable methods for large-scale hydrogen production is thermo-chemical water decomposition using heat energy from nuclear, solar and other sources. Detailed simulations of two most promising water splitting thermo-chemical cycles - Westinghouse cycle and Sulphur-Iodine cycle were performed in Aspen Plus code and obtained results were use for their life cycle analysis. They were compared with two different processes for hydrogen production - coal gasification and coal pyrolysis. Some of the obtained results are reported in this paper.Bioenergy from plants, particularly from perennial grasses and trees, could make a substantial contribution to alleviation of global problems in climate change and energy security if high yields can be sustained. Here, yield traits in a range of key bioenergy crops are reviewed, from which several targets for future improvement can be identified. Some are already the focus of genetically modified (GM) and non-GM approaches. However, the efficient growth strategies of perennial bioenergy crops rely on newly assimilated and recycled carbon and remobilized nitrogen in a continually shifting balance between sources and sinks. This balance is affected by biotic (e.g. pest, disease) and abiotic (e.g. drought) stresses. Future research should focus on three main challenges: changing (photo)thermal time sensitivity to lengthen the growing season without risking frost damage or limiting remobilization of nutritional elements following senescence; increasing aboveground biomass without depleting belowground reserves required for next year's growth and thus without increasing the requirement for nutrient applications; and increasing aboveground biomass without increasing water use.Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have significant potential to enhance the microelectronics industry. However, prior to full-scale manufacturing of CNT products, the environmental and economic impacts of such an implementation must be assessed. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques, environmental attributes are assessed for fabricating CNT transistors and CNT-polymer composites used for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. Manufacturing cost will also be determined for these using process-based technical cost modeling. Such information on both cost and environmental impacts will enable more responsible nanomanufacturing.Public concern over the discharge of some nanomaterials to wastewater treatment systems has caused at least one product to be taken off the market. This paper explores the potential for nanomaterials to be included in the discharge of effluent to publicly owned treatment works, as well as water bodies generally, and the likely consequences of such releases. It uses a mass balance approach to quantify discharges for two case studies, to the extent possible. It also discusses regulatory restrictions that limit the discharges of nanomaterials. [1]Oil shales used in Estonian power plants to generate electricity and in oil production are of different quality. Different excavation methods in use and accompanying development processes are accompanied by various emissions that call pollute water and air. However, generation of waste as well as impact on land use are of greater concern than emissions into the water and atmosphere. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has proved to be one of the most attractive approaches to characterize sustainability of mining industry, as several environmental and economic indicators are used to assess its performance. The methodology enables to choose the best available environmentally friendly technology. As shown by investigations, the mining processes exerts smaller effect on acidification, terrestrial eutrophication and ecotoxicity than production of auxiliary materials and transportation of oil shale to customers. Other impacts considered and discussed are ground surface subsidence, land use for deposited wastes and mine water pollution. Assessment of the impact caused by a combination of different mining processes gives the opportunity to find a better way for planning new mines in accordance with environment protection measures in the area of the Estonia oil shale deposit.European countries have recently been required to conform with the European legislation relating to the introduction of biofuels at local and national levels. In order to permit wider implementation of biofuels, the present Study explored the use of life cycle analysis (LCA) as a potential tool for analyzing the use of biomass resources for domestic fuel. The LCA performed in this study used the RETScreen International software developed by Natural Resources Canada. This tool embodies it simplified form of the LCA methodology for Simulating space heating of houses and domestic water heating. The financial feasibility and environmental sustainability of each proposed project was investigated.Life cycle analysis is especially important for characterizing novel forms of material in new energy-generation technologies that are intended to replace or improve the current infrastructure of energy production. We propose a comparative life-cycle analysis framework for investigating the effect of incorporating nanotechnology in the life cycle of new photovoltaics, focusing on the differences between the new technologies and the ones that they may replace. Within this framework, we investigate the following parameters: Methods of synthesizing nanoparticles, physicochemical specifications of the precursors, material-utilization rates, deposition rates, energy-conversion efficiencies, and lifetime expectancy of the final product. We introduce the application of this framework by comparing nanostructured cadmium telluride and silicon films with their nano- and amorphous-structured equivalents.Sustainable development has undergone an important evolution over recent years. It has been used not only as a tool to decide among several options in research programs but also in political decisions. However, how can we measure if something is sustainable or not? It seems that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most powerful technique to objectively describe and determine the sustainability of a new project, idea, change in established lines, etc. However, some important aspects are lacking today in LCA, for instance, experimental data on environmental impact related to emission factors. In sustainable development, global warming is presented today as the major reason to carry out sustainability studies. Although global warming is, of course, an important reason for attaining sustainability, it is not the only reason. In this work, relevant aspects related to two important topics involved in modem sustainable development, sustainable tourism and waste management are briefly introduced.With economic development and social progress, it has become more and more intense, in the modem society to put in force environmental protection and sustainable development. Therefore a new kind of environmental management tool is born, and it is theory of Life Cycle Assessment which studies the environmental effect, the input and output of the material and the energy during the entire life cycle of the product. In Life Cycle Assessment theory, the assessment of Life Cycle Value is an important method, and it is brought based on the Life Cycle Cost theory. With Life Cycle Value method, this paper studies the income and cost of the construction engineering which has lengthy construction period and large investment during the entire life cycle. And the value of the construction engineering can be estimated with the aid of this assessment method in this paper to determine the rationality of construction engineering and further control environmental pollution of construction engineering. It's hoped that the research can provide some useful thoughts and be helpful for the projects construction in our country.With the aim to develop an integrated and objective model applicable to green earthwork assessment just at the pre-construction stage, this paper focused on the application of life-cycle assessment theory to the qualitative analysis of resources and energy input-output effect and pollutants emission impact during the earthwork phase. The study gave the outline of this model including the units works breakdown technique, the input-output analysis of units and the assessment procedures. It's expected that the paper could offer us a general overview how to identify and quantitative assess the environment impacts during the earthwork phase, by which, a pre-control plan for green construction could be easily established.Intensive scientific researches on waste materials utilisation as source of recyclable materials and in particular in chemical and energy industries have been carried out around the world and particularly in industrialised countries since mid-seventies of past century. Contemporary technique allows proposing waste management solutions nearly in each technology. Yet, it is necessary to consider ecological and also economical conditions. Production cost of recyclable products is calculated on basis of capital expenditures and operational costs of wastes processing. Assessment of waste management technology influence on environment can be carried out with use of available techniques of environmental management - Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is relatively new technique of environmental aspects assessment; it forms grounds for identification, hierarchy and also arrangements concerning ways of improvement of environment quality. One of the basic LCA tasks is examining potential product or product's system influence on environment during the whole life cycle: from raw materials extraction through production and use untill utilisation. Carrying out researches and analysis with use of LCA technique allows to manage resources in effective way because it is based on real input and output data of analysed processes. Correctly performed LCA analysis should include four phases: I - establishing the aim and the scope of the research, 2 - forming input and output database - inventory (system balance analysis, data inventory), 3 - assessment of life cycle impact, 4 - interpretation of the results. In article the authors present the LCA analysis for production of sodium salt of sulphonate derivative of polystyrene waste materials, which would be used in coagulation process of selected municipal and industrial wastes. The aim of LCA analysis is the assessment of influence on environment of developed new technology of selected processes, which consists of chemical modification of polystyrene wastes and receiving new flocculants types. Researches scope includes modification process of crumbled polystyrene wastes for receiving sodium salt of sulphonate derivative of polystyrene (of waste materials) and next its application to coagulation process. Technological assumptions of developed technology became basis to creation of inventory tables, and then to assessment of the potential influence on environment with LCA technique using SimaPro. Received data are the basis to ecological and economical assessment of offered new technological solutions.Different from Life Cycle Assessment, Global Scope Assessment considers not only time dimension but also space dimension. It integrates economy, environment and resources as a whole. The data necessary for Global Scope Assessment are from cradle to grave as for Life Cycle Assessment. The conclusions are from the comparison among corresponding countries. Chinese aluminum industry has a name of a lot of energy consumption and a lot of pollutant emission. This feature was disproportional to its little contribution to China's GDP. Therefore how should Chinese government treat its aluminum industry? This paper made a Global Scope Assessment on Chinese aluminum industry. The synthetic benefits of electrolyzed aluminum industry in China and in related country were investigated. The results showed that the link-integrated frame could contribute to improving the competitiveness of Chinese aluminum industry. It was also shown that self-bake cell technology must be prohibited. It was necessary for government to change present tax policy to confirm the sustainable development of Chinese aluminum industry. The comparison of both resources consumption and synthetic benefit between practical production situation and optimal development pattern of Chinese aluminum industry in 2005 was also analyzed. It was shown that more synthetic benefit, less energy consumption and pollution emission could be realized in the optimal one. Although domestic tax revenue would be reduced in the optimal pattern, the positive effect of energy saving and environment protection was enough to counteract the loss. The developing strategy for Chinese electrolyzed aluminum industry was also discussed in this paper. Chinese government should vigorously compress the overheated investment in domestic electrolyzed aluminum industry. At the same time, China should take full advantage of the chance of global economy and overseas resources to meet domestic demand on aluminum. China should also provide incentive policy to encourage the development of aluminum recovery industry.Sustainable tourism development is viewed as the best pattern to develop tourism industry, in which the technical approach is needed more and more, As the scientific concept of development is brought about by Chinese government, sustainable tourism development based on technical approach is becomimg more and more important. This paper discusses the feasibility of sustainable tourism development that could realize not only the scientific concept of development, but also the sustainable social and economic impacts of tourism activities with high technology. In this study, a general methodology for the conversion from standard to sustainable tourism is presented. The methodology consists of an initial audit, the selection of objectives and solutions, and the application of the selected solutions, an economical evaluation and a review can obtain the results. This methodology applied to sustainable tourism with technical approach is presented, which shows an important reduction in the environmental impacts associated with tourism development. The paper tries to make the results serve for the application of sustainable tourism plans for government.Integration of sustainable design solutions is a current issue at the forefront of any business that claims to have corporate and social responsibility. Sustainable design and development stems from the idea of sustainability which is an increasingly well known ideal but with an application and resulting definition that can differ across the many different industrial disciplines. Sustainability and indeed sustainable design becomes a complex problem due to the many interlinking factors that evolve around three key principles of people, planet and prosperity. This paper reports a research programme that aims to establish a generic interpretation of sustainability and how the complex problem of sustainable design can be effectively and efficiently tackled using a constraint-based approach. The paper discusses how different aspects of sustainability and sustainable design affect design process thinking and examines their effect on project management including a discussion of current tools such as life cycle assessment, information modelling and integrated resource management that are widely used. There is also an introduction into a newly formed concept which involves the application of a function specific constraint modeller in order to manage sustainable design and development.Sustainable development was articulated by the Brundtland Commission as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". With respect to growing importance of sustainability, consideration has been given to the convergence of supply chains and sustainability. A focus on supply chains is a step towards the broader adoption and development of sustainability, since the supply chain considers the product from initial processing of raw materials to delivery to the customer. In this paper, we explore different changes, needed to be considered, in each level of supply chain of a product, in sustainable development context. These changes can be classified in two groups: process-based and structural changes. Next in this research, a step by step framework will be provided to guide practitioners in moving toward better management Of supply chain in the sustainable development environment. This framework will be applied in tire industry as a case study.A preliminary Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of nuclear-based hydrogen production via thermochemical water decomposition is presented. The copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) thermochemical cycle is considered in the LCA, which examines the environmental impacts of the nuclear plant and the thermochemical hydrogen production plant. The environmental impacts from the thermochemical plant are determined by examining data and applying several assumptions on inventories of raw materials and chemicals. The results indicate that the nuclear fuel cycle contributes significantly to the total environmental impacts, and the improvement analysis stage of LCA suggests the need for the development of more sustainable processes, particularly in the nuclear plant.Sustainability and economic factors are increasingly pushing industry towards environmentally friendly manufacturing methods. However, the implications of processing level changes, which are being introduced at a significant rate, for overall, environmental impact need better characterization. In the first half of this paper, a simplified framework for enhancing sustainability in manufacturing, by enabling rapid assessment of approximate life-cycle implications of competing process-level alternatives, is introduced. This framework relies on developing or enhancing manufacturing process models in such a way that a superior quantitative evaluation of the environmental and economic impacts of decisions made in manufacturing process planning can be established. In the second half of this paper, the specific case of metal machining is presented. In machining the maximum attention has been directed towards reducing the traditional profligate use of metalworking fluids. Consequently, a significant quantity of research work has been directed towards developing dry and near-dry, or Minimal Quantity Lubrication (MQL), machining techniques. A review of available literature shows that several outcomes of these techniques for product life-cycle assessment need to be addressed - i.e., some environmental tradeoffs are often involved in their implementation. Avenues for further research in sustainable machining, including some ideas for advancing dry and near-dry machining without resorting to chemical action for extreme-pressure lubrication, are also presented.Electric drive is an inherent and important part of ship development. Now it becomes one kind of standard on the way towards more efficient ship concepts. As one of the challenging topics in ship, a key step is how to find resolution for improvement of the performance of Ro/Ro ships, according to safety, friend environment and less cost. Definitely, electric propulsion systems for marine vessels are an interesting alternative to conventional manner. In this paper, we'll investigate development of the vehicle/passenger carriers with all electric system, including benefit analysis about environmental performance assessment and life cycle costing, based on the LCA (life cycle analysis) philosophy. A test case is from the Chuan river (Yangtze River upstream, China) transportation market. Based on the net present value available, we'll demonstrate that the environmental effects and future benefits in this area are closely associated with ship owners' invest capacity. As an environmental friendly ship with obvious social profits, therefore, AES (all electric ship) will be widely used in markets of China in the near future.The world's first commercial-scale grid-connected tidal current energy installation will feature the Seagen marine current turbine developed by Marine Current Turbines Ltd. With potential for the manufacture of significant numbers of such devices there is a need to assess their environmental impact and, in particular, their life cycle energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) performance. This paper presents an analysis of the life cycle energy use and CO2 emissions associated with the first generation of Seagen turbines. The detailed assessment covers the embodied energy and CO2 in the materials and manufacturing of components, device installation, and operation along with those for decommissioning. With relatively conservative assumptions, and despite the early stage of development, the study shows that at 214 kJ/kWh and 15 gCO(2)/kWh, the respective energy and carbon intensities are comparable with large wind turbines and very low relative to the 400 to 1000 gCO(2)/kWh typical of fossil-fuelled generation. The energy payback period is approximately 14 months and the CO2 payback is around 8 months. The embodied energy and carbon show limited sensitivity to assumptions with environmental performance remains excellent even under the most adverse scenarios considered. Materials use is identified as the primary contributors to embodied energy and carbon with shipping also significant. Improvements in the environmental impact of the Seagen can be achieved primarily by increased structural efficiency and the use of alternative installation methods to increase recovery of steel at decommissioning.RHP is currently developing a classification system that expresses the environmental quality of growing media. The system intends to offer producers and (professsional) users transparency about the environmental quality of a particular substrate. Depending on their environmental profile, growing media are awarded an A, B or C classification. This classification is based on clear and public criteria. The criteria applied are partly quantitative, partly qualitative. The quantitative criteria are based on LCA's (lifecycle analyses), which have been made for all major raw materials and additives. The qualitative criteria address aspects that are hard to quantify, but are nevertheless environmentally relevant, such as the level of environment management in the various stages in the production chain (including end-of-life).This paper presents the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study conducted to determine the environmental burdens associated with cut flowers and pot plant greenhouse cultivation. The goal of this research is to provide an objective environmental analysis of greenhouse ornamental production and point out technical and operational solutions in order to reduce the environmental burdens produced by cultivation. In order to define the environmental friendly strategy in the area of the U.E., a research has been carried out within project "Ecoflower Terlizzi" (LIFE04 ENV/IT/000480) based on ISO standardisation guidelines, with the participation of Italian ornamental growers. Twenty-two farms of the greenhouse districts of Terlizzi, near Bari in the southern Italian region of Apulia, were chosen in order to analyse the environmental sustainability of soil and soil-less production. The data gathered within project concerned greenhouse typology (structure and covering), equipments (heating, electric, irrigation, etc.) crops (rose, daisy flower, chrysanthemum, carnation, lily, cyclamen, etc.), consumption of water, fertilisers, pesticides, substrates, nutrient solutions, energy consumed for the cultivation and the running of solution distribution systems. The results, based on CML2001 interpretation method (Guinee et al., 2001), show that plastic covering materials instead of glass, the use of thermal screen for energy saving, an optimization of structures, equipments and agronomical management can reduce environmental burden of ornamental cultivation mainly generated by fuel, pesticide and fertilizer emissions.Agriculture Plastic Waste (APW) generates about 615.000 tons of waste per year in Europe. This presents a serious challenge concerning the production of the plastic as well as the disposal or recycling of the materials. For addressing especially the specific issues of APW the European Commission funds a project called LABELAGRIWASTE, labelling agricultural plastic waste for valorising the waste stream. In the consortium partners from Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain are working together on developing a labelling scheme for European APW. In order to identify the environmental impact of the main agricultural plastic products, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed. The LCA is done before the development of a labelling scheme starts to examine the different life cycles of the most commonly used products in agriculture in Europe. The study includes the LCA of mulch films, pipes, and greenhouse films, each with two different plastics and different End-of-Life options. Also differences in four countries and the European Union in total are investigated. Furthermore, the LCA includes the production of the plastics and the following different End-of-Life scenarios: Mechanical Recycling, Landfill and Incineration. As a result the environmental profiles of different materials with various End-of-Life (EoL) options are generated. The environmental categories Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP) and additionally the Primary Energy consumption are shown. The results are varying depending on the End-of-Life option, the country and of course the material studied. This paper presents the results for the Life Cycle of mulch film including the production and different EoL options for the Global Warming Potential.The flower market of the Terlizzi agro-industrial district (Bari, Italy) represents the 20% of the Italian production, which is the second in Europe after the Netherlands. The main products are cut flowers and plants in vase, in particular roses and cyclamens. In this framework the European Project "Ecoflower Terlizzi" was carried out to support the implementation of a sustainable environmental policy in the Terlizzi district. The project was aimed at defining the criteria of environmental quality of the flowers produced in this area and includes both the definition of an EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) programme and of a local eco-label (type 1). To reach this objective environmental analyses and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) studies were carried out on a sample of seven enterprises representative of the Terlizzi's production systems. They were analysed on the basis of on-site data collection including materials and components for structures and equipments, energy and water consumption, fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals used in the cultivation phase. Three farms produce roses with soilless cultivation systems, two produce roses in soil and two produce cyclamens' pots. In this paper the main issues concerning the application of the LCA methodology to the production of roses and cyclamens and the results obtained will be presented. Thermal energy consumption gives the main contribution to the environmental impacts of the roses' life cycle. For the cyclamens' pots the main contribution comes from the seedlings production. For both productions, electricity consumption, structures and equipments give a significant contribution to the environmental impacts.Greenhouse production is often perceived as an artificial process, characterized by low nutritional quality of the final product and the heavy use of chemical inputs. Moreover, large areas covered with greenhouses create a big visual impact, a factor which is especially important in the highly touristic Mediterranean Coastal. In contrast, open-field cultivation is generally perceived as an 'eco-friendly' activity, and one that has a much smaller visual impact. Setting aside these,apparent' perceptions of the two cultivation systems, it is necessary to make an objective assessment and to quantify their respective impacts on the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) tool was used to compare the environmental burdens associated with greenhouse as opposed to open-field production processes for a spring season tomato crop grown in the Maresme region near Barcelona. Greenhouse structure, irrigation equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, cultural tasks and irrigation were all analyzed as subsystems. All inputs for each subsystem were traced back to primary resources. For each subsystem, emissions were quantified and aggregated into impact categories defined by CML 2001, using tomato yield (kg) as the functional unit. Preliminary results revealed that environmental burden per kg of tomato grown in open-field production was greater than that for tomatoes produced in greenhouses with respect to factors such as the use of water, fertilizers and pesticides. Notwithstanding the differences in environmental burden associated with the two production systems, if one considers the higher economic returns obtained from greenhouse production, their existence could constitute a reasonable trade-off.This research has been carried out funded by EU project "Ecoflower Terlizzi" (LIFE04 ENV/IT/000480) with ISO standardization guidelines, with the participation of Italian ornamental growers and breeders, in order to gather information regarding the floricultural production process. The applications of LCA (life cycle assessment) methodology to greenhouse crops, point out the difficult to analyse an agricultural production with large use of energy, raw materials, structures and equipments, but also depending by the biology of vegetables, cultivation systems and the economic growers chooses. The evaluation of baby plants, in term of energy and materials consumptions, is the first step to realize an LCA analysis of whole productive cycle. At this aim, an LCI (life cycle inventory) was been realised near nursery farm in order to gathering production data of grafted baby plant of rose. The same search was carried out into a nursery farm that produces sowbread baby plants by F1 seedling. These two ornamental plants have been selected because representing the commercial typologies of cut flower and pot plant most growed in Terlizzi's area, an ornamental greenhouse district in Apulia - Southern Italy. The informations about the production of baby plant have been collected in a database and processed by specific LCA software. Further investigations have been done in order to analyze and evaluate the fertilisers and pesticides used in the nursery. The results of LCA analysis have been expressed by means of the environmental burdens produced by energy, water, packaging, fertilisers and pesticides consumptions, structures and equipments, used in the production of baby plant. The results of this research point out that the environmental burdens of the production of baby plants are negligible in the rose production and considerable in the pot sowbread production principally because of the contributions of polystyrene plateaux and Polyvinylchloride plastic pot.The primary energy required to provide apple ('Braeburn' and 'Golden Delicious') fruit for consumers in the densely populated (8 million consumers) Rhein-Ruhr area, Germany in April was calculated. Home grown-apples harvested in mid-October and CA-stored for 5 months on-site at ca. 1 degrees C until mid March were compared with fresh apples of the same cultivar grown in the Southern hemisphere in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand or Grabouw-Elgin, Western Cape, South Africa. These apples were picked in March with subsequent 28 day, or 14 day transport, respectively, on reefers to Antwerp for sale in April in Germany. The primary energy required for the cultivation of 'Braeburn' apples in New Zealand of ca. 0.7 MJ center dot kg(-1), apple fruit represented 11% of their overall primary energy requirement, compared with 1.0 MJ center dot kg(-1) fruit in Germany or South Africa with smaller harvests of 40 t center dot ha(-1) cf. 90 t center dot ha(-1) in New Zealand. Apples ('Braeburn' and 'Golden Delicious'), grown and stored locally in Germany, consumed 4.1 MJ center dot kg(-1) fruit, which included ca. 0.8 MJ center dot kg(-1) for five I months CA storage during the winter. This compared favourably with 5.4-6.1 MJ center dot kg(-1) for overseas shipment from South Africa or New Zealand, i.e., a 24-33% greater energy requirement for imported fruits. The CA storage of home-grown apples in Germany partially compensated for the energy required to import fresh fruit from overseas. To fully compensate for fruit imports from South Africa or New Zealand, home-grown apples had to be stored locally for ca. 9 or 18 months, respectively, i.e., in the latter case beyond the next harvest. The smaller primary energy required for domestic apple fruit is discussed with respect to providing local employment, fruit orchards preserving the countryside, fruit quality, food safety and quality assurance schemes such as QS and EUREP-GAP and food security of local fruit and networking favouring regional produce.Movements advocating 'buy local' have used the 'Food Miles' concept to develop consumer awareness of the environmental 'footprint' of food items freighted over longer distances, and have raised objections to the environmental costs of pandering to consumer demand for year-round availability of a wide variety of horticultural products. This problem requires careful analysis, particularly because the 'Food Miles' concept may help to create a new type of non-tariff trade barrier. The environmental benefit of the 'Food Miles' concept is not so clear-cut. Transport by sea has been estimated to impose a 20-fold lower energy cost per kg of produce than transport by road, making a simple comparison of kilometres travelled almost meaningless. Air freight, often criticized as the least sustainable form of transport, has a hugely variable environmental cost per kg depending on whether perishable produce is transported in freight-only aeroplanes or as cargo in passenger flights. A focus on the environmental impact of 'Food Miles' is misleading unless there is additional information on the other energy costs involved in producing alternative products. The 'Food Miles' concept comes at a particularly bad time for developing countries, for whom niche marketing of horticultural products can make a significant contribution to sustainable socio-economic development. The recent launch of the Global Horticulture Initiative promotes trade in fresh produce as a means to support sustainable development in developing countries. This paper explores some of the issues surrounding 'Food Miles' calculations and the potential impact of the 'Food Miles' issue on sustainable socio-economic development.The global issues of climate change, resource consumption and waste are translating into real business risks and opportunities that are forcing Australian manufacturers to design and develop their products more sustainably. For a manufacturing company, 'sustainability risk' includes those risks resulting from the emerging environmental and social justice issues (such as the adoption of mandatory greenhouse emissions reduction targets to curb Australia's impact on climate change) that directly affect the quality, cost and development time of a product. Identifying and assessing these risks at the product design stage is crucial for the development of products that both minimise sustainability risk exposure and are environmentally sustainable. This paper outlines a Sustainability Risk Assessment framework that integrates Life Cycle Analysis and Activity-Based Life Cycle Costing with risk assessment to identify, assess and model the impact of sustainability risks specific to a product's life cycle impact.This paper is a study of comparisons between five types of 100 MW Very Large-Scale Photovoltaic Power Generation (VLS-PV) Systems, from economic and environmental viewpoints. The authors designed VLS-PV systems using typical PV modules of multi-crystalline silicon (12.8% efficiency), high efficiency multi-crystalline silicon (15.8%), amorphous silicon (6.9%), cadmium tellurium (9.0%), and copper indium selenium (11.0%), and evaluated them by Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA). Cost, energy requirement, and CO2 emissions were calculated. In addition, the authors evaluated generation cost, energy payback time (EPT), and CO2 emission rates. As a result, it was found that the EPT is 1.5-2.5 years and the CO2 emission rate is 9-16g-C/kWh. The generation cost was 11-12 US Cent/kWh on using 2 USD/W PV modules, and 19-20 US Cent/kWh on using 4 USD/W PV module price. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This paper presents the optimal sizing and life cycle assessment of residential photovoltaic (PV) energy systems. The system consists of PV modules as the main power producer, and lead-acid batteries as the medium of electricity storage, and other essential devices such as an inverter. Five parameter analytic PV cell model is used to calculate the energy production from the modules. Electrical needs for a family living under normal conditions of comfort are modelled and used within simulation of the system performance, with an average daily load of approximately 9.0 kWh. The system's performance simulations are carried out with typical yearly solar radiation and ambient temperature data from five different sites in Turkey. The typical years are selected from a total of 6 years data for each site. The life cycle cost of the PV system is analysed for various system configurations for a 20 year system life. The role of the batteries in PV energy systems are analysed in terms of the cost and power loss. The system performance is analysed as a function of various parameters such as energy production and cost. It is shown that these change substantially for different system configurations and locations. The life cycle assessment of the energy system described was also carried out to determine the environmental impact. It was found that, with the conservative European average electricity mix, energy pay back time (EPBT) is 6.2 years and CO2 pay back time is 4.6 years for the given system. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is utilized to analyze SolFocus Inc. concentrator solar systems. A hybrid LCA methodology is explained that combines process and input-output LCA techniques. The use of the greenhouse gas return on investment metric for solar technologies is discussed as a complement to energy metrics. Finally, preliminary results of a hybrid LCA for the SolFocus concentrator technology are presented. It is found that transportation and electricity consumption play a significant role in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.Assessment of environmental impact is one of the crucial steps in life-cycle assessment (LCA). Current LCA tools typically compute an overall environmental score using a linear-weighted aggregation of normalized inventory data relating to relative performance in impact categories such as global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, or eutrophication. However, uncertainty associated with quantification of weights is, in general, very high. Moreover, where multiple stakeholder groups are engaged in a particular problem, there may be several different sets of weights that result in disparate scores or ranking. In some cases, the final results may seem entirely dependent upon the relative importance of weights and/or level of data uncertainty. Therefore, we propose to couple life-cycle impact assessment tools with stochastic multiattribute acceptability analysis (SMAA), which is a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) technique for exploring uncertain weight spaces. This paper briefly reviews the current state of the art for impact assessment in LCA and compares results using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's TRACI model with the SMAA approach for transportation energy alternatives with uncertain preference information. In both cases, life-cycle inventories are compiled from Argonne National Labs' GREET model. In the typical life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA), case results are based on the total environmental score, allowing dissimilar impacts to be added together, which correlates rank to the highest normalized impact. However, the SMAA approach balances the criteria more evenly, resulting in a different preference ordering. The difference between the two methods is partly due to stochastic versus point representation of weights. Data normalization, which converts incommensurate impact units to dimensionless quantities for the purpose of aggregation, greatly influences the results.Renewable energy sources are often presented as "clean". A more correct definition is that they are "cleaner" than ones based on fossil fuel conversion. When the energy consumption and the environmental impacts related to the plant's life-cycle are considered, a more comprehensive assessment of these technologies can be carried out. This paper aims to evaluate the energy and the environmental performances of the electricity production of a wind farm. The impacts related to all the phases of the wind farm construction and operation have been compared to the environmental benefits due to the "green" electricity generation during its useful life. In other terms, the goal is to trace the ecoprofile of the production of 1 kWh of electricity. A life cycle assessment (LCA) has been performed based on data related to an Italian wind farm: production and deliver of energy and raw materials, components manufacturing, transports, installation, maintenance, disassembly and disposal have been analysed. The attention focused to those life cycle steps generally neglected or not adequately investigated as installation, civil works and maintenance. The results can be assumed as representative of the Italian context and they can represent a further incentive to the diffusion of wind farms. In fact, the environmental performances of the wind farm have been compared to other power energy generation systems. The results showed a great environmental convenience of the inquired technology. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays hydrogen is industrially produced mainly from fossil fuels [18, 19, 20]. In the long term, will respect of a lack of fossil fuels, hydrogen produced from water can play a very important role in the energy system One of the way how to produce hydrogen from water are water splitting thermo-chemical cycles which replace thermal decomposition of water with several partial reactions. Two most promising water splitting thermo-chemical cycle (WH cycle and SI cycle) were compared with two different processes for hydrogen production (coal gasification are coal pyrolysis). Results obtained from LCA of these processes are reported in the paper.In recent years, new European Directives have been issued to ensure that Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is treated in as environmentally friendly a way as possible. These new European laws call for the creation of new logistics networks to collect all such waste. The purpose of this paper is to show that, under certain circumstances, the environmental impact of these networks could be even higher than the impact of non-collection. Different appliances were analysed (washing machines, refrigerators, TV sets and personal computers) in order to test this hypothesis. The methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied, highlighting especially the final phase of product life and calculating the threshold beyond which collection is harmful for each type of equipment. The results demonstrate that, depending on the distance travelled to pick up the domestic appliances, recycling is not as environmental friendly as expected, especially when it comes to the impact of fossil fuels or respiratory inorganics (winter smog). This work can be a useful tool for manufacturers (now forced to take back all the equipment after use for subsequent treatment) when designing their new recycling networks from an environmental perspective. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This research performed life cycle inventory using proposed recycled material formulas and service records and incorporating the database provided by Eco-indicator 99 in order to study the eco-burden presented by using recycled materials to rehabilitate asphalt pavements. Three recycled materials (recycled hot mix asphalt, asphalt rubber, and Glassphalt) and the traditional hot-mixed asphalt are compared. Assuming that the thickness of the asphalt is 5 cm and the service life is 6 years, the eco-burden presented by the traditional hot-mixed asphalt is 3.45 kPt. per lane-kilometer. Using recycled hot mixed asphalt can reduce the eco-burden by 23% under the same conditions. Using asphalt rubber increases the eco-burden by 16%, while the eco-burden remains essentially the same (reduced by less than 1%) using Glassphalt. Taking into account the difference in service life between different materials, this research also uses a 40-year time span to evaluate the eco-burden for each material. The results show that the traditional hot mixed asphalt has an eco-burden of 23.03 kPt. for that time span. Both recycled hot mixed asphalt and asphalt rubber can reduce the eco-burden by 23% in the same period. On the contrary, Glassphalt increases the eco-burden by 19%. This research also identified the sources of the eco-burden for these asphalts. The results show that a large percentage of the eco-burden comes from two sources, the asphalt binder used (39-48%) and the heat sources required to process these paving materials (42-50%). This suggests that the most effective way to lower the eco-burden may be to reduce the heat requirement during the manufacturing process. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Design for Environment is a design approach used to improve the performance of products and manufacturing operations, and reduce business disruption and sustainability risk, through design characteristics that reduce environmental impacts over the product's entire life cycle. For a manufacturing company, 'sustainability risk' includes those risks resulting from the emerging environmental and social justice issues (such as greenhouse emissions and waste legislation) that directly affect the quality, cost and development time of a product line. Identifying and assessing these risks at the product design stage is crucial for the development of products that both minimise sustainability risk exposure and are environmentally sustainable. Sustainability Risk Assessment at the product design stage must link the environmental impact of a product to business risks that affect the product life cycle cost. This paper describes a framework that integrates Life Cycle Analysis and Activity-Based Life Cycle Costing with risk assessment to identify, assess and model the impact of sustainability risks specific to a product's life cycle characteristics.An experimental program has thus been undertaken to collect environmental data and assess the potential environmental impacts from a pavement containing Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) in varying proportions, by means of the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) technique. This paper presents the methods and results inherent in the Impact Assessment component of the LCA standard (ISO 14 043). Except for the toxicity and ecotoxicity impact indicators, the entire set of computed indicators reveals a trend of decreasing potential environmental impacts with an increasing recycling rate. The trend derived for the majority of computed indicators is found strongly correlated with the transport process. Results depend upon various data sources, whose quality is not known with precision that could lead to biasing indicator results. Simplifying hypotheses are recalled in the conclusion.Sustainable development is a philosophy of social-economic development with a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future. It requires the minimization of the environmental impacts of a given product or service caused or necessitated by its existence in whole life cycle, ie. from-cradle-to-grave. The investigation and valuation of the environmental impacts are based on life cycle analysis with the use of the special assessment methods for product/material/technology comparison in respect of sustainable development. The whole life costs and environmental impacts assessment are the subject of two types of analysis: LCCA - life cycle costs analysis and LCA - life cycle (environmental) analysis. The integrated results of both analysis are commonly used for an evaluation, how a compared products/materials/technologies fulfil the sustainable development requirements. The application of LCCA and LCA analysis for the bridge modernisation case study is the subject of the paper. The comparative analysis of costs and environmental impacts in the whole life of a bridge for three variants of its modernisation has been carried out. The bridge modernisation with the use of the RC deck, steel deck and aluminium deck has been considered in the study. The final results have enabled the holistic view on the bridge redecking problem being very common in contemporary bridge maintenance policy. The analysis clearly reveals, that both life cycle costs and environmental impacts are the least in the case of aluminium deck. Only the whole life cycle analysis could prove, that the application of advanced materials/products/technologies in bridge construction leads up towards the sustainable development.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of residential windows was conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts of those made with aluminum-clad wood, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and fiberglass frames for sale in North America. The LCA was a case study in which specific-site data were used for the manufacturing stage of each window, while published data were adapted to complete the life cycle inventories using Sima Pro software. These inventories were grouped into impact categories and scaled based on IMPACT 2002+ version 2.1 characterization and damage factors. The damage modeling indicated that the life cycle impacts are dominated by the combustion of non-renewable energy resources. The PVC life cycle used the most non-renewable energy and caused the most damage owing to that window's shorter service life. The disposal of aluminum cladding in the municipal waste stream caused greater aquatic ecotoxicity for the wood window. The sensitivity analysis revealed that replacing the virgin material in aluminum cladding with recycled content improved the life cycle impacts of the wood window. Using fiberglass or PVC to clad the wood window also improved the environmental performance. Other potential improvements to the life cycle impacts of the three windows include improving energy efficiency, particularly during the secondary manufacturing.In this paper, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to coated white board made in China in order to analyze the resource consumption and environmental emissions at the different stages of the paper's life cycle and to compare the potential impacts of different waste paper ratio on environment. The results of inventory analysis showed that the energy consumption of coated white board in China was 1.063 ton coal (the heat value of the coal is 29308kJ/kg) per ton, which was 28-36% higher than that in the developed countries. The water consumption of coated white board in China was 113m(3)/t, which was higher than that in the developed countries too. The results also indicated that water pollutants mainly came from the pulping, bleaching and papermaking processes. In the above processes, chemical oxygen demand (COD) emission in the coated white board production was 102.5kg/t, and solid suspension (S S) 63.8kg/t, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) 34.9kg/t. The air pollutants came mainly from heat energy production and electric energy production and pulping process, and gas emissions in the coated white board production was CO2 2130kg/t, SO2 32.8kg/t, NOx 30.81kg/t. The results of impact assessment showed that the most important environmental impact related to the papermaking industry was acidification, the second was global warming. Moreover, more attention should be paid to the eutrophication. Based on the inventory analysis and impact assessment results, the conclusion could also be drawn that the replacement of bleached kraft softwood pulp by waste paper in the coated white board production process appeared to be environmentally friendly.In France, where a division by 4 of the greenhouse gases emissions is aimed from 1990 to 2050, technical solutions are studied in order to reduce energy consumption while providing a satisfactory thermal comfort level in buildings. A two-dwelling passive building has been carried out in Formerie (North-West of France), complying the "Passivhaus" standard. This building, not yet monitored, has been modeled using the dynamic simulation software COMFIE, which is dedicated to building eco-design. In order to account for the implemented ventilation system, including a heat recovery unit and an earth-to-air heat exchanger, a specific model has been developed and integrated to COMFIE as a new module. In this article, this model is described first. In order to quantify the benefits brought by a passive design, the simulation results are presented for the passive house and a reference house complying with the French thermal regulation for buildings. The heating load and thermal comfort level of both houses are compared, showing for the passive design a tenfold reduction of the heating load and a clear reduction of summer discomfort. Finally, the environmental assessment - carried out with the life cycle assessment tool EQUER - shows the reduction in primary energy consumption, global warming potential and other impacts brought by the passive house design. Passive house appears to be an adequate solution to improve the environmental performances of buildings in the French context. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Competitiveness of steel construction and, in particular, steel and composite bridges, requires a broader view that encompasses the concepts of sustainability and life-cycle assessment in parallel with the classical structural and geotechnical issues. Also, from the economical viewpoint, the progressive transfer of operational duties from the National Road Authorities to private companies in the context of design, build and operate contracts, reinforces the need for an integrated approach. It is the purpose of the present paper: (i) to present an integrated methodology for a life-cycle and sustainability analysis (LCA and LCCA); and (ii) to apply such an integrated approach to a case study of a composite bridge. The proposed approach, besides structural considerations, contemplates environmental aspects (energy consumption, raw materials, and environmental impacts), economical aspects and a brief discussion of degradation and maintenance aspects. The case study consists of a three-span continuous bridge with spans of 27.2m+35.0m+27.2m, thus totalling 89.40m. Finally, some comparisons are presented between alternative solutions.The safety and usability of transport infrastructures is of great importance for the entire society, because disturbances of traffic networks can have significant consequences for the economy and the environment. Especially today, when bad news about deteriorated structures and shortened public budgets are omnipresent, this must not be forgotten. Structural health monitoring (SHM) can help to ensure the safety of deteriorated structures. SHM is expensive and therefore the investigation of optimized inspection and monitoring strategies is an active field of research. The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 477 at the Braunschweig University of Technology investigates innovative methods for SHM. In project field A1, a framework for the probabilistic safety assessment of structures has been developed using data from SHM. The current paper describes and explains the methodology of the framework and shows its application using a substitute structure, which was built for the CRC 477.This paper provides a wide-ranging up-to-date literature review on the current state of the art of photovoltaic systems, in terms of market penetration, costs and environmental performance. It then goes on to draft three alternative scenarios for the next few decades, highlighting the four key factors influencing PV growth, i.e. cost reduction, efficiency increase, building integration and storage networks. Lastly, preliminary results are presented for greenhouse gas emissions of selected PV technologies in the years 2025 and 2050. In the light of the findings presented here, photovoltaics can be considered an inherently advantageous option for the production of "green" electricity, which may be looking at a rosy future provided that a few key conditions are met.Although several studies have found biodiesel to be a renewable source of energy, there has been a claim that it is not. This article investigates models used to calculate the net energy ratio (NER) of biodiesel production to point out the reasons for the contradictory results, compares their strengths and weaknesses, and proposes a uniform model for interpretation of the final result. Four commonly referenced models were compared for their assumptions and results. The analysis revealed that the most significant factors in altering the results were the proportions of energy allocated between biodiesel and its coproducts. The lack of consistency in defining system boundaries has apparently led to very different results. The definitions of NER used among the models were also found to be different. A unified model is proposed for biodiesel energy analysis to answer the renewability question. Using the unified boundary, a range of probable NERs was calculated using bootstrapping. The mean NER on a mass basis was 2.55 with a standard deviation of 0.38. The economic sustainability ratio (ESR) is defined as the monetary value ratio of biodiesel to biodiesel's share of the energy inputs. The average ESR was found to be 4.43 with a standard deviation of 0.6.Advocates of 'local food' claim it serves to reduce food miles and greenhouse gas emissions, improve food safety and quality, strengthen local economies and enhance social capital. We critically review the philosophical and scientific rationale for this assertion, and consider whether conventional scientific approaches can help resolve the debate. We conclude that food miles are a poor indicator of the environmental and ethical impacts of food production. Only through combining spatially explicit life cycle assessment with analysis of social issues can the benefits of local food be assessed. This type of analysis is currently lacking for nearly all food chains.Nowadays, public authorities are faced with a conflicting situation in which the urgent necessity is to decrease greenhouse gas emissions combined with a steady increase of road traffic. To be able to take the most appropriate and efficient policy measures, the decision makers need to be provided with relevant and complete life cycle environmental impact data for each vehicle technology. Besides the vehicles' environmental life cycle data, the environmental impact of every step of fuels' life cycle must be assessed and provided as well. To achieve that purpose, a special Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool allowing the assessment of different vehicle types with different lifetime driven distances in one single model is being developed. A special modeling system (RangeLCA), using a range of values instead of averaged ones, will allow the potential variability of the data to be taken into account. The distribution of the main parameters of the model as well as the influence of their variability on each other will be taken into account thanks to a specific statistical tool integrated in the modeling system. The relevance of the choice of the parameters and the sensitivity of the LCA results to those parameters are checked on a regular basis throughout the modeling process. Temporary LCA results of the Volkswagen Touareg and the Volkswagen Golf as well as a sensitivity analysis of different parameters will be discussedBallast track has some advantages compared to concrete track in terms of noise reduction, drainage and so on. However, rail infrastructure has been exchanged from ballast track to concrete track due to the ease of maintenance without considering prior environmental impact. In order to accomplish superior environmental position in the transportation modes, the environmental characteristics of rail track systems should be investigated, as well as the rail vehicle. In this study, two rail track systems, gravel ballast and the concrete track system, constructed recently on the Seoul-Busan High-speed Line for running KTX (Korea Train eXpress), were compared by quantifying their environmental loads using a LCA tool. The life cycle inventory of track systems was analyzed from their material and energy flows through a whole process. In the future, the application of LCA into railway infrastructure can achieve a fundamental technology for sustainable development.The SISMan (Simple Integrated System Management) decision-aid model is introduced in this paper. The SISMan model is used in a demonstration of evaluating the viability of adding an Energy-from-Waste (EfW) plant to an existing municipal energy supply system. The integrated system utilizes co-generation in heat and electricity production. The evaluation is carried out by calculating the energy and money flows for the integrated system and comparing the results to the original system values. No "competing technologies" to the EfW alternative are presented; the evaluation is carried out simply by comparing the original ("existing") system flows to the integrated system flows. The results show that in certain conditions it is feasible to integrate an EfW plant with the existing municipal energy supply system in Finland. However, the conditions for a viable integration may not be so easy to fulfill. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, the impact levels in environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports of 10 incinerator plants were quantified and discussed. The relationship between the quantified impact levels and the plant scale factors of BeiTou, LiZe, BaLi, LuTsao, RenWu, Ping-Tung, SiJhou and HsinChu were constructed, and the impact levels of the GangShan (GS) and YongKong (YK) plants were predicted using grey model GM (1, N). Finally, the effects of plant scale factors on impact levels were evaluated using grey model GM (1, N) too. According to the predicted results of GM, the relative errors of topography/geology/soil, air quality, hydrology/water quality, solid waste, noise, terrestrial fauna/flora, aquatic fauna/flora and traffic in the GS plant were 17%, 14%, 15%, 17%, 75%, 16%, 13%, and 37%,, respectively. The relative errors of the same environmental items in the YK plant were 1%, 18%, 10%, 40%, 37%, 3%, 25% and 33%, respectively. According to GM (1, N), design capacity (DC) and heat value (HV) were the plant scale factors that affected the impact levels significantly in each environmental item, and thus were the most significant plant scale factors. GM (1, N) was effective in predicting the environmental impact and analyzing the reasonableness of the impact. If there is an EIA for a new incinerator plant to be reviewed in the future, the official committee of the Taiwan EPA could review the reasonableness of impact levels in EIA reports quickly. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An investigation into the possibility of replacing conventional biomass with biodegradable municipal solid waste (BMSW), which provides an alternative solution for preventing organic fraction of municipal solid waste going into landfill required by EU Landfill Directives (European Commission [1]) was carried out. The experimental results have shown that more than 85% of the cellulose from the waste can be converted to glucose, which can be easily fermented to ethanol production. The conversion rate is relatively high compared with other conventional biomass. Taking into account the existing waste collection system and the cost for disposing of waste, makes this waste-to-ethanol system economically valuable. However, every type of energy has some advantages as well as disadvantages. This paper identifies the potential impacts of using BMSW as bio-ethanol resources from the prospects of both energy development and waste management. The opportunities of MSW-to-ethanol as an alternative waste management are also discussed with the recommendation for further life cycle study.As a consequence of the EU Water Framework Directive more focus is now on discharges of hazardous substances from wastewater treatment plants and sewers. Thus, many municipalities in Denmark may have to adopt to future advanced treatment technologies. This paper describes a holistic assessment, which includes technical, economical and environmental aspects. The technical and economical assessment is performed on 5 advanced treatment technologies: sand filtration, ozone treatment, UV exclusively for disinfection of pathogenic microorganisms, membrane bioreactor (MBR) and UV in combination with advanced oxidation. The technical assessment is based on 12 hazardous substances comprising heavy metals, organic pollutants, endocrine disruptors as well as pathogenic microorganisms. The environmental assessment is performed by life cycle assessment (LCA) comprising 9 of the specific hazardous substances and three advanced treatment methods; sand filtration, ozone treatment and MBR. The technical and economic assessment showed that UV solely for disinfection purposes or ozone treatment is the most advantageous advanced treatment methods if the demands are restricted to pathogenic microorganisms. In terms of sustainability, sand filtration is the most advantageous method based on the technical and environmental assessment due to the low energy consumption and high efficiency with regards to removal of heavy metals.Environmental impacts associated with the construction, maintenance, and disposal of low-impact stormwater management devices are one aspect that should be considered during decision-making and life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a suitable method for quantifying such impacts. This paper reports a pilot study that employs LCA to compare life-cycle energy requirements and CO(2) emissions of two stormwater devices in New Zealand. The two devices are a raingarden servicing an urban feeder road, and a sand filter that could have been installed in its stead. With an assumed life-time of 50 years, the life-cycle energy requirements of the built raingarden were almost 20% less than for the sand filter, while the CO(2) emissions were 30% less. Our analysis shows that given the difference between the infiltration rates used in the raingarden design (0.3m/day) and measured during monitoring (3m/day) there was potential to make significantly greater life-time savings using a smaller design for the raingarden that would have also met the treatment efficiency expectations. The analysis highlights the significant contribution of transportation-of both materials and staff-and ongoing maintenance to a treatment device's life-cycle energy and CO(2) profiles.Conventional and source-separating urban sanitation systems are compared with regard to their ecological sustainability using the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment. A substance flow model of all relevant processes in a settlement with 5,000 inhabitants is set up and evaluated with environmental indicators for resource demand and emissions to air, water, and soil. The comparison shows that source separation does not necessarily result in a system with less environmental impacts. If the conventional system is energetically optimized and equipped with extended nutrient removal, its impact is comparable to the source-separating systems. However, source separation has the potential to offer ecological benefits depending on the system configuration. Especially the input of toxic heavy metals to agriculture with sewage sludge can be substantially lowered if separately collected urine and faeces are used as organic fertilizer.Lifecycle assessment (LCA) is a standardised methodology that is used to assess the impact of techno-economic systems on the natural environment. By compiling an inventory of energy and material inputs and environmental releases or outputs of a system, and evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with the inventory, one can make an informed decision regarding the sustainability of a techno-economic system in question. However, the current lifecycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies that form part of LCA studies do not effectively consider the impacts of techno-economic systems on ground and surface water resources in South Africa ( and elsewhere). It is proposed that a microbiology based index method, similar to methods proposed for terrestrial resources, can establish the states of water resources for six classes of current economic exploitation: protected, moderate use, degraded, cultivated, plantation, and urban. It is further suggested that changes in these classes ( and states) can be used meaningfully in LCIA methodologies to quantify the extent to which techno-economic interventions may alter natural water resources. Research is recommended to further improve the accuracy and reliability of the water state index.Much research and development effort is directed towards advances in municipal wastewater treatment aiming at reducing the effluent content of micro-pollutants and pathogens The objective is. to further reduce the eco-toxicity hormone effects and pathogenic effects of the effluent Such further polishing of the effluent, however, involves an environmental trade-off: the reduction in eco-toxicity, hormone effects, etc. will happen at the expense of increased resource- and energy consumption. Obviously, at some point of further advances, there must be an 'environmental break-even'. This trade-off was investigated using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and based on a literature review of advanced treatment performance. The LCA evaluation comprised sand filtration, ozonation and MBRs and assessed the effect of extending existing tertiary treatment with these technologies on a variety of micro-pollutants being: heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Ni), endocrine disruptors (E2 and EE2), PAH, DEHP and detergents (LAS & NPE). It was found, in some of the studied scenarios, that more environmental impact may be induced than removed by the advanced treatment. The study showed that for the 3 technologies, sand filtration has the best balance between prevented and induced impacts, and sand filtration proved to have a net environmental benefit under the assumptions used in the study. But the outcome of the study suggests that this is not always the case for ozonation and MBR.Anaerobic digestion is a well known process that (while still capable of showing new features) has experienced several waves of technological development. It was "born" as a wastewater treatment system, in the 1970s showed promise as an alternative energy source (in particular from animal waste), in the 1980s and later it became a standard for treating organic-matter-rich industrial wastewater, and more recently returned to the market for its energy recovery potential, making use of different biomasses, including energy crops. With the growing concern around global warming, this paper looks at the potential of anaerobic digestion in terms of reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The potential contribution of anaerobic digestion to GHG reduction has been computed for the 27 EU countries on the basis of their 2005 Kyoto declarations and using life cycle data. The theoretical potential contribution of anaerobic digestion to Kyoto and EU post- Kyoto targets has been calculated. Two different possible biogas applications have been considered: electricity production from manure waste, and upgraded methane production for light goods vehicles (from landfill biogas and municipal and industrial wastewater treatment sludges). The useful heat that can be produced as by-product from biogas conversion into electricity has not been taken into consideration, as its real exploitation depends on local conditions. Moreover the amount of biogas already produced via dedicated anaerobic digestion processes has also not been included in the calculations. Therefore the overall gains achievable would be even higher than those reported here. This exercise shows that biogas may considerably contribute to GHG emission reductions in particular if used as a biofuel. Results also show that its use as a biofuel may allow for true negative GHG emissions, showing a net advantage with respect to other biofuels. Considering also energy crops that will become available in the next few years as a result of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, this study shows that biogas has the potential of covering almost 50% of the 2020 biofuel target of 10% of all automotive transport fuels, without implying a change in land use. Moreover, considering the achievable GHG reductions, a very large carbon emission trading "value" could support the investment needs. However, those results were obtained through a "qualitative" assessment. In order to produce robust data for decision makers, a quantitative sustainability assessment should be carried out, integrating different methodologies within a life cycle framework. The identification of the most appropriate policy for promoting the best set of options is then discussed.The design stage of a product highly influences the products economic and environmental impacts throughout its life, cycle. Therefore, decisions during this stage must be taken considering all possible information. The aim of this paper is to confirm the importance of analysing a product in an early stage of its development on a life cycle perspective. A case study was developed to outline this importance, considering the material selection of an automobile front fender. A set of candidate materials with different characteristics technologically suitable for an automobile fender were selected to analyse. The selection varied front mild steel to ultra strength steel and aluminium alloys. Starting front the most basic decision criterion, the material specific market cost, additional analysis were performed, including life cycle cost and environmental assessment, verifying that the "best material" considering different approaches is not always the same. The most economic material during production stage may not be the most economic one during the in-use stage and may also not be the most ecological one. Thus, life cycle approaches integrating the companies' strategies allow more conscious and informed decisions during product design stages. Shanghai is a cosmopolitan city and one of the most important economic centers in China, but is saddled with serious environmental problems resulting from a recent industrial transformation. This paper examines the interactive relationships between economic growth, eco-efficiency Of urban metabolism, and environmental performance of the Shanghai metropolitan area since the 1990S using 15 indicators. This Study has revealed an enhanced eco-efficiency of water and energy use as Well as all improved overall environmental quality)l in the central urban districts of Shanghai. Both TGDP (total GDP) and GDP per capita increased rapidly at the annual rate of 16.28% and 15.91 %, respectively. In contrast, energy consumed per 10 000 RMB YUAN GDP (ECG), water consumed per 10000 RMB YUAN GDP (WCG), wastewater discharged per 10000 RMB YUAN GDP (WWDG), and waste gases emitted per 10000 RMB YUAN GDP (WGEG) decreased at the annual rate of 9.34%, 10.69%, 14.57% and 8.52% respectively. The rapid decline in ECG, WCG, WWDG, and WGEG indicates,in enhanced eco-efficiency Of Urban metabolism. However, uncontrolled emission of wastes from domestic instead of industrial Sources adversely affected the overall environmental quality. Ill addition, Suburban areas have undergone rapid economic growth at the cost of human,111 health deterioration, as Measured by mortalities and relative mortality ratios ofthree major diseases tumor, respiratory disease, and trauma/toxicosis). With Shanghai serving as the "locomotive" driving the economy of the Yangtze River Basin, effective pollution control policies and a network of regional coordination are urgently needed ill the globalization and ecological security of the entire area. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The urban forest has several positive effects on urban metabolism: reducing urban runoff, consequent sewer overloads and resulting water pollution; and reducing heat islands through shading and transpirational cooling by tree leaves, which also reduces energy required for cooling buildings. It is likely that urban trees can mitigate CO2 emissions from combustion, thus reducing overall emissions from power plants. This has been modelled, but has not been verified by actual measurements. Large computer models have been used to predict uptake of air pollutants by urban trees. There is, however, considerable uncertainty about the validity of the predictions from these models. Very few real uptake data are available. Urban trees emit small biogenic volatile hydrocarbons (BVOCs), with amounts varying by species. BVOCs can become part of the photochemical oxidant cycle, increasing ozone levels in cities. It is likely, but unverified, that the urban forest can improve the quality of life for city residents. There is much to be learned about the characteristics and ecophysiology of trees selected for large urban plantings. Additional research will help to elaborate more fully the role of urban forests in urban metabolism and succession toward sustainability.Too much time is spent nowadays analyzing the symptoms of urban problems in Africa, without looking at the root causes of those problems. This paper addresses the future of African cities from an African perspective. Urbanization in the context of the west is an aberration because its roots are found in the industrial development of the west. When an African speaks his native tongue, the whole street becomes his neighborhood plaza, playground and the market, even though the western method of planning did not make provision for this. When he speaks the foreign colonial language he only sees the street and not the plaza, the playground, the market or the rest of the neighborhood. From a purely ecological perspective, shanties and their inhabitants are a good example of the new, green urban metabolism. Despite their sanitary and security failings, they often have a social vibrancy and ecological systems that get lost in most planned urban environments.Analysis of urban metabolism has been established as an appropriate approach for assessing the sustainability of cities. A desirable next step is to use the metabolism as a guide to designing more sustainable cities. This study provides an analysis of the metabolism of four representative Toronto neighborhoods. The annual energy consumption for buildings and transport is determined to be from 57 to 107 GJ/capita and from 0.5 to 9.2 GJ/capita, respectively. The annual consumption of food and water is found to be 1,100 and 92,300 kg/capita. The findings of the study have implications for the design of sustainable neighborhoods. This includes the construction of energy-efficient buildings, development of public transit, and encouragement of residents to replace inefficient water fixtures. More advanced methods might consist of growing the urban forest using nutrients from wastewater, and converting solar energy to building operational energy.This paper investigates the relationships between settlement size, functionality, geographic location and sustainable development. Analysis was carried out on a sample of 79 Irish settlements, located in three regional clusters. Two methods were selected to model the level of sustainability achieved in settlements, namely, Metabolism Accounting and Modelling of Material and Energy Flows (MA) and Sustainable Development Index Modelling. MA is a systematic assessment of the flows and stocks of material within a system defined in space and time. The metabolism of most settlements is essentially linear, with resources flowing through the urban system. The objective of this research on material and energy flows was to provide information that might aid in the development of a more circular pattern of urban metabolism, vital to sustainable development. In addition to MA, a set of forty indicators were identified and developed. These target important aspects of sustainable development: transport, environmental quality, equity and quality of life issues. Sustainability indices were derived through aggregation of indicators to measure dimensions of sustainable development. Similar relationships between settlement attributes and sustainability were found following both methods, and these were subsequently integrated to provide a single measure. Analysis identified those attributes of settlements preventing, impeding or promoting progress towards sustainability. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.On the basis of Ecosystem Adaptive Management theory, this paper attempts to put forward the fundamental concept and theoretical framework of Urban Adaptive Management (UAM), to expound the crucial essentials of UAM, and to establish the management mode and framework of UAM. Then, take Lanzhou, Gansu province of China as a study area, based on the urban metabolism theory, analysis the material metabolism of Lanzhou from 1990 to 2004 using emergy analysis approach, Meanwhile it identifies the resilience of urban metabolism process, and study its adaptive cycle process, consequently, we put forward the objects and mode of UAM of Lanzhou. The outcome of the study shows that the mode we proposed is a good way for urban management.Problem: Emerging energy technologies are bringing planners a new set of issues. The supply-oriented framework from engineering economics within which energy planning has traditionally been conducted may be useful for siting large refineries, power plants, and transmission corridors, but it is not helpful for mitigating conflicts at the site level, encouraging new technology adoptions, managing the demand for energy, or, especially, coordinating the diverse users of smaller, local energy facilities. Purpose: I provide an alternative conceptual framework for thinking about emerging energy planning tasks. I highlight factors not considered in the traditional model, and introduce terminology for characterizing key characteristics of the changing energy economy. Methods: I draw on concepts from industrial ecology, urban metabolism, and ecological economics, and apply my new framework to a set of examples illustrating its advantages relative to the traditional approach to energy planning. Results and conclusions: I propose that planners use network models to think about energy systems and focus especially on nodes where energy is converted from one form to another. Understanding the scale, scope, commodification, and agency of such nodes, and whether and when these attributes are open to change, can improve energy planning decisions for traditional energy investments such as power plants and for energy initiatives such as wind farms, rooftop solar systems, energy-efficient buildings, cogeneration, compact growth, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Takeaway for practice: Planners should do more than just mitigate energy facility siting conflicts. They should also identify points of governmental leverage on private decision makers, keep track of evolving technologies, bundle energy users with different temporal demand profiles, and help build smarter energy networks. Focusing on energy networks and their nodes should help planners see how they can be most effective. Research support: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.Ecological and environmental conditions in and around cities are under pressure: transportation distances grow, protection and qualities diminish, and infrastructures (including management) get more complex, less robust and less visible, which result in a decline of sustainable commitment and behaviour of users. Yet, citizens are concerned that environmental degradation is affecting the quality of life in their neighbourhood. Resource reduction strategies and integrated waste management in close collaboration with urban planners, infrastructure developers, and representatives of key social groups are the basis to achieve environmental improvement. To do so the option of interconnection of the most important so called 'essential flows', especially waste related flows, energy, water and nutrients, at scales closer to users is argued to be necessary. This will be the guideline for urban planning based on the 'urban metabolism'. This paper will focus on the options for improving the sustainability of the urban metabolism by interconnecting these essential flows and thus closing cycles at lower scale levels within the built-up environment (decentralization). This will be done from the perspective of the 'sanitation flows', consisting of waste water and solid waste flows in residential urban areas. After a short introduction on cycles existing sanitation infrastructures and waste management will be drawn up. Subsequently future developments will be analysed and form the basis of a new approach to waste in urban residential neighbourhoods. It promotes sustainable management of the environment and its resources through a renewed focus on waste flows (mostly ignored resources) in urban neighbourhoods and local 'quality-cascading', together with niche planning to improve knowledge on the interactions between natural resources, human activities, waste and environmental impact. The approach is illustrated with two case studies.

 The aim of the study was to analyse provenance tests of beech situated close to the south-eastern continental limits of the species, in order to develop a response model of adaptation and plasticity of populations on evolutionary-ecological basis, following sudden climatic changes, as a result of transplanting. Modelling of juvenile height was performed with the help of ecodistance variables. The concept of transfer analysis and ecodistance is based on the hypothesis that phenotypic response to macroclimatic changes depends on the inherited adaptive potential of the population and on the magnitude and direction of experienced environmental change. In common garden experiments, the transfer to the planting site is interpreted as simulation of environmental change. The application of ecodistance of transfer for evaluating common garden experiments provides much needed quantitative information about response of tree populations to predicted climatic changes. The analysis of three field experiments of European beech in SE Europe indicates that macroclimatic adaptation patterns exist in juvenile growth and justify restrictions of use of reproductive material on the basis of evolutionary ecology. The presented model illustrates that response to climatic change is regionally divergent, depending on testing conditions and on hereditary traits. In particular, climatic warming in the central-northern part of the range may lead to production increase. However, under the stressful and uncertain conditions at the lower (xeric) limit of the species, growth depression and vitality loss are predicted. The deviating behaviour of higher elevation provenances support their separate treatment. The results may be utilised in climate change adaptation and mitigation policy in forestry and nature conservation, to revise rules for use of reproductive material and also for validating evolutionary and ecological hypotheses related to climate change effects.Background: Although the message of "global climate change'' is catalyzing international action, it is local and regional changes that directly affect people and ecosystems and are of immediate concern to scientists, managers, and policy makers. A major barrier preventing informed climate-change adaptation planning is the difficulty accessing, analyzing, and interpreting climate-change information. To address this problem, we developed a powerful, yet easy to use, web-based tool called Climate Wizard (http://ClimateWizard.org) that provides non-climate specialists with simple analyses and innovative graphical depictions for conveying how climate has and is projected to change within specific geographic areas throughout the world. Methodology/Principal Findings: To demonstrate the Climate Wizard, we explored historic trends and future departures (anomalies) in temperature and precipitation globally, and within specific latitudinal zones and countries. We found the greatest temperature increases during 1951-2002 occurred in northern hemisphere countries (especially during January-April), but the latitude of greatest temperature change varied throughout the year, sinusoidally ranging from approximately 50 degrees N during February-March to 10 degrees N during August-September. Precipitation decreases occurred most commonly in countries between 0-20 degrees N, and increases mostly occurred outside of this latitudinal region. Similarly, a quantile ensemble analysis based on projections from 16 General Circulation Models (GCMs) for 2070-2099 identified the median projected change within countries, which showed both latitudinal and regional patterns in projected temperature and precipitation change. Conclusions/Significance: The results of these analyses are consistent with those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but at the same time, they provide examples of how Climate Wizard can be used to explore regionally- and temporally-specific analyses of climate change. Moreover, Climate Wizard is not a static product, but rather a data analysis framework designed to be used for climate change impact and adaption planning, which can be expanded to include other information, such as downscaled future projections of hydrology, soil moisture, wildfire, vegetation, marine conditions, disease, and agricultural productivity.In response to a drying climate, an integrated property planning tool was developed over three years to help landowners make better use of available rainfall. A sequence was identified which indicated how parts of each property are affected by soil moisture limitations. The sequence was combined with soil properties to indicate targeted strategies for each location aimed to improve soil moisture availability, biomass utilisation, and long-term viability of the farm or ranching enterprise. As a result of training of land owners and operators in use of this tool, 97% of participants indicated that they have begun or intend to make changes in land management; 78% are intending to make three or more substantial changes; and 91% felt better prepared for the impacts of climate change. The key to the success of this technique is that it identifies critical sustainable production drivers in a simple plan format and offers tailored management options which can address more variable climate conditions. The integrated planning tool has application as a driver of climate change adaptation in agricultural regions where farm units contain substantial landscape variation and seasonal rainfall is frequently limiting to production.The assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) have demonstrated that the climate is changing and the future will see higher sea levels, more heat waves, intense storms and heavy precipitation events and extension of drought areas. These climate hazards are having impacts on human settlements causing major loss of life, social disruption and economic hardship. Recent literature has demonstrated that the problem is more rather than less critical. Linking of climate change adaptation with disaster risk reduction is important and starting to happen although there are significant barriers. Less developed countries and the poorest people in all countries are those most at risk and usually with the least capacity to adapt and reduce risk. A new international research initiative, Integrated Research on Disaster Risk: addressing the challenge of natural and human-induced environmental hazards (including climate change) has been established to meet the needs of providing an enhanced research base on which to develop and implement public policies.Since its establishment in 1903, the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) has grown to 635 units and 37 Wetland Management Districts in the United States and its territories. These units provide the seasonal habitats necessary for migratory waterfowl and other species to complete their annual life cycles. Habitat conversion and fragmentation, invasive species, pollution, and competition for water have stressed refuges for decades, but the interaction of climate change with these stressors presents the most recent, pervasive, and complex conservation challenge to the NWRS. Geographic isolation and small unit size compound the challenges of climate change, but a combined emphasis on species that refuges were established to conserve and on maintaining biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health provides the NWRS with substantial latitude to respond. Individual symptoms of climate change can be addressed at the refuge level, but the strategic response requires system-wide planning. A dynamic vision of the NWRS in a changing climate, an explicit national strategic plan to implement that vision, and an assessment of representation, redundancy, size, and total number of units in relation to conservation targets are the first steps toward adaptation. This adaptation must begin immediately and be built on more closely integrated research and management. Rigorous projections of possible futures are required to facilitate adaptation to change. Furthermore, the effective conservation footprint of the NWRS must be increased through land acquisition, creative partnerships, and educational programs in order for the NWRS to meet its legal mandate to maintain the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the system and the species and ecosystems that it supports.In insects including Drosophila melanogaster, females can overwinter at the adult stage by adopting a shallow reproductive diapause, but almost nothing is known about male reproductive diapause. In this study, we test for the maintenance of fertility in overwintering males from the eastern Australian D. melanogaster cline. Males from southern temperate populations maintained in field cages in temperate Melbourne had a higher fertility in spring compared with males from tropical locations. Temperate males successfully inseminated more females, and there were also more offspring produced per inseminated female. The resulting linear post-winter fertility clines were unrelated to male body size. In contrast, there was no clinal variation for fertility in nonoverwintering males held in the laboratory. The cline in overwintering male fertility is likely to have evolved as an adaptive response to latitudinal climatic variation over the last 100 years.In developing countries where economies and livelihoods depend largely on ecosystem services, policies for adaptation to climate change should take into account the role of these services in increasing the resilience of society. This ecosystem-based approach to adaptation was the focus of an international workshop on "Adaptation to Climate Change: the role of Ecosystem Services" held in November 2008 in Costa Rica. This article presents the key messages from the workshop.Coastal areas are threatened under climate change because of factors related to vulnerability of society and sensitivity of the environment. Protection and adaptation may mitigate the adverse consequences. This research reviews and assesses the options of protection by homeowners in the coastal zone in the southwest region of Cameroon. The coastal zone of Cameroon is studied because of the observed deleterious effect of recent extreme climatic events. From a research sample of 400 households, the house types and protection strategies - which are of two main types: reactive measures and preventive measures taken to offset adverse effects on property, are studied. A multinomial logit function reveals that income, education, age and gender are significant factors determining household's probability on the selection of protection measures. The study concludes that there are strong implications for adaptation to future climate change, and the ability of homeowners to extensively respond will have to be reinforced not only by communal and public works projects but also through an active government policy to promote climate change adaptation.There are several factors that influence whether people will want to participate in index insurance programs. A number of these influence their attractiveness on economic grounds, including both the size and timing of the premium and potential payouts, and the degree of risk aversion of the potential customers. Other factors make programs attractive for reasons that are not economic, but no less valid. These have to do with the trust that people have in the insurance product and the organizations involved in selling and managing it. Indeed, data from India, Africa, and South America show that these factors may be more important than the economic ones in influencing demand. Index insurance pilot projects, in order to estimate demand for alternative products, have typically involved a great deal of interaction with potential customers. It is important to recognize that such interaction is crucial not just as a research tool, but also as a means to build understanding and trust in the products. When scaling up from isolated pilots to operational programs, it is vital to recognize this trust building function by replicating participation efforts in every community. In this paper, we examine the role of field games in establishing and building trust in three important aspects of these projects for participants: trust in the insurance product, trust in the participating organizations, and trust in their own ability to make good decisions. While games have previously been used as a way to gauge interest in the product and to identify design features, we argue that these games are also valuable tools for constructing these kinds of trust.The links between rapid population growth and concerns regarding climate change have received little attention. Some commentators have argued that slowing population growth is necessary to reduce further rises in carbon emissions. Others have objected that this would give rise to dehumanizing "population control" programmes in developing countries. Yet the perspective of the developing countries that will be worst affected by climate change has been almost completely ignored by the scientific literature. This deficit is addressed by this paper, which analyses the first 40 National Adaptation Programmes of Action reports submitted by governments of least-developed countries to the Global Environment Facility for funding. Of these documents, 93% identified at least one of three ways in which demographic trends interact with the effects of climate change: (i) faster degradation of the sources of natural resources; (ii) increased demand for scarce resources; and (iii) heightened human vulnerability to extreme weather events. These findings suggest that voluntary access to family planning services should be made more available to poor communities in least-developed countries. We stress the distinction between this approach, which prioritizes the welfare of poor communities affected by climate change, and the argument that population growth should be slowed to limit increases in global carbon emissions. The paper concludes by calling for increased support for rights-based family planning services, including those integrated with HIV/AIDS services, as an important complementary measure to climate change adaptation programmes in developing countries.The aim of this article is to examine progress so far, as well as current challenges and opportunities for EPI in bilateral official development assistance (ODA). A short review of progress shows that effectiveness has so far been limited. Although there has been intense donor activity in relation to stating commitment to the EPI principle and developing a wide range of processes, institutions, and tools, a large part of ODA still is likely to have directly harmful impacts on the environment. The implications for EPI of the emerging governance framework for ODA, namely, the principles stipulated in the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, are then discussed. Both challenges and opportunities are presented, and these are empirically illustrated with a case study of the integration of climate change adaptation in ODA. Finally, this article proposes that at least four special conditions apply to EPI in the bilateral ODA context as compared with domestic EPI: two or more jurisdictions, electorates, and governments are involved; a negotiation context characterized by sovereign states but with a potential power asymmetry; potential conflicts of interest and equity concerns in cases where environmental objectives refer to global environmental problems primarily caused by developed countries; and a policy-making process characterized by a comparatively wide span of both strategic and operational decisions, where EPI can take on very different meanings. The initial exploration presented in this article suggests that these conditions hold, and that, as a consequence, EPI arguably involves more 'high-politics' decisions and questions than in a domestic policy context.This study analyzes the vulnerability of cotton farmers to climate change in a cotton growing district in Zimbabwe. The vulnerability indicators studied include cotton output and farmers' livelihoods from cotton farming. In order to examine climate variability and change, a time series analysis of two variables: temperature and rainfall was done for a period of 30 years, resulting in graphs of any climate anomalies. Correlation tests between the independent variable (the climate) and the dependent variable (cotton output) were assessed in order to examine the nature and the magnitude of the relationship between the two. The opinions of 100 randomly sampled farmers were analysed in an attempt to verify the climate scenarios and cotton production trends, as well as to understand their adaptation to climate change. Negative rainfall deviations from the long-term mean and positive temperature deviations dominated the climate trend scenarios' results. Cotton production levels declined as precipitation decreased and temperatures increased across the district. The survey revealed that a significant number of farmers believed that temperatures were increasing and precipitation was declining. Farmers' perceptions on whether the climate was changing were greatly influenced by incidences of drought and changes in the seasonal timing of rainfall, and in few cases unusual floods. The majority believed the frequency of droughts was increasing. While farmers were prepared to adapt to changes in climate, their options were very limited. The results show that farmers are highly vulnerable to climate change and that there is a need to invest in climate adaptation strategies, including policies on irrigation and early warning systems to help farmers to cope better and to reduce their vulnerability to climate change.A new model for environmental and urban sustainability 'living architecture' that connects artifice with the natural world through the use of materials that possess some of the properties of living systems, and can therefore actively exchange energy with the ecosphere, is proposed.The watershed services provided by tropical natural and planted forests are critical to human well-being. An increasing number of valuation studies and experiences with payment for ecosystem services have dealt with the role of ecosystems in regulating the flow of water. However, several studies and experiences have been based on misconceptions about the role of forests and plantations in the hydrological cycle, despite the publication of many reviews by hydrologists. The objective of this paper is to evaluate whether meta-analyses applied to studies comparing water flows in tropical watersheds under natural or planted forests and non-forest lands can provide useful results for valuing watershed ecosystem services and making decisions. The meta-analyses show significantly lower total flows or base flows under planted forests than non-forest land uses. Meta-analyses conducted with subsamples of the data also show lower total flow and higher base flow under natural forests than non-forest land uses. However, the available studies were restricted to humid climates and particular forest types (Pinus and Eucalyptus planted forests and lowland natural forests). The small number of available Studies with sufficient original data is a major constraint in the application of meta-analyses. This represents a major technical challenge for valuation studies or payment for ecosystem services, especially in countries where financial resources for implementing field research are scarce. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reservedScenario planning should be an effective tool for developing responses to climate change but will depend on ecological assessments of broad enough scope to support decision-making. Using climate projections from an ensemble of 16 models, we conducted an assessment of a midcontinental area of North America (Minnesota) based on a resistance, resilience, and facilitation framework. We assessed likely impacts and proposed options for eight landscape regions within the planning area. Climate change projections suggest that by 2069, average annual temperatures will increase 3 degrees C with a slight increase in precipitation (6%). Analogous climate locales currently prevail 400-500 km SSW. Although the effects of climate change may be resisted through intensive management of invasive species, herbivores, and disturbance regimes, conservation practices need to shift to facilitation and resilience. Key resilience actions include providing buffers for small reserves, expanding reserves that lack adequate environmental heterogeneity, prioritizing protection of likely climate refuges, and managing forests for multi-species and multi-aged stands. Modifying restoration practices to rely on seeding (not plants), enlarge seed zones, and include common species from nearby southerly or drier locales is a logical low-risk facilitation strategy. Monitoring "trailing edge" populations of rare species should be a high conservation priority to support decision-making related to assisted colonization. Ecological assessments that consider resistance, resilience, and facilitation actions during scenario planning is a productive first step towards effective climate change planning for biodiversity with broad applicability to many regions of the world. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The scientific literature contains numerous descriptions of observed and potential effects of global climate change on species and ecosystems. In response to anticipated effects of climate change, conservation organizations and government agencies are developing "adaptation strategies" to facilitate the adjustment of human society and ecological systems to altered climate regimes. We reviewed the literature and climate-change adaptation plans that have been developed in United States, Canada, England, Mexico, and South Africa and found 16 general adaptation strategies that relate directly to the conservation of biological diversity. These strategies can be grouped into four broad categories: land and water protection and management; direct species management; monitoring and planning; and law and policy. Tools for implementing these strategies are similar or identical to those already in use by conservationists worldwide (land and water conservation, ecological restoration, agrienvironment schemes, species translocation, captive propagation, monitoring, natural resource planning, and legislation/regulation). Although our review indicates natural resource managers already have many tools that can be used to address climate-change effects, managers will likely need to apply these tools in novel and innovative ways to meet the unprecedented challenges posed by climate change.This paper suggests a climate policy that integrates adaptation funds into a harmonized carbon tax approach. In the proposed approach, the world will set a carbon tax assuming that vulnerable sectors will adapt to future changes at its full capacity. At the same time, the world will support climate adaptation programs at a regional level. A mitigation policy will be set at the global level while adaptation measures will be taken at a local or regional level. The carbon revenue generated from a mitigation program will be used to support adaptation aid programs in developing countries. This augmented carbon tax approach has the capacity to deal with climate inequities while it creates additional incentives for developing countries to participate in a global mitigation effort.Climate change may cause most harm to countries that have historically contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change. This paper identifies consequentialist and non-consequentialist ethical principles to guide a fair international burden-sharing scheme of climate change adaptation costs. We use these ethical principles to derive political principles - historical responsibility and capacity to pay - that can be applied in assigning a share of the financial burden to individual countries. We then propose a hybrid 'common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities' approach as a promising starting point for international negotiations on the design of burden-sharing schemes. A numerical assessment of seven scenarios shows that the countries of Annex I of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would bear the bulk of the costs of adaptation, but contributions differ substantially subject to the choice of a capacity to pay indicator. The contributions are less sensitive to choices related to responsibility calculations, apart from those associated with land-use-related emissions. Assuming costs of climate adaptation of USD 100 billion per year, the total financial contribution by the Annex I countries would be in the range of USD 65-70 billion per year. Expressed as a per capita basis, this gives a range of USD 43-82 per capita per year. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The mountain chain of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas in southern Mexico is globally significant for its biodiversity and is one of the most important coffee production areas of Mexico. It provides water for several municipalities and its biosphere reserves are important tourist attractions. Much of the forest cover outside the core protected areas is in fact coffee grown under traditional forest shade. Unless this (agro)forest cover can be sustained, the biodiversity of the Sierra Madre and the environmental services it provides are at risk. We analyzed the threats to livelihoods and environment from climate change through crop suitability modeling based on downscaled climate scenarios for the period 2040 to 2069 (referred to as 2050s) and developed adaptation options through an expert workshop. Significant areas of forest and occasionally coffee are destroyed every year by wildfires, and this problem is bound to increase in a hotter and drier future climate. Widespread landslides and inundations, including on coffee farms, have recently been caused by hurricanes whose intensity is predicted to increase. A hotter climate with more irregular rainfall will be less favorable to the production of quality coffee and lower profitability may compel farmers to abandon shade coffee and expand other land uses of less biodiversity value, probably at the expense of forest. A comprehensive strategy to sustain the biodiversity, ecosystem services and livelihoods of the Sierra Madre in the face of climate change should include the promotion of biodiversity friendly coffee growing and processing practices including complex shade which can offer some hurricane protection and product diversification; payments for forest conservation and restoration from existing government programs complemented by private initiatives; diversification of income sources to mitigate risks associated with unstable environmental conditions and coffee markets; integrated fire management; development of markets that reward sustainable land use practices and forest conservation; crop insurance programs that are accessible to smallholders; and the strengthening of local capacity for adaptive resource management.This work identifies and documents a suite of large-scale drivers of rainfall variability in the Australian region. The key driver in terms of broad influence and impact on rainfall is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). ENSO is related to rainfall over much of the continent at different times, particularly in the north and east, with the regions of influence shifting with the seasons. The Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) is particularly important in the June-October period, which spans much of the wet season in the southwest and southeast where IOD has an influence. ENSO interacts with the IOD in this period such that their separate regions of influence cover the entire continent. Atmospheric blocking also becomes most important during this period and has an influence on rainfall across the southern half of the continent. The Madden-Julian oscillation can influence rainfall in different parts of the continent in different seasons, but its impact is strongest on the monsoonal rains in the north. The influence of the southern annular mode is mostly confined to the southwest and southeast of the continent. The patterns of rainfall relationship to each of the drivers exhibit substantial decadal variability, though the characteristic regions described above do not change markedly. The relationships between large-scale drivers and rainfall are robust to the selection of typical indices used to represent the drivers. In most regions the individual drivers account for less than 20% of monthly rainfall variability, though the drivers relate to a predictable component of this variability. The amount of rainfall variance explained by individual drivers is highest in eastern Australia and in spring, where it approaches 50% in association with ENSO and blocking.Since the beginning of time, people have adapted to changes in their environment, reacting with physical adjustments, acclimatization or cultural and technological practices. Humans thus transform their food, clothing and dwellings. Environmental education can strengthen the resilience and adaptation of citizens facing climate change. Certain EE teaching practices can be used to accompany citizens while they analyze local problems, predict the impacts of climate change and propose adaptation measures. These practices encourage the development of skills such as environmental analysis, problem solving and prospective thinking. This article presents the results of a research-intervention during which adult literacy students suggested measures for adapting to the impacts of agricultural floods. These adults proposed effective adaptation ideas thanks to the group's skills and practices (knowledge of the land, an experiential method of problem solving, broad prospective thinking, an attitude of perseverance faced with complex situations.), and coaching that favoured the reinforcement of problem solving skills.Cool season rainfall variability in Southeastern Australia is investigated via classification and characterization of the predominant types of synoptic systems occurring in the region. These types are frontal systems, cut-off low and other systems. Rainfall ill the region is dominated by cut-off systems and these systems are the main influence on the interannual variability of rainfall. Both cut-off systems and frontal systems display in enhancement of thermal (thickness) gradient as rainfall increases, but the mechanisms for intensification differ. Cut-off systems intensity ill the region in association with local increases in baroclinicity and the subtropical jet, whereas frontal systems lend to intensity via a continence of subtropical and polar,jets. Interannual rainfall variability is examined for grouping of years based oil both clustering of continental rainfall patterns and oil El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)/Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) years. Cut-off systems exhibit consistent enhancements of thermal gradients for groupings of years in which they produce more rainfall. For ENSO/IOD groupings, the cut-off thermal gradients are consistent With the underlying Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. Wet years ill Southeastern Australia are usually produced by cut-off systems. but Call also be produced by frontal systems. In those cases the mid-tropospheric flow pattern is reminiscent of the negative Southern Annular Mode (SAM) pattern. The positive SAM pattern is also associated with enhanced rainfall in the southeast via local intensification of blocking and cut-off systems. Copyright (C) 2008 Royal Meteorological SocietyThis paper assesses the effect of climate change on crop yield from a soil water balance perspective. The uncertainties of regional-scale climate models, local-scale climate variability, emissions scenarios, and crop growth models are combined to explore the possible range of climate change effects on rainfed corn yield in central Illinois in 2055. The results show that a drier and warmer summer during the corn growth season and wetter and warmer precrop and postcrop seasons will likely occur. Greater temperature and precipitation variability may lead to more variable soil moisture and crop yield, and larger soil moisture deficit and crop yield reduction are likely to occur more frequently. The increased water stress is likely to be most pronounced during the flowering and yield formation stages. The expected rainfed corn yield in 2055 is likely to decline by 23%-34%, and the probability that the yield may not reach 50% of the potential yield ranges from 32% to 70% if no adaptation measures are instituted. Among the multiple uncertainty sources, the greenhouse gas emissions projection may have the strongest effect on the risk estimate of crop yield reduction. The effects from the various uncertainties can be offset to some degree when the uncertainties are considered jointly. An ensemble of GCMs with an equal weight may overestimate the risk of soil moisture deficits and crop yield reduction in comparison with an ensemble of GCMs with different weight determined by the root-mean-square error minimization method. The risk estimate presented in this paper implies that climate change adaptation is needed to avoid reduced corn yields and the resulting profit losses in central Illinois.Drought is the main selection agent in Mediterranean ecosystems and it has been suggested as an important evolutionary force responsible for population diversification in these types of environments. However, population divergence in quantitative traits can be driven by either natural selection, genetic drift or both. To investigate the roles of these forces on among-population divergence in ecophysiological traits related to drought tolerance (carbon isotope discrimination, specific leaf area, leaf size and leaf nitrogen content), we compared molecular and quantitative genetic differentiation in a common garden experiment including thirteen cork oak (Quercus suber L.) populations across a gradient of rainfall and temperature. Population differentiation for height, specific leaf area, leaf size and nitrogen leaf content measured during a dry year far exceeded the molecular differentiation measured by six nuclear microsatellites. Populations from dry-cool sites showed the lowest nitrogen leaf content and the smallest and thickest leaves contrasting with those from humid-warm sites. These results suggest (i) these traits are subjected to divergence selection and (ii) the genetic differences among populations are partly due to climate adaptation. By contrast, the low among-population divergence found in basal diameter, annual growth and carbon isotopic discrimination (a surrogate for water use efficiency) suggests low or no divergence selection for these traits. Among-population differentiation for neutral markers was not a good predictor for differentiation regarding the quantitative traits studied here, except for leaf size. The correlation observed between the genetic differentiation for leaf size and that for molecular markers was exclusively due to the association between leaf size and the microsatellite QpZAG46, which suggests a possible linkage between QpZAG46 and genes encoding for leaf size.Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific. First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>1. Facilitating adaptive responses of organisms in modified landscape will be essential to overcome the negative effects of climate change and its interaction with land use change. Without such action, many organisms will be prevented from achieving the predicted range shifts they need to survive. 2. Scattered trees are a prominent feature of many modified landscapes, and could play an important role in facilitating climate change adaptation. They are keystone structures because of the disproportionally large ecological values and ecosystem services that they provide relative to the area they occupy in these landscapes. The provision of habitat and connectivity will be particularly relevant. 3. Scattered trees are declining in modified landscapes due to elevated tree mortality and poor recruitment often associated with intensive land use. The continuing global decline of scattered trees will undermine the capacity of many organisms to adapt to climate change. 4. Synthesis and applications. The sustainable management of scattered trees in modified landscapes could complement other strategies for facilitating climate change adaptation. They create continuous, though sparse, vegetation cover that permits multi-directional movements of biota across landscapes and ecological networks. They have the capacity to span ecosystems and climatic gradients that cannot be captured in formal reserves alone. The management of scattered trees should be an integral part of conservation objectives and agricultural activities in modified landscapes. Public investment, through mechanisms such as agri-environmental schemes, in rotational grazing, temporary set-asides, tree-planting and regulations that reduce clearing and early mortality among standing trees will improve the capacity of biota to adapt to climate change.As a part of its obligations under the Climate Convention, the Czech Republic must annually estimate and report its anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. This also applies for the sector of agriculture, which is one of the greatest producers of methane and nitrous oxide emissions. This paper presents the approaches applied to estimate emissions in agricultural sector during the period 1990-2006. It describes the origin and sources of emissions, applied methodology, parameters and emission estimates for the sector of agriculture in the country. The total greenhouse gas emissions reached 7644 Gg CO2 eq. in 2006. About 59% (4479 Gg CO2 eq.) of these emissions has originated from agricultural soils. This quantity ranks agriculture as the third largest sector in the Czech Republic representing 5.3% of the total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The emissions under the Czech conditions consist mainly of emissions from enteric fermentation, manure management and agricultural soils. During the period 1990-2006, GHG emissions from agriculture decreased by 50%, which was linked to reduced cattle population and amount of applied fertilizers. The study concludes that the GHG emissions in the sector of agriculture remain significant and their proper assessment is required for sound climate change adaptation and mitigation policies,What will happen to local record values of temperature and precipitation in a world with ongoing global warming ? Here we first examine how many of the observed local temperature maxima of 1901-2006 occurred in the years 2001-2006 and compare the observations with model simulations. Then we study whether, and how soon, the models simulate the climate records of the 20th century to be broken in the ongoing 21st century. In 27% of our analysis area, the highest annual mean temperatures of the whole period 1901-2006 were observed in 2001-2006. For the 22 climate models in our study, this fraction varies from 17% to 70%, with a multimodel mean of 40%. In simulations based on the SRES A1B emissions scenario, the highest annual mean temperature of the 20th century is exceeded on average in 99% of the global area by the year 2080. The same number for the highest (lowest) annual precipitation total is 60% (43%). Monthly and seasonal temperature and precipitation records are also analysed, and the geographical distributions of record value occurrence are related to the distributions of time mean climate change and magnitude of interannual variability.Mediterranean climate is found on five continents and supports five global biodiversity hotspots. Based on combined downscaled results from 23 atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) for three emissions scenarios, we determined the projected spatial shifts in the mediterranean climate extent (MCE) over the next century. Although most AOGCMs project a moderate expansion in the global MCE, regional impacts are large and uneven. The median AOGCM simulation output for the three emissions scenarios project the MCE at the end of the 21(st) century in Chile will range from 129-153% of its current size, while in Australia, it will contract to only 77-49% of its current size losing an area equivalent to over twice the size of Portugal. Only 4% of the land area within the current MCE worldwide is in protected status ( compared to a global average of 12% for all biome types), and, depending on the emissions scenario, only 50-60% of these protected areas are likely to be in the future MCE. To exacerbate the climate impact, nearly one third (29-31%) of the land where the MCE is projected to remain stable has already been converted to human use, limiting the size of the potential climate refuges and diminishing the adaptation potential of native biota. High conversion and low protection in projected stable areas make Australia the highest priority region for investment in climate-adaptation strategies to reduce the threat of climate change to the rich biodiversity of the mediterranean biome.Aviation emissions contribute to the radiative forcing (RF) of climate. Of importance are emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) nitrogen oxides (NO.), aerosols and their precursors (soot and sulphate), and increased cloudiness in the form of persistent linear contrails and induced-cirrus cloudiness. The recent Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) quantified aviation's RF contribution for 2005 based upon 2000 operations data. Aviation has grown strongly over the past years, despite world-changing events in the early 2000s; the average annual passenger traffic growth rate was 5.3% yr(-1) between 2000 and 2007, resulting in an increase of passenger traffic of 38%. Presented here are updated values of aviation RF for 2005 based upon new operations data that show an increase in traffic of 22.5%, fuel use of 8.4% and total aviation RF of 14% (excluding induced-cirrus enhancement) over the period 2000-2005. The lack of physical process models and adequate observational data for aviation-induced cirrus effects limit confidence in quantifying their RF contribution. Total aviation RF (excluding induced cirrus) in 2005 was similar to 55 mW m(-2) (23-87 mW m(-2), 90% likelihood range), which was 3.5% (range 1.3-10%. 90% likelihood range) of total anthropogenic forcing. Including estimates for aviation-induced cirrus RF increases the total aviation RF in 2005-78 mW m(-2) (38-139 mW m(-2), 90% likelihood range), which represents 4.9% of total anthropogenic forcing (2-14%, 90% likelihood range). Future scenarios of aviation emissions for 2050 that are consistent with IPCC SIZES A1 and B2 scenario assumptions have been presented that show an increase of fuel usage by factors of 2.7-3.9 over 2000. Simplified calculations of total aviation RF in 2050 indicate increases by factors of 3.0-4.0 over the 2000 value, representing 4-4.7% of total RF (excluding induced cirrus). An examination of a range of future technological options shows that substantive reductions in aviation fuel usage are possible only with the introduction of radical technologies. Incorporation of aviation into an emissions trading system offers the potential for overall (i.e., beyond the aviation sector) CO2 emissions reductions. Proposals exist for introduction of such a system at a European level, but no agreement has been reached at a global level. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In many countries around the world impacts of climate change are assessed and adaptation options identified. We describe an approach for a qualitative and quantitative assessment of adaptation options to respond to climate change in the Netherlands. The study introduces an inventory and ranking of adaptation options based on stakeholder analysis and expert judgement, and presents some estimates of incremental costs and benefits. The qualitative assessment focuses on ranking and prioritisation of adaptation options. Options are selected and identified and discussed by stakeholders on the basis of a sectoral approach, and assessed with respect to their importance, urgency and other characteristics by experts. The preliminary quantitative assessment identifies incremental costs and benefits of adaptation options. Priority ranking based on a weighted sum of criteria reveals that in the Netherlands integrated nature and water management and risk based policies rank high, followed by policies aiming at 'climate proof' housing and infrastructure.By providing financial security against droughts, floods, tropical cyclones and other forms of weather extremes, insurance instruments present an opportunity for developing countries in their concurrent efforts to reduce poverty and adapt to climate change. By pricing risk, insurance provides incentives for reducing risks and adapting to climate change; if these premiums are not affordable to the most vulnerable, donors can combine premium support with risk-reduction measures. In this paper, we examine the costs, benefits and risks of public-private (and donor supported) insurance programmes that offer affordable economic security to vulnerable communities and governments. Insurance mechanisms are of particular interest to climate negotiators seeking strategies that help vulnerable countries adapt to increasing severity and frequency of weather disasters, and we examine the case for including insurance mechanisms in a climate adaptation strategy expected to be agreed in Copenhagen in 2009. We present a proposal for this purpose that has been recently put forward by the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII), which calls for international solidarity for very low probability and high consequence weather-related events (high- risk layer). For middle-layer risks the MCII proposal calls for international support to promote sustainable, affordable and incentive-compatible insurance programmes that serve the poor without crowding out private sector involvement. The Geneva Papers (2009) 34, 381-400. doi: 10.1057/gpp.2009.15Weather index insurance underwrites a weather risk, typically highly correlated with agricultural production losses, as a proxy for economic loss and is gaining popularity in lower income countries. This instrument, although subject to basis risk and high start-up costs, should reduce costs over traditional agricultural insurance. Multilateral institutions have suggested that weather index insurance could enhance the ability of stakeholders in lower income countries to adapt to climate change. While weather index insurance could have several benefits in this context (e.g. providing a safety net to vulnerable households and price signals regarding the weather risk), climate change impacts increase the price of insurance due to increasing weather risk. Uncertainty about the extent of regional impacts compounds pricing difficulties. Policy recommendations for insurance market development include funding risk assessments, start-up costs and the extreme layer of risk. General premium subsidies are cautioned against as they may actually slow household adaptation. The Geneva Papers (2009) 34, 401-424. doi: 10.1057/gpp.2009.11There is a growing awareness that both adaptation and mitigation measures are needed to reduce the impacts of climate change. Historically, due to a wide variety of reasons, mitigation and adaptation have been framed by scientists and policy makers as two different approaches to deal with the same problem: climate change. As a result, there are large differences in the way knowledge is produced, the analytical approaches that are used, and the designed policy strategies. This paper discusses the origin of the adaptation-mitigation dichotomy. Second, the paper addresses the relationship between climate change responses and spatial planning since there is a growing awareness that spatial planning can function as a switchboard for mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development objectives. Furthermore, the paper explores the role that spatial planning can play in developing effective mitigation and adaptation options in an integrated manner, searching for synergies and trade-offs. This creates the necessity to take climate change responses into account in spatial planning practices. We argue that climate change could also lead to changes in the traditional administrative structures that spatial planners are accustomed to. Since many of the main impacts of climate change have a water dimension, we discuss the river basin approach as the new administrative level at which spatial planning can increase the effectiveness of adaptation and mitigation measures and integrate these into other sustainable development policies. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Issues related to sustainable urbanisation are best addressed when coordinated within a strategic framework and facilitated by a system of policy formulation that combines local opinions with scientific insights. This implies that planning for sustainable urbanisation has the potential to minimise climate change threats. While there is a pressing need for this potential to be realised globally, the current level of success in fast growing cities of the developing world is very limited. An approach to overcome this limitation has recently been successful in Dhaka, one of the fastest growing global megacities. It involved the identification of a strategic framework for the city. This framework was then combined with a locally-informed model of sustainable urbanisation to produce the Dhaka Metropolitan Development Planning Support System (DMDPSS). This paper discusses the climate change adaptation and mitigation issues that can be addressed through such a method in Dhaka, using a scenario-based approach. Two alternative development options (constrained and unconstrained) are constructed and analysed. A common set of indicators are used: first to evaluate which alternative is more sustainable: and then the mitigation and adaptation issues addressed. Results show that the 'constrained' scenario, which includes a series of development limitations, is both more sustainable and can address more mitigation and adaptation issues than the other alternative. The scenario analysis, however, is only a part of the strategic framework needed for Dhaka. Indeed other factors, such as dissemination of facts and issues, and the ease and equity of communication in the community, are critical both for progress towards sustainability and to enhance community resilience to climate change. The paper concludes that the optimum combination of adaptation and mitigation measures can be identified in fast growing cities by using systems, such as the DMDPSS, based on the core principles of sustainable development. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The vulnerability of individuals and communities to climate change impacts is not simply determined by the location of their settlements, but also by how those settlements are serviced, how effective and capable their local governments are and to what extent communities are able to cope with climate change impacts. It is widely accepted that the poorest communities are the most vulnerable, because they lack access even to the most basic urban services placing them at a comparative disadvantage and challenging their capabilities to take on additional stresses caused by climate change. Such complex vulnerabilities require comprehensive responses that link climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts to the sustainable development of these communities enhancing their adaptive capacity. It is not sufficient to concentrate on either mitigation or adaptation, but a combination of these results in the most sustainable outcomes. Yet, these two strategies do not always complement each other, but can be counterproductive. A similar argument can be made for linking climate change adaptation with sustainable development. In order to avoid these conflicts, priorities need to be set. This calls for a methodology and comparison tool to assess the most cost-effective and appropriate strategies for each community. Strategies need to be evaluated in terms of their negative consequences and priority given to those that minimize these. This article includes case Studies of successful adaptation and mitigation strategies Suggesting that these successes be translated into local contexts and communalized with the involvement of local authorities using participatory approaches. Successful outcomes integrate different adaptation and mitigation strategies with the overall development goals of the community through local government leadership, comprehensive planning and prioritization. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The future design of urban settlements and infrastructure in response to climate change will be critical in the future. Urban planning for human settlements will require both an intergovernmental and multi-disciplinary approach integrating science and urban planning. The paper focuses on coastal urbanisation and the planning for climate change. The Australian coastal zone is home to over 85% of the Australian population with coastal townships expanding rapidly. The International Panel on Climate Change predicts that the Australian coast will experience increasing storm surge and rising sea levels. A set of principles is proposed that should underpin an intergovernmental agreement on coastal planning and climate change. The Agreement would include actions such as regional planning, policy integration, financial incentives and innovative regulatory mechanisms that use both mitigation and adaptation in complimentary and reinforcing ways. Selected case studies including peri-urban and sea change locations are used to examine the possibilities and obstacles for current urban planning and institutional arrangements to incorporate such mitigation and adaptation measures for climate change. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we present a new analysis of the costal skeleton of the Kebara 2 Neandertal that challenges the original description of the fossil remains. In addition to correcting an erroneous rib rejoin, we document that Kebara 2 shows significant metric and morphological differences in comparison to a wide range of modern human comparative samples. Moreover, Kebara 2's thorax is large, but it is not an isometrically scaled version of a modern human thorax. We also present updated information regarding additional Neandertal rib remains that weakens the case for previous speculations regarding marked ecogeographical patterning in the Neandertal upper thorax. From these results, in combination with various other lines of evidence, we hypothesize that the large chest of Neandertals, while different from modern humans, is not autapomorphic but instead related to a "primitive body bauplan": wide bodies with high body mass. A large thorax in pre-modern Homo, indicating a large vital capacity, would be consistent with the idea of increased oxygen consumption derived from higher energetic demands of a larger body and higher activity levels when compared to modem industrial samples. The likely presence of larger chests in the large bodied individuals from the middle Pleistocene of Eurasia and Africa (and even from the African lower Pleistocene) calls into question cold climate adaptation as a primary force for this skeletal morphology in Neandertals.Predictions of climate change suggest major changes in temperature, rainfall as well as in frequency and timing of extreme weather, all in varying degrees and patterns around the world. Although the details of these patterns changes are still uncertain, we can be sure of profound effects on ecological processes in and functioning of landscapes. The impact of climate change will affect all types of land use, ecosystem services, as well as the behavior of humans. The core business of Landscape Ecology is the interaction of landscape patterns and processes. Most of these interactions will be affected by changing climate patterns, so clearly within the focus of our science. Nevertheless, climate change received little attention from landscape ecologists. Are we missing the boat? Why is it that our science does not contribute to building a knowledge base to help solving this immense problem? Why is there so little attention paid to adaptation of landscape to climate change? With this editorial article IALE would like to receive inputs from the Landscape Ecology scientific community in related research on adaptation of landscapes to climate change, on tools or approaches to help landscape planners and stakeholders to this new challenge where landscape ecology can play a key role.Climate change is affecting the world's ecosystems and threatening the economic system, livelihoods and availability of natural resources. Forest ecosystems can be carbon sources or sinks and are therefore integrated in international climate policy. Forest-related carbon mitigation projects are threatened by climate change through altered environmental conditions and forest processes, as well as through synergistic effects of climate change impacts with already existing socioeconomic and environmental stressors. Data on risk management and adaptation strategies were collected by a survey of 28 current forest projects targeting climate change mitigation. Ten of these represent the officially implemented afforestation (A) and reforestation (R) activities under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto protocol. Additionally, the official methodologies for AR activities under the CDM (Scope 14) were examined for potential climate change adaptation requirements. As a result, the adaptation of forest mitigation projects to climate change is found to be insufficient. A systematic approach for the inclusion of climate change risk management and adaptation is developed and guidelines for the design of "climate-change-proof" afforestation, reforestation and deforestation avoidance projects are proposed. A broader mainstreaming of the issue is required and clear policy regulations are necessary, especially for the post-Kyoto process.The current variability in weather and climate is posing a challenge for transport infrastructure. However, during the past decade the need to adapt to a changing climate has attracted increasing attention. This paper summarises a case study on the future vulnerability to climate change of the Swedish railway transport system and its adaptive capacity. The combination of a long time horizon in planning and an expected increasing demand for rail traffic raises many questions regarding how adaptation to climate change can be accounted for in future planning, design and management of railways. The case study was essentially based on interviews with key personnel within the Swedish Rail Administration. Views on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change were documented, and the need for improved methods to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity related to climate change for the Swedish railways was addressed. The conclusions of the paper are addressed to the European railway context at large. Firstly, systematic mapping of current climate vulnerabilities and their consequences is important in order to guide the implementation of adaptation measures. Secondly, climate change should be considered in the early stages of planning and included in risk and vulnerability assessments. In assessing future conditions with the aim of prioritising adaptation measures, current methodologies should be complemented with more future-orientated tools. When designing adaptation measures, the effects of potential goal conflicts should also be assessed, in order to avoid the implementation of counter-productive measures. The possibility of creating synergies with climate mitigation goals and other environmental goals should also be investigated.A logical starting point for climate change adaptation in the forest sector is to proactively identify management practices and policies that have a higher likelihood of achieving management objectives across a wide range of potential climate futures. This should be followed by implementation of these options and monitoring their success in achieving management objectives within an adaptive management context. Here, we implement an approach to identify locally appropriate adaptation options by tapping into the experiential knowledge base of local forest practitioners while at the same time, building capacity within this community to implement the results. We engaged 30 forest practitioners who are involved with the implementation of a regional forest management plan in identifying climate change vulnerabilities and evaluating alternative adaptation options. A structured decision-making approach was used to frame the assessment. Practitioners identified 24 adaptation options that they considered important to implement in order to achieve the regional goals and objectives of sustainable forest management in light of climate change.The most vulnerable groups in terms of food security during floods in south Asia under climate change will be the poor, women and children. Current procedures for the transfer of climate adaptation funds tend to marginalize these groups. Food production is being disrupted by flooding more frequently and more severely than before, due to climate change. By 2080 the situation is likely to be much worse than at present. Adaptation has to encourage management of all stages of food security, from the farm to the consumer, both urban and rural. Measures have to be participatory, from the community to the international level. While many individual initiatives offer hope and demonstrate good practice, institutional, economic and environmental factors may all impede the maintenance and enhancement of food security in south Asia. Innovative forms of food production, distribution and storage will have to be developed.Wetlands of the Prairie Pothole Region of North America are vulnerable to climate change. Adaptation of farming practices to mitigate adverse impacts of climate change on wetland water levels is a potential watershed management option. We chose a modeling approach (WETSIM 3.2) to examine the effects of changes in climate and watershed cover on the water levels of a semi-permanent wetland in eastern South Dakota. Land-use practices simulated were unmanaged grassland, grassland managed with moderately heavy grazing, and cultivated crops. Climate scenarios were developed by adjusting the historical climate in combinations of 2 degrees C and 4 degrees C air temperature and +/- 10% precipitation. For these climate change scenarios, simulations of land use that produced water levels equal to or greater than unmanaged grassland under historical climate were judged to have mitigative potential against a drier climate. Water levels in wetlands surrounded by managed grasslands were significantly greater than those surrounded by unmanaged grassland. Management reduced both the proportion of years the wetland went dry and the frequency of dry periods, producing the most dynamic vegetation cycle for this modeled wetland. Both cultivated crops and managed grassland achieved water levels that were equal or greater than unmanaged grassland under historical climate for the 2 degrees C rise in air temperature, and the 2 degrees C rise plus 10% increase in precipitation scenarios. Managed grassland also produced water levels that were equal or greater than unmanaged grassland under historical climate for the 4 degrees C rise plus 10% increase in precipitation scenario. Although these modeling results stand as hypotheses, they indicate that amelioration potential exists for a change in climate up to an increase of 2 degrees C or 4 degrees C with a concomitant 10% increase in precipitation. Few empirical data exist to verify the results of such land-use simulations; however, adaptation of farming practices is one possible mitigation avenue available for prairie wetlands.Adaptation to climate change is given increasing international attention as the confidence in climate change projections is getting higher. Developing countries have specific needs for adaptation due to high vulnerabilities, and they will in this way carry a great part of the global costs of climate change although the rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are mainly the responsibility of industrialized countries. This article provides a status of climate change adaptation in developing countries. An overview of observed and projected climate change is given, and recent literature on impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation are reviewed, including the emerging focus on mainstreaming of climate change and adaptation in development plans and programs. The article also serves as an introduction to the seven research articles of this special issue on climate change adaptation in developing countries. It is concluded that although many useful steps have been taken in the direction of ensuring adequate adaptation in developing countries, much work still remains to fully understand the drivers of past adaptation efforts, the need for future adaptation, and how to mainstream climate into general development policies.The paper introduces the so-called climate change mainstreaming approach, where vulnerability and adaptation measures are assessed in the context of general development policy objectives. The approach is based on the application of a limited set of indicators. These indicators are selected as representatives of focal development policy objectives, and a stepwise approach for addressing climate change impacts, development linkages, and the economic, social and environmental dimensions related to vulnerability and adaptation are introduced. Within this context it is illustrated using three case studies how development policy indicators in practice can be used to assess climate change impacts and adaptation measures based on three case studies, namely a road project in flood prone areas of Mozambique, rainwater harvesting in the agricultural sector in Tanzania and malaria protection in Tanzania. The conclusions of the paper confirm that climate risks can be reduced at relatively low costs, but the uncertainty is still remaining about some of the wider development impacts of implementing climate change adaptation measures.In this article, we argue that people's adjustments to multiple shocks and changes, such as conflict and drought, are intrinsically political processes that have uneven outcomes. Strengthening local adaptive capacity is a critical component of adapting to climate change. Based on fieldwork in two areas in Kenya, we investigate how people seek to access livelihood adjustment options and promote particular adaptation interests through forming social relations and political alliances to influence collective decision-making. First, we find that, in the face of drought and conflict, relations are formed among individuals, politicians, customary institutions, and government administration aimed at retaining or strengthening power bases in addition to securing material means of survival. Second, national economic and political structures and processes affect local adaptive capacity in fundamental ways, such as through the unequal allocation of resources across regions, development policy biased against pastoralism, and competition for elected political positions. Third, conflict is part and parcel of the adaptation process, not just an external factor inhibiting local adaptation strategies. Fourth, there are relative winners and losers of adaptation, but whether or not local adjustments to drought and conflict compound existing inequalities depends on power relations at multiple geographic scales that shape how conflicting interests are negotiated locally. Climate change adaptation policies are unlikely to be successful or minimize inequity unless the political dimensions of local adaptation are considered; however, existing power structures and conflicts of interests represent political obstacles to developing such policies.Few studies consider how social-ecological systems recover from disturbance. We consider the small semi-autonomous island of Rodrigues (Indian Ocean). Based on semi-structured interviews (n = 70), a fisher survey (n = 73), weather data and official records we build a timeline of key events. We tabulate local perceptions (5+ mentions) of changes (social, economic and natural capital) and look for signs of adaptive cycles in the island's social-ecological past. Rising human pressure and extreme weather event impacts are reported since first settlement. We propose a recent "collapse" phase catalysed in the 1970s by severe drought, based on respondents' perceptions of still-ongoing changes in farming and fishing, water, external dependence, migration and inter-island political change. Connectivity (flows of people, goods, information, money, power) appear to have strengthed local island recovery, but degradation continued, not least due to water scarcity and a lack of shared political vision as Rodrigues became more tied into the wider world. Overall, our findings suggest social-ecological systems may get stuck in a post-collapse recovery without any new structure emerging, presuming adaptive cycles can even be detected. Data gaps and global change redefining spatial and temporal scales could mean the adaptive cycle's usefulness is limited in development policy-making contexts. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: The reduced rainfall in southeast Australia has placed this region's urban and rural communities on escalating water restrictions, with anthropogenic climate change forecasts suggesting that this drying trend will continue. To mitigate the stress this may place on domestic water supply, governments have encouraged the installation of large domestic water tanks in towns and cities throughout this region. These prospective stable mosquito larval sites create the possibility of the reintroduction of Ae. aegypti from Queensland, where it remains endemic, back into New South Wales and other populated centres in Australia, along with the associated emerging and re-emerging dengue risk if the virus was to be introduced. Methodology/Principal Findings: Having collated the known distribution of Ae. aegypti in Australia, we built distributional models using a genetic algorithm to project Ae. aegypti's distribution under today's climate and under climate change scenarios for 2030 and 2050 and compared the outputs to published theoretical temperature limits. Incongruence identified between the models and theoretical temperature limits highlighted the difficulty of using point occurrence data to study a species whose distribution is mediated more by human activity than by climate. Synthesis of this data with dengue transmission climate limits in Australia derived from historical dengue epidemics suggested that a proliferation of domestic water storage tanks in Australia could result in another range expansion of Ae. aegypti which would present a risk of dengue transmission in most major cities during their warm summer months. Conclusions/Significance: In the debate of the role climate change will play in the future range of dengue in Australia, we conclude that the increased risk of an Ae. aegypti range expansion in Australia would be due not directly to climate change but rather to human adaptation to the current and forecasted regional drying through the installation of large domestic water storing containers. The expansion of this efficient dengue vector presents both an emerging and re-emerging disease risk to Australia. Therefore, if the installation and maintenance of domestic water storage tanks is not tightly controlled, Ae. aegypti could expand its range again and cohabit with the majority of Australia's population, presenting a high potential dengue transmission risk during our warm summers.Ecogeographic variation in nasal valve angles stands as one of the best examples of human morphological adaptation to climate. A major physiological function of the nasal cavity is to condition the inhaled air to body core temperature and saturated with vapour to prevent damage to the alveolar epithelium in the lungs. The air conditioning capability of the nose is dependent on the nasal mucosal temperature and the airflow dynamics caused by the airway geometry. Morphological variation of the human nose has been attributed to the ecogeographic adaptation to climate where nasal cavities have been broadly categorised as tall and narrow (leptorrhines) or short and broad (platyrrhines) according to their morphology. We believe that there is a relationship between nasal valve angles and climate adaptation. Crown Copyright (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change combined with human activities poses significant risks to people's livelihood especially in developing countries. Adaptation at the community level is of crucial importance in enabling them to respond to the direct and indirect effects of changes in climate. In a case study of fishing communities in Chilika lagoon, India, the focus is made on understanding climate change adaptation at the community level and scaling it up into the policy perspective through application of Sustainable Livelihood Approach. This article challenges the research and policy community to encourage the identification of locally negative constraints and positive strengths toward climate resilient communities in rural areas.The links between tropical forests and global climate change have traditionally focused on mitigation. Much less emphasis, by contrast, has been devoted to how management activities may help forest ecosystems adapt to a changing climate. This article discusses how some kinds of forestry management practices can help maintain or enhance the adaptive capacity of natural and planted tropical forests to global climate change. It also outlines some challenges, as well as opportunities, for integrating tropical forest management into climate-change adaptation more broadly. In addition to the use of reduced-impact logging to maintain ecosystem integrity, other approaches, such as fire prevention and management as well as specific silvicultural options aimed at facilitating genetic adaptation, may be needed. The normally higher intensity of management in tree plantations (compared to natural forests) offers additional opportunities for implementing adaptation measures at both the industrial and smallholder level. Although the integration of measures aimed at enhancing adaptation to climate change may not involve substantial deviations from current practices, little action appears to have been taken on the ground. Up to what point have forestry research and national policies promoted the adoption of management practices (many of which do not need much additional investigation) that assist exploited forests adapt to climate change? Prioritizing adaptation in national development and forestry planning can serve as a first step towards incorporating climate change into tropical forestry management.The purpose of this study is to describe the roles of carbon dioxide in the climate change, and carbon dioxide reduction policies in some countries. In addition, ways to cope with climate change in Korea are also discussed. Currently, global temperatures are rising due to the carbon dioxide produced by human beings. Global temperatures will rise approximately 6 until 2100 if we emit carbon dioxide at a present rate. Temperature rise will affect the terrestrial and oceanic resources, and ultimately influence the socio-economic structures including political stability. Most of the carbon dioxide comes from fossil fuels. Therefore, it is urgent to reduce the use of energy, which comes from fossil fuels. Solving the climate change due to the increases in carbon dioxide is a global problem. Korea should participate in the international community and cooperate with each other in order to reduce the carbon dioxide concentration. No policy was announced for the reduction of carbon dioxide so far. Korea should make a policy for the reduction of carbon dioxide in a specific year compared to that of certain standard year such as 1990 or 2005. Making policy should be based on the scientific result of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted and absorbed. Germanwatch announced the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) in order to evaluate an effort to reduce the carbon dioxide for 56 countries which emits 90 % of global carbon dioxide. Ranking for Korea is 51 among 56 countries. This clearly indicates that the appropriate carbon dioxide reduction has not been exercised yet in Korea. Researchers have a moral responsibility to provide updated new ideas and knowledges regarding climate change. Politicians should have a sharp insight to judge the ideas provided by researchers. People need an ethics to reduce the carbon dioxide in every day's life. Scientific research should not be influenced by stress caused by external budget and negative impact of capitalism. Science should be based on the pure curiosity.Adaptation to climate change and disaster risk reduction both focus on society-risk dynamics. However, each field does so through different actors and institutions, andwith different time horizons, policy frameworks and patterns inmind. Recently, dialogue between the adaptation and disaster risk-reduction communities has focused on creating stronger links between the two by putting greater effort into learning from each other and collaborating conceptually and practically. In part, this common interest has come from a simultaneous recognition that risk reduction requires a farmore holistic approach than has previously been applied. Both adaptation and disaster risk reduction require the same underlying aims, namely, to reduce vulnerability and create sustainable and flexible long-term strategies to reduce the risk of adverse impacts. However, neither is able to address these single-handedly. In both adaptation and disaster risk reduction, there is an implicit acknowledgement that risk is part of everyday life, and thus social development plays a vital role. An outstanding question for these communities to address is whether a convergence of the two tracks is desirable. Furthermore, if such a convergence were to occur, what forms would it take and what outcomes could be expected.Climate change is one of a complex array of risks facing the planet and society. It is argued that adaptation to and mitigation of climate change will be required to avert or reduce adverse impacts. Governments are developing climate change adaptation (CCA) strategies. The business community is also stirring to the need to adapt to as well as mitigate climate change, but progress has been slow, particularly in the case of adaptation. This paper explores emerging perceptions of the need for adaptation and some initial adaptation actions within a 'business as usual' economic mode of operation. It also identifies constraints to further action among a cross-section of actors in the business community in South Africa. Data from semi-structured interviews and scrutiny of reports reveals that there are a number of constraints preventing business from engaging more fully in CCA. These findings correspond with findings in other business-sector and CCA studies. They include: issues of terminology (adaptation versus risk management); uncertainty over climate-change projections and scenarios; and concerns about how such information can be used effectively in decision making, particularly long-term business planning. Despite these challenges, some potential synergies between policy, planning and the business community for promoting adaptation are suggested.This paper discusses the applicability of crop insurance for the case of Malawi and explores the potential impact of climate change on the viability of the Malawi weather insurance program making use of scenarios of climate change-induced variations in rainfall patterns. The analysis is important from a methodological and policy perspective. By combining catastrophe insurance modeling with climate modeling, the methodology demonstrates the feasibility, albeit with large uncertainties, of estimating the effects of climate variability and climate change on the near- and long-term future of microinsurance schemes serving the poor. By providing a model-based estimate of insurance back-up capital necessary to avoid ruin under climate variability and climate change, along with the associated uncertainties and data limitations, this methodology can quantitatively demonstrate the need for financial assistance to protect micro-insurance pools against climate-induced insolvency. This is of major concern to donors, NGOs and others supporting these innovative systems, those actually at-risk and insurers providing insurance. A quantitative estimate of the additional burden that climate change imposes on weather insurance for poor regions is of interest to organizations funding adaptation. Further, by linking catastrophe modeling to regionalized climate modeling, the analysis identifies key modeling inputs necessary as well as important constraints. We end with a discussion of the opportunities and limits to similar modeling and weather predictability for Sub-Saharan Africa beyond the case of Malawi.Local governments and communities have a critical role to play in adapting to climate variability and change. Spatial vulnerability assessment is one tool that can facilitate engagement between researchers and local stakeholders through the visualisation of climate vulnerability and the integration of its biophysical and socio-economic determinants. This has been demonstrated through a case study from Sydney, Australia where a bushfire vulnerability assessment was undertaken as the first-step in a project to investigate local government perceptions of climate vulnerability and adaptive capacity. A series of relevant biophysical and socio-economic indicators was identified that represented the region's exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity with respect to bushfires. These indicators were then combined to develop maps of net landscape vulnerability to bushfire. When presented in a workshop setting, vulnerability maps were successful in capturing the attention of stakeholders while simultaneously conveying information regarding the diversity of drivers that can contribute to current and future vulnerability. However, stakeholders were reluctant to embrace representations of vulnerability that differed from their own understanding of hazard, necessitating the demonstration of agreement between the vulnerability assessment and more conventional hazard assessment tools. This validation opened the door for public dissemination of vulnerability maps, the uptake and use of the assessment in local government risk assessment and adaptation planning, and more focused case-studies on barriers to adaptation.On one hand cities and regions are causing climate change and on the other hand they are affected by climate change. Therefore, they are obliged to develop and implement climate protection and climate adaptation measures. As climate change can not be stopped any more but only decreased, adaptation is becoming more and more important - in addition to further climate protection. This paper aims to clarify a theoretical comprehension of regional strategies of climate change adaptation. It introduces a concept for the development of regional adaptation strategies based on a broad comprehension of strategic planning. A strategy cycle with eight appropriate planning steps shall help to increase adaptive capacity at regionallevel.Current rates of climate change are unprecedented, and biological responses to these changes have also been rapid at the levels of ecosystems, communities, and species. Most research on climate change effects on biodiversity has concentrated on the terrestrial realm, and considerable changes in terrestrial biodiversity and species' distributions have already been detected in response to climate change. The studies that have considered organisms in the freshwater realm have also shown that freshwater biodiversity is highly vulnerable to climate change, with extinction rates and extirpations of freshwater species matching or exceeding those suggested for better-known terrestrial taxa. There is some evidence that freshwater species have exhibited range shifts in response to climate change in the last millennia, centuries, and decades. However, the effects are typically species-specific, with cold-water organisms being generally negatively affected and warm-water organisms positively affected. However, detected range shifts are based on findings from a relatively low number of taxonomic groups, samples from few freshwater ecosystems, and few regions. The lack of a wider knowledge hinders predictions of the responses of much of freshwater biodiversity to climate change and other major anthropogenic stressors. Due to the lack of detailed distributional information for most freshwater taxonomic groups and the absence of distribution-climate models, future studies should aim at furthering our knowledge about these aspects of the ecology of freshwater organisms. Such information is not only important with regard to the basic ecological issue of predicting the responses of freshwater species to climate variables, but also when assessing the applied issue of the capacity of protected areas to accommodate future changes in the distributions of freshwater species. This is a huge challenge, because most current protected areas have not been delineated based on the requirements of freshwater organisms. Thus, the requirements of freshwater organisms should be taken into account in the future delineation of protected areas and in the estimation of the degree to which protected areas accommodate freshwater biodiversity in the changing climate and associated environmental changes.In this paper, we investigate the ways in which climate stressors and economic changes related to liberalisation alter the local vulnerability context. Household and key informant data from two villages in Mozambique are analysed. First, we explore how changes such as increased market integration, altered systems of agricultural support, land tenure change and privatisation of agro-industries may affect factors important for response capacity, including access to local natural resources, employment opportunities, and household labour and capital. Next, we investigate how people related to the market while coping with the 2002-2003 drought, The study reveals that there had been an increase in informal trade and casual employment opportunities; however, market relations were very unfavourable and as the drought intensified, smallholders were locked into activities that barely secured economic survival and which sometimes endangered long-term response capacity. Only a few large-scale farmers had the capital and skills necessary to negotiate a good market position in urban markets, thus securing future incomes. Inequality, social sustainability, vulnerability and natural resource use are all closely linked in the savannas. Hence, both climate change adaptation policies and sustainability measures need to target vulnerability context and the social and environmental stressors shaping it. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study aimed to investigate how the heat-related increase in deaths in summer and the extent of mortality displacement depend on influenza and other categories of mortality in the previous winter, which when low leaves a greater pool of susceptible individuals. Mortality data from Stockholm, Sweden, from 1990-2002 were stratified into a summer period and a winter period. A Poisson regression model was established for the daily mortality in the summer, with temperature and confounders as explanatory variables. In addition, indicators of total, respiratory, cardiovascular and influenza mortality of the winter period were incorporated as effect modifiers in the summer model, and lagged effects in strata defined by indicators were studied. A high rate of respiratory as well as cardiovascular mortality in winter reduced the heat effect the following summer, and influenza mortality tended to do so as well. The cumulative effect per degrees C increase was 0.95% below and 0.89% above a threshold (21.3 degrees C) after a winter with low cardiovascular and respiratory mortality, but -0.23% below and 0.21% above the threshold after a winter with high cardiovascular and respiratory mortality. The current study shows that high respiratory, cardiovascular and influenza mortality in winter leads to lower temperature effects in the following summer. It also suggests that persons for whom influenza may be fatal are often also susceptible to heat and this subgroup might, therefore, not benefit as much as expected from influenza vaccinations.There is an increasing interest in detecting genes, or genomic regions, that have been targeted by natural selection. Indeed, the evolutionary approach for inferring the action of natural selection in the human genome represents a powerful tool for predicting regions of the genome potentially associated with disease and of interest in epidemiological genetic studies. Here, we review several examples going from candidate gene studies associated with specific phenotypes, including nutrition, infectious disease and climate adaptation, to whole genome scans for natural selection. All these studies illustrate the power of the evolutionary approach in identifying regions of the genome having played a major role in human survival and adaptation.Recurrent climate hazards challenge subsistence farmers in developing countries. Reliance on various diversification strategies and traditional risk sharing among kin and families has serious limitations, such as the problem of covariate risk within such networks. Index-based crop insurance could help to reduce people's climate-related risk, but raising the necessary capital to make insurance schemes financially secure is difficult for micro-insurance providers. We examine the extent to which spatial pooling of micro-insurance schemes could reduce these capital requirements. We simulate a hypothetical insurance market operating in Ethiopia, using rainfall data and yield estimates for 15 stations. By performing a Monte Carlo analysis, risk capital required to keep the probability of financial ruin below a threshold value is identified. We investigate the marginal benefits of pooling increasing numbers of sites, as well as the relationship between the benefits of pooling and the spatial covariance of rainfall. We find spatial diversification to offer considerable savings in required capitalization with as few as three sites pooled, as well as a weak but significant relationship between rainfall covariance and those benefits. The results suggest that spatial pooling may be an attractive option for micro-insurers, worthy of a detailed case-by-case analysis when designing index-insurance schemes. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many studies have suggested various kinds of forest policies, management planning and practices to help forests adapt to climate change. These recommendations are often generic, based mostly on case studies from temperate countries and rarely from Africa. We argue that policy and management recommendations aimed at integrating adaptation into national forest policies and practices in Africa should start with an inventory and careful examination of existing policies and practices in order to understand the nature and extent of intervention required to influence the adaptation of forest ecosystems to climate change. This paper aims to contribute to closing this gap in knowledge detrimental to decision making through the review and analysis of current forest policies and practices in Burkina Faso and Ghana and highlighting elements that have the potential to influence the adaptation of forest ecosystems to climate change. The analysis revealed that adaptation (and mitigation) are not part of current forest policies in Burkina Faso and Ghana, but instead policies contain elements of risk management practices which are also relevant to the adaptation of forest ecosystems. Some of these elements are found in policies on the management of forest fires, forest genetic resources, non-timber resources, tree regeneration and silvicultural practices. To facilitate and enhance the management of these elements, a number of recommendations are suggested. Their implementation will require experienced and well-trained forestry personnel, financial resources, socio-cultural and political dimensions, and the political will of decision makers to act appropriately by formulating necessary policies and mainstreaming adaptation into forest policy and management planning.A Climate Change Adaptation Strategy Assessment Tool ( CCASAT) for agriculture with integrated GIS capability was described. Historical climate data from 1889 to 2008 and 12 GCMs downscaling scenarios were integrated in the tool. Daily climate change data used were based on state-of-the-art statistical downscaling methods which allow for the description of fine scale structures. Development of GIS functionality within CCASAT involves the selection of mapping projection, boundary allocation, interpolation and a graphical display of the spatial data. Several mapping projections and data interpolation were implemented in CCASAT. All interpolation methods were tested using cross validation and users can review these analyses and select the best interpolation method to plot their data. To demonstrate the GIS functionality in CCASAT, the impacts of climate change on wheat flowering in the NSW wheat belt was investigated as a case study. A non-intercepted spherical equation described well the relationship between the semi-variance in changes of annual long-term hot days (d(h), T(max) >= 28 degrees C) and the lag-distance. Cross validations showed that ordinary Kriging methods were the best scheme for interpolation of this index. The results showed that the number of hot days in 2050 during the winter crop growing season (1 May-30 November) would increase by up to 28 days, while frost days (T(min) <= 2 degrees(C)) would decrease by up to 29 days. Predicted changes in the winter-genotype wheat flowering dates ranged from 5 days later in the northwestern corner and 10 days earlier in south-eastern corner of the NSW wheat belt. Spring-genotype wheat flowering is projected to be earlier by up to 7 days. The delay in the winter-genotype wheat flowering date is due to the delay in the completion of vernalisation in the warmer conditions. The analysis showed that number of frost days at flowering are not projected to change dramatically in the future, however an increase in hot days during wheat flowering is projected to have serious implications. This case study demonstrates that selecting suitable genotype wheat is the key adaptation strategy for the impacts of climate change on wheat cropping. Spring wheat genotypes are likely to become predominate in future climate, while winter genotype will only be viable in areas where sufficient days of cool temperature exist for completion of vernalisation. Breeding strategies should focus on releasing early-sowing genotypes that do not require vernalisation.Issues around climate change are being examined globally across various disciplines and informed decisions at community levels are required within wider national responses. Research addressing decision support for managing the possible impacts on human communities has to date been limited. As climate science knowledge and government policy changes, information must be updated for dissemination to regional implementers. Traditional knowledge repositories for decision support however work on static models, expensive to update in dynamic fields. This paper describes a process for developing a sustainable knowledge repository for decision support that can assist local policy development in climate change applications. An ontology guaranteeing the semantic integrity of the repository is a central feature. Using a semantic wiki approach the semantic integrity of the knowledge base is combined with the update of emergent findings from multiple stakeholders. Both methodological and practical aspects for developing an information framework to support climate change decision makers are addressed.The south-west of Western Australia has experienced reduced rainfall over recent decades. Annual rainfall in the state's capital city, Perth, has declined by approximately 20% since the 1970's. Runoff from the forested catchments into the city's water supply dams has declined more dramatically - of the order of 50%. Forest vegetation plays a major role in catchment water balance. Thinning of forest cover has been proposed as a means to increase catchment yields, and a trial is being conducted. Time series Landsat imagery provides information on historic forest disturbance on all catchments and an alternative data Integration analysis combining these indicators with historical rainfall and runoff data is being conducted to estimate effects of forest thinning on catchment runoff under different rainfall scenarios. The remote sensing analysis has provided indication of forest adaption to the drying climate These results and a sample of the hydrological data and analysis are presented in this paper.Summer turnip rape (Brassica rapa L.) is the dominant oilseed crop in Finland. It has lower production risks compared with summer oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.). However, climate-change-induced increases in temperature accumulation could favour oilseed rape and, hence, the relative importance of the two crops could be reversed in the future. This study compared production risks associated with turnip rape and oilseed rape in two climate-change scenarios, the high-emission A2 scenario and the low-emission B1 scenario, with or without changes in the length of the growing season. To compute future changes in temperature accumulation, observations were modified by the average of temperature increases simulated by 19 global climate models. Four plant-breeding scenarios were also included: a similar pace of yield improvements as recorded over recent years, halved or doubled rates of improvement, and no improvements (levelling off). The production risks were compared by analysing the yield-value changes under projected conditions (i.e., in different combinations of scenarios) on the basis of temperature- and plant-breeding-dependent changes in seed yield, oil content, and chlorophyll content. Both plant breeding and climate change already have alone the potential to change the balance between oilseed rape and turnip rape. When acting together the change will be more apparent and faster, but plant breeding will, however, play a more significant role in yield-trend changes than will climate change under northern conditions. If the current rate of plant-breeding improvements continues, only a 100C increase in temperature sum during the growing season would result in domination of oilseed rape over turnip rape in Finland. This comparative analysis also indicated that strategies, including doubling of oilseed crop production area, are realistic if the climate change and plant breeding achievements facilitate cultivation of oilseed crops in more northern areas. If northern areas are taken into oilseed crop production the lifespan of turnip rape in Finnish field crop production could be extended. Nevertheless, a breeding strategy for northern conditions needs increased efforts focussed on oilseed rape.Climate change offers new opportunities for Finnish field crop production, which is currently limited by the short growing season. A wanner climate will extend the thermal growing season and the physiologically effective part of it. Winters will also become milder, enabling introduction of winter-sown crops to a greater extent than is possible today. With this study we aim to characterise the likely regional differences in capacity to grow different seed producing crops. Prolongation of the Finnish growing season was estimated using a 0.5 degrees latitude x 0.5 degrees longitude gridded dataset from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The dataset comprised an average estimate from 19 global climate models of the response of Finnish climate to low (B 1) and high (A2) scenarios of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions for 30-year periods centred on 2025, 2055 and 2085 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Growing season temperature sums that suit crop growth and are agronomically feasible in Finland are anticipated to increase by some 140 degrees Cd by 2025, 300 degrees Cd by 2055 and 470 degrees Cd by 2085 in scenario A2, when averaged over regions, and earlier sowing is expected to take place, but not later harvests. Accordingly, the extent of cultivable areas for the commonly grown major and minor crops will increase considerably. Due to the higher base temperature requirement for maize (Zea mays L.) growth than for temperate crops, we estimate that silage maize could become a Finnish field crop for the most favourable growing regions only at the end of this century. Winters are getting milder, but it will take almost the whole century until winters such as those that are typical for southern Sweden and Denmark are experienced on a wide scale in Finland. It is possible that introduction of winter-sown crops (cereals and rapeseed) will represent major risks due to fluctuating winter conditions, and this could delay their adaptation for many decades. Such risks need to be studied in more detail to estimate timing of introduction. Prolonged physiologically effective growing seasons would increase yielding capacities of major field crops. Of the current minor crops, oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.), winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), triticale (X Triticosecale Wittmack), pea (Pisum sativum L.) and faba bean (Vicia faba L.) are particularly strong candidates to become major crops. Moreover, they have good potential for industrial processing and are currently being bred. Realisation of increased yield potential requires adaptation to 1) elevated daily mean temperatures that interfere with development rate of seed crops under long days, 2) relative reductions in water availability at critical phases of yield determination, 3) greater pest and disease pressure, 4) other uncertainties caused by weather extremes and 5) generally greater need for inputs such as nitrogen fertilisers for non-nitrogen fixing crops.As the northern hemisphere will experience the greatest increases in temperature and indications of climatic change are already visible in the north (in the 2000s average temperatures exceeded the long-term mean), we sought to establish if there are already signs of increased variability in yield and quality of the major field crops grown under the northernmost European growing conditions: spring and winter cereals (barley Hordeum vulgare L., oat Avena saliva L., wheat Triticum aestivum L., rye Secale cereale L.), spring rapeseed (turnip rape Brassica rapa L., oilseed rape B. napus L.), pea (Piston sativum L.) and potato (Solanum tuberosum L.). We used long-term yield datasets of FAO for Finland (1960s to date) and MTT Agrifood Research Finland (MTT) Official Variety Trial datasets on yield and quality of major field crops in Finland since the 1970s. Yield variability was exceptionally high in the 1980s and 1990s, but previously and subsequently national yields were clearly more stable. No progressive increase in yield variability was recorded. No marked and systematic changes in variability of quality traits were recorded, except for rapeseed, which exhibited reduced variability in seed chlorophyll content. This may at least partly attribute to the differences in intensity of input use and thereby responsiveness of the crops before and after 1980 and 1990 decades. We also noted that in the 2000s average temperatures were higher than in earlier decades and this was the case for all months of the growing season except June, which represents, however, the most critical phase for yield determination in most of the field crops in Finland. Also in the 2000s precipitation increased in the first three months of the growing season and thereafter decreased, but without signs of significantly increased numbers of heavy showers (extreme rain events). Hence, in general constant, increased average temperatures during the growing seasons of the 2000s were identified, but with reduced yield variability, which was partly attributable to the diminished use of inputs, especially fertilisers.Beach monitoring data are presented and show an average beach erosion trend of 0.5 m yr -1 in eight Caribbean islands over the period 1985-2000, with elevated rates in those islands impacted by a higher number of hurricanes. The data are based on 5 to 15 years of continuous monitoring, conducted at three-month intervals, at 113 beaches (200 profile sites) on eight islands, using standard methodology. The causes of the erosion are discussed and include anthropogenic factors, climate variability and projected climate change. Based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections for the Caribbean region, and the likely increase of anthropogenic stresses such as coastal development, it is likely that the beach erosion trend will continue and increase. Nonexclusive approaches to help beaches adapt to climate change include structural, planning or ecological measures. Two case studies illustrating climate change adaptation measures are discussed, one focuses on coastal planning measures in Anguilla and Nevis, and the second focuses on ecological measures, specifically the rehabilitation of a coastal forest in Puerto Rico. These case studies have not reached a stage where their effectiveness can be evaluated, however preliminary outcomes show that community-based climate change adaptation measures require careful planning such that the entire community is involved in a participatory manner and sufficient time is allocated for awareness-raising, information-sharing and discussion.Increases in wind damage are expected if the intensity and/ or frequency of tropical cyclones increase due to enhanced greenhouse conditions (climate change). The paper proposes a methodology to estimate cyclone damage risks due to enhanced greenhouse conditions using residential construction in the North Queensland cities of Cairns, Townsville and Mackay as a case study, and then assesses the economic viability of several climate adaptation strategies. The analysis includes probabilistic modelling of cyclone intensity and frequency, time-dependent increase in wind speed from enhanced greenhouse conditions (global warming), and vulnerability functions of building damage. Increases in mean annual maximum wind speed from 0% to 25% over 50 years are considered to represent the uncertainty in changing wind hazard patterns as a result of climate change. The effect of regional changes to building inventory over time and space, rate of retrofi tting, cost of retrofit, reduction in vulnerability, and discount rate will be considered. The risk-cost-benefit analysis considering temporal changes in wind hazard and building vulnerability can be used to help optimise the timing and extent of climate adaptation strategies.Climate change will place increasing pressure on the functioning of agricultural and natural areas in the Netherlands. Strategies to adapt these areas to stress are likely to require changes in landscape structure and management. In densely populated countries such as the Netherlands, the increased pressure of climate change on agricultural and natural areas will inevitably lead, through the necessity of spatial adaptation measures, to spatial conflicts between the sectors of agriculture and nature. An integrated approach to climate change adaptation may therefore be beneficial in limiting such sectoral conflicts. We explored the conflicting and synergistic properties of different climate adaptation strategies for agricultural and natural environments in the Netherlands. To estimate the feasibility and effectiveness of the strategies, we focussed on three case study regions with contrasting landscape structural, natural and agricultural characteristics. For each region, we estimated the expected climate-related threats and associated trade-offs for arable farming and natural areas for 2040. We describe a number of spatial and integrated adaptation strategies to mitigate these threats. Formulating adaptation strategies requires consultation of different stakeholders and deliberation between different interests. We discuss some trade-offs involved in this decision-making.Tropical forests are 'eco-utilities' providing critical ecosystem services that underpin food, energy, water and climate security at local to global scales. Currently, these services are unrecognised and unrewarded in international policy and financial frameworks, causing forests to be worth more dead than alive. Much attention is currently focused on REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) and A/R (Afforestation and Reforestation) as mitigation options. In this article we propose an additional mechanism PINC (Proactive Investment in Natural Capital) that recognises and rewards the value of ecosystem services provided by standing tropical forests, especially from a climate change adaptation perspective. Using Amazonian forests as a case study we show that PINC could improve the wellbeing of rural and forest-dependent populations, enabling them to cope with the impacts associated with climate change and deforestation. By investing pro-actively in areas where deforestation pressures are currently low, the long-term costs of mitigation and adaptation will be reduced. We suggest a number of ways in which funds could be raised through emerging financial mechanisms to provide positive incentives to maintain standing forests. To develop PINC, a new research and capacity-building agenda is needed that explores the interdependence between communities, the forest eco-utility and the wider economy.This paper examines Indonesia's vulnerability to climate change, and her position in the global climate change mitigation effort as a significant emitter with large potential for reducing emissions from forestry. It highlights the scope for Australia and Indonesiaboth large emitters, one a developed country and potential buyer of emissions permits, the other a developing country and potential seller of per-mitsto play complementary roles in the global effort. The discussion outlines ways in which the two countries can cooperate with each other and with regional neighbours in mitigation initiatives and climate change adaptation. It suggests that their efforts could serve as a model for cooperation between developed and developing countries. The paper notes that the current global financial crisis is a short-term problem, while climate change has its effects over the long term. The recessionary effect of the financial crisis is not a good reason for delaying climate change mitigation efforts by Indonesia and other countries.The Philippines, as an archipelago and a developing country, is very vulnerable to climate change. Current efforts to address the impacts of climate change exist but may not be sufficient. The first part of this paper reviews current knowledge on mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development. It then assesses how far climate change has been mainstreamed into key development plans and programmes in the Philippines. Interviews with key informants were also conducted. The results show that there is no mainstreaming in the Philippines. All the major development plans and policies reviewed did not contain any reference to climate change adaptation. Interviews with key stakeholders reveal a similar trend. The main reason preventing mainstreaming are that national priorities are biased towards concerns deemed more pressing, and that there is a pervasive lack of awareness about the impacts of climate change on sustainable development. However, there are massive investments in infrastructure projects designed to adapt to weather-related hazards. Projects such as these could provide an entry point for integrating climate change adaptation into development plans and policy in the Philippines.Autonomous adaptation in the water sector is assessed to derive lessons for more successful climate change adaptation from six empirical, consistently designed river management case studies based on projects of WWF They show that when adaptation measures are considered in the context of common problems in water management, many practical ways of building resilience to climate change through mainstream programs are evident. The cases are mainly from developing countries - India, China, Mexico, Brazil, the lower Danube basin and Tanzania - where efforts to reduce environmental degradation and enhance livelihoods have directly helped to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change. The key lessons include: the benefits of concurrent measures for improving livelihoods and reducing physical vulnerability; the need to enhance and fund local institutions to mainstream adaptation programmes; and the value in implementing 'no and low regrets' measures despite uncertainties.Conversion of the Danube river floodplains through dyke construction for farming and other development has cut off 95, 75 and 28% of the floodplains of the upper Danube, the lower Danube and the Danube delta, respectively. Together with channelization, this has exacerbated flood peaks. Anthropogenic climate change is anticipated to bring more frequent flooding and reduced water quality. In assessing ongoing floodplain restoration work that commenced in 1993, this paper finds the following. (a) Along the lower Danube River, restoration of floodplains by decommissioning under-performing flood protection infrastructure has provided many benefits. The benefits of these adaptation measures include improved natural capacity to retain and release floodwaters and remove pollutants, enhanced biodiversity, and strengthened local economies through diversification of livelihoods based on natural resources. (b) The drivers for more successful adaptation measures in the Danube included EU expansion, legal mechanisms, and local desire to improve livelihoods. The support of non-governmental organizations (WWF and partner organizations) for basin- and regional-level planning for more effective water resource management has also been a powerful driver of policy change in the lower Danube countries.Adaptation to anthropogenic climate change is becoming vital to freshwater ecosystems and resource management, but climate adaptation can be purposeful or unintentional. This paper presents lessons from an assessment of an autonomous adaptation in the Great Ruaha River catchment in Tanzania following WWF intervention. The project was designed to address challenges resulting from natural resource use and existing levels of climate variability by changing water resource management. The study applied participatory methods and an open-ended questionnaire to collect data. The study found key adaptation benefits, including reduced vulnerability to drought and strengthened local water user associations and other regional institutions. As a result of the project interventions from 2003 to 2009, rural livelihoods became more profitable and water-sustainable, and local livelihood strategies were diversified. Regional ecosystems improved as a result of restoring river flows in some rivers, conservation of riparian vegetation and halting tree felling for charcoal production. As a result of these changes the communities and ecosystems in the Great Ruaha River catchment should be more resilient to emerging climate change impacts, yet the need for further physical interventions and institutional reform is identified. The study concludes that strengthening local institutions and capacity building are fundamental to climate change adaptation and sustainable freshwater management.The Yangtze is the largest river basin in China and home to over 400 million people. In recent history, and especially during 1950s-1970s, extensive lakes and floodplains were reclaimed as polders for agriculture and rural development. Consequently, the flood retention capacity was decreased, many lakes were disconnected from the main channel of the Yangtze by embankments and sluice gates, and eutrophication was common. It is anticipated that there will be a greater frequency of extreme floods and droughts in the basin according to climate change scenarios. WWF commenced a programme in 2002 in partnership with government agencies and local communities to reconnect three lakes (Zhangdu, Hong and Tian-e-zhou) in Hubei Province to the river by opening sluice gates seasonally and improving lake management. The resilience of the lake environment to climate change and the livelihoods of local people were enhanced. The measures assessed here highlight: (a) the need for adaptation programmes to concurrently improve livelihoods and reduce exposure to physical risks; (b) the need to build the capacity of people and institutions; and (c) the value of decentralized adaptation as compared with new infrastructure investments.In Mexico, due to reduced and unevenly distributed hydrological resources and incipient water management capabilities, climate change adaptation in the water sector is recognized as an urgent issue. To derive lessons for climate change adaptation, this paper evaluates the results gained after five years of an integrated river basin management (IRBM) programme in the Conchos River in northern Mexico. Autonomous adaptation measures assessed include: modernization of irrigation practices; pilot sustainable watershed management projects in the upper basin; development of an environmental flow assessment and a proposal to improve water allocation; and the creation of the Inter-institutional Working Group as a basin organization. These measures have improved river basin management, yet adverse outcomes were also observed, such as impacts of surface water efficiency measures that were not managed in conjunction with groundwater. Key adaptation lessons derived include: the importance of multi-stakeholder participation in designing and implementing adaptive management measures; the need for significant investment in transfer of expertise and capacity building; and the positive effect of linking local, national and international institutions. These results highlight the need for more investment in 'soft' adaptive management in place of infrastructure. In the Rio Conchos, if these no regrets' adaptation measures are consolidated in the following years, they will serve as a foundation to develop planned and more effective climate change adaptation programmes, and enhance institutional, environmental and societal resilience.This paper describes an empirical case study of enhanced water management in the Sao Joao River basin on the southeast coast of Brazil between 1999 and 2008. The autonomous adaptation measures applied are assessed to derive lessons for more effective climate change adaptation. In response to severe eutrophication of their coastal lakes, effective, local multi-stakeholder institutions were established under the auspices of the Consorcio Intermunicipal Lagos Sao Joao from 1999 to improve basin management. Having significantly reduced the pollution problem, other environmental challenges are now being addressed. In managing environmental problems with multiple causes and effects, engaging multiple stakeholders and communicating the need to change environmental management, these local institutions have established the types of capacities needed for climate change adaptation. Factors contributing to the strengthening of this adaptive capacity include: engagement of local non-governmental organizations, companies and municipal governments; leadership and development of a collective identity; enabling national and state water laws; an ability to raise funds; and implementation of an iterative, adaptive management approach to environmental management.Climate shifts are not new in the experience of humans and other species, but the capacity of potential evolutionary and ecological responses to climate change has been reduced through widespread human modifications of natural ecosystems. The magnitude, duration and timescales of altered climate threats require multigenerational strategies for climate change adaptation. In many places terrestrial and aquatic species and human livelihoods are limited by the availability of freshwater resources. Current climate change adaptation practice places great faith in the ability of climate models to predict specific impacts, which then become the focus of climate change adaptation activities and thus foster reactive 'impacts thinking'. Given that freshwater climate variables are associated with high predictive uncertainty, a novel approach referred to here as 'adaptation thinking' treats ecosystems as dynamic entities that will be inherently different from current and past ecosystem states for multiple reasons, including climate change. As a result, adaptation thinking emphasizes the shifting relationship between institutions and ecosystems. This approach promotes flexibility and continuous scenario development. Using natural modes of adaptation as a template for sustainable development should promote collaboration between scientists, policymakers and development professionals.Formal Arctic governance has developed mainly since the 1990s when the eight-state Arctic Council was established to provide a common forum for national, indigenous peoples' and environmental interests. The Arctic is seen as encompassing the northernmost areas of the Nordic states, USA, Russia and Canada, thereby including areas that will be among those impacted the earliest by the effects of climate change on sea ice and permafrost. However, most of the pollution affecting the Arctic is not released in the area, and cohesion among the states in confronting the climate change problem has been limited. Based in interviews with organisations involved in new governance initiatives (high level fora, NGOs and international organisations) in the Arctic region, this chapter discusses the capacity of the Arctic governance framework to support adaptation to climate change. The paper views adaptation in governance as requiring horizontal and vertical interlinkage between actors, and outlines the interlinkages between regional actors as well as the resources (including funding and legislation) perceived by the interviewees as available to the organisations. The paper concludes that organisational capacities will need to be strengthened for effective implementation of adaptive actions.In contemporary media discourse, suggestions for publicly mandated climate change mitigation or adaptation measures are frequently challenged from a cost perspective. However, empirical data on the actual economic appreciation of local mitigation and adaptation measures expressed as citizen willingness-to-pay (WTP) are scarce. In this paper, we report results of a preference survey using a choice experiment (CE) that quantifies economic preferences for biodiversity-based climate change mitigation and adaptation in the region surrounding Hainich National Park (Thuringia, Germany). A representative sample of 302 respondents-the majority of them frequent Hainich forest visitors-was interviewed in autumn 2006. Nested logit analysis showed that respondents state a substantially positive WTP for climate change mitigation by afforestation (p < 0.001). If converted to WTP for an additional sequestration of carbon that average German citizens emit as CO(2), a monetary value of 7.34 (sic) yr(-1) t C(-1) is obtained. For increasing forest resistance and resilience against insect pests and storms (climate change adaptation) a WTP of 27.54 (sic) yr(-1) (p < 0.001) is obtained, and 16.83 (sic) yr(-1) (p < 0.001) is obtained for increasing the general resilience and resistance of forest ecosystems to environmental stressors. Respondents support moderate programs to eradicate invasive plants when compared to more aggressive eradication measures. Due to the lack of comparable studies, it can only be conservatively assumed that WTP would be lower if mitigation and adaptation measures were to be implemented in forests not, or only rarely, used by respondents. As all proposed means for climate change mitigation and adaptation contribute to local forest ecosystem biodiversity, the results of the study advocate the realization of measures that potentially benefit both climate policy and regional conservation concerns,Pacific Island nations face similar challenges from climate change to those faced by other developing nations, yet these are exacerbated by the comparative smallness, remoteness, and archipelagic character of many of the islands. Proposed solutions to the effects of climate change in the Pacific Islands have often been uncritically imposed from elsewhere and have often proved unsuited to both their environmental and cultural contexts. Effective solutions to challenges of climate change in the Pacific Islands should acknowledge their unique environmental characteristics, particularly their high insularity (coastal length to land area) ratios, their topographic and geological diversity, and the raw materials available to support adaptation. It is important for policy makers to understand the cultural influences that have helped shape current environmental decision making, and the ways in which adaptations to climate change can be sustained. The efficacy of donor preferences for aid funding of policy development (top-down) rather than empowering community-level decision-makers (bottom-up) is questionable. Pacific Island governments are focused on economic growth, with little tangible investment in non-profit environmental sustainability. In the future they should take on ownership of the climate-change adaptation process to a greater degree than they do at present, with external assistance brought in only for special cases and for the trialling of novel solutions, rather than for routine adaptation. Globally, there should be less emphasis on sea-level rise as the principal challenge posed by climate change to Pacific Island nations and a better appreciation of the other challenges, particularly inundation and salinization of economically critical lowland, as well as coral-reef degradation.Economic valuation applied to coral reef management in selected case study sites in the Caribbean was used to analyze three types of interventions coastal management, physical planning, and environmental policy For each site, both a local threat and a global threat were analyzed and costs and benefits of interventions were estimated In the scenario analysis for the Negril Marine Park (Jamaica), the costs and benefits of physical planning were assessed in order to assist with hotel development, set-back rules, etc The benefits of physical planning compared to 'without planning' were estimated at US$ 15 million For Hol Chan (Belize), a scenario with and without coastal management (enforcement and tourist education) was analyzed Total benefits over time were estimated to be US$ 50 4 million in the case 'with management' and US$ 46 9 million 'without management', while the associated costs exactly matched the additional benefits In the Grand Anse area (Grenada), a change in the sewerage policy (Including investments) was assessed 'With management' benefits were estimated at US$ 17 4 million compared to US$ 11 9 million 'without management' The benefit-cost rate is 2 Climate change adaptation was assessed for the same sites For instance, with an appropriate adaptation strategy, tourism benefits in Negril could increase from US$3 million to US$ 5 million per year on average Key constraints in the above case studies are the lack of data on ecological parameters and especially the impact of threats and of management options on these parameters, as well as the enormous Inherent uncertainty associated with such assessments This was even more evident in the climate change adaptation scenariosGlobal environmental change and climate change are rapidly altering the world's socio-ecological systems and affecting human populations at multiple scales. Important manifestations of these changes are hazard and disaster events. The emerging fields of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction provide significant opportunities to avoid and/or reduce many of the negative consequences associated with such events. Reviewing current attempts to link these two fields, we suggest an urgent need for a holistic and dynamic systems approach, focusing on socio-ecological resilience as a primary objective for adaptation and risk reduction. Furthermore, we propose two mechanisms for transformative change in these fields: (1) the use of iterative risk management as a primary instrument for adaptive decision making, and (2) the establishment of 'boundary organizations' and institutional changes that increase the transfer of knowledge between not only science and policy, but also science, policy and practice. There is immediate demand for participatory scholarly research to address the needs and concerns of practitioners on the ground. As a framework for these concepts, we see a dynamic systems approach to socio-ecological resilience as a means to deal with the inherent uncertainty associated with climate change and hazard events.South Eastern Europe, being shattered with conflicts in the last decades, still faces numerous challenges today such as inadequate growth, declining living standards and high environmental stress. Climate change will exacerbate the situation in the future. Since environmental security is an emerging concern that cannot be tackled with traditional approaches, new ways to deal with it have to be developed. Cooperation forms the core of such means, aiming at a cross-sectoral approach and guaranteeing a wide-stakeholder participation with the view of integrating the principle of sustainable development into national policies. The ENVSEC, a unique partnership between the UN and other agencies that is targeting certain hotspots in Europe and Central Asia can serve as a model to meet security and environmental concerns also in other areas of the world.Cross-country skiing has a long history in Finland, and it is a part of the national identity of Finns. This study on cross-country skiers' adaptation to changing climate describes groups of cross-country skiers with reference to their motives for skiing, and their perceptions and preferences on climate change adaptation tools. The data was collected by means of a web questionnaire contacting skiers in ski areas, mainly in southern Finland, and on the websites of ski associations. On the basis of a cluster analysis, we found three groups of skier types, each of which has different perceptions of means for adapting their skiing behaviour to the decreasing skiing opportunities close to home. One group of skiers, the 'social type' group, placed emphasis on skiing traditions and social reasons. This group is the most liable to give up skiing if the skiing conditions close to home are poor. The 'outdoor type' group, whose skiing motives were related to skiing environment qualities (nature, landscape, winter) and the 'technical type' group motivated by fitness objectives, were interested in behavioural adaptation, for example, travelling further away and using artificial snow tracks. With a better understanding of skiers' behaviour, it is possible to identify adaptation strategies that can help providers of skiing services, such as municipal agencies and the ski tourism industry, as well as skiers themselves, to prepare for climate change.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a case study, showing a local government's capacity in addressing energy consumptions and local greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in its administration areas. This case demonstrates some strengths and weaknesses in the actions of local institutions to complement the national and European efforts in addressing climate change problems. Design/methodology/approach - The paper starts by considering the need to address global changes by a multi-level governance system, in line with the subsidiarity principle proposed by the European Commission for the implementation of its policies. According to this principle, different institutional levels should intervene through control and reduction of GHG emissions from their operational scale. In particular, this paper reports an ongoing activity of urban planning carried out by a local municipality of Northern Italy, Martellago (Venice Province), that has focused on the energy and GHG reduction as a priority. Findings - The analysis identified some topics to be addressed by urban plans; their higher or lower effectiveness in respect to the climate change adaptation and mitigation needs; and some constraints to be addressed by an enforced integration of different administrative levels of governance. Originality/value - This paper shows the importance of local planning in climate change issues, which is seldom considered, particularly in practice. In fact, while the elaboration of energy and urban plans is not mandatory for small municipalities, some voluntary actions - like for Martellago - show that their wide applications could contribute importantly to the efforts to decrease GHG emissions.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess the successes and challenges of adaptation to climate change focusing on water governance institutions in Saskatchewan, a province located in the western Canadian prairies. Design/methodology/approach - A framework of vulnerability and adaptive capacity to the effects of climate change is employed. Data are obtained through qualitative research conducted through interviews and focus groups with stakeholders and people playing a role in water governance in Saskatchewan. Findings - There have been many positive institutional developments which have improved Saskatchewan's adaptive capacity. The most promising is the creation of local watershed advisory committees that are poised to implement on-the-ground water management decisions. What is lacking, however, is a long-term comprehensive climate change and adaptation plan, with built-in flexibility to address present and future climate variability. Without a long-term baseline plan and vision, Saskatchewan rural communities and the agricultural sector will remain vulnerable to present and future climate-induced water stress. Practical implications - The research shows a need for an increased inter-disciplinary approach addressing environmental issues, and an increased need for academic-government-industry partnerships working towards capacity-building for sustainable climate change adaptation responses. Originality/value - This inter-disciplinary research study is the first of its kind conducted in this region of Canada, and blends contributions from physical and social scientists, government and rural stakeholders.Tradeoffs between climate change mitigation and adaptation policies are explored under both certainty and uncertainty with learning using a numerical two-period decision model. We first replicate a version of the Adaptation in DICE climate model (AD-DICE) (de Bruin et al., 2009), which modifies the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) (Nordhaus and Boyer, 2000) to incorporate climate change adaptation explicitly into the traditional optimisation framework. Our model is then extended to include uncertainty over a probability distribution of expected Climate Sensitivity (CS) values and the implications for optimal mitigation and adaptation levels are then explored. In the certainty model runs, the results of previous studies that incorporated adaptation into the portfolio of climate change responses are largely confirmed. Modelling an uncertain CS with the same expected value as under certainty leads to several insights: before learning occurs, optimal levels of both mitigation and adaptation are lower under uncertainty than under certainty in this same early period, optimal mitigation and adaptation levels are most sensitive to the respective cost of each strategy, with the mitigation level more dependent on adaptation costs than vice versa variance in CS - a parameter with long-term effects - affects mitigation levels more than adaptation levels.This section briefly describes the significant political initiatives and acts of legislation adopted in the environmental field between February 2009 and July 2009Purpose - This study aims to examine the effects of levee construction and tropical storms on regional economic growth of a coastal community. The study's goal is to highlight feedbacks important to climate change adaptation in the coastal zone. Design/methodology/approach - The research utilizes a dynamic feedback model that includes coastal engineering, urban economic development, and natural ecosystem response. The model is a tool to help discuss important long-term issues and to highlight areas of policy intervention. The data for the model come from US Census data, the global DIVA coastal database, and IPCC projections. Findings - The results show urban areas facing elevated levels of exposure because of residents' low understanding of climatic risks. Coastal managers may actually increase long-term exposure by attempting to protect coastal regions from long-term sea-level rise. Coastal defenses lead to a false sense of safety, increasing economic development in the short term, but causing larger economic losses in the long term, especially after a storm. Storm intensity and levee protection are important in determining an "economic tipping point" of long term growth - whether a community continues to grow or faces economic stagnation or decline. If storm damage is large enough, the community passes the tipping point and economic growth never recovers. The presence of levees changes the tipping point dynamic, making communities more resilient as long as there is no levee breach. Originality/value - Coastal communities face increasing risk from accelerated sea-level rise and tropical storms. Understanding the long-term dynamics of protection decisions is important for creating effective adaptation policies.Little is known about the factors that affect the growth rates of deep-water corals. Analysis of 23 specimens of bamboo corals, a ubiquitous deep-water group, that were reliably aged using radiometric techniques or validated increment counts indicates that the radial growth rate of the coral's calcite internode declines with depth and increases logistically with ambient temperature. Temperature alone accounts for about half of the variance among specimens in lifetime mean growth rates. Growth rates plateau below 2 degrees C and above 5 degrees C, which likely reflects physiological constraints on growth and calcification. Thus far, the only other effect on growth rate identified is a tendency for colonies from the NE Pacific to grow faster relative to ambient temperature than colonies in other regions. Analysis of elemental composition of the calcite internode, based on data available for 16 of the 23 specimens, shows that, contrary to suggestions in the literature, growth rate does not correlate with Sr/Ca ratios, neither among or within colonies. Rather, within-colony ontogenetic variability in increment width, an index of short-term growth rate, correlates positively with calcium weight-fractions and negatively with the ratio between P and S, an index of organic content. The underlying mechanism is likely to be a link between crystal ultrastructure, which varies with growth rate, and the ratio between CaCO3 and organic matrix in different crystal types. Between colonies, composition correlates poorly with growth rate. This could reflect spatial and temporal heterogeneity in other environmental factors that determine internode composition, as well as difficulties in standardising P measurements across specimens.Bamboo corals (Family Isididae) are an important component of seamount benthos south of Tasmania. Besides having lifespans of up to 400 yr, little is known about their basic ecology, nor how to decode potential climate signals encoded in their skeletons. We explored the stable nitrogen isotope and radiocarbon compositions of the skeletal organic fraction of the genera Isidella, Keratoisis and Lepidisis collected from 3 Tasmanian seamounts. Analyses were performed on tissues and organic node growth rings sampled at a temporal resolution of 1 to 4 yr. Radiocarbon chronologies exhibited nuclear bomb signals characteristic of surface waters and constrained radial growth rates to similar to 35 +/- 10 mu m yr(-1) for 3 specimens of the genus Lepidisis and 113 +/- 17 mu m yr(-1) for 1 specimen of Isidella. delta N-15 values of the living tissue and underlying gorgonin were similar and averaged 9 to 12 parts per thousand. Records of delta N-15 from 8 different specimens showed subtle, quasi-decadal patterns over the last similar to 100 yr, although the amplitude of these features (similar to 1 parts per thousand) was similar to the average intra- and inter-colony reproducibility. These results demonstrate the utility of deep-sea corals to track seamount bio-geochemical processes over long time scales, and suggest that the extent of nutrient depletion of surface waters and associated trophic dynamics have remained relatively constant in this region over centuries. This provides an important baseline for the evaluation of the impacts of anthropogenic climate change.This longitudinal study tracks and analyses a local government's planning and adaptation to potential sea-level rises, over the twenty-year period 1987-2008, and identifies future concerns regarding inundation. The case study location, Redcliffe, is a small bay side city in Southeast Queensland that is potentially prone to coastal inundation. Over the period of study, there have been significant scientific, policy and public awareness developments relating to climate change at the international, national and state levels which local governments have had to take into consideration in decision-making. The Redcliffe study reveals continuity in the range of challenges faced by this local council including: dealing with scientific uncertainty; policy application at the local government level, public awareness, political response, planning and land use adaptation. While progress has been evident over the past two decades in addressing these issues, some obstacles still persist and some major future challenges remain unresolved. These challenges include funding for adaptation, legal liability and governance issues.This special issue explores emerging research agendas in planning. It brings together scholars from diverse schools working on new areas of research and application in urban design and planning. Emergent research agendas include both novel areas of research and important shifts in the direction of a research area. The challenge for planning schools is to reflect critically on these changes and develop long-term research agendas that can better position our field in society and academia, and provide a basis from which to assess our academic programmes. The chapters presented in this issue reinforce key aspects of planning: multi-scale, and multi-faceted, yet integrative in its intent, stressing the physical, yet inescapably social. At the same time, they identify research areas that respond to major social and environmental changes. Blanco and Alberti focus on the latest findings in climate change science and on planning for adaptation; they highlight the opportunities that planners have to provide leadership in this area. Forsyth, Krizek and Rodriguez take up the issue of non-motorised travel, a topic of increasing interest for urban designers, public health experts and transportation and energy planners. For Talen and Ellis, an emerging challenge is the need to plan for diverse and compact communities. What social factors, policies, programmes and planning processes facilitate compact and diverse communities? (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy in Europe does not deal with ecological problems of continental Southeast European environments and with the role of terrestrial vegetation cover according to their importance, although the predicted increase of drought frequency will have a profound effect on quality of human life and on the functioning ("services") of ecosystems. In this region the southern border of the closed forest belt forms an ecotone toward the forest steppe. Forests have an effect on the majority of factors causing climatic forcing, such as surface albedo, carbon emission and sequestration, evapotranspiration etc. A recurrent drawback of present forecasting models is the inaccurate parameterisation and the lack of consideration of biotic response mechanisms and of planned forest management.Transportation emissions are a significant contributor to climate change. Transportation plans and related documentation of metropolitan planning organizations and international cities were reviewed to ascertain whether climate change considerations are being incorporated into the transportation planning process. The review revealed that climate change considerations were not included in a majority of cases in the transportation planning process, especially to adapt transportation systems to the potential effects of climate change. When such consideration did occur, the focus was on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation, with data collection techniques and analysis tools that were better developed and already in place within many planning organizations. A conceptual framework for transportation planning is presented and used to illustrate how some agencies have considered climate change in each step of the planning process. Recommendations are provided on how GHG emission mitigation and climate adaptation strategies can be incorporated into the transportation planning process.Climate change is increasingly recognized as a potential threat to national security. Climate change does not cause war by itself, but can have significant effects on the ecological basis of societies and thereby lead to instability and unpredictability, which can in turn lead to war. History is replete with episodes of climate change that have led to violent conflict, even the fall of civilizations. This paper identifies climate-related conflicts over natural resources that take place at a local or regional scale and primarily in developing countries. The focus is on the likelihood of increasing conflict between pastoralists and farmers, especially in parts of the world that contain important biological resources. Conflict in such regions can affect food supplies at a time when one billion people already are undernourished. The impacts of climate change are felt by people primarily through impacts on ecosystems. For example, climate change can affect agriculture through three main ecological impacts: changing patterns of rainfall, increasing numbers of extreme climate events, and increasing temperature changing distribution of land productivity. Improving security requires a broader approach to adapting to climate change, drawing on international law and support from climate change adaptation funds.Many scientists feel that scientific outcomes are not sufficiently taken into account in policy-making. The research reported in this paper shows what happens with scientific information during such a process. In 2001 the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management commissioned their regional office in Limburg to assess how flood management objectives could be achieved in future in the Dutch Meuse valley, assuming climate change will increase peak discharges. To ensure political support, regional discussion rounds were to help assess the measures previously identified. This paper discusses the ways in which hydrological and hydraulic expertise was input, understood and used in this assessment process. Project participants as a group had no trouble contesting assumptions and outcomes. Nevertheless, water expertise was generally accepted as providing facts, once basic choices such as starting situation had been discussed and agreed. The technical constraints determined that politically unacceptable measures would have to be selected to achieve the legally binding flood management objective. As a result, no additional space will be set aside for future flood management beyond the already reserved floodplain. In this case, political arguments clearly prevail over policy objectives, with hydraulic expertise providing decisive arbitration between the two.Recent rapid changes in the Earth's climate have altered ecological systems around the globe. Global warming has been linked to changes in physiology, phenology, species distributions, interspecific interactions, and disturbance regimes. Projected future climate change will undoubtedly result in even more dramatic shifts in the states of many ecosystems. These shifts will provide one of the largest challenges to natural resource managers and conservation planners. Managing natural resources and ecosystems in the face of uncertain climate requires new approaches. Here, the many adaptation strategies that have been proposed for managing natural systems in a changing climate are reviewed. Most of the recommended approaches are general principles and many are tools that managers are already using. What is new is a turning toward a more agile management perspective. To address climate change, managers will need to act over different spatial and temporal scales. The focus of restoration will need to shift from historic species assemblages to potential future ecosystem services. Active adaptive management based on potential future climate impact scenarios will need to be a part of everyday operations. And triage will likely become a critical option. Although many concepts and tools for addressing climate change have been proposed, key pieces of information are still missing. To successfully manage for climate change, a better understanding will be needed of which species and systems will likely be most affected by climate change, how to preserve and enhance the evolutionary capacity of species, how to implement effective adaptive management in new systems, and perhaps most importantly, in which situations and systems will the general adaptation strategies that have been proposed work and how can they be effectively applied. A transformation in the way the United States produces and uses energy is needed to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets for climate change mitigation. Wind power is an important low-carbon technology and the most rapidly growing renewable energy technology in the U.S. Despite recent advances in wind deployment, significant state-by-state variation in wind power distribution cannot be explained solely by wind resource patterns nor by state policy. Other factors embedded within the state-level socio-political context also contribute to wind deployment patterns. We explore this sociopolitical context in four U.S. states by integrating multiple research methods. Through comparative state-level analysis of the energy system, energy policy, and public discourse as represented in the media, we examine variation in the context for wind deployment in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, and Texas. Our results demonstrate that these states have different patterns of wind deployment, are engaged in different debates about wind power, and appear to frame the risks and benefits of wind power in different ways. This comparative assessment highlights the complex variation of the state-level socio-political context and contributes depth to our understanding of energy technology deployment processes, decision-making, and outcomes.We used Comparative Risk Assessment methods to estimate the health effects of alternative urban land transport scenarios for two settings-London, UK, and Delhi, India. For each setting, we compared a business-as-usual 2030 projection (without policies for reduction of greenhouse gases) with alternative scenarios-lower-carbon-emission motor vehicles, increased active travel, and a combination of the two. We developed separate models that linked transport scenarios with physical activity, air pollution, and risk of road traffic injury. in both cities, we noted that reduction in carbon dioxide emissions through an increase in active travel and less use of motor vehicles had larger health benefits per million population (7332 disability-adjusted life-years [DALYs] in London, and 12 516 in Delhi in 1 year) than from the increased use of lower-emission motor vehicles (160 DALYs in London, and 1696 in Delhi). However, combination of active travel and lower-emission motor vehicles would give the largest benefits (7439 DALYs in London, 12 995 in Delhi), notably from a reduction in the number of years of life lost from ischaemic heart disease (10-19% in London, 11-25% in Delhi). Although uncertainties remain, climate change mitigation in transport should benefit public health substantially. Policies to increase the acceptability, appeal, and safety of active urban travel, and discourage travel in private motor vehicles would provide larger health benefits than would policies that focus solely on lower-emission motor vehicles.The cumulative effects of individual purchase decisions are responsible for anthropogenic climate change. These very same private investment and consumption decisions are at the center of climate change mitigation efforts. This article shows that new market-based, incentive-compatible mechanisms could encourage win-win (green and profitable) behavior by private investors. Despite their availability and financial viability, people often overlook more efficient technologies in favor of the less efficient but familiar ones. The article provides a framework that shows how local policies can act as catalysts in providing profitable opportunities for private investors to bridge this so-called 'efficiency gap."Globalization and the dynamics of ecosystem sinks need be considered in post-Kyoto climate negotiations as they increasingly affect the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. Currently, the allocation of responsibility for greenhouse gas mitigation is based on territorial emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, process emissions and some land-use emissions. However, at least three additional factors can significantly alter a country's impact on climate from carbon dioxide emissions. First, international trade causes a separation of consumption from production, reducing domestic pollution at the expense of foreign producers, or vice versa. Second, international transportation emissions are not allocated to countries for the purpose of mitigation. Third, forest growth absorbs carbon dioxide and can contribute to both carbon sequestration and climate change protection. Here we quantify how these three factors change the carbon dioxide emissions allocated to China, Japan, Russia, USA, and European Union member countries. We show that international trade can change the carbon dioxide currently allocated to countries by up to 60% and that forest expansion can turn some countries into net carbon sinks. These factors are expected to become more dominant as fossil-fuel combustion and process emissions are mitigated and as international trade and forest sinks continue to grow. Emission inventories currently in wide-spread use help to understand the global carbon cycle, but for long-term climate change mitigation a deeper understanding of the interaction between the carbon cycle and society is needed. Restructuring international trade and investment flows to meet environmental objectives, together with the inclusion of forest sinks, are crucial issues that need consideration in the design of future climate policies. And even these additional issues do not capture the full impact of changes in the carbon cycle on the global climate system.Sustainable management of the world's land resources is a key to the provision of food for a more affluent global population and progress in other areas, such as improved water quality and mitigation of climate change. But the world's land resources are far too varied in their soils, native and managed vegetation, water resources and climatic norms and extremes to expect that a single, globally comprehensive strategy can be applied to meet such goals. Rather, lessons to guide programs aimed at achieving sustainability can be assembled from experience gained in discrete geographic, climatic and edaphic regions. One such region is the semiarid to subhumid North American Great Plains (hereafter NAGP), a region that since settlement has experienced many periods of economic boom and many of economic distress. Originally a grassland, its vulnerability to soil erosion, environmental problems associated with the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the overuse of surface and ground water is typical of other important grasslands converted to agriculture in South America and in the European and central Asiatic regions of the former Soviet Union. In addition, there is reason to believe that many of these grassland regions, most located in continental interiors, may be further stressed by climate changes caused by rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. One action that can potentially contribute to climate change mitigation is the production of herbaceous biomass, for which the NAGP region is well suited. This paper reviews the geography, history and current condition of the NAGP and offers suggestions about how the agriculture, economy and environment of this and similar regions around the world can be made more sustainable and able to contribute to a reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and consequent global warming.The climate-trade nexus gains increasing attention as governments are taking great efforts to forge a post-2012 climate change regime to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. This raises the issues of the scope of trade-related measures and of when and how they could be used. This paper discusses how far trade-related measures should be incorporated in that context. Drawing on an analogy to the Montreal Protocol and comparing developing country's climate mitigation and adaptation needs with the funding available, the paper argues that such measures should initially be applied only among Annex I or If countries. To discipline the use of unilateral trade measures at the international level, the paper emphasizes a need to define comparable climate efforts. Moreover, the Lieberman-Warner bill in the US Senate-taken as a proxy for future US climate legislation-is assessed, and found to be neither effective nor likely to be WTO-consistent. The paper is concluded by arguing that, in order to encourage developing countries to do more to combat climate change, developed countries should focus on carrots. Sticks can be incorporated, but only if they are credible and realistic and serve as a useful supplement to push developing countries to take actions or adopt policies and measures earlier than would otherwise have been the case. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.So-far, most climate mitigation studies look at climate policy strategies in a so-called first-best world, i.e. using the least expensive emission reduction options in all world regions and sectors. To explore the impact of limited participation of countries, we have run a set of scenarios that explore the impact of introducing a carbon tax in OECD, the BRIC countries (Brazil Russia, India and China) and the rest of the world. The results show that carbon taxes can effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, if low greenhouse gas concentration levels are to be achieved, early participation (in some form) of large developing countries is important to increase reduction potential. It should be noted that global carbon taxes (without additional assumptions) lead to relatively high costs in low-income regions. Cap-and-trade regimes have more flexibility to create a comparable distribution of costs amongst countries. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Analyses on the equity issues associated with climate change and the mitigation strategies that aim to attenuate it tend to focus on the international scale. These analyses tend to cite developing countries as the most vulnerable and disproportionately affected, and thus, the most likely to benefit from sound policies. However, fewer studies focus on the intra-national context within industrialized countries and the potential disparate impacts and benefits of climate change mitigation on lower socioeconomic groups and communities of color. In this article we investigate the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation strategies-some of which have been specified in the Scoping Plan for the implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32). We discuss: (1) the environmental equity concerns regarding certain forms of climate change mitigation; (2) the health co-benefits of AB 32 GHG mitigation policies; (3) the economic implications of different climate change policies on households of low socioeconomic status; and (4) future steps and research needs to leverage GHG mitigation as a health and economic opportunity for vulnerable communities that face disproportionate exposures to social stressors and environmental hazards.Climate models indicate that warming due to increase in shortwave absorption from the lowering of albedo caused by afforestation reduces and can even overcome, particularly at high latitudes, the cooling caused by the carbon drawdown. We use high resolution (0.05 x 0.05 degrees to 1 x 1 degrees) global satellite observations to investigate the effects of afforestation. Results are markedly different from the coarser (similar to 2.5 x similar to 2.5 degrees) model-based studies. Between 40 degrees S and 60 degrees N afforestation always results in cooling Many of the areas with the highest net carbon drawdown (drawdown after albedo effects) are at high latitudes. There is large zonal variability in drawdown and latitude is not a good indicator of afforestation efficiency. The overall efficiency of afforestation, defined as the net carbon drawdown divided by the total drawdown, is about 50%. By only considering the total drawdown and not considering albedo effects, the Kyoto Protocol carbon accounting rules grossly overestimate the cooling caused by afforestation drawdown. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.P>1. There is an urgent need for climate change mitigation, of which the promotion of renewable energy, such as from wind farms, is an important component. Birds are expected to be sensitive to wind farms, although effects vary between sites and species. Using data from 12 upland wind farms in the UK, we examine whether there is reduced occurrence of breeding birds close to wind farm infrastructure (turbines, access tracks and overhead transmission lines). To our knowledge, this is the first such multi-site comparison examining wind farm effects on the distribution of breeding birds. 2. Bird distribution was assessed using regular surveys during the breeding season. We took a conservative analytical approach, with bird occurrence modelled as a function of habitat, before examining the additional effects of wind farm proximity. 3. Seven of the 12 species studied exhibited significantly lower frequencies of occurrence close to the turbines, after accounting for habitat variation, with equivocal evidence of turbine avoidance in a further two. No species were more likely to occur close to the turbines. There was no evidence that raptors altered flight height close to turbines. Turbines were avoided more strongly than tracks, whilst there was no evidence for consistent avoidance of overhead transmission lines connecting sites to the national grid. 4. Levels of turbine avoidance suggest breeding bird densities may be reduced within a 500-m buffer of the turbines by 15-53%, with buzzard Buteo buteo, hen harrier Circus cyaneus, golden plover Pluvialis apricaria, snipe Gallinago gallinago, curlew Numenius arquata and wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe most affected. 5. Despite being a correlative study, with potential for Type I error, we failed to detect any systematic bias in our likelihood of detecting significant effects. 6.Synthesis and applications. This provides the first evidence for consistent and significant effects of wind farms on a range of upland bird species, emphasizing the need for a strategic approach to ensure such development avoids areas with high densities of potentially vulnerable species. Our results reduce the uncertainty over the magnitude of such effects, and will improve future environmental impacts assessments.Forestry and land-use change are often considered in the context of a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, in recognition of their influence on net carbon flux and their ability to mitigate climate change via increased carbon sequestration. The climatic impacts of forests are not limited to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, however, and a growing body of research suggests that albedo-related climatic changes stemming from land-use change may diminish or counteract the climatic benefits of sequestration. Because forests are generally darker than bare or agricultural land they absorb relatively more solar radiation, which may exert a local worming influence. This phenomenon is known as the "albedo effect." Thus, a "carbon-only" accounting approach that ignores albedo impacts can significantly overestimate the climatic benefit of offsets, in particular, afforestation. In the worst case this could result in a forest offset actually contributing to worming and, in general, may reduce the environmental effectiveness of some forest offsets. Therefore a cap-and-trade system design question is whether to recognize the albedo effect into forest offset accounting frameworks. We propose that forest offset design moves toward, a "carbon-equivalent" accounting approach that aggregates the climatic impacts of sequestration and of surface albedo when evaluating forest offset projects. This change would result in climate mitigation efforts taking a more targeted geographic approach that emphasizes maintaining or increasing forest cover in the tropics, and that avoids afforestation in boreal and high-latitude temperate regions. Currently developing regional cap-and-trade systems in North America, however, give afforestation projects priority for offset consideration. By staying on the current path, efforts in these initiatives directed toward forest offsets may be inefficient or ineffective and, at worst, counterproductive, in large parts of the area they cover. Incorporating both carbon and albedo effects into policymaking will lead to more informed and effective forest offset design.This Series has examined the health implications of policies aimed at tackling climate change. Assessments of mitigation strategies in four domains-household energy, transport, food and agriculture, and electricity generation-suggest an important message: that actions to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions often, although not always, entail net benefits for health. In some cases, the potential benefits seem to be substantial. This evidence provides an additional and immediate rationale for reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions beyond that of climate change mitigation alone. Climate change is an increasing and evolving threat to the health of populations worldwide. At the same time, major public health burdens remain in many regions. Climate change therefore adds further urgency to the task of addressing international health priorities, such as the UN Millennium Development Goals. Recognition that mitigation strategies can have substantial benefits for both health and climate protection offers the possibility of policy choices that are potentially both more cost effective and socially attractive than are those that address these priorities independently.The future demand for land for mining and quarrying will be affected by a large number of economic, technological, environmental and social issues within the UK. Global developments also have a role to play. Although mining and quarrying account for only 0.9 per cent of the land area of England, the impact of this activity is considerable. Minerals are essential to the economy, for energy, construction, infrastructure and manufacturing, while their extraction has effects on the environment and on public perception. This paper examines current scientific understanding of the context of mining and quarrying. with particular reference to its impact on land use, along with the spatial relationship between minerals - which can only be worked where they occur - and other forms of land use and designation in the 'post-industrial' landscape of Britain. Looking out to 2060 and beyond, developments which may influence demand for minerals include climate change mitigation and adaptation; energy, food and raw material security; and new construction, manufacturing, recycling and re-use technologies. Factors influencing the supply side include the structure and ownership of the mining and quarrying industry, new extraction, processing and environmental technologies, ecosystem service provision, societal attitudes and land access. Although prediction carries a high level of uncertainty. continuous development of the regulatory framework is, and will remain, a major and pervasive factor in the relationship between mining and quarrying and land use. (C) 2009 Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The fact that cumulative carbon dioxide emissions are more important than annual emission rates calls for a fresh approach to climate change mitigation. one option would be a mandatory link between carbon sequestration and fossil fuel extraction.This paper reviews the scientific information related to climate change impacts on wetlands and functions of human-made wetlands such as paddy rice field and treatment wetland are described to partially compensate for the loss of natural wetlands. Wetlands are among the world's most productive environments and are cradles of biological diversity, providing the water and primary productivity upon which countless species of plants and animals depend for survival. Considerable evidence suggests that some global warming is occurring, which has important implications for wetland system as well as human life and wildlife. Direct effects of climate change on wetlands are likely to be accentuated by human induced changes that will increase stress to wetland ecosystems. The Ramsar Classification System for Wetland Type provides three broad categories: marine/ coastal wetlands, inland wetlands, and human-made wetlands. Human-made wetlands are as important as natural wetlands, and the largest human-made wetland is a paddy rice field (130,000,000 ha) taking about 18% of total global wetland, which is second only to natural fresh wetlands. Paddy rice fields provide not only rice production for food, but also diverse multi-functionalities such as flood control, groundwater recharge, soil erosion control, water quality purification, air purification and cooling, wildlife habitat, amenity and social benefits. The economic value of multi-functionalities estimated by contingent valuation method (CVM) and travel cost method was in the range of U$ 9.75-11.46 billion, which is greater than the value of rice production itself in Korea. Unfortunately, there is an indication of decreased area in paddy rice field in Korea after 1990 showing about 20% decrease in 15 years. Another human-made wetland type is a constructed wetland for water purification, and thousands hectares of wetlands are scheduled to be constructed for reservoir water quality improvement in next 5 years in Korea, and their application is expected to be more common in near future. There is a growing consensus that wetlands are critically important ecosystems that provide globally significant social, economic and environmental benefits. Wise use of human-made wetlands is as important as conservation of natural wetlands, which can be a viable element to overall climate change mitigation and can partially compensate for the loss of natural wetlands.Background and Purpose: The estimation of forest woody biomass has a significant role in forestry, due to several reasons. One of the reasons is that good woody, biomass estimation is important for the planning of forest woody assortments production, for main commercial roundwood assortment and for assortments like "waste wood" or "recovered wood" as a potential for electricity (heat generation(firewood, wood bricks, wood pellets etc.). Economic and political meaning of woody biomass estimation is important to know forest biomass resources in the country and present these facts to international institutions or in treaties as needed. The estimation is also important for strategic planning of the use of renewable energy sources from woody biomass. Oil the other hand, estimation of the carbon content in forest woody biomass has importance in global climate mitigation policy and processes (Kyoto- and post-Kyoto period). The purpose of this paper is to present methodology application for estimation of forest woody biomass and its carbon content according to main tree components, on the forest stand scale. Material and Methods: As research area, two representative Croatian forest communities/stands were selected. The one represents flooded low-land pedunculate oak forest of Pokupski Basin, and the other represents mountain fir-beech forest of the Gorski Kotar region. Emphasis in the paper is oil the methodology which was developed for the purpose of research. The methods applied in this study consist of: a) dendrometrical measurements oil selected forest stands (research sites), b) sampling of main tree components and sample analyses in laboratory and c) calculation of forest woody biomass and its carbon content according to main tree components. Results: General result of the laboratory analyses of the samples of,of main tree components is that the Carbon content in biomass was around 50,0% of the dry matter of a component. In line with volume allocation of main tree components are the biomass of tree components and the content of carbon sequestered I'll these components. Stein had the largest share in total tree biomass while foliage or needle biomass had the smallest share. The shares of main it-cc components in total biomass of the tree depend oil morphology, each of tree species. Conclusion: This research was a pilot and pioneering research of forest biomass in Croatian forestry, and it should be continued to acquire better knowledge of relations in forest woody biomass in main forest communities in Croatia.Electricity generation in different countries is based on a variety of fuel mixes compromising solid fossil fuels, oil, natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy sources. While in the past, national energy agendas have directed the optimal utilisation of domestic resources as a means to achieve supply security, today's environmental debates are influencing the electricity fuel mix in new directions. In this paper we examine the electricity sectors of Germany, Greece, Poland and the UK in an attempt to identify the policy and technology choices implemented in each country. The country selection is deliberately made to facilitate an extended overview of national agendas, varying domestic energy resources and industrialisation levels but still within the common EU framework. The focus is placed on policies related to two objectives, climate change mitigation and improving electricity supply security. The theoretical framework developed provides the possibility to assess the electricity sector independence at a national level using a multi-parametric analysis of the fuel mix data. Through a comparative assessment of the knowledge gained in different countries the authors provide insights and suggestions that allow for an improved understanding of the trade-offs and synergies that various policy options may introduce. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increased carbon uptake of land in response to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration and nitrogen deposition could slow down the rate of CO2 increase and facilitate climate change mitigation. Using a coupled model of climate, ocean, and land biogeochemistry, we show that atmospheric nitrogen deposition and atmospheric CO2 have a strong synergistic effect on the carbon uptake of land. Our best estimate of the global land carbon uptake in the 1990s is 1.34 PgC/yr. The synergistic effect could explain 47% of this carbon uptake, which is higher than either the effect of increasing nitrogen deposition (29%) or CO2 fertilization (24%). By 2030, rising carbon uptake on land has a potential to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration by about 41 ppm out of which 16 ppm reduction would come from the synergetic response of land to the CO2 and nitrogen fertilization effects. The strength of the synergy depends largely on the cooccurrence of high nitrogen deposition regions with nonagricultural ecosystems. Our study suggests that reforestation and sensible ecosystem management in industrialized regions may have larger potential for climate change mitigation than anticipated.Most climate change policy attention has been addressed to long-term options, such as inducing new, low-carbon energy technologies and creating cap-and-trade regimes for emissions. We use a behavioral approach to examine the reasonably achievable potential for near-term reductions by altered adoption and use of available technologies in US homes and nonbusiness travel. We estimate the plasticity of 17 household action types in 5 behaviorally distinct categories by use of data on the most effective documented interventions that do not involve new regulatory measures. These interventions vary by type of action and typically combine several policy tools and strong social marketing. National implementation could save an estimated 123 million metric tons of carbon per year in year 10, which is 20% of household direct emissions or 7.4% of US national emissions, with little or no reduction in household well-being. The potential of household action deserves increased policy attention. Future analyses of this potential should incorporate behavioral as well as economic and engineering elements.About 72 million households in rural India do not have access to electricity and rely primarily on traditional biofuels. This research investigates how rural electrification could be achieved in India using different energy sources and what the effects for climate change mitigation could be We use the. Regional Energy Model (REM) to develop scenarios for rural electrification for the period 2005-2030 and to assess the effects on greenhouse gas emissions, primary energy use and costs. We compare the business-as-usual scenario (BAU) with different electrification scenarios based on electricity from renewable energy, diesel and the grid. Our results indicate that diesel systems tend to have the highest CO2 emissions, followed by grid systems. Rural electrification with primarily renewable energy-based end-uses could save up to 99% of total CO2 emissions and 35% of primary energy use in 2030 compared to BAU. Our research indicates that electrification with decentralised diesel systems is likely to be the most expensive option. Rural electrification with renewable energy tends to be the most cost-effective option when end-uses are predominantly based on renewable energy, but turns out to be more costly than grid extensions when electric end-use devices are predominantly used. This research therefore elaborates whether renewable energy is a viable option for rural electrification and climate change mitigation in rural India and gives policy recommendations. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current carbon accounting methodologies do not accommodate activities that involve emissions reductions from both land-use change and energy production. This paper analyzes the climate change mitigation potential of charcoal production in East Africa by examining the impact of changing both land management and technology. Current production in a major charcoal producing region of Kenya where charcoal is made as a by-product of land clearance for commercial grain production is modeled as the "business-as-usual" scenario. Alternative production systems are proposed based on coppice management of native or exotic trees. improved kilns are also considered. Changes in aboveground, belowground, and soil carbon are modeled and two distinct baseline assessments are analyzed: one is based on a fixed area of land and one is based on the quantity of non-renewable fuel that is displaced by project activities. The magnitude of carbon emissions reductions varies depending on land management as well as the choice of carbonization technology. However, these variations are smaller than the variations arising from the choice of baseline methodology. The fixed-land baseline yields annualized carbon emission reductions equivalent to 0.5-2.8 tons per year (t y(-1)) with no change in production technology and 0.7-3.5 t y(-1) with improved kilns. In contrast, the baseline defined by the quantity of displaced non-renewable fuel is 2-6 times larger, yielding carbon emissions reductions of 1.4-12.9 t y(-1) with no change in production technology and 3.2-20.4 t y(-1) with improved kilns. The results demonstrate the choice of baseline, often a political rather than scientific decision, is critical in assessing carbon emissions reductions. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article assesses the long-term economic and climatic effects of introducing price caps and price floors in hypothetical global climate change mitigation policy. Based on emission trends, abatement costs and equilibrium climate sensitivity from IPCC and IEA reports, this quantitative analysis confirms that price caps could significantly reduce economic uncertainty. This uncertainty stems primarily from unpredictable economic growth and energy prices, and ultimately unabated emission trends. In addition, the development of abatement technologies is uncertain. Furthermore, this analysis shows that rigid targets may entail greater economic risks with little or no comparative advantage for the climate. More ambitious emission objectives, combined with price caps and price floors, could still entail significantly lower expected costs while driving similar, or even slightly better, climatic outcomes in probabilistic terms.Large amounts of carbon (C) have been released into the atmosphere over the past centuries. Less than half of this C stays in the atmosphere. The remainder is taken up by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. Where does the C come from and where and when does this uptake occur? We address these questions by providing new estimates of regional land-use emissions and natural carbon fluxes for the 1700-2000 period, simultaneously considering multiple anthropogenic (e.g. land and energy demand) and biochemical factors in a geographically explicit manner. The observed historical atmospheric CO2 concentration profile for the 1700 to 2000 period has been reproduced well. The terrestrial natural biosphere has been a major carbon sink, due to changes in climate, atmospheric CO2, nitrogen and management. Due to land-use change large amounts of carbon have been emitted into the atmosphere. The net effect was an emission of 35 Pg C into the atmosphere for the 1700 to 2000 period. If land use had remained constant at its distribution in 1700, then the terrestrial C uptake would have increased by 142 Pg C. This overall difference of including or excluding land-use changes (i.e. 177 Pg C) comes to more than half of the historical fossil-fuel related emissions of 308 Pg C. Historically, global land-use emissions were predominantly caused by the expansion of cropland and pasture, while wood harvesting (for timber and fuel wood) only played a minor role. These findings are robust even when changing some of the important drivers like the extent of historical land-use changes. Under varying assumptions, land-use emissions over the past three centuries could have increased up to 20%, but remained significantly lower than from other sources. Combining the regional land-use and natural C fluxes, North America and Europe were net C sources before 1900, but turned into sinks during the twentieth century. Nowadays, these fluxes are a magnitude smaller than energy- and industry-related emissions. Tropical regions were C neutral prior to 1950, but then accelerated deforestation turned these regions into major C sources. The energy- and industry-related emissions are currently increasing in many tropical regions, but are still less than the land-use emissions. Based on the presented relevance of the land-use and natural fluxes for the historical C cycle and the significance of fossil-fuel emissions nowadays, there is a need for an integrated approach for energy, nature and land use in evaluating possible climate change mitigation policies.China and India are heavily dependent on high-carbon fossil fuels. This article elaborates the implications of low-carbon energy transitions in the two countries, which can mitigate their serious contribution to climate change while allowing economic growth. Three modelling case studies are presented: for the Chinese power sector, the economy of Beijing and rural Indian households without access to electricity. They demonstrate a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, while costs are likely to increase. Financial assistance and technology transfer will be needed to support their efforts towards a climate-friendly low-carbon economy.Urban areas contain 40% of the population and contribute 75% of the Chinese national economy. Thus, a better understanding of urban energy uses is necessary for Chinese decision-makers at various levels to address energy security, climate change mitigation, and local pollution abatement. Therefore, this paper addresses three key questions: What is the urban contribution to China's energy usage and CO(2) emissions? What is the contribution of large cities, and what alternate energy-economy pathways are they following? How have energy uses and CO(2) emissions transformed in the last two decades in key Chinese cities? This three-tier analysis illustrates the changes in urban energy uses and CO(2) emissions in China. The results show that the urban contributions make up 84% of China's commercial energy usage. The 35 largest cities in China, which contain 18% of the population. contribute 40% of China's energy uses and CO(2) emissions. In four provincial cities, the per capita energy usage and CO(2) emissions have increased several-fold. Rapid progress was made in reducing the carbon intensity of economic activities in cities throughout the 1990s, but alarmingly, such progress has either slowed down or been reversed in the last few years. These results have important policy implications. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Technology learning can make a significant difference to renewable energy as a mitigation option in South Africa's electricity sector. This article considers scenarios implemented in a Markal energy model used for mitigation analysis. It outlines the empirical evidence that unit costs of renewable energy technologies decline, considers the theoretical background and how this can be implemented in modeling. Two scenarios are modelled, assuming 27% and 50% of renewable electricity by 2050, respectively. The results show a dramatic shift in the mitigation costs. In the less ambitious scenario, instead of imposing a cost of Rand 52/t CO(2)-eq (at 10% discount rate), reduced costs due to technology learning turn renewables into negative cost option. Our results show that technology learning flips the costs, saving R143. At higher penetration rate, the incremental costs added beyond the base case decline from R92 per ton to R3. Including assumptions about technology learning turns renewable from a higher-cost mitigation option to one close to zero. We conclude that a future world in which global investment in renewables drives down unit costs makes it a much more cost-effective and sustainable mitigation option in South Africa. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent proposals at the UNFCCC meeting in Bali in December 2007 suggest that a 2% levy on the CDM could finance adaptation costs in developing regions. other proposals include extending the scope of the levy to emissions trading. This study applies an integrated Assessment Model to gain insight in the interactions between adaptation costs, residual damages and mitigation costs and to analyse the effectiveness of a 2% levy on both the CDM and emissions trading from developing countries. We show that adaptation is especially important in lower income regions where damages are higher. The revenues of a 2% levy strongly depend on both the climate mitigation target and the burden-sharing regime. A more stringent climate mitigation target results in more emissions trade and, in the longer run, less need for adaptation. Both factors increase the share of adaptation costs that can be funded. The burden-sharing regime strongly affects the revenues of a 2% levy as well: relatively more stringent targets for developed countries increase the revenues of a 2% levy. However, in the next two decades the share of adaptation that can be financed remains well below 20% in most cases. Additional funding mechanisms are therefore necessary to substantially finance adaptation costs in developing countries. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new model for environmental and urban sustainability 'living architecture' that connects artifice with the natural world through the use of materials that possess some of the properties of living systems, and can therefore actively exchange energy with the ecosphere, is proposed.Evaluating multicomponent climate change mitigation strategies requires knowledge of the diverse direct and indirect effects of emissions. Methane, ozone, and aerosols are linked through atmospheric chemistry so that emissions of a single pollutant can affect several species. We calculated atmospheric composition changes, historical radiative forcing, and forcing per unit of emission due to aerosol and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions in a coupled composition-climate model. We found that gas-aerosol interactions substantially alter the relative importance of the various emissions. In particular, methane emissions have a larger impact than that used in current carbon-trading schemes or in the Kyoto Protocol. Thus, assessments of multigas mitigation policies, as well as any separate efforts to mitigate warming from short-lived pollutants, should include gas-aerosol interactions.Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good of carbon sequestration and local and national level contributions to livelihoods for more than half a billion users. Forest commons are a particularly important class of forests generating these multiple benefits. Institutional arrangements to govern forest commons are believed to substantially influence carbon storage and livelihood contributions, especially when they incorporate local knowledge and decentralized decision making. However, hypothesized relationships between institutional factors and multiple benefits have never been tested on data from multiple countries. By using original data on 80 forest commons in 10 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, we show that larger forest size and greater rule-making autonomy at the local level are associated with high carbon storage and livelihood benefits; differences in ownership of forest commons are associated with trade-offs between livelihood benefits and carbon storage. We argue that local communities restrict their consumption of forest products when they own forest commons, thereby increasing carbon storage. In showing rule-making autonomy and ownership as distinct and important institutional influences on forest outcomes, our results are directly relevant to international climate change mitigation initiatives such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and avoided deforestation. Transfer of ownership over larger forest commons patches to local communities, coupled with payments for improved carbon storage can contribute to climate change mitigation without adversely affecting local livelihoods.We analyze climate change in a cost-benefit framework, using the emission and concentration profiles of Wigley et al. (Nature 379(6562):240-243, 1996). They present five scenarios that cover the period 1990-2300 and are designed to reach stabilized concentration levels of 350, 450, 550, 650 and 750 ppmv, respectively. We assume that the damage cost in each year t is proportional to the corresponding gross world product and the square of the atmospheric temperature increase (Delta T(t)). The latter is estimated with a simple two-box model (representing the atmosphere and deep ocean). Coupling the damage cost with the abatement cost, we interpolate between the five scenarios to find the one that is optimal in the sense of minimizing the sum of discounted annual (abatement plus damage) costs over a time horizon of N years. Our method is simpler than 'traditional' models with the same purpose, and thus allows for a more transparent sensitivity study with respect to the uncertainties of all parameters involved. We report our central result in terms of the stabilized emission level E (o) and concentration level p (o) (i.e. their values at t = 300 years) of the optimal scenario. For the central parameter values (that is, N = 150 years, a discount rate r (dis) = 2%/year and a growth rate r (gro) = 1%/year of gross world product) we find E (o) = 8.0 GtCO(2)/year and p (o) = 496 ppmv. Varying the parameters over a wide range, we find that the optimal emission level remains within a remarkably narrow range, from about 6.0 to 12 GtCO(2)/year for all plausible parameter values. To assess the significance of the uncertainties we focus on the social cost penalty, defined as the extra cost incurred by society relative to the optimum if one makes the wrong choice of the emission level as a result of erroneous damage and abatement cost estimates. In relative terms the cost penalty turns out to be remarkably insensitive to errors. For example, if the true damage costs are three times larger or smaller than the estimate, the total social cost of global climate change increases by less than 20% above its minimum at the true optimal emission level. Because of the enormous magnitude of the total costs involved with climate change (mitigation), however, even a small relative error implies large additional expenses in absolute terms. To evaluate the benefit of reducing cost uncertainties, we plot the cost penalty as function of the uncertainty in relative damage and abatement costs, expressed as geometric standard deviation and standard deviation respectively. If continued externality analysis reduces the geometric standard deviation of relative damage cost estimates from 5 to 4, the benefit is 0.05% of the present value G (tot) of total gross word product over 150 years (about $3.9 x 10(15)), and if further research reduces the standard deviation of relative abatement costs from 1 to 0.5, the benefit is 0.03% of G (tot) .The climate change debate in the United States has now moved beyond arguments about whether climate change is real and man-made to focus on what the country should do about the threat. This Essay takes on and debunks the "climate change winner" argument. That argument asserts that the United States is likely to fare well in a warmer world, at least compared to most other states, and therefore should invest less, rather than more, in mitigation efforts. We explain that existing estimates of the impact of climate change on the United. States systematically understate the likely economic impact of climate change, and we provide rough estimates of what a more complete accounting would reveal. Existing estimates fail to account for a variety of the costs that climate change will impose, and ignore the ways in which climate change impacts abroad are likely to spill over into the United States. By looking more carefully at these omitted costs, this Essay shows that the United States, acting in its own self-interest, should try to combat climate change. A more complete accounting of the costs reveals that the United States would be better off paying the full cost of climate change mitigation (if doing so were possible) rather than allowing the world to continue in a "business as usual "fashion. This conclusion is even stronger if Europe and perhaps the rest of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are assumed to shoulder some of the costs. The point is not that the United States or the OECD should actually bear these costs alone, or even that it would. be possible to do so, but rather that there is a strong case for action by the United States even if some countries refuse to cooperate. This Essay shows that the United States has reason to take prompt and aggressive action to address climate change, not out of benevolence or guilt, but out of self-interest.The urgency for adaptation actions in response to climate risks is rapidly growing and climate change mitigation efforts alone are insufficient to avoid further, and often negative, impacts. Although most agricultural producers respond rapidly to changes in their external environment, science needs to play an important, partial role in instigating adaptation actions that go beyond the ongoing, experience-based response process. This requires well-structured, conceptual frameworks that connect science with action. These frameworks must also ensure that the scientific input into the adaptation process remains salient, credible and legitimate. For the field of agriculture and environmental sciences we review the urgency and the theoretical basis for such engagement processes. On the basis of this we propose an adaptation cycle that first, provides a reflective analysis-action continuum; second, ensures broad-based scientific input and feedback; and third, helps to increase the adaptive capacity of everyone involved (including farmers, policy-makers and scientists).EU Heads of State and Government agreed in March 2007 that the EU will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 within an international post-2012 climate agreement, provided that other developed (Annex I) countries commit to comparable reductions. Within this context, this paper first explores the pros and cons of many possible conceptual approaches to assess the comparability of the mitigation efforts by Annex I countries. We selected six approaches for further analysis, which represent efforts well and are technically feasible. The implications of each of these six approaches were analysed in terms of the reductions and abatement costs that must be made by different Annex I countries to meet an aggregate reduction of 20% and 30%, respectively, below 1990 levels by 2020. The analysis indicates that significant reductions are necessary for all developed countries. This study shows that reductions by the EU of at least 30%, combined with comparable reduction efforts by other developed countries to meet the aggregate Annex I reduction target of 30% by 2020 and support of developed countries for developing countries to keep their emissions 15-30% below the baseline, are sufficient to achieve the EU climate goal of 2 degrees C. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Methane is the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas in the atmosphere next to carbon dioxide. Its global warming potential (GWP) for a time horizon of 100 years is 25, which makes it an attractive target for climate mitigation policies. Although the methane GWP traditionally includes the methane indirect effects on the concentrations of ozone and stratospheric water vapour, it does not take into account the production of carbon dioxide from methane oxidation. We argue here that this CO2-induced effect should be included for fossil sources of methane, which results in slightly larger GWP values for all time horizons. If the global temperature change potential is used as an alternative climate metric, then the impact of the CO2-induced effect is proportionally much larger. We also discuss what the correction term should be for methane from anthropogenic biogenic sources.The climate benefit and economic cost of an international mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) will depend on the design of reference levels for crediting emission reductions. We compare the impacts of six proposed reference level designs on emission reduction levels and on cost per emission reduction using a stylized partial equilibrium model (the open source impacts of REDD incentives spreadsheet; OSIRIS). The model explicitly incorporates national incentives to participate in an international REDD mechanism as well as international leakage of deforestation emissions. Our results show that a REDD mechanism can provide cost-efficient climate change mitigation benefits under a broad range of reference level designs. We find that the most effective reference level designs balance incentives to reduce historically high deforestation emissions with incentives to maintain historically low deforestation emissions. Estimates of emission reductions under REDD depend critically on the degree to which demand for tropical frontier agriculture generates leakage. This underscores the potential importance to REDD of complementary strategies to supply agricultural needs outside of the forest frontier.It has been proposed that growing crop varieties with higher canopy albedo would lower summer-time temperatures over North America and Eurasia and provide a partial mitigation of global warming ('bio-geoengineering') (Ridgwell et al 2009 Curr. Biol. 19 1-5). Here, we use a coupled ocean-atmosphere-vegetation model (HadCM3) with prescribed agricultural regions, to investigate to what extent the regional effectiveness of crop albedo bio-geoengineering might be influenced by a progressively warming climate as well as assessing the impacts on regional hydrological cycling and primary productivity. Consistent with previous analysis, we find that the averted warming due to increasing crop canopy albedo by 0.04 is regionally and seasonally specific, with the largest cooling of similar to 1 degrees C for Europe in summer whereas in the low latitude monsoonal SE Asian regions of high density cropland, the greatest cooling is experienced in winter. In this study we identify potentially important positive impacts of increasing crop canopy albedo on soil moisture and primary productivity in European cropland regions, due to seasonal increases in precipitation. We also find that the background climate state has an important influence on the predicted regional effectiveness of bio-geoengineering on societally-relevant timescales (ca 100 years). The degree of natural climate variability and its dependence on greenhouse forcing that are evident in our simulations highlights the difficulties faced in the detection and verification of climate mitigation in geoengineering schemes. However, despite the small global impact, regionally focused schemes such as crop albedo bio-geoengineering have detection advantages.This article presents the key findings of the final chapter of the recently published World Trade non (WTO)/United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report on Trade and Climate Change. It provides an overview of the range of national climate change mitigation policies, including possible border measures, and relevant WTO rules. The development of such policies has increasingly gained pace over the past two decades, and their swim and complexity have increased. It is therefore fundamental to understand better their key features in order to draw a clearer picture of their overall effect and potential impact on environmental protection, sustainable development, and trade.Death and desire exist in a critical tension, contributing to climate change as a crisis of modern civilisation. Public international environmental law, in particular the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Climate, is a point of potential redemption for the deaths and loss that are predicted to occur with global warming. Arguably, climate change is a cumulative outcome of a 'shift' in governance from state control and concern about 'death' to a regulation of 'desire' or life. In the modern governance of life and desire by 'Northern' states, there has been a successive deflection of the ecological limits of 'civilisation' into the colonial and postcolonial space of the peoples and places of the developing world. In the first instance, these deflections were achieved through the instruments of law as sovereignty in colonial periods. In a postcolonial era, such deflections are implemented as 'regulation' adopting the techniques of a governance of desire to realise the processes of climate change mitigation, credit and trade, notwithstanding the language of co-benefits for local communities that is emerging at international law. Tensions about this history of deflection and appropriation at an international level surface in the climate change context around the principle of a 'common but differentiated responsibility'. Whether such tensions can be resolved, at least partially, will be important to whether any post-Copenhagen agreement is achieved and whether civilisation is able to avert crisis.This paper examines Sweden's role as a pioneer in mitigating climate change. Critical discourse analysis of climate and energy policy unveils Sweden's ambition to 'lead-by-example', by virtue of a win-win combination of economy and environment via stringent regulations and an early-mover strategy on eco-innovations. The extent of the unilateral approach is constrained by concerns for the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries and a persistent debate on the fate of Swedish nuclear power. Whilst Sweden has made significant demonstrative progress in reducing emissions and introducing renewable energy sources, these issues may limit her role as a pioneer in years to come.The Canadian VCR is a climate change mitigation program that relies on firms' desire to signal environmental responsibility to external stakeholders through voluntary information disclosure. We analyze indicators of strategic behavior through three measures of engagement with the VCR program ( annual participation behavior, quality of action plans and repeat participation), and test for differences in these measures among firms subjected to different regulatory climates that arise over time, across provinces and across economic sectors. Our findings suggest an increased perception of a regulatory threat in later years, as evidenced by an increase in participation rates, higher quality of action plans and higher rates of repeat participation. We also find higher levels of engagement with the VCR program in provinces with large petroleum ( Alberta) and manufacturing ( Ontario) industries and that have established provincial level greenhouse gas reporting mechanisms, and in certain sectors such as petroleum, electric utilities and to some extent services. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Climate change mitigation via a reduction in the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal requirement for reducing global warming, its impacts, and the degree of adaptation required. We present a simple conceptual model of anthropogenic CO2 emissions to highlight the trade off between delay in commencing mitigation, and the strength of mitigation then required to meet specific atmospheric CO2 stabilization targets. We calculate the effects of alternative emission profiles on atmospheric CO2 and global temperature change over a millennial timescale using a simple coupled carbon cycle-climate model. For example, if it takes 50 years to transform the energy sector and the maximum rate at which emissions can be reduced is -2.5% year(-1), delaying action until 2020 would lead to stabilization at 540 ppm. A further 20 year delay would result in a stabilization level of 730 ppm, and a delay until 2060 would mean stabilising at over 1,000 ppm. If stabilization targets are met through delayed action, combined with strong rates of mitigation, the emissions profiles result in transient peaks of atmospheric CO2 (and potentially temperature) that exceed the stabilization targets. Stabilization at 450 ppm requires maximum mitigation rates of -3% to -5% year(-1), and when delay exceeds 2020, transient peaks in excess of 550 ppm occur. Consequently tipping points for certain Earth system components may be transgressed. Avoiding dangerous climate change is more easily achievable if global mitigation action commences as soon as possible. Starting mitigation earlier is also more effective than acting more aggressively once mitigation has begun.The utilisation of fluctuating renewable energy sources is increasing world-wide; however, so is the concern about how to integrate these resources into the energy systems. The design of optimal energy resource mixes in climate change mitigation actions is a challenge faced in many places. This optimisation may be implemented according to economic objectives or with a focus on techno-operational aims and within these two main groupings, several different criteria may potentially be applied to the design process. In this article, a series of optimisation criteria are reviewed and subsequently applied to an energy system model of Western Denmark in an analysis of how to use heat pumps for the integration of wind power. The analyses demonstrate that the fact whether the system in question is modelled as operated in island mode or not has a large impact on the definition of the optimal wind power level. If energy savings and CO2 emission reductions beyond the system boundary are not included in the analysis, then it is either not feasible to expand wind power to a high degree or it is conversely more feasible to install relocation technologies that can utilise any excess production. The analyses also demonstrate that different optimisation criteria render different optimal designs. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production of woodchips in short rotation coppices (SRC) presents a new market opportunity, which is strengthened by both the EU agricultural policy and the European emission trading system This market will grow substantially in the next few decades Woodchips can substitute for fossil fuel to generate heat and power as well as provide car fuels from biomass The SRC market will interfere with both the food and feed markets Farmers and other stakeholders in the woodchip market have to decide whether to go for the SRC option or not Examples from Sweden and Germany show how different stakeholders along the production line including end-users and financial institutions value chances and risks in the SRC market. The assumption that SRC is an environmentally friendly and economically promising option that can contribute to climate change mitigation (for example Pieprzyk, 2009) is lacking scientific evidence and reliable data An assessment on the total impact(s) to the environment and society is thus needed in this paper research concepts are reviewed for a comprehensive analysis outlining a research agenda to evaluate SRC markets. One result of the review is that socio-economic research in SRC requires transdisciplinary work integrating the fields of ecology, technology, business studies, and economics with innovation, stakeholders' involvement, and societal impacts on regional economiesOver the past 20 years there has been growing interest in the concept of fertilizing the ocean with iron to abate global warming. This interest was catalyzed by basic scientific experiments showing that iron limits primary production in certain regions of the ocean. The approach-considered a form of "geoengineering"-is to induce phytoplankton blooms through iron addition, with the goal of producing organic particles that sink to the deep ocean, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. With the controversy surrounding the most recent scientific iron fertilization experiment in the Southern Ocean (LOHAFEX) and the ongoing discussion about restrictions on large-scale iron fertilization activities by the London Convention, the debate about the potential use of iron fertilization for geoengineering has never been more public or more pronounced. To help inform this debate, we present a synoptic view of the two-decade history of iron fertilization, from scientific experiments to commercial enterprises designed to trade credits for ocean fertilization on a developing carbon market. Throughout these two decades there has been a repeated cycle: Scientific experiments are followed by media and commercial interest and this triggers calls for caution and the need for more experiments. Over the years, some scientists have repeatedly pointed out that the idea is both unproven and potentially ecologically disruptive, and models have consistently shown that at the limit, the approach could not substantially change the trajectory of global warming. Yet, interest and investment in ocean fertilization as a climate mitigation strategy have only grown and intensified, fueling media reports that have misconstrued scientific results, and conflated scientific experimentation with geoengineering. We suggest that it is time to break this two-decade cycle, and argue that we know enough about ocean fertilization to say that it should not be considered further as a means to mitigate climate change. But, ocean fertilization research should not be halted: if used appropriately and applied to testable hypotheses, it is a powerful research tool for understanding the responses of ocean ecosystems in the context of climate change.Forests help mitigate climate change by sequestering atmospheric carbon. However, boreal and high-latitude temperate forests may also contribute to global warming due to the albedo effect. The relative effects of carbon sequestration and albedo can be quantified in terms of radiative forcing. We present a stylized, stand-level analysis to determine the optimal rotation age when considering a tax/subsidy scheme based on radiative forcing and the notion of equivalent carbon emissions. Additional management decision variables considered include species choice and regeneration effort, since these can impact the albedo effect. We demonstrate analytically that the optimal rotation length is likely shortened when albedo-related equivalent emissions are incorporated, relative to a policy based only on carbon. Empirical results indicate that rotation ages do decrease relative to a "carbon only" policy, and approach the traditional (timber only) Faustmann rotation age as equivalent emission rates increase. Our results suggest that forestation does not necessarily provide climatic benefits in all circumstances, and that. at the margin, other opportunities for carbon reduction (e.g. abatement), or pursuing forestation in other locations, become more attractive. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change mitigation requires a rapid decrease of global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from their present value of 8.4 GtC/year to, as of current knowledge, approximately 1 GtC/year by the end of the century. The necessary decrease of GHG emissions will have large impacts on existing and new investments with long lifetimes, such as coal-fired power plants or buildings. Strategic decision making for major investments can be facilitated by indicators that express the likelihood of costly retrofitting or shut-down of carbon intensive equipment over time. We provide a set of simple indicators that Support assessment and decision making in this field. Given a certain emissions target, carbon allowance prices in a cap-and-trade plan will depend on the development of the global economy and the degree to which the target is approached on the global and national levels. The indicators measure the degree to which a given emissions target is approached nationally and assess risks for long-lived investments subject to a range of emissions targets. A comparative case study on existing coal-fired power plants with planned plants and Utility-scale photovoltaic power-plants confirms that high risk for coal-fired power plants is emerging. New legislation further confirms this result.In situ airborne measurements of actinic flux and the mass and mixing state of individual refractory black carbon (BC) particles were made in the lower troposphere around a major U. S. metropolitan area. These data were used to estimate atmospheric heating rates and surface dimming due to absorption of solar radiation by refractory BC. Direct absorption by ozone is also calculated and averages 10% of that of BC below 4 km but becomes dominant above this altitude. Variability in BC absorption is large due to source variability and clouds. Average BC heating rates are much smaller than those associated with BC and other absorbing aerosol components in global hotspot regions. These results, which are specific to refractory BC absorption, will help determine the value of short-term climate-change mitigation strategies involving BC emission reductions. They may also be used to estimate refractory BC contributions to total aerosol absorption. Citation: Schwarz, J. P., H. Stark, J. R. Spackman, T. B. Ryerson, J. Peischl, W. H. Swartz, R. S. Gao, L. A. Watts, and D. W. Fahey (2009), Heating rates and surface dimming due to black carbon aerosol absorption associated with a major U. S. city, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L15807, doi:10.1029/2009GL039213.The integrated assessment models (IAMs) that economists use to analyze the expected costs and benefits of climate policies frequently suggest that the "optimal" policy is to go slowly and to do relatively little in the near term to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We trace this finding to the contestable assumptions and limitations of IAMs. For example, they typically discount future impacts from climate change at relatively high rates. This practice may be appropriate for short-term financial decisions but its extension to intergenerational environmental issues rests on several empirically and philosophically controversial hypotheses. IAMs also assign monetary values to the benefits of climate mitigation on the basis of incomplete information and sometimes speculative judgments concerning the monetary worth of human lives and ecosystems, while downplaying scientific uncertainty about the extent of expected damages. In addition, IAMs may exaggerate mitigation costs by failing to reflect the socially determined, path-dependent nature of technical change and ignoring the potential savings from reduced energy utilization and other opportunities for innovation. A better approach to climate policy, drawing on recent research on the economics of uncertainty, would reframe the problem as buying insurance against catastrophic, low-probability events. Policy decisions should be based on a judgment concerning the maximum tolerable increase in temperature and/or carbon dioxide levels given the state of scientific understanding. The appropriate role for economists would then be to determine the least-cost global strategy to achieve that target. While this remains a demanding and complex problem, it is far more tractable and epistemically defensible than the cost-benefit comparisons attempted by most IAMs.Abatement cost is the main concern for climate change mitigation and the key factor for mitigation cost is technological change. This study established an integrated economic, energy, environmental, dynamic, computable general equilibrium (CGE) model representing endogenous technological change for China's climate change policy analysis. This study analyzed and compared the economic impact of different approaches to mitigation commitments as well as the potential role of technological change in the formulation of mitigation targets and commitments, taking into account China's climate policy-making needs based on the current international climate negotiation process. The results show that, absolute emission limits similar to the Kyoto Protocol will seriously impede the future economic development of China, while the impact of an 80% reduction in carbon intensity, forecast for 2050 based on the 2005 level, is relatively small. Technological change can promote economic growth, improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon intensity per unit of output through the substitution of production factors. Consequently it can reduce marginal abatement cost and related GDP loss by mitigation. At the same time it can increase mitigation potentials and extend the emission reduction amount, showing that consideration of the impact of technological change when deciding the emission reduction targets is necessary. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For over two decades, scientific and political communities have debated whether and how to act on climate change. The present paper revisits these debates and synthesizes the longstanding arguments. Firstly, it provides an overview of the development of international climate policy and discusses clashing positions, represented by sceptics and supporters of action on climate change. Secondly, it discusses the market-based measures as a means to increase the win-win opportunities and to attract profit-minded investors to invest in climate change mitigation. Finally, the paper examines whether climate protection policies can yield benefits both for the environment and the economy. A new breed of analysts are identified who are convinced of the climate change problem, while remaining sceptical of the proposed solutions. The paper suggests the integration of climate policies with those of development priorities that are vitally important for developing countries and stresses the need for using sustainable development as a framework for climate change policies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global climate change is affecting Africa, as it is every other continent and region of the world. The absolute poverty of a large proportion of the continent's people renders them highly vulnerable to changes in climate. Mitigation of climate change is a global imperative. However, numerous other changes continue apace, notably population growth, natural resource degradation, and rural-urban migration. Probably 50% or more of the continent's population rely on groundwater. This paper explores the relative impacts of changes in climate, demography and land use/cover on groundwater resources and demands. It concludes that the climate change impacts are likely to be significant, though uncertain in direction and magnitude, while the direct and indirect impacts of demographic change on both water resources and water demand are not only known with far greater certainty, but are also likely to be much larger. The combined effects of urban population growth, rising food demands and energy costs, and consequent demand for fresh water represent real cause for alarm, and these dwarf the likely impacts of climate change on groundwater resources, at least over the first half of the 21st century.This article discusses China's motives for participation in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), and whether this has or will have consequences for its participation and efforts in the UN track of international climate governance. In order to discuss these issues, it also provides an outline of key national priorities and explains the nature of China's involvement in both the UN track and the APP. It suggests that the APP is a complement to the UN process, not a competitor, in the case of China. APP participation represents a win-win situation in terms of the transfer of technology and know-how for solving challenges related to energy security and greenhouse gas emissions. For the Chinese leadership, this seems preferable to taking on UN commitments which it fears would impede economic development. The APP's projects also seem to complement the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism project in China. This article argues that there is little indication that China would make less of an effort under the UN track.Cities demand a large proportion of energy supplies while exporting significant amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW). Landfill regulations, self-sufficiency and proximity principles have induced shifts in waste management techniques. Historically, energy security, best use of resources, renewable energy use and climate change mitigation have not been leveraged in waste management strategies. This study examines emerging treatment technologies that could make a contribution in the aforementioned areas and have the potential for working at smaller scales in urban locations. The energy efficiency and environmental and economic performance of two thermal treatment technologies are presented, thus elucidating their potential role in urban strategies in the light of rising energy prices, decarbonisation of the economy, taxation and full use of incentives. The study illustrates that considering the full life cycle, beyond waste management, will enable more strategic technology utilisation. Improvements in viability over time according to evolving regulations are assessed, demonstrating how possible contributions to renewable heat and power can enhance profitability. Combustion technology is analysed for a medium-scale configuration, processing 100 kilotonnes per annum (ktpa) using a steam turbine for heat and power generation, and a large-scale 250 ktpa configuration. Fluidised bed gasification is analysed at the small scale (50 ktpa) and medium scale (100 ktpa) using a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) for heat and power generation. One key aspect is the evaluation of the processing of waste into a predominantly renewable fuel capable of running a gas and steam turbine while rendering a significant proportion of residues reusable. Emission profiles and mass and energy balances are presented quantitatively. A discounted cash flow of material and energy outputs incorporating the effect of incentives across deployment scenarios is presented. Furthermore, key technical and policy pre-conditions are discussed.This article presents the findings of a combined cost-benefit analysis of local air pollution and global climate change, two subjects that are usually studied separately. Yet these distinct environmental problems are closely related, since they are both driven by the nature of present energy production and consumption patterns. Our study demonstrates the mutual relevance of, and interaction between, policies designed to address these two environmental challenges individually. Given the many dimensions air pollution control and climate change management have in common, it is surprising that they have only little been analyzed in combination so far. We attempt to cover at least part of the existing gap in the literature by assessing how costs and benefits of technologies and strategies that jointly tackle these two environmental problems can best be balanced. By using specific technological options that cut down local air pollution, e.g. related to particulate emissions, one may concurrently reduce CO2 emissions and thus contribute to diminishing global climate change. Inversely, some of the long-term climate change strategies simultaneously improve the quality of air in the short run. We have extended the well-established MERGE model by including emissions of particulate matter, and show that integrated environmental policies generate net global welfare benefits. We also demonstrate that the discounted benefits of local air pollution reduction significantly outweigh those of global climate change mitigation, at least by a factor of 2, but in most cases of our sensitivity analysis much more. Still, we do not argue to only restrict energy policy today to what should be our first priority, local air pollution control, and wait with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, we propose to design policies that simultaneously address these issues, as their combination creates an additional climate change bonus. As such, climate change mitigation proves an ancillary benefit of air pollution reduction, rather than the other way around. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We present a framework for allocating a global carbon reduction target among nations, in which the concept of "common but differentiated responsibilities'' refers to the emissions of individuals instead of nations. Weuse the income distribution of a country to estimate how its fossil fuel CO2 emissions are distributed among its citizens, from which we build up a global CO2 distribution. We then propose a simple rule to derive a universal cap on global individual emissions and find corresponding limits on national aggregate emissions from this cap. All of the world's high CO2-emitting individuals are treated the same, regardless of where they live. Any future global emission goal (target and time frame) can be converted into national reduction targets, which are determined by "Business as Usual'' projections of national carbon emissions and in-country income distributions. For example, reducing projected global emissions in 2030 by 13 GtCO(2) would require the engagement of 1.13 billion high emitters, roughly equally distributed in 4 regions: the U.S., the OECD minus the U.S., China, and the non-OECD minus China. We also modify our methodology to place a floor on emissions of the world's lowest CO2 emitters and demonstrate that climate mitigation and alleviation of extreme poverty are largely decoupled.From analysis of published global site biomass data (n = 136) from primary forests, we discovered (i) the world's highest known total biomass carbon density (living plus dead) of 1,867 tonnes carbon per ha (average value from 13 sites) occurs in Australian temperate moist Eucalyptus regnans forests, and (ii) average values of the global site biomass data were higher for sampled temperate moist forests (n = 44) than for sampled tropical (n = 36) and boreal (n = 52) forests (n is number of sites per forest biome). Spatially averaged Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change biome default values are lower than our average site values for temperate moist forests, because the temperate biome contains a diversity of forest ecosystem types that support a range of mature carbon stocks or have a long land-use history with reduced carbon stocks. We describe a framework for identifying forests important for carbon storage based on the factors that account for high biomass carbon densities, including (i) relatively cool temperatures and moderately high precipitation producing rates of fast growth but slow decomposition, and (ii) older forests that are often multiaged and multilayered and have experienced minimal human disturbance. Our results are relevant to negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change regarding forest conservation, management, and restoration. Conserving forests with large stocks of biomass from deforestation and degradation avoids significant carbon emissions to the atmosphere, irrespective of the source country, and should be among allowable mitigation activities. Similarly, management that allows restoration of a forest's carbon sequestration potential also should be recognized.This article looks at the issue of climate change from a developing country perspective and develops an outline of a win-win-oriented climate policy around development priorities. It demonstrates how the great climate debate between the 'skeptics' and 'supporters' does not lead developing countries anywhere. The article shows that the emerging middle-path approach, which suits developing countries will lead to win-win opportunities both for the environment and the economy. The proponents of this approach are termed as 'climate realists', who consider climate mitigation as a by-product of sustainable development solutions. The article also discusses the issue of discount rate that should be applied for problems which are likely to peak in the medium to long-term future. Finally, various market-based mechanisms with 'no-regret options' are discussed and we advocate the use of sustainable development paradigm for climate-change policies.Aviation emissions contribute to the radiative forcing (RF) of climate. Of importance are emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) nitrogen oxides (NO.), aerosols and their precursors (soot and sulphate), and increased cloudiness in the form of persistent linear contrails and induced-cirrus cloudiness. The recent Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) quantified aviation's RF contribution for 2005 based upon 2000 operations data. Aviation has grown strongly over the past years, despite world-changing events in the early 2000s; the average annual passenger traffic growth rate was 5.3% yr(-1) between 2000 and 2007, resulting in an increase of passenger traffic of 38%. Presented here are updated values of aviation RF for 2005 based upon new operations data that show an increase in traffic of 22.5%, fuel use of 8.4% and total aviation RF of 14% (excluding induced-cirrus enhancement) over the period 2000-2005. The lack of physical process models and adequate observational data for aviation-induced cirrus effects limit confidence in quantifying their RF contribution. Total aviation RF (excluding induced cirrus) in 2005 was similar to 55 mW m(-2) (23-87 mW m(-2), 90% likelihood range), which was 3.5% (range 1.3-10%. 90% likelihood range) of total anthropogenic forcing. Including estimates for aviation-induced cirrus RF increases the total aviation RF in 2005-78 mW m(-2) (38-139 mW m(-2), 90% likelihood range), which represents 4.9% of total anthropogenic forcing (2-14%, 90% likelihood range). Future scenarios of aviation emissions for 2050 that are consistent with IPCC SIZES A1 and B2 scenario assumptions have been presented that show an increase of fuel usage by factors of 2.7-3.9 over 2000. Simplified calculations of total aviation RF in 2050 indicate increases by factors of 3.0-4.0 over the 2000 value, representing 4-4.7% of total RF (excluding induced cirrus). An examination of a range of future technological options shows that substantive reductions in aviation fuel usage are possible only with the introduction of radical technologies. Incorporation of aviation into an emissions trading system offers the potential for overall (i.e., beyond the aviation sector) CO2 emissions reductions. Proposals exist for introduction of such a system at a European level, but no agreement has been reached at a global level. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change mitigation policies tend to focus on the energy sector, while the livestock sector receives surprisingly little attention, despite the fact that it accounts for 18% of the greenhouse gas emissions and for 80% of total anthropogenic land use. From a dietary perspective, new insights in the adverse health effects of beef and pork have lead to a revision of meat consumption recommendations. Here, we explored the potential impact of dietary changes on achieving ambitious climate stabilization levels. By using an integrated assessment model, we found a global food transition to less meat, or even a complete switch to plant-based protein food to have a dramatic effect on land use. Up to 2,700 Mha of pasture and 100 Mha of cropland could be abandoned, resulting in a large carbon uptake from regrowing vegetation. Additionally, methane and nitrous oxide emission would be reduced substantially. A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO(2)-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case. Dietary changes could therefore not only create substantial benefits for human health and global land use, but can also play an important role in future climate change mitigation policies.Current rates of deforestation and the resulting C emissions in the tropics exceed those of secondary forest regrowth and C sequestration. Changing land-use strategies that would maintain standing forests may be among the least expensive of climate change mitigation options. Further, secondary tropical forests have been suggested to have great value for their potential to sequester atmospheric C. These options require an understanding of and capability to quantify C dynamics at landscape scales. Because of the diversity of physical and biotic features of tropical forests as well as approaches and intensities of land uses within the neotropics, there are tremendous differences in the capacity of different landscapes to store and sequester C. Major gaps in our current knowledge include quanti. cation of C pools, rates and patterns of biomass loss following land-cover change, and quanti. cation of the C storage potential of secondary forests following abandonment. In this paper we present a synthesis and further analyses from recent studies that describe C pools, patterns of C decline associated with land use, and rates of C accumulation following secondary-forest establishment-all information necessary for climate-change mitigation options. Ecosystem C pools of Neotropical primary forests minimally range from similar to 141 to 571 Mg/ha, demonstrating tremendous differences in the capacity of different forests to store C. Most of the losses in C and nutrient pools associated with conversion occur when. res are set to remove the slashed forest to prepare sites for crop or pasture establishment. Fires burning slashed primary forests have been found to result in C losses of 62-80% of prefire aboveground pools in dry (deciduous) forest landscapes and 29-57% in wet (evergreen) forest landscapes. Carbon emissions equivalent to the aboveground primary-forest pool arise from repeated. res occurring in the first 4 to 10 years following conversion. Feedbacks of climate change, land-cover change, and increasing habitat fragmentation may result in increases of both the area burned and the total quantity of biomass consumed per unit area by. re. These effects may well limit the capacity for future tropical forests to sequester C and nutrients.For millennia, India used surface storage and gravity flow to water crops. During the last 40 years, however, India has witnessed a decline in gravity-flow irrigation and the rise of a booming 'water-scavenging' irrigation economy through millions of small, private tubewells. For India, groundwater has become at once critical and threatened. Climate change will act as a force multiplier; it will enhance groundwater's criticality for drought-proofing agriculture and simultaneously multiply the threat to the resource. Groundwater pumping with electricity and diesel also accounts for an estimated 16-25 million mt of carbon emissions, 4-6% of India's total. From a climate change point of view, India's groundwater hotspots are western and peninsular India. These are critical for climate change mitigation as well as adaptation. To achieve both, India needs to make a transition from surface storage to 'managed aquifer storage' as the center pin of its water strategy with proactive demand- and supply-side management components. In doing this, India needs to learn intelligently from the experience of countries like Australia and the United States that have long experience in managed aquifer recharge.Major cities have a significant impact on global and regional climate change due to their intensive material and energy use accompanied by population growth and the physical expansion of the metro region. This study presents the Sustainable Urban Systems Framework for assessing the causes and effects of climate change involved with the built environment at different scales with a case study of Seoul, South Korea. The Seoul metro region is the sixth most densely populated area in the world, and the region's rapid population growth has resulted in dramatic increases in both energy consumption and land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes. South Korea is now the ninth largest Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emitter in the world and the third largest in Asia. Our results indicate that the system inputs and impacts of the proposed framework (urban population, LULC change, greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, and energy consumption) are closely related to the system pressures of energy security and GHG-reduction requirements. To meet the goal for the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol, Seoul must cut down its annual CO2 emissions by 3.4 million metric tons. The city's current intervention strategies will result in a reduction of only 2.1 million metric tons a year, a deficit of 1.3 million metric tons. Our preliminary results indicate that the Seoul government can strengthen its CO2 reduction strategy by incorporating built environment factors from the Sustainable Urban Systems Framework. By adopting energy-efficient-building standards, CO2 emissions can be reduced by up to 1.34 million metric tons per year, suggesting a promising approach to lowering the city's energy use and GHG emissions. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is affecting the world's ecosystems and threatening the economic system, livelihoods and availability of natural resources. Forest ecosystems can be carbon sources or sinks and are therefore integrated in international climate policy. Forest-related carbon mitigation projects are threatened by climate change through altered environmental conditions and forest processes, as well as through synergistic effects of climate change impacts with already existing socioeconomic and environmental stressors. Data on risk management and adaptation strategies were collected by a survey of 28 current forest projects targeting climate change mitigation. Ten of these represent the officially implemented afforestation (A) and reforestation (R) activities under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto protocol. Additionally, the official methodologies for AR activities under the CDM (Scope 14) were examined for potential climate change adaptation requirements. As a result, the adaptation of forest mitigation projects to climate change is found to be insufficient. A systematic approach for the inclusion of climate change risk management and adaptation is developed and guidelines for the design of "climate-change-proof" afforestation, reforestation and deforestation avoidance projects are proposed. A broader mainstreaming of the issue is required and clear policy regulations are necessary, especially for the post-Kyoto process.The December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami wrought environmental damage beyond the normal framework of integrated coastal management and has implications for coastal management in Asia-Pacific in the post-tsunami phase. Fieldwork conducted on the coasts of four tsunami-affected countries in 2005 and 2006 identified several "practitioner-type" issues that would have implications for ICM policy. These include the loss of land with accompanying land tenure problems; the safety zone in conflict with the buffer zone; the need for better integration of livelihoods restoration with the rehabilitation of coastal ecosystems; and the inclusion of tsunami mitigation in the larger framework of climate change mitigation. A discussion of these issues and future role of ICM would provide a fresh perspective to policy-practice of ICM. A proposal is made to study various development pathways of selected coastal villages as they recovered in the post-tsunami phase. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cross-cultural studies are particularly relevant in the context of climate change, given its pervasive character and the growing demand for climate change mitigation at both global and local levels. This paper reports on findings from comparative cross-cultural mixed-methods research eliciting perceptions of the future among citizens in Norwich (UK) and Rome (Italy). The paper explores how individuals at the two locations interpret socio-economic and climate scenarios, and how they relate environmental change to human behavior. Attitude segmentation was found to be similar in both localities. Although most participants in both locations realized the benefits of a future centered on sustainable resource use and societal welfare, individuals' attitudes and considerations about the future were not largely influenced by the scenarios. Discussions revealed that the credibility of the projections depended on individuals' prior beliefs and their trust in the science portrayed.This state-of-the-art review compares recent literature coverage of principles, practice and procedures the three Ps - of place making for climate change. Procedural thinking dominates, with extensive work on theoretical models of decision-making, policy processes, and development of human resources and skills. Coverage of practice is also extensive, although the medium of descriptive case studies poses issues of replicability and transferability. Work on the principles of place making attracts less attention and is more ambiguous, with environmental architecture and green infrastructure principles apparently at variance with conventional principles of urban design. The requirements of environmental and social sustainability seem to be pulling in opposite directions. The paper discusses promising lines of work, concluding that tried-and-tested urban design typologies may have a new lease of life in addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation.Energy has come to the forefront of the public debate in the past decade for two main reasons: the first relates to the lack of a secure, Continuous, and unconditional energy supply in the importing countries, mostly developed and transition economics, which are still dependent oil non-renewable carbon-based fossil fuels. The second reason is that uncontrolled production, distribution, and use of conventional energy may lead to environmental degradation and global warming. Renewable energy certificates (RECs) are instruments that allow Countries to promote energy generation from renewables and form part of domestic policies aimed at climate change mitigation and adaptation. Since RECs call be traded in secondary markets, this paper discusses issues raised by the nature of and the trade in RECs which call be of concern for the General Agreement oil Trade in Services (GATS) and the multilateral regulation of trade in financial services, notably in the case where World Trade Organisation (WTO) Members undertook sweeping commitments in financial services which equally apply to trade in RECs.The global temperature response to increasing atmospheric CO2 is often quantified by metrics such as equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response(1). These approaches, however, do not account for carbon cycle feedbacks and therefore do not fully represent the net response of the Earth system to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Climate-carbon modelling experiments have shown that: (1) the warming per unit CO2 emitted does not depend on the background CO2 concentration(2); (2) the total allowable emissions for climate stabilization do not depend on the timing of those emissions(3-5); and (3) the temperature response to a pulse of CO2 is approximately constant on timescales of decades to centuries(3,6-8). Here we generalize these results and show that the carbon-climate response (CCR), defined as the ratio of temperature change to cumulative carbon emissions, is approximately independent of both the atmospheric CO2 concentration and its rate of change on these timescales. From observational constraints, we estimate CCR to be in the range 1.0-2.1 degrees C per trillion tonnes of carbon (Tt C) emitted (5th to 95th percentiles), consistent with twenty-first-century CCR values simulated by climate-carbon models. Uncertainty in land-use CO2 emissions and aerosol forcing, however, means that higher observationally constrained values cannot be excluded. The CCR, when evaluated from climate-carbon models under idealized conditions, represents a simple yet robust metric for comparing models, which aggregates both climate feedbacks and carbon cycle feedbacks. CCR is also likely to be a useful concept for climate change mitigation and policy; by combining the uncertainties associated with climate sensitivity, carbon sinks and climate-carbon feedbacks into a single quantity, the CCR allows CO2-induced global mean temperature change to be inferred directly from cumulative carbon emissions.Forested areas are important in arid and semi-arid regions primarily to combat desertification, but also to increase carbon sinks. To reverse the land degradation processes, restoration in the Mediterranean Basin had been frequently obtained by planting indigenous and exotic conifers, but it has been demonstrated that shrubs are nurse species for tree seedlings. Furthermore, planting indigenous shrubs is more efficient than allochthonous in restoring degraded soils. The aims of this work were: 1) to illustrate an experimental area in Sardinia used as a test-site to build up afforestation and reforestation activities in arid and semi-arid areas with autochthonous shrub species; 2) to show the results on plant survival and biomass one year after plantation trying to explain the role of different densities and specific compositions; 3) to hypothesize some trends of C accumulation of this "artificial" Mediterranean semi-arid shrubland by comparison with data found in the literature. The area is located in North West Sardinia, and is characterized by a Mediterranean climate. The revegetation was set up in February 2006, planting local species (Juniperus phoenicea, Pistacia lentiscus and Rosmarinus officinalis). Three densities and three specific compositions (monospecific plots with P. lentiscus, monospecific plots with J. phoenicea and mixed plots with the three cited species) were combined. One month after plantation, almost all plants were alive, but mortality increased after summer, independently of the treatments, likely due to summer drought. During the first year, no differences among the densities and the specific compositions were observed. Total above-ground biomass was in the range of 0.8-3.0 g m(-2). Below-ground biomass was in the range of 0.9-1.7 g m(-2). A significant lower biomass was measured in October, especially in the Pistacia plots. Higher densities and plant mixing seemed to better perform, allowing establishment of species with a strong pioneer behaviour and aridity resistant characteristics. Data collection on initial conditions and recurrent monitorings will be basic for evaluating in the long term the potential positive effects on C stock and on biodiversity of afforestation activities in arid and semi-arid areas.The current variability in weather and climate is posing a challenge for transport infrastructure. However, during the past decade the need to adapt to a changing climate has attracted increasing attention. This paper summarises a case study on the future vulnerability to climate change of the Swedish railway transport system and its adaptive capacity. The combination of a long time horizon in planning and an expected increasing demand for rail traffic raises many questions regarding how adaptation to climate change can be accounted for in future planning, design and management of railways. The case study was essentially based on interviews with key personnel within the Swedish Rail Administration. Views on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change were documented, and the need for improved methods to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity related to climate change for the Swedish railways was addressed. The conclusions of the paper are addressed to the European railway context at large. Firstly, systematic mapping of current climate vulnerabilities and their consequences is important in order to guide the implementation of adaptation measures. Secondly, climate change should be considered in the early stages of planning and included in risk and vulnerability assessments. In assessing future conditions with the aim of prioritising adaptation measures, current methodologies should be complemented with more future-orientated tools. When designing adaptation measures, the effects of potential goal conflicts should also be assessed, in order to avoid the implementation of counter-productive measures. The possibility of creating synergies with climate mitigation goals and other environmental goals should also be investigated.Microalgae are expected to play a significant role in greenhouse gas mitigation because they can utilize CO(2) from power plant flue gases directly while producing a variety of renewable carbon-neutral biofuels. In order for such a microalgal climate change mitigation strategy to become economically feasible, it will be necessary to significantly improve biomass productivities. One approach to achieve this objective is to reduce, via mutagenesis, the number of light-harvesting pigments, which, according to theory, should significantly improve the light utilization efficiency, primarily by increasing the light intensity at which photosynthesis saturates (I(s)). Employing chemical (ethylmethylsulfonate) and UV mutagenesis of a wild-type strain of the diatom Cyclotella, approximately 10,000 pigment mutants were generated, and two of the most promising ones (CM1 and CM1-1) were subjected to further testing in both laboratory cultures and outdoor ponds. Measurements of photosynthetic oxygen production rates as a function of light intensity (i.e., P-I curves) of samples taken from laboratory batch cultures during the exponential and linear growth phase indicated that the light intensity at which photosynthesis saturates (I(s)) was two to three times greater in the pigment mutant CM1-1 than in the wild type, i.e., 355-443 versus 116-169 mu mol/m(2) s, respectively. While theory, i.e., the Bush equation, predicts that such a significant gain in I(s) should increase light utilization efficiencies and thus biomass productivities, particularly at high light intensities, no improvements in biomass productivities were observed in either semi-continuous laboratory cultures or outdoor ponds. In fact, the maximum biomass productivity in semi-continuous laboratory culture was always greater in the wild type than in the mutant, namely 883 versus 725 mg/L day, respectively, at low light intensity (200 mu mol/m(2) s) and 1,229 versus 1,043 mg/L day, respectively, at high light intensity (1,000 mu mol/m(2) s). Similarly, the biomass productivities measured in outdoor ponds were significantly lower for the mutant than for the wild type. Given that these mutants have not been completely characterized in these initial studies, the exact reasons for their poor performance are not known. Most likely, it is possible that the mutation procedure affected other photosynthetic or metabolic processes. This hypothesis was partially validated by the observation that the pigment mutant had a longer lag period following inoculation, a lower maximum specific growth rate, and poorer stability than the wild type.The need for climate change mitigation and to meet increasing energy demands has led to a rise in the land area under bioenergy crops in many countries. There are concerns that such large-scale land conversion will conflict with food production and impact on the environment. Perennial biomass crops could be grown on more marginal agricultural land. However, for sustainable solutions, biomass yields will need to be sufficient and the wider implications of land-use changes considered. Here, focusing on Miscanthus in England as an example, we combined an empirical model with GIS to produce a yield map and estimated regional energy generation potentials after masking out areas covered by environmental and socio-economic factors which could preclude the planting of energy crops. Agricultural land quality and the distributions of currently grown food crops were then taken into account. Results showed that: (i) regional contrasts occur in the importance of different factors affecting biomass planting; (ii) areas with the highest biomass yields co-locate with food producing areas on high grade land, and; (iii) when such high grade land and unsuitable areas are excluded, a policy-related scenario for increased planting on 350,000 ha utilised 4-28% (depending on the region) of lower grade land and would not necessarily greatly impact on UK food security. We conclude that the GIS-based yield and suitability mapping described here can help identify important issues in bioenergy generation potentials and land use implications at regional or finer spatial scales that would be missed in analyses at the national level.In this article we discuss the global negotiations now underway and aimed at achieving new climate change mitigation and other arrangements after 2012 (the end of the Kyoto commitment period). These were initiated in Bali in December 2007 and are scheduled to conclude by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen. As such, this negotiation is effectively the second round in ongoing global negotiations on climate change and further rounds will almost certainly follow. We highlight both the vast scope and vagueness of the negotiating mandate, the many outstanding major issues to be accommodated between negotiating parties, the lack of a mechanism to force collective decision making in the negotiation, and their short time frame. The likely lack of compliance with prior Kyoto commitments by several OECD countries (some to a major degree), the effective absence in Kyoto of compliance/enforcement mechanisms, and growing linkage to non-climate change areas (principally trade) all further complicate the task of bringing the negotiation to conclusion. The major clearage we see that needs to be bridged in the negotiations is between OECD countries on the one hand, and lower wage, large population, rapidly growing countries (China, India, Russia, Brazil) on the other. (JEL codes: F33, F51, F53, Q54, 056, P28)This study investigates whether a key conclusion of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, that is, an annual investment of 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to mitigate the negative economic impacts of climate change, would allow for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Republic of Ecuador (Ecuador). An integrated modeling approach to support climate policy evaluation, consisting in the Threshold 21 (T21) model and other methodologies, is employed to carry out a country-wide, cross-sectoral analysis of Ecuador's energy, social, economic and environmental sectors. The investigation assumes an investment of 1% of GDP in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to measure the potential to stabilize carbon emissions from fossil fuel electric power generation. Results of the study indicate that while investing 1% of GDP annually through 2025 would reduce GHG emissions in the electric power sector, it would not stabilize national emissions. On the other hand, avoided electricity costs realized from the investment in energy efficiency, amounting to over USD 5 billion by 2025, could contribute significantly to poverty alleviation, job creation, and to the improvement of social services. Finally, the authors find that these positive economic and social results are likely to increase energy consumption, making the goal to reduce GHG emissions more challenging. (C) 2009 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Closing the gap between carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) rhetoric and technical progress is critically important to global climate mitigation efforts. Developing strong international cooperation on CCS demonstration with global coordination, transparency, cost-sharing and communication as guiding principles would facilitate efficient and cost-effective collaborative global learning on CCS, would allow for improved understanding of the global capacity and applicability of CCS, and would strengthen global trust, awareness and public confidence in the technology. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This commentary examines the impact of the recently launched European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS) in terms of emission reductions and cost to the public. The study points out that a cap-and-trade system may not be the most cost-efficient mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also lists seven main differences between such a system and a carbon tax along the following issues: amount of emissions reduced; flow of revenue to the public purse: cost of the system to the public; marginal cost of carbon emission reductions to the firm: generating excess rent; price setting mechanism and stability of system; as well as duration and commitment. When looking at emission reductions along these dimensions, it becomes clear that an internationally coordinated carbon tax may be a quicker and cheaper way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The gradual shift from the traditional approach of outdoor processes of habitation in Ghana to the indoor, coupled with an ingress of solar radiation, liberates excess heat into buildings and makes occupants feel uncomfortable. A straightforward response has been the adoption of air conditioners. This has resulted in high peak electricity demand and excess emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This paper identifies passive and low energy techniques which can improve the thermal comfort in buildings for the different climate zones of Ghana, and consequently reduce electricity demand and environmental effects due to air conditioning. The potential for various passive and low energy cooling techniques was determined by plotting climatic data comprising average monthly temperature and relative humidity over a thirty year period (1976-2005) for a total of ten towns and cities from the various climatic zones of Ghana on the Building Bioclimatic chart. This work is aimed at encouraging innovative and individual design solutions amongst building design professionals applicable to Ghana and regions elsewhere that are experiencing a growth in air conditioning. Reducing peak cooling-energy demand is of great interest to the power generating industries and policy makers. It is of interest to building investors, since it implies a possible reduction in the required installed plant capacity. This is also an essential element in Ghana's Climate Change Mitigation Program.This paper attempts to analyse the role of building energy efficiency (BEE) in China in addressing climate change mitigation. It provides an analysis of the current situation and future prospects for the adoption of BEE technologies in Chinese cities. It outlines the economic and institutional barriers to large-scale deployment of the sustainable, low-carbon, and even carbon-free construction techniques. Based on a comprehensive overview of energy demand characteristics and development trends driven by economic and demographic growth, different policy tools for cost-effective CO2 emission reduction in the Chinese construction sector are described. We propose a comprehensive approach combining building design and construction, and the urban planning and building material industries, in order to drastically improve BEE during this period of rapid urban development. A coherent institutional framework needs to be established to ensure the implementation of efficiency policies. Regulatory and incentive options should be integrated into the policy portfolios of BEE to minimise the efficiency gap and to realise sizeable carbon emissions cuts in the next decades. We analyse in detail several policies and instruments, and formulate relevant policy proposals fostering low-carbon construction technology in China. Specifically, Our analysis shows that improving building energy efficiency can generate considerable carbon emissions reduction credits with competitive price under the CDM framework. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Plant volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have important roles in plant adaptation to the environment and serve as infochemicals in multitrophic interactions. Global climate change factors, such as increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, ozone and temperature, could alter how insects perceive such compounds. Here we review recent research on the influence of climate change parameters on the ecological functions of VOCs, with specific focus on terpenoids, the best-characterized VOCs. We summarize how emission patterns and concentrations of VOCs could change in future environments, mainly from the perspectives of plant defense and stress responses. We discuss how higher carbon dioxide concentrations, elevated ozone levels and increased temperatures could affect the biological functions of VOCs, particularly their role in plant defense.The emerging carbon market is an increasingly important source of finance for bottomland hardwood afforestation in the Lower Mississippi River Valley (LMV). Notwithstanding, there is a scarcity of empirical estimates of carbon sequestration specific to the region and we sought to address this outstanding need. We evaluated tree measurements from known-age bottomland hardwood stands from a chronosequence of sites in the LMV, drawing on 540 plot measurements within 67 stands. We derived a model of live tree biomass carbon as a function of stand age. The model explained 83% of the variation in live tree biomass carbon at the stand level, and provides a more accurate projection for application in the LMV than broader regional models currently available. Modeled live tree biomass carbon was greater than the corresponding regional estimate used in the U.S. Department of Energy's voluntary greenhouse gas reporting program for years 20 through 90 (up to 59% greater at year 50), but trended toward convergence at mature stages.Germany's National Allocation Plans (NAP I and NAP II) for implementing the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) are critically analysed. Emissions trading has created a new scarcity, and grandfathering constitutes a subsidy that is used to reach additional policy goals related to energy and distribution policy. With respect to energy policy, the objective was to protect the German coal industry; but in terms of distribution policy the hidden agenda was to allocate as many emissions allowances as possible to the industries involved. The whole discussion is based on the false premise that a generous, or at least 'needs-based', allocation of costless emissions allowances increases an industry's competitiveness. As a consequence, NAP I is overburdened with several complex special rules and exemptions which distort the incentive effect of emissions trading, thus making climate change mitigation in Germany more costly than necessary. The attempted continuation of this policy, in particular with regard to new installations and an over-generous cap, has led to the European Commission's rejection of these rules in the German NAP II in November 2006. Despite significant improvements since then, some important shortfalls remain. Unfortunately, the economic literature available on this topic refers to highly stylized models of allocation rules and neglects the concrete details of the German NAP II. This article tries to close this gap in the literature by analysing the most distorting rules as well as the most important and arguments of the misguided debate on competitiveness.This article discusses how renewable and low-carbon energies can serve as mitigation options of climate change in China's power sector. Our study is based on scenarios developed in PowerPlan, a bottom-up model simulating a countries' power sector and its emissions. We first adjusted the model to China's present-day economy and power sector. We then developed different scenarios based on story lines for possible future developments in China. We simulated China's carbon-based electricity production system of today and possible future transitions towards a low-carbon system relying on renewable and low-carbon energies. In our analysis, we compare the business-as-usual scenarios with more sustainable energy scenarios. We found that by increasing the share of renewable and nuclear energies to different levels, between 17% and 57% of all CO(2) emissions from the power sector could be avoided by 2030 compared to the business-as-usual scenario. We also found that electricity generation costs increase when more sustainable power plants are installed. As a conclusion, China has two options: choosing for high climate change mitigation and high costs or choosing for moderate climate change mitigation and moderate costs. In case high climate change mitigation will be chosen, development assistance is likely to be needed to cover the costs.Industry contributes directly and indirectly (through consumed electricity) about 37% of the global greenhouse gas emissions, of which over 80% is from energy use. Total energy-related emissions, which were 9.9 GtCO(2) in 2004, have grown by 65% since 1971. Even so, industry has almost continuously improved its energy efficiency over the past decades. In the near future, energy efficiency is potentially the most important and cost-effective means for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from industry. This paper discusses the potential contribution of industrial energy-efficiency technologies and policies to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions to 2030.Energy efficiency in agriculture is an under-analyzed aspect of a potential climate change mitigation strategy. According to the Fourth Assessment Report, experts report only medium agreement and medium evidence that energy efficiency can provide substantial reductions (Smith et al. 2007). This paper estimates the CO2 mitigation potential achievable through improvements in energy efficiency in the US agriculture sector. The data are presented in three formats: the cost data or break-even points of each technology, a marginal abatement supply curve expressed in terms of reduction in energy use by fuel category, and a marginal abatement supply curve expressed in terms of CO2 emission reductions by fuel category. The largest sources of energy use in the sector were identified as motors used in irrigation systems or other pumping operations; farm machinery such as tractors used in daily farm operations; and space conditioning, such as HVAC systems for livestock and crop-drying systems.International emissions trading is widely seen as an indispensable policy pillar of climate change mitigation [Stern, N., 2007. The Economics of Climate Change. The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press, New York]. This article analyzes five different types of trading architectures, classified into two top-down (UNFCCC driven) and three bottom-up (driven by individual countries or regions) approaches. The two types of approaches are characterized by a trade-off between environmental effectiveness and political feasibility, respectively, whereas their relative cost-effectiveness depends on implementation details. Bottom-up architectures constitute imperfect substitutes for top-down architectures in terms of environmental effectiveness, and thus remain mere fallback options. However, especially the 'formal linking' architecture can act as complement in terms of cost-effectiveness. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is likely to be central to a post-Kyoto climate change mitigation agreement. As such, identifying conditions and factors that will shape the success or failure of a reduced deforestation scheme will provide important insights for policy planning. Given that protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone in forest conservation, we draw on interviews and secondary data to analyze the effects of available PA resources, governance ability, the level of community involvement, and provincial deforestation rates on land-cover change in nine PAs in Panama. Our results illustrate that coupling surveillance measures with greater funding and strong governance are paramount to reducing deforestation. Alone, however, these factors are insufficient for forest protection. We argue that conservation approaches that complement effective Surveillance with community participation and equitable benefit sharing will address the wider issues of leakage and permanence. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The ACCSEPT project, which ran from January 2006 to December 2007, identified and analysed the main factors which have been influencing the emergence of CO2 capture and geological storage (CCS) within the European Union (EU). The key clusters of factors concern science and technology, law and regulation, economics, and social acceptance. These factors have been analysed through interviews, a large-scale questionnaire conducted in 2006, and discussions in two stakeholder workshops (2006 and 2007). In Part I of this paper, we aim to distil the key messages and findings with regards to scientific, technical, legal and economic issues. There are no compelling scientific, technical, legal, or economic reasons why CCS could not be widely deployed in the forthcoming decades as part of a package of climate change mitigation options. In order to facilitate this deployment, governments at both the EU and Member State levels have an important role to play, in particular in establishing a robust and transparent legal framework (e.g. governing longterm environmental liability) and a strong policy framework providing sufficient and longterm incentives for CCS and CO2 transportation networks. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article examines the role of non-state actors in the climate change regime, particularly the role that the private sector plays in the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The international carbon market serves as an example of how the direct regulation by international law of the activities of private entities poses certain challenges to the traditional state-centric conceptual paradigm of international law. This article discusses the following issues: first, while the text of the Kyoto Protocol clearly includes provisions to facilitate private sector participation in the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms, the lack of safeguards for private sector concerns is indicative of the prevailing state-centric mentality amongst international law-makers. Second, the failure to design rules and institutions to adequately protect private interests threatens the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. This proposition is already borne out by current developments concerning the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board. We prescribe a number of reforms to address the situation, such as professionalising the Executive Board and introducing administrative rules. Finally, we build upon the discussion of non-state actors as subjects of international regulation to make certain proposals for the emerging international mechanism focused on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.Plant photosynthesis tends to increase with irradiance. However, recent theoretical and observational studies have demonstrated that photosynthesis is also more efficient under diffuse light conditions(1-5). Changes in cloud cover or atmospheric aerosol loadings, arising from either volcanic or anthropogenic emissions, alter both the total photosynthetically active radiation reaching the surface and the fraction of this radiation that is diffuse, with uncertain overall effects on global plant productivity and the land carbon sink. Here we estimate the impact of variations in diffuse fraction on the land carbon sink using a global model modified to account for the effects of variations in both direct and diffuse radiation on canopy photosynthesis. We estimate that variations in diffuse fraction, associated largely with the 'global dimming' period(6-8), enhanced the land carbon sink by approximately one-quarter between 1960 and 1999. However, under a climate mitigation scenario for the twenty-first century in which sulphate aerosols decline before atmospheric CO2 is stabilized, this 'diffuse-radiation' fertilization effect declines rapidly to near zero by the end of the twenty-first century.The growing demand for biofuels is promoting the expansion of a number of agricultural commodities, including oil palm (Elaeis guineensis). Oil-palm plantations cover over 13 million ha, primarily in Southeast Asia, where they have directly or indirectly replaced tropical rainforest. We explored the impact of the spread of oil-palm plantations on greenhouse gas emission and biodiversity. We assessed changes in carbon stocks with changing land use and compared this with the amount of fossil-fuel carbon emission avoided through its replacement by biofuel carbon. We estimated it would take between 75 and 93 years for the carbon emissions saved through use of biofuel to compensate for the carbon lost through forest conversion, depending on how the forest was cleared. If the original habitat was peatland, carbon balance would take more than 600 years. Conversely, planting oil palms on degraded grassland would lead to a net removal of carbon within 10 years. These estimates have associated uncertainty, but their magnitude and relative proportions seem credible. We carried out a meta-analysis of published faunal studies that compared forest with oil palm. We found that plantations supported species-poor communities containing few forest species. Because no published data on flora were available, we present results from our sampling of plants in oil palm and forest plots in Indonesia. Although the species richness of pteridophytes was higher in plantations, they held few forest species. Trees, lianas, epiphytic orchids, and indigenous palms were wholly absent from oil-palm plantations. The majority of individual plants and animals in oil-palm plantations belonged to a small number of generalist species of low conservation concern. As countries strive to meet obligations to reduce carbon emissions under one international agreement (Kyoto Protocol), they may not only fail to meet their obligations under another (Convention on Biological Diversity) but may actually hasten global climate change. Reducing deforestation is likely to represent a more effective climate-change mitigation strategy than converting forest for biofuel production, and it may help nations meet their international commitments to reduce biodiversity loss.The GLOBIO3 model has been developed to assess human-induced changes in biodiversity, in the past, present, and future at regional and global scales. The model is built on simple cause-effect relationships between environmental drivers and biodiversity impacts, based on state-of-the-art knowledge. The mean abundance of original species relative to their abundance in undisturbed ecosystems (MSA) is used as the indicator for biodiversity. Changes in drivers are derived from the IMAGE 2.4 model. Drivers considered are land-cover change, land-use intensity, fragmentation, climate change, atmospheric nitrogen deposition, and infrastructure development. GLOBIO3 addresses (i) the impacts of environmental drivers on MSA and their relative importance; (ii) expected trends under various future scenarios; and (iii) the likely effects of various policy response options. GLOBIO3 has been used successfully in several integrated regional and global assessments. Three different global-scale policy options have been evaluated on their potential to reduce MSA loss. These options are: climate-change mitigation through expanded use of bio-energy, an increase in plantation forestry, and an increase in protected areas. We conclude that MSA loss is likely to continue during the coming decades. Plantation forestry may help to reduce the rate of loss, whereas climate-change mitigation through the extensive use of bioenergy crops will, in fact, increase this rate of loss. The protection of 20% of all large ecosystems leads to a small reduction in the rate of loss, provided that protection is effective and that currently degraded protected areas are restored.Geological CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is among the main near-term contenders for addressing the problem of global climate change. Even in a baseline scenario, with no comprehensive international climate policy, a moderate level of CCS technology is expected to be deployed, given the economic benefits associated with enhanced oil and gas recovery. With stringent climate change control, CCS technologies will probably be installed on an industrial scale. Geologically stored CO2, however, may leak back to the atmosphere, which could render CCS ineffective as climate change reduction option. This article presents a long-term energy scenario study for Europe, in which we assess the significance for climate policy making of leakage of CO2 artificially stored in underground geological formations. A detailed sensitivity analysis is performed for the CO2 leakage rate with the bottom-up energy systems model MARKAL, enriched for this purpose with a large set of CO2 capture technologies (in the power sector, industry, and for the production of hydrogen) and storage options (among which enhanced oil and gas recovery, enhanced coal bed methane recovery, depleted fossil fuel fields, and aquifers). Through a series of model runs, we confirm that a leakage rate of 0.1%/year seems acceptable for CCS to constitute a meaningful climate change mitigation option, whereas one of 1%/year is not. CCS is essentially no option to achieve CO2 emission reductions when the leakage rate is as high as 1%/year, so more reductions need to be achieved through the use of renewables or nuclear power, or in sectors like industry and transport. We calculate that under strict climate control policy, the cumulative captured and geologically stored CO2 by 2100 in the electricity sector, when the leakage rate is 0.1%/year, amounts to about 45,000 MtCO(2). Only a little over 10,000 MtCO(2) cumulative power-generation-related emissions are captured and stored underground by the end of the century when the leakage rate is 1%/year. Overall marginal CO2 abatement costs increase from a few a,not sign/tCO(2) today to well over 150 a,not sign/tCO(2) in 2100, under an atmospheric CO2 concentration constraint of 550 ppmv. Carbon costs in 2100 turn out to be about 40 a,not sign/tCO(2) higher when the annual leakage rate is 1%/year in comparison to when there is no CO2 leakage. Irrespective of whether CCS deployment is affected by gradual CO2 seepage, the annual welfare loss in Europe induced by the implementation of policies preventing "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (under our assumption, implying a climate stabilisation target of 550 ppmv CO2 concentration) remains below 0.5% of GDP during the entire century.Second-generation, dedicated lignocellulosic crops for bioenergy are being hailed as the sustainable alternative to food crops for the generation of liquid transport fuels, contributing to climate change mitigation and increased energy security. Across temperate regions they include tree species grown as short rotation coppice and intensive forestry (e. g. Populus and Salix species) and C-4 grasses such as miscanthus and switch-grass. For bioenergy crops it is paramount that high energy yields are maintained in order to drive the industry to an economic threshold where it has competitive advantage over conventional fossil fuel alternatives. Therefore, in the face of increased planting of these species, globally, there is a pressing need for insight into their responses to predicted changes in climate to ensure these crops are 'climate proofed' in breeding and improvement programmes. In this review, we investigate the physiological responses of bioenergy crops to rising atmospheric CO2 ([Ca]) and drought, with particular emphasis on the C-3 Salicaceae trees and C-4 grasses. We show that while crop yield is predicted to rise by up to 40% in elevated [Ca], this is tempered by the effects of water deficit. In response to elevated [Ca] stomatal conductance and evapotranspiration decline and higher leaf-water potentials are observed. However, whole-plant responses to [Ca] are often of lower magnitude and may even be positive (increased water use in elevated [Ca]). We conclude that rising [Ca] is likely to improve drought tolerance of bioenergy crop species due to improved plant water use, consequently yields in temperate environments may remain high in future climate scenarios.Many people believe that forest management and the production of forest products can be important tools in a climate change mitigation strategy. This article critically examines how forest management can contribute to climate change mitigation in the global context, and it examines four major issues that must be considered before developing a strategy that would achieve real contributions. The article argues that protection of the carbon stock in the existing natural forest should be the central management objective related to carbon. Second should be the development of a widely accepted standard for calculating forestry offsets to drive future private investment on private forests. The article concludes with some recommendations for policy setting.Forests provide a wide range of benefits to people. Forest plantations on former agricultural land for commercial and restoration purposes may enhance ecosystem services, including biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. Incorporating these ecosystem services into resource management decisions is of paramount importance. Efforts towards the sustainable management of forest ecosystems for climate change mitigation give opportunities to establish a new relationship between researchers and forests. Growing and competing demands for food, biomass, timber, and environmental services is posing severe challenges to effective forest governance, considering the impact of global change. However, tree plantations can hardly match biological diversity and structural attributes of the original forest cover, which warrants for future sustainable mitigation through forest activities.If photovoltaics (PV) are to contribute significantly to stabilizing the climate, they will need to be deployed on the scale of multiple terawatts. Installation of that much PV would cover substantial portions of the Earth's surface with dark-colored, sunlight-absorbing panels, reducing the Earth's albedo. How much radiative forcing would result from this change in land use? How does this amount compare to the radiative forcing avoided by substituting PV for fossil fuels? This analysis uses a series of simple equations to compare the two effects and finds that substitution dominates; the avoided radiative forcing due to substitution of PV for fossil fuels is approximately 30 times larger than the forcing due to albedo modification. Sensitivity analysis, including discounting of future costs and benefits, identifies unfavorable yet plausible configurations in which the albedo effect substantially reduces the climatic benefits of PV. The value of PV as a climate mitigation option depends on how it is deployed, not just how much it is deployed-efficiency of PV systems and the carbon intensity of the substituted energy are particularly important.Critical geographers have paid remarkably scant attention to issues of climate change, even less so to forest carbon management policy. Building on geographic debate concerning the ontological production of nature and race, this paper argues that at stake in the climate change debate are not simply questions of energy geopolitics or green production. Also at issue in the climate debate are powerful questions of identity, the national form and race. This paper considers how a particular slice of the climate debate - forest carbon management discourse pertaining to Canada's boreal forest - enacts a political geography of racial difference, one that seeks to accommodate an imagined mode of traditional aboriginal life to the exigencies of global climate change mitigation and, importantly, to a logic of global capital now well into its ecological phase.Climate change mitigation poses significant challenges for South Africa and its energy development, historically highly energy intensive. At the same time, the country faces a host of daunting development challenges, exacerbated by the legacy of apartheid. Examining both challenges, this paper considers how alternative conceptions of a development path can be achieved. In the short term, energy efficiency provides large potential for mitigation - and energy savings at the same time. Changing South Africa's fuel mix, dependent to three-quarters on coal, is at least a medium-term challenge. The minerals-energy complex is so central to the economy that it is likely to take decades to change dramatically. The most transformative change is to an alteration in economic structure, likely to take long to achieve. The article examines specific policy instruments that might be implemented to achieve such a transformation. A transition to a low-carbon economy will require a paradigm shift in industrial policy. It will require considered provision for sectors sensitive to changes in energy prices. Building up new, climate-friendly industries will be needed to sustain employment and investment. To enable a just transition, provision will have to be made for emissions-intensive sectors, if they are to be phased out over time. South African government has adopted a vision, strategic direction and framework for climate policy. Policymakers have begun to understand that the future will be carbon constrained and that South Africa's emission will have to stop growing, stabilize and decline before mid-century. The challenge of climate change is a long-term challenge, requiring immediate action. This article examines actions at near-, medium- and long-term timescales. Its focus is on the most transformative change, that of seeking to shift development paths.Deep ocean storage of CO2 could help reduce the atmospheric level of greenhouse gas as part of a climate change mitigation strategy. In this paper, a multiphase flow model of CO2 sequestration into deep ocean sediments was designed associated with the formation of CO2 hydrates. A simplified assumption was proposed to predict the critical time of CO2 leakage from marine sedimentary strata into seawater. Moreover, some principal parameters, which include the permeability, anisotropy, total injection amount, and length of the injection part of wellbores, were investigated by numerical simulations. The numerical estimates are used to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of CO2 storage in deep ocean sediments. Accurately predicting the actual fate of liquid CO2 sequestered into the marine sedimentary strata at depths greater than 500 m is complicated by uncertainties associated with not only the chemical-physical behavior of CO2 under such conditions but also the geo-environment of disposal sites. Modeling results have shown some implications that the effectiveness of CO2 ocean sequestration depends mainly on the injection conditions (such as injection rate, total injection amount, and the depth of injection), the site geology (such as permeability and anisotropy of disposal formations), and the chemical-physical behavior of CO2 in marine environment. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article examines whether democracies contribute more to the provision of global public goods. It thus contributes to the debate on the effects of domestic institutions on international cooperation. The focus is on human-induced climate change, in Stern's words "the biggest market failure the world has ever seen."(1) Using new data on climate change cooperation We Study a cross-section of 185 countries in 1990-2004. The results show that the effect of democracy on levels of political commitment to climate change mitigation (policy output) is positive. In contrast, the effect on policy outcomes, measured in terms of emission levels and trends, is ambiguous. These results demonstrate that Lip until now the democracy effect has not been able to override countervailing forces that emanate from the free-rider problem, discounting of future benefits of climate change mitigation, and other factors that cut against efforts to reduce emissions. Even though democracies have had a slow start in moving from political and legal commitments (Policy Output) to emission reductions (policy outcomes), particularly in the transportation sector, we observe some encouraging signs. The main implication of our findings for research on international politics is that greater efforts should be made to Study policy output and outcome side by side. This will help in identifying whether more democratic countries experience larger "words-deeds" gaps also in other policy areas, and whether there are systematic differences of this kind between domestic and international commitments and across different policy areas.An extensive laboratory program was conducted for the measurement of the interfacial tension between CO2 and water or brine covering the ranges of (2 to 27) MPa pressure, (20 to 125) degrees C temperature, and (0 to 334 010) mg(.)L(-1) water salinity. The laboratory experiments were conducted using the pendant drop method combined with the solution of the Laplace equation for capillarity for the profile of the brine drop in the CO2-brine equilibrium environment. The analysis of the resulting set of 378 IFT measurements reveals that: (1) under conditions of constant temperature and water salinity, IFT steeply decreases with increasing pressure in the range P < P-c and mildly decreases for P > P-c with an asymptotic trend toward a constant value at higher pressures; (2) under the same conditions of constant pressure and temperature, IFT increases with increasing water salinity, reflecting decreasing CO2 solubility in brine as salinity increases; (3) the dependence of IFT on temperature is more complex than that on either pressure or salinity, depending on the CO2 phase. For T < T-c, IFT increases with increasing temperature, and around the critical point (T approximate to T-c), IFT significantly decreases (believed to be associated with the fact that at T-c the IFT between CO2 liquid and vapor phases tends to zero) and then increases again with increasing temperature for T > T-c with an asymptotic trend toward a constant value for high temperatures. The dependence of IFT on pressure, temperature, and water salinity for CO2 and water/brine systems can be well approximated by a power function of pressure whose coefficient and exponent depend on temperature and water salinity. These results indicate that, in the case Of CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers as a climate-change mitigation strategy, the formation water displacement by injected CO2 during the injection (drainage) phase of CO2 storage and the possible subsequent CO2 displacement by invading brine during the CO2 migration (imbibition) phase depend on in situ conditions of pressure, temperature, and water salinity through the effects that these primary variables have on the IFT between CO2 and aquifer brine.In seeking to determine whether climate change mitigation strategies are effective, researchers and policy-makers typically use energy consumption as all indicator. UK government data show that energy use amongst the Public is rising, despite measures to encourage energy conservation. Yet, research to date has not explicitly asked which actions the public are taking with the express intention of mitigating climate change. Using Stern's classification of impact-oriented and intent-oriented behaviour research, tire research described in this paper examines both actions taken 'out of concern for climate change' and energy conservation practices amongst the UK public. The findings show a clear divergence between actions prescribed by policy-makers (i.e. energy conservation) and those taken by the public to mitigate climate change (e.g.. recycling). Furthermore, those who take action to conserve energy generally do so for reasons unconnected to the environment (e.g., to save money). Regression analyses highlight the distinct determinants of these two behavioural categories. These findings imply that surveys using energy reduction as in indicator of Public response to climate change falsely assume that these can be equated; Consequently, they Will provide a distorted picture of behavioural response. Possible reasons for the asymmetry of intentions and impacts, and policy implications, are discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All right reserved.Lighting constitutes more than 20% of total U.S. electricity consumption, a similar fraction in the European Union, and an even higher fraction in many developing countries. Because many current lighting technologies are highly inefficient, improved technologies for lighting hold great potential for energy savings and for reducing associated greenhouse gas emissions. Solid-state lighting shows great promise as a source of efficient, affordable, color-balanced white light. indeed, assuming market discount rates, engineering-economic analysis demonstrates that white solid-state lighting already has a lower levelized annual cost (LAC) than incandescent bulbs. The LAC for white solid-state lighting will be lower than that of the most efficient fluorescent bulbs by the end of this decade. However, a large literature indicates that households do not make their decisions in terms of simple expected economic value. After a review of the technology, we compare the electricity consumption, carbon emissions, and cost-effectiveness of current lighting technologies, accounting for expected performance evolution through 2015. We then simulate the lighting electricity consumption and implicit greenhouse gases emissions for the U.S. residential and commercial sectors through 2015 under different policy scenarios: voluntary solid-state lighting adoption, implementation of lighting standards in new construction, and rebate programs or equivalent subsidies. Finally, we provide a measure of cost-effectiveness for solid-state lighting in the context of other climate change abatement policies.Urban car transportation is a cause of climate change but is also associated with additional burdens such as traffic congestion and air pollution. Studies of external costs and potential impacts of travel demand management help to define policy instruments that mitigate the damaging impact of transportation. Here, we analyze different externalities of car transportation in Beijing and show that social costs induced by motorized transportation are equivalent to about 7.5-15.0% of Beijing's GDP. Congestion and air pollution contribute the most with climate change costs being the most uncertain. We show that a road charge could not only address congestion but also has environmental benefits. The paper investigates the role of demand elasticities and demonstrates that joint demand and supply-side policies provide considerable synergies. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we examine the use of wood products as a means to mitigate climate change. We describe the life cycle of wood products including forest growth, wood harvest and processing, and product use and disposal, focusing on the multiple roles of wood as both material and fuel. We present a comparative case study of a building constructed with either a wood or a reinforced concrete frame. We find that the production of wood building material uses less energy and emits less carbon than the production of reinforced concrete material. We compare the relative cost of the two building methods without environmental taxation, under the Current Swedish industrial energy taxation regime, and in scenarios that incorporate estimates of the full social cost of carbon emission. We find that the inclusion of climate-related external costs improves the economic standing of wood construction vis-A-vis concrete construction. We conclude that policy instruments that internalise the external costs of carbon emission should encourage a structural change toward the increased use of sustainability produced wood products. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.What geographical and institutional conditions are important for initiating and sustaining climate-change mitigation at the local level? Taking this question as a point of departure, we analyze local climate mitigation as a case of multilevel network governance. This is illustrated by the case of two Swedish cities, which are both involved in city networking in favour of climate-change mitigation. Different business structures and other local conditions in significant ways influence both the level of ambition and the climate-policy strategies of the two cities. The sheer size and intensity of the networking activities clearly illustrate the fact that cities are increasingly becoming arenas of globalization, rather than passive victims of global forces, thus confirming the call for a multilevel network-governance approach in policy and politics as well as in research.In an effort to minimize its contribution to climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, California enacted California Senate Bill 1368. The bill prohibits utilities from purchasing electrical power from plaids that emit more green house gases than natural-gas-fired power plants. This burdens interstate commerce by prohibiting power purchases from out-of-state coal-fired plants and is likely to lead to a constitutional challenge under the dormant Commerce Clause. To address the validity of California Senate Bill 1308 under traditional dormant Commerce Clause analysis, one necessary step is to answer a question that has troubled scientists and economists for decades: What is the value of California's interest in reducing its contributions to climate change? This Note examines that interest and argues that its value is a, political question that makes traditional dormant Commerce Clause analysis inappropriate. It proposes an alternative, threshold test under dormant Commerce Clause analysis it avoid inappropriate judicial valuations of public goods: Is the statutes burden necessary to create a public good that is most appropriately valued by the political process?Climate change mitigation would benefit from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The REDD mechanism, still in discussion, would be in charge of distilling the right incentives and promoting the right policies for fostering forest conservation. The estimation of reduced emissions induced by the mechanism has been raised as an issue, either for issuing the proper amount of carbon credits or for providing appropriate compensations of foregone revenues and other costs to host countries. This estimation would be based on the gap between observed deforestation and a counterfactual value. Although any prediction of deforestation rates (i.e. business-as-usual scenarios) is challenging, and any negotiated target is subject to obvious political influence, these two ways have been prioritirized so far to determine the counterfactual value. In other words proposals focused on a results-based approach, the relevance of which is questionable because estimations of avoided deforestation are hardly reliable. With this approach, issuance of carbon credits and distribution of financial compensations could threaten respectively environmental integrity of the scheme and equity outcomes. Rather than considering overall deforestation (predicted and observed), we argue that a REDD mechanism would gain from linking distribution of carbon finance to real efforts (opposed to "results") that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates. This would provide strong incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures. The methodology we present to measure these efforts (labeled Compensated Successful Efforts) is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is partly due to structural factors, and to domestic policies and measures. This typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate/underlying causes, or economic/institutional factors. Using an econometric model, our approach estimates efforts that are (i) independent of structural factors (economic development, population, initial forest area, agricultural export prices), (ii) estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period, and (iii) relative to other countries. In order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) and four periods between 1970 and 2005. We conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the Compensated Successful Efforts approach. In addition to being conservative from an environmental perspective, this approach tends to guarantee fairness by accounting for dramatic changes during the commitment period. Last, such estimations of avoided deforestation could provide guidance for decisions on further financing of national programs to curb deforestation, as it would help to distinguish between successful and unsuccessful policies. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The European forest-based sector has several unique strengths. These include its provision of multiple sociocultural, economic and environmental benefits in a sustainable way, without compromising its resource base, the forest. The sector also plays an important role in climate change mitigation. The European forest-based sector plays a key role in a sustainable society. It comprises a competitive, knowledge-based industry that fosters the extended use of renewable resources. It strives to ensure its societal contribution in the context of a bio-based, customer-driven and globally competitive European economy.Future climate projections of Global Climate Models (GCMs) under different scenarios are usually used to develop climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. However, present GCMs have limited skills to simulate the complex and local climate features and to provide reliable information on precipitation which is a principal input to hydrologic impact assessment models. Furthermore, the outputs provided by GCMs are too coarse to be used by such hydrologic models, as they require information at much finer scales. Downscaling of GCM outputs is usually employed to provide fine-resolution or point-scale information required for impact models. The downscaling methodologies developed to date can be broadly categorized as statistical and dynamical. Statistical downscaling tools have three main classes: 1) regression based, 2) weather generators, and 3) weather typing. The weather generator is one of the popular downscaling techniques. It is based on statistical principles and considered to be computationally less demanding than other downscaling techniques. In the present study, LARS-WG (a weather generator) and the outputs from HadCM3 (a climate change model) for present climate as well as future time slice of 2070-2099 (2080s) based on A2 scenario of Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) are used to evaluate LARS-WG as a tool for the assessment of climate change impacts on extreme characteristics of daily rainfall at Owairaka station located in the Auckland region in New Zealand. The results obtained in this study illustrate that LARS-WG has reasonable skill to simulate the extreme rainfall events and can be adopted as an effective tool for incorporating climate change impacts into sustainable development.A huge opportunity exists within the electricity generation industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thus making a significant contribution to climate change mitigation. Under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), member countries are allocated national emission quotas which they further distribute among their individual industry sectors. Within the UK, the electricity generation industry already plays a significant role in the reduction of green house emissions. Emissions trading mechanisms should make it more attractive to build capacity in renewable and cleaner generation than buying rights to emit since more still needs to be done to reduce emissions. To achieve this it is essential that the right emission quotas are allocated for different industries. The amount of emissions to be allocated to the generation industry must therefore be consistent with the desired emissions reduction target and the current technological status of the generation mix. The allocation must also take into account the relative costs of cleaner and renewable generation technologies that are commercially available and those in developments. This paper proposes an approach for determining the emissions allocation for the generation industry to achieve a given emission reduction target. The paper draws on previous work on valuing emissions from electricity generation and building a sustainable generation mix in a competitive environment. Studies were carried out with seven generation technologies. The studies demonstrate that when compared with energy markets alone, emission trading schemes have significant influence in future generation mix and its consequential technology and generation costs as well as emission reductions. Appropriate emission allocation scheme encourages a cost-effective, sustainable generation mix to develop without distorting competition.Renewable generating technologies offer an effective means for climate change mitigation and guaranteeing energy security. As we all known that, the widespread perception that these renewable generating technologies have more risk than conventional alternatives. So, it is an investment-decision problem. Investors commonly evaluate such problems using portfolio theory to manage risk and maximize portfolio performance under a variety of unpredictable economic outcomes. Absolute deviation is utilized as a measure of risk and a new function is provided for it to manage the portfolio of energy market which including renewable generating technologies. We consider the Mean-Absolute Deviation (MAD) portfolio optimization problem in a frictional market with additional constraints representing so-called short sales. An algorithm for solving the optimization problem is thus presented, which uses the special structure of the original problem to reduce to a linear programming. The numerical test shows the validity of the method.The gradual shift from the traditional approach of outdoor processes of habitation in Ghana to the indoor, coupled with increased use of information technology, and ingress of solar radiation, liberate excess heat into buildings and make occupants feel uncomfortable. A straight forward response to excess heat in buildings in Ghana has been the adoption of an air conditioner. Air conditioner use leads to high peak electricity demand and emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This paper identifies passive and low energy techniques which can improve thermal comfort in buildings for the different climate zones of Ghana, and consequently reduce electricity demand and environmental effects due to air conditioning. The energy saving potential for use of passive and low energy cooling techniques was determined by plotting climatic data comprising average monthly temperature and relative humidity for a thirty year period (1976-2005) for a total of ten towns and cities from the various climatic zones of Ghana on the Building Bioclimatic chart. It is aimed at encouraging innovative and individual design solutions amongst building design professionals. The reduction of the peak cooling-energy demand would be of great interest to the power generating industries. It will also be of interest to building investors, as it will imply a possible reduction in the required installed plant capacity. It will also be an essential element in Ghana's Climate Change Mitigation Program.Ecosystem services are public goods that frequently constitute the only source of capital for the poor, who lack political voice. As a result, provision of ecosystem services is sub-optimal and estimation of their values is complicated. We examine how econometric estimation can feed computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling to estimate health-related ecosystem values. Against a back drop of climate change, we analyze the Brazilian policy to expand National Forests (FLONAS) by 50 million hectares. Because these major environmental changes can generate spillovers in other sectors, we develop and use a CGE model that focuses on land and labor markets. Compared to climate change and deforestation in the baseline, the FLONAS scenario suggests relatively small declines in GDP, output (including agriculture) and other macro indicators. Urban households will experience declines in their welfare because they own most of the capital and land, which allows them to capture most of the deforestation benefits. In contrast, even though rural households have fewer opportunities for subsistence agriculture and face additional competition with other rural agricultural workers for more limited employment, their welfare improves due to health benefits from conservation of nearby forests. The efficiency vs. equity tradeoffs implied by the FLONAS scenario suggests that health-related ecosystem services will be underprovided if the rural poor are politically weaker than the urban rich. In conclusion, we briefly discuss the pros and cons of the CGE strategy for valuing ecosystem-mediated health benefits and evaluating contemporary policies on climate change mitigation.This article describes the most important provisions of World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements that should be considered in designing laws and regulations under likely post-Kyoto climate change mitigation regimes. The Kyoto Protocol and the expected post-Kyoto international climate agreement depend on national measures to implement market-based mitigation measures. This market strategy promotes international exchanges of goods, investments, and services such as cross-border trading of credits for emissions reductions and transnational financing for projects that avoid emissions through the Clean Development Mechanism. Moreover, the United States and other countries, concerned over "leakage" of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through relocation of industry to other countries coupled with political worry over manufacturing competitiveness, have proposed national climate legislation containing border adjustments on imported goods or implicit subsidies for national producers, raising additional WTO considerations. The article assesses the likely effectiveness of such trade-related measures in achieving climate change mitigation goals and the potential trade policy infringements and trade distortions that they might bring about. Alternative strategies for achieving GHG mitigation goals in closer conformity with WTO law and policy will be suggested.There is much talk about engaging the public in climate change mitigation and adaptation in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Governments rush to demand greater engagement of the public in tackling climate change and delivering sustainable futures. The importance that public engagement has gained as part of the UK climate agenda begs the questions of what is actually behind this call and what are the implications. This paper analyses the rationale for public engagement as enshrined in major policy documents. This rationale is clearly instrumental in that citizens are expected to engage by adopting the 'right attitude', by performing prescribed behaviours, and by consenting to proposed measures. Using recent cases of climate change mitigation and adaptation practice the paper discusses the implications of such an approach to public engagement. The paper concludes that until the manifold disjunctions between climate related policy agendas and their rationales for engagement are explicitly addressed citizen engagement will be serving incumbent interests rather than contributing to socially sustainable and democratic decision-makingSemi-arid West Africa has not been integrated into the afforestation/reforestation (AR) carbon market. Most projects implemented under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have focused on carbon emission reductions from industry and energy consumption, whereas only few (only one in West Africa) have been certified for AR carbon sequestration. A proposed mechanism, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) to be discussed under COP15 aims to reduce emissions by conserving already existing forests. REDD has high potential for carbon stocking at low costs, but focuses primarily on rain forest countries and excludes semi-arid West Africa from the preliminary setup. African savannas have potentials to store carbon in the present situation with degrading ecosystems and relatively low revenues from crops and cattle, especially if it is possible to combine carbon stocking with promotion of secondary crops such as food resources and traditional medicines harvested on a sustainable basis. Methods for modelling and mapping of potential carbon biomass are being developed, but are still in a preliminary state. Although economic benefits from the sale of carbon credits are likely to be limited, carbon stocking is an interesting option if additional benefits are considered such as improved food security and protection of biodiversity.Estimating carbon exchange at regional scales is paramount to understanding feedbacks between climate and the carbon cycle, but also to verifying climate change mitigation such as emission reductions and strategies compensating for emissions such as carbon sequestration. This paper discusses evidence for a number of important shortcomings of current generation modelling frameworks designed to provide regional scale budgets from atmospheric observations. Current top-down and bottom-up approaches targeted at deriving consistent regional scale carbon exchange estimates for biospheric and anthropogenic sources and sinks are hampered by a number of issues: we show that top-down constraints using point measurements made from tall towers, although sensitive to larger spatial scales, are however influenced by local areas much more strongly than previously thought. On the other hand, classical bottom-up approaches using process information collected at the local scale, such as from eddy covariance data, need up-scaling and validation on larger scales. We therefore argue for a combination of both approaches, implicitly providing the important local scale information for the top-down constraint, and providing the atmospheric constraint for up-scaling of flux measurements. Combining these data streams necessitates quantifying their respective representation errors, which are discussed. The impact of these findings on future network design is highlighted, and some recommendations are given.Carbon dioxide capture technologies have the potential to become an important climate change mitigation option through sequestration of gaseous CO, A new concept for CO2 capture involves use of immobilized carbonic anhydrase (CA) that catalyzes the reversible hydration of CO2 to HCO3- and H+. Cost-efficient production of the enzyme and an inexpensive immobilization system are critical for development of economically feasible CA-based CO2 capture processes. An artificial, bifunctional enzyme containing CA from Neisseria gonorrhoeae and a cellulose binding domain (CBD) from Clostridium thermocellum was constructed with a His(6) tag. The chimeric enzyme exhibited both CA activity and CBD binding affinity. This fusion enzyme is of particular interest due to its binding affinity for cellulose and retained CA activity, which could serve as the basis for improved technology to capture CO2 from flue gasses. (C) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 25: 68-74, 2009This paper examines Indonesia's vulnerability to climate change, and her position in the global climate change mitigation effort as a significant emitter with large potential for reducing emissions from forestry. It highlights the scope for Australia and Indonesiaboth large emitters, one a developed country and potential buyer of emissions permits, the other a developing country and potential seller of per-mitsto play complementary roles in the global effort. The discussion outlines ways in which the two countries can cooperate with each other and with regional neighbours in mitigation initiatives and climate change adaptation. It suggests that their efforts could serve as a model for cooperation between developed and developing countries. The paper notes that the current global financial crisis is a short-term problem, while climate change has its effects over the long term. The recessionary effect of the financial crisis is not a good reason for delaying climate change mitigation efforts by Indonesia and other countries.Indonesia has so far suffered a relatively mild impact from the global financial crisis. Its economy grew at 4% in the year to June 2009, displaying a more resilient response than some of its neighbours. Fiscal stimulus measures, deft monetary policy and cash transfers to the poor served to soften the impact of the crisis. Parliamentary elections in April and presidential elections in July provided further economic stimulus. Election-related spending and the stimulus measures helped maintain formal sector employment levels and the proportion of casual employees in the workforce. Like the cash transfers, payments by parliamentary candidates to voters contributed to household incomes, particularly among the poor. This is reflected in widespread declines in poverty observed in 2009. The crisis, the stimulus package, the direct cash transfers and the election campaign spending combined to create a mechanism of income redistribution in favour of the poor. On 20 October Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Boediono were inaugurated as president and vice president for 2009-14. They announced key economic targets for 2014, including 7% economic growth, 5-6% unemployment and an 8-10% poverty level. It is crucial that the two leaders tackle important reforms - even politically sensitive ones - that will remove obstacles to faster and more employment-friendly growth. However, the plan for their first 100 days focuses on a series of small, politically non-sensitive reforms designed to demonstrate their commitment to, and create momentum for, wider reform. This strategy is unlikely to create an impression that the government is serious about more substantial and essential reforms. Nor is it likely to generate the economic impact necessary to bring the economy closer to the government's key economic targets. The slow expansion of infrastructure since the 1997-98 crisis is a major obstacle to future high and sustained economic growth. Despite some signs of improvement in recent years, Indonesia's rate of infrastructure investment remains far below pre-crisis levels. Tackling this problem should be a high priority for the government. While pursuing ways to grow faster, Indonesia - one of the world's largest CO2 emitters-needs to respond more vigorously to climate change. The leaders have pledged to place climate change mitigation high on their policy agenda. Yet little has been said about how, as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, Indonesia should support her people's adaptation to its effects. The government needs to give high priority to adaptation and promote it at the international level.The idea of engineering the storage of carbon released from fossil fuel burning in reservoirs other than the atmosphere has developed in the past 20 years from an obscure idea to an increasingly recognized potential approach that could be an important contributor to stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. Despite the intense application of scientific and technological expertise to the development of options for deliberate carbon storage, nontechnical factors play an important role. This chapter identifies sociopolitical, nontechnical factors that have contributed to the development of ideas and technologies associated with deliberate carbon storage. Broadly, interest in deliberate storage has expanded in response to increasing societal attention to reducing CO2 emissions for climate change mitigation. Specific societal groups, or stakeholders, which have contributed to the recent focus on carbon storage include the fossil fuel industry that has been shifting to a strategy of confronting rather than denying the CO2-climate change connection, a scientific community motivated by an increased sense of urgency of the need to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the general public with little knowledge about or awareness of carbon storage, and environmental advocacy groups that have demonstrated some divergence in levels of support for deliberate carbon storage. Among the policy mechanisms that have provided incentives for deliberate carbon storage are national accounting of carbon sources and sinks and carbon taxes. Another driver with particular importance in the United States is the political preference of some politicians to support development of advanced technologies for climate change mitigation rather than supporting mandatory CO2 regulations.Alkane Energy plc grew from an idea conceived in 1993 to capture methane from abandoned coal mines for use as fuel in a similar way to landfill gas. Alkane was founded in 1994 in Nottinghamshire, was supported by an Apax venture capital fund and floated in 2000 on the London Stock Exchange. The company has since developed containerised systems for the recovery of methane from abandoned coal mines and installed it on old mine sites as decentralised power-generation plants. Alkane has become a leading European player in the design, construction and operation of these climate change mitigation and carbon capture plants. The company and its associate Pro2 Anlagentechnik now recover emissions of methane from abandoned and operating coal mines and other anthropogenic sources such as biogas and landfill gas for renewable electricity generation in the UK and Germany.Not all regions in a weak position vis-a-vis climate change are recognised by the international Climate Regime. The Arctic region is a case in point. Although generally considered to be particularly vulnerable to climate change neither the text of the UNFCCC, nor the Kyoto Protocol makes any special mention of the Arctic. Still, the assessment reports of the IPCC as well as the ACIA-report predicts major ecological, sociological and economic impacts of climate change in the Arctic; the sea-ice is melting; the permafrost is thawing and thereby exposing the already susceptible ecosystems to an even greater risk of e. g., species extinction, and endangering the livelihood of, primarily the indigenous, peoples in the Arctic. At the same time, the Arctic is rich in natural resources, particularly energy resources; immense reserves of oil, coal and gas, as well as renewable energy resources, such as wind and water, are located within the Arctic areas. This chapter deals with climate change mitigation possibilities in the energy sector in the Arctic region. What implications follow, for instance from, on the one hand, the Arctic's special vulnerability in relation to climate change, and, the other hand, the prosperous occurrence of energy resources in the Arctic region? The aim of the chapter is thus to analyse the interrelation between climate change, energy and the Arctic and, subsequently, to consider better ways to counter the posed challenges.This article surveys the experience of conditionality provisions applied by the World Bank, the IMF, bilateral donors, and the European Union's accession process. Ownership is essential for effective cooperation and requires domestic climate policies to be country-driven and decision-making to be equitable. Bilateral cooperation allows for a direct exchange of expertise and long-term relationships. A multilateral umbrella or multilateral institutions can avoid complexity and detrimental competition between multiple supporters of one developing country, limit the ability of individual countries to abuse the mechanism to exercise geo-strategic interests, and allow for more stringent reactions to non-compliance. In all cases, independent monitoring and review create transparency and objectivity, enhance effectiveness, and protect the interests of all parties. Policy relevance: Past conditionality provisions offer many negative experiences, particularly where international organizations have imposed the prevailing economic paradigm on countries that were in desperate need of finance. The situation for international cooperation on climate change mitigation is fundamentally different. Developing countries can choose whether they want to access international support to enhance the scale, scope or speed of their mitigation actions. Developed countries or international bodies also retain some discretion to choose among possible mitigation actions based on the carbon impact. This creates a double conditionality and the opportunity to jointly design appropriate incentive schemes. Several lessons from the use of conditionality provisions are identified in order to inform the process, institutional setting and design of such incentive schemes.In contemporary media discourse, suggestions for publicly mandated climate change mitigation or adaptation measures are frequently challenged from a cost perspective. However, empirical data on the actual economic appreciation of local mitigation and adaptation measures expressed as citizen willingness-to-pay (WTP) are scarce. In this paper, we report results of a preference survey using a choice experiment (CE) that quantifies economic preferences for biodiversity-based climate change mitigation and adaptation in the region surrounding Hainich National Park (Thuringia, Germany). A representative sample of 302 respondents-the majority of them frequent Hainich forest visitors-was interviewed in autumn 2006. Nested logit analysis showed that respondents state a substantially positive WTP for climate change mitigation by afforestation (p < 0.001). If converted to WTP for an additional sequestration of carbon that average German citizens emit as CO(2), a monetary value of 7.34 (sic) yr(-1) t C(-1) is obtained. For increasing forest resistance and resilience against insect pests and storms (climate change adaptation) a WTP of 27.54 (sic) yr(-1) (p < 0.001) is obtained, and 16.83 (sic) yr(-1) (p < 0.001) is obtained for increasing the general resilience and resistance of forest ecosystems to environmental stressors. Respondents support moderate programs to eradicate invasive plants when compared to more aggressive eradication measures. Due to the lack of comparable studies, it can only be conservatively assumed that WTP would be lower if mitigation and adaptation measures were to be implemented in forests not, or only rarely, used by respondents. As all proposed means for climate change mitigation and adaptation contribute to local forest ecosystem biodiversity, the results of the study advocate the realization of measures that potentially benefit both climate policy and regional conservation concerns,Growing concern over the impact on global climate change of the buildup of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere has resulted in proposals to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) at large point sources and store it in geologic formations, such as oil and gas reservoirs, unmineable coal seams, and saline formations, referred to as carbon capture and storage (CCS). There are three options for capturing CO2 from point sources: post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture, and oxy-combustion. Several processes are available to capture CO2, and new or improved processes are under development. However, CO2 capture is the most expensive part of CCS, typically accounting for 75% of overall cost. CCS will benefit significantly from the development of a lower cost post-combustion CO2 capture process that can be retrofitted to existing power plants. Once captured, the CO2 is compressed to about 150 atm and pipelined at supercritical conditions to a suitable storage site. Oil and gas reservoirs, because they have assured seals and are well characterized, are promising early opportunity sites. Saline formations are much more extensive and have a huge potential storage capacity, but are much less characterized. Several commercial and a number of pilot CCS projects are underway around the world. Information from these projects will form the basis for the development of CCS as a climate change mitigation strategy. These projects are contributing to the development of suitable regulations, determining best operating practices, improving mathematical models, and providing information to the public and other stakeholders. Based on current knowledge, CCS appears to be a promising option for reducing GHG emissions.The political and academic discussion on the global problem of climate change and its future implications have occurred mainly at the national and international level. However, communities and local governments can have a significant role in mitigating climate change by controlling greenhouse gas production at the local level. The Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign sponsored by Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) assists more than 800 municipalities all over the world to adopt climate change mitigation policies and integrate them into decision making. There are 176 Canadian municipalities involved in this campaign while other policies and programs on the national, provincial and local level are also available to implement activities to mitigate impact of climate change. The principle questions addressed by this research were: how Canadian municipalities contribute to greenhouse gas reduction, if and how communities benefit from those activities.In spite of all the low carbon technologies, climate change mitigation policies, and high energy prices since the IPCC 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and in many regions accelerate. Energy related carbon dioxide emissions, currently over 28 Gt CO(2)/year, could exceed 40Gt CO(2)/year by 2030 under business as usual. To keep mean global temperature rise below 2.4 degrees C above pre-industrial levels would require stabilisation around 450 ppm CO(2-eq), although this target is becoming very challenging to achieve. The CO(2) concentration is already at 380 ppm CO(2). Existing technologies and those close to commercialisation have the potential to reduce CO(2) emissions, the amount depending on the future price of carbon. The total global economic potential in 2030 for up to US$50/t CO(2-eq) is between 14-23 Gt CO(2-eq)/year with the energy supply sector having a potential of between 3-6.4Gt CO(2-eq)/year and the potential uptake of energy efficient technologies in the buildings, industry and transport sectors contributing 9-11 Gt CO(2-eq)/year. Deeper reductions are needed to meet the desired 450 ppm CO(2-eq) target, requiring social change and strong political measures to be enacted. The cost of achieving this goal is likely to be a small percentage of total GDP, but only if stringent measures are taken now.This paper builds on the assumption that OECD countries are (or will soon be) taking actions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These actions, however, will not be sufficient to control global warming, unless developing countries also get involved in the cooperative effort to reduce GHG emissions. The paper investigates the best short-term strategies that emerging economies can adopt in reacting to OECD countries' mitigation effort, given the common long-term goal to prevent excessive warming without hampering economic growth. Results indicate that developing countries would incur substantial economic losses by following a myopic strategy that disregards climate in the short-run, and that their optimal investment behaviour is to anticipate the implementation of a climate policy by roughly 10 years. investing in innovation ahead of time is also found to be advantageous. The degree of policy anticipation is shown to be important in determining the financial transfers of an international carbon market meant to provide incentives for the participation of developing countries. This is especially relevant for China, whose recent and foreseeable trends of investments in innovation are consistent with the adoption of domestic emission reduction obligations in 2030. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The transition from the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission levels currently allowed under the Kyoto Protocol climate agreement to more ambitious, and internationally comprehensive, GHG reduction goals will have important implications for the global economic system. Given the major role that the United States plays in the global economy, and also as a major GHG emitter, this paper examines a range of climate policy pathways for the country in the context of international actions. The ADAGE model is used to examine policy impacts for climate scenarios, focusing on key factors such as emissions, technology deployment, macroeconomic indicators and international trade. In general, the simulations indicate that reductions in GHG emissions can be accomplished with limited economic adjustments, although impacts depend on the future availability of new low-carbon technologies. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over the coming decades, the cost of U.S. climate change policy likely will be comparable to the total cost of all existing environmental regulation-perhaps 1-2 percent of national income. In order to avoid higher costs, policy efforts should create incentives for firms and individuals to pursue the cheapest climate change mitigation options over time, among all sectors, across national borders, and in the face of significant uncertainty. Well-designed national greenhouse gas mitigation policies can serve as the foundation for global efforts and as (in example for emerging and developing countries. We present six key policy design issues that will determine the costs, cost-effectiveness, and distributional impacts of domestic climate policy: program scope, cost containment, offsets, revenues and allowance allocation, competitiveness, and R&D policy. We synthesize the literature on these design features, review the implications for the ongoing policy debate, and identify outstanding research questions that can inform policy development.Latin American countries have increasingly turned to fossil fuel-generated electricity to fill demand growth in recent years as the hydro applications that comprise 73% of the region's energy generation portfolio have proven unreliable in years of drought. These countries, which experienced a wave of restructuring in the 1990s, cannot attract private investors that are willing to construct hydro applications because these sources of new generation necessitate huge capital expenditures. Recent fossil fuel prices have caused some countries to consider how to steer new capacity additions away from fuel oil generation with high operating costs. Many of these countries have implemented new or strengthened renewable energy legislation to promote generation with stable operating costs. Countries have pursued diverse renewable energy policy incentives like production tax credits in Argentina, feed-in tariffs in Ecuador, and portfolio mandates in Chile. The impact this legislation will have on future capacity additions will depend on how it is incorporated in the existing energy sectors and the longevity of the support. Countries like Brazil that have strong renewable energy laws may neglect this new legislation as domestic future fuel prices drop in response to new fossil fuel discoveries like the large off-shore oil deposit found in late 2007. The decision made by these countries on how to fulfill future demand growth is critical for climate change mitigation. However, an international Mechanism to involve developing countries in the effort to mitigate climate change ironically may be rendered useless if a Latin American country has taken domestic steps to promote renewable energy applications.The key questions addressed in this paper are: What is climate change? What are the impacts on engineering geology practice? Can engineering geologists contribute to mitigation of climate change? What research areas are engineering geologists involved with? Where should the focus for future research be? Following an overview of the papers presented for the 'Legacy of the Past and Future Climate Change' session of the 10th Congress of the International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment, this paper reviews the sources of information and current models of climate change. An overview of some of the potential impacts of climate change on engineering geology practice follows. Attention has been given to areas of active research, the potential impacts on the more routine work of the engineering geologist, and the way in which the engineering geologist can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. It is concluded that current planning guidance addresses climate change more fully than current engineering practice, and it is considered that there are considerable research areas open to engineering geologists with regard to potential impacts of climate change. More specifically, it has been noted that current engineering practice draws heavily on empirical approaches to design, and it is suggested that this approach should be reviewed in the context of climate change. Attention is given to a number of mitigating measures, such as ground source heat pumps, carbon sequestration, the 'reduce, reuse and recycle' approach to achieving sustainability and sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDSs).Wind power is a critically important climate change mitigation technology, and the most rapidly growing renewable energy technology in the USA. Wind energy can provide carbon-free electricity generation, so within societal discourse on how society should minimize the risks of climate change it is widely recognized and acknowledged as a valuable technology. Despite recent increases in wind turbine installation in the USA, the high-level of variation in deployment patterns of wind technology in different states cannot be explained simply by wind resource patterns. Other factors, including differences in the state-level, socio-political context, seem to be influencing wind development. This research compares these contextual differences by using media analysis to assess state-level public discourse about wind technology. Through comparative content and frame analysis of newspaper coverage of wind power in Texas, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, we explore state-level variations in the salience of wind in public discourse, the focus on wind power as a climate change mitigating technology, and the framing of wind power's risks and benefits. In addition to identifying distinct state-level variation in wind energy discourse, the results demonstrate that wind's climate change mitigation potential has been a limited but growing part of media coverage on wind power.This article examines discourses associated with a new environmental movement, "Carbon Rationing Action Groups'' (CRAGs). This case study is intended to contribute to a wider investigation of the emergence of a new type of language used to debate climate change mitigation. Advice on how to reduce one's "carbon footprint,'' for example, is provided almost daily. Much of this advice is framed by the use of metaphors and "carbon compounds''-lexical combinations of at least two roots-such as "carbon finance'' or "low carbon diet.'' The study uses a combination of tools from frame analysis and lexical pragmatics within the general framework of ecolinguistics to compare and contrast language use on the CRAGs' website with press coverage reporting on them. The analysis shows how the use of such lexical carbon compounds enables and facilitates different types of metaphorical frames such as dieting, finance and tax paying, war time rationing, and religious imperatives in the two corpora.The paper is divided in three parts. In the first one, the climate change issue is presented and a brief analysis of the major international treaties on climate change is provided. A special focus is placed on the concept of the combination between mitigation and adaptation activities which is required to deal effectively with climate change. The second part deals with the link between climate change and environmental security, stressing in particular the contribution that climate change may give to worsen the already occurring environmental crisis at a global level, acting as a "threat multiplier". In order to prevent the effect of such a possible combined negative effect of climate change and environmental security, a serious and sharp series of climate change mitigation and adaptation activities must be performed in the years to come in an even more constant and incisive way compared to the last two decades. The third part addresses more specifically the issue of how to reduce environmental security risks in SEE through the implementation of climate change treaties. In such a context, in particular, two specific scenarios are proposed and analysed. Firstly, under option A, the simpler possibility for SEE countries to implement the existing major climate change treaties, namely the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, is considered. The formal implementation of such treaties should be accompanied by the development of appropriate national mitigation and adaptation policies to effectively tackle climate change and prevent climate change related risks. Depending on the seriousness and effectiveness of such national policies, the outcomes of the domestic actions in each of the SEE countries may finally prove more or less successful. Secondly, under option B, a more sophisticated integrated approach is proposed for the SEE countries, based on the track indicated by the 2005 Energy Community South East Europe Treaty (ECSEE Treaty), which aims inter alia at reducing environmental risks by establishing a single and comprehensive regulatory framework for trading energy across SEE. Such a treaty imposes to the contracting parties, as a prerequisite for its effective enforcement, the implementation of the most relevant acquis communautaire in the environmental, energy and competition fields. Moreover, it calls for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, thus linking within a broad comprehensive legal framework the major climate change, environmental, energy and competition issues in an integrated way.Environmentally displaced persons can be included in several existing categories of protected persons under international law, but there may be a normative protection gap for many of those who cross an international border. This article looks at protection possibilities within the EU framework and national European legislations. Environmental displacement can arguably trigger temporary protection according to the EU Temporary Protection Directive. There may also be environmentally displaced persons who require longer-term or permanent protection. Drawing on the EU Qualification Directive and case-law from the European Court of Human Rights, one can argue that subsidiary protection should be granted in certain cases of extreme natural disaster or degradation. In less extreme cases, humanitarian asylum could be granted. Human rights principles such as non-refoulement could also be used to extend at least basic protection. In addition, legal labour migration could supply a work force, assist distressed countries and enhance protection of the individual. A strategy to meet the challenge of environmental displacement must also include climate change mitigation and external measures such as adaptation. Most of the displaced persons in the world today and in the near future do not arrive at the EU borders.This paper discusses carbon sequestration in Makiling Forest Reserve (MFR) and in the Philippines in general in relation to mitigating climate change. First, it estimates the values of carbon sequestration benefits for MFR and the Philippines. Then it reviews the policies and practices in the country pertaining to carbon sequestration. Then it determines the feasibility of different climate abatement projects, including reforestation, tree planting and agroforestry activities. The current carbon content in the biomass of the plant covers in MFR is estimated to be 109 tons per hectare. Accordingly, the total carbon content for the whole of MFR is 167,277 tons. The equivalent in terms of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere is 669,108 tons, amounting to a total sequestration value of P1.5 billion or US$ 3.8 million. The capitalized value derived from MFR carbon sequestration is P15.06 billion or US$1.13 billion. Conservation of existing forests reduces oxidized carbon releases into the atmosphere. Agroforestry systems also have the potential to replace destructive shifting agricultural practices. Other strategies for increasing the carbon sequestration capacity of forests is reforestation, and increasing the amount of carbon being stored in forest ecosystems. The latter involves planting of fast-growing species and high-timber-yielding varieties. The sustainable management of the forests in MFR would contribute significant greenhouse benefits by enhancing long-term storage of carbon in the ecosystem.Global climate change is the severe environmental concern to the world communities now. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) adopted by the Kyoto Protocol is the important response to it. CDM assigns the afforestation/ reforestation (A/R) activities as the critical to the climate change mitigation. Potentialities of the carbon sequestration of the plantation tree species shows the extents of the A/R, how much it can be put under CDM forestry project. Bangladesh has been experiencing experimental plantation from the last 2-3 decades. The present study focuses on understanding the carbon sequestration potential of an indigenous tree species, Aphanamixis polystachya, in the plantation program of Bangladesh. The study found the average carbon stock in the biomass of trees as 239 t ha(-1) having higher in the bottom slope (291.16 t ha(-1)) followed by middle (266.48 t ha(-1)) and top (156.66 t ha(-1)) slope. The result showed the average carbon stock in the soil as 53.96 t ha(-1). The findings of the study would be of immense importance to the scientific background of CDM forestry in Bangladesh.The licence to operate large CO2 emission sources is challenging the power and coal industry worldwide and they will require technologies such as CCS to meet the expectations of the community. Overcoming the numerous policy and technical issues will require prompt and insightful decision processes and collaboration between governments and industries. Delay in achieving such outcomes will make the climate mitigation challenge that much more difficult to accomplish. The ZeroGen experience has shown that there are substantial challenges facing the future CCS business, which can be summarised into; community acceptance, legal and regulatory risk, commercial uncertainty, and capability in terms of both skills and knowledge. Unlike the oil and gas industry, the power and coal fossil fuel energy based industries are unfamiliar with deep subsurface technologies. To make a difference in terms of emissions reductions from coal fired power stations, the CCS business dealing with geological storage will require significant technology transfer and/or a service industry to rival the current worldwide gas industry. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Large stationary CO2 emitters are located in central Alberta with cumulative annual emissions in the order of 30 Mt CO2. This includes four coal-fired power plants in the Wabamun Lake area, southwest of Edmonton with emissions between 3 to 6 Mt/year each. The study will perform a comprehensive characterization of large-scale CO2 storage opportunities in the Wabamun area and analyze any potential risks. As a benchmark, the project will examine the feasibility of storing 20 Mt-CO2/year for 50 years within 30 km of Wabamun. This gigaton-scale storage assessment project is one to two orders of magnitude larger than the commercial projects now under study. It will fill a gap between Canadian province-wide capacity estimates (which do not involve site specific studies of flow and geomechanics etc.) and the detailed commercial studies of small CO2 storage projects currently underway. Unlike the commercial projects, this project is planned as a public non-confidential project lead by the University of Calgary (U of C). The study will first assess the possible injection formations within the area based on storage capacity, ease of injectivity, leakage likelihood, and interference with current petroleum production. Then a few (1-3) specific targets will be selected for more detailed studies. The detailed studies will evaluate how the injected CO2 moves and reacts within the reservoir, the storage integrity of the over and underlying shaly aquitard, leakage risks of CO2 along existing wells and a preliminary well injection design. Finally, the study will do a preliminary assessment of currently available options for monitoring such large scale injection of CO2. Since the project is planned to develop a realistic scenario we will add an economic evaluation of the total project costs downstream of the capture and pipeline transportation components. Furthermore, the study will outline the necessary next steps to close any remaining knowledge gaps before planning and conducting the actual injection phase of the project. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide capture and sequestration in saline aquifers is considered one of the most important technologies for short and medium term climate change mitigation. There are many challenges for wide scale deployment of sequestration, including developing a sufficiently accurate fundamental understanding of the processes which govern the movement of supercritical CO(2) in saline aquifers. A method for testing our understanding of the underlying physics is to conduct numerical simulations intended to replicate a multiphase flow experiment in which CO(2) is injected into a brine saturated rock core. This paper focuses on methods to integrate pore scale rock properties into permeability models of cores subjected to such experiments. We use thin sections to measure pore scale features of rocks, and test correlations that relate permeability to porosity using the Carman-Kozeny equation. Incorporation of these pore scale features into sub-core scale maps of permeability is being used to history match core-scale multi-phase flow experiments. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedThe storage of large volumes of industrial CO2 emissions in deep geological formations is one of the most promising climate mitigation options. The long-term retention time and environmental safety of the CO2 storage are defined by the interaction of the injected CO2 with the reservoir fluids and rocks. Finding a storage solution that is long lasting, thermodynamically stable and environmentally benign would be ideal. Storage of CO2 as solid magnesium or calcium carbonates in basaltic rocks may provide such a long-term and thermodynamically stable solution. Basaltic rocks, which primarily consist of magnesium and calcium silicate minerals, provide alkaline earth metals necessary to form solid carbonates. In nature, the carbonization of basaltic rocks occurs in several well-documented settings, such as in the deep ocean crust, through hydrothermal alteration and through surface weathering. The goal of the CarbFix pilot project is to optimize industrial methods for permanent storage of CO2 in basaltic rocks. The objective is to study the in-situ mineralization of CO2 and its long term fate. The project involves the capture and separation of flue gases at the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant, the transportation and injection of the CO2 gas fully dissolved in water at elevated pressures at a depth between 400 and 800 m, as well as the monitoring and verification of the storage. A comprehensive reservoir characterization study is on-going prior to the CO2 injection, including soil CO2 flux measurements, geophysical survey and tracer injection tests. Results from the tracer tests show significant tracer dispersion within the target formation, suggesting large surface area for chemical reactions. The large available reservoir volume and surface area in combination with relatively rapid CO2-water-rock reactions in basaltic rocks may allow safe and permanent geologic storage of CO2 on a large scale. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedDeep-sea basalt aquifers have been identified for geological CO2 sequestration in worldwide locations and offer vast reservoir capacities, permanent geochemical trapping potential, and other deep-sea protections that significantly reduce the risk of post-injection leakage. Using site-specific criteria, we target basalt aquifers along seismic and aseismic oceanic ridges, and calculate the injection volume potential for each. Results indicate that these aquifers occur in many oceans and could sequester 2.3-11.5 Tt-C along seismic ridges and 5.9-29.6 Tt-C along aseismic ridges. The enormous size of these potential reservoirs warrants further research and pilot experiments in each geographic setting. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedCoal is central to China's continued economic growth and CCS is one of the most promising technological solutions to curb the CO2 emitted from the continued use of coal. This paper introduces some areas of recent R&D on CCS in China and focuses, in particular, on the Near Zero Emission Coal (NZEC) project, a China-UK CCS initiative. NZEC is being undertaken in three phases, with the current project comprising the first phase. The ultimate aim of NZEC, following Phase 3, is to have constructed and operated a coal-fired power plant with integral CCS in China. In this paper, some of the early progress made in NZEC Phase 1 is described. Launched in November 2007, the objectives of Phase 1 are to build confidence in CCS and to explore technology options for demonstrating coal-fired power generation with CCS in China. The Phase 1 partnership of nine leading UK organisations and 20 from China demonstrates the strong collaborative working relationship that exists between China and the UK, at all levels, to develop CCS as a key climate change mitigation technology. Apart from NZEC, China is involved in several national and international CCS initiatives and some of these will be touched upon in this paper. The success of the 18-month first phase will, to a large extent, be measured against its contribution to increasing CCS capacity in China and against strengthened links between Chinese and British experts. Activities designed to raise capacity are described. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Endogenous technology scenarios for meeting low stabilization CO2 targets are derived in this study and assessed regarding emission reductions and mitigation costs. The aim is to indentify the most important technology options for achieving low stabilization targets. The significance of an option is indicated by its achieved emission reduction and the mitigation cost increase, if this option were not available. Quantitative results are computed using a global multi-regional hard-linked hybrid model that integrates the economy, the energy sector and the climate system. The model endogenously determines the optimal deployment of technologies subject to a constraint on climate change. The alternative options in the energy sector comprise the most important mitigation technologies: renewables, biomass, nuclear, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), and biomass with CCS as well as energy efficiency improvements. The results indicate that the availability of CCS technologies and espec. biomass with CCS is highly desirable for achieving low stabilization goals at low costs. The option of nuclear energy is different: although it could play an important role in the primary energy mix, mitigation costs would only mildly increase, if it could not be expanded. Therefore, in order to promote prudent climate change mitigation goals, support of CCS technologies reduces the costs and - thus - is desirable from a social point of view. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industries have various kinds of voluntary approaches to mitigate climate change through international industrial associations. Sector based intensity target based on the bottom-up technological information is proposed as one of climate policies and it is compatible with industrial voluntary approaches in many cases. Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology is one of climate mitigation options in energy sector, especially in power generation. Energy, macroeconomy and climate modules in integrated assessment model GRAPE (Global Relationship to Protect the Environment) was used for the analysis. In relatively complex energy demand and supply representation in energy module, CO(2) capture from power generation was assumed. The author assumed that CO(2) intensity target would converge among global regions in the three energy sectors (i.e. power generation, transport, and other sectors) and that almost zero CO(2) emissions will be realized in the end of 21st century. Sensitivity analysis was conducted by changing the CCS cost settings and degree of nuclear power capacity limit. CO(2) capture power capacity role in the power generation portfolio and changes in generation cost is discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedThrough work with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency, ICF has developed a costing model for geologic sequestration of CO2 by geologic setting in the U.S. The GeoCAT model is being used by the EPA Office of Air and Radiation to assist in analyzing the impact of potential climate change legislation. GeoCAT includes an assessment of sequestration capacity by state and geologic setting. Costing algorithms are based upon a detailed analysis of individual cost components, such as site characterization and injection well construction. The study shows that the cost of geologic sequestration without by-product credits (such as additional oil produced with enhanced oil recovery (EOR)) ranges from $2.84 to $28.12 per metric ton of CO2, depending on characteristics specific to the type of geologic formation. By-product impacts on costs for EOR, enhanced coalbed methane, and shale gas production are very significant. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.India is a nation with a rapidly growing economy, achieving an 8.5% GDP growth rate in 2006 and 9.2% in 2007. This rise in economic growth goes hand in hand with an increase in the country's energy demand, which is currently met, as in many evolving economies, by fossil fuels. Coal is the dominant commercial fuel, accounting for almost 70% of the total energy consumption, but India still faces serious electricity shortfalls. Both the Stern Review and The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook reports have listed Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a carbon mitigation strategy for India. It is unclear, if, how, or when, CCS will have a place within the Indian system. (C) 2009 Ltd. All rights reserved.During the last 10 years, CCS has been developed and is now widely accepted to be a key technology to significantly reduce the CO(2) emissions from the power sector and other large stationary emitters. To make use of the climate mitigation potential of CCS it is however required that some existing key challenges in terms of technology and legal aspects can be overcome. The proposed CCS directive for the European Union could provide the necessary legal framework if the directive is not overburdened by requirements which could not be justified for a technology in its demonstration phase. Like for renewable energies the development of clean fossil power generation technologies requires public support, as the risks for individual companies are just too high. The main critical points based on the adapted amendments by ENVI are related to liability and financial securities, the required composition of the CO(2) stream and the introduction of an emission performance standard for new coal fired power plants. All this points will be discussed with some details in this article. It is hoped that based on a constructive dialogue with the stakeholders a widely accepted solution can be found which would pave the road to a low carbon power generation future. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedCarbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has the potential to contribute to reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions and thus help mitigate climate change. Although awareness of the potential of CCS technology is increasing among the public and specific energy/climate stakeholders, understanding remains limited and engaged opportunities for learning about CCS technology have been minimal. This paper explores stakeholders' perceptions of the risks and benefits of CCS technology, and how those perceptions changed with additional information provided by CCS technology experts. In October 2007, a unique day-long CCS educational event was held at the Chewonki Foundation's Center for Environmental Education in Wiscasset, Maine, U. S. A. This event brought a dozen CCS experts from academia, industry, and government to Maine to discuss CCS technology, its potential role in mitigating CO2 emissions, and its place within the evolution of an increasingly carbon constrained energy system. Approximately one hundred key policy and decision-makers with interest and involvement in the northeast United States' energy system were invited and participated in the seminar. All participants were asked to complete a survey on their perceptions of the risks and benefits of CCS technology before and after the event. The results indicate that exposure to information about CCS technology increased stakeholder reporting of their level of understanding of the technology and of their level of support for advancing the technology. Several interesting changes in perception were associated with age, level of education and gender. Significant changes in the reported level of support for CCS advancement was found in more educated and younger stakeholders while this change did not appear with older and less educated individuals. A distinct and significant increase was identified in the level of concern about CCS reported among women before and after the event. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedThis paper evaluates the expected environmental impact of several promising schemes for ocean carbon sequestration by direct injection of CO(2), and serves as a major update to the assessment by Auerbach et al. ( 1997) and Caulfield et al. ( 1997) of water quality impacts and the induced mortality to zooplankton. The impact assessment methodology from the earlier studies has been updated to incorporate the extended probit methodology of Sato et al. ( 2004), and revised mortality relationships based mainly on copepods were developed after a thorough review of publicly available CO(2) toxicity data for zooplankton and fish. The impact assessment is conducted for three discharge approaches, each designed to maximize dilution over the water column: a point release of negatively buoyant CO(2) hydrate particles from a moving ship; a stationary point release of CO(2) hydrate particles forming a sinking plume; and a long, bottom-mounted diffuser discharging buoyant liquid CO(2) droplets. Two of these scenarios take advantage of the enhanced dilution offered by CO(2) hydrate particles, and are based on ongoing laboratory and field studies on the formation and behavior of such particles ( Chow et al., 2008). Overall, results suggest that it is possible with present or near present technology to engineer discharge configurations that achieve sufficient dilution to largely avoid acute impacts. In particular, the moving ship hydrate discharge is identified as the most promising due to its operational flexibility. In addition to lethal effects, sub-lethal and ecosystem effects are discussed qualitatively, though not analyzed quantitatively. The main conclusion from our analysis is that ocean carbon sequestration by direct injection should not be dismissed as a climate change mitigation strategy on the basis of environmental impact alone. Rather, it can be considered as a viable option for further study, especially in regions where geologic sequestration proves impractical. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The effectiveness of CCS, i.e. its emission abatement potential in relation to the possibility of leakage of CO2 from geological reservoirs once this greenhouse gas has been stored artificially underground, will be among the main determinants of whether CCS can significantly contribute to a deep cut in global CO2 emissions. This paper presents an analysis of the economic and climatic implications of the large-scale use of CCS for reaching a stringent climate change control target, when geological CO2 leakage is accounted for. The natural scientific uncertainties regarding the rates of possible leakage of CO2 from geological reservoirs are likely to remain large for a long time to come. We present a concise analytical inspection, as well as an analysis with a more detailed integrated assessment model, proffering insight into the economics of geological CO2 storage and leakage. CO2 leakage lowers the value of CCS as climate mitigation option below the prevailing level of the CO2 tax. We therefore employ a definition for the effectiveness of temporary carbon storage as the net present value of the total stream of avoided emissions. We calculate the effectiveness of CCS under two leakage models (an exponential model with a constant seepage rate and a two-layer model with a bell-shaped time-dependent seepage rate) and with different assumptions regarding (1) the carbon tax growth rate relative to the interest rate and (2) the average CO2 storage life-time. We introduce the expression for the effectiveness of CCS in a top-down integrated assessment model that represents three main CO2 emission reduction options: energy savings, a carbon to non-carbon (renewable) energy transition and the use of CCS. We find CCS to remain a valuable option even with CO2 leakage of a few %/yr, well above the maximum seepage rates that we think are likely from a geo-scientific point of view. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years a lot of new energy models have been developed to analyze climate change mitigation strategies and the effects such strategies have on economic and technological development. Two main types of models can be identified: Top-down models that focus on the economic interactions within different sectors in an economy and bottom-up models that focus more on physical energy flows and technological aspects. One way of exploiting the advantages of each of these approaches is to link them to create a hybrid approach. Due to their main characteristics (e.g. high degree of disaggregating) input-output models are suitable for integrating technological data in an economic model in a special manner. Therefore, a class of models exists, linking input-output models with disaggregated energy system models. In this paper we present such a hybrid approach which consists of the input-output model Macroeconomic Information System (MIS) and the bottom-up model Instruments for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategies (IKARUS) - Market Allocation (MARKAL). For the hybrid MIS/IKARUS-MARKAL model a soft-linking approach is used, where the MIS model supplies data about the development of the different industry and service sectors and the IKARUS-MARKAL model calculates the energy demand of these sectors and the cost-optimal energy production structure. Two different examples for the use of the hybrid MIS/IKARUS-MARKAL approach will be presented: our first example focuses on the question of whether a given emission target (like the Kyoto one) can be reached assuming a desired growth rate and taking technological restrictions into account. The focus of the second example is on the economic impacts of a CO2 mitigation strategy. In this example, we ask which industries will benefit from the decision of policymakers to take measures to reduce CO2 emissions and which ones will lose (in the sense of economic growth).Sustainability conveys the idea of a balance between human needs and environmental concerns. A common theme amongst definitions of sustainability is that sustainable agricultural systems remain productive over little. They should provide for the needs of current, as well as future generations, while conserving natural resources. The enhancement of environmental quality and careful use of resource base on which agriculture depends is viewed as a requisite for sustained agricultural productivity. The notion that sustainable agricultural systems maintain Output in Spite of major disturbances, e.g., such as those caused by projected climate change, is relevant to vulnerable areas, especially in the semi-arid and sub-humid regions of developing Countries. According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2007, semi-arid regions of Asia. Africa, and Latin America are likely to warm during this century, and freshwater availability is projected to decrease. Agricultural productivity in tropical Asia is sensitive not only to temperature increases, but also to changes in the nature and characteristics of monsoon. In the semi-arid tropics of Africa, which are already having difficulty coping With environmental stress. climate change resulting in increased frequencies of drought Poses the greatest risk to agriculture. In Latin America, agriculture and water resources are most affected through the impact of extreme temperatures and changes in rainfall. Climate change mitigation strategies which include interventions to reduce the Sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases have a marked management component aiming at conservation of natural resources such as improved fertilizer use, improved ruminant digestion, use of water harvesting, and conservation techniques. These strategies are equally consistent with the concept of sustainability. Adaptation strategies include initiatives and measures to reduce the Vulnerability of agroecosystems to projected climate change, Such as changing varieties, altering the timing or location of cropping activities, improving the effectiveness of pest, disease and weed management practices, making better use of seasonal climate forecasts, etc. It is essential to develop and integrate agriculture mitigation and adaptation frameworks for climate change into Sustainable development planning at the national and regional levels to cope with the projected impacts of climate change.Global food security is threatened by crop diseases that account for average yield losses of 16 per cent, with the greatest losses experienced by subsistence farmers in the developing world. Climate change is exacerbating the threats to food security in such areas, emphasizing the need to increase food production in northern European countries such as the UK. However, the crops must be grown in such a way as to minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with their production. As an example, it is estimated that production of UK winter oilseed rape is associated with GHG of 3300 kg CO2 eq. ha(-1) of crop and 834 kg CO2 eq. t(-1) of seed yield, with 79 per cent of the GHG associated with the use of nitrogen fertilizer. Furthermore, it is estimated that control of diseases by use of fungicides in this UK oilseed rape is associated with a decrease in GHG of 100 kg CO2 eq. t(-1) of seed. Winter oilseed rape cultivar disease resistance is associated with a decrease in GHG of 56 kg CO2 eq. t(-1), although this figure is an underestimate. These results demonstrate how disease control in arable crops can make a contribution to both climate change mitigation and sustainable arable crop production to ensure global food security.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse the development and character of climate policy in Latvia with a special emphasis on policy instruments. Design/methodology/approach - In order to implement policies and measures effectively and monitor progress in achieving its mitigation targets, Latvia uses a wide mix of policy instruments, including regulations (e.g. environmental impact assessment procedures, environmental permits and standards, restrictions and prohibitions), economic and fiscal instruments (the natural resources tax, the excise tax for energy resources, user's charges), and voluntary agreements, also raising public awareness. Findings - The combination of the policy instruments with the economic and fiscal instruments support consideration of the needs to support industrial developments and consider national growth interests, but at the same time keeping in line with the leadership in the climate change mitigation and adaptation leadership. Practical implications - The approaches used in Latvia for climate policy development supports prioritising of climate change issues and put the development of adaptation measures as key issues, at the same time stressing efforts in mitigation. Originality/value - The character of development of climate policy combining different policy instruments in line with limited availability of resources is analysed.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to emphasise mangrove reforestation as a countermeasure for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the Godavari Delta in India. Design/methodology/approach - Restoration of the mangrove forest in the Godavari Delta near Kakinada town in the south-eastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is carried out with participatory involvement of local communities depending for their livelihood on the mangrove forest. The extent of habitat restoration through reforestation in this area is explored. The possible contribution of restored mangroves in minimising the impacts of sea-level rise due to climate change is highlighted. Reforestation information from 1999 to 2006 is collected from available published work and the Forest Department of the Government of Andhra Pradesh. Findings - The positive result of reforestation since the past few years is seen as an increase in mangrove vegetation. The changing landscape due to restoration could stop erosion and salt water incursion up to some extent and help in maintaining the biodiversity of this place. Practical implications - A long-term monitoring with ethnobiological study is required for managing such projects in future. Originality/value - The Godavari Delta mangroves are rich in biodiversity and offer a wide range of ecological services. Adding to habitat degradation, predicted sea-level rise is likely to affect the local human communities. The role of mangroves as an economically viable barrier against sea-level rise has been recognised in other Asian countries. The results from this case study too could be disseminated to various stakeholders involved in sustainable development. The focus of the paper on India is particularly relevant, as the country is going to be integral in climate change debates.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to extend the previous larger-scale climate policy studies to the local jurisdiction level to evaluate local land use planning capacity for climate change. Design/methodology/approach - This paper evaluated 53 recently developed local comprehensive land use plans in California and analyzes how well these plans recognized the concepts of climate change and prepared for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Findings - The descriptive results show that local land use plans reflect very low awareness and little analysis for climate change; however, the actions for climate change varied widely in scope and content in their plans. Originality/value - This paper provides policymakers important empirical evidence to improve local land use planning capacities for climate change.This paper uses quantitative electricity supply scenarios to explore the potential for CO2 storage at locations in the Southern North Sea basin from point sources within a case study region that consists of the East Midlands combined with Yorkshire and Humberside in the UK. The reactions to these scenarios from a variety of stakeholders from the public and private sectors are explored using an assessment process. The scenarios demonstrate that there is sufficient storage capacity within reservoirs in the Southern North Sea basin for CO2 generated within the region's power stations to 2050 and beyond, even under a high fossil fuel scenario. Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) was typically seen as offering significant potential for CO2 mitigation by a small but varied selection of professional stakeholders, although the consensus over the preferred approach to a low carbon electricity supply was far from evident.Tradeoffs between climate change mitigation and adaptation policies are explored under both certainty and uncertainty with learning using a numerical two-period decision model. We first replicate a version of the Adaptation in DICE climate model (AD-DICE) (de Bruin et al., 2009), which modifies the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) (Nordhaus and Boyer, 2000) to incorporate climate change adaptation explicitly into the traditional optimisation framework. Our model is then extended to include uncertainty over a probability distribution of expected Climate Sensitivity (CS) values and the implications for optimal mitigation and adaptation levels are then explored. In the certainty model runs, the results of previous studies that incorporated adaptation into the portfolio of climate change responses are largely confirmed. Modelling an uncertain CS with the same expected value as under certainty leads to several insights: before learning occurs, optimal levels of both mitigation and adaptation are lower under uncertainty than under certainty in this same early period, optimal mitigation and adaptation levels are most sensitive to the respective cost of each strategy, with the mitigation level more dependent on adaptation costs than vice versa variance in CS - a parameter with long-term effects - affects mitigation levels more than adaptation levels.The setting of binding targets for CO2 emission reductions for 2020 by the European Union (EU) alone has led to concerns that unilateral climate change mitigation may not only hamper the union's competitiveness, but also result in carbon leakage. The paper explores these claims through the deployment of a dynamic, nonlinear, macro-econometric simulation called the Energy-Environment-Economy (E3) Model at the Global Scale (E3MG). In contrast to the generally held view, we argue that overall EU competitiveness may improve. We also argue that unilateral action may be effective in reducing global emissions relative to a no-climate-change-action scenario, although the reduction is very small.This paper describes an innovative modelling approach focusing on linking spatial (GIS) modelling of hydrogen (H(2)) supply, demands and infrastructures, anchored within a economy-wide energy systems model (MARKAL). The UK government is legislating a groundbreaking climate change mitigation target for a 60% CO(2) reduction by 2050, and has identified H(2) infrastructures and technologies as potentially playing a major role, notably in the transport sector, An exploratory set of linked GIS-MARKAL model scenarios generate a range of nuanced insights including spatial matching of supply and demand for optimal zero-carbon H(2) deployment, a crucial finding on successive clustering of demand centres to enable economies of scale in H(2) supply and distribution, the competitiveness of imported liquid H(2) and of liquid H(2) distribution, and sectoral competition for coal with carbon sequestration between electricity and H(2) production under economy-wide CO(2) constraints. (c) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Treasury's October 2008 report on the economics of climate change mitigation was followed in December by the Government's White Paper on its carbon pollution reduction scheme. What guidance do these comprehensive reports, and other emerging data, provide to investors in climate-affected industries such as agriculture and tourism, which are now facing large long-term risks?The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has become a key instrument for climate change mitigation. Parties with emission targets are using it to buy greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions for compliance against the Protocol's emission reduction targets. In parallel, the purchase of emission reductions through a voluntary carbon market has become a mainstream practice across business and individuals who, although not having any regulatory mandate, aim to offset their emissions. This voluntary market relies on mitigation projects which may or may not follow the standards of the CDM. This review compares these two instruments and traces similarities and differences in terms of project types, offset quality and contribution to sustainable development. It is shown that both mechanisms support a wide range of mitigation options and technologies, and differ considerably in the contribution of forestry and industrial gas offsets to their markets. There is not enough empirical data to assess the actual additionality and quality of produced offsets and their contribution to national and local sustainable development also requires further empirical assessment. Large scale mitigation options provide a substantial percentage of GHG reductions in both markets, with methane-based mitigation and fuel switching dominating over renewable investments such as solar and tidal. Africa remains the least benefited continent in both schemes. The review supports proposals towards reforming the CDM so that the least developed countries can also participate in a transition towards a decarbonised global society. Voluntary markets, in turn, are likely to remain driven by investors' willingness to support projects which are in line with poor countries' demands and priorities.Despite significant progresses toward a more harmonized relation with natural systems the next few decades outlook is overshadowed by the climate chaos more and more clearly foreseen 41, the most recent scenarios. Our paper aims to explore at what extent one important climate change stakeholder - oil industry - succeeded in building the motivation needed for transforming awareness in action within the framework of worldwide implementation of global climate policy through the mechanisms established by the Kyoto Protocol. We approached this enquiry by computing data on GHGs emissions, oil consumption, exploring action barriers for CC change mitigation and adaptation and giving insights about the vision of oil companies. Our findings support that one key player in climate change mitigation is lagged in embarking overall efforts and this invites scientists and policy makers for further research and reflections on climate policy mechanism.Estonia's energy sector is facing challenges regarding closing of old oil-shale based production units and rapid development of wind power. In this paper the CO(2) and SO(2) emissions of electricity production scenarios in the new Estonia's Long-term Electricity Sector Development Plan until 2018 are evaluated. The analysis is carried out using the Long range Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP) software, which is a widely used software tool for energy policy analysis and climate change mitigation assessment developed at the Stockholm Environment Institute.Nuclear energy is on the verge of a possible nuclear renaissance, driven by the simultaneous growing global demand for energy and a growing awareness of the need to combat climate change by lowering atmospheric carbon emissions. Widespread deployment of advanced nuclear technologies will require nuclear energy to be competitive in the energy market. Given the long lead-time and high cost of building capital-intensive nuclear facilities, it is important to perform analyses up-front to gain insight into what combinations of economic, environmental, technical and policy conditions will be required for nuclear to play a significant future role. This paper describes an analytical approach that can be used to define those conditions where nuclear energy could contribute. The methodology, using the MARKAL model, is both rich in technical detail and yet conceptually transparent. It is flexible, easy to modify for the needs of a particular analysis and can vary parameters of interest to address uncertainties in data and in future conditions. It can also examine the impacts of present or potential future government policies on the ultimate deployment of nuclear technologies over time. The example results provided in the paper illustrate some issues of interest to the nuclear and energy communities that can be addressed using MARKAL.This article analyzes post-Kyoto climate change mitigation regimes and their impact on sustainable development. Wide range of post-Kyoto climate change mitigation architectures have different impact on different groups of countries, therefore sustainability assessment is performed for four main group of countries: EU and other Annex-I countries, USA, Advanced Developing Countries and Least Developed Countries. The post-Kyoto climate change mitigation regimes arc evaluated based on their economical, environmental, social and political impact for different groups of countries. For the assessment the scoring is applied. The architectures are further ranked according to the best results or highest score obtained during assessment according to all criteria and for all groups of countries. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of sustainable energy development cannot be separated from the understanding of additional positive socio-economic effect of sustainable energy projects (energy efficiency measures, use of renewable energy sources). Implementation of sustainable energy projects has positive impact on security of energy supply, provides financial economies and improved comfort and has multiplier effect for new jobs, involving small and medium size enterprises. Therefore integration of sustainable energy projects into regional development process may create external positive effect concerning increased energy security and other regional development goals (reduction of unemployment, reduction of environmental impact, etc.). The examples of EU-15 countries implementing their sustainable energy development and climate change mitigation policies on local level can be successfully applied in Lithuania. The aim of the article is to discuss methodological problems related with integration of sustainable energy projects into regional development procedures and provide guidelines, ensuring that energy elements may compile integral uniformity in terms of regional goals. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to propose an effective policy approach for promoting the use of crop residues for soil improvement, especially in remote areas where resource-poor farmers are conducting slope agriculture with slash-and-burn practice. The research included the following steps: i) investigate the management of crop residues in Wiang Kaen district, Chiang Rai province, through a field survey and policy analysis; ii) identify the potential to involve elementary school students in promoting the use of crop residues for soil improvement, through a capacity development program; and iii) identify effective policies to promote crop residues utilization for soil conservation and climate change mitigation. The field survey revealed that agricultural land in Wiang Kaen is limited and susceptible to erosion. Burning is a common practice for the disposal of crop residues. Approximately 8,600 tonnes of rice straw, 15,500 tonnes of corn stalks and cobs, and an unmeasured amount of weeds were burnt annually. These residues would contribute around 26 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent if they are burnt, however this waste could return nutrients for soil improvement if it were applied to farmland. Twenty-one schools participated in the capacity development program, in which a brainstorming and drawing contest enhanced the children's understanding of the value of environment and soil conservation. The children produced compost for vegetable cultivation and gardening, while corn cobs, rice straw, and longan peels and seeds were applied for mulching. Unproductive land, including arid and stoney land and a sand bank, was developed for cultivation. Benefits included, inter alia, the use of crop residues for soil improvement and the supply of fresh vegetables for school lunches and household consumption. The quality of the children's participation in the program activities is evidence of their intellectual capacity to manage crop residues. The study found that elementary schools can be important local institutions to promote utilization of crop residues for sustainable agriculture. The policy analysis identified a need to involve all relevant stakeholders to promote the wide adoption of improved practices. For instance, the local administrators should provide not only regulatory controls but also support to school composting plants. We conclude that this approach to mobilise schools to promote the use of crop residues might be replicated successfully in other areas of Thailand and South-East Asia where school characteristics and school-community relations are similar.This paper describes how integrated energy-emissions planning can be carried out for evolving energy strategies that facilitate greenhouse gas mitigation. The India case study highlights different energy scenarios, keeping in view the need for clean environment. This study has been carried out using an integrated energy planning tool which takes emissions into account. The importance of energy efficiency, fuel switching, and utilization of hydro, nuclear and renewable energy sources, for greenhouse gas mitigation is clearly brought out. These findings would be of interest to those working on national energy planning, sustainable development, and climate change mitigation.A case study conducted with the Canadian tourism industry identified that the level of awareness and participation in climate change mitigation strategies is low and that there is a need for further action if Canada is to position and market itself as a destination which is taking responsibility for climate change. This study used a qualitative approach that consisted of 24 in-depth interviews with Provincial Deputy Ministers of Tourism, other federal and provincial agencies, marketing bodies and industry associations across Canada. Results indicate that despite a relatively high level of awareness about climate change, the implementation of mitigation strategies was piece-meal in its approach. This non-regulatory approach to climate change action indicated that several small initiatives were taking place without significant collective action. This paper concludes that without national leadership on this issue, there is limited action occurring. A comprehensive, national regulatory framework is required in order to move the agenda forward to be able to market Canada as a responsible destination with regard to climate change.The Territorial Agenda of the European Union (Territorial Agenda) document agreed by EU Member States at Leipzig in May 2007 aims at strengthening territorial cohesion in Europe and supporting the growth and jobs and sustainable development objectives of the EU's Lisbon and Gothenburg strategies. It seeks to foster and reconcile sustainable economic growth and job creation, as well as social and ecological development in all EU regions. In light of these aspirations, this article assesses: whether the Territorial Agenda document can be considered to represent progress for climate change mitigation and adaptation when its policy goals are set against the climate change dimensions of its predecessor document, the European Spatial Development Perspective; the evidence and impacts of climate change in Europe; and the EU's wider evolving policy response to climate change. It concludes that the Territorial Agenda can be seen to indicate some progress in the treatment of climate change, even if the territorial cohesion thinking and spatial model that underpin the document continue to be viewed, it seems, primarily as prerequisites for achieving a European social model which aims to couple sustainable economic growth with the achievement of social and economic cohesion.It is now widely accepted that the natural carbon cycle has a key role to play in determining future climate. As climate changes, this will affect the ability of the carbon cycle to take up and store anthropogenic carbon. However, great uncertainty surrounds the magnitude of this sensitivity to climate and how to represent this in Earth System models. Much of this uncertainty comes from the terrestrial biosphere and in particular the storage of carbon in soil organic material. Therefore it is vitally important to understand the factors which will determine future soil carbon storage and their inherent uncertainties. We show that significant uncertainty in future soil carbon storage comes from many sources, both external to the soil such as climate uncertainty or uncertainty in vegetation productivity and internal to the soil such as uncertainty in soil carbon structure and its sensitivity to changing temperature and moisture. Understanding and reducing this uncertainty is key to improving reliability of future climate projections and their utility for informing climate mitigation policy. The concept of producer responsibility has become a major tenet of EU waste management policy. It forms part of an effort to set a regulatory context for firms supportive of sustainable development. Two contrasting notions of the theory and implementation of sustainable development are ecological modernisation and industrial ecology. Ecological modernisation emphasises economic development and technological advances, within a suitable policy framework. Industrial ecology, by contrast, emphasises inter-firm cooperation and voluntary compliance inspired by eco-efficiency savings. Recently, however, industrial ecologists have shown greater interest in the potential for policy implementation. With aims such as increasing recovery of value from waste, creating a demand for recycled materials, and decreasing the potential harmful effects of waste, the producer responsibility directives can be seen as attempts to implement industrial ecology principles. This paper examines interrelationships of ecological modernisation and industrial ecology to understand the potential and shortcomings of the producer responsibility regulations as a means to promote waste minimisation through eco-design.The recycling of scrap material has been identified as an important strategy in the larger theory of industrial ecology. Industrial ecology argues that the traditional model of industrial activity needs to be transformed into a 'closed loop' industrial ecosystem where used materials (scrap) and by-products would substitute for virgin materials during production processes. The recycling of scrap material forms part of this larger effort to reduce the overall environmental impact of production and consumption. A key, but as yet, unresolved question in this process is the geographic scale (local, regional, national, global) at which loop closing should take place. This preliminary empirical research examines the export and import geography of the seven largest (by weight) US scrap commodities (iron and steel, paper, plastics, aluminium, copper, nickel and zinc) between 1995 and 2005 to ascertain the extent to which US scrap flows overseas and how that might affect our understanding of how material loops can close. Other than an integrated export and import relationship with Canada, the results suggest that there are two distinct circuits of scrap flows in the USA. The USA exports a substantial portion of the recyclable scrap generated each year to rapidly developing countries, while importing smaller quantities of scrap from the EU. With the major exception of exporting higher value iron and steel scrap to China, the US tends to export lower value scrap and import higher value scrap. In part this reflects imbalances in the supply and demand for scrap between the USA and the developing world, the lack of potentially available scrap and the absence of a robust recycling infrastructure in the developing world. Although such scrap circuits are probably not ideal, the use of US scrap in the developing world is both a realistic and preferable alternative in the short to medium term than virgin production.Industrial water conservation is an important adaptation to the effects of climate change. In addition to water conservation within individual plants, wastewater can be reused/recycled among different companies through inter-plant water integration (IPWI) schemes. Such schemes are based on the concept of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis, and can be used to achieve greater water savings than when water conservation is implemented in individual companies separately. However, in IPWI, each participating company seeks to maximise its own benefits. In the absence of centrailised authority dictating the terms of water integration schemes, conventional modelling techniques are not appropriate. This paper shows how a game theory-based approach can be used to analyse the interaction of participating companies in an eco-industrial park seeking to develop an IPWI scheme. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>This article presents an analysis of the material history of Australia in the period 1975-2005. The values of economy-wide indicators of material flow roughly trebled since 1975, and we identify the drivers of this change through structural decomposition analysis. The purpose of this work is to delve beneath the top-level trends in material flow growth to investigate the structural changes in the economy that have been driving this growth. The major positive drivers of this change were the level of exports, export mix, industrial structure, affluence, and population. Only improvements in material intensity offered retardation of growth in material flow. Other structural components had only small effects at the aggregate level. At a more detailed level, however, the importance of the mineral sectors became apparent. Improvements in mining techniques have reduced material requirements, but increased consumption within the economy and increased exports have offset these reductions. The full roll out of material flow accounting through Australian society and business and a systematic response to its implications will require change in the national growth focus of the last two generations, with serious consideration needed to reverse the current volume-focused growth of the economy and also to recast neoliberal and globalized trade policies that have dominated the globe for the past decades.P>In this article we test the long-term dematerialization potential for Australia in terms of materials, energy, and water use as well as CO(2) emissions by introducing concrete targets for major sectors. Major improvements in the construction and housing, transport and mobility, and food and nutrition sectors in the Australian economy, if coupled with significant reductions in the resource export sectors, would substantially improve the current material, energy, and emission intensive pattern of Australia's production and consumption system. Using the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework we model all system interactions to understand the contributions of large-scale changes in technology, infrastructure, and lifestyle to decoupling the economy from the environment. The modeling shows a considerable reduction in natural resource use, while energy and water use decrease to a much lesser extent because a reduction in natural resource consumption creates a trade-off in energy use. It also shows that trade and economic growth may continue, but at a reduced rate compared with a business-as-usual scenario. The findings of our modeling are discussed in light of the large body of literature on dematerialization, eco-efficiency, and rebound effects that may occur when efficiency is increased. We argue that Australia cannot rely on incremental efficiency gains but has to undergo a sustainability transition to achieve a low carbon future to keep in line with the international effort to avoid climate change and resource use conflicts. We touch upon the institutional changes that would be required to guide a sustainability transition in the Australian economy, such as an emission trading scheme.P>This article aims at estimating the raw material equivalents (RMEs)-the upstream used material flows required along the production chain-of imports and exports for some Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Furthermore, the United States is included in the analysis as a reference for a high-income economy. The RME concept and the empirical evidence are articulated by use of an input-output methodology. Results are set out for the year 2003 for each of the countries and in time series for the years 1977, 1986, 1996, and 2003 in the case of Chile. The findings show not only the physical dimensions behind direct material traded but also how the previous exporter (importer) position of a country (based on standard material flow analysis indicators) deteriorates, alleviates, or changes. Implications for material consumption indicators, such as direct material consumption (DMC) and raw material consumption (RMC), are also drawn. The results suggest basing the discussion of material flows on a broader set of indicators to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the implications of international trade and its impacts on the environment.P>The article presents the results of a research project aimed at (1) examining the feasibility of material flow analysis (MFA) on a regional and urban scale in France, (2) selecting the most appropriate method, (3) identifying the available data, and (4) calculating the material balance for a specific case. Using the Eurostat method, the study was conducted for the year 2003 and for three regional levels: Paris, Paris and its suburbs, and the entire region. Applying the method on a local scale required two local indicators to be defined in order to take into account the impact of exported wastes on MFA: LEPO, local and exported flows to nature, and DMC(corr), a modified domestic material consumption (DMC) that excludes exported wastes (and imported ones if necessary). As the region extracts, produces, and transforms less material than the country as a whole, its direct material input (DMI) is lower than the national DMI. In all the areas, LEPO exceeds 50% of DMI; in contrast, recycling is very low. The multiscale approach reveals that urban metabolism is strongly impacted by density and the distribution of activities: the dense city center (Paris) exports all of its wastes to the other parts of the region and concentrates food consumption, whereas the agricultural and urban sprawl area consumes high levels of construction materials and fuel. This supports the use of MFA on an urban and regional scale as a basis for material flow management and dematerialization strategies and clearly reveals the important interactions between urban and regional planning and development, and material flows.P>This work introduces a new approach to integrating the discharges of industrial processes with macroscopic watershed systems. The key concept is that environmental quality models (such as material flow analysis) can be inverted and included in an optimization formulation that seeks to determine the maximum allowable target for the process discharges while meeting the overall environmental requirements of the watershed. Because of its holistic nature, this approach simultaneously considers the effects of the inputs and outputs to the watershed (e.g., agricultural, residential, wastewater treatment plants, industrial, and so on) and the various physical, chemical, and biological phenomena occurring within the watershed. An optimization formulation is developed to systematically represent the reverse problem formulation. To illustrate the effectiveness of this approach, a case study is solved to manage phosphorus in Bahr El-Baqar drainage system leading to Lake Manzala in Egypt. The key environmental and economic aspects are addressed and used to screen plant location and discharges.P>Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used to inform decisions related to environmental technologies and polices, such as carbon footprinting and labeling, national emission inventories, and appliance standards. However, LCA studies of the same product or service often yield very different results, affecting the perception of LCA as a reliable decision tool. This does not imply that LCA is intrinsically unreliable; we argue instead that future development of LCA requires that much more attention be paid to assessing and managing uncertainties. In this article we review past efforts to manage uncertainty and propose a hybrid approach combining process and economic input-output (I-O) approaches to uncertainty analysis of life cycle inventories (LCI). Different categories of uncertainty are sometimes not tractable to analysis within a given model framework but can be estimated from another perspective. For instance, cutoff or truncation error induced by some processes not being included in a bottom-up process model can be estimated via a top-down approach such as the economic I-O model. A categorization of uncertainty types is presented (data, cutoff, aggregation, temporal, geographic) with a quantitative discussion of methods for evaluation, particularly for assessing temporal uncertainty. A long-term vision for LCI is proposed in which hybrid methods are employed to quantitatively estimate different uncertainty types, which are then reduced through an iterative refinement of the hybrid LCI method.For the practical implementation of the assessment of environmental impact, actual procedures and data requirements should be clarified so that industrial decision makers understand them. Researchers should consider local risks related to processes and environmental impact throughout the life cycle of products simultaneously to supervise these adverse effects appropriately. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for quantifying the potential impact associated with a product life cycle. Risk assessment (RA) is a widely used tool for identifying chemical risks in a specific situation. In this study, we integrate LCA and RA for risk-based decision making by devising a hierarchical activity model using the type-zero method of integrated definition language (IDEF0). The IDEF0 activity modeling language has been applied to connect activities with information flows. Process generation, evaluation, and decision making are logically defined and visualized in the activity model with the required information. The activities, information flows, and their acquisitions are revealed, with a focus on which data should be collected by on-site engineers. A case study is conducted on designing a metal cleaning process reducing chemical risks due to the use of a cleansing agent. LCA and RA are executed and applied effectively on the basis of integrated objective settings and interpretation. The proposed activity model can be used as a foundation to incorporate such assessments into actual business models.P>Incorporating the beneficial use of industrial by-products into the industrial ecology of an urban region as a substitute or supplement for natural aggregate can potentially reduce life cycle impacts. This article specifically looks at the utilization of industrial by-products (IBPs) (coal ash, foundry sand, and foundry slag) as aggregate for roadway sub-base construction for the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, urban region. The scenarios compare the use of virgin aggregate with the use of a combination of both virgin and IBP aggregate, where the aggregate material is selected based on proximity to the construction site and allows for minimization of transportation impacts. The results indicate that the use of IBPs to supplement virgin aggregate on a regional level has the potential of reducing impacts related to energy use, global warming potential, and emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO(x)), sulfur dioxide (SO(2)), carbon monoxide (CO), PM(10) (particulate matter-10 microns), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb). Regional management of industrial by-products would allow for the incorporation of these materials into the industrial ecology of a region and reduce impacts from the disposal of the IBP materials and the extraction of virgin materials and minimize the impacts from transportation. The combination of reduced economic and environmental costs provides a strong argument for state transportation agencies to develop symbiotic relationships with large IBP producers in their regions to minimize impacts associated with roadway construction and maintenance-with the additional benefit of improved management of these materials.P>With increasing resource depletion and environmental issues in China, it is both desirable and practical to promote industrial ecology (IE) education. While industrial ecology education in China is still in its infancy, we believe it can be improved through systematic review of specific experiences. We outline and assess the experience with teaching of industrial ecology at the Dalian University of Technology (DUT) in northeastern China. We first provide an overview related to industrial ecology education in China and then present a detailed description of eight teaching modules focused on industrial ecology at DUT: history and evolution of IE, cleaner production, life cycle management, design for environment, integrated waste management, industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial parks, circular economy, and sustainable consumption. Particular attention is given to teaching methodology. All lectures and discussions are in English; written assignments and verbal presentations in English are required, as is a final research paper and extensive use of Chinese and international case studies. Overall pedagogy emphasizes active learning and critical reflection. The grading system relies on individual written assignments, an oral presentation, participation, and a research paper. Challenges encountered include the difficulties for some students due to their limited competency in the English language, facilitating students to shift from passive to active learning, and attracting management students to the course. Postcourse evaluations indicated that the students' understanding of industrial ecology increased.In this article, the DOI was incorrectly provided as DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00166.x. The correct DOI is DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00166_2.x. The DOI in the reference to this article in the volume 13, issue 5 editorial by Binder and colleagues should be updated as well.A scheme is developed for the moist cleaning of gases in a system consisting of an oxidizing reactor and bag filter. A suspension of calcium hydroxide (lime) is used as a sorbent. Reactions that occurred during absorption are cited. Advantages of the moist method of removing acidic components and suspended solid particles from flue gases are described.Concentrations of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil, moss and reindeer dung collected at Ny-Alesund of the Arctic were measured to investigate their accumulation trends and distribution in the three compartments. Compared with the other regions, the proportions of 2 + 3 ring PAHs to the total PAHs were higher, whereas the proportions of 5 + 6 ring PAHs were lower in the three compartments at Ny-Alesund. Significant log/log-linear relationship was observed between the sub-cooled liquid vapor pressure (p) and the soil/moss quotient (Q(SM)). The relation was similar to the relationship between the gas/particle partition coefficient (K-P) and p(L)degrees of PAHs, implying Q(SM) would be a "mirror image" of K-P. Excellent log/log-linear relationships were observed between Q(SM) and K-OA as well as between the moss/dung quotient (Q(MD)) and K-OW. The results presented here indicate the physicochemical properties are suitable for characterizing the distribution of PAHs in soil, moss and reindeer dung. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main purpose of industrial ecology is to evaluate and minimize impacts from economic activities of human society. Tourism as one economic activity, results in a full range of environmental impacts, but few applications of industrial ecology to tourism management have previously been discussed. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used in this research to explore environmental impacts of island tourism, and then the environmental loads per tourist per trip can be found. Penghu Island in Taiwan is taken as an example to examine this new approach. Various environmental loads in transportation, accommodation, and recreation activity sector are all inventoried and calculated here. In summary, per tourist per trip uses 1606 MJ of energy, 607 L of water, and emits 109,034 g of CO2, 2660 g of CO, 597 g of HC, 70 g of NOx. In addition, per tourist per trip also discharges 416 L of waste-water, 83.1 g of BOD, and 1.95 g of solid waste. In terms of energy use, the transportation consumes the largest energy (67%); in particular, the airplane sector. Moreover, per Penghu tourist results in more environmental loads than local people; for example, the amount of solid waste discharge per tourist is 1.95 kg per day, while that of per local people is 1.18 kg. Finally, the advantages and limitations of such LCA approach are also discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>Despite phase-out policies, regulations, planning, and systematic thinking, diffuse emissions of hazardous substances from goods and materials accumulate in society. This is most pronounced in urban areas, since such emissions are related to high densities of people, services, and goods. In this study of Stockholm, Sweden, the aim is to discuss the utility of substance flow analyses (SFAs) for the urban management of hazardous substances. Several SFAs in Stockholm have been conducted during the period from 1995-2007. Eleven case studies were selected and were related to utility aspects to discover specific factors involved in the practical application of SFA. As far as ongoing environmental management is concerned, it can be stated that the SFAs' results have been implemented in several local environmental objectives. Citations and use of the SFAs show that the studies, which focus on diffuse emissions, have had a strong influence on local policy. The application of SFA in Stockholm reveals that methodology factors, type of information, local context, and method of communication may be important in the utilization of SFA in policy. In the implementation of the results of Stockholm studies, it has been a strength to have both the environmental monitoring, which indicates the existence of hazardous substances in different environmental compartments, and SFAs that map and monitor sources of emissions.P>The demand for biofuels has recently increased because of rising prices of fossil fuels and diversification of energy resources. As a result, the demand for sugarcane and corn has been increasing, not only for food production, but also as sources of energy. In this context, securing supplies of phosphorus, required as an essential nutrient in agricultural production, has considerable implications that extend beyond food and agricultural policy. It is therefore important to consider the quantity and availability of phosphorus resources that remain untapped, because the demand and supply of phosphate ore is currently becoming very tight, and Japan has no domestic phosphorus resources. To identify potential phosphorus resources, we have investigated the material flow of phosphorus within Japan, including that in the iron and steel industry, on the basis of statistical data for 2002. Our major finding is that the quantity of phosphorus in iron and steelmaking slag is almost equivalent to that in imported phosphate ore in terms of both the amount and concentration. We also found, by means of a waste input-output analysis and a total materials requirement study, that the phosphorus potentially recoverable from steelmaking slag by a new process that we have proposed has considerable environmental and economic benefits. Concerning the restricted supplies of phosphorus resource, it is important to consider the quantity and availability of phosphorus resources that currently remain untapped. From that viewpoint, steelmaking slag would be expected to be a great potential resource for phosphorus.P>Effective life cycle management of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) calls for the separation of end-of-life PVC products at the time of collection not only from other wastes but among different PVC types as well. Information about the flow of PVC products in the economy is important for this purpose. Within the framework of the Japanese input-output (IO) table for the year 2000, with around 400 industry sectors, the flow of PVC is captured in terms of six PVC-embodying products and in terms of three PVC types, (1) flexible PVC (soft PVC), (2) rigid PVC (hard PVC), and (3) others. The degree of resolution; the consideration of different PVC types, which are seldom performed in the material flow analysis (MFA) literature; and the use of waste input-output material flow analysis (WIO-MFA) represent distinguishing features of our study. The use of WIO-MFA methodology enables one to convert a monetary input-output table into a physical interindustry flow table involving an arbitrary number of materials under full consideration of the mass balance. The results indicate that 40% of the PVC produced in Japan is exported (as resins and as products such as passenger motor cars), and the rest is accumulated mostly as capital stock. The largest share of accumulation goes to public construction in the form of plates, pipes, and bars, which are mostly hard-PVC products.P>In this article, a methodology to model the annual stock and flows of aluminum in a key end-use sector in the United States-passenger vehicles-from 1975-2035 is described. This dynamic material flow model has enabled analysis of the corresponding energy embodied in automotive aluminum as well as the cumulative aluminum production energy demand. The former was found to be significant at 2.6 x 109 gigajoules (GJ) in year 2008 under baseline assumptions. From 2008-2035, the cumulative energy required to produce aluminum to be used in vehicles is estimated at 7.8 x 109 GJ. Although the automotive aluminum stock is expected to increase by 1.8 times by 2035, the corresponding energy embodied is not expected to grow as rapidly due to efficiency improvements in aluminum processing over time. The model's robustness was tested by checking the sensitivity of the results to variations in key input assumptions, including future vehicle sales, lifetimes, and scrap recovery. Sensitivity of energy embodied in automotive aluminum to changes in aluminum production efficiency and aluminum applications within the vehicle were also explored. Using more recycled aluminum or improving the energy efficiency of aluminum production at a faster rate can lower production energy demands. However, aggressive and sustained changes are needed beginning today to achieve meaningful reductions. This may potentially be countered by increased use of stamped aluminum in vehicles.P>In the Campania region, an area in the south of Italy with 5.7 million inhabitants and a production of about 7,900 tonnes of municipal solid waste per day, an emergency situation was created by inappropriate waste management policy and practice. In order to support decisions regarding future solutions for this crisis, reliable, transparent, and impartial strategies and concepts are needed. For this purpose, six waste management scenarios have been defined and quantitatively assessed by means of substance flow analysis (SFA). The scenarios are based on firm objectives and recent legislation for waste management and take into account regional waste production and composition as well as existing waste treatment infrastructure. They are evaluated and compared with the status quo in view of reaching the goals of waste management. For each scenario, the following material flows were quantified: wastes that would be sent to different processes, such as those of mechanical-biological treatment, incineration, or anaerobic digestion; treatment residues (in mass and volume) to be diverted to landfills; materials recoverable by recycling processes; and energy obtainable by waste-to-energy and anaerobic digestion plants. The results demonstrate that a future waste management system that is based on a combination of more recycling, thermal treatment, anaerobic digestion, and improved landfilling reaches the objectives of waste management much more closely than the present, inadequate system.P>Home to the capital city and nearly a million people, the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii, USA, is highly dependent on external resources. Over the past decade, large-scale agricultural production has diminished dramatically, leaving the island greatly reliant on imports for food and most other basic goods. A strong tourism sector and high levels of affluence contribute to per capita municipal waste generation rates exceeding all other U.S. states. The only municipal landfill requires immediate expansion if it is to remain in operation, and it has proven extremely difficult to find additional disposal sites. An island-wide material flow analysis (MFA) was performed as an innovative means of considering issues of import, export, consumption, and substitution, resulting in long-term strategies for diminishing the generation of waste that could complement current local conservation and recycling efforts. The findings indicate several opportunities for using domestic waste resources to substitute for imports and simultaneously reduce waste generation, particularly for construction materials. Legislative constraints and possible changes in this regard are also considered. Although past efforts by both the city and state governments to encourage on-island recycling and reuse have not achieved set goals, the MFA results suggest numerous opportunities that could be pursued to increase material self-sufficiency and/or reduce waste disposal by several hundred thousand short tons, enhancing the long-term sustainability of the island.P>Total material requirement (TMR), a measure of all of the material input required by a national economy, is sometimes criticized for failing to link material flows within an economy and their global environmental impacts. This article presents a three-step method for bridging this gap. The method shows how to (1) analyze TMR accounts to identify potentially environmentally relevant flows (PERF), that is, material flows with potential environmental impacts abroad; (2) assess the socioenvironmental impacts of the identified PERF; and (3) determine the main economic activities underlying these PERF. Using this method we are able to add an environmental dimension to TMR accounts and to make the connection between economic activities and their socioenvironmental impacts worldwide. This methodology has been applied to the Basque Country (BC) region (Spain). An in-depth analysis of the trends in the TMR of the BC shows that tin imports associated with tin capsule production account for around 7% of the TMR. These high figures are due to the substantial hidden flows (HF) of tin imports, which is an indicator of potential environmental impacts abroad. We find that tin extraction and concentration involve several social and environmental impacts such as waste generation, soil, water, and air pollution affecting biodiversity and human health, and child labor. These impacts are located in Indonesia, China, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Malaysia, and Thailand.P>The manufacturing of electronic and electrical equipment (EEE) is a major demand sector for precious and special metals with a strong growth potential. Both precious and special metals are contained in complex components with only small concentrations per unit. After the use-phase, waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) is an important source of these "trace elements." Their recycling requires appropriate processes in order to cope with the hazardous substances contained in WEEE and to recover efficiently the valuable materials. Although state-of-the-art preprocessing facilities are optimized for recovering mass-relevant materials such as iron and copper, trace elements are often lost. The objective of this article is to show how a substance flow analysis (SFA) on a process level can be used for a holistic approach, covering technical improvement at process scale, optimization of product life cycles, and contributing to knowledge on economy-wide material cycles. An SFA in a full-scale preprocessing facility shows that only 11.5 wt.% of the silver and 25.6 wt.% of the gold and of the palladium reach output fractions from which they may potentially be recovered. For copper this percentage is 60. Considering the environmental rucksack of precious metals, an improvement of the recycling chain would significantly contribute to the optimization of the product life cycle impact of EEE and to ensuring the long-term supply of precious metals.P>Over the course of ten years, a consortium of stakeholders (the Harbor Consortium) used a collaborative approach to identify viable pollution prevention (P2) strategies for specific contaminants, namely mercury, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as well as suspended solids entering the New York/New Jersey Harbor. The project, titled "The New York/New Jersey Harbor Watershed Pollution Prevention and Industrial Ecology Project," in a very conscious and overt way engaged stakeholders in the process of developing P2 recommendations for the Harbor. The industrial ecology (IE) tools applied by the Harbor Consortium include substance flow analysis (SFA), material flow analysis (MFA), and, to a limited extent, life cycle analysis (LCA) and fate and transport analysis (F&T), to quantify and characterize how the contaminants flow through the regional economy and the Harbor Watershed once released to the environment. The application of these scientific tools to five contaminants at such a large geographical scale, within the context of a broad and inclusive stakeholder process, and with the goal of identifying and implementing pollution prevention strategies, led to a wide range of surprising outcomes and lessons learned. Undertaking this IE research with the key institutions and stakeholders at the table resulted in the identification and the implementation of many P2 opportunities.The photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) over NaBiO3 under visible light irradiation was investigated in this study. RhB (20 mg/L.) was almost completely decolorized in 30 min in given conditions. It was found that catalyst heating temperature significantly influenced the photocatalytic activity of the catalyst in which crystal water may played an important role, and the original sample exhibited higher activity than the heated samples did. To scrutinize the mechanistic details of the dye photodegradation, several critical analytical methods including UV-vis spectroscopy, HPLC, LC/MS/MS, and GUMS were utilized to monitor the temporal course of the reaction. All N-deethylation intermediates and several small molecular products were separated and identified. The yield distinctness between two isomer intermediates (DR and EER) was considered to be correlated with the changes in the electron density of the dye molecule. Then two possible competitive photodegradation pathways of RhB over NaBiO3 were proposed: Chromophore cleavage and N-deethylation. Yet, cleavage of dye chromophore structure predominated over the N-deethylation.Industrial symbiosis, a subfield of industrial ecology, focuses on transforming the waste of one firm into the valuable input of another, which improves the competitive advantages of supply chain by reducing production cost and improving environmental performance. Considering the specific situation where there are so many state-owned big company groups in China, this paper utilizes the ideas of constructing an industrial symbiosis among different firms, and does a case study on applying the concept into the inner relationships' reconstruction among different production systems in a big state-owned smeltery in South-west China. Three kinds of approaches are explored: 1) recycling and reusing the release; 2) concentrating and abstracting metals from the residues; 3) extending the product chain for value-added products. The results show that it can effectively improve the competitive advantage of the enterprise in terms of decreasing production cost and improving environmental performance. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A key aspect to achieving long-term resource sustainability is the development of methodologies that explore future material cycles and their environmental impact. Using a novel dynamic in-Use stock model and scenario analysis, I analyzed the multilevel global copper cycle over the next 100 years. In 1990, the industrialized world had an in-use copper stock about twice as large as the developing world and a per capita in-use stock of about six times as large. By 2100, the developing world will have an in-use copper stock about three times as large as the industrialized world, but the industrialized world will maintain a per capita stock twice that of the developing world. Under a scenario of no material substitution or technological change in copper products, global in-use stock in 2100 will be about as large as currently known copper resources. However, current scrap recycling trends and exploration will alleviate absolute supply pressure but not environmental impacts from decreasing copper ore grades. Additionally, unexpected emergent properties of dematerialization are observed from the in-use stock model that arise solely from the proper-des of stock dynamics, an infrequently discussed cause of dematerialization in the literature.The fate of used electronic products (e-waste) is of increasing concern because of their toxicity and the growing volume of e-waste. Addressing these concerns requires developing the recycling infrastructure, but good estimates of the volume of e-waste stored by US households are still unavailable. In this context, we make two contributions based on a national random survey of 2136 US households. First, we explain how much e-waste is stored by US households using count models. Significant explanatory variables include age, marital and employment status, ethnicity, household size, previous e-waste recycling behavior, and to some extent education, home ownership, and understanding the consequences of recycling, but neither income nor knowledge of e-waste recycling laws. Second, we estimate that on average, each US household has 4.1 small (<= 10 pounds) and 2.4 large e-waste items in storage. Although these numbers are likely lower bounds, they are higher than recent US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates (based on narrower product categories). This suggests that the backlog of e-waste in the US is likely larger than generally believed; it calls for developing the recycling infrastructure but also for targeted recycling campaigns. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New fuel regulations based on life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have focused renewed attention on life cycle models of biofuels. The BESS model estimates 25% lower life cycle GHG emissions for corn ethanol than does the well-known GREET model, which raises questions about which model is more accurate. I develop a life cycle metamodel to compare the GREET and BESS models in detail and to explain why the results from these models diverge. I find two main reasons for the divergence: (1) BESS models a more efficient biorefinery than is modeled in the cases to which its results have been compared, and (2) in several instances BESS fails to properly count upstream emissions. Adjustments to BESS to account for these differences raise the estimated global warming intensity (not including land use change) of the corn ethanol pathway considered in that model from 45 to 61 g CO(2)e MJ(-1). Adjusting GREET to use BESS's biorefinery performance and coproduct credit assumptions reduces the GREET estimate from 64 to 61 g CO(2)e MJ(-1). Although this analysis explains the gap between the two models, both models would be improved with better data on corn production practices and by better treatment of agricultural inputs.The boreal forests of Scandinavia offer a considerable resource base, and use of the resource for the production of less carbon-intensive alternative transport fuel is one strategy being considered in Norway. Here, we quantify the resource potential and investigate the environmental implications of wood-based transportation relative to a fossil reference system for a specific region in Norway. We apply a well-to-wheel life cycle assessment to evaluate four E85 production system designs based on two distinct wood-to-ethanol conversion technologies. We form best and worst case scenarios to assess the sensitivity of impact results through the adjustment of key parameters, such as biomass-to-ethanol conversion efficiency and upstream biomass transport distance. Depending on the system design, global warming emission reductions of 46% to 68% per-MJ-gasoline avoided can be realized in the region, along with reductions in most of the other environmental impact categories considered. We find that the region's surplus forest-bioenergy resources are vast; use for the production of bioethanol today would have resulted in the displacement of 55% to 68% of the region's gasoline-based global warming emission-or 6% to 8% of Norway's total global warming emissions associated with road transportation.Oslo's wastewater pipeline network has an aging stock of concrete, steel, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipelines, which calls for a good portion of expenditures to be directed toward maintenance and investments in rehabilitation. The stock, as it is in 2008, is a direct consequence of the influx of pipelines of different sizes, lengths, and materials of construction into the system over the years. A material flow analysis (MFA) facilitates an analysis of the environmental impacts associated with the manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, and retirement of the pipelines. The forecast of the future flows of materials-which, again, is highly interlinked with the historic flows-provides insight into the likely future environmental impacts. This will enable decision makers keen on alleviating such impacts to think along the lines of eco-friendlier processes and technologies or simply different ways of doing business. Needless to say, the operation and maintenance phase accounts for the major bulk of emissions and calls for energy-efficient approaches to this phase of the life cycle, even as manufacturers strive to make their processes energy-efficient and attempt to include captive renewable energy in their total energy consumption. This article focuses on the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with the wastewater pipeline network in the city of Oslo.The ecological metaphor of industrial ecology is a proven conceptual tool, having spawned an entire field of interdisciplinary research that explores the intimate linkages between industry and its underlying natural systems. Besides its name and a number of borrowed concepts, however, industrial ecology has no formal relationship with the ecological sciences. This study explores the potential for further interdisciplinary collaboration by testing whether some of the same quantitative analysis techniques used in community ecology research can have meaning in an industrial context. Specifically, we applied the ecological concepts of connectance and diversity to an analysis of Burnside Industrial Park in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Our results demonstrate that these ecological tools show promise for use in industrial ecology. We discuss the meaning of connectance and diversity concepts in an industrial context and suggest next steps for future studies. We hope that this research will help to lay the groundwork of an ecologically inspired tool kit for analyzing industrial ecosystems.Practitioners of life cycle assessment (LCA) have recently turned their attention to social issues in the supply chain. The United Nations life cycle initiative's social LCA task force has completed its guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products, and awareness of managing upstream corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues has risen due to the growing popularity of LCA. This article explores one approach to assessing social issues in the supply chain-life cycle attribute assessment (LCAA). The approach was originally proposed by Gregory Norris in 2006, and we present here a case study. LCAA builds on the theoretical structure of environmental LCA to construct a supply chain model. Instead of calculating quantitative impacts, however, it asks the question "What percentage of my supply chain has attribute X?" X may represent a certification from a CSR body or a self-defined attribute, such as "is locally produced." We believe LCAA may serve as an aid to discussions of how current and popular CSR indicators may be integrated into a supply chain model. The case study demonstrates the structure of LCAA, which is very similar to that of traditional environmental LCA. A labor hours data set was developed as a satellite matrix to determine number of worker hours in a greenhouse tomato supply. Data from the Quebec tomato producer were used to analyze how the company performed on eight sample LCAA indicators, and conclusions were drawn about where the company should focus CSR efforts.Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, causing widespread damage to industry, housing, and infrastructure. The area of New Orleans East was particularly devastated, including a cluster of industries, such as a major food-processing plant, manufacturing facilities, and bulk material and gas processors. Although this area was well suited for resource recovery and eco-industrial linkages, little progress has been made in implementation. This article explores New Orleans as a case study in the application of industrial ecology to disaster management. Hurricane Katrina's damage to New Orleans resulted in a significant increase in the amount of waste flowing into New Orleans East, which precipitated a massive expenditure of federal funds toward debris management. Those circumstances created an unprecedented opportunity to capitalize a resource recovery program and to establish eco-industrial relationships, both of which would have resulted in new jobs and environmental improvement. Yet straightforward opportunities for resource recovery and eco-industrial linkage were overlooked or dismissed, in spite of antilandfill activism from the environmental community and formal recommendations for recycling from scientists and other professionals. We describe the specific resource recovery and eco-industrial opportunities that were available to New Orleans East, especially those that were magnified by Hurricane Katrina, and analyze the barriers that prevented their actualization. We also provide recommendations for overcoming barriers to resource recovery and eco-industrial progress with the goal that future postcatastrophe scenarios may benefit from more effective use of relief and recovery funding.Throughout their life cycle stages-material production, package manufacture, distribution, end-of-life management-packaging systems consume natural resources and energy, generate waste, and emit pollutants. Each of these stages also carries a financial cost. Motivated by a desire to decrease environmental burdens while reducing financial costs associated with the packaging of accessory and service parts, Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) partnered with the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management to build a life cycle assessment and costing tool to support packaging design decisions. The resulting Environmental Packaging Impact Calculator (EPIC) provides comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). It allows packaging designers to identify environmentally and economically preferable packaging systems in daily decision-making. EPIC's parameterized process flow model allows users to assess many different packaging systems using a single model. Its input/output interface is designed for users without preexisting knowledge of LCA theory or practice and calculates results based on relatively few input data. The main motivation behind this environmental design tool is to provide relevant information to those individuals who are in the best position to reduce life cycle impacts and costs from TMS's packaging and distribution systems.This article applies a combined input-output and life cycle inventory (LCI) method to the calculation of emissions and material requirements of the Czech economy in 2003. The main focus is on materials and emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic. Emissions and material extraction avoided due to imports are calculated according to an input-output approach that assumes the same production technology for imports as for domestic production. Because not all products are provided by the domestic economy, the LCI data are incorporated into the monetary input-output model. The results show that incorporating the LCI data into an input-output model is reasonable. The emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic are comparable to the domestic emissions. We compare the economy-wide material flow indicators, such as direct material input, domestic material consumption, and physical trade balance, to their raw material equivalents. The results of our calculation show that the Czech Republic exerts environmental pressure on the environment in other countries through international trade. We argue that raw material equivalents should be used to express the flows across national boundaries. Furthermore, we recommend a raw material consumption indicator for international comparisons.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and tools are increasingly being taught in university courses. Students are learning the concepts and applications of process-based LCA, input-output-based LCA, and hybrid methods. Here, we describe a classroom simulation to introduce students to an economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) method. The simulation uses a simplified four-industry economy with eight transactions among the industries. Production functions for the transactions and waste generation amounts are provided for each industry. Students represent an industry and receive and issue purchase orders for materials to simulate the actual purchases of materials within the economy. Students then compare the simulation to mathematical representations of the model. Finally, students view an online EIO-LCA tool (www.eiolca.net) and use the tool to compare different products. The simulation has been used successfully with a wide range of students to facilitate conceptual understanding of one EIO-LCA method.Gloshedobin, a thrombin-like enzyme from the venom of Gloydius shedaoensis was expressed as Hsp70 fusion protein from the construct pPIC9K/hsp70-TLE in the yeast Pichia pastoris. By fusing gloshedobin to the C-terminus of Hsp70, an expression level of 44.5 mg Hsp70-gloshedobin per liter of culture was achieved by methanol induction. The fusion protein secreted in the culture medium was conveniently purified by two chromatographic steps: Q-Sepharose FF and Superdex 200. The purified enzyme had an apparent molecular mass of 98 kDa according to SIDS-PAGE analysis, and exhibited fibrinogenolytic activity that preferentially degraded fibrinogen alpha-chain. The enzyme also degraded fibrinogen beta-chain to a lesser extent, while showing no degradation toward the gamma-chain. A fibrinogen clotting activity of 499.8 U/mg was achieved by the enzyme, which is within the range reported for other thrombin-like enzymes. Hsp70-gloshedobin had strong esterase activity toward the chromogenic substrate N alpha-p-tosyl-Gly-Pro-Arg-p-nitroanilide, and this activity was optimal at pH 7.5 and 50 degrees C, and was completely inhibited by PMSF, but not by EDTA. We concluded that Hsp70 has no effect on the physiochemical and biochemical properties of gloshedobin. Although applying a fusion partner with very big molecular weight is unusual, Hsp70 proved its advantage in soluble expression of gloshedobin without affecting its fibrinogenolytic activity. And this positive result may provide an alternative strategy for the expression of thrombin-like enzymes in microbial system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Within a product system of a life-cycle assessment (LCA), solid waste landfills should be treated as processes, because they are considered to be a part of the technical system. Hence, their inputs and outputs should be included in the life-cycle inventory analysis and evaluated within the life-cycle impact assessment. The aim of this paper is to discuss the consideration of emissions from solid waste landfills within the LCA framework and to investigate the uncertainties in existing modelling approaches. Based on this analysis the main limitations are discussed and recommendations for incorporating long-term emissions from landfills in LCA are made. It is emphasized that the lack of consideration of spatial and temporal characteristics of long-term emissions turns out to be an important source of uncertainty when modelling the environmental impact of landfills. For toxicity categories in particular, the life-cycle impact assessment might be the dominant source of uncertainty. However, in order to understand the reliability of LCA results with respect to landfill emissions, quantitative uncertainty should be routinely included in LCA studies and sources of uncertainty need to be thoroughly discussed.Molecular imprinted polymer (MIP) as solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibers coating has gained great attention in recent years. In this study, a simple preparation approach for bisphenol A (BPA) MIP coating with controlled thickness on fused-silica capillaries was developed. A capillary was inserted into a larger bore capillary to form a sleeve as mold. The prepolymer solution containing the template BPA was introduced into the interspace between the two capillaries for polymerization under photoirradiation. The larger bore capillary was removed away after the polymerization, and MIP coating with certain thickness on the surface of the inserted capillary was obtained. SPME conditions based on the MIP-coated fibers were optimized, and the extraction performance of the fibers with different thickness coating was compared. Finally, the MIP fibers were used for selective extraction of BPA spiked in tap water, human urine, and milk samples. The average recoveries of spiked BPA in the three samples were 92.5%, 81.6%, and 87.5%, respectively. The present analytical performance is not up to par for applicability to real environmental matrices. Further improvement will be necessary for analysis of real complex samples. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Product lifespan is a fundamental variable in understanding the environmental impacts associated with the life. cycle of products. Existing life cycle and materials flow studies of products, almost without exception, consider lifespan to be constant overtime. To determine the validity of this assumption, this study provides an empirical documentation of the long-term evolution of personal computer lifespan, using a major U.S. university as a case study. Results indicate that over the period 1985-2000, computer lifespan (purchase to "disposal") decreased steadily from a mean of 10.7 years in 1985 to 5.5 years in 2000. The distribution of lifespan also evolved, becoming narrower over time. Overall, however, lifespan distribution was broader than normally considered in life cycle assessments or materials flow forecasts of electronic waste management for policy. We argue that these results suggest that, at least for computers, the assumption of constant lifespan is problematic and that it is important to work toward understanding the dynamics of use patterns. We modify an age-structured model of population dynamics from biology as a modeling approach to describe product life cycles. Lastly, the purchase share and generation of obsolete computers from the higher education sector is estimated using different scenarios for the dynamics of product lifespan.The effects of di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) at five different doses from 10 to 1000 mg kg(-1) soil on biological properties were investigated over a period of 56 days. Meanwhile, the dissipation of DEHP was also monitored. The results indicated that the microbial biomass C (C-mic) fluctuated at around 70 mg kg(-1) soil for the control, whereas the Cmic varied significantly for the soil samples contaminated by DEHR The catalase activities in all five treatments were stimulated at most time, and the activities of phosphatase in the soils treated by DEHP with 500 mg kg(-1) or 1000 mg kg(-1) were significantly higher than the other treatments from the 20th day. Urease was more sensitive and inhibited significantly during the initial period of incubation. Additionally, the dose-response relationship of invertase was presented in the later phase of incubation. The activities of urease and invertase might indicate soil perturbations caused by the introduction of DEHP. The dissipation of DEHP was found to follow the pseudo first-order kinetics behavior. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.A determination of the sustainability performance of a company ought to fulfill certain requirements. It has to take into account the direct impacts from on-site processes as well as indirect impacts embodied in the supply chains of a company. This life cycle thinking is the common theme of popular footprint analyses, such as carbon, ecological, or water footprinting. All these indicators can be incorporated into one common and consistent accounting and reporting scheme based on economic input-output analysis, extended with data from all three dimensions of sustainability. We introduce such a triple-bottom-line accounting framework and software tool and apply it in a case study of a small company in the United Kingdom. Results include absolute impacts and relative intensities of indicators and are put into perspective by a benchmark comparison with the economic sector to which the company belongs. Production layer decomposition and structural path analysis provide further valuable detail, identifying the amount and location of triple-bottom-line impacts in individual upstream supply chains. The concept of shared responsibility has been applied to avoid double-counting and noncomparability of results. Although in this work we employ a single-region model for the sake of illustration, we discuss how to extend our ideas to international supply chains. We discuss the limitations of the approach and the implications for corporate sustainability.Urban metabolism studies have been established for only a few cities worldwide, and difficulties obtaining adequate statistical data are universal. Constraints and peculiarities call for innovative methods to quantify the materials entering and leaving city boundaries. Such methods include the extrapolation of data at the country or the region level based, namely, on sales, population, commuters, workers, and waste produced. The work described in this article offers a new methodology developed specifically for quantifying urban material flows, making possible the regular compilation of data pertinent to the characterization of a city's metabolism. This methodology was tested in a case study that characterized the urban metabolism of the city of Lisbon by quantifying Lisbon's material balance for 2004. With this aim, four variables were characterized and linked to material flows associated with the city: absolute consumption of materials/products per category, throughput of materials in the urban system per material category, material intensity of economic activities, and waste flows per treatment technology. Results show that annual material consumption in Lisbon totals 11.223 million tonnes (20 tonnes per capita), and material outputs sum 2.149 million tonnes. Nonrenewable resources represent almost 80% of the total material consumption, and renewables consumption (biomass) constitutes only 18% of the total consumption. The remaining portion is made up of nonspecified materials. A seemingly excessive consumption amount of nonrenewable materials compared to renewables may be the result of a large investment in building construction and a significant shift toward private car traveling, to the detriment of public transportation.A model of the use of the platinum group metals (PGMs) platinum, palladium, and rhodium in Europe has been developed and combined with a model of the environmental pressures related to PGM production. Compared to the base case presented in Part I of this pair of articles, potential changes in PGM production and use are quantified with regard to cumulative and yearly environmental impacts and PGM resource use, for the period 2005-2020. Reducing sulfur dioxide (SO(2)) emissions of PGM producer Norilsk Nickel could cut the cumulative SO(2) emissions associated with the use of PGMs in Europe by 35%. Cleaner electricity generation in South Africa could reduce cumulative SO(2) emissions by another 9%. Increasing the recycling rate of end-of-life catalytic converters to 70% in 2020 could save 15% of the cumulative primary PGM input into car catalysts and 10% of the SO(2) emissions associated with PGM production. In 2020, PGM requirements and SO(2) emissions would be, respectively, 40% and 22% lower than the base case. Substituting palladium for part of the platinum in diesel catalysts, coupled with a probable palladium price increase, could imply 15% more cumulative SO(2) emissions if recycling rates do not increase. A future large-scale introduction of fuel cell vehicles would require technological improvements to significantly reduce the PGM content of the fuel cell stack. The basic design of such vehicles greatly influences the vehicle power, a key parameter in determining the total PGM requirement.The study fills the gap in existing literature by comparing the economic costs and environmental impacts of processes in four services companies in Europe and the United States. Process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) and the case study method are used to compare companies both on four global-scale impacts and on environmental intensity (impacts per unit cost). The study builds on prior publications on the environmental contribution of processes. The processes include all the activities of the companies that result in an entry into the bookkeeping records. The results show that despite the substantial differences in organizational characteristics and line of business, all the cases had similar environmental contributions and intensity profiles. Wages, which accounted for over half of the costs, were assumed not to cause any environmental impacts. By contrast, the office premises, which generated less than 10% of the costs, caused around 50% of the environmental impacts. At a more general level, the results suggest that both the high environmental impact and the high intensity are attributed mostly to a few premises-related processes in the services industry. The results also seem to imply that the companies could gain added value by using life cycle assessment in determining the significant environmental impacts of their operations.Material flows of the economic cycle can contain toxic substances, which enter the economy as impurities in raw materials or are intentionally added as minor or even main constituents during the manufacture of industrial or consumer goods. Cadmium, predominantly associated with zinc minerals, is a by-product of the primary zinc production. Cadmium is generated when zinc is extracted from zinc ores and concentrates, an intermediate product resulting from flotation processing after the zinc ore has been mined and milled. Information on the amount of cadmium generated from zinc extraction is rarely published. In this article, we assess generation and fate of cadmium accumulating worldwide in the production of primary zinc from ores and concentrates. Model calculations for the beginning of the 21st century show that annually about 30,000 tonnes of cadmium were generated, but only approximately 16,000 tonnes were converted to primary cadmium metal, key material for the production of other cadmium compounds (e.g., cadmium oxide), and cadmium-containing goods (e.g., nickel-cadmium batteries). Hence, about 14,000 tonnes of cadmium must have been transferred somewhere else. The fate of about 5,500 tonnes can be plausibly explained, but it is difficult to determine what happens to the rest.This article presents an approach to evaluating the toxic potential for products or materials using Chinese-language material safety data sheets (MSDSs). The toxic potential indicator (TPI) is one of many simple methods used to evaluate the environmental impact of toxins in products and materials. According to actual application experience in Taiwan, difficulties and problems arise in the preliminary implementation of TPI values calculated via Chinese-language MSDSs. Some adjustment techniques combining Chinese vocabulary conversion and unit transformation are proposed in this article to overcome these obstacles. The proposed procedures and evaluated results can serve as a basis for environmentally conscious product design, especially with regard to the choice of materials used in Chinese-speaking countries.In order to convey the results of our industrial ecology research to broader audiences, the Green Design Institute research group at Carnegie Mellon University offers the Green Design Apprenticeship for local high school students. The Green Design Apprenticeship introduces participants to industrial ecology concepts and how they intersect with engineering. The content of the program has evolved to include the topics of life cycle assessment, energy and water resources, transportation, and the built environment. The program has resulted in exposing a new generation of scholars to industrial ecology and has also benefited the research of graduate students involved with the program. The process of developing the instructional materials for younger, novice students based on complex industrial ecology research was a challenging task requiring thoughtful and iterative planning. Through the development and delivery of the program, we have experienced awareness of where our own research fits into the larger industrial ecology scope, have improved our communication of complex industrial ecology concepts into simple terms, and have gained valuable insight for engaging students in our teaching.The effect of medium-delivery cleaned gas velocity, Reynolds criterion for average efficiency of cement and aluminum oxide dust capture, on the hydraulic resistance and hydraulic resistance coefficient of a direct-flow cyclone with intermediate dust collection with a large twist of flow and slow gas flow rates are studied. An estimate is obtained for the dust catching efficiency of a test cyclone by a probability-energy method that is in good agreement with experimental data. It is established that fraction efficiency indices of the test cyclone are better than for counterflow cyclone TsN-24.Substituted phenylglyoxylonitrile oximino phosphates and thiophosphates invested as a synergist of molluscicide killing snail eggs have been exposed to the environment with very little attention. The partitioning properties, aqueous solubility (S (w)), n-octanol-water partition coefficient (K (ow)) and soil organic carbon sorption coefficients (K (oc)) of 16 O, O'-dialkyl, OaEuro(3)-(substituted phenylglyoxylonitrile oximino) phosphates and thiophosphates, were determined by the traditional shaking flask method. The parameters of molecular fragment connectivity indices (MFCIs) and linear solvation energy relationships (LSERs) were used as molecular descriptors to establish a series of correlation equations successfully. The obtained correlation equations provided a quantitative method to predict the three partitioning properties for new exploited substituted phosphates and thiophosphates. More valuable, the successful application of MFCIs provides us with a good example and a good idea to improve traditional molecular connectivity indices (MCIs).It is critical to understand environmental impacts embodied in the bilateral trade between China and the United States, given the political, economic, and geographical importance of the two countries and the fact that few studies have investigated this before. This article studies the environmental impacts, particularly energy consumption and air emissions, embodied in the eastbound (from China to the U.S.) trade from 2002 to 2007 using an environmental input-output analysis technique and the adjusted bilateral trade data. In general,trade volume increased until the panic of 2008, and shifting trade patterns cause fluctuating embodied energy and air emissions in trade in China. Results show that embodied energy ranges from 7 to 11 exajoule (EJ) and takes about 12-17% of China's energy consumption. Embodied CO2 ranges between 400 and 800 Mt and represents about 8-12% of China's CO2 emissions. SO2 and NOx embodied in the eastbound trade generally grow over this period, from 4.2 to 6.3 Mt and from 1.4 to 2.9 Mt, and account for 10-15% and 8-12% of China's total emissions, respectively.The dynamics of an e-commerce market and the associated environmental impacts from a bottom-up perspective using an agent-based model is explored. A conceptual meta-theory from psychology is adopted to form the behavioral rules of artificial consumers choosing different methods of buying a book, including conventional bookstores, e-commerce, and a proposed self-pick-up option. Given the energy and emissions savings that result from a shift to e-commerce from bookstore purchase, it appears that reductions in environmental impacts are relatively probable. Additionally, our results suggest that the shift to e-commerce is mainly due to the growth of Internet users, which ties energy and emissions savings to Internet penetration. Moreover, under any scenario, the energy and emissions savings will be provided by the introduction of the proposed self-pick-up option. Our model thus provides insights into market behaviors and related environmental impacts of the growing use of e-commerce systems at the retail level, and provides a basis for the development and implementation of more sustainable policies and practices.The modern world increasingly reflects human activities, to the point that many scientists are referring to this era as the "Anthropocene," the Age of Humans. A major domain of human activity involves sociotechnical systems, which can be characterized as occurring in constellations of coevolving technological, cultural, institutional, economic, and psychological systems lasting over many decades. The current constellation, still in its early stages of development, brings together five powerful technology systems-nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, information and communication technology, and cognitive science-that are even more complex than historical precedents because they enable not just far more powerful capabilities to design domains external to humans but also the potential to design individual humans themselves. Understanding the implications of this sociotechnical landscape for industrial ecology suggests profound theoretical challenges as well as important new areas of research.This article presents a framework, transition management, for managing complex societal systems. The principal contribution of this article is to articulate the relationship between transition management and complex systems theory. A better understanding of the dynamics of complex, adaptive systems provides insight into the opportunities, limitations, and conditions under which it is possible to influence such systems. Transition management is based on key notions of complex systems theory, such as variation and selection, emergence, coevolution, and self-organization. It involves a cyclical process of phases at various scale levels: stimulating niche development at the micro level, finding new attractors at the macro level by developing a sustainability vision, creating diversity by setting out experiments, and selecting successful experiments that can be scaled up.The sciences of industrial ecology, complex systems, and adaptive management are intimately related, since they deal with flows and dynamic interdependencies between system elements of various kinds. As such, the tool kit of complex systems science could enrich our understanding of how industrial ecosystems might evolve over time. In this article, I illustrate how an important tool of complex systems science-agent-based simulation-can help to identify those potential elements of an industrial ecosystem that could work together to achieve more eco-efficient outcomes. For example, I show how agent-based simulation can generate cost-efficient energy futures in which groups of firms behave more eco-efficiently by introducing strategically located clusters of renewable, low-emissions, distributed generation. I then explain how role-playing games and participatory modeling can build trust and reduce conflict about the sharing of common-pool resources such as water and energy among small clusters of evolving agents. Collective learning can encourage potential industrial partners to gradually cooperate by exchanging by-products and/or sharing common infrastructure by dint of their close proximity. This kind of coevolutionary learning, aided by participatory modeling, could help to bring about industrial symbiosis.Systems dynamics, cellular automata, agent-based modeling, and network analyses have been used in population, land use, and transport planning models. An overview of complex systems science as applied to urban development is presented, and examples are given of where the problems of housing people and anticipating their movements have been addressed with complex approaches, sometimes in concert with deterministic, large-scale urban models. Planning for cities today has additional environmental and social priorities in common with many topics that concern industrial ecology. The research agenda suggested here is that this, too, can be enriched with complex systems thinking and models to complement the often static assessment of environmental performance and better inform decision processes.A framework has been developed to assess the structure, function, and evolution of a regional industrial ecosystem that integrates insights from industrial ecology and economic geography dimensions with complex systems theory. The framework highlights the multilayered landscape of natural ecosystem functions, economic transactions, policy contexts, and social interactions in which interfirm collaboration evolves. Its application to a single case study on the island of Puerto Rico revealed changes in the system's institutional context, its resource flows, and the composition of its industrial community. It illustrated that external forces and interactions among actors at multiple levels can cause permanent changes-but not necessarily system collapse-as policy choices and interfirm cooperation can be used to organize resources in ways that retain system functionality.Two objectives are pursued in this article. First, from a methodological perspective, we explore the relationships among the constructs of complex adaptive systems, systems of systems, and industrial ecology. Through examination of central traits of each, we find that industrial ecology and system of systems present complementary frameworks for posing systemic problems in the context of sociotechnical applications. Furthermore, we contend that complexity science (the basis for the study of complex adaptive systems) provides a natural and necessary foundation and set of tools to analyze mechanisms such as evolution, emergence, and regulation in these applications. The second objective of the article is to illustrate the use of two tools from complexity sciences to address a network transition problem in air transportation framed from the system-of-systems viewpoint and shaped by an industrial ecology perspective. A stochastic simulation consisting of network theory analysis combined with agent-based modeling to study the evolution of an air transport network is presented. Patterns in agent behavior that lead to preferred outcomes across two scenarios are observed, and the implications of these results for decision makers are described. Furthermore, we highlight the necessity for future efforts to combine the merits of both system of systems and industrial ecology in tackling the issues of complexity in such large-scale, sociotechnical problems.It is perhaps in the nature of complex systems that they call for aggregate measures that enable analysts to grasp their structure and evolution without being overwhelmed by their very complexity. Complex interindustry theory and models are a typical case, where the underlying database-an input-output table-routinely contains thousands of data points for a single year. Within input-output analysis, quantitative measures have been developed that describe and characterize interindustry interactions and that have been used to compare economies, both in a static taxonomy and through their evolution over time. First, we review and critically discuss a number of concepts that have been proposed and applied to interindustry systems, such as interconnectedness, interrelatedness, linkages, and economic landscapes. Second, we apply these concepts to a case study of the Australian economy between 1975 and 1999 in terms of environmental headline indicators. Our results enable the reader to judge the usefulness and ability of the measures in capturing the key structural elements and evolutionary processes governing the interaction between the economy and the environment. For the Australian case study, the measures showed a diversifying economy occurring together with a specialization of environmental flows.This article presents a new methodology for designing industrial networks and analyzing them dynamically from the standpoint of sustainable development. The approach uses a combination of optimization and simulation tools. Assuming "top-down" overarching control of the network, we use global dynamic optimization to determine which evolutionary pathways are preferred in terms of economic, social, and environmental performance. Considering the autonomy of network entities and their actions, we apply agent-based simulation to analyze how the network actually evolves. These two perspectives are integrated into a powerful multiscale modeling framework for evaluating the consequences of new policy instruments or different business strategies aimed at stimulating sustainable development as well as identifying optimal leverage points for improved performance of the network in question. The approach is demonstrated for a regional network of interdependent organizations deploying a set of bioenergy technologies within a developing-economy context.A method is presented that allows for a life cycle assessment (LCA) to provide environmental information on an energy infrastructure system while it evolves. Energy conversion facilities are represented in an agent-based model (ABM) as distinct instances of technologies with owners capable of making decisions based on economic and environmental information. This simulation setup allows us to explore the dynamics of assembly, disassembly, and use of these systems, which typically span decades, and to analyze the effect of using LCA information in decision making. We were able to integrate a simplified LCA into an ABM by aligning and connecting the data structures that represent the energy infrastructure and the supply chains from source to sink. By using an appropriate database containing life cycle inventory (LCI) information and by solving the scaling factors for the technology matrix, we computed the contribution to global warming in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents in the form of a single impact indicator for each instance of technology at each discrete simulation step. These LCAs may then serve to show each agent the impact of its activities at a global level, as indicated by its contribution to climate change. Similar to economic indicators, the LCA indicators may be fed back to the simulated decision making in the ABM to emulate the use of environmental information while the system evolves. A proof of concept was developed that is illustrated for a simplified LCA and ABM used to generate and simulate the evolution of a bioelectricity infrastructure system.This article introduces a multiagent simulation framework for investigating the emergence of niche markets for environmentally innovative products. It clarifies how consumer preferences, business strategy, and government policy interact during market development. The framework allows investigation of the effects of uncertainty and agents' corresponding coping strategies. We describe the model, illustrate how it works when applied to the case of hybrid cars, and analyze results spanning several policy cases and a range of scenarios that make different assumptions about the heterogeneity of agents. Heterogeneity within each agent class strongly influences aggregate outcomes. Innovative firms can create green products in response to or in anticipation of government regulation, but true green niche markets do not emerge unless there are also green consumers. Niche markets do not go mainstream unless scale economies drive costs down to parity with conventional products. Preferred environmental innovation policies change with heterogeneity assumptions.Sustainable engineering is a conceptual and practical challenge to all engineering disciplines. Although the profession has experience with environmental dimensions of engineering activities that in some cases are quite deep, extending the existing body of practice to sustainable engineering by including social and cultural domains is a significant and non-trivial challenge. Nonetheless, progress is being made, as a recent study undertaken by the Center for Sustainable Engineering in the United States demonstrates.An efficient and convenient method, biological Fingerprinting chromatogram analysis is presented. which is applied to the comparison or finger printing chromatograms of the extracts of Chinese herbal medicines after the interaction with biological systems (cell, DNA, protein, etc.). The method was established for the purpose of screening and analysis of the multiple bioactive compounds in herbal medicines. In this work, microdialysis sampling combined with high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) was Studied for binding property of MCF 7 and multidrug resistant MCF-7 cell systems. The results showed that pseudolaric acid A (PAA) and pseudolaric acid B (PAB) in the cortex of Pseudolarix kaempferi (Lamb.) Gorden can easily bind to the MCF-7 cells ranging from 0 to 16.3% (PAA) and from 0 to 35.7% (PAB), and another compound, tetrandrine (TET) from the root of Stephania tetrandrae S. Moore, showed higher binding activity with multidrug resistant MCF-7 cells ranging from 0 to 39.9%. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The effective communication of corporate environmental messages has a history of mixed results and concerns remain around the quality and accurateness of these messages. Life cycle assessment (LCA) information is often presented as a promising informational tool, by which improved communication effectiveness of environmental/sustainable claims may materialize; however, the possibility of information overload has limited its application in marketing communication settings. The overall purpose of this research is to better understand how LCA-based environmental performance information might be effectively communicated in an advertising setting, the impact of such messages on individuals' attitudes and behavioral intentions, and the mediating roles of informational complexity and credibility. Fictitious, but realistic, advertisements employing LCA-based information were created and tested empirically in two experimental settings. The first, in a business-to-consumer (B2C) setting, examines the influence of several environmental information contents, formats, and disclosures on attitudinal factors toward the ad, brand, and company, as well as behavioral intentions. Using hair shampoo as the product category, and the biodegradability capacity of its bottle as the environmental attribute, regression analyses were developed based on a sample of 3,292 subjects evaluating one of 12 different advertisements. The second experiment presented in this paper expands upon these ideas by focusing on a business-to-business (B2B) environment where the need for cognition, and thus the complexity threshold, is thought to be quite high and where environmental performance is expected to be of importance to the purchaser. This experimental setting includes responses from 1,062 architects and engineers-all of whom are members of the U.S. Green Building Council who evaluated one of eight different advertisements. In this experimental setting, the volume of LCA-based information is varied, while exploring the role of this information in conjunction with functional product performance messages. Results indicate that LCA-based information can be effective within an advertising medium in enhancing message credibility, attitudes toward the brand and company, and positively influencing behavioral intentions toward purchasing, even though this information is viewed as complex and detrimental to attitudes toward the advertisement itself. More specifically, results from the first empirical experiment indicate that LCA-based communications make for more poorly reviewed advertising, but the credibility gained through explicit LCA-based environmental disclosures favorably influences the perceptions toward the company and the brand. These results are confirmed in the business-to-business experiment. Evidence from this study suggests that, within environmentally aware and sensitive recipients, advertisements with environmental messages are more effective than those presenting functional product benefits alone, but only when the messages are substantiated with elaborated LCA-based information. Within the B2C respondents, we found that the perceived complexity of the ad in fact generated a significantly positive attitudinal response concerning the company under evaluation, which was not evident in the B2B study. The results suggest that the end-use consumers in the first experiment more often processed the ad through the peripheral route of persuasion, where the downside risk of presenting complex and detailed environmental information is significant (i.e. people won't pay attention to the ad), but can be balanced (or even surpassed) by positive associations with presenting additional information (i.e. the company must be strong if it is willing to fully disclose all of this information). The influence of perceived complexity of LCA-based advertisements does not appear to negatively influence most measures typically used to assess advertising effectiveness; however, the appeal of the advertisement itself is significantly negatively impacted by increases in complexity. The credibility gained through more elaborated LCA-based environmental messages, to a high extent, compensates the effect of complexity on the attitude toward the appeal of the ad itself. In fact, this credibility strongly influences in a positive manner the attitudes buyers have toward the ad, the brand, the company, and their intention to purchase the product under evaluation. Practitioners are to reconsider the position that simple and appealing advertisements are most effective to an overall marketing communication strategy addressing environmental performance. Simple messages are often required to gain market awareness and break through the noisy hypermedia marketplace; however, our results suggest that a firm's ability to gain credibility in its message can compensate for many of the negative effects of highly complex messages. Researchers and LCA professionals influencing methodologies and implementation of LCA at the product level should recognize the potential use of selected and incomplete LCA-based information by firms in marketing communications. While strategic differentiation benefits associated with effective communication of environmental performance may lead to increased use of LCA techniques by firms, appropriate development of standards and certifications may be required to preserve perceptions of objectivity and transparency associated with LCA methodologies.Japan's Eco-Town Program spearheaded in Japan the integration of Industrial Symbiosis and Urban Symbiosis, seeking to maximise the economic and environmental benefit from close geographic proximity of industrial and urban areas, through the use of previously discarded commercial, municipal and industrial waste materials in industrial applications. The program established 26 Eco-Towns around Japan. Approximately 1.65 billion USD was invested in 61 innovative recycling projects, with an average government subsidy of 36%. In addition at least 107 other recycling facilities have been constructed without government subsidy. 14 Eco-Towns primarily contributed to improving industry's productivity, whilst 10 Eco-Towns primarily contributed to improving environmental amenity. In 16 Eco-Towns the private sector was the most important actor supporting local government in the realisation of the Eco-Town, whilst in 9 Eco-Towns this was civil society. The availability of investment subsidies, the coming into force of ambitious recycling legislation with quantified, product-specific targets, access to the significant technological resources of the private sector, and widespread recognition of the urgency to act on environmental issues, all contributed to the success of the Eco-Town Program. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Arctic (or Subarctic) is characterized by a harsh climate and nutrient-poor soil; what makes it even harsher in Monchegorsk (67 degrees 51'N and 32 degrees 48'E) is that metal Pollution originating from the Ni-Cu smelting industry has severely damaged the soil and ground vegetation, resulting in formation of an industrial desert (barren ground). A pilot-scale (4 ha) field test was carried Out under Such conditions to study how to apply municipal sewage sludge for rehabilitation of degraded land. After sewage sludge had been composted, an artificial substratum made from the compost was introduced to the remediation test field, and then willow, birch and grasses were planted on the substratum. The transformation of the artificial substratum was observed in the test field during 3 years. The portion of Cu in residual form was greater than that in other forms, it is hence considered that Cu has low bioavailability in the artificial substratum. Furthermore, the metal distributions statistically increased in fractions of humic acid (insoluble in water under acidic condition,;), so the mobile amounts of Ni and Cu became small. The conclusion drawn from the field Survey and analysis of extractable metals indicates that the lost vegetation is being restored even while Pollution Continues to be discharged from the smelter operation. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A development in wind energy technology towards higher nominal power of the wind turbines is related to the shift of the turbines to better wind conditions. After the shift from onshore to offshore areas, there has been an effort to move further from the sea coast to the deep water areas, which requires floating windmills. Such a concept brings additional environmental impact through higher material demand. To evaluate additional environmental burdens and to find out whether they can be rebalanced or even offset by better wind conditions, a prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) study of one floating concept has been performed and the results are presented in this paper. A comparison with existing LCA studies of conventional offshore wind power and electricity from a natural gas combined cycle is presented. The results indicate similar environmental impacts of electricity production using floating wind power plants as using non-floating offshore wind power plants. The most important stage in the life cycle of the wind power plants is the production of materials. Credits that are connected to recycling these materials at the end-of-life of the power plant are substantial. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Eco-industrial park (EIP) projects have become more prevalent in China. In order to evaluate the performance of such innovative projects, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has set up a new national standard for EIPs, the first of its kind globally. This article examines the applicability and feasibility of the indicator system established in the standard. It first presents the details of this new standard. Then benefits and challenges in the standard's application are analyzed. The analysis shows that the new indicators are eco-efficiency-oriented and do not address the essence of the EIP. In the future, there will be a need to revise this set of indicators by considering the principles of eco-industrial development and local realities in order to ensure that the indicators are indeed used to promote sustainable development of industrial parks.A key requirement for those in industry and elsewhere who wish to reduce the environmental impact of a product is to develop priorities for action. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to identify such priorities but can be misleading. This article draws attention to two effects that can occur when the system boundary for a product LCA is not defined correctly. We illustrate the "washing machine effect" by showing that in separate life cycle studies of clothing, detergents, and washing machines, the use of energy is dominated by operation of the washing machine. All three studies prioritize the use phase for action, but in an aggregated study, double counting of the use-phase impact occurs. We demonstrate the "inverse washing machine effect" with an example related to energy used in transport. We show that some activities that are significant on a cumulative basis consistently fall outside the chosen system boundary for individual products. A consequence is that when LCA studies are used for prioritization, they are in danger of overemphasizing the use-phase impacts and overlooking the impacts from indirect activities. These effects, which are broadly understood by LCA developers, appear not to be understood properly by those who use LCA to direct priorities for action. Therefore, practitioners should be wary of using LCA for prioritizing action, and LCA guidance documents should reflect this caution.This article extends and applies the world trade model with bilateral trade (WTMBT), a linear program with any number of goods, factors, and regional trade partners that determines regional production, bilateral trade patterns, and region-specific prices on the basis of comparative advantage by minimizing factor use. The model provides a consistent analysis of the global production system, representing geographical location at a regional level, region-specific technologies at a sector level, emissions from production, and resource constraints and costs. An illustrative analysis investigates how changes in the geographic distribution of production could contribute to reducing global carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions and at what cost. The model provides a bridge between global objectives and their determinants and consequences in specific sectors in individual regions. Multi-objective analysis is used to construct a trade-off curve between global factor costs and CO(2) emissions. The relevance of both primal and dual solution variables is demonstrated. In particular, changes in goods prices and emissions are investigated. We conclude that the main impact of tightening carbon constraints is a substantial reduction in international trade accompanied by a shift away from regions most reliant on the combustion of coal. In addition to the analysis of the overall global trends, including the impact on prices, the implications of the global carbon constraint for one specific industry are investigated.Corn-ethanol production is expanding rapidly with the adoption of improved technologies to increase energy efficiency and profitability in crop production, ethanol conversion, and coproduct use. Life cycle assessment can evaluate the impact of these changes on environmental performance metrics. To this end, we analyzed the life cycles of corn-ethanol systems accounting for the majority of U.S. capacity to estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy efficiencies on the basis of updated values for crop management and yields, biorefinery operation, and coproduct utilization. Direct-effect GHG emissions were estimated to be equivalent to a 48% to 59% reduction compared to gasoline, a twofold to threefold greater reduction than reported in previous studies. Ethanol-to-petroleum output/input ratios ranged from 10:1 to 13:1 but could be increased to 19:1 if farmers adopted high-yield progressive crop and soil management practices. An advanced closed-loop biorefinery with anaerobic digestion reduced GHG emissions by 67% and increased the net energy ratio to 2.2, from 1.5 to 1.8 for the most common systems. Such improved technologies have the potential to move corn-ethanol closer to the hypothetical performance of cellulosic biofuels. Likewise, the larger GHG reductions estimated in this study allow a greater buffer for inclusion of indirect-effect land-use change emissions while still meeting regulatory GHG reduction targets. These results suggest that corn-ethanol systems have substantially greater potential to mitigate GHG emissions and reduce dependence on imported petroleum for transportation fuels than reported previously.The analysis of socioeconomic metabolism has largely been dominated by quantification of material flows on a mass basis. This neglects the energetic dimensions of the urban metabolism and makes analysis that integrates material and energy flows difficult. The present research applies Odum's emergy concept to integrate energy and material flows for the study of the socioeconomic metabolism of the Taipei area. We also take into consideration the urban sprawl in the Taipei area to study its relationship to the change of socioeconomic metabolism. We interpret SPOT satellite images from 1992 and 2002 to provide a deeper understanding of the whole urban system; results show that Taipei's urban areas increased in size during the past decades. Emergy-based indicators show decreasing empower densities (total emergy use per area) of undeveloped and agricultural areas, whereas the empower density of urban areas has increased, which signals a convergence of resource flows toward urban areas. Such an increase of empower density is mainly due to fossil fuel use and translates into increased environmental loading and decreased sustainability. An analysis of the relationship between urbanization and socioeconomic metabolism indicates that changes in land use affect the characteristics of socioeconomic metabolism in Taipei. The effects of urban sprawl on Taipei's urban sustainability are also discussed.Large stocks of metals have accumulated in the urban technosphere (i.e., the physical environment altered by human activity). To minimize health and environmental risks, attempts were begun in the 1980s to phase out the use of cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and mercury (Hg). To study the effect of this attempt, we conducted substance flow analyses (SFAs) in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1995 and in 2002-2003, which allow a comparison of the results over time. The SFAs showed a reduction in the stocks of Cd and Hg by approximately 25% to 30% between 1995 and 2002-2003. For Pb, the stock development was more uncertain. Cd and Hg inflow was substantially reduced during this period, but Pb inflow increased. Amounts of Cd and Pb in waste were still large, whereas Hg flows in waste were decreasing. Furthermore, although emissions of Pb decreased, Cd and Hg emissions were in the same range as in 1995. The application of SFAs has provided unique data on the accumulation of metals in the Stockholm technosphere, thus serving as a valuable indicator of how the phasing out progresses. The changes can be related to regulations, initiatives by industries and organizations, and the proactive attitude of the local environmental authorities and of the water company.The 20th century was a time of rapidly escalating use of lead (Pb). As a consequence, the standing stock of lead is now substantial. By linking lead extraction and use to estimates of product lifetimes and recycling, we have derived an estimate of the standing stock of lead throughout the century by top-down techniques. We find that the stock of in-use lead is almost entirely made up of batteries (68%), lead sheet (10%), and lead pipe (10%). Globally, about 200 teragrams (Tg) Pb was mined in the 20th century, and about 25 Tg Pb now makes up the in-use stock, so some 87% has been lost over time. Nonetheless, about 11% of all lead entering use was added to in-use stock in 2000, so the stock continues to increase each year. Currently, most of the stock is in Europe (32%), North America (32%), and Asia (24%). On a per capita basis, the global stock is about 5.6 kilograms (kg) Pb, and regional in-use stock ranges from 2.0 kg Pb (Africa) to 19.7 kg Pb (Europe). From a sustainability perspective, we estimate that the global lead resource is around 415 Tg Pb. Were the entire world to receive the services of lead at the level of the developed countries, some 130 Tg Pb would be needed, so there do not appear to be significant long-term limitations to the lead supply.Advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) could, in principle, offer a means of dematerializing a wide variety of services. In practice, however, the material resource impact of electronic equipment is itself an issue of increasing concern. This article looks specifically at music delivery methods to investigate whether digital media and associated hardware can reduce the material throughput attributable to music delivery. In the first part of the article, we examine recent market trends in digital music delivery and digital media sales. Next we report on a series of stakeholder interviews undertaken during 2006 to explore industry views on the relationship among audio content, electronic hardware, and environmental impact. Finally, we carry out a scenario analysis to investigate the potential material impacts of different possible futures in music delivery. Although in one scenario we find some potential for dematerialization, there are too many ambiguities in underlying assumptions about the relationship between content and hardware to predict with any confidence that the promise of digital media will lead to the dematerialization of music delivery. Currently, at least, it appears that digital formats have not contributed to dematerialization, essentially due to increases in hardware. It seems most likely that the material resource impacts of digital music delivery will continue to be significant for some time.The generation of waste in urban regions over time is seen to impact the balance of anthropogenic and natural resources. Various national and international initiatives to manage urban solid waste are in place and has thus have evolved at present to form an assortment of different subcomponents involving environmental, administrative, regulatory, scientific, market, technology, and socio-economic factors, which has increasing bearing on the US due to its volume and nature of discards. This paper draws together the various aspects of municipal solid waste (MSW) management as it evolved, particularly in the American society through reviewing works and findings. In many parts of the country, waste management at present, primarily involves landfilling, incineration with and without energy recovery, recycling and composting. Legislation, nature of wastes and market trends continue to redefine management operations and its responsibilities and impacts. Complexities are added to it by the nature of urban development as well. New studies and concepts like 3Rs, cradle-to-cradle, industrial ecology, and integrated waste management are adding new dimensions for solving waste problems towards achieving sustainable resource use. Local initiatives, both public and private are in the forefront of adopting alternate waste management procedures. The assistance from various government and private bodies, supporting shifts in waste management approaches, have immense value, as according to the new paradigms, nothing goes to waste. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial symbiosis (IS) involves the inter-company exchanges of by-products, water and energy. The development of IS networks offers a potential regional platform to contribute to ensuring efficient utilization resources while minimizing the negative impacts on the environment. To illustrate the concept and potential application of IS, this paper focuses on the introduction of sulfur oriented IS network to reduce SO2 emission and increase the opportunity of business. It consists of interlinked production of sulfur related products. These production networks utilize nearly all sulfur by-products to generate new revenues and reduce environmental emissions and disposal costs. The companies in Kalundborg industrial park could reduce SO2 air emission 3,700 tonnes and reuse 2,800 tonnes waste sulfur annually. The hypothetical example will achieve 15,000 tonnes SO2 emission reduction per year.In this paper, a water quality evaluation model of nearshore (Dalian Bay) is built through artificial neural network based on the analysis of history information and monitoring data. In which a back propagation (BP) network is used. A hierarchical prediction model is established according to water quality at different period. Results illustrates the methodology is practicable and can be provided scientific proof for water quality evaluation and prevention of Dalian Bay. The method does not demand data's rules and has the characteristic of impersonality, credibility and highly inaccuracy permission. At the same time the predictive relative error is little.Throughout history, technological evolution and military activity have been linked to each other. The existential challenge to a particular society represented by warfare, combined with the immediate advantage that technology can deliver, tends to accelerate technological innovation and diffusion. The relationship between them, and the social and ethical issues that arise from that relationship, are quite complex, however, and it is useful to try to understand them to inform current technological development.Previous studies on environmental impacts embodied in trade have paid little attention on the impacts of labor, or environmental overhead of labor (EOL). In particular, EOL can occur in both the household consumption of fuels and electricity by workers and in the delivery of products and services consumed by workers. This research defines EOL and quantifies energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) EOL embodied in the 2002 China-U.S. trade using an integrated environmental input-output model. The results find that the eastbound trade from China to the U.S. uses 28.80 million worker-years in China. This trade corresponds to, an EOL of 466.98 petajouless (PJ) of energy use and 42.50 million metric tons (MMt) of CO2 emissions. The westbound trade from the U.S. to China on the other hand requires 0.28 million worker-years, associated with an EOL of 87.48 PJ energy and 5.71 MMt of total CO2 emissions. Further analysis shows China's EOL is dominated by manufacturing while EOL on the U.S. side is primarily from household consumption.The paper's theme is in methods and practice in planning a urban environment and energy. The automobile industry is the pillar industry in Jilin Province, to study the building model of automobile EIP will be beneficial to resolve the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection and realize the development of circular economy. The research is taking the theories of sustainable development and circular economy as the guiding ideology, using cleaner production, life cycle assessment, industrial metabolizeand management information system as the technological methods. Through cleaner production at the enterprise level, construction of the cco-industrial demonstration parks at regional level, the ecological industrial network will be set up in combination the physical EIPs with the virtual ones. Based on the actual situation of various areas as well as their demonstrative and leading effects, the EIPs should be distributed rationally to avoid redundant construction. To build the automobile EIP will not only hEIP to set up a resource-saving and environment-friendly society, but also establish a close correlation among the enterprises by forming the network of multi-level use of resources and energy. So it will achieve good social, economic and environmental benefits.Over the last several decades, the strategies for environmental protection have changed considerably from the implementation of End-of-pipe technologies to the implementation of Beginning-of-pipe technologies incorporating a wide variety of instruments that are already in use, but are continuing to be developed. Among these technology choices, eco-efficiency tools, such as cleaner production technologies, environmental management systems and material flow analysis, are of particular importance because of their enormous application potential, economic and environmental benefits, and relatively low costs. Implementation of the mentioned instruments fosters the creativity of the human mind with regard to improvements of environmental quality. In the more broad sense, it helps to build capacity for sustainable development and, in the longer time perspective, it helps to motivate technological change. The paper examines an application of eco-efficiency instruments in the teaching curriculum of the Industrial Ecology Department at St. Petersburg State University of Refrigeration and Food Technology. The results of several cooperative projects between the university and food processing companies of the city were put into the research agenda of university students and led to environmental innovations in companies.Industrial ecology education is being developed and delivered predominantly within the domains of engineering and management. Such an approach could prove somewhat limiting to the broader goal of developing industrial ecology as an integrated knowledge base inclusive of diverse disciplines, contributing to sustainable development. This paper hypothesizes that industrial ecology could be optimally delivered across broader disciplines if it were to be delivered as a supplemental knowledge among disciplines that engage with sustainable development education. Based on this hypothesis, a pedagogical experiment was devised and is presented here. This paper is descriptive, reflective and exploratory in approach, highlighting the challenges embedded in an interdisciplinary industrial ecology education, and recommending an inclusive pedagogical model to address the challenges. The intention is binary, to contribute towards the advancement of industrial ecology as an integrated knowledge base, and to introduce the concept of industrial ecology to the discipline of landscape architecture.Eco-efficiency is a kind of cross-efficiency linking environmental with economic issues and measuring the environmental impact added attributed to per output value created. The industries of western China have been increasing steadily but still lag behind the eastern region with the implementation of the west development strategy. From the perspective of sustainable development, this paper discovers the problems such as weakened resources, poor environmental performance and serious environmental pollution in the resources-directional structure of the west industry. And then the eco-efficiency of material metabolism in the west is calculated through the factor's analysis and principle component's analysis which shows the falling trend on the whole. As a result, it is necessary to develop the industrial ecology in the west for changing its ways of economic growth. This paper points out that the keys of improving the eco-efficiency of regional material metabolism are the increasing of resources, and environmental efficiencies, and the establishment of recycling chain of the re-utilization of waste resources.In this paper, apply some theory tools such as the cycle of economic theory, industrial ecological theory, the system of scientific theory and the theory of sustainable development and so on. Analysis of the development status of domestic and foreign industry ecosystems, At the same time, believe that the key to set up the material recycling and energy efficient eco-industrial chain and eco-industrial symbiosis networks, industrial ecosystem diversity, the key types of enterprises, industrial symbiosis networks, information networks, etc. aspects of ecosystem construction industry means. the use of physics concepts and sustainable development of enterprises ramp-type structure model together to build ecosystem dynamic model of innovation systems. Propose a new type of eco-industrial management model, in order to achieve industrial ecology.This paper shows that important insights can be lost when assessing the relative performance of balancing methods solely based on individual optima. This is demonstrated through a multi-objective assessment. A trade-off curve between RAS and sign-preserving absolute differences (SPAD) is obtained based on the 60 x 60 Norwegian 2001 input-output table. The trade-off curve takes on a form that is close to a step function. This demonstrates that the solution surface around the RAS and SPAD optimums are very flat. Solutions can be identified that improve on the other objective or measure with little or marginal cost to the original objective function. Motivation for the assessment is provided, the technique applied is presented and the implications of the findings are discussed in an input-output and industrial ecology context.In the paper are defined two new traits of industrial ecology: technological pollution and technological pollutant. Like an example of technological polution is studied the polution interaction (corrosion like a phenomenon of dirt) of a steel pipe and the fluid transported. Processes also influence the use period, C.V-p.u, component of life cycle, C.V-p.u. Are presented results of experiments which can help assess the negative impact of pipe-fluid interaction on the C.V-p.u.Assessing the impact of industrial activity is a complex challenge for policy makers, scientists and engineers. In an effort to evaluate industrial systems, a range of alternative methods have been developed. From qualitative matrix models to data-intensive computer models, decision-makers are able to choose from a variety of tools to appraise the potential environmental impact. However, these methods stop short at demonstrating how industrial activity affects sustainability. The purpose of this work is to advance the area of environmental assessment by developing a method of evaluating the sustainability implications of industrial activity (products and processes). This chapter covers the definition of sustainability, its key factors and elements, the state of the art for environmental assessment and the shortcomings of the current environmental assessment methods. This research agenda was carved out of a survey of research needs within environmental assessment and industrial ecology. From this study, it is evident that assessing sustainability requires a cross-disciplinary study of factors and interactions linking demography, consumer demand, economic activity, industrial activity and resource use to sustainability. Further, a key component of assessing sustainability is population. As such, this chapter serves as an introduction to the development of the "Population Based Model for Assessing the Sustainability Implications of Industrial Activity" (PMASI). This approach is relevant to both developing and industrialized countries.We attempted to design and assess an example of a sustainable networked delivery (SND) system: a hybrid business-to-consumer book delivery system. This system is intended to reduce costs, achieve significant reductions in energy consumption, and reduce environmental emissions of critical local pollutants and greenhouse gases. The energy consumption and concomitant emissions of this delivery system compared with existing alternative delivery systems were estimated. We found that regarding energy consumption, an emerging hybrid delivery system which is a sustainable networked delivery system (SND) would consume 47 and 7 times less than the traditional networked delivery system (TND) and e-commerce networked delivery system (END). Regarding concomitant emissions, in the case of CO(2), the SND system produced 32 and 7 times fewer emissions than the TND and END systems. Also the SND system offer meaningful economic benefit such as the costs of delivery and packaging, to the online retailer grocery, and consumer. Our research results show that the SND system has a lot of possibilities to save local transportation energy consumption and delivery costs, and reduce environmental emissions in delivery system.Two fields of scientific inquiry can be interconnected effectively only through a clear conceptual overlap. Moreover, the overlapping (that is, the common) concepts must have proven their internal operational effectiveness separately in each one of the adjoining disciplines (Leontief 1959, 1985).In recent years a lot of new energy models have been developed to analyze climate change mitigation strategies and the effects such strategies have on economic and technological development. Two main types of models can be identified: Top-down models that focus on the economic interactions within different sectors in an economy and bottom-up models that focus more on physical energy flows and technological aspects. One way of exploiting the advantages of each of these approaches is to link them to create a hybrid approach. Due to their main characteristics (e.g. high degree of disaggregating) input-output models are suitable for integrating technological data in an economic model in a special manner. Therefore, a class of models exists, linking input-output models with disaggregated energy system models. In this paper we present such a hybrid approach which consists of the input-output model Macroeconomic Information System (MIS) and the bottom-up model Instruments for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategies (IKARUS) - Market Allocation (MARKAL). For the hybrid MIS/IKARUS-MARKAL model a soft-linking approach is used, where the MIS model supplies data about the development of the different industry and service sectors and the IKARUS-MARKAL model calculates the energy demand of these sectors and the cost-optimal energy production structure. Two different examples for the use of the hybrid MIS/IKARUS-MARKAL approach will be presented: our first example focuses on the question of whether a given emission target (like the Kyoto one) can be reached assuming a desired growth rate and taking technological restrictions into account. The focus of the second example is on the economic impacts of a CO2 mitigation strategy. In this example, we ask which industries will benefit from the decision of policymakers to take measures to reduce CO2 emissions and which ones will lose (in the sense of economic growth).Economists and policy makers refer to carbon tax as an efficient instrument to control CO2 emissions, but concerns about possible negative effects of its implementation, as for instance the loss of competitiveness on the international market, have been expressed. In the present chapter the IO model is used to estimate the short-term effects of a carbon tax in Italy (the results can be easily extended to the case of a permission trading scheme), which include the percentage increase in prices and the increase in the imports of commodities to substitute domestically produced ones as intermediate input. The present study is not "behavioral", in the sense that the change in the consumers' behavior and choice, induced by higher prices, is not taken into account. The results of the study show that a carbon tax of 20 (sic)/t CO2 in Italy would produce a modest increase in prices and a small reduction in the emitted CO2 determined by the substitution of domestically produced intermediate inputs with imported ones. Moreover, due to the assumption underlying the applied model, the results have to be considered as an upper bound estimation or pessimistic forecast as well as restricted to a short-run time horizon, which means before any technological adjustments are possible.In this paper we show how IO equations for sector outputs and prices are used as part of a larger policy analysis modeling system for energy and climate-related studies. The IO framework is particularly useful because it can accommodate the analysis of both price and direct program expenditure impacts. We briefly discuss the advantages of including non-price programs in any serious climate policy or sustainable energy strategy. Further, we contend that the impacts on the economy from a set of price and program expenditure polices can be seen by comparing constructed IO tables for a future year, such as 2030, with and without these polices. We present the All Modular Industry Growth Assessment (AMIGA) modeling system which has the capability to forecast future IO table values.This chapter reviews the history and discusses the role of the primary environmental data that have become the foundation of environmental input-output analyses in Japan. It also describes two practical approaches to estimating unit environmental burden: an exogenous estimate approach and an endogenous estimate approach. As a case study, the endogenous estimate approach is used to estimate sectoral unit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions based on the Japanese Input-Output Tables for 2000. The technical problems that exist in determining CO2 emission for each sector by that approach are explained. In addition, this chapter uses an input-output analysis to calculate the embodied CO2 emission intensities of the approximately 400 sectors in the Japanese Input-Output Tables, and summarizes the quantitative characteristics of intensities for the major sectors. To examine the relationship between economic final demands and CO2 emissions, the Japanese CO2 emission structure in 2000 is illustrated using those intensities.This paper elucidates the data sources and data preparation procedures used in developing the sectoral environmental data of the U.S. The database described in this paper interlinks (1) Input-Output Table (IOT), (2) environmental emission and resources use statistics, and (3) characterization factors from Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) that quantify environmental impacts. Each of these three modules was designed to describe (1) the economic process generates environmental interventions, (2) the quantity of the environmental intervention generated, and (3) the process that these environmental interventions realize environmental impacts, respectively. The resulting database encompasses 1,344 different types of environmental interventions generated by 480 commodities of the U.S. input-output table, linked to 86 commonly used LCIA models. This paper aims to share the experiences of and to elucidate the procedures and the data sources used for developing the sectoral environmental database in the U.S.Ecologists have used input-output analysis since the early 1970s to study flows of materials and energy in complex networks. These ecological networks are very similar to material and energy flows in industrial systems, yet the input-output approach developed by ecologists has not been applied to industrial systems. In this paper, an overview of early work to adapt ecological input-output analysis to industrial systems is presented.On a scientific as well as a political level, there is wide consensus today that the concept of sustainable development requires integrated approaches to illustrate the interactions between economic, social and environmental concerns. Input-output analysis is regarded as an appropriate framework to provide a comprehensive picture of these linkages as it allows combining bio-physical and social data with economic (monetary) input-output models. The interrelations between the economic and ecological system affect the flow of material inputs and outputs in many forms. Environmental degradation depends considerably on input quantities, which are taken from and transferred again to the environment in form of emissions and wastes. For the description of these relationships, the concepts of "industrial metabolism" and "societal metabolism" are important. These terms refer to the exchange of materials and energy between ecological and socio-economic systems. According to these concepts physical indicators can be differentiated with respect to input and output indicators. The material input of a national economy is frequently regarded as a substantial indicator for environmental sustainability. The decrease of material flows and their decoupling from economic growth represent central goals of the Austrian strategy for sustainable development. Referring to the output side, CO2 emissions reflect the most dominant output flow, showing a still increasing pattern in Austria, which clearly conflicts with the Kyoto goal of a reduction of greenhouse gases by 13% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012 for the Austrian economy. Therefore the Austrian sustainability strategy also demands climatic protection and thus the reduction of CO2 emissions as the most important greenhouse gas. On the basis of these guidance goals fixed in the sustainability strategy, this paper examines which economic activities are directly as well as indirectly responsible for the material input and CO2 emissions of the Austrian economy. By using data on material input on the one hand and CO2 emissions (undesired outputs) on the other hand we connect both an input- and an output-based indicator using the basic snake-use tables of the input-output accounting framework in order to illustrate the interactions between environmental and socio-economic trends of the Austrian economy. This modelling approach allows accounting for flows of environmental commodities from the environment into the economy and of emissions and waste products from the economy back to the environment. It enables a comprehensive assessment of the considered indicators related to production and consumption activities of the Austrian economy. With this procedure we show which economic activities are directly and indirectly responsible for the use of natural resources and the generation of CO2 emissions. Furthermore we investigate whether decoupling of resource use and CO2 emissions from economic development took place in recent years. In addition to the sustainability goals from an environmental point of view we refer to a high employment level, as one important aim for social sustainability in order to consider at least one essential aspect of social equality, by integrating employment in our model as social indicator. The parallel analysis of employment, environment and economy within the make-use-framework allows the comprehensive assessment of the considered indicators related to production and consumption activities of the Austrian economy. This analysis is supplemented by an evaluation of the sustainability of the Austrian economy by applying minimum conditions for sustainable development. With the help of this framework we investigate if the development of the Austrian economy fulfilled these minimum conditions in the time period 1995 to 2000.Current environmental evaluation analysis methods such as LCA require detailed information about the studied product or process. This leads to uncertain or wrong results when applied during the early design phase. As a result all the design choices must be made before performing such environmental analysis, consequently such methods are not truly design tools. The proposed exergetic approach offers an appropriate solution for an environmental evaluation during the early stages of the design process. A key aspect of this exergetic approach is a combination of a classical exergy and dimensional analysis. In previous works, the exergetic approach has been compared using LCA eco-indicator 99 (H), as the LCA method is a widely used and accepted method. This article aims at further validating the exergetic method by comparing it to the LCA exergetic method implemented in existing, widely spread, software. The comparison of the two approaches is done through a case study which is part of a project that is in the early design stage. This work is a part of the development of a tool that provides a model-based approach of the entire engineering design process.The industrial symbiosis theory is an effective way to develop circular economy. Based on the theory, the paper analyzed the development status of heavy chemical industry, constructed the circulation development pattern of Handan's heavy chemical industry based on industrial symbiosis, and according to the circulation development pattern, proposed development recommendations and measures of heavy chemical industry to achieve a win-win of economic and environmental benefits of Handan City.In order to alleviate production costs and increase the environmental performance of solar photovoltaic manufacturing, an eco-industrial park for GW-scale production of PV is proposed. This article quantifies the inputs and outputs for the glass manufacturing component of such a system using standard manufacturing techniques. Utilizing industrial symbiosis in this way, potential reductions for such a plant were found to be about 30,000 tons/year in raw materials and over 220,000 GJ/year in embodied energy.With ever increasing focus on industrial pollution and environment, traditional industrial design framework needs to be extended from green process design, to industrial ecology, to sustainability. The concept of overall sustainability goes beyond industrial ecology and brings in time dependent nature of the ecosystem. Decisions regarding regulations and human interactions with ecosystem come in picture. It involves dealing with various time scales and time dependent uncertainties. The available management options and decision making change from the single industrial production plant to the larger scales of an integrated industrial park, community, and natural systems. Further, green engineering concepts change the goal of engineering design from profitability to include a number of different and conflicting objectives that can define sustainability in the end. This integration poses challenging problem of discrete and continuous decisions, nonlinearities and uncertainties. Systems theory approach deals with similar ideas of disparate temporal and spatial systems, their interactions and interdependencies. This prompts one to extend systems theory approach for decision making in sustainability. This chapter presents such an idea through a case-study problem of mercury waste management in a watershed. The harmful effects of mercury pollution are well documented. Mercury in water particularly presents a grave danger because of its bioaccumulative nature. It is further complicated by the complex mercury cycling in the environment. As a result, successful control of mercury pollution in water depends on actions at various points in the mercury cycle, creating an appropriate case study for the sustainability initiative. This work looks at three levels of pollution control: individual industry level, industrial sector level and ecosystem level. At the individual industry level, the goal is to optimize mercury treatment technology selection and design. At the industrial sector level, the option of pollutant trading to balance ecological and economic objectives is analyzed, and an optimization based decision making framework is proposed. Once mercury enters the water bodies, controlling the bioaccumulation of mercury can further reduce the harmful effects and affect the regulatory decisions. This work investigate the idea of lake pH control through time dependent liming, constituting work at the ecosystem level. Uncertainties increase as we move from the individual industry level, where model and tools are well developed, to ecosystem level. Although the application is specific to mercury pollution, the goal is to understand the generalized integrated approach for sustainable waste management from industrial perspective. To achieve these goals, appropriate modeling of the objectives, risks and uncertainties is necessary, followed by the use of appropriate tools to optimize various decision. This work takes a systems theory approach, employing techniques such as optimization, optimal control and real options theory, to come up with efficient management strategies.Industrial symbiosis is a model of sustainability which suggests that agglomerations of industries can achieve considerable environmental benefits by engaging in inter-organisational waste recycling, energy cascading and water recovery. This article considers how such a complex inter-organisational model for environmental management can be mobilised across different industrial localities. It is suggested that companies engaged in industrial symbiosis activities at one production locality may be more inclined to engage in symbiotic activities when entering a new production locality. The industrial symbiosis model may in this way be mobilised across industrial localities as part of the global corporate search for marked access and cost reductions. This suggestion is supported by an illustrative case study shedding some light on the mechanisms for mobilising sustainability models across localities.Sustainable production of biofuels requires lots of feedstocks, developing robust technologies and industrial ecology-oriented biorefineries under the overarching principles of sustainability. Majority of existing methods for impacts analysis of biofuels have not considered the triple dimensions of sustainability. A critical challenge for any chain of biofuel traders is to develop and implement an integrated set of performance measures that can direct its efforts towards restructuring existing supply chains. This research aims to develop OR/MS based metrics that are integrative and consider the multi-expectations of various stakeholders to allow efficient supply chains' participation into sustainable development at various levels.The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is among the central concepts in strategic management. The four Industrial Ecosystem Principles (IEPs) are among the central theoretical constructs in industrial ecology. This theoretical contribution applies the BSC approach to IEPs to construct an Industrial Ecosystem Balanced Scorecard (IEBSC). BSC breaks the strategy of the organisation down to four interdependent perspectives. The Industrial Ecosystem (IE) is divided into four perspectives according to the four IEPs. The IEPs are roundput (materials cycles, energy cascades), diversity (in the involved actors/organisations), cooperation/symbiosis (cooperation in their relations) and locality in product life cycles. In BSC, two criteria are employed to evaluate the perspectives of the organisation's scorecard: the strategic vision and the financial perspective. In IEBSC, the strategic vision and overall objective is ecological sustainability. Sustainability principles (the strategic vision) and roundput (the central IEP perspective) are used to assess the diversity, cooperation/symbiosis and locality in IEBSC. The cause-and-effect chains and interdependencies between the four IEPs are identified. We innovate by linking the engineering and natural science-derived IEPs with the management and organisational models of the BSC that introduce strategic thinking to industrial ecology. The four IEPs can now be used complementarily. The IEBSC further illustrates how the cause-and-effect chains between the four IEPs may actually create unsustainable solutions and environmentally harmful outcomes.The application of the industrial ecology to industrial areas implies re-defining the design and development process of these areas to minimize the environmental impacts along its life cycle. The development of industrial areas include several phases, one of them is the location decision that is one of the most important, since it will determine the park operation. For a long time, the location theories have only considered the proximity to raw materials, existence of basic infrastructures and qualified manpower. Nevertheless, the new model of sustainable development demands to realize a planning that defines and integrates the different subsystems and influential aspects. The aim of this work is to create a conceptual descriptive model to locate sustainable industrial areas. This model is based on long-established factors and new strategies and experiences of sustainability. The second step is the establishment of a diffuse evaluation system that determines the fulfilment of defined sustainable criteria. This model makes the planning process for the decision-makers easier through a system that considers multiple criteria that converge in order to get the balance of industrial activities with the environment. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper we consider industrial ecology as a novel and distinct state in the evolution of production systems trajectory. More specifically, adopting an evolutionary institutionalist's perspective at the socio-technical system level of analysis, we discuss the transition towards an industrial ecology-inspired industrial production system through the governance approach of strategic niche management (SNM). Towards this end, the paper first develops industrial ecology as a novel state of the industrial production socio-technical system paying particular attention at its technological component, then it discusses in detail the transition of this system through SNM, and examines whether existing implementations of the industrial ecology (industrial ecosystems and eco-industrial parks) are efforts embracing this philosophy and transition procedures. We conclude by stressing the importance of adopting the technology policy and strategic niche management perspectives in eco-industrial projects and we provide insights for accomplishing it in a more effective manner. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability strategies create many synergistic effects for SMEs working collaboratively. as well as systemic benefits for the commons. After setting forth the business case for sustainable SMEs, and considering SME sustainability advantages in contrast to MNEs, this paper discusses several different incentives for SMEs to optimize sustainability: (1) becoming valuable sustainable investment targets for larger firms; (2) creating highly competitive networks of sustainable SMEs in market spaces where large enterprises are less successful; (3) becoming highly efficient suppliers in global supply chains through sustainable practices. While several successful models of the sustainable SME are evolving, it may be that networks of SMEs will become essential for addressing the systemic problems that underlie industrial ecology, enterprise resilience, and global supply chain sustainability. SMEs represent the majority of all enterprises, and rapidly evolving communication technologies allow for various routes of network formation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) is an emerging concept that is being spread worldwide as a new industrial model that can reconcile the three dimensions of sustainability: social, economic and environmental. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, EIPs were launched through formal legislation as a means to foster sustainable development and to ameliorate the distress caused by unplanned urban and industrial development. The objective of this study is to present and analyze the development of EIPs in Rio de Janeiro, focusing on two of the initiatives launched. We argue that Rio de Janeiro has the potential for developing a sustainable industrial system through EIP implementation, but the continuity of EIPs will only be successful if there is convergence of interests among the actors involved. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper discusses the nature of sustainability and sustainable development as they relate to operations management. It proposes a typology for sustainable operations management that is based on the life cycle stages of a product and the three dimensions of corporate social responsibility. The aim is to show how this typology development could provide a useful approach to integrating the diverse strands of sustainability in operations, using industrial ecology and carbon neutrality as examples. It does this by providing a focused subset of environmental concerns for an industrial ecology approach, and some research propositions for the issue of carbon neutrality.The paper present some aspects about the clean technology's influention applied in the industrial ecology. There are presented two industrial cases regarding the aplication of this technologies in metallurgical industry,Industry is in the greatest degree responsible for the deteriorated quality of the environment. The holistic approach to production aims at prevention of environmental pollution and wastes. It begins at the stage of project design, through production phase and recycling possibilities. Technical dimension is especially devoted to look for products or technologies which are material-saving, energy-efficient and no-waste. The aim of the article is to present supportive methods for introducing the principle of sustainable development into industrial plants.As the basis of our traditional industries, the iron and steel industry plays an important role in national economic development. At the same time the development of the steel industry has some problems such as low degree of industrial concentration, serious pollution and contradictions of product structure which is urgent to resolve. Based on the principles of industrial ecology, this paper analyzes the necessity of eco-industrial chain(EIC) construction facing with the practical problems in the development of the iron and steel industry, and then proposes corresponding proposals to the iron and steel industry in China which will establish and develop EIC. Finally the results may be useful for the establishment of EIC and development of circular economy in China.In the international economic globalization era, commerce competitiveness is not only the competitiveness between different enterprises, but also the competitiveness between industries in different areas. How to enhance industrial competitiveness in a long time has became a crucial question. This article introduces the definition, earlier attempts and development of industrial ecology. Comparing the analogues between natural ecosystems and industrial ecosystems, three aspects of industrial ecology competitiveness factors come out, which are environment adaptation factor, harmony and symbiosis factor, and resource productivity factor.Material flow analysis (MFA) becomes more and more an important instrument to support environmental protection and sustainable development. Often, a special approach, life-cycle assessment (LCA), is put on the same level with material flow analysis. Based on the industrial ecology or industrial metabolism paradigm (Fischer-Kowalski 1998, Fischer-Kowalski and Huttler 1999), we interpret material flow analysis in a broader sense. That makes it possible to simulate, to analyze and, as a subsequent step, to optimize multi-product systems. This contribution shows how simulation and optimization can utilized in the field of material flow analysis. It can be shown that the different approaches are not alternatives. Rather, it is possible to combine them in order to provide a flexible MFA tool-chain.Increasing plantation forestry around the world is apparently the only way to guarantee the future fiber demand economically and save the remaining natural forests. Environmentally sound harvesting technology is a must when operating in these plantations. Already proven cut - to - length or shortwood technology is one option for flat terrain. In short rotation plantations trees do not grow so large that they would require heavy soil and environment damaging technology in harvesting. The light ground based technology is based on load carrying wheeled machines, harvesters and forwarders. In mountain regions extraction is carried out with cable logging or log chutes if there is enough manpower available. These technologies save soil and environment by minimizing erosion and thus help keeping nutrient balance on the logging sites as well as accelerating carbon sequestration. Another advantage is that they also suit for small scale operations typical to agro forestry. Cut - to - length technologies can be fully mechanized or semi mechanized which is easily adoptable to local conditions. Cut - to - length technology also utilizes raw material better and allows bioenergy collection from the forests easier than other technologies.:The concept, contents and methodology of Industrial Ecology (IE) was briefly introduced. A logging operation system is an industrial process closely related to natural resources and environment with some spatial limit and time extent. This makes the logging become a challenging field of IE application. The research progress in the forest industry based on industrial ecology was introduced, including the forest industrial ecosystem in Finland, IE studies in forest industry, flows of forest resources and products in China, and logging based on IE. The research in the future should focus on theory, methodology and technical system of IE based logging industry. The circular economy of forest resources from growing, harvesting, to products through reducing, reusing and recycling should be put forwards. The optimal flows of material, energy and. information in the logging ecosystem should be explored. The study will be further extended to cover the technical and methodology system for LCA of forest products, the cleaner production in forest industry, the dematerialization technology of forest resources and products and the applicable model of forest industry eco - industrial parks.In this paper mathematics models for timber logistics centers location were set up and genetics algorithms were applied to solve the problem. Baseed on the models and algorithms, an integrated development on the application system of centers location was carried out where ArcGIS was adopted as its development platform and VB as its programming language. Based on the case study Yongan Forestry Group Co., Ltd, a timber logistics spatial database was built on which a primary location decision was practiced through the application system.Efficient procurement and optimal utilization of wood biomass for bioenergy production requires a good understanding of both the technological processes of biomass to bioenergy conversion and efficiency of the biomass supply - chain management. In this paper, a decision support system for planning the wood biomass logistics procurement for conversion to bioenergy in northwestern Ontario is developed based on a non - linear dynamic mixed integer programming model using General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) computer software. The model is used to estimate optimal quantity and type of wood biomass supplied to the Atikokan Generating Station (AGS), a proposed biomass - based power generating station from each of the 20 forest management units (IrMU) of northwestern Ontario, lying within 300 km distance from AGS. The model only selected 10 FMUs to supply both forest harvest residues and unutilized wood species biomass to meet the weekly demand of feedstock in the AGS. The model provided a global optimal solution for a one year planning horizon by minimizing the objective function of biomass procurement (including harvesting, processing and transportation) costs based on wood biomass availability from different tree species combinations in the 20 FMUs.With a large quantity of artificial forest coming to a main cutting age in our country, how to reduce effect of wood harvesting on eco - environment of forest and realize sustainable development of forestry have become to one of hot domains of researching of operation technology of artificial forest. In accordance with possible effect of harvesting of artificial forest on forestry environment, all kinds of operation ways and technology used in the different stage of operation of wood cutting, logging, transportation and site - clearing are analyzed deeply. Their possible effect, including effecting way and degree, on forest environment is investigated and tested from the point of a favorable to environment protection. According to demands of environment - friendly operation technology, all ways and technology are optimized by using optimization theory. The environment - friendly operation technology of harvesting of artificial forest is fitted to condition of artificial forest source. Scientific decision basis is provided for decision department of forestry to select operation way and technology rationally.With the application of the three dimensional laser scanner, it makes possible that measure the shape and size of the sanding tree accurately. In this paper we put forward a new approach to reckon the volume of a single standing tree with three - dimensional laser scanner, explain the principle of the three - dimensional laser scanning system and how to establish the model of a single standing tree based on three - dimensional laser scanner and computer program. We have a test for a single standing tree volume with three dimensional laser scanner, and also expatiate the specific process of reckoning the volume of a single standing tree with the model. As shown by the test, we can work out fast and exactly the single standing tree volume. If the approach can be apply on the measurement of stand volume, there has a great improvement in the precision and efficiency of measurement.The protection and utilization of forest resource needs to inventory the area, quality and distribution of forest in detail. Then the plan of forest cutting and renewing may be worked out scientifically for the purpose of protecting the environmental quality. Modern survey technology used for urban forest resource inventory can save manpower, material resources and financial resources. Therefore, by improving working efficiency greatly, it can provide good data base for digital management of urban forest resource. Digital photogrammetry technology is one of the modern survey technologies and has been used for every aspect of economic construction, social development, national security and human life. In this paper, photogrammetry technology will be described first. On this base, the article proposes the application of digital photogrammetry to urban forest resource inventory, such as drawing forestry orthophoto map, mapping the distribution of urban forest resources and taking the amount of tree height, etc. The purpose is to provide a convenient, fast, accurate and practical forest resource inventory means for reference.Certain tree species can adjust to grow as undergrowth, i.e. under the shadow of other trees. In boreal forest spruces and firs are typical representatives of this type of shade - tolerant tree species. The most common way to regenerate downy birch (Betula pubescens) forest is to make a clear cut and replant the soil with birches or spruces although young vital spruce seedling or sapling is already growing in the shadow of birches. It is a common believe that modern harvesters are unable to fell the trees in a manner that could retain a vital, evenly distributed spruce sapling growing after the clear cut. This type of selection cutting is also believed to be rather unproductive compared to clear cut. The paper presents a new cut - to - length method based cutting practise for two - story forests where harvester cuts overstory in a manner that retains a vital understory sapling growing. The method is compared to the conventional clear cut method in three downy birch dominated study stands in western Finland. The results show that it is technically and economically possible to clear cut overstory trees and simultaneously retain vital understory sapling in certain two - story downy birch - forests.Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) has a unique capability for estimating forest canopy height, which has a direct relationship with, and can provide better understanding of the aboveground forest carbon storage. The full waveform data of ICESat - GLAS, were employed to achieve improved estimates of forest canopy height over sloping terrain in the Changbai Mountains region, China. The study proposed an improved model to predict maximum canopy height using the logarithmic transformation of waveform extent as only independent variables. While Lefsky's model explained 9% -90% of maximum canopy height variation in the study area, the improved model explained 53% -92% of variation within the 0 -30 degrees terrain slope category. The results reveal that the improved model can reduce the mixed effects caused by complex sloping terrain.The tropical peat swamp forests are disturbed and the tendency for soil degradation is very high. The objectives of this study were to determine whether the logging operations affects soil carbon storage and soil chemical properties of tropical peat swamp forest. Soil sampling was conducted before and after logging operation at 0 15 cm depth on 6 plots with 0.1 hectare each plot at Batang Igan forest in Sibu, Sarawak. The soil samples were analyzed at Laboratory of Soil, UPMKB for acidity, organic matter content, total carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, cation exchange capacity (CEC), available potassium and C/N ration, before and after logging operation on peat swamp forest. Data was analyzed by using Statistical Analysis System (SAS) version 9. 2. As the result, the availability of unstable carbon and stable carbon controlled by soil acidity on undisturbed peat swamp forest thereby the accumulation of unstable carbon as well as stable carbon occurs if soil pH declines and vice versa. However, stable carbon associated well with soil acidity (P < 0.05, r = -0.52). The C/P ratio positively correlated with humic acid and stable carbon on both before and after logging conditions. Nevertheless, that association was prominently on logged peat swamp forest. An indication that even this peat swamp forest had been logged, humification still strongly maintained. However, the similarity of stable carbon of logged peat swamp forest with stable carbon of undisturbed peat swamp forest indicates an ineffectiveness humification of logged peat swamp forest. For chemical properties, the tropical peat swamp forest indicate its specific natural state such as rich in soil pH KCl and insignificant C/N ratio, soil pH water, cation exchange capacity, soil organic matter, total carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and available potassium being significant different between before and after timber harvesting. This tropical peat swamp forest also acidic soil in range 3.2 - 4.0 % and had large amounts of total carbon (before 48.85%, after 48.30%), low CEC (before 68.04 cmol/kg, after 46.17 cmol/kg), high soil organic matter content (before 97.70, after 96.59%), low mineral nitrogen (before: 0.79%, after 1.18), and high C/N ratio (before 74.04%, after 53.25%) low phosphorus (before 219. 20 mg/L, after 312 mg/L) and low available K (before 330.60 mg/L, after 613.90). The low nitrogen and phosphorus suggests that this peat swamp forest typically represent shallow peat. This research concluded that logging operation on sensitive forest with peat soil using heavy machinery increased the bulk density, hence it compacted the soil. Soil acidity has important role in preserving soil carbon storage of this natural peat swamp forest, especially stable carbon. For the chemical properties, this study found the comparison before and after of some parameter were significant different, such as pH - water, CEC, SOM, Total C, Total N, Total P and available K. Meanwhile, some parameter are not significant different, such as pH KCl and C/N Ratio.Forest access systems are essential for a variety of forest uses, including recreation, timber removal, and fire control. Regardless of their use, forest roads and trails are the primary sources of soil damage and non - point source water pollution in forests. Moreover, perhaps more than any other forestry - related activity, forest roads represent avenues of public exposure - for hikers, skiers, hunters, motorists, and forestland owners. The impacts of forest roads, landings, and skid trails on forest values-including water quality, aesthetics, and recreation-therefore, come under close, continual scrutiny. This paper discusses some of the principles related to soil and water conservation in forestry and demonstrates ways to plan, construct, and maintain forest access systems. The discussion includes an overview of Best Management Practices for forestry. While the focus is on forest access systems used in timber removal, many of the concepts and techniques discussed and demonstrated can be used for other landowner objectives and forest uses.Species diversity and stability of natural secondary communities in different layers with different cutting intensities 10 years later were studied by using Marglef Richness index(R), Shannon Wiener index (H), Simpson index(P), and Pielou Evenness index(J). The results showed that the values of richness indices and diversity indices among different layers were the shrub layer, the arbor layer, and the herb layer from large to small. The values of Evenness index had significant difference among different layers. Richness index values had high significant difference among different cutting intensities, but other indices had not significant difference. Species evenness index variation, shrub layer species evenness and cutting strength is concave parabolic changes of tree layer, increase the degree of uniform linear cutting strength increases, and herb layer, by contrast, in the difference between different levels. Variability of these diversity indices was R > J > H > P or R > H > P > J among different layers and different cutting intensities. According to all species, the values of richness index and diversity index showed convex parabolic change with cutting intensities increasing, which reached the greatest with medium selective cutting 10 years later, but which was the smallest with clear cutting 10 years later. However, evenness index values were opposite. The stability of communities under different cutting intensities was examined with M. Godron. The results showed that the stability of communities was in unstable state with different intensities cutting 10 years later, and it is the greater to cutting intensities, the worse the stability was.In the Asalem Nay uneven - aged mixed forests, timber harvesting operation is generally performed by using selection cutting method and ground - based logging system. Residual trees are damaged by logging operations in these stands. In this study, after finishing the logging operation, the residual tree damages were examined by considering variable factors including logging stages,. tree species, location, size and intensity of damages. Results showed that approximately 13% of the residual trees were damaged and 54% Of damages are caused by felling stage and 46% by skidding stage. From all damaged trees 68% belonged to beech, 12% to oak and 8% to hornbeam. Damages on the trees bole are respectively 36% on stump level, 27% on first 2m and 37% on upper first 2m. Damage sizes vary depending on the logging stages. About 74% of the damages intensity observed bark squeezed and 26% wood damaged. Appropriate silvicultural prescriptions and harvesting technologies can reduce wounding to acceptable levels.Different methods of wood transportation in forest have various effects on the residual stand. To study the effects of Air - transportation by helicopter on the residual stand in the forest in winter of 2005 in District 2 of water shed basin no. 38 (Palat cheshmeh - Gerdehlapi) of Nowshahr Depatment General district a research was launched to investigate the effect of this type of transportation used in 1995. After primary studies and performing the random sampling method and selection of 20 samples of 100 square meters and 20 micro - plots with common center and sample lobes with an area of 10 square meter, all trees and seedling were measured in respect of species, diameter, height, number and type of damages in area of helicopter activity and also in control areas. Based on the analysis made in areas of helicopter activity, the number of seedlings decreased 55% in contrast with control areas because of the intensive and warm stream of air due to helicopters operation and also vertical force of helicopters caused 20 to 23% of the existing regenerations, with a diameter of 20 cm at the time of transportation operation, to be bent completely. Moreover, considering the transportation by cable and raising the woods from ground by the helicopter, 21 percent of the residual trees in the bulk with diameters more than 20 centimeters suffered damages such as breaking of the crown, branches and peeling of the bark of the trees.Harvesting was a key influence factor of forest landscape structure characteristics, and it was core element of forest management and sustainable development. By controlling the pattern of harvesting could form an ideal, sustainable and harmonious forest landscape structure. The relationship between harvesting patterns and forest landscapes had always attracted forest scientists and landscape ecologists. This paper began with the research methods of impacts of harvesting on forest landscape. Then it summarized the researches of the impacts of forest harvesting in the scale of landscape all over the world. At last, according to the problems existed in the current study,it pointed out a research direction of impact on forest landscape by harvesting.Skidding operation is the most important procedure in the course of production in the felling area. However, traditional ground machine skidding can no longer adapt itself to working conditions in the felling area faced with the problems of the forest area with fiercely resource quality decreasing, forest resource exhaustion, and low stand quality, etc. in the Heilongjiang Province of China while proportion of animal skidding in skidding operation of forest area increases year by year. Therefore it is practically important to conduct driving force analysis of animal skidding operation. Data obtained by collecting through the investigation and research were analyzed by SPSS and a method of combining qualitative and quantitative determination was used to analyze the skidding volume and the proportion of skidding methods, as well as the annual skidding volume, work capacity and the skidding costs in Heilongjiang Province of China. The results showed that the change of deforestation operating conditions and forest resource structure promoted the development of animal logging operations in Heilongjiang province. Meanwhile, it was predicted that the animal skidding would still occupy a dominant position among logging methods in the next few years in the forestry of Heilongjiang province.The testing experiments to non defect poplar and larch logs samplings were conducted by using Arbotom and Fakopp stress wave testing instrument. The relationships between radial propagation time, longitudinal propagation velocity as well as dynamic modulus of elasticity of stress wave and moisture content, density and diameter were studied in the two logs samplings. The results indicated that, in the both species, the radial propagation time of stress wave had positive correlation with moisture content, and the longitudinal propagation velocity had negative correlation with moisture content and diameter, and the dynamic modulus of elasticity was influenced markedly by the combined of moisture content, density and diameter.As forested areas become more populated, the aesthetic values associated with logging - in - progress are increasingly driving public reaction to and concern about timber harvesting. Utilizing a video - based survey, this research assessed the public's visual and aural preferences for five ground - based timber harvest yarding, methods - a forwarder, rubber - tired cable skidder, bulldozer, farm tractor, and workhorse - based on a battery of attributes and situations. Survey respondents preferred the horse and farm tractor methods for their visual, aural, and forest disturbance effects, while the forwarder method ranked highest for efficiency. The horse and tractor methods were also preferred for logging in residential areas. In several cases, survey respondents' gender and knowledge of timber harvesting were associated with their preferences for the logging methods studied. Results are placed in the context of the residual forest effects of the logging methods studied.The economic, ecological, and social comprehensive benefits of natural secondary forest with different intensity cutting 10 years later were analyzed by multi - object decision according to nine benefit indexes. The results showed that the economic beneficial value was increased with the cutting intensity increased, but the ecological beneficial value was decreased. The economic beneficial value of clear cutting is largest, which works out at 0.233 while the ecological beneficial value of clear cutting is the worst, with its value being 0.047;the economic beneficial value of selective cutting is smallest, which works out at 0.098 while the ecological beneficial value of selective cutting is the optimal version, with value 0.466. The social benefits evaluation is in shape of appraising parabola. The high intensity selective cutting is largest, with its value being 0.254 while clear cutting is the worst, which works out at 0.113. The comprehensive benefits evaluation is obviously decreased with the cutting intensity increased. The low intensity selective cutting is the optimal version, which works out at 0.739 while the clear cutting is the worst, with its value being 0.392. So, the similar experimental condition areas should pursue the low or middle intensity selective cutting in order to realize the natural secondary forest sustainable management.In the forest harvesting cost accounting, it is not only need to consider cutting cost of labor, but should also consider environmental costs, thus to compensate the negative impacts of forest harvesting. In this paper the environmental costs of cutting operating were evaluated based on the data of tracking investigation of natural forest selective cutting plots. The plots were set up in Dayuan Forest Logging and Regeneration Station located in Jian'ou County, Fujian Province. The experimental stands were harvested by selective cutting of different intensities (low intensity of 13.0% in volume, medium intensity of 29.1%, high intensity of 45.8%, extra high intensity of 67.1%) in November, 1996. The un - cutting and clear cutting plots were set as controls. In July, 2006, the regeneration investigation was conducted again, forest litters were collected and soil sections were examined in every plot as well. Thus environmental costs of logging operations were evaluated quantitatively from the conversed values of water and soil conservation, carbon sequestration and oxygen releasing. The results show that environmental cost of low intensity selective cutting is the least, only 1.7 Yuan/m(3), while that of medium and high intensity cutting were 5.1 Yuan/m(3), 12.2 times of that of low intensity. Extra high intensity selective ranks the highest, which is 27.6 Yuan/m(3), and is 16.2 times of that of low intensity selective cutting. Due to its more timber volume harvesting, the cost of clear - cutting is lower than that of extra high selective which is 14.9 times of that of low intensity. The findings are helpful to understanding forestry production benefit.Cutting of trees like other stages of utilization causes many damages to the residual stand. Recognition of type and severity of damages and the factors causing such damages may be important. This research was performed to study the effect of diameter of fallen trees on the residual stand in forest of Mazandaran province in northern Iran. At first 50 trees (20%) out of 250 signed trees were selected on random basis as per the diameter classes and then considering the sample, a number of 50 trees were considered in a Semi - circle with an area of 1500 square meters and quantity (diameter breast height (D. B. H.) and height) and quality (up - rooted, break of crown, injury to the bark, peeling of the bark) specifications were recorded before and after cutting. Results of the study indicates that thorax diameter of fallen trees, except for the up -rooted trees, may have a significant impact on the range of Crown and trunk brake, injury of the trunk and peeling of the trees and the moat damages happened in cutting of the trees with diameter of 80 centimeters and more.The cutting pattern of the artificial forest on the basis of the Industrial Ecology means the reasonable method of cutting technique, machine, forest tending, forest restoration and the residue treatment considering the forest system during its life cycle period. This paper discussed the assessment method and the criterion system in the life cycle according to the advanced harvesting pattern in order to decide the feasibility of different cutting models.The pattern of material flows and energy flows in a forest logging operation system was set forth. The material flows include wooden material flow, the biomass flow, the soil flow, the nutrient flow and the water content flow. The energy flows are in the forms of manpower, animal power, fuel, electricity and others. An evaluation system for forest logging operation systems was built based on the analysis of respective material flows and energy flows in the systems. The subjects for evaluation are the resource efficiency, energy efficiency, utilization efficiency of biomass, biomass residue, biomass waste, material consumption and energy consumption. The norms of evaluation were types of material, energy, manpower, machinery, efficiency and benefit. A multi objective analysis and evaluation model was proposed to consider comprehensively the economic benefit and the ecological benefit under the limit of social issues. A multi - objective decision - making and optimization model was built based on the theories of Artificial Neutral Networks (ANN), Genetic Algorithm (GA), fuzzy tools and others. The material flows and energy flows were tested and verified in logging operation production. The models for system evaluation, system optimization and decision - making were analyzed and discussed for their characteristics.Transportation geographic information system (GIS - T) is the extension of GIS technology in transportation domain, and it is the integration of GIS and many kinds of transportation information analysis and processing technology. The most transportation facilities have the linear feature, so that GIS - T stresses on linear object processing compared with GIS. The dynamic segmentation technology is the effective method of simulating and analyzing linear feature, and is the essential module in transportation GIS. This paper considers the characteristic of linear feature, and discusses emphatically how to improve tradition mileage reference system, and choose the linear reference system suitable of GIS analysis on the basis of establishing highway network's topologic relation. The system is based upon the reference one of edges and nodes; it is flexible to provide the visit of coordinate geometry and topology structure of actual communication network. The paper puts forward data model of dynamic segmentation based on linear reference system. The dynamic partition technology establishes the punctual or striation entity and data connection, simulates the actual situation in transportation, for example, transportation signal marker and some section of roads. The paper implements the algorithm of dynamic segmentation based on linear reference system, realizes the result, and carries on its visualization by graphs and forms, which facilitates the following spatial analysis and assistant decision.The paper presents an assessment of the life cycle operation phase of bundler John Deere (Timberjack) 1490 D with respect to energy requirements and environment load with emissions. Energy audit quantifies energy use from the consumption of fuels and lubricants. Energy balance includes both the energy content and the energy needed for the production of fuels and lubricants. Based on the consumption of fuels and lubricants the paper quantifies the amount of emissions with a special focus on GHG emissions. Results can be used in the judgment and selection of a suitable and for the given conditions most environment friendly technology to be applied on the assumption of existing technical and technological possibilities for its employment. The basic cost; assessment is also included to figure out eco - efficiency of dendromass production using this type of machine. This paper examines and assesses the actual performance and running costs. It compares general calculation elaborated on the basis of information from the manufacturer to real costs ensuing from the machine operation. The costs are divided into acquisition, running and other costs. Total costs are subsequently converted into unit costs according to the expected output, on the basis of anticipated lifetime and mean actual output capacity of the machine.The wooden biomass flow and the non - wood biomass flow are two major material flows in a log harvesting production system. Field test was taken in fast growing plantations with three species of Pinus massoniana, Cunninghamia lanceolata and Eucalyptus in the northwest region of Fujian province of China. Different parts of trees were dried and weighed as roots, trunks, branches, leaves and barks. The dry masses of bushes, herbs, dead branches and fallen leaves were measured as well. The percentage distribution of biomass in a felling area was calculated. Based on specific process of log harvesting operation, the material consumption and the waste for producing unit volume of logs were computed. The resource efficiency of trees and the semi product consumption in different stage for unit final products were derived. A time and space network was established to show the time and space distribution of the wooden biomass flow and the non - wood biomass flow. With the application of network analysis method, the optimum operation schemes can be drawn out for minimizing wooden material waste and maximizing biomass residue in slash. Furthermore, the space distribution of wooden material and biomass in the slash, the skidding road and the landing area was revealed with the analysis of the network. There are certain patterns of material flows in the log harvesting production but the specific value of the flow is scattered. From the wooden and non - wood biomass to the nutrient in the forest soil, and finally to the next generation of growing biomass, a material metabolism chain is formed. The time and space distribution of the wooden biomass flow and the non - wood biomass flow reveals the important characteristics of the material flow in a log harvesting production system. The time and space network can be used to analyze the characteristics of the material flow in a log harvesting production system and related input and output efficiency. By combining the time and space network of the log harvesting production system with the geographic information system (GIS) in a harvesting area, a simulation and optimization tool for forest harvesting and regeneration operation system can be developed.The principles of Life Cycle Assessment were introduced in this paper. Logging Industrial Plantation was divided into cutting, delimbing and bucking, skidding, utilization of logging residue. Life Cycle Assessment matrix was used to evaluate environmental impact of various timber production techniques. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate various logging technologies of Industrial Plantation based on Life Cycle Assessment.The paper analyzed the material flow of the plantation harvesting operation system. It provided a new way and a method to determinine if the harvesting operations is reasonable and ecological. Basing on the research of material flow abroad, we analyzed the material flow in forest ecosystem. And according to the timber production technology in felling area, we get the material flow chart of timber production. According to the plantation production characteristics, we made a fixed - point observation to analyze the plantation production material flow that provides analise indicators for consulting. The analysis methods and indicators of the plantation material flow will be the subject for the future study which use cleaner production technology in the felling area, make researche of material reduction pattern of forest areas and make assessment of the plantation harvesting in the view of life cycle.Based on the current condition of forest resources and the nature of forest plantation in China, the necessity of cleaner production evaluation for the logging of forest plantation was put forward. The indicators and methods for cleaner production evaluation in China and abroad were analyzed. The contents of the cleaner production evaluating for the logging in forest plantation were introduced and the system of evaluation indicators established. The subjects for evaluation are the design of felling areas, the technology in forest harvesting operation, the ecological environment in forests, the economic benefit, the sustainability and the protect of workers. The specific evaluation indicators include the rationality of felling process design, the advancement of production technology in felling areas, the advancement of operational technique, the advancement of technology, the operational economy, the compactness of slash soil, the damage to the reserved trees in slash, the biomass, the biodiversity, the benefit of water source conservation, the benefit of soil and water conservation, the benefit of air purification, the tree renewal rate, the labor intensity, the safety indicator, the coordination of man - machine - environment, etc. A centesimal grade method was proposed to evaluate the cleaner production level of logging in forest plantations.The whole process of plantation harvesting and transporting consists Of tree cutting, trimming, bucking, skidding and transporting. In the process of production the environment is affected to a certain extent, including water, air, and soil environment. At the same time, resources such as mineral resources and timber resources are consumed. Moreover, the economic cost of labor and equipment input occurs and the commercial value of timber is achieved. Based on the methodology of life - cycle evaluation, a comprehensive analysis model was built in the paper by means of quantifying environmental impact and resource and economic consumption. The influence of plantation harvesting to the environment, the resource and the economy was evaluated in the model. Furthermore, a corresponding evaluation model and its algorithm were set up by employing an analytical approach of multi - target and the optimization method of non - dominated sorting. Finally, the evaluation model was verified with experimental data and compared with reality.The history and the state of art of the Forest Ecology - based Logging (FEL) theory in China were briefly introduced, including its origin, theoretical basis, present situation and related theoretical concepts abroad. The technical system of FEL consists of four parts of the planning and design, the technological process, the operational technique, and the management and administration. The study of FEL is focused on the forest operation system, relating to planning, technology, machinery and management. The theoretical and technological framework of FEL includes five parts: the research aim, the research contents, the methodology, the standard system and the applied technology. The research aim of FEL is to reach the harmony between the logging in forest utilization and the sustainable development of the forest ecosystem. The research contents of FEL can be divided into four parts: the mutual relation between the logging engineering and the forest ecosystem, the evaluation and optimization of logging system, the ecology - based logging technique and equipment, and the ecology - based logging planning and management. The methodology in FEL will be experiment and model types, relating to the study of influencing factors, evaluation indicators and models, methods in ecological economics and industrial ecology. The standard system for FEL will be set up, covering the specification and guideline on logging operation planning and design, the rule and guideline for logging operation, the experiment methods in FEL, the evaluation indexes and modeling of FEL. The system of the applied technology of FEL should include the application modes, the operation patterns, the practical models, the application cases and the typical systemsThis paper introduces basic principles of dematerialization of industrial ecology. The suggestions and countermeasures of saving forest resource in logging fast - growing and high - yield plantation are based on dematerialization principles. This paper holds that logging and utilizing fast - growing and high - yield plantation based on principles of dematerialization is beneficial to both economical development and ecology. Logging and utilizing fast - growing and high - yield plantation can play an important role in providing wood and protecting ecological environment at the same time.Since the 1990s, the transnational M&A (Merger & Acquisition) has already been the main approach of international direct investment instead of newly built investment, which has a significant upgrade in recent years. Moreover, the transnational M&A has affected more on the industrial security. In the 21 century, with the rapid development of economic globalization and regional economic integration, the industrial security problem has already become the common one which has been faced by various countries in the world. Many countries have lost not only the normal industrial chains and industrial ecology of the economic development, but also have lost control power of important industries and the core technologies related to the national economy and the people's livelihood under economic globalization impact. The article discusses the industrial security problem from the perspective of transnational M&A and proposes industrial security evaluation indexes in China, and then put forward some countermeasures and suggestions.The manner is illustrated in which energy conversion processes during electric train operation can be analyzed using exergy. Loss of exergy reflects a loss of potential of energy to do work. Following the notion that life on Earth demonstrates sustainable energy conversion, we assess the viability of transportation systems according to the model of an ecosystem. Analysis steps based on an industrial ecosystem metabolism include describing the electric railway system as an industrial ecosystem with its limits and components, defining system operation regimes, and assessing the equilibrium points of the system for two reference frames. Exergy losses can be related to the energy flows during dynamic processes, and exergy conversion in these processes provides a meaningful measure of the industrial ecosystem efficiency. The results are expected to help make transportation systems more sustainable. Potentially beneficial directions for future research are highlighted.All life is based on superbly contrived interdependent natural nano-artifacts. What then is the intention of human attempts to create nano-artifacts of increasing complexity? What may be their purpose? Why is so much effort being made globally to create nano-science and nano-technology to be the basis of nano-artifacts? How much progress is being made toward vague and undeclared goals? When may some of these goals be reached? These are some of the issues for foresight (anticipation) to explore through appreciation of the situation that now characterises the nano-world of human endeavour. Later an example will be used to illustrate the interdependencies within these situations over an extended time horizon notionally up to 2050. However, first it is necessary to indicate briefly how the present nano-world situation has been reached, a matter of foresight's close relation to hindsight. Subsequently, the concepts of situations, systemic foresight and panarchy, and their interrelatedness are outlined. Also illustrated is how they work in harness with the six foresight themes Social, Technology, Economics, Ecology, Politics and Values (acronym STEEPV) and appreciation. There are two examples. One dwells on some current anticipations of the future for nano-science, nano-technology and nano-artifacts. The other illustrates how situations, systemic foresight and panarchy illuminate four interdependent themes that are important to the future of the nano-field. Throughout, what is colloquially called 'nanotechnology' is considered as three interdependent parts nano-science, nano-technology and nano-artifacts. Two of these, nano-science and nanotechnology, support the creation of nano-artifacts. The paper also indicates briefly the relevance of industrial ecology.This paper discusses how to carry out eco-transition in China coastal development area. This is an important and urgent issue of urban sustainable development that industrial parks into eco-industrial parks. It is a tactic selection to realize development area's sustainable development that boost present industrial system to industrial eco-system and then build eco-industry parks. It is thinks that the region coastal development zones should choose the cycle mode which the three level of industry, Cluster-Industry and Eco-Industrial Parks developed corporately, that is, promoting clean production continually and cutting pollution from the source in the aspect of enterprise 12, and building up the ecosystem industrial chain and then form industrial community according to the product integration, industrial integration, material integration and technique integration in the aspect of industry, and in the aspect of society attaching great importance to the control of the government and the function of the regulation through the market, and promote the intensive utilization of the regional resource, and advocate green assumption, also construct a circulation society completely.This chapter gives the aim of the book, and an outline of its contents as well. With its explicit consideration of the physical flows of waste and the activity of waste management (including the recycling of waste materials), the Waste Input-Output model (WIO) has made it possible to take into account the entire life cycle phases of a product within the framework of (hybrid) IOA. This is a book on the concepts and application of WIO for students and practitioners of IE. In order to make it a self-contained textbook on IOA, the first part is devoted to the standard IOA, while the second part is reserved for issues which are closely related to WIO including the environmental extensions of IOA.This chapter deals with the basic concepts of input-output analysis (IOA) such as the representation of a production process in terms of the flow of inputs and outputs, the input and output coefficients, the Leontief inverse coefficients, the productive conditions, the Leontief quantity- and price models, as well as input-output tables. First we consider the simplest case of an economy consisting of a single producing sector. While this case may appear odd with the multi-sectoral feature of IOA, we find this case useful to help readers become familiar with the basic concepts of IOA without being unduly bothered by mathematics: simple arithmetic suffices. The multi-sectoral feature of IOA is then considered for the case of an economy with two producing sectors. The Leontief quantity- and price models are also derived, which involve systems of simultaneous equations. Rewriting these systems of simultaneous equations in terms of matrix algebra yields the basic results of IOA that can be applied to the general case of n producing sectors.The basic IO model introduced in Chapter 2 needs some extensions before it can effectively be put to a practical application. This applies particularly to regional extensions and the treatment of by-product. Regional extensions are necessary to account for the plain fact that economies are connected to each other thorough the trans boundary flows of goods and services, just as the sectors of an economy are connected to each other through the flow of goods and services. Waste and emissions, which are objects of a great concern in industrial ecology, are typical examples of by-product. Alternative ways to accounting for it in IOA are discussed, including one based on the make and use matrices. In Chapter 2 a brief mention was made of the possibility of representing the household consumption just like any other production process. Section 3.4 deals with the closing of the IO model by making endogenous the final demand sectors including not only household consumption but capital formation as well. Other topics to be dealt with include the introduction of inequalities to allow for the presence of resource constraints, the identification of a fundamental structure of production based on some rearrangements of sector orderings, and a variant of IOA model called Ghosh model.This chapter provides some basics of microeconomics that are closely related to IOA. First, some basic concepts of great relevance to IOA in microeconomics, such as the concept of production- and cost functions, will be discussed. When it comes to practical application, general concepts need to be specified in order to be quantitatively implemented to real data. Issues related to the specification of technology in microeconomics constitute the second topic of this chapter. Some remarks on CGE (the Computable General Equilibrium model) with regard to its specification of technology will also be made. Finally, the microeconomic characteristics of IOA will be derived.The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the basic concepts of Waste Input-Output (WIO) tables and the model (Nakamura [37,38]). The WIO is a variant of environmental Input-Output (EIO) models, and focuses on issues of waste management (waste treatment and recycling). Familiarity with major EIO models is useful for a proper understanding of the main features of WIO. The first section of this chapter gives a brief review of EIO models from rather broad areas, which include economy-environment (ecology) IO tables and models, IO-based energy analysis, and IO models of emissions. The review in the second section is focused on EIO models that deal with pollution (waste) and its abatement (treatment), which include the seminal work of Leontief [28], and its extension by Duchin, as well as the development of IOTs incorporating waste flows (the Dutch NAMEA and German PIOT). Section 5.3 introduces the concepts of WIO table and its modeling for analytical purposes (further details of WIO model will be dealt with in the next chapter).This chapter is concerned with application of the WIO model to real data, the basic structure of which was shown in Chapter 5, and the derivation of the WIO cost-price model as well. First, as a real example of WIO table, a WIO table for a small city in northern Japan is shown, which is characterized by ambitious management programs of municipal solid waste (MSW) with a rate of recycling around 70%. Secondly, large scale WIO tables for Japan with 50 to about 400 endogenous sectors with dozens of waste types are introduced, and the results of some applications based on the WIO quantity model are shown. Also dealt with is the issue of adjusting for the imports of waste in WIO, which were not touched upon in Chapter 5. A distinguishing feature of a waste treatment process consists in its dependence on the chemical properties of the incoming waste. The third topic of this chapter deals with the consideration of this "dynamic nature of a waste treatment process" in WIO by use of engineering models. Fourth, the cost and price counterpart of the WIO quantity model, the WIO price model, is derived, and numerical examples are given for its illustration. The contents of this chapter make use of Nakamura [8], Nakamura and Kondo [10, 11].This chapter is concerned with the application of WIO to major tools of IE such as LCA, MFA, LCC (life cycle costing), and its further extensions in various fields of IE. Introducing the use phase, which has remained unconsidered in the previous chapters, into the WIO quantity model yields the WIO-LCA model, which can be used for life cycle inventory analysis. In a similar fashion, its cost counterpart, the WIO-LCC model, is also obtained, which can be used for environmental LCC. A new method of MFA, WIO-MFA, is presented, which can consider the physical flows of many materials/substances simultaneously. This method can also be used to transform a monetary IO table into a physical table of the flow of materials. Extensions of WIO to regional models and a linear programming model are also dealt with. A permeable reactive barrier (PRB) is a passive remediation technology, which over decades of use, may reduce lifetime environmental impacts when compared with a conventional pump-and-treat system (PTS). Greater material production requirements to install PRBs may offset the expected reductions in operational phase impacts and the trade-offs can be investigated in a life-cycle assessment (LCA). The life-cycle environmental impacts of a zerovalent iron (ZVI) containing PRB with a funnel and gate configuration and a PTS were compared in a case study. Potential impacts of the model PRB are driven by the ZVI reactive medium and the energy usage during construction, while for the PTS they are driven by the operational energy demand. Medium longevity governed the magnitude of the potential PRB impacts and the extent to which it was optimal relative to the PTS. Even at conservatively low estimates of longevity, the PRB offers significant environmental advantages in impact categories of human health and ozone depletion. The minimum ZVI longevity for PRB benefit over the PTS system in all impact categories was 10 years. Suggested PRB design innovations to reduce environmental impacts include the development of alternative reactive media and construction methods.There are two quantitative indicators that are most widely used to assess the extent of compliance of industrial facilities with environmental regulations: the quantity of hazardous waste generated and the amount of toxics released. These indicators, albeit useful in terms of some environmental monitoring, fail to account for director indirect effects on human and environmental health, especially when aggregating total quantity of releases for a facility or industry sector. Thus, there is a need for a more comprehensive approach that can prioritize a particular chemical (or industry sector) on the basis of its relevant environmental performance and impact on human health. Accordingly, the objective of the present study is to formulate an aggregation of tools that can simultaneously capture multiple effects and several environmental impact categories. This approach allows us to compare and combine results generated with the aid of select U.S.-based quantitative impact assessment tools, thereby supplementing compliance-based metrics such as data from the U.S. Toxic Release Inventory. A case study, which presents findings for the U.S. chemical manufacturing industry, is presented to illustrate the aggregation of these tools. Environmental impacts due to both upstream and manufacturing activities are also evaluated for each industry sector. The proposed combinatorial analysis allows for a more robust evaluation for rating and prioritizing the environmental impacts of industrial waste. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper, energy metrics (energy pay back time, electricity production factor and life cycle conversion efficiency) of hybrid photovoltaic (PV) modules have been analyzed and presented for the composite climate of New Delhi, India. For this purpose, it is necessary to calculate (1) the energy consumption in making different components of the PV modules and (2) the annual energy (electrical and thermal) available from the hybrid-PV modules. A set of mathematical relations have been reformulated for computation of the energy metrics. The manufacturing energy, material production energy, energy use and distribution energy of the system have been taken into account, to determine the embodied energy for the hybrid-PV modules. The embodied energy and annual energy outputs have been used for evaluation of the energy metrics. For hybrid PV module, it has been observed that the EPBT gets significantly reduced by taking into account the increase in annual energy availability of the thermal energy in addition to the electrical energy. The values of EPF and LCCE of hybrid PV module become higher as expected. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiversity is one aspect of a natural environment affected by the construction of buildings and the manufacture of building materials However, the complexity of biodiversity impact assessment and the lack of a meaningful surrogate or indicator for biodiversity Impacts have made meaningful discussion on constructions impact on biodiversity difficult This paper reports on part of a multidisciplinary study that examined methods for comparing the biodiversity impacts of different land uses in the life cycle assessment of buildings and building materials It summarizes the biodiversity impact assessment methods used in recent studies, outlines the major concepts of biodiversity management, expands on the temporal, spatial and other factors that need to be considered when comparing the biodiversity impacts of renewable and non-renewable materials in LCA, and proposes means by which this can be done It concludes with three qualitative examples of the methods in actionThe paper presents the state-of-the-art regarding the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) in the building sector, providing a list of existing tools, drivers and barriers, potential users and purposes of LCA studies in this sector. It also proposes a simplified LCA methodology and applies this to a case study focused on Spain. The thermal simulation tools considered in the Spanish building energy certification standards are analysed and complemented with a simplified LCA methodology for evaluating the impact of certain improvements to the building design. The simplified approach proposed allows global comparisons between the embodied energy and emissions of the building materials and the energy consumption and associated emissions at the use stage. The results reveal that embodied energy can represent more than 30% of the primary energy requirement during the life span of a single house of 222 m(2) with a garage for one car. The contribution of the building materials decreases if the house does not include a parking area, since this increases the heated surface percentage. Usually the top cause of energy consumption in residential building is heating, but the second is the building materials, which can represent more than 60% of the heating consumption. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work presents a sustainability analysis of CO2 reuse to produce dimethyl carbonate (DMC) via ethylene oxide (ROUTE A) and via urea methanolysis (ROUTE B). Two different technologies are considered in ROUTE A: reaction followed by separation and reactive distillation. Life cycle analyses of the ROUTES are presented employing sustainability analysis performed in HYSYS process simulator, along with WAR Algorithm. Process economical optimization is performed to maximize the processes profitability. A sustainability function, defined as a 2D indicator involving both economical and environmental aspects, is calculated for the optimized processes. Additional sustainability indexes are evaluated: material index, energy index, and ecoefficiency. The results, under both economical and environmental aspects, show that ROUTE A is the most sustainable. The study also points to the relevance of the frontier set between the domains cradle-to-gate and gate-to-gate in assessing process sustainability during LCA.In this paper, metabolic evaluation has been employed for better understanding the trends in urban environmental changes. Due to the urban activities cause impacts not only on local level but also a broader scale, Hybrid Emergy-LCA (HEML), a combining approach of Emergy Analysis (EMA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is structured to quantitatively investigate the mechanism. For the similarity across many emerging cities in China, a large-scale sub-urban residential area named Tian Tongyuan (Try) in Beijing was chosen for testing the HEML. Objective indicators of live quality and negative impacts are both considered. Analysis indicates that the household Emergy input of TTY is 1.76E+16 sej/yr, while the prominent environmental impact is induced by Photochemical Oxidant Creation Potentials (POCP), 4.58E+05 g ethane eq./yr. The sustainable performance constructed by its live quality and environmental impacts of TTY is found as 98.80% as that of Beijing average. Mitigation polices on the building sector should be proposed because of its dominating impacts among various consuming ends of energy and materials. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of four waste management strategies: landfill without biogas utilization; landfill with biogas combustion to generate electricity; sorting plant which splits the inorganic waste fraction (used to produce electricity via Refuse Derived Fuels, RDF) from the organic waste fraction (used to produce biogas via anaerobic digestion); direct incineration of waste. These scenarios are applied to the waste amount and composition of the Municipality of Roma (Italy) and are evaluated under different points of view: global and local emissions, total material demands, total energy requirements and ecological footprints. Results, reliable for most of the European big cities, show landfill systems as the worst waste management options and significant environmental savings at global scale are achieved from undertaking energy recycling. Furthermore, waste treatments finalized to energy recovery provide an energy output that, in the best case, is able to meet the 15% of Roma electricity consumption. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work aims at examining, from an energy and environmental standpoint, one production cycle which is extremely energy-consuming, namely the glass production for drink containers. More specifically, the industrial process is first analysed as is, so as to evaluate and assess its energy needs and its associated environmental impact. As a second step the influence of glass container recycle and reuse on energy consumption and pollutant emission is investigated. To this end the recycling chain operation is illustrated and appropriate working hypotheses for the modified process are formulated, so that its energy and environmental performance can be evaluated. Finally, the two production scenarios are compared by means of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology, to the purpose of determining the best recycling percentage for glass containers from the standpoint of energy consumption and pollutant emission minimization, taking also into account the waste legislation currently in force. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rapidly-rising oil demand and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from road vehicles in China, passenger cars in particular, have attracted worldwide attention. As most studies to date were focused on the vehicle operation stage, the present study attempts to evaluate the energy demand and GHG emissions during the vehicle production process, which usually consists of two major stages-material production and vehicle assembly. Energy demand and GHG emissions in the material production stage are estimated using the following data: the mass of the vehicle, the distribution of material used by mass, and energy demand and GHG emissions associated with the production of each material. Energy demand in the vehicle assembly stage is estimated as a linear function of the vehicle mass, while the associated GHG emission is estimated according to the primary energy sources. It is concluded that the primary energy demand, petroleum demand and GHG emissions during the production of a medium-sized passenger car in China are 69,108 MJ, 14,545 MJ and 6575 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)-eq). Primary energy demand, petroleum demand and GHG emissions in China's passenger car fleets in 2005 would be increased by 22%, 5% and 30%, respectively, if the vehicle production stage were included. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We calculate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from producing liquid fuels from Green River oil shale with the Alberta Taciuk Processor (ATP). Kerogen contained ill oil shale call be retorted to produce liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons. The ATP is ail above-ground oil shale retort that combusts the coke or "char" deposited oil the shale during retorting to fuel the retorting process. Using life cycle assessment (I-CA), we calculate the energy inputs and outputs of each process stage. We then calculate the resulting full-fuel-cycle GHG emissions from producing reformulated gasoline using the ATP. Full-fuel-cycle GHG emissions are conservatively calculated at approximate to 130-150 g CO2 equiv/MJ of gasoline produced. These emissions are 1.5 to 1.75 times larger than emissions from conventionally produced gasoline. The results depend most sensitively on the grade of shale used and the rate of carbonate mineral decomposition, which causes inorganic carbon dioxide (CO2) release.In order to combat global warming, a detailed knowledge of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with different energy conversion technologies is important. For nuclear energy, GHG emissions result from different process stages of the whole fuel cycle. A life-cycle assessment offers the possibility to properly calculate these emissions. In the past, both indirect energy use and GHG emissions were studied by many researchers. Most of the studies result in low indirect emissions comparable to wind turbines. However, some of the studies in the literature obtain high results adding up to a significant fraction of the direct emissions from a CCGT. In this paper, the GHG emissions resulting from the overall nuclear fuel cycle are analyzed by making a detailed comparison of the results from three different life-cycle assessments. Hereby, the studies are chosen in order to reflect the range of results available in open literature. The studies under consideration result in indirect emissions of around 8 and 58g CO2/kWh(e) and more than 110g CO2/kWh(e). An explanation is given for these strongly varying results by analyzing the input data, assumptions and estimations made for different process steps. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the assessment of the environmental impacts caused by the treatment of Riga's waste water in the Daugavgriva plant with biogas energy cogeneration through the life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA seems to be a good tool to assess and evaluate the most serious environmental impacts of a facility The results showed clearly that the impact category contributing the most to the total impact - eutrophication-comes from the wastewater treatment stage. Climate change also seems to be a relevant impact coming from the wastewater treatment stage and the main contributor to the Climate change is N2O. The main environmental benefits, in terms of the percentages of the total impact, associated to the use of biogas instead of any other fossil fuel in the cogeneration plant are equal to: 3,11% for abiotic depletation, 1,48% for climate change, 0,51% for acidification and 0,12% for eutrophication.The pollution prevention during the design phase of products and processes in environmental policy gains its importance over the other, more historically known principle - pollution reduction in the end-of-pipe. This approach requires prediction of potential environmental impacts to be avoided or reduced and a prioritisation of the most efficient areas for action. Currently the most appropriate method for this purpose is life cycle assessment (LCA) - a method for accounting and attributing all environmental impacts which arise during the life time of a product, starting with the production of raw materials and ending with the disposal, or recycling of the wasted product at the end of life. The LCA, however, can be misleading if the performers of the study disregard gaps of information and the limitations of the chosen methodology. During the study we researched the environmental impact of desktop computers, using a simplified LCA method Indicators' 99, and by developing various scenarios (changing service life, user behaviour, energy supply etc). The study demonstrates that actions for improvements lie in very different areas. The study also concludes that the approach of defining functional unit must be sufficiently flexible in order to avoid discounting areas of potential actions. Therefore, with regard to computers we agree with other authors using the functional unit "one computer" but suggest not to bind this to service life or usage time, but to develop several scenarios varying these parameters. The study also demonstrates the importance of a systemic approach when assessing complex product systems - as more complex the system is, the more broad the scope for potential actions. We conclude that, regarding computers, which belong to energy using and material-intensive products, the measures to reduce environmental impacts lie not only with the producer and user of the particular product, but also with the whole national energy supply and waste management system. Improvements in the latter areas can significantly reduce the environmental impacts of such products.Life cycle thinking and life cycle management (LCM) are concepts which have been gaining increasing attention from the industry. However, there is a need for tools and methods to make these concepts operational. Environmental management systems (EMS) and life cycle assessment (LCA) are mature tools that can be used to support the implementation of LCM within organizations. This article proposes a methodology for the integration of these tools. More specifically, it addresses the importance of LCA methodological choices in this context. A pulp and paper case study is used to illustrate the methodology. The potential of using such an integrated framework for assessing the environmental implications of capital investment projects is also underlined. it is concluded that the integration is possible but that conventional EMS evaluation is still required. (C) 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 28: 576-588, 2009We present a global-scale life cycle assessment of a major food commodity, farmed salmon. Specifically, we report the cumulative energy use, biotic resource use, and greenhouse gas, acidifying, and eutrophying emissions associated with producing farmed salmon in Norway, the UK, British Columbia (Canada), and Chile, as well as a production-weighted global average. We found marked differences in the nature and quantity of material/energy resource use and associated emissions per unit production across regions. This suggests significant scope for improved environmental performance in the industry as a whole. We identify key leverage points for improving performance, most notably the critical importance of least-environmental cost feed sourcing patterns and continued improvements in feed conversion efficiency, Overall, impacts were lowest for Norwegian production in most impact categories, and highest for UK farmed salmon. Our results are of direct relevance to industry, policy makers, eco-labeling programs, and consumers seeking to further sustainability objectives in salmon aquaculture.Corporations increasingly subscribe to the principles of corporate sustainability, which is generally described as the integration of economic, environmental and social dimensions. Concerning innovation management, this emphasises the role of sustainability-oriented innovations (SOI). SOI is considered a tool both to address sustainability issues and to tap into new customer segments and markets. Yet SOI are very risky: both their market success and non-economic sustainability are uncertain. This paper presents a generic model termed the "Sustainability InnovationCube" (SIC) for structuring innovations' sustainability effects in order to better inform corporate decision-makers about how to minimize the directional risk of SOI. The model includes the three dimensions: target, life cycle and innovation type. A qualitative expert study reveals the opportunities and challenges related to the developed model. Finally, practical implications are derived, limitations are discussed and a brief outlook is given.Given the growing interest in ground source heat pump and distributed heating installations in general for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, technology implementation planning can benefit from the simultaneous consideration of building renovations. Here, a method for identifying and evaluating scenarios based on cost and greenhouse gas emissions is presented. The method is demonstrated for a case study in Vaasa Finland. The case study considers the insulation of the walls, roof and base floor and the replacement of windows based on 2003 and 2010 Finnish building codes simultaneously with the possible replacement of existing heat sources with ground source feat pumps. Estimates of changes in heat demand for consecutive renovations are combined with data on renovation, installation, heating costs, and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions data for the current and proposed heat sources. Preferred scenarios are identified and evaluated by building type, construction decade, and current heating source. The results are then placed within the contexts of the Vaasa building stock and policy theory.P>Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used to inform decisions related to environmental technologies and polices, such as carbon footprinting and labeling, national emission inventories, and appliance standards. However, LCA studies of the same product or service often yield very different results, affecting the perception of LCA as a reliable decision tool. This does not imply that LCA is intrinsically unreliable; we argue instead that future development of LCA requires that much more attention be paid to assessing and managing uncertainties. In this article we review past efforts to manage uncertainty and propose a hybrid approach combining process and economic input-output (I-O) approaches to uncertainty analysis of life cycle inventories (LCI). Different categories of uncertainty are sometimes not tractable to analysis within a given model framework but can be estimated from another perspective. For instance, cutoff or truncation error induced by some processes not being included in a bottom-up process model can be estimated via a top-down approach such as the economic I-O model. A categorization of uncertainty types is presented (data, cutoff, aggregation, temporal, geographic) with a quantitative discussion of methods for evaluation, particularly for assessing temporal uncertainty. A long-term vision for LCI is proposed in which hybrid methods are employed to quantitatively estimate different uncertainty types, which are then reduced through an iterative refinement of the hybrid LCI method.For the practical implementation of the assessment of environmental impact, actual procedures and data requirements should be clarified so that industrial decision makers understand them. Researchers should consider local risks related to processes and environmental impact throughout the life cycle of products simultaneously to supervise these adverse effects appropriately. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for quantifying the potential impact associated with a product life cycle. Risk assessment (RA) is a widely used tool for identifying chemical risks in a specific situation. In this study, we integrate LCA and RA for risk-based decision making by devising a hierarchical activity model using the type-zero method of integrated definition language (IDEF0). The IDEF0 activity modeling language has been applied to connect activities with information flows. Process generation, evaluation, and decision making are logically defined and visualized in the activity model with the required information. The activities, information flows, and their acquisitions are revealed, with a focus on which data should be collected by on-site engineers. A case study is conducted on designing a metal cleaning process reducing chemical risks due to the use of a cleansing agent. LCA and RA are executed and applied effectively on the basis of integrated objective settings and interpretation. The proposed activity model can be used as a foundation to incorporate such assessments into actual business models.P>Incorporating the beneficial use of industrial by-products into the industrial ecology of an urban region as a substitute or supplement for natural aggregate can potentially reduce life cycle impacts. This article specifically looks at the utilization of industrial by-products (IBPs) (coal ash, foundry sand, and foundry slag) as aggregate for roadway sub-base construction for the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, urban region. The scenarios compare the use of virgin aggregate with the use of a combination of both virgin and IBP aggregate, where the aggregate material is selected based on proximity to the construction site and allows for minimization of transportation impacts. The results indicate that the use of IBPs to supplement virgin aggregate on a regional level has the potential of reducing impacts related to energy use, global warming potential, and emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO(x)), sulfur dioxide (SO(2)), carbon monoxide (CO), PM(10) (particulate matter-10 microns), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb). Regional management of industrial by-products would allow for the incorporation of these materials into the industrial ecology of a region and reduce impacts from the disposal of the IBP materials and the extraction of virgin materials and minimize the impacts from transportation. The combination of reduced economic and environmental costs provides a strong argument for state transportation agencies to develop symbiotic relationships with large IBP producers in their regions to minimize impacts associated with roadway construction and maintenance-with the additional benefit of improved management of these materials.This paper deals with a comparative analysis of two different packaging and transport scenarios, which exemplifies the implications of choosing between single-use and reusable packaging. In particular, transport of a batch of chemicals by means of disposable fibre drums versus reusable steel drums is investigated from a life cycle perspective, and the associated environmental impact in terms of global warming potential, acidification potential, gross energy requirement and solid waste generation is assessed. Results prove beyond reasonable doubt that even in the case of durable packaging containers requiring the use of comparatively energy-intensive materials for their production, the reuse scenario is characterized by lower environmental impact indicators across the board, and as such is the most advisable and environmentally sound option. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The production of glass/plant fiber hybrid laminates is a possibility for obtaining semistructural materials with sufficient impact properties, and a better life cycle analysis (LCA) profile than fiberglass. The simplest and possibly the most effective configuration for the production of these hybrids would involve the use of a plant fiber reinforced laminate as the core between two glass fiber reinforced laminates. A main limitation to the use of composites including plant fibers is that their properties may be significantly affected by the presence of damage, so that even the application of a low stress level can result in laminate failure. In particular, it is suggested that when loading is repeatedly applied and removed, residual properties may vary in an unpredictable way. In this work, E-glass/jute hybrid reinforced laminates, impacted in a range of energies (10, 12.5, and 15 J), have been subjected to post-impact cyclic flexural tests with a step loading procedure. This would allow evaluating the effect of damage dissipation offered by the plant fiber reinforced core. The tests have also been monitored by acoustic emission (AE), which has confirmed the existence of severe limitations to the use of this hybrid material when impacted at energies close to penetration. POLYM. COMPOS., 30:18791887, 2009. (C) 2009 Society of Plastics EngineersIn order to glean some insight into the likely trends in the next 50 years of power generation, the major trends of the last 50 years are reviewed first of all. It is noted that not only were all the power generating systems in operation today being researched in the 1960s, but SO were most of those now being discussed for the future. The major trends ill generation have all been driven by political and environmental considerations rather than by radically new ideas. For the next 50 years, in a new environment of concern about climate change and security of electricity supply, new technology must be developed to make some more of the options economically viable. This article surveys most of the systems now being considered and picks Out a few of the enabling technologies. With such a broad subject, selectivity in the choice of sources is inevitable: this review draws preferentially upon papers published in the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part A: Journal of Power and Energy over the last 10 years.This paper considers a difficult but practical circumstance of civil infrastructure management-deterioration/failure data of the infrastructure system are absent while only condition-state data of its components are available. The goal is to develop a framework for estimating time-varying reliabilities of civil infrastructure facilities under such a circumstance. A novel method of analyzing time-varying condition-state data that only reports operational/non-operational status of the components is proposed to update the reliabilities of civil infrastructure facilities. The proposed method assumes that the degradation arrivals can be modeled as a Poisson process with unknown time-varying arrival rate and damage impact and that the target system can be represented as a fault-tree model. To accommodate large uncertainties, a Bayesian algorithm is proposed, and the reliability of the infrastructure system can be quickly updated based on the condition-state data. Use of the new method is demonstrated with a real-world example of hydraulic spillway gate system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the popularity of renewable energy systems grows, small wind turbines are becoming a common choice for off-grid household power. However, the true benefits of such systems over the traditional internal combustion systems are unclear. This study employs a life-cycle assessment methodology in order to directly compare the environmental impacts, net-energy inputs, and life-cycle cost of two systems: a stand-alone small wind turbine system and a single-home diesel generator system. The primary focus for the investigation is the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) including CO2, CH4, and N2O. These emissions are calculated over the life-cycle of the two systems which provide the same amount of energy to a small off-grid home over a twenty-year period. The results show a considerable environmental benefit for small-scale wind power. The wind generator system offered a 93% reduction of GHG emissions when compared to the diesel system. Furthermore, the diesel generator net-energy input was over 200 MW, while the wind system produced an electrical energy output greater than its net-energy input. Economically, the conclusions were less clear. The assumption was made that diesel fuel cost over the next twenty years was based on May 2008 prices, increasing only in proportion to inflation. As such, the net-present cost of the wind turbine system was 14% greater than the diesel system. However. a larger model wind turbine would likely benefit from the effects of the 'economy of scale,' producing superior results both economically and environmentally. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of biodiesel produced from the transesterification of vegetable oils with methanol and ethanol is currently seen as an interesting alternative to fossil fuels. The output/input energy relation in the biodiesel production life cycle can be an important indicator of the techno-economic and environmental feasibility evaluation of production of biodiesel from different oleaginous plants. Due to increasing environmental concerns about the emissions from fuel-derived atmospheric pollutants, alternative sources of energy have been receiving greater attention. This work does not look to carry out a complete life cycle assessment (LCA) but rather just to focus on the energy balance in the Palm Oil-Derived Methyl Ester (PME) life cycle, taking into account practices in Brazil and Colombia. This work will show the differences between the results attained for the two cases. The output/input energy relation for the evaluated case studies ranged from 3.8 to 5.7, with an average value of 4.8. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels have had bad press in recent years. There are primarily two distinct issues. The biofuel crops with the best yields (such as sugarcane or oil palm) grow in tropical countries where habitat destruction has occurred in association with the biofuel system. First generation indigenous energy crops commonly used for transport fuel in Europe (such as rapeseed and wheat) have low yields and/or the energy balance of the associated biofuel system is poor. This paper shows that grass is a crop with significant yields and grass biomethane (a gaseous renewable transport biofuel) has a very good energy balance and does not involve habitat destruction, land use change, new farming practices or annual tilling. The gross and net energy production per hectare are almost identical to palm oil biodiesel; the net energy of the grass system is at least 50% better than the next best indigenous European biofuel system investigated. Ten percent of Irish grasslands could fuel over 55% of the Irish private car fleet. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The installation and operation of systems that exploit solar energy through photovoltaic conversion, recently promoted in some European countries by new sell-back tariffs, is a relevant transformation of the territory for various reasons (land use, elimination of the existing vegetation, visual impact on the components of the landscape, microclimate change, glare from the reflection of the direct sunlight). The weak energy intensity of the solar source coupled with the low conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic cells, make the physical dimensions of such systems relevant and, with them, also the environmental, territorial and landscape impacts that basically depend on the physical extent of the system. If it is well known that an incentive to the exploitation of renewable sources is one of the features of the policy of land conservation, including the one of the protected areas, at the same time the concerns of local communities and governments about the environmental, territorial and landscape impacts of this technology are increasing rapidly. Given this picture, this work is intended to clarify the territorial impacts of the ground mounted photovoltaic systems. Later, the paper concentrates on a specific impact, which is the assessment of the risk of glare by reflection of direct sunlight from the surfaces of photovoltaic modules. The methodologies that can be used to assess this impact and the outcomes of an evaluation carried out for a 5000 m(2) PV system currently designed on a hilly territory in Italy are presented. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle analysis is considered to be a valuable tool for decision making towards sustainability Life. cycle energy and environmental impact analysis for conventional transportation fuels and alternatives such as biofuels has become an active domain of research in recent years. The present study attempts to identify the most reliable results to date and possible ranges of life cycle fossil fuel use petroleum use. and greenhouse gas emissions for various road transportation fuels in China through a comprehensive review of recently published life cycle studies and review articles. Fuels reviewed include conventional gasoline, conventional diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, compressed natural gas, wheat-derived ethanol, corn-derived ethanol, cassava-derived ethanol, sugarcane-derived ethanol, rapeseed-derived biodiesel and soybean-derived biodiesel. Recommendations for future work are also discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the main challenges faced by mankind in the 21st century is to meet the increasing demand for energy requirements by means of a more sustainable energy supply. In countries that are net fossil fuel importers, expectation about the benefit of using alternative fuels on reducing oil imports is the primary driving force behind efforts to promote its production and use. Spain is scarce in domestic energy sources and more than 50% of the energy used is fossil fuel based. The promotion of renewable energies use is one of the principal vectors in the Spanish energy policy. Selected herbaceous crops such as Brassica carinata are currently under study as potential energy sources. Its biomass can be considered as potential feedstock to ethanol conversion by an enzymatic process due to the characteristics of its composition, rich in cellulose and hemicellulose. This paper aims to analyse the environmental performance of two ethanol-based fuel applications (E10 and E85) in a passenger car(E10 fuel: a mixture of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline by volume; E85 fuel: a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline by volume) as well as their comparison with conventional gasoline as transport fuel. Two types of functional units are applied in this study: ethanol production oriented and travelling distance oriented functional units in order to reflect the availability or not of ethanol supply. E85 seems to be the best alternative when ethanol production based functional unit is considered in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions and E10 in terms of non-renewable energy resources use. Nevertheless, E85 offers the best environmental performance when travelling distance oriented functional unit is assumed in both impacts. In both functional unit perspectives, the use of ethanol-based fuels reduces the global warming and fossil fuels consumption. However, the contributions to other impact indicators (e.g. acidification, eutrophication and photochemical oxidants formation) were lower for conventional gasoline. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure helps to identify the key areas in the B. carinata ethanol production life cycle where the researchers and technicians need to work to improve the environmental performance. Technological development could help in lowering both the environmental impact and the prices of the ethanol fuels. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The renewable based electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators using data obtained from the literature. These indicators are cost of electricity generation, greenhouse gas emissions and energy pay-back time. All the three parameters were found to have a very wide range for each technology. For grading different renewable energy sources a new figure of merit has been proposed, linking greenhouse gas emissions, energy pay-back time and cost of electricity generated by these renewable energy sources. It has been found out that wind and small hydro are the most sustainable source for the electricity generation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To ensure photovoltaics become a major sustainable player in a competitive power-generation market, they must provide abundant, affordable electricity. with environmental impacts drastically lower than those from conventional power generation. The recent reduction in the cost of 2nd generation thin-film PV is remarkable, meeting the production milestone of $1 per watt in the fourth quarter of 2008. This achievement holds great promise for the future. However, the questions remaining are whether the expense of PV modules can be lowered further, and if there are resource- and environmental-impact constraints to growth. I examine the potential of thin-films in a prospective life-cycle analysis, focusing on direct costs, resource availability, and environmental impacts. These three aspects are closely related; developing thinner solar cells and recycling spent modules will become increasingly important in resolving cost, resource, and environmental constraints to large scales of sustainable growth. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The automotive is a sector where energy consumption during the use phase prevails over the production and the end-of-life phase. Therefore, a lot of research and innovations aimed (and still aim) at replacing classical steel parts by lighter materials like light alloys and polymer composites. While composites are very attractive for the use phase of cars, their introduction suffers from the limited end-of-life options for composite structures. Due to the restrictions imposed by the European ELV directive, the use of non-recyclable composite components in car manufacturing is not obvious. An extensive life cycle analysis for a reference car design was conducted to study the effects of replacement of conventional steel structures by lightweight carbon fibre composite alternatives. The study also takes second order effects in the design of the car into account, such as the required motor power. The obtained results show the trend towards more intensive use of carbon-fibre composites in car design desires some nuancing, and the opportunities and threats are identified.Assessing traditional iron and steelmaking processes from an environmental point of view and developing breakthrough eco-efficient processes for the future are major challenges for the steel industry today. In the framework of the challenging European project ULCOS, which stands for Ultra Low CO(2) Steelmaking, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was chosen to assess breakthrough processes that could be part of the future iron and steel making landscape and to compare them to the reference classical integrated steelmill. To carry out such a study we propose a new methodological concept which combines LCA thinking with physicochemical process modelling. Physicochemical models were developed for each processes of the classical integrated steelmaking route in order to generate the data required to draw the Life Cycle Inventory of the route. Such a method bypasses the traditional data collection and brings accuracy to the inventory by introducing rigorous mass and energy balances into the methodology. In addition it was shown that such an approach allows testing and assessing different operational practices of the processes in order to optimise the use of energy and the CO(2) emissions, which showed that it can be used as a powerful tool for eco-conception of processes.A range of tools have been proposed to support decision making in contaminated land remediation. From a European perspective it is clear, however, that there are considerable national differences in the decision support process, and more generally in the extent to which this process supports the selection of less invasive, alternative remediation options such as phytoremediation, in situ immobilisation etc. (referred to here as "gentle" remediation technologies). In this paper we present results from the recently completed European Union ERANET SNOWMAN project SUMATECS (Sustainable Management of Trace Element Contaminated Sites), and critically review available decision support tools in terms of their fitness for purpose for the application of gentle remediation technologies. Stakeholder feedback indicates a lack of knowledge amongst stakeholders of currently available decision support tools. We propose that decision support which focuses on gentle remediation is more strongly incorporated into existing, well-established (national) decision support tools / decision-frameworks, to promote more widespread use and uptake. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sea ports and the related maritime activities (e.g. shipping, shipbuilding, etc.) are one of the main driver of Europe's growth, jobs, competitiveness and prosperity. The continuously growth of shipping sectors has however introduced some environmental concerns, particularly with respect to ship-generated waste management. The port of Koper, one of the major ports on the northern Adriatic Coast, is the focus of this study. In this paper, a life cycle assessment was performed to identify and quantify the environmental impacts caused by the ship-generated waste management of port of Koper. Carcinogens substance (e.g. dioxins) and inorganic emissions, especially heavy metals, resulted to be the most critical environmental issues, while the fossil fuels consumption is reduced by recovery of ship-generated oils. Moreover, the final treatment of ship waste was found to be critical phase of the management, and the landfill have a significant contribute to the overall environmental load. These results can be useful in the identification of the best practices and in the implementation of waste management plans in ports. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses oil a biomethanol from the rice straw process involving the thermodynamic, economic, and environmental performance in China. Based oil the simulation of methanol synthesis via biomass gasification in interconnected fluidized beds using Aspen Plus software, the method of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is applied to evaluate the impact of pollutant emissions in the full life cycles of biomethanol. The integrated performance of biomethanol system is analyzed combining with energy utilization, economic cost, and environmental impact. The results show that the methanol yield can reach 0.308 kg/(kg rice straw), i.e., the energy efficiency of rice straw conversion to biomethanol is approximately 42.7%. For a biomethanol plant with an annual production of 50,000 tons, the real cost of biomethanol is evaluated at 2685 RMB/t, in which the economic cost is 2347 RMB/t, and the environmental cost is 337.6 RMB/t. Because of its high investment cost, presently the economic cost of biomethanol is higher than that of coal-based methanol in China. Nevertheless biomethanol will be becoming more competitive with the shortage of fossil fuel in the future. In the whole life cycle, the main pollutant emissions come from the biomethanol production process and biomethanol end-use by automobiles, whereas the net environmental effect is negative during the rice cultivation. Global warming is the most influential factor of the different impact categories. However, 1910 kg of CO2 can be fixed for one ton of methanol by photosynthesis in the growth of rice, thus the effect of global warming is significantly reduced by biomass utilization compared with coal-based methanol. The integrated performance indicates that producing methanol from rice straw is beneficial to both the utilization of agriculture waste and in the improvement of environment.Over one billion people are without access to safe water, while twice as many lack access to improved sanitation services, making these two of the world's most pressing issues. The sustainability of critical infrastructure systems, such as water and sanitation, is a necessary (though not sufficient) criterion for achieving sustainable human settlements since the lack of adequate services affects literally all aspects of a Community's daily existence including health, education, family, surroundings, and employment. Despite several decades of development aid, infrastructure solutions have not significantly improved these water and sanitation problems (with few exceptions). In this paper, we consider the holistic nature of water infrastructure development in terms of rural areas in developing countries. We propose an outcome-based evaluation method using Life-Cycle Analysis to examine three categories of infrastructure sustainability metrics: technical, environmental, and economic; both from a community perspective, and a social-equity perspective. We demonstrate the method with a simple, generic example of arsenic treatment approaches in Bangladesh.Many organizations look to carbon footprint protocols for guidance on measuring their greenhouse gas emissions, or carbon footprint Existing protocols generally require estimation of direct emissions (Scope 1) and emissions from direct purchases of energy (Scope 2), but focus less on indirect emissions upstream and downstream of the supply chain (optional Scope 3). Because on average more than 75% of an industry sectors carbon footprint is attributed to Scope 3 sources, better knowledge of Scope 3 footprints can help organizations pursue emissions mitigation projects not just within their own plants but also across their supply chain, In this work, Scope 3 footprints of U.S. economic sectors are categorized using an Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) model to identify upstream emission sources that are likely to contribute significantly to different sectors' footprints. The portions of the upstream footprint captured by the sector's top-10 upstream suppliers are estimated at 3 different levels of specificity: general economy-wide, industry specific, and sector specific. The results show that enterprises can capture a large portion of their total upstream carbon footprint by collecting full emissions information from only a handful of direct suppliers, and Scope 3 footprint capture rates can be improved considerably by sector-specific categorization. Employee commuting and air transportation may be more important (7%-30%) for the services industries, but should not be a focus of detailed Scope 3 footprint estimates for the manufacturing industries (<1% of the total analyzed footprint). Protocol organizations should actively make more specific Scope 3 guidelines available for their constituents by developing sector-specific categorizations for as many sectors as they feasibly can and create broader industry-specific protocols for others.An in-depth life-cycle assessment of nine home-care and personal-hygiene products was conducted to determine the ecological relevance of different life-cycle phases and compare the environmental profiles of products serving equal applications. Using detailed data from industry and consumer-behavior studies a broad range of environmental impacts were analyzed to identify the main drivers in each life-cycle stage and potentials for improving the environmental footprints. Although chemical production significantly adds to environmental burdens, substantial impacts are caused in the consumer-use phase. As such, this research provides recommendations for product development supply chain management, product policies, and consumer use. To reduce environmental burdens products should, for instance, be produced in concentrated form, while consumers should apply correct product dosages and low water temperatures during product application.This paper presents life-cycle-analysis (LCA) energy consumption (EC) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of China's current six biofuel pathways, which are: corn-derived ethanol (CE); cassava-derived ethanol (KE); sweet sorghum-derived ethanol (SE): soybean-derived bio-diesel (SB); jatropha fruit-derived bio-diesel (JB); and used cooking oil (UCO)-derived bio-diesel (LIB). The tool utilized here is the WTW (Well-to-Wheels) module of Tsinghua-CA3EM model covering the entire lifecycle including: raw materials cultivation (or feedstock collection): fuel production; transportation and distribution; and application in automobile engines, compared with Conventional Petroleum-based gasoline and diesel Pathways (CPP). The results indicate: (1) the fossil energy inputs are about 1.0-1.5 times the energy contained in the fuel for the CE, SE and SB pathways, but 0.5-0.9 times for the KE, UB and JB pathways: (2) compared with CPP, the JB, KE and LIB pathways can reduce both fossil fuel consumption and GHG emissions; the CE and SB pathways can only reduce fossil fuel consumption, but increase GHG emission: the SE pathway increases not only fossil fuel consumption but also GHG emission: and (3) the main factors inducing high EC and GHG emission levels include: high EC levels during the fuel production stage and high fertilizer application rates during the planting of raw feedstocks. Conclusions are that of the aforementioned biofuel pathways in (the) People's Republic of China: (1) only the JB, KE and UB pathways have energy-saving merits as indicated by the LCA energy inputs and outputs; (2) compared with CPP, all but the SE pathway reduces fossil fuel consumption. However, the SB and CE pathway increase GHG emission; (3) all six displace petroleum by utilizing more coal; and (4) feedstock productivity levels must be increased, and there must be a reduction in fertilizer utilization and EC consumption during the cultivation and transportation stages in order to achieve the goals of energy balance and GHG emission reduction. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiesel from palm oil has been considered for partial substitution of diesel fuel for transportation in Thailand. The Government of Thailand recently has set up a production target of 8.5 million liters per day of palm oil-based biodiesel by 2011. The aim of this study is to investigate the energy consumption of palm methyl ester (PME) production in Thailand using a life cycle approach compared to other possible oil crops for biodiesel production including jatropha and coconut. The main contributors to the energy use are cultivation, oil production, transesterification and transportation. Taking into account only fossil fuel or petroleum inputs in the production cycle, the energy analysis provides results in favour of PME in Thailand. The net energy balance (NEB) and net energy ratio (NER) of PME and co-products are 100.84 GJ/ha and 3.58, respectively. The NER of PME without co-products is 2.42, which is still higher than one indicating a favourable result. The results are important in selecting an appropriate feedstock for biodiesel production and this study will support policy makers in the energy sector to make informed decisions vis-a-vis promotion of oil palm plantation for biodiesel. This will also support the Government of Thailand in its policy to promote the use of indigenous and renewable sources for transportation fuels. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The growing demand for biofuels has led to an increased demand for feedstocks which in turn is anticipated to induce changes in the cropping systems or land requirement for agriculture use. This study used consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental consequences of possible (future) changes in agricultural production systems and determine their effects on land use change (LUC) and greenhouse gas (GHG) implications when cassava demand in Thailand increases. Six different cropping systems to increase cassava production including converting unoccupied land to cropland, yield improvement, displacement of area currently under sugarcane cultivation and the other potential changes in cropping systems in Viet Nam and Australia are modeled and assessed. The comparative results show that LUC is an important factor in overall GHG emissions of the first generation biofuels especially change in soil carbon stock contributing about 58-60% of the net GHG emissions. Increased cassava production by expanding cultivation area has a significantly larger effect on GHG emissions than increased productivity. The analysis shows that increasing productivity of both sugarcane and cassava are important ways to maximize benefits in using of certain area of Thailand to serve both the food and fuel industries. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since Indonesia has significant land area in different forest types that could be used to produce biofuels, the potential to sustainably collect and convert forest materials to methanol for use in energy production was examined. Using the annually available aboveground forest biomass, from 40 to 168 billion 1 of bio-methanol could be produced for use as a transportation fuel and/or to supply fuel cells to produce electricity. When a lower forest biomass availability estimate was used to determine how much electricity (methanol fed into fuel cells) could be produced in Indonesia, more than 10 million households or about 12,000 villages (20% of the total rural villages in Indonesia) would be supplied annually with electricity. Collecting forest biomass at the higher end of the estimated available biomass and converting it to methanol to supply fuel cells could provide electricity to more than 42 million households annually. This would be approximately 52,000 villages, or 86% of the total rural villages in Indonesia. When electricity is produced with bio-methanol/fuel cells, it could potentially supply from half to all of the current electricity consumed in Indonesia. By generating electricity using bio-methanol/fuel cells instead of from fossil fuels, from 9 to 38% of the total carbon currently emitted each year in Indonesia could be avoided. In contrast, substituting this same amount of bio-methanol for gasoline could provide all of the annual gasoline needs of Indonesia and contribute towards reducing their carbon emissions by about 8-35%. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Similarity between the properties of biodiesel and petroleum-derived diesel has made the former one of the most promising alternatives to a renewable and sustainable fuel for the transportation sector. In Malaysia, palm oil can be a suitable feedstock for the production of biodiesel due to its abundant availability and low production cost. However, not many assessments have been carried out regarding the impacts of palm biodiesel on the environment. Hence, in this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for palm biodiesel in order to investigate and validate the popular belief that palm biodiesel is a green and sustainable fuel. The LCA study was divided into three main stages, namely agricultural activities, oil milling and transesterification process for the production of biodiesel. For each stage, the energy balance and green house gas assessments were presented and discussed. These are important data for the techno-economical and environmental feasibility evaluation of palm biodiesel. The results obtained for palm biodiesel were then compared with rapeseed biodiesel. From this study, it was found that the utilization of palm biodiesel would generate an energy yield ratio of 3.53 (output energy/input energy), indicating a net positive energy generated and ensuring its sustainability. The energy ratio for palm biodiesel was found to be more than double that of rapeseed biodiesel which was estimated to be only 1.44, thereby indicating that palm oil would be a more sustainable feedstock for biodiesel production as compared to rapeseed oil. Moreover, combustion of palm biodiesel was found to be more environment-friendly than petroleum-derived-diesel as a significant 38% reduction Of CO2 emission can be achieved per liter combusted. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper summarizes the research of Monte Carlo simulation-based Economic, Energy and Environmental (3E) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the three Biomass-based Fuel Ethanol (BFE) projects in (the) People's Republic of China. Our research includes both theoretical study and case study. In the theoretical study part, 3E LCA models are structured, 3E Index Functions are defined and the Monte Carlo simulation is introduced to address uncertainties in BFE life cycle analysis. In the case study part, projects of Wheat-based Fuel Ethanol (WFE) in Central China, Corn-based Fuel Ethanol (CFE) in Northeast China, and Cassava-based Fuel Ethanol (KFE) in Southwest China are evaluated from the aspects of economic viability and investment risks, energy efficiency and airborne emissions. The life cycle economy assessment shows that KFE project in Guangxi is viable, while CFE and WFE projects are not without government's subsidies. Energy efficiency assessment results show that WFE, CFE and KFE projects all have positive Net Energy Values. Emissions results show that the corn-based El 0 (a blend of 10% gasoline and 90% ethanol by volume), wheat-based E10 and cassava-base E10 have less CO2 and VOC life cycle emissions than conventional gasoline, but wheat-based E10 and cassava-based E10 can generate more emissions of CO, CH4, N2O, NOx, SO2, PM10 and corn-based E10 can have more emissions of CH4, N2O, NOx, SO, PM10. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the most promising forms of renewable energy is biodiesel produced from vegetable oils, such as rapeseed, soybean and palm oil. Malaysia, being the world's second-largest producer of palm oil, therefore begins to align herself as the potential world producer of palm biodiesel apart from exporting palm oil as feedstock for the food and oleochemical industries. However, due to the recent food versus fuel debate, Malaysian palm oil has received a lot of negative attention especially from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The sustainability of palm biodiesel production and environmental issues are constantly being questioned. Many quarters have even claimed that the use of non-edible oils, such as Jatropha curcas L., should be promoted rather than palm oil for biodiesel production. Therefore, this study aims to compare and validate the production of biodiesel from palm and jatropha using the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The assessment encompasses the cultivation of the crop, the oil extraction stage and finally, the biodiesel production stage. We found that to produce 1 tonne of jatropha biodiesel, the land area requirement is 118% higher than to produce 1 tonne of palm biodiesel. The energy output-to-input ratio for palm biodiesel is 2.27, slightly higher than jatropha biodiesel at 1.92. Furthermore, CO2 sequestration for the whole life cycle chain of palm biodiesel is 20 times higher than jatropha biodiesel. All these results show the superiority and sustainability of palm oil as a feedstock for biodiesel production (C) Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons. LtdThe promotion of biofuels as energy for transportation in the industrialized countries is mainly driven by the perspective of oil depletion, the concerns about energy security and global warming. However due to sustainability constraints, biofuels will replace only 10 to 15% of fossil liquid fuels in the transport sector. Several governments have defined a minimum target of GHG emissions reduction for those biofuels that will be eligible to public incentives, for example a 35% emissions reduction in case of biofuels in Members States of the European Union. This article points out the significant biases in estimating GHG balances of biofuels stemming from modelling choices about system definition and boundaries. functional unit, reference systems and allocation methods. The extent to which these choices influence the results is investigated. After performing a comparison and constructive criticism of various modelling choices, the LCA of wheat-to-bioethanol is used as an illustrative case where bioethanol is blended with gasoline at various percentages (E5, E10 and E85). The performance of these substitution options is evaluated as well. The results show a large difference in the reduction of the GHG emissions with a high sensitivity to the following factors: the method used to allocate the impacts between the co-products, the type of reference systems, the choice of the functional unit and the type of blend. The authors come out with some recommendations for basing the estimation of energy and GHG balances of biofuels on principles such as transparency, consistency and accuracy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Continuously running microreaction technology offers novel ways of process intensification, going beyond its established features such as process safety or modularity. One current concept is to operate under rough reaction conditions to speed up conversion rates. Performing microprocess technology under rigorous reaction conditions for several applications and under utilization of different techniques is currently investigated within the German research cluster called "Novel Process Windows". Due to the improvements obtained in synthesis performance, a positive effect on environmental impacts is expected as well. But, harsh process conditions probably require. added energy input and effort concerning process control and safety. The question whether the ratio of effort and benefit is less than for alternative approaches or not can be addressed by (Simplified) Life Cycle Assessment. Such analyses will be particularly helpful, if they are already integrated into the design of the process, in order to disclose the key drivers of a deliberated design of a green chemical process.Food consumption represents the dominant exposure pathway of the general public to pesticides. In this paper, we characterize the lifelong cumulative human health damage from ingestion of pesticides contained in fruits and vegetables in Switzerland and the United States. We evaluated pesticide residues in 62 151 food samples. Chemical specific concentrations were combined with pesticide emission data and information on country-specific diets and chemical toxicity to assess the human health impacts of 51 food commodities and national average diets. Furthermore, a list of characterization factors for pesticide ingestion via food was calculated for use in life cycle impact assessment. On average, the Swiss population takes in via food ingestion 0.41 g of every 1 kg of pesticide applied during agricultural cultivation. The corresponding value in the United States is 0.51. Intake fractions based on experimental monitoring data were compared with outputs from the USEtox model for life cycle impact assessment of toxic substances. The modeled intake fractions were underestimated by up to two orders of magnitude. However, even when using the monitored residue concentration data, the absolute health damage via fruits and vegetable ingestion was small: The potential lifelong damage of pesticides is estimated to be only 4.2 and 3.2 min of life lost per person in Switzerland and the United States, respectively. The results of this study indicate that pesticide intake due to the ingestion of fruits and vegetables consumed in Switzerland and the United States does not lead to significant human health damages. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment and Material Flow Analysis, in spite of their invaluable contribution to the investigation of the environmental performance of human-dominated processes, still fall short of properly addressing the issue of the geographic distribution of the potential environmental impacts, which often has wide-reaching environmental as well as political implications. An innovative allocation method based on matrix algebra is introduced here, in order to allow to split the calculated environmental impact indicators into fractions thereof which are geographically attributed to the different world regions. This is done on the basis of: (i) where the analyzed process takes place and (ii) where the directly and indirectly required fossil and nuclear fuels are sourced from (including those for electricity production). The method has been successfully tested on primary aluminium production, as a first case study. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reduce energy consumption and environmental pollution is an important objective in energy sustainability. The building sector, one of the fastest growing in terms of energy consumption, accounts for over 40% of final energy. Building energy conservation will drive the application of new energy conservation technologies and strongly promote the development of sustainable building. In this paper, the extenics theory and life cycle assessment (LCA) are proposed in building energy conservation assessment. Analytic hierarchical process (AHP) method and 9-scale pair-wise comparison are adopted to determine the weights of the factors in different hierarchies. A building energy conservation assessment model combining LCA and the extenics theory is established. The matter-element and the dependent function are defined. Then the synthesis dependent degree and the final grade index are calculated. Thus the building energy conservation grade is obtained. An example is used to illustrate the proposed approach. The results provide guidance to assess building energy conservation performance and determine the energy conservation grade of buildings. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bio-ethanol is playing an important role in renewable energy for transport according to Thai government policy. This study aims to evaluate the energy efficiency and renewability of bio-ethanol system and identify the current significant environmental risks and availability of feedstocks in Thailand. Four of the seven existing ethanol plants contributing 53% of the total ethanol fuel production in Thailand have been assessed by the net energy balance method and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A renewability and net energy ratio portfolio has been used to indicate whether existing bio-ethanol production systems have net energy gain and could help reduce dependency on fossil energy. In addition, LCA has been conducted to identify and evaluate the environmental hotspots of 'cradle to gate' bio-ethanol production. The results show that there are significant differences of energy and environmental performance among the four existing production systems even for the same feedstock. The differences are dependent on many factors such as farming practices, feedstock transportion, fuel used in ethanol plants, operation practices and technology of ethanol conversion and waste management practices. Recommendations for improving the overall energy and environmental performance of the bio-ethanol system are suggested in order to direct the bio-ethanol industry in Thailand towards environmental sustainability. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.District heating is a technology for distributing centrally produced heat for space heating and sanitary hot-water generation for residential and commercial uses. The objectives are to identify which subsystems and components of a district heating grid are the main contributors to the overall impact of the infrastructure: and provide environmentally oriented design strategies for the future eco-redesign of these kinds of infrastructures. This paper performs a life-cycle assessment (LCA) to determine the environmental impacts of a district heating infrastructure in an urban neighbourhood context. The analysis covers seven subsystems (power plant, main grid, auxiliary components of the main grid, trench works, service pipes, buildings and dwellings) and twelve standard components. The results for the subsystems show that the sources of impact are not particularly located in the main grid (less than 7.1% contribution in all impact categories), which is the focus of attention in the literature, but in the power plants and dwelling components. These two subsystems together contribute from 40% to 92% to the overall impact depending on the impact categories. Concerning the components, only a reduced number are responsible for the majority of the environmental impact. This facilitates identifying effective strategies for the redesign of the infrastructure. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an innovative, quantitative assessment of pollution avoidance attributable to environmental regulation enforced through integrated licensing, using Ireland's pharmaceutical-manufacturing Sector as a case study. Emissions data reported by pharmaceutical installations were aggregated into a pollution trend using an Environmental Emissions Index (EEI) based on Lifecycle Assessment methodologies. Complete sectoral emissions data from 2001 to 2007 were extrapolated back to 1995, based on available data. Production volume data were used to derive a sectoral production index, and determine 'no-improvement' emission trends, whilst questionnaire responses from 20 industry representatives were used to quantify the contribution of integrated licensing to emission avoidance relative to these trends. Between 2001 and 2007 there was a 40% absolute, reduction in direct pollution from 27 core installations, and 45% pollution avoidance relative to hypothetical 'no-improvement' pollution. It was estimated that environmental regulation avoided 20% of 'no-improvement' pollution, in addition to 25% avoidance under business-as-usual. For specific emissions, avoidance ranged from 14% and 30 kt a(-1) for CO2 to 88% and 598 t a(-1) for SOx. Between 1995 and 2007, there was a 59% absolute reduction in direct pollution, and 76% pollution avoidance. Pollution avoidance was dominated by reductions in emissions of VOCs, SOx and NOx to air, and emissions of heavy metals to water. Pollution avoidance of 35% was attributed to integrated licensing, ranging from between 8% and 2.9 t a(-1) for phosphorus emissions to water to 49% and 3143 t a(-1) for SOx emissions to air. Environmental regulation enforced through integrated licensing has been the major driver of substantial pollution avoidance achieved by Ireland's pharmaceutical sector - through emission limit values associated with Best Available Techniques, emissions monitoring and reporting requirements, and performance targets specified in environmental management plans. This compliant sector offers a positive, but not necessarily typical, case study of IPPC effectiveness. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular tool used to evaluate the environmental performance of municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems. Although reviews of LCAs of MSW have been undertaken to assess the validity of the 'waste hierarchy,' a recent review of the goal, scope and results of LCAs of mixed-material MSW management systems has yet to be performed. This paper is a comparative analysis of 20 process-based LCAs of MSW published between 2002 and 2008 in a total of 11 English-language peer-reviewed journals. It quantifies the methodological transparency of the studies and the frequency of use of particular system boundaries, types of data sources, environmental impact categories, impact weightings, economic valuations, sensitivity analyses, and LCA computer models. Net energy use (NEU). global warming potential (GWP), and acidification potential (AP) values for various types of MSW management systems are also compared using statistical indicators. The reviewed LCAs differ substantially in their system boundaries. Half or more of the LCAs either do not mention or are unclear in whether or not life cycle emissions from energy inputs or capital equipment are included in the calculation of results. Only four impact categories are common to more than half of the reviewed LCAs. The human and ecological toxicity impact categories are much less common than global warming potential, acidification, and eutrophication. A financial life cycle costing is present in eight of the reviewed LCAs, while an economic valuation of the environmental impacts is observed in five. Explicit sensitivity analyses are present in 4/20 of the studies, although many more LCAs evaluate the effects of varying model parameters by increasing the number of waste management scenarios. There is no consensus on whether or not to use the marginal or average source of electricity in calculating environmental impacts. Eight out of the 20 do not mention this source while the remaining LCAs are evenly split between the marginal and average electricity source. One quarter of the reviewed LCAs supply weighted results for the overall environmental performance of MSW management scenarios. All but one of these concurred with the 'hierarchy of waste' that the environmental performance of landfilling is lower than that of all the other treatment methods, and that thermal treatments are inferior to recycling. The comparative analyses of the NEU, GWP and AP results are based on 37, 45, and 42 MSW management scenarios, respectively. As measures of statistical dispersion, the interquartile ranges of the NEU. GWP and AP values are lowest for the landfilling (AP, NEU) and thermal treatment (GWP) scenarios. The results of the statistical analysis of the NEU, AP and GWP values appear to indicate that thermal treatment scenarios have a better environmental performance than landfilling, while the results for mixed treatment scenarios are less obvious. A comparison of the relative environmental performances of MSW treatment scenario types within each study did not provide a clear confirmation or repudiation of the waste hierarchy. This paper concludes that many recently published LCAs do not ensure that the methodological assumptions are made clear to the reader. Lack of transparency makes the results difficult to interpret, and hampers meaningful comparisons between the LCA results. A convergence in the adoption of particular assumptions that are more representative of MSW management systems would facilitate the comparison of the results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hybrid techniques for Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) provide a way of combining the accuracy of process analysis and the completeness of input-output analysis. A number of methods have been suggested to implement a hybrid LCA in practice, with the main challenge being the integration of specific process data with an overarching input-output system. In this work we present a new hybrid LCA method which works at the finest input-output level of detail: structural paths. This new Path Exchange method avoids double-counting and system disturbance just as previous hybrid LCA methods, but instead of a large LCA database it requires only a minimum of external information on those structural paths that are to be represented by process data.Background, aim and scope Established in 1992, the European Union Ecolabel, that is briefly called "the Flower" because of the mark, is a voluntary ecological product award issued by the 1980/2000 Regulation (EC 2000). Adopting the ISO classification, the EU Ecolabel belongs to the "Type I environmental labelling" (ISO 14024: 1999). The possibility to include GreenHouse Gases (GHG) emissions (as of CO2 equivalents) among the EU Ecolabel criteria is a news that is justified to the consideration that, in the last 30 years, their management and limitation assumed a relevant and strategic importance for greenhouse effect control. This paper introduces results of a project for the European Commission that aimed at developing and checking a carbon footprint calculator procedure suitable for the inclusion of the GHG emission issue in the EU Ecolabel criteria. The output tool is primarily aimed at the policy maker, i.e. the European Commission, the European Union Ecolabel Board and the Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG, created to develop a transparent and wide discussion with reference stakeholders, see Fig. 2 for more details), but, in this step, not directly to the applicant yet. Materials and methods The project structure followed four main tasks: (1) a preliminary desk top research, (2) the toolkit development, (3) the organisation of workshops and (4) diffusion and dissemination activities. A number of dissemination activities has been carried out, such as participation in key events in order to present the project and preliminary results, consultations with key stakeholders to get their opinions and input to the project work, issuing newsletters, setting up an ad hoc website with on-line consultation services and the organisation of a Europeanwide workshop. Results, discussion and conclusions The main outcomes of the project can be summarised in the availability of a simple, flexible Excel-based preliminary tool, which gives the possibility of a multilevel interpretation of the results for the different environmental parameters used, and in the definition of rules in order to provide the most suitable and scientifically correct approach that should be considered in general for the inclusion of carbon footprint criteria in the EU Ecolabel. The output tool has the unique scope to provide a basis for the AHWG in case the decision to include carbon footprint during the product group (PG) development criteria process is taken; the CO2 figures that are provided in the database have the intention to support the execution of the five examples that are presented and included in the Excel file; it is a precise responsibility of the AHWG to verify/update/implement the data for the carbon footprint calculation of any PG under study. The dissemination activities have brought to some important decisions related to the possible use of the carbon footprint approach concerning the `EU Flower' marketing and communication strategies. Recommendations and perspectives The application of the life cycle thinking approach by means of the LCA methodology must always be strictly linked to the specific system (product group) under investigation. This means that the adaption of the rules and a creation of specific `calculation tool' for certain product groups should be implemented during any process of criteria development or revision, where and if will be possible to define specific hurdles on carbon footprint.Background, aim, and scope Life-cycle thinking and life-cycle approaches are concepts that are getting increased attention worldwide and in particular in EU Policies related to sustainability. The European Commission is launching a number of activities to strengthen life-cycle thinking in policy and business. EU policies aim to decrease waste generation through new waste prevention initiatives, better use of resources and shift to more sustainable consumption patterns. The approach to waste management is based on three principles: waste prevention, recycling and reuse and improving the final disposal and monitoring. In particular, concerning the prevention and recycling of waste, the definition of a waste hierarchy should be the basis for the prioritisation of waste management options. The benefit of using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in analysing waste management systems is the provision of a comprehensive view of the processes and impacts involved. However, it is also clear that the studies will always be open for criticism as they are simplifications of reality. Moreover, in order to become the LCA, a leading tool within businesses and government to understand and manage risks or opportunities related to waste management and treatment technologies, there are methodological choices required and a number of aspects that still need to be worked out. It is therefore important to review open and grey literatures, EU guidelines, relevant environmental indicators and databases for the waste sector and data easily usable in waste policy decision-making, with an agreed approach and methodology based on life-cycle thinking. The following survey gathers and describes the existing guidelines and methodologies based on life-cycle thinking and applicable in waste policy decision-making. Main features This survey is focused on three main issues: definition and categorisation of waste streams and technologies; review and interpretation of existing waste-specific guidelines and tools; identification of specific key environmental performance indicators for the waste sector. Considering that a wide part of municipal solid waste is biodegradable and that their degradation is the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions in the waste management sector, considerable attention has been paid to biodegradable municipal waste. Results The survey shows that general technical guidance documents should take into account the following key issues: how to categorise waste streams, how to develop a waste hierarchy from a life-cycle point of view, how to include any possible new waste treatment technologies and to take into account local and waste-related factors. Moreover, the survey summarises the generic/default values that could be used for waste-related key parameters when insufficient information/data are available. The survey identifies some key environmental performance indicators in the waste sector. The analysis of existing waste-specific guidelines and tools leads to a list of available methodologies and foreground/background environmental data sources that satisfy specific data constraints (origin, time-related coverage, geographical coverage, technology coverage). Discussion The survey points out the need for strategic guidance documents for policy makers with quantitative examples to define the waste hierarchy. Depending on the characteristics of the specific cluster or area, such as climate, population density, etc., these documents should be integrated with quantitative considerations related to cost and social dimension, as complementary information to the environmental aspects of sustainability in waste management in order to address the preferable options to be considered for the definition of a local waste hierarchy. Conclusions The survey shows that a considerable number of decision models and methodologies for the integration of life-cycle thinking into waste management have been developed for several waste streams and waste-management and treatment technologies. This leads to the need of a critical analysis of the existing guidelines and tools. Perspectives A survey of life-cycle approaches in waste management has been presented in this paper. The analysis of specific waste streams and the integration of different environmental tools supporting the choice between different waste-treatment options could be taken into consideration for further work.Background, aims, and scope In this study, we focused on the biomass di-methyl ether (Bio-DME) and the biomass methanol (Bio-MeOH) in BTL (Biomass to Liquid) fuels which might bring a solution on an energy storage and/or CO(2) emissions abatement. For these fuels, our object is to estimate CO(2) emissions and energy intensities (the specific energy consumption in each sub-process) for the biomass liquefaction system, which is expanded to material's transportation, energy conversion and fuel transportation in detail. Materials and methods In this paper, we estimated life cycle inventories (CO(2) emissions and energy intensities) on Bio-DME and Bio-MeOH using the bottom-up methodology. The system boundary consists of the pre-processing, the biomass liquefaction process and the fuel transportation. In order to evaluate the uncertainties in the pre-processing, the moisture content of biomass materials and the transportation distance to the plant were considered by the Monte Carlo simulation. Also, in the energy conversion process, our system is built up by gasification through the BLUE Tower (BT) process, with the liquefaction process. In addition, in the fuel transportation, we assumed that the liquefied fuel (Bio-DME/Bio-MeOH) was delivered to the end-users at a distance of 209 km round trip. Results First, the assumptions for estimation of CO(2) emissions and energy intensities in the pre-processing were as follows: The biomass materials are the waste products from Japanese Cedar. Also, the uncertainties of moisture content and transportation distance are assumed to be 20 to 50 wt.% and 5 to 50 km, respectively. In the case that the reaction temperature and the pressure in the liquefaction plant were 210-290 degrees C and 2.0-5.0 MPaA of DME/MeOH synthesis, the production rate of DME is 37,634 to 44,912 GJ/yr, and that of MeOH was 30,562 to 39,865 GJ/yr. These production rates are used as functional units of CO(2) emissions and energy intensities. Under these operational conditions, CO(2) emissions for the entire system are 42.3-64.6 g-CO(2)/MJ-Fuel of Bio-DME, and 48.3-77.7 g-CO(2)/MJ-Fuel of Bio-MeOH, respectively. Also, energy intensities are 1.22-1.65 MJ/MJ-Fuel of Bio-DME, and 1.42-2.03 MJ/MJ-Fuel of Bio-MeOH, respectively. Discussion The effects on the operation conditions of temperature and pressure were as follows: In general, in the liquefaction synthesis, a good result (the liquefied fuel at a higher efficiency) is obtained as the pressure would be increased. Also, the temperature to encourage the reaction well is required to some extent. The specific CO(2) emissions would decrease as the temperature drops. Note that the minimum temperature of DME or MeOH synthesis is at least 210-220 degrees C. Meanwhile, CO(2) emissions would decrease as the pressure increases. However, in the case of Bio-DME fuel, CO(2) emissions would be slightly worse. This implies that the production rate is not ideal, compared to the total energy consumption. In all conditions we analyzed, Bio-DME/MeOH production indicated that energy intensities were lower than 2.0 MJ/MJ-Fuel, and that there was a potential to mitigate CO(2) emissions. Conclusion We focused on a small gasification-liquefaction plant from the perspective of biomass resources distribution. Although this circumstance might be unique to Japan, the plant scale for the biomass energy use would not be able to expand. Nowadays, the fuel of biomass to liquid (BTL)is exceedingly being counted on as a promising fuel, so as to reduce CO(2) emissions. However, when considering the collection area of biomass resources, the moisture content, the plant scale and the auxiliary power, it is implied that BioMeOH/DME does not always reduce CO(2) emissions on an LCA basis, compared to a conventional plant. Recommendations and perspectives The LCA of the small scale biomass energy system we treated in our study is extremely significant to build a sustainable biomass energy system, since we presume that the utilization of biomass resources would compete with other strategies such as food production, etc. For future work, the feasibility studies on the wheel efficiency and/or the investigation of demand of DME/MeOH will be required from the perspectives of a diversity of energy sources, and/or alternative fuels use.Background, aim and scope Fly ash, a by-product of coal-fired power stations, is substituted for Portland cement to improve the properties of concrete and reduce the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Much of the world's fly ash is currently disposed of as a waste product. While replacing some Portland cement with fly ash can reduce production costs and the embodied emissions of concrete, the relationship between fly ash content and embodied GHG emissions in concrete has not been quantified. The impact of fly ash content on embodied water is also unknown. Furthermore, it is not known whether a global trade in fly ash for use in concrete is feasible from a carbon balance perspective, or if transport over long distances would eliminate any CO(2) savings. This paper aims to quantify GHG emissions and water embodied in concrete (f'(c)= 32 MPa) as a function of fly ash content and to determine the critical fly ash transportation distance, beyond which use of fly ash in concrete increases embodied GHG emissions. Materials and methods This paper used previously published and reported data for GHG emissions and water usage in cement production, quarries, transportation and concrete batching to quantify the embodied GHG emissions (CO(2)-equivalent) and water in concrete and the critical transportation distance for fly ash. Results Fly ash content alone is not a good indicator of embodied emissions in concrete; increasing fly ash content only reduces embodied emissions when there is a corresponding reduction in the mass of Portland cement used. The total embodied GHG emissions in concrete (GHG(concrete), kg CO(2)-equivalent m(-3)) can be determined from the mass of Portland cement used (mass(cement), t m(-3)): GHG(concrete)= 66+790.7 masscement. This equation can be used to determine the reduction in Portland cement required to meet specific GHG emissions targets for concrete, if the Portland cement is replaced by fly ash sourced within 100 km of a concrete batching plant. Fly ash content has little effect on embodied water, which was 2.7-4.1 m(3) water per cubic metre of concrete. Discussion Fly ash can be transported more than 11,000 km by articulated truck, 47,000 km by rail and 54,000 km by sea and still result in a net reduction in GHG emissions if used to replace Portland cement in concrete. At least 70% of GHG emissions embodied in concrete were due to cement production, even for fly ash content as high as 40%. Aggregate production accounted for 17-25% of embodied GHG emissions. While transport of concrete from batching plant to site represented only 3-5% of GHG emissions, this distance is subject to wide variability and hence can be a source of variation in total embodied GHG emissions. Water used in quarrying aggregate is both the largest and the most variable quantity of water used in concrete production, and accounted for at least 89% of water consumption for all mix designs considered in this study. Conclusions While this study used values applicable to Brisbane, Australia, results are presented in a generalised form for ready adaptation to other conditions, for example different distances to raw materials sources, transport emissions factors, etc. Recommendations and perspectives A global trade in fly ash has the potential to reduce GHG emissions embodied in concrete, if the fly ash is used to reduce the consumption of Portland cement per cubic metre of concrete. Increasing fly ash usage under these conditions will reduce both the volume of fly ash disposal and the GHG emissions from the concrete industry. Efforts to reduce water consumption in the concrete industry should focus on quarrying processes, and on finding replacement materials with lower embodied water, which may include recycled aggregate. While this study has quantified the GHG emissions and water embodied in concrete as a function of fly ash content, a full life cycle study of concrete is required to determine the full impact of substituting fly ash for Portland cement. Structural characteristics, life span and operational requirements of concrete should also be considered in any decision to alter cement and fly ash content.Background, aim and scope As a food exporting nation, New Zealand recognises that the Global Warming Potential (GWP) impact of agriculture has become important to food customers. Food production policy and industry analysts make GWP decisions based on greenhouse gas inventory and life cycle assessment (LCA) results. For decision making, the level of confidence associated with information is important. However, treatment of uncertainty has been problematic in LCA, especially in agricultural systems. In this paper, the GWP of 1 kg of milk was used as a case study to test the feasibility of quantifying uncertainties by Monte Carlo simulation in an LCA applied to an agriculture product. The study also contributes to the development of good practice and has implications for the incorporation of uncertainties into decision making. Materials and methods We distinguished between three sources of variation. First, there is variability amongst basic units such as dairy cattle, soils and farm characteristics which may be quantified by the standard deviation (SD). Second, there is uncertainty about true population means, which is typically provided by a sample and can be measured by the standard error of the mean (SEM). Third, choices, such as the time horizon for computing GWP, can strongly affect the LCA outcomes. The first two sources were analysed by compiling input variable statistics and undertaking Monte Carlo numerical simulations. The third source of variation was quantified by sensitivity analysis. Results Up to the farm-gate stage, the mean GWP of 1 kg of milk (computed over 100 years) was 0.96 kg CO(2)-eq. The associated SD was 38% of the mean when using the SD of input variables (and called "variability") and 7% when using the SEM (and called "uncertainty"). The GWP was most sensitive to uncertainty of pasture dry matter intake by grazing cattle. The second and third key input variables were the cattle excreta nitrous oxide emission factor and the enteric fermentation methane emission factor, respectively. Changing the GWP from a 100-year computation to one of 20 years corresponded to GWP increasing by 92%, while for a change from 100 to 500 years GWP declined by 54%. Discussion Data compilation for the uncertainty analyses was challenging because the measurements available were made over smaller time and space scales than ideal, so observations had to be generalised and data gaps filled by expert judgement. Uncertainty analysis using the SEM of input variables was considered most adapted in LCA, so it is recommended as best practice. Identification of the key parameters responsible for uncertainty in the LCA revealed knowledge gaps where research should be directed, such as for methane digestion and nitrous oxide emissions from N excreted by ruminants. Moreover, richer information for those key parameters could be used to build a typology of more meaningful simulations instead of a single, virtual average for analysing environmental impacts of the agricultural system. Conclusions The use of Monte Carlo simulations for uncertainty and sensitivity analyses of LCA estimates for an agricultural product was feasible and recommendations were made. Developing a typology of realistic simulations based on the key parameters identified in the sensitivity analysis could provide decision makers with more information. Furthermore, in comparative LCA studies, a probabilistic framework provides further information including the statistical significance of differences between technological options. This would represent considerable progress for the decision-making process. Recommendations and perspectives We recommend that uncertainty information such as SEM, when available, be part of inventory data for agriculture systems in public reports and databases including assessment of its statistical meaning and consistency.Background, aim, and scope Nowadays, various crops are cultivated to supply emerging needs in sustainable fuels and materials. In addition to the development of crop processing technologies, cultivation processes in a cropping system could be modified to meet the emerging needs, along with the conventional needs in food supply. This study provides a decision tool for modifications in cultivation of crops based on life cycle assessment. Sugarcane cultivation in Taiwan is chosen as a case study to present such a decision tool, because it is an important potential indigenous resource for energy (for example, bio-ethanol) and materials (for example, bio-plastics). First, this study presents the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production of 1 ton of sugarcane in Taiwan, which makes it possible to understand how it is consistent to develop this bio-resource in terms of both objectives: i.e., resource security and reduction of global warming impact. Next, sensitivity of the parameters in cropping systems, such as amount of irrigation, fertilization and tillage are assessed from a viewpoint of GHG emissions, using the LCI model constructed in the first step. Finally, equivalent impact level (EIL) lines are presented for some important parameters in the cropping system to support considerations in modification of agricultural methods. Because the objective is to discuss parameters in cultivation processes, the scope of study is limited to cradle-to-gate of raw sugarcane transported to the cane processing plant. Materials and methods In addition to GHG emissions from cultivation processes, such as soil preparation, growing, harvesting and transportation, auxiliary processes such as agrochemicals production, power generation and fossil diesel fuel refining was accounted for. To quantify the nitrous oxide emission from the soil ecosystem, a denitrification-decomposition (DNDC) model was used with the localized data obtained in this study. EIL lines were developed aiming at supporting decisions about modifying agricultural methods that should be made considering consequential changes in environmental impacts. For example, if the envisioned improvement in yield as a result of modification of parameters such as irrigation, tillage and fertilization is likely to achieve a value above the EIL line, GHG emission per ton of sugarcane would be decreased. An iterative procedure is applied to draw nonlinear EIL lines using Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 3 method for nitrous oxide emission from soil. Results A 3 year crop cycle was assumed, and the net GHG emissions associated with the sugarcane produced was 280 kg-CO2-equiv. per ton of raw sugarcane. The emission of nitrous oxide from soil during cultivation accounted for 50.4% of the total emissions. One-at-a-time sensitivity analysis indicates that this result is most sensitive to yield and amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied, which are correlated to each other. The EIL lines were drawn for yield over five parameters in cultivation including amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied with respect to GHG emission. For example, if an additional 5% of nitrogen fertilizer application realizes enhancement of yield by 5 tons per hectare, such modification simultaneously reduces total GHGs associated with sugarcane production. Discussion The EIL lines drawn with respect to various environmental impacts aims to provide a simple-to-use guidance in reconsideration of agricultural options. The cradle-to-gate LCA of sugarcane provides information useful in development of bioethanol and bioplastics derived from sucrose in the cane juice. In doing so, it must be noted, if extension of farm area is among the options to be assessed, that release of the carbon stock from the original state of use should be accounted for in addition to the result presented in this study. Absorbed CO2 should be quantified separately based on the content of the sugarcane, which could be varied for different cultivars. Conclusions This study presents a decision tool to allow introduction of an environmental life cycle perspective in modification of cultivation methods, which has already been undergoing as driven by economic reasons. The data and inventory method presented in this study can be applied for varied end products derived from sugarcane. The algorithm to develop an EIL line for correlated parameters in the inventory model was presented. Recommendations and perspectives Results from this study require appropriate modification if they are to be used for studies for other regions. Such modifications would be straightforward, because all inventory data and assumptions are presented in this paper. Essentially, the functional unit used in this study is unit amount (by weight) of sugarcane. If some specific content (for example, sucrose or cellulose) is important in a study which attempts to use results from this study, variations in the content over cultivation methods and cultivar of sugarcane must be investigated further.Background, aim, and scope Brazil is the world's largest orange producing country, with a total planted area of more than 820,000 hectares. The bulk of the oranges produced in Brazil (70%) is processed into frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ) by large processing companies. Exports represent around 97% of the total FCOJ produced, making Brazil the largest world producer and exporter of FCOJ. The Brazilian citrus sector accounts for half of the world's supply of orange juice and for 80% of the juice traded on the international market. The goal of this study is to characterize the Brazilian orange producers in terms of farm size, cultivated varieties, watering system and tillage practices. In addition, the study presents some aspects of the LCI of oranges grown specifically for the production of FCOJ in the two major orange-growing areas in Brazil (the Northern and Southern regions of the State of Sao Paulo) during reference crop year 2002/03 in order to generate detailed production inventory data and identify the potential environmental impacts of tillage, both of which are key to enable the formulation of sustainability parameters for the production of FCOJ in Brazil. Methods This study was performed in compliance with the guidelines and requirements of the ISO 14040 standard series. All information and data considered and evaluated in this study (the use of water, energy, fertilizers, pesticides and soil correctors) were gathered through in-depth questionnaires either filled in directly by the farm manager or completed by the farm manager and sent in by mail. The data cover a total of 367,200 metric tons of oranges produced by 4 million plants in commercial production from a total evaluated area that accounts for 19.5% of the overall production of oranges in the State of Sao Paulo. The two major orange-producing areas in Brazil located respectively in the Northern and Southern regions of the State of Sao Paulo were evaluated. Only the inputs and outputs associated with tillage practices and technology were considered in this paper. The environmental aspects of the production of fertilizers and pesticides were not included within the boundaries. The functional unit selected for this study was 1,000 kg of oranges for FCOJ. Farm-specific data have been combined with agricultural production data to construct an orange cultivation model. Results The orange varieties for the production of FCOJ evaluated in this study were Pera, Valencia and Natal. The farms investigated had a cultivated area varying from 22 to 7,000 ha, with a plant density ranging from 170 to 500 plants/ha and an average yield of 30,500 kg/ha for mature trees. Depending on the region, the production of 1,000 kg of oranges requires approx. 120 to 4,400 MJ of energy; 0.3 to 36 kg of diesel; 1,100 to 54,500 kg of water for irrigation; 0.3 to 65 kg of fertilizers (NPK); 0.1 to 13.5 kg of pesticides; 8 to 650 kg of soil correctors. The distribution of some inputs across the farms located in the two main Brazilian orange-producing regions is presented, in addition to the total weighted average. Discussion In addition to the variations among the regions evaluated, it was generally observed that there were very considerable differences in order of magnitude between the data collected from farms located in the same region. Although the inputs are directly related to the specific characteristics of each farm and the climatic and topographic conditions of its location, this study has identified some farms that are in a good position to reduce the amounts of some inputs and enhance their environmental and economical performance. Conclusions Taking into account the aspects evaluated in this study, only 21% of the orange growers showed good performance, i.e., consumption of pesticides, fertilizers and soil correction compounds equal to or lower than the weighted averages, except for "land use", which was above the average for the majority of these farms. This study provided important results that allow for a better understanding of the agricultural practices involved and the potential environmental impacts of this product. Recommendation and perspective The authors would like to suggest that the five best-performing farms average values be set as the maximum allowable level and point of departure for the discussion on the good environmental performance of Brazilian FCOJ. Besides the total inputs, the role of good agricultural practices to achieve good yields and, at the same time, improve the sustainability of orange growing should also be taken into consideration. Future updates of this study will show the evolution of natural resource management as a result of improved land use, new agricultural practices, reduced use of fertilizers and agrochemicals.Background, aim, and scope Impact assessment can be completed with the help of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) as a part of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and External Cost Assessment methods. These methods help, for project and product classifications, to protect human health and the environment. Comparison of different impact assessment methods along parallel evaluations of real air pollution case studies helps to detect similarities and dependencies between them. The comparison helps and supports the work in both areas by mutually exploiting the merits of both methods. On the other hand, the detected similarities and dependencies also support the accuracy of the assessment work. Materials and methods Two impact assessment methods are compared to detect the dependencies between them. These are: the damage-oriented Life Cycle Impact Assessment method Eco-indicator 99 (EI99) and the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CAFE CBA) carried out within the framework of the Clean Air for Europe Programme of the European Union. Arithmetic comparison of the two methods' impact indicators is carried out in order to show how differently they assess and evaluate the environmental impacts of the same pollutants. Moreover, air pollution inventories of five industrialized cities in Poland are evaluated in parallel with the two impact assessment methods. The uncertainties of the two methods are also considered and Monte Carlo simulations are completed to obtain probability intervals of impact indicators and overall mean values of the generated populations. Results and discussion The arithmetic comparison of the impact indicators shows a strict correlation between the two impact assessment methods. This correlation is confirmed by results of the parallel evaluation of the real case studies. The comparison of the overall mean values obtained by the Monte Carlo simulations also shows a clear dependency between the results of the two impact assessment methods. After detecting the dependencies between the two methods, the best guess values of the EI99 indicator are selected and applied to make a ranking of the air pollutants and their emission sources for an industrialized Polish city. Conclusions It can be concluded that the detected correlation between the two methods (EI99 and CAFE CBA) supports and helps the accuracy of the impact assessment. If the uncertainties of the methods are also considered, it is proved for the examples of real case studies that they correlate in their results. On the other hand, the best guess of the EI99 indicators can be used to rank emissions according to their relative damage to human health and the ecosystem, and to locate emission sources. These results help decision-makers to conclude an efficient environmental conscious policy.Background, aim, and scope An inclusion of traffic noise effects could change considerably the overall results of many life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. However, at present, noise effects are usually not considered in LCA studies, mainly because the existing methods for their inclusion do not fulfill the requirement profile. Two methods proposed so far seem suitable for inclusion in generic life cycle inventory (LCI) databases, and a third allows for inter-modal comparison. The aim of this investigation is an in-depth analysis of the existing methods and the proposition of a framework for modeling road transport noise emissions in LCI in accordance to the requirement profile postulated in part 1. Materials and methods This paper analyzes three methods for inclusion of traffic noise in LCA (Danish LCA guide method, Swiss EPA method, and Swiss FEDRO method) in detail. The additional basis for the analysis are the Swiss road traffic emission model "SonRoad," traffic volume measurements at 444 sites in the Swiss road network, vehicle-type-specific noise measurements in free floating traffic situations in Germany, and noise emission measurements from different tires. Results The Danish LCA guide method includes a major flaw that cannot be corrected within the methodological concept. It applies a dose-response function valid for average noise levels of a traffic situation to maximum noise levels of single vehicles. The Swiss FEDRO method is based on an inappropriate assumption since it bases distinctions of specific vehicles on data that do not allow for such a distinction. Noise emissions cannot be distinguished by the make and type of a vehicle since other factors, especially the tires, are dominant for noise emissions. Several problems are also identified in the Swiss EPA method, but they are not of a fundamental nature. Thus, we are able to base a new framework for vehicle and context-sensitive inclusion of road traffic noise emissions in LCI on the Swiss EPA method. We show how specific vehicle classes can be distinguished, how the influence of different tires can be dealt with, and what temporal and spatial aspects of traffic need to be distinguished. Discussion While the Danish LCA guide method and the Swiss FEDRO method are not suitable for our purpose, the Swiss EPA method can be used as a basis to better meet the requirement profile identified in Part 1 of this paper. The proposed method for consistent, context-sensitive modeling of noise emissions from road transports in LCI meets all the requirements except that it is restricted to road transport. Conclusions We show limitations of the existing methods and approaches for improving them. Our proposed model allows for a more specific consideration of the various vehicles and contexts in terms of space and time and thus in terms of speed and traffic volume. This can be used on one hand for a consistent, context sensitive assessment of different vehicles in different traffic situations. On the other hand, it also allows for an inclusion of noise in LCA of transports on which only very little is known. This new LCI model meets five of the six requirements postulated in Part 1. Recommendations and perspectives In a next step, additional noise emissions due to additional traffic needs to be calculated based on the proposed framework and national or regional traffic models. Furthermore, the consideration of noise from different traffic modes should be addressed. The approach presented needs to be extended in order to make it also applicable for rail and air traffic noise, and the methods need to be implemented in LCI databases to make them easily available to practitioners. Furthermore, suitable impact assessment methods need to be identified or developed. They could base on the proposals made in the Swiss EPA and in the Swiss FEDRO methods.Retrofit process design can be seen as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem aiming at selecting the best alternative for improving the performance of a chemical process. There is a growing consensus that environmental considerations, including the environmental impact associated with all life cycle stages of materials, should be integrated in chemical process design. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique that allows quantification of those impacts. However, implementing this technique would increase the decision-making complexity and thus would necessitate systematic tools and methods. The analogy between LCA and MCDM has been recognized, but the systematic evaluation of LCA methodological choices and interpretation in this context is rarely discussed. The importance of those is demonstrated in this paper using a case study involving the implementation of de-inked pulp capacity and cogeneration and an integrated newsprint mill. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the energy and carbon balance of two residential house alternatives; a typical wood frame home using more conventional materials (brick cladding, vinyl windows. asphalt shingles, and fibreglass insulation) and a similar wood frame house that also maximizes wood use throughout (cedar shingles and siding, wood windows, and cellulose insulation) in place of the more typical materials used - a wood-intensive house. Carbon emission and fossil fuel consumption balances were established for the two homes based on the cumulative total of three subsystems: (1) forest harvesting and regeneration; (2) cradle-to-gate product manufacturing, construction, and replacement effects over a 100-year service life; and (3) end-of-life effects - landfilling with methane capture and combustion or recovery of biomass for energy production. The net carbon balance of the wood-intensive house showed a complete offset of the manufacturing emissions by the credit given to the system for forest re-growth. Including landfill methane emissions, the wood-intensive life cycle yielded 20 tons of CO(2)e emissions compared to 72 tons for the typical house. The wood-intensive home's life cycle also consumed only 45% of the fossil fuels used in the typical house. Diverting wood materials from the landfill at the end of life improved the life cycle balances of both the typical and wood-intensive houses. The carbon balance of the wood-intensive house was 5.2 tons of CO(2)e permanently removed from the atmosphere (a net carbon sink) as compared to 63.4 of total CO(2)e emissions for the typical house. Substitution of wood fuel for natural gas and coal in electricity production led to a net energy balance of the wood-intensive house that was nearly neutral, 87.1 GJ energy use, 88% lower than the scenario in which the materials were landfilled. Allocating biomass generation and carbon sequestration in the forest on an economic basis as opposed to a mass basis significantly improves the life cycle balances of both houses. Employing an economic allocation method to the forest leads to 3-5 times greater carbon sequestration and fossil fuel substitution attributable to the house, which is doubled in forestry regimes that remove stumps and slash as fuel. Thus, wood use has the potential to create a significantly negative carbon footprint for a house up to the point of occupancy and even offset a portion of heating and cooling energy use and carbon emissions: the wood-intensive house is energy and carbon neutral for 34-68 years in Ottawa and has the potential to be a net carbon sink and energy producer in a more temperate climate like San Francisco. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy requirements and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for current landfilling of municipal solid waste (MSW) was compared to potential biodegradation of MSW in anaerobic digesters (AD) throughout the United States. A hybrid life-cycle analysis was completed to assess the potential for anaerobic biodegradation of MSW to methane, a valuable energy source. Conversion of MSW to methane in AD would generate a form of renewable energy, reduce GHG emissions, and save landfill space for nonbiodegradable materials. Based on laboratory-and pilot-scale studies conducted in the United States, full-scale data from facilities in Europe, and economic input-output life-cycle analysis, the annual 127 million t of MSW landfilled in the United States could be biologically converted to 5.9 billion m(3) of methane. Net methane production would have an estimated value of $1.5 billion/year when converted to an equivalent amount of electricity at an assumed value of $0.1/kWh. The 15 billion kWh/year of renewable energy released through the biodegradation process is estimated to satisfy the annual consumption of 1.3 million United States households. The analysis also suggests that diversion of MSW from landfills to AD systems would result in GHG emissions reductions of 146 million t CO(2)e per year, due to decreased landfill activity and use of biogenic methane instead of fossil fuel for electricity production. This represents a reduction in total emissions of 1.9% compared to U. S. GHG emissions in 2006. Nationwide AD systems are projected to reduce cumulative energy consumption by nearly 15 million TJ and reduce GHG emissions by 7.2 billion t CO(2)e, over a 50-year period. Logistics and capital costs of developing a nationwide reactor-based system for MSW management are considerable. Development of appropriate national policy and incentives would be needed to stimulate such a transition from the current landfill-based system that currently exists. It is estimated that a carbon emissions credit on the order of $30 to $60/t CO(2)e would facilitate break-even economics for nationwide implementation of AD systems. Alternatively, renewable energy credits would enhance the value of electricity produced from AD biogas. Carbon emissions taxes on landfills would further improve the economics of AD systems.This article deals with the evaluation of influence of fossil fuels and bioethanol use on the environment. Only a comprehensive analysis, which takes into consideration the whole "life cycle" of fuel (covering the start-up phase of fuel production, followed with the actual fuel production LIP to the final burn LIP in vehicles) provides an objective impact estimation of a certain fuel type on the environment. The aim of this paper is Familiarization of the readers with the most widely known studies, which deal with life cycle evaluation of impact of fuels Use on the environment. The result of all studies is an assessment of energy consumption and green house gases emission production in the whole life cycle in dependence on the needed energy making process and the secondary product utilization. At the end, there are mentioned the criteria of bio fuel sustainability, which are included in a new directive of the European parliament and of the Council on the subsidize of the use of energy from renewable sources and the list of feedstock (products) and the technological process applied, Which Can ensure an accomplishment of those criteria.Environmental impacts associated to different waste treatments are of interest in the decision-making process at local, regional and international level. However, all the environmental burdens of an organic waste biological treatment are not always considered. Real data on gaseous emissions released from full-scale composting plants are difficult to obtain. These emissions are related to the composting technology and waste characteristics and therefore, an exhaustive sampling campaign is necessary to obtain representative and reliable data of a single plant. This work proposes a methodology to systematically determine gaseous emissions of a composting plant and presents the results obtained in the application of this methodology to a plant treating source-separated organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) for the determination of ammonia and total volatile organic compounds (VOC). Emission factors from the biological treatment process obtained for ammonia and VOC were 3.9 kg Mg OFMSW-1 and 0.206 kg Mg OFMSW-1 respectively. Emissions associated to energy use and production were also quantified (60.5 kg CO2 Mg OFMSW-1 and 0.66 kg VOC Mg OFMSW-1). Other relevant parameters such as energy and water consumption and amount of rejected waste were also determined. A new functional unit is presented to relate emission factors to the biodegradation efficiency of the composting process and consists in the reduction of the Respiration Index of the treated material. Using this new functional unit, the atmospheric emissions released from a composting plant are directly related to the plant specific efficiency. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Use of diesel in collection trucks is presumably the most important environmental burden from waste collection because of the emission of exhaust gases from the combustion process. The environmental impact depends not only on the amount of diesel used, but also the on the cleanness of the exhaust gas that is regulated by emission standards. We measured the diesel consumption for 14 different collection schemes in two municipalities in Denmark, yielding a total of 254 measurements. Collection was defined as driving and loading of waste from the first to the final stop on the collection route. All other distances covered were defined as transport of waste, which was modelled in generic transport simulation models. The diesel consumption per tonne of waste in the specified collection schemes turned out to be related to the type of housing and to the amount of waste collected per stop. The observations showed a considerable variation between different collection schemes, ranging from 1.4-10.1 L diesel tonne(-1) of waste. Assessment of the potential environmental impact by a life-cycle-assessment method showed a substantial decrease over the last decade because of implementation of European emissions standard for diesel trucks. The paper also discusses the importance of energy used for collection and transport in relation to the potential energy savings from waste treatment. In many cases, the net savings exceed significantly the use of diesel.Accounting of emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) is a major focus within waste management. This paper analyses and compares the four main types of GHG accounting in waste management including their special features and approaches: the national accounting, with reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the corporate level, as part of the annual reporting on environmental issues and social responsibility, life-cycle assessment (LCA), as an environmental basis for assessing waste management systems and technologies, and finally, the carbon trading methodology, and more specifically, the clean development mechanism (CDM) methodology, introduced to support cost-effective reduction in GHG emissions. These types of GHG accounting, in principle, have a common starting point in technical data on GHG emissions from specific waste technologies and plants, but the limited availability of data and, moreover, the different scopes of the accounting lead to many ways of quantifying emissions and producing the accounts. The importance of transparency in GHG accounting is emphasised regarding waste type, waste composition, time period considered, GHGs included, global warming potential (GWP) assigned to the GHGs, counting of biogenic carbon dioxide, choice of system boundaries, interactions with the energy system, and generic emissions factors. In order to enhance transparency and consistency, a format called the upstream-operating-downstream framework (UOD) is proposed for reporting basic technology-related data regarding GHG issues including a clear distinction between direct emissions from waste management technologies, indirect upstream (use of energy and materials) and indirect downstream (production of energy, delivery of secondary materials) activities.Global warming potential (GWP) is an important impact category in life-cycle-assessment modelling of waste management systems. However, accounting of biogenic CO2 emissions and sequestered biogenic carbon in landfills and in soils, amended with compost, is carried out in different ways in reported studies. A simplified model of carbon flows is presented for the waste management system and the surrounding industries, represented by the pulp and paper manufacturing industry, the forestry industry and the energy industry. The model calculated the load of C to the atmosphere, under ideal conditions, for 14 different waste management scenarios under a range of system boundary conditions and a constant consumption of C-product (here assumed to be paper) and energy production within the combined system. Five sets of criteria for assigning GWP indices to waste management systems were applied to the same 14 scenarios and tested for their ability to rank the waste management alternatives reflecting the resulting CO2 load to the atmosphere. Two complete criteria sets were identified yielding fully consistent results; one set considers biogenic CO2 as neutral, the other one did not. The results showed that criteria for assigning global warming contributions are partly linked to the system boundary conditions. While the boundary to the paper industry and the energy industry usually is specified in LCA studies, the boundary to the forestry industry and the interaction between forestry and the energy industry should also be specified and accounted for.The energy system plays an essential role in accounting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from waste management systems and waste technologies. This paper focuses on energy use and energy recovery in waste management and outlines how these aspects should be addressed consistently in a GHG perspective. Essential GHG emission data for the most common fuels, electricity and heat are provided. Average data on electricity provision show large variations from country to country due to different fuels being used and different efficiencies for electricity production in the individual countries (0.007-1.13 kg CO2-eq.kWh(-1)). Marginal data on electricity provision show even larger variations (0.004-3 kg CO2-eq.kWh(-1)). Somewhat less variation in GHG emissions is being found for heat production (0.01-0.69 kg CO2-eq.kWh(-1)). The paper further addresses allocation principles and the importance of applying either average or marginal energy data, and it discusses the consequences of introducing reduction targets on CO2 emissions. All discussed aspects were found to significantly affect the outcome of GHG accounts suggesting transparent reporting to be critical. Recommendations for use of average/marginal energy data are provided.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been established for recycling of paper waste with focus on a material recovery facility (MRF). The MRF upgrades the paper and cardboard waste before it is delivered to other industries where new paper or board products are produced. The accounting showed that the GHG contributions from the upstream activities and operational activities, with global warming factors (GWFs) of respectively 1 to 29 and 3 to 9 kg CO2-eq.tonne(-1) paper waste, were small in comparison wih the downstream activities. The GHG contributions from the downstream reprocessing of the paper waste ranged from approximately 490 to 1460 kg CO2-eq.tonne(-1) of paper waste. The system may be expanded to include crediting of avoided virgin paper production which would result in GHG contributions from -1270 to 390 kg CO2-eq.tonne(-1) paper waste. It may also be assumed that the wood not used for virgin paper production instead is used for production of energy that in turn is assumed to substitute for fossil fuel energy. This would result in GHG contributions from -1850 to -4400 kg CO2-eq.tonne(-1) of paper waste. These system expansions reveal very large GHG savings, suggesting that the indirect upstream and operational GHG contributions are negligible in comparison with the indirect downstream emissions. However, the data for reprocessing of paper waste and the data for virgin paper production are highly variable. These differences are mainly related to different energy sources for the mills, both in regards to energy form (heat or electricity) and fuel (biomass or fossil fuels).The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the recycling of wood waste have been assessed with the purpose to provide useful data that can be used in accounting of greenhouse gas emissions. Here we present data related to the activities in a material recovery facility (MRF) where wood waste is shredded and foreign objects are removed in order to produce wood chips for use in the production of particleboard. The data are presented in accordance with the UOD (upstream, operational, downstream) framework presented in Gentil et al. (Waste Management & Research, 27, 2009). The GHG accounting shows that the emissions related to upstream activities (5 to 41 kg CO2-equivalents tonne(-1) wood waste) and to activities at the MRF (approximately 5 kg CO2-equivalents tonne(-1) wood waste) are negligible compared to the downstream processing (-560 to -120 kg CO2-equivalents tonne-1 wood waste). The magnitude of the savings in GHG emissions downstream are mainly related to savings in energy consumption for drying of fresh wood for particleboard production. However, the GHG account highly depends on the choices made in the modelling of the downstream system. The inclusion of saved electricity from avoided chipping of virgin wood does not change the results radically (-665 to -125 kg CO2-equivalents tonne(-1) wood waste). However, if in addition it is assumed that the GHG emissions from combustion of wood has no global warming potential (GWP) and that the energy produced from excess wood due to recycling substitutes energy from fossil fuels, here assumed to be coal, potentially large downstream GHG emissions savings can be achieved by recycling of waste wood (-1.9 to -1.3 tonnes CO2-equivalents tonne(-1) wood waste). As the data ranges are broad, it is necessary to carefully evaluate the feasibility of the data in the specific system which the GHG accounting is to be applied to.The global warming factor (GWF; CO2-eq. tonne(-1) waste) performance of municipal waste management has been investigated for six representative European Member States: Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Poland and the United Kingdom. The study integrated European waste statistical data for 2007 in a life-cycle assessment modelling perspective. It is shown that significant GWF benefit was achieved due to the high level of energy and material recovery substituting fossil energy and raw materials production, especially in Denmark and Germany. The study showed that, despite strong regulation of waste management at European level, there are major differences in GWF performance among the member states, due to the relative differences of waste composition, type of waste management technologies available nationally, and the average performance of these technologies. It has been demonstrated through a number of sensitivity analyses that, within the national framework, key waste management technology parameters can influence drastically the national GWF performance of waste management.In an effort to obtain the most accurate climate change impact assessment, greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting is evolving to include life-cycle thinking. This study (1) identifies similarities and key differences between GHG accounting and life-cycle assessment (LCA), (2) compares them on a consistent basis through a case study on a waste management business unit. First, GHG accounting is performed. According to the GHG Protocol, annual emissions are categorized into three scopes: direct GHG emissions (scope 1), indirect emissions related to electricity, heat and steam production (scope 2) and other indirect emissions (scope 3). The LCA is then structured into a comparable framework: each LCA process is disaggregated into these three scopes, the annual operating activities are assessed, and the environmental impacts are determined using the IMPACT2002+ method. By comparing these two approaches it is concluded that both LCA and GHG accounting provide similar climate change impact results as the same major GHG contributors are determined for scope 1 emissions. The emissions from scope 2 appear negligible whereas emissions from scope 3 cannot be neglected since they contribute to around 10% of the climate change impact of the waste management business unit. This statement is strengthened by the fact that scope 3 generates 75% of the resource use damage and 30% of the ecosystem quality damage categories. The study also shows that LCA can help in setting up the framework for a annual GHG accounting by determining the major climate change contributors.Global warming is a focus of political interest and life-cycle assessment of waste management systems reveals that energy recovery from municipal solid waste is a key issue. This paper demonstrates how the greenhouse gas effects of waste treatment processes can be described in a simplified manner by considering energy efficiency indicators. For evaluation to be consistent, it is necessary to use reasonable system boundaries and to take the generation of electricity and the use of heat into account. The new European R1 efficiency criterion will lead to the development and implementation of optimized processes/systems with increased energy efficiency which, in turn, will exert an influence on the greenhouse gas effects of waste management in Europe. Promising technologies are: the increase of steam parameters, reduction of in-plant energy consumption, and the combined use of heat and power. Plants in Brescia and Amsterdam are current examples of good performance with highly efficient electricity generation. Other examples of particularly high heat recovery rates are the energy-from-waste (EfW) plants in Malmo and Gothenburg. To achieve the full potential of greenhouse gas reduction in waste management, it is necessary to avoid landfilling combustible wastes, for example, by means of landfill taxes and by putting incentives in place for increasing the efficiency of EfW systems.The Swedish Armed Forces have large stocks of ammunition that were produced at a time when decommissioning was not considered. This ammunition will eventually become obsolete and must be destroyed, preferably with minimal impact on the environment and in a safe way for personnel. The aim of this paper is to make a comparison of the environmental impacts in a life cycle perspective of three different methods of decommissioning/destruction of ammunition, and to identify the environmental advantages and disadvantages of each of these destruction methods: open detonation; static kiln incineration with air pollution control combined with metal recycling, and a combination of incineration with air pollution control, open burning, recovery of some energetic material and metal recycling. Data used are for the specific processes and from established LCA databases. Recycling the materials in the ammunition and minimising the spread of airborne pollutants during incineration were found to be the most important factors affecting the life cycle environmental performance of the compared destruction methods. Open detonation with or without metal recycling proved to be the overall worst alternative from a life cycle perspective. The results for the static kiln and combination treatment indicate that the kind of ammunition and location of the destruction plant might determine the choice of method, since the environmental impacts from these methods are of little difference in the case of this specific grenade. Different methods for destruction of ammunition have previously been discussed from a risk and safety perspective. This is however to our knowledge the first study looking specifically on environmentally aspect in a life cycle perspective. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Corporate approaches to improve environmental performance cannot be undertaken in isolation. so a concerted effort along the supply chain (SC) entities is needed which poses another important challenge to managers. This work addresses the optimization of SC planning and design considering economical and environmental issues. The strategic decisions considered in the model are facility location, processing technology selection and production-distribution planning. A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is envisaged to incorporate the environmental aspects of the model. IMPACT 2002+ methodology is selected to perform the impact assessment within the SC thus providing a feasible implementation of a combined midpoint-endpoint evaluation. The proposed approach reduces the value-subjectivity inherent to the assignment of weights in the calculation of an overall environmental impact by considering endpoint damage categories as objective function. Additionally, the model performs an impact mapping along the comprising SC nodes and activities. Such mapping allows to focus financial efforts to reduce environmental burdens to the most promising subjects. Furthermore, consideration of CO2 trading scheme and temporal distribution of environmental interventions are also included with the intention of providing a tool that may be utilized to evaluate current regulatory policies or pursue more effective ones. The mathematical formulation of this problem becomes a multi-objective MILP (moMILP). Criteria selected for the objective function are damage categories impacts, overall impact factor and net present value (NPV). Main advantages of this model are highlighted through a realistic case study of maleic anhydride SC production and distribution network. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analysed a future hypothetical organic farm self-sufficient in renewable tractor fuel. Biomass from the farm was assumed to be transported to a central fuel production plant and the fuel returned to the farm, where it was utilised in fuel cell powered tractors. The land use, energy balance and environmental impact of five different scenarios were studied. In the first two scenarios, straw was used as raw material for production of hydrogen or methanol via thermochemical gasification. In the third and fourth scenarios, short rotation forest (Salix) was used as raw material for the same fuels. In the fifth scenario, ley was used as raw material for hydrogen fuel via biogas production. The straw scenarios had the lowest impact in all studied environmental impact categories since the Salix scenarios had higher soil emissions and the ley scenario had comparatively large emissions from the fuel production. The energy balance was also favourable for straw, 16.3 and 19.5 for hydrogen and methanol respectively, compared to Salix 14,2 and 15.6. For ley to hydrogen the energy balance was only 6.1 due to low efficiency in the fuel production. In the Salix scenarios, 1.6% and 2.0% of the land was set aside for raw material production in the hydrogen and methanol scenarios respectively. In the straw scenarios no land needed to be reserved, but straw was collected on 4.3% and 5.3% of the area for hydrogen and methanol respectively. To produce hydrogen from ley, 4% of the land was harvested. The study showed that the difference in environmental performance lay in choice of raw material rather than choice of fuel. Hydrogen is a gas with low volumetric energy density, which requires an adapted infrastructure and tractors equipped with gas tanks. This leads to the conclusion that methanol probably will be the preferred choice if a fuel cell powered farm would be put into practice in the future. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study uses the life cycle assessment methodology to analyze the type and origin of environmental impacts related to natural gas distribution networks in high and low density neighborhoods, and compares the environmental performance of two infrastructures in low density neighborhoods: a standard natural gas grid and a discontinuous system based on propane tanks. The results show that the impact per dwelling in the environmental categories studied is between 1.9 and 4.8 times higher in a low density neighborhood, depending on the impact category. Besides, in high density areas the main impact originates from components and materials related to the buildings and dwellings, whereas in low density areas the main impact originates on the neighborhood network. Given this last result, the advisability of substituting the neighborhood network by a discontinuous system based on propane tanks has been evaluated, obtaining as a result that when a single neighborhood pipe, longer than I km, is required to reach one user, it is environmentally preferable for all the studied environmental categories to use the propane tank system. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Small-scale distributed cogeneration technologies represent a key resource to increase generation efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions with respect to conventional separate production means. However, the diffusion of distributed cogeneration within urban areas, where air quality standards are quite stringent, brings about environmental concerns on a local level. In addition, partial-load emission worsening is often overlooked. which could lead to biased evaluations of the energy system environmental performance. In this paper, a comprehensive emission assessment framework suitable for addressing distributed cogeneration systems is formulated. Local and global emission impact models are presented to identify upper and lower boundary values of the environmental pressure from pollutants that would be emitted from reference technologies, to be compared to the actual emissions from distributed cogeneration. This provides synthetic information on the relative environmental impact from small-scale CHP sources, useful for general indicative and non-site-specific studies. The emission models are formulated according to an electrical output-based emission factor approach, through which off-design operation and relevant performance are easily accounted for. In particular, in order to address the issues that could arise under off-design operation, an equivalent load model is incorporated within the proposed framework. by exploiting the duration curve of the cogenerator loading and the emissions associated to each loading level. In this way, it is possible to quantify the contribution to the emissions from cogeneration systems that might operate at partial loads for a significant portion of their operation time, as for instance in load-tracking applications. Suitability of the proposed methodology is discussed with respect to hazardous air pollutants such as NOx and CO, as well as to greenhouse gases such as CO2. Two case study applications based on the emission data of real microturbines are illustrated in order to highlight the effectiveness of the proposed assessment techniques. The numerical results exemplify the emission impact of distributed cogeneration systems operating under general and realistic loading conditions with respect to average and state-of-the-art conventional technologies. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microgeneration using roof-top wind turbines is at present not common in New Zealand. It is, however, being trialled by the electricity network company, Vector, in a range of urban locations. Limitations of size mean roof-top wind turbines may not satisfy the total energy requirement of New Zealand houses. Ensuring structural stability and complying with stringent noise standards in New Zealand are further issues. In addition, roof-top turbines may be inefficient in terms of net energy and carbon emissions, performance indicators that are fundamental for the adoption of this technology. This paper considers the feasibility of using roof-top wind turbines in urban houses in New Zealand and, using life cycle assessment, evaluates the net energy and carbon emissions associated with their use. The results indicate that the electricity-generating potential of centralised wind farms in New Zealand using large turbines is 11.3-7 times the generating potential of roof-top turbines mounted on urban houses. In spite of this the roof-top turbines that are currently being trialled, could have the potential to reduce the energy and carbon intensity of New Zealand electricity by 81% and 26%, respectively. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A typical office building in Thailand was analyzed using the life cycle energy analysis (LCEA) method to illustrate the argument. Results indicate that although life cycle energy (LCE) distribution is concentrated at the operating phase, the embodied energy of buildings is a non-negligible fraction of the LCE balance. Energy (electricity) used for lighting and HVAC systems in the operation phase and: the manufacture of concrete and steel were the most significant elements in the buildings life cycle. Application of a combination of energy saving measures, showed that 40-50% of energy (electricity) used in a typical office building in Thailand can be saved. Preliminary analysis indicated that recycling building materials can also contribute additional energy savings (about 8.9%) to a buildings LCE profile. Therefore reducing energy consumption should be a priority for not only the operation but also other life cycle phases. It is suggested that both embodied and operating energy should be accounted for within the context of energy efficiency through the incorporation of LCEA into the existing Thai building energy code. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change and energy security require a reduction in travel demand, a modal shift, and technological innovation in the transport sector. Through a series of press releases and demonstrations, a car using energy stored in compressed air produced by a compressor has been suggested as an environmentally friendly vehicle of the future. We analyze the thermodynamic efficiency of a compressed-air car powered by a pneumatic engine and consider the merits of compressed air versus chemical storage of potential energy. Even under highly optimistic assumptions the compressed-air car is significantly less efficient than a battery electric vehicle and produces more greenhouse gas emissions than a conventional gas-powered car with a coal intensive power mix. However, a pneumatic-combustion hybrid is technologically feasible, inexpensive and could eventually compete with hybrid electric vehicles.Greenhouse gases from the combination of land use change and agriculture are responsible for the largest share of global emissions, but are inadequately considered in the current set of international climate policies. Under the Kyoto protocol, emissions generated in the production of agricultural commodities are the responsibility of the producing country, introducing potential inequities if agricultural products are exported. This study quantifies the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of soybeans and beef in the Amazon basin of Brazil, a region where rates of both deforestation and agricultural exports are high. Integrating methods from land use science and life-cycle analysis, and accounting for producer-consumer responsibility, we allocate emissions between Brazil and importing countries with an emphasis on ultimately reducing the greenhouse gas impact of food production. The mechanisms used to distribute the carbon emissions over time allocate the bulk of emissions to the years directly after the land use change occurred, and gradually decrease the carbon allocation to the agricultural products. The carbon liability embodied in soybeans exported from the Amazon between 1990 and 2006 was 128 TgCO(2)e, while 120 TgCO(2)e were embodied in exported beef. An equivalent carbon liability was assigned to Brazil for that time period.Computational logic, in the form of semiconductor chips of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistor structure, is used in personal computers, wireless devices, IT network infrastructure, and nearly all modern electronics. This Study provides a life-cycle energy analysis for CMOS chips over 7 technology generations with the purpose of comparing energy demand and global warming potential (GWP) impacts of the life-cycle stages, examining trends in these impacts over time and evaluating their sensitivity to data uncertainty and changes in production metrics such as yield. A hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) model is used. While life-cycle energy and GWP of emissions have increased on the basis of a wafer or die, these impacts have been reducing per unit of computational power. Sensitivity analysis of the model shows that impacts have the highest relative sensitivity to wafer yield, line yield, and die size and largest absolute sensitivity to the use-phase power demand of the chip.Although the importance of green (evaporative) water flows in delivering ecosystem services has been recognized, most operational impact assessment methods still focus only on blue water flows. In this paper, we present a new model to evaluate the effect of land use occupation and transformation on water quantity. Conceptually based on the supply of ecosystem services by terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, the model is developed for, but not limited to, land use impact assessment in life cycle assessment(LCA) and requires a minimum amount of input data. Impact is minimal when evapotranspiration is equal to that of the potential natural vegetation, and maximal when evapotranspiration is zero or when it exceeds a threshold value derived from die concept of environmental water requirement Three refinements to the model, requiring more input data, are proposed. The first refinement considers a minimal impact over a certain range based on the boundary evapotranspiration of the potential natural vegetation. In the second refinement the effects of evaporation and transpiration are accounted for separately, and in the third refinement a more correct estimate of evaporation from a fully sealed surface is incorporated. The simplicity and user friendliness of the proposed impact assessment method are illustrated with two examples.A model for input- and technology-dependent cradle-to-gate life cycle assessments (LCA) was constructed to quantify emissions and resource consumption of various clinker production options. The model was compiled using data of more than 100 clinker production lines and complemented with literature data and best judgment from experts. It can be applied by the cement industry for the selection of alternative fuels and raw materials (AFR) and by authorities for decision-support regarding the permission of waste co-processing in cement kilns. In the field of sustainable construction, the model can be used to compare clinker production options. Two case studies are presented. First co-processing of four different types of waste is analyzed at a modern precalciner kiln system. Second, clinker production is compared between five kiln systems. Results show that the use of waste (fires, prepared industrial waste, dried sewage sludge, blast furnace slag) led to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, decreased resource consumption, and mostly to reduced aggregated environmental impacts, Regarding the different kiln systems, the environmental impact generally increased with decreasing energy efficiency.In this study, the environmental aspects of H-2 pathways are analyzed according to plausible H-2 production methods, production capacity, and distribution options in Korea, using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The target H-2 pathways analyzed are H-2 via naphtha steam reforming (Naphtha SR), H-2 via natural gas steam reforming (NG SR), H-2 via liquefied petroleum gas steam reforming (LPG SR), H-2 via water electrolysis with wind power (WE[Wind]), and H-2 via water electrolysis with Korea electricity mix (WE[KEM]). The results are then compared with those of conventional fuels (gasoline, diesel, and LPG) to identify which H-2 pathway has less environmental impact than the conventional fuels. Global warming (GW) impact, fossil fuel consumption (FFC) and regulated air emissions are studied to examine the environmental aspects of each fuel pathway. Given that H-2 technologies and infrastructures have yet to be fully commercialized, the environmental aspects of each pathway are analyzed in both their present status and a future scenario in 2015. LCA results show that WE[Wind] is superior regarding global warming potential (GWP), FFC and regulated air emissions. When gasoline is replaced with H-2 from WE[Wind], 99.8% and 99.9% of GWP and FFC can be reduced, respectively. Among the H-2 pathways based on fossil fuels, Naphtha SR[C] has the lowest values of GWP since the CO2 capture equipment is attached to it. On the other hand, Naphtha SR[S] which is the station-type H-2 pathway does not have the CO2 capture equipment. Naphtha SR[C] can reduce CO2 emissions by 23.60 tons compared to gasoline over the entire life cycle of a vehicle. At present, Naphtha SR[C] appears to be environmentally efficient as H-2 conversion and infrastructure technologies have already been commercialized and are suitably developed in Korea. In 2015, however, among the H-2 pathways based on fossil fuels LPG SR[S] is expected to be the best pathway in terms of FFC and regulated air emissions, while Naphtha SR[C) will likely have lowest impact on GW by that time as well. (c) 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although autonomous photovoltaic (PV) systems are identified as renewable energy technologies able to satisfy the electrification needs of remote consumers, they are strongly accused of their life-cycle energy requirements. To support the specific systems' sustainable character one should be able to ensure minimum period of energy pay-back. In this context, an optimum sizing methodology is developed for stand-alone PV-battery systems in order to obtain configurations of minimum energy content. The proposed methodology is applied to three representative islands across the Greek territory and the results obtained are favourably compared with the up to now - commonly used - diesel-electric generator solution. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main purpose of industrial ecology is to evaluate and minimize impacts from economic activities of human society. Tourism as one economic activity, results in a full range of environmental impacts, but few applications of industrial ecology to tourism management have previously been discussed. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used in this research to explore environmental impacts of island tourism, and then the environmental loads per tourist per trip can be found. Penghu Island in Taiwan is taken as an example to examine this new approach. Various environmental loads in transportation, accommodation, and recreation activity sector are all inventoried and calculated here. In summary, per tourist per trip uses 1606 MJ of energy, 607 L of water, and emits 109,034 g of CO2, 2660 g of CO, 597 g of HC, 70 g of NOx. In addition, per tourist per trip also discharges 416 L of waste-water, 83.1 g of BOD, and 1.95 g of solid waste. In terms of energy use, the transportation consumes the largest energy (67%); in particular, the airplane sector. Moreover, per Penghu tourist results in more environmental loads than local people; for example, the amount of solid waste discharge per tourist is 1.95 kg per day, while that of per local people is 1.18 kg. Finally, the advantages and limitations of such LCA approach are also discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When performing life cycle assessment (LCA) assumptions regarding the energy use are often decisive for the outcome. In this paper, current approaches of identifying marginal electricity and heat technologies for consequential LCAs are challenged. The identification of marginal energy technologies is examined from three angles: The marginal electricity technology is identified in Danish historical and potential future energy systems. The methods of identifying and using marginal electricity and heat technologies in key LCA studies are analysed. Finally, the differences in applying energy system analysis and assuming one marginal technology are illustrated, using waste incineration with energy substitution as a case. The main problem with the current approach is the use of one single marginal technology. It is recommended to use fundamentally different affected technologies and identify these in several possible and fundamentally different future scenarios. If possible, the affected technologies should also be identified based on energy system analyses considering the technical characteristics of the technologies involved. Some results in this paper may be applicable to other affected technologies than energy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development of methods for process analysis has contributed to the improvement of production systems. In this context, many models and methodologies have been established in the literature in order to evaluate environmental performance of industrial processes, since it has become an important issue for society. However, few of them analyze environmental impacts and related costs simultaneously. So, this work presents an integrated methodology to perform this evaluation, based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Activity-Based Costing (ABC) principles. The proposed methodology was applied in a metallurgical industry in Brazil. As result, it allowed to identify the production process stages which have critical environmental impacts and greatest contribution to increase environmental costs of the company. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper aims to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with spray dried soluble coffee over its entire life cycle and compare it with drip filter coffee and capsule espresso coffee. It particularly aims to identify critical environmental issues and responsibilities along the whole life cycle chain of spray dried coffee. This life cycle assessment (LCA) specifically uses foreground data obtained directly from coffee manufacturers and suppliers. Aside from energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions, water footprint is also studied in detail, including regionalization of water impacts based on the ecological scarcity method 2006. Other impact categories are screened using the IMPACT 2002+ impact assessment method. The overall LCA results for a 1 dl cup of spray dried soluble coffee amounts approximately to 1 MJ of primary non-renewable energy consumption, to emissions of 0.07 kg of CO(2-eq), and between 3 and 10 l of non-turbined water use, depending on whether or not the coffee cultivation is irrigated and wet treated. When considering turbined water, use can be up to 400 l of water per cup. Pouch - and to a lesser extent metal can packaging alternatives - show lower environmental burdens than glass or sticks. On average, about one half of the environmental footprint occurs at a life cycle stage under the control of the coffee producer or its suppliers (i.e., during cultivation, treatment, processing, packaging up to distribution, along with advertising) and the other half at a stage controlled by the user (shopping, appliances manufacturing, use and waste disposal). Key environmental parameters of spray dried soluble coffee are the amount of extra water boiled and the efficiency of cup cleaning during use phase, whether the coffee is irrigated or not, as well as the type and amount of fertilizer used in the coffee field. The packaging contributes to 10% of the overall life cycle impacts. Compared to other coffee alternatives, spray dried soluble coffee uses less energy and has a lower environmental footprint than capsule espresso coffee or drip filter coffee, the latter having the highest environmental impacts on a per cup basis. This study shows that a broad LCA approach is needed to help industry to minimize the environmental burdens directly related to their products. Including all processes of the entire system is necessary i) to get a comprehensive environmental footprint of the product system with respect to sustainable production and consumption, ii) to share stakeholders responsibility along the entire product life cycle, and iii) to avoid problem shifting between different life cycle stages. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Stromman et al. (2009) developed a method for dealing with double-counting in tiered hybrid LCA. Their algorithms identify overlaps of physical and monetary flows in the process and input-output parts of their hybrid data base, and then remove double-counted monetary flows in the input-output system using structural path analysis. Stromman's adjustment criterion is that the set of input-output paths to be removed should have the same monetary value as the process system flow that it overlaps with. I comment on Stromman's methods with respect to the accuracy of the correspondence between process and input-output systems. I argue that the set of double-counted paths to be removed from the input-output system is better selected on the basis of sector definitions than monetary value. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to assess the environmental impacts and resources used throughout a product's life cycle, i.e., from raw material acquisition, via production and use phases, to waste management. The methodological development in LCA has been strong, and LCA is broadly applied in practice. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of recent developments of LCA methods. The focus is on some areas where there has been an intense methodological development during the last years. We also highlight some of the emerging issues. In relation to the Goal and Scope definition we especially discuss the distinction between attributional and consequential LCA. For the Inventory Analysis, this distinction is relevant when discussing system boundaries, data collection, and allocation. Also highlighted are developments concerning databases and Input-Output and hybrid LCA. In the sections on Life Cycle Impact Assessment we discuss the characteristics of the modelling as well as some recent developments for specific impact categories and weighting. In relation to the Interpretation the focus is on uncertainty analysis. Finally, we discuss recent developments in relation to some of the strengths and weaknesses of LCA. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved..P>In the Campania region, an area in the south of Italy with 5.7 million inhabitants and a production of about 7,900 tonnes of municipal solid waste per day, an emergency situation was created by inappropriate waste management policy and practice. In order to support decisions regarding future solutions for this crisis, reliable, transparent, and impartial strategies and concepts are needed. For this purpose, six waste management scenarios have been defined and quantitatively assessed by means of substance flow analysis (SFA). The scenarios are based on firm objectives and recent legislation for waste management and take into account regional waste production and composition as well as existing waste treatment infrastructure. They are evaluated and compared with the status quo in view of reaching the goals of waste management. For each scenario, the following material flows were quantified: wastes that would be sent to different processes, such as those of mechanical-biological treatment, incineration, or anaerobic digestion; treatment residues (in mass and volume) to be diverted to landfills; materials recoverable by recycling processes; and energy obtainable by waste-to-energy and anaerobic digestion plants. The results demonstrate that a future waste management system that is based on a combination of more recycling, thermal treatment, anaerobic digestion, and improved landfilling reaches the objectives of waste management much more closely than the present, inadequate system.P>Over the course of ten years, a consortium of stakeholders (the Harbor Consortium) used a collaborative approach to identify viable pollution prevention (P2) strategies for specific contaminants, namely mercury, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as well as suspended solids entering the New York/New Jersey Harbor. The project, titled "The New York/New Jersey Harbor Watershed Pollution Prevention and Industrial Ecology Project," in a very conscious and overt way engaged stakeholders in the process of developing P2 recommendations for the Harbor. The industrial ecology (IE) tools applied by the Harbor Consortium include substance flow analysis (SFA), material flow analysis (MFA), and, to a limited extent, life cycle analysis (LCA) and fate and transport analysis (F&T), to quantify and characterize how the contaminants flow through the regional economy and the Harbor Watershed once released to the environment. The application of these scientific tools to five contaminants at such a large geographical scale, within the context of a broad and inclusive stakeholder process, and with the goal of identifying and implementing pollution prevention strategies, led to a wide range of surprising outcomes and lessons learned. Undertaking this IE research with the key institutions and stakeholders at the table resulted in the identification and the implementation of many P2 opportunities.Steel work operators face a plenty of challenges in a dynamic market, where even short and mid term fluctuations show their impact in a dramatic way. Hence unfortunately, long term considerations seem to be neglected, although especially in the raw material sector radical changes are inevitable. Resource depletion is not leading to a price increase only; non renewable raw materials along with a rising demand create a supply bottleneck. This is expected for coking coal, as well as for natural gas, where the industry is forced to give off more of its shares for public demands like power generation, fertilizer production and/or heating purposes. On the other hand, environmental care, which is by far not only the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, becomes an important economical driving factor as well. More enforced environmental restrictions by law causes operators to revise their production routes to sort out processes which are not complying with these regulations. Answers to these scenarios give the established COREX technology and the new COREX "Low Coal" and the COREX/FINEX "(L)ow (R)educed (I)ron" concepts. Both concepts lead to fuel savings for hot metal production, either by direct savings in the COR-EX process or indirectly by supporting the traditional blast furnace route. By fulfilling the criteria, utilization of low cost / high available raw materials, overall fuel savings even for the blast furnace and the impressive ecological advantages, once again the COREX/FINEX technology approves itself as a recommendable alternative to the blast furnace and/or a reasonable expansion/substitution of existing production routes. Focus of this presentation is laid on latest operation results of the operating plants in China, South Africa, India and Korea, new technological developments like the "Low Coal" and "LRI" concepts and a Life Cycle Assessment of the COREX/FINEX processes.To reduce or eliminate chemical pollution in origin is the ideal of green chemistry, while its principles are the best elucidation for its essence. Based on the 12 well-known principles proposed by Anastas et al. in 1998, the 12 more principles were complemented by Anastas himself and Winterton, respectively from technical, economic and commercial considerations. Unfortunately, these principles don't explicitly include concept which is highly relevant to environmental impact. As a result, the concept of green engineering and its principles were proposed. Tang et al. subsequently simplified the original 12 green chemistry and 12 green engineering principles proposed by Anastas et al. as the memonic, communicative and popularized "IMPROVEMENTS PRODUCTIVELY". However, the principles are still intuitive and commonsensible and thus can't explicitly reflect the inherent relationships between the goal and related research fields of green chemistry. It is estimated that the green chemistry principles which are centered around designation of green, coordination of atom economy and effective mass yield etc., data collection of life-cycle assessment, integration of properties of catalyst with reaction, separation and recycling use, and the optimization and balance of evaluation metrics and methods to greenness etc. still need to be developed and upgraded over a long period of time.Biofuel use seems to have certain environmental, energy and socioeconomic advantages versus fossil fuel consumption. The substitution of fossil fuels with biofuels can be a useful tool to fulfil the Spanish and European policy in relation to mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase the security in energy supply. The continuous increase in energy consumption, dependence on energy and high petroleum prices has motivated increasing support for renewable energy promotion. In Spain (the third ethanol producer in Europe in 2007), ethanol from lignocellulosic feedstocks could be one of the most valuable and interesting possibilities for renewable transportation fuels due to the limited competition with food production and high net reduction of GHG emissions. This study is focused on flax shives, obtained as an agricultural co-product from flax crops dedicated to fibre production for specialty paper pulp manufacture as lignocellulosic biomass to produce second generation ethanol involving the use of cellulosic technology. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to evaluate the environmental impacts of the production and use in a flexi fuel vehicle (FFV) of ethanol blends (10 and 85% in volume of ethanol with gasoline) versus conventional gasoline, throughout their whole life cycle in order to highlight the main sources of these impacts. The system boundaries include cultivation, extraction, processing and final use of fuels. Mass and economic allocation were considered to determine the effect on the results of different allocation approaches. The results of the study show that the allocation methods are essential for outcomes and decision-making. Using ethanol as transportation fuel could present better environmental performance than conventional gasoline in terms of global warming and fossil fuel consumption according to mass allocation. However, environmental credits could be achieved in terms of acidification, fossil fuel consumption and human toxicity according to economic allocation. Contributions to other impact categories such as eutrophication and photochemical oxidants formation were lower for conventional gasoline regardless of the allocation procedure selected. Agricultural activities related to feedstock production are notable contributors to the environmental performance. Thus, high yielding varieties, reduction of tillage activities and reduction in fertilization should help to reduce these impacts. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Our environment is an important resource, not only for use in development, but to conserve. In the 1990s, the importance of our environment became underscored for conservation efforts in many areas. Among them, the building construction industry had played a role in impoverishing the environment, for the sake of improving our quality of life, but at a great cost of impact to the environment. It is therefore incumbent upon the industry to endeavor to mitigate effects from building constructions to our environment. During the life cycle of a building, it consumes energy and other natural resources. But it is difficult to evaluate their effects on the environment during the entire course of a building's life span, without much time and effort. An easy to handle program is necessary for the calculation of effects to the environment during the life cycle of a building. Many of the software programs developed for these kinds of assessments can only be used with significant restrictions because of their differences in design for scope and content. This paper presents foundations for the development of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) program for buildings, focusing on their energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission levels, with a comparison of domestically and foreign designed programs. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electric generation by wind turbine is growing very strongly. However, the environmental impact of wind energy is still a matter of controversy. This paper uses Life Cycle Assessment, comparing two systems: a 4.5 MW and a 250 W wind turbines, to evaluate their environmental impact. All stages of life cycle (manufacturing, transports, installation. maintenance, disassembly and disposal) have been analysed and sensitivity tests have been performed. According to the indexes (PEPBT (primary energy pay back time), CO(2) emissions, etc.), the results show that wind energy is an excellent environmental solution provided first, the turbines are high efficiency ones and implemented on sites where the wind resource is good, second, components transportation should not spend too much energy and, third, recycling during decommissioning should be performed correctly. This study proves that wind energy should become one of the best ways to mitigate climate change and to provide electricity in rural zones not connected to the grid. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A study was carried out in order to compare the environmental performance of two different types of adsorbents in removing arsenic (As) from wastewater. A FeCl(3)-based adsorbent and a poly-Fe-based adsorbent were first synthesized and their abilities in adsorbing As from wastewater were investigated in terms of the adsorption density and the rate of adsorption. Here, it should be noted that the main material being used in the synthesis of the poly-Fe-based adsorbent was a waste product, known as polyferric sulfate or poly-Fe in short, which exits the manufacturing process of titanium dioxide. Both adsorbents were then compared in the context of life-cycle assessment (LCA). In other words, the experimental results (i.e. the value of the adsorption density and the rate of adsorption) were input into the LCA model in order to assess the environmental performance of each adsorbent in removing arsenic. An estimate for the environmental burden of each option was finally calculated as the sum of the depletion of abiotic resources (ADP). the global warming potential (GWP), the acidification potential (AP), the photo-oxidant formation potential (POCP), the eutrophication potential (EP), and the human toxicity potential (HTP). The main finding of this study was that the adsorption of arsenic by using the poly-Fe-based adsorbent is more attractive treatment option in the environmental protection point of view than the adsorption by using the FeCl(3)-based adsorbent, which generates a relatively larger environmental burden. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This life cycle assessment case study puts the supply chain contribution of transportation to greenhouse gas emissions in context with other contributors using American wheat grain as a representative product. Multiple locations, species and routes to market are investigated. Transportation contributes 39-56% of the supply chain emissions, whereas there is a 101% intra-species and 62% inter-species variation in greenhouse gas emissions from production, demonstrating that transportation is both of smaller magnitude, and less sensitive than other factors, in particular, field sequestration. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Hexavalent chromium was recently prohibited in the European automotive industry, electrical and electronic equipment by two regulations of the European Parliament (End of Life Vehicles and RoHS). It is still allowed in the electrolytic baths for decorative chromium plating and hard chromium plating, but the regulation concerning the surface treatment industry was reinforced, in particular reclassifying the chromic anhydride amongst the very toxic substances. In addition, surface coatings deposited by thermal spraying have already been developed in the industry to replace the electrolytic process. But results are not always satisfactory for porosity and microstructure reasons. The contribution of laser cladding is also studied. This allows the formation of denser coatings. In fact, both processes appear to be very complementary. Thus. it is interesting to compare the environmental and technical results obtained with these two technologies. Therefore, the aim of this study is to propose coatings, with a justified environmental behaviour, carried out by thermal spray processes (APS and HVOF) and laser cladding (with a diode laser) which could replace hard chromium coatings in order to resist wear and/or corrosion. The originality of this step lies in the optimization of the coating processes, in order to offer transferable alternatives to industrial production. To take into account the environmental properties of these coatings from the point of view of materials and processes, Life Cycle Assessment of the surface coating processes was established, which constitutes the genuine characteristic of the study. The ecodesign of surface coatings has not been reported in detail in the current literature. Thus two types of materials, stainless steel and self-fluxing NiCrBSi alloy, were chosen to be the coatings on a steel substrate. Then, chemical characterization (corrosion in salt spray test) was carried out in order to determine the alternative potential of dry coatings, especially NiCrBSi coatings, compared to electrolytic hard chromium plating. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, there has been a tremendous amount of research and development in the area of photocatalysis (heterogeneous and homogeneous), a process included in a special class of oxidation techniques defined as Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs), all characterized by the same chemical feature, production of (OH)-O-center dot radicals. This paper reviews the use of sunlight to produce the (OH)-O-center dot radicals by TiO2 photocatalysis and photo-Fenton process. The reacting systems necessary for performing solar photocatalysis are described. The paper also summarizes most of the research carried out related to solar photocatalytic degradation of water contaminants, and how it could significantly contribute to the treatment of persistent toxic compounds. It outlines how to enhance the process efficiency by integration with biotreatment. Various solar reactors for photocatalytic water treatment mainly based on non-concentrating collectors built during the last few years are also described in detail in this review, as well as the use of the solar photocatalytic processes to inactivate microorganisms present in water, placing special emphasis on experimental systems made to optimize this disinfection technique. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper proposes a time correction factor (TCF) to properly account for the timing of land use change-derived greenhouse gas emissions in the biofuels life cycle. Land use change emissions occur at the outset of biofuel feedstock production, and are typically amortized over an assumed time horizon to assign the burdens of land use change to multiple generations of feedstock crops. Greenhouse gas intensity calculations amortize emissions by dividing them equally over a time horizon, overlooking the fact that the effect of a greenhouse gas increases with the time it remains in the atmosphere. The TCF is calculated based on the relative climate change effect of an emission occurring at the outset of biofuel feedstock cultivation versus one amortized over a time horizon. For time horizons between 10 and 50 years, the TCF varies between 1.7 and 1.8 for carbon dioxide emissions, indicating that the actual climate change effect of an emission is 70-80% higher than the effect of its amortized values. The TCF has broad relevance for correcting the treatment of emissions timing in other life cycle assessment applications, such as emissions from capital investments for production systems or manufacturing emissions for renewable energy technologies.Despite the popularity of life cycle assessment (LCA) for understanding the broader implications of technological alternatives, it faces challenges due to difficulties in defining the analysis boundary, uncertain data, and ignoring the role of ecological goods and services. The latter natural capital is essential for sustainability but is only considered partially in conventional LCA. Accounting for ecological resources introduces the challenge of how to aggregate resources of widely varying qualities such as sunlight, wood, water, and coal. Methods based on mass, energy, and exergy have been proposed and are evaluated in this work. In addition, this work aims to analyze three LCA techniques with different system boundaries: conventional process-based LCA, hybrid economic input-output LCA (EIO-LCA), and hybrid ecologically based LCA (Eco-LCA). These three methods are applied to the case study of 1,3-propanediol (PDO) produced via fossil-based and bio-based feedstocks. The results of this study indicate that a hierarchical set of metrics can be useful for gaining insight into the role of ecosystem resources in a life cycle. Among aggregation methods, ecological cumulative exergy consumption seems to provide meaningful results, but more empirical studies are needed. It is also determined that bio-based PDO is more attractive than fossil-based PDO because of less nonrenewable resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. However, bio-based PDO does rely more on land, water, and fertile soil. By determining the impact of making the current PDO demand entirely from corn, it is found that the consumption of natural resources relative to national consumption is very low. While producing PDO alone from corn may have a negligible impact in terms of emissions and resource use, switching other products to bio-based will have an additive effect, increasing the strain on some ecological goods and services. These impacts should be addressed before promoting the large scale production of bio-based products.In this paper, a systematic method based on mathematical programming is proposed for the design of environmentally conscious absorption cooling systems. The approach presented relies on the development of a multi-objective formulation that simultaneously accounts for the minimization of cost and environmental impact at the design stage. The latter criterion is measured by the Eco-indicator 99 methodology, which follows the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA). The design task is formulated as a bicriteria nonlinear programming (NLP) problem, the solution of which is defined by a set of Pareto points that represent the optimal trade-off between the economic and environmental concerns considered in the analysis. These Pareto solutions can be obtained via standard techniques for multi-objective optimization. The main advantage of this approach is that it offers a set of alternative options for system design rather than a single solution. From these alternatives, the decision-maker can choose the best one according to his/her preferences and the applicable legislation. The capabilities of the proposed method are illustrated in a case study problem that addresses the design of a typical absorption cooling system. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Twelve case-studies on systems that generate, store and use hydrogen from photovoltaic energy are hereby presented and discussed. Hydrogen generated from direct sunlight is often called solar hydrogen, and the whole process is characterized by having very low CO2 and pollutants emissions. Such systems, comprising of several sub-systems of different technologies, are called hybrid systems. All case-studies are briefly analyzed and the most prominent conclusions reported. Results show that production of solar hydrogen and its subsequent use in fuel cells is technically viable but costs still need to be reduced for widespread adoption. A comparison is given and need for further work highlighted; in particular, researchers should investigate carbon structures as a potential alternative to pressurization or metal hydrides; a complete analysis of the intangible costs and benefits involved should be performed, together with Discounted Cash Flow and Life Cycle Assessment analysis to understand the true nature of such investments and their sustainability in the near future. Performing such a rigorous and complete economical analysis would, for instance, enable governments to design better incentive schemes and propel such technology in real life usage. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Five conversion routes in winter wheat to first-and second-generation ethanol production systems under north European conditions are analyzed subject to energy efficiency, feed energy production, feed protein production and land use. The impact of integrating a bioethanol plant with combined heat and power generation, taking advantage of excess heat available, is analyzed for the same five scenarios. They are based on empirical data from large-scale processing of starch and lignocellulose to ethanol. We show that integrating technologies can improve the system energy efficiency by more than 30 percentage points. A technology-integrated wheat-to-ethanol system may exhibit energy efficiencies almost comparable to those seen for conversion of petroleum into gasoline. We also show that it is possible to utilize crops for energy purposes without substantially changing the global appropriation of land for agriculture. (C) 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdCurrent interest in the large-scale use of biofuels has grown in response to both energy security and climate change concerns; however, it is also increasingly apparent that these benefits can come only at the expense of increased demand for agricultural resources such as land and water. Furthermore, recent studies also suggest that changes in land use patterns for energy crop cultivation can incur significant carbon debts that can only be recovered after many years of operation. The environmental feasibility of the use of energy crops to make biofuels can thus be viewed in terms of three main performance indicators-the land use, water and carbon footprints arising from a given level of system output. An optimal solution thus needs to account for tradeoffs that may be inherent in the conflicting objectives. This work presents a fuzzy multiple-objective modeling approach for determining optimal bioenergy system configuration given targets for the three footprint metrics. The fuzzy optimization approach is integrated with an input-output-based life cycle model for establishing system material and energy balances. The approach is demonstrated here through the analysis of different scenarios for the integrated production of biodiesel, ethanol and electricity under anticipated energy demand conditions in the Philippines. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Institution of Chemical Engineers.In this work three scenarios of biomass production, conversion and utilization of different biofuels (sunflower crude oil, sunflower refined oil and sunflower methyl-ester) in a rural context are compared. The analysis is referred to the district of Pisa, in Italy. Technical feasibility was analysed by comparing process schemes and safety issues, while environmental impacts were studied by applying the methodology of life cycle assessment. Scenarios involving upgrading of crude sunflower oil (refined oil and biodiesel) require complex plants and the management of dangerous materials, and they produce considerable amounts of wastewater. These scenarios need larger plant size, more complex organization (farm cooperatives) and higher costs than the simple mechanical operations associated with crude oil production. On the other hand the use of low-quality fuels in internal combustion engines can lead to short engine lifetime and high pollutant emissions. The life cycle analysis shows that the biofuel upgrading processes (refining and transesterification) and oil transport have a low influence on the environmental impact, compared to seed cultivation, which is the most impacting step. However fuel upgrading allows a significant reduction in polluting emission during combustion; as a consequence biodiesel results the most sustainable biofuel. (C) 2009 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.According to the Electricity Directive, suppliers of electricity must disclose their electricity portfolio with regards to energy source and environmental impact. This paper gives some examples of disclosure systems and residual electricity mixes in Norway, Sweden and Finland, compared to an approach based on a common regional disclosure. Disclosures based on the E-TRACK standard are presented, as well as the variation in CO2 emissions from different residual mixes. The results from this study clearly show that there is a need for a harmonised, transparent and reliable system for the accounting of electricity disclosure in Europe.Stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) systems comprise one of the most promising electrification solutions for covering the demand of remote consumers. However, such systems are strongly questioned due to extreme life-cycle (LC) energy requirements. For similar installations to be considered as environmentally sustainable, their LC energy content must be compensated by the respective useful energy production, i.e. their energy pay-back period (EPBP) should be found less than their service period. In this context, an optimum sizing methodology is currently developed, based on the criterion of minimum embodied energy. Various energy autonomous stand-alone PV-lead-acid battery systems are examined and two different cases are investigated; a high solar potential area and a medium solar potential area. By considering that the PV-battery (PV-Bat) system's useful energy production is equal to the remote consumer's electricity consumption, optimum cadmium telluride (CdTe) based systems yield the minimum EPBP (15 years). If achieving to exploit the net PV energy production however, the EPBP is found less than 20 years for all PV types. Finally, the most interesting finding concerns the fact that in all cases examined the contribution of the battery component exceeds 27% of the system LC energy requirements, reflecting the difference between grid-connected and stand-alone configurations. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Analysis (SLCA) are available methodologies for the economic and social assessment of a product or process along its life cycle. Different approaches regarding LCC and SLCA have recently emerged and several hypotheses are currently on testing and discussing. This paper shows existing LCC and a SLCA approaches as well as the methodology applied in the particular case of a paper recycling process. This study gathers part of the European project SORT IT whose main goal is to enable sustainable paper recovery throughout the development of new technology on sorting processes. Results of this paper show, for newsprint and packaging paper recycling processes, the goal and scope, life cycle description, system boundaries as well as functional unit defined for the LCC and SLCA models used in the project. In addition, costs and social indicators are defined under the project framework.This paper introduces a new approach to prioritize urban planning projects according to their environmental pressure in an efficient and reliable way. It is based on the combination of three procedures: (i) the use of environmental pressure indicators, (ii) the aggregation of the indicators in an Environmental Pressure Index by means of the Analytic Network Process method (ANP) and (iii) the interpretation of the information obtained from the experts during the decision-making process. The method has been applied to a proposal for urban development of La Carlota airport in Caracas (Venezuela). There are three options which are currently under evaluation. They include a Health Club, a Residential Area and a Theme Park. After a selection process the experts chose the following environmental pressure indicators as ANP criteria for the project life cycle: used land area, population density, energy consumption, water consumption and waste generation. By using goal-oriented questionnaires designed by the authors. the experts determined the importance of the criteria. the relationships among criteria, and the relationships between the criteria and the urban development alternatives. The resulting data showed that water consumption is the most important environmental pressure factor, and the Theme Park project is by far the urban development alternative which exerts the least environmental pressure on the area. The participating experts coincided in appreciating the technique proposed in this paper is useful and. for ranking ordering these alternatives, an improvement from traditional techniques such as environmental impact studies, life-cycle analysis. etc. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper provides an analysis of the potential environmental impacts of biodiesel production from microalgae. High production yields of microalgae have called forth interest of economic and scientific actors but it is still unclear whether the production of biodiesel is environmentally interesting and which transformation steps need further adjustment and optimization. A comparative LCA study of a virtual facility has been undertaken to assess the energetic balance and the potential environmental impacts of the whole process chain, from the biomass production to the biodiesel combustion. Two different culture conditions, nominal fertilizing or nitrogen starvation, as well as two different extraction options, dry or wet extraction, have been tested. The best scenario has been compared to first generation biodiesel and oil diesel. The outcome confirms the potential of microalgae as an energy source but highlights the imperative necessity of decreasing the energy and fertilizer consumption. Therefore control of nitrogen stress during the culture and optimization of wet extraction seem to be valuable options. This study also emphasizes the potential of anaerobic digestion of oilcakes as a way to reduce external energy demand and to recycle a part of the mineral fertilizers.This study aims to set up a method to analyse the variable office work profiles of jobs such as bankers, managers, specialists, researchers, etc. A worker's profile has to be assessed from the perspective of balanced sustainability including environmental, economic and social aspects. This paper starts with a presentation of a visionary methodology by which the environmental performance of present work profiles (taken from research reports and policy strategies by Finnish ministries) is assessed. Due to this all the work profiles presented in this paper are preliminary and only serve the purpose of illustrating the methodology. In a second step an extensive survey will be carried out in larger companies to create more detailed and empirical work profiles. At the same time, further effort has to be put into analysing alternative future work profiles and possibly to include economic and social aspects. In order to determine the environmental impact of office work, two normally independent methods are combined in this paper. A futures table is used to describe a number of alternative work profiles. This table matrix serves also as the basis to establish future scenarios of probable and possible working weeks. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is the tool used for figuring out the energy and material performance according to the modelled work profiles. When used together, the two methods comprise - as we call it with respect to future-oriented work scenarios - a Visionary Life Cycle Analysis (VLCA) of Office Work. The immediate results of this methodology demonstrate which working profiles are ecologically more sustainable than others. Weaknesses in behaviour patterns are detected and space for improvement is localised. In short: this methodology enables a company or single worker to analyse present work profiles and patterns and to create new visionary and sustainable work patterns. The final goal could be to provide a tool to document anybody's work profile and to show how - by changing certain habits - the individual's (environmental) performance could be improved. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 mandates US production of 136 billion L of biofuel by 2022. This target implies an appropriation of regional primary production for dedicated feedstocks at scales that may dramatically affect water supply, exacerbate existing water quality challenges, and force undesirable environmental resource trade offs. Using a comparative life cycle approach, we assess energy balances and water resource implications for four dedicated ethanol feedstocks - corn, sugarcane, sweet sorghum, and southern pine - in two southeastern states, Florida and Georgia, which are a presumed epicenter for future biofuel production. Net energy benefit ratios for ethanol and coproducts range were 1.26 for corn, 1.94 for sweet sorghum, 2.51 for sugarcane, and 2.97 for southern pine. Corn also has high nitrogen (N) and water demand (11.2 kg GJ(net)(-1) and 188 m(3) GJ(net)(-1), respectively) compared with other feedstocks, making it a poor choice for regional ethanol production. Southern pine, in contrast, has relatively low N demand (0.4 kg GJ(net)(-1)) and negligible irrigation needs. However, it has comparatively low gross productivity, which results in large land area per unit ethanol production (208 m(2) GJ(net)(-1)), and, by association, substantial indirect and incremental water use (51 m(3) GJ(net)(-1)). Ultimately, all four feedstocks require substantial land (10.1, 3.1, 2.5, and 6.1 million ha for corn, sugarcane, sweet sorghum, and pine, respectively), annual N fertilization (3230, 574, 396, 109 million kg N) and annual total water (54 400, 20 840, 8840, and 14 970 million m(3)) resources when scaled up to meet EISA renewable fuel standards production goals. This production would, in turn, offset only 17.5% of regional gasoline consumption on a gross basis, and substantially less when evaluated on a net basis. Utilization of existing waste biomass sources may ameliorate these effects, but does not obviate the need for dedicated primary feedstock production. Careful scrutiny of environmental trade-offs is necessary before embracing aggressive ethanol production mandates.While the community of life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners in Australia has developed relatively recently and is naturally smaller than in Europe or the United States, it is a vibrant community. The idea for this article was to examine the contribution made to LCA development by Australians, the rate of growth of this work, and its industry sectoral focus by quantitative analysis of publication data from four key LCA journals. Although these data suggest that the country's publication rate has not changed much in the last 8 years and fallen relative to the international rate, applied LCA is playing an increasing role in the work of Australian industry and government. Current efforts of the Australian LCA Society are focused on the renewal and expansion of available inventory resources, standardization of life cycle inventory methodology, and improvement of impact assessment processes.One barrier to the further implementation of LCA as a quantitative decision-support tool is the uncertainty created by the diversity of available analytical approaches. This paper compares conventional ('process analysis') and alternative ('input-output analysis') approaches to LCA, and presents a hybrid LCA model for Australia that overcomes the methodological limitations of process and input-output analysis and enables a comparison between the results achieved using each method. A case study from the water industry illustrates this comparison. We have developed a tiered hybrid model for calculating the life cycle impacts of a system. In so doing, we have developed a novel way of overcoming a key methodological issue associated with this method: avoiding double counting. We calculate 'system incompleteness factors' and use these to delete the lower-order burdens in the input-output inventory according to the depth of production taken into account in the process inventory. We apply this method to a case study of Sydney Water Corporation. The functional unit is the provision of water and sewerage services to residential, industrial, and commercial customers in the city of Sydney in the year 2002/03. We analysed the case study using three methods: process analysis, input-output analysis, and hybrid analysis. In each case, we obtained results for eight impact categories: water use; primary energy use; global warming potential; carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic human toxicity potentials; and terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecotoxicity potentials. Although the process analysis has a relatively shallow investigative depth, it shows good system coverage (i.e. a small truncation error) for most indicators. The truncation errors for all of the indicators except marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential compare favourably with predicted truncation errors for the relevant industry sector. This suggests that the truncation error of a particular process analysis cannot be accurately predicted using generic system completeness curves, and implies that the truncation error of a typical process analysis may be less severe than is commonly generalised by the proponents of input-output analysis. The case study supports the largely theoretical claims in the literature about the relative merits and drawbacks of process and input-output analysis. Each method has the potential to highlight different aspects of the system. By estimating the truncation error of the process analysis independently of the relationship between the results obtained using the other methods, our hybrid model enhances the ability to investigate the differences between results and thus adds considerable value to such a study. Input-output LCA has become more popular as computational tools have become more accessible. We directly compare input-output, process and hybrid LCA and recommend that, from an environmental analysis perspective, it would be beneficial to consider the three methodologies in parallel. We highlight the potential for misinterpretation of differences between methods that rely on different reporting frameworks, and recommend that LCA method and practice continue to emphasise the role of careful interpretation.In this study, we evaluate the environmental effects of wood-based household heating. Wood is a significant source of household heating in Norway, and a comparative life cycle assessment of a wood-based heating system using an old and a modern stove was conducted to estimate the total life cycle benefits associated with the change from old to new combustion technology. The study uses a new approach to complete the inventory. Input-output data are used in combination with the Leontief price model to estimate inputs of products and services from the background economy to the birch wood supply chain. When comparing new and old stove technology, the results show that the new technology contributes to a significantly improved performance (28-80%) for all types of environmental impact studied. As there is a large share of old wood stoves still in use, replacing the old stoves with new ones can lead to substantial reductions in environmental impacts, especially impacts affecting human health. The use phase, i.e., wood combustion, is responsible for over 60% of the impact within all categories. Both the old and new stove provide heating with emissions of greenhouse gases ranging from one third (new stove, similar to 80 g CO2-eq/kWh) to half (old stove, similar to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh) of the impacts compared to electricity use from the Nordic electricity mix (similar to 210 g CO2-eq/kWh) to heat the house. Combustion of the wood is found to be most important for all types of impacts, even for global warming, where the CO2 emissions from combustion are treated as "climate neutral." Products of incomplete combustion are the reason for this, as well as the high contribution to other impact categories. Emission factors for these substances are subject to high uncertainty. Although the combustion phase is the most important stage in the life cycle, transportation distances can play an important role. To render wood as environmentally benign as possible, one should thus seek to shorten the distances from producer to consumer. There is a significant difference in the life cycle performance of a wood stove using modern technology versus older technologies within all impact categories. In addition, there is a preference to use locally produced firewood over wood transported over long distances. A strong emphasis on phasing out old woodstoves should be maintained and is well justified.Facing the threat of oil depletion and climate change, a shift from fossil resources to renewables is ongoing to secure long-term low carbon energy supplies. In view of the carbon dioxide reduction targets agreed upon in the Kyoto protocol, bioethanol has become an attractive option for one energy application, as transport fuel. Many studies on the LCA of fuel ethanol have been conducted, and the results vary to a large extent. In most of these studies, only one type of allocation is applied. However, the effect of allocation on outcomes is of crucial importance to LCA as a decision supporting tool. This is only addressed in a few studies to a limited extent. Moreover, most of the studies mainly focus on fossil energy use and GHG emissions. In this paper, a case study is presented wherein a more complete set of impact categories is used. Land use has been left out of account as only hectare data would be given which is obviously dominated by agriculture. Moreover, different allocation methods are applied to assess the sensitivity of the outcomes for allocation choices. This study focuses on the comparison of LCA results from the application of different allocation methods by presenting an LCA of gasoline and ethanol as fuels and with two types of blends of gasoline with ethanol, all used in a midsize car. As a main second-generation application growing fast in the USA, corn stover-based ethanol is chosen as a case study. The life cycles of the fuels include gasoline production, corn and stover agriculture, cellulosic ethanol production, blending ethanol with gasoline to produce E10 (10% of ethanol) and E85 (85% of ethanol), and finally the use of gasoline, E10, E85, and ethanol. In this study, a substantially broader set of eight environmental impacts is covered. LCA results appear to be largely dependent on the allocation methods rendered. The level of abiotic depletion and ozone layer depletion decrease when replacing gasoline by ethanol fuels, irrespective of the allocation method applied, while the rest of the impacts except global warming potential are larger. The results show a reduction of global warming potential when mass/energy allocation is applied; in the case of economic allocation, it gives contrary results. In the expanded systems, global warming potential is significantly reduced comparing to the ones from the allocated systems. A contribution analysis shows that car driving, electricity use for cellulase enzyme production, and ethanol conversion contribute largely to global warming potential from the life cycle of ethanol fuels. The reason why the results of global warming potential show a reverse trend is that the corn/stover allocation ratio shifts from 7.5 to 1.7 when shifting from economic allocation to mass/energy allocation. When mass/energy allocation is applied, both more credits (CO2 uptake) and more penalties (N2O emission) in agriculture are allocated to stover compared to the case of economic allocation. However, more CO2 is taken up than N2O (in CO2 eq.) emitted. Hence, the smaller the allocation ratio is between corn and stover, the lower the share of the overall global warming emissions being allocated to ethanol will be. In the system expansion approach, global warming potentials are significantly reduced, resulting in the negative values in all cases. This implies that the system expansion results are comparable to one another because they make the same cutoffs but not really to the results related to mass, energy, and economic value-based allocated systems. The choice of the allocation methods is essential for the outcomes, especially for global warming potential in this case. The application of economic allocation leads to increased GWP when replacing gasoline by ethanol fuels, while reduction of GWP is achieved when mass/energy allocation is used as well as in the system where biogenic CO2 is excluded. Ethanol fuels are better options than gasoline when abiotic depletion and ozone layer depletion are concerned. In terms of other environmental impacts, gasoline is a better option, mainly due to the emissions of nutrients and toxic substances connected with agriculture. A clear shift of problems can be detected: saving fossil fuels at the expense of emissions related to agriculture, with GHG benefits depending on allocation choices. The overall evaluation of these fuel options, therefore, depends very much on the importance attached to each impact category. This study focuses only on corn stover-based ethanol as one case. Further studies may include other types of cellulosic feedstocks (i.e., switchgrass or wood), which require less intensive agricultural practice and may lead to better environmental performance of fuel ethanol. Furthermore, this study shows that widely used but different allocation methods determine outcomes of LCA studies on biofuels. This is an unacceptable situation from a societal point of view and a challenge from a scientific point of view. The results from applying just one allocation method are not sufficient for decision making. Comparison of different allocation methods is certainly of crucial importance. A broader approach beyond LCA for the analysis of biorefinery systems with regard to energy conservation, environmental impact, and cost-benefit will provide general indications on the sustainability of bio-based productions.Regional variations in the environmental impacts of plant biomass production are significant, and the environmental impacts associated with feedstock supply also contribute substantially to the environmental performance of biobased products. Thus, the regional variations in the environmental performance of biobased products are also significant. This study scrutinizes greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with two biobased products (i.e., ethanol and soybean oil) whose feedstocks (i.e., corn and soybean) are produced in different farming locations. We chose 40 counties in Corn Belt States in the United States as biorefinery locations (i.e., corn dry milling, soybean crushing) and farming sites, and estimated cradle-to-gate GHG emissions of ethanol and of soybean oil, respectively. The estimates are based on 1 kg of each biobased product (i.e., ethanol or soybean oil). The system boundary includes biomass production, the biorefinery, and upstream processes. Effects of direct land use change are included in the greenhouse gas analysis and measured as changes in soil organic carbon level, while the effects of indirect land use change are not considered in the baseline calculations. Those indirect effects however are scrutinized in a sensitivity analysis. GHG emissions of corn-based ethanol range from 1.1 to 2.0 kg of CO(2) equivalent per kilogram of ethanol, while GHG emissions of soybean oil are 0.4-2.5 kg of CO(2) equivalent per kilogram of soybean oil. Thus, the regional variations due to farming locations are significant (by factors of 2-7). The largest GHG emission sources in ethanol production are N(2)O emissions from soil during corn cultivation and carbon dioxide from burning the natural gas used in corn dry milling. The second largest GHG emission source groups in the ethanol production system are nitrogen fertilizer (8-12%), carbon sequestration by soil (-15-2%), and electricity used in corn dry milling (7-16%). The largest GHG emission sources in soybean oil production are N(2)O emissions from soil during soybean cultivation (13-57%) and carbon dioxide from burning the natural gas used in soybean crushing (21-47%). The second largest GHG emission source groups in soybean oil production are carbon sequestration by soil (-29-24%), diesel used in soybean cultivation (4-24%), and electricity used in the soybean crushing process (10-21%). The indirect land use changes increase GHG emissions of ethanol by 7-38%, depending on the fraction of forest converted when newly converted croplands maintain crop cultivation for 100 years. Farming sites with higher biomass yields, lower nitrogen fertilizer application rates, and less tillage are favorable to future biorefinery locations in terms of global warming. For existing biorefineries, farmers are encouraged to apply a site-specific optimal nitrogen fertilizer application rate, to convert to no-tillage practices and also to adopt winter cover practices whenever possible to reduce the GHG emissions of their biobased products. Current practices for estimating the effects of indirect land use changes suffer from large uncertainties. More research and consensus about system boundaries and allocation issues are needed to reduce uncertainties related to the effects of indirect land use changes.One of the most important sources of global carbon dioxide emissions is the combustion of fossil fuels for power generation. Power plants contribute more than 40% of the worldwide anthropogenic CO(2) emissions. Therefore, the increased requirements for climate protection are a great challenge for the power producers. In this context a significant increase in power plant efficiency will contribute to reduce specific CO(2) emissions. Additionally, CO(2) capture and storage (CCS) is receiving considerable attention as a greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation option. CCS allows continued use of fossil fuels with no or little CO(2) emissions given to the atmosphere. This could approve a moderate transition to a low-carbon energy generation over the next decades. Currently, R&D activities in the field of CCS are mainly concentrated on the development of capture techniques, the geological assessment of CO(2) storage reservoirs, and on economic aspects. Although first studies on material and energy flows caused by CCS are available, a broader environmental analysis is necessary to show the overall environmental impacts of CCS. The objectives in this paper are coal-based power plants with and without CO(2) capture via mono-ethanolamine (MEA) and the comparison of their environmental effects based on life cycle assessment methodology (LCA). This LCA study examines the environmental and human health effects of power generation of five coal-based steam power plants, which differ in the year of installation (2005, 2010, 2020), the conversion efficiency, and in the ability and efficiency to capture CO(2). For the removal of CO(2) from combustion and gasification processes in power plants, three main technology concepts exist: (1) pre-combustion technology, (2) oxyfuel combustion systems, and (3) post-combustion separation. As post-combustion technology shows the highest level of maturity, this study concentrates on this route, focusing on capture using mono-ethanolamine (MEA). The analysis regards the post-combustion retrofit of coal power plants with MEA to be a general option in 2020. Material and energy flows are balanced on the level of single processes as well as for the whole process chains. The life cycle inventory clearly shows decreasing inputs and outputs according to the efficiency increase from 43% to 49% in case of the power plants without CO(2) capture. In case of the MEA plants, all inputs and emissions raise, according to the additional energy consumption, except CO(2) and sulphur dioxide. The strong decrease of SO(2) partly results from the necessary improvement of desulphurisation if MEA wash is used. The influence of up and downstream activities on the results is determined. For the MEA plants, a considerable effect of up and downstream activities on the overall results is observed. Finally, the inventory results are assigned to selected impact categories. Global warming (GWP), human toxicity (HTP), acidification (AP), photo-oxidant formation (POCP), eutrophication (EP), and primary energy demand are adopted as impact categories. The impact assessment indicates decreasing impacts for all categories with increasing combustion efficiency for the coal plants without carbon capture. As expected, the GWP for the MEA plants is much lower than for the power plants without CO(2) capture. In contrast to this, the HTP and the EP are much higher (up to three times) for the MEA plants. Sensitivity analysis reveals that the origin of coal and the corresponding transport distances have a significant impact on the overall results. Furthermore, it is concluded from the sensitivity analysis that for CCS systems the length of CO(2) pipeline has a negligible effect in comparison with the effect of capture efficiency. The LCA is completed by a normalisation of the environmental impact categories. The development of combustion efficiency in case of the power plants without CO(2) capture has the main influence on the decreasing mass flows at the input side. The energy penalty of the MEA plants affects the use of the inputs into the opposite direction. Although the power producer's focus is on the power plant, the sense of a life cycle assessment is an integrated environmental assessment of the full life cycle of a product (here 1 kWh) including up and downstream processes. Therefore, the inventory results are presented without and with up and downstream processes. The inventory analysis clearly shows the significant influence of the up and downstream processes on the overall emissions. This influence is higher for the MEA plants than for the power plants without capture. In case of CO(2) emissions, the significance of up and downstream processes is especially considerable (approx. 30%). Sensitivity analysis reveals that the origin of coal and the corresponding transport distances have a significant impact on the overall results. The results point out that the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere is achieved at the expense of increasing other emissions and corresponding environmental impacts. In most cases the influence of up and downstream processes is significant. Therefore, life cycle approaches are necessary to get a holistic evaluation. It also shows that the implementation of new techniques can change the environmental assessment of the process chain and, thus, positive and negative effects have to be compared and weighed up against each other. As there exist several possible technical options for CO(2) capture, further studies are necessary to compare the overall environmental effects of competing capture concepts such as pre-combustion and oxyfuel technology. Additionally, gas separating membranes should be part of further studies as they have the potential to contribute to all three main capture technology routes. Further studies with more detail and reliable inventories for CO(2) compression and liquefaction as well as for gas conditioning as an interface between CO(2) capture and transport are needed. Furthermore, the environmental effects including long-term CO(2) emission from the storage sites are recommended.According to some recent studies, noise from road transport is estimated to cause human health effects of the same order of magnitude as the sum of all other emissions from the transport life cycle. Thus, ISO 14'040 implies that traffic noise effects should be considered in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies where transports might play an important role. So far, five methods for the inclusion of noise in LCA have been proposed. However, at present, none of them is implemented in any of the major life cycle inventory (LCI) databases and commonly used in LCA studies. The goal of the present paper is to define a requirement profile for a method to include traffic noise in LCA and to assess the compliance of the five existing methods with this profile. It concludes by identifying necessary cornerstones for a model for noise effects of generic road transports that meets all requirements. Requirements for a methodological framework for inclusion of traffic noise effects in LCA are derived from an analysis of how transports are included in 66 case studies published in International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment in 2006 and 2007, in the sustainability reports of ten Swiss companies, as well as on the basis of theoretical considerations. Then, the general compliance of the five existing methods for inclusion of noise in LCA with the postulated requirement profile is assessed. Six general requirements for a methodological framework for inclusion of traffic noise effects in LCA were identified. A method needs to be applicable for (1) both generic and specific transports, (2) different modes of transport, (3) different vehicles within one mode of transport, (4) transports in different geographic contexts, (5) different temporal contexts, and (6) last but not least, the method needs to be compatible with the ISO standards on LCA. One of the reviewed methods is not specific for transports at all and two are only applicable for specific transports. The other two allow generic and specific road transports to be assessed. The methods either deal with road traffic noise only or they compare noise from different sources, ignoring the fact that not only physical sound levels but also the source of sound determines the effect. Three methods only differentiate between vehicle classes (lorries and passenger cars) while one method differentiates between specific vehicles of the same class. Four of the methods consider the geographic context and three of them differentiate between day- and nighttime traffic. None of the existing methods for traffic noise integration in LCA complies with the proposed requirement profile. They either lack the genericness for a wide application or they lack the specificity needed for differentiations in LCA studies. There is no method available that allows for appropriate inter- or intramodal comparison of traffic noise effects. Thus, the benefit of the existing methods is limited. They can, in the better cases, only demonstrate the relative importance of road or rail traffic noise effects compared to the nonnoise-related effects of transportation. Currently, none of the major LCI databases includes traffic noise indicators. Thus, noise effects are usually not considered in LCA studies. We introduce a requirement profile for methods that allow the inclusion of noise in LCI. Due to the estimated significance of noise in transport LCA, this inclusion will change the overall results of many LCA studies. None of the existing methods fully complies with the requirement profile. Two of the methods can be modified and extended for inclusion in generic LCI databases. A third model allows for intermodal comparison. From an LCA perspective, all methods include weaknesses and need to be amended in order to make them widely usable. In part 2 of this paper, an in-depth analysis of the promising methods is provided, improvement potential is evaluated, and a new context-sensitive framework for the consistent LCI modeling of noise emissions from road transportation is presented. Appropriate methods for modeling rail and air traffic noise will have to be developed in the future in order to arrive at a methodological framework fully compliant with the requirement profile. Furthermore, future research is needed to identify appropriate methods for impact assessment.New and innovative technologies may claim substantial efficiency gains in the future. However, they are often assessed based on their current performance, measured in the laboratory or in pilot plants. The goal of discussion forum 38 was, on one hand, to shed light on the main drivers and principles that ensure a sensible and fair assessment of far future technologies. On the other hand, the most recent European developments in prospective technology assessment of emerging energy technologies and the related quantification of external costs were touched upon. The discussion forum started with three talks dedicated to external costs and multicriteria decisions presenting results of the New Energy Externality Developments for Sustainability project. After three presentations considering long-term LCI modeling aspects, lectures were held covering industry implementation and case studies. The following main conclusions were drawn at the end of discussion forum 38: (a) life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a useful tool for environmental assessments of future energy technology, (b) consistency in LCA modeling of future situations is achieved by adapting data in the foreground (electricity-generating technology) and in the background (electricity supply mix, material manufacture, transport services, etc.), (c) external cost assessments and multicriteria decision analysis involve value judgments and thus do lead to a variety of different conclusions, (d) the present situation must be known properly to be able to model possible future situations, and (e) challenges are the data availability and definition of consistent scenarios of the future.The long term aim of this study is to carry out a comparative quantitative Life Cycle Assessment (QLCA) of natural fibres compared with glass fibres when used as reinforcement for polymer composites to confirm or refute the claim "green" fibres are the more sustainable option. As flax fibres are perhaps the most agro-chemical intensive bast fibres then, if flax is proven to be the better option, the other bast fibres (e.g., hemp or jute) may be shown to have even lower environmental burdens. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is used here to quantify the environmental impacts in the production process of converting flax fibres from plant stem to reinforcement for composite materials (cradle-to-gate). Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) for energy use has been completed using compiled data from a number of published sources. This paper reports on the LCIA considering environmental categories as listed in ISO/TR 14047:2003.This study reviews corn-ethanol life cycle assessment studies and modeling tools to identify key discrepancies between studies, and shortcomings in analysis of greenhouse gas emissions. The primary conclusions are that direct land use change modeling, soil N2O emissions modeling, and co-product crediting were either poorly treated or treated inconsistently across most or all studies. Despite the existence of improved methods and tools proposed by institutional bodies and the broader research community, the state of the practice tends towards over-simplified and highly generalized methods that increase potential uncertainty in greenhouse gas estimates and prevents differentiation among producers of corn ethanol. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessments of bio-based polymer resin and products historically have shown favorable results in terms of environmental impacts and energy use compared to petroleum-based products. However, calculation of these impacts always depends on the system and boundary conditions considered during the study. This paper reports a cradle-to-cradle Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) in comparison with poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and poly(styrene) (PS) thermoformed clamshell containers, used for packaging of strawberries with emphasis on different end-of-life scenarios. It considers all the inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and seed corn required for the growing and harvesting of corn used for manufacturing PLA. For PET and PS, the extraction of crude oil and the entire cracking processes from crude oil through styrene and ethylene glycol and terephathalic acid are considered. Global warming, aquatic acidification, aquatic eutrophication, aquatic ecotoxicity, ozone depletion, non-renewable energy and respiratory organics, land occupation and respiratory inorganics were the selected midpoint impact categories. The geographical scope of the study reflects data from Europe, North America and the Middle East. PET showed the highest overall values for all the impact categories, mainly due to the higher weight of the containers. The main impacts to the environment were the resin production and the transportation stage of the resins and containers. This implies that the transportation stage of the package is an important contributor to the environmental impact of the packaging systems, and that it cannot be diminished. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Responding to concerns about the unsustainable use of global freshwater resources, especially in agriculture, the concept of water footprinting has recently been developed and applied to a wide range of commodities. In this paper, water footprints were calculated for two complex agrifood products, 250 g Peanut M&M's(R) and 575 g Dolmio (R) pasta sauce, in order to evaluate the usefulness of the concept when applied at the product brand level. The process LCA-based methodology took account of blue water appropriated from surface and groundwater resources, green water appropriated from the root zone by plants, and dilution water, being the volume of freshwater needed to assimilate emissions to freshwater. These case studies revealed several issues, namely the lack of correspondence between water footprints and the availability of water for alternative uses in the absence of production, and the difficulty in relating water footprints to potential social and environmental harm. As such, the water footprinting concept requires further development to be useful for promoting sustainable production and consumption. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the generation of waste home appliances increases continuously with economic growth, the importance of recycling becomes more apparent. Many home appliances we use today are recyclable, and recyclable materials from the waste home appliances can be used to create new or refurbishing products. To do that, first of all, we have to know and consider the recyclable materials' recycling potential with environmental and economic information. In this study, an evaluation method to assess recycling potential considering both the environmental and economic factors was suggested for the materials recovered from waste home appliances. Life cycle assessment (LCA) method was applied to obtain the environmental score (S(Env)) and an actual value and a static economic model was used to obtain the economic score (S(Eco)). The recycling potential for recyclable materials was calculated by using the S(Env) and S(Eco) along with weighting factors derived from an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. With the calculated data and evaluation method for the recycling materials, this study could provide useful information for decision makers and product designers in the design for environment (DfE). (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analyzed the environmental impacts of a single-story residential building using different exterior wall systems. The environmental impacts over the complete life cycle of the residential buildings were determined and compared using the following indicators: air pollution index, energy consumption (embodied and operational), global warming potential, resource use, solid waste emissions, and water pollution index. The exterior wall systems analyzed were concrete block, poured in-place concrete, insulated concrete, traditional 0.05 mx0.1 m by 0.4 m (2 in.x4 in. by 16 in.) on center wood frame, traditional 0.05 mx0.15 m by 0.6 m (2 in.x6 in. by 24 in.) on center wood frame, and steel stud framing. Additionally, structural insulated panels were modeled for the operational energy of the building. For each scenario, the designs were based on the minimum R value required by the International Building Code. ATHENA, a life-cycle assessment software tool, and eQuest, an energy usage modeling software tool that calculated the operational energy of the building, were used to evaluate the environmental impacts of the building, during the construction, use, and end of life phases, for each scenario. The results show that in the preuse phase, the insulated concrete buildings produce the greatest impact on the environment followed by the concrete block, poured in-place concrete, and steel stud buildings. Traditional wood frames had the fewest environmental impacts when considering only the preuse phase. In the use phase, the insulated concrete buildings had the lowest impacts to the environment because they required less operational energy, whereas concrete block, poured in-place concrete, traditional 0.05 mx0.15 m by 0.6 m (2 in.x6 in. by 24 in.) on center wood frame, traditional 0.05 mx0.1 m by 0.4 m (2 in.x4 in. by 16 in.) on center wood frame, and steel stud framing had progressively larger environmental impacts. The end of life phase was negligible with respect to the other phases. In the complete life-cycle assessment (LCA), 50-year life span, insulated concrete exterior walls used around 700 GJ (5%) less energy than traditional wood 0.05 mx0.15 m by 0.6 m (2 in.x6 in. by 24 in.) on center wall systems. The results also indicate the importance of exterior wall's thermal mass for the energy performance of a building, especially for a city located in a hot climate zone such as Phoenix, Arizona, and the importance of a holistic approach, such as LCA, to properly assess the negative environmental impact of different technologies.An index-based method for the evaluation of the environmental impact of water distribution systems is introduced. The method is developed according to a set of methodological criteria to assess the environmental effect of water networks. A number of environmental measures are incorporated into the index-based method to account for nonrenewable resource consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and emissions to air, land, and water. The index-based method can be included into a multiobjective optimization program to find design solutions that minimize cost and environmental impact. The index-based method was applied to the design of a water transmission system over a 20-year design horizon. Design alternatives were compared on the basis of the environmental impact index and cost. For the system analyzed, results indicated that of the hydraulically feasible alternatives, the five most environmentally acceptable alternatives were the five most cost-effective alternatives. Results also showed that the environmental impact index is mainly influenced by pumping energy and partially influenced by pipe diameter selection.We used recent developments in theoretical population ecology to construct basic models of common loon (Gavia immer) demography and population dynamics. We parameterized these models using existing survival estimates and data from long-term monitoring of loon productivity and abundance. Our models include deterministic, 2-stage, density-independent matrix models, yielding population growth-rate estimates (lambda) of 0.99 and 1.01 for intensively studied populations in our Wisconsin, USA, and New Hampshire, USA, study areas, respectively. Perturbation analysis of these models indicated that estimated growth rate is extremely sensitive to adult survival, as expected for this long-lived species. Also, we examined 20 years of count data for the 2 areas and evaluated support for a set of count-based models of population growth. We detected no temporal trend in Wisconsin, which would be consistent with fluctuation around an average equilibrium state but could also result from data limitations. For New Hampshire, the model set included varying formulations of density dependence and partitioning of stochasticity that were enabled by the annual sampling resolution. The best model for New Hampshire included density regulation of population growth and, along with the demographic analyses for both areas, provided insight into the possible importance of breeding habitat availability and the abundance of nonbreeding adults. Based on these results, we recommend that conservation organizations include nonbreeder abundance in common loon monitoring efforts and that additional emphasis be placed on identifying and managing human influences on adult loon survival. (JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT 73(7): 1108-1115; 2009)Materials indices and exchange constants are combined with Field et al.'s fleet analysis [Field F, Kirchain R, Clark J. Life-cycle assessment and temporal distributions of emissions: developing a fleet-based analysis. J Indust Ecol 2000;4:71-91, doi:10.1162/108819800569816] to examine the time-dependent CO(2) emissions attached to the production of the Al and Mg alloys used to reduce the mass of transport vehicles. The model is used to breakdown the temporal pattern of upfront emissions of passenger cars according to the mass and CO(2)-footprint efficiency of typical automotive structural substitutions (castings, stiff panels and stiff beams), accounting for the effect of recycling. The fleet's upfront emissions of Al and Mg castings with high content of secondary metal are offset by the increased fuel efficiency after 4 years of driving. Al beams and panels and electrolytic Mg panels require between 8 and 15 years, whereas for panels and beams of Pidgeon Mg no environmental benefits ever materialise. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of polymer materials for photovoltaic applications is expected to have several advantages over current crystalline silicon technology. In this paper, we perform an environmental and economic assessment of polymer-based thin film modules with a glass substrate and modules with a flexible substrate and we compare our results with literature data for multicrystalline (mc-) silicon photovoltaics and other types of PV The functional unit of this study is '25 years of electricity production by P V systems with a power of I watt-peak (W(p))'. Because the lifetime of polymer photovoltaics is at present much lower than of mc-silicon photovoltaics, we first compared the PV cells per watt-peak and next determined the minimum required lifetime of polymer PV to arrive at the same environmental impacts as mc-silicon PV We found that per watt-peak of output power, the environmental impacts compared to mc-silicon are 20-60% lower for polymer PV systems with glass substrate and 80-95% lower for polymer PV with PET as substrate (flexible modules). Also in comparison with thin film CuInSe and thin film silicon, the impacts of polymer modules, per watt-peak, appeared to be lower. The costs per watt-peak of polymer PV modules with glass substrate are approximately 20% higher compared to mc-silicon photovoltaics. However, taking into account uncertainties, this might be an overestimation. For flexible modules, no cost data were available. If the efficiency and lifetime of polymer PV modules increases, both glass-based and flexible polymer PV could become an environment friendly and cheap alternative to mc-silicon PV Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This paper considers two alternative feedstocks for bioethanol production. both derived from household waste-Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) and Biodegradable Municipal Waste (BMW). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been carried out to estimate the GHG emissions from bioethanol using these two feedstocks. An integrated waste management system has been considered. taking into account recycling of materials and production of bioethanol in a combined gasification/bio-catalytic process. For the functional unit defined as the 'total amount of waste treated in the integrated waste management system', the best option is to produce bioethanol from RDF-this saves up to 196 kg CO(2) equiv. per tonne of MSW, compared to the current waste management practice in the UK. However, if the functional unit is defined as 'MJ of fuel equiv.' and bioethanol is compared with petrol on an equivalent energy basis, the results show that bioethanol from RDF offers no saving of CHG emissions compared to petrol. For example. for a typical biogenic carbon content in RDF of around 60%, the life cycle GHG emissions from bioethanol are 87 g CO(2) equiv./MJ while for petrol they are 85 g CO(2) equiv./MJ. On the other hand, bioethanol from BMW offers a significant GHG saving potential over petrol. For a biogenic carbon content of 95%, the life cycle CHG emissions from bioethanol are 6.1 g CO(2) equiv./MJ which represents a saving of 92.5% compared to petrol. In comparison. bioethanol from UK wheat saves 28% of GHG while that from Brazilian sugar cane - the best performing bioethanol with respect to GHG emissions - saves 70%. If the biogenic carbon of the BMW feedstock exceeds 97%, the bioethanol system becomes a carbon sequester. For instance, if waste paper with the biogenic carbon content of almost 100% and a calorific value of 18 MJ/kg is converted into bioethanol, a saving of 107% compared to petrol could be achieved. Compared to paper recycling. converting waste paper into bioethanol saves 460 kg CO(2) equiv./t waste paper or eight times more than recycling. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of the University of Maribor (Engineering Campus) has been assessed on a life cycle basis. The following activities have been considered in the study: the use and operation of lecture theatres (construction and maintenance, heating, lighting and water consumption) and day-to-day consumption of sundries (paper and plastic bottles). The results indicate that the heating and construction of buildings are the 'hot spots' in the system, for most environmental impacts. Different waste management options for the plastic and paper, including recycling, incineration and landfill, have also been compared for environmental impacts and economic costs. The option combining 70% recycling, 29% incineration and 1% landfill has been found to be most economically and environmentally sustainable. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment Is a powerful method to compare the full environmental burden assignable to products, services or processes. In the framework of ULGOS project, this method was chosen to assess the environmental burden of future Iron and steel making processes. We propose here a novel methodology which consists in replacing the traditional data collection by a rigorous physico-chemical calculation. Such an approach allows precise environmental assessment of existing or future processes.The energetic and environmental life cycle assessment of a 4.2 kW(p) stand-alone photovoltaic system (SAPV) at the University of Murcia (south-east of Spain) is presented. PV modules and batteries are the energetically and environmentally most expensive elements. The energy pay-back time was found to be 9.08 years and the specific CO2 emissions was calculated as 131 g/kWh. The SAPV system has been environmentally compared with other supply options (diesel generator and Spanish grid) showing lower impacts in both cases. The results show the CO2-emission reduction potential of SAPV systems in southern European countries and point out the critical environmental issues in these systems. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon footprint of materials and products is becoming an increasingly important factor in international trade. At present the carbon emissions balance of the South African economy is not well understood, especially the carbon emissions associated with imports and exports. An investigation was done of known economic input-output and life cycle analyses models addressing this shortcoming. The results reveal that South Africa is a major exporter of carbon; at least 129 per cent more carbon is associated with a dollar earned from exports than a dollar spent on imports, and the carbon footprint of the outflows on average, equates 37 per cent of the total carbon emissions of the economy. Such figures have serious policy-related implications in a future where international climate-change trade limitations will become stricter and binding.At international level LCA is being increasingly used to objectively evaluate the performances of different Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management solutions. One of the more important waste management options concerns MSW incineration. LCA is usually applied to existing incineration plants. In this study LCA methodology was applied to a new Italian incineration line, to facilitate the prediction, during the design phase, of its potential environmental impacts in terms of damage to human health, ecosystem quality and consumption of resources. The aim of the study was to analyse three different design alternatives: an incineration system with dry flue gas cleaning (without- and with-energy recovery) and one with wet flue gas cleaning. The last two technological solutions both incorporating facilities for energy recovery were compared. From the results of the study, the system with energy recovery and dry flue gas cleaning revealed lower environmental impacts in relation to the ecosystem quality. As LCA results are greatly affected by uncertainties of different types, the second part of the work provides for an uncertainty analysis aimed at detecting the extent output data from life cycle analysis are influenced by uncertainty of input data, and employs both qualitative (pedigree matrix) and quantitative methods (Monte Carlo analysis). (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This review section covers journal articles and conferences papers on sustainability that were published from 2006 to 2008. The literature review has been divided into the following sections(1): Sustainable water and wastewater utilities Sustainable watersheds and water resources management Industrial and corporate approaches towards sustainability Stormwater and green infrastructure Sustainable wastewater technologies Life cycle analysis (LCA) Sustainability and energy in wastewater industry Sustainability and climate change Sustainability and water reuse Application of LEED (R) in wastewater The sustainable water and wastewater utilities reviewed sustainable practices and sustainable workforce management including workforce development, knowledge retention and information sharing, succession planning, and financing. The stormwater and green Infrastructure considered a variety of low impact development (LID) design and technologies and green infrastructures. The wastewater technologies reviewed wastewater treatment, anaerobic technologies, low impact and natural treatment systems, and residuals and emissions management. The sustainability and energy in wastewater industry discussed energy conservation, production and recovery. The sustainability and climate change reviewed greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from water and wastewater industries, the impacts of climate change and reducing carbon footprint. The sustainability and water reuse considered water reclamation and reuse in municipal, industrial, and agricultural settingsThe example of urine reveals the large potential of source separation technologies for sustainable and resource efficient future urban wastewater management. [GRAPHICS]In order to make the best choice between renewable energy technologies, it is important to be able to compare these technologies on the basis of their sustainability, which may include a variety of social, environmental, and economic indicators. This study examined the comparative sustainability of four renewable electricity technologies in terms of their life cycle CO2 emissions and embodied energy, from construction to decommissioning and including maintenance (periodic component replacement plus machinery use), using life cycle analysis. The models developed were based on case studies of power plants in New Zealand, comprising geothermal, large-scale hydroelectric, tidal (a proposed scheme), and wind-farm electricity generation. The comparative results showed that tidal power generation was associated with 1.8 g of CO2/kWh wind with 3.0 g of CO2/kWh, hydroelectric with 4.6 g of CO2/kWh, and geothermal with 5.6 g of CO2/kWh (not including fugitive emissions), and that tidal power generation was associated with 42.3 kJ/kWh, wind with 70.2 kJ/kWh, hydroelectric with 55.0 kJ/kWh, and geothermal with 94.6 kJ/kWh. Other environmental indicators, as well as social and economic indicators, should be applied to gain a complete picture of the technologies studied.Life-cycle assessments (LCAs) are based on numerous databases in the energy, transport, waste disposal, chemicals, agricultural processes and facilities spheres. Agroscope Reckenholz-Tanikon Research Station ART has expanded the data specifically pertaining to agriculture in the 'buildings' sphere. The comparison of four different dairy barns shows that by opting for a multi-building loose-housing system in a simple design, the environmental impacts in the 'buildings' input group can be reduced to a good quarter (energy demand, global warming potential) to a good half (terrestrial ecotoxicity according to the Centrum voor Milieukunde Leiden) of those of an isolated tied-housing system. From the results, it is evident that it is not just the quantity but the type of materials which exerts a major influence on the level of environmental impacts. In individual-farm LCAs, buildings for the three types of farms with animal husbandry investigated contribute 11 to 17 per cent of the 'environmental impact' energy requirement. Consequently, they represent one of the most important input groups in addition to the primary energy carriers and the purchase of feedstuffs and livestock by pigs/poultry farm types.A recent increase in the demand for bio-ethanol has sparked maize production in the USA and other countries across the world. The net energy value (NEV), i.e. the energy output in ethanol and co-products; after accounting for energy input requirements in the production chain of ethanol, is a measure of its sustainability. Grain yield of maize, which varies substantially across different climate and soil conditions, greatly impacts the ethanol NEV. The objectives of this study were to determine i) the NEV of ethanol produced from maize grown in four production regions in the southeastern USA and, ii) the specific impact of local soil variability under the same climate conditions within the four regions on the NEV of maize-ethanol. Maize yield was simulated with the Cropping System Model (CSM)-CERES-Maize model for soil and weather conditions, and management practices representing Bulloch, Floyd, Laurens and Mitchell counties, Georgia, USA. The calculation of ethanol NEV took into account the energy inputs and outputs of the entire ethanol production chain, and was based on the crop simulations. There were statistically significant differences in ethanol NEV among the counties, and within counties due to local soil variability. Differences in ethanol NEV among counties were partially due to different transportation distances. Based on the results of this study, it was concluded that maize-ethanol NEV can be increased by accounting for the soil and climate factors in the feed-stock production and by locating ethanol-processing facilities in regions with soil and climate conditions that are favorable for ethanol-maize production. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper studies the energy valorization of sewage sludge using a batch fry-drying process. Drying processes was carried out by emerging the cylindrical samples of the sewage sludge in the preheated recycled cooking oil. Experimental frying curves for different conditions were determined. Calorific values for the fried sewage sludge were hence determined to be around 24 MJ kg(-1), showing the auto-combustion potential of the fried sludge. A one-dimensional model allowing for the prediction of the water removal during frying was developed, Another water replacement model for oil intake in the fried sewage sludge was also developed. Typical frying curves were obtained and validated against the experimental data. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.By using biofuels bioproductive land is devoted to supply energy. As the bioproductive land area on our planet is confined and actually decreasing, biofuels compete against other demands like the production of food, industrial resources, nature conservation etc. This not only results in higher prices for agricultural and forestry products. but also increases environmental pressures. The aim of this paper is to clarify if and to which extent biofuels might be Sustainable by applying modified calculation methods of the ecological footprint. it can be concluded that biofuels can offer huge environmental benefits compared to fossil fuels. Yet, if and to which extent biofuel production is Sustainable depends on the amount of land available and, therefore, can only be decided in a regional context. Ecological footprinting can significantly support these regional decision making processes. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment is a technique to assess environmental aspects associated with a product or process by identifying energy, materials, and emissions over its life cycle. The energy analysis includes four stages of a life cycle: material production phase, manufacturing phase, use phase, and end-of-life phase. In this study, the life cycle energy of fiber-rein forced composites manufactured by using the pultrusion process was analyzed. For more widespread use of composites, it is critical to estimate how much energy is consumed during the lifetime of the composites compared to other materials. In particular, we evaluated a potential for composite materials to save energy in automotive applications. A hybrid model, which combines process analysis with economic input-output analysis, was used to capture both direct and indirect energy consumption of the pultrusion process in the material production and manufacturing stages. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several papers have studied the eco-efficiency of manufacturing systems to address strategic socioeconomic issues in the context of sustainability analysis. Their goal has been to take into account not only environmental impact aspects throughout the whole life cycle but also to incorporate the associated economic value as well, thus, giving a comprehensive vision of both factors. This paper focuses on different commonplace household electric appliances, comparing their eco-efficiency computed using a data envelopment analysis model. We consider the retail price as a measure of the product's economic value and the ecopoint LCA score as the assessment of its environmental impact. We conclude that cell phones and the bulky analyzed appliances have the highest eco-efficiency scores, whereas the rest would require a more environmentally friendly redesign and/or an increase in their perceived value to improve their eco-efficiency.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have shown that site-dependent impact assessment for categories like acidification and eutrophication give more accurate and realistic results than site-generic assessments. To date, existing geography-specific, or regionalized, impact assessment factors have not been applied to LCA databases and software tools. We describe a simple, generic methodology to couple existing regionalized characterization factors with large life cycle inventory databases. This approach allows for detailed geographic life cycle impact assessment results. Case-study results for European country-specific electricity mixes are calculated using the Ecoinvent 2.01 database and the EDIP 2003 and Accumulated Exceedance impact assessment methods and CASES project external energy cost characterization factors. In most cases, regionalization shows different total scores, different processes of high importance, and varying geographic distributions of environmental impacts, As the methodology requires no additional input other than the geographic information already in existing LCA databases, it can be used routinely. Better and more consistent geographic information in life cycle inventory databases and impact assessment methods, tailored to the specific spatial range of all environmental effects considered, would be beneficial.We evaluated three exposure models with data obtained from measurements among workers who use "aerosol" solvent products in the vehicle repair industry and with field experiments using these products to simulate the same exposure conditions. The three exposure models were the (1) homogeneously mixed-one-box model, (2) multizone model, and (3) eddy-diffusion model. Temporally differentiated real-time breathing zone volatile organic compound (VOC) concentration measurements, integrated far-field area samples, and simulated experiments were used in estimating parameters, such as emission rates, diffusivity, and near-field dimensions. We assessed differences in model input requirements and their efficacy for predictive modeling. The One-box model was not able to resemble the temporal profile of exposure concentrations, but it performed well concerning time-weighted exposure over extended time periods. However, this model required an adjustment for spatial concentration gradients. Multizone models and diffusion-models may solve this problem. However, we found that the reliable use of both these models requires extensive field data to appropriately define pivotal parameters such as diffusivity or near-field dimensions. We conclude that it is difficult to apply these models for predicting VOC exposures in the workplace, However, for comparative exposure scenarios in life-cycle assessment they may be useful.Oriented strand boards (OSBs) are wood panels that are used worldwide mainly in the packaging and the building sectors. Their market share is rapidly increasing thanks to their outstanding mechanical properties and to a renewed interest for wood based products. The OSB production process generates, nonetheless, emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during the air-drying of wood strands. This known problem in the literature leads to an odorous nuisance in the surrounding area of the production site. In order to address this problem, a novel application to wood drying of an innovative vapor drying technology is successfully operated at the production site of Kronospan Luxembourg S.A. In addition to the reduced odorous nuisance, a significant environmental added value is expected because of the other modifications induced by the vapor-drying technique on the OSB production process viz. the reduced energy and raw materials demands and the change of adhesive mixture, With the addition of phenol resin. The potential impact of this technology on the OSB market is therefore very significant This study was aimed at assessing the environmental added value provided by the vapor-drying technique through a life cycle assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14040-44 standards. The objective was to compare the environmental performances of the former and the current OSB production processes. Considering only the pollutant emissions from the OSB production process, the reduction of climate change impact and human health damage is significant, respectively, 15-20% and 50-75%. When the lifecycle processes related to the OSB production are included, the reduction of damages does not exceed 3-7%. Following an uncertainty analysis,this reduction was nevertheless proven to be statistically significant However, it is observed that the reduction of environmental impacts and damages allowed by the vapor-drying technology is counterbalanced by the change of adhesive mixture. Indeed the new adhesive mixture generates higher environmental damages than the former mixture because of the higher energy and raw material demand from phenol resin production. These results show the need to move from an approach focused on a single process innovation (the vapor-drying technique) to a more general and systemic approach combining process and product ecodesign. Such approaches are needed in order to effectively improve the overall environmental performance of a production system, without transfer of pollution along the lifecycle or offsets of pollution credits. LCA is definitively one of the most pertinent tools to identify improvement opportunities in the comparison of alternative designs from an environmental perspective.There is a strong societal need to evaluate and understand the sustainability of biofuels, especially because of the significant increases in production mandated by many countries, including the United States. Sustainability will be a strong factor in the regulatory environment and investments in biofuels. Biomass feedstock production is an important contributor to environmental, social, and economic impacts from biofuels. This study presents a systems approach where the agricultural, energy, and environmental sectors are considered as components of a single system, and environmental liabilities are used as recoverable resources for biomass feedstock production. We focus on efficient use of land and water resources. We conducted a spatial analysis evaluating marginal land and degraded water resources to improve feedstock productivity with concomitant environmental restoration for the state of Nebraska. Results indicate that utilizing marginal land resources such as riparian and roadway buffer strips, brownfield sites, and marginal agricultural land could produce enough feedstocks to meet a maximum of 22% of the energy requirements of the state compared to the current supply of 2%. Degraded water resources such as nitrate-contaminated groundwater and wastewater were evaluated as sources of nutrients and water to improve feedstock productivity. Spatial overlap between degraded water and marginal land resources was found to be as high as 96% and could maintain sustainable feedstock production on marginal lands. Other benefits of implementing this strategy include feedstock intensification to decrease biomass transportation costs, restoration of contaminated water resources, and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be an objective, strategic and immediate criteria in determining, case-by-case, the most suitable crop for energy. In this study, a cradle-to-farm gate LCA study was performed in 4 perennial energy crops and then compared to the environmental impacts of a conventional wheat-maize rotation. The functional units energy and hectare were used for ranking the crops. The results showed clear and constant environmental benefits, on average 50% lower impacts, by substituting the conventional rotation with perennial crops. Among the latter, little differences were found on hectare basis, while the differences were strictly dependent on biomass yield, on energy basis. Giant reed, the most productive crop, showed at this regard the best performance, while cynara resulted in the lowest ecological benefits. A similar trend was also registered as concern the energy gain and efficiency that ranged from 75 (cynara) to 349 (giant reed) GJ ha(-1), and from 7 to 30 (same order), respectively. On hectare basis, switchgrass achieved better results in six categories out of nine, and especially, it was from 27% to 32% less impacting than the other perennials on marine water ecotoxicity, which resulted in the clearly most affected category after normalisation on average European inhabitants. Weighting is not allowed for public comparison (ISO 14042), yet it can be helpful for some overall indications and conclusive comments. Comparing giant reed and switchgrass under different weighting sets, it emerged that resource depletion was the main discriminator for crop choice. Evenly weighting human health (HH), resource depletion (RD) and ecosystem quality (EQ) categories made the preference toward switchgrass or giant reed very uncertain. Taking three different weighting sets with RD, HH and EQ having 50% of relative importance (25% was set for the remaining two categories), switchgrass appeared the best choice in two cases (i.e. HH = 50% and EQ = 50%) out of three. Therefore, the preference toward a specific energy crop will strongly depend on weighting sets that may considerably change in space and time. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over the last few years, the favourable political environment has led to an increasing use of biofuels in die worldwide transportation sector. This development is mainly driven by concerns about the security of energy supplies and the intention to mitigate anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG). However, recently, the sustainability of a broad biofuel production and use has, in particular, been strongly questioned. Against this background, in this study a literature review on available and recently published life cycle assessment (LCA) studies for biodiesel has been carried out and the potential GHG emission savings from biodiesel production and use compared to fossil diesel have been analysed. The results of the reviewed studies underline the significant influence of the effects of land use change and the importance of avoiding the conversion of natural land into agricultural areas. If no land use change takes place, the results show moderate to good GHG savings for biodiesel (depending on the type of converted raw materials as well as on the chosen biomass conversion technology). In particular, the biodiesel feedstock production and the source of energy for the production process strongly influence the overall result of the GHG balance of biodiesel.Accurate estimation of the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential of bioenergy crops requires the integration of a significant component of spatially varying information. In particular, crop yield and soil carbon (C) stocks are variables which are generally soil type and climate dependent. Since gaseous emissions from soil C depend on current C stocks, which in turn are related to previous land management it is important to consider both previous and proposed future land use in any C accounting assessment. We have conducted a spatially explicit study for England and Wales, coupling empirical yield maps with the RothC soil C turnover model to simulate soil C dynamics. We estimate soil C changes under proposed planting of four bioenergy crops, Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus), short rotation coppice (SRC) poplar (Populus trichocarpa Torr. & Gray x P. trichocarpa, var. Trichobel), winter wheat, and oilseed rape. This is then related to the former land use - arable, pasture, or forest/seminatural, and the outputs are then assessed in the context of a life cycle analysis (LCA) for each crop. By offsetting emissions from management under the previous land use, and considering fossil fuel C displaced, the GHG balance is estimated for each of the 12 land use change transitions associated with replacing arable, grassland, or forest/seminatural land, with each of the four bioenergy crops. Miscanthus and SRC are likely to have a mostly beneficial impact in reducing GHG emissions, while oilseed rape and winter wheat have either a net GHG cost, or only a marginal benefit. Previous land use is important and can make the difference between the bioenergy crop being beneficial or worse than the existing land use in terms of GHG balance.The Brookings Institute analysis rate both Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky ( USA) as two of the nation's largest carbon emitters. This high carbon footprint is largely due to the fact that 95% of electricity is produced from coal. Kentucky has limited options for electric power production from low carbon sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric. Other states (TN, IN, OH, WV, and IL) in this region are similarly limited in renewable energy capacity. Bioenergy agriculture could account for a proportion of renewable energy needs, but to what extent is unclear. Herein, we found that abandoned agricultural land, not including land that is in fallow or crop rotation, aquatic ecosystems, nor plant-life that had passed through secondary ecological succession totaled 1.9Mha and abandoned mine-land totaled 0.3 Mha, which combined accounted for 21% of Kentucky's land mass. A life cycle assessment was performed based on local yield and agronomic data for native grass bioenergy agriculture. These data showed that utilizing Kentucky's marginal land to grow native C-4 grasses for cellulosic ethanol and bioelectricity may account for up to 13.3% and 17.2% of the states 2 trillion MJ energy consumption and reduce green house gas emissions by 68% relative to gasoline.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is performed to quantitatively evaluate all environmental impacts from products, systems, processes and services. However, LCIA does not always provide valuable information for choosing among alternatives with different specifications, functionalities and lifetimes. The objectives of this study are (1) to propose environmental indicators to evaluate environmental efficiency and value qualitatively and quantitatively on the basis of analogies to financial and economic indicators, and (2) to present the application of the indicators. Incremental evaluation using a reference is employed to obtain the environmental indicators. The environmental efficiency indicators are conceptually based on the ratios of reduced environmental burdens returned to environmental burdens required: environmental return on investment, environmental payback period and environmental internal rate of return. The environmental value indicator is the sum of all reduced and required environmental burdens: i.e., environmental net present value. All the environmental indicators can be used to compare and rank the environmental efficiencies or values of alternatives. The environmental efficiency indicators can be applied to a new environmental labeling. The concept of eco-efficiency labeling is developed by combining the environmental efficiency indicators with financial indicators. A case study is performed to illustrate the necessity and importance of the environmental indicators. These environmental indicators can help easily communicate LCIA results in the field of environmental management. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the intention of bridging the 'digital divide' many programmes have been launched to provide computers for educational institutions, ranging from refurbishing second hand computers to delivering low cost new computers. The fast and economical provision of large quantities of equipment is one of the many challenges faced by such programmes. If an increase is to be achieved in the sustainability of computer supplies for schools, not only must equipment be provided, but also suitable training and maintenance delivered. Furthermore, appropriate recycling has to be ensured, so that end-of-life equipment can be dealt with properly. This study has evaluated the suitability of three computer supply scenarios to schools in Colombia: (i) 'Colombian refurbishment', -refurbishment of computers donated in Colombia, (ii) 'Overseas refurbishment', -import of computers which were donated and refurbished abroad, and (iii) 'XO Laptop', -purchase of low cost computers manufactured in Korea. The methods applied were: Material Flow Assessment, -to assess the quantities-, Life Cycle Assessment, -to assess the environmental impacts, and the application of the Multiple Attribute Utility Theory, -to analyse, evaluate and compare different scenarios. The most sustainable solution proved to be the local refurbishment of second hand computers of Colombian origin to an appropriate technical standard. The environmental impacts of such practices need to be evaluated carefully, as second hand appliances have to be maintained, require spare parts and sometimes use more energy than newer equipment. Providing schools with second hand computers from overseas and through programmes such as 'One Laptop Per Child' has the disadvantage that the potential for social improvements - such as creation of jobs and local industry involvement - is very low, (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes and applies EDEN-E, an operational method for the environmental evaluation of dairy farms based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) conceptual framework. EDEN-E requires a modest amount of data readily available on-farm, and thus can be used to assess a large number of farms at a reasonable cost. EDEN-E estimates farm resource use and pollutant emissions mostly at the farm scale, based on-farm-gate balances, amongst others. Resource use and emissions are interpreted in terms of potential impacts: eutrophication, acidification, climate change, terrestrial toxicity, non-renewable energy use and land occupation. The method distinguishes for each total impact a direct component (impacts on the farm site) and an indirect component (impacts associated with production and supply of inputs used). A group of 47 dairy farms (41 conventional and six organic) was evaluated. Expressed per 1000 kg of fat-and-protein-corrected milk, total land occupation was significantly larger for organic than for conventional farms, while total impacts for eutrophication, acidification, climate change, terrestrial toxicity, and non-renewable energy use were not significantly different for the two production modes. When expressed per ha of land occupied all total impacts were significantly larger for conventional than organic farms. This study largely confirms previously published findings concerning the effect of production mode on impacts of dairy farms. However, it strikingly reveals that, for the set of farms examined, the contribution of production mode to overall inter-farm variability of impacts was minor relative to inter-farm variability within each of the two production modes examined. The mapping of impact variability through EDEN-E opens promising perspectives to move towards sustainable farming systems by identifying the structural and management characteristics of the farms presenting the lowest impacts. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New fuel regulations based on life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have focused renewed attention on life cycle models of biofuels. The BESS model estimates 25% lower life cycle GHG emissions for corn ethanol than does the well-known GREET model, which raises questions about which model is more accurate. I develop a life cycle metamodel to compare the GREET and BESS models in detail and to explain why the results from these models diverge. I find two main reasons for the divergence: (1) BESS models a more efficient biorefinery than is modeled in the cases to which its results have been compared, and (2) in several instances BESS fails to properly count upstream emissions. Adjustments to BESS to account for these differences raise the estimated global warming intensity (not including land use change) of the corn ethanol pathway considered in that model from 45 to 61 g CO(2)e MJ(-1). Adjusting GREET to use BESS's biorefinery performance and coproduct credit assumptions reduces the GREET estimate from 64 to 61 g CO(2)e MJ(-1). Although this analysis explains the gap between the two models, both models would be improved with better data on corn production practices and by better treatment of agricultural inputs.The boreal forests of Scandinavia offer a considerable resource base, and use of the resource for the production of less carbon-intensive alternative transport fuel is one strategy being considered in Norway. Here, we quantify the resource potential and investigate the environmental implications of wood-based transportation relative to a fossil reference system for a specific region in Norway. We apply a well-to-wheel life cycle assessment to evaluate four E85 production system designs based on two distinct wood-to-ethanol conversion technologies. We form best and worst case scenarios to assess the sensitivity of impact results through the adjustment of key parameters, such as biomass-to-ethanol conversion efficiency and upstream biomass transport distance. Depending on the system design, global warming emission reductions of 46% to 68% per-MJ-gasoline avoided can be realized in the region, along with reductions in most of the other environmental impact categories considered. We find that the region's surplus forest-bioenergy resources are vast; use for the production of bioethanol today would have resulted in the displacement of 55% to 68% of the region's gasoline-based global warming emission-or 6% to 8% of Norway's total global warming emissions associated with road transportation.Oslo's wastewater pipeline network has an aging stock of concrete, steel, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipelines, which calls for a good portion of expenditures to be directed toward maintenance and investments in rehabilitation. The stock, as it is in 2008, is a direct consequence of the influx of pipelines of different sizes, lengths, and materials of construction into the system over the years. A material flow analysis (MFA) facilitates an analysis of the environmental impacts associated with the manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, and retirement of the pipelines. The forecast of the future flows of materials-which, again, is highly interlinked with the historic flows-provides insight into the likely future environmental impacts. This will enable decision makers keen on alleviating such impacts to think along the lines of eco-friendlier processes and technologies or simply different ways of doing business. Needless to say, the operation and maintenance phase accounts for the major bulk of emissions and calls for energy-efficient approaches to this phase of the life cycle, even as manufacturers strive to make their processes energy-efficient and attempt to include captive renewable energy in their total energy consumption. This article focuses on the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with the wastewater pipeline network in the city of Oslo.Practitioners of life cycle assessment (LCA) have recently turned their attention to social issues in the supply chain. The United Nations life cycle initiative's social LCA task force has completed its guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products, and awareness of managing upstream corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues has risen due to the growing popularity of LCA. This article explores one approach to assessing social issues in the supply chain-life cycle attribute assessment (LCAA). The approach was originally proposed by Gregory Norris in 2006, and we present here a case study. LCAA builds on the theoretical structure of environmental LCA to construct a supply chain model. Instead of calculating quantitative impacts, however, it asks the question "What percentage of my supply chain has attribute X?" X may represent a certification from a CSR body or a self-defined attribute, such as "is locally produced." We believe LCAA may serve as an aid to discussions of how current and popular CSR indicators may be integrated into a supply chain model. The case study demonstrates the structure of LCAA, which is very similar to that of traditional environmental LCA. A labor hours data set was developed as a satellite matrix to determine number of worker hours in a greenhouse tomato supply. Data from the Quebec tomato producer were used to analyze how the company performed on eight sample LCAA indicators, and conclusions were drawn about where the company should focus CSR efforts.Throughout their life cycle stages-material production, package manufacture, distribution, end-of-life management-packaging systems consume natural resources and energy, generate waste, and emit pollutants. Each of these stages also carries a financial cost. Motivated by a desire to decrease environmental burdens while reducing financial costs associated with the packaging of accessory and service parts, Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) partnered with the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management to build a life cycle assessment and costing tool to support packaging design decisions. The resulting Environmental Packaging Impact Calculator (EPIC) provides comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). It allows packaging designers to identify environmentally and economically preferable packaging systems in daily decision-making. EPIC's parameterized process flow model allows users to assess many different packaging systems using a single model. Its input/output interface is designed for users without preexisting knowledge of LCA theory or practice and calculates results based on relatively few input data. The main motivation behind this environmental design tool is to provide relevant information to those individuals who are in the best position to reduce life cycle impacts and costs from TMS's packaging and distribution systems.This article applies a combined input-output and life cycle inventory (LCI) method to the calculation of emissions and material requirements of the Czech economy in 2003. The main focus is on materials and emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic. Emissions and material extraction avoided due to imports are calculated according to an input-output approach that assumes the same production technology for imports as for domestic production. Because not all products are provided by the domestic economy, the LCI data are incorporated into the monetary input-output model. The results show that incorporating the LCI data into an input-output model is reasonable. The emissions embodied in the international trade of the Czech Republic are comparable to the domestic emissions. We compare the economy-wide material flow indicators, such as direct material input, domestic material consumption, and physical trade balance, to their raw material equivalents. The results of our calculation show that the Czech Republic exerts environmental pressure on the environment in other countries through international trade. We argue that raw material equivalents should be used to express the flows across national boundaries. Furthermore, we recommend a raw material consumption indicator for international comparisons.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and tools are increasingly being taught in university courses. Students are learning the concepts and applications of process-based LCA, input-output-based LCA, and hybrid methods. Here, we describe a classroom simulation to introduce students to an economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) method. The simulation uses a simplified four-industry economy with eight transactions among the industries. Production functions for the transactions and waste generation amounts are provided for each industry. Students represent an industry and receive and issue purchase orders for materials to simulate the actual purchases of materials within the economy. Students then compare the simulation to mathematical representations of the model. Finally, students view an online EIO-LCA tool (www.eiolca.net) and use the tool to compare different products. The simulation has been used successfully with a wide range of students to facilitate conceptual understanding of one EIO-LCA method.The purpose of this article is to provide planners with an introduction to the concept of green buildings and building assessment systems and to identify and explore the major themes in the literature as they relate to planning. Six themes are identified: scope, weighting, subjectivity, rigor, adaptation, and life cycle analysis. Planners have begun to develop and implement green building policies and programs, although there is much room for expansion of the role of planning in green building issues. The article concludes by outlining a broad research agenda that can help move the discussion of the role of planning in green building issues forward. Planning needs to take a more assertive role in green buildings to add more comprehensiveness to the issue.The impacts of some high-pressure diecasting (HPDC) process parameters on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are quantified using life cycle analysis (LCA) for both aluminum and magnesium alloys. The study was conducted according to ISO 14040 standards and was based on an automotive component made on cold-chamber HPDC machines operating in typical mass production environments. The aluminum alloy foundry was located in Australia; the magnesium alloy foundry was located in the United States. In both cases, emissions were found to reduce with an increasing HPDC process yield. However, yield variations had only a modest impact on GHG emissions in the aluminum alloy HPDC, due to the excellent in-plant recycling of the alloy and the relatively low emissions from primary aluminum production compared with primary magnesium production. In contrast, for the magnesium alloy, significant reductions in emissions were recorded as the yield increased. This outcome was attributed to the considerable savings achieved in raw material quantities sourced from high-emitting primary production and the use of lower amounts of SF6, a GHG with a very high global warming potential (GWP). These results were found to hold irrespective of changes to the ratio between the primary and secondary alloys in the raw material mix, although the magnitude of the impact was reduced considerably with reductions in the primary alloy component. In the case of the magnesium alloy HPDC, decreases in quality assurance (QA) rejects and cycle times were also found to contribute toward reduced emissions, although their influences were an order of magnitude lower than that of the yield improvements.Moulded pulp has been used as an alternative to plastic in certain packaging applications, but some problems in the production system lead to higher costs including energy consumption. Industry tends to operate on the basis of experience rather than through scientific evaluation and systematic design methods. The research aims at detecting the problems in the production system by a multidimensional life cycle assessment (MLCA) with transparent analysis. The MLCA measures the performance of the moulded pulp production system with regard to technical, economic and environmental aspects and produces quantitative results (in monetary units), and finally indicates the overall efficiency of the production system using a sustainability index (SI). A life cycle impact assessment method based on endpoint modelling (LIME) is mainly adopted in the MLCA. Three existing moulded pulp production systems for industrial packaging in China were assessed in this study. The results show that the main environmental impacts Of the three production systems are the atmospheric emissions and landfill waste; the drying stage in the production systems, which is dominated by consumption of resources and environmental impacts, is the key to controlling costs; steam should be the first preferred heat source in the drying process for achieving sustainability in the moulded pulp production system. The optimum for the three cases is identified by calculating the newly developed SI. The MLCA approach can be used to assist in identifying potential improvements and practical new packaging designs. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The imminent decline of the world's oil production, its high market prices and environmental impacts have made the production of biofuels to reach unprecedent volumes over the last 10 years, This is why there have been intense debates among international organizations and political leaders in order to discuss the impacts of the biofuel use intensification. Besides assessing the causes of the rise in the demand and production of biofuels, this paper also shows the state of the art of their world's current production. It is also discussed different vegetable raw materials sources and technological paths to produce biofuels, as well as issues regarding production cost and the relation of their economic feasibility with oil international prices. The environmental impacts of programs that encourage biofuel production, farmland land requirements and the impacts on food production are also discussed, considering the life cycle analysis (LCA) as a tool. It is concluded that the rise in the use of biofuels is inevitable and that international cooperation, regulations and certification mechanisms must be established regarding the use of land, the mitigation of environmental and social impacts caused by biofuel production. It is also mandatory to establish appropriate working conditions and decent remuneration for workers of the biofuels production chain. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable-energy sources often are regarded as dispersed and difficult to collect, thus requiring substantial land resources in comparison to conventional energy sources. In this review, we present the normalized land requirements during the life cycles of conventional- and renewable-energy options, covering coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, photovoltaics, wind, and biomass. We compared the land transformation and occupation matrices within a life-cycle framework across those fuel cycles. Although the estimates vary with regional and technological conditions, the photovoltaic (PV) cycle requires the least amount of land among renewable-energy options, while the biomass cycle requires the largest amount. Moreover, we determined that, in most cases, ground-mount PV systems in areas of high insolation transform less land than the coal-fuel cycle coupled with surface mining. In terms of land occupation, the biomass-fuel cycle requires the greatest amount, followed by the nuclear-fuel cycle. Although not detailed in this review, conventional electricity-generation technologies also pose secondary effects on land use, including contamination and disruptions of the ecosystems of adjacent lands, and land disruptions by fuel-cycl e-related accidents. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Brazil has always been the pioneer in the application of bioethanol as a main fuel for automobiles, hence environmental and economic analyses of the Brazilian ethanol industries are of crucial importance. This study presents a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) on gasoline and ethanol as fuels, and with two types of blends of gasoline with bioethanol, all used in a midsize car. The focus is on a main application in Brazil, sugarcane based ethanol. The results of two cases are presented: base case-bioethanol production from sugarcane and electricity generation from bagasse; future case-bioethanol production from both sugarcane and bagasse and electricity generation from wastes. In both cases sugar is co-produced. The life cycles of fuels include gasoline production, agricultural production of sugarcane, ethanol production, sugar and electricity co-production, blending ethanol with gasoline to produce E10 (10% of ethanol) and E85 (85%), and finally the use of gasoline, E10, E85 and pure ethanol. Furthermore, a life cycle costing (LCC) was conducted to give an indication on fuel economy in both cases. The results show that in the base case less GHG is emitted; while the overall evaluation of these fuel options depends on the importance attached to different impacts. The future case is certainly more economically attractive, which has been the driving force for development in the ethanol industry in Brazil. Nevertheless, the outcomes depend very much on the assumed price for crude oil. In LCC a steady-state cost model was used and only the production cost was taken into account. In the real market the prices of fuels are very much dependent on the taxes and subsidies. Technological development can help in lowering both the environmental impact and the prices of the ethanol fuels. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development was articulated by the Brundtland Commission as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Consumers and legislation have pushed companies to re-design their logistics networks in order to mitigate negative environmental and social impacts. The objective of this paper is to design a sustainable recovery network, in which economical, environmental and social impacts are balanced. Life cycle analysis (LCA) has been applied to investigate the environmental impact of different end-of-life (EOL) options. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) has been utilized to calculate social impacts. Next in this research, a three-objective mathematical programming model has been developed to maximize economic and social benefits and minimize negative environmental impacts, simultaneously. Scrap tires have been considered for a case study. Multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) has been applied to find the Pareto-optimal solutions. In the recovery network of scrap tires, each solution corresponds to a different configuration of the network, based on technology type and location of installed recycling plants. These Pareto-optimal solutions will give some trade off information about the three mentioned objectives, so decision makers can assess the economical impact of efforts of improving the social and environmental issues. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of environmental planning tools for optimum solid waste landfill siting taking into account all environmental implications was carried out by applying Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to enhance the research information obtained from initial analysis using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The objective of this study is to identify the most eco-friendly landfill site by conducting a LCA analysis upon 5 potential GIS generated sites which incorporated eleven important criteria related to the social, environmental, and economical factors. The LCA analysis utilized the daily distance covered by collection trucks among the 5 selected landfill sites to generate inventory data on total energy usage for each landfill sites. The planning and selection of the potential sites were facilitated after conducting environmental impact analysis upon the inventory data which showed the least environmental impact.A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment was conducted in this paper to calculate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, such as CO(2), CH(4), CF(4) and C(2)F(6) emissions, based on statistic data of Chinese aluminum industry of the year 2003. The results showed that the GHG emissions for 1 t primary aluminum production was 21.6 t CO(2) equivalent which is 70% higher than that of worldwide average level of the year 2000. The main contributors of emission were the alumina refining and aluminum smelting process accounting for 72% and 22% in accumulative emission, respectively. According to the development and application of new process technologies for primary aluminum production and the 'target of energy-saving and emissions-reducing' of Chinese government, the reduction potential of the GHG emissions for alumina and aluminum production were estimated. The results indicated that China aluminum industry would achieve the target of reducing about 25% GHG emissions by the end of 2010.Waste consumer batteries are recycled using different routes based on hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical processes. Two hydrometallurgical and two pyrometallurgical treatment scenarios are compared starting from an average composition of Belgian waste batteries. The environmental performance is compared using life cycle analysis (LCA). The recycling rate is studied through mass balance Calculation. Each treatment scenario results in a specific recycling rate. The environmental impact and benefits also vary between the treatment options. There is no such thing as a typical hydrometallurgical or pyrometallurgical treatment. When applying a hydrometallurgical treatment scenario, the focus lies on zinc and iron recycling. When allowing manganese recycling, the energy demand of the hydrometallurgical process increases considerably. Both pyrometallurgical options recycle zinc, iron and manganese. According to the LCA, none of the treatment scenarios performs generally better or worse than the others. Each option has specific advantages and disadvantages. The Batteries Directive 2006/66/EC sets out a recycling rate of 50% for consumer waste batteries. Based on metal recycling alone, the mass balances show that the target is difficult to obtain. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within a product system of a life-cycle assessment (LCA), solid waste landfills should be treated as processes, because they are considered to be a part of the technical system. Hence, their inputs and outputs should be included in the life-cycle inventory analysis and evaluated within the life-cycle impact assessment. The aim of this paper is to discuss the consideration of emissions from solid waste landfills within the LCA framework and to investigate the uncertainties in existing modelling approaches. Based on this analysis the main limitations are discussed and recommendations for incorporating long-term emissions from landfills in LCA are made. It is emphasized that the lack of consideration of spatial and temporal characteristics of long-term emissions turns out to be an important source of uncertainty when modelling the environmental impact of landfills. For toxicity categories in particular, the life-cycle impact assessment might be the dominant source of uncertainty. However, in order to understand the reliability of LCA results with respect to landfill emissions, quantitative uncertainty should be routinely included in LCA studies and sources of uncertainty need to be thoroughly discussed.The Old Ammassuo Landfill (Espoo, Finland) covers an area of 52 hectares and contains about 10 million tonnes of waste that was landfilled between 1987 and 2007. The majority of this waste was mixed, of which about 57% originated from households. This paper aims at describing the management of the Old Ammassuo Landfill throughout its operational lifetime (1987-2007), and at developing an environmental evaluation based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) using the EASEWASTE-model. The assessment criteria evaluate specific categories of impact, including standard impact categories, toxicity-related impact categories and an impact categorized as spoiled groundwater resources (SGR). With respect to standard and toxicity-related impact categories, the LCA results show that substantial impact potentials are estimated for global warming (GW), ozone depletion (OD), human toxicity via soil (HTs) and ecotoxicity in water chronic (ETwc). The largest impact potential was found for SGR and amounted to 57.6 person equivalent (PE) per tonne of landfilled waste. However, the SGR impact may not be viewed as a significant issue in Finland as the drinking water is mostly supplied from surface water bodies. Overall, the results demonstrate that gas management has great importance to the environmental performance of the Old Ammassuo Landfill. However, several chemicals related to gas composition (especially trace compounds) and specific emissions from on-site operations were not available or were not measured and were therefore taken from the literature. Measurement campaigns and field investigations should be undertaken in order to obtain a more robust and comprehensive dataset that can be used in the LCA-modelling, before major improvements regarding landfill management are finalized.Plastics are inexpensive, lightweight and durable materials, which can readily be moulded into a variety of products that find use in a wide range of applications. As a consequence, the production of plastics has increased markedly over the last 60 years. However, current levels of their usage and disposal generate several environmental problems. Around 4 per cent of world oil and gas production, a non-renewable resource, is used as feedstock for plastics and a further 3-4% is expended to provide energy for their manufacture. A major portion of plastic produced each year is used to make disposable items of packaging or other short-lived products that are discarded within a year of manufacture. These two observations alone indicate that our current use of plastics is not sustainable. In addition, because of the durability of the polymers involved, substantial quantities of discarded end-of-life plastics are accumulating as debris in landfills and in natural habitats worldwide. Recycling is one of the most important actions currently available to reduce these impacts and represents one of the most dynamic areas in the plastics industry today. Recycling provides opportunities to reduce oil usage, carbon dioxide emissions and the quantities of waste requiring disposal. Here, we briefly set recycling into context against other waste-reduction strategies, namely reduction in material use through downgauging or product reuse, the use of alternative biodegradable materials and energy recovery as fuel. While plastics have been recycled since the 1970s, the quantities that are recycled vary geographically, according to plastic type and application. Recycling of packaging materials has seen rapid expansion over the last decades in a number of countries. Advances in technologies and systems for the collection, sorting and reprocessing of recyclable plastics are creating new opportunities for recycling, and with the combined actions of the public, industry and governments it may be possible to divert the majority of plastic waste from landfills to recycling over the next decades.The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool to guide catalyst development is demonstrated by comparing the environmental impact of acrylic acid production from propylene, the Current commercial feedstock, to propane as an alternate feedstock. Acrylic acid is Currently produced in a two-step process from propylene. Because of its lower cost, propane is an attractive alternative to propylene; however, no catalysts are currently available that can compete with the high yield of the propylene process. The LCA was performed using SimaPro, and impact assessment was determined using the Eco-Indicator 99 method. A comparison of the two feedstocks at the 87% yield of the current commercial propylene process demonstrated that switching to propane Would decrease the environmental impact of the process by 20%. Determination of environmental impact as the yield from the potential propane process wits varied predicts that, at yields exceeding 6%, the propane process will have a lower environmental impact than the current propylene process. By focusing on particular categories such as fossil fuels or climate change, the propane process will have a lower impact for yields exceeding 15 and 33%, respectively. The Current catalyst yield of up to 48% for the propane process exceeds these values. If reaction and waste gas heat are converted to electricity instead of steam, yields in excess of 61% will result in a lower total impact for the propane process. On the basis of raw material costs, the economic break-even point for the propane process is 59% yield. The similar yields of similar to 60% from propane required by economics and for a lower environmental impact represents a factor of 1.25 increase in yield over the current state-of-the-art propane catalyst compared to a factor of 1.81 increase in yield required to equal the current propylene yield. Thus, the proposed propane process may be much closer to viability than previously realized. This analysis provides an example of how LCA can compare chemical production from two different feedstocks, even if a catalyst for the reaction of interest has not been designed. The LCA analysis can also be used to determine target goals for catalysis research.On-board hydrogen storage and production via ammonia electrolysis was evaluated to determine whether the process was feasible using galvanostatic studies between an ammonia electrolytic cell (AEC) and a breathable proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Hydrogen-dense liquid ammonia stored at ambient temperature and pressure is an excellent source for hydrogen storage. This hydrogen is released from ammonia through electrolysis, which theoretically consumes 95% less energy than water electrolysis; 1.55 Wh g(-1) H-2 is required for ammonia electrolysis and 33 Wh g(-1) H-2 for water electrolysis. An ammonia electrolytic cell (AEC), comprised of carbon fiber paper (CFP) electrodes supported by Ti foil and deposited with Pt-Ir, was designed and constructed for electrolyzing an alkaline ammonia solution. Hydrogen from the cathode compartment of the AEC was fed to a polymer exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). In terms of electric energy. input to the AEC was less than the output from the PEMFC yielding net electrical energies as high as 9.7 +/- 1.1 Wh g(-1) H-2 while maintaining H-2 production equivalent to consumption. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Technical viability of two small-scale electricity generation pathways based on willow short rotation coppice biomass was evaluated using a Screening Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure. The system inputs included fuel and oil consumption in machine operations, fertilizer and herbicide production, transportation of willow chips biomass, and biomass-to-energy conversion. The analysis was based on net energy production, energy output-input ratio, and the related CO(2) emission. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine the effect of fertilizer type and application technique, harvesting and drying techniques, energy conversion process and chips transportation distance. The results showed that key energy efficiency and environmental compatibility factors include: the choice of drying technique; fertilizer type and application technique (68.2% variation in net energy, 57.7% difference in output-input ratio, respectively), and; the type of biomass-to-energy conversion plant, which had up to 36.4% variation in net energy production, and 96.4% reduction in CO(2) emission. Willow chips transportation up to distances of 38 km did not have significant impact on the net energy production and CO(2) emission. Chip transportation over distances in excess of 38 km generated significant drop in energy efficiency (25.9% reduction in energy output-input ratio) which underlines the importance of transportation in the overall system productivity. (C) 2009 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present paper discusses a study which aims to develop a method for choosing and managing in the best possible way heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in new and existing buildings. The method utilises a combination of two analysis' tools, the multicriteria decision-making and the building simulation towards the direction of a holistic assessment of HVAC systems. In order to evaluate the method, a series of HVAC systems are considered for installing in an office building and the multicriteria method Electre III is applied for their selection. The results show that the proposed model allows the classification of alternative technical solutions concerning the HVAC's design, taking into consideration economic, energy and environmental criteria as well as criteria of users' satisfaction. Finally, the study also indicates that when applying the sustainability concept in the building sector, and especially in the HVAC systems, this should concern the overall socioeconomic costs. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) are gaining attention over the world due to their ability to reduce gasoline/diesel consumption by using electricity from the grid. Despite the efforts of Society of Automotive Engineers Recommended Practice SAE J1711, it has not yet been established a worldwide methodology for calculation of fuel consumption and emission factors when regarding emission standards, with distinct driving cycles. This paper intends to contribute to the creation of this broader methodology, based on SAE J1711, aiming a fair comparison among vehicle technologies, and giving insight on electric grid impact and On CO2 life-cycle emissions. The methodology was applied to two simulated PHEVs exploring two different powertrain configurations: series and parallel; different driving cycles: CAFE, FTP75, NEDC and JC08; different driving distances (specially analyzing the average commuting daily distance of 20 km) and different user behaviours regarding battery recharging. CO2 emissions were calculated for fuel consumption, electricity generation and cradle-to-grave. Electric grid power demand was estimated. Maintenance, manufacturer and use costs were discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using coal to produce transportation fuels could improve the energy security of the United States by replacing some of the demand for imported petroleum. Because of concerns regarding climate change and the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with conventional coal use, policies to encourage pathways that utilize coal for transportation should seek to reduce GHGs compared to petroleum fuels. This paper compares the GHG emissions of coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuels to the emissions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) powered with coal-based electricity, and to the emissions of a fuel cell vehicle (FCV) that uses coal-based hydrogen. A life cycle approach is used to account for fuel cycle and use-phase emissions, as well as vehicle cycle and battery manufacturing emissions. This analysis allows policymakers to better identify benefits or disadvantages of an energy future that includes coal as a transportation fuel. We find that PHEVs could reduce vehicle life cycle GHG emissions by up to about one-half when coal with carbon capture and sequestration is used to generate the electricity used by the vehicles. On the other hand, CTL fuels and coal-based hydrogen would likely lead to significantly increased emissions compared to PHEVs and conventional vehicles using petroleum-based fuels. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pavements comprise an essential and vast infrastructure system supporting our transportation network, yet their impact on the environment is largely unquantified. Previous life-cycle assessments have only included a limited number of the applicable life-cycle components in their analysis. This research expands the current view to include eight different components: materials extraction and production, transportation, onsite equipment, traffic delay, carbonation, lighting, albedo, and rolling resistance. Using global warming potential as the environmental indicator, ranges of potential impact for each component are calculated and compared based on the information uncovered in the existing research. The relative impacts between components are found to be orders of magnitude different in some cases. Context-related factors, such as traffic level and location, are also important elements affecting the impacts of a given component. A strategic method for lowering the global warming potential of a pavement is developed based on the concept that environmental performance is improved most effectively by focusing on components with high impact potentials. This system takes advantage of the fact that small changes in high-impact components will have more effect than large changes in low-impact components.Decision support systems (DSS) are used to aid at solid waste management, a tedious problem with many technical, economic and social constraints. The main DSS available are briefly presented and the development of a novel system, ReFlows, is described. The novelty of the developed DSS consists of the detailed analysis of the collection subsystem and in particular the source separation and collection programs for recyclables materials. ReFlows utilises mathematical equations for material and financial flows, organised in several subroutines, to simulate the various sub-systems of an integrated solid waste management system and may be applied to any geographical scale, from the local to the national. The model, currently developed in MATLAB, is applied on recycling scenarios based on the degree of expansion of the different source collection schemes currently operating in Greece. Results are presented at a national (Greece) and a local level (Municipality of Athens). The main outcome of the study is that full expansion of the existing schemes may not fulfil the recovery goals for packaging waste in Greece. Improved collection schemes are required, based on more pilot programs in order to investigate the optimum recycling strategy.Considerable debate surrounds the assessment of the environmental impacts and the ethical justification for providing a year-round supply of fresh produce to consumers in the developed countries of northern Europe. Society is seeking environmentally sustainable supply chains which maintain the variety of fresh food on offer throughout the year. This paper compares the environmental impacts of different supply chains providing lettuce all year round to the UK and considers consumers' meanings of-and attitudes to-available options. Lettuce has been selected as a case study as its consumption has grown steadily during the last two decades and the supply chains through cold months are protected cropping in the UK and field cropping in Spain; during warm months, lettuce is sourced from field cropping in the UK. Data were collected from farms supplying each of these supply chains, and life cycle assessment methodology was used to analyse a range of impacts associated with producing (from plant propagation to harvesting and post-harvest cooling) and delivering 1 kg of lettuce to a UK Regional Distribution Centre (RDC). The downstream stages (i.e. retailing, consumption and waste management) are the same regardless of the origin of the product and were omitted from the comparison. The impacts considered included potential to induce global warming and acidification as well as three inventory indicators (primary energy use, land use and water use). Qualitative data were collected in order to assess the consumer considerations of purchasing lettuce also during winter. Importation of Spanish field-grown lettuce into the UK during winter produced fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than lettuce produced in UK-protected systems at that time (0.4-0.5 vs. 1.5-3.7 kg CO(2)-eq/kg lettuce in RDC). Refrigerated transport to the UK was an important element of the global warming potential associated with Spanish lettuce (42.5% of emissions), whilst energy for heating dominated the results in UK-protected cultivation (84.3% of emissions). Results for acidification were more variable and no overall trends are apparent. Results from qualitative social analysis revealed complex and multidimensional meanings of freshness and suggested that the most striking seasonal variation in vegetable/salad eating was a tendency to consume more salads in the summer and more cooked vegetables in the winter, thus suggesting that in-home consumption alone cannot explain the rise in winter imports of lettuce to the UK. UK field-grown lettuce had the lowest overall environmental impact; however, those lettuces are only available in summer, so consumers therefore need to either accept the environmental impacts associated with eating lettuce in the winter or to switch consumption to another food product in the winter. When lettuces were field-grown in Spain and then transported by road to the UK, the overall impacts were similar to the UK field lettuces. The variation within farms of the same country employing different cultivation regimes and practices was bigger than between farms of different countries. This paper has explored the environmental consequences of consuming lettuce year-round in the UK. Whilst recognising the small sample size, the comparative analysis of the different supply chains does suggest that seasonality can be an important variable when defining the best choice of lettuce from an environmental point of view. Further studies considering more production sites and product types are required to obtain conclusions whose general validity is clear and for different types of fresh produce. A clear distinction to be made in such studies is whether crops are produced in open fields or under protection. New characterisation methods are needed for environmental impacts derived from the use of key agricultural resources such as land and water. Social studies to investigate consumer preferences and the possibility of moving to more seasonal diets should be an integral part of these studies using samples composed of both urban and rural consumers and using a mixed methodology with both quantitative and qualitative components.During the last decade, the interest in estimating environmental life cycle impacts of bioprocesses has markedly risen. To adequately quantify these impacts, accurate life cycle inventories of materials, such as agricultural substrates and enzymes, are required. The goals of this life cycle assessment were (1) to estimate the life cycle inventories (LCIs) and impacts of three supported enzymes produced in-house for pharmaceutical applications (A, B, and C) and (2) to determine the suitability of applying modular life cycle inventory estimation techniques to enzymes when individual enzyme LCIs are not readily available. The scope of this LCA was cradle to gate, covering the production and purification of the enzymes, energy generation, raw material production, waste treatment, and transportation of the raw materials. Three immobilized enzymes (A, B, and C) produced industrially for application in pharmaceutical products were studied. Enzyme production information was obtained from internal process descriptions. LCI information was obtained from GlaxoSmithKline's in-house LCA database FLASC (TM), from LCA commercial databases, and literature. The LCI for the enzyme support was estimated using its material flows. Mass allocations were applied to multi-output processes in the upstream processes. The life cycle impacts considered were nonrenewable energy consumption, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical smog formation. Life cycle impacts of the immobilized enzymes A, B, and C were estimated. For instance, nonrenewable energy use is between 117 to 207 MJ/kg of immobilized enzyme and the global warming potential ranges from 16 to 25 kg CO2 eq/kg immobilized enzyme. Contributions of different subprocesses were also estimated. For example, support production accounts for about 31% to 67% of the energy consumption and soybean protein and yeast extract account for about 64% to 72% of the total photochemical smog formation. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis were performed using Monte Carlo simulation and showed that a standard deviation of the environmental impact is less than 7% of the mean in all the environmental impacts considered. "What if" analysis shows that using biobased glycerin instead of petroleum-based glycerin could reduce global warming impacts between 11% and 44%. The production of immobilized enzyme is, in general, energy intensive. Enzyme A has larger environmental impacts than the other enzymes evaluated because of larger energy intensity and lower enzyme production yield. The media preparation inputs (soybean protein, yeast extract) and immobilization subprocesses are the two major contributors to acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical smog formation. Immobilization is the major contributor for global warming potential. "What if" analysis estimated changes on life cycle impacts for biobased vs. synthetic substrates. The results of this LCA are, in general, comparable with results previously reported in the literature (Nielsen et al., Int J Life Cycle Assess 12(6):432-438, 2007). Therefore, using this technique to estimate LCI of enzymes appears to be suitable for future life cycle assessments of biocatalyzed processes. The results of this study will be integrated into GlaxoSmithKline's FLASC (TM) to improve the accuracy of life cycle assessment for biocatalyzed processes and enzymes produced in-house.Background, aim, and scope Composting is a viable technology to treat the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) because it stabilizes biodegradable organic matter and contributes to reduce the quantity of municipal solid waste to be incinerated or land-filled. However, the composting process generates environmental impacts such as atmospheric emissions and resources consumption that should be studied. This work presents the inventory data and the study of the environmental impact of two real composting plants using different technologies, tunnels (CT) and confined windrows (CCW). Materials and methods Inventory data of the two composting facilities studied were obtained from field measurements and from plant managers. Next, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to calculate the environmental impacts. Composting facilities were located in Catalonia (Spain) and were evaluated during 2007. Both studied plants treat source separated organic fraction of municipal solid waste. In both installations the analysis includes environmental impact from fuel, water, and electricity consumption and the main gaseous emissions from the composting process itself (ammonia and volatile organic compounds). Results and discussion Inventory analysis permitted the calculation of different ratios corresponding to resources consumption or plant performance and process yield with respect to 1 t of OFMSW. Among them, it can be highlighted that in both studied plants total energy consumption necessary to treat the OFMSW and transform it into compost was between 130 and 160 kWh/t OFMSW. Environmental impact was evaluated in terms of global warming potential (around 60 kg CO2/t OFMSW for both plants), acidification potential (7.13 and 3.69 kg SO2 eq/t OFMSW for CT and CCW plant respectively), photochemical oxidation potential (0.1 and 3.11 kg C2H4 eq/t OFMSW for CT and CCW plant, respectively), eutrophication (1.51 and 0.77 kg PO43-/t OFMSW for CT and CCW plant, respectively), human toxicity (around 15 kg 1,4-DB eq/t OFMSW for both plants) and ozone layer depletion (1.66 x 10(-5) and 2.77 x 10(-5) kg CFC-11 eq/t OFMSW for CT and CCW plant, respectively). Conclusions This work reflects that the life cycle perspective is a useful tool to analyze a composting process since it permits the comparison among different technologies. According to our results total energy consumption required for composting OFMSW is dependent on the technology used (ranging from 130 to 160 kWh/t OFMSW) as water consumption is (from 0.02 to 0.33 m(3) of water/t OFMSW). Gaseous emissions from the composting process represent the main contribution to eutrophication, acidification and photochemical oxidation potentials, while those contributions related to energy consumption are the principal responsible for global warming. Recommendations and perspectives This work provides the evaluation of environmental impacts of two composting technologies that can be useful for its application to composting plants with similar characteristics. In addition, this study can also be part of future works to compare composting with other OFMSW treatments from a LCA perspective. Likewise, the results can be used for the elaboration of a greenhouse gasses emissions inventory in Catalonia and Spain.Life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to alternative waste management strategies is becoming a commonly utilised tool for decision makers. This LCA study analyses together material and energy recovery within integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems, i.e. the recovery of materials separated with the source-separated collection of MSW and the energy recovery from the residual waste. The final aim is to assess the energetic and environmental performance of the entire MSW management system and, in particular, to evaluate the influence of different assumptions about recycling on the LCA results. The analysis uses the method of LCA and, thus, takes into account that any recycling activity influences the environment not only by consuming resources and releasing emissions and waste streams but also by replacing conventional products from primary production. Different assumptions about the selection efficiencies of the collected materials and about the quantity of virgin material substituted by the reprocessed material were made. Moreover, the analysis considers that the energy recovered from the residual waste displaces the same quantity of energy produced in conventional power plants and boilers fuelled with fossil fuels. The analysis shows, in the expanded model of the material and energy recovering chain, that the environmental gains are higher than the environmental impacts. However, when we reduce the selection efficiencies by 15%, the impact indicators worsen by a percentage included between 10% and 26%. This phenomenon is even more evident when we consider a substitution ratio of 1:< 1 for paper and plastic: The worsening is around 15-20% for all the impact indicators except for the global warming for which the worsening is up to 45%. Hypotheses about the selection efficiencies of the source-separated collected materials and about the substitution ratio have a great influence on the LCA results. Consequently, policy makers have to be aware of the fact that the impacts of an integrated MSW management system are highly dependent on the assumptions made in the modelling of the material recovery, as well as in the modelling of the energy recovery. LCA allows to evaluate the impacts of integrated systems and how these impacts change when the assumptions made during the modelling of the different single parts of the system are modified. Due to the significant impacts that hypotheses about material recovery have in the results, they should be expressed in a very transparent way in the report of LCA studies, together with the assumptions made about energy recovery. The results suggest that the hypotheses about the value of the substitution ratio are very important, and the case of wood should therefore be better analysed and a substitution ratio of 1:< 1 should be used, as for paper and plastic. It seems that the assumptions made about which material is replaced by the recycled one are very important too, and in this sense, more research is needed about what the recycled plastic may effectively substitute, in particular the polyolefin mix.Policy initiatives, such as the EU End of Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive for only 5% landfilling by 2015, are increasing the pressure for higher material recyclability rates. This is stimulating research into material alternatives and end-of-life strategies for automotive components. This study presents a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on an Australian automotive component, namely an exterior door skin. The functional unit for this study is one door skin set (4 exterior skins). The material alternatives are steel, which is currently used by Australian manufacturers, aluminium and glass-fiber reinforced polypropylene composite. Only the inputs and outputs relative to the door skin production, use and end-of-life phases were considered within the system boundary. Landfill, energy recovery and mechanical recycling were the end-of-life phases considered. The aim of the study is to highlight the most environmentally attractive material and end-of-life option. The LCA was performed according to the ISO 14040 standard series. All information considered in this study (use of fossil and non fossil based energy resources, water, chemicals etc.) were taken up in in-depth data. The data for the production, use and end-of-life phases of the door skin set was based upon softwares such as SimaPro and GEMIS which helped in the development of the inventory for the different end-of-life scenarios. In other cases, the inventory was developed using derivations obtained from published journals. Some data was obtained from GM-Holden and the Co-operative research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology (AutoCRC), in Australia. In cases where data from the Australian economy was unavailable, such as the data relating to energy recovery methods, a generic data set based on European recycling companies was employed. The characterization factors used for normalization of data were taken from (Saling et. al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 7(4):203-218 2002) which detailed the method of carrying out an LCA. The production phase results in maximum raw material consumption for all materials, and it is higher for metals than for the composite. Energy consumption is greatest in the use phase, with maximum consumption for steel. Aluminium consumes most energy in the production phase. Global Warming Potential (GWP) also follows a trend similar to that of energy consumption. Photo Oxidants Creation Potential (POCP) is the highest for the landfill scenario for the composite, followed by steel and aluminium. Acidification Potential (AP) is the highest for all the end-of-life scenarios of the composite. Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) is the highest for the metals. The net water emissions are also higher for composite in comparison to metals despite high pollution in the production phases of metallic door skins. Solid wastes are higher for the metallic door skins. The composite door skin has the lowest energy consumption in the production phase, due to the low energy requirements during the manufacturing of E-glass and its fusion with polypropylene to form sheet molding compounds. In general, the air emissions during the use phase are strongly dependent on the mass of the skins, with higher emissions for the metals than for the composite. Material recovery through recycling is the highest in metals due to efficient separation techniques, while mechanical recycling is the most efficient for the composite. The heavy steel skins produce the maximum solid wastes primarily due to higher fuel consumption. Water pollution reduction benefit is highest in case of metals, again due to the high efficiency of magnetic separation technique in the case of steel and eddy current separation technique in the case of aluminium. Material recovery in these metals reduces the amount of water needed to produce a new door skin set (water employed mainly in the ingot casting stage). Moreover, the use of heavy metals, inorganic salts and other chemicals is minimized by efficient material recovery. The use of the studied type of steel for the door skins is a poor environmental option in every impact category. Aluminium and composite materials should be considered to develop a more sustainable and energy efficient automobile. In particular, this LCA study shows that glass-fiber composite skins with mechanical recycling or energy recovery method could be environmentally desirable, compared to aluminium and steel skins. However, the current limit on the efficiency of recycling is the prime barrier to increasing the sustainability of composite skins. The study is successful in developing a detailed LCA for the three different types of door skin materials and their respective recycling or end-of-life scenarios. The results obtained could be used for future work on an eco-efficiency portfolio for the entire car. However, there is a need for a detailed assessment of toxicity and risk potentials arising from each of the four different types of door skin sets. This will require greater communication between academia and the automotive industry to improve the quality of the LCA data. Sensitivity analysis needs to be performed such as the assessment of the impact of varying substitution factors on the life cycle of a door skin. Incorporation of door skin sets made of new biomaterials need to be accounted for as another functional unit in future LCA studies.A coupled Life Cycle Costing and life cycle assessment has been performed for car-bodies of the Korean Tilting Train eXpress (TTX) project using European and Korean databases, with the objective of assessing environmental and cost performance to aid materials and process selection. More specifically, the potential of polymer composite car-body structures for the Korean Tilting Train eXpress (TTX) has been investigated. This assessment includes the cost of both carriage manufacturing and use phases, coupled with the life cycle environmental impacts of all stages from raw material production, through carriage manufacture and use, to end-of-life scenarios. Metallic carriages were compared with two composite options: hybrid steel-composite and full-composite carriages. The total planned production for this regional Korean train was 440 cars, with an annual production volume of 80 cars. The coupled analyses were used to generate plots of cost versus energy consumption and environmental impacts. The results show that the raw material and manufacturing phase costs are approximately half of the total life cycle costs, whilst their environmental impact is relatively insignificant (3-8%). The use phase of the car-body has the largest environmental impact for all scenarios, with near negligible contributions from the other phases. Since steel rail carriages weigh more (27-51%), the use phase cost is correspondingly higher, resulting in both the greatest environmental impact and the highest life cycle cost. Compared to the steel scenario, the hybrid composite variant has a lower life cycle cost (16%) and a lower environmental impact (26%). Though the full composite rail carriage may have the highest manufacturing cost, it results in the lowest total life cycle costs and lowest environmental impacts. This coupled cost and life cycle assessment showed that the full composite variant was the optimum solution. This case study showed that coupling of technical cost models with life cycle assessment offers an efficient route to accurately evaluate economic and environmental performance in a consistent way.Life cycle analyses (LCA) approaches require adaptation to reflect the increasing delocalization of production to emerging countries. This work addresses this challenge by establishing a country-level, spatially explicit life cycle inventory (LCI). This study comprises three separate dimensions. The first dimension is spatial: processes and emissions are allocated to the country in which they take place and modeled to take into account local factors. Emerging economies China and India are the location of production, the consumption occurs in Germany, an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development country. The second dimension is the product level: we consider two distinct textile garments, a cotton T-shirt and a polyester jacket, in order to highlight potential differences in the production and use phases. The third dimension is the inventory composition: we track CO2, SO2, NO (x) , and particulates, four major atmospheric pollutants, as well as energy use. This third dimension enriches the analysis of the spatial differentiation (first dimension) and distinct products (second dimension). We describe the textile production and use processes and define a functional unit for a garment. We then model important processes using a hierarchy of preferential data sources. We place special emphasis on the modeling of the principal local energy processes: electricity and transport in emerging countries. The spatially explicit inventory is disaggregated by country of location of the emissions and analyzed according to the dimensions of the study: location, product, and pollutant. The inventory shows striking differences between the two products considered as well as between the different pollutants considered. For the T-shirt, over 70% of the energy use and CO2 emissions occur in the consuming country, whereas for the jacket, more than 70% occur in the producing country. This reversal of proportions is due to differences in the use phase of the garments. For SO2, in contrast, over two thirds of the emissions occur in the country of production for both T-shirt and jacket. The difference in emission patterns between CO2 and SO2 is due to local electricity processes, justifying our emphasis on local energy infrastructure. The complexity of considering differences in location, product, and pollutant is rewarded by a much richer understanding of a global production-consumption chain. The inclusion of two different products in the LCI highlights the importance of the definition of a product's functional unit in the analysis and implications of results. Several use-phase scenarios demonstrate the importance of consumer behavior over equipment efficiency. The spatial emission patterns of the different pollutants allow us to understand the role of various energy infrastructure elements. The emission patterns furthermore inform the debate on the Environmental Kuznets Curve, which applies only to pollutants which can be easily filtered and does not take into account the effects of production displacement. We also discuss the appropriateness and limitations of applying the LCA methodology in a global context, especially in developing countries. Our spatial LCI method yields important insights in the quantity and pattern of emissions due to different product life cycle stages, dependent on the local technology, emphasizing the importance of consumer behavior. From a life cycle perspective, consumer education promoting air-drying and cool washing is more important than efficient appliances. Spatial LCI with country-specific data is a promising method, necessary for the challenges of globalized production-consumption chains. We recommend inventory reporting of final energy forms, such as electricity, and modular LCA databases, which would allow the easy modification of underlying energy infrastructure.The forest-based and related industries comprise one of the most important industry sectors in the European Union, representing some 10% of the EU's manufacturing industries. Their activities are based on renewable raw material resources and efficient recycling. The forest-based industries can be broken down into the following sectors: forestry, woodworking, pulp and paper manufacturing, paper and board converting and printing and furniture. The woodworking sector includes many sub-sectors; one of the most important is that of wood panels accounting for 9% of total industry production. Wood panels are used as intermediate products in a wide variety of applications in the furniture and building industries. There are different kinds of panels: particleboard, fibreboard, veneer, plywood and blockboard. The main goal of this study was to assess the environmental impacts during the life cycle of wet-process fibreboard (hardboard) manufacturing to identify the processes with the largest environmental impacts. The study covers the life cycle of hardboard production from a cradle-to-gate perspective. A hardboard plant was analysed in detail, dividing the process chain into three subsystems: wood preparation, board forming and board finishing. Ancillary activities such as chemicals, wood chips, thermal energy and electricity production and transport were included within the system boundaries. Inventory data came from interviews and surveys (on-site measurements). When necessary, the data were complemented with bibliographic resources. The life cycle assessment procedure followed the ISO14040 series. The life cycle inventory (LCI) and impact assessment database for this study were constructed using SimaPro Version 7.0 software. Abiotic depletion (AD), global warming (GW), ozone layer depletion (OLD), human toxicity (HT), ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidant formation (PO), acidification (AC) and eutrophication (EP) were the impact categories analysed in this study. The wood preparation subsystem contributed more than 50% to all impact categories, followed by board forming and board finishing, which is mainly due to chemicals consumption in the wood preparation subsystem. In addition, thermal energy requirements (for all subsystems) were fulfilled by on-site wood waste burning and, accordingly, biomass energy converters were considered. Several processes were identified as hot spots in this study: phenol-formaldehyde resin production (with large contribution to HT, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity and PO), electricity production (main contributor to marine aquatic ecotoxicity), wood chips production (AD and OLD) and finally, biomass burning for heat production (identified as the largest contributor to AC and EP due to NO (X) emissions). In addition, uncontrolled formaldehyde emissions from manufacturing processes at the plant such as fibre drying should be controlled due to relevant contributions to terrestrial ecotoxicity and PO. A sensitivity analysis of electricity profile generation (strong geographic dependence) was carried out and several European profiles were analysed. Novel binding agents for the wood panel industry as a substitute for the currently used formaldehyde-based binders have been extensively investigated. Reductions of toxic emissions during drying, mat forming and binder production are desirable. The improved method would considerably reduce the contributions to all impact categories. The results obtained in this work allow forecasting the importance of the wood preparation subsystem for the environmental burdens associated with hardboard manufacture. Special attention was paid to the inventory analysis stage for each subsystem. It is possible to improve the environmental performance of the hardboard manufacturing process if some alternatives are implemented regarding the use of chemicals, electricity profile and emission sources in the production processes located inside the plant. This study provides useful information for forest-based industries related to panel manufacture with the aim of increasing their sustainability. Our research continues to assess the use phase and final disposal of panels to complete the life cycle assessment. Future work will focus on analysing the environmental aspects associated with plywood, another type of commonly used wood panel.Organic solvents are used in large quantities in the chemical, metal and electronics industries as well as in many consumer products, such as coatings or paints, and are therefore among the most important chemicals. The petrochemical production of organic solvents is a relevant environmental issue because fossil resources are needed (crude oil and natural gas), synthesis processes are energy-intensive and cause considerable amounts of emissions. So far, comprehensive data on the environmental impact are rather scarce. The aim of this paper is to therefore present a systematical environmental assessment of the main petrochemical solvent production routes using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. Fifty organic solvents were selected covering the most important representatives from the various chemical groups (e.g., alcohols, esters, ketones). To conduct the LCA, 40 new Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) were established and existing LCI were improved. The petrochemical solvent production was structured into four production routes. In these production routes, the single chemical unit processes (e.g. esterification, carbonylation or hydrogenation) were analyzed in order to determine characteristic environmental impacts. The four solvent production routes including the unit processes and intermediates are presented. Additionally, energy profiles of these production routes are shown using the Cumulative Primary Energy Demand (CED) as an indicator for the environmental impact. The results were cross-checked with the Global Warming Potential and the Eco-indicator 99 method and good correlations were found. Processes that show high environmental impacts are the dehydration of butylene glycol to tetrahydrofuran, the carbonylation of methanol to methyl formate, the hydrogenation of acetone to methyl isobutyl ketone, and the Reppe synthesis of formaldehyd/acetylene to butylene glycol. Based on the energy profiles, ranges of environmental impacts are determined for all unit processes. On the one hand, esterification and alkylation processes cause high CED values because complex ancillaries are needed and hydroformylation and carbonylation processes are energy-intensive. On the other hand, in hydration, hydrogenation, hydrolysis, and oxidation processes, ancillaries with low CED are added to the chemical structure that result in low CED ranges for these unit processes. Dehydrogenation and molecular sieve separation processes seem to be energy efficient and no ancillaries are required. Therefore, these unit processes cause the lowest CED values. Subject of further research in this field should be the environmental analysis of further process steps that include the presented unit processes and a subsequent statistical analysis in order to derive reliable data ranges for all unit processes. Such statistically robust ranges could be used in the approximation of missing life-cycle inventory data of other chemical products and intermediates.China has been the largest primary magnesium producer in the world since year 2000 and is an important part of the global magnesium supply chain. Almost all of the primary magnesium in China is produced using the Pidgeon process invented in the 1940s in Canada. The environmental problems of the primary magnesium production with the Pidgeon process have already attracted much attention of the local government and enterprises. The main purposes of this research are to investigate the environmental impacts of magnesium production and to determine the accumulative environmental performances of three different scenarios. System boundary included the cradle-to-gate life cycle of magnesium production, including dolomite ore extraction, ferrosilicon production, the Pidgeon process, transportation of materials, and emissions from thermal power plant. The life cycle assessment (LCA) case study was performed on three different fuel use scenarios from coal as the overall fuel to two kinds of gaseous fuels, the producer gas and coke oven gas. The burden use of gaseous fuels was also considered. The procedures, details, and results obtained are based on the application of the existing international standards of LCA, i.e., the ISO 14040. Depletion of abiotic resources, global warming, acidification, and human toxicity were adopted as the midpoint impact categories developed by the problem-oriented approach of CML to estimate the characterized results of the case study. The local characterization and normalization factors of abiotic resources were used to calculate abiotic depletion potential (ADP). The analytic hierarchy process was used to determine the weight factors. Using the Umberto version 4.0, the emissions of dolomite ore extraction were estimated and the transportation models of the three scenarios were designed. The emissions inventory showed that both the Pidgeon process of magnesium production and the Fe-Si production were mainly to blame for the total pollutant emissions in the life cycle of magnesium production. The characterized results indicated that ADP, acidification potential, and human toxicity potential decreased cumulatively from scenarios 1 to 3, with the exception of global warming potential. The final single scores indicated that the accumulative environmental performance of scenario 3 was the best compared with scenarios 1 and 2. The impact of abiotic resources depletion deserves more attention although the types and the amount of mineral resources for Mg production are abundant in China. This study suggested that producer gas was an alternative fuel for magnesium production rather than the coal burned directly in areas where the cost of oven gas-produced coke is high. The utilization of "clean" energy and the reduction of greenhouse gases and acidic gases emission were the main goals of the technological improvements and cleaner production of the magnesium industry in China. This paper has demonstrated that the theory and method of LCA are actually helpful for the research on the accumulative environmental performance of primary magnesium production. Further studies with "cradle-to-cradle" scheme are recommended. Furthermore, other energy sources used in magnesium production and the cost of energy production could be treated in further research.This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the manufacturing process of crystal glass products in order to evaluate the potential environmental impacts due to a crystalware company located in Colle di Val d'Elsa, Siena (Italy). Since there is not any published research specifically focussed on crystal production to our knowledge, outcomes from this study would represent a first documented evidence gathered from an LCA of crystal glass products. Once a detailed description of the production process was provided, different categories of impacts were assessed and analysed. Outcomes allowed us to identify 'weak points' in the production process and propose possible solutions for decreasing the risk of negative effects on the environment. According to the LCA methodology, the whole life cycle of crystal glass was structured into four primary phases-raw materials acquisition, crystal glass manufacturing, product utilisation and final disposal-each of which includes a set of sub-processes. Through an accurate life cycle inventory, primary data, relative to the year 2006, were elaborated through the EDIP database. The calculation of impacts was aided by GaBi4 software with reference to a functional unit corresponding to 1 kg of crystal glass products. Relative to the CML2001 problem-oriented approach, a set of impact categories was used for the classification and characterisation of the life cycle impact assessment. Potential category indicators were finally accounted for and normalised in accordance with the CML Western Europe method. The following ten impact categories were assessed: (1) depletion of abiotic resources, (2) acidification, (3) eutrophication, (4-6) ecotoxicity (marine and freshwater aquatic as well as terrestrial, respectively), (7) climate change (greenhouse effect), (8) human toxicity, (9) stratospheric ozone depletion and (10) photo-oxidant formation. Results showed that among the main phases, crystal glass manufacturing is the one with the highest environmental impact and emissions to air, mainly due to an intensive use of energy and materials. In particular, some sub-processes within the manufacturing stage, such as melting in furnaces, acid polishing, cutting and forming, were found to hold a high responsibility for most of the environmental effects. The main effects depend on CO2, NOx and SO2 emissions, heavy metals emissions and use of non-renewable resources. In particular, the latter is due to the processes of extraction, refining, transport and use of fuels such as natural gas. Results were analysed relative to each of the main processes involved in the crystal glass life cycle and critical points were investigated in order to inform the administrators of the crystalware company and address future choices towards a more sustainable production. Some technical solutions were proposed in order to improve environmental performances. Impacts due to the use of lead in the mixture were widely treated in literature and briefly discussed here. An accurate energy and material flow inventory allowed us to assess the potential environmental impacts of the crystal glass production in Colle Val d'Elsa, including the effects of processes occurring within the industrial plant and those due to the import of products and services from outside. Through the case study, we aimed to provide an exhaustive description of the main steps in the process and clear results relative to different impact categories. Outcomes showed that some procedures could be implemented in order to decrease these impacts. The use of lead is an irreplaceable characteristic of crystal products, but also a critical point to deal with. Nevertheless, the high quality of man-made crystal products makes the use of lead acceptable. The LCA of crystal glass products presented in this paper provided an accurate description of processes and procedures that can mirror a traditional production in a broader sense. This paper can therefore represent a valuable reference for future studies on crystal glass production processes. The LCA method was performed for identifying critical aspects in the production process from an energetic and environmental viewpoint and was useful for constructing a model of the crystal glass production in Colle di Val d'Elsa. This can be a starting point for processing an environmental product declaration.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well-known tool for analyzing environmental impacts on a wide perspective with reference to a product system and the related environmental and economic impacts. The need for a novel approach that complements environmental and financial considerations is addressed in this study with the introduction of a new graphical representation: the Environmental Performance Strategy Map. This graphical map allows one to combine the main environmental indicators (footprints) with the additional dimension of cost. The paper defines the Sustainable Environmental Performance Indicator as a single measure for sustainability of a given option. Comparison of different options for strategic decision-making purposes can be enhanced and facilitated by the use of this indicator. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pulp industry plays an important role in the structure of European economy and society. Paper pulp manufacture, the industrial utilization of plant biomass, is increasing every year. In Spain, Eucalyptus is the dominant raw material and the Kraft cooking and total chlorine free (TCF) bleaching processes lead the procedures of Eucalyptus paper pulp production. This paper aims to identify and quantify the environmental impacts associated to Eucalyptus TCF pulp manufacture by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an analytical tool. The system has been defined using a cradle-to-gate perspective, that is to say from forest activities to the exit gate of the pulp mill, The production of chemicals consumed in the cooking and bleaching stages as well as the on-site energy production system is the elements that contribute the most to all impact categories analyzed (more than 50% of total contributions), except for the eutrophication potential where forest activities and waste treatment play an important roles (about 52% of total). Specific actions associated to the recovery boiler, lime kiln and digestion stage could considerably reduce the environmental impact and improve the environmental performance of the Spanish paper pulp industry. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle framework is developed to examine how the value of time (VOT) changes as one ages. We consider two risk-sharing schemes, the Tonti scheme under which wealth is actuarially insured, and the Robinson Crusoe scheme under which insurance institution is entirely absent. For the first time in the literature, we characterize the condition, in terms of key parameters for valuating VOT, under which VOT may increase, decline, or even display more complicated profiles, as one ages. Our analysis reveals the crucial role played by the relative magnitude of the market interest rate to other parameters (including the parameter of time preference, the age-specific mortality and the wage growth rate) in determining the age profile of VOT, and the difference in VOT that is caused by the insurance scheme.An analysis and evaluation have been conducted to assess the environmental impact of greenbean cultivation grown under different cropping alternatives, using the life-cycle analysis (LCA) in a highland area of Southeastern Spain. The cropping systems applied in this study were a greenbean crop grown in a screen greenhouse (G), in a screen greenhouse equipped with a misting system (GM) and in the open field (OF). The phases taken into account in the LCA study were two: infrastructure system and crop cycle. In the categories considered, the subsystems that generated the greatest impact were: wastes, misting management and infrastructure. From the comparison of the different alternatives proposed for producing greenbeans, the most and the least environmental-friendly options were the screen-covered-greenhouse with a misting system (GM) and the screen-covered-greenhouse without a misting system (G), respectively.Although textile sector is one of the biggest consumer intensive sector, recycling and reclamation practices in this sector are not satisfactory. In this study, "cradle to grave" Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis is carried out for a textile product (i.e., the bathrobe). The life cycle stages of the product are explained in detail including the waste potential, energy usage and envrionmental effects of each stage. Findings of the study present that cotton fiber, which is the most commonly consumed natural fiber, is not so environmentaly friendly fiber as opposed to the expactations. Growing, manufacturing, consumer usage, and recovery stages of a 100% cotton bathrobe may cause some environmental effects. Study shows that recycling of waste generated by the production processes of it bathrobe is somewhat commons yet it cannot be said the same thing about the after use textiles.Electric two-wheelers have become a significant mode of transportation in China in the past decade. Though marketed and publicized by some as zero-emission vehicles, little past research has been done to quantify the environmental impacts of electric two-wheelers in China. This paper quantifies some of the environmental impacts of the production processes and use phase of electric two-wheelers and compares them to the environmental impacts of competing modes, including bicycles, buses. motorcycles and cars. The use phase emissions are quantified geographically with significantly higher emissions in coal rich regions, compared to regions relying more on hydropower. The results show that electric two-wheelers emit several times lower pollution per kilometer than motorcycles and cars, have comparable emission rates to buses and higher emission rates than bicycles. Lead is one pollutant on which electric two-wheelers perform poorly, because of their use of lead acid batteries. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Incineration ashes may be treated either as a waste to be dumped in landfill, or as a resource that is suit able for re-use. In order to choose the best management scenario, knowledge is needed on the potential environmental impact that may be expected, including not only local, but also regional and global impact. In this study. A life cycle assessment (LCA) based approach Was Outlined for environmental assessment of incinerator residue utilisation, in which leaching of trace elements as well as other emissions to air and water and the use of resources were regarded as constituting the potential environmental impact from the system studied. Case Studies were performed for two selected ash types, bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) and wood fly ash. The MSWI bottom ash was assumed to be suitable for road construction or as drainage material in landfill, whereas the wood fly ash Was assumed to be suitable for road construction or as a nutrient resource to be recycled oil forest land after biofuel harvesting. Different types of potential environmental impact predominated in the activities of the system and the use of natural resources and the trace element leaching were identified as being relatively important for the scenarios compared. The scenarios differed in use of resources and energy, whereas there is a potential for trace element leaching regardless of how the material is managed. Utilising MSWI bottom ash in road construction and recycling of wood ash on forest land saved more natural resources and energy than when these materials were managed according to the other scenarios investigated, including dumping in landfill. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is a driving force behind some recent environmental legislation around the world. Greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have been set in many industrialised countries. A change in current practices of almost all greenhouse-emitting industrial sectors is unavoidable, if the set targets is to be achieved. Although, waste disposal contributes around 3% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in Australia (mainly due to fugitive methane emissions from landfills), the carbon credit and trading scheme set to start in 2010 presents significant challenges and opportunities to municipal solid waste practitioners. Technological advances in waste management, if adopted properly, allow the municipal solid waste sector to act as carbon sink, hence earning tradable carbon credits. However, due to the complexity of the system and its inherent uncertainties, optimizing it for carbon credits may worsen its performance under other criteria. We use an integrated, stochastic multi-criteria decision-making tool that we developed earlier to analyse the carbon credit potential of Sydney municipal solid waste under eleven possible future strategies. We find that the changing legislative environment is likely to make current practices highly non-optimal and increase pressures for a change of waste management strategy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable dairy production requires farms that are economically viable, environmentally sound and socially acceptable. A low environmental impact of milk production is not necessarily associated with an economically viable farm. To gain insight into a possible "trade-off" between economic and environmental sustainability, the relation between the environmental and economic indicators of dairy farms was quantified, and farm characteristics that influence this relation were identified. Economic and environmental indicators were quantified for 119 specialized dairy farms in 2005, based on data from the Dutch Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). Economic indicators used were: gross value added expressed per kg fat-and-protein-corrected milk (FPCM) or expressed per unit of labour, i.e. labour productivity. Environmental indicators used were: land use per kg FPCM, energy use per kg FPCM, global warming potential per kg FPCM, eutrophication and acidification potential per kg FPCM or per ha of land. Environmental indicators were deduced from a life cycle assessment. High labour productivity on dairy farms was associated with low on-farm energy use, total and on-farm land use, total and on-farm global warming potential, and total and off-farm acidification potential per kg FPCM. High labour productivity, however. was associated also with high on-farm eutrophication and acidification potential per hectare. From partial least squares regression analysis, it was concluded that relations between economic and environmental indicators were affected mainly by milk production per ha, annual milk production per cow, farm size, and amount of concentrates per kg FPCM. An increase in annual milk production per cow. for example, not only increased labour productivity, reduced energy use and global warming potential per kg FPCM but also, in the case of an unchanged stocking density, increased eutrophication and acidification per ha. To be economically and environmentally sustainable, animal production in the Netherlands, therefore, should focus on high animal productivity, i.e. high annual milk production per cow and efficient use of feed per kg milk, and moderate stocking density, provided that a good animal welfare standard is guaranteed. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.Up to now, process specific integral resource consumption is barely used as criterion for the selection and improvement of fine chemical and pharmaceutical production processes. Reasons are the complexity of the supply networks in multipurpose plants and the requirement of a detailed data inventory from the production plant itself and from facilities delivering supporting utilities and treating waste streams. In this paper, a methodology is presented to set up integral mass and energy balances of specific production processes in the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industry. This methodology is based on the principle that each chemical production process is a sequence of unit operations in which basic operations at individual equipment take place. These basic operations are considered as the building blocks for all production processes. If the resource consumption of each building block can be quantified, not only at the operation itself but also at the on-site and off-site upstream and downstream processes to sustain the operation, the integral resource requirement of a whole specific production process can be quantified by the summation of the resource requirements of all building blocks involved. This methodology allows the development of a calculation tool for the quantification of the integral resource consumption with minimized data inventory. This tool will enable the selection of the most resource efficient production process and will indicate points of improvement. In this way production processes in pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries can become economically and ecologically more sustainable.The need for climate change mitigation and to meet increasing energy demands has led to a rise in the land area under bioenergy crops in many countries. There are concerns that such large-scale land conversion will conflict with food production and impact on the environment. Perennial biomass crops could be grown on more marginal agricultural land. However, for sustainable solutions, biomass yields will need to be sufficient and the wider implications of land-use changes considered. Here, focusing on Miscanthus in England as an example, we combined an empirical model with GIS to produce a yield map and estimated regional energy generation potentials after masking out areas covered by environmental and socio-economic factors which could preclude the planting of energy crops. Agricultural land quality and the distributions of currently grown food crops were then taken into account. Results showed that: (i) regional contrasts occur in the importance of different factors affecting biomass planting; (ii) areas with the highest biomass yields co-locate with food producing areas on high grade land, and; (iii) when such high grade land and unsuitable areas are excluded, a policy-related scenario for increased planting on 350,000 ha utilised 4-28% (depending on the region) of lower grade land and would not necessarily greatly impact on UK food security. We conclude that the GIS-based yield and suitability mapping described here can help identify important issues in bioenergy generation potentials and land use implications at regional or finer spatial scales that would be missed in analyses at the national level.Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) the fossil energy benefits and avoided global warming emissions have been evaluated for the EU Biofuels goals in Spain. The Biofuels considered are cereal ethanol, biodiesel from residual oils, and from palm, sunflower, soybeans and rapeseed vegetable oils. Our findings are that the source of the cereal and vegetable oil influences the efficacy of the Biofuels and that results greatly depend on whether or not electricity has been produced as co-product in bioethanol plants and that without CHP the energy balance of ethanol is negative with few greenhouse gas offsets. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ionic liquids (ILs) have been considered as "green solvents" in many published works. However, recent research on their eco-toxicity and degradability has proven that some ILs are not as "green" as expected. In this review, the greenness of ILs was discussed in terms of their synthesis, eco-toxicity and degradability and their applications. Greenness of ILs depends not only on themselves but also on their synthesis and specific applications. For a chemical process where the IL is employed, its greenness should be assessed using the life cycle analysis method and compared with other alternative processes. The green process is much more important than the IL itself with respect to green chemistry, and more research should be made to improve the greenness of process employing ILs.New requirements and regulations have increased the pressure on companies to provide information on their products. This is challenging for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) since they lack both expertise and resources. In this paper, the possibilities to develop environmental product declarations (EPDs) for products with use of data-assistant tools are explored. A case study of furniture production in Norway is used to exemplify this. A database with specific environmental data for materials used in furniture has been developed. The database is used to conduct the life cycle assessment (LCA) for selected products and is the backbone of a data-assistance tool used to design and present the EPDs. Five key performance indicators are selected. The database and these KPIs ensures standardised assessments of products that enables both comparison of existing products as well as assessment of environmental performance of redesigned products and potential new products. This paper shows how this enables the SMEs to both provide environmental performance information to stakeholders as well as enables them to identify possible improvements with limited resources and competence on environmental performance and LCAs.This work presents a preliminary screening of eco-technologies for dimethyl carbonate (DMC) production. Through sustainability metrics, the assessment of six different chemical routes allows comparisons according to economical and environmental criteria, to determine the most sustainable route. CO2 sequestration potential is also considered. The alternatives are scored according to the adopted metrics, leading to the decision of a suitable route based on economic and environmental grounds, prioritizing pollution-preventing technologies herein referred to as eco-technologies. Casting of technologies was based on alternatives available in the literature: Route 1 production of DMC from methanol and phosgene [Ono in Pure Appl Chem 68(2):367-375, 1996]; Route 2 production of DMC from methyl nitrite and CO [Ono in Pure Appl Chem 68(2):367-375, 1996]; Route 3 production of DMC from CO and methanol [Ono in Pure Appl Chem 68(2):367-375, 1996]; Route 4 production of DMC from urea and methanol (Wang et al. in Ind Eng Chem Res 46:8972-8979, 2007); Route 5 production of DMC from ethylene oxide and CO2 [Ono in Pure Appl Chem 68(2):367-375, 1996]; Route 6 production of DMC from CO2 and methanol (Choi et al. in Green Chem 4:230-234, 2002). The analysis shows that Routes 4 and 5 combine intermediate values of the total (sustainability) score, CO2 sequestration potential and industrial feasibility, therefore entitled as eco-technologies, based on the adopted metrics. Although the two technologies are potentially ecological, they are recommended for a more rigorous analysis on the grounds of process simulation and life cycle analysis.Sustainable energy is the problem of the 21st century. If biofuels want to be part of the solution they must accept a degree of scrutiny unprecedented in the development of a new industry. That is because sustainability deals explicitly with the role of biofuels in ensuring the well-being of our planet, our economy, and our society both today and in the future. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been the standard framework for assessing sustainability of biofuels. These assessments show that corn ethanol has a marginally lower fossil energy and greenhouse gas footprint compared to petroleum fuel. Sugarcane ethanol and some forms of biodiesel offer substantially lower footprints. New biofuels may offer low footprints. The science of LCA is being stretched to its limits as policy makers consider direct and indirect effects of biofuels on global land and water resources, global ecosystems, air quality, public health, and social justice.Heat metering and energy efficiency retrofit of existing residential buildings in northern heating areas of China is organized and implemented in a large scale by local government in 15 provinces of North China with the unified guidance and control of central government. Firstly, this paper introduced the target of energy-saving reformation of existing residential buildings in North China and the importance of check and evaluation on this target, then pointed out the necessity of building up an evaluation system for energy-saving retrofit. According to the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), three-grade evaluation system was built up for heat metering and energy efficiency retrofit of existing residential buildings in northern heating areas of China. Also, based on multi-index comprehensive evaluation method combined with life cycle assessment (LCA) theory, post-evaluation thought and successful degree evaluation method, a mathematical model was established. Finally, a set of scientific method for evaluating heat metering and energy efficiency retrofit of existing residential buildings in northern heating areas of China systematically, scientifically, comprehensively and objectively was created. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd, All rights reserved.Carbon labels inform consumers about the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) released during the production and consumption of goods, including food. In the future consumer and legislative responses to carbon labels may favour goods with lower emissions, and thereby change established supply chains. This may have unintended consequences. We present the carbon footprint of three horticultural goods of different origins supplied to the United Kingdom market: lettuce, broccoli and green beans. Analysis of these footprints enables the characterisation of three different classes of vulnerability which are related to: transport, national economy and supply chain specifics. There is no simple relationship between the characteristics of an exporting country and its vulnerability to the introduction of a carbon label. Geographically distant developing countries with a high level of substitutable exports to the UK are most vulnerable. However, many developing countries have low vulnerability as their main exports are tropical crops which would be hard to substitute with local produce. In the short term it is unlikely that consumers will respond to carbon labels in such a way that will have major impacts in the horticultural sector. Labels which require contractual reductions in GHG emissions may have greater impacts in the short term. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Research shows that livestock account for a significant proportion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and global consumption of livestock products is growing rapidly. This paper reviews the life cycle analysis (LCA) approach to quantifying these emissions and argues that, given the dynamic complexity of our food system, it offers a limited understanding of livestock's GHG impacts. It is argued that LCA's conclusions need rather to be considered within a broader conceptual framework that incorporates three key additional perspectives. The first is an understanding of the indirect second order effects of livestock production on land use change and associated CO(2) emissions. The second compares the opportunity cost of using land and resources to rear animals with their use for other food or non-food purposes. The third perspective is need-the paper considers how far people need livestock products at all. These perspectives are used as lenses through which to explore both the impacts of livestock production and the mitigation approaches that are being proposed. The discussion is then broadened to consider whether it is possible to substantially reduce livestock emissions through technological measures alone, or whether reductions in livestock consumption will additionally be required. The paper argues for policy strategies that explicitly combine GHG mitigation with measures to improve food security and concludes with suggestions for further research. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A method for assessing the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption was developed. This method considers damages to three areas of protection: human health, ecosystem quality, and resources. The method can be used within most existing life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods. The relative importance of water consumption was analyzed by integrating the method into the Eco-indicator-99 LCIA method. The relative impact of water consumption in LCIA was analyzed with a case study on worldwide cotton production. The importance of regionalized characterization factors for water use was also examined in the case study. In and regions, water consumption may dominate the aggregated life-cycle impacts of cotton-textile production. Therefore, the consideration of water consumption is crucial in life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies that include water-intensive products, such as agricultural goods. A regionalized assessment is necessary, since the impacts of water use vary greatly as a function of location. The presented method is useful for environmental decision-support in the production of water-intensive products as well as for environmentally responsible value-chain management.In recent years, liquid biofuels for transport have benefited from significant political support due to their potential role in curbing climate change and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. They may also participate to rural development by providing new markets for agricultural production. However, the growth of energy crops has raised concerns due to their high consumption of conventional fuels, fertilizers and pesticides, their impacts on ecosystems and their competition for arable land with food crops. Low-input species such as Jatropha curcas, a perennial, inedible crop well adapted to semiarid regions, has received much interest as a new alternative for biofuel production, minimizing adverse effects on the environment and food supply. Here, we used life-cycle assessment to quantify the benefits of J. curcas biofuel production in West Africa in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy use, compared with fossil diesel fuel and other biofuels. Biodiesel from J. curcas has a much higher performance than current biofuels, relative to oil-derived diesel fuels. Under West Africa conditions, J. curcas biodiesel allows a 72% saving in greenhouse gas emissions compared with conventional diesel fuel, and its energy yield ( the ratio of biodiesel energy output to fossil energy input) is 4.7. J. curcas production studied is eco-compatible for the impacts under consideration and fits into the context of sustainable development.Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L. subsp. vulgaris) is deemed to be one of the most promising bioethanol feedstock crops in northern Japan. To establish viable sugar beet-based bioethanol production systems, energy-efficient protocols in sugar beet cultivation are being intensively sought. On this basis, the effects of alternative agronomic practices for sugar beet production on total energy inputs (from fuels and agricultural materials during cultivation and transportation) and ethanol yields (estimated from sugar yields) were assessed in terms of (i) direct drilling, (ii) reduced tillage (no moldboard plowing), (iii) no-fungicide application, (iv) using a high-yielding beet genotype, (v) delayed harvesting and (vi) root + crown harvesting. Compared with the conventional sugar beet production system used in the Tokachi region of Hokkaido, northern Japan, which makes use of transplants, direct drilling and no-fungicide application contributed to reduced energy inputs from raising seedlings and fungicides, respectively, but sugar (or ethanol) yields were also reduced by these practices, to a greater equivalent extent than the reductions in energy inputs. Consequently, direct drilling (6.84 MJ L(-1)) and no-fungicide application (7.78 MJ L(-1)) worsened the energy efficiency (total energy inputs to produce 1 L of ethanol), compared with conventional sugar beet production practices (5.82 MJ L(-1)). Sugar yields under conventional plow-based tillage and reduced tillage practices were similar, but total energy inputs were reduced as a result of reduced fuel consumption from not plowing. Hence, reduced tillage showed improved energy efficiency (5.36 MJ L(-1)). The energy efficiency was also improved by using a high-yielding genotype (5.23 MJ L(-1)) and root + crown harvesting (5.21 MJ L(-1)). For these practices, no major changes in total energy inputs were noted, but sugar yields were consistently increased. Neither total energy inputs nor ethanol yields were affected by extending the vegetative growing period by delaying harvesting.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been considered one of the tools for supporting decision-making related to the environmental aspects of a product system. It has mainly been used to evaluate the potential impacts associated with relevant inputs and outputs to/from a given product system throughout its life cycle. In most cases, LCA has not considered the impacts on the internal environment, i.e. working environment, but only the external environment. Recently, it has been recognized that the consideration of the impacts on the working environment as well as on the external environment, is needed in order to assess all aspects of the effects on human well-being. To this end, this study has developed a total environmental assessment methodology which enables one to integrate both the working environment and the external environment into the conventional LCA framework. In general, the characteristics of the impacts on the external environment are different from those on the working environment. In order to properly integrate the two types into total environmental impacts, it is necessary to define identical system boundaries and select impact category indicators at the same level. In order to define the identical system boundary and reduce the uncertainties of LCI results, the hybrid IOA (input-output analysis) method, which integrates the advantages between conventional LCI method and IOA method, is introduced to collect input and output data throughout the entire life cycle of a given product. For the impact category indicators at the endpoint level, LWD (Lost Work Days) is employed to evaluate the damage to human health and safety in the working environment, while DALY (disability-adjusted life years) and PAF (Potentially Affected Fraction) are selected to evaluate the damage to human health and eco-system quality in the external environment, respectively. The environmental intervention factors (EIFs) are developed not only for the data categories of resource use, air emissions, and water emissions, but also for occupational health and safety to complete a life cycle inventory table. For the development of the EIFs on occupational health and safety, in particular, the number of workers affected by i hazardous items and the number of workers affected at the i magnitude of disability are collected. For the characterization of the impact categories in the working environment, such as occupational health and safety, the exposure factors, effect factors, and damage factors are developed to calculate the LWD of each category. For normalization, the normalization reference is defined as the total LWD divided by the total number of workers. A case study is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method for the integration of the working environment into the conventional LCA framework. This study is intended to develop a methodology which enables one to integrate the working environmental module into the conventional LCA framework. The hybrid IOA method is utilized to extend the system boundary of both the working environment module and the external environment module to the entire life cycle of a product system. In this study, characterization models and category indicators for occupational health and safety are proposed, respectively, while the methodology of Eco-indicator 99 is used for the external environment. In addition to aid further understanding on the results of this method, this study introduced and developed the category indicators such as DALY, and LWD, which can be expressed as a function of time, and introduced PAF, which can be expressed as a probability. The consideration of the impacts not only on the external environment, but also on the working environment, is very important, because the best solution for the external environment may not necessarily be the best solution for the working environment. It is expected that the integration of occupational health and safety matters into the conventional LCA framework can bring many benefits to individuals, as well as industrial companies, by avoiding duplicated measures and false optimization.New neighborhoods and cities are built in both developing and developed countries worldwide. Given this urbanization context and current global environmental threats, the concept of sustainability will, in the long term, succeed or fail in cities. To succeed, we need to provide life-cycle-based data aimed at improving the environmental performance of new urban developments and redevelopments. This study discusses the installation criteria for three specific types of sidewalk; these criteria are currently based exclusively on economic and social factors, leading to design uniformity. This study also provides a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of these three types of concrete sidewalks and identifies potential redesign solutions. If sidewalk design were adapted to specific usability requirements, the environmental impact factors associated with sidewalks, and therefore cities, would be significantly optimized and reduced. Although a wide range of materials and constructive solutions are available for sidewalk paving, this study focuses on three very common concrete-based systems with different functionalities in terms of traffic, surface characteristics, and maintenance (i.e., interlocking blocks, continuous concrete layer, and slabs set on a 10-, 12-, and 15-cm-thick concrete base). These systems are analyzed from a life cycle perspective. The impact assessment method used was CML 2 Baseline 2000; input data were provided by the City of Barcelona and other local municipal councils in Catalonia, Spain as well as by local producers. In terms of main findings, this study provides a comprehensive description and inventory of the sidewalk systems under study. According to the LCA, the slab system has the highest environmental impacts; this happens to be the most widely used sidewalk type in the area studied, mainly due to aesthetic concerns and the imperatives of maintaining underground urban services. Regardless of the thickness of the concrete base, the slab system has the highest impact in all categories compared with the other two sidewalk types. However, when the slabs are set on 10 cm of concrete, performance approaches that of the continuous concrete system (with the difference ranging from 3.4% to 6.3%, depending on the impact category); this system is very convenient when maintenance work on underground urban services is required. The interlocking block system, which has the lowest structural capacity, reduces environmental impacts in all categories by 73.8% compared with the highest impact system (i.e., slabs plus a 15-cm concrete base). However, the interlocking block system is limited to areas in which vehicular traffic is prohibited. Nevertheless, there is a high potential for environmental impact reductions when this system is used in places where high structural capacity is not required. The highest environmental impacts of the various sidewalk types are associated with the use of cement (accounting for approximately 24% to nearly 77% of the total impact, depending on the impact category and the sidewalk system used); other impacts have origin in site-to-site transportation of materials, installation, and removal of slabs and continuous concrete layers. Aggregates, which are the materials used in larger quantities in concrete, have a negligible effect on the environmental impact (less than 10% in the categories where its effect is most pronounced). In contrast, the contribution of admixtures, which are used in much smaller quantities, exceeds 10% in the abiotic depletion category. The redesign of sidewalks using environmental criteria and adjusting the sidewalk types to functions fulfilled can bring important benefits. Using a linear regression of the characterization results based on the weight of cement in each system, Pearson's coefficient of regression is greater than 0.99 for all impact categories. Therefore, the content of cement is a key factor in determining the environmental impacts of each sidewalk type. In certain high-traffic areas, e.g., when a sidewalk is located between a roadway and a parking garage entrance or when a sidewalk must to be dug up frequently to access underground service networks (in a process known as 'trenching"), the sidewalk must be reinforced and surface damage must be concealed. In such cases, the environmental impacts may be justified. However, sidewalks have multiple uses, and in many cases, their structural requirements are not excessively rigorous. Therefore, the systematic application of the slab system exacerbates urban environmental impacts. Restricting the use of concrete sidewalks with high structural capacity to street sections that actually require them could reduce environmental impacts by up to 73.8% in pedestrian-only areas. In light of these findings, attention should be paid to the appropriate selection of sidewalks in urban developments and redevelopments based on street function. In addition, the use of materials containing cement should be optimized, local suppliers should be selected, and sidewalks should be designed to facilitate dismantling and reutilization of their components, especially when frequent access to underground networks is required.Traditional life cycle impact assessment methodologies have used aggregated characterization factors, neglecting spatial and temporal variations in regional impacts like photochemical oxidant formation. This increases the uncertainty of the LCA results and diminishes the ease of decision-making. This study compares four common impact assessment methods, CML2001, Eco-indicator 99, TRACI, and EDIP2003, on their underlying models, spatial and temporal resolution, and the level at which photochemical oxidant impacts are calculated. A new characterization model is proposed that incorporates spatial and temporal differentiation. A photochemical air quality modeling system (CAMx-MM5-SMOKE) is used to simulate the process of formation, transformation, transport, and removal of photochemical pollutants. Monthly characterization factors for individual US states are calculated at three levels along the cause-effect chain, namely, fate level, human and ecosystem exposure level, and human effect level. The results indicate that a spatial variability of one order of magnitude and a temporal variability of two orders of magnitude exist in both the fate level and human exposure and effect level characterization factors for NOx. The summer time characterization factors for NOx are higher than the winter time factors. However, for anthropogenic VOC, the summer time factors are lower than the winter time in almost half of the states. This is due to the higher emission rates of biogenic VOCs in the summer. The ecosystem exposure factors for NOx and VOC do not follow a regular pattern and show a spatial variation of about three orders of magnitude. They do not show strong correlation with the human exposure factors. Sensitivity analysis has shown that the effect of meteorology and emission inputs is limited to a factor of three, which is several times smaller than the variation seen in the factors. Uncertainties are introduced in the characterization of photochemical precursors due to a failure to consider the spatial and temporal variations. Seasonal variations in photochemical activity influence the characterization factors more than the location of emissions. The human and ecosystem exposures occur through different mechanisms, and impacts calculated at the fate level based only on ozone concentration are not a good indicator for ecosystem impacts. Spatial and temporal differentiation account for fate and transport of the pollutant, and the exposure of and effect on the sensitive human population or ecosystem. Adequate resolution for seasonal and regional processes, like photochemical oxidant formation, is important to reduce the uncertainty in impact assessment and improve decision-making power. An emphasis on incorporating some form of spatial and temporal information within standard LCI databases and using adequately resolved characterization factors will greatly increase the fidelity of a standard LCA.The expectations with respect to biomass as a resource for sustainable energy are sky-high. Many industrialized countries have adopted ambitious policy targets and have introduced financial measures to stimulate the production or use of bioenergy. Meanwhile, the side-effects and associated risks have been pointed out as well. To be able to make a well-informed decision, the Dutch government has expressed the intention to include sustainability criteria into relevant policy instruments. Among other criteria, it has been proposed to calculate a so-called life-cycle-based greenhouse gas (GHG) indicator, which expresses the reduction of GHG emissions of a bio-based fuel chain in comparison with a fossil-based fuel chain. Life-cycle-based biofuel studies persistently have problems with the handling of biogenic carbon balances and with the treatment of coproducts and recycling. In life-cycle assessments (LCAs) of agricultural products, a distinction between "negative" and "positive" emissions may be relevant. In particular, carbon dioxide, as a naturally occurring compound or an anthropogenic emission, takes part in the so-called geochemical carbon cycle. The most appropriate way to treat carbon cycles is to view them as genuine cycles and, thus, at the systems level, subtract the fixation of CO(2) during tree growth from the CO(2) emitted during waste treatment of discarded wood and to quantify the CH(4) emitted. In solving the multifunctionality problem, two steps may be distinguished. The first concerns the modeling of the product system studied in the inventory analysis. In this step, system boundaries are set, processes are described, and process flows are quantified. Multifunctionality problems can be identified and the model of the product system is drafted. The second step concerns solving the remaining multifunctionality problems. For this step, various ways of solving the multifunctionality problem have been proposed and applied, on the basis of mass, energy, economic value, avoided burdens, etc. As the GHG indicator may constitute the basis for granting subsidies to stimulate the use of bioenergy, for example, and as the method for the GHG indicator provides no guidelines on the handling of biogenic CO(2) and guidelines for solving multifunctionality problems such as with coproducts and recycling that leave room for various choices, this study analyzed whether the current GHG indicator provides results that are a robust basis for granting such subsidies. For the robustness check, a hypothetical case study on wood residue-based electricity was set up in order to illustrate what the effects of different solutions and choices for the two steps mentioned may be. The case dealt with the production of wood pellets (residues of the wood industry) that are cofired in a coal-fired power plant. The functional unit is 1 kWh of electricity. Three possibilities for the places of the multifunctional process, two possibilities for whether or not to include biogenic CO(2), and four possibilities for the allocation method were distinguished and calculated. Varying the options for these three choices in this way appears to have a huge effect on the GHG indicator, while no clear pattern seems to emerge. The results found for this hypothetical case indicate that there are several methodological choices that have not sufficiently been fixed by the presently available standards and guidelines for LCA and GHG assessment of bioenergy systems. In particular, we have focused on issues related to biogenic CO(2) and allocation, two issues that play a prominent role in the assessment of bioenergy systems. Moreover, we have demonstrated with a small hypothetical case study that these are not only issues that might theoretically show up, but that they play a decisive role in practice. The present (Dutch) GHG indicator lacks robustness, which will raise problems for providing a sound basis for granting subsidies. This situation can, however, be improved by reducing the freedom of choices for the handling of biogenic CO(2) and allocation to an absolute minimum. Even then, however, differences could appear due to different definitions, data sources, and method interpretations. It thus appears that two kinds of guidance are needed: (1) the LCA methodology itself should be expanded with guidelines for those issues that follow from science, logic, or consensus; (2) in the policy regulation that demands LCA to be the basis of the decision, additional guidelines should be specified that perhaps do not (yet) have the status of being scientifically proven or generally agreed upon, but that serve as a set of temporary extra guidelines.Forest operations use large amounts of energy, which must be considered when life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied to forest products. Forest management practices differ considerably between countries and may also differ within a country. This paper aims to identify and compare the environmental burdens from forest operations in Sweden and Spain focused on pulpwood production and supply to pulp mills. To perform the analysis, the main forest plantations were investigated as well as the most important tree species used in pulp mills in both countries: eucalyptus and, Norway spruce and Scots pine, were taken into account for the Spanish and Swedish case studies, respectively. Energy requirements for pulpwood production and supply to Spanish and Swedish pulp mills are evaluated in this paper. All forest operations from site preparation to extraction of felled wood to the delivery point at the roadside are included within the system boundaries as well as wood transport from forest landing to the pulp mill gate. Seedling and machinery production are excluded from the system boundaries due to lack of field data. The impact assessment phase was carried out according to the Swedish Environmental Management Council and, in particular, the impact categories assessed in forest and agricultural LCAs (global warming, acidification, eutrophication and photochemical oxidant formation) were analysed. SimaPro 7.10 software was used to perform the impact assessment stage. Different types of wood are produced in both case studies: softwood in Sweden and hardwood in Spain, with higher production of round wood and biomass per hectare in Sweden. Total energy use for pulpwood production and supply are in a similar order of magnitude, up to 395 MJ and 370 MJ/m(3) solid under bark in Spain and Sweden, respectively. Field operations, such as silviculture and logging, are more energy-intensive in the Spanish case study. However, secondary hauling of pulpwood to pulp mill requires more energy in the Swedish case study. These important differences are related to different forest management practices as well as to pulpwood supply to the pulp mill. The eventual imports of pulpwood, application of pesticides, thinning step or final felling considerably affects energy requirements, which are reflected on the environmental results. Although differences between both case studies were observed, several stages were investigated: wood delivery to the pulp mill by road, harvesting and forwarding, contribute considerably to acidification, eutrophication and global warming potential in both cases. The type of wood, the machines used in forest operations (mechanised or motor-manual), the use of fossil fuels and the amount of wood produced influence the results. These differences must be kept in mind in comparative studies between such different countries. The results obtained in this work allow one to forecast the importance of forest operations in LCA of forest products (in this case, wood pulp) and the influence of energy use in the results. Special attention has been paid in the inventory analysis stage for both case studies. It is possible to gain a better environmental performance in both case studies if alternative practices are considered, mainly focused on site preparation and stand tending in the Spanish system and on pulpwood supply in the Swedish one. This study provides useful information that can assist forest-based industries in the aim of increasing their sustainability. Future work will focus on the study of several transport alternatives of pulpwood supply including railway, road and ship. In addition, pulpwood processing in Spanish and Swedish paper pulp mills considered to be representative of the "state of art" will be carried out in order to get a complete picture of this kind of forest-based industry. In addition, the use of biofuels (such as forest biomass) instead of fossil fuels and CO2 uptake of wood via photosynthesis will be carried out in order to have a complete perspective of forest ecosystems.The main primary energy for electricity in Thailand is natural gas, accounting for 73% of the grid mix. Electricity generation from natural gas combustion is associated with substantial air emissions. The two technologies currently used in Thailand, thermal and combined cycle power plant, have been evaluated for the potential environmental impacts in a "cradle-to-grid" study according to the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. This study evaluates the environmental impacts of each process of the natural gas power production over the entire life cycle and compares two different power plant technologies currently used in Thailand, namely, combined cycle and thermal. LCA is used as a tool for the assessment of resource consumption and associated impacts generated from utilization of natural gas in power production. The details follow the methodology outlined in ISO 14040. The scope of this research includes natural gas extraction, natural gas separation, natural gas transmission, and natural gas power production. Most of the inventory data have been collected from Thailand, except for the upstream of fuel oil and fuel transmission, which have been computed from Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation version 1.7 and Global Emission Model for Integrated Systems version 4.3. The impact categories considered are global warming, acidification, photochemical ozone formation, and nutrient enrichment potential (NEP). The comparison reveals that the combined cycle power plant, which has a higher efficiency, performs better than the thermal power plant for global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (ACP), and photochemical ozone formation potential (POCP), but not for NEP where the thermal power plant is preferable. For the thermal power plant, the most significant environmental impacts are from power production followed by upstream of fuel oil, natural gas extraction, separation, and transportation. For the combined cycle power plant, the most significant environmental impacts are from power production followed by natural gas extraction, separation, and transportation. The significant difference between the two types of power production is mainly from the combustion process and feedstock in power plant. The thermal power plant uses a mix of natural gas (56% by energy content) and fuel oil (44% by energy content); whereas, the combined cycle power plant operates primarily on natural gas. The largest contribution to GWP, ACP, and NEP is from power production for both thermal as well as combined cycle power plants. The POCP for the thermal power plant is also from power production; whereas, for combined cycle power plant, it is mainly from transmission of natural gas. In this research, we have examined the environmental impact of electricity generation technology between thermal and combined cycle natural gas power plants. This is the overview of the whole life cycle of natural gas power plant, which will help in decision making. The results of this study will be useful for future power plants as natural gas is the major feedstock being promoted in Thailand for power production. Also, these results will be used in further research for comparison with other feedstocks and power production technologies.As the sustainability improvement becomes an essential business task of industry, a number of companies are adopting IT-based environmental information systems (EIS). Life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool to improve environmental friendliness of a product, can also be systemized as a part of the EIS. This paper presents a case of an environmental information system which is integrated with online LCA tool to produce sets of hybrid life cycle inventory and examine its usefulness in the field application of the environmental management. Samsung SDI Ltd., the producer of display panels, has launched an EIS called Sustainability Management Initiative System (SMIS). The system comprised modules of functions such as environmental management system (EMS), green procurement (GP), customer relation (e-VOC), eco-design, and LCA. The LCA module adopted the hybrid LCA methodology in the sense that it combines process LCA for the site processes and input-output (IO) LCA for upstream processes to produce cradle-to-gate LCA results. LCA results from the module are compared with results of other LCA studies made by the application of different methodologies. The advantages and application of the LCA system are also discussed in light of the electronics industry. LCA can play a vital role in sustainability management by finding environmental burden of products in their life cycle. It is especially true in the case of the electronics industry, since the electronic products have some critical public concerns in the use and end-of-life phase. SMIS shows a method for hybrid LCA through online data communication with EMS and GP module. The integration of IT-based hybrid LCA in environmental information system was set to begin in January 2006. The advantage of the comparing and regular monitoring of the LCA value is that it improves the system completeness and increases the reliability of LCA. By comparing the hybrid LCA and process LCA in the cradle-to-gate stage, the gap between both methods of the 42-in. standard definition plasma display panel (PDP) ranges from 1% (acidification impact category) to -282% (abiotic resource depletion impact category), with an average gap of 68.63%. The gaps of the impact categories of acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), and global warming (GWP) are relatively low (less than 10%). In the result of the comparative analysis, the strength of correlation of three impact categories (AP, EP, GWP) shows that it is reliable to use the hybrid LCA when assessing the environmental impacts of the PDP module. Hybrid LCA has its own risk on data accuracy. However, the risk is affordable when it comes to the comparative LCA among different models of similar product line of a company. In the results of 2 years of monitoring of 42-in. Standard definition PDP, the hybrid LCA score has been decreased by 30%. The system also efficiently shortens man-days for LCA study per product. This fact can facilitate the eco-design of the products and can give quick response to the customer's inquiry on the product's eco-profile. Even though there is the necessity for improvement of process data currently available, the hybrid LCA provides insight into the assessments of the eco-efficiency of the manufacturing process and the environmental impacts of a product. As the environmental concerns of the industries increase, the need for environmental data management also increases. LCA shall be a core part of the environmental information system by which the environmental performances of products can be controlled. Hybrid type of LCA is effective in controlling the usual eco-profile of the products in a company. For an industry, in particular electronics, which imports a broad band of raw material and parts, hybrid LCA is more practicable than the classic LCA. Continuous efforts are needed to align input data and keep conformity, which reduces data uncertainty of the system.Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) methods are used increasingly in the automotive industry to quantify the environmental impacts during vehicle manufacturing. Automotive coating processes are of particular interest as they contribute significantly to the environmental burden with emissions released to air, water, and land, along with the use of substantial amounts of energy and raw materials. Recently, the online NREL LCI Database was developed to characterize the environmental impacts of products and processes in the North American manufacturing sector, including automotive production. For automotive coatings, three unit processes represent the majority of environmental impacts: pretreatment, E-coat, and topcoat. Vie complexity of the automotive coating processes, how-ever, poses a significant challenge for the practical application of LCI information. This article extends pretreatment LCI data previously presented at FutureCoat! 2007, with detailed LCI data for the E-coat and topcoat processes. Furthermore, an LCI data application protocol is proposed to allow LCI reference data to be used to estimate LCI results for a different manufacturing facility or scenario. The analysis examines several variables for their effect on extrapolating NREL reference data, including: coated surface area, paint process, production volume/cycle length, and vehicle type. For the coating process, the applicability of manufacturing LCI data is shown to depend primarily on coated surface area and production volume.To reduce operating costs, cold storage buildings are being designed with increasing levels of thermal roof insulation. This paper examines the current state of the art in order to estimate average roof insulation requirements in modern cold storage buildings. This research includes both economic and environmental considerations. The added environmental impact of manufacturing thermal insulation is compared to the reduced environmental impact of the building's cooling load. The cost of purchasing and installing additional roof insulation is also compared to the annual energy savings associated with the increase to establish the most economic insulating level given today's cost of energy. This paper shows that, from an economic, as well as from an environmental performance perspective, there is a need to design more efficient, sustainable cold storage buildings now.Decision models under uncertainty can be used as an alternative method for assessing the embodied energy and greenhouse gas missions of different heating equipment when detailed information is not available. The method can help in the estimation of life-cycle energy use of equipment by removing obstacles in the evaluation of embodied energy. The paper presents the estimation of environmental impacts from manufacturing a noncondensing, natural gas-fired hot-water boiler with a heat capacity of about 12 kW for residential applications, in the absence of accurate data about the materials used. Results from a case study found in the literature are used for the verification of the proposed method. The embodied energy in a hot-water boiler with the heat exchanger in aluminum, for instance, is about 20,000 MJ or about 30% of the total embodied energy of a house and in the case of stainless steel, it is about 3,000 MJ or about 5%.The study fills the gap in existing literature by comparing the economic costs and environmental impacts of processes in four services companies in Europe and the United States. Process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) and the case study method are used to compare companies both on four global-scale impacts and on environmental intensity (impacts per unit cost). The study builds on prior publications on the environmental contribution of processes. The processes include all the activities of the companies that result in an entry into the bookkeeping records. The results show that despite the substantial differences in organizational characteristics and line of business, all the cases had similar environmental contributions and intensity profiles. Wages, which accounted for over half of the costs, were assumed not to cause any environmental impacts. By contrast, the office premises, which generated less than 10% of the costs, caused around 50% of the environmental impacts. At a more general level, the results suggest that both the high environmental impact and the high intensity are attributed mostly to a few premises-related processes in the services industry. The results also seem to imply that the companies could gain added value by using life cycle assessment in determining the significant environmental impacts of their operations.In order to convey the results of our industrial ecology research to broader audiences, the Green Design Institute research group at Carnegie Mellon University offers the Green Design Apprenticeship for local high school students. The Green Design Apprenticeship introduces participants to industrial ecology concepts and how they intersect with engineering. The content of the program has evolved to include the topics of life cycle assessment, energy and water resources, transportation, and the built environment. The program has resulted in exposing a new generation of scholars to industrial ecology and has also benefited the research of graduate students involved with the program. The process of developing the instructional materials for younger, novice students based on complex industrial ecology research was a challenging task requiring thoughtful and iterative planning. Through the development and delivery of the program, we have experienced awareness of where our own research fits into the larger industrial ecology scope, have improved our communication of complex industrial ecology concepts into simple terms, and have gained valuable insight for engaging students in our teaching.This article gives an overview of the current methods for life cycle analysis with special emphasis on dynamic load analysis. Recent developments in CFD simulations of time-dependent phenomena are presented, such as the von Karman vortex shedding at stay vanes in a Kaplan turbine and the part load vortex in the draft tube of a Francis turbine and a pump turbine. A major topic of this article is the unsteady pressure field in a pump turbine, which is caused by the interaction of guide vanes and runner blades. CFD results of the pressure pulsations and their validation through comparison with measurement data are presented. It is shown how the predicted time-dependent pressure load is transferred as input to the structural analysis of the runner. For the analysis of the response of the runner to the dynamic load knowledge of the natural frequencies of the structure is required including the influence of the surrounding water on the natural frequencies. New results of the prediction of the natural frequencies of a Francis runner including the added mass effect due to the surrounding water are presented. For Pelton runners the state-of-the-art of measurement of eigenfrequencies and detuning are discussed along with the potential improvements due to the new simulation methods.The implementation of resource management strategies aimed at reducing the impacts of the anthropogenic activities system requires a comprehensive approach to evaluate on the whole the environmental burdens of productive processes and to identify the best recovery strategies from both an environmental and an economic point of view. In this framework, an analytical methodology based on the integration of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), ExternE and Comprehensive Analysis was developed to perform an in-depth investigation of energy systems. The LCA methodology, largely utilised by the international scientific community for the assessment of the environmental performances of technologies, combined with Comprehensive Analysis allows modelling the overall system of anthropogenic activities, as well as sub-systems, the economic consequences of the whole set of environmental damages. Moreover, internalising external costs into partial equilibrium models, as those utilised by Comprehensive Analysis, can be useful to identify the best paths for implementing technology innovation and strategies aimed to a more sustainable energy supply and use. This paper presents an integrated application of these three methodologies to a local scale case study (the Val D'Agri area in Basilicata, Southern Italy), aimed to better characterise the environmental impacts of the energy system, with particular reference to extraction activities. The innovative methodological approach utilised takes advantage from the strength points of each methodology with an added value coming from their integration as emphasised by the main results obtained by the scenario analysis. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development requires methods and tools to measure and compare the environmental impacts of human activities for various products (goods and services). Providing society with goods and services contributes to a wide range of environmental impacts. Environmental impacts include emissions into the environment and the consumption of resources as well as other interventions such as land use, etc. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for assessing environmental loads of a product or a system. The aim of this paper is to review existing energy and CO(2) life cycle analyses of renewable sources based electricity generation systems. The paper points out that carbon emission from renewable energy (RE) systems are not nit, as is generally assumed while evaluating carbon credits. Further the range of carbon emissions from RE systems have been found out from existing literature and compared with those from fossil fuel based systems, so as to assist in a rational choice of energy supply systems. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The non-combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature. The indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity, greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology, availability of renewable sources, efficiency of energy conversion, land requirements, water consumption and social impacts, The cost of electricity, greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology, mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source. The social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature. Renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development. It was found that wind power is the most sustainable, followed by hydropower, photovoltaic and then geothermal. Wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions, the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies, but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedWith increasing use of biomass for energy, questions arise about the validity of bioenergy as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology able to reveal these environmental and energy performances, but results may differ even for apparently similar bioenergy systems. Differences are due to several reasons: type and management of raw materials, conversion technologies, end-use technologies, system boundaries and reference energy system with which the bioenergy chain is compared. Based on review of published papers and elaboration of software data concerning greenhouse gas and energy balances of bioenergy, other renewable and conventional fossil systems, this paper discusses key issues in bioenergy system LCA. These issues have a strong influence on the final results but are often overlooked or mishandled in most of the studies available in literature. The article addresses the following aspects: recognition of the biomass carbon cycle, including carbon stock changes in biomass and soil over time; inclusion of nitrous oxide and methane emissions from agricultural activities; selection of the appropriate fossil reference system; homogeneity of the input parameters in Life Cycle Inventories; influence of the allocation procedure when multiple products are involved; future trends in bioenergy (i.e. second-generation biofuels and biorefineries). Because many key issues are site-specific, and many factors affect the outcome, it is not possible to give exact values for the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy consumption saved by a certain bioenergy product, because too many uncertainties are involved. For these reasons, the results are here provided as a means of wide ranges. Despite this wide range of results, it has been possible to draw some important conclusions and devise recommendations concerning the existing bioenergy systems, and some emerging implications about the future deployment and trends of bioenergy products are pointed out. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Advanced thermal treatment technologies utilizing pyrolysis or gasification, as well as a combined approach, are introduced as sustainable methods to treat wastes in Singapore. Eight different technologies are evaluated: pyrolysis-gasification of MSW: pyrolysis of MSW; thermal cracking gasification of granulated MSW; combined pyrolysis, gasification and oxidation of MSW: steam gasification of wood: circulating fluidized bed (CFB) gasification of organic wastes; gasification of RDF; and the gasification of tyres. Life cycle assessment is carried out to determine the environmental impacts of the various waste conversion systems including global warming potential, acidification potential, terrestrial eutrophication and ozone photochemical formation. The normalization and weighting results, calculated according to Singapore national emission inventories, showed that the two highest impacts are from thermal cracking gasification of granulated MSW and the gasification of RDF; and the least are from the steam gasification of wood and the pyrolysis-gasification of MSW. A simplified life cycle cost comparison showed that the two most costs-effective waste conversion systems are the CFB gasification of organic waste and the combined pyrolysis, gasification and oxidation of MSW. The least favorable - highest environmental impact as well as highest costs - are the thermal cracking gasification of granulated MSW and the gasification of tyres. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on the study of eleven environmental impact categories produced by several municipal solid waste management systems (scenarios) operating on a provincial scale in Southern Italy. In particular, the analysis takes into account 12 management scenarios with 16 management phases for each one. The only difference among ten of the scenarios (separated kerbside collection of all recyclables, glass excepted, composting of putrescibles, RDF pressed bales production and incineration, final landfilling) is the percentage of separated collection varying in the range of 35-80%, while the other two scenarios, for 80% of separate collection, consider different alternatives in the disposal of treatment residues (dry residue sorting and final landfilling or direct disposal in landfill). The potential impacts induced on the environmental components were analysed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) procedure called "WISARD" (Waste Integrated System Assessment for Recovery and Disposal). Paper recycling was the phase with the greatest influence on avoided impacts, while the collection logistics of dry residue was the phase with the greatest influence on produced impacts. For six impact categories (renewable and total energy use, water, suspended solids and oxydable matters index, eutrophication and hazardous waste production), for high percentages of separate collection a management system based on recovery and recycling but without incineration Would be preferable. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the purpose of assessing the environmental impacts and benefits of the current municipal solid waste management system and two modified systems, EASEWASTE, a life-cycle-based model, was used to evaluate the waste system of Hangzhou city in China. An integrated model was established, including waste generation, collection, transportation, treatment, disposal and accompanying external processes. The results showed that CH4 released from landfilling was the primary pollutant contributing to global warming, and HCl and NH3 from incineration contributed most to acidification. Material recycling and incineration with energy recovery were important because of the induced savings in material production based on virgin materials and in energy production based on coal combustion. A modified system in which waste is transported to the nearest incinerators would be relatively better than the current system, mainly due to the decrease of pollution from landfilled waste and the increase in energy production from waste avoiding energy production by traditional power plants. A ban on free plastic bags for shopping was shown to reduce most environmental impacts due to saved oil resources and other materials used in producing the plastic bags. Sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the results. LCA methodology and a model like EASEWASTE are very suitable for evaluating the overall environmental consequences, and can be used for decision support and strategic planning in developing countries such as China where pollution control has become increasingly important with the rapid increase of waste generation as well as the increasing public awareness of environmental protection.The quantity of land available to grow biofuel crops without affecting food prices or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land conversion is limited. Therefore, bioenergy should maximize land-use efficiency when addressing transportation and climate change goals. Biomass could power either internal combustion or electric vehicles, but the relative land-use efficiency of these two energy pathways is not well quantified. Here, we show that bioelectricity outperforms ethanol across a range of feedstocks, conversion technologies, and vehicle classes. Bioelectricity produces an average of 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area of cropland than does cellulosic ethanol. These results suggest that alternative bioenergy pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the available land to achieve transportation and climate goals.This paper presents the strategy for a large EU-funded Integrated Project: EXIOPOL ("A New Environmental Accounting Framework Using Externality Data and Input-Output Tools for Policy Analysis"), with special attention for its part in environmentally extended (EE) input-output (IO) analysis. The project has three principal objectives: (a) to synthesize and further develop estimates of the external costs of key environmental impacts for Europe; (b) to develop an EE IO framework for the EU-27 in a global context, including as many of these estimates as possible, to allow for the estimation of environmental impacts (expressed as LCA themes, material requirement indicators, ecological footprints or external costs) of the activities of different economic sectors, final consumption activities and resource consumption; (c) to apply the results of the work to external costs and EE I-O for illustrative policy questions. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Wood transportation from forest landing to forest-based industries uses large amounts of energy. In the case of Sweden, where forest operations are highly and efficiently mechanized, this stage consumes more fossil fuels than other elements of the wood supply chain (such as silviculture and logging operations). This paper intends to compare the environmental burdens associated to different wood transport models considering a Swedish pulp mill as a case study by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an analytical tool. Five scenarios (the current one and four alternative reliable scenarios) were proposed and analysed taking into account two variables. On the one hand, the influence of imported pulpwood share from Baltic countries and on the other hand, the use of rail transportation for wood transport. in particular, the following impact categories were assessed: Eutrophication, Global Warming, Photochemical Oxidant Formation, Acidification and Fossil fuel extraction. The environmental results indicate that transport alternatives including electric and diesel trains, as well as the reduction in Baltic wood imports should present better environmental performance than the current scenario in terms of all the impact categories under study. Remarkable differences were identified with regard to energy requirements. This divergence is related to different long-distance transport strategies (lorry. boat and/or train) as well as the relative import of wood selected. The combination of lorry and train in wood transportation from Southern Sweden plus the reduction of wood imports from 25% to 15% seems to be more favourable from an environmental perspective. The results obtained allow forecasting the importance of the wood transport strategy in the wood supply chain in LCA of forest products and the influence of energy requirements in the results. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to describe how the greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of ethanol from agricultural crops depend on local conditions and calculation methods. The focus is mainly on the fuels used in the ethanol process and biogenic GHG from the soils cultivated. To ensure that "good" ethanol is produced, with reference to GHG benefits, the following demands must be met: (i) ethanol plants should use biomass and not fossil fuels, (ii) cultivation of annual feedstock crops should be avoided on land rich in carbon (above and below ground), such as peat soils used as permanent grassland, etc., (iii) by-products should be utilised efficiently in order to maximise their energy and GHG benefits and (iv) nitrous oxide emissions should be kept to a minimum by means of efficient fertilisation strategies, and the commercial nitrogen fertiliser utilised should be produced in plants which have nitrous oxide gas cleaning. Several of the current ethanol production systems worldwide fullfill the majority of these demands, whereas some production systems do not. Thus, the findings in this paper helps identifying current "good" systems, how today's "fairly good" systems could be improved, and which inherent "bad" systems that we should avoid. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) was applied to evaluate the global environmental impact of two scenarios of trout production systems based on the operational information from an operational farm using a flow through system (FFF) and an experimental pilot low head recirculating system (RSF) located on the same site. The main differences between the environmental balances of the two systems were relative to water use, eutrophication potential and energy use. Independently of the system used, feed is the key indicator in determining the environmental balance (notwithstanding eutrophication potential and water dependence) monitored by fish production, chemical products, buildings and energy consumption. Consequently, when considering the RSF with a lower feed conversion ratio (0.8 versus 1.1 for FTF), the environmental balance of the RSF is more favourable at both global and regional levels, except with regards to energy use. RSF water dependence is 93% lower than the FTF and its eutrophication potential is 26-38% lower due to reduced waste release. On the other hand, at 57,659 MJ per ton of fish produced ( 16 kWh per kg), the RSF consumes 24-40% more energy than the FTF, especially for aeration and water treatment. Nevertheless, the RSF has significant potential for energy reduction through improvements to airlift and biofilter designs which Would reduce RSF energy use to a level similar to that of the FTF (34,869-43,841 MJ per ton of fish produced, corresponding to 10 and 12 kWh respectively). LCA is therefore a powerful tool which can be used on fish farms to define and prioritise the most promising potential improvements to the system. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recent legislative mandates have been enacted at state and federal levels with the purpose of reducing life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation fuels. This legislation encourages the substitution of fossil fuels with 'low-carbon' fuels. The burden is put on regulatory agencies to determine the GHG-intensity of various fuels, and those agencies naturally look to science for guidance. Even though much progress has been made in determining the direct life cycle emissions from the production of biofuels, the science underpinning the estimation of potentially significant emissions from indirect land use change (ILUC) is in its infancy. As legislation requires inclusion of ILUC emissions in the biofuel life cycle, regulators are in a quandary over accurate implementation. In this article, we review these circumstances and offer some suggestions for how to proceed with the science of indirect effects and regulation in the face of uncertain science. Besides investigating indirect deforestation and grassland conversion alone, a more comprehensive assessment of the total GHG emissions implications of substituting biofuels for petroleum needs to be completed before indirect effects can be accurately determined. This review finds that indirect emissions from livestock and military security are particularly important, and deserve further research. (C) 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdBiomass is a sustainable alternative to fossil energy carriers which are used to produce fuels, electricity, chemicals, and other goods. At the moment, the main biobased products are obtained by the conversion of biomass to basic products like starch, oil, and cellulose. In addition, some single chemicals and fuels are produced. Presently, concepts of biorefineries which will produce a multitude of biomass-derived products are discussed. Biorefineries are supposed to contribute to a more sustainable resource supply and to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. However, biobased products and fuels may also be associated with environmental disadvantages due to, e.g. land use or eutrophication of water. We performed a Life Cycle Assessment of a lignocellulose feedstock biorefinery system and compared it to conventional product alternatives. The biorefinery was found to have the greatest environmental impacts in the three categories: fossil fuel use, respiratory effects, and carcinogenics. The environmental impacts predominantly result from the provision of hydrochloric acid and to a smaller extent also from the provision of process heat. As the final configuration of the biorefinery cannot be determined yet, various variants of the biorefinery system were analysed. The optimum variant (acid and heat recoveries) yields better results than the fossil alternatives, with the total environmental impacts being approx. 41% lower than those of the fossil counterparts. For most biorefinery variants analysed, the environmental performance in some impact categories is better than that of the fossil counterparts while disadvantages can be seen in other categories. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a matrix to select sustainable materials for buildings in Sri Lanka, taking into consideration environmental, economic and social assessments of materials in a life cycle perspective. Five building elements, viz.. foundations, roofs, ceilings, doors and windows, and floors are analyzed based on materials used for these elements. Environmental burdens associated with these elements are analyzed in terms of embodied energy and environmental impacts such as global warming, acidification and nutrient enrichment. Economic analysis is based on market prices and affordability of materials. Social factors that are taken into account are thermal comfort, interior (aesthetics), ability to construct quickly, strength and durability. By compiling the results of analyses, two building types with minimum and maximum impacts are identified. These two cases along with existing buildings are compared in a matrix of environmental, economic and social scores. Analysis of the results also indicates need for higher consideration of environmental parameters in decision-making over social and economic factors, as social and economic scores do not vary much between cases. Hence, this matrix helps decision-makers to select sustainable materials for buildings, meaningfully, and thus helps to move towards a more sustainable buildings and construction sector. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The emergence of voluntary carbon markets provides an additional income opportunity to nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners because of the carbon sequestered in forest biomass. This study integrates life cycle analysis and the modified Faustmann model to assess the impact of carbon payments on the optimum rotation age and profitability of 1 ha of privately owned but intensely managed slash pine (Pinus elliottii Engelm.) plantation in the southern United States. Guidelines of the Chicago Climate Exchange were followed for carbon payments. When carbon payments were included, land expectation values (LEVs) were found to be about $1384.ha(-1) and $1063.ha(-1) for the with and without thinning scenarios, respectively. When payment for carbon sequestered in the live forest biomass was included, LEVs increased to about $2807.ha(-1) and $2765.ha(-1) for the aforementioned scenarios, respectively. No significant change in the optimum rotation age was observed in the presence of carbon payments. Results suggest that voluntary carbon markets could play a key role in improving the financial returns to NIPF landowners.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is not widely used as a decision-supporting tool in Italy, despite recent European Commission policies fostering its adoption to achieve an energy- and resource-efficient economy. In this paper, an LCA of waste management system of the 1st Macrolotto industrial area is presented. The aims of the study were to identify the environmental critical points of the system and to evaluate opportunities and problems in applying this methodology at industrial area level. After a description of the waste management system of the 1st Macrolotto industrial area, the main assumptions of the study and some elements of the system modelling are presented. Results confirmed that door-to-door separated collection and packaging recycling are successful strategies for reducing the use of natural resources. The cooperation of the waste management company, which was part of the area management structure, was strategic for the completion of the analysis. Country-specific databases and models should be developed for a widespread application of the LCA methodology to waste management in Italian industrial areas. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a comparative energy system analysis of different technologies utilising organic waste for heat and power production as well as fuel for transport. Technologies included in the analysis are second-generation biofuel production, gasification, fermentation (biogas production) and improved incineration. It is argued that energy technologies should be assessed together with the energy systems of which they form part and influence. The energy system analysis is performed by use of the EnergyPLAN model, which simulates the Danish energy system hour by hour. The analysis shows that most fossil fuel is saved by gasifying the organic waste and using the syngas for combined heat and power production. On the other hand, least greenhouse gases are emitted if biogas is produced from organic waste and used for combined heat and power production; assuming that the use of organic waste for biogas production facilitates the use of manure for biogas production. The technology which provides the cheapest CO(2) reduction is gasification of waste with the subsequent conversion of gas into transport fuel. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing use of petroleum, coupled with concern for global warming, demands the development and institution of CO2 reducing, non-fossil fuel-based alternative energy-generating strategies. Ethanol is a potential alternative, particularly when produced in a sustainable way as is envisioned for sugarcane in Brazil. We consider the expansion of sugarcane-derived ethanol to displace 5% of projected gasoline use worldwide in 2025. With existing technology, 21 million hectares of land will be required to produce the necessary ethanol. This is less than 7% of current Brazilian agricultural land and equivalent to current soybean land use. New production lands come from pasture made available through improving pasture management in the cattle industry. With the continued introduction of new cane varieties (annual yield increases of about 1.6%) and new ethanol production technologies, namely the hydrolysis of bagasse to sugars for ethanol production and sugarcane trash collection providing renewable process energy production, this could reduce these modest land requirements by 29-38%. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We combine Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA) and Structural Path Analysis (SPA) in order to examine the temporal changes within a full production chain perspective. To our knowledge this work constitutes the first formulation of what we call Structural Path Decomposition (SPD). SPD provides noteworthy insight in two instances: first it extracts and ranks those interactions within an economy that are most important in driving change; second it provides a temporal perspective to standard input-output-based Life-Cycle Assessment. In this paper, we develop the mathematical model of SPD and provide two case studies of the most important changes in structural paths in Australia from 1995 to 2005. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.Increasing needs for new urban water infrastructure are very difficult to meet within existing environmental constraints. New ways must be found to deliver these services with lower water demand, greenhouse gas emissions, and discharge of nutrients. Alternative means of water servicing are being considered for long-term ecological sustainability. An environmental and economic assessment framework combined with various analysis tools like water balance, life-cycle costing, and life-cycle assessment (LCA) is presented in this paper to evaluate a range of alternative water servicing scenarios. LCA has the potential to evaluate development and associated service provision impacts on the environment in the long term, locally and globally. Application of this framework and analysis approaches was demonstrated on a 3062 hectare greenfield development for 86,000 residents near Melbourne.This paper describes the derivation of an Environmental Emissions Index (EEI) intended to quantify the environmental performance of Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) installations and sectors. Characterisation and normalisation methods used in life-cycle analyses were applied to 20 routinely reported emissions parameters, pertaining to six environmental impact categories. Distance to policy targets for relevant emissions were used to weight impact categories, and link the EEI to policy priorities. Ireland and the EU15 were considered as scales of context. The European Pollutant Emission Register was a convenient source of normalisation data, but restricted the context of the EEI to industrial emissions, and distorted outputs. Using national and EU15 total loading estimates for normalisation resulted in an EEI that better reflected the relative contribution of reported emissions towards overall environmental pressures. Using Ireland's pharmaceutical sector as a case study indicated that weighting factors, and the toxicity range of NMVOC emissions, were the largest sources of EEI uncertainty. Through the integration of inventory data, scientific characterisation, and policy targets, the EEI translates reported emissions data from IPPC installations and sectors into a benchmark of environmental performance. It may be regarded as an evolving tool of potential utility to regulators and policy makers. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to evaluate the environmental profile of a product or process from its origin to its final destination. In this paper we used LCA to evaluate the current situation of a wastewater treatment plant and identify improvement alternatives. Currently, the highest environmental impacts are caused by the stages of the plant with the highest energy consumption, the use of biogas from anaerobic digestion (95% burned in torch) and the final destination of the sludge (98.6% for agricultural use and 1.4% for compost). We propose four alternatives for biogas applications and five alternatives for sludge applications and compare them to the current situation. The alternatives were incorporated in a decision support system to identify and prioritize the most positive environmental option. Using biogas to produce electricity or a combination of electricity and heat provided the best environmental options since the energy produced would be enough to supply all the stages of the plant, thus reducing their environmental impact. The best environmental option for the final destination of the sludge is to combine the current situation (fertilizer replacement) with use of the sludge in a cement plant (as a replacement for fuel and raw material).Life-cycle assessment (LCA) presents a relatively new approach, which allows comprehensive environmental consequences analysis of a product system over its entire life. This analysis is increasingly being used in the industry, as a tool for investigation of the influence of the product system on the environment, and serves as a protection and prevention tool in ecological management. This method is used to predict possible influences of a certain material to the environment through different development stages of the material. In LCA, the product systems are evaluated on a functionally equivalent basis, which, in this case, was 1000 cubic centimeters of an alloy. Two of the LCA phases, life-cycle inventory (LCA) and life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA), are needed to calculate the environmental impacts. Methodology of LCIA applied in this analysis aligns every input and output influence into 16 different categories, divided in two subcategories. The life-cycle assessment reaserch review of the lead-free solders Sn-Cu, SAC (Sn-Ag-Cu), BSA (Bi-Sb-Ag) and SABC (Sn-Ag-Bi-Cu) respectively, is given in this paper, from the environmental protection aspect starting from production, through application process and finally, reclamation at the end-of-life, i.e. recycling. There are several opportunities for reducing the overall environmental and human health impacts of solder used in electronics manufacturing based on the results of the LCA, such as: using secondary metals reclaimed through post-industrial recycling; power consumption reducing by replacing older, less efficient reflow assembly equipment, or by optimizing the current equipment to perform at the elevated temperatures required for lead-free soldering, etc. The LCA analysis was done comparatively in relation to widely used Sn-Pb solder material. Additionally, the impact factors of material consumption, energy use, water and air reserves, human health and ecotoxicity have been ALSO considered including the potentials for dissolution and recycling processes.Personal electronic products have received little attention regarding life cycle assessment (LCA), possibly due to the fact that their energy consumption is not high in general. In fact, the European Union has decided to enforce a law (Directive 2005/32/EC, the EuP Directive hereafter) for regulating the environmental consequences of all energy-using products (EuPs), the scope of which also covers such personal electronic products. In complying with the directive, LCA is a useful tool to draw conclusion and to compare the performance of alternatives. In this connection, a pilot study is carried out to assess the environmental impacts of two personal electronic products through LCA, subject to the scope of the said directive. Main objective of this technical note is to raise the awareness of eco-design for personal electronic products.Electric energy consumption represents the greatest part of the cost of the hydrogen produced by water electrolysis. An effort is being carried out to reduce this electric consumption and improve the global efficiency of commercial electrolysers. Whereas relevant progresses are being achieved in cell stack configurations and electrodes performance, there are practically no studies on the effect of the electric power supply topology on the electrolyser energy efficiency. This paper presents an analysis on the energy consumption and efficiency of a 1 N m(3)h(-1) commercial alkaline water electrolyser and their dependence on the power supply topology. The different topologies of power supplies are first summarised, analysed and classified into two groups: thyristor-based (ThPS) and transistor-based power supplies (TrPS). An Electrolyser Power Supply Emulator (EPSE) is then designed, developed and satisfactorily validated by means of simulation and experimental tests. With the EPSE, the electrolyser is characterised both obtaining its I-V curves for different temperatures and measuring the useful hydrogen production. The electrolyser is then supplied by means of two different emulated electric profiles that are characteristic of typical ThPS and TrPS. Results show that the cell stack energy consumption is up to 495WhN m(-3) lower when it is supplied by the TrPS, which means 10% greater in terms of efficiency. (C) 2009 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from products (goods and services) is emerging as a high profile application of life cycle assessment (LCA), with an increasing desire from retailers and other supply chain organizations to better understand, and in some cases communicate, the carbon footprint of products. Publicly Available Specification 2050:2008, Specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services, addresses the single-impact category of global warming to provide a standardized and simplified implementation of process LCA methods for assessing GHG emissions from products. This paper briefly reviews the development process followed for PAS 2050, before examining the treatment of GHG-specific contribution of PAS 2050 to product carbon footprinting. PAS 2050 was jointly sponsored by the Carbon Trust and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and was published by the British Standards Institution on 29 October 2008. An independent steering group oversaw the development of the specification, including the establishment of an expert workgroup program, comprehensive international consultation, and expert input on the requirements of the specification. The development process for PAS 2050 resulted in a specification that includes specific requirements that limit the interpretation of the underlying LCA approach to product carbon footprinting. These requirements, including goal setting and life cycle inventory assessment, aspects of system boundary identification and temporal aspects of GHG emissions, clarify the approach to be taken by organizations implementing product carbon footprinting, and simplify the application of LCA procedures in relation to product carbon footprinting. Assessment of the emissions arising from the life cycle of products has a clear international component, and delivering consistent results across the supply chain requires the application of consistent methods. There is an emerging recognition that further standardization of methods for product carbon footprinting is needed, and the specific requirements resulting from the PAS 2050 development process make a valuable contribution across a range of GHG assessment issues. The widespread interest in PAS 2050 from individuals and organizations, together with the development of similar guidance by other organizations, confirmed that there is a need for clarification, certainty, and requirements in the field of product carbon footprint analysis. The use of PAS 2050 to refine, clarify, and simplify existing LCA methods and standards has resulted in specific approaches to key GHG assessment issues being developed; it is important that future standards development work considers the impact of these approaches and their further refinement. It is the consumption of goods and services by individuals around the world that drives global GHG emission, and PAS 2050 is a first attempt to provide integrated, consistent approaches that directly address the role of consumption at the product level in contributing to GHG emissions. Climate science and GHG assessment techniques are both evolving areas and it will be necessary to review the approach taken by PAS 2050 in the future: a formal review process for PAS 2050 will commence towards the end of 2009 and practitioners are encouraged to participate in this review process.Methodology development should reflect demands from the intended users: what are the needs of the user group and what is feasible in terms of requirements involving data and work? Mapping these questions of relevance and feasibility is thus a way to facilitate a higher degree of relevance of the developed methodology. For the emerging area of social life cycle assessment (SLCA), several different potential user groups may be identified. This article addresses the issues of relevance and feasibility of SLCA from a company perspective through a series of interviews among potential company users. The empirical basis for the survey is a series of eight semi-structured interviews with larger Danish companies, all of which potentially have the capacity and will to use comprehensive social assessment methodologies. SLCA is not yet a well-defined methodology, but still it is possible to outline several potential applications of SLCA and the tasks a company must be able to perform in order to make use of these applications. The interviews focus on the companies' interest in these potential applications and their ability and willingness to undertake the required work. Based on these interviews, three hypotheses are developed relating to these companies' potential use of SLCA, viz.: (1) needs which may be supported by SLCA relate to three different applications, being comparative assertions, use stage assessments, and weighting of social impacts; (2) assessing the full life cycle of a product or service is rarely possible for the companies; and (3) companies see their social responsibility in the product chain as broader than dictated by the product perspective of SLCA. Trends for these three hypotheses developed on the basis of the opinions of the interviewees. Also, factors influencing the generalization of the results to cover other industries are analyzed. Full comparative assertions as known from environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) may be difficult in a company context due to several difficulties in assessing the full life cycle. Furthermore, the comparative assertion may potentially be hampered by differences in how companies typically allocate responsibility along the product chain and how it is done in SLCA, creating a boundary setting issue. These problems do, only in a limited degree, apply for both the use stage assessment and the tool for weighting social issues. Despite these difficulties, it is concluded that all three applications of SLCA may be possible for the interviewed companies, but it seems the tendency is to demand assessment tools with very limited life cycle perspective, which to some extent deviate from the original thought behind the LCA tools as being holistic decision aid tools. It is advocated that there is a need to focus more on questions regarding the relevance and feasibility of SLCA from several different perspectives to direct the future methodology development.Under ISO 14040, normalisation is an optional step in life-cycle impact assessment designed to provide environmental context by indicating the relative contribution that the product system under investigation makes in the various impact categories, in comparison to a suitable reference scenario. The challenge for many studies, however, is to provide the appropriate context by adopting a normalisation reference scenario that is well matched to the product system's parent environment. Australia has a highly urbanised population, mainly contained in just eight capital cities. In the context of normalising environmental impacts against the profile of an 'average' Australian, this poses a unique problem, compared to other industrialised regions of the world. This study aims to use publicly available data on environmentally relevant emissions and non-renewable resource consumption in 2005/2006 to develop regional normalisation data for Australia, at both inventory and characterisation levels. The regionalised inventory of emissions and resources production is constructed using a framework of 60 regional Statistical Divisions from the Australian Standard Geographical Classification system. Data from the National Pollutant Inventory, Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (energy and mineral statistics) are used as the basis for the inventories. These data could subsequently be used by any LCA practitioner to construct characterisation or normalisation data by impact category, according to any preferred life-cycle impact assessment methodology, for any of 60 regions in the country. In this study, the regionalised inventory data were assessed using the CML 2001 baseline and IMPACT 2002+ life-cycle impact assessment methods in SimaPro v.7.1.5. Characterisation results from the two LCIA methods for Australia's eight state and territory capital cities are presented, together with an overall national profile. These data are also shown on a per capita basis to highlight the relative environmental profiles of citizens in the different cities. Interestingly, many significant impacts occur outside of the capital cities but are linked to facilities providing the majority of their services and products to these urban centres (e.g. power stations, minerals processing). Comparison of the average Australian data with the Netherlands, Western Europe and the World shows the results to be broadly similar. Analysis of the CML 2001 baseline characterisation results, on a per capita basis, shows substantial differences between the major cities of the country. In each impact category, these differences can be successfully traced to specific emissions in the raw data sources, the influence of prevailing climate conditions, or factors such as the mix of non-renewable energy resources in each state. Some weaknesses are also evident in the collection and estimation techniques of the raw data sources and in the application of European-based impact assessment models. Australia is a net exporter of many products, particularly natural resources. Therefore, a significant part of the characterisation data presented here for Australia represents products that will be consumed in other parts of the world. Similarly, at a regional level, there will be many inventory items produced in one area yet consumed in another. In this way, the impacts associated with consumption (particularly in densely populated but largely industry-free cities) are dissipated into other production centres. This study provides the first set of comprehensive inventory and characterisation data for Australia from a production perspective, disaggregated at a regional level. Despite Australia's unique spatial demography, it is now possible to properly characterise the relative significance of environmental impacts occurring in any of 60 specific regions across the country. Australia's unique concentration of urban populations demonstrates the importance of regionally specific environmental assessments. Whilst the data presented in this study will be of most use to Australian LCA practitioners, it is also demonstrative of the broader global distribution of environmental impacts between urban and non-urban areas. The disconnection of environmental impacts between the place of production and the place of consumption is highlighted by this study and should be considered in any studies using these normalisation data for environmental profiling.The environmental burden of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules is currently largely determined by the cumulative input of fossil energy used for module production. However, with an increased focus on limiting the emission of CO(2) coming from fossil fuels, it is expected that renewable resources, including photovoltaics, may well become more important in producing electricity. A comparison of the environmental impacts of PV modules in case their life cycle is based on the use of PV electricity in contrast to conventional electricity can elucidate potential environmental drawbacks in an early stage of development of a solar-based economy. The goal of this paper is to show for ten impact categories the environmental consequences of replacing fossil electricity with solar electricity into the life cycle of two types of PV modules. Using life cycle assessment (LCA), we evaluated the environmental impacts of two types of PV modules: a thin-film GaInP/GaAs tandem module and a multicrystalline silicon (multi-Si) module. For each of the modules, the total amount of fossil electricity required in the life cycle of the module was substituted with electricity that is generated by a corresponding PV module. The environmental impacts of the modules on the midpoint level were compared with those of the same modules in case their life cycle is based on the use of conventional electricity. The environmental impacts were assessed for Western European circumstances with an annual solar irradiation of 1000 kWh/m(2). For the GaInP/GaAs module, the environmental impacts of individual production steps were also analysed. Environmental burdens decreased when PV electricity was applied in the life cycle of the two PV modules. The impact score reductions of the GaInP/GaAs module were up to a factor of 4.9 (global warming). The impact score reductions found for the multi-Si module were up to a factor of 2.5 (abiotic depletion and global warming). Reductions of the toxicity scores of both module types were smaller or negligible. This is caused by a decreased use of fossil fuels, on the one hand, and an increased consumption of materials for the production of the additional solar modules used for generating the required PV electricity on the other. Overall, the impact scores of the GaInP/GaAs module were reduced more than the corresponding scores of the multi-Si module. The contribution analysis of the GaInP/GaAs module production steps indicated that for global warming, the cell growth process is dominant for supply with conventional electricity, while for the solar scenario, the frame becomes dominant. Regarding freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity scores associated with the life cycle of the GaInP/GaAs module, the cell growth process is dominant for supply with conventional electricity, while the reactor system for the cell growth with the associated gas scrubbing system is dominant for the solar scenario. There are uncertainties regarding the calculated environmental impact scores. This paper describes uncertainties associated with the used economic allocation method, and uncertainties because of missing life cycle inventory data. For the GaInP/GaAs module, it was found that the global warming impact scores range from -66% to +41%, and the freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity scores (for an infinite time horizon) range from -40% to +300% compared to the default estimates. For both impact categories, the choices associated with the allocation of gallium, with the electricity mix, with the conversion efficiency of the commercially produced GaInP/GaAs cells, and with the yield of the cell growth process are most influential. For freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, the uncertainty concerning the lifetime of the reactor system for the GaInP/GaAs cell growth process and the gas scrubbing system is particularly relevant. Use of PV electricity instead of fossil electricity significantly reduces the environmental burdens of the GaInP/GaAs and the multi-Si module. The reductions of the toxicity scores, however, are smaller or negligible. Toxicity impacts of the GaInP/GaAs cells can be reduced by improvement of the yield of the cell growth process, a reduced energy demand in the cell growth process, reduction of the amount of stainless steel in the cell growth reactor system and the gas scrubbing system, and a longer lifetime of these systems. Because the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of fossil-fuel-based electricity have an important share in global warming on a world-wide scale, switching to a more extensive use of solar power is helpful to comply with the present international legislation on the area of global warming reduction. As reductions in toxicity impact scores are smaller or negligible when fossil electricity is replaced by PV electricity, it is desirable to give specific attention to the processes which dominantly contribute to these impact categories. Furthermore, in this study, a shift in ranking of several environmental impacts of the modules has been found when PV electricity is used instead of fossil electricity. The results of a comparative LCA can thus be dependent of the electricity mix used in the life cycles of the assessed products.This paper presents the lifecycle assessment (LCA) of fuel ethanol, as 100% of the vehicle fuel, from sugarcane in Brazil. The functional unit is 10,000 km run in an urban area by a car with a 1,600-cm(3) engine running on fuel hydrated ethanol, and the resulting reference flow is 1,000 kg of ethanol. The product system includes agricultural and industrial activities, distribution, cogeneration of electricity and steam, ethanol use during car driving, and industrial by-products recycling to irrigate sugarcane fields. The use of sugarcane by the ethanol agribusiness is one of the foremost financial resources for the economy of the Brazilian rural area, which occupies extensive areas and provides far-reaching potentials for renewable fuel production. But, there are environmental impacts during the fuel ethanol lifecycle, which this paper intents to analyze, including addressing the main activities responsible for such impacts and indicating some suggestions to minimize the impacts. This study is classified as an applied quantitative research, and the technical procedure to achieve the exploratory goal is based on bibliographic revision, documental research, primary data collection, and study cases at sugarcane farms and fuel ethanol industries in the northeast of SA o pound Paulo State, Brazil. The methodological structure for this LCA study is in agreement with the International Standardization Organization, and the method used is the Environmental Design of Industrial Products. The lifecycle impact assessment (LCIA) covers the following emission-related impact categories: global warming, ozone formation, acidification, nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity. The results of the fuel ethanol LCI demonstrate that even though alcohol is considered a renewable fuel because it comes from biomass (sugarcane), it uses a high quantity and diversity of nonrenewable resources over its lifecycle. The input of renewable resources is also high mainly because of the water consumption in the industrial phases, due to the sugarcane washing process. During the lifecycle of alcohol, there is a surplus of electric energy due to the cogeneration activity. Another focus point is the quantity of emissions to the atmosphere and the diversity of the substances emitted. Harvesting is the unit process that contributes most to global warming. For photochemical ozone formation, harvesting is also the activity with the strongest contributions due to the burning in harvesting and the emissions from using diesel fuel. The acidification impact potential is mostly due to the NOx emitted by the combustion of ethanol during use, on account of the sulfuric acid use in the industrial process and because of the NOx emitted by the burning in harvesting. The main consequence of the intensive use of fertilizers to the field is the high nutrient enrichment impact potential associated with this activity. The main contributions to the ecotoxicity impact potential come from chemical applications during crop growth. The activity that presents the highest impact potential for human toxicity (HT) via air and via soil is harvesting. Via water, HT potential is high in harvesting due to lubricant use on the machines. The normalization results indicate that nutrient enrichment, acidification, and human toxicity via air and via water are the most significant impact potentials for the lifecycle of fuel ethanol. The fuel ethanol lifecycle contributes negatively to all the impact potentials analyzed: global warming, ozone formation, acidification, nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity. Concerning energy consumption, it consumes less energy than its own production largely because of the electricity cogeneration system, but this process is highly dependent on water. The main causes for the biggest impact potential indicated by the normalization is the nutrient application, the burning in harvesting and the use of diesel fuel. The recommendations for the ethanol lifecycle are: harvesting the sugarcane without burning; more environmentally benign agricultural practices; renewable fuel rather than diesel; not washing sugarcane and implementing water recycling systems during the industrial processing; and improving the system of gases emissions control during the use of ethanol in cars, mainly for NOx. Other studies on the fuel ethanol from sugarcane may analyze in more details the social aspects, the biodiversity, and the land use impact.Many recent studies on waste management have described in detail the potential impacts of recycling and final treatment of municipal waste. In public debates, the attention has also been focused on the choice of final disposal technologies (e.g. landfilling vs. incineration). However, a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of waste collection and transport was still lacking. In the present study, we use LCA to evaluate the potential impact of the provincial waste management plan of Varese (northern Italy). Particular attention is devoted to the estimation of environmental impacts generated during waste transport. A detailed Life Cycle Inventory was built for the transportation phase, based on primary data collected by interviewing the agencies involved in waste collection. To model the recycling and final disposal phase we relied on the BUWAL 250 database. Impacts were evaluated with the Eco-Indicator 99 method in its egalitarian formulation. The results of our analysis reveal that the major potential impacts of the plan are associated with waste collection and transport. These impacts are partially compensated by reduced resource consumption through recycling and energy recovery through incineration. The outputs of the LCIA were compared with those obtained by using other ecoindicators (Eco-Indicator 99 hierarchist and individualist, CML2, EPS2000). Although not comparable on a quantitative basis, they are qualitatively consistent. Neglecting the effects of collection and transport might result in a severe underestimation of the environmental impacts of a waste management system, especially as refers to depletion of fossil fuels, emission of respiratory inorganics and climate change. To reduce the environmental impact of waste management systems, an accurate optimisation of waste transport is required. Effective waste management planning requires the explicit inclusion of waste collection and transport when comparing alternative management policies.The mining sector provides materials that are essential elements in a wide range of goods and services, which create value by meeting human needs. Mining and processing activities are an integral part of most complex material cycles so that the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to minerals and metals has therefore gained prominence. In the past decade, increased use of LCA in the mineral and metal sector has advanced the scientific knowledge through the development of scientifically valid life cycle inventory databases. Though scientifically valid, LCA still needs to depend on several technical assumptions. In particular, measuring the environmental burden issues related to abiotic resource depletion, land use impacts and open-loop recycling within the LCA are widely debated issues. Also, incorporating spatial and temporal sensitivities in LCA, to make it a consistent scientific tool, is yet to be resolved. This article discusses existing LCA methods and proposed models on different issues in relation to minerals and metals sector. A critical review was conducted of existing LCA methods in the minerals and metals sector in relation to allocation issues related to indicators of land use impacts, abiotic resource depletion, allocation in open-loop recycling and the system expansions and accounting of spatial and temporal dimension in LCA practice. Evolving a holistic view about these contentious issues will be presented with view for future LCA research in the minerals and metals industry. This extensive literature search uncovers many of the issues that require immediate attention from the LCA scientific community. The methodological drawbacks, mainly problems with inconsistencies in LCA results for the same situation under different assumptions and issues related to data quality, are considered to be the shortcomings of current LCA. In the minerals and metals sector, it is important to increase the objectivity of LCA by way of fixing those uncertainties, for example, in the LCA of the minerals and metals sector, whether the land use has to be considered in detail or at a coarse level. In regard to abiotic resource characterisation, the weighting and time scales to be considered become a very critical issue of judgement. And, in the case of open-loop recycling, which model will best satisfy all the stake holders? How the temporal and spatial dimensions should be incorporated into LCA is one of the biggest challenges ahead of all those who are concerned. Addressing these issues shall enable LCA to be used as a policy tool in environmental decision-making. There has been enormous debate with respect to on land use impacts, abiotic resource depletion, open-loop recycling and spatial and temporal dimensions, and these debates remain unresolved. Discussions aimed at bringing consensus amongst all the stake holders involved in LCA (i.e. industry, academia, consulting organisations and government) will be presented and discussed. In addition, a commentary of different points of view on these issues will be presented. This review shall bring into perspective some of those contentious issues that are widely debated by many researchers. The possible future directions proposed by researchers across the globe shall be presented. Finally, authors conclude with their views on the prospects of LCA for future research endeavours. Specific LCA issues of minerals and metals need to be investigated further to gain more understanding. To facilitate the future use of LCA as a policy tool in the minerals and metals sector, it is important to increase the objectivity with more scientific validity. Therefore, it is essential that the issues discussed in this paper are addressed to a great detail.One third of the total housing stock in the Republic of Ireland has been built in 10 years up to and including 2006 and of this approximately 34% was built in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA). Much of the housing was low-density with poor public transport links leading to doubts over its sustainability-particularly in terms of energy use. Although the country is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 13% above 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012, by 2005, emissions were already 25.4% higher than the baseline and current projections are that this figure will rise to 37% over the period. The residential sector is estimated to contribute to approximately 24.5% of energy-related CO(2) emissions. This paper estimates total emissions from residential developments in the GDA constructed between 1997 and 2006. Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)) emissions are estimated using a life cycle assessment approach over a 100-year building lifespan and employing process, input-output and hybrid energy techniques. Life cycle stages include: construction, operation, transport, maintenance and demolition. The main data sources include: national population and industry census data, household travel survey data, residential energy performance surveys and national accounts. The GDA was split into four zones each encompassing development at increasing radii from Dublin's city centre, namely: city centre, suburbs, exurbs and commuter towns. Per capita CO(2) life cycle emissions in the GDA were found to be approximately 50-55% greater in the exurbs and commuter towns than in the city centre. Of the five life cycle stages studied, operational energy requirements (predominantly space heating and hot water, but including power) contributed most significantly to emissions (68%), followed by transport (17%), construction (9%) and maintenance/renovation (6%). Operating emissions from dwellings in the commuter town and extra-urban zones were almost twice those in the city centre both due to larger dwelling sizes and the predominance of detached and semi-detached dwellings (with large amounts of exposed walls) in the former and the prevalence of smaller apartments in the latter. Car use was most pronounced in the zones furthest from the city centre where per capita emissions were almost twice those of residents in the city centre. Despite their smaller size, the per capita construction CO(2) emissions of apartments were approximately one third greater than for low-rise dwellings due to the greater energy intensity of the structure. However, this difference was more than compensated for by the significantly lower operational emissions referred to above. In 2006, recurrent CO(2) emissions (operational, transport and maintenance) from dwellings built in the GDA over the ten preceding years were 2,108 kt while construction-related emissions in that year were 1,325 kt giving a total contribution from the residential sector of 3,434 kt CO(2)/annum-representing 4.9% of national emissions for that year. Had the development policy prescribed 'city centre'-type development and transport modes, then emissions for the year 2006 would have been 2,892 kt CO(2)-a reduction of almost 16% over the actual figure. However, in this scenario recurrent emissions would have been reduced to 1,417 kt CO(2)-a reduction of 33% over actual levels. This study supports Irish and international governments' policies aimed at curbing CO(2) emissions from the domestic sector which focus primarily on reducing operational emissions from new and existing housing through design and construction improvements. However, it demonstrates that significant reductions in operational emissions are associated with high-density residential development with modest floor areas. Furthermore, it highlights the scope for transport emissions' reductions through better spatial planning leading to reduced car travel.BACKGROUND: The forest products industry produces valuable industrial chemicals, wood products, and consumer goods, but is also responsible for the emission of significant quantities of hazardous air pollutants. Although many air pollution control options are available, little is known about the overall environmental impacts of implementing each option. Therefore, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to compare energy and raw material inputs, air emissions, and environmental impacts associated with construction and operation of two air pollution control systems: regenerative thermal oxidation (RTO) with wet scrubbing and photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) with biofiltration. RESULTS: LCA results indicated that environmental impacts to resource depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, and acidification were 20% higher for the use of a RTO-scrubber than for the PCO-biofilter. In addition, at least 25% of the RTO impacts were due to infrastructure requirements. However, the PCO-biofilter system was responsible for more environmental impact in categories of global warming and human toxicity, because of the packing materials required and the electricity use for the PCO reactor. CONCLUSIONS: The PCO-biofilter system could be a promising, environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional RTO devices, provided that this system is modified to decrease resource and energy demands. (C) 2008 Society of Chemical IndustryUse of post-flotation tailings for backfilling the Zn and Pb ore mine excavations was assessed by live cycle anal. (LCA). Uses of mixts. of the post-flotation tailings with fly ash, modified ash, silica binder, cement and gelatinizing agents for backfilling the excavations were compared with the usual sand backfilling by the best available technol. (BAT) method. The highest efficiency showed the process based on the use of fly ashes from a power station.Life cycle assessment is being accepted by the road industry to measure such key environmental impacts as the energy Consumption and carbon footprint of its materials and laying processes. Previous life cycle studies have indicated that the traffic vehicles account for the majority of fuel consumption and emissions from a road. Contractors and road agencies are looking for road maintenance works that have the least overall environmental impact considering both the roadwork itself and the disrupted traffic. We review life cycle assessment studies and describe the development of a model for pavement construction and maintenance, detailing the methodology and data sources. The model is applied to an asphalt pavement rehabilitation project in the UK, and the micro-simulation program VISSIM is used to model the traffic on that road section. The simulation results are fed into a traffic emissions model and emissions from the roadwork and the traffic are compared. The additional fuel consumption and emissions by the traffic during the roadwork are significant. This indicates that traffic management at road maintenance projects should be included in the life cycle assessment analysis of such work. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The current landfill gas (LFG) management (based on flaring and utilization for heat generation of the collected gas) and three potential future gas management options (LFG flaring, heat generation and combined heat and power generation) for the Old Ammassuo landfill (Espoo, Finland) were evaluated by life-cycle assessment modeling. The evaluation accounts for all resource utilization and emissions to the environment related to the gas generation and management for a life-cycle time horizon of 100 yr. The assessment criteria comprise standard impact categories (global warming, photo-chemical ozone formation. stratospheric ozone depletion, acidification and nutrient enrichment) and toxicity-related impact categories (human toxicity via soil, via water and via air, eco-toxicity in soil and in water chronic). The results of the life-cycle impact assessment show that disperse emissions of LFC from the landfill surface determine the highest potential impacts in terms of global warming, stratospheric Ozone depletion, and human toxicity Via Soil. Conversely, the impact potentials estimated for other categories are numerically-negative when the collected LFG, is utilized for energy generation, demonstrating that net environmental savings call be obtained. Such savings are proportional to the amount Of gas utilized for energy generation and the gas energy recovery efficiency achieved, which thus have to be regarded as key parameters, As a result, the overall best performance is found for the heat generation option - as it has the highest LEG utilization/energy recovery rates - whereas the worst performance is estimated for the LEG flaring option, as no LEG is here Utilized for energy generation. Therefore, to reduce the environmental burdens caused by the Current gas management strategy, more LEG should be used for energy generation. This inherently requires a superior LEG capture rate that, in addition, would reduce fugitive emissions of LFC; from the landfill surface, bringing further environmental benefits. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bagasse is mostly utilized for steam and power production For domestic sugar mills. There have been a number of alternatives that could Well be applied to manage bagasse, such as pulp production, conversion to biogas and electricity production. The selection of proper alternatives depends significantly on the appropriateness of the technology both from the technical and the environmental points of view. This work proposes a simple model based on the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impacts, of various alternatives for dealing with bagasse waste. The environmental aspects Of concern included global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential and photochemical oxidant creation. Four waste management scenarios for bagasse were evaluated: landfilling with utilization of landfill gas, anaerobic digestion with biogas production, incineration for power generation, and pulp production. In landfills, environmental impacts depended significantly on the biogas collection efficiency, whereas incineration of bagasse to electricity in the power plant showed better environmental performance than that of conventional low biogas collection efficiency landfills. Anaerobic digestion of bagasse in a control biogas reactor was superior to the other two energy generation options in all environmental aspects. Although the use of bagasse in pulp mills created relatively high environmental burdens, the results from the LCA revealed that other stages of the life cycle produced relatively small impacts and that this option might be the most environmentally benign alternative. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper tackles the problem of the optimal design of the recovery processes of the end-of-life (EOL) electric and electronic products, With a special focus oil the disassembly issues. The objective is to recover as much ecological and economic value as possible, and to reduce the overall produced quantities Of waste. To this context, a medium-range tactical problem is defined and a novel two-phased algorithm is presented for a remanufacturing-driven reverse Supply chain. in the first phase, we propose a multicriteria/goal-programming for the identification and the optimal selection of the most 'desirable',subassemblies and components to be disassembled for recovery, from a set of different types of EOL produced. In the second phase, a multi-product. multi-period mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is presented. which addresses the optimization of the recovery processes, while taking into account explicitly the lead times of the disassembly and recovery processes. Moreover, a simulation-based solution approach is proposed for capturing the uncertainties in reverse logistics. The overall approach loads to an easy-to-use Methodology that could Support effectively middle level management decisions. Finally, tire applicability of the developed applicability is illustrated by its application on a specific case study. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Against the background of increasing concerns about climate change, the reduction Of greenhouse gas emissions has become in integral part of processes in both the waste management and the energy industries. This is reflected in the development of new waste treatment concepts, in which domestic and commercial waste is treated with the aim of utilizing its energy content, while at the same time recycling as Much of its Material Content as possible. Life cycle assessment (LCA) represents a method of assessing the environmental relevance of a waste management system, the basis of which is a material flow analysis of the system in question. GHC; emissions from different options for thermal treatment and energy recovery from waste as applied to a region in Northern Germany have been analyzed by the LCA approach and an indicative LCA, which only considers those emissions resulting from operating stages of the system. Operating stages have the main share of emissions compared to pre-processing stages. Results show that through specific separation of waste Material flows and highly efficient energy recovery, thermal treatment and energy generation from waste can be optimized resulting in reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases. There ate also other areas Of Waste utilization, currently given little attention, such as the solar drying of sewage sludge, which can considerably contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Environmental and energy performances of a water network system (WNS) utilizing water reuse are compared to those of a conventional water system (CWS) supplying only freshwater from the perspective of an entire economy and life cycle. Environmental input-output analysis (EIOA) is used to evaluate their air pollutant emissions and energy consumptions. The global warming potential and the emissions of carbon monoxide and of volatile organic compounds from the WNS are less than those from the CWS because of the decrease in the consumption of industrial water, while the emissions of sulfur dioxide and of nitrogen oxides and energy consumption from the WNS are greater because of the increase in electricity consumption for pumping. For perfectly environmentally-friendly water reuse, electricity consumption should be constrained or optimized in water network synthesis, and primary energy mix for electricity generation should be shifted towards renewable energy.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a rather common tool for reducing environmental impacts while striving for cleaner processes. This method yields reliable information when input data is sufficient; however, in uncertain systems Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is used as a means to compensate for insufficient data. The MC optimization model was constructed from environmental emissions, process parameters and operation constraints. The results of MC optimization allow for the prediction of environmental performance and the opportunity for environmental improvement. The case study presented here focuses on the acidification improvement regarding uncertain emissions and on the available operation of Taiwan's power plants. The boundary definitions of LCA were established for generation, fuel refining and mining. The model was constructed according to objective functional minimization of acidification potential, base loading, fuel cost and generation mix constraints. Scenario simulations are given the different variation of fuel cost ratios for Taiwan. The simulation results indicate that fuel cost was the most important parameter influencing the acidification potential for seven types of fired power. Owing to the low operational loading, coal-fired power is the best alternative for improving acidification. The optimal scenario for acidification improvement occurred at 15% of the fuel cost. The impact decreased from 1.39 to 1.24 kg SO2-eq/MWh. This reduction benefit was about 10.5% lower than the reference year. Regarding eco-efficiency at an optimum scenario level of 5%, the eco-efficiency value was -12.4 $US/kg SO2-eq. Considering the environmental and economical impacts, results indicated that the ratio of coal-fired steam turbine should be reduced. Crown Copyright (c) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The concept of eco-efficiency has largely been applied along these years. This study proposes the earlier application of this concept, namely the R&D stage of a product. Together with the economic and ecological assessment, the social impacts were analysed in the production of adipic acid from renewable resources. Conventional adipic acid based on crude oil served as a benchmark. The work was carried out within the frame of the EU funded project BIOFOAM. The ecological aspects were addressed in the Life Cycle Perspective by performing a Life Cycle Assessment. The economic impacts were assessed by the application of the Life Cycle Costing under a 'total production cost' perspective. In this case, the addressee is interested in several steps of the value chain, but only of the steps that are related to the consortium as a single player in the value chain. The Life Cycle Working Environment method was used to assess the social impacts. Data sources were based on the project consortium, literature and statistics. Despite of the fact that the conventional routes still outperform the new bio-source based adipic acid, the application of this methodology has shown as successful way of identifying problem fields and paving further research. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.New Zealand (NZ) dairy farms used to be the lowest input and most efficient dairy farms of the world. However, intensification of the traditional pasture-based system has occurred over the last decade and has not always been accompanied by increased efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to produce an updated reference of the eco-efficiency of NZ dairy farm systems and to analyse the implications of intensification on their eco-efficiency. Results for an average NZ dairy farm system were compared with those for three dairy farmlet systems representing a wide range in intensification practices. A low input system (LI) (no N fertiliser, no brought-in feed supplement, stocking rate of 2.3 cows/ha) was compared with an N-fertilised farm system (NF) (170 kg fertiliser-N/ha/year, 3 cows/ha) representing a first level of intensification and with an N-fertilised and maize silage supplemented system (NFMS) (170 kg fertiliser-N/ha/year, 13 t DM maize silage/ha/year, 5.2 cows/ha), representing a possible future intensification option. Their eco-efficiency in terms of milk production and land use was compared using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. NZ dairy farm systems rely on favourable temperate climate conditions and long-term perennial ryegrass/white clover pasture, to achieve eco-efficient milk production and land use compared to European systems. However, intensification of NZ dairy farms was shown to be detrimental to their eco-efficiency in terms both of milk production and land use functions and could greatly reduce their advantage compared to European systems. The eco-efficiency of LI was very high whatever the functional unit which is remarkable from an LCA perspective. NF and NFMS had a similar eco-efficiency except for energy use which corresponded to the most critical hot spot of NFMS. All studied NZ systems presented some areas for improvement where some new technologies available for dairy farms might play a promising role in the future. Finally, it should be highlighted that the comparison with European studies based on the literature available needs validation through a more comprehensive study using harmonised methodology and assumptions across countries. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To fill a gap in the information available to nonmetropolitan policy makers, eight scenarios combining processing technologies and end-uses for biosolids products associated with a 40 000 equivalent-person town were modeled using environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). An uncertainty analysis examined several key assumptions. The results showed that the reuse of biosolids products can be environmentally beneficial but transportation distances can change the preferences between technologies, and drying biosolids using petrochemical methane rather than biogas (produced endogenously in the wastewater facility) significantly worsens environmental performance. System scale can also invert option preferences. This work demonstrates an application of LCA to a strategic engineering question. We also examine the methodological feasibility of considering carbon sequestration and water offsets beyond those typical of previous studies. As the development of scientific data regarding the benefits of biosolids recycling develops,there may be potential to reward agricultural businesses that choose to reduce their environmental burdens using biosolids. A life cycle management approach to this will be necessary.Life-cycle air emission effects of supplying water are explored using a hybrid life-cycle assessment For the typically sized U.S. utility analyzed, recycled water is preferable to desalination and comparable to importation. Seawater desalination has an energy and air emission footprint that is 1.5-2.4 times larger than that of imported water. However, some desalination modes fare better, brackish groundwater is 53-66% as environmentally intensive as seawater desalination. The annual water needs (326 m(3)) of a typical Californian that is met with imported water requires 5.8 GJ of energy and creates 360 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions. With seawater desalination, energy use would increase to 14 GJ and 800 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions. Meeting the water demand of California with desalination would consume 52% of the state's electricity. Supply options were reassessed using alternative electricity mixes, including the average mix of the United States and several renewable sources. Desalination using solar thermal energy has lower greenhouse gas emissions than that of imported and recycled water (using California's electricity mix), but using the U.S. mix increases the environmental footprint by 1.5 times. A comparison with a more energy-intensive international scenario shows that CO2 equivalent emissions for desalination in Dubai are 1.6 times larger than in California. The methods, decision support tool (WEST), and results of this study should persuade decision makers to make informed water policy choices by including energy consumption and material use effects in the decision-making process.This paper outlines the approach to the evaluation of sustainability of current and future electricity supply options of interest for a major Swiss utility Axpo Holding AG. The motivation behind this effort has been to provide a solid basis for a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary assessment and use this framework within a dialog with a wide spectrum of stakeholders. The development and implementation of the methodology was coordinated by Axpo in co-operation with the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) and other scientific institutions. The evaluation covers environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. Methods used include among others life cycle assessment (LCA), impact pathway approach (IPA) and probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). The associated databases developed by PSI have been extensively used, subject to major extensions necessary for analyzing the future technologies. Learning curves were employed for future cost estimates. Furthermore, particularly in the social area expert surveys were used. The results were aggregated using total (internal plus external) costs approach and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). For MCDA a set of criteria and the associated indicators was established. In total 75 indicators were quantified, including 11 environmental, 33 social and 31 economic. Eighteen current and 18 future technologies have been analysed including nuclear as well as fossil and renewable technologies. Total costs were estimated for these technologies providing a clear ranking with nuclear having the lowest costs and some of the renewables showing remarkable cost reductions until 2030. This ranking is partially controversial mainly due to the limited representation of social aspects in the total costs. The results of MCDA-applications involving elicitation of preferences from a relatively homogeneous stakeholder group, i.e. 85 employees of the Axpo Group (including also NOK, EGL, CKW and Axpo IT), are Summarized. In addition, sensitivity of technology ranking to preference profiles is demonstrated. Broader consideration of social factors favours renewables and depending on the specifics of preference profiles may lower the ranking of nuclear. Further applications of the MCDA-approach with various stakeholder groups are planned. (c) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The results of life cycle assessment of five different energy recovery - based waste management system options are presented. The system options were designed for the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. The Kaunas model was formed according to the Simple Integrated System Management concept developed at Lappeenranta University of Technology. CML2001 was selected as the method according to which the life cycle impact assessment profiles were compiled and analyzed. The results suggest that energy recovery from biowaste, paper and cardboard derived from households could be a more recommendable waste management option than material recovery of the fractions (composting of biowaste and recycling of paper and cardboard). The calculations were carried out with limited process information, and cannot thus be generalized in all parts. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, the environmental impacts of two types of slab systems are studied. The first type, a concrete-based one-way spanning slab, is the most common solution in residential buildings in Spain. The second type, a hollow core slab floor, is increasingly becoming more used in buildings, but is not being broadly used in residential buildings as yet. The study is undertaken through the Life Cycle Analysis methodology, applying the EPS 2000 method. The assessment shows that the environmental impact of a building structure with precast concrete floors is 12.2% lower than that with in situ cast floors for the defined functional unit. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides a detailed analysis of life cycle assessment (LCA) results of different building components (e.g. wooden wall, concrete roof) on different levels of simplification (from a comprehensive LCA including all materials and processes to the fully reduced component including only the main materials remaining in the component). The main objective is the determination of the relevance of materials and processes often neglected in simplified LCA of building components which aim at providing results of similar quality as comprehensive assessments with less effort. The studied simplifications are categorised in transportations of the building materials from the factory gate to the building site, some ancillary materials which are not obvious in the component, the building process itself and the associated cutting waste. The results show that transports and ancillary materials are of relevance while the building process and the cutting waste can be neglected. The heavier the used materials and the longer the transport distances the bigger is the influence of transports on the LCA results. The influence of the ancillary materials is highest for wooden constructions as a lot of screws nails and other connectors are essential. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the present work was the assessment of economic and environmental aspects of decentralized energy-saving wastewater treatment systems. The formulated investment and operation cost functions were adjusted by a power law function. The different wastewater systems serving population settlements between 50 p.e. and 250 p.e., presented associated investment costs varying from (sic)400/p.e. to (sic)200/p.e. and annual operation costs in the range of (sic)70/p.e.-(sic)20/p.e., respectively. A life cycle analysis approach was used to compare the environmental impact of alternative wastewater treatment systems. The assessment was focused on two energy-saving systems (constructed wetland and slow rate infiltration) and a conventional one (activated sludge process). Low environmental impact of energy-saving wastewater treatment systems was demonstrated, being the most relevant the global warming indicator. Options for reduction of life cycle impacts were assessed including materials used in construction and operation lifetime of the systems. A 10% extension of operation lifetime of constructed wetland and slow rate infiltration systems lead to a 5% and 7% decrease in the abiotic depletion indicator, respectively, and to a 1% decrease in CO2 emissions in both systems. Replacing steel with HDPE in the activated sludge tank resulted in a 1% reduction in CO2 emission and 1% in the abiotic depletion indicator. In the case of the Imhoff tank a 1% reduction in CO2 emissions and 5% in abiotic depletion indicator were observed when concrete was replaced by HDPE. Therefore, considering the huge potential of energy saving wastewater treatment systems, the overall environmental impact of such design alternatives should not be discarded.The Urban Wastewater Directive is aiming to implement adequate treatments of collected wastewater before 31 December 2005 in small communities witha population until 2000 equivalent-inhabitant. Within the framework of the DEPURANAT project, co-financed by the European Interregional Cooperation Programme (Interreg IIIB Atlantic Arc), several Natural Reclamation Systems (NRS) based upon no-conventional technologies of wastewater treatment, have been studied from different points of view in rural areas: their effectiveness for producing regenerated wastewater of acceptable quality for several reuse options and vegetal biomass for different purposes, their environmental integration or their potential of implementation. Most of these treatment plants achieved high mean removal efficiencies: TSS (73-96%); BOD5 (74-94%); COD (53-90%); E. coli (2-3 log units); Enterococci (1.5-4 log units). The environmental impact of the systems was determined using an adapted life cycle assessment methodology and the economic analysis of the systems was focused on analysing the financial indicators, empirical cost functions, and the potential market for these technologies. Furthermore, maps of potential implementation of these systems and a support tool for deciding upon the installation of conventional or NRS were designed with the aim of promoting them.Interests in biomass-based fuel ethanol (BFE) have been re-boosted due to oil shortage and environmental deterioration. Biomass-based fuel ethanol is renewable and, apparently, environmentally friendly. Biomass-based E10 (a blend of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline by volume) is a promising conventional gasoline substitute, because vehicle engines require no modifications to run on E10 and vehicle warranties are unaffected. This paper presented life cycle assessments (LCAs) of energy efficiency of wheat-based E10 from central China, corn-based E10 from northeast China, and cassava-based E10 from southwest China. The respective energy flow-based evaluation model of wheat-, corn-, and cassava-based E10 was built based on data from pilot BFE plants. Monte Carlo method is applied to deal with the uncertain parameters and input and output variables of the evaluation model because of its wide application and easy development of statistical dispersion of calculated quantities. According to the assessment results, the average energy input/output ratio of wheat-based fuel ethanol (WIFE), corn-based fuel ethanol (CFE), and cassava-based fuel ethanol (KFE) is 0.70, 0.75, and 0.54. respectively, and biomass-based E10 vehicle can have less fossil energy demand than gasoline-fueled ones. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The whole life of methanol fuel, produced by microalgae biomass which is a kind of renewable energy, is evaluated by using a method of life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA has been used to identify and quantify the environment emissions and energy efficiency of the system throughout the whole life cycle, including microalgae cultivation, methanol conversion, transport, and end-use. Energy efficiency, defined as the ratio of the energy of methanol produced to the total required energy, is 1.24, the results indicate that it is plausible as an energy producing process. The environmental impact loading of microalgae-based fuel methanol is 0.187mPFT(2000) in contrast to 0.828mPET(2000) for gasoline. The effect of photochemical ozone formation is the highest of all the calculated categorization impacts of the two fuels. Utilization of microalgae an raw material of producing methanol fuel is beneficial to both production of renewable fuels and improvement of the ecological environment. This Fuel methanol is friendly to the environment, which should take an important role in automobile industry development and gasoline fuel substitute. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food production and consumption cause significant environmental burdens during the product life cycles. As a result of intensive development and the changing social attitudes and behaviors in the last century, the agrofood sector is the highest resource consumer after housing in the EU. This paper is part of an effort to estimate environmental impacts associated with life cycles of the agrofood chain, such as primary energy consumption, water exploitation, and global warming. Life cycle assessment is used to investigate the production of the following citrus-based products in Italy: essential oil, natural juice, and concentrated juice from oranges and lemons. The related process flowcharts, the relevant mass and energy flows, and the key environmental issues are identified for each product. This paper represents one of the first studies on the environmental impacts from cradle to gate for citrus products in order to suggest feasible strategies and actions to improve their environmental performance.Plain linear models have recently been used in methodologies to model fate and transport for assessing acidification in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), or in support of air pollution abatement policies. These models originate from a statistical analysis of the relationship between inputs and outputs of physically-based models that reflect the mechanics of a system in detail. Linear models applied to assess acidification use an acidification factor (AF), which relates changes in the magnitude of emissions to changes in the total area that is protected against acidification in Europe. The changes in emission volume refer to changes of one substance, within one country and one sector or one grid cell. This paper evaluates the dependence of AFs on three spatial characteristics, i.e. the spatial emission and deposition resolution, the spatial emission distribution and the actual spatial location of emissions. The applied spatial resolutions of emission and deposition cause non-systematic variations in AFs of up to 60%, relative to the finest resolution. The manner in which the distribution of emissions is modelled, i.e. grid or sector-specific, is shown to affect AFs considerably, as well. We conclude that spatial characteristics of the physically-based acidification model can affect the assessment of acidification by means of plain linear models. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To appropriately mitigate environmental impacts from transportation, it is necessary for decision makers to consider the life-cycle energy use and emissions. Most current decision-making relies on analysis at the tailpipe, ignoring vehicle production, infrastructure provision, and fuel production required for support. We present results of a comprehensive life-cycle energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and selected criteria air pollutant emissions inventory for automobiles, buses, trains, and airplanes in the US, including vehicles, infrastructure, fuel production, and supply chains. We find that total life-cycle energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions contribute an additional 63% for onroad, 155% for rail, and 31% for air systems over vehicle tailpipe operation. Inventorying criteria air pollutants shows that vehicle non-operational components often dominate total emissions. Life-cycle criteria air pollutant emissions are between 1.1 and 800 times larger than vehicle operation. Ranges in passenger occupancy can easily change the relative performance of modes.Methods for the inclusion of land use in life cycle assessment are not well established. Here, we describe an approach that compares land disturbance between spatially compact and diffuse activities that contribute to the life cycle of a single product, in this case synthetic crude from Alberta's oil sands. We compare production using surface mining and in situ extraction technologies. In situ technologies disturb less land per unit of production than surface mining, but the spatial footprint of in situ production is more dispersed-increasing landscape fragmentation-and in situ production requires more natural gas which increases land use due to gas production. We examine both direct and peripheral land use of oil sands development by quantifying land disturbance using a parameterized measure of fragmentation that relies on 'edge effects' with an adjustable buffer zone. Using a life cycle perspective, we show that the land area influenced by in situ technology is comparable to land disturbed by surface mining when fragmentation and upstream natural gas production are considered. The results suggest that land disturbance due to natural gas production can be relatively large per unit energy. This method could be applied to other energy developments, for example, a comparison between coal mining and natural gas production when both fuels are used to generate electricity.The global warming intensities of crop-based biofuels and fossil fuels differ not only in amount but also in their discharge patterns over time. Early discharges, for example, from market-mediated land use change, will have created more global warming by any time in the future than later discharges, owing to the slow decay of atmospheric CO2. A spreadsheet model of this process, BTIME, captures this important time pattern effect using the Bern CO2 decay model to allow fuels to be compared for policy decisions on the basis of their real warming effects with a variety of user-supplied parameter values. The model also allows economic discounting of climate effects extended far into the future. Compared to approaches that simply sum greenhouse gas emissions over time, recognizing the physics of atmospheric CO2 decay significantly increases the deficit relative to fossil fuel of any biofuel causing land use change.The combination of current and planned 2007 U.S. ethanol production capacity is 50 billion L/yr, one-third of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) target of 136 billion L of biofuels by 2022. In this study, we evaluate transportation impacts and infrastructure requirements for the use of E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) in light-duty vehicles using a combination of corn and cellulosic ethanol. Ethanol distribution is modeled using a linear optimization model. Estimated average delivered ethanol costs, in 2005 dollars, range from $0.29 to $0.62 per liter ($1.3-2.8 per gallon), depending on transportation distance and mode. Emissions from ethanol transport estimated in this work are up to 2 times those in previous ethanol LCA studies and thus lead to larger total life cycle effects. Long-distance transport of ethanol to the end user can negate ethanol's potential economic and environmental benefits relative to gasoline. To reduce costs, we recommend regional concentration of E85 blends for future ethanol production and use.Exchange of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) from soils can contribute significantly to the global warming potential (GWP) of agro-ecosystems. Due to variations in soil type, climatic conditions and land management practices, exchange of CO(2) can differ markedly in different geographical locations. The food industry is developing carbon footprints for their products necessitating integration of CO(2) exchange from soils with other CO(2) emissions along the food chain. It may be advantageous to grow certain crops in different geographical locations to minimize CO(2) emissions from the soil, and this may provide potential to offset other emissions in the food chain, such as transport. Values are derived for the C balance of soils growing horticultural crops in the UK, Spain and Uganda. Net ecosystem production (NEP) is firstly calculated from the difference in net primary production (NPP) and heterotrophic soil respiration (R(h)). Both NPP and R(h) were estimated from intensive direct field measurements. Secondly, net biome production (NBP) is calculated by subtracting the crop biomass from NEP to give an indication of C balance. The importance of soil exchange is discussed in the light of recent discussions on carbon footprints and within the context of food life-cycle assessment (LCA). The amount of crop relative to the biomass and the R(h) prevailing in the different countries were the dominant factors influencing the magnitude of NEP and NBP. The majority of the biomass for lettuce Lactuca sativa and vining peas Pisum sativum, was removed from the field as crop; therefore, NEP and NBP were mainly negative. This was amplified for lettuces grown in Uganda (-16.5 and -17 t C ha(-1) year(-1) compared to UK and Spain -4.8 to 7.4 and -5.1 to 6.3 t C ha(-1) year(-1) for NEP and NBP, respectively) where the climate elevated R(h). Synthesis and applications. This study demonstrates the importance of soil emissions in the overall life cycle of vegetables. Variability in such emissions suggests that assigning a single value to food carbon footprints may not be adequate, even within a country. Locations with high heterotrophic soil respiration, such as Spain and Uganda (21.9 and 21.6 t C ha(-1) year(-1), respectively), could mitigate the negative effects of climate on the C costs of crop production by growth of crops with greater returns of residue to the soil. This would minimize net CO(2) emissions from these agricultural ecosystems.A method is presented that allows for a life cycle assessment (LCA) to provide environmental information on an energy infrastructure system while it evolves. Energy conversion facilities are represented in an agent-based model (ABM) as distinct instances of technologies with owners capable of making decisions based on economic and environmental information. This simulation setup allows us to explore the dynamics of assembly, disassembly, and use of these systems, which typically span decades, and to analyze the effect of using LCA information in decision making. We were able to integrate a simplified LCA into an ABM by aligning and connecting the data structures that represent the energy infrastructure and the supply chains from source to sink. By using an appropriate database containing life cycle inventory (LCI) information and by solving the scaling factors for the technology matrix, we computed the contribution to global warming in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents in the form of a single impact indicator for each instance of technology at each discrete simulation step. These LCAs may then serve to show each agent the impact of its activities at a global level, as indicated by its contribution to climate change. Similar to economic indicators, the LCA indicators may be fed back to the simulated decision making in the ABM to emulate the use of environmental information while the system evolves. A proof of concept was developed that is illustrated for a simplified LCA and ABM used to generate and simulate the evolution of a bioelectricity infrastructure system.Material properties and selection are very important in product design. To get more sustainable products. not only the technical and economic factors, but also the environmental factors should be considered. To satisfy the requirements, evaluation indicators of materials are presented. Environmental impacts were Calculated by the Life Cycle Assessment method (LCA method). An integration of artificial neural networks (ANN) with genetic algorithms (GAs) is proposed to optimize the multi-objectives of material selection, it was validated by an example that the system can select suitable materials to develop sustainable products. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Material flows and emissions in all the stages of production of zinc, copper, aluminum, cadmium, indium, germanium, gallium, selenium, tellurium, and molybdenum were investigated. These metals are used selectively in the manufacture of solar cells, and emission and energy factors in their production are used in the life cycle analysis (LCA) of photovoltaics. Significant changes have occurred in the production and associated emissions for these metals over the last 10 years, which are not described in the LCA databases. Furthermore, emission and energy factors for several of the by-products of the base metal production were lacking. This review article aims in updating the life cycle inventories associated with the production of the base metals (Zn, Cu), and defining the production paths and emission and energy allocations for the minor metals (Cd, Ge, In, Mo, Se, and Te) used in photovoltaics. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The recent development of efficient thermal prime movers for distributed generation is changing the focus of the production of electricity from large centralized power plants to local generation units scattered over the territory. The scientific community is addressing the analysis and planning of distributed energy resources with widespread approaches, taking into account technical, environmental, economic and social issues. The coupling of cogeneration systems to absorption/electric chillers or heat pumps, as well as the interactions with renewable sources, allow for setting up multi-generation systems for combined local production of different energy vectors such as electricity, heat (at different enthalpy levels), cooling power, hydrogen, various chemical substances, and so forth. Adoption of composite multi-generation systems may lead to significant benefits in terms of higher energy efficiency, reduced CO2 emissions, and enhanced economy. In this light, a key direction for improving the characteristics of the local energy production concerns the integration of the concepts of distributed energy resources and combined production of different energy vectors into a comprehensive distributed multi-generation (DMG) framework that entails various approaches to energy planning currently available in the literature. This paper outlines the main aspects of the DMG framework, illustrating its characteristics and summarizing the relevant DMG structures. The presentation is backed by an extended review of the most recent journal publications and reports. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.Much of the hydrogen vehicle research to date has been conducted and demonstrated in wealthy nations, with very few exceptions. However, developing economies are largely dependent on public transportation, and struggle with air pollution and energy security concerns. The developing regions are in great need of alternative transportation solutions, and although many alternatives are being explored, hydrogen-fueled vehicles are emerging as one of the only technologies that can meet the demands for lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower emissions of air pollutants, and reduced dependence on imported energy. Many conventional buses in developing regions are built from an imported 'buggy-chassis', which is a functional bus chassis with an engine and other auxiliaries. 'Buggy-chassis' are designed with a very short wheel-base dimension to reduce freight costs as they are often shipped overseas. Domestic companies extend the 'buggy-chassis' to full bus length, build the body and cabin, and install other auxiliary systems. The existing infrastructure of the bus buggy-chassis market can be used to leverage hydrogen technology for mass production. This solution allows developing nations to import a state-of-the-art vehicle, with the possibility for local content in the final delivered product, while maintaining the flexibility for innovative technological developments and promoting hydrogen research within the developing economies. Indeed, a modular series-hybrid drivetrain can be made adaptable to a range of primary power sources such as an internal combustion engine or fuel cell engine. The modular approach provides an opportunity to reduce cost while still providing flexibility for innovation, and allows customers to tailor performance to suit their topographical and operational needs. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.A growing number of regulatory interventions such as the European Union's Extended Polluter Responsibility Policy hold manufacturers accountable for the damage inflicted to the natural environment by their products. However, not all components of an industrial product have an equitable role regarding their overall burden to the environment. In this context, it is of great interest to manufacturers to identify and rank those components with the highest potential value at the end of their useful life, employing an array of economical and environmental criteria. In order to assist manufacturers on their decision-making for the optimal end-of-life alternatives for their products, the "Multicriteria Matrix" methodology has been developed. The methodology relies on multicriteria analysis and takes into consideration the residual weight, quantity and ease of disassembly of each component. With the environmental burden value,, developed methodology only those components that do not have any residual value end up in landfills, while the majority of the components are either reused or recycled. The application of the developed methodology is demonstrated employing a real-world case study; that of an ISDN network terminal. Finally, the paper is concluded by presenting interesting managerial insights that were obtained. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Several authors have assessed the positive repercussions of compost application in soil and the benefits of composting process, although most previous works focused only on a specific aspect of the whole life cycle of compost. The aim of this paper was to determine the environmental impacts associated to the use of compost, from the collection of organic municipal solid waste to its application to tomato crops, and to compare these results with mineral fertilizer application, using the environmental tool of life cycle assessment. Three fertilizing systems were defined, arising from the dosages of mineral and organic fertilizers applied. The environmental performance of the pilot fields and the industrial composting were based on experimental measured data. The use of compost in horticulture demonstrated to be a treatment with fewer impacts than mineral fertilizer, if the avoided loads were considered, although compost production was a critical stage which needs to be optimised. No differences were observed in terms of agricultural production and quality. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, a new method is developed to investigate the entire life cycle of shallow cumuli in large eddy simulations. Although trained observers have no problem in distinguishing the different life stages of a cloud, this process proves difficult to automate, because cloud- splitting and cloud- merging events complicate the distinction between a single system divided in several cloudy parts and two independent systems that collided. Because the human perception is well equipped to capture and to make sense of these time-dependent three-dimensional features, a combination of automated constraints and human inspection in a three-dimensional virtual reality environment is used to select clouds that are exemplary in their behavior throughout their entire life span. Three specific cases (ARM, BOMEX, and BOMEX without large-scale forcings) are analyzed in this way, and the considerable number of selected clouds warrants reliable statistics of cloud properties conditioned on the phase in their life cycle. The most dominant feature in this statistical life cycle analysis is the pulsating growth that is present throughout the entire lifetime of the cloud, independent of the case and of the large-scale forcings. The pulses are a self-sustained phenomenon, driven by a balance between buoyancy and horizontal convergence of dry air. The convective inhibition just above the cloud base plays a crucial role as a barrier for the cloud to overcome in its infancy stage, and as a buffer region later on, ensuring a steady supply of buoyancy into the cloud.Definitions of sustainability abound. However, they tend to be abstract and thus open to diverging interpretations. Conversely, scientists need concrete guidance to develop quantitative measures of the sustainability of agricultural systems, such as sustainability indicators. Bridging this gap between what policy provides and what scientists need involves strong normative elements. Many publications on sustainable agriculture suggest bridging the gap through participatory stakeholder processes. However, participatory stakeholder involvement is not always practicable, due to the high cost and time required. In addition, the outcome of such processes can lack transparency and validity to outsiders. In this paper (the first of a series of two, [Walter, C. and Stutzel, H., 2009-this issue. A new method for assessing the sustainability of land-use systems (II): Evaluating impact indicators. Ecological Economics]), we introduce an alternative method for concretising sustainability within a given context. It is based on a systematic inventory of potential issues through a structured literature review, and then uses a simple and transparent criterion to decide which of these potential issues is actually relevant within the given context. This approach yields a set of concrete issues against which to test the impact of agricultural production systems. It also makes transparent the normative and descriptive elements of the process, which helps to control value-driven biases. We demonstrate the practical applicability of this approach by testing it for an agricultural area in Northwest Germany. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the past decade, numerous indicators and indicator sets for sustainable agriculture and sustainable land management have been proposed. In addition to their interest in comparing different management systems on an indicator by indicator basis, land managers are often interested in comparing individual indicators against a threshold, or, in order to study trade-offs, against each other. To this end it is necessary to (1) transform the original indicators into a comparable format, and (2) score these transformed indicators against a sustainability function. This paper introduces an evaluation method for land-use-related impact indicators, which was designed to accomplish these tasks. it is the second of a series of two papers, and as such it links into a larger framework for sustainability assessment of land use systems. The evaluation scheme introduced here comprises (1) a standardisation procedure, which aims at making different indicators comparable. In this procedure indicators are first normalised, by referencing them to the total impact they contribute towards, and then they are corrected by a factor describing the severity of this total impact in terms of exceeding a threshold. The procedure borrows conceptually from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Impact Analysis methodology; (2) a valuation procedure, which judges the individual standardised indicators with regard to sustainability. This methodology is then tested on an indicator set for the environmental impact of a spinach production system in Northwest Germany. The method highlights mineral resource consumption, greenhouse gas emission, eutrophication and impacts on soil quality as the most important environmental effects of the studied system. We then explore the effect of introducing weighting factors, reflecting the differing societal perception of diverse environmental issues. Two different sets of weighting factors are used. The influence of weighting is, however, small compared to that of the standardisation procedure introduced earlier. Finally, we explore the propagation of uncertainty (defined as a variable's 95% confidence limits) throughout the standardisation procedure using a stochastic simulation approach. The uncertainty of the analysed standardised indicator was higher than that of the non-standardised indicators by a factor of 2.0 to 2.5. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Neglecting health effects from indoor pollutant emissions and exposure, as currently done in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), may result in product or process optimizations at the expense of workers' or consumers' health. To close this gap, methods for considering indoor exposure to chemicals are needed to complement the methods for outdoor human exposure assessment already in use. This paper summarizes the work of an international expert group on the integration of human indoor and outdoor exposure in LCA, within the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. A new methodological framework is proposed for a general procedure to include human-health effects from indoor exposure in LCA. Exposure models from occupational hygiene and household indoor air quality studies and practices are critically reviewed and recommendations are provided on the appropriateness of various model alternatives in the context of LCA. A single-compartment box model is recommended for use as a default in LCA, enabling one to screen occupational and household exposures consistent with the existing models to assess outdoor emission in a multimedia environment An initial set of model parameter values was collected. The comparison between indoor and outdoor human exposure per unit of emission shows that for many pollutants, intake per unit of indoor emission may be several orders of magnitude higher than for outdoor emissions. It is concluded that indoor exposure should be routinely addressed within LCA.Human and ecosystem health damage due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is generally poorly quantified in the life cycle assessment of products, preventing an integrated comparison of the importance of GHGs with other stressor types, such as ozone depletion and acidifying emissions. In this study, we derived new characterization factors for 63 GHGs that quantify the impact of an emission change on human and ecosystem health damage. For human health damage, the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) per unit emission related to malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition, drowning, and cardiovascular diseases were quantified. For ecosystem health damage, the Potentially Disappeared Fraction (PDF) over space and time of various species groups, including plants, butterflies, birds, and mammals, per unit emission was calculated. The influence of value choices in the modeling procedure was analyzed by defining three coherent scenarios, based on Cultural theory perspectives. It was found that the characterization factor for human health damage by carbon dioxide (CO2) ranges from 1.1 x 10(-2) to 1.8 x 10(+1) DALY per kton of emission, while the characterization factor for ecosystem damage by CO2 ranges from 5.4 x 10(-2) to 1.2 x 10(+1) disappeared fraction of species over space and time ((km(2).year)/kton), depending on the scenario chosen. The characterization factor of a GHG can change up to 4 orders of magnitude, depending on the scenario. The scenario-specific differences are mainly explained by the choice for a specific time horizon and stresses the importance of dealing with value choices in the life cycle impact assessment of GHG emissions.The use of municipal solid Waste (MSW) to generate electricity through landfill-gas-to-energy (LFGTE) and waste-to-energy (WTE) projects represents roughly 14% of U.S. nonhydro renewable electricity generation. Although various aspects of LFGTE and WTE have been analyzed in the literature, this paper is the first to present a comprehensive set of life-cycle emission factors per unit of electricity generated for these energy recovery options. In addition, sensitivity analysis is conducted on key inputs (e.g., efficiency of the WTE plant, landfill gas management schedules, oxidation rate, and waste composition) to quantify the variability in the resultant life-cycle emissions estimates. While methane from landfills results from the anaerobic breakdown of biogenic materials, the energy derived from WTE results from the combustion of both biogenic and fossil materials. The greenhouse gas emissions for WTE ranges from 0.4 to 1.5 MTCO(2)e/MWh, whereas the most agressive LFGTE scenerio results in 2.3 MTCO(2)e/MWh. WTE also produces lower NO, emissions than LFGTE, whereas SO, emissions depend on the specific configurations of WTE and LFGTE.The aim of this paper is to present a simplified life cycle assessment on an innovative bridge structure, made of wood and ultra high performance concrete, which combines mechanical performance with minimum environmental impact The environmental analysis was conducted from cradle to grave using the Life Cycle Assessment method. It was restricted to energy release and greenhouse gas emissions. Assumptions are detailed for each step of the analysis. For the wood end-of-life, three scenarios were proposed: dumping, burning, and recycling. Results show that the most energy needed is in the production phase, which represents 73.4% of the total amount Analysis shows that the renewable energy is about 70% of the production energy. Wood, through its biomass CO2, contributes positively to the environmental impact. It was concluded that no scenario can be the winner on both impacts. Indeed, the end-of-life wood recycling gives the best impact on CO2 release, whereas burning wood, despite its remarkable energy impact, is the worst According to the emphasis given to each impact, designers will be able to choose one or the other.We analyze the spatial distribution of deep convection and its diurnal cycle and life cycle over Africa in June and December 2006. We investigate regions of distinct temporal evolution and of largest frequency of occurrence of deep convection (hereinafter referred to as convective activity), and we define and identify the deep convective stage from space observations. The analysis is based on hourly, half-hourly, and quarter-hourly brightness temperature (BT) observations of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) on board Meteosat 8. Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches are utilized. In the Eulerian approach, diurnal cycles and spatial distributions of BTs are calculated as averages on a local solar time (LST) and pixel basis. In the Lagrangian approach we use a stand-alone algorithm that tracks deep convective systems. Deep convection is frequently found over mountainous regions and exhibits a distinct diurnal cycle over large lakes. Local maxima of convective activity and origin of tracked systems are observed over the ocean off the west coast of Africa early in the morning. Over land the diurnal cycle of deep convective systems starts with strong rates of BT change in the formative stage, continues with the minimum BT around 1530 LST (start of the mature stage), and reaches the maximum cold cloud cover at 1730 LST (end of mature stage). The maximum number of split events marks the center of the dissipation stage at similar to 1930 LST. A time shift of 1-2 h to earlier times is found in December. The life cycle analysis perfectly complements the diurnal cycle analysis and reveals characteristics of deep convective systems around the time of minimum BT10.8. Extreme rates of BT change and area expansion rates successively increase with decreasing temporal resolution. Thus quarter-hourly measurements are needed to observe the most vigorous updraft and downdraft events.The paper presents the results of life cycle assessments (LCA) performed for three bridges in which UHPC was an essential part of the structure. The bridges investigated are the Sherbrooke footbridge in Canada, the Kassel Gartnerplatz footbridge in Germany and the Wapello road bridge in USA. The life cycle assessment was performed using the Swiss process and material database ecoinvent. The ecological effects of global warming (GWP100), depletion of the stratospheric ozone (ODP), photo-oxidant formation (POCP), acidification (AP) and eutrophication (NP) were adopted as impact category indicators according to the Dutch CML method. The results show that UHPC used in the Sherbrooke footbridge and the Gartnerplatz footbridge causes approximately 60 to 85% of the environmental impact. In addition, appreciable contributions are made by the steel truss and the prestressing of the UHPC. In case of the Wapello road bridge, the contribution of UHPC to environmental impact was from 44 to 74% somewhat smaller. As well as UHPC, in particular normal concrete in the bridge deck, the steel reinforcement of the bridge deck and the prestressing of the UHPC contribute appreciably to the effect on the environment. The present contribution is a summary of a paper presented in 2008 AMCM conference.Biodegradable plastics are those that can be completely degraded in landfills, composters or sewage treatment plants by the action of naturally occurring micro-organisms. Truly biodegradable plastics leave no toxic, visible or distinguishable residues following degradation. Their biodegradability contrasts sharply with most petroleum-based plastics, which are essentially indestructible in a biological context. Because of the ubiquitous use of petroleum-based plastics, their persistence in the environment and their fossil-fuel derivation, alternatives to these traditional plastics are being explored. Issues surrounding waste management of traditional and biodegradable polymers are discussed in the context of reducing environmental pressures and carbon footprints. The main thrust of the present review addresses the development of plant-based biodegradable polymers. Plants naturally produce numerous polymers, including rubber, starch, cellulose and storage proteins, all of which have been exploited for biodegradable plastic production. Bacterial bioreactors fed with renewable resources from plants - so-called 'white biotechnology' - have also been successful in producing biodegradable polymers. In addition to these methods of exploiting plant materials for biodegradable polymer production, the present review also addresses the advances in synthesizing novel polymers within transgenic plants, especially those in the polyhydroxyalkanoate class. Although there is a stigma associated with transgenic plants, especially food crops, plant-based biodegradable polymers, produced as value-added co-products, or, from marginal land (non-food), crops such as switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), have the potential to become viable alternatives to petroleum-based plastics and ail environmentally benign and carbon-neutral source of polymers.Fourteen mature technology biomass refining scenarios - involving both biological and thermochemical processing with production of fuels, power, and/or animal feed protein - are compared with respect to process efficiency, environmental impact - including petroleum use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and water use - and economic profitability. The emissions analysis does not account for carbon sinks (e. g., soil carbon sequestration) or sources (e. g., forest conversion) resulting from land-use considerations. Sensitivity of the scenarios to fuel and electricity price, feedstock cost, and capital structure is also evaluated. The thermochemical scenario producing only power achieves a process efficiency of 49% (energy out as power as a percentage of feedstock energy in), 1359 kg CO2 equivalent avoided GHG emissions per Mg feedstock (current power mix basis) and a cost of $0.0575/kWh ($16/GJ), at a scale of 4535 dry Mg feedstock/day, 12% internal rate of return, 35% debt fraction, and 7% loan rate. Thermochemical scenarios producing fuels and power realize efficiencies between 55 and 64%, avoided GHG emissions between 1000 and 1179 kg/dry Mg, and costs between $0.36 and $0.57 per liter gasoline equivalent ($1.37 - $2.16 per gallon) at the same scale and financial structure. Scenarios involving biological production of ethanol with thermochemical production of fuels and/or power result in efficiencies ranging from 61 to 80%, avoided GHG emissions from 965 to 1,258 kg/dry Mg, and costs from $0.25 to $0.33 per liter gasoline equivalent ($0.96 to $1.24/gallon). Most of the biofuel scenarios offer comparable, if not lower, costs and much reduced GHG emissions (>90%) compared to petroleum-derived fuels. Scenarios producing biofuels result in GHG displacements that are comparable to those dedicated to power production (e. g., >825 kg CO2 equivalent/dry Mg biomass), especially when a future power mix less dependent upon fossil fuel is assumed. Scenarios integrating biological and thermochemical processing enable waste heat from the thermochemical process to power the biological process, resulting in higher overall process efficiencies than would otherwise be realized - efficiencies on par with petroleum-based fuels in several cases. c 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThere have been increased interests on exporting wood pellets from Canada to Europe to meet the increased demand on biofuels in European countries. The wood pellet industry in Canada, especially in the west coastal region, has grown at an annual rate of more than 20% averaged over last 5 years due to the steady supply of wood residues. This paper attempted to analyze the fuel consumption and air emissions associated with the wood pellet production in British Columbia and export to Sweden based on a streamlined life cycle analysis, starting from tree harvesting for wood residue production to the shipping of wood pellets from Vancouver to Stockholm in Sweden. The results showed that about 7.2 GJ of energy is consumed for each tonne of wood pellets produced and shipped to Europe, representing about 39% of the total energy content of the wood pellets. Among those energies consumed over the life cycle, about 2.6 GJ is associated with long-distance ocean transportation. The ocean transportation is also the major contributor to environmental and health impacts, followed by the pellet production processes. The fossil fuel content, which quantifies the amount of fossil fuel consumed over the life cycle, for exported wood pellets ranged from 19% to 35%, depending on whether natural gas or wood residue is used in the drying operation during the wood pellet production stage. To reduce the fossil fuel content and the environmental impacts, wood residues should be used in the drying operation and, if possible, local market should be explored to reduce the energy consumption associated with wood pellet transportation over long distances. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Terrestrial transport biofuels differ in their ability to replace fossil fuels. When both the conversion of solar energy into biomass and the life cycle inputs of fossil fuels are considered, ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from palm oil do relatively well, if compared with ethanol from corn, sugar beet or wheat and biodiesel from rapeseed. When terrestrial biofuels are to replace mineral oil-derived transport fuels, large areas of good agricultural land are needed: about 5x10(8) ha in the case of biofuels from sugarcane or oil palm, and at least 1.8-3.6x10(9) ha in the case of ethanol from wheat, corn or sugar beet, as produced in industrialized countries. Biofuels from microalgae which are commercially produced with current technologies do not appear to outperform terrestrial plants such as sugarcane in their ability to displace fossil fuels. Whether they will able to do so on a commercial scale in the future, is uncertain.Engineering prognosis and life cycle management have increasingly become dependent on probabilistic methods and material microstructure. Due to variability in microstructural properties produced by differences in alloys and processing conditions, scientifically based probability modeling for life prediction and reliability is a challenging problem. For several years, probabilistic and statistical methodologies have been available to address prognosis issues, and there has been significant progress in computational methods for engineering applications. Their utility has been greatly limited by the lack of well developed physically and mechanistically based models for many of the complex applications. Without a reasonably accurate description of the damage process at a scale that is pertinent to the desired application, probabilistic computations have minimal value for prognosis and life cycle assessment. In this paper, the major methods in computational probability are reviewed, and their efficacy is illustrated through two engineering examples. One example is corrosion and corrosion fatigue crack growth for 7075-T6 aluminum alloy, which is used commonly for structural components in commercial and military aircraft. The other example is very high cycle S-N behavior of SUJ2 bearing steel for which multiple modes of failure are manifest in the high cycle regime. Their application to other critical engineering problems is discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mathematical models of integrated solid waste management (SWM) are useful planning tools given the complexity of the solid waste system and the interactions among the numerous components that constitute the system. An optimization model was used in this study to identify and evaluate alternative plans for integrated SWM for the State of Delaware in consideration of cost and environmental performance, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The three counties in Delaware were modeled individually to identify efficient SWM plans in consideration of constraints on cost, landfill diversion requirements, GHG emissions, and the availability of alternate treatment processes (e.g., recycling, composting, and combustion). The results show that implementing a landfill diversion strategy (e.g., curbside recycling) for only a portion of the population is most cost-effective for meeting a county-specific landfill diversion target Implementation of waste-to-energy offers the most cost-effective opportunity for GHG emissions reductions.Primary aluminum ingot is a globally traded commodity, and large regional differences in technology and electricity fuel mixes exist among the industry's smelters. A life cycle assessment model is developed to calculate absolute emissions and emissions intensities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the production, trade, and consumption of primary ingot in six world regions. Global production emissions are estimated at 283 (+/- 18) Mt CO2-eq (14.7 (+/- 0.95) kg CO2-eq/kg primary ingot) in 1990 and 468 (+/- 26) Mt CO2-eq (14.7 (+/- 0.80) kg CO2-eq/kg primary ingot) in 2005. In total, the production of primary aluminum accounts for 0.78 and 0.93% of world GHG emissions in 1990 and 2004, respectively. Regional production GHG intensities in 2005 range from 7.07 (+/- 0.69) kg CO2-eq/kg primary ingot in Latin America to 21.9 (+/- 3.0) kg CO2-eq/kg primary ingot in Asia. The GHG implications of expanding global trade of primary ingot are examined in terms of the emissions embodied in the imports and exports and the consumption-weighted emissions intensities of each region.A process evaluation methodology is presented that incorporates flowsheet mass and energy balance modeling, heat and power integration, and life cycle assessment. Environmental impacts are determined by characterizing and weighting (using CO2 equivalents, Eco-indicator 99, and Eco-scarcity) the flowsheet and inventory modeling results. The methodology is applied to a waste biomass to synthetic natural gas (SNG) conversion process involving a catalytic hydrothermal gasification step. Several scenarios are constructed for different Swiss biomass feedstocks and different scales depending on logistical choices: large-scale (155 MWSNG) and small-scale (5.2 MWSNG) scenarios for a manure feedstock and one scenario (35.6 MWSNG) for a wood feedstock. Process modeling shows that 62% of the manure's lower heating value (LHV) is converted to SNG and 71% of wood's LHV is converted to SNG. Life cycle modeling shows that, for all processes, about 10% of fossil energy use is imbedded in the produced renewable SNG. Converting manure and replacing it, as a fertilizer, with the process mineral byproduct leads to reduced N2O emissions and an improved environmental performance such as global warming potential: -0.6 kg(CO2eq)/MJ(SNG) VS -0.02 kg(CO2eq)/MJ(SNG) for wood scenarios.This paper compares the life cycle assessment (LCA) of two packaging alternatives used for baby food produced by Nestl,: plastic pot and glass jar. The study considers the environmental impacts associated with packaging systems used to provide one baby food meal in France, Spain, and Germany in 2007. In addition, alternate logistical scenarios are considered which are independent of the two packaging options. The 200-g packaging size is selected as the basis for this study. Two other packaging sizes are assessed in the sensitivity analysis. Because results are intended to be disclosed to the public, this study underwent a critical review by an external panel of LCA experts. The LCA is performed in accordance to the international standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. The packaging systems include the packaging production, the product assembly, the preservation process, the distribution, and the packaging end-of-life. The production of the content (before preservation process), as well as the use phase are not taken into account as they are considered not to change when changing packaging. The inventory is based on data obtained from the baby food producer and the suppliers, data from the scientific literature, and data from the ecoinvent database. Special care is taken to implement a system expansion approach for end-of-life open and closed loop recycling and energy production (ISO 14044). A comprehensive impact assessment is performed using two life cycle impact assessment methodologies: IMPACT 2002+ and CML 2001. An extensive uncertainty analysis using Monte Carlo as well as an extensive sensitivity study are performed on the inventory and the reference flows, respectively. When looking at the impacts due to preservation process and packaging (considering identical distribution distances), we observe a small but significant environmental benefit of the plastic pot system over the glass jar system. Depending on the country, the impact is reduced by 14% to 27% for primary energy, 28% to 31% for global warming, 31% to 34% for respiratory inorganics, and 28% to 31% for terrestrial acidification/nutrification. The environmental benefit associated with the change in packaging mainly results from (a) production of plastic pot (including its end-of-life; 43% to 51% of total benefit), (b) lighter weight of packaging positively impacting transportation (20% to 35% of total benefit), and (c) new preservation process permitted by the plastic system (23% to 34% of total benefit). The jar or pot (including cap or lid, cluster, stretch film, and label) represents approximately half of the life cycle impacts, the logistics approximately one fourth, and the rest (especially on-site energy, tray, and hood) one fourth. The sensitivity analysis shows that assumptions made in the basic scenarios are rather conservative for plastic pots and that the conclusions for the 200-g packaging size also apply to other packaging sizes. The uncertainty analysis performed on the inventory for the German market situation shows that the plastic pot system has less impact than the glass jar system while considering similar distribution distances with a confidence level above 97% for most impact categories. There is opportunity for further improvement independent of the type of packaging used, such as by reducing distribution distances while still optimizing lot size. The validity of the main conclusions presented in this study is confirmed by results of both impact assessment methodologies IMPACT 2002+ and CML 2001. For identical transportation distances, the plastic pot system shows a small but significant reduction in environmental burden compared to the glass jar system. As food distribution plays an important role in the overall life cycle burdens and may vary between scenarios, it is important to avoid additional transportation of the packaged food in order to maintain or even improve the advantage of the plastic pot system. The present study focuses on the comparison of packaging systems and directly related consequences. It is recommended that further environmental optimization of the product also includes food manufacturing (before preservation process) and the supply chain of raw materials.This paper presents a waste management analysis of the packaging systems for soft drinks in Mexico, with emphasis on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) containers. The work presented is part of a project sponsored by a consortium of Mexican industries that participate in the PET market, such as resin producers, bottle manufacturers, soft drinks producers, distributors, and plastic recyclers. Two different life cycle assessments (LCAs) were elaborated to provide insight on waste management scenarios and waste products comparisons, respectively. The first LCA was a description of the actual PET market and PET waste treatment in Mexico. On the second LCA, three systems were analyzed: PET bottles, aluminum cans, and glass bottles. Currently, these results are used in Mexico as a basis for environmental policy. PET bottle's participation in the market has increased substantially in the previous years, and it is forecasted that this increase rate will continue. Due to this factor, there are some concerns about the environmental implications of PET usage. In order to analyze the waste management of PET bottles in Mexico, an LCA and a series of sensitivity analyses were conducted in order to understand: (1) the effect of different collecting distances in environmental impacts, (2) the effect of different recycling rates in environmental impacts, (3) the effect of different collecting rates in environmental impacts, and (4) the effect of different collecting rates with its associated distances in the environmental impacts. An optimal degree of PET waste collection was identified as a result of considering different collecting rates and distances. At this point, minimum environmental impact occurs. This is due to the excessive increase in environmental resources that is needed in order to collect higher amounts of waste by traveling longer distances. These results may pose significant implications on current environmental legislation and waste management policies in Mexico and can well be applied into other Latin-American and developing countries. Other results show that production processes represent the highest environmental impacts along the supply chain, which are considerably higher than those impacts related to transport and collecting activities. Because of this, the environmental advantages of waste management in Mexico can be significant as long as the material that is collected is also recycled. Results to be presented include specific impact data on electricity generation and transport in Mexico. This work can be used as a basis for decision making in environmental policy. Moreover, it provides technical grounds to demonstrate that under certain conditions, traditional waste management systems may cause higher environmental impacts than the environmental benefit/credit that they are supposed to deliver.Management of the medical waste produced in hospitals or health care facilities has raised concerns relating to public health, occupational safety, and the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a decision-supporting tool in waste management practice; but relatively little research has been done on the evaluation of medical waste treatment from a life cycle perspective. Our study compares the environmental performances of two dominant technologies, hazardous waste incineration (HWI) as a type of incineration technology and steam autoclave sterilization with sanitary landfill (AL) as a type of non-incineration technology, for specific medical waste of average composition. The results of this study could support the medical waste hierarchy. This study implemented the ISO 14040 standard. Data on steam autoclave sterilization were obtained from an on-site operations report, while inventory models were used for HWI, sanitary landfill, and residues landfill. Background data were from the ecoinvent database. The comparative LCA was carried out for five alternatives: HWI with energy recovery efficiencies of 0%, 15%, and 30% and AL with energy recovery efficiencies of 0% and 10%. The assumptions on the time frame for landfill markedly affect the impact category scores; however, the orders of preference for both time frames are almost the same. HWI with 30% energy recovery efficiency has the lowest environmental impacts for all impact categories, except freshwater ecotoxicity. Incineration and sanitary landfill processes dominate global warming, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, and eutrophication of incineration and non-incineration alternatives, respectively. Dioxin emissions contribute about 10% to human toxicity in HWI without energy recovery alternatives, and a perturbation analysis yielded identical results. As regards eutrophication, non-incineration treatments have an approximately sevenfold higher impact than incineration treatments. The differences between short-term and long-term time frame assumptions mainly are decided by heavy metals dissolved in the future leachate. The high heat value of medical waste due to high contents of biomass, plastic, and rubber materials and a lower content of ash, results in a preference for incineration treatments. The large eutrophication difference between incineration and non-incineration treatments is caused by different N element transformations. Dioxin emission from HWI is not the most relevant to human toxicity; however, large uncertainties could exist. From a life cycle perspective, the conventional waste hierarchy, implying incineration with energy recovery is better than landfill, also applies to the case of medical waste. The sanitary landfill process is the key issue in non-incineration treatments, and HWI and the subsequent residues landfill processes are key issues in incineration treatments. Integrating the medical waste hierarchy and constructing a medical waste framework require broader technologies to be investigated further, based on a life cycle approach.Feedstock recycling has received attention as an effective method to recycle waste plastics. However, estimating the reduction potential by life cycle assessment using coke oven and blast furnace in steel works has been a challenging task due to the complex structure of energy flow in steel works. Municipal waste plastics consist of several plastic resins. Previous studies have generally disregarded the composition of waste plastics, which varies significantly depending on the geographical area. If the reduction potentials by using each plastic resin in steel works can be quantified, the potential of municipal waste plastics (mixtures of plastic resins) can be estimated by summing up the potential of each resin multiplied by the composition of each resin in municipal waste plastics. Therefore, the goal of this study is to investigate the reduction potentials of CO2 emissions by using individual plastic resins (polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyethylene terephthalate (PET)) and those for municipal waste plastics in the coke oven and blast furnace. A model was developed to clarify the energy flow in steel works. In order to estimate the changes in energy and material balance in coke ovens when waste plastics are charged, the equations to calculate the coke product yield, gas product yield, and oil product yields of each plastic resin were derived from previous studies. The Rist model was adopted to quantify the changes in the inputs and outputs when plastics were fed into a blast furnace. Then, a matrix calculation method was used to calculate the change in energy balance before and after plastics are fed into a coke oven. It was confirmed that product yields of municipal waste plastics (mixtures of plastic resins) could be estimated by summing up the product yield of each plastic resin multiplied by the composition of each resin in municipal waste plastics. In both cases of coke oven and blast furnace feedstock recycling, the reduction potential of CO2 emissions varies significantly depending on the plastic resins. For example, in the case of coke oven chemical feedstock recycling, the reduction potential of PS and PP is larger than that of PE. On the other hand, in the case of blast furnace feedstock recycling, PE has the largest CO2 emissions reduction potential, whereas the CO2 emission reduction potential of PP is smaller than those of PE and PS. In both cases, PET has negative CO2 emission reduction potentials, i.e., there is an increase of CO2 emissions. In addition, the reduction potentials of CO2 emissions are slightly different in each city. The differences in the reduction potentials of CO2 emissions by coke oven chemical feedstock recycling of each plastic resin is attributable to the differences in calorific values and coke product yields of each plastic resin. On the other hand, the difference in the CO2 emission reduction potential for each plastic resin in blast furnace feedstock recycling is attributable to the difference in calorific values and the carbon and hydrogen content of each plastic resin, which leads to a difference in the coke substitution effect by each plastic resin. In both cases, the difference in those of municipal waste plastics is mostly attributable to the amount of impurities (e.g., ash, water) in the municipal waste plastics. It was found that the reduction potential of CO2 emissions by coke oven and blast furnace feedstock recycling of municipal waste plastics (mixtures of plastic resins) could be estimated by summing up the potential of each resin multiplied by the composition of each resin in municipal waste plastics. It was also clarified that feedstock recycling of waste plastic in steel works is effective for avoiding the increase in CO2 emissions by incinerating waste plastics, such as those from household mixtures of different resins. With the results obtained in this study, reduction potentials of CO2 emissions can be calculated for any waste plastics because differences in composition are taken into account.Phospholipase is an enzyme which is able to increase the yield of cheese in, for instance, mozzarella production. Milk production is the most important source of environmental impacts in cheese production and it is obvious to assume that the milk saving that comes with the use of phospholipase reduces the overall environmental impacts of the final product. Production of industrial phospholipase is, however, also associated with environmental burdens and it is not known whether and to what extent the use of phospholipase is justified by overall environmental improvements. The aim of the present study is therefore to assess the environmental impacts that come with the use of industrial phospholipase in mozzarella production and compare with the savings that come with the avoided milk production. The study addresses mozzarella production in Denmark. LCA is used as analytical tool and environmental modelling is facilitated in SimaPro 7.1.8 LCA software. Yield improvements refer to full scale industrial application of phospholipase in cheese industry. The study is a comparative analysis and a marginal and market-oriented approach is taken. The study addresses contribution to global warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment, photochemical smog formation, energy consumption and use of agricultural land. Estimation of environmental impact potentials is based on Eco-indicator 95 v.2.1 equivalency factors. Toxicity is addressed by qualitative means. The environmental impacts induced by phospholipase production are small compared with the savings obtained by reduced milk consumption for mozzarella production when all impact indicators are considered. Sensitivity analyses and data quality assessments indicate that this general outcome of the study is robust, although results at the more detailed level are the subject of much variation and uncertainty. Transport of the enzyme from producer to mozzarella producer is insignificant and the general outcome of the study is considered applicable to other regions of the world where milk is produced in modern milk production systems. Use of phospholipase as a yield improvement factor is a means of reducing environmental impact of mozzarella production. The total annual global warming mitigation potential of phospholipase used in production of mozzarella and other pasta filata products is in the order of 7 x 10(8) kg CO2 equivalents. The use of phospholipase is driven by overall cost savings and it is therefore recommended that the enzyme should be given attention as a cost-efficient means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.Regional specificities are a key factor when analyzing the environmental impact of a biofuel pathway through a life cycle assessment (LCA). Due to different energy mixes, transport distances, agricultural practices and land use changes, results can significantly vary from one country to another. The Republic of Argentina is the first exporter of soybean oil and meal and the third largest soybean producer in the world, and therefore, soybean-based biodiesel production is expected to significantly increase in the near future, mostly for exportation. Moreover, Argentinean biodiesel producers will need to evaluate the environmental performances of their product in order to comply with sustainability criteria being developed. However, because of regional specificities, the environmental performances of this biofuel pathway can be expected to be different from those obtained for other countries and feedstocks previously studied. This work aims at analyzing the environmental impact of soybean-based biodiesel production in Argentina for export. The relevant impact categories account for the primary non-renewable energy consumption (CED), the global warming potential (GWP), the eutrophication potential (EP), the acidification potential (AP), the terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), the aquatic ecotoxicity (AE), the human toxicity (HT) and land use competition (LU). The paper tackles the feedstock and country specificities in biodiesel production by comparing the results of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina with other reference cases. Emphasis is put on explaining the factors that contribute most to the final results and the regional specificities that lead to different results for each biodiesel pathway. The Argentinean (AR) biodiesel pathway was modelled through an LCA and was compared with reference cases available in the ecoinventA (R) 2.01 database, namely, soybean-based biodiesel production in Brazil (BR) and the United States (US), rapeseed-based biodiesel production in the European Union (EU) and Switzerland (CH) and palm-oil-based biodiesel production in Malaysia (MY). In all cases, the systems were modelled from feedstock production to biodiesel use as B100 in a 28 t truck in CH. Furthermore, biodiesel pathways were compared with fossil low-sulphur diesel produced and used in CH. The LCA was performed according to the ISO standards. The life cycle inventory and the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) were performed in Excel spreadsheets using the ecoinventA (R) 2.01 database. The cumulative energy demand (CED) and the GWP were estimated through the CED for fossil and nuclear energy and the IPCC 2001 (climate change) LCIA methods, respectively. Other impact categories were assessed according to CML 2001, as implemented in ecoinvent. As the product is a fuel for transportation (service), the system was defined for one vehicle kilometre (functional unit) and was divided into seven unit processes, namely, agricultural phase, soybean oil extraction and refining, transesterification, transport to port, transport to the destination country border, distribution and utilisation. The Argentinean pathway results in the highest GWP, CED, AE and HT compared with the reference biofuel pathways. Compared with the fossil reference, all impact categories are higher for the AR case, except for the CED. The most significant factor that contributes to the environmental impact in the Argentinean case varies depending on the evaluated category. Land provision through deforestation for soybean cultivation is the most impacting factor of the AR biodiesel pathway for the GWP, the CED and the HT categories. Whilst nitrogen oxide emissions during the fuel use are the main cause of acidification, nitrate leaching during soybean cultivation is the main factor of eutrophication. LU is almost totally affected by arable land occupation for soybean cultivation. Cypermethrin used as pesticide in feedstock production accounts for almost the total impact on TE and AE. The sensitivity analysis shows that an increase of 10% in the soybean yield, whilst keeping the same inputs, will reduce the total impact of the system. Avoiding deforestation is the main challenge to improve the environmental performances of soybean-based biodiesel production in AR. If the soybean expansion can be done on marginal and set-aside agricultural land, the negative impact of the system will be significantly reduced. Further implementation of crops' successions, soybean inoculation, reduced tillage and less toxic pesticides will also improve the environmental performances. Using ethanol as alcohol in the transesterification process could significantly improve the energy balance of the Argentinean pathway. The main explaining factors depend on regional specificities of the system that lead to different results from those obtained in the reference cases. Significantly different results can be obtained depending on the level of detail of the input data, the use of punctual or average data and the assumptions made to build up the LCA inventory. Further improvement of the AR biodiesel pathways should be done in order to comply with international sustainability criteria on biofuel production. Due to the influence of land use changes in the final results, more efforts should be made to account for land use changes others than deforestation. More data are needed to determine the part of deforestation attributable to soybean cultivation. More efforts should be done to improve modelling of interaction between variables and previous crops in the agricultural phase, future transesterification technologies and market prices evolution. In order to assess more accurately the environmental impact of soybean-based biodiesel production in Argentina, further considerations should be made to account for indirect land use changes, domestic biodiesel consumption and exportation to other regions, production scale and regional georeferenced differentiation of production systems.The goal of this study is to estimate the county-level environmental performance for continuous corn cultivation of corn grain and corn stover grown under the current tillage practices for various corn-growing locations in the US Corn Belt. The environmental performance of corn grain varies with its farming location because of climate, soil properties, cropping management, etc. Corn stover, all of the above ground parts of the corn plant except the grain, would be used as a feedstock for cellulosic ethanol. Two cropping systems are under investigation: corn produced for grain only without collecting corn stover (referred to as CRN) and corn produced for grain and stover harvest (referred to as CSR). The functional unit in this study is defined as dry biomass, and the reference flow is 1 kg of dry biomass. The system boundary includes processes from cradle to farm gate. The default allocation procedure between corn grain and stover in the CSR system is the system expansion approach. County-level soil organic carbon dynamics, nitrate losses due to leaching, and nitrogen oxide and nitrous oxide emissions are simulated by the DAYCENT model. Life cycle environmental impact categories considered in this study are total fossil energy use, climate change (referred to as greenhouse gas emissions), acidification, and eutrophication. Sensitivities on farming practices and allocation are included. Simulations from the DAYCENT model predict that removing corn stover from soil could decrease nitrogen-related emissions from soil (i.e., N2O, NO (x) , and NO3 (-) leaching). DAYCENT also predicts a reduction in the annual accumulation rates of soil organic carbon (SOC) with corn stover removal. Corn stover has a better environmental performance than corn grain according to all life cycle environmental impacts considered. This is due to lower consumption of agrochemicals and fuel used in the field operations and lower nitrogen-related emissions from the soil. The primary source of total fossil energy associated with biomass production is nitrogen fertilizer, accounting for over 30% of the total fossil energy. Nitrogen-related emissions from soil (i.e., N2O, NO (x) , and NO3 (-) leaching) are the primary contributors to all other life cycle environmental impacts considered in this study. The environmental performance of corn grain and corn stover varies with the farming location due to crop management, soil properties, and climate conditions. Several general trends were identified from this study. Corn stover has a lower impact than corn grain in terms of total fossil energy, greenhouse gas emissions, acidification, and eutrophication. Harvesting corn stover reduces nitrogen-related emissions from the soil (i.e., N2O, NO (x) , NO3 (-)). The accumulation rate of soil organic carbon is reduced when corn stover is removed, and in some cases, the soil organic carbon level decreases. Harvesting only the cob portion of the stover would reduce the negative impact of stover removal on soil organic carbon sequestration rate while still bringing the benefit of lower nitrogen-related emissions from the soil. No-tillage practices offer higher accumulation rates of soil organic carbon, lower fuel consumption, and lower nitrogen emissions from the soil than the current or conventional tillage practices. Planting winter cover crops could be a way to reduce nitrogen losses from soil and to increase soil organic carbon levels. County-level modeling is more accurate in estimating the local environmental burdens associated with biomass production than national- or regional-level modeling. When possible, site-specific experimental information on soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics should be obtained to reflect the system more accurately. The allocation approach between corn grain and stover significantly affects the environmental performance of each. The preferred allocation method is the system expansion approach where incremental fuel usage, additional nutrients in the subsequent growing season, and changes in soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics due to removing corn stover are assigned to only the collected corn stover.The process of producing a graduate is a complex one involving major effort usually by large institutions such as universities. The Faculty of Engineering and Surveying at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia produces several hundred engineering and spatial science graduates each year using both on-campus and external modes of study. The purpose of this study is to determine the major causes of environmental impact in this process with a view to targeting areas where improvements may be made. An inventory of all major inputs to and outputs from the faculty was compiled from a mixture of measurements, real data, and financial data for the calendar year 2006. Data for graduate output were also compiled. These data were then assessed using SimaPro software, mainly Australian data and predominantly the Eco-indicator 99 (E) method of impact assessment. The analysis shows that environmental impacts are many and varied as might be expected from a complex operation like a university. However, energy inputs in the form of electricity from black coal, staff and student travel and the embodied impact of buildings were dominant. The results obtained may point the way towards future consideration of areas where environmental impact might be reduced by changes in institution strategies such as the way external students are taught and the way the electricity usage in our buildings is managed. The environmental impact of undergraduate education is complex and involves many different areas of activity. However, the use of energy in various forms is of major significance in this impact. It is recommended that university managers consider the results presented in this paper and use them as a starting point in developing strategies to reduce the impact of their institutions.The effective communication of corporate environmental messages has a history of mixed results and concerns remain around the quality and accurateness of these messages. Life cycle assessment (LCA) information is often presented as a promising informational tool, by which improved communication effectiveness of environmental/sustainable claims may materialize; however, the possibility of information overload has limited its application in marketing communication settings. The overall purpose of this research is to better understand how LCA-based environmental performance information might be effectively communicated in an advertising setting, the impact of such messages on individuals' attitudes and behavioral intentions, and the mediating roles of informational complexity and credibility. Fictitious, but realistic, advertisements employing LCA-based information were created and tested empirically in two experimental settings. The first, in a business-to-consumer (B2C) setting, examines the influence of several environmental information contents, formats, and disclosures on attitudinal factors toward the ad, brand, and company, as well as behavioral intentions. Using hair shampoo as the product category, and the biodegradability capacity of its bottle as the environmental attribute, regression analyses were developed based on a sample of 3,292 subjects evaluating one of 12 different advertisements. The second experiment presented in this paper expands upon these ideas by focusing on a business-to-business (B2B) environment where the need for cognition, and thus the complexity threshold, is thought to be quite high and where environmental performance is expected to be of importance to the purchaser. This experimental setting includes responses from 1,062 architects and engineers-all of whom are members of the U.S. Green Building Council who evaluated one of eight different advertisements. In this experimental setting, the volume of LCA-based information is varied, while exploring the role of this information in conjunction with functional product performance messages. Results indicate that LCA-based information can be effective within an advertising medium in enhancing message credibility, attitudes toward the brand and company, and positively influencing behavioral intentions toward purchasing, even though this information is viewed as complex and detrimental to attitudes toward the advertisement itself. More specifically, results from the first empirical experiment indicate that LCA-based communications make for more poorly reviewed advertising, but the credibility gained through explicit LCA-based environmental disclosures favorably influences the perceptions toward the company and the brand. These results are confirmed in the business-to-business experiment. Evidence from this study suggests that, within environmentally aware and sensitive recipients, advertisements with environmental messages are more effective than those presenting functional product benefits alone, but only when the messages are substantiated with elaborated LCA-based information. Within the B2C respondents, we found that the perceived complexity of the ad in fact generated a significantly positive attitudinal response concerning the company under evaluation, which was not evident in the B2B study. The results suggest that the end-use consumers in the first experiment more often processed the ad through the peripheral route of persuasion, where the downside risk of presenting complex and detailed environmental information is significant (i.e. people won't pay attention to the ad), but can be balanced (or even surpassed) by positive associations with presenting additional information (i.e. the company must be strong if it is willing to fully disclose all of this information). The influence of perceived complexity of LCA-based advertisements does not appear to negatively influence most measures typically used to assess advertising effectiveness; however, the appeal of the advertisement itself is significantly negatively impacted by increases in complexity. The credibility gained through more elaborated LCA-based environmental messages, to a high extent, compensates the effect of complexity on the attitude toward the appeal of the ad itself. In fact, this credibility strongly influences in a positive manner the attitudes buyers have toward the ad, the brand, the company, and their intention to purchase the product under evaluation. Practitioners are to reconsider the position that simple and appealing advertisements are most effective to an overall marketing communication strategy addressing environmental performance. Simple messages are often required to gain market awareness and break through the noisy hypermedia marketplace; however, our results suggest that a firm's ability to gain credibility in its message can compensate for many of the negative effects of highly complex messages. Researchers and LCA professionals influencing methodologies and implementation of LCA at the product level should recognize the potential use of selected and incomplete LCA-based information by firms in marketing communications. While strategic differentiation benefits associated with effective communication of environmental performance may lead to increased use of LCA techniques by firms, appropriate development of standards and certifications may be required to preserve perceptions of objectivity and transparency associated with LCA methodologies.Assessment of a society's environmental load is one of the important tasks when creating a sustainable society. The authors of this paper assessed CO2 emissions and forest resource sustainability for the housing construction taking place in Malaysia using an Input-Output analysis. Common housing types such as apartments and terraced houses were assessed. The findings showed that the main sources of CO2 emissions during the construction phase were generated in the building components, such as building structures and foundations. The forest resource sustainability will be sustained under certain conditions, even if timber housing construction is to be promoted. This paper also discusses the methods for both CO2 reductions and forest resource sustainability.This article addresses the optimization of the quality of wood-plastic composites (WPC) designed for outdoor uses such as decking, taking into account the environmental impact during the life cycle of the product, from production to end of life (from ground to ground). In a context where several conflicting objectives must be satisfied simultaneously in the design process, meta-heuristic approaches provide efficient methods for optimization. Multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MO-PSO) has been chosen here to solve a complex problem in which physical properties such as creep and duration of load, water absorption and swelling, need to be improved with a limited impact on environment. This requires to get reliable information on material properties as related to its composition, environmental impacts through life cycle analysis (LCA), and to implement relevant information such as exhaustion of fossils resources through analytical or probabilistic models in the PSO algorithm in order to obtain a set of optimal solutions for the composite. This article shows the feasibility of this approach, which can be generalized in the design of any type of composite structures, provided objective functions can be specified.Synthesis of distributed wastewater treatment plants (WTPs) has focused on cost reduction, but never on the reduction of environmental impacts. A mathematical optimization model was developed in this study to synthesize existing distributed and terminal WTPs into an environmentally friendly total wastewater treatment network system (TWTNS) from a life cycle perspective. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate the environmental impacts of principal contributors in a TWTNS. The LCA results were integrated into the objective function of the model. The mass balances were formulated from the superstructure model, and the constraints were formulated to reflect real wastewater treatment situations in industrial plants. A case study validated the model and demonstrated the effect of the objective function on the configuration and environmental performance of a TWTNS. This model can be used to minimize environmental impacts of a TWTNS in retrofitting existing WTPs in line with cleaner production and sustainable development. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Vercelli rice district in northern Italy plays a key role in the agri-food industry in a country which accounts for more than 50% of the EU rice production and exports roughly 70%. However, although wealth and jobs are created, the sector is said to be responsible for environmental impacts that are increasingly being perceived as topical. As a complex and comprehensive environmental evaluation is necessary to understand and manage the environmental impact of the agri-food chain, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to the rice production system: from the paddy field to the supermarket The LCA has pointed out the magnitude of impact per kg of delivered white milled rice: a CO2eq emission of 2.9 kg, a primary energy consumption of 17.8 MJ and the use of 4.9 m(3) of water for irrigation purposes. Improvement scenarios have been analysed considering alternative rice farming and food processing methods, such as organic and upland farming, as well as parboiling. The research has shown that organic and upland farming have the potential to decrease the impact per unit of cultivated area. However, due to the lower grain yields, the environmental benefits per kg of the final products are greatly reduced in the case of upland rice production and almost cancelled for organic rice. LCA has proved to be an effective tool for understanding the eco-profile of Italian rice and should be used for transparent and credible communication between suppliers and their customers. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most products have the potential to negatively impact the environment during all life-cycle stages. However, most environmental impact assessment methods focus on a single product life-cycle and on a specific life-cycle stage. Product design plays a significant role by determining traditional environmental impacts, such as embodied energy Of materials, but also by influencing market adoption and production volumes. The main objective of this work is to develop a design optimization framework that estimates the environmental impact of design decisions (e.g. materials choice, etc.) across all life-cycle stages in consumer products. The methodology relies on quality function deployment (QFD), multi-attribute utility theory, non-linear mathematical programming, and life-cycle assessment tools to estimate the utility of the design options to the customer, the producer, and the environment. The proposed framework allows designers and other decision makers to select options that are environmentally sound and also aligned with the business objectives.Polypropylene/hemp or sisal fibre composites exhibit interesting recyclability [Bourmaud A, Baley C. Investigations on the recycling of hemp and sisal fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites. Polymer Degradation and Stability 2007:92(6):1034-45]. The obtained results prove that the tensile modulus of these polypropylene/vegetal fibre composites is well conserved with the number of reprocessing cycles. In this work, we investigated the relationship between the mechanical properties of the fibres and those of the composites by taking the influence of the recycling into account. In the first part of this study we carried out nanoindentation and tensile tests on vegetal fibres to obtain transversal and longitudinal Young's moduli. The experimental values were then introduced into micromechanical models, taking the aspect ratio changes into account, to estimate the stiffness of the PP/vegetal fibre injected composites before and after recycling. The first results show an interesting correlation between experimental results and model predictions; however a general underestimation of tensile stiffness of composites can be noticed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A review of existing studies about life cycle assessment (LCA) of PV systems has been carried out. The data from this review have been completed with our own figures in order to calculate the energy payback time (EPBT) of double and horizontal axis tracking and fixed systems. The results of this metric span from 2 to 5 years for the latitude and global irradiation ranges of the geographical area comprised between -10 degrees to 10 degrees of longitude, and 30 to 45 of latitude. With the caution due to the uncertainty of the sources of information, these results mean that a grid connected PV system (GCPVS) is able to produce back the energy required for its existence from 6 to 15 times during a life cycle of 30 years. When comparing tracking and fixed systems, the great importance of the PV generator makes advisable to dedicate more energy to some components of the system in order to increase the productivity and to obtain a higher performance of the component with the highest energy requirement. Both double axis and horizontal axis trackers follow this way, requiring more energy in metallic structure, foundations and wiring, but this higher contribution is widely compensated by the improved productivity of the system. Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Full life cycles of gasoline, gas oil, sugar beet and wheat EtOH as well as rapeseed and sunflower fatty acid Me ester (FAME) biodiesels were assessed to estimate the CO(2) emission. The method was found very efficient. The highest redn. of the emission was observed for the sunflower FAME bio-diesel when all its by-products and prodn. wastes were gasified to a fuel gas.At the present moment in time, renewable energy sources have achieved great significance for modern day society. The main reason for this boom is the need to use alternative sources of energy to fossil fuels which are free of CO2 emissions and contamination. Among the current renewable energy sources, the growth of wind farms has been spectacular. Wind power uses the kinetic energy of the wind to produce a clean form of energy without producing contamination or emissions. The problem it raises is that of quantifying to what extent it is a totally clean form of energy. In this sense we have to consider not only the emissions produced while they are in operation, but also the contamination and environmental impact resulting from their manufacture and the future dismantling of the turbines when they come to the end of their working life. The aim of this study is to analyse the real impact that this technology has if we consider the whole life cycle. The application of the ISO 14040 standard [ISO. ISO 14040. Environmental management - life cycle assessment - principles and framework. Geneva, Switzerland: International Standard Organization; 1998.] allows us to make an LCA study quantifying the overall impact of a wind turbine and each of its components. Applying this methodology, the wind turbine is analysed during all the phases of its life cycle, from cradle to grave, with regard to the manufacture of its key components (through the incorporation of cut-off criteria), transport to the wind farm, subsequent installation, start-up, maintenance and final dismantling and stripping down into waste materials and their treatment. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A development in wind energy technology towards higher nominal power of the wind turbines is related to the shift of the turbines to better wind conditions. After the shift from onshore to offshore areas, there has been an effort to move further from the sea coast to the deep water areas, which requires floating windmills. Such a concept brings additional environmental impact through higher material demand. To evaluate additional environmental burdens and to find out whether they can be rebalanced or even offset by better wind conditions, a prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) study of one floating concept has been performed and the results are presented in this paper. A comparison with existing LCA studies of conventional offshore wind power and electricity from a natural gas combined cycle is presented. The results indicate similar environmental impacts of electricity production using floating wind power plants as using non-floating offshore wind power plants. The most important stage in the life cycle of the wind power plants is the production of materials. Credits that are connected to recycling these materials at the end-of-life of the power plant are substantial. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers the use of paper by academics and student computer laboratories at Rhodes University as a basis for identifying areas to reduce the amounts used and increase rates of recycling. A sample of 50 academic staff monitored the volume and purpose of the paper they used over 5 months, and the procurement officers in all the academic departments were interviewed regarding the total amount of paper used per academic department. Mean use was 34 20 new sheets of paper per working day, of which 3% were trashed, 15% were kept for later use (as scrap or printed on the opposite side) and 79% were given out as notes to students, filed as records or posted out as mail to other departments or institutions. There was a significant relationship between number of students served by a department and the overall demand for paper, as well the number of staff per department and the number of recycling bins. The university could save approximately US$ 7000 per year for every 10% reduction in current use of paper (12,784 reams/year). Reduction in paper usage could be achieved through an increase in re-use of paper, printing handouts for students on both sides of each sheet of paper and by investing in printers that are capable of printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. Double-sided printers are only 20-25% more expensive than single-sided ones, but will potentially reduce paper usage by half A 40% reduction would save the university approximately US $ 20,000 per year in direct costs, and more in reduced waste streams, as well as help promote the environmental image of the university. On a per unit basis, the higher costs for a double-sided printer in offices would be repaid in 9 months or less through reduced paper use. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biofuels have been proposed as an ecologically benign alternative to fossil fuels. There is, however, considerable uncertainty in the scientific literature about their ecological benefit. Here, we review studies that apply life-cycle analysis (LCA), a computational tool for assessing the efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) impact of energy systems, to biofuel feedstocks. Published values for energy efficiency and GHG differ significantly even for an individual species, and we identify three major sources of variation in these LCA results. By providing new information on biogeochemistry and plant physiology, ecologists and plant scientists can increase the accuracy of LCA for biofuel production systems.The aim of this research activity is to investigate the environmental impact of different thermal treatments of waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE), applying a life cycle assessment methodology. Two scenarios were assessed, which both allow the recovery of bromine: (A) the co-combustion of WEEE and green waste in a municipal solid waste combustion plant, and (13) the staged-gasification of WEEE and combustion of produced syngas in gas turbines. Mass and energy balances on the two scenarios were set and the analysis of the life cycle inventory and the life cycle impact assessment were conducted. Two impact assessment methods (Ecoindicator 99 and Impact 2002+) were slightly modified and then used with both scenarios. The results showed that scenario B (staged-gasification) had a potentially smaller environmental impact than scenario A (co-combustion). In particular, the thermal treatment of staged-gasification was more energy efficient than co-combustion, and therefore scenario B performed better than scenario A, mainly in the impact categories of "fossil fuels" and "climate change". Moreover, the results showed that scenario B allows a higher recovery of bromine than scenario A: however, Br recovery leads to environmental benefits for both the scenarios. Finally the study demonstrates that WEEE thermal treatment for energy and matter recovery is an eco-efficient way to dispose of this kind of waste. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Species choice is potentially an important management decision for increasing carbon stocks in forest ecosystems. The substitution of a slow-growing hardwood species (Quercus petraea) by a fast-growing conifer plantation (Pinus nigra subsp. laricio) was studied in central France. Simulations of carbon stocks in tree biomass were conducted using stand growth models Fagacees for sessile oak and PNL for Corsican pine. The changes in soil carbon were assessed using the Century model and data from two European soil monitoring networks: 16 km x 16 km grid and RENECOFOR. Carbon in wood products was assessed with life cycle analysis and lifespan of final products. However, only carbon stocks and their variation were accounted for: effects of energy-consuming materials or fossil fuel substitution are excluded from the analysis. To compare the growth of these two types of forest stands, an important part of the study was to assess the productivity of both species at the same site, using National Forest Inventory data. Simulations showed that (i) this species substitution would lead to an additional carbon storage of 1.6 tC/ha/year with the conifer plantation during its first rotation (64 years) (ii) at steady state, the time-averaged carbon stock of the conifer plantation over the whole rotation would be 42 tC/ha to 47 tC/ha lower than that of the hardwood even-aged forest, depending on applied silvicultural scenarios. The time-averaged carbon stocks including vegetation, soil and wood products are 221 tC/ha for sessile oak, and around 175 tC/ha for Corsican pine. The amount of carbon stored in wood products is low compared to the total carbon stock (5% for sessile oak, 8-8.5% for Corsican pine), mainly due to important losses during early wood processing, and to the short lifespan of wood products compared to the rotation length of forest stands. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The biofuel ethanol is currently being produced in large quantities from corn in the US and from wheat in the EU and further capacity expansion is expected. Relying on the so-called 1 st generation technology, only the starch contained in the edible portion of the crops (ears/grains) is subjected to fermentation. Following life cycle calculations reveals minute levels of fossil fuel replacement placing doubt on its renewability and an imbalance on the domestic animal feed markets are immerging due to the by-product distiller grains. Additional utilization Of the lignocellulosic and protein components of the by-product through new developments has the potential to alleviate both setbacks. A cradle-to-factory gate analysis was performed on a variety of bioethanol production layouts incorporating the newest technological developments to determine the maximum fossil fuel reduction potential. Expanding to include lignocellulose pretreatment for ethanol production with protein separation for amine-based chemical production can increase the fossil fuel mitigation potential by seven- to ninefold for US-corn and five- to eightfold for EU-wheat bioethanol facilities.Ecological sanitation (EcoSan) concepts, relying on an environmentally sound management of water, nutrient and energy fluxes, have been poorly characterized in literature and are widely ignored by public planning authorities, architects or engineers. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of an EcoSan system at an office building and of conventional systems was carried out in order to provide practical data and information to (partially) fill this gap. Compared to conventional systems, EcoSan can reduce the contribution to ecosystem quality damage by more than 60%. EcoSan leads, however, to higher damages on resources and human health and higher impact on climate change. Key improvement possibilities and research needs related to these results are discussed throughout the paper. Ecological sanitation appears to be a promising alternative to small-scale wastewater treatment. At higher scales, low water consumption conventional systems are better performing and are not likely to be replaced by EcoSan systems in the short term. Standard conventional systems have very poor environmental performances and should be upgraded as far as possible. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of municipal solid waste (MSW) management have been highlighted in China, due to the continually increasing amount of MSW being generated and the limited capacity of waste treatment facilities. Of particular interest is greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, aided by the Kyoto Mechanisms. China is an important case study for this global issue; however, an analysis of the entire life cycle of MSW management on GHG emissions is not available for China. This study evaluates the current and possible patterns of MSW management with regard to GHG emissions, using life cycle assessment (LCA), based on the Tianjin case. We assess the baseline scenario, reflecting the existing MSW management system, as well as a set of alternative scenarios, five exploring waste treatment technology innovations and one exploring integrated MSW management, to quantitatively predict potentials of GHG mitigation for Tianjin. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis is used to investigate the influence of landfill gas (LFG) collection efficiency, recycling rate and methodological choice, especially allocation, on the outcomes. The results show GHG emissions from Tianjin's MSW management system amount to 467.34 Mg CO2 eq. per year, based on the treatment of MSW collected in the central districts in 2006, and the key issue is LFG released. The integrated MSW management scenario, combining different improvement options, shows the highest GHG mitigation potential. Given the limited financial support and the current waste management practice in Tianjin, LFG utilization scenario would be the preferred choice. The sensitivity analysis of recycling rate shows an approximately linear relation of inverse proportion between recycling rate and total GHG emissions. Kitchen waste composting makes a considerable contribution to total GHG emissions reduction. Allocation choices result in differences in total quantitative outcomes, but preference orders and contributions analysis are found to be robust, suggesting LCA can support decision making. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) allows the estimation of the environmental impacts of a process or product. Those environmental impacts depend on the efficiency with which operations are carried out. In the case that LCA data are available for multiple similar installations, their respective operational performances can be benchmarked and links between operational efficiency and environmental impacts can be established. In this paper, this possibility is illustrated with a case study on LCA of mussel cultivation in rafts. For each site (raft) both its inputs consumption and mussel production are known. A separate LCA of each site has been performed and its corresponding environmental impacts have been estimated. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) on the input/output data allows computing the relative efficiency of each mussel raft and setting appropriate efficiency targets. The DEA targets represent virtual cultivation sites, which consume less input and/or produce more output. The performance of an LCA study for each of these virtual cultivation sites and the comparison between their environmental impacts are used to estimate the environmental impacts consequences of operational inefficiencies. This direct link can help to convince the managers and operators of the cultivation sites of the double dividend of reducing inputs consumption and achieve operational efficiency: lower costs and lower environmental impacts. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Associated with the tremendous prosperity in world electronic information and telecommunication industry, there continues to be an increasing awareness of the environmental impacts related to the accelerating mass production, electricity use, and waste management of electronic and electric products (e-products). China's importance as both a consumer and supplier of e-products has grown at an unprecedented pace in recent decade. Hence, this paper aims to describe the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental performance of Chinese e-products from a global level. A desktop personal computer system has been selected to carry out a detailed and modular LCA which follows the ISO 14040 series. The LCA is constructed by SimaPro, software version 7.0 and expressed with the Eco-indicator'99 life cycle impact assessment method. For a sensitivity analysis of the overall LCA results, the so-called CML method is used in order to estimate the influence of the choice of the assessment method on the result Life cycle inventory information is complied by ecoinvent 1.3 databases, combined with literature and field investigations on the present Chinese situation. The established LCA study shows that that the manufacturing and the use of such devices are of the highest environmental importance. In the manufacturing of such devices, the integrated circuits (Is) and the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) are those parts contributing most to the impact. As no other aspects are taken into account during the use phase, the impact is due to the way how the electricity is produced. The final process steps - i.e. the end of life phase - lead to a clear environmental benefit if a formal and modem, up-to-date technical system is assumed, like here in this study. Crown Copyright (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental impacts of energy use can impose large costs on society. We quantify and monetize the life-cycle climate-change and health effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions from gasoline, corn ethanol, and cellulosic ethanol. For each billion ethanol-equivalent gallons of fuel produced and combusted in the US, the combined climate-change and health costs are $469 million for gasoline, $472-952 million for corn ethanol depending on biorefinery heat source ( natural gas, corn stover, or coal) and technology, but only $123-208 million for cellulosic ethanol depending on feedstock ( prairie biomass, Mis-canthus, corn stover, or switchgrass). Moreover, a geographically explicit life-cycle analysis that tracks PM2.5 emissions and exposure relative to U. S. population shows regional shifts in health costs dependent on fuel production systems. Because cellulosic ethanol can offer health benefits from PM2.5 reduction that are of comparable importance to its climate-change benefits from GHG reduction, a shift from gasoline to cellulosic ethanol has greater advantages than previously recognized. These advantages are critically dependent on the source of land used to produce biomass for biofuels, on the magnitude of any indirect land use that may result, and on other as yet unmeasured environmental impacts of biofuels.Until recently, agricultural production was optimised almost exclusively for profit but now farming is under pressure to meet environmental targets, A method is presented and applied for optimising the sustainability of agricultural production system in terms of both economics and the environment. Components of the agricultural production chain are analysed using environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) and a financial value attributed to the resources consumed and burden imposed on the environment by agriculture, as well as to the products. The sum of the Outputs is weighed against the inputs and the system considered sustainable if the value of the outputs exceeds those of the inputs. If this ratio is plotted against the sum of inputs for all levels of input, a diminishing returns curve should result and the optimum level of sustainability is located at the maximum of the curve. Data were taken from standard economic almanacs and from published LCA reports on the extent of consumption and environmental burdens resulting from firming in the UK. Land-use is Valued using the concept of ecosystem services. Our analysis suggests that agricultural systems ire sustainable at rates of production close to current levels practiced in the UK. Extensification of farming, which is thought to favour non-food ecosystem services, requires more land to produce the same amount of food. The loss of ecosystem services hitherto provided by natural land brought into production is greater than that which can be provided by land now under extensive farming. This loss of ecosystem service is large in comparison to the benefit of a reduction in emission of nutrients and pesticides. However, food production is essential, so the coupling of subsidies that represent a relatively large component of the economic output in EU farming, with measures to reduce pollution are well-aimed. Measures to ensure that as little extra land is brought into production as possible or that marginal land is allowed to revert to nature would seem to be equally well-aimed, even if this required more intensive use of productive areas. We conclude that current arable farming in the EU is sustainable with either realistic prices for products or some degree of subsidy and that productivity per unit area of land and greenhouse gas emission (subsuming primary energy consumption) are the most important pressures on the sustainability of farming. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a consequence of current energy and climate policies, several regional and federal measures are being implemented in Belgium to encourage the utilization of biofuels for automotive applications. The use of biomass for power and/or heat production also gets growing support through CHP and/or CO2 certificates and most probably through new upcoming European directives. As a result, many investors, policy makers and energy companies are investigating these so-called biomass routes and there is definitely a need to gain more insight in this complex matter. This paper presents an analysis and comparison of the most promising options for utilizing the limited biomass resources in Belgium. To allow for a systematic comparison, a new method called System Perturbation Analysis (SPA) was developed. SPA differs from a classical Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) mainly because it looks to geographical system balances of resources and the resulting effects, rather than comparing well-to-wheel trajectories. Therefore SPA is able to identify the best usage of limited resources such as hectares, wood waste or imports, in terms of fossil energy savings or GHG emissions within a given system (in casu: Belgium). Comparative results of such a SPA assessment are presented and discussed in this paper, including the use of wood for transport, heat and power applications. All the considered biofuel scenarios have positive energy and CO(2)eq balances. The use of wood appears as a good choice in terms of efficiency, CO2 abatement and surface requirements. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Under the impression of an increasing demand for sustainability thinking in the building and construction sector the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is constantly gaining relevance. LCA is a method to quantify and assess the environmental impacts of technical systems - in the building and construction sector these could be both, building products or complete buildings - over their entire life cycle. In the construction sector, LCAs of building products have been well established, while LCAs of entire buildings are just now becoming more common. The German certificate for sustainable buildings strongly promotes this development by including Life Cycle Thinking into the rating of the sustainability of buildings, Due to this development, planners and other stakeholders in the construction industry have to face the necessity of life cycle based environmental optimization of a building already during the planning phase of the building. With the cooperation of LCA experts and experts in the field of assistance in the planning and construction process, dedicated and feasible solutions for this task can be developed. This article provides an overview on LCA in the building and construction sector and presents a possible approach to the question of planning-integrated environmental optimization of buildings.The effects of five different biomass species and their chemical composition on the overall process efficiency and economic performance considering feedstock availability and feedstock costs to manufacture ethanol from lignocellulose were studied. First is a comparison of ethanol production and excess electricity generated between different biomass species. Results show that, at the same feedstock rate of 2000 Mg day(-1), aspen wood has larger ethanol production than switchgrass, hybrid poplar and corn stover, while the excess electricity generated is as follows in increasing order: aspen < corn stover < hybrid poplar/switchgrass. Second, our results show that the ethanol production is largely linear with holocellulose (cellulose plus hemicellulose) composition of the various biomass species. However, the relationship between excess electricity generated and non-holocellulose combustible component is nonlinear. Last, on environmental performance, it is found that the water losses per unit ethanol production are in the following order: aspen wood < corn stover < hybrid poplar < switchgrass. While corn stover is a potential feedstock to produce cellulosic ethanol with the lowest ethanol production cost at the present time, hybrid poplar and switchgrass are the two promising future energy crops. The effects of plant size analysis showed that the estimated feedstock delivered costs, ethanol production, excess electricity generated and solid and gaseous waste emissions all increase with plant size for the various biomass species. The ethanol production costs decrease with the increase in plant size with optimal plant sizes for corn stover in the range from 2000 dry Mg day(-1) to 4000 dry Mg day(-1). (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the most challenging issues presently facing policymakers and public administrators in Italy concerns what to do with waste materials from building dismantling activities and to understand whether, and to what extent, the ever-increasing quantity of demolition waste can replace virgin materials. The paper presents the results from a research programme that was focused on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of a residential building, located in Turin, which was demolished in 2004 by controlled blasting. A detailed LCA model was set-up, based on field measured data from an urban area under demolition and re-design, paying attention to the end-of-life phase and supplying actual data on demolition and rubble recycling. The results have demonstrated that, while building waste recycling is economically feasible and profitable, it is also sustainable from the energetic and environmental point of view. Compared to the environmental burdens associated with the materials embodied in the building shell, the recycling potential is 29% and 18% in terms of life cycle energy and greenhouse emissions, respectively. The recycling potential of the main building materials was made available in order to address future demolition projects and supply basic knowledge in the design for dismantling field. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) between three different cheese packages (P1: completely polypropylene (PP), P2: tin and polyethylene (PE), and P3: carton and PE) has been carried out for the production, distribution and waste disposal (100% landfill) phase. A package for 1 kg of cheese was selected as the functional unit. SimaPro7 software (PReConsultants, The Netherlands) was used for the LCA study. The EcoIndicator 99 method was selected for comparison of the packages. The comparisons show that the total environmental performance of the cheese package types in order from worst to best is P2, P1, and P3. This conclusion was supported by a sensitivity analysis, which was conducted by using different impact assessment methods.In this study, we used Argonne National Laboratory's Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model to assess the life-cycle energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impacts of four soybean-derived fuels: biodiesel fuel produced via transesterification, two renewable diesel fuels (I and II) produced from different hydrogenation processes, and renewable gasoline produced from catalytic cracking. Five approaches were employed to allocate the coproducts: a displacement approach; two allocation approaches, one based on the energy value and the other based on the market value; and two hybrid approaches that integrated the displacement and allocation methods. The relative rankings of soybean-based fuels in terms of energy and environmental impacts were different under the different approaches, and the reasons were analyzed. Results from the five allocation approaches showed that although the production and combustion of soybean-based fuels might increase total energy use, they could have significant benefits in reducing fossil energy use (>52%), petroleum use (>88%), and GHG emissions (>57%) relative to petroleum fuels. This study emphasized the importance of the methods used to deal with coproduct issues and provided a comprehensive solution for conducting a life-cycle assessment of fuel pathways with multiple coproducts.One potentially significant impact of growing biofuel crops will be the sequestration or release of carbon (C) in soil. Soil organic carbon (SOC) represents an important C sink in the lifecycle C balances of biofuels and strongly influences soil quality. We assembled and analyzed published estimates of SOC change following conversion of natural or agricultural land to biofuel crops of corn with residue harvest, sugarcane, Miscanthus x giganteus, switchgrass, or restored prairie. We estimated SOC losses associated with land conversion and rates of change in SOC over time by regressing net change in SOC relative to a control against age since establishment year. Conversion of uncultivated land to biofuel agriculture resulted in significant SOC losses - an effect that was most pronounced when native land was converted to sugarcane agriculture. Corn residue harvest (at 25-100% removal) consistently resulted in SOC losses averaging 3-8 Mg ha(-1) in the top 30 cm, whereas SOC accumulated under all four perennial grasses, with SOC accumulation rates averaging <1 Mg ha(-1)yr(-1) in the top 30 cm. More intensive harvests led to decreased C gains or increased C losses - an effect that was particularly clear for residue harvest in corn. Direct or indirect conversion of previously uncultivated land for biofuel agriculture will result in SOC losses that counteract the benefits of fossil fuel displacement. Additionally, SOC losses under corn residue harvest imply that its potential to offset C emissions may be overestimated, whereas SOC sequestration under perennial grasses represents an additional benefit that has rarely been accounted for in life cycle analyses of biofuels.Decomposition of CH(4) (natural gas) is one of the alternatives under study to achieve the sustainable production of hydrogen. No CO(2) or other greenhouse gases emissions are produced in this route and carbon is obtained as a solid co-product at the end of the reaction (CH(4) reversible arrow C + 2H(2)). This process can be thermally or catalytically conducted and recent studies have demonstrated that the carbon obtained in the reaction can also show catalytic activity. In this work, thermal and autocatalytic decomposition of methane were studied and compared with the steam reforming with and without CO(2) capture and storage from an environmental point of view, using life cycle assessment (LCA) tools. As well, different energetic scenarios were included in the study. The selected functional unit was 1 Nm(3) of hydrogen and the LCA was focused on material and raw materials acquisition and manufacturing stages. The assessment was carried out with SimaPro 7.1 software by using Eco-indicator 95 method. Results showed that autocatalytic decomposition is the most environmental-friendly process for hydrogen production since presented the lowest total environmental impact and CO(2) emissions. Also, steam reforming with CO(2) capture and storage led to lower CO(2) emissions but higher total environmental impact than conventional steam reforming. (C) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the last two decades, sustainable consumption has become one of the most important issues in global sustainable development. Rapid economic development in China has greatly improved people's living standards, but has also seriously damaged the environment. In this paper, material flow analysis and life-cycle assessment methods were used to analyze environmental consumption patterns of Chinese urban households. Results show that the total household environmental impact (HEI) increased nearly four fold, increasing from 1.85 in the environmental potential index (EPI) in 1985 to 6.40 EPI in 2000. In 1985 and 1990, more than 80% of HEI came from food and housing consumption behaviors. In 2000, transport and housing consumption behaviors have become the main sources of HEI. Climate, economic development, household income. family size, and urbanization rate are main driving forces of household environmental impacts. The increasing consumption demand in the next two decades and its environmental implications are discussed in the last part of this paper.This study explores a model (MIKADO) to analyse scenarios for the reduction of the environmental impact of an aluminium die casting plant. Our model calculates the potential to reduce emissions, and the costs associated with implementation of reduction options. In an earlier paper [Neto, B., Kroeze, C., Hordijk, L., Costa, C., 2008. Modelling the environmental impact Of all aluminium pressure die casting company and options for control. Environmental Modelling & Software 23 (2) 147-168] we included the model description and explored the model by applying it to a plant in which no reduction options are assumed to be implemented (so-called zero case, reflecting the current practice in the plant). Here, we perform a systematic analysis of reduction options. We analysed seven types of reduction strategies, assuming the simultaneous implementation of different reduction options. These strategies are analysed with respect to their potential to reduce emissions, environmental impact and costs associated with the implementation of options. These strategies were found to differ largely in their potential to reduce the environmental impact of the plant (10-87%), as well as in the costs associated with the implementation of options (-268 to +277 k(sic)/ year). We were able to define I I strategies, reducing the overall environmental impact by more than 50%. Of these, two have net negative costs, indicating that the company may in fact earn money through their implementation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All fights reserved.A water footprint (WF) measures the total water consumed by a nation, business or individual by calculating the total water used during the production of goods and services. This paper extends the existing methods for WF to more localised levels for crops grown partly in open systems and partly in plastic-covered houses with multi-seasonal harvesting, such as the horticulture industry in Spain. This improvement makes it possible to visualise the links of EU tomato consumption to precise production sites in Spain and opens a debate to the usefulness of such findings. This paper also compares existing ecological methodologies with WF and argues that both life cycle analysis (LCA) and ecological footprint (EF) models could benefit from WF methods. Our results show that the EU consumes 957,000 tons of Spanish fresh tomatoes annually, which evaporates 71 Mm(3)/yr of water and would require 7 Mm(3)/yr of water to dilute leached nitrates in Spain. In Spain, tomato production alone evaporates 297 Mm(3)/yr and pollutes 29 Mm(3)/yr of freshwater. Depending upon the local agro-climatic character, status of water resources, total tomato production volumes and production system, the impact of EU consumption of fresh tomatoes on Spanish freshwater is very location specific. The authors suggest that business now seek to report and address negative impacts on the environment. WF opens the door to complex water relationships and provides vital information for policy actors, business leaders, regulators and managers to their draw, dependence and responsibilities on this increasingly scarce resource. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Slurry management is a central topic in the agronomic and environmental analysis of intensive livestock production systems. The objective of this study is to compare the environmental performance of two scenarios of collective slurry management for the disposal of excess nitrogen from animal manure. The scenarios are the transfer of slurry and its injection to crop land, and the treatment of slurry in a collective biological treatment station. The study is based on a real case in the West of France, where a group of farmers is developing a collective plan for the disposal of almost 7000 m(3) of excess pig slurry. The evaluation is carried out by Life Cycle Assessment, where emissions and resource consumption are quantified and aggregated into four environmental impact categories: eutrophication, acidification, climate change, and non-renewable energy use. Ammonia emitted is the most important contributor to acidification and eutrophication, while methane contributes most to climate change. Both ammonia and methane are mostly emitted during the storage of slurry and, in the case of the treatment scenario, also during composting the solid fraction of the slurry. The two management strategies are similar with respect to climate change, whereas eutrophication and acidification are twice as large for treatment relative to transfer. Electricity needed for the treatment process is the main contributor to non-renewable energy use for the treatment scenario, while the transfer scenario represents a net energy saving, as energy saved by the reduction of mineral fertiliser use more than compensates for the energy needed for transport and injection of slurry. The overall environmental performance of transfer is better than that of treatment, as it involves less acidification, eutrophication and non-renewable energy use. The method employed and the results obtained in this study can provide elements for a transparent discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of contrasting excess slurry management scenarios as well as the identification of the main aspects determining their environmental performance. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A key requirement for those in industry and elsewhere who wish to reduce the environmental impact of a product is to develop priorities for action. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to identify such priorities but can be misleading. This article draws attention to two effects that can occur when the system boundary for a product LCA is not defined correctly. We illustrate the "washing machine effect" by showing that in separate life cycle studies of clothing, detergents, and washing machines, the use of energy is dominated by operation of the washing machine. All three studies prioritize the use phase for action, but in an aggregated study, double counting of the use-phase impact occurs. We demonstrate the "inverse washing machine effect" with an example related to energy used in transport. We show that some activities that are significant on a cumulative basis consistently fall outside the chosen system boundary for individual products. A consequence is that when LCA studies are used for prioritization, they are in danger of overemphasizing the use-phase impacts and overlooking the impacts from indirect activities. These effects, which are broadly understood by LCA developers, appear not to be understood properly by those who use LCA to direct priorities for action. Therefore, practitioners should be wary of using LCA for prioritizing action, and LCA guidance documents should reflect this caution.Corn-ethanol production is expanding rapidly with the adoption of improved technologies to increase energy efficiency and profitability in crop production, ethanol conversion, and coproduct use. Life cycle assessment can evaluate the impact of these changes on environmental performance metrics. To this end, we analyzed the life cycles of corn-ethanol systems accounting for the majority of U.S. capacity to estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy efficiencies on the basis of updated values for crop management and yields, biorefinery operation, and coproduct utilization. Direct-effect GHG emissions were estimated to be equivalent to a 48% to 59% reduction compared to gasoline, a twofold to threefold greater reduction than reported in previous studies. Ethanol-to-petroleum output/input ratios ranged from 10:1 to 13:1 but could be increased to 19:1 if farmers adopted high-yield progressive crop and soil management practices. An advanced closed-loop biorefinery with anaerobic digestion reduced GHG emissions by 67% and increased the net energy ratio to 2.2, from 1.5 to 1.8 for the most common systems. Such improved technologies have the potential to move corn-ethanol closer to the hypothetical performance of cellulosic biofuels. Likewise, the larger GHG reductions estimated in this study allow a greater buffer for inclusion of indirect-effect land-use change emissions while still meeting regulatory GHG reduction targets. These results suggest that corn-ethanol systems have substantially greater potential to mitigate GHG emissions and reduce dependence on imported petroleum for transportation fuels than reported previously.Life Cycle Assessment has been used to compare different scenarios involving wastewater reuse, with special focus on toxicity-related impact categories. The study is based on bench-scale experiments applying ozone and ozone in combination with hydrogen peroxide to a wastewater effluent from a Spanish sewage treatment plant. Two alternative characterisation. models have been used to account for toxicity of chemical substances, namely USES-LCA and EDIP97. Four alternative scenarios have been assessed: wastewater discharge plus desalination supply, wastewater reuse without tertiary treatment, wastewater reuse after applying a tertiary treatment consisting on ozonation, and wastewater reuse after applying ozonation in combination with hydrogen peroxide. The results highlight the importance of including wastewater pollutants in LCA of wastewater systems assessing toxicity, since the contribution of wastewater pollutants to the overall toxicity scores in this case study can be above 90%. Key pollutants here are not only heavy metals and other priority pollutants, but also non-regulated pollutants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Wastewater reuse after applying any of the tertiary treatments considered appears as the best choice from an ecotoxicity perspective. As for human toxicity, differences between scenarios are smaller, and taking into account the experimental and modelling uncertainty, the benefits of tertiary treatment are not so clear. From a global warming potential perspective, tertiary treatments involve a potential 85% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions when compared with desalination. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment for sewage sludge treatment was carried out by estimating the environmental and economic impacts of the six alternative scenarios most often used in Japan: dewatering, composting, drying, incineration, incinerated ash melting and dewatered sludge melting, each with or without digestion. Three end-of-life treatments were also studied: landfilling, agricultural application and building material application. The results demonstrate that sewage sludge digestion can reduce the environmental load and cost through reduced dry matter volume. The global warming potential (GWP) generated from incineration and melting processes can be significantly reduced through the reuse of waste heat for electricity and/or heat generation. Equipment production in scenarios except dewatering has an important effect oil GWP, whereas the contribution of construction is negligible. In addition, the results show that the dewatering scenario has the highest impact on land use and cost, the drying scenario has the highest impact on GWP and acidification, and the incinerated ash melting scenario has the highest impact on human toxicity due to re-emissions of heavy metals from incinerated ash in the melting unit process. 017 the contrary, the dewatering, composting and incineration scenarios generate the lowest impact on human toxicity, land use and acidification, respectively, and the incinerated ash melting scenario has the lowest impact on GWP and cost. Heavy metals released from atmospheric effluents generated the highest human toxicity impact, with the effect of dioxin emissions being significantly lower. This study proved that the dewatered sludge melting scenario is an environmentally optimal and economically affordable method. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents research concerning the environmental analysis of the selective collection management of municipal solid waste. The main goal of this study is to quantify and to compare, by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the potential environmental impacts of three selective collection systems modelled on densely populated urban areas. These systems are: the mobile pneumatic, the multi-container and the door-to-door. Impact assessment method based on CML 2 baseline 2000 is applied to the different systems. The study separates and analyzes the collection systems in substages: two urban substages and one inter-city substage. At the urban level, the multi-container system has the least environmental impact of all systems. The mobile pneumatic system has greater environmental impacts in terms of global warming, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, acidification and eutrophication. In this system, the pipes and the pneumatic transport have the greatest impacts. The door-to-door system has a greatest environmental impact in terms of abiotic depletion, ozone layer depletion and human toxicity. An overall evaluation of the three substages, with a sensitivity analysis, indicates that the mobile pneumatic system at an inter-city distance of 20 km shows the greatest environmental impacts and the greatest energy demand. Inter-city transport is key; the results show that from an inter-city distance of 11 km onwards, this becomes the substage which most contributes to global warming impact and energy demand, in all the systems. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This life cycle assessment study analyses material and energy recovery within integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems, and, in particular, the recovery of the source-separated materials (packaging and organic waste) and the energy recovery from the residual waste. The recovery of materials and energy are analysed together, with the final aim to evaluate possible optimum levels of source-separated collection that lead to the most favourable energetic and environmental results; this method allows identification of an optimum configuration of the MSW management system. The results show that the optimum level of source-separated collection is about 60%, when all the materials are recovered with high efficiency; it decreases to about 50%, when the 60% level is reached as a result of a very high recovery efficiency for organic fractions at the expense of the packaging materials, or when this implies an appreciable reduction of the quality of collected materials. The optimum MSW management system is thus characterized by source-separated collection levels as included in the above indicated range, with subsequent recycling of the separated materials and energy recovery of the residual waste in a large-scale incinerator operating in combined heat and power mode. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) is the dominant tree species in the Canadian province of Quebec's boreal ecosystem, particularly in the black spruce-feathermoss (BSFM) domain (between the 49th and the 52nd parallels). While black spruce is generally well adapted to regenerate after wildfires, regeneration failure can sometimes occur, resulting in the irreversible conversion of closed-crown BSFM to open black spruce-lichen woodlands (OW). With OWs representing approximately 7% (1.6 M ha) of Quebec's BSFM domain, the afforestation of OWs carries significant theoretical potential for carbon (C) sequestration, which has not yet been evaluated. The main objectives of the study were then: (i) to estimate the theoretical C balance of OW afforestation within the closed-crown BSFM domain in Quebec's boreal forest; (ii) to calculate, using the life cycle analysis (LCA) method, all the GHG emissions related to black spruce OW afforestation in the closed-crown BSFM domain of Quebec. The CO2FIX v. 3.1 model was used to calculate the biological C balance between the baseline (natural OW of site index 9 at age 50) and afforestation (black spruce plantation of site index 6 at age 25) scenarios, using the best estimates available for all five recommended C compartments (aboveground biomass, belowground biomass, litter, deadwood, and soil). The simulation revealed a biological C balance of 77.0 t C ha(-1), 70 years following afforestation, for an average net sequestration rate of 1.1 t C ha(-1) year(-1). Biological C balance only turns positive after 27 years. When integrating the uncertainties related to both the plantation growth yield and the wildfire disturbance, the average sequestration rate varies between 0.2 and 1.9 t C ha(-1) year(-1). GHG emissions are 1.3 t CO(2) equiv. ha(-1) for all afforestation-related operations, which is less than 0.5% of the biological C balance after 70 years. Thus, GHG emissions do not significantly affect the net C balance of the afforestation project simulated. Several recommendations are made, mostly centered on the factors influencing the growth rate of carbon stocks and the impact of natural disturbances, to minimize the range of uncertainties associated to the sequestration potential and maximize the mitigation benefits of an OW afforestation project. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Currently, hydrogen is primarily used in the chemical industry, but in the near future it will become a significant fuel. There are many processes for hydrogen production. This paper reviews the technologies related to hydrogen production from both fossil and renewable biomass resources including reforming (steam, partial oxidation, autothermal, plasma, and aqueous phase) and pyrolysis. In addition, electrolysis and other methods for generating hydrogen from water, hydrogen storage related approaches, and hydrogen purification methods such as desulfurization and water-gas-shift are discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the new economic context the long term success of any organization is built not only on profits and profitability but also on its contribution to the future of people and the future of the planet. Being supply chains a key cornerstone in any organization the consideration of sustainability at the supply chain level is recognized as an emerging area that needs to be studied in a systematic way. The concept of sustainable supply chain is raising both in the industry and academic communities and studies have been reported on this new supply chain management concept. An overview of some of these works is performed along this paper and some major issues that should form a future research agenda on the area are identified.The interest in renewable fuels such as bioethanol has significantly increased in the last years all over the world. In this work, a decision-support tool based on a mixed integer linear model for the design of sugarcane supply chains (SC) is developed. The approach considers the minimization of the total SC costs and environmental impact, which is determined according to the Life-Cycle Assessment principles. The solution is a set of Pareto optimal alternatives, i.e. SC configurations with associated strategic planning decisions. The capabilities of the proposed framework are illustrated through a case-study designed on the basis of the current situation in Argentina.This study presents a set of models of activity and information infrastructure required for practical risk-based process design. In this process design, local risk and global impact are evaluated and interpreted comprehensively by integrating risk assessment (RA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). The type-zero method of Integrated DEFinition language, or IDEF0 and the Unified Modeling Language for information system, or UML, were applied for enabling systematic and effective definitions of requirements for process designers and supporting information infrastructure. In this study, a case study is performed on metal cleaning process, where various chemical substances have been utilized. With the description of developed IDEF0 and UML models, risk-based process design involving on-site engineers was proposed.It becomes necessary the standardization of environmental sustainability indicators for energy conversion systems as well as the measurement of the impact of their emissions on the environment. The exergy concept has been evaluated as a useful tool for this purpose. It is based on thermodynamic criteria and reveals the transformation capacity of a given energy carrier in the environment and the consumption and depletion flows of the useful resources available on nature. Natural and artificial systems are supported by energy useful potential (exergy) and the evaluation of this exergy consumption in relation to natural resources is an indication of process sustainability. The aim of this work is review the environmental sustainability concepts from the perspective of exergy analysis, show the contribution of exergy to the Life Cycle Analysis and clarify the relations between exergy and environmental impacts measurements. In the final section, we illustrate with two real industrial examples.This work proposes a spatially explicit modeling framework developed for the strategic design of biomass-based fuel supply networks. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is formulated and solved for the multi-objective optimization of the whole supply network in terms of both operating costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The economics are assessed by means of Supply Chain Analysis (SCA) techniques. The environmental performance is evaluated in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, by adopting a Well-to-Tank (WTT) approach. The framework capabilities in steering the strategic design path are assessed through a real-world case study.New Zealand's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol requires agriculture, including dairy farming, to reduce current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by about 20% by 2012. This modelling exercise explored the cumulative impact of dairy management decisions on GHG emissions and profitability at the farm level. The objective was to maintain production, but reduce GHG emissions per unit of land and product. A recent survey (Groundwork Associates; Hamilton, New Zealand) collated the views of experts regarding available technologies for GHG mitigation on farm. This, together with performance indicators for dairy farms obtained from DairyBase (DairyNZ), formed the basis for the exercise (Figure 1). A farm scale computer model (DairyNZ's Whole Farm Model) with a mechanistic cow model (Molly) was used to model an average, all-pasture Waikato farm over different climate years. A mitigation strategy based on reduced milker replacement rates was then added to this baseline farm and modelled over the same years. Three more strategies were added, including improved cow efficiency (higher genetic merit), improved pasture management (better pasture quality), and home-grown maize silage (increased total yield and reduced N intake), and modelled to predict milk production, intakes, methane, urinary-N, and operational profit. Profit was calculated from 2006/07 economic data, where milksolids payout was $4.09/kg. The Overseer (R) nutrient budget model was used with these scenarios and two more strategies added: standing on loafing pads during wet conditions and nitrification inhibitors. Overseer (R) predicted total GHG emissions in CO(2) equivalents and included some life cycle analysis of emissions from fertiliser manufacturing, fuel and electricity generation. The simulations suggest an implementation of these strategies could decrease GHG emissions by 27-32% while increasing profitability by up to $821/ha/annum on a Waikato dairy farm. Success requires production to be maintained by increasing the efficiency of milk production from forage. This may be achieved by a combination of high (but realistic) reproductive performance leading to low involuntary culling, using crossbred cows with high genetic merit producing 430 kg milksolids/yr, and pasture management to increase average pasture and silage quality by 1 MJ ME/kg Dry Matter. These efficiencies enable stocking rate to be reduced from 3 to 2.3 cows/ha. Nitrogen from fertilisers would be reduced to less than 50 kg/ha/yr and include "best practice" application of nitrification inhibitors. Considerable GHG mitigation may be achieved by applying optimal animal management to maximise efficiency, minimise wastage and target N fertiliser use.An integrated approach of product development, process design and operation analysis is presented. A kilo-plant was designed and set up as a research platform for fine and specialties chemicals manufacture in kilogram-scale batch process. The investigation emphasizes the issues concerning product synthesis, process operation, and product quality control, as well as process monitoring and operation optimization. It provides a systematic approach of responding to rapid changes in the marketplace demands to new green products.This work addresses the design of supply chains (SC) for sugar/ethanol production with economic and environmental concerns. The design task is formulated as a bi-criterion mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that simultaneously minimizes the total cost of the network and its environmental performance over the entire life cycle of the product (i.e., sugar and ethanol). The capabilities of our approach are highlighted through a case study based on a real scenario, for which a set of Pareto optimal alternatives is calculated.This paper proposes a systematic approach for the design of environmentally conscious absorption cooling systems. The method presented relies on the development of a mathematical formulation that simultaneously accounts for the minimization of total cost and environmental impact at the design stage. The latter criterion is measured by the Eco-Indicator 99 methodology, which follows the principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The design task is formulated as a bi-criteria nonlinear programming (NLP) problem, the solution of which is defined by a set of Pareto points that represent the optimal trade-off between the two objective functions. The capabilities of the proposed method are illustrated in a case study problem that addresses the design of a typical absorption cooling system.This paper addresses the analysis of existing metrics of sustainable development for system application on the lower layers of hierarchy for enterprise management. Sustainable resource consumption coefficient is proposed which characterizes the ability of a system to regenerate resources used and compensate resources taken earlier. Sustainable resource consumption coefficient is obtained on the basis of data collecting within life cycle inventory that is second stage of life cycle assessment. Environment repairing stage is added to account for renewable resources regeneration. The approach was tested against the problems of the assessment of alternative sewerage systems.This study presents an activity model for sustainable process design with comprehensive assessment integrating risk assessment (RA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). The type-zero method of Integrated DEFinition language, or IDEF0 and the Unified Modeling Language for information system, or UML, were applied for enabling systematic and effective development of procedure and information infrastructure of such comprehensive assessment in process design. Integration of different assessment can be fulfilled by these modeling. In this study, to demonstrate the proposed model, a case study is performed on metal cleaning process where various chemical substances have been utilized.Abound Solar (formerly AVA Solar) is successfully commercializing a state-of-the-art CdTe PV manufacturing process. Formed in 2007, Abound Solar has ramped to large-scale manufacturing and commercial sales in 30 months. A fully automated production plant has been constructed in Longmont,, Colorado and will ultimately have a capacity of 200 MW per year. Total processing time for module fabrication (incoming glass to shipping crate) is approximately 2.5 hours. During semiconductor fabrication, glass substrates enter a single vacuum chamber where all substrate heating, semiconductor film deposition, annealing and back contact formation are performed. Processing is fully automated, performed on a conveyor and has very high materials utilization. A unique module package design has been developed to increase safety and reliability. This progress is based on 15 years of development at Colorado State University by Abound's three founders and the key support of NREL. Abound Solar demonstrated the ability to produce modules at industry leading low costs to NREL representatives including manufacturing costs below $1.00 per watt and capital equipment costs well below $1.50 per watt of annual manufacturing capacity. An independently performed life cycle analysis shows significantly reduced emissions of air pollutants and anthropogenic greenhouse gases compared to grid passed electricity and other common PV manufacturing technologies.The Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) including decommission stage of the VLS-PV system with six types of PV modules was studied in this paper. They were assumed to be installed in Gobi desert in China, where there are abundant sunshine and land area. Output electricity of the system is consumed in city by 100 km transmission line. Concerning the Energy requirement, the CIS was the smallest, and biggest energy requirement was the sc-Si. mc-Si, a-Si/sc-Si hetero junction type, thin-film tandem and CdTe were average. Especially, the energy payback time of the CIS PV module was much shorter than the others. It was approximately 1.8 years. And energy payback time of sc-Si was 2.5 years. The others were approximately 2.0 to 2.3 years. Characteristics of CO2 emissions rate were almost same, but biggest CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions rate was the thin-film hybrid PV module. CO2 emissions rate was 71 g-CO2/kWh. The mc-Si and a-Si/sc-Si hetero junction type shows lower CO2 emissions rate. It is approximately 51-53 g-CO2/kWh.Based on the practicable of function, environment compatibility and economic applicability of packaging, and using life cycle assessment (LCA), the hierarchy structure of evaluation index system was established. Then weight of items in the evaluation system was given by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation was used for rationality evaluation of packaging. Furthermore, an example was analyzed for demonstration. The results showed that using LCA in rationality evaluation of packaging could comprehensively consider evaluate environmental, economic and functional factors. It was a comprehensive evaluation index system, and could get the objective and impartial results. For the strong social significance, it could provide direction for improvement assessment with this simple and practicable method even good maneuverability, it also showed the feasibility of rationality evaluation.This paper proposes different approaches for the ecodesign of safety transformer based on optimization methods. The first approach consists in a life cycle analysis to highlight the stage of the product life that has the most considerable impact. An effective way to reduce the environmental impacts is to maximize the transformer efficiency. The second approach is to build a surrogate model of environmental impacts. This model is used jointly with economic and electromagnetic models in a multiobjective optimization to find the best trade-off between those criteria.In this paper a typical electricity distribution network for a residential area in Portugal is used in order to assess the impact of integrating different levels of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the grid and in pollutants emissions. First, the amount of vehicles that can be safely accommodated in the grid will be determined. Second, changes in pollutants emissions will be evaluated, by applying a vehicle full life cycle analysis.With the development of wind industry, influencing factors for economic operation of wind farm is attracting more and more attention. The internal and external factors during wind farm's life cycle are discussed. For external factors, wind electricity price, taxes, repayment load, tempo of wind power industry are analyzed; as to internal factors, evaluation of wind resource, site selection, feasibility study, project bidding, project design of wind farm, design and manufacture of wind power equipments, construction, operation and maintenance of wind farm are analyzed in this paper. According to the analysis, we can obtain the conclusion: the external factor, i.e. wind electricity price, taxes, repayment load, tempo of wind industry leave little selection room for wind power enterprise, as to internal factors, wind resource is the precondition, design and manufacture of wind power equipments, design and construction of wind farm are the pledge, operation and maintenance is the last stage but not the least important stage to achieve economic benefit.Stand-alone system of power production is very important for every industrial activity. Green energy initiative has various options of Power projects which includes Synthetic natural gas-Bio mass, geo-thermal, tidal, hydro, hydrogen, nuclear and Solar. Every power producing project as product has different requirement of the design in nature and its process application. The world growing urban population in the developed economies where there is a culture to consume more therefore, urban and town planners have to design inclinators as well for quick disposal of the burnable waste which has became a life line for the urban areas sustainability. Similarly, the Hydrogen power projects have a big rivalry in the alternative fuel area with the Synthetic Natural gas. Development of renewable fuel infrastructures and systems is very complex. It is up to the capacity of the design to support the main grid in the peak load situation Therefore; comprehensive analyses are required to ensure the implementation and accomplishment of the desired goals, with few unintended consequences. In this paper a comparative Life Cycle Assessment based results are presented as a Sustainable design of new energy product in the wake of current state of the global energy needs; given the fact that sluggish economy where millions of hybrid cars are expected to be on the road which will put tremendous pressure on our current power supply system. Therefore stand alone energy systems are needed to fulfill rapid growth in peak loads situations or even if possible for back up support system of the current grid capacity. As after the lake Erie's incident in north America un foreseen is possible even reliability makes us over confident. Much of the related work on impact assessment and lifecycle energy analysis has been presented by Ali-Qureshi in ASME's (MSEC-2008) and IASTED's (EME-2009). In this paper comparative analysis on the basis of LHV and HHV are presented.Service-oriented architecture is an architectural style that allows functionalities to be grouped around business processes as interoperable services. Web service compositions, as part of service-oriented architecture, have to be managed to create software services with guaranteed service levels. Situations arise where an appropriate partner service is not available or reliable. These dependability issues need to be taken into account when integrating a number of external services into a business process. With the growing awareness of environmental agenda, manufacturing enterprises are starting to internalize environmental aspects of their businesses. Reducing the environmental impact of manufacturing processes to meet local environmental regulations and to conform to evolving international standards and best practices contributes to the practice of an adaptive green manufacturing method. In such enterprise systems, the bindings among services must be defined dynamically for providing adaptive business processes for service quality. Managing the automation of web service composition is best handled using autonomic concepts. In this paper, we focus on self-adaptive process and dependability aspects of web service composition, discuss some of the research happening in this challenging field, and present our ongoing work on a dynamically evolvable (self-adaptive) and dependable green manufacturing process for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in a service-oriented context for an automotive component.Along with the rapid development of the computer industry environment, the contradiction between desktop computers and environments is increasingly prominent. The text analyze the whole life cycle of the desktop computer starting from the concept of sustainable development and the basic concept of life cycle. When finish the matrix of life cycle assessment method according to factors which make effect to environment in the design process, and then improve the design proposal to achieve the sustainable development of computer industry.With the acceleration of urbanization process and the booms in domestic infrastructure investment, the amount of civil engineering projects and infrastructures increase with years. In this context, how to lower the energy and environmental impacts of proposed project while achieving an optimization of owner's investment capitals has become a research focus with both theoretical and practical significance. Since the traditional decision-making process of construction projects solely focuses on the return of investment, this research aims to formulize a more scientific one by combining the concrete economic costs with quantitative social costs. Specific methods adopted are life-cycle costs analysis and hybrid life-cycle assessment. Result shows that the large-scale hydropower project, no matter in the aspect of life-cycle costs or in energy efficiency and environmental impact, are superior to the small-scale one.High-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs) form the basis for solid-state lighting (SSL) systems. SSL systems have the potential to reduce electricity consumption of lighting systems as they are much more efficient than current lighting technologies. One concern is that the full life-cycle energy requirements of SSL systems, including the production of the materials and LED components, may negate any savings during the use phase. As a start to estimating the life-cycle energy requirements of SSL systems, we present an estimate for the manufacturing energy consumption of high-brightness light-emitting diodes. Results are based on full-scale, research-scale, and laboratory-scale equipment energy use data, and data from logic chip production processes. Energy consumption estimates for wafer production are 15 kWh to 60 kWh (approximately 1,000 LEDs).Existing Life Cycle Assessment does not take into account the relative temporal differences in inventory data. The lack of such considerations could lead to an inaccurate analysis of impacts and to incorrect conclusions in the comparative studies of products with comparable inventories but different life cycle times. In this paper, we report on our research of the investigation of the embedded temporal differences in LCA, and propose a simple method to calculate the temporal space of the subject system for life cycle assessment. A case study is performed on VW Golf A4 Car based on previous LCA results. The temporal space of the vehicle, as estimated, is found to be approximately 11.04 years. We establish the emission pattern of CO2 along the time scale to demonstrate the effects of product life cycle durations on the LCA modeling and the inventory results. The life cycle inventory flow is discounted using a traditional economic discounting method with two discounting rates, 5% and 10%, respectively. The discounted results indicate that significant differences could be achieved on the life cycle inventory results.Corporations and institutions, including the electronics manufacturing and computer services sectors have become concerned with their impacts on climate change and are participating in carbon footprint assessment and climate management discussions. Existing carbon footprint protocols classify carbon footprint into tiered "Scopes": direct emissions as "Scope 1", emissions from direct purchased energy as "Scope 2", and all other indirect emissions as optional "Scope 3." Because Scopes I and 2 footprints are generally less than 25% of the total direct and upstream footprint for a vast majority of businesses, Scope 3 emissions should not be ignored as knowledge of them can help inform more holistic approaches to address life cycle footprint across the supply chain. This research uses input-output life cycle assessment methods to conduct a "scoping analysis" that characterizes the carbon footprint profiles of A electronics manufacturing and computer services sectors. The results show that there are significant variations in the portions of total analyzed footprint captured by each footprint Scope among this sector group. Most of the footprints for the electronics manufacturing sectors do not come from their Scope 1 emissions, but from the embodied emissions in the supplies of parts, components, chemicals, and materials. Purchases of food, air transportation, and hotel accommodation from employees traveling to customer locations are found to be the largest sources of upstream Scope 3 footprint for computer system design services sector. The results presented in this work are intended to inform footprinting entities and companies of the potential Scope 3 subcategories to focus their footprint efforts.Given the uncertain environmental, health, and safety risks for using carbon nanotubes (CNTs), it is prudent to assess the environmental attributes of nanomanufacturing processes using CNTs while in the developmental phase. This information can provide insights for development of safe, economically competitive, and environmentally responsible nanotechnologies. Environmental assessments of manufacturing two CNT applications were investigated: a CNT switch and a CNT-polymer mesh. Results indicate significant environmental impact contribution to airborne inorganics, climate change, and fossil fuels due to materials used in cleansing processes and significant electricity consumption.Sustainable building materials offer energy efficiency and environmental performance. One possible sustainable building product is insulating concrete forms (ICF). An ICF wall section consists of expanded polystyrene and concrete with polyethylene ties. One difference between a "normal" construction and ICF construction is that the forms stay in place after concrete has cured. The forms and concrete act as insulation material and have the potential for reducing energy consumption in buildings. The goal of this research is to conduct a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of the wall sections comprised of ICF and traditional wood-framed for the life cycle phases of raw materials, manufacturing, construction, use and end of life. Preliminary results comparing ICF and wood frame in the manufacturing phase for above grade construction are presented. To investigate the use phase, an energy modeling tool eQuest will be utilized, along with discussing the development of the LCA residential model.The generation and distribution of electric power is enormously important in both economic and environmental terms. However, despite the obvious importance of electricity for life cycle assessment and policy analysis, accounting for the environmental emissions associated with electricity remains an uncertain task. In this analysis we examine the different methods available for electricity greenhouse gas emissions accounting, and show that different standards, protocols, and reporting organizations can lead to considerably different estimates of emissions associated with purchased electricity. We discuss the implications of this uncertainty and list recommendations for electricity emissions accounting in the world of incomplete and uncertain information.Materials selection decisions exhibit great influence on the environmental performance of firms through their impact on processing technology, product form, and supply chain configuration. Consequently, materials dictate a product's environmental profile via the burden associated with extraction and refining, transformation from material to product, product performance characteristics during use, and potential recovery at end-of-life (EOL). While lifecycle assessment (LCA) methods provide quantitative input to a product designer's materials selection decision, LCA implementations are evolving and disparate. This work explores several analytical variations of LCA related to the allocation of recycling impacts at product EOL and the implications of these variants across a range of contexts. Stylized analyses across a range of materials are presented, focusing on materials with varying primary and secondary materials production burdens. This work illustrates that a) the application of distinct EOL allocation methods give different values of cumulative environmental impact for the same material, b) these impacts change at differing rates between the various methods, and c) these disparities can result in different rank ordering of materials preference. Characterizing this behavior over a range of parameters illustrates the potential trends in allocation method bias for or against particular materials classes.A schematic method to characterize the human health impact of toxic chemicals is presented. This schematic method uses a streamlined three-tiered hierarchy process which includes intake, toxicity and persistence of a chemical release for its impact characterization. The human health impact of a chemical is represented by its position in a two-dimensional characterization plot, which enables the benchmarking of chemicals to be easily made by comparing the relative positions of the chemicals in the characterization plot. A case study is performed on 12 toxic chemicals commonly used as solvents by the manufacturing industry. The reliability of this schematic method is checked and confirmed by comparing its benchmarked results with that of the conventional Human Toxicity Potential (HTP) method. With an explicit model structure and a visual representation, this schematic method increases the transparency of the human impact assessment and can facilitate decision-making in the material screening and benchmarking of toxic chemicals for implementation of sustainable design and manufacturing strategies.The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) has highlighted the fast depletion of ecosystem services over the past 50 years and has identified their crucial role in human wellbeing. This emphasizes the need of accounting for ecosystem goods and services in life cycle of products and processes. Despite the availability of numerous Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques, most methods only account for a handful of ecosystem services. Furthermore, methods for interpreting and aggregating these services are also needed. The framework of Ecologically-Based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) can overcome these challenges [1], and a software tool for this approach has been developed. This tool is based on the 1997 U.S. economic inputoutput model, and can account for many provisioning services, and some regulating and supporting services. The web-based Eco-LCA tool is an easy and quick way of implementing the methodology. This article highlights the key features of the Eco-LCA tool and the kind of results it can provide, via an illustrative case study.This paper uses economic value metrics to evaluate the retention of value of secondary materials and provides a framework for characterizing value throughout a material and product life-cycle. These economic value metrics are compared with analogous life cycle assessment metrics in order to determine the conditions under which economic value effectively represents environmental impact for EoL material recovery decision-makers. A comparison of these metrics using several different material types indicates that there is a strong correlation between LCA metrics and economic value metrics for most of the materials studied. However, there were a few cases in which the economic value metrics were poor indicators of the LCA metrics.Biobased fuels from renewable resources has gained high research and development priority due to national security and environmental concerns. To ensure resilience and sustainability of the nation's agricultural and fuel sectors, it is essential to evaluate the effect of recent and foreseeable environmental effects from agricultural cultivation. This study examines the environmental impacts of fertilizers practices with the aim of improving environmental profile of corn-derived biofuel. A comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCAs) is conducted to elucidate overall environmental impacts of synthetic fertilizer and organic manure. Results show that using manure fertilizers as opposed to synthetic fertilizers requires less energy, however the use of manure generates significantly more CH4, N2O, CO2, and results in more variable concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus leaching from farmlands.Renewable energy systems such as wind, solar and biomass are significantly more land intensive than traditional fossil fuels. Moreover, their environmental implications are highly geographically heterogeneous. Consequently, they present a significant challenge to existing life cycle assessment techniques. Four specific issues are identified in this paper: determining changes in land use due to increased production of renewable energy, characterizing land use impacts, understanding geographic variability in inventory data, and modeling energy distribution effects. This paper reviews the extent of recent research activity in each of these areas as it applies to wind, solar, bioenergy or life cycle assessment in general. Some areas, such as land use needed for distribution of wind or solar energy, have received little or no research activity, despite an increased level of concern in political or policy arenas. This deficiency will be addressed in a new National Science Foundation workshop planned for September 2009 in Boston MA.Understanding the total life cycle CO(2) impacts of different types of products and operations has been a subject of significant interest recently. Total life cycle impacts include not just the CO(2) generated from the manufacture of a product, but also from the product's use and from the manufacture of all the inputs that go into creating the product. In theory, understanding this total impact can help manufacturers identify means of reducing the impact and could gives consumers information that can be used as a consideration in purchase decisions. Unfortunately, there are to date no broadly accepted and consistent methods for calculating this impact. Determining the boundaries that define which inputs should be included in the assessment is a significant challenge. In addition, supply chains for manufactured products can be highly complicated, involving hundreds or thousands of individual suppliers, all of which have a large number of end customers. Few if any of these suppliers have the ability to collect energy use and CO(2) impact data in a way that breaks the impact down by product or customer. This is especially true with complex products like semiconductors, making it very difficult to allocate the CO(2) from the supply chain in a way that a customer such as Intel can estimate its portion of the impact from the manufacture of a material that is used by many other customers as well. A number of life cycle analysis studies have been completed on semiconductors and electronics in recent years. However, the term "life cycle analysis" is broad enough that a wide range of potential focus areas and specific environmental impacts can be evaluated in any given study. Some studies reviewed attempted to make comparisons between different products while others tried to identify the portion of a manufacturing process with the largest impact or the portion of a product's life cycle with the largest impact (e.g. manufacture, use, disposal, etc.). In addition, each study had a different environmental impact metric, or range of metrics that they focused on. Some focused on energy, water or raw material use, others on environmental impacts associated with pollutant discharge (e.g. acidification, eutrophication). Intel was specifically interested in quantifying the total life cycle CO(2) impact of our operations and products, including as many of the "indirect" impacts that could be quantified. We also wished to define a methodology and set of boundaries that could be useful in establishing consistent calculation of these impacts in the future. Intel had long been reporting its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions publicly, but like many companies had an incomplete understanding of scope 3 emissions. Scope 1 and 2 emissions refer to direct emissions at the facility and purchased electricity. Scope 3 emissions, according to internationally accepted protocols, are indirect sources that are not directly attributed to a company's manufacturing operations, but that are nonetheless created as a result of demands that the company's operations are creating, or the use of its products. Supply chain impacts were a specific focus due to interest from customers and others, and also because preliminary assessments suggested that this was likely to be a much larger scope 3 source than some less significant ones such as employee commute and travel. Given the large number of inputs in semiconductor manufacturing, the supply chain impact appeared to have potential to be significant. To assess this impact, data was collected quantifying the amount of input chemical and materials Intel's manufacturing operations use in a year. A project was then initiated with a third party consultant to compile information on the total CO(2) equivalent impact (including the impacts from energy required and emissions of any non-CO(2) global warming gases) to produce a fixed quantity of each substance. The data was taken from previous research on this subject from the consultant and other sources. Information was collected on more than 90% by mass of the raw material input to the manufacturing process. This was then combined with the information on material quantities to produce an estimate of the total CO(2) impact of Intel's supply chain. This paper will show the relative CO(2) impacts of the various aspects of semiconductors including manufacturing operations, product use, and various scope 3 impacts such as supply chain, logistics and employee travel. It will also present what Intel believes to be a realistic definition of boundaries for defining scope 3 impacts and procedures for performing this type of assessment. The paper will also include discussion on potential focus areas for reducing impact based on the study, and will identify remaining data gaps and areas for future study.A 'green scorecard' to identify research projects in the digital printing industry is described. The scorecard is intended to be cognizant of life cycle issues without being onerous to use, allows comparison of green 'goodness' among scenarios, provides guidelines for use, and reduces subjectivity by requiring quantified input data. The green scorecard is neither a design tool, nor a substitute for Life Cycle Assessment; rather it is a guide for assessing eco-efficiency of research concepts in the digital printing domain, and for choosing between competing 'green' project opportunities.The undergraduate program in the Materials Science and Engineering department at the University of Florida requires its junior students to take the course "Analysis of the Structure of Materials". This course provides students the opportunity to disassemble an engineered product, characterize and analyze the structure of its components, and correlate the structures with properties and processing addressing the criteria most likely used for materials selection by the manufacturers. In addition to the traditional reverse engineering approach, the students must select at least one component and re-create the life cycle of the material/component. The analysis requires collection and analysis of data from emissions, and waste generated from each step of the mining, processing, manufacturing, fabrication, distribution, use, and typical disposal of the product. The students are required to estimate product impacts on the waste stream, environment and society. The final presentation must also include recommendations from the students to create the same product in a more environmentally responsible way.This paper summarizes a modeling framework that characterizes the key underlying technologies and processes that contribute to the supply chain energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a variety of goods and services purchased by U.S. consumers. The framework couples an input-output supply chain modeling approach with "bottom-up" fuel end use models for individual IO sectors. This fuel end use modeling detail allows energy and policy analysts to better understand the underlying technologies and processes contributing to the supply chain energy and GHG "footprints" of goods and services. To illustrate the policy-relevance of this approach, a case study was conducted to estimate achievable household GHG footprint reductions associated with the adoption of best practice energy-efficient supply chain technologies.The need for sustainable development requires organizations to consider the economic, environmental, and social repercussions of their actions. While the economic effects, and increasingly the environmental consequences, of engineering design and business decisions are evaluated, little attention has been devoted to understanding the social impacts. It has been recognized that corporate decisions are linked to social sustainability indicators, and the need exists to better understand these links. This research represents a first step toward modeling the relationships between corporate decision alternatives and lower-order human needs (e.g., physiological requirements) and higher-order needs (e.g., belonging).A major problem that the United States is facing in the 21(st) century is meeting energy needs. With an ever-increasing population, a question arises: can we generate and deliver enough energy in order to meet the ever-increasing demand? Each day more and more people are using automobiles to go from place to place, but there is a single point of failure in automotive design: petroleum based fuels. Travel is dependent on this mostly foreign fuel source, and as more require it, the price goes up while supply diminishes. On July 7, 2008, T. Boone Pickens introduced the "Pickens Plan," an energy proposal to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil by one-third over the next ten years. By harnessing wind power to generate electricity, and using natural gas to power automobiles, he believes that it can revitalize a dying industry and stimulate the economy. The objective of this paper is to describe an analysis of the T. Boone Pickens energy plan. These analysis explores the feasibility of generating 20% of the nation's electricity from wind, and reducing gasoline and diesel consumption by 20% in 10 years through examining its technological requirements, economic viability, and the policy and planning issues of implementing such plan in the United States. The preliminary feasibility evaluation uses a parametric to conduct an economic payback analysis and life cycle assessment of wind turbines. Our study focuses mainly on the Midwestern area of the U.S. This region will have wind farms which will support large wind turbines to generate 20% of our electricity. A Monte Carlo integration of a probability density function was conducted to determine natural gas vehicle manufacturing and turnover time from petroleum based fuel powered automobile to natural gas powered automobiles.Building construction has an enormous and increasing impact on environment, and sustainable construction can lead to environmental protection. At the same time, the selection of green building materials is a critical point to realize sustainable construction. In this paper, considering the properties of building materials, a systematic method based on life cycle assessment (LCA) theory is put forward to analyze the green performance of construction materials. To a further step, back propagation neural network (BPNN) and GA-BP hybrid algorithm are introduced to evaluate green building materials respectively. Finally, a case study is conducted in order to verify that this research is helpful for the construction professionals in selecting green construction material.Based on the application of life cycle analysis (LCA), this paper quantifies the impact of food consumption on carbon emission during the period 1990-2006. The results showed that the carbon footprint due to food consumption is increasing. The impact of direct food consumption on carbon emission was just a small part of the life cycle of food consumption, and about 30% of carbon emission was a consequence of food transportation. Meat consumption was the most carbon-intensive food, and compared with 1990, the carbon-density of I kg of food increased by 0.52 kgC/kg. The direct impact on carbon emission for urban residents was lower than rural residents, but indirect impact was nearly twice that of rural residents; urban residents consumed more energy due to food transportation and keeping food fresh, the carbon emission related to keeping food fresh was 4 times that of rural residents. This paper provides quantitative evidence of the impact of food consumption on the environment. We suggest that the key to reducing this impact is to improve energy efficiency, especially in the transportation sector.Energy analysis, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic analysis have been utilised to study the performance of a domestic building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system on a 'whole systems basis. The energy analysis determined that the system paid back its embodied energy in just 4.5 years. Environmental LCA revealed that over the lifetime of the BIPV system the impacts from production were offset by the electricity generated (the avoided impacts) to provide a net environmental benefit. The financial analysis considered the householder's perspective, in contrast to the cost-benefit analysis, which considered a societal perspective. The results of both indicated that under current market conditions the system failed to pay back its initial investment over the 25 year lifetime. However it was predicted that with sustained market growth BIPV could become economically viable by the year 2019. If realised BIPV would offer an attractive option to assist the UK's anticipated (mandatory) zero carbon homes by the year 2016.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the principal options for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from coal-fired power plants. It involves capturing carbon dioxide from power plants, transporting it and storing it in secure places including former oil and gas fields and marine aquifers. However, the use of coal does not only contribute to the global climate change, it also has other important environmental impacts, for example: acidification, eutrophication and depletion of non-renewable resources. In order to assess whether or to what extent the introduction of CCS to coal-fired power plants will contribute to reducing these and other environmental impacts, life cycle assessment (LCA) which considers a full supply chain from resource extraction to ultimate waste management should be conducted. This paper is part of the background research for the development of a full LCA study of coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage. Through a literature review of a wide range of international studies, particular attention is given to understanding the scopes of former LCA studies and their environmental assessments. The results of the review show that, although previous LCA studies have been informative to some extent, no complete LCA has been performed yet on coal combustion power plants with CCS, with important gaps identified in terms of the consideration of parts of the supply chain, alternative technologies and potentially important impact categories. In addition to presenting the key findings from this review, this paper presents the future research strategy being applied to contribute to filling these gaps.The overall objective of integrated lifetime management of civil infrastructure is to broaden stakeholder's perspective and include maintenance, repair, rehabilitation and replacemen costs in addition to cost of design and construction, when determining best management strategies of their facilities.Nowadays, a major challenge is to use structural health monitoring concepts and methods in the general maintenance and repair frameworks of civil infrastructure to determine optimal maintenance strategies. The information obtained from monitoring can be used to reduce epistemic uncertainties and, consequently, improve the results of the life-cycle cost analysis. The primary objective of this paper is to highlight recent accomplishments in the integrated lifetime management of civil infrastructure including performance assessment based on lifetime functions or structural reliability, maintenance, monitoring, management and optimization of structural systems under uncertainty.Load testing of bridges (in one of 3 possibilities: soft, diagnostic and proof load test) may discover higher strength capacities than predicted by standard analytical assessment methods based on numerical models. This is due to hidden resisting mechanisms than in many cases analytical tools are not able to deal with. As a consequence, load testing can make a more accurate assessment of the bridge response and therefore predict longer life-time than predicted by simple calculations. At the end, this leads to an extended service life for bridges that may be posted or declared as unsafe after some years in operation due to increasing damage or traffic loading. An accurate life-cycle analysis requires an accurate estimation of the remaining service life of the bridge. In this sense, the paper shows how load testing can be used directly in the correct capacity assessment of existing bridges and how the results of the test can be included in a life-cycle cost analysis of the prospective decisions ( repair, strengthening, replacement,...).As one of the major infrastructure, the bridge consumes an enormous of materials during its life cycle, and results in significant environmental burdens. Therefore, it is an urgent need to develop an objective and effective assessment methodology. This methodology is expected to be used as a tool to evaluate and control environmental impacts of bridges. In this research, a life cycle assessment approach based on Eco-indicator99 is presented for evaluating environmental impacts of bridges from extraction of raw materials to end-of-life, while considering the damages to human health, ecosystem quality and resources caused by environmental factors. Finally, a case project is discussed in order to illustrate the assessment processes and test the effectiveness of the approach in application.The paper's theme is in methods and practice in planning a urban environment and energy. The automobile industry is the pillar industry in Jilin Province, to study the building model of automobile EIP will be beneficial to resolve the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection and realize the development of circular economy. The research is taking the theories of sustainable development and circular economy as the guiding ideology, using cleaner production, life cycle assessment, industrial metabolizeand management information system as the technological methods. Through cleaner production at the enterprise level, construction of the cco-industrial demonstration parks at regional level, the ecological industrial network will be set up in combination the physical EIPs with the virtual ones. Based on the actual situation of various areas as well as their demonstrative and leading effects, the EIPs should be distributed rationally to avoid redundant construction. To build the automobile EIP will not only hEIP to set up a resource-saving and environment-friendly society, but also establish a close correlation among the enterprises by forming the network of multi-level use of resources and energy. So it will achieve good social, economic and environmental benefits.In the present study, previous conventional life cycle inventory model was improved, disregarding the iterative calculation of transportation and etc. of the high-level environmental factor in energy upstream phase, and an algorithm for the energy upstream was put forward. Life cycle inventory analysis of energy upstream, which includes energy consumption and environmental emission involving mining, production, transportation and distribution phases, built a firm foundation for not only energy downstream phase but also the whole life cycle assessment of the energy system. The results of life cycle inventory can therefore be traced back to the initiating terminal.The United Nations, Food and Agricultural Organization [ FAO, Steinfeld, Gerber, Wassenaar, Castel, Rosales, and de Haan (2006). Livestock's Long Shadow. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] report titled Livestock's Long Shadow (LLS) stated that 18% (approximately 7100 Tg CO2-eq yr (1)) of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) are directly and indirectly related to the world's livestock. The report's statement that livestock production is responsible for a greater proportion of anthropogenic emissions than the entire global transportation sector (which emits 4000-5200 Tg CO2-eq yr(-1)) is frequently quoted in the public press [Fox News and Kroll (2009). A Tearful, Reluctant Farewell to My Favorite Food: Meat; LA Times (2007). A warming world; pollution on the hoof; livestock emissions are a leading source of greenhouse gases. One solution may be to eat less meat, Los Angeles; NY Times, Op-ed. (2009). Meat and the Planet. New York City] and continues to inform public policy. Recent estimates by the United States Environmental Protection Agency [EPA, Hockstad, Weitz (2009). Inventory of U. S. greenhouse gases and sinks: 1990-2007. Environmental Protection Agency] and the California Energy Commission [CEC-California Energy Commission (2005). Inventory of California Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990 to 2002 Update] on the impacts of livestock on climate change in the United States and California have arrived at much different GHG estimates associated with direct livestock emissions (enteric fermentation and manure), totaling at less than 3% of total anthropogenic GHG and much smaller indirect emissions compared to the global assessment. Part of the difference of the global versus national predictions is due to the significant weight that has been assigned to the category of "land-use change'' patterns related to livestock production (mainly deforestation). Furthermore, LLS attempts a life cycle assessment for global livestock production but does not use an equally holistic approach for its transportation prediction numbers. The primary focus of the present paper is to examine the relative contributions of livestock to climate change at different geographical and production scales. [Note: CO(2)equivalents (CO2-eq.) represent the total impact (radiative forcing) of GHG in the atmosphere, thereby making it possible to determine the climate change impact of one GHG versus another EPA [ EPA and Holtkamp, Irvine, John, Munds-Dry, Newland, Snodgrass, and Williams (2006). "Inventory of U. S. Green House Gases and Sinks: 1996-2006.'']. The definition of the Global Warming Potential (GWP) for a particular GHG is the ratio of heat trapped by one unit mass of the GHG to that of one unit mass of CO2 ( the GWP of CO2 is one) over a specific period of time [IPCC ( 2001). IPCC Third Assessment Climate Change 2001. A Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. The 100-year GWP for CH4 and N2O are 23 times and 296 times the GWP of CO2, respectively [IPCC ( 2001). IPCC Third Assessment Climate Change 2001. A Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. Therefore, for simplicity sake it is common practice to combine the total effects of CO2, CH4, and N2O into CO2 equivalents ( or CO2-eq).]The environmental impact of new technology is important and interesting for academic research in the field of new technology assessment. A thorough presentation of the approaches, methods and tools that have been introduced or employed in the field of technology assessment such as toxicology, life cycle assessment method (LCA), the combination of LCA and toxicology for environmental impact of new technological assessment, as well as the frame of new technological impact on the environment based on technology forecast and the application and so on is provided in the paper. Based on the reviews of the current situation, it's argued the shortage of existing research, in order to cover which, one of the mainly prospects for future research work is the scope identification in research, and establishment of assessment benchmark, and further research and empirical studies on promising methods may be applied.A process was started in the late 1990s to produce comprehensive environmental data on particular aspects of Finnish food production with the aim of analyzing the environmental impacts (at least climate change, acidification and eutrophication and some other impacts) of products and locating hot spots in production chains. A supply chain integrated life cycle assessment was carried out on fodder barley, hard cheese, oat flakes, potato flour, cream cheese potato gratin, beer, honey-marinated/sliced broiler fillet and greenhouse cucumber. Methodological improvements in assessing environmental impacts of food products were evaluated in relation to ISO 14040 and 14044 standards. Methods improved, especially regarding quality of cultivation data and previously reported data from the literature, impact assessment and calculations for assessment of leaching from agriculture. As a generic conclusion on the share of contributions of the various phases of production chains to environmental impact: agriculture was the most important phase, especially in terms of eutrophication potential. Work in food LCA methodology has provided a sound base for future development in assessing environmental impacts of food products. In the future providing more and more environmental information on products for customers and consumers is setting new challenges for research.This article addresses the design of sustainable chemical supply chains in the presence of uncertainty in the life cycle inventory associated with the network operation. The design task is mathematically formulated as a bi-criterion stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP) that simultaneously accounts for the maximization of the net present value and the minimization of the environmental impact for a given probability level. The environmental performance is measured through the Eco-indicator 99, which incorporates the recent advances made in Life Cycle Assessment. The stochastic model is converted into its deterministic equivalent by reformulating the probabilistic constraint required to calculate the environmental impact in the space of uncertain parameters. The resulting deterministic bi-criterion MINLP problem is further reformulated as a parametric MINLP, which is solved by decomposing it into two sub-problems and iterating between them. The capabilities of the proposed model and solution procedure are illustrated through two case studies for which the set of Pareto Optimal, or efficient solutions that trade-off environmental impact and profit, are calculated. These solutions provide valuable insights into the design problem and are intended to guide the decision maker towards the adoption of more sustainable design alternatives. (C) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 55: 99-121, 2009Among all the various air pollution issues, greenhouse gases are the key environmental and global concern that the world is facing today. The European Union's project on Carbon Measurement Tootkit was developed to determine the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities of products. This kind of evaluation is important for fast growing industrial nations, especially in assessing sources of alternative energy. Life cycle assessment or LCA is used to model the following fuels delivered to Singapore: foreign conventional fuel production; biofuels from palm oil grown in neighbouring countries (with 'worst' and 'best' cases of direct land use change); and biodiesel produced from used cooking oil in Thailand. The life cycle approach used in this article is similar to the method developed by the European Union's Carbon Measurement Toolkit. The case studies involve raw material production/plantation, processing and final delivery by long-distance transportation. The investigation highlights that despite being labelled as a "green" or "carbon neutral" source of renewable energy, the actual ability of biofuels (especially those made from crops) to reduce GHGs hangs delicately on several crucial factors, namely, direct land use change.Pie goal of this paper is to identify the relationship between ceramic assemblages and household population. This ethnoarchaeological study among the Gamo of southwestern Ethiopia focuses on three villages and the relationship between household population and the ceramic life cycle and vessel uselife. The life cycle analysis in combination with vessel function reveals that household population could be interpreted from vessel frequency v and volume. The non-pottery-producing village of Etello displays more correlations between house old population and ceramic assemblages than do the two pottery-producing villages of Zuza and Guyla. Furthermore, vessel function plays a principal role in the association between uselife and household population.Even if the biggest individual emissions are reduced, the total environmental impact in some areas will still rise as a consequence of the growing flow of products and the activities to which they are leading. LCA approach includes different tools for possibly implementation through process of product design and process planning by help: ISO standards 14040-series, IPPC directive, national legislative, influence of state/non-state organizations, mass media, etc. Our aim is to investigate national and ISO norms and EU/CRO legislative and how they can improve application of the LCA method in practice. It would be presented by selected LCA case studyInfrastructure is the foundation on which industrialized economies are built. As global population has grown and as economies of many regions have expanded, the quantity and scale of infrastructure has increased dramatically. Although some infrastructure is used to move people and commodities, much infrastructure is also used to control natural processes or to extract natural resources. Thus, understanding environmental change necessitates understanding the role of infrastructure in the environment. We review available inventories of infrastructure and current understanding of environmental impacts for different types of infrastructure. We also examine the current status of aging infrastructure and the potential environmental impacts and benefits of infrastructure decommissioning. Finally, we briefly review policies that have facilitated or inhibited infrastructure decommissioning or environmentally oriented modifications of infrastructure operation.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has lately emerged as a comprehensive tool for environmental management, and is also becoming increasingly important in the development of cleaner production schemes. Conducting an LCA involves collecting data on raw material and energy consumption and on waste emissions to air, water and land. Data is collected for every stage of the life cycle of the product, from mining or cultivation of the raw materials through to processing, transporting, consumption and disposal. Based on a relevant functional unit for the system under study, the collected data is aggregated and modeled into a life cycle inventory, which in turn is classified and characterized to determine the environmental impacts of the entire system. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has standardized the process for conducting LCA in their ISO 14040 series. Many companies have turned to a life-cycle approach in an attempt to properly assess the full environmental impact of their products. This paper presents an environmental life cycle analysis of chocolate produced in Ghana. The study was conducted in accordance with the international ISO procedural framework for performing and presenting LCA results. The product's life cycle stages, involving the cocoa supply chain, i.e. cocoa beans production, beans transportation and storage and the industrial processing of beans and chocolate manufacturing stages, were studied. The total environmental impacts associated with chocolate production and the relative contribution of each life cycle stage to the impacts tire presented and discussed. The functional unit on which the analysis was based is the production of 1 kg chocolate.It is undeniable that we cannot live without water. Safe and clean water supply is crucial to human life activities. It is estimated that 80 per cent of all diseases and more than a third of death in this world is caused by using contaminated water. Constant effort that started in the 1980s has brought water services and sanitation to hundreds of millions of the poor population of the world. Among the efforts are the launch of Sanitation Century and International Drinking Water supply in 1981 resulting in the Mar del Plata Action Plan used by the United Nations. But do we know that to produce clean drinking water, chemicals and electricity are needed? Life cycle assessment (LCA) has found that the chemicals and electricity generation in the drinking water production has the potential of releasing green house gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide and dinitrogen monoxide. Thus raising the dilemma between basic necessity and the issue of saving the world from the impact of climate change. The use of LCA as a tool to achieve sustainable development could detect weaknesses in any system studied. Analysis has shown that the electricity generation using natural gas fuel emits the highest green house gases such as carbon dioxide (95.26%) and methane (4.47%) while PAC contributes the lowest. This situation should be solved by using electricity generated from alternative sources such as photovoltaic and hydroelectric that emits less green house gases.The poplar bioenergy system has been analysed applying life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare its environmental performance to: Ethiopian mustard bioenergy system and natural gas. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) shows that the use of fertilizers is the highest impact in four of the 10 environmental categories, representing between 39% and 67% of the impact in them. The diesel used in transport vehicles and agricultural tractors also has a significant impact in another five of the 10 analysed categories 40-85%. The poplar bioenergy system contributes to global warming with 1-90-1.98 gCO(2)eq MJ(-1) biomass produced. The production and transport as far as the thermoelectric plant of the poplar biomass consumes 0.02 MJ of primary energy per 1 MJ of biomass stored. In comparison with Ethiopian mustard and natural gas, it reduces primary energy consumption by 83% and 89% and the greenhouse gas emission by 84% and 89%, respectively. The results of the analysis support that the poplar bioenergy system is viable from an energy balance and environmental perspective for producing energy in southern Europe, as long as it is cultivated in areas where water is available. This latter point and the better environmental performance of both crops in comparison to natural gas allows us to affirm that the combination of several crops adapted to the local agro-climatic conditions of the territory will be the most suitable strategy in Mediterranean areas that wish to reach the global energy production targets in terms of biomass established by the European Union (EU). (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This overview examines the status and trends of seafood production, and the positive and negative impacts of aquaculture on biodiversity conservation. Capture fisheries have been stabilized at about 90 million metric tons since the late 1980s, whereas aquaculture increased from 12 million metric tons in 1985 to 45 million metric tons by 2004. Aquaculture includes species at any trophic level that are grown for domestic consumption or export. Aquaculture has some positive impacts on biodiversity; for example, cultured seafood can reduce pressure on overexploited wild stocks, stocked organisms may enhance depleted stocks, aquaculture often boosts natural production and species diversity, and employment in aquaculture may replace more destructive resource uses. On the negative side, species that escape from aquaculture can become invasive in areas where they are nonnative, effluents from aquaculture can cause eutrophication, ecologically sensitive land may be converted for aquaculture use, aquaculture species may consume increasingly scarce fish meal, and aquaculture species may transmit diseases to wild fish. Most likely, aquaculture will continue to grow at significant rates through 2025, and will remain the most rapidly increasing food production system.During the last century. a great deal of research and development as well as applications has been devoted to waste. These include waste minimization and treatment, the environmental assessment of waste, minimization of environmental impact, life cycle assessment and others. The major reason for such huge efforts is that waste generation constitutes one of the major environmental problems where production industries are concerned. Until now, an increasing pressure has been put on finding methods of reusing waste. for instance through cleaner production, thus mirroring rapid changes in environmental policies. The palm oil industry is one of the leading industries in Malaysia with a yearly production of more than 13 million tons of crude palm oil and plantations covering 11% of the Malaysian land area. However, the production of such amounts of crude palm oil result in even larger amounts of palm oil mill effluent (POME), estimated at nearly three times the quantity of crude palm oil. Normally, POME is treated using end-of-pipe processes, but it is worth considering the potential value of POME prior to its treatment through introduction of a cleaner production. It is envisaged that POME can be sustainably reused as a fermentation substrate in the production of various metabolites, fertilizers and animal feeds through biotechnological advances. The present paper thus discusses various technically feasible and economically beneficial means of transforming the POME into low or preferably high value added products. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Purpose - Sustainable agriculture implies the ability of agro-ecosystems to remain productive in the long-term. It is not easy to point out unambiguously whether or not current production systems meet this sustainability demand. A priori thinking would suggest that organic crops are environmentally favourable, but, may ignore the effect of reduced productivity, which shifts the potential impact to other parts of the food provision system. The purpose of this paper is to assess the ecological sustainability of conventional and organic leek production by means of life cycle assessment (LCA). Design/methodology/approach - A cradle-to-farm gate LCA is applied, based on real farm data from two research centres. For a consistent comparison, two functional units (FU) were defined: 1ha and I kg of leek production. Findings - Assessed on an area basis, organic farming shows a more favourable environmental profile. These overall benefits are strongly reduced when the lower yields are taken into account. Related to organic farming it is therefore important that solutions are found to substantially increase the yields without increasing the environmental burden. Related to conventional fanning, important potential for environmental improvements are in optimising the farm nutrient flows, reducing pesticide use and increasing its self-supporting capacity. Research lilmitations/implications - The research is a cradle-to-farm gate LCA, future research can be expanded to comprise all phases from cradle-to-grave to get an idea of the total sustainability of our present food consumption patterns. The research is also limited to the case of leek production. Future research can apply the methodology to other crops. Originality/value - To date, there is still lack of clear evidence of the added value of organic farming compared to conventional farming on environmental basis. Few studies have compared organic and conventional food production by means of LCA. This paper addresses these issues.Resource management becomes a key issue in the development of sustainable technology. This paper envisages a quantification of all energy and material needs for a family dwelling, both for the construction aspects ('embodied energy and materials') and usage aspects. To do so, an exergetic life-cycle assessment has been carried out that enables the quantification of all necessary natural energy and material resources simultaneously. The case study covered 65 optimized Belgian family dwelling types with low energy input (56 MJ/(m(3) year)). The study shows that cumulative annual exergy demand is of the order of 65 GJ(exergy)/year, with a limited dependency on the construction type: cavity wall, external insulation or wooden frame. For the cavity wall and external insulation building type, non-renewable inputs are dominant for the construction with 85-86% of the total exergy to be extracted out of the environment. For the wooden frame, non-renewable resource intake for construction remains 62%. Despite the low-energy building type, heating requirements during the use phase are dominanat in the overall resource intake with a 60% of the total annual exergy consumption. In order to make family dwellings less fossil resource dependent, the study learns that particularly reduction of heating requirements should be envisaged. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) allows a holistic assessment of the environmental impacts associated with a good or a service, considering its life cycle from the production of its energy and inputs to its disposal. We used LCA to assess the impacts of aquaculture systems and to raise some key questions concerning its development. We compared three production systems of carnivorous fish in Europe: trout in fresh water raceways, turbot in an inland recirculating system and sea bass in sea cages, to explore the environmental impacts of aquaculture. Eutrophication strongly depends on the feed conversion ratio and thus on the efficiency of the system. Energy use is strongly associated with water management options and feed production. Climate change depends on the use of energy resources. It is strongly affected by feed production and feed transformation on the farm. Net primary production use assesses the amount of carbon from photosynthesis used to produce a kilogram of fish. Identifying this impact makes it possible to compare the performance of different farms as well as data on wild fish. Differences between farming systems and among farmed fish species tend to be larger than the differences between fish from aquaculture and fish from fisheries. In particular, the effect of feed composition is discussed. Water dependence, that is to say the amount of water entering the farm per kilo of fish produced, can be used to compare farming systems and assess the links between the farm and its natural environment. LCA results can be used to present a relative environmental profile of farms. The relevance of the different impacts is discussed according to the regional contexts of production which affect availability of energy resources and vulnerability of the environment.Life cycle assessment is applied to assess the ultra-clean micronized coal oil water slurry (UCMCOWS) with SimaPro and the environmental impact of UCMCOWS on its whole life cycle is also analyzed. The result shows that the consumption of energy and products are increasing along with the deepening of UCMCOWS processing, UCMCOWS making and combustion are the two periods which have a bigger impact on eco-system and human health. As a new substitute of fuel, UCMCOWS merits to be utilized more efficiently and reasonably.This paper presents the selection of the most suitable system between new collection systems focused on improving waste recovery rate. A large part of solid waste can be recovered in some way. Recycling, energy production, composting are some of the recovery techniques. To obtain a high level of solid waste recovery, the waste must be collected according to some rules. Different collection methods are compared with fuzzy TOPSIS method, according to financial, social and environmental criteria. The originality of this paper is that the decision making process is enriched by the use of environmental impact data. In most of the studies, financial and social aspects are used to compare these methods but due to multiplicity of environmental factors and their complexity, environmental aspect has been neglected. This paper evaluates the environmental effects through Life Cycle Assessment methodology.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly used as a decision support system that enables the modelling, the evaluation and the comparison of different alternatives of products, processes or supply chains as regards their environmental and sustainable impacts. In the textile-garment domain, the complexity of the supply chain adds to the difficulty of the interpretation of the LCA results. Authors' purpose is to use Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method in order to analyze the results of the Life Cycle Assessment of textile products in order to help the different actors in the supply chain. Within this framework, the paper studies the choice of the most suitable multicriteria analysis method from the literature and shows its application in the textile supply chain.Nowadays, manufacturers are facing great challenges with regard to the production of green products due to the emerging issue of hazardous substance management (HSM). In particular, environmental legislation pressures have yielded to increased risk, manufacturing complexity and green components demands. The green principles were expanded to many departments within organization, including supply chain. Green supply chain management (GSCM) was emerging in the last few years. This idea covers every stage in manufacturing from the first to the last stage of life cycle. From product lifecycle concept, the cycle starts at the design of a product. QFD is a customer-driven product development tool, considered as a structured management approach for efficiently translating customer needs into design requirements and parts deployment, as well as manufacturing plans and controls in order to achieve higher customer satisfaction. This paper develops an Eco-QFD to provide a framework for designing Eco-products by integrating the life cycle analysis LCA into QFD throughout the entire product development process.Taking the restrictions imposed by the EU ELV directive into account, the use of non-recyclable composite components in car manufacturing is not obvious. However, from a life cycle engineering perspective the introduction of composites in car design is not necessarily negative in terms of additional environmental impact. An extensive life cycle analysis for a reference car design was conducted to study the effects of replacement of conventional steel structures by lightweight composite alternatives. The obtained results reveal the need for a nuanced attitude towards more intensive use of composites in car design. The sensitivity of the analysis results for the used carbon fibre production method is documented, indicating significant improvement potential based on emerging, less energy consuming production methods. (C) 2009 CIRP.Algae biodiesel is an opportunity space that has gained renewed interest for venture investment. As with any new opportunity space, determining where the greatest value capturing potential resides has important implications for directing investment and research. This paper presents a value chain analysis of algae biodiesel and maps current industry players against similar segments in the biofuels and petroleum value chains. Using margin analysis and life-cycle analysis of one of the market pains (energy use in algae harvesting and biomass processing to biodiesel), a technology opportunity was identified. The identification of potentially high value companies using semi-quantitative analysis provides a useful tool for investors and entrepreneurs in the algae biodiesel space.In support of the ASTM International, Symposium on Common Ground, Consensus Building and Continual Improvement, this paper describes the BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability) software that integrates standard approaches for selecting cost-effective, environmentally-preferable building products, Version 4.0 of the Windows-based decision support software, aimed at designers, builders, and product manufacturers, includes actual environmental and economic performance data for over 230 building products across a range of functional applications. BEES measures the environmental performance of building products using the environmental life-cycle assessment approach specified in International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 standards. All stages in the life of a product are analyzed: raw material acquisition, manufacture, transportation, installation, use, and waste management. Economic performance Is measured using the ASTM International standard life-cycle cost method (E 917), which covers the costs of initial investment, replacement, operation, maintenance and repair, and disposal. Environmental and economic performance are combined into an overall performance measure using the ASTM standard for Multiattribute Decision Analysis (E 1765). For the entire BEES analysis, building products are defined and classified based on the ASTM standard classification for building elements known as UNIFORMAT II (E 1557).Rating systems in North America are experiencing a fundamental shift in the way they approach sustainable design, away from a prescriptive methodology toward one that emphasizes quantifiable performance. They are maturing, placing more importance on issues such as life cycle assessment and how to strengthen the link between design forecasts and actual building performance over the long-term. But, they remain an inherent mix of objective and subjective elements-of process, prescriptive measures, and performance-which makes it difficult for them to evolve in their entirety into sustainable building standards. This paper will focus on fundamental issues related to the standardization of sustainable design principles in the context of assessment and rating systems, drawing on the experience of the Green Building Initiative (GBI) American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Technical Committee for Green Globes (TM). The GBI is the first national organization to take a green building rating system through the consensus-based ANSI process, and its technical committee will examine how process, prescriptive, and performance measures fit in a standard of this nature. For example, experience shows that an integrated design process tends to result in higher performance buildings. However, while it is recommended practice, can it be mandated as part of a standard if it isn't a measure of the building's actual worth? Indeed, can any process be dictated, or would this risk penalizing an exceptional building for something that has nothing to do with sustainability? Likewise, prescriptive measures such as favoring building materials with recycled content do not always deliver the benefits they are widely assumed to have. They are means to an end and should not be treated as objectives in their own right. It is tempting to include prescriptive measures in a standard because they are easy to verity. But do we not then risk perpetuating points of view that, while deeply entrenched, do not contribute positively to actual building performance?Environmental conservation and the impact that the construction industry has on the environment have risen to the fore as a principle against which materials, products, specifications, and whole building fabric must be considered. The reasoning for this is sound, with the industry being responsible for the manufacture and use of hundreds of millions of tons of materials annually. At a national level in the UK alone the construction products sector is responsible for around 10% [DEFRA statistics, 2000] of all carbon emissions. Against this background, the sector is remarkably well placed to build from work already done to develop standardized Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approaches and to apply them to construction scenarios. As a result, the practice is now well established and has gained a growing momentum across all construction stakeholders, from clients to product suppliers. This paper examines BRE's experience in the field having originally developed an LCA approach called the "Environmental Profiles methodology" and used it to create an information database, specification tools, and a proprietary product certification scheme. The next phase of development is critical to the continuing success of these programs.One of the main environmental impacts caused by fisheries is the emission of gases from the fuels used for the vessels. These gases contribute to global warming. The aim of this chapter is to use LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) to compare the global warming potential of artisanal and industrial fishing off the northern coast off Rio de Janeiro state (municipalities of Arraial do Cabo and Cabo Frio, respectively). For this analysis, one ton of common sea bream was adopted as the functional unit. The artisanal fishing data were obtained from interviews with local fishermen, while the industrial fishing data were collected from an industrial fishery. The study made use of the Umberto (TM) software package. The result of this comparison showed that industrial fishing has a greater impact oil global warming than artisanal fishing.This review brings together research on life cycle assessment ( LCA) applied within the building sector. More than ever, the construction industry is concerned with improving the social, economic and environmental indicators of sustainability. By applying LCA it is possible to optimise these aspects, from the extraction of raw materials to the final disposal of waste building materials. Firstly, this review details LCA concepts and focuses on the LCA methodology and tools employed in the built environment. Secondly, this paper outlines and discusses the differences between the LCA of building materials and components combinations versus the LCA of the full building life cycle. Finally, this work can be used by stakeholders as an important reference on LCA including up to date literature on approaches and methodologies to preserve the environment and therefore achieve sustainable development in both developed and developing countries. The present review has tried to compile and reflect the key milestones accomplished in LCA over the last 7 years, from 2000 to 2007 within the building sector. In summary, it can be stated that the application of LCA is fundamental to sustainability and improvement in building and construction. For industrial activities, SMEs must understand the application of LCA, not only to meet consumer demands for environmentally friendly products, but also to increase the productivity and competitiveness of the green construction markets. For this reason, this review looks at LCA because of its broad international acceptance as a means to improve environmental processes and services, and also for creating goals to prevent adverse environmental impacts, consequently enhancing quality of life and allowing people to live in a healthy environment. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a kind of evaluation techniques and methods. It was used to analyze the environment influence of the construction entire life cycle, including raw materials acquisition, production, use until the disposal of the products. The LCA method can analyze impacts of the energy consumption and environment emissions on the whole society from each link of constructing the entire building. Its analysis result will enable the project participants to have a clear understanding on energy consumption and the environment emissions. Life cycle assessment method can analyze impacts of the energy consumption and the environment emissions of the entire building on the whole society. The results of the analysis can make each participant clear understand impacts of construction projects on the whole society. Based on the life cycle theory, LCA space-time evaluating indicator is put forward. It can analyze the building energy consumption and environmental emissions. However, its implementation effect is concerned with the corresponding platform.The solar energy is one of the most widely researched sources to replace fossil fuel energy in the world. Among the applications of the solar energy, solar hot water system is the most promising one. Previous research has indicated that the solar hot water system is more efficient than other applications of the solar energy. However, most of the research on the solar hot water system mainly focus on the small-scale household type, as the need of the solar hot water system increases, the large-scale hot water system should be considered as one of the solution for providing large amount hot water. Although the large-scale solar hot water system can reduce the use of fossil fuel and decrease the greenhouse gas emission, it would possess high initial investment of the equipment and decrease the economic benefit. Therefore, the overall benefit of the solar hot water system over its life cycle should be included within the analysis of determining the solar water system configuration. In addition, previous studies on the configuration of the solar water heater system, which determines the size of the solar collector and the volume of the storage tank, are based on the single type of the solar collector. However, the type of the solar collector plays a crucial role to the life-cycle benefit of the solar water system. Therefore, there is a need to develop a more generic optimization model that determines the type of the solar collector, the size of the collector and the volume of the storage tank with the consideration of the life cycle cost and benefit. This research first employs TRNSYS computer program and the typical meteorological year data to predict the auxiliary energy generated by different types of collector, size of the collector, and storage tank volume. Then a multiple regression analysis and genetic algorithms are applied to minimize the life-cycle cost of the solar hot water system. Several different models of the life-cycle cost are evaluated.Public policy is becoming increasingly stringent with respect to the environmental impacts of modern products. To respond to this tightened scrutiny, product designers must innovate to lower the environmental footprints of their concepts. Design for Environment (DfE) is a field of product design methodology that includes tools, methods and principles to help designers reduce environmental impact. The most powerful and well-known tool within DfE is Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA); however, LCA requires a fully specified design and thus is a retrospective design tool, only applicable as the end of the design process. Because the decisions with the greatest environmental impact are made during earlier design stages, it is important to develop concurrent design tools that can implement DfE principles at conceptual and embodiment design stages, thereby achieving more substantial environmental improvements. The goal of this work is to compile a set of DfE principles that are useful during the design process; explain select principles through examples; and provide an example of applying DfE principles concurrently during the design process.This paper provides an analysis of the carbon emissions of materials used by a water company in the refurbishment of mechanical and electrical equipment at its pumping station. A tool for attaining life cycle calculations for embodied carbon, which can be applied in similar applications, is developed. Due to uncertainties in the derivation of numerical data and other related information, such as sources of raw materials, the embodied carbon emissions are calculated and analyzed using material emission factors using the Life Cycle Assessment method. This work may be used as a template for organizations requiring estimates of embodied carbon in materials and plant, for example, as a precursor to a major refurbishment project.The eco-efficiency can be defined by using the "economic value/environmental impacts" ratio. In this study the eco-efficiency of orange production in the Comunidad Valenciana was assessed. 24 scenarios of orange production were built regarding their agricultural practices. For every scenario the environmental impacts were assessed by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as well as the economic value added. The results have been referred to 1 kg oranges. The integration of the economic and environmental assessments was made through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Among the scenarios scored as eco-efficient, those with organic production prevailed.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has gained wider acceptance as a quantitative environmental performance tool, based on mass and energy balances. This paper applies the LCA method in a combined form with Emergy, which is a holistic and thermodynamic tool for the physical evaluation of environmental resources and services. A crystal glass production has been assessed as a case study. According with LCA method, the system was analysed from "cradle to gate". Data elaborated refer to 1 kg of crystal glass packed (functional unit). Results of life cycle inventory and impact assessment showed the highest contribution of the manufacturing phase to the total environmental impact, with evidence of CO(2), NO(x), SO(2), and heavy metals emissions and some acid wastewater releases. Emergy results have been useful for carrying out a more reliable evaluation of the non-renewable resources involved, in terms of solar energy needed for generating 1 kg of crystal glass (sej/kg). Also with emergy analysis, the manufacturing phase highlighted the highest resources exploitation, due to water and natural gas uses. The combined use of emergy and LCA contributes important information useful for the comprehension of the crystal glass system organization and its level of environmental pressure, which could be reduced. Moreover, the integration may provide a base for a future development of the emergy evaluation within an LCA framework.To improve the ecological performance of energy conversion systems, it is essential to understand the formation of environmental impact at component level. A method has been developed that (a) reveals the extent to which each component of an energy conversion system is responsible for the overall environmental impact and (b) identifies the sources of the impact. The approach of exergoeconomic analysis is modified to deal with all evaluation of the ecological impact instead of an economic problem. The basic idea is that exergy represents a proper basis for allocating both costs and environmental impact to components of energy conversion processes. The proposed exergoenvironmental analysis consists of three steps. In the first step, a detailed exergy analysis of the system under consideration is conducted. In the second step, the required values of the environmental impact are determined by applying all appropriate method involving all appropriate quantifier of the environmental impact. Here the Eco-indicator 99 impact assessment method is applied in conjunction with the method of life cycle assessment. In the last step, the environmental impact associated with each component is assigned to the product exergy streams of the component; subsequently exergoenvironmental variables are calculated and all exergoenvironmental evaluation is conducted. As a case study, all energy conversion system consisting of a high-temperature solid oxide fuel cell integrated with all allothermal biomass gasification process has been analyzed. Exergoenvironmental analysis allows us to identify the environmentally most relevant system components and provides information about possibilities for design improvements. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban areas and environments are expanding worldwide and this ever-increasing urban population is likely to become larger still. Despite representing only two percent of the world's surface area, world's cities are responsible for 75 percent of the world's energy consumption, and they emit almost 80 percent of global carbon dioxide mainly related to fossil energy carriers. Therefore, cities are a cornerstone in the implementation of strategies for energy conservation and its efficiency, establishing an intrinsic union between the concepts "cities" and "sustainability." Within the city, energy is consumed in different sectors in order to satisfy the needs of the citizens. For this reason, we propose an approach based on the functional unit concept linked to the activities undertaken in cities. This commentary focuses on the service sector, without any doubt the most representative of cities and the western countries. However, this sector requires an important material and energy base for its correct operation, not only to maintain itself but also coming from the inputs of the other sectors. To analyze the energetic and environmental costs of the service sector, we propose integrating analysis tools such as Energy Flow Analysis (EFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and communication instruments like the energy footprint. These have been applied to two case studies in the metropolitan area of Barcelona: Montjuic Urban Park (including cultural, educational and sport services) and Sant Boi Retail Park. The results indicate that the average energy consumed in buildings and common services (street lighting and gardening practices) per visitor in Montjuic is 0.35 kilograms of oil equivalent (Koe); meanwhile, the purchases in the retail park amount to a similar value of 0.37 Koe of energy. When transportation activities are considered in the analysis of the system, this energy consumption is heavily increased, up to four times in the case of the retail park. The greenhouse gas emissions are also indicated for both case studies. The results show the relevance of the environmental impacts of the service sector, which up to the moment has been forgotten from the environmental perspective.The combined methodology for the rating of advanced glazing proposed in this work, aims to add the economical and the environmental aspect to the existing evaluation systems. Taking into account the special characteristics of the advanced glazing, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study and an eco-efficiency analysis have been combined to provide an alternative rating scheme, which has been applied to an electrochromic window as a case study. The proper graphical representation of the selected indicators leads to figures clearly depicting a rating result for the selected product. Such rating schemes can be useful for the Consumers and also for the product manufacturers, requesting for additional necessary input apart from its typical technical characteristics only the product expected lifetime, its purchase cost and the energy required for its production. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Hydrogen is proposed as the most promising solution as a mid and long-term energy carrier for transport and electricity generation, attending to fossil fuels scarcity and the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Several problems have to be solved before hydrogen technology could be applied. One of the main challenges is to develop a sustainable and cost-efficient process for hydrogen production. In this regard, this work intends to evaluate several possibilities of electrolytic hydrogen production from different scales (from a few Nm(3)/h to several hundred) and different electricity origins (solar, wind and grid) and to compare electrolysis with steam methane reforming, (which is, nowadays, the preferred method for hydrogen production). The evaluation and comparison are made by Life, Cycle Assessment tools. The results are focused on the environmental performances of each process, energy 'renewability' and their exergetic behavior. The performed analysis shows that electrolytic hydrogen from wind electricity is the best alternative because of its low associated greenhouse gas emissions, its low environmental impact and the best grade of renewability of the produced hydrogen.Municipal solid waste (MSW) is not only a societal problem addressed with environmental impact, it is also a resource that can be used for energy supply. In Northern Europe combustion of MSW ( incineration with energy recovery) in combination with district heating systems is quite common. In Sweden, about 47% of the household waste is treated by incineration with energy recovery. Most incineration plants are CHP, summing up to 0.3% of the total electricity generation. MSW is to a high extent a renewable fuel, but plastic, rubber etc. can amount to 50% of the carbon content in the waste. Recycling of plastic is in general environmentally favourable in comparison to landfill disposal or incineration. However, some plastic types are not possible to recycle and some plastic is of such low quality that it is not suitable for recycling. This paper focuses on the non-renewable and non-recyclable plastic in MSW. A CO2 assessment has been made for non-recyclable plastic where incineration with energy recovery has been compared to landfill disposal. In the assessment, consideration has been taken of alternative fuel in the incinerator, emissions from waste treatment and avoided emissions from heat and power supply. For landfill disposal of plastic the emissions of CO2 amounts to 253 g kg(-1) plastic. For incineration, depending on different discrete choices, the results vary from -673 g kg(-1) to 4605 g kg(-1). Results indicate that for typical Swedish and European conditions, incineration of plastics has net emissions of greenhouse gases. These emissions are also in general higher for incineration than for landfill disposal. However in situations where plastics are incinerated with high efficiency and high electricity to heat ratios, and the heat and the electricity from incineration of plastics are replacing heat and electricity in non-combined heat and power plants based on fossil fuels, incineration of plastics can give a net negative contribution of greenhouse gases. The results suggest that efforts should be made to increase recycling of plastics, direct incineration of plastics in places where it can be combusted with high efficiency and high electricity-to-heat ratios where it is replacing fossil fuels, and reconsider the present policies of avoiding landfill disposal of plastics.Life cycle analysis of mercury in discarded low energy efficiency fluorescent lamps (36W) and of HCFC in air-conditioners (12,000 Btu) removed from service has been conducted in this study. The objective was to find out the environmental impact (EDIP 1997 category, waste evaluation) of the products that appear in the waste stream as a result of facility upgrades. The scope of the study starts from retrofitting of the lamps and air-conditioners through recycling and disposal. For a 36W fluorescent lamp, the bulk waste 1.64E-5 kg, hazardous waste 1.11E-4 kg, radioactive waste 1.09E-9 kg, and slag-ash 6.02E-7 kg occurred at the end of life of the retrofitting cycle. For a 12,000 Btu air-conditioner, the bulk waste 0.58 kg, hazardous waste 0.11 kg, radioactive waste 0.0002 kg, and slag-ash 0.01 kg also occurred at the end of life of the retrofitting cycle. These small amounts become important when viewed at the country level. These quantities imply that the policy makers who deal with hazardous waste should be aware of this waste-generating characteristic before issuing any pertinent policy. Consideration of this characteristic and planning for appropriate waste management methods at the beginning stage will reduce any future problem of contamination by the hazardous waste. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is an economic method of project evaluation in which all costs arising from owning, operating, maintaining and ultimately disposing of a project are considered to be potentially important to that decision. LCCA is particularly suitable for the evaluation of building design alternatives that satisfy a required level of building performance, but that may have different initial investment costs; different operating, maintenance and repair (OM&R) costs; and possibly different lives. In this study, a software computer program for educational purposes is designed to determine initial, life cycle and unit energy costs of a stand-alone photovoltaic system in Turkey. Depending on the selected location, material and criteria, the proposed software implements the life cycle analysis of the system.A great fraction of worldwide energy carriers and material products come from fossil fuel refinery. Because of the on-going price increase of fossil resources, the uncertain availability, the environmental concerns and the fact that they are not a renewable resource, the feasibility of their exploitation is predicted to decrease in the near future. Therefore, alternative solutions able to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels should be promoted. Electricity and heat can be provided by a variety of renewable alternatives (wind, sun, water, biomass), while the fossil resource alternative for production of fuels and chemicals can be just biomass, the only C-rich material source available on the Earth, besides fossils. The replacement of oil with biomass as raw material for fuel and chemical production leads to the development of "biorefinery", a relatively young concept in the scientific literature. In biorefinery, almost all the types of biomass feedstock can be converted to different classes of biofuels and chemicals through jointly applied conversion technologies. This chapter describes the emerging biorefinery concept and provides an overview of the most important biomass sources, conversion technologies and platforms (or intermediates). The advantages of biorefinery systems over conventional fossil systems are outlined by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): in the second half of this chapter, a LCA of a biorefinery system based on a lignocellulosic feedstock (e.g. wood industrial residues) and producing bioethanol and methyltetrahydrofuran (MTHF) as transportation biofuels, furan resins, fumaric acid and oxygen as chemicals and hydrogen, biomethane, electricity and heat as further energy carriers, is reported. The biorefinery system is compared with a reference system based on fossil sources. Results focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) and energy balances and estimate the possible GHG and fossil energy savings. System performances are also investigated with calculations of product yields and mass, energy, exergy and C conversion efficiencies. Since the biorefinery system co-produces many high value products, an allocation issue must be addressed. Different allocation procedures (substitution method, and energy, exergy, economic allocation) are therefore used and final results compared. The evaluation of the environmental performances reveals that relevant environmental benefits can be gained with a shift from oil refinery to biorefinery: almost 89% of GHG emissions and 96% of fossil energy demand can be saved.The aim of this paper is to investigate the global contribution of carbon capture and storage technologies to mitigating climate change. Carbon capture and storage is a technology that comprises the separation of from carbon dioxide industrial-and energy-related sources, transport to a storage location (e.g., saline aquifers and depleted hydrocarbon fields), and long-term isolation from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxides emitted directly at the power stations are reduced by 80 to 90%. In contrast, the life cycle assessment shows substantially lower reductions of greenhouse gases in total (minus 65 to 79%).Integrating environmental considerations into the product traditional process design is now the major challenge for steel industry. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is nowadays considered as an appropriate method for assessing environmental impact and selecting new technologies to reduce CO2 emissions for steel industry. In this paper we propose a new methodological concept which combines LCA thinking with process simulation software in order to carry out the life cycle inventory of classical steelmaking process. Using Aspen Plus(TM) software, a physicochemical model has been developed for the integrated steelmaking mute. This model gives the possibility to carry out life cycle inventories for different operational practices in order to optimise the use of energy, to calculate CO2 and other emissions and to control the mass and the heat balances of processes. It is also shown that such approach can be used to design and assess new technologies for steelmaking without large industrial application.Industries have always been a major consumer of energy and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, causing environmental problems. Concerns about the impact of industries on the environment have led industries to change or adapt their methodologies to be more efficient and environmentally responsible. This article explains the impact that has on the industrial engineer.Assessing the impact of industrial activity is a complex challenge for policy makers, scientists and engineers. In an effort to evaluate industrial systems, a range of alternative methods have been developed. From qualitative matrix models to data-intensive computer models, decision-makers are able to choose from a variety of tools to appraise the potential environmental impact. However, these methods stop short at demonstrating how industrial activity affects sustainability. The purpose of this work is to advance the area of environmental assessment by developing a method of evaluating the sustainability implications of industrial activity (products and processes). This chapter covers the definition of sustainability, its key factors and elements, the state of the art for environmental assessment and the shortcomings of the current environmental assessment methods. This research agenda was carved out of a survey of research needs within environmental assessment and industrial ecology. From this study, it is evident that assessing sustainability requires a cross-disciplinary study of factors and interactions linking demography, consumer demand, economic activity, industrial activity and resource use to sustainability. Further, a key component of assessing sustainability is population. As such, this chapter serves as an introduction to the development of the "Population Based Model for Assessing the Sustainability Implications of Industrial Activity" (PMASI). This approach is relevant to both developing and industrialized countries.In this chapter, the environmental quality (EQ) of three rural communities in connection with two dams in Kumasi, Ghana, is overhauled over four distinct years. The study is organized into two main parts: (i) an empirical analysis that aims at investigating the retrospective EQ of three riparian communities, and (ii) model development and prediction (backcasting/hindcasting) of the EQ of the communities, in one year lag. We use discontinuous, irregularly spaced, multivariate geostatistical, limited time series data consisting of sets of predictors and predictands. Missing values in the datasets are estimated using kriging technique. A multivariate empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis is performed oil the datasets Out of which the first three principal components (PCs) are retained for the study. The construction of the operational activity indices (OAIs) and EQ indices (EQIs) is based on the scores of the first three PCs of the predictor and predictand datasets, respectively. This is followed by performing dependency measures typically, zero order and lagged cross correlation analyses between the two sets of indices to monitor the EQ of the communities over the four years. Generally, the results from the retrospective environmental analysis (REA) show moderate to strong relationships between the EQIs and OAIs, a signal of profound influences exerted by the darn(s). The most important signals are observed in the years when the two darns are operated in tandem. The potential forecasting (hindcasting) abilities of the OAls determined from cross-validations, give us the confidence to incorporate the REA results in the stochastic and temporal environmental autoregressive AR (1) model developments for performing retrospective backcasts. A comparison between the parametric and non-parametric stochastic model results shows that the latter Outperforms the former, and thus, better fits the data. The AR (1) model results theoretically signal progressive deteriorations in the backcast EQ for three out of the four lagged years. However, the remaining one shows no significant difference from the preceding year's, an indication of environmental stability and non-responsiveness to the operational activities of the dam(s). Lack of observational data posed a limitation in comparing our hindcast model results with real life situation. Notwithstanding this, the model biases and forecast (hindcast) errors seem to be very reasonable. These suggest beyond doubts that the findings can be relied upon for decision support system. Remediation of the environmental impacts of the darns proposed does not differ from that of our previous studies.Over the last three decades environmental issues have a direct impact on technology assessment and policy decisions. One of the difficulties with measuring environmental performance is lack of consensus on evaluation of relevant aspects, including materials and energy use, air emissions, solid and hazardous waste and water pollution. In practice various environmental indicators are used, usually restricted to one specific aspect. In case of complex environmental metrics, such as Life Cycle Analysis, more environmental aspects are involved but they are usually judged in a subjective way. This Chapter presents development aspects of environmental performance indicators based on exergy. The concept exergy is based on the second law of thermodynamics and is very suitable for assessment of various systems, ranging from chemical and energy processes through economic sectors to entire societies. Traditionally, exergy-based indicators are restricted to measurement of thermodynamic efficiency. Recently, they are coupled with Life Cycle analyzes concepts, such as Cumulative Exergy Consumption (CExC). Finally, exergy indicators are extended with environmental and economic issues, as applied in Extended Exergy Accounting (EEA). EE indicators can be expressed in monetary as well as energy units. However, they are sensitive to capital conversion factors, which can be evaluated for various levels, including individual technologies, economic sectors, and entire societies.A present challenge for research is to determine how to use the combination of oil, gas and coal most efficiently with the minimum environmental damage, In this paper the authors have compared technologies to produce the electricity using natural gas and coal. The objective of this paper consists in evaluation of the life cycle assessment of the natural gas and coal in order to compare their greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. In this way, three systems with and without CCS were examined: one using the natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) and two using the coal: pulverized coal with sub-critical and super-critical parameters and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). The study shows that life cycle GHG emissions from fossil fuel power stations with carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be reduced by 75-84% relative to the reference case. IGCC is found to be favorable with a reduction of GHG emissions to less than 160 g/kWh. For NGCC power plants, the amount of methane leakage from natural gas extraction and transport has a significant effect on life cycle GHG emissions.Current applications for carbon nanotubes include manufacture and assembly to create carbon nanotube (CNT) switches and CNT-polymer meshes. While these nanomanufacturing processes are still in the developmental stage, it is critical to understand the tradeoffs of scaled-up process economics with their associated environmental footprints. Two case studies that involve using single-walled nanotubes (SWNT) are considered: 1) a comparison of SWNT production alternatives and 2) a SWNT switch for non-volatile memory devices. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) - a methodology to explore the environmental impacts associated with a product's life cycle, inventories for these nanomanufacturing processes have been assembled through data collection of inputs (raw materials, energy, labor and equipment) and outputs (emissions). From this life cycle inventory data, select sensitivity analyses are performed to investigate parameters that drive economic and environmental impacts. From these analyses, recommendations can be offered to improve specific process parameters and practices that affect cost and the process environmental footprints prior to full-scale manufacturing.Sustainability was adopted by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Rio de Janiero as the main political goal for the future development of humankind. It should also be the ultimate aim of product development. According to the well-known interpretation of the original definition given in the Brundtland Report, sustainability comprises three components: environment, economy, and social aspects. These components or 'pillars' of sustainability have to be properly assessed and balanced if a new product is to be designed or an existing one be improved. Depending on the systems to be improved, in the sense of better sustainability, and to the audience(s), i.e. actors or stakeholders, different scientific and practical approaches are being developed. There are notably two directions which can be distinguished: one based on accounting (Environmental Accounting and Environmental Management Accounting-EMA) and another one based on the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of products. In this article, the latter approach is described in the hope of improving the mutual understanding of the two communities and their assessment/accounting tools. The responsibility of the researchers involved in the assessment of sustainability is to provide appropriate, reliable, and up-to-date instruments. For the environmental part, there is already an internationally standardised tool: Life-Cycle Assessment ( LCA). Life-Cycle Costing (LCC) is the logical counterpart of LCA for the economic assessment. LCC surpasses the purely economic accounting and cost calculation by taking into account the use-and end-of-life phases and hidden costs. For this component, a guideline is being developed by The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). It is a very important point that different life-cycle based methods (including Social Life-Cycle Assessment 'SLCA') for sustainability assessment use consistent system boundaries. SLCA has been neglected in the past, mainly due to great methodological difficulties, but is now beginning to be developed. The central problems seem to be how to relate the social indicators ( social impact assessment) quantitatively to the functional unit of the product-system, and how to restrict to a manageable number the many social indicators proposed. Furthermore, a better regional resolution of the Life-Cycle Inventory, compared to conventional LCA, has to be achieved since the social conditions vary geographically much more than, the core element of LCA industrial production.The magnitude of Canada's oil sands reserves, their rapidly expanding and energy intensive production, combined with existing and upcoming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions regulations motivate an evaluation of oil sands-derived fuel production from a life cycle perspective. Thirteen studies of GHG emissions associated with oil sands operations are reviewed. The production of synthetic crude oil (SCO) through surface mining and upgrading (SM&Up) or in situ and upgrading (IS&Up) processes is reported to result in emissions ranging from 62 to 164 and 99 to 176 kgCO(2)eq/bbl SCO, respectively (or 9.2-26.5 and 16.2-28.7 gCO(2)eq MJ(-1) SCO, respectively), compared to 27-58 kgCO(2)eq/bbl (4.5-9.6 gCO(2)eq MJ(-1)) of crude for conventional oil production. The difference in emissions intensity between SCO and conventional crude production is primarily due to higher energy requirements for extracting bitumen and upgrading it into SCO. On a 'well-to-wheel' basis, GHG emissions associated with producing reformulated gasoline from oil sands with current SM&Up, IS&Up, and in situ (without upgrading) technologies are 260-320, 320-350, and 270-340 gCO(2)eq km(-1), respectively, compared to 250-280 gCO(2)eq km(-1) for production from conventional oil. Some variation between studies is expected due to differences in methods, technologies studied, and operating choices. However, the magnitude of the differences presented suggests that a consensus on the characterization of life cycle emissions of the oil sands industry has yet to be reached in the public literature. Recommendations are given for future studies for informing industry and government decision making.Most life cycle studies of biofuels have not examined the impact of process chemicals and enzymes, both necessary inputs to biochemical production and which vary depending upon the technology platform (feedstock, pretreatment and hydrolysis system). We examine whether this omission is warranted for sugar-platform technologies. We develop life cycle ('well-to-tank') case studies for a corn dry-mill and for one 'mature' and two near-term lignocellulosic ethanol technologies. Process chemical and enzyme inputs contribute only 3% of fossil energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for corn ethanol. Assuming considerable improvement compared to current enzyme performance, the inputs for the near-term lignocellulosic technologies studied are found to be responsible for 30%-40% of fossil energy use and 30%-35% of GHG emissions, not an insignificant fraction given that these models represent technology developers' nth plant performance. Mature technologies which assume lower chemical and enzyme loadings, high enzyme specific activity and on-site production utilizing renewable energy would significantly improve performance. Although the lignocellulosic technologies modeled offer benefits over today's corn ethanol through reducing life cycle fossil energy demand and GHG emissions by factors of three and six, achieving those performance levels requires continued research into and development of the manufacture of low dose, high specific activity enzyme systems. Realizing the benefits of low carbon fuels through biological conversion will otherwise not be possible. Tracking the technological performance of process conversion materials remains an important step in measuring the life cycle performance of biofuels.The relative influence of substance properties and of environmental characteristics on the variation in the environmental fate of chemicals was studied systematically and comprehensively. This was done by modeling environmental concentrations for 200 sets of substance properties, representative of organic chemicals used, and 137 sets of environmental characteristics, representative of regions in Europe of 250 x 250 km. Since it was expected that the model scale has an influence on the predicted concentration variations, the calculations were repeated for regions with a 100 x 100 km and 50 x 50 km area. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the contribution of each of the individual input parameters on the total concentration variation. Depending on the scenario, the range in predicted environmental concentrations spreads from two up to nine orders of magnitude. In accord with earlier studies, variation in the fate of chemicals in the environment appeared to depend mainly on substance-specific partition coefficients and degradation rates. For the estimation of soil and water concentrations with direct emissions to these compartments, however, the influence of spatial variation in environmental characteristics can mount up to two orders of magnitude, a range that can be significant to account for in certain model applications. Concentration differences in water and soil are predicted to be larger if a smaller region is applied in the model calculations, and the relative influence of environmental characteristics on the total variation increases on a more detailed spatial scale. It is argued that the influence of environmental characteristics as predictors of exposure concentrations of chemicals deserves better attention in comparative risk assessment with conventional nonspatial multimedia box models.Based on the principle of life cycle assessment (LCA), municipal solid waste management (MSWM) was analyzed by life cycle inventory method. According to the system expansion and Substitution method, the content and frame of life cycle analysis is summarized and applied to municipal solid waste. On the basic of feasibility research of life cycle analysis on MSWM, the paper put forwards complete and concrete "three changes" measures under life cycle analysis on MSWM. Some aims of MSWM can be achieved under above conditions of LCA on MSWM: to improve the current system efficiency of MSWM; to enhance the serve quality of MSWM, to increase recycle garbage from MSW; to reduce waste amount and reach minimization and innocuity aim of MSWM; to help the of MSWM to get over all to realize their ideal goals.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of nuclear-based hydrogen production using thermochemical water splitting is conducted. The copper-chlorine thermochemical cycle is considered, and the environmental impacts of the nuclear and thermochemical plants are assessed. Environmental impacts are investigated using CML-2001 impact categories. The nuclear plant and the construction of the hydrogen plant contribute significantly to the total environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of operating the hydrogen production plant contribute much less. Changes in the inventory of materials or chemicals needed in the thermochemical plant do not affect significantly the total impacts. Improvement analysis suggests the development of more sustainable processes, particularly in the nuclear plant and construction of the hydrogen production plant.Building energy performance regulations and standards around the world are evolving aiming to reduce the energy use in buildings. As we move towards zero energy buildings, the embodied energy of construction materials and energy systems becomes more important, as it represents a high percentage of the overall life cycle energy use of a building. However, this issue is still ignored by many regulations and certification methods, as happens with the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which focuses on the energy used in operation. This paper analyses a typical house designed to comply with Irish building regulations, calculating its energy use for heating and how water with the Irish national calculation tool, which uses a methodology in line with the EPBD.A range of measures to reduce the energy performance in use of this typical house are proposed, calculating the reduced energy demand and moving towards a zero energy demand building. A life-cycle approach is added to the analysis, taking into account the differential embodied energy of the implemented Measures in relation to the typical house base-case, annualizing the differential embodied energy and re-calculating the overall energy use The paper discusses how a simplified approach for accounting embodied energy of materials could be useful in a goal to achieve the lowest life-cycle energy use in buildings, and concludes with a note oil how accounting for embodied energy is a key element when moving towards zero energy buildings.This research investigates algae as a feedstock for producing liquid fuels for the light vehicle sector. It is in the interest of national economic security to investigate alternative sources of transportation energy before the extraction of existing supplies becomes prohibitively expensive. Biofuels are one such alternative liquid fuel supply. The research used the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach for evaluating the production of biodiesel fuel from algae as a feedstock, including processes for growing algae in conventional and accelerated processes in bioreactors. An energy return on investment and comparison with conventional fuels (gasoline, diesel fuel) on an LCA basis and on a resource consumption basis (e.g., land, water, feedstock) is also presented. The results are reported for required land use, water use, input-to-output energy ratio, and carbon emissions for algacultural biodiesel fuel. From the present study it appears that algae-derived biodiesel fuel requires significantly less land, water and energy than do all other biodiesel fuels. It would appear prudent for the US to vigorously pursue this option since a significant fraction of US light vehicle fuel needs can be addressed.The trend of increasing petroleum prices has prompted the consideration of other fuels for transportation. Ethanol has received a great deal of attention based on the hope that it is possible to develop a sustainable and relatively environmentally responsible alternative to gasoline. Currently, the biofuels industry depends heavily on the use of cereal crops as the feedstock for the ethanol refineries. This practice, however, has led to concern over the diversion of food supplies to fuel supplies; price increases of corn and corn-dependent products (milk, beef, etc.) have already been blamed on the market forces pushing crops towards fuel production. Additionally, sufficient land water exist in the US for cereal crop-based biofuels. Another method for producing ethanol uses waste products as the main feedstock. The waste can consist of anything fermentable agricultural field remnants, yard clippings, and paper and food waste all are potentially inputs to the ethanol production process. An added benefit of such a system is the decrease in the amount of material that must be disposed in landfills or dumps. This paper briefly discusses the conversion of municipal solid waste (MSW) to ethanol for use as an automotive replacement fuel.Renewable energy and storage technologies are often thought of as sustainable energy systems and several life cycle analyses point to the positive energy return on energy invested for individual renewable systems. However, in order to power the various life cycle processes such as manufacturing, refining, and installation, fossil fuels are used to generate the required heat and electricity. Thus, there remains a question as to how the whole suite of renewable technologies, as considered in isolation from fossil fuels, can power their own life cycles. Because most renewable technologies have intermittent outputs due to intermittent inputs such as the sun, wind, and waves, it is unclear how compatible those power outputs are for our constant and high-power industrial processes. Storage technologies can possibly play a key role in providing dispatchable power, and storage systems are often quoted as being necessary to promote widespread use of renewable energy. This paper presents a methodology to measure innovation in renewable and storage technologies by using a time-varying renewable energy only energy return on energy invested - rEROI(t). Innovative technologies will therefore be those that make rEROI(t) increase over time. The methodology assumes that the power outputs of existing renewable systems would be the only source of power for the life cycle processes of making the next set of renewable and storage technologies. Thus, renewable systems are required to manufacture themselves.In modern society, everything from transportation to commerce to food supply is heavily dependent on the availability of cheap and plentiful energy supplies. In the past few years many have realized that the traditional sources of energy oil and gas are in limited supply and that we need to prepare for the approaching production maxima. Recent research has focused on alternative forms of transportation energy including biofuels, unconventional refining techniques, and heavy oil and bitumen. This report is a continuation of earlier research and now considers ethanol produced from municipal solid waste, ethanol from algae, and compressed natural gas. The data presented are maintained in the same format as previous studies to facilitate comparison between the fuels. Results are reported for land use, water use, input-to-output energy ratio, and carbon emissions for each fuel cycle and source. Data are given for the cases of 10, 25, and 50 percent displacements of the 2012 predicted transportation energy needs (i.e., the equivalent of 430 million gallons of gasoline per day). Cradle-to-grave findings indicate that some novel fuels cannot substitute for conventional fuels without consuming more water or land and emitting more greenhouse gases than fuels in use today. The life cycle analysis approach presented here is that which should be used as the US moves toward low carbon fuel standards (LCFS) and carbon cap and trade (CC&T) approaches for reducing carbon loading of the environment.This paper proposes an exergy-based approach to evaluating the sustainability of different information technology (IT) systems. In reviewing existing standards around IT sustainability, we find that most of these metrics are based on energy efficiencies. Thermodynamically, these metrics imply sufficiency of a first-law analysis. In this paper, we show that such metrics based on the first-law of thermodynamics are necessary but not sufficient for evaluating the sustainability of IT systems. We discuss how within the context of sustainability theory exclusively relying on first-law metrics implicitly assumes a narrow set of system boundary conditions, and we show using an exergy-based life-cycle analysis that various classes of IT systems violate these boundary conditions. Thus, we suggest the need for metrics that include a second-law component as well as a life-cycle view of the IT system. Having identified such a metric, we demonstrate applicability of the framework for a sample IT system. We conclude by reflecting upon additional research needs and challenges associated with widespread implementation of such a framework.This study represents a cumulative exergy and life cycle assessment of corn ethanol production via dry milling. The process under consideration includes the agricultural process for production of corn, transportation of corn and industrial process of ethanol production. The secondary process of production of pesticides and fertilizers is also taken into consideration. It is seen that the exergy content of ethanol produced from this process is 23.3 MJ per liter of ethanol produced. The non-renewable input was 7.5 MJ per liter. The overall production efficiency of the industrial process was found to be 49%. The life cycle assessment results showed that both the global warming potential and acidification potential are positive which means that the production of corn ethanol via dry milling contributes to the increase of greenhouse gases and acidification.One of the most important measures for building energy conservation is applying wall materials with thermal-insulation performance in buildings. But energy and resource consumption together with induced environment problems also occur during the process of production and recycling of wall materials. Therefore, a comprehensive and scientific evaluation system for wall materials is necessary. Based on the life-cycle theory, a multi-objective assessment model involving environment, energy and cost items is proposed for the typical wall materials. In the model, the concept of utility is employed to evaluate the influence of energy assumption, economic cost and environment. The target weight values of the index in the assessment model are identified by the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Finally, based on the multi-objective assessment model and the regional development in Shaanxi Province, China, the life cycle assessment for ten kinds of wall materials commonly used in China is made. It concludes that in the three block wall materials, autoclaved aerated concrete block has the largest total utility value as well as the sintering ash bricks followed by the hollow clay bricks with little difference between them in the brick wall materials category. The results can be used for public policy for promoting new types of wall materials.Geopolymers as alternative binder systems are attracting increasing interest in research and development. They can display outstanding technical properties, such as high strength, high acid resistance, and/or high temperature resistance. It has been documented by several investigations that good performance of geopolymers can also be obtained by the utilisation of secondary raw materials (industrial wastes like fly ash or slag). This explains the strong interest in this technology from countries with growing industrialisation. These countries accumulate large quantities of industrial wastes and do not have a developed recycling pathway. The use of waste for geopolymer production could not only solve a waste problem, but also reduce the consumption of primary raw materials. Nevertheless, only limited knowledge exists about the ecological implications of geopolymer production. in this chapter, the effects of geopolymer production will be investigated from an environmental point of view. Furthermore, the predominant drivers of ecological impacts of geopolymers will be discussed to provide guidance for the development of geopolymer compositions for different applications.In this study, we analyze the impact of fertilizer- and manure-induced N2O emissions due to energy crop production on the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when conventional transportation fuels are replaced by first-generation biofuels (also taking account of other GHG emissions during the entire life cycle). We calculate the nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions by applying a statistical model that uses spatial data on climate and soil. For the land use that is assumed to be replaced by energy crop production (the 'reference land-use system'), we explore a variety of options, the most important of which are cropland for food production, grassland, and natural vegetation. Calculations are also done in the case that emissions due to energy crop production are fully additional and thus no reference is considered. The results are combined with data on other emissions due to biofuels production that are derived from existing studies, resulting in total GHG emission reduction potentials for major biofuels compared with conventional fuels. The results show that N2O emissions can have an important impact on the overall GHG balance of biofuels, though there are large uncertainties. The most important ones are those in the statistical model and the GHG emissions not related to land use. Ethanol produced from sugar cane and sugar beet are relatively robust GHG savers: these biofuels change the GHG emissions by -103% to -60% (sugar cane) and -58% to -17% (sugar beet), compared with conventional transportation fuels and depending on the reference land-use system that is considered. The use of diesel from palm fruit also results in a relatively constant and substantial change of the GHG emissions by -75% to -39%. For corn and wheat ethanol, the figures are -38% to 11% and -107% to 53%, respectively. Rapeseed diesel changes the GHG emissions by -81% to 72% and soybean diesel by -111% to 44%. Optimized crop management, which involves the use of state-of-the-art agricultural technologies combined with an optimized fertilization regime and the use of nitrification inhibitors, can reduce N2O emissions substantially and change the GHG emissions by up to -135 percent points (pp) compared with conventional management. However, the uncertainties in the statistical N2O emission model and in the data on non-land-use GHG emissions due to biofuels production are large; they can change the GHG emission reduction by between -152 and 87 pp.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a valuable tool that can be used to quantify potential environmental costs and benefits early in process research and development, allowing a company to focus development resources on products with both economic and environmental benefits. Cradle-to-gate life cycle assessments show clear environmental benefits for flexible foam polyols made primarily from soy or castor oil compared to petrochemicals. Compared to petrochemical based polyols, the seed oil based polyols would use 33% to 64% of the fossil resources and could generate very low (-13% (i.e., sequestration) to 46%) greenhouse gas emissions. The magnitude of impacts for polyols from castor oil is dominated by two key assumptions: castor farming inputs and emissions, and castor oil co-product value. The choice of farming model also has a significant impact on the gas emissions and water use for polyols from soy oil.Today, environmentally responsible chemistry is of huge importance in the wake of sustainable production. In the field of the. ne chemical and pharmaceutical industry, preparative supercritical fluid chromatography (Prep-SFC) and preparative high performance liquid chromatography (Prep-HPLC) are widely used chiral separation techniques. Prep-SFC is often named as a green alternative for Prep-HPLC without having a thorough assessment of the greenness. However, if metrics are used for process selection with respect to green chemistry, they mainly show three shortcomings: (1) a narrow system boundary approach is used; (2) energy requirements are barely taken into account and (3) if energy requirements are considered, there is a differentiation in mass and energy inputs. Taking into account these shortcomings, Prep-HPLC and Prep-SFC are now compared and evaluated for their integral resource consumption. The evaluation is performed on a specific enantiomeric separation using exergetic life cycle analysis within enlarging system boundaries alpha, beta and gamma. Within the a system boundary (process level), Prep-HPLC requires 26.3% more resources quantified in exergy than the Prep-SFC separation due to its inherent higher use of organic solvents. Within the b system boundary (plant level), Prep-HPLC requires 29.1% more resources quantified in exergy than Prep-SFC. However, the Cumulative Exergy Extracted from the Natural Environment (CEENE) to deliver all mass and energy flows to the a and b system boundary via the overall industrial metabolism shows that Prep-SFC requires 34.3% more resources than Prep-HPLC. The poor score of Prep-SFC in the g system boundary is attributed to the high CEENE value related to the production of liquid carbon dioxide and the use of electricity for heating and cooling. It can be concluded that for this case, the most sustainable process as for the integral resource consumption is Prep-HPLC, unlike the general perception that Prep-SFC outperforms Prep-HPLC.The chemical industry is increasing its efforts to reduce the environmental burdens of chemical production. One focus is to implement energy-efficient processes and green technologies early in the process design to maximize environmental efficiency and to reduce costs. However, as data on many chemical products are scarce, many sustainability studies are hampered by the lack of information on production processes, and chemicals are often neglected or only crudely estimated. Models that estimate production data and environmental burdens can be vital tools to aid sustainability efforts. In addition, they are useful for the environmental assessment of chemicals without access to production data, i.e. in supply-chain management or for the assessment of products using chemicals as materials. Using mass and energy flow data on the petrochemical production of 338 chemicals, we developed models that can estimate key production parameters directly from the molecular structure. The data sources were mostly production data provided by industrial partners, extended by data from the ecoinvent database. The predicted parameters were the Cumulative Energy Demand (CED), the Global Warming Potential (GWP), the Eco-indicator 99 score, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, and the electricity and heat use over the production cycle. Model outputs include a measure of the prediction uncertainty. The median relative errors of the models were between 10% and 30%, within acceptable ranges for estimations. The modelled parameters offer a thorough insight into the environmental performance of a production process and the model estimates can be of great service in process design, supply-chain management and environmental assessments of chemical products in the early planning and design stages where production data are not available.The solvent-less Pd-catalyzed Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling of different aryl halides with phenylboronic acid and an in situ generated solid base was investigated in order to study the influence of different modes of energy entry. For this reason reactions were performed in two different ball-milling set-ups and also different techniques of microwave irradiation have been applied. Combination of reaction data (yield, selectivity, batch size) with energetic data (line power consumption) was used to generalize the results as a curtate life cycle assessment (cLCA), breaking down the reaction to the reaction step, neglecting up- and downstream processes. Thus cLCA was applied for early-level reaction optimization and as decision guidance for constitutive experiments. Under the applied reaction and boundary conditions applied for the solvent-free Suzuki-Miyaura reaction ball milling is proven to be a more effective tool for energy entry than microwave irradiation.In this presentation it is analyzed how the replacement of out-dated power plants can be combined with a German CCS strategy and which environmental impacts this will cause. Although the application of CCS results in net reduction of CO(2) emissions, a broader environmental analysis is necessary to show the overall environmental impacts. Based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and a simulation of capacity replacement from today up to 2030 the environmental effects of power generation of coal-based steam power plants are examined. Future environmental impacts of German electricity production are projected. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedDue to its compatibility with the current energy infrastructures and the potential to reduce CO(2) emissions significantly, CO(2) capture and geological storage is recognised as one of the main options in the portfolio of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation technologies being developed worldwide. The CO(2) capture technologies offer a number of alternatives, which involve different energy consumption rates and subsequent environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) not only tracks energy and non-energy related GHG releases but also tracks various other environmental releases, such as solid wastes, toxic substances and common air pollutants, as well as the consumption of other resources, such water, minerals and land use. This paper presents the principles of the LCA model developed at Imperial College and uses the post combustion capture example to demonstrate the methodology in detail. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European DYNAMIS project is part of the HYPOGEN quick-start programme and aims at investigating viable routes for large-scale cost-effective combined hydrogen and electricity production with integrated CO2 Capture and geological Storage. This paper presents the environmental evaluation carried out for each technology option studied, producing Hydrogen and Electricity with CCS. The methodology used is based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) principles and concentrates on the assessment of two criteria: GHG emissions and non renewable primary energy consumption. As with other evaluations performed in DYNAMIS (mainly focused on technical and economic aspects), these results lead to the selection of best concepts in terms of environmental efficiency by comparing and weighing up positive and negative effects (i.e GHG emissions reduction and increase of non-renewable primary energy consumption). (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) tools are compared in the article. The examples of how LCA methodology and results of LCA studies can be utilized to improve EIA procedures are presented. Application of the Canadian EIA guidelines to Carbon Capture and Storage projects is reviewed. As a case study, the Weyburn project in Saskatchewan, Canada is used. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Exergy concept is very useful to assess the loss of work potential, which is inherent in any natural process. The entropy generation in any real (i.e., irreversible) process is a measure of the irreversibility of that process. Exergy concept includes the combined effect of a system and environment to measure the maximum possible work potential as the system reaches equilibrium with the environment from its initial state. In this article, a brief overview of different methods based on the principles of second law of thermodynamics in design and analysis of thermal systems is discussed. The concept of entropy generation and exergy destruction in real-life processes are combined with economics and the overall impact on the environment during the life-cycle of a system to obtain more useful conclusions. Starting from entropy generation minimization principle (EGMP), exergy analysis, thermoeconomics (exergoeconomics) and exergetic life cycle analysis has been discussed. Some discussions on possible future trends of application of exergy concept are also included.A method based on life cycle assessment (LCA) is presented and applied to upgrading of Brewers' spent grain and cabbage trimmings. The results show that upgrading is beneficial compared with present systems. It is also demonstrated that without the systems approach the conclusions would have been different, hence leading to sub-optimal solutions.The methodology, key factors and main strategies of ecodesign are described, as well as current efforts to progress beyond state of the art. The majority of the costs and environmental impacts attributable to the sale of food products are accumulated throughout the length of the food chain, from the raw materials to the end use of the consumer. Therefore, life cycle assessment methodology is one of the most useful methodologies to ecodesign new food products. The ecodesign process is used to optimise all stages of the food chain to reduce material, water and energy consumption as well as to minimise the pollutants and waste generated. A brief case study is presented of a successful food product ecodesign.Definitions that have been developed for sustainable packaging are critically reviewed and examples given of situations where prevailing assumptions about what constitutes sustainable packaging are incorrect. Metrics and tools for the design of sustainable packaging are reviewed and the key drivers for development of sustainable food packaging discussed. Waste management options are explored from a sustainability viewpoint, and future trends outlined.The effect of decreasing the inlet temperature and the cathode porosity of tubular Solid Oxide Fuel Cell with one air channel and one fuel channel was investigated using CFD approach. A CFD model of the cell was developed using the commercial CFD software Fluent 6.2. A Fluent based SOFC model was used to simulate the electrochemical effects. The cathode and the anode of the cell were resolved in the model and the convection and conduction heat transfer modes were included. The results of the CFD model are presented at inlet temperatures of 700 degrees C, 600 degrees C, and 500 degrees C and with cathode porosity of 30%, 20% and 10%. The resulting thermal, electrical, and flow fields are presented and discussed. It was found that the Fluent based SOFC model is effective tool for analyzing the complex and highly interactive three-dimensional electrical, thermal, and fluid flow fields, generally associated with the SOFCs. The comprehensive current density and thermal fields generated with the Fluent based model are necessary to assist a life-cycle analysis of the cell through prediction of thermal stresses.Continued efforts to reduce the environmental impact of products and services are leading to the increased prevalence of life-cycle assessment (LCA) during the design phase. A key challenge in traditional process-based LCA is the validation of vast life-cycle inventory data, which easily numbers in the tens of thousands of data points. In this paper, we utilize an 'object-based' approach from software engineering to manage the large amount of data and combine this approach with simple thermodynamic principles, thus significantly reducing the chance of error in LCA inputs. The approach is demonstrated for the test case of a typical industrial air-conditioning unit. We find that implementation of the object-based approach identifies numerous potential errors in the life-cycle inventory data. Thus, the proposed approach enables the designer to perform a more robust environmental analysis of a given system. This facilitates a better identification and prioritization of opportunities for reducing the environmental footprint across the system life-cycle.Life cycle inventory (LCI) can be used to quantify the energy input and materials assumption as well as associated with environmental emission of a product system in their whole life cycle, and provide important information to improve the environmental performance, to compare possible alternatives or to establish recommendations for action, product procurement, purchase and disposal. Data flow balanced Algorithm was built up in terms of the main flow and modeling the unit process and flow chart, and LCI data compiled method were also established based on the recursion algorithm of primary flows. Lastly, a case practice of iron and steel production was carried out to test the correctness of developed LCI calculation model.This paper presents recent trends in Design for Sustainability (DfS) with foresight and strategy as the point of view. We first provide a definition of design for sustainability based on the notion of sustainability. Then, we show the scope of various Design for X concepts in relation to the stages of product lifecycle and the triple bottom lines of sustainability; economy, environment and society. A survey of the recent studies for designing sustainable products is presented followed by the detail summary of various metrics that are used in relation to sustainability and designing environmentally friendly products.The area of sustainability in business is crowded with discussion and tools that are geared towards change at the organisational level (e.g. Corporate Social Responsibility). At the product level, there is a predominance of work focusing on environmental sustainability (e.g. Design for Environment). This work addresses the multiple aspects of sustainability that are involved in making decisions in new product development (NPD). A framework is proposed that maps different facets of sustainability against each stage of the product life cycle. This framework will provide the basis for an assessment tool to improve Design for Sustainability capabilities in NPD.Engineering design is done in CAD systems. Environmental assessment is done by using LCA software. Both worlds have strong relationships - especially when Ecodesign is to be implemented - but they are not necessarily connected. The project presented in this paper wants to link both worlds and show how the reduction of the environmental impact can be considered during engineering design processes. CAD systems include much information about different parameters of the product life cycle, from which Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can benefit. This paper describes an approach by which LCA could be integrated into CAD systems to provide an easy to apply environmental evaluation in early design stages.The predigestion life cycle assessment (LCA) method has been applied to investigate the environmental impact of recycle copper process from copper-slag. Related environmental load data of each process stage have been obtained. Copper-slag recycle copper process includes crushing, milling, flotation, dehydration. Environmental impact single data of each process stage is 0.0168, 0.0200, 0.0615, 0.0279, total environmental impact single data of copper-slag is 0.1262. Copper-ore recycle process includes mining, crushing, milling, flotation, dehydration. Environmental impact single data of each process stage is 0.1120, 0.0138, 0.0152, 0.0617, 0.0287, total environmental impact single data of copper-slag is 0.2314. Copper-slag recycle process has not mining process. The total impact single score of copper-slag process is 0.55 times than copper-ore. Recycle copper from slag will improve the utilization of resource, reduce environmental load and development of circulation economics.Three scenarios of energy production from sunflower seeds in a rural context are compared. The analysis refers to the district of Pisa, in Italy, and it accounts for production of sunflower seeds, conversion of seeds into different biofuels (crude oil, refined oil and biodiesel) and production of thermal and electrical power from biofuels in CHP engines. The environmental impacts of each scenario were compared by applying the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA). The use of all the three types of biofuel allows a reduction of fossil CO2 emissions of 400-460 g/MJ of produced electricity respect to a traditional diesel fuel. On the other hand all biofuel scenarios have a higher impact than diesel in the categories respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, terrestrial acidification/nutrification due to polluting emissions deriving from seed cultivation. The life cycle analysis shows that the biofuel upgrading processes (refining and transesterification) as well as crude oil transport have a low influence on the environmental performance, compared to seed cultivation, which is the most impacting step. On the other hand, crude oil upgrading allows a significant reduction in pollutant emissions during combustion. As a result, biodiesel results the most sustainable biofuel in the analysed context.The design and development cycle for complex systems is full of uncertainty, commonly recognized as the main source of risk in organizations engaged in design and development. One of the challenges for such organizations is assessing how much risk (cost, schedule, scope) they can take on and still remain competitive. The risk associated with the design of complex systems is fundamentally tied to uncertainty, which may lead to suboptimal performance or failure if unmanaged. By understanding the sources of uncertainty in all stages of complex system design, decision-makers can make more informed choices and identify "hotspots" for reducing risks due to uncertainty by reallocating resources, adding safeguards, etc. There are two major categories of uncertainty (certain uncertainty) classification in the design of complex systems: Knowledge/epistemic uncertainty and Variability/Aleatory uncertainty. The intersection of these two sets is ambiguity uncertainty and the outside is what we don't know we don't know (uncertain uncertainty). By setting detailed definitions, we can reduce the ambiguity uncertainty. Furthermore, we can subdivide knowledge uncertainty into model, ambiguity and behavioral uncertainty, and subdivide variability uncertainty into natural randomness, ambiguity and behavioral uncertainty. We can go further and find subcategories for model and behavioral uncertainty. Using this classification for uncertainty, this paper proposes the "Capture, Assessment and Communication Tool for Uncertainty Simulation" (CACTUS) for assessing, capturing, and communicating risks due to uncertainty during complex system design. CACTUS has columns to identify sources, location, severity and importance of uncertainty in stages of design. By applying CACTUS, decision-makers will be able to find answers to the following questions for each type of uncertainty included in the design process: 1- Where is uncertainty from? (i.e., Sources); 2- In which stages of design does uncertainty appear? (i.e., Location); 3- What is its severity?; and, 4-What is its importance? The hypothesis of this research is that, by using CACTUS, design organizations can capture, assess, and efficiently and effectively communicate uncertainty through their design processes, and as a result, improve their capacity for delivering complex systems that meet cost, schedule, and performance objectives. The fundamental steps of the methodology are illustrated by using a concurrent design case study from NASA's Project Design Center.This study examines the identification of the typology of semantic relationships that exist in the Product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) domain of the Projeto de Inventario do Ciclo de Vida para a Competitividade Ambiental da Industria Brasileira [Life Cycle Inventory Project for Environmental Competetiveness in Brazilian Industry] managed by the Instituto Brasileiro de Ciencia e Tecnologia (IBICT) [Brazilian Institute of Science and Technology]. To this end it creates a defining structure based on the methodology for ontology development described by Brascher (2007), and in guidelines described by Uschold (1996), Uschold & King (1995) and Uschold et al. (1996). With the intention of contributing to the development of ontologies, as well as glossaries and specialized dictionaries, it tests the validity of this structure by applying the experimental method to a corpus of 231 terms belonging to the domain. By adopting the structure in question it is possible to identify the category, type, definition, source, property, note, synonym, example and limit term for the collected terms. It was noted in the study that the structure follows a pattern of a highly flexible classification, thus enabling it to be applied to any area of knowledge. It was concluded that the defining structure comprehends the complexity of the semantic relationsA life cycle assessment (LCA) of dairy systems in Nova Scotia was conducted to compare environmental impacts of typical pasture and confinement operations. Data on material and energy inputs and outputs of these systems were obtained from local researchers and industry, and life cycle impacts in 11 categories were quantified. Use of concentrate feeds, IN fertilizers, transport fuels and electricity were dominant contributors to environmental impacts. Somewhat surprisingly, grazing cows for five months per year (typical of pasture systems in Nova Scotia) had little effect on overall environmental impact. Scenario modelling suggests, however, that prolonged grazing is potentially beneficial. Compared with total confinement, a seven-month grazing scenario performed better in seven of the environmental impact categories evaluated with greatest potential improvements associated with acidification potential, ozone depletion potential, human toxicity and fresh water ecotoxicity. In contrast, land use was the only category in which an increased reliance on pasture is predicted to result in a marked increase in environmental impact.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to discuss the growing public interest in climate protection and the desire for climate-friendly consumption which has led to a previously unimagined demand for Carbon Labels on products and various approaches to calculating the carbon footprint of firms or individual products. Design/methodology/approach - A principal problem in calculating the carbon footprint is the input required to genuinely map the emissions from cradle to grave, in other words the product life path as is customary in a life cycle assessment. Small-and medium-sized companies especially encounter major problems in practice when trying to calculate their footprint and take aspects of upstream CO2 emissions from their suppliers into account as well. The different options regarding how to balance and to include these emissions are compared. Findings - Such analyses are indispensable against the background of decreasing vertical integration in industrialised countries. This is the classic question concerning the boundaries of balancing, but here with far-reaching consequences, as incorrect selection of the limits will also falsify the results and conclusions. Originality/value - The paper demonstrates that there are new methods that can be used to determine CO2 emissions in supply chains from stage to stage recursively and simply pass the data on to the next actor in the chain. A company then only needs to take the data from its direct trading partners into account and can dispense with comprehensive life cycle analyses. This would make CO2 calculations easier but it requires a discussion about the question for what kind of decisions the different approaches are really helpful.Purpose - Efforts to address climate change need to focus on curtailing carbon emissions to the atmosphere, and these efforts need to focus in large part on energy processes and activities, given the significant contributions to carbon emissions of the energy sectors of countries. This paper aims to describe key energy-related steps needed to address climate change. Design/methodology/approach - The key energy-related steps needed to address climate change are identified, discussed and illustrated. Findings - Several key energy-related steps are identified that need to be addressed to combat climate change. These include: use non-carbon-based energy sources; use non-carbon-based energy carriers and/or energy carriers that facilitate the use of non-carbon-based energy sources; remove and sequester carbon-based atmospheric emissions; and increase efficiency. Originality/value - Given the major contributions of energy processes to climate change, it is anticipated that initiatives to address these steps will allow major advances to be achieved regarding addressing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The key energy-related steps constitute a logical and pragmatic approach that provides a coherent overall structure to guide efforts to address climate change. It is expected that addressing these steps should assist broader efforts to achieve sustainable development.The basic targets of the modern cement and concrete production industry are the reduction of energy costs and minimisation of environmental effects. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for the evaluation of the environmental performance of a production system. The objective of this work is to provide a very clear analysis and quantification of all the parameters of the process that make a major contribution to environmental impact. The system investigated includes raw material acquisition, industrial production, packaging and transportation, use of the product, demolition and its final disposal. The cement production stage contributes the most to the environmental pollution.A fuzzy logic based method of energy efficiency assessment of Biomass-based Fuel Ethanol (BFE) production is introduced in this paper. Energy relevant inventory variables are defined and described by fuzzy sets representing the differences in energy inventory data between the BFE system and its reference. A fuzzy reasoning process is developed to derive the energy efficiency from the fuzzificated inventory data. This method distinguishes itself by simple calculation, lower requirements of data accuracy and capability of processing subjectivity. A case study of corn-based fuel ethanol from Northeast China is conducted to demonstrate the application of the proposed method.Sustainable production of biofuels requires lots of feedstocks, developing robust technologies and industrial ecology-oriented biorefineries under the overarching principles of sustainability. Majority of existing methods for impacts analysis of biofuels have not considered the triple dimensions of sustainability. A critical challenge for any chain of biofuel traders is to develop and implement an integrated set of performance measures that can direct its efforts towards restructuring existing supply chains. This research aims to develop OR/MS based metrics that are integrative and consider the multi-expectations of various stakeholders to allow efficient supply chains' participation into sustainable development at various levels.Non-fossil fuel energy options can help reduce or eliminate the emissions of greenhouse gases and are needed to combat climate change. Three distinct ways in which non-fossil fuel options can be used in society are examined here: the capture/production of non-fossil fuel energy sources, their conversion into appropriate energy carriers and increased efficiency throughout the life cycle. Non-fossil fuel energy sources are insufficient to avoid global warming in that they are not necessarily readily utilisable in their natural forms. Hydrogen energy systems are needed to facilitate the use of non-fossil fuels by converting them to two main classes of energy carriers: hydrogen (and hydrogen-derived fuels) and electricity. High efficiency is needed to allow the greatest benefits to be attained from energy options in terms of climate change and other factors. A case study is considered involving the production of hydrogen from non-fossil energy sources via thermochemical water decomposition. Thermochemical water decomposition provides a realistic future non-fossil fuel energy option, which can be driven by non-fossil energy sources (particularly nuclear or solar energy) and help combat global warming.The life cycle Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production and use of transportation fuels from conventional and unconventional fossil fuel sources in Canada and the USA are investigated. The studied pathways include reformulated gasoline and low sulphur diesel produced from oil sands, oil shale, coal and natural gas, as well as reference pathways from conventional crude oil. A comparison of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) completed for these fuels indicates considerable uncertainty in these emissions, illustrating the need for further LCAs with particular attention to completeness and transparency. Based on the considered studies, only one unconventional pathway has better GHG emissions performance than the conventional pathways: Fischer-Tropsch diesel from natural gas. However, the limitations of the data used here and other factors that may restrict a switch to natural gas must be considered. Furthermore, there are considerable opportunities to reduce emissions from the unconventional pathways. There is significant potential to produce liquid transportation fuels from unconventional Canadian and US fossil sources. However, to avoid significant increases in GHG emissions, the life cycle GHG implications of almost all pathways will need to be reduced to respond to upcoming regulatory initiatives and to move towards a more sustainable transportation sector.The objective of this study is to assess the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the production and use of biofuels in Spain considering different crop production alternatives, including the possible import of raw materials. Avoided GHG emissions due to the substitution of conventional transport fuels with biofuels are then quantified. The studied biofuels are bioethanol from cereal crops and biodiesel from crude vegetable oil and waste vegetable oil. Several blends of these biofuels with gasoline and diesel are also studied. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of these fuels is carried out. The stakeholders were involved early in the process, setting the scope of the analysis and providing the relevant data. The results shown are GHG emissions in the production and distribution of these fuels. The benefits, in terms of GHG savings, of the adoption of the biofuel introduction objectives at the national and European levels are also quantified.In this study, a well-to-wheel CO2 analysis of the usage phase of an Electric Vehicle (EV) compared with Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)-based vehicles is conducted. This study uses vehicle-type approval data of the vehicles and official fuel consumption data for comparison. It was found that EVs move the CO2 emissions from the transport sector to the electricity sector, but contribute to reducing the overall global emissions. For urban driving, this reduction ranges from 30% to 95% depending on the country in question. In rush hour the EV outperforms all other fossil-fuelled alternatives even if charged on electricity from hard coal.This study is concerned with the very topical issue of assessing electricity production technologies according to sustainable development criteria. The objective is to be able to classify the most important production electricity technologies according to the three pillars of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Our classification is based on multi-criteria tools respecting the non-compensation of bad performances. Thanks to our results, we can make technological choices with greater objectivity.In this article, we present a life cycle assessment (LCA) of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) for several lignite power plant technologies. The LCA includes post-combustion, pre-combustion and oxyfuel capture processes as well as subsequent pipeline transport and storage of the separated CO2 in a depleted gas field. The results show an increase in cumulative energy demand and a substantial decrease in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for all CO2 capture approaches in comparison with power plants without CCS, assuming negligible leakage within the time horizon under consideration. Leakage will, however, not be zero. Due to the energy penalty, CCS leads to additional production Of CO2. However, the CO2 emissions occur at a much lower rate and are significantly delayed, thus leading to different, and most likely smaller, impacts compared to the no-sequestration case. In addition, a certain share of the CO2 will be captured permanently due to chemical reactions and physical trapping. For other environmental impact categories, the results depend strongly on the chosen technology and the details of the process. The post-combustion approach, which is closest to commercial application, leads to sharp increases in many categories of impacts, with the impacts in only one category, acidification, reduced. in comparison with a conventional power plant, the pre-combustion approach results in decreased impact in all categories. This is mainly due to the different power generation process (IGCC) which is coupled with the pre-combustion technology. In the case of the oxyfuel approach, the outcome of the LCA depends highly on two uncertain parameters: the energy demand for air separation and the feasibility of co-capture of pollutants other than CO2. If co-capture were possible, oxyfuel could lead to a near-zero emission power plant. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new system is proposed for the treatment of waste aluminium. The total exergy loss (EXL) in the system for the co-production of 1 kg of hydrogen at 30 MPa and 26 kg of aluminium hydroxide is evaluated from the viewpoint of life cycle assessment (LCA) by comparison with the EXLs in conventional systems, The exergy flow diagram reveals that the exergy of waste aluminium, which contains only 15 mass% metal, is still large, while that of pure aluminium hydroxide is relatively small. Therefore, the EXL in the proposed system (150.9 MJ) is 55% less than that in the conventional system (337.7 MJ) in which the gas compressor and production of aluminium hydroxide consume significantly more exergy. The results also indicate that exergy analysis should be applied to the LCA as a critical measure for practical use, in addition to the conventional LCA of carbon dioxide emission. (C) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To reduce criteria pollutant emissions and greenhouse gases from mobile sources, the use of hydrogen as a transportation fuel is proposed as a new paradigm in combination with fuel cells for vehicle power. The extent to which reductions can and will occur depends on the mix of technologies that constitute the hydrogen supply chain. This paper introduces an analysis and planning methodology for estimating emissions, greenhouse gases, and the energy efficiency of the hydrogen supply chain as a function of the technology mix on a life cycle, well to wheels (WTW) basis. The methodology, referred to as the preferred combination assessment (PCA) model, is demonstrated by assessing an illustrative set of hydrogen infrastructure (generation and distribution) deployment scenarios in California's South Coast Air Basin. Each scenario reflects a select mix of technologies for the years 2015, 2030, and 2060 including (1) the proportion of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources of the hydrogen and (2) the rate of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle adoption. The hydrogen deployment scenarios are compared to the existing paradigm of conventional vehicles and fuels with a goal to reveal and evaluate the efficacy and utility of the PCA methodology. In addition to a demonstration of the methodology, the salient conclusions reached from this first application include the following. Emissions of criteria pollutants increase or decrease, depending on the hydrogen deployment scenario, when compared to an evolution of the existing paradigm of conventional vehicles and fuels. For all scenarios, pipeline distribution from a centrally located generation source reduces criteria pollutant emissions when compared to distribution by truck. With one qualification, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced for the scenarios considered with the extent of reduction increasing in proportion to the renewable sources of hydrogen, When natural gas is utilized as a source for hydrogen, leakage of methane from the U.S. natural gas infrastructure is a significant contributor to the greenhouse gases associated with a hydrogen economy. For all scenarios considered, the WTW energy efficiency improves whereas the consumption of water (and the associated energy) increases.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of one proposed method of hydrogen production - thermochemical water-splitting using the sulfur-iodine cycle couple with a very high-temperature nuclear reactor - is presented in this paper. Thermochemical water-splitting theoretically offers a higher overall efficiency than high-temperature electrolysis of water because heat from the nuclear reactor is provided directly to the hydrogen generation process, instead of using the intermediate step of generating electricity. The primary heat source for the S-1 cycle is an advanced nuclear reactor of operating at temperatures corresponding to those required by the sulfur-iodine process. This LCA examines the environmental impact of the combined advanced nuclear and hydrogen generation plants and focuses on quantifying the emissions of carbon dioxide per kilogram of hydrogen produced. The results are presented in terms of global warming potential (GWP). The GWP of the system is 2500 g carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2-eq) per kilogram of hydrogen produced. The GWP of this process is approximately one-sixth of that for hydrogen production by steam reforming of natural gas, and is comparable to producing hydrogen from wind- or hydro-electric conventional electrolysis. (c) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It may soon become possible to produce hydrogen from hydrolysed carbohydrates instead of ethanol via fermentation and distillation, employing aqueous phase reforming. The environmental merits of these two different energy products and their uses are compared on a life cycle basis, based on expanded systems in the context of a coal-intensive energy economy. Eight industrial options are defined: ethanol for peak power generation with or without heat integration, hydrogen for peak power generation with and without heat integration, ethanol for use in a flexi-fuel vehicle and a fuel cell vehicle, and hydrogen use in an internal combustion engine vehicle and a fuel cell vehicle. Aqueous phase reforming to produce hydrogen is shown to generally outperform the corresponding fermentation-distillation ethanol options. Peak power generated from ethanol would be a preferred short-term option, with peak power from hydrogen in the medium term ceding to the environmentally preferred option of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the long-term. (c) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a growing recognition on the part of industry, policymakers, and consumers that sustainable industry practices are needed to maintain environmental and social well being. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized analytical framework that has traditionally focused on evaluation of the environmental impacts of processes or products using a cradle-to-grave approach. Yet, sustainability, defined generally, requires that assessments consider not only environmental but also social and economic impacts-the other two pillars of sustainability. Even though the LCA methodology has the potential to include both social and economic indicators, and SETAC guidelines recommend the inclusion of such impact categories in all detailed LCAs, no established set of metrics exists to describe the relationship between socioeconomic indicators (SEIs) and a specific product or process; nor is there a common understanding on how such metrics might be developed. This article presents the methods for and development of a suite of socioeconomic indicators that complement the LCA methodology and provides a comprehensive approach for assessing the cradle-to-grave sustainability of a product or process. A combined top-down and bottom-up approach serves as the basis for development of the set of socioeconomic indicators presented here. Generally recognized societal values, industry specific issues, and financial constraints associated with collection of data necessary for measurement of the indicators are all factors considered in this approach. In our categorization, socioeconomic indicators fall into two types: additive indicators and descriptive indicators. Indicators are categorized based on fundamental methodological differences and then used to describe the socioeconomic impacts associated with salmon production. Additive indicators (e.g., production costs and value added) and descriptive indicators (e.g., fair wage and contribution to personal income) are both discussed. There is a need to further develop and refine methods to assess the results of socioeconomic indicators using a life cycle perspective. It would be most interesting to conduct additional case studies that focus on such methodological development, particularly trade-offs between stakeholder groups and pillars of sustainability. Additional areas of discussion are (1) the need for data to populate socioeconomic indicators and (2) defining system boundaries for socioeconomic indicators. This article presents a set of socioeconomic indicators designed to serve as a complement for the LCA framework, thus, increasing the framework's effectiveness as a measure of the overall sustainability of a product or process. Development of socioeconomic indicators as a complement to LCA is still in its early stages, however, and further research is required. The SEIs presented here are discussed theoretically within the context of salmon food production systems, but a test of the practicability and validity of the indicators (i.e., a practical application) is also necessary. The practical application of the topic will be presented in a forthcoming paper.Many studies evaluate the results of applying different life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods to the same life cycle inventory (LCI) data and demonstrate that the assessment results would be different with different LICA methods used. Although the importance of uncertainty is recognized, most studies focus on individual stages of LCA, such as LCI and normalization and weighting stages of LCIA. However, an important question has not been answered in previous studies: Which part of the LCA processes will lead to the primary uncertainty? The understanding of the uncertainty contributions of each of the LCA components will facilitate the improvement of the credibility of LCA. A methodology is proposed to systematically analyze the uncertainties involved in the entire procedure of LCA. The Monte Carlo simulation is used to analyze the uncertainties associated with LCI, LCIA, and the normalization and weighting processes. Five LCIA methods are considered in this study, i.e., Eco-indicator 99, EDIP, EPS, IMPACT 2002+, and LIME. The uncertainty of the environmental performance for individual impact categories (e.g., global warming, ecotoxicity, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, human health) is also calculated and compared. The LCA of municipal solid waste management strategies in Taiwan is used as a case study to illustrate the proposed methodology. The primary uncertainty source in the case study is the LCI stage under a given LCIA method. In comparison with various LCIA methods, EDIP has the highest uncertainty and Eco-indicator 99 the lowest uncertainty. Setting aside the uncertainty caused by LCI, the weighting step has higher uncertainty than the normalization step when Eco-indicator 99 is used. Comparing the uncertainty of various impact categories, the lowest is global warming, followed by eutrophication. Ecotoxicity, human health, and photochemical smog have higher uncertainty. In this case study of municipal waste management, it is confirmed that different LCIA methods would generate different assessment results. In other words, selection of LCIA methods is an important source of uncertainty. In this study, the impacts of human health, ecotoxicity, and photochemical smog can vary a lot when the uncertainties of LCI and LCIA procedures are considered. For the purpose of reducing the errors of impact estimation because of geographic differences, it is important to determine whether and which modifications of assessment of impact categories based on local conditions are necessary. This study develops a methodology of systematically evaluating the uncertainties involved in the entire LCA procedure to identify the contributions of different assessment stages to the overall uncertainty. Which modifications of the assessment of impact categories are needed can be determined based on the comparison of uncertainty of impact categories. Such an assessment of the system uncertainty of LCA will facilitate the improvement of LCA. If the main source of uncertainty is the LCI stage, the researchers should focus on the data quality of the LCI data. If the primary source of uncertainty is the LCIA stage, direct application of LCIA to non-LCIA software developing nations should be avoided.Freshwater is a basic resource for humans; however, its link to human health is seldom related to lack of physical access to sufficient freshwater, but rather to poor distribution and access to safe water supplies. On the other hand, freshwater availability for aquatic ecosystems is often reduced due to competition with human uses, potentially leading to impacts on ecosystem quality. This paper summarises how this specific resource use can be dealt with in life cycle analysis (LCA). The main quantifiable impact pathways linking freshwater use to the available supply are identified, leading to definition of the flows requiring quantification in the life cycle inventory (LCI). The LCI needs to distinguish between and quantify evaporative and non-evaporative uses of 'blue' and 'green' water, along with land use changes leading to changes in the availability of freshwater. Suitable indicators are suggested for the two main impact pathways [namely freshwater ecosystem impact (FEI) and freshwater depletion (FD)], and operational characterisation factors are provided for a range of countries and situations. For FEI, indicators relating current freshwater use to the available freshwater resources (with and without specific consideration of water ecosystem requirements) are suggested. For FD, the parameters required for evaluation of the commonly used abiotic depletion potentials are explored. An important value judgement when dealing with water use impacts is the omission or consideration of non-evaporative uses of water as impacting ecosystems. We suggest considering only evaporative uses as a default procedure, although more precautionary approaches (e.g. an 'Egalitarian' approach) may also include non-evaporative uses. Variation in seasonal river flows is not captured in the approach suggested for FEI, even though abstractions during droughts may have dramatic consequences for ecosystems; this has been considered beyond the scope of LCA. The approach suggested here improves the representation of impacts associated with freshwater use in LCA. The information required by the approach is generally available to LCA practitioners The widespread use of the approach suggested here will require some development (and consensus) by LCI database developers. Linking the suggested midpoint indicators for FEI to a damage approach will require further analysis of the relationship between FEI indicators and ecosystem health.Characterization factors for ecotoxicity in the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) are used to convert emissions into ecotoxicological impacts. Deriving them involves a fate and an effect analysis step. The fate factor quantifies the change in environmental concentration per unit of emission, while the effect factor quantifies the change in impact on the ecosystem per unit of environmental concentration. This paper calculates freshwater ecotoxicological effect factors for 397 pesticides belonging to 11 pesticide-specific toxic modes of action (TMoA), such as acetylcholinesterase inhibition and photosynthesis inhibition. Moreover, uncertainties in the effect factors due to uncertain background concentrations and due to limited toxicity data are quantified. To calculate median ecotoxicological effect factors (EEFs), toxic pressure assessments were made, based on the species sensitivity distribution-and the multisubstance potentially affected fraction-concept. The EEF quantifies an estimate of the fraction of species that is probably affected due to a marginal change in concentration of a pesticide. EEFs were divided into a TMoA-specific and a chemical-specific part, which were calculated on the basis of physicochemical properties, emissions, and toxicity data. Propagation of parameter uncertainty in the EEFs and the TMoA- and chemical-specific parts was quantified by Monte Carlo simulation and results were reported as 90% confidence intervals. Median EEFs range from 2 center dot 10(-3) to 7 center dot 10(6) l/g. Uncertainty in the TMoA-specific part is dominated by uncertainty in the TMoA-specific spread in species sensitivity and by uncertainty in the effective toxicity of a TMoA. Uncertainty in the chemical-specific part of the EEFs depends on the number of species for which toxicity data are available to calculate average toxicity (n (s)) and ranges from a median uncertainty of 2.6 orders of magnitude for n (s) = 2 to one order of magnitude for n (s) a parts per thousand yenaEuro parts per thousand 4. The TMoA-specific effect factor for systemic fungicides shows the largest uncertainty range. For seven TMoAs, uncertainty ranges of the TMoA-specific effect factor are less than two orders of magnitude. For the other four TMoAs, the EEF uncertainty range is between two and eight orders of magnitude. For the chemical-specific part of the EEFs, we found that variation in uncertainty readily decreases for pesticides for which toxicity data are available for at least three species. The same parameters that contributed most to uncertainty were found for pesticides as were found before for high-production-volume chemicals. However, uncertainty in concentrations of pesticides was lower. TMoA-specific factors obtained with the applied nonlinear method differ up to nine orders of magnitude from the factor of 0.5, which is used in the linear method. With the applied method, a distinction in EEFs can be made among different TMoAs. Ecotoxicological effect factors are presented, including overviews of their uncertainty ranges and the main contributors to uncertainty. The applied nonlinear method provides the possibility to quantify parameter uncertainty in the TMoA-specific part of the ecotoxicological effect factor, which is helpful to get more insight in how uncertainty in ecotoxicological characterization factors can be reduced. The calculated uncertainty ranges can be included in life cycle assessment (LCA) case studies, which allows for better interpretation of LCA results obtained with the EEFs. To put the uncertainty in effect factors into perspective within LCIA, more information on the uncertainty in fate factors should be derived.Renewable energy sources nowadays constitute an increasingly important issue in our society, basically because of the need for alternative sources of energy to fossil fuels that are free of CO2 emissions and pollution and also because of other problems such as the diminution of the reserves of these fossil fuels, their increasing prices and the economic dependence of non-producers countries on those that produce fossil fuels. One of the renewable energy sources that has experienced a bigger growth over the last years is wind power, with the introduction of new wind farms all over the world and the new advances in wind power technology. Wind power produces electrical energy from the kinetic energy of the wind without producing any pollution or emissions during the conversion process. Although wind power does not produce pollution or emissions during operation, it should be considered that there is an environmental impact due to the manufacturing process of the wind turbine and the disposal process at the end of the wind turbine life cycle, and this environmental impact should be quantified in order to compare the effects of the production of energy and to analyse the possibilities of improvement of the process from that point of view. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyse the environmental impact of wind energy technology, considering the whole life cycle of the wind power system, by means of the application of the ISO 14040 standard [ISO (1998) ISO 14040. Environmental management-life cycle assessment-principles and framework. International Standard Organization, Geneva, Switzerland], which allows quantification of the overall impact of a wind turbine and each of its component parts using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study. The procedures, details, and results obtained are based on the application of the existing international standards of LCA. In addition, environmental details and indications of materials and energy consumption provided by the various companies related to the production of the component parts are certified by the application of the environmental management system ISO 14001 [ISO (2004) ISO 14001 Environmental management systems-requirements with guidance for use. International Standard Organization, Geneva, Switzerland]. A wind turbine is analysed during all the phases of its life cycle, from cradle to grave, by applying this methodology, taking into account all the processes related to the wind turbine: the production of its main components (through the incorporation of cut-off criteria), the transport to the wind farm, the subsequent installation, the start-up, the maintenance and the final dismantling and stripping down into waste materials and their treatment. The study has been developed in accordance with the ISO 14044 standard [ISO (2006) ISO 14044: Environmental management-life cycle assessment-requirements and guidelines. International Standard Organization, Geneva, Switzerland] currently in force. The application of LCA, according to the corresponding international standards, has made it possible to determine and quantify the environmental impact associated with a wind turbine. On the basis of this data, the final environmental effect of the wind turbine after a lifespan of 20 years and its subsequent decommissioning have been studied. The environmental advantages of the generation of electricity using wind energy, that is, the reduction in emissions and contamination due to the use of a clean energy source, have also been evaluated. This study concludes that the environmental pollution resulting from all the phases of the wind turbine (manufacture, start-up, use, and dismantling) during the whole of its lifetime is recovered in less than 1 year. From the developed LCA model, the important levels of contamination of certain materials can be obtained, for instance, the prepreg (a composite made by a mixture of epoxy resin and fibreglass). Furthermore, it has been concluded that it is possible to reduce the environmental effects of manufacturing and recycling processes of wind turbines and their components. In order to achieve this goal in a fast and effective way, it is essential to enlist the cooperation of the different manufacturers.A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of a toy incorporating electric and electronic components is carried out following the ISO 14044 standard, with the purpose of identifying the environmental hotspots and suggesting ecodesign measures to the manufacturer. The product under study is a teddy bear which sings songs and tells stories while moving its body, using conventional alkaline batteries as a source of energy. This toy is designed by a Spanish company, but manufactured entirely in China, from where it is exported to Europe, America, and Africa. The LCA study includes production of all components in China, maritime and road distribution, use phase, and end-of-life. Life cycle impact assessment is focused on five standard impact categories from the CML 2001 method. The use phase is identified as potentially the most important life cycle stage, due to the impact of battery production. It is responsible for 50% to 64% of the overall life cycle impact, depending on the impact category. Toy production is also an important stage, with 28% to 34% of the total contribution. Maritime distribution also involves relevant contributions in some impact categories. Based on the results of the study, a set of ecodesign measures were suggested to the manufacturer, with most of them being judged as feasible, and applied in a new product. Important data gaps were encountered during the study, especially concerning the use phase, due to lack of data on consumer behavior, and background inventory data on alkaline battery production. A sensitivity analysis applied to the use phase showed that the relative importance of this life cycle stage is strongly affected by the assumptions made in this work. The LCA study was found as a very helpful tool to define ecodesign measures for this product. Several measures suggested have been actually implemented by the manufacturer in a similar product. This case study, together with others, will help in the long run to define general ecodesign measures for the toy sector in Catalonia.The goal of this study is to analyze the environmental impact of new composite materials obtained from the combination of recycled thermoplastics (polypropylene [PP] and high-density polyethylene [HDPE]) and biodegradable waste of little economic value, namely, rice husks and recycled cotton. The environmental impact of these materials is compared to the impact of virgin PP and HDPE using life cycle assessment. From-cradle-to-grave life cycle inventory studies were performed for 1 kg of each of the three new composites: PP+cotton linters, PP+rice husks, and HDPE+cotton linters. Inventory data for the recycling of thermoplastics and cotton were obtained from a number of recycling firms in Spain, while environmental data concerning rice husks were obtained mainly from one rice-processing company located in Spain. Life cycle inventory data for virgin thermoplastics were acquired from PlasticsEurope. Two different scenarios-incineration and landfilling-were considered for the assessment of disposal phase. A quantitative impact assessment was performed for four impact categories: global warming over a hundred years, nonrenewable energy depletion, acidification, and eutrophication. The composites subject to analysis exhibited a significantly reduced environmental impact during the materials acquisition and processing phases compared to conventional virgin thermoplastics in all of the impact categories considered. The use of fertilizers for rice cultivation, however, impaired the results of the rice husk composite in the eutrophication category where it nevertheless outperformed its conventional counterparts. The compounding phase fundamentally implies an electric consumption. The disposal phase was analyzed with regard to emissions in the global warming category. Composites obtained from renewable sources are still in an incipient state of development in comparison with petroleum-derived plastics. In the future, as mass production of these plastics becomes more widespread, their environmental impact can be expected to reach lower levels than those obtained in our study. The new materials exhibited adequate mechanical performance for the application analyzed (structures used in aquaculture). The composites subject to analysis exhibited a significantly reduced environmental impact compared to conventional virgin thermoplastics using 1 kg of material as a functional unit. In accordance with the International Organization for Standardization 14044:2006 standard, it would be advisable to avoid impact allocation. This posed some difficulties, since rice husks are a coproduct of rice. Thus, some impact allocation was done in our study on the basis of economic value. It would also be advisable to take the land use impact category into consideration when performing comparative studies between composites and conventional plastics, albeit the definition of this category is currently the subject of scientific debate.Natural fibres composite materials can have an important role for the planet sustainability. The use of such materials involves the following considerations: complete biodegradability no toxic agents no fabrication energy consumption (very low emissions). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Life Cost Analysis (LCA) of natural fibres composites for industrial applications, for making a comparison with those relative to steel, aluminum and glass fibres production. The comparison shows all the important advantages that we can obtain by the (partial) substitution of such materials with the new natural fibres composites, depending on the applications.Greenhouse production in the near future will need to reduce significantly its environmental impact. For this purpose, elements such as the structure, glazing materials, climate equipments and controls have to be developed and wisely managed to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, achieve maximum use of natural resources such as solar radiation and water, and minimize the input of chemicals and fertilizers. This paper discusses the most relevant developments in greenhouse technology for mild winter climates. Regarding greenhouse structures, recent studies based on computational fluid dynamics have been conducted to investigate the effect of parameters such as ventilator size and arrangement, roof slope and greenhouse width and height on the air exchange rate. Next generation greenhouses are expected to incorporate some of the innovations derived from recent ventilation studies. Covering crops with screens is becoming a common practice. Main advantages and limitations of screenhouses are discussed in this paper. Thermal storage is increasingly applied in closed or semi-closed greenhouses. Under some conditions semi-closed greenhouses could mitigate day/night while reducing the use of water and the entrance of pest. Photo selective films that reflect a fraction of NIR radiation are effective at lowering greenhouse temperature and, in some cases, may be cost effective. NIR reflective films have side effects of major importance in greenhouse production. The CO2 enrichment strategy in computer-controlled greenhouses is based on determining the benefits of increasing the CO2 concentration against the cost of it. No clear strategies have been defined for the application of CO2 in unheated greenhouses, where most of the time the source of carbon dioxide is the external air. Some authors suggest ventilating as little as possible and fertilizing with bottled carbon dioxide at least up to the external concentration. Improving greenhouses by introducing new technologies may have an additional impact on the environment. From an environmental point of view, the incorporation of technology needs to increase yield to compensate for its associated environmental burden. Previous results have shown that forced ventilation and heating are the main reasons for the increase in environmental impact in climate controlled greenhouses. Additional results on the area of technology and its associated impact are discussed in this paper.In Colombia, greenhouse tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) production has been increasing during the last years. Greenhouse production has caused landscape changes, ecosystem flux variations and risings on energy inputs and residue generation. The aim of this work was to quantify the relative intensity of energy demand, resources consumption and pollutants emissions to air, soil and water as a consequence of the implementation of technological alternatives for greenhouse tomato production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was applied to determine the environmental sustainability of tomato production chain. Three strategies were evaluated: soil production system under single layer plastic greenhouse (SSP), substrate production system under double layer plastic greenhouse (HDP) and HDP including heating (HDPH). The Tomgro model was used to determine biomass production for each crop cycle under the three strategies. Potential impact of infrastructure and its contribution to environmental loads were determined especially for categories: climate change, eutrophication and marine aquatic ecotoxicity. LCA results showed the lowest energy consumption for SSP strategy, followed by HDP, while HDPH registered the highest energy demands. The major impact of greenhouse tomato production on the aforementioned categories is related to leaching for SSP and HDP, while, for HDPH, fuel consumption causes the highest environmental impact. Biodegradable residues are of major importance since they lower the impacts for all categories. Water pollution and eutrophication are affected by high nutrient emissions. LCA approach and the use of simulation models allowed assessing the environmental impact of production strategies and possible effects of technological improvements on commercial production systems.Grazed clover/grass pastures are important for animal production systems and the clover component is critical for its contribution to N inputs via biological fixation of atmospheric N(2). The resource efficiency and environmental emissions for clover/grass pastures can differ from that of N-fertilised grass-only pastures. Fixation of N(2) by clover uses photosynthetically-fixed carbon, whereas fertiliser N production consumes fossil fuels and has net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Clover has a higher phosphorus (P) requirement than grass and where extra P fertiliser is used for clover/grass pastures the risk of P loss to waterways is greater than for grass-only pastures. Nitrogen leaching from grazed pasture increases exponentially with increased N inputs and urinary-N contributes 70 to 90% of total N leaching. However, the few studies comparing clover/grass and N-fertilised grass-only pastures at similar total N inputs indicated similar N leaching losses. Nitrous oxide emissions from grazed pastures due to N-cycling of excreta are similar for clover/grass and N-fertilised grass-only pastures at similar total N inputs. However, grass-only pasture requires the application of N fertiliser, which will result in additional specific losses that don't occur from clover-fixed N. Thus, total N(2)O emissions are generally higher for N-fertilised grass pastures than for clover/grass pastures. A summary of various whole-system and life cycle assessment analyses for dairy farms from various countries indicated that at similar total N inputs, clover/grass pasture systems can be more efficient than N-fertilised grass systems per kilogram of milk produced from an energy use and GHG perspective whereas results for nutrient losses to waterways were mixed and appear to be similar for both pasture types. In practice, other management practices on farm, such as crop integration, supplementary feeding strategy and winter management, can have a larger overall effect on environmental emissions than whether the N input is derived from fertiliser N or from N(2) fixation.The use of charcoal as a fuel and reductant in ironmaking and steelmaking in place of fossil fuel-based carbon sources has been assessed from both an environmental and economic point of view. Life cycle assessment methodology has been used to indicate potential reductions in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from charcoal substitution rates up to 100% in the integrated, direct smelting and mini-mill routes for steelmaking. The results indicated that based on typical costs of charcoal and coal, charcoal is not competitive with coal in the steelmaking applications considered. However, the introduction of a carbon trading scheme or carbon taxes can be expected to improve the competitiveness of charcoal compared to coal. Based on a long-term price of $US90/t for metallurgical coal, a carbon tax in the order of US$30-35/t CO(2) would be required with the direct smelting and integrated routes for the overall charcoal and coal costs to be roughly equal, including a charcoal electricity co-product credit. However, if the recent increase in price of metallurgical coal is sustained for an extended period of time, the required carbon tax rate would fall to about US$18/t CO(2).At present, more than 4-hundred million waste brick and concrete are produced every year in China. In these building waste, over 60% is waste concrete, and there is enormous waste because of approximately 95% of them was not resued as useful building material resource. The recycled use of waste concrete accords with recycling economy development strategy of China, and takes a vital position in China's development of recycling economy. According to the theory of "Life Cycle Assessment",combining environmental cost with traditional manufacturing cost and taking into account material cost, utilizing quantized index of environmental assessment, this paper analyzes and evaluates the environmental benefit of recycle use of waste concrete. The analyses show that the recycle use of waste concrete will effectively reduce the consumption of nonrenewable resources and energy. halt the greenhouse effect, preserve soil and water.Organic farming and livestock production offer effective means of satisfying consumer demand for healthy and safe foods and reducing the environmental pressure of agricultural production. In Mediterranean areas organic livestock production could be considered a feasible systems to improve rural development in unfavourable areas and to maintain rural landscape. Constrains, like pasture availability during the year, determine the evolution of different strategies in livestock rearing to improve or maintain net income of population. Moreover the evaluation of the sustainability using a holistic approach using assessment criteria like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Emergy Assessment could be considered models to evaluate organic and conventional livestock production sustainability and at the same time new research fields.This study investigates the environmental burdens due to the provision of potable water and sanitation in the eThekwini Municipality (Durban), South Africa. This was achieved by employing LCA studies for the individual parts of the urban water system (impoundment, water treatment, distribution, collection, sewage treatment and water recycling). Based on the results of the individual LCAs a base case was constructed. For the provision of potable water and sanitation to new customers, which have not been previously served, two different scenarios (200000 new customers in an urban environment with waterborne sewage and in a peri-urban environment with on-site sanitation) and three different options (maximising use of existing assets, recycling water and building new infrastructure) were considered and analysed. With regard to the impact scores calculated for both scenarios (urban and peri-urban), the recycling of water is followed by maximising the use of existing assets as the most environmentally friendly options. The construction of new infrastructure carries a higher environmental burden and the use of bottled water for drinking (an additional scenario) carries the highest environmental burden. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study analyses the different processes followed during color TV set production along with the energy consumption and the environment emissions in each stage. The purpose is to identify "hot-spots", i.e. parts of the life cycle important to the total environmental impact. The analysis is performed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, which is a method used to identify and quantify in the environmental performance of a process or a product from "cradle to grave". LCA methodology provides a quantitative basis for assessing potential improvements in the environmental performance of a system throughout the life cycle. The system investigated includes the production of manufacturing materials, transport of manufacturing materials, color TV set manufacturing, transport of color TV sets, use of color TV sets, discarding color TV sets and partial plastic waste energy utilization. The environmental burdens that arise from color TV sets are mainly due to air emissions derived from fossil fuel utilization. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.According to the targets set for sustainability, integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs is one of the main goals for development projects. A major challenge in the development field is cross-sectoral integrated planning and achieving multi-stakeholder consensus for collaborative joint projects, especially when sustainability is a goal. This increases the complexity of the multi-stakeholder interaction in decision making and requires enhanced mechanisms for stakeholder participation, coordination, and commitment beyond narrow self-interest. A critical aspect in the decision making process is to enable stakeholders to not only interpret and make decisions based on expert judgments, but also to appropriately involve the relevant parties in the research and decision making process. Therefore, scientific analyses in multi-stakeholder contexts have to be more transparent, participatory, and stakeholder-based in order to provide useful information to assist responsible decision making. This paper presents an outline of a stakeholder-based life cycle assessment approach that can be used to support sustainable decision making in multi-stakeholder contexts. The framework is discussed and compared to other common methods used to support environmental decision making in development projects. We argue that the fundamental concept of life cycle thinking can be effectively used to incorporate stakeholders in the research and decision making process, which can lead to more comprehensive, yet achievable assessments in collaboration with stakeholders. Life cycle thinking is not just a way to examine environmental impacts of activities, but also a way to comprehend and visualize a broader set of upstream and downstream consequences of decisions in development planning and implementation. A life cycle framework including the mapping of stakeholder involvement at each activity in upstream and downstream stages would give stakeholders a holistic view that they otherwise may not have. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Existing product life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on offset printed matter all point at paper as the overall dominating cause of environmental impacts. All studies focus on energy consumption and the dominating role of paper is primarily based on the energy-related impact categories: global warming, acidification and nutrient enrichment. Ecotoxicity and human toxicity, which are related to emissions of chemicals, etc., are only included to a limited degree or not at all. In this paper we include the impacts from chemicals emitted during the life cycle of sheet fed offset printed matter. This is done by making use of some of the newest knowledge about emissions from the production at the printing industry combined with knowledge about the composition of the printing materials used. In cases with available data also upstream emissions from the production of printing materials are included. The results show that inclusion of the chemical emission-related impacts makes the EDIP97 impact profile of sheet fed offset products much more varied, as well for the normalised profiles as for the profiles weighted by distance to political environmental targets. Especially the ecotoxicity impact potential related to the production stage may contribute significantly, and the use of paper no longer becomes the overall dominating factor driving the environmental impacts. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiesel is one of the candidates for alternative fuels since it is renewable, sustainable and produced from domestic or non-food crop resources with less detrimental environmental impact. There are several different approaches to the production process. In this paper a new production method, the supercritical methanol process, was investigated and its environmental performance was compared with the conventional alkali-catalyzed process using LCA as a tool. The supercritical process is technically a simpler production process and offers the advantages of higher yields and the production of less environmentally damaging wastes. However, it still generates a significantly higher environmental load since the methanol recovery unit requires a large amount of energy. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A streamlined hybrid life cycle assessment is conducted to compare the global warming potential (GWP) and primary energy use of conventional and organic wheat production and delivery in the US. Impact differences from agricultural inputs, grain farming, and transport processes are estimated. The GWP of a I kg loaf of organic wheat bread is about 30 g CO2-eq less than the conventional loaf. When organic wheat is shipped 420 km farther to market, organic and conventional wheat systems have similar impacts. These results can change dramatically depending on soil carbon accumulation and nitrous oxide emissions from the two systems. Key parameters and their variability are discussed to provide producers, wholesale and retail consumers, and policymakers metrics to align their decisions with low-carbon objectives. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a method to facilitate the decision-making process in selecting sustainable floors (elements) for buildings in Sri Lanka, taking into consideration environmental, economic and social assessments of materials used for these elements. Two types of elements are selected for this study, namely, tile and vinyl tile, Environmental burdens associated with these elements are analyzed in terms of embodied energy and environmental impacts that are relevant to Sri Lanka, such as global warming, acidification and nutrient enrichment. Economic analysis is based on market prices and affordability of materials. Factors considered for the social analysis are thermal comfort, good interior (aesthetics), ability to construct fast, strength and durability. It was found that tile elements are superior to vinyl tile elements on environmental scores if processes of complete life cycle of these elements are taken into account. On social score also, tile elements (104.8) are better than vinyl tile elements (51.15). But on economic score, vinyl tile elements are better. These scores are presented in a matrix which will help in selecting sustainable floor coverings for buildings. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an approach for inventory compilation and adjustment of double counting in tiered hybrid life cycle inventories (LCIs). The combination of input-output and physical inventory data on coefficient level is a convenient way of constructing a hybrid LCI that has both good detail and completeness. The proposed approach formalizes how to deal with partially overlapping data in inventory compilation. This particular approach requires that the issue of double counting is resolved in a consistent manner. Algorithms for identifying and adjusting for double counting are developed. Identification is performed based on a structural path analysis (SPA). Two algorithms for adjustment are presented. The first method is relatively simple to implement but has limitations to its applicability when performing a detailed assessment. The second method is more complex to implement but provides results that allow for more comprehensive structural inventory analysis. Numerical examples are provided in Appendix. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing use of recycled materials in asphalt pavements calls for environmental assessment of Such impacts as the energy input and CO(2) footprint. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is being accepted by the road industry for such purpose. It aims to quantify and collate all the environmental impacts from the life time of the product or process. This paper reviews relevant LCA resources worldwide, identifies the knowledge gap for the road industry, and describes the development of an LCA model for pavement construction and maintenance that accommodates recycling and up-to-date research findings. Details are provided of both the methodology and data acquisition. This is followed by a discussion of the challenges of applying LCA to the pavement construction practice, and recommendations for further work. In the case study, the model is applied to an asphalt paving project at London Heathrow Terminal-5 (LHR), in which natural aggregates were replaced with waste glass, incinerator bottom ash (IBA) and recycled asphalt pavements (RAP). Production of hot mix asphalt and bitumen was found to represent the energy intensive processes. This is followed by data analysis and sensitivity check. Further development of the model includes expanding the database to accommodate the recycling and maintenance practice in the UK, and taking into account the effect that roadwork has on traffic emissions. The LCA model can be further tested and calibrated as a decision support tool for sustainable construction in the road industry. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production on "The Sustainability of Seafood Production and Consumption". The purpose of the special issue is to bring together a series of papers that will form a nucleus for the growth of an emerging area of scholarship. Overfishing and marine habitat damage have generated a global crisis in the production of seafood. In order to respond to this crisis we need systems for the management of seafood production and consumption that will comprehensively reduce and eventually eliminate wastefulness in both capture fisheries and aquaculture systems. Thirteen papers address these issues, with focuses on: seafood harvesting practices, fish processing, life cycle assessment, eco-efficiency, management of wastes, seafood distribution and consumption, total energy costs, eco-labeling, and the conservation of resources and biodiversity. We conclude that major changes are required in our approaches to the management of both the marine environment and our seafood capture and production systems. We also conclude that steps have been taken in this direction, but there is still far to go. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy use is of great concern within fisheries, due to both associated environmental effects and the cost of fuel to fishermen. This article explores the scale of energy consumed by most segments of the Norwegian fishing fleet for gadoid fish and for parts of the pelagic fleet for the period 1980-2005. Fuel use is assigned to the different species caught and different fishing gears using economic and mass-based allocation, where data permit. Correlations between variations in energy use and changing catch rates, quotas and oil prices are found. Inverse correlations are found between fuel consumption per kilogram of fish and catch rates on a yearly basis and between fuel consumption and oil prices on a longer term basis. A long term trend towards increased fuel consumption and reduced real prices is observed from the mid 1980s until 2000. This may indicate that low fuel prices do not motivate the development of energy efficient technology in the long run. increased fuel use may further be used as an indication of over fishing as the correlation between low catch rates and increased fuel consumption is rather strong. Possible means of reducing energy use and emissions are discussed including changing operational strategies, hull forms and the use of alternative energy carriers. A comparison with measures taken in connection with the previous oil crisis around 1980 is done. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When evaluating the environmental impacts of finfish production systems, both regional impacts (e.g., eutrophication) and global impacts (e.g., climate change) should be taken into account. The life cycle assessment (LCA) method is well suited for this purpose. Three fish farms that represent contrasting intensive production systems were investigated using LCA: rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in freshwater raceways in France, sea-bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) in sea cages in Greece, and turbot (Scophtalmus maximus) in an inland re-circulating system close to the seashore in France. Two main characteristics differentiated the three farm systems: feed use and energy use. Emission of nitrogen and phosphorus accounted for more than 90% of each farm's potential eutrophication impact. In the trout and sea-bass systems, feed production was the major contributor to potential climate change and acidification impacts and net primary production use (NPPU). In these systems, the main source of variation for environmental impacts was the feed conversion ratio. Results from this study indicate that the sea-bass cage system was less efficient than the trout raceway system, with a higher level of potential eutrophication (65% greater) and NPPU (15% greater). The turbot re-circulating system was a high energy-consumer compared to the trout raceway system (four times higher) and the sea-bass cage system (five times higher). Potential climate change and acidification impacts were largely influenced by energy consumption in the turbot re-circulating system. In the turbot re-circulating system 86% of energy use was due to on-site consumption, while in the sea-bass cage farming system 72% of energy use was due to feed production. These results are discussed in relation to regional contexts of production and focus attention on the sensitivity of each aquatic environment and the use of energy carriers. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All. rights reserved.This study employed life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify and compare the potential environmental impacts of culturing salmonids in a conventional marine net-pen system with those of three reportedly environmentally-friendly alternatives; a marine floating bag system; a land-based saltwater flow-through system; and a land-based freshwater recirculating system. Results of the study indicate that while the use of these closed-containment systems may reduce the local ecological impacts typically associated with net-pen salmon farming, the increase in material and energy demands associated with their use may result in significantly increased contributions to several environmental impacts of global concern, including global warming, non-renewable resource depletion, and acidification. It is recommended that these unanticipated impacts be carefully considered in further assessments of the sustainability of closed-containment systems and in ongoing efforts to develop and employ these technologies on a larger scale. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Danish fish processing industry has been one of the pioneers regarding implementation of cleaner production and environmental management systems. This article describes the experiences with cleaner production (CP) among leading Danish industries producing pickled herring and canned mackerel. The article emphasizes two case studies of 'first mover' companies, but data from other 'proactive' companies are also included. The article provides an overview of different types of CP solutions, improvement potentials, synergistic effects and possible trade-offs. The development of the applied solutions from the late 1980s until today are analysed and recommendations to future strategies at company level and policy level are provided. It is concluded that significant environmental improvements have been obtained for the analysed companies - especially concerning reductions in water consumption, wastewater emissions, and utilisation of fish 'waste' for valuable by-products. Still, more focus could be placed on the reduction of energy consumption, change of packaging types, and environmental impacts in other stages of the products life cycle. Authorities and companies have mainly focused on on-site reductions of wastewater emissions, but life cycle assessments show that more attention should be given to the reductions of environmental impacts in other parts of the product chain, e.g. fishing operations and transport as well. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Consumer-based ocean conservation efforts focus attention on seafood that is produced in an "eco-friendly" manner. However, many species can be produced either in aquaculture operations or harvested within wild capture fisheries, and each mode of production differs in their environmental impacts as well as their energy requirements. Complicating the assessment of eco-friendly seafood is the fact that seafood is a global commodity, the suppliers of which utilize a variety of methods to distribute the product from producer to consumer (e.g. ship, truck, airplane). Like the modes of production, these various modes of distribution differ in their energy intensity. This analysis assesses the overall energy requirements of production and distribution (E-P&D) of seafood to evaluate how the energy costs of distribution influence the total energy cost of seafood produced by different methods. This paper develops the concept of energy isolines as a tool to assess E-P&D. Isolines are a graphical method to succinctly integrate multiple distance assessments so that the best sourcing option can be determined. The isolines are then used to assess how the energy cost of distribution functions as a component of the overall energy cost, and how this influences the E-P&D of a product originating from two different sources with inherently different energy costs of production. Using scallops and salmon as examples, this analysis has revealed that an "eco-friendly" seafood commodity (one produced with less energy) produced far from its destination market could have a higher total E-P&D compared to a local, less "eco-friendly" product (that takes more energy to produce). Finally, this paper evaluates strategies to minimize the overall E-P&D of seafood. Overall, further work on energy audits of seafood focused the need to maintain a global perspective to determine seafood with the lowest overall energy cost of production and distribution. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several eco-labels for wild-caught seafood have been developed during the last decade. This article describes and analyses the criteria applied by four different eco-labelling schemes for seafood products from capture fisheries, and discusses the criteria in terms of environmental impacts, based on the ISO 14040 standard for life cycle assessment. It is concluded that the most widespread eco-label, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), mainly addresses the fishing stage, in particular the overexploitation of marine resources. LCA studies confirm that the fishing stage represents the most significant environmental burden, but energy consumption and emissions of anti-fouling agents at the fishing or harvesting stage contribute with significant impacts that are not being addressed by international labelling initiatives for wild-caught seafood. LCA studies show that significant environmental impacts are related to the life cycle stages after landing. This includes fish processing, transport, cooling and packaging (especially for highly processed seafood products). Hence, another challenge would be to include criteria related to the post-landing consumption of energy, certain materials and chemicals, waste handling and wastewater emissions. Minimizing product losses throughout the product chain would also be an important area for future criteria in order to avoid fishing at high environmental costs only to produce something that is later wasted. The analysis shows that the Swedish KRAV is the only one that currently addresses a range of issues that include energy and chemicals in the whole life cycle of the products. International initiatives such as MSC cover fish products from many parts of the world emphasizing 'overexploitation of fish resources'. It is recommended, however, that international initiatives such as MSC develop criteria related to energy use and chemicals - at least at the fishing stage. Over time, other life cycle stages could be addressed as well to the extent that this is manageable. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a previous study, the global agricultural expansion caused by wheat consumption in four different countries was modelled with the aim of establishing land use life cycle inventories. The previous study estimated the areas affected by expansion (in terms of square meters) but did not explain how to characterise these areas. The present study ascribes so-called biomes (natural potential vegetation) to the areas affected by agricultural expansion in order to provide a basis for assessing the environmental impacts from land use in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The methodology builds on agricultural statistics and maps of global agricultural areas and the global distribution of biomes. The application of the method is illustrated with four examples. The results indicate that agricultural expansion on land suited for crop cultivation (cultivable land) typically affects forest biomes or potential grassland/steppe, whereas expansion on land suited for grazing but not for crop cultivation (grazable land) typically occurs on potential shrubland or a few other biomes depending on the region. Some uncertainty applies to the results but it is concluded that it is feasible to identify biomes affected by agricultural expansion and that the biomes can therefore be used as a starting point for land use LCIA. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The effective management of mine tailings involves the control of several environmental impacts and legal requirements. Six tailings site management and closure scenarios were developed for a copper zinc underground mine located in Quebec (Canada) and compared using life cycle assessment (LCA). Two options are considered for the mine operation: tailings can be sent to the tailings disposal area where they are submerged or they can be partly used for backfilling. For each of these two operation options, three alternatives are presented for mine closure: (a) submerged tailings, (b) partial desulphurization with a cover of desulphurized material and (c) a cover with capillary barrier effects (CCBE) made of natural soils followed by revegetation. The goals of the study were to draw the inventory of these management scenarios from the development to the post-closure phase, to assess and compare their environmental impacts and to determine the importance of the land-use impact category. The potential impacts for each scenario were evaluated using the IMPACT 2002+ LCIA method. The results of the performed LCA indicate that for mine development and operation, scenarios where tailings are partly used as backfill for underground stopes appear to lead to larger impacts in 11 of the 14 midpoint categories since the backfill plant operation consumes a greater amount of material and energy. For a site closure period of 2 years, the CCBE option creates the greatest impacts, since it requires much more effort than the other techniques. The results for the post-closure phase have been analysed separately since they have a larger uncertainty. They appear to modify the comparative assessment results. The various results presented in the paper show the importance of taking land-use impacts into account. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Oil shortage and environmental deterioration urge people to pay more and more attention to Biomass-based Fuel Ethanol (BFE), because it is renewable and apparently environmentally friendly. This paper aims to assess and compare the air emissions of three BEF products from different feedstock planting areas in China. For the purpose of a "cradle to grave" study of biomass-based ethanol fuel as a substitute transportation fuel, the authors chose "vehicle fueled by biomass-based E10 (a blend of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline, v/v)" as the subject. Then, life cycle emission models of Wheat-based E10 from central China, Corn-based E10 from northeast China, and Cassava-based E10 from southwest China were set up based on surveys; life cycle emission functions Of CO2, CO, N2O, NOx, SO2, CH4, VOC, and PM10 were constructed and value of each emission category was calculated based on Monte Carlo simulation of the life cycle emission models. The calculation results showed that compared with gasoline-fueled vehicles, biomass-based E10-fueled vehicles release less CO2 and VOC in their lifecycles, but wheat-based E10-fueled and cassava-based E10-fueled ones have more emissions of CO, CH4, N2O, NOx, SO2, PM10 and corn-based E10-fueled ones have more emissions of CH4, N2O, NOx, SO2, PM10. Suggestions on reducing the emissions have been proposed for future actions. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Growing public concerns about the traceability, safety and environmental-friendliness of food products provide an incentive for shorter supply chains in agricultural production. Here, we assessed the environmental impacts of the substitution of imported soybean meal with locally-produced rapeseed meal in French dairy production systems, using a life-cycle approach. Two feeding rations based on either French-produced rapeseed meal or Brazilian-produced soy meal as concentrates, were compared for nine impact categories, including global warming, ecotoxicity and eutrophication. Crop production was the main contributor to most impacts. while overseas transport of soy meal only had a marginal effect. The "Soybean" ration appeared more environmentally-efficient than the "Rapeseed" ration because it involved less intensive management practices, in particular regarding synthetic fertilizers consumption. However, land use changes brought about by soybean cultivation should also be examined. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concern over the impact of anthropogenic carbon emissions on the global climate has increased in recent years due to growth in global warming awareness. Approximately 5% of global CO2 emissions originate from the manufacturing of cement, the third largest source of carbon emission in the United States. In addition to the generation of CO2 the cement manufacturing process produces millions of tons of the waste product cement kiln dust (CKD) each year contributing to respiratory and pollution health risks. In this paper LCA is used to evaluate the environmental impact of four cement manufacturing processes: (1) the production of traditional Portland cement, (2) blended cement (natural pozzolans), (3) cement where 100% of waste cement kiln dust is recycled into the kiln process, and (4) Portland cement produced when cement kiln dust (CKD) is used to sequester a portion of the process related CO2 emissions. To reduce uncertainty this manuscript presents a cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment of several cement products. Analysis using SimaPro 6.0 software shows that blended cements provide the greatest environmental savings followed by utilization of CKD for sequestration. The recycling of CKD was found to have little environmental savings over the traditional process. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article introduces Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a method for improving the environmental performance of the Norwegian fishing fleet Systems engineering has been introduced as a feasible process for handling sustainability issues in the fisheries, because it contains methods for general system design, operation, and support in a life-cycle perspective. QFD is related to systems engineering as a method for translating stakeholder needs into detailed system requirements at each life-cycle stage. Eco-QFD extends the scope of QFD, and combines QFD. Life-Cycle Cost (LCC), and Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) to evaluate environmental effects and costs in the system development process. The article assesses the usefulness of Eco-QFD in fisheries management decision-making regarding sustainability in the fishing fleet. and for shipyards in their design of fishing vessels. It is concluded that Eco-QFD may be difficult to use for fisheries management in its present form, due to the complexity of sustainability, and the time and efforts demanded to carry out the analyses. Nevertheless, the structuring of the stakeholder needs and requirements may contribute to improved understanding of the decision-situation. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cane sugar production by-products can be considered either as waste, affecting the environment, or as a resource when an appropriate valorization technology is implemented. This study is made with the objective of identifying and quantifying the aspects which have the largest environmental impact of four alternatives for using by-products and wastes from the cane sugar process and suggest improvements in the systems. For this analysis a cane sugar mill was chosen in Cuba and four alternatives were designed for the by-product valorization. The first alternative represents the conventional sugar production; its main characteristics are the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, the bagasse combustion and the usage of molasses and agricultural wastes as animal food. Other wastes constitute emissions to the environment. Alternatives 11, if and IV incorporate more use of by-products and wastes. Alternative 11 considers the use of wastewater, filter cake and ashes for the substitution of synthetic fertilizers. In Alternative 111, the filter cake and wastewater are used for biogas production and Alternative IV integrates alcohol and biogas production into the sugar production process. The assessment is done by means of Life Cycle Assessment, according to the ISO 14040 series by using the SimaPro 6.0 LCA software, Ecoinvent database and the Eco-indicator 99 methodology. As a functional unit the daily sugar production of the mill was defined (216 t/d). The sugar was selected as main product and all the by-products were assumed to substitute other products on the market avoided products. For the four alternatives, the agricultural stage shows the greatest impact due to land use, fuel and agrochemicals consumption. In the industrial stage, the electricity cogeneration with bagasse has the highest impact as to respiratory effects due to the emission of tiny particle material into the atmosphere. The major difference between the alternatives is found in the resource impact category. The advantage of producing alcohol, biogas, animal food and fertilizers from the by-products is made obvious through the comparative study for resource savings. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental evaluation of new technology faces many challenges, but at the same time it is an opportunity to take proactive measures to prevent possible negative effects on the environment. Examination of environmental issues using the life cycle approach should form an integrated part of comprehensive technology and product development. The aim of this study was to assess the environmental issues related to a rising technology, printed electronics. Printing is an additive process, having no need for extra material and corrosive chemicals. On the basis of an evaluation made for a prototype product, i.e. a wristband, it was observed that more information on the new materials and further optimization of the process are required before electronics printing can be claimed to be environmentally friendly. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.Relevant and understandable environmental information about production and products is needed in any attempt to mitigate environmental impact from production, products, and consumption. This paper introduces an analytical framework for studying the drivers, barriers and enablers of corporate environmental information collection, management and communication. The framework is built up by two main parts. In the first, we sort out what corporate environmental information is and how to spot gaps in information collection, management and communication. The second part examines the stakeholders and company features that could constitute important influencing factors. The framework is intended to support qualitative and quantitative studies which aim to increase understanding of what shapes the flow of environmental information in companies and product chains. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main organic wastes produced in modern wine industries include grape pomace (62%). lees (14%), stalk (12%) and dewatered sludge (12%). Some of these wastes are being used as by-products (grape pomace and lees) whereas the rest of organic wastes (stalk and wastewater sludge) has been traditionally incinerated or disposed in landfill. In this work, composting is proposed for the recovery of stalk and wastewater sludge to produce a sanitized organic amendment for application in the vineyard, closing the organic matter cycle. The environmental and economical analyses of the different alternatives to manage organic wastes from the wine industry are also presented. Composting costs are almost negligible when compared to other management options. From the environmental point of view, in-situ composting presents the best performance in 8 of the 10 impact categories analysed. Finally, the energy balance shows that the 4 composting systems involved less energy than the systems based on Mineral Fertilizer consumption. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The selection of the most appropriated technological solution to produce a certain mould able to competitively produce parts in polymeric materials is a multi-disciplinary activity, which integrates different knowledge fields and professional domains. The selection decision should capture not only the technical performance required for the mould to produce the final part in the expected quantities and intended quality, but also the economic issues and environmental impacts originated all along the mould life cycle. In this paper a Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) model is proposed to support the selection of alternative technological solutions through the integration of these three analysis dimensions underlined by the LCE approach. The model proposed has the novelty of integrating the three dimensions through the use of easy-to-read ternary diagrams allowing the identification of the "best domains" of each technological alternative. With the integrated analysis, the present model fosters the global comparison of alternatives according to different business scenarios and corporate strategies, supporting an informed decision-making process. The model was applied to a case study aiming the production of very small production volumes of polymeric parts. Two candidate technologies were evaluated: one involving a mould made of a spray metal shell backfilled with resin and aluminium powder and another based on the machining of aluminium. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiesel, produced from various vegetable and/or animal oils, is one of the most promising alternative fuels for transportation in Thailand. Currently, the waste oils after use in cooking are not disposed adequately. Such oils could serve as a feedstock for biodiesel which would also address the waste disposal issue. This study compares the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from used cooking oil methyl ester (UCOME) and conventional diesel used in transport. The functional unit (FU) is 100 km transportation by light duty diesel vehicle (LDDV) under identical driving conditions. Life cycle GHG emissions from conventional diesel are about 32.57 kg CO2-eq/FU whereas those from UCOME are 2.35 kg CO2-eq/FU. The GHG emissions from the life cycle of UCOME are 93% less than those of conventional diesel production and use. Hence, a fuel switch from conventional diesel to UCOME will contribute greatly to a reduction in global warming potential. This will also support the Thai Government's policy to promote the use of indigenous and renewable sources for transportation fuels. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study assesses the direct and indirect environmental impacts to be expected if Switzerland should replace one percent of its current diesel consumption with imports of A) soybean methyl ester (SME) from Brazil, or B) palm methyl ester (PME) from Malaysia. In order to take into account possible future consequences, what-if scenarios were developed and assessed by means of a consequential LCA. In contrast to attributional LCA, the consequential approach uses system enlargement to include the marginal products affected by a change of the physical flows in the central life cycle. This means that the LCA considers all inputs and outputs which are linked to biodiesel production and that the product system is subsequently expanded to include the marginal products affected. Both future systems are assessed in comparison with the environmental scores of the fossil equivalent to biodiesel, i.e. diesel low in sulphur. The environmental burdens are measured by means of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), land occupation and various non-aggregated and aggregated environmental impact indicators. In sum, the environmental impacts of an increased SME consumption depend on the environmental scores of the marginal replacement products on the world market, rather than on local production factors. In other words, the marginal products assumed to be affected are most important for the results obtained, i.e. in particular the marginal vegetable oil, fodder cake and land areas. In this study it is SME production increased at the expense of the available soybean oil which shifts the impacts associated with soybean oil production to the production of the marginal vegetable oils on the world market. In this perspective, it is not relevant in which country biodiesel production takes place, but rather which vegetable oil is involved. With respect to PME, the most relevant determining factor for the environmental impacts is the land area affected by the increased cultivation of oil palms. Currently, this expansion displaces primarily peat land and rain forest. This causes GHG emissions which are much higher than the emissions of the fossil reference. All in all, both PME from Malaysia and SME from Brazil cause more environmental impact than allowed by the Swiss tax redemption on agro-biofuels (max. 60% GHG emissions and 125% UBP of the fossil reference). (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The assessment of environmental impacts along the life cycle of biofuels is a complex and resource-demanding task that cannot be afforded by small producers in developing countries. Therefore, certification schemes bear the risk that small and independent producers will be locked out and the market for sustainable biofuels will be dominated by international investors and large-scale plantations. However, many environmental impacts of various production chains of biofuels and feedstocks are already known. This knowledge has been used to create a web-based questionnaire for a "Sustainability Quick Check for Biofuels" (SQCB, http://www.sqcb.org). SQCB reduces the need for user entries to the most relevant and best-known parameters of the biofuel production chain. Based on this user input, a specific inventory is automatically modelled and linked to background data. SQCB then calculates the environmental impact assessment and checks the results against sustainability criteria. Since the results are calculated immediately, key environmental factors can be interactively analyzed. One major goal of the SQCB is to support the market entrance for local biofuel producers, given that strengthening local stakeholders is a key driver for empowering rural communities in development countries. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A methodological approach of life cycle assessment is presented to compare the overall energy consumption in three variants of a road itinerary in Cameroon, which only differs from their respective lengths. In assessing this energy, construction, exploitation and maintenance phases, as well as their closure were considered in the two scenarios devised. This energy assessment has permitted us to present the life cycle approach has a tool on decision aid. Results arrived at reveal that whatever the case, variants 3 appears to consume more energy than variant 1. Conversely, variant 2 consumes less energy than the two others. In addition, it was noticed that the exploitation phase alone consumes 84.44% of the total energy, irrespective of the scenario. Total energy consumption at construction phase largely depends on the length of the stretch of the road, which remains low and less than 8.21% of the total energy for both scenarios.Purpose - This paper aims to provide an integrated framework of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) for assessing alternative technologies, processes, and/or activities, with focus on concrete pavements. Design/methodology/approach - LCA and LCCA are used to evaluate environmental and economic impacts of substituting different percentages of fly ash and slag into continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) and jointed plane concrete pavement (JPCP). Impacts are determined over different life cycle phases. Findings - An LCA of the extraction phase indicated that JPCP pavement had 33-62 percent less emissions than CRCP pavements, when only steel consumption was considered. When cement was considered, JPCP pavement had almost 40 percent greater emissions then CRCP for all mix types. An LCCA showed that over the entire life cycle phases studied, CRCP pavements had about 46 percent more costs than JPCP. However, when only maintenance costs were considered, CRCP pavement cost 80 percent less to maintain than JPCP over the studied period of 35 years. Originality/value - The study is a step towards using an integrated framework to evaluate the performance of different materials and technology. The same framework could be conducted for different kinds of asphalt pavements and concrete pavements, as well as other infrastructure that makes up the built environment, with the goal of making decisions that take into account design considerations, environmental impacts, and cost effectiveness.Nanotechnology is a novel and emerging area of the global research involving disciplines such as chemistry, physics, biology, informatics and engineering. This field of science has the ability to construct at the molecular level, creating, unique systems with fundamentally new molecular organisation. The above-mentioned field has recently gained importance due to the diversity of innovative approaches to human life, including the environment protection and safety. In the present work we provide a survey of the current activities related to methods and techniques designed to reduce and remove toxic agents and undesirable by-products from our environment. Having the opinion of a great number of experts, life cycle analysis could be a useful tool for assessing the true of environment situation.In order to predict consequences of replacing jet grouting with biogrouting, and identify major contributors to the cost of both technologies, a large road project in Stockholm, Sweden, was used as a case study. Jet grouting had been used to seal the contact between sheet piling and bedrock, biogrouting for the same function was computed. A comparative environmental and economical assessment was carried out using life cycle assessment (LCA). The results show that biogrouting was cheaper than jet grouting and would have had lower environmental impact. The major difference was the transport and use of heavier equipment for jet grouting. Biogrouting also used less water and produced less landfilled waste. However, the production of urea and CaCl2 for biogrouting required much energy.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to evaluate the environmental load of a product, process, or activity throughout its life cycle. Today's LCA users are a mixture of individuals with skills in different disciplines who want to evaluate their products, processes, or activities in a life cycle context. This study attempts to present some of the LCA studies on agricultural and industrial food products, recent advances in LCA and their application on food products. The reviewed literatures indicate that agricultural production is the hotspot in the life cycle of food products and LCA can assist to identify more sustainable options. Due to the recent development of LCA methodologies and dissemination programs by international and local bodies, use of LCA is rapidly increasing in agricultural and industrial food products. A network of information sharing and exchange of experience has expedited the LCA development process. The literatures also suggest that LCA coupled with other approaches provides much more reliable and comprehensive information to environmentally conscious policy makers, producers, and consumers in selecting sustainable products and production processes. Although LCA methodologies have been improved, further international standardization would broaden its practical applications, improve the food security and reduce human health risk. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are unconventional fuels that may serve as near term major replacements for conventional mineral oil and natural gas. These include fuels from oil shale and bitumen, liquid fuels from coal, methane from methane hydrates, biofuels and the secondary fuel hydrogen. Here, these fuels will be reviewed as to their presumable stocks and life cycle wastes, emissions and inputs of natural resources. The unconventional fuels are usually characterized by a relatively poor source-to-burner energy efficiency when compared with current conventional mineral oil and gas. Apart from some varieties of hydrogen and biofuel, their life cycles are characterized by relatively large water inputs, emissions, and wastes. The unconventional fuels shale oil, bituminous oil, coal liquids, and methane from methane hydrates are based on natural resources which are practically finite. This does not hold for biofuels, but the sustainable supply thereof is severely limited when large numbers of people also have to be fed. In view of the problems associated with unconventional fuels, there is a case to consider fuel-less replacements for many fuel applications.The land use required in order to meet the increasing demand for biodiesel has significant impacts. New methodological developments within environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) establish a cause-effect relationship between the demand for biodiesel and its impacts on biodiversity. The objective of this article is to assess and compare the impacts of rapeseed oil (RSO) production in the EU and palm oil (PO) production in Southeast Asia. The functional unit of the LCA is 20.8 Mtoe (million tons oil equivalents) biodiesel equalling the EU25 goals for biodiesel in 2020. Land occupation and transformation are quantified for the two alternative vegetable oils, and losses throughout the product chain from cultivation over crushing to refining are inventoried. Market mechanisms and land which is indirectly affected by product substitutions from co-products are included in the modelling. Land occupation and transformation are evaluated by the use of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models on land use and biodiversity. Three basic scenarios are evaluated: (1) RSO-based biodiesel is produced from rapeseed grown on fields which were previously grown by other crops (barley, BL) -the displaced BL is imported from abroad; (2) RSO-based biodiesel is produced from rapeseed grown on former set-aside land in the EU; and (3) PO-based biodiesel produced in Southeast Asia is imported to the EU. It is concluded that the new EU policies on using set-aside land for energy crops cannot cover the European demand for biodiesel and crops must thus be imported from outside the EU. This means that land use outside the EU is affected. The modelling shows that the use of PO affects the land use in Malaysia or Indonesia and that Canadian land use for BL cultivation is affected when rapeseed is produced in the EU. The impacts on land use and biodiversity are presented for all three scenarios. Finally, it is discussed how an LCA perspective like the one applied here can contribute to the assessment of environmental impacts within land use science.A comparative quantitative life cycle assessment (LCA) should consider the eight environmental impact classification factors listed in ISO/TR 14047:2003. This paper reports on the energy requirement for production of flax fibers to be used as reinforcement in composite materials. Data are compiled from a number of published sources. Only 5% of the harvested plant mass is converted into long fibers, while the other 95% could be regarded as waste; the respective coproducts (short fiber for paper manufacture, shives for animal bedding, and dust for fuel) can be collected, processed, packaged, and sold. The analysis here assumes that these coproducts are disposed of at a cost that covers the postseparation handling and hence they are not included in the flax burdens. The analysis suggests that sliver (post-carding fiber) has an embodied energy comparable to glass fiber reinforcement mat at approximately 55 GJ/tonne. Spinning fibers to produce yarn for weaving dominates the embodied energy. In the event that best agricultural practice is taken into account, and that some energy usage is apportioned to coproduct, then the claim that flax is a sustainable "green" alternative may be justified for random mat reinforcement. If the fiber is spun to yarn, then the embodied energy for flax exceeds that of the glass fiber equivalent.A method to assist in the rapid preparation of Life Cycle Assessments of emerging energy generation technologies is presented and applied to distributed proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems. The method develops life cycle environmental design metrics and allows variations in hardware materials, transportation scenarios, assembly energy use, operating performance and consumables, and fuels and fuel production scenarios to be modeled and comparisons to competing systems to be made. Data and results are based on publicly available U.S. Life Cycle Assessment data sources and are formulated to allow the environmental impact weighting scheme to be specified. A case study evaluates improvements in efficiency and in materials recycling and compares distributed proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems to other distributed generation options. The results reveal the importance of sensitivity analysis and system efficiency in interpreting case studies. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.During the next decades there will be a growing demand for new land for food production due to population and economic growth. Simultaneously, global warming has been recognised as one of the most severe environmental problems of our time, and industrialised countries are negotiating on considerable emission cuts for the next decades. Biorefineries are considered by many as one solution for mitigation of climate change and improvement of the future security of food, chemical, forest and energy industries. Since increased use of biomass in biorefineries also implies increased use of land and auxiliary inputs, many have proposed to use by-products of food and forest industries in biorefineries. When assessing the global warming impacts of biorefineries, the setting of the spatial system boundary to include or exclude indirect impacts may significantly affect the results. In this paper, we discuss the life cycle greenhouse gas impacts of a hypothetical forest-based biorefinery by using two different approaches - attributional and consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) - to set the system boundary. The results imply that for those bio-based side-streams for which there presently exists use, the environmental benefits of diverting them to new uses as bio-fuel or bio-material are not straightforward and should be carefully and comprehensively studied before making decisions.Discussion about the impacts and consequences of climate change has aroused interest in the carbon emissions that are associated with the purchased products. In the methodology development, the inclusion of biogenic carbon has turned out to be problematic. The problems with including biomass carbon are mainly related to forest carbon balance and some methodological issues concerning carbon storage in products. There are several open questions that have to be solved, such as the time frame used in the carbon footprint calculations. Before a generally accepted methodology is available, several varying approaches are applied, depending on who is performing the calculations and what their goal and scope are. The effect of wood raw material harvesting on the forest carbon balance can be calculated in various ways. Three different approaches are presented in this paper. In the first approach, it is claimed that sustainable forest management ensures that the same amount of carbon taken out from the forest is absorbed again by the forest growth. The opposite way is to calculate the lost carbon stock and allocate it to products. The third approach allocates the net carbon sequestration through net forest growth to forest products. Guidance concerning carbon storage in products exist and they are discussed in this paper. The challenges of including the forest carbon balance are expressed with the case calculation examples.Environmental impacts of a beverage cup concept were studied with help of life cycle assessment methodology with specific focus on end-of life scenarios. Carton based products were compared with polymer based products. The carton-based cups were covered either with polyethene (PE) or polylactide (PLA). The polymer based cups were made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The paper studies the environmental impacts of production and alternative end-of-life scenarios and discusses the significance of the research frame related decisions. The focus is on global warming potential. The paper shows that significant improvements can be achieved through the choice of raw materials and optimal end-of-life. In order to avoid a situation where the results provoke more confusion than develop improved understanding, the LCA results should not be taken as fixed but the LCA should rather be seen as a tool which supports the manufacturer in the formulation of guidelines for product's end-of-life.Environmental performance of a product in relation to climate change has become an interest among consumers. A carbon footprint is used as an indicator in evaluating the emissions of greenhouse gases of print products. In the following article, results from two case studies define the carbon footprint of a Finnish daily newspaper and weekly magazine throughout their entire life cycle. The significance of the carbon footprint results during the print product's life cycle is discussed. Energy needed in the pulp, paper and printing processes creates the main part of the emissions. Furthermore, transporting the product to the customer and the end-of-life phase contribute to the total result as calculated from cradle to grave. However, current methodology involves open questions and, e.g. landfill data estimations introduce variation. The calculations provide a baseline against which the development can be measured and communicated. The total carbon footprint should be expressed as a range of values rather than as a single figure.New emerging regulations and market rivalry has forced electronic manufacturers to assess their environmental impacts in order to decrease their environmental burden. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method has been used widely in industry to assess the product scale environmental impacts in order to enhance the environmentally conscious product design and product planning. However, the LCAs including product specific data collection can be resource extensive due to the complexity of electronic systems, which hinders the usability of LCA in the dynamic product planning process. This paper aims to present the main findings and challenges of an LCA of small-sized electronic products through a case study. Furthermore, the usability of LCA as a tool for eco-design is discussed. The LCA method was applied for two electronic products with the scope bounded to the cradle-to-customer phases through the life cycle. Due to the complexity of the products' end-of-life system and limited time for the study quantitative assessment of end-of-life was left with less attention in LCA. However, during the LCA process the end-of-life aspects of the case study products were studied separately on a qualitative basis.In the Climate Bonus project, a demonstrative GHG-monitoring, reporting, consumer feedback & reward system for households was developed by the research consortium. The created application enables consumers to follow up accumulated GHG-emissions of their household's purchases and to compare results with several reference levels and other users of the system. They can also acquire "bonus points" on the basis of a reduction of emission intensity. The demo version of the service covers foodstuffs, transport fuels and services, home energy and the "other consumption" category, and utilises multi-approach methodology - i.e. combines several data sources and approaches (LCA, I/O, ETS-data) to seek emission factors for a very wide range of product categories. Foodstuffs were registered automatically for the service through a Nutrion Code system (www.nutritioncode.com) that uses the PLUSSA-key card and the information systems of Kesko and Tuulia International Oy. The rest of a household's purchases can be entered manually via a computer interface directly to the Service or by using the optical barcode recognition capabilities of the Nokia mobile phone. Based on the pilot tests, the authors believe that the climate-feedback system could activate notable voluntary emission reduction potentials, provided that the feedback system is widely used.The criteria used in selecting products and materials are increasingly related to environmental impacts during the life cycle. Life cycle thinking is well suited for remediation of contaminated sediments. It can be used in selecting most environmentally friendly options for dredging, treatment and disposal of sediments. In this work, assessment and comparison procedure (SEDU) was created to identify environmental impacts during a sediment remediation project. Sediment contamination is recognized as a widespread and serious problem and the management of contaminated sediments presents significant challenges. However, with optimal selection of dredging and treatment technologies, costs and environmental effects can be minimised.The building sector contributes about a third of all energy-related emissions worldwide. Taking into account the emissions caused by land-use change impacts caused by urbanization, the manufacturing of building elements and the production of building materials, the share becomes even larger. According to the World Watch Institute, if the current trend continues the entire global community will run out of raw building materials by approximately 2030. Moreover, the building sector consumes water - a scarce resource in many parts of the world for domestic use, landscapes and cooling towers. The building sector also generates a large variety of waste in construction, operation, renovation and, finally, demolition. Consequently, finding an effective way to transform the way we plan, design, build, operate, renovate and demolish buildings in the direction of sustainable practices has been the goal of many environmental assessment tools. In addition, there are co-benefits from this effort such as decreasing air and environmental pollution, improving health and productivity, and enabling sustainable economic development by promoting new sustainable technologies and behavior. Due to rising environmental concerns many local and global assessment tools have been developed. Because of the varying perspectives of the assessment tools the weighting factors applied to the various issues differ to some extent. The aim of this study was to understand the similarities and differences between various rating schemes currently applied in our market and to analyze their relation to LCA-based assessment and the new SBA system, which is still under development. The commercial rating tools studied were BREEAM, LEED and PromisE.Urban planning solutions and decisions have large-scale significance for ecological sustainability, eco-efficiency, the consumption of energy and other natural resources, the production of greenhouse gas and other emissions, and the costs caused by urban form. The EcoBalance Model was developed to assess sustainability of urban form and has been applied at various planning levels: regional plans, local master plans and detailed plans. The EcoBalance model estimates the total consumption of energy and other natural resources, the production of emissions and wastes and the costs caused directly and indirectly by urban form on a life cycle basis. The results of the case studies provide information about the ecological impacts of various solutions in urban development. Planning solutions may impact on greenhouse gas emissions by 10% at the regional level, 60% at the local community level, and even 200% at the local dwelling area level. Impact on emissions caused by transportation is even bigger: at least double compared to the impact on total emissions. Similarly, large impacts can be seen concerning the consumption of energy and other natural resources, as well as costs. The most important factors in sustainable urban planning are at the dwelling area level - location, structure, building density, house types, space heating systems; at the community and regional level - area density, energy consumption and production systems, location and distances between dwellings, working places and services, transportation systems, possibilities for walking and cycling, availability of public transport and necessity for the use of private cars.A tool was developed for life cycle assessment of cements. This tool aids the manufacturer to consider environmental aspects in product development and environmental reporting (for example environmental product declaration). Attention was paid especially to the energy efficiency in the manufacturing processes. This affects not only energy use but also environmental impacts such as the carbon footprint. Cement is an essential material increasingly needed in the production of concrete structures, buildings and the modem infrastructure. However, the production of cement is an energy-intensive process which requires a lot of fuels and releases process emissions, especially CO(2) in the calcination process. On the other hand, as calcination is an inevitable process in cement production, attention should be given to energy use - especially the use of recovered energy and combustible wastes. Manufacturing process optimisation and life cycle management are the key issues with regard to lowering environmental impacts caused by cement production. Cement industry belongs to the EU's emission trade systems; they must track and report the CO(2) emissions annually. The role of manufacturer is also to identify and improve the CO(2) and other environmental impacts incurred by production processes. This can happen with the help of life cycle assessment tool, target-setting, process development and monitoring. The LCA result should be provided for designers, contractors, and users. This information aids them to design eco-efficient use of products and buildings.LIPASTO is a calculation system for transport energy consumption and emissions in Finland. The system comprises two separate units, the emission inventory part and the unit emission database part. This article is an introduction to the LIPASTO system, the main focus being on the unit emission database. The database contains energy consumption and emission figures for both passenger and freight transport, expressed as grams per passenger kilometre or tonne kilometre. These types of data are needed, for example, when calculating the carbon footprint of a transport service or when assessing the life cycle emissions of a consumer product. The LIPASTO system has been developed by VTT, and all main results are published on a free website www.lipasto.vtt.fi.In spite of die castings being amongst the highest volume items manufactured by the metalworking industry, the influence of high pressure die casting (HPDC) process parameters on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remains largely unreported. In this article, the authors discuss the effect of some HPDC process parameters on GHG emissions using cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) for both aluminium and magnesium alloys. Although the impacts reduced with increasing yields in both cases, it was determined that the GHG impact of magnesium alloy HPDC was more sensitive to HPDC yield irrespective of the ratio of primary/secondary alloys in the melt charge. The reasons for this include a greater dependence of magnesium alloy HPDC on high-emitting primary processing and the use of the highly potent GHG SF6 for melting. For magnesium alloy HPDC, a decrease in quality assurance (QA) rejects and cycle times also reduced GHG emissions; although their influences were found to be an order lower than that of yield.This article presents the evaluation of a pilot project where four decision-making tools were applied in a municipal energy-planning process in a Swedish municipality. The tested tools were citizens' panel, a scenario method, life cycle assessment and qualitative checklists for environmental assessment (EA). The results presented are based on two focus group discussions with the participants from the project: one with the municipal workgroup and one with the researchers that were responsible for the application of the decision-making tools. The results show that energy planning is a process of learning and dialogue, and workshop methodology was found to be favourable for open dialogue. This test also shows that public involvement can contribute to a valuable dialogue in the visionary work and suggestions of actions and strategies. Another conclusion is that energy planning needs to be iterative, even in the scoping. This test also shows that there is a need to develop simplified tools that include EA and a broad systems approach in local energy planning.This paper focuses on a life cycle assessment (LCA) that compares a magnesium automotive front end for a 2007 GM-Cadillac CST with the standard steel-based design. The analysis framework is based on the consequential life cycle assessment approach, using extensive life cycle inventory data collected for various magnesium manufacturing technologies, including primary production, cast and wrought, and end-of-life. Recent magnesium market trends have been captured with the consideration of primary magnesium production in China and parts manufacturing in North America (NA). The comparative life cycle assessment includes energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) and select other emissions. It is estimated that the magnesium front end achieves reductions in energy and GHG in relation to the base line scenario only after several years of vehicle operation. Sustainable material management and technology improvements, including recycling, would further enhance the environmental benefit of magnesium use in automobiles.This work investigates the environmental impacts of three manufacturing processes for a promising biodegradable polymeric material: polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA). The processes studied are microbial PHA manufacturing using glucose as the carbon substrate, microbial PHA manufacturing using cheese whey as the carbon substrate, and microbial PHA manufacturing using genetically engineered plants. A lifecycle model is established for each of the processes, and the Eco-indicator 99 methodology is used in the study. Results with 10 indicators under human health, ecosystem quality, and resources are obtained and compared. Because the processes are still largely under development, many lifecycle data are rare and insufficient. A number of reference sources and reasonable assumptions are used in the calculations. The study has identified the major contributors to environmental impacts, and can quantitatively explain how each impact indicator is affected by a particular process. The study provides the information for technical decision-making for the development of environmentally-friendly PHA manufacturing processes.The major environmental loads of mineral separation process in China iron production (with missing data) are analyzed. And the inner relationship between these loads data is qualified and the missing data are imputed using a statistic method called Multiple imputation (MI), aimed to improve the quality of LCA datasets and allow industry to easily conduct a highly reliable LCA. By using computer simulation, MI replaces each missing value with a set of plausible values which represent the uncertainty of the missing data. The multiply imputed datasets are then analyzed by the standard procedures for completing data and combining the results from these analyses. The result proves that MI Method is an effective and reasonable method to solve the problem of missing data and therefore can ensure the validity and reliability of LCA.Engineering designers consider many aspects surrounding a product's life in order to meet safety, reliability, quality, manufacturing, and cost requirements. Most of the time this is done in an excellent way and the resulting products offers broad functionality with high quality and reasonable price. However serious considerations of integration of environmental requirements are often missed in the product development process. All products contribute to a range of environmental problems. These problems arise through the entire life cycle of products from the creation to the disposal of products. Design for environment (DfE) is the systematic consideration of design performance with respect to environmental, health, and safety objectives over the full product and process life-cycle. It takes place early in a product's design or upgrade phase to ensure that the environmental consequences of a product's life cycle are considered. The key issue to success is how to select the most appropriate and effective strategy for a particular product to reduce environmental impacts without disregarding the business strategies in the decision making process. In this paper, a general framework is proposed to integrate the life cycle assessment and decision analysis for prioritizing the design for environment strategy by considering uncertainty issues exist in the decision making process. A case study is illustrated focusing in the product upgrade phase. The ultimate goal is to provide a design advisory tool for product designers in the hopes of facilitating their complex decision making processes by considering the environmental issues in mind.Despite concerns regarding environmental fate and toxicology, engineered nanostructured material manufacturing is expanding at an increasingly rapid pace. In particular, the unique properties of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) have made them attractive in many areas, including high-tech power applications such as experimental batteries, fuel cells or electrical wiring. The intensity of research interest in SWCNT has raised questions regarding the life cycle environmental impact of nanotechnologies, including assessment of. worker and consumer safety, greenhouse gas emissions, toxicological risks associated with production or product emissions and the disposition of nanoproducts at end of life. However, development of appropriate nanotechnology assessment tools has lagged progress in the nanotechnologies themselves. In particular, current approaches to life cycle assessment (LCA) - originally developed for application in mature manufacturing industries such as automobiles and chemicals - suffer from several shortcomings that make applicability to nanotechnologies problematic. Among these are uncertainties related to the variability of material properties, toxicity and risk, technology performance in the use phase, nanomaterial degradation and change during the product life cycle and the impact assessment stage of LCA. This chapter expounds upon the unique challenges presented by nanomaterials in general, specifies sources of uncertainty and variability in LCA of SWCNT for use in electric and hybrid vehicle batteries and makes recommendations for modeling and decision-making using LCA in a multi-criteria decision analysis framework under conditions of high uncertainty.(1)Algae biodiesel is all opportunity space that has gained renewed interest for venture investment. As with any new opportunity space, determining where the greatest value capturing potential resides has important implications for directing investment and research. This paper presents a value chain analysis of algae biodiesel and maps current industry players against similar segments in the biofuels and petroleum value chains. Using margin analysis and life-cycle analysis of one of the market pains (energy use in algae harvesting and biomass processing to biodiesel), a technology opportunity was identified. The identification of potentially high value companies using semi-quantitative analysis provides a useful tool for investors and entrepreneurs in the algae biodiesel space.It is clear that in the near future the world will be facing a water crisis, and indeed, many parts of the world already are. The focus of this book has been on ways that nanotechnology may provide solutions to many of the technical problems that are or will result in scarcity and poor water quality. However, there are many potential sources of competition for water, both technical and nontechnical. Some of these, such as corruption and mismanagement, have been creating issues with water for a very long time, whereas others, such as the burgeoning biofuels industry, are only just emerging. It is important that we consider all of the many competitors for clean water and possibility for nanotechnology to address these directly and indirectly.With a number of potentially groundbreaking nanotechnology water purification products entering the market, the application of nanotechnology toward improving water quality has the potential to become a major industry over the next 10-15 years. However, there is an emerging set of scientific and policy barriers that could interfere with the long-term success of these nanotechnology water applications. The chapter investigates some of these obstacles to innovation in the international arena and describes a series of policy options that can be used to accelerate the application of nanotechnology toward improving water quality. In particular, it describes how the need for effective oversight mechanisms, risk research tools, "killer applications," and public outreach can be addressed by policy solutions that range from innovation inducement awards and word-of-mouth information campaigns to targeted, collaborative funding and life cycle assessment. The aim of such policy solutions is to offer a range of short-term options that could foster cooperation among a range of interested stakeholders while simultaneously addressing long-term challenges. The challenges of nanotechnology governance will require an integrated set of forward-looking policy solutions and a coherent, integrated risk management strategy. Such a response is needed to help ensure that nanotechnology water applications have an opportunity to surpass their conventional counterparts in terms of effectiveness, reliability, and ease of diffusion. Undertaking these actions will require intellectual, financial, human resource, and time commitments from a range of stakeholders; hence, this process must begin to move forward at a rapid pace to match the speed of nanotechnology innovation.This paper develops an Eco-QFD methodology to provide a framework for designing EEE (electrical and electronical equipment) Eco-products by integrating the life cycle analysis into QFD throughout the entire product development process. However, the classical QFD is not capable of handling qualitative and fuzzy information. In order to overcome the uncertainty and the vagueness of the problem, the Eco-design product development problem was formulated as fuzzy multi-objective model based on the QFD planning.In the present study two different sets of assumptions for future power production scenarios, one based on conventional technologies and another assuming a more sustainable energy oriented electricity production, for the Baltic States are analysed to identify, the possible marginal electricity sources which could be used in consequential Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies in these countries. The environmental impacts of electricity production often account for a major portion of the total environmental burden in LCAs of many products and services. It is known that the environmental impacts Of electricity production vary significantly, between different energy sources, thus the choice of input data could significantly influence the final results of LCA studies. Therefore, it is important that the LCA practitioners and those who draw conclusions based on LCA studies have both an understanding about data sensitivity issues and the development of energy systems. In this article the implications of marginal data choices in LCA are discussed on the basis of a case study on energy production from municipal waste incineration in the Baltic States.The ability of nanoporous materials to reduce the environmental impact of chemical processes is discussed. The chapter begins with a discussion of methods such as Life Cycle Analysis and green chemistry metrics for measuring the impact of a process, and continues to discuss how nanoporous catalytic materials can be utilized to improve processes. Considerations for minimizing the impact of nanoporous catalyst synthesis follow. Diffusion plays an important role in catalytic reactions involving nanoporous catalysts, and pertinent results on diffusion behaviour are briefly reviewed. This is followed by a section discussing the key advances in catalyst design and utilization; for example the control of surface properties by incorporation of secondary groups, and the development of bifunctional systems which allow two consecutive steps of a reaction to proceed together are covered. The final section of the chapter discusses reactor design as it affects nanoporous catalysis. Continuous reactors such as trickle bed reactors, spinning disc reactors and membrane reactors are discussed as options which can best demonstrate the benefits of nanoporous catalysis for green chemistry.The results of laboratory investigations into the aerobic biodegradation of chelating compounds in water medium under static test conditions are presented. It was found that nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) and glutamic acid diacetic acid (GLDA) are more readily biodegradable than ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) commonly used in the production of liquid fertilizers. Biodegradation was evaluated on the basis of compound decay and changes in COD.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well used tool for analyzing environmental impacts on a wide perspective and with a reference to a product system and economic activity. However it has some limitations and there is a need for a novel approach that complements environmental and financial considerations is addressed in this study with the introduction of a new graphical representation: the Environmental Performance Strategy Map. This particular graphical map allows combination of the main environmental indicators (footprints) with the additional dimension of cost. The paper defines the Sustainable Environmental Performance Indicator as a single measure for sustainability of a given option. Comparison of different options for strategic decision making purposes can be enhanced and facilitated by the use of this indicator.With the development of society, people have more and more request for painting goods in appearance. Electrostatic coating technology is a new type of technology developed rapidly at home and abroad and has been widely applied to several kinds of industrial fields. Electrostatic oiler developed using electrostatic atomization technology is a high-tech production integrated with machinery, hydraulics, electricity, high voltage electrostatic, and computer control. However, in the whole life cycle of production, manufacturing, usage, and scrapping of electrostatic oiler resource consumptions and environment pollutions are formed In this paper, take the electrostatic oiler developed by Wuhan University of science and technology as an object and adopt life cycle assessment (LCA) to carry out inventory analysis, influence evaluation, and explanations in order to supply theoretical foundation for developing green electrostatic oilerAccording to the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA), a new LCA-based ecological design methodology for cotton fabric is proposed in this paper. A factor system based on the environmental influences of global, regional and local areas is established, which includes the resource consumption, global warming, oxygen depletion, acidification, eutrophication, speck or ash and ecological toxicity. These factors are used to evaluate the potential environmental impact. Based on the characteristics of cotton textiles and the environment principles of ecological design, the ecological design process of cotton-fabric product is divided into several stages such as raw material, production, sale, usage and disposition. In particular, the results of the LCA-based ecological design are assessed with environment impact load (EIL). After ecological design the EIL of cotton textiles is decreased and it is recommended that EIL=0.484 could be taken as a default setting to judge whether cotton textiles is environmental-friendly.Currently, the studies on the energy saving of public buildings are mainly focused on how to reduce the energy consumption in the using stage of buildings. With the further research on the building energy saving, green building, ecological architecture and the related areas of sustainable architecture, it is demonstrated that life cycle assessment (LCA) is a good method to evaluate the total energy consumption of the whole life cycle of the buildings and to assess its influence on the environment completely. According to the actual situation of the energy consumption of public buildings in the hot-summer and cold-winter region, the method of life cycle assessment is used to analyze the specific compositions of the building energy consumption at the each stage of the life cycle of public buildings and to investigate the distribution of the energy consumption among different stages of the life cycle of public buildings. Based on the analysis above, a basic strategy set of the energy consumption control of the public buildings in the hot-summer and cold-winter region is put forward to provide reference for the energy-efficient retrofitting practices and to improve the actual benefits of the energy efficient retrofitting of public buildings in the region.With the advancement in building designs, materials and technologies, nowadays it is not so much a technical challenge to develop net-zero energy houses; rather it is more of an economic challenge to develop such houses within certain environmental limits. The concept of green building is not new. Today's green building movement is mostly fueled by the urgent need to reverse the course of the deterioration of the natural environment. However, human activities associated with the built environment have long been focused on other interests such as profit and comfort than the intricate impact of building processes, materials and technologies on the natural environment. With environmental concerns as another dimension of constraints on the built environment, significant changes will happen to building designs and construction processes. Such changes are the consequence of reconciliation of the existing paradigm focusing mostly on cost or profit and the new paradigm with environmental concerns. Thus, will reducing cost and environmental impacts always at odds with each other? What are the strategies to align the two objectives, when they are in conflict? Answers to those questions will help researchers and practitioners develop a better understanding on green building. This paper discusses a pilot study on a net-zero energy house. The house, called "Future House USA" located in Beijing China, is developed by a team of faculty at Florida International University in collaboration with industry partners, the Future House Real Estate, Inc. in China and the Learn Green Foundation in the USA. The house contains many green house features such as solar panels, a geothermal system and a highly insulated building envelop. The study uses existing life cycle assessment/costing (LCA/LCC) tools to perform an analysis on the house and demonstrated the feasibility of activity-based environmental impact accounting for a construction project. The activity-based environmental impact accounting provides a base for studying the relationship between time, cost and environmental impacts.The green input output matrix will not only include the economic factors as the traditional input output matrix, but also include the environmental factors such nature resources, environmental pollution and environmental protection. Therefore the input output matrix with environmental pollution and wastage recycling is set up based on data from China Statistical Yearbook 2007 and is applied to analyze the sustainable development of China. The green input output matrix has two variables different from traditional input output matrix, i.e. resources restoration and pollution control, indicating the environment pollution and wastage recycling. The green input output matrix can evaluate the sustainable development of China more efficiently.Under the background of energy and environment problems becoming increasingly prominent as well as the new socialism countryside policies energetically promoted, low cost energy system is advanced for rural energy construction. Quantitative assessment model of low cost element is first established by dividing rural energy system cost into economic cost and environmental cost. And the latter is determined based on output data of life cycle inventory. Taken 15 years as a life cycle, 12 energy system schemes of 3 typical villages from freezing zone, cold zone in China are compared synthetically as case studies. From the quantitative result, the fossil energy (coal, LPG) system schemes have higher economic and environmental cost; straw and fuel wood energy system schemes have lower economic cost but higher environmental cost; straw gas and methane energy system schemes have lower economic and environmental cost, and the integrated cost is below 5000 yuan/capita, which are the optimum schemes for the future rural energy system planning.Material flow analysis (MFA) becomes more and more an important instrument to support environmental protection and sustainable development. Often, a special approach, life-cycle assessment (LCA), is put on the same level with material flow analysis. Based on the industrial ecology or industrial metabolism paradigm (Fischer-Kowalski 1998, Fischer-Kowalski and Huttler 1999), we interpret material flow analysis in a broader sense. That makes it possible to simulate, to analyze and, as a subsequent step, to optimize multi-product systems. This contribution shows how simulation and optimization can utilized in the field of material flow analysis. It can be shown that the different approaches are not alternatives. Rather, it is possible to combine them in order to provide a flexible MFA tool-chain.The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) adopted the Kyoto protocol, establishing legally binding targets for the developed world countries that ratified the protocol. It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an overall 5% below 1990 levels during the period between 2008 and 2012. Our review of current literature and research project; in the area of sustainability, energy and assessment applied to built environment identified gaps in current knowledge and tools. There is also a need to integrate sustainability within the whole life cycle of a building from design through construction to operation. This paper aims to give an overall review of the knowledge and technologies in the research area. We present a framework, methodologies and technologies that will facilitate the integration of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Whole Life Cycle Cost Assessment (WLCCA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) using 3D and Building Information Model (BIM) technologies.To understand ecological systems and environmental impact, techniques can be used which combine thermodynamics with environment and ecology. Most assessments consider thermodynamics via energy, but it many feel that ecological and environmental factors are better understood through exergy. One rationale is that exergy, not energy, is often a measure of the potential for ecological and environmental impact. Here, existing analysis techniques are reviewed which integrate exergy and ecological and environmental factors, including exergy-based ecological indicators, exergy-based life cycle analysis and environomics. The goals of most such techniques include improving understanding of the impact on ecological systems and the environment of processes and the determination of appropriate ecological and environmental improvement measures.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a full-scale environmental management tool which has an encouraging prospect for development. In the framework of LCA, this paper compares the synthetic evaluation of key iron and steel enterprises of China based on establishing an environmental evaluating indicator system. Derived from analyzing the main constraint factors of the environmental sustainability for iron and steel enterprises of China, this paper puts forward suggestions to achieve sustainable development in iron and steel enterprises.This paper presents a computational framework for calculating turning energy for parts and assemblies, at two levels - early design stage and manufacturing stage. At the early design stage such energy estimation can be used to redesign the part and assemblies for manufacturing energy efficiency. At the manufacturing stage, allocation of resources based on energy efficient process planning and scheduling aids in reducing the carbon emissions of the product due to manufacturing energy production. For computing the turning energy, at the early design stage, first removal volume for turning operations for a part is identified. Then, material data and the removal volume are used to calculate a range of turning energy for manufacturing the part. If dealing with an assembly, then the above computations are applied to each individual parts and total turning energy is computed for the assembly. Energy hogging parts/features are identified based on percent contribution, which is then used to suggest parts for re-design. Application of statistical analysis and allocation of turning energy for identifying re-design parts is also explored. Re-design at the early design stage is performed at two levels - form (geometry and shape) and material. At the manufacturing stage, turning energy calculations can be utilized for optimizing the process plans. Although the framework presented in this paper is applied only to turned parts and assemblies, it can also be applied to machined parts and assemblies.Laser assisted manufacturing (LAM) processes, when compared with traditional manufacturing processes, have the potential to reduce cost, increase surface finish, extend part/tool life, and expand the range of manufacturable materials. However, very limited research has been done to evaluate the environmental performance of laser assisted processes and it is generally not clear how LAM processes compare with traditional methods. This paper conducts case studies on two representative laser based processes, i.e. laser shock peening of 7065 T7351 Aluminum and laser assisted turning of compacted graphite iron. Life cycle assessment is used to benchmark the environmental performance of these two processes to conventional processes, i.e. shot peening and dry turning, respectively. The life cycle inventory of both the laser based processes and conventional processes are developed using SimaPro v7.1 and Ecoinvent 2.0 and life cycle impact assessment is performed using US EPA TRACI. It is found that environmental performance of laser based processes varies significantly from process to process due to materials and energy consumption. Laser shock peening of aluminum has much better performance when over all environmental impact categories considered. Contribution analysis indicates that this is mainly due to the fact that laser shock peening does not need shot medium and at the same time significantly extends fatigue life of the workpiece. However, due to high electricity consumption and use of absorptive paint, laser assisted turning of compacted graphite iron has much higher environmental impacts than traditional dry turning, even after extending the tool life significantly.Nano- and microtechnologies offer many benefits to society and promise the prospect of paradigm shifts on many technological fronts, including health care, alternative energy production, and efficient chemical processing. Current manufacturing processes for the production of nano- and microscale products, however, are energy and waste-intensive requiring energy and creating wastes/emissions at orders of magnitude greater than traditional production. Therefore, research is needed to quantify environmental performance improvements in nano- and microproduction technologies. nickel nanoparticle (NiNP) deposition is compared with more traditional nickel phosphorus (NiP) electroplating for facilitating diffusion brazing of arrayed microfluidics. These two technologies are analyzed on a functional basis from an environmental perspective. Potential areas of improvement and future research opportunities arc identified and discussed.The issue of environmental sustainability, which is unprecedented in both magnitude and complexity, presents one of the biggest challenges faced by modern society. Engineers, including mechanical engineers, can make significant contribution to the development of solutions to this problem by designing products and processes that are more environmentally sustainable. It is critical that engineers take a paradigm shift of product design i.e. from cost and performance centered to balance of economic, environmental, and societal consideration. Although there have been quite a few design for environment (DIE, or ecodesign) tools developed, so far these tools have only achieved limited industrial penetration: they are either too qualitative/subjective to be used by designers with limited experiences, or too quantitative, costly and time consuming and thus cannot be used during the design process specially during the early design stage. This paper develops a novel, semi-quantitative ecodesign tool that targets specially on early design process. The new tool is a combination of environmental life cycle assessment, working knowledge model, and visual tools such as QFD, functional-component matrix, and Pugh chart. Redesign of staplers is selected as a case study to demonstrate the use of the proposed tool. Efforts are on going to confirm that the new design generated using this new tool does have improved environmental performance.The performances for controlling a rotating machine by using either an Electromagnetic Actuator or a Piezoelectric Actuator are compared in this work. The aim is to establish selection criteria based on environmental impact. Life Cycle Analysis shows that the operating stage has a considerable impact. In this study, only the operating stage is considered. The energy consumed by the actuators seems to be the appropriate indicator for the same "mechanical" performances. Numerical studies are carried out in order to quantify the energy consumed in each case. Modal control strategy with a fuzzy controller is used. The controller inputs are displacements and velocities. The system studied is modeled by using finite element method and the electrical circuit of each actuator is modeled by using basic electricity and electromagnetism theories. Several configurations are assessed and defined by using the chosen Functional Unit. The results obtained show that both controllers are efficient and enable recommendations for optimal control procedures design for the energy consumed.The cutting pattern of the artificial forest on the basis of the Industrial Ecology means the reasonable method of cutting technique, machine, forest tending, forest restoration and the residue treatment considering the forest system during its life cycle period. This paper discussed the assessment method and the criterion system in the life cycle according to the advanced harvesting pattern in order to decide the feasibility of different cutting models.The principles of Life Cycle Assessment were introduced in this paper. Logging Industrial Plantation was divided into cutting, delimbing and bucking, skidding, utilization of logging residue. Life Cycle Assessment matrix was used to evaluate environmental impact of various timber production techniques. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate various logging technologies of Industrial Plantation based on Life Cycle Assessment.As new markets arise and global competition takes place, there is a need to come up with innovative-successful projects that present the best holistic alternative based on customer needs and market expectations. The present research provides a high-end technical solution to determine the best product alternative in terms of market expectations, product & process specifications, logistic and environmental performance. The integration of this framework is oriented towards rapid generation and evaluation of innovative products. The methodology is an engineering design framework based oil the efficient use of design tools and computer aided design and engineering (CAD/CAE). This methodology is illustrated with 2 case studies: the design and development of a commercial fan and the envisioning of an energy efficient luminary for public lighting. The implementation of this methodology delivered a better ranked product in less time and lower cost. The correct application of these engineering concepts can be easily extended into almost any new product at its development stage.Coal has the largest share of utility power generation in the Romania, accounting for approximately 40% of all utility-produced electricity. Therefore, understanding the environmental implications of producing electricity from coal is an important component of any plan to reduce total emissions and resource consumption. Three systems were examined: a) a plant that represents the average emissions and efficiency of currently operating coal-fired power plants in the Romania; b) a new coal-fired power plant that meets the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS); c) a highly advanced coal-fired power plant utilizing a low emission boiler system (LEBS). The results are then used to evaluate the environmental impacts of the process so that efforts can be focused on mitigating possible effects. Each system analyzed consists of coal mining, transportation, and electricity generation. In keeping with the cradle-to-grave concept of LCA, upstream processes required for the operation of these three subsystems were also included in this study. As expected, because coal combustion results in the production of CO(2) from carbon that was previously sequestered underground, CO(2) accounts for the vast majority (98%-99% by weight) of the total air emissions from each system examined. The rate of production is 1,022 g/kWh, 941 g/kWh, and 741 g/kWh for the Average, NSPS, and LEBS systems, respectively. Two other climate change gases, methane and nitrous oxide, are also emitted from the system. Although the global warming potential (GWP) of these gases is much higher than that of CO(2), they are emitted in much smaller quantities and therefore do not significantly change the GWP of the overall systems. Apart from the CO(2) produced during coal combustion, operations related to flue gas clean-up produce more CO(2) than any other upstream process. Limestone production, transportation, and use account for 59% and 62% of the non-coal CO(2) emissions in the Average and NSPS systems. These amounts are greater than twice the CO(2) emissions related to transportation of the coal. In the LEBS system, operations associated with the production and use of natural gas to regenerate the CuO sorbent is responsible for 35% of the total non-coal CO(2) emissions. Coal transportation, in this system, produces nearly 40% of the non-coal CO(2).In this issue we will look at the environmental management system and related standards developed by ISO TC 207.Energy efficiency is an important way for energy consumption and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission mitigation. The present approach in energy policy is the life-cycle costs analyses, followed by reliable solutions for any level of the cycle, in order to reduce mainly energy consumption, which represents about 30% to 60% or more of the total costs emphasis by the life-cycle analysis. There are presented analysis results and reliable general costs reduction methods and especially energy consumption mitigation methods applied in different phases of pumping systems realization.Biofuels are of rapidly growing interest for reasons of energy security, diversity, and sustainability - as well as for greenhouse gas mitigation. In recent years, the U.S. has enacted regulations - and adopted aggressive goals - to encourage increased usage of biofuels. Individual States (especially California) have taken even stronger positions with respect to biofuels. Initial efforts have focused mainly on ethanol, produced via fermentation of sugars from grains (especially corn). Today's R&D focus is on "2nd Generation Biofuels" that are produced from a variety of biomass feedstocks utilizing a wide range of conversion technologies. This paper summarizes policy and regulatory drivers for biofuels in the U.S., describes usage trends and projections, and highlights major R&D efforts to promote development and commercialization of 2nd Generation Biofuels. R&D is being conducted in many areas, including biomass resource assessment, development of new biomass feedstocks, improved conversion technologies, and integration of systems. Other important considerations include fuel quality and specifications, as well as requirements for blending, distribution, and storage. Considerable R&D, policy, and regulatory efforts are also focused on the energy and environmental consequences of biofuels. This includes not only direct emissions associated with vehicular uses, but also the fuels' life-cycle impacts with respect to total energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and multi-media effects. Due to the wide diversity of biomass feedstocks, conversion technologies, and systems integration approaches, the life-cycle impacts of biofuels can vary widely. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work presents results of experimental and simulation study of a solar assisted pre-cooled hybrid desiccant cooling (PHDCS) system for air conditioning applications in Pakistan. Tests were conducted on a gas fired pre-cooled hybrid desiccant cooling test rig for high humidity Karachi weather. Using measured data sets from the test rig, validation of TRYNSIS model of the same cooling system was undertaken. Four modes or configurations of the cooling system were simulated for Karachi and Lahore climatic conditions. Lahore simulation results demonstrated that better COPp can be achieved using indirect evaporative cooler for pre-cooling and direct evaporative cooler for post-cooling of air. Life cycle assessment of solar air collector was performed and energy and environmental payback periods were found to be equal to 1 and 1.5 years, respectively. An economic assessment of the solar collector revealed a payback period of about 14 years. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Converting available biomass from municipal, agricultural and forest wastes to bio-methanol can result in significant environmental and economic benefits. Keeping these benefits in mind, one plausible scenario discussed here is the potential to produce energy using bio-methanol in five states of the western United States. In this scenario, the bio-methanol produced is from different biomass sources and used as a substitute for fossil fuels in energy production. In the U.S. West, forest materials are the dominant biomass waste source in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, while in California, the greatest amount of available biomass is from municipal wastes. Using a 100% rate of substitution, bio-methanol produced from these sources can replace an amount equivalent to most or all of the gasoline consumed by motor vehicles in each state. In contrast, when bio-methanol powered fuel cells are used to produce electricity, it is possible to generate 12-25% of the total electricity consumed annually in these five states. As a gasoline substitute, bio-methanol can optimally reduce vehicle C emissions by 2-29 Tg of C (23-81% of the total emitted by each state). Alternatively, if bio-methanol supported fuel cells are used to generate electricity, from 2 to 32 Tg of C emissions can be avoided. The emissions avoided, in this case, could equate to 25-32% of the total emissions produced by these particular western states when fossil fuels are used to generate electricity. The actual C emissions avoided will be lower than the estimates here because C emissions from the methanol production processes are not included; however, such emissions are expected to be relatively low. In general, there is less carbon emitted when bio-methanol is used to generate electricity with fuel cells than when it is used as a motor vehicle fuel. In the state of Washington, thinning "high-fire-risk" small stems, namely 5.1-22.9 cm diameter trees, from wildfire-prone forests and using them to produce methanol for electricity generation with fuel cells would avoid C emissions of 3.7-7.3 Mg C/ha. Alternatively, when wood-methanol produced from the high-fire-risk wood is used as a gasoline substitute, 3.3-6.6 Mg C/ha of carbon emissions are avoided. If these same "high-fire-risk" woody stems were burned during a wildfire 7.9 Mg C/ha would be emitted in the state of Washington alone. Although detailed economic analyses of producing methanol from biomass are in its infancy, we believe that converting biomass into methanol and substituting it for fossilfuel-based energy production is a viable option in locations that have high biomass availability. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The forest is an essential natural resource providing multiple benefits to people. However, forests face several environmental problems created by modern industrial society such as acidification, eutrophication and global warming. This study investigated the environmental loads associated with the Spanish forest sector, where this activity plays an important role in socioeconomic development. A Eucalyptus globulus plantation located in north-western Spain was considered as a case study. Forest operations were divided into three subsystems: silvicultural operations, logging operations and secondary hauling. The results showed that logging operations consume more energy than any other part of the wood supply chain, with a remarkable contribution in the potential impact categories of global warming, acidification and photochemical oxidant formation. Transportation of timber from forest landing to industrial sites (secondary hauling) is the second most important energy user. Silvicultural operations made an important contribution to eutrophication, mainly due to phosphorus-based fertilizer application. This study will enable improved Iberian life cycle assessment studies of wood products in the absence of detailed studies for this region.Three interconnected and underpinning aspects of nanotechnology viz.: environment, human health, and sustainability are discussed. Sustainable development using nanomaterials by employing responsible manufacturing, principles of "green chemistry"; by drastically reducing waste discharge and emission by-products; generation and storage of energy; development of lightweight yet mechanically strong components; development of bio-degradable goods - for medicine, waste disposal., containers, etc. and to monitor, detect, and remediate the environmental pollution are discussed. A brief discussion of fate and transport of nanomaterials in air, water, and soil; life-cycle analysis, and methodologies to conduct risk-assessment in the context of source reduction and conservation is introduced. It is expected that such emerging and potentially transformative studies will make a major contribution to improving the quality of the life of citizens worldwide, in particular in sectors such as environment and health care.In this paper, the environmental benefits or renewable energy systems are initially presented followed by a study of the thermal performance, economics and environmental protection offered by thermosiphon solar water heating systems. The system investigated is of the domestic size, suitable to satisfy most of the hot water needs of a family of four persons. The results presented in this paper show that considerable percentage of the hot water needs of the family are covered with solar energy. This is expressed as the solar contribution and its annual value is 79%. Additionally, the system investigated give positive and very promising financial characteristics with payback time of 2.7 years and life cycle savings of 2240 E with electricity backup and payback time of 4.5 years and life cycle savings of 1056(sic) with diesel backup. From the results it can also be shown that by using solar energy considerable amounts of greenhouse polluting gasses are avoided. The saving, compared to a conventional system, is about 70% for electricity or diesel backup. With respect to life cycle assessment of the systems, the energy spent for the manufacture and installation of the solar systems is recouped in about 13 months, whereas the payback time with respect to emissions produced from the embodied energy required for the manufacture and installation of the systems varies from a few months to 3.2 years according to the fuel and the particular pollutant considered. It can therefore be concluded that thermosiphon solar water hearting systems offer significant protection to the environment and should be employed whenever possible in order to achieve a sustainable future. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A complex interdisciplinary approach to the reliability assessment of reinforced concrete structures is introduced and demonstrated on a real existing bridge structure. The reliability index of the structure decreases during its life cycle due to material degradation. A retrofitting to the desired reliability level should be performed. This procedure is modelled by advanced life-cycle computer simulation. The main feature of the presented approach is the nonlinear finite element analysis of the structure employed for the realistic assessment of structural behaviour. A suitable statistical sampling technique, which allows relatively small numbers of simulations, is used in this context. Different degradation scenarios are analysed concerning their effect on the structure's reliability progression. These studies give a basis for future models including analytical deterioration models combined with in situ monitoring, used to launch the degradation process. Finally the presented methodology for advanced life-cycle analysis is integrated in the innovative decision-making tool that supports the maintenance planning of engineering structures.Engineered wood products are made from a variety of wood substances which are held together by an adhesive; the aim being to use the wood fibre more efficiently by redistributing and reinforcing natural defects and by forming the products into structurally efficient shapes unachievable by sawing, thereby doing more with less wood fibre. While additional energy resources are required to process engineered wood products they remain largely renewable and thus sustainable compared with competing materials that involve considerable mining. This chapter describes the manufacture of these wood products, reviews life cycle analysis (LCA) studies of their application to domestic housing and describes their use in larger public buildings.Environmental impacts of agriculture cannot be always assessed by using direct measurements. Since the 1990s, numerous agri-environmental indicators were developed to assess the adverse effects of cropping and farming systems in the environment, such as water pollution, soil erosion, and emission of greenhouse gases. Here we present the different types of indicators developed during the last decade and review the progress of the methods used for their development. The application of different groups of indicators is discussed and illustrated by examples in the fields of nitrogen losses and pesticide risk: (1) indicators based on a single or a combination of variables related to farmer practices, (2) indicators derived from operational or more complex simulation models assessing emissions of pollutants, and (3) measured indicators linked directly to environmental impacts. The nitrogen indicator (IN) of the INDIGO method and the MER-LIN indicator will be presented and used to illustrate the methodological discussion. We show that a good identification of the end-users, of the practical objectives of the indicator, and of the spatial and temporal scales is essential and should be done at a preliminary step before designing the indicator itself. The possibilities of deriving an indicator from a model and of setting a reference value are discussed. Several methods are also presented to study the sensitivity and the validity of agri-environmental indicators. Finally, several practical recommendations are made. As only few data are usually available at the regional level, several simple indicators should be used for assessing a given impact at this level. When more detailed information is available, indicators based on operational models can be useful to analyse the effects of several factors related to soil, climate, and cropping system on an environmental impact. In experimental studies, we suggest using both measured indicators and model-based indicators.The development of the dairy farming is important for environmental aspects, as well as social and economic development of the countryside in Sweden. When aiming at a sustainable dairy production it is crucial to include these issues, but animal health and welfare should also be considered. The overall aim of this study was to describe future scenarios for dairy farm production in Sweden, and to analyse sustainability of theses scenarios, using a method previously developed. Based on the construction of goal visions two scenarios for future dairy farms were constructed; Specialised Dairy Farming (SDF) with high production intensity and Mixed Dairy Farming (MDF) with increased crop rotations and large share of pasture. Based on the qualitative descriptions and the design of buildings, the farming systems were quantified. When quantification was performed the scenarios were evaluated concerning economics, environmental effects and animal welfare, including health. Cost of production was in scenario SDF 3.02 SEK/kg milk, in MDF 4.34 SEK/kg milk, and in the present Swedish dairy production 2.87 SEK/kg milk. Life Cycle Assessment included analyses of eutrophication, global warming potential, acidification and usage of pesticides. The contribution to eutrophication per litre milk was lower for scenario SDF, but MDF contributed less to eutrophication per land area used. Comparing the scenarios, MDF had more positive impact on the environment than SDF, based on our analysis. Cows in SDF were found to have an increased risk of lameness, mastitis, ketosis and abomasal displacement compared to cows in the MDF scenario. No scenario was superior in all aspects and the goal for developing Sustainable dairy farm production must be guided by analysis of values. However, the mainly positive environmental results for scenario MDF must be considered as rather strong, since the assumed milk yield is rather low. No system is the sole solution and choices has to be made, and studies of this kind make it possible to survey which choices that can be made and what the consequences are.A four-year project (SuFiQuaD) started in 2007 to optimize the Belgian dwelling stock. The optimization focuses on environmental impacts, financial cost and quality aspects. The aim is to evaluate the whole life cycle of representative housing types and formulate recommendations for improvement. In a first phase the methodology has been developed and is now being applied to a limited selection of extreme dwelling types. Based on this application, the methodology will be revised and applied to representative dwelling types. This paper elaborates on the developed methodology and the first results of the implementation. The basic approach for the optimisation is to search for the highest marginal quality improvement for the additional cost. The cost consists of different aspects: initial financial cost, initial environmental cost, life cycle financial cost and life cycle environmental cost. The environmental cost is calculated by translating the environmental impact - estimated based on life cycle assessment - into financial terms. Finally, a quality evaluation is included. This is considered as an essential part of the analysis since a good quality is a requirement for sustainability, but moreover, the inclusion of the evaluation of the performance of a building enables comparative analysis.The current interest in sustainability has created difficulties for those attempting to rethink issues of urban form. Most challenging is the lack of consensus on what is meant by a sustainable city. At first glance, this lack of consensus could be pinned on our inability to define sustainability or to clarify the motives that have spawned its remarkable rise. We intend to argue, however, that it is not a failure of lexicon, but the fact that implicit definitions of, and seldom-articulated motives for, sustainability are contrary to our notions of urban life. When addressing sustainable issues, international design journals frequently highlight single-family, detached housing using advanced technologies, recycled and recyclable materials, and passive strategies as models. In America, LEED checklists and the annual Solar Decathlon reinforce this nascent impression that sustainability is first and foremost a matter of technological advance, which does not necessitate a corresponding rethinking of land use, density or urban form. Even when second and third looks reveal the deeper importance of land use planning and life cycle analysis, seldom is perception of form broached. The experiential appears outmoded in the face of such dire concerns. This paper will relocate perceptual concerns to the forefront of developing a sustainable city in two ways. Firstly, utilizing frameworks provided by Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey, we will argue the primacy of the city in fostering sustainable ways of life through proper land use, density, and consolidation of resources. Secondly, turning to Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, and Judith Butler, I will argue that the creation of a phenomenal city - a city rooted in the bodily experience of desire - is the necessary trigger to spur human migration to technologically sustainable cities.This chapter is based on research to establish what constitutes an environmentally friendly textile, from the perspective of a practising designer. It identifies the environmental issues, the new goals and objectives, and the role of the designer in manifesting the necessary changes across the whole industry. The chapter identifies key environmental design strategies, and gives practical advice in the form of questions and exercises so that designers may engage their creativity to develop interpretations and alternatives based on their own methods of life cycle analyses. Because designers are in such key positions, the chapter also endeavours to explain the unique qualities that comprise the nature of design practice to others working within the field. There are also websites and suggestions for furtherThis chapter reviews the history and development of wool as a modern textile fibre and describes the systems that have been developed to overcome the inherent variability in the fibre production process. Wool is a natural and renewable protein fibre, with a complex physical micro- and nano-structure and a complex chemistry. Together these allow development of textile garments with unique comfort, performance and appearance characteristics. However, 'natural' does not automatically equate to 'sustainable' and the wool industry, like most other mainstream textile fibre industries, is examining its environmental performance. For Australian Merino wool, this is not being done as a marketing tool, but as a means to identify and confront the main environmental challenges and to direct future research. Three main production, processing and garment scenarios representative of Australian wool supply chains have been chosen for examination using life cycle assessment (LCA). Overall conclusions from the current study are that: biogenic methane is the major contributor to the carbon footprint, and the Australian industry is intensively developing tools to reduce enteric emissions; garment laundering accounts for most water consumption, and much energy (heating water and electrical drying); more research is needed to address the gaps in our background environmental knowledge, especially for electricity and energy production in Asia where the bulk of textile processing is currently performed.Enzymes are used in a broad range of processes in the textile industry: scouring, bleach clean-up, desizing, denim abrasion and polishing. Enzymes are specific and fast in action and small amounts of enzyme often save large amounts of raw materials, chemicals, energy and/or water. This chapter describes enzyme use in the textile industry in the context of sustainable production and reports life cycle assessments (LCAs) on two enzyme applications: bioscouring and enzymatic bleach clean-up. The results show that resource use and impact on the environment can be reduced considerably when enzymes are implemented in the two processes.The concept of an eco-label for products of commerce continues to evolve. The textile industry in particular is now facing an explosion of various textile labeling concepts. This chapter examines the types, roles and reasons for eco-labels, how the process of eco-labeling has evolved, and forecasts future developments.Trade-off studies for the evaluation of tailings management options, alternative designs, etc. are typically based on cost, environmental and site specific considerations. This short paper presents the Concepts Of using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a basis for tradeoff Studies to evaluate tailings management options, alternative designs, etc. LCA has been formalized by the International Organization for Standardization in a series of standards, ISO 14040. In all LCA materials flows, environmental impacts, and energy flows are typically used to evaluate a specific option as well as for trade-off Studies. A short review of the LCA principles, framework and approach is followed by summaries of a few mining and project related Studies using LCA's at the Country, mine site and project scale. By defining the "functional unit" clearly as tailings management all the LCA standards call be applied in the evaluation of trade-offs, at this scale.In the recent years, attention has been attracted to the development of activities (developing and implementation of standards, directives, regulations, policies etc.) related to the environmental protection and implementation of the principles of sustainable development. Also in Poland, principles of that concept are Put into practice. There is, however, a shortage of elaborations which the future investor or designer could, in an easy way, utilise for the selection of environment-friendly materials, technologies, building utilities and so forth, i.e. to design a facility which causes the least harm possible to the environment, maintaining at the same time low energy demand during its life cycle. According to the philosophy of environmental protection, a building design should take into consideration its entire life cycle, and its structure and utilities should allow the supplies of energy needed for heating to be eliminated while using the building. The present paper aims to give multi-attribute analysis for assessment of building variants, which utilises the Life Cycle Assessment method (LCA). The method defines a number of so-called environmental impact categories, which include criteria to be considered while selecting a solution, which minimises such impacts. The most important of them and costs are taken into account in the multi-criteria analysis for optimum solution selection. The results of eco-energetic assessment of variants house are grounds to supporting decisions in programming, designing and performing houses, taking into consideration numerous others aspects (usable, technical, social etc.).Today there are varieties of comments prevailing among people who use Plastic and Paper bags for their shopping needs. A few people support Plastic bags with their own justifications and others support Paper bags. This is a hot topic of today and arguments are going up and down to deduce which one is better in terms of environmental impact, but some people abstain from this issue by choosing the other track of going with reusable bags. This exploratory study is attempted to infer the environmental concerns made by these bags. The two common grocery bags of today - Paper & Plastic bags are compared in this study. Two imperative measures - total amount of energy used by a bag to get it manufactured and the amount of pollutants emitted during the manufacturing phase of a bag - are chosen as data for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI). To arrive at a clear state of conclusion with respect to environmental impact made by these two bags, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) study was accomplished. Evolvement of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study from the data available on this context is the crux of this study. The Eco-indicator 99, damage oriented method for LCIA in SIMAPRO 7.1 tool is used to assess the environmental impact made by these two grocery bags. The single score values calculated by the Eco-indicator 99 is considered as a directive to compare the environmental impact made by these and a detailed explanation of results is also dealt with in this paper. As far as the Life cycle energy analysis and amount of pollutants produced from these two bags are concerned, a plastic bag simply scores out a paper bag. The impact assessment results are also in line to support the plastic bags over paper bags. However, this conclusion has been drawn on the basis of the secondary data for LCI and the results provided by the software which also has certain hypotheses and assumptions.In recent years, global environmental concerns have been promoted and the need for adopting environmentally friendly policies has been widely acknowledged by the whole society. As the building sector is the biggest consumer of raw materials and energy, the role of environmental parameters regarding the design and construction of structures based oil concrete and steel is becoming increasingly significant particularly in the field of construction. In order to deal with the environmentally unfriendly operation of buildings, the concept of sustainable construction has been developed and new methods and practices have been implemented to work towards the goal of reducing environmental impacts. In the present paper, a new topic of modern engineering, namely, the sustainability in the field of construction is discussed, while newly introduced terms, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) are presented along with the current regulative standards regarding life cycle assessment. The Study aims at investigating steel structures in view of sustainability and at analyzing all processes related to their sustainable design. Special emphasis has been given to the properties of steel members and their influence Oil the overall sustainability performance, including structural stability and functionality. The latter are Studied through the application of the sustainability software and the implementation of an LCA analysis for a steel shed, covering the whole life cycle of the structure. Environmental impact is calculated according to the number of impact indicators and useful conclusions concerning the Sustainable design of steel Structures are presented.Rail-based intermodal freight transportation systems in the European Union have been regarded as being more environmental friendly than truck-only freight systems, particularly for long-distance haulage and in terms of CO2 emissions. However, to date there has been no clear comparison of CO2 emissions between different freight systems. Therefore, this paper examines whether the intermodal freight system really does emit less CO2 than their road-based counterparts. A research framework is established in which the methods and data of earlier studies are assessed. Based on a conceptualisation of intermodal and truck-only systems, the semi-life cycle assessment technique, which excludes emissions from infrastructure and vehicle manufacturing and includes emissions from the production of fuel and direct emissions, is used in order to examine the short- and medium-term environmental impact of different freight systems. The main conclusion is that in general rail-based intermodal freight systems emit less CO2 than truck-only systems, regardless of the type of locomotive. For electric locomotives, the electricity power-generating source is the definitive factor in deciding which type of train in an intermodal freight system offers the most environmental friendly alternative: if power plants use only coal or oil fuel sources, intermodal systems using electric trains could emit more CO2 than their competitors.Sustainability is characterized as a three-legged stool supported by economic, environmental, and social considerations. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of integrating environmental performance measures, one aspect of sustainable practices, into asset and pavement management. To illustrate these concepts, a Microsoft Excel workbook-based pavement construction decision support tool named Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment Tool for Environmental and Economic Effects (PaLATE) is introduced. Background information is given on life-cycle assessment (LCA) pavement construction tools. PaLATE product life-cycle and LCA phases are covered, in addition to PaLATE data and data sources. A table describing the data used for environmental calculations is included, and the use of an asphalt emulsion seal and the use of an ultrathin hot-mix asphalt overlay are compared by use of the tool. Special attention is given to recycled materials and environmental measures. Concluding remarks suggest different contexts for potential applications of PaLATE, together with network tools that can be used to meet user needs and applications as well as to address feasibility and cost.The article presents a way of analysis of environmental impact for several different cogeneration systems using like methodology Life Cycle Analysis.Buildings in cities and the activities carried out therein use a significant proportion of a nation's energy consumption and produce substantial quantities of greenhouse gases in the process. Residential buildings are a large contributor, partially as a result of the transport and housing activities of households. In this study, life cycle analysis is used to calculate the total transport and housing energy and emissions from a sample of 41 households in apartment buildings in the city centre of Adelaide, Australia and compare them with suburban households. The purpose of this is to determine whether the urban density option of higher rise dwellings offers a lower environmental impact than conventional housing. The analysis includes delivered energy and greenhouse gas emissions generated by motorised travel and activities within the dwellings, and the energy and emissions embodied in household motor vehicles and the apartment buildings. The total delivered energy consumption of apartment households was found to be lower than suburban households due mainly to higher car usage, particularly in the outer suburbs. However, the analysis of total greenhouse gas emissions provided a somewhat different comparison especially when they were considered on a per capita basis. The total per capita emissions for apartment households varied considerably but, on average, exceeded those of both the inner and outer suburban households. This resulted from lower occupancy rates and higher emissions arising from higher dwelling operational and embodied energy consumption. Overall, it cannot be assumed that centralised, higher density living will deliver per capita emission reductions for residents, once the combined per capita life cycle emissions from housing and transport have been accounted for. A more vigorous educational, promotional and regulatory approach is required to achieve greater operational and embodied energy efficiency in apartment buildings to fully realise the emissions-reducing potential of such buildings in centralised locations.By using life cycle assessment (LCA) modeling, this paper compares the environmental performance of six landfilling technologies (open dump, conventional landfill with flares, conventional landfill with energy recovery, standard bioreactor landfill, flushing bioreactor landfill and semi-aerobic landfill) and assesses the influence of the active operations practiced on these performances. The environmental assessments have been performed by means of the LCA-based tool EASEWASTE, whereby the functional unit utilized for the LCA is "landfilling of I ton of wet household waste in a 10 on deep landfill for 100 years". The assessment criteria include standard categories (global warming, nutrient enrichment, ozone depletion, photo-chemical ozone formation and acidification), toxicity-related categories (human toxicity and ecotoxicity) and impact on spoiled groundwater resources. Results demonstrate that it is crucially important to ensure the highest collection efficiency of landfill gas and leachate since a poor capture compromises the overall environmental performance. Once gas and leachate are collected and treated, the potential impacts in the standard environmental categories and on spoiled groundwater resources significantly decrease, although at the same time specific emissions from gas treatment lead to increased impact potentials in the toxicity-related categories. Gas utilization for energy recovery leads to saved emissions and avoided impact potentials in several environmental categories. Measures should be taken to prevent leachate infiltration to groundwater and it is essential to collect and treat the generated leachate. The bioreactor technologies recirculate the collected leachate to enhance the waste degradation process. This allows the gas collection period to be reduced from 40 to 15 years, although it does not lead to noticeable environmental benefits when considering a 100 years LCA-perspective. In order to more comprehensively understand the influence of the active operations (i.e., leachate recirculation, waste flushing and air injection) on the environmental performance, the time horizon of the assessment has been split into two time periods: years 0-15 and 16-100. Results show that if these operations are combined with gas utilization and leachate treatment, they are able to shorten the time frame that emissions lead to environmental impacts of concerti. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to determine the optimum municipal solid waste (MSW) management strategy for Eskisehir city. Eskisehir is one of the developing cities of Turkey where a total of approximately 750 tons/day of waste is generated. An effective MSW management system is needed in this city since the generated MSW is dumped in ail unregulated dumping site that has no liner, no biogas capture, etc. Therefore, five different scenarios were developed as alternatives to the current waste management system. Collection and transportation of waste, a material recovery facility (MRF), recycling, composting, incineration and landfilling processes were considered in these scenarios. SimaPro7 libraries were used to obtain background data for the life cycle inventory. One ton of municipal solid waste of Eskisehir was selected as the functional unit. The alternative scenarios were compared through the CML 2000 method and these comparisons were carried out from the abiotic depletion, global warming, human toxicity, acidification, eutrophication and photochemical ozone depletion points of view. According to the comparisons and sensitivity analysis, composting scenario, S3, is the more environmentally preferable alternative. In this study waste management alternatives were investigated only oil ail environmental point of view. For that reason, it might be Supported with other decision-making tools that consider the economic and social effects of solid waste management. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The contribution of existing municipal solid waste management to emission of greenhouse gases and file alternative scenarios to reduce emissions were analyzed for Data Ganj Bukhsh Town (DGBT) in Lahore. Pakistan using file life cycle assessment methodology. DGBT has a population of 1,624.169 people living ill 232,024 dwellings. Total waste generated is 500,000 tons per),car with in average per capita rate of 0.84 kg per day. Alternative scenarios were developed and evaluated according to the environmental, economic. and social atmosphere of file study area. Solid waste management options considered include the collection and transportation of waste. collection of recyclables with single and mixed material bank container systems (SMBCS, MMBCS). material recovery facilities (MRF). composting, biogasification and landfilling. A life cycle inventory (LCI) of the six scenarios along with file baseline scenario was completed; this helped to quantify the CO(2) equivalents, emitted and avoided, for energy consumption. production. fuel consumption and methane (CH(4)) emissions. LCI results showed that file contribution of the baseline scenario to the global warming potential as CO(2) equivalents Was a maximum of 838,116 toils. The sixth scenario had a maximum reduction of GHG emissions in terms of CO(2) equivalents of -33,773 tons, but the most workable scenario for file current situation ill file study area is scenario 5. It saves 25% ill CO(2) equivalents compared to the baseline scenario. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The quantitative evaluation of emissions from incineration is essential when Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies consider this process as an end-of-life solution for some wastes. Thus, the objective of this work is to quantify the main gaseous emissions produced when spent AA alkaline batteries are incinerated. With this aim, batteries were kept for I h at 1273 K in a refractory steel tube hold in a horizontal electric furnace with temperature control. At one end of the refractory steel tube, a constant air flow input assures the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere and guides the gaseous emissions to a filter system followed by a set of two bubbler flasks having an aqueous solution of 10% (v/v) nitric acid. After each set of experiments, sulphur, chlorides and metals (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sb, Tl and Zn) were analyzed in both the solutions obtained from the steel tube washing and from the bubblers. Sulphur, chlorides and metals were quantified, respectively, using barium sulfate gravimetry, the Volhard method and atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). The emissions of zinc, the most emitted metal, represent about 6.5% of the zinc content in the batteries, Emissions of manganese (whose oxide is the main component of the cathode) and iron (from the cathode collector) are negligible when compared with their amount in AA alkaline batteries. Mercury is the metal with higher volatility in the composition of the batteries and was collected even in the second bubbler flask. The amount of chlorides collected corresponds to about 36% of the chlorine in the battery sleeve that is made from PVC. A considerable part of the HCl formed in PVC plastic sleeve incineration is neutralized with KOH, zinc and manganese oxides and, thus, it is not totally released in the gas. Some of the emissions are predictable through a thermodynamic data analysis at temperatures in the range of 1200-1300 K taking into account the composition of the batteries. This analysis was done for most of potential reactions between components in the batteries as well as between them and the surrounding atmosphere and it reasonably agrees the experimental results. The results obtained show the role of alkaline batteries at the acid gases cleaning process, through the neutralization reactions of some of their components. Therefore, LCA of spent AA alkaline batteries at the municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration process must consider this contribution. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work developed and evaluated a sustainability planning platform composed of a methodology and a tool suite called Enhanced Balanced Scorecard (EBSC). The platform was built on the synergy of widely used production systems design and evaluation methodologies and tools namely Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), and Abridged Life Cycle Assessment (ALCA). EBSC was designed to (1) address the deficiencies of existing frameworks and (2) exhibit the desired characteristics of a sustainability planning framework, which are: (a) allows possibility of certification; (b) integrates the social; (c) environmental, and economic dimensions of the organization; (d) involves continual improvement; (e) exhibits structural clarity; (f) involves participative decision making among internal and external stakeholders; (g) allows ease of information handling; and (h) considers individual characteristics of companies.Environmental considerations are now part of the consumer behaviour influencing their purchases. The only way to get information on the environmental impact of an article is to go through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In some European countries, it is also included in legislation. Environmental impact of some articles has to be labelled indicating for example the carbon footprint. Purchasing product with a lower environmental impact is one way leading to sustainable consumption. Footwear and leather-goods as all products causes environmental impacts throughout their lifespan (from raw materials to end of life). Impacts are wide-ranging and include global warming, acidification, smog, ozone layer depletion, toxicity, water and energy consumption, depletion of mineral and fossil fuels.... There are a number of barriers to effectively providing information to consumers and linking information to action. These barriers are related to the growing volume and complexity of environmental information today, consumer scepticism vis-A-vis the credibility of most information source. Eco-design through Life Cycle Analysis is the methodology that quantifies the impact of an article throughout its lifespan. The eco-design toolset developed gives the opportunity to deeply understand the signification of Life Cycle Analysis and Environmental Impacts and to quantify the environmental impacts of a model in order to check that it is really environmentally friendly. In order to go further up to eco-design, the toolset provides results showing impacts related to transportation, to material production, to the footwear industry itself and to the end-of-life of the article. Demonstration and results will be proposed. P>The article presents the results of a research project aimed at (1) examining the feasibility of material flow analysis (MFA) on a regional and urban scale in France, (2) selecting the most appropriate method, (3) identifying the available data, and (4) calculating the material balance for a specific case. Using the Eurostat method, the study was conducted for the year 2003 and for three regional levels: Paris, Paris and its suburbs, and the entire region. Applying the method on a local scale required two local indicators to be defined in order to take into account the impact of exported wastes on MFA: LEPO, local and exported flows to nature, and DMC(corr), a modified domestic material consumption (DMC) that excludes exported wastes (and imported ones if necessary). As the region extracts, produces, and transforms less material than the country as a whole, its direct material input (DMI) is lower than the national DMI. In all the areas, LEPO exceeds 50% of DMI; in contrast, recycling is very low. The multiscale approach reveals that urban metabolism is strongly impacted by density and the distribution of activities: the dense city center (Paris) exports all of its wastes to the other parts of the region and concentrates food consumption, whereas the agricultural and urban sprawl area consumes high levels of construction materials and fuel. This supports the use of MFA on an urban and regional scale as a basis for material flow management and dematerialization strategies and clearly reveals the important interactions between urban and regional planning and development, and material flows.The essay tries to show a positive appreciation of the city, disregarding the negative aspects, which are widely widespread. It assumes that if there is such a thing as a new paradigm of communion, then the city as it is nowadays configured in huge metropolitan areas is an integral dimension of this new paradigm. The global cities and the whole planet are urban, yet there are still areas that function as countryside and natural regions, but its governance depends on decisions taken in the city. Next the city is presented as a net of different links or a dynamic knot of relationships. These links are a synthesis of matter, energy, information, communications, and communion. There is an urban metabolism that constantly transforms nature. After reviewing society-nature relationship, there is an approach to the philosophical dimension of dwelling in a place. I finally conclude presenting the actual urban world as a sacrament.This paper aims to measure product and waste flows in an Irish city-region using the principles of metabolism and mass balance. An empirical indicator to measure resource efficiency, using a ratio of waste disposal as a function of product Consumption, was developed and it was found that total materials metabolic inefficiency fell by 31% from 0.13 in 1996 to 0.09 in 2002. The paper concludes by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this indicator and its potential application in the field of sustainable consumption and resource efficiency as well as making suggestions to improve and strengthen the indicator. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities ("urban superorganisms") exhibit metabolic processes. Disturbance of these processes results from the high throughput of the socioeconomic system as a result of the flow of resources between it and its surroundings. Based on systematic ecology and emergy synthesis, we developed an emergy-based indicator system for evaluating urban metabolic factors (flux, structures, intensity, efficiency, and density), and evaluated the status of Beijing's environment and economic development by diagramming, accounting for, and analyzing the material, energy, and monetary flows within Beijing's metabolic system using biophysically based ecological accounting. We also compared the results with those of four other Chinese cities (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Ningbo, and Baotou) and China as a whole to assess Beijing's development status. From 1990 to 2004, Beijing's metabolic flux, metabolic intensity, and metabolic density increased significantly. The city's metabolic processes depend excessively on nonrenewable resources, but the pressure on resources from outside of the city decreased continuously. The metabolic efficiency increased by around 12% annually throughout the study period. Beijing had a highest metabolic fluxes and density compared with the four other cities; its metabolic efficiency was lower, and its metabolic intensity was higher. Evaluating these metabolic indicators revealed weaknesses in the urban metabolic system, thereby helping planners to identify measures capable of sustaining these urban metabolic processes. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Based on the mass balance approach, a detailed quanti. cation of nitrogen (N) cycling was constructed for an urban-rural complex system, named the Greater Hangzhou Area (GHA) system, for this paper. The GHA is located in the humid climatic region on the southeastern coast of China, one of the earliest regions in the Yangtze Delta to experience economic development. Total N input into the GHA was calculated at 274.66 Gg/yr (1 Gg = 10 9 g), and total output was calculated at 227.33 Gg/yr, while N accumulation was assessed at 47.33 Gg/yr (17.2% of the total N input). Human activity resulted in 73% of N input by means of synthetic fertilizers, human food, animal feed, imported N containing chemicals, fossil fuel combustion, and other items. More than 69.3% of N was released into the atmosphere, and riverine N export accounted for 22.2% of total N output. N input and output to and from the GHA in 1980 were estimated at 119.53 Gg/yr and 98.30 Gg/yr, respectively, with an increase of 130% and 131%, respectively, during a 24-year period (from 1980 to 2004). The N input increase was influenced by synthetic fertilizers (138%), animal feed (225%), N-containing chemicals (371%), riverine input (311%), and N deposition (441%). Compared to the N balance seen in the arid Central Arizona-Phoenix (CAP) system in the United States, the proportion of N transferred to water bodies in the humid GHA system was found to be 36 times higher than the CAP system. Anthropogenic activity, as it typically does, enhanced the flux of N biogeochemistry in the GHA; however, a lack of an N remover (N pollutant treatment facilities) causes excess reactive N (N-r; such as NH3, N2O, NOx), polluting water bodies and the atmosphere within the GHA. Therefore many challenges remain ahead in order to achieve sustainable development in the rapidly developing GHA system.Analysis of the structure and function of urban metabolic systems is an important goal of urban research. We used network pathways and network utility analysis to analyze the basic network structure of the urban metabolic system and the complex ecological relationships within the system, providing a new way to perform such research. Using four Chinese cities as examples, we developed an ecological network model of the urban metabolic system. By using network pathway analysis, we studied the changing relationships between metabolic length and the number of metabolic pathways, and between metabolic length and reachability. Based on the distribution of the number of metabolic pathways, we describe the basic structure and intercompartment relationships of the system. By using the sign distribution in the network utility matrix, we determined the ecological relationships and degree of mutualism between the compartments of the system. The basic components of the system consisted of the internal environment, the external environment, and the agricultural, industrial, and domestic sectors. With increasing metabolic length, the ecological relationships among the components of the system became more diverse, and the numbers of metabolic paths and their reachability improved. Although the basic network structure of the four cities was identical, the mutualism index differed. Beijing's mutualism index was superior to that of Shanghai, and much higher than those of Tianjin and Chongqing. By analyzing the structure and function of the urban metabolic system, we provide suggestions for optimizing the structure and adjusting the relationships, and propose methods for the application of ecological network analysis in future urban system research. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban metabolism studies have been established for only a few cities worldwide, and difficulties obtaining adequate statistical data are universal. Constraints and peculiarities call for innovative methods to quantify the materials entering and leaving city boundaries. Such methods include the extrapolation of data at the country or the region level based, namely, on sales, population, commuters, workers, and waste produced. The work described in this article offers a new methodology developed specifically for quantifying urban material flows, making possible the regular compilation of data pertinent to the characterization of a city's metabolism. This methodology was tested in a case study that characterized the urban metabolism of the city of Lisbon by quantifying Lisbon's material balance for 2004. With this aim, four variables were characterized and linked to material flows associated with the city: absolute consumption of materials/products per category, throughput of materials in the urban system per material category, material intensity of economic activities, and waste flows per treatment technology. Results show that annual material consumption in Lisbon totals 11.223 million tonnes (20 tonnes per capita), and material outputs sum 2.149 million tonnes. Nonrenewable resources represent almost 80% of the total material consumption, and renewables consumption (biomass) constitutes only 18% of the total consumption. The remaining portion is made up of nonspecified materials. A seemingly excessive consumption amount of nonrenewable materials compared to renewables may be the result of a large investment in building construction and a significant shift toward private car traveling, to the detriment of public transportation.The analysis of socioeconomic metabolism has largely been dominated by quantification of material flows on a mass basis. This neglects the energetic dimensions of the urban metabolism and makes analysis that integrates material and energy flows difficult. The present research applies Odum's emergy concept to integrate energy and material flows for the study of the socioeconomic metabolism of the Taipei area. We also take into consideration the urban sprawl in the Taipei area to study its relationship to the change of socioeconomic metabolism. We interpret SPOT satellite images from 1992 and 2002 to provide a deeper understanding of the whole urban system; results show that Taipei's urban areas increased in size during the past decades. Emergy-based indicators show decreasing empower densities (total emergy use per area) of undeveloped and agricultural areas, whereas the empower density of urban areas has increased, which signals a convergence of resource flows toward urban areas. Such an increase of empower density is mainly due to fossil fuel use and translates into increased environmental loading and decreased sustainability. An analysis of the relationship between urbanization and socioeconomic metabolism indicates that changes in land use affect the characteristics of socioeconomic metabolism in Taipei. The effects of urban sprawl on Taipei's urban sustainability are also discussed.Large stocks of metals have accumulated in the urban technosphere (i.e., the physical environment altered by human activity). To minimize health and environmental risks, attempts were begun in the 1980s to phase out the use of cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and mercury (Hg). To study the effect of this attempt, we conducted substance flow analyses (SFAs) in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1995 and in 2002-2003, which allow a comparison of the results over time. The SFAs showed a reduction in the stocks of Cd and Hg by approximately 25% to 30% between 1995 and 2002-2003. For Pb, the stock development was more uncertain. Cd and Hg inflow was substantially reduced during this period, but Pb inflow increased. Amounts of Cd and Pb in waste were still large, whereas Hg flows in waste were decreasing. Furthermore, although emissions of Pb decreased, Cd and Hg emissions were in the same range as in 1995. The application of SFAs has provided unique data on the accumulation of metals in the Stockholm technosphere, thus serving as a valuable indicator of how the phasing out progresses. The changes can be related to regulations, initiatives by industries and organizations, and the proactive attitude of the local environmental authorities and of the water company.Based on neoclassical economic theories, such as the production possibility curve (production possibility frontier) and the social welfare indifferent curve, a model to measure urban material metabolism was proposed and an urban development mode was determined in this paper. Taking twelve typical Chinese cities as study subjects, the metabolic flux and eco-efficiency of water, energy and waste were calculated with a measurement model and their metabolic capabilities were evaluated extensively on their eco-efficiency and eco-equity ability. On the basis of material metabolism capability evaluated with the index of eco-efficiency and eco-equity, policymakers can determine the root cause of urban eco-environmental problems and take measures to optimize the process of urban material metabolism to achieve healthy urban ecosystem.A huge amount of construction material is required in urban areas for developing and maintaining buildings and infrastructure. Ageing stocks, which were built during a period of rapid growth in Japan (1955-1973), will cause a new waste flow in the near future. In order to assess urban metabolism with regard to building and infrastructure, it is necessary to understand change in its material accumulation both 'spatially' and 'temporally'. In this analysis, material accumulation over time is elucidated using four-dimensional Geographical Information Systems (4d-GIS) data at an urban scale. An approximately 8km2 urban area of Salford in Manchester, UK, and 11km2 of Wakayama City centre, Japan, were selected as case study sites. In this analysis, the material stock of buildings, roadways and railways was estimated locally over time, using a 4d-GIS database: (1) to find the spatial distribution of construction materials over time, (2) to estimate the demolition curve of buildings based on characteristics of an area, and (3) to clarify material accumulation with vertical location, such as above and below ground, from the viewpoint of recyclability. By estimation of the demolition curve, the life span of buildings in an urban area was found to be shorter than the national average respectively at both sites: 81 years in the urban area of Salford compared with 128 years for the UK; and 28 years in Wakayama City centre compared with the Japanese national average of 40 years. In 2004, 47% of total construction material was stocked in underground infrastructure in Wakayama City centre.The relevance of the boundary concept to ecological processes has been recently questioned. Humans in the post-industrial era have created novel lateral transport fluxes that have not been sufficiently considered in watershed studies. We describe patterns of land-use change within the Potomac River basin and demonstrate how these changes have blurred traditional ecosystem boundaries by increasing the movement of people, materials, and energy into and within the basin. We argue that this expansion of ecological commerce requires new science, monitoring, and management strategies focused on large rivers and suggest that traditional geopolitical and economic boundaries for environmental decision making be appropriately revised. Effective mitigation of the consequences of blurred boundaries will benefit from a broad-scale, interdisciplinary framework that can track and explicitly account for ecological fluxes of water, energy, materials, and organisms across human-dominated landscapes.This paper presents an environmental accounting method, based on Odum's systems theory. So-called emergy analysis (spelled with an M) was here applied for evaluating sustainability of the Abruzzo Region, a large area in the middle of Italy along east coast. This study attempts to answer questions concerning: globalization (strong competition among regional and national systems, outsourcing of productive activities), energy (growth of consumptions, cost and lack of resources), territorial disequilibrium (concentration of activities and environmental impacts) and use of resources (renewable and non renewable). The aim of this research is to study a territorial system and to verify potentiality and contribution that this environmental accounting technique provides to manage and to program the future development. In particular this study aims to understand the functioning of a region based on the analysis of stocks and flows of energy and matter inside the examined area, investigating their spatial distribution and their relationships with geo-morphological structure of territory. This study further evaluates the use of local resources and aims to understand the relationships among the different parts of a territorial systems, their level of autonomy in terms of resource use and their effective spatial boundaries, which usually do not correspond to the administrative limits. The study also attempts to present the evaluation in an easily comprehensible graphic manner as digital maps.The present study sets out to analyse the urban metal sources of Sb, by estimating the stock of Sb in use, and to present related flows and emissions in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2005. Antimony was studied with the main methodology of substance flow analysis with existing data, while chemical analysis was used as a complement. No large point sources were found reported to the authorities; hence, the dominating source for Sb is diffuse and originates from goods. The total Sb stock in Stockholm in 2005 was similar to 430 000 kg (range 110 000-1 700 000 kg) and the total Sb inflow was estimated at 45 000 kg year(-1) (range 30 000-67 000 kg). The stock was dominated by flame-retarded goods, cable shielding, glass and accumulators. The Sb emission was estimated at similar to 720 kg year(-1) (range 430-1200 kg year(-1)). Despite large uncertainties and missing data, the results supported the notion of the importance of brake linings as a source of Sb emissions (710 kg year(-1)), whereas other goods such as textiles (4.5 kg year(-1)), tyres (1.4 kg year(-1)), sinkers, ammunition and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and packaging were minor sources. However, flame-retarded goods are still poorly quantified and are seen as a potential emission source.In order to be ready for the harsh environmental challenges of the 21(st) century, cities need a new planning agenda. Defining this agenda is impossible without first revisiting the core concepts of our work: 'sustainability', 'city' and 'urban planning'. A four-fold shift in emphasis is vital: from an excessive focus on the development density, to the monitoring and taming of urban metabolism; from a single focus on sustainability to one which also includes resilience; from traditional city to urban region; from policy and land-use planning to strategic urban and regional design. In most parts of the world, the battle for the compact city is lost. However, from the perspective of ecological sustainability, perhaps it was the wrong battle anyway. We should now direct our creative energies at deploying ecological design and clean technologies on a mass scale to our unstoppable, sprawling urban regions.

 This article presents a systematic framework to identify barriers that may impede the process of adaptation to climate change. The framework targets the process of planned adaptation and focuses on potentially challenging but malleable barriers. Three key sets of components create the architecture for the framework. First, a staged depiction of an idealized, rational approach to adaptation decision-making makes up the process component. Second, a set of interconnected structural elements includes the actors, the larger context in which they function (e. g., governance), and the object on which they act (the system of concern that is exposed to climate change). At each of these stages, we ask (i) what could impede the adaptation process and (ii) how do the actors, context, and system of concern contribute to the barrier. To facilitate the identification of barriers, we provide a series of diagnostic questions. Third, the framework is completed by a simple matrix to help locate points of intervention to overcome a given barrier. It provides a systematic starting point for answering critical questions about how to support climate change adaptation at all levels of decision-making.The practice of long fallowing, by omitting a year of cropping, is gaining renewed focus in the low rainfall zone of the northern agriculture region of Western Australia. The impetus behind this practice change has been a reduced use of pasture breaks in cereal crop rotations, and the belief that a fallow can improve soil water accumulation and thus buffer the negative effects of dry seasons on crop yields. We evaluated the benefits of long fallowing (full stubble retention, no weed growth allowed) in a continuous wheat sequence via simulation modelling with APSIM at two rainfall locations and five soil types. The simulated benefits to long fallowing were attributable to soil water accumulation only, as the effects on soil nitrogen, diseases or weeds were not evaluated. The long-term (100 years) mean wheat yield benefit to fallowing was 0.36-0.43 t/ha in clay, 0.20-0.23 t/ha in sand and loam, and 0-0.03 t/ha in shallow sand and shallow bums. Over the range of seasons simulated the response varied from -0.20 to 3.87 t/ha in the clay and -0.48 to 2.0 t/ha for the other soils. The accumulation of soil water and associated yield benefits occurred in 30-40% of years on better soils and only 10-20% on poorer soils. For the loam soil, the majority of the yield increases occurred when the growing-season (May-September) rainfall following the fallow was low (<210 mm) and the difference in plant available soil water at sowing between fallowed and continuously cropped soil was high (>30 mm), although yield increase did occur with other combinations of growing-season rainfall and soil water. Over several years of a crop sequence involving fallow and wheat, the benefits from long fallowing due to greater soil water accumulation did not offset yield lost from omitting years from crop production, although the coefficient of variation for inter-annual farm grain production was reduced, particularly on clay soils during the 1998-2007 decade of below-average rainfall. We conclude that under future drying climates in Western Australia, fallowing may have a role to play in buffering the effects of enhanced inter-annual variability in rainfall. Investigations are required on the management of fallows, and management of subsequent crops (i.e. sowing earlier and crop density) so as to maximise yield benefits to subsequent crops while maintaining groundcover to prevent soil erosion. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global warming has profound consequences for the climate of the American Southwest and its overallocated water supplies. This paper uses simulation modeling and the principles of decision making under uncertainty to translate climate information into tools for vulnerability assessment and urban climate adaptation. A dynamic simulation model, WaterSim, is used to explore future water-shortage conditions in Phoenix. Results indicate that policy action will be needed to attain water sustainability in 2030, even without reductions in river flows caused by climate change. Challenging but feasible changes in lifestyle and slower rates of population growth would allow the region to avoid shortage conditions and achieve groundwater sustainability under all but the most dire climate scenarios. Changes in lifestyle involve more native desert landscaping and fewer pools in addition to slower growth and higher urban densities. There is not a single most likely or optimal future for Phoenix. Urban climate adaptation involves using science-based models to anticipate water shortage and manage climate risk.Mixed forests feature competitive interactions of the contributing species which influence their response to environmental change. We analyzed climate change effects on the inter-specific competition in a managed Douglas-fir/beech mixed forest. Therefore, we initialised the process-based forest model 4C with published fine root biomass distributions of Douglas-fir/beech stands and a stand composition originating from yield tables to simulate forest growth under regional climate change scenarios for a Dutch and a German site. The number of days when the tree water demand exceeded the soil water supply was higher for Douglas-fir than for beech. After 45 simulation years the proportion of basal area covered by beech increased from one to seven percent. Beech's competitive strength is mainly explained by the fine root biomass distributions and is highest under the historic climate and the driest climate change scenarios. Higher net primary production (NPP) under warmer/wetter climate but decreased NPP under warmer/drier conditions confirms Douglas-fir's high sensitivity to limited water supply. Simulated climate change does not substantially alter the interaction of the two species but the drought-stressed trees are more susceptible to insects or pathogens. The concept of complementary water use highlights the importance of mixed forest for climate change adaptation.Rainfall variability is an important feature of semi-arid climates, and climate change is likely to increase that variability in many of these regions. An understanding of rainfall variability and trends in that variability is needed to help vulnerable dryland agriculturalists and policymakers address current climate variation and future climate change. The goals of this paper are to examine this climatic phenomenon in semi-arid Botswana, to investigate these results for signs of climate change, and to explore the policy implications for climate adaptation. To reach these goals, the paper determines rainfall variability and monthly and annual trends in that variability. The results agree with earlier work showing gradients in rainfall and rainfall variability across Botswana. The results also identify a trend towards decreased rainfall throughout the nation, which is associated with decreases in the number of rainy days. Both the drying trend and decrease in rainy days agree with climate change projections for southern Africa. The paper discusses policies that the government could adopt to help its farmers adapt to climate change. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study explores the implications of recent extreme rainfall and flood events in the Sahel and the wider West African region for climate change adaptation Are these events merely a temporal nuisance as suggested by the lingering desertification discourse or will more climatic extremes characterize the region over the next century? After reviewing incidences of severe rainfall and projected future climate variability, the paper examines local flood knowledge and decision-making, drawing upon a case study in Ghana The data demonstrate that a variety of response strategies to flooding exist, yet, knowledge of and access to climate forecasts and other learning tools are essentially absent So far, floods have not triggered mass displacement although cumulative environmental deterioration is likely to cause environmental refugees The paper recommends to lay to rest the desertification narrative consider the possibility of both floods and droughts, and mobilize local memory for anticipatory learning and practical adaptationWater resources, and in particular run-off, are significantly affected by climate variability At present, there are few examples of how the water management sector Integrates information about changing ultra-annual climate conditions in a systematic manner in developing countries This paper, using the case study of Cape Town in the Western Cape, South Africa, identifies processes and products to facilitate increased uptake of seasonal climate forecasts among water resource managers Results suggest that existing seasonal forecasts do not focus enough on specific users' needs In order to increase uptake, forecasts need to include information on the likely Impact of precipitation variability on runoff and water availability More opportunities are also needed for those with climate knowledge to interact with water resource managers, particularly in the developing country context where municipal managers capacity is strained Although there are challenges that need to be overcome in using probabilistic climate information, seasonal forecast information tailored to the needs of water resource planners has the potential to support annual planning and is therefore a means of adapting to climate changeClimate impact research in Berchtesgaden National Park (NP) complies with the provisions of its management plan and is supported by a wide range of scientists working for several institutes in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. To promote the exchange of project ideas in the shared study area and discover synergy effects, the park administration initiated a two day workshop in Berchtesgaden. The main topics covered climate impacts on the water balance and snow cover dynamics, species composition and spatial distribution of alpine ecosystems as well as climate adaptation strategies. Workshop results were given an expert assessment by the recently retired director of the Max Plank Institute of Meteorology, Hartmut Grassl.The article presents the platform "Pimp your landscape" (PYL), which aims firstly at the support of planners by simulating alternative land-use scenarios and by an evaluation of benefits or risks for regionally important ecosystem services. Second, PYL supports an integration of information on environmental and landscape conditions into impact assessment. Third, PYL supports the integration of impacts of planning measures on ecosystem services. PYL is a modified 2-D cellular automaton with GIS features. The cells have the major attribute "land-use type" and can be supplemented with additional information, such as specifics regarding geology, topography and climate. The GIS features support the delineation of non-cellular infrastructural elements, such as roads or water bodies. An evaluation matrix represents the core element of the system. In this matrix, values in a relative scale from 0 (lowest value) to 100 (highest value) are assigned to the land-use types and infrastructural elements depending on their effect on ecosystem services. The option to configure rules for describing the impact of environmental attributes and proximity effects on cell values and land-use transition probabilities is of particular importance. User interface and usage of the platform are demonstrated by an application case. Constraints and limits of the recent version are discussed, including the need to consider in the evaluation, landscape-structure aspects such as patch size, fragmentation and spatial connectivity. Regarding the further development, it is planned to include the impact of land management practices to support climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in regional planning.Developing countries situated mostly in latitudes that are projected for the highest climate change impact in the twenty-first century will also have a predictable increase in demand on energy sources. India presents us with a unique opportunity to study this phenomenon in a large developing country. This study finds that climate adaptation policies of India should consider the significance of air conditioners (A/Cs) in mitigation of human vulnerability due to unpredictable weather events such as heat waves. However, the energy demand due to air conditioning usage alone will be in the range of an extra similar to 750,000 GWh to similar to 1,350,000 GWh with a 3.7 degrees C increase in surface temperatures under different population scenarios and increasing incomes by the year 2100. We project that residential A/C usage by 2100 will result in CO2 emissions of 592 Tg to 1064 Tg. This is significant given that India's total contribution to global CO2 emissions in 2009 was measured at 1670 Tg and country's residential and commercial electricity consumption in 2007 was estimated at 145,000 GWh. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Most research on gender difference or inequities in capture fisheries and aquaculture in Africa and the Asia-Pacific focuses on the gender division of labour. Emerging research on globalization, market changes, poverty and trends in gendered employment within this sector reveals the need to move beyond this narrow perspective. If gleaning and post-harvesting activities were enumerated, the fisheries and aquaculture sector might well turn out to be female sphere. A livelihoods approach better enables an understanding of how employment in this sector is embedded in other social, cultural, economic, political and ecological structures and processes that shape gender inequities and how these might be reduced. We focus on four thematic areas - markets and migration, capabilities and well-being, networks and identities, governance and rights - as analytical entry points. These also provide a framework to identify research gaps and generate a comparative understanding of the impact of development processes and socioecological changes, including issues of climate change, adaptation and resilience, on gendered employment. Without an adequate analysis of gender, fisheries management and development policies may have negative effects on people's livelihoods, well-being and the environment they depend on, or fail altogether to achieve intended outcomes.Objectives: To present the available evidence on the impacts of climate change on health, to analyze the situation in Spain in relation to the European context, to discuss barriers to and catalysts for climate change, and to recommend policy options to reduce the effects of climate change on health. Methods: We reviewed the literature on the impact of climate change on health. The proposals for adaptation to climate change identified in the framework of the European project coordinated by the WHO/Europe on "Climate, Environment and Health action plans and information systems" were analyzed. Results: The effects of climate change on health include: 1) an increase in the impacts of extreme weather events; 2) an increase of the frequency of respiratory diseases due to changes in air quality and pollen distribution; 3) an increase in the incidence of food-borne, zoonotic and waterborne diseases; and 4) a change in the distribution of infectious diseases and/or their vectors. In Spain, the morbidity and mortality due to heat waves are expected to increase. The main impact related to atmospheric contamination is a predicted increase in fine particles and ozone. There is also a risk of an increase in the geographical distribution of vector borne diseases that are already established in Spain or the establishment of new subtropical vectors. Spain is one of the first European countries to have developed a climate change adaptation plan. This plan provides a framework for coordination among public institutions on activities to evaluate the impacts of climate change, as well as vulnerability and adaptation to this phenomenon, and makes reference to the health sector. Conclusions: Policy options to reduce the impacts of climate change on health include: 1) integrating health in all policies, strategies and interventions to mitigate and adapt to climate change; 2) strengthening health systems and public health systems to improve their ability to prevent, prepare and respond to the impacts of climate change; 3) raising awareness among all sectors to promote the co-benefits to health of adaptation and mitigation strategies; and 4) promoting research, technological development, data sharing and information exchange across sectors. (C) 2010 SESPAS. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.River ecosystems are driven by linked physical, chemical, and biological subsystems, which operate over different temporal and spatial domains. This complexity increases uncertainty in ecological forecasts, and impedes preparation for the ecological consequences of climate change. We describe a recently developed "multi-modeling" system for ecological forecasting in a 7600 km(2) watershed in the North American Great Lakes Basin. Using a series of linked land cover, climate, hydrologic, hydraulic, thermal, loading, and biological response models, we examined how changes in both land cover and climate may interact to shape the habitat suitability of river segments for common sport fishes and alter patterns of biological integrity. In scenario-based modeling, both climate and land use change altered multiple ecosystem properties. Because water temperature has a controlling influence on species distributions, sport fishes were overall more sensitive to climate change than to land cover change. However, community-based biological integrity metrics were more sensitive to land use change than climate change; as were nutrient export rates. We discuss the implications of this result for regional preparations for climate change adaptation, and the extent to which the result may be constrained by our modeling methodology.This paper reviews recent scientific literature addressing climate change adaptation and mitigation measures developed by the scientific community. The review analyses more than one hundred papers regarding forests, agriculture and water resources. Its aim is to be used as a basis for supporting future research and long-term mitigation and adaptation planning. Mitigation possibilities are mainly focused on producing energy from renewable resources, reducing CO, emissions from fossil fuels and using biomass specifically produced or different types of wastes. Other mitigation strategies are contrasting or governing land use changes or sequestring C into the soil. Adaptation to climate change will need anthropic intervention, to help the adapting capability of different environments. Most of the papers reviewed underline the need to act immediately to have the desired results, and to take into account, during the design of the strategy, the society and the local authorities, which may be able to help at identifying the vulnerabilities and the appropriate measures for each region.The arrival of wilderness as a policy issue, following the passing of a European Parliament resolution in 2009, has increased the profile of the issue and provided a challenge for policy-makers and practitioners. There is a need for a policy relevant definition that can guide decision-making in relation to the protection and management of wilderness areas, including their exploitation for economic benefit, and for information and data about the extent of existing wilderness and wild areas and the opportunities for its recreation. The scale of the challenge requires a high level of aspiration and any efforts will require the coordination of policy and implementation well beyond the borders of Europe itself. (C) 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.The impacts of global climate change on agricultural production and food security are serious source of worry to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. This is because their economies mainly depend on agriculture which is now affected by climate change catastrophes. The paper examines why farmers find it difficult to adapt to climate change impacts. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used in selecting 120 farmers that participated in the study. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing data. Major results show that the most difficult challenges faced by farmers in adapting to climate change impacts in the State were: lack of improved agricultural technologies, low adaptive capacities, and unsustainable agricultural practices. Furthermore, a framework for climate change adaptation shows that a mix of agronomic best practices, technology and innovation development and institutional and policy reforms were proposed as capable of improving farmers' adaptation capacity to climate change. The paper concluded with the recommendation that farmers' adaptation capacities to climate change need to be urgently strengthened by extension service so as to sustain agricultural production and food security even in the event of climate change.Agriculture the major economic and social activity in the globe. It is understood that agriculture is highly sensitive to climatic variability and likely to. be affected most to predicted climate change. The fourth assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reconfirmed that the phenomenon of existence of climate change in recent decades is due to anthropogenic activities. It is also revealed the availability of wide array of adaptation options for agro-ecosystem to cope up with the impact of climate change. However, it is important to design more extensive adaptation strategies to reduce vulnerability of agriculture and rural poor to impacts of climate change. Climate change impacts and responses are presently observed as autonomous adaptation in the physical and ecological systems as well as in human adjustments to resource availability and risks at different spatial and trophic levels. But these strategies are not enough to reduce the current anthropogenic driven climate change, so there is a need to adopt the planned adaptation. This paper reviews the findings based on the series of studies carried across the globe on the potential adaptation strategies to alleviate the impact of climate change by improving the resilience of the agro-ecosystems. Adaptation strategies have to be in place to reduce vulnerability to climate change through developing consensus between industrialized countries and developing countries at global scale, whereas new public policies in place at national regional and local level is prudent to support adaptation research, insurances, incentives to farmers to adapt new technologies.During the last decennium climate change has received much attention and especially various mitigation and adaptation strategies have gained political awareness. Particularly the coastal zone will be affected by derived consequences like sea level rise, increased storminess and flooding. In order to mitigate the most severe consequences for the society it is decisive that urban and regional planners address the climate change issue in their planning efforts. Using modelling and simulation, we can increase our understanding of the future land-use system under influence of a changing climate and accordingly reduce uncertainty concerning decisions. The current paper describes how to carry out land-use simulations as envisaged by the SRES narratives using a multi-criteria land-use modelling framework. Combined with expected future flooding due to sea level rise we perform an impact assessment on future urban development. Finally, we describe how the definition of adaptation strategies can facilitate spatial planning measures to counteract the consequences of potential climate changes. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Here we present a spatial planning approach for the implementation of adaptation measures to climate change in conservation planning for ecological networks. We analyse the wetland ecosystems of the Dutch National Ecological Network for locations where the effectiveness of the network might be weakened because of climate change. We first identify potential dispersal bottlenecks where connectivity might be insufficient to facilitate range expansions. We then identify habitat patches that might have a too low carrying capacity for populations to cope with additional population fluctuations caused by weather extremes. Finally, we describe the spatial planning steps that were followed to determine the best locations for adaptation measures. An essential part of our adaptation strategy is to concentrate adaptation measures in a 'climate adaptation zone'. Concentrating adaptation measures is a cost-effective planning strategy, rendering the largest benefit per area unit. Measures are taken where abiotic conditions are optimal and measures to enhance the spatial cohesion of the network are taken close to existing areas, thus creating the highest possible connectivity with the lowest area demands. Another benefit of a climate adaptation zone is that it provides a spatial protection zone where activities that will have a negative impact on ecosystem functioning might be avoided or mitigated. The following adaptation measures are proposed within the climate adaptation zone: (1) link habitat networks to enable species to disperse from present to future suitable climate zones, (2) enlarge the carrying capacity by either enlarging the size of natural areas or by improving habitat quality to shorten population recovery after disturbances, (3) increase the heterogeneity of natural areas, preferably by stimulating natural landscape-forming processes, to avoid large synchronised extinctions after extreme weather events. The presented approach can be generalised to develop climate adaptation zones for other ecosystem types inside or outside Europe, where habitat fragmentation is a limiting factor in biodiversity responses to climate change.This paper provides a culturally-informed understanding of the impacts of climate change on a highly important subsistence activity that has been practiced by First Nations of central British Columbia for thousands of years. The paper begins with a review of the science regarding sockeye salmon and climate change. It discusses harvest patterns, and how the timing of runs has changed. A survey was conducted by the first author regarding St'at'imc traditional fishing at a historic site on the Fraser River, in 2005. The results show that the impacts of climate change are apparent to those conducting traditional fishing practices, in terms of changed timing and abundance of salmon runs. These perceptions fit closely with the information available from scientists and management agencies. These changes are highly problematic for the St'at'imc, in that the preservation method (drying) is tied to seasonal weather patterns. The whole cultural setting, and the relevance of salmon for subsistence would be highly altered by climate change that leads to changes in the timing and abundance of sockeye salmon. The paper discusses mitigation and adaptation alternatives, but also indicates the scope of these seem limited, given the resource systems and the context of these activities.The paper discusses how the current climate change debate influences the way in which development is conceptualised, negotiated and implemented. The objective of the article is to explore some of the underlying controversies that characterise development discourses in the context of climate change. Adaptation to climate change goes along with a significant shift in discourses used to deal with what is normally called development. This is reflected in shifting research interests and perspectives, from vulnerability studies to resilience thinking. However, the paper argues, this shift is problematic for the normative contents of development and especially for a pro-poor and grass roots perspective.This paper contains an assessment and standardized comparative analysis of the current water management regimes in four case-studies in three European river basins: the Hungarian part of the Upper Tisza, the Ukrainian part of the Upper Tisza (also called Zacarpathian Tisza), Alentejo Region (including the Alqueva Reservoir) in the Lower Guadiana in Portugal, and Rivierenland in the Netherlands. The analysis comprises several regime elements considered to be important in adaptive and integrated water management: agency, awareness raising and education, type of governance and cooperation structures, information management and-exchange, policy development and-implementation, risk management, and finances and cost recovery. This comparative analysis has an explorative character intended to identify general patterns in adaptive and integrated water management and to determine its role in coping with the impacts of climate change on floods and droughts. The results show that there is a strong interdependence of the elements within a water management regime, and as such this interdependence is a stabilizing factor in current management regimes. For example, this research provides evidence that a lack of joint/participative knowledge is an important obstacle for cooperation, or vice versa. We argue that there is a two-way relationship between information management and collaboration. Moreover, this research suggests that bottom-up governance is not a straightforward solution to water management problems in large-scale, complex, multiple-use systems, such as river basins. Instead, all the regimes being analyzed are in a process of finding a balance between bottom-up and top-down governance. Finally, this research shows that in a basin where one type of extreme is dominant-like droughts in the Alentejo (Portugal) and floods in Rivierenland (Netherlands)-the potential impacts of other extremes are somehow ignored or not perceived with the urgency they might deserve.This paper reviews land based transport related issues from considerations of climate change adaptation in Australia. The two main issues for climate change adaptation are sea level rise and the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. These issues are considered in the paper. It considers the risks to existing transport infrastructure and the resulting considerations necessary in planning new infrastructure, transport systems operations under changing climatic conditions, and potential changes in travel behaviour. The use and capability of regional rural networks in emergency evacuation planning emerges as one particular area for further research. More generally, recognition of the risks associated with climate change is required for better planning of new infrastructure and mitigating potential damage to existing infrastructure. Climate change poses a significant risk to infrastructure and its owners, managers and operators. There is a need to undertake research into the likely impacts of climate change on Australia's transport infrastructure, establish the categories of infrastructure most at risk and outline opportunities for adaptation responses, and examine the current governance structures. Then the administrative, legal and other issues that may impact on climate change adaptation can be identified.In 2025 the majority of the world population will live in flood prone delta cities. Delta City Rotterdam, with one of the biggest ports in the world, is dealing with the consequences of climate change in a very pro-active and smart way, turning these challenges into opportunities. Rotterdam wants to become one of the global leaders in water management and climate change adaptation, by using new and smart technologies and protecting its citizens against the future impacts of sea level rise and intensified rainfall by making Rotterdam completely "Climate Proof" by 2025. And also by developing its old city ports area by adding attractive waterfronts and knowledge centers like the RDM Campus (Research, Design and manufacturing), where education of future generations is combined with innovative and sustainable development of businesses and sciences, and with experiencing best practices. One of the major innovative and smart solutions for climate change adaptation discussed in this paper is called "Smart Flood Control Rotterdam", the development of a serious flood management game for Rotterdam. All this knowledge and experiences are shared with other Delta Cities of the world, in the C40 "Connecting Delta Cities" network.This work investigates six static stability measures a over West Africa Using National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis in summer (June to September JJAS) for the period 1979-2005 the mean vertical distribution of the stability measures for different climatic zones over West Africa were computed at different tropospheric layers between 1000 and 70 hPa Five of the six stability measures considered here show a decrease in the mean troposphere by a factor of about three and seven from 925 hPa to 300 hPa This contributes to identify the mean features of the vertical structure of the West Africa troposphere circulation An Empirical Orthogonal Function ( EOF) analysis reveals that the JJAS stability measures variability is almost entirely controlled by one entirely positive EOF The first 2 EOFs represent more than 90% of the total variance and are sufficient to describe the spatial variability of the summer mean stability measure The relationship of the stability measure field to the convection represented by Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) field was investigated by means of a Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) The correlations are stronger in areas where the first and second CCA pair of sigma and OLR have correlations of 72% and 65% respectively The first CCA pair mostly determine the arid and semi-and area whereas the second is related to the Guinea coast and wet equatorial region Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B V All rights reservedImproved management of carbon storage by terrestrial biomes has significant value for mitigating climate change. The carbon value of such management has the potential to provide additional income to rural communities and provide biodiversity and climate adaptation co-benefits. Here, we quantify the carbon stores in a 49,300-ha landscape centered on the cloud forest-grassland transition of the high Andes in Manu National Park, Peru. Aboveground carbon densities were measured across the landscape by field sampling of 70 sites above and below the treeline. The forest near the treeline contained 63.4 +/- A 5.2 Mg C ha(-1) aboveground, with an additional 13.9 +/- A 2.8 Mg C ha(-1) estimated to be stored in the coarse roots, using a root to shoot ratio of 0.26. Puna grasslands near the treeline were found to store 7.5 +/- A 0.7 Mg C ha(-1) in aboveground biomass. Comparing our result to soil data gathered by Zimmermann and others (Ecosystems 13:62-74, 2010), we found the ratio of belowground:aboveground carbon decreased from 15.8 on the puna to 8.6 in the transition zone and 2.1 in the forest. No significant relationships were found between carbon densities and slope, altitude or fire disturbance history, though grazing (for puna) was found to reduce aboveground carbon densities significantly. We scaled our study sites to the study region with remote sensing observations from Landsat. The carbon sequestration potential of improved grazing management and assisted upslope treeline migration was also estimated. Afforestation of puna at the treeline could generate revenues of US $1,374 per ha over the project lifetime via commercialization of the carbon credits from gains in aboveground carbon stocks. Uncertainties in the fate of the large soil carbon stocks under an afforestation scenario exist.In many cases in which climate change affects natural resources impacts are uncertain and adaptation to climate change often involves collective action problems at the local level, which are embedded in multilevel governance regimes Adaptive management (AM) is an emerging approach to deal with such uncertainty and complexity by promoting multilevel institutions that are robust to change and able to learn Much of the literature evaluating AM in multilevel governance regimes however focuses only on the adherence to certain structural features said to make AM successful leaving aside the question whether AM actually produces desired outcomes This paper evaluates AM in multilevel regimes also in terms of the outcomes they produce To this end we first apply the Management and Transition Framework (MTF) in order to describe three multilevel regimes in Lesotho For each regime we then observe whether it adheres to the structure features of AM Finally we evaluate the extent to which the outcomes natural resource management projects, are conducive to Ostrom s (1990) design principles' for sustainable common pool resource management We find that though no ideal adaptive regime' is found in Lesotho the results confirm the AM hypotheses that decentralised decision making open information sources and plurality of user interests lead to improved outcomes Conversely, elements of the climate regime are found not to be adaptive Our findings also confirm the appropriateness of AM as a governance approach to climate adaptation (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedThe challenge of governing transboundary water resources is expected to increase with climate change and the resulting need to adapt to its impacts such as temperature increase more precipitation in the wet season and less m the dry season In a number of transboundary basins international regimes, and in particular river basin commissions are emerging to account for this and other challenges Some basins are however rather advanced in terms of developing climate change adaptation strategies while others are in a more nascent stage For the two case studies of the Orange Senqu and Mekong river basins this paper attempts to explain the different degrees of progress towards climate change adaptation by applying regime effectiveness analysis First we analyze using the Activity Diagram (AD) of the Management and Transition Framework (MTF) at which stage in the climate change adaptation policy formation process each of the two basins is Then we attempt to explain the different degrees of progress towards adaptation by means of regime effectiveness theory Variables indicating regime effectiveness are taken from the literature and further developed to suit the context of climate change adaptation We find that the different degrees of progress can partially be explained by some variables of regime effectiveness such as the characteristics of rules and procedures organizational structure the role of riparian countries as well as international context At the same time the analysis points to the need for an analysis of additional factors that potentially shape decision making and policy processes for climate change adaptation in international river basins such as (a) the hydrological political and socio economic setting (b) underlying principles of regional cooperation (or conflict) (c) interests and values of the various actors in the negotiation process and (d) the possible linkages and trade offs with other policy fields (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedIn Australia, the transportation sector is the third largest contributor of CO2-e emissions. In order for Australia to meet the ratified target of 5% below 2000 emissions levels by 2020, a number of changes must be put in place. Sustainable transport design allows for more carbon-friendly travelling alternatives in urban and suburban areas where transportation activities mostly occur. In order for the design to be successfully accepted by the community, a good understanding of people's travel behaviour and preferences of transportation mode is required. This paper offers a review of current transportation research in the context of Australia that spans a number of disciplines including economics, engineering and psychology. The objectives are to assess the key factors that have been empirically shown to affect individual transportation mode choice, identify the shortcoming and gaps in the literature, and recommend how this research can be used to aid in future carbon reduction through better understanding of people's travelling behaviour.A cross-comparison of climate change adaptation strategies across regions was performed, considering six large river basins as case study areas. Three of the basins, namely the Elbe, Guadiana, and Rhine, are located in Europe, the Nile Equatorial Lakes region and the Orange basin are in Africa, and the Amudarya basin is in Central Asia. The evaluation was based mainly on the opinions of policy makers and water management experts in the river basins. The adaptation strategies were evaluated considering the following issues: expected climate change, expected climate change impacts, drivers for development of adaptation strategy, barriers for adaptation, state of the implementation of a range of water management measures, and status of adaptation strategy implementation. The analysis of responses and cross-comparison were performed with rating the responses where possible. According to the expert opinions, there is an understanding in all six regions that climate change is happening. Different climate change impacts are expected in the basins, whereas decreasing annual water availability, and increasing frequency and intensity of droughts (and to a lesser extent floods) are expected in all of them. According to the responses, the two most important drivers for development of adaptation strategy are: climate-related disasters, and national and international policies. The following most important barriers for adaptation to climate change were identified by responders: spatial and temporal uncertainties in climate projections, lack of adequate financial resources, and lack of horizontal cooperation. The evaluated water resources management measures are on a relatively high level in the Elbe and Rhine basins, followed by the Orange and Guadiana. It is lower in the Amudarya basin, and the lowest in the NEL region, where many measures are only at the planning stage. Regarding the level of adaptation strategy implementation, it can be concluded that the adaptation to climate change has started in all basins, but progresses rather slowly.Climate and climate-related hazards such as floods, storms, and droughts have served as trigger events for more than 75% of the disasters that have occurred globally over the past decade. Proportionately, these disasters affect the least developed countries most intensely, proving to be especially harmful to poverty stricken populations. In the future, a changing climate is likely to exacerbate these effects and could make development unsustainable in many places. It is necessary to develop the capacity of all countries to combat hazards so that they do not become disasters. The international framework connects climate change and development, mainly within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Millennium Development Goals and Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Reduction, and most recently the Declarations of the G8 and the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate provide further mandates for action. Climate hazards are now clearly linked with issues such as food security, migration, and national security. The linking of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction provides a framework for responding. The development of capacity for knowledge-based reduction of hazards and disasters risk demands an integrated approach that recognizes the changing nature of natural hazards. Further, capacity development must also recognize the limitations in governmental response and facilitate alternate ways to overcome barriers. For example, the role of resilience is examined in order to demonstrate the tools available for policymakers and individuals, to respond to hazards as they occur. The path forward to sustainable development depends on investments in the development and then the utilization of knowledge-based, integrated approaches that factor in the future in balance with the present needs of societies. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 871-884 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.77Background: Accurate predictions of species distributions are essential for climate change impact assessments. However the standard practice of using long-term climate averages to train species distribution models might mute important temporal patterns of species distribution. The benefit of using temporally explicit weather and distribution data has not been assessed. We hypothesized that short-term weather associated with the time a species was recorded should be superior to long-term climate measures for predicting distributions of mobile species. Methodology: We tested our hypothesis by generating distribution models for 157 bird species found in Australian tropical savannas (ATS) using modelling algorithm Maxent. The variable weather of the ATS supports a bird assemblage with variable movement patterns and a high incidence of nomadism. We developed "weather" models by relating climatic variables (mean temperature, rainfall, rainfall seasonality and temperature seasonality) from the three month, six month and one year period preceding each bird record over a 58 year period (1950-2008). These weather models were compared against models built using long-term (30 year) averages of the same climatic variables. Conclusions: Weather models consistently achieved higher model scores than climate models, particularly for wide-ranging, nomadic and desert species. Climate models predicted larger range areas for species, whereas weather models quantified fluctuations in habitat suitability across months, seasons and years. Models based on long-term climate averages overestimate availability of suitable habitat and species' climatic tolerances, masking species potential vulnerability to climate change. Our results demonstrate that dynamic approaches to distribution modelling, such as incorporating organism-appropriate temporal scales, improves understanding of species distributions.The importance of identifying the environmental adaptation of underutilised species such as tamarind (Tamarindus indica L) and their ecogeographic distribution is widely recognised. However the lack of physiological or quantitative yield/growth data does not permit the use of more traditional methods of crop modelling. In this study a representative dataset of tamarind's global distribution appropriate for modelling the species distribution is produced mainly from herbarium records; while minimising the effects of error and bias inherent in such data. The exploratory analysis of the clean dataset showed that both at the bioregional and sub-regional scale tamarind is experiencing varying conditions in different regions. This indicates the existence of spatial non-stationarity, which due to the broad distribution and semi-domesticated nature of the species, could be caused by evolution of the niche. Spatial niche variation in tamarind indicates that its range may have expanded from its naturalised area in Africa and India eastward into South East Asia and Latin America, progressively moving into regions with a less pronounced dry period and wetter conditions. Difference in environmental niche between East African and West African populations may be caused by the Rift Valley preventing gene flow between the two regions of the continent. Such information can be related to genetic variation and structuring within such species, providing information useful for conservation and selection of plant material for adaptation to future climate. The implication of spatial non-stationarity and spatial variation within the niche, when considering if global or regional/multi-scale models should be used to predict the world distribution of such species under current and future climate scenarios, are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We describe the development of a low cost, repeatable self-assessment process enabling community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) groups to set priorities for building their capacity to adopt sustainable farming practices and adapt to global change. Regional measures of adaptive capacity derived from rural livelihoods analysis were populated with secondary data and used to communicate the multiple dimensions of adaptive capacity to groups of landowners. This conceptual framework was then used to derive locally relevant measures of adaptive capacity via focus groups drawn from pre-existing networks of land managers. The key issue discussed at the workshop was what constrained or enabled private land managers to effectively manage natural resources. This self-assessment process was designed to support dialogue between CBNRM groups, industry and governments to prioritise collective action for building adaptive capacity. The approach was piloted with CBNRM groups across New South Wales, Australia. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the institutional and resource challenges and opportunities in getting different sectors in eThekwini Municipality (the local government responsible for planning and managing the city of Durban) to recognize and respond to their role in climate change adaptation. The Headline Climate Change Adaptation Strategy launched by the municipality in 2006 did not catalyze the development of sectoral plans or significantly influence the Integrated Development Plan, the key document through which the municipal government sets and implements development priorities. Possible causal factors for this include limited human and financial resources and more immediate and urgent development needs. To address the situation, the municipality's Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department encouraged and supported three pilot sectors to develop their own municipal adaptation plans. This more sectoral approach encouraged greater interaction among the sectors and provided each with a clearer understanding of their needs and roles from an adaptation perspective. It also highlighted how climate change adaptation could be used as a tool to address development priorities. This work will be extended through research into the cost-benefits of Durban being an "early adapter". Work has also begun on community-based adaptation (including support for reforestation projects that provide "green jobs") and on responses to slow onset disasters, food security and water constraints.If climate change is perceived as a global threat, this can mean that too little attention is paid to the ways in which it affects local populations and settlements. This also means too little attention to the importance of locally driven adaptation, both to reduce risks and to be better prepared to cope with consequences. This paper reviews the many initiatives underway in India that respond to climate change, and discusses what else is needed to mainstream effective adaptation, as well as identifying what currently constrains this. It also discusses how adaptation has to be mainstreamed within urban development and urban governance. Most municipal authorities in India are already grappling with large deficits in infrastructure and services and do not see climate change adaptation as a priority or as their responsibility. However, their attention may be engaged if they can see the co-benefits between adaptation and measures to address development and environmental health concerns.Despite growing recognition of the importance of climate change adaptation, few global estimates of the costs involved are available for the water supply sector. We present a methodology for estimating partial global and regional adaptation costs for raw industrial and domestic water supply, for a limited number of adaptation strategies, and apply the method using results of two climate models. In this paper, adaptation costs are defined as those for providing enough raw water to meet future industrial and municipal water demand, based on country-level demand projections to 2050. We first estimate costs for a baseline scenario excluding climate change, and then additional climate change adaptation costs. Increased demand is assumed to be met through a combination of increased reservoir yield and alternative backstop measures. Under such controversial measures, we project global adaptation costs of $12 bn p.a., with 83-90% in developing countries; the highest costs are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Globally, adaptation costs are low compared to baseline costs ($73 bn p.a.), which supports the notion of mainstreaming climate change adaptation into broader policy aims. The method provides a tool for estimating broad costs at the global and regional scale; such information is of key importance in international negotiations.Tropical forests hold several goods and services used by forest-dependent people as safety nets to traverse difficult periods of resource supply. These same goods and services are constantly surrounded by emerging markets linking remote communities with major urban centers nationally and internationally. How these markets affect adaptation remains unclear. This paper examines the roles of markets in non-timber forest products that normally serve as safety nets for forest communities, and the implications for climate change adaptation in the Congo Basin. Following the identification and prioritization of forest-based development sectors for adaptation by stakeholders, the types of markets and trades surrounding the identified sectors were examined in two provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a case study in order to evaluate revenue flows and their potential contribution to adaptation by local communities. The distribution of the market revenue leaves local people with returns much lower than the worth of the commodity, while wholesalers and retailers reap most of the benefits and profit from the high variability in volume and market earnings for the same commodity across provinces. Markets may increase the value of a commodity as observed in this study, but their contributions to adaptation appear highly limited for local communities following their distribution among the stakeholders in the market chain. This is likely to be worse in free market settings, especially when it diminishes the safety net roles of forest goods and services. Markets should therefore complement rather than substitute forests roles for adaptation to climate change in tropical forest countries. Capturing the benefits of trade for adaptation is crucial but will require policy reforms and further research that addresses the complexity in benefit sharing. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, climate change is viewed as one of the main global challenges. The EU has become a major player in the political arena and seeks to reach worldwide agreements on 'mitigation' policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite speaking with one voice at the global scale, the effects of climate change on European territories vary widely according to local circumstances. The ESPON scenarios explore what those impacts could be, and what effect EU climate change adaptation policies would have. The first scenario envisions an EU policy limited to emergency funds following extreme events like floods and droughts. In the second scenario, the EU takes a much more proactive stance by funding radical and costly adaptation strategies. The exercise demonstrates the difficulty in identifying the cost-effectiveness of each approach. Territorial effects are often indirect and affect a variety of economic, social and ecological systems. Moreover, a great deal of uncertainty exists surrounding their magnitude and timing. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Comparisons between historical and recent ecological datasets indicate that shallow reef habitats across the central Galapagos Archipelago underwent major transformation at the time of the severe 1982/1983 El Nino warming event. Heavily grazed reefs with crustose coralline algae ('urchin barrens') replaced former macroalgal and coral habitats, resulting in large local and regional declines in biodiversity. Following recent threat assessment workshops, a total of five mammals, six birds, five reptiles, six fishes, one echinoderm, seven corals, six brown algae and nine red algae reported from coastal environments in Galapagos are now recognized as globally threatened. The 2008 International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List includes 43 of these species, while two additional species (Galapagos damsel Azurina eupalama and 24-rayed sunstar Heliaster solaris) not seen for > 25 years also fulfil IUCN threatened species criteria. Two endemic species (Galapagos stringweed Bifurcaria galapagensis and the damselfish A. eupalama) are now regarded as probably extinct, while an additional six macroalgal species (Dictyota galapagensis, Spatoglossum schmittii, Desmarestia tropica, Phycodrina elegans, Gracilaria skottsbergii and Galaxaura barbata) and the seastar H. solaris are possibly extinct. The removal of large lobster and fish predators by artisanal fishing probably magnified impacts of the 1982/1983 El Nino through a cascade of indirect effects involving population expansion of grazing sea urchins. Marine protected areas with adequate enforcement are predicted to ameliorate but not eliminate ecosystem impacts caused by increasing thermal anomalies associated with El Nino and global climate change.This paper investigates whether and to what extent a wide range of actors in the UK are adapting to climate change, and whether this is evidence of a social transition. We document evidence of over 300 examples of early adopters of adaptation practice to climate change in the UK. These examples span a range of activities from small adjustments (or coping), to building adaptive capacity, to implementing actions and to creating deeper systemic change in public and private organisations in a range of sectors. We find that adaptation in the UK has been dominated by government initiatives and has principally occurred in the form of research into climate change impacts. These government initiatives have stimulated a further set of actions at other scales in public agencies, regulatory agencies and regional government (and the devolved administrations), though with little real evidence of climate change adaptation initiatives trickling down to local government level. The sectors requiring significant investment in large scale infrastructure have invested more heavily than those that do not in identifying potential impacts and adaptations. Thus we find a higher level of adaptation activity by the water supply and flood defence sectors. Sectors that are not dependent on large scale infrastructure appear to be investing far less effort and resources in preparing for climate change. We conclude that the UK government-driven top-down targeted adaptation approach has generated anticipatory action at low cost in some areas. We also conclude that these actions may have created enough niche activities to allow for diffusion of new adaptation practices in response to real or perceived climate change. These results have significant implications for how climate policy can be developed to support autonomous adaptors in the UK and other countries. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite growing global attention to the development of strategies and policy for climate change adaptation, there has been little allowance for input from Indigenous people. In this study we aimed to improve understanding of factors important in integration of Yolngu perspectives in planning adaptation policy in North East Arnhem Land (Australia). We conducted workshops and in-depth interviews in two 'communities' to develop insight into Yolngu peoples' observations and perspectives on climate change, and their ideas and preferences for adaptation. All participants reported observing changes in their ecological landscape, which they attributed to mining, tourism 'development', and climate change. 'Strange changes' noticed particularly in the last five years, had caused concern and anxiety among many participants. Despite their concern about ecological changes, participants were primarily worried about other issues affecting their community's general welfare. The results suggest that strategies and policies are needed to strengthen adaptive capacity of communities to mitigate over-arching poverty and wellbeing issues, as well as respond to changes in climate. Participants believed that major constraints to strengthening adaptive capacity had external origins, at regional, state and federal levels. Examples are poor communication and engagement, top-down institutional processes that allow little Indigenous voice, and lack of recognition of Indigenous culture and practices. Participants' preferences for strategies to strengthen community adaptive capacity tended to be those that lead towards greater self-sufficiency, independence, empowerment, resilience and close contact with the natural environment. Based on the results, we developed a simple model to highlight main determinants of community vulnerability. A second model highlights components important in facilitating discourse on enhancing community capacity to adapt to climatic and other stressors. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To determine and characterise the health impacts of extreme heat events on the population in five regions of New South Wales (NSW). Such data provide evidence necessary for the development of policy and programme initiatives designed to reduce the burden of disease due to the impact of climate change. A case-only approach was used to analyse 1,497,655 emergency hospital admissions in Sydney East and West, Illawarra, Gosford-Wyong and Newcastle. The distribution of daily minimum and maximum temperatures in each region was used to define extreme heat (a parts per thousand yen99th percentile). We investigated the susceptibility of the main causes of emergency hospital admission to extreme heat. We also examined the presence of underlying conditions as a risk modifier of emergency hospital admission on extreme heat. Logistic regression model was used to estimate the effect modifications. Main causes: On days of extreme heat, the risk of emergency hospital admission due to heat-related injuries, dehydration and other disorders of fluid, electrolyte and acid-base balance increased more than the risk of admission from other causes. Underlying conditions: Those with underlying mental and behavioural disorders, diseases of nervous and circulatory system, especially cardiac, diseases of respiratory system, especially asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, neoplasms and renal disease, especially renal failure, were more susceptible to an extreme heat event. In this study, we identified several main diagnoses and underlying conditions for emergency hospital admission that are particularly susceptible to extreme heat events. This knowledge can contribute directly to establishing health programmes that would effectively target those with higher relative risk of emergency hospital admission due to extreme heat.Conserving biological diversity in a changing climate poses major challenges for land managers and society. Effective adaptive strategies for dealing with climate change require a socio-ecological systems perspective. We highlight some of the projected ecological responses to climate change in the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A and identify possible adaptive actions that federal forest managers could take. The forest landscape, ownership patterns and recent shift toward ecologically based forest management provide a good starting place for conserving biological diversity under climate change. Nevertheless, undesirable changes in species and ecosystems will occur and a number of adaptive actions could be undertaken to lessen the effects of climate change on forest ecosystems. These include: manipulation of stand and landscape structure to increase ecological resistance and resilience; movement of species and genotypes; and engaging in regional, multi-ownership planning to make adaptive actions more effective. Although the language and goals of environmental laws and policies were developed under the assumption of stable climate and disturbance regimes, they appear to be flexible enough to accommodate many adaptive actions. It is less certain, however, if sufficient social license and economic capacity exist to undertake these actions. Given the history of contentious and litigious debate about federal forest management in this region, it is likely that some of these actions will be seen as double-edge swords, spurring social resistance, especially where actions involve cutting trees. Given uncertainties and complexity, collaborative efforts that promote learning (e.g. adaptive management groups) must be rejuvenated and expanded.Increasing losses from weather related extreme events coupled with limited coping capacity suggest a need for strong adaptation commitments, of which public sector responses to adjustments to actual and expected climate stimuli are key. The European Commission has started to address this need in the emerging European Union (EU) climate adaptation strategy; yet, a specific rationale for adaptation interventions has not clearly been identified, and the economic case for adaptation to extremes remains vague. Basing the diagnosis on economic welfare theory and an empirical analysis of the current EU and member states' roles in managing disaster risk, we discuss how and where the public sector may intervene for managing climate variability and change. We restrict our analysis to financial disaster management, a domain of adaptation intervention, which is of key concern for the EU adaptation strategy. We analyse three areas of public sector interventions, supporting national insurance systems, providing compensation to the affected post event as well as intergovernmental loss sharing through the EU solidarity fund, according to the three government functions of allocation, distribution, and stabilization suggested by welfare theory, and suggest room for improvement.This paper describes how relatively detailed knowledge about probabilities of natural hazards can be used to make decisions to develop areas and control the risk within hazard zones. The assessment serves two purposes. First, it shows how information can support decisions. Second, decision criteria put leads on what information is required. This is helpful to identify unavailable information. We show by an example from a land-slide prone area in Norway how a relatively reliable estimate of the probability of slides ends up in a rather uncertain estimate of the risk. Uncertainty about the risk represented by natural hazards imply great challenges to the development of adaptation policies to meet climate change, but they are required. We develop a simplified criterion for optimal adaptation, and estimate the added social value required to defend development in hazard prone areas instead of developing a risk-free alternative. The value is estimated between 0 and 0.40 Euros per Euro invested in the case area, depending on type of slide, category of asset and other costs that occur in the wake of slides.This paper provides a general overview of changes in flooding caused by climate change in Finland for the periods 2010-2039 and 2070-2099. Changes in flooding were evaluated at 67 sites in Finland with variable sizes of runoff areas using a conceptual hydrological model and 20 climate scenarios from both global and regional climate models with the delta change approach. Floods with a 100-year return period were estimated with frequency analysis using the Gumbel distribution. At four study sites depicting different watershed types and hydrology, the inundation areas of the 100-year floods were simulated with a 2D hydraulic model. The results demonstrate that the impacts of climate change are not uniform within Finland due to regional differences in climatic conditions and watershed properties. In snowmelt-flood dominated areas, annual floods decreased or remained unchanged due to decreasing snow accumulation. On the other hand, increased precipitation resulted in growing floods in major central lakes and their outflow rivers. The changes in flood inundation did not linearly follow the changes in 100-year discharges, due to varying characteristics of river channels and floodplains. The results highlight the importance of comprehensive climatological and hydrological knowledge and the use of several climate scenarios in estimation of climate change impacts on flooding. Generalisations based on only a few case studies, or large scale flood assessments using only a few climate scenarios should be avoided in countries with variable hydrological conditions. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Developing and implementing effective adaptation policies for freshwater and estuarine systems in Australia will be a significant challenge in a rapidly changing climate. The broad aims of climate change adaptation policies are to reduce vulnerability and increase the adaptive capacity and resilience of ecosystems to climate change impacts. There are a range of adaptation policy options relevant to aquatic systems, and many of these measures can be 'mainstreamed' or incorporated into existing conservation and resource management frameworks. This article evaluates adaptation policy options and the constraints on policy implementation for freshwater and estuarine ecosystems in the coastal floodplains of tropical Queensland. Many of these aquatic systems are in a degraded condition and are vulnerable to the compounded impacts of climate change and other stressors. The analysis suggests that statutory planning schemes, water resource planning and protected area frameworks provide limited scope to address the more severe threats to these systems from rising sea levels, extreme cyclones, floods and droughts. In many locations, the effectiveness of adaptation policies is constrained by existing land uses and competing demands from communities and industry sectors. To prevent further widespread loss of habitat may require the development and implementation of new policies that prioritise adaptation management for freshwater and estuarine ecosystems.A changing climate means more work for humanitarian organizations. Vulnerable people served by the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement are likely to experience new patterns of disasters. In the face of these rising dangers, science-based information about likely threats can be used to reduce risk and improve resource allocation. Examples such as the 2008 emergency appeal for flood preparedness in West Africa illustrate the benefits of turning early warnings into early actions at community, national, and regional levels, at timescales ranging from hours to decades ahead of a looming threat. By making better use of a wide range of new information, humanitarian organizations can enhance their work even in the face of the rising risks of climate change.Adaptation of agricultural and food systems to climate change involves private and public investment decisions in the face of climate and policy uncertainties. The authors present a framework for analysis of adaptation as an investment, based on elements of the economics, finance, and ecological economics literatures. They use this framework to assess critically impact and adaptation studies, and discuss how research could be designed to support public and private investment decisions. They then discuss how climate mitigation policies and other policies may affect adaptive capacity of agricultural and food systems. They conclude with an agenda for public research on climate adaptation.South East Queensland (SEQ) has experienced voracious growth over the past five decades. Spanning some 200 km, this sprawling subtropical coastal conurbation is beginning to reach its ecological and socio-political limits. Over the last decade there have been concerted efforts to manage this growth with a new regime of plans and policies, but climate change has significantly complicated the challenge. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the situation. The major climate adaptation challenges for the region are identified, including: rising sea levels, storm surges, higher temperatures, and increased freshwater scarcity. These will impact most on the elderly, sick and disadvantaged who have lower levels of resilience. The key plans and policies that address these issues are then reviewed, including: ClimateQ; the SEQ Regional Plan; and, the Draft SEQ Climate Change Management Plan. The overall planning regime is appraised in light of five core themes of strong ecological modernisation (technological innovation; engaging with economic imperatives; political and institutional change; transforming the role of social movements and discursive change) and the principles of environmental justice. It is argued that together these schools of thought could provide criteria for a more effective and equitable climate adaptation response for the region.Climate change poses profound, direct, and well-documented threats to biodiversity. A significant fraction of Earth's species is at risk of extinction due to changing precipitation and temperature regimes, rising and acidifying oceans, and other factors. There is also growing awareness of the diversity and magnitude of responses, both proactive and reactive, that people will undertake as lives and livelihoods are affected by climate change. Yet to date few studies have examined the relationship between these two powerful forces. The natural systems upon which people depend, already under direct assault from climate change, are further threatened by how we respond to climate change. Human history and recent studies suggest that our actions to cope with climate change (adaptation) or lessen its rate and magnitude (mitigation) could have impacts that match-and even exceed-the direct effects of climate change on ecosystems. If we are to successfully conserve biodiversity and maintain ecosystem services in a warming world, considerable effort is needed to predict and reduce the indirect risks created by climate change.The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the influential Stern Report both reinforce the warming of the earth's climate system. The alarming environmental, social, and economic consequences of this trend call for immediate action from individuals, institutions, and governments. This article identifies parallels between the problem of adaptive management presented by climate change and an earlier 'global water crisis. It explores how adaptive strategies have successively emphasized three different principles, based on science, economics, and politics/institutions. The article contends that the close association between climate change and water resources development enables a comparative analysis to be made between the strategies that have been adopted for the latter over the last 100 years. It argues that the experience of water resources development suggests a strong interdependence between the three principles and concludes that conceptualizing them as different dimensions of a single governance framework is necessary to meet the challenge of climate change adaptation.Producing more food for a growing population in the coming decades, while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, is a huge challenge facing African agriculture. The risks that come with climate change make this task more daunting. However, hundreds of thousands of rain fed smallholder farmers in Zambia, Malawi, Niger, and Burkina Faso have been shifting to farming systems that are restoring exhausted soils and are increasing food crop yields, household food security, and incomes. This article reviews these experiences, and their broader implications for African food security, as manifestations of Evergreen Agriculture, a fresh approach to achieving food security and environmental resilience. Evergreen Agriculture is defined as the integration of particular tree species into annual food crop systems. The intercropped trees sustain a green cover on the land throughout the year to maintain vegetative soil cover, bolster nutrient supply through nitrogen fixation and nutrient cycling, generate greater quantities of organic matter in soil surface residues, improve soil structure and water infiltration, increase greater direct production of food, fodder, fuel, fiber and income from products produced by the intercropped trees, enhance carbon storage both above-ground and below-ground, and induce more effective conservation of above-and below-ground biodiversity. Four national cases are reviewed where farmers are observed to be applying these principles on a major scale. The first case involves the experience of Zambia, where conservation farming programmes include the cultivation of food crops within an agroforest of the fertilizer tree Faidherbia albida. The second case is that of the Malawi Agroforestry Food Security Programme, which is integrating fertilizer, fodder, fruit, fuel wood, and timber tree production with food crops on small farms on a national scale. The third case is the dramatic expansion of Faidherbia albida agroforests in millet and sorghum production systems throughout Niger via assisted natural regeneration. The fourth case is the development of a unique type of planting pit technology (zai) along with farmer-managed natural regeneration of trees on a substantial scale in Burkina Faso. Lastly, we examine the current outlook for Evergreen Agriculture to be further adapted and scaled-up across the African continent.Perhaps no subject is more intriguing and complex than climate change and its effects on ecosystems and their biological communities. Changes in precipitation and snowmelt patterns, sea level rise, increased intensity of storms and wet-weather events, thawing permafrost, changes in vegetation and wildlife composition and distribution, and other effects present significant policy and land management challenges. Scientific modeling and analyses demonstrate that the effects of a changing climate are complex, with high variability over time, space, and species, including effects on benthic organisms. The variable effects of a changing climate complicate decision making, rendering scenario planning, adaptive management, and other management learning tools increasingly important. The very complexity of effects presents particularly difficult challenges for policy makers and resource managers because the available science often is highly uncertain. Thus, other decision support tools are needed to help managers anticipate and respond to local and regional conditions. Effective policy and management require relevant science to inform decision making. Key needs include more assessments of ecosystem and species trends and their possible linkage to climate change and a better understanding of the interplay of multiple variables, how different management regimes might affect ecosystems and species survival, and how to apply risk management tools and adaptive management to resource issues.While climate change is expected to affect cetaceans primarily via loss of habitat and changes in prey availability, additional consequences may result from climate-driven shifts in human behaviors and economic activities. For example, increases in shipping, oil and gas exploration and fishing due to the loss of Arctic sea ice are highly likely to exacerbate acoustic disturbance, ship strikes, bycatch and prey depletion for Arctic cetaceans. In the tropics, climate change may result in increased hunting pressure on near-shore dolphins and whales off Asia, Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere as the availability of other marine resources diminishes. This study explores the range of potential consequences to cetaceans worldwide from predicted climate-driven shifts in human behavior, and evaluates the risks to particular species given their geographic ranges and habitat preferences. While concern about impacts of climate change on cetaceans has largely focused on polar species, the analysis presented here suggests tropical coastal and riverine cetaceans such as the lrawaddy dolphin, Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, and finless porpoise are particularly vulnerable to those aspects of climate change that are mediated by changes in human behavior. Policy recommendations include the following: (1) information about cetacean populations should be incorporated into national, regional and international climate adaptation decisions wherever possible (for example, via GEF-sponsored adaptation initiatives); and (2) human-mediated impacts of climate change should be included in cetacean conservation and management plans, such as the management procedures of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), where possible. Because human responses to climate change are likely to evolve rapidly over the coming years and decades, it is important that local, regional and international cetacean conservation and management plans include regular reviews to allow them to adapt to new information. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The fascination of seasonal climate forecasting, of which El Nino forecasting is the prime example, comes from its multi-faceted character. Not only does it pose interesting new challenges for the climate scientific community but also it is naturally linked to a great variety of socio-economic applications. Seasonal climate forecasts are indeed becoming a most important element in some policy/decision making systems, especially within the context of climate change adaptation. Thus, seriously considering the management of risks posed by the variability of climate on the seasonal to interannual time scale is key to achieving the longer terms goals of climate change adaptation strategy. This review paper explores the main components needed to construct a seasonal forecasting system, from the physical basis of climate seasonal predictions, to the tools used for producing them, to the importance of assessing their skill, to their use in risk management decision-making. Future challenges are also examined. Copyright (C) 2010 Royal Meteorological SocietyLand-use planners have a critical role to play in building vibrant, sustainable and hazard resilient communities in New Zealand. The policy and legal setting for natural hazards planning provides a solid foundation for good practice. But there are many examples of 'bad practice' that result in unnecessary risks and, in some cases, exposure to repeat events and potentially devastating impacts. Much, therefore, remains to be done to improve hazards planning policy and practice in New Zealand. This article explores the questions: What role does land-use planning play in managing hazard risks in New Zealand; and what needs to be done to reduce hazard risks and build community resilience? The article starts by describing the milieu within which natural hazards planning takes place. It goes onto outline the stakeholders and institutional and legal setting for natural hazards planning in New Zealand, including barriers to realising the potential of natural hazards planning. This synthesis reveals a number of 'burning issues', including the need to: (a) Improve understanding about the nature of hazards; (b) Prioritise risk avoidance (reduction) measures; (c) Provide national guidance for communities exposed to repeat events and address the relocation issue and (d) Mainstream climate change adaptation. Each 'burning issue' is discussed, and priority actions are recommended to realise the potential of land-use planning to reduce natural hazard risks and build community resilience in New Zealand. Ultimately, the challenge is to develop a cooperative hazards governance approach that is founded on coordinated policies, laws and institutions, cooperative professional practice and collaborative communities.This article reports findings from an empirical study of the impacts of drought on rural households in southeastern Alberta, Canada during the 1930s. In that decade, extreme summer heat conditions and low precipitation levels led to repeated crop failures. These extreme climatic conditions coincided with economic recession, falling commodity prices, and rising unemployment to create widespread hardship and suffering across the rural population. Thousands of households adapted by leaving the drought-stricken region and migrating to more northerly regions unaffected by drought, often suffering still further hardship as they reestablished themselves in a new environment. Through secondary research of historical documents and interviews with surviving migrants and non-migrants, this study identifies how economic, human, and social capital influenced the adaptive capacity, adaptation decisions, and migration behavior of rural households and describes how institutional responses affected household adaptation. Differential access to capital in its various forms was a key factor that distinguished households that adapted via migration from those that did not. The findings from this study of historical environment-related population change provide insights that enhance our broader understanding of potential future migration responses to the impacts of anthropogenic climate change and important considerations for policy-makers and planners seeking to build adaptive capacity in rural populations.Climate change may have dramatic consequences for several regions. Most vulnerable are fragile countries with limited capacities to adapt. Without timely action, the stresses induced by climate change may increase the risk of violent conflict. Designing and implementing adaptation strategies is becoming imperative to mitigate conflict potentials and prevent escalation. This article will discuss existing national and international approaches with focus on the UNFCCC process. It will be emphasized that a purely technical understanding of adaptation is insufficient to cope with the socio-political consequences of climate change. Indeed, adaptation may even contribute to conflict potentials if ill-designed. Thus, it is necessary to develop conflict-sensitive approaches complemented by internationally supported capacity development measures. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 741-750Reducing uncertainty in climate projections can involve giving less credence to Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) for which the simulated future climate is judged to be unreliable. Reliability is commonly assessed by comparing AOGCM output with observations. A desirable property of any AOGCM skill score is that resulting AOGCM-performance rankings should show some consistency when derived using observations from different time periods. Notably, earlier work has demonstrated inconsistency between rankings obtained for 20-year periods in the 20th century based on global and regional comparisons of simulated and observed near-surface temperature anomalies. Here, we demonstrate that AOGCM-performance rankings derived from actual temperatures, which incorporate AOGCM biases in climatological means, can be used to identify AOGCMs that perform consistently well or poorly across multiple 20-year periods in the 20th century. This result supports the use of comparisons of simulated and observed actual values of climate variables when assessing the reliability of AOGCMs. Citation: Macadam, I., A. J. Pitman, P. H. Whetton, and G. Abramowitz (2010), Ranking climate models by performance using actual values and anomalies: Implications for climate change impact assessments, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L16704, doi:10.1029/2010GL043877.The empirically based VIHMA model is intended for evaluation of agricultural loading and mitigation measures at the catchment scale. As a starting point for the model construction, results of relevant Finnish long-term field experiments were collected as the database of the model. From the database, specific loading values for different cultivation and tillage methods were calculated using the values of respective tillage methods and conditions (slope, soil texture, hydrological year type) and - in cases of missing empirical data - interpolation and expert judgment. Moreover, based on the data collected in studies carried out at Finnish constructed wetlands (CWs) and at experimental fields with buffer zones (BZs), the model is able to evaluate the environmental benefits achieved by these water protection measures at the catchment scale. The model points out the origin of loading as well as the needs of targeting the protective measures and their load-reducing effects. The use of VIHMA is bound to the distribution of actual information of field cultivation in the target area. Hence, calculations based on changed tillage practices can be assessed only within the limits determined by the lines of production in local farms. On the other hand, the need to decrease the loading is determined by the target state of the recipient body of water. By changing the input data, the potential change in loading, e.g. by increasing the number of BZs or CWs, can be simulated by VIHMA. Influences of different hydrological years with different flow regimes due to different meteorological conditions are taken into account by the choice of the respective empirically-based specific loadings in the model data. The results calculated by VIHMA were found to be well in line with the reported results from long-term catchment monitoring. The model was able to reliably calculate the influences of mitigation measures in large scale in spite of high variation due to different hydrological years. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Conifer dominated plantations in central and northern Europe are associated with relatively low ecological values, and in some cases, may be vulnerable to disturbances caused by anthropogenic climate change. This has prompted the consideration of alternative tree species compositions for use in production forestry in this region. Here we evaluate the likely biodiversity costs and benefits of supplanting Norway spruce (Picea abies) monocultures with polycultures of spruce and birch (Betula spp.) in southern Sweden. This polyculture alternative has previously been evaluated in terms of economic, recreational, and silvicultural benefits. By also assessing the ecological implications we fill a gap in our understanding of the range of socio-ecological benefits that can be achieved from a single polyculture alternative. We project likely broad scale changes to species richness and abundance within production stands for five taxonomic groups including ground vegetation, tree-living bryophytes, lichens, saproxylic beetles, and birds. Our research leads us to three key findings. First, the replacement of spruce monocultures with spruce-birch polycultures in the managed forest landscapes of southern Sweden can be expected to result in an increase in biological diversity for most but not all taxa assessed, but it is unlikely to improve conditions for many red-listed forest species. Second, modification of other aspects of forest management (i.e. rotation length, dead wood and green tree retention, thinning regimes) is likely to contribute to further biodiversity gains using spruce-birch polycultures than spruce monocultures. Third, the paucity of empirical research which directly compares the biodiversity of different types of managed production stands, limits the extent to which policy relevant conclusions can be extracted from the scientific literature. We discuss the wider implications of our findings, which indicate that some climate change adaptation strategies, such as risk-spreading, can be readily integrated with the economic, environmental and social goals of multi-use forestry. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global climate change may impact grain production as atmospheric conditions and water supply change, particularly intensive cropping, such as double wheat-maize systems. The effects of climate change on grain production of a winter wheat-summer maize cropping system were investigated, corresponding to the temperature rising 2 and 5 degrees C, precipitation increasing and decreasing by 15% and 30%, and atmospheric CO(2) enriching to 500 and 700 ppmv. The study focused on two typical counties in the Huang-Huai-Hai (3H) Plain (covering most of the North China Plain), Botou in the north and Huaiyuan in the south, considering irrigated and rain-fed conditions, respectively. Climate change scenarios, derived from available ensemble outputs from general circulation models and the historical trend from 1996 to 2004, were used as atmospheric forcing to a bio-geo-physically process-based dynamic crop model, Vegetation Interface Processes (VIP). VIP simulates full coupling between photosynthesis and stomatal conductance, and other energy and water transfer processes. The projected crop yields are significantly different from the baseline yield, with the minimum, mean (+/-standardized deviation, SD) and maximum changes being -46%, -10.3 +/- 20.3%, and 49%, respectively. The overall yield reduction of -18.5 +/- 22.8% for a 5 degrees C increase is significantly greater than -2.3 +/- 13.2% for a 2 degrees C increase. The negative effect of temperature rise on crop yield is partially mitigated by CO(2) fertilization. The response of a C3 crop (wheat) to the temperature rise is significantly more sensitive to CO(2) fertilization and less negative than the response of C4 (maize), implying a challenge to the present double wheat-maize systems. Increased precipitation significantly mitigated the loss and increased the projected gain of crop yield. Conversely, decreased precipitation significantly exacerbated the loss and reduced the projected gain of crop yield. Irrigation helps to mitigate the decreased crop yield, but CO(2) enrichment blurs the role of irrigation. The crops in the wetter southern 3H Plain (Huaiyuan) are significantly more sensitive to climate change than crops in the drier north (Botou). Thus CO(2) fertilization effects might be greater under drier conditions. The study provides suggestions for climate change adaptation and sound water resources management in the 3H Plain. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Under global climate change, adaptation to new conditions is crucial for plant species persistence. This requires the ability to evolve in traits that are correlated with changing climatic variables. We studied between-year seed dormancy, which correlates with environmental variability, and tested for clinal trends in its evolvability along an aridity gradient in Israel. We conducted a germination experiment under five irrigation levels with two dryland winter annuals (Biscutella didyma, Bromus fasciculatus) from four sites along the gradient. Species differed in means and evolvability of dormancy. Biscutella had high dormancy, which significantly increased with aridity but decreased with higher irrigation. In Bromus, dormancy was low, similar among populations, and only marginally affected by irrigation. Evolvability in Biscutella was high and varied among populations, without a clinal trend along the gradient. Conversely, in Bromus, trait evolvability was low and declined with increasing aridity. We argue that changes in evolvability along climatic gradients depend on the relative intensity of stabilizing selection. This may be high in Bromus and not only depends on environmental stress, but also on variability. Our findings point to the importance of measuring evolvability of climate-related traits across different natural and artificial environments and for many coexisting species. (C) 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 100, 924-934.Climate projections from multi-model ensembles are commonly represented by the multi-model mean (MMM) climate change. As an alternative, various subjectively formulated schemes for performance-based weighting of models have been proposed. Here, a more objective framework for model weighting is developed. A key ingredient of this scheme is a calibration step quantifying the relationship between intermodel similarity in observable climate and intermodel similarity in simulated climate change. Models that simulate the observable climate better are only given higher weight where and when such an intermodel relationship is found, and the difference in weight between better and worse performing models increases with the strength of this relationship. The method is applied to projections of temperature change from the Third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. First, cross-validation is used to estimate the potential of the method to improve the accuracy of climate change estimates and to search for suitable predictor variables. The decrease in cross-validation error allowed by the weighting is relatively modest but not negligible, and it could potentially be increased if better predictor variables were found. Second, observations are used to weight the models, to study the differences between the weighted mean and MMM estimates of twenty-first century temperature change and the sensitivity of these differences to the predictor variables and observational data sets used.Following creation of the 2010 Biodiversity Target under the Convention on Biological Diversity and adoption of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, information on status and trends of biodiversity at the national level has become increasingly important to both science and policy. National red lists (NRLs) of threatened species may provide suitable data for reporting on progress toward these goals and for informing national conservation priority setting. This information will also become increasingly important for developing species-and ecosystem-based strategies for climate change adaptation. We conducted a thorough global review of NRLs in 109 countries and analyzed gaps in NRL coverage in terms of geography and taxonomy to determine priority regions and taxonomic groups for further investment. We then examined correlations between the NRL data set and gross domestic product (GDP) and vertebrate species richness. The largest geographic gap was in Oceania, followed by middle Africa, the Caribbean, and western Africa, whereas the largest taxonomic gaps were for invertebrates, fungi, and lichens. The comprehensiveness of NRL coverage within a given country was positively correlated with GDP and negatively correlated with total vertebrate richness and threatened vertebrate richness. This supports the assertion that regions with the greatest and most vulnerable biodiversity receive the least conservation attention and indicates that financial resources may be an integral limitation. To improve coverage of NRLs, we propose a combination of projects that target underrepresented taxa or regions and projects that provide the means for countries to create or update NRLs on their own. We recommend improvements in knowledge transfer within and across regions as a priority for future investment.The urbanization process and urban activities generate environmental impacts both within and beyond city boundaries. Urban policy plays an important role in shaping and changing the regional and global linkages of cities. Integrating regional and global environmental concerns into urban policy and management practices remains a challenging issue because of the inherent temporal, spatial and institutional scale mismatch between urban policies and regional and global environmental issues. This paper argues that firstly, urban policy has increasing relevance to regional and global environmental issues, and a systems approach is essential in urban policy making to maximize co-benefit and negotiate trade-offs and secondly, although the current institutional settings in urban policy making are not necessarily best suited for managing these issues, enhanced governance processes such as increased public participation and networking and learning across cities can be effective.Climate change has added a new layer to the existing challenges in Africa that adaptation is high on the development agenda. Adaptation is necessary to build resilience of cities' response to climate change. Inland, coastal and mountainous cities face different climate risks ranging from storm surges, droughts, excessive rainfall, heat waves and cold waves. The impacts also range from flooding, storm surges, water scarcity and landslides. The urgency of climate change adaptation promises to revitalize practice in urban development around which innovations in planning, institutional readiness and community resilience are crucial to successful adaptation. Being an inland city, Kampala experiences increased frequency of floods with associated impacts on health, infrastructure and human settlements. Building on early and scalable adaptation measures is paramount to enable communities, institutions, urban authorities and different actors become climate ready while addressing the inherent challenges. In Kampala, community adaptation offers lessons but the requirement for scaling up needs urgent attention by city authorities and government for widespread adaptation.Claims have been made that global environmental change could drive anywhere from 50 to almost 700 million people to migrate by 2050. These claims belie the complexity of the multi-causal relationship between coupled social-ecological systems and human mobility, yet they have fueled the debate about "environmentally induced migration". Empirical evidence, notably from a 23 case study scoping study supported by the European Commission, confirms that currently environmental factors are one of many variables driving migration. Fieldwork reveals a multifaceted landscape of patterns and contexts for migration linked to rapid- and slow-onset environmental change today. Migration and displacement are part of a spectrum of possible responses to environmental change. Some forms of environmentally induced migration may be adaptive, while other forms of forced migration and displacement may indicate a failure of the social-ecological system to adapt. This diversity of migration potentials linked to environmental change presents challenges to institutions and policies not designed to cope with the impacts of complex causality, surprises and uncertainty about social-ecological thresholds, and the possibility of environmental and migration patterns recombining into a new patterns. The paper highlights fieldwork on rapid- and slow-onset environmentally induced migration in Mozambique, Vietnam, and Egypt. Current governance frameworks for human mobility are partially equipped to manage new forms of human mobility, but that new complementary modes of governance will be necessary. The paper concludes with challenges for governance of environmentally induced migration under increasing complexity, as well as opportunities to enhance resilience of both migrants and those who remain behind. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water management in Australia has traditionally been carried out on the assumption that the historical record of rainfall, evaporation, streamflow, and recharge is representative of current and future climatic conditions. However, in many circumstances, this does not adequately address the potential risks to supply security for towns, industry, irrigators, and the environment. This is because the Australian climate varies markedly due to natural cycles that operate over periods of several years to several decades. There is also serious concern about how anthropogenic climate change may exacerbate drought risk in the future. In this paper, the frequency and severity of droughts are analyzed during a range of "climate states'' (e.g., different phases of the Pacific, Indian, and/or Southern Oceans) to demonstrate that drought risk varies markedly over interannual through to multidecadal time scales. Importantly, by accounting for climate variability and change on multitemporal scales (e.g., interdecadal, multidecadal, and the palaeo scale), it is demonstrated that the risk of failure of current drought management practices may be better assessed and more robust climate adaptation responses developed.Discounting is traditionally interpreted as the technique for comparing the values of costs and benefits which occur at different points in time. It endeavors to incorporate how humans trade off values to be received in the future versus value received immediately into economic analysis. Interpreted as such, discounting neglects important spatial influences on how values are compared, thereby hindering cost-benefit analyses of climate change adaptation. In this article, we present new theory on space-time discounting and use it to analyze aspects of how humans adapt to climate change. Three climate change adaptation cases are considered. First, analysis of crop indemnity payments to farmers shows that failure to discount across space and time yields inaccurate evaluations of adaptation projects. Second, adaptation efforts of the Commonwealth of Nations show irregular patterns of international cooperation that suggest spatial discounting of adaptation which are not found in temporal discounting. Third, the nexus between climate change, migration, and conflict shows how various forms of space-time discounting can influence whether climate change and migration will lead to conflict. Collectively, these cases demonstrate the analytical power of the space-time discounting theory and also show how the complexity of climate change adaptation can challenge and strengthen this theory. Finally, this article's analysis demonstrates that proper discounting must include space as well as time.Volatile fuel prices are a threat to the viability of UK fishing communities. The economic and social impacts of rising fuel costs for fishers and communities in southwest England are examined. Fuel prices doubled between early 2007 and mid-2008, whereas fish prices remained relatively stable throughout as a result of the price-setting power of seafood buyers. It was the fishers who absorbed the increased costs, resulting in significant loss of income, reduced job security, and problems in recruiting crew. All gear types were affected, but fishers using towed gears were most adversely impacted. Fishing vessels with recent investment have greater fuel efficiency, so appeared to be more able to cope and to adapt to increased fuel costs. Fishing behaviour also altered as skippers attempted to increase fuel efficiency at the cost of reduced catches. Most skippers reported fishing closer to port, reducing their exploratory fishing, and ceasing experimentation with fishing gears with lesser environmental impact. Therefore, a threat to fishing community viability may have linked environmental effects. The impacts of this fuel price volatility foreshadow a likely future impact of rising fuel prices attributable to climate change adaptation and mitigation and forecasts of rising oil prices. Without proactive planning and policy development, rising fuel prices have the potential to cause job losses and economic hardship additional to problems that may arise from poor management and stock decline, in all fishing-related sectors of the industry.The climate change and natural hazard communities have developed the notion of vulnerability and associated methods for its assessment in parallel, with only limited interaction. What are the underlying reasons for this diversity; is there advantage in greater synergy? If yes, what are the pathways through which greater integration could be fostered? This paper discusses these issues using vulnerability studies in coastal areas to describe gaps between climate change and natural hazard approaches, and investigates scope for mutual learning and collaboration in the development of methodologies for vulnerability assessment. An overview of methods highlights the separation between climate change and natural hazard approaches. The main differences identified, beyond formal divergences in terminology, are linked to: process (stress vs shock), scale (temporal, functional and spatial), assessment approach (statistical vs prospective) and levels of uncertainty. We argue that the underlying source of divergence is the initial difference of purpose, one being identification of climate change adaptation pathways, the other being disaster risk reduction. In this context, the notion of vulnerability and its expression through assessment studies is the focal point connecting both domains. Indeed, the ongoing and active development of vulnerability concepts and methods have already produced some tools to help overcome common issues, such as acting in a context of high uncertainties, taking into account the dynamics and spatial scale of a social-ecological system, or gathering viewpoints from different sciences to combine human and impact-based approaches. Based on this assessment, this paper proposes concrete perspectives and possibilities to benefit from existing commonalities in the construction and application of assessment tools.Statistical data shows that the increase in disasters due to natural hazards over the past 20 years has, for the most part, been caused by meteorological and hydrological events. This increase has been largely assigned to climate change [Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), 2010, http://www.emdat.be/Database/Trends/trends.html], that is, with climate-related hazards being major triggers for the majority of disasters. Consequently, there is obvious concern about how a changing climate will exacerbate the situation in the future (McBean and Ajibade in Curr Opin Environ Sustain 1:179-186, 2009). However, the attribution of a single hazard event or specific losses to climate change is still difficult, if not impossible, due to the complexity of factors that generate disaster losses. Disaster risk is a product of the interaction of the hazard (event) and the vulnerability conditions of the society or elements exposed. As a result, the need for a systematic linkage between disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) to advance sustainable development, and finally human security is being discussed within the ongoing climate change negotiations as well as within the disaster risk community, for example, in the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on 'Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation'. However, crucial differences between DRR and CCA exist that have widely limited or hampered their integration in practice. A review of existing literature on the topic and current national and local adaptation strategies, as well as 38 expert interviews conducted between April and May 2009, have led the authors to hypothesise that most of these differences and challenges can be categorised with respect to different spatial and temporal scales, the knowledge base, and norm systems. This paper examines the reasons for the practical barriers when linking CCA and DRR according to these three aspects. Finally, we outline recommendations and measures that need to be adopted in order to overcome existing barriers. In addition, quality criteria are formulated that should be applied in order to constantly monitor and evaluate adaptation strategies designed to simultaneously meet DRR requirements and vice versa.The task of adapting cities to the impacts of climate change is of great importance-urban areas are hotspots of high risk given their concentrations of population and infrastructure; their key roles for larger economic, political and social processes; and their inherent instabilities and vulnerabilities. Yet, the discourse on urban climate change adaptation has only recently gained momentum in the political and scientific arena. This paper reviews the recent climate change adaptation strategies of nine selected cities and analyzes them in terms of overall vision and goals, baseline information used, direct and indirect impacts, proposed structural and non-structural measures, and involvement of formal and informal actors. Against this background, adaptation strategies and challenges in two Vietnamese cities are analyzed in detail, namely Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho. The paper thereby combines a review of formalized city-scale adaptation strategies with an empirical analysis of actual adaptation measures and constraints at household level. By means of this interlinked and comparative analysis approach, the paper explores the achievements, as well as the shortcomings, in current adaptation approaches, and generates core issues and key questions for future initiatives in the four sub-categories of: (1) knowledge, perspectives, uncertainties and key threats; (2) characteristics of concrete adaptation measures and processes; (3) interactions and conflicts between different strategies and measures; (4) limits of adaptation and tipping points. In conclusion, the paper calls for new forms of adaptive urban governance that go beyond the conventional notions of urban (adaptation) planning. The proposed concept underlines the need for a paradigm shift to move from the dominant focus on the adjustment of physical structures towards the improvement of planning tools and governance processes and structures themselves. It addresses in particular the necessity to link different temporal and spatial scales in adaptation strategies, to acknowledge and to mediate between different types of knowledge (expert and local knowledge), and to achieve improved integration of different types of measures, tools and norm systems (in particular between formal and informal approaches).Climate change may pose considerable challenges to coastal cities, particularly in low-lying urban deltas. Impacts are, however, associated with substantial uncertainties. This paper studies an uncertainty-robust adaptation strategy: strengthening the resilience of the impacted system. This approach is operationalised for the city of Rotterdam, using literature study, interviews, and a workshop. Potential impacts have been explored using national climate statistics and scenarios and a set of 'wildcards' (imaginable surprises). Sea level rise, particularly in combination with storm surge, and enduring heat and drought are the most relevant potential stresses in the area. These can lead to damage, loss of image, and societal disruption. Unclear responsibilities enhance disruption. 'Resilience principles' nude the concept of resilience sufficiently operational for local actors to explore policy options. Useful principles for urban resilience include: homeostasis, omnivory, high flux, flatness, buffering, redundancy, foresight and preparedness/planning, compartmentalisation, and flexible planning/design. A resilience approach makes the system less prone to disturbances, enables quick and flexible responses, and is better capable of dealing with surprises than traditional predictive approaches. Local actors frame resilience as a flexible approach to adaptation that would be more suitable and tailored to local situations than rigid top-down regulations. In addition to a change in policy, it would require a more pro-active mentality among the population. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.State and local governments in the United States manage a wide array of natural and human resources that are particularly sensitive to climate variability and change. Recent revelations of the extent of the current and potential climate impact in this realm such as with the quality of water, the structure of the coasts, and the potential and witnessed impact on the built infrastructure give these political authorities impetus to minimize their vulnerability and plan for the future. In fact, a growing number of subnational government bodies in the United States have initiated climate adaptation planning efforts; these initiatives emphasize an array of climate impacts, but at different scales, scopes, and levels of sophistication. Meanwhile, the current body of climate adaptation literature has not taken a comprehensive look at these plans nor have they questioned what prompts local adaptation planning, at what scope and scale action is being taken, or what prioritizes certain policy responses over others. This paper presents a case-based analysis of seven urban climate adaptation planning initiatives, drawing from a review of publicly available planning documents and interviews with stakeholders directly involved in the planning process to provide a preliminary understanding of these issues. The paper also offers insight into the state of implementation of adaptation strategies, highlighting the role of low upfront costs and cobenefits with issues already on the local agenda in prompting anticipatory adaptation.This paper examines climate adaptation strategies of farmers in the Limpopo Basin of South Africa. Survey results show that while many farmers noticed long-term changes in temperature and precipitation, most could not take remedial action. Lack of access to credit and water were cited as the main factors inhibiting adaptation. Common adaptation responses reported included diversifying crops, changing varieties and planting dates, using irrigation, and supplementing livestock feed. A multinomial logit analysis of climate adaptation responses suggests that access to water, credit, extension services and off-farm income and employment opportunities, tenure security, farmers' asset base and farming experience are key to enhancing farmers' adaptive capacity. This implies that appropriate government interventions to improve farmers' access to and the status of these factors are needed for reducing vulnerability of farmers to climate adversities in such arid areas.Geoscientists play an increasingly important role in understanding climate change and its impacts. This is especially the case with adaptation to climate change which cannot be solved in isolated attempts, but calls for international cooperation and integrated approaches. The potential effects of climate change on natural hazards, as well as water and energy resources, are of great concern to geoscientists and stakeholders. Climate change has only recently been incorporated into decision-making processes and spatial planning. In order to facilitate communication of potential impacts of climate change, and to determine strategies and measures to adapt to those, in October 2009 the RIGS Commission on Geoscience for Environmental Management (GEM) established a Working Group on Climate Change Adaptation (http://climate.iugsgem.org/). This article presents some results of projects on climate change adaptation in the Baltic Sea Region (conducted by multi-disciplinary project teams under the lead of the Geological Survey of Finland). This paper was elaborated under the auspices of the BaltCICA project and JUGS-GEMThe short-term effects of high temperatures are a serious concern in the context of climate change. In areas that today have mild climates the research activity has been rather limited, despite the fact that differences in temperature susceptibility will play a fundamental role in understanding the exposure, acclimatization, adaptation and health risks of a changing climate. In addition, many studies employ biometeorological indexes without careful investigation of the regional heterogeneity in the impact of relative humidity. We aimed to investigate the effects of summer temperature and relative humidity and regional differences in three regions of Sweden allowing for heterogeneity of the effect over the scale of summer temperature. To do so, we collected mortality data for ages 65+ from Stockholm, Goteborg and Skane from the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute for the years 1998 through 2005. In Stockholm and Skane on average 22 deaths per day occurred, while in Goteborg the mean frequency of daily deaths was 10. We fitted time-series regression models to estimate relative risks of high ambient temperatures on daily mortality using smooth functions to control for confounders, and estimated non-linear effects of exposure while allowing for auto-regressive correlation of observations within summers. The effect of temperature on mortality was found distributed over the same or following day, with statistically significant cumulative combined relative risk of about 5.1% (CI = 0.3, 10.1) per degrees C above the 90th percentile of summer temperature. The effect of high relative humidity was statistically significant in only one of the regions, as was the effect of relative humidity (above 80th percentile) and temperature (above 90th percentile). In the southernmost region studied there appeared to be a significant increase in mortality with decreasing low summer temperatures that was not apparent in the two more northerly situated regions. The effects of warm temperatures on the elderly population in Sweden are rather strong and consistent across different regions after adjustment for mortality displacement. The impact of relative humidity appears to be different in regions, and may be a more important predictor of mortality in some areas.Climate change is perhaps the most serious environmental threat to the fight against hunger, malnutrition, disease and poverty in Africa, essentially because of its impact on agricultural productivity. The objective of this paper was to identify the major barriers to climate change adaptation among smallholder farmers of Southern Nigeria. The paper was based on primary data collected within the framework of the Development Partnership for Higher Education (DelPHE) Project from 360 farming households selected randomly from the region. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. The result of the analysis show that majority of the farmers were men (70%), relatively educated (average of 9 years in school) and practiced mixed farming (61%). The major factors constraining farmers from adapting to climate change impacts were - (a) land constraints which manifested itself in limited availability, high costs and poor ownership systems (tenure); (b) poor climate change information and agricultural extension service delivery; (c) high cost of farm inputs and processing facilities; (d) high cost of irrigation facilities and government irresponsiveness to climate change risk management, (e) credit constraints, (f) labour constraints, and (g) income constraints. The paper concludes with a recommendation that farmers need to be supported in order for them to effectively adapt to the climate change impacts that are already affecting their production and hence reduce hunger and poverty. These supports could come from governments, non- governmental organizations and even farmers' unions themselves.Agriculture is one of the key sectors of the Sri Lankan economy, which contributes a significant percentage to its gross domestic product (GDP) and provides direct or indirect employment to a sizeable proportion of its population. Climate change involves long-term slow changes in climate, short-term year-to-year climatic variability and unpredictable extreme climatic events. Agriculture, especially crop production, is highly dependent on the prevailing weather conditions and therefore is highly sensitive to climate change, both short-term and long-term. Almost all General Circulation Models predict that the processes of climate change such as increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and global warming will continue well into the 21(st) century even If the mitigation measures to minimize the causes of climate change exert maximum effect. Therefore, it is imperative that a well-co-ordinated and sustained effort is set in motion to increase the capacity of Sri Lankan agriculture to adapt to short and long-term climate change. Adaptation involves measures to minimize the impacts of climate change. At present, implementation of climate change adaptation measures in Sri Lanka is piecemeal and lacks co-ordination and direction. Hence, a clear policy framework identifying the measures to be pursued and the roles of different stakeholders is needed for allocating and channelling the necessary financial and human resources for successful adaptation to climate change. A clear and comprehensive policy framework also becomes the basis for development of an effective road map and an action plan to achieve successful adaptation. This paper discusses a policy framework for adaptation of Sri Lankan agriculture to climate change based on the following components: (a) Quantification and forecasting of climate change; (b) Assessment of impacts and vulnerability to climate change; (c) Identification and formulation of responses to adapt to climate change; (d) Creating and strengthening the institutional framework and infrastructure to implement and monitor adaptation measures to climate change. Major advances in scientific research on components a, b and c, both locally and internationally, are briefly discussed and key policy measures to facilitate and accelerate their progress along with the relevant stakeholders are identified. Importance of allocating adequate resources to promote research on all aspects of climate change and their impacts by developing infrastructure, a critical mass of experts and an institutional framework to effectively link all stakeholders to channel the formulated adaptation measures to the farming communities at the grass-root level are emphasized.Climate change presents potential increased threats to the comfort and health of urban populations as a result of higher summer temperatures. This paper reviews recent research on the climate change adaptation potential of urban environments and focuses on a major conurbation, London. Recent work relating to the impact of exposure to heat on population health is also noted. Data obtained from a pilot monitoring study carried out in a subset of 36 dwellings (from a total of 110 dwellings in the overall study) across London during the summer of 2009 is then discussed. Preliminary results illustrate the need to quantify the net impacts of individual building characteristics and the location of each dwelling within the London heat island. During a hot period, more than 40% of the monitored bedrooms failed the recommended overheating criteria during the night time. There was some indication of purpose built flats being more prone to overheating. The potential use of such data as the basis of a heat-related health risk epidemiological model for London is discussed. Such a tool would help health policy makers to target the most vulnerable building types and areas.This study aims to integrate scientific knowledge from a variety of disciplines with local experience to describe, contextually and in detail, the impact of flood events on the community of the Alpine Shire and current mitigation efforts to alleviate and reduce these impacts. The Myrtleford Floodplain Management Study was the cornerstone of the strategy to address the goal of reducing flood damage in the community. It was found that the most consequential deficiencies in the Myrtleford flood mitigation scheme decision process are related to flaws in four elements of the process: the articulation of goals; the development of appropriate knowledge support; the effectiveness of promotion; and the ability to move from invocation to application. The Alpine Shire can be used as a microcosm that can represent adaptation challenges in other communities to climate change and extreme events. This research contributes to the development of the conceptual and analytical framework of integrated assessments, while making concrete contributions to the development of adaptive policies in Alpine Shire.Climate change is already with us. It is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time. The effects of changing weather patterns and more extreme climate events can be seen around the world. Examining the scale of the global challenge through the threats posed by a changing climate across Europe and in the UK, this paper indicates that leadership and policy responses are needed at all levels-international, European national and local. The urban environment amplifies the impacts of climate change and adaptation of our towns and cities is essential to accommodate this change. Regional and local planning can make a major contribution to tackling climate change by shaping decisions that reduce carbon dioxide emissions and positively build community resilience to problems such as extreme temperatures or flood risk. Looking to examples of best practice across local authorities in Europe, the EU-funded green and blue space adaptation for urban areas and eco-towns (GRaBS) project is showcased. This paper presents the case for climate change adaptation and, in particular, argues that people or places facing poverty and disadvantage must not be disproportionately affected by climate change, or by policy or practice responses to it.(1287) Cameron Hepburn and Benito Muller Greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation services have been increasing rapidly and are likely to continue to do so in the absence of major policy changes. At the same time, while all countries will experience impacts from climate change, developing countries are the most vulnerable. Significant financial assistance for adaptation is therefore needed for developing countries, but current proposals are inadequate. Solutions to the challenges of both aviation greenhouse gas emissions and climate change adaptation finance are thus urgently required. This paper proposes an international air travel adaptation levy that addresses both problems.1. Research linking river ecology and hydromorphology is driven by concerns about hydromorphological pressures (e.g. abstraction, land-use change) and legislative (e.g. EU Water Framework Directive) or management needs (e.g. climate-change adaptation). Unfortunately, much of the science is still weak or qualitative (cf. links between ecology and water quality). 2. Rapid progress is required, but financial resources are limited. In response, research opportunities using existing ecological and hydromorphological data and survey methods need to be explored further. 3. There are challenges inherent in using existing data, which are often collected for different purposes, and this paper highlights aspects of spatial scale, temporal coverage, sampling biases, data quality and mining, and the problems faced when using pre-defined sets of variables. 4. While the prospects for exploiting existing data are mixed, distinct strengths arise from extensive geographic coverage, the ability to improve the evidence base rapidly and at low cost, and the generation of testable hypotheses. 5. Current survey methods usually record biological or hydromorphic patterns, or inventories of features (cf. physical processes, or ecosystem functions or services). Their greatest use is likely to be in extending current spatially extensive biological or water chemistry monitoring to more integrated 'eco-hydromorphic' monitoring. 6. With further methodological development, there is real scope for illuminating several aspects of riverine ecology, including the direct ecological and physical consequences of modifying river systems; revealing indirect sensitivity to other pressures, such as climate change; offering a more holistic picture of the distribution of pressures on river ecosystems; and developing hydromorphology as a unifying theme in river studies. However, such developments require funding commitments from research sponsors. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This article examines biomimicry where organisms or ecosystems are mimicked in human design as a means to either mitigate the causes of climate change that the built environment is responsible for or adapt to the impacts of climate change Different biomimetic approaches to design are discussed and categorized, and a series of examples illustrate the benefits and drawbacks of each approach Biomimicry s potential role in addressing climate change in the built environment over the short, medium and long term is examined Specific principles of ecosystem biomimicry for architecture have been deduced through a comparative cross-disciplinary review and are presented It is posited that the incorporation of a thorough understanding of biology and ecology into architectural design will be significant in the creation of a built environment that contributes to the health of human communities, while increasing positive integration with natural carbon cyclesA critical challenge in supporting climate change adaptation is improving the linkage between climate-impacts and vulnerability research and public and private planning and management decisions. We highlight the need for bottom-up/top-down vulnerability assessment, bringing together bottom-up knowledge of existing vulnerabilities with top-down climate-impact projections, as a transparent basis for informing decisions intended to reduce vulnerability. This approach can be used to evaluate the likelihood of crossing identified thresholds of exposure, and to evaluate alternative adaptation strategies based on their ability to reduce sensitivity to projected changes in exposure and their robustness across uncertainty in future outcomes. By identifying thresholds for which adaptive capacity is limited in particular systems, adaptation and mitigation become complements where the magnitudes of climate change at which such thresholds cluster can help to define mitigation targets.Connecting indigenous and scientific observations and knowledge has received much attention in the Arctic, not least in the area of climate change. On some levels, this connection can be established relatively easily, linking observations of similar phenomena or of various effects stemming from the same cause. Closer examinations of specific environmental parameters, however, can lead to far more complex and difficult attempts to make those connections. In this paper we examine observations of wind at Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada. For Inuit, many activities are governed by environmental conditions. Wind, in particular, is identified by Inuit as one of the most important environmental variables, playing a key role in driving sea ice, ocean, and weather conditions that can either enable or constrain hunting, travel, or other important activities. Inuit observe wind patterns closely, and through many means, as a result of their close connection to the land and sea. Inuit in many parts of Nunavut are reporting changes in wind patterns in recent years. At Clyde River, a community on the eastern coast of Baffin Island, Inuit have observed that at least three key aspects of wind have changed over the last few decades: wind variability, wind speed, and wind direction. At the same time, wind observations are also available from an operational weather station located at Clyde River. An analysis of this information shows little change in wind parameters since the mid-1970s. Though the station data and Inuit observations correspond in some instances, overall, there is limited agreement. Although the differences in the two perspectives may point to possible biases that may exist from both sources-the weather station data may not be representative of the region, Inuit observations or explanations may be inaccurate, or the instrumental and Inuit observations may not be of the same phenomena-they also raise interesting questions about methods for observing wind and the nature of Arctic winds.This paper examines traditional ecological knowledge of weather and climate in Samoa, a Polynesian community in the South Pacific. The research found Samoans have their own unique seasonal calendar. The Samoan seasonal calendar is predominantly based on the observations of local environmental changes, which are in turn influenced by weather and climate. Monitoring changes in plants and animal behaviour, for example, are key indicators used by the Samoans to forecast changes in weather and climate. In addition, their communal and family social activities like hunting, fishing and feasting are driven by the seasonal calendar. The Samoans knowledge of cloud formation, conditions conducive to the formation and onset of severe weather systems and seasonal changes in climate, helped them anticipate, plan and adapt to extreme weather and climate events. The ability and knowledge of the Samoans to forecast the onset of extreme weather and climate events, relying predominantly on local environmental changes are vital tools that should be incorporated in the formulation of human induced climate change adaptation strategies.Aim We seek to demonstrate that whilst information derived from phylogeographic and landscape genetic approaches has been used broadly to further ecological and evolutionary hypothesis testing, it can also be used to further species modelling approaches, particularly where bioclimatic and demographic methodologies are to be combined to tackle climate change adaptation and conservation planning. Location General application. Methods We start with a review of species distribution modelling studies that have used data derived from molecular marker studies, and identify which parameters can realistically be derived from molecular marker studies for inclusion in species and ecosystem distribution prediction and conservation planning. Results We find that the uptake of phylogeographic and landscape genetic methods to inform species distribution modelling studies has to date been limited (particularly the latter approaches), despite offering clear potential to improve species modelling approaches that aim to combine climatic envelope and demographic parameters. Using a series of cases studies, we demonstrate that phylogeographic approaches can be particularly useful for identifying biogeographic barriers and refugia, testing alternative demographic models, identifying concordant demographic patterns between species within a single ecosystem and testing temporal niche conservatism. We also find that landscape genetic approaches are particularly useful for quantifying landscape permeability and source/sink dynamics of meta-populations and identifying adaptive variation in the landscape. A summary of parameters that are derivable from such studies for modelling and conservation applications is provided. Main conclusions Molecular marker methods have much to offer species distribution modelling, particularly in the field of climate adaptation. Molecular information can inform on species historical dynamics and contemporary demography necessary to advance species modelling paradigms that seek to integrate climatic and demographic drivers. Furthermore, recognizing diversity below species level and incorporating this information into modelling frameworks will enable conservation managers to plan for the capture of areas of evolutionary potential.Climate change has the potential to compromise the sustainability of natural resources in Mediterranean climatic systems, such that short-term reactive responses will increasingly be insufficient to ensure effective management. There is a simultaneous need for both the clear articulation of the vulnerabilities of specific management systems to climate risk, and the development of appropriate short- and long-term strategic planning responses that anticipate environmental change or allow for sustainable adaptive management in response to trends in resource condition. Governments are developing climate change adaptation policy frameworks, but without the recognition of the importance of responding strategically, regional stakeholders will struggle to manage future climate risk. In a partnership between the South Australian Government, the Adelaide and Mt Lofty Ranges Natural Resource Management Board and the regional community, a range of available research approaches to support regional climate change adaptation decision-making, were applied and critically examined, including: scenario modelling; applied and participatory Geographical Information Systems modelling; environmental risk analysis; and participatory action learning. As managers apply ideas for adaptation within their own biophysical and socio-cultural contexts, there would be both successes and failures, but a learning orientation to societal change will enable improvements over time. A base-line target for regional responses to climate change is the ownership of the issue by stakeholders, which leads to an acceptance that effective actions to adapt are now both possible and vitally important. Beyond such baseline knowledge, the research suggests that there is a range of tools from the social and physical sciences available to guide adaptation decision-making.EU climate policy based on reduction (mitigation) of greenhouse gas emissions is coupled with measures aimed at responding efficiently to the unavoidable consequences of climate change (adaptation). However, as the European Commission stated recently in its Green and White Papers on adaptation in Europe, there is still need to develop an overall EU adaptation strategy. Moreover, such a strategy should take into consideration both efficiency and equity concerns. In this article we propose a framework for EU adaptation policy that addresses the two concerns and which enables a transparent decision-making process. In the proposed scheme universal weightings of the individual policy objectives have to be agreed upon prior to actual decision-making. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Despite a wealth of financial, technical, and human capacity in Canadian cities, it remains a challenging task to transform this capacity into effective climate change adaptation and mitigation. Indeed, mitigative and adaptive capacities only represent the potential to achieve the ultimate goals of greenhouse gas and vulnerability reduction. This paper builds on previous explorations of barriers to identify powerful levers by which action can be triggered and sustained at the local level through the study of three municipalities in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. The necessity of an explicitly articulated high-level directive, leadership that stimulates an organizational culture of innovation and collaboration, and the 'institutionalization' of climate change response measures within standard operating procedures emerged as crucial enablers of action. Addressing a lack of technical, financial, or human resources is less a matter of creating more capacity than of facilitating the effective use of existing resources. This facilitation depends most fundamentally on re-working the path dependent institutional structures, organizational culture and policy-making procedures that have characterized the unsuccessful patterns of climate change policy development in the past. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the ongoing efforts to adapt institutions to the complex and uncertain futures associated with a changing climate, while simultaneously embedding broader sustainability goals in long-range strategic planning. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is increasing concern over the consequences of global warming for the food security and livelihoods of the world's 36 million fisherfolk and the nearly 1.5 billion consumers who rely oil fish for more than 20% of their dietary animal protein. With mounting evidence of the impacts of climate variability and change oil aquatic ecosystems, the resulting impacts oil fisheries livelihoods are likely to be significant, but remain a neglected area in climate adaptation policy. Drawing upon our research and the available literature, and using a livelihoods framework, this paper synthesizes the pathways through which climate variability and change impact fisherfolk livelihoods at the household and community level. We identify current and potential adaptation strategies and explore the wider implications for local livelihoods, fisheries management and climate policies. Responses to climate change can be anticipatory or reactive and should include: (1) management approaches and policies that build the livelihood asset base, reducing vulnerability to multiple stressors, including climate change; (2) an understanding of current response mechanisms to climate variability and other shocks in order to inform planned adaptation; (3) a recognition of the opportunities that climate change could bring to the sector; (4) adaptive strategies designed with a multi-sector perspective; and (5) a recognition of fisheries potential contribution to mitigation efforts. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper responds to the challenge of how and when to adapt marine capture fisheries to climate change by (1) providing a set of fisheries policy options to climate change; (2) developing a risk and vulnerability assessment and management decision-making framework for adaptation; and (3) describing the possible strategies and tactics for ex ante and ex post climate adaptation in the marine environment. Its contributions include (1) a discussion of how management objectives and instruments influence resilience and adaptation; (2) a decision-making process to assess vulnerabilities to climate change and to manage adaptation responses: (3) an inter-temporal framework to assist decision-makers on when to adapt; (4) a risk and simulation approach to confront the uncertainties of the possible losses due to climate change and the net benefits of adaptation; (5) an explanation of how adaptive co-management can promote flexible adaptation responses and also strengthen adaptation capacity: and (6) a selection of possible 'win-win' management actions. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article describes and analyzes the impacts of population and demographic change on the vulnerability of communities to climate change and variability. It begins with a review of existing literature on the effects of population change on anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the exposure of settlements to climate risks, and on the capacity to adapt to climate change. The article explores the relationship between population change and adaptive capacity through detailed examination of empirical findings from a study of small communities in eastern Ontario, Canada currently experiencing a combination of changes in local climatic conditions and rapid demographic change caused by in-migration of urban retirees and out-migration of young, educated people. The combination of changing demographic and climatic patterns has placed increased stress on local social networks that have long been critical to climate adaptation in that region. The case study and literature review are used to create a general typology of the relationship between population change and vulnerability that may be used as a framework for future research in this field.Assessing vulnerability is an important component of human dimensions of climate change (HDCC) research. Vulnerability assessments identify and characterize who and what are sensitive to climatic risks and why, characterize adaptive capacity and its determinants, and identify opportunities for adaptation. This paper examines the importance of case study and analogue methodologies in vulnerability research, reviews the historical evolution of the two methodologies in the HDCC field, and identifies ways in which they can be used to increase our understanding of vulnerability. Case studies involve in-depth place-based research that focuses on a particular exposure unit (e. g., community, industry, etc.) to characterize vulnerability and its determinants. Temporal analogues use past and present experiences and responses to climatic variability, change and extremes to provide insights for vulnerability to climate change; spatial analogues involve conducting research in one region and identifying parallels to how another region might be affected by climate change. Vulnerability research that uses case studies and analogues can help to develop an understanding of the determinants of vulnerability and how they interact, and identify opportunities to reduce vulnerability and enhance adaptive capacity to current and future climate risks. This information can assist policy makers in developing adaptation plans and to mainstream climate change adaptation into other policy-and decision-making processes. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 374-392Background: Malaria is rampant in Africa and causes untold mortality and morbidity. Vector-borne diseases are climate sensitive and this has raised considerable concern over the implications of climate change on future disease risk. The problem of malaria vectors (Anopheles mosquitoes) shifting from their traditional locations to invade new zones is an important concern. The vision of this study was to exploit the sets of information previously generated by entomologists, e. g. on geographical range of vectors and malaria distribution, to build models that will enable prediction and mapping the potential redistribution of Anopheles mosquitoes in Africa. Methods: The development of the modelling tool was carried out through calibration of CLIMEX parameters. The model helped estimate the potential geographical distribution and seasonal abundance of the species in relation to climatic factors. These included temperature, rainfall and relative humidity, which characterized the living environment for Anopheles mosquitoes. The same parameters were used in determining the ecoclimatic index (EI). The EI values were exported to a GIS package for special analysis and proper mapping of the potential future distribution of Anopheles gambiae and Anophles arabiensis within the African continent under three climate change scenarios. Results: These results have shown that shifts in these species boundaries southward and eastward of Africa may occur rather than jumps into quite different climatic environments. In the absence of adequate control, these predictions are crucial in understanding the possible future geographical range of the vectors and the disease, which could facilitate planning for various adaptation options. Conclusion: Thus, the outputs from this study will be helpful at various levels of decision making, for example, in setting up of an early warning and sustainable strategies for climate change and climate change adaptation for malaria vectors control programmes in Africa.Objective: To investigate the temporal relationship between the monthly count of salmonellosis notifications and the monthly average temperature in New Zealand during the period 1965-2006 Methods: A negative binomial regression model was used to analyse monthly average ambient temperature and salmonellosis notifications in New Zealand between 1965 and 2006 Results: A 1 C increase in monthly average ambient temperature was associated with a 15% increase in salmonellosis notifications within the same month (IRR 115, 95% CI 1 07 - 1 24) Conclusion: The positive association found in this study between temperature and salmonellosis notifications in New Zealand is consistent with the results of studies conducted in other countries New Zealand is projected to experience an increase in temperature due to climate change Therefore, all other things being equal, climate change could increase salmonellosis notifications in New Zealand Implications: This association between temperature and salmonellosis should be considered when developing public health plans and climate change adaptation policies Strategically, existing food safety programs to prevent salmonellosis could be intensified during warmer periods As the association was strongest within the same month, focusing on improving food handling and storage during this time period may assist in climate change adaptation in New ZealandThis paper analyses the results from two surveys which were sent to all Norwegian municipalities in 2007 and gives an overview of adaptation measures undertaken by local governments. Our analyses show that municipalities have more often invested in measures related to extreme precipitation and flooding than in measures for securing buildings and infrastructure against climate change. One key factor explaining their efforts is whether they have experienced extreme events. Hence adaptation efforts are mainly reactive. With a changing climate comes a greater demand for proactive adaptation processes, as well as knowledge of how adaptation policies and measures could be implemented successfully. This paper emphasises the importance of enhancing institutional capacity in order to address the challenges of climate change adaptation at the municipal level; and asserts that a multilevel governance framework is a way of advancing proactive adaptation and overcoming the identified barriers to adaptation.Climate change is altering the rate and distribution of primary production in the world's oceans. Primary production is critical to maintaining biodiversity and supporting fishery catches, but predicting the response of populations to primary production change is complicated by predation and competition interactions. We simulated the effects of change in primary production on diverse marine ecosystems across a wide latitudinal range in Australia using the marine food web model Ecosim. We link models of primary production of lower trophic levels (phytoplankton and benthic producers) under climate change with Ecosim to predict changes in fishery catch, fishery value, biomass of animals of conservation interest, and indicators of community composition. Under a plausible climate change scenario, primary production will increase around Australia and generally this benefits fisheries catch and value and leads to increased biomass of threatened marine animals such as turtles and sharks. However, community composition is not strongly affected. Sensitivity analyses indicate overall positive linear responses of functional groups to primary production change. Responses are robust to the ecosystem type and the complexity of the model used. However, model formulations with more complex predation and competition interactions can reverse the expected responses for some species, resulting in catch declines for some fished species and localized declines of turtle and marine mammal populations under primary productivity increases. We conclude that climate-driven primary production change needs to be considered by marine ecosystem managers and more specifically, that production increases can simultaneously benefit fisheries and conservation. Greater focus on incorporating predation and competition interactions into models will significantly improve the ability to identify species and industries most at risk from climate change.Adaptation was a core concept of twentieth-century cultural ecology. It is having a new life in the context of debates over climate change, particularly as it becomes more significant in public discourse and policy. In this third and final progress report, I identify ways in which geographers and others are currently using the concept of adaptation, tracing both continuities and discontinuities with its earlier heritage. Three differences that warrant attention are the new mitigation/adaptation binary, the deliberate and conscious nature of climate change adaptation, and the fact that the stimuli to which we are adapting are complex assemblages comprising more-than-climate. To 'retrofit' the concept for twenty-first-century conditions, we should avoid the limitations of some past uses, and enhance its operation with new techniques and approaches. I identify four threads in recent geographic research that enhance the retrofit: cultural research around climate; emphasis on everyday practices; attention to the contingencies of scale; and more-than-human/more-than-nature theoretical conceptualizations.Lack of local information on climate change impacts is increasingly recognized as an important barrier to progress in adaptation. However, simply providing decision makers with higher-resolution climate information will not ensure successful adaptation. In order for there to be appropriate information uptake and use, it is essential to understand the political constraints and conditions under which decision makers operate. A detailed examination of the current regulatory context in relation to climate and weather impacts can provide insight into the barriers and obstacles affecting decision makers in adaptation endeavors. This study examines the experiences of the municipalities of Tompkins County, New York, as they attempt to manage stormwater in compliance with federally mandated regulations. The current policies fail to adequately address the fundamental problems affecting local government in New York: fragmented jurisdiction, interagency communication, inability to cope with unfunded mandates, enforcement, and the promotion of informed decision making. The way forward may be the adaptive governance approach for the management of complex environmental issues. This article is intended to serve as an initial model for other university-based researchers that are interested in serving their local communities with weather, climate, and policy research and are willing to engage in the complexities involved.A Web site questionnaire survey in Finland suggested that maps illustrating projected shifts of Koppen climatic zones are an effective visualization tool for disseminating climate change information. The climate classification is based on seasonal cycles of monthly-mean temperature and precipitation, and it divides Europe and its adjacent land areas into tundra, boreal, temperate, and dry climate types. Projections of future changes in the climatic zones were composed using multimodel mean projections based on simulations performed with 19 global climate models. The projections imply that, depending on the greenhouse gas scenarios, about half or possibly even two-thirds of the study domain will be affected by shifts toward a warmer or drier climate type during this century. The projected changes within the next few decades are chiefly located near regions where shifts in the borders of the zones have already occurred during the period 1950-2006. The questionnaire survey indicated that the information regarding the shifting climatic zones as disseminated by the maps was generally interpreted correctly, with the average percentage of correct answers being 86%. Additional examples of the use of the climatic zones to communicate climate change information to the public are included.Disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies and strategies are well established within the international development community, being utilised at the grassroots level to address all forms of hazards. An exacerbation and increase in meteorological hazards has in part been attributed to climate change. Climate change also contributes to noticeable seasonal fluctuations that severely affect natural resource based livelihoods. In response, a need in development policy has been identified to address climate change at the community level by helping those most affected through 'climate change adaptation' (CCA) strategies. This paper explores the differences or, rather, the similarities between DRR and CCA through analysing climate-related DRR in Papua New Guinea (PNG) within the context of wider development policies. Ways forward are identified for international development policy supporting all forms of risk reduction through integrating DRR and CCA strategies. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The changing environment is expected to intensify the challenges that people in developing countries are facing, particularly among the groups whose livelihoods depend on natural resources. The adaptive capacity of livelihoods largely defines the extent to which people can cope with future environmental changes, whether caused by climate change or other factors such as land use changes and water resources development. This article analyses the resilience and adaptive capacity of rural livelihoods around Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake, an exceptional lake-floodplain system dominated by flood pulse. The research findings demonstrate that despite the people's tradition of adapting to the remarkable seasonal variation of water and related resources, their capacity to adapt to unusual environmental changes is weak, with the poorest being clearly the most vulnerable group. Reasons for the weak resilience include villages' relatively homogenous livelihood structures, unjust governance practices, increasing inequality and the lack of opportunities for livelihood diversification. It is concluded that while climate change is likely to pose a remarkable challenge to people's livelihoods in the longer term, climate change adaptation activities should also take into account other environmental changes. Equally critical is the understanding of the broader socio-political context and its dynamics in increasing-and decreasing-livelihood resilience.Climate change presents additional challenges to a diverse country like Cameroon that shares the Congo Basin rainforest. Not only is the population vulnerable to the direct effects of climate change, forest-dependent communities are also vulnerable to changing environmental policy that may affect their access to forest resources. Using a qualitative approach to data collection through semi-structured interviews and content analysis of relevant documents, the perception of decision-makers within, and the response of the institutions of the state, the private sector and civil society to the complex challenges of climate change in the Congo Basin forest of Cameroon were analysed. Results indicate that while decision-makers' awareness of climate change is high, a concrete institutional response is at a very early stage. Cameroon has low adaptive capacity that is further constrained by weak linkages among government institutions nationally and between different levels of government and with communities. Civil society institutions play a role in enhancing government capacity to respond, particularly in relation to new international policies on climate change and forests. Adaptive capacity would be further enhanced by facilitating institutional linkages and coordinating multilevel responses across all boundaries of government, private sector and civil society. A collaborative capacity builder could foster the transfer, receipt and integration of knowledge across the networks, and ultimately build long-term collaborative problem-solving capacity in Cameroon.An increasing lack of stationarity in environmental phenomena and hence in the predictability of loading and effects makes it necessary to modify the traditional approach for planning and risk assessment of flood mitigation. The traditional approach attempts to manage the flooding system with the use of predictive/optimisation methods. These use the 'most likely' or average future projection to identify a singular optimal adaptation strategy. Because the planning and risk management in this method is often decoupled from the dynamics and uncertainty of the flooding system, this is a rather risky approach. This paper argues that responsible climate adaptation requires an alternative approach that attempts to assess and manage the resiliency of the flooding system for long-term future change. The aim of such an approach is to keep the system within a configuration of states that gives at least acceptable functioning despite the occurrence of possible changes. The paper proposes an options planning and assessment process for managing the resiliency of the flooding system to climate change. This process explicitly acknowledges the uncertainty in future climate conditions by introducing and implementing flexibility (real options) into the designed components of the flooding system.Institutions and institutional change are mentioned often but rarely specified in discussions of climate adaptation. Policy change is proposed, but the detail of policy processes less often discussed. Adaptation to increased climate change and variability will require policy interventions to change behaviors across multiple sectors, requiring policy processes constrained or enabled by institutional settings. Detailed discussion of how to redesign policy processes and institutions are especially rare at the crucial jurisdictional scales of national and sub-national policy and planning. We review coverage of policy and institutions in the adaptation literature and clarify key issues by drawing on the domains of public policy, institutional change, and sustainable development. The distinction between, but close dependencies among, institutions, institutional systems, organizations, policy processes, policy instruments, and management are emphasized. We propose that the climate policy literature has rapidly become large enough that a tendency of self-referencing has developed, and that insights can be gained from other areas. Within existing parameters of law, politics, and governance, options are identified that could embed considerations of climate adaptation into policy processes and institutional systems, with focus on enabling cross-sectoral policy integration ('mainstreaming'), decision making under conditions of uncertainty, vertical ('cross-scale') policy coordination, issues of capacity and devolution, and policy evaluation and learning. The value of seeking lessons from past policy interventions and from cognate policy sectors is explored. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 212-231Insurance instruments that provide economic security against droughts, floods, tropical cyclones and other weather extremes have emerged as an opportunity for developing countries in their concurrent efforts to reduce their vulnerability to weather variability and adapt to climate change. Yet, issues remain concerning the viability of insurance systems serving the most vulnerable and their potential role in an adaptation regime. Many pilot projects are underway, that can inform debate on these issues. This discussion builds on a recent droughtmicro-insurance project for subsistence farmers in Malawi, which by enabling farmers to access higher yield seeds, raises their productivity and decreases their vulnerability to climate change. Beyond this 'developmental' gain from insurance we show that micro-insurance in Malawi can directly promote adaptation by actually reducing crop losses from drought. This is possible by incorporating seasonal rainfall forecasts, which are strongly related to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), into insurance pricing. This paper describes the Malawi pilot program, its challenges after the first operational year and the potential benefits of ENSO-based pricing. The paper concludes by discussing the outlook for micro-insurance in the emerging climate. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 271-278This paper examines the likely effects on gas and electricity consumption and carbon emissions from heating and cooling systems in existing dwellings up to 2080, assuming a widespread uptake of cooling systems. This area of research is highly sensitive to the myriad of possible inputs and thus holds a wide range of predicted outcomes. However, general trends have been found, showing significant sensitivity to ventilation rate, U-values, occupant behaviour and location. Heating demand will still be dominant over cooling demand in UK dwellings by the 2080s, based on an UKCIP02 A1F1 weather scenario. A national worst case scenario for the 2050s, shows a 10 megatonne CO2 emissions saving on present levels largely due to a 20% reduction in gas consumption. Practical applications: The balance of heating and cooling demand causes more modest changes in CO2 than first anticipated. Despite first perceptions of future energy use in housing and climate change, heating appears to remain the major load rather than cooling, even into the 2080s. These predictions of future CO2 emissions will be useful to those in the building industry planning appropriate proportionate climate adaptation and climate mitigation measures. Also, the prediction of changes to future energy demands from the housing sector will be of interest to energy providers considering future demands for heating and cooling and may feed into larger bottom-up energy models.To be successful, conservation practitioners and resource managers must fully integrate the effects of climate change into all planning projects. Some conservation practitioners are beginning to develop, test, and implement new approaches that are designed to deal with climate change. We devised four basic tenets that are essential in climate-change adaptation for conservation: protect adequate and appropriate space, reduce nonclimate stresses, use adaptive management to implement and test climate-change adaptation strategies, and work to reduce the rate and extent of climate change to reduce overall risk. To illustrate how this approach applies in the real world, we explored case studies of coral reefs in the Florida Keys; mangrove forests in Fiji, Tanzania, and Cameroon; sea-level rise and sea turtles in the Caribbean; tigers in the Sundarbans of India; and national planning in Madagascar. Through implementation of these tenets conservation efforts in each of these regions can be made more robust in the face of climate change. Although these approaches require reconsidering some traditional approaches to conservation, this new paradigm is technologically, economically, and intellectually feasible.Climate change has created the need for a new strategic framework for conservation. This framework needs to include new protected areas that account for species range shifts and management that addresses large-scale change across international borders. Actions within the framework must be effective in international waters and across political frontiers and have the ability to accommodate large income and ability-to-pay discrepancies between countries. A global protected-area system responds to these needs. A fully implemented global system of protected areas will help in the transition to a new conservation paradigm robust to climate change and will ensure the integrity of the climate services provided by carbon sequestration from the world's natural habitats. The internationally coordinated response to climate change afforded by such a system could have significant cost savings relative to a system of climate adaptation that unfolds solely at a country level. Implementation of a global system is needed very soon because the effects of climate change on species and ecosystems are already well underway.Resource-dependent industries are particularly vulnerable to climate change, and their ability to adapt will be as critical to society as to the natural systems upon which they rely. More than ever, resource-users will need to anticipate, and prepare for, climate-related changes, and institutions will need to be particularly supportive, if resource industries and the extended social systems dependent on them are to be sustained. I examine the capacity of cattle-graziers in Australia to cope and adapt to climate variability as a precursor for understanding their vulnerability to climate change by assessing: (i) their perception of risk, (ii) their capacity to plan, learn and reorganise, (iii) their proximity to the thresholds of coping, and (iv) their level of interest in adapting to change. Graziers perceived themselves to be resilient to climate variability in their perceptions of climate risk, reorganising capacity, coping, and interest in adapting. Their dependency on the grazing resource and use of seasonal climate forecasts were significant influences, suggesting that resilience could be enhanced. Facilitated collaborative learning amongst graziers and other stakeholders may assist to develop strategic skills, increasing climate awareness, developing financial security and adopt climate tools such as seasonal climate forecasts. Enhanced strategies for coping with climate variability will provide a way for encouraging gradual, incremental adjustments for climate adaptation. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It has been claimed that high social capital contributes to both positive public health outcomes and to climate change adaptation. Strong social networks have been said to support individuals and collective initiatives of adaptation and enhance resilience. As a result, there is an expectation that social capital could reduce vulnerability to risks from the impacts of climate change in the health sector. This paper examines evidence on the role social networks play in individuals' responses to heat wave risk in a case study in the UK. Based on interviews with independently living elderly people and their primary social contacts in London and Norwich, we suggest that strong bonding networks could potentially exacerbate rather than reduce the vulnerability of elderly people to the effects of heat waves. Most respondents interviewed did not feel that heat waves posed a significant risk to them personally, and most said that they would be able to cope with hot weather. Bonding networks could perpetuate rather than challenge these narratives and therefore contribute to vulnerability rather than ameliorating it. These results suggest a complex rather than uniformly positive relationship between social capital, health and adaptation to climate change. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article develops a framework of procedural and distributive justice specifically tailored to the international-level funding of adaptation based on the assumptions that the ethical contents of such funding should consist of a fair process which involves all relevant parties, that adaptation funds should be raised according to the responsibility for climate impacts, and that the funds raised should be allocated by putting the most vulnerable first. In particular, after underlining the usefulness and possibilities of an ethical approach to climate adaptation finance, the article, in defining the framework of justice, first explores and justifies principles of procedural and distributive justice, and on their basis advances fairness and equity criteria that serve as benchmarks for assessing the ethical contents of international adaptation funding. Then, in order to test the robustness and investigative potential of the framework of justice developed, the article uses its fairness and equity criteria to evaluate the procedural and distributive justness of some climate adaptation finance architectures. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Human adaptation to climate change is a heterogeneous process influenced by more than economic and technological development. It is increasingly acknowledged in the adaptation to climate change literature that factors such as class, gender and culture play a large role when adaptation strategies are either chosen or rejected at the local scale. This paper explores adaptation strategies by focusing on livelihood diversification in the face of the most recent of recurrent droughts in the Sahel. It is shown that for Fulbe, one of the two main ethnic groups in the small village in Northern Burkina Faso studied, culture acts as a major barrier to embracing four of the most successful livelihood strategies: tabour migration, working for development projects, gardening, and the engagement of women in economic activities. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Innovative micro-insurance schemes can be one tool to help African small-holder farmers cope with climate variability and change. A critical challenge for implementing such risk transfer programs, however, is helping participants understand how insurance operates, and there is evidence that farmers with a poor understanding of insurance are less likely to use it. One of the proposed tools to help farmers understand insurance is a simulation game, through which farmers can gain first-hand experience with a functioning insurance market. This paper reports on the results of experiments in Ethiopia and Malawi, investigating farmers' understanding and the effectiveness of a role-playing game at improving that understanding. Our results suggest a generally poor understanding of basic insurance concepts, and are consistent with past results in suggesting that better understanding correlates with greater willingness to purchase it. Our results also suggest that role-playing games may be an important tool for improving understanding, but that they do not necessarily out-perform more conventional training practices. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adapting conservation policy to the impacts of climate change has emerged as a central and unresolved challenge. In this paper, we report on the results of 21 in-depth interviews with biodiversity and climate change adaptation experts on their views of the implications of climate change for conservation policy. We find a diversity of views across a set of topics that included: changing conservation objectives, conservation triage and its criteria, increased management interventions in protected areas, the role of uncertainty in decision-making, and evolving standards of conservation success. Notably, our findings reveal active consideration among experts with some more controversial elements of policy adaptation (including the role of disturbance in facilitating species transitions, and changing standards of conservation success), despite a comparative silence on these topics in the published literature. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to: (a) identifying future research and integration needs and (b) providing insight into the process of policy adaptation in the context of biodiversity conservation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As climate change adaptation planning moves beyond short term National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) to longer-term approaches, it is instructive to review the NAPA process and examine how well it was linked to national development planning. This paper reviews 41 NAPAs submitted by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to assess the NAPA process in terms of NAPAs integration with countries' national development strategies. The review outlines the actors involved in developing NAPAs and identifies the range of interventions included in countries' priority adaptation actions. The paper uses the example of population as an issue related to both climate change and national development to assess how it is addressed as part of LDCs' adaptation and national development agendas. The analysis shows that although countries recognize population pressure as an issue related to the ability to cope with climate change and as a factor hindering progress in meeting development goals, it is not well incorporated into either adaptation planning or in national development strategies. Among the 41 NAPAs, 37 link high and rapid population growth to climate change. Moreover, six NAPAs clearly state that slowing population growth or investments in reproductive health/family planning (RH/FP) should be considered among the country's priority adaptation actions. Furthermore, two NAPAs actually propose a project with components of RH/FP among their priority adaptation interventions, although none of them has yet been funded. The paper points to structural issues that hamper better alignment between climate change adaptation and national development planning and offers recommendations for longer-term adaptation strategies that better meet the development needs of countries.A thorough understanding of the behavior of fire in grasslands is critical to the minimization of the impact of fires on agricultural and pastoral land as well as the successful management of the health, robustness, and species diversity of native grasslands. This is also necessary to understand the impact that a changing climate will have on these fires and the subsequent impacts and adaptation steps needed to protect valuable farmland and grassland ecosystems in the future, a challenge that will soon be facing all land managers. While a number of studies have investigated the impact of climate change on fire danger indices, the fire danger systems used in Australia are actually fire weather indices that provide no information about the likely impact of climate change on fire behavior. This chapter summarizes the state of the knowledge of fire behavior in grass fuels and discusses in detail the factors that influence the behavior of grassfires. The CSIRO Grassland Fire Spread Meter is the recommended operational system for the prediction of grassfire behavior in all Australian grass types. The system is used to assess the impact of a high-emission climate change scenario upon the likely behavior of grassfires throughout the fire season for three major pastoral and agricultural regions of eastern Australia in 2020 and 2050. It was found that mean fire rate of forward spread in ungrazed/natural pastures will increase by a maximum of 10% by 2020 and by 32% by 2050 in southeastern Australia. The implications for grassland management strategies and possible climate adaptation pathways are explored.Climate change is a major issue for agricultural sustainability, and changes in farming practices will be necessary both to reduce emissions and to adapt to a changing climate and to new social expectations. A complicating factor is that the processes of behaviour change are complex and can be slow to occur. Discourse analysis is useful in understanding how the discourses farmers are embedded in contribute to resistance to change. Discourses are particular ways of using language in particular situations. They have wide ranging effects on beliefs, values and behaviours. Interviews were conducted in 2008 with 63 respondents, including 22 apple growers, 29 dairy farmers and 12 agricultural consultants in Tasmania, Australia. In undertaking a discourse analysis of the transcripts of these interviews utilising N-Vivo, four specific discourses were identified as being important in shaping farmers' perspectives of climate change and sustainability: Money, Earth, Human responsibility and Questioning. Each discourse contributes to resistance to changing behaviour in particular ways. An understanding of these discourses offers a new approach to facilitating behaviour change.Climate change impacts are already being experienced in every region of the United States and every part of the world-most severely in Arctic regions- and adaptation is needed now. Although climate change adaptation research is still in its infancy, significant adaptation planning in the United States has already begun in a number of localities. This article seeks to broaden the adaptation effort by integrating it with broader frameworks of hazards research, sustainability science, and community and regional resilience. To extend the range of experience, we draw from ongoing case studies in the Southeastern United States and the environmental history of New Orleans to consider the multiple threats and stresses that all communities and regions experience. Embedding climate adaptation in responses to multiple threats and stresses helps us to understand climate change impacts, themselves often products of multiple stresses, to achieve community acceptance of needed adaptations as cobenefits of addressing multiple threats, and to mainstream the process of climate adaptation through the larger envelope of social relationships, communication channels, and broad-based awareness of needs for risk management that accompany community resilience.Recent environmental discourses and headlines on small island developing states (SIDS) have heralded the grave and impending threats of global warming and associated sea-level rise. These are undoubtedly significant challenges for SIDS, including atoll nations such as Kiribati. Nevertheless, securing small island state futures also requires a renewed commitment to addressing the obvious and immediate threats of urbanisation, pollution and sanitation. Looking at pressures of development on freshwater, this article argues that the future survival of small island states and their societies also greatly depends on managing the impacts of development. Approaches which can concurrently strengthen the resilience of communities and their ecosystems will result in mutual benefits for both sustainable development and climate change adaptation.Viewing emergency management issues through the lens of a changing climate was the challenge put to a workshop held at the Australian Emergency Management Institute in July 2009. The aim of the workshop was to further develop the National Climate Change Action Plan for the emergency management sector. The current predictions for climate change in Australia were presented along with the implications for emergency management. A discussion paper due out in December 2009 will report on some of the strategies that are being considered and implemented in the climate change adaptation space relevant to the emergency management field in Australia.Uncertainty in the prediction of low probability high-impact climate events makes it difficult for local governments to foresee locality specific climate risks, prioritise policy options and implement suitable actions for the future. Climate projections and economic evaluation need to be available at the local levels (scales of a few tens of kilometres at most) to ensure local climate investment actions. Observations of the historical climate impacts at local scales could give a probability distribution that could be projected into the future using new information and expert opinions. This research describes the early stages of a study of the adaptation options for local government authority, based on available climate information and perceptions of the local community. In our overview we concentrate on the following key issues and questions: i. Review of the literature on economic modelling of adaptation strategies at the local scale ii. A description of the legal background and the quadruple bottom line (QBL) approach that can be used to evaluate potential adaptation strategies for local governments iii. How to quantify and evaluate losses from climate change impact related hazards at the local scale iv. The adequate choice of discount rate for economic analysis. Our findings are that to date there have been surprisingly few studies at the local level on the economic cost of mitigation and adaptation to climate change effects. We suggest that valuing the non-monetary impacts of climate change via Quadruple Bottom Line analysis considering the social, economic, environment and governance dimensions could be a method to identify the appropriate importance of each impact category. We further suggest the use of the so-called Loss Distribution Approach (LDA) in combination with expert judgements and discounted present value analysis as a potential framework for modelling the losses from climate change impacted hazards at the local scale. For the choice of the optimal discount rate we suggest for the financial dimension to use the cost of capital for local governments while for the social discount rate it might be appropriate to use clearly lower discount rates as they are suggested - for example in the reports by Stern (2006) and Garnaut (2008).Climate change is expected to affect water supply if extreme climatic events and unpredictable rainfall patterns become more prevalent. Bulk infrastructure tends to determine urban communities' vulnerability to water supply and this infrastructure tends to be managed by the government. This suggests that water supply adaptation will require government capacity and commitment - often lacking in the developing country context. This article focuses on the processes impeding and facilitating adaptation to climate change within the urban water sector in the City of Cape Town, South Africa. The case study explores water management at the city scale, highlighting how actors currently respond to water stress and the challenges they face in integrating climate change information into water management. The case study results suggest that the best ways to facilitate adaptation are to focus on areas where development needs and responses to climate change impacts are connected, and focus support on adaptation processes rather than outcomes. This approach is likely to ensure that climate change responses are not seen as competing with non-climate development priorities, but as part of the solution to them. This is likely to create incentives for the global South to respond to climate change.The South African constitution enshrines the right to water for the well-being of its people. Recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and governmental reports show that this will be endangered by climate change. Recent high-resolution hydro-climatic model outputs give cause for further concern. Additionally, the South African Government is under pressure to implement progressive new water regulations; shift its overall water management approach; deal with skills shortages at all institutional levels; and cope with immense disparities and, hence, vulnerabilities within society. South Africa therefore faces huge water challenges in the coming years. This article questions whether the country's regulatory frameworks and laws on water sufficiently support adaptation to climate change. Furthermore, questions are raised on incorporating climatic and other uncertainties into decision-making processes. It is concluded that South African water law and regulatory systems do offer sufficient flexibility and openness to cope with an adaptive and participatory management approach. This may lead to a progressive management era when current weaknesses and threats are addressed through self-reflection by all actors, as well as through building on cultural differences and incorporating the most recent research findings and other relevant information.This case study explores the interface between climate change adaptation and socio-economic development in the Southern African region. It seeks to make the climate-development juncture more palpable and further highlights the challenges of integration from a policymaker's perspective. It makes a normative case concerning the following key questions: Why is it advantageous to integrate adaptation into development planning, given that the degree and specific advent of climate change is still uncertain? How should this best be done? Which action is required at what level?The pursuit of adaptation to climate change, both theoretically and practically, has intensified considerably over the past decade in response to increasing awareness of the potential impacts of global climate change. Despite this momentum, the interaction of climate change adaptation with pre-existing strategies to reduce vulnerability and build resilience in the developing world has only recently received significant attention. Using the example of disaster risk reduction, this paper explores the developing interface between climate change adaptation and existing development methodologies that have overlapping interests. While it has been established that there must be greater collaboration between these fields, many questions remain surrounding the scope of such interaction. This paper reviews the literature on the relationship between disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and then explores some unanswered questions and developing conceptualizations. An examination of the theoretical points of convergence and divergence raises a range of questions surrounding how climate change adaptation is conceptualized in both the academic literature and the policy environment. There is a rich space to consider pre-existing development pathways within the adaptation narrative. Enhancing adaptive capacity requires robust frameworks that more holistically engage the embedded structures that perpetuate both socio-economic and environmental vulnerability.Climate change adaptation is at the intersection of science, communities, and a decision-making context characterized by multiple spatial and temporal scales and high levels of uncertainty, complexity, and dynamism. Potential approaches to adaptation include shared governance, adaptive management, establishing improved system indicators and metrics, and assessing ecosystem services benefits. Addressing climate change also requires evaluating the role of scientists in the decision-making process.The traditional view of adaptation to climate change tends to assume that a national government is responsible for implementing technological adaptation measures (e.g., seeds, dams, irrigation schemes), which are selected on the basis of specific knowledge of future climate conditions. This view has been widely challenged but is still prevalent within sectors dominated by engineering, such as water and coastal management. The purpose of this chapter is to show that while technology has an important part to play in climate adaptation, its effectiveness relies on it being part of a broader strategy that acknowledges uncertainty and addresses the underlying drivers of people's current and future vulnerability. Such a strategy requires the integration of adaptation with human and economic development efforts.The magnitude of climate change impacts facing water resources managers in the United States has spurred closer interagency cooperation in developing methods supporting planning and engineering for climate change adaptation. The two largest water resources management agencies in the U.S., the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, have partnered to describe climate change challenges, identify user needs for improving tools and information, and assess capabilities to use weather and climate forecasts in federal water resources management. They have also hosted a forum with national and international experts exploring the issue of nonstationary hydrology with respect to climate change. In progress is development of multiagency guidelines for best practices to select from the portfolio of climate information including global climate scenarios, through general circulation models, through downscaling, to regional or watershed-scale hydrological and operations planning models to account properly for climate change and variability at the scale of water-resource operational decisions. This presentation describes collaborative activities and the resulting methods being used as both agencies plan for and implement climate change adaptation measures.This paper explores several issues associated with the adaptation of inland systems to climate change, particularly by addressing the vulnerabilities of inland centers of people, industry, and agriculture that are interconnected at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The aim of the paper is to improve understanding needed for sustainable climate change adaptation of inland systems, where sustainability encompasses social and psychological adaptation, environmental justice, and the preservation and enhancement of human dignity and natural resources. This requires participatory approaches with iterative problem framing and solution generation that are respectful of both human dignity and the integrality of nature. A vital component of developing adaptation strategies is the assessment of current vulnerabilities, namely the extent to which current climate variability and change, acting together with other stressors, impact inland systems. This assessment requires an understanding of the climate system and its impacts to inland systems, as well as the responses of the systems to changing climate. A complex adaptive systems approach can be useful in carrying out such an assessment. Important factors include how inland centers especially marginal lands, disadvantaged populations, and threatened ecosystems are resilient to both episodic shocks and to steady trends, which may be difficult to measure, monitor, or forecast. Climate change adaptation strategies for inland systems must also take into account transboundary issues, and take advantage of opportunities where present.High-latitude species are predicted to be vulnerable to climate change, particularly in the UK uplands, where many are at the margins of their southern range. There is increasing evidence that climate change may have an impact on populations through reductions in prey abundance. The diet of 17 insectivorous UK upland birds, and the sensitivity of their prey to likely climate change, were quantified from the literature and combined to produce an index of climate-change sensitivity for upland birds. Coleoptera and Diptera were the 2 most important prey taxa, with Tipulidae the most widely ingested prey family. Lepidoptera, Lumbricidae and Hymenoptera also comprised >20% of the diet of at least one upland bird species. Of these prey taxa, existing studies suggest that Tipulidae, Chironomidae and Lumbridicae may be particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures and increased frequency of drought projected to result from climate change. Therefore, the contribution of these 3 taxa to the diets of upland birds provides an index of climate-change sensitivity, which was correlated with an index of recent upland bird population trends. Future increases in temperature and drought frequency are expected to have an impact on populations of a range of upland bird species through reductions in prey availability, although further studies are required to test this hypothesis. Many upland areas have been artificially drained using ditches. Blocking these ditches may therefore provide a potential management option for climate-change adaptation in the UK uplands.Successful adaptation assumes the availability of appropriate information for groups potentially impacted by climate change. This research examines information available to help farmers in the Canadian Prairies to adapt, with focus on information related to soil and water conservation practices, such as preserving wetlands and maintaining shelterbelts and groundcover, considered particularly important for this region. Results of 28 semi-structured interviews carried out with producers in two Prairie provinces, Alberta and Manitoba, revealed that information regarding soil and water conservation practices comes from a variety of sources. These included industry, government, producer and conservation organizations, social sources of information and personal experience, and media. Producers were more open to new practices when they could learn them through observation, trials, and two-way dialogue. There appears to be a general lack of producer organization involvement, and dearth of government information, direction, and coordination for climate change adaptation. Information from government and producer organizations can be important for the co-production of knowledge that can lead to successful adaptation.Democratic legitimacy in the carbon fuel era has been based on popular acceptance of elitist democracy in return for economic growth and rising material standards of living. This social contract of consumption is coming to an end with climate change adaptation and ecological limits to growth. This article argues that a new era characterized by a social covenant of ecological trusteeship is necessary. Will the politics and governance of this new covenant necessarily be elitist and authoritarian, or can it be democratic in new ways? The article discusses the nature and prospects for a future democratic governance that remains liberal in its respect for human rights and the rule of law, but is more deliberative and civic in its orientation than interest group liberalism has been. Key concepts of ecological literacy and ecological democratic citizenship are discussed. Literacy is understood as a function of both information and empowerment. A model of citizenship as trusteeship is defended against the notion of citizenship as rational-choice consumerism. Deliberation as distinct from bargaining, and dialogic judgment rather than monologic assessment of interests, are defended as the appropriate forms of policy making and policy analysis.Higher temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns have induced an acute decrease in Andean glaciers, thus leading to additional stress on water supply. To adapt to climate changes, local governments need information on the rate of glacier area and volume losses and on current ice thickness. Remote sensing analyses of Coropuna glacier (Peru) delineate an acute glaciated area decline between 1955 and 2008. We tested how volume changes can be estimated with remote sensing and GIS techniques using digital elevation models derived from both topographic maps and satellite images. Ice thickness was measured in 2004 using a Ground Penetrating Radar coupled with a Ground Positioning System during a field expedition. It provided profiles of ice thickness on different slopes, orientations and altitudes. These were used to model the current glacier volume using Geographical Information System and statistical multiple regression techniques. The results revealed a significant glacier volume loss; however the uncertainty is higher than the measured volume loss. We also provided an estimate of the remaining volume. The field study provided the scientific evidence needed by COPASA, a local Peruvian NGO, and GTZ, the German international cooperation agency, in order to alert local governments and communities and guide them in adopting new climate change adaptation policies.The tourism sector is particularly vulnerable to changes in climate, as it is often the weather that sets the parameters for various forms of tourism. Despite this, little research has been done to assist tourism destinations in adapting to climate change. Adaptation aims to moderate, cope with, and benefit from the consequences of climate change in order to manage risk and reduce vulnerability. Most adaptation models focus on the risks of climate change, missing the potential opportunities that may emerge due to climate change. Furthermore, the role of the tourist is largely neglected. This paper provides an analysis of existing adaptation models for tourism before proposing a conceptual framework for regional adaptation to climate change which takes into account both supply- and demand-side perspectives. Consequently, the proposed model provides a holistic approach to adaptation that aims to increase resilience and resistance to climate change by implementing appropriate adaptation strategies that reduce vulnerability, while increasing readiness to capitalise on opportunities presented by climate change.As mitigation will not likely be sufficient to hinder climate change, adaptation to the consequences of climate change will be needed The impacts of climate change will include such phenomena as increased flooding and sea level rise, which will in turn have significant effects on densely populated and infrastructurally-developed areas in advanced industrial states Despite the potential for serious consequences very little of the existing climate change adaptation literature has focused on adaptation in the EU or the industrialised world in general This chapter and the volume at large address this gap This chapter describes the governance system of public and private actors and bodies that set the context for adaptive capacity at local, regional national and EU levels, and argues that adaptive capacity can largely be seen as related to the resource distribution and prioritisation processes within such systems The chapter further outlines the comparative approach taken by the volume, including a common methodology for the presented multi-level studiesThe UK has been one of the early actors in developing adaptation to climate change, and today has a comprehensive legislative and regulative framework for including climate change effects in planning This chapter reviews the development of the UK approach, drawing on a literature study and semi-structured interviews conducted with several actors, the majority of whom are from public administration at the national, regional and local levels The study focuses on England and the South-East England region in particular, one of the areas most at risk of flooding and sea level rise in the UK In addition to discussing the national and regional levels, the chapter describes how adaptation has been integrated in a number of counties, cities and boroughs in the area All in all, the study reveals a relatively developed approach to adaptation, made possible in part as a result of both the recognised sensitivity of selected areas to climate change and the centralised nature of the political system Centralised as well as network capacities of the central government have made it possible for the national level to both include adaptation criteria in the performance assessment framework for local authorities, and for these to be broadly accepted among affected actorsAlthough mitigation of climate change dominates the climate change agenda in Finland, adaptation to climate change is increasingly recognised as an important policy issue across all levels of governance Finland was an early mover on adaptation, being the first country in Europe to publish a National Adaptation Strategy to climate change in 2005 After a few years of mainstreaming of adaptation into regular planning, implementation and monitoring at the national level, adaptation has been recognised important and some measures have been implemented but that there are also sectors where hardly any measures have been taken At sub-national level, actors are pursuing voluntary climate strategies that are not directly linked to the developments at the national level This chapter highlights how the different levels of governance are disconnected in terms of their actions on adaptation On the one hand, at the national level, the NAS predominantly concentrates on administrative sectors by mainstreaming adaptation On the other hand, the lower levels of governance are pursuing their separate climate strategies that are based on voluntary initiatives with little input from the national level Thus, despite the early action on adaptation, it can be argued that implementation of adaptation measures has been slow and fragmented across levels of governanceThis chapter examines the Italian approach to climate change adaptation at the national scale, where the design of a formal adaptation strategy has yet to emerge out of preliminary stages Adaptation discourses at the national level were initiated in 2007 at the time of the National Climate Change Conference, after which efforts to pull together a national adaptation strategy were considerably slowed by low prioritisation of climate change adaptation, changes in national administration and poor coordination The ways in which adaptation is beginning to emerge at the regional and local scales is assessed in the Emilia-Romagna region and its province and municipality of Ferrara Policy reviews and interviews with decision makers in the case study areas indicate that despite such slow progress, both national and regional actors have furthered adaptation discourses and activities at different scales Issues that have typically hindered environmental policy development are partially overcome as strong political leadership, stakeholder involvement and strengthening vertical and horizontal networks are coupled within governments with long-standing interest in environmental issues and positive science-policy linkages At all scales, adaptation has occurred in response to current risks and vulnerabilities with little consideration of and future projections and long-term planningThis paper reviews the literature on the economics of climate change adaptation in developing countries, and identifies three key points for consideration in future studies. One key point is that all development policy should be formulated using forecasts from climate science as a baseline. When this is not done, there is risk that a false status quo without climate change is seen as an implicit baseline. Another key point is that authors must be clearer about their behavioral assumptions: Many studies either (problematically) assume profit maximization on the side of farm households, or do not specify behavioral assumptions at all. A third important point is that the allocation of rights is crucial for the results; if households have a right to maintain their current livelihoods, the costs of climate change in developing countries are considerably greater than traditional willingness-to-pay studies would indicate. Thus, costs and benefits of climate change adaptation cannot be analyzed using economic aspects only; climate science, behavioral science, and legal and moral aspects have crucial implications for the outcome of the analysis.It is vitally important to identify agroecosystems that may cease functioning because of changing climate or land degradation. However, identifying such systems is confounded on both conceptual and methodological grounds, especially in systems that are moving toward thresholds, a common trait of dryland environments. This study explores these challenges by analyzing how a range of external pressures affect the vulnerability of dryland pastoral systems in the Kalahari. This is achieved by employing dynamic systems modeling approaches to understand the pathways by which communities became vulnerable to drought. Specifically, we evaluate how external pressures have changed: (1) different agroecosystems' abilities to tolerate drought, i.e., ecosystem resilience; (2) rural communities' abilities to adapt to drought, mediated via their access to assets; and (3) the ability of institutions and policy interventions to play a role in mediating drought-related crises, i.e., socio-political governance. This is done by reanalyzing ecological and participatory research findings along with farm-scale livestock offtake data from across the Kalahari in Botswana. An iterative process was followed to establish narratives exploring how external drivers led to changes in agroecosystem resilience, access to assets, and the institutional capacity to buffer the system. We use "causal loop diagrams" and statistical dynamic system models to express key quantitative relationships and establish future scenarios to help define where uncertainties lie by showing where the system is most sensitive to change. We highlight how that greater sharing of land management knowledge and practices between private and communal land managers can provide 'win-win-win' benefits of reducing system vulnerability, increasing economic income, and building social capital. We use future scenario analyses to identify key areas for future studies of climate change adaptation across the Kalahari.Climate change will increasingly challenge ecosystem managers' ability to protect species diversity and maintain ecosystem function. In response, the National Park Service and the United States Forest Service have promoted climate change adaptation as a management strategy to increase ecosystem resilience to changing climatic conditions. However, very few examples of completed adaptation plans or projects exist. Here, we examine managers' perceptions of internal and external institutional barriers to implementing adaptation strategies. We conducted semi-structured interviews (n=32) with regional managers and agency staff in six park and forest units in Washington State. We found that internal barriers, including unclear mandates from superiors and bureaucratic rules and procedures, are perceived as greater constraints than external barriers related to existing federal environmental laws. Respondents perceived process-oriented environmental laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, as enablers of adaptation strategies, and prescriptive laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, as barriers. Our results suggest that climate change adaptation is more often discussed than pursued, and that institutional barriers within agencies limit what can be accomplished.This paper is a methodological contribution to emerging debates on the role of learning, particularly forward-looking (anticipatory) learning, as a key element for adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change. First, we describe two major challenges: understanding adaptation as a process and recognizing the inadequacy of existing learning tools, with a specific focus on high poverty contexts and complex livelihood-vulnerability risks. Then, the article examines learning processes from a dynamic systems perspective, comparing theoretical aspects and conceptual advances in resilience thinking and action research/learning (AR/AL). Particular attention is paid to learning loops (cycles), critical reflection, spaces for learning, and power. Finally, we outline a methodological framework to facilitate iterative learning processes and adaptive decision making in practice. We stress memory, monitoring of key drivers of change, scenario planning, and measuring anticipatory capacity as crucial ingredients. Our aim is to identify opportunities and obstacles for forward-looking learning processes at the intersection of climatic uncertainty and development challenges in Africa, with the overarching objective to enhance adaptation and resilient livelihood pathways, rather than learning by shock.The USA and the Western Europe are responsible for 2/3 of the CO2 emissions accumulated until today. On the other hand, Africa has produced but 3% of polluting emission since 1900 until today, burning mineral fuels. Since 1992, the most industrialized countries have promised to help "the most vulnerable nations face the adverse consequences of climate changes" by supporting the costs of adaptation. The commitment was included in the convention frame that gave birth to the Kyoto Treaty, which was rejected by the George W. Bush administration, even though the initial document, issued in 1992, had been signed by George Bush. The industrialized countries that signed the Kyoto Treaty have decided to create a special fund for "climate adaptation". Hundred of millions of dollars had to be used in order to diminish the impact of the global warming in the most exposed areas. Lately, maybe because the CO2 emissions increase due to human activities, the planet climate has changed in worse. 2007 was a key year in evaluating the reply the planet would give to the global overheating, mainly caused by the green-house effect and worsen by El Nino oceanic stream. This superposition of climate factors made 2007 to be one of the warmest years ever registered.A levy on the Clean Development Mechanism and other carbon trading schemes is a potential source of finance for climate change adaptation. An adaptation levy of 2% is currently imposed on all CDM transactions which could raise around $500 million between now and 2012. This paper analyses the scope for raising further adaptation finance from the CDM, the economic costs (deadweight loss) of such a measure and the incidence of the levy, that is, the economic burden the levy would impose on the buyers and sellers of credits. We find that a levy of 2% could raise up to $2 billion a year in 2020 if there are no restrictions on demand. This could rise to $10 billion for a 10% tax. Restrictions on credit demand (called supplementarity limits, the requirement that most emission abatement should happen domestically) curtail trade volumes and consequently tax revenues. They also alter the economic impact of the CDM levy. Without supplementarity restrictions sellers (developing countries) bear twothirds of the cost of the tax. If there are supplementarity limits they can pass on the tax burden to buyers (developed countries) more or less in full. Without supplementarity restrictions the distortionary effect of the levy (its deadweight loss) rises sharply with the tax rate. With them the deadweight loss is close to zero. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We introduce a new pragmatic procedure called the 'climate learning ladder' to structure policy analysis, support reflection and identify critical decisions to support climate adaptation. This tool is the result of the reflexive learning process that occurred while developing innovative appraisal methods in the Alxa League of Inner Mongolia, China, and in the Guadiana river basin in the European Union. Building capacities to cope with climate change requires going beyond simply providing 'more knowledge' on climate impacts to policy makers. Instead, climate adaptation can be understood as a multi-step social process in which individuals and organizations need to learn how to (1) manage different framings of the issues at stake while raising awareness of climate risks and opportunities, (2) understand different motives for, and generate adequate incentives or sanctions to ensure, action, (3) develop feasible options and resources for individual and collective transformation and collaboration and (4) institutionalize new rights, responsibilities and feedback learning processes for climate adaptation in the long term. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The creation and funding of international institutions for adaptation to climate change involve questions of justice. Should unconditional assistance flow to governments or should assistance be provided in ways that ensure benefits flow to vulnerable populations? Do major emitters of greenhouse gases have special obligations to assist the developing world adapt to climate change? Which actors are the proper bearers of obligations to assist? After reviewing both state-centred and cosmopolitan arguments about adaptation assistance, it is argued that neither philosophical perspective justifies the statist design of existing institutions. A more just and effective international agreement on climate change adaptation must achieve a higher degree of consistency between the principles of burden sharing applied internationally and domestically. Adaptation assistance should target human welfare rather than provide compensation to states, and should be funded through measures that impose similar emission costs on affluent people in both developed and developing countries. These arguments are briefly demonstrated using the case of China.Climate change is predicted to increase the intensity and negative impacts of urban heat events, prompting the need to develop preparedness and adaptation strategies that reduce societal vulnerability to extreme heat. Analysis of societal vulnerability to extreme heat events requires an interdisciplinary approach that includes information about weather and climate, the natural and built environment, social processes and characteristics, interactions with stakeholders, and an assessment of community vulnerability at a local level. In this letter, we explore the relationships between people and places, in the context of urban heat stress, and present a new research framework for a multi-faceted, top-down and bottom-up analysis of local-level vulnerability to extreme heat. This framework aims to better represent societal vulnerability through the integration of quantitative and qualitative data that go beyond aggregate demographic information. We discuss how different elements of the framework help to focus attention and resources on more targeted health interventions, heat hazard mitigation and climate adaptation strategies.1. Freshwater systems are subject to multiple stressors that include changing climate, changing land use, changing demands on water resources and changing nutrient cycles. Global trends suggest these stressors that impact on water availability will increase over the coming decades, and - without action - will constrain opportunities to sustain ecosystem services to deliver the Millennium Development Goals. 2. Although a key 'service' freshwaters provide is buffering inputs from the land system, predicting ecosystem response through observation and modelling is complex because nonlinear and dynamic interactions amongst a large number of constituents operate to regulate biogeochemical transformations in freshwater systems. 3. Reductionist approaches have been successful at unravelling many of the processes and some of the interactions in freshwater systems. However, reductionist approaches cannot provide the concepts or methods to understand how system properties will emerge in response to a changing climate (particularly the changing spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation); to the consequent change in water availability and water quality in the context of social drivers on the demand for water; and to feedbacks arising from nutrient cycling across a range of scales. 4. This study presents a review of the evidence for landscape-scale filtering of nutrient delivery to receiving waters and examines the role of the internal processing of nutrients at critical interfaces such as the hyporheic in attenuating nutrient loads. Analysis of research on the spatial scales and time step appropriate for catchment and water quality observations indicates the importance of small scale and short time step data for unravelling nutrient cycling in freshwater ecosystems. 5. Thematic implications: leading work in the catchment and aquatic sciences on the importance of diffuse nutrient losses from land, and on nutrient cycling in freshwaters, in governing water quality and protecting water availability, is making an increasing contribution to mainstream environmental science. Critically, the evidence base is starting to grow to inform policy-related debates with respect to food security, to climate change adaptation and for sustaining ecosystem services in freshwater environments.The participatory modelling project (PAMO) carried out in the Thukela River Basin, South Africa assessed vulnerability to climate variability and change on water resources through direct involvement of affected groups. The aim was to increase stakeholder confidence and ownership, and create a local adaptation plan. Meetings were held with three stakeholder groups: (a) government authorities, research institutes, NGOs, (b) commercial farmers, and (c) small-scale farmers, and complemented with interviews. Based on participants' requests, modellers compiled regionally dynamically downscaled climate change projections, as well as their hydrological consequences. The project focused on agriculture, water resources/infrastructure and biodiversity. Though many future problems were shared, their pre-conditions for dealing with these were vastly different. Knowledge transfer within and across the farming communities and with government agencies on climate change, adaptation measures, and means to procure financing and permits for measures will aid local initiatives to prepare for climate variability and change.Background: Population health is a primary goal of sustainable development. United Nations international conferences like the Beijing Platform for Action have highlighted the key role of women in ensuring sustainable development. In the context of climate change, women are affected the most while they display knowledge and skills to orient themselves toward climate adaptation activities within their societies. Objective: To investigate how the gender perspective is addressed as an issue in research and policy-making concerning climate change and global health. Methods: A broad literature search was undertaken using the databases Pubmed and Web of Science to explore the terms 'climate change,' 'health,' 'gender,' and 'policy.' Climate change and health-related policy documents of the World Health Organization (WHO) and National Communications and National Adaptation Programs of Action reports submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of selected countries were studied. Assessment guidelines to review these reports were developed from this study's viewpoint. Results: The database search results showed almost no articles when the four terms were searched together. The WHO documents lacked a gender perspective in their approach and future recommendations on climate policies. The reviewed UN reports were also neutral to gender perspective except one of the studied documents. Conclusion: Despite recognizing the differential effects of climate change on health of women and men as a consequence of complex social contexts and adaptive capacities, the study finds gender to be an underrepresented or non-existing variable both in research and studied policy documents in the field of climate change and health.While there is no question that successful mitigation strategies remain critical in the quest to avoid worst-case climate change scenarios, we have passed the point where mitigation efforts alone can deal with the problems that climate change is creating. Because of "committed" warming climate change that will occur regardless of mitigation measures, a result of the already-accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere what happens to coupled socio-ecological systems over the next decades, and most likely over the next few centuries, will largely be beyond human control. The time to start preparing for these changes is now, by making adaptation part of a national climate change policy. American environmental law and policy are not keeping up with the need for adaptation. For example, environmental and natural resources law are currently based on assumptions of ecological stationarity and pursue goals of preservation and restoration. Neither those assumptions nor those goals fit a world of continual, unpredictable, and nonlinear transformations of complex ecosystems but that is the world that climate change is creating. This Article argues for a principled flexibility model of climate change adaptation law to pursue goals of increasing the resilience and adaptive capacity of socioecological systems. In so doing, it lays out five principles and several subprinciples for the law of environmental regulation and natural resource management. Structurally, this Article also strongly suggests that climate change adaptation law must be bimodal: it must promote informed and principled flexibility when dealing with climate change impacts, especially impacts that affect baseline ecological conditions such as temperature and hydrology, while simultaneously embracing an unyielding commitment to precautionary regulation when dealing with everything else.In this chapter, a review is given of progress to date on an intercomparison project designed to compare and evaluate the ability of climate models to generate tropical cyclones, the Tropical Cyclone climate Model Intercomparison Project (TC-MIP). Like other intercomparison projects, this project aims to evaluate climate models using common metrics in order to make suggestions regarding future development of such models. A brief summary is given of the current ability of these models and some initial conclusions are made. Coarser-resolution climate models appear to have difficulty simulating tropical formation in the Atlantic basin, but simply increasing the resolution of such models does not necessarily lead to improved simulations in this region. The choice of convective scheme is also important in determining the tropical cyclone formation rate. There appears to be little relationship between the simulated details of the large-scale climate and model tropical cyclone formation rates, and possible reasons are given for this. Recent fine-resolution models have shown considerable improvement in their simulation of both global and Atlantic tropical cyclone formation, leading to the possibility that such models could be used for detection and attribution studies of the causes of observed changes in tropical cyclone formation rate, particularly in the Atlantic basin.Mean annual cycles of runoff, evapotranspiration, leaf area index (LAI) and potential vegetation were modelled for Mesoamerica using the SVAT model MAPSS with different climatology datasets. We calibrated and validated the model after building a comprehensive database of regional runoff, climate, soils and LAI. The performance of several gridded precipitation climatology datasets (CRU, FCLIM, WorldClim, TRMM, WindPPT and TCMF) was evaluated and FCLIM produced the most realistic runoff. Annual runoff was successfully predicted (R-2=0.84) for a set of 138 catchments, with a low runoff bias (12%) that might originate from an underestimation of the precipitation over cloud forests. The residuals were larger in small catchments but remained homogeneous across elevation, precipitation, and land-use gradients. Assuming a uniform distribution of parameters around literature values, and using a Monte Carlo-type approach, we estimated an average model uncertainty of 42% of the annual runoff. The MAPSS model was most sensitive to the parameterization of stomatal conductance. Monthly runoff seasonality was mimicked "fairly" in 78% of the catchments. Predicted LAI was consistent with MODIS collection 5 and GLOBCARBON remotely sensed global products. The simulated evapotranspiration: runoff ratio increased exponentially for low precipitation areas, highlighting the importance of accurately modelling evapotranspiration below 1500 mm of annual rainfall with the help of SVAT models such as MAPSS. We propose the first high-resolution (1 km(2) pixel) maps combining average long-term runoff, evapotranspiration, leaf area index and potential vegetation types for Mesoamerica.Severe events around the globe have highlighted the threat to life, infrastructure and the environment posed by flooding. Flood forecasting systems are a vital component of broader flood risk management activities. These systems are becoming increasingly more sophisticated as their importance in reducing life loss and economic damages is realized. Part of this increase in complexity is focused on the ability to predict and warn of failures in dykes, levees and embankments. A new European ICT project, UrbanFlood for Environmental Services and Climate Change Adaptation, has recently been commissioned and is introduced in this presentation. The primary objective of the Urban Flood project is to develop early warning systems that will monitor flood protection systems in real-time, identify vulnerable locations, model the failure and predict dike collapse and subsequent inundation. In combination with the damage assessment, Urban Flood will serve as an advanced decision support system, mitigating the impact of seasonal and catastrophic floods. Modeling is one of the key tasks in the project. The models will be required to simulate the behavior of the material properties of the layered dikes (sand, clay, peat, grass or concrete cover, metal frame, dam gates, etc.), during extreme hydraulic loading events. In earthen dikes, extra challenge is posed by the non-linear elastic plastic properties of the deformable clay. A realistic simulation of the dike will model the free-surface water dynamics; convective and diffusive transfer of water inside the porous materials; dynamic response of clay to the water pressure; structural mechanics, deformation and actual dike breakdown and flood. The models shall cover a wide range of scales from a sand grain to a flooded city. The time scales will range from seconds (for water penetrating the soil) to hours (for dike collapse dynamics and ocean tides). Eventually, the models will predict the influence of seasonal and global changes on the stability of flood defense systems. Full 3D transient simulation of dike failure with subsequent inundation will require significant computing resources. The project started three months ago, and we will present the plan for developing the modeling cascade for the system. This work is supported by the UrbanFlood European Union project N 248767, theme ICT-2009.6.4 (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate change adaptation and mitigation needs to cut across all poverty reduction efforts, including any post-2015 architecture. However, low carbon development (LCD) debates to date have been mainly about high- and middle-income countries. There are good reasons why even the poorest countries with low emissions might be interested in pursuing LCD. This article argues that we need to link up pro-poor policy debates with the low carbon debates as part of a post-MDG agenda. The article explores several policy responses to LCD and analyses how pro-poor these policy responses are.In a restructured power system, there are many players who benefit from Demand Response (DR). These include the Market Operator (MO), the Transmission System Operator (TSO), Distributors, Retailers, Aggregators, and also consumers. This paper proposes a new concept - Demand Response eXchange (DRX) - in which DR is treated as a virtual resource that can be exchanged between two groups of players, namely the DR user group and the DR supplier group. Players within the DR user group, including the MO, the TSO, Distributors and Retailers, are the ones who need DR to improve the reliability of their related business and systems. Players within the DR supplier group, including Aggregators and consumers, are the ones capable of negotiating DR with the users. The paper suggests that there are two alternative types of business models for DRX, namely bilateral and pool-based. In the bilateral model, DR users and DR suppliers independently arrange the exchange of DR with no participation by a system operator. In the pool-based model, DR exchange between suppliers and users is facilitated and settled by a new system operator named DRX Operator (DRXO). The paper then focuses on investigating the feasibility of the pool-based model versus the bilateral model with regard to power system restructuring.The German InnoLand Research Area is constituted by the counties Barnim and Uckermark. As part of the State of Brandenburg within North-Eastern Germany, the Research Area is a typical young moraine lowland with domination of crop production. This region - located between the Berlin metropolitan area in the south and the Polish border in the northeast - is characterized by strong gradients with respect to the intensity of land use as well as by impacts due to land use, economic power, and demographic changes. Actual challenges are high unemployment rate and increased production of energy crops despite low yields. Future challenges may arise from droughts and increasing shortages in ground water supply due to climate change. As a result of a regional consensus finding process local authorities made the decision to establish a "Zero Emissions Region" as an optimization for one specific demand. Consequently, a landscape experiment, using untreated or only partly treated waste water as contribution to a environmental sound material flow management exemplified by cultivation of reed will be conducted. A double dividend with respect to landscape functions could be obtained with this approach to solve problems with the water household and water quality and to establish a sustained production e.g. of biomass for energy production.Advocates of community-based adaptation claim that it heaps to identify, assist, and implement community-based development activities, research and policy in response to climate change. However, there has been little systematic examination of the ways in which existing experiences of dealing with hazard events con inform communily-based adaptation. This article analyses the experience of the Homeless People's Federation of the Philippines in respect of community-led disaster responses, with the aim of informing future discussions on the role of planning for climate change adaptation in low- and middle-income countries.True sustainability demands that we seek to more than 'prop up' traditional approaches to our environment; rather, it requires that we redress current shortcomings in the planning and design of our urban environment at both bio-regional and local scales. Nourishing Urbanism proposes a shift in the urban and non-urban paradigm relating to energy, water and food; all face significant climate-related challenges - and are united by land-use policy, planning and design. We need a renewed planning and design framework for cities and regions that allows the retrofitting of today's urbanity, and prepares our cities for a new tomorrow. Nourishing Urbanism seeks to provide a malleable planning and design framework that embraces the symbiosis between urban and non-urban, and provides for the well-being of the human condition through recommending policies and technical solutions that readdress land use, ultimately impacting the security of our energy, water and soil resources, as well as infrastructure, food supply, health and design.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to emphasise the importance of resolving the disconnect between issues of quality, timing and uncertainty in climate projections and the need for swift, informed and appropriate climate change adaptation decisions. Design/methodology/approach - The paper utilises results from a multi-level study of adaptation policy conducted in early 2009 to assess the different approaches to climate change, the production of climate information, and its application at national and select sub-national levels in Italy and Finland. Data were collected via a preliminary review of relevant documents as well as 23 interviews in Italy and 21 interviews in Finland conducted with climate change and environmental policy actors at each scale of administration. Findings - The paper shows while the different extent and processes of climate research and their linkages to policy can be seen as determinants of the development of adaptation measures, the multi-scalar adaptation decision-making processes and the ways in which climate change and climate information are framed and used render climate research and its application a complex process. Originality/value - The paper contributes further understanding of the linkages between science and policy with regards to adaptation, and the nature of science-policy linkages in local decision-making processes in particular. The findings are of importance to climate scientists and policy-makers alike.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify and critically examine a framing of key characteristics for climate change adaptation learning and action in the context of urban Pakistani local government. Design/methodology/approach - The research employed a combination of approaches; predominantly literature review and interview methodologies. Recognising the need to understand climate change adaptation as an iterative learning process, the literature review concentrated on organisational and policy learning, with special consideration given to those characteristics most pertinent to urban governance in the Pakistani context. This analysis was then furthered through primary data collated through a series of interviews, with the City District Government of Lahore as the chosen case study for this piece of research. Initial scoping interviews were followed up by a series of in-depth, semi-structured, interviews with local government officials, an assessment process used to examine conceptual evidence and findings in the Pakistani urban context. A total of 21 Pakistani professionals, working in a variety of roles for local government, were subject to the interview process. Findings - From a critical analysis of conceptual and real world evidence, the authors identified six discrete characteristics that could be used to frame the context of climate change adaptation learning and action in the Pakistani urban local government context. These have been categorised as: leadership for adaptation, vision for adaptation, culture for adaptation, good governance for adaptation, innovation and creativity for adaptation and resources for adaptation. Originality/value - The value of this paper is several-fold: it applies a learning perspective to the climate change adaptation debate, identifies a framing of key characteristics for climate change adaptation learning and action, and uses an actor-based approach to examine some of the key conceptual ideas in the Pakistani urban context.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the development of climate change adaptation curricula. Instituting adaptation frameworks that can assist professionals to respond to climate change, yet be tailored to specific sectoral needs is crucial. Professionals working at the coalface of the climate change challenge need to build new skills and create innovative solutions in social and political contexts. Design/methodology/approach - Using case studies, this paper reflects on the experience of developing climate change curricula at multiple levels and the obstacles to implementation of the links between curriculum and practice. This includes reflections on the necessity of interlinking political, social and economic aspects together in delivery of such a course. Findings - The paper finds that a strictly content based approach to curriculum development is inadequate. The context of an issue like climate change requires attention to the specific needs of the target audience, in addition to delivery of generic content, so as to achieve the industry uptake critical to ensuring social and political objectives are implemented on the ground. Originality/value - The paper concludes by examining the utility of such educational initiatives to build community resilience, forge networks between multiple sectors and contribute to achieving social/institutional, political and economic outcomes for adaptation to climate change.Increased temperatures from climate change are expected to result in sea level rise which will initially be experienced in the surge events that accompany hazards. Despite uncertainty various scenarios have been proposed that predict more severe droughts, wildfire, floods, tropical cyclones/hurricanes and severe storms. Media focus and raised public awareness of climate change risks presents an opportunity to enhance community level mitigation for climate-induced natural hazards. Emergency managers and community researchers must guide communities towards adaptation to climate change impacts. A review of recent literature on the state of knowledge of climate change impact and natural hazards examines the problem of translating this increased risk into community hazard mitigation strategies, and the more complexity of identifying those hazard risks that specifically relate to climate change which requires enhanced adaptation strategies on the part of households, communities and local governments. Climate change adaptation must be flexible, local, community based and stakeholder driven, involving all of government and community agencies and institutions.Previous studies have shown that limited understanding of the social needs and capabilities of specific places and communities present limitations in the progression of public policy and strategic response to climate change risks. Social capital, a mutually beneficial collective action found in communities to different extents, has the potential to facilitate urban vulnerability reduction necessary for climate change adaptation. This article explores how the notion of social capital can attain new relevance by motivating the initiation and accomplishment of measures to overcome climate change risks facing coastal East African cities. Building on the existing conceptualization of social capital and associated concepts in climate change theory and policy, this article demonstrates how, within a social capital framework, the analysis of risk and adaptation can move away from a purely top-down focus on formal organizational capacity towards an acknowledgment of the importance of informal social networks in the final directing of flow of activities as well as policy enactment. This article finds that a strong tradition of collaboration, trust and reciprocal relationships between local resource-oriented groups in the cities of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam can be leveraged to generate material interventions directed at reducing vulnerability to climate variability and change.The Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) establishes a framework for integrated water management and functions as a major legal frame for the protection of water bodies in Europe. In the Flemish Region the Directive has been implemented by the Decree of July 2003 on Integral Water Policy. As climate change affects the quality and quantity status of water bodies, the question arises whether the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Flemish implementation legislation are well-suited to handle climate change impacts. Although climate change concerns are not explicitly incorporated in the text of the WFD and the Flemish Decree, this author believes that the main components for an effective adaptation strategy are included in the above mentioned legislation. More in particular, this is achieved by the environmental objectives which have to be elaborated in environmental quality standards (EQS) on the one hand, and the integrated approach on the other hand. Water quality management on the basis of a high level of protection of the aquatic environment is indispensable for adapting to climate change, as ecosystem-based adaptation is most cost-effective. Therefore spatial planning should integrate water quality concerns, as spatial planning may be critical for spatial quality and more specific for the achievement of the environmental objectives. Consequently this contribution focuses on the impact of water quality standards on, permit decision-making and spatial planning. In this context some legal instruments anchored in the Flemish legislation on integral water policy will be highlighted, especially the 'watertoets' (translated as the water checkup), which may be useful to facilitate adaptation to climate change.In working with local climate adaptation, questions are raised of how to increase the capacity for integrating climate considerations in planning and decision-making. As part of the institutional dimension of adaptive capacity, how to foster processes of learning and reflexivity among different administrative units and actors is particularly essential. The aim of this paper is to analyse how the call for systematic organizational learning is manifested in local climate adaptation in two Swedish municipalities, illustrating what forms of learning occur and what learning challenges are identified. Despite the distinct and often contrasting approaches to climate adaptation adopted in the two municipalities-reflecting a variety of learning approaches-there are striking similarities in terms of difficulties in moving beyond the specialized few and reaching general acceptability as well as in the inability to mediate tensions between local sector interests, values and priorities and thus bringing about reflexive learning through experience. The paper shows that the cross-cutting nature of climate change needs to be further acknowledged in practice, including to what extent learning takes place among a specialized few key actors or as part of a systematic and cross-sectoral organizational mainstreaming as well as to what extent learning 'on paper' is actually embraced as 'learning in use' in concrete working practices.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified Australia as among the developed nations most at risk from climate change effects. Key tourism icon destinations and the tourism sector generally have been identified as being particularly at risk. This paper reports on an interdisciplinary, multi-case study approach to assess tourism stakeholders' knowledge of, and approaches to, climate change adaptation and to explore the potential for building a self-assessment toolkit that can be exported to other tourism destinations. This study examined existing knowledge on anticipated biophysical changes and, through primary research (stakeholder interviews and social learning workshops), gauged the expected adaptive approaches of destination communities and the tourism sector to these changes for 2020, 2050 and 2070. The facilitated workshops generated a common set of adaptation strategies across a diverse set of tourist destinations. A key finding from the workshops is that the tourism sector is not yet ready to invest in climate change adaptation because of the perceived uncertainties. Ongoing leadership for such measures were seen to rest with the public sector, especially local authorities. Whether such assessments can be self-generated or require specialist facilitation remains open to debate.Problem: Human and natural systems will probably have to adapt to climate change impacts, but this cannot be planned for using the traditional approach based on predictions because of the subject's great complexity, its planning horizon more than 50 years away, and uncertainty about the future climate and how effectively CO2 emissions will be reduced. Purpose: This article proposes a more appropriate basis for planning climate change adaptation. Anticipatory governance is a flexible decision framework that uses a wide range of possible futures to prepare for change and to guide current decisions toward maximizing future alternatives or minimizing future threats. Rather than trying to tame or ignore uncertainty, this approach explores uncertainty and its implications for current and future decision making. Methods: I review and summarize the literature on anticipatory governance and provide three case studies to demonstrate its application to climate change planning. Results and conclusions: Denver Water, New York City, and the City of Phoenix are all using scenarios to anticipate the range of global climate changes that may impact their communities and to develop adaptation strategies to address these impacts. Each is developing a decision framework for implementing adaptation strategies incrementally based on climate monitoring. An incremental approach minimizes the resources that must be allocated to address these risks and has allowed these cities to plan in spite of the high uncertainty associated with climate change science and social change. Takeaway for practice: The complexity, uncertainty, and distant planning horizon associated with climate change cannot be managed sufficiently for the traditional predict-and-plan approach to yield good decisions about the significant social and capital investments likely to be required for adaptation. To be successful, social institutions must embrace new methods that explore uncertainty and that provide strategic guidance for current and future decisions. Research support: None.Adaptation to climate change has become one of the focal points of current development discussion. This article summarises the findings from a multidisciplinary research project looking at climate change impacts and adaptation in the Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia. The research highlights the central role that the hydrological cycle has in mediating climate change impacts on ecosystems and societies. The findings indicate that climate change should not be studied in isolation, as there are several other factors that are affecting the hydrological cycle. In the Mekong, the most important such factor is the on-going hydropower development that is likely to induce changes at least as radical as climate change, but with shorter timescales. The article concludes that climate change adaptation should broaden its view to consider environmental changes likely to occur due to different factors at various spatial and temporal scales. It is also important to recognise that climate change adaptation is a dynamic, development-orientated process that should consider also broader socio-political context. To enable this, we propose that an area-based adaptation approach should be used more actively to complement the dominant sector-based approaches.This introductory Chapter first outlines the role of justice in climate change and then explains the ethical approach to international climate adaptation funding adopted by the book. It is an approach which can be framed within the liberal accounts of justice that authoritatively underpin many of the ethical issues raised by climate change because it posits that, in order to alleviate injustice, the more powerful responsible subjects should support and assist the weaker vulnerable ones. The Chapter then specifies the book's main aims, namely to develop a framework of justice for the funding of adaptation to climate change within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change regime, and to evaluate its funding architecture against the ethical framework developed. The Chapter closes with an outline of the book's contents.The primary objective of this paper is to discuss the limitations of risk management as a strategy for Australian local government climate change adaptation and explore the advantages of complementary approaches, including a social-ecological resilience framework, adaptive and transition management, and vulnerability assessment. Some federal and local government initiatives addressing the limitations of risk-based approaches are introduced. We argue that conventional risk-based approaches to adaptation, largely focused on hazard identification and quantitative modelling, will be inadequate on their own for dealing with the challenges of climate change. We suggest that responses to climate change adaptation should move beyond conventional riskbased strategies to more realistically account for complex and dynamically evolving social-ecological systems.The reality of the human impact on climate change is now widely accepted, with the extent and potential catastrophic magnitude increasingly recognised by scientists and politicians, also by business people and citizens. Scientific climate observations, the development of scenarios on which planning and decisions can be based, studies on the economic impact of climate change, and monitoring actual impacts - at the macro (world) and micro level (community) - all point in a specific direction: humans must change towards sustainable energy solutions and change their lifestyle. As the urban population continues to grow, the centres of human life require a drastic rethink in terms of energy and the use of resources, also from a climate change mitigation and adaptation perspective. People are looking to their governments to respond appropriately. They are waiting for courageous leadership, guidance, motivation and direction - they need to know that a more coherent climate protection response is being developed. Expectations in this regard are particularly directed towards national government, but all other levels as well. Citizens are also looking towards their local governments, with the local impact of climate change requiring a local response, with plans for community based adaptation and local climate change mitigation. This publication addresses local governments and climate change, with a specific focus on smaller sized communities and renewable energy solutions.Now that most British local authorities have signed the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change, the Nottingham Declaration Partnership is concentrating on helping local authorities to respond to the growing demands that they face from the UK government and general public. Most important of these are the new national indicators on climate change which monitor local performance on climate change adaptation and mitigation.Since the start of its climate protection action in 1995 until today, the City of Stockholm has been working systematically and efficiently in this field, starting with mitigation actions and from 2006 including climate change adaptation. By 2005 the second greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets were met and emissions per inhabitant of Stockholm have been reduced by around 25% from the baseline levels of 1990. The City's long-term goal is to be fossil fuel-free by 2050, and the City has now established the ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 3 t of CO2 per resident by 2015. The early start and the methodical character of Stockholm's climate work in part explain the success story thus far. Other contributing factors are political support and networking with other municipalities, as well as organisations devoted to climate change related issues. The early decision to move from theory to practice, and to have ambitious policies matched by concrete action and a large number of practical measures, helped the City to move forward step-by-step. The climate protection activities of the City of Stockholm can serve as an inspirational model for other municipalities. In February 2009 Stockholm was awarded Europe's first Green Capital for 2010 partly due do decades of climate efforts and partly due to the environmental and climate goals we have established for the future.Countries in Europe and Central Asia (ECAI) face the same broad energy challenges as the world at large, with some regional distinctions. This chapter makes the case that modernization of national hydro-meteorological capacity to provide high-quality weather/climate services could help capture emerging economic gains, enable risk management in the energy sector, and support national economies in multiple sectors.Three working groups (WGs) were formed to address the five objectives of the Workshop. These objectives were: (A) To identify vulnerabilities of energy sector to extreme weather events in the context of climate change adaptation; (B) To identify impediments to the use of weather/climate information for the energy sector in the context of climate change adaptation; (C) To suggest ways to improve and/or facilitate the transfer of knowledge between weather/climate scientists and the energy experts to allow an optimal use of climate risk management; (D) To outline proposals to improve the way in which weather/climate information is used for modelling demand and to provide warnings for potential disruptions on energy operations and infrastructure; (E) To discuss possible contributions of the weather/climate scientists and the energy experts to climate change adaptation policies for energy security. All three WGs addressed the first two objectives in their early phases of discussion and then each of them went into greater detail in discussing C (WG1), D (WG2), E (WG3). Thus objectives C, D and E are the distinguishing attributes of the three WGs. The main recommendations of each WG are presented in this chapter. See also Troccoli et al. (2009).Climate change is predicted to increase ocean temperatures and alter plankton communities that are food for many marine fishes. To examine the effects of increased sea surface temperature and fluctuating food levels on reef-fish reproduction, breeding pairs of the coral reef damselfish Acanthochromis polyacanthus were maintained for a full summer breeding season in an orthogonal experiment comprising 3 temperature and 2 food levels. Water temperatures were the current-day average summer temperature for the collection location (28.5 degrees C) and temperatures predicted to become close to the average for this region over the next 50 to 100 yr (30.0 and 31.5 degrees C). Pairs were fed either a high or low quantity diet based on average and minimum feeding rates in the wild. Both water temperature and food supply affected reproductive output. Fewer pairs bred at elevated water temperatures and no pairs reproduced at either of the higher temperatures on the lower quantity diet. Furthermore, eggs produced were smaller at. 30.0 and 31.5 degrees C compared to those at 28.5 degrees C. Histological analysis of the gonads and steroid hormone measurement did not reveal any apparent differences in patterns of oogenesis among treatments. However, spermatogenesis was reduced at high temperatures despite sonic increases in plasma androgen levels. Reduced breeding rate at warmer temperatures combined with reduced sperm production indicates the potential for significant declines in A. polyacanthus populations as the ocean warms.Climate change presents a major threat to the prospects for sustained economic development in Africa. In spite of this, climate change concerns do not feature prominently in the implementation of national and regional development programmes. The present paper identifies the likely trade-offs and synergies that may emerge from an integrated 'development-climate' approach to policy making. Also, the paper presents the case for the formulation and evaluation of an integrated policy approach based on four principle criteria, including; long-term environmental effectiveness, equity considerations, cost-effectiveness and the institutional compatibility of the policy combinations. What is more? The paper suggests specific options for mainstreaming climate change adaptation and mitigation in various sectoral development agenda such as; agricultural intensification, poverty eradication, rural development, urban renewal, energy security of supply and trade. Given the wide divergence of socio-economic systems and the peculiar challenges faced by individual countries in the continent, further research is required on robust country-specific strategies for pursuing an integrated development-climate policy framework.High resolution surface climate variables are required for end-users in climate change impact studies; however, information provided by Global Climate Models (GCMs) has a coarser resolution. Downscaling techniques such as that developed at the University of Cape Town, which is based on self-organizing maps (SOMs) technique, can be used to downscale the coarse-scale GCM climate change projections into finer spatial resolution projections. The SOM downscaling technique was employed to project rainfall and temperature changes for 2046-2065 and 2080-2100 periods for Same district, Tanzania. This model was initially verified using downscaled NCEP reanalysis and observed climate data set, and between NCEP reanalysis and GCM controls. After verification the model was used to downscale climate change projections of five GCMs for 2046-2065 (future-A) and 2080-2100 (future-B) periods. These projections were then used to compute changes in the climate variables by comparing future-A and B to the control period (1961-2000). Verification results indicated that the NCEP downscaled climate compared well with the observed data. Also, comparison between NCEP downscaled to GCM downscaled showed that all the four GCM models (CGCM, CNRM, IPSL, and ECHAM) compared well with the NCEP downscaled temperature and rainfall data. Future projections (2046-2065) indicated 56 mm and 42 mm increase in seasonal total rainfall amounts for March-April-May (MAM) and October-November-December (OND) seasons (23% and 26% increase), respectively, and an increase of about 2 degrees C in temperature for both seasons. Furthermore, future projects show that during MAM there will be 2 days decrease in dry spells, and 8 days increase in seasonal length while for OND, there will also be 2 days decrease in dry spells, and 40 days increase in the seasonal length. Future-B projects 4 degrees C rise in temperature, and 46.5% and 35.8% increase in rainfall for MAM and OND, respectively. It is recommended to investigate the effect of increased rainfall and temperature on agricultural production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Economic development remains a priority of Chinese government. However it is, increasingly being measured by the effectiveness of the steps taken to protect the environment, including control of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) emissions. Climate change adaptation and mitigation not an altruistic pursuit but pressing imperatives for a sustainable and strong national economy. As a responsible country, we are committed to leveraging our people, capital, and ideas to help find effective market-based solutions to address climate change, ecosystem degradation, and other critical environmental issues, and to seek new business opportunities that benefit the environment.The average energy rating of existing housing stocks is estimated to be around 2 stars on the basis specified by the Australian Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS). Currently, most Australian states and territories require a minimum of 4 to 5 stars for new house designs with this requirement scheduled to rise to 6 stars in 2011. In recent years, 7 star houses have also been offered by several building developers in Australia. It is understood that the energy consumption of buildings closely depends on their surrounding climate, yet current practices assumes a stationary climate in both building energy efficiency design and regulation. In fact, any change of climate in the future implies that the energy rating of buildings, as well as their carbon emissions, may also experience changes. Especially, the mitigation efforts to reduce carbon emission in the housing sector by increasing building energy efficiency based on the assumption of stationary climate may be considerably compromised. This study investigated the potential impact of climate change on the energy efficiency in terms of energy ratings by taking a 5 star residential house in five regional climates varying from cold to hot humid in Australia. Ramification of the impact was also discussed, represented by the change in carbon emission, and it may have a considerable implication to carbon mitigation policies in the housing sector. In the study, future climate was projected by three General Circulation Models (GCMs) under three scenarios representing high, low and policy-intervened carbon emissions.Climate change has a multiplying effect on existing risks and vulnerabilities, and adds new threats to food security and nutrition among the poorest countries and communities. By 2050, climate change is projected to have increased the number of people at risk of hunger by 10 to 20 percent, compared to a no-climate-change scenario. Achieving global food security under a changing climate therefore poses a tremendous challenge to development and requires a strong commitment to a two-fold approach: 1) enhanced food production and availability through technical innovation and improvement in agriculture; and 2) enhanced access to adequate food and nutrition among the most vulnerable and at risk populations-through more inclusive development pathways, enhanced social protection and safety nets systems, as well as strengthened community resilience to natural disasters.Korea has always suffered from frequent flooding and drought because of its unfavorable climate and geological conditions. In order to survive the worst conditions and maintain food and water sustainability, some technology and wisdom might have been developed and melted into the Korean tradition and culture. Some of important wisdoms might be the selection of rice as the major crop, respecting farmers, developing rain gauge and record keeping of a nation wide rain gauge network and making regulations encouraging reservoirs. The multifunctional role of rice paddy areas such as to control flooding, draught, erosion, etc are reevaluated. From the lessons learned from Korean tradition, a new water management paradigm is suggested, which is to manage with many small reservoirs controlling both water quality and quantity at the source. The decentralized rainwater management at the whole watershed by all the stakeholders might be a good strategy for climate change adaptation.To tackle the global problem of climate change, it will be crucial that the global economic system adopts energy-saving measures and furthers its reliance on renewable energy sources. This challenge is particularly relevant for the tourism industry, which depends on transportation by definition, and is highly dependent on resources and energy in many other regards. Tourism can quickly be caught in a vicious cycle: the necessity to adapt to climate change, i.e. by increasing artificial snow making, or new product development as exemplified by the "wellness-boom", leads to ever higher rates of energy consumption, thus further contributing to climate change. However, the fledgling human explorations towards combating climate change and increasing energy efficiency also offer innovative opportunities for exploring new niches of tourism. This paper presents how such novel tourism opportunities avail themselves around the theme of renewable and sustainable energy use. Combining environmental education and experiencing novel products can be used for marketing a fundamentally new tourism product, which attracts both the technologically interested tourism segment and the family-oriented traveler. This may lead to positive perception of climate change adaptation strategies. A summary of "model" energy regions in Central Europe describes the typical characteristics that regions must have for possibly developing these innovative tourism niches. The main focus of the paper is on "eco-energy region" of Guessing, Burgenland, which is involved in an on-going transnational research project -for sustainable tourism development in Central Europe (Interreg IVB). The area around Austria's only energy self sufficient city (Gassing) is situated in a nature park at the eastern foothills of the Alps. Due to the mild climate this region is a part of the so called "Austrian Tuscany". Multicultural influences by the proximity to Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia are reflected by various cultural, especially culinary experiences. Due to its location along the former iron curtain, the region has remained fairly remote and is not recognized as a tourism destination. However, with the eco-energy project of Guessing gaining world-wide recognition, it became obvious that in addition to the business and conference driven energy tourism, an opportunity for a leisure oriented tourism development also availed itself. This paper presents the innovative strategies that the region will focus on in order to expand to a more complete and sustainable energy-tourism destination.A problem-orientated and interdisciplinary approach was employed at Alpine Shire, in north-east Victoria, Australia, to explore the concept of contextual vulnerability and adaptability to stressors that include, but are not limited to climatic change. Using a policy sciences approach, the objective was to identify factors that influence existing vulnerabilities that might consequently act as barriers to effective adaptation for the tourism sector. This paper presents initial analyses carried out to clarify adaptation goals through problem definition. Results suggest that many threats, including the effects of climate change, compete for the resources, strategy and direction of local tourism management bodies. An approximation of the common interest, i.e. enhancing capacity in business acumen amongst tourism operators, would facilitate adaptability and sustainability through the enhancement of social capital in this business community.One of the key issues in Australia for sustainable management of the coastal zone is that the science of climate change has not been widely used by decision-makers to inform coastal governance. There exist opportunities to enhance the dialogue between knowledge-makers and decision-makers, and universities have a key role to play in researching and fostering better linkages. At the heart of these linkages lies the principle of more informed engagement between historically disparate groups. In Australia, the new 'Flagship' research programme, funded by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), emphasizes their partnering with universities in a more systematic and collaborative manner than previously achieved in such research projects. In order to address sustainability in general and coastal adaptation to climate change in particular, interdisciplinary learning needs to occur between the social and natural sciences; also, transdisciplinary understanding of that interaction needs to be fully developed. New methods of communicative engagement such as computer visualizations and animations, together with deliberative techniques, can help policy-makers and planners reach a better understanding of the significance of the science of climate change impacts on the coast. Deeper engagement across historically disparate groups can lead to the development of epistemological and methodological synergies between social and natural scientists, adaptive learning, reflexive governance, and greater analytical and deliberative understanding among scientists, policymakers and the wider public. This understanding can lead in turn to enhance coastal governance for climate adaptation on the coast.There is increasing public, industry and government interest in establishing green roofs in Australian cities due to their demonstrated environmental benefits. While a small number of green roofs have been constructed in Australia, most are roof gardens or intensive green roofs. Despite their potential as a climate change adaptation and mitigation tool and their widespread use in the northern hemisphere, there are very few examples of extensive green roofs in Australia. One of the major barriers to increasing the prevalence of extensive green roofs in Australia is the lack of scientific data available to evaluate their applicability to local conditions. Relying on European and North American experience and technology is problematic due to significant differences in climate, available substrates and plants. This paper examines green roofs in Australia, discusses the challenges to increasing their use and the major information gaps that need to be researched to progress the industry in Australia. (C) 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.Different strategy positions ale possible with regard to new urban water infrastructural investments A relatively new position argues that new water infrastructure needs to be linked to ongoing urban developments. This article investigates how the urban water management organizations in Rotterdam developed its climate adaptation strategy by creating urban development strategies that are sensitive to water issues A crucial factor was the recognition that water could contribute to solving urban problems by upgrading neighbourhood quality. In this case study. a multi-level analysis is used to reconstruct the urban water management cascade, that is, the turns in thinking made by the Rotterdam water professionals, leading to this new approach In particular the interactions between the envisioning project Rotterdam Watet City 2035 and the broader policy context in this cascade together with how they were managed strategically are investigated This research indicates that the Rotterdam urban water management organizations realized a successful water policy innovation; however, the institutional mechanisms needed to realize, operate and maintain the proposed multi-stakeholder projects on a city-wide scale are still missing This is currently the major challenge for realizing climate adaptation in terms of water sensitive urban development.Climate variability, climate change, climate risk, and climate adaptation are topics of great interest worldwide. Mediterranean climates are particularly vulnerable to these climate-related issues because of the strong seasonality of precipitation, high human demand for water, and predicted increasingly variable worldwide climate. I will address some of these issues in Mediterranean climates from research on the Sacramento River, the San Joaquin River, and the California Bay-Delta in the western USA. The Sacramento River and San Joaquin River converge to form the California Delta. Waters from these catchments, which drain 40% of the landmass of California and discharge about 47% of the available water from California, are extensively dammed, diverted, and exported. Exports from the Delta provide a portion of the drinking water for similar to 25 million people and sustain more than a million hectares of irrigated agriculture. Interannual variability in river discharge is linked to Pacific climate forcing in the late fall, winter, and early spring with peak discharge from rainstorms and snowmelt in the winter and spring. Warming coupled with drought has caused substantive change in the timing of runoff and in the composition of upland vegetation in large areas of the catchment. Human adaptation to water supply risks involves shifts to groundwater supplies, increased conservation, and water reuse or desalinization. Many of the indicator variables used to assess the ecological condition of aquatic ecosystems are highly sensitive to drought and climate change. Factoring variability and climate change into integrated ecological assessments is an ongoing challenge and effort. Finally, some of the insights from managing and researching these river ecosystems and the Delta in California, USA are discussed in the context of water resource challenges in Mediterranean climates in general.Like other mountain areas in the world, the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Ongoing climate change processes are projected to have a high impact on the HKH region, and accelerated warming has been reported in the Himalayas. These climate change impacts will be superimposed on a variety of other environmental and social stresses, adding to the complexity of the issues. The sustainable use of natural resources is crucial to the long-term stability of the fragile mountain ecosystems in the HKH and to sustain the socio-ecological resilience that forms the basis of sustainable livelihoods in the region. In order to be prepared for these challenges, it is important to take stock of previous research. The 'People and Resource Dynamics Project' (PARDYP), implemented by International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), provides a variety of participatory options for sustainable land management in the HKH region. The PARDYD project was a research for development project that operated in five middle mountain watersheds across the HKH - two in Nepal and one each in China, India, and Pakistan. The project ran from 1996 to 2006 and focused on addressing the marginalisation of mountain farmers, the use and availability of water, issues relating to land and forest degradation and declining soil fertility, the speed of regeneration of degraded land, and the ability of the natural environment to support the growing needs of the region's increasing population. A key learning from the project was that the opinion of land users is crucial to the acceptance (and, therefore, successful application) of new technologies and approaches. A major challenge at the end of every project is to promote knowledge sharing and encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas (e.g., in the case of PARDYP, with other middle mountain inhabitants and practitioners in the region) and to share lessons learned with a wider audience. This paper will highlight how the PARDYP findings, including ways of addressing soil fertility and water scarcity, have been mainstreamed in the HKH region through capacity building (international, regional, and national training courses), networking, and the provision of backstopping services. In addition, in view of the challenges in watershed management in the HKH connected to environmental change, the lessons learned from the PARDYP are now being used by ICMOD to define and package climate change proof technology options to address climate change adaptation.Greater Wellington Regional Council currently supplies water to 380 000 consumers. This number is expected to rise to about 480 000 by the year 2050. Water is currently drawn from three rivers in the region and the Lower Hutt aquifer. Only a small amount of off-river storage is available, so the system is heavily reliant upon frequent and adequate rainfall. Under projected climate change scenarios, rainfall is likely to become less frequent and falls will be of higher intensity. In addition, projected increases in temperature will cause the per capita demand to rise, and a rise in sea level will increase the potential for saline intrusion into the aquifer.Severe droughts in southern Africa are associated with livelihood impacts, a strain on local economies, and other hardships. Extensive effort has been spent in the past trying to improve responses to periods of extensive drought. There have also been renewed calls for improvements to climate change adaptation by adopting more proactive governance and disaster risk reduction approaches. Few efforts, however, have been made to assess how to learn more from past drought efforts so as to enhance overall resilience to future drought risks. Few have examined the role and contributions of institutions and drought governance, either across spatial scales [from regional (i.e., Southern African Development Community) to national scales (e. g., South Africa) to the very local scale (e. g., Limpopo Province, South Africa)] or across temporal scales (over at least 100 yr). Despite calls for better risk management approaches at all levels, this paper illustrates two points. First, a failure to fully understand, integrate, and learn from past efforts may undermine current and future drought response. Second, state-led drought risk reduction, which remains focused on a financial "bail-out" mentality, with little follow-through on proactive rather than reactive drought responses, is also seriously contributing to the vulnerability of the region to future drought impacts.Both developed and developing countries face many environmental challenges, including climate change, improving energy efficiency and waste management, addressing air pollution, water quality and scarcity, and loss of natural habitats and biodiversity. Drawing on the existing literature, this paper explores how the Internet and ICT can help tackle environmental challenges in developing countries through more environmentally sustainable models of economic development and environmentally friendly technologies and applications. This review focuses on the role of ICTs in climate change mitigation, mitigating other environmental pressures and climate change adaptation, providing an overview and pointing to examples of current activities and opportunities in each of these areas.The contribution of the transport systems, including road, air and sea, are making to climate change through the emission of greenhouse (GHG) gases, and new technologies and programmes of action to mitigate their impact on climate is reviewed. The actitivites of the transport systems in most countries are sensitive to a range of weather extremes, including those related to precipitation, thunderstorms, temperature, winds, visibility and sea level. The impact of climate, climate variability and climate change, in particular the impact of these extremes on transport systems and adaptation measures are discussed. This paper also discusses the foundation of climate services to assist informed decision-making for climate change adaptation, planning and designing, which require close collaboration among a wide range of disciplines and the engagement of the users such as the transport systems' communities. It has been recognized widely that sequestration of atmospheric CO2 by terrestrial ecosystems can contribute significantly to the stabilization of atmospheric CO2. The carbon sequestration potential of crop lands should be considered as a modest but non-negligible contribution to climate change mitigation. Salinity is one of the most important environmental factors limiting crop production of marginal agricultural soils in many parts of the world. In our research, several physiological analyses were performed in atmospheric CO2, in daylight, both in normal conditions and with salinity (40 mm NaCl). Crops like melon or pepper showed significantly lower photosynthetic rates when they were grown in saline conditions. Also, the total chlorophyll content and carbon percentage were lower in the salinity-treated plants of these species. For lettuce, treated plants showed a significant decrease in photosynthetic rates and chlorophyll content, but there were no differences in carbon content. On the other hand, there were no significant differences in the values of total chlorophyll content, photosynthetic rate, or carbon content for tomato and watermelon plants when control and NaCl-treated plants were compared. The mineral composition data showed greater increases of sodium in both roots and leaves of melon and pepper when plants were treated with NaCl compared with the rest of the species. In conclusion, tomato and watermelon seem to be more efficient in CO2 fixation than the other crops of this experiment and this seems to be related to their greater salinity tolerance.One of the priorities of the European Union is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation. The aim of this paper is to analyze consumers' valuation of one type of renewable energy which is important to reach the European emission reduction targets, biodiesel, and to assess the extra price consumers are willing to pay to use biodiesel instead of conventional diesel. In order to achieve these goals, a market survey has been carried out in Aragon (Spain) to collect primary data from diesel consumers. A choice experiment has been used to assess willingness to pay for biodiesel. Results suggest that the consumers' level of knowledge of biodiesel is not very high although consumers' perception of the product is quite favourable because they believe biodiesel is less pollutant and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, compared to conventional diesel. Actual consumption of biodiesel is still very low. However, consumers are willing to pay 5% extra to fill up with biodiesel instead of its conventional counterpart.This paper reports the methodology and results of an one-way coupling of the E3 Model at the Global level (E3MG) model to the global atmospheric chemistry model, p-TOMCAT, to assess the effects on the concentrations of atmospheric gases over Mexico of a low-GHG scenario compared to an alternative reference case with higher use of fossil fuels. The paper covers the data and methods, changes in atmospheric gas concentrations, the macroeconomic effects of the policies, and the outcome for pollution. The results suggest that in the conditions of underemployment in Mexico, substantial investment in low-carbon technologies, such as electric vehicles, heat pumps and geo-thermal power, could improve employment prospects, maintain growth, as well as reduce some of the risks associated with prospective falls in oil revenues. The concentrations of low-level ozone, both for Mexico-only and global decarbonisation scenarios relative to the original reference case, show appreciable reductions, sufficient to bring concentrations close to the WHO guideline levels. An indication is given of the potential scale of the benefits on human health in Mexico City. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Federal political deadlock has long forced progressive climate change mitigation efforts in the United States to target greenhouse gas emissions and reduction options at regional, state, urban, and local levels. Even as a national mitigation agenda solidifies, researchers and political actors might strategically maintain local places and types of landscape center cities, older and newer suburbs, and rural areas in different United States regions as distinct spheres for analysis and action. This local articulation permits ongoing analysis of how place/landscape type-specific conditions structure everyday greenhouse gas emissions and the prospects for reducing them. As such, it promotes mitigation programs that encompass broad, long-term infrastructure and lifestyle transformations for energy efficiency and conservation; not only top-down changes to energy generation technologies. Participatory climate change mitigation research in the Philadelphia suburbs demonstrates how geographically particular metropolitan development patterns shape the prospects for two such policies, residential energy efficiency improvement and the promotion of local food systems. The sprawling suburb investigated here, with the center city its development has helped impoverish, challenges these mitigation options in particular and emissions reduction in general. Deeply problematic elements include both the landscape's ever-extending physical morphology and the socioeconomic inequalities that this built environment - and the stakeholders who build it - help to create and maintain. Reshaping this and other suburban landscapes can not only promote long-term climate change mitigation but also reduce vulnerability to climate change's unavoidable impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emissions from land transport, and from road transport in particular, have significant impacts on the atmosphere and on climate change. This assessment gives an overview of past, present and future emissions from land transport, of their impacts on the atmospheric composition and air quality, on human health and climate change and on options for mitigation. In the past vehicle exhaust emission control has successfully reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. This contributed to improved air quality and reduced health impacts in industrialised countries. In developing countries however, pollutant emissions have been growing strongly, adversely affecting many populations. In addition, ozone and particulate matter change the radiative balance and hence contribute to global warming on shorter time scales. Latest knowledge on the magnitude of land transport's impact on global warming is reviewed here. In the future, road transport's emissions of these pollutants are expected to stagnate and then decrease globally. This will then help to improve the air quality notably in developing countries. On the contrary, emissions of carbon dioxide and of halocarbons from mobile air conditioners have been globally increasing and are further expected to grow. Consequently, road transport's impact on climate is gaining in importance. The expected efficiency improvements of vehicles and the introduction of biofuels will not be sufficient to offset the expected strong growth in both, passenger and freight transportation. Technical measures could offer a significant reduction potential, but strong interventions would be needed as markets do not initiate the necessary changes. Further reductions would need a resolute expansion of low-carbon fuels, a tripling of vehicle fuel efficiency and a stagnation in absolute transport volumes. Land transport will remain a key sector in climate change mitigation during the next decades. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A number of recent studies have highlighted the potential for economically efficient climate change mitigation through the abatement of anthropogenic emissions of methane and nitrous oxide. In the case of methane there are likely to be considerable co-benefits in terms of reduced ground-level ozone and therefore avoided damages to human health and crop yields. Climate mitigation policy has tended to focus most strongly on carbon dioxide because it has produced three times as much radiative forcing as methane since the pre-industrial era, and because it has a longer lifetime in the atmosphere. However, here we argue that changes in methane radiative forcing also provide a sensitive control on the allowable integrated CO2 emissions for climate stabilization. A feasible 40% sustained abatement of CH4 emissions could increase the allowable CO2 emissions for stabilization at an additional global radiative forcing of +1 W m(-2), by about a third. As such, reductions in anthropogenic methane emissions have the potential to make climate stabilization at less than 2 degrees C of global warming far more achievable.Fairness is recognised, almost universally, as the most fundamental ideal of any tax system. With tax systems around the globe being increasingly utilised to implement policies to change emissions behaviour and address the causes of climate change, it is imperative that fairness be a primary consideration. The paper sets out to explore the dilemma of what is meant by 'fairness' in the context of environmental taxation. It begins by first establishing the urgent need for climate change mitigation and establishes the role that environmental taxation has to play. It then considers the extent to which the traditional philosophical and moral approaches to decision making can provide a contemporary and relevant framework by which 'fairness' can be judged. The tax literature generally recognises fairness as having only two dimensions, namely horizontal and vertical equity. The requirement for the 'fair sharing' of the cost of climate change mitigation is considered and additional dimensions of fairness are discussed including the need to look beyond national borders and the current generation of taxpayers. The paper considers the potential conflict that may arise from taking this more holistic and enduring view of fairness and explores the distributional concerns, the dilemma of justice in the international community and the notion of procedural fairness. The paper concludes by acknowledging the complexity of the task facing governments and policy makers in implementing environmental tax systems that reflect a more responsible approach to the concept of fairness. The required changes are identified, including the need within the global arena to show greater leadership and the acknowledgement of the rights of others, both now and in the future.This article offers a unique three-stage approach in LCI analysis for generating the environmental profile of electricity generation in Singapore. The first stage focuses on fuels delivered to Singapore, next on electricity generated from various types of power production plants. The third stage integrates the entire life cycle study. The final gate-to-gate results show that the total CO2 emissions from the national grid are 455.6 kg CO2 per MWh without any loss in transmission and 467.0 kg CO2 per MWh with 2.5% losses. The results for the entire cradle-to-gate energy production are: 586.3 kg CO2 per MWh without considering any losses and 601.0 kg CO2 per MWh with 2.5% transmission loss. For the rest of the LCI, the cradle-to-gate results (per MWh) are kg 0.19 CO (carbon monoxide), 0.06 kg N2O (nitrous oxide), 1.94-1.99 kg NOx (nitrogen oxides), 2.94-3.01 kg SOx (sulphur oxides), 0.064-0.066 kg VOC (volatile organic compounds) and 0.078-0.080 kg PM (particulate matters). From gate-to-gate, the results are 0.12 kg CO, 0.0016 kg N2O, 1.42-1.46 kg NOx, 2.56-2.62 kg SOx, 0.033-0.034 kg VOC and 0.067-0.069 kg PM. Emissions of CO2 from energy generation, climate change mitigation and policies for energy security are also discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A fee on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, applicable equally to all nations and based on the quantity of fossil fuels used in each country, is proposed. Fees would be paid into a UNFCCC-administered fund. Fees would be distributed to nations, according to population, for use in climate change mitigation or adaptation. Advantages and disadvantages of the fee scheme and its effects on various groups of nations are discussed. About 40% of the fees would be net transfers from developed nations to developing nations; 60% of fees would return to their country of origin. Concessions to major fuel exporters may be appropriate. Historical emissions could be included in the fee scheme. A fee provides disincentives to inefficient industrial operations, regardless of location, and avoids trade inequities inherent in unequal national emission caps. Project-based emission reductions of the Clean Development Mechanism could be continued by using fees to buy CERs. A fee scheme would be simpler than alternative climate change treaty proposals but presents problems regarding the appropriate fee level, efficient and fair management of funds, perverse incentives to increase GHG emissions through biofuels production, and political acceptability in nations having greater than average per capita GHG emissions. (C) 2010 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.We briefly consider the trend towards relying on the tools, systems and resources of national energy policy to meet international climate change mitigation goals. Within this paradigm, the myriad energy-related aspects of climate change policy should be explicitly addressed as a sub-set of energy policy rather than the reverse, with the positive goal of building a low-carbon economy rather than the negative task of reducing emissions. While international signals on global targets for climate change mitigation are valuable, they will only be realised if "grounded" into specific policy sectors that address core objectives of society (like security of energy service delivery). Various facets of energy policy from the geo-politics of the global trade in fossil fuels, to development of renewable energy technologies, to national power system planning and operation lend themselves to this approach. It remains the case that modifying the goals of energy policy to encompass delivery of climate goals will require a change in focus of energy decision-makers and institutions. (C) 2010 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Sustainable Development (SD) has been discussed extensively in the theoretical literature since the concept was adopted as an overarching goal of economic, social development and environmental protection. The relationship between SD and climate change is of particular importance to developing countries due to their development process and the particular climate challenges that many of them face. The notion is that strategies pursuing SD and climate change mitigation can be mutually reinforcing. In the frame of climate change, the transfer of low-carbon sustainable technologies could ideally provide a framework of helping developing countries to find new sustainable development paths. The aim of this paper is to present a Linguistic Decision Support Approach, based on the Linguistic Ordered Weighted Averaging (LOWA) operator, with the objective of assessing developing countries' energy service needs and priorities. In our approach, a range of energy services and criteria for the assessment were defined, related stakeholders were also involved so as to identify energy service needs and priorities that are most applicable to the country's sustainable development. In this respect, the approach followed could enhance the so far applied Technology Needs Assessments (TNA) and establish a clear understanding of the host country's overall medium to long-term energy and environmental strategy. The application of the particular approach to cross representative developing countries around the world indicated energy efficiency in industry and electricity for industry as high priority energy services. (C) 2010 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The effect of national energy policies on a local Swedish district heating (DH) system has been studied, regarding the profitability of new investments and the potential for climate change mitigation. The DH system has been optimised regarding three investments-biomass-fuelled CHP (bio CHP), natural gas-fuelled combined cycle CHP (NGCC CHP) and biomass-fuelled heat-only boiler (bio HOB) in two scenarios (with or without national taxes and policy instruments) In both scenarios EU's tradable CO2 emission permits are included. Results from the study show that when national policies are included. the most cost-effective investment option is the bio CHP technology. However, when national taxes and policy instruments are excluded, the DH system containing the NGCC CHP plant has 30% lower system cost than the bio CHP system. Regardless of the scenario and when coal condensing is considered as marginal electricity production, the NGCC CHP has the largest global CO2 reduction potential, about 300 ktonne CO2 However. the CO2 reduction potential is highly dependent on the marginal electricity production. Demonstrated here is that national policies such as tradable green certificates can, when applied to OH systems, contribute to investments that will not fully utilise the DH systems' potential for global CO2 emissions reductions (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.Significant reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be achieved whilst at the same time developing the production potential of EU agriculture and forestry through increased productivity. Therefore, research and investment in innovation and new technologies are needed. Agriculture and forestry are uniquely placed in being able to reduce GHG emissions whilst adapting their own businesses and facilitating society's adaptation to climate change. Farmers in the EU-27 have already contributed to a significant decrease in GHG emissions of 20 per cent between 1990 and 2006. The implementation of the EU's climate and energy package must not jeopardise the economic viability and competitiveness nor the social component of agricultural and forestry activities. Beyond their productive role, environmental benefits, landscape preservation and employment opportunities are delivered by both sectors. However, several factors hamper their contribution to combating climate change: and there is a risk that measures put in place to reduce GHG emissions will result in the delocalisation of agricultural production outside the EU. There is limited capacity of autonomous farm level adaptation. It is vital, therefore, that we have a strong Common Agricultural Policy to support farmers in improving their resilience to climatic variability and in contributing to climate change mitigation, which will deliver cost-saving benefits for society as a whole.Temperate forests play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. However, deforestation, land use changes and differences in successional and species composition cause a spatial heterogeneity in the potential carbon storage in the landscape. The aims of this study were (1) to quantify aboveground and belowground biomass and respective carbon storage and (2) to project the future carbon storage in temperate forests landscape in Cofre de Perote, Veracruz, Mexico. Aboveground and belowground biomass was estimated in seven forests with different species composition and conservation status and management, in three grasslands and in two shrublands at a range of altitudes. Total biomass in forests ranged from 91.07 to 383.78 Mg ha(-1), in grassland from 9.83 to 24.93 Mg ha(-1) and in successional (shrublands) from 6.33 to 7.69 Mg ha(-1). This suggests that deforestation and changes of land use could reduce aboveground biomass by 90 per cent. Mature forests had the largest aboveground and belowground biomass and the lowest density (number of trees per hectare) but a lower potential for accumulation of C in the future; in contrast, young forests and reforested areas had higher growth and carbon storage potential. Our results suggest that avoiding deforestation and improving forest management could play a major role in global climate change mitigation.This paper explores some issues that have been important in the climate change mitigation debate in Australia. Media coverage reflects the prominence and nature of the debate and has risen almost exponentially since 2003. Clearly it has become a political issue. Media coverage is the lens through which the public view the debate, and whilst public opinion is not the only factor affecting policy formulation, in Australia it can be critical as voting is mandatory. A pilot study was used to explore perceptions of the nature of policy, the climate change debate, and its portrayal in the media, through the interview of key opinion leaders. Results indicate that opinion leaders believe that mitigation policy in Australia has been slow to progress due to media promotion of the uncertainty associated with climate change science, the weakness of leadership, and the political cost of unpalatable policy, even though effective policies at both national and international levels are needed.This paper investigates the effects of market-based projects supporting rural electrification through small scale solar photovoltaic applications on climate change mitigation and energy security in developing countries It is based on a case study investigating a Global Environment Facility project in India. It concludes that market based approaches have the advantage of providing support for private actors that is otherwise not available and serve well to complement similar government activities. From that perspective, they may have a positive impact on mitigation through reduction of CO2 emissions and on energy security of rural populations. At the same time, this research suggests that market based approaches are limited considerably through the business goals of the private actors they aim to support as well as lack of mechanism to effectively compensate the additional cost of solar photovoltaic technology.This paper provides (for the nonspecialist) a highly streamlined discussion of the main issues, and controversies, in the design of climate mitigation policy. The first part of the paper discusses how much action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the global level is efficient under both the cost-effectiveness and welfare-maximizing paradigms. We then discuss various issues in the implementation of domestic emissions control policy, instrument choice, and incentives for technological innovation. Finally, we discuss alternative policy architectures at the international level. (JEL Q54, Q58)The small scale forestry carbon project in Haryana, India has been registered as a Clean Development Project (CDM) activity and is the first such projects from India. Developed under the Kyoto Protocol of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the projects aims at restoring heavily degraded sandune affected private lands and contribute to climate change mitigation. The project is expected to sequester 234,584 tons of carbon dioxide (tCO(2)) in 20 years project cycle with an average annual sequestration of 11,729 (tCO2) per year. The project is expected to have a total carbon stock of 385,253.1 ton Carbon (tC) in the project life span of 20 years as against 7,920.6 (tC) in the baseline scenario. The carbon credits earned from the project is supposed to provide additional incentives to the smallholders who have formed a cooperative society for this purpose. This paper addresses the issues and challenges in developing the project activity and also discusses the lessons learned in the process. The project is supposed to help in poverty alleviation and has become a success story for rehabilitating degraded lands in semi arid regions of India through plantation forestry.Background and purpose: Climate change and its mitigation have become increasingly high profile issues since the late 1990s, with the potential of forestry in carbon sequestration a particular focus. The purpose of this paper is to outline the importance of socio-economic considerations in this area. Opportunities for forestry to sequester carbon and the role of terrestrial carbon uptake credits in climate change negotiations are addressed, together with the feasibility of bringing terrestrial carbon offsets into the regulatory emission trading scheme. The paper discusses whether or not significant carbon offsetting and trading will occur on a large scale in the UK or internationally. Materials and methods: The paper reviews the literature on the socio-economic aspects of climate change mitigation via forestry (including the authors' research on this topic) to assess the potential for carbon offsetting and trading, and the likely scale of action. Results and conclusions: We conclude that the development of appropriate socio-economic framework conditions (e.g. policies, tenure rights, including forest carbon ownership, and markets) and incentives for creating and trading terrestrial carbon credits are important in mitigating climate change through forestry projects, and we make suggestions for future research that would be required to support such developments.Forest management for carbon sequestration is a low-cost, low-technology, relatively easy way to help mitigate global climate change that can be adopted now while additional long-term solutions are developed. Carbon-oriented management of forests also offers forest owners an opportunity to obtain a new source of income, and commonly has environmental co-benefits. The USA is developing climate change policy that recognizes forestry as a source of offsets in carbon markets, and the emissions trading programs and standards that have developed to date offer opportunities for afforestation, reforestation, reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and improved forest management projects. Private forest owners are key players in carbon markets because they own over half of the forest land in the USA and carbon offsetting from public forest land is rare. However, a number of environmental, economic, and social constraints currently limit carbon market participation by forest owners. Key issues include: the low price of carbon and high cost of market entry; whether small landowners can gain market access; how to meet requirements such as management plans and certification; and whether managing for carbon is consistent with other forest management goals. This paper provides an overview of current and emerging opportunities for family forest owners to contribute to climate change mitigation in the USA, and explores ways of overcoming some of the challenges so that they can take advantage of these opportunities.Increasing food production and mitigating climate change are two primary but seemingly contradictory objectives for tropical landscapes. This special feature examines synergies and trade-offs among these objectives. Four themes emerge from the papers: the important roles of both forest and agriculture sectors for climate mitigation in tropical countries; the minor contribution from deforestation-related agricultural expansion to overall food production at global and continental scales; the opportunities for synergies between improved food production and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through diversion of agricultural expansion to already-cleared lands, improved soil, crop, and livestock management, and agroforestry; and the need for targeted policy and management interventions to make these synergistic opportunities a reality. We conclude that agricultural intensification is a key factor to meet dual objectives of food production and climate mitigation, but there is no single panacea for balancing these objectives in all tropical landscapes. Place-specific strategies for sustainable land use emerge from assessments of current land use, demographics, and other biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics, using a whole-landscape, multisector perspective.Land-use change to meet 21st-century demands for food, fuel, and fiber will depend on many interactive factors, including global policies limiting anthropogenic climate change and realized improvements in agricultural productivity. Climate-change mitigation policies will alter the decision-making environment for land management, and changes in agricultural productivity will influence cultivated land expansion. We explore to what extent future increases in agricultural productivity might offset conversion of tropical forest lands to crop lands under a climate mitigation policy and a contrasting no-policy scenario in a global integrated assessment model. The Global Change Assessment Model is applied here to simulate a mitigation policy that stabilizes radiative forcing at 4.5 Wm(-2) ( approximately 526 ppm CO2) in the year 2100 by introducing a price for all greenhouse gas emissions, including those from land use. These scenarios are simulated with several cases of future agricultural productivity growth rates and the results downscaled to produce gridded maps of potential land-use change. We find that tropical forests are preserved near their present-day extent, and bioenergy crops emerge as an effective mitigation option, only in cases in which a climate mitigation policy that includes an economic price for land-use emissions is in place, and in which agricultural productivity growth continues throughout the century. We find that idealized land-use emissions price assumptions are most effective at limiting deforestation, even when cropland area must increase to meet future food demand. These findings emphasize the importance of accounting for feedbacks from land-use change emissions in global climate change mitigation strategies.Potential interactions between food production and climate mitigation are explored for two situations in sub-Saharan Africa, where deforestation and land degradation overlap with hunger and poverty. Three agriculture intensification scenarios for supplying nitrogen to increase crop production (mineral fertilizer, herbaceous legume cover crops-green manures-and agroforestry-legume improved tree fallows) are compared to baseline food production, land requirements to meet basic caloric requirements, and greenhouse gas emissions. At low population densities and high land availability, food security and climate mitigation goals are met with all intensification scenarios, resulting in surplus crop area for reforestation. In contrast, for high population density and small farm sizes, attaining food security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions require mineral fertilizers to make land available for reforestation; green manure or improved tree fallows do not provide sufficient increases in yields to permit reforestation. Tree fallows sequester significant carbon on cropland, but green manures result in net carbon dioxide equivalent emissions because of nitrogen additions. Although these results are encouraging, agricultural intensification in sub-Saharan Africa with mineral fertilizers, green manures, or improved tree fallows will remain low without policies that address access, costs, and lack of incentives. Carbon financing for small-holder agriculture could increase the likelihood of success of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries programs and climate change mitigation but also promote food security in the region.Using cost-benefit analysis to determine an optimal climate mitigation target is criticised especially because i) it fails to sufficiently take into account low-probability high-impact events and ii) results strongly depend on the discount rate used One of the alternative suggestions to inform policymakers about the right mitigation target that does take the risks associated with low-probability high-impact events explicitly into account is the minimax regret criterion We apply the minimax regret criterion quantitatively using an integrated assessment model with extreme values for climate sensitivity damage estimates and mitigation costs The goal is to analyse whether such a method leads to different results compared to standard cost-benefit analysis and whether the results are still sensitive to the discount rate used We find that the minimax regret approach leads to more stringent and robust climate targets for relatively low discount rates and if both a high climate sensitivity and high damage estimates are assumed If one of these assumptions does not hold the difference between the minimax regret approach and standard cost-benefit analysis is much smaller Therefore we conclude that the discount rate used can still be of vital importance even when applying a minimax regret approach (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reservedForest products industry is one of the major industrial consumers of energy. Worldwide, the final energy use in the pulp and paper industry amounted to 6 ExaJoules in 2003 (i.e. 6% of the total industrial energy use). In Europe, the total primary energy consumption attained the level of 1.3 ExaJoules in 2003. The pulp and paper industry, including recycling processes, also produces energy, as well as by-products that can be used for energy generation. It already generates enough to cover approximately 50% of its own energy needs. A significant share of this energy is renewable CO2 neutral biomass. Energy costs, energy supply and climate change are other important issues impacting the future of the forest-based industry. They will have impacts on the manufacturing costs, as well as on the allocation of investments around the globe. It seems, however, that at an industrial level crucial knowledge on the state-of-the-art is still missing. The chain of the energetic sector very often lacks a correct management strategy and, therefore, it is not optimally efficient. Climate change mitigation policy will add extra force to all these developments and the companies (not only from the papermaking sector) will move forward towards the application of modem, conscious management strategies.Dynamic targets have been long advocated as a participatory tool for developing countries in climate change mitigation. Copenhagen commitments of India and China resume this trend after the unsuccessful attempt of Argentina a decade ago. However, linear intensity targets are prone to 'hot air' problems or non-compliance risks. Intensity targets of India and China are analyzed using their elasticity parameters. The relationship of these parameters to the structural nature of emissions and GDP profiles has been demonstrated and a method of comparing the probability indices of target achievement has been formulated in this paper, showing a lower probability for China compared to India. Similarly, a method of defining stringency factor for linear targets has been suggested and stringency factors evaluated for India (40%) and China (90%). which shows the relative stability of India's targets. This paper evaluates an energy-GDP-emissions index (EYE index) to indicate the extent of coupling/decoupling of economic growth from emissions. The three indices developed in this paper, namely, elasticity parameter, stringency factor and EYE index can be effectively used to analyze the economy-emissions relationships for policy making and target setting. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Quantification of stand and forest C stocks in response to different disturbances is necessary to develop climate change mitigation strategies and to evaluate forest C accounting tools. Live tree, dead tree, woody debris (WD), stump, buried wood, and organic and mineral soil C stocks are described in chronosequences of black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) (harvest and fire origin) and balsam fir (Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.) (insect and harvest origin). The largest C stocks were found in mineral soil (<= 179 Mg.ha(-1)), organic soil (<= 123 Mg.ha(-1)), and live tree (<= 93 Mg.ha(-1)) pools. Live tree C changed predictably with disturbance history and time since disturbance, increasing with forest age. Regeneration growth slowed under snags. Thinning accelerated production of larger trees but reduced site live tree C. Dead tree and WD C were temporally dynamic and strongly influenced by disturbance history and time since disturbance, but abundances in differently disturbed forests converged at low levels 40-60 years after disturbance. Only immediately following natural disturbances were there large amounts of snag C (26-30 Mg.ha(-1)). WD C was relatively abundant <3 years after harvesting (15-17 Mg.ha(-1)) and 31-36 years after natural disturbance (9 Mg.ha(-1)). Buried wood stocks were small, but comparable with WD stocks in some forests.The potential of the Web for applied linguistic research is being increasingly recognized. As the internet is a particularly valuable source of data on recent changes in meaning, Mautner (2005b) made a plea for more discourse analysts to work with Web-based texts in order to study important social developments. Taking up this suggestion, this article introduces an approach based on the analysis of recent updates to Web-based sources. A special purpose corpus, compiled from Web feeds containing so-called lexical 'carbon compounds', such as, for example, carbon credit, carbon diet, carbon sinner, is studied with corpus linguistic tools to explore the online dimension of the interpretative struggle around the issue of climate change mitigation. The analysis reveals semantic associations surrounding the compounds and highlights connotational differences that signal both support and criticism of the climate mitigation initiatives proposed by policy makers and environmentalists.As a response to the twin challenges of climate change mitigation and energy security, the UK government has set a groundbreaking target of reducing the UK's economy-wide carbon emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. A second key UK energy policy is to increase the share of final energy consumption from renewables sources to 15% by 2020, as part of the wider EU Renewable Directive. The UK's principle mechanisms to meet this renewable target are the Renewable Obligation (RO) in the electricity sector, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), and most recently the Renewable Heat Programme (RHP) for buildings. This study quantifies a range of policies, energy pathways, and sectoral trade-offs when combining mid- and long-term UK renewables and CO2 reduction policies. Stringent renewable policies are the binding constraints through 2020. Furthermore, the interactions between RO, RTFO, and RHP policies drive trade-offs between low carbon electricity, bio-fuels, high efficiency natural gas, and demand reductions as well as resulting 2020 welfare costs. In the longer term, CO2 reduction constraints drive the costs and characteristics of the UK energy system through 2050. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Evaluating contributions of forest ecosystems to climate change mitigation requires well-calibrated carbon cycle models with quantified baseline carbon stocks. An appropriate baseline for carbon accounting of natural forests at landscape scales is carbon carrying capacity (CCC); defined as the mass of carbon stored in an ecosystem under prevailing environmental conditions and natural disturbance regimes but excluding anthropogenic disturbance. Carbon models require empirical measurements for input and calibration, such as net primary production (NPP) and total ecosystem carbon stock (equivalent to CCC at equilibrium). We sought to improve model calibration by addressing three sources of errors that cause uncertainty in carbon accounting across heterogeneous landscapes: (1) data-model representation, (2) data-object representation, (3) up-scaling. We derived spatially explicit empirical models based on environmental variables across landscape scales to estimate NPP (based on a synthesis of global site data of NPP and gross primary productivity, n=27), and CCC (based on site data of carbon stocks in natural eucalypt forests of southeast Australia, n=284). The models significantly improved predictions, each accounting for 51% of the variance. Our methods to reduce uncertainty in baseline carbon stocks, such as using appropriate calibration data from sites with minimal human disturbance, measurements of large trees and incorporating environmental variability across the landscape, have generic application to other regions and ecosystem types. These analyses resulted in forest CCC in southeast Australia (mean total biomass of 360 t C ha-1, with cool moist temperate forests up to 1000 t C ha-1) that are larger than estimates from other national and international (average biome 202 t C ha-1) carbon accounting systems. Reducing uncertainty in estimates of carbon stocks in natural forests is important to allow accurate accounting for losses of carbon due to human activities and sequestration of carbon by forest growth.l-lactide is the monomer for the polymer poly-l-lactic acid (PLLA). PLLA can be made from renewable resources, and is used in an increasing amount of applications. The biopolymer PLLA is one type of polymer of the family of polylactic acids (PLAs). Purac produces l-lactide and d-lactide, and supports partners with know-how to produce their own PLA from lactide. This life cycle assessment (LCA) study supporting market development presents the eco-profile of lactides and PLA biopolymers. An LCA was carried out for l-lactide, d-lactide, PLLA, and two PLLA/PDLA blends made from cane sugar in Thailand, and were compared with that of fossil-based polymers. The LCA complies with ISO standards, and is a cradle-to-gate analysis including sugarcane cultivation, sugarcane milling, auxiliary chemicals production, transport, and production of lactide and PLAs. In the analysis, process data were taken from the designs of full-scale plants for the production of lactic acid, lactides, and PLA. The data were combined with ecoprofiles of chemicals and utilities and recalculated to the following environmental impacts: primary renewable and non-renewable energy, non-renewable abiotic resource usage, farm land use, global warming, acidification, photochemical ozone creation, human toxicity, and eutrophication. On a weight-by-weight basis, PLLA results in significantly lower emissions of greenhouse gasses, and less use of material resources and non-renewable energy, compared to fossil-based polymers. With the present calculations, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) in l-lactide production is 300-600 kg CO2 eq./tonne and for PLLA 500-800 kg CO2 eq./tonne. The range indicates the sensitivity of the GWP to the energy credit for electricity production from bagasse in the sugar mill. The GWP of PLLA/PDLA blends with increased heat resistance is also lower compared to fossil based polymers with similar durable character. Being based on an agricultural system the biobased PLA gives rise to higher contributions to acidification, photochemical ozone creation, eutrophication, and farm land use compared to the fossil polymers. The application spectrum of PLAs is expanding, and there are opportunities to replace various fossil-based polymers. This facilitates climate change mitigation and reduces dependence on fossil and scarce resources while promoting the use of local and renewable resources. It is evident that in emerging green economies agricultural technology will form an integral part in the changeover towards a more sustainable industry and society.In order to meet long-term climate change mitigation objectives, emissions cuts are required in all regions across the globe and in all sectors, including transport. In financing this effort, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) are until now the only international climate policy instruments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that provide incentives for emissions reductions in developing countries. More recently, the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) was established. In this paper, we show that the impact of these financing instruments on transport has been very limited, due to methodological difficulties, a data-intensive monitoring process and the limited funding available. We argue that the transport sector is not likely to play a significant role in the continuation of a carbon credit offsetting scheme, unless these methodological requirements are simplified and significantly more funding is available. In the post-2012 climate regime, there may be substantial international funding available in addition to existing credit schemes and international funds, which could be channeled through nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs). This can provide new and better opportunities for sustainable transport in developing countries. We propose a framework for NAMAs, including types of policies and measures, measurement, reporting and verification of the actions, and an institutional and financial structure. We conclude that climate funding needs to be aligned closely with domestic and multilateral development finance flows in order to make a difference for sustainable transport.Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change. Carbon dioxide displays exceptional persistence that renders its warming nearly irreversible for more than 1,000 y. Here we show that the warming due to non-CO2 greenhouse gases, although not irreversible, persists notably longer than the anthropogenic changes in the greenhouse gas concentrations themselves. We explore why the persistence of warming depends not just on the decay of a given greenhouse gas concentration but also on climate system behavior, particularly the timescales of heat transfer linked to the ocean. For carbon dioxide and methane, nonlinear optical absorption effects also play a smaller but significant role in prolonging the warming. In effect, dampening factors that slow temperature increase during periods of increasing concentration also slow the loss of energy from the Earth's climate system if radiative forcing is reduced. Approaches to climate change mitigation options through reduction of greenhouse gas or aerosol emissions therefore should not be expected to decrease climate change impacts as rapidly as the gas or aerosol lifetime, even for short-lived species; such actions can have their greatest effect if undertaken soon enough to avoid transfer of heat to the deep ocean.The food production system as a whole is recognized as one of the major contributors to environmental impacts. Accordingly, food production, processing, transport and consumption account for a relevant portion of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with any country. In this context, there is an increasing market demand for climate-relevant information regarding the global warming impact of consumer food products throughout the supply chains. This article deals with the assessment of the carbon footprint of seafood products as a key subgroup in the food sector. Galicia (NW Spain) was selected as a case study. The analysis is based on a representative set of species within the Galician fishing sector, including species obtained from coastal fishing (e.g. horse mackerel, Atlantic mackerel, European pilchard and blue whiting), offshore fishing (e.g. European hake, megrim and anglerfish), deep-sea fishing (skipjack and yellowfin tuna), extensive aquaculture (mussels) and intensive aquaculture (turbot). The carbon footprints associated with the production-related activities of each selected species were quantified following a business-to-business approach on the basis of 1 year of fishing activity. These individual carbon footprints were used to calculate the carbon footprint for each of the different Galician fisheries and culture activities. Finally, the lump sum of the carbon footprints for coastal, offshore and deep-sea fishing and extensive and intensive aquaculture brought about the carbon footprint of the Galician fishing activity (i.e., capture and culture). A benchmark for quantifying and communicating emission reductions was then provided, and opportunities to reduce the GHG emissions associated with the Galician fishing activity could be prioritized. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is consensus that carbon pricing is required to support a lower carbon pathway for South Africa. However, a debate remains on the most appropriate mechanism to introduce such a price. Although theoretically similar under restrictive assumptions, carbon taxes and emissions trading have very different environmental and economic implications in practice. The differences between price and quantity instruments remain fundamental, but there are other important criteria when comparing instruments. On the basis of a broad set of public policy criteria, carbon taxation appears to have many merits for a middle-income developing country like South Africa. The concentrated market structure of the country's energy sector raises concerns about the ability to construct a competitive and efficient emissions trading market and further supports taxation as the more appropriate instrument for the country. Other considerations are the relative political credibility, welfare impacts and long-term stability of each instrument. A comparison of the instruments should not, however, be treated as an either/or choice, as much depends on the design of each instrument. The evaluation of the instruments in South African circumstances suggests potential criteria for evaluation and instrument modifications, which may also be useful for other developing countries.Climate change mitigation presents us with a social dilemma: while mitigation benefits everyone, individuals lack the incentive to alter their behaviour, since they can reap its benefits while failing to reduce their own emissions. Using a 'public good' experiment with a climate change framing, the scope for cooperation in meeting a national mitigation goal is examined: in particular, how different sectors with differing marginal abatement costs distribute the responsibility of reducing emissions between themselves. The experiment consists of four scenarios: (1) a counterfactual baseline scenario in which cooperation is voluntary although communication is prohibited, (2) a communication scenario in which communication is permitted, and finally, (3) and (4) two scenarios in which there is a carbon tax, where the tax reflects an electricity levy. The results suggest that relying on the voluntary cooperation of individuals will not be sufficient to meet the mitigation target; while communication significantly increases average contribution levels, it also polarizes the strategies of individual players between full cooperation and free-riding. While introducing a carbon tax crowds out contributions, in excess of a specified mitigation target, cooperation becomes near-universal, thus emphasizing the importance of choosing the correct tax level.Ecosystem services are vital for humans in urban regions. However, urban development poses a great risk for the ability of ecosystems to provide these services. In this paper we first address the most important ecosystem services in functional urban regions in Finland. Well accessible and good quality recreational ecosystem services, for example, provided by urban nature, are an important part of a high-quality living environment and important for public health. Vegetation of urban regions can have a role in carbon dioxide sequestration and thus in climate change mitigation. For instance, estimates of carbon sinks can be compared to total CO2 emissions of an urban region, and the municipality can aim at both increasing carbon sinks and decreasing CO2 emissions with proper land-use planning. Large and contiguous core nature areas, smaller green areas and ecological connections between them are the essence of regional ecological networks and are essential for maintaining interconnected habitats for species and thus biological diversity. Thus, both local and regional level ecological networks are vital for maintaining ecosystem services in urban regions. The impacts of climate change coupled with land-use and land cover change will bring serious challenges for maintaining ecosystem services in urban areas. Although not yet widely used in planning practices, the ecosystem services approach can provide an opportunity for land-use planning to develop ecologically sustainable urban regions. Currently, information on ecosystem services of urban regions is lacking and there is a need to improve the knowledge base for land-use planning.Reversing forest losses through restoration, improvement, and conservation is a critical goal for greenhouse gas mitigation. Here, we examine some ecological, demographic, and economic opportunities and constraints on forest-loss mitigation activities. Reduced deforestation and forest degradation could cut global deforestation rates in half by 2030, preserving 1.5 billion to 3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO(2)e) emissions yearly. Our new economic modeling for the United States suggests that greenhouse gas payments of up to $50 per tCO(2)e could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 700 million tCO(2)e per year through afforestation, forest management, and bioelectricity generation. However, simulated carbon payments also imply the reduction of agricultural land area in the United States by 10% or more, decreasing agricultural exports and raising commodity food prices, imports, and leakage. Using novel transgenic eucalypts as our example, we predict selective breeding and genetic engineering can improve productivity per area, but maximizing productivity and biomass could make maintaining water supply, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services a challenge in a carbon-constrained world.With the pressure of energy shortage rising and climate change looming as an imminent disaster, it is up to individual corporate entities to set the pace for climate change action. A good action plan relies heavily on climate knowledge and basis quantification. After the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, the quantification of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission became the key issue in climate change-mitigation strategy, and was an especially key issue in the negotiations between China and the USA. This report addresses the issue of GHG quantification by demonstrating the potential effectiveness of the Energy and Climate Registry (ECR) that was launched in 2009 in China to help entities input, calculate, analyze, third-party verify and report the energy consumption and GHG emission in China. The ECR is an adaptation of the North American Climate Registry based in Los Angeles, USA. The system will play a pilot role for entities and allow them to measure energy consumption and GHG emissions in an accurate, consistent and verifiable way. This is the first step towards better energy management and the reduction of GHG emissions.Climate change is a major externality justifying government-sponsored R&D efforts into climate-friendly technologies. Current and near-term R&D is needed to develop new and improve existing technological options that will be needed in the long-term future to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The paper contrasts historical and current government R&D spending of the member countries of the International Energy Agency with a 'need'-based analysis of technologies required to achieve long-term climate stabilization. The assessment of technology needs draws on the popular 'stabilization wedge' concept and is based on an analysis of a wide range of (22) scenarios of future technology deployment rates under a range of climate constraints that reflect important long-term uncertainties. We identify a significant mismatch to current energy technology R&D portfolios. The largest gap is between energy efficiency that is under-represented in current R&D portfolios and nuclear, which is over-represented, when compared with their respective importance for future climate mitigation efforts. Our discussion, therefore, focuses largely on these two contrasting mitigation options: energy efficiency versus nuclear.Any human intervention in environmental systems carries risk of adverse consequences. Planetary-scale intervention carries the potential for planetary-scale risk. Continued emissions of greenhouse gases represent an unintentional planetary-scale human intervention in the climate system, which is resulting in global consequences that will become increasingly harmful to both human and environmental systems. The most appropriate response to this problem is to decrease the level of overall human intervention in the climate system by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. However, owing to the slow progress of mitigation efforts, many scientists are starting to suggest alternate climate interventions as a strategy to decrease or avert some of the anticipated impacts of global warming. In this review, I will consider the role of some forms of climate intervention those aimed at accelerating the slow natural removal of atmospheric CO, as possible complements to aggressive mitigation policy, for the purpose of expanding the range of attainable long-term climate targets.Domestic actions on climate mitigation are important for countries to undertake in addition to engaging in the international negotiations. An emissions trading scheme (ETS) can be one of the policy tools to promote mitigation actions, but has not yet been implemented in any developing country. An overview is provided of the climate change debate in India, its carbon markets, and proposed government action to tackle climate change. The possibility of implementing an ETS in India is explored from political and institutional perspectives. In particular, an ETS is considered in relation to the existing carbon market in India, particularly the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the proposed 'Perform, Achieve and Trade' (PAT) scheme and possible Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). Three key design aspects that would be central to the implementation of ETS in India are: point of regulation, GHG emission sources, and choice of allocation method. Their relevance in Indian context and the challenges that the ETS will face in the future are examined, if ETS were to be considered as a possible policy option. Based on this analysis, it is argued that an ETS is not viable for India in the immediate future.The alignment of energy policy in South Africa is considered in the context of the country's emerging climate mitigation vision. The term 'policy' is first defined as having a number of levels and components. It is then argued that at the level of written and stated energy policy, the intention exists to move towards a more diverse, efficient and less carbon-intensive energy sector. A number of policy instruments are being developed that go some way towards achieving these emission reductions. However, at a policy paradigm level, the energy paradigm and institutional orientation and capacity are fundamentally misaligned with the mitigation vision. In particular, vested interests constrain policy coordination and hence alignment. How could greater alignment be secured? First, government must ensure sufficient capacity, leadership and influence within its energy institutions as a prerequisite. This would prioritize and enable appropriately oriented sector institutional capacity, either by creating new institutions, or by mandating existing institutions to deliver on low-carbon initiatives. It is suggested that, while new capacity may be optimal, it would be unrealistic to attain this level of sector transformation within urgent time frames, given the strongly entrenched energy sector interests in maintaining the status quo.Decreasing the human impact on the atmosphere will necessitate active management of terrestrial carbon pools and greenhouse gas fluxes. Biospheric greenhouse gas emission mitigation measures such as increasing forest area and increasing forest biomass density, build-up of soil carbon and avoided emissions from deforestation offer cost-efficient solutions while in the long run they are limited by land availability, saturation, and concerns about their permanence. Biomass can also be used to produce low greenhouse gas intensive materials, feedstock for energy production and if combined with carbon capture and sequestration it can offer permanent negative emissions. Although most terrestrial management options appear as competitive mitigation measures from an economic point of view, issues of governance remain most contentious as they induce competition for land and other ecosystem services.A large body of literature has been published on urban carbon emissions and management in the last few years. This paper searches for answers to two broad questions: what do we know about the GHG emissions from urbanization at multiple scales and what are the key opportunities to mitigate GHG from cities and their efficient governance? The review suggests that the quantification of urban contribution to global, regional and national GHGs are limited to few regions and for CO2 only. The GHG emissions of urban areas differ widely for the accounting methods, scope of GHGs, emission sources and urban definition, thus, making place-based comparisons difficult. The urban system has large indirect carbon flows across the administrative and agglomeration boundaries with important policy implications. We also observed that an integrated system perspective is needed in future studies to integrate all sources, sinks, and opportunities for infrastructure and technology for carbon management. In particular, the multiple benefit assessment of climate change mitigation in cities including the potentials for combined response to the mitigation and adaptation are necessary and the research related to efficient urban carbon governance by ascertaining who can influence the urban carbon mitigation by what extent is important.In recent years, a number of initiatives have been supported in Europe in the hydrogen energy sector. Communities can play an important role in the adoption process of these emerging technologies: supporting pre-commercial deployment, building public acceptance, and promoting innovation clusters, all of which lay the foundations for more widespread and sustained technology deployment. Participation by communities is hinged on the perceived contribution of technology adoption to community socio-economic and energy related goals, such as, climate change mitigation, air quality improvement, creation of new industries and businesses, exploitation of abundant renewable resources, and meeting growing energy needs. Hydrogen uptake in communities therefore stands to benefit development of the hydrogen energy sector and the communities themselves. This paper presents a methodology for evaluating the potential for successful large-scale hydrogen and fuel cell technology adoption beyond demonstration projects within defined community frameworks. This methodology can be a valuable tool, for community decision-makers and industry stakeholders alike, to evaluate and identify opportunities for large-scale hydrogen technology adoption. Results of applying the methodology are presented for three community types: islands, cities and regions. The work in this paper reflects work done within the frame of the European Commission-funded 'Roads2HyCom' project, Work Package 3.(1) (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a new approach for a nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMA) framework that can unlock the huge potential for greenhouse gas mitigation in dispersed energy end-use sectors in developing countries; specifically, the building sector and the industrial sector. These two sectors make up the largest portions of energy consumption in developing countries. However, due to multiple barriers and lack of effective polices, energy efficiency in dispersed energy end-use sectors has not been effectively put into practice. The new NAMA framework described in this paper is designed to fulfill the demand for public policies and public sector investment in developing countries and thereby boost private sector investment through project based market mechanisms, such as CDM. The new NAMA framework is designed as a need-based mechanism which effectively considers the conditions of each developing country. The building sector is used as an example to demonstrate how NAMA measures can be registered and implemented. The described new NAMA framework has the ability to interface efficiently with Kyoto Protocol mechanisms and to facilitate a systematic uptake for GHG emission reduction investment projects. This is an essential step to achieve the global climate change mitigation target and support sustainable development in developing countries. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many US municipalities are engaged in climate mitigation planning, or efforts to reduce their communities' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through land-use, transportation, and energy planning. However, they face a number of procedural and institutional obstacles that limit the adoption and implementation of those plans. The literature identifies some of the factors that lead municipalities to join relevant policy networks, but provides little guidance for overcoming the aforementioned obstacles and adopting policies to reduce community-wide GHG emissions. With this study I increase the understanding of climate mitigation planning by examining whether the adoption of these plans and policies is driven primarily by local demographic, economic, environmental, or political institutional characteristics. My research is based upon a survey of 255 US municipalities. I combine the survey responses with secondary data and use multiple regression techniques to estimate the impact of fifteen demographic, political institutional, economic, and environmental variables on the adoption of climate mitigation plans and policies. The influence of neighboring jurisdictions, the presence of staff members assigned to energy or climate planning, and the level of community environmental activism are found to have the greatest impact on climate mitigation policy adoption. These findings support the conclusion that the extent of climate mitigation planning is driven primarily by internal processes, and municipalities that are successful in this area do not fit any one profile according to their demographic, economic, or environmental characteristics.We compare several emissions reduction instruments, including quantity policies with banking and borrowing, price policies, and hybrid policies (safety valve and price collar), using a dynamic model with stochastic baseline emissions. The instruments are compared under the design goal of obtaining the same expected cumulative emissions across all options. Based on simulation analysis with the model parameterized to values relevant to proposed US climate mitigation policies, we find that restrictions on banking and borrowing, including the provision of interest rates on the borrowings, can severely limit the value of the policy, depending on the regulator-chosen allowance issuance path. Although emissions taxes generally provide the lowest expected abatement costs, a cap-and-trade system combined with either a safety valve or a price collar can be designed to provide expected abatement costs near those of a tax, but with lower emissions variance than a tax. Consistently, a price collar is more cost-effective than a safety valve for a given expected cumulative emissions outcome because it encourages inexpensive abatement when abatement costs decline.The increasing demand for environmental information on the global warming impact of products requires a solid methodological framework which guarantees comparability and communicability. The publicly available specification PAS 2050 combines approaches to a variety of greenhouse gas specific assessment issues to deliver a globally applicable product Carbon Footprinting (CF) method, which is expected to be widely accepted. Specifically, this paper aims to demonstrate the implementation of a CF scheme for a common canned mussel product according to PAS 2050 guidelines. A final value of 4.35 kg CO(2)e per triple pack of round cans of mussels was calculated. Furthermore, this CF study led to identify primary packaging (can production) and mussel shell management as the main activities where efforts should focus for climate change mitigation. Throughout this case study. CF opportunities and drawbacks are discussed. The whole text tries to provide a starting point for both mussel processors and policy makers to benefit from the potential advantages of a responsible use of this increasingly popular tool. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land used for agricultural production can contribute significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; however, there is very little information on the role of management and land use change in influencing these emissions in Africa. Thus, exploring GHG emissions that occur at the soil-atmosphere interface is an essential part of the effort to integrate land management strategies with climate change mitigation and adaptation in southern Africa. We measured soil emissions of carbon dioxide (CO(2)), methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O) from rain-fed perennial tropical grassland, wastewater-irrigated perennial tropical pastureland, recently cleared woodland, miombo woodland, a Eucalyptus plantation, regular cropland and recently cleared-and-cropped land, on two contrasting soils at five sites in one cropping season in Zimbabwe. Gas samples were collected using static chambers and analysed by gas chromatography. Considerably high GHG emissions were found on sewage effluent-irrigated pastureland (means, 190 mg CO(2)-C m(-2) hour(-1), 102 mu g CH(4)-C m(-2) hour(-1) and 6 mu g N(2)O-N m(-2) hour(-1) from sandy soil) and altered woodlands (mean ranges, 38-70 CO(2)-C m(-2) hour(-1), 12-43 mu g CH(4)-C m(-2) hour(-1) and 20-31 mu g N(2)O-N m(-2) hour(-1) from deforested and cultivated woodland on clay and sandy soils). Relatively low and less variable emissions were found among the rain-fed perennial tropical grasslands, regular croplands and Eucalyptus plantations (mean ranges, 19-39 mg CO(2)-C m(-2) hour(-1), -9.4-2.6 mu g CH(4)-C m(-2) hour(-1) and 1.0-4.7 mu g N(2)O-N m(-2) hour(-1)). Variability in CO(2), CH(4) and N(2)O emissions from soils was to the greatest extent influenced by soil temperature, but soil moisture, mineral-N and pH were also important. The increased N(2)O emissions from cleared woodland on clay soil were attributed to increased mineralization and N availability when no tree could take up that N. while the N mineralized on the sandy soil could have been largely leached due to the soil's poor nutrient holding capacity, resulting in a relatively lower N(2)O emission response to clearing. We concluded that the alteration of woodlands by deforestation and cultivation increased soil temperature, resulting in increased soil respiration, while the establishment of Eucalyptus plantations may provide an option for reduction in soil emissions of CO(2) and N(2)O and a sink for CH(4).Communications regarding climate change are increasingly being utilised in order to encourage sustainable behaviour and the way that these are framed can significantly alter the impact that they have on the recipient. This experimental study seeks to investigate how transferable existing research findings on framing from health and behavioural research are to the climate change case. The study (N=161) examined how framing the same information about climate change in terms of gain or loss outcomes and in terms of local or distant impacts can affect perceptions. Text on potential climate change impacts was adapted from the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, alongside maps and images of potential flooding impacts. Participants then completed measures of various relevant socio-cognitive factors and questions assessing their responses to the information that they had received. Results indicated that, ceteris paribus, gain frames were superior to loss frames in increasing positive attitudes towards climate change mitigation, and also increased the perceived severity of climate change impacts. However, third variable analyses demonstrated that the superiority of the gain frame was partially suppressed by lower fear responses and poorer information recall within gain framed information. In addition, framing climate change impacts as distant (whilst keeping information presented the same) resulted in climate change impacts being perceived as more severe, whilst attitudes towards climate change mitigation were more positive when participants were asked to consider social rather than personal aspects of climate change. Implications for designing communications about climate change are outlined. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and the Stern report climate mitigation has become a main topic on all levels. In national efforts concerning CO2-reduction cities play a crucial role. But in local praxis various deficits preventing a successful implementation show up. Against this background the article discusses the frame of action as well as approaches of a Local Climate Protection Management, which refers to the well implemented concept of Local Sustainability Management. The research project supported by the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt explores how a strategic management could upgrade processes concerning climate protection.Sustainable urban water consumption has become a critical issue in Australian built environments due to the country's dry climate and increasingly variable rainfall. Residential households have the potential to conserve water, especially across discretionary end uses such as showering. The advent of high resolution smart meters and data loggers allows for the disaggregation of water flow recordings into a registry of water end use events (e.g. showers, washing machine and taps). This study firstly reports on a water consumption end use study sample of 151 households conducted in the Gold Coast, Australia, with a focus on daily per capita shower end use distributions. A sub-sample of 44 households within the greater sample was recruited for the installation of an alarming visual display monitor locked at 40 L consumption for bathroom showers. All sub-sample shower end use event durations, volumes and flow rates were then analysed and compared utilising independent sample t-tests pre- and post-intervention. The installation of the shower monitor instigated a statistically significant mean reduction of 15.40 L (27%) in shower event volumes. Monetary savings resulting from modelled water and energy conservation resulted in a 1.65-year payback period for the device. Furthermore, conservative modelling indicated that the citywide implementation of the device could yield 3% and 2.4% savings in total water and energy consumption, respectively. Moreover, a range of non-monetary benefits were identified, including the deferment of water and energy supply infrastructure, reduced resource inflationary pressures, and climate change mitigation, to name a few. Resource consumption awareness devices like the one evaluated in this study assist resource consumers to take ownership of their usage and individually tackle individualistic and/or society driven conservation goals, ultimately helping to reduce the ecological footprint of built environments. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change mitigation, economic growth and stability, and the ongoing depletion of oil reserves are all major drivers for the development of economically rational, renewable energy technology platforms. Microalgae have re-emerged as a popular feedstock for the production of biofuels and other more valuable products. Even though integrated microalgal production systems have some clear advantages and present a promising alternative to highly controversial first generation biofuel systems, the associated hype has often exceeded the boundaries of reality. With a growing number of recent analyses demonstrating that despite the hype, these systems are conceptually sound and potentially sustainable given the available inputs, we review the research areas that are key to attaining economic reality and the future development of the industry.Recent globalization has been characterized by a decline in the costs of cross-border trade in farm and other products. It has been driven primarily by the information and communication technology revolution and-in the case of farm products-by reductions in governmental distortions to agricultural production, consumption and trade. Both have boosted economic growth and reduced poverty globally, especially in Asia. The first but maybe not the second of these drivers will continue in coming decades. World food prices will depend also on whether (and if so by how much) farm productivity growth continues to outpace demand growth and to what extent diets in emerging economies move towards livestock and horticultural products at the expense of staples. Demand in turn will be driven not only by population and income growth, but also by crude oil prices if they remain at current historically high levels, since that will affect biofuel demand. Climate change mitigation policies and adaptation, water market developments and market access standards particularly for transgenic foods will add to future production, price and trade uncertainties.Climate change mitigation targets are often described in terms of annually averaged global mean temperature increases. However local interpretation of impacts resulting from these targets are required if the public is to have a sound appreciation of their consequences. Some of the largest impacts are likely to arise from changes in extreme events, for example heatwaves and floods. This article estimates future regional heat extreme changes consistent with specific global warming targets, using a new and presently unique ensemble of physically plausible climate simulations. We find that a subset of ensemble members giving globally averaged temperature increases of 2.0 +/- 0.5 degrees C shows a wide range of changes in regional temperature extremes. For example, changes in extreme single-day hot events range between 2 and 6 degrees C for large parts of Europe, North America and Asia for this target. Plausible variations in the model representation of forest roughness length, vegetation root depth and boundary layer cloud make the largest individual contributions to the spread of changes found in different parts of the world. However, a wide range of processes contribute to the uncertainties in the regional changes, particularly through their direct or indirect influences on the simulation of soil moisture. Citation: Clark, R. T., J. M. Murphy, and S. J. Brown (2010), Do global warming targets limit heatwave risk?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L17703, doi: 10.1029/2010GL043898.Even though much has been written about climate change and poverty as distinct and complex problems, the link between them has received little attention. Understanding this link is vital for the formulation of effective policy responses to climate change. In this article the authors focus on agriculture as a primary means by which the impacts of climate change are transmitted to the poor and as a sector at the forefront of climate change mitigation efforts in developing countries. In so doing, they offer some important insights that may help shape future policies as well as ongoing research in this area.Adaptation of agricultural and food systems to climate change involves private and public investment decisions in the face of climate and policy uncertainties. The authors present a framework for analysis of adaptation as an investment, based on elements of the economics, finance, and ecological economics literatures. They use this framework to assess critically impact and adaptation studies, and discuss how research could be designed to support public and private investment decisions. They then discuss how climate mitigation policies and other policies may affect adaptive capacity of agricultural and food systems. They conclude with an agenda for public research on climate adaptation.This paper looks at the role of the built environment in our un-sustainability and explores the full spectrum of strategies and solutions as to how buildings might become a pathway towards a sustainable future, using carbon as a proxy. In addition to traditional notions of reductive sustainability, it explores restorative strategies and advocates a '5Rs' solution: 'Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, Repair and Restore'.The current and emerging international architecture to mitigate and adapt to climate change has significant implications for the enjoyment of human rights. This article considers these implications, looking at a number of problematic areas where the climate change regime may cause human rights violations. These include some projects under the Clean Development Mechanism, including large hydropower and biomass projects. Use of biofuels, choices on energy and adaptation, and avoided deforestation (known as REDD) can also create human rights problems for local communities, especially indigenous peoples and rural residents. The article then considers ways to avoid creating new human rights violations as we pursue climate mitigation and adaptation, including linking the climate change and human rights regimes, the use of private standards, and creating an expert mechanism within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.This article aims to investigate the introduction, sustenance and consolidation of bioethanol in Brazil. It presents an analysis of its introductory stage, from the first decades of the 20th century until the early 1970s, when, in a second stage, additional measures allowed for its consolidation and maturity, under the widely known Proalcool. The paper presents a historical reinterpretation of the policies, mechanisms and instruments adopted in both stages, aiming to highlight the economical and political links. It is concluded that the interests of the agrarian elites, operating at the political level, and the fuel supply crisis during Second World War were basic during the first stage, to sustain a productive and logistic capacity and maintain ethanol alive as an automotive fuel. It is also concluded that the launching of Proalcool represented a transition combining the interests of the sugarcane agribusiness, burdened by the drop in sugar prices, and the need to equilibrate the balance of payments due to the oil shocks of the 1970s. Ethanol supply shocks harmed its credibility and its commercial consolidation was only possible through the introduction of flex-fuel vehicles with expectations strongly relying on climate change mitigation actions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.No-tillage mulch-based (NTM) cropping systems have been widely adopted by farmers in the Brazilian savanna region (Cerrado biome). We hypothesized that this new type of management should have a profound impact on soil organic carbon (SOC) at regional scale and consequently on climate change mitigation. The objective of this study was thus to quantify the SOC storage potential of NTM in the oxisols of the Cerrado using a synchronic approach that is based on a chronosequence of fields of different years under NTM. The study consisted of three phases: (1) a farm/cropping system survey to identify the main types of NTM systems to be chosen for the chronosequence; (2) a field survey to identify a homogeneous set of situations for the chronosequence and (3) the characterization of the chronosequence to assess the SOC storage potential. The main NTM system practiced by farmers is an annual succession of soybean (Glycine max)or maize (Zea mays) with another cereal crop. This cropping system covers 54% of the total cultivated area in the region. At the regional level, soil organic C concentrations from NTM fields were closely correlated with clay + silt content of the soil (r(2) = 0.64). No significant correlation was observed (r(2) = 0.07), however, between these two variables when we only considered the fields with a clay + silt content in the 500-700 g kg(-1) range. The final chronosequence of NTM fields was therefore based on a subsample of eight fields, within this textural range. The SOC stocks in the 0-30 cm topsoil layer of these selected fields varied between 4.2 and 6.7 kg C m(-2) and increased on average (r(2) = 0.97) with 0.19 kg C m(-2) year(-1). After 12 years of NTM management, SOC stocks were no longer significantly different from the stocks under natural Cerrado vegetation (p < 0.05), whereas a 23-year-old conventionally tilled and cropped field showed SOC stocks that were about 30% below this level. Confirming our hypotheses, this study clearly illustrated the high potential of NTM systems in increasing SOC storage under tropical conditions, and how a synchronic approach may be used to assess efficiently such modification on farmers' fields, identifying and excluding non desirable sources of heterogeneity (management, soils and climate). (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cross-sector partnerships between representatives of state, private business, and civil society are widely proposed as means to involve non-state actors in public policy. Yet, critics have argued partnerships contain paradoxes that prevent effective regulation or social inclusion. This paper reviews these debates and applies them to climate change policy in developing countries, and especially technology transfer and forest governance. The paper argues that debate about partnerships needs to move from rhetoric to identifying institutional designs that maximize contractual obligations and enhance local deliberation. But enhancing deliberation also implies looking at how partnerships reflect, rather than create, wider norms and advocacy coalitions, and by creating standardized means of collaboration such as free and prior informed consent. Rethinking partnerships in these ways not only accelerates climate change mitigation but also builds local adaptive capacity. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 683-696To understand how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may affect future stratospheric ozone, 21st century projections from four chemistry-climate models are examined for their dependence on six different GHG scenarios. Compared to higher GHG emissions, lower emissions result in smaller increases in tropical upwelling with resultant smaller reductions in ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere and less severe stratospheric cooling with resultant smaller increases in upper stratospheric ozone globally. Increases in reactive nitrogen and hydrogen that lead to additional chemical ozone destruction mainly play a role in scenarios with higher GHG emissions. Differences among the six GHG scenarios are found to be largest over northern midlatitudes (similar to 20 DU by 2100) and in the Arctic (similar to 40 DU by 2100) with divergence mainly in the second half of the 21st century. The uncertainty in the return of stratospheric column ozone to 1980 values arising from different GHG scenarios is comparable to or less than the uncertainty that arises from model differences in the larger set of 17 CCMVal-2 SRES A1B simulations. The results suggest that effects of GHG emissions on future stratospheric ozone should be considered in climate change mitigation policy and ozone projections should be assessed under more than a single GHG scenario. Citation: Eyring, V., et al. (2010), Sensitivity of 21st century stratospheric ozone to greenhouse gas scenarios, wGeophys. Res. Lett., 37, L16807, doi:10.1029/2010GL044443.Carbon sequestration by afforestation can help mitigate global climate change but may have adverse environmental and economic impacts in some regions. For example, economic incentives for carbon sequestration may encourage the expansion of Pinus radiata timber plantations in the Fynbos biome of South Africa, with negative consequences for water supply and biodiversity. I built a dynamic ecological-economic model to investigate whether afforestation of a Fynbos catchment with Pinus radiata is economically viable when the potential benefits of carbon sequestration and timber production are balanced against the losses to water supply. I found that afforestation appears viable to the forestry industry under current water tariffs and current carbon accounting legislation, but would appear unviable if the forestry industry were to pay the true cost of water used by the plantations. I also found that under various plausible future economic scenarios. afforestation can be associated with either large future economic gains or losses, suggesting a need for future analyses based on branches of decision theory that deal with severe uncertainty. I conclude with a general recommendation that climate legislation should be explicit about the conditions under which afforestation for carbon sequestration of native vegetation is a legitimate climate mitigation strategy. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study quantifies the relative impact on future ocean acidification of different aspects of global climate change mitigation policies, such as the year that global emissions peak, how fast they reduce after their peak, and the long term minimum emissions that are possible. Relative to a scenario where emissions peak in 2016 and then decrease by 1% per year, further emissions reductions to 2, 3 and 4% per year lead to the same impact minimum pH (by 2100) if emissions peak 10, 15 and 17 years later respectively. Over the same time scale, non-mitigation scenarios lead to a decrease of global mean surface pH of 7.67 to 7.81. Strong and urgent mitigation, emissions peaking in 2016 and reducing by 5% per year, are shown to limit this minimum to 8.02. Minimum pH over longer timescales, the next 500 years, is largely determined by the minimum emission level that is attainable, owing to its relation with cumulative emissions. Citation: Bernie, D., J. Lowe, T. Tyrrell, and O. Legge (2010), Influence of mitigation policy on ocean acidification, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L15704, doi:10.1029/2010GL043181.Each year greenhouse gas emissions remain high the climate mitigation and adaptation challenges grow. The economic downturn was already in train in 2008, yet concentrations of CO(2) increased unabated. Without concerted effort across all sectors there will be little chance of avoiding 'dangerous climate change' and the aviation sector has a clear role to play. Current and forthcoming technologies, operational practices and behavioural change offer widespread opportunities for other sectors to mitigate their CO(2) emissions in absolute terms, but as they do so, aviation will become an increasingly important player. By comparing a range of global cross-sector emission scenarios with existing aviation projections, this paper illustrates the importance of understanding the future context with regard to other sectors when assessing the aviation industry's potential impact. Given growth projections for aviation and the relatively slow pace of technological change, aviation's proportion of 2050 global CO(2) emissions is low only in those global cross-sector emission scenarios where there is a high probability of 'dangerous climate change'. For a 'reasonable' (>50%) chance of avoiding 'dangerous climate change', the most technologically radical scenarios for aviation make up 15% of global CO(2) in 2050 and conventional scenarios exceed the carbon budget entirely. Only by recognising that aviation's currently projected emissions are incompatible with avoiding 'dangerous climate change' can the industry fully grasp the challenge of accelerating innovation and managing demand to deliver a more sustainable route to 2050 and beyond.There is a widespread sense that a sufficiently stringent climate mitigation policy, that is, a considerable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to avoid extreme climate change, will come with very high economic costs for society. This is supported by many cost-benefit analyses (CBA) and policy cost assessments of climate policy. All of these, nevertheless, are based on debatable assumptions. This paper will argue instead that safe climate policy is not excessively expensive and is indeed cheaper than suggested by most current studies. To this end, climate CBA and policy cost assessments are critically evaluated, and as a replacement twelve complementary perspectives on the cost of climate policy are offered.Though an extensive and growing literature suggests that the ancillary benefits of climate mitigation policies are large, the policy impact of the co-benefits concept has been limited. We review the methodological underpinnings of recent contributions to the co-benefits literature, paying particular attention to policy, environmental, and health modeling. We conclude that future contributions should look beyond air pollution, analyze developing economies, and draw on research teams that bring sophistication on both the science and the policy aspects of the co-benefits question.This paper focuses on the issue of innovation and technology transfer in the areas of air pollution abatement, wastewater effluent treatment, solid waste management; and climate change mitigation. The paper describes the trends in innovative activity related to selected areas of pollution abatement and control technologies and their transfer internationally. It also discusses characteristics of environmental policy regimes that are amenable to encouraging innovation of environmental technologies, and provides empirical evidence on the role of various determinants (including general characteristics of countries' environmental policy regimes) in encouraging innovation.Increasing demand for biofuels as a component of climate change mitigation, energy security, and a fossil fuel alternative attracts investors to developing countries like Tanzania. Ample unused land is critical for first generation biofuels production and an important feature to attract foreign direct investments that can contribute towards agricultural modernization and poverty reduction initiatives. Despite the economic justifications, the existing institutional and infrastructural capacities dictate the impacts of biofuels market penetrations. Furthermore, exogenous factors like global recessionary pressure depressed oil prices below the level at which biofuel production were profitable in 2007, making Tanzania's competitiveness and potential benefits questionable. This paper investigates the extent that first generation, jatropha-based biofuels industry development in Tanzania observed during fieldwork in Kisarawe and Bahi may fulfill policy objectives. This paper argues that without strong regulatory frameworks for land, investment management, and rural development, biofuel industrialization could further exacerbate poverty and food insecurity in Tanzania. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for first generation biofuel development while keeping in mind implications of second generation production. Since the topic is broad and multifaceted, a multidisciplinary approach is used that includes political, institutional, and agricultural economics to analyze and conceptualize biofuel industry development and food security. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.As climate change mitigation gains attention in the United States, low-carbon energy technologies such as wind power encounter both opportunities and barriers en route to deployment. This paper provides a state-level context for examining wind power deployment and presents research on how policy stakeholders perceive wind energy in four states: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, and Texas. Through semi-structured interviews, state-level energy policy stakeholders were asked to explain their perceptions of wind energy technology within their state. Interview texts were coded to assess how various drivers promote or hinder the deployment of wind power in sub-national contexts. Responses were dominated by technical, political, and economic frames in all four states, but were often driven by a very different rationale. Environmental, aesthetic, and health/safety frames appeared less often in the discourse. This analysis demonstrates that each state arrived at its current level of deployment via very different political, economic, and technical paths. In addition to helping explain why and how wind technology was - or was not - deployed in each of these states, these findings provide insight into the diversity of sub-national dialogues on deployment of low-carbon energy technologies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is critical to understanding the developmental path of a nation in relation to its environment. How the effects of economic development processes dictate environmental changes can be found through the study of EKC. To understand the EKC phenomena for climate change, this study was undertaken by reviewing the available literature. As CO2, SOx and NOx are the significant greenhouse gases (GHG) responsible for global warming, thus leading to climate change, the study focused on those GHGs for EKC consideration. With an understanding of the different EKC trajectories, an attempt was made to determine the implications for the economic development of Bangladesh in regards to the EKC. It was shown that EKC for CO2 was following a monotonous straight line in most cases. SOx were shown to follow the full trajectory of the EKC in most situations and NOx was shown the hope only for the developed countries getting the low-income turning point. The type of economic policy that Bangladesh should follow in regards to the discussed pollutants and sources is also revealed. From these discussions, contributions to policy stimulation in Bangladesh are likely to be made. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides a summary of the 'Retrofitting Residential Housing and Precincts: Current Practice, New Strategies and Training Responses' report, which was prepared by UNSW Global Pty Ltd for the Commonwealth Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR). The report was prepared with the guidance of the Built Environment Industry Innovation Council (BEIIC) and aimed to address two main research gaps: First, to identify current practice and new strategies for retrofitting residential housing and precincts in the context of climate change mitigation; Second, to provide a critical review of current upskilling and training programs for the 'green collar' construction workforce.We explore the relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation and distributional preferences, by which we mean individuals' opinions about who should be responsible for climate change prevention and whether the share of climate change impacts borne by the poor is a cause for concern. We use 1,770 responses to an online stated preference survey. The domestic costs in our survey's policy choice scenarios are expressed as a set of randomized shares across four different payment vehicles, and the international cost shares are randomized across four groups of countries. We also elicit respondents' perceptions of the likely regressivity of climate change impacts under a policy of business-as-usual. WTP is higher when larger cost shares are borne by parties deemed to bear a greater responsibility for mitigation, and when respondents believe (and care) that the impacts of climate change may be borne disproportionately by the world's poor. That WTP for an environmental policy depends on the distributional consequences of the policy is an unsettling result: efficiency assessments are typically assumed to be separate from equity considerations in most benefit-cost analyses.Urban forest management and policies have been promoted as a tool to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions. This study used existing CO(2) reduction measures from subtropical Miami-Dade and Gainesville, USA and modeled carbon storage and sequestration by trees to analyze policies that use urban forests to offset carbon emissions. Field data were analyzed, modeled, and spatially analyzed to compare CO(2) sequestered by managing urban forests to equivalent amounts of CO(2) emitted in both urban areas. Urban forests in Gainesville have greater tree density, store more carbon and present lower per-tree sequestration rates than Miami-Dade as a result of environmental conditions and urbanization patterns. Areas characterized by natural pine-oak forests, mangroves, and stands of highly invasive trees were most apt at sequestering CO(2). Results indicate that urban tree sequestration offsets CO(2) emissions and, relative to total city-wide emissions, is moderately effective at 3.4 percent and 1.8 percent in Gainesville and Miami-Dade, respectively. Moreover, converting available non-treed areas into urban forests would not increase overall CO(2) emission reductions substantially. Current CO(2) sequestration by trees was comparable to implemented CO(2) reduction policies. However, long-term objectives, multiple ecosystem services, costs, community needs, and preservation of existing forests should be considered when managing trees for climate change mitigation and other ecosystem services. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a major global carbon sink and is a target of carbon sequestration. SOC is also a major potential source of future emissions as conversion of land from pasture or forest to arable land leads to significant emissions of CO(2) plus N(2)O. We have investigated the relationship between UK crop yields, land-use change and GHG emissions. There are a number of potential threats to future yields including climate change, water availability and pest pressure. Were pasture or forested land to be converted to arable land in order to compensate for lower yields then this would result in significant additional GHG emissions from SOC losses. We have modelled the impact of increasing the arable land area in the UK and other selected countries compensating for UK crop yield reductions. The predicted 20-year emissions range from under 5 x 10(6) t CO(2)-e to over 5 x 10(8) t CO(2)-e, following yield reductions of individual UK crops between 5 per cent and 30 per cent. These results suggest that crop yield reductions could have a significant adverse impact on climate change and that the maintenance or increase of crop yields is necessary in any strategy for climate change mitigation.Synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizers, by both very energy-intensive manufacture and inefficient N use in farm soils, contribute rationally to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and, thus, climate change. India consumes similar to 14Mt of synthetic N per year, of which about 80 per cent is produced, and is the second-largest producer and consumer in the world, after China. We estimate that GHG emissions from synthetic N fertilizer in India reached similar to 100Mt of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) in 2006/2007; about half of these emissions resulted from the 11 Mt of synthetic N produced in the country that year (48Mt of CO2-e) and the other half resulted from the 14Mt of N applied to Indian farm soils in the same year (51 Mt of CO2-e, ranging between 28 and 1 63Mt of CO2-e). Emissions from synthetic N fertilizers represent 6 per cent of India's total anthropogenic emissions, comparable to cement industry and to the whole road transport system. There is significant potential to mitigate these emissions: savings from increased N use efficiency and from shifting away from synthetic fertilizer could reduce total fertilizers emissions to 37Mt of CO2-e, and the contribution of fertilizers to India's emissions would drop from 6 to 2 per cent.55 % of all investments are made in the buildings sector. Over its entire value added chain, the construction industry accounts for 11 % of output in Germany and employs 12 % of the workforce subject to compulsory social insurance. The construction, housing and property sectors are involved in a multiplicity of interrelationships with measures and objectives of the Federal Government's sustainable development strategy. Principal among these are climate change mitigation, improving energy efficiency, improving the productivity of energy and raw materials, reducing land take and shaping demographic change. The assessment of the contribution made by individual structures to sustainable development results in the call for the development of an overall system for the description and appraisal of buildings, including the land on which they are built. Sustainability considerations are characterized by a whole life cycle analysis and the comprehensive inclusion of ecological, economic and socio-cultural aspects. Alongside energy balances, therefore, it is also necessary to study the material flows and financial impacts, in particular. The development, trialling and application of systems for describing, assessing and certifying the sustainability of buildings is tied to a number of prerequisites. In particular, the changeover to an assessment and certification system based predominantly on quantitative assessments poses a significant challenge.Production of biochar (the carbon (C)-rich solid formed by pyrolysis of biomass) and its storage in soils have been suggested as a means of abating climate change by sequestering carbon, while simultaneously providing energy and increasing crop yields. Substantial uncertainties exist, however, regarding the impact, capacity and sustainability of biochar at the global level. In this paper we estimate the maximum sustainable technical potential of biochar to mitigate climate change. Annual net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide could be reduced by a maximum of 1.8Pg CO2-C equivalent (CO2-C-e) per year (12% of current anthropogenic CO2-C-e emissions; 1Pg = 1Gt), and total net emissions over the course of a century by 130 Pg CO2-C-e, without endangering food security, habitat or soil conservation. Biochar has a larger climate-change mitigation potential than combustion of the same sustainably procured biomass for bioenergy, except when fertile soils are amended while coal is the fuel being offset.Concerns about the slow pace of climate mitigation have led to renewed dialogue about solar-radiation management, which could be achieved by adding reflecting aerosols to the stratosphere(1-6). Modelling studies suggest that solar-radiation management could produce stabilized global temperatures and reduced global precipitation(4-6). Here we present an analysis of regional differences in a climate modified by solar-radiation management, using a large-ensemble modelling experiment that examines the impacts of 54 scenarios for global temperature stabilization. Our results confirm that solar-radiation management would generally lead to less extreme temperature and precipitation anomalies, compared with unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions. However, they also illustrate that it is physically not feasible to stabilize global precipitation and temperature simultaneously as long as atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise. Over time, simulated temperature and precipitation in large regions such as China and India vary significantly with different trajectories for solar-radiation management, and they diverge from historical baselines in different directions. Hence, it may not be possible to stabilize the climate in all regions simultaneously using solar-radiation management. Regional diversity in the response to different levels of solar-radiation management could make consensus about the optimal level of geoengineering difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.Black carbon is generated by fossil-fuel combustion and biomass burning. Black-carbon aerosols absorb solar radiation, and are probably a major source of global warming(1,2). However, the extent of black-carbon-induced warming is dependent on the concentration of sulphate and organic aerosols-which reflect solar radiation and cool the surface-and the origin of the black carbon(3,4). Here we examined the impact of black-carbon-to-sulphate ratios on net warming in China, using surface and aircraft measurements of aerosol plumes from Beijing, Shanghai and the Yellow Sea. The Beijing plumes had the highest ratio of black carbon to sulphate, and exerted a strong positive influence on the net warming. Compiling all the data, we show that solar-absorption efficiency was positively correlated with the ratio of black carbon to sulphate. Furthermore, we show that fossil-fuel-dominated black-carbon plumes were approximately 100% more efficient warming agents than biomass-burning-dominated plumes. We suggest that climate-change-mitigation policies should aim at reducing fossil-fuel black-carbon emissions, together with the atmospheric ratio of black carbon to sulphate.Climate change mitigation is considered as a high priority internationally and is placed in the top of the agenda for most politicians and decision makers. The key challenge is that low-carbon sustainable technologies need to be adopted both by developed as well as developing countries, in an effort to avoid past unsustainable practices and being locked into old, less sustainable technologies. Technology transfer (TT), as an important feature of both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol can play a key role. TT can allow countries to move quickly to environmentally sound and sustainable practices, institutions and technologies. Indeed, the transfer or innovation process must be fast enough, to reduce global vulnerability to climate change. The aim of this paper is to analyse the IT challenges and emerging opportunities under the new climate regime, in terms of the process of innovation into an existing energy system, the related barriers and the supporting diffusion mechanisms. Good practices for renewable energy are also presented and discussed by both the developed and the developing countries in this respect. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lithuania is currently dealing with two major problems in energy sector: final closure of Ignalina Nuclear Power plant (Ignalina NPP) in the end of 2009 and nuclear waste disposal and climate change mitigation issues having in mind replacement of nuclear capacities with fossil one and anticipated increase in GHG emissions. Lithuania has two options: to construct new nuclear power plant also taking into account nuclear waste disposal issue or to burn fossil fuel and to apply carbon capture and storage (CCS) for GHG emission reduction. These two options need to be investigated in Lithuania based on various studies conducted in Lithuania and abroad dealing with geological carbon storage and nuclear waste disposal potentials. There are no long-lived nuclear waste geological storage capacities in Lithuania and there is no pilot project on CCS developed in Lithuania. The aim of the article is to analyse and compare geological carbon and nuclear waste storage opportunities in Lithuania and to assess nuclear and carbon capture and storage technologies in terms of costs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores the potential for ethanol production and fuel substitution in Nepal based on established sugarcane production, installed capacity for sugar and ethanol production, economic opportunities for the national economy, and potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At present conditions, 18,045 m(3) ethanol can be annually produced in Nepal without compromising the production of food products from sugar cane such as sugar, chaku and shakhar. The effects for the country can be manifold. As much as 14% of gasoline import reduction, and annual savings of US$ 10 million could be achieved through the introduction of the E20. The activity can provide an incentive for improved yields in sugarcane production, and help develop the industrial sector. This, in turn, will have a positive effect in terms of job and income generation in the rural areas where 85% of the population live. Improvement of agricultural practices for sugarcane could also have an indirect and positive effect on improving other agriculture activities. Furthermore, the use of ethanol in the transport sector will have a positive environmental effect while reducing CO(2) emissions and combating pollution in the Kathmandu Valley. Finally, the substitution of ethanol in transport will imply lower imports of oil products and less draining of resources from the Nepalese economy. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Currently in the US, over 97% of food waste is estimated to be buried in landfills. There is nonetheless interest in strategies to divert this waste from landfills as evidenced by a number of programs and policies at the local and state levels, including collection programs for source separated organic wastes (SSO). The objective of this study was to characterize the state-of-the-practice of food waste treatment alternatives in the US and Canada. Site visits were conducted to aerobic composting and two anaerobic digestion facilities, in addition to meetings with officials that are responsible for program implementation and financing. The technology to produce useful products from either aerobic or anaerobic treatment of SSO is in place. However, there are a number of implementation issues that must be addressed, principally project economics and feedstock purity. Project economics varied by region based on landfill disposal fees. Feedstock purity can be obtained by enforcement of contaminant standards and/or manual or mechanical sorting of the feedstock prior to and after treatment. Future SSO diversion will be governed by economics and policy incentives, including landfill organics bans and climate change mitigation policies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sequestered forest carbon can provide a climate change mitigation benefit, but in dry temperate forests, wildfire poses a reversal risk to carbon offset projects. Reducing wildfire risk requires a reduction in and redistribution of carbon stocks, the benefit of which is only realized when wildfire occurs. To estimate the time needed to recover carbon removed and emitted during treatment, we compared the 7-year post-treatment carbon stocks for mechanical thinning and prescribed fire fuels reduction treatments in Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forest and modeled annual carbon accumulation rates. Within our 7-year re-sample period, the burn only and understory thin treatments sequestered more carbon than had been removed or emitted during treatment The understory thin and burn, overstory thin, and overstory thin and burn continued to have net negative carbon stocks when emissions associated with treatment were subtracted from 7-year carbon stock gains. However, the size of the carbon deficit in the understory thin and burn 7 years post-treatment and the live tree growth rates suggest that the remaining trees may sequester treatment emissions within several more years of growth. Overstory tree thinning treatments resulted in a large carbon deficit and removed many of the largest trees that accumulate the most carbon annually, thereby increasing carbon stock recovery time. Our results indicate that while there is an initial carbon stock reduction associated with fuels treatments, treated forests can quickly recover carbon stocks if treatments do not remove large, fire-resistant overstory trees. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper addresses the probable levels of investment needed in new technologies for energy conversion and storage that are essential to address climate change, drawing on past evidence on the rate of cost improvements in energy technologies. A range of energy materials and technologies with lower carbon emissions over their life cycle are being developed, including fuel cells (FCs), hydrogen storage, batteries, supercapacitors, solar energy and nuclear power, and it is probable that most, if not all, of these technologies will be needed to mitigate climate change. High rates of innovation and deployment will be needed to meet targets such as the UK's goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, which will require significant levels of investment. Learning curves observed for reductions in unit costs of energy technologies, such as photovoltaics and FCs, can provide evidence on the probable future levels of investment needed. The paper concludes by making recommendations for policy measures to promote such investment from both the public and private sectors.Background: If biofuels are to be a viable substitute for fossil fuels, it is essential that they retain their potential to mitigate climate change under future atmospheric conditions. Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration [CO2] stimulates plant biomass production; however, the beneficial effects of increased production may be offset by higher energy costs in crop management. Methodology/Main Findings: We maintained full size poplar short rotation coppice (SRC) systems under both current ambient and future elevated [CO2] (550 ppm) and estimated their net energy and greenhouse gas balance. We show that a poplar SRC system is energy efficient and produces more energy than required for coppice management. Even more, elevated [CO2] will increase the net energy production and greenhouse gas balance of a SRC system with 18%. Managing the trees in shorter rotation cycles (i.e., 2 year cycles instead of 3 year cycles) will further enhance the benefits from elevated [CO2] on both the net energy and greenhouse gas balance. Conclusions/Significance: Adapting coppice management to the future atmospheric [CO2] is necessary to fully benefit from the climate mitigation potential of bio-energy systems. Further, a future increase in potential biomass production due to elevated [CO2] outweighs the increased production costs resulting in a northward extension of the area where SRC is greenhouse gas neutral. Currently, the main part of the European terrestrial carbon sink is found in forest biomass and attributed to harvesting less than the annual growth in wood. Because SRC is intensively managed, with a higher turnover in wood production than conventional forest, northward expansion of SRC is likely to erode the European terrestrial carbon sink.Due to the potential of forest ecosystems contributing to CO(2) increase as well as to climate change mitigation, forest-atmosphere CO(2) exchange has been intensively studied over last decades. However, the contribution of individual components of belowground carbon pools is still poorly known. In particular, there is no unequivocal means to separate root respiration (autotrophic) from heterotrophic respiration by soil microflora and fauna. Most studies investigating soil respiration disturbed the soil and tried to exclude autrophic respiration. Here we review alternative non invasive methods to separate the two components. Those methods share the application of the stable carbon isotope (13)C, using either local changes in natural abundance of (13)CO(2) or artificial labelling of trees with CO(2) enriched or depleted in (13)C. We conclude that the applicability of natural stable isotope methods is still limited in forest ecosystems because only in a few cases there are large enough differences in (13)C among soil carbon pools (usually due to the earlier presence of a C(4) canopy, which is seldom in forests). On the other hand, artificial labelling with CO(2) either enriched or depleted in (13)C is now in a widely used for partitioning soil respiration components. However, recent findings gave clear evidence that measurements of soil CO(2) efflux can be substantially influenced by the return efflux of the abiotic label. Still, especially the combination of Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) with dual delta(13)C and delta(18)O stable isotope approach has the potential to provide new answers on the response sensitivity of turnover dynamics of the largest belowground soil carbon storage to elevated temperature and CO(2).We compare different options for the use of lignocellulosic biomass to reduce CO2 emission and oil use, focusing on polygeneration of biomass-based motor fuels and electricity, and discuss methodological issues related to such comparisons. The use of biomass can significantly reduce CO2 emission and oil use, but there is a trade-off between the reductions in CO2 emission and oil use. Bioelectricity from stand-alone plants replacing coal-based electricity reduced CO2 emission by 99 kg per GJ biomass input but gave no oil use reduction. Stand-alone produced methanol replacing diesel reduced the CO2 emission with 38 kg and the oil use with 0.67 GJ per GJ biomass, indicating that a potential CO2 emission reduction of 90 kg is lost per GJ oil reduced. CO2 emission and oil use reduction for alternatives co-producing fuel and electricity fall between the stand-alone alternatives. Plug-in hybridelectric vehicles using bioelectricity reduced CO2 emission by 75-88 kg and oil use by 0.99-1.2 GJ, per GJ biomass input. Biomass can also reduce CO2 emission and/or oil use more efficiently if fossil-fuel-fired boilers or electric heating is replaced by district heating from biomass-based combined heat and power generation. This is also true if electricity or motor fuel is produced from black liquor gasification in pulp mills or if wood is used instead of concrete in building construction. Biomass gasification is an important technology to achieve large reductions, irrespective of whether CO2 emission or oil use reduction is prioritised. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Papua New Guinea (PNG) has become the focus of climate change mitigation initiatives such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, but defensible estimates of forest carbon are lacking. Here we present a methodology for estimating aboveground forest carbon, and apply it to a large Permanent Sample Plot system maintained by Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute. We report the first estimates of forest carbon in lowland tropical forest in PNG. Average aboveground carbon in stems > 10 cm diam. for 115 selectively harvested 1-ha plots in lowland tropical forest was 66.3 +/- 3.5 Mg C/ha (95% CI) while for 10 primary forest plots the average was 106.3 +/- 16.2 Mg C/ha. We applied ratios based on field observations, in-country studies, and the literature to estimate unmeasured pools of aboveground carbon (stems < 10 cm diam., fine litter and coarse woody debris). Total aboveground carbon was estimated at 90.2 and 120.8 Mg C/ha in selectively harvested and primary lowland forest, respectively. Our estimate for primary tropical forest is lower than biome averages for tropical equatorial forest, and we hypothesize that frequent disturbances from fire, frost, landslides, and agriculture are limiting carbon stock development. The methodology and estimates presented here will assist the PNG government in its preparedness for mitigation initiatives, are of interest to communities that are seeking to participate in voluntary carbon markets, and will encourage transparency and consistency in the estimation of forest carbon.In both developing and industrialized countries, abatement of air pollution and mitigation of climate change have generally been treated separately Co-benefits of air quality and climate change related policies are often addressed on national or supra-national level, to document that costs of policies are acceptable, especially when ancillary benefits are considered On local or regional level the focus until now has been mainly on air quality management, not considering benefits for climate change mitigation Today's air quality management requires integrated and coordinated measures where urban air quality planning includes also greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change issues The tools available for investigating scenarios for reducing local impacts and health effect improvements can also be used to investigate cost effective actions aimed at reducing GHG emissions This approach would lead to identification of strategies that consider co-benefits of climate and local air quality measures and would both improve the health of people and give climate benefits at best possible costs Approaches based on an existing air quality management tool prepared for co-benefit studies in Norway as well as plans for co-control projects in China are presented in this paper These approaches have the potential to focus on issues not included in traditional air pollution abatement studiesWhile uptake of renewable energies as a solution to climate change is widely discussed, the issue of public vs. private financing is not yet adequately explored. The debates over the Kyoto Protocol and its successor, culminating in the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, maintained a strong preference for public over private financing. Yet it is also clear to most observers that the energy revolution will never happen without the involvement of private finance to drive private investment. In this Viewpoint, we discuss the ways in which private financing could be mobilized to drive the energy industrial revolution that is needed if climate change mitigation is to succeed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Canada's forest and peatland ecosystems are globally significant carbon stores, whose management will be influenced by climate change mitigation policies such as offset systems. To be effective, these policies must be grounded in objective information on the relationships between land use, ecosystem carbon dynamics, and climate. Here, we present the outcomes of a workshop where forest, peatland, and climate experts were tasked with identifying management actions required to maintain the role of Canada's forest and peatland ecosystems in climate regulation. Reflecting the desire to maintain the carbon storage roles of these ecosystems, a diverse set of management actions is proposed, incorporating conservation, forest management, and forest products.The paper discusses opportunities for integration of the climate protection strategy declared by the German government into spatial and urban land-use plans in Germany. The paper gives a brief overview of German climate protection related legislation, gives some statistics on energy demand in the housing sector in Germany, and identifies opportunities for climate change mitigation in urban areas through enhanced spatial planning and energy-efficient homes. Drawing on statistical analysis the paper identifies discrepancies between trends in population densities and actual housing floor space. The paper further identifies opportunities for increasing heating efficiency of houses by managing the spatial arrangement of apartments and buildings. The overall conclusion of the paper is that adjustments in the spatial planning legal base in Germany are necessary to integrate specific climate protection tools that will allow an increase in energy efficiency in housing. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Turkey's demand for energy and electricity is increasing rapidly. Turkey is heavily dependent on expensive imported energy resources that place a big burden on the economy and air pollution is becoming a great environmental concern in the country. Turkey's energy production meets nearly 28% of its total primary energy consumption. As would be expected, the rapid expansion of energy production and consumption has brought with it a wide range of environmental issues at the local, regional and global levels. With respect to global environmental issues, Turkey's carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions have grown along with its energy consumption. States have played a leading role in protecting the environment by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). In this regard, renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solutions for clean and sustainable energy development in Turkey. Turkey presently has considerable renewable energy sources. The most important renewable sources are hydropower, biomass, geothermal, solar and wind. Turkey's geographical location has several advantages for extensive use of most of these renewable energy sources. Turkey has a great and ever-intensifying need for power and water supplies and they also have the greatest remaining hydro potential. Hydropower and especially small hydropower are emphasized as Turkey's renewable energy sources. Turkey's hydro electric potential can meet 33-46% of its electric energy demand in 2020 and this potential may easily and economically be developed. This paper presents a review of the potential and utilization of the renewable energy sources in Turkey. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An approach to mitigate global warming via sulphur loading in the stratosphere (geoengineering) is studied, employing a large ensemble of numerical experiments with the climate model of intermediate complexity IAP RAS CM. The model is forced by the historical+SRES A1B anthropogenic greenhouse gases+tropospheric sulphates scenario for 1860-2100 with additional sulphur emissions in the stratosphere in the twenty-first century. Different ensemble members are constructed by varying values of the parameters governing mass, horizontal distribution and radiative forcing of the stratospheric sulphates. It is obtained that, given a global loading of the sulphates in the stratosphere, among those studied in this paper latitudinal distributions of geoengineering aerosols, the most efficient one at the global basis is that peaked between 50A degrees N and 70A degrees N and with a somewhat smaller burden in the tropics. Uniform latitudinal distribution of stratospheric sulphates is a little less efficient. Sulphur emissions in the stratosphere required to stop the global temperature at the level corresponding to the mean value for 2000-2010 amount to more than 10 TgS/year in the year 2100. These emissions may be reduced if some warming is allowed to occur in the twenty-first century. For instance, if the global temperature trend S (g) in every decade of this century is limited not to exceed 0.10 K/decade (0.15 K/decade), geoengineering emissions of 4-14 TgS/year (2-7 TgS/year) would be sufficient. Even if the global warming is stopped, temperature changes in different regions still occur with a magnitude up to 1 K. Their horizontal pattern depends on implied latitudinal distribution of stratospheric sulphates. In addition, for the stabilised global mean surface air temperature, global precipitation decreases by about 10%. If geoengineering emissions are stopped after several decades of implementation, their climatic effect is removed within a few decades. In this period, surface air temperature may grow with a rate of several Kelvins per decade. The results obtained with the IAP RAS CM are further interpreted employing a globally averaged energy-balance climate model. With the latter model, an analytical estimate for sulphate aerosol emissions in the stratosphere required climate mitigation is obtained. It is shown that effective vertical localisation of the imposed radiative forcing is important for geoengineering efficiency.The Doha Round must be concluded not because it will produce dramatic liberalization but because it will create greater security of market access. Its conclusion would strengthen, symbolically and substantively, the WTO's valuable role in restraining protectionism. What is on the table would constrain the scope for tariff protection in all goods, ban agricultural export subsidies in the industrial countries and sharply reduce the scope for distorting domestic support - by 70% in the EU and 60% in the US. Average farm tariffs that exporters face would fall to 12% (from 14.5%) and the tariffs on exports of manufactures to less than 2.5% (from about 3%). There are also environmental benefits to be captured, in particular disciplining the use of subsidies that encourage over-fishing and lowering tariffs on technologies that can help mitigate global warming. An agreement to facilitate trade by cutting red tape will further expand trade opportunities. Greater market access for the least-developed countries will result from the 'duty free and quota free' proposal and their ability to take advantage of new opportunities will be enhanced by the Doha-related 'aid for trade' initiative. Finally, concluding Doha would create space for multilateral cooperation on critical policy matters that lie outside the Doha Agenda, most urgently the trade policy implications of climate change mitigation.As efforts to mitigate climate change increase, there is a need to identify cost-effective ways to avoid emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Agriculture is rightly recognized as a source of considerable emissions, with concomitant opportunities for mitigation. Although future agricultural productivity is critical, as it will shape emissions from conversion of native landscapes to food and biofuel crops, investment in agricultural research is rarely mentioned as a mitigation strategy. Here we estimate the net effect on GHG emissions of historical agricultural intensification between 1961 and 2005. We find that while emissions from factors such as fertilizer production and application have increased, the net effect of higher yields has avoided emissions of up to 161 gigatons of carbon (GtC) (590 GtCO(2)e) since 1961. We estimate that each dollar invested in agricultural yields has resulted in 68 fewer kgC (249 kgCO(2)e) emissions relative to 1961 technology ($14.74/tC, or similar to$4/tCO(2)e), avoiding 3.6 GtC (13.1 GtCO(2)e) per year. Our analysis indicates that investment in yield improvements compares favorably with other commonly proposed mitigation strategies. Further yield improvements should therefore be prominent among efforts to reduce future GHG emissions.Current studies of the impact of climate change mitigation options tend to scale patterns of precipitation change linearly with surface temperature. Using climate model simulations, we show a nonlinear hydrological response to transient global warming and a substantial side effect of climate mitigation. In an idealised representation of mitigation action, where we reverse the trend of global warming, the precipitation response shows significant hysteresis behaviour due to heat previously accumulated in the ocean. Stabilising or reducing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere is found temporarily to strengthen the global hydrological cycle, while reducing rainfall over some tropical and subtropical regions. The drying trend under global warming over The Amazon, Australia and western Africa may intensify for decades after CO2 reductions. The inertia due to accumulated heat in the ocean implies a commitment to hydrological cycle changes long after stabilisation or reduction of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Citation: Wu, P., R. Wood, J. Ridley, and J. Lowe ( 2010), Temporary acceleration of the hydrological cycle in response to a CO2 rampdown, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L12705, doi: 10.1029/2010GL043730.Protected areas (PAs) now shelter 54% of the remaining forests of the Brazilian Amazon and contain 56% of its forest carbon. However, the role of these PAs in reducing carbon fluxes to the atmosphere from deforestation and their associated costs are still uncertain. To fill this gap, we analyzed the effect of each of 595 Brazilian Amazon PAs on deforestation using a metric that accounts for differences in probability of deforestation in areas of pairwise comparison. We found that the three major categories of PA (indigenous land, strictly protected, and sustainable use) showed an inhibitory effect, on average, between 1997 and 2008. Of 206 PAs created after the year 1999, 115 showed increased effectiveness after their designation as protected. The recent expansion of PAs in the Brazilian Amazon was responsible for 37% of the region's total reduction in deforestation between 2004 and 2006 without provoking leakage. All PAs, if fully implemented, have the potential to avoid 8.0 +/- 2.8 Pg of carbon emissions by 2050. Effectively implementing PAs in zones under high current or future anthropogenic threat offers high payoffs for reducing carbon emissions, and as a result should receive special attention in planning investments for regional conservation. Nevertheless, this strategy demands prompt and predictable resource streams. The Amazon PA network represents a cost of US$147 +/- 53 billion (net present value) for Brazil in terms of forgone profits and investments needed for their consolidation. These costs could be partially compensated by an international climate accord that includes economic incentives for tropical countries that reduce their carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.Climate change mitigation policy is the most difficult to come before our polity in living memory. There can be no solution without international agreement involving all substantial economies, and yet each country has an incentive to free ride on others. The international agreement must have five parts: agreement on the objective in terms of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, agreement on allocation of an emissions entitlements budget among countries, agreement on rules for international trade in entitlements, agreement on developed countries taking the lead on development of low-emissions technologies, and agreement on assistance from developed countries for climate change mitigation in developing countries. Two sources of market failure must be corrected to achieve emissions reduction targets efficiently: the external costs of emitting greenhouse gases and the external benefits of private investment in innovation in relation to low-emissions technologies.Climate change is an issue that requires integrated action at multiple levels of government and within the spheres of politics, economics, and society. National, regional, and local governments have both distinct and complementary roles in developing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Compared with the attention that has been given to international and national activities in East Asia, relatively limited attention has been paid to the role of urban and regional governments in combating global climate change. Cities and provinces are initiating their own climate action plans, positioning themselves as environmental model cities, and joining local, national, and international networks for climate change. This article examines urban and prefectural climate policies in China, Japan, and South Korea within a multilevel governance framework.Asian and global agriculture will be under significant pressure to meet the demands of rising populations, using finite and often degraded soil and water resources that are predicted to be further stressed by the impacts of climate change. In addition, agriculture and land use change are prominent sources of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Fertilizer application, livestock rearing, and land management affect levels of GHG in the atmosphere and the amount of carbon storage and sequestration potential. Therefore, while some impending climatic changes will have negative effects on agricultural production in parts of Asia, and especially on resource-poor farmers, the sector also presents opportunities for emission reductions. Warming across the Asian continent will be unevenly distributed, but will certainly lead to crop yield losses in much of the region and subsequent impacts on prices, trade, and food security-disproportionately affecting poor people. Most projections indicate that agriculture in South, Central, and West Asia will be hardest hit. This paper discusses two approaches to responding to the impacts of climate change: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation-or the reduction of GHG emissions-is essential to slow climate change. The primary opportunities for pro-poor mitigation in the agriculture sector in Asia involve soil carbon sequestration, rice cultivation, and grazing land management. China and India, the world's largest producers of rice, also account for the vast majority of global methane emissions from rice. Potential exists for low-and no-cost mitigation policies in this sector. But significant reforms in the international climate policy framework and in implementation of carbon mitigation are needed to reduce transactions costs and increase the incentives for small farmer participation. In addition, as climate change has already begun, adaptation-or the modification of agricultural practices and production-will be imperative if the growing food demands of modern society are to be met. However, many developing countries lack sufficient adaptive capacity. National governments, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), and international institutions therefore have a large role to play in building the necessary adaptive capacity and risk management structures. Significantly, mitigation and adaptation must be pursued in tandem. The greater the level of mitigation that can be achieved at affordable cost, the smaller the burdens placed on adaptation.The issue of devising an efficient and equitable global climate change mitigation agreement is examined. While the possibility of catastrophic damages contingent on unmitigated climate change provides cogent reasons for self-interested, large countries to unilaterally mitigate there are practical reasons for them not to do so. A key concern for developed countries is possible carbon leakages. For developing countries, the need to pursue growth objectives can restrict the proclivity to mitigate. Carbon leakage issues can be addressed using border tax adjustments although these raise computational complexity, GATT-rules consistency and equity issues for developing countries. If the efficiency gains from utilising border tax adjustments are to be realised, compensation schemes must address these equity issues. An analysis is provided explicitly addressing the role of China and the United States.One of the cheapest ways to reduce CO(2) emissions is thermal renovation of existing homes. Germany is a world leader in this project, with a strict building code, generous state subsidies, and an advanced renovation infrastructure. The effects of its policies are here explored in the light of progressive tightening of the building code, and the strict criteria for subsidies. Data on costs and outcomes of residential building renovations are presented from published reports on renovation projects, and crosschecked with projects investigated directly. Comparisons are made in terms of euros invested for every kilowatt hour of heating energy saved over the lifetime of the renovations, for standards ranging from 150 kWh (the lowest standard) to 15 kWh (the highest) of primary energy use per square metre of floor area per year. It is found that the lowest standard is an order of magnitude more cost-effective than the highest, in terms of both energy saved per euro invested, and return on investment over the lifetime of the renovations, regardless of fuel prices. It is argued that this throws into question Germany's policy of progressively regulating for higher renovation standards, and offering subsidies only for projects that go beyond the minimum standard. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper discusses the importance of standards for sustainable bioenergy production. Sustainability of bioenergy production is crucial if bioenergy is supposed to contribute effectively to climate change mitigation. First, a brief overview of current bioenergy policies and of initiatives and legislation for bioenergy sustainability are given. Then, the authors show that under free market conditions undersupply of sustainable bioenergy will prevail. Two types of market failures are identified: information asymmetry and externalities in bioenergy production. Due to these market failures bioenergy is less sustainable than it could be. It is shown that mandatory certification and subsequent labeling can help to overcome the information asymmetry and lead to a more efficient market outcome since consumers can choose products according to their preferences. The authors conclude, however, that the existence of production externalities asks for stronger market intervention, for example in the form of binding minimum standards or taxes. The paper discusses the efficiency and feasibility of such policy measures and shows that mandatory certification combined with binding minimum standards can be an adequate policy choice to regulate the bioenergy market. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The LPJ dynamic global vegetation and hydrology model with river routing is implemented on a compute cluster in order to reduce the overall computation time. In order to achieve this, a parallel algorithm had to be developed for the river routing part of the LPJ code. It can be shown that the run time of the parallel LPJ model scales well with the number of parallel tasks, even getting a super-linear speedup for 8-128 tasks. The sequential part of the model code can be estimated to be only 0.16%. This offers the opportunity, for example, to apply the model to find optimal climate change mitigation/adaptation paths requiring a multitude of subsequent simulation runs. The algorithm can also be used for networks with a different topology than river routing networks. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the paper is to propose a method to maximize energy production from arboreous and herbaceous dedicated crops given the characteristics of the local environment: geo-morphology, climate, natural heritage, current land use. The best energy crops available in the Italian panorama are identified and the problem of maximizing the bioenergy production over an entire regional area is formulated. Each cultivar is thus assigned to the suitable land accounting for sensitive parameters that characterize it and taking into account current land use. The assumption made here is that marginal land and set-asides can be converted to energy crops without altering current practices and cash crops' production. The method is based on the integration of GIS data (spatially continuous) with data derived from the agricultural census (spatially discrete). We carry out the analysis for Emilia-Romagna, in Northern Italy. The sustainable growth of energy crops, with an optimized network of conversion facilities distributed in the territory, may significantly contribute to the local energy supply and to climate change mitigation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The global climate problem becomes tractable if CO2 emissions from coal use are phased out rapidly and emissions from unconventional fossil fuels (e.g., oil shale and tar sands) are prohibited. This paper outlines technology options for phasing out coal emissions in the United States by similar to 2030. We focus on coal for physical and practical reasons and on the U.S. because it is most responsible for accumulated fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere today, specifically targeting electricity production, which is the primary use of coal. While we recognize that coal emissions must be phased out globally, we believe U.S. leadership is essential, A major challenge for reducing U.S. emissions is that coal provides the largest proportion of base load power, i.e., power satisfying minimum electricity demand. Because this demand is relatively constant and coal has a high carbon intensity, utility carbon emissions are largely due to coal. The current U.S. electric grid incorporates little renewable power, most of which is not base load power. However, this can readily be changed within the next 2-3 decades. Eliminating coal emissions also requires improved efficiency, a "smart grid", additional energy storage, and advanced nuclear power. Any further coal usage must be accompanied by carbon capture and storage (CCS). We suggest that near-term emphasis should be on efficiency measures and substitution of coal-fired power by renewables and third-generation nuclear plants, since these technologies have been successfully demonstrated at the relevant (commercial) scale. Beyond 2030, these measures can be supplemented by CCS at power plants and, as needed, successfully demonstrated fourth-generation reactors. We conclude that U.S. coal emissions could be phased out by 2030 using existing technologies or ones that could be commercially competitive with coal within about a decade. Elimination of fossil fuel subsidies and a substantial rising price on carbon emissions are the root requirements for a clean, emissions-free future.The lowland peatlands of south-east Asia represent an immense reservoir of fossil carbon and are reportedly responsible for 30% of the global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry. This paper provides a review and meta-analysis of available literature on greenhouse gas fluxes from tropical peat soils in south-east Asia. As in other parts of the world, water level is the main control on greenhouse gas fluxes from south-east Asian peat soils. Based on subsidence data we calculate emissions of at least 900 g CO2 m-2 a-1 (similar to 250 g C m-2 a-1) for each 10 cm of additional drainage depth. This is a conservative estimate as the role of oxidation in subsidence and the increased bulk density of the uppermost drained peat layers are yet insufficiently quantified. The majority of published CO2 flux measurements from south-east Asian peat soils concerns undifferentiated respiration at floor level, providing inadequate insight on the peat carbon balance. In contrast to previous assumptions, regular peat oxidation after drainage might contribute more to the regional long-term annual CO2 emissions than peat fires. Methane fluxes are negligible at low water levels and amount to up to 3 mg CH4 m-2 h-1 at high water levels, which is low compared with emissions from boreal and temperate peatlands. The latter emissions may be exceeded by fluxes from rice paddies on tropical peat soil, however. N2O fluxes are erratic with extremely high values upon application of fertilizer to wet peat soils. Current data on CO2 and CH4 fluxes indicate that peatland rewetting in south-east Asia will lead to substantial reductions of net greenhouse gas emissions. There is, however, an urgent need for further quantitative research on carbon exchange to support the development of consistent policies for climate change mitigation.We propose to compare avoided emissions from ethanol use in Brazil with emissions caused by the use of fossil fuel, and by land use changes, specifically Amazon deforestation. The avoided emissions of CO2 in Brazil due to ethanol use in 2008 ranged from approximately 9 to 12 Tg C yr-1. These values are an order of magnitude higher than the amount of carbon that could be potentially sequestered in soils if sugarcane cultivation in Brazil switches completely to mechanized harvesting, and two orders of magnitude higher than the carbon emissions in soils cultivated with sugarcane and that undergo harvest with burning. In relation to fossil fuel emissions, ethanol avoided emissions are equivalent to 20-30% of the carbon emissions associated with the use of gasoline and diesel in the transportation sector, and to approximately 10% of the total use of fossil fuel in the country. When compared with the carbon emissions from Amazon deforestation ethanol avoided emissions are again one order of magnitude lower. We conclude that ethanol avoided emissions are relatively important within the transport sector, but are still incipient if compared with the emissions from total fossil fuel combustion and emissions from deforestation indicating that climate mitigation efforts in Brazil needs to focus outside of biofuel production. Consequently, we suggest that Brazil develop equally strong actions towards increased energy efficiency use in the country and, more importantly to drastically reduce carbon emissions associated with Amazon deforestation.Coal consumption accounted for 36% of America's CO2 emissions in 2005, yet because coal is a relatively inexpensive, widely available, and politically secure fuel, its use is projected to grow in the coming decades (USEIA, 2007, "World Carbon Dioxide Emissions From the Use of Fossil Fuels," International Energy Annual 2005, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/carbon.html). In order for coal to contribute to the U.S. energy mix without detriment to an environmentally acceptable future, implementation of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is critical. Techno-economic studies establish the large expense of CCS due to substantial energy requirements and capital costs. However, such analyses typically ignore operating dynamics in response to diurnal and seasonal variations in electricity demand and pricing, and they assume that CO2 capture systems operate continuously at high CO2 removal and permanently consume a large portion of gross plant generation capacity. In contrast, this study uses an electric grid-level dynamic framework to consider the possibility of turning CO2 capture systems off during peak electricity demands to regain generation capacity lost to CO2 capture energy requirements. This practice eliminates the need to build additional generation capacity to make up for CO2 capture energy requirements, and it might allow plant operators to benefit from selling more electricity during high price time periods. Post-combustion CO2 absorption and stripping is a leading capture technology that, unlike many other capture methods, is particularly suited for flexible or on/off operation. This study presents a case study on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) electric grid that estimates CO2 capture utilization, system-level costs, and CO2 emissions associated with different strategies of using on/off CO2 capture on all coal-fired plants in the ERCOT grid in order to satisfy peak electricity demand. It compares base cases of no CO2 capture and "always on" capture with scenarios where capture is turned off during: (1) peak demand hours every day of the year, (2) the entire season of peak system demand, and (3) system peak demand hours only on seasonal peak demand days. By eliminating the need for new capacity to replace output lost to CO2 capture energy requirements, flexible CO2 capture could save billions of dollars in capital costs. Since capture systems remain on for most of the year, flexible capture still achieves substantial CO2 emissions reductions. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4001573]The implementation of carbon dioxide capture and storage technology (CCS) is considered an important climate change mitigation strategy, but the viability of this technology will depend on public acceptance of CCS policy decisions. The results of three experiments with students as participants show that whether or not interest groups receive an opportunity to express their opinions in the decision-making process (i.e., group voice) affects acceptance of CCS policy decisions, with inferred trustworthiness of the decision maker mediating this effect. Decision-making procedures providing different interest groups with equal opportunities to voice their opinions instigate more trust in the decision maker and, in turn, lead to greater willingness to accept decisions compared to no-voice procedures (i.e.. unilateral decision-making Study I) and unequal group-voice procedures when one type of interest group receives voice, but another type of interest group does not Study 2). Study 3 further shows that an individual's own level of knowledge about CCS moderates the desire for an opportunity for members of the general public to voice opinions in the decision-making process, inferred trustworthiness of decision makers, and policy acceptance. These results imply that people care about voice in decision-making even when they are not directly personally involved in the decision-making process. We conclude that people tend to use procedural information when deciding to accept or oppose policy decisions on political complex issues: hence, it is important that policymakers use fair group-voice procedures and that they communicate to the public how they arrive at their decisions.Influenced by the success of emission trading in the US for sulphur dioxide (SO2), some economists have argued for an upstream, economy-wide cap-and-trade scheme as the primary tool for achieving the required reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper addresses that argument and concludes that cap-and-trade will need to be accompanied by complementary regulatory measures. While it is a necessary component in a climate mitigation programme, it is unlikely to be sufficient by itself to accomplish the desired emission reductions. The paper reviews the evidence on how SO2 emissions were reduced and the extent to which actual emission trading was responsible for the reduction as opposed to other innovations. It also identifies differences between the past regulation of SO2 and other air pollutants and the challenges presented by the regulation of GHG emissions. What actually happened in the US with SO2 emission trading deviated in several significant respects from what would be predicted based on the conventional theoretical analysis. While there was a dramatic reduction in SO2 emissions, it occurred because of several factors, some of which are unlikely to apply for GHG emissions, and others of which argue for an activist regulatory policy by the government as a complement to the functioning of an emissions market for GHGs.This paper identifies market incentives and international and domestic policies that could technologically alter energy systems to achieve greenhouse gas stabilization targets while also meeting other societal goals. I consider the conceptual basis and empirical evidence on the effectiveness and efficiency of climate technology policies. The paper reviews the literature on trends and prospects for innovation in climate change mitigation and examines the evidence on induced innovation and the implications for the choice of technology policy. I then consider the impact of technological advances on the environment, the role of direct government support for R&D, and the complementarities between policies internalizing environmental externalities and those aimed at environmental innovations.This article discusses the mitigation and adaptation potential of organic agricultural systems along three main features: farming system design, cropland management and grassland and livestock management. An important potential contribution of organically managed systems to climate change mitigation is identified in the careful management of nutrients and, hence, the reduction of N2O emissions from soils. Another high mitigation potential of organic agriculture lies in carbon sequestration in soils. In a first estimate, the emission reduction potential by abstention from mineral fertilizers is calculated to be about 20% and the compensation potential by carbon sequestration to be about 40-72% of the world's current annual agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but further research is needed to consolidate these numbers. On the adaptation side, organic agriculture systems have a strong potential for building resilient food systems in the face of uncertainties, through farm diversification and building soil fertility with organic matter. Additionally, organic agriculture offers alternatives to energy-intensive production inputs such as synthetic fertilizers which are likely to be further limited for poor rural populations by rising energy prices. In developing countries, organic agricultural systems achieve equal or even higher yields, as compared to the current conventional practices, which translate into a potentially important option for food security and sustainable livelihoods for the rural poor in times of climate change. Certified organic products cater for higher income options for farmers and, therefore, can serve as promoters for climate-friendly farming practices worldwide.Sustainable construction in Germany - Assessment system of the Federal Government for office and administration buildings. 55% of all investments are made in the buildings sector. Over its entire value added chain, the construction industry accounts for 11% of output in Germany and employs 12% of the workforce subject to compulsory social insurance. The construction, housing and property sectors are involved in a multiplicity of interrelationships with measures and objectives of the Federal Government's sustainable development strategy. Principal among these are climate change mitigation, improving energy efficiency, improving the productivity of energy and raw materials, reducing land take and shaping demographic change. The assessment of the contribution made by individual structures to sustainable development results in the call for the development of an overall system for the description and appraisal of buildings, including the land on which they are built. Sustainability considerations are characterized by a whole life cycle analysis and the comprehensive inclusion of ecological, economic and socio-cultural aspects. Alongside energy balances, therefore, it is also necessary to study the material flows and financial impacts, in particular. The development, trialling and application of systems for describing, assessing and certifying the sustainability of buildings is tied to a number of prerequisites. In particular, the changeover to an assessment and certification system based predominantly on quantitative assessments poses a significant challenge. The new sustainable construction assessment system that has been developed in Germany is a voluntary market instrument and is currently designed for office and administrative buildings, and has been trialled on such buildings. It is available to all users free of charge and can be downloaded from the following website: www.nachhaltigesbauen.de. The Federal Government plans to make the system mandatory for federal buildings by introducing it with the Sustainable Construction Guide via the federal building authorities, thereby setting an example of good practice. The system can be used by other providers. Widening it to include other categories of buildings will be done by appropriate system providers. These providers can have their system recognized by the Bundesministerium fur Verkehr, Bau- und Stadtentwicklung (BMVBS; Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development). In the case of buildings and structural works that are of significant public interest, assessment systems will be developed and implemented in working groups comprising representatives of public agencies and hosted by the BMVBS.Uncertainties remain in the potential of forest plantations to sequestrate carbon (C). We synthesized 86 experimental studies with paired-site design, using a meta-analysis approach, to quantify the differences in ecosystem C pools between plantations and their corresponding adjacent primary and secondary forests (natural forests). Totaled ecosystem C stock in plant and soil pools was 284 Mg C ha(-1) in natural forests and decreased by 28% in plantations. In comparison with natural forests, plantations decreased aboveground net primary production, litterfall, and rate of soil respiration by 11, 34, and 32%, respectively. Fine root biomass, soil C concentration, and soil microbial C concentration decreased respectively by 66, 32, and 29% in plantations relative to natural forests. Soil available N, P and K concentrations were lower by 22, 20 and 26%, respectively, in plantations than in natural forests. The general pattern of decreased ecosystem C pools did not change between two different groups in relation to various factors: stand age (<25 years vs. <= 25 years), stand types (broadleaved vs. coniferous and deciduous vs. evergreen), tree species origin (native vs. exotic) of plantations, land-use history (afforestation vs. reforestation) and site preparation for plantations (unburnt vs. burnt), and study regions (tropic vs. temperate). The pattern also held true across geographic regions. Our findings argued against the replacement of natural forests by the plantations as a measure of climate change mitigation.Current economic instruments aimed at climate change mitigation focus mainly on CO2 emissions, but efficient climate mitigation needs to focus on other greenhouse gases as well as CO2. This study investigates the distributional effects of climate change taxes on households belonging to different income and lifestyle groups; and it compares the effects of a CO2 tax with a multiple GHG tax in the UK in terms of cost efficiency and distributional effects. Results show that a multi GHG tax is more efficient than a CO2 tax due to lower marginal abatement costs, and that both taxes are regressive, with lower income households paying a relatively larger share of their income for the taxes than higher income households. A shift from a CO2 tax to a GHG tax will reduce and shift the tax burden between consumption categories such as from energy-intensive products to food products. Consumers have different abilities to respond to the tax and change their behavior due to their own socio-economic attributes as well as the physical environment such as the age of the housing stock, location, and the availability of infrastructure. The housing-related carbon emissions are the largest component of the CO2 tax payments for low income groups and arguments could be made for compensation of income losses and reduction of fuel poverty through further government intervention.At last, all the major emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) have agreed under the Copenhagen Accord that global average temperature increase should be kept below 2 degrees C. This study develops the criteria for limiting the warming below 2 degrees C, identifies the constraints imposed on policy makers, and explores available mitigation avenues. One important criterion is that the radiant energy added by human activities should not exceed 2.5 (range: 1.7-4) watts per square meter (Wm(-2)) of the Earth's surface. The blanket of man-made GHGs has already added 3 (range: 2.6-3.5) Wm(-2). Even if GHG emissions peak in 2015, the radiant energy barrier will be exceeded by 100%, requiring simultaneous pursuit of three avenues: (i) reduce the rate of thickening of the blanket by stabilizing CO2 concentration below 441 ppm during this century (a massive decarbonization of the energy sector is necessary to accomplish this Herculean task), (ii) ensure that air pollution laws that reduce the masking effect of cooling aerosols be made radiant energy-neutral by reductions in black carbon and ozone, and (iii) thin the blanket by reducing emissions of short-lived GHGs. Methane and hydrofluorocarbons emerge as the prime targets. These actions, even if we are restricted to available technologies for avenues ii and iii, can reduce the probability of exceeding the 2 degrees C barrier before 2050 to less than 10%, and before 2100 to less than 50%. With such actions, the four decades we have until 2050 should be exploited to develop and scale-up revolutionary technologies to restrict the warming to less than 1.5 degrees C.P>Livestock production both contributes to and is affected by climate change. In addition to the physiological effects of higher temperatures on individual animals, the consequences of climate change are likely to include increased risk that geographically restricted rare breed populations will be badly affected by disturbances. Indirect effects may be felt via ecosystem changes that alter the distribution of animal diseases or affect the supply of feed. Breeding goals may have to be adjusted to account for higher temperatures, lower quality diets and greater disease challenge. Species and breeds that are well adapted to such conditions may become more widely used. Climate change mitigation strategies, in combination with ever increasing demand for food, may also have an impact on breed and species utilization, driving a shift towards monogastrics and breeds that are efficient converters of feed into meat, milk and eggs. This may lead to the neglect of the adaptation potential of local breeds in developing countries. Given the potential for significant future changes in production conditions and in the objectives of livestock production, it is essential that the value provided by animal genetic diversity is secured. This requires better characterization of breeds, production environments and associated knowledge; the compilation of more complete breed inventories; improved mechanisms to monitor and respond to threats to genetic diversity; more effective in situ and ex situ conservation measures; genetic improvement programmes targeting adaptive traits in high-output and performance traits in locally adapted breeds; increased support for developing countries in their management of animal genetic resources; and wider access to genetic resources and associated knowledge.Tradable permits and intergovernmental fiscal transfers play an increasing role in both biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation. In comparison to regulatory and planning approaches these economic instruments offer a more flexible and cost-effective approach to biodiversity conservation. Economic instruments should act as complements to rather than substitutes for conventional land-use planning, given that their applicability is limited by the heterogeneity of biodiversity. Linking biodiversity policies with carbon mitigation policies may provide synergies and alleviate the chronic inadequacy of conservation budgets. Since the scope and scale of the two policy fields differ in some respects, it must be ensured that market-based climate mitigation policies will be implemented with the restrictions necessary for safeguarding Earth's biological diversity.Based on the European project RES2020, the analysis evaluates the energy strategies to be implemented in Spain in order to satisfy the EU Renewable Directive. The modelling framework relies on the technico-economic model TIMES-Spain, part of the Pan-European TIMES model used in the project. TIMES is a bottom-up technology rich optimisation model representing the whole energy systems of the countries. Among the results, it appears that the gap regarding the renewable deployment in Spain between the Business-as-Usual case (including the existing policies) and the EU Directive should be compensated mainly by the penetration of bioenergy in transport and industry, and by the implementation of conservation measures, which contribute to reduce the total energy demand and thus makes useless additional investments in renewable power plants compared to the Business-as-Usual case. Only higher climate mitigation ambitions result in an absolute increase in the renewable-based electricity generation compared to the Business-as-Usual case. Moreover, when allowed, Spain is offering renewable energy credits under the statistical transfer mechanism to other European countries. The cost increase of the modelled renewable and climate policies compared to the Business-as-Usual remains relatively minor. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a growing literature which examines the ways in which individualised responsibilisation of 'risky behaviours' also entails moralisation. In UK discourses about climate change, certain individualised behaviours (e.g. leaving appliances on standby) are designated as responsible and/or good and correspondingly as irresponsible and/or bad. In this context, the decision to engage or not engage in these types of behaviour can be seen as becoming increasingly moralised. Drawing on focus group discussions with members of the British lay public (participant n96), this paper brings together public(s) (re)production of and negotiated responses to the moral undertones of this aspect of climate change discourse with theories of risk, morality and responsibility to develop important insights for conceptualising climate change mitigation.Canada is seeking cost-effective means to mitigate anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2, that have been linked to global climate change. In 2003 the Government of Canada launched the Forest 2020 Plantation Development and Assessment Initiative to assess the potential for fast-growing woody crops to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Across the country 6000 ha of plantations were established and monitored on nonforested lands (afforestation) using a variety of methods. Economic analyses assessed the investment attractiveness of this mitigation measure for a range of species and suitable lands, taking into account such factors as growth rates, agricultural opportunity costs and a range of possible carbon values. Analyses illustrated that at current trading prices for carbon and for much of the available lands and expanding markets for forest bioproducts, expected rates of return on investment for afforestation were relatively low. However, higher future carbon prices, combined with monetary values for environmental benefits, could dramatically change the economics of afforestation in the future.The aim of this study is to examine how the options for producing electricity, fuels, and heat in a carbon-constrained world affect the cost-effectiveness of a range of fuels and propulsion technologies in the transportation sector. GET 7.0, a global energy system model with five end-use sectors, is used for the analysis. We find that an energy system dominated either by solar or by nuclear tends to make biofuels in plug-in hybrids cost-effective. If coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) dominates the energy system, hydrogen cars, rather than plug-in hybrids tend to become cost-effective. Performing a Monte Carlo simulation, we then show that the general features of our results hold for a wide range of assumptions for the costs of vehicle propulsion technologies (e.g., batteries and fuel cells). However, sufficiently large changes in say the battery costs may overturn the impact of changes in the energy supply system, so that plug-in hybrid vehicles become cost-effective even if coal with CCS dominate the energy supply. We conclude that analyses of future energy carriers and propulsion technologies need to consider developments in the energy supply system. (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper first describes an inventory for 2005 giving the tourism related CO(2) emission caused by global tourism, and presents a 30-year projection and a 45-year simulation. The study found that tourists cause 4.4% of global CO(2) emissions. Also these emissions are projected to grow at an average rate of 3.2% per year up to 2035. This increase is problematic as globally a reduction of emissions by 3-6% is required to avoid 'dangerous' climate change. Using contemporary scenario techniques it appeared difficult to find a future tourist travel system consistent with CO(2) emission reductions of up to 70% by 2050 with respect to 2005. Based on the model underlying the 30-year projection, 70 scenarios are presented in a 'landscape' graph exploring the effect of opportunities to reduce the emissions, but this attempt did not reach the large reductions envisaged. We therefore explored automated scenario generation as a way to define backcasting scenarios that both reach the emission reduction target and retain the highest possible economic value for the sector. The main contributions made by this study are (1) in comparing the value of different ways to approach a (desired) future and (2) giving insight into the kind of structural changes required within tourism and tourism transport in case very strong emission reductions are required. Finally the model showed signs of 'complex' behaviour. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The long-term assessment of new electricity generation was performed for various long-run policy scenarios taking into account two main criteria: private costs and external GHG emission costs. Such policy oriented power generation technologies assessment based on carbon price and private costs of technologies can provide information on the most attractive future electricity generation technologies taking into account climate change mitigation targets and GHG emission reduction commitments for world regions. Analysis of life cycle GHG emissions and private costs of the main future electricity generation technologies performed in this paper indicated that biomass technologies except large scale straw combustion technologies followed by nuclear have the lowest life cycle GHG emission. Biomass IGCC with CO(2) capture has even negative life cycle GHG emissions. The cheapest future electricity generation technologies in terms of private costs in long-term perspective are: nuclear and hard coal technologies followed by large scale biomass combustion and biomass CHPs. The most expensive technologies in terms of private costs are: oil and natural gas technologies. As the electricity generation technologies having the lowest life cycle GHG emissions are not the cheapest one in terms of private costs the ranking of technologies in terms of competitiveness highly depend on the carbon price implied by various policy scenarios integrating specific GHG emission reduction commitments taken by countries and climate change mitigation targets. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change, as a slow and gradual modification of average climate conditions, is a difficult phenomenon to detect and track accurately based on personal experience. Insufficient concern and trust also complicate the transfer of scientific descriptions of climate change and climate variability from scientists to the public, politicians, and policy makers, which is not a simple transmission of facts. Instead, worldview and political ideology, two elements of the cultural context of decisions, guide attention toward events that threaten the desired or existing social order, and shape expectations of change, which in turn guide the detection and interpretation of climate events. Action that follows from climate change perceptions can be informed by different processes. Affect-based decisions about climate change are unlikely to motivate significant action, as politicians and the general public are not particularly worried about climate risks, and because attempts to scare people into greater action may have unintended negative consequences. Analysis-based decisions are also unlikely to result in significant action, because of large discounting of uncertain future costs of climate risks compared to the certain and immediate costs of climate change mitigation. Rule-based decisions that determine behavior based on moral or social responsibility may hold out the best prospects for sustainable action. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 332-342Common agricultural practices such as excessive use of agro-chemicals, deep tillage and luxury irrigation have degraded soils, polluted water resources and contaminated the atmosphere. There is increasing concern about interrelated environmental problems such as soil degradation, desertification, erosion, and accelerated greenhouse effects and climate change. The decline in organic matter content of many soils is becoming a major process of soil degradation, particularly in European semi-arid Mediterranean regions. Degraded soils are not fertile and thus cannot maintain sustainable production. At the same time, the production of urban and industrial organic waste materials is widespread. Therefore, strategies for recycling such organic waste in agriculture must be developed. Here, we review long-term experiments (3-60 years) on the effects of organic amendments used both for organic matter replenishment and to avoid the application of high levels of chemical fertilizers. The major points of our analysis are: (1) many effects, e. g. carbon sequestration in the soil and possible build-up of toxic elements, evolve slowly, so it is necessary to refer to long-term trials. (2) Repeated application of exogenous organic matter to cropland led to an improvement in soil biological functions. For instance, microbial biomass carbon increased by up to 100% using high-rate compost treatments, and enzymatic activity increased by 30% with sludge addition. (3) Long-lasting application of organic amendments increased organic carbon by up to 90% versus unfertilized soil, and up to 100% versus chemical fertilizer treatments. (4) Regular addition of organic residues, particularly the composted ones, increased soil physical fertility, mainly by improving aggregate stability and decreasing soil bulk density. (5) The best agronomic performance of compost is often obtained with the highest rates and frequency of applications. Furthermore, applying these strategies, there were additional beneficial effects such as the slow release of nitrogen fertilizer. (6) Crop yield increased by up to 250% by long-term applications of high rates of municipal solid waste compost. Stabilized organic amendments do not reduce the crop yield quality, but improve it. (7) Organic amendments play a positive role in climate change mitigation by soil carbon sequestration, the size of which is dependent on their type, the rates and the frequency of application. (8) There is no tangible evidence demonstrating negative impacts of heavy metals applied to soil, particularly when high-quality compost was used for long periods. (9) Repeated application of composted materials enhances soil organic nitrogen content by up to 90%, storing it for mineralization in future cropping seasons, often without inducing nitrate leaching to groundwater.The study of international trade in agricultural products has developed rapidly over the past fifty years. In the 1960s the disarray in world agriculture caused by domestic price support policies became the focus of analytical studies. There followed attempts to measure the distortions caused by policies also in developing countries and to model their impact on world agricultural markets. Tools were advanced to explain the trends and variations in world prices and the implications of market imperfections. Challenges for the future include analyzing trade based on consumer preferences for certain production methods and understanding the impact of climate change mitigation and adaptation on trade.The carbon storage and conservation value of old-growth tropical forests is clear, but the value of logged forest is less certain. Here we analyse > 100,000 observations of individuals from 11 taxonomic groups and > 2,500 species, covering up to 19 years of post-logging regeneration, and quantify the impacts of logging on carbon storage and biodiversity within lowland dipterocarp forests of Sabah, Borneo. We estimate that forests lost ca. 53% of above-ground biomass as a result of logging but despite this high level of degradation, logged forest retained considerable conservation value: floral species richness was higher in logged forest than in primary forest and whilst faunal species richness was typically lower in logged forest, in most cases the difference between habitats was no greater than ca. 10%. Moreover, in most studies > 90% of species recorded in primary forest were also present in logged forest, including species of conservation concern. During recovery, logged forest accumulated carbon at five times the rate of natural forest (1.4 and 0.28 Mg C ha(-1) year(-1), respectively). We conclude that allowing the continued regeneration of extensive areas of Borneo's forest that have already been logged, and are at risk of conversion to other land uses, would provide a significant carbon store that is likely to increase over time. Protecting intact forest is critical for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, but the contribution of logged forest to these twin goals should not be overlooked.In this study we analyze the primary energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of increasing biomass production by fertilizing 10% of Swedish forest land. We estimate the primary energy use and GHG emissions from forest management including production and application of N and NPK fertilizers. Based on modelled growth response, we then estimate the net primary energy and GHG benefits of using biomaterials and biofuels obtained from the increased forest biomass production. The results show an increased annual biomass harvest of 7.4 million t dry matter, of which 41% is large-diameter stemwood. About 6.9 PJ/year of additional primary energy input is needed for fertilizer production and forest management. Using the additional biomass for fuel and material substitution can reduce fossil primary energy use by 150 or 164 PJ/year if the reference fossil fuel is fossil gas or coal, respectively. About 22% of the reduced fossil energy use is due to material substitution and the remainder is due to fuel substitution. The net annual primary energy benefit corresponds to about 7% of Sweden's total primary energy use. The resulting annual net GHG emission reduction is 11.9 million or 18.1 million tCO(2equiv) if the reference fossil fuel is fossil gas or coal, respectively, corresponding to 18% or 28% of the total Swedish GHG emissions in 2007. A significant one-time carbon stock increase also occurs in wood products and forest tree biomass. These results suggest that forest fertilization is an attractive option for increasing energy security and reducing net GHG emission. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The agriculture, forestry, and other land-use sector is a crucial sector, second only to the energy sector, in fighting climate change, and provides an important greenhouse gas abatement opportunity for the world. Recently, released figures for Australia, for example, suggest that agriculture, forestry, and other land-uses, which depend on healthy functioning ecosystems, could abate as much as three quarters of the country's emissions. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was concerned primarily with ecosystems and humankind, but the Kyoto Protocol of the Convention forfeited the potential of using agriculture, forestry, and other land-uses for global climate mitigation. This had the effect of decoupling biodiversity and ecosystems from carbon pollution reduction and climate change considerations. The Australian Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, one of the first emission trading schemes in the world to follow Kyoto "rules," excludes the agriculture, forestry, and other land-use sector, apart from plantation reforestation, potentially creating perverse incentives that themselves can turn into threatening ecological processes. We use Australia and its emerging emissions trading scheme as a case study of the potential effects of this decoupling, and demonstrate the potential impacts on a landscape-scale regional greenhouse gas abatement and carbon sequestration project.Deforestation is a main driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. An incentive mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is being negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Here we use the best available global data sets on terrestrial biodiversity and carbon storage to map and investigate potential synergies between carbon and biodiversity-oriented conservation. A strong association (r(S) = 0.82) between carbon stocks and species richness suggests that such synergies would be high, but unevenly distributed. Many areas of high value for biodiversity could be protected by carbon-based conservation, while others could benefit from complementary funding arising from their carbon content. Some high-biodiversity regions, however, would not benefit from carbon-focused conservation, and could become under increased pressure if REDD is implemented. Our results suggest that additional gains for biodiversity conservation are possible, without compromising the effectiveness for climate change mitigation, if REDD takes biodiversity distribution into account.Strategies for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) could become an important part of a new agreement for climate change mitigation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We constructed a system dynamics model for a cocoa agroforest landscape in southwestern Ghana to explore whether REDD payments are likely to promote forest conservation and what socio-economic implications would be. Scenarios were constructed for business as usual (cocoa production at the expense of forest), for payments for avoided deforestation of old-growth forest only and for payments for avoided deforestation of all forests, including degraded forest. The results indicate that in the short term, REDD is likely to be preferred by farmers when the policy focuses on payments that halt the destruction of old-growth forests only. However, there is the risk that REDD contracts may be abandoned in the short term. The likeliness of farmers to opt for REDD is much lower when also avoiding deforestation of degraded forest since this land is needed for the expansion of cocoa production. Given that it is mainly the wealthier households that control the remaining forest outside the reserves, REDD payments may increase community differentiation, with negative consequences for REDD policies.Economic assessments of the welfare effects of energy insecurity are typically uncertain and fail to provide clear guidance to policy makers. As a result, governments have had little analytical support to complement expert judgment in the assessment of energy security. This is likely to be inadequate when considering multiple policy goals, and in particular the intersections between energy security and climate change mitigation policies. This paper presents an alternative approach which focuses on gauging the causes of energy insecurity as a way to assist policy making. The paper focuses on the energy security implications of fossil fuel resource concentration and distinguishes between the price and physical availability components of energy insecurity. It defines two separate indexes: the energy security price index (ESPI), based on the measure of market concentration in competitive fossil fuel markets, and the energy security physical availability index (ESPAI), based on the measure of supply flexibility in regulated markets. The paper illustrates the application of ESPI and ESPAI with two case studies France and the United Kingdom looking at the evolution of both indexes to 2030. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable energy technologies have the potential to help solve two pressing problems. On one hand, carbon-free energy sources must play a role in climate change mitigation. On the other hand, renewables might help meet needs of rural people without access to modern energy services. However, if renewables are deployed to combat climate change (primarily resulting from emissions in the developed economies) then providing basic energy services in the developing world may be compromised. The tendency to conflate the two drivers by installing renewables in rural areas for carbon mitigation reasons rather than for development reasons could compromise both goals. The danger is supporting sub-optimal policies for mitigating carbon and for rural energy. This is problematic given the limited funds available for energy development and reducing greenhouse gases. This paper analyzes how these goals have been balanced by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Project documents are used to determine whether incremental costs of installing renewables were covered by GEF funds and whether the costs are comparable with other carbon mitigation options. The results raise concerns about the effectiveness and appropriateness of GEF funding of such projects and highlight the importance of post-Kyoto framework design to reduce emissions and promote development. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The post-2012 climate policy framework needs a global commitment to deep greenhouse gas emission cuts. This paper analyzes reaching ambitious emission targets up to 2050, either -10% or -50% from 1990 levels, and how the economic burden from mitigation efforts could be equitably shared between countries. The scenarios indicate a large low-cost mitigation potential in electricity and industry, while reaching low emission levels in international transportation and agricultural emissions might prove difficult. The two effort sharing approaches, Triptych and Multistage, were compared in terms of equitability and coherence. Both approaches produced an equitable cost distribution between countries, with least developed countries having negative or low costs and more developed countries having higher costs. There is, however, no definitive solution on how the costs should be balanced equitably between countries. Triptych seems to be yet more coherent than other approaches, as it can better accommodate national circumstances. Last, challenges and possible hindrances to effective mitigation and equitable effort sharing are presented. The findings underline the significance of assumptions behind effort sharing on mitigation potentials and current emissions, the challenge of sharing the effort with uncertain future allowance prices and how inefficient markets might undermine the efficiency of a cap-and-trade system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Alternative energy technologies (AETs) have emerged as a solution to the challenge of simultaneously meeting rising electricity demand while reducing carbon emissions. However, as all AETs are responsible for some greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during their construction, carbon emission "Ponzi Schemes" are currently possible, wherein an AET industry expands so quickly that the GHG emissions prevented by a given technology are negated to fabricate the next wave of AET deployment. In an era where there are physical constraints to the GHG emissions the climate can sustain in the short term this may be unacceptable. To provide quantitative solutions to this problem, this paper introduces the concept of dynamic carbon life-cycle analyses, which generate carbon-neutral growth rates. These conceptual tools become increasingly important as the world transitions to a low-carbon economy by reducing fossil fuel combustion. In choosing this method of evaluation it was possible to focus uniquely on reducing carbon emissions to the recommended levels by outlining the most carbon-effective approach to climate change mitigation. The results of using dynamic life-cycle analysis provide policy makers with standardized information that will drive the optimization of electricity generation for effective climate change mitigation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of agroforestry crops is a promising tool for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration through fossil fuel substitution. In particular, plantations characterised by high yields such as short rotation forestry (SRF) are becoming popular worldwide for biomass production and their role acknowledged in the Kyoto Protocol. While their contribution to climate change mitigation is being investigated, the impact of climate change itself on growth and productivity of these plantations needs particular attention, since their management might need to be modified accordingly. Besides the benefits deriving from the establishment of millions of hectares of these plantations, there is a risk of increased release into the atmosphere of volatile organic compounds (VOC) emitted in large amounts by most of the species commonly used. These hydrocarbons are known to play a crucial role in tropospheric ozone formation. This might represent a negative feedback, especially in regions already characterized by elevated ozone level. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A displacement factor can express the efficiency of using biomass to reduce net greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, by quantifying the amount of emission reduction achieved per unit of wood use. Here we integrate data from 21 different international studies in a meta-analysis of the displacement factors of wood products substituted in place of non-wood materials. We calculate the displacement factors in consistent units of tons of carbon (tC) of emission reduction per tC in wood product. The displacement factors range from a low of -2.3 to a high of 15, with most lying in the range of 1.0 to 3.0. The average displacement factor value is 2.1, meaning that for each tC in wood products substituted in place of non-wood products, there occurs an average GHG emission reduction of approximately 2.1 tC. Expressed in other units, this value corresponds to roughly 3.9 t CO(2) eq emission reduction per ton of dry wood used. The few cases of negative displacement factors are the result of worst-case scenarios that are unrealistic in current practice. This meta-analysis quantifies the range of GHG benefits of wood substitution, and provides a clear climate rationale for increasing wood substitution in place of other products, provided that forests are sustainably managed and that wood residues are used responsibly. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Short rotation bioenergy crops for energy production are considered an effective means to mitigate the greenhouse effect, mainly due to their ability to substitute fossil fuels. Alternatively, carbon can be sequestered and stored in the living biomass. This paper compares the two land use categories (forest land and non-forest land) for two management practices (short rotation vs. long rotation) to study mitigation potential of afforestation and fossil fuel substitution as compared to carbon storage. Significant carbon benefit can be obtained in the long run from using lands for growing short rotation energy crops and substituting fossil fuels by the biomass thus produced, as opposed to sequestering carbon in the biomass of the trees. When growth rates are high and harvest is used in a sustainable manner (i.e., replanting after every harvest), the opportunities for net carbon reductions appear to be fossil fuel substitution, rather than storage in ecosystem biomass. Our results suggest that at year 100 a total of 216 Mg C ha(-1) is sequestered for afforestation/reforestation using long rotation sal (Shorea robusta Gaertn.f) species, as opposed to offset of 412 Mg C ha(-1) for carbon storage and fossil fuel substitution for short rotation poplar (Populus Deltoides Marsh) plantations. The bioenergy option results in a continuous stream of about 3 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) of carbon benefits per year on forest land and 4 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) on non-forest land. Earlier studies have shown that in India waste land availability for establishing energy plantations is in the range of 9.6 to 36.5 Mha. Thus, using the 758 Tg biomass per year generated from 9.6 Mha waste land gives a mitigation potential in the range of 227 to 303 Tg C per year for carbon storage and fossil fuel substitution from poplar plantation for substituting coal based power generation. Depending upon the land availability for plantation, the potential for energy generation is in the range of 11,370 PJ, possibly amounting to a bioenergy supply of 43% of the total projected energy consumption in 2015. Further studies are needed to estimate the mitigation potential of other species with different productivities for overall estimation of the economic feasibility and social acceptability in a tropical country like India.Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions change earth's climate by altering the planet's radiative balance. An important first step in mitigation of climate change is to reduce annual increases in these emissions. However, the many suggested means of limiting emissions rates have led to few actual changes in policy or behavior. This disconnection can be attributed in part to the difficulty of convening groups of stakeholders with diverse values, the polarizing nature of current political systems, poor communication across disciplines, and a lack of clear, usable information about emission mitigation strategies. Here, electronically facilitated ethical deliberation, a method of determining courses of action on common goals by collaborative discussion, is used to evaluate Pacala and Socolow's climate change stabilization strategies based on economic, technological, social, and ecological impacts across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Few previous analyses of climate mitigation strategies include all of these factors; rather, short-term technological feasibility studies and economic cost-benefit analyses predominate. After accounting for tradeoffs among disparate criteria, strategies involving end-user efficiency (e.g., efficient buildings and vehicles), wind, and solar power rank highest, while carbon capture and storage, hydrogen fuel cells, and biofuels options rank lowest. This electronically facilitated deliberation method offers an alternative to oppositional debate or cost-benefit analysis for assessing strategies where both quantitative and qualitative factors are important, information from disparate disciplines is relevant, and stakeholders are geographically dispersed.Carbon sequestration by forested ecosystems offers a potential climate change mitigation benefit. However, wildfire has the potential to reverse this benefit. In the western United States, climate change and land management practices have led to increases in wildfire intensity and size. One potential means of reducing carbon emissions from wildfire is the use of prescribed burning,which consumes less biomass and therefore releases less carbon to the atmosphere. This study uses a regional fire emissions model to estimate the potential reduction in fire emissions when prescribed burning is applied in dry, temperate forested systems of the western U.S. Daily carbon dioxide (CO2) fire emissions for 2001-2008 were calculated for the western U.S. for two cases: a default wildfire case and one in which prescribed burning was applied. Wide-scale prescribed fire application can reduce CO2 fire emissions for the western U.S. by 18-25% in the western U.S., and by as much as 60% in specific forest systems. Although this work does not address important considerations such as the feasibility of implementing wide-scale prescribed fire management or the cumulative emissions from repeated prescribed burning, it does provide constraints on potential carbon emission reductions when prescribed burning is used.Background: Green roofs perform ecosystem services such as summer roof temperature reduction and stormwater capture that directly contribute to lower building energy use and potential economic savings. These services are in turn related to ecosystem functions performed by the vegetation layer such as radiation reflection and transpiration, but little work has examined the role of plant species composition and diversity in improving these functions. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used a replicated modular extensive (shallow growing-medium) green roof system planted with monocultures or mixtures containing one, three or five life-forms, to quantify two ecosystem services: summer roof cooling and water capture. We also measured the related ecosystem properties/processes of albedo, evapotranspiration, and the mean and temporal variability of aboveground biomass over four months. Mixtures containing three or five life-form groups, simultaneously optimized several green roof ecosystem functions, outperforming monocultures and single life-form groups, but there was much variation in performance depending on which life-forms were present in the three life-form mixtures. Some mixtures outperformed the best monocultures for water capture, evapotranspiration, and an index combining both water capture and temperature reductions. Combinations of tall forbs, grasses and succulents simultaneously optimized a range of ecosystem performance measures, thus the main benefit of including all three groups was not to maximize any single process but to perform a variety of functions well. Conclusions/Significance: Ecosystem services from green roofs can be improved by planting certain life-form groups in combination, directly contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. The strong performance by certain mixtures of life-forms, especially tall forbs, grasses and succulents, warrants further investigation into niche complementarity or facilitation as mechanisms governing biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships in green roof ecosystems.Older Australians living in rural areas have long faced significant challenges in maintaining health. Their circumstances are shaped by the occupations, lifestyles, environments and remoteness which characterise the diversity of rural communities. Many rural regions face threats to future sustainability and greater proportions of the aged reside in these areas. The emerging changes in Australia's climate over the past decade may be considered indicative of future trends, and herald amplification of these familiar challenges for rural communities. Such climate changes are likely to exacerbate existing health risks and compromise community infrastructure in some instances. This paper discusses climate change-related health risks facing older people in rural areas, with an emphasis on the impact of heat, drought and drying on rural and remote regions. Adaptive health sector responses are identified to promote mitigation of this substantial emerging need as individuals and their communities experience the projected impact of climate change.The aim of this article is to analyze the potential for synergies between climate policies and development in a case study on India focusing on the power sector sub-optimalities. To do so, we use I-MACLIM-R, a dynamic recursive energy-economy model that represents a second best world with market imperfections and short-run adjustments constraints along a long-term growth path. The analysis suggests (i) global carbon pricing induces prohibitive macroeconomic costs for the Indian economy, even in the case of significant financial transfers associated with a global cap-and-trade system and a 'Contraction and Convergence in 2100' allocation scheme and (ii) the most cost efficient climate policies are not uniform carbon pricing only. The implementation of domestic policies suited to the national context, for instance targeting sub-optimalities in the power sector for India, allows reducing significantly the macroeconomic costs induced by international mitigation policies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the expected environmental impact of several promising schemes for ocean carbon sequestration by direct injection Of CO2, and serves as a major update to the assessment by Auerbach et al (1997) and Caulfield et al (1997) of water quality impacts and the induced mortality to zooplankton Three discharge approaches are considered, each designed to maximize dilution over the water column a point release of negatively buoyant CO2, hydrate particles from a moving ship, a stationary point release Of CO2 hydrate particles forming a sinking plume, and a long, bottom-mounted diffuser discharging buoyant liquid CO2 droplets. Two of these scenarios take advantage of the enhanced dilution offered by CO2 hydrate particles, and are based on recent laboratory and field studies on the formation and behavior of such particles Overall, results suggest that it is possible with present or near present technology to engineer discharge configurations that achieve sufficient dilution to largely avoid acute impacts. In particular, the moving ship hydrate discharge is identified as the most promising due to its operational flexibility. In addition to lethal effects, sub-lethal and ecosystem effects are discussed qualitatively, though not analyzed quantitatively. Our main conclusion is that ocean carbon sequestration by direct injection should not be dismissed as a climate change mitigation strategy on the basis of environmental impact alone. Rather, it can be considered as a viable option for further study, especially in regions where geologic sequestration proves impractical Published by Elsevier LtdIn order to take up the twin challenge of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, while meeting a growing energy demand, the potential deployment of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies is attracting a growing interest of policy makers around the world In this study we evaluate and compare national approaches towards the development of CCS in the United States, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia The analysis is done by applying the functions of innovation systems approach. This approach posits that new technology is developed, demonstrated and deployed in the context of a technological innovation system. The performance assessment of the CCS innovation system shows that the extensive knowledge base and knowledge networks, which have been accumulated over the past years. have not yet been utilized by entrepreneurs to explore the market for integrated CCS concepts linked to power generation. This indicates that the build-up of the innovation system has entered a critical phase that is decisive for a further thriving development of CCS In order to move the CCS innovation system through this present difficult episode and deploy more advanced CCS concepts at a larger scale, it is necessary to direct policy initiatives at the identified weak system functions, i e entrepreneurial activity, market creation and the mobilization of resources Moreover, in some specific countries it is needed to provide more regulatory guidance and improve the legitimacy for the technology. We discuss how policy makers and technology managers can use these insights to develop a coherent policy strategy that would accelerate the deployment of CCS (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedOne of the major justifications for bio-energy systems is their low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to fossil-energy ones. Transforming a sugar mill into a bio-energy plant would contribute to climate change mitigation via the extraction of renewable electricity and ethanol. This study takes the case of the sugar industry in Thailand and identifies scenario options that offer GHG reduction benefits. Improving efficiency in electricity generation from sugar cane residues e.g. excess bagasse and cane trash is such a beneficial option. Furthermore, extracting ethanol in a so-called bio-refinery, where the co-product stillage is utilized for energy, tends to magnify the potential benefit. The largest savings potential achieved with extracting ethanol from surplus sugar versus current practice in the sugar industry in Thailand amounts to 14 million tonnes CO(2)e a year. This cannot be realized in practice until the carbon debt from land conversion is repaid, which takes 4.5-7 years, assuming that the land converted is grassland. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>As governments elaborate strategies to counter climate change, there is a need to compare the different options available on an environmental basis. This study proposes a life cycle assessment framework integrating the Lashof accounting methodology, which enables the assessment and comparison of different carbon mitigation projects (e.g., biofuel use, a sequestering plant, an afforestation project). The Lashof accounting methodology is chosen amid other methods of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission characterization for its relative simplicity and capability to characterize all types of carbon mitigation projects. Using the unit of megagram-year (Mg-year), which accounts for the mass of GHGs in the atmosphere multiplied by the time it stays there, the methodology calculates the cumulative radiative forcing caused by GHG emission within a predetermined time frame. Basically, the developed framework uses the Mg-year as a functional unit and isolates impacts related to the climate mitigation function with system expansion. The proposed framework is demonstrated with a case study of tree ethanol pathways (maize, sugarcane, and willow). The study shows that carbon mitigation assessment through life cycle assessment is possible and that it could be a useful tool for decision makers, as it can compare different projects regardless of their original context. The case study reveals that system expansion, as well as each carbon mitigation project's efficiency at reducing carbon emissions, are critical factors that have a significant impact on the results. Also, the framework proves to be useful for treating land-use change emissions, as they are considered through the functional unit.There is considerable interest in the potential use of soils to sequester carbon for climate change mitigation. As such, there is a need to evaluate the potential for carbon accumulation in tropical regions. We compared the effects of three annual additions of nitrogen and/or phosphorus on soil carbon and nitrogen contents and pools (bulk soil, macro-, meso-, and microaggregates) of two regenerating secondary tropical dry forest differing in nutrient status and succession stage (10-year-old early-succession stage and approximately 60-year-old late-succession stage). The selected forest sites were located on a shallow calcareous soil in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). The primary production is limited by nitrogen and phosphorus in early-succession stage and by phosphorus in late-succession stage. In each forest site, four independent plots (12 x 12 m2) were established, the treatments being: controls and plots fertilized during three consecutive years with nitrogen, phosphorus, or nitrogen plus phosphorus. In both forests, soil carbon and nitrogen contents were consistently high, with soil carbon:nitrogen ratios generally greater than 10. Results indicate that usually there are no significant increases of soil carbon stock associated to late succession but can be increased to 3.7 Mg center dot ha-1 center dot yr-1 with adoption of fertilizer practices. The potential soil carbon sequestration in early-succession forest was estimated to be 2.7 Mg center dot ha-1 center dot yr-1, and there is no indication that fertilization improves carbon sequestration. In short, results suggest that the soil potential for carbon sequestration in these ecosystems is high and depends on the specific nutrient status of the site.The issue of integrating environmental concerns into energy policy decision making is increasingly addressed, not least related to climate change. Although the United States, unlike the EU, did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, several U.S. states promote renewable electricity (RES-E), and some of these initiatives are linked to climate-change mitigation efforts. The present article assesses in this connection the six New England states of the United States, comparing their efforts of integrating RES-E with climate change to the Nordic countries in Europe. In order to explain different approaches, the article focuses on the importance of different EU and U.S. multilevel governing structures. The analysis indicates that the New England states' RES-E promotion thus far has not been substantially integrated with climate-change concerns, whereas in the EU's more top-down approach, climate change figures more prominently vis-a-vis RES-E. EU policies represent an increasingly important driver for the Nordic countries. In the United States, on the other hand, it remains an open question as to how future federal policy efforts will relate to existing policies at the state level.P>Climate change may be considered a natural disaster evolving in slow motion on a global scale. Increasing storm intensities, shifting rainfall patterns, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and other manifold alterations are being experienced around the world. Climate has never been constant in any location, but human-induced changes associated with greenhouse gases and fossil fuel use are new and rapidly shifting conditions for rural communities and regions across the planet. Rural sociologists have long been carving out the contours of this topic through research on family well-being, rural livelihoods, community, and the environment. Now climate change and subsequent policy responses present a new and fundamental source of social change. The purpose of this article is to assess lines of research and theory that consider and direct our understanding of the impacts of climate change, the ways it might be mitigated, and the coping strategies of rural people and communities that are both victims and perpetrators in the global realignment. As climate-change impacts and policy responses begin to impinge on rural populations, the first line of resistance and participation will be the rural community. The distribution of rewards from climate-change mitigation is broad and diffuse; the distribution of costs, compromised livelihoods, and community disruption often is focused.Lexical combinations of at least two roots around "carbon" as the hub, such as "carbon finance" or "carbon footprint," have recently become ubiquitous in English-speaking science, politics, and mass media. They are part of a new language evolving around the issue of climate change that can reveal how it is framed by various stakeholders. In this article, the authors study the role of these "carbon compounds" as tools of communication in different online discourses on climate change mitigation. By combining a quantitative analysis of their occurrences with a qualitative analysis of the contexts in which the compounds were used, the authors identify three clusters of compounds focused on finance, lifestyle, and attitudes and elucidate the communicative purposes to which they were put between the 1990s and the early 21st century. This approach may open up new ways of analyzing the framings of climate change mitigation initiatives in the public sphere.This article assesses the contributions of public-private partnerships, understood as a specific type of networked climate governance, to effective and legitimate climate governance. The appraisal of networked governance in the climate change arena is based on three sets of criteria. First, their potential contribution to effective climate change mitigation and adaptation; second, their contribution to broader political goals such as increased participation and inclusiveness in global environmental governance; and third, their linkages and fit with the existing institutional architecture of international climate change governance. I conclude with a set of questions for future research. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 279-287Soil C sequestration in cropland could play an important role in mitigating the rapidly increasing CO(2) emissions in China. Many efforts had been dedicated to estimating the potential for C sequestration in croplands. Potential increases in SOC in China's croplands had been recently evaluated using inventory-up-scaling simulation and crop-soil C process-based modeling. In this study, data of SOC change at monitoring sites from croplands across mainland China were collected from publications available from 1985 to 2006 to perform a statistical analysis. The data set comprises 1081 observations (404 from rice paddies, RPs and 677 from dry croplands, DCs). Frequency analysis indicates that over 70% of observations show an increase in SOC, which is higher among RPs than DCs. To quantify SOC dynamics, a Relative Annual Change Index in g kg(-1) year(-1) (RAC, g kg(-1) year(-1)) is defined and calculated using the initial and final SOC values for the duration of monitored observations. RAC values ranged from -0.806 to 0.963 g kg(-1) year(-1) for DCs and from -0.597 to 0.959 g kg(-1) year(-1) for RPs, respectively. From this data. the average is estimated to be 0.056 +/- 0.200 g kg(-1) year(-1) for DCs, and 0.110 +/- 0.244 g kg(-1) year(-1) for RPs, with an overall estimate for China's croplands, with RPs and DCs combined, of 0.076 +/- 0.219 g kg(-1) year(-1). A mean increase in topsoil C (0-20 cm) stock of China's croplands was estimated to be 25.5 Tg C year(-1) (8 Tg C year(-1) in RPs and 17.5 Tg C year(-1) in DCs) between 1985 and 2006, with a total topsoil C stock increase of 0.64 Pg C over the whole period. The annual stock increase may offset similar to 20%, on average, of the total CO(2) emissions of China for 1994. This Study Suggests an important role of China's croplands, especially rice paddies, for C sequestration to mitigate climate change. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has become a key technology in climate change mitigation programs worldwide. CCS is well-studied in terms of greenhouse gas emission reduction potential and cost of implementation. Impacts on human health and the environment have, however, received considerably less attention. In this work, we present a first assessment of human health and environmental impacts of a postcombustion CO2 capture facility, focusing on emissions from amine-based scrubbing solvents and their degradation products to air. We develop characterization factors for human toxicity for monoethanolamine (MEA) as these were not yet available. On the basis of the limited information available, our assessment indicates that amine-based scrubbing results in a 10-fold increase in toxic impact on freshwater ecosystems and a minor increase in toxic impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. These increases are attributed to emissions of monoethanolamine. For all other impact categories, i.e., human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, particulate matter formation, photochemical oxidant formation, and terrestrial acidification, the CO2 capture facility performs equally well to a conventional NGCC power plant albeit substantial changes in flue gas composition. The oxidative degradation products of MEA, i.e., formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and ammonia, do not contribute significantly to total environmental impacts.Advances in the science and observation of climate change are providing a clearer understanding of the inherent variability of Earth's climate system and its likely response to human and natural influences. The implications of climate change for the environment and society will depend not only on the response of the Earth system to changes in radiative forcings, but also on how humankind responds through changes in technology, economies, lifestyle and policy. Extensive uncertainties exist in future forcings of and responses to climate change, necessitating the use of scenarios of the future to explore the potential consequences of different response options. To date, such scenarios have not adequately examined crucial possibilities, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, and have relied on research processes that slowed the exchange of information among physical, biological and social scientists. Here we describe a new process for creating plausible scenarios to investigate some of the most challenging and important questions about climate change confronting the global community.In the residential sector, there is glowing interest in the concept of carbon neutral and net zero energy housing within the context of emerging climate change mitigation and energy security strategies. A hybrid building represents a new class of dwelling capable of achieving net zero energy, carbon neutral or zero carbon status. This article reports on the carbon footprints of alternative configurations of a hybrid building, where variations in performance are explored across different types of residential structure (detached, medium density, high-rise), different energy ratings of the shell, number and mix of domestic appliances in use, and type of distributed or local energy generation technology employed. Hybrid building pathways to zero carbon housing are identified, delivering average savings of approximately 11 tonnes CO2-e per year per dwelling compared with new del ached project home; designed to current 5-star energy standards.This paper examines the likely effects on gas and electricity consumption and carbon emissions from heating and cooling systems in existing dwellings up to 2080, assuming a widespread uptake of cooling systems. This area of research is highly sensitive to the myriad of possible inputs and thus holds a wide range of predicted outcomes. However, general trends have been found, showing significant sensitivity to ventilation rate, U-values, occupant behaviour and location. Heating demand will still be dominant over cooling demand in UK dwellings by the 2080s, based on an UKCIP02 A1F1 weather scenario. A national worst case scenario for the 2050s, shows a 10 megatonne CO2 emissions saving on present levels largely due to a 20% reduction in gas consumption. Practical applications: The balance of heating and cooling demand causes more modest changes in CO2 than first anticipated. Despite first perceptions of future energy use in housing and climate change, heating appears to remain the major load rather than cooling, even into the 2080s. These predictions of future CO2 emissions will be useful to those in the building industry planning appropriate proportionate climate adaptation and climate mitigation measures. Also, the prediction of changes to future energy demands from the housing sector will be of interest to energy providers considering future demands for heating and cooling and may feed into larger bottom-up energy models.The United Nations climate negotiations on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) provide a rare opportunity for conservation of tropical forests and biodiversity. Here, we explore the implications of REDD design and implementation options on biodiversity conservation and ways to link REDD with biodiversity conservation. From both a mitigation and biodiversity perspective, the most important immediate steps are to ensure that REDD is included in the new global climate agreement and maximizes the area of tropical forest conserved. It may also be possible to include guidelines or incentives within a REDD framework or in national implementation to channel funding to areas of high biodiversity. However, if the immediate steps above are not taken first, REDD will reach neither its mitigation nor its biodiversity conservation potential.Possible growth paths for new electricity generation technologies are investigated on the basis of an empirical analysis of past penetration rates. Finding and understanding high market penetration scenarios is relevant to formulating climate change mitigation strategies. The analysis shows that under favorable growth conditions, photovoltaics and wind could produce 15% and 25%, respectively, of world electricity by 2050. Under the same assumptions nuclear power could increase to 41% of world electricity. But it is unlikely that all three technology paths could be realized up to these values simultaneously and therefore the penetration rates presented here should be considered as indicative only. The results show that under positive conditions, an embryonic technology could move as a preferred option into a mainstream energy source within half a century. The introduction of growth constraints reflecting, e.g., severe economic, technical, or political limitations could reduce the above numbers by a factor of up to 2-3. The results indicate a decline in the relative year-to-year growth of new technologies when they have higher market shares. A comparison of the results with other short-term and long-term technology scenarios shows satisfactory agreement. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study the life cycle primary energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission of an eight-storey wood-framed apartment building are analyzed. All life cycle phases are included, including acquisition and processing of materials, on-site construction, building operation, demolition and materials disposal. The calculated primary energy use includes the entire energy system chains, and carbon flows are tracked including fossil fuel emissions, process emissions, carbon stocks in building materials, and avoided fossil emissions due to biofuel substitution. The results show that building operation uses the largest share of life cycle energy use, becoming increasingly dominant as the life span of the building increases. The type of heating system strongly influences the primary energy use and CO2 emission; a biomass-based system with cogeneration of district heat and electricity achieves low primary energy use and very low CO2 emissions. Using biomass residues from the wood products chain to substitute for fossil fuels significantly reduces net CO2 emission. Excluding household tap water and electricity, a negative life cycle net CO2 emission can be achieved due to the wood-based construction materials and biomass-based energy supply system. This study shows the importance of using a life cycle perspective when evaluating primary energy and climatic impacts of buildings. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recent research has shown that once CO2 has been emitted to the atmosphere, it will take centuries for natural removal. Clearly, the longer we delay deep reductions in CO2, the greater the risk that total greenhouse gas emissions will exceed prudent limits for avoiding dangerous anthropogenic change. We evaluate the three possible technical approaches for climate change mitigation: emission reduction methods, post-emission draw down of CO2 from the atmosphere, and geoengineering. We find that the first two approaches are unlikely to deliver the timely reductions in CO2 needed, while geoengineering methods either deliver too little or are too risky. Given the deep uncertainties in both future climate prediction and energy availability, it seems safest to actively plan for a much lower energy future. We propose a general 'shrink and share' approach to reductions in both fossil-fuel use and carbon emissions, with basic human needs satisfaction replacing economic growth as the focus for economic activity. Only with deep cuts in energy and carbon can we avoid burdening future generations with the high energy costs of air capture. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Quantitative assessments help to highlight the main features of climate policies by better identifying their strengths and weaknesses. In this study, we develop a grading system for assessing thirteen proposals for post-2012 climate policy. We believe that these proposals contain appropriate policy instruments which will be considered for discussions about how to design the post-2012 climate agreement. Our grades are based on four criteria: environmental effectiveness, cost effectiveness, distributional considerations and institutional feasibility. We analyze the grades with two complementary methods: principal component and cluster analysis. Our results entail three policy implications. Firstly, the higher the number of policy instruments a proposal comprises, the more difficult might be its implementation. Secondly, proposals which include a meaningful effort by the U.S. tend to fail in environmental effectiveness and institutional feasibility. Thirdly, we identify that the "first best" and the "second best" approaches belong to a stable policy group, and both may be considered as suitable candidates for post-2012 climate policy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rationale The health economy is a significant part of a national economy accounting typically for about 8% of GDP spent. As national economies respond to the dual challenges of severe economic turbulence on the global scale and climate change mitigation, the health economy is coming under increasing pressure to respond. Indications for sharp reductions in budgets and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, are widespread. Aims In this paper an analysis is undertaken of the diverse forces acting on a typical health care enterprise. The forces, both economic and carbon related, are investigated in terms of their effects through the enterprise and across its boundaries on the supply, demand and waste sides. The overall aim is to show how the enterprise and whole supply chains may flip synchronously into a low-carbon evolutionary pathway. Objectives By illustrating how different elements of the health care enterprise may respond to these developments, diverse opportunities for cost reduction, carbon reduction and product (goods and services) development are identified. These opportunities involve a variety of waste reduction and energy and materials conservation measures as well as new ways of collaborating with other enterprises going through similar transformations. The overall objective is to show that the carbon-constrained health care enterprise and the low-carbon health economy in which it sits may broaden its role in the coming decades to include a degree of responsibility for the health of the environment. This broader role is likely to supplement and entangle with the traditional role of the health economy, currently focused narrowly on human health, and lead to extensive organisational transformation, and infrastructure and product developments.We use a stochastic dynamic profit maximization model to investigate the effects of forest carbon seqeustration credits on optimal forest management practices for stands facing wildfire risk. Landowners that periodically thin a stand can increase growth rates and mitigate loss of timber and carbon stocks from wildfire. Results indicate that thinning and shortening rotations are cost-effective strategies to mitigate wildfire risk. Carbon prices cause landowners to delay both their thinning treatments and the final rotation age. Thinning and extending timber rotations are thus a viable climate-change mitigation option even when stands are susceptible to risks of fire. (JEL Q23, Q54)Climate change is occurring with greater speed and intensity that previously anticipated. All effective environmentally and socially sound mitigation efforts need to be employed to effectively address this global crisis. Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) projects can provide significant climate change mitigation benefits as well as poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation benefits. The policies of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), the world's largest carbon market exclude LULUCF. Scientific support for this exclusion was presented in a briefing paper published by the Climate Action Network-Europe (CAN) that puts forward the proposition that land based storage of carbon is ineffective. A careful review of the scientific papers cited in support of CAN's position indicates that, while the papers themselves are scientifically sound, they do not support the continued exclusion of LULUCF projects from the EU-ETS. At the same time some important recent research papers that describe the carbon storage and social benefit potential of such projects are not included in the analysis. An in-depth consideration of the scientific evidence is necessary in evaluating this policy option. Based on this evidence a case can be made for the inclusion of LULUCF projects in the EU-ETS.Carbon sequestration in forest sinks is an important strategy to remove greenhouse gases and to mitigate climate change; however its implementation has been limited under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol which has not created the incentives for widespread implementation. The objective of this paper is to analyze the sequestration costs of agroforestry afforestation and reforestation projects (ARPs) following a partial market equilibrium using average cost curves and economic break even analysis to identify the supply costs. The modelling done in this work contrasts the voluntary and clean development mechanism transaction costs. Data is based on the voluntary project, Scolel Te, being implemented in Mexico. Cost curves are developed for seven different sequestration options considering transaction and implementation costs; information from agricultural production in Chiapas Mexico is used to integrate opportunity costs of two agroforestry practices suggesting that sequestration costs may follow a "U" shape, with an initial reduction due to economies of scale and a subsequent increase caused by high opportunity costs. The widespread implementation of agroforestry options not requiring complete land conversion (e.g. living fences and coffee under shade) might be cost effective strategies not generating high opportunity costs. Results also suggest that payments in the early years of the project and lower transaction costs favour the development of ARPs in the voluntary market especially in marginal rural areas with high discount rates. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biomass pyrolysis with biochar returned to soil is a possible strategy for climate change mitigation and reducing fossil fuel consumption. Pyrolysis with biochar applied to soils results in four coproducts: long-term carbon (C) sequestration from stable C in the biochar, renewable energy generation, biochar as a soil amendment, and biomass waste management. Life cycle assessment was used to estimate the energy and climate change impacts and the economics of biochar systems. The feedstocks analyzed represent agricultural residues (corn stover), yard waste, and switchgrass energy crops. The net energy of the system is greatest with switchgrass (4899 MJ t(-1) dry feedstock). The net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for both stover and yard waste are negative, at -864 and -885 kg CO2 equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions reductions per tonne dry feedstock, respectively. Of these total reductions, 62-66% are realized from C sequestration in the biochar. The switchgrass biochar-pyrolysis system can be a net GHG emitter (+36 kg CO(2)e t(-1) dry feedstock), depending on the accounting method for indirect land-use change impacts. The economic viability of the pyrolysis-biochar system is largely dependent on the costs of feedstock production, pyrolysis, and the value of C offsets. Biomass sources that have a need for waste management such as yard waste have the highest potential for economic profitability (+$69 t(-1) dry feedstock when CO(2)e emission reductions are valued at $80 t(-1) CO(2)e). The transportation distance for feedstock creates a significant hurdle to the economic profitability of biochar-pyrolysis systems. Biochar may at present only deliver climate change mitigation benefits and be financially viable as a distributed system using waste biomass.Renewable obligation is a crucial policy to tackle the twin challenges of climate change mitigation and energy security. Wind generation is crucial to meet the UK Renewable Obligation which requires certain percentage of renewable electricity in the UK electricity generation. This paper analyses implications of Renewable Obligation and climate change mitigation policy in regional electricity generation mix and regional renewable electricity trade in the UK low carbon scenarios. The newly developed 2 region UK MARKAL model has been used for the analysis. UK is divided into two regions: Scotland and rest of the UK Spatial off-shore wind resource data has been used for the modeling by quantifying the UK continental off-shore wind resources into several zones. Analysis shows that renewable electricity flow between Scotland and rest of the UK is heavily influenced by renewable obligations in the short-and medium-term while climate change policy influence in the long-term.This paper attempts to analyze the role of building sector in China in addressing climate change mitigation. Based on a comprehensive overview of building demand characteristics and development trends driven by economic and demographic growth, different policy tools for cost-effective CO2 emission reduction in the Chinese construction sector are described. This paper proposes a comprehensive approach combining building design and construction, and energy efficiency, so as to promote low carbon development of China's Building Sector during this period of rapid urban development. Regulatory and incentive options should be integrated to realize sizeable carbon emissions cuts in the next decades. Finally the paper analyzes in detail several policies and instruments, and formulates relevant policy proposals fostering low carbon building sector in China.Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of forest carbon (C) stocks, changes in these stocks (Delta C) due to land use and land use change and net greenhouse gas emissions are critical technical challenges of climate change mitigation initiatives aiming to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) [1,2]. MRV systems for emission reporting for voluntary carbon agreements and REDD will require the careful integration of remotely sensed (RS) data and ground measurements for the retrieval of C and Delta C with sufficient precision and accuracy to be marketable and tradable [3]. MRV systems will also need to be designed specific to scale; from project level monitoring for voluntary carbon agreements to national level REDD reporting. Field sampling will be an expensive component of MRV systems and efficiency and cost effectiveness are paramount. Here we present protocols that can guide the design of field measurement campaigns for estimating C and Delta C for MRV systems in developing tropical countries. We will use examples from Papua New Guinea (PNG).CO2 capture: why, how, with what constraints? Since 1900's, the fast-expanding industrialization has led to significant increase of CO2 emissions into atmosphere, which has contributed to global warming. In spite of alternative options development to reduce greenhouse effect (energy savings, green transport, and renewable energies), CO2 capture and storage is an interesting, perhaps inevitable climate change mitigation measure. In fact, one of the most significant sources of CO2 emissions worldwide is industrial fumes (flue gas stream, coal-fired power plants, refineries, cement, manufacturing plants). The process consists in recovering CO2 from flue gas streams, carrying by ships or pipelines and finally storing in depleted gas or oil fields or in deep saltwater aquifers. Among different considered solutions, post-combustion capture is now the most advanced technology because it can be applied to retrofit plants. Current applications are based on a reversible chemical reaction between CO2 and aqueous amine solution, which permits selective absorption. One of the main limits for this process is amine degradation, which leads to many by-products. These compounds generate many problems such as corrosion, fouling, solvent losses. As a consequence, the efficiency of capture units decreases and additional operating cost is a drawback. Thus, many investigations are still in course to improve this very promising concept.The contradiction between the environment and the development of economy is going more and more outstanding in the 21 century. Climate change mitigation also poses significant challenges for China and its energy development, historically highly energy-intensive. Examining this challenge, this paper considers how to choose effective path to achieve the transformation of the economy growth pattern from the energy-intensive and high-carbon to low-carbon and no-carbon under the current limits of economy, population, resource, environment, and technical conditions, etc. In the short term, energy efficiency provides large potential for mitigation. Changing energy structure, dependent to 70% on coal, is at least a medium-term challenge. The most transformative change is to an alteration industry structure, likely to take long to achieve. In the future, the carbon dioxide emissions will have to stop growing, stabilize and decline 40%-50% before mid-century in China. The challenge of climate change is a long-term challenge, requiring immediate action. This article is focus on seeking to shift development paths.Annotation: Quality control on the water for irrigation is needed to avoid emerging problems as decreasing the yield of agriculture and worsening its quality at using inadequate quality water. The development of a computer based information system, i.e. decision support system for assessing the suitability of the water for irrigation aims to protect cultivated crops not to be irrigated with water of unsuitable quality. The system uses laboratory analysis information, cultivated crops data, soil and agro-climatic characteristics, irrigation technology, legal rules and some additional parameters. The paper presents the main directions for determination the applicability of irrigation water at various crops on the basis of the assessment of its quality, i.e. establishing a database of irrigation water quality indicators and recommendations' elaboration for irrigation water considering qualitative parameters of the available water. The estimation algorithm and the programme follows three fundamental steps: establishing an irrigation water quality indicators database and input data uploading and updating, assessment of irrigation water quality, issuing recommendations for irrigation water utilization.The importance of agroforestry systems as carbon sinks has recently been recognized due to the need of climate change mitigation. The objective of this study was to compare the carbon content in living biomass, soil (0-10, 10-20, 20-30 cm in depth), dead organic matter between a set of non-agroforestry and agroforestry prototypes in Chiapas, Mexico where the carbon sequestration programme called Scolel'te has been carried out. The prototypes compared were: traditional maize (rotational prototype with pioneer native trees evaluated in the crop period), Taungya (maize with timber trees), improved fallow, traditional fallow (the last three rotational prototypes in the crop-free period), Inga-shade-organic coffee, polyculture-shade organic coffee, polyculture-non-organic coffee, pasture without trees, pasture with live fences, and pasture with scattered trees. Taungya and improved fallow were designed agroforestry prototypes, while the others were reproduced traditional systems. Seventy-nine plots were selected in three agro-climatic zones. Carbon in living biomass, dead biomass, and soil organic matter was measured in each plot. Results showed that carbon in living biomass and dead organic matter were different according to prototype; while soil organic carbon and total carbon were influenced mostly by the agro-climatic zone (P < 0.01). Carbon density in the high tropical agro-climatic zone (1,000 m) was higher compared to the intermediate and low tropical agro-climatic zones (600 and 200 m, respectively, P < 0.01). All the systems contained more carbon than traditional maize and pastures without trees. Silvopastoral systems, improved fallow, Taungya and coffee systems (especially polyculture-shade coffee and organic coffee) have the potential to sequester carbon via growing trees. Agroforestry systems could also contribute to carbon sequestration and reducing emissions when burning is avoided. The potential of organic coffee to maintain carbon in soil and to reduce emissions from deforestation and ecosystem degradation (REDD) is discussed.Contemporary urbanization differs from historical patterns of urban growth in terms of scale, rate, location, form, and function. This review discusses the characteristics of contemporary urbanization and the roles of urban planning, governance, agglomeration, and globalization forces in driving and shaping the relationship between urbanization and the environment. We highlight recent research on urbanization and global change in the context of sustainability as well as opportunities for bundling urban development efforts, climate mitigation, and adaptation strategies to create synergies to transition to sustainability. We conclude with an analysis of global greenhouse gas emissions under different scenarios of future urbanization growth and discuss their implications.Our strong dependence on fossil fuels results from the intensive use and consumption of petroleum derivatives which, combined with diminishing oil resources, causes environmental and political concerns. The utilization of agricultural residues as raw materials in a biorefinery is a promising alternative to fossil resources for production of energy carriers and chemicals, thus mitigating climate change and enhancing energy security. This paper focuses on a biorefinery concept which produces bioethanol, bioenergy and biochemicals from two types of agricultural residues, corn stover and wheat straw. These biorefinery systems are investigated using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, which takes into account all the input and output flows occurring along the production chain. This approach can be applied to almost all the other patterns that convert lignocellulosic residues into bioenergy and biochemicals. The analysis elaborates on land use change aspects, i.e. the effects of crop residue removal (like decrease in grain yields, change in soil N2O emissions and decrease of soil organic carbon). The biorefinery systems are compared with the respective fossil reference systems producing the same amount of products/services from fossils instead of biomass. Since climate change mitigation and energy security are the two most important driving forces for biorefinery development, the assessment focuses on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cumulative primary energy demand, but other environmental categories are evaluated as well. Results show that the use of crop residues in a biorefinery saves GHG emissions and reduces fossil energy demand. For instance, GHG emissions are reduced by about 50% and more than 80% of non-renewable energy is saved. Land use change effects have a strong influence in the final GHG balance (about 50%), and their uncertainty is discussed in a sensitivity analysis. Concerning the investigation of the other impact categories, biorefinery systems have higher eutrophication potential than fossil reference systems. Based on these results, a residues-based biorefinery concept is able to solve two problems at the same time, namely find a use for the abundant lignocellulosic residues and ensure a mitigation effect for most of the environmental concerns related to the utilization of non-renewable energy resources. Therefore, when agricultural residues are used as feedstocks, best management practices and harvest rates need to be carefully established. In fact, rotation, tillage, fertilization management, soil properties and climate can play an important role in the determination of the amount of crop residue that can be removed minimizing soil carbon losses. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As global warming moves to the center stage of world politics, climate-change policies have evolved to become one of the key components of China's global strategy. In recent years, China has adopted a more proactive attitude toward climate-change mitigation, demonstrated by its domestic policies and role in international environmental negotiations, especially at the Copenhagen Conference. The cause of this policy change is the adjustments in China's grand national strategy. After three decades of rapid economic growth, the Chinese government wants to facilitate the transition of its development pattern at home and seeks more prestige and influence in the international arena. As a rising power, China sees the climate-change issue as a matter of global strategic importance and has adopted a double-pronged approach to maximize its national interests by balancing its domestic needs with its international aspirations. The negotiations about the post-Kyoto regimes present an opportunity for China to exercise its power in creating rules and institutions on major global issues.Particles, climate change, and health have thought-provoking interactions. Air pollution is one of the largest environmental problems concerning human health. On the other hand, aerosol particles can have a cooling effect on climate and a reduction of those emissions may result in an increased temperature globally, which in turn may have negative health effects. The objective of this work was to investigate the "total health effects" of aerosol emissions, which include both exposure to particles and consequences for climate change initiated by particles. As a case study the "total health effect" from ship emissions was derived by subtracting the number of deaths caused by exposure with the estimated number of lives saved from the cooling effect of the emissions. The analysis showed that, with current level of scientific understanding, it could not be determined whether ship emissions are negative or positive for human health on a short time scale. This first attempt to approximate the combined effect of particle emissions on health shows that reductions of particulate air pollution will in some cases (black carbon) have win-win effects on health and climate, but sometimes also cause a shift from particle exposure-related health effects towards an increasing risk of health consequences from climate change. Thus, measures to reduce aerosol emissions have to be coupled with climate change mitigation actions to achieve a full health benefit on a global level.Climate mitigation policy should be imposed over a long period, and spur innovation of new technologies in order to make stabilization of green house gas concentration economically feasible. The government may announce current and future policy packages that stimulate current R&D in climate-friendly technologies. However, once climate-friendly technologies have been developed, the government may have no incentive to implement the pre-announced future policies, that is, there may be a time inconsistency problem. We show that if the government can optimally subsidize R&D today, there is no time inconsistency problem. Thus, lack of commitment is not an argument for higher current R&D subsidies than the first-best subsidy. If the offered R&D subsidy is lower than the optimal subsidy, the current (sub-game perfect) carbon tax rate exceeds the first-best carbon tax rate.Afforestation and reforestation have become popular instruments of climate mitigation policy, as forests are known to store large quantities of carbon. However, they also modify the fluxes of energy, water and momentum at the land surface. Previous studies have shown that these biogeophysical effects can counteract the carbon drawdown and, in boreal latitudes, even overcompensate it due to large albedo differences between forest canopy and snow. This study investigates the role forest cover plays for global climate by conducting deforestation and afforestation experiments with the earth system model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-ESM). Complete deforestation of the tropics (18.75 degrees S-15 degrees N) exerts a global warming of 0.4 degrees C due to an increase in CO(2) concentration by initially 60 ppm and a decrease in evapotranspiration in the deforested areas. In the northern latitudes (45 degrees N-90 degrees N), complete deforestation exerts a global cooling of 0.25 degrees C after 100 years, while afforestation leads to an equally large warming, despite the counteracting changes in CO(2) concentration. Earlier model studies are qualitatively confirmed by these findings. As the response of temperature as well as terrestrial carbon pools is not of equal sign at every land cell, considering forests as cooling in the tropics and warming in high latitudes seems to be true only for the spatial mean, but not on a local scale.Forested tropical peatlands in Southeast Asia store at least 42 000 Million metric tonnes (Mt) of soil carbon. Human activity and climate change threatens the stability of this large pool, which has been decreasing rapidly over the last few decades owing to deforestation, drainage and fire. In this paper we estimate the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions resulting from drainage of lowland tropical peatland for agricultural and forestry development which dominates the perturbation of the carbon balance in the region. Present and future emissions from drained peatlands are quantified using data on peatland extent and peat thickness, present and projected land use, water management practices and decomposition rates. Of the 27.1 Million hectares (Mha) of peatland in Southeast Asia, 12.9 Mha had been deforested and mostly drained by 2006. This latter area is increasing rapidly because of increasing land development pressures. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission caused by decomposition of drained peatlands was between 355 Mt y(-1) and 855 Mt y(-1) in 2006 of which 82% came from Indonesia, largely Sumatra and Kalimantan. At a global scale, CO2 emission from peatland drainage in Southeast Asia is contributing the equivalent of 1.3% to 3.1% of current global CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel. If current peatland development and management practices continue, these emissions are predicted to continue for decades. This warrants inclusion of tropical peatland CO2 emissions in global greenhouse gas emission calculations and climate mitigation policies. Uncertainties in emission calculations are discussed and research needs for improved estimates are identified.This case study has been carried out as a comparison between two different land-use strategies for climate change mitigation, with possible application within the Clean Development Mechanisms. The benefits of afforestation for carbon sequestration versus for bioenergy production are compared in the context of development planning to meet increasing domestic and agricultural demand for electricity in Hosahalli village, Karnataka, India. One option is to increase the local biomass based electricity generation, requiring an increased biomass plantation area. This option is compared with fossil based electricity generation where the area is instead used for producing wood for non-energy purposes while also sequestering carbon in the soil and standing biomass. The different options have been assessed using the PRO-COMAP model. The ranking of the different options varies depending on the system boundaries and time period. Results indicate that, in the short term (30 years) perspective, the mitigation potential of the long rotation plantation is largest, followed by the short rotation plantation delivering wood for energy. The bioenergy option is however preferred if a long-term view is taken. Short rotation forests delivering wood for short-lived non-energy products have the smallest mitigation potential, unless a large share of the wood products are used for energy purposes (replacing fossil fuels) after having served their initial purpose. If managed in a sustainable manner all of these strategies can contribute to the improvement of the social and environmental situation of the local community. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electricity demand in Romania declined during the 1990s, and several older thermal units were decommissioned. However, demand has recently increased and is expected to continue as the economy expands. The paper aims to analyze the availability of renewable energy resources in Romania and to reveal their potential in dealing with major public policy issues like energy security and climate change mitigation. Thus, many new electricity generation projects are underway. Privatization has proceeded slowly with many of the large industries still owned by the government. Plans have been made to privatize the electric sector, however, actual progress has been slow. The Romanian Agency has proposed Directive No. 77, which would provide significant incentives for renewable energy development.The term 'policy analytical capacity' is used within the policy analysis literature to describe the ability of organizations to produce valuable research and analysis on topics of their choosing. As the scientific evidence becomes clearer, and various actors in society continue to point out that governments around the world will need to play a lead role in climate change mitigation and adaptation, there is good reason to believe that environmental policy makers and civil society stakeholders require a high level of policy analytical capacity in order to create effective policies. Assessing this capability, however, is difficult. Surveying the literature, this articles sets out a seven criteria model of policy analytical capacity and applies it to three prominent Canadian environmental policy research organizations - two governmental organizations and one NGO. Using interview data, it provides information on the status of each organizations' current research capacity and the effect this has on overall government policy-making capability in the face of climate change challenges.Businesses and individuals are buying carbon offsets to reduce their "carbon footprint" or to categorize an activity as "carbon neutral." A carbon offset is a measurable avoidance, reduction, or sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) or other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Offsets generally fall within the following four categories: biological sequestration, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and reduction of non-CO2 emissions. In terms of the carbon concentration in the atmosphere, an emission reduction, avoidance, or sequestration is beneficial regardless of where or how it occurs. A credible offset equates to an emission reduction from a direct emission source, such as a smokestack or exhaust pipe. The core issue for carbon offset projects is: do they actually offset emissions generated elsewhere? If the credibility of the voluntary offsets is uncertain, claims of carbon neutrality may be challenged. Evidence suggests that not all offset projects are of equal quality, because they are developed through a range of standards. In the voluntary market, there are no commonly accepted standards. Although some standards are considered stringent, others are less so. At least 30 companies and organizations (domestic and international) sell carbon offsets to individuals or groups in the international, voluntary carbon market. Two recent studies that examined many of the offset sellers found a general correlation between offset price and offset quality. Due to the lack of common standards, some observers have referred to the market as the "wild west." This does not suggest that all carbon offsets are low quality, but that the consumer must necessarily adopt a buyer-beware mentality when purchasing carbon offsets. This places the responsibility on consumers to judge the quality of carbon offsets. The viability of the voluntary offset market may influence future policy decisions regarding climate change mitigation. For example, credible offsets could play an important role, particularly in terms of cost-effectiveness, in an emissions control regime. There is some concern that the range in the quality of voluntary market offsets may damage the overall credibility of carbon offsets. If this occurs, it may affect policy decisions concerning whether or not to include offsets as an option in a mandatory reduction program.This chapter provides an overview of the opportunities and challenges associated with climate change mitigation policy, in order to achieve the target of limiting global average temperature rise to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. Scenarios from the International Energy Agency and others show that a large number of mitigation 'wedges' from the large-scale deployment of a range of low-carbon technologies, including a range of renewable energy technologies, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage from coal- and gas-fired electricity generation, are likely to be needed. The Stern Review set out the economic case for climate change mitigation, arguing that the costs of mitigation are likely to be much smaller than the costs and risks of the impacts of climate change. Governments are now attempting to implement policies to deliver effective and efficient mitigation in three complementary areas: carbon pricing, through taxes or tradable permit schemes; increasing support for R&D, demonstration and early commercialisation of low-carbon technologies; and measures to overcome non-market barriers to the deployment of energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies. However, the rationales for these different types of mitigation policy come from different areas of economic theory, and it is argued that a more holistic framework may be needed to stimulate a transition to a low-carbon economy, drawing on new economic thinking, such as a 'green fiscal stimulus' or a global 'green new deal'.We summarise the work of an interdisciplinary network set up to explore the impacts of climate change in the British Uplands. In this CR Special, the contributors present the state of knowledge and this introduction synthesises this knowledge and derives implications for decision makers. The Uplands are valued semi-natural habitats, providing ecosystem services that have historically been taken for granted. For example, peat soils, which are mostly found in the Uplands, contain around 50% of the terrestrial carbon in the UK. Land management continues to be a driver of ecosystem service delivery. Degraded and managed peatlands are subject to erosion and carbon loss with negative impacts on biodiversity, carbon storage and water quality. Climate change is already being experienced in British Uplands and is likely to exacerbate these pressures. Climate envelope models suggest as much as 50% of British Uplands and peatlands will be exposed to climate stress by the end of the 21st century under low and high emissions scenarios. However, process-based models of the response of organic soils to this climate stress do not give a consistent indication of what this will mean for soil carbon: results range from a very slight increase in uptake, through a clear decline, to a net carbon loss. Preserving existing peat stocks is an important climate mitigation strategy, even if new peat stops forming. Preserving upland vegetation cover is a key win-win management strategy that will reduce erosion and loss of soil carbon, and protect a variety of services such as the continued delivery of a high quality water resource.On the eve of the 15th climate negotiations conference in Copenhagen, the pressure to assess all climate mitigation options is mounting. In this study, a bio-physic model and a socio-economic model were designed and coupled to assess the carbon sequestration potential of agricultural intensification in Senegal. The biophysical model is a multiple linear regression, calibrated and tested on a dataset of long-term agricultural trials established in West Africa. The socio-economic model integrates both financial and environmental costs related to considered practice changes. Both models are spatially explicit and the resulting spatial patterns were computed and displayed over Senegal with a geographic information system. The national potential from large-scale intensification was assessed at 0.65-0.83 MtC. With regards to local-scaled intensification as local projects, the most profitable areas were identified in agricultural expansion regions (especially Casamance), while the areas that meet the current financial additionality criteria of the Clean Development Mechanism were located in the northern part of the Peanut Basin. Using the current relevant mode of carbon valuation (Certified Emission Reductions), environmental benefits are small compared to financial benefits. This picture is radically changed if "avoided deforestation", a likely consequence of agricultural intensification, is accounted for as the greenhouse gases sink capacity of projects increases by an average of a hundred-fold over Senegal.Though the EU's climate change mitigation strategy has taken precedence over adaptation, there are signs this is beginning to change With the publication of both a Green (2007) and a White Paper (2009) on an EU Adaptation strategy, the European Commission has taken the important step of initiating broad discussion and encouraging the mainstreaming or integration of adaptation strategies into the existing EU and Member state policy framework Still, without extensive revision in particular in the direction of ecosystem preservation, improvement and creation and the parallel introduction of a Climate Change Commission mandated to pursue mitigation AND adaptation strategies in the Community interest, policy outcomes are likely to remain fragmented and suboptimal Institutional divisions at the EU and national levels reinforce sectorally-driven climate strategies that only partially address the goals of either mitigation or adaptation Among other policy suggestions, this chapter makes two broad recommendations First, the EU and the Member states should seriously re-evaluate the approach to such policies as the water framework directive, Natura 2000 sites and biodiversity, afforestation, ecosystem services and ecosystem preservation Second, significant institutional reforms could heighten EU commitment to the climate change agenda, reinforce its already significant international bargaining authority and broaden the focus and impact of the EU's growing mitigation and adaptation agenda Rapidly changing climate dynamics leave little room to dallyThis chapter focuses on technical issues related to the transport of carbon dioxide (CO2) in a transport infrastructure for CO2 capture and storage designed for climate change mitigation. Naturally occurring CO2 has been transported for enhanced oil recovery in the USA and Canada for many years now and the practice is well understood. However, there are significant differences between established practice and the requirements of anthropogenic CO2 transport systems to be instituted in countries in other parts of the world in response to climate change. This chapter concentrates on issues arising from those differences with particular reference to CO2 transport in the UK. Some of the issues, such as those relating to the specification of the CO2 quality for transport, have been introduced in Chapter 12 and will be developed further in the context of their implications for the design and operation of a CO2 transport infrastructure. The chapter starts by identifying some of the differences between existing and future systems and goes on to describe the basic properties of CO2 relevant to the issues arising from them. It proceeds to discuss some of the technical aspects of the transport of CO2 by pipeline and ship followed by the development of a wider transport infrastructure. It concentrates on pipelines because in the early days of the development of large-scale CO2 capture and storage, it is anticipated that this will be the dominant mode of CO2 transport.In this paper, we assess the global consequences of implementing first- and second-generation bioenergy in the coming five decades, focusing on the nitrogen cycle. We Use a climate mitigation scenario from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Environmental Outlook, in which a carbon tax is introduced to stimulate production of biofuels from energy crops. In this scenario, the area of energy crops will increase from 8 Mha in the year 2000 to 270 Mha (14% of total cropland) and producing 5.6 Pg dry matter per year (12% of energy use) in 2050. This production requires and additional annual 19 Tg or N fertilizer in 2050 (15% of total), and this causes a global emission of 0.7 Tg or N2O-N (8% of agricultural emissions), 0.2 Tg NO-N (6%), and 2.2 Tg of NH3-N (5%). In addition, we project that 2.6 Tg of NO3 -N will leach from fields under energy crops. The emissions of N2O may be an important term in the greenhouse gas balance of biofuels produced from energy crops.In 2005, the Philippine government, led by the Department of Energy, implemented the Philippine Efficient Lighting Market Transformation Project (PELMATP) with support from the Global Environmental Facility (GEE) through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Similar to other countries that embarked on technology-specific efficient lighting programs, the Philippines took advantage of this "low-hanging fruit" to enhance and complement its energy security and climate change mitigation programs. Over the years, the program attracted the support of local and national actors in the lighting industry and the market, including those from urban centers. Two years before the official end date of the project, a scaled-up project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at US$46.5 million-more than tenfold the original GEE grant of US$3.1 million for PELMATP-was implemented; this project was designed to reinforce the initiatives undertaken under PELMATP and to sustain the transition to efficient lighting systems in the country. This chapter assesses the factors influencing a sustained switch to efficient lighting in the Philippines, which are part of the country's "win-win" strategies toward energy independence and climate change mitigation.Against a background of regulatory uncertainty, this article contends that voluntary action by the banking industry has potential to facilitate climate change mitigation and the transition to a low-carbon economy. First, it evidences the relationship between the banking industry and climate change by focusing on three hallmarks of banking business, namely risk assessment, financing and profiteering. Secondly, it shows how banks in their role as creditors, investors, advisers and heads of supply chains can influence the business practices and greenhouse gas emissions of other corporate actors. Thirdly, it contends that exponential corporate emissions reductions could flow from bank practices that influence client and supplier networks in an ever-widening web. In so doing, this article also examines how environmental regulation - both soft and hard - can mobilise the full potential of the banking industry.In this chapter, the importance of Russian (and foreign) business participation in the success of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 'Kyoto Protocol' or 'Protocol') is discussed. The Russian regulations and remaining issues and questions are reviewed, also in context of the new global climate change regime which is to be negotiated later this year. Furthermore, possible ways in which to control greenhouse gas ('GHG') emissions in Russia are considered, including the introduction of technical performance standards and GHG emissions permits. Finally, the ways in which Russian businesses are participating in the climate change mitigation process are explored in more detail.Over the past decade, questions regarding how to reduce human contributions to climate change have become more commonplace and non-nation state actors-such as businesses, non-government organizations, celebrities-have increasingly become involved in climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives. For these dynamic and rapidly expanding spaces, this letter provides an accounting of the methods and findings from a 2007 assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK music industry. The study estimates that overall GHG emissions associated with the UK music market are approximately 540 000 t CO(2)e per annum. Music recording and publishing accounted for 26% of these emissions ( 138 000 t CO(2)e per annum), while three-quarters (74%) derived from activities associated with live music performances ( 400 000 t CO(2)e per annum). These results have prompted a group of music industry business leaders to design campaigns to reduce the GHG emissions of their supply chains. The study has also provided a basis for ongoing in-depth research on CD packaging, audience travel, and artist touring as well as the development of a voluntary accreditation scheme for reducing GHG emissions from activities of the UK music industry.Climate change is increasingly seen to raise difficult normative issues. To date, cumulative emissions have been disproportionately from the developed world, while the consequences of climate change are anticipated to hit poorer countries hardest. For this reason, amongst others, it is suggested that more economically developed countries with high greenhouse gas emissions ought to transfer resources to less economically developed, lower emissions countries. Some proponents would justify these resource transfers by ethical or justice-based arguments, often based on some function of the emissions per capita of each country, such that rights of some sort are created and those nations which are emitting more ( per capita) than some amount are to compensate those who are emitting less. In this letter we show that national emissions per capita, scaled by economic output, show a systematic negative correlation with state corruption. We discuss this result in the context of justice-based arguments for per capita climate mitigation transfers, and suggest that it would be beneficial for the climate mitigation community to consider state corruption as a relevant factor in the development of mitigation policy.We present an analysis of the barriers and opportunities for incorporating air quality co-benefits into climate policy assessments. It is well known that many strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions also decrease emissions of health-damaging air pollutants and precursor species, including particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide. In a survey of previous studies we found a range of estimates for the air quality co-benefits of climate change mitigation of $2-196/tCO(2) with a mean of $49/tCO(2), and the highest co-benefits found in developing countries. These values, although of a similar order of magnitude to abatement cost estimates, are only rarely included in integrated assessments of climate policy. Full inclusion of these co-benefits would have pervasive implications for climate policy in areas including: optimal policy stringency, overall costs, distributional effects, robustness to discount rates, incentives for international cooperation, and the value of adaptation, forests, and climate engineering relative to mitigation. Under-valuation results in part from uncertainty in climatic damages, valuation inconsistency, and institutional barriers. Because policy debates are framed in terms of cost minimization, policy makers are unlikely to fully value air quality co-benefits unless they can be compared on an equivalent basis with the benefits of avoided climatic damages. While air quality co-benefits have been prominently portrayed as a hedge against uncertainty in the benefits of climate change abatement, this assessment finds that full inclusion of co-benefits depends on-rather than substitutes for-better valuation of climate damages.Curbing global warming by setting long term maxima for temperature rise or concentrations of greenhouse gases defines spaces within which further emissions of these gases are to remain ( referred to here as 'carbon spaces'). This paper addresses questions related to how to share between countries the carbon space and/or efforts to stay within it, in the perspective of sustainable development; different allocation mechanisms are reviewed, responding to criteria such as 'responsibility' for climate change,'capability' to engage in abating it, and 'potential' or future contribution. The carbon space remaining at any time will depend on effective mitigation up till that time, and will condense if more stringent maxima are to be set; per capita this space becomes smaller with rising population. Sharing the carbon space in a fair way requires "convergence" of currently widely unequal per capita emissions. If the world is to stay within the carbon space consistent with <2 degrees warming, then developed economies-the wealthiest sources of greenhouse gases should quickly and deeply engage in mitigation. Also, substantial mitigation is to take place in developing countries and that this will require substantial support to developing countries ( financially, technologically). Changing development paths can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation; this requires changes in investment, production and consumption patterns. Green New Deals as proposed in the context of a widened response to the current economic crisis could become a first phase of a fundamental transition towards a decarbonised global economy worldwide. Concerns to do with equity as well as sustainability must be incorporated and integrated into coherent transitory strategies.The forest sector can contribute to atmospheric greenhouse gas reduction, while also providing other environmental, economic, and social benefits. Policy tools for climate change mitigation include carbon-related payment programs as well as laws and programs to impede the loss of agricultural and forest lands to development. Policy makers will base their expectations of the effectiveness of these strategies to some degree on anticipated land use impacts. We examine a number of scenarios about carbon prices. urban development rates, and potential future land transfers between forestry and agriculture to provide information about the potential effectiveness of policies to address climate change in the U.S. Because large areas of land can move between forestry and agricultural uses, we used the Forest and Agriculture Sector Optimization Model-Greenhouse Gases model to examine responses between sectors as part of GHG policy analysis. The model projects changes in land uses, has full carbon accounting for both forestry and agriculture, and can examine a broad range of adaptation and climate change mitigation options. Modeling results suggest that receipt of carbon-related payments by landowners in forestry and agriculture can have substantial impacts on future land use patterns, levels of terrestrial carbon sequestration, forest resource conditions, agricultural production trends, and bioenergy production. Published by Elsevier B.V.This chapter addresses the dysfunctionality of the international dialogue on natural forests - especially those in the tropics. It argues that, until very recently, the issue of global deforestation has lost considerable traction with the broader public, and that disputes between different groups within the international forests constituency - usually over ideological issues - have reduced the impact of development assistance financing on forest management and protection, and in fact have reduced the willingness of some development agencies to engage with the forests issue at all. The danger is that if this fragmentation of the approach to reducing deforestation is not addressed, then the same fate may be in store for promising forestry options from climate change mitigation that will be discussed later in the book. The essential task must be to persuade all groups which have significant agency over forest outcomes - not just those groups of most direct interest to the particular organization promoting its own solutions and programmes that their natural forests really can be made worth more dead than alive.Some believe that a nuclear power renaissance will lead to a low-carbon future. Nuclear generation emits no greenhouse gases (GHGs), and, unlike most renewable technologies, it operates at near full capacity. However, after Chernobyl, the United States and Europe rejected investment in new nuclear generation. Further, emerging economies have chosen to build coal-fired power plants. By 2008 coal plants represented over 40 percent of global electricity-generating capacity. As a result, GHG emissions are predicted to double by 2030, even with aggressive new nuclear plant construction. Until the cost of GHG is reflected in fossil-fired electricity generation, nuclear power might not make an appreciable difference in global GHG emissions.China's role in an international climate-change solution cannot be overstated. Now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has become the focus of scrutiny as climate-related impacts are revealed and global policy solutions are debated. At the center of this scrutiny is China's rapidly growing power sector: the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. Coal has played and continues to play a crucial role in powering China's economic development, particularly for electricity generation. Diversification away from coal and toward a range of low-carbon power sources will need to be at the core of any climate change mitigation strategy that moves China to a lower-carbon development pathway.Dire warnings on the odangerso of climate change are reinvigorating past debates over environmental security. However, one strain of this debate is exceeding the state-based logics of security found in more conventional environmental security approaches. The UNFCCC's goal of avoiding odangerous climate changeo that, inter alia, threatens sustainable development has inspired volumes of research on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and has increasingly become incorporated into World Bank and UN development programmes. However, much of this research has yet to examine the cultural and political effects of framing climate change through the loaded language of security. As a result, there has been little critical analysis of the emergence of a variety of disaster risk management and insurance-based adaptation strategies that attempt to offer security against the effects of dangerous climate change. This article articulates the insights of critical environmental security studies with recent research on biopolitical security and post-structural critiques of development to unpack the biopolitical and geopolitical assumptions that animate discourses on dangerous climate change and disasters. My argument here is twofold. First, I suggest that risk management and catastrophe insurance have political effects: these biopolitical technologies sustain the global social and political order that the history of Western-led odevelopmento has produced. Second, along these lines, dangerous climate change discourses extend the project of earlier environmental security discourses, specifically, the attempt to secure Western ways of life against the effects of environmental change. In securing osustainable development,o discourses on dangerous climate change combine biopolitical technologies of risk management with geopolitical technologies of security to sustain the exclusion and containment of underdeveloped populations, and the mobility of the global elite, that characterise contemporary practices of development.An important task of signatory parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) declared "affected countries" is to adopt a National Action Programme (NAP). After limited implementation of the 2000 NAP, and while confronted with the severe drought of 2007, a decision was made to proceed with its revision. A decision making process based on stakeholder participation assumes the consequent reduction of enforcement costs and enhanced effectiveness of the political programme. Another assumption is that UNCCD has an essential social component, as the decrease in agricultural production represents a great concern for rural communities in drylands. Questionnaires meant to grasp the position of local communities on drought and desertification were therefore instrumental in NAP revision. After being completed by a significant and representative number of mayoralties throughout the country, they were analysed at a centralized level. An important result of this approach was that it gave local communities key information, so they could have a thorough understanding of the processes. In addition, they seem committed to mitigation measures, by means of consistent contributions in kind and money. The exercise of NAP revision revealed several shortcomings which may be extrapolated for policy making on cross-cutting issues. First, the realization was made that the political profile of NAP relates closely to the severity of the natural phenomenon and its impact. Second, bringing together a multitude of potential stakeholders incurs transaction costs, adding to those already required for technical expertise. Last, actions proposed within an NAP may overlap with those of related programmes, such as climate change mitigation/adaptation and water management, entailing a need for synergetic action.New sources and uses of biofuel energy offer the prospect of climate change mitigation and less reliance on fossil fuels. At the same time, biofuel represents an unusual precedent in economics, the possibility of substitution between two essential but very different commodities, food and energy. The first characteristic has dramatically heightened interest in biofuel production around the world, but particularly in high-income economies, whose expenditure patterns are most energy-intensive. Rising concerns about the need for climate stabilization and rapid innovation to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission have stimulated visions of a booming new agribusiness energy industry, with pervasive induced effects on transportation and related sectors. At the same time, diversion of agricultural resources to energy production has implications for food markets that are only beginning to be fully understood, but are of special concern to poor countries whose expenditure patterns are mostly food-intensive. Both commodities are essential to human well-being, and their prices are important determinants of real living standards. In this paper, we assess the consequences of energy and food price uncertainty for the poor, using a variety of empirical assessment techniques. Beginning with traditional poverty indicators, we appraise the effect of energy and food price vulnerability on the existing burden of poverty, providing concrete indications for policy makers about distributional incidence. A second approach decomposes energy and food price effects across the economy, showing how the embodied costs of these basic commodities affect overall household purchasing power. Finally, we use a general equilibrium framework to elucidate the complex pathways through which energy and food prices interact to affect both household incomes and the cost of living. Each approach offers different insights that can support better foresight and more effective policy responses, but a few general patterns emerge. It is clear from this analysis, for example, that a North-South dichotomy between relative energy and food dependence, respectively, may lead to persistent contention regarding the use of agricultural resources for energy production. In particular, food price vulnerability is strongly regressive across income distributions, while energy price vulnerability is strongly progressive. This conclusion reaffirms productivity oriented, and intensive rather than extensive approaches to biofuel development.Accurate information about organic/mineral soil occurrence is a prerequisite for many land resources management applications (including climate change mitigation). This paper aims at investigating the potential of using geomorphometrical analysis and decision tree modeling to predict the geographic distribution of hydromorphic organic landscapes in unsampled area in Denmark. Nine primary (elevation, slope angle, slope aspect, plan curvature, profile curvature, tangent curvature, flow direction, flow accumulation, and specific catchment area) and one secondary (steady-state topographic wetness index) topographic parameters were generated from Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) acquired using airborne LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) systems. They were used along with existing digital data collected from other sources (soil type, geological substrate and landscape type) to explain organic/mineral field measurements in hydromorphic landscapes of the Danish area chosen. A large number of tree-based classification models (186) were developed using (1) all of the parameters, (2) the primary DEM-derived topographic (morphological/hydrological) parameters only, (3) selected pairs of parameters and (4) excluding each parameter one at a time from the potential pool of predictor parameters. The best classification tree model (with the lowest misclassification error and the smallest number of terminal nodes and predictor parameters) combined the steady-state topographic wetness index and soil type, and explained 68% of the variability in organic/mineral field measurements. The overall accuracy of the predictive organic/inorganic landscapes' map produced (at 1:50 000 cartographic scale) using the best tree was estimated to be ca. 75%. The proposed classification-tree model is relatively simple, quick, realistic and practical, and it can be applied to other areas, thereby providing a tool to facilitate the implementation of pedological/hydrological plans for conservation and sustainable management. It is particularly useful when information about soil properties from conventional field surveys is limited.Increasingly stringent workplace, food safety and environmental regulations, growing customer expectations, limited resources and climate change mitigation measures are just some of a growing list of pressures currently facing the dairy industry. In order to remain competitive it is becoming increasingly accepted that the entire supply chain needs to explore opportunities to manage and improve resource efficiency and to reduce waste. This chapter looks at eco-efficiency initiatives undertaken on dairy farms and processing sites that have achieved both environmental and economic gains. The authors draw on case studies from around the globe and their own studies in Australia to demonstrate that eco-efficiency really does make good business sense and is an essential component of the industry's long term environmental and financial sustainability.Around the planet, numerous research initiatives are taking place to mitigate the effects of climate change. These activities-emerging from diverse research projects from basic and applied science-often suffer from lack of an overall design strategy that would allow capitalising on cross-specialised knowledge by having an integrative, holistic and synergistic approach to innovation design and implementation. This chapter discusses a particular research project and describes how a design methodology could help to address issues such as equality, empowerment, autonomy, creativity, performance and cycle times and provide for the necessary balance between control, speed and flexibility.The aim of this study is to compare the conceivable baseline or "business as usual" scenario to four extreme alternative scenarios over the next two decades. The alternative extreme scenarios present the question of "what if" an extreme policy is implemented, what would be the forecasted impact on global food production and how the impact would differ from the plausible scenario. The baseline scenario includes the WTO draft proposal for the Doha Round, the Kyoto Protocol targets to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, and the scheduled reforms on the EU Common Agricultural Policy. The alternative scenarios are prolonged world economic recession, climate change mitigation policies with higher targets, complete removal of only EU agricultural subsidies, and total trade liberalisation for agriculture worldwide. The goal is to foresee the future under plausible and extreme circumstances or policy implementations in a rapidly changing environment for decision makers, interest groups, agribusiness firms and managers in order to support the process of policy and strategy planning.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the various consequences of climate change on the biodiversity of Kuwait. Many world organizations have established strategic plans for climate change, such as The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, which is adopted in 2002 by the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Design/methodology/approach - The paper utlizes a wide range of research projects completed at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), which provide information leading to the degradding effects and risks of climate change on the biodiversity and ecosystem services of Kuwait. Findings - The biodiversity of Kuwait is under severe stress due to natural and anthropogenic factors. The region is also threatened physically and biologically by the global warming phenomena. More severe and harsh climatic conditions will cause increase in formation of sand dunes, sand encroachment, and extreme dust storms. In 2008, Kuwait has the worst ever reported summer since 1991 with increase in intensity and frequency of dust storms. Drought will cause more water demand for local consumption and irrigation. The seawater temperature increase would affect the spawning period of fish and shrimp and would cause migration of fish to other more suitable areas. This would cause severe impact on the fish industry in Kuwait and the region. Losses in plant cover will be due to sand encroachment or erratic rainfall periods causing runoff and flooding. Research limitations/implications - The work is based on various projects at the KISR and by some journal publications that relate to climate change impact on biodivesity. More research work is needed to test the long-term impact of climate change on bidivesity of Kuwait. Originality/value - There is a need to develop a strategic plan for climate change mitigation and adaptation in Kuwait. Specific elements of the plan would include: research for identification of vulnerable species, collecting field population data, conducting modeling research to inform conservation programs; monitoring key species; ex situ conservation using living collection and ensuring representation in conservation collection; in situ conservation and increase in protected areas; education and public awareness programs; networking; and sharing knowledge.Purpose - This purpose of this paper is to summarise the outcomes of a recent project in Victoria, Australia exploring the effectiveness of community engagement strategies in improving climate mitigation and adaptation outcomes. Design/methodology/approach - Roundtables and interviews with a diverse range of community engagement practitioners and policy makers involved in climate change work were conducted, informed by a discussion paper outlining recent Australian and international learning about community engagement and climate change. Findings - The project confirms and builds on recent international learning about the importance of carefully planned and implemented community engagement as essential components in effective climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Originality/value - The paper brings together learning from recent on-the-ground experience from Australian community engagement practitioners and policy makers working in the climate change. field. In addition to evidence supporting the international case for community engagement methodologies the paper also summarises a number of factors important to effective climate change community engagement strategies.Purpose - This paper aims to analyse Chinese policy instruments for climate change mitigation. Design/methodology/approach - First, the paper reviews Chinese energy consumption per unit of GDP (EC/GDP) in order to determine the overall effects of the combined policy instruments. Second, the different policy instruments are compared in terms of their effects. Third, the actual trends of EC/GDP in two provinces and the instruments adopted by them are analysed on the provincial level. Findings - The decline in EC/GDP can indirectly reflect the Chinese contribution to mitigation of CO(2) emissions since fossil fuels dominate Chinese energy consumption. The national EC/GDP values have shown a declining trend from 2005 to date, indicating that the policy instruments are very important to mitigate climate change as regards reducing EC/GDP. The technological improvement regulations have made the greatest contribution to date to reduce EC/GDP values. The experiences from the Beijing and Shandong province indicate that their final targets in 2010 will be most likely achieved because the different provinces are not only following the national policy instruments but have also developed quite a few new instruments to assist in reaching the these reductions. Research limitations/implications - There are three limitations regarding Chinese policy instruments analysis. First, the paper does not go far to determine the other factors which can affect EC/GDP apart from policy instruments. Second, some data were lacking and there may be inaccuracies in the existing data that could affect the analysis results. Third, EC/GDP cannot reflect the Chinese contribution to mitigation of CO2 emissions if the composition of Chinese energy consumption changes significantly. Originality/value - The paper addresses the importance of various policy instruments in reducing EC/GDP. The results can be referenced by Chinese policy makers on both the national and provincial level.Purpose - Climate change impacts and scientific evidence are now irresistible based on time scales, consequences and perspectives. Civil society leaders and business people are now agreed on emission reduction targets to mitigate the effects of climate change but the question remains: how to make sure that durable, lasting, and real mitigation options are taking place? The purpose of this paper is to ask, does climate change mitigation option (via carbon tax) exert a greater improvement within the tradeoff between climate change and economic values? Design/methodology/approach - This study tries to lessen the gap between mitigation options and economic development activities using computable general equilibrium techniques focusing on alteration of carbon tax. instruments. Findings - The findings indicate that much strong carbon tax policy compensates GDP compositions, places economic burden, shrinks enterprise savings and investment. Originality/value - This paper describes the most favorable policy option and may find use in formulation of climate change mitigation options and policy concerns for prioritizing needs.This paper focuses on the management of Climate Change Mitigation (CCM), seeking a working institution capable of addressing its cross-scale and multi-level challenges. Currently, two most studied forms of institution are co-management and transnational networks, of which a common point is that they both attempt to build up cooperative networks. While cooperative networks have a general form of viability, this paper develops an Interactions Check Table (ICT) to illustrate those interactions between stakeholders in those two forms of cooperative networks. On the basis of the ICT analysis, this paper makes suggestions for improving cooperative networks as a working institution.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has been endorsed by the IPCC and the UK government as a key mitigation option but remains on the cusp of wide-scale commercial deployment. Here we present a technology roadmap for CCS, depicted in terms of external factors and short- and long-term pathways for its development, moving from a demonstration to commercialisation era. The roadmap was been developed through a two-phase process of stakeholder engagement; the second phase of this, a high level stakeholder workshop, is documented here. This approach has provided a unique overview of the current status, potential and barriers to CCS deployment in the UK. In addition to the roadmap graphics and more detailed review, five consensus conclusions emerging from the workshop are presented. These describe the need for a monetary CO(2) value and the financing of carbon capture and storage schemes; the lack of technical barriers to the deployment of demonstration scale CCS plant; the role of demonstration projects in developing a robust regulatory framework; key storage issues; the need for a long-term vision in furthering both the technical and non-technical development of CCS. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The availability of fossil resources is predicted to decrease in the near future: they are a non-renewable source, they cause environmental concerns, and they are subjected to price instability. Utilization of biomass as raw material in a biorefinery is a promising alternative to fossil resources for production of energy carriers and chemicals, as well as for mitigating climate change and enhancing energy security. This paper focuses on a biorefinery concept which produces bioethanol, bioenergy, and biochemicals from switchgrass, a lignocellulosic crop. Results are compared with a fossil reference system producing the same products/services from fossil sources. The biorefinery system is investigated using a Life Cycle Assessment approach, which takes into account all the input and output flows occurring along the production chain. This paper elaborates on methodological key issues like land use change effects and soil N2O emissions, whose influence on final outcomes is weighted in a sensitivity analysis. Since climate change mitigation and energy security are the two most important driving forces for biorefinery development, the assessment has a focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cumulative primary energy demand (distinguished into fossil and renewable), but other environmental impact categories (e.g., abiotic depletion, eutrophication, etc.) are assessed as well. The use of switchgrass in a biorefinery offsets GHG emissions and reduces fossil energy demand: GHG emissions are decreased by 79% and about 80% of non-renewable energy is saved. Soil C sequestration is responsible for a large GHG benefit (65 kt CO2-eq/a, for the first 20 years), while switchgrass production is the most important contributor to total GHG emissions of the system. If compared with the fossil reference system, the biorefinery system releases more N2O emissions, while both CO2 and CH4 emissions are reduced. The investigation of the other impact categories revealed that the biorefinery has higher impacts in two categories: acidification and eutrophication. Results are mainly affected by raw material (i.e., switchgrass) production and land use change effects. Steps which mainly influence the production of switchgrass are soil N2O emissions, manufacture of fertilizers (especially those nitrogen-based), processing (i.e., pelletizing and drying), and transport. Even if the biorefinery chain has higher primary energy demand than the fossil reference system, it is mainly based on renewable energy (i.e., the energy content of the feedstock): the provision of biomass with sustainable practices is then a crucial point to ensure a renewable energy supply to biorefineries. This biorefinery system is an effective option for mitigating climate change, reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels, and enhancing cleaner production chains based on local and renewable resources. However, this assessment evidences that determination of the real GHG and energy balance (and all other environmental impacts in general) is complex, and a certain degree of uncertainty is always present in final results. Ranges in final results can be even more widened by applying different combinations of biomass feedstocks, conversion routes, fuels, end-use applications, and methodological assumptions. This study demonstrated that the perennial grass switchgrass enhances carbon sequestration in soils if established on set-aside land, thus, considerably increasing the GHG savings of the system for the first 20 years after crop establishment. Given constraints in land resources and competition with food, feed, and fiber production, high biomass yields are extremely important in achieving high GHG emission savings, although use of chemical fertilizers to enhance plant growth can reduce the savings. Some strategies, aiming at simultaneously maintaining crop yield and reduce N fertilization application through alternative management, can be adopted. However, even if a reduction in GHG emissions is achieved, it should not be disregarded that additional environmental impacts (like acidification and eutrophication) may be caused. This aspect cannot be ignored by policy makers, even if they have climate change mitigation objectives as main goal.The Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have failed to engage the nations in a cooperative approach to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are destabilizing the earth's climate. Central to this failure is the resort to neo-liberal market techniques-and in particular markets in carbon emissions-for the management of emissions reduction. The resort to Carbon Emissions Trading (CET) reveals the problematic philosophical premises of economic neo-liberalism, which include a preference for anonymous algorithms as managers of human affairs over face-to-face political communities and shared engagement of citizens and corporations in practices that promote the common good of a stable climate. It is proposed in this article that a core task of the church's public responsibility in relation to climate change is to offer a theological critique of neo-liberal approaches to climate change mitigation and against these to advance a spiritual theology of cooperative action for the common good of a stable climate in which love for near and distant neighbours, and creatures, is the key metaphor.In this survey we review the literature that studies the relationship between environmental policy and technical change. We divide the literature in two broad areas of research. First, we look at the studies that evaluate the impact of environmental regulation on technological change after the implementation of environmental policy (ex-post). Second, we introduce the studies that assess the impact of environmental regulation on innovation dynamics before the implementation of environmental policy (ex-ante). While the first group is dominated by econometric work, in the second group we find the fast growing literature based on Integrated Assessment Models (IAMB) created to study the policies to limit global warming. Both ex-post and ex-ante studies corroborate the hypothesis that environmental policy plays an important role in inducing innovation and in increasing the adoption as well as the diffusion of new technologies. Policy experiments carried out using Integrated Assessment Models highlight that the size and the direction of the inducement effect depend on at least three elements. First, relative prices play an important role, but also scale and market size effects are relevant in shaping incentives to innovate. Second, the inducement effect can vary across different R&D programs and with the degree of policy stringency. Third, nearly all studies stress the role of substitution in terms of flexibility, either within the energy sector, between energy and other inputs such as labour or capital, or between final sectors with different energy intensities. A relevant lesson that should be communicated to policy makers is the importance of combining efficiently policies to address the environmental and the knowledge externalities. Areas in which there is room for more research are mentioned throughout the survey. They include the need of exploiting better cross-country dimension of recent panel data sets, launching a new comprehensive assessment of the determinants of eco-friendly innovation in developing countries, assessing the interactions between "clean" and "dirty" R&D, testing whether firms are operating at the frontier of efficiency or not.In EC countries, energy production and transport are responsible for the major production of GHG emissions. The last report of IPCC on climate change and water suggests that changes in lifestyle, behavior patterns and management practices can contribute to climate change mitigation across all sectors. The present study aims at understanding how Azoreans perceive climate change as well as their responsibility in both the production and the reduction of GHG emissions through a survey conducted in the island of Sao Miguel. A questionnaire was used to capture people's conceptions, affect, sense of trust, and responsibility regarding climate change and the results were analyzed according to environmental and socio-demographic variables. The findings indicate that even though participants report being most concerned with poverty and food and water shortage in the world, they are afraid of Global Climate Change (GCC). Their perceptions indicate that the vast majority (1) has a very good understanding of GCC processes; (2) believe GCC is a serious threat very much linked to human activities, affects most other distant parts of the world and dangerous impacts are already happening; and (3) think they are reasonably well informed, get information mainly through the media and trust the media more than any other source of environmental information. Most participants report having taken action to fight GCC but that tendency is not expressed in daily domestic behavior. Responsibility for acting against GCC is mainly attributed to external powerful agents rather than to citizens and their communities.Ocean fertilization is, at least theoretically, perceived as an option to mitigate climate change. However, theoretical assumptions could not be proved by experiments, in fact recent experiments have endorsed existing doubts. On international level seems to be a far-reaching-at least political-consensus that ocean fertilization should not be applied as climate change mitigation measure, based inter alia on unknown risks for the marine environment. Currently the Contracting Parties of the London Protocol are negotiating an international ban of ocean fertilization projects. Only "legitimate scientific research" shall be exempted from the prohibition provided negative effects on the marine environment can be excluded in this field. There is an ongoing discussion on whether a prior permission regime for research projects would be an adequate and reasonable approach and-finally also-legally admissible.Over the past two decades, Germany has created a sophisticated climate change legislation framework which in many instances implements international and particularly EU requirements. In some areas, Germany has played a pioneer role in shaping the development of EU law. As an environmental problem of truly global scale, climate change mitigation is heavily reliant on the achievement of international consensus. But it also requires effective, level-specific solutions to problems at all rungs of the multi-level policy hierarchy comprising the international community, the European Union and the Federal Republic of Germany with its sixteen states and numerous cities and municipalities. Much progress has therefore already been made, but efforts must be greatly intensified right across the board.Climate, water shortages, poor soils, pests, isolation and the impermanence of settlements made ornamental gardening difficult for householders on the mining fields of Queensland's dry tropics between 1860 and 1960. Only some tried to overcome these disadvantages. Out of the many motivations that exist for ornamental gardening, the principal reasons here seem to have been the love of plants, climate mitigation, expectations of gender and class, the desire of schools to civilise their students, aesthetics derived from European tastes, and attempts to improve the raw rough mining settlements.Substantial and increasing amounts of funding are available for countries to undertake climate change interventions. This article argues that to ensure effective allocation of these resources, the selection and design of climate change mitigation and adaptation interventions should be based on evidence of what works, what doesn't work, under what circumstances and at what cost. Currently the evidence base on the impact of climate change interventions is minimal and there is a need for wider application of rigorous impact evaluation (IE) in the field. Climate change interventions have much to learn from experiences in related fields, notably international development and conservation. The paper highlights some of the challenges faced when conducting IEs of climate change interventions and discusses how these can be tackled. Moreover, it discusses some of the key areas of mitigation and adaptation interventions and suggests how IEs could be implemented, using IEs from other policy fields as examples. It argues that despite the limited experience so far there are ample opportunities to conduct IE of climate change interventions. If calls for increasing financing of climate change mitigation and adaptation by hundreds of billions of dollars a year are to remain credible and gain support, evidence of the effectiveness of current spending is essential.Climate change is conventionally recognised as a large-scale issue resolved through regional or national policy initiatives. However, little research has been done to directly evaluate local climate change action plans. This study examines 40 recently adopted local climate change action plans in the US and analyses how well they recognise the concepts of climate change and prepare for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The results indicate that local climate change action plans have a high level of 'awareness', moderate 'analysis capabilities' for climate change, and relatively limited 'action approaches' for climate change mitigation. The study also identifies specific factors influencing the quality of these local jurisdictional plans. Finally, it provides policy recommendations to improve planning for climate change at the local level.To address climate change and other are sustainability imperatives, the private sector has launched various initiatives that are aimed to evaluate and reduce the impact throughout the life cycle of consumer products. Recently, multi-national retailers and manufacturers have initiated a unified approach in creating sustainable indexing programs for the products they make and sell. Often overlooked in addressing pressing sustainability imperatives such as climate change are the consumptive patterns and impact of consumer goods during the consumer use phase. This article presents an empirical study of the consumer use phase of laundry care with a specific focus on electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. By understanding the climate change impact associated with the consumer use phase, innovations in the manufacturing phase as well as life cycle benefits of different technologies and consumer actions can be explored. Incentives offered to consumers on appropriate technologies used in this phase can be examined to identify the effectiveness of change-agents. Our results indicate that a carbon dioxide reduction of 105 MMT and electricity savings of 142 thousand GWh can be obtained by optimizing and modifying technological and consumer behavior strategies. This is roughly equivalent to removing 12.1% of the 135.4 M passenger cars in the United States per year or taking 23 coal power plants off the grid. In addition, more than 60% of water consumption (512 billion gallons) while laundering can be reduced through these strategies.This study explores the spread of Jatropha in Kenya and some implications of its trajectory. Proponents of biodiesel in Kenya have adopted a near-singular focus on Jatropha but attach it to a wide variety of goals, including climate change mitigation, poverty reduction, and clean development. The priorities of actors who promote the crop often differ from those of smallholder farmers who grow it. The persistence of multiple discourses of development linked to Jatropha creates tensions between competing perspectives, manifested through allegations of exclusion and shady business, but it also allows actors to deploy strategic flexibility by invoking Jatropha to pursue different ends. A case study of an internationally funded project in Mpeketoni, Coast Province highlights disconnects between the initial objectives of donors, coordinators, and farmers and explores the project's potential to produce outcomes that are satisfactory to all three. The paper contributes to wider debates about biofuels and discourses of development: Jatropha shares many features with past agricultural development interventions, but as a biofuel it exhibits additional layers of contested meaning because of the politics of energy and the environment that are involved.This paper develops and applies a simple "conditional growth" framework to make long-term GDP projections for the world economy, taking as a starting point the recent empirical evidence about the drivers of existing cross-country income disparities. Human capital is projected by cohorts, and allowance is implicitly made for the impact of ageing and potential labour market and pension reforms on employment growth. Leaving aside deeper sources of uncertainty such as model and parameter uncertainty, projections are found to be sensitive to future economic policies in the areas of education, pensions, tabour markets and climate change mitigation, and even more so to total factor productivity and population trends. A baseline scenario projects fairly stable world GDP growth of about 3.5% annually on average (in PPP terms) over 2005-2050. (C) 2009 Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This introductory paper discusses tourism's role in relation to climate change mitigation and adaptation, at a time when climate change is at the forefront of many political discussions, including the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen, and many business decisions. The development of tourism research in response to climate change in the past 25 years is outlined and limitations are identified. The paper also argues that while growing engagement with the challenge of climate change is evident across the tourism industry, this is still limited and not widespread. The minor role played by tourism interests in the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen is noted and discussed. Questions are raised around the willingness and ability of both the tourism industry and tourists to significantly reduce global emissions. The papers brought together in this Special Issue (Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 18.3) both highlight key challenges that tourism faces in its attempts to better understand and manage the problem of climate change, and suggest valuable ways forward.This paper explores the issues in estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the tourism industry and related activity in Australia. The scope of tourism consists of the economic activities defined as otourism characteristico and otourism connectedo as defined in the Australian Tourism Satellite Account (TSA). Two approaches are employed and contrasted - a oproduction approacho and an oexpenditure approacho. Depending on the approach, tourism contributes between 3.9% and 5.3% of total industry GHG in Australia. The rationale for each approach is explained. The GHG emissions have been estimated for 2003-2004, the latest year for which detailed industry GHG emissions data are available in a form suitable for this type of analysis. Tourism's GHG emissions are compared with other industries in the Australian economy. The policy implications of the results are discussed. It should be possible to adopt a broadly similar method for any destination with TSA - enabling tourism stakeholders to play an informed role in assessing appropriate and effective climate change mitigation strategies for their destination.Problem: The planet appears to be warming in a complex, highly unpredictable, unplanned-for pattern. Purpose: We briefly describe the seven articles and survey the topic of this special issue, framing it using both climate science and policy analysis. Methods: We review definitions and discuss known explanations and planning strategies. Results and conclusions: Planning for climate change differs from traditional urban planning in that we lack knowledge and experience about the efficacy of particular responses and that, without collective efforts, responses by individual municipalities, states, and even countries are likely to be ineffective. This combination of uncertainty and interdependency makes climate change a wicked problem. Takeaway for practice: Planners are relatively uninformed about whether and how particular climate change mitigation and adaptation responses are likely to work. Given this, we argue that planners' experiences in dealing with uncertainty and contingent and collective actions positions them well to formulate and implement effective climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Research support: None.Carbon absorbed by forests remains stored in the timber used for wood products, and a change in wood product stock can be evaluated as substantial removal/emission of atmospheric carbon. Since the carbon storage effect due to harvested wood products (HWP) might be taken into account in the future framework of carbon mitigation, it is crucial to estimate the carbon flow and stock concerning HWP for the next commitment period. In the present study, we developed a model for estimating the flow and stock of wood products in Japan's building, furniture, and paper sectors. The HWP carbon storage effect and substitution effect (carbon reduction by substituting fossil fuels and energy-intensive materials with HWP) up to 2050 were quantitatively estimated by lifetime analysis. Our model simulation revealed that (i) the carbon stock change in Japan due to HWP would be evaluated as a large emission if the atmospheric-flow approach is adopted, (ii) carbon removal would not significantly increase if the ratio of newly constructed wooden buildings/furniture remains stable, and (iii) the carbon storage effect together with the substitution effect would have a significant impact on climate change mitigation if the ratio of newly constructed wooden buildings/furniture is gradually improved to 70% by 2050.Climate change has become a more salient issue on the US policy agenda at all levels of government. Increasing empirical evidence and identification of its potential risks to human populations have increased media, public, and policy-maker interest. There is a gap, however, in our knowledge of sub-national decision-making which suggests several questions: Are community leaders deciding to take action in response to climate change action, and, if so, what is the solution focus - mitigation or adaptation? Our study addresses this gap in the literature by reporting the results of a national survey of local, regional, and state decision-makers whose organisations will be addressing community responses to the threat of climate change. We find that, in general, these agencies are not engaged in climate change policy, nor is the issue on their agendas. Among organisations considering policy responses, there is variation between types of agency and type of solution, mitigation versus adaptation.Many US municipalities are engaged in climate change mitigation planning or efforts to reduce their communities' greenhouse gas emissions. However, most have adopted very few policies to implement their climate change mitigation goals, and many others are not pursuing climate change mitigation at all. This study examines municipalities' approaches to energy and climate issues and identifies the "keys to success" that influence the extent to which they adopt climate change mitigation policies. Prior researchers have characterised climate change mitigation efforts as an example of multi-level governance, in which policies are formulated through a variety of networks and interactions between government actors and civil society. I find that municipalities that engage community interests and coordinate with neighbouring jurisdictions in their energy and climate planning processes are far more likely to adopt meaningful policies and conclude that such multi-level governance approaches are actually critical to the success of climate change mitigation planning.The reality of the human impact on climate change is now widely accepted, with the extent and potential catastrophic magnitude increasingly recognised by scientists and politicians, also by business people and citizens. Scientific climate observations, the development of scenarios on which planning and decisions can be based, studies on the economic impact of climate change, and monitoring actual impacts - at the macro (world) and micro level (community) - all point in a specific direction: humans must change towards sustainable energy solutions and change their lifestyle. As the urban population continues to grow, the centres of human life require a drastic rethink in terms of energy and the use of resources, also from a climate change mitigation and adaptation perspective. People are looking to their governments to respond appropriately. They are waiting for courageous leadership, guidance, motivation and direction - they need to know that a more coherent climate protection response is being developed. Expectations in this regard are particularly directed towards national government, but all other levels as well. Citizens are also looking towards their local governments, with the local impact of climate change requiring a local response, with plans for community based adaptation and local climate change mitigation. This publication addresses local governments and climate change, with a specific focus on smaller sized communities and renewable energy solutions.Recent history of town and city planning shows growing attention is given to environmental policies in this field, despite many apparent contradictions when comparing theory and actual practices. Sustainabilty issues and new systems of public governance, based on participatory and inclusive schemes, particularly characterise the last decade of urban planning culture. Many experts are indicating that local dimensions of sustainability have a prominent role to play in planning systems - a perspective supported by the United Nations (UN) since 1992 with the recognition of the Local Agenda 21 (LA21) concept. This article underlines that know-how introduced by LA21 at the local government level can be a useful start-up point for climate protection planning and, in particular in terms of changing peoples' attitude, can play a defining role in developing effective policies for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the urban context.What is being done for and by cities to tackle climate change? There are many actions, a vast array of information and, in recently, a particular upsurge of interest in the concept of local climate action the focus is now on cities and towns. One of the oldest and most well-know campaigns running since 1993, is ICLEI's international Cities for Climate Protection (TM) (CCP) Campaign. Together with its members, the organisation decided to develop a support framework for local governments around the globe to look at community climate action. Since then the CCP support framework was expanded and tools were developed, also addressing other angles of community sustainability. More recent developments include the publication of the first international Local Government Greenhouse Gas Emissions Analysis Protocol, developed to create a standardised approach when addressing community emissions data collection. Another global activity is the City Climate Catalogue, specifically aimed at presenting a collection of community climate change mitigation targets to be presented to the national governments during the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) to support the call that communities should be recognised as important actors in the international climate debate.The City Council of Almada developed its 'Local Strategy for Climate Change' in the framework of its Local Agenda 21, addressing both mitigation and adaptation to climate change. As a growing tourist destination with coastal vulnerability and an import fishing industry, the impact on the marine ecosystems and coastal dunes were among the issues that were studied. Risk charts were developed, and integrated into the urban and master plans.The Kyoto Protocol accounting system and its market mechanisms, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI), are built on the key principle that emission and emission reduction units generated by afforestation/reforestation activities under national systems and projects are fully comparable, no matter their origin. Lack of consistency in the quality of emission and emission reduction units can undermine the environmental integrity of the climate stabilization actions. Therefore, it is the ambition that units generated in the land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector are of similar quality with those from non-LULUCF sectors. In this paper, the authors pose the question of whether there is full estimation and accounting consistency between Annex I Party's national GHG systems and CDM projects methodologies in the LULUCF sector, in terms accuracy, completeness, levels of uncertainty and permanence risk. We focus on methodological aspects related to the applicability and practicability of using approved afforestation/reforestation CDM methodologies; estimation, reporting and accounting rules; the small pools and sources issue, uncertainty of removal estimate; leakage and handling of non-permanence risk. We conclude that there is significant scope for improving the consistency of greenhouse gas emission accounting from land use activities in the post-2012 climate change agreement, between Annex I domestic and project activities. As well, we conclude that the preparation and implementation of project activities has to be made simpler by a project framework guideline, which is then adapted to any project circumstances.Even before the disaster at the Macondo field in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, there was growing recognition that it was getting increasingly difficult and costly to meet the growing global demand for energy. This paper focuses on two related issues: the emergence of a new energy paradigm and the globalization of energy demand. The new energy paradigm refers to the fact that the contemporary concern for energy security is set within the wider context of climate change and the need to reduce significantly global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). As a consequence, the global energy system needs to move away from fossil fuels to lower carbon alternatives, namely renewable and nuclear energy. The analysis suggests that it is still unclear how this low carbon energy transition will be achieved. Further, it maintains that such a transition will pose new challenges to global energy security. This is particularly so because the globalization of energy demand means that the bulk of future energy demand growth will come from the 'developing world', driven by emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil. To enable the global South to continue to grow, while reducing GHG emissions will require cooperation between North and South. The North will need to provide capital and technology to enable the South to secure access to the energy needed to power economic growth, without increasing demand for fossil fuels and their associated carbon emissions. The final section considers what this 'global energy dilemma' (the need to provide secure and affordable access to energy services while reducing carbon emissions) means for European Union energy policy.This article assesses the contribution which the Smart Grid can make to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The Smart Grid amalgamates information and communications technology ('ICT') and electrical capabilities to improve flexibility, security, reliability, efficiency, and the safety of the electricity system. Demand side management ('DSM') is increased as consumers gain better control over their electricity use and respond to prices. At the same time, a smart grid includes diverse and distributed energy resources, including energy storage, and accommodates electric vehicle charging. Although much of the literature to date assesses the interface between the Smart Grid and climate change mitigation, there is barely any mention of the adaptation benefits emanating from Smart Grid technology. If the Smart Grid improves efficiency and DSM and encourages distributed energy sources its mitigation benefits are clear. Yet the fragility of electricity networks to climate change impacts suggests that the Smart Grid might also assist utilities to respond to blackouts, and other climate change induced crises, more effectively than is currently possible. The article also assesses the regulatory consequences which are attendant upon the adoption of a Smart Grid in Australia.In this chapter, the author argues that the countries in the Global South can gain from stringent own climate policies. This is so, as in the current situation, the south tends to be dominated by the climate policies of northern countries and climate finance largely supports single projects and technology transfer that are not embedded in a broader policy framework in southern countries. Adopting own stringent policies could help to counteract this and to channel these financial means to their most beneficial use. This could help southern countries to follow an agenda that is different from the fossil fuel based development path of the north. Such a "green new deal" could be a promising economic and technological development strategy. Stringent climate policies would strengthen the southern countries in the international climate negotiations and southern countries could take the lead in the climate change mitigation debate. Technology transfer and the carbon finance sector would play a crucial role for this. Climate policy and climate finance could thus be used to set a new stage, where the south is not at a disadvantage with respect to the north.This article explores whether emissions trading is morally defensible To do so it examines three different kinds of moral consideration Which might be used to judge emissions trading. The first kind makes what I term an 'ethical' objection, and holds that utilising market instruments to combat climate change is inherently objectionable. I examine three versions if this 'ethical' argument but find none persuasive. The remainder of the article considers two additional moral considerations, both of which appeal to principles of justice. Drawing on these it argues that emissions trading can be morally defensible but only it it meets these two demanding moral criteria. First, the costs of emissions trading should be shared equitably. The paper examines what this might mean and criticises the leading account of what constitutes a just distribution of emissions Second, emissions trading must make an appropriate contribution to climate mitigation. A number of ways in which current emissions trading schemes signally fail to meet this second criterion are then noted. The article concludes that emissions trading schemes could in principle be morally defensible but only if new schemes are introduced or existing schemes are radically redesigned in line with the principles outlined in the article.Renewable energy technologies (RET) have the potential to satisfy a significant share of the global energy supply, thus contributing to achieve climate mitigation goals. RET can also accelerate the recovery from the current economic crisis thanks to the many environmental, economic and societal benefits that such technologies incorporate. However, traditional accounting methods largely overlook the positive externalities generated by RET and therefore tend to favor conventional energy sources over capital-intensive, alternative energy technologies. Even worse, RET still suffer from a series of biased perceptions and preconceptions that favor status quo energy production models over innovative alternatives. This perspective can help explain why investments in RET, although appealing, still remain below expectations. In order to better understand this phenomenon, we focus on the investment decision making process of a sample of investors with the objective to identify the main determinants of their choices. We propose and test a conceptual model which investigates the role of institutional and behavioural factors in determining the share of renewable energy technologies in the investment portfolios, as well as the degree of technological diversification of these portfolios. Based on the results of our analysis, we derive and discuss implications for scholars, investors, and policy makers.The text explores the role of sustainable not just green buildings and construction in climate change mitigation. What is the potential of the many different actors and stakeholders to make a difference during the whole life cycle of a building? How can public policies support energy efficiency in buildings? What is the role of the construction and real estate sector in global climate change strategies? This text is based on the Sustainable Development Innovation Brief on Sustainable Buildings and Construction, compiled by Dr. Kaarin Taipale, to be published by the UN DESA in 2010.This paper discusses some important fundamental issues behind application of renewable energy (RE) to evaluate its impact as a climate change mitigation technology. The discussed issues are the following: definition of renewable energy, concentration of RE by weight and volume, generation of electrical energy and its power at unit area, electrical energy demand per unit area, life time approach vs. layman approach, energy return time, energy return ratio, CO(2) return time, energy mix for RES production and use, geographical distribution of RES use, huge scale of energy shift from RES to non-RES, increase in energy consumption, Thermodynamic equilibrium of earth, and probable solutions for energy future of our energy and environmental crisis of today. The future solution (that would enable to human civilization further welfare, and good living, but with lower release of CO2 in atmosphere) may not be only RES. This will rather be an energy mix that may contain nuclear energy, non-nuclear renewable energy, or fossil energy with CO2 sequestration, efficient energy technologies, energy saving, and energy consumption decrease.The potential for environmental, social, and economic advances enabled by information and communication technologies (ICTs) is tremendous: 'Smart Grid' systems hold promise for resource conservation and climate change mitigation; innovations in ICT help transition countries from industrial to knowledge economies, and bridging the digital divide in developing countries can help achieve Millennium Development Goals worldwide: ending poverty, enabling universal education, and creating global partnerships. However, the benefit possible from global use of ICTs cannot be realized without a corresponding build up of digital infrastructure. This projected increase in ICT products is of particular concern to environmental sustainability, in large part due to the global health, safety, and environmental effects of managing these products in the waste stream. The ability to quantify and manage environmental impacts of ICT products is complicated by continuous evolution of product form and function. The work described herein provides an assessment of how changing form factor and material composition in common consumer electronics - desktop and notebook computers - may influence the electronic waste stream in the U.S. Results indicate that dematerialization on a per product basis is largely offset by increasing volumes of the total waste stream. From an economic standpoint, end-of-life value will be enhanced by the increasing use of lightweight materials such as aluminum and magnesium but potentially impacted by decreasing precious metal content. This paper also suggests that common design for end-of-life heuristics may be less applicable to ICT products undergoing rapid technological progress, as exemplified by the changing form factor and lightweighting of the consumer notebook computer.The intensification of agricultural production on a global scale has become the need of hour to fulfill the food supply of increasing world population. As a result, more and more organic carbon is being removed from the soil leading to dramatic soil degradation. Over-exploitation of soils has depleted an enormous amount of soil organic carbon. One method of increasing the soil health is through the application of biochar (carbonized material) that have long term stability. The term biochar refers to black carbon formed by the pyrolysis of biomass i.e. by heating the biomass in an oxygen-free or low oxygen environment such that it does not combust. The definition adopted by International Biochar Initiative (IBI) further emphasizes on its application on agricultural lands. The charred material has highly porous structure, potentially responsible for improved water retention and increased soil surface area. The study of physical and chemical properties of biochar has led to the conclusion that it may serve as a long term source of organic carbon, reduce leaching of organic and inorganic fertilizers and has potential to increase the soil productivity. It also increases the water holding capacity of soil and its nutrient use efficiency. Although some evidences exist that it can reduce the soil emissions of N2O and CH4. Therefore, it may help in climate change mitigation. Further studies in this field may help in better understanding of its interaction with soil.A direct link between emissions and GDP is experienced in the most countries. The urgent actions for mitigating climate change call for the decoupling of the economic growth from emissions. Innovative climate change mitigation technologies and systems have critical roles to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing greenhouse gas sinks. This presentation will review the experiences of the decoupling in Sweden, as an example. The wider adoption of existing climate-friendly technologies, and the development and deployment of demonstrated, new and improved and innovative technologies and increased utilization of non-fossil fuels are of importance together with the favorable policy incentives. Realizing the potential to reduce greenhouse gases emissions requires combined actions in all sectors of economy including adoption of energy-efficient technologies and practices, increased fuel switching toward lower carbon fuels, combined growth in the use of efficient energy systems, greater reliance on renewable energy sources, physical sequestration of CO2, and improving the end-use efficiency of energy uses etc. This talk also presents the technically integrated options related to renewable biomass energy systems for mitigating GHG emissions. Those options include industrial process improvement, energy optimization and integration with advanced power generation technologies, and integration of industrial processes with carbon capture and storage (CCS). Such options could create a new opportunities and possibilities for the future carbon-constrained economy, which may result in a "negative CO2 emission" energy system. The presentation will address the integration of CO2 capture into large industrial processes integrated with renewable bioenergy resources. Different possibilities with integrated energy systems will be proposed and analyzed.The average energy rating of existing housing stocks is estimated to be around 2 stars on the basis specified by the Australian Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS). Currently, most Australian states and territories require a minimum of 4 to 5 stars for new house designs with this requirement scheduled to rise to 6 stars in 2011. In recent years, 7 star houses have also been offered by several building developers in Australia. It is understood that the energy consumption of buildings closely depends on their surrounding climate, yet current practices assumes a stationary climate in both building energy efficiency design and regulation. In fact, any change of climate in the future implies that the energy rating of buildings, as well as their carbon emissions, may also experience changes. Especially, the mitigation efforts to reduce carbon emission in the housing sector by increasing building energy efficiency based on the assumption of stationary climate may be considerably compromised. This study investigated the potential impact of climate change on the energy efficiency in terms of energy ratings by taking a 5 star residential house in five regional climates varying from cold to hot humid in Australia. Ramification of the impact was also discussed, represented by the change in carbon emission, and it may have a considerable implication to carbon mitigation policies in the housing sector. In the study, future climate was projected by three General Circulation Models (GCMs) under three scenarios representing high, low and policy-intervened carbon emissions.Sustainable production of renewable energy is being hotly debated globally since it is increasingly understood that first generation biofuels, primarily produced from food crops and mostly oil seeds are limited in their ability to achieve targets for biofuel production, climate change mitigation and economic growth. These concerns have increased the interest in developing second generation biofuels produced from non-food feedstocks such as microalgae, which potentially offer greatest opportunities in the longer term. This paper reviews the current status of microalgae use for biodiesel production, including their cultivation, harvesting, and processing. The microalgae species most used for biodiesel production are presented and their main advantages described in comparison with other available biodiesel feedstocks. The various aspects associated with the design of microalgae production units are described, giving an overview of the current state of development of algae cultivation systems (photo-bioreactors and open ponds). Other potential applications and products from microalgae are also presented such as for biological sequestration Of CO2, wastewater treatment, in human health, as food additive, and for aquaculture. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Expansion of wind energy installed capacity is poised to play a key role in climate change mitigation. However, wind energy is also susceptible to global climate change. Some changes associated with climate evolution will likely benefit the wind energy industry while other changes may negatively impact wind energy developments, with such 'gains and losses' depending on the region under consideration. Herein we review possible mechanisms by which global climate variability and change may influence the wind energy resource and operating conditions, summarize some of the tools that are being employed to quantify these effects and the sources of uncertainty in making such projections, and discuss results of studies conducted to date. We present illustrative examples of research from northern Europe. Climate change analyses conducted for this region, which has shown considerable penetration of wind energy, imply that in the near-term (i.e. to the middle of the current century) natural variability exceeds the climate change signal in the wind energy resource and extreme wind speeds, but there will likely be a decline in icing frequency and sea ice both of which will tend to benefit the wind energy industry. By the end of the twenty-first century there is evidence for small magnitude changes in the wind resource (though the sign of the change remains uncertain), for increases in extreme wind speeds, and continued declines in sea ice and icing frequencies. Thus the current state-of-the-art suggests no detectable change in the wind resource or other external conditions that could jeopardize the continued exploitation of wind energy in northern Europe, though further research is needed to provide greater confidence in these projections. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In community nutrition, sustainability refers to the ability of the program or intervention to continue over time in line with local and global economic, human and environmental resources. We can differentiate the sustainability into two major conceptual areas: The sustainability of community nutrition programs, understood as autonomy and self-financing or external independence, and the sustainability of agricultural, livestock and nutritional policies with respect to the environment. Food production exerst distinct effects on the geophysical environment, such as the degradation of species, the emission of toxins, air pollution and water consumption. The changes in diet related to reducing animal products and increasing vegetable comsumption not only produce benefits for human health and on the overall utilization of land, but can also play a decisive role in the policies of climate change mitigation. The Mediterranean, being understood not only as a concrete set of foods but also as a cultural incorporating the ways foods are produced and processed, is an example of sustainability, in wich biodiversity is also key. Sustainability should be considered as a fundamental element when planning and defining community nutrition interventions and should constitute a key issue in the agenda for climate change mitigation. (C) 2009 SENC. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.Burning is the most simple and cheap method for small-scale farmers to manage plant residue. This practice does provide immediate benefits to farmers, but the wider immediate and long-term negative impacts are much larger. The objective of this study is to elaborate an alternative model for environmental and economically sound plant residue management that benefits all stakeholders particularly in terms of food security, income generation and climate change mitigation. The study found that there are several factors disrupting the adoption of non-burning practices in the study district such as land and labour scarcity, costs and the risk of wildfire. The study revealed that elementary schools and students have the capacity to manage certain amounts of plant residues and to produce vegetables and compost for the communities. Considering the weaknesses, threats and opportunities of existing policies, the study proposed a new model to manage plant residues involving local partnership and participation. This model would benefit relevant stakeholders: government, farmers, private sector actors, schools, students and the communities. Food security and income generation in the district would be the visible benefits attracting the interest of all stakeholders. Reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved air quality would be benefits for the region and the globe.Climate Change mitigation is considered as a high priority internationally and is placed in the top of the agenda for most politicians and decision makers. The key challenge is that low-carbon sustainable technologies need to be adopted both by developed as well as developing countries, in an effort to avoid past unsustainable practices and being locked into old, less sustainable technologies. Technology Transfer (TT), as an important feature of both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol can play a key role. IT can allow countries to move quickly to environmentally sound and sustainable practices, institutions and technologies. Indeed, the transfer or innovation process must be fast enough, to reduce global vulnerability to climate change. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the TT challenges within the new climate regime, in terms of the process of innovation into an existing energy system, the related barriers and the supporting diffusion mechanisms, with the emphasis laid on the emerging opportunities within the new climate regime. Successful practices will be also presented and discussed by both the developed and the developing countries in this respect.Since 1995, award-winning New Zealand campervan and motorhome manufacturing, rentals, and sales company KEA Campers have "done the right thing" as much as possible. In 2007, the film An Inconvenient Truth made headlines, sustainability became the word on everyone's lips, and KEA together with their peers in the New Zealand tourism industry suddenly realized that the country might not be as clean and green as they had been led to believe. This case study covers the achievements and challenges faced by KEA in trying to minimize their impact on the natural environment.This chapter explores the issues in estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the tourism industry and related activities in Australia. A production-based approach is employed and its rationale is explained. The scope of tourism consists of the economic activities of tourism-characteristic and tourism-connected sectors as defined in the Australian Tourism Satellite Account (TSA). The GHG emissions have been estimated for 2003-04, the latest year for which detailed industry GHG emissions data are available in a form suitable for this type of estimate. Tourism's GHG emissions are compared with other industries in the Australian economy. The policy implications of the results are discussed. It should be possible to adopt a broadly similar method for any destination with a TSA, enabling tourism stakeholders to play an informed role in assessing appropriate climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies for their destination.Globally, tourism is a non-negligible contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primarily through tourist transport, and in particular rapidly increasing air travel. A number of policy proposals to reduce GHG emissions from domestic and international aviation have been introduced between 2005 and 2009. Oil price volatility, especially since 2008, has forced airlines to make adjustments to flight schedules and even to add fuel surcharges to plane tickets. Tourism destinations dependent on long-haul air travel have expressed concern about the potential impact of change mitigation policies and high oil prices on tourist mobility and arrivals to their countries. A tourist arrivals model was constructed to examine whether aviation sector mitigation policy introduced in the major market regions of the European Union and North America, coupled with a return to recent oil price market volatility might adversely affect tourist arrivals to the Caribbean region. A sensitivity analysis that included 18 scenarios with different combinations of three GHG mitigation policy scenarios for aviation (represented by varied carbon prices), two oil price projections, and three price elasticity estimates, representing the range in the air travel economics literature, was conducted to examine the impact on air travel arrivals from eight outbound market nations to the Caribbean region. Results indicate that under proposed aviation sector mitigation policies and the range of oil price projections currently available, growth in visitor numbers through to 2020 would decrease only slightly (-1.3% to -4.3%) relative to a reference scenario based on recent growth trends. A detailed case study of Jamaica further revealed the different sensitivity of market segments (package vacations) to climate policy and oil price related increases in air travel costs and the economic implications of reduced growth in tourist arrivals. As the international policy framework for managing GHG emissions from bunker fuels (air and marine transport) solidifies, further research will be required to understand the implications for tourist mobility, tour operator routing and the longer-term risks to tourism development in the Caribbean.Cities, particularly those in coastal areas around the world, need to pay close attention to the risks posed by global warming and climate change. These risks are substantial, and the costs of not taking them into account are likely to be enormous. Planners should take the lead in preparing climate mitigation and adaptation plans, although these need to be approached somewhat differently from other planning assignments. Adaptation planning, in particular, should be viewed as a collective risk management task. As such, new tools for collaboration such as scenario planning, joint fact-finding and the use of role-play simulations to build public support in the face of high levels of uncertainty and complexity might be helpful.Climate change mitigation options in energy sector are related with various strategies to reduce carbon emissions via carbon capture and storage, enhanced efficiency of energy generation and use, application of low-carbon fuels, use of renewable energy sources and nuclear energy. Many discussions on pots-Kyoto GHG emission reduction strategies and energy options have raised the increasing role of nuclear power in enhancing energy security and mitigating climate change together with concerns over disposal of nuclear waste. In addition the increasing interest in carbon capture and the geological storage of CO2 has brought up a range of questions as well. Lithuania is currently dealing with two major problems in energy sector: final closure of Ignalina Nuclear Power plant (Ignalina NPP) in the end of 2009 and nuclear waste disposal and climate change mitigation issues because of the replacement of nuclear capacities with fossil one and anticipated increase in GHG emissions. Lithuania has two main options in energy sector: to construct new nuclear power plant also taking into account nuclear waste disposal problems or to burn imported fossil fuel and to apply carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies for GHG emission reduction. These two main options should be carefully investigated in Lithuania based on various studies conducted in Lithuania and other countries dealing with geological carbon storage and nuclear waste disposal potentials. There are no long-lived nuclear waste geological storage capacities in Lithuania and there is no pilot projects on CCS developed in Lithuania; therefore, there are no experience in this field. The aim of the article is to review the state-of-the-art in geological CO2 and nuclear waste storage fields focusing on the assessment of comparative similarities and differences of the geological disposal of CO2 and nuclear waste and to perform comparison of these technologies possible application in Lithuania.Although the connection between the storms along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 and global climate change is still being debated, the fact that low-income communities are more likely to bear the greatest burden and are more vulnerable to potential future climate change and rising sea levels is widely acknowledged. Adding to this problem, greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming are income dependent: people with the highest incomes, both globally and within specific communities, tend to pollute more than those with the lowest incomes. A policy dilemma thus arises when abatement strategies involve regressive financing or when the benefits of such strategies are concentrated within higher-income groups. Low-income communities are in effect subsidizing the pollution abatement of higher-income communities. This paper reviews a range of evidence showing the unequal vulnerabilities, responsibilities, benefits, and costs from climate change and climate change policies. A framework for the evaluation of climate change mitigation strategies in the transportation sector is then proposed. This framework incorporates these equity issues along with other traditional measures of policy effectiveness. Exactly how these various inequities are incorporated and valued is highly case specific and is proposed as the subject of future research.Urban transportation investments present an opportunity to mitigate climate change while supporting effective, clean, safe, and equitable transportation. This study reports on the response of a set of urban transportation investments in Latin America to climate change. A sample of recent transportation projects funded by an international bank was analyzed to learn what kinds of infrastructure, plans, and policies were being pursued and to assess whether projects developed specifically to address climate change differed from other projects. Loans and grants supported a mix of infrastructure for transit, bicycles, and pedestrians, as well as institutional strengthening. Although only a few projects explicitly addressed climate change mitigation, their impacts on mode choice and urban development almost surely have had positive effects compared with what would have happened without them. In some cases, however, funding for road construction at the urban fringe may induce outward urban expansion and greater automobile use. Specifically analyzing the carbon consequences of all projects as well as their combined effects in the overall system would provide better ability to track and take credit for carbon mitigation and also could flag potential problem areas.The agroclimatic conditions of Bulgaria permit rapeseed growing. They are considered risky in some regions of the country, because of the drought conditions during the seeding and flowering periods and the extremely low air temperatures in winter and extremely high air temperatures in late spring. The goal of the paper is to assess the climate risks for rapeseed (Brassica napus, L.) growing in three representative for the agricultural production regions around the towns of Lom and Ruse in Northern Bulgaria and Pazardjik in Southern Bulgaria. Thirty-year (1971-2000) meteorological data minimum and maximum air temperatures, relative air humidity and rainfalls have been processed. The following parameters of the hydro-thermal conditions have been analyzed: long-term dynamics, probability and trends of the minimum and maximum air temperature, rainfalls and relative air humidity; duration and frequency of the rainless periods during flowering & seed filling; duration and frequency of the periods with minimum daily air temperature less than -10 degrees C in the period of winter dormancy; duration and frequency of the periods with maximum daily air temperature above 27 degrees C in the period of flowering & seed filling; the dynamics of the available soil water within a yearly production cycle. The future conditions for rapeseed production in our country have been assessed.Both developed and developing countries face many environmental challenges, including climate change, improving energy efficiency and waste management, addressing air pollution, water quality and scarcity, and loss of natural habitats and biodiversity. Drawing on the existing literature, this paper explores how the Internet and ICT can help tackle environmental challenges in developing countries through more environmentally sustainable models of economic development and environmentally friendly technologies and applications. This review focuses on the role of ICTs in climate change mitigation, mitigating other environmental pressures and climate change adaptation, providing an overview and pointing to examples of current activities and opportunities in each of these areas.Climate change is a growing concern for society and the focus of numerous research initiatives across multiple fields of science. These initiatives often need to capitalize on the cross-specialized knowledge contributed by researchers from very different fields. The diversity of worldviews among key stakeholders requires an effective overall design strategy acting as a boundary spanner object. This study presents an account of the issues faced by a multidisciplinary research project and discusses the suitability of a design approach to help address issues such as equality, empowerment, autonomy, creativity, performance, reduction of innovation cycle times and also provide for the necessary balance between control, speediness and flexibility. We have assembled extensive information on the cycles of seven industrial metals in 49 countries, territories, or groups of countries, drawn from a database of some 200,000 material flows, and have devised analytical approaches to treat the suite of metals as composing an approach to a national "materials metabolism." We demonstrate that in some of the more developed countries, per capita metal use is more than 10 times the global average. Additionally, countries that use more than the per capita world average of any metal do so for all metals, and vice versa, and countries that are above global average rates of use are very likely to be above global average rates at all stages of metal life cycles from fabrication onward. We show that all countries are strongly dependent on international trade to supply the spectrum of nonrenewable resources that modern technology requires, regardless of their level of development. We also find that the rate of use of the spectrum of metals stock is highly correlated to per capita gross domestic product, as well as to the Human Development Index and the Global Competitiveness Innovation Index. The implication is that as wealth and technology increase in developing countries, strong demand will be created not for a few key resources, but across the entire spectrum of the industrial metals. Long-term metal demand can be estimated given gross domestic product projections; the results suggest overall metal flow into use in 2050 of 5-10 times today's level should supplies permit.This study has been performed to identify the degree of pollution with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the soil and water of the highly industrialized town, Targoviste, and its surroundings. This research represents the first stage of a larger project aiming at monitoring the PAHs during the entire food chain meant to obtain meat products starting with the feeding of the animals and ending with the obtaining of the finished products. The measurements will be realized using a modem methodology which will permit the establishing of low levels of PAS in the analyzed products. Many of them - the benzo [a] anthracene, the chrysene, the benzo [b] fluoranthene, the benzo [a] pyrene and the benzo [ghi] perylene- are known to be potentially carcinogenic for humans. Therefore, they have been included in the list of priorities of the Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC and, also, sixteen of them have been established by EPSA U.S. as major pollutants. Their distribution in the environment and the potential risks to human health, have attracted the public attention. There have been dosed 14 PAHs. The determinations have been made using a modern methodology that will allow the detection of the lowest levels of contaminants. For this purpose PAHs have been separated by a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) of water samples collected from areas surrounding the town.Intermolecular dihydrogen bond O-H center dot center dot center dot H-Ge in the electronically excited state of the dihydrogen-bonded phenol-triethylgermanium (TECH) complex was studied theoretically using time-dependent density functional theory. Analysis of the frontier molecular orbitals revealed a locally excited S(1) state in which only the phenol moiety is electronically excited. In the predicted infrared spectrum of the dihydrogen-bonded phenol-TEGH complex, the O-H stretching vibrational mode shifts to a lower frequency in the S(1) state in comparison with that in ground state. The Ge-H stretching vibrational mode demonstrates a relatively smaller redshift than the O-H stretching vibrational mode. Upon electronic excitation to the S(1) state, the O-H and Ge-H bonds involved in the dihydrogen bond both get lengthened, whereas the C-O bond is shortened. With an increased binding energy, the calculated H center dot center dot center dot H distance significantly decreases in the S(1) state. Thus, the intermolecular dihydrogen bond O-H center dot center dot center dot H-Ge of the dihydrogen-bonded phenol-TEGH complex becomes stronger in the electronically excited state than that in the ground state. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 31: 2853-2858, 2010P>There is an increasing worldwide concern about the problem of dealing with the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), given the high volume of appliances that are disposed of every day. In this article, an environmental evaluation of WEEE is performed that combines life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and multivariate statistical techniques. Because LCA handles a large number of data in its different phases, when one is trying to uncover the structure of large multidimensional data sets, multivariate statistical techniques can provide useful information. In particular, principal-component analysis and multidimensional scaling are two important dimension-reducing tools that have been shown to be of help in understanding this type of complex multivariate data set. In this article, we use a variable selection method that reduces the number of categories for which the environmental impacts have to be computed; this step is especially useful when the number of impact categories or the number of products or processes to benchmark increases. We provide a detailed illustration showing how we have used the proposed approach to analyze and interpret the environmental impacts of different domestic appliances.China's remarkable economic growth in the last 3 decades has brought about big improvements in quality of life while simultaneously contributing to serious environmental problems. The aim of all economic activities is, ultimately, to provide the population with products and services. Analyzing environmental impacts of consumption can be valuable for illuminating underlying drivers for energy use and emissions in society. This study applies an environmentally extended input-output analysis to estimate household environmental impact (HEI) of urban Beijing households at different levels of development. The analysis covers direct and indirect energy use and emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen oxide (NOx). On the basis of observations of how HEI varies across income groups, prospects for near-future changes in HEI are discussed. Results indicate that in 2007, an urban resident in Beijing used, on average, 52 gigajoules of total primary energy supply. The corresponding annual emissions were 4.2 tonnes CO2, 27 kilograms SO2, and 17 kilograms NOx. Of this, only 18% to 34% was used or emitted by the households directly. While the overall expenditure elasticity of energy use is around 0.9, there is a higher elasticity of energy use associated with transport. The results suggest that significant growth in HEI can be expected in the near future, even with substantial energy efficiency improvements.P>Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare the current water supply planning in Mediterranean Spain, the so-called AGUA Programme, with its predecessor, the Ebro river water transfer (ERWT). Whereas the ERWT was based on a single interbasin transfer, the AGUA Programme excludes new transfers and focuses instead on different types of resources, including seawater and brackish water desalination and wastewater reuse, among others. The study includes not only water supply but the whole anthropic cycle of water, from water abstraction to wastewater treatment. In addition to standard LCA impact categories, a specific impact category focusing on freshwater resources is included, which takes into account freshwater scarcity in the affected water catchments. In most impact categories the AGUA Programme obtains similar or even lower impact scores than ERWT. Concerning impacts on freshwater resources, the AGUA Programme obtains an impact score 49% lower than the ERWT. Although the current water planning appears to perform better in many impact categories than its predecessor, this study shows that water supply in Spanish Mediterranean regions is substantially increasing its energy intensity and that Mediterranean basins suffer a very high level of water stress due to increasing demand and limited resources.P>The mix of electricity consumed in any stage in the life cycle of a product, process, or industrial sector has a significant effect on the associated inventory of emissions and environmental impacts because of large differences in the power generation method used. Fossil-fuel-fired or nuclear-centralized steam generators; large-scale and small-scale hydroelectric power; and renewable options, such as geothermal, wind, and solar power, each have a unique set of issues that can change the results of a life cycle assessment. This article shows greenhouse gas emissions estimates for electricity purchase for different scenarios using U.S. average electricity mix, state mixes, state mixes including imports, and a sector-specific mix to show how different these results can be. We find that greenhouse gases for certain sectors and scenarios can change by more than 100%. Knowing this, practitioners should exercise caution or at least account for the uncertainty associated with mix choice.P>In this article we consider interactions between life cycle emissions and materials flows associated with lightweighting (LW) automobiles. Both aluminum and high-strength steel (HSS) lightweighting are considered, with LW ranging from 6% to 23% on the basis of literature references and input from industry experts. We compare the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with producing lightweight vehicles with the saved emissions during vehicle use. This yields a calculation of how many years of vehicle use are required to offset the added GHG emissions from the production stage. Payback periods for HSS are shorter than for aluminum. Nevertheless, achieving significant LW with HSS comparable to aluminum-intensive vehicles requires not only material substitution but also the achievement of secondary LW by downsizing of other vehicle components in addition to the vehicle structure. GHG savings for aluminum LW varies strongly with location where the aluminum is produced and whether secondary aluminum can be utilized instead of primary. HSS is less sensitive to these parameters. In principle, payback times for vehicles lightweighted with aluminum can be shortened by closed-loop recycling of wrought aluminum (i.e., use of secondary wrought aluminum). Over a 15-year time horizon, however, it is unlikely that this could significantly reduce emissions from the automotive industry, given the challenges involved with enabling a closed-loop aluminum infrastructure without downcycling automotive body structures.P>The market for photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation has boomed over the last decade, and its expansion is expected to continue with the development of new technologies. Taking into consideration the usage of valuable resources and the generation of emissions in the life cycle of photovoltaic technologies dictates proactive planning for a sound PV recycling infrastructure to ensure its sustainability. PV is expected to be a "green" technology, and properly planning for recycling will offer the opportunity to make it a "double-green" technology-that is, enhancing life cycle environmental quality. In addition, economic feasibility and a sufficient level of value-added opportunity must be ensured, to stimulate a recycling industry. In this article, we survey mathematical models of the infrastructure of recycling processes of other products and identify the challenges for setting up an efficient one for PV. Then we present an operational model for an actual recycling process of a thin-film PV technology. We found that for the case examined with our model, some of the scenarios indicate profitable recycling, whereas in other scenarios it is unprofitable. Scenario SC4, which represents the most favorable scenario by considering the lower bounds of all costs and the upper bound of all revenues, produces a monthly profit of $107,000, whereas the least favorable scenario incurs a monthly loss of $151,000. Our intent is to extend the model as a foundation for developing a framework for building a generalized model for current-PV and future-PV technologies.P>Policy makers and practitioners working on local climate action continuously strive for improved greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories to support their mitigation strategies. The provision of such inventories, with the sufficient detail and quality needed, has proven to be challenging. This article describes the application of a carbon-footprint-based (CF-based) calculation tool to Norwegian municipalities. The aim is to improve the local GHG inventory, with a particular focus on the emissions resulting from the provision of services by local governments. Through selective CF analysis, we aim to illustrate the knowledge gained from implementing these tools in local climate action plans and to further contrast CF-based calculations with more traditional production-based accounting. Municipalities report they have revised their understanding of the most important GHG mitigation strategies after implementing this tool.Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are two typical perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), found in a wide range of environmental media and organisms, including humans. Human biomonitoring studies of body fluids have revealed that in many areas of the world the general population has been exposed to background levels of PFOS and PFOA. Fingernail has been suggested as a promising biopsy material for assessment of PFCs environmental exposure. In the present study, PFOS and PFOA were quantified using high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) in fingernails of urban and rural children (N=93) aged 6-12 years. A questionnaire was conducted to determine factors that could influence the PFOS and PFOA levels in the children. The levels of PFOS in urban children were significantly higher (geometric mean (GM)=328 ng/g) than those in rural children (GM=27 ng/g). In contrast, PFOA levels were significantly lower in the urban children compared with the rural children. Significant positive correlation (R=0.53, P < 0.05 for urban areas; R=0.71; P < 0.001 for rural areas) between the PFOS and PFOA concentrations indicated they had similar sources. The PFOS and PFOA levels were higher in fingernail samples from children aged < 9 years than in children aged a (c) 3/49 years. In addition, females had higher PFOA levels than males, in both regions. Other factors that significantly influenced PFOS and PFOA levels were dietary habits and socio-economic background. The results of this study indicate fingernails are a suitable material for biomonitoring of PFCs environmental exposure. However, the levels determined in the fingernail samples need to be first evaluated with regard to the levels determined in other samples, such as human serum.Art effective approach to research on farmers' behaviour is based on: i) an explicit and well-motivated behavioural theory; ii) an integrative approach; and iii) understanding feedback processes and dynamics. While current approaches may effectively tackle some of them, they often fail to combine them together. The paper presents the integrative agent-centred (IAC) framework, which aims at filling this gap. It functions in accordance with these three pillars and provides a conceptual structure to understand farmers' behaviour in agricultural systems. The IAC framework is agent-centred and supports the understanding of farmers' behavior consistently with the perspective of agricultural systems as complex social-ecological systems. It combines different behavioural drivers, bridges between micro and macro levels, and depicts a potentially varied model of human agency. The use of the framework in practice is illustrated through two studies on pesticide use among smallholders in Colombia. The examples show how the framework can be implemented to derive policy implications to foster a transition towards more sustainable agricultural practices. The paper finally suggests that the framework can support different research designs for the study of agents' behaviour in agricultural and social-ecological systems. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.P>Smart irrigation controllers (SICs) can save water by adapting watering schedules to climate and soil conditions. The potential benefit of SICs is particularly high in southwestern U.S. states, where the arid climate makes water scarcer and increases watering needs of landscapes. A number of studies have tested the ability of SICs to save water in residential and small commercial settings. Results generally show overall savings, but there is substantial variability, including cases of increased water use. Though there are many controllers on the market, we argue there is a further need for optimization of design and field performance. To inform the technology development process, we develop a design for environment method, which overlays economic and environmental performance parameters under different operating conditions. This method is applied to characterize design goals for controller price and water savings that SICs must meet to yield life cycle carbon dioxide reductions and economic savings in southwestern U.S. states, accounting for regional variability in electricity and water prices and carbon overhead. Results from applying the model to SICs in the Southwest suggest that some areas are significantly easier to design for. One concept to realize improved design in practice is to build out the controller market in a staged set of niches, starting from a more favorable area then moving toward more challenging conditions.P>Industrial symbiosis describes the mutualistic interaction of different industries for beneficial reuse of waste flows or energy cascading that results in a more resource-efficient production system and fewer adverse environmental impacts. Research shows that many information and communication technology (ICT) tools for industrial symbiosis development have been created, but the results of those efforts are unclear. Drawing from advancements in knowledge-based economics and management, this article applies a knowledge-based framework to evaluate opportunities for ICT within industrial symbiosis development. ICT systems designed to enable industrial symbiosis are surveyed and evaluated within the proposed framework to identify strengths, trends, and opportunities for continued development. An appendix provides a capsule summary of the 17 ICT tools that are assessed in the article.P>During the past decade, several macroeconomic studies on the potentials of information and communication technology (ICT) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been published. The mitigation potentials identified in them vary to a high degree, mainly because they are not consistently defined and diverse methodologies are applied. The characteristics of ICT-exceptional dynamics of innovation and diffusion, social embedment and cross-sector application, diverse and complex impact patterns-are a challenge for macroeconomic studies that quantify ICT impacts on GHG emissions. This article first reviews principal macroeconomic studies on ICT and GHG emissions. In the second part, we reconsider our own study on this topic and present an in-depth scenario analysis of the future impacts of ICT applications on GHG emissions. We conclude that forthcoming macroeconomic studies could strengthen the state of the art in environmental ICT impact modeling (1) by accounting for the dynamics of new ICT applications and their first-, second-, and third-order effects on a global scale, (2) by reflecting the error margins resulting from data uncertainty in the final results, and (3) by using scenario techniques to explore future uncertainty and its impacts on the results.Enhancement of Cr (VI) reduction rate and power production from biocathode microbial fuel cells (MFCs) was achieved using indigenous bacteria from Cr (VI)-contaminated site as inoculum and MFC architecture with a relatively large cathode-specific surface area of 340-900 m(2) m(-3). A specific Cr (VI) reduction rate of 2.4 +/- A 0.2 mg g(-1)VSS h(-1) and a power production of 2.4 +/- A 0.1 W m(-3) at a current density of 6.9 A m(-3) were simultaneously achieved at an initial Cr (VI) concentration of 39.2 mg L-1. Initial Cr (VI) concentration and solution conductivity affected Cr (VI) reduction rate, power production and coulombic efficiency. These findings demonstrate the importance of inoculation and MFC architecture in the enhancement of Cr (VI) reduction rate and power production. This study is a beneficial attempt to improve the efficiency of biocathode MFCs and provide a good candidate of bioremediation process for Cr (VI)-contaminated sites.This paper investigates the challenges and opportunities of how firms and organizations can and will be able to strike a better balance between economic growth and environmental stewardship in the context of China's emerging 'circular economy' policy paradigm and based on ecological modernization theoretic approaches. Based on three company case studies in the information technology and electronic industries in China, we identify and demonstrate how a blended business and environmental value can be created from adopting a sustainable supply chain management approach. The adoption of a sustainable supply chain management approach is rapidly becoming a key business challenge and opportunity in China and other large emerging economies around the world, where our greatest environmental management challenges currently reside and will continue to exist for many years to come. The value creation framework proposed in research focuses on evaluating three case study companies who appear in various stages of an electronic industry supply chain. Value creation within a supply chain can provide the impetus for organizations to adopt circular economy, sustainable supply chain practices, for competitive reasons. In addition, we describe how a value proposition can be evaluated at two levels of analysis, a more specific micro-level and a more general meso-level of analysis. The four major business value dimensions include cost reduction, revenue generation, resiliency, and legitimacy and image. The initial findings are that a variety of opportunities exist for electronic firms in emerging and developing countries, while results from this study provide an important scholarly foundation to develop and refine sustainable supply chain management practices in emerging and developing economies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>Industrial ecology (IE) is an ambitious field of study where we seek to understand systems using a wide perspective ranging from the scale of molecules to that of the planet. Achieving such a holistic view is challenging and requires collecting, processing, curating, and sharing immense amounts of data and knowledge. We are not capable of fully achieving this due to the current state of tools used in IE and current community practices. Although we deal with a vastly interconnected world, we are not so good at efficiently interconnecting what we learn about it. This is not a problem unique to IE, and other fields have begun to use tools supported by the World Wide Web to meet these challenges. We discuss these sets of tools and illustrate how community driven data collection, processing, curation, and sharing is allowing people to achieve more than ever before. In particular, we discuss standards that have been created to allow for interlinking of data dispersed across multiple Web sites. This is currently visible in the Linking Open Data initiative, which among others contains interlinked datasets from the U.S. and U.K. governments, biology databases, and Wikipedia. Since the types of technologies and standards involved are outside the normal scope of work by many industrial ecologists, we attempt to explain the relevance, implications, and benefits through a discussion of many real examples currently on the Web. From these, we discuss several best practices, which can be enabling factors for how IE and the community can more efficiently and effectively meet its ambitions-an agenda for Industrial Ecology 2.0.P>The impacts of information and communications technology (ICT) on the environment have been a rich area for research in recent years. A prime example is the continuing rise of digital music delivery, which has obvious potential for reducing the energy and environmental impacts of producing and delivering music to final consumers. This study assesses the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with several alternative methods for delivering one album of music to a final customer, either through traditional retail or e-commerce sales of compact discs or through a digital download service. We analyze a set of six (three compact disc and three digital download) scenarios for the delivery of one music album from the recording stage to the consumer's home in either CD or digital form. We find that despite the increased energy and emissions associated with Internet data flows, purchasing music digitally reduces the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with delivering music to customers by between 40% and 80% from the best-case physical CD delivery, depending on whether a customer then burns the files to CD. Despite the dominance of the digital music delivery method, however, there are scenarios by which digital music performs less well, and these scenarios are explored. We suggest future areas of research, including alternative digital media services, such as subscription and streaming systems, for which Internet energy usage may be larger than for direct downloads.P>The positive and negative environmental impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) are widely debated. This study assesses the electricity use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the ICT and entertainment & media (E&M) sectors at sector level, including end users, and thus complements information on the product level. GHGs are studied in a life cycle perspective, but for electricity use, only the operational use is considered. The study also considers which product groups or processes are major contributors. Using available data and extrapolating existing figures to the global scale for 2007 reveals that the ICT sector produced 1.3% of global GHG emissions in 2007 and the E&M sector 1.7%. The corresponding figures for global electricity use were 3.9% and 3.2%, respectively. The results indicate that for the ICT sector, operation leads to more GHG emissions than manufacture, although impacts from the manufacture of some products are significant. For the E&M sector, operation of TVs and production of printed media are the main reasons for overall GHG emissions. TVs as well as printed media, with the estimations made here, led to more GHG emissions on a global level in 2007 than PCs (manufacture and operation). A sector study of this type provides information on a macro scale, a perspective easily lost when considering, for example, the product-related results of life cycle assessments. The macro scale is essential to capture changes in total consumption and use. However, the potential of the ICT sector to help decrease environmental impacts from other sectors was not included in the assessment.P>The absence of detailed information on residential energy end use characteristics for the United States has in the past presented an impediment to the effective development and targeting of residential energy efficiency programs. This article presents a framework for modeling space heating, cooling, water heating, and appliance energy end uses, fuels used, and carbon emissions at a zip code-level resolution for the entire United States. It combines a regression-based statistical model derived from Residential Energy Consumption Survey data with U.S. census 2000 five-digit zip code level information, climate division-level temperature data, and other sources. The results show large variations in energy use characteristics both between and within different regions of the country, with particularly notable differences in the magnitude of and distribution by fuel of residential energy use in urban and rural areas. The results are validated against residential energy sales data and have useful implications for both residential energy efficiency planning and further study of variations in use patterns.Building on previously introduced concepts and software, we constructed an interlinked system of models, called an "integrated model project," for assessing integrated effects of supply-side and demand-side technologies and policies for carbon dioxide (CO2) mitigation in urban areas. We used the integrated model project to evaluate scenarios that included introduction of a solid oxide fuel cell combined with a gas turbine topping cycle (SOFC/GT) as a supply-side technology and reduction of electricity demand by energy conservation and rooftop photovoltaic (PV) cells in residential and commercial buildings as a demand-side measure in Tokyo, Japan. Modeling results indicate that integrating multiple supply-side and demand-side countermeasures can result in more effective mitigation of CO2 emissions. In particular, although separately a moderate CO2 tax and the SOFC/GT technology do not produce large CO2 mitigation, the combination of the two with PV installation could result in a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions in 2050. Cancellation effects of combinations of supply-side and demand-side measures were also seen between supply-side SOFC/GT systems and demand-side rooftop PV cells, effects that might not be apparent without the integrated environmental assessment approach that we have adopted. An integrated environmental assessment approach using tools such as those described in this article could help researchers to assess these kinds of dynamic, nonlinear effects, which would not be predicted by conventional linear, "additive" approaches.P>Nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM) is a technique for deducing the power consumption and operational schedule of individual loads in a building from measurements of the overall voltage and current feeding it, using information and communication technologies. In this article, we review the potential of this technology to enhance residential electricity audits. First, we review the currently commercially available whole-house and plug-level technology for residential electricity monitoring in the context of supporting audits. We then contrast this with NILM and show the advantages and disadvantages of the approach by discussing results from a prototype system installed in an apartment unit. Recommendations for improving the technology to allow detailed, continuous appliance-level auditing of residential buildings are provided, along with ideas for possible future work in the field.Recovery, reuse and recycling of industrial residuals, often dismissed as wastes, are common in India and other industrializing countries largely due to lower associated costs. Some wastes are reused within the facility where they are generated, others are reused directly by nearby industrial facilities, and some are recycled via the formal and informal recycling markets. Direct inter-firm reuse is the cornerstone of the phenomenon termed industrial symbiosis, where firms cooperate in the exchange of material and energy resources. This study applies material flow analysis to an economically diverse industrial area in South India to characterize the recovery, reuse and recycling of industrial residuals. It quantifies the generation of waste materials from 42 companies as well as the materials that are directly traded across facilities and those that are recycled or disposed. This study encompasses a business cluster in Mysore in the State of Karnataka, and is the first in India to thoroughly quantify material flows to identify existing symbiotic connections in an industrial area. Examined industries in this industrial area generate 897,210 metric tons of waste residuals annually, and recovered 99.5% of these, 81% with reused by the companies that generated them, with one company, a sugar refinery, processing most of this amount. Geographic data show that operations within 20 km of the industrial area receive over 90% of residuals exiting facility gates. Two-thirds of this amount goes directly to other economic actors for reuse. This study makes key contributions to the literature in distinguishing how particular types of materials are reused in different ways, the geographic extent of symbiotic activities and the important role of the informal sector in industrial waste management in industrializing regions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An industrial symbiosis (IS) is a group of industrial plants and other actors which exchange energy, water, by-products and waste. This article studies the evolution of an IS centred around a Finnish pulp and paper mill and analyses how the operations of the case system developed in a more sustainable direction during the years 1890-2005. We build upon basic sustainability principles known as The Natural Step (TNS) System Conditions by identifying and selecting quantifiable indicators for each of the conditions in the case of our target symbiosis. The study reveals that the environmental impacts of the case IS became more far-reaching during the 110-year period studied. Emissions, however, decreased substantially after the 1970s due to tightening environmental legislation and other policy measures and the progress in environmental technology, not due to symbiosis-type of arrangements. There has been no strong driver for more symbiosis-like cooperation among the companies in this study. It appeared that the main motives for increased collaboration were economic. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a systems analysis perspective that extends the traditional process design framework to green process design, green energy and industrial ecology leading to sustainability. For green process design this involves starting the design decisions as early as chemical and material selection stages on one end, and managing and planning decisions at the other end. However, uncertainties and multiple and conflicting objectives are inherent in such a design process. Uncertainties increase further in industrial ecology. The concept of overall sustainability goes beyond industrial ecology and brings in time dependent nature of the ecosystem and multi-disciplinary decision making. Optimal control methods and theories from financial literature can be useful in handling the time dependent uncertainties in this problem. Decision making at various stages starting from green process design, green energy, to industrial ecology, and sustainability is illustrated for the mercury cycling. Power plant sector is a major source of mercury pollution. In order to circumvent the persistent, bioaccumulative effect of mercury, one has to take decisions at various levels of the cycle starting with greener power systems, industrial symbiosis through trading, and controlling the toxic methyl mercury formation in water bodies and accumulation in aquatic biota. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,Sustainability of human activities is entirely dependent on the availability of ecosystem goods and services such as carbon sequestration, mineral and fossil resources, sunlight, biogeochemical cycles, soil formation, pollination, etc. However, existing methods in most disciplines, including sustainable engineering and industrial ecology ignore this crucial role played by nature. The use of such a narrow boundary can lead to misleading results and perverse decisions. This paper introduces the idea of designing networks of technological systems along with their supporting ecological systems. Such networks of technological and ecological systems exploit the synergy between them and can help in closing material loops and minimize exergy loss, leading to truly self-sustaining systems. Methods for designing such technological-ecological synergy (TES) networks could be developed by extending existing process synthesis and design approaches to include ecological models. Such an approach would integrate industrial ecology with ecological engineering and require collaboration between engineers and ecologists. It presents many new challenges and opportunities for process systems engineering to contribute to the sustainability of engineered systems. The idea of TES networks is illustrated via several practical case studies, with focus on the life cycle of corn ethanol and a typical American residential system. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article, the author applies complex systems theory (CST) to help understand why, after 14 years of management scholar advocacy for a paradigmatic shift in management behavior, the field of management has been unable to move away from a technocentric paradigm. Using four principles of complex adaptive systems (CAS), the author shows that focusing exclusively on business behavior limits our attention to symptoms rather than the broader system of interacting agents whose collective behaviors legitimize and support an economic paradigm. By drawing on complexity and critical systems theory, the author then develops a three-phased process model that provides a preliminary conceptualization of what it might take to shift the business paradigm. The success of this shift is dependent on a consequential shift at the societal level, the interaction of which speaks to the implications for business as a recipient of this broader shift and, more important, its role as an agent in the process of creating new opportunities that sustain the life-supporting environmental and social systems. Through this model, the author presents important implications for policy makers and management theory.A unified process assessment is carried out to integrate various resources and emissions associated with the life cycle of typical coal-fired power generation systems, based on the thermodynamic concept of exergy as a common objective measure. For a comprehensive assessment of industrial production systems, three indicators termed as ecological efficiency, resources use efficiency and environmental emission intensity are devised to evaluate the overall efficacy. Concretely assessed in the present work are three typical modes of coal-fired power generation systems, i.e., the Average mode that represents the average emissions and efficiency of coal-fired power plants operating in the US in 1999, the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) mode that meets the New Source Performance Standards, and the low emission boiler system (LEBS) mode as a kind of highly advanced coal-fired power plant utilizing a low emission boiler, as benchmark cases in related NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) report. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The design methodologies require applying techniques in the phase of generating options, selecting methods to achieve the best of them, and thereby meeting the needs of the various requirements of the project. In the forest industry, the case of engineering glued laminated timber is not immune to these demands. Using the methodology of Integrated Environmental Design (IED) and the Muticriteria Technical Decision (MCTD) method, referred to the stage, it was possible to achieve the successful consolidation of design and conceptual development of a new constructive component of structural quality with technical innovation criteria based on the use of optional materials and new manufacturing processes. First, a total of 53 alternatives to the structural elements were generated with the creative brainstorming technique. Secondly, a selection technique was carried out according to the environmental, socio-economic and technological change, which came to define alternative 7. Using the Expert Choice 2000, it was chosen among the last 7, option number 39. This one met the requirements of the above factors in terms of cost, quality, resistance and Ecodesign principles, such as reduced energy consumption, use of alternative raw materials such as grass, recycling and reuse of raw materials, among others.Efforts to increase the use of waste materials as substitutes for virgin primary materials in industry are considered an important step toward sustainable industrial development. Some industries, however, have struggled to increase the recycling of materials for a variety of reasons. This study proposes a new approach to searching for recycling across industry boundaries. By focusing on an entire industry, the locations where economic and environmental benefit exists can be identified. This research identifies brick manufacturing facilities in the United States that are most likely to gain substantial economic benefit from the recycling of waste products. The results of this case study indicate that an industry-based approach can provide economically feasible pathways towards sustainable industrial development, especially for data rich manufacturing nations like the United States. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) method has been carried out to investigate the excited-state hydrogen-bonding dynamics of 4-aminophthalimide (4AP) in hydrogen-donating water solvent The infrared spectra of the hydrogen-bonded solute-solvent complexes in electronically excited state have been calculated using the TDDFT method We have demonstrated that the intermolecular hydrogen bond C= O H-O and N-H O-H in the hydrogen-bonded 4AP-(H2O)(2) trimer are significantly strengthened in the electronically excited state by theoretically monitoring the changes of the bond lengths of hydrogen bonds and hydrogen-bonding groups in different electronic states The hydrogen bonds strengthening in the electronically excited state are confirmed because the calculated stretching vibrational modes of the hydrogen bonding C=O, amino N-H, and H-O groups are markedly red-shifted upon photoexcitation The calculated results are consistent with the mechanism of the hydrogen bond strengthening in the electronically excited state, while contrast with mechanism of hydrogen bond cleavage Furthermore, we believe that the transient hydrogen bond strengthening behavior in electroniclly excited state of chromophores in hydrogen-donating solvents exists in many other systems in solution (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals. Inc. J Comput Chem 31 2157-2163. 2010P>This article elaborates an integrated policy framework, including policy features and specific measures that can be implemented to mitigate the barriers to eco-innovations. We claim that factors inhibiting the development and uptake of eco-innovations are multifaceted and stem from different sources. This systems view, which highlights the multilayered conception of the obstacles to eco-innovation, calls for a combination of environmental and technology policies adapted to the different barriers and characteristics of the technologies. Drawing on evolutionary economics, the article sheds light on the appropriate combinations of framework conditions and instruments that are most effective to promote eco-innovation, considering different barriers and eco-innovation types (process/product, mature/immature, and radical/incremental).P>A probability-based method is presented for assessing the reliability of synergistic systems and their ability to cope with the uncertainties often associated with two of a company's main types of activities: those carried out by the manufacturing department, and those carried out by the storage department. This method is based on a model focusing on the dynamic simulation of synergistic flows in terms of the mass balance. It differs from previous material flow analysis tools, which do not take into account the temporary failures occurring at the companies involved and the resulting loss of production capacity. The failure events occurring at any of the companies in a synergistic system may result in various levels of synergy failure and a short supply of resources for other companies. We therefore propose to identify the main factors responsible for a lack of synergy. We developed a dynamic stock simulation model for assessing the reliability of synergistic systems as well as that of the individual companies of a system before and after a synergy is set up. We first confirm the validity of this model by comparing the results with those based on the binomial theorem in system reliability analysis, and we then apply the model to the case of an industrial system. We conclude that companies involved in a synergistic system will inevitably be exposed to a higher risk of resource shortage because of the unsteady synergistic and outsourcing flows on which they depend. More efficient stock management methods would prevent the occurrence of the risks often associated with synergistic flows.P>International trade transfers social and environmental impacts across national borders. The consumption of forest products often takes place far away from industrial production sites, and mills procure raw material from remote forests. Finland produces about 10% of forest products that are traded internationally, with the majority of its exports destined for other European countries. Here we report and analyze data that demonstrate that international leakage, in relative terms, increased faster than the production of commodities. The international consumption of products made in Finland increased, and an increase in wood imports from Russia provided the raw material for most of the incremental production. The international consumption-production system translated the increasing global demand for Finnish products into increased harvests in Russia, until the Russian customs duties started to increase in 2007. We argue that national and regional policies for the promotion of sustainable consumption and production must be analyzed and assessed from an international, holistic perspective.P>We develop the absorbing Markov chain (AMC) for describing in detail the network of paths through an industrial system taken by an embodied resource from extraction through intermediate products and, finally, consumer products. We refer to this as a resource-specific network. This work builds on a recent literature in industrial ecology that uses an AMC to quantify the number of times a resource passes through a recycling sector before ending up in a landfill. Our objective is to incorporate into that analysis an input-output (IO) table so that the resource paths explicitly take account of the interdependence of sectors through their reliance on intermediate products. This feature makes it possible to track multiple resources simultaneously and consistently and to represent both resources and products in mixed units. Hypothetical scenarios about technological changes and changes in consumer demand are analyzed with an IO model, and model solutions generate the AMC database. A numerical example is provided. We identify the three most critical enhancements to the standard IO model that will be needed for analyzing material cycles: the incorporation of waste-processing sectors, stock and flow relationships, and international trade. The idea is to implement an AMC after each modeling step for analyses, such as tracking a resource extracted in one region to landfills in other regions and evaluating ways to intensify secondary recovery at key junctures in between.P>Lifespan is an essential parameter for the accounting and analysis of material stocks and flows, one of the main research topics in industrial ecology. Lifespan is also important as a parameter that portrays the current and historical situation of industrial metabolism, which is an area of interest to industrial ecologists. In the present article, the available information from various reports on product lifespan was reviewed. Although we found a large number of data for many durables, the definition of lifespan in published articles varied, which limited our ability to compare reported values. We therefore first defined lifespan and then compared the international and historical data. We compiled more than 1,300 data sets from various sources and identified some differences among the types of goods and among regions. With the reviewed data noted in this article, we established a database, named LiVES (Lifespan Database for Vehicles, Equipment, and Structures), and will disclose it on the Internet to share the information.P>Lifespan of commodities is essential information for material flow analysis and material stock accounting. Lifespan data is available in the literature; however, it varies in definition and in methodology employed. This article reviews and categorizes different types of lifespan distribution and distribution estimation methodologies, and investigates the relationship and differences between lifespan definitions and estimation methodologies. Lifespan distribution of commodities can be classified into five types from two perspectives: base year for which the distribution is drawn, and vertical axis of the distribution. The methodologies for estimating lifespan distribution were classified into four types and the details of each methodology and the relationship to the definition of lifespan were also clarified. This article also examines differences in actual lifespan data-between the types of distribution, the definitions, and the employed methodologies-by comparing reported data in literature. Any of the four methodologies are theoretically applicable and provide the same value of a lifespan; however unless accurate data such as census statistics are available, lifespan data can vary, and therefore we must be very cautious about the representativeness of sample data.P>We conducted a decomposition analysis of material flows in a dynamic system, focusing on factors in the generation of waste consumer durables. A methodology for the analysis of consumer durables was developed and applied to three common consumer durables: cathode ray tube TVs, refrigerators, and passenger cars. The methodology decomposed changes in the numbers of waste products into three factors: changes in lifespan distribution, past trends in replacement sales, and past trends in sales for additional purchases. The decomposed equation clearly showed that the number of waste products would not necessarily be reduced by lifespan extension alone. This is because the number of waste products generated is affected not only by current lifespan distribution but also by past trends in sales for replacement and in additional purchases. The results show that changes in past replacement sales influence the current generation of waste, even if current replacement sales are declining. To reduce the generation of waste products on a short-term basis, lifespan must be extended until the waste-reducing effect of lifespan extension exceeds the waste-increasing effect of the other two factors. From a long-term perspective, controlling current replacement and additional purchases can be used to prevent future waste product generation.P>With the rapid growth of highway mileage and vehicles, the Chinese highway traffic system (HTS) has become one of the great resource consumers. This article attempts to evaluate the material metabolism of China's HTS during 2001-2005 using the approach of material flow analysis (MFA) and to explore possible measures to promote circular economy throughout HTS. We measured a set of indicators to illustrate the whole material metabolism of China's HTS. The results indicated that the direct material input (DMI) of China's HTS increased from 1181.26 million tonnes (Mt) in 2001 to 1,874.57 Mt in 2005, and about 80% of DMI was accumulated in the system as infrastructure and vehicles. The domestic processed output (DPO) increased by 59.0% from 2001 to 2005. Carbon dioxide and solid waste accounted for 80.5% and 10.4% of DPO, respectively. The increase of resource consumption and pollutant emissions kept pace with the growth of transportation turnover. All these suggest that China's HTS still followed an extensive linear developing pattern with large resource consumption and heavy pollution emissions during the study period, which brought great challenges to the resources and the environment. Therefore, it's high time for China to implement a circular economy throughout the HTS by instituting resource and energy savings, by reducing emissions in the field of infrastructure construction and maintenance, by reducing vehicles' energy and materials consumption, and by recycling waste materials.P>This article deals with the economy-wide material flows in the Czech Republic in 1990-2006. It presents in brief the overall trends of the material flow indicators in 1990-2002. The major part of the article is focused on the years 2002-2006, which immediately preceded and followed the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union in 2004. It is shown that this accession had quite a significant impact on the volume and character of the material flows of the Czech Republic. The accession was beneficial from an economic point of view, as it allowed for an increased supply of materials needed for economic growth. Furthermore, it was accompanied by an improvement in the efficiency of material transformation into economic output. From an environmental and broader sustainability point of view, however, this accession brought about some controversial outcomes. There was a significant increase in the net export of environmental pressure, on one hand, and an increase in net additions to the physical stock of the economy, on the other. Although the former is controversial from the viewpoint of equity in sharing area and resources, the latter places an additional burden on future generations because all physical stocks will turn into waste and emissions at some point, when their life span expires.P>The present article investigates to what extent and level of success urban mining-the recovery of resources from anthropogenic stock-has been applied in the past during shortages of primary resources. As a case study, the Austrian economy during World War I-when raw materials indeed had to be substituted from secondary sources-is analyzed here. By means of material flow analysis, the management of copper, an important and relatively scarce metal that is difficult to substitute, is examined. The combination of increased demand for copper (for ammunition) and constraints on supply from sources other than the domestic anthroposphere highlights the importance of planning for and surveying urban mining activities. The results also indicate limitations to extracting a large share of copper from the anthroposphere, even in the face of a critical shortage. Although extreme measures, such as confiscation, were taken, only 1.7 kilograms of copper per capita (kg Cu/cap), amounting to perhaps as little as 10% of the anthropogenic stock, could be made available through the end of the war.The extraordinary chemical and physical properties of materials at the nanometer scale enable novel applications ranging from structural strength enhancement and energy conservation to antimicrobial properties and self-cleaning surfaces. Consequently, manufactured nanomaterials (MNMs) and nanocomposites are being considered for various uses in the construction and related infrastructure industries. To achieve environmentally responsible nanotechnology in construction, it is important to consider the lifecycle impacts of MNMs on the health of construction workers and dwellers, as well as unintended environmental effects at all stages of manufacturing, construction, use, demolition, and disposal. Here, we review state-of-the-art applications of MNMs that improve conventional construction materials, suggest likely environmental release scenarios, and summarize potential adverse biological and toxicological effects and their mitigation. Aligned with multidisciplinary assessment of the environmental implications of emerging technologies, this review seeks to promote awareness of potential benefits of MNMs in construction and stimulate the development of guidelines to regulate their use and disposal to mitigate potential adverse effects on human and environmental health.Tests are performed in an experimental unit on various specimens of ceramic filter screens with slow filtration rates. The hydraulic resistance of materials with filtration rates of 0.5-5.0 cm/sec and mist droplet capture efficiency with a filtration rate of 3 cm/sec are determined.The results of experimental determination of the operating parameters of the gas cleaning system at Moscow Spetszavod (Special Plant) No. 2 under various equipment operation conditions are reported. Based on the experimental data, conclusions have drawn regarding the feasibility of attaining the required flue gas cleaning degree in the gas cleaning system of Spetszavod No. 2 that meets European and Russian standards for a wide variety of municipal solid waste.Both biotic ligand models (BLM) and bioaccumulation models aim to quantify metal exposure based on mechanistic knowledge, but key factors included in the description of metal uptake differ between the two approaches. Here, we present a quantitative comparison of both approaches and show that BLM and bioaccumulation kinetics can be merged into a common mechanistic framework for metal uptake in aquatic organisms. Our results show that metal-specific absorption efficiencies calculated from BLM-parameters for freshwater fish are highly comparable, i.e. within a factor of 2.4 for silver, cadmium, copper, and zinc, to bioaccumulation-absorption efficiencies for predominantly marine fish. Conditional affinity constants are significantly related to the metal-specific covalent index. Additionally, the affinity constants of calcium, cadmium, copper, sodium, and zinc are significantly comparable across aquatic species, including molluscs, daphnids, and fish. This suggests that affinity constants can be estimated from the covalent index, and constants can be extrapolated across species. A new model is proposed that integrates the combined effect of metal chemodynamics, as speciation, competition, and ligand affinity, and species characteristics, as size, on metal uptake by aquatic organisms. An important direction for further research is the quantitative comparison of the proposed model with acute toxicity values for organisms belonging to different size classes.''Industrial symbiosis'' (IS) is a central concept in the industrial ecology literature, which describes geographically proximate interfirm relationships involving the exchange of residual materials, water, and energy. Despite its obvious relevance to regional science, economic geography, and urban economics, the issue is only beginning to be addressed in these subdisciplines. This situation is paradoxical as both recovery linkages and the very concept of IS were discussed in some depth by numerous economists and geographers several decades ago. The goals of this article are to document this intellectual history, in the process gaining a better understanding of the phenomenon while shedding additional light on current controversies. In doing so, the authors further hope to restimulate economists, geographers, and regional scientists' interest in the topic and to illustrate the long-standing importance of geographical co-location in facilitating the ''internalization of externalities'' of industrial operations.An analytical framework is developed in this paper in order to explore the diversity of eco-innovations according to several key dimensions (design, user, product service and governance). The framework is used to analyse a set of case studies of eco-innnovation processes. The diversity of the analysed eco-innovations appears to be considerable; each of them involves different kinds of combinations of elements pertaining to those dimensions. Albeit the design dimension is decisive to determine the environmental impacts of the innovation, all dimensions can play a significant role in the management of eco-innovation. Our findings suggest that the capacity of eco-innovations to provide new business opportunities and contribute to the transformation towards a sustainable society depends on the interplay of those dimensions and the engagement of key stakeholders in the innovation process. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rise of China to become world largest iron and steel producer and consumer since the late 1990s can be largely attributed to urbanization, with about 20% of China's steel output used by residential buildings, and about 50% for the construction sector as a whole. Previously, a dynamic material flow analysis (MFA) model was developed to analyze the dynamics of the rural and the urban housing systems in China. This model is expanded here to specifically analyze iron and steel demand and scrap availability from the housing sector. The evolution of China's housing stock and related steel is simulated from 1900 through 2100. For almost all scenarios, the simulation results indicate a strong drop in steel demand for new housing construction over the next decades, due to the expected lengthening of the - presently extremely short - life span of residential buildings. From an environmental as well as a resource conservation point of view, this is a reassuring conclusion. Calculations for the farther future indicate that the demand for steel will not just decrease but will rather oscillate: the longer the life spans of buildings, the stronger the oscillation. The downside of this development would be the overcapacities in steel production. A scenario with slightly lower life spans but a strong emphasis on secondary steel production might reduce the oscillation at moderate environmental costs. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Utilization of by-products or waste materials in concrete production are important subjects for sustainable development and industrial ecology concepts. The usages as mineral admixtures or fine aggregates improve the durability properties of concrete and thus increase the economic and environmental advantages for the concrete industry. The effect of clay waste (CW) containing boron on the mechanical properties of concrete was investigated. CW was added in different proportions as cement additive in concrete. The effect of CW on workability and strength of concrete were analysed by fresh and hardened concrete tests. The results obtained were compared with control concrete properties and Turkish standard values. The results showed that the addition of CW had a small effect upon the workability of the concrete but an important effect on the reduction of its strength. It was observed that strength values were quite near to that of control concrete when not more than 10% CW was used in place of cement. In addition to concrete specimens, replacing cement with CW produced mortar specimens, which were investigated for their strength and durability properties. The tests of SO42- and Cl- effect as well as freeze-thaw behaviour related to the durability of mortar were performed. Consequently, it can be said that some improvements were obtained in durability properties even if mechanical properties had decreased with increasing CW content.Development of an eco-industrial park (EIP) has drawn attention as a promising approach seeking for the mutual benefit to the economy and environment. In recent years, the reduction of energy consumption has become a global necessity due to the high oil price and environmental regulations. In order to find energy strategies in an EIP, a framework to investigate waste heat of an industrial complex was proposed. A mathematical model was developed to synthesize a waste heat utilization network, including nearby companies and communities. A case study of an existing petro-chemical complex in Yeosu, South Korea showed that the total energy cost and the amount of waste heat of the region can be reduced by more than 88% and 82% from the present values, respectively, applying the suggested waste heat utilization networks. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial symbiosis, representing resource sharing and byproduct use among colocated firms, is a key concept of industrial ecology. Local co-operation in industrial symbioses can reduce raw material use and waste disposal, but material and energy flows extending outside symbiosis boundaries can cause considerable environmental impacts. These external impacts are often ignored in industrial symbiosis studies. In this study, we compared process, hybrid and input-output life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches in quantifying the overall environmental impacts of a forest industrial symbiosis, situated in Kymenlaakso, Finland. Conclusions from an earlier process-LCA were strengthened by the use of hybrid-LCA as local emissions were found to cause less than half of the global impacts. In some impact categories, the whole impact was caused by supply chain emissions (land use, metal depletion and ozone depletion). The cutoff in process-LCA was found to be less than 25%, except in metal depletion and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Input-output LCA approximated hybrid-LCA results well in most impact categories, but seriously underestimated land use and overestimated terrestrial ecotoxicity. Based on the results we conclude, that input-output based LCA can be used to analyze the global impacts of an industrial symbiosis, but a careful interpretation of the results is necessary in order to understand the influence of aggregation and allocation.Recent environmental trends, including (1) an expansion of existing command and control directives, (2) the introduction of market-based policy instruments, and (3) the adoption of extended producer responsibility, have created a need for new tools to help managerial decision-making. To address this need, we develop a nonlinear mathematical programming model from a profit-maximizing firm's perspective, which can be tailored as a decision-support tool for firms facing environmental goals and constraints. We typify our approach using the specific context of diesel engine manufacturing and remanufacturing. Our model constructs are based on detailed interviews with top managers from two leading competitors in the medium and heavy-duty diesel engine industry. The approach allows the incorporation of traditional operations-planning considerations-in particular, capacity, production, and inventory-together with environmental considerations that range from product design through production to product end of life. A current hurdle to implementing such a model is the availability of input data. We therefore highlight the need not only to involve all departments within businesses but also for industrial ecologists and business managers to work together to implement meaningful decision models that are based on accurate and timely data and can have positive economic and environmental impact.Consumer choices affect sustainability of societal systems, and state governments increasingly are interested in environmental impacts of consumption. This article describes a Consumer Environmental Index (CEI) to track the impacts of product purchase, use, and disposal and applies this initial CEI to Washington State in the United States. CEI has modules for product and service use, upstream resource extraction and manufacturing, and downstream disposal. CEI uses hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) methods, combined with purchasing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditure Survey. For Washington State, when human health and ecosystem toxicity impact was assessed with the TRACI/CalTOX methods, weighted aggregate and per consumer impacts in all categories increased during the 6 years from 2000 to 2005. For impacts per real dollar spent, only the CEI's climate change component declined, falling nearly 7% between 2000 and 2005. Purchasing details in the BLS expenditure surveys enable the CEI to track environmental impact details on 700 individual categories of products and services. For example, sugar, motor oil, and wood heat appear to have serious environmental impacts, whereas recycling of paper, cardboard, and food and beverage container discards can be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as cutting vehicle fuel usage nearly in half. Such results may serve to increase understanding of environmentally effective actions to reduce climate, human health, and ecosystem impacts of consumption.In Norway, the boreal forest offers a considerable resource base, and emerging technologies may soon make it commercially viable to convert these resources into low-carbon biofuels. Decision makers are required to make informed decisions about the environmental implications of wood biofuels today that will affect the medium-and long-term development of a wood-based biofuels industry in Norway. We first assess the national forest-derived resource base for use in biofuel production. A set of biomass conversion technologies is then chosen and evaluated for scenarios addressing biofuel production and consumption by select industry sectors. We then apply an environmentally extended, mixed-unit, two-region input-output model to quantify the global warming mitigation and fossil fuel displacement potentials of two biofuel production and consumption scenarios in Norway up to 2050. We find that a growing resource base, when used to produce advanced biofuels, results in cumulative global warming mitigation potentials of between 58 and 83 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents avoided (Mt-CO2-eq.-avoided) in Norway, depending on the biofuel scenario. In recent years, however, the domestic pulp and paper industry-due to increasing exposure to international competition, capacity reductions, and increasing production costs-has been in decline. In the face of a declining domestic pulp and paper industry, imported pulp and paper products are required to maintain the demand for these goods and thus the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the exporting region embodied in Norway's pulp and paper imports reduce the systemwide benefit in terms of avoided greenhouse gas emissions by 27%.Of all materials extracted from the earth's crust, the construction sector uses 50%, producing huge amounts of construction and demolition waste (CDW). In Beijing, presently 35 million metric tons per year (megatonnes/year [Mt/yr]) of CDW are generated. This amount is expected to grow significantly when the first round of mass buildings erected in the 1990s starts to be demolished. In this study, a dynamic material flow analysis (MFA) is conducted for Beijing's urban housing system, with the demand for the stock of housing floor area taken as the driver. The subsequent effects on construction and demolition flows of housing floor area and the concurrent consumption and waste streams of concrete are investigated for Beijing from 1949 and projected through 2050. The per capita floor area (PCFA) is a key factor shaping the material stock of housing. Observations in Beijing, the Netherlands, and Norway indicate that PCFA has a strong correlation with the local gross domestic product (GDP). The lifetime of dwellings is one of the most important variables influencing future CDW generation. Three scenarios, representing the current trend extension, high GDP growth, and lengthening the lifetime of dwellings, are analyzed. The simulation results show that CDW will rise, unavoidably. A higher growth rate of GDP and the consequent PCFA will worsen the situation in the distant future. Prolonging the lifetime of dwellings can postpone the arrival of the peak CDW. From a systematic view, recycling is highly recommended for long-term sustainable CDW management.With the rapid development of the rubber industry and its downstream sectors in China, the resulting sharp increase in the number of scrap tires is creating great environmental pressure. By considering the tire production, consumption, collection, and reuse processes as a whole system of tire material flows, and based on physical input-output analysis (IOA), this article analyzes the status quo of China's tire industry and performs a comparative study between China and Europe. The study shows that the tire industry of China in 2005 and that of Europe in 1996 are similar in material-flow characteristics. To make the best use of materials, it is necessary to strengthen the reuse of scrap tires in China. A scenario analysis is presented to show the effects of improving the reuse process from the viewpoint of IOA.We used life cycle assessment to evaluate a subset of the cradle-to-destination-port environmental impacts associated with the production, processing, and transportation of frozen, packaged Indonesian tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) fillets to ports in Chicago and Rotterdam. Specifically, we evaluated the cumulative energy use; biotic resource use; and global warming, acidifying, and eutrophying emissions at each life cycle stage and in aggregate. We identify the importance of least environmental cost feed sourcing for reducing supply chain environmental impacts. We also highlight the need for more effective nutrient cycling in intensive aquaculture. The environmental trade-offs inherent in substituting technological inputs for ecosystem services in intensive pond-based versus lake-based production systems are discussed. We further call for more nuanced considerations of comparative environmental advantage in the production and interregional trade of food commodities than has been characteristic of historic food miles discussions. Significant opportunities exist for improving environmental performance in tilapia aquaculture. This product compares favorably, however, with several other fishery, aquaculture, and animal husbandry products, according to the suite of impact categories considered in this study.Fish consumption is increasing globally. Overfishing puts pressure on fisheries, but aquaculture provides an alternative to satisfy the growing need for seafood. However, nutrient emissions from aquaculture contribute to eutrophication, and raising fish from the top of the food chain is inefficient. Here we use the approach of industrial ecology and report ImPACT decomposition analysis of the drivers of nutrient emissions to the Baltic Sea from rainbow trout aquaculture in Finland during 1980-2007. During this period, the nitrogen load studied increased markedly and was 522 tonnes in 2007. The phosphorus load quadrupled and then returned to its original level of about 65 tonnes. The Finnish population increased slightly, while the average affluence level increased significantly. Total salmonid consumption increased substantially during the period. The increasing percentage of imported salmonids and improvements in domestic aquaculture technology ended the period of strong growth of emissions in the 1980s. Decreasing the nutrient load through reductions in salmonid consumption in the future is unlikely, due to health benefits and consumer preferences. Replacing domestic production with import of salmonids raises questions regarding outsourcing of the environmental impact, and regarding rural development in Finland. Major improvements in production technology are not in sight. New perspectives on rainbow trout aquaculture may be needed, including using feed from the Baltic Sea, thus closing the nutrient cycle or changing consumption and production to herbivorous fish species.Making use of the social accounting matrix (SAM) of the Spanish province of Huesca in 2002, updated following Junius and Oosterhaven's GRAS method and work by Lenzen and colleagues, we have estimated the water footprint of the region. The water footprint is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants plus the direct consumption in the households. We built an open Leontief model, which gives us the water embodied in the production of goods. The valuations concern the industrial, service, and domestic sectors' water consumption, the embodied water imported from and exported to other countries, and the agrarian water use. This agrarian sector, clearly the sector that shows the greatest water consumption, is carefully examined, so it is disaggregated for the calculations into 31 irrigation land products, dry land, and 9 livestock classifications. As a consequence, the framework enables the observation of the relationships and flows of water taking place among all the sectors and activities in the economy. Finally, we also make use of the per capita water footprint estimations to get a clear picture of how the responsibility for water use is distributed once foreign trade is taken into account.One of the most important problems today is the scarcity of fresh water safe enough for human, industrial, and agricultural use. Desalination is an alternative source of fresh water supply in areas with severe problems of water availability. Desalination plants generate a huge amount of brine as the main residual from the plant (about 55% of collected seawater). Because of that, it is important to determine the best environmental option for the brine disposal. This article makes a global environmental analysis, under Spanish conditions, of a desalination plant and an environmental assessment of different final brine disposals, representing a range of the most common alternatives: direct disposal, wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) outflow dilution, and dilution with seawater. The environmental profile of the plant operation and a comparison of the brine final disposal alternatives were established by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. From an analysis of the whole plant we observed that the highest environmental impact was caused by energy consumption, especially at the reverse osmosis stage, while the most relevant waste was brine. From an analysis of brine final disposal we have elaborated a comparison of the advantages and detriments of the three alternatives. As all of them might be suitable in different specific situations, the results might be useful in decisions about final brine disposal.A coupled source-transport-storage model was developed to determine the origin and path of copper from materials/goods in use in the urban drainage area and the fate of copper in local recipient lakes The model was applied and tested using five small lakes in Stockholm, Sweden. In the case of the polluted lakes Racksta Trask, Trekanten and Langsjon, the source strengths of copper identified by the model were found to be well linked with independently observed copper contents in the lake sediments through the model. The model results also showed that traffic emissions, especially from brake linings, dominated the total load in all five cases Sequential sedimentation and burial proved to be the most important fate processes of copper in all lakes, except Racksta Trask, where outflow dominated The model indicated that the sediment copper content can be used as a tracer of the urban diffuse copper source strength, but that the response to changes in source strength is fairly slow (decades) Major uncertainties in the source model were related to management of stormwater in the urban area, the rate of wear of brake linings and weathering of copper roofs The uncertainty of the coupled model is in addition affected mainly by parameters quantifying the sedimentation and bury processes, such as particulate fraction, settling velocity of particles, and sedimentation rate As a demonstration example, we used the model to predict the response of the sediment copper level to a decrease in the copper load from the urban catchment in one of the case study lakes (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V All rights reservedThis article focuses on studying the natural and artificial water flows of the service sector from an industrial ecology perspective. The purpose is to determine, in the area under study, the water consumption of the service sector and the most water demanding services in global and relative terms, total water consumption per year and liters per user per year (Lpu) respectively, as well as the existing and potential water flow interrelations among service facilities to reduce their water consumption. Finally we propose measures for water consumption minimization, recycling and reusability based on the results of the diagnosis. The analyzed system is Montju < c Urban Park (Barcelona, Spain), where the economic activity is based on the service sector (about 200 service facilities and no industrial activities). In the individual study of services we found an average consumption of 75 Lpu, with a large range in the water consumption by service types (between 17 and 156 Lpu), and between facilities of the same service type (51 and 155 Lpu). These results indicate a high level and low regulation of water consumption among the service facilities. In the study of the interrelations between the services we found that a high potential for hydrological saving exists in the system (equivalent to 50% of the potable water inflow from the supply network). The results indicate a lack of ecosystemic and synergic vision in the service sector. Interrelations among water flows have to be established, by means of rainwater collection and the reuse of water flows from swimming pools and ornamental fountains. The article proposes the application of industrial ecology methods to improve water management inside Montju < c Urban Park and, in general, within any system where the service sector is the main economic activity.A visible-light-induced gas sensing element based on the heterostructures of CdS nanoparticles (NPs)/ZnO microcrystals has been successfully developed. Commercial ZnO microcrystals were coated with CdS nanoparticles by a sonochemical method to form the heterostructures. Compared with native CdS NPs, the as-obtained CdS NPs/ZnO showed enhanced photocurrent intensity. And the heterostructures-based element exhibited an excellent performance of photoelectric gas sensing to formaldehyde induced by visible-light. Moreover, the photocurrent intensity and sensitivity to formaldehyde were controllable by tuning the amount of CdS NPs attached on the surface of ZnO microcrystals. A possible explanation on the sensing mechanism has been proposed. In addition, the gas sensing element possessed good reproducibility. Our results demonstrate that the heterostructures of CdS NPs/ZnO is an efficient and promising material for visible-light-induced photoelectric gas sensors working at room temperature. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This scoping study takes a broad look at how information technology-enabled monitoring and control systems could assist in mitigating energy use in residences by more efficiently allocating the delivery of services by time and location. A great deal of energy is wasted in delivering services inefficiently to residents such as heating or cooling unoccupied spaces, overheating/undercooling for whole-house comfort, leakage current, and inefficient appliances. We construct a framework to estimate different categories of inefficient energy services and the result of our initial estimate is that over 39% of residential primary energy is wasted. We next discuss how monitoring and control technologies could manage home energy use to reduce waste. Technologies considered here include programmable thermostats, smart meters and outlets, zone heating, automated sensors, and wireless communications infrastructures. The level of energy services delivered is assumed to remain unchanged, with all energy savings being realized through better management. A final discussion on barriers to adoption of these systems speculates that a lack of consumer awareness of the technologies, high costs due to lack of economies of scale, and difficult user interfaces are currently the major hurdles toward adoption. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper describes the application of biological theory to an eco-industrial park (EIP), and provides support to some earlier research. Natural ecological theory is applied to the development of two indices by which to evaluate an EIP. The first index is the eco-connectance of an EIP that defines the degree of the connectivity among the enterprises or factories in an EIP; the second index defines the degree of byproduct and waste recycling in an EIP. The eco-connectances and the byproduct and waste recycling rates of selected ElPs were analyzed with the aid of theories that are proposed in the paper, and corresponding measures are put forward for planning and building of ElPs in the future. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.F-Si-co-modified TiO(2) (FST) samples with different ratios of fluorine to titanium (RF) and silica to titanium (R.), were successfully synthesized by ultrasound-assisted hydrolysis. The structure and properties of the as-prepared codoped titania were characterized by means of XRD, TEM, XPS, BET, UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectra and ESR. XRD analysis showed that Si and F atoms prevented phase transition of anatase to rutile and suppressed the growth of titania crystalline. ESR results showed that the concentration of the active species ((center dot)OH) on 1%-FST((Rx=10%)) was higher than that on other FST samples and P25 titania. The improvement in photocatalytic activity relative to titania can be achieved by co-modifying fluorine and silica to fabricate FST composite material. The photocatalytic activity of FST powders for decomposition of methyl orange was affected by the content of fluorine and the content of silica. When the ratios of R(F) and R(x) were 1 and 10%, respectively, 1%-FST((Rx=10%)) shows the best among photocatalytic activity, which is much superior to P25 under UV-Vis irradiation. The possible reasons for the high photocatalytic activity of the FST powders were proposed in the paper. In addition, the stability of the FST powders in photocatalytic process was confirmed based on the XPS analysis. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ongoing eutrophication is changing the Baltic Sea ecosystem. Aquaculture causes relatively small-scale nutrient emissions, but local environmental impact may be considerable. We used substance flow analysis (SFA) to identify and quantify the most significant flows and stocks of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) related to rainbow trout aquaculture in Finland. In 2004-2007, the input of nutrients to the system in the form of fish feed was 829 t N year(-1) and 115 t P year(-1). Around one-fifth of these nutrients ended up as food for human consumption. Of the primary input, 70% ended up in the Baltic Sea, directly from aquaculture and indirectly through waste management. The nutrient cycle could be closed partially by using local fish instead of imported fish in rainbow trout feed, thus reducing the net load of N and P to a fraction.Industrial Ecology involves the transformation of industrial processes from linear to closed loop systems: matter and energy flows which were initially considered as wastes become now resources for existing or new processes. In this paper, Thermoeconomics, commonly used for the optimization and diagnosis of energy systems, is proposed as a tool for the characterization of Industrial Ecology. Thermoeconomics is based on the exergy analysis ( Thermodynamics) but goes further by introducing the concepts of purpose and cost ( Economics). It is presented in this study as a systematic and general approach for the analysis of waste flow integration. The formulation is based on extending the thermoeconomic process of the cost formation of wastes in order to consider their use as input for other processes. Consequently, it can be applied to important Industrial Ecology issues such as identification of integration possibilities and efficiency improvement, quantification of benefits obtained by integration, or determination of fair prices based on physical roots. The capability of the methodology is demonstrated by means of a case study based on the integration of a power plant, a cement kiln and a gas-fired boiler.There exists a growing interest in understanding the mechanisms of innovations in the forestry sector. This article contributes to that goal by presenting a detailed study of the emergence of small-scale wood energy production practices in Finland. Given the distinctive and institutionally strong orientation of Finnish forestry towards raw material production for the pulp and paper industry, such innovative ways of using forest resources seem somewhat improbable and surprising. Despite this, we argue that the development of these new production practices can be understood as a process of institutional renewal that combines elements of continuity and novelty. In our empirical analysis, we follow the emergence of a new forest management category of "young forest" and explore how its naturalization as part of various institutional rules, identities and practices enabled the birth of local wood energy production within the forestry sector. In order to elucidate this multidimensional change, we analyze the new forest category as a boundary object. a socio-technical category with multiple functions and identities, within the large technological system of forestry. These analytical concepts help us illuminate how various material and discursive practices-both in the forestry and energy sectors and at the local and national levels-were able to interact for innovation and institutional change. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Water resource scarcity is becoming more and more serious and greatly restricts sustainable development in many locations. In this paper, the characteristics and implementation of a regional water resource sustainable utilization project in the Hai Hua Ecological Industry Pilot Zone (HHEIPZ) are described. In the project, a three-level water cycle pattern was built to relieve local water resource scarcity. The project was designed to suit the local context and operated at the individual firm level, the inter-firm level, and the regional level. The results show that the three-level water cycle was effective and provided sufficient and continuous water supply for sustainable local development. This paper also analyzes the main responsibility, impetus, and interrelation of the three cycles and gives some suggestions on how to further promote implementation of the three-level water cycle. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China has rapidly developed a number of Eco-industrial parks (EIPs) in recent years. In order to promote and regulate their development, two government agencies, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the National Development and Reform Commission are currently engaged in promoting national pilot EIP programs. Both agencies have developed their own management systems, and 60 industrial parks have been approved for construction of national pilot EIPs, among which six parks appear in both lists of the two agencies. This article introduces the practice of the national pilot EIPs. It first describes the management systems and achievements within the two programs, and then summarizes the problems encountered thus far in program implementation. Finally it proposes brief suggestions for future development of EIPs. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>This article presents the results of an experimental activity aimed at investigating the technical feasibility and the environmental performance of using municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash to produce glass frit for ceramic glaze (glaze frit). The process includes an industrial pretreatment of bottom ash that renders the material suitable for use in glaze frit production and allows recovery of aluminum and iron. The environmental performance of this treatment option is assessed with the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The goal of the LCA study is to assess and compare the environmental impacts of two scenarios of end of life of bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI): landfill disposal (conventional scenario) and bottom ash recovery for glaze frit production (innovative scenario). The main results of the laboratory tests, industrial simulations, and LCA study are presented and discussed, and the environmental advantages of recycling versus landfill disposal are highlighted.P>In this article, foundry sand as waste material has been valorized in ceramic brick manufacturing at industrial scale. The employment of a waste coming from one industry as an input for another is one of the key concepts of industrial ecology. To study the environmental behavior of the ceramic bodies in different life cycle stages, three leaching tests have been developed. We used an EN 12457 equilibrium leaching test with distilled water and a Wastewater Technology Centre acid neutralization capacity (WTC-ANC) leaching test with different acidic leachates to carry out the environmental evaluation under different granular scenarios to ascertain the possibilities of the reuse or disposal of this granular material at the end of its useful life (end-of-life stage). Finally, we used a NEN 7345 diffusion leaching test for construction materials, with the aim of studying the environmental assessment at the use stage. Regulated pollutants in both stages have been evaluated. Furthermore, other soluble salts have been analyzed because they are closely related to the efflorescence phenomenon in bricks. Results indicate that core and green sand from the foundry industry can be used to replace clay content in construction materials, and that these foundry-sand-based ceramics improve some soluble salt results. Despite this fact, at the end-of-life stage in an inert waste landfill, lead, arsenic and chromium can be an environmental problem, both for commercial bricks and for foundry-sand-based bricks. This work can contribute to the determination of viability of sustainable processes of brick manufacturing that use foundry wastes as raw materials.P>Due to increasing environmental concerns in the wastewater treatment sector, the environmental impacts of organic waste disposal procedures require careful evaluation. However, the impacts related to the return of organic matter to agricultural soils are difficult to assess. The goals of this study are to assess the environmental impacts of land application of two types of biosolids (dried and composted, respectively) from the same wastewater treatment plant in France, and to improve the quantification of human toxicity. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out on a case study based on validated data from an actual wastewater treatment plant. Numerous impacts were included in this analysis, but a particular emphasis was laid on human toxicity via plant ingestion. For six out of the eight impact categories included in the analysis, the dried biosolids system was more harmful to the environment than the composting route, especially regarding the consumption of primary energy. Only human toxicity via water, soil, and air compartments and ozone depletion impacts were higher with the composted biosolids.P>Closing loops by intercompany recycling of by-products is a core theme of industrial ecology (IE). This article considers whether industrial recycling networks or industrial symbiosis projects can be used as a starting point for much broader intercompany cooperation for sustainable development. Evidence presented is based on the results of an empirical investigation of the recycling network Styria in Austria, the recycling network Oldenburger Munsterland in Germany, and the manufacturing sector in Austria. Statistical analysis shows that the percentage of by-products that are passed on to other companies for recycling purposes is not higher in member companies of the recycling networks than in the other companies of the manufacturing sector in Austria. In terms of cooperation, the relationships with the respective recycling partners are found to be very similar to regular customer relations. Furthermore, the companies of the recycling networks remain unaware of the network to which they belong. Instead, one of the main findings of this study is that intercompany recycling activities are regarded by the company representatives as bilateral market transactions, not as collaborative network activities. This has potentially significant implications for the use of industrial symbiosis networks as starting points for sustainability networks with broader cooperation toward sustainability. The findings raise interesting questions as to whether such broader cooperation might result from a conscious planning process or might emerge largely spontaneously as part of normal market coordination. In any case, intercompany recycling is clearly considered to be a very important field of collaborative action for sustainability in industry.P>Collection and treatment of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is regulated in the European Union by the WEEE Directive. Producers are responsible for take-back and recycling of discarded equipment. Valuable materials are, however, at risk of "getting lost" in current processes. Thus, strategies to minimize losses are sought after. The material hygiene (MH) concept was introduced to address this issue. Structural features, which are important for the outcome of reuse, recovery, and recycling, were investigated in an earlier field study of discarded dishwashers. It was proposed that a prestep, manual removal of copper prior to shredding could increase the purity of recovered material fractions. This article builds on the field study and theoretical reasoning underlying the MH concept. Dishwashers are assumed to be designed for disassembly when the prestep is introduced. A limited life cycle assessment was performed to determine whether the proposed prestep may be environmentally beneficial in a life cycle perspective. Two alternatives were analyzed: Case 1: the current shredding process. Case 2: prestep removal of copper before shredding. Targeted disassembly prior to shredding may reduce the abiotic depletion and global warming potential in a life cycle perspective. The prestep results in increased copper recovery, but, more important, copper contamination of the recovered steel fractions is reduced. The results also highlight the importance of minimizing energy consumption in all process stages.P>Industrial ecology offers an original way of looking at economic activities. The approach is based on an analogy between certain objects studied by the science of ecology (ecosystems, metabolisms, symbiosis, biocenosis, etc.) and industrial systems. However, this analogical relationship raises difficulties due to the various interpretations to which it is open. Although there is agreement regarding its heuristic function, the analogy can nevertheless be understood either as a model or as a metaphor. The present article first attempts to show how models differ from metaphors. It then sets out to justify the epistemological relevance of this distinction for industrial ecology research. The reflection should thus contribute to clarifying the debate on the (supposed or desired) role of analogy in the field of industrial ecology and heighten the interest this field of investigation represents for implementing sustainable development.P>As design for recycling becomes more broadly applied in material and product design, analytical tools to quantify the environmental implications of design choices will become a necessity. Currently, few systematic methods exist to measure and direct the metallurgical alloy design process to create alloys that are most able to be produced from scrap. This is due, in part, to the difficulty in evaluating such a context-dependent property as recyclability of an alloy, which will depend on the types of scraps available to producers, the compositional characteristics of those scraps, their yield, and the alloy specification itself. This article explores the use of a chance-constrained based optimization model, similar to models used in operational planning in secondary production today, to (1) characterize the challenge of developing recycling-friendly alloys due to the contextual sensitivity of recycling, (2) demonstrate how such models can be used to evaluate the potential scrap usage of alloys, and (3) explore the value of sensitivity analysis information to proactively identify effective alloy modifications that can drive increased potential scrap use. These objectives are demonstrated through two cases that involve the production of a broad range of alloys utilizing representative scraps from three classes of industrial end uses.P>As governments elaborate strategies to counter climate change, there is a need to compare the different options available on an environmental basis. This study proposes a life cycle assessment framework integrating the Lashof accounting methodology, which enables the assessment and comparison of different carbon mitigation projects (e.g., biofuel use, a sequestering plant, an afforestation project). The Lashof accounting methodology is chosen amid other methods of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission characterization for its relative simplicity and capability to characterize all types of carbon mitigation projects. Using the unit of megagram-year (Mg-year), which accounts for the mass of GHGs in the atmosphere multiplied by the time it stays there, the methodology calculates the cumulative radiative forcing caused by GHG emission within a predetermined time frame. Basically, the developed framework uses the Mg-year as a functional unit and isolates impacts related to the climate mitigation function with system expansion. The proposed framework is demonstrated with a case study of tree ethanol pathways (maize, sugarcane, and willow). The study shows that carbon mitigation assessment through life cycle assessment is possible and that it could be a useful tool for decision makers, as it can compare different projects regardless of their original context. The case study reveals that system expansion, as well as each carbon mitigation project's efficiency at reducing carbon emissions, are critical factors that have a significant impact on the results. Also, the framework proves to be useful for treating land-use change emissions, as they are considered through the functional unit.P>This article evaluates the implications of uncertainty in the life cycle (LC) energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of rapeseed oil (RO) as an energy carrier displacing fossil diesel (FD). Uncertainties addressed include parameter uncertainty as well as scenario uncertainty concerning how RO coproduct credits are accounted for (uncertainty due to modeling choices). We have carried out an extensive data collection to build an LC inventory accounting for parameter uncertainty. Different approaches for carbon stock changes associated with converting set-aside land to rapeseed cultivation have been considered, which result in different values: from -0.25 t C/ha.yr (carbon uptake by the soil in tonnes per hectare year) to 0.60 t C/ha.yr (carbon emission). Energy renewability efficiency and GHG emissions of RO are presented, which show the influence of parameter versus scenario uncertainty. Primary energy savings and avoided GHG emissions when RO displaces FD have also been calculated: Avoided GHG emissions show considerably higher uncertainty than energy savings, mainly due to land use (nitrous oxide emissions from soil) and land use conversion (carbon stock changes). Results demonstrate the relevance of applying uncertainty approaches; emphasize the need to reduce uncertainty in the environmental life cycle modeling, particularly GHG emissions calculation; and show the importance of integrating uncertainty into the interpretation of results.P>Allocation in life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis is one of the long-standing methodological issues in life cycle assessment (LCA). Discussion on allocation among LCA researchers has taken place almost in complete isolation from the series of closely related discussions from the 1960s in the field of input-output economics, regarding the supply and use framework. This article aims at developing a coherent mathematical framework for allocation in LCA by connecting the parallel developments of the LCA and the input-output communities. In doing so, the article shows that the partitioning method in LCA is equivalent to the industry-technology model in input-output economics, and system expansion in LCA is equivalent to the by-product-technology model in input-output output economics. Furthermore, we argue that the commodity-technology model and the by-product-technology model, which have been considered as two different models in input-output economics for more than 40 years, are essentially equivalent when it comes to practical applications. It is shown that the matrix-based approach used for system expansion successfully solves the endless regression problem that has been raised in LCA literature. A numerical example is introduced to demonstrate the use of allocation models. The relationship of these approaches with consequential and attributional LCA models is also discussed.P>This article presents the trends of two indicators measuring fossil resource consumption in the United Kingdom (UK). First, a domestic material consumption (DMC) indicator for fossil resources (DMCfossil) in the mass unit million tonnes is calculated. DMCfossil shows that between 1970 and 2000 UK fossil resource consumption decreased by 10%, which suggests absolute dematerialization for this resource. Investigation into the mix of fossil resources during this period highlighted the shift from the heavy fossil resource coal to the lighter, more energy-dense natural gas, which resulted in decreased mass of resource required. Second, an alternative indicator, resource consumption by a nation (RCN) for fossil resources (RCNfossil) was calculated, which includes the indirect fossil resources attributable to traded goods and is measured in million tonnes of oil equivalent. RCNfossil shows that between 1970 and 2000 United Kingdom's fossil resource consumption increased by 14%, which emphasizes that even though there has been a decrease in the mass of fossil resources demanded, it has been accompanied by an increase in the volume of resource consumed. Additionally, deconstruction of RCNfossil shows that indirectly used resources attributable to exports and imports for the United Kingdom are significant. RCNfossil indicates that on the basis of past trends, fossil resources attributable to UK imports will overtake fossil resources attributable to its exports, which will make it dependent on imported resources. We conclude that further debate on appropriate aggregate and complementary indicators is needed.There are many approaches to study the environmental and sustainability aspects of production and consumption Some of these reside at the level of concepts, e.g, Industrial ecology, design for environment, and cleaner production. Other approaches are based on the use of quantitative models, e g., life cycle assessment, material flow accounting and strategic environmental assessment This paper focuses on the development of a framework that is able to incorporate different models for environmental analysis, with the option of a broader scope that also includes economic and social aspects, thus covering the three pillars of sustainability This framework builds on the ISO-framework for life cycle assessment, but takes a broader view, and allows us to move from micro questions on specific products, via meso questions on life styles tip to macro questions in which the entire societal structure IS part of the analysis (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.Intermolecular dihydrogen bonding in the electronically excited states of a phenol-diethylmethylsilane (DEMS) complex was Studied theoretically using the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) method. Analysis of the frontier molecular orbitals revealed a locally excited S(1) state for the dihydrogen-bonded phenol-DEMS complex in which only the phenol moiety is electronically excited. The calculated infrared spectrum of the phenol-DEMS complex is quite different from that of previously studied S(1) state of a dihydrogen-bonded phenol-borane-trimethylamine complex. The O-H and Si-H stretching vibrational modes appear as intense, sharp peaks for the S(1) state which are slightly red-shifted compared with those predicted for the ground state. Upon electronic excitation to the S(1) state, the O-H and Si-H bonds involved in the dihydrogen bond O-H center dot center dot center dot H-Si lengthen slightly, while the C-O bond shortens. The calculated H center dot center dot center dot H distance is significantly shorter in the S(1) state than in the ground state. Thus, the intermolecular dihydrogen bond of the phenol-DEMS complex is stronger in the electronically excited state than in the ground state. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To address the pollution that accompanies rapid industrial growth in China, a National Eco-industrial Park Demonstration Program was launched in 2000. This article provides a case study of the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA). The emergence of an environmental institution in TEDA is used as a backdrop to assess how TEDA has transformed itself into one of the top three national eco-industrial parks in China. Following two years of field research, a network of 81 inter-firm symbiotic relationships formed in TEDA during the past 16 years were identified involving the utility, automobile, electronics, biotechnology, food and beverage, and resource recovery clusters. The article assesses the environmental benefits of the key symbiotic exchanges in TEDA and summarizes some unique characteristics of EIP progress in a developing country. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The colourimetric pH indicators methyl red and bromocresol green have been immobilised in organic-inorganic silica hybrid matrices prepared by a sol-gel method. The optically transparent sol-gel thin films containing encapsualated dye molecules were deposited onto glass substrates using spin-coating and dip-coating techniques. The organic-inorganic hybrid materials were obtained by co-polymerisation of tetraethoxysilane together with glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane as an organically modified sol-gel precursor. Matrix polarity and morphology were varied by using solutions containing different ratios of sol-gel precursors and surfactants. Spectral characterisation of the films was performed using ultra-violet and visible absorption spectroscopy, and the spectral changes in different matrices were identified. The effects of the sol-gel mixtures composition on the mechanical stability and homogeneity of the films, and the colourimetric response to solutions of differing pH were studied. The apparent pK(app) values of the immobilised pH indicators were also determined in the different matrices. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Previous studies on environmental impacts embodied in trade have paid little attention to the impacts of labor input, or environmental overhead of labor input (EOLI). EOLI occurs to support lifestyles both in the purchase of goods and services and in the consumption of fuels and electricity by workers. This research investigates both supply chain manufacturing and EOLI energy use and carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions embodied in the 2002 China-U.S. trade. EOLI is substantial in scale: 24% of manufacturing energy in the U.S. and 6% for China. The higher share of EOLI in the U.S. is the result of higher energy use to support worker lifestyles. Analysis shows China's EOLI is dominated by the manufacturing of products consumed by workers, while EOLI on the U.S. side is primarily from workers' direct consumption. The total manufacturing and EOLI energy and CO(2) embodied in the eastbound trade from China to the U.S. are 6.5 exajoules (EJ) of energy (6% EOLI) and 440 million tons (Mt) Of CO(2) (8% EOLI). The total manufacturing and EOLI energy and CO(2) embodied in the westbound trade from the U.S. to China are 424 petajoules (PJ) of energy (19% EOLI) and 25.3 Mt of CO(2) (21% EOLI).For producer services' becoming more and more significant in economic development, it plays a vital role in optimizing industrial structures and realizing sustainable development of economy by studying the development mechanism of producer services. The evolution mechanism between the producer service and advanced manufacturing industry was explored by the Lotka-Volterra Mathematical model which is based on the industrial ecology theory, so that the development mechanism of the producer services could be analyzed. At last, the result that the effect of industrial guide, industrial extension and industrial incubation appears in the evolution of competition and reciprocity between producer services and advanced manufacturing is found.Based on the theory of industrial ecology, the connotation of comprehensive utilization of energy in iron & steel industry was analyzed and the he importance of comprehensive utilization of energy was expounded in terms of resources conversion and environment protection. Recovery approaches of secondary energy in iron & steel industry were studied. Finally, the paper put forward some advices of energy policy through analyzed problems of old policy system of the industry in our country.Regard low carbon development strategy of iron and steel industry as the research aim, based on recycling economy, industrial ecology and material flow analysis, in allusion to the question of resource, energy and environment that exist in the development course of iron and steel industry. We propose a series of countermeasures such as taking "reduce, reuse, recycle" as the principle, launching three different scales of recycling of industrial materials extensively, strengthening the material flow analysis for iron and steel enterprise, etc., to implement the low carbon development strategy of iron and steel industry.The frequent extreme weathers have raised great concern of the people on the ecological environment problems. How to coordinate the relationship of the environment and development is the core for the existence of human. And the numerous contradictions of the environment and industries have promoted the birth of industrial ecology. The paper firstly introduces the relevant concepts and domestic and foreign study trends of the industrial ecology and its measuring indicator eco-efficiency, and then carries out the empirical study of the industrial eco-efficiency of Xuzhou with suer-efficiency DEA method, studying on the vertical change trend of the industrial eco-efficiency of Xuzhou from 1995 to 2008, horizontal comparison with Suzhou. The result indicates that the industrial eco-efficiency of Xuzhou has been obviously improved, but the overall industrial eco-efficiency is lower than Suzhou which develops fast in economic. At last offers the corresponding suggestions according to the result.Developing more environmentally sustainable consumption and production systems depends upon consumers' willingness to engage in "greener" consumption behaviors. Research efforts have sought to identify, analyze, and understand the "green consumer." Initial marketing and economics research, focusing on purchasing activities, has been complemented by research from fields such as industrial ecology and sociology, providing a more holistic picture of green consumption as a process. Much of the research has focused on areas with the greatest environmental impacts, namely peoples' homes and household management, their food choices and behaviors, and their transport behaviors for work, leisure, and travel. The emerging picture of green consumption is of a process that is strongly influenced by consumer values, norms, and habits, yet is highly complex, diverse, and context dependent. There are Opportunities for future research that provides greater interdisciplinarity and challenges our assumptions and expectations about consumption and the nature of the consumer society.In Abruzzo Italian Region, after earthquake, it's possible to wish in a sustainable development for the future of sensitive areas using low tech material from the territory for building. Agricolture waste of cereal productions, very developed in those areas, can be used as material for low tech proposals building. In particular the use of straw in construction has been limited, until now, to those dedicated enough to acquire the skills and knowledge to build their own properties, in self construction. Now, in a critical situation of emergency, we have the chance to use this material in a commercial construction industry, born in the territory. The concept takes a material perceived as refuse and combines it with modern methods of construction, for consider it a resource and recreate an economic system, developing a sustainable, carbon-neutral cladding system.The Industrial Ecology (IE) is a new interdisciplinary field focused on sustainable development. IE aims to the shifting of industrial processes from open-loop systems where different resources move through a system to become wastes to a closed-loop system where wastes become inputs for new processes. This paper introduces a Green Virtual Enterprise (GVE) model as an emerging sustainable manufacturing and logistics mode focused on offering, delivering and recovering green products to/from the market, under a lifecycle thinking and supported by its source network. GVEs creation is considered within a GVE breeding environment context, which acts as a long-term collaborative network aimed at offering the conditions to efficiently promote the sharing and recycling of resources such as: information, materials, water, energy and/or infrastructure with the intention of increasing economic gains and achieving sustainable development.This paper presents a systems analysis perspective that extends the traditional process design framework to green process design, green energy and industrial ecology leading to sustainability. For green process design this involves starting the design decisions as early as chemical and material selection stage on one end, and managing and planning decisions at the other end. However, uncertainties and multiple and conflicting objectives are inherent in such a design process. Uncertainties increase further in industrial ecology. The concept of overall sustainability goes beyond industrial ecology and brings in time dependent nature of the ecosystem and multi-is illustrated for the mercury cycling. Power plant sector is a major source of mercury pollution. In order to circumvent the persistent, bioaccumulative effect of mercury, one has to take decisions at various levels of the cycle starting with greener power systems, industrial symbiosis through trading, and controlling the toxic methyl mercury formation in water bodies and accumulation in aquatic biota.disciplinary decision making. Optimal control methods and theories from financial literature can be useful in handling the time dependent uncertainties in this problem. Decision making at various stages starting from green process design, green energy, to industrial ecology, and sustainability is illustrated for the mercury cycling. Power plant sector is a major source of mercury pollution. In order to circumvent the persistent, bioaccumulative effect of mercury, one has to take decisions at various levels of the cycle starting with greener power systems, industrial symbiosis through trading, and controlling the toxic methyl mercury formation in water bodies and accumulation in aquatic biota.Sustainability of human activities is entirely dependent on the availability of ecosystem goods and services such as carbon sequestration, mineral and fossil resources, sunlight, biogeochemical cycles, soil formation, pollination, etc. However, most existing methods in sustainable engineering and industrial ecology ignore this crucial role played by nature. The use ofsuch a narrow boundary can lead to perverse and misleading results. This paper introduces the idea of designing networks of technological systems along with their supporting ecological systems. Such technological-ecological networks (TEco-Nets), can emulate ecosystems by having closed material loops and minimum exergy loss, leading to truly self-sustaining systems. Methods for designing TEco-Nets could be developed by extending existing process synthesis and design approaches to include ecological models. Such an approach would integrate industrial ecology with ecological engineering and require collaboration between engineers and ecologists. It presents many new challenges and opportunities for process systems engineering to contribute to the sustainability of engineered systems. The idea of TEco-Nets is illustrated via several practical case studies, with focus on a typical residential system and the life cycle of corn ethanol.As one branch of industrial ecology, the ecoindustrial park (EIP) concept is being accepted and implemented in many parts of the world. In order to pursue a sustainable industrial development, China's government is forging this concept into a new strategy of industrial development and regional practices. This article aims to depict a picture of current China's experiences on EIP. It first presents two stages of EIP development at national level. Then more details at individual level are provided by three cases studies, that is, Dafeng, Lubei, and Nanhai, in which three points are addressed: (1) the industrial and environmental backgrounds of EIP projects; (2) specific resource sharing; and (3) benefits and challenges in these projects. The case studies show that the government acts as a key role player, facilitating multiple functions in the development of EIP projects. The case studies also suggest that many factors including holistic, economic, social, and technical aspects need to be taken into account to develop a successful EIP project.People in the world are more concerned about environment protection than ever before, which calls for green manufacturing (GM) and industrial ecology. With more eco-industrial parks (EIPs) built up recently in China, this GM, however, is progressively integrated into a ideal framework featuring in economies of scale as well as circular economy, aiming at saving energy, protecting the environment and sustaining economic growth. Jiangxi provincial government commits itself to constructing ten EIPs, one of which is Hengfeng EIP that succeeds both in business & investment invitation and circular economy. Likewise, some of the issues surrounding the environmental performance and resource management require a lot of exploration.This paper examines the possibility of Public-Private-People partnership (4P) model as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from residential developments. The case project focuses on the energy system design as a part of urban planning. Based on the case experiences, the paper presents a 4P framework for low-carbon residential development systems. The theoretical model was tested in one specific case project, Nupurinkartano. The major findings were that the 4P framework is a relevant tool for decreasing carbon emissions when planning a new development; the applied solution delivered an energy system design that could reduce the CO2 emissions of the development by 75%. Based on literature this paper suggests that a new development should be viewed as one system instead of several different subsystems. The paper concludes by suggesting that 4P offers an alternative approach for urban planning, specifically energy system planning, and it can deliver significant improvements in carbon efficiency.The Thai Government has committed to promoting the production and use of biodiesel in place of petro-diesel oil, with the objective of reducing the country's dependence on imported oil. However, biodiesel production generates large amounts of waste and wastewater. This research aspires to adopt industrial ecology measures to alleviate environmental problems encountered in the biodiesel industry in Thailand. The proposed implementation options included clean technology and waste exchange measures. Five biodiesel production factories were selected to analyse material flow and balance in the production processes. The results show that 1 m3 biodiesel production generated 8kg of spent bleaching earth, 140kg of glycerine and 0.50m3 of wastewater with a chemical oxygen demand (COD) content of up to 170,000mg/L. The postulated options, on the basis of clean technology, included methanol recovery from the methyl ester and glycerine mixture, substitution of the hydroxide catalyst by methoxide, and reuse of the final washing water used in the methyl ester purification step. These options are expected to reduce raw material and water use in the production processes. The wastes or by-products generated from the biodiesel production process can be utilised as raw material for other industries. Crude glycerine, which is produced in large quantities from the trans-esterification process, can be reused or recycled by a value-added conversion for other industries. In addition, the biodiesel wastewater mostly obtained from the methyl ester washing process can be treated in an anaerobic digestion system to produce biogas for electricity generation.Most chemical companies consume a lot of steam, water and electrical resources in the production process. Given recent record fuel costs, utility networks must be optimized to reduce the overall cost of production. Environmental concerns must also be considered when preparing modifications to satisfy the requirements for industrial utilities, since wastes discharged from the utility networks are restricted by environmental regulations. Construction of Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) has drawn attention as a promising approach for retrofitting existing industrial parks to improve energy efficiency. The optimization of the utility network within an industrial complex is one of the most important undertakings to minimize energy consumption and waste loads in the EIP. In this work, a systematic approach to optimize the utility network of an industrial complex is presented. An important issue in the optimization of a utility network is the desire of the companies to achieve high profits while complying with the environmental regulations. Therefore, the proposed optimization was performed with consideration of both economic and environmental factors. The proposed approach consists of unit modeling using thermodynamic principles, mass and energy balances, development of a multi-period Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model for the integration of utility systems in an industrial complex, and an economic/environmental analysis of the results. This approach is applied to the Yeosu Industrial Complex, considering seasonal utility demands. The results show that both the total utility cost and waste load are reduced by optimizing the utility network of an industrial complex. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban areas, in particular cities, are significant consumers of materials and energy, either directly on their land areas or indirectly through the materials, goods and services they import or export; there are upstream and downstream consequences of the removal of resources and the discharge of waste materials (to the atmosphere, water and soils), with multiple impacts on the biosphere. The processes involved need to be better characterised to reduce these environmental pressures. This is a sustainable development issue and it is a major goal of a field ecology which has been described as urban, industrial or sometimes territorial. This paper reviews the specific origins and findings of studies on urban metabolism. It describes the analysis tools used, including material and substance flows, energy balances, ecological, water and, more generally, environmental footprints. Finally, recent findings and areas for future research in the dematerialisation of urban societies are summarised.P>This introductory article situates the contributions that comprise this special issue within the field of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) studies. After a brief review of the policy history surrounding SCP, we organize our discussion and the subsequent collection of articles into two groups. The first suite of articles views the environmental impacts associated with household consumption from the perspectives of different consumer groups, income levels, and geographic areas. This work confirms and refines several insights that have been developing over the past several years, namely that food and beverages, mobility, housing, and energy-using products are the most critical consumption domains from the standpoint of environmental sustainability and that higher household income leads to greater (but less than proportional) impacts. The second subset of articles analyzes the potential for mitigating these impacts through behavioral changes and innovation strategies. Although the contributions to this special issue describe several noteworthy examples of information- and team-based initiatives to catalyze behavioral changes, the state of knowledge pertaining to this aspect of the consumption problem is much more inchoate. Research on the formulation and implementation of effective "change management for sustainable consumption" should be treated as an area of priority attention for industrial ecologists.P>Households exert an important influence on total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, their consumption behavior is of interest in evaluations of climate policy options and projections of future emission paths. While most evaluations of household consumption and its emissions are based on expenditure only, we use a household consumption model based on functional units (e.g., kg food, person kilometers, living square meters). The goal of this article is to assess changes in consumption with increasing affluence level of households and to compare the allocation of GHG emissions to monetary versus functional units. We find that (1) the model based on functional units provides good bottom-up estimates for greenhouse emissions of Swiss households; (2) quality (price per functional unit) increases with income for many consumption categories, and therefore using functional instead of monetary units leads to a lower increase of greenhouse gas emissions with income; (3) the relevance of GHG emissions from goods and mobility will increase. We conclude that using household models based on monetary units only overestimates the impact of marginal consumption and neglects the potential of decoupling income and environmental impact by consuming better instead of more. For sustainable consumption, research and policy should aim at preventing goods of higher quality from having higher environmental impact in order to benefit from the increasing quality orientation with rising income.P>In this article we apply geodemographic consumer segmentation data in an input-output framework to understand the direct and indirect carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with consumer behavior of different lifestyles in the United Kingdom. In a subsequent regression analysis, we utilize the lifestyle segments contained in the dataset to control for aspects of behavioral differences related to lifestyles in an analysis of the impact of various socioeconomic variables on CO2 emissions, such as individual aspirations and people's attitudes toward the environment, as well as the physical context in which people act. This approach enables us to (1) test for the significance of lifestyles in determining CO2 emissions, (2) quantify the importance of a variety of individual socioeconomic determinants, and (3) provide a visual representation of "where" the various factors exert the greatest impact, by exploiting the spatial information contained in the lifestyle data. Our results indicate the importance of consumer behavior and lifestyles in understanding CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom. Across lifestyle groups, CO2 emissions can vary by a factor of between 2 and 3. Our regression results provide support for the idea that sociodemographic variables are important in explaining emissions. For instance, controlling for lifestyles and other determinants, we find that emissions are increasing with income and decreasing with education. Using the spatial information, we illustrate how the lifestyle mix of households in the United Kingdom affects the geographic distribution of environmental impacts.P>This article links databases on household consumption, industrial production, economic turnover, employment, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions into a spatially explicit model. The causal sequence starts with households demanding a certain consumer basket. This demand requires production in a complex supply-chain network of interdependent industry sectors. Even though the household may be confined to a particular geographical location, say a dwelling in a city, the industries producing the indirect inputs for the commodities that the household demands will be dispersed all over Australia and probably beyond. Industrial production represents local points of economic activity, employment, water use, and emissions that have local economic, social, and environmental impacts. The consumer basket of a typical household is followed in Australia's two largest cities-Sydney and Melbourne-along its upstream supply chains and to numerous production sites within Australia. The spatial spread is described by means of a detailed regional interindustry model. Through industry-specific emissions profiles, industrial production is then translated into local impacts. We show that annually a typical household is responsible for producing approximately 80 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, uses around 3 million liters of water, causes about A$140,000 to circulate in the wider economy, and provides labor worth just under three full-time employment-years. We also introduce maps that visually demonstrate how a very localized household affects the environment across an entire continent. Our model is unprecedented in its spatial and sectoral detail, at least for Australia.P>Von Hippel and colleagues have highlighted the crucial role of users in innovation in different industries and types of products. They describe the innovation process in terms of the distinct domains of knowledge that producers and users possess. Producers have knowledge about technical solutions and users about their needs, the context of use, and their own capabilities as users. Both sets of knowledge are characterized by "stickiness": They move relatively freely within their own domain but are difficult to transfer outside of it. In the case of radical innovations for sustainable consumption, the problem of "sticky information" is compounded. Both producers and consumers need to reach out of their conventional competencies and search for new solutions. "Societal actors," such as government bodies or environmental experts, can show the way to such solutions, but this new knowledge needs to be integrated with the "sticky" knowledge about everyday practices in production and consumption. In the present article we attempt to conceptualize the role and interaction of user and producer knowledge with the knowledge of environmental experts in housing energy innovations. We do so by applying the user-producer interaction framework to a case study on the introduction of low-energy housing concepts in Finland. On the basis of this analysis, we draw conclusions on the potential and limitations of today's practices in the field. For example, we suggest that user involvement can help to enhance the acceptance of low-energy solutions but that the methods for involving users need to be adapted to the particular circumstances in each industry.P>Comprehensive assessments of final consumption have identified "housing" as a major contributor to total environmental impacts. Within this category, electrical-energy-using products are important. Do consumers opt for more energy-efficient household appliances if they are provided with life cycle cost (LCC)-that is, the sum of purchase price and operating cost estimated over the life span of the appliance? And what consequences does LCC disclosure have for business? Physical energy figures shown on appliance labels may be cognitively demanding for consumers, whereas monetary information promises to simplify the decision problem. Despite the rising interest in monetary cost disclosure, its effectiveness relative to physical cost disclosure has not been rigorously evaluated. This research approached the question of effectiveness with an online field experiment for washing machines. Customers of a commercially operating online shop were randomly assigned to two groups. The control group was provided with regular product price information; the treatment group received additional LCC information. A total of 2,065 clicks were recorded and analyzed with multiple regression that controlled for several product characteristics. The evidence suggests that LCC disclosure decreases the mean specific energy use of chosen washing machines by 0.8% (p < 0.01) and their mean specific water use by 0.7% (p < 0.05). As to business implications, LCC disclosure had no effect on the indicator of retail volume, which makes it unattractive for retailers to provide LCC on their own initiative.P>Life cycle cost (LCC) computations are a well-established instrument for the evaluation of intertemporal choices in organizations, but they have not been widely adopted by private consumers yet. Consumer investment decisions for products and services with higher initial costs and lower operating costs are potentially subject to numerous cognitive biases, such as present-biased preferences or framing effects. This article suggests a classification for categorizing different cost profiles for eco-innovation and a conceptual model for the influence of LCC information on consumer decisions regarding eco-innovation. It derives hypotheses on the decision-making process for eco-innovation from a theoretical perspective. To verify the hypotheses, the publication reviews empirical studies evaluating the effects of LCC information on consumer investment decisions. It can be concluded that rather than finding ways to make customers pay more for environmentally sound products, the marketing challenge for eco-innovation should be reconceptualized as one of lowering customers' perceived initial cost and increasing awareness of LCC. Most existing studies report a positive effect of LCC information on the purchase likelihood of eco-innovations. Disclosing LCC information provides an important base for long-term thinking on the individual, corporate, and policy levels.P>This article explores the intrinsic role of context in shaping the course and outcomes of interventions aimed at changing environmentally significant behavior in home and workplace settings. Drawing on sociological theories of symbolic interactionism, we evaluate the social dynamics and mechanisms of two similar, team-based behavior change interventions at work (Environment Champions) and at home (EcoTeams). The analysis shows that the interventions open up different levels of opportunity for reviewing and renegotiating new environmentally friendly behaviors against the reactions and expectations of the immediate peer group, existing workplace or domestic roles, and the situation-specific definitions of what counts as appropriate behavior in the home and the workplace. We argue that policy studies should pay greater attention to the processes of behavior change, or the contextually sensitive relationship between interventions and outcomes, as a step toward refining or streamlining interventions aimed at changing environmentally significant behavior.P>This article focuses on the energy consumption of households and the question of how daily routines can be changed in a more sustainable direction. It discusses different theoretical approaches with which to understand consumer behavior and introduces practice theory that emphasizes sociotechnical structures as the basis for analyzing stability of consumer practices and opportunities for change. Through analysis of ten in-depth interviews with families participating in a project aimed at reducing standby consumption, it is shown how technological configurations, everyday life routines, knowledge, and motivation constitute the practice and also structure the possibilities for change. The article concludes by contending that a conception of human behavior that is both less rational and less individualistic is needed to understand stability and change of households' energy consumption behavior.This paper proposes the consideration of non-linear cost function based on ecological considerations for lot-size planning. The classical approaches of lot-size optimization, the Wagner-Whitin algorithm and the Part-Period Balancing heuristic, are enhanced with so called eco-factors. These eco-enhanced approaches combined with eco-balancing help to reduce overall production costs. Simultaneously the environmental impact is reduced.An intermolecular coexistent hydrogen bond and a dihydrogen bond of a novel phenol-H2O-diethylmethylsilane (DEMS) complex in the electronically excited states were studied using the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) method. Frontier molecular orbitals analysis revealed that the S-2 state of the dihydrogen-bonded phenol-H2O-DEMS complex is a locally excited state in which only the phenol site is electronically excited. Upon electronic excitation, the O-H and H-Si vibrational modes are red shifted compared with those calculated for the ground state. The O-H and H-Si bonds involved in the dihydrogen bond O-H center dot center dot center dot H-Si and hydrogen bond O-H center dot center dot center dot O are longer in the S-2 state than in the ground state. The H center dot center dot center dot H and H center dot center dot center dot O distances significantly shorten in the S-2 state. Thus, both the intermolecular dihydrogen bond and the hydrogen bond of the phenol-H2O-DEMS complex are stronger in the electronically excited state than in the ground state. In addition, the hydrogen bonding is favorable for the formation of the intermolecular dihydrogen bond in the ground state. However, they are competitive with each other in the electronically excited state.Industrial ecology is founded on analogies and lateral thinking, borrowing and adapting, and opening up the frontiers of imagination and innovativeness to make the road to sustainable development more tractable. Talking of the key role mankind needs to play to make sustainable development a reality, a wonderful analogy is uncovered between holistic individual human development and the triple bottom line approach (economic, social and environmental) to sustainable progress of humanity as a whole on the surface of the earth. An individual starts off from gross materialism (body) but needs to aim for the right blend of physical, emotional and spiritual advancement in life. When all individuals do so, a lop-sided socio-economic techno-sphere will gradually metamorphose into a fully-evolved one. Paradoxically, individuals need to delve in and comprehend their spiritual selves, for the technosphere to fan out and embrace the earth of which it is just a small component.Circular economy is a new economic growth mode, by resource of continuous processing and recycling to reach the purpose of enhancing resource utilization, conserving resources and reducing pollution. Eco-industrial Park is a new form of industrial organization based on the concept of circular economy and industrial ecology principles. Circular economy theory is one of core theories of building the eco-industrial park, therefore, the construction of eco-industrial parks need to follow the concept of circular economy.Eco-agriculture refers to a new intensive sustainable modern agriculture system that is eco-rational and a virtuous circle. Eco-agricultural industry chain is the new agricultural economy that is based on the concept of eco- economy and the principles of industry chain. Theoretical basis of eco-agricultural industry chain include industry chain theory, industrial ecology theory and Eco-economy theory. The build path of eco-agricultural industry chain is building green industry group, setting up the industry clusters of eco-economy, developing of waterfowl breeding industry, establishing livestock and poultry products deep processing base, strengthening technology introduction and fostering core enterprises.Ecological function area plays important roles in water saving,,floods storage, soil and water conservation, sand fixation, biodiversity maintenance. It should under the management from both central government and local governments. It needs special protection and limited regional development. YiChun is a forestry ecological function area in Eleventh Five-Year Plan of the country. Considering the natural conditions and policy factors, Yichun should make inevitable choice in industrial restructuring. That is to develop ecological industry and the existing industrial ecology. Ecological industry development can promote the harmony between human and nature in the region, economic and environmental coordinated development. Therefore, the pattern will change from the pursuit of single economic growth or natural protection to economic and accumulation of ecological assets growth jointly. This article makes the positive analysis by summarizing the relevant data for the relationship between ecological industry development and economic growth in Yichun. It analyzes whether there is co-integration relation between ecological industry development and economic growth in Yichun. It reveals the acceleration role of ecological industry for economic growth objectively. It is of important significance for predicting the numbers of ecological industry and formulating industrial structure adjustment policies reasonably.Industrial ecology suggests innovative pathways for re-use and recovery of waste streams, but efforts to establish eco-industrial networks have encountered both technical and institutional barriers. To help overcome these challenges, an Industrial Ecosystem Toolkit has been developed to quantify how such collaborative networks can reduce costs, employ assets more efficiently, increase revenue, reduce risks, and conserve natural resources. The tools draw upon methods from network flow optimization modeling and environmental life cycle assessment, and enable real-time, interactive use by decision makers. Working with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U. S. Business Council for Sustainable Development, and other regional organizations, the Center for Resilience has applied these innovative tools to promote a systems approach based on sound science and informed decision-making. Future work will develop network models that represent synergies among industrial and ecological processes.The typical disciplinary approach that underlies most research areas is fragmented. Consequently, advances in science and technology are often disconnected from and uninformed of the potential sustainability implications of new technologies. The PhD program in Sustainability at RIT establishes a program of study that links discipline-specific science with an understanding of the integrative sciences of sustainability, such as industrial ecology, ecological economics, risk analysis, energy policy, and ethics. Ultimately, the proposed program will transform the graduate experience by making it highly collaborative, team-based, and embedded in the broader context of economic, environmental and social understandingCurrently, industrial ecology system is still in the black-box analysis stage, which means that analysis of the inherent structures and function of the system remain fairly shallow. The conceptual model of eco-industrial parks is set up according to the natural ecosystem. The model comprises of (1) definition of species in an eco-industrial park, (2) the structure and function of an eco-industrial system, (3) the classification of the enterprises as producers, consumers, decomposers, and (4) the interactions of each component in an eco-industrial park. Methodology is very important for researching eco-industrial parks, and some analysis tools are in brief specialized, i.e. the network analysis, life-cycle assessment, input-output analysis, emergy analysis, industrial metabolism, and mass balance and material flow accounting.Eco-Industrial Parks are the third generation of industrial parks besides industrial parks and high-tech parks. To develop industrial circular economy parks is an effective way to ease environmental pressure. Moreover, to rebuild different types of industrial parks in line with the concept of circular economy contribute largely to promote sustainable development. For various existing industrial parks, it is necessary to carry out circular economic transformation plan and build up eco-industrial parks. This paper introduces the concept of eco-industrial parks, sums up several types and requirements of eco-industrial parks and their theoretical base, and then proposes several suggestions to construct eco-industrial parks in China.In order to minimize the consumption of resources and the generation of waste, eco-industrial parks (EIPs) have been designed to encourage the establishment of waste exchange networks between the plants contained within them. Considering that the participating plants have their individual fuzzy cost goals and that the park authority has the objective of minimizing total freshwater consumption in the EIP, this problem may be formulated as a bi-level optimization problem, with the park authority as the upper-level decision-maker. A bi-level fuzzy optimization model is developed to explore the effect of charging fees for the purchase of freshwater and the treatment of wastewater in optimizing the water exchange network of plants in an EIP, The effect of subsidizing exchange of streams between plants is also included in the model. Results show that it is not necessary to impose exorbitant fees, nor to completely subsidize costs associated with recycling, in order to induce significant reduction of the consumption of freshwater in the EIP. (C) 2009 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.A sustainable industrial metabolism, integrating technical patterns into ecological systems should be doubtless related to humans further challenges. By modeling the power electrical transformers in dynamic regimes according to an industrial ecosystem pattern, one could provide a holistic view of the interactions and symbiosis interrelationships among human activities, technical systems operation and ecological processes. The laws of the Universe should be used in assessing the viability of the human technical applications according to the ecosystems models. Physically, dynamic regimes of electric transformers are characterized by the variation in time of "electromagnetic status". Mathematically, the processes dynamics of electric transformers are described by differential equations which, in most cases, are nonlinear. Based on the mathematical model equations, in this paper will be presented the structural diagrams method, as a modeling method of three-phase electric transformers in dynamic regimes. Among others, the benefit derived from the easily conversion of structural diagrams in Matlab-Simulink implementations. By modeling the electrical transformer dynamic regimes according to an industrial ecosystem pattern, one could attempt to minimize the environmental impacts and optimize the efficiency of energy use within the power transformer operation.Purpose: This paper explains the concept of agribusiness parks, a concept aimed improving sustainability and logistic efficiency of agro-food production through alternative spatial design: clustering of different agro-activities along voluminous (by-) products flows and along fresh primary products. The focus of this paper is on the role of scientific research to facilitate the practical realization of agribusiness parks. Methodology/approach: Clustering of different activities in fresh production chains as well as clustering of different production chains sets conditions for increasing production efficiency and sustainability. Potential merits are reduction of transport, increasing product quality and new opportunities for utilization of rest products. In order to assess the merits quantitatively, a cluster simulation model system has been developed. This numerical model connects inputs and outputs of various (agro-)activities, estimates investments and financial results and predicts sustainability effects (including bio-energy production and CO2 emission reduction potentials. Findings: The modeling system proves very valuable in practical agribusiness park development initiatives. Through the model, choices to be made by entrepreneurs can be quickly evaluated. This partly eliminates uncertainty of entrepreneurs due to mutual dependency of the parties in agribusiness park development. The model is parameterized based on various data found in literature and other public sources. Results compare well to more precise estimations made by system engineers during detail-engineering phases. Practical implications: The models has (in various variants) been used for different agribusiness park initiatives. It proves very valuable to the process of decision taking by the entrepreneurs. In order to improve re-usability a new version will be developed in a generic modeling system environment. Background: Greenhouse gas (GHG) production, as a cause of climate change, is considered as one of the biggest problems society is currently facing. The livestock sector is one of the large contributors of anthropogenic GHG emissions. Also, large amounts of ammonia (NH(3)), leading to soil nitrification and acidification, are produced by livestock. Therefore other sources of animal protein, like edible insects, are currently being considered. Methodology/Principal Findings: An experiment was conducted to quantify production of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) and average daily gain (ADG) as a measure of feed conversion efficiency, and to quantify the production of the greenhouse gases methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O) as well as NH(3) by five insect species of which the first three are considered edible: Tenebrio molitor, Acheta domesticus, Locusta migratoria, Pachnoda marginata, and Blaptica dubia. Large differences were found among the species regarding their production of CO(2) and GHGs. The insects in this study had a higher relative growth rate and emitted comparable or lower amounts of GHG than described in literature for pigs and much lower amounts of GHG than cattle. The same was true for CO(2) production per kg of metabolic weight and per kg of mass gain. Furthermore, also the production of NH(3) by insects was lower than for conventional livestock. Conclusions/Significance: This study therefore indicates that insects could serve as a more environmentally friendly alternative for the production of animal protein with respect to GHG and NH(3) emissions. The results of this study can be used as basic information to compare the production of insects with conventional livestock by means of a life cycle analysis.To date the impact of thermal emissions has not been addressed in life cycle assessment despite the narrow thermal tolerance of most aquatic species. A method to derive characterization factors for the impact of cooling water discharges on aquatic ecosystems was developed which uses space and time explicit integration of fate and effects of water temperature changes. The fate factor is calculated with a 1-dimensional steady-state model and reflects the residence time of heat emissions in the river. The effect factor specifies the loss of species diversity per unit of temperature increase and is based on a species sensitivity distribution of temperature tolerance intervals for various aquatic species. As an example, time explicit characterization factors were calculated for the cooling water discharge of a nuclear power plant in Switzerland, quantifying the impact on aquatic ecosystems of the rivers Aare and Rhine. The relative importance of the impact of these cooling water discharges was compared with other impacts in life cycle assessment We found that thermal emissions are relevant for aquatic ecosystems compared to other stressors, such as chemicals and nutrients. For the case of nuclear electricity investigated, thermal emissions contribute between 3% and over 90% to Ecosystem Quality damage.A sustainable supply of both energy and water is critical to long-term national security, effective climate policy, natural resource sustainability, and social wellbeing. These two critical resources are inextricably and reciprocally linked; the production of energy requires large volumes of water, while the treatment and distribution of water is also significantly dependent upon energy. In this paper, a hybrid analysis approach is proposed to estimate embodied energy and to perform a structural path analysis of drinking water supply systems. The applicability of this approach is then tested through a case study of a large municipal water utility (city of Kalamazoo) in the Great Lakes region to provide insights on the issues of water-energy pricing and carbon footprints. Kalamazoo drinking water requires approximately 9.2 MJ/m(3) of energy to produce, 30% of which is associated with indirect inputs such as system construction and treatment chemicals.The impact on human health of substances emitted to air by the Flemish industry was calculated with characterization factors (CFs) provided by the CML, Eco-indicator 99, EPS, EDI P and USEtox impact assessment methods. A comparison of the results pointed out that the choice of the CFs can greatly influence conclusions on the trend of the impact over time and on the relative contribution of the individual substances. lithe impact on human health of organic substances and heavy metals was assessed separately, the differences between methods were less pronounced. In this case, the impacts on human health obtained by simply dividing the emitted masses of substances by the respective minimal risk concentrations or minimal risk doses, were comparable to those calculated with the CFs of the model-based methods. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A commercially available pure lead acid battery electric scooter (GoPed) was converted to a hydrogen fuel cell battery hybrid scooter (HFCHS) in views of investigating the effect of hybridisation on driving duty cycles range performance recharging times well to wheel CO2 footprint and overall running costs The HFCHS with plug in features consisted mainly of a 500 W hydrogen PEM Fuel Cell stack connected to four 12 V 9 Ah lead acid batteries and two hydrogen metal hydride canisters supplying pure hydrogen (99 999%) and also acting as heat sink (due to endothermic hydrogen desorption process) In this study the HFCHS urban driving cycle was compared with that of a conventional petrol and pure battery electric scooter The energy consumed by the HFCHS was 0 11 kWh/km with an associated running cost of 0 pound 01/km a well to wheel CO2 of 9 37 g CO2/km and a maximum range of 15 miles It was shown that the HFCHS gave better energy efficiencies and speeds compared to battery and petrol powered GoPed scooters alone (C) 2010 Professor T Nejat Veziroglu Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedCETEA has conducted a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of PE (polyethylene) plastic bags with emphasis on the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), collecting data for the reference year 2003. The goal of this paper is to present part of this complete study, focusing on the influence of polyethylene recycling rate on the LCI of PE plastic bags in Brazil. For generating the Brazilian average data of ethylene, HDPE-HMW, HDPE/LLDPE and LDPE, the data were compiled taking into account, respectively, 61, 100, 78 and 63% of the companies involved in each phase of the production process. After the companies agreed to collaborate with the Project, appropriate questionnaires were prepared and sent for data collection. The companies were responsible for both collecting the data and completing the data sheets. The calculation of the Brazilian average polyethylene recycling was accomplished considering the data supplied by seven companies. The calculation of the Brazilian average PE plastic bags production was accomplished considering the data supplied by four companies. Taking into account the impact categories adopted in this study it has been demonstrated that recycling helps to improve the PE plastic bags environmental profile measured as LCI data.The oil palm nursery is the first link in the palm oil supply chain where oil palm seedlings are produced for the cultivation of palms in plantations. One seedling is the defined functional unit. This article outlines the environmental impacts, identified using life cycle assessment (LCA), associated with the production of a single seedling, and the proposed mitigation measures. LCA is a cradle-to-gate study which starts at the pre-nursery stage, proceeding to the main nursery before subsequent transplantation of the seedlings in the plantation. An audit on electricity, diesel, fertilizers, pesticides, polybags and water consumption was carried out using data obtained from a questionnaire on the life cycle inventory of seedling production. The information obtained was then verified by follow-up site visits. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) was carried out for a single seedling produced, using the SimaPro software version 7.1 and the Eco indicator 99 methodology. Polyvinylchloride (PVC) pipes were also included in the study. Ecotoxicity was found to be the major impact category followed by fossil fuel and respiratory inorganics.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important tool for identifying potential environmental impacts associated with the production of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) from specific operations in Malaysian oil palm plantations. This LCA study is to make available the life cycle inventory for cradle-to-gate data so that the environmental impacts posed by FFB production in the plantation can be assessed. The results of the study provide the Malaysian palm oil industry with information, and identify ways and measures to reduce the environmental impacts. Most of the foreground data were collected directly from the oil palm plantations (site specific) from a detailed survey of the estates throughout Malaysia. The inventory data were collected from 102 plantations (based on feedback to a questionnaire) covering 1.1 million hectares of planted area, which is approximately 25% of the total area under oil palm. This survey area consisted of immature (1- to 2-year-old palms) and mature (3- to 25-year-old palms) areas, with both data sets included in the inventory for an amortized period of 25 years. Data gaps were filled by information obtained through literature and public databases, or calculated using published models. The inputs and outputs from upstream activities were quantified on the basis of a functional unit of production of 1 t FFB, while the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) was carried out using the Sima Pro version 7.1 software and the Eco-indicator 99 methodology. The weighted results of LCA for the production of 1 t FFB from continued land use (replanting) show significant environmental impacts in the fossil fuels, respiratory inorganics and climate change categories. The most significant process contributing to these environmental impacts comes from the production and usage of the various fertilizers (especially N fertilizers) from the use of field machinery (tractors) during operations in the plantation, and the use of transport vehicles bringing inputs to the plantations and transporting FFB to the mills. Producing FFB from continued land use (replanting) has no effect on land use. The results clearly show that nitrogenous fertilizer production and application in the plantation is the most polluting process in the agricultural stage of FFB production; this is followed by the energy used by the machinery in the plantations and for transportation of FFB to the mills. Ways of reducing the environmental impacts are by increasing the FFB yield through the use of high-yielding oil palm planting materials which will result in increased fruit production, by applying more organic sources of nitrogen fertilizer instead of chemical fertilizers, by returning the nutrient-rich slurry from palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment ponds to the field, or by applying compost (empty fruit bunches + POME) as fertilizer.The oil palm industry is a very important industry which contributes immensely towards the economy of the country. In 2009 alone, the total exports of oil palm products, constituting palm oil, palm kernel oil, palm kernel cake, oleochemicals and finished products, amounted to 22.40 million tonnes, resulting in total export earnings of KM 49.59 billion. The oil palm industry is an export-orientated industry which relies heavily on the world market. Therefore, it is vital for the oil palm industry to be sustainable and competitive to increase its long-term profitability. The objective of this study is to identify the potential environmental impacts associated with the production of crude palm oil (CPO), and to evaluate opportunities to overcome the potential impacts. This study has a cradle-to-gate system boundary. This article is part of the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the whole supply chain for palm oil, and is linked to the upstream LCA for nursery and plantation which can be found in Parts 1 and 2. This article examines the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of the production of 1 t of CPO at the palm oil mill. For this study, 12 palm oil mills were selected. These mills were selected based on the type of mill, i.e. whether they were plantation-based mills or private mills, and having different processing capacities for fresh fruit bunches (FFB). The mills selected were all located in different zones in West Malaysia. Inventory data collection consisted of inputs and outputs of materials and energy. LCIA was carried out using the Simapro software version 7.1 and the Eco-indicator 99 methodology. Results show that the impact categories with significant impacts were from fossil fuels, respiratory inorganics and climate change. The impact under the fossil file's category came from the production of the fertilizers used as well as diesel usage for transportation and harvesting in the nursery and plantation phases. The impact categories of climate change and respiratory inorganics came from upstream activities and the palm oil mill effluent (POME) in the mill. Both these impact categories are related to air emissions. The main air emission from the POME ponds during the anaerobic digestion was biogas which consisted of methane, carbon dioxide and traces of hydrogen sulphide. The unharvested biogas is a greenhouse gas. The impact under respiratory inorganics and climate change from upstream was caused by the application of nitrogen fertilizers in the plantation as well as the nursery. When biogas was captured, the impact under climate change was reduced. What was left were the impacts from upstream activities. The Malaysian oil palm industry should seriously look into the old sludge treatment system which is emitting biogas. They should capture the biogas and use it as renewable energy source, or produce value-added products such as fertilizer from POME which will eliminate methane generation.The present reality is that we have to deal with environmental deterioration. Mitigation using the life cycle assessment (LCA) concept must be viewed as an investment for our future generations, if not for ourselves, because efforts in mitigation of environmental degradation will translate into a concerted effort to combat the many environmental impacts resulting from mismanagement of natural resources and energy. The oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFB) are a unique crop product. Two types of oil can be obtained from this raw material. Crude palm oil (CPO) is obtained from the mesocarp while palm kernel oil is obtained from the kernel within the nut. CPO is processed at palm oil mills, and the kernels which are removed from the cracked nuts is a by-product at the palm oil mills as has been discussed in the Part 3 article. These kernels are then transported by trucks to kernel-crushing plants that process the kernels into crude palm kernel oil (CPKO). The objective of this study is to identify the potential environmental impacts associated with the production of CPKO, and to evaluate opportunities to overcome the potential impacts. This study has a cradle-to-gate system boundary. This resulting article is part of LCA of the whole palm oil supply chain which is linked to the upstream LCA for nursery (Part I), plantation (Part 2) and palm oil mill (Part 3). The article examines the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of the production of 1 t of CPKO at the kernel-crushing plant. For this study, six kernel-crushing plants were chosen for their locations which were well-distributed all over Peninsular Malaysia. Five kernel-crushing plants were located near the ports, while the remaining plant was located right beside a palm oil mill. This selection strategy was carried out to examine the different scenarios that exist in Malaysia, and also to ensure that they were representative of the scenarios of all kernel-crushing plants in Malaysia. Inventory data collection consisted of inputs and outputs of materials and energy. LCIA was carried out using the Simapro software version 7.1, and the Eco-indicator 99 methodology was selected. Based on the results, the main impacts from upstream activities were from fertilizer production and application, and biogas emissions. The impacts directly associated with the production of CPKO were mainly from the transportation of palm kernels from the palm oil mills to the kernel-crushing plants and from the electricity consumption from the grid for the processing of the CPKO. The best scenario for the production of CPKO with the least environmental impact was when the kernel-crushing plant was integrated with a palm oil mill which captured the biogas.With the increasing global attention to sustainable development, the environmental and social relevance of palm oil production are now defining issues in responsible trade. The life cycle assessment (LCA) study on refined palm oil (RPO) and its fractionated products is part of the sustainable solution provided by the Malaysian palm oil industry. The study was conducted according to established ISO (International Standards Organization standards) for LCA. The system model for this LCA study was developed and analyzed using SimaPro software, and the Eco-indicator 99 methodology was used for the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). An average of 1.05 t of crude palm oil (CPO) is required for the production of 1 t of RPO. The greatest environmental burden arising from refining is from CPO, and consequently from RPO for fractionation to produce refined palm olein (RPOo) and palm stearin (RPOs). This is followed by boiler fuel combustion and the transport of materials, suggesting that a potential mitigation measure for the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) and consequently the impact on climate change would be to address these three inflows into the system. It was found that sourcing CPO from mills with systems in place for capturing biogas reduced the impact on climate change by about 40%.In Malaysia, the major consumers of energy are the industrial and transport sectors. The demand is expected to increase steadily in tandem with the growth of the economy. As such, alternative sources of energy need to be developed, in particular energy from renewable sources, to meet the energy requirements. Fatty acid methyl esters, commonly known as biodiesel, derived from oils and fats have long been known as a potential diesel substitute. Biodiesel is suitable to be used neat or blended with petroleum diesel in any proportion in an unmodified diesel engine. However, the many concerns related to the emissions from the production and use of biodiesel have been discussed globally. Thus, this life cycle assessment study was conducted to investigate the environmental impacts from the production and use of palm biodiesel produced using MPOB's production technology. The results show that the environmental impact from the production of palm biodiesel is related to the use of methanol, while the use of palm biodiesel contributes to the impact categories of respiratory inorganics and acidification/eutrophication. In spite of these, the production and use of palm biodiesel is more environmental-friendly as compared to petroleum diesel.With high population densities concentrated in predominately coastal zones, the South Pacific will, in this century, be heavily impacted by global temperature and sea level rises. Small island developing states do have a number of unique problems, namely, small scale economic development together with environmental sustainability. This paper presents the lessons learnt from the implementation of the first cleaner production and design initiative project conducted in a Pacific small island developing state(s) (SIDS) using the design for sustainability (D4S) methodology. The final product was analysed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. Implemented within a medium-sized enterprise operating in Fiji, the Cook Islands, and Samoa, the project focused on improving an existing product and its associated life cycle to make it more environmentally friendly to manufacture, retail, and dispose of. The project outcomes revealed that D4S provides a suitable tool for a country like Fiji to pursue more intensively an eco-friendly manufacturing agenda. However, when combined with LCA, the qualitative nature of D4S shows that not all solutions produce the best overall result. Specifically, the "improved" design, whilst being less impactful on Fiji in terms of disposal, has a higher impact globally due to the production and manufacture of the new materials used. For this reason designers need to address the impact criteria and decide whether a domestic or international agenda is of greater concern within the SIDS context. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reports the investigation results of the energy payback time (EPBT) and greenhouse-gas payback time (GPBT) of a rooftop BIPV system (grid-connected) in Hong Kong to measure its sustainability. The 22 kWp PV array is facing south with inclined angle of 22.5 degrees. The hourly solar irradiance and ambient air temperature from 1996 to 2000 were used as weather data input. The annual power output was found to be 28,154 kWh. The embodied energy for the whole system in the lifespan was 205,816 kWh, including 71% from PV modules and 29% from balance of system (BOS). The percentage of embodied energy for silicon purification and processing reached 46%. The EPBT of the PV system was 7.3 years, and the GPBT was estimated to be 5.2 years considering fuel mixture composition of local power stations. This paper also discussed the EPBTs for different orientations, ranging from 7.1 years (optimal orientation) to 20.0 years (west-facing vertical PV facade). The results show that the 'sustainability' of a PV system is affected by its installation orientation and location. Choosing locations and orientations with higher incident solar irradiance is one key for the sustainability of BIPV technology applications. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since 2003 India has been actively promoting the cultivation of Jatropha on unproductive and degraded lands (wastelands) for the production of biodiesel suitable as transportation fuel. In this paper the life cycle energy balance, global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential and land use impact on ecosystem quality is evaluated for a small scale, low-input Jatropha biodiesel system established on wasteland in rural India. In addition to the life cycle assessment of the case at hand, the environmental performance of the same system expanded with a biogas installation digesting seed cake was quantified. The environmental impacts were compared to the life cycle impacts of a fossil fuel reference system delivering the same amount of products and functions as the Jatropha biodiesel system under research. The results show that the production and use of Jatropha biodiesel triggers an 82% decrease in non-renewable energy requirement (Net Energy Ratio, NER = 1.85) and a 55% reduction in global warming potential (GWP) compared to the reference fossil-fuel based system. However, there is an increase in acidification (49%) and eutrophication (430%) from the Jatropha system relative to the reference case. Although adding biogas production to the system boosts the energy efficiency of the system (NER = 3.40), the GWP reduction would not increase (51%) due to additional CH4 emissions. For the land use impact, Jatropha improved the structural ecosystem quality when planted on wasteland, but reduced the functional ecosystem quality. Fertilizer application (mainly N) is an important contributor to most negative impact categories. Optimizing fertilization, agronomic practices and genetics are the major system improvement options. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Through the Renewable Energies Plan 2000-2010, Spain has fixed the objective of covering 12% of the primary energy demand from renewable sources. The achievement of this objective implies an annual increase of 22.4% of the energy produced from renewable sources. In this context, the objective of this study is to determine if the electricity from biomass produced in Spain would be environmentally competitive with electricity from natural gas or from the Spanish electricity mix. For that, the environmental impacts associated to the whole life cycle of two energetic crops in Spain, Poplar and Ethiopian mustard, used for power generation were evaluated. The overall assessment includes the cultivation and collection of biomass, its transport and the processes of its energetic transformation. We calculated different scenarios of electricity production from biomass in different capacity power plants (10, 25 or 50 MW), different transport scenarios and different productivities for biomass production. Our results show that, given the assumptions of this study, Ethiopian mustard is more impacting than Poplar when used for electricity production. Also, the transportation of biomass from the field to the power plant is an important stage that has to be carefully planned in order to get the maximum amount of electricity with a minimum environmental impact. Compared to electricity from natural gas or the Spanish electricity mix, the electricity obtained from biomass is more impacting in three from six impact categories we present here. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a LCA study about household heat from Short Rotation Coppice wood pellets combustion. The overall process, from field growth to ash disposal, was considered; environmental analysis was carried out using a LCA software programme (Simapro 7.0) and adopting the EcoIndicator 99 model for the evaluation of the global burden; analysis with EPS 2000 and EDIP methodologies were also carried out, in order to compare the different approaches. For the pellet production process, mass and energy flows were measured on an existing Italian plant, while other data were obtained from the Literature; a comparison between results obtained using only data from Literature and using data from the existing plant was made, showing for the pelleting phase a value of about 23% lower if measured data are used. The LCA study showed that agricultural operations account for most of the environmental impact if evaluated both with EcoIndicator 99 and EPS 2000; EDIP gave results that were not very reliable for this chain, due to the high weight given to the infrastructures and machinery construction. The comparison between data obtained considering and not considering the infra-structures contribution in the LCA analysis with EcoIndicator 99 showed a modest contribution of infra-structures on the final score (about 2%). The overall impact evaluated with EcoIndicator 99 is considerably less than the one caused by natural gas heating. The Energy Return Ratio was finally calculated; a value of 3.25 was found, good if compared to the one for the methane combustion, equal to 6. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment has been used to investigate the environmental and economic sustainability of a potential operation in the UK in which bioethanol is produced from the hydrolysis and subsequent fermentation of coppice willow, lithe willow were grown on idle arable land in the UK, or, indeed, in Eastern Europe and imported as wood chips into the UK, it was found that savings of greenhouse gas emissions of 70-90%, when compared to fossil-derived gasoline on an energy basis, would be possible. The process would be energetically self-sufficient, as the co-products, e.g. lignin and unfermented sugars, could be used to produce the process heat and electricity, with surplus electricity being exported to the National Grid. Despite the environmental benefits, the economic viability is doubtful at present. However, the cost of production could be reduced significantly if the willow were altered by breeding to improve its suitability for hydrolysis and fermentation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The automobile industry in China has rapidly developed in recent years which resulted in an increase in gasoline usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Focus on climate change has also accelerated to grow pressure on reducing vehicle weight and improving fuel efficiency. Aluminum (Al) as a light metal has demonstrated a great potential for weight savings in applications such as engine blocks, cylinder heads, wheels, hoods, tailgates etc. However, primary Al production requires intensive energy and the cost of Al is more than traditional steel, which may affect the total benefits realized from using Al in automobiles. Therefore, it is very essential to conduct a study to quantify the life cycle GHG emissions and energy consumption if the plan is to achieve fleet-wide Al intensive vehicles. This paper describes a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and the general modeling assumptions used to evaluate the impact of Al intensive vehicle on GHG emissions and energy consumption. The results indicated that the reductions in life cycle GHG emissions and energy consumption were not significant when the maximum Al content in an automobile is 145 kg, which is the average level of Al usage in automobiles in North America. A neural network methodology was used to forecast the vehicle stock in China from 2010 to 2020 and a vehicle fleet model was established to track GHG emissions and energy consumption of the vehicle fleet. A material availability factor was also introduced into the LCA methodology to further assist decision makers in providing rational proposals for a widespread implementation of Al in automobiles. A sensitivity analysis was also conducted to study the impact of the Al content in a vehicle on the final outcomes. The GHG emissions and energy consumption could be further reduced when the Al content in an automobile increases. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper combines an existing projection of the development of electricity production with a technology-specific environmental assessment. The combination of these two approaches, which so far have only been performed separately, allows a discussion about environmental effects of carbon capture and storage (CCS) implementation strategies on a national level. The results identify the future role of lignite and hard coal in German power production. The implementation of CCS technology leads to a considerable loss of efficiency. Due to CCS, about 50 million t of lignite will be additionally required in 2030 in comparison to the reference case without CCS in 2010. Increasing demand, the replacement of old plants and the compensation of efficiency losses lead to highly ambitious expansion rates. In the case of CCS implementation, the global warming potential (GWP) can be reduced by up to 70%. However, other environmental impacts increase in part considerably. Compliance with national ceilings for NOx emissions can only be reached by compensation measures in other sectors The results of the environmental assessment demonstrate the significant role of the coal composition, coal origin and the required transport. CO2 pipeline transport and CO2 storage make a fairly minor contribution to the overall environmental impact. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since the potentially available agricultural land for energy crop cultivation is limited, the area should be used in a sustainable and efficient way. In this project, the "basket of benefit" methodology, a special life-cycle assessment approach, is used to calculate emissions of different bioenergy pathways, related to 1 ha of agricultural land. The method comprises both land use and energy output in one functional unit and enables a comparison in spite of the different "end use" (electricity, heat, and fuels). In this article, environmental impacts of different utilization pathways of biogas from energy crops are assessed. Decentralized electricity and heat production in a cogeneration plant is compared with feeding purified biomethane into the gas grid for centralized electricity and heat production, and to the usage as transportation fuel. Similarly, biogas is compared with biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from sugar beet. Calculations are based on the conditions in south-east Germany. Results for the impact categories global warming potential and eutrophication potential are presented. Regarding greenhouse gas emissions, the results are heterogeneous: Biogas shows fewer emissions than biodiesel and bioethanol only if a big proportion of the generated heat is consumed. Biogas use as biofuel can be rated similar to the use of the other biofuels. Due to the application of digestates as fertilizer, biogas exhibits a higher eutrophication potential than the other bioenergy carriers. At the moment, more bioenergy pathways, as well as additional impact categories, are being included into the analysis.A life cycle assessment model with eight potential scenarios for the conversion of energy crops into biogas and bioethanol in Germany has been developed, in order to compare energetic output/input relationships and potential environmental effects of the different pathways. The model includes parameter from the literature as well as own data collected at laboratory and semi-industrial scale trials. Corn silage and ripe triticale, both whole plants, were chosen as typical energy crops for the assessment. In addition, steam explosion as a pretreatment technique was examined. Biogas, as well as bioethanol combined with biogas, is potentially helpful to reduce the consumption of nonrenewable energy carriers and its greenhouse gas emission under the investigated scenarios and the scope set. A future task will be the development of differentiated and well-adapted concepts on the basis of a decision on liquid or gaseous fuels versus stationary supply of thermal and electrical energy from biomass.The emissions of ten representative agricultural biogas plants located in Germany were investigated to generate a comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions that occur within the biogas production process. The main methane emission sources were identified by a site inspection with a portable flame ionization detector. Whenever possible, the released amount of methane was quantified by installing a chamber around the identified sources. The chamber was flushed with air, and the values of the flow rate and the measured concentrations in the exhaust allowed the determination of the methane emissions. The two main sources of emissions turned out to be the digestate storage tanks when constructed without a sealed cover and the cogeneration unit. In some cases, improper handling of equipment within the gas-filled digester headspaces and pipes caused substantial emissions. The results will be used for a comprehensive life cycle assessment of the biogas production process. Finally, sufficient measures for a substantial reduction of emissions will be developed.A life cycle assessment (LCA) model was developed to determine the environmental impacts associated with a modeled modern Northern Great Plains U.S. swine production facility. This region has experienced significant growth (2.5 million head increase since 1996) and currently accounts for 13% of U.S. swine herd. The LCA model followed a "gate-to-gate" perspective focusing solely on feed manufacturing and swine production facility operations and did not include feedstuff production or abattoir and other postproduction supply chain processes. Model input data were normalized using a head of swine functional unit and were segregated into two operation processes and associated subprocesses: feed manufacturing including electricity use and completed feed transport, and production facility operations including manure handling and storage, enteric emissions, electricity generation and propane production, and water extraction. Four distinct operation scenarios were modeled, including normal operations, use of feed-based antimicrobials, a 50% reduced completed feed transportation distance, and a 30% increased use of renewable energy for all operations. For the normal operations scenario, climate change impacts were predominantly attributed to swine enteric emissions (331.6 kg CO(2) eq) and manure storage and handling (53.4 kg CO(2) eq), whereas antimicrobial use reduced total climate change impacts by 3.7%. Manure storage and handling resulted in the greatest contribution toward marine eutrophication (0.048 kg N eq) and terrestrial acidification (1.29 kg SO(2) eq) impacts, whereas production facility electricity and heating resulted in the greatest terrestrial ecotoxicity (0.00060 kg 1,4-DB eq) and freshwater eutrophication (0.00016 kg P eq) impacts observed. Results from this LCA model provide Northern Great Plains swine producers and environmental practitioners with techniques that can be used to improve swine production efficiencies and identify opportunities for a future carbon-constrained and sustainability-aware marketplace.Cement production is an environmentally relevant process responsible for 5% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and 7% of industrial fuel use. In this study, life cycle assessment is used to evaluate improvement potentials in the cement production process in Europe and the USA. With a current fuel substitution rate of 18% in Europe and 11% in the USA, both regions have a substantial potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save virgin resources by further increasing the coprocessing of waste fuels. Upgrading production technology would be particularly effective in the USA where many kiln systems with very low energy efficiency are still in operation. Using best available technology and a thermal substitution rate of 50% for fuels, greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 9% for Europe and 18% for the USA per tonne of cement. Since clinker production is the dominant pollution producing step in cement production, the substitution of clinker with mineral components such as ground granulated blast furnace slag or fly ash is an efficient measure to reduce the environmental impact. Blended cements exhibit substantially lower environmental footprints then Portland cement, even if the substitutes feature lower grindability and require additional drying and large transport distances. The highest savings in CO2 emissions and resource consumption are achieved with a combination of measures in clinker production and cement blending.The environmental impacts of remediation of a chloroethene-contaminated site were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The compared remediation options are (i) in situ bioremediation by enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD), (ii) in situ thermal desorption (ISTD), and (iii) excavation of the contaminated soil followed by off-site treatment and disposal. The results showed that choosing the ERD option will reduce the life-cycle impacts of remediation remarkably compared to choosing either ISTD or excavation, which are more energy-demanding. In addition to the secondary impacts of remediation, this study includes assessment cf local toxic impacts (the primary impact) related to the on-site contaminant leaching to groundwater and subsequent human exposure via drinking water. The primary human toxic impacts were high for ERD due to the formation and leaching of chlorinated degradation products, especially vinyl chloride during remediation. However, the secondary human toxic impacts of ISTD and excavation are likely to be even higher, particularly due to upstream impacts from steel production. The newly launched model, USEtox, was applied for characterization of primary and secondary toxic impacts and combined with a site-dependent fate model of the leaching of chlorinated ether es from the fractured clay till site.Atlantic horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) is one of the main target pelagic species of the coastal purse seining and bottom trawling Galician fleets The goal of this LCA study was to assess and compare the environmental impacts associated with the fishing operations related to Atlantic horse mackerel extraction in these two Galician coastal fisheries This analysis Included the operation of the vessels together with major inputs related to the production of diesel fishing nets or anti-fouling paints Data regarding vessel operation was obtained from the questionnaires filled out by a total of 54 skippers Results showed that environmental burdens regarding horse mackerel landing are associated mainly with activities related to diesel production transport and consumption of the fishing vessels Furthermore cooling agent leakage from the cooling chambers was identified as a major impact regarding ozone layer depletion and global warming potentials Horse mackerel captured by purse seiners presented reduced environmental burdens for all impact categories respect to horse mackerel landings by bottom trawlers The environmental reduction ranged from 49 to 89% depending on the Impact category analyzed Discard rates for coastal trawlers were also identified as a major environmental impact in this fishery Revision of fishing quotas and fishing strategies for the horse mackerel fishery and reduction of energy consumption through the introduction of new alternative fuels or technological actions are necessary in order to reduce the environmental impacts of a highly fuel-dependent activity (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reservedCo-pyrolysis of coal with waste plastic is increasingly being looked upon as a potential technique to counter the present day challenges in energy and waste management by harnessing the multiple benefits associated with the same. In the present work, the kinetics of co-pyrolysis of waste LDPE carried out with coal of Ledo origin from the coalfields of Assam (India) has been studied. A thermo-gravimetric (TG) study of the co-pyrolysis has been carried out taking waste LDPE-coal mixtures in ratios of 3: 1, 1: 1, and 1: 3 by weight and at five varying heating rates from 5 to 25 K min(-1) with a 5 K increment. Experiments were also carried out for the individual components at all the five heating rates. This TG analysis data was used to evaluate the kinetics parameters such as the activation energy, pre-exponential factors, and the reaction orders, applying a model fitting approach. The results of the kinetics analysis indicate higher activation energy for the mixtures. With increase in the coal percentage, the reaction order is found to increase. Also the synergistic effect between the two sample species in the mixtures has been studied and found to indicate presence of interaction between coal and LDPE. The effect of sample composition on the products of co-pyrolysis has also been compared. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.First-generation biofuels are an existing, scalable form of renewable energy of the type urgently required to mitigate climate change. In this study, we assessed the potential benefits, costs, and trade-offs associated with biofuels agriculture to inform bioenergy policy. We assessed different climate change and carbon subsidy scenarios in an 11.9 million ha (5.48 million ha arable) region in southern Australia. We modeled the spatial distribution of agricultural production, full life-cycle net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and net energy, and economic profitability for both food agriculture (wheat, legumes, sheep rotation) and biofuels agriculture (wheat, canola rotation for ethanol/biodiesel production). The costs, benefits, and trade-offs associated with biofuels agriculture varied geographically, with climate change, and with the level of carbon subsidy. Below we describe the results in general and provide (in parentheses) illustrative results under historical mean climate and a carbon subsidy of A$20 t-1 CO2-e. Biofuels agriculture was more profitable over an extensive area (2.85 million ha) of the most productive arable land and produced large quantities of biofuels (1.7 GL yr-1). Biofuels agriculture substantially increased economic profit (145.8 million $A yr-1 or 30%), but had only a modest net GHG abatement (-2.57 million t CO2-e yr-1), and a negligible effect on net energy production (-0.11 PJ yr-1). However, food production was considerably reduced in terms of grain (-3.04 million t yr-1) and sheep meat (-1.89 million head yr-1). Wool fiber production was also substantially reduced (-23.19 kt yr-1). While biofuels agriculture can produce short-term benefits, it also has costs, and the vulnerability of biofuels to climatic warming and drying renders it a myopic strategy. Nonetheless, in some areas the profitability of biofuels agriculture is robust to variation in climate and level of carbon subsidy and these areas may form part of a long-term diversified mix of land-use solutions to climate change if trade-offs can be managed.Life-cycle assessment was used to evaluate the widespread installation of green roofs in a typical urban mixed-use neighborhood. Market prices of materials, construction, energy conservation, storm-water management, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions were used to evaluate private and social costs and benefits. Results suggest green roofs are currently not cost effective on a private cost basis, but multifamily and commercial building green roofs are competitive when social benefits are included. Multifamily and commercial green roofs are also competitive alternatives for reducing greenhouse gases and storm-water runoff. However, green roofs are not the most competitive energy conservation techniques. GHG impacts are dominated by the material production and use phases. Energy impacts are dominated by the use phase, with urban heat island (UHI) impacts being an order of magnitude higher than direct building impacts. The quantification of private and social costs and benefits should help guide green roof policy. Results should encourage green roof enthusiasts to set appropriate life-cycle assessment boundaries, including construction material impacts and UHI effects.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of a domestic cooker hood was conducted. Cradle-to-grave analysis was performed using the GaBi software with Eco-Indicator 99 (Egalitarian Approach). The most polluting phases were "manufacturing" and "use", the environmental impact being affected especially by production materials and the electricity consumed during the product's lifespan. The study also highlighted that the hood's environmental impact is closely related to the local power grid mix. This aspect was further analyzed by entering the data for operating it both in Italy and in France. Finally, the improvements obtained by replacing the single-phase electrical motor with an inverter-driven three-phase induction one and the halogen lamps with Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps were assessed with the LCA. These changes entail an improvement of the environmental impact of 36% in Italy and of 24% in France. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hydrilla (Hydrilla verticillata) is one of the world's most problematic invasive aquatic plants. Although management of hydrilla overgrowth has often been based on use of chemical herbicides, issues such as the emergence of herbicide-resistant hydrilla biotypes and the need for in situ nutrient remediation strategies have together raised interest in the use of harvester machines as an alternative management approach. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, we calculated a range of net energy and economic benefits associated with hydrilla harvests and the utilization of biomass for biogas and compost production. Base case scenarios that used moderate data assumptions showed net energy benefit ratios (NEBRs) of 1.54 for biogas production and 1.32 for compost production pathways. NEBRs for these respective pathways rose to 2.11 and 2.68 when labor was excluded as a fossil fuel input Base case biogas and compost production scenarios respectively showed a monetary benefit cost ratio (BCR) of 1.79 and 1.83. Moreover, very high NEBRs (3.94 for biogas; 6.37 for compost) and BCRs (>11 for both biogas and compost) were found for optimistic scenarios in which waterways were assumed to have high hydrilla biomass density, high nutrient content in biomass, and high priority for nutrient remediation. Energy and economic returns were largely decoupled, with biogas and fertilizer providing the bulk of output energy, while nutrient remediation and herbicide avoidance dominated the economic output calculations. Based on these results, we conclude that hydrilla harvest is likely a suitable and cost-effective management program for many nutrient-impaired waters. Additional research is needed to determine how hydrilla harvesting programs may be most effectively implemented in conjunction with fish and wildlife enhancement objectives. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>There is an increasing worldwide concern about the problem of dealing with the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), given the high volume of appliances that are disposed of every day. In this article, an environmental evaluation of WEEE is performed that combines life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and multivariate statistical techniques. Because LCA handles a large number of data in its different phases, when one is trying to uncover the structure of large multidimensional data sets, multivariate statistical techniques can provide useful information. In particular, principal-component analysis and multidimensional scaling are two important dimension-reducing tools that have been shown to be of help in understanding this type of complex multivariate data set. In this article, we use a variable selection method that reduces the number of categories for which the environmental impacts have to be computed; this step is especially useful when the number of impact categories or the number of products or processes to benchmark increases. We provide a detailed illustration showing how we have used the proposed approach to analyze and interpret the environmental impacts of different domestic appliances.P>Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare the current water supply planning in Mediterranean Spain, the so-called AGUA Programme, with its predecessor, the Ebro river water transfer (ERWT). Whereas the ERWT was based on a single interbasin transfer, the AGUA Programme excludes new transfers and focuses instead on different types of resources, including seawater and brackish water desalination and wastewater reuse, among others. The study includes not only water supply but the whole anthropic cycle of water, from water abstraction to wastewater treatment. In addition to standard LCA impact categories, a specific impact category focusing on freshwater resources is included, which takes into account freshwater scarcity in the affected water catchments. In most impact categories the AGUA Programme obtains similar or even lower impact scores than ERWT. Concerning impacts on freshwater resources, the AGUA Programme obtains an impact score 49% lower than the ERWT. Although the current water planning appears to perform better in many impact categories than its predecessor, this study shows that water supply in Spanish Mediterranean regions is substantially increasing its energy intensity and that Mediterranean basins suffer a very high level of water stress due to increasing demand and limited resources.P>The mix of electricity consumed in any stage in the life cycle of a product, process, or industrial sector has a significant effect on the associated inventory of emissions and environmental impacts because of large differences in the power generation method used. Fossil-fuel-fired or nuclear-centralized steam generators; large-scale and small-scale hydroelectric power; and renewable options, such as geothermal, wind, and solar power, each have a unique set of issues that can change the results of a life cycle assessment. This article shows greenhouse gas emissions estimates for electricity purchase for different scenarios using U.S. average electricity mix, state mixes, state mixes including imports, and a sector-specific mix to show how different these results can be. We find that greenhouse gases for certain sectors and scenarios can change by more than 100%. Knowing this, practitioners should exercise caution or at least account for the uncertainty associated with mix choice.P>In this article we consider interactions between life cycle emissions and materials flows associated with lightweighting (LW) automobiles. Both aluminum and high-strength steel (HSS) lightweighting are considered, with LW ranging from 6% to 23% on the basis of literature references and input from industry experts. We compare the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with producing lightweight vehicles with the saved emissions during vehicle use. This yields a calculation of how many years of vehicle use are required to offset the added GHG emissions from the production stage. Payback periods for HSS are shorter than for aluminum. Nevertheless, achieving significant LW with HSS comparable to aluminum-intensive vehicles requires not only material substitution but also the achievement of secondary LW by downsizing of other vehicle components in addition to the vehicle structure. GHG savings for aluminum LW varies strongly with location where the aluminum is produced and whether secondary aluminum can be utilized instead of primary. HSS is less sensitive to these parameters. In principle, payback times for vehicles lightweighted with aluminum can be shortened by closed-loop recycling of wrought aluminum (i.e., use of secondary wrought aluminum). Over a 15-year time horizon, however, it is unlikely that this could significantly reduce emissions from the automotive industry, given the challenges involved with enabling a closed-loop aluminum infrastructure without downcycling automotive body structures.P>Policy makers and practitioners working on local climate action continuously strive for improved greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories to support their mitigation strategies. The provision of such inventories, with the sufficient detail and quality needed, has proven to be challenging. This article describes the application of a carbon-footprint-based (CF-based) calculation tool to Norwegian municipalities. The aim is to improve the local GHG inventory, with a particular focus on the emissions resulting from the provision of services by local governments. Through selective CF analysis, we aim to illustrate the knowledge gained from implementing these tools in local climate action plans and to further contrast CF-based calculations with more traditional production-based accounting. Municipalities report they have revised their understanding of the most important GHG mitigation strategies after implementing this tool.Preservation (maintenance and rehabilitation) strategy is the critical factor controlling pavement performance. A life-cycle optimization (LCO) model was developed to determine an optimal preservation strategy for a pavement overlay system and to minimize the total life-cycle energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and costs within an analysis period. Using dynamic programming optimization techniques, the LCO model integrates dynamic life-cycle assessment and life-cycle cost analysis models with an autoregressive pavement overlay deterioration model. To improve sustainability in pavement design, a promising alternative material for pavement overlays, engineered cementitious composites (ECCs), was studied. The LCO model was applied to an ECC overlay system, a concrete overlay system, and a hot mixed asphalt (HMA) overlay system. The LCO results show that the optimal preservation strategies will reduce the total life-cycle energy consumption by 5-30%, GHG emissions by 4-40%, and costs by 0.4-12% for the concrete, ECC, and HMA overlay systems compared to the current Michigan Department of Transportation preservation strategies, respectively. The impact of traffic growth on the optimal preservation strategies was also explored.Crop waste and residues from agriculture, forestry, food industry, biotope and landscape management and municipalities are raw materials for energy and material recycling. They contain nutrients and trace elements and can maintain soil fertility. Partially there is a competition for its use at the market, because no unused and free waste is available. The total amount of crop waste and residues in Germany is unknown, because no statistical data are available. Widely it can be calculated on assumptions and standard values only. Because all biomass residues in Germany are used, a utilization competition occurs at the market. In the present paper we tried to estimate the carbon potential for hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) and following land application, based on the data for biomass residues in Germany. Furthermore a definition for the HTC potential is recommended. After subtraction of unusable biomass residues by ecological and technical restrictions the technical-ecological carbon potential is about 29 million tonnes annually. Because the technical-ecological potential of biomass residues is used otherwise already, from the 29 million tonnes only 1.56 million tonnes or 5.4 % of the carbon are available for hydrothermal carbonisation. The estimated HTC-potential is uncertain because substantial questions influencing the HTC-potential are unanswered until now: The total energy balance, the effect of HTC-coal in the soil and a life cycle assessment (LCA).Rapidly growing energy demand and emissions from China's road transportation vehicles in the last two decades have raised concerns over oil security, urban air pollution and global warming. This rapid growth will be likely to continue in the next two to three decades as the vehicle ownership level in China is still very low. The current status of China's road transport sector in terms of vehicles, infrastructure, energy use and emissions is presented. Mitigation measures implemented and those that can reasonably be expected to be adopted in the near future are analysed. Recent studies exploring the future trends of road vehicle energy demand and emissions under various strategies are reviewed. Moreover, those studies which assessed various fuel/propulsion options in China from a life cycle perspective are examined to present an overview of the potential for reducing energy use and emissions. Recommendations for further developments are also made. It is concluded that comprehensive and appropriate strategies will be needed to minimise the adverse impacts of China's road vehicles on energy resources and the environment. Fortunately, China appears to be heading in this direction. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of sustainability evolved throughout the 1970s and 1980s. but was formally described by the 27 principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992. Despite the passage of nearly 20 years, to date there are no uniform set of federal rules, regulations, or guidelines specifically governing the environmental aspects of sustainability practices or related requirements in the United States. In this benchmark analysis, we have collected information on the sustainability programs of the five largest US companies in each of the 26 industrial sectors [based on the Forbes Global 2000 through 2009 (n = 130)]. For each company, we reviewed the most recent corporate sustainability, citizenship, or responsibility report, limiting our scope to environmental components, if available. Ten criteria were identified and analyzed, including leadership, reporting, external review, certification, and individual components of environmental sustainability programs. With respect to the prevalence of sustainability components between various business sectors, we found that the Drugs and Biotechnology (87%), Household and Personal Products (87%) and Oil and Gas Operations (87%) industries had the most comprehensive environmental sustainability programs. Using the nine components of environmental sustainability as a benchmark, we identified four key components as the characteristics of the most comprehensive environmental sustainability programs. These were (1) empowering leadership with a commitment to sustainability (80%), (2) standardized reporting (87%), (3) third-party evaluation of the sustainability programs (73%), and (4) obtaining ISO 14001 certification (73%). We found that many firms shaped their own definition of sustainability and developed their associated sustainability programs based on their sector, stakeholder interests, products or services, and business model. We noted an emerging area that we have called product sustainability - one in which toxicologists and environmental scientists can play a vital role helping to ensure that a manufactured item will indeed be considered acceptable for distribution now, as well as in the coming years. Numerous examples or case studies are presented. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Omics technologies provide coverage of gene, protein and metabolite analysis that is unsurpassed compared with traditional targeted approaches. There are a growing number of examples indicating that profiling approaches can be used to expose significant sources of variation in the composition of crop and model plants caused by genetic background, breeding method, growing environment (site, season), genotype x environment interactions and crop cultural practices to name but a few. Whilst breeders have long been aware of such variation from tried and tested targeted analytical approaches, the broad-scale, so called "unbiased" analysis of the metabolome now possible, offers a major upside to our understanding of the true extent of variation in a plethora of metabolites relevant to human and animal health and nutrition. Metabolomics is helping to provide targets for plant breeding by linking gene expression, and allelic variation to variation in metabolite complement (functional genomics), and is also being deployed to better assess the potential impacts of climate change and reduced input agricultural systems on crop composition. This review will provide examples of the factors driving variation in the metabolomes of crop species. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to analyze various Austrian dairy production systems (PS) concerning their greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) in a life-cycle chain, including effects of land-use change (LUC). Models of eight PS that differ, on the one hand, in their regional location (alpine, uplands and lowlands) and, on the other hand, in their production method (conventional versus organic, including traditional and recently emerging pasture-based dairy farming) were designed. In general, the GHGE-reducing effect of a higher milk yield per cow and year in conventional dairy farming cannot compensate for the advantages of organic dairy production which requires lower inputs. This is shown both for GHGE per kg of milk and GHGE per ha and year of farmland. Especially when (imported) concentrates were fed, which had been grown on former forests or grassland, e. g. soybean meal and rapeseed cake, GHGE of conventional dairy farming rose due to the effects of LUC. GHGE per kg milk varied from 0.90 to 1.17 kgCO(2)-eq for conventional PS, while organic PS on average emitted 11% less greenhouse gases (GHGs), the values ranging from 0.81 to 1.02 CO2-eq per kg milk. Within each production method, PS with a higher milk output generally showed better results for GHGE per kg of milk produced than PS with a lower milk output. Nevertheless the latter showed clearly better results for GHGE per ha of land used, ranging from 5.2 to 7.6 MgCO2-eq per ha and year for conventional PS and from 4.2 to 6.2 MgCO2-eq per ha and year for organic PS. The results of this study emphasize the importance of a complete life-cycle assessment in the evaluation of impacts that dairy PS have on the climate.Microalgae feedstocks are gaining interest in the present day energy scenario due to their fast growth potential coupled with relatively high lipid, carbohydrate and nutrients contents. All of these properties render them an excellent source for biofuels such as biodiesel, bioethanol and biomethane; as well as a number of other valuable pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products. The present review is a critical appraisal of the commercialization potential of microalgae biofuels. The available literature on various aspects of microalgae, e.g. its cultivation, life cycle assessment, and conceptualization of an algal biorefinery, has been scanned and a critical analysis has been presented. A critical evaluation of the available information suggests that the economic viability of the process in terms of minimizing the operational and maintenance cost along with maximization of oil-rich microalgae production is the key factor, for successful commercialization of microalgae-based fuels. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to tackle climate change, a transition to a renewable based energy system is crucial. A renewable based hydrogen economy is one of the possible implementations of such a system. The world receives ample energy from the sun that can be harvested by PV solar cells and, indirectly, by wind turbines. In order to use the most optimal locations for collecting and concentrating energy from these diffuse sources, a long distance transmission network is needed. Mature and semi-mature technologies are available for all parts of the system: from collection to transmission to end-use. In an early stage of development, when new technologies have to win market share from the existing energy system, their development is driven almost exclusively by the reduction of costs per J delivered. However, if a technology should be able to deliver tens to hundreds of EJ, resource constraints can become show stoppers. Many of the newest, most cost-efficient, energy technologies make use of scarce resources and, although they may play an important role in the transition process, they can not be scaled up the level we need for a complete transition. In most cases however other technologies are available that use more abundant materials, be it often at a cost of efficiency. The issue is not only with scarce resources. The sheer size of the energy transition will also challenge the industrial capacity for the mining and production of bulk materials like steel and copper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable distributed electricity generation can play a significant role in meeting today's energy policy goals, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving energy security, while adding supply to meet increasing energy demand. However, the exact potential benefits are still a matter of debate. The objective of this study is to evaluate the life cycle implications (environmental, economic and energy) of distributed generation (DG) technologies. A complementary objective is to compare the life cycle implications of DG technologies with the centralized electricity production representing the Northeastern American context. Environmental and energy implications are modeled according to the recommendations in the ISO 14040 standard and this, using different indicators: Human Health; Ecosystem Quality; Climate Change: Resources and Non-Renewable Energy Payback Ratio. Distinctly, economic implications are modeled using conventional life cycle costing. DG technologies include two types of grid-connected photovoltaic panels (3 kWp mono-crystalline and poly-crystalline) and three types of micro-wind turbines (1, 10 and 30 kW) modeled for average, below average and above average climatic conditions in the province of Quebec (Canada). A sensitivity analysis was also performed using different scenarios of centralized energy systems based on average and marginal (short- and long-term) technology approaches. Results show the following. First, climatic conditions (i.e., geographic location) have a significant effect on the results for the environmental, economic and energy indicators. More specifically, it was shown that the 30 kW micro-wind turbine is the best technology for above average conditions, while 3 kWp poly-crystalline photovoltaic panels are preferable for below average conditions. Second, the assessed DG technologies do not show benefits in comparison to the centralized Quebec grid mix (average technology approach). On the other hand, the 30 kW micro-wind turbine shows a potential benefit as long as the Northeastern American electricity market is considered (i.e., oil and coal centralized technologies are affected for the short- and long-term marginal scenarios, respectively). Photovoltaic panels could also become more competitive if the acquisition cost decreased. In conclusion, DG utilization will represent an improvement over centralized electricity production in a Northeastern American context, with respect to the environmental, energy and economic indicators assessed, and under the appropriate conditions discussed (i.e., geographical locations and affected centralized electricity production scenarios). (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article energy densities of selected renewable fuels are determined. Energy density is defined here as the annual energy production per hectare, taking energy inputs into account. Using 5 scenarios, consisting of 1 set focusing on technical differences and 1 set focusing on geographical variations, the range of energy densities currently obtained in Europe was determined for the following fuels: biodiesel from rapeseed: bioethanol from sugar beet: electricity from wood, wind and solar PV. The energy densities of the fuels produced from biomass were calculated by determining the energy contained in the energy carrier produced from the crop annually produced on 1 ha, from which the energy inputs for crop cultivation and conversion were subtracted. For wind and solar electricity, the energy density calculation was based on the energy production per turbine or cell and the number of turbines or cells per hectare after which the manufacturing energy was subtracted. Comparing the results shows that, for the average energy density scenarios, the ratio between the energy densities for wind, solar, and biomass is approximately 100:42:1, with wind electricity also having the highest energy output/input ratio. A case study was done in which the energy density was used to calculate the distance a vehicle can cover using the energy carrier annually produced per hectare. This was done for 3 regions, in Mid-Sweden, North-Netherlands, and South-East Spain. The results of the case show that wind electricity results in the largest distance covered, except in Spain, where solar electricity is the most favourable option. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental assessment of the processing and consumption of mussels of the species Mytilus galloprovincialis was carried out for both fresh and canned mussels. For this purpose, the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was considered. Inventories for mussel purification in dispatch centres and mussel transformation in canning factories were performed, along with those for household consumption of fresh and canned mussels. Environmental characterization results were computed for different impact categories, including abiotic depletion, global warming, ecotoxicity, human toxicity, acidification, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation and eutrophication. As a whole, the environmental hot spots for fresh mussel processing included electricity and chlorine gas production, as well as water discharge in dispatch centres. Similarly, the environmental hot spots for canned mussel processing comprised electricity production, can production and transport, oil production, and fuel oil production. Finally, the implementation of the previous mussel culture stage into the LCA of mussel processing and consumption showed the relevant role of the mussel culture system when assessing the potential environmental impacts of mussel-based products. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The management of plastic wastes is important owing to the high levels of embodied fossil fuel energy they contain. Although the environmental benefits of closed-loop recycling of plastics have been established through a number of life cycle studies, the benefits of open-loop recycling of plastics have not been examined for many substituted materials. This paper compares two equivalent sports-field drainage systems, one based on conventional sand and aggregate drainage materials, the other incorporating a novel drainage material produced from mixed plastics waste. The scope is confined to an analysis of primary energy consumption and global warming potential. It was found that the novel drainage system had lower global warming potential and primary energy consumption than the conventional system. These results were robust to sensitivity analyses of electricity mix and transportation distance to installation. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The need to minimise the environmental impacts of production and consumption are increasingly being recognised by governments, industry and the general public. Biodegradable waste composting is able to make a contribution to this need, not only in reducing the biodegradable waste being landfilled, but also lessening the horticultural industry's and gardeners' reliance on peat based compost, whilst the application of compost to land has the potential to enhance soil and biomass carbon sequestration. As a result of the consequent interest in the potential environmental benefits accruing from composting, there have been a number of studies attempting to measure the gains from composting the biodegradable fraction of commercial and household waste streams. However, a review of such studies reveal that there is much scope for improvement in defining the product process and in data accuracy, as well as the technical framework employed to construct the life cycle inventory stage. These shortcomings can invalidate life cycle impact assessments, and at worst lead to invalid management and operational decisions based on their findings. This study addresses the inventory process deficiencies, and issues of data reliability and completeness, contained in much of the published compost production life cycle assessment literature. It provides a comprehensive cradle to grave inventory of the soil conditioning compost produced by a social enterprise company in Manchester, England. Based on the specifics of the system model, it provides the basis for valid comparisons of the environmental benefits of producing soil-conditioning compost from biodegradable municipal waste with other composting and waste management options. Overall energy use has been calculated as 1034 MJ/tonne of compost, equivalent to 633 MJ/tonne for processing the wet feedstock, with the processing inventory stage accounting for 57%. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A number of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have been undertaken within the last 15 years comparing end-of-life treatment options for post-consumer plastic waste, including techniques such as: mechanical recycling, feedstock recycling, incineration with energy recovery and landfilling. These have attempted to support decisions in the formulation of waste management strategies and policies. In light of the introduction of life cycle thinking into European waste policies, specifically in relation to the waste hierarchy, a literature review of publically available LCA studies evaluating alternative end-of-life treatment options for plastic waste has been conducted. This has been done in order to: establish if a consensus exists as to the environmentally preferable treatment option for plastic waste; identify the methodological considerations and assumptions that have led to these conclusions; and determine the legitimacy of applying the waste hierarchy to the plastic waste stream. The majority of the LCA studies concluded that, when single polymer plastic waste fractions with little organic contamination are recycled and replace virgin plastic at a ratio of close to 1:1, recycling is generally the environmentally preferred treatment option when compared to municipal solid waste incineration. It has been found that assumptions relating to the virgin material substitution ratio and level of organic contamination can have a significant influence upon the results of these studies. Although a limited number of studies addressed feedstock recycling, feedstock recycling and the use of plastic waste as a solid recovered fuel in cement kilns were preferred to municipal solid waste incineration. Landfilling of plastic waste compared to municipal solid waste incineration proved to be the least preferred option for all impact categories except for global warming potential. Due to the uncertainty surrounding some assumptions in the studies, it cannot be said with confidence that the waste hierarchy should be applied to plastic waste management as a general rule. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Man-made cellulose fibres have played an important role in the production of textile products for more than 70 years. The purpose of this study is to assess the environmental impact of man-made cellulose fibres. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for three types of fibres (i.e. Viscose, Modal and Tencel) produced by Lenzing AG. The functional unit is one tonne of staple fibre. The system boundary is cradle to factory gate. We compared the LCA results with other commodity fibres, namely cotton, PET and PP. Primary energy demand, water use, land use and the CML baseline impact categories were assessed. Sensitivity analyses were carried out to understand the influence of different allocation methods. In addition, three single score methods were introduced and applied. The LCA results show that four modern man-made cellulose fibre products, namely Tencel, Modal, Viscose (Austria) and Tencel (2012), have the lowest overall impact among all fibres studied. Viscose (Asia) has a higher overall impact than the other man-made cellulose fibres and is comparable to PET. Cotton is identified as the least preferred choice due to its high ecotoxicity impacts, eutrophication, water use and land use. The LCA results are influenced by the allocation methods applied: however, the ranking of all fibres does not change. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, a detailed technical-economic analysis on a O-2/CO2 recycle combustion power plant (Oxy-combustion plant) retrofitted from the existing coal-fired plant (with a capacity of 2x300 MW) in China was carried out by using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) method. The CO2 emissions, investment cost, cost of electricity and CO2 avoidance cost within the life cycle were calculated respectively. The results showed that the CO2 emission avoidance rate of retrofitted Oxy-combustion plant in the life cycle was about 77.09% without taking account of the CO2 compression; the annual cost increased by 5.9% approximately, the net power decreased by 21.33%, the cost of electricity increased by 34.77%, and the CO2 avoidance cost was about 28.93 USD/t. Considering the compression process of CO2, the avoidance rate of CO2 emission was about 73.35% or so; the annual cost increased by 9.35% approximately, the net power decreased by about 26.70%, the cost of electricity increased by 49.13%, and the CO2 avoidance cost was about 45.46 USD/t. The carbon tax (the CO2 tax) should be more than about 24 USD/t and 34 USD/t under the condition of considering CO2 compression or not, respectively, which is beneficial to promote transformation of existing coal-fired plant for reducing the CO2 emissions.In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) normalization calculates the magnitude of an impact (midpoint or endpoint) relative to the total effect of a given reference The goal of this work is to calculate normalization factors for Canada and the US and to compare them with existing European normalization factors The differences between geographical areas were highlighted by identifying and comparing the main contributors to a given impact category in Canada the US and Europe This comparison verified that the main contributors in Europe and in the US are also present in the Canadian inventory It also showed that normalized profiles are highly dependent on the selected reference due to differences in the industrial and economic activities To meet practitioners needs. Canadian normalization factors have been calculated using the characterization factors from LUCAS (Canadian) IMPACT 2002+ (European) and TRACI (US) respectively The main sources of uncertainty related to Canadian NFs are data gaps (pesticides metals) and aggregated data (metals VOC) but the uncertainty related to CFs generally remains unknown A final discussion is proposed based on the comparison of resource extraction and resource consumption and raises the question of the legitimacy of defining a country by its geographical borders (C) 2010 Elsevier BV All rights reservedAffected energy production is often decisive for the outcome of consequential life-cycle assessments when comparing the potential environmental impact of products or services. Affected energy production is however difficult to determine. In this article the future long-term affected energy production is identified by use of energy system analysis. The focus is on different uses of waste for energy production. The Waste-to-Energy technologies analysed include co-combustion of coal and waste, anaerobic digestion and thermal gasification. The analysis is based on optimization of both investments and production of electricity, district heating and bio-fuel in a future possible energy system in 2025 in the countries of the Northern European electricity market (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany). Scenarios with different CO(2) quota costs are analysed. It is demonstrated that the waste incineration continues to treat the largest amount of waste. Investments in new waste incineration capacity may, however, be superseded by investments in new Waste-to-Energy technologies, particularly those utilising sorted fractions such as organic waste and refuse derived fuel. The changed use of waste proves to always affect a combination of technologies. What is affected varies among the different Waste-to-Energy technologies and is furthermore dependent on the CO(2) quota costs and on the geographical scope. The necessity for investments in flexibility measures varies with the different technologies such as storage of heat and waste as well as expansion of district heating networks. Finally, inflexible technologies such as nuclear power plants are shown to be affected. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A number of waste life cycle assessment (LCA) models have been gradually developed since the early 1990s, in a number of countries, usually independently from each other. Large discrepancies in results have been observed among different waste LCA models, although it has also been shown that results from different LCA studies can be consistent. This paper is an attempt to identify, review and analyse methodologies and technical assumptions used in various parts of selected waste LCA models. Several criteria were identified, which could have significant impacts on the results, such as the functional unit, system boundaries, waste composition and energy modelling. The modelling assumptions of waste management processes, ranging from collection, transportation, intermediate facilities, recycling, thermal treatment, biological treatment, and landfilling, are obviously critical when comparing waste LCA models. This review infers that some of the differences in waste LCA models are inherent to the time they were developed. It is expected that models developed later, benefit from past modelling assumptions and knowledge and issues. Models developed in different countries furthermore rely on geographic specificities that have an impact on the results of waste LCA models. The review concludes that more effort should be employed to harmonise and validate non-geographic assumptions to strengthen waste LCA modelling. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compared the environmental impacts of composting yard wastes in windrows with using them in place of soil as alternative daily cover (ADC) in landfills. The Life Cycle Assessment was made using the SimaPro LCA software and showed that the ADC scenario is more beneficial for the environment than windrow composting. ADC use is also a less costly means of disposal of yard wastes. This finding applies only in cases where there are sanitary landfills in the area that are equipped with gas collection systems and can use yard wastes as alternative daily cover. Otherwise, the environmentally preferable method for disposal of source-separated yard wastes is composting rather than landfilling. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Offshore wind turbines are relatively complex structural and mechanical systems located in a highly demanding environment. In the present paper the fundamental aspects and the major issues related to the design of these special structures are outlined. Particularly, a systemic approach is proposed for a global design of such structures, in order to handle coherently their different parts: the decomposition of these structural systems, the required performance and the acting loads are all considered under this philosophy. According to this strategy, a proper numerical modeling requires the adoption of a suitable technique in order to organize the qualitative and quantitative assessments in various sub-problems, which can be solved by means of sub-models at different levels of detail, for both structural behavior and loads simulation. Specifically, numerical models are developed to assess the safety performances under aerodynamic and hydrodynamic actions. In order to face the problems of the actual design of a wind farm in the Mediterranean Sea, in this paper, three schemes of turbines support structures have been considered and compared: the mono pile, the tripod and the jacket support structure typologies.Rapid escalation in biofuels consumption may lead to a trade regime that favors exports of food-based biofuels from tropical developing countries to developed countries. There is growing interest in mitigating the land-use impacts of these potential biofuels exports by converting biorefinery waste streams into cellulosic ethanol, potentially reducing the amount of land needed to meet production goals. This increased land-use efficiency for ethanol production may lower the land-use greenhouse gas emissions of ethanol but would come at the expense of converting the wastes into bioelectricity which may offset fossil fuel-based electricity and could provide a vital source of domestic electricity in developing countries. Here we compare these alternative uses of wastes with respect to environmental and energy security outcomes considering a range of electricity production efficiencies, ethanol yields, land-use scenarios, and energy offset assumptions. For a given amount of waste biomass, we found that using bioelectricity production to offset natural gas achieves 58% greater greenhouse gas reductions than using cellulosic ethanol to offset gasoline but similar emissions when cellulosic ethanol is used to offset the need for more sugar cane ethanol. If bioelectricity offsets low-carbon energy sources such as nuclear power then the liquid fuels pathway is preferred. Exports of cellulosic ethanol may have a small impact on the energy security of importing nations while bioelectricity production may have relatively large impacts on the energy security in developing countries.The unprecedented uncertainty associated with engineered nanomaterials greatly expands the need for research regarding their potential environmental consequences. However, decision-makers such as regulatory agencies, product developers, or other nanotechnology stakeholders may not find the results of such research directly informative of decisions intended to mitigate environmental risks. To help interpret research findings and prioritize new research needs, there is an acute need for structured decision-analytic aids that are operable in a context of extraordinary uncertainty. Whereas existing stochastic decision-analytic techniques explore uncertainty only in decision-maker preference information, this paper extends model uncertainty to technology performance. As an illustrative example, the framework is applied to the case of single-wall carbon nanotubes. Four different synthesis processes (arc, high pressure carbon monoxide, chemical vapor deposition, and laser) are compared based on five salient performance criteria. A probabilistic rank ordering of preferred processes is determined using outranking normalization and a linear-weighted sum for different weighting scenarios including completely unknown weights and four fixed-weight sets representing hypothetical stakeholder views. No single process pathway dominates under all weight scenarios, but it is likely that some inferior process technologies could be identified as low priorities for further research.The alternative coatings to electrodeposited hard chromium plating are studied nowadays, because of the chemical composition of the baths containing Cr(VI), forbidden by several European regulations. Thermal spraying is already used in industry, but the deposited coatings still need improvements for reasons of porosity and microstructures. In this study, atmospheric plasma spraying and in situ laser irradiation by diode laser processes were combined to modify the structural characteristics of NiCrBSi coatings. The microstructure evolution was studied, with the analysis of chemical composition using energy-dispersive spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. Results show that in situ laser remelting induces the growth of a dendritic structure which strongly decreases the porosity of as-sprayed coatings and no phase transition after laser treatment. The adopted configuration drives to the achievement of coatings without solidification cracking, one of the major defects that can occur during the solidification of metallic alloys. Furthermore, to evaluate the environmental impacts of coatings in comparison with other conventional treatments developed to melt NiCrBSi layers, a Life Cycle Assessment was carried out. The ecodesign of surface coatings has not been reported in detail in the current literature, and nowadays, life cycle analysis is an important consideration for the thermal spray community. The good environmental assessment of the hybrid process is demonstrated in this paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In 2008, around 596 000 t of aluminum dross was generated from secondary aluminum industry in China; however, it was not sufficiently recycled yet. Approximately 95% of the Al dross was land filled without innocent treatment. The purpose of this work is to investigate Al dross recycling by environmentally efficient and friendly methods. Two methods of Al dross recycling which could utilize Al dross efficiently were presented. High-quality aluminum-silicon alloys and brown fused alumina (BFA) were produced successfully by recycling Al dross. Then, life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate environmental impact of two methods of Al dross recycling process. The results show that the two methods are reasonable and the average recovery rate of Al dross is up to 98%. As the LCA results indicate, they have some advantages such as less natural resource consumption and pollutant emissions, which efficiently relieves the burden on the environment in electrolytic aluminum and secondary aluminum industry.We used ISO-compliant life cycle assessment to evaluate the comparative environmental performance of high- and low-profitability commodity and deep-bedded niche swine production systems in the Upper Midwestern United States. Specifically, we evaluated the contributions of feed production, in-barn energy use, manure management, and piglet production to farm-gate life cycle energy use, ecological footprint, and greenhouse gas (GHG) and eutrophying emissions per animal produced and per live-weight kg. We found that commodity systems generally outperform deep-bedded niche systems for these criteria, but that significant overlap occurs in the range of impacts characteristic of high- and low-profitability production between systems. Given the non-optimized status of current deep-bedded niche relative to commodity production, we suggest that optimizing niche systems through improvements in feed and sow herd efficiency holds significant environmental performance improvement potential. Drivers of impacts differed between commodity and deep-bedded niche systems. Feed production was the key consideration in both, but proportionally more important in niche production due to lower feed use efficiencies. Liquid manure management in commodity production strongly influenced GHG emissions, whereas solid manure management increased eutrophication potential due to outdoor storage in deep-bedded niche production. We further observe an interesting but highly imperfect relationship between economic and environmental performance measures, where profitability tracks well with resource (in particular, feed) throughput, but only indirectly with emissions intensity. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The dual objective of sustainable aquaculture, i.e., to produce food while sustaining natural resources is achieved only when production systems with a minimum ecological impact are used. Recirculating aquaculture systems (RASs) provide opportunities to reduce water usage and to improve waste management and nutrient recycling. RAS makes intensive fish production compatible with environmental sustainability. This review aims to summarize the most recent developments within RAS that have contributed to the environmental sustainability of the European aquaculture sector. The review first shows the ongoing expansion of RAS production by species and country in Europe. Life cycle analysis showed that feed, fish production and waste and energy are the principal components explaining the ecological impact of RAS. Ongoing developments in RAS show two trends focusing on: (1) technical improvements within the recirculation loop and (2) recycling of nutrients through integrated farming. Both trends contributed to improvements in the environmental sustainability of RAS. Developments within the recirculation loop that are reviewed are the introduction of denitrification reactors, sludge thickening technologies and the use of ozone. New approached towards integrated systems include the incorporation of wetlands and algal controlled systems in RAS. Finally, the review identifies the key research priorities that will contribute to the future reduction of the ecological impact of RAS. Possible future breakthroughs in the fields of waste production and removal might further enhance the sustainabilty of fish production in RAS. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The production of energy crops must be studied and evaluated in terms of environmental impact, in order to integrate them into a sustainable agricultural development. As bioenergy carriers they offer ecological advantages over fossil fuels by contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gases and acidifying emissions. However, there could be ecological shortcomings related to the intensity of agricultural production. There is a risk of polluting water and air, losing soil quality, enhancing erosion, and reducing biodiversity. In the scope of the project Future Crops for Food, Feed, Fiber and Fuel (4F Crops), supported by the European Union, an environmental impact assessment study was developed and applied to the production of potential energy crops in Europe. The following variables were selected as categories: use of water and mineral resources, soil quality and erosion, emission of minerals and pesticides to soil and water, waste generation and utilization, landscape, and biodiversity. In addition, a normalization and weighting procedure was applied, which attempts to aggregate environmental impacts. Results suggest that growing energy crops does not inflict higher impact on the environment compared to potato and wheat farming (regarding the studied categories). Although the different indicators did not yield a common pattern, overall results suggest that woody and lignocellulosic crops have an advantage over annual crop systems, namely regarding erodibility and biodiversity. Some crop management options, such as pesticides and fertilizers inputs, can influence the outcomes. However, site-specific factors should be accurately assessed to evaluate the adequacy between crop and location. Environmental hotspots in the systems are detected and options for improvement are presented. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdLife cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is increasingly used to determine the potential environmental impacts of biofuels and bioenergy. This paper presents the outcomes of screening LCAs of 13 future energy crops for Europe summarizing the results of the EC-funded project 4F CROPS - Future Crops for Food, Feed, Fiber and Fuel. For analysis, these dedicated energy crops - representing seven environmental zones in Europe - are combined with a multitude of processing and utilization options, resulting in 120 different biofuel and bioenergy chains. Compared to fossil fuels and energy carriers, all biofuel and bioenergy chains show environmental advantages in terms of life-cycle energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but mostly disadvantages regarding other environmental impact categories. Quantitative results vary widely across environmental zones, depending on crop species, agricultural inputs, and yield. Moreover, coproduct accounting and coproduct utilization, as well as the agricultural and fossil reference system play an important role. In view of environmental advantages and disadvantages, subjective trade-offs are required between the environmental impact categories. If saving GHG emissions is given the highest environmental priority, combined heat and power generation from herbaceous lignocellulosic crops is the most efficient option in terms of land use, provided that the biomass is cultivated on surplus agricultural land, thus avoiding indirect land-use change. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe recent policies enacted by the EU foresee an increased interest in the cultivation of energy crops. Hence systematized information on new energy crops and cropping strategies is necessary to optimize their production quantitatively and qualitatively and to integrate them into traditional production systems. This kind of information will offer farmers new perspectives and options to diversify their farming activities. Some of these crops, however, may compete for land and resources with existing food crops, while others could be grown in marginal/degraded lands with consequent beneficial effects on the environment. Therefore choosing the appropriate management components and species should be site specific and oriented to minimize inputs and maximize yields. In some cases, traditional food crops are used as dedicated energy crops with the advantage that their management practices are well known. On the other hand, the management of new dedicated energy crops, such as perennial herbaceous crops, often demands a range of structural features and tactical management approaches that are different to those commonly used for traditional food crops. Most of these crops are largely undomesticated and are at their early stages of development and improvement. In this work, state-of-the-art research and development of agronomic management and the production of a wide range of multipurpose future energy crop species are reviewed and where possible examples of appropriate crop management practices that would enhance energy yields are provided. Interesting lines of investigation are also suggested. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdBuildings contribute significantly to the human-induced environmental burden. This comes not only from construction and demolition but also from activities throughout the operational phase building maintenance and energy use for climate control. This paper describes how life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology can be applied to quantitatively assess the environmental performance of the use and maintenance of heating and ventilation systems. The studied climate systems include individual non-condensing boilers, condensing boilers and heat pumps on exhaust air for heating and hot tap water combined with either collective mechanical exhaust ventilation or individual balanced ventilation with heat recovery. This study shows that a heat pump causes the highest environmental burden of all the assessed climate systems due to the electricity needed for operation, high material content of the system and the refrigerant used. If the electricity used by the heat pump is generated fully by local photovoltaic cells, environmental performance will improve, but not for all environmental impact categories. Climate systems that reduce energy demand for heating, such as ventilation with heat recovery, will reduce the environmental impact related to energy use for space heating. However, if the electricity used to operate the system increases, along with the material content of the systems and distribution networks, other environmental impact categories than those related to space heating will also increase. Finally, maintenance frequency and related transportation of maintenance workers have a marginal effect on total environmental impact. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of dwellings contributes significantly to human-induced environmental burden in a number of ways, including energy consumption and the maintenance and replacement of building components. The present study deals with the maintenance and replacement of external doors and windows in a Dutch reference dwelling and describes how life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology can be applied to quantitatively assess the environmental impact of various maintenance scenarios for the facade components. First, the most effective way to reduce the negative environmental impact in this context is to replace existing single and double glazing with high efficiency double glazing, thereby reducing energy consumption for space heating. Second, the use of timber frames causes less environmental impact than PVC frames with a steel core. Third, extending the service life of building components decreases the input of material resources, production processes and the waste processing of building components during the service life of a dwelling, which is beneficial to the environment. Maintenance activities should only be performed when needed, keeping the building components in good condition while minimising the transportation movements of maintenance workers. Finally, protecting timber components with an alternative paint that contains less solvent does not lower the assessed environmental impact, but low-solvent paint may be preferred because of health aspects both for maintenance workers and occupants of the dwelling. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the increasing attention to the environmental impact of discharging greenhouses gases, there has been a growing public pressure to reduce the carbon footprint associated with the use of fossil fuels. In this context, one of the key strategies is the substitution of fossil fuels with biofuels such as biodiesel. The design of biodiesel production facilities has traditionally been carried out based on technical and economic criteria. Greenhouse gas (GHG) policies (e.g., carbon tax, subsidy) have the potential to significantly alter the design of these facilities, the selection of the feedstocks, and the scheduling of multiple feedstocks. The objective of this article is to develop a systematic approach to the design and scheduling of biodiesel production processes while accounting for the effect of GHG policies in addition to the technical, economic, and environmental aspects. An optimization formulation is developed to maximize the profit of the process subject to flowsheet synthesis and performance modeling equations. Furthermore, the carbon footprint is accounted for with the help of a life cycle analysis (LCA). The objective function includes a term which reflects the impact of the LCA of a feedstock and its processing to biodiesel. A multiperiod approach is used to discretize the decision-making horizon into time periods. During each period, decisions are made on the type and flowrate of the feedstocks, as well as the associated design and operating variables. A case study is solved with several scenarios of feedstocks and GHG policies.A complete understanding of the resource consumption, embodied energy, and environmental emissions of civil projects in China is difficult due to the lack of comprehensive national statistics. To quantitatively assess the energy and environmental impacts of civil construction at a macro-level, this study developed a 24 sector environmental input-output life-cycle assessment model (I-O LCA) based on 2002 Chinese national economic and environmental data. The model generates an economy-wide inventory of energy use and environmental emissions. Estimates based on the level of economic activity related to planned future civil works in 2015 are made. Results indicate that the embodied energy of construction projects accounts for nearly one-sixth of the total economy's energy consumption in 2007, and may account for approximately one-fifth of the total energy use by 2015. This energy consumption is dominated by coal and oil consumptions. Energy-related emissions are the main polluters of the country's atmosphere and environment. If the industry's energy use and manufacturing techniques remain the same as in 2002, challenges to the goals for total energy consumption in China will appear in the next decade. Thus, effective implementation of efficient energy technologies and regulations are indispensable for achieving China's energy and environmental quality goals. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper explores energy and physical resource limitations to transitioning from fossil fuels to the large-scale generation of electricity with photovoltaic arrays. The model finds that business as usual models, which involve growth rates in world electricity demand of between 2% and 3.2% p.a., exhibit severe material difficulties before the end of this century. If the growth rate is lowered to 1% p.a., then it may be possible to reach the year 2100 before such difficulties, but it is likely that material constraints will occur early the next century. Steady state scenarios show that silicon based photovoltaic panels could, however, displace fossil fuels before the middle of the century, providing around the same order of magnitude as present (2010) world electricity demand. Scenarios also show that outcomes will be highly dependent upon the rate of improvement of photovoltaic technologies. The analysis does not contend that silicon PV technology is the only technology that will or can be adopted, but as the embodied energy content per kWh generated of this technology is similar to other renewable technologies, such as other solar technologies and wind, it can provide a baseline for examining a transition to a mixture of renewable energy sources. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study evaluates the efficacy of green design principles such as the "12 Principles of Green Chemistry," and the "12 Principles of Green Engineering" with respect to environmental impacts found using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. A case study of 12 polymers is presented, seven derived from petroleum, four derived from biological sources, and one derived from both. The environmental impacts of each polymer's production are assessed using LCA methodology standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Each polymer is also assessed for its adherence to green design principles using metrics generated specifically for this paper. Metrics include atom economy, mass from renewable sources, biodegradability, percent recycled, distance of furthest feedstock, price, life cycle health hazards and life cycle energy use. A decision matrix is used to generate single value metrics for each polymer evaluating either adherence to green design principles or life-cycle environmental impacts. Results from this study show a qualified positive correlation between adherence to green design principles and a reduction of the environmental impacts of production. The qualification results from a disparity between biopolymers and petroleum polymers. While biopolymers rank highly in terms of green design, they exhibit relatively large environmental impacts from production. Biopolymers rank 1, 2, 3, and 4 based on green design metrics; however they rank in the middle of the LCA rankings. Polyolefins rank 1, 2, and 3 in the LCA rankings, whereas complex polymers, such as PET, PVC, and PC place at the bottom of both ranking systems.In a case study, seven different procurement chains of forest energy in Sweden were modelled and the environmental performance was calculated from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective. The systems differed with respect to geographical location, the technology employed and resource use (stumps or logging residues). The energy output/input ratio of chips from residues and stumps was in the range 21-48, and the greenhouse gas emissions were 1.5-3.5 g CO2-eq/MJ chips. The systems in southern Sweden were generally more efficient than similar systems in northern Sweden. The forest energy systems based on bundles and stumps rely on immature technologies which have the potential to be improved should there be technical developments of the systems.Plant fibers have several aspects, such as low energetic production costs, biodegradability and great mechanical properties, which make them very attractive in the field of composite reinforcement. The aim of this study was to compare the impact of two eco friendly water washings on the thermal behavior, surface morphology and mechanical properties of flax fibers (Electra variety). As a first step, we have carried out scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) to evaluate surface properties and performed thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to estimate the effects of the treatments on the fiber composition. Secondly, tensile tests were performed on elementary fibers. The results show no negative impact of water treatment on the mechanical properties of the elementary fibers. Moreover, after water washing for 72 h at 23 degrees C. the Young's modulus values appeared to increase slightly, possibly due to better surface state and an easier extraction of flax fibers. Finally, an analysis of eluted sugars suggests some negative effect of the boiling treatment on the fiber structure. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The well-to-wheels (WTW) analysis of energy conservation and greenhouse gas emission of advanced scooters associated with new transportation fuels is studied in the present work. Focus is placed on fuel cell scooter technologies, while the gasoline-powered scooter equipped with an internal combustion engine (ICE) serves as a reference technology. The effect of various pathways of hydrogen production on the well-to-tank (WTT) efficiency for energy is examined. Both near-term and long-term hydrogen production options are explored, such as purification of coke oven gas (COG), steam reforming of natural gas, water electrolysis by generation mix and renewable electricity, and gasification of herbaceous biomass. Then, the WTW efficiency of fuel cell scooters for various hydrogen production options is compared with that of the conventional ICE scooters and electric scooters. Results showed that the fuel cell scooters fueled with COG-based hydrogen could achieve the highest reduction benefits in energy consumption and GHG emission. Finally, the potential for hydrogen production from COG resulting from the coking process in steelworks is evaluated, which is anticipated as a near-term hydrogen production for helping transition to a hydrogen energy economy in Taiwan. (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aliapur was created in 2002 by tyre manufacturers as a means of providing a collective response to the regulatory obligations in force in France on the management of used tyres. Since 2004, Aliapur has implemented a major industrial research programme to support the development and optimisation of long-term, diversified recovery methods. At a time when several used tyre recovery methods have achieved a certain maturity, Aliapur decided to carry out a comparative environmental evaluation of the various recovery alternatives. In addition to comparing the different alternatives, this environmental evaluation aimed at identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each recovery method, and of the management of used tyres as a whole. This evaluation was based on the Life Cycle Assessment approach and conformed to the methodological prescriptions developed in the ISO 14 040 (2006a) and ISO 14 044 (2006b) standards. It was carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers Ecobilan (2009) a consulting firm specialising in life cycle assessments, and was reviewed by a committee of European LCA experts and interested parties Lecouls and Klopffer (2010).This note describes the "a posteriori" critical review process of a large Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study. This LCA study covered nine different recycling options of used tyres. The review was conducted by an international and multipartite seven-member review panel. It should be noted that the preliminary administrative tasks took more time than expected. After that, it took about 4 months from the distribution of the preliminary LCA report to the editing of the final, approved, critical review report. About 140 questions or comments were answered, which contributed to the improvement of the LCA report concerning methodology, data quality and clarity aspects, and to highlighting some research directions.European Community claims for end-of-vehicles (ELVs) targets of at least 85% recycling and 95% recovery rate by 2015. At present, only about 80% of ELV total weight is being recycled, whereas the remaining fraction of 20%, which is called automotive shredder residue (ASR), is disposed by landfilling in most of the EU countries. In this study a comparison has been carried out among five ASR management strategies, chosen after a screening of the most common technologies suitable and available nowadays, aiming at proposing alternatives to the current disposal in terms of benefits resulting from the conservation of nonrenewable resources and reduction of wastes disposal. These scenarios are ASR landfill disposal, the current status quo for a further nonferrous metals recovery, ASR incineration with energy recovery, an advanced material recovery followed by thermal treatment of ASR residue and a feedstock recycling by means of gasification. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied in order to characterise and quantify the environmental impacts related to each scenario analysed, using the SimaPro 7.1 software and the Eco-indicator'99 method, according to a hierarchic approach. The analysis shows that recovering nonferrous metals ensures a reduction of the environmental loads related to resources depletion due to landfill disposal, but no significant benefit for human health end point can be observed. The ASR thermal treatment in incinerators allows both the decrease of impacts due to plastic fraction disposal and benefits from energy recovery, but a decrease of ecosystem quality occurs because of stack emissions. A net environmental performance upgrading seems to be ensured by those scenarios which include the application of post-shredder technologies. Industrial processes aimed to matter recovery, after shredding, resulted not only in a necessary solution to fit the European recovery and recycling targets for ELVs but also to the options that can obtain greater environmental benefits compared to present practises. However, further improvement can be achieved only by integrating end-of-life treatments into Eco-design strategies aiming at a more efficient separation of high value-added materials such as plastics and metals.Globally, 45 million metric tonnes of palm oil has been produced in 2009. The production of 1 t crude palm oil requires 5 t of fresh fruit bunches (FFB). On average, processing of 1 t FFB in palm oil mills generates 230 kg empty fruit bunches (EFB) and 650 kg palm oil mill effluent (POME) as residues. These residues cause considerable environmental burdens, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. In order to reduce those emissions, four waste management options are compared in the present study using 1,000 kg of FFB as functional unit. A detailed life cycle model has been used to calculate the environmental impacts of POME and EFB treatment. The options under investigation are: (1) dumping EFB and storing POME and ponds, (2) returning EFB to the plantation and POME as before, (3) using EFB and POME for co-composting and returning the produced compost to the plantation, (4) generating biogas from POME and thereafter as in (3). The CML 2001 method included in the GABI 4.3 software package has been used for the impact calculations. Sensitivity analysis has been carried out in order to estimate the influence of good and poor management practice on the environmental performance. The main contributor to the GWP is methane from POME and EFB dumping. The GWP of palm oil mill waste treatment can be reduced from 245 kg CO2eq per ton FFB to up to 5 kg CO2eq per ton FFB due to reduced methane emissions and nutrient recycling. Co-composting of POME and EFB leads to considerable nutrient recovery, in addition to GWP reduction. Thus, the composting process reduces not only environmental burdens; it also leads to net environmental benefit regarding most environmental impact categories, e.g., acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone layer depletion potential, etc. due to the avoided emissions from inorganic fertilizer production. The recovery of nutrients in EFB can be achieved by solely returning it to the plantation, but only the combined treatment of EFB and POME allows nutrient recovery from POME while methane emissions from pond systems are avoided simultaneously. The fermentation of POME to produce biogas reduces environmental burdens when operating under best practice conditions. However, fugitive biogas emissions of more than 2% reverse that beneficial effect. A life-cycle-based comparison of conventional and advanced treatment systems for EFB and POME can support decision makers regarding waste treatment options and provide information on technology risks involved. The results of this study may be used as basic calculation data for clean development mechanism for palm oil mills. LCA is shown to be a powerful tool to estimate and compare environmental impacts of different options. Unfortunately, it is rarely used in the palm oil industry in order to improve or optimize palm oil production systems. This study has shown that nutrient recovery from POME and EFB offers considerable environmental and economic benefits to palm oil production systems. However, using EFB for energy production, as it is discussed and realized by some palm oil mills, prohibits environmental beneficial POME utilization. Best waste management practice reduces emissions at palm oil mills and consequently the carbon footprint of palm oil products. Co-composting of EFB and POME, with or without prefermentation of POME in a biogas plant, is a profitable way to use the nutrients from both POME and EFB.The goal of the study was to compare the environmental impact of butter and margarine. Altogether, seven products were studied in three European markets: UK, Germany and France. The approach used for the analysis is descriptive (attributional) LCA. The SimaPro software PR, 2007 was used to perform the calculations. Data for the production chain of the margarine products (production of raw materials, processing, packaging and logistics) were compiled from Unilever manufacturing sites, suppliers and from literature. The edible oil data inventories have been compared with those in proprietary databases (ecoinvent and SIK food database) and they show a high degree of similarity. For the butter products, data on milk production and butter processing were taken from various published studies for the countries of interest. Sensitivity analyses were conducted for a number of parameters (functional unit, allocation method, impact of using different oil, milk and dairy data, impact of estimating GHG emissions from land use change for certain oils) in order to evaluate their influence on the comparison between margarine and butter. The sensitivity analyses demonstrate that the initial results and conclusions are robust. The results show that margarine has significantly lower environmental impact (less than half) compared to butter for three impact categories global warming potential, eutrophication potential and acidification potential. For primary energy demand, the margarines have a lower impact than butter, but the difference is not as significant. Margarines use approximately half of the land required used for producing the butter products. For POCP, the impact is higher for the margarines due to the use of hexane in the oil extraction (no similar process occurs for butter). The margarine products analysed here are more environmentally favourable than the butter products. In all three markets (UK, DE and FR) the margarine products are significantly better than the butter products for the categories global warming potential, eutrophication potential and acidification potential. These findings are also valid when comparing margarines and butters between the markets; for this reason they are likely to be of general relevance for other Western European countries where similar margarine and butter production systems are found.Past life cycle assessments (LCA) of sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) production have commonly been based on limited datasets, and variability has not been well described. In this work, Australian sugarcane production was assessed more comprehensively in order to generate a robust set of LCA results for use in subsequent assessments of sugarcane products and also to investigate: (1) variability due to regional differences, (2) factors influencing variability, and (3) significance of the impacts. An average scenario for Australian sugarcane production was modeled based on data for the state of Queensland (98% of Australian production). Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results were generated using Impact 2002+, modified to be more representative of Australian conditions, and with the inclusion of water use and land use indicators. A Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis, using minimum and maximum values for production data, was undertaken to evaluate variability. Different regional production practices were also modeled to identify factors that influence variability. Normalization aimed to show the significance of total Australian sugarcane production relative to total Australian impacts. Considerable variability was found in the LCIA results, with the key variables being yield, N use efficiency, the susceptibility of soils to N leakage, irrigation (water and energy intensity), and pre-harvest burning. N leakage was found to be an important issue that influences a range of impact categories. When normalized against total national impacts, water use and land use appear to be the most significant impacts (based on simple indicators of consumption), followed by eutrophication potential, acidification potential, and respiratory impacts, whereas non-renewable energy input and global warming are less significant. The results suggest that toxicity impacts are insignificant; however, this may not be supported by other observations that link pesticide loss from sugarcane to toxicity concerns in receiving waters and is a subject for further research. The potential for significant variability in the impacts from sugarcane growing suggests a need for LCAs of sugarcane systems to consider ranges for key variables. The key variables and significant impacts identified in this work can guide data collection priorities for future assessment of sugarcane and possibly other Australian cropping systems. To further develop LCA as a useful predictive tool for Australian agricultural systems, further development and testing of impact assessment models for eutrophication, toxicity, and land and water resource depletion appropriate for Australia and its subregions will be required.Numerous life cycle assessments (LCAs) have been conducted on the environmental impacts of beverage packaging systems. With such a potentially rich source of knowledge available, it seemed worthwhile to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of those existing studies. This paper describes a recent 'meta analysis', whose goal it was to provide a structured overview of LCAs on beverage cartons and other packaging systems from past years in order to answer two key questions: (1) Is it possible to draw general conclusions regarding the environmental performance (in terms of strengths and weaknesses) of beverage cartons in comparison to alternative packaging systems from these existing LCAs? (2) If certain trends arise across these LCA studies regarding the environmental performance of beverage cartons compared to other packaging systems for beverages, what can be said on their validity and limitations? The meta analysis presented covers 22 LCA studies, all of which fulfil three criteria: (1) full life cycle approach, (2) beverage carton must be among the products evaluated in study, and (3) comparative approach. Each of these studies was categorised either as a core study (if focussed on Europe, conducted in 2000 or later, and peer reviewed) or as a basic study. Next to providing detailed comparisons of the analysed studies, the full report on the meta analysis was designed to allow a quick understanding of their main characteristics (or 'profiles'). Similarities and differences were highlighted both in terms of results and the applied methodologies (e.g., key settings) and the validity and limitations of the findings were stated. Additionally, further environment-related topics of special interest to stakeholders in the beverage packaging industry were addressed. For certain environmental impact indicators/inventory categories, the LCA studies covered in this meta analysis indicate general trends regarding the performance of beverage cartons versus alternative packaging systems. For climate change, cumulated energy demand/fossil resource consumption, and acidification, all regarded by the majority of all studies, beverage cartons mostly have the most favourable results, while in terms of land use for forestry, they clearly require the largest area. For summer smog and terrestrial eutrophication, the result 'pattern' points towards a favourable picture for beverage cartons; however, fewer LCA studies provide results for these impact categories. For other environmental aspects, where the results of the analysed studies vary strongly, no clear pattern can be made out. Several aspects were covered in too few LCA studies in order for an overall trend or lack thereof to become visible, and still others-which in part have been receiving increased attention in the past years-are not addressed in any of the analysed core or basic studies.Purpose We propose a prescriptive framework to support environmentally conscious decision making in the design of goods and services. The framework bridges recent applications of input-output analysis to conduct environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), with seminal work in production economics. In the latter, product design, production planning, and scheduling problems are frequently formulated as input-output models with substitution, and subsequently analyzed and solved as linear programs. The use of linear programming provides an appealing theory and computational framework to support decision making, as well as to conduct sensitivity analysis Methods In this paper, we explore the benefits of integrating LCA within a linear programming (LP) framework and present a case study where we consider a hypothetical advertiser located in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, who wishes to allocate a predetermined budget to place ads in either the print or online versions of a high-circulation, local newspaper. We formulate the problem of finding an advertising strategy that minimizes global warming potential (GWP), subject to demand and budget constraints. We then solve the problem and evaluate the optimal strategy in terms of discharges of component greenhouse gases, and in terms of requirements imposed on various energy sources. We also analyze the sensitivity of the optimal advertising strategy (and associated global warming potential) to perturbations in the model parameters and constraints. Results and discussion By embedding LCA within an LP formulation, we are able to examine the relationships between economic and environmental factors inherent within decisions to use specific products or services. Specifically, the advertiser finds that each strategy contains tradeoffs among and between environmental and monetary costs. A disaggregate comparison of greenhouse gas release and energy consumption among strategies highlights the variation between these factors and the potential dangers of aggregation. Sensitivity analysis gives us marginal costs (per dollar and per person) of GWP in the optimal solution. These and other managerial insights presented highlight the complex tradeoffs necessary for environmentally conscious, sustainable decision making.Carbon footprints (CF) provide companies, customers, and other agents with information related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the life cycle of products, identifying key points in the supply chain, potential risks, and opportunities of improvement. This paper briefly examines how the method composed of financial statements (MC3) (MC3, as coined from the name of the method in Spanish, i.e., m,todo compuesto de las cuentas contables.) approaches to specific requirements related to the assessment of product GHG emissions, pointing out the contribution of this method to assessing and communicating the carbon footprint of products. The MC3 was developed between 2000 and 2002 by J. L. Dom,nech who designed a tool for assessing ecological and carbon footprint of organizations. Nowadays, MC3 is supported by the Multi-University Working Group on Corporative Footprint. One of the recent achievements of this group has been the development of MC3 for products carbon footprinting. The MC3 approach has been recognized by the Spanish Observatory for Sustainability as a valid methodology for assessing and reducing GHG emissions arising from companies under the frame of the Spanish GHG Voluntary Reduction Agreement. MC3 offers guidelines for assessing the CF of products. Guidelines include specific requirements for issues such as system boundaries, temporal boundaries, and goal setting. Information on specific issues such as emissions from land use change, capital goods or carbon storage clarifies the approach to be taken by organizations implementing product carbon footprinting. Consumers and organizations all over the world are interested in obtaining information regarding the carbon footprint of products they consume and produce, being needed further standardization of methods for carbon footprinting. However, it is difficult that one approach provides for optimal results in a wide range of situations. MC3 is one of the existing approaches to assess the CF of products. MC3 has been developed under the premise of being a simple and practical method. The role of markets as the main source of communicating CF information on products among the members of the supply chain is an important strength of the method. MC3 provides for an internationally standardized method for the assessment of GHG emissions from the life cycle of products built on the LCA guidance and key principles of relevant approaches of the field of LCA. MC3 offers useful information for sustainable development, carbon management of organizations and sustainable consumption, being a flexible, transparent, and easy-to-apply method.l-lactide is the monomer for the polymer poly-l-lactic acid (PLLA). PLLA can be made from renewable resources, and is used in an increasing amount of applications. The biopolymer PLLA is one type of polymer of the family of polylactic acids (PLAs). Purac produces l-lactide and d-lactide, and supports partners with know-how to produce their own PLA from lactide. This life cycle assessment (LCA) study supporting market development presents the eco-profile of lactides and PLA biopolymers. An LCA was carried out for l-lactide, d-lactide, PLLA, and two PLLA/PDLA blends made from cane sugar in Thailand, and were compared with that of fossil-based polymers. The LCA complies with ISO standards, and is a cradle-to-gate analysis including sugarcane cultivation, sugarcane milling, auxiliary chemicals production, transport, and production of lactide and PLAs. In the analysis, process data were taken from the designs of full-scale plants for the production of lactic acid, lactides, and PLA. The data were combined with ecoprofiles of chemicals and utilities and recalculated to the following environmental impacts: primary renewable and non-renewable energy, non-renewable abiotic resource usage, farm land use, global warming, acidification, photochemical ozone creation, human toxicity, and eutrophication. On a weight-by-weight basis, PLLA results in significantly lower emissions of greenhouse gasses, and less use of material resources and non-renewable energy, compared to fossil-based polymers. With the present calculations, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) in l-lactide production is 300-600 kg CO2 eq./tonne and for PLLA 500-800 kg CO2 eq./tonne. The range indicates the sensitivity of the GWP to the energy credit for electricity production from bagasse in the sugar mill. The GWP of PLLA/PDLA blends with increased heat resistance is also lower compared to fossil based polymers with similar durable character. Being based on an agricultural system the biobased PLA gives rise to higher contributions to acidification, photochemical ozone creation, eutrophication, and farm land use compared to the fossil polymers. The application spectrum of PLAs is expanding, and there are opportunities to replace various fossil-based polymers. This facilitates climate change mitigation and reduces dependence on fossil and scarce resources while promoting the use of local and renewable resources. It is evident that in emerging green economies agricultural technology will form an integral part in the changeover towards a more sustainable industry and society.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an emerging supporting tool designed to help practitioner in systematically assessing the environmental performance of selected product's life cycle. A product's life cycle includes the extraction of raw materials, production, and usage, and ends with waste treatment or disposal. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) as a part of LCA is a method used to derive the environmental burdens from selected product's stages. LCIA is structured in classification, characterization, normalization and weighting. Presently most of the LCIA practices use European database to establish the characterization, normalization and weighting value. However, using these values for local LCA practice might not be able to reflect the actual Malaysian's environmental scenario. The aim of this study is to create a Malaysian version of normalization and weighting value using the pollution database within Malaysia. This research work used the LCIA top-down approach of the Eco-indicator 99 impact assessment methodology as a guide for the formulation of normalization and weighting value. Normalization values were formulated based on Malaysia's pollutant emission rate while the weighting values were formulated using the results of questionnaire survey that was distributed among local LCA practitioner and experts. The results from the studies showed that the normalization values for Malaysia in average are four times higher compared to European value while the weighting values for Malaysia are almost similar to the reference European value. In this study, an attempt was made to formulate Malaysian normalization and weighting values of the LCIA step using the Eco-indicator methodology. By adopting these values, the LCA study conducted will be more accurate and meaningful in evaluating Malaysian environmental impact. As a recommendation, this study can be further expanded by using different type of software and different type of method in formulating the normalization and weighting values. Besides that, a better collection with more recent data should be use for estimation of the normalization values. While in the weighting values estimation, a bigger size and different social background of panel should be used in the questionnaire survey approach to indicate different perception of average Malaysian citizen on environmental concerns.This paper explores a computational method to resolve some of the problems of external normalization in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) process of midpoint characterized impacts. Problems inherent to external normalization (per capita per year for a defined region) that reduce the ability to accurately calculate the most significant impact categories include a) Bias created by a range of measurement disparities b) Inverse proportion of the scale of the reference system impacts to the normalized product system impacts c) Measurement and methodological uncertainties This paper demonstrates a method called Process Inventory Dataset (PID) normalization. PID normalization modifies the normalized impact value by a normalizing factor which puts a probability distribution on average normalized impact categories for an entire process inventory dataset. PID normalization allows for significant variation of normalized impact ratio impact values among impact categories and among materials and processes. PID normalization works with incomplete process inventory and normalization data to deliver normalized impact ratio values that more accurately identify the impact categories with the most significant impacts in the LCIA process. Although PID normalization does not eliminate all of the bias that can occur from midpoint characterization and external normalization and may not reduce all uncertainties, it substantially trims the effects of normalization bias and eliminates inverse proportionality within one normalization dataset. It allows for a more accurate interpretation of normalized and weighted life cycle assessment results.Propagation of parametric uncertainty in life cycle inventory (LCI) models is usually performed based on probabilistic Monte Carlo techniques. However, alternative approaches using interval or fuzzy numbers have been proposed based on the argument that these provide a better reflection of epistemological uncertainties inherent in some process data. Recent progress has been made to integrate fuzzy arithmetic into matrix-based LCI using decomposition into alpha-cut intervals. However, the proposed technique implicitly assumes that the lower bounds of the technology matrix elements give the highest inventory results, and vice versa, without providing rigorous proof. This paper provides formal proof of the validity of the assumptions made in that paper using a formula derived in 1950. It is shown that an increase in the numerical value of an element of the technology matrix A results in a decrease of the corresponding element of the inverted matrix A (-1), provided that the latter is non-negative. It thus follows that the assumption used in fuzzy uncertainty propagation using matrix-based LCI is valid when A (-1) does not contain negative elements. In practice, this condition is satisfied by feasible life cycle systems whose component processes have positive scaling factors. However, when avoided processes are used in order to account for the presence of multifunctional processes, this condition will be violated. We then provide some guidelines to ensure that the necessary conditions for fuzzy propagation are met by an LCI model. The arguments presented here thus provide rigorous proof that the algorithm developed for fuzzy matrix-based LCI is valid under specified conditions, namely when the inverse of the technology matrix is non-negative. This paper thus gives the conditions for which computationally efficient propagation of uncertainties in fuzzy LCI models is strictly valid.The matrix method for the solution of the so-called inventory problem in LCA generally determines the inventory vector related to a specific system of processes by solving a system of linear equations. The paper proposes a new approach to deal with systems characterized by a rectangular (and thus non-invertible) coefficients matrix. The approach, based on the application of regression techniques, allows solving the system without using computational expedients such as the allocation procedure. The regression techniques used in the paper are (besides the ordinary least squares, OLS) total least squares (TLS) and data least squares (DLS). In this paper, the authors present the application of TLS and DLS to a case study related to the production of bricks, showing the differences between the results accomplished by the traditional matrix approach and those obtained with these techniques. The system boundaries were chosen such that the resulting technology matrix was not too big and thus easy to display, but at the same time complex enough to provide a valid demonstrative example for analyzing the results of the application of the above-described techniques. The results obtained for the case study taken into consideration showed an obvious but not overwhelming difference between the inventory vectors obtained by using the least-squares techniques and those obtained with the solutions based upon allocation. The inventory vectors obtained with the DLS and TLS techniques are closer to those obtained with the physical rather than with the economic allocation. However, this finding most probably cannot be generalized to every inventory problem. Since the solution of the inventory problem in life cycle inventory (LCI) is not a standard forecasting problem because the real solution (the real inventory vector related to the investigated functional unit) is unknown, we are not able to compute a proper performance indicator for the implemented algorithms. However, considering that the obtained least squares solutions are unique and their differences from the traditional solutions are not overwhelming, this methodology is worthy of further investigation. In order to make TLS and DLS techniques a valuable alternative to the traditional allocation procedures, there is a need to optimize them for the very particular systems that commonly occur in LCI, i.e., systems with sparse coefficients matrices and a vector of constants whose entries are almost always all null but one. This optimization is crucial for their applicability in the LCI context.New alternative routes for the treatment and disposal of stillage should be proposed, as fertigation could become unfeasible, due to the increasing transport costs and environmental concerns The aim of this paper is to show the results of the application of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology for the analysis and comparison of four alternatives for stillage treatment and disposal conventional 'in natura' fertigation, anaerobic digestion, concentration until 40% for fertifation and concentration until 65% for combustion in boilers using fuel oil as supplementary fuel For the LCA study, a hypothetic Standard Sugar and Alcohol Mill was assumed with a milling capacity of 1 99 milliion tonnes of sugarcane per crop, producing 154,000 tonnes of sugar and 81,000 m(3) of ethanol The mill is located near the city of Sertaozinho, Brazil and local soil characteristics were also considered The environmental evaluation results comparing the 4 alternatives of disposal are shown The Simapro (R) software and the CML 2 baseline 2000 are used as support tools Conventional and concentrated stillage fertigation alternative have the best environmental performance In the combustion of stillage, we considered the installation of pollution control devices for SOx and NOx with 95% efficiency From the point of view of climate change, based on the life cycle greenhouse gases balance, the best alternative was anaerobic digestionThis paper summarises the results of a number of life cycle evaluations that we have carried out in recent years about some of the sub-units (in particular, the recycling of the packaging materials, the treatment of the bio-waste, and the energy recovery from the residual waste) that compose a municipal solid waste management system (MSWMS) and about the MSWMS as a whole. The range of values estimated for cumulative energy demand (CED), global warming (GWP(100)), human toxicity, acidification, and photochemical ozone creation indicators according to the different analyses are presented in the paper for each sub-unit. The assumptions influencing the results have been identified, too. The proper aggregation of sub-units has allowed the estimation of the impacts associated with two integrated MSWMSs implemented in Italy and of the order of magnitude of those associated with a generic MSWMS, similar to those of the two case studies. The results show that the assumptions that most influence the environmental indicators are those about selection efficiencies and quality deterioration in the recycling of the packaging materials, about process emissions and avoided products in the composting, about the biogas yield and its way of utilisation in the anaerobic digestion, and about the efficiency of the plant and the kind of avoided energy in the energy recovery. All the indicators, except GWP(100) under certain assumptions, are negative in sign, thus indicating a benefit for the environment thanks to the avoided impact associated with the production of material and energy during the waste management. The estimated order of magnitude of the CED and GWP100 indicators turns out to be respectively thousands of MJ eq. and tens of kg CO(2) eq. per tonne of managed waste. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The deployment of biofuels is significantly affected by policy in energy and agriculture. In the energy arena, concerns regarding the sustainability of biofuel systems and their impact on food prices led to a set of sustainability criteria in EU Directive 2009/28/EC on Renewable Energy. In addition, the 10% biofuels target by 2020 was replaced with a 10% renewable energy in transport target. This allows the share of renewable electricity used by electric vehicles to contribute to the mix in achieving the 2020 target. Furthermore, only biofuel systems that effect a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with the fuel they replace are allowed to contribute to meeting the target. In the agricultural arena, cross-compliance (which is part of EU Common Agricultural Policy) dictates the allowable ratio of grassland to total agricultural land, and has a significant impact on which biofuels may be supported. This paper outlines the impact of these policy areas and their implications for the production and use of biofuels in terms of the 2020 target for 10% renewable transport energy, focusing on Ireland. The policies effectively impose constraints on many conventional energy crop biofuels and reinforce the merits of using biomethane, a gaseous biofuel. The analysis shows that Ireland can potentially satisfy 15% of renewable energy in transport by 2020 (allowing for double credit for biofuels from residues and ligno-cellulosic materials, as per Directive 2009/28/EC) through the use of indigenous biofuels: grass biomethane, waste and residue derived biofuels, electric vehicles and rapeseed biodiesel. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the context of global water scarcity and food security concerns, water footprints are emerging as an important sustainability indicator in the agriculture and food sectors. Using a recently developed life cycle assessment-based methodology that takes into account local water stress where operations occur, the normalized water footprints of milk products from South Gippsland, one of Australia's major dairy regions, were 14.4 L/kg of total milk solids in whole milk (at farm gate) and 15.8 L/kg of total milk solids in skim milk powder (delivered to export destination). These results demonstrate that dairy products can be produced with minimal potential to contribute to freshwater scarcity However, not all dairy production systems are alike and the variability in water footprints between systems and products should be explored to obtain strategic insights that will enable the dairy sector to minimize its burden on freshwater systems from consumptive water use.The South African government ratified a new biofuels industrial strategy at the end of 2007 The feasibility study that forms the basis of the strategy highlights the potential environmental implications of such a strategy However, at present there is no structured approach to evaluate the environmental profile of the scenarios within the strategy This paper introduces life cycle inventories whereby the environmental profiles of biofuel value chains may be evaluated meaningfully The scope of the paper focuses on the seed extraction biodiesel production scenarios of the strategy The inventory analysis shows that the inputs and outputs of the farming unit process are sensitive to the type of crop and region of produce Water usage is a highly variable parameter, which emphasises the importance of rainfall and irrigation to the overall burden of the biodiesel system on water resources Crop yields may differ by a factor of two, which is a significant difference in terms of land and non-renewable energy resources requirements The oil and meal/cake content of the seed proves to be the most important parameter that influences the initial unit processes of the value chains, almost all the inputs and outputs of the farming unit processes, for all the crops, range in the order of a factor of two due to this parameter The uncertainties associated with the logistic system in the value chain also have major implications Further, should there be no market offset for the meal/cake co-products, the waste treatment requirements would be highly uncertain Very little uncertainties were detected in the biodiesel production unit process, although the energy efficiency, and sustainability, of the overall production system remains questionable The paper identifies a number of limitations with inventory sets that need to be addressed through further research efforts to improve the environmental evaluations of a biofuel value chain in South Africa for policy-making purposesA multi-disciplinary design-optimization procedure has been introduced and used for the development of cost-effective glass-fiber reinforced epoxy-matrix composite 5 MW horizontal-axis wind-turbine (HAWT) blades. The turbine-blade cost-effectiveness has been defined using the cost of energy (CoE), i.e., a ratio of the three-blade HAWT rotor development/fabrication cost and the associated annual energy production. To assess the annual energy production as a function of the blade design and operating conditions, an aerodynamics-based computational analysis had to be employed. As far as the turbine blade cost is concerned, it is assessed for a given aerodynamic design by separately computing the blade mass and the associated blade-mass/size-dependent production cost. For each aerodynamic design analyzed, a structural finite element-based and a post-processing life-cycle assessment analyses were employed in order to determine a minimal blade mass which ensures that the functional requirements pertaining to the quasi-static strength of the blade, fatigue-controlled blade durability and blade stiffness are satisfied. To determine the turbine-blade production cost (for the currently prevailing fabrication process, the wet lay-up) available data regarding the industry manufacturing experience were combined with the attendant blade mass, surface area, and the duration of the assumed production run. The work clearly revealed the challenges associated with simultaneously satisfying the strength, durability and stiffness requirements while maintaining a high level of wind-energy capture efficiency and a lower production cost.The objective of the RETHINK project was to evaluate the potential impact of toxicity testing in the minipig as an alternative approach in regulatory toxicity testing that can contribute to the replacement, refinement and reduction of animal testing (3Rs). Expert study groups (Working Groups) were assembled to review five different areas relating to the use of minipigs in regulatory safety testing: ethical issues, welfare and animal care, development of new medicines and chemicals, safety testing issues and emerging technologies in safety testing. The conclusions and recommendations of the projects are presented in this article. It is concluded that there are no specific areas where restrictions to the use of minipigs in toxicology are required for welfare reasons. The minipig model is generally acceptable to regulatory authorities, provided it is adequately justified. The minipig is an interesting model for safety testing since there are numerous anatomical, physiological, genetic and biochemical similarities to humans. In addition many features of the minipig make it a practical and flexible model for safety testing. The use of the minipig in development of products does not bring any financial penalty in terms of the cost of testing. Benefits in terms of 3Rs can be identified in terms of life-cycle analysis of the use of minipigs compared to dogs and non-human primates. Finally the minipig (unlike the dog) is well positioned to take advantage of genomics and gene manipulation technologies. Specific recommendations for further research are made, which could bring 3Rs benefits. To deploy the minipig to the best advantage, clear information is needed about the predictivity of the minipig for human toxicities, and focussed action to define the potential role of the minipig in testing of biologics. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.For parabolic trough power plants using synthetic oil as the heat transfer medium, the application of solid media sensible heat storage is an attractive option in terms of investment and maintenance costs. One important aspect in storage development is the storage integration into the power plant. A modular operation concept for thermal storage systems was previously suggested by DLR, showing an increase in storage capacity of more than 100%. However, in these investigations, the additional costs needed to implement this storage concept into the power plant, such as for extra piping, valves, pumps, and control, had not been considered. These aspects are discussed in this paper, showing a decrease in levelized energy costs with a modular storage integration of 2-3%. In a life cycle assessment a comparison of an AndaSol-I type solar thermal power plant with the original two-tank molten salt storage and with a "hypothetical" concrete storage shows an advantage of the concrete storage technology concerning environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of the hypothetical concrete based AndaSol-I decreased by 7%, considering 1 kW h of solar electricity delivered to the grid. Regarding only the production of the power plant, the emissions decreased by 9.5%. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4001404]This paper presents an assessment of the technical and environmental performance of a wheat-based foam (WBF) and bio-composite for shipping chilled products. The thermal conductivity of the WBF was found to be higher than that of polyurethane foams commonly used in high-value insulation packaging, but close to that of low-density (expanded polystyrene) EPS foams and significantly lower than that of polyethylene (PE) foams, which are typically used in thermal packaging of foods. The insulation performance of a simple cool box constructed from both the WBF and EPS sandwich panels without the use of any refrigerant was studied experimentally. The comparison demonstrated that the performance of the WBF cool box was comparable to that of the EPS counterpart Two industrial case studies were conducted on WBF cool boxes with refrigerants in comparison with PE or EPS counterparts The WBF cool boxes had comparable thermal performance to the EPS and PE counterparts on the basis of identical foam thickness. The performance of the WBF cool boxes was also simulated with finite element (FE) modelling. Good agreement was achieved between experimental data and the FE prediction. The model was then used to assist cool box design. WBF cool boxes made from renewable raw materials are inherently biodegradable and may be used as an alternative to those based on polymer foams in thermal packaging applications. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) was used to investigate environmental profiles of cool boxes made with WBF, EPS and PE foams. The WBF cool boxes offer substantially lower global warming and abiotic depletion potentials than equivalent cool boxes made from petrochemical foams. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This review critically discusses the environmental and resource implications for the design of sustainable biocomposites. Sustainable biocomposites should satisfy several requirements: (i) renewable and/or recycled resources should be utilized for their manufacture; (ii) the synthetic, modification, and processing operations should be benign and energy effective; (iii) no hazardous environmental or toxicological effects should arise during any stage of their life cycle; and (iv) their waste management options should be implemented. The future integration of biorefineries and green chemistry will guarantee the availability of a wide range of raw materials for their preparation. The emission of volatile organic compounds and the release of nanoparticles should be evaluated from a toxicological and environmental point of view. Finally, the susceptibility of sustainable biocomposites towards degradation, including abiotic effects (water absorption, thermo- and photo-oxidation) and biofilm formation and biodegradation, must be considered, to guarantee their structural and functional stability during service life, and to ensure their biodegradability and assimilation during composting. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development is a concept, which involves social, ecological and economic objectives, and requires to sustain the integrity of resources exploitation, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change. Although there is still much confusion and conflict about exact meaning of sustainable development, many agree that sustainable development is about satisfying social, environmental, and economic goals. While the concept is generally accepted and relatively easy to comprehend, the difficulty arises in trying to apply the principles of sustainable development in practice. One of the difficulties is need to measure the "level of sustainability". The desirable characteristics for sustainability indicators have to include: simple to calculate, useful for decision making, and robust in indicating progress toward sustainability. The exergy analysis approach based on full life cycle assessment (LCA) of the materials and technologies is a useful metrics to evaluate mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with industrial eco materials and technologies. The metrics is used for reducing dimensionality on the input side by combining material and energy streams and output side reducing different characterisation factors to a single "unsustainability" indicator in a theoretically rigorous manner. The adopted approach has been illustrated on a few examples associated with Australian aluminium industry.Organic solar cells, both in the hybrid dye sensitized technology and in the full organic polymeric technology, are a promising alternative that could supply solar electricity at a cost much lower than other more conventional inorganic photovoltaic technologies. This paper presents a life cycle analysis of the laboratory production of a typical bulk heterojunction organic solar cell and compares this result with those obtained for the industrial production of other photovoltaic technologies. Also a detailed material inventory from raw materials to final photovoltaic module is presented, allowing us to identify potential bottlenecks in a future supply chain for a large industrial output. Even at this initial stage of laboratory production, the energy payback time and CO2 emission factor for the organic photovoltaic technology is of the same order of other inorganic photovoltaic technologies, demonstrating that there is plenty of room for improvement if the fabrication procedure is optimized and scaled up to an industrial process. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The search for alternatives to fossil fuels is boosting interest in biodiesel production. Among the crops used to produce biodiesel, palm trees stand out due to their high productivity and positive energy balance. This work assesses life cycle emissions and the energy balance of biodiesel production from palm oil in Brazil. The results are compared through a meta-analysis to previous published studies: Wood and Corley (1991) [Wood BJ, Corley RH. The energy balance of oil palm cultivation. In: PORIM intl. palm oil conference agriculture; 1991.], Malaysia; Yusoff and Hansen (2005) [Yusoff S. Hansen SB. Feasibility study of performing an life cycle assessment on crude palm oil production in Malaysia. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 2007;12:50-8], Malaysia; Angarita et al. (2009) [Angarita EE, Lora EE, Costa RE, Torres EA. The energy balance in the palm oil-derived methyl ester (PME) life cycle for the cases in Brazil and Colombia. Renewable Energy 2009;34:2905-13], Colombia; Pleanjai and Gheewala (2009) [Pleanjai S. Gheewala SH. Full chain energy analysis of biodiesel production from palm oil in Thailand. Applied Energy 2009;86:S209-14], Thailand; and Yee et al. (2009) [Yee KF, Tan KT, Abdullah AZ, Lee la. Life cycle assessment of palm biodiesel: revealing facts and benefits for sustainability. Applied Energy 2009;86:S189-96], Malaysia. In our study, data for the agricultural phase, transport, and energy content of the products and co-products were obtained from previous assessments done in Brazil. The energy intensities and greenhouse gas emission factors were obtained from the Simapro 7.1.8. software and other authors. These factors were applied to the inputs and outputs listed in the selected studies to render them comparable. The energy balance for our study was 1:5.37. In comparison the range for the other studies is between 1:3.40 and 1:7.78. Life cycle emissions determined in our assessment resulted in 1437 kg CO(2)e/ha, while our analysis based on the information provided by other authors resulted in 2406 kg CO(2)e/ha, on average. The Angarita et al. (2009) [Angarita EE, Lora EE, Costa RE, Torres EA. The energy balance in the palm oil-derived methyl ester (PME) life cycle for the cases in Brazil and Colombia. Renewable Energy 2009:34:2905-13] study does not report emissions. When compared to diesel on a energy basis, avoided emissions due to the use of biodiesel account for 80 g CO(2)e/MJ. Thus, avoided life Cycle emissions associated with the use of biodiesel yield a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. We also assessed the carbon balance between a palm tree plantation, including displaced emissions from diesel, and a natural ecosystem. Considering the carbon balance outcome plus life cycle emissions the payback time for a tropical forest is 39 years. The result published by Gibbs et al. (2008) [Gibbs HK, Johnston M, Foley JA, Holloway T, Monfreda C, Ramankutty N, et al., Carbon payback times for crop-based biofuel expansion in the tropics: the effects of changing yield and technology. Environmental Research Letters 2008;3:10], which ignores life cycle emissions, determined a payback range for biodiesel production between 30 and 120 years. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study assesses the environmental impact of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle-to-fibre recycling using the methodology of life-cycle assessment (LCA). Four recycling cases, including mechanical recycling, semi-mechanical recycling, back-to-oligomer recycling and back-to-monomer recycling were analysed. Three allocation methods are applied for open-loop recycling, i.e. the "cut-off" approach, the "waste valuation" approach and the "system expansion" approach. Nine environmental impact indicators were analysed, i.e. non-renewable energy use (NREU), global warming potential (GWP), abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidant formation. The LCA results are compared with virgin PET fibre and other commodity fibre products, i.e. cotton, viscose, PP (polypropylene) and PLA (polylactic acid). The LCA results show that recycled PET fibres offer important environmental benefits over virgin PET fibre. Depending on the allocation methods applied for open-loop-recycling, NREU savings of 40-85% and GWP savings of 25-75% can be achieved. Recycled PET fibres produced by mechanical recycling cause lower environmental impacts than virgin PET in at least eight out of a total of nine categories. Recycled fibres produced from chemical recycling allow to reduce impacts in six to seven out of a total of nine categories compared to virgin PET fibres. Note that while mechanical recycling has a better environmental profile than chemical recycling, chemically recycled fibres can be applied in a wider range of applications than mechanically recycled fibres. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are novel materials with remarkable properties; possible beneficial applications include aircraft frames, hydrogen storage, environmental sensors, electrical transmission, and many more. At the same time, precise characterization of their potential toxicity remains elusive, in part because engineered nanostructures pose challenges to existing assays, predictive models, and dosimetry. While these obstacles are surmountable, their presence suggests that scientific uncertainty regarding the hazards of CNTs is likely to persist. Traditional U.S. policy approaches implicitly pose the question: "What level of evidence is necessary and sufficient to justify regulatory action?" In the case of CNTs, such a strategy of risk analysis is of limited immediate utility to both regulators essaying to carry out their mandates, and users of CNTs seeking to provide an appropriate level of protection to employees, customers, and other stakeholders. In contrast, the concept of anticipatory governance suggests an alternative research focus, that is: "Given the conflicted character of the data, how should relevant actors respond?" Adopting the latter theoretical framework, this article argues that currently available data support treating CNTs "as if" they are hazardous, while simultaneously highlighting some systemic uncertainties in many of the experiments carried out to date. Such a conclusion implies limiting exposure throughout product lifecycles, and also points to the possible applicability of various conceptual tools, such as life-cycle and multicriteria decision analysis approaches, in choosing appropriate courses of action in the face of prolonged uncertainty.Carrying traffic loads is not the only objective of bridge designers nowadays. Other demands include constructing a bridge in a sustainable way, which reduces pollution and other harm to the environment. In The Netherlands, the government responds to such demands by promoting technologies and materials that decrease the environmental impact of construction projects. An assessment of that impact is, however, quite complex for bridge projects. The existing analytical methods, such as life-cycle analysis (LCA), require an extensive data input. Moreover, their results are more reliable for relatively simple products of short life cycles, for example, door or window frames, than for complex construction projects. In construction projects, the life cycles cannot be determined with the same precision and the materials are usually chosen in the very early stage of design. As a result, the data required by the LCA are often incomplete or even disputable. Therefore, there is a demand for ecological analysis methods that enable quick scanning of several material options, require less-extensive data input and are hardly, or not, vulnerable to arbitrariness.Lowering the washing temperature of laundry has environmental benefits, but consumers are reluctant to decrease the temperature in fear of not getting clean textiles. The objective of this study was to test eight leading laundry detergents for low temperature washing at 30 degrees C and at 40 degrees C. The cleaning effect was tested by measuring the reflection values of pre-soiled swatches after wash based on standard EN 60456. The results show that the difference in reflection value was on average only 1.9% higher at 40 degrees C than at 30 degrees C, indicating very small difference in cleaning effect. Most differences between temperatures could be seen in liquid detergents for white textiles, and least in powder detergents for coloured textiles. This confirms that modern detergents are suitable for wash at 30 degrees C, and the soil removal will in most cases be satisfactory for household use instead of the more common wash EA 40 degrees C.This paper presents a systematic overview of the environmental impacts of new average diesel and petrol cars from a life cycle perspective. An analysis of different technical and non-technical improvement options that could be achieved at each stage of a car's life cycle was performed. The consequences of the adoption of these options on the environment were estimated. The results show that some of the options analysed could have a major positive impact on the vehicle efficiency and induce large improvements of the environmental profile of passenger cars. The highest improvements are achievable through more efficient power trains (including hybrid car), and through lightweight cars. For some options, burden shifts from one car life cycle phase to another, or from one environmental problem to another, can occur. The results show that besides the purely technological options, those that imply behavioural changes by the driver may also reduce the environmental burden substantially. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to compare different end-of-life tire (ELT) treatment technologies in China from an environmental and economic perspective. Four treatment technologies were evaluated: ambient grinding, devulcanization, pyrolysis and illegal tire oil extraction. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to evaluate the potential environmental impact of each treatment based on the Eco-indicator 99 (Hierarchist approach) method provided by GaBi 4 software. The final result shows that pyrolysis represents the environmentally benign option while illegal tire oil extraction caused the worst damages. For the three legal treatments, although high credit was obtained when considering avoided impacts from recycled materials and energy, they have great impact as to respiratory effects (inorganic) dominantly contributed by energy production stage, which implies that the emphasis on environmental policies related to ELT treatment should shift from the control of emissions from treatment process to the reduction of energy consumption. A simplified comparison of net benefits and total impacts shows that the most eco-effective ELT treatment technology is pyrolysis, followed by dynamic devulcanization and ambient grinding. The illegal tire oil extraction, however, must be prohibited immediately because of its highest environmental pollution and lowest net benefit. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Constant and rapid increase in construction and demolition (C&D) waste generation and consumption of natural aggregate for concrete production became one of the biggest environmental problems in the construction industry. Recycling of C&D waste represents one way to convert a waste product into a resource but the environment benefits through energy consumption, emissions and fallouts reductions are not certain. The main purpose of this study is to determine the potentials of recycled aggregate concrete (concrete made with recycled concrete aggregate) for structural applications and to compare the environmental impact of the production of two types of ready-mixed concrete: natural aggregate concrete (NAC) made entirely with river aggregate and recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) made with natural fine and recycled coarse aggregate. Based on the analysis of up-to-date experimental evidence, including own tests results, it is concluded that utilization of RAC for low-to-middle strength structural concrete and non-aggressive exposure conditions is technically feasible. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed for raw material extraction and material production part of the concrete life cycle including transport. Assessment is based on local LCI data and on typical conditions in Serbia. Results of this specific case study show that impacts of aggregate and cement production phases are slightly larger for RAC than for NAC but the total environmental impacts depend on the natural and recycled aggregates transport distances and on transport types. Limit natural aggregate transport distances above which the environmental impacts of RAC can be equal or even lower than the impacts of NAC are calculated for the specific case study. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of recycling, mechanical biological treatments (MBT) and waste-to-energy incineration, the main management strategies to respond to the increasing production of post-consumer materials are reviewed and compared. Several studies carried out according to life-cycle assessment (LCA) confirm that the lowest environmental impact, on a global scale, is obtained by recycling and by biological treatments (composting and anaerobic fermentations) if compost is used in agriculture. The available air emission factors suggest that, on a local scale, mechanical biological treatments with energy recovery of biogas, may be intrinsically safer than waste-to-energy incinerators. Several studies confirm the capability of biological treatments to degrade many toxic xenobiotic contaminating urban wastes such as dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, an important property to be improved, for safe agricultural use of compost. Further LCA studies to compare the environmental impact of MBTs and of waste-to-energy incinerators are recommended. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was carried out to estimate the environmental impact of municipal solid waste. Four scenarios mostly used in China were compared to assess the influence of various technologies on environment: (1) landfill, (2) incineration, (3) composting plus landfill, and (4) composting plus incineration. In all scenarios, the technologies significantly contribute to global warming and increase the adverse impact of non-carcinogens on the environment. The technologies played only a small role in the impact of carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and non-renewable energy. Similarly, the influence of the technologies on the way other elements affect the environment was ignorable. Specifically, the direct emissions from the operation processes involved played an important role in most scenarios except for incineration, while potential impact generated from transport, infrastructure and energy consumption were quite small. In addition, in the global warming category, highest potential impact was observed in landfill because of the direct methane gas emissions. Electricity recovery from methane gas was the key factor for reducing the potential impact of global warming. Therefore, increasing the use of methane gas to recover electricity is highly recommended to reduce the adverse impact of landfills on the environment. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to compare, from an environmental point of view, different alternatives for the management of municipal solid waste generated in the town of Castellon de la Plana (Spain). This town currently produces 207 ton of waste per day and the waste management system employed today involves the collection of paper/cardboard, glass and light packaging from materials banks and of rest waste at street-side containers. The proposed alternative scenarios were based on a combination of the following elements: selective collection targets to be accomplished by the year 2015 as specified in the Spanish National Waste Plan (assuming they are reached to an extent of 50% and 100%), different collection models implemented nationally, and diverse treatments of both the separated biodegradable fraction and the rest waste to be disposed of on landfills. This resulted in 24 scenarios, whose environmental behaviour was studied by applying the life cycle assessment methodology. In accordance with the ISO 14040-44 (2006) standard, an inventory model was developed for the following stages of the waste management life cycle: pre-collection (bags and containers), collection, transport, pre-treatment (waste separation) and treatment/disposal (recycling, composting, biogasification + composting, landfill with/without energy recovery). Environmental indicators were obtained for different impact categories, which made it possible to identify the key variables in the waste management system and the scenario that offers the best environmental behaviour. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was used to test some of the assumptions made in the initial life cycle inventory model. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The performance of a battery-EDLC hybrid power source under pulse-operated power systems is theoretically and experimentally analyzed. Electrical double layer capacitors (or EDLC) enhance the power of lead-acid battery as it acts as a buffer in charging and discharging. Consequently, this hybrid technology is able to provide and absorb charge rapidly during vehicle acceleration and braking. The experimental results show considerable extension of runtime and reducing of internal losses. Using this association, the battery current draw is reduced and the EDLC source supplies the majority of transient current. As a result the battery stress is reduced up to 58%. Other laboratory tests showed a substantial improvement over stand-alone lead-acid battery pack and the lifetime of the battery is increased with 30%. This article proposes a new approach to perform accelerated life cycle analysis of lead-acid batteries with/without EDLC based on Dynamic Endurance Test according to standard IEC 61982-2. At least the power capabilities and internal resistance characteristics during charge/discharge of this technology have been evaluated by hybrid pulse power characterization test (HPPC). This paper introduces further new definition of the battery stress in terms of battery current and depth of discharge. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent decades international trade has become a major source of supplying the need and wants of billions of people around the world. Virtually everyone now consumes resource commodities and manufactured products imported from 'elsewhere'. In effect, globalization and trade enable consuming populations to support themselves on the output of distant ecosystems half a world away. However, while economic integration implies greater 'connectivity' within the global village, the spatial separation of material production (including resource extraction) from consumption eliminates some of the signals i.e., the negative feedbacks coming from supporting eco-systems from reaching those who depend on these ecosystems for their sustainability. At present, despite increasing global connectedness, most environmental studies and models apply to a single spatial scale: local, national or global; analysing diverse pressures on human well-being and ecosystems integrity. This paper argues that both economic globalization and global ecological change should force us to add an interregional scale for quantifying and modelling sustainability. Such an approach recognizes that, in a globalizing world, the sustainability of any given region increasingly depends, directly and indirectly, on the sustainability of many other regions. The following pages describe the interregional approach and illustrate some existing and emerging methods for quantifying, analysing and modelling interregional linkages. It then identifies some of what is still missing, and discusses some of the implications in a changing world. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare climate impacts of landfill (LF) and waste-to-energy (WTE) for disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW). To avoid possibly arbitrary assumptions about landfill gas (LEG) capture rates, the study develops a crossover function for LFG capture that indicates the capture rate at which LF and WTE breakeven for climate impacts. Above the crossover rate LF is better for the climate; below WTE is superior. Base case and sensitivity analyses show how this crossover rate is affected by waste composition, electricity conversion efficiency, heat capture, scrap metal recovery, greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of displaced power, and LCA time horizon. In general, crossover rates are in the 50% to 70% range. Notable exceptions include much higher crossover when WTE has high heat recovery, and much lower crossover for low carbon displaced power. The study also compares GHG emissions for electricity generated by WTE, captured LE methane, coal and natural gas, and concludes that none are carbon neutral. Further, the study tentatively suggests that MSW is a particularly carbon intensive fuel due to GHGs avoidable when readily recyclable materials in MSW are used in manufacturing new products rather than used to generate electricity.This paper advances the life cycle assessment (LCA) of photovoltaic systems by expanding the boundary of the included processes using hybrid LCA and accounting for the technology-driven dynamics of embodied energy and carbon emissions. Hybrid LCA is an extended method that combines bottom-up process-sum and top-down economic input-output (EIO) methods. In 2007, the embodied energy was 4354 MJ/m(2) and the energy payback time (EPBT) was 2.2 years for a multicrystalline silicon PV system under 1700 kWh/m(2)/yr of solar radiation. These results are higher than those of process-sum LCA by approximately 60%, indicating that processes excluded in process-sum LCA, such as transportation, are significant. Even though PV is a low-carbon technology, the difference between hybrid and process-sum results for 10% penetration of PV in the U.S. electrical grid is 0.13% of total current grid emissions. Extending LCA from the process-sum to hybrid analysis makes a significant difference. Dynamics are characterized through a retrospective analysis and future outlook for PV manufacturing from 2001 to 2011. During this decade,the embodied carbon fell substantially, from 60 g CO2/kWh in 2001 to 21 g/kWh in 2011, indicating that technological progress is realizing reductions in embodied environmental impacts as well as lower module price.Biofuels derived from microalgae have the potential to replace petroleum fuel and first-generation biofuel, but the efficacy with which sustainability goals can be achieved is dependent on the lifecycle impacts of the microalgae-to-biofuel process. This study proposes a detailed, industrial-scale engineering model for the species Nannochloropsis using a photobioreactor architecture. This process level model is integrated with a lifecycle energy and greenhouse gas emission analysis compatible with the methods and boundaries of the Argonne National Laboratory GREET model, thereby ensuring comparability to preexisting fuel-cycle assessments. Results are used to evaluate the net energy ratio (NER) and net greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) of microalgae biodiesel in comparison to petroleum diesel and soybean-based biodiesel with a boundary equivalent to "well-to-pump". The resulting NER of the microalgae biodiesel process is 0.93 MJ of energy consumed per MJ of energy produced. In terms of net GHGs, microalgae-based biofuels avoids 75 g of CO2-equivalent emissions per MJ of energy produced. The scalability of the consumables and products of the proposed microalgae-to-biofuels processes are assessed in the context of 150 billion liters (40 billion gallons) of annual production.The combined application of Life Cycle Assessment and Data Envelopment Analysis has been recently proposed to provide a tool for the comprehensive assessment of the environmental and operational performance of multiple similar entities. Among the acknowledged advantages of LCA+DEA methodology, eco-efficiency verification and avoidance of average inventories are usually highlighted. However, given the novelty of LCA + DEA methods, a high number of additional potentials remain unexplored. In this sense, there are some features that are worth detailing given their wide interest to enhance LCA performance. Emphasis is laid on the improved interpretation of LCA results through the complementary use of DEA with respect to: (i) super-efficiency analysis to facilitate the selection of reference performers, (ii) inter- and intra-assessments of multiple data sets within any specific sector with benchmarking and trend analysis purposes, (iii) integration of an economic dimension in order to enrich sustainability assessments, and (iv) window analysis to evaluate environmental impact efficiency over a certain period of time. Furthermore, the capability of LCA+DEA methodology to be generally implemented in a wide range of scenarios is discussed. These further potentials are explained and demonstrated via the presentation of brief case studies based on real data sets. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The food production system as a whole is recognized as one of the major contributors to environmental impacts. Accordingly, food production, processing, transport and consumption account for a relevant portion of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with any country. In this context, there is an increasing market demand for climate-relevant information regarding the global warming impact of consumer food products throughout the supply chains. This article deals with the assessment of the carbon footprint of seafood products as a key subgroup in the food sector. Galicia (NW Spain) was selected as a case study. The analysis is based on a representative set of species within the Galician fishing sector, including species obtained from coastal fishing (e.g. horse mackerel, Atlantic mackerel, European pilchard and blue whiting), offshore fishing (e.g. European hake, megrim and anglerfish), deep-sea fishing (skipjack and yellowfin tuna), extensive aquaculture (mussels) and intensive aquaculture (turbot). The carbon footprints associated with the production-related activities of each selected species were quantified following a business-to-business approach on the basis of 1 year of fishing activity. These individual carbon footprints were used to calculate the carbon footprint for each of the different Galician fisheries and culture activities. Finally, the lump sum of the carbon footprints for coastal, offshore and deep-sea fishing and extensive and intensive aquaculture brought about the carbon footprint of the Galician fishing activity (i.e., capture and culture). A benchmark for quantifying and communicating emission reductions was then provided, and opportunities to reduce the GHG emissions associated with the Galician fishing activity could be prioritized. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Plasma spraying using liquid precursors makes possible the production of finely-structured coatings and thin, coatings This technology has been investigated for nearly ten years in many laboratories and applications are now emerging, using conventional plasma equipment except for the feedstock injection system. While superior quality is expected from the nano-structured coatings, the question remains as to the impacts of using liquid precursors on the environment. In this study, we used the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to compare the conventional plasma spray process using powder feedstock, with injection of the precursor in the form of a liquid solution or suspension. The LCA methodology consists of identifying and comparing the environmental impacts of feedstock, energy inputs, products and emissions (solid, liquid and gaseous) of these two alternatives. The LCA study was carried out using the SimaPro program developed in the Netherlands and a peer-reviewed database of upstream materials and energy (Ecolnvent v.2). The specific application studied was the plasma spraying of yttria-stabilized zirconia. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V All rights reservedOne of the goals of the US Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save ( CARS) Act of 2009, more commonly known as 'Cash for Clunkers', was to improve the US vehicle fleet fuel efficiency. Previous studies of the program's environmental impact have focused mainly on the effect of improved fuel economy, and the resulting reductions in fuel use and emissions during the vehicle use phase. We propose and apply a method for analyzing the net effect of CARS on greenhouse gas emissions from a full vehicle life cycle perspective, including the impact of premature production and retirement of vehicles. We find that CARS had a one-time effect of preventing 4.4 million metric tons of CO(2)-equivalent emissions, about 0.4% of US annual light-duty vehicle emissions. Of these, 3.7 million metric tons are avoided during the period of the expected remaining life of the inefficient 'clunkers'. 1.5 million metric tons are avoided as consumers purchase vehicles that are more efficient than their next replacement vehicle would otherwise have been. An additional 0.8 million metric tons are emitted as a result of premature manufacturing and disposal of vehicles. These results are sensitive to the remaining lifetime of the 'clunkers' and to the fuel economy of new vehicles in the absence of CARS, suggesting important considerations for policymakers deliberating on the use of accelerated vehicle retirement programs as a part of the greenhouse gas emissions policy.An eight-year model window exposure trial was used to determine the best treatments available for hardwood windows Severe decay was found in painted untreated Eucalyptus regnans Eucalyptus delegatensis and Shorea spp window frames Light or light-moderate decay was detected in Eucalyptus sieberi and Eucalyptus obliqua frames There was generally only light decay in Thuja plicata windows although two windows had deeper patches of decay Only light decay was found in eucalypt windows treated by vacuum pressure impregnation (VPI) with azole LOSP (light organic solvent preservative) when they were painted There was no difference in performance of azole LOSP-treated E regnans windows when painted cream or brown However similar unpainted windows had moderate to heavy decay E regnans windows dipped in azole LOSP performed much better than untreated windows TBTN-treated E regnans windows performed worse than azole LOSP-treated windows The VPI treatment of unseasoned E obliqua E regnans and E delegatensis with boron to meet H1 requirements for lyctine borer control also mostly protected the windows from significant decay The retention of boron achieved in E when did not improve decay resistance When the ends cut after VPI boron treatments were resealed by dipping in boron solution there were nine examples of end-grain decay In comparison all of the azole LOSP-treated eucalypts where cut ends were resealed by a 3-min dip in azole LOSP were sound The least decay for windows was found in E regnans that contained borate/fluoride diffusible preservative rods Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedThis review on Sustainability covers journal articles and conferences papers published in 2009 and is divided into the following sections(1): Sustainable water and wastewater utilities Sustainable watersheds and water resources management Industrial and corporate approaches towards sustainability Stormwater and green infrastructure Sustainable wastewater technologies Sustainability assessment and life cycle analysis Sustainability and energy in wastewater industry Sustainability and climate change Sustainability and water reuse Application of LEED (R) The sustainable water and wastewater utilities reviewed sustainable practices, sustainable workforce management, and sustainable financing. The stormwater and green Infrastructure (GI) described the current development in four general categories: new studies of GI and low impact design (LID) system performance; GI/LID system planning and design; modeling of GI/LID systems; and social implications of GI/LID systems. The sustainable wastewater technologies reviewed wastewater treatment, anaerobic technologies, low impact and natural treatment systems, residuals and emissions management.Experiments were performed employing cane particles obtained from sugarcane at different growth stages until maturation measuring the amount of ethanol produced and the carbohydrate consumption in order to estimate the sugarcane growth stage where both parameters were optimized. Two non-flowering commercial cane varieties NA56 and PR752002 were cultivated and samples taken at different time intervals. Two Saccharomyces cerevisae strains were also compared in the trials. Sucrose was poorly consumed in young cane, which was an unexpected result. Fructose on the other hand was the hexose that remained in the medium at the end of the fermentations specially when using mature sugarcane. There was an increasing trend in ethanol production as a function of days after planting (DAP) as expected; however, a plateau was reached after 225 DAP and the maximum value obtained was between 300 and 325 DAP. When these figures were compared with the corresponding DAP used for sugar production, only 25 days less were needed in the field for maximum ethanol production. On the other hand, it was clear from the data that cane harvesting for ethanol production should not be done after the recommended DAP for commercial sugar production. If this is done, the excess fructose present will not be completely utilized by yeast. Finally, it was observed that the yeast with more affinity for sugarcane fibers showed better ethanol yields in all samples tested.Fibre reinforced polymers (FRPs) are increasingly being used in construction due to their light weight, ease of installation, low maintenance, tailor made properties, and corrosion resistance. The UK FRP industry produces 240,000 tonnes of products a year with 11% of this being for the construction industry in a variety of structural and on-structural applications. Products made from FRP materials can offer significant environmental benefits, for example, FRPs used in bridges can reduce the overall weight of the structure and so offer reduced transport and installation impacts. However, although the in service environmental benefits of composites are known, there is far less understanding of the environmental and social implications associated with the manufacture of FRP materials and products. Current and impending waste management legislation will put more pressure on the industry to address the options available for dealing with FRP waste. Such waste legislation focuses on dealing with waste through the w aste hierarchy and will therefore put more pressure on solving FRP waste management through recycling and reuse. At present the most common disposal method for UK FRP waste is landfill. To assist in the transition from disposal in landfill to recycling, the FRP industry needs to consider designing materials and components for easier deconstruction, reuse and recycling at the end of the product life. This paper will highlight the key issues affecting the FRP industry, taking a cradle to grave approach and assessing the environmental impacts at each stage.Gas-to-liquids (GTL) as an alternative to diesel is considered to be one of the technical options to reduce petroleum consumption in the on-road transportation sector. Between May and August 2007, a joint demonstration program by Tsinghua University, Beijing Transit, Cummins Corporation and Shell Corporation was carried out in Beijing. The program focused on the supply systems and vehicle use of GTL fuel. The demonstration fleet was formed by four transit buses fueled with GTL and four with diesel. It was demonstrated that GTL has good compatibility with diesel in terms of fuel supply system and vehicle use. This paper compares the energy consumption and GHG emissions of diesel and GTL fuel supply chains by life cycle analysis based on demonstration results. The results indicate GTL's large range (reported 54-70%) in synthesis efficiency, as the key factor in determining energy consumption and GHG emissions within the GTL fuel supply chain. For the probable case (GTL synthesis efficiency: 65%), the life cycle energy consumption and GHG emissions of GTL fuel are 42.5% and 12.6% higher than that of diesel. For two sensitivity analysis cases (GTL synthesis efficiency: 54% and 70%), energy consumptions are 74.2% and 31.2% higher and GHG emissions are 27.3% and 7.4% higher than that of the diesel fuel supply chain. If the efficiency of the GTL synthesis process is improved to 75%, then the GHG emissions level of the GTL fuel supply chain can be reduced to the same level as the diesel fuel supply chain. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Analysis and comparison of energy standards based on a typical single-family house in terms of energy demand and costs over the entire life cycle. Over recent years significant progress has been made with regard to sustainable development, particularly for new buildings. Particularly noteworthy are the advancement of renewable energy technologies and new building materials with very low thermal conductivity. In parallel, solutions for low-energy, passive and even surplus-energy homes were developed and implemented. These building standards are characterised by low heating energy consumption and therefore enable significant energy savings during the building utilisation phase. The question is whether the application of new technologies and building materials results in a partial shift of the total primary energy demand from the utilisation phase to the construction and maintenance phase. It is also questionable, however, what additional investments are required to achieve the savings in operating costs. In order to answer this question a number of different design and construction options for a free-standing single-family house were examined and subjected to a life cycle analysis using the LEGEP software tool. Based on this analysis a number of statements regarding the primary energy demand over the life cycle of the exemplary single-family house and also for the cost trend can be made. However, the results are not universally applicable. They indicate that a holistic analysis is required for each individual case in order to achieve sustainable resource use.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing the environmental impacts associated with products throughout their lifecycle. Many impacts are accounted for within the LCA framework, but to date biodiversity impacts have received little attention. There are a number of existing direct and indirect measures of biodiversity within the ecological field, some of which have the potential to be developed into a useable method for LCA. However, our assessment is that considerable development would be required and their implementation for LCA is not likely in the foreseeable future. Here an alternative approach is proposed for rapidly incorporating biodiversity impacts into LCA. The approach relies on expert opinions through a series of questions which aim to encapsulate the main issues relating to biodiversity within a disturbance impact framework. While the technique is in its infancy we outline a foundation for the approach and identify the steps required to develop this method for implementation into LCA.A novel process was developed to isolate Poly([[R]-3-hydroxyoctanoate-co-3-hydroxyhexamiate) (PHO) and poly([R]-3-hydroxy-co-undecenoate-co-3-hydroxy-co-nonenoate-co-3-hydroxy-co-heptenoate) (PHUE) from Pseudomonas putido species. Methyl teri-butyl ether (MTBE), ethyl acetate, acetone, and methylene chloride efficiently extracted PHO from freeze-dried biomass. The ratio of solvent to biomass was 15:1 (vol/wt). The nonchlorinated solvents required 18 h of extraction to achieve methylene chloride's yield or 15 wt % within 60 min. In the case of PHUE. the yield was 15-17 wt % after 60 min or extrartion at room temperature, independently of the solvent used. MTBE performed best in life cycle assessment (LCA) if contamination of the environment is avoided. Filtration of the extract containing 8 wt % of raw polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) through activated charcoal revealed colorless polymers with less than one endotoxin unit/g. The ratio (v/v) of the solution to activated charcoal was 2:1. The loss (impurities and polymers) amounted up to 50 wt %.At the Biomass Research Centre University of Perugia some LCA studies were carried out on different biomass chains, using a detailed software (Simapro 7.0) and the EcoIndicator 99 model in order to evaluate the global burden. Results showed that EcoIndicator 99 lacks some important features (e.g. freshwater consumption, nutrient emissions into water, soil erosion) that are necessary in evaluating the environmental load of energy crops. Therefore a new LCA methodology, tailored to biomass production, was developed, in which all resources used and emissions into environment were divided into the following impact categories: depletion of abiotic resources, freshwater consumption, climate change, land use, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, ecotoxicity, soil erosion. The impact assessment methodology was tested on fiber sorghum crop production, adopting two different agricultural techniques mainly regarding irrigation management, employing data from experimental fields in Umbria Region (Italy). Results showed a more reliable approach to the impact assessment of biomass cultivation phase. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Photosynthetic assimilation of atmospheric carbon dioxide by land plants offers the underpinnings for terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration. A proportion of the C captured in plant biomass is partitioned to roots, where it enters the pools of soil organic C and soil inorganic C and can be sequestered for millennia. Bioenergy crops serve the dual role of providing biofuel that offsets fossil-fuel greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sequestering C in the soil through extensive root systems. Carbon captured in plant biomass can also contribute to C sequestration through the deliberate addition of biochar to soil, wood burial, or the use of durable plant products. Increasing our understanding of plant, microbial, and soil biology, and harnessing the benefits of traditional genetics and genetic engineering, will help us fully realize the GHG mitigation potential of phytosequestration.Following a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, this study aims at defining an appropriate performance index to consider environmental impact in the development of a multicriteria evaluation comparing factory-built wood-frame exterior walls. The investigation is applied to a case study comparing five wall assemblies for the exterior wall of a residential building in Quebec City (Canada). For the five alternatives, the life cycle inventory (LCI) provided by the ATHENA(TM) Environmental Impact Estimator software is aggregated using three different life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods: IMPACT 2002+, Eco-indicator 99 and TRACI. The relative impacts of assembly components and of the operation energy source on the environmental performance of the assemblies are investigated by comparing midpoint and endpoint indicators calculated with the three LCIA methods. The study concludes to the acceptability, in this specific context, of using the climate change indicator as an appropriate environmental index. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With increasing renewable energy targets and the use of biomass for energy production, questions arise about the sustainability of differing types of bioenergy. Much has been made about the renewable transport fuel obligations and the impact the production of biofuel can have on the environment, but there has been less consideration of more small scale biomass heating systems. This work examines the life cycle impacts of the production and use of three such systems using waste wood in the South West of England. Burning of wood in the UK was reduced after the introduction of legislation to reduce smog in the 1950s, and so the impact of the emissions from the boilers has been examined. Whilst the boilers studied complied with UK emissions legislation, the emissions were the most significant impact found. However, there were differences in the emission levels depending on the loading of the boiler. In all cases the energy payback of the systems was under one year, ranging from approximately four to ten months. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Steels were the upstream of various products. The environmental performance of steel can affect those of the downstream products. In this work, environmental impacts of individual steels, i.e. slab, hot-rolled, cold-rolled, hot-dipped galvanized, and electro-galvanized steels, were studied, via life cycle assessment. The impact assessment methods of IPCC 2007 GWP 100a and Eco-indicator 99 (H) were used to cover the impact categories of Global warming potential, Fossil fuels, Ecotoxicity, Minerals, Carcinogens, and Respiratory inorganics. In all categories, the slab showed the lowest impacts and the hot-dipped galvanized steel showed the highest impacts. The main causes of the impacts were attributed to these inputs: steel, energy, and zinc. The emissions from steel production plants showed relatively low impacts. Small amount of zinc input can cause huge environmental impacts. The impacts of Fossil fuels, Minerals, and Ecotoxicity, of 1-kg zinc were 2.9, 116.9, and 39.6 times of those caused by 1-kg cold-rolled steel, respectively. The reduction of zinc consumption and the improvement of zinc production process, in terms of reduction of heavy metal emissions, could largely improve environmental performance of the galvanized steels. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings demand energy in their life cycle right from its construction to demolition. Studies on the total energy use during the life cycle are desirable to identify phases of largest energy use and to develop strategies for its reduction. In the present paper, a critical review of the life cycle energy analyses of buildings resulting from 73 cases across 13 countries is presented. The study includes both residential and office buildings. Results show that operating (80-90%) and embodied (10-20%) phases of energy use are significant contributors to building's life cycle energy demand. Life cycle energy (primary) requirement of conventional residential buildings falls in the range of 150-400 kWh/m(2) per year and that of office buildings in the range of 250-550 kWh/m(2) per year. Building's life cycle energy demand can be reduced by reducing its operating energy significantly through use of passive and active technologies even if it leads to a slight increase in embodied energy. However, an excessive use of passive and active features in a building may be counterproductive. It is observed that low energy buildings perform better than self-sufficient (zero operating energy) buildings in the life cycle context. Since, most of the case studies available in open literature pertain to developed and/or cold countries; hence, energy indicative figures for developing and/or non-cold countries need to be evaluated and compared with the results presented in this paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper reports a life-cycle assessment on energy and carbon footprints of bio-oil/char slurry (i.e., bioslurry) fuel from malice in Western Australia (WA). The results demonstrate that bioslurry fuels have small energy and carbon footprints, < 4% and < 3% of the total energy and carbon embedded in the delivered fuels, respectively. The energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions during the life cycle of these fuels are mainly due to biomass production, harvest, and transport. Considering the carbon sinks because of below-ground biomass and land-use change, the carbon footprints of both biomass and bioslurry fuels are actually negative. While a biomass supply chain delivers biomass fuels with smaller energy and carbon footprints for small bioenergy plants, a bioslurry supply chain achieves better performance for dedicated applications only in large-scale centralized plants situated within a biomass collection area. For co-processing applications in coal-based energy plants distant from the biomass collection area, bioslurry as a fuel achieves more energy savings and carbon benefit at a longer transport distance between the biomass collection area and the coal-based energy plant. However, for both biomass and bioslurry fuels, the energy and carbon footprints are small compared to the embedded energy and carbon in the delivered fuels.The power sector in Nigeria is undergoing structural reforms aimed at improving and expanding the current grid generation capacity and distribution network. The Government has injected huge funds into this sector while also granting licences to private companies for the provision of electricity. It is also aiming to increase electricity generation capacity to 25,000 MW by 2020 from the current installed capacity of 6500 MW while also pledging to connect 75% of the population to the grid from the current 40% by 2025. This paper sets out to analyse the implications of the energy policy in Nigeria and presents the life cycle environmental and economic analysis of the current and future electricity sector. The results show that all the life cycle impacts and economic costs increase significantly over the time-period (2003-2030), but at different rates depending on the types of technologies deployed. Renewables such as large hydro and solar proposed by the Government have a potential to reduce the overall life cycle environmental impacts from the electricity mix, considering their lower environmental impacts compared to fossil-fuels. However, this requires a five-fold increase in grid investments from the current US$1.7 billion per year to US$9.40 billion by 2030. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greater use of renewable energy is being aggressively promoted to combat climate change by the Chinese government and by other governments. Agricultural straw is the kind of renewable energy source that would become a pollution source if it is not well utilized. We select the Shiliquan straw-based electricity generation project in Shandong Province, China as a case and assess environmental externalities of straw utilization in power plants by using life-cycle analysis. Results show that straw-based electricity generation has far fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than that of coal-based electricity generation. Improvement in the energy efficiency of equipment used for straw's pretreatment would lead to a decrease of GHG emissions and energy consumption in the life-cycle of straw-based electricity generation. In case 400 million tonnes of wasted straw in China could be used as a substitute for 200 million tonnes of coal, annually the straw 291 Terrawatt hours (TWh) of electricity could be generated, resulting in an annual total CO(2) emissions savings of 193 million tonnes. Straw-based electricity generation could be a high-potential alternative for electricity generation as well as an incentive for utilizing wheat straw instead of burning it in the field. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lignocellulosic biomass can be converted into ethanol through either biochemical or thermochemical conversion processes. Biochemical conversion involves hydrolysis and fermentation while thermochemical conversion involves gasification and catalytic synthesis. Even though these routes produce comparable amounts of ethanol and have similar energy efficiency at the plant level, little is known about their relative environmental performance from a life cycle perspective. Especially, the indirect impacts, i.e. emissions and resource consumption associated with the production of various process inputs, are largely neglected in previous studies. This article compiles material and energy flow data from process simulation models to develop life cycle inventory and compares the fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and water consumption of both biomass-to-ethanol production processes. The results are presented in terms of contributions from feedstock, direct, indirect, and co-product credits for four representative biomass feedstocks i.e., wood chips, corn stover, waste paper, and wheat straw. To explore the potentials of the two conversion pathways, different technological scenarios are modeled, including current, 2012 and 2020 technology targets, as well as different production/co-production configurations. The modeling results suggest that biochemical conversion has slightly better performance on greenhouse gas emission and fossil fuel consumption, but that thermochemical conversion has significantly less direct, indirect, and life cycle water consumption. Also, if the thermochemical plant operates as a biorefinery with mixed alcohol co-products separated for chemicals, it has the potential to achieve better performance than biochemical pathway across all environmental impact categories considered due to higher co-product credits associated with chemicals being displaced. The results from this work serve as a starting point for developing full life cycle assessment model that facilitates effective decision-making regarding lignocellulosic ethanol production.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to analyze a food-processing wastewater treatment plant and investigate the economic and environmental effects of the plant. With the long-term operational data of this plant, an inventory of relative inputs, e.g., flow rate, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and suspended solids, etc., and outputs of the plant, e.g., effluent COD and suspended solids, methane production, etc., was compiled. The potential environmental effects associated with those inputs and outputs were evaluated, and the results of the inventory analysis and impact assessment phases of the plant were interpreted. One feature of this study was the assessment of the treatment plant based on both energy and material flows. Another feature was the establishment of an assessment model with an integration of plant operating parameters, system recognition and grey relation. The analytical results are helpful for the design and operation of wastewater treatment plants.This study describes the development and application of the Farfield Human Exposure (FHX) model. This screening level model brings together information on chemical partitioning, degradation, environmental fate and transport, and food web bioaccumulation for assessing human age class-specific exposures from chemicals released to the environment. The Level III model calculates steady-state concentrations in multimedia compartments such as air, water, and soil, and various food groups including fruits, vegetables, milk, dairy, fish, and meats based on a unit emission rate. Human multimedia intake and ingestion rates determine unit emission based chemical exposures, intake rates and intake fractions for various age classes representing the general population. The FHX model is generally applicable to regional areas and is designed to use readily available chemical input data for screening level and priority setting evaluations. In the present study the model is parameterized for an evaluative regional area using Health Canada exposure factors to determine multimedia intake rates for seven selected age classes. The model outputs, human chemical intake rates and human intake fractions are described for four case study chemicals. Biotransformation and biomagnification processes in food webs are highlighted as key factors influencing human exposure. Future research needs to improve the model are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recently, an isoparaffin-rich jet fuel derived from camelina, a low-input nonfood oilseed crop, was flight-tested by a commercial airline. To date, all test results indicate that this hydrotreated renewable jet fuel (HRJ) not only meets stringent engine fuel and performance specifications but also reduces environmental emissions. Several scenarios are now being considered for camelina as a sustainable feedstock for advanced biofuel production. For example, growth of camelina in the Northern Plains of the United States on either marginal lands or as a rotation crop during fallow periods on existing lands already in food crop production can avoid the conflict with food cultivation and concerns with indirect land use change impacts. Updated estimates of camelina cultivation requirements and commercial scale oil recovery and refining were used to calculate life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy demand for both HRJ and renewable diesel (green diesel, GD). GHG life cycle emissions for GD and HRJ are 18.0 and 22.4 g CO2 equiv/MJ fuel, which represent savings relative to petroleum counterparts of 80% and 75%, respectively. Scenario analyses were conducted to determine response to model assumptions and data uncertainty, including allocation methodology, N fertilizer application rate, N2O emission factor, source of H-2, and farm diesel consumption. (C) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 29: 382-392, 2010The increasing demand for environmental information on the global warming impact of products requires a solid methodological framework which guarantees comparability and communicability. The publicly available specification PAS 2050 combines approaches to a variety of greenhouse gas specific assessment issues to deliver a globally applicable product Carbon Footprinting (CF) method, which is expected to be widely accepted. Specifically, this paper aims to demonstrate the implementation of a CF scheme for a common canned mussel product according to PAS 2050 guidelines. A final value of 4.35 kg CO(2)e per triple pack of round cans of mussels was calculated. Furthermore, this CF study led to identify primary packaging (can production) and mussel shell management as the main activities where efforts should focus for climate change mitigation. Throughout this case study. CF opportunities and drawbacks are discussed. The whole text tries to provide a starting point for both mussel processors and policy makers to benefit from the potential advantages of a responsible use of this increasingly popular tool. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article begins with a summary of findings from commonly cited life cycle assessments (LCA) of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products. While differing conclusions regarding environmental impact are expected across product segments (mobile phones, personal computers, servers, etc.) significant variation and conflicting conclusions are observed even within product segments such as the desktop Personal Computer (PC). This lack of consistent conclusions and accurate data limits the effectiveness of LCA to influence policy and product design decisions. From 1997 to 2010, the majority of published studies focused on the PC concluded that the use phase contributes most to the life cycle energy demand of PC products with a handful of studies suggesting that manufacturing phase of the PC has the largest impact. The purpose of this article is to critically review these studies in order to analyze sources of uncertainty, including factors that extend beyond data quality to the models and assumptions used. These findings suggest existing methods to combine process-based LCA data with product price data and remaining value adjustments are not reliable in conducting life cycle assessments for PC products. Recommendations are provided to assist future LCA work.Biomass can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by displacing petroleum in the transportation sector, by displacing fossil-based electricity, and by sequestering atmospheric carbon. Which use mitigates the most emissions depends on market and regulatory contexts outside the scope of attributional life cycle assessments. We show that bioelectricity's advantage over liquid biofuels depends on the GHG intensity of the electricity displaced. Bioelectricity that displaces coal-fired electricity could reduce GHG emissions, but bioelectricity that displaces wind electricity could increase GHG emissions. The electricity displaced depends upon existing infrastructure and policies affecting the electric grid. These findings demonstrate how model assumptions about whether the vehicle fleet and bioenergy use are fixed or free parameters constrain the policy questions an analysis can inform. Our bioenergy life cycle assessment can inform questions about a bioenergy mandate's optimal allocation between liquid fuels and electricity generation, but questions about the optimal level of bioenergy use require analyses with different assumptions about fixed and free parameters.The potential expansion of biofuel production raises food, energy, and environmental challenges that require careful assessment of the impact of biofuel production on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, soil erosion, nutrient loading, and water quality. In this study, we describe a spatially explicit integrative modeling framework (SEIMF) to understand and quantify the environmental impacts of different biomass cropping systems. This SEIMF consists of three major components: (1) a geographic information system (GIS)-based data analysis system to define spatial modeling units with resolution of 56 m to address spatial variability, (2) the biophysical and biogeochemical model Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) applied in a spatially-explicit way to predict biomass yield, GHG emissions, and other environmental impacts of different biofuel crops production systems, and (3) an evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithm for exploring the trade-offs between biofuel energy production and unintended ecosystem-service responses. Simple examples illustrate the major functions of the SEIMF when applied to a nine-county Regional Intensive Modeling Area (RIMA) in SW Michigan to (1) simulate biofuel crop production, (2) compare impacts of management practices and local ecosystem settings, and (3) optimize the spatial configuration of different biofuel production systems by balancing energy production and other ecosystem-service variables. Potential applications of the SEIMF to support life cycle analysis and provide information on biodiversity evaluation and marginal-land identification are also discussed. The SEIMF developed in this study is expected to provide a useful tool for scientists and decision makers to understand sustainability issues associated with the production of biofuels at local, regional, and national scales.A method for evaluating the environmental burden due to manufacturing process is proposed using virtual manufacturing processes based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The total environment, burden is evaluated from the electric consumption of machine tool components, coolant quantity; lubricant oil quantity, cutting tool status, and metal chip quantity. The initial step of this study is focused on machine tool operations Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 100 years impact is taken as a key factor and equivalent CO2 emission is evaluated The relation between cutting conditions and environmental burden of machine tool operations is analyzed in this study The results reveal the appropriate cutting conditions and can be used to predict and reduce the amount of CO2 generated from machine tool operationsThe main aim of the study was to explore how LCA can be used to optimize the design of lithium-ion batteries for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Two lithium-ion batteries, both based on lithium iron phosphate, but using different solvents during cell manufacturing, were studied by means of life cycle assessment, LCA. The general conclusions are limited to results showing robustness against variation in critical data. The study showed that it is environmentally preferable to use water as a solvent instead of N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone. NMP, in the slurry for casting the cathode and anode of lithium-ion batteries. Recent years' improvements in battery technology, especially related to cycle life, have decreased production phase environmental impacts almost to the level of use phase impacts. In the use phase, environmental impacts related to internal battery efficiency are two to six times larger than the impact from losses due to battery weight in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, assuming 90% internal battery efficiency. Thus, internal battery efficiency is a very important parameter; at least as important as battery weight. Areas, in which data is missing or inadequate and the environmental impact is or may be significant, include: production of binders, production of lithium salts, cell manufacturing and assembly, the relationship between weight of vehicle and vehicle energy consumption, information about internal battery efficiency and recycling of lithium-ion batteries based on lithium iron phosphate. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, we analyzed the effects of different cropping systems (sole maize (CK), maize + soybean (CST) and maize + groundnut (CGT)) on the environment. The comprehensive index of environmental impacts varied in the order, sole maize > maize + groundnut > maize + soybean, with corresponding intercropping values of 0.1295, 0.1229 and 0.0945, respectively. The results showed that intercropping maize with suitable plants (e.g., groundnut and soybean) could reduce the adverse effects of over-application of nitrogen fertilizer on the environment. The study further showed that the LCA method may be a convenient and effective approach for analyzing the environmental impact of fertilizer management in agricultural fields. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>The impacts of information and communications technology (ICT) on the environment have been a rich area for research in recent years. A prime example is the continuing rise of digital music delivery, which has obvious potential for reducing the energy and environmental impacts of producing and delivering music to final consumers. This study assesses the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with several alternative methods for delivering one album of music to a final customer, either through traditional retail or e-commerce sales of compact discs or through a digital download service. We analyze a set of six (three compact disc and three digital download) scenarios for the delivery of one music album from the recording stage to the consumer's home in either CD or digital form. We find that despite the increased energy and emissions associated with Internet data flows, purchasing music digitally reduces the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with delivering music to customers by between 40% and 80% from the best-case physical CD delivery, depending on whether a customer then burns the files to CD. Despite the dominance of the digital music delivery method, however, there are scenarios by which digital music performs less well, and these scenarios are explored. We suggest future areas of research, including alternative digital media services, such as subscription and streaming systems, for which Internet energy usage may be larger than for direct downloads.P>The positive and negative environmental impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) are widely debated. This study assesses the electricity use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the ICT and entertainment & media (E&M) sectors at sector level, including end users, and thus complements information on the product level. GHGs are studied in a life cycle perspective, but for electricity use, only the operational use is considered. The study also considers which product groups or processes are major contributors. Using available data and extrapolating existing figures to the global scale for 2007 reveals that the ICT sector produced 1.3% of global GHG emissions in 2007 and the E&M sector 1.7%. The corresponding figures for global electricity use were 3.9% and 3.2%, respectively. The results indicate that for the ICT sector, operation leads to more GHG emissions than manufacture, although impacts from the manufacture of some products are significant. For the E&M sector, operation of TVs and production of printed media are the main reasons for overall GHG emissions. TVs as well as printed media, with the estimations made here, led to more GHG emissions on a global level in 2007 than PCs (manufacture and operation). A sector study of this type provides information on a macro scale, a perspective easily lost when considering, for example, the product-related results of life cycle assessments. The macro scale is essential to capture changes in total consumption and use. However, the potential of the ICT sector to help decrease environmental impacts from other sectors was not included in the assessment.This paper presents the writer's pedagogical development and delivery of a new undergraduate course in applied sustainability and public health in civil engineering design in the Department of Civil Engineering at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. This innovative course introduces undergraduate civil engineering students to methods in sustainability indicators, life-cycle analysis, environmental input-output analysis, and risk analysis to evaluate the environmental impacts and public health impacts of civil engineering design. The paper discusses the learning objectives and course themes of preventive design, multicriteria decision making, and systems-level analysis. The course syllabus and the design project in which students were asked to design a water transmission pipeline and evaluate its environmental impacts are discussed in detail. An overview of the pedagogical methods and student evaluation tools employed in the course is given. An evaluation of learning outcomes and student impressions of the course suggest that topics on design for environment, sustainable development in an international context, and the interface between sustainability, engineering, and policy development should be included in future editions of the course.Ceramic tiles are one of the most widely used materials in both commercial and residential buildings. As environmental problems increase, the need for environment-friendly building design increases. To achieve this, architects and engineers need reliable data on the environmental impacts of various building materials-including ceramic tiles. This paper reports the results of environmental impact assessment of ceramic tile production in Thailand. Key impact categories, including fossil fuel impact, global warming, ozone depletion, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity were assessed. The results showed that when assessed by EDIP methodology, the global warming impact value of 3.73E+3 kg CO2-eq per megagram (Mg) of ceramic tile is quite prominent and is rather high compared with existing data in current literature. The human toxicity impact value is also significant. The values of the other impact categories were also determined and found to be relatively high. When assessed using the Eco-indicator 99 methodology, the results showed that the fossil fuel category was the most affected with a value of 8.62E+1 Pt per Mg of ceramic tile, followed by respiratory inorganics and climate change. Raw materials transportation stage yielded the highest environmental impact values. It is thought that the key factors responsible for the relatively high impact values are the process technologies employed and the long transportation distances of the raw materials. It was concluded that the environmental impact values of ceramic tile production in this study are different from, and in most cases higher than, the values presented in current literature. (C) 2010 The Ceramic Society of Japan. All rights reservedThe challenges of providing electricity to rural households are manifold. Ever increasing demand-supply gap, crumbling electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure, high cost of delivered electricity are a few of these. Use of renewable energy technologies for meeting basic energy needs of rural communities has been promoted by the Governments world over for many decades. Photovoltaic (PV) technology is one of the first among several renewable energy technologies that was adopted globally as well as in India for meeting basic electricity needs of rural areas that are not connected to the grid. This paper attempts at reviewing and analyzing PV literature pertaining to decentralized rural electrification into two main categories-(1) experiences from rural electrification and technology demonstration programmes covering barriers and challenges in marketing and dissemination; institutional and financing approaches; and productive and economic applications, (2) techno-economic aspects including system design methodologies and approaches; performance evaluation and monitoring; techno-economic comparison of various systems; and environmental implications and life cycle analysis. The paper discusses the emerging trends in its concluding remarks. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper assesses the relative contribution of the individual resources to abiotic depletion in the production of steel by ArcelorMittal Gent, a major Belgian Steelwork. The contribution of both energetic (natural gas, coke gas, fuel, cokes, anthracite, coal, powdered coal and electricity) and non-energetic resources (iron ore, iron scrap and lime(stone)) to the total abiotic depletion is calculated by the CML-, CExD-, EPS-, Eco-indicator 99- and mass and energy-methods. The results obtained by the five methods are compared. In addition the methods are evaluated taking into account three ISO-14042-based criteria. Some reflections on the applicability are dealt with for the specific case of steel production. According to the applied assessment method, ArcelorMittal should, in order to reduce abiotic depletion, either mainly focus on further improving energy efficiency (CML), further improve material efficiency (EPS) or focus on both energy and material efficiency improvement (Eco-indicator 99, CExD). For the EPS- and Eco-indicator 99-method the conclusion is based on events in the (far) future without consideration of technological improvements and therefore does not seem realistic for the actual steel production process. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) are well-established methods used for many years in many countries for system analysis of waste management. According to standard LCA procedure the assessment should include improvement analysis, in many cases this is performed by simple sensitivity analyses. An obstacle to perform more thorough sensitivity analyses is that it is hard to distinguish input data important to the results, i.e. key parameters. This paper further elaborates sensitivity analyses performed in an environmental system analysis fora hypothetical Swedish municipality. In this paper, the method to identify and test input data that can be categorised as potential key parameters is described. The method and the results from computer simulations of the identified parameters are presented, and some conclusions are drawn regarding the robustness of the results for environmental impact from municipal solid waste management. The major conclusion is that the results are robust. Changes in results, when changing the preconditions, are often small and the changes observed do not lead to new conclusions; i.e., a change of ranking order between treatment options. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The auto industry is compelled to improve its environmental performance, namely by making use of renewable materials and cleaner manufacturing processes with lower energy intensity, and at the end-of-life of the auto, recyclable products and materials are desirable specifications that need to be considered at an earlier design stage, i.e., promoting the ecodesign. This paper provides an analysis of such a strategy for a material that is used extensively in the auto industry, namely polypropylene composites, as we have quantified the environmental impacts when sugarcane bagasse-reinforced polypropylene substitutes for talc-filled polypropylene (PP). To achieve these goals, a comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed for the two alternatives, from raw extractions to the end-of-life (EOL) phase of sugarcane bagasse-PP and talc-PP composite, where data gathered in different industries in Brazil were included in the LCA GaBi software. Our analysis shows that in addition to similar mechanical performance, natural fiber composites showed superior environmental performance throughout the entire life cycle. This superior performance is because: (1) in the cultivation phase, sugarcane absorbs carbon through the photosynthesis process while growing, thus reducing the global warming impact of the materials used; (2) the production process is cleaner; (3) sugarcane bagasse-reinforced composites are lighter for equivalent performance, which reduces the amount of polypropylene used; and (4) the economic reuse proposed for the EOL sugarcane bagasse-PP composite was the best alternative to minimize environmental impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Considering that the civil construction segment is responsible for a significant amount of the environmental impact, once it consumes a large amount of natural resources and energy, the incorporation of waste in the process brings sustainable benefits for the companies as well as for society. In addition, the reduction of the useful life of mortar coating related to the lack of adherence to the substrate provokes a large generation of waste, increasing the environmental liability of the respective industry. This study aimed to determine the technical and environmental viability of the incorporation of rice husk ash (RHA) waste in mortar coatings, in order to reduce the consumption of natural resources and improve the conditions of adherence of the cementitious matrix. For this evaluation, mechanical tests were carried out to test the adherence to the substrate, besides a survey of all the processes related to mortar coating production, from natural resources extraction till the application of the product and its consequent impact. Finally it was used the life cycle analysis (LCA) tool to evaluate the environmental issue. The results showed an increase of 100% of bond strength for the mortars with 5% addition of RHA, and it was identified, among the processes surveyed, a smaller number of significant impacts in relation to the mortar with no addition. It is noticed that, for the conditions of this study, the mortars with RHA addition present better technical and environmental performance compared to the usual mortars. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, the study first compares the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from conventional instrument panels (IPs) and bio-plastics as an alternative to plastics. It is found that IPs made out of steel, plastic and bio-plastic are, respectively, 15%, 29% and 37% lower than magnesium. The higher emissions of magnesium are mainly due to high impact of the source of Chinese primary magnesium used, impact of SF6 cover gas used in die casting and lower percentage of recycled magnesium content. By adopting best practice technologies in casting magnesium car cross beam, the study shows that comparative performance of magnesium IPs can be vastly improved. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Lifestyle and consumer habits increasingly demand ready meals with high quality standards. A ready meal is a packaged food product already prepared for eating with minimum handling. Generally, ready meals only require heating or hydration, and can even consist of a complete prepared dish including all the ingredients, such as a stew. The ready meals industry uses raw materials with high environmental loads, needs energy and water and generates solid and liquid waste that must be properly managed. The environmental performance of the food industry is an issue of great importance for consumers, companies and administrative authorities responsible for environmental policies. This work demonstrates the utility of using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to identify more sustainable options in the ready meals food sector. The complete production process for a canned ready meal, a stew product based on cooked pulses and pork meat cuts (sausages and ham), has been analyzed in a real factory using an LCA approach through its entire life cycle, with a cradle to grave perspective. Two different methodologies were applied for the impact assessment step in LCA: a problem-oriented method (midpoints) and a damage-oriented method (endpoints). The subsystems showing the highest environmental loads turned out to be food ingredients and solid waste management. The impact categories most affected by the production cycle of the ready meal were land use, fossil fuel consumption and water ecotoxicity. An impact analysis of different packaging systems for the specific product, applicable to packaging selection, was performed, considering five alternative scenarios to tinplate cans. The selection of biopolymer packaging systems as an alternative end-of-life scenario could help to reduce the environmental impacts of the ready meal product under study. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In Galicia (NW Spain), the mussel sector is an economic and social cornerstone, with great relevance at both regional and international scales. The environmental impact of this sector has been recently discussed from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective. In previous studies, it was concluded that the management of mussel shells and mussel organic by-products needed to be implemented into future life cycle assessments. In this article, LCA methodology was used in order to assess the environmental performance of two valorization alternatives for mussel by-products: mussel shell valorization to produce calcium carbonate, and mussel organic remains valorization to produce pate. From the environmental characterization for mussel shell valorization, propane and electricity production, sludge and ash management, haulage and atmospheric releases were identified as the hot-spots on which improvement potentials should be focused. Furthermore, the environmental profile for mussel shell valorization was compared to those for incineration and landfilling as alternative management options. The environmental characterization of pate production from mussel organic by-product led to the recommendation of acting on the formulation of mussel pate, the thermal energy demand and the product transport. Additionally, this valorization alternative was compared to another common scenario which considered the use of mussel organic by-product to manufacture fish meal. Finally, the valorization of mussel shells and organic by-products was implemented into the assessment of the Galician mussel sector. Thus, mussel by-product management was found to contribute to the potential environmental impacts to a lesser extent than mussel culture, purification and canning transformation. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Waste recycling avoids waste landfilling and all associated releases. It also allows for saving nonrenewable resources. However, the new commercial interest for waste can be seen as a shift in their status from waste to co-product. This has important consequences for environmental load allocation between the different industrial products (and co-products) in industrial plants. In this paper, the specific case of cement has been studied. Actually, to reduce the environmental impact of cement and concrete, industries have been engaged over the last 10 years to increase the replacement of Portland cement by alternative cementitious materials that are principally industrial waste or by-products. In this study, the environmental impacts of two different Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCM), blast furnace slag and fly ash, are considered using Life Cycle Assessment methodology through a study of the influence of different allocation procedures on environmental impacts of SCM in concrete. Three allocation procedures are tested. In the first one, which is the current practice, no allocations are done. As for the two others, the environmental burdens of the system are respectively associated with the relative mass and some current economic values of the co-products and products. The results are discussed according to the specificity of the cement substitution products (SCM) and the driving forces that are identified for the use of these co-products. Then, a description investigation of another allocation procedure is proposed based on the fact that it is not the relative economic value that permits to evaluate the environmental burdens but the contrary. This last allocation procedure could be generalised for other waste recycling and be used as a regulation tool between the different industrial branches. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles collected by source-segregation recycling schemes can be treated by mechanical and chemical means to remove any contaminants. The cleaned PET can then be melted and formed into pellets with the same physical properties as virgin PET. Full-scale trials have shown that this reprocessed material can be used with virgin PET to make new bottles. An alternative recovery option is to collect the waste PET with the non-recyclable waste and burn it in an energy-from-waste plant. A life cycle inventory was produced for these two recovery options to compare the atmospheric emissions of key pollutants and the overall environmental impacts. The recycling option resulted in an overall reduction in the emission of each key pollutant and in the overall environmental impact. This was due to the reduction in emissions from displacing virgin PET. The energy-from-waste route also leads to a reduction in the emissions of several of the pollutants, depending on the assumptions made about the thermal efficiency of the process and the pollutants generated by burning the PET. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Compost produced from biological treatment of organic waste has a potential for substituting peat in growth media preparation. The life-cycle-inventories (LCIs) of the two alternatives were compared using LCA-modelling (EASEWASTE) considering a 100-year period and a volumetric substitution ratio of 1:1. For the compost alternative, the composting process, growth media use, and offsetting of mineral fertilizers were considered. For the peat alternative, peatland preparation, excavation, transportation, and growth media use were considered. It was assumed that for compost 14% of the initial carbon was left in the soil after 100 years, while all carbon in peat was mineralized. With respect to greenhouse gas emissions, the former is considered a saving, while the later is considered an emission, because peat in a peatland is considered stored biogenic carbon. The leaching during the growth media use was assessed by means of batch leaching tests involving 4 compost samples and 7 peat samples. The compost leached 3-20 times more heavy metals and other compounds than the peat. The life-cycle-assessment showed that compost performs better regarding global warming (savings in the range of 70-150 kg CO(2)-eq. Mg(-1)) and nutrient enrichment (savings in the range of 1.7-6.8 kg NO(3) Mg(-1) compost), while peat performs better in some toxic categories, because of the lower content of heavy metals. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recently, Iribarren et al. (in press) reported the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for mussel cultivation in rafts in the northwest coast of Spain. A Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and its corresponding Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) were carried out from the definition of a representative mussel culture vessel and an average raft. Since data were available on a whole sample of 83 mussel cultivation rafts, an LCI and an LCIA have been developed for each one separately and an efficiency analysis has been performed to identify those rafts that have the best practices and therefore can serve as benchmarks for the rest. A Slacks Based Measure (SBM) of environmental impact efficiency has been computed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), taking into account the different inputs (as recorded in the LCI) as well as the characterization values for 10 environmental impact categories. An environmental impact efficiency score and reduction targets for both input consumption levels and environmental impacts have been computed. The estimated environmental impacts reduction potential for the whole sample ranges from 11% for terrestrial ecotoxicity to 67% for ozone layer depletion. This environmental performance assessment method is rather general and can be used in other LCA studies in order to identify operational inefficiencies and to reduce environmental impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this article, for the treatment of two specific pharmaceutical waste solvents the resource consumption of an on-site distillation process is evaluated and compared with an off-site incineration process. Both techniques are evaluated based on a thermodynamic quantitative method. The exergy approach and the cumulative exergy extracted from the natural environment (CEENE) are envisaged in order to evaluate the overall resource intake at different levels. Scenarios are constructed to make a fair comparison of both techniques. Two waste solvents, toluene (TOL) and dichloromethane (DCM), from the pharmaceutical industry which are frequently sent to distillation were evaluated. The functional unit for the comparison of both treatment alternatives is the treatment of 1 kg waste solvent + the incineration of W kg low calorific hazardous waste + the delivery of X kg "recovered" solvent + the production of Y MJ heat and Z MJ electricity. W, X, Y and Z depend on the waste solvent properties. In terms of resource requirements, distillation requires 17% (TOL) and 66% (DCM) less resources than incineration. It can be concluded that the waste solvent properties, the efficiency of the distillation process and the efficiency of the fresh solvent production process are of major importance on the resource consumption and the final choice between incineration and distillation. For a full environmental impact analysis of both treatment options, also the emissions should be taken into account. It also has to be stressed that in practice, only solvents go to incineration which cannot be distilled due to the type and degree of pollution/composition of the solvent. If distillation is not feasible, then such solvents are sent to incineration with energy recovery, according to the EU directive 2006/12/EG. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study focuses on the potential energetic and environmental impacts associated with the production of wheat grain-based bioethanol in Lombardia (Italy), with a "seed-to-wheel" approach (i.e. taking into account the production and use phase). Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) were estimated through the CML 2 baseline 2000 methodology counting the CO2 equivalent emissions, while the energy flow indicator was estimated using the Ecoindicator 95 methodology. The impact of the different phases involved in the production and use of bioethanol have been analysed: the agricultural production of wheat grain, its transformation into bioethanol, the production of gasoline and the use of 5 different blends (from pure gasoline to pure ethanol). The results show that ethanol fuel, used in the form of blends in gasoline, can help reduce energy use and GHGs. In particular, the use of pure ethanol was found to be the best alternative presenting the lowest GHGs (saving about 32% of CO(2)eq emissions in comparison to gasoline) and the minor energy use (63% saving). Differences between low-ethanol blends and gasoline are minimal and dependent on the specific fuel consumption of the vehicle. The sensitivity analysis performed to test the robustness of results through the change of some basic assumptions (specific fuel consumption, N2O emissions from agricultural phase, allocation method) shows the sensitivity of GHGs saving to the adopted allocation method. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Wood-fiber composites with densities of 80, 90, and 100 kg m(-3) were created using a single-component polyurethane that was foamed by steam injection The impact behavior of the composite was studied by static and dynamic tests The dynamic impact curves of the composites were concave and upward Decreasing densities or increasing resin content resulted in better dynamic cushioning properties The minimum static cushioning coefficients were much lower and increased more slowly than the minimum dynamic cushioning coefficients with increases of density Mathematical relations for minimum static and dynamic cushioning coefficients and densities were established With the increase of initial dynamic shock stress the residual thickness-peak acceleration curve shifted to reduced residual thickness and higher peak acceleration Dynamic maximum stresses were much higher and increased more sharply than static maximum stresses These results can be used to optimize the structure and properties of the composites and evaluate the potential of applications in the packaging industryBased on available technology and emission data seven selected management options for air-pollution-control (APC) residues from waste incineration were evaluated by life-cycle assessment (LCA) using the EASEWASTE model. Scenarios were evaluated with respect to both non-toxicity impact categories (e.g. global warming) and toxicity related impact categories (e.g. ecotoxicity and human toxicity). The assessment addressed treatment and final placement of 1 tonne of APC residue in seven scenarios: 1) direct landfilling without treatment (baseline), 2) backfilling in salt mines, 3) neutralization of waste acid, 4) filler material in asphalt, 5) Ferrox stabilization, 6) vitrification, and 7) melting with automobile shredder residues (ASR). The management scenarios were selected as examples of the wide range of different technologies available worldwide while at the same time using realistic technology data. Results from the LCA were discussed with respect to importance of: energy consumption/substitution, material substitution, leaching, air emissions, time horizon aspects for the assessment, and transportation distances. The LCA modeling showed that thermal processes were associated with the highest loads in the non-toxicity categories (energy consumption), while differences between the remaining alternatives were small and generally considered insignificant. In the toxicity categories, all treatment/utilization options were significantly better than direct landfilling without treatment (lower leaching), although the thermal processes had somewhat higher impacts than the others options (air emissions). Transportation distances did not affect the overall ranking of the management alternatives. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Within the forest sector, the sustainability concept has evolved from a narrow focus on sustainable wood production to a much broader evaluation of environmental, social, and economic sustainability for whole value chains. A new software tool - ToSIA - has been developed for assessing sustainability impacts of Forest-Wood-Chains (FWCs). In the approach, FWCs are defined as chains of production processes (e.g. harvesting-transport-industrial processing), which are linked with products (e.g. a timber frame house). Sustainability is determined by analysing environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators for all the production processes along the FWC. The tool calculates sustainability values as products of the relative indicator values (i.e. indicator value expressed per unit of material flow) multiplied with the material flow entering the process. Calculated sustainability values are then aggregated for the segments of the FWC or for the complete chain. The sustainability impact assessment requires carefully specified system boundaries. ToSIA uses a data-oriented approach that is very flexible in the focus of the analysis and the selection of indicators of sustainability. An example of alternative Norway spruce management systems in Southern Germany and their effects on six sustainability indicators is presented. The less intensive management system with natural regeneration and motor-manual harvesting shows higher carbon storage and slightly less energy use. It creates more employment and higher labour costs, but the average rate of accidents is also higher. ToSIA offers a transparent and consistent methodological framework to assess sustainability impacts in the forest-based sector as affected, e.g. by changes in policies, market conditions, or technology. The paper discusses strengths and limitations of the approach and provides an outlook on further development perspectives of the methodology. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental burden associated with some functionalization reactions of nitrogen-heteroaromatics via TiO2 (solar) photocatalysis is compared with the same reactions under thermal conditions. Two methods, LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and EATOS (Environmental Assessment Tool for Organic Synthesis), both based on a detailed analysis of the experiments, are used for the assessment. The thermal processes are consistently evaluated to give a better environmental performance. Photocatalysis is disfavored by the required management of a large amount of excess reagent and solvent involved. Still the good yield and simplicity of the photocatalytic method are promising (and are positively evaluated by a third assessment, EcoScale). The precautions for making photocatalytic syntheses environmentally viable are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There has been a proliferation of building and product sustainability standards based on the success of the LEED (TM) program from the green building council for new commercial building construction. A feature of these standards is the accumulation of points for undertaking various activities of different types, such as improving energy efficiency. The combined points total leads to certification of the product at different performance levels. The question is whether the standards actually promote products that are better from a life cycle perspective, or whether the standards are biased towards certain activities based on a perception that some activities are inherently better than others (recycling or bio-based materials for example). In this work, we used optimization methods coupled with life cycle inventory information to explore this question. A carpet standard is used to compare the life cycle optimization against an optimization to earn the maximum number of points in the standard. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability has recently emerged as a key issue in process systems engineering (PSE). Mathematical programming techniques offer a general modeling framework for including environmental concerns in the synthesis and planning of chemical processes. In this paper, we review major contributions in process synthesis and supply chain management, highlighting the main optimization approaches that are available, including the handling of uncertainty and the multi-objective optimization of economic and environmental objectives. Finally, we discuss challenges and opportunities identified in the area. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The diversity of priorities and differing awareness of sustainable practices among stakeholders in the architecture, engineering and construction industry is critically shaping the adoption of green technology, and the rate at which the industry is shifting towards more sustainable practices. In this paper, we develop an integrated framework that allows reorganization and integration of existing sustainability research in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, emphasizing the perspective of decision-makers and stakeholders. Further, an agent-based model is introduced that allows study of the decision-maker with the decision context, thus making them an integral part of the decision-making process rather than independent of it. The coupled system is adaptive and dynamically organizes itself to reflect complex bottom-up interactions between individual stakeholders, their contexts and the constraints driving their decisions even as they implement or respond to top-down decisions pertaining to the adoption of sustainable practices. The contention of this research is that an integrative systems approach to top-down decision-making and an understanding of bottom-up influences in stakeholder decisions is critical to the understanding sustainable practices and decisions that lead to their adoption in the AEC industry. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The activities associated with raw milk production on dairy farms require an effective evaluation of their environmental impact. The present study evaluates the global environmental impacts associated with milk production on dairy farms in Portugal and identifies the processes that have the greatest environmental impact by using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The main factors involved in milk production were included, namely: the dairy farm, maize silage, ryegrass silage, straw, concentrates, diesel and electricity. The results suggest that the major source of air and water emissions in the life cycle of milk is the production of concentrates. The activities carried out on dairy farms were the major source of nitrous oxides (from fuel combustion), ammonia, and methane (from manure management and enteric fermentation). Nevertheless, dairy farm activities, which include manure management, enteric fermentation and diesel consumption, make the greatest contributions to the categories of impact considered, with the exception of the abiotic depletion category, contributing to over 70% of the total global warming potential (1021.3 kg CO2 eq. per tonne of milk), 84% of the total photochemical oxidation potential (0.2 kg C2H4 eq. per tonne of milk), 70% of the total acidification potential (20.4 kg SO2 eq. per tonne of milk), and 41% of the total eutrophication potential (7.1 kg PO43- eq. per tonne of milk). The production of concentrates and maize silage are the major contributors to the abiotic depletion category, accounting for 35% and 28%, respectively, of the overall abiotic depletion potential (1.4 Sb eq. per tonne of milk). Based on this LCA case study, we recommend further work to evaluate some possible opportunities to improve the environmental performance of Portuguese milk production, namely: (i) implementing integrated solutions for manure recovery/treatment (e.g. anaerobic digestion) before its application to the soil as organic fertiliser during maize and ryegrass production; (ii) improving manure nutrient use efficiency in order to decrease the importation of nutrients; (iii) diversifying feeding crops, as the dependence on two annual forage crops is expected to lead to excessive soil mobilisation (and related impacts) and to insignificant carbon dioxide sequestration from the atmosphere; and (iv) changing the concentrate mixtures. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Organic rules for glazing and access to outdoor areas in pig production may be met in different ways, which express compromises between considerations for animal welfare, feed self-reliance and negative environmental impact such as greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate pollution. This article compares the environmental impact of the main organic pig systems in Denmark. Normally, sows are kept in huts on grassland and finishing pigs are raised in stables with access to an outdoor run. One alternative practice is also rearing the fattening pigs on grassland all year round. The third method investigated was a one-unit pen system mainly consisting of a deep litter area under a climate tent and with restricted access to a grazing area. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, the emissions of greenhouse gases of the free range system were estimated to be 3.3 kg CO2-equivalents kg(-1) live weight pig, which was significantly higher than the indoor fattening system and the tent system, yielding 2.9 and 2.8 kg CO2-eq. kg(-1) pig, respectively. This was 7-22% higher compared with Danish conventional pig production but, due to the integration of grass-clover in the organic crop rotations these had an estimated net soil carbon sequestration. When carbon sequestration was included in the LCA then the organic systems had lower greenhouse gas emissions compared with conventional pig production. Eutrophication in nitrate equivalents per kg pig was 21-65% higher in the organic pig systems and acidification was 35-45% higher per kg organic pig compared with the conventional system. We conclude that, even though the free range system theoretically has agro-ecological advantages over the indoor fattening system and the tent system due to a larger grass-clover area, this potential is difficult to implement in practice due to problems with leaching on sandy soil. Only if forage can contribute to a larger proportion of the pigfeed uptake may the free range system be economically and environmentally competitive. Improvement of nitrogen cycling and efficiency is the most important factor for reducing the overall environmental load from organic pig meat. Presently, a system with pig fattening in stables and concrete-covered outdoor runs seems to be the best solution from an environmental point of view.In this study, the environmental load of photovoltaic power generation system (PV) during its life cycle and energy payback time (EPT) are evaluated by LCA scheme. Two hypothetical case studies in Toyohashi, Japan and Gobi dessert in China have been carried out to investigate the influence of installation location and PV type on environmental load and EPT. The environmental load and EPT of a high-concentration photovoltaic power generation system (hcpV) and a multi-crystalline silicon photovoltaic power generation system (mc-Si PV) are studied. The study shows for a PV of 100 MW size, the total impacts of the hcpV installed in Toyohashi is larger than that of the hcpV installed in Gobi desert by 5% without consideration of recycling stage. The EPT of the hcpV assumed to be installed in Gobi desert is shorter than EPT of the hcpV assumed to be installed in Toyohashi by 0.64 year. From these results, the superiority to install PV in Gobi desert is certificated. Comparing with hcpV and mc-Si PV, the ratio of the total impacts of mc-Si PV to that of hcpV is 0.34 without consideration of recycling stage. The EPT of hcpV is longer than EPT of mc-Si PV by 0.27 year. The amount of global solar radiation contributing to the amount of power generation of mc-Si PV is larger than the amount of direct solar radiation contributing to the amount of power generation of hcpV by about 188 kW h/(m(2) year) in Gobi desert. Consequently, it appears that using mc-Si PV in Gobi desert is the best option. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis concerning the selected options of supercritical coal power units. The investigation covers a pulverized power unit without a CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) installation, a pulverized unit with a "post-combustion" installation (MEA type) and a pulverized power unit working in the "oxy-combustion" mode. For each variant the net electric power amounts to 600 MW. The energy component of the LCA analysis has been determined. It describes the depletion of non-renewable natural resources. The energy component is determined by the coefficient of cumulative energy consumption in the life cycle. For the calculation of the ecological component of the LCA analysis the cumulative CO2 emission has been applied. At present it is the basic emission factor for the LCA analysis of power plants. The work also presents the sensitivity analysis of calculated energy and ecological factors.The aim of the present paper was to investigate the land use, environmental impact and fossil energy use when using biogas instead of natural gas in the production of nitrogen fertilisers The biogas was assumed to be produced from anaerobic digestion of ley grass and maize. The calculations showed that 1 ha of agricultural land in south-west Sweden can produce 1.7 metric ton of nitrogen in the form of ammonium nitrate per year from ley grass, or 3 6 ton from maize The impact on global warming, from cradle to gate, was calculated to be lower when producing nitrogen fertiliser from biomass compared with natural gas Eutrophication and acidification potential was higher in the biomass scenarios The greatest advantage of the biomass systems however lies in the potential to reduce agriculture's dependency on fossil fuels In the biomass scenarios, only 2-4 MJ of primary fossil energy was required, while 35 MJ/kg N was required when utilising natural gas (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedThe main function of a Wastewater Treatment Plant is to minimize the environmental impact of discharging untreated water into natural water systems. Also a Wastewater Treatment Plant may get a resource from wastewater carrying out a tertiary treatment on the treated wastewater which can be reused in non-potable applications. Water reuse strategies are intended to address the problem of water scarcity without aggravating other environmental problems, thus reflecting the need of their environmental assessment. In this paper we used Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate different disinfection treatments (chlorination plus ultraviolet treatment, ozonation and ozonation plus hydrogen peroxide) and to assess the environmental advantages and drawbacks of urban wastewater reuse in non-potable applications. To do so, we compared the environmental impacts of producing 1 m(3) of water for non-potable uses from reclaimed water, potable water and desalinated water sources. The calculation has used current operating data from a Wastewater Treatment Plant located in the Mediterranean area, although the results can be applied to any other plant with similar technology. The ozonation and zonation plus hydrogen peroxide disinfection treatment technologies have similar environmental profiles. However most of the indicators are about 50% higher than the ultraviolet disinfection except for the acidification (100% higher) and photochemical oxidation (less than 5%). Non-potable uses (both agricultural and urban uses) of reclaimed water have environmental and economical advantages. Reuse of treated wastewater is particularly beneficial when it can replace desalinated water. Consequently, reclaimed water should be promoted for non-potable uses, when there is scarcity of freshwater. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using the life table method, we analyzed in this paper the survival of enterprises that were established from 1980 to 2007 in the Hunan province. Based on the quantile indicators, the average remaining firm lifespan in the specified period of time and the average survival time during a specific period of time, we conducted a comparative study using enterprises associated with different cities, industries, capital sizes, types of ownership and periods of establishment. The results show that there are great differences in firm survival that correlate with differences in city affiliation, industry, capital size, ownership type and period of establishment. Survival of Chinese enterprises is affected not only by the location of the business, the industry and the capital scale, which are usual players in the classical theory of industrial organization, but also by the nature of ownership and the time of establishment, which are determined by China's national context. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.A unified process assessment is carried out to integrate various resources and emissions associated with the life cycle of typical coal-fired power generation systems, based on the thermodynamic concept of exergy as a common objective measure. For a comprehensive assessment of industrial production systems, three indicators termed as ecological efficiency, resources use efficiency and environmental emission intensity are devised to evaluate the overall efficacy. Concretely assessed in the present work are three typical modes of coal-fired power generation systems, i.e., the Average mode that represents the average emissions and efficiency of coal-fired power plants operating in the US in 1999, the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) mode that meets the New Source Performance Standards, and the low emission boiler system (LEBS) mode as a kind of highly advanced coal-fired power plant utilizing a low emission boiler, as benchmark cases in related NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) report. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, there has been a growing increase of the cooling demand in many parts of the world, which has led to major energy problems. In this context, solar assisted absorption cooling systems have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional vapor compression air conditioning systems, given the fact that in many cases the cooling demand coincide with the availability of solar radiation. In this work, we present a decision-support tool based on mathematical programming for the design of solar assisted absorption cooling systems. The design task is formulated as a bi-criteria mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) optimization problem that accounts for the minimization of the total cost of the cooling system and the associated environmental impact measured over its entire life cycle. The capabilities of the proposed method are illustrated in a case study that addresses the design of a solar assisted ammonia-water absorption cycle considering weather data of Barcelona (Spain). (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present work evaluates the environmental impact of including phase change materials (PCM) in a typical Mediterranean building. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is developed for three monitored cubicles built in Puigverd de Lleida (Spain). It is possible to control the inner temperature of the cubicles using a domestic heat pump for cooling and an electrical radiator for heating: The energy consumption is registered to determine the energy savings achieved. The aim is to analyze if these energy savings are large enough to balance the environmental impact originated during the manufacturing of PCM. Some hypothetical scenarios, such as different systems to control the temperature different PCM types or different weather conditions are proposed and studied using LCA process to point out the critical issues. Furthermore, a parametric analysis of the lifetime of buildings is developed. Results show that the addition of PCM in the building envelope, although decreasing the energy consumption during operation, does not reduce significantly the global impact throughout the lifetime of the building. For the hypothetical scenario considering summer conditions all year around and a lifetime of the building of 100 years, the use of PCM reduces the overall impact by more than 10%. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper describes the methodology and data used to determine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to ten cities or city-regions: Los Angeles County, Denver City and County, Greater Toronto, New York City, Greater London, Geneva Canton, Greater Prague, Barcelona, Cape Town and Bangkok. Equations for determining emissions are developed for contributions from: electricity; heating and industrial fuels; ground transportation fuels; air and marine fuels; industrial processes; and waste. Gasoline consumption is estimated using three approaches: from local fuel sales; by scaling from regional fuel sales; and from counts of vehicle kilometres travelled. A simplified version of an intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) method for estimating the GHG emissions from landfill waste is applied. Three measures of overall emissions are suggested: (i) actual emissions within the boundary of the city; (ii) single process emissions (from a life-cycle perspective) associated with the city's metabolism; and (iii) life-cycle emissions associated with the city's metabolism. The results and analysis of the study will be published in a second paper. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Small and open economic systems like cities face specific challenges for greenhouse gas accounting. They typically import most of their energy requirements as secondary energy products based on conversion processes which caused emissions elsewhere. Emission estimates therefore already require attention not only to direct on-site activities. Moreover, for a comprehensive approach it is suggested to include upstream and downstream processes of connected socioeconomic systems and the indirect life-cycle related emissions of imported and exported goods. Singapore is used in this longitudinal study as an example of an urban scale economy. Accounts for direct emissions are compared with trade corrected estimates of indirect emissions. Results indicate that direct emissions account for only about 20% of the overall upstream emissions necessary to sustain the input side of the economic production process (domestic emissions plus indirect emissions embodied in imported goods). If indirect emissions embodied in exports are considered and subtracted from the previous figure, the trade corrected accounts for direct and indirect emissions still exceed direct emission accounts, although by less than 40%. Given the increasing trends in world trade and urbanisation, indirect pressures of urban systems should be included in discussions of effective and fair adaptation and mitigation strategies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In society's quest to mitigate climate change it is important to consider potential trade-offs in climate solutions impacting other environmental issues. This analysis explores the life cycle water consumption of alternative low-carbon energy sources for transportation. Energy sources analyzed include both biofuels used in internal combustion engines and low-carbon electricity generation methods used in conjunction with electric vehicles. Biofuels considered are corn-based ethanol, soybean biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, and microbial biodiesel. Electricity sources analyzed are coal with carbon sequestration, photovoltaic cells, and solar concentrators. The assessment method used is hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA), which combines materials-based process method and the economic input-output (EIO) method. To compare these technologies on an even footing the life cycle water use to propel a passenger vehicle one mile is estimated. All technologies evaluated showed an increase in water consumption compared to unleaded gasoline when water use from vehicle manufacturing was included. Scale-up calculations showed that mass adoption of electric vehicles and some configurations of algae and switchgrass systems could potentially contribute to the decarbonization of transportation with tolerable increases in overall water consumption. Irrigated crop based biofuels however were found to have significant potential impact on water resources when scaled up to macroscopic production levels. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite recent consumption decrease due to recession, European electricity sector is struggling to reach ambitious targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Our objective is to carry out a macro analysis of the energy mix in two European countries: Belgium and Spain. Life Cycle Assessments are carried for 2005 as well as for seven possible referenced scenarios to reach EU and also national legal objectives at the horizon 2020 and 2030. Ambitious renewable energy sources' deployment plans can decrease impacts on the environment significantly as those sources replace polluting traditional sources, such as coal/lignite, oil or gas. When concentrating on projections for the future in Spain, results show that a mix with little coal and oil replaced by up to 54% of RES-E energy sources could bring environmental benefits with CO(2) emissions equivalent around 0.2 kg per kWh produced (compared with 0.54 kg in 2005). In Belgium, all future scenarios presented include more coal and gas with a limited share of RES-E; those mixes present more environmental harmful impacts (up to 0.56 kg CO(2) equivalent). This is why RES-E deployment is crucial as long as it is part of an electricity mix with reduced quantities of traditional fossil fuels. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 requires life-cycle assessment (LCA) for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from expanded U.S. biofuel production. To qualify under the Renewable Fuel Standard, cellulosic ethanol and new corn ethanol must demonstrate 60% and 20% lower emissions than petroleum fuels, respectively. A combined corn-grain and corn-stover ethanol system could potentially satisfy a major portion of renewable fuel production goals. This work examines multiple LCA allocation procedures for a hypothetical system producing ethanol from both corn grain and corn stover. Allocation choice is known to strongly influence GHG emission results for corn-ethanol. Stover-derived ethanol production further complicates allocation practices because additional products result from the same corn production system. This study measures the carbon intensity of ethanol fuels against EISA limits using multiple allocation approaches. Allocation decisions are shown to be paramount. Under varying approaches, carbon intensity for corn ethanol was 36-79% that of gasoline, while carbon intensity for stover-derived ethanol was -10% to 44% that of gasoline. Producing corn-stover ethanol dramatically reduced carbon intensity for corn-grain ethanol, because substantially more ethanol is produced with only minor increases in emissions. Regulatory considerations for applying LCA are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental issues are a key objective for European paper industry. Among the initiatives addressed. to minimise the environmental impacts, this industry has an important focus on the product itself. Paper industry is continuously improving environmental profile of their products by using high percentages of recycled fibres as substitute of virgin fibres. The use of recycled cellulose fibres has taken a considerable extent during last decade and recovered paper became an indispensable secondary raw material for the paper manufacturing, accounting for 50% of the total fibre raw material in European countries. Despite of these assets of paper and board recycling, there are few specific studies that analyse the environmental behaviour of the paper products considering the use virgin and/or recycled fibres. The aim of this work is to assess and compare the environmental impact of corrugated board production by using different component papers, based on virgin fibbers (kraftliner) and recycled fibres (testliner and wellenstoff). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied in order to identify, quantify and evaluate the environmental. impacts. LCA software GaBi 4 was used to support this analysis.The overall evaluation of small autonomous hybrid power systems (SAHPS) that contain renewable and conventional power sources depends on economic and environmental criteria, which are often conflicting objectives. The solution of this problem belongs to the field of non-linear combinatorial multiobjective optimisation. In a multiobjective optimisation problem, the target is not to find an optimal solution, but a set of non-dominated solutions called Pareto-set. The present article considers as an economic objective the minimisation of system's cost of energy (COE), whereas the environmental objective is the minimisation of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the system during its lifetime. The main novelty of this article is that the calculation of GHG emissions is based on life cycle analysis (LCA) of each system's component. In LCA, the whole life cycle emissions of a component are taken into account, from raw materials extraction to final disposal/recycling. This article adopts the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), which in combination with a proposed local search procedure effectively solves the multiobjective optimisation problem of SAHPS. Two main categories of SAHPS are examined with different energy storage: lead-acid batteries and hydrogen storage. The results indicate the superiority of batteries under both economic and environmental criteria.This paper compares the GHG emissions of coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuels to the GHG emissions of electric vehicles (EVs) powered with coal-to-electricity in China. A life cycle model is used to account for full fuel cycle and use-phase emissions, as well as vehicle cycle and battery manufacturing emissions. It is found that the reduction of life cycle GHG emissions of EVs charged by electricity generated from coal, without utilizing carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology can be 3-36% when compared to petroleum-based gasoline car. The large range in emissions reduction potential is driven by the many different power generation technologies that are and could in the future be used to generate electricity in China. When CCS is employed in power plants, the GHG emission reductions increase to 60-70% compared to petroleum-based gasoline car. However, the use of coal to produce liquid transportation fuels (CTL fuels) will likely lead to significantly increased life cycle GHG emissions, potentially 30-140% higher than petroleum-based gasoline. When CCS is utilized in the CTL plant, the CTL fueled vehicles emit roughly equal GHG emissions to petroleum-based gasoline vehicles from the life cycle perspective. The authors conclude that policies are therefore needed in China in order to accelerate battery technology and infrastructural improvements for EV charging, increased energy efficiency management, and deployment of low-carbon technologies such as CCS. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, the number of power plants based on renewable energy (RWE) has been increasing and hydrogen as an energy carrier has become a suitable medium-to-long term storage solution as well as a "fuel" for FCEV's because of its CO(2)-free potential. In this context, the aim of the present study is to carry out both an economic and environmental analysis of a start-up RWE plant using a simulation code developed in previous work [1] and a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The plant will be located in the South of Italy (Puglia) and will consist of different RWE sources (Wind Power, Photovoltaic, Biomass). RWE will be used to produce hydrogen from an electrolyzer, which will feed a fleet of buses using different fuels (methane, hydrogen, or a mixture of these). In particular, a wind turbine of 850 kW will feed a hydrogen production plant and a biomass plant will produce methane. Preliminary studies have shown that it is possible to obtain hydrogen at a competitive cost (DOE target) and that components (wind turbine, electrolyzer, vessel, etc.) influence the final price. In addition, LCA results have permitted a comparison of different minibuses using either fossil fuels or renewable energy sources. (C) 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main objective of this research is to analyze the impact of the market share increase of hydrogen based road vehicles in terms of energy consumption and CO(2), on today's Portuguese light-duty fleet. Actual yearly values of energy consumption and emissions were estimated using COPERT software: 167112 TJ of fossil fuel energy, 12213 kton of CO(2) emission and 141 kton of CO, 20 kton of HC, 46 kton of NO(x) and 3 kton of PM. These values represent 20-40% of countries total emissions. Additionally to base fleet, three scenarios of introduction of 10-30% fuel cell vehicles including plug-in hybrids configurations were analysed. Considering the scenarios of increasing hydrogen based vehicles penetration, up to 10% life cycle energy consumption reduction can be obtained if hydrogen from centralized natural gas reforming is considered. Full life cycle CO(2) emissions can also be reduced up to 20% in these scenarios, while local pollutants reach up to 85% reductions. For the purpose of estimating road vehicle technologies energy consumption and CO(2) emissions in a full life cycle perspective, fuel cell, conventional full hybrids and hybrid plug-in technologies were considered with diesel, gasoline, hydrogen and biofuel blends. Energy consumption values were estimated in a real road driving cycle and with ADVISOR software. Materials cradle-to-grave life cycle was estimated using GREET database adapted to Europe electric mix. The main conclusions on CO(2) full life cycle analysis is that light-duty vehicles using fuel cell propulsion technology are highly dependent on hydrogen production pathway. The worst scenario for the current Portuguese and European electric mix is hydrogen produced from on-site electrolysis (in the refuelling stations). In this case full life cycle CO(2) is 270 g/km against 190 g/km for conventional Diesel vehicle, for a typical 150,000 km useful life. A brief energy price analysis was presented. We conclude that hydrogen price equivalent to gasoline energy price ((sic)/MJ) is important to the consumer preference of hydrogen based vehicles. It is also possible a fuel cell cost comparable with internal combustion engine cost if sufficient market penetration and power density increase are attained. (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of building products made from heavy metals has been a topic of discussion for some years. This was fuelled by results of life cycle assessments (LCAs), where the emission of heavy metals strongly effected the results. An issue was that the characterisation factors of the Centre for Environmental Studies (CML) 2000 life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology put too much emphasis on the impact of metal emissions. We adjusted Zn characterisation factors according to the most recent insights in the ecotoxicity of zinc and applied them in an LCA using zinc gutters and downpipes as an example. The CML 2000 methodology was used to assess the environmental impact of the zinc products. To adjust the Zn characterisation factors, the uniform system for the evaluation of substances (USES)-LCA model and the biotic ligand model were used. The first correction was based on updating the effect values for zinc. This resulted in a reduction of the characterisation factors for zinc to 42% of their original values. Additional correcting for the bioavailability of zinc leads to final Zn characterisation factors for the freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity potential (FAETP), the marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential (MAETP) and the terrestrial ecotoxicity potential (TETP) of 25%, 42% and 0.006%, respectively, of the original values. The CML 2000 LCIA methodology is based on the predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) of a substance. PNEC is not value-free as political considerations are used to decide on it. Using a more robust toxicity measure as the hazardous concentration at which 50% of the species is affected (HC50) will provide value-free results. The production of standard high-grade zinc shows main contributions to six of the ten environmental impact categories. The recycling of zinc at the end of the life cycle shows beneficial effects for these same categories. Despite the reduction of the characterisation factor of Zn, the runoff emissions of Zn are still dominant. To improve LCA characterisation factors for ecotoxicity in the CML 2000 methodology, it is recommended to use either the geometric mean of the effect data or the HC50. The HC50 should be based upon the EC50 values from chronic ecotoxicity tests. It is proposed to include the bioavailability of metals in LCA in three steps: (1) separate soluble fraction, (2) separate dissolved fraction and (3) separate bioavailable fraction. The issue of essentiality could not be resolved in this study. However, this could be accounted for by leaving out the fraction of the emission below the maximum permissible admission.Multinational companies have recently been encouraged by government policies to implement Extended Producer Responsibility. One objective is to stimulate high-level recovery, and the other is to introduce life cycle thinking. This paper studies decision making in recovery, comparing opportunistic decision making with short-term profit maximization (usually leading to one loop) versus a life-cycle perspective (leading to multiple loops). The question is (1) which business benefits this brings as well as reduction of environmental impact and (2) whether companies should be inclined to think multi-loop and if so how governments could stimulate this. After comparing the problem with the literature, a non-linear optimization model is presented optimizing NPV of revenues and calculating environmental impact with cumulative energy demand and cumulative recovery rates. The environmental indicators chosen are motivated based on literature research in the area of streamlined LCA. Sensitivity analysis tests solutions on various sources of uncertainty. We study a real-life case with real data. Based on the results, we can formulate the following insights for industry. Firstly, cascade markets for reuse may appear attractive but new sales cannibalization compromised margins. To neutralize this effect, returns should be remanufactured to equal-to-new quality hence no difference should exist between new and recovered items. Companies must suppress their natural instincts of maximizing short-term profits and delay some of the revenues by implementing multi-loop models in order to maximize total life-cycle profit. Environmental impact improves as well according to both indicators. Feasibility of returns should be maximized which for example implies careful collection and storage of wrecks, preventing damage and corrosion, etc. Product design changes may further enhance feasibility. However, the concept requires that all loops are controlled well by one actor. For governments the following advices apply. As mentioned, most EPR-based systems in place today maximize single loop 3. Using alternative steering principles instead of target quota on recovery and collection could stimulate multi-loop solutions that prove more robust, more profitable, and have better footprint. It is concluded that multi-loop recovery is preferred both economically and environmentally. But both industry and governments must improve their policies. Therefore, future research is mapped based on handles and delineations of the study.The goal of the paper is to present the ecodesign procedure developed based on the guidelines of ISO 14062 standard. The article has been divided into two parts. Part 1 presents the description of the procedure's structure and its most important elements. Part 2 (Kurczewski and Lewandowska 2010) focuses on the practical aspects and presents an example of the suggested methodology application in relation to a fridge freezer. The example presented uses the environmental life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, and environmental benchmarking; however, the use of other techniques, e.g., matrix methods, social life cycle assessment, or checklists, is also possible. An innovation is the development of assessment criteria concerning the interested parties and their requirements and the use of multidimensional comparative analysis in the assessment of the design variants. The result of ecodesign application is the selection of the design that meets the assumed requirements to the highest extent. They are formulated not only on the basis of environmental or economic aspects but also in virtue of the interested parties' requirements, including functionality, ergonomics, safety, etc. Ecodesign requires relatively quick and clear responses. The suggested procedure comprises all the key elements of ecodesign, and the result represents a compromise solution between various, often contradictory, requirements identified at different life cycle stages. The suggested procedure has been checked on a few practical examples, although it still requires verification in relation to products/services of various groups and representing various specific features (electrical and electronic equipment, packages, clothes, furniture, services, etc.).The goal of the paper is to present the ecodesign procedure developed based on the guidelines of ISO 14062 standard. The article has been divided into two parts. Part 1 (Lewandowska and Kurczewski 2010) presents the description of the procedure's structure and its most important elements. Part 2 focuses on the practical aspects and presents an example of the suggested methodology application in relation to a fridge freezer. The example presented uses the environmental life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, and environmental benchmarking, however, the use of other techniques, e.g. matrix methods, Social Life Cycle Assessment, checklists, is also possible. An innovation is the development of assessment criteria concerning the interested parties and their requirements and the use of multidimensional comparative analysis (MCA) in the assessment of the design variants. The result of ecodesign application is the selection of the design that meets the assumed requirements to the highest extent. They are formulated not only on the basis of environmental or economic aspects, but also in virtue of the interested parties' requirements, including: functionality, ergonomics, safety, etc. Ecodesign requires relatively quick and clear responses. The suggested procedure comprises all the key elements of ecodesign and the result represents a compromise solution between various, often contradictory, requirements identified at different life cycle stages. The suggested procedure has been checked on a few practical examples, although it still requires verification in relation to products/services of various groups and representing various specific features (electrical and electronic equipment, packages, clothes, furniture, services, etc.).Home heating is an important component of life in inland temperate Australia, and firewood remains a common and relatively inexpensive fuel. However, supplies of firewood are becoming scarce, and excessive smoke pollution is becoming a problem in some places, partly due to poor management of fires. The alternative energy sources are electricity and gas, and the aim of this study is to compare the relative merits of these three energy sources for their impacts on the physical environment. Data were compiled about the physical appliances used in the home for electric power, and for gas and wood burning. Data about the production of electricity, gas supply and burning was available in Australian databases. The inputs and outputs for the growing of firewood in plantations in the drier, cooler parts of inland Australia were compiled from various sources and supplemented by measurements of typical tree growth. Information about emissions from wood burning was obtained from several sources, and all data were entered into SimaPro life cycle assessment software. The Eco-Indicator 99 (E) method was then used to assess the impacts of a range of heating scenarios including two different gas heaters, three different wood burners and a variety of wood growth rates and burning conditions. Overall results show that, as expected, using coal-fired electricity for heating had a significantly larger impact than the other forms of heating. The older, less efficient wood burning appliances were also significantly inferior to modern appliances mainly because of their inefficiency. There was a significant lessening of impact when wood was burned in a modern appliance under well-managed conditions compared to poor management. The comparison between gas and wood burning showed significant advantages for each with wood being preferable from a resource and climate change perspective, and gas being preferred from a health and ecological perspective. The results suggest that using electricity for heating should be discouraged as should the use of inefficient, older, wood burning appliances. The impact of wood burning depends very much on how fires are managed but is acceptable and could make a major contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions if users can be educated to reduce emissions by managing fires better. Sufficient firewood could be grown on plantations even though the rate of growth is slow but would require a significant area of land. The big advantage of doing this is that wood is a renewable resource. So the two alternative heating sources at the moment are gas and wood burning, and the decision about which to use will depend on the ability to reduce emissions from wood. It is recommended that electricity use for heating be discouraged in the future and that gas be considered as an alternative, at least in the short term, while we depend on coal burning to produce electricity. Wood should continue to be used, but more community education about managing fires is needed as is a move towards growing firewood on plantations.The aim of this work is to find out to what extent human excretion is relevant in the context of a Spaniard's overall food intake. A case study dealing with the average Spanish diet is carried out, including the whole life cycle of food: agricultural and animal production, industrial processing, distribution and retail, home storage and cooking, solid waste management and human excretion. An extensive literature review was carried out to obtain life cycle assessment (LCA) data for Spanish food products. Also, the Danish LCA Food database and other European literature sources were used, along with ecoinvent background data. Human excretion and wastewater treatment were accounted for with a specific model recently developed, which required calculating the average nutritional composition of the Spanish diet. Concerning life cycle impact assessment, only three impact categories, namely global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP), were assessed, along with primary energy use (PEU) as environmental indicator. Food production clearly appears as the main hotspot in the Spanish diet. Human excretion, along with further wastewater treatment, is not a negligible process in EP and GWP, where it is the second most important source of emissions, with 17% of the overall emissions. However, if biogenic CO2 emissions are not taken into account, the contribution of human excretion to GWP becomes very small (3%). The contributions to AP (2%) and PEU (3%) are also very small. The main limitation of this study is the lack of representative data to cover food production in Spain. Nevertheless, our total estimates for GWP and PEU per person per year are in accordance with previous studies, as well as the identification of animal food as a main source of environmental impacts. These studies achieve similar results without including human excretion, but concerning EP, there are no previous studies focusing on this impact category at the diet level. Food production is the most important life cycle stage in the Spanish diet, especially meat and dairy products. Nevertheless, human excretion as a life cycle stage has been found to be important in EP due to the emissions of nutrients in treated sewage. These results show that excretion should not be overlooked in LCA studies dealing with diet shifts and studies aimed at identifying the life cycle hotspots of food products.Electricity use or substitution is one of the key parameters with regard to life cycle assessment (LCA) results. At the same time, it is often used as an illustrative example to highlight the modelling differences between decision-oriented and descriptive LCA. Three basically different models exist in life cycle inventory analysis: the attributional, the consequential and the decisional model. This paper proposes criteria that help to classify typical LCA questions regarding real business cases and find the most appropriate life cycle inventory (LCI) model. The framework is applied to a case study of an LCA of electricity use and supply within the international operations of an environmental service company with headquarters in France. Individual decision with comparatively small consequences can be modelled under ceteris paribus (other things being equal) conditions. Decision situations with medium to large potential consequences should be modelled under the conditions of mutatis mutandis (the necessary changes being made). The key question is how to distinguish between small, medium and large consequences. We recommend using the relative economic size to classify objects of investigation and the LCA goals related to them into three groups to which the most appropriate LCI models are assigned. The attributional approach is sensible for environmental reporting and product labelling and declaration where the relative economic size of the object of investigation is small. The decisional approach is sensible for LCAs of product and process development, as well as site and supplier evaluation carried out by private companies in case the relative economic size of the object of investigation is medium. The consequential approach is of relevance for policy support of governments and international organisations as well as for strategic decisions of companies, where the relative economic size of the object of investigation is large. The consequential approach is also sensible in product or service comparisons by companies, if they offer products or services that are in line or help to comply with large-scale government policy measures (like for instance promoting renewable fuels). The French attributional and decisional electricity supply mix causes greenhouse gas emissions of 98 and 225 g CO(2)-eq./kWh, respectively, whereas the European attributional and decisional electricity supply mix causes greenhouse gas emissions of 554 and 473 g CO(2)-eq./kWh, respectively. The volumes of high radioactive waste generated with the French and EU-27 electricity mixes amount to 11 and 3.5 mm(3)/kWh for the attributional mixes as well as 3.8 and 0.034 mm(3)/kWh for the decisional mixes. The criterion "relative economic size" helps to better decide on the appropriate LCI model to be applied in specific LCA case studies supporting any kind of decisions. Being quantitative, the "relative economic size" criterion is comparable to the criteria used to delimitate the product system (cut-off criteria mass, energy and environmental impact). The delimitation values proposed are still preliminary and still show a certain degree of ambiguity. Nevertheless, it proves to be both a practical and potentially relevant criterion. The case study of the French and European electricity mixes shows that a distinction of different decision contexts is required and feasible. Using official statistical information and published forecasts issued by the relevant industrial associations or governmental bodies significantly reduces the potential bias related to the determination of possible change-oriented electricity mixes. The relative economic size of the object of investigation is a quantified criterion to decide on the most appropriate modelling approach in life cycle inventory. It is recommended to apply the criterion in the goal and scope phase of any LCA and to apply it on the production volume on the one hand and on purchase volumes on the other. Production and purchase volumes can be expressed in either economic or physical quantities and be related to the totals of economic sectors or political entities such as nations or international organisations. The current paper deals with the appropriate modelling approach illustrated with the electricity mix. The electricity sector is only one of many sectors where the choice of the modelling approach may reveal important differences in the overall environmental impacts. Thus, it is worthwhile to extend the concept presented in this paper to other economic sectors such as agriculture, mining or paper and pulp. This would help to better substantiate or to adjust the delimitation values and to gain more experience with the threshold criteria proposed.Attempts to develop adequate allocation methods for CO2 emissions from petroleum products have been reported in the literature. The common features in those studies are the use of energy, mass, and/or market prices as parameters to allocate the emissions to individual products. The crude barrel is changing, as are refinery complexities and the severity of conversion to gasoline or diesel leading to changes in the emissions intensity of refining. This paper estimates the consequences for CO2 emissions at refineries of allowing these parameters to vary. A detailed model of a typical refinery was used to determine CO2 emissions as a function of key operational parameters. Once that functionality was determined, an allocation scheme was developed which calculated CO2 intensity of the various products consistent with the actual refinery CO2 functionality. The results reveal that the most important factor driving the refinery energy requirement is the H-2 content of the products in relation to the H-2 content of the crude. Refinery energy use is increased either by heavier crude or by increasing the conversion of residual products into transportation fuels. It was observed that the total refinery emissions did not change as refinery shifted from gasoline to diesel production. The energy allocation method fails to properly allocate the refinery emissions associated with H-2 production. It can be concluded that the reformer from a refinery energy and CO2 emissions standpoint is an energy/CO2-equalizing device, shifting energy/CO2 from gasoline into distillates. A modified allocation method is proposed, including a hydrogen transfer term, which would give results consistent with the refinery behavior. The results indicate that the refinery CO2 emissions are not affected by the ratio of gasoline to distillate production. The most important factors driving the CO2 emissions are the refinery configuration (crude heaviness and residual upgrading) which link to the refinery H-2 requirement. Using the H-2-energy equivalent allocation proposed in this study provides a more reliable method to correctly allocate CO2 emissions to products in a refinery in a transparent way, which follows the ISO recommendations of cause-effect and physical relationship between emissions and products. Regulatory activity should recognize that there is no functional relationship between refinery CO2 emissions and the production ratio of gasoline, jet, and diesel, and adopt a methodology which more accurately mirrors actual refinery behavior.During the last decades, the electronics industry has undergone tremendous changes due to intense research leading to advanced technology development. Multiple life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have been performed on the environmental implications of consumer electronics. The aim of this review is to assess the consistency between different LCA studies for desktop computers, laptop computers, mobile phones and televisions (TVs). A literature study was conducted covering some key LCA contributions to the consumer electronics field. The focus is primarily on global warming potential during 100 years (GWP100) efficiency in different life cycle phases and secondarily on primary energy usage/electricity usages which are normalised per year to find inconsistencies. The life cycle impact assessment GWP100 results for consumer electronics over the years suggest that most studies are of comparable quality; however, some studies are neither coherent nor transparent. Published LCAs for mobile phone and TV sets are consistent, whereas for laptop and desktop computers, the studies occasionally give conflicting messages. The inconsistencies appear to be rooted in subjective choices and different system boundaries and lifetime, rather than lack of standardisation. If included, the amounts of emissions of sulphur hexafluoride (SF(6)) and nitrogen trifluoride (NF(3)) are crucial to the GWP100 in the various life cycle phases for a desktop using liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. Another important observation is that the MEEuP methodology report/tool underestimates the GWP100 of electronic component manufacturing processes. Between 1997 and 2010, the ISO 14040/44 standards have ensured a rather consistent set of GWP100 results for the studied products. However, the lack of transparency for consumer electronics LCAs sometimes makes benchmarking difficult. It is nevertheless possible to compare new LCA calculations to existing studies. It is also possible to reveal which product studies are consistent with studies of submaterials and subcomponents. In most cases, the GWP100 results for consumer electronics are consistent. Based on the survey of published work, recycling and other end-of-life processes have a tiny share of the total GWP100 score for consumer electronics. LCA researchers should as a rule, if possible, make a historical survey of their technical system to establish trends, proportions and relations. Policy makers ought to ask for these surveys when using LCAs for decision support. This charter is necessary as to understand the reasonableness of the results. Additions to the ISO14040/44 LCA standardisation for mass-volume products would be worthwhile as a means of increasing the consistency.Ballast is a device in a fluorescent lamp that supports the production of light. In this study, the environmental impacts of two types of Malaysian ballast, magnetic ballast and electronic ballast, were identified and compared using the life cycle assessment approach through the ISO 14040 (2005) series. The functional unit is consumption of 36 W ballast for a fluorescent lamp of 36 W during 10 years of working hours. The life cycle impact assessment was determined by the Eco-indicator 99 method. Only material processing, production, and use stages were considered in this study. Component inventory showed steel to be the major component in both the magnetic and electronic ballasts, used as the core steel and housing, respectively. For raw material and manufacturing phases, electronic ballast registered higher value for each damage category: 2.92 x 10(-5) disability adjusted life years (DALY) for human health, 1.43 potential disappeared fraction of plants (PDF) m(2) year for ecosystem quality and 17.02 MJ surplus for resource depletion compared to those for magnetic ballast at 4.08 x 10(-6) DALY, 0.83 PDF m(2) year, and 3.53 MJ surplus, for their respective damage categories. For the use phase, magnetic ballast used more energy (135 kWh) than electronic ballast (45 kWh) and also registered more impact during the use phase with 3.57 x 10(-5) DALY for human health, 3.25 PDF m(2) year for ecosystem quality, and 219.43 MJ surplus for resource depletion, compared to electronic ballast's 1.19 x 10(-5) DALY, 1.08 PDF m(2) year, and 73.14 MJ surplus for their respective damage categories.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used for the environmental assessment of food products, but difficulties arise when evaluating large portfolios of food products or when faced with a diversity of sources of ingredients and/or frequent changes of suppliers. In such situations, a specific, in-depth assessment of each ingredient is not feasible, and screening approaches using a few LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment) results are not recommended. The goal of this paper is to propose an intermediate solution between a screening assessment using limited data and specific LCA for all products considering all sources of ingredients. The extrapolation method presented here [Modular EXtrapolation of Agricultural LCA (MEXALCA)] allows deriving LCIA results for a crop in a specific (target) country using the LCIA data of the same crop in another (original) country. The existing crop inventory (LCI) is split into nine modules corresponding to the main on-field and post-harvest activities, each associated to its key farming input. This approach reduces the complexity of the inventories, and data collection is focused on nine inputs in the target country. Additionally, data can be approximated by means of statistical estimators if necessary. Impacts per unit of farming input are calculated for each module in the original country and combined with the quantity of farming inputs in the target countries in order to determine the impacts in the latter. Combining MEXALCA with available national statistics provides the means for a rapid evaluation of environmental impacts of a given crop for all producing countries globally and the determination of their statistical distribution. The range of the impacts for a number of crops was determined, and a sensitivity analysis with values derived from national statistics was conducted. Validation of the method showed a good performance for the evaluation of energy demand, ozone formation, and global warming potential. The method was inaccurate for eutrophication and acidification and not suitable for toxicity impact categories. Extrapolation of agricultural LCIAs using statistical data and existing inventories is feasible. Compared with many streamlined LCA approaches, it does not discard processes nor jeopardise the understanding of the production system. MEXALCA shows benefits in terms of the amount of data and time required and allows for data generation on a multi-country scale. It appears promising for an assessment of products from various origins and may also be useful for the extrapolation of one product to another. The method is suitable for environmental assessments at the regional or global scale and to fill data gaps in traditional LCAs. However, extrapolation should not replace a conventional LCA for the assessment of a specific product, and particular caution should be exercised for spatially dependent impact categories such as eutrophication or acidification.Food production is essential to life. Modern farming uses considerable resources to produce arable crops. Analysing the environmental burdens of alternative crop production methods is a vital tool for policymakers. The paper describes the production burdens (calculated by life cycle analysis) of three key arable crops: bread wheat, oilseed rape and potatoes as grown in England and Wales using organic and non-organic (contemporary conventional) systems. Resource use (e.g. abiotic and energy) and burdens from emissions are included (e.g. global warming potential on a 100-year basis, global warming potential (GWP), and eutrophication and acidification potentials). Crop production was analysed, using systems models, so that the effects of factors like changing N fertiliser application rates or irrigation could be examined. Emissions of nitrate were derived from a simulation model in which soil organic N was driven to steady state so that all long-term effects were properly accounted for. Yield response curves to N were similarly derived from long-term experiments. Crop nutrient inputs and plant protection applications were derived from national survey data and the literature. All major inputs were accounted for including fertiliser extraction, manufacture and delivery; pesticide manufacture; field fuel use; machinery and building manufacture; crop drying, cooling and storage. The current balance of production systems were found from survey data. The weighted mean national production was calculated from a combination of three rainfall levels and soil textures. The system boundary is the farm gate. The functional unit is 1 t marketable fresh weight of each product. The primary energy needs for the producing the three main crops were 2.4, 4.9 and 1.4 GJ/t for bread wheat, oilseed rape and potatoes, respectively. When expressed in terms of dry matter, protein or energy, wheat incurred smaller burdens than oilseed rape, which incurred lower burdens than potatoes. The crops do, of course, all play different roles. Organically produced bread wheat needed about 80% of the energy of non-organic, while organic potatoes needed 13% more energy than non-organically produced ones. While pesticide use was always lower in organic production, other burdens were generally inconsistently higher or lower. Land occupation was always higher for organic production. Lower fertiliser use (and hence energy use) in organic systems is offset by more energy for fieldwork and lower yields. Main crop potato energy needs are dominated by cold storage. Reducing the N application rate for bread wheat production reduces energy use and GWP. The optimum for energy is with N at about 70% of the current level. It seems to be lower for GWP, but the sub-models used are beyond their range of reliability. The results are generally of the same order as those from other European studies. Arable crop production depends heavily on fossil fuel in current major production systems. The emissions causing GWP are very dependent on nitrous oxide, more so than fuel consumption. That, together with emissions of ammonia and nitrate, means that agriculture has a C-N footprint rather than the C footprint that typifies most industrial life. With the large influence of nitrous oxide on GWP, evaluation of nitrous oxide emissions by another method, e.g. crop-soil simulation modelling instead of the more rigid IPCC method would improve the robustness of the analysis. The transition between farming systems was not included in this study, but there could be short to medium term benefits of converting from non-organic to organic methods that should be evaluated. System modelling allows alternative production methods to be readily explored and this greatly enhances LCA methodology.Several methodological shortcomings still hinder the inclusion of transport noise as an established impact category within life cycle assessment (LCA). Earlier attempts to quantify the health damages caused by traffic noise yielded valuable results from an academic point of view, but these were of limited use in the context of everyday LCA practice. An enhanced understanding of traffic noise emission models coupled with a straightforward choice of indicators could lead to faster, more accurate assessments of health impairment due to traffic noise whose results would fittingly serve the purposes of policy makers and the information needs of the general public alike. This article aims to propose the guidelines for such assessments. The assessment method presented takes an incremental approach in similar fashion as previous work in the field done by R. Muller-Wenk. An explanation is provided of how the assumption of linearity leads to a substantial overestimation of noise level increments attributable to additional vehicles, and subsequently to a misjudgement of overall health impacts due to traffic noise. Hence, an alternative calculation method allowing for better accuracy in the computation of noise level increments is proposed. This method can be easily applied, needless of a specific traffic noise emission model. A more detailed method, based on the state-of-the-art Improved Methods for the Assessment of the Generic Impact of Noise in the Environment (IMAGINE) traffic noise emission model, is also described. This method is to be applied to large-, medium- and small-scale assessments where variations in traffic flow or composition can be reasonably predicted or measured. In the proposed methodology, health impairment due to traffic noise is not aggregated in DALY (disability-adjusted life years). Rather, the results are given in terms of the 'number of annoyed persons', which is derived from the synthesis curves relating noise exposure to annoyance presented by Miedema and Oudshoorn. The calculation procedure and data needs to do this are explained. Moreover, the validity of taking the number of annoyed persons as a proxy for overall health impairment due to traffic noise-and the main benefits of doing so-are discussed. Performing the attribution of impacts on a per vehicle-kilometre basis can lead to impact misrepresentations whenever an incremental approach is taken. A different attribution scheme, which takes background noise into account, is thus proposed. The general framework of a method to assess the impact of traffic noise upon human health within LCA is presented. This method, which finds its basis in the work of Muller-Wenk, can be used to evaluate a large number of variations in traffic other than mere increases in overall traffic flows. An application example evaluating the impact of a generic 1,000-km trip of a heavy-duty vehicle through Spain is provided in Section 2.4. The incremental approach seems most adequate for the assessment of the impact of traffic noise upon human health within LCA, albeit the assumption of linearity can significantly distort its results. Likewise, performing the attribution of impacts through generic characterisations of additional vehicle-kilometres may mask the true responsibility of traffic for increasing noise levels, and is therefore advised against. The special characteristics of noise as a pollutant (relevance of spatial data, human perception issues) appear to justify the adoption of a distinct indicator, namely 'number of annoyed persons'. Reasonably good estimates of equivalent noise level increases due to proportional increases over pre-existing traffic can be given without using a noise emission model. Yet, the use of state-of-the-art vehicle noise emission models (e.g. IMAGINE) should allow for more accurate assessments, provided sufficient data regarding the spatial distribution of receivers and traffic characteristics (traffic flow, average speed per vehicle type and so forth) are known. Incorporating annoyance as the preferred indicator for the impact of traffic noise upon human health would make assessment results more intelligible and readily applicable to decision making in matters like infrastructure policing and urban planning, whilst placing the focus on damage prevention. In this paper, only road traffic noise is dealt with. However, annoyance curves with a comparably solid scientific background also exist for railway and aircraft noise, which would make comparisons between alternative transportation modes feasible. The use of 'number of annoyed persons' instead of DALY units is favoured because it allows for a more straightforward presentation of results, even if it excludes the possibility of aggregation with other health impacts. Nevertheless, the use of DALY is not excluded beforehand, insofar as a scientifically sound relationship between long-term exposure to environmental noise and more severe health conditions is agreed upon by medical experts.Radar and surface thunderstorm data in North Dakota were investigated to obtain the climatology of thunderstorms in the state. A life cycle analysis for the individual storm cells between 2002 and 2006 was carried out, and it was found that June and July were the peak months, late afternoon to early morning was the peak time for thunderstorms, the average lifetime of storm cells was 23.6 min, the average gust wind speed was 16.5 m s(-1), the average track length was 21.8 km, and the average movement speed was 16.4 m s(-1). The average movement of storm cells varied with months, and the storms moved toward the north, the northeast, and the east. It was also demonstrated that there were 19-35 thunderstorm days each year in North Dakota and that, of these, 9-14 thunderstorm days each year were associated with high speed winds. Severe thunderstorms composed 1.7% of all the thunderstorms in 2002-06. The most intense thunderstorm in North Dakota between 2002 and 2006 was associated with a 5-yr-high wind speed of 31.4 m s(-1). It was also found that the longer-lasting storms were the stronger storms.Green product innovation has been recognized as one of the key factors to achieve growth, environmental sustainability, and a better quality of life. Understanding green product innovation as a result of interaction between innovation and sustainability has become a strategic priority for theory and practice. This article investigates green product innovation by means of a multiple case study analysis of 12 small to medium size manufacturing companies based in Italy and Canada. First, we propose a conceptual framework that presents three key environmental dimensions of green product innovation such as energy minimization, materials reduction, and pollution prevention as identified in the life cycle phases of products. Based on insights gained from in-depth interviews, we discuss firms' motivations to develop green products, environmental policies and targets for products, different dimensions of green product innovation, and challenges faced during developing and marketing of green products. Results from the study are then synthesized and integrated in a toolbox that sheds light on various aspects of green product innovation and provides solutions to challenges and risks that are faced by firms. Finally, implications for managers, academia and public policy makers are discussed.This study uses the process simulator ASPEN Plus (R) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare three process design alternatives for biodiesel production from waste vegetable oils that are: the conventional alkali-catalyzed process including a free fatty acids (FFAs) pre-treatment, the acid-catalyzed process, and the supercritical methanol process using propane as co-solvent. Results show that the supercritical methanol process using propane as co-solvent is the most environmentally favorable alternative. Its smaller steam consumption in comparison with the other process design alternatives leads to a lower contribution to the potential environmental impacts (PEI's). The acid-catalyzed process generally shows the highest PEI's, in particular due to the high energy requirements associated with methanol recovery operations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bamboo has some positive aspects compared to wood: it can grow on slopes and other areas where foresting of wood is not possible, and it grows fast. it can replace tropical hardwood, so it can mitigate the decrease of tropical forest area. it can support the local economies in the third world. This article is based on a bamboo species from China (Phyllostachys Pubescens, also called Moso), and its industrially processed products: Plybamboo and Strand Woven Bamboo. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used in this paper to compare the environmental impact of bamboo materials, shipped to Western Europe, with commonly used materials such as timber. The calculations are based on the LCI databases of Ecoinvent v2 (2008) and Idemat 2008, applied to the eco-costs 2007 method for LCIA. The annual yield of harvesting is calculated as well, and compared with other wood products. General conclusions are: bamboo products have less eco-costs than tropical hardwood (FSC certified) bamboo products imported in Europe have more eco-costs than local European softwood. the yield of bamboo is high compared to most other wood species: the yield of bamboo for production of biofuel is extremely high. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Laser assisted manufacturing processes, when compared with traditional manufacturing processes, have the potential to reduce cost, increase surface resistance to wear and fatigue, extend part/tool life, and expand the range of manufacturable materials. These processes have found niche applications in automotive, aerospace, and defense industries. However, very limited research has been conducted to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of laser assisted processes with traditional methods. This paper conducts case studies on two representative laser based processes, i.e. laser shock peening of 7075-T7351 Aluminum and laser assisted turning of compacted graphite iron. Life cycle assessment is used to benchmark the environmental performance of these two processes to conventional processes, i.e. shot peening and turning, respectively. The life cycle inventory of both the laser based processes and conventional processes are developed using SimaPro 7.1 and the Ecoinvent 2.0 database and life cycle impact assessment is performed using US EPA TRACI. The results of this study show that the environmental performance of the two laser based processes is significantly better than conventional processes. For laser shock peening of aluminum, contribution analysis indicates that this is mainly due to the significant extension of fatigue life of the workpiece being treated. For laser assisted turning of compacted graphite iron, the improved performance is mainly due to the extended tool life since cutting tool manufacturing is an energy intensive process. Development of high-power laser with a lower wavelength (e.g. direct diode system) could eliminate the use of paint in laser assisted turning. This, along with improved wall plug efficiency, makes laser assisted turning even more environmentally benign compared to conventional process. A brief cost analysis suggests that both laser shock peening and laser assisted turning can be economically viable with payback period less than three years for niche applications. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper compares the life cycle global warming potential of three of Australia's important agricultural production activities - the production of wheat, meat and wool in grazed subterranean clover (sub-clover) dominant pasture and mixed pasture (perennial ryegrass/phalaris/sub-clover/grass and cape weed) systems. Two major stages are presented in this life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis: pre-farm, and on-farm. The pre-farm stage includes greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agricultural machinery, fertilizer, and pesticide production and the emissions from the transportation of these inputs to paddock. The on-farm stage includes GHG emissions due to diesel use in on-farm transport and processing (e.g. seeding, spraying, harvesting, topdressing, sheep shearing), and non-CO2 (nitrous oxide (N2O), and methane (CH4)) emissions from pastures and crop grazing of lambs. The functional unit of this life cycle analysis is the GHG emissions (carbon dioxide equivalents - CO2 -e) from 1 kg of wheat, sheep meat and wool produced from sub-clover, wheat and mixed pasture plots. The GHG emissions (e.g. CO2, N2O and CH4 emission) from the production, transportation and use of inputs (e.g. fertilizer, pesticide, farm machinery operation) during pre-farm and on-farm stages are also included. The life cycle GHG emissions of 1 kg of wool is significantly higher than that of wheat and sheep meat. The LCA analysis identified that the on-farm stage contributed the most significant portion of total GHG emissions from the production of wheat, sheep meat and wool. This LCA analysis also identified that CH4 emissions from enteric methane production and from the decomposition of manure accounted for a significant portion of the total emissions from sub-clover and mixed pasture production, whilst N2O emissions from the soil have been found to be the major source of GHG emissions from wheat production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increased and intensified pig production has raised the needs for proper management systems of pig manure in order to reduce negative environmental impacts. The objectives of this study were to identify the most significant environmental impacts from pig manure management considering a wide range of impact categories and to determine which integrated technology system at which handling stage can achieve the highest impact reduction. Twelve scenarios applying various treatment, storage and land application systems were developed and compared. Life cycle assessment (LCA) with the aim of capturing the actual consequences of the considered scenarios was selected as the tool for impact quantification. The most important impact categories in this investigation are global warming (GWP), aquatic eutrophication (AEP), respiratory inorganics (RIP), and terrestrial eutrophication (TEP). The two latter impacts, caused by ammonia emissions, have not been widely considered in most of previous LCA studies on pig manure management. The main keys for the effective impact reduction are the integration of treatment technology systems aiming at energy recovery with high nutrient recovery and control of greenhouse gas, ammonia, and nitrate emissions at every handling stage. For GWP and AEP, the anaerobic digestion-based scenario with natural crust storage achieves the highest impact reduction because of high efficiencies in energy and nutrient recovery with restricted emissions of GHG and nitrate. For RIP and TEP, the incineration and thermal gasification based scenarios and the scenario without a treatment system applying the deep injection method yield the highest impact minimisation due to the lowest ammonia emissions. This study further indicates the need to consider all significant impacts to decide the best management options taking into consideration local conditions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed to analyze environmental consequences of different pear production chains in terms of fossil energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in China. The assessment identified hotspots that contributed significantly to the environmental impacts of pear production from the cradle to the point of sale. The results showed that GHG emissions and fossil energy use varied in the different production chains because the environmental performance does not associate with the farming systems (i.e. organic vs. conventional), but is co-determined by farm topography and thus machinery use, by market demands to seasonality of products and thus the need for storage, and by local farming practices including manure management. The LCA could be used as a tool to guide selections of agricultural inputs with the aim of reducing environmental impacts. The results of the LCA analysis indicate that a list of choices are available to reduce energy use and GHG emission in the pear production chain, namely substitution of the traditional storage systems by an efficiently controlled atmosphere storage system, using manure for biogas production, conversion from the conventional farming to organic farming, and reduction of mechanical cultivation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Growing global trade with organic products has increased the demand for environmental impact assessments during both production and transport. Environmental hotspots of organic soybeans produced in China and imported to Denmark were identified in a case study using a life cycle assessment approach. Furthermore, environmental impacts of organic and conventional soybeans at farm gate were compared in the case study. The total global warming potential (GWP) per ton organic soybeans imported to Denmark revealed that 51% came from transportation and 35% from the farm level. Comparing organic and conventional soybean at farm gate showed that GWP, non-renewable energy use, acidification and eutrophication was lower per ton organic soybeans, whereas land use was slightly higher. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle thinking is emphasised in EU policies and legislation. All products have environmental impacts during their production, use and disposal. It is important to ensure that environmental impacts are considered throughout the life-cycle and it will be more and more important for the industry to understand the meaning of the life cycle thinking and to adopt it. The environmental impacts of an industrial disposable cup concept were studied with help of life-cycle assessment method. The objective of the study was to create new knowledge about the life cycle effects of the carton based cup concept. The scope of the study was to compare the effects of material choices and different end-of-life scenarios. The paper focuses on the global warming potential of the cup concept The carton based products were covered either with polyethene or polylactide. In addition, the environmental impacts of the carton-based cups were compared to the estimated environmental impacts of polymer-based cups. The polymer based cups were made of polyethylene terephthalate. The paper shows that significant improvements can be achieved with help of the choice of materials and optimal end of life. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life-cycle impacts of five different 11 kV electrical power cables (three overhead lines and two underground cables) were analysed. These were compared by their embodied impacts in production and total lifetime operational impacts. The life-cycle results revealed there to be three key issues, the impacts of climate change, fossil fuel depletion, and particulate matter formation (PMF). The former two were of particular significance. The embodied impacts, which are those associated with the materials, were generally determined to be insignificant. The exception was for underground cables at low operating loads. Under these conditions PMF was more significant as a result of the high embodied impacts of the cables. Further analysis revealed that these impacts could be mitigated with an end of life material recovery program. At present the underground cables are not recovered, but if they were the recycling benefits would give rise to a notable improvement in PMF. For the other impact categories operational conductor losses were the dominant cause of impacts. In summary it was concluded that to minimise the life-cycle impacts of 11 kV cables the system with the lowest conductor resistance should be selected. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soybean production and its supply chain are highly dependent on inputs such as land, fertilizer, fuel, machines, pesticides and electricity. The expansion of this crop in Brazil in recent decades has generated concerns about its environmental impacts. To assess these impacts, two representative chains supplying soybeans to Europe were identified: Center West (CW) and Southern (SO) Brazil. Each supply chain was analyzed using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. We considered different levels of use of chemical and organic fertilizers, pesticides and machinery, different distances for transportation of inputs and different yield levels. Because transportation contributed strongly to environmental impacts, a detailed study was performed to identify the routes used to transport soybeans to seaports. Additionally, we considered different levels of land occupation and land transformation to represent the impact of deforestation in the CW region. Environmental impacts were calculated for 1000 kg of soybean up to and including the delivery to Europe at the seaport in Rotterdam, at 13% humidity. Overall results showed that the impacts are greater for CW than for SO for all impact categories studied, including acidification (7.7 and 5.3 kg SO2 eq., respectively), climate change (959 and 510 kg CO2 eq.), cumulative energy demand (12,634 and 6,999 MJ) and terrestrial ecotoxicity (4.9 and 3.1 kg 1,4-DCB eq.), except eutrophication and land occupation. The same trend was observed for the crop-production stage. Efforts to reduce chemical fertilizers and diesel consumption can reduce CO2 emissions. Although deforestation for crop production has decreased in recent years, the contribution of deforestation to climate change and cumulative energy demand remains significant. In the CW scenario deforestation contributed 29% to climate change and 20% to cumulative energy demand. Results also showed that although there are different transportation options in Brazil, the current predominance of road transport causes severe environmental impacts. In CW, road transport contributed 19% to climate change and 24% to cumulative energy demand, while in SO it contributed 12% and 15% to these impacts, respectively. Improvements in the logistics of transportation, giving priority to rail and river transports over road transport, can contribute significantly to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and decreasing energy use. Future studies involving Brazilian soybeans should take into account the region of origin as different levels of environmental impact are predicted. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research examined the environmental impacts due to the construction phase of commercial buildings. Previous building research has often overlooked the construction phase and focused on the material and use phases, discounting the significant environmental impacts of construction. The research was conducted using life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, which is a systematic environmental management tool that holistically analyzes and assesses the environmental impacts of a product or process. Life-cycle inventory results focused on particulate matter, global warming potential, SO(x), NO(x), CO, Pb, nonmethane volatile organic compounds, energy usage, and solid and liquid wastes. Results over the entire building life cycle indicate that construction, while not as significant as the use phase, is as important as other life-cycle stages. This research used augmented process-based hybrid LCA to model the construction phase; this modeling approach effectively combined process and input-output (IO) LCA. One contribution was the development of a hybrid LCA model for construction, which can be extended to other sectors, such as building products. Including IO results, especially construction service sectors, is critical in construction LCA modeling. Results of a case study demonstrated that services had the highest level of methane emissions and were a significant contributor to CO(2) emissions.This paper describes efforts taken to further transition life cycle assessment techniques from the latter, more detailed phases of design to the early-on conceptual phase of product development. By using modern design methodologies such as automated concept generation and an archive of product design knowledge, known as the Design Repository, virtual concepts are created and specified. Streamlined life cycle assessment techniques are then used to determine the environmental impacts of the virtual concepts. As a means to benchmark the virtual results, analogous real-life products that have functional and component similarities are identified. The identified products are then scrutinized to determine their material composition and manufacturing attributes in order to perform an additional round of life cycle assessment for the actual products. The results of this research show that sufficient information exists within the conceptual phase of design (utilizing the Design Repository) to reasonably predict the relative environmental impacts of actual products based on virtual concepts. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4002152]Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to estimate a product's environmental impact. Using LCA during the earlier stages of design may produce erroneous results since information available on the product's lifecycle is typically incomplete at these stages. The resulting uncertainty must be accounted for in the decision-making process. This paper proposes a method for estimating the environmental impact of a product's life cycle and the associated degree of uncertainty of that impact using information generated during the design process. Total impact is estimated based on aggregation of individual product life cycle processes impacts. Uncertainty estimation is based on assessing the mismatch between the information required and the information available about the product life cycle in each uncertainty category, as well as their integration. The method is evaluated using pre-defined scenarios with varying uncertainty. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4002163]A reverse engineering methodology is presented for identifying environmentally conscious design guidelines for use in the conceptual stages of product design. Environmentally conscious principles and guidelines help designers improve environmental impacts of products by making better decisions during conceptual design stages when data for life cycle analysis (LCA) are sometimes scarce. The difficulty in using the current knowledge base of guidelines is that it is not exhaustive and conflicts are not well understood. In response, the authors propose a general method for expanding the current set of guidelines and for understanding potential environmental tradeoffs. The method helps designers extract environmentally conscious design guidelines from a set of functionally related products by combining reverse engineering with LCA. The guidelines and LCA results can then be used to inform subsequent design cycles without repeating the process. Although in environmentally conscious design, reverse engineering is commonly applied to studies of disassembly and recyclability, the methodology and case study herein show how reverse engineering can be applied to the utilization stage of a product's life cycle as well. The method is applied to an example of electric kettles to demonstrate its utility for uncovering new design guidelines. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4002145]Toxic chemicals used in product design and manufacturing are grave concerns due to their toxic impact on human health. Implementing sustainable material selection strategies on toxic chemicals can substantially improve the sustainability of products in both design and manufacturing processes. In this paper, a schematic method is presented for characterizing and benchmarking the human health impact of toxic chemicals, as a visual aid to facilitate decision-making in the material selection process for sustainable design and manufacturing. In this schematic method, the human health impact of a toxic chemical is characterized by two critical parameters: daily exposure risk R and environmental persistence T. The human health impact of a toxic chemical is represented by its position in the R - T two-dimensional plot, which enables the screening and benchmarking of toxic chemicals to be easily made through comparing their relative positions in the characterization plot. A case study is performed on six toxic chemicals commonly used as solvents for cleaning and degreasing in product development and manufacturing. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4002199]The marine organism Rhodopirellula baltica is a representative of the globally distributed phylum Planctomycetes whose members exhibit an intriguing lifestyle and cell morphology. The analysis of R. baltica's genome has revealed many biotechnologically promising features including a set of unique sulfatases and C1-metabolism genes. Salt resistance and the potential for adhesion in the adult phase of the cell cycle were observed during cultivation. To promote the understanding of this model organism and to specify the functions of potentially useful genes, gene expression throughout a growth curve was monitored using a whole genome microarray approach. Transcriptional profiling suggests that a large number of hypothetical proteins are active within the cell cycle and in the formation of the different cell morphologies. Numerous genes with potential biotechnological applications were found to be differentially regulated, revealing further characteristics of their functions and regulation mechanisms. More specifically, the experiments shed light on the expression patterns of genes belonging to the organism's general stress response, those involved in the reorganization of its genome and those effecting morphological changes. These transcriptomic results contribute to a better understanding of thus far unknown molecular elements of cell biology. Further, they pave the way for the biotechnological exploitation of R. baltica's distinctive metabolic features as a step towards sourcing the phylum Planctomycetes at large.Life Cycle Assessment Applied to Naphtha Catalytic Reforming -d Facing the increase of environmental concerns in the oil and gas industry, engineers and scientists need information to assess sustainability of chemical processes. Among the different methods available, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used. In this study, LCA is applied to a catalytic reforming process using the Eco-Indicator 99 as life cycle impact assessment method. The main identified environmental impacts are fossil fuels consumption, climate change and respiratory effects due to inorganics compounds. The influence of different process parameters (feed composition, reaction temperature) is determined with respect to environmental impacts. Two allocation methods are analysed (mass and exergetic allocation) and two different process versions are compared in order to determine the effect of some improvements on environmental impact.The management of food distribution networks is receiving more and more attention, both in practice and in the scientific literature. In this paper, we review quantitative operations management approaches to food distribution management, and relate this to challenges faced by the industry. Here, our main focus is on three aspects: food quality, food safety, and sustainability. We discuss the literature on three decision levels: strategic network design, tactical network planning, and operational transportation planning. For each of these, we survey the research contributions, discuss the state of the art, and identify challenges for future research.The study was conducted to trace and analyze the energy for different rice ecosystems in the Philippines. Energy inputs consisted of human labor, machinery, animal, seeds, irrigation, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides. Energy outputs consisted of rice yield and husk. Using life cycle assessment (LCA), we analyzed and quantified energy inputs and outputs. The average output-input ratio was 9.0 and 7.5 for farms irrigated by canal and pump facility, respectively, during wet season (December-May). Among the other farming systems, the manual system had the highest energy ratio (8.50 and 10.17 for farms with pumping sets and canal facility, respectively). For these farms, the average total energy input was 12,066 and 10,574 MJ ha(-1), respectively. The average output-input ratios were 9.55 for channel and 5.51 for pumping areas during the dry season. The manual system had the highest output-input ratio of 6.17 and 10.39 for channel and pumping areas, respectively. The average total energy inputs were 11,500 MJ ha(-1) for channel and 11,753 MJ ha(-1) for pumping. In all farming systems, N, fuel and seeds contributed around 80% of the total energy inputs. Power source for rice production in the Philippines predominantly came from human labor.Geotechnical engineering has a crucial role to play in enhancing sustainability due to its key position in the early stages of the construction process, where potentially adverse impacts are highest. Currently, there is a lack of methods with which to assess the sustainability of geotechnical projects that truly encompass the three core pillars (economic, environmental and social). What is required is a system that can offer a holistic approach that is flexible and easily understood while not having a bias towards rewards and not being prohibitively costly. In addition, 'tool fatigue', generating a system never to be used, must be avoided. After a detailed review of the systems available, the SPeAR methodology was selected as fulfilling these key criteria. After detailed discussion, the methodology was adapted to ensure it is rationalised into a system that geotechnical engineers can understand and use relatively easily. The adapted version allows greater communication between masterplanning and geotechnical engineering via their common base, thus avoiding a potential barrier to greater adoption of more sustainable practices through the construction cycle.Modern agriculture relies heavily on fossil energy for food production. Reducing fossil energy and replacing that energy with renewable energy is critical in attaining a sustainable food system. Hand-scale intensive food production offers a reduction in fossil energy and an increased use of renewable human-based energy. Using biointensive production techniques, onions (Allium cepa) were grown in Pennsylvania, USA. A life-cycle analysis was performed to monitor energy utilization. Individual human labor tasks were evaluated using the factor method. This method accounts for the type and duration of physical activity. The average yield of eight onion varieties utilizing biointensive production in standard-sized beds (9.3 m(2); 100 ft(2)) was 160.2 kg. The US average for mechanical onion production is 46.1 kg/9.3 m(2) (100 ft(2)). The energy efficiency ratio, specific energy and energy productivity were 51.5, 0.03 MJ kg(-1) and 32.2 kg MJ(-1) (MJ = megajoule), respectively. When defined within common boundaries, these three relationships: energy input, energy output and yield productivity allow researchers, farmers and policy-makers to select production systems and/or practices that better manage fossil and renewable energy for food production. Current mechanized agriculture has an energy efficiency ratio of 0.9. With most energy being supplied by fossil fuels. The energy efficiency for biointensive production of onions in our study was over 50 times higher than this value (51.5) and 83% of the total energy required is renewable energy. Biointensive production offers a viable energy use alternative to current production practices and may contribute to a more sustainable food system.A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to compare the environmental performance of different organic cropping systems with and without digestion of slurry and crop residues. The aims of the present study are: (1) to compare the environmental performance of organic farming dairy systems with the currently prevalent animal housing systems [solid farmyard manure (FYM) versus liquid slurry] as the main reference systems; (2) to analyze the effect of the implementation of a biogas digestion system on the consumption of fossil fuels and production of electrical energy; (3) to quantify the effects of the implementation of a biogas digestion system on the environment; and (4) to compare the obtained net energy yields with other means of obtaining energy by using the farmland area. The considered impact categories are greenhouse gas (GHG) balances, acidification, eutrophication and groundwater pollution. LCA results indicated that total emissions in systems based on FYM are much higher than in liquid slurry systems for most of the considered impact categories. The benefits of digestion of stable wastes in comparison with the reference system without digestion are mainly (1) the net reduction of the emissions of GHG and (2) energy recovery from produced biogas, while the disadvantages can be higher emissions of NH3 after spreading. The effects of additional biogas digestion of biomass such as crop residues (e. g., straw of peas and cereals) and cover crops are: (1) an optimization of the N-cycle and therewith higher yields; (2) higher energy production per unit arable land; (3) a further reduction of the GHG balance; but (4) higher N-related environmental burdens like eutrophication and acidification. The offsets of fossil fuel emissions were the largest GHG sink in most of the biogas digestion systems. The inclusion of a biogas plant into organic cropping systems and the use of the available wastes for production of energy largely increased the overall productivity of the farming system and matched very well the basic principles of organic farming such as a high self-sufficiency of the cropping system and reducing as much as possible the environmental impact of farming.The aim of this study is to show the impact of different assumptions and methodological choices on the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) performance of biofuels by providing the results for different key parameters on a consistent basis. These include co-products allocation or system expansion, N2O emissions from crop cultivation, conversion systems and co-product applications and direct land-use change emissions. The results show that the GHG performance of biofuels varies depending on the method applied and the system boundaries selected. Key factors include selected allocation procedures and the location of production and related yields, reference land and soil N2O emissions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Shallow geothermal systems such as open and closed geothermal heat pump (GHP) systems are considered to be an efficient and renewable energy technology for cooling and heating of buildings and other facilities. The numbers of installed ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems, for example, is continuously increasing worldwide. The objective of the current study is not only to discuss the net energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or savings by GHP operation, but also to fully examine environmental burdens and benefits related to applications of such shallow geothermal systems by employing a state-of the-art life cycle assessment (LCA). The latter enables us to assess the entire energy flows and resources use for any product or service that is involved in the life cycle of such a technology. The applied life cycle impact assessment methodology (ReCiPe 2008) shows the relative contributions of resources depletion (34%), human health (43%) and ecosystem quality (23%) of such GSHP systems to the overall environmental damage. Climate change, as one impact category among 18 others, contributes 55.4% to the total environmental impacts. The life cycle impact assessment also demonstrates that the supplied electricity for the operation of the heat pump is the primary contributor to the environmental impact of GSHP systems, followed by the heat pump refrigerant, production of the heat pump, transport, heat carrier liquid, borehole and borehole heat exchanger (BHE). GHG emissions related to the use of such GSHP systems are carefully reviewed; an average of 63 t CO2 equivalent emissions is calculated for a life cycle of 20 years using the Continental European electricity mix with 0.599 kg CO2 eq/kWh. However, resulting CO2 eq savings for Europe, which are between -31% and 88% in comparison to conventional heating systems such as oil fired boilers and gas furnaces, largely depend on the primary resource of the supplied electricity for the heat pump, the climatic conditions and the inclusion of passive cooling capabilities. Factors such as degradation of coefficient of performance, as well as total leakage of the heat carrier fluid into the soil and aquifer are also carefully assessed, but show only minor environmental impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a review of the available literature covering the latest module aspects of different photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collectors and their performances in terms of electrical as well as thermal output. The review covers detailed description of flat-plate and concentrating PV/T systems, using liquid or air as the working fluid, numerical model analysis, experimental work and qualitative evaluation of thermal and electrical output. Also an in-depth review on the performance parameters such as, optimum mass flow rate, PV/T dimensions, air channel geometry is presented in this study. Based on the thorough review, it is clear that PV/T modules are very promising devices and there exists lot of scope to further improve their performances. Appropriate recommendations are made which will aid PV/T systems to improve their efficiency and reducing their cost, making them more competitive in the present market. Published by Elsevier Ltd.A renewable biofuel economy is projected as a pathway to decrease dependence on fossil fuels as well as to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Ethanol produced on large-scale from lignocellulosic raw materials is considered the most potential next generation automotive fuel. In this paper, a Life Cycle Assessment model was developed to evaluate the environmental implications of the production of ethanol from five lignocellulosic materials: alfalfa stems, poplar, Ethiopian mustard, flax shives and hemp hurds and its use in passenger cars. Two ethanol-based fuel applications, E10 (a mixture of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline by volume) and E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline by volume) were assessed and the results were compared to those of conventional gasoline (CG) in an equivalent car. The environmental performance was assessed in terms of fossil fuels requirements, global warming, photochemical oxidant formation, acidification and eutrophication by means of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology in order to identify the best environmental friendly lignocellulosic source. The results show that, compared to CG, life cycle greenhouse gases emissions are lower for etanol blends, specifically up to 145% lower for E85-fueled car derived from Ethiopian mustard. This crop is also the best option in terms of eutrophying emissions regardless the ratio of ethanol in the blend. In the remaining impact categories, other feedstocks are considered beneficial, that is, poplar in the case of photochemical oxidants formation and flax shives for acidification. Concerning fossil fuels requirements, decreases up to 10% and 63% for E10 and E85 derived from hemp hurds and Ethiopian mustard, respectively, were obtained. According to the results, the study clearly demonstrates the importance of using low intensive energy and high biomass yield crops. LCA procedure helps to identify the key areas in the ethanol production life cycle where the researchers and technicians need to work to improve the environmental performance. Technological development could help in lowering both the environmental impact and the prices of the ethanol fuels. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment methodology has been applied to a typical block of flats located in Barcelona, Spain to evaluate environmental impacts during the construction phase. The aim of this paper is to develop and apply several criteria for the building sector that help decision making at the design and construction stages, thereby allowing the selection of sustainable building materials, reducing the environmental impact of the materials used, minimizing the amount of waste generated, and increasing the percentage of this waste that is recycled. From a life cycle perspective during the construction phase, results showed that regarding to environmental impact of global warming potential, there was a total emission of 1.19E+01 kg CO2 equiv. m(-2) y(-1) (referred to m(2) of horizontal constructed area) of which about 85% was during the fabrication, while the rest was due to the energy consumed (8%), transport (6%) and waste management (1%). When analysing the whole building, the total waste obtained in the construction phase was 4.56E+01 kg m(-2) of which rest of materials account for 84% (internal and external walls 30%, architectural finishing 23% and foundations and basement 19%) and packaging waste represents 16% (roofing 31%, structural frame 22%, architectural finishing 15% and internal and external walls 10% of the total waste). Finally, in this paper we compare the different combinations of real construction scenarios for external and internal walls while taking into account the environmental and economic aspects and also three different systems of waste management: landfill, incineration and recycling have been evaluated. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study the environmental burdens of home composting were determined using the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool. Data used for the LCA study such as gas emissions (CH4, N2O, NH3 and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)), tools and composter characteristics were obtained from an experimental home composting process of leftovers of raw fruits and vegetables (LRFV). Stable compost with a high content of nitrogen and organic matter was obtained. Neither pathogens nor phytotoxic compounds were found in the final compost. In relation to gaseous emissions, only volatile organic compounds (0.32 kg VOC/Mg LRFV) were detected, even though ammonia, methane and nitrous oxide emissions were also measured. Regarding environmental burdens, the composter was the major contributor to the total home composting process impact for the impact categories of abiotic depletion, ozone layer depletion, and cumulative energy demand. Gaseous emissions (based on our own measurements and literature data) caused the greatest contribution to the acidification, eutrophication, global warming and photochemical oxidation potentials. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.At the present time, there is a remarkable increasing interest for using non-woody fibres as raw materials for pulp mills. The present study aims to identify and quantify the environmental impacts associated with the production of hemp and flax fibres for speciality paper pulp by using the Life Cycle Assessment (from now, LCA) methodology. One ton of fibre entering the pulp mill was used as functional unit in both systems. Inventory data for the foreground system (agricultural inputs and outputs) were obtained directly from growers (Spanish plantations and expert advisors) and combined, when necessary, with bibliographic sources. Data for the background system such as production of chemicals and pesticides, machinery or electricity were taken from the Ecoinvent database. The CML baseline 2000 methodology was selected to quantify the potential environmental impact associated to the crops. Specifically global warming (GWP), acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP) and photochemical oxidant formation (POP) were evaluated. In addition, two flow indicators were considered: energy (EU) and pesticide use (PU). Production of hemp fibre reported higher values for all the impact categories analyzed. On the contrary, flow indicators were more intensive in the flax scenario due to irrigation and pesticide consumption. LCA tool aided to identify the hot spots, so that a proposal for upgrading alternatives to reduce environmental impacts could be made. Production and use of fertilizers as well as the stage of scutching were identified as the hot spots in both crops; in addition, harvesting has also significant contribution in hemp production and irrigation regarding the flax scenario. Future work will be focused on the study of non-wood fibre processing in order to get a complete picture of the non-wood pulp life cycle. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The planning activity of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) collection networks is a topic of interest for researchers and managers, due to both the complexity of the problem and its important practical implications, in accordance with the guidelines that recent laws have addressed in a large number of industrialized countries. Nevertheless, even if these new legislation directives aim to reduce the critical effects of human activities on the environment, approaches for coupling the planning phase of a WEEE transportation network with the analysis of its environmental impact are rare in literature. Specifically, in this paper, a WEEE transportation network in the North of Italy (precisely, in the Reggio Emilia district) is addressed by means of an integrated solution approach. The methodological steps regard the following topics: data collection techniques, vehicle routing methods and heuristic procedures for creating different system scenarios, simulation modelling for obtaining solutions satisfying technical performance measures, LCA methodology for assessing the environmental impact of such solutions, multi-criteria decision methods for selecting the best choice under the joint technical and environmental perspective. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study evaluated feed manufacturing including dry feeding and wet feeding, composting, and landfilling for food waste disposal options from the perspective of global warming and resource recovery. The method of the expanded system boundaries was employed in order to compare different by-products. The whole stages of disposal involved in the systems such as separate discharge, collection, transportation, treatment, and final disposal, were included in the system boundary and evaluated. The Global Warming Potential generated from 1 tonne of food wastes for each disposal system was analyzed by the life cycle assessment method. The results showed that 200 kg of CO2-eq could be produced from dry feeding process, 61 kg of CO2-eq from wet feeding process, 123 kg of CO2-eq from composting process, and 1010 kg of CO2-eq from landfilling. Feed manufacturing and composting, the common treatment methods currently employed, have been known to be environment friendlier than other methods. However, this study shows that they can negatively affect the environment if their by-products are not appropriately utilized as intended. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, users, architects and engineers have all been searching for the most economic dwelling building systems. In this context, steel-framed houses have become a choice in many European countries, including Romania. One of the issues raised in the case of the new systems concerns their environmental impact. This paper presents an innovative structure/ envelope solution, enabling flexible floor plans and modular construction, faster fabrication and erection times and high solution diversity for floors and envelope. The main features of the architectural and technical solution are presented here. In the second part, the paper presents a comparative life cycle analysis for the above house, designed with various solutions. For this purpose, the building was designed with four different so-lutions, each having its own structural system, as follows: (1) hot-rolled steel framing -the innovative structure; (2) cold-formed steel framing; (3) timber framing, and (4) masonry. Besides the life cycle analysis at the level of the structural framework, studies regarding the cladding solution, versatility and adaptability of the four structural frames have been integrated. Several aspects are presented in turn in order to underline the impact for dif-ferent stages during the life cycle: (a) construction stage only; (b) construction stage and final disposal of materials; (c) construction stage, disposal and maintenance.Although the environmental impacts and carbon footprints of foods are gaining more public attention and scientific debate, few studies have systematically evaluated the He cycle nitrogen and phosphorus flows among different food types Disruption of natural nitrogen and phosphorus cycles already result in serious environmental quality degradation and economic losses, such as loss of fisheries due to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico This study characterizes the nutrient flows during food production, processing, packaging, and distribution stages for eight food types, compares carbon footprints and nitrogen equivalent footprints of food groups; evaluates solutions to reduce excessive nitrogen outputs, and estimates effectiveness and efficiency of possible solutions Different food groups exhibit a highly variable nitrogen-intensity, on average, red meat and dairy products require much more nitrogen than cereals/carbohydrates The ranking of foods' nitrogen footprints is not consistent with their carbon footprints For example, dairy products and chicken/eggs have relatively high nitrogen footprint and low carbon footprints. Finally, the study evaluates shifting food consumption patterns Dietary shifts from dairy products and red meat to cereals can be an effective approach for lowering the personal nitrogen footprintThis study was conducted to develop software which can process data to be information of bagasse life cycle assessment (LCA). This study was done by collecting data of sugarcane process production and the utilization of bagasse as a boiler fuel at Madukismo Sugar Mill, Yogyakarta. Data analysis utilized the LCA standard analysis based on ISO 14040 series. LCA software which has been developed can be applied in a simulating for condition of energy input, energy output, emission and its impact of bagasse life cycle in the sugarcane industry. The analysis results using LCA software showed that the energy input at the mill and boiler station in Madukismo Sugar Mill was higher than energy output, and bagasse utilization as a boiler fuel was more environmental friendly than fossil fuel.Building environmental design typically focuses on improvements to operational efficiencies such as building thermal performance and system efficiency. Often the impacts occuring across the other stages of a building's life are not considered or are seen as insignificant in comparison. However, previous research shows that embodied impacts can be just as important. There is limited consistent and comprehensive information available for building designers to make informed decisions in this area. Often the information that is available is from disparate sources, which makes comparison of alternative solutions unreliable. It is also important to ensure that strategies to reduce environmental impacts from one cycle stage do not come at the expense of an increase in overall life-cycle impacts. A consistent and comprehensive framework for assessing and specifying building assemblies for enhanced environmental outcomes does not currently exist. This article presents the initial findings of a project that aims to establish a database of life cycle energy requirements for a broad range of construction assemblies, based on a comprehensive assessment framework. Life cycle energy requirements have been calculated for eight residential construction assemblies integrating an innovative embodied energy assessment technique with thermal performance modelling and ranked according to their performance.Systematic approach for the estimation of country-specific product eco-profile using the Portland cement as example. In a globalised world, where construction materials are produced and assembled in different countries, country-specific eco-profile gain even more relevance. Nevertheless, many countries still face the problem of having very few or no ecological product profiles at all, being often 'forced' to use data from other countries, e.g. European background data, in order to fill in their gaps or even for being able to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Whereas methodology transfer among countries can take place, simply transfer of life cycle inventory data can lead to wrong results and conclusions. In this article, a systematic approach for the transferability of data between countries is proposed and applied on the Portland cement production process as example. The availability of country indicators data and the possibility of producing more appropriate country-specific eco-profiles with feasible time and effort can be seen as the main advantages of this approach.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) developments are explained along with key publications which record discussions which comprised ISO 14042 and SETAC document development, UNEP SETAC Life Cycle Initiative research, and research from public and private research institutions. It is recognized that the short list of impact categories has remained fairly constant, even after extensive discussions. The termination point of impact assessment modeling (e.g., inventory, midpoint, endpoint, damage, single score) has been discussed extensively, and the advantages and disadvantages of these different levels are well published. Early LCIAs were conducted independent of system location, but now site-specificity has been a research topic for many of the local and regional categories (e.g., acidification, eutrophication, and smog formation). In reality, even though many advances have been made in site-specific analysis, the life cycle assessment (LCA) case studies are often limited to their inventory data, and as a result, most LCAs are still site-generic even though the LCIA methodologies exist to allow for site-specific analysis. Pollutant-based impacts have received the most research effort and support in the past, but resource depletion categories (e.g., land use and water use) are now recognized as being highly complex, site-specific, data intensive, and important for contributing toward the sustainability of the planet. Efforts in these categories are still in the neophyte stages and are expected to have the greatest advances in the upcoming years.Life cycle analyses of renewable energy sources focus on static accounting of energy and green house gases balances. In this work, we introduce a conceptual framework and a mathematical model to simulate the time evolution of the energy balance of energy conversion technologies. This approach complements static energy return analyses. It is based on a few technical parameters that describe a standard conversion module, a set of deployment objectives, and assumed growth rates for deployment. It is independent of working details of the conversion technology. A set of equations is formulated and solved to model the deployment of the new technology. It allows for evaluation of gross and net produced energy and for estimation of required investments. The model is applied to photovoltaic electricity in Brazil, wind electricity globally and in Brazil, and sugar cane bioethanol. The main conclusions are: (i) photovoltaic electricity, because it requires large energy investments, leads to negative net production of electricity for many years, i.e., for an extended period it is an energy sink and not source; (ii) wind electricity is an attractive option is terms of net electricity production; (iii) sugar cane bioethanol is an attractive option for liquid fuels production for the world. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The building construction industry consumes a large amount of resources and energy and, owing to current global population growth trends, this situation is projected to deteriorate in the near future. Buildings consume approximately 40 percent of total global energy: during the construction phase in the form of embodied energy and during the operation phase as operating energy. Embodied energy is expended in the processes of building material production (mining and manufacture), on-site delivery, construction and assembly on-site, renovation and final demolition. Recent studies have considered the significance of embodied energy inherent in building materials, with a specific focus on this fraction of sequestered energy. Current interpretations of embodied energy are quite unclear and vary greatly, and embodied energy databases suffer from problems of variation and incomparability. Furthermore, there is no reliable template, standard or protocol regarding embodied energy computations that could address these problems in embodied energy inventories. This paper focuses on the analysis of existing literature in order to identify differing parameters so that development of a consistent and comparable database can be facilitated. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is one of the most important issues our world faces today and it is responsible for a number of natural disasters that threaten human life and existence. Carbon dioxide, produced from almost every energy consuming activity, is the dominant greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Water desalination is an energy intensive activity, and when it is powered by conventional energy sources, significant amounts of CO2 are released. For every cubic metre of fresh water produced, there is a 2 kg of CO2 reduction if renewable energy sources (RES) are used instead of electricity from the local grid. On the other hand, the cost of fresh water produced by desalination is much less if conventional sources of energy are used. Making appropriate policy choices require information on both costs and benefits. So here we estimate the critical CO2 cost, above which desalination units should use renewable energy instead of conventional energy sources. It was found that the critical CO2 emissions cost can be close to the CO2 capture cost and in many cases less than the penalties imposed by the European Commission. Several case studies of water desalination in the Aegean islands verify the conclusions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The New Zealand electricity generation system is dominated by hydro generation at approximately 60% of installed capacity between 2005 and 2007, augmented with approximately 32% fossil-fuelled generation, plus minor contributions from geothermal, wind and biomass resources. In order to explore the potential for a 100% renewable electricity generation system with substantially increased levels of wind penetration, fossil-fuelled electricity production was removed from an historic 3-year data set, and replaced by modelled electricity production from wind, geothermal and additional peaking options. Generation mixes comprising 53-60% hydro, 22-25% wind, 12-14% geothermal, 1% biomass and 0-12% additional peaking generation were found to be feasible on an energy and power basis, whilst maintaining net hydro storage. Wind capacity credits ranged from 47% to 105% depending upon the incorporation of demand management, and the manner of operation of the hydro system. Wind spillage was minimised, however, a degree of residual spillage was considered to be an inevitable part of incorporating non-dispatchable generation into a stand-alone grid system. Load shifting was shown to have considerable advantages over installation of new peaking plant. Application of the approach applied in this research to countries with different energy resource mixes is discussed, and options for further research are outlined. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Owing to booming mobile phone ownership and a short product innovation cycle, waste mobile phones are flooding China. In 2008, about 560 million mobile phones were produced and 634 million users subscribed to a mobile phone plan in China. These large numbers mean that the charging and disposal of mobile phones has the potential to have significant impacts on the environment. Thus the evaluation of material and energy consumption of mobile phones is an important task in the end-of-life management of electronic products. This paper uses material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) methods to estimate the life cycle impacts of mobile phones in China from manufacturing energy, use phase and generation of waste mobile phones. Results indicate over the mobile phone life cycle, manufacturing accounts for 50% of the total energy consumption, whereas the use phase accounts for only 20%. Mobile phones and supporting infrastructures account for a rapidly increasing 0.17% of Chinese energy use. In 2008, around 77 million units of waste mobile phones were generated in China. To manage this energy use and recover valuable materials recommendations are made to increase lifespan, improve energy efficiency during use and ensure recycling. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents the ways of integration of environmental impact in the usual design of buildings. This integrated design can change the manner of structural conception. Firstly there are presented some theoretical aspects that should be considered when performing a life-cycle assessment, such as life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle costing (LCC). The second part presents concisely the actual normative conditions at the European level regarding the sustainability of construction works. The third part presents a practical application of integration of environmental impact into design of buildings, by means of a case-study. The example compares the environmental impact for a single-family house, designed in two situations: classic design - by considering a masonry house and the same house designed in steel lightweight profiles respectively. The impact analyses are performed at different levels: construction, construction and end-of-life and construction, end-of-life including maintenance.The disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) can lead to significant environmental burdens. The implementation of effective waste management practices, however, requires the ability to benchmark alternative systems from an environmental sustainability perspective. Existing metrics-such as recycling and generation rates, or the emissions of individual pollutants-often are not goal-oriented, are not readily comparable, and may not provide insight into the most effective options for improvement Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an effective approach to quantify and compare systems, but full LCA comparisons typically involve significant expenditure of resources and time. In this work we develop a metric called the Resource Conservation Efficiency (RCE) that is based on a screening-LCA approach, and that can be used to rapidly and effectively benchmark (on a screening level) the ecological sustainability of waste management practices across multiple locations. We first demonstrate that this measure is an effective proxy by comparing RCE results with existing LCA inventory and impact assessment methods. We then demonstrate the use of the RCE metric by benchmarking the sustainability of waste management practices in two U.S. cities: San Francisco and Honolulu. The results show that while San Francisco does an excellent job recovering recyclable materials, adding a waste to energy (WTE) facility to their infrastructure would most beneficially impact the environmental performance of their waste management system. Honolulu would achieve the greatest gains by increasing the capture of easily recycled materials not currently being recovered. Overall results also highlight how the RCE metric may be used to provide insight into effective actions cities can take to boost the environmental performance of their waste management practices.The production of food protein has a considerable impact on the environment. This paper investigates the potential environmental benefits of introducing more grain legumes in human nutrition. Four meals with different amounts of soybeans or peas (either used as feed for production of pork or directly consumed) were analysed using life cycle assessment methodology. The results of this analysis demonstrate that it is environmentally favourable to replace meat with peas. In particular, the addition of more legumes to human nutrition potentially aids in the reduction of global warming, eutrophication, acidification, and land use; however, in terms of energy use, a completely vegetarian pea burger meal requires the same amount of energy as other meat-containing meals. Feeding pigs with European-produced peas instead of imported soybeans, in addition to partial replacement (10%) of meat protein with pea protein, failed to reduce the environmental impact of the meal. In summary, peas can be considered 'green', but there remains a significant need for more energy-efficient processing of vegetarian products. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is an urgent and serious global problem. Life cycle assessment methods may be used to evaluate the life cycle carbon footprint of a product, such as the National Geographic magazine. The results of the study provide the publisher and material suppliers with information to reduce life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The study also informs consumers of the GHG emissions associated with the product. The purpose of this study was to document the life cycle carbon footprint of the National Geographic magazine. Currently, there is no international standard for conducting a product life cycle carbon footprint. Both the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the World Resources Institute's Greenhouse Gas Protocol are working to develop standards. The study followed the ISO standards for life cycle assessment (ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006). The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard also provided guidance. The study showed that the life cycle of the National Geographic magazine produces about 0.82 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents per life cycle of the average magazine. The amount of GHG emissions per life cycle of each magazine produced is about the same amount of GHG emissions produced by driving an automobile (8.5 km/liter gasoline) for about 3 km. High quality, geographically and temporally representative data for the study were provided by National Geographic, Verso Paper, and Quad Graphics. These data are specific to the magazine life cycle and account for about 88% of the total energy results and about 75% of the total GHG emissions for the entire life cycle of the magazine. The study includes extraction of raw materials from the earth, processing of raw materials, fuels, intermediate products, transportation steps, manufacture of paper, printing, distribution of the magazine, and final disposition. The results indicate that opportunities for improving the carbon footprint of the magazine are more likely to be found within the manufacturing and printing of the paper. These two steps account for the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions. Including recycled fiber into magazine paper did not improve the carbon footprint of the magazine. Incorporation of groundwood did impact end-of-life emissions from disposal into landfills.Over the past two decades, energy efficiency of building operation has increased significantly. As a result, the percentage of building life cycle energy attributed to embodied energy has also risen. This percentage, as measured in recent LCA studies, ranges between 2% and 51% and is influenced by the different climatic, infrastructure, and building characteristics that comprise the input data for these studies. Comparing the results of these studies is helpful in understanding how different combinations of these characteristics influence the relative proportions of embodied and operational energy. However, results are also influenced by the subjectivity inherent in each LCA study. Thus, meaningful comparison of results requires documentation of study methodologies, as outlined in ISO 14041. In this paper, 20 journal articles describing LCA studies of buildings were reviewed for their adherence to key ISO 14041 documentation requirements. It was found that the majority of journal articles have inadequate documentation. Journal articles are not subject to ISO 14041 requirements and, due to limitations in article length, some degree of documentation is necessarily omitted. However, since journal articles provide much of the publicly available data on the life cycle energy of buildings, a minimum degree of documentation should be provided to allow comparison between LCA results, without substantially increasing article length. Recommended documentation for journal articles that describe LCA studies of buildings, as proposed in this paper, includes: a list life cycle stages and unit processes included within the system boundary; a statement of calculation procedure; and the referencing of all data sources.A low-energy family house recently built in Northern Italy was selected by Regione Piemonte as an outstanding example of resource efficient building. An economic incentive was awarded to cover the extra costs of the thermal insulation, windows and equipment in order to decrease the yearly winter heat requirement from the legal standard of 109 to 10 kW h/m(2), while existing buildings in the study area typically require 200 kW h/m(2). As the building was claimed to be sustainable on the basis of its outstanding energy-saving performance, an ex post life cycle assessment (LCA) was set up to understand whether, and to what extent, the positive judgement could be confirmed in a life cycle perspective. After an analysis of the literature on LCA of whole buildings, a detailed life cycle assessment has been conducted by encompassing all the life cycle phases. Emphasis was given on the end-of-life stage, too often disregarded due to lack of data or heavily simplified. Virtually all the materials used in the building structure, finishes and equipment were considered, paying attention to their expected service duration and the recycling potential. In order to increase transparency and therefore credibility and acceptance of LCA in the building sector, an uncertainty analysis was carried out. The dramatic contribution of material-related impacts emerged. Structure and finishes materials represented the highest relative contribution, but maintenance operations also played a major role. The contributions of equipment, construction stage and transportation were minor. The important role of the recycling potential also emerged. Unlike standard buildings, where heating-related impacts overshadow the rest of the life cycle, there is no single dominating item or aspect. Rather, several of them play equally important roles. The study confirmed that the initial goal of resource and environmental efficiency was reached, but to a much lower extent than previously thought. In comparison to a standard house, while the winter heat requirement was reduced from 109 to 10 kW h/m(2) (10:1 ratio), the life cycle energy was only reduced by 2.1:1 and the carbon footprint by 2.2:1. The findings emphasise the need for incorporating the life cycle approach in energy-saving policies and economic incentives schemes in the building sector, in Italy and elsewhere, as single-step improvements might not be effective in a life cycle perspective and could even disappoint expectations.Two ISO-compliant approaches on modelling the recycling of plastics and metals are frequently applied in life cycle assessment case studies and intensively debated: the recycled content or cutoff approach and the end of life recycling or avoided burden approach. This paper discusses the two approaches from three different perspectives: (1) the kind of sustainability concept served, (2) the risk perception involved and (3) the eco-efficiency indicators resulting from the two approaches. The analysis shows that the recycled content approach serves the strong sustainability concept. It is based on a risk-averse attitude and results in higher eco-efficiency of metal scrap recycling as compared to primary metal manufacture. The end of life recycling approach serves the weak sustainability concept (losses in natural capital can be compensated by man-made capital). It corresponds to a risk-seeking attitude and results in higher eco-efficiency of primary metal manufacture as compared to secondary metal production. It is concluded that a harmonisation of the approaches is hardly possible due to the value choices involved. It is the task of (private and public) life cycle assessment commissioners to decide on the appropriate modelling approach. National authorities may have a rather long-term and risk-averse perspective, whilst industries may prefer a short-term perspective leading them to select the recycled content and end of life recycling approach, respectively. Life cycle inventory databases need to be flexible to serve such opposing perspectives and to enable practitioners to adapt the modelling approaches according to the needs of the commissioner.Climate change impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA) are usually assessed as the emissions of greenhouse gases expressed with the global warming potential (GWP). However, changes in surface albedo caused by land use change can also contribute to change the Earth's energy budget. In this paper we present a methodology for including in LCA the climatic impacts of land surface albedo changes, measured as CO2-eq. emissions or emission offsets. A review of studies calculating radiative forcings and CO2-equivalence of changes in surface albedo is carried out. A methodology is proposed, and some methodological issues arising from its application are discussed. The methodology is applied in a practical example dealing with greenhouse agriculture in Southern Spain. The results of the case study show that the increase in surface albedo due to the reflective plastic cover of greenhouses involves an important CO2-eq. emission offset, which reduces the net GWP-100 of tomato production from 303 to 168 kg CO2-eq. per ton tomato when a 50-year service time is considered for the agricultural activity. This example shows that albedo effects can be very important in a product system when land use plays an important role, and substantial changes in surface albedo are involved. Although the method presented in this work can be improved concerning the calculation of radiative forcing, it constitutes a first operative approach which can be used to develop regionalized characterization factors and provide a more complete evaluation of impacts on the climate change impact category.Uncertainties in land use damage modeling are recognized, but hardly quantified in life cycle assessment (LCA). The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of various key assumptions and uncertainties within the development of characterisation factors (CFs) for land use in LCA. We assessed the influence on land use CFs of (1) parameter uncertainty and (2) the choice for a constant or land use-specific species accumulation factor z and including or excluding regional effects. A model framework was developed to analyze the uncertainties of CFs for six land use types and three agricultural practices. The CFs are expressed as potential disappeared fraction (PDF) of vascular plant species based on the species area relationship (S=c.A(z)). The species area relationship describes the relation between the species number and area size, with help of the species accumulation factor z and the species richness factor c. A dataset representative for Great Britain was used to quantify both modeling choices and parameter uncertainty. Modeling choices were analyzed by defining three coherent scenarios, based on cultural theory perspectives. The parameter uncertainties of average species number and species accumulation factor z were quantified using Monte Carlo simulation. Pair-wise comparison of the CFs shows that 68-85% of the CFs significantly differ from each other within each perspective. It is found that the ranking of organic, less intensive, and intensive land practices of each land use type is unaltered by the chosen model scenario. However, the absolute values of the CFs can change from negative to positive scores with an average difference of 0.8 PDF between the two extreme perspectives, i.e., individualistic and egalitarian. The difference between these scenarios is for 40% explained by the choice in z and for 60% by the choice in including regional effects. Within the egalitarian and hierarchist perspective the species accumulation factor z is for more than 80% responsible for the parameter uncertainty. Modeling choices and uncertainties within the species area relationship hardly change the ranking of the different land practices but largely influence the absolute value of the CFs for land use. The absolute change in the land use CFs can change the interpretation of land use impacts compared with other stressors such as climate change.Geospatial details about land use are necessary to assess its potential impacts on biodiversity. Geographic information systems (GIS) are adept at modeling land use in a spatially explicit manner, while life cycle assessment (LCA) does not conventionally utilize geospatial information. This study presents a proof-of-concept approach for coupling GIS and LCA for biodiversity assessments of land use and applies it to a case study of ethanol production from agricultural crops in California. In Part 2 of this paper series, four biodiversity impact indicators are presented and discussed, which use the inventory data on habitat composition and sizes from the GIS-based inventory modeling in Part 1 (Geyer et al. 2010). The concepts used to develop characterization models are hemeroby, species richness, species abundance, and species evenness. The biodiversity assessments based on species richness, abundance, and evenness use a species-habitat suitability matrix which relates 443 terrestrial vertebrate species native to California to the 29 habitat types that occur in the study area. The structural similarities and differences of all four characterization models are discussed in some detail. Characterization factors and indicator results are calculated for each of the four characterization models and the 11 different land use scenarios from Part 1 of this paper series. For the sugar beet production scenarios, the indicator results are in fairly good agreement. For the corn production scenarios, however, they come to fundamentally different results. The overall approach of using GIS-based inventory data on land use together with information on species-habitat relationships is not only feasible but also grounded in ecological science and well connected with existing life cycle impact assessment efforts. Excluding biodiversity impacts from land use significantly limits the scope of LCA. Accounting for land use in inventory modeling is dramatically enhanced if LCA is coupled with GIS. The resulting inventory data are a sound basis for biodiversity impact assessments, in particular if coupled with information on species-habitat relationships. However, much more case studies and structural analysis of indicators is required, together with an evaluation framework that enables comparisons and ranking of indicators.Algae biomass has great promise as a sustainable alternative to conventional transportation fuels. In this study, a well-to-pump life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to investigate the overall sustainability and net energy balance of an algal biodiesel process. The goal of this LCA was to provide baseline information for the algae biodiesel process. The functional unit was 1,000 MJ of energy from algal biodiesel using existing technology. Systematic boundary identification was performed using relative mass, energy, and economic value method using a 5% cutoff value. Primary data for this study were obtained from The USLCI database and the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy use in Transportation model. Carbohydrates in coproducts from algae biodiesel production were assumed to displace corn as a feedstock for ethanol production. For every 24 kg of algal biodiesel produced (1,000 MJ algae biodiesel), 34 kg coproducts are also produced. Total energy input without solar drying is 3,292 and 6,194 MJ for the process with filter press and centrifuge as the initial filtering step, respectively. Net CO2 emissions are -20.9 and 135.7 kg/functional unit for a process utilizing a filter press and centrifuge, respectively. In addition to the -13.96 kg of total air emissions per functional unit, 18.6 kg of waterborne wastes, 0.28 kg of solid waste, and 5.54 Bq are emitted. The largest energy input (89%) is in the natural gas drying of the algal cake. Although net energy for both filter press and centrifuge processes are -6,670 and -3,778 MJ/functional unit, respectively, CO2 emissions are positive for the centrifuge process while they are negative for the filter press process. Additionally, 20.4 m(3) of wastewater per functional unit is lost from the growth ponds during the 4-day growth cycle due to evaporation. This LCA has quantified one major obstacle in algae technology: the need to efficiently process the algae into its usable components. Thermal dewatering of algae requires high amounts of fossil fuel derived energy (3,556 kJ/kg of water removed) and consequently presents an opportunity for significant reduction in energy use. The potential of green algae as a fuel source is not a new idea; however, this LCA and other sources clearly show a need for new technologies to make algae biofuels a sustainable, commercial reality.The timber sector, i.e., forestry and timber industry, plays an important role in the socioeconomic development of Ghana through timber products export. Timber production in this sector is associated with increasing environmental burdens in terms of use of materials and energy, production of emissions and waste, and land use changes. The purpose of this study was to compile a comprehensive life cycle inventory (LCI) to identify the most dominant environmental pressures for five major production lines in the timber industry, and to evaluate the influence of the choice of the functional unit on the results (1 m(3), 1 kg, and 1 euro). LCA's of wood typically base their functional unit on volume, but mass or money may be more appropriate for the rather different products considered in this study. The LCI covers five timber production lines, namely, air-dried lumber, kiln-dried lumber, plywood, veneer, and furniture parts. Three functional units were used for this study to identify the most appropriate basis for a fair comparison of the different timber products (functional units were 1 m(3), 1 kg and 1 euro). Questionnaires were administered to thirty selected companies in Ghana. These companies provided data about their material uses, energy requirements, and waste production for their operations from 2000 to 2007. The collected data were first converted into total annual average values, and next extrapolated to reflect the national average data for all 104 active companies. Finally, these data were expressed per functional unit for each of the five product lines on the basis of their production outputs (in volume, mass or money according to functional unit applied). Forest land used changes data was taken from the Ghana Timber Industry Development Division. Emissions for the several activities were taken from literature. Land use change for timber production in Ghana between the estimated periods turned out to be 34.0 x 10(3) ha per year, which will lead to complete deforestation in the year 2023 if continued. The total energy consumed by the timber sector per year was estimated at 1.9 x 10(9) MJ per year. The results showed that CO2 emissions by the timber sector activities per year accounted for 745k tons per year and dominate overall greenhouse gases emissions in the timber sector (changes in carbons storage related to land use changes not included). Wood waste by the timber sector accounted for 0.8 million m(3) per year. The enormous wastage of wood contributes enormously to the rapid depletion of the country's timber resources. The choice of the functional unit influences inventory results. The money-based functional unit, which also seems more appropriate for the different products considered, favors the value-added. Value-added products with strict sustainable forest management policy hold a promising future in terms of sustainability for the timber industry in Ghana. This study has yielded good quality primary data unique for LCA research in Africa. This will enhance LCA approaches in Ghana, and allows here identification of the main environmental pressures and their dominantly contributing processes in the timber sector. Land use changes due to forestry form a critical issue and require urgent attention. The chosen functional units' plays a crucial role in the environmental comparison of production line in the timber sector in Ghana. A comprehensive and transparent inventory for the timber industry provides the industry with an overview of areas in which material and thus economic savings can be made for the good of both environment and the industry finances. Good data keeping in the Ghanaian timber industry will help to build the required research capacity to develop local familiarity and competence in LCA techniques and applying these techniques will help to further certify tropical timber international markets.Clothes are often discarded when much of their potential lifetime is left. Many charitable organizations therefore collect used clothing and resell it as second-hand clothes for example in Eastern Europe or Africa. In this connection, the question arises whether reusing clothes actually results in a decrease of the environmental burden of the life cycle of clothing. The environmental burden of clothing has been studied in several studies. However, most of these studies focus solely on the energy consumption aspects and pay little attention to the potential benefits of diverting used clothing from the waste stream. The aim of the study was to assess the net environmental benefits brought by the disposal of used clothing through charities who return them for second-hand sales assuming that second-hand clothes to some extent replace the purchase of new clothes. The extent to which second-hand clothes (SHC) introduces such a replacement was investigated applying a methodology in which a questionnaire-based survey was conducted on more than 200 consumers in second-hand shops. The survey was done in Sweden and Estonia, and Africa was included by estimation. Based on the identification of the different profiles of the consumers questioned, a methodology was developed to get a quantitative evaluation of the replacement of new clothes enabled by second-hand clothing consumption. A life cycle assessment was conducted based on the EDIP methodology. The life cycle impacts of clothes that are directly disposed of by incineration were compared with the life cycle impacts of clothes that are collected and sorted after consumer use in order to be reused. Two products were assessed: a cotton T-shirt and a pair of polyester (65%)/cotton (35%) trousers. The functional unit was 100 garments in the use stage. Based on the survey result and the methodology applied, the purchase of 100 second-hand garments would save between 60 and 85 new garments dependent of the place of reuse. Based on information about the second-hand clothing activities conducted by Humana People to People in Sweden and Estonia, it was assumed that over 100 collected items 60 would be reused, 30 recycled in other ways, and ten go to final disposal. Using these inputs, the LCA showed that the collection, processing, and transport of second-hand clothing has insignificant impacts on the environment in comparison to the savings that are achieved by replacing virgin clothing. The reduction of impacts resulting from collecting 100 garments for reuse range from 14% decrease of global warming for the cotton T-shirt to 45% reduction of human toxicity for the polyester/cotton trousers. The approach applied is a fair way of establishing the net benefits from introducing clothes reuse. Indeed, it enables to take into consideration all the activities connected to reusing clothes, including, for instance, recycling and disposal of the collected clothes not suitable for reuse. In addition, the routes followed by the collected clothes have been determined based on real figures. A main assumption concerns the estimation of avoided production of new clothes brought by clothes reuse. The method used, based on questionnaires, could be further developed but still suggests an approach on an issue that had not been investigated so far. The results of the study show that clothes reuse can significantly contribute to reducing the environmental burden of clothing. It would be beneficial to apply other methods for estimating the avoided production of new clothes in order to check the validity and reliability of the results obtained in the current study. Such further work could include the possible difference in the lifetime of second-hand clothes compared to new clothes.An increasing number of organisations are moving towards assessing and reporting their environmental performance in a supply-chain context. Not only are such "footprint"-type assessments seen as more rigorous than sustainability reports created in-house, they also offer more abatement options than assessments limited to an organisation's premises. Hybrid life-cycle assessment methods combining input-output analysis and process analysis are ideally suited to enumerate organisational footprints, because they were developed to enable overall complete results whilst being application-specific. We apply one of these hybrid methods, the Path Exchange Method to the task of planning for a sustainable campus at the University of Sydney in Australia. We show how this method can be used by an environmental or procurement officer for exploring environmental performance and abatement options across supply chains. We also show how parts of an organisation, for example University faculties, can be assessed and compared against each other. Whilst tools like ones used in this work enable quantitative decision support for procurement and operations policies, it takes staff awareness, engagement and training to successfully put such tools into practice. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work analyzes a process known as flash pyrolysis, which produces bio fuels using biomass for power generation. A life-cycle assessment of flash pyrolysis of wood waste was conducted to study whether a flash pyrolysis plant set up locally would be environmentally friendly. The results obtained show that the process of flash pyrolysis of wood waste is in fact environmentally friendly, and the process has little contribution to the environment. However, efforts still have to be made to address the global warming potential issue. Continuous research and developments must be carried out to further reduce the global warming potential of the flash pyrolysis. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper compares life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from two municipal solid waste (MSW) management options, municipal waste combustion, and landfilling, using a U.S. EPA life-cycle assessment (LCA) model, the MSW Decision Support Tool. Unlike previously reported LCAs, key combustion model inputs-total MSW carbon content and its biogenic/fossil split-are determined not from MSW composition studies, but from measurements taken at operating municipal waste combustors (MWCs). MWC measurement data show U. S. MSW carbon content averages of 30% with a biogenic/fossil split of 66%/34%. The LCA also considers a range of landfilling scenarios which account not only for alternative land fill gas (LFG) management techniques, but also for the variability of landfill methane generation and capture. The LCA found that for the range of inputs and scenarios considered, municipal waste combustion outperforms landfilling in terms of GHG emissions, regardless of the LFG management technique.This paper presents an examination of MSW generation and composition in China, providing an overview of the current state of MSW management, an analysis of existing problems in MSW collection, separation, recycling and disposal, and some suggestions for improving MSW systems in the future. In China, along with urbanization, population growth and industrialization, the quantity of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation has been increasing rapidly. The total MSW amount increased from 31.3 million tonnes in 1980 to 212 million tonnes in 2006, and the waste generation rate increased from 0.50 kg/capita/day in 1980 to 0.98 kg/capita/year in 2006. Currently, waste composition in China is dominated by a high organic and moisture content, since the concentration of kitchen waste in urban solid waste makes up the highest proportion (at approximately 60%) of the waste stream. The total amount of MSW collected and transported was 148 million tonnes in 2006, of which 91.4% was landfilled, 6.4% was incinerated and 2.2% was composted. The overall MSW treatment rate in China was approximately 62% in 2007. In 2007, there were 460 facilities, including 366 landfill sites, 17 composing plants, and 66 incineration plants. This paper also considers the challenges faced and opportunities for MSW management in China, and a number of recommendations are made aimed at improving the MSW management system. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The issue of environmental sustainability, which is unprecedented in both magnitude and complexity, presents one of the biggest challenges faced by modern society. Design engineers can make significant contributions by incorporating environmental awareness into product and process development. It is critical that engineers make a paradigm shift in product design from centering on cost and performance to balancing economic, environmental, and societal considerations. Although there have been quite a few designs for environment (or ecodesign) tools developed, so far these tools have only achieved limited industrial penetration. The present-day methods are either too qualitative to offer concrete solutions and not effective for designers with limited experience or too quantitative, costly, and time consuming. Thus, current ecodesign tools cannot be implemented during the early design phases. This paper develops a novel, semiquantitative ecodesign methodology that is targeted specifically toward the early stages of the design process. The new methodology is a combination of environmental life cycle assessment and visual tools such as quality function deployment, functional-component matrix, and Pugh chart. Since the early design process is function-oriented, a new visual tool called the function impact matrix has been developed to correlate environmental impacts with product function. Redesign of office staplers for reduced carbon footprint has been selected as a case study to demonstrate the use of the proposed approach. Life cycle assessment results confirm that the new stapler design generated using this methodology promotes improved environmental performance. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4001890]The goal of our study was to investigate the potential benefits of reinforcing polymer matrices with nanoobjects for structural applications by looking at both the mechanical properties and environmental impacts. For determining the mechanical properties, we applied the material indices defined by Ashby for stiffness and strength. For the calculation of environmental impacts, we applied the life cycle assessment methodology, focusing on non-renewable energy use (NREU). NREU has shown to be a good indicator also for other environmental impacts. We then divided the NREU by the appropriate Ashby index to obtain the 'functionality-based NREU'. We studied 23 different nanocomposites, based on thermoplastic and thermosetting polymer matrices and organophilic montmorillonite, silica, carbon nanotubes (single-walled and multiwalled) and calcium carbonate as filler. For 17 of these, we saw a decrease of the functionality-based NREU with increasing filler content. We draw the conclusion that the use of nanoobjects as filler can have benefits from both an environmental point of view and with respect to mechanical properties.This article deals with the historical development of sustainability and it depicts on the resulting requirements und qualities for sustainable building. Ecological, economical und socio-cultural aspects have to be regarded as equal considering the whole life-cycle of the building from "cradle to grave". Due to this several interdependencies arise that can be optimised by means of ecological and economical life cycle analysis. Regarding several ecological, economical und socio-cultural aspects this article identifies those dependencies and reveals the resulting implications.55 % of all investments are made in the buildings sector. Over its entire value added chain, the construction industry accounts for 11 % of output in Germany and employs 12 % of the workforce subject to compulsory social insurance. The construction, housing and property sectors are involved in a multiplicity of interrelationships with measures and objectives of the Federal Government's sustainable development strategy. Principal among these are climate change mitigation, improving energy efficiency, improving the productivity of energy and raw materials, reducing land take and shaping demographic change. The assessment of the contribution made by individual structures to sustainable development results in the call for the development of an overall system for the description and appraisal of buildings, including the land on which they are built. Sustainability considerations are characterized by a whole life cycle analysis and the comprehensive inclusion of ecological, economic and socio-cultural aspects. Alongside energy balances, therefore, it is also necessary to study the material flows and financial impacts, in particular. The development, trialling and application of systems for describing, assessing and certifying the sustainability of buildings is tied to a number of prerequisites. In particular, the changeover to an assessment and certification system based predominantly on quantitative assessments poses a significant challenge.For grading different types of renewable energy based electricity generation systems, a figure of merit has been proposed and evaluated. The figure of merit has been obtained by analyzing total energy utilization in constructing and installing the systems and by their respective electricity generation. The gross carbon emission has also been estimated for evaluation of figure of merit. This figure of merit clearly indicates that wind power is the most sustainable source for electricity generation, followed by small hydropower and solar photovoltaics. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order for products to be comparable in different life cycle assessments, functional units need to be defined. Nevertheless, their definitions tend to be simplified or ambiguous. There is thus a need to standardize these functional units, to be properly used for environmental comparison of the environmental performance of products. This paper introduces a systematic approach to define standardized functional units: the concept of fuons. Fuons are defined as an abstraction of a product, based on its essential function and representing the whole set of products that share the parameters for this function's flows. The use of fuons, and by these means the correct definition of the functional unit, should then help to retrieve a suitable product family for life cycle comparison, hence a set of products whose LA shares a common behavior. This will allow comparing the environmental performance of a new product in development with the products in that family. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A sustainable recycling of photovoltaic (PV) thin film modules gains in importance due to the considerable growing of the PV market and the increasing scarcity of the resources for semiconductor materials. The paper presents the development of two strategies for thin film PV recycling based on (wet) mechanical processing for broken modules, and combined thermal and mechanical methods for end-of-life modules. The feasibility of the processing steps was demonstrated in laboratory scale as well as in semi-technical scale using the example of CdTe and CIS modules. Pre-concentrated valuables In and Te from wet mechanical processing can be purified to the appropriate grade for the production of new modules. An advantage of the wet mechanical processing in comparison to the conventional procedure might be the usage of no or a small amount of chemicals during the several steps. Some measures are necessary in order to increase the efficiency of the wet mechanical processing regarding the improvement of the valuable yield and the related enrichment of the semiconductor material. The investigation of the environmental impacts of both recycling strategies indicates that the strategy, which includes wet mechanical separation, has clear advantages in comparison to the thermal treatment or disposal on landfills. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A comprehensive set of metrics quantifying sustainability and cost effectiveness of urban water systems is required to rigorously inform policy, design and management decisions, as cities all over the world face the combined pressures of drought and flood, climatic uncertainty, rising population, and an increasingly complex wastewater. These metrics need to be generated using an integrated system approach covering the whole urban water cycle, be capable of assessing a wide range of scenarios including innovations, be able simulate system metric dynamics at a range of time steps including sub-daily, and to create a comprehensive set of technical, economic and environmental variables. A dynamic system engineering modelling framework has been developed to provide a comprehensive set of dynamic performance metrics, integrating all six subsystems of the water cycle viz. (a) water supply; (b) urban water consumers; (c) industrial water consumers (e.g. metallurgical, plastics, construction, recycling industries also as processor or residues); (d) agricultural water consumers; (e) stormwater generation and treatment; and (0 sewerage and wastewater treatment. Dynamic material, component and energy balances, thermodynamics and kinetics, along with life cycle assessment and process economics enable the following variables to be simultaneously throughout the integrated water system viz. water, wastewater, rainfall, stormwater; dissolved constituents (e.g. BUD, TN); embodied energy of system/structures, energy consumed and generated; dynamic environmental impacts and greenhouse gas emissions (arising from water, wastewater, stormwater, dissolved constituents, reagents, infrastructure materials, sludge processing, recycling of materials, direct greenhouse gas emissions, energy); and financial costs (operating and capital). The novel framework has been applied to an innovative urban case study site; a MATLAB/Simulink (R) simulation model linked to Simapro (R) data compares infrastructure scales at the site viz. (a) conventional city-scale infrastructure; (b) suburban-scale infrastructure with dual reticulation of potable and recycled water to every house; and (c) household-scale infrastructure, where each house has a grey water recycling unit. (C) 2009 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.In consequence of traffic accidents car maintenance is essential. There are two maintenance options: to either repair the damaged components or replace them. Economic and environmental considerations come into making the optimal choice. This article develops a comparative environmental assessment of the options for typical non-structural damage to passenger cars using life cycle assessment. The results show that the environmental impact is generally lower when a damaged car component is repaired than when a new one is fitted. Single process steps have a significant influence on the results, and selective improvements may have an effect on the respective impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we analyzed the effect of silviculture on carbon (C) budgets in Pinus elliottii (slash pine) plantations on the southeastern U.S. Coastal Plain. We developed a hybrid model that integrates a widely used growth and yield model for slash pine with allometric and biometric equations determined for long-term C exchange studies to simulate in situ C pools. The model used current values of forest product conversion efficiencies and forest product decay rates to calculate ex situ C pool. The model was validated from a variety of sources, accurately simulating C estimates based on multiple measurement techniques and sites. Site productivity was the major factor driving C sequestration in slash pine stands. On high productivity sites, silvicultural schemes that promote sawtimber-type products are more suitable for increasing C storage (even not taking in account the consequent economical revenues associated with sawtimber production). When rotation length was increased from 22 to 35 years on unthinned and thinned stands, respectively, we estimated net increments of 26 and 20 MgC ha(-1) in average C stock of the first five rotations. Even though in situ C pool in slash pine accounts for most of this net increment, C in sawtimber products increased from Sand 14 to 23 and 24 MgC ha(-1), on unthinned and thinned stands, respectively. Thinning effects on net C stock depended on intensity and timing of intervention, mainly due to changes in diameter classes that promote higher proportion of long-lived products. Emissions associated with silvicultural activities, including transportation of logs to the mill, are small compared to the magnitude of net C sequestration, accounting for between 2.2 and 2.3% of gross C stock. This slash pine plantation C sequestration model, based on empirical and biological relationships, is appropriate for use in regional C stock assessments or for C credit verification. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A commonly encountered challenge in emergy analysis is the lack of transformity data for many economic products and services. To overcome this challenge, emergy analysts approximate the emergy input from the economy via a single emergy/money ratio for the country and the monetary price of economic inputs. This amounts to assuming homogeneity in the entire economy, and can introduce serious uncertainties in the results. This paper proposes and demonstrates the use of a thermodynamically augmented economic input-output model of the US economy for obtaining sector-specific emergy to money ratios that can be used instead of a single ratio. These ratios at the economy scale are more accurate than a single economy-wide emergy/money ratio, and can be obtained quickly for hundreds of economic products and services. Comparing sector-specific emergy/money ratios with those from conventional emergy studies indicates that the input-output model can provide reasonable estimates of transformities at least as a stop-gap measure until more detailed analysis is completed. A hybrid approach to emergy analysis is introduced and compared with conventional emergy analysis using life cycles of corn ethanol and gasoline as examples. Emergy and transformity data from the hybrid approach are similar to those from conventional emergy analysis, indicating the usefulness of the proposed approach. In addition, this work proposes the metric of return on emergy investment for assessing product alternatives with the same utility such as transportation fuels. The proposed approach and data may be used easily via web-based software. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biodiesel has attracted considerable attention during the past decade as a renewable, biodegradable and non-toxic fuel alternative to fossil fuels. Biodiesel can be obtained from vegetable oils (both edible and non-edible) and from animal fat. Jatropha curcas Linnaeus, a multipurpose plant, contains high amount of oil in its seeds which can be converted to biodiesel. J. curcas is probably the most highly promoted oilseed crop at present in the world. The availability and sustainability of sufficient supplies of less expensive feedstock in the form of vegetable oils, particularly J. curcas and efficient processing technology to biodiesel will be crucial determinants of delivering a competitive biodiesel. Oil contents, physicochemical properties, fatty acid composition of J. curcas reported in literature are provided in this review. The fuel properties of Jatropha biodiesel are comparable to those of fossil diesel and confirm to the American and European standards. The objective of this review is to give an update on the J. curcas L. plant, the production of biodiesel from the seed oil and research attempts to improve the technology of converting vegetable oil to biodiesel and the fuel properties of the Jatropha biodiesel. The technological methods that can be used to produce biodiesel are presented together with their advantages and disadvantages. The use of lipase as biotechnological solution to alkali and acid catalysis of transesterification and its advantages is discussed. There is need to carry out research on the detoxification of the seed cake to increase the benefits from J. curcas. There is also need to carry out life-cycle assessment and the environment impacts of introducing large scale plantations. There is also still a dearth of research about the influence of various cultivation-related factors and their interactions and influence on seed yield. Many other areas that need to be researched on Jatropha curcas L. are pointed out in this review.Environmental efficiency measures constructed using the materials balance principle have two important shortcomings: (1) the ambiguity in the treatment of immaterial inputs and the various types of energy and (2) the lack of universally accepted weights for various material inputs. These two limitations are primarily caused by the fact that the materials balance condition is strictly regulated by the law of mass/energy conservation and that mass/energy content cannot be a good physical common unit of various inputs. The use of cumulative exergy content overcomes these problems. The use of cumulative exergy content allows the inclusion of life cycle assessment; hence facilitates the analysis of the cumulative pollution and total affects on natural resources. The present study uses cumulative exergy content to construct new efficiency sustainable measures and decomposes them into technical efficiency and cumulative exergy allocative efficiency in agricultural production. Empirical applications on OECD agriculture yielded a number of important findings: (1) OECD has the potential to save 72.3% of cumulative exergy consumption and improvements can be achieved by being more technically efficient and choosing a better combination of inputs; (2) the sustainable efficiency varied enormously across countries; and (3) the efficiency levels in 2003 was lower than in 1990. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Electrical power can be distributed in overhead or underground systems, both of which generate a variety of environmental impacts at all stages of their life cycles. While there is considerable literature discussing the trade-offs between both systems in terms of aesthetics, safety, cost and reliability, environmental assessments are relatively rare and limited to power cable production and end-of-life management This paper assesses environmental impacts from overhead and underground medium voltage power distribution systems as they are currently built and managed by Southern California Edison (SCE). It uses process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14044 (2006) and SCE-specific primary data to the extent possible. Potential environmental impacts have been calculated using a wide range of midpoint indicators, and robustness of the results has been investigated through sensitivity analysis of the most uncertain and potentially significant parameters. The studied underground system has higher environmental impacts in all indicators and for all parameter values, mostly due to its higher material intensity. For both systems and all indicators the majority of impact occurs during cable production. Promising strategies for impact reduction are thus cable failure rate reduction for overhead and cable lifetime extension for underground systems.Ownership of private swimming pools in the U.S. grew 2 to 4% per annum from 1997 to 2007. The environmental implications of pool ownership are analyzed by hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) for nine U.S. cities. An operational model is constructed estimating consumption of chemicals, water, and energy for a typical residential pool. The model incorporates geographical climatic variations and upstream water and energy use from electricity and water supply networks. Results vary considerably by city: a factor of 5-6 for both water and energy use. Water use is driven by aridness and length of the swimming season, while energy use is mainly driven by length of the swimming season. Water and energy impacts of pools are significant, particularly in arid climates. In Phoenix for example pools account for 22% and 13% of a household's electricity and water use, respectively. Measures to reduce water and energy use in pools such as optimizing the pump schedule and covering the pool in winter can realize greater savings than many common household efficiency improvements. Private versus community pools are also compared. Community pools in Phoenix use 60% less swimming pool water and energy per household than subdivisions without community pools.The next generation of process engineers will face a new set of challenges, with the need to devise new bioprocesses, with high selectivity for pharmaceutical manufacture, and for lower value chemicals manufacture based on renewable feedstocks In this paper the current and predicted future roles of process system engineering and life cycle inventory and assessment in the design, development and improvement of sustainable bioprocesses are explored The existing process systems engineering software tools will prove essential to assist this work However, the existing tools will also require further development such that they can also be used to evaluate processes against sustainability metrics, as well as economics as an integral part of assessments Finally, property models will also be required based on compounds not currently present in existing databases. It is clear that many new opportunities for process systems engineering will be forthcoming in the area of integrated bioprocesses. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedLife Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool has been applied to evaluate environmental impacts through the whole building life cycle. LCA has been carried out in accordance to the international standard of ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. As a reference, an application of LCA has been made to a Catalan house located in Barcelona, Spain with a projected 50 years life span. In this work, construction, use (operation and maintenance) and end-of-life phases have been considered. The operational energy consumed during the dwelling period was modeled using a mix of electrical power for electrical appliances, illumination, heating and cooling; and using thermal energy from natural gas for domestic hot water and cooking. Result shows that the highest environmental impacts during the dwelling's life cycle took place during the use phase. The total impact of global warming potential was 4.52+01 kgCO(2)-Equiv. m(-2)a(-1) of which use phase accounted for 92% (operation 90% and maintenance 2%), construction represented 7% and end-of-life contributed less than 1%. Regarding the operation phase, cooling had the highest environmental burden with 33%, heating represented 9%, followed by illumination 26% and electrical appliances 19%. The other two household activities accounted for less than 12% (domestic hot water 9% and cooking 4%) of total phase. During the construction phase, the production of building materials represented about 97%, transport to the job site 2% and waste management 1% of total phase. The total primary energy demand was 5.26E+01 MJ m(-2) a(-1) (gross calorific value) of which non-renewable primary energy demand represents 78% and renewable energy demand 22%. In summary, data for a Catalan home has been provided to evaluate environmental impacts using LCA tool. Data have been modelled into the Gabi software system. Finally, LCA is a suitable tool to evaluate environmental impacts throughout all phases of the building life cycle.A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to estimate whole-farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from beef production in western Canada. The aim was to determine the relative contributions of the cow-calf and feedlot components to these emissions, and to examine the proportion of whole-farm emissions attributable to enteric methane (CH(4)). The simulated farm consisted of a beef production operation comprised of 120 cows, four bulls, and their progeny, with the progeny fattened in a feedlot. The farm also included cropland and native prairie pasture for grazing to supply the feed for the animals. The LCA was conducted over 8 years to fully account for the lifetime GHG emissions from the cows, bulls and progeny, as well as the beef marketed from cull cows, cull bulls, and progeny raised for market. The emissions were estimated using Mobs, a whole-farm model developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Holos is an empirical model, with a yearly time-step, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methodology, modified for Canadian conditions and farm scale. The model considers all significant CH(4), N(2)O, and CO(2) emissions and removals on the farm, as well as emissions from manufacture of inputs (fertilizer, herbicides) and off-farm emissions of N(2)O derived from nitrogen applied on the farm. The LCA estimated the GHG intensity of beef production in this system at 22 kg CO(2) equivalent (kg carcass)(-1). Enteric CH(4) was the largest contributing source of GHG accounting for 63% of total emissions. Nitrous oxide from soil and manure accounted for a further 27% of the total emissions, while CH(4) emissions from manure and CO(2) energy emissions were minor contributors. Within the beef production cycle, the cow-calf system accounted for about 80% of total GHG emissions and the feedlot system for only 20%. About 84% of enteric CH(4) was from the cow-calf herd, mostly from mature cows. It follows that mitigation practices to reduce GHG emissions from beef production should focus on reducing enteric CH(4) production from mature beef cows. However, mitigation approaches must also recognize that the cow-calf production system also has many ancillary environmental benefits, allowing use of grazing and forage lands that can preserve soil carbon reserves and provide other ecosystems services. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We used ISO-compliant life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the cumulative energy use, ecological footprint, greenhouse gas emissions and eutrophying emissions associated with models of three beef production strategies as currently practiced in the Upper Midwestern United States. Specifically we examined systems where calves were either: weaned directly to feedlots; weaned to out-of-state wheat pastures (backgrounded) then finished in feedlots; or finished wholly on managed pasture and hay. Impacts per live-weight kg of beef produced were highest for pasture-finished beef for all impact categories and lowest for feedlot-finished beef, assuming equilibrium conditions in soil organic carbon fluxes across systems. A sensitivity analysis indicated the possibility of substantial reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions for pasture systems under conditions of positive soil organic carbon sequestration potential. Forage utilization rates were also found to have a modest influence on impact levels in pasture-based beef production. Three measures of resource use efficiency were applied and indicated that beef production, whether feedlot or pasture-based, generates lower edible resource returns on material/energy investment relative to other food production strategies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During recent years renewables have been acquiring gradually a significant importance in the world market (especially in the Spanish energetic market) and in society; this fact makes clear the need to increase and improve knowledge of these power sources. Starting from the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a multi-megawatt wind turbine, this work is aimed to assess the relevance of different choices that have been made during its development. Looking always to cover the largest possible spectrum of options, four scenarios have been analysed, focused on four main phases of lifecycle: maintenance, manufacturing, dismantling, and recycling. These scenarios facilitate to assess the degree of uncertainty of the developed LCA due to choices made, excluding from the assessment the uncertainty due to the inaccuracy and the simplification of the environmental models used or spatial and temporal variability in different parameters. The work has been developed at all times using the of Eco-indicator99 LCA method. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban sprawl is a worldwide tendency leading to an increased demand for adequate highly condensed living space within cities. To meet this demand, there are two typical building types: the high rise and the elongate apartment building. This article aims at providing a comparative ecological life cycle assessment (LCA) for the structure of these two building types. For the analysis, an existing elongate apartment building, planned for a site with bad soil conditions and a high groundwater level in Zurich, was examined. This building was then compared to a hypothetic high rise building, designed for the same site in Zurich and meeting identical energy standards as well as containing a comparable amount of accommodation units and floor space. The weighting of the environmental impact of the buildings over their entire lifecycle was illustrated through two different weighting indices (Eco-Indicator 99 [1], Ecological Scarcity '06 [2]). Additionally, the cumulative energy demand (CED) [3] for both buildings was calculated. Afterwards, a sensitivity analysis was conducted, accounting for the influence of improved soil properties and a low groundwater level. The LCA results show that with bad soil properties, the high rise building has a significantly lower cumulative energy demand and environmental impact than the elongate building, whereas improved soil properties lead to the elongate building exceeding the high rise building in terms of environmental impacts.Lignocellulosic biomass is considered as the future feedstock for ethanol production because of its low cost and its huge availability. One of the major lignocellulosic materials found in great quantities to be considered, especially in tropical countries, is sugarcane bagasse (SCB). This work deals with its current and potential transformation to sugars and ethanol, considering pretreatment technologies, detoxification methods and biological transformation. Some modeling aspects are exposed briefly. Finally stability is discussed for considering the high nonlinear phenomena such as multiplicity and oscillations, which make more complex the control as a result of the inhibition problems during fermentation when furfural and formic acid from SCB hydrolysis are not absent. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Contrary to the case of the United States where a systematic management of the RD&D on lignocellulosic ethanol prevails, in Europe the research works remain fragmented despite the efforts made by the European Union and in few member states. In most of the European countries, sustainable lignocellulosic resources may not be widely available in the future for bioethanol production due to the possible competition between several potential usages. Thus the actual deployment of the lignocellulosic bioethanol in Europe will depend on the opportunity costs of biomass on one side and on the prices of ethanol and gasoline on the other side. While the papers on lignocellulosic ethanol often emphasize technology progress, this review paper also addresses policy measures. It is found that, especially in Europe where security of oil supply will be lower in long term, the policy instruments should explicitly reward the higher value of lignocellulosic ethanol compared to first the generation ethanol and gasoline. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Progressive depletion of conventional fossil fuels with increasing energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have led to a move towards renewable and sustainable energy sources. Lignocellulosic biomass is available in massive quantities and provides enormous potential for bioethanol production. However, to ascertain optimal biofuel strategies, it is necessary to take into account environmental impacts from cradle to grave. Life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques allow detailed analysis of material and energy fluxes on regional and global scales. This includes indirect inputs to the production process and associated wastes and emissions, and the downstream fate of products in the future. At the same time if not used properly, LCA can lead to incorrect and inappropriate actions on the part of industry and/or policy makers. This paper aims to list key issues for quantifying the use of resources and releases to the environment associated with the entire life cycle of lignocellulosic bioethanol production. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recently, second-generation bio-ethanol (SGB), which utilizes readily available lignocellulosic biomass has received much interest as another potential source of liquid biofuel comparable to biodiesel. Thus the aim of this paper is to determine the exergy efficiency and to compare the effectiveness of SGB and palm methyl ester (PME) processes. It was found that the production of bio-ethanol is more thermodynamically sustainable than that of biodiesel as the net exergy value (NExV) of SGB is 10% higher than that of PME. Contrarily, the former has a net energy value (NEV) which is 9% lower than the latter. Despite this, SGB is still strongly recommended as a potential biofuel because SGB production can help mitigate several detrimental impacts on the environment. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Process technology appears to get increasing attention in the whole process of pharmaceutical development. Although the contribution of an efficient manufacturing process to the success and profit of a large pharmaceutical appears small, this contribution is significant when it comes to sustainable manufacturing. Here an efficient process helps to lower environmental impact at the site of production and allows production beyond the patent life of a product. The design and scale-up of a sustainable process comprises route design, use of state-of the art chemical methods and also state-of-the-art process technology such as continuous manufacturing by intensified processes. DSM has developed a set of competences in these fields. Examples and metrics related to the sustainability of the described processes are given.The amount of garbage emitted from households and industries has been constantly increasing in recent years, and its treatment cost has been a financial burden to municipal governments in Japan. Many municipal governments recommend that their citizens purchase household garbage processors in order to reduce the volume of garbage transferred to and incinerated at their facilities. Actually, 1535 municipal governments subsidize their citizens' purchase of electrical garbage processors and/or compost containers. These subsidies should be assessed from various points of view, such as the costs and benefits to municipal governments and citizens, and also global or local environmental loads. An environmental planning department of a city office sent questionnaires to its residents to investigate the utilization of the subsidized devices. An environmental organization of citizens supported the department with design of the questionnaire form and analysis of the collected questionnaire data. In this paper, the processes of designing the form and analyzing the data are explained, and then an evaluation of the subsidy is presented. The conclusions are as follows: Electrical garbage processors would be beneficial for dealing with local environmental problems such as lack of a final landfill site. However, the processors will increase CO(2) emissions unless their electrical consumption efficiency can be improved. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 93(7): 42-52, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10285A typology of buildings representative of the building stock for the EU-25 was developed characterizing 72 building types in terms of their representativity, geographical distribution, size, material composition, and thermal insulation. The life cycle impacts of the building types were calculated for different environmental impact categories both at building and EU-25 level. The use phase of buildings, dominated by the energy demand for heating is by far the most important life cycle phase for existing and new buildings. The environmental impacts were allocated to single building elements. Ventilation, heat losses through roofs and external walls are important for a majority of single- and multi-family houses. Three improvement options were identified: additional roof insulation, additional facade insulation and new sealings to reduce ventilation. The measures yield a significant environmental improvement potential, which, for a majority of the buildings types analyse represent at least 20% compared to the base case. The major improvement potentials at EU-level lie with single-family houses, followed by multi-family houses. Smaller reductions are expected for high-rise buildings due to the smaller share in the overall building stock. For both roof insulation and reduced ventilation, the measures were shown to be economically profitable in a majority of buildings. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A great fraction of worldwide energy carriers and material products come from fossil fuel refinery. Because of the on-going price increase of fossil resources, their uncertain availability, and their environmental concerns, the feasibility of oil exploitation is predicted to decrease in the near future. Therefore, alternative solutions able to mitigate climate change and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels should be promoted. The replacement of oil with biomass as raw material for fuel and chemical production is an interesting option and is the driving force for the development of biorefinery complexes. In biorefinery, almost all the types of biomass feedstocks can be converted to different classes of biofuels and biochemicals through jointly applied conversion technologies. This paper provides a description of the emerging biorefinery concept, in comparison with the current oil refinery. The focus is on the state of the art in bio-fuel and biochemical production, as well as discussion of the most important biomass feedstocks, conversion technologies and final products. Through the integration of green chemistry into biorefineries, and the use of low environmental impact technologies, future sustainable production chains of biofuels and high value chemicals from biomass can be established. The aim of this bio-industry is to be competitive in the market and lead to the progressive replacement of oil refinery products. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment has been used to investigate the global warming potential (GWP) and fossil-energy requirement of a hypothetical operation in which biodiesel is produced from the freshwater alga Chlorella vulgaris, grown using flue gas from a gas-fired power station as the carbon source. Cultivation using a two-stage method was considered, whereby the cells were initially grown to a high concentration of biomass under nitrogen-sufficient conditions, before the supply of nitrogen was discontinued, whereupon the cells accumulated triacylglycerides. Cultivation in typical raceways and air-lift tubular bioreactors was investigated, as well as different methods of downstream processing. Results from this analysis showed that, if the future target for the productivity of lipids from microalgae, such as C. vulgaris, of similar to 40 tons ha(-1) year(-1) could be achieved, cultivation in typical raceways would be significantly more environmentally sustainable than in closed air-lift tubular bioreactors. While biodiesel produced from microalgae cultivated in raceway ponds would have a GWP similar to 80% lower than fossil-derived diesel (on the basis of the net energy content), if air-lift tubular bioreactors were used, the GWP of the biodiesel would be significantly greater than the energetically equivalent amount of fossil-derived diesel. The GWP and fossil-energy requirement in this operation were found to be particularly sensitive to (i) the yield of oil achieved during cultivation, (ii) the velocity of circulation of the algae in the cultivation facility, (iii) whether the culture media could be recycled or not, and (iv) the concentration of carbon dioxide in the flue gas. These results highlight the crucial importance of using life-cycle assessment to guide the future development of biodiesel from microalgae.Analysis of lower carbon power systems has tended to focus on the operational carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power stations. However, to achieve the large cuts required it is necessary to understand the whole-life contribution of all sectors of the electricity industry. Here, a preliminary assessment of the life cycle carbon emissions of the transmission network in Great Britain is presented. Using a 40-year period and assuming a static generation mix it shows that the carbon equivalent emissions (or global warming potential) of the transmission network are around 11 gCO(2-eq)/kWh of electricity transmitted and that almost 19 times more energy is transmitted by the network than is used in its construction and operation. Operational emissions account for 96% of this with transmission losses alone totalling 85% and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) emissions featuring significantly. However, the CO2 embodied within the raw materials of the network infrastructure itself represents a modest 3%. Transmission investment decisions informed by whole-life cycle carbon assessments of network design could balance higher financial and carbon 'capital' costs of larger conductors with lower transmission losses and CO2 emissions over the network lifetime. This will, however, necessitate new regulatory approaches to properly incentivise transmission companies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research presents an estimate of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, CH4 e N2O) in the stages of agriculture and sugarcane industrialization for the production of ethanol in mills located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Life Cycle Assessment principles were considered in the quantification of emissions. The use of fuels, agricultural inputs, N2O emissions on soil, sugarcane burning emissions and use of chemical products of 11 mills were considered in this study. The results show a total emission of 1,539.60 kg CO(2)eq/ha.year, considering as the main key sources: sugarcane burning and use of fuels, which account for more than 50% of the total emissions.The straws of two high-biomass soybean lines developed at ARS for bioenergy were subjected to thermochemical conversion by fast pyrolysis. The objective was to evaluate the potential use of the straw Or the production of liquid fuel intermediates. The immediate goal was to demonstrate production of pyrolysis liquid that can be burned "as is" and/or potentially be upgraded to transportation grade fuel and at the same time produce biochar that can be deployed as a soil amendment. The goal supports the concept of on-farm biorefinery where food and bioenergy can be sustainably produced in a soybean farm system. The study shows that high yields of pyrolysis liquids (blood) can be efficiently produced from the soybean straws using the fluidized-bed fast pyrolysis technology. Free flowing biooils with heating values in excess of 20 MJ/kg were produced in yields of approximately 70 wt %. Accompanying this was 22 wt % mineral-rich biochar that can be returned to the soil and up to 10 wt % combustible gas with the potential to partially power the pyrolysis system. A sustainable farm system may be enhanced by the synergy between production of extra biomass in soybean cultivation, lignocellulosic biofuel production, production and use of carbon sequestering, soil-amending biochar in addition to nitrogen fixation by rhizobial bacteria. Although the findings are encouraging, actual data over several :years will be necessary to fully evaluate a potential soybean farm biorefinery system. by comprehensive life-cycle analysis. (C) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog. 29: 175-183. 2010A life cycle assessment study of the biomass-to-oil (BTO (R)) process based on the fast ablative pyrolysis of wood chips from forest residues has been performed. The planned system consists of eight pyrolyzers with a throughput of 6 tpd each. The bio-oil will be burnt in eight modified diesel engines with a capacity of 315 kWhel each. The results were compared with a reference system (fossil diesel-fueled CHP). The comparison is made for the production of 1 kWh of electrical oleo; (kWhel) and shows significant differences for global warming potential (GWP(100): -87.7%), eutrophication potential (ER +23.2%), acidification potential (AP: -44.6%), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP -63.6%), and ozone depletion potential (ODP: -92.4%). The results of the BTO-CHP-system show lower environmental impact values in all environmental impact categories except for the EP-value, which exceeds the reference clue to the application of bio-oil additives derived from agricultural production. (C) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 29: 193-202, 2010The US parking infrastructure is vast and little is known about its scale and environmental impacts. The few parking space inventories that exist are typically regionalized and no known environmental assessment has been performed to determine the energy and emissions from providing this infrastructure. A better understanding of the scale of US parking is necessary to properly value the total costs of automobile travel. Energy and emissions from constructing and maintaining the parking infrastructure should be considered when assessing the total human health and environmental impacts of vehicle travel. We develop five parking space inventory scenarios and from these estimate the range of infrastructure provided in the US to be between 105 million and 2 billion spaces. Using these estimates, a life-cycle environmental inventory is performed to capture the energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases, CO, SO(2), NOX, VOC (volatile organic compounds), and PM(10) (PM: particulate matter) from raw material extraction, transport, asphalt and concrete production, and placement (including direct, indirect, and supply chain processes) of space construction and maintenance. The environmental assessment is then evaluated within the life-cycle performance of sedans, SUVs (sports utility vehicles), and pickups. Depending on the scenario and vehicle type, the inclusion of parking within the overall life-cycle inventory increases energy consumption from 3.1 to 4.8 MJ by 0.1-0.3 MJ and greenhouse gas emissions from 230 to 380 g CO(2)e by 6-23 g CO(2)e per passenger kilometer traveled. Life-cycle automobile SO(2) and PM(10) emissions show some of the largest increases, by as much as 24% and 89% from the baseline inventory. The environmental consequences of providing the parking spaces are discussed as well as the uncertainty in allocating paved area between parking and roadways.Projected life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and net energy value (NEV) of high-ethanol blend fuel (E85) used to propel a passenger car in the United States are evaluated using attributional life cycle assessment. Input data represent national-average conditions projected to 2022 for ethanol produced from corn grain, corn stover, wheat straw, switchgrass, and forest residues. Three conversion technologies are assessed: advanced dry mill (corn grain), biochemical (switchgrass, corn stover, wheat straw), and thermochemical (forest residues). A reference case is compared against results from Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis. For this case, one kilometer traveled on E85 from the feedstock-to-ethanol pathways evaluated has 43%-57% lower GHG emissions than a car operated on conventional U.S. gasoline (base year 2005). Differences in NEV cluster by conversion technology rather than by feedstock. The reference case estimates of GHG and NEV skew to the tails of the estimated frequency distributions. Though not as optimistic as the reference case, the projected median GHG and NEV for all feedstock-to-E85 pathways evaluated offer significant improvement over conventional U.S. gasoline. Sensitivity analysis suggests that inputs to the feedstock production phase are the most influential parameters for GHG and NEV. Results from this study can be used to help focus research and development efforts.Following the "Grenelle de l'Environnement", the French Parliament is currently discussing a project of law in which it is mentioned that environmental information of mass market products in France will be experimented on sale's place. This experiment will begin from the 1st July 2011 and will last at least 1 year. After this experiment, the French parliament will assess the opportunity to generalise this information. The French agency on environment and energy management was asked to lead the elaboration of methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of the mass market products and to develop a generic database that quantifies the environmental impacts of products to make the assessments possible. The environmental information has to respect the following principles: Packaging and product system is studied; life cycle approach, from cradle to grave; multicriteria approach. The objective of this initiative is to allow the consumer to use the information concerning the environmental impacts of a product throughout its life cycle as a choice criterion when deciding on a purchase. This environmental communication must also allow comparison of products belonging to the same category and, when relevant, between product categories.The objective of this paper is to describe the process of development of an appropriate methodology for a type III label that can be used by a trade association, namely "Sector Environmental Product Declaration" (EPD). The study starts from the definition of required data, data collection procedures, sample selection criteria etc. With this aim, the application of the scheme on a case study has been conducted, regarding the cement production in Italy. The methodology has been selected coherently with the requirements of the International EPDA (R) system. The basis for the definition of the methodology of the study was the document Product Category Rules 2004:01 for the Product Group "Cement". Since these rules were prepared before the introduction of the International EPDA (R) system, the guidelines have been refined in order to suit the revised programme instructions, whose spectrum includes the innovative case of the Sector EPD. A pre-inventory analysis, aimed to the sample selection for the case study presented, has been conducted. The elements influencing the selection of plants and products were geographical position of plants and eventual company/group affiliation, plant productivity, process technology type, fuels and raw materials use and product typology. Seven plants have been identified. The environmental impacts are referred to the production of 1 ton of representative average cement. "Representative" is referred to the selection of the panel of typical cement plants, whilst "average" refers to data source. In particular, for every selected plant, the analysis has yielded the results related to an average cement, including all the typologies there produced; then, the average profile is derived. It can be remarked that the relative contribution of the different life cycle phases remains almost unchanged for every impact category. Apart from waste production, the distribution appears rather uniform. The amount of clinker results as the main potential source of variation for the impacts, as regards the different cement typologies. It can be concluded that a targeted analysis of the sample representativeness is required to support the robustness of the selection in view of the successive verification process. The incoming revision of the Product Category Rules, in order to extend the application spectrum to product-type declarations, will enable the compilation of the life cycle assessment results presented in this paper in a Sector EPD for the case study.When the service life (or primary life) of built concrete infrastructure has elapsed, a common practice is that the demolished concrete is crushed and recycled, then incorporated into new construction. LCA studies of CO(2) emissions focus on the manufacturing and construction and occupancy/utilization phases, without consideration of the demolition and application of recycled concrete into a secondary construction application. Concrete has a documented ability to chemically react with airborne carbon dioxide (CO(2)); however, carbon capture (or carbonation) by concrete during the primary and secondary life, is not considered in LCA models. This paper incorporates CO(2) capture during both primary and secondary life into an LCA model for built concrete. CO(2) equivalent (CO(2)-e) emissions were estimated by calculation of the quantity of CO(2)-e emitted per unit of activity at the point of emission release (i.e., fuel use, energy use, manufacturing activity, construction activity, on-site demolition, etc.). Carbonation was estimated for built concrete during the primary life and also during the secondary life when the demolished concrete structure is crushed and recycled for a new application within a new built structure. Life cycle calculations for a built bridge structure are provided which contrasts the net effects of CO(2) emission and capture. The study has analyzed a concrete bridge with primary life of 100 years. Following completion of the primary life, we have considered that the demolished concrete from the bridge will be crushed, recycled, and used in the construction of a replacement bridge. Due to damage caused by demolition and crushing, the quality of the recycled concrete is unlikely to be as high as quarried natural rock, and the recycled concrete is most likely to be used in a more temporary construction application with an assumed 30-year secondary life. Following the expiry of the secondary life, if recycling of recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) was to be undertaken, it is unlikely the quality of RCA will be suitable to enable a third construction application: therefore, our LCA includes the primary life of 100 years plus the secondary life of 30 years. Carbonation of the built concrete during the primary life is almost negligible compared with the emissions arising from manufacture of raw materials, concrete production, and construction. However, CO(2) capture by recycled concrete during the secondary life is considerably greater: a factor that is not included in LCA estimates of the carbon footprint of built concrete. Crushed concrete has considerably greater exposed surface area, relative to volume, than a built concrete structure: therefore, a greater surface area of RCA, compared with a built structure, is exposed to CO(2) and carbonates. This key factor leads to such high amounts of carbonation during the secondary life when compared with the built structure. While reducing the amount of solid landfill, recycled concrete provides significant capture of airborne carbon dioxide. The effects of carbon capture of recycled concrete aggregate within the secondary life is significant, imbibing up to 41% of the CO(2) emitted during manufacture of a 100% Portland cement binder. Emission estimates can be overestimated by as much as 13-48%, depending on the type of cementitious binder in the built concrete and the application of recycled concrete during the secondary life. The effects of carbon capture of recycled concrete aggregate within the secondary life are significant and should be included in LCA calculations for reinforced concrete structures. Carbonation during the secondary life can be affected by the type of application and exposure of the RCA: gravel with fine particle size will carbonate more comprehensively than larger boulders (due to greater exposed surface area), while air-exposed RCA will carbonate more comprehensively than RCA located in a buried and moist environment. An approach is provided in this paper that incorporates carbon capture by concrete infrastructure into LCA carbon emission calculations. If carbonation is ignored, emission estimates can be overestimated by 13-48%, depending on the type of cement binder and the application of RCA during the secondary life. Due to the considerable number and types of built concrete structures, it is recommended that the LCA model be improved by incorporation of carbonation data obtained from recycled concretes that have been applied to a variety of construction applications and exposed to a range of exposure environments.In order to assess the environmental sustainability of a novel wastewater treatment process based on power an electrochemical reactor by photovoltaic solar modules (photovoltaic solar electrochemical oxidation), a life cycle approach was considered to quantify the CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq.) emissions coming from the two supplying power systems to the electrochemical process: conventional grid power or photovoltaic solar power under Spain frame conditions. GaBi 4 software was used to build models to characterize the conventional grid and photovoltaic power generation (corresponding functional unit, 1 kWh). ecoinvent v2.0 was chosen to consider background data. Nine different 2030 scenarios were evaluated versus 2007 reference values to take into account: (a) the progressive change to a greener grid mix in Spain and (b) the improvements in photovoltaic solar technology. The results showed that, under the nine considered scenarios for 2030, the CO2-eq.per kilowatt hour emissions are always lower than the reference values for 2007 (reductions around 60%). Additionally, the results showed that 2030 values for the CO2-eq.per kilowatt hour emissions coming from the use of photovoltaic modules for power generation are expected to be around 60% lower than for 2007 values. In order to power an electrochemical process, the direct use of photovoltaic solar energy will give much lower CO2-eq.per kilowatt hour emissions than the supply from conventional grid. A quantitative study based on life cycle assessment has compared the CO2-eq.per kilowatt hour emissions coming from supplying an electrochemical reactor by conventional grid and by photovoltaic solar modules under Spanish frame conditions and stated that the novel process photovoltaic solar electrochemical oxidation would be a preferred environmental option due to the lower CO2-eq.per kilowatt hour emissions under present and future scenarios. The results would suggest that it is worthy to explore not only the possibilities of this technology but also other electrochemical technologies that can be supplied directly by electricity in order to have a better sustainability performance.Ambitious targets for the use of renewable energy have recently been set in the European Union. To reach these targets, a large share of future energy generation will be based on the use of woody biomass. Therefore, there is an increasing interest in the cultivation of fast-growing tree species on agricultural land outside forests. Intensive crop production is always considered to harm the environment. The study explores the environmental burdens of the cultivation of fast-growing tree species on agricultural land and their subsequent energetic conversion in comparison to the fossil reference energy system. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology according to the ISO 14040 and 14044 is used. Input data were partly collected within the German joint research project AGROWOOD. Two utilization paths of short rotation poplar chips are analyzed: heat and power generation in a cogeneration plant and the production of Fischer-Tropsch (FT) diesel. Subsequently, the bioenergy systems are compared with their fossil references. The production and distribution of 1 oven dry tonne (odt) of short-rotation poplar chips require 432 MJ non-renewable energy. This equals an output-input ratio of 43:1, which includes all process steps from field preparation to road transport. Emissions of this energy use amount to a global warming potential of 38.4 kg CO(2) eq odt(-1), an acidification potential of 0.24 kg SO(2) eq odt(-1), and a eutrophication potential of 0.04 kg PO(4) eq odt(-1). The greatest reductions of environmental impacts can be achieved by substituting power from lignite with cogenerated power from short-rotation coppice (SRC). Compared with the average German power generation mix GWP and AP of power generation from short rotation poplar chips are lower by 97% and 44%, respectively, while eutrophication potential is about 26% higher. FT diesel made from short-rotation poplar chips has an 88% lower global warming potential and a 93% lower acidification potential than fossil diesel. But, the eutrophication potential of FT diesel is twice as high as of fossil diesel. It was found that even intensively produced wood from SRC can reduce environmental burdens if it is used for biofuel instead of fossil fuel. The utilization of the same amount of short-rotation poplar chips for heat and power production causes fewer environmental impacts than its use for FT diesel.Municipal solid waste (MSW) management organizations commonly address both waste treatment and diversion activities in their management plans, yet the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to MSW rarely incorporates the effects of waste prevention activities (WPAs) in an explicit manner. The primary objective of this paper is to further develop the methodological options for attributional LCAs of MSW to address waste prevention, including product reuse. This article introduces the waste management and prevention (WasteMAP) LCA, a conceptual model that applies system expansion to generate a hybrid of the traditional product and waste LCA. The WasteMAP LCA, unlike the traditional LCA of MSW, can be used to compare functionally equivalent MSW management scenarios incorporating both treatment and prevention. This functional equivalence necessitates that waste prevention takes place through dematerialization. This form of WPA is analogous to waste management techniques such as landfilling in that it does not affect the functional output (product services) of MSW-generating product systems. Integral to the WasteMAP LCA is the requirement that the sum of the MSW managed through treatment and prevention, and the level of consumption of product services contributing to MSW generation, are identical for each scenario. A partial abandonment of the zero-burden assumption is also required. Consequently, product life cycles associated with WPAs, excluding the waste treatment stages, comprise the 'upstream' component of the system boundary, while the 'downstream' component encompasses the waste treatment life cycle. WasteMAP also possesses primary and secondary functional units, with the former accounting for the amount of waste managed, and the latter depicting the product services provided by the product systems responsible for the waste targeted for prevention. The WasteMAP LCA method can be used to identify in the results the burdens and avoided burdens attributed to waste prevention, recycling, biological and thermal treatments, as well as landfilling, within a particular MSW management system. This method also distinguishes itself through its ability to evaluate scenarios that target the prevention of particular waste streams to obtain downstream efficiency gains for the management of all waste materials. An attributional LCA of MSW can be applied to a wider array of possible waste management scenarios, including those with waste prevention, by expanding the system boundary, and in the case of waste prevention through dematerialization, by introducing an additional type of functional unit.In recent years, besides being recycled domestically, a part of Japanese post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles have been exported to and recycled in mainland China. In this study, life-cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to compare domestic and transboundary recycling scenarios between Japan and China and disposal scenarios from the viewpoints of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission and fossil resource consumption. The following 10 scenarios based on our field surveys were evaluated: Japanese post-consumer PET bottles are (i) recycled into polyester staple in Japan, (ii) recycled into polyester filaments in Japan, (iii) recycled into polyester clothes in Japan, (iv) chemically decomposed and recycled into bottle-grade PET resin in Japan, (v) chemically decomposed and recycled into polyester filaments in Japan, (vi)-(vii) recycled into polyester staple via two different flows in China, (viii) recycled into polyester clothes in China, (ix) incinerated and partly recovered as electricity in Japan, and (x) directly landfilled in Japan. In all the evaluated scenarios, the functional unit is the recycling or disposal of 1 kg of Japanese post-consumer PET bottles. The system boundaries range from waste collection by municipalities to the manufacture of recycled products that can be regarded as substitutes for virgin products, and a credit for the avoided production of equivalent virgin products is given to each scenario. The inventories of both foreground and background processes in Japan were quoted from published reports and databases. The actual conditions of PET bottle recycling that were obtained through field surveys in China were reflected to some inventories of foreground processes in China. The inventories of public electricity supplies in China were based on the national statistics, and the inventories of petroleum products, industrial water supply, and waste treatment are based on our field surveys in China. Other unknown inventories in China were substituted by corresponding inventories in Japan. The results showed that all the domestic and transboundary recycling scenarios had smaller GHG emissions and fossil resource consumptions than the incineration scenario and that the chemical recycling scenarios had larger GHG emissions and fossil resource consumptions than the other recycling scenarios. The landfilling scenario had the largest fossil resource consumption, while it was better than the incineration scenario and slightly better than the chemical recycling scenarios from the viewpoint of GHG emission. The robustness of the results was examined, and it was found that the differences in GHG emission and fossil resource consumption between the domestic and transboundary recycling scenarios, other than the scenarios including cloth-manufacturing processes in system boundaries, were sufficiently large to be robust against the variability of background parameters for electricity supplies. As for the variability against the substitutions between recycled products and virgin products, interchanging the producer countries of substituted virgin products decreases the GHG emissions and fossil resource consumptions of the domestic recycling scenarios, but increases those of the transboundary scenarios. When recycling systems between different countries are compared using LCA, it should be noted that the differences in background parameters have an impact on the environmental burdens of recycling and avoided manufacturing processes, and therefore, the result depends on the identification of the producer countries of the virgin products that are substituted by recycled products. However, it is practically impossible to identify in which country the manufacture of virgin products are avoided by recycling. Therefore, it is recommended that the results be presented according to the relationships between recycled and substituted virgin products as described in this paper.MilA i Canals et al. (Int J Life Cycle Ass 14(1):28-42, 2009) referred to as 'Part 1' in this paper) showed that impacts associated with use of freshwater must be treated more rigorously than is usual in life cycle assessment (LCA), going beyond the conventional consideration only of 'blue' water (i.e. irrigation and other abstractions), and suggested an operational method to include the impacts on freshwater ecosystems (freshwater ecosystem impact) and abiotic resource depletion (freshwater depletion). The inclusion of water-related impacts in LCA is of paramount importance, particularly for agricultural systems due to their large water consumption worldwide. A case study of UK consumption of broccoli grown in the UK and Spain is presented here to illustrate the method suggested in Part 1. Water footprint (WF) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods presented in Part 1 are applied to six different and synchronic supply chains providing broccoli during the British colder months (November-April); four of these chains refer to broccoli produced in Spain and the other two are based on frozen British produce. In addition, four UK-based supply chains delivering fresh broccoli from April to November are studied to provide a year-round perspective. Using WF accounting methods helps to provide a richer picture of the total water consumption associated with growing broccoli. Including the volumes of water consumed in the life cycle inventory (LCI), assessed following the WF approach (evaporative uses of irrigation water and soil moisture), shows that the total water consumption does not vary greatly between UK and Spanish broccoli production. However, when impact assessment indicators based on the water use per resource ratio are applied, water use in Spain is shown to be much more critical, with significantly higher impact for Spanish cultivation. While the largest component of water use in Spain is linked to irrigation, the study reveals other important uses in the life cycle of vegetables, namely direct use of water for cooking and sanitation, land use effects on the water cycle and electricity production. The results highlight the importance of distinguishing between different water volumes and sources in the different LCA phases: LCI (with and without full WF consideration) and LCIA. Traditional LCI results may be misleading when comparing irrigated systems in regions with differing water scarcity. The WF estimates are more relevant for sourcing strategies, as they show the total water requirements of crops including both irrigation water use as well as the use of green water (effective rainfall stored as soil moisture). Finally, LCIA results show the potential impacts of water consumption on freshwater ecosystems and future freshwater availability. This methodological framework improves the representation of impacts associated with water use in LCA. This helps in identifying the hotspots of the production system in terms of potential impacts to freshwater ecosystems, as well as in identifying where investments for water-saving may have the greatest benefit. In addition, this approach addresses a regional specific issue, water scarcity, which may often be closer to critical thresholds than other environmental impacts. The method should be tested with further case studies in order to confirm the suitability and necessity of the LCI modelling requirements and LCIA characterisation factors such as the explicit inclusion of evaporative water losses. The WF approach can benefit from experience of systems analysis gained in LCA, while LCA may benefit from the detailed accounting framework embodied in the WF approach, as illustrated in this paper. Because the purposes of the two tools are different, they will continue to evolve separately, but complementarity in application should guide this development.'Streamlined' life cycle assessment (LCA) tools hold out the possibility of providing LCA information quickly and easily in order to support a variety of decision-making environments and situations. The utility of such tools is closely related to the accuracy needs and possibilities, and the particular decisions to be supported. In order to facilitate the provision and application of LCA information in decision making during packaging design, development and utilisation, there is a prima facia case for a 'streamlined' LCA tool, provided it meets a set of requirements, including functionality, accuracy, validity, reliability and usability. One such 'streamlined' LCA tool, Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool (PIQET), has been designed to allow for packaging system scenarios to be evaluated. Utilising embedded life cycle inventory data for material manufacture, converting, filling, cleaning of returnables, transport and end-of-life waste management processes, PIQET presents life cycle environmental impacts for the different levels of packaging. These life cycle environmental impacts are combined with packaging-specific indicators, such as product/packaging ratio and number of packaging materials per format, to provide the user, typically a packaging technologist, designer, environmental manager or marketer, a comprehensive assessment of the packaging format being assessed. This paper introduces the case for a streamlined LCA tool for sustainable packaging design and evaluation, and describes the design and development of PIQET. Particular reference is made to the tool development model, including the involvement of industry partners' input. Goal and scope, functional unit, system boundary, characterisation and impact assessment in PIQET, and key algorithms and data sources are described. The functionality, application and limitations of the tool are also highlighted in the paper, along with ideas for further research and development. The paper concludes with the discussion of the inevitable trade-offs between functionality, cost and accuracy in streamlined LCA tools in comparison to more detailed and specific LCAs. The authors contend that the two approaches are not alternatives but occupy different parts of the necessary innovation niche of sustainable packaging system change. While streamlined LCA tools are compromises, they can be potentially useful and have their own unique role in furthering the use of LCA data in decision making.The aim of this work is to present guidance on the application of ISO 14044 to allocation procedures for metal recycling. As such, graphical patterns of metal recycling and generic "rules" for metal recycling maps are presented. The results are intended to be useful in assessing and validating the suitability of allocation procedures for metal recycling in the context of life cycle assessment (LCA) and assist in the understanding of metals flow patterns in product systems. LCA uses a product-focus; therefore, the perspective here is on recycling metals in post-consumer products. The discussions, analysis, and illustrations in this paper emphasize old (post-consumer) scrap and do not detail flows of new (post-manufacturing, pre-consumer) or prompt (internal) scrap. The work included participation and review from International Council on Mining and Metals, the Nickel Institute, the International Copper Association, the International Zinc Association, worldsteel (formerly International Iron and Steel Institute), and the International Aluminium Institute. A survey of generic metal flows was conducted for three major non-ferrous metals-nickel, copper, and zinc. Based on the results of this survey, four metal recycling map models were developed. Implications of these recycling maps for LCA were then considered, and parameters necessary to model metal recycling were presented. Relationships of inherent properties and recycling loops are provided and connected to the allocation procedures in the context of LCA. Four metals recycling map models were generated based on a survey and analysis of current metals flow analysis. The utility of the recycling maps is to serve the basis of a structured approach to recycling allocation in life cycle assessment and leveraging the efforts of harmonized recycling metrics. A consensus on mapping metals is important in order to achieve an accurate understanding and measurement of metals recycling. To this end, consensus mapping presentation of a general allocation approach and identification of harmonized metrics were achieved among representatives of ferrous and non-ferrous metals groups. For the future, allocation factors based on sound empirical data needs to be developed. Those metrics will empower the various stakeholders-industry, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and academics to make appropriate decisions based on agreed scientific bases.The objective of this study was to integrate process life cycle assessment (LCA) into an activity-based microeconoinic model of production to quantify environmental impacts induced by economic incentives imposed on individual producers. The economic incentives may include price changes, technological innovations and governmental taxes/subsidies that are beyond the scope of Input-Output-based LCA. In this approach, however, traditional normative activity analysis hardly reproduces the observed input variables referred to as "reference point", as is often the case with linear programming model widely used for farm management. Consequently, the resultant LCA deviates from the original LCA that is evaluated at the reference point. This study made an attempt to bridge the gap between the theoretically derived LCA and the original process LCA by introducing the positive mathematical programming (PMP) approach, which was established by Howitt. The PMP-based LCA was applied to conventional and reduced tillage farming systems in Hokkaido, northern Japan, to consider its potential for analyzing an area-based farm policy and to discuss several limitations to be addressed in future research.Industrial symbiosis encourages the establishment of a broad eco-industrial network so that more synergy opportunities can be identified. By linking municipal solid waste management (MSWM) with local industries, i.e., urban symbiosis, new symbiotic opportunities can be generated from the geographic proximity of urban and industrial areas, transferring physical resources from urban refuse directly to industrial applications and improving the overall eco-efficiency of the city as a whole. Using a case study of Kawasaki, this paper simulates and evaluates an innovative waste management initiative in Kawasaki by an scenario simulation model based on the LCA approach. Results show that recycling mixed paper, mixed plastics, and organic wastes and utilizing the recycled materials in industrial production will potentially reduce about 69 kt CO(2)(e) emissions and 8 kt incineration ashes to be landfilled in 2015. To achieve these outcomes, the total additional cost compared with the current practice is about 1.2 billion JPY. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The ever increasing quantity of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) in Italy is presently challenging public administrators, which strive to ensure that collection and recycling are sustainably managed and need to understand whether and to what extent recycled aggregates can complement natural aggregates in a sustainable supply mix (SSM) for the construction industry. The paper presents a research aimed at analysing energy and environmental implications of the C&DW recycling chain in the administrative territory of Provincia di Torino in Northern Italy, with 2.25 million inhabitants and yearly generation of 1.8 million tons of C&DW. A combined Geographical Information System (GIS) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model was developed using site-specific data and paying particular attention to land use, transportation and avoided landfill: crucial issues for sustainable planning and management. A GIS was used to handle data and information about 89 recycling plants, including technological features, output and physical-mechanical characteristics of recycled aggregate. The LCA methodology was used to identify and quantify energy and environmental loads, under different assumptions relevant to delivery distances, quality of recycled aggregates, local availability of natural aggregates and geographical coverage of market demand. The C&DW recycling chain was proved to be eco-efficient, as avoided impacts were found to be higher than the induced impacts for 13 out of 14 environmental indicators. It was also estimated that the transportation distance of recycled aggregate should increase 2-3 times before the induced impacts outweigh the avoided impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on investigating several aspects of the machining process from an ecological perspective, the result being a macro-level analysis. The analysis presented here considers not only the environmental impact of the material removal process itself, but also the impact of the associated processes such as the material preparation, and the scrap processing. A macro-level assessment of the comparative life cycle environmental performance of the near-dry machining (NDM) using TiN-coated carbide tools and the flood machining (FM) is performed by a case study referring to the gear milling. The assessment, using the SimaPro 7.1.5 software and the ecoinvent1.5 database, includes combined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the workpiece material, the scrap processing, the use of lubrication, and the energy consumption. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban water authorities and water planers in many countries are struggling to satisfy the growing urban water and sanitation demands, while at the same time achieving sustainability of the urban water system. This research focused on the assessment of the environmental impact of today's Alexandria's urban water system and on the identification of options to improve the sustainability of the system. Therefore, a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used. The urban water system was modelled using SimaPro software, and the impacts of various options on the system were analyzed based on the Eco-indicator 99 assessment method. The results show that the highest impact in today's system is generated by the disposal of primary treated wastewater (68% of the total impact) and by high-energy-consuming water treatment plants (18% of the total impact). The research assessed different scenarios for improving the environmental performance of the system and a paradigm shift (decentralization and separation at-source of different kinds of household wastewater) was found to be the preferred long-term scenario. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Though many studies concern the agro-food sector in the EU and Italy, and its environmental impacts, literature is quite lacking in works regarding LCA application on citrus products. This paper represents one of the first studies on the environmental impacts of citrus products in order to suggest feasible strategies and actions to improve their environmental performance. In particular, it is part of a research aimed to estimate environmental burdens associated with the production of the following citrus-based products: essential oil, natural juice and concentrated juice from oranges and lemons. The life cycle assessment of these products, published in a previous paper, had highlighted significant environmental issues in terms of energy consumption, associated CO2 emissions, and water consumption. Starting from such results the authors carry out an improvement analysis of the assessed production system, whereby sustainable scenarios for saving water and energy are proposed to reduce environmental burdens of the examined production system. In addition, a sensitivity analysis to estimate the effects of the chosen methods will be performed, giving data on the outcome of the study. Uncertainty related to allocation methods, secondary data sources, and initial assumptions on cultivation, transport modes, and waste management is analysed. The results of the performed analyses allow stating that every assessed eco-profile is differently influenced by the uncertainty study. Different assumptions on initial data and methods showed very sensible variations in the energy and environmental performances of the final products. Besides, the results show energy and environmental benefits that clearly state the improvement of the products eco-profile, by reusing purified water use for irrigation, using the railway mode for the delivery of final products, when possible, and adopting efficient technologies, as the mechanical vapour recompression, in the pasteurisation and concentration of juice. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Standard methods for assessing the environmental impact of waste management systems are needed to underpin the development and implementation of sustainable waste management practice. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for comprehensively ensuring such assessment and covers all impacts associated with waste management. LCA is often called "from cradle to grave" analysis. This paper integrates information on the greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of various management options for some of the most common materials in municipal solid waste (MSW). Different waste treatment options for MSW were studied in a system analysis. Different combinations of recycling (cardboard, plastics, glass, metals), biological treatment (composting), and incineration as well as land-filling were studied. The index of environmental burden in the global warming impact category was calculated. The calculations are based on LCA methodology. All emissions taking place in the whole life cycle system were taken into account. The analysis included "own emissions," or emissions from the system at all stages of the life cycle, and "linked emissions," or emissions from other sources linked with the system in an indirect way. Avoided emissions caused by recycling and energy recovery were included in the analysis. Displaced emissions of GHGs originate from the substitution of energy or materials derived from waste for alternative sources. The complex analysis of the environmental impact of municipal waste management systems before and after application of changes in MSW systems according to European Union regulations is presented in this paper. The evaluation is made for MSW systems in Poland.Though environmental impacts of dredging have been studied, no efforts have been applied to the evaluation of air emissions from comparable types of dredging equipment, as in this study. This study provides a procedure to include air emissions resulting from the combustion of diesel fuel during dredging operations into the dredging equipment selection decision-making process. The proposed procedure includes a limited life cycle assessment and is demonstrated for typical dredging methods and data from the Illinois Waterway as performed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District, Ill. It was found that commonly used rules of thumb in the dredging industry hold true by indicating that mechanical bucket dredges are better suited for long transport distances and have lower air emissions and cost per cubic meter (m(3)) for smaller quantities of dredged material. In addition, the results show that a cutterhead pipeline dredge would be preferable for moderate and large volumes of dredged material when no additional booster pumps are required. Finally, the results indicate that production rates can be a significant factor when evaluating the air emissions from comparable dredging equipment.Bioethanol is gathering attention as a countermeasure to global warming and as an alternative energy for gasoline. Meanwhile, due to the synchronous increase in bioethanol production and grain prices, the food-fuel competition has become a public issue. It is necessary to see the issue objectively and to recognize that the real background is the change in allocation of limited resources such as farmland and water. In this review, we discuss which, where and how energy crops should be grown to establish a sustainable bioethanol production system. Several combinations of crops, areas and cultivation methods are recommended as a result of a survey of the bioethanol production system with various energy crops. In tropical and subtropical regions, sugarcane can be grown in agricultural and/or unused favorable lands. In other regions, cellulosic energy crops can be grown in abandoned and marginal lands, including lands contaminated with inorganic pollutant like heavy metals and some detrimental minerals. There also is the possibility that, for Japan and other Asian countries, rice can be grown as an energy crop in unused lowland paddy field. Regarding cultivation way, energy saving is beneficial for bioethanol production systems irrespective of energy efficiency. On the other hand, effective energy input should be considered for the systems with higher energy efficiency when available land area is limited. Exploring and developing new energy crops and varieties, which show higher biomass productivity and stress tolerances under marginal conditions, are necessary for sustainable bioethanol production because energy crop production would be restricted mostly to marginal areas in future.The exploitation of solar energy by autonomous, photovoltaic (PV) based systems offers the opportunity for satisfying the electrification needs of numerous remote consumers worldwide in an environmentally friendly way. On the other hand, the sustainable character of these systems is strongly questioned by the energy intensity of processes involved in the various life cycle (LC) stages of the system components. Although there are several studies concerned with the estimation of the energy pay-back period (EPBP) for grid-connected systems, the same is not valid for stand-alone configurations. In this context, an integrated methodology is currently developed in order to estimate the EPBP of PV-battery (PV-Bat) configurations ensuring 100% energy autonomy. The main scope of the proposed analysis is to determine the optimum size of a corresponding system, comprised of multi-crystalline (me-Si) PV modules and lead-acid (PbA) batteries, based on the criterion of minimum embodied energy, i.e. minimum EPBP. For this purpose, a representative case study examined considers the electrification needs of a typical remote consumer on the Island of Rhodes, Greece. According to the results obtained, the autonomous energy character of the system is reflected by the comparatively higher EPBP in comparison with the corresponding grid-connected option, nevertheless the PV-Bat configurations analyzed clearly constitute sustainable energy solutions. Finally, in order to increase the reliability of the calculation results, a sensitivity analysis is carried out, based on the variation of the input energy content data. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper deals with a methodology for calculating the greenhouse gas (GHG) balances of bioenergy systems producing electricity, heat and transportation biofuels from biomass residues or crops. Proceeding from the standard Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) as defined by ISO 14040 norms, this work provides an overview of the application of the LCA methodology to bioenergy systems in order to estimate GHG balances. In this paper, key steps in the bioenergy chain are identified and the bioenergy systems are compared with fossil reference systems producing the same amount of final products/services. The GHG emission balances of the two systems can thus be compared. Afterwards, the most important methodological assumptions (e.g. functional unit, allocation, reference system, system boundaries) and key aspects affecting the final outcomes are discussed. These key aspects are: changes in organic carbon pools, land-use change effects (both direct and indirect), N(2)O and CH(4) emissions from agricultural soils and effects of crop residue removal for bioenergy use. This paper finally provides some guidelines concerning the compilation of GHG balances of bioenergy systems, with recommendations and indications on how to show final results, address the key methodological issues and give homogenous findings (in order to enhance the comparison across case studies). (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper incorporates two features of housing in a life-cycle analysis of social security: housing as a durable good and housing market frictions. We find that both housing quantities and homeownership rates respond strongly to eliminating social security. Accordingly, the aggregate impacts of this policy reform are significantly larger in an economy with explicit housing choices than in a standard life-cycle economy. Our analysis shows that the key mechanism behind these results is the substitution effects of a change in interest rates and, thus, the price of housing services on the choice of nondurable consumption versus housing services. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This study aims to stimulate the discussion on how to optimize a sustainable energy mix from an environmental perspective and how to apply existing renewable energy sources in the most efficient way. Ground-mounted photovoltaics (PV) and the maize biogas-electricity route are compared with regard to their potential to mitigate environmental pressure, assuming that a given agricultural area is available for energy production. Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) studies are taken as a basis to analyse environmental impacts of those technologies in relation to conventional technology for power and heat generation. The life-cycle-wide mitigation potential per area used is calculated for the impact categories non-renewable energy input, green house gas (GHG) emissions, acidification and eutrophication The environmental performance of each system depends on the scenario that is assumed for end energy use (electricity and heat supply have been contemplated). In all scenarios under consideration, PV turns out to be superior to biogas in almost all studied impact categories Even when maize is used for electricity production in connection with very efficient heat usage, and reduced PV performance is assumed to account for intermittence, PV can still mitigate about four times the amount of green house gas emissions and non-renewable energy input compared to maize biogas. Soil erosion, which can be entirely avoided with PV, exceeds soil renewal rates roughly 20-fold on maize fields. Regarding the overall Eco-indicator 99 (H) score under most favourable assumptions for the maize biogas route, PV has still a more than 100% higher potential to mitigate environmental burden At present, the key advantages of biogas are its price and its availability without intermittence In the long run, and with respect to more efficient land use, biogas might preferably be produced from organic waste or manure, whereas PV should be integrated Into buildings and infrastructures (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedBiodiesel, an alternative to petroleum-derived diesel fuel, is defined as the mono-alkyl esters of vegetable oils and animal fats. Several current issues affecting biodiesel that are briefly discussed include the role of new feedstocks in meeting increased demand for biodiesel and circumventing the food versus fuel issue, biodiesel production, as well as fuel properties and their improvement.Unbalanced production of atmospheric CO2 constitutes a major challenge to global sustainability. Technologies have thus been developed for enhanced biological carbon fixation (also referred to as CO2 mitigation), and one of the most promising capitalizes on microalgae. However, the "best bioreactor", which would be able to achieve maximum productivity and maximum energy efficiency under a given set of operational costs, does not exist. This review briefly examines the current technologies available for enhanced microalgal CO2 fixation, and specifically explores the possibility of coupling wastewater treatment with microalgal growth for eventual production of biofuels and/or added-value products, with an emphasis on productivity. In addition, an overview of reactor configurations for CO2 fixation and bottlenecks associated with the underlying technology are provided. Finally, a review of life cycle analysis studies is presented, and routes for improvement of existing processes are suggested.Incineration of municipal solid waste is a debated waste management technology. In some countries it is the main waste management option whereas in other countries it has been disregarded. The main discussion point on waste incineration is the release of air emissions from the combustion of the waste, but also the energy recovery efficiency has a large importance. The historical development of air pollution control in waste incineration was studied through life-cycle-assessment modelling of eight different air pollution control technologies. The results showed a drastic reduction in the release of air emissions and consequently a significant reduction in the potential environmental impacts of waste incineration. Improvements of a factor 0.85-174 were obtained in the different impact potentials as technology developed from no emission control at all, to the best available emission control technologies of today (2010). The importance of efficient energy recovery was studied through seven different combinations of heat and electricity recovery, which were modelled to substitute energy produced from either coal or natural gas. The best air pollution control technology was used at the incinerator. It was found that when substituting coal based energy production total net savings were obtained in both the standard and toxic impact categories. However, if the substituted energy production was based on natural gas, only the most efficient recovery options yielded net savings with respect to the standard impacts. With regards to the toxic impact categories, emissions from the waste incineration process were always larger than those from the avoided energy production based on natural gas. The results shows that the potential environmental impacts from air emissions have decreased drastically during the last 35 years and that these impacts can be partly or fully offset by recovering energy which otherwise should have been produced from fossil fuels like coal or natural gas. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Even when policies of waste prevention, re-use and recycling are prioritised a fraction of waste will still be left which can be used for energy recovery. This article asks the question: How to utilise waste for energy in the best way seen from an energy system perspective? Eight different Waste-to-Energy technologies are compared with a focus on fuel efficiency, CO2 reductions and costs. The comparison is carried out by conducting detailed energy system analyses of the present as well as a potential future Danish energy system with a large share of combined heat and power as well as wind power. The study shows potential of using waste for the production of transport fuels. Biogas and thermal gasification technologies are hence interesting alternatives to waste incineration and it is recommended to support the use of biogas based on manure and organic waste. It is also recommended to support research into gasification of waste without the addition of coal and biomass. Together the two solutions may contribute to alternate use of one third of the waste which is currently incinerated. The remaining fractions should still be incinerated with priority to combined heat and power plants with high electric efficiency. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste incineration contributes with 20% of the heat supplied to the more than 400 district heating networks in Denmark. In evaluation of the environmental consequences of this heat production, the typical approach has been to assume that other (fossil) fuels could be saved on a 1:1 basis (e.g. 1 GJ of waste heat delivered substitutes for 1 GJ of coal-based heat). This paper investigates consequences of waste-based heat substitution in two specific Danish district heating networks and the energy-associated interactions between the plants connected to these networks. Despite almost equal electricity and heat efficiencies at the waste incinerators connected to the two district heating networks, the energy and CO2 accounts showed significantly different results: waste incineration in one network caused a CO2 saving of 48 kg CO2/GJ energy input while in the other network a load of 43 kg CO2/GJ. This was caused mainly by differences in operation mode and fuel types of the other heat producing plants attached to the networks. The paper clearly indicates that simple evaluations of waste-to-energy efficiencies at the incinerator are insufficient for assessing the consequences of heat substitution in district heating network systems. The paper also shows that using national averages for heat substitution will not provide a correct answer: local conditions need to be addressed thoroughly otherwise we may fail to assess correctly the heat recovery from waste incineration. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the current recycling system of end-of-life (EoL) appliances, which is based on shredding, alloying elements tend to end up in the scrap of base metals. The uncontrolled mixing of alloying elements contaminates secondary metals and calls for dilution with primary metals. Active disassembling fastener (ADF) is a design for disassembly (DfD) technology that is expected to solve this problem by significantly reducing the extent of mixing. This paper deals with a life cycle assessment (LCA) based on the waste input-output (WIO) model of an ADF developed using hydrogen storage alloys. Special attention is paid to the issue of dilution of mixed iron scrap using pig iron in an electric arc furnace (EAF). The results for Japanese electrical and electronic appliances indicate superiority of the recycling system based on the ADF over the current system in terms of reduced emissions of CO2. The superiority of ADF was found to increase with an increase in the requirement for dilution of scrap.The use of palm oil as a biofuel has been heavily debated for its land-use conflict with nature and its competition with food production, being the number one cooking oil worldwide. In that context, we present a life cycle assessment of a palm oil production process yielding both biodiesel and cooking oil, incorporating the land-use impact and evaluating the effect of treating the palm oil mill effluent (POME) prior to disposal. The results show that the nonrenewable energy requirement, global warming potential (GWP; exclusive land-use change), and acidification potential are lower than those of the fossil alternative. However, the system triggers an increase in eutrophication potential (EP) compared to the fossil fuel reference. This system shows less energy requirement, global warming and acidification reduction, and less eutrophication increase compared to the reference than the same system converting all palm oil into biodiesel (no cooking oil production). The land occupation of palm oil triggers ecosystem quality (Ea) loss of 30-45% compared to the potential natural vegetation. Furthermore, such land-use change triggers a carbon debt neutralizing the GWP reduction for 45-53 years. The POME treatment scenarios reveal a trade-off between GWP and EP.The U.S. EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) represents an extensive, publicly available dataset on toxics and, as such, has contributed to reducing the releases and disposal of toxic chemicals. The TRI, however, reports on a wide range of releases from different sources, some of which are less likely to generate a human or ecological hazard. Furthermore, the TRI is quantity based and does not take into account the relative toxicity of chemicals. In an effort to utilize the TRI more effectively to guide environmental management and policy, this work provides an in-depth analysis of the quantity-based TRI data for year 2007 at industry sector, state, and chemical levels and couples it with toxicity potentials. These toxicity potentials are derived from the U.S. EPA's TRACI (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts) characterization factors for cancer, non-cancer and ecotoxicity. The combination of quantity-based and toxicity-based analysis allows a more robust evaluation of toxics use and priorities. Results show, for instance, that none of the highest priority chemicals identified through the toxicity-based evaluation would have been identified if only quantity-based evaluation had been used. As the chemicals are aggregated to the state and industry sector levels, the discrepancies between the evaluation methods are less significant. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Many pulp and paper companies are considering implementation of the forest biorefinery for revenue diversification in order to improve their financial performance, implicating the addition of biomass-based products to the existing pulp and paper products portfolio. The environmental benefits associated with these bio-products may not be immediately obvious. For this reason, systematic methodologies are required to identify those process/product combinations that offer the most promising environmental benefits. In this paper, it is shown that the direct application of classical LCA methodology is not well suited for this purpose. Instead, an LCA methodology based on system boundary expansion is proposed and used in an industry case study involving the implementation of an integrated forest biorefinery (IFBR) process at two different pulp and paper mills. Using this approach, it is shown that the implementation of the IFBR for the production of polylactic acid (PLA) arguably leads to environmental benefits, but only under certain conditions. The main objective of the case study is to demonstrate the proposed approach and not to determine the best way of implementing an IFBR process. For this purpose, more detailed process design, including the analysis of several scenarios and the corresponding LCA studies, would be required.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the standard approach used to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of biofuels. However, the need for the appropriate use of LCA in policy contexts is highlighted by recent findings that corn-based ethanol may actually increase GHG emissions. This is in contrary to most existing LCA results. LCA estimates can vary across studies due to heterogeneities in inputs and production technology. Whether marginal or average impacts are considered can matter as well. Most important of all, LCA is product-centered. The determination of the impact of biofuels expansion requires a system wide approach (SWA) that accounts for impacts on all affected products and processes. This paper presents both LCA and SWA for ethanol based on Iowa corn. LCA was conducted in several different ways. Growing corn in rotation with soybean generates 35% less GHG emissions than growing corn after corn. Based on average corn production, ethanol's GHG benefits were lower in 2007 than in 2006 because of an increase in continuous corn in 2007. When only additional corn was considered, ethanol emitted about 22% less GHGs than gasoline. SWA was applied to two simple cases. Using 2006 as a baseline and 2007 as a scenario, corn ethanol's benefits were about 20% of the emissions of gasoline. If geographical limits are expanded beyond Iowa, then corn ethanol could generate more GHG emissions than gasoline. These results highlight the importance of boundary definition for both LCA and SWA. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy potential of a crop may be evaluated through life cycle assessment methodologies. These refer to the computation of the crop's energy balance and related indicators, such as the energy efficiency. This study concerns sprinkler irrigated sunflower, wheat and maize crops using data relative to the campaign of 2008. It is applied to selected farms in the Vigia Irrigation District, Alentejo, using pressurised water distribution systems. A model was developed and various scenarios were considered in order to assess the impacts on the crops' energy balance of (1) full and deficit irrigation, (2) climatic demand scenarios, and (3) upgrading irrigation systems performance. The model allows the energy efficiency and the energy balance of the three referred crops using centre-pivot and solid set sprinkler systems to be computed. The different irrigation scenarios and crop yield thresholds were defined in a previous study (Rodrigues & Pereira, 2009). The modelling results lead to the conclusion that the maize crop is the most efficient in producing energy and wheat is the least for all the alternative scenarios considered. The results of full irrigation scenarios present higher energy performance than deficit irrigation because it depends greatly on the yields achieved. Weak relationships were found when relating energy efficiency and water productivity (WP) because while the first mainly depends upon yields, the second is highly influenced by water use. Results also show that improving irrigation systems performance has little impact on energy performance, which contrasts with WP. (C) 2010 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings are long-lasting products which have huge impacts on the environment during their whole lives. The design of buildings should take into consideration long-term environmental and economic benefits. A life cycle assessment approach is developed and demonstrated in a case study-the strategic design of a Flagship Store in Shanghai. Industrial practitioners were invited to the feasibility study. Their opinions were included in the life cycle assessment for the first time. The economic analysis takes account of not only the capital costs of the design options but also the running costs during the building's economic life cycle. The methodology adopted is an integrated life cycle assessment process including life cycle costing, multi-criteria decision making and group decision making methods. The workshops are successful in terms of educational opportunity for the practitioners and have obtained good feedbacks. The top 10 sustainable design options after the life cycle assessment process were chosen by the practitioners as the compulsory design strategies in their global environmental development agenda, whilst the other 32 design options as optional design solution for the international retailer's future stores. The life cycle assessment tool demonstrated by a case study was proven to be a simple and efficient design tool in practice, and therefore it can be adopted in other projects to assist the decision makers. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The application of strippable coatings is an innovative technology for decontamination of nuclear plants and for any decontamination project aiming at removing surface contamination. An adhesive plastic coating is applied on the contaminated surface. The strippable coating is allowed to cure for up to 24 h, after which it can be easily peeled. The coating traps the contaminants in the polymer matrix. Strippable coatings are non-toxic and do not contain volatile compounds or heavy metals. Since the coating constitutes a solid waste, disposal is easier than treating contaminated liquid wastes, produced by the baseline technology: steam vacuum cleaning, based upon superheated pressurized water in order to remove contaminants from floors and walls. A life cycle assessment (LCA) has been carried out with the purpose of comparing the strippable coating with the steam vacuum technology. The functional unit of the study is represented by a surface of 1 m(2) to be decontaminated. The results of LCA achieved using Sima Pro 5.0(A (R)) software confirm the good environmental performances of strippable coatings. Taking into account both LCA and environmental costs for liquid wastes, the advantages of strippable coatings will be more and more evident.Rapidly developing economy in China makes great improvement in human life quality. At the mean while, it brings great pressures on environment which has drawn broadly attentions all over the world. The 'problems of consumption' comes both from consumers and producers. Hybrid life cycle analysis method and structural decomposition analysis model were used in this paper to explore the interaction of consumption and production and how technology development and household consumption contributed to CO(2) emissions in the period of 1992-2002. The achievements of technology development in the last two decades reduced the emission intensity and technical coefficients which lowered the CO(2) emissions. But the household consumption has offset this technological contribution and resulted in the growth of CO(2) emission. Interaction analysis results showed that consumer's demand for energy-intensive product was an important driving force of pollution production. Household consumption in China contributed a lot to the expansion of manufacturing activities in the last two decades. We concluded that sustainable development could not be achieved if policy makers continuously emphasize the control of polluting industries. The government should simultaneously emphasize technological development and consumer policies to curb these emissions and induce more environmental conscious production and consumption patterns. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Gate-to-gate process energy consumption is an important metric for sustainability as it affects both costs and environmental impact. As only little process information is available in early phases of chemical process design, a detailed energy consumption calculation is substantially restrained. Therefore, a reliable estimation of energy consumption in early phases of process design is an important alternative. In this work, an index representing process energy consumption was evaluated and tested for 14 organic solvent case studies. By using simplified process models the indices were calculated and compared to literature values for gate-to-gate energy consumption. The predictability of the process energy consumption on the basis of this indicator, including possible modifications in its original definition, was evaluated with the Pearson's and Spearman's correlation coefficients. The results further validated the use of the El (energy index) in its original form as a proxy indicator of the process energy consumption for decision making in early stages of process design. For assessing the production of new classes of chemicals the El should be evaluated as shown in this paper in order to establish its practicability. In certain cases an adjustment of the indicator categories may be necessary. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted on a low energy family house recently built in Northern Italy. The yearly net winter heat requirement is 10 kWh/m(2), while the same unit with legal standard insulation would require 110 kWh/m(2). As the building was claimed to be sustainable on the basis of its outstanding energy saving performances, an ex post LCA was set up to understand whether, and to what extent, the positive judgement could be confirmed in a life cycle perspective. The dramatic contribution of materials-related impacts emerged. The shell-embedded materials represented the highest relative contribution, but maintenance operations also played a major role. The contributions of plants, building process and transportation were minor. The important role of the recycling potential also emerged. Unlike standard buildings, where heating-related impacts overshadow the rest of the life cycle, there is no single dominating item or aspect. Rather, several of them play equally important roles. The study has confirmed that the initial goal of environmental sustainability was reached, but to a much lower extent than previously thought. In comparison to a standard house, while the winter heat requirement was reduced by a ratio of 10:1, the life cycle energy was only reduced by 2.1:1 and the carbon footprint by 2.2:1. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for answering questions related to environmental impacts of products. It is a comprehensive tool, addressing the entire life cycle, and addressing the full spectrum of environmental impacts. There are two opposite movements occurring: LCA is getting smaller, and it is getting broader. This presentation presents the general framework for a broader life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA), and shows how the practical work related to doing an LCA, a carbon footprint, or an analysis for ecodesign, can be seen as special cases.The main goal of this paper is to analyze the innovative process of production of biogas (via fermentation processes) using marine macroalgae as feedstock in a pilot project plant in Augusta (Sicily, Italy). Algae, during their growth, have the capacity to assimilate nutrients and thus subsequent harvesting of the algal biomass recovers the nutrients from biowaste sources giving the possibility to transform negative environmental externalities in positive mainly in terms of eutrophication and climate change impact categories. production of biogas and 2nd generation biofuel (liquid biomethane) after an upgrading process through the use of a cryogenic technology. The paper would also like to make the first attempt at understanding the possibility to implement this innovative technology in the Latvian context. The first calculations and assumptions for the Life Cycle Inventory for a further Life Cycle Assessment are presented.The purpose of this paper is to analyze some models currently used in the area of solid waste management, identified in literature as decision support models and developed for establishing a decision support system (DSS). They are usually designed to help decision makers to build up integrated programs for applying solid waste management alternatives such as recycling, treatment, incineration, disposal. These decision support models are based on cost benefit analysis, multicriteria analysis or life cycle assessment (LCA) respectively. The structure, types, advantages and limitation of these models were analyzed, the work being focused on the methodology of LCA in waste management. Types of LCA models and application in the solid waste management area and possible combinations of LCA with other methods used in literature such as cost-benefit analysis and multicriteria decision making are approached, discussed and compared.In this paper we explain how a shift from culture of the black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) to the Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) took place during 2002-6 in Thailand. We use system innovation theory to help explain how niche substitution led to a regime change within a Thai aquaculture industry trying to maintain international competitiveness but under pressures from a global landscape in which consumers are increasingly concerned with health and ecological sustainability. Support from a vertically integrated major firm, an extensive foundation of learning networks within the industry, and early profitability made the scaling-up and embedding of the experiment with white shrimp very rapid once the formal ban on import of exotic broodstock was lifted. Disease management with domesticated, specific pathogen-free strains of white shrimp has proven much easier than with black shrimp still dependent on capture of wild broodstock. Moreover relative production costs are lower. The switch in species had significant consequences for the environment and firms. Using life cycle analysis we found that rearing white shrimp requires less resource and produces less waste than black shrimp. The shift in regime, however, also made it more difficult for small farms and hatchery businesses. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial symbiosis, representing resource sharing and byproduct use among colocated firms, is a key concept of industrial ecology. Local co-operation in industrial symbioses can reduce raw material use and waste disposal, but material and energy flows extending outside symbiosis boundaries can cause considerable environmental impacts. These external impacts are often ignored in industrial symbiosis studies. In this study, we compared process, hybrid and input-output life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches in quantifying the overall environmental impacts of a forest industrial symbiosis, situated in Kymenlaakso, Finland. Conclusions from an earlier process-LCA were strengthened by the use of hybrid-LCA as local emissions were found to cause less than half of the global impacts. In some impact categories, the whole impact was caused by supply chain emissions (land use, metal depletion and ozone depletion). The cutoff in process-LCA was found to be less than 25%, except in metal depletion and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Input-output LCA approximated hybrid-LCA results well in most impact categories, but seriously underestimated land use and overestimated terrestrial ecotoxicity. Based on the results we conclude, that input-output based LCA can be used to analyze the global impacts of an industrial symbiosis, but a careful interpretation of the results is necessary in order to understand the influence of aggregation and allocation.Biofuel greenhouse gas (GHG)-reduction standards calculated via life-cycle assessment are shown to be biased, even when indirect land-use change is included, because they are based on physical GHG emissions and uptakes and on simple aggregates of balances. We offer a GHG-reduction standard for biofuel production free of these biases, expressed for a range of discount rates and an upper bound on the GHG payback period. A numerical example, based on previously used data, reveals that converting two land types into ethanol in Brazil satisfies our biofuel emissions test, whereas in the United States no land type satisfies our criterion.Across the energy sector, alternatives to fossil fuels are being developed, in response to the dual drivers of climate change and energy security. For transport, biofuels have the greatest potential to replace fossil fuels in the short-to medium term. However, the ecological benefits of biofuels and the role that their deployment can play in mitigating climate change are being called into question. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used approach that enables the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of biofuel production to be calculated. Concerns have nevertheless been raised that published data show widely varying and sometimes contradictory results. This review describes a systematic review of GHG emissions and energy balance data from 44 LCA studies of first- and second-generation biofuels. The information collated was used to identify the dominant sources of GHG emissions and energy requirements in biofuel production and the key sources of variability in published LCA data. Our analysis revealed three distinct sources of variation: (1) 'real' variability in parameters e.g. cultivation; (2) 'methodological' variability due to the implementation of the LCA method; and (3) 'uncertainty' due to parameters rarely included and poorly quantified. There is global interest in developing a sustainability assessment protocol for biofuels. Confidence in the results of such an assessment can only be assured if these areas of uncertainty and variability are addressed. A more defined methodology is necessary in order to allow effective and accurate comparison of results. It is also essential that areas of uncertainty such as impacts on soil carbon stocks and fluxes are included in LCA assessments, and that further research is conducted to enable a robust calculation of impacts under different land-use change scenarios. Without the inclusion of these parameters, we cannot be certain that biofuels are really delivering GHG savings compared with fossil fuels.Marginal organic soils, abundant in the boreal region, are being increasingly used for bioenergy crop cultivation. Using long-term field experimental data on greenhouse gas (GHG) balance from a perennial bioenergy crop [reed canary grass (RCG), Phalaris arundinaceae L.] cultivated on a drained organic soil as an example, we show here for the first time that, with a proper cultivation and land-use practice, environmentally sound bioenergy production is possible on these problematic soil types. We performed a life cycle assessment (LCA) for RCG on this organic soil. We found that, on an average, this system produces 40% less CO2-equivalents per MWh of energy in comparison with a conventional energy source such as coal. Climatic conditions regulating the RCG carbon exchange processes have a high impact on the benefits from this bioenergy production system. Under appropriate hydrological conditions, this system can even be carbon-negative. An LCA sensitivity analysis revealed that net ecosystem CO2 exchange and crop yield are the major LCA components, while non-CO2 GHG emissions and costs associated with crop production are the minor ones. Net bioenergy GHG emissions resulting from restricted net CO2 uptake and low crop yields, due to climatic and moisture stress during dry years, were comparable with coal emissions. However, net bioenergy emissions during wet years with high net uptake and crop yield were only a third of the coal emissions. As long-term experimental data on GHG balance of bioenergy production are scarce, scientific data stemming from field experiments are needed in shaping renewable energy source policies.Purpose Nowadays, there is one television device for every four human beings, making television one of the most popular pieces of electrical and electronic equipment in our society, with the so-called flat-screen technologies gaining more and more market share. For one such technology, the plasma display panel (PDP), no complete life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have existed thus far, and therefore, the question as to their environmental performance, especially as compared with LCD technology, is still open. This paper describes a detailed LCA study of a PDP television, including a first comparison of it with the two competing technologies, the cathode ray tube and the liquid crystal display technologies. Methods An LCA study from cradle to grave-i.e., from the extraction of the various resources used in the production to the final recycling or disposal activities-has been established taking the complete life cycle of one PDP television as the functional unit. Results Analysis of the complete life cycle of a PDP television shows that the distribution stage is of no importance. Of the remaining life cycle stages, the importance of the use phase depends on the actual production mix used for the electricity consumed. A fossil-based electricity mix, such as the Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE)-mix, causes an impact in the use phase about two times higher than in the production phase. The production phase is dominated by the printed wiring boards and their various components-responsible for more than three quarters of the impact of this first life stage. Last but not least, in the end-of-life (EoL) phase, substantial environmental benefits are possible through a modern recycling system. A comparison of the PDP with competing technologies shows the PDP technology to be the more environmentally friendly one, based on the impact per square-inch of screen. All technologies show thereby a similar picture-production and use having high impacts, distribution being irrelevant, and EoL resulting in an ecological benefit. Conclusions Hence, it is advisable to use electronic devices such as a PDP television as long as possible, because within the manufacturing stage, the production of the electronics is by far the most important production part. Some of this high environmental impact in electronics can be recovered in an up-to-date recycling system. The second most important life stage is the use phase, which depends on the production mix of the electricity consumed; the more non-renewable sources used for its production, the higher the impact of the use phase will appear. Hence, electronic devices should be used specifically and be turned off when not in use.Purpose Freshwater scarcity is a problem in many areas of the world and will become one of the most sensitive environmental issues in coming decades. Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies generally do not provide assessment schemes or characterization factors of the potential environmental impacts of freshwater use or freshwater resource depletion. These assessments therefore do not account for the significant environmental consequences of the loss in quality and availability of freshwater. This paper aims to develop a framework to address this methodological limitation and to support further quantitative modeling of the cause-effect chain relationships of water use. The framework includes recommendations for life cycle inventory (LCI) modeling and provides a description of possible impact pathways for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), including indicators on midpoint and endpoint levels that reflect different areas of protection (AoP). Methodology LCI of freshwater use aims to quantify changes in freshwater availability. The key elements affected by changes in availability are sufficient freshwater supplies for contemporary human users, ecosystems, and future generations, the latter referring to the renewability of the resource. Three midpoint categories are therefore proposed and linked to common AoP as applied in LCIA. Results and discussion We defined a set of water types, each representing an elementary flow. Water balances for each type allows the quantification of changes in freshwater availability. These values are recommended as results for the LCI of water use. Insufficient freshwater supplies for contemporary human users can mean freshwater deficits for human uses, which is the first midpoint impact category ultimately affecting the AoP of human life; freshwater deficits in ecosystems is the second proposed midpoint impact category and is linked to the AoP biotic environment. Finally, the last midpoint category is freshwater depletion caused by intensive overuse that exceeds the regeneration rate, which itself is ultimately linked to the AoP abiotic environment. Depending on the regional context, the development of scenarios aimed to compensate for the lack of water for specific uses by using backup technologies (e.g., saltwater treatment, the import of agricultural goods) can avoid generating direct impacts on the midpoint impact category freshwater deficits for human uses. Indirect impacts must be assessed through an extension of system boundaries including these backup technologies. Because freshwater is a resource with high spatial and temporal variability, the proposed framework discusses aspects of regionalization in relationship to data availability, appropriate spatial and temporal resolution, and software capacities to support calculations. Conclusions The framework provides recommendations for the development of operational LCA methods for water use. It establishes the link between LCI and LCIA, water-use mechanism models, and impact pathways to environmental damages in a consistent way. Recommendations Based on this framework, next steps consist of the development of operational methods for both inventory modeling and impact assessment.Purpose Geospatial details about land use are necessary to assess its potential impacts on biodiversity. Geographic information systems (GIS) are adept at modeling land use in a spatially explicit manner, while life cycle assessment (LCA) does not conventionally utilize geospatial information. This study presents a proof-of-concept approach for coupling GIS and LCA for biodiversity assessments of land use and applies it to a case study of ethanol production from agricultural crops in California. Materials and methods GIS modeling was used to generate crop production scenarios for corn and sugar beets that met a range of ethanol production targets. The selected study area was a four-county region in the southern San Joaquin Valley of California, USA. The resulting land use maps were translated into maps of habitat types. From these maps, vectors were created that contained the total areas for each habitat type in the study region. These habitat compositions are treated as elementary input flows and used to calculate different biodiversity impact indicators in a second paper (Geyer et al., submitted). Results and discussion Ten ethanol production scenarios were developed with GIS modeling. Current land use is added as baseline scenario. The parcels selected for corn and sugar beet production were generally in different locations. Moreover, corn and sugar beets are classified as different habitat types. Consequently, the scenarios differed in both the habitat types converted and in the habitat types expanded. Importantly, land use increased nonlinearly with increasing ethanol production targets. The GIS modeling for this study used spatial data that are commonly available in most developed countries and only required functions that are provided in virtually any commercial or open-source GIS software package. Conclusions This study has demonstrated that GIS-based inventory modeling of land use allows important refinements in LCA theory and practice. Using GIS, land use can be modeled as a geospatial and nonlinear function of output. For each spatially explicit process, land use can be expressed within the conventional structure of LCA methodology as a set of elementary input flows of habitat types.Background, aim, and scope The increasing gasoline price, the depletion of fossil resources, and the negative environmental consequences of driving with petroleum fuels have driven the development of alternative transport fuels. Bioethanol, which is converted from cellulosic feedstocks, has attracted increasing attention as one such alternative. This study assesses the environmental impact of using ethanol from switchgrass as transport fuel and compares the results with the ones of gasoline to analyze the potential of developing switchgrass ethanol as an environmentally sustainable transport fuel. Methods The standard framework of life cycle assessment from International Standards Organization was followed. To compare the environmental impact of driving with E10 and E85 with gasoline, "power to wheels for 1-km driving of a midsize car" was defined as the functional unit. The product system consists of all relevant processes, from agriculture of switchgrass, throughout the production of ethanol, blending ethanol with gasoline to produce E85 and E10, to the final vehicle operations. The transport of all products and chemicals is also included in the system boundaries. An allocation based on energy content was applied as a baseline, and market price-based allocation was applied for a sensitivity analysis. Results and discussion With regard to global warming potential, driving with switchgrass ethanol fuels leads to less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than gasoline: 65% reduction may be achieved in the case of E85. Except for global warming and resource depletion, driving with ethanol fuels from switchgrass does not offer environmental benefits in the other impact categories compared to gasoline. Switchgrass agriculture is the main contributor to eutrophication, acidification, and toxicity. Emissions from bioethanol production cause a greater impact in photochemical smog formation for ethanol-fueled driving. Conclusions and recommendations Switchgrass ethanol indeed leads to less GHG emissions than gasoline on a life cycle basis; however, the problem has been shifted to other impacts. Improvement of switchgrass yields and development of ethanol production technologies may be the key to lower environmental impact in the future. For a more comprehensive evaluation of using bioethanol as transport fuel, more impact categories need to be included in the life cycle impact assessment. A comparison with bioethanol from other feedstocks, based on similar methodological choices and background data, would provide more insight in the environmental benefits of switchgrass as a feedstock.Background, aim, and scope Carbon footprint (CF) has become a hot topic as public awareness of climate change is placing demands on manufacturers to declare the climate impact of their products. Calculating the CF of food products is complex and associated with unavoidable uncertainty due to the inherent variability of natural processes. This study quantifies the uncertainty of a common food product and discusses the results in relation to different types of CF systems for food product labelling. Materials and methods A detailed LCI with global warming potential as the only impact category was performed on King Edward table potatoes grown in the Ostergotland region of Sweden. Parameters were described using one probability distribution for spatial and temporal variation and one separate distribution describing measuring/data uncertainty, allowing the effect of parameter resolution on CF uncertainty to be studied. Monte Carlo simulation was used to quantify the overall uncertainty. The influence of individual parameters on the CF was analysed and differences in CF for food products from different production systems, with and without climate impact reduction rules, were simulated. Results The potato CF fell in the range 0.10-0.16 kg CO(2)e per kilogram of potatoes with 95% certainty for an arbitrary year and field. Emissions of N2O from soil dominated the CF uncertainty. Locking the temporal variation to a specific year lowered the uncertainty range by 19%. Parameter collection on a spatial scale of one field did not reduce the uncertainty. The most sensitive parameters were the yield, the soil humus content and the emissions factors for N2O emissions from soil. Potatoes grown according to climate rules lowered the CF by 9% with a probability of 53% for an arbitrary year and field. Discussion The importance of yield, which proved to be the most influential parameter, is a common characteristic of agricultural products in general, since the accumulated emissions from a cultivated area are divided across the yield from that area. Maximising the yield reduces the CF but could have negative impacts on other environmental aspects. The purpose of the CF labelling scheme, together with uncertainty analysis, needs to be considered when determining how the CF should be calculated, as an average or for a specific year, farm, field, region, etc. Conclusions The CF of a potato crop calculated for an arbitrary year and field varied between approximately -17% and +30% of the average value with 95% certainty, showing that uncertainty analysis in the design, calculation and evaluation of food product CF labelling schemes is important to ensure fair comparisons. Recommendations and perspectives Similar studies comparing different production systems for the same type of product and products from different categories, on large and small scale depending on the purpose of the CF system, are needed in order to determine how the CF of food products can be compared and the precision with which data have to be collected in order to allow fair and effective comparison of the CF of food products.Background, aim and scope In spite of a number of lingering issues, life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely recognised as one of the most powerful tools to investigate the environmental performance of a product or service. Carbon footprint (CF) analysis can also be considered a subset of LCA, limited to a single impact category (i.e. global warming potential (GWP)). However, the inherent complexity of a full LCA or CF analysis often stands in the way of their widespread application in the industry and policy-making sectors. For these latter ambits, this paper advocates the adoption of tailor-made streamlined approaches, with reduced inventory requirements and impact assessment scope. Two such examples are provided, respectively addressing the evaluation of GWP in the development of new product standards and the GWP savings attainable through the use of recycled materials. Materials and methods Both the application examples presented here are firmly rooted in life cycle thinking, and follow the guidelines provided by the current ISO standards on LCA. At the same time, the employed models are structured in such a way as not to require the deployment of specific LCA software but rely on simple algorithms instead, complemented by tables of data for the associated background processes sourced from standard life cycle inventory databases. Results In the first example, the simplified algorithm was found to produce reliable and satisfactorily accurate results in terms of GWP, i.e. within 10% of those produced by a fully fledged LCA performed in parallel for validation purposes. In the second example, the adopted simplification only applied to the goal of the study (i.e. assessment of the absolute GWP savings, with no quantitative indication of their relative extent with respect to the total). Within these limits, the proposed simplified tool provided accurate indications, which enabled a clear ranking of the analysed products, in terms of desirability of recycling. Discussion To the extent possible within the given set of constraints, simplified tools such as those presented here do not lose their scientific rigour and take into account all phases of the product life cycle. Their reduced goal and scope does of course limit the breadth of the information that they can produce, but this can be mitigated through a case-specific selection of the adopted inventory simplifications and impact category/ies. Conclusions The two application examples presented here have provided solid evidence that streamlined approaches such as these can go a long way in facilitating the introduction of life cycle thinking and LCA in the day-today practice of industries and policy makers, while still producing scientifically sound and robust results. Recommendations and perspectives Simplified LCA tools lend themselves to a wealth of possible applications in the industry and policy-making sectors. More case studies are in order, and it will be advisable not to limit the goal and scope of all streamlined approaches to carbon footprint evaluation but to pick the most relevant impact categories to be included in the model on a case-by-case basis.Background, aim, and scope Uncertainty information is essential for the proper use of life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental assessments in decision making. So far, parameter uncertainty propagation has mainly been studied using Monte Carlo techniques that are relatively computationally heavy to conduct, especially for the comparison of multiple scenarios, often limiting its use to research or to inventory only. Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulations do not automatically assess the sensitivity and contribution to overall uncertainty of individual parameters. The present paper aims to develop and apply to both inventory and impact assessment an explicit and transparent analytical approach to uncertainty. This approach applies Taylor series expansions to the uncertainty propagation of lognormally distributed parameters. Materials and methods We first apply the Taylor series expansion method to analyze the uncertainty propagation of a single scenario, in which case the squared geometric standard deviation of the final output is determined as a function of the model sensitivity to each input parameter and the squared geometric standard deviation of each parameter. We then extend this approach to the comparison of two or more LCA scenarios. Since in LCA it is crucial to account for both common inventory processes and common impact assessment characterization factors among the different scenarios, we further develop the approach to address this dependency. We provide a method to easily determine a range and a best estimate of (a) the squared geometric standard deviation on the ratio of the two scenario scores, "A/B", and (b) the degree of confidence in the prediction that the impact of scenario A is lower than B (i.e., the probability that A/B<1). The approach is tested on an automobile case study and resulting probability distributions of climate change impacts are compared to classical Monte Carlo distributions. Results The probability distributions obtained with the Taylor series expansion lead to results similar to the classical Monte Carlo distributions, while being substantially simpler; the Taylor series method tends to underestimate the 2.5% confidence limit by 1-11% and the 97.5% limit by less than 5%. The analytical Taylor series expansion easily provides the explicit contributions of each parameter to the overall uncertainty. For the steel front end panel, the factor contributing most to the climate change score uncertainty is the gasoline consumption (>75%). For the aluminum panel, the electricity and aluminum primary production, as well as the light oil consumption, are the dominant contributors to the uncertainty. The developed approach for scenario comparisons, differentiating between common and independent parameters, leads to results similar to those of a Monte Carlo analysis; for all tested cases, we obtained a good concordance between the Monte Carlo and the Taylor series expansion methods regarding the probability that one scenario is better than the other. Discussion The Taylor series expansion method addresses the crucial need of accounting for dependencies in LCA, both for common LCI processes and common LCIA characterization factors. The developed approach in Eq. 8, which differentiates between common and independent parameters, estimates the degree of confidence in the prediction that scenario A is better than B, yielding results similar to those found with Monte Carlo simulations. Conclusions The probability distributions obtained with the Taylor series expansion are virtually equivalent to those from a classical Monte Carlo simulation, while being significantly easier to obtain. An automobile case study on an aluminum front end panel demonstrated the feasibility of this method and illustrated its simultaneous and consistent application to both inventory and impact assessment. The explicit and innovative analytical approach, based on Taylor series expansions of lognormal distributions, provides the contribution to the uncertainty from each parameter and strongly reduces calculation time.Background, aim, and scope Matrix-based life cycle assessment (LCA) is part of the standard ingredients of modern LCA tools. An important aspect of matrix-based LCA that is straightforward to carry out, but that requires a careful mathematical handling, is the inclusion of sensitivity coefficients based on differentiating the matrix-based formulas. Materials and methods We briefly review the basic equations for LCA and the basic theory of sensitivity coefficients. Results We present the complete set of sensitivity coefficients from inventory to weighting through characterization and normalization. We show the specific formulas for perturbation analysis, uncertainty analysis, and key issue analysis. We also provide an example using the ecoinvent data. Discussion The limitations of the present approach include the restriction to small changes and uncertainties and the ignorance of correlation between input uncertainties. In contrast to common thinking, there is no restriction to normally distributed uncertainties: Every uncertainty distribution for which a variance can be defined can be submitted to the analytical uncertainty analysis. Conclusions This paper provides a useful set of tables for a number of purposes related to uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. Recommendations and perspectives Although the formulas derived are not simple, they are straightforward to implement in software for LCA. Once this is done, the use of these formulas can become routine practice, enabling a key issue analysis and speeding up perturbation and uncertainty analysis.To achieve more sustainable production and consumption patterns, it is mandatory to consider the environmental implications of the whole supply chain of products, both goods and services, their use and waste management, i.e. their entire life cycle from "cradle to grave". The International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook provides governments and businesses with a basis for assuring quality and consistency of life cycle data, methods and assessments.Climate change has recently become a major focus for industry and government agencies. Some recent works have been reported on the use of pinch analysis techniques for carbon-constrained energy planning problems. This paper discusses a new application of graphical technique based on pinch analysis for company-level visualization and analysis of carbon footprint improvement. The technique is based on the decomposition of total carbon footprint into material- and energy-based components, or alternatively, into internal and external components. The decomposition facilitates the evaluation and screening of process improvement alternatives. Two industrial case studies on the production of phytochemical extracts and bulk chemicals are used to illustrate the new extension. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment of nuclear-based hydrogen production using thermochemical water splitting is conducted. The copper-chlorine thermochemical cycle is considered, and the environmental impacts of the nuclear and thermochemical plants are assessed. Environmental impacts are investigated using CML-2001 impact categories. The nuclear plant and the construction of the hydrogen plant contribute significantly to the total environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of operating the hydrogen production plant contribute much less. Changes in the inventory of materials or chemicals needed in the thermochemical plant do not affect significantly the total impacts. Improvement analysis suggests the development of more sustainable processes, particularly in the nuclear plant and construction of the hydrogen production plant. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4001603]The design of cooling solutions is an important consideration for the efficient management of different types of energy technologies. In the present work, we adapt the method of thermo-volumes-which has been used for nearly a decade in the design of electronic cooling solutions-for purposes of expeditiously understanding the thermal resistance of a given solution (in terms of cooling performance) along with its flow resistance (an indicator of the pumping power or energy consumption, which will be required by the thermal solution). Furthermore, we expand on thermo-volumes by including the lifetime exergy cost as a means to enable the consideration of resource consumption (and thus the environmental sustainability) of the cooling solution. We apply this framework for evaluation of thermal management solutions in terms of the heat removal capacity per unit lifetime exergy consumption. This paper concludes by illustrating applicability of the method to the design of a fuel cell thermal management solution. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4001569]Consumer choices affect sustainability of societal systems, and state governments increasingly are interested in environmental impacts of consumption. This article describes a Consumer Environmental Index (CEI) to track the impacts of product purchase, use, and disposal and applies this initial CEI to Washington State in the United States. CEI has modules for product and service use, upstream resource extraction and manufacturing, and downstream disposal. CEI uses hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) methods, combined with purchasing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditure Survey. For Washington State, when human health and ecosystem toxicity impact was assessed with the TRACI/CalTOX methods, weighted aggregate and per consumer impacts in all categories increased during the 6 years from 2000 to 2005. For impacts per real dollar spent, only the CEI's climate change component declined, falling nearly 7% between 2000 and 2005. Purchasing details in the BLS expenditure surveys enable the CEI to track environmental impact details on 700 individual categories of products and services. For example, sugar, motor oil, and wood heat appear to have serious environmental impacts, whereas recycling of paper, cardboard, and food and beverage container discards can be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as cutting vehicle fuel usage nearly in half. Such results may serve to increase understanding of environmentally effective actions to reduce climate, human health, and ecosystem impacts of consumption.In Norway, the boreal forest offers a considerable resource base, and emerging technologies may soon make it commercially viable to convert these resources into low-carbon biofuels. Decision makers are required to make informed decisions about the environmental implications of wood biofuels today that will affect the medium-and long-term development of a wood-based biofuels industry in Norway. We first assess the national forest-derived resource base for use in biofuel production. A set of biomass conversion technologies is then chosen and evaluated for scenarios addressing biofuel production and consumption by select industry sectors. We then apply an environmentally extended, mixed-unit, two-region input-output model to quantify the global warming mitigation and fossil fuel displacement potentials of two biofuel production and consumption scenarios in Norway up to 2050. We find that a growing resource base, when used to produce advanced biofuels, results in cumulative global warming mitigation potentials of between 58 and 83 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents avoided (Mt-CO2-eq.-avoided) in Norway, depending on the biofuel scenario. In recent years, however, the domestic pulp and paper industry-due to increasing exposure to international competition, capacity reductions, and increasing production costs-has been in decline. In the face of a declining domestic pulp and paper industry, imported pulp and paper products are required to maintain the demand for these goods and thus the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the exporting region embodied in Norway's pulp and paper imports reduce the systemwide benefit in terms of avoided greenhouse gas emissions by 27%.We used life cycle assessment to evaluate a subset of the cradle-to-destination-port environmental impacts associated with the production, processing, and transportation of frozen, packaged Indonesian tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) fillets to ports in Chicago and Rotterdam. Specifically, we evaluated the cumulative energy use; biotic resource use; and global warming, acidifying, and eutrophying emissions at each life cycle stage and in aggregate. We identify the importance of least environmental cost feed sourcing for reducing supply chain environmental impacts. We also highlight the need for more effective nutrient cycling in intensive aquaculture. The environmental trade-offs inherent in substituting technological inputs for ecosystem services in intensive pond-based versus lake-based production systems are discussed. We further call for more nuanced considerations of comparative environmental advantage in the production and interregional trade of food commodities than has been characteristic of historic food miles discussions. Significant opportunities exist for improving environmental performance in tilapia aquaculture. This product compares favorably, however, with several other fishery, aquaculture, and animal husbandry products, according to the suite of impact categories considered in this study.One of the most important problems today is the scarcity of fresh water safe enough for human, industrial, and agricultural use. Desalination is an alternative source of fresh water supply in areas with severe problems of water availability. Desalination plants generate a huge amount of brine as the main residual from the plant (about 55% of collected seawater). Because of that, it is important to determine the best environmental option for the brine disposal. This article makes a global environmental analysis, under Spanish conditions, of a desalination plant and an environmental assessment of different final brine disposals, representing a range of the most common alternatives: direct disposal, wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) outflow dilution, and dilution with seawater. The environmental profile of the plant operation and a comparison of the brine final disposal alternatives were established by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. From an analysis of the whole plant we observed that the highest environmental impact was caused by energy consumption, especially at the reverse osmosis stage, while the most relevant waste was brine. From an analysis of brine final disposal we have elaborated a comparison of the advantages and detriments of the three alternatives. As all of them might be suitable in different specific situations, the results might be useful in decisions about final brine disposal.The use of titanium dioxide (TiO(2)) ultrafine particulates as coating for concrete pavement have received considerable attention in recent years as these coatings can trap and absorb organic and inorganic air pollutants by a photocatalytic process. Despite these promising benefits, the promotion of TiO(2) coatings based on a single factor such as air quality does not provide a complete evaluation of this technology and may omit critical environmental factors that should be considered in the selection of sustainable materials. The objective of this study was to determine the life-cycle assessment of TiO(2) coating technology based on a hybrid life-cycle methodology. To achieve this objective, a life-cycle inventory that quantifies the energy, abiotic raw material inputs, and emission of TiO(2) coatings from cradle to grave were developed. Based on this inventory, life-cycle impact assessment of TiO(2) coatings for concrete pavement was conducted using the BEES impact assessment model. The use of titanium dioxide coating reduces the concentration of harmful pollutants by a photocatalytic process, and therefore, reduces the environmental impacts in four main categories: acidification, eutrophication, criteria air pollutants, and smog formation. However, during the production phases and due to the consumption of fossil energy, titanium dioxide will cause an increase in global warming, fossil fuel depletion, water intake, ozone depletion, and impacts on human health. Based on the overall environmental performance of this product, life-cycle assessment shows that titanium dioxide coating has an overall beneficial effect on the environment.Agriculture emits about 14 % of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In Germany this share is about 7 %, without consideration of imported feedstuff, the production of farm inputs and land use changes such as forest clearing and the drainage of peaty soils. The total emissions of food production in Germany including processing, transport and distribution are between 16 to 22 %. In consequence, a critical public discussion and the demand for emission reduction in the whole value added chain arises. The calculation of the product-related emissions of food (carbon footprint) indicates important emission sources that are used to detect potentials of reduction. The calculated emissions of milk, meat and cereals vary greatly in the present literature mainly due to different reference systems of the studies and the chosen system boundaries. Some studies compare different agricultural production systems and focus only on parts of the value added chain, while other surveys consider the whole life cycle form cradle to grave. Accordingly, the range of results per unit (kg of CO2 equivalents kg of product) is large. However, the most important emission sources can be derived and options of regulation can be identified. Climate-friendly consumption patterns could be induced by providing advice and guidance to consumers (e.g. reduction of meat consumption and consumption of seasonal food products) and labelling of food products. However, the level of greenhouse gas emissions from food consumption depends on a large number of different factors which makes it often difficult to derive general conclusions.The sustainability of electricity generation from biomass has been assessed in this work according to the key indicators of price, efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, availability, limitations, land use, water use and social impacts. Biomass produced electricity generally provides favourable price, efficiency, emissions, availability and limitations but often has unfavorably high land and water usage as well as social impacts. The type and growing location of the biomass source are paramount to its sustainability. Hardy crops grown on unused or marginal land and waste products are more sustainable than dedicated energy crops grown on food producing land using high rates of fertilisers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.At first 'sustainable mining' could be perceived as a paradox minerals are widely held to be finite resources with rising consumption causing pressure on known resources. The true sustainability of mineral resources, however, is a much more complex picture and involves exploration, technology, economics, social and environmental issues, and advancing scientific knowledge predicting future sustainability is therefore not a simple task. This paper presents the results from a landmark study on historical trends in Australian mining, including ore milled, ore grades, open cut versus underground mining, overburden/waste rock and economic resources. When complete data sets are compiled for specific metals, particular issues stand out with respect to sustainability-technological breakthroughs (e.g. flotation, carbon-in-pulp), new discoveries (e.g. uranium or U), price changes (e.g. Au, boom/bust cycles), social issues (e.g. strikes), etc. All of these issues are of prime importance in moving towards a semi-quantitative sustainability model of mineral resources and the mining industry. For the future, critical issues will continue to be declining ore grades (also ore quality and impurities), increased waste rock and associated liabilities, known economic resources, potential breakthrough technologies, and broader environmental constraints (e.g. carbon costs, water). For this latter area, many companies now report annually on sustainability performance facilitating analysis of environmental sustainability with respect to production performance. By linking these two commonly disparate aspects mining production and environmental/sustainability data it becomes possible to better understand environmental sustainability and predict future constraints such as water requirements, greenhouse emissions, energy and reagent inputs, and the like. This paper will therefore present a range of fundamental data and issues which help towards quantifying the resource and environmental sustainability of mining with critical implications for the mining industry and society as a whole. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A model with Chinese characterization factors for quantifying the damages to environment by land use in terms of the change in net primary productivity (NPP) of ecosystem was developed in the framework of life cycle assessment (LCA). In this method, the forms of land utilization were divided into two aspects involving long-term use of land (e.g., for arable farming), namely "land occupation", and the change of land properties (e.g., from agricultural area to urban area), namely "land transformation". Furthermore, the land use elementary flows (occupation and transformation) and parameters were linked to the impact indicators, and the characterization formulas of the two forms of land utilization were derived respectively according to the ecological theory. Moreover, based on this method, the characterization factors of both land occupation and land transformation were calculated using Chinese empirical information on NPP, which can be incorporated into LCA framework and applied to Chinese LCA case study to fill up the important gap in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of land use.Sustainable construction in Germany - Assessment system of the Federal Government for office and administration buildings. 55% of all investments are made in the buildings sector. Over its entire value added chain, the construction industry accounts for 11% of output in Germany and employs 12% of the workforce subject to compulsory social insurance. The construction, housing and property sectors are involved in a multiplicity of interrelationships with measures and objectives of the Federal Government's sustainable development strategy. Principal among these are climate change mitigation, improving energy efficiency, improving the productivity of energy and raw materials, reducing land take and shaping demographic change. The assessment of the contribution made by individual structures to sustainable development results in the call for the development of an overall system for the description and appraisal of buildings, including the land on which they are built. Sustainability considerations are characterized by a whole life cycle analysis and the comprehensive inclusion of ecological, economic and socio-cultural aspects. Alongside energy balances, therefore, it is also necessary to study the material flows and financial impacts, in particular. The development, trialling and application of systems for describing, assessing and certifying the sustainability of buildings is tied to a number of prerequisites. In particular, the changeover to an assessment and certification system based predominantly on quantitative assessments poses a significant challenge. The new sustainable construction assessment system that has been developed in Germany is a voluntary market instrument and is currently designed for office and administrative buildings, and has been trialled on such buildings. It is available to all users free of charge and can be downloaded from the following website: www.nachhaltigesbauen.de. The Federal Government plans to make the system mandatory for federal buildings by introducing it with the Sustainable Construction Guide via the federal building authorities, thereby setting an example of good practice. The system can be used by other providers. Widening it to include other categories of buildings will be done by appropriate system providers. These providers can have their system recognized by the Bundesministerium fur Verkehr, Bau- und Stadtentwicklung (BMVBS; Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development). In the case of buildings and structural works that are of significant public interest, assessment systems will be developed and implemented in working groups comprising representatives of public agencies and hosted by the BMVBS.Life Cycle Analysis as a part of the assessment of sustainability in industrial construction. In autumn 2009, the DGNB-certification for industrial buildings was presented officially. Thus, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as an important part of the assessment of sustainability will prospectively gain in importance also in the sector of industrial buildings. The following article contains a comparison of the environmental performance of different construction methods in the sector of industrial buildings, which is quantifiable by the use of LCA, with the help of current available data and methods. Selected results, existing uncertainties and the hence resulting need for research are presented.The demand for environmentally responsible food production is increasing, this is also valid for fish food products To assess the environmental performance of a fish food product system, contributions from both the life cycle of the fishing vessel and the value chain of the fish, from catch to final product, should be investigated Few environmental life cycle investigations of the fish value chain, the so-called fish food production system, have been performed This paper uses systems engineering methods with input from life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to create a framework for performing environmental analysis on fish food production in the North Sea In order to test the proposed framework, life cycle environmental data from a medium-sized Norwegian fishing vessel has been used The framework demonstrates a systematic way to analyze and provide environmental information for the fish food product system This can be extended to other food products and thereby become a framework for the analysis and comparison of different food products (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc Syst Eng 13 109-118,2010This paper identifies Madeira Island's growth stage in accordance with Butler's life cycle model. Life cycle analysis is pursued using an econometric approach over an extended period, from 1976 to 2006. The results suggest that Madeira is about to enter the stagnation phase. The industry's development since the 1970s was found to conform to Butler's model, but in its own way. In the case of Madeira, the island's positive image and the time span within each of the life cycle stages challenge the traditional life cycle model, suggesting rather that the maturity stage may persist indefinitely.Carbon fiber reinforced plastic is applied to railway car bodies to lighten them and reduce fuel consumption. This study looks at recycling methods for carbon fiber reinforced plastic used in a car body of a tilting train. It looks at four types of recycling: acid, pyrolysis in oxygen and nitrogen, organic solvents and supercritical process under various operating conditions. It evaluates the environmental performance of the recycling methods in terms of footprints of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. A simplified life-cycle analysis is applied focusing mainly on the recycling treatment system. Only acid and pyrolysis in oxygen were capable of passing the technical and recyclate quality criteria. The energy footprint by pyrolysis in oxygen is approximately six times greater than acids and greenhouse gas emissions are some five times greater than with the acid recycling method. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The planning and design of integrated municipal solid waste management (MSWM) systems requires accurate environmental impact evaluation of the systems and their components. This research assessed, quantified and compared the environmental impact of the first stage of the most used MSW container systems. The comparison was based on factors such as the volume of the containers, from small bins of 60-80 Ito containers of 2400 l, and on the manufactured materials, steel and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Also, some parameters such as frequency of collections, waste generation, filling percentage and waste container contents, were established to obtain comparable systems. The methodological framework of the analysis was the life cycle assessment (LCA), and the impact assessment method was based on CML 2 baseline 2000. Results indicated that, for the same volume, the collection systems that use HDPE waste containers had more of an impact than those using steel waste containers, in terms of abiotic depletion, global warming, ozone layer depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation, human toxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Besides, the collection systems using small HDPE bins (60 l or 80 l) had most impact while systems using big steel containers (2400 l) had less impact. Subsequent sensitivity analysis about the parameters established demonstrated that they could change the ultimate environmental impact of each waste container collection system, but that the comparative relationship between systems was similar. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impacts and gaseous emissions associated to home and industrial composting of the source-separated organic fraction of municipal solid waste have been evaluated using the environmental tool of life cycle assessment (LCA). Experimental data of both scenarios were experimentally collected. The functional unit used was one ton of organic waste. Ammonia, methane and nitrous oxide released from home composting (HC) were more than five times higher than those of industrial composting (IC) but the latter involved within 2 and 53 times more consumption or generation of transport, energy, water, infrastructures, waste and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) emissions than HC. Therefore, results indicated that IC was more impacting than HC for four of the impact categories considered (abiotic depletion, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation and cumulative energy demand) and less impacting for the other three (acidification, eutrophication and global warming). Production of composting bin and gaseous emissions are the main responsible for the HC impacts, whereas for IC the main contributions come from collection and transportation of organic waste, electricity consumption, dumped waste and VOCs emission. These results suggest that HC may be an interesting alternative or complement to IC in low density areas of population. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Phosphorous (P) is a limited and non-substitutable resource. Sewage sludge contains significant amounts of P and is therefore a widely applied fertilizer. Due to its organic and inorganic contaminants, sewage sludge is also combusted in industrial facilities as well as in waste incinerators. This study compares five common methods and one novel alternative based on a thermo-chemical process to treat and dispose of sewage sludge with regard to environmental impact, resource recovery, and materials dissipation. The comparison is based on material flow analysis, energy balances, selected LCA impact analysis, and statistical entropy analysis. This work shows that the novel technology combines both advantages of the established practices: organic and inorganic pollutants are either destroyed or removed from the P containing material, and the P returned to the soil exhibits high plant-availability. The novel method also has low emissions. The additional energy requirements should be reduced. However, with regards to sewage sludge P recovery is more important than energy recovery. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we conducted a hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate reductions in CO2 emissions by food waste biogasification of household food wastes in Japan. Two alternative scenarios were examined. In one alternative (Ref), all combustible municipal solid wastes (MSWs), including food waste, are incinerated. In the other (Bio), food waste is biogasified, while the other combustible wastes are incinerated. An inventory analysis of energy and material flow in the MSW management system was conducted. Subsequently, the inventory data were summarized into an input-output format, and a make-use input-output framework was applied. Furthermore, a production equilibrium model was established using a matrix representing the input output relationship of energy and materials among the processes and sectors. Several levels of power generation efficiency from incineration were applied as a sensitivity analysis. The hybrid LCA indicated that the difference between the Bio and Ref scenarios, from the perspective of CO2 emissions, is relatively small. However, a 13-14% reduction of CO2 emissions of the total waste management sector in Japan may be achieved by improving the efficiency of power generation from incineration from 10% to 25%.The environmental profile of two municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) technologies with semi-dry flue gas cleaning, namely grated firing incinerators (GFI) and fluidised bed incinerators (FBI) that are commonly used in China were evaluated and compared by life-cycle assessment (LCA) using the EASEWASTE model. All emissions of key pollutants as well as energy, resource and material inputs and outputs associated with the two MSWI technologies were determined and the corresponding environmental impact potentials were modelled. Incineration of MSW with a lower heating value (LHV) around 4.5 MJ kg(-1) demands that auxiliary fuel is used, and both GFI and FBI caused environmental loads by contributing with environmental impact potentials in most categories except for some saving in global warming (GW100) and hazardous waste (HW). Coal combustion in FBI is a main contributor to the environmental impact potentials and thus should always be limited to a minimum. Auxiliary fuels can be avoided when the LHV of MSW is higher than 5-6 MJ kg(-1). For all scenarios, GFI saves more global warming potentials than FBI due to its higher net power generation from combustion of MSW itself. Leachate from the bunker could be sprayed into the furnace for evaporation under high temperature, as an alternative to waste-water treatment, without major changes in the environmental profile of the incinerator. The presented evaluations may contribute to a more balanced environmental assessment of the two incineration technologies with respect to incineration of MSW with low heating values as often found in Asia and China.Agricultural systems are important for world ecosystems. They can be managed to moderate CO(2) emissions. World soils can be both a sink and source of atmospheric CO(2), but it is a slow process. Data from long-term soil management experiments are needed to assess soil carbon (C) sink capacity through a complete life cycle analysis of direct and hidden C changes. Eight commonly used agricultural systems in northern Appalachia (OH, USA) were tested after 38 year to assess the magnitude of the soil C pool. Only a forest ecosystem and a no-tillage corn (Zea mays L.) crop plus manure increased soil organic carbon (SOC) by 37.3 and 33.3 Mg C ha(-1), respectively; meanwhile monoculture corn and/or no-tillage practices maintained the SOC level over the period. Thus, most of north Appalachian agriculture, with current practices, does not contribute to C sequestration. Improved agricultural practices for no-tillage continuous corn should include cultivars with higher residue production (above- and belowground) and slower decomposition rates in order to increase SOC sequestration. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of bioenergy products have received a great deal of attention. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a widely accepted method to quantify the environmental impacts of products. Conducting comprehensive LCAs for every possible bioenergy alternative is difficult because of the sheer magnitude of potential biomass sources and energy end products. The scopes of LCAs are often simplified to compare multiple products on the basis of greenhouse gas emissions and net energy balances, and may neglect equally important considerations such as nitrogen and land use. This study determines the most desirable energy crops on the basis of nitrogen and land use. The theoretical minimum nitrogen and land use requirements of fourteen bioenergy feedstocks are evaluated. These results can help prioritize certain feedstock crops for more in-depth life cycle analyses and can be used to inform policies on dedicated energy crops. The results of the study indicate that sugar cane has the best nitrogen and land use profile of the analyzed feedstocks. Sugar cane is the largest contributor to bioenergy production worldwide and is an effective policy choice from a nutrient and land use perspective. Conversely, soybeans and rapeseed are the least effective biomass sources with respect to land use and nitrogen requirements, yet these crops are also used to meet biofuel production targets worldwide. These results indicate current energy policies either do not consider or undervalue nitrogen and land use impacts, which could lead to unsustainable recommendations. Interestingly, when both nitrogen and land intensity are taken into account, reasonably small differences are seen between the remainder of the analyzed feedstocks, indicating an inherent trade-off between energy yield and nitrogen impacts.The prospect of biofuel production on a large scale has focused attention on energy efficiencies associated with different agricultural systems and production goals. We used 17 years of detailed data on agricultural practices and yields to calculate an energy balance for different cropping systems under both food and fuel scenarios. We compared four grain and one forage systems in the U.S. Midwest corn (Zea mays) - soybean (Glycine max) - wheat (Triticum aestivum) rotations managed with (1) conventional tillage, (2) no till, (3) low chemical input, and (4) biologically based (organic) practices, and (5) continuous alfalfa (Medicago sativa). We compared energy balances under two scenarios: all harvestable biomass used for food versus all harvestable biomass used for biofuel production. Among the annual grain crops, average energy costs of farming for the different systems ranged from 4.8 GJ ha(-1) y(-1) for the organic system to 7.1 GJ ha(-1) y(-1) for the conventional; the no-till system was also low at 4.9 GJ ha(-1) y(-1) and the low-chemical input system intermediate (5.2 GJ ha(-1) y(-1)). For each system, the average energy output for food was always greater than that for fuel. Overall energy efficiencies ranged from output:input ratios of 10 to 16 for conventional and no-till food production and from 7 to 11 for conventional and no-till fuel production, respectively. Alfalfa for fuel production had an efficiency similar to that of no-till grain production for fuel. Our analysis points to a more energetically efficient use of cropland for food than for fuel production and large differences in efficiencies attributable to management, which suggests multiple opportunities for improvement.Crop residues are a critical component of the sustainable energy and natural resource strategy within a country. In this study, we use hybrid life-cycle environmental and economic analyses to evaluate and compare the atmospheric chemical, climatic, ecological, and economic issues associated with a set of energy conversion technologies that use crop residues for various energy demands in China. Our analysis combines conventional process-based life cycle assessment with economic input-output life cycle assessment. The results show that the return of crop residues to the fields, silo/amination and anaerobic digestion (household scale) offer the greatest ecological benefits, with net greenhouse gas reduction costs of US$3.1/tC, US$11.5/tC, and US$14.9/tC, respectively. However, if a positive net income for market-oriented operations is the overriding criterion for technology selection, the cofiring of crop residues with coal and crop residue gasification for power generation offer greater economic scope and technical feasibility, with net incomes of US$4.4/Mg and US$4.9/Mg, respectively. We identify that poor economies of scale and the absence of key technologies mean that enterprises that use pure combustion for power generation (US$212/tC), gasification for heat generation (US$366/tC) and large-scale anaerobic digestion for power generation (US$169/tC) or heat generation (US$206/tC) are all prone to operational deficits. In the near term, the Chinese government should also be cautious about any large-scale investment in bioethanol derived from crop residues because, with a carbon price of as high as US$748/tC, bioethanol is the most expensive of all energy conversion technologies in China.Display devices such as cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer monitors are known to contain toxic substances and have consequently been banned from disposal in landfills in the State of California and elsewhere. New types of flat panel display (FPD) devices, millions of which are now purchased each year, also contain toxic substances, but have not previously been systematically studied and compared to assess the potential impact that could result from their ultimate disposal. In the current work, the focus is on the evaluation of end-of-life toxicity potential from the heavy metal content in select FPD devices with the intent to inform material selection and design-for-environment (DfE) decisions. Specifically, the metals antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, selenium, silver, vanadium, and zinc in plasma TVs, LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs, LCD computer monitors and laptop computers are considered. The human health and ecotoxicity potentials are evaluated through a life cycle assessment perspective by combining data on the respective heavy metal contents, the characterization factors in the U.S. EPA Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts (TRACI), and a pathway and impact model. Principal contributors to the toxicity potentials are lead, arsenic, copper, and mercury. Although the heavy metal content in newer flat panel display devices creates less human health toxicity potential than that in CRTs, for ecological toxicity, the new devices are worse, especially because of the mercury in LCD TVs and the copper in plasma TVs. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The main objective of this paper is to study and quantify the differences in energy consumption and environmental impacts of two dwellings during the full building life cycle: one in Spain, a developed country, and one in Colombia, a country under development. In both scenarios, we assessed the construction, use and end-of-life phases. Results show that the use phase in the Pamplona house (Colombia) represents a lower percentage for all impacts in the total than in the Barcelona house (Spain). The findings of this study showed that the difference in consumption in Colombia and Spanish dwellings analysed is not only due to the variation in results for bio-climatic differences but also because of the consumption habits in each country. The importance of consumption habits of citizens and the need to decouple socio-economic development from energy consumption are sought for achieving sustainability from a life cycle perspective. There is a crucial necessity to provide satisfaction to basic needs and comfort requirements of population with reasonable and sustainable energy consumption. Then, the type of standard dwelling varies substantially depending on the geographic location where it is built. Climate, technological, cultural, socio-economical differences clearly define the standard of a building in any context and in any region. However, the function is always the same, to provide protection and housing for its habitants. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Microalgae provide various potential advantages for biofuel production when compared with 'traditional' crops. Specifically, large-scale microalgal culture need not compete for arable land, while in theory their productivity is greater. In consequence, there has been resurgence in interest and a proliferation of algae fuel projects. However, while on a theoretical basis, microalgae may produce between 10- and 100-fold more oil per acre, such capacities have not been validated on a commercial scale. We critically review current designs of algal culture facilities, including photobioreactors and open ponds, with regards to photosynthetic productivity and associated biomass and oil production and include an analysis of alternative approaches using models, balancing space needs, productivity and biomass concentrations, together with nutrient requirements. In the light of the current interest in synthetic genomics and genetic modifications, we also evaluate the options for potential metabolic engineering of the lipid biosynthesis pathways of microalgae. We conclude that although significant literature exists on microalgal growth and biochemistry, significantly more work needs to be undertaken to understand and potentially manipulate algal lipid metabolism. Furthermore, with regards to chemical upgrading of algal lipids and biomass, we describe alternative fuel synthesis routes, and discuss and evaluate the application of catalysts traditionally used for plant oils. Simulations that incorporate financial elements, along with fluid dynamics and algae growth models, are likely to be increasingly useful for predicting reactor design efficiency and life cycle analysis to determine the viability of the various options for large-swcale culture. The greatest potential for cost reduction and increased yields most probably lies within closed or hybrid closed-open production systems.Structural ceramics were manufactured from industrial byproducts and lime by a compression moulding/vacuum dewatering technique. Treatment of these ceramics with supercritical carbon dioxide was found to both significantly increase their flexural strength and activate cementation in the industrial byproducts at least as efficiently as heat curing. Flexural strengths of up to 10 MPa were achieved. Strength improvements were associated with decreased porosity and conversion of calcium hydroxide to calcium carbonate. Life cycle assessment of proposed products made from such materials indicated that the total reduction in embodied carbon dioxide achieved, as a result of combining use of byproducts with recombination of carbon dioxide, was up to 70%.By applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) it is possible to evaluate the environmental impact of the construction phase starting from the building materials, transport to the construction site, the energy consumed by machinery, and the disposal of material and packaging wastes. Therefore, a typical Catalonian building with external and internal walls has been applied as a case study. Results shows that the total life cycle mass of all construction materials consumed was determined to be 1.88E+03 kg/m(2) in which structure represented 41%, foundation 25% and walls (ext./int.) 11%. The total climate change impact during the fabrication phase is 8.40E+02 kg CO(2)-Eq/m(2). The total energy used during the construction phase is 2.88E+04 MJ (4% for renewable and 96% for non-renewable resources). Finally, comparing the different alternatives for waste management, the scenario of incineration is the best environmental option, except for the category of resource consumption in which the best option is recycling.We modelled the financial and environmental costs of two commonly used anaesthetic plastic drug trays. We proposed that, compared with single-use trays, reusable trays are less expensive, consume less water and produce less carbon dioxide, and that routinely adding cotton and paper increases financial and environmental costs. We used life cycle assessment to model the financial and environmental costs of reusable and single-use trays. From our life cycle assessment modelling, the reusable tray cost (Australian dollars) $0.23 (95% confidence interval [CI] $0.21 to $0.25) while the single-use tray alone cost $0.47 (price range of $0.42 to $0.52) and the single-use tray with cotton and gauze added was $0.90 (no price range in Melbourne). Production of CO(2) was 110 g CO2(95% Cl 98 to 122 g CO(2)) for the reusable tray, 126 g (95% CI 104 to 151 g) for single-use trays alone (mean difference of 16 g, 95% CI -8 to 40g) and 204 g CO(2) (95% CI 166 to 268 g CO(2)) for the single-use trays with cotton and paper Water use was 3.1 l (95% CI 2.5 to 3.7 l) for the reusable tray 10.4 l (95% CI 8.2 to 12.7 l) for the single-use tray and 26.7 l (95% CI 20.5 to 35.4 l) for the single-use tray with cotton and paper Compared with reusable plastic trays, single-use trap alone cost twice as much, produced 15% more CO(2) and consumed three times the amount of water Packaging cotton gauze and paper with single-use trays markedly increased the financial, energy and water costs. On both financial and environmental grounds it appears difficult to justify the use of single-use drug trays.Fuel cells own the potential for significant environmental improvements both in terms of air quality and climate protection. Through the use of renewable primary energies, local pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions can be significantly minimized over the full life cycle of the electricity generation process, so that marine industry accounts renewable energy as its future energy source. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the use of methanol in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC), as auxiliary power systems for commercial vessels, through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The LCA methodology allows the assessment of the potential environmental impact along the whole life cycle of the process. The unit considered is a 20 kWel fuel cell system. In a first part of the study different fuel options have been compared (methanol, bio-methanol, natural gas, hydrogen from cracking, electrolysis and reforming), then the operation of the cell fed with methanol has been compared with the traditional auxiliary power system, i.e. a diesel engine. The environmental benefits of the use of fuel cells have been assessed considering different impact categories. The results of the analysis show that fuel production phase has a strong influence on the life cycle impacts and highlight that feeding with bio-methanol represents a highly attractive solution from a life cycle point of view. The comparison with the conventional auxiliary power system shows extremely lower impacts for SOFCs. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses how different actors influence the sorting quality of waste at recycling centres. Users (i.e. citizens) play an essential role since they conduct the actual sorting. They have difficulties sorting many of their discarded products, leading to decreased performance of the entire waste management system of which recycling centres are a part. Several measures addressing this problem are identified such as product design, improved terminology for labelling waste and increased manning at recycling centres. A fundamental task for managers and employees is to further develop information and guidance for users, both at home and at recycling centres. Several obstacles for improvements are also discussed, including working conditions and the economy of recycling centres, as well as the routines for communication and quality assurance among actors in the recycling business. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Grassland is a beneficial landscape for numerous reasons including potential to sequester carbon in the soil. Cross compliance dictates that grassland should not be converted to arable land; this is particularly interesting in Ireland where 91% of agricultural land is under grass. Biogas generated from grass and further upgraded to biomethane has been shown to offer a better energy balance than first-generation liquid biofuels indigenous to Europe. The essential question is whether the gaseous biofuel meets the EU sustainability criteria of 60% greenhouse gas emission savings. The base-case scenario investigated included: utilization of electricity from the grid; over-sizing heated digestion tanks to hold digestate in the winter period; vehicular efficiency 82% of that of a diesel vehicle; and no allowance for carbon sequestration. The analysis of the base case showed a reduction in emissions of 21.5%. However by varying the system, using electricity from wind, improving digester configuration, and by using a vehicle optimized for gaseous fuel, a reduction of 54% was evaluated. Furthermore allowing for 0.6 t carbon sequestration per hectare per annum the reduction increased to 75%. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe environmental and social sustainability of biofuel production and use is today the most critical issue for the development of support policies in this sector. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is commonly agreed as the main tool for the estimation of the impact of biofuel chains, even in quantitative terms. This is also reflected in the recently issued EU Directive (Renewable Energy Directive, RED) on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources. However, the results of Life Cycle Assessment works largely depend on the quality of the information given as input to the study, as also very recent research works started to investigate: in addition, the comparison of a large number of very different (technically, geographically, agronomically) biofuel chains, as some Life Cycle Assessments and reviews tried to do, is a very difficult task due to the extremely large number of variable conditions and parameters. This paper, by considering a very specific biofuel chain (production and use of Pure/Straight Sunflower Oil in North-Central Italy), discuss some limits and constraints of the application of the LCA method. The work investigated within which boundaries Life Cycle Assessment could be implemented to perform quantitative assessments, as requested by the current supporting policies in the biofuel area. Results showed very large variations in the calculation of the CO2 equivalent emissions, thus illustrating how achievable results depends on the local agricultural practices and performances, even for such a small and well defined biofuel chain. The adoption of the present standardized Life Cycle Assessment approach for generalized evaluations in the bioenergy sector and, in particular, for quantitative assessments should therefore be reconsidered. Concluding, LCA studies, even while addressing very specific and well defined chains, should always provide the bias of the calculations, as this range of variation of Life Cycle Assessment results could be significantly greater than the initially set quantitative targets and therefore the whole investigation would be at risks of inconsistency. Proposals are finally given for small scale projects, with the aim of developing sound but realistic processes to assess biofuel sustainability. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Micro-generators have the potential to reduce carbon emissions and enhance energy security by providing heat or electricity either from renewable sources, or via the more efficient use of fossil fuels. Such potential is often, however, unquantified or unclear, and hence a thermodynamic and related carbon analysis of micro-generators for UK household energy supply has been performed. Where pertinent, the thermodynamic concept of exergy is employed alongside that of energy. Analysis begins with a description of the established methods of energy supply to, and use within, typical UK households. On these foundations a grid-tied micro-wind turbine, a grid-tied solar photovoltaic array, and a solar hot-water system are analysed. Annual outputs are estimated and contextualised against the demands of representative households. The annual energy-resource and carbon savings provided by the micro-generators are determined on the basis that they (partially) displace the established supply systems. Savings are then compared with the energy-resource and carbon-emission 'debts' of the micro-generators, to assess the latter's net performance. Given appropriate installations, all three micro-generators are found to provide significant net energy and carbon benefits, confirming that all three technologies can provide net reductions in both carbon emissions and dependence on conventional energy resources. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Geothermal binary power plants that use low-temperature heat sources have gained increasing interest in the recent years due to political efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the consumption of finite energy resources. The construction of such plants requires large amounts of energy and material. Hence, the question arises if geothermal binary power plants are also environmentally promising from a cradle-to-grave point of view. In this context, a comprehensive Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) on geothermal power production from EGS (enhanced geothermal systems) low-temperature reservoirs is performed. The results of the analysis show that the environmental impacts are very much influenced by the geological conditions that can be obtained at a specific site. At sites with (above-) average geological conditions, geothermal binary power generation can significantly contribute to more sustainable power supply. At sites with less favorable conditions, only certain plant designs can make up for the energy and material input to lock up the geothermal reservoir by the provided energy. The main aspects of environmentally sound plants are enhancement of the reservoir productivity, reliable design of the deep wells and an efficient utilization of the geothermal fluid for net power and district heat production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment is applied to assess the environmental benefits and trade-offs of a solar-assisted heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system installed in the CIESOL building in Almeria (southeastern Spain). The environmental performance of this system is compared to that of a conventional HVAC system using a heat pump. The study evaluates these systems from cradle to grave, and the impact assessment includes, in addition to the CML2001 method, an impact category dealing with impacts on freshwater resources. The results show that the solar-assisted HVAC involves lower impacts in many impact categories, achieving, as an example, a reduction of 80% in greenhouse-gas emissions. On the other hand, key weak points of this system are the production of capital goods, but specially water use for cooling, due to its high impact on freshwater resources. Minimization of water requirements should be a priority for further development of this promising technology.Existing wastewater treatment options are generally perceived as energy intensive and environmentally unfriendly. Much attention has been focused on two new approaches in the past years, (i) microbial fuel cells and (ii) microbial electrolysis cells, which directly generate electrical current or chemical products, respectively, during wastewater treatment. These systems are commonly denominated as bioelectrochemical systems, and a multitude of claims have been made in the past regarding the environmental impact of these treatment options. However, an in-depth study backing these claims has not been performed. Here, we have conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental impact of three industrial wastewater treatment options, (i) anaerobic treatment with biogas generation, (ii) a microbial fuel cell treatment, with direct electricity generation, and (iii) a microbial electrolysis cell, with hydrogen peroxide production. Our analysis showed that a microbial fuel cell does not provide a significant environmental benefit relative to the "conventional" anaerobic treatment option. However, a microbial electrolysis cell provides significant environmental benefits through the displacement of chemical production by conventional means. Provided that the target conversion level of 1000 A.m(-3) can be met, the decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmentally harmful emissions (e.g., aromatic hydrocarbons) of the microbial electrolysis cell will be a key driver for the development of an industrial standard for this technology. Evidently, this assessment is highly dependent on the underlying assumptions, such as the used reactor materials and target performance. This provides a challenge and an opportunity for researchers in the field to select and develop appropriate and environmentally benign materials of construction, as well as demonstrate the required 1000 A.m(-3) performance at pilot and full scale.This study is focused on the province-wide emissions in Ontario, Canada and urban air pollution in the city of Toronto. The life-cycle (LC) impacts of utilizing alternative fuels for transportation purposes is considered in terms of six major stressors for climate change, acidification and urban air quality. The vehicles considered are plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) and fuel cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (FCPHEVs). Modeling of the penetration rates for these types of vehicles has been completed based on the maximum base-load capacity of Ontario's electricity grid to accommodate the generation of hydrogen and charging of vehicles using grid electricity. Results show that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from adoption of PHEVs or FCVs will exceed 3% of the current emissions from the transportation sector in Ontario while FCPHEVs may achieve almost twice this reduction. All vehicles exhibit similar impacts on the precursors for photochemical smog although the province-wide effects differ significantly. (C) 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.About 143,000 industrial chemicals have been pre-registered at the European Chemical Agency for registration according to REACH. The tools, models, and regressions employed for the chemical safety assessment of the registered compounds have limited applicability domains. Thus, it is an important question which fraction of the pre-registered compounds falls into these applicability domains. A random sample of 1,510 compounds out of the similar to 117,000 chemicals pre-registered at the European Chemicals Agency and due to registration by 2010 and 2013 was analyzed to investigate the physico-chemical domain of REACH substances. The chemical structure was identified from the CAS number, and the software ACD/Labs was used to calculate dissociation constant(s) (pK (a)), octanol-water partition coefficient (log P) and vapor pressure of the neutral molecule. Four hundred ninety-one (33%) of the 1,510 compounds are mostly ionized at pH 7 (i.e., acids pK (a) < 7, bases pK (a) > 7). Twenty-seven percent of compounds are acids with pK (a) < 12, 14% bases with pK (a) > 2, and 8% ampholytes or zwitterionics. Almost half of the ionizable compounds (267 out of 1,510 compounds or 18%) with pK (a) between 2 and 12 are even multivalent. There is a high occurrence of hydrophilic chemicals (30% with log P < 1), but super-lipophilic chemicals are frequent as well (10% with log P > 6). Most chemicals are non- or semi-volatile: the vapor pressure is < 1 Pa for 65% and > 100 Pa only for 13%. This preliminary characterization of the REACH chemical space helps to identify most urgent gaps of existing in silico tools that are going to be applied in the context of REACH. These data may also be used to select representative sets of test chemicals for the development of new QSARs and models.The biannual Life Cycle Management conference series aims to create a platform for users and developers of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and related tools to share their experiences. A key concern of the LCM community has been to move beyond the production of LCA reports toward using the developed knowledge. This paper reports and evaluates some of the main outcomes of the 4th International Life Cycle Management Conference (LCM 2009). Conference focus: While the focus of the conference was LCM, LCA remains a main analytical tool for supporting LCM. This is clearly shown by the overall program in which roughly half of the contributions focused on or used LCA. Some products and resources and environmental themes were markedly represented in the presentation subjects. Conference participation: The 180 delegates included 40 South Africans, 20 from other African countries, and 140 from as far afield as Brazil, Sweden, Japan, and Australia. The surveyable number of delegates and conference rooms, in combination with the well-balanced scientific and social program, facilitated optimal professional exchange and discussion. Conference structure: LCM 2009 featured some 140 contributions from 47 leading environmental practitioners, consultants, and academic researchers. The interactive conference format included three plenary sessions and training workshops. LCM 2009 successfully engaged with the critical questions of what it means to manage (not merely shift) the environmental and social impacts of global economic activity, what this entails for industry and public services in emerging economies, and how supply chains, networks, and partnerships can be stimulated and managed to deliver truly sustainable practice.This paper presents the results of the LCA of wine production in the region of La Rioja (Spain). The aim of this study was twofold: to identify the most critical life cycle stages of an aged Spanish wine from the point of view of the associated environmental impacts and to compare its environmental performance with that of other wines and beers for which comparable information could be found in the scientific literature. All the product's life cycle stages were accounted for, namely: grapes cultivation (viticulture), wine making and bottling, distribution and sales, and disposal of empty bottles. Foreground data were directly obtained from wine producers, farmers, and oenologists; background data were instead sourced from the GaBi professional database. In order to limit the uncertainty and subjectivity of the results, the choice was made to only employ midpoint indicators of environmental impact (global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical ozone creation potential), in addition to gross energy requirement (GER) and water demand (WD). The calculated environmental indicators were allocated to the following co-products on the basis of the associated economic revenues: wine, pomace, lees, and press syrup. The avoided impacts associated to electricity generation were accounted for according to the displaced marginal technology. The GWP of Rioja wine was found to lie between 900 and 1,000 g(CO(2)-eq)/bottle, depending on the assumed distribution scenario. GER is around 8-9 MJ/bottle, and WD is approximately 5 kg/bottle. The most relevant life cycle stages from the point of view of most of the considered impact categories were found to be viticulture (and fertilizer use in particular) and the production of glass for the bottles. Transportation of the wine and final disposal of the empty bottles cumulatively account for a maximum of 30% of the overall impact, depending on the specific indicator and the assumed distribution scenario. The analysis appears to be in good agreement with previous literature studies, the results of which lie within a comparatively narrow range. Within such range, the more upmarket Rioja wine can arguably be seen as providing a greater net benefit to the economy per unit of impact. The present analysis has shed light on which are the two main environmental bottlenecks in the life cycle of industrialized wine, namely viticulture and glass production for bottle manufacture; GWP results are in the same range as those from previous literature studies. New insight is also provided on a possible measure of "economic return on environmental investment." As it stands, the study presented here is arguably among the most complete and transparent analyses in the alcoholic beverage sector. It could be further enhanced at a later stage by also including those secondary sub-processes which were cut off due to lack of available data (including herbicides and pesticides). As for cross-comparability, it would be recommendable for all authors to never omit presenting their results in terms of transparent, disaggregated impact indicators.Worldwide, the production of biodegradable and compostable plastics has steadily grown. In Part 1 (Khoo et al. 2010), life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to compare the production stages of a bio-based bag (made from polyhydroxyalkanoate or bio-plastic (PHA)) with polyethylene plastic bag. The scope of the study is within the context of Singapore and does not include other types of conventional or bio-based polymers (e.g., polylactic acid (PLA), thermoplastics, high-density polyethylene (HDPE), EPS, etc). This article (part 2) proposes to investigate the end-of-life options of both bags. For part 2, the same LCA methodology is used for the investigation. The LCA system for part 2 starts with disposal options: (1) land filling at Singapore's offshore Semakau Island, (2) incineration, and the (3) composting of bio-bag. Two useful products, energy and compost, will be produced from options 2 and 3, respectively. While the energy from the incineration of both bags are fed back into the LCA production stage, compost from bio-bags can be used as a peat substitute, thus generating carbon dioxide savings from reduced peat production. The end-of-life environmental impacts were generated for global warming potential, acidification, and photochemical ozone formation. A landfill impact, based on Singapore's offshore landfill capacity, was also generated. Next, the environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of both products are calculated for a few scenarios-from cradle-to-grave. The highest end-of-life impacts are observed from the land filling of bio-bags. Next highest disposal impacts are from incineration, and least of all (minimal) from the composting of bio-bags. The greenhouse gas savings from peat substitutes derived from the compost material is rather insignificant. Overall, the cradle-to-grave results demonstrates that the environmental burdens generated from any of the disposal options are less significant compared to those from both products' life cycle production stages. Unless plans for energy recovery systems are in place, the least preferred route for the disposal of bio-bags are at landfills. From the trend of the final cradle-to-grave results, it can be claimed that the life cycle production of bio-bags from PHA can only be considered as environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional plastic bags if clean energy sources are supplied throughout its production processes. This claim was in agreement with other LCA work carried out for the life cycle production of PHA, with the supply of energy by corn stover waste or the consideration of wind power supply in the replacement of grid electricity. It was also observed, however, that some of the results in this article vary from other LCA work carried out by other authors. Some of the reasons included variations in LCA scope and the different range of materials investigated (PLA, HDPE, and thermoplastic starch). Presently, the wide range of LCA work carried out on biodegradable polymers differs considerably in the amount of reported background data and the level of detail concerning the LCA system and production methods. A globally accepted as well as concerted effort to describe in detail the life cycle production steps involved, disposal options, type of energy supplied to the production chain, for a well-selected range of polymer materials should be conducted. Meanwhile, it is recommended that a conservative approach is required in introducing bio-based carrier bags as a solution for solving plastic waste issues. Future LCA investigations should also look into the reuse of carrier bags, which is anticipated to bring much greater environmental and sustainable benefit than the replacement of bio-bags with plastic ones.Packaging uses nearly 40% of all polymers, a substantial share of which is used for sensitive merchandise such as moisture-sensitive food. To find out if bio-based materials are environmentally advantageous for this demanding application, we compared laminated, printed film across the whole life cycle. We compared bio-based materials (paper, polylactic acid, bio-based polyethylene, and a bio-based polyester) as well as conventional ones (polypropylene, polyethylene). Data stemmed from 13 companies that produce raw materials, films and/or laminates and which co-operated with us in a project commissioned by a large food producer. The functional unit chosen for this study is 1 m(2) of packaging film. This is (mostly) laminated, printed film that is delivered on reels to the food industry, where the laminate is cut, sealed and filled. The impact assessment is presented for non-renewable energy use, total energy use, global warming potential, depletion of abiotic resources, photo-oxidant formation, acidification, eutrophication, water use, and land use. For Inner Packs that get in direct contact with food and therefore require certain barrier properties, the environmental performance of many laminates is not better than the reference, petrochemical material. However, our study shows that paper/polypropylene laminates perform equally well as the current material (polypropylene) if the material is landfilled, and better if incinerated with energy recovery. For Outer Packs, bio-based polyethylene film shows a particularly low environmental impact. Paper/bio-based polyester laminates also offer significant savings compared with the current material. For Inner as well as Outer Packs, laminates including polylactic acid offer environmental advantages when accounting for wind credits or when assuming a future technology level for polymer or film production. Increased technology maturity of PLA and cellulose in the film production stage offers significant environmental improvement with respect to global warming potential compared with today's technology. Though large, the uncertainty regarding the degree of degradation of paper, cellulose, PLA and bio-based polyester, is not decisive for the conclusions. Generally, laminates and films (partly) consisting of bio-based polymers offer opportunities for significantly reducing environmental impacts of food packaging. Large variations in land-use are possible depending on the type of bio-based material that is used. The environmental advantages differ depending on the polymer and the final product (Inner vs. Outer Pack). Lack of experience and investment in converting bio-based polymers into final products and comparatively unfavourable material properties result in lower environmental advantages for some novel bio-based materials than one may expect. However, a) already today, the options with the lowest global warming potential are partly or fully bio-based and b) bio-based materials will benefit more from technological progress than conventional materials, potentially making certain bio-based laminates highly attractive options for the future. Overall, Outer Packs are more promising than Inner Packs when introducing bio-based wrappings to replace the current petrochemical material because a) the opportunities are clearer for this application and b) the product specifications (required barrier properties) are less demanding. Starting with the Outer Packs would also allow bio-based polymer producers and processors to invest and learn, thus offering the opportunity to reduce the environmental impact even further.Although life cycle assessment is frequently used in scientific studies of product comparison, many practitioners are looking for improvements in the normalisation, grouping and weighting of life cycle inventory results. Local conditions, which are well known to local experts, are very important to these steps. The goal of this work was to develop a computer-based decision support system for classifying wood products according to their influence on the environment in their whole life cycle. The model specifically addresses local conditions in the Republic of Slovenia and was developed by Slovenian experts. We used the approach of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM). We developed a multi-attribute model that includes key parameters that influence the burdening of environment. The parameters are organised into a hierarchical structure with several levels in such a way that they form a hierarchy with unidirectional hierarchical relationships between levels. The aggregation of parameter values is carried out by utility functions which were defined according to the analytic hierarchy process method on the basis of 52 experts' findings, which were gathered with the Delphi method in three rounds. The main result is a multi-criteria model for the assessment of wooden products. The model consists of 104 criteria, grouped into 28 subtrees, addressing various processes of production. Each criterion in the model has an associated weight, and each entry criterion has an entry function. The model has been used to assess different product concepts with the purpose of supporting decision making for the environmentally most suitable product concept and for analysing products with the intention of finding out more environmentally friendly products. The weights in the model indicate that a preliminary production of auxiliary materials and energy consumption represents the biggest impact of wooden products on the environment. In preliminary production, the most problematic are preservatives, coating systems and glues. In energy production, the most influential are gasoline and petroleum. Emissions are most affected through water and air, whereas solid wastes and energy emissions are less important. With wastewaters, the most critical is the presence of organic criteria. With waste air, more important is waste air appearing directly in the production and less the smoke gases from devices for acquiring heat and electricity. The presented multi-attribute model is aimed at classifying and comparing products according to their environmental burden in the entire wood product life cycle. The comparison can be carried out not only at the level of entire products but is also decomposed into hierarchically structured criteria. The decomposition reveals distinctive advantages and disadvantages of a product compared to others. The MCDM approach enables a relatively easy adaptation of the model where the changes have only a local effect. Entry data can be provided either directly in a numerical form or indirectly through pairwise comparison of alternatives. The model is restricted in the sense that it specifically addresses local conditions and legislation of the Republic of Slovenia. The parts of the model that address emissions depend on Slovenian legislation and would require an adaptation to other countries. Other parts are fairly general. In order to compare wood products with other alternative or substitutive products, the set of criteria had to be expanded. We also suggest expanding the model with the aspects of working conditions and socioeconomic consequences of production.Pulp and paper production is one of the most important Portuguese economic activities. Mostly based on eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus), nearly 70% of the pulp produced is exported, mainly to the European Union. The aim of this paper is to compare the environmental impacts of the production of Portuguese printing and writing paper based on eucalyptus with those from the production of paper from industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa). We have used a life cycle assessment approach to compare both types of paper. The functional unit used was a ton of white printing and writing paper. Data was mostly derived from the Portuguese literature for eucalyptus and from scientific literature for hemp. The impact categories/indicators taken into account were global warming, photochemical oxidant formation (summer smog), acidification, eutrophication, and direct land use. Industrial hemp presents higher environmental impacts than eucalyptus paper in all environmental categories analyzed. The main differences are in the crop and the pulp production stages. This is because hemp makes use of higher number of mechanical operations and larger amounts of fertilizer in the former and larger amounts of chemical additives in the latter. There is scope for improving industrial hemp paper production. We present some suggestions on how to reduce some of the environmental impacts identified for hemp, so that the pulp and paper industry can continue its progress towards a more environmentally friendly paper production. New studies could be based on the alternatives presented throughout the paper for improving hemp paper. Further studies should incorporate analyses on water consumption, soil erosion, soil nutrient depletion, and impacts on biodiversity.A relatively broad consensus has formed that the purpose of developing and using the social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is to improve the social conditions for the stakeholders affected by the assessed product's life cycle. To create this effect, the SLCA, among other things, needs to provide valid assessments of the consequence of the decision that it is to support. The consequence of a decision to implement a life cycle of a product can be seen as the difference between the decision being implemented and 'non-implemented' product life cycle. This difference can to some extent be found using the consequential environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) methodology to identify the processes that change as a consequence of the decision. However, if social impacts are understood as certain changes in the lives of the stakeholders, then social impacts are not only related to product life cycles, meaning that by only assessing impacts related to the processes that change as a consequence of a decision, not all changes in the life situations of the stakeholders will be captured by an assessment following the consequential ELCA methodology. This article seeks to identify these impacts relating to the non-implemented product life cycle and establish indicators for their assessment. A conceptual overview of the non-implemented life cycle situation is established, and the impacts which may be expected from this situation are identified, based on theories and empirical findings from relevant fields of research. Where possible, indicators are proposed for the measurement of the identified impacts. In relation to the workers in the life cycle, the non-implemented life cycle situation may lead to increased levels of unemployment. Unemployment has important social impacts on the workers; however, depending on the context, these impacts may vary significantly. The context can to some extent be identified and based on this, indicators are proposed to assess the impacts of unemployment. In relation to the product user, it was not possible to identify impacts of the non-implemented life cycle on a generic basis. The assessment of the non-implemented life cycle situation increases the validity of the SLCA but at the same time adds a considerable extra task when performing an SLCA. It is therefore discussed to what extent its assessment could be avoided. It is argued that this depends on whether the assessment will still meet the minimum criterion for validity of the assessment, that the assessment should be better than random in indicating the decision alternative with the most favourable social impacts. Based on this, it is concluded that the assessment of the non-implemented life cycle cannot be avoided since an assessment not taking into account the impacts of the non-implemented life cycle will not fulfil this minimum criterion. To mitigate the task of assessing the impacts of the non-implemented life cycle, new research areas are suggested, relating to simpler ways of performing the assessment as well as to investigations of whether the effect of SLCA can be created through other and potentially simpler assessments than providing an assessment of the consequences of a decision as addressed here.A characterisation model based on multi-criteria indicators has been developed for each of four impact categories representing the labour rights according to the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) covering: forced labour, discrimination, restrictions of freedom of association and collective bargaining and child labour (Dreyer et al., Int J Life Cycle Assess, 2010a, in press). These impact categories are considered by the authors to be among the obligatory impact categories in a Social LCA. The characterisation models combine information about the way a company manages its behaviour towards some of its important stakeholders, its employees, with information about the geographical location and branch of industry of the company and the risk of violations of these workers' rights inherent in the setting of the company. The result is an indicator score which for each impact category represents the risk that violations occur in the company. In order to test the feasibility and relevance of the developed methodology, it is tested on real cases. The developed characterisation models are applied to six cases representing individual manufacturing companies from three different continents. Five of the case companies are manufacturing companies while the sixth is a knowledge company. The application involves scoring the management efforts of the case company in a multi-criteria scorecard and translating the scores into an aggregated performance score, which represents the effort of the management in order to prevent violations of the workers' rights to occur in the company. The company performance score is multiplied by a contextual adjustment score which reflects the risk of violations taking place in the context (in terms of geographical location or industrial branch or sector) of the company. The resulting indicator score represents the risk that violations take place of the labour right represented by the impact category. The social impact characterisation is performed for each of the six case studies using the methodology earlier developed. The procedure and outcome are documented through all the intermediary results shown for all four obligatory impact categories for each of the six case studies. The results are judged against the risk which was observed during visits and interviews at each of the six case companies, and their realism and relevance are discussed. They are found to be satisfactory for all four impact categories for the manufacturing companies, but there are some problems for two of the impact categories in the case company which represents knowledge work, and it is discussed how these problems may be addressed through change of the underlying scorecard or the way in which the scoring is translated into a company performance score. It is concluded that it is feasible to perform a characterisation of the impacts related to the four obligatory impact categories representing the labour rights according to the conventions of the ILO covering: forced labour, discrimination, restrictions of freedom of association and collective bargaining and child labour. When compared with the observed situation in the companies, the results are also found to be relevant and realistic. The proposed characterisation method is rather time-consuming and cannot realistically be applied to all companies in the product system. It must therefore be combined with less time-requiring screening methods which can help identify the key companies in the life cycle for which a detailed analysis is required. The possibility to apply country- or industry sector-based information is discussed, and while it is found useful to identify low-risk companies and eliminate them from more detailed studies, the ability of the screening methods to discriminate between companies located in medium and high-risk contexts is questionable.The management of municipal solid waste and the associated environmental impacts are subject of growing attention in industrialized countries. European Union has recently strongly emphasized the role of LCA in its waste and resource strategies. The development of sustainable solid waste management systems applying a life cycle perspective requires readily understandable tools for modeling the life cycle impacts of waste management systems. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the structure, functionalities, and LCA modeling capabilities of the PC-based life cycle-oriented waste management model EASEWASTE, developed at the Technical University of Denmark specifically to meet the needs of the waste system developer with the objective to evaluate the environmental performance of the various elements of existing or proposed solid waste management systems. The EASEWASTE model supports a full life cycle assessment of any user-defined residential, bulky, or garden waste management system. The model focuses on the major components of the waste and reviews each component in terms of the available waste management options, including biogasification and composting, thermal treatment, use on land, material sorting and recycling, bottom and fly ash handling, material and energy utilization, and landfilling. In order to allow the use of the model in an early stage where local data may be limited, default data sets are provided for waste composition and quantities as well as for the waste technologies mentioned above. The model calculates environmental impacts and resource consumptions and allows the user to trace all impacts to their source in a waste treatment processes or in a specific waste material fraction. In addition to the traditional impact indicators, EASEWASTE incorporates impact categories on stored ecotoxicity, specifically developed for representation of the long-term impacts of persistent pollutants in landfilled waste. The model reports data at any stage of the LCA and supports identification of most sensitive parameters as well as overall sensitivity analysis and material balances for all substances passing through the system. The structure of the model is presented, and its functionalities are demonstrated on a hypothetical case study based on waste data from a large Danish municipality. The aim of the case is to demonstrate new waste treatment technologies and their modeling capabilities as well as the LCA modeling capabilities in EASEWASTE to identify the most important impact categories and the main sources of contributions to these in the system for treating the waste. Based on the results, the modeling features, user flexibility, and transparency of the EASEWASTE model are discussed. EASEWASTE is demonstrated to be a versatile and detailed (engineering) model with a strong differentiation of individual fractions, but it requires an engineering background to use all the features. The model is especially developed for the modeling of the handling of municipal solid wastes, and therefore, it does not support other wastes such as demolition and large commercial waste. The model is useful for an iterative approach to waste system modeling; its database access supports a quick primary calculation of the impacts from a designed waste system using default data, and based on this, a gradually refined focusing on the parts which contribute the most to the total impacts. The EASEWASTE model allows the user to supply detailed data for waste generation, waste composition including material fractions and chemical properties, sorting efficiencies, waste collection, and waste treatment technologies. More generic LCA modeling tools developed for LCA of products do not support these steps of the modeling to the same extent, and also the creation and evaluation of waste collection, waste transportation, and waste treatment technology individually or in a designed scenario is much easier in EASEWASTE. EASEWASTE has been used in the modeling of a number of real case studies, and much data have been incorporated into it. Several research projects are currently underway under the Danish 3R (Residual Resources Recovery) research school in support of its further development. There are, however, still many issues that have to be improved significantly to facilitate application by other users than model developers. The improvements in consideration are to provide data for more treatment and disposal technologies and more flexibility. The current version of the model supports the environmental assessment (environmental impacts and resource consumption) of household and small commercial business units waste treatment systems in a Danish context, but it is the ambition that future versions of the model shall support the inclusion of other waste types as well as economic evaluation and that the geographical coverage shall be extended to other countries.Biodiesel derived from Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) is considered highly environmentally sustainable since WCO is a waste product from domestic and commercial cooking processes and then recycled to a transportation fuel in Singapore. In addition, it avoids the conversion of land use for crop production. This is a strong advantage for Singapore which has relatively smaller land space than other countries. The import of virgin oil as feedstock into Singapore is also avoided. Therefore, the more appropriate feedstock to produce biodiesel in Singapore context is WCO. According to the National Environment Agency, diesel vehicles in Singapore contribute 50% of the total particulate matter smaller than 2.5 mu m (PM(0.25)) emissions to air ambient. Hence, the aim of this life cycle assessment study was to compare the environmental performances of biodiesel derived from WCO and low sulphur diesel in terms of global warming potential, life cycle energy efficiency (LCEE) and fossil energy ratio (FER) using the life cycle inventory. The results of this study would serve as a reference for energy policy makers and environmental agencies. ISO14040 and ISO14044 (ISO14040 2006; ISO 14044 2006) are used as the method for implementing this study. This comparative study between biodiesel derived from WCO and low sulphur diesel is done by comparing the life cycle inventory results. The tailpipe emission tests were done using a gas analyser. Biodiesel production data are collected from a local facility. The production of main ingredients, types of transportation, conversion of WCO to biodiesel and the usage of biodiesel were considered within the dataset. Production of low sulphur diesel was modelled according to several references. The phases include foreign crude oil production, refining, transporting of diesel to station and finally the usage of diesel. The testing vehicle for both transportation fuels is an ISUZU pickup truck with engine capacity of 3,059 cc and in direct injection combustion chamber type. The functional unit in this study is output of 1 transportation-km. In this section, two types of emissions are discussed. First is the net life cycle emission. The second is the exhaust tailpipe emissions. Highest amount of reduction on a life cycle basis is PM(2.5) and PM(10) with a significant reduction of 99.99%. On the exhaust tailpipe emission basis, the reduction for total particulate matter is 94.80%. The LCEE of biodiesel produced from WCO is calculated as 86.93%. This is higher than biodiesel reported from US studies (using soybean as feedstock) which is 80.55%. The low LCEE value of 71.09% for low sulphur diesel could be attributed by the fact that Singapore depends greatly on foreign crude oil production and imports. The FER is calculated to be 9.39. The life cycle of biodiesel produced from the recycling of WCO produces more than nine times as much energy in its final fuel product as it uses in fossil energy. This is three times higher than biodiesel derived from soya oil in the USA. The emission results and the life cycle energy efficiencies have indicated that the replacement of low sulphur diesel with biodiesel derived from WCO as a transportation fuel is favourable. In Singapore, the potential substitution percentage of diesel by biodiesel if all of the WCO can be collected and processed to biodiesel is 1.42%. There is a need for recyclers to convince the food establishments and users of cooking oil of the benefits of recycling cooking oil, which in turn obtains a steady source of WCO as feedstock for biodiesel production. In addition, as the biodiesel life cycle defined is very much dependent on WCO as a feedstock, it is recommended to optimise the WCO collection network.LCAs (life cycle assessments) are often based on average data to produce a generic evaluation of a good or service. However, ignoring variability and induced uncertainty of LCA results reduces their significance, especially when dealing with agricultural processes that present high natural fluctuations. The objective of the study was to explore the robustness of LCA results when accounting for variable emissions data, illustrated by the case of slurry application techniques. Four application techniques were compared: band spreading, broadcast spreading, harrowing after surface application and direct injection. On the basis of the normalisation results, acidification, eutrophication and global warming potentials were selected. To estimate field nitrogen emissions, an original approach was developed based on relative nitrogen loss factors for each technique from a literature review. The calculated field emissions from different soil and climate conditions were considered equally probable and were propagated into a range of LCA result using the Monte Carlo method. Injection and harrowing both showed reduced acidification and eutrophication potentials compared to band spreading and broadcast spreading but had larger global warming potentials, which could be particularly important with injection. Harrowing consequently appeared as the best compromise. Despite the large range of LCA results, robust conclusions could be drawn. To achieve a more refined comparison between the techniques, the use of process-based models in contrasted situations is suggested. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to examine the environmental consequences of beef meat production in the EU, using a life cycle approach. Four beef production systems were studied - three from intensively reared dairy calves and one from suckler herds. According to the results of the analysis, the contributions from the production of 1 kg beef meat (slaughter weight) to global warming, acidification, eutrophication, land use and non-renewable energy use were lower for beef from dairy calves than from suckler herds (16.0-19.9 versus 27.3 kg CO(2)e, 101-173 versus 210 g SO(2)e, 622-1140 versus 1651 g NO(3)e, 16.5-22.7 versus 42.9 m(2)year, and 41.3-48.2 versus 59.2 MJ, respectively). The breakdown analysis helped identify the key areas in the "cradle to farm gate" beef production system where sustainable management strategies are needed to improve environmental performance. The study also included a sensitivity analysis to preliminarily estimate GHG emissions from beef production systems if land opportunity cost and land use change related to grazing and feed crop production for beef were taken into account. If so, the contribution from the production of 1 kg beef to global warming would increase by a factor of 3.1-3.9, based on a depreciation period of 20 years. This highlights the importance of taking into account the impacts of land use in assessing the environmental impacts of livestock production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) is an environmental accounting system that provides an aggregate indicator which is both scientifically robust and easy to understand by non-experts. Although based on the lifestyle consumption of natural resources, recent improvements in the methodology now allow the application of EFA to a final product. Thus the resulting footprint value represents the environmental cost of all of the activities required to create, use and/or dispose of a particular product. The application of EFA to agricultural systems is still uncommon and examples in the fruit sector rare. In this work a detailed application of EFA to a commercial nectarine orchard in Piedmont (Italy) is presented. In contrast to previous studies, we considered not only the one-year field operations, but also the whole lifetime of the orchard. The calculation was conducted for six different orchard stages: (ST1) nursery propagation of the young plants; (ST2) orchard establishment, (ST3) young trees producing low yields, (ST4) mature trees at full production, (ST5) declining trees with low yields, and finally (ST6) orchard removal. The environmental costs at each stage are presented and related to each other on the basis of the relative footprint value. Results highlight the importance of applying EFA to the entire lifecycle of orchard production: ST4 accounted for the majority of costs at 65% followed by ST2. ST3 and ST5 at or near 10%, whilst the costs of ST1 and ST6 were negotiable. Thus it is the type of ST4 production used which can have the greatest impact on EFA values. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to report a research carried out for ensuring sustainable product design by the integration of environmentally conscious quality function deployment (ECQFD) and life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches. Sustainability refers to the capability of an organization to maximize resource efficiency for ensuring clean and green atmosphere. The sustainable product development model integrated with ECQFD and LCA has been used for ensuring sustainable product design. The implementation study was carried out by gathering data from a single manufacturing organization. The implementation experiences indicated that methodology of sustainable product design is practically feasible and compatible. The findings and contributions of this research would be useful to the majority of the organizations situated in the world. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Remediation methods for contaminated sites cover a wide range of technical solutions with different remedial efficiencies and costs. Additionally, they may vary in their secondary impacts on the environment i.e. the potential impacts generated due to emissions and resource use caused by the remediation activities. More attention is increasingly being given to these secondary environmental impacts when evaluating remediation options. This paper presents a methodology for an integrated economic decision analysis which combines assessments of remediation costs, health risk costs and potential environmental costs. The health risks costs are associated with the residual contamination left at the site and its migration to groundwater used for drinking water. A probabilistic exposure model using first- and second-order reliability methods (FORM/SORM) is used to estimate the contaminant concentrations at a downstream groundwater well. Potential environmental impacts on the local, regional and global scales due to the site remediation activities are evaluated using life cycle assessments (LCA). The potential impacts on health and environment are converted to monetary units using a simplified cost model. A case study based upon the developed methodology is presented in which the following remediation scenarios are analyzed and compared: (a) no action, (b) excavation and off-site treatment of soil, (c) soil vapor extraction and (d) thermally enhanced soil vapor extraction by electrical heating of the soil. Ultimately, the developed methodology facilitates societal cost estimations of remediation scenarios which can be used for internal ranking of the analyzed options. Despite the inherent uncertainties of placing a value on health and environmental impacts, the presented methodology is believed to be valuable in supporting decisions on remedial interventions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Besides the evaluation of the environmental issues, the correct assessment of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) should take into account several objectives such as: economic e.g. operation costs; technical e.g. risk of suffering microbiology-related TSS separation problems; or legal e.g. accomplishment with the effluent standards in terms of the different pollution loads. For this reason, the main objective of this paper is to show the benefits of complementing the environmental assessment carried out by life cycle assessment with economical, technical and legal criteria. Using a preliminary version of the BSM2 as a case study, different combinations of controllers are implemented, simulated and evaluated. In the following step, the resulting multi-criteria matrix is mined using multivariate statistical techniques. The results showed that the presence of an external carbon source addition, the type of aeration system and the TSS controller are the key elements creating the differences amongst the alternatives. Also, it was possible to characterize the different control strategies according to a set of aggregated criteria. Additionally, the existing synergies amongst different objectives and their consequent trade-offs were identified. Finally, it was discovered that from the initial extensive list of evaluation criteria, only a small set of five are really discriminant, being useful to differentiate within the generated alternatives. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Potential biodiesel production was evaluated by assuming that waste and cutover forestlands and burnt site areas, equivalent to 5.94% of China's land area, were used to cultivate the most suitable energy crop in each province of China. Jatropha, Xanthoceras, Pistacia, and Swida were the candidate energy crops in that order of priority based on yield and oil content. The crop was assigned by comparing crop climatic requirements and the meteorological statistics of each province and choosing the best match. Potential production for all of China was estimated to be 57.6 x 10(6) tons/yr on the basis of seed yields and biodiesel conversion factors. A logistics scenario was created for the transportation of crops and biodiesel, and a life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and costs were evaluated for the cultivation, refinement, and transportation stages using local data on energy sources and costs. The production of biodiesel with and without waste biomass utilization creates emissions of 0.95 and 1.31 t CO2eq/t biodiesel, respectively, as compared to 2.08 t CO2eq/t fossil diesel. Fertilizer use in the cultivation stage accounts for 61% and 44% of GHG emissions with and without waste biomass utilization, respectively. The use of waste biomass and proper use of fertilizers are essential in reducing GHG emissions and enhancing the advantages of using biodiesel. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3449298]With the potential depletion of liquid fuels, a search is on for alternative renewable liquid fuels in the transportation sector. While first generation biofuels produced from starch based materials are already available, it is considered to have direct and indirect effects on food security. The bioconversion of lignocellulosic residues is considered an appropriate alternative as it does not affect food security and in many cases has a positive carbon balance from a climate point of view. This paper highlights the major advances and barriers to the use of lignocellulosics for the production of bioethanol. Starting with land use patterns, the bottlenecks to technical conversion of these residues and by-products, specifically the pretreatment and saccharification steps, are presented in a concise manner. The way in which subsidies affect the cost of the product, which is not economically feasible at current petroleum prices, the possibility of using the different products produced in the overall conversion stages, and the need to make complete life cycle analysis, on a case by case basis, to determine the effects on the atmosphere are highlighted. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3366722]Agriculture produces similar to 10%-12% of total global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, contributing similar to 50% and similar to 60% of all anthropogenic methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O), respectively. Apart from their significant contribution to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the energy lost as CH(4) and total N losses are two of the most significant inefficiencies remaining in ruminant production systems. A number of options are reviewed to reduce production of enteric CH(4) and N(2)O from ruminant production systems, mainly focusing on breeding, feeding, animal management, soil and fertilizer management, and rumen manipulation. To fully assess the net abatement potential, each strategy must be subjected to whole-farm systems modelling and a full life-cycle assessment, to ensure that a reduction in emissions at one point does not stimulate higher emissions elsewhere in the production system. Most of the options reviewed require many years of research before practical strategies and commercially viable products are available for use on farms. This paper reviews the options available for livestock production to reduce CH(4) and N(2)O emissions while improving production, and highlights research issues and the need for a systems approach to the evaluation of the relative merits of abatement options. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Commercial fisheries are heavily dependent upon the combustion of fossil fuels and as such contribute to increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and the concomitant impact on the world's climate. The fuel use and greenhouse gas intensity of a fishery is a function of several variables. One that has not been previously investigated is the role of fisheries management. Using historical gear-specific fuel use and landings data, we employ scenarios to examine the potential impact that recent changes in the management of the New England fishery for Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) may have on fishery-related fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, we consider the direct effect of the seasonal ban of midwater trawling in favor of purse seine and fixed gears within Atlantic herring fishing Area IA. We also evaluate the indirect effect of reductions to the Area IA total allowable catch of Atlantic herring on the regional supply of bait and the resulting potential need to import bait herring from Canada. Our results indicate that because of the five-fold lower fuel intensity of purse seining, relative to midwater trawling (21 L/ton versus 108-118 L/ton), the seasonal ban on midwater trawling has the potential to markedly reduce overall fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the herring fishery. These results indicate that management decisions can strongly influence energy demands and resulting greenhouse gas emissions of fisheries. We urge those involved with fisheries management to take this into account when developing policy and management measures. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Design process determines 80% of the whole environmental impact generated by a product or service. This paper intends to describe a simplified renewed procedure for the analysis and selection of materials capable of providing fast and reliable information to those designers that are interested to minimize the life-cycle environmental burden of products and services, the so called EcoAudit. The here presented EcoAudit procedure assesses the burden associated to a component/product by means of a customized set of environmental impact indicators, without exploring all parameters that are usually provided by a LCA study. The set of environmental impact indicators that are here adopted for this purpose are the energy consumption (energy breakdown in terms of direct and indirect contributors, MJ per functional unit), the global warming potential (in terms of CO2 equiv per functional unit) and the end of life possibilities (in terms of effective practicable scenarios, i.e. of recycling). The first two indicators may be intended as "key environmental performance indicators" ("KEPIs"). This approach allows a fast preliminary ranking of materials and processes identifying the most relevant critical phases of a system, making the ecodesign process really starting. The integration within the Cambridge Engineering Selector 2009 EcoAudit tool allows to search and browse materials data, calculating the environmental load in a real time. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.MH200918]In order to estimate the environmental impacts of first generation biofuels produced in France, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was conducted in 2009 and published in the beginning of 2010. However, there have been discrepancies in the interpretation of the results of this study. The objective of the article was to present the results of this LCA and the uncertainties for rapeseed methyl ester (RME), in order to help people to understand the debates about the environmental impacts of biofuels. The four steps of the LCA (goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment and interpretation) were presented in this article with a focus on the main uncertainties. This LCA confirmed the ability of RME to save non renewable energy (-65%) and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG, -59%). Hence according to these results, RME produced in France fulfils the GHG sustainable criterion of the European Directive on renewable energy (2009/28/EC). However, the sensitivity analyses of the LCA clearly showed that there were many uncertainties at the inventory analysis step of the LCA. The main uncertainty resulted from the effect of indirect Land Use Change (iLUC), which was not taken into account in this LCA, except in a sensitivity analysis in which a GHG emission due to deforestation (positive emission) or reforestation (negative emission) was added to the emissions of the LCA. This sensitivity analysis showed that the iLUC effect could not be neglected. This suggests that an accurate estimation of this effect is necessary. However, in order to properly take into account the iLUC effect on GHG, along with all the emissions due to biofuel production, a consequential approach is more relevant than the simple addition of an iLUC GHG emission as it was done in the sensitivity analysis.Liquid biofuels provide one of the few options for fossil fuel substitution in the short to medium-term and they are strongly being promoted by the European Union as transport fuel (such as ethanol) since they have the potential to offer both greenhouse gas (GHG) savings and energy security. A "well to wheel" analysis has been conducted for poplar based ethanol by means of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The aim of the analysis is to assess the environmental performance of three ethanol applications (E10, E85 and E100) in comparison with conventional gasoline. To compare the environmental profiles, the study addressed the impact potentials per kilometre driven by a middle size passenger car, taking into account the performance difference between ethanol blends and gasoline. According to the results of this study, fuel ethanol derived from poplar biomass may help to reduce the contributions to global warming, abiotic resources depletion and ozone layer depletion up to 62%, 72% and 36% respectively. Reductions of fossil fuel extraction of up to 80% could be achieved when pure ethanol is used. On the contrary, contributions to other impact categories would be increased, specifically to acidification and eutrophication. In both categories, ethanol based blends are less environmentally friendly than conventional gasoline due to the higher impact from the upstream activities. Research focussed on the reduction of the environmental impacts should be pointed forward poplar cultivation as well as ethanol conversion plant (enzyme manufacturing, energy production and distillation). In this study poplar cultivation was really intensive in order to obtain a high yield. Strategic planning according to the location of the crops and its requirements should help to reduce these impacts from its cultivation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recycling of waste textile fiber material is composed of two parts, one is the processing course from waste fiber to regenerated fiber and the other is the using course of regenerated fiber. This paper aims at the processing course, considering whether the waste material contains color, finishing reagent and twist, and brings forward a new model to divide waste textile fiber material. Under this model, different processing methods will be adopted in each kind of waste fiber material, polyester and wool taken as samples, and recycling of waste textile fiber material will be analyzed from the viewpoint of economic costs, and also data base of evaluation system will be constructed, which takes J2EE as joining platform and builds SQL data base. Establishment of such a data base will provide possible plans and theory basis for reasonable and efficient recycling of waste textile fiber material.A greenness evaluation index and system of microwave-assisted leaching method were established. The effects of the life cycle assessment variables, such as the resource consumption, environment impact, cost, time and quality, were investigated, and the concept of green degree was applied in the production of synthetic rutile. An analytic hierarchy process was utilized to assess matrix of greenness evaluation. The Gauss-Seidel iterative matrix method was employed to solve the assessment matrix and obtain the weights and membership functions of all evaluation indexes. A fuzzy decision-making method was applied to build the greenness evaluation model, and then the scores of green degree in microwave-assisted leaching process was obtained. The greenness evaluation model was applied to the life cycle assessment of the microwave-assisted leaching process. The results show that the microwave-assisted leaching process has advantages over the conventional ones, with respect to energy-consumption, processing time and environmental protection.Recycling of paper and glass from household waste is an integrated part of waste management in Denmark, however, increased recycling is a legislative target. The questions are: how much more can the recycling rate be increased through improvements of collection schemes when organisational and technical limitations are respected, and what will the environmental and economic consequences be? This was investigated in a case study of a municipal waste management system. Five scenarios with alternative collection systems for recyclables (paper, glass, metal and plastic packaging) were assessed by means of a life cycle assessment and an assessment of the municipality's costs. Kerbside collection would provide the highest recycling rate, 31% compared to 25% in the baseline scenario, but bring schemes with drop-off containers would also be a reasonable solution. Collection of recyclables at recycling centres was not recommendable because the recycling rate would decrease to 20%. In general, the results showed that enhancing recycling and avoiding incineration was recommendable because the environmental performance was improved in several impact categories. The municipal costs for collection and treatment of waste were reduced with increasing recycling, mainly because the high cost for incineration was avoided. However, solutions for mitigation of air pollution caused by increased collection and transport should be sought. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the development and application of the Stochastic Integrated Waste Management Simulator (SIWMS) model. SIWMS provides a detailed view of the environmental impacts and associated costs of municipal solid waste (MSW) management alternatives under conditions of uncertainty. The model follows a life-cycle inventory approach extended with compensatory systems to provide more equitable bases for comparing different alternatives. Economic performance is measured by the net present value. The model is verified against four publicly available models under deterministic conditions and then used to study the impact of uncertainty on Sydney's MSW management 'best practices'. Uncertainty has a significant effect on all impact categories. The greatest effect is observed in the global warming category where a reversal of impact direction is predicted. The reliability of the system is most sensitive to uncertainties in the waste processing and disposal. The results highlight the importance of incorporating uncertainty at all stages to better understand the behaviour of the MSW system. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, semiconductor photocatalytic process has shown a great potential as a low-cost, environmental friendly and sustainable treatment technology to align with the "zero" waste scheme in the water/wastewater industry. The ability of this advanced oxidation technology has been widely demonstrated to remove persistent organic compounds and microorganisms in water. At present, the main technical barriers that impede its commercialisation remained on the post-recovery of the catalyst particles after water treatment. This paper reviews the recent R&D progresses of engineered-photocatalysts, photoreactor systems, and the process optimizations and modellings of the photooxidation processes for water treatment. A number of potential and commercial photocatalytic reactor configurations are discussed, in particular the photocatalytic membrane reactors. The effects of key photoreactor operation parameters and water quality on the photo-process performances in terms of the mineralization and disinfection are assessed. For the first time, we describe how to utilize a multi-variables optimization approach to determine the optimum operation parameters so as to enhance process performance and photooxidation efficiency. Both photomineralization and photo-disinfection kinetics and their modellings associated with the photocatalytic water treatment process are detailed. A brief discussion on the life cycle assessment for retrofitting the photocatalytic technology as an alternative waste treatment process is presented. This paper will deliver a scientific and technical overview and useful information to scientists and engineers who work in this field. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agricultural application of sewage sludge has been emotionally discussed in the last decades, because the latter contains organic micropollutants with unknown fate and risk potential. In this work, the reuse of anaerobically digested sludge in agriculture is evaluated from an environmental point of view by using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. More specifically, the potential impacts of emerging micropollutants, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products, present in the sludge have been quantified. Four scenarios were considered according to the temperature of the anaerobic digestion (mesophilic or thermophilic) and the sludge retention time (20 or 10 d), and they have been compared with the non-treated sludge. From an environmental point of view, the disposal of undigested sludge is not the most suitable alternative, except for global warming due to the dominance (65-85%) of the indirect emissions associated to the electricity use. Nutrient-related direct emissions dominate the eutrophication category impact in all the scenarios (>71.4%), although a beneficial impact related to the avoidance of industrial fertilisers production is also quantified (up to 6.7%). In terms of human and terrestrial toxicity, the direct emissions of heavy metals to soil dominate these two impact categories (>70%), and the contribution of other micropollutants is minimal. Moreover, only six (Galaxolide, Tonalide, Diazepam, Ibuprofen, Sulfamethoxazole and 17 alpha-ethinyloestradiol) out of the 13 substances considered are really significant since they account for more than 95% of the overall micropollutants impact. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The lack of temporal information is an important limitation of life cycle assessment (LCA). A dynamic LCA approach is proposed to improve the accuracy of LCA by addressing the inconsistency of temporal assessment. This approach consists of first computing a dynamic life cycle inventory (LCI), considering the temporal profile of emissions. Then, time-dependent characterization factors are calculated to assess the dynamic LCI in real-time impact scores for any given time horizon. Although generally applicable to any impact category, this approach is developed here for global warming, based on the radiative forcing concept This case study demonstrates that the use of global warming potentials for a given time horizon to characterize greenhouse gas emissions leads to an inconsistency between the time frame chosen for the analysis and the time period covered by the LCA results. Dynamic LCA is applied to the US EPA LCA on renewable fuels, which compares the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of different biofuels with fossil fuels including land-use change emissions. The comparison of the results obtained with both traditional and dynamic LCA approaches shows that the difference can be important enough to change the conclusions on whether or not a biofuel meets some given global warming reduction targets.This study quantifies the trade-offs and synergies between climate and air quality policy objectives for the European power and heat (P&H) sector. An overview is presented of the expected performance data of CO2 capture systems implemented at P&H plants, and the expected emission of key air pollutants, being: SO2, NOx, NH3, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulate matter (PM). The CO2 capture systems investigated include: post-combustion, oxyfuel combustion and pre-combustion capture. For all capture systems it was found that SO2, NOx and PM emissions are expected to be reduced or remain equal per unit of primary energy input compared to power plants without CO2 capture. Increase in primary energy input as a result of the energy penalty for CO2 capture may for some technologies and substances result in a net increase of emissions per kWh output. The emission of ammonia may increase by a factor of up to 45 per unit of primary energy input for post-combustion technologies. No data are available about the emission of VOCs from CO2 capture technologies. A simple model was developed and applied to analyse the impact of CO2 capture in the European P&H sector on the emission level of key air pollutants in 2030. Four scenarios were developed: one without CO2 capture and three with one dominantly implemented CO2 capture system, varying between: post-combustion, oxyfuel combustion and pre-combustion. The results showed a reduction in GHG emissions for the scenarios with CO2 capture compared to the baseline scenario between 12% and 20% in the EU 27 region in 2030. NOx emissions were 15% higher in the P&H sector in a scenario with predominantly post-combustion and lower when oxyfuel combustion (-16%) or pre-combustion (-20%) were implemented on a large scale. Large scale implementation of the post-combustion technology in 2030 may also result in significantly higher, i.e. increase by a factor of 28, NH3 emissions compared to scenarios with other CO2 capture options or without capture. 502 emissions were very low for all scenarios that include large scale implementation of CO2 capture in 2030, i.e. a reduction varying between 27% and 41%. Particulate Matter emissions were found to be lower in the scenarios with CO2 capture. The scenario with implementation of the oxyfuel technology showed the lowest PM emissions followed by the scenario with a significant share allocated to pre-combustion, respectively -59% and -31%. The scenario with post-combustion capture resulted in PM emissions varying between 35% reduction and 26% increase. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyzes and compares the environmental impacts of biomass combustion in small appliances such as domestic open fireplaces and stoves, and in two types of centralized combined heat and power plants, feeding district heating networks. The analysis is carried out following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The expected savings of GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions due to the substitution of fossil fuels with biomass are quantified, as well as emissions of toxic pollutants and substances responsible for acidification and ozone formation. The LCA results show net savings of GHG emissions when using biomass instead of conventional fuels, varying from 0.08 to 1.08 t of CO2 eq. per t of dry biomass in the different scenarios. Avoided GHG emissions thanks to biomass combustion in Lombardy are 1.32 Mt year (1)(1.5% of total regional GHG emissions). For the other impact categories, the use of biomass in district heating systems can again cause a consistent reduction of impacts, whereas biomass combustion in residential devices shows higher impacts than fossil fuels with a particular concern for PAH, VOC and particulate matter emissions. For example, in Lombardy, PM10 emissions from domestic devices are about 8100 t year(-1), corresponding to almost one third of the total particulate emissions in 2005. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A companion paper presented the life cycle inventory (LCI) calculation model for buildings as a whole, developed within a global methodology to optimise low energy buildings simultaneously for energy, environmental impact and costs without neglecting the boundary conditions for thermal comfort and indoor air quality. This paper presents the results of a contribution analysis of the life cycle inventory of four typical Belgian residential buildings. The analysis shows the relative small importance of the embodied energy of a building compared to the energy consumption during the usage phase. This conclusion is even more valid when comparing the embodied energy of energy saving measures with the energy savings they realise. In most studied cases, the extra embodied energy for energy saving measures is gained back by the savings in less than 2 years. Only extremely low energy buildings might have a total embodied energy higher than the energy use of the utilisation phase. However, the sum of both remains small and the energy savings realised with these dwellings are large, compared to the energy consumption of average dwellings. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Traditionally, life cycle assessment (LCA) is mostly concerned with product design and hardly considers large systems, such as buildings, as a whole. Though, by limiting LCA to building materials or building components, boundary conditions, such as thermal comfort and indoor air quality, cannot be taken into account. The life cycle inventory (LCI) model presented in this paper forms part of a global methodology that combines advanced optimisation techniques, LCI and cost-benefit assessment to optimise low energy buildings simultaneously for energy, environmental impact and costs without neglecting the boundary conditions for thermal comfort indoor air quality and legal requirements for energy performance. This paper first outlines the goal and scope of the LCI. Then, the partial inventory models as well as the overall building inventory model are presented. Finally, the LCI results are shown and discussed for one reference dwelling for the context of Belgium. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The design of environmental-effective energy conversion processes can be provided by exergoenviromental analysis which is a new method supporting the design for environment. It combines an exergy analysis with a life cycle assessment (LCA) to determine thermodynamic efficiency and formation of environmental impacts on plant components. The exergoenvironmental approach is used to assign environmental impacts to all energy and material flows as well as thermodynamic inefficiencies within each process component. The analysis reveals the interdependencies between thermodynamic behavior and environmental impacts and between process components. Presenting an example of electricity production using a high-temperature solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with an integrated allothermal biomass gasification process, exergoenvironmental analysis is described and the environmentally most relevant process components are identified. Furthermore, the result of the exergoenvironmental analysis is discussed with regard to utilization for process design and optimization in chemical production.In semiconductor and crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication, volatile organic compound (VOC) abatement is state of the art and obligatory in many countries. Thermal or catalytic oxidation is used as the preferred reduction technique in this field. Because of low concentrated exhaust gas, oxidation needs additional energy which is not to be ignored. Against the background of resource depletion, the question arises whether, from an environmental point of view, treatment is more beneficial than the direct release of emissions. The overall potential environmental impact of several scenarios has been investigated using a method based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The results show that below an exhaust concentration of 600 mg/m(3) for semiconductor fabrication and below 1500 mg/m(3) of nontoxic solvents for solar cell fabrication, exhaust conditioning causes a greater potential environmental impact than the direct release without any treatment.The two main alternatives for the pre-treatment of seawater for reverse osmosis desalination, membrane- (UF) and granular media filter based, have been compared and analyzed for their sustainability potential. An environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) has been conducted using commercial software and an economic life cycle costing assessment (LCC) followed according to SETAC guidelines in order to form an eco-efficiency analysis. In addition, other sustainability relevant aspects such as societal factors and process performance have been discussed. The results show why a broad sustainability analysis should be an indispensable part of every process synthesis and how the design and operation of a SWRO desalination plant could be influenced by it.This note generalizes the value of life to incorporate the preferences for descendants of a dynastically altruistic decision-maker. It derives the value of progeny and shows how it depends on the Benthamite vs. Millian nature of dynastic altruism. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment has been used to investigate the global warming potential (GWP) and fossil-energy requirements of the production of biodiesel from canola (oilseed rape), soybean, and sunflower oils in South Africa. The effect of scale and transportation of raw materials and products was investigated, as well as the effect of ploughing grassland and using irrigation to grow oil crops. This research shows that the GWP and fossil-energy requirements of biodiesel produced in South Africa vary widely, depending upon predominantly the crop yield, the requirement for irrigation, and the ploughing of uncultivated land. For the best case scenario, where no uncultivated land is newly ploughed and irrigation is not required, biodiesel has a GWP 20-36% lower than that of the fossil diesel mix currently used in South Africa and a fossil-energy requirement 50-62% lower. However, in the worst case scenario, where oil-seed crops are grown on newly cultivated land requiring substantial irrigation, this paper concludes that biodiesel can have a GWP significantly higher than South African fossil diesel. The scale of operation and transport distances involved are shown to have little influence on the GWP and fossil-energy requirement of biodiesel produced in South Africa.Alternative energy technologies (AETs) have emerged as a solution to the challenge of simultaneously meeting rising electricity demand while reducing carbon emissions. However, as all AETs are responsible for some greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during their construction, carbon emission "Ponzi Schemes" are currently possible, wherein an AET industry expands so quickly that the GHG emissions prevented by a given technology are negated to fabricate the next wave of AET deployment. In an era where there are physical constraints to the GHG emissions the climate can sustain in the short term this may be unacceptable. To provide quantitative solutions to this problem, this paper introduces the concept of dynamic carbon life-cycle analyses, which generate carbon-neutral growth rates. These conceptual tools become increasingly important as the world transitions to a low-carbon economy by reducing fossil fuel combustion. In choosing this method of evaluation it was possible to focus uniquely on reducing carbon emissions to the recommended levels by outlining the most carbon-effective approach to climate change mitigation. The results of using dynamic life-cycle analysis provide policy makers with standardized information that will drive the optimization of electricity generation for effective climate change mitigation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper is a short analysis on the impact of pollution prevention practices that can lead to important economic savings, materialized in benefits and resource preservation, since P2 shift the focus of environmental protection from end-of-pipe reactive control, to adopting preventive/proactive measures. Even though there are techniques of preventing pollution (P2) from happening, there will always be the necessity of efficiency in use, because globalization is increasing and by consuming resources without putting them back leads to scarcity of land, labor, raw materials and capital. The scarcity problem and the impact of processes and products on the environment demand eco-efficient pathways to prevent and reduce the pollution quantity and quality, since pollution prevention programs offer sustainable alternatives that express precaution in usage of new and more toxic substances and efficiency where the level of pollution must not pass a defined level. The economic analysis is considered as the most commonly used method to determine how scarce resources should be allocated. There are sectors that may choose the cost-benefit analysis because it is easy to implement and choose the best environmental project. A more complete analysis involve performance analysis steps that contains a forecast of possible risk or factors that can influence the environment and the costs that may appear in the near future, or in the occurrence of unexpected events. Eco-efficiency has extended its coverage from being concerned with making resource savings and preventing pollution in manufacturing sector, towards innovation and competitiveness in all types of companies. It was emphasized that, based on eco-efficiency for pollution prevention analysis, companies can re-engineer or re-design their processes to reduce the consumption of resources, avoid the risk and reduce pollution, saving costsNine non-local databases were evaluated with respect to their suitability for the environmental assessment of industrial activities in Latin America. Three assessment methods were considered, namely Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and air emission inventories. The analysis focused on data availability in the databases and the applicability of their international data to Latin American industry. The study showed that the European EMEP/EEA Guidebook and the U.S. EPA AP-42 database are the most suitable ones for air emission inventories, whereas the LCI database Ecoinvent is the most suitable one for LCA and EIA. Due to the data coverage in the databases, air emission inventories are easier to develop than LCA or EIA, which require more comprehensive information. One strategy to overcome the limitations of non-local databases for Latin American industry is the combination of validated data from international databases with newly developed local datasets. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Viable alternatives to conventional newspapers, such as electronic papers, e-papers or e-readers, are intended to have many of the qualities of paper, such as reading using reflective light, high resolution, 180 degrees viewing angle. It has been suggested that the environmental impact of e-paper can be lower than for printed and internet-based newspapers. However, in order to find the facts of the matter, a thorough life cycle perspective covering raw material acquisition, production, use and disposal should preferably be used to study the environmental performance of the different products. A screening life cycle assessment was performed to describe the potential environmental impacts of two product systems; printed on paper and tablet e-paper newspapers. Results show that the most significant phase of the life cycle for both product systems was the production of substrate or platform. Accordingly, key aspects that may affect the resulting environmental performance of newspaper product systems were for the printed newspaper number of readers per copy and number of pages per issue and for the tablet e-paper newspaper lifetime and multi-use of the device. The printed newspaper in general had a higher energy use, higher emissions of gases contributing to climate change and several other impact categories than the tablet e-paper newspaper. It was concluded that tablet e-paper has the potential to decrease the environmental impact of newspaper consumption. However, further studies regarding the environmental impact of production and waste management of electronic devices and internet use, as well as more comprehensive assessment of toxicological impacts are needed. As the data on the electronic devices becomes more comprehensive this may prove to be a major limitation of electronic newspaper systems. Developers are suggested to strive towards minimisation of toxic and rare substances in production. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.A displacement factor can express the efficiency of using biomass to reduce net greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, by quantifying the amount of emission reduction achieved per unit of wood use. Here we integrate data from 21 different international studies in a meta-analysis of the displacement factors of wood products substituted in place of non-wood materials. We calculate the displacement factors in consistent units of tons of carbon (tC) of emission reduction per tC in wood product. The displacement factors range from a low of -2.3 to a high of 15, with most lying in the range of 1.0 to 3.0. The average displacement factor value is 2.1, meaning that for each tC in wood products substituted in place of non-wood products, there occurs an average GHG emission reduction of approximately 2.1 tC. Expressed in other units, this value corresponds to roughly 3.9 t CO(2) eq emission reduction per ton of dry wood used. The few cases of negative displacement factors are the result of worst-case scenarios that are unrealistic in current practice. This meta-analysis quantifies the range of GHG benefits of wood substitution, and provides a clear climate rationale for increasing wood substitution in place of other products, provided that forests are sustainably managed and that wood residues are used responsibly. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As part of carbon cap-and-trade policy development, programs are being proposed that would pay landowners for the carbon stored in the trees in their forests. We contend that such programs could be counterproductive to the aim of mitigating atmospheric carbon if they discourage the use of wood for carbon-neutral fuels and as substitutes for more fossil carbon-intensive building products. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.If life cycle oriented methods are to encourage sustainable development, they must account for the role of ecosystem goods and services, since these form the basis of planetary activities and human well-being. This article reviews methods that are relevant to accounting for the role of nature and that could be integrated into life cycle oriented approaches. These include methods developed by ecologists for quantifying ecosystem services, by ecological economists for monetary valuation, and life cycle methods such as conventional life cycle assessment, thermodynamic methods for resource accounting such as exergy and emergy analysis, variations of the ecological footprint approach, and human appropriation of net primary productivity. Each approach has its strengths: economic methods are able to quantify the value of cultural services; LCA considers emissions and assesses their impact emergy accounts for supporting services in terms of cumulative exergy; and ecological footprint is intuitively appealing and considers biocapacity. However, no method is able to consider all the ecosystem services, often due to the desire to aggregate all resources in terms of a single unit This review shows that comprehensive accounting for ecosystem services in LCA requires greater integration among existing methods, hierarchical schemes for interpreting results via multiple levels of aggregation, and greater understanding of the role of ecosystems in supporting human activities. These present many research opportunities that must be addressed to meet the challenges of sustainability.Despite the essential role of ecosystem goods and services in sustaining all human activities, they are often ignored in engineering decision making, even in methods that are meant to encourage sustainability. For example, conventional Life Cycle Assessment focuses on the impact of emissions and consumption of some resources. While aggregation and interpretation methods are quite advanced for emissions, similar methods for resources have been lagging, and most ignore the role of nature. Such oversight may even result in perverse decisions that encourage reliance on deteriorating ecosystem services. This article presents a step toward including the direct and indirect role of ecosystems in LCA, and a hierarchical scheme to interpret their contribution. The resulting Ecologically Based LCA (Eco-LCA) includes a large number of provisioning, regulating, and supporting ecosystem services as inputs to a life cycle model at the process or economy scale. These resources are represented in diverse physical units and may be compared via their mass, fuel value, industrial cumulative exergy consumption, or ecological cumulative exergy consumption or by normalization with total consumption of each resource or their availability. Such results at a fine scale provide insight about relative resource use and the risk and vulnerability to the loss of specific resources. Aggregate indicators are also defined to obtain indices such as renewability, efficiency, and return on investment An Eco-LCA model of the 1997 economy is developed and made available via the web (www.resilience.osu.edu/ecolca). An illustrative example comparing paper and plastic cups provides insight into the features of the proposed approach. The need for further work in bridging the gap between knowledge about ecosystem services and their direct and indirect role in supporting human activities is discussed as an important area for future work.The aim of the present study is to analyze the most common method used for processing ripe table olives: the "California style". Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to detect the "hot spots" of the system under examination. The LCA results also allowed us to compare the traditional "California style", here called "method A", with another "California style", here called "method B". We were interested in this latter method, because the European Union is considering introducing it into the product specification of the Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) "La Bella della Daunia". It was also possible to compare the environmental impacts of the two "California style" methods with those of the "Spanish style" method. From the comparison it is clear that "method B" has a greater environmental impact than "method A" because greater amounts of water and electricity are required, whereas "Spanish style" processing has a lower environmental impact than the "California style" methods.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used by practitioners and policy-makers to help them understand the sustainability impacts of packaging. LCA is useful because it quantifies the impact of a product throughout its life cycle, from raw materials extraction through to disposal or recovery. However, it can only ever be one input to decisions about the design or procurement of packaging. LCA has limitations as a tool to measure environmental impact and it does not currently evaluate social or financial impact. This paper provides a critical review of the role of LCA in evaluating packaging sustainability. It does this by evaluating the results of LCA studies that compare different types of carry bags and their implications for policy and practice. The benefits and limitations of this type of analysis are discussed. The case study of plastic carry bags demonstrates that while a scientific understanding of life cycle impacts is essential to support informed decision-making, a broader sustainability analysis is required to ensure that all relevant issues are considered. These include the functionality of alternative bags, their relative cost, convenience for consumers and retailers, and the availability of reuse and recovery systems. An alternative approach, which evaluates packaging design within a broader sustainability framework, is presented and discussed. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Global climate change concerns have lead to growing demand for renewable energy sources (RES). However the viability of these sources is critically dependent on environmental, economic and technological considerations. This paper focuses on the environmental aspect of future photovoltaic (PV) systems which are assessed through life cycle analysis (LCA). Previous LCA studies on commercially available PV systems are reviewed. The sustainable evaluation methods used in these studies are also discussed. These methods are applied to the hybrid quantum dot (QD)-based solar cells currently under development within a project between the University of Manchester and Imperial College London. The aim of this project is to develop affordable solar cells with efficiencies up to 10% for micro-generation applications. Presently hybrid QD-based solar cells are not commercially fabricated: therefore the study is mostly based on very small laboratory-scale production. For easy comparability 10% conversion efficiency and 25 years lifetime are initially assumed. Lower conversion efficiencies and shorter lifetimes likely to initially characterise emerging PV technologies such as the hybrid QD-based solar cells are discussed. Comparable criteria for sustainability, of electricity-generating systems namely net energy ratio (NER), energy pay-back time (EPB-T) and CO(2) emissions per unit generated during lifetime are found to be lower than current commercially available PV modules. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The purpose of this paper is twofold: to investigate the problems involved when performing an environmental assessment of various pavements structures and to establish the method applied to solutions proposed by official French guidelines. This assessment will be performed by employing the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology specifically adapted to road pavements through a parametric environmental evaluation tool developed by LCPC: ERM (elementary road modulus). The paper will also detail the assessment methodology using this same ERM method. The issues of resources conservation and waste allocation will be examined for the case of blast furnace slag (BFS) recycling. Special focus will be placed on the sensitivity of environmental indicators as regards to the waste allocation procedure implemented in the ERM. Two distinct mass ratios (0% and 20%) of steel production have been assigned to BFS and tested on indicators results as hypotheses HI and H2, respectively. Classical indicators have been calculated using a simplified model to allocate output flows into several impact categories. Results show that the structure using BFS contributes to saving binder extracted from natural resources, yet also consumes a larger mass of natural aggregates. All indicators except for toxicity were found to be very sensitive to the choice of H1 or H2 hypotheses. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A criterion for preventive maintenance scheduling (PMS) is proposed based on the history of previous damage occurrences, duration of repairs or maintenance, and the development of cost functions. The PMS method describes the performance of the bridge for the deterioration/damage events and maintenance actions during the bridge's service life. The time to failure and repair time are modeled as random variables. Sensitivity studies show that the maintenance cost by damage consequence, an indirect measure of the bridge importance, plays a significant role on the optimal maintenance period.The main objective of this paper is to evaluate environmental impacts of construction wastes in terms of the LIFE 98 ENV/E/351 project. Construction wastes are classified in accordance with the Life Program Environment Directive of the European Commission. Three different scenarios to current waste management from a case study in Catalonia (Spain) have been compared: landfilling, recycling and incineration, and these scenarios were evaluated by means of Life Cycle Assessment. The recommendations of the Catalan Waste Catalogue and the European Waste Catalogue have been taken into account. Also, the influence of transport has been evaluated. Results show that in terms of the Global Warming Potential, the most environmentally friendly treatment was recycling, followed by incineration and lastly landfilling. According to the influence of treatment plants location on the GWP indicator, we observe that incineration and recycling of construction wastes are better than landfilling, even for long distances from the building site to the plants. This is true for most wastes except for the stony types, than should be recycled close to the building site. In summary, data from construction waste of a Catalan case study was evaluated using the well established method of LCA to determine the environmental impacts. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper discusses the ecological optimisation of municipal waste management systems. The purpose of this paper is to help local decision-makers in designing integrated waste management solutions that are ecologically optimal. The study uses life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to build a model and test different waste management scenarios in order to see whether the waste management hierarchy is influenced by regional conditions. The study also tests to which variables in waste management systems the end results of the LCA are most sensitive. The discussion is built around a case study in Lithuania where several waste management scenarios have been analysed and compared in the LCA framework. The paper reveals several methodology-related issues and discusses what implications waste-related policy intervention would have on the environmental outcomes of different waste management scenarios.New Zealand's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol requires agriculture, including dairy farming, to reduce current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by about 20% by 2012. A modeling exercise to explore the cumulative impact of dairy management decisions on GHG emissions and profitability is reported. The objective was to maintain production, but reduce GHG emissions per unit of land and product by improving production efficiency. A farm-scale computer model that includes a mechanistic cow model was used to model an average, pasture-based New Zealand farm over different climate years. A mitigation strategy based on reduced replacement rates was first added to this baseline farm and modeled over the same years. Three more strategies were added, improved cow efficiency (higher genetic merit), improved pasture management (better pasture quality), and home-grown maize silage [increased total metabolizable energy (ME) yield and reduced nitrogen intake], and modeled to predict milk production, intakes, methane, urinary-nitrogen, and operational profit. Profit was calculated from 2006/2007 economic data, where milksolids (fat + protein) payout was NZ$ 4.09 kg(-1).(1) A nutrient budget model was used with these scenarios and two more strategies added: cows standing on a loafing pad during wet conditions and application of a nitrification inhibitor to pasture (DCD). The nutrient budget model predicted total GHG emissions in CO2 equivalents and included some life cycle analysis of emissions from fertilizer manufacturing, fuel and electricity generation. The simulations suggest that implementation of a combination of these strategies could decrease GHG emissions by 27-32% while showing potential to increase profitability on a pasture-based New Zealand dairy farm. Increasing the efficiency of milk production from forage may be achieved by a combination of high (but realistic) reproductive performance leading to low involuntary culling, using crossbred cows with high genetic merit producing 430 kg milksolids yr(-1), and pasture management to increase average pasture and silage quality by 1 MJ ME kg dry matter(-1). These efficiency gains could enable stocking rate to be reduced from 3 to 2.3 cows ha(-1). Nitrogen from fertilizers would be reduced to less than 50 kg ha-1 yr-1 and include "best practice" application of nitrification inhibitors. Considerable GHG mitigation may be achieved by applying optimal animal management to maximize efficiency, minimize wastage and target N fertilizer use. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.The generation and distribution of electricity comprises nearly 40% of U.S. CO2 emissions, as well as large shares of SO2, NOx, small particulates, and other toxins. Thus, correctly accounting for these electricity-related environmental releases is of great importance in life cycle assessment of products and processes. Unfortunately, there is no agreed-upon protocol for accounting for the environmental emissions associated with electricity, as well as significant uncertainty in the estimates. Here, we explore the limits of current knowledge about grid electricity in LCA and carbon footprinting for the U.S. electrical grid, and show that differences in standards, protocols, and reporting organizations can lead to important differences in estimates of CO2, SO2, and NOx emissions factors. We find a considerable divergence in published values for grid emissions factor in the U.S. We discuss the implications of this divergence and list recommendations for a standardized approach to accounting for air pollution emissions in life cycle assessment and policy analyses in a world with incomplete and uncertain information.Effective water management is critical for social welfare and ecosystem health. Nevertheless, information necessary to meaningfully assess sustainable water use is incomplete. In particular, little information is available on supply chain or indirect water use for the production of goods and services in the United States. We estimate a vector of water withdrawals for all 428 sectors in the 2002 U.S. economic input-output table. The vector was applied using economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) methods to estimate direct and indirect water withdrawals for each sector's production, both in terms of total withdrawals and per dollar of output. Agriculture and power generation account for an overwhelming majority of direct water withdrawals (90%). A majority of water use (60%) is indirect ("embodied" or "virtual" water) with 96% of the sectors using more water indirectly in their supply chains than directly. The food and beverage industry accounts for 30% of indirect withdrawals. These results can be useful for environmental life cycle assessment of U.S. production and other studies, especially to avoid truncation errors due to boundary setting associated with process based life cycle impact assessments. However,we conclude that better information on water use would be helpful for effective water management.We present a model that integrates the economic input-output approach of life cycle assessment with environmental fate, exposure, and risk assessment to estimate the spatial distribution of air toxic health risks due to sector-specific economic activity in the U.S. The model is used to relate the economic activity and exposure potential (population density and meteorology) associated with point source emissions of the heavy metal and carcinogen, hexavalent chromium, or Cr(VI), on a county basis. Total direct annual airborne emissions of Cr(VI) in the U.S. were 44 tonnes in 2002, with 97% from facilities in four major sectors: power generation, wood, plastics, and chemicals, metals, and scientific services. These include 6 tonnes of COO emitted in the supply chains of these sectors. A highly variable national distribution of lifetime cancer risk is predicted, with a population-weighted mean of 2.7 x 10(-7), but with hot-spot counties with lifetime risks as high as 6 x 10(-6). Furthermore, high exposures and risks tend to occur in more highly populated counties. In particular, the population of Los Angeles County is exposed to the highest level of risk in the country and almost three-quarters of the total predicted cancer incidence due to inhalation of airborne COO emissions. This finding can be attributed largely to the use of Cr(VI) as a corrosion inhibitor by the scientific services sector facilities in the county, the use of shorter facility stacks, and their siting within a highly populated area. These results indicate that linking economic activity, emission estimates, and fate and transport models for air toxics can inform both life cycle impact and comparative health risk assessments, allowing us to better target emission reductions to minimize hot-spots of risk.The Southern Appalachian forest region of the U.S.-a region responsible for 23% of U.S. coal production-has 24 billion metric tons of high quality coal remaining of which mountaintop coal mining (MCM) will be the primary extraction method. Here we consider greenhouse gas emissions associated with MCM terrestrial disturbance in the life-cycle of coal energy production. We estimate disturbed forest carbon, including terrestrial soil and nonsoil carbon using published U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data of the forest floor removed and U.S. Department of Agriculture - Forest Service inventory data. We estimate the amount of previously buried geogenic organic carbon brought to the soil surface during MCM using published measurements of total organic carbon and carbon isotope data for reclaimed soils, soil organic matter and coal fragments. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the life-cycle emissions of coal production for MCM methods were found to be quite significant when considering the potential terrestrial source. Including terrestrial disturbance in coal life-cycle assessment indicates that indirect emissions are at least 7 and 70% of power plant emissions for conventional and CO2 capture and sequestration power plants, respectively. To further constrain these estimates, we suggest that the fate of soil carbon and geogenic carbon at MCM sites be explored more widely.The remediation of contaminated sites supports the goal of sustainable development but may also have environmental impacts at a local, regional and global scale. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has increasingly been used in order to support site remediation decision-making. This review article discusses existing LCA methods and proposed models focusing on critical decisions and assumptions of the LCA application to site remediation activities. It is concluded that LCA has limitations as an adequate holistic decision-making tool since spatial and temporal differentiation of non-global impacts assessment is a major hurdle in site remediation LCA. Moreover, a consequential LCA perspective should be adopted when the different remediation services to be compared generate different site's physical states. displacing alternative post-remediation scenarios. The environmental effects of the post-remediation stage of the site is generally disregarded in the past site remediation LCA studies and such exclusion may produce misleading conclusions and misdirected decision-making. In addition, clear guidance accepted by all stakeholders on remediation capital equipment exclusion and on dealing with multifunctional processes should be developed for site remediation LCA applications. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Whilst the global players in industry are rapidly moving forward to take advantage of the new opportunities and prospects offered by nanotechnologies, it is imperative that such developments take place in a safe and sustainable manner. The increasing use of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in consumer products has raised certain concerns over their safety to human health and the environment. There are currently a number of major uncertainties and knowledge gaps in regard to behavior, chemical and biological interactions and toxicological properties of ENMs. As dealing with these uncertainties will require the generation of new basic knowledge, it is unlikely that they will be resolved in the immediate future. One has to consider the whole life cycle of nanoproducts to ensure that possible impacts can be systematically discovered. For example, life cycle assessment (LCA) - a formalized life cycle concept - may be used to assess the relative environmental sustainability performance of nanoproducts in comparison with their conventional equivalents. Other less formalized life cycle concepts in the framework of prospective technology assessment may uncover further detailed and prospective knowledge for human and environmental exposure to ENMs during the life cycle of nanoproducts. They systematically reveal impacts such as cross product contamination or dissipation of scarce materials among others. The combination of different life cycle concepts with the evolving knowledge from toxicology and risk assessment can mitigate uncertainties and can provide an early basis for informed decision making by the industry and regulators. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.The energy life cycle assessment for the production of biodiesel from rendered lipids in the United States is presented in this study. Three different scenarios were found eligible for analysis: (1) conversion to biodiesel, (II) rendering and conversion, and (III) farming, rendering, and conversion. The amounts of energy required in farming, meat processing, and baseline conversion to biodiesel were reviewed front the literature. The thermal energy and electricity Used in rendering were surveyed front the U.S. rendering industry. For animal fats, scenario III resulted in a net energy ratio (NER, ratio of energy outputs to energy inputs) much lower than I. In contrast, the NERs for scenarios I and If were both found to be > 1. For scenario I, the NER was found to be >3.6, larger than the value typically reported for soybean oil (SBO) biodiesel. As for the waste SBO grease, the NER Was found to be > 1 for both applicable scenarios (I and II). To a limited extent, sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate changes in assumptions with respect to the type of fuels employed in the generation of thermal energy as well as the method for biodiesel production.In this article, we address the design of hydrogen supply chains for vehicle use with economic and environmental concerns. Given a set of available technologies to produce, store, and deliver hydrogen, the problem consists of determining the optimal design of the production-distribution network capable of satisfying a predefined hydrogen demand. The design task is formulated as a bi-criterion mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem, which simultaneously accounts for the minimization of cost and environmental impact. The environmental impact is measured through the contribution to climate change made by the hydrogen network operation. The emissions considered in the analysis are those associated with the entire life cycle of the process, and are quantified according to the principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). To expedite the search of the Pareto solutions of the problem, we introduce a bi-level algorithm that exploits its specific structure. A case study that addresses the optimal design of the hydrogen infrastructure needed to fulfill the expected hydrogen demand in Great Britain is introduced to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed approach. (C) 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 56: 650-667, 2010Decreasing enteric methane (CH4) emissions from ruminants without altering animal production is desirable both as a strategy to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and as a means of improving feed conversion efficiency. The aim of this paper is to provide an update on a selection of proved and potential strategies to mitigate enteric CH4 production by ruminants. Various biotechnologies are currently being explored with mixed results. Approaches to control methanogens through vaccination or the use of bacteriocins highlight the difficulty to modulate the rumen microbial ecosystem durably. The use of probiotics, i.e. acetogens and live yeasts, remains a potentially interesting approach, but results have been either unsatisfactory, not conclusive, or have yet to be confirmed in vivo. Elimination of the rumen protozoa to mitigate methanogenesis is promising, but this option should be carefully evaluated in terms of livestock performances. In addition, on-farm defaunation techniques are not available up to now. Several feed additives such as ionophores, organic acids and plant extracts have also been assayed. The potential use of plant extracts to reduce CH4 is receiving a renewed interest as they are seen as a natural alternative to chemical additives and are well perceived by consumers. The response to tannin- and saponin-containing plant extracts is highly variable and more research is needed to assess the effectiveness and eventual presence of undesirable residues in animal products. Nutritional strategies to mitigate CH4 emissions from ruminants are, without doubt, the most developed and ready to be applied in the field. Approaches presented in this paper involve interventions on the nature and amount of energy-based concentrates and forages, which constitute the main component of diets as well as the use of lipid supplements. The possible selection of animals based on low CH4 production and more likely on their high efficiency of digestive processes is also addressed. Whatever the approach proposed, however, before practical solutions are applied in the field, the sustainability of CH4 suppressing strategies is an important issue that has to be considered. The evaluation of different strategies, in terms of total GHG emissions for a given production system, is discussed.A comparative life-cycle energy and emissions (greenhouse gas, CO. NOx, SO2, PM10, and VOCs) inventory is created for three U.S. metropolitan regions (San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City). The inventory captures both vehicle operation (direct fuel or electricity consumption) and non-operation components (e.g., vehicle manufacturing, roadway maintenance, infrastructure operation, and material production among others). While urban transportation inventories have been continually improved, little information exists identifying the particular characteristics of metropolitan passenger transportation and why one region may differ from the next. Using travel surveys and recently developed transportation life-cycle inventories, metropolitan inventories are constructed and compared. Automobiles dominate total regional performance accounting for 86-96% of energy consumption and emissions. Comparing system-wide averages, New York City shows the lowest end-use energy and greenhouse gas footprint compared to San Francisco and Chicago and is influenced by the larger share of transit ridership. While automobile fuel combustion is a large component of emissions, diesel rail, electric rail, and ferry service can also have strong contributions. Additionally, the inclusion of life-cycle processes necessary for any transportation mode results in significant increases (as large as 20 times that of vehicle operation) for the region. in particular, emissions of CO2 from cement production used in concrete throughout infrastructure, SO2 from electricity generation in non-operational components (vehicle manufacturing, electricity for infrastructure materials, and fuel refining), PM10 in fugitive dust releases in roadway construction, and VOCs from asphalt result in significant additional inventory, Private and public transportation are disaggregated as well as off-peak and peak ravel times. Furthermore, emissions are joined with healthcare and greenhouse gas monetized externalities to evaluate the societal costs of passenger transportation in each region. Results are validated against existing studies. The dominating contribution of automobile end-use energy consumption and emissions is discussed and strategies for improving regional performance given private travel's disproportionate share are identified. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A 'well-to-wheel' analysis was conducted for bioethanol obtained from alfalfa stems by means of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. This analysis was compared with two blends of conventional gasoline with bioethanol (E10 and E85), all used in a mid-size car. A biochemical process including enzymatic hydrolysis and simultaneous saccharification and fermentation was considered. The life cycles of the fuels include gasoline production, alfalfa agriculture, lignocellulosic bioethanol production, blend production, and finally the use of fuels. The production of the alfalfa plant has two products: high-protein leaves for animal feed (the main driving force) and high-fiber stems. In this study, we assumed two allocation procedures based on mass and protein content, the latter reflecting the greater value of the leaves. According to the results, the use of bioethanol-based fuels leads to reduced global warming potential. A reduction in fossil fuel extraction of up to 72% could be achieved when pure bioethanol is used as transport fuel. On the contrary, bioethanol fuels are not the most suitable option when assessing acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical oxidant formation impact categories, mainly due to the higher impact from the upstream processes (specifically agricultural activities). LCA methodology helped to identify the key areas in the bioethanol production where researchers and technicians need to work to improve the environmental performance, paying special attention to enzyme production, onsite energy generation and distillation processes as well as agricultural activities. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdWe assessed options for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in the US Great Lakes States, a region heavily dependent on coal-fired power plants. A proposed 600 MW power plant in northern Lower Michigan, USA provided context for our evaluation. Options to offset fossil CO2 emissions by 20% included biomass fuel substitution from (1) forest residuals, (2) short-rotation woody crops, or (3) switchgrass; (4) biologic sequestration in forest plantations; and (5) geologic sequestration using CO2 capture. Review of timber product output data, land cover data, and expected energy crop productivity on idle agriculture land within 120 km of the plant revealed that biomass from forestry residuals has the potential to offset 6% and from energy crops 27% of the annual fossil fuel requirement. Furthermore, annual forest harvest in the region is only 26% of growth and the surplus represents a large opportunity for forest products and bioenergy applications. We used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare mitigation options, using fossil energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions per unit electricity generation as criteria. LCA results revealed that co-firing with forestry residuals is the most attractive option and geologic sequestration is the least attractive option, based on the two criteria. Biologic sequestration is intermediate but likely infeasible because of very large land area requirements. Our study revealed that biomass feedstock potentials from land and forest resources are not limiting mitigation activities, but the most practical approach is likely a combination of options that optimize additional social, environmental and economic criteria. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A decentralized power generation plant fuelled by straight jatropha oil was implemented in 2006 in Ranidhera, Chhattisgarh, India. The goal of this study was to assess the environmental sustainability of that electrification project in order to provide a scientific basis for policy decisions on electrifying remote villages. A full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was conducted on jatropha-based rural electrification and then compared with other electrification approaches such as photovoltaic (PV), grid connection and a diesel-fuelled power generator. In summary, the jatropha-based electrification in Ranidhera reduces greenhouse gas emissions over the full life cycle by a factor of 7 compared to a diesel generator or grid connection. The environmental performance is only slightly improved, mainly due to the high air pollution from pre-heating the jatropha seeds. With additional measures oil extraction and overall efficiency could be further improved. However, environmental benefits can only be achieved if jatropha is cultivated on marginal land and land use competition can be excluded. Under these conditions, jatropha-based electricity generation might be a useful alternative to other renewable electrification options, as the technology is very sturdy and can be maintained even in remote and highly under-developed regions. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to illuminate the benefit of a wastewater treatment and reuse project, a life cycle assessment (LCA) model was proposed by combining the process-based LCA and the input-output based LCA in one framework and using energy consumption as the sole parameter for quantitative evaluation of the project. The life cycle consumption was evaluated mainly by life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis taking into account the construction phase, operation phase and demolishment phase of the project. For evaluating the life cycle benefit of treated water reuse, attention was paid to the decrease of secondary effluent discharge and water saving. As a result of comprehensive LCA analysis of a case' project in Xi'an, China, it was understood that the life cycle benefit gained from treated wastewater reuse much surpassed the life cycle energy consumption. The advantage of wastewater treatment and reuse was well shown by LCA analysis using the proposed model. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A quantitative assessment of the environmental impact of construction activities can help decision-makers identify major environmental impact factors and make environmentally friendly construction plans in the early stages of construction. This paper presents an integrated life cycle environmental impact assessment model that is applicable to construction phase studies, where impact factors are examined according to two aspects of a typical construction process: construction equipment and ancillary materials. Environmental impacts are categorized into three safeguard subjects: ecosystems, natural resources and human health. A disability adjusted life year (DALY) model for assessing human health damage due to construction dust is developed. In addition, the environmental impact of earthwork construction is assessed as a case study to demonstrate the application of the proposed model. Results indicate that the proposed model can effectively quantify the environmental impacts of construction processes, and can potentially be used as a tool for contractors to select environmentally friendly construction plans. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Income, capital, pension provision and demographic factors across generations in Quebec Over the next twenty years the baby boom generation will be reaching retirement in large numbers. For our aging society their financial security in retirement is a matter of great anxiety. In this article the author uses life cycle analysis to compare the financial situation of Quebec's baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1966, with that of their parents, and to evaluate their financial prospects in retirement. The demographic factors influencing their financial situation in retirement are also compared. Through the use of selected quantitative indicators, the results show that if we compare the two populations at the same working age, baby-boomers are in a considerably better financial position than their parents were, in terms both of income and capital and of pension provision. This comparative advantage will tend to equip them with greater resources for financing their lives in retirement than their parents enjoyed. However, features of the particular demographic context for the baby boomers - increased life expectancy, fewer children, decline in the proportions living in couples and increased propensity to live alone - are likely to have the effect of reducing this relative advantage.Agricultural eco-efficiency is promoted as a means of increasing agricultural production and improving the security of food systems in response to climate change. The rationale is that economic and environmental resources will be used more efficiently, enabling increased amounts of food to be produced from the same amount or fewer inputs. We used (i) a quantitative literature analysis to examine current usage of the eco-efficiency concept to assess strategies aimed at improving food security under climate change, and (ii) a wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) simulation experiment to consider possible tradeoffs between economic benefits of agricultural intensification, environmental performance, and social impacts. Two issues were highlighted from this. First, the relationship between economic and environmental outcomes is regularly assumed, leading to potentially erroneous conclusions and unintended outcomes. Second, the lack of any consideration for the social dimensions of food security ignores variability in incomes generated from agricultural production, and the potential for reduced quantities of food to be produced as a rational response to maximizing gross margins. We suggest the eco-efficiency concept explicitly include social as well as economic and environmental criteria if it is to avoid poor rates of uptake of eco-efficiency technologies, the promotion of practices that reduce the effectiveness of hunger-reduction efforts, and unintended environmental degradation.The authors have been studied the life-cycle analysis of the VLS-PV systems installed in desert area using sc-Si, mc-Si, a-Si/sc-Si, a-Si/mu c-Si, CdTe, and CIS PV modules The sc-Si and a-Si/sc-Si, a-Si/mu c-Si are new items from the last studies [1] It is assumed 1 GW system in Gobi desert including transmission lines We estimated energy requirement, energy pay-back time. CO(2) emissions, and CO(2) emissions rate Concerning the energy requirement, the CIS is the smallest, and biggest energy requirement is the sc-Si The mc-Si, a-Si/sc-Si. thin-film Si and CdTe ale average The energy pay-back time of the CIS's VLS-PV system is approximately 18 years, and sc-Si is 2 5 years The others are approximately 20-23 years. Characteristics of the CO(2) emissions rate are almost same as energy pay-back time. The CO(2) emission rate is 43-54 g-O(2)/kW h The mc-Si, a-Si/sc-Si, and CIS shows lower CO(2) emissions rate (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reservedThe Planet has a large number of concentrations of minerals. However, the low price assigned to these resources and the principles of sustainable mining in the short term may cause limitations in the exploration and extraction of these resources in the immediate future and they affect the supply of minerals. The true accounts of non-renewable natural resources must be completed entering with the non market values associated to its exploitation. The environmental management tools (Exergetic Analisis and Life Cycle Assessment) are instruments to achieve this goal as outlined below.Electricity is perhaps the most versatile energy carrier in modern economies, and it is therefore fundamentally linked to human and economic development. Electricity growth has outpaced that of any other fuel, leading to ever-increasing shares in the overall mix. This trend is expected to continue throughout the following decades, as large-especially rural-segments of the world population in developing countries start to climb the "energy ladder" and become connected to power grids. Electricity therefore deserves particular attention with regard to its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, which is reflected in the ongoing development of low-carbon technologies for power generation. The focus of this updated review of electricity-generating technologies is twofold: (a) to provide more technical information than is usually found in global assessments on critical technical aspects, such as variability of wind power, and (b) to capture the most recent findings from the international literature. This report covers eight technologies. Seven of these are generating technologies: hydro-, nuclear, wind, photovoltaic, concentrating solar, geothermal and biomass power. The remaining technology is carbon capture and storage. This selection is fairly representative for technologies that are important in terms of their potential capacity to contribute to a low-carbon world economy.An 'integrated appraisal' of a solar hot water (SHW) system in the UK residential sector was carried out to assess its overall energetic, environmental and economic performance. The energy analysis indicates that when displacing a gas boiler, oil boiler, or electrical immersion heater, the SHW system would provide a net energy benefit for the majority of its estimated 25 year lifetime, thus enhancing energy security by reducing the use of, and dependence upon, conventional energy resources (mainly fossil fuels). A life cycle assessment was carried out to determine a range of environmental implications of installing and using the SHW system. It was shown that the use of aluminium has the greatest impact within the production of the system. During its use, the SHW provides the largest environmental externality benefits when displacing electricity. The economic assessment indicates that the SHW system is currently uncompetitive given the negative net present values of the various scenarios assessed. This outcome included the internalisation of the social costs of carbon. There are, however, future prospects for reduced capital costs that may significantly improve the economic performance of the system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy efficiency in new building construction has become a key target to lower nation-wide energy use. The goals of this paper are to estimate life-cycle energy savings, carbon emission reduction, and cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency measures in new commercial buildings using an integrated design approach, and estimate the implications from a cost on energy-based carbon emissions. A total of 576 energy simulations are run for 12 prototypical buildings in 16 cities, with 3 building designs for each building-location combination. Simulated energy consumption and building cost databases are used to determine the life-cycle cost-effectiveness and carbon emissions of each design. The results show conventional energy efficiency technologies can be used to decrease energy use in new commercial buildings by 20-30% on average and up to over 40% for some building types and locations. These reductions can often be done at negative life-cycle costs because the improved efficiencies allow the installation of smaller, cheaper HVAC equipment. These improvements not only save money and energy, but reduce a building's carbon footprint by 16% on average. A cost on carbon emissions from energy use increases the return on energy efficiency investments because energy is more expensive, making some cost-ineffective projects economically feasible. Published by Elsevier B.V.Energy Efficient (EE) appliances such as Compact Fluorescent Light (CFC) bulbs and Renewable Energy (RE), namely solar Photovoltaic (PV) can help to reduce Operational Energy (OE) in a house. In addition, a house should also incorporate Passive Architecture (PA) design strategies which in the hot and humid tropical climate, mean avoiding direct heat gain, encouraging natural cross ventilation and optimising the abundant daylight. Nevertheless, reducing OE must also mean economic gain to households to encourage their participation. Common economic gauges such as Return on Investment, Payback Period, Cost Benefit Analysis, Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Cost are not suitable to validate OE options in households. These economic gauges approach economic assessment as an end-result on the cost side of the product and may result for good intention to be shelved, primarily because EE equipment and RE have high capital cost compared with the alternatives. On the other hand, reducing OE in houses is actually a continual progression from the status quo and there is always a marginal gain in doing so. The challenge is to know how much is the marginal benefit against the marginal cost of investing in EE and RE. In Economics, the ratio of Marginal Cost (MC) and Marginal Benefits (MB) measure additional benefits of every additional costs of investment at a specific level of production and consumption; and Economists suggests that effective gain and loss should be compared to the status quo, i.e., Relative Position (RP). The Economics theories of MC, MB and RP are being adapted to measure the progression of reducing OE. The living/dining area in two types of houses: with and without PA design strategies are simulated to useconventional incandescent light bulbs and CFL as well as solar PV in lieu of the mains electricity supply. The power requirement for artificial lighting in every case is translated into monetary value and the ratio of MB against MC for each case shows the gain or loss in investment to reduce CE in a 30-year period. The result suggests that the value of MB/MC is high when both houses use CFI, i.e., approximately (Ringgit Malaysia) RM2.5 gain for every RM1 cost. It is also found that investment in solar PV benefits the most in the PA case that uses superior CFL bulbs, i.e., approximately RM2 gain for every RM1 cost. Despite the high capital cost of EE equipment and RE, MB/MC approach seems to make economic sense for household to invest in reducing CE at certain stages. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Union (EU) Renewable Energy Directive stipulates that only biofuel systems that achieve greenhouse gas emission savings of 60% will be eligible to be considered for the 2020 target of 10% renewable energy in transport. Rape seed biodiesel is a very popular indigenous European biofuel; however, this 60% target is very challenging for the biofuel produced. Tropical biofuels such as palm oil biodiesel tend to be sustainable, due to use of residues and byproduct to satisfy parasitic energy demands. This paper explores, through life cycle assessment methodologies, the whole rape seed system and the potential to improve sustainability. Allocation by energy content attributes almost half the greenhouse gas emissions to rape cake (a coproduct). Indeed rape cake as animal feed displaces imported soybean from Latin America and potential destruction to rain forests. Together with use of glycerol as a source of heat, greenhouse gas savings of 75% maybe attained, indicating a sustainable system. Furthermore use of rape straw pellets in lieu of the environmentally unsound practice of using peat produced from Irish Bogs as a source of domestic heating can lead to a 135% savings on diesel. Interestingly, rape cake as a source of biomethane greatly improves the energy balance of the system but is of little benefit to emissions.Industrial Ecology involves the transformation of industrial processes from linear to closed loop systems: matter and energy flows which were initially considered as wastes become now resources for existing or new processes. In this paper, Thermoeconomics, commonly used for the optimization and diagnosis of energy systems, is proposed as a tool for the characterization of Industrial Ecology. Thermoeconomics is based on the exergy analysis ( Thermodynamics) but goes further by introducing the concepts of purpose and cost ( Economics). It is presented in this study as a systematic and general approach for the analysis of waste flow integration. The formulation is based on extending the thermoeconomic process of the cost formation of wastes in order to consider their use as input for other processes. Consequently, it can be applied to important Industrial Ecology issues such as identification of integration possibilities and efficiency improvement, quantification of benefits obtained by integration, or determination of fair prices based on physical roots. The capability of the methodology is demonstrated by means of a case study based on the integration of a power plant, a cement kiln and a gas-fired boiler.The U.S. is strongly considering regulating hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) due to their global climate change forcing effects. A drop-in replacement hydrofluoroether has been evaluated using a gate-to-grave life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions for the trade-offs between direct and indirect carbon dioxide equivalent emissions compared to a current HFC and a historically used refrigerant. The results indicate current regulations being considered may increase global climate change.The aim of the study is to analyze three different waste treatment technologies by life cycle assessment tool. Sanitary Landfill, Incineration and gasification-pyrolysis of the waste treatment technologies are studied in SimaPro software based on input-output materials flow. SimaPro software has been applied for analyzing environmental burden by different impact categories. All technologies are favorable to abiotic and ozone layer depletion due to energy recovery from the waste treatment facilities. Sanitary landfill has the significantly lower environmental impact among other thermal treatment while gases are used for fuel with control emission environment. However, sanitary landfill has significant impact on photochemical oxidation, global warming and acidification. Among thermal technology, pyrolysis-gasification is comparatively more favorable to environment than incineration in global warming, acidification, eutrophication and eco-toxicity categories. Landfill with energy recovery facilities is environmentally favorable. However, due to large land requirement, difficult emission control system and long time span, restriction on land filling is applying more in the developed countries. Pyrolysis-gasification is more environmental friendly technology than incineration due to higher energy recovery efficiency. Life cycle assessment is an effective tool to analyze waste treatment technology based on environmental performances.Rapid development of information technology has changed people's attitudes towards information usage. To tender to the public's expectation, information system must feature facilities to increase the efficiency of information usage using modern information technology. Facing this challenge, it is necessary to establish a sustainable information environment, including information policy, data quality regulations and information management framework to deal with the rapidly increasing environmental data and changing behavior related to data/information usage except upgrading the hardware and software devices. Taking the uniqueness and complexity of environmental data into account, this study proposes a systematic framework based on the principle of life cycle assessment to outline the elements and its associated guidance required for a sustainable information environment. Simultaneously, the concept of information ecology is also embedded into such a planning for the purpose of establishing a self-evolutional information environment. Finally, the environmental protection administration of Taiwan is used as a case study to explain the practice of proposed framework.Due to its compatibility with the current energy infrastructures and the potential to reduce CO2 emissions significantly, CO2 capture and geological storage is recognised as one of the main options in the portfolio of greenhouse gas mitigation technologies being developed worldwide. The CO2 capture technologies offer a number of alternatives, which involve different energy consumption rates and subsequent environmental impacts While the main objective of this technology is to minimise the atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, it is also important to ensure that CO2 capture and storage does not aggravate other environmental concerns This requires a holistic and system-wide environmental assessment rather than focusing on the greenhouse gases only Life Cycle Assessment meets this criteria as it not only tracks energy and non-energy-related greenhouse gas releases but also tracks various other environmental releases, Such as solid wastes, toxic substances and common air Pollutants, as well as the Consumption of other resources, Such as water. minerals and land use This paper presents the principles of the CO2 capture and storage LCA model developed at Imperial College and uses the pulverised coal post-combustion capture example to demonstrate the methodology in detail At first, the LCA models developed for the coal combustion system and the chemical absorption CO2 capture system are presented together with examples of relevant model applications Next, the two models are applied to a plant with post-combustion CO2 capture. in order to compare the life cycle environmental performance of systems with and without CO2 capture The LCA results for the alternative post-combustion CO2 capture methods (including MEA, K+/PZ, and KS-1) have shown that, compared to plants without Capture, the alternative CO2 capture methods can achieve approximately 80% reduction in global warming potential without a significant increase in other life cycle impact categories The results have also shown that, of all the solvent options modelled, KS-1 performed the best in most impact categories (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.This study aimed to identify the environmental and economic aspects of the wind-hydrogen system using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methodologies. The target H-2 pathways are the H-2 pathway of water electrolysis (WE) with wind power (WE[Wind]) and the H-2 pathway of WE by Korean electricity mix (WE[KEM]). Conventional fuels (gasoline and diesel) are also included as target fuel pathways to identify the fuel pathways with economic and environmental advantages over conventional fuels. The key environmental issues in the transportation sector are analyzed in terms of fossil fuel consumption (FFC), regulated air pollutants (RAPs), abiotic resource depletion (ARD), and global warming (GW). The life cycle costs of the target fuel pathways consist of the well-to-tank (WTT) costs and the tank-to-wheel (TTW) costs. Moreover, two scenarios are analyzed to predict potential economic and environmental improvements offered by wind energy-powered hydrogen stations. In LCA results, WE[Wind] is superior to the other pathways in all environmental categories. The LCC results show that the projected WTT cost savings of WE[Wind] and WE[KEM] compared to gasoline are US $ 0.050 and US $ 0.036 per MJ, respectively, because hydrogen will not be subjected to any fuel tax according to the Korean Energy Policy in 2015. Although WE[KEM] and WE [Wind] incur high capital costs owing to the required capital investment in fuel cell vehicles (FCVs), they have lower well-to-wheel (WTW) costs than those of conventional fuels due to the high FCV efficiency in fuel utilization stage. WTW costs for gasoline are higher than those of WE[KEM] and WE[Wind] by US $ 12,600 and US $ 10,200, respectively. This study demonstrated the future competitiveness of the WE[Wind] pathway in both environmental and economic aspects. In the WTT stage, the point-of-sale of the electricity produced by the wind power plant (WPP) cannot be controlled because the wind-powered electricity production fluctuates considerably depending on the wind. However, the use of a wind-powered H-2 station in the future enables stable wind power plant management and provides greater economic profit than the present system since the wind-powered electricity can be used for the hydrogen production in the H-2 station and any residual electricity is sold to Korea electric power corporation (KEPCO). If 5% of conventional vehicles in Korea are substituted with FCVs using H-2 via WE[Wind] in 2015, CO2 emission will be reduced by 2,876,000 tons/year and annual LCC costs by US $ 8559 million. Thus, the operation of wind-powered hydrogen stations will encourage the introduction of hydrogen into the transportation fuel market. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of an alkaline fuel cell based domestic combined heat and power (CHP) system is presented. Literature on non-noble, monopolar cell design and stack construction was reviewed, and used to produce a life cycle inventory for the construction of a 1 kW stack. Inventories for the ancillary components of other commercial fuel cell products were consulted, and combined with information on the fuel processing requirements of alkaline cells to suggest a hypothetical balance of plant that would be required to produce AC electricity and domestic grade heat from natural gas and air. The emissions from manufacturing and disposing of this fuel cell CHP system were estimated to be equivalent to 510-1000 kg of CO(2) and 1.0-2.0 kg of particulate matter. As with platinum based polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEMFC), emissions of sulphur dioxide were the most significant impact, resulting in degraded human health in the regions where catalyst metals are mined. Improving the operating lifetime and reducing catalyst loadings were identified as the most effective routes to reducing this environmental impact, as they are with other fuel cell technologies. These impacts were compared to the results of existing LCAs for other fuel cell technologies. It was found that an alkaline fuel cell stack produces less environmental impact than an equivalent solid oxide or phosphoric acid (SOFC or PAFC) stack, while no conclusive comparison with PEMFC could be made. The inclusion of energy consumption during stack manufacture and data on the more exotic material inputs were highlighted as a problem in these studies. (C) 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Commission is supporting the development of the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD). This consists primarily of the ILCD Handbook and the ILCD Data Network. This paper gives an insight into the scientific positions of business, governments, consultants, academics, and others that were expressed at this public consultation workshop. The workshop focused on four of the topics of the main guidance documents of the ILCD Handbook: (1) general guidance on life cycle assessment (LCA); (2) guidance for generic and average life cycle inventory (LCI) data sets; (3) requirements for environmental impact assessment methods, models and indicators for LCA; and (4) review schemes for LCA. This consultation workshop was attended by more than 120 participants during the 4 days of the workshop. Representatives came from 23 countries, from both within and outside the European Union. Approximately half of the participants were from business associations or individual companies. Another 20% were governmental representatives. Others came predominantly from consultancies and academia. This public consultation workshop provided valuable inputs into the overall ILCD Handbook developments as well as for further development. This paper focuses on some of the main scientific issues that were raised.At the parameter level, data inaccuracy, data gaps, and the use of unrepresentative data have been recognized as sources of uncertainty in life cycle assessment (LCA). In many LCA uncertainty studies, parameter distributions were created based on the measured variability or on "rules of thumb," but the possible existence of correlation was not explored. The correlation between parameters may alter the sampling space and, thus, yield unrepresentative results. The objective of this article is to describe the effect of correlation between input parameters (and the final product) on the outcome of an uncertainty analysis, carried out for an LCA of an agricultural product. After a theoretical discussion about the statistical concepts on the creation of multivariate random distributions for a Monte Carlo simulation, a LCA case study for potatoes was performed. LCA followed the International Standards Organization guidelines, and the CML baseline characterization method was applied. The functional unit was 1 t of potatoes, while the inputs were restricted to inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. Differences among the two ways to assess uncertainty (with or without correlation) were analyzed through Monte Carlo methodologies, based on the respective estimated probability density functions. In order to demonstrate the effect of correlation on the final outcome, only global warming potential, acidification, and eutrophication impact categories are presented. The LCA outcome evidenced the highest environmental impact for N-based fertilizers. Environmental impact of the pesticides to the categories considered was minimum, while its contribution in the characterization phase was lower than 10%. Different degrees of correlation were found between the input factors analyzed and also in relation with yield. Uncertainty analysis results indicated a lower uncertainty level for abiotic depletion and global warming when correlation was taken into account, and the Monte Carlo simulations were based on a multivariate sampling space. The results presented allowed the inclusion of the existence of such correlation within the sampling space for a Monte Carlo simulation. Multivariate sampling spaces can be included in LCA uncertainty analysis but only if sensitivity analysis are done previously in order to identify the input factors with the highest contribution to the output uncertainty. The results of an LCA uncertainty analysis at the parameter level may lead to the wrong conclusions when the input parameters are correlated. Under a Monte Carlo procedure, the sampling space derived from univariate or multivariate normal distributions exert a varying degree of error propagation leading to different responses in the uncertainty analysis.The authors have suggested earlier a framework for life cycle impact assessment to form the modelling basis of social LCA. In this framework, the fundamental labour rights were pointed out as obligatory issues to be addressed, and protection and promotion of human dignity and well-being as the ultimate goal and area of protection of social LCA. The intended main application of this framework for social LCA was to support management decisions in companies who wish to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, by providing information about the potential social impacts on people caused by the activities in the life cycle of a product. Environmental LCA normally uses quantitative and comparable indicators to provide a simple representation of the environmental impacts from the product lifecycle. This poses a challenge to the social LCA framework because due to their complexity, many social impacts are difficult to capture in a meaningful way using traditional quantitative single-criterion indicators. A salient example is the violation of fundamental labour rights (child labour, discrimination, freedom of association, and right to organise and collective bargaining, forced labour). Furthermore, actual violations of these rights somewhere in the product chain are very difficult to substantiate and hence difficult to measure directly. Based on a scorecard, a multi-criteria indicator model has been developed for assessment of a number of social impact categories. The multi-criteria indicator assesses the effort (will and ability) of a company to manage the individual issues, and it calculates a score reflecting the company's performance in a form which allows aggregation over the life cycle of the product. The multi-criteria indicator model is presented with labour rights as an example, but the underlying principles make it suitable for modelling of other social issues with similar complexity and susceptibility to a management approach. The outcome of the scorecard is translated for each impact category through a number of steps into a company performance score, which is translated into a risk of social impacts actually occurring. This translation of the scorecard results into a company risk score that constitutes the characterisation of the developed social LCA methodology. The translation from performance score to risk involves assessment of the context of the company in terms of geographical location and industry and of the typical level of social impacts that these entail, and interpretation of the company's management effort in the light of this context. The developed indicators in social LCA are discussed in terms of their ability to reflect impacts within the four obligatory impact categories representing the labour rights according to the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) covering forced labour, discrimination, restrictions of freedom of association and collective bargaining, and child labour. Also their feasibility and the availability of the required data are discussed. It is concluded that it is feasible to develop indicators and characterisation methods addressing impacts related to the four obligatory impact categories representing the labour rights. The developed indicators are judged to be both feasible and relevant, but this remains to be further investigated in a separate paper in which they are implemented and tested in six separate industrial case studies. The suitability of multi-criteria assessment methods to cover other social impacts than the obligatory ILO-based impacts is discussed, and it is argued that the combination of indirect indicators measuring a risk of impacts and direct indicators giving a direct measure of the impacts requires an explicit weighting before interpretation and possible aggregation.This paper discusses the identification of the environmental consequences of marginal electricity supplies in consequential life cycle assessments (LCA). According to the methodology, environmental characteristics can be examined by identifying affected activities, i.e. often the marginal technology. The present 'state-of the-art' method is to identify the long-term change in power plant capacity, known as the long-term marginal technology, and assume that the marginal supply will be fully produced at such capacity. However, the marginal change in capacity will have to operate as an integrated part of the total energy system. Consequently, it does not necessarily represent the marginal change in electricity supply, which is likely to involve a mixture of different production technologies. Especially when planning future sustainable energy systems involving combined heat and power (CHP) and fluctuating renewable energy sources, such issue becomes very important. This paper identifies a business-as-usual (BAU) 2030 projection of the Danish energy system. With a high share of both CHP and wind power, such system can be regarded a front-runner in the development of future sustainable energy systems in general. A strict distinction is made between, on the one hand, marginal capacities, i.e. the long-term change in power plant capacities, and on the other, marginal supply, i.e. the changes in production given the combination of power plants and their individual marginal production costs. Detailed energy system analysis (ESA) simulation is used to identify the affected technologies, considering the fact that the marginal technology will change from one hour to another, depending on the size of electricity demand compared to, among others, wind power and CHP productions. On the basis of such input, a long-term yearly average marginal (YAM) technology is identified and the environmental impacts are calculated using data from ecoinvent. The results show how the marginal electricity production is not based solely on the marginal change in capacity but can be characterised as a complex set of affected electricity and heat supply technologies. A long-term YAM technology is identified for the Danish BAU2030 system in the case of three different long-term marginal changes in capacity, namely coal, natural gas or wind power. Four analyses and examples of YAMs have been used in order to present examples of the cause-effect chain between a change in demand for electricity and the installation of new capacity. In order to keep open the possibilities for further analysis of what can be considered the marginal technology, the results of four different situations are provided. We suggest that the technology mix with the installation of natural gas or coal power plant is applied as the marginal capacity. The environmental consequences of marginal changes in electricity supply cannot always be represented solely by long-term change in power plant capacity, known as the long-term marginal technology. The marginal change in capacity will have to operate as an integrated part of the total energy system and, consequently, in most energy systems, one will have to identify the long-term YAM technology in order to make an accurate evaluation of the environmental consequences. This paper recommends a combination of LCA and ESA as a methodology for identifying a complex set of marginal technologies. The paper also establishes values for Danish marginal electricity production as a yearly average (YAM) that can be used in future LCA studies involving Danish electricity.The synergistic use of life cycle assessment (LCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed as a new methodological approach to link environmental and socioeconomic assessments of fisheries. Therefore, the goal is to combine LCA and DEA in order to increase the assessment ability of both tools when applied to these fisheries. Specifically, the joint inclusion of economic aspects and the consideration of currently underrepresented environmental impact categories are tackled. A five-step method is presented to combine LCA and DEA so that operational benchmarking and eco-efficiency verification are included together with the assessment of the environmental performance of fishing vessels. Some guidelines are also provided to orientate methodological choices in DEA. Furthermore, the applicability of the method for fisheries is discussed using a Spanish coastal trawl fishery as an example. The use of the five-step LCA+DEA method for fisheries demonstrated the dependence of environmental impacts on the operational performance of the vessels. Operational inefficiencies were detected and target performance improvement values were consequently defined for the inefficient vessels. The combined method favored quantification of potential eco-efficiency gains. Optional features of DEA models allowed the inclusion of controversial impact issues such as by-catch discarding. As demonstrated by the application of the method to the trawling case study, this methodology facilitates joint consideration of the environmental impacts of the fleet together with economic issues such as operational efficiency. Moreover, the potential inclusion of "bad outputs" in DEA models makes the proposed method suitable for quantifying the potential improvements in currently underrepresented issue areas such as discarding by-catch. The proposed methodological approach was found as an adequate alternative to complement the mere use of LCA for fisheries. Its use avoids problems with standard deviations which usually arise when LCA practitioners work with average inventories. Moreover, the new approach facilitates the interpretation of the results for practitioners who deal with multiple individual LCAs for the same fishery. Furthermore, the joint application of LCA and DEA carry synergistic effects related to the link between operational efficiency and environmental impacts. The proposed LCA+DEA approach for fisheries is recommended for its regular use. The need of multiple input/output data for multiple vessels is not seen as a limitation in the case of fisheries research.The use of bio-based products as carrier bags, packaging materials, and many other applications has been increasingly replacing conventional polymer products. One of the main driving forces of bio-plastic applications is the perceived depletion and scarcity of fossil fuels, especially petroleum. However, despite being introduced as an environmentally friendly alternative to plastics made from crude oil, the environmental benefits of bio-plastics remain debatable. This article serves to investigate whether or not bio-based materials are environmentally friendlier options compared to plastics and attempts to explain the rationale of the results. The production and disposal of both conventional plastic and bio-plastic carrier bags are investigated using life cycle assessment or LCA. A typical bio-based bag (made from polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA) from the U.S. was selected to be compared with a locally produced polyethylene plastic (PP) bag in Singapore. In the LCA system, the raw materials for making polyethylene came from crude oil imported from Middle East and natural gas piped from Natuna gas field. The refinery and PP bag production processes are based in Singapore. Bio-bag production was entirely in the U.S., and the finished product was shipped to Singapore. The impact assessment results were generated for global warming potential, acidification, and photochemical ozone formation. Next, normalized results were calculated according to the parameters of Singapore's annual emission inventory. The total environmental impacts of bio-bags showed considerable differences under various energy scenarios. When the energy expenditures to make bio-bags are supplied by U.S. electricity mix, the production impacts are about 69% higher, compared to the impacts from PP bags. With coal-fired power supply, the production impacts from bio-bag production turned out to be about five times greater than those from conventional plastics. The life cycle production impacts of PP bags are comparable to bio-bags when the energy supplied to the bio-material production chain is supplied by natural gas. Bio-bags are 80% more environmentally friendly than plastic bags when clean and renewable energy (geothermal) is used throughout its life cycle production stages. By the use of LCA with different energy scenarios, this article sheds some light on the extent of environmental benefits (or drawbacks) of replacing plastic carrier bags with PHA bags. It was concluded that the life cycle production of bio-bags can only be considered as environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional plastic bags if clean energy sources are supplied throughout its production processes. It was also highlighted that the results should not be viewed as a global representative since the case study scope was for Singapore alone. Additional work by others on different biodegradable and compostable bags vary in results. Some of the complexities of such work lie in what is included or excluded from the scope and the adoption of different environmental impact assessment methods. Nevertheless, the authors' attempt to compare the two bags may serve as a basis for identifying the major environmental burdens of such materials' life cycle production. Although bio-based products have been mostly regarded as a sustainable solution for replacing petroleum-based polymers, in most cases, the amounts of resources and energy required to produce them have not been taken into account. Before bio-based plastics can be recommended as a preferred option to plastics, a few challenges have to be overcome. The main issue lies in reducing the energy used in the life cycle production of the bio-material from crops. The environmental benefits and drawbacks of both materials should also be more clearly highlighted by expanding the system boundary to include end-of-life options; this is carried out in part 2 (Khoo and Tan, Int J Life Cycle Assess, in press, 2010).Pharmaceuticals have been recently discussed in the press and literature regarding their occurrence in rivers and lakes, mostly due to emissions after use. The production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) has been less analyzed for environmental impacts. In this work, a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the production of an API from cradle to factory gate was carried out. The main sources of environmental impacts were identified. The resulting environmental profile was compared to a second pharmaceutical production and to the production of basic chemicals. Detailed production data of a pharmaceutical production in Basel, Switzerland were used as the basis of this work. Information about the production of precursor chemicals was available as well. Using models and the ecoinvent database to cover remaining data gaps, a full life cycle inventory of the whole production was created. Using several life cycle impact assessment methods, including Cumulative Energy Demand (CED), Global Warming Potential (GWP), Eco-Indicator 99 (EI99), Ecological Scarcity 2006, and TRACI, these results were analyzed and the main sources of environmental burdens identified. Pharmaceutical production was found to have significantly more environmental impacts than basic chemical production in a kilogram-per-kilogram basis. Compared to average basic chemical production, the API analyzed had a CED 20 times higher, a GWP 25 times higher and an EI99 (H/A) 17 times higher. This was expected to a degree, as basic chemicals are much less complex molecules and require significantly fewer chemical transformations and purifications than pharmaceutical compounds. Between 65% and 85% of impacts were found to be caused by energy production and use. The fraction of energy-related impacts increased throughout the production process. Feedstock use was another major contributor, while process emissions not caused by energy production were only minor contributors to the environmental impacts. The results showed that production of APIs has much higher impacts than basic chemical production. This was to be expected given the increased complexity of pharmaceutical compounds as compared with basic chemicals, the smaller production volumes, and the fact that API production lines are often newer and less optimized than the production of more established basic chemicals. The large contributions of energy-related processes highlight the need for a detailed assessment of energy use in pharmaceutical production. The analysis of the energy-related contributions to the overall impacts on a process step level allows a comprehensive understanding of each process' contribution to overall impacts and their energy intensities. Environmental impacts of API production were estimated in a cradle-to-gate boundary. The major contributors to the environmental impacts in aggregating methods were resource consumption and emissions from energy production. Process emissions from the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant itself were less of a concern in developed countries. Producers aiming to increase their sustainability should increase efforts to reduce mass intensity and to improve energy efficiency. Pharmaceutical companies have increased their efforts to optimize resource efficiency and energy use in order to improve their environmental performance. The results of this study can be used as a first step to perform a full cradle to grave LCA of pharmaceutical production and use, which could include other important phases of the pharmaceutical product life cycle. To assess a commercial pharmaceutical, the results of API production have to be compared to the contributions of other ingredients and formulation.Integrating environmental issues into the traditional product design process, for powerful eco-efficiency, is now one of the major priorities for steelmakers. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is currently undertaken as the most holistic approach for assessing environmental impact and selecting new technologies to reduce emissions for steel industry. However, in order to identify new ways for environmental friendly production of steel, it is essential to carry out the process Life cycle inventory (LCI) which is the core part of LCA. According to LCA practitioners, the quality and the availability of data are the main important limiting factors when applying this methodology for new steelmaking processes without large industrial application. In this paper, we propose a new approach of LCIA of steelmaking, based on the simulation of traditional processes which guarantees the quality of data, the mass and the energy balances. This approach is validated for an existing integrated plant and will be used to assess the inventory for breakthrough steelmaking technologies. The proposed methodological framework combines physicochemical modelling approach with LCA thinking, in order to carry out the LCI of steelmaking process. Using Aspen Plus commercial flow-sheeting software, physicochemical models have been developed for each steelmaking unit: coke plant, sinter plant, blast furnace, basic oxygen furnace and hot-rolling. The association of the five separately developed modules builds the complete flow sheet of the integrated steelmaking plant. Based on chemical reactions, thermodynamics laws and mathematical equations, the model calculates the mass of each pollutant released by the process, the masses and the chemical compositions of products and by-products simultaneously. For a better understanding of this approach, a brief description of the module developed for coke-making plant is given in the current paper. Thanks to the developed model, the LCI of an existing European integrated steelmaking plant has been calculated and inserted into GaBi software for environmental impacts assessment. In order to check the maturity of the developed approach, simulations of the model have been carried out for virtual cases describing an integrated steelmaking plant, characterised by the best available technology. Comparisons between inventories calculated with the model for "virtual" cases and for existing European plant showed good consistency of results and allowed us to validate the proposed approach. The new approach proposed for LCI calculation offers some important benefits that cannot be obtained when the inventory is carried out in the traditional way. First of all, the model allows us to control the mass and energy balances, something that is basically impossible to assure when only data from industry and/or literature are used. Secondly, calculating emissions based on physicochemical and mathematical considerations gives a strong credibility to the inventory. Predictive model simulations, for special operating conditions (e.g. recycling of different wastes, use of new fuels or mix of fuels), give access to certain environmental information which is not available. The LCI of the integrated steelmaking plant can then be carried out for different operational practices, and the best scenario can be identified in minimal time. The integrated classical steelmaking route (via blast furnace/converter) has been modelled with Aspen, and the results were successfully compared with industrial data. Consistency of results obtained for simulations of real and virtual integrated plants have shown that the new concept strengthens the LCA method in order to supply rigorous "gate to gate" LCI. It has been shown that the current approach, developed for steelmaking classical route, is mature for modelling new steelmaking breakthrough technologies for environmentally friendly production of steel, such as smelting reduction, direct reduction, hydrogen reduction and use of biomass. After the selection of steelmaking alternatives and before testing these technological proposals at industrial scale, it is crucial to assess their inventories. As perspective of the current work, the approach proposed in this paper can be used as a powerful tool in order to assess the LCI of new technologies mentioned above.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle inventory (LCI) practice needs to engage with the debate on water use in agriculture and industry. In the case of the red meat sector, some of the methodologies proposed or in use cannot easily inform the debate because either the results are not denominated in units that are meaningful to the public or the results do not reflect environmental outcomes. This study aims to solve these problems by classifying water use LCI data in the Australian red meat sector in a manner consistent with contemporary definitions of sustainability. We intend to quantify water that is removed from the course it would take in the absence of production or degraded in quality by the production system. The water used by three red meat supply systems in southern Australia was estimated using hybrid LCA. Detailed process data incorporating actual growth rates and productivity achieved in two calendar years were complemented by an input-output analysis of goods and services purchased by the properties. Detailed hydrological modelling using a standard agricultural software package was carried out using actual weather data. The model results demonstrated that the major hydrological flows in the system are rainfall and evapotranspiration. Transferred water flows and funds represent small components of the total water inputs to the agricultural enterprise, and the proportion of water degraded is also small relative to the water returned pure to the atmosphere. The results of this study indicate that water used to produce red meat in southern Australia is 18-540 L/kg HSCW, depending on the system, reference year and whether we focus on source or discharge characteristics. Two key factors cause the considerable differences between the water use data presented by different authors: the treatment of rain and the feed production process. Including rain and evapotranspiration in LCI data used in simple environmental discussions is the main cause of disagreement between authors and is questionable from an environmental impact perspective because in the case of some native pastoral systems, these flows may not have changed substantially since the arrival of Europeans. Regarding the second factor, most of the grain and fodder crops used in the three red meat supply chains we studied in Australia are produced by dryland cropping. In other locations where surface water supplies are more readily available, such as the USA, irrigation of cattle fodder is more common. So whereas the treatment of rain is a methodological issue relevant to all studies relating water use to the production of red meat, the availability of irrigation water can be characterised as a fundamental difference between the infrastructure of red meat production systems in different locations. Our results are consistent with other published work when the methodological diversity of their work and the approaches we have used are taken into account. We show that for media claims that tens or hundreds of thousands of litres of water are used in the production of red meat to be true, analysts have to ignore the environmental consequences of water use. Such results may nevertheless be interesting if the purpose of their calculations is to focus on calorific or financial gain rather than environmental optimisation. Our approach can be applied to other agricultural systems. We would not suggest that our results can be used as industry averages. In particular, we have not examined primary data for northern Australian beef production systems, where the majority of Australia's export beef is produced.Though environmental improvement has been claimed for the application of nanotechnology to solar cells, several characteristics of the fullerene-based organic, and the dye-sensitized nanoparticulate, solar cell are not conducive to such improvement. These include relatively high energy and materials inputs in the production of nanoparticles, a relatively low solar radiation to electricity conversion efficiency, a relatively short service life, the use of relatively scarce metals and relatively poor recyclability, if compared with the multicrystal line Si solar cell which currently is the market leader. Moreover, the lack of data and the inability of current methods to handle hazards of nanoparticles generate problems in conducting comparative life cycle assessment of nanoparticulate solar cells. So far, the claimed environmental advantage can not be substantiated for fullerene-based and dye-sensitized nanoparticulate solar cells. There are options for the environmental improvement of these nanoparticulate solar cells, but actual development does not seem to focus on environmental improvement. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to understand and to model the environmental performance of biodiesel produced by various Greek raw materials under current conditions. Three energy crops (rapeseed, sunflower and soybean) have been studied, with regard to their levels of biodiesel productivity. Throughout the entire process, current Greek climatic conditions and cultivation parameters have been taken into account. At the stage of assessment, we conclude that the environmental impacts per crop area indicate that soybean has the lowest environmental impacts. However, by assessing the results per quantity of produced biodiesel, the crop with the minimum environmental impacts is sunflower. This paper shows that environmental benefits from biodiesel have better results, compared to conventional diesel, thus leading to the conclusion that it is feasible to succeed improved environmental performance. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An option for the agriculture and energy sectors in Chile is the cultivation of energy crops, but environmental studies are first needed in the framework of a sustainable national energy policy. In this study, we used a cradle-to-farm gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare environmental impacts and energy and water demand of rapeseed (Brassica napus L) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus L) in Chile, as potential oleaginous crops for first-generation biodiesel production. National agricultural data are used for the LCA inventory and process data of international databases are adapted to local conditions. The effect of field N2O emissions and land use change is evaluated. The results indicate that, compared to sunflower, rapeseed production has a better environmental performance in 9 out of the 11 impact categories evaluated, and lower water consumption. The energy demand of rapeseed is 4.9 GJ/t seed, 30% less than that of sunflower. Mineral fertilizers cause the highest environmental impact in both crops. The analysis of the life cycle of fertilizers indicates that extraction of raw materials and its production are key stages. Attempts to reduce the environmental impact and energy requirement of both crops should be mainly associated with the evaluation of other types of fertilization. In addition, particularly for sunflower, low impact herbicides should be evaluated, seed yield improved and cultivation practices optimized. If the crops are produced on degraded grasslands, the greenhouse gas emissions may be reduced. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has proven useful in comparing the environmental impact of alternatives, life-cycle phases or parts in a product. To date, benchmarking a new product with previous environmental information entails a degree of subjectivity. This paper presents LCP-families, a concept to develop reference ranges for environmental impact of a new product. A new product can be catalogued as environmentally better or worse than a percentage of its competitors, depending on what position it occupies in its LCP-family. Three case studies of packaging products are carried out to show the applicability and usefulness of the concepts presented. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the major justifications for bio-energy systems is their low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to fossil-energy ones. Transforming a sugar mill into a bio-energy plant would contribute to climate change mitigation via the extraction of renewable electricity and ethanol. This study takes the case of the sugar industry in Thailand and identifies scenario options that offer GHG reduction benefits. Improving efficiency in electricity generation from sugar cane residues e.g. excess bagasse and cane trash is such a beneficial option. Furthermore, extracting ethanol in a so-called bio-refinery, where the co-product stillage is utilized for energy, tends to magnify the potential benefit. The largest savings potential achieved with extracting ethanol from surplus sugar versus current practice in the sugar industry in Thailand amounts to 14 million tonnes CO(2)e a year. This cannot be realized in practice until the carbon debt from land conversion is repaid, which takes 4.5-7 years, assuming that the land converted is grassland. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The semiconductor industry plays a leading role in supporting economic stabilization and social progress in Taiwan. In this paper, Eco-indicator 95 and Impact 2002+ are utilized to evaluate the potential environmental impacts from five production processes of the double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory (DDR SDRAM). The comparisons between these two impact methods and their scopes are also discussed. From our results, global warming potential and non-renewable energy consumption were identified as the major environmental impacts. Applications of Eco-indicator 95 and IMPACT 2002+ also suggest that summer smog and respiratory inorganics are significant impact categories. The comparison of the scopes of these two methods identifies that low GWP potential PFCs substitution and electricity saving are effective ways to decrease environmental impacts of DRAM manufacturing. In addition, IMPACT 2002+ is a more applicable LCA method for the semiconductor industry in Taiwan due to the structure and reference area of this method and the characteristics of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study evaluates the environmental impact of the cement production and its variations between different cement plants, using Life Cycle Impact Assessment. For that purpose, details of the cement production processes are investigated in order to show the respective part of raw materials preparation and clinker production using environmental impacts calculated with CML01 indicators. For the kiln emission data, a European pollutant emission register for French intensive industries is used to quantify the variability of indicators between cement plants. For the CML01 indicators that are controlled by kiln emissions, some of them (i.e. global warming, photochemical oxidation) show variations between cement plants between 20 and 30%, as for other (i.e. acidification, eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity) variations are greater than 40% due to the lack of accurate measurements on both pollutant content and annual flow. Finally, a normalisation, using Western Europe yearly emissions is performed and permits to highlight among all the CML01 indicators which ones are the main impacts for the cement production. Abiotic depletion, global warming, acidification and marine ecotoxicity are the four identified impacts. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their potential effect on the environment has become an important national and international issue. Dairy production, along with all other types of animal agriculture, is a recognized source of GHG emissions, but little information exists on the net emissions from dairy farms. Component models for predicting all important sources and sinks of CH4, N2O, and CO2 from primary and secondary sources in dairy production were integrated in a software tool called the Dairy Greenhouse Gas model, or DairyGHG. This tool calculates the carbon footprint of a dairy production system as the net exchange of all GHG in CO2 equivalent units per unit of energy-corrected milk produced. Primary emission sources include enteric fermentation, manure, cropland used in feed production, and the combustion of fuel in machinery used to produce feed and handle manure. Secondary emissions are those occurring during the production of resources used on the farm, which can include fuel, electricity, machinery, fertilizer, pesticides, plastic, and purchased replacement animals. A longterm C balance is assumed for the production system, which does not account for potential depletion or sequestration of soil carbon. An evaluation of dairy farms of various sizes and production strategies gave carbon footprints of 0.37 to 0.69 kg of CO2 equivalent units/kg of energy-corrected milk, depending upon milk production level and the feeding and manure handling strategies used. In a comparison with previous studies, DairyGHG predicted C footprints similar to those reported when similar assumptions were made for feeding strategy, milk production, allocation method between milk and animal coproducts, and sources of CO2 and secondary emissions. DairyGHG provides a relatively simple tool for evaluating management effects on net GHG emissions and the overall carbon footprint of dairy production systems.Nowadays, there is a trend in many countries towards more environmentally benign products and processes. Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a quantitative analysis tool developed and utilized for the evaluation of environmental impacts occurring throughout the entire life-cycle of a product, process or activity. LCA requires a large amount of data in its different phases and can also generate large amounts of results which may be hard to interpret. In order to uncover and visualize the structure of large multidimensional data sets, Multivariate Analysis techniques can help. Hence, in this paper, a methodology using Principal Component Analysis and Multi-Dimensional Scaling is proposed and illustrated by means of two case studies. The first case study evaluates the operation of several wastewater treatment plants. The second case study deals with the environmental evaluation of the cultivation, processing and consumption of mussels. In both case studies, the redundancy present in the data allowed a dimensionality reduction from seven and ten to two dimensions, with a small loss of information. Plotting the environmental impact data in these two dimensions can help visualize, interpret and communicate them. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.P>This article presents the results of an experimental activity aimed at investigating the technical feasibility and the environmental performance of using municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash to produce glass frit for ceramic glaze (glaze frit). The process includes an industrial pretreatment of bottom ash that renders the material suitable for use in glaze frit production and allows recovery of aluminum and iron. The environmental performance of this treatment option is assessed with the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The goal of the LCA study is to assess and compare the environmental impacts of two scenarios of end of life of bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI): landfill disposal (conventional scenario) and bottom ash recovery for glaze frit production (innovative scenario). The main results of the laboratory tests, industrial simulations, and LCA study are presented and discussed, and the environmental advantages of recycling versus landfill disposal are highlighted.P>Due to increasing environmental concerns in the wastewater treatment sector, the environmental impacts of organic waste disposal procedures require careful evaluation. However, the impacts related to the return of organic matter to agricultural soils are difficult to assess. The goals of this study are to assess the environmental impacts of land application of two types of biosolids (dried and composted, respectively) from the same wastewater treatment plant in France, and to improve the quantification of human toxicity. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out on a case study based on validated data from an actual wastewater treatment plant. Numerous impacts were included in this analysis, but a particular emphasis was laid on human toxicity via plant ingestion. For six out of the eight impact categories included in the analysis, the dried biosolids system was more harmful to the environment than the composting route, especially regarding the consumption of primary energy. Only human toxicity via water, soil, and air compartments and ozone depletion impacts were higher with the composted biosolids.P>Collection and treatment of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is regulated in the European Union by the WEEE Directive. Producers are responsible for take-back and recycling of discarded equipment. Valuable materials are, however, at risk of "getting lost" in current processes. Thus, strategies to minimize losses are sought after. The material hygiene (MH) concept was introduced to address this issue. Structural features, which are important for the outcome of reuse, recovery, and recycling, were investigated in an earlier field study of discarded dishwashers. It was proposed that a prestep, manual removal of copper prior to shredding could increase the purity of recovered material fractions. This article builds on the field study and theoretical reasoning underlying the MH concept. Dishwashers are assumed to be designed for disassembly when the prestep is introduced. A limited life cycle assessment was performed to determine whether the proposed prestep may be environmentally beneficial in a life cycle perspective. Two alternatives were analyzed: Case 1: the current shredding process. Case 2: prestep removal of copper before shredding. Targeted disassembly prior to shredding may reduce the abiotic depletion and global warming potential in a life cycle perspective. The prestep results in increased copper recovery, but, more important, copper contamination of the recovered steel fractions is reduced. The results also highlight the importance of minimizing energy consumption in all process stages.P>As governments elaborate strategies to counter climate change, there is a need to compare the different options available on an environmental basis. This study proposes a life cycle assessment framework integrating the Lashof accounting methodology, which enables the assessment and comparison of different carbon mitigation projects (e.g., biofuel use, a sequestering plant, an afforestation project). The Lashof accounting methodology is chosen amid other methods of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission characterization for its relative simplicity and capability to characterize all types of carbon mitigation projects. Using the unit of megagram-year (Mg-year), which accounts for the mass of GHGs in the atmosphere multiplied by the time it stays there, the methodology calculates the cumulative radiative forcing caused by GHG emission within a predetermined time frame. Basically, the developed framework uses the Mg-year as a functional unit and isolates impacts related to the climate mitigation function with system expansion. The proposed framework is demonstrated with a case study of tree ethanol pathways (maize, sugarcane, and willow). The study shows that carbon mitigation assessment through life cycle assessment is possible and that it could be a useful tool for decision makers, as it can compare different projects regardless of their original context. The case study reveals that system expansion, as well as each carbon mitigation project's efficiency at reducing carbon emissions, are critical factors that have a significant impact on the results. Also, the framework proves to be useful for treating land-use change emissions, as they are considered through the functional unit.P>This article evaluates the implications of uncertainty in the life cycle (LC) energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of rapeseed oil (RO) as an energy carrier displacing fossil diesel (FD). Uncertainties addressed include parameter uncertainty as well as scenario uncertainty concerning how RO coproduct credits are accounted for (uncertainty due to modeling choices). We have carried out an extensive data collection to build an LC inventory accounting for parameter uncertainty. Different approaches for carbon stock changes associated with converting set-aside land to rapeseed cultivation have been considered, which result in different values: from -0.25 t C/ha.yr (carbon uptake by the soil in tonnes per hectare year) to 0.60 t C/ha.yr (carbon emission). Energy renewability efficiency and GHG emissions of RO are presented, which show the influence of parameter versus scenario uncertainty. Primary energy savings and avoided GHG emissions when RO displaces FD have also been calculated: Avoided GHG emissions show considerably higher uncertainty than energy savings, mainly due to land use (nitrous oxide emissions from soil) and land use conversion (carbon stock changes). Results demonstrate the relevance of applying uncertainty approaches; emphasize the need to reduce uncertainty in the environmental life cycle modeling, particularly GHG emissions calculation; and show the importance of integrating uncertainty into the interpretation of results.P>Allocation in life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis is one of the long-standing methodological issues in life cycle assessment (LCA). Discussion on allocation among LCA researchers has taken place almost in complete isolation from the series of closely related discussions from the 1960s in the field of input-output economics, regarding the supply and use framework. This article aims at developing a coherent mathematical framework for allocation in LCA by connecting the parallel developments of the LCA and the input-output communities. In doing so, the article shows that the partitioning method in LCA is equivalent to the industry-technology model in input-output economics, and system expansion in LCA is equivalent to the by-product-technology model in input-output output economics. Furthermore, we argue that the commodity-technology model and the by-product-technology model, which have been considered as two different models in input-output economics for more than 40 years, are essentially equivalent when it comes to practical applications. It is shown that the matrix-based approach used for system expansion successfully solves the endless regression problem that has been raised in LCA literature. A numerical example is introduced to demonstrate the use of allocation models. The relationship of these approaches with consequential and attributional LCA models is also discussed.Livestock production has a major impact on the environment. Choosing a more environmentally-friendly livestock product in a diet can mitigate environmental impact. The objective of this research was to compare assessments of the environmental impact of livestock products. Twenty-five peer-reviewed studies were found that assessed the impact of production of pork, chicken, beef, milk, and eggs using life cycle analysis (LCA). Only 16 of these Studies were reviewed, based on five criteria: study from an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country, non-organic production. type of LCA methodology, allocation method used, and definition of system boundary. LCA results of these 16 studies were expressed in three ways: per kg product. per kg protein. and per kg of average daily intake of each product for an OECD country. The review yielded a consistent ranging of results for use of land and energy, and for climate change. No clear pattern was found, however, for eutrophication and acidification. Production of 1 kg of beef used most land and energy, and had highest global warming potential (GWP), followed by production of 1 kg of pork, chicken. eggs, and milk. Differences in environmental impact among pork. chicken, and beef can be explained mainly by 3 factors: differences in feed efficiency, differences in enteric CH4 emission between monogastric animals and ruminants, and differences in reproduction rates. The impact of production of 1 kg of meat (pork, chicken, beef) was high compared with production of 1 kg of milk and eggs because of the relatively high water content of milk and eggs. Production of 1 kg of beef protein also had the highest impact, followed by pork protein, whereas chicken protein had the lowest impact. This result also explained why consumption of beef was responsible for the largest part of the land use and GWP in an average OECD diet. This review did not show consistent differences in environmental impact per kg protein in milk, pork, chicken and eggs. Only one study compared environmental impact of meat versus milk and eggs. Conclusions regarding impact of pork or chicken versus impact of milk or eggs require additional comparative studies and further harmonization of LCA methodology. Interpretation of current LCA results for livestock products, moreover, is hindered because results do not include environmental consequences of competition for land between humans and animals, and consequences of land-use changes. We recommend, therefore, to include these consequences in future LCAs of livestock products. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Within the organic dairy farming sector in Germany, traditional mixed farms with relatively low yearly milk yields of around 6000 kg per cow exist beside highly specialised grassland based farms with more than 9000 kg milk yield per cow and year. Specialisation and intensification are discussed critically within the organic sector as negative environmental effects are expected. In this study the potential environmental impacts of four different types of organic dairy farms are compared, based on a survey of 27 organic dairy farms classified by a percentage of grassland on total farm area and feeding intensity. The analysed environmental impact categories were energy consumption, climate impact, land demand, ammonia emissions, nitrate leaching, conservation of soil fertility, biodiversity, animal welfare and milk quality. Farms with a high feeding intensity tended to show ecological advantages in the impact categories climate impact and land demand. In contrast, low-input farm types showed positive environmental effects in the impact categories animal welfare, milk quality and ammonia losses. In an overall environmental index, the farm type "low-input mixed farming" showed the best results. The hypothesis that farms orientated on the traditional principles of organic farming tend to have less negative environmental effects even within the range of organic dairy farms is hereby confirmed, However, further research is needed to affirm the methodology Used to quantify the environmental effects in the categories of animal welfare and milk quality. The results show that focussing only on the classical environmental impact categories, e.g. energy consumption and climate impact, may lead to different results than a more complex system approach that considers a broader range of relevant impacts and ecological benefits. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There are many approaches to study the environmental and sustainability aspects of production and consumption Some of these reside at the level of concepts, e.g, Industrial ecology, design for environment, and cleaner production. Other approaches are based on the use of quantitative models, e g., life cycle assessment, material flow accounting and strategic environmental assessment This paper focuses on the development of a framework that is able to incorporate different models for environmental analysis, with the option of a broader scope that also includes economic and social aspects, thus covering the three pillars of sustainability This framework builds on the ISO-framework for life cycle assessment, but takes a broader view, and allows us to move from micro questions on specific products, via meso questions on life styles tip to macro questions in which the entire societal structure IS part of the analysis (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.The sizing optimization of a Stand-Alone Photovoltaic system (SAPV) is a very complex issue. Therefore, a compromise solution must be made between having an acceptable energy and economic cost for the consumer, and a relatively correct energy supply quality. The Gross Energy Requirement (GER) of an SAPV system corresponds to the primary energy total amount required for the production, the maintenance and the recycling of this system. Reducing the GER is thus, an effective way to promote the development of SAPV systems. Therefore, the load profile management, in order to get closer to the ideal "solar" consumer, allows the downsizing of the system. In this paper, a methodology for studying the impact of load profiles on GER is proposed. Two different modifications parameters have been considered theoretically on idealized load and production profiles: the load shifting which seems simpler to implement in the reality. and the amplitude modulation. Furthermore, the NSGA-II genetic algorithm has been used to confirm theoretical outcomes and to optimize SAPV system sizing for three realistic load profiles, with the aim of quantifying the GER reduction, by minimizing the storage capacity (taking into account the replacements due to cycling) which is one of the weak points of such a system, and by PV panels downsizing. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reduction of the environmental impact in the oil and gas industry is an ecological and financial issue for process development and design. Currently. the environmental impact of a process is often determined by life cycle assessment (LCA). But exergy analysis has also been proposed to assess process sustainability. To illustrate the potential of coupling LCA and exergy analysis in the petroleum industry, a naphtha catalytic reforming process has been selected and evaluated in terms of climate change, one of the classical environmental impacts used in LCA. LCA and exergy analysis are used together to show how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and a thermodynamic indicator (I-p) related to exergy are modified when the process parameters are varied (feed characteristics, inlet reactor temperature, type of utilities). A positive relationship between GHG emissions and Ip has been obtained. It does not depend upon the feed characteristics and can be used for process development without performing a full LCA. The methodology has been extended to take into account natural resources depletion, greenhouse gas emissions and quality of co-products during process development and design for a given product specification. Two catalytic reforming process variants (i.e. processing same inputs and producing same outputs with different internal unit operations arrangement; for this reason, these process variants have the same function) are compared from these previous different points of view. LCA and exergy analysis are shown to be complementary tools. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Concerns about CO(2) emissions and fossil fuel supplies have enhanced interest in using crop residues for biofuel production; however, maintaining soil organic C (SOC) through residue return is vital for maintaining sod productivity. Our objectives were to simulate long-term SOC dynamics using CQESTR and to examine the effect of residue harvest on SOC stocks under disking (DT) and conservation tillage (CS). A long-term study in the mid-Coastal Plain region of South Carolina was used to simulate four residue harvest rates (0, 50,66, and 90%) during two harvest periods. The yearly variation of SOC was predicted well (r(2) = 0.84, P < 0.0001). Without residue removal, average increases of 0.10 and 0.39 g SOC kg(-1) yr(-1) were predicted under DT and CS, respectively, consistent with observed increases of 0.12 and 0.44 g SOC kg(-1) yr(-1). After 23 yr, simulated SOC stock gain was more than threefold greater under CS than DT (9.0 vs. 2.4 g SOC kg(-1)). The model predicted 1.86 and 4.47 g SOC kg(-1) losses in the top 5 cm of soil under DT and CS, respectively, during 23 yr of 66% residue harvest compared with no residue harvest. The predicted SOC stocks under CS were similar to 5 g SOC kg(-1) greater than under DT, however, even with 90% residue harvest. The quantities of crop residue that can be sustainably harvested were directly influenced by the initial SOC concentration and tillage practices. While CS can somewhat mitigate the loss of soil C, residue harvest from loamy sand soils may have an adverse impact on SOC stocks.This paper investigates the CO2 impact of current and future UK rail track and estimates the material, process and transport emissions associated with construction maintenance and, end-of-life activities for designs at high and low traffic loads. Analysis shows that for current track configurations, track with concrete sleepers has the lowest CO2 impact, followed by steel, hardwood and softwood. Several potential future rail track designs have been analysed including embedded rail and double and quadruple-headed rail. All future track designs have a lower impact than current designs, but this improvement is more marked at high traffic loads. Up to a 40% reduction in CO2 impact could be achieved if the UK rail network was to move from conventional track design to a double-headed embedded rail design. Key levers for reducing the CO2 impact of track are identified as service life extension, traffic load reduction and the selection of low impact track designs. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon emissions and stores are increasingly important as solutions are sought to address climate change. Focusing on some forest-related carbon pools but omitting product carbon frequently results in invalid conclusions. This study examined carbon emissions and stores in the life cycle of wood products in comparison with alternative materials. Emissions were established from a sustainably managed, carbon-neutral forest through processing to wood product use in residential structures and their eventual disposal. A life-cycle inventory was developed to establish the quantity of emissions from each stage of processing, and a life-cycle assessment of a representative residential building was made of its impact on global warming potential. The carbon stored in wood products as an offset to emissions was shown to be significant. Comparison of various building materials wood, steel, and concrete showed that wood was more environmentally friendly because of reduced carbon emissions because of fossil fuel combustion, carbon stored in products, permanent avoidance of emissions from fossil fuel-intensive products, and use of a sustainable and renewable resource.Determining the life-cycle inventory (LCI) and impact of forest harvest, regeneration, and growth is necessary in conducting a life-cycle assessment of wood products. This publication provides quantitative assessments of the economic and environmental impacts of forest management activities covering portions of the Inland Northwest (INW), including Montana, Idaho, and eastern Washington, and of the Northeastern and North Central (NE/NC) forests from Minnesota to Maine and south as far as Missouri, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The management scenarios provide the inputs needed to develop an LCI on all the inputs and outputs for wood products as impacted by forest treatments and the harvesting of logs in the region. Productive timberlands were grouped according to forest type, productivity, management intensity, and ownership into three broad forest types in the west: cold, dry, and moist; and four in the east: spruce/fir, northern hardwoods, oak/hickory, and aspen/birch. Spruce/fir represented the feedstock to softwood lumber and a composite of northern hardwoods and oak/hickory the feedstock to hardwood lumber. Simulations used the US Forest Service Forest Vegetation Simulator to estimate standing and harvested biomass and log volumes passed on as resources to the manufacturing segments for lumber, plywood, or oriented strandboard. The combinations of ownership, management intensity, and forest type were stratified and averaged to produce a single estimate of yield and the corresponding harvesting impacts. Both historic harvest rates and increased management intensity scenarios were simulated for each region. In the INW, the shift to the higher intensity scenario increased the average production of merchantable volume at harvest to 249 399 m(3)/ha when averaged across the forested land in each ownership class. For the NE/NC region, the production of merchantable volume averaged 263 m(3)/ha for softwood and 328 m(3)/ha for hardwood forests with an insignificant volume response from shifting land into more intensive management. Average growth varied widely for INW forest categories from a low on federal land for the base case of 0.7-6.7 m(3)/ha.yr for moist state and private land under the intensive management alternative. Current condition estimates of softwood log and bark carbon exported for mill processing in the INW and NE/NC regions were 751 and 988 kg/ha.yr, respectively.Forest inventory and harvest data from life-cycle inventory and life-cycle assessment for the forest resources of the Inland Northwest region covering Idaho, Montana, and eastern Washington were used to estimate the impacts of management action on the full suite of carbon accounts that can accrue from forest management. The carbon accounts include the forest, wood products, the benefit gained from using wood products as substitutes for alternative products that are fossil fuel-intensive to produce, and the displacement value of using woody biomass to replace fossil fuel. A landscape-level assessment of projected carbon storage by owner group shows that in 100 yr, management on State and Private Forests can sequester or avoid emissions equal to 294 t/ha of carbon, which equals over 1.9 Gt of carbon across 6.5 Mha. Seventy-nine percent of the carbon accumulates beyond current forest carbon inventories. On National Forests, carbon sequestration and avoided emissions are 152 t/ha over 11 Mha of unreserved forests equaling 1.4 Gt of carbon under predictions for a doubling of the 20th century fire rate. The carbon storage in buildings and the substitution benefits override the potential gains of attempting to leave high carbon stocks stored in the forest in this region where disturbance from fire and insect outbreaks dominates the forest ability to sequester carbon.The concept of environmental sustainability is crucial for the development of human actions, and it is one of the most important concerns of the European Union that requires attention in all of the economic sectors. In particular, the potential environmental impact of livestock is well known and has been one of the most important constraints on the development of animal breeding in certain areas. The main aim of this paper is to compare the environmental impact of different poultry production systems: conventional, organic and organic-plus. Organic-plus has more restrictive requirements than the organic system for improving animal welfare (i.e., use of slow-growing strains and 10 m2 pasture/bird), and the quality of the product. For environmental evaluation, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used in this review, which is a method to evaluate the environmental impact of products, activities and services, based on a 'cradle-to-grave' approach. This article provides information for improving the environmental impacts in a process of assessing the sustainability that is specific for poultry production. An important recommendation can be drawn from this study: great attention has to be paid to the feed production phase, since it contributes more to the systems than animal rearing does to the environmental impact of the overall system. With reference to the comparison among the systems, our results show that the organic system has the best environmental performance because it not only has the lowest impact values for two of the most important impact categories (i.e., respiratory inorganics and fossil fuels), but it also has the lowest values for most of the remaining categories. LCA provides important data and specific indicators that can be used in a wider process for the analysis of sustainability, and to adapt and improve production systems. Taking into account the entire life cycle, the organic system has shown a better environmental performance than the organic-plus system. On the other hand, the organic-plus system improves animal welfare and meat quality, which are not considered by LCA. Therefore, to reach an equilibrium among all of these factors (namely environment protection, animal welfare and meat quality), it would be necessary to find a production system that conciliates them into one coherent scheme.The prediction of wear and performance change over the life cycle of the consumable liners used to protect grinding mills is an important element of their optimization. Poor wear behaviour can lead to higher replacement costs and production loss during liner replacement. Prediction of wear behaviour using discrete element method (DEM) can provide valuable information about the impact of the design on the life cycle of the liner. Here, the DEM method is extended to predict the evolution of the shape of the liner throughout the life cycle. Using a Hicom 110 nutating mill as a case study, we demonstrate a process for constructing a wear model that is shown to be able to quantitatively predict the spatially varying wear rates over the surface of the liner. The functional dependence of wear rate on micro-mechanical flow quantities is not currently understood; hence, two model variants for each of the normal impact damage and the shear abrasion damage are considered. This model is validated by comparison with the actual erosion depths of a real liner. It is then used in a multi-step DEM simulation to predict the liner evolution and the operational changes in the mill performance over the full life cycle of the liner. For the Hicom mill, it is demonstrated that the wear is entirely dominated by abrasion and that the best measure of this was the shear energy dissipation of wall contacts. It was also to identify that the floor of the mill was constructed of a more abrasion resistance material. The life cycle analysis showed a 20% decline in power draw as the increasing grinding chamber volume and eroding lifters lead to less efficient operation of the mill. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The Kyoto Protocol created a framework of responsibilities and mechanisms to mitigate climate change by reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. The Protocol stipulates accounting and reporting of GHG emissions and removals, such as energy use, industrial processes, agriculture, waste and net emissions resulting from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities. Emissions reported according to the rules set by the Kyoto Protocol do not include GHG emissions outside a country's boundaries resulting from the production of imported goods or services. As a result, GHG accounts constructed according to the Kyoto Protocol reflect the GHG emissions resulting from the production system of a country, but not all the emissions resulting from the consumption of goods and services within the country. However. as previous studies demonstrate, a country's emission balance changes remarkably if emissions related to goods or services imported and exported are taken into account. Here, we go beyond the aforementioned studies which mainly focus on GHG emissions from fossil fuel combustion. We assess, in a first-order approach, upstream emissions that result from LULUC activities outside a country while the produced goods are consumed within the country. In our study we focus on Austria's livestock system to elucidate the difference between production and consumption-related emissions accounting approaches. We study direct and 'hidden' (embodied) GHG emissions associated with Austria's bilateral trade in livestock and livestock-related products, based on the integration of full carbon accounting (FCA) and life cycle analysis (LCA). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas emissions from beef production are a significant part of Australia's total contribution to climate change. For the first time an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) hybridizing detailed on-site process modeling and input-output analysis is used to describe Australian red meat production. In this paper we report the carbon footprint and total energy consumption of three supply chains in three different regions in Australia over two years. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy use data are compared to those from international studies on red meat production, and the Australian results are either average or below average. The increasing proportion of lot-fed beef in Australia is favorable, sin c e this production system generates lower total GHG emissions than grass-fed production; the additional effort in producing and transporting feeds is effectively offset by the increased efficiency of meat production in feedlots. In addition to these two common LCA indicators, in this paper we also quantify solid waste generation and a soil erosion indicator on a common basis.Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has become a key technology in climate change mitigation programs worldwide. CCS is well-studied in terms of greenhouse gas emission reduction potential and cost of implementation. Impacts on human health and the environment have, however, received considerably less attention. In this work, we present a first assessment of human health and environmental impacts of a postcombustion CO2 capture facility, focusing on emissions from amine-based scrubbing solvents and their degradation products to air. We develop characterization factors for human toxicity for monoethanolamine (MEA) as these were not yet available. On the basis of the limited information available, our assessment indicates that amine-based scrubbing results in a 10-fold increase in toxic impact on freshwater ecosystems and a minor increase in toxic impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. These increases are attributed to emissions of monoethanolamine. For all other impact categories, i.e., human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, particulate matter formation, photochemical oxidant formation, and terrestrial acidification, the CO2 capture facility performs equally well to a conventional NGCC power plant albeit substantial changes in flue gas composition. The oxidative degradation products of MEA, i.e., formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and ammonia, do not contribute significantly to total environmental impacts.A life cycle analysis on the cradle-to-gate production of vancomycin hydrochloride. which begins at natural resource extraction and spans through factory (gate) production, not only shows all inputs, outputs, and energy usage to manufacture the product and all related supply chain chemicals, but can highlight where process changes would have the greatest impact on raw material and energy consumption and emissions. Vancomycin hydrochloride is produced by a low-yield fermentation process that accounts for 47% of the total cradle-to-gate energy. The fermentation step consumes the most raw materials and energy cradle-to-gate. Over 75% of the total cradle-to-gate energy consumption is due to steam use; sterilization within fermentation is the largest user of steam. Aeration and agitation in the fermentation vessels use 65% of the cradle-to-gate electrical energy. To reduce raw materials, energy consumption, and the associated environmental footprint of producing vancomycin hydrochloride, other sterilization methods, fermentation media, nutrient sources, or synthetic manufacture should be investigated. The reported vancomycin hydrochloride life cycle inventory is a part of a larger life cycle study of the environmental consequences of the introduction of biocide-coated medical textiles for the prevention of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) nosocomial infections. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Proper management and recycling of huge volumes of food waste is one of the challenges faced by Singapore. Semakau island - the only offshore landfill of the nation - only accepts inert, inorganic solid waste and therefore a large bulk of food waste is directed to incinerators. A remaining small percent is sent for recycling via anaerobic digestion (AD), followed by composting of the digestate material. This article investigates the environmental performance of four food waste conversion scenarios - based on a life cycle assessment perspective - taking into account air emissions, useful energy from the incinerators and AD process, as well as carbon dioxide mitigation from the compost products derived from the digestate material and a proposed aerobic composting system. The life cycle impact results were generated for global warming. acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation and energy use. The total normalized results showed that a small-scale proposed aerobic composting system is more environmentally favorable than incinerators, but less ideal compared to the AD process. By making full use of the AD's Recycling Phase II process alone. the Singapore Green Plan's 2012 aim to increase the recycling of food waste to 30% can easily be achieved, along with reduced global warming impacts. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been applied within the residential building sector of two buildings, one in each a developed (Spain) and a developing (Colombia) country. The main goal of this paper involves the environmental loads and also brings together the operational energy for activities during the operation phase such as HVAC, domestic hot water, electrical appliances, cooking and illumination. The present research compares two real scenarios: Situation 1, where 100% of the dwelling's energy is supplied with electricity only and Situation 2, where dwellings can be operated with natural gas plus electricity. The results for the environmental impacts using natural gas plus electricity show that of the Spanish environmental impacts air conditioning had the highest impact with approximately 27-42% due to the electricity used to power it. In Colombian results showed that electrical appliances had the highest environmental impacts in the same order of magnitude with approximately 60% and cooking had the best reduction of emissions due to the use of natural gas, from 10% down to less than 2%. The origin of the energy source used in each Country plays an important role to minimize environmental impacts, as was demonstrated by the environmental impacts of its use in Colombia where 78% of the electricity came from hydroelectric plants whereas in Spain it is more mixed, fossil fuels represented 55%, nuclear 18% and wind 9%. In summary, LCA has been applied because this methodology supports the decision making to concern environmental sustainability. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While statistical estimation of uncertainty has not typically accompanied published emergy values, as with any other quantitative model, uncertainty is embedded in these values, and lack of uncertainty characterization makes their accuracy not only opaque, it also prevents the use of emergy values in statistical tests of hypotheses. This paper first attempts to describe sources of uncertainty in unit emergy values (UEVs) and presents a framework for estimating this uncertainty with analytical and stochastic models, with model choices dependent upon on how the UEV is calculated and what kind of uncertainties are quantified. The analytical model can incorporate a broader spectrum of uncertainty types than the stochastic model, including model and scenario uncertainty, which may be significant in emergy models, but is only appropriate for the most basic of emergy calculations. Although less comprehensive in its incorporation of uncertainty, the proposed stochastic method is suitable for all types of UEVs. The distributions of unit emergy values approximate the lognormal distribution with variations depending on the types of uncertainty quantified as well as the way the UEVs are calculated. While both methods of estimating uncertainty in UEVs have their limitations in their presented stage of development, this paper provides methods for incorporating uncertainty into emergy, and demonstrates how this can be depicted and propagated so that it can be used in future emergy analyses and permit emergy to be more readily incorporated into other methods of environmental assessment, such as LCA. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The key environmental benefits of faba bean are its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen symbiotically under a broad spectrum of environmental conditions and making this renewable resource available to show positive precrop effects in diversified crop rotations. Non-nitrogen precrop effects entail potential benefits via increased availability of soil phosphorus to the subsequent crops. Faba bean acts as a break crop in intensive cereal-dominated crop rotations. Faba bean enables diversification of the agroecosystem, i.e. planned biodiversity in time via diversified crop rotations and in space via intercrops, indirectly enhancing associated diversity of wild flora, wild fauna and soil microbes that may affect the sustainability of agricultural systems. Nevertheless, most effects are indirect effects on soil fertility, productivity, and system stability, as well as resilience of the entire agroecosystems, effects that can seldom be attributed solely to this crop. The environmental impacts of grain legumes have been studied at different levels by means of life cycle assessment (LCA). Considering the individual crops, it can be shown that faba bean enables savings of energy and reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, but it is difficult to assess all precrop effects at the individual crop level. First, comparisons of whole crop rotations with and without grain legumes show reductions of energy consumption, global warming, ozone formation, and acidification and ecotoxicity in intensive cereal-rich crop rotations. Eutrophication was at a similar level, with a tendency for increased nitrate leaching and a decrease of other N emissions. Replacement of imported soybean meal by locally produced pulses could have a favourable effect, particularly for pulses produced and used on-farm. However, depending on the raw materials used to replace soybean meal, the effects can also be unfavourable. Finally, shifting the human diet toward less reliance on meat has the potential to reduce environmental burdens, but care must be taken that the plant products are not too highly processed. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Water network synthesis is to optimize a water supply system by connecting water sources to sinks in order to maximize water reuse. This synthesis has been applied within a factory to reduce freshwater Consumption. This study illustrates (i) the synthesis and design of an interfactory and intrafactory water network system for an eco-industrial park (EIPWNS) utilizing more opportunities for water reuse within an industrial park, and (ii) an environmental and economic feasibility Study to demonstrate benefits from industrial symbiosis. An EIPWNS is synthesized, designed, and compared to conventional water system (CWS). The feasibility Study using life cycle assessment and life cycle costing shows that the total environmental impacts of the EIPWNS are 7.5% to 16.0% less than those or the CWS, and the life cycle cost of the EIPWNS is 15.6% less. Therefore, the EIPWNS can be employed in remodeling a conventional industrial park to an eco-industrial park. This study provides a good example for disseminating EIPWNSs.An analysis of the energy life-cycle for production of biomass using the oil-rich microalgae Nannochloropsis sp. was performed, which included both raceway ponds, tubular and flat-plate photobioreactors for algal cultivation. The net energy ratio (NER) for each process was calculated. The results showed that the use of horizontal tubular photobioreactors (PBRs) is not economically feasible ([NER] < 1) and that the estimated NERs for flat-plate PBRs and raceway ponds is >1. The NER for ponds and flat-plate PBRs could be raised to significantly higher values if the lipid content of the biomass were increased to 60% dw/cwd. Although neither system is currently competitive with petroleum, the threshold oil cost at which this would occur was also estimated. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper assesses the life cycle of biodiesel from used cooking oil (UCO). Such life cycle involves 4 stages: 1) collection, 2) pre-treatment, 3) delivery and 4) transesterification of UCO. Generally, UCO is collected from restaurants, food industries and recycling centres by authorised companies. Then, UCO is pre-treated to remove solid particles and water to increase its quality. After that, it is charged in cistern trucks and delivered to the biodiesel facility to be then transesterified with methanol to biodiesel. The production of I ton of biodiesel is evaluated by a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impact and by an Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA) to account for the exergy input to the system. A detailed list of material and energy inputs is done using data from local companies and completed using Ecoinvent 1.2 database. The results show that the transesterification stage causes 68% of the total environmental impact. The major exergy inputs are uranium and natural gas. If targets set by the Spanish Renewable Energy Plan are achieved, the exergy input for producing biodiesel would be reduced by 8% in the present system and consequently environmental impacts and exergy input reduced up to 36% in 2010. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of multi-objective optimization techniques is attractive to incorporate environmental objectives into the design of energy conversion systems. A method to locally optimize a given process while considering its global environmental impact by using life cycle assessment (LCA) to account for avoidable and unavoidable off-site emissions for each independent material input is presented. It is applied to study the integration of a CO(2)-capture process using monoethanolamine in a natural gas-combined cycle power plant, simultaneously optimizing column dimensions, heat exchange, and absorbent flow configuration with respect to two objectives: the levelized cost of electricity and its life cycle global-warming potential. The model combines a process flow-sheeting model and a separate process-integration model. After optimization using an evolutionary algorithm, the results showed that widening the absorber and generating near-atmospheric pressure steam are cost-effective options but that increasing stripper complexity is less so. With $7.80/GJ natural gas and $20/ton CO(2) handling, the minimum on-site CO(2) abatement cost reaches $62.43/ton on a life cycle basis, achieved with a capture rate of over 90%. Of this, $2.13/ton is related to off-site emissions - a specific advantage of LCA that could help industries and governments anticipate the actual future Costs Of CO(2) capture. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims at analyzing the environmental impact of each process of atypical office building over its entire life cycle in Shanghai, China, and finding out a suited limited value for window-wall ratio (WWR) of different orientation and window materials by comparing the results of different scenarios. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a tool for the assessment of energy consumption and associated impacts generated from utilization of energy in building construction and operation. When looking at the impacts due to building external envelope production, we observed a small but significant environmental benefit as WWR increasing. Depending on the window materials, the impact is reduced by 9-15%. The environmental benefit associated with the changing in building external envelope production mainly results from the high coefficient of recovery of window materials, include window-frame and glass. But for building use phase, WWR with different window types or orientation has various effects on environmental burden. The environmental impact of office buildings is dominated by the operation stage, although the environmental burden of material production for low-E hollow glass window is larger than single glazing window, the environmental performance of building with low-E hollow glass window is better than other window materials. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.During the last decade, there has been an intensive debate on-going in Sweden about how power generation and use affect global warming. More precisely, the discussion has considered how electricity shall be assessed from an environmental and climate perspective in different situations. This article gives a critical analysis on the main viewpoints. A number of environmental-impact assessment principles are outlined and critically examined. Concepts like average electricity and marginal electricity are discussed, and Electricity Disclosure as a basis for evaluation is addressed. The impact from Emission Trading and Tradable Green Certificates is also considered. Recommendations to concerned stakeholders are given. The clash points in the Swedish debate are highlighted and thus made available to a broader audience outside Scandinavia. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Lebanese electricity system has been evaluated in terms of its sustainability. An integrated approach was adopted to assess the life-cycle technical, environmental, energy and economic attributes of the system. The findings show that the Lebanese electricity system is characterized by a weak performance in all analysed aspects related to the sustainability of energy systems. Specifically, the system lacks adequacy and security leading to a supply-demand deficit and poor diversity. It gives rise to significant environmental emissions (including green-house gases), and produces large economic inefficiencies. The costs and benefits of optimising the performance of the centralised electricity system are presented, indicating substantial net benefits (together with considerable benefits in reduced environmental impacts across the life-cycle assessment categories, including carbon emissions) from improving the transmission and distribution networks, upgrading existing conventional plants to their design standards, and shifting towards the use of natural gas. The expected levelised cost of various energy sources in Lebanon also indicates that renewable energy sources are competitive alternatives at the present time. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An increased use of wood products and an adequate management of forests can help to mitigate climate change. However, planning horizons and response time to changes in forest management are usually long and the respective GHG effects related to the use of wood depend on the availability of harvested wood. Therefore, an integral long-term strategic approach is required to formulate the most effective forest and wood management strategies for mitigating climate change. The greenhouse gas (GHG) dynamics related to the production, use and disposal of wood products are manifold and show a complex time pattern. On the one hand, wood products can be considered as a carbon pool, as is the forest itself. On the other hand, an increased use of wood can lead to the substitution of usually more energy-intense materials and to the substitution of fossil fuels when the thermal energy of wood is recovered. Country-specific import/export flows of wood products and their alternative products as well as their processing stage have to be considered if substitution effects are assessed on a national basis. We present an integral model-based approach to evaluate the GHG impacts of various forest management and wood use scenarios. Our approach allows us to analyse the complex temporal and spatial patterns of GHG emissions and removals including trade-offs of different forest management and wood use strategies. This study shows that the contributions of the forestry and timber sector to mitigate climate change can be optimized with the following key recommendations: (1) the maximum possible, sustainable increment should be generated in the forest, taking into account biodiversity conservation as well as the long-term preservation of soil quality and growth performance; (2) this increment should be harvested continuously; (3) the harvested wood should be processed in accordance with the principle of cascade use, i.e. first be used as a material as long as possible, preferably in structural components; (4) waste wood that is not suitable for further use should be used to generate energy. Political strategies to solely increase the use of wood as a biofuel cannot be considered efficient from a climate perspective; (5) forest management strategies to enhance carbon sinks in forests via reduced harvesting are not only ineffective because of a compensatory increase in fossil fuel consumption for the production of non-wooden products and thermal energy but also because of the Kyoto-"cap" that limits the accountability of GHG removals by sinks under Article 3.3 and 3.4, at least for the first commitment period; (6) the effect of substitution through the material and energy use of wood is more significant and sustained as compared with the stock effects in wood products, which tend towards new steady-state flow equilibria with no further increase of C stocks; (7) from a global perspective, the effect of material substitution exceeds that of energy recovery from wood. In the Swiss context, however, the energy recovery from wood generates a greater substitution effect than material substitution. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are both a promising solution to global warming mitigation and a potential contributor to the problem. Several life cycle assessments of bioethanol have been conducted to address these questions. We performed a synthesis of the available data on Brazilian ethanol production focusing on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon (C) sinks in the agricultural and industrial phases. Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from sources commonly included in C footprints, such as fossil fuel usage, biomass burning, nitrogen fertilizer application, liming and litter decomposition were accounted for. In addition, black carbon (BC) emissions from burning biomass and soil C sequestration were included in the balance. Most of the annual emissions per hectare are in the agricultural phase, both in the burned system (2209 out of a total of 2398 kg C-eq), and in the unburned system (559 out of 748 kg C-eq). Although nitrogen fertilizer emissions are large, 111 kg C-eq ha-1 yr-1, the largest single source of emissions is biomass burning in the manual harvest system, with a large amount of both GHG (196 kg C-eq ha-1 yr-1). and BC (1536 kg C-eq ha-1 yr-1). Besides avoiding emissions from biomass burning, harvesting sugarcane mechanically without burning tends to increase soil C stocks, providing a C sink of 1500 kg C ha-1 yr-1 in the 30 cm layer. The data show a C output: input ratio of 1.4 for ethanol produced under the conventionally burned and manual harvest compared with 6.5 for the mechanized harvest without burning, signifying the importance of conservation agricultural systems in bioethanol feedstock production.Through the interconnectedness of global business, the local consumption of products and services is intervening in the hydrological cycle throughout the world to an unprecedented extent. In order to address the unsustainable use of global freshwater resources, indicators are needed which make the impacts of production systems and consumption patterns transparent. In this paper, a revised water footprint calculation method, incorporating water stress characterisation factors, is presented and demonstrated for two case study products, Dolmio (R) pasta sauce and Peanut M & M's (R) using primary production data. The method offers a simple, yet meaningful way of making quantitative comparisons between products, production systems and services in terms of their potential to contribute to water scarcity. As such, capacity is created for change through public policy as well as corporate and individual action. This revised method represents an alternative to existing volumetric water footprint calculation methods which combine green and blue water consumption from water scarce and water abundant regions such that they give no clear indication about where the actual potential for harm exists. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Methane decomposition to yield hydrogen and carbon (CH(4) reversible arrow 2H(2) + C) is one of the cleanest alternatives, free of CO(2) emissions, for producing hydrogen from fossil fuels. This reaction can be catalyzed by metals, although they suffer a fast deactivation process, or by carbonaceous materials, which present the advantage of producing the catalyst from the carbon obtained in the reaction. In this work, the environmental performance of methane decomposition catalyzed by carbonaceous catalysts has been evaluated through Life Cycle Assessment tools, comparing it to other decomposition processes and steam methane reforming coupled to carbon capture systems. The results obtained showed that the decomposition using the autogenerated carbonaceous as catalyst is the best option when reaction conversions higher than 65% are attained. These were confirmed by 2015 and 2030 forecastings. Moreover, its environmental performance is highly increased when the produced carbon is used in other commercial applications. Thus, for a methane conversion of 70%, the application of 50% of the produced carbon would lead to a virtually zero-emissions process. (C) 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd, All rights reserved.Task Force 3 of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has been working towards developing scientifically sound methods for quantifying impacts of substances released into the environment. The Clearwater Consensus follows from the Lausanne (Jolliet et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 11:209-212, 2006) and Apeldoorn (Apeldoorn Int J Life Cycle Assess 9(5):334, 2004) statements by recommending an approach to and identifying further research for quantifying comparative toxicity potentials (CTPs) for ecotoxicological impacts to freshwater receptors from nonferrous metals. The Clearwater Consensus describes stages and considerations for calculating CTPs that address inconsistencies in assumptions and approaches for organic substances and nonferrous metals by focusing on quantifying the bioavailable fraction of a substance. A group of specialists in Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Impact Assessment, metal chemistry, and ecotoxicology met to review advances in research on which to base a consensus on recommended methods to calculate CTPs for metals. Consensus was reached on introducing a bioavailability factor (BF) into calculating CTPs where the BF quantifies the fraction of total dissolved chemical that is truly dissolved, assuming that the latter is equivalent to the bioavailable fraction. This approach necessitates calculating the effects factor, based on a HC50(EC50), according to the bioavailable fraction of chemical. The Consensus recommended deriving the BF using a geochemical model, specifically WHAM VI. Consensus was also reached on the need to incorporate into fate calculations the speciation, size fractions, and dissolution rates of metal complexes for the fate factor calculation. Consideration was given to the characteristics of the evaluative environment defined by the multimedia model, which is necessary because of the dependence of metal bioavailability on water chemistry.Records over the last decades indicate a high growth rate for tourism, making it one of the most important industries in the world economy. Since estimates outline a consolidation of this trend, an accurate identification and assessment of the environmental impacts related to the life cycle of tourist products is increasingly necessary. By reviewing and comparing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) case studies in the tourism sector, this paper aims to identify life cycle approaches that may be used as a basis for the subsequent development of sectorial Life Cycle Thinking guidelines. The following characterising elements were analysed for each case study reviewed, bearing in mind ISO 14044:2006 contents: goal, functional unit, system boundaries, inventory data quality and assessment methods of the environmental impacts. The few LCA implementations found in the literature vary considerably as regards the object studied and the methodological choices made. Specifically, the objects studied could be categorised as follows: accommodation services; buildings (hotel structures); tourist package holiday; the entire tourism industry. The main methodological choices made regard: system boundaries, data quality requirements and methods for assessing environmental impacts. A critical analysis of case studies revealed considerable dissimilarities as regards time reference and methodology application. Even though these differences made any comparison of results difficult, a few findings on methodological approaches might be outlined. Because the goal and scope definition profoundly affects LCA results, particular emphasis has been given to objectives and system boundaries. The low number of studies found in the literature could indicate either that there are significant obstacles to adopting this approach or the limited awareness of LCA in tourism's drivers. The main obstacles might be: the complicated nature of the tourism system; the lack of specific LCA databases for tourism and related sectors; the tourism industry's low consideration of the environmental impact categories that are generally taken into account in impact assessment methodologies. In order to promote the applicability and dissemination of LCA within the tourism sector, a number of methodological approaches and guidelines should be developed further. Moreover, it might be necessary to look into the possibility of integrating LCA with other instruments, such as environmental support tools for assessment, management, and design, as well as communication and marketing. Further synergies should be investigated regarding environmental instruments for passenger transportation, and specific tools that focus on the economic and social aspects of sustainability.Authors of different sustainability journals, including authors of articles in past issues of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment have acknowledged the rising interest and the pressing need for a social and socio-economic life cycle assessment methodology and identified challenges in its development and implementation. Social life cycle assessment (LCA) allows identification of key issues, assessing, and telling the story of social conditions in the production, use, and disposal of products. In this article, the United Nations Environment Programme/The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products will be presented. The guidelines demystifies the assessment of product life cycle social impacts and presents an effective framework representing the consensus of an international group of experts leading research in this field. The guidelines complement those for environmental life cycle assessment and life cycle costing, and by doing so contribute to the full assessment of goods and services within the context of sustainable development. They enable a larger group of stakeholders to engage. Key aspects of the framework and the research needs identified in the guidelines will be summarized. In a globalized world where transparency and information occupies a predominant place and where consumers and companies reach out to shed light on both the brightest and the darkest side of the economy and, when applicable, transform its condition, social LCA brings strong value. At a moment where major companies and initiatives are going forward with using LCA and are trying to track and communicate about the social impacts of their products they are increasingly held accountable for the guidelines for social life cycle assessment arrive just in time to inform their efforts.Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is a tool assessing the social aspects of products and services. This article is a step forward from the Guidelines and wishes to clarify the different impact assessment (IA) methods covered in the Guidelines and how these different methods would provide different types of information regarding the social aspects of the product system. The outcomes resulting from different sLCIA methods are discussed through the analysis of three methods covered by the Guidelines for SLCA (UNEP 2009): the Taskforce's method, Hunkeler's (2006) and Weidema's (2006). In order to highlight the different outcomes, we analyze the "nature" of the indicator results, the sources of the stressors, and the way the IA results are linked to the product system. Different results are provided depending on the sLCIA approach used. We stress that the use of impact pathways allows the assessment of social impacts. The Taskforce's method, which compares the state of the dimensions of the social context of the product system with international consensus, assesses "social performances." Regarding the sources of the stressors, the analysis needs to look at other levels than the unit process to capture the social issues. Finally, two approaches are used to connect the indicator results to the product system: one carrying the quantitative link between the inventory indicator and the functional unit all the way to the IA result through impact pathways, and the other, weighting the IA results according to the relative importance of an activity variable. The different features of the sLCIA methods result in different outcomes. Depending on the sources of the stressors, different levels are assessed. When the stressors are collected at an organizational level, e.g., country, sector, or enterprise, the unit assessed becomes the social context, which can be called "context units" parallel to the unit processes. SLCIA methods will also provide different outcomes depending on the characterization models used in the analysis: social impacts versus social performances. Finally, the difference between the outcomes according to the approaches used to link the IA results to the product system will require further reflections. Two types of sLCIA are covered by the Guidelines. One uses Performance Reference Points allowing the evaluation of the relative position of the state of a dimension of a context unit in reference to an international consensus. The second one, closer to LCA, assesses the social impacts derived from the technical nature of the processes, through the use of impact pathways. Choosing between the feasibility of deriving social impacts from social variables through impact pathways or assessing a broader set of social issues through the use of semiquantitative indicators is an ongoing issue and requires further research. Currently, the choice of sLCIA methods is informed by the availability of the characterization models and the indicators.Human use of land areas leads to impacts on nature in several ways. Within the framework of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, it was stated that life cycle assessment (LCA) of land use should assess at least the impact on biodiversity, the impact on biotic production, and the impact on the regulating functions of the natural environment. This study focuses on the climatic impact of land use as determined by the CO(2) transfers between vegetation/soil and the atmosphere in the course of terrestrial release and re-storage of carbon. Compared with the potential natural vegetation as a baseline, areas getting transformed by man (land transformations) as well as areas forced to maintain their current non-natural state (land occupations) may store reduced amounts of carbon in soil and vegetation, whereby the mobilized carbon is essentially transferred to the atmosphere in form of CO(2), contributing to global warming. The size of this climatic impact is determined by the amount of carbon transferred per hectare, as well as by the duration of the carbon's stay in air. Generally, we consider this duration as limited by spontaneous reversal of vegetation and soil toward a quasi-natural form as soon as human land use ends. Taking the mean stay in air of 1 ton carbon from fossil fuel combustion as a basis of comparison, 1 ton carbon released by, e.g., a forest-to-cropland transformation can be adequately weighted by considering the timing of carbon backflow from air to the spontaneously regrowing forest. Carbon transfers to the air per hectare, as well as imputable durations of carbon stay in air, are determined for the most important types of land transformation and land occupation, for locations in any of the terrestrial biomes of tropical forest, temperate forest, boreal forest, tropical grassland, and temperate grassland. The carbon quantities are expressed as "fossil-combustion-equivalent" tons of carbon so that they can be summed up with carbon amounts from fossil fuel combustion into the usual LCA indicator for global warming potential. The results confirm that on a per hectare basis, transforming forests into cropland has a more serious climatic effect than continuing to occupy such land as cropland for one additional year. But on a global basis, maintaining current cropland areas for one additional year is a serious driver of global warming due to the huge area of croplands in zones where forest would be the natural vegetation. Furthermore, forest-to-cropland transformations cause carbon transfers to air per hectare of roughly similar size in tropical, temperate, or boreal zones, but due to slow forest restoration, transformation of boreal forests has a stronger influence on global warming. The results of this study facilitate a worldwide impact assessment of land use with respect to global warming. Together with the two separate studies covering the impacts of land use on biodiversity and on biotic production, a tool will be available for a reasonably complete LCA of land use at global level. However, the data quality needs further improvement.The environmental effect of globalisation has been debated intensively in the last decades. Only few well-documented analyses of global versus local product alternatives exist, whilst recommendations on buying local are vast. At the same time, the European Environmental Agency's Third Assessment concludes that the resource use within the EU is stabilising at the expense of increased resource use for import of products to the EU. Taking its point of departure in vegetable oils, this article compares rapeseed oil and palm oil as a local and a global alternative for meeting the increasing demand for these products in the EU. By using detailed life cycle assessment (LCA), this study compares the environmental impacts and identifies alternative ways of producing rapeseed oil and palm oil to the EU market in order to reduce environmental impacts. The consequential approach for system delimitation is applied (Ekvall and Weidema 2004; Weidema 2003; Schmidt 2008a; Schmidt and Weidema 2008). This approach differs from the attributional approach in a way that the actual affected suppliers and technologies are modelled instead of averages. In addition, co-product allocation is avoided by system expansion. The method for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is EDIP97 updated (LCA-Center 2007). In addition, land use and the associated impacts on biodiversity are assessed using the LCIA method described in Schmidt (2008b). The characterised results of the LCA show that palm oil is environmentally preferable to rapeseed oil within ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog and land use, whilst the differences within global warming and biodiversity are less clear. The most significant process contributing to global warming from rapeseed oil is the cultivation of rapeseed, whilst the oil palm cultivation and the palm oil mill (effluent treatment) are equally important. Regarding land use and biodiversity for rapeseed oil, the avoided production caused by system expansion has a major role, whilst system expansion has only limited effect on the results of palm oil. Alternative cultivation practices and technologies are assessed. The findings for rapeseed oil are that local expansions of the cultivated area on set-aside area is preferable to displacement of crops which are compensated for by increased agricultural production abroad and that the full press technology in the oil mill is preferable to solvent extraction. Concerning palm oil, cultivation on peat increases the contribution to global warming significantly with a factor of 4-5 compared to cultivation on the current mix of soils types. The other hotspot related to global warming (effluent treatment) can be markedly reduced by installation of digester tanks and subsequent utilisation of biogas. The results of the scenarios show that the approach to system delimitation matters. When the consequential approach to system delimitation is applied in the agricultural stage, uncertainties show to be significant. These uncertainties are mainly related to the determination of how increased production is achieved, increased cultivated area and/or increased intensification. Overall, palm oil tends to be environmentally preferable to rapeseed oil within all impact categories except global warming, biodiversity and ecotoxicity where the difference is less pronounced and where it is highly dependent on the assumptions regarding system delimitation in the agricultural stage. Since the environmental performance of rapeseed oil and palm oil is a result of the current applied technologies and since improvement options exist in both product systems, it may be more relevant for decision makers to focus on requirements on the applied technologies in the product systems rather than preferring the one oil over the other.North American pulp and paper mills are facing tremendous challenges, which may necessitate major mill modernizations. An example is process modification to reduce dependency on purchased power, which is an expensive resource. Such modifications may have environmental implications at the mills' sites, on their product life cycle, and on other interconnected systems, and therefore, systematic tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) need to be applied. Different LCA system boundary approaches can be used for such process design applications, and these approaches need to be compared to determine their respective benefits and limitations in this context. This study compares setting the system boundary according to a cradle-to-gate approach [attributional LCA (ALCA)] and a system expansion [consequential LCA (CLCA)] approach using a case study, which deals with implementing cogeneration and increased de-inked pulp production at an integrated newsprint mill. A case study considering various process options to reduce purchased electricity at an integrated newsprint mill is defined. These options include implementing cogeneration and increasing de-inked pulp production. The environmental impacts related to these process options are analyzed using two LCA methodologies. The first one consists in setting the system boundary according to a cradle-to-gate ALCA approach, while the second one uses a differential CLCA approach (system expansion). Comparisons of the two methods are based on different parameters: inclusion/exclusion of the indirect environmental consequences, selected allocation procedures, and effect of using the average versus the marginal technology for power production. Both the ALCA approach and the CLCA approach indicate that the process options are beneficial. However, the results show that indirect environmental consequences, which are assessed only with the CLCA approach, can be opposite to direct effects (e.g., the results can indicate an improvement of the direct impacts and a deterioration of the indirect ones). In addition, environmental impacts obtained by modeling the average or the marginal technology may be very different. Using an ALCA approach often necessitates the use of an arbitrary allocation procedure, which can greatly affect the results. On the other hand, ALCA can be used to perform "hot spots" identification, which, at this time, is not possible with CLCA. The cradle-to-gate boundary approach, which is usually used in the literature for pulp and paper process design applications, may not always be the most appropriate to determine the environmental consequences of implementing different process options. However, at this time, there is no method based on CLCA allowing for "hot spots" identification, and thus, a combined approach may be required for process design. It is shown that the choice of the system boundary can significantly affect the results. More specifically, the usage of different allocation procedures in ALCA leads to different interpretation of the results, which does not occur when using the CLCA approach. CLCA provides more complete information for decision making for the cases where most of the consequences occur outside the life cycle of the product investigated. Research opportunities include developing methodologies to integrate ALCA and CLCA for improved process design applications and mechanisms for reducing uncertainty in CLCA.Semi-trailers with load boxes are the most important mode of grain transport by land in the world. Load boxes can be produced with different materials such as: wood, steel, and synthetic material. They are responsible for effectiveness retention and quality of grains during the transport. Among the main aspects to be considered and valued when selecting materials for load boxes are the final mass of the semi-trailer, loss of grains, and mechanical properties. Environmental performance is another important aspect to be taken into account for developing and selecting new materials in this kind of application. This study presents a comparative environmental evaluation of load boxes built from two different materials (a wood panel and a three-layer synthetic (TLS) panel). Mass balance and life cycle assessment (LCA) were used in this study. The TLS panel is made of polyvinyl chloride, metal, and wood sheets. The wood panel is composed of a marine plywood, protected with latex paint. Each semi-trailer is 7.1 m long and has two load boxes. Mass balance allowed the evaluation of the productive process itself, considering the different materials used, water and energy consumption and solid waste generation. LCA was applied to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the production, use, and end-of-life (EOL) processes for the two different types of load box panels. LCA followed the ISO 14040 standard and was performed with the SimaPro 7.0 software. The functional unit of the load boxes is defined as: to allow and to protect the transportation of 40 tons per journey of dry grains, for 10 years, traveling 120,000 km per year. The databases selected for this study were local ones produced by different authors that presented Brazilian inventories (petroleum, PVC, wood, electrical energy, steel, and natural gas). When local databases were not available, inventories from Buwal and Ecoinvent were used. Impact evaluation was performed with the Eco-indicator 95 method. The mass of materials necessary to build wood panel load boxes is four times higher than the mass of material required to build the TLS panel load boxes. Furthermore, solid waste generation is ten times higher for the wood panels (on a mass basis). Water consumption is also higher for the production of the wood panel load boxes. However, the mass balance analysis showed that energy consumption during production is higher for a TLS panel load box than for the wood panel load box. The results of the LCA showed that the TLS panel load boxes provide superior environmental performance compared with wood panel load boxes. However, the wood boxes panel scored only 10.7% more impact points than the TLS panel load boxes in the LCA, considering all phases, including production, use, and end-of-life processes. The use phase is responsible for more than 96% of the total impact points for the wood panel load boxes. Impact points for the TLS load boxes are 33% higher than for the wood panel boxes during the production phase. The TLS load boxes offer greater durability than wood panel load boxes, resulting in a smaller number of replacement TLS load boxes to fulfill the same functional unit. However, even considering the smaller number of replacement boxes, the difference in terms of impact points between the two types of load boxes was small. This result may seem counter-intuitive, since wood panel load box production employs more raw materials, generates more waste, and consumes more water than the TLs panel load box production. Non-standardization of the boundaries of the databases employed in the LCA is believed to be a major reason that only a small difference was found between material types in the LCA. This is particularly true with respect to the databases for disposal of residual materials, as these databases do not exist in Brazilian inventories or are not satisfactory available in other databases. Improvement of these datasets for Brazilian circumstances should be a priority. The TLS panel load boxes provided better overall environmental performance compared with the wood panel load boxes, considering both the mass balance analysis and LCA results. The quality of the databases employed in the analysis is a critical factor with respect to the adequacy of the LCA. Additional effort is necessary to create adequate datasets for use in Brazilian LCA, particularly with respect to waste disposal.At the request of the Public Waste Agency for the Flemish Region, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research performed a life cycle assessment (LCA), according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 procedures (ISO 1997, 1998, 2000, and ISO 2006), followed by an eco-efficiency analysis of four alternative types of drinking cups for use at public events. The results of the LCA study served as input for the eco-efficiency analysis in which the costs related to the four cup systems were studied and combined with the environmental impacts. The objective of this study was to gain insight into the current environmental impacts and costs related to existing systems for drinking cups at public events in Flanders (Belgium) in order to outline a well-founded policy with regard to this subject. Since the results of this comparative study are publicly available, a critical review was performed according to ISO 14040 (review by interested parties, using a review panel) after each stage (goal and scope, data inventory, impact analysis/interpretation, eco-efficiency analysis) during the study. Four types of cups were analysed; the reusable polycarbonate cup (PC), the one-way polypropylene cup (PP), the one-way PE-coated cardboard cup and the one-way polylactide cup (PLA). The functional unit is defined as 'the recipients needed to serve 100 l of beer or soft drinks at a small-scale indoor respectively a large-scale outdoor event'. This definition included the production of the cups, the consumption stage (at the event) and the processing of the waste. The data inventory focused on specific data supplied by different stakeholders in Flanders (and Belgium). Based on data collected for specific events, an average typical small indoor and large outdoor event was defined, respectively. One important aspect in this context was the trip rate for the reusable cups, meaning the average number of times one cup can be used before disposal. Based on practical experiences combined with literature research, a trip rate was defined for small- and large-scale events, respectively. Since this factor was very important but also very open for debate, a sensitivity analysis was performed on the trip rate. The impact analysis was based on the Eco-Indicator 99 methodology (Hierarchist version H/A; Goedkoop and Spriensma 2000). The main reason for using this methodology was that it allows the calculation of one weighted environmental indicator for each alternative, which was needed as input for the eco-efficiency analysis. The cost indicator, which was based on similar system boundaries and assumptions as the environmental indicator, was calculated from a societal perspective. Both indicators were combined in an eco-efficiency portfolio, with the average in the centre point and the number of standard deviations indicated on the axes. For the environmental profile of the individual cup systems, the total life cycle of the cups was divided in different life cycle stages. Based on the individual profiles it could be concluded that the most important environmental contribution when using reusable PC cups at small indoor events is caused by the production of the cups and the transport of the cups from the distributor to the event and back. On large outdoor events, the (machine) cleaning of the cups also contributes significantly to the total environmental impact. For one-way cups (PP, PE-coated cardboard and PLA) used at small indoor as well as large outdoor events, the production of the cups dominates the environmental profiles. By comparing the environmental impacts of the four types of cups on both types of event, it became clear that none of the cup systems has the highest or the lowest environmental score for all environmental impact categories considered in the study. Based on these comparisons, it was not possible to make a straightforward conclusion for the selection of the most favourable cup system with regard to the environment. When comparing the individual cup systems between small indoor and large outdoor events, the reusable PC cup differs the most between both types of events. The environmental burden increases significantly for PC cups moving to larger scale events. This can be explained by the lower trip rate and the machine cleaning instead of manual cleaning of the cups after large events. For the other types of cup systems, the difference going from a small to a large scale event is negligible. The combination of the environmental and cost indicator in the eco-efficiency analysis led to a different result for small indoor compared to large outdoor events. The eco-efficiency portfolio for small events showed that the reusable PC cup has a significant more favourable environmental score than the one-way cups, but the cost indicator is significantly higher. This may be an argument to initiate a promotion policy for reusable PC cups at small events. For large events, the eco-efficiency portfolio did not result in a significant winner with regard to the environmental or cost indicator. To determine the influence of a change in the inventory data on the results of the impact assessment and eco-efficiency analysis, some sensitivity analyses were performed, for example for a variation in trip rate, a variation in the cleaning of the cups during and after the event (manual versus machine), and a future scenario for the PLA cups (change in production process, end-of-life treatment, etc.). The comparative LCA study according to ISO did not provide an overall environmentally superior cup system. In the eco-efficiency analysis, using a subjective weighting step, the reusable PC cup system resulted to be significantly better compared to the other cup systems for small events from an environmental point of view. Two aspects that improved the overall quality of this study are on the one hand the consultation and collaboration of the stakeholders during the process to supply information, check the inventory data and give feedback on the preliminary results and on the other hand the work of the review panel in order to ensure that the provisions from the ISO 14040 series regarding methods, data, interpretations and reporting are taken care of. It was appreciated by the commissioner and all stakeholders that the results of the study are communicated in a transparent way, with a discussion of the necessary differentiations. From the comparative LCA-study according to ISO, none of the four considered cup systems has overall superior or inferior performance neither at small nor large events. This means that there are no scientific arguments for a policy of encouraging or discouraging one of the four cup systems based on the LCA-results. The eco-efficiency assessment (with its subjective choices and limitations, that the commissioner of the study should realise and support in the context of this study) has shown that in the base case for small events the PC cup system shows a significant more favourable environmental score than the other three cup systems on the market. As the costs of the reusable PC cup system are higher, a policy of promoting the system can be considered based on the more favourable environmental score. Policy makers should agree on the subjective value choices made while weighting different impact or damage categories.Eco-efficiency analysis was used to compare eco-effectiveness of PVC plastisol with two commercially accepted coating agents; polyacrylate (PAA) and polyurethane (PUR) both in dispersed form in water. Eco-efficiency portfolio was graphically illustrated for different scenarios of coating textile fabrics using high and low quality PVC plastisols. PVC plastisol was found as the most eco-efficient coating agent followed by polyacrylate and polyurethane resin dispersions in water. It was concluded that PVC plastisol containing non-toxic plasticizer and less than 5 ppm free vinyl chloride monomer is an eco-efficient material which, when responsibly managed from cradle to grave, provides sustainable benefits to the society. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessments of the mining and mineral processing of iron ore, bauxite and copper concentrate were carried out, focussing on embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions. The results showed that loading and hauling make the largest contributions to the total greenhouse gas emissions for the mining and processing of iron ore and bauxite. in the case of copper ore, the crushing and grinding steps make the largest contribution to the total greenhouse gas emissions for the production of copper concentrate. These results indicate that efforts to reduce the increased greenhouse gas emissions from mining and mineral processing, anticipated in the future as a result of falling ore grades and more finer-grained deposits, should focus on loading and hauling for iron ore and bauxite, while for copper ore the focus should be on grinding. There are a number of new and emerging technologies that could be expected to and these include high pressure grinding rolls and stirred mills for grinding, and assist in this task, further advances in diesel engine technology for loading and hauling applications. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a feasibility study of the supply of electricity and heat to a large user (i. e., a public hospital in Northern Italy) by means of a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) hybrid system in comparison with other technologies. The study investigated three alternative options in order to meet the user's demand: internal combustion engine, gas turbine, and a hybrid system (molten carbonate fuel cells and gas turbine, MCFC-HS), which is currently under development by Ansaldo Fuel Cell Ltd. and ENEA. The user requirement was the yearly supplies of 6.65 GWh(e)/year and 21.64 GWh(th)/year. Due to demand fluctuations over the year, integration by electric grid and/or additional thermal boilers was also required and investigated. The approach integrates the usual mass balance with large scale material flow accounting, embodied energy analysis, exergy efficiency, and emergy synthesis, within a LCA perspective. Results show that the best performance from the point of view of energy and exergy efficiency is shown by the MCFC-hybrid system. The latter is also characterized by the lowest embodied energy demand and cumulative material demand as well as by the lowest requirement for direct and indirect environmental support (emergy method). However, the small thermal energy supply of the MCFC-HS compared with the large thermal needs of the hospital calls for a larger use of the additional boiler. The latter device worsens the local-scale emissions of the system, compared with the other alternatives investigated. Results point out that a proper choice cannot only be based on the individual performance of an even well performing technological device, but also needs to be tailored on the system's characteristics and dynamics, in order to adequately match supply and demand. [DOI: 10.1115/1.3120270]Inventory analyses of manufacturing systems for Pb-bronze (JIS: CAC406), Pb-free bronze produced by Bi addition (JIS: CAC902) and copper sulfide-dispersed Pb-free bronze were assessed from the viewpoint of life cycle assessment. The results show that the manufacturing system of copper sulfide-dispersed Pb-free bronze significantly reduces such environmental impacts as energy consumption, global warming, acidification and resource consumption as compared with that of CAC902. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.D-M2009330]The European Water Framework Directive (EWFD) demands a detailed analysis to determine which changes and measures within the surface water system are required, which actors require detailed scrutiny, and which technology has to be developed in order to guarantee that the quality of the surface water is complying with this Directive. This paper will discuss a holistic model developed for the optimization of the surface water system for a water authority in The Netherlands, which is influenced by (i) waste water streams originating from e.g. households, industry, agricultural and transport activities among others and (ii) the end-of-pipe technology of waste water treatment plants, while interfacing with (iii) thermal treatment and minerals and metallurgical processing for the recovery of specific elements from waste water sludge and other residues created during waste water treatment. The paper develops a fundamental basis that can feed factual information such as optimal combination of measures (technology and policy) into sustainability frameworks or the implementation of the EWFD. This optimization is affected by quality constraints, costs, energy, environment and interactions between the various materials present in the different streams in the water system. By incorporating these parameters into the model a tool is provided that provides metrics to measure the 'sustainability' of the Web of Water (WoW), while linking to and harmonising with the Web of Materials/Metals (WoM). The WoW optimization model links material cycles from e.g. food, transport, agriculture and industry to the recovery of materials from the water cycle with the pyrometallurgical and thermal processing of minerals/materials, hence quantifying resource conservation and sustainability on the interface between aquatic and product manufacturing systems and the process industries. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Polymers are the most versatile material in our modern day and age. With certain chemicals and additives (pigments, concentrates, anti-blockers, light transformers (Lts), UV-stabilizers, etc.), they become what we know as plastics. The aim of this review is to provide the reader with an in depth analysis regarding the recovery, treatment and recycling routes of plastic solid waste (PSW), as well as the main advantages and disadvantages associated with every route. Recovery and recycling of PSW can be categorized by four main routes, i.e. re-extrusion, mechanical, chemical and energy recovery. Re-extrusion (primary recycling) utilizes scrap plastics by re-introducing the reminder of certain extruded thermoplastics (mainly poly-alpha-olefins) into heat cycles within a processing line. When plastic articles are discarded after a number of life cycles, mechanical recycling techniques present themselves as a candidate for utilizing a percentage of the waste as recyclate and/or fillers. Collectively, all technologies that convert polymers to either monomers (monomer recycling) or petrochemicals (feedstock recycling) are referred to as chemical recycling. The technology behind its success is the depolymerization processes (e.g. thermolysis) that can result in a very profitable and sustainable industrial scheme, providing a high product yield and a minimal waste. Nevertheless, due to their high calorific value and embodied energy, plastics are being incinerated solely or in combination with municipal solid waste (MSW) in many developed countries. This review also presents a number of application and technologies currently being used to incinerate plastics. Cement kilns and fluidized beds are the two most common units used to recover energy from PSW or MSW with high PSW content. It is concluded that, tertiary (chemical methods) and quaternary (energy recovery) are robust enough to be investigated and researched in the near future, for they provide a very sustainable solution to the PSW cycle. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, the policy, market conditions and food security of biomass energy sources are assessed for supplying the future needs of Vojvodina. The Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province in Serbia, containing about 27% of its total population according to the 2002 Census. It is located in the northern part of the country, in the Pannonia plain, in southeastern Europe. Vojvodina is an energy-deficient province. Vojvodina also has a large potential for renewable energy, especially energy from biomass (biodiesel and bio-ethanol). The lack of knowledge about renewable energy technologies by most policy-makers, potential consumers, and energy firm managers has played against renewable energy developments. The environmental impacts of programs that encourage biofuel production, farmland land requirements and the impacts on food production are also discussed, considering the life cycle analysis (LCA) as a tool. It is concluded that the rise in the use of biofuels is inevitable and that international cooperation, regulations and certification mechanisms must be established regarding the use of land, the mitigation of environmental and social impacts caused by biofuel production. It is also mandatory to establish appropriate working conditions and decent remuneration for workers of the biofuels production chain. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial byproducts such as coal fly ash, coal bottom ash, and recycled concrete pavement (RCP) are being used in considerable amounts as a full or partial replacement of natural aggregates. Studies comparing road construction byproduct materials with natural aggregates are limited. In the present study, a comparison of these byproducts with natural aggregates was carried out with respect to cost, environmental pollutants generated, and energy consumption. Pollutant emission data were aggregated to express results in terms of global warming potential (GWP). acidification potential and various toxicity potentials. For assessment of toxicity potentials, all the toxicities were represented with respect to 1,4 dichlorobenzene. Mixed results were found from the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and no single material performed superiorly in all categories. Fly ash and bottom ash were found attractive in cost, GWP, and acidification potential categories. RCP had higher GWP and acidification potential compared to natural aggregates. In toxicity categories, in some cases fly ash and bottom ash had higher; and RCP, in all cases, had Much lower toxicity compared to natural aggregates. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nickel is an integral material to our modern, high-performance technological society. With increasing emphasis being put on energy efficiency and global climate change, it is important for companies to understand in detail the energy use and greenhouse gas implications of their business. The present analysis is a facility-level life-cycle assessment of these twin impacts covering the entire global nickel industry. Cradle-to-gate results (including extraction, production, and fabrication) are presented here for selected nickel and nickel alloy products, including upstream energy required for fuel production. Stainless steel is one of the most highly recycled metals in the world. In order to assess the energy and carbon implications of secondary material use, recycling scenarios for three grades of stainless steel (AISI 304, 409, and 430) were considered. Using the Current scenario as a baseline, maximum use of scrap (within technical limits) and all-virgin production results varied widely. Smelting/Class II refining was the most energy intensive step of production, accounting for 50-90% of total primary energy use. Transport contributed 2-11% of the total, depending on the nickel product considered. A sensitivity analysis revealed that the results are highly dependent on the energy requirements for upstream fuel production, which apply to all steps of the assessment. These results will help the nickel industry navigate energy and climate change concerns in the coming years. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over the past two decades, the waste reduction problem has been a major issue in environmental protection. Both recycling and waste reduction policies have become increasingly important. As the complexity of decision-making has increased, it has become evident that more factors must be considered in the development and implementation of policies aimed at resource recycling and waste reduction. There are many studies focused on waste management excluding waste reduction. This study paid more attention to waste reduction. Social, economic, and management aspects of waste treatment policies were considered in this study. Further, a life-cycle assessment model was applied as an evaluation system for the environmental aspect. Results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses on the social, economic, and management aspects were integrated via the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method into the comprehensive decision-making support system of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). A case study evaluating the waste reduction policy in Taoyuan County is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of this model. In the case study, reinforcement of MSW sorting was shown to be the best practice. The model in this study can be applied to other cities faced with the waste reduction problems.The environmental performance of two low-organic waste landfill scenarios ('low-organic-energy' and 'low-organic-flare') was developed and compared with two household waste landfill scenarios ('household-energy' and 'household-flare') by means of LCA-modelling. The LCA-modelling was made for 1 tonne of wet waste landfilled and the environmental aspects were evaluated for a 100-year period after disposal. The data utilized in the LCA-calculations to model the first 10-20 years of landfilling of the two low-organic waste scenarios make extensive use of site-specific data from the Nauerna Landfill (The Netherlands), but average data from other comparable, existing landfills were used too. As data from full-scale landfills do not cover more than 30-40 years of landfilling, data from laboratory simulations and accelerated tests of limited scale were also utilized. The life-cycle impact assessments show that the low-organic waste scenarios achieved better environmental performance than the household waste scenarios with regard to both ordinary and toxicity-related environmental impact categories. This indicates that the reduction of organic matter accepted at landfills (as prescribed by the European Union Landfill Directive: Council Directive 1999/31/EC, EU, Brussels, 1999) can be a successful approach to decrease the environmental loads in several impact categories in comparison with landfilling of waste with significant organic content. However, when utilization of landfill gas is accounted for in the life-cycle impact assessment calculation, the small gas generation in low-organic waste landfills reduced the actual potential for energy generation and therefore the environmental savings obtained were reduced proportionally. Groundwater pollution from input of leachate was also evaluated and the WHO (Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality; WHO, Geneva, 2006) guideline for drinking water quality was assumed as reference. The results show that low-organic waste landfills pose a smaller risk of groundwater contamination, but the impact potentials estimated still remain a lot higher than estimated in other categories.While methods for aggregating emissions are widely used and standardized in life cycle assessment (LCA), there is little agreement about methods for aggregating natural resources for obtaining interpretable metrics. Thermodynamic methods have been suggested including energy, exergy, and emergy analyses. This work provides insight into the nature of thermodynamic aggregation, including assumptions about substitutability between resources and loss of detailed information about the data being combined. Methods considered include calorific value or energy, industrial cumulative exergy consumption (ICEC) and its variations, and ecological cumulative exergy consumption (ECEC) or emergy. A hierarchy of metrics is proposed that spans the range from detailed data to aggregate metrics. At the fine scale, detailed data can help identify resources to whose depletion the selected product is most vulnerable. At the coarse scale, new insight is provided about thermodynamic aggregation methods. Among these, energy analysis is appropriate only for products that rely primarily on fossil fuels, and it cannot provide a useful indication of renewability. Exergy-based methods can provide results similar to energy analysis by including only nonrenewable fuels but can also account for materials use and provide a renewability index. However, ICEC and its variations do not address substitutability between resources, causing its results to be dominated by dilute and low-quality resources such as sunlight. The use of monetary values to account for substitutability does not consider many ecological resources and may not be appropriate for the analysis of emerging products. ECEC or emergy explicitly considers substitutability and resource quality and provides more intuitive results but is plagued by date gaps and uncertainties. This insight is illustrated via application to the life cycles of gasoline, diesel, corn ethanol, and soybean biodiesel. Here, aggregate metrics reveal the dilemma facing the choice of fuels: high return on investment versus high renewability.Biomass pyrolysis with biochar returned to soil is a possible strategy for climate change mitigation and reducing fossil fuel consumption. Pyrolysis with biochar applied to soils results in four coproducts: long-term carbon (C) sequestration from stable C in the biochar, renewable energy generation, biochar as a soil amendment, and biomass waste management. Life cycle assessment was used to estimate the energy and climate change impacts and the economics of biochar systems. The feedstocks analyzed represent agricultural residues (corn stover), yard waste, and switchgrass energy crops. The net energy of the system is greatest with switchgrass (4899 MJ t(-1) dry feedstock). The net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for both stover and yard waste are negative, at -864 and -885 kg CO2 equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions reductions per tonne dry feedstock, respectively. Of these total reductions, 62-66% are realized from C sequestration in the biochar. The switchgrass biochar-pyrolysis system can be a net GHG emitter (+36 kg CO(2)e t(-1) dry feedstock), depending on the accounting method for indirect land-use change impacts. The economic viability of the pyrolysis-biochar system is largely dependent on the costs of feedstock production, pyrolysis, and the value of C offsets. Biomass sources that have a need for waste management such as yard waste have the highest potential for economic profitability (+$69 t(-1) dry feedstock when CO(2)e emission reductions are valued at $80 t(-1) CO(2)e). The transportation distance for feedstock creates a significant hurdle to the economic profitability of biochar-pyrolysis systems. Biochar may at present only deliver climate change mitigation benefits and be financially viable as a distributed system using waste biomass.This paper addresses the optimal design and planning of sustainable chemical Supply chains (SCs) in the presence of uncertainty in the damage model used to evaluate their environmental performance. The environmental damage is assessed through the Eco-indicator 99, which includes recent advances made in life cycle assessment (LCA). The overall problem is formulated as a bi-criterion stochastic non-convex mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP). The deterministic equivalent of such a model is obtained by reformulating the joint chance-constraint employed to calculate the environmental performance of the SC in the space of uncertain parameters. The resulting bi-criterion non-convex MINLP is solved by applying the epsilon constraint method. To guarantee the global optimality of the Pareto solutions found, we propose a novel spatial branch and bound method that exploits the specific structure of the problem. The capabilities of our modeling framework and the performance of the proposed Solution strategy are illustrated through a case study. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial activities have the direct goal to help increasing the quality of life of the population. Beside positive direct and desired effects of industrial activities these have also negative, undesired and sometimes unthinkable effects on the environment and society. Especially mining based industrial activities have several unwanted impacts on environment, but not only on environment. With the goal of assuring the sustainable development of our human society it is therefore necessary to evaluate industrial processes or generally economic activities not only from economic and technological points of view but from environmental and social ones as well, In the last years the new discipline called Technology Assessment grew up. It started in the United States and then became well known in the Western Europe as well. The discipline bases on several instruments and methods to carry out technology assessment studies. From the universe of known methods and instruments there are some used to carry out environmental assessment of industrial activities. Presently the most discussed one on international level is the life cycle assessment (LCA). In the present paper general notions regarding environmental assessment will be presented, as well as application examples from the industrial practice. The idea is to take into consideration possible negative impacts on the environment because of several mining based industrial activities.The Low Resource Consumption Buildings and Construction by Use of Life-Cycle Assessment in Design and Decision Making (LoRe-LCA) project aims to coordinate activities regarding the application of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in the European construction sector, focusing on comparing and improving the functional units used for LCA for whole buildings, improving the possibilities to compare results for different alternatives during design stage, and for comparison of results for different buildings. The project focuses on harmonisation and use of LCA-methods in design and decision-making for reaching overall goals of reduced resource consumption.The buildings and building materials belong to the biggest consumers of energy and material sources and to the biggest producers of pollution. In order to determine the interaction between the buildings and environment it is necessary to understand the environmental effects of building products throughout the product life. The life cycle assessment method seems to be the most appropriate method for environmental evaluation of building materials, which includes the existing and potential environmental impacts evaluation of material within their whole life cycle. The results of the environmental assessment of the selected masonry family house in Slovakia with special regards to the used building materials based on LCA are presented in this paper. The amount of embodied energy PEI, global warming potential GWP, acidification potential AP and quantity of used materials for selected building were evaluated in this study. The most negative effect on global warming and acidification was found for thermal insulation material of roof, floor and ceiling, the highest value of primary energy was found for vertical load bearing materials.There is an increasing focus on the secondary pollution of a municipal sewage treatment plant. To illuminate the environmental load of a sewage treatment process, a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a case project in Harbin was proposed by combining the process-based life cycle inventory (LCI) and the input-output based LCI in one framework. For classification of the effect factors and characterization, the calculation methods and models studied by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were applied and the improved analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to determine the indicator weights. Characterization results show that land filling space contributes to environmental load largely. Results of weighting assessment display the five bigger environmental impact categories. Results of LCA are intended to help inform and guide decisions about sewage treatment for existing wastewater treatment plants and those that are still in the planning phase in cities.The reverse supply chain is more and more concerned about because of the improvement of the environmental quality. LCA is a quantitative evaluation method of the environmental effect of a reverse supply chain. The evaluation result can be used as an objective reference in the productive design and recycling disposal and at the same time reduce the negative influence on environment so that it can facilitate the protection of the environment and the establishment of a green supply chain. This article, using the method of case study, focuses on the analysis of the reverse supply chain of the waste lead acid batteries (material recycling) and direct disposal(landfill). Through the analysis of evaluation method of the life cycle, this paper comes to a more environmentally friendly dealing method of the end of life. After an analysis of the different environmental influence in different phases, this paper finds out the main activities that exert a negative influence on environment and provides a direction for the improvement of the environment benefits of the reverse supply chain of the lead acid batteries.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is induced to examine the environmental impacts in the life cycle of milk package from polythene, and to compare the environmental impacts from different plastic package waste treatments in this article. The data of the mass and energy fluxes and the environmental emissions are obtained from literatures and sites investigation. The application of LCA by using Eco-Indicator 99 has made possible the comparison of the environmental impacts of three treatments. The results of this LCA study are discussed and reveal that the environmental impacts of plastic package from raw materials supply period is highest, over 90.2% of total environmental impacts in its life cycle except treatment stage. The plastic package contributes more to Fossil fuels, Respiratory inorganics and Climate change. While the contribution of Carcinogens, Eco-toxicity, Acidification and Eutrophication is less. The environmental impacts from plastic package waste is highest in landfill treatment followed by incineration and recycling, which landfill and incineration can append 16.1% and 5.3% of additional environmental impacts respectively, compared to that before plastic package come into waste stream. In contrast, recycling can reduce 75.9% of environmental impacts more significantly.Though experiment of the waste edible oil fuel, life cycle assessment methods of the waste edible oil fuel and diesel fuel were introduced in the process of preparation and combustion. The results showed that the petroleum diesel oil of the blended fuel proportion reduce, contamination index value also reduced except eutrophication potential. The petrochemical diesel oil system is more serious than the biological diesel oil system to the global environment impact, but to compare with the petrochemical fuel oil, it have burned the waste edible oil of the pollutant discharge drops except the NOxThe successive removal of units from a group of systems during phasing out leads to a variable requirement for stock level of spare parts. Repairable units from phased out systems can be reused for the remaining functional systems in the group. Hence, the stock level of spare parts increases and the demand for spare parts decreases. This can lead to excessive stocking of spare parts and high maintenance costs for spare parts. This paper proposes a methodology to determine the optimum time to stop repair of repairable units to minimize the maintenance cost. It uses a Poisson Distribution based on NHPP (Non-Homogenous Poisson Process) to predict the available number of units, while fulfilling the demand for spare parts for the remaining systems. A concept, called Minimal Margin is introduced to formulate the problem and nonlinear programming is proposed to obtain the optimum solution. Finally, a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the approach.In this paper, through the analysis of rare-earth mining process environmental problems,object and system boundary of environmental coordination assessment in rare earth mining have been put forward,and index system and cumulative comparison model of environmental load are set up. After the index system and cumulative comparison model of environmental load application,environmental effects produced by each rare earth mining process have been deeply analyzed,simultaneously,it has also given a supplement for total emissions control models and standards in China's rare earth mining.This paper based on four key abilities of the Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) System including the abilities of fault detection, fault isolation, fault prognosis and prognosis of the remaining life, analyzes and constructs a framework of the PHM quantitative requirements, and defines the quantitative assessment emphasis of the PHM abilities. Targeting these quantitative requirements and proceeding from the viewpoint of life cycle assessment, this paper presents three methods of the PHM System validation, which a re the validation method based on analysis and assessment, the validation method based on simulation (including entire simulation validation and half-entity simulation validation) and the validation method based on experimentation. This paper defines the emphasis on the PHM System analysis and assessment, ascertains the implementary elements and the simulated environmental framework of the PHM System simulated validation and elaborates two central elements of the PHM System experimental validation the experiment scheme and the experiment technique. This paper provides thoughts and methods to the quantitative validation assessment of the rapidly developing and applying PHM System.This paper based on four key abilities of the Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) System including the abilities of fault detection, fault isolation, fault prognosis and prognosis of the remaining life, analyzes and constructs a framework of the PHM quantitative requirements, and defines the quantitative assessment emphasis of the PHM abilities. Targeting these quantitative requirements and proceeding from the viewpoint of life cycle assessment, this paper presents three methods of the PHM System validation, which a re the validation method based on analysis and assessment, the validation method based on simulation (including entire simulation validation and half-entity simulation validation) and the validation method based on experimentation. This paper defines the emphasis on the PHM System analysis and assessment, ascertains the implementary elements and the simulated environmental framework of the PHM System simulated validation and elaborates two central elements of the PHM System experimental validation the experiment scheme and the experiment technique. This paper provides thoughts and methods to the quantitative validation assessment of the rapidly developing and applying PHM System.Coal is dominating the context of energy supply and demand, and is also considered as one important option to be converted to liquid and gaseous fuels for vehicle use in future in China. Tsinghua-CA3EM model is employed to calculate the life-cycle fossil energy and GHG emission intensity of the four major pathways of coal-based vehicle fuel in China. The results show that: 1) both the two aspects of intensities of the studied coal-based methanol, coal-based dim ethyl ether, direct coal-to-liquid and indirect coal-to-liquid are all about one time higher than conventional gasoline and diesel for vehicle pathways; 2) with the technology development in future, the above situation can be improved; 3) the development of coal-based fuels will substitute the petroleum in China effectively; and 4) Carbon Dioxide capture and storage technology is an effective option to study for low-carbon coal utilization.With sustainability increasingly becoming an important business factor, companies are now looking for methods and tools to help assess the fuller picture of the environmental impacts associated with their manufacturing and supply chain activities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely-used technique for measuring the environmental costs assignable to a product or service. However, LCA takes a high-level view and assumes a fixed supply chain structure and operation. It does not explicitly consider the effect of supply chain design and practices which can be a significant contributor to the overall environmental impacts. This paper presents an approach integrating LCA indicators and dynamic simulation for green supply chain design and operation. Environmental impact indicators are incorporated into a dynamic model of the supply chain along with profit and customer satisfaction, so that sustainability of various design and operational decisions can be assessed comprehensively. The application and benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated using two case studies.This work presents a multi-period and multi-objective optimization based on mathematical programming of solar assisted absorption cooling systems. Seven solar collector models combined with a gas fired heater and an absorption cooling cycle are considered. The optimization task is formulated as a multi-objective multi-period mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem that accounts for the minimization of the total cost of the cooling system and the associated environmental impact. The environmental performance is measured following the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles. The capabilities of the proposed method are illustrated in a case study that addresses the design of a solar assisted ammonia-water absorption cooling system using the weather conditions of Tarragona (Spain).Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a strong tool for quantifying the environmental impact associated with a product life cycle. To implement LCA into environmentally-conscious process design, the lack of inventory data should be addressed by computer-aided process engineering (CAPE) tools. This study proposes the process design framework integrating CAPE and LCA tools. Missing inventory data is estimated by process simulation with design information extracted from literatures and design heuristics. At this time, the sensitivity of design settings to LCA results should be analyzed to generate design requirements for further process design stages. This study demonstrates the proposed procedure by a case study on biomass-derived polypropylene (PP). In the case study, it is demonstrated that the potential of biomass-derived resin to reduce environmental impact due to the production of PP. At the same time, it was also revealed that the environmental impact could be increased by implementation of biomass resource as raw material, because of the increase of GHG emission in biomass cultivation site.The well-known world energetic matter, mainly due to the worldwide growing energy consumption gone with a reduction of oil and gas availability, and to the environmental effects of the indiscriminate use of fossil fuels in our economy, is leading to the development of clean innovative technologies for the reduction of GHG emissions and the creation of a more sustainable economic structure worldwide. But, realizing and installing renewable energy plants have an envionmental "footprint" that has to be evaluated to quantify the real impact of renewable technologies on the environment. Nowadays, the most important tool to evaluate this impact of a product is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). To this aim, several impact categories are defined; among these the most important are the Gloal Warming, the Abiotic Depletion, the Eutrophication, the Acidification, the Land Use and the Human toxicity. The aim of this work is to present a Life Cycle Assessment of an innovative solar technology the Molten Salt Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant, developed by Italian Research Centre ENEA and able to produce clean electricity by using solar energy. The Life Cycle Assessment was carried out by means of SimaPro7 Software, one of the most used LCA software in the world. It is worth assess that these types of software are an indispensible tools for leading LCA studies. In the second part of the study the environmental performance of the CSP plant was compared with these of conventional oil and gas power plants.Sustainable development is usually presented using the three pillar model: economy, environment and society. This research uses life cycle based assessments in conjunction with process system engineering methods for the design and analysis of sustainable processes with the example of pretreatment of seawater membrane desalination. At the first step, the sustainability potential of several state of the art process alternatives is analyzed (namely granular media- and membrane-based filtration). Conducting a broad environmental life cycle assessment (LCA, using GaBi4 (R) software) together with a life cycle costs assessment (LCC, according to SETAC guidelines) forms the so called eco-efficiency analysis (based on a definition by Germany's institute for applied Ecology) which together with a qualitative process performance assessment gives a good idea about the sustainability potential of the different process alternatives. The results show that the current trend of using a membrane based pre-treatment is proven here to not always be a more sustainable process solution.Sustainable process design involves the simultaneous consideration of economic, environmental, and social factors. This approach is demonstrated in the production of corn ethanol by using a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The system boundaries considered are corn farming and transportation, and ethanol production and distribution. The analysis is extended to studying the impact of alternative processing technologies on sustainability performance. The goals of this work are achieved by mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) using the General Algebraic Modelling System (GAMS). Multi-objective optimisation techniques are used in assessing the trade-offs between the sustainability aspects.In this paper, the life cycle of 4 different electric passenger vehicles and corresponding traditional passenger vehicles in China are described and compared. Chinese statistics data about industry, transportation and vehicle energy consumption are widely collected and used to calculate the total and segmental energy consumption and GHG emission. As a result, energy consumption and GHG emission decline of the remolded electric car from corresponding gasoline passenger car reach 41% and 23% separately. Energy consumption and GHG emission of electric vehicles can benefit from technical progress of traditional vehicles, and from development of renewable power and generating efficiency growth, but they can hardly benefit from vehicle miniaturization Copyright Form of EVS25.Based on life cycle assessment methodology, production cost and CO2 emission estimation of rapeseed biodiesel industry were conducted. Results of the assessment indicate that the total amount of absorbed CO2 during the whole life cycle of rapeseed biodiesel is much larger than that has been emitted and rapeseed biodiesel is really an environment-friendly energy source. However, cost of rapeseed biodiesel production is relatively high, and the production is profitable only if the price of diesel reaches to 7.8yuan/liter.Hybrid city bus can help to save significant quantities fuel (up to 35%) in bus applications involving frequent starting and stopping and reduce CO2 emission to 40 similar to 50 %. The environmental impact from the hybrid bus is mainly due to the use of oil or natural gas and the emission of CO2 from driving the bus, but also the use of raw materials and its recycle also have an impact on the environment. So we use LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) method to assesses the environmental impacts related to hybrid bus during its whole life cycle; i.e. energy, other resource use and emissions from materials production, use, maintenance, as well as disposal of the product are included in the analysis. In this article, we use Volvo Hybrid Bus as one example to evaluate the potential environmental impacts through its whole life. We indentify the most significant environmental impacts which we need to focus on in the future product development and usage. EVS25 Copyright.In this study, LCA (life cycle assessment) is used as a tool for the assessment of energy consumption and associated impacts generated from utilization of energy in various power generation systems in China. The details follow the methodology outlined in ISO14040. The scope of this research includes energy production, energy transportation, and energy utilization. The function unit of life cycle inventory is 1kJ electricity power. Most of the inventory data have been collected from Yearbook of China. Compared to fuel-fired power generation system, hydropower and nuclear power are more environment-friendly according to life cycle inventory analysis results, so increasing the proportion of hydropower and nuclear power in the power industry has a significant improvement effect on the development of China's power industry. The life cycle environmental impact of integrated power generation level in 2010 will be 13.8% lower than in 1999 according to National energy policy of China.For the first time a full/streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) case study was performed to estimate the carbon footprint of three types of FTTx networks deployed in Italy. The functional unit is "broadband network in an Italian urban dense area for use by 10,000 homes during one year" The worst case results show that FTTB, FTTCab, and FTTH all emit around 1,000-1,300 ton CO(2)e/year dominated by the use stage. The LCA based carbon footprint is 30-70% higher than the carbon footprint based only on the use of electricity. As far as overall energy usage reduction, the customer premise equipment (CPE) has the largest opportunity for improvement. A sensitivity analysis shows that it might be possible to reduce the FTTH score by 80% by assuming 4 hours full power mode/20 hours low power mode for the CPE, and use existing infrastructure in deployment. Moreover, FTTH has considerably better bitrate based carbon efficiency than FTTCab and FTTB. The parameterized study could be expanded to included service level functions.Photovoltaic (PV) lighting products are increasingly used to provide rural households in developing countries with clean and safe lighting. These households usually do not have access to electricity from a power grid and rely on either kerosene lamps or electricity from car batteries which are inefficiently charged at local charging stations. PV lighting products can deliver a higher quality of service. Moreover, they are safer and more reliable (1). Another important aspect is their environmental benefit when compared to their traditional alternatives, which we have evaluated by a life cycle assessment. Our study is based on a case in Cambodia (2). The main goals of the project are to determine the environmental benefits and which parts are contributing to impacts that occur. The analysis provides important information for stakeholders, because environmental strengths and weaknesses of these products can be identified and used in future product design and for marketing purposes. Our study shows that the use of small sized PV lighting products is environmentally beneficial compared to traditional lighting solutions such as a car battery charged with a diesel generator or a kerosene light. However, impacts are comparable to the environmental impacts of lighting by compact fluorescent lights powered by electricity from the grid. The environmental profile of small size PV lighting products can be improved by 50 % by recycling of the batteries.Organic photovoltaics are often proposed as a solution to achieve low cost and low environmental impact in a solar cell. In this work, life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for various donor and acceptor materials, taking into account required purity of reactants and solvents, low yields for reactions, repeated purification steps, and toxic chemicals and solvents used for production of electronic grade semi-conductor materials. The full life cycle of complete single junction organic solar cells was done, based on current state-of-the art efficiencies reported for various donor/acceptor combinations. At this point, it is shown that the increase in device efficiency results in an increase in energy payback, mainly because higher concentrations of [C70]PCBM are being used which have a higher embodied energy compared to lower efficiency [C60]PCBM - based solar cells.We estimated the energy payback time (EPBT) and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in the life cycle of the Amonix high-concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) system with III-V solar cells. For a location in the southwest United States, the Amonix 7700 has an EPBT of only 0.86 yrs and GHG emissions of 24 g CO2-eq./kWh; we expect further decreases in both by 2011.Under the current conditions, the concept of sustainable development is a basic model of development of the society. Economic, environmental and social implications (as a three basic pillars of sustainable development) occur throughout the stages of the product, process, or facility life cycle that is, from the acquisition and processing of materials, through production or construction, use, maintenance, and retirement. Application of Life Cycle Engineering to the company processes creates many questions related with stakeholders. This paper is concerned with Life Cycle Engineering and its influence throughout the associated life cycle on the company and on customers as a one of the most important stakeholder.Purpose - The paper aims to examine the value relevance of alternative accounting performance measures in Australia. It also documents the relative and incremental value relevance of revenue vis-a-vis earnings and the longitudinal changes in such value relevance. Finally, the impact of certain firm characteristics including firm life cycle on the value relevance of revenue and earnings information is investigated. Design/ methodology/ approach - The paper utilises data on Australian listed companies from 1992 to 2005 on the level of and changes in seven alternative accounting performance measures. Standard ordinary least square regression is conducted. Findings - Results reveal that: the coefficient estimates on all the performance measures are much higher for large firms compared to their small firm counterpart; the explanatory power of incremental revenue in explaining stock returns has declined significantly over the sample period; and life cycle analysis shows that the combined coefficients for both revenue and earnings are significant in the growth and maturity stages of the firm life cycle. Practical implications - When making equity valuation decisions investors consider firms' fundamentals as reflected in financial statements. However, which line item is more important for equity valuation is an important consideration. From a regulatory perspective, this stream of research is quite relevant because standard setters will have evidence from an investor viewpoint about whether certain line items, subtotals, and totals should be defined in standards and required to be displayed in financial statements. Originality/value - The paper adds to the existing capital market research in Australia by documenting differential persistence of alternative performance measures.Based on total life cycle assessment (TLCA) and a research project on auto engine remanufacturing, this article look forward to make certain what is "Remanufacturing Rate" of engine remanufacturing and how to express it on the occasions of OEMs, independent remanufacturers and subcontracted remanufacturers in China. The concepts of 'Remanufacturing rate' of engine are put forward at first, and then the estimate methods are studied based on remanufacturing environment of China.This paper outlines general methods, calculation models and some available software for the calculation of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions in logistics activities. General calculation formulas are presented mostly for transportation by truck, but by train as well. Listed are CO(2) emission factors (EFs) for the different types of fuels and partially average numbers for the various transport carriers. The relevance of the calculation of CO, emissions in the logistics sector is described to show the growing importance of sustainability in the world of logistics.This work evaluates the technical performance and environmental impacts, when sugarcane bagasse is applied as reinforcement of polypropylene in a component instead neat polypropylene (PP). To achieve the goals of this study, the tensile and flexural properties and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a function of fiber content were performed. In addition, different end-of-life (EOL) options for natural fiber composites were proposed, including incineration, recycling (with economic reuse) and discharging (landfill). Besides the good mechanical properties, natural fiber composites showed great environmental performance during the entire life cycle, mainly in the cultivation phase, when sugarcane consumes carbon while growing, contributing to global warming decreases. As a conclusion, sugarcane bagasse fibers production results in lower environmental impacts compared to neat PP and the recycling with economic reuse of sugarcane bagasse-PP composite was the best alternative to minimize environmental impacts after the end-of-life.Rising demand for sustainable development motivated our eco-friendly polishing method. In this study, fixed-abrasive polishing using a compact robot was proposed based on a new approach that includes the idea of secondary tools. The effectiveness of using a compact robot was investigated by life cycle assessment for eco-friendly polishing processing. The actual polishing process was carried out with low pressure to determine the potential of the proposed polishing method. As a result, low-environmental-load processing was achieved by machine downsizing without affecting the processing results by designing an independent pressure mechanism along the equipment's main axis. The nano-surface could also be obtained with this method for glass material.Contributing 5% of global anthropogenic greenhouse emissions through cement production alone, the concrete industry is a major contributor to climate change. Vehicles that use concrete transportation infrastructure release another 30% of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. Within this research, carbon nanoparticles are used to tailor the fiber-matrix interface of ECC materials for improved mechanical performance. Using life cycle assessment, the high energy content of carbon nanoparticles (2 to 100 times more energy intensive than aluminum) is balanced against their ability to improve ECC performance, increase infrastructure durability, and reduce traffic emissions, thereby improving transportation system sustainability. Specifically, carbon nanoparticles are used to tailor the crack bridging stress versus opening relationship within ECC to improve tensile ductility and crack width control. Results show that depending on the application, carbon nanoparticles can improve transportation infrastructure sustainability by reducing a number of environmental indicators including primary energy (MJ) and global warming potential (kg CO2-eq).An experimental biomass crop of Nicotiana tabacum was grown over a nine-month period inside a greenhouse situated in Almeria, south-eastern Spain. Two irrigation methods corresponding to treated urban wastewater and groundwater, were arranged. No significant differences were observed in the total biomass produced on the treated wastewater and groundwater plots, which ranged from 17 to 28 kg m(-2), depending on plant density. Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied in order to gain knowledge of the potential impacts of using either treated wastewater, groundwater, or desalinated water for irrigation. The LCA study included all the processes involved in agricultural production up to the final plant cutting. Since desalinated water was not actually used in the experiment, the experimental data from tobacco irrigated with groundwater was used in the LCA. Impact categories included were: global warming; acidification: water eutrophication; primary energy use; as well as aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Special attention was put on the ecotoxicity of emerging and priority pollutants in treated wastewater, as well as on soil quality impacts, namely soil organic carbon deficit and soil salinisation. The results show that using desalinated water leads to higher environmental impacts in several impact categories, including global warming, energy use, soil quality, and aquatic ecotoxicity. As an example. primary energy use increases by 80% and 50% as compared to using treated wastewater and groundwater, respectively. On the other hand, wastewater pollutants in irrigation water may involve a relevant contribution to terrestrial ecotoxicity. For this reason, the impact score of the wastewater-irrigated crop is 23% and 35% higher as compared to the crop using desalinated water and groundwater, respectively. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels can be produced by converting cellulose in crop residues to ethanol. This has recently been viewed as a potential supplement to non-renewable energy sources, especially in the Americas. A 50-yr field experiment was analyzed to determine the influence of (i) removing approximately 22% of the above-ground wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) residue each crop year, and (ii) N and P fertilization on soil carbon (C) in the top 15 cm depth of a fallow-wheat-wheat (F-W-W) rotation. The study was conducted from 1958 to 2007 on a clay soil, at Indian Head in sub-humid southeast Saskatchewan, Canada. Soil C concentrations and bulk densities were measured in the 0-7.5 and 7.5-15 cm depths in 1987, 1996 and 2007 and soil C changes were related to C inputs estimated from straw and root yields Calculated from regressions relating these to grain yields. Two soil organic matter models [the Campbell model and the Introductory Carbon Balance Model (ICBM)] were also used to simulate and predict the effects of the treatments on soil C change over time, and to estimate likely soil C change if 50% or 95% of above-ground residues were harvested each crop year. Crop residue removal reduced cumulative C inputs from straw and roots over the 50-yr experiment by only 13%, and this did not significantly (P > 0.05) reduce soil C throughout the experiment duration. However, after 50 yr of applying N fertilizer at recommended rates, soil C increased significantly by about 3 Mg ha(-1) compared to the non-fertilized treatment. The simulated effect of removing 50% and 95% of the above-ground residues suggested that removing 50% of the straw would likely have a detectable effect on the soil C, while removing 95% of the straw certainly would. Measurements and model simulations suggest that adoption of no-tillage Without proper fertilization will not increase soil C. Although it appears that a modest amount of residue may be safely removed from these Udic Borolls (Black Chernozems) without a measurable effect on soil C, this would only be feasible if accompanied by appropriate fertility management. Crown Copyright (c) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aluminium industry is reducing its carbon dioxide emissions and environmental footprint. In order to identify and prioritise areas in the cast house where greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced it is necessary to quantify CO(2)e (CO(2) equivalent tonnes) emissions for the various cast house operations. In this study two typical cast house layouts are examined. In one case, 22kg 99.85% aluminium remelt ingots are produced using chain conveyor ingot casting machines. In the second case, wrought alloy extrusion and rolling slab direct chill cast products are made. Both plants are sized at 500ktpa. The various process inputs in terms of energy and materials were identified and typical usage rates assigned. The results show that general electricity consumption, dross generation and furnace energy consumption are the three biggest areas of CO,e and should be targeted for improvement. Magnesium consumption also has a large effect in the case of the wrought alloy plant.Our strong dependence on fossil fuels results from the intensive use and consumption of petroleum derivatives which, combined with diminishing oil resources, causes environmental and political concerns. The utilization of agricultural residues as raw materials in a biorefinery is a promising alternative to fossil resources for production of energy carriers and chemicals, thus mitigating climate change and enhancing energy security. This paper focuses on a biorefinery concept which produces bioethanol, bioenergy and biochemicals from two types of agricultural residues, corn stover and wheat straw. These biorefinery systems are investigated using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, which takes into account all the input and output flows occurring along the production chain. This approach can be applied to almost all the other patterns that convert lignocellulosic residues into bioenergy and biochemicals. The analysis elaborates on land use change aspects, i.e. the effects of crop residue removal (like decrease in grain yields, change in soil N2O emissions and decrease of soil organic carbon). The biorefinery systems are compared with the respective fossil reference systems producing the same amount of products/services from fossils instead of biomass. Since climate change mitigation and energy security are the two most important driving forces for biorefinery development, the assessment focuses on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cumulative primary energy demand, but other environmental categories are evaluated as well. Results show that the use of crop residues in a biorefinery saves GHG emissions and reduces fossil energy demand. For instance, GHG emissions are reduced by about 50% and more than 80% of non-renewable energy is saved. Land use change effects have a strong influence in the final GHG balance (about 50%), and their uncertainty is discussed in a sensitivity analysis. Concerning the investigation of the other impact categories, biorefinery systems have higher eutrophication potential than fossil reference systems. Based on these results, a residues-based biorefinery concept is able to solve two problems at the same time, namely find a use for the abundant lignocellulosic residues and ensure a mitigation effect for most of the environmental concerns related to the utilization of non-renewable energy resources. Therefore, when agricultural residues are used as feedstocks, best management practices and harvest rates need to be carefully established. In fact, rotation, tillage, fertilization management, soil properties and climate can play an important role in the determination of the amount of crop residue that can be removed minimizing soil carbon losses. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the performance and/or CO(2) intensities of a Bio-DME (Biomass Di-methyl Ether) production system, considering the differences of biomass feedstock. In the past LCA studies on an energy chain model, there is little knowledge on the differences of biomass feedstock and/or available condition. Thus, in this paper, we selected Papua New Guinea (PNG) which has good potential for supply of an energy crop (a short rotation forestry), and Japan where wood remnants are available, as model areas. Also, we referred to 9 species of biomass feedstock of PNG, and to 8 species in Japan. The system boundary on our LCA consists of (1) the pre-treatment process, (2) the energy conversion process, and (3) the fuel transportation process. Especially, since the pre-treatment process has uncertainties related to the moisture content of biomass feedstock, as well as the distance from the cultivation site to the energy plant, we considered them by the Monte Carlo simulation. Next, we executed the process design of the Bio-DME production system based on the basic experimental results of pyrolysis and char gasification reactions. Due to these experiments, the gas components of pyrolysis and the gasification rate under H(2)O (Steam) and CO(2) were obtained. Also, we designed the pressurized fluid-bed gasification process. In a liquefaction process, that is, a synthesis process of DME, the result based on an equilibrium constant was used. In the proposed system, a steam turbine for an auxiliary power was assumed to be equipped, too. The energy efficiencies are 39.0-56.8 LHV-%, depending upon the biomass species. Consequently, CO(2) intensities in the whole system were 16.3-47.2 g-CO(2)/MJ-DME in the Japan case, and 12.2-36.7 g-CO(2)/MJ-DME in the PNG one, respectively. Finally, using the results Of CO(2) intensities and energy efficiencies, we obtained the regression equations as parameters of hydrogen content and heating value of a feedstock. These equations will be extremely significant when we install the BTL (biomass-to-liquid, ex. Bio-DME) energy system in the near future, in order to mitigate CO(2) emissions effectively, and to estimate the energy's efficiency. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The management of riparian vegetation which includes cutting operations of grass, reeds, bushes and trees, is very important to reduce hydrogeologic risk. In Tuscany, riparian biomass and residues are mainly left shredded along courses or disposed in landfills as special wastes: actually different laws prohibit that tree trunks are abandoned in areas naturally affected by flooding, because they can be moved contributing to increase the water level and to maximize the hydraulic risk of some other nearby areas. In some cases, it is also possible to store the logs in specified sites from where they can be taken and used as a fuel in fireplaces or domestic heating plants. This work studies the possibility of the reuse of riparian vegetation as biomass for energy production and evaluates benefits and drawbacks from the economical, environmental and managerial points of Particularly, a specific methodology has been developed for two hydrological districts of Tuscany, view. with different typologies and densities of vegetation. First, an estimation of biomass distribution on the land and an evaluation of annual wood availability have been carried out; then, different chains concerning harvesting operation, biomass transport, storage conditions and final utilisation, have been defined and compared by a specific multicriteria analysis (MCA): finally, for the most suitable bio-energy chains the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been implemented. Results of the LCA have also permitted to validate some environmental indicators used in the MCA, as mechanisation level of yards, energy efficiency of plants or transport distances. The decision making tool developed allows to compare costs and environmental benefits of the energy use of riparian vegetation, supporting local authorities involved in energy planning: in this way it is possible to confront different alternatives to match the energy demand and meet the energy saving and sustainability issues at the lowest cost for the community. In conclusion, the most interesting bio-energy chains, based on technology of direct combustion, are those that require a limited forestry mechanisation, the short transport distances and the medium sized plants. The LCA applied to these most suitable chains has also shown significant environmental benefits to promote the energetic use of riparian biomass instead of fossil fuels. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The construction industry has historically consumed large quantities of raw materials. Waste generation from the use of these materials can have a significant impact on the environment. Major potential sources of pollution from construction processes are waste materials, emissions from vehicles, noise and release of contaminants to the atmosphere, ground and water. In order to minimize the impact of waste generated by construction activities, a methodology to estimate the eco-costing of construction waste is proposed by this work. The article presents the results of quantifying the ecological cost and impact of brick waste from construction sites on the environment. Life-cycle assessment methodology and Eco-indicator 95 are used to calculate the impact of brick waste. This article provides a first attempt to conceptualize eco-costing issues in relation to waste from construction activities. Generally, the results show that the impact is mainly due to the burning of diesel from machinery during dismantling processes and the use of vehicles for transportation of brick waste.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the environmental management techniques, which aims to assess potential hazards to the environment of products, processes or entire systems. The role of LCA has been increasing as it was proposed in many EU and Polish official documents. The present paper aims to analyse the environmental impact of the process of energy generation in a boiler station (hereinafter referred to as the power plant), incorporated in the integrated mill operating in the Polish ferrous metal industry. Obtained results show that the most harmful potential for the environment presents the emission of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides this affects the respiratory system. The following impact factors potentially affecting the production of energy in the power plant are the climate change category, carcinogenic factors and fossil fuels. Moreover, comparative study for four variants of annual operation of the power plant was performed, whereby the variants differed only by the proportion in dosage of two types of fuel: hard coal and blast furnace gas (other fuels such as natural and coke gas were left at the current levels they are used as "starting" fuel). Using the blast furnace gas will always be less harmful alternative for the environment, as it is a waste fuel, a side product, which requires no material and energy cost to produce. The only drawback of this fuel is high carbon emission index while combusting the blast furnace gas.This paper presents a framework and approach for the computation of machining energy for parts and assemblies, at two levels early design stage and manufacturing stage Energy estimation at an early design stage can be useful for redesign strategies and improving manufacturing efficiency At the manufacturing stage, energy estimations allow for asset management based on energy efficient process planning and scheduling, thereby reducing the negative impacts of the product to the environment To facilitate the computation of the machining energy, at an early design stage, we first automate the process of identifying the material removal volume for machining operations for a given part We subsequently use the identified removal volume together with the material specific data to compute an energy range for manufacturing the part For an assembly, the above computations for individual parts are aggregated to arrive at the final energy range The proposed method allows the identification of energy intensive parts/features based on the percent contribution, thereby assisting re-design strategies We additionally explore the application of statistical analysis and allocation principles to identify priority re-design parts In this paper, we limit our product re-design discussions based on form (geometry and shape) and material Future extensions will potentially also include manufacturing process optimization Although the framework presented in this paper is currently applied only to milled parts and assemblies, it can also be extended to other machining methodsToxic chemicals used in product design and manufacturing are grave concerns due to their significant impact on human health Sustainable material selections are needed by industry to reduce the overall impact of toxic chemicals in both design and manufacturing In this paper, we integrate the human health impact assessment into standard material selection process for developing a sustainable material selection metric for decision support in design and manufacturing A schematic method is presented for characterizing and benchmarking the human health impact of toxic chemicals A case study is performed on six toxic chemicals used as solvents in semiconductor manufacturing Reliability of the schematic benchmarking results is checked and validated by comparing the results with that of conventional Human Toxicity Potential (HTP) methodA steam surface condenser can operate very reliably for many years. However, much of the tubing will spend a good portion of its life in a most demanding environment of high stresses, mechanical vibration, temperature variations causing thermal stresses, and exposure to corrosive chemicals and waters. Traditionally used copper alloys and lower performance 300 series stainless steel alloys may, at some point during the operating life of the plant, require replacement. The challenge for the plant operations staff is to understand the possible material failure mechanisms, and once they impact profitable performance, develop a long term cost analysis to determine the lowest cost replacement solution. This paper identifies the potential causes of condenser and heat exchanger tube failures and their alternative solutions, the impact of metal transport and provides tools to assign costs to help develop an economic justification for the replacement using a life-cycle analysis. In addition to the cost for treatment chemicals, the paper identifies the impact of forced outages and derates, reduction of generation, and other operation related costs, including the future potential of CO(2) charges. Using HEI criteria, the thermal and mechanical performance of various tube materials are compared and used to build a model to justify the retube payback.Enriching soil carbon storage is regarded as a viable option for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the agricultural sector. Carbon sequestration by applying biomass into the soil can be an effective sequestration pathway for agriculture. Biochar, charcoal produced from biomass pyrolysis, is highly stable against microbial decomposition, and applying this to farmland has the potential to mitigate GHG emissions. However, CO2 is emitted throughout the biochar life cycle, including pyrolysis, transportation, and farmland application. Therefore, estimating the net carbon sequestration potential by considering these CO2 emissions is important. To this end, operational data from a pilot sugarcane bagasse carbonisation plant were collected, and the net carbon sequestration potential with farmland application of bagasse charcoal was calculated using inventory data from the pilot plant. The results were as follows: (i) kerosene consumption during the carbonisation process was the greatest contributor to CO2 emissions within the life cycle of applying bagasse charcoal to farmland; (ii) the initial dryness of the feedstock was an important factor in estimating net carbon sequestration potentials; (iii) the CO2 mitigation potential with farmland application of bagasse charcoal on Miyako Island would be 1200-1800 t CO2/year.Energy consumption in automobiles is an important issue to be addressed in the present day. Several concerns in the dimensions of economics, environment and health are proposed in the literature. If energy conservation is a goal of a federal budget policy maker, full coverage on all dimensions is needed. In this specific brief article, the author will discuss the issue of energy consumption in automobiles covering the dimensions of economics, environment and health. Also, important reports will be summarized and quoted.Environmental life cycle assessment methods have become integral tools for developing and implementing renewable and low carbon fuel policies in several jurisdictions. We discuss the current state of knowledge on environmental implications, focused on greenhouse gas emissions, of lignocellulosic bioalcohol fuels as understood through a life cycle framework and identify areas for continued research to develop robust evaluation methods to support informed decision making and investment in emerging biofuel technologies. Understanding direct and market-induced effects and uncertainties across the life cycle of biofuels and, more broadly, their use in vehicles is critical for establishing sustainable biofuel markets.One of the energy policy goals is production and use of sustainable biodiesel. There is no general consensus on the use of an important analytical tool (life cycle assessment) as to inclusion of the effects of land use (change). Biodiesel fuel properties were evaluated in comparison to petrodiesel, in particular as to operability in terms of cold-temperature performance, storage stability and engine exhaust emissions. Not all biodiesel fuels are created equal. Biodiesel economics have been evaluated in particular in relation to feedstock and manufacturing costs and competitiveness. Biodiesel use and market prospects were detailed critically for the EU, the US and emerging economies (BRIC, South-East Asia, Argentina).Recently, there has been an explosion of life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies of biofuels to support biofuel policy making. It is difficult to draw general conclusions from the set of studies due to the variation in outcomes. Causes of this variation include real-world differences, data uncertainties and methodological choices. In this review we explore some of the more complicated sources of differences in findings related to LCA methodology by reviewing 67 LCA studies published between 2005 and 2010. A very important and particularly difficult problem to solve is coproduct allocation. Different allocation methods, all approved under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard for LCA studies, can cause improvement percentages compared with fossil fuels to vary from negative to above 100%. The treatment of biogenic carbon is another important issue. Most studies include neither extractions nor emissions of biogenic CO2, but a number of these LCAs do include both, leading to very different conclusions on greenhouse gas performance of biofuel chains.The use of renewable energy is a possible solution to reduce the contribution to climate change of human activities. Nevertheless, there is much controversy about the non-climate related environmental impacts of renewable energy as compared to fossil energy. The aim of this study is to assess a new technology of biomethane production by mono-fermentation of cultivated crops. Based on the results of an attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the contribution to climate change of biomethane production and injection into the grid is 30-40% (500a time horizon) or 10-20% (100a) lower than the contribution of natural gas importation. The reduction depends mainly on the biogas yield, the amount of readily available nitrogen in the digestate and the type of agricultural practices. Nevertheless, the natural gas definitively generates far lower ecosystem quality and human health damages than the biomethane production. Farming activities have the most important contribution to the damages mainly because of land occupation and the use of fertilizer. The main improvement opportunities highlighted are: the increase of biogas yield, the choice of good agricultural practices and the cultivation of winter or summer crops exclusively. Future research should include the emission and sequestration Of CO2 from soil. The ripple effects related to the total increase of farming area and the consequences of farming activities on the food production chain should be addressed as well. To this aim, the switch to consequential LCA is a critical challenge, from both the methodological and application point of view, to support decision-making. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass-based energy and fuels are receiving attention because they are considered carbon neutral; i.e. the amount Of CO2 released during combustion of this biomass is nearly the same as that taken up by the plants during their growth. Bio-oil is a dark viscous liquid consisting of hydrocarbons. These are produced by fast pyrolysis of biomass. "As-is" biomass material has a low energy density (MJ m(-3)), hence, the cost of transporting this energy is high. Bio-oil has a high energy density as compared to "as-is" biomass material, consequently it helps in reducing the cost of energy transport. This study compares the life cycle assessment of transportation of bio-oil by pipeline with that by truck. The scope of the work includes the transportation of bio-oil by truck or pipeline from a centralized plant (supplied with forest biomass) to an end-user. Two cases are studied for pipeline transport of bio-oil: the first case considers a coal-based electricity Supply for pumping the bio-oil through a pipeline; the second case considers an electricity supply from a renewable resource. The two cases of pipeline transport are compared to two cases of truck transport (truck trailer and Super B-train truck). The life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the pipeline transport of bio-oil for the two cases of electricity supply are 345 and 17 g Of CO2 m(-3) km(-1), respectively. Similar values for transport by trailer (capacity - 30 m(3)) and super B-train truck (Capacity - 60 m(3)) are 89 and 60 g of CO2 m(-3) km(-1), respectively. Energy input for bio-oil transport is 3.95 MJ m(-3) km(-1) by pipeline, 2.59 MJ m(-3) km(-1) by truck and 1.66 MJ m(-3) km(-1) by super B-train truck. The results show that GHG emissions in pipeline transport are largely dependent on the source of electricity (higher for coal-based electricity). Substituting 250 m(3) day(-1) of pipeline-transported bio-oil for coal-based electricity can mitigate about 5.1 million tonnes Of CO2 per year. Overall, this study gives a comprehensive life cycle assessment of bio-oil transport comparing pipeline and truck transport. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lignocellulosic ethanol holds promise for addressing climate change and energy security issues associated with personal transportation through lowering the fuel mixes' carbon intensity and petroleum demand. We compare the technological features and life cycle environmental impacts of near- and mid-term ethanol bioconversion technologies in the United States. Key uncertainties in the major processes: pre-treatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation are evaluated. The potential to reduce fossil energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions varies among bioconversion processes, although all options studied are considerably more attractive than gasoline. Anticipated future performance is found to be considerably more attractive than that published in the literature as being achieved to date. Electricity co-product credits are important in characterizing the GHG impacts of different ethanol production pathways; however, in the absence of near-term liquid transportation fuel alternatives to gasoline, optimizing ethanol facilities to produce ethanol (as opposed to co-products) is important for reducing the carbon intensity of the road transportation sector and for energy security. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, the life-cycle energy and environmental assessment was conducted for bioethanol production from cassava in Thailand. The scope covered all stages in the life cycle of bioethanol production including cultivating, chip processing, transportation and bioethanol conversion. The input-output data were collected at plantation sites and ethanol plants which included materials usage, energy consumption, and all emissions. From the energy analysis, the results show that cassava-based bioethanol has a negative net energy value with an energy ratio was less than 1, indicating a net energy loss. For the environmental performance, the results show that throughout the life cycle of bioethanol, the conversion stage contributes most to the environmental impacts which is due to the use of coal for power and steam production in the bioethanol plants. It is suggested that a partial substitution of coal with biogas produced from existing wastewater treatment could lead to a significant reduction in the environmental impact. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The emergence of food security as a key policy issue in developed nations has been concomitant with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the implementation of Environmental Management Systems in primary industries. Biotechnological interventions such as biorefinery platforms that produce chemicals and fuels provide opportunities to reconcile the security and environmental sustainability criteria increasingly sought after by governments. Indeed, sustainable and more carbon neutral options have been positively benchmarked against scenarios based solely on petrochemical feedstocks. Notably, biotechnology companies are beginning to use Environmental Management Systems employed by other industries to advocate the benefits of green technologies that employ GM, industrial enzymes and bio-materials. Management systems such as Life Cycle Analysis are providing a powerful means to measure benefits and augment change in the biotechnology sector. These methods are discussed here in the context of the emergent 21st Century debates on security. The evidence presented leads to a conclusion where biotechnologies are likely to offer increasingly high impact options for sustainability and security criteria required for food and fuel supply.The objective of this paper is to illustrate how data obtained from monitoring can be integrated into the assessment, prediction and management of deteriorating structures. The role that monitoring plays in enhancing the outcomes of these processes is demonstrated. Bayesian updating is used to integrate the data obtained from monitoring with prior design-code predicted load effects to establish a more accurate life-cycle assessment and prediction. Accordingly, the management of deteriorating structures is conducted more accurately. An example will be conducted over an existing bridge.Recently, Ministry of Land Transport and Maritime Affairs (MLTM) of Korea has researched on the existing bridge management system (BMS) and its improvement. The current BMS for national road managed by MUM was developed in late 1990's. However, its computational operating system was only changed but its performance and function have limited in simple function such as inventory and inspection data storage. For developing new BMS with the analysis of research trend, the research has been developing classified into the performance evaluation, the maintenance cost analysis and the decision making technique for optimal maintenance strategy and budget plan. The contents of research for establishing the advanced BMS combining asset management concept are summarized as follows; first, it may need life-cycle performance evaluation and estimation of the effect of maintenance interventions, and asset evaluation and its calculation technique related to maintenance cost. Second, decision making technology based on these various performances and cost related information is necessary for the life-cycle management of bridge. Finally, a proper computational system and practical education for applying a new method and system should be developed.The primary objective of asset/bridge management is ensuring safety of users while maintaining or reducing costs of ownership. Decision making tools are often used by bridge owners to assist in reaching these objectives and one such tool is life cycle analysis. In particular, the Bridge Life Cycle Cost Analysis (BLCCA) technique is extensively advocated in the infrastructure arena. But decision making capabilities can be enhanced by an accurate estimation of the benefits and life span of the structure. Thus, Bridge Life Cycle Analysis (BLCA) is a metric that requires consideration on all three components: cost, benefits, and service life. One major issue in this type of analysis is lack of reliable data that is needed for accurate results. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is one of the tools that have the potential to assist in BLCA. The paper will discuss this by exploring two modes where SHM can provide advantage to the BLCA process. Following these modes can help decision makers in achieving their safety and cost optimizations goals.The time-variant structural robustness and redundancy of concrete bridges under environmental damage is investigated in deterministic and probabilistic terms. The effects of the damage process are evaluated by using a proper methodology for life-cycle assessment of concrete structures exposed to diffusive attacks from aggressive agents. Time-variant measures of structural robustness and redundancy are developed with respect to the loads associated to the first failure and to the structural collapse. The proposed approach is illustrated through the application to the assessment of time-variant structural robustness and structural redundancy of a concrete arch bridge.one of the most critical issues related to bridge management and preventive maintenance is deck waterproofing. Infiltration of meteoric and rain-wash water into the bridge asphalt pavement through unsealed cracks could produce a series of chain events that leads towards an accelerated decay of the bridge structural adequacy. Actions like crack sealing and general waterproofing are main activities; they can in fact slow down the deterioration and reduce the life-cycle costs. An effective protection system against water is one of the key factors for a functional and efficient bridge management plan. However, benefits associated with such maintenance activities are seldom correctly accounted and, in many instances, they are not even considered at all. Consequently many road bridge authorities do not include pavement preventive maintenance activities in their infrastructures management programs Recent research has resulted in the development of new technologies in the field of crack sealing and pavement waterproofing. In this context, a new composite material for waterproofing interlayer membranes, to be "cold applied" (with great benefit for environment and workers) was studied and also tested in full scale experiments by Politecnico of Milano researchers. This paper presents the main characteristics and the performances of this new technology, applied to bridge pavements, followed by a life-cycle analysis to quantitatively show the savings of the road bridge authority and the benefits of the users (in terms of improved condition of the bridge pavement surface). The results obtained are of general validity as they can be extended to all similar technologies.For purposes of optimizing resources for bridge preservation over its life cycle, designers of reinforced concrete bridge decks seek cost-effective designs that yield minimal rehabilitation frequency and intensity over the bridge life. Recognizing that the deck is the most vulnerable element of bridge structures, this paper discusses the cost-effectiveness of stainless steel as a deck reinforcement material, on the basis of agency cost, user cost, and material service life. The paper analyzes the influence of interest rate, user cost weight, traffic volume on the relative attractiveness of stainless steel compared to traditional steel, using data from a mid-western state in the United States. The results suggest that using stainless steel as reinforcement material for the bridge deck, under a majority of the analysis scenarios, yields significantly higher initial costs but drastically reduced costs over the bridge life cycle, and thus is generally more cost-effective in the long term.Objective decision making processes are emerging as indispensable tools for bridge managers. Objective relationships between traditional bridge management efforts and management decisions are needed to ensure cost effectiveness and adequate performance. Such tools include conventional decision-making theory, qualitative and quantitative risk management, and life cycle analysis. The advent of high cost demands due to recent natural and man-made disasters have led to an interest in a modern decision-making concept known as "Infrastructure Resiliency". This paper explores the application of resiliency concepts to bridge structures. This concept has great potential to assist infrastructure owners with multiple asset types to reduce overall risk through appropriate decisions after specific hazards faced by their network.Load testing is gaining popularity among bridge owners to take advantage of the actual load capacity that can not be estimated using conservative analyses. This paper provides an easy, generalized model for evaluating the value of load testing using costs and benefits of load tests. Both quantitative and qualitative benefits are included. Also explored are the effects of load tests on the life cycle analysis of bridges and quantification of extended life of bridges due to load testing.Purpose - The Hot Spot Analysis developed by the Wuppertal Institute is a screening tool focussing on the demand of reliable sustainability-oriented decision-making processes in complex value chains identifying high priority areas ("hot spots") for effective measures in companies. This paper aims to focus on this tool. Design/methodology/approach - The Hot Spot Analysis is a qualitative method following a cradle-to-cradle approach. With the examples of coffee and cream cheese hot spots of sustainability indicators throughout the entire life cycle are identified and evaluated with data from literature reviews and expert consultations or stakeholder statements. This paper focuses on the indicator resource efficiency as an example of how the methodology works. Findings - The identified hot spots for coffee are the raw material procurement phase in terms of abiotic material, water and energy consumption, the production phase concerning biotic material and the energy consumption in the use phase. For cream cheese relevant hot spots appear in the raw material procurement phase in terms of biotic materials and water as well as biotic materials and energy consumption during the production phase. Research limitations/implications - Life cycle analyses connected to indicators like resource efficiency need to be applied as consequent steps of a Hot Spot Analysis if a deeper level of analysis is eventually aimed at which is more cost and time intensive in the short term. The Hot Spot Analysis can be combined with other sustainability management instruments. Practical implications - Research and management can be directed to hot spots of sustainability potential quickly which pays off in the long term. Originality/value - The paper shows that companies can address sustainability potentials relatively cost moderately.Does passive housing really have better environmental performance than conventional housing? Three passive houses and four conventional houses were compared using a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The comparison also provided an actor analysis for the building supply chain and building inhabitants. Results are presented for two scenarios: 'conventional choices' and 'green choices' by the actors. The comparison confirms that passive houses have lower energy use than conventional houses, but when the environmental impact of energy production is taken into consideration, the outcome is less clear. Conventional houses can be equally good environmentally in terms of global warming, acidification, or radioactive waste as typical passive houses with electrical heating depending on the actors' choices. Actor analysis shows that inhabitants' and material producers' electricity choice are very important, while other choices (e.g. green transport) are less important. The findings highlight the importance of environmentally responsible decisions throughout the whole life cycle and the need for appropriate behaviours and actions, along with implications for improved communication.The environmental impact of novel processing techniques has been investigated using carrot juice as a case study. Pulsed electric field (PEF) treatment and high pressure (HP) processing have been compared to mild thermal pasteurizing of carrot juice using life cycle assessment (LCA) to ascertain environmental hotspots along the chain from cultivation to packaging and delivery of the product. From this analysis, it can be seen that the contribution of the pasteurization step is quite small in relation to the overall impact. Packaging, however, has a significant impact and should be considered when making changes to the process or product.China is the largest cement producer worldwide. The cement industry is very energy and raw material intensive and a large emitter of CO2. At the same time, China's waste management system still has many deficiencies, and the waste is an enormous source of pollution. Waste used as alternative fuel and raw material (AFR) in cement kilns can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save primary resources, and provide a waste treatment service. A large variety of wastes can be co-processed if certain rules are followed and process adaptations are made in order to avoid negative impacts on operation and emissions. In this study, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to identify the effects of waste co-processing in cement production on greenhouse gas emissions. With substitution rates of 40% for fuels (20% plastics, 10% tires, 10% sugarcane leaves) and 5% for raw materials (blast furnace slag), a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 89 kg CO2-equivalents can be achieved per ton cement. From a waste management perspective, AFR co-processing may achieve even larger emission reductions, since the co-processed wastes need not be landfilled or incinerated.The paper refers to an experimental application of methodologies and tools of eco-design, life-cycle service design and life-cycle assessment, for the integrated design of a footbridge. The main objective of the work was to demonstrate the real possibility of developing a design solution that can simultaneously meet needs of static security (structural design), useful life optimization (life-cycle services design), environmental impacts evaluation (life-cycle assessment) and their minimization through the correct configuration of building elements. Secondary objective of the study was to evaluate potential changes in the environmental behaviour of the footbridge during its whole life cycle, in the case should change the useful life and the materials used. The study was developed with regard to the more meaningful life cycle stages. The production, the construction and assembly, the maintenance and disposal.Sustainable design can be pursued only through the use of ecological materials which are environmentally compatible. For this reason, it is necessary to carry out a control during the whole "life cycle" of building materials and components to determine their ecological sustainability. The aim of the present research is to show the environmental impact assessment of different solutions of vertical building envelope, realised using eco-efficient materials, in particular following "low-tech" solutions deriving/derived from renewable resources, by means of the recovery of local material culture. Life Cycle Assessment (UNI EN ISO 14040), also called LCA, is the methodology adopted in this research; it is a helpful system used also in building construction to evaluate and quantify environmental impact of building manufactures, by studying them at different levels (from materials, products and building system, till the entire edifice). It is paid attention to every single material and to the building process, by evaluating their environmental impact during the different life cycle stages: from raw materials supply to production, building and managing stages, from maintenance to final disposal of materials at their end-of-life stage.The intention of this paper is to support the adoption of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) environmental tool to assess sustainable technologies in office buildings. Existing research on LCA has been applied to assess the impact of building materials, building components and building services from cradle-to-grave; nevertheless there is less focus on the use of sustainable technology in buildings and its contribution to reduce energy demands and potential costs in the long run and this is somewhat surprising as energy is mainly consumed during the use stage of buildings for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting and for other appliances. According to current research, the environmental design of office buildings holds a particular interest, as a matter of fact, at the moment, a large proportion of all companies with a certified environmental management system are already operating. Some clear indications of the importance attached to office buildings are already appearing. Several studies in office buildings have also shown that energy consumption for space and water heating is higher than that of lighting and for the use of other electrical (60%). 00Consequently, this paper supports the adoption of LCA to assess the impact of sustainable and conventional technologies on office buildings in order to make better choice between conventional and sustainable products. Finally, the paper will emphasize that with the use of Life Cycle Assessment we can ensure that we take the right decision from the early stages of the building product processes in order technologies to become environmental friendly, durable and to last for long time.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of today's key issues if we look at the environmental performance of building materials, construction components or especially if we discuss about the sustainability of entire buildings. LCA assists in answering questions concerning these topics by using specific software, such as the GaBi 4 software, and by setting up tailored models. The difficulties in designing such tailored models for building LCA are high expenditures of time for modeling, the need for flexibility in assessing conditions and the representation of various building circumstances. In the context of a sustainable certification according to the German Certification for Sustainable Construction (DGNB), a generic built and hierarchical drawn up model for an office building is assembled within the GaBi 4 software [1]. Its structural design complies with the ISO 14040/44 standard [2], [3] and with the requirements for a sustainable evaluation according to the German Certification for Sustainable Buildings and Construction [5]. As fully parameterized model it was applied in practical certification process for assessing the environmental impacts of the accredited office building and furthermore its applicability was validated. Therefore, the structural assembly of the described model and the flexibility of application for other building types will be demonstrated and discussed, to work out, how a smart model for building LCA may look like.In the construction industry there is an increasing demand for harmonisation of environmental assessment methods and environmental performance declarations of construction products between the different EU members states. The most common method of assessing environmental performance of construction products is Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) based on a multi-impact categories Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. LCA compiles and evaluates the inputs, outputs and potential environmental impact (LCI data) of a product or service thorough its life cycle according to the standards series ISO and EN. However, no commonly accepted guidance exists that complements the general framework given in the ISO 14040 series for ensuring consistent and reproducible life cycle data and robust assessments. The UEAtc network therefore recreated a WG in 2009 to conduct an LCA Exercise (LCA.EXE) which compares and identifies differences of various LCA methodologies used by UEAtc members in practice (real assessment) with the ultimate objective of developing a harmonized and simplified approach which could be accepted by all and that is consistent with the other European initiatives, in particular with the CEN 350 WG and The International Reference Life Cycle Data System. It is believed that a common approach based on prEN 15804 [1] is beneficial to manufacturers as the data resulting from the assessment will be mutually recognised and will riot create any trading barrier. This article presents the findings from LCA.EXE workshops including the review of the results of LCA procedure, the review of the current methodologies and their differences (allocation, cut offs, generic data quality) used by the different UEAtc members [2]. WG developed also Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data collection questionnaire which can be used for UEAtc members without restriction by the local legislation and the audit checklist template. This report also includes details of the EPD example that was created during the project.The life cycle of a building is assumed to be 80 years. A number of factors influence the selection of building materials and components including cost, design, performance, and availability. Sustainable design seeks to minimize environmental health impacts caused by building materials. A healthy workplace or living space supports the occupants' health and well-being. As an important aspect of the life cycle assessment you have to consider what is needed to improve the indoor air quality (IAQ). A mathematical model allows to predict the future indoor air quality during the design phase. Based on this model, a tool was developed that architects and other consultants can make use of to optimize the construction and surfaces during the design phase. This calculation tool will be part of MINERGIE-ECOplus, a Swiss sustainability evaluation method. MINERGIE is a building label for ecological design, high energy efficiency, and comfort. The existing energy simulation software (LESOSAI) will be further improved by tools for IAQ and ecobalance calculation. The indoor air quality criteria can be evaluated quantitatively. Therefore the emission data of building materials for VOC, formaldehyd, and other substances are collected in a catalogue of materials. Further information is necessary, like, for example, room capacity, air change rate, quantity and consistence of surface materials. In order to evaluate data and make predictions regarding future indoor air quality, reference values have to be taken into account. By this process, a classification system ranging from 'very good' to 'bad' quality becomes possible.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) provides a chance to assess the integrated performance of buildings over the whole life cycle. Clients and architects can use LCA as a decision support tool for building projects with ambitious ecological targets, for policy making and for public information. LCA provides serious, scientific and comparable data about buildings, building materials and building infrastructure. But as a matter of fact LCA is not very wide spread. Even life cycle thinking - as a more general way of being aware of impacts through out the whole building life cycle - is not a common practice of many actors in the construction sector. The background of this presentation is to ask for possibilities and chances that could take us some steps further towards integrating LCA-calculations into stakeholder decisions. We will describe the typical practice in European countries and its actors. Various methods of assessing environmental performance of buildings used in different countries will be presented. From this, evidence will derive what is meaningful and useful for practice in the construction sector as well as what are the chances and barriers for a broader uptake. The presentation is part of the EU-FP 7 project "LoRe - Low Resource consumption buildings and construction by use of LCA in design and decision making" and the EIE project "ENSLIC_Build - Energy Saving in Buildings through Promotion of Life Cycle Assessment". These projects aim to contribute to an increased use of Life cycle analysis (LCA) as a method to gather, analyse, valuate and document comprehensive information on buildings and constructions with a specific focus on building's resource consumption (water, primary raw materials, energy, land) and waste generation.In Germany, the 'Certification for Sustainable Construction' currently receives tremendous attention throughout the building industry and from the general public. Launched with the claim to demand for meeting performance indicator benchmarks, it uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA, as defined in ISO 14040/14044) to quantify the environmental perfcrmance of a building's life cycle. Along with Life Cycle Costing, LCA is one of the two single most relevant assessment methods within the system, which currently has around 50 criteria in the version for new construction of office buildings. Due to its nature of being applicable to any product, process or service, LCA is standardized to allow for extensive adaptations to the scope of the assessment. The German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) specified the application of LCA for the certification procedure in detail. This includes the life cycle stages and system boundaries to be considered, the environmental impact categories to be assessed (such as Global Warming Potential) or the background data to be utilized. Moreover, LCA indicator benchmarks are set by the DGNB for buildings to be met over the entire life cycle. These benchmarks use a fixed value for the building's constructional stages including building materials, maintenance and end-of-life, and a variable value for the energy demand, based on the German implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD).Due to the acknowledged urgency for sustainable development, the building sector has been introduced with a number of new technologies which aim at ensuring the sustainability of building projects worldwide. Among the key issues related to the optimization of building sustainability is the improvement of the initial stages of a project, namely early decision making and design. Environmental assessment methods such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are useful tools and provide the opportunity to assess the environmental impact of buildings, taking into account all necessary materials and processes of their complete life cycle. A detailed comparison of environmental data used in these studies and found in a range of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases is presented in the current paper, focusing on steel buildings and structural steel members. The data is managed with the SimaPro software and compared on the basis of environmental impact caused for the manufacturing of specific structural steel members. The comparative analysis results lead to conclusions regarding the uncertainty embedded in the use of LCI databases and also the range of application of the databases that were examined.Hydrogen is considered an ideal energy carrier, but the storage and efficient delivery of hydrogen to vehicles still remain a challenging problem currently This study analyzes the possibilities of using methanol as a hydrogen carrier in China, based on the distributed methanol reforming technology at forecourt refueling stations. A detailed well-to-tank life cycle analysis was applied to the hydrogen production from coal-derived methanol at refueling stations (onsite methanol pathway) from energy, environmental and economic performance aspects, followed by comparisons between the onsite pathway and conventional ones on the delivery cost of hydrogen, energy efficiency, and CO(2) emissions. The study shows that a coal-derived methanol pathway with distributed reforming utilities is well suited for China's specific energy situation, therefore it could play a key role in the transition process to a hydrogen economy in China. (C) 2009 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method used to evaluate the potential impacts on the environment of a product, process, or activity throughout its life cycle. Today's LCA users are a mixture of individuals with skills in different disciplines who want to evaluate their products, processes, or activities in a life cycle context. This study attempts to present some of the LCA studies on agro-chemical processes, recent advances in LCA and their application on food products and non-food products. Due to the recent development of LCA methodologies and dissemination programs by international and local bodies, use of LCA is rapidly increasing in agricultural and industrial products. The literatures suggest that LCA coupled with other environmental approaches provides much more reliable and comprehensive information to environmentally conscious policy makers, producers, and consumers in selecting sustainable products and production processes. For this purpose, a field study of LCA of biodiesel from Jatropha curcas has been taken as an example in the study. In the past, LCA has been applied primarily to products but recent literature suggests that it has also the potential as an analysis and design tool for processes and services. In general, all primary industries use energy and water resources and emit pollutants gases. LCA is a method to report on and analyze these resource issues across the life cycle of agro-chemical processes. This review has the importance as a first part of a research project to develop a life cycle assessment methodology for agro-chemical industries. It presents the findings of a literature review that focuses on LCA of agriculture and chemical engineering literature.The use of solvents produces the largest amount of auxiliary waste in polymer science. Due to the fact that sustainable chemistry is becoming more and more important in polymer research, alternative reaction media have been investigated in order to reduce or replace the use of organic solvents. The most commonly used green solvents in polymer chemistry are water, supercritical carbon dioxide and ionic liquids. The progress of utilizing these green solvents in polymerization processes is reviewed and discussed in this critical review on the basis of results mainly published during the last five years (216 references).Current technological innovations are focused on environmental aspects of human activities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an analytical method of calculation and determination of various environmental impacts of products, services and technologies in their whole life cycle, i.e., starting from resource depletion, material production, their use and final disposal. All the mentioned phases of product life cycle are specific environmental burdens, which should be evaluated and transparently summed up. For this purpose, an LCA method was developed. Contrary to other developed countries, no progress in application of LCA in chemical industry can be observed in the Czech Republic as yet.The article presents the methodology which can help the decision makers in evaluation of different municipal solid waste disposal systems. The results of the well known computer Integrated Waste Management model (IWM-1) are usually too fragmented to allow the final decision. The authors present the scientific background of the IWM-1 results integration. The results of the IWM-1 model analysis have been integrated into some specific categories that originate from the field of the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The authors propose 11 environmental categories plus the general ones calculated by the IWM-1 model. The presented categories describe the environmental impact of the analyzed system and are far easier to identify and understand by the public and by the decision makers. The developed methodology has been applied for the City of Krakow. The authors analyze two Krakow municipal solid waste disposal systems. The first system has been in operation for the last few years. The waste is collected and disposed at the landfill site while recycling and composting are implemented only in a limited scale. The second system presents the potential ultimate solid waste option for Krakow, where the waste is sorted extensively, then a significant part of organic fraction is composted, and the rest of the waste goes to the incinerator. The presented analysis compares these two systems. The authors use the results from the IWM-1 models for both systems as the input data to calculate the proposed impact categories. The final outcome is presented as graphs with the detail description of each stage of generation.This paper introduces sustainable design applications for small businesses through the Life Cycle Assessment and supply chain publishing platform Sourcemap.org. This web-based tool was developed through a year-long participatory design process with five small businesses in Scotland and in New England. Sourcemap was used as a diagnostic tool for carbon accounting, design and supply chain management. It offers a number of ways to market sustainable practices through embedded and printed visualizations. Our experiences confirm the potential of web sustainability tools and social media to expand the discourse and to negotiate the diverse goals inherent in social and environmental sustainability.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a strong tool for quantifying the environmental impact associated with a product life cycle. To implement LCA into process design of biomass-derived resin, the lack of inventory data should be addressed by computer-aided process engineering (CAPE) tools. This study proposes the procedure of life cycle system design of biomass-derived resin. In this procedure, missing inventory data can be estimated by process simulation with design information extracted from literatures and design heuristics. at this time, the sensitivity of design settings to LCA results is analyzed and considered in process analysis. The categories of environmental impacts are specified on the scenarios definition originating from the decision by other stakeholders in the life cycle. This study demonstrates the proposed procedure by a case study of biomass-derived polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). At the case of synthesizing PP through synthesis gas from biomass, resin production phase has the largest contribution to the total GHG emission. In the case study, it is demonstrated that the detailed design of unit operation can lead to the increase of environmental impact by substituting biomass for fossil resources as raw material.This study aims to compare soy methyl esters (biodiesel) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as automotive fuels in Portugal using LCA. The potential environmental impacts (PEI) associated with their life cycles are compared for twelve impact categories. As a general conclusion biodiesel has a lower total PEI than LPG. Nonetheless biodiesel shows higher values of some individual impact categories such as acidification photo-oxidant formation, terrestrial eutrophication, and land use. This study results can be used to support decision making and recommendations about the environmentally preferable fuel to be used in Portugal, which should be complemented with economic and societal considerations.The integration of environmental concerns into the product design process has highlighted a new problem that arises when confronted with complex systems. Indeed environmental assessment methodologies like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) become in this case particularly heavy to implement. Considering aluminium electrolysis substations as a complex industrial system, we propose a new eco-design methodology based on a Lean Six Sigma approach. Including the environmental parameter as the fourth dimension of the Quality, Costs, Time triangle this methodology has the advantage to cover and systematize the entire eco-design process. It answers to most of the limits raised in our study and allows managing a part of the complexity that appears in particular during the goal and scope definition and the inventory phases of LCA. An application of aluminium electrolysis substations is mentioned.The utilization of agricultural biomass for anaerobic digestion is increasingly appreciated in Germany since the first version of the Renewable Energies Act (Gesetz zum Vorrang erneuerbarer Energien, EEG) in the year 2000. Main products of this conversion process are biogas and digestate, whereby the biogas is mainly used for the generation of heat and electricity in combined heat and power plants (CHP). This study has investigated the environmental impact potential of this process with the method of Life Cycle Assessment. The focus was put on liquid manure and various energy crops as feedstock on the one hand and different CHP engine sizes on the other hand. The results show that greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced with anaerobic digestion of liquid manure as well as energy crops, particularly when digestate storage tanks are gas-proof. The CHP engine size influences the electrical efficiency and thereby has a direct influence on the result but to a minimal extent when compared with the energy crops used or the share of liquid manure which commonly decreases with an increasing size of the biogas plant. When energy crops are fermented together with liquid manure, the biggest credit for the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions was given for the generation of electricity.Life cycle assessment is a technique for assessing the environmental performance of a product from the extraction of row materials to its final disposal, including the phase of manufacturing and use. LCA is an environmental management standard that recognized by contemporary internationally. The LCA technical framework, development and application of LCA software and application in chemical process systems engineering were reviewed. Finally, the prospect of investigation of LCA application in chemical was summarized.This paper attempts to extend the corporate social responsibility in environmental dimensions. The objective of the paper is to suggest an improvement of the most commonly used corporate environmental management tool the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The current study includes two stages. First, more phases are added to the life cycle of a product. Second, some criteria that measure the investment in environmental protection are introduced. Moreover, upstream and downstream firms are considered in the assessment of environmental performance to extend the LAC further.A recent, major UK research project investigated technical and social aspects of reducing the CO2 emissions of UK domestic housing by 50% by the year 2030. As 80% of the UK housing stock that will be present in 2030 has already been built, this study aimed to research the whole life costs of three sets of energy demand reduction technologies for existing housing, over a 25-year period, suitable to deliver significant CO2 emissions reduction up to 50%. Demand side technological interventions in the form of fabric upgrades and ventilation systems are identified. Whole life cycle analysis of interventions carried out on two housing variants prominent in the domestic stock under different energy price scenarios is carried out using discounted cash flow and compared with the do-nothing option. The results show that, despite reducing annual energy bills, there is no clear financial case even over a 25-year horizon for householders to invest in the proposed interventions that contribute to CO2 emission reduction targets. When discussed with respect to household income and consumption preferences, the results reveal the need for new policy approaches to overcome the financial and non-financial hurdles for a mass uptake of energy efficient technologies.Purpose - Environmental management has not kept pace with the challenges of globalization. Case studies show that life-cycle management (LCM) can be an important alternative approach in managing sustainability, performance of products and materials along the value-chain. Design/methodology/approach - The paper analyzes case study models for LCM used in different circumstances. It compares the new forms of governance along the life-chain, and the coordination of environmental management tools already in widespread use. Strengths and weaknesses are discussed with respect to other CSR methods in current use. The role of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in prioritizing sustainability issues is highlighted. Findings - Business focuses on supply-chain management to achieve its sustainability goals. Governments give emphasis to communication rather than legislation. Community and NGO pressure on the commodity resource sector has led to important multi-stakeholder life-cycle-management. These approaches are most effective in a cooperative framework. Practical implications - The choice of the LCM model depends on the nature of the value-chain and the sector involved. Companies have made progress in managing longer portions of their value-chains. However, there is now a need to refine the management instruments used to implement LCM, as many of them were not intended to function at broad levels, for example, globally. Originality/value - Much attention so far has been given to LCA techniques. The paper looks at management models that can transform LCA into effective action programmes for a higher level of sustainability.The paper illustrates the main objectives in structural damage and vulnerability assessment as a part of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and LCC (Life Cycle Costs) analyses. A proper analysis of vulnerability factors due to degrade conditions and to construction features of buildings helps to guide the design choices for refurbishment interventions, introducing assessments on the appropriateness of the retrofit action when the damage or vulnerability level is too high. From this point of view, the introduction of new tools and methodologies is needed, in order to support the shared evaluation models with specific assessments related to the various building components. The paper shows the approach used in MEDEA (Manual for Earthquake Damage Evaluation and safety Assessment) developed by PLINIVS Study Centre, University of Naples "Federico II", in collaboration with Italian Civil Protection Department.This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of natural wastewater treatment technologies selected from the point of view of sustainability and relates them to feasible reuse and disposal practices available for food processing wastewater. Selected technologies include land application, constructed wetlands, and various pond systems that all make use of natural processes. The aim of the review is to help understand issues controlling wastewater reuse and how the different natural treatment systems and their combinations could help us to protect the environment, meet regulations, and conserve water, material, and energy resources.There has been a proliferation of building and product sustainability standards based on the success of the LEEDTM program from the Green Building Council for new commercial building construction. These standards have several common features. 1) They are point-based, in which points are earned for undertaking various activities or using certain materials. 2) The points are aggregated to achieve an overall score. 3) The score is compared to a threshold that determines the rating of a building or a product. The question is whether the standards actually promote products that are better from a life cycle perspective, or whether they are biased towards certain activities based on a perception that they are inherently better than others (recycling or bio-based materials for example). In this work we use optimization methods coupled with life cycle inventory information to explore this question. A carpet standard is used to compare the life cycle optimization against an optimization to earn the maximum number of points in the standard. Our work is extended to show how sustainability assessment standards can be redesigned to make them congruent with life cycle measures so that there is less opportunity for distortions in product design to maximize performance against the standard and have a less than optimal life cycle impact.The article presents an introduction to life cycle assessment (LCA) and application of the LCA to the analysis of spray-drying processes. Environmental load produced by two dryers, a laboratory spray dryer and an industrial-scale spray dryer, was compared using the Eco-indicator technique. Three different functionality systems were considered: the operation of an industrial dryer compared to the operation of a laboratory dryer, the operation of both dryers during one-year operational time, and the operation of both dryers according to the functional unit, defined as the amount of water evaporated per second. Results of the analysis show that for the first analyzed functionality of the system the main environmental load for the lab dryer is generated at the assembly stage, whereas for the industrial dryer it is generated at the usage stage. For the other functionality system, both dryers generate the greatest environmental load for the usage stage of the life cycle. At usage stages, the main effect of both dryers on the environment is the depletion of resources because of combustion of natural gas in the industrial dryer and use of electricity in the lab dryer to heat up a drying agent. Environmental superiority of the industrial dryer performance for massive production has been proved.In this paper, life-cycle assessment method is used to analysis the two dimensions of environmental impact and resource consumption of the dry waste reverse logistics model. Through the example, in addition, it demonstrates the process of using models and data needs. So for a variety of waste Battery Reverse Logistics Model, it provides quantitative support for the choice.In the last years there has been a multiplication of the International and European political interventions addressed to the diffusion of environmental sustainability in the building sector. In this area the life cycle design of technical elements assumed particular relevance. The materials and construction techniques used, like their durability in the use phase and their disposal strategies, tend to influence the environmental behaviour of a building during its whole life cycle. It is worth recalling the energy consumption connected with the extraction, production and assembly of the materials (initial embodied energy) and with maintenance, replacement, and dismantling activities (lifecycle-embodied energy). At the present time the rules focusing on the environmental certification of technical elements allow one to meet these objectives only in part. The study that will be presented, based on eco-design and Life Cycle Assessment criteria, uses this knowledge to explain research work focused on a comparative evaluation of some technical elements, and analyzes different end of life scenarios, in order to further understanding and improve their environmental impact.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact on human health and on the ecosystem caused by electricity produced by photovoltaic systems. The analysis was carried out with the life cycle assessment methodology (LCA) and the eco indicators method. It includes a study of raw materials and energy consumption and their polluting emissions in air, water and soil during the production phase in Europe and transport, use and disposal in the city of Rome of the crystalline silicon and all other materials and components used to produce 1 kWh of electricity. The kWh is the functional unit of the LCA analysis. The study considers the relationship between the energy consumption needed to build a PV system and the energy produced by the same system over 25 years. The study also considers the relationship between global and local environmental impact caused by the manufacturing and disposal of the PV system and the avoided environmental impact due to the energy produced by renewable sources. Finally, the analysis compares global and local emissions of CO2 caused by the PV system's manufacturing and disposal and the avoided emissions of CO2 using electricity from renewable sources. The study describes the possible solutions to reduce environmental impact through innovation.Qualitative methods of evaluation predominate in designing for green building. Although accessible for architects, this paper makes a case for data driven quantification to aid in fostering change in finding a balance between the triple bottom line of sustainability: environment, society and economics. The paper proposes three functionalities that should be considered by the design team, including architects and engineers, in order to develop a unique quantification method and select appropriate tools, including subject, scale and scope. Challenges are discussed and suggestions are proposed for the future of method and tool development for sustainable design processes.Textile specification in the interior design field has evolved to include attributes in addition to aesthetics, cost, building occupant health and safety, and specialized performance criteria. Initially, "green" specifications addressed environmental impact reduction through renewable, recycled, recyclable, nontoxic and low-emitting materials. Worldwide, third-party certifications continue to expand sustainable attributes to include social equity impacts on human health, safety, training and compensation throughout the product life cycle. Comprehension of these new assessment tools is essential for designers to effectively balance economic, environmental, and social responsibility. Although social responsibility has been discussed in the context of global sustainable development since the 1970s, third-party evaluation attempts to systematically connect the effects of product manufacture, use, and disposal to the human condition are relatively recent. Environmental and social impacts are interrelated, but not interchangeable. Social equity criteria are not addressed uniformly in textile certifications. This paper presents research on designers' perceptions of social responsibility, awareness of social issues in the textile life cycle, and prioritization of textile specification criteria. The study also considers to what extent designers take responsibility for sustainable design decisions, and if sustainable design is becoming a standard practice. The analysis focuses on responses generated by a questionnaire distributed through an online interior design publication based in Texas (USA) and distributed internationally.The recent proliferation of standards and labels for organic, fair-trade, locally produced, and healthy food products risks creating confusion among consumers. This study presents a standardized approach to developing a comprehensive sustainability label that incorporates ecological, economic, and social values. The methodology is based on an extension of modular life-cycle assessment to non-environmental sustainability criteria. Interviews with a wide range of experts (n = 65) and a consumer survey (n = 233) were conducted to analyze the feasibility and potential effectiveness of the approach. Responses indicated that a comprehensive sustainability label could considerably influence consumption patterns and facilitate cross-product comparisons.Humanity depends on healthy ecosystems: they support or improve our quality of life, and without them, the Earth would be uninhabitable. However, over the past 50 years, fast-growing demands for food, fuel, water and other natural resources have led to an unprecedented degradation of many ecosystem services so that their ability to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. Therefore, reversing ecosystem degradation is one of the great challenges of sustainable development. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires action by all actors in society, including governments, industry and individuals. One of the difficulties is that, even if there was a universal commitment to sustainable development, it is still unclear what goods, services and activities are sustainable and how they could be identified. In an attempt to contribute towards a better understanding of this complex problem, this paper illustrates how environmentally-sustainable products and activities can be identified using Life Cycle Assessment as a tool. Four industrial sectors and supply chains are discussed: energy, transport, industry and food & agriculture. The examples used within these sectors include, respectively, electricity generation; different transportation options and fuels; chemicals and related products; different food products and packaging. Their impacts on the ecosystem services are examined from 'cradle to grave' to help identify more sustainable alternatives. For illustration purposes, the discussion centres on carbon footprint (global warming potential), as one of the major global impacts; however, other impacts are also discussed as appropriate.The primary problem of eco-materials is how to judge whether a material is environmentally friendly or not, and the method of life cycle assessment is usually used to evaluate it. The depletion of mineral resources is a very important indicator of LCA, but its characterization is still filled with dispute. At present, the most commonly used method is CML, which is put forward by Leiden University, and its core idea is that using the ratio of exploitation amount and reserves of mineral resources as the degree of scarcity. Although being accepted by most of the scholars at work on LCA, CML doesn't grasp the essence of the depletion of mineral resources. Recently, a new assessment method, injecting new ideas to the conventional life cycle assessment, combines exergy with LCA is arising, which can be used to solve some specific problems of LCA especially the depletion of mineral resources. In this paper, two results of elements' exergy calculated by Rivero and Szargut respectively are compared, and the exergy of some natural minerals, which can be used in LCA and other minerals-related research, is calculated based on the data of Chinese mineral resources.As a result of increasing demands from users, photovoltaic (PV) applications are currently in use in some practical applications such as solar watches and for lighting purposes, and since 1981 it has been used in buildings. While PV arrays are used to produce electricity by the solar power plants which are uncovered, they are first used on the roof of the buildings and then produced as roof plates for modern buildings. Research studies and findings on the effect of sun light amounts, shadow, the value of the thermal transitivity and damp-proofing on the PV arrays show that they are used effectively on the vertical covering of the buildings and pilot applications have been increasing since 1992. Most of the researches in nowadays are focusing on finding out economic PV arrays production methods. In this study, the electricity consumption of a house in Turkey is calculated in order to determine cost of electricity consumption depending on using machines and instruments. Then, the life cycle analysis of PV system is investigated. At the end of the study, a comparative analysis of electrical cost by PV arrays and operating costs are presented with the other energy sources referenced in literature. Turkish market values are used in calculations of the PV system.Alternative transportation fuels are projected to grow substantially due to energy security concerns especially in the US and China. Moreover, some of these fuels can potentially reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector and hence, can help to mitigate climate change. We present a comprehensive review on Well-to-Wheel fossil fuel use and GHG emissions of biofuels and synthetic fuels in the US and China including emissions from land-use change. Our results are carefully benchmarked to the emissions caused by crude oil-derived fuels as well as synthetic fuels from fossil feedstocks in order to estimate the potential emission reduction or increase. The review strongly suggests that biofuels and synthetic fuels can contribute to GHG mitigation in the transport sector only if appropriate feedstocks are used and emissions from land-use change are minimised.This review discusses the relative merits of sweet sorghum and sugarcane crops for the expanding bioethanol sector in Nigeria. We have compared, from a number of perspectives, sugarcane molasses and sweet sorghum stalk juice as biomass sources for Nigerian fuel alcohol fermentations and the findings indicate that sweet sorghum is most suited in terms of the adaptability of this crop to harsh climatic and cultivation conditions. In terms of environmental impact, sweet sorghum cultivation is more water efficient, requires less energy input, fertilization and agrochemical application. The concept of life cycle analysis was used to compare the environmental, social and economic impacts of using sweet sorghum stalk juice and sugarcane molasses. Sweet sorghum represents a more favourable biomass source and there is great potential for sustainable development and utilization of sweet sorghum for bioenergy production in Nigeria. However, there is need for well defined, structured, coordinated, targeted and monitored scientific efforts and investments in order to realize maximum associated benefits.Optimizing the performance of a given process requires that many different aspects are taken into account Some of them, mostly of technical nature, relate to the local scale at which the process occurs Other technological, economic and environmental aspects are likely to affect the dynamics of the larger space and time scales in which the process is embedded These spatial and time scale effects require that a careful evaluation of the relation between the process and its 'surroundings' is performed, so that hidden consequences and possible sources of inefficiency and impact are clearly identified In this work the authors summarise a number of studies in which they applied a multi-method and multi-scale approach in order to generate a comprehensive picture of the investigated systems/processes The benefits of such an integrated investigation approach are discussedThe globalization of trade has numerous environmental implications. Trade creates a mechanism for consumers to shift environmental pollution associated with their consumption to other countries. Carbon leakage exerts great influences on international trade and economy. Applying an input-output approach, the paper estimates the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) embodied in China's foreign trade during 1997-2007. It is found that 10.03-26.54% of China's annual CO2 emissions are produced during the manufacture of export goods destined for foreign consumers, while the CO2 emissions embodied in China's imports accounted for only 4.40% (1997) and 9.05% (2007) of that. We also estimate that the rest of world avoided emitting 150.18 Mt CO2 in 1997, increasing to 593 Mt in 2007, as a result of importing goods from China, rather than manufacturing the same type and quantity of goods domestically. During 1997-2007, the net "additional" global CO2 emissions resulting from China's exports were 4894 Mt. Then, the paper divides the trade-embodied emissions into scale, composition and technical effect. It was found that scale and composition effect increased the CO2 emissions embodied in trade while the technical effect offset a small part of them. Finally, its mechanism and policy implications are presented. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Chinese government has enacted policies to promote alternative vehicle fuels (AVFs) and alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs), including city bus fleets. The life cycle (LC), energy savings (ES) and GHG reduction (GR) profiles of AVFs/AFVs are critical to those policy decisions. The well-to-wheels module of the Tsinghua-CA3EM model is employed to investigate actual performance data. Compared with conventional buses, AFVs offer differences in performance in terms of both ES and GR. Only half of the AFVs analyzed demonstrate dual benefits. However, all non-oil/gas pathways can substitute oil/gas with coal. Current policies seek to promote technology improvements and market creation initiatives within the guiding framework of national-level diversification and district-level uniformity. Combined with their actual LC behavior and in keeping with near- and long-term strategies, integrated policies should seek to (1) apply hybrid electric technology to diesel buses; (2) encourage NG/LPG buses in gas-abundant cities: (3) promote commercialize electric buses or plug-in capable vehicles through battery technology innovation; (4) support fuel cell buses and hydrogen technology R&D for future potential applications; and (5) conduct further research on boosting vehicle fuel efficiency, applying low-carbon transportation technologies, and addressing all resultant implications of coal-based transportation solutions to human health and natural resources. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In several policy documents bioenergy is recognized as an important renewable energy source in Italy. The increase in energy prices represents an opportunity for lignocellulosic energy crops such as acacia and poplar. However, for Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) and Short Rotation Forestry (SRF) to be adopted by farmers, these crops must be perceived to be at least as profitable as crops that normally compete with these plantations for land use. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the economic feasibility of acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia) as an energy crop in a low input production regime in Italy and, in particular, to consider its competitiveness with wheat. Our results show that neither SRC and SRF techniques using assumed production costs ((sic)3820 and (sic)5285 ha(-1) yr(-1)) nor biomass productions are able to obtain a positive profit (-(sic)184 and -(sic)172 ha(-1) yr(-1)) that can convince farmers to invest in biomass plantations on their land. The results demonstrate that wheat is a more economically secure option than SRC or SRF. The viability of local biomass production in Italy and Southern Europe depends on the active support of the governments: without them, biomass is not economically competitive for the farmers when compared to crops such as wheat. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Instead of using the traditional batch casting process, the CRIMSON [1] (Constrained Rapid Induction Melting Single Shot Up-Casting) method employs a high-powered furnace to melt just enough metal to fill a single mould in a closed crucible. The crucible is transferred to a station for computer-controlled counter gravity filling of the mould for optimum filling and solidification. The CRIMSON method therefore holds the liquid aluminium for a minimum of time drastically reducing the energy losses attributed to holding the metal at temperature. With the rapid melting times achieved, of the order of minutes, there isn't a long time at temperature for hydrogen to be absorbed or for thick layers of oxide to form. The metal is never allowed to fall under gravity and therefore any oxide formed is not entrained within the liquid. Thus higher quality castings are produced leading to a reduction in scrap rate and reduced overall energy losses.The work presented in this paper aims at developing a tool based on the LCA approach which could be used systematically for the environmental evaluation of Forestry(Pulp) and Paper-making industry, seeking a way to reduce energy consumption, product cost and find the opportunity and way to reduce the pollution load. So it should be controled in every link which is possible to generate radiation in the process from gain of raw material in forestation pulp making and paper making to processing of waste products to prevent and reduce pollution and realize sustainable development of the economic, environmental and human society.The present organisation of our food production leads to significant alterations of the global nitrogen cycle and this is an important cause of increasing emissions of reactive nitrogen into ecosystems and the atmosphere. In this chapter, important environmental themes related to the mismanagement of the nitrogen cycle - eutrophication, acidification and climate change - are discussed. The prospect of a doubled consumption of animal products in 2050 globally means a giant challenge for stakeholders in the food chain to improve production and to find new innovative ideas in order to substantially reduce nutrient losses from the food chain.Agriculture is by far the largest user of water. Increasing the use efficiency of water is essential to sustainably provide food for humans and water for maintaining natural ecosystems. The production ecological approach presented in this chapter allows us to identify constraining factors in crop production that depress use efficiency of water and to determine intervention measures. Much of the additional water needed for world food production in 2050 can be obtained by improving agronomic practices, though expansion of agricultural land to capture rainwater will be inevitable.This chapter provides an introduction to life-cycle thinking, Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Management. It gives a brief history of LCA development, describes LCA methodology, and discusses specific issues that arise in assessment of food systems. These include assessment of land occupation, soil quality, carbon storage, crop rotations, variability in agricultural practices and yields, consumer behaviour, sewage treatment, definition of the functional unit, and co-product allocation.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the quantitative environmental assessment of a product over its entire life cycle, which includes raw material acquisition, production, transportation, use and disposal. This chapter provides an overview of the different applications of LCA and of the methodology. The more critical methodological issues and choices are discussed at some depth, after which examples are given of the ways in which methodological choices relate to application. The chapter is concluded by the presentation of a number of more recent trends in LCA methodology.This chapter describes the major challenges relating to LCA data and system delimitation when carrying out LCAs on products from the food industry. Food is characterised as a product where emissions related to the feedstock (agriculture) and electricity in the use (and processing) stage can be identified as hotspots. Calculation of environmental impacts from agricultural products and electricity are highly sensitive to the applied approach for modelling; consequential versus attributional. Both consequential and attributional modelling are demonstrated in different situations, and pros and cons of the two approaches are discussed. Based on this, consequential modelling is proposed as the preferable option because it takes into account cause-effect relationships, it does not ignore the effects of co-products and it maintains mass- and substance-balance of processes. Since consequential modelling seeks to be more accurate, the risk of misleading decision support is minimised in consequential modelling. The disadvantage of consequential modelling is that no commonly accepted marginal supplies of products for different countries/regions exist. The same applies for attributional modelling, but national/regional market averages are more fixed and less sensitive to assumptions introduced by the individual LCA practitioner.LCA has been applied to assess the environmental impacts of crop production and horticulture for over 15 years. This chapter discusses the main challenges of this procedure. It gives guidance on how to consider the multifunctionality of agricultural production and how to draw the boundaries of the production system. The complexity and variability of the production systems and the environmental mechanisms underlying the environmental impacts give rise to a number of challenges that have to be met. From this analysis, recommendations are deducted for a solid analysis of the environmental impacts. The chapter ends with an outlook on expected future developments.Livestock systems are complex in a number of aspects, which is why it is not an easy task to assess associated environmental impacts. Some of the most important aspects are: (i) the way or the degree by which the rearing of the farm animals is integrated with the production of crops, (ii) the impact of different housing and feeding conditions, (iii) the multi-process and multi-product nature of livestock production systems, (iv) the interactions between livestock and land use, and (v) the complexities in estimating emissions/leaching related to livestock production. This chapter illustrates these complexities and discusses how they can be dealt with.Modern fisheries have developed into an industrial-scale activity during the last 60 years and today represent the only large-scale harvesting of a wild resource for food. Intensive aquaculture has had even less time to develop to an important food producing sector and continues to expand rapidly. The environmental debate around seafood, as well as consumer awareness programs, has focused on biological impacts on the marine ecosystem in terms of sustainable use of target stocks, by-catch and discard levels, as well as seafloor impacts of fishing. Additional aspects, such as the use of energy and formation of greenhouse gases caused by seafood production, have recently emerged and received increased attention. Results of seafood LCAs show that most resources, both biotic and abiotic, are used in the fishing phase, with key factors determining resource use being the condition of the stock and the fishing gear used. In aquaculture, a considerable part of the feed is crop-based; however, many of the species popular in developed countries require inputs of fish meal and fish oil and therefore depend on capture fisheries. Environmental debate about aquaculture has, in general, focused on the biological impacts taking place in the immediate surroundings of the farm facility. LCAs on the other hand have shown that feed production is the activity causing most environmental impact in the life cycle of farmed fish with impacts in areas much larger than the fish farm itself; therefore, key factors regarding the climate impact of farmed fish are the amount and composition of the feed used. The only post-landing activity that has been able to outcompete the climate impact of both industrial fishing and fish-farming is airfreight. Seafood LCAs can be used to improve the environmental performance of supply chains or to establish criteria for eco-labeling of the products. The integration of criteria regarding climate impact into existing eco-label programs is desirable to avoid certifying products causing high greenhouse gas emissions as sustainable seafood. A broader view on sustainability in certification schemes would make consumers more confident that their purchasing choices actually support more resource-efficient fisheries and aquaculture.The environmental impact of food products occur in all nodes of the supply chain; from production of inputs to agriculture, through farming, industry and retail to households. Impacts at one node often depend on activities at other nodes, and improvement options for food industry might often involve changes that result in large savings at other nodes rather than for the industry's own emissions. This must be considered when assessing food products, and life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well established tool for such analyses. However, for novel processes or products, the LCA methodology needs to be adapted to the specific circumstances and questions posed. In this chapter, two case studies where LCA has been used are presented, exemplifying the value of adopting a food chain perspective. In addition, a methodological proposal for a working framework is given.Effects of land use and ecotoxicity are not commonly addressed in Life Cycle Assessment on agricultural food production, due to the expected high level of uncertainties in the impact assessment and a lack of available inventory data. This chapter provides an overview of the cause-effect pathways related to the release of toxic chemicals and physical land use practices caused by food production practices. It also discusses the background and application of several life cycle impact assessment methods that produce so-called characterization factors to quantify the environmental effects of the agricultural activity occurring along the cause-effect pathways. Particular attention is paid to advances in the data and modelling of ecotoxicological and land use impacts that resulted in the development of a consensus model to calculate characterization factors for aquatic ecotoxicity and several models to calculate characterization factors for land use. Finally, for both ecotoxicity and land use modelling, a number of uncertainties are discussed and several requirements for improvement are proposed.The economic counterpart of LCA, known as Environmental Life Cycle Costing (LCC), is of increasing concern for LCA practitioners. Just like LCA, LCC may concern food products. Yet, the literature provides few applications of LCC to food products and, more generally, to nondurable products; moreover, the methodologies adopted vary significantly within the available studies. Other examples of combined environmental-economic tools for the assessment of food products include applications of Input-Output Analysis along with Material Flows Analysis (MFA) and LCA. These combinations aim at studying the way materials and substances flow through the economy and applications in these fields are well-established ones. The main results achieved by such diverse combinations of tools are discussed here, especially those which are of managerial relevance. An effort will also be made to highlight the peculiarities that may be taken into account in future applications, when carrying out economic analysis concerning food products combined with environmental analysis.This chapter focuses on how the social 'pillar' of sustainability might be more fully integrated into the life cycle assessment framework in the specific context of food production systems. The chapter includes a discussion of why social impacts are relevant in the context of food production systems and also highlights several existing food system applications of social impacts using life-cycling thinking.This chapter describes the characteristics of ecodesign, a tool for integration of environmental considerations in product development processes, and its relevance for the food sector. Similarities and differences between ecodesign and LCA are highlighted, and the chapter provides an example of how a specific ecodesign tool (based on eight design principles) can be applied to food products. Perspectives and future trends are addressed in the last section, followed by an overview of information sources that can be useful for companies that want to engage in ecodesign. The main target group of the chapter is the food industry, broadly speaking, but it can also be relevant for distributers, retailers, catering centres and private households.This chapter introduces a number of different, but related accounting methods that can be used to assess the environmental impact of food production and processing; the methods are grouped under the banner of footprinting. Footprinting has only a short history, but from the original introduction of ecological footprinting in 1995, the methodology has expanded to include water footprinting, carbon footprinting and latterly environmental and nitrogen footprinting. The various methods share a common approach but include many different indicators to illustrate the environmental impact of production. Although not necessarily compatible they are complimentary. This chapter examines each method and uses examples to show how they can be used within the food sector.Carbon footprints estimate the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted during the production, processing and retailing of consumer goods. The aim is to identify major sources of emissions in supply chains to inform relevant stakeholders so that actions can be taken to reduce emissions. Carbon footprints can also be communicated to consumers via carbon labels. This chapter first describes the principles of carbon footprinting and labelling, and presents some examples of carbon footprints of food products. It then discusses problems in calculating carbon footprints and finally speculates on future developments of the methodology and its application.The chapter provides an overview of sustainability performance evaluations of a supply chain. It introduces a new methodology for sustainability assessment of food supply chains, and demonstrates it by using an example of potato supply chains in the UK. The framework identifies indicators within three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) and applies them to stages of agriculture, food processing, wholesale, retail and catering. The framework assigns importance ratings (determined with help from an expert) for sustainability indicators using the Analytic Network Process. The chapter discusses possible applications of the framework and further trends in sustainability benchmarking.This chapter is about controlling and improving environmental performance at the site or business unit level, and in particular about using formal management systems to do that. Drawing largely on experience in the UK, it begins by looking at the incentives for allocating resources to environmental management before describing the steps involved in putting an environmental management system in place. The benefits and drawbacks of various approaches are discussed and the pros and cons of external audit and certification to standards such as ISO14001 and EMAS are considered. Some factors for successful implementation of an environmental management system in a food business are identified.This chapter presents a view on the current international research in workplace learning. The chapter is introduced by quoting the requirements on employee participation and training in the European regulation on environmental management and audit systems, and outlining the value of employee participation and training in the development, implementation and operation of an environmental management system. The different training needs are analysed for the various departments in a food company, and the concept of the learning organisation is introduced. The chapter covers both the external training situation and workplace learning. The maintenance of a learning organisation is treated, focusing especially on the problems related to personnel turnover, and the crucial role of management. Finally, some current and future trends in workplace learning are outlined, especially regarding training evaluation.This chapter discusses eco-labelling of food products from different types of agriculture, together with the underlying certification systems. Three types of agricultural production are on various points compared with conventional agricultural practice: organic farming, integrated agriculture and regional products. For comparison reasons, three related eco-labelling schemes are added that are relevant for agricultural products: industrial eco-labelling, sustainability certification of natural resources and Fair Trade labelling. Thereafter the effectiveness of the schemes is discussed. The chapter ends with a discussion of some perspectives, particularly of the ever increasing number of labelling schemes.In the last decade a certain number of car scrappage incentives programs have been promulgated to promote earlier replacement of aging vehicles with new ones, cleaner and more efficient, with the aim of pollutant emission reduction and transport safety improvement. Some concerns have been raised about the effectiveness and efficiency of those measures, in particular in relation to the overall environmental impacts along the life of the vehicle phases production, use, end of life and fuel life chain. This life cycle study is focused on the effects on greenhouse gases emissions of a car scrappage scheme in a time range of 24 years, from 1996 to 2020, reducing the average vehicle life from 12 to 10 years; the reference value of retirement age is calculated from the Italian vehicle fleet and used cars market statistics. Two case studies are analyzed for two reference gasoline cars and one diesel car, representative of the European and USA fleet in 2005, considering emissions and consumption data respectively from the MIT and JRC reports published in 2008. In the baseline case it is considered the expected technological evolution of conventional gasoline vehicle both on propulsion and non-propulsion systems. The advanced case takes into account a higher technology improvement up to 2020, with hybrid propulsion systems. Both case studies show that the GHG emissions on the whole vehicle life cycle are neutral with respect to car replacement acceleration, provided that the promoting incentives are restricted to the more energy efficient new vehicles, and new technologies development expected for 2020 will be achieved.The use of dwellings contributes significantly to human-induced environmental burden in a number of ways, including energy consumption and the maintenance and replacement of building components. The present study deals with the maintenance and replacement of external doors and windows in a Dutch reference dwelling and describes how life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology can be applied to quantitatively assess the environmental impact of various maintenance scenarios for the facade components. First, the most effective way to reduce the negative environmental impact in this context is to replace existing single and double glazing with high efficiency double glazing, thereby reducing energy consumption for space heating. Second, the use of timber frames causes less environmental impact than PVC frames with a steel core. Third, extending the service life of building components decreases the input of material resources, production processes and the waste processing of building components during the service life of a dwelling, which is beneficial to the environment. Maintenance activities should only be performed when needed, keeping the building components in good condition while minimising the transportation movements of maintenance workers. Finally, protecting timber components with an alternative paint that contains less solvent does not lower the assessed environmental impact, but low-solvent paint may be preferred because of health aspects both for maintenance workers and occupants of the dwelling.Buildings contribute significantly to the human-induced environmental burden. This comes not only from construction and demolition but also from activities throughout the operational phase building maintenance and energy use for climate control. This paper describes how life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology can be applied to quantitatively assess the environmental performance of the use and maintenance of heating and ventilation systems. The studied climate systems include individual non-condensing boilers, condensing boilers and heat pumps on exhaust air for heating and hot tap water combined with either collective mechanical exhaust ventilation or individual balanced ventilation with heat recovery. This study shows that a heat pump causes the highest environmental burden of all the assessed climate systems due to the electricity needed for operation, high material content of the system and the refrigerant used. If the electricity used by the heat pump is generated fully by local photovoltaic cells, environmental performance will improve, but not for all environmental impact categories. Climate systems that reduce energy demand for heating, such as ventilation with heat recovery, will reduce the environmental impact related to energy use for space heating. However, if the electricity used to operate the system increases, along with the material content of the systems and distribution networks, other environmental impact categories than those related to space heating will also increase. Finally, maintenance frequency and related transportation of maintenance workers have a marginal effect on total environmental impact.Energy consumption in dwellings contributes significantly to their total negative environmental impact. This paper quantitatively assesses the environmental impact of building-related and user-related gas and electricity consumption in a Dutch apartment dwelling using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Several scenarios for gas and electricity consumption are compared to assess what effect changes in building characteristics and user behaviour have on the environmental impacts of energy consumption. This study shows that gas consumption significantly contributes to four environmental impact categories, which can be most effectively countered by reducing the heat demand of the dwelling. A 23% reduction in gas consumption leads to up to 13% less overall environmental impacts. Particularly in buildings with low heat demand, electricity consumption dominates all environmental impact categories. These can most effectively be reduced by changing the electricity demand of the user: 47% less electricity consumption leads to a 9-45% reduction in the total environmental impact. However, since electricity consumption continues to rise, the environmental effects of electricity use may be better reduced by changing the environmental impact of the electricity supply. Theoretically, when electricity consumption remains the same, over 90% less environmental impact could be reached by using 100% wind power to generate electricity.Determination of the life-cycle environmental and human health impacts of semiconductor logic is essential to a better understanding of the role information technology can play in achieving energy efficiency or global warming potential reduction goals. This study provides a life-cycle assessment for digital logic chips over seven technology generations, spanning from 1995 through 2010. Environmental indicators include global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, ground-level ozone (smog) formation, potential human cancer and non-cancer health effects, ecotoxicity and water use. While impacts per device area related to fabrication infrastructure and use-phase electricity have increased steadily, those due to transportation and fabrication direct emissions have fallen as a result of changes in process technology, device and wafer sizes and yields over the generations. Electricity, particularly in the use phase, and direct emissions from fabrication are the most important contributors to life-cycle impacts. Despite the large quantities of water used in fabrication, across the life cycle, the largest fraction of water is consumed in generation of electricity for use-phase power. Reducing power consumption in the use phase is the most effective way to limit impacts, particularly for the more recent generations of logic.The state of California is expected to have significant population growth in the next half-century resulting in additional passenger transportation demand. Planning for a high-speed rail system connecting San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento as well as many population centers between is now underway. The considerable investment in California high-speed rail has been debated for some time and now includes the energy and environmental tradeoffs. The per-trip energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and other emissions are often compared against the alternatives (automobiles, heavy rail, and aircraft), but typically only considering vehicle operation. An environmental life-cycle assessment of the four modes was created to compare both direct effects of vehicle operation and indirect effects from vehicle, infrastructure, and fuel components. Energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and SO(2), CO, NO(X), VOC, and PM(10) emissions were evaluated. The energy and emission intensities of each mode were normalized per passenger kilometer traveled by using high and low occupancies to illustrate the range in modal environmental performance at potential ridership levels. While high-speed rail has the potential to be the lowest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter, appropriate planning and continued investment would be needed to ensure sustained high occupancy. The time to environmental payback is discussed highlighting the ridership conditions where high-speed rail will or will not produce fewer environmental burdens than existing modes. Furthermore, environmental tradeoffs may occur. High-speed rail may lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions per trip but can create more SO2 emissions ( given the current electricity mix) leading to environmental acidification and human health issues. The significance of life-cycle inventorying is discussed as well as the potential of increasing occupancy on mass transit modes.Biofuels account for 1-2% of global transportation fuel and their share is projected to continue rising, with potentially serious consequences for water resources. However, current literature does not present sufficient spatial resolution to characterize this localized effect. We used a coupled agro-climatic and life cycle assessment model to estimate the water resource impacts of bioenergy expansion scenarios at a county-level resolution. The study focused on the case of California, with its range of agroecological conditions, water scarcity, and aggressive alternative fuel incentive policies. Life cycle water consumption for ethanol production in California is up to 1000 times that of gasoline due to a cultivation phase that consumes over 99% of life cycle water use for agricultural biofuels. This consumption varies by up to 60% among different feedstocks and by over 350% across regions in California. Rigorous policy analysis requires spatially resolved modeling of water resource impacts and careful consideration of the various metrics that might act to constrain technology and policy options.This letter describes a comprehensive modeling framework and the Wastewater-Energy Sustainability Tool (WWEST) designed for conducting hybrid life-cycle assessments of the wastewater collection, treatment, and discharge infrastructure in the United States. Results from a case study treatment plant which produces electricity using methane offgas are discussed. The case study system supplements influent with 'high-strength organic waste' to augment electricity production. The system balance is 55 kg of greenhouse gases per million liters of wastewater. Sensitivity analysis confirms that reusing biogas from anaerobic digestion for electricity reduces life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions by nine times. When biogas is captured and reused for electricity, material production (e.g., chemicals and pipes) and the corresponding supply chains, rather than energy production, are responsible for most of the environmental effects. When biogas is flared, the material and energy production contributions are similar.The feasibility of meeting California's low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) using ethanol from various feedstocks is assessed. Lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, direct agricultural land use, petroleum displacement directly due to ethanol blending, and production costs for a number of conventional and lignocellulosic ethanol pathways are estimated under various supply scenarios. The results indicate that after considering indirect land use effects, all sources of ethanol examined, except Midwest corn ethanol, are viable options to meet the LCFS. However, the required ethanol quantity depends on the GHG emissions performance and ethanol availability. The quantity of ethanol that can be produced from lignocellulosic biomass resources within California is insufficient to meet the year 2020 LCFS target. Utilizing lignocellulosic ethanol to meet the LCFS is more attractive than utilizing Brazilian sugarcane ethanol due to projected lower direct agricultural land use, dependence on imported energy, ethanol cost, required refueling infrastructure modifications and penetration of flexible fuel E85 vehicles. However, advances in cellulosic ethanol technology and commercial production capacity are required to support moderate- to large-scale introduction of low carbon intensity cellulosic ethanol. Current cellulosic ethanol production cost estimates suffer from relatively high uncertainty and need to be refined based on commercial scale production data when available.The Risk Assessment IDentification And Ranking (RAIDAR) model is refined to calculate relative human exposures as expressed by total intake, intake fraction (iF), and total body burden (TBB) metrics. The RAIDAR model is applied to three persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and six petrochemicals using four mode-of-entry emission scenarios to evaluate the effect of metabolic biotransformation estimates on human exposure calculations. When biotransformation rates are assumed to be negligible, daily intake and iFs for the nine substances ranged over six orders of magnitude and TBBs ranged over 10 orders of magnitude. Including biotransformation estimates for fish, birds, and mammals reduced substance-specific daily intake and iF by up to 4.5 orders of magnitude and TBB by more than eight orders of magnitude. The RAIDAR iF calculations are compared to the European Union System for the Evaluation of Substances (EUSES) model iF calculations and differences are discussed, especially the treatment of food web bioaccumulation. Model selection and application assumptions result in different rankings of human exposure potential. These results suggest a need to critically consider model selection and to include reliable biotransformation rate estimates when assessing relative human exposure and ranking substances for priority setting. Recommendations for further model evaluations and revisions are discussed. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2010;29:45-55. (C) 2009 SETACAlthough consensus has not been reached regarding the most efficient mechanism to curb anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, rising concern over the consequences of global climate change and consequent shifts in public and political sentiment suggest that carbon legislation will be instituted in the US in the near future. The recent climate change bill passed in the House of Representatives titled The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454) includes provisions for a cap-and-trade system intended to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions 83% by 2050 Consequently, it is likely that some means of carbon pricing will take effect that will make it more expensive to emit greenhouse gases. In a carbon constrained economy, it will become increasingly important to consider every stage of food production and consumption in order to evaluate the potential opportunities for emission reductions. This analysis uses Life-Cycle Assessment to estimate the social cost of food production by quantifying the associated negative externalities under a range of potential carbon prices, using meat and grain as examples. It concludes that 0.42 and 16.0 kg of lifecycle CO(2)e are embedded in 1 kg of grain and beef production, respectively. Consequently, the marginal cost associated with the emissions caused by grain production under a carbon price range of $10 and $85 per t CO(2)e is estimated to be between $.004 and $0.036 per kg of grain By comparison, the estimated marginal cost associated with beef production over the same range of carbon pricing is $0.16 and $1.36 per kg of beef Considering that the US produces 12 billion kg of beef per year, this range indicates that the carbon cost of beef production alone might fall anywhere between $1 9 and $16.3 billion per year, depending on whether and how a carbon price is applied This uncertainty and potential carbon price could significantly impact the cost of carbon-intensive foods.,Presently the sustainable development stratagem has made the green buildings to be a trend of building industry in China, and the assessment to the green buildings is becoming more and more important Ill developing the green buildings. In this paper the meaning of the green building assessment is explained, several main domestic and foreign green building assessment systems are analyzed and compared, and the common ground and limitations of these assessment methods are presented. Then a novel assessment index system which is more comprehensive, scientific and suitable for green buildings in China is developed by using the life cycle assessment method This system contains six categories including land saving and outdoor environment, energy saving and utilization, material saving and utilization, water saving and utilization, indoor environment quality and economy. According to the decision-making stage, design stage, construction stage. operation and maintenance stage, each category is divided into more concrete indexes. At last the established assessment system is used to evaluate a typical building in Xi'an, China. The final novel assessment index system is of theoretical and practical significance for the assessment and development of green buildings in China.This paper details the calculation of the environmental loads associated with the construction of each piece of equipment (considering that the materials were not reused at the end of the equipment's lifetime, which is the worst case scenario) and operation of a trigeneration system. The purpose of a trigeneration system is to meet the demands of a consumer center - in this case, a medium-sized hospital located in Zaragoza, Spain. The evaluation extended over a period of one year, considering previously specified energy service demands (electricity, heat - sanitary hot water and heating -, and cooling). The system interacted with the economic environment (market) through the purchase of natural gas and electricity from the grid, and also through the sale of autogenerated electricity to the grid, according to Spanish regulations. Therefore, the environmental loads regarding the operation of the system were associated with the consumption of natural gas and electricity purchased/sold from/to the grid. Technical information on each piece of equipment was obtained from catalogs and from consultation with manufacturers. Regarding natural gas, special care was taken to correctly identify the natural gas supplied to a user in Spain (It was considered that the gas comes from Algeria, transported in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) carriers, including pipeline transportation to the user and controlled burning). The electricity supplied by the Spanish electric grid was also properly specified and characterized. The environmental loads were calculated utilizing SimaPro, a specialized Life Cycle Assessment tool, and then incorporated Into a linear programming model, solved by LINGO optimization software. Environmental criteria were used to obtain the optimal configuration and operation of the system simultaneously.Business Investments rely on creating a whole system of different parts, technologies, field and business operations, management, land, financing and commerce using a network of other services. Using the example of a wind farm development, a typical life cycle assessment (LCA) focuses upon the primary technology inputs and their countable embodied direct impacts What LCA omits are the direct and indirect impacts of the rest of the business system that operates the primary technology, the labor, commerce and other technology employed. A total environmental assessment (TEA) would include the physical costs to the environment of the labor, commerce and other technology too. Here a simplified "system energy assessment" (SEA) is used to combine a "top-down" method of measuring implied indirect business impacts using econometric methods, with a "bottom-up" method of adding up the identifiable direct impact parts The top-down technique gives an inclusive but rough measure. The bottom-up technique gives a precise accounting for the directly identifiable individual parts that is highly incomplete. SEA allows these two kinds of measures to be combined for a significantly improved understanding of the whole business system and its impacts, combining the high and low precision measures indentified by each method. The key is exhaustively accounting for energy uses within the natural boundary of a whole business system as a way of calibrating the measure. That allows defining a standardized measure of complex distributed system energy flows and their energy returns on invested energy resources (EROI). The method is demonstrated for a generic business operation. Starting from the easily accountable inputs and outputs, SEA successively uses larger natural system boundaries to discover a way of finding the limiting value of EROI after all parts of the whole are included Some business choices and a net present value model of cash flow for the 20 year project help illustrate the related financial Issues. The business model used shows that the EROI of a generic "Texas Wind Farm" is 31 when accounting for direct and indirect fuels only, but decreases to 4-6 after accounting for the economic energy consumed by all necessary business units and services.This study evaluates the environmental impacts of a hypothetical 103 megawatt, parabolic trough, wet-cooled concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the U S Southwest with 6 3 hours of thermal energy storage by means of a hybrid life cycle assessment Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative energy demand, and water consumption associated with the manufacture, construction, operation, dismantling, and disposal of the power plant are evaluated and disagaregated by maim systems and components. The reference CSP plant emits 26 g CO(2eq) per kWh of electrical output across its life cycle, cumulatively demands 0 43 MJ(eq)/kWh of energy, and consumes 4 7 L/kWh of water. The majority of water is consumed by the power block for evaporative cooling. Sensitivity analyses are performed on several key assumptions and design elements the configuration of the thermal energy storage system (i e, thermocline), the heat transfer fluid, the nitrate salts, the cooling system type (m e, dry-cooled) and the energy required for construction and end-of-life dismantling Our base case results are robust to alternative assumptions regarding the heat transfer fluid and energy required for construction and dismantling, however, the total life cycle impacts are strongly influenced by the type of cooling system and nitrate salts employedThe Pinoleville-Pomo Nation of northern California is seeking to implement sustainable technologies and best practices that will increase their self sufficiency and meet their housing, energy. and water conservation needs. Since 2008, the Tribe has worked with UC Berkeley on sustainable community projects, including the design of a prototype "roundhouse" design, to be constructed in 2010 in Ukiah, California Using an energy-efficient architecture and an analysis tool for selection of the engineered systems (the Native American Energy Analysis Tool, or NAEPA), the new homes are predicted to emit less than 50% of the carbon emissions over their lifetime, and have lower lifetime energy expenditures. The design methodology, energy analyses and life cycle assessment used by NAEPA will be discussed. Extensions to community-based housing energy plans and an optimization will also be discussed.Alkali-activated 'geopolymer' concrete has been commercialized in Australia under the trade name E-Crete (TM), and is now finding acceptance among the end-user community and from regulatory authorities. E-Crete (TM) is derived from fly ash and blast furnace slag with an alkali activator, and is available in both precast and pre-mix forms. The pre-mix concrete is able to be placed using largely standard concrete processing equipment and expertise. A life cycle analysis of E-Crete (TM) has shown savings of around 80% in CO2 emissions compared to a standard Portland cement-based binder, which provides the primary driver for the uptake of this technology on a larger scale. Commercialization of geopolymer technology by Zeobond has been linked closely with scientific developments in this area, in particular through the use of innovative methods of analyzing and predicting durability, and in understanding and controlling reaction mechanisms. The importance of leading-edge scientific research in enhancing the performance and utility of geopolymer concretes will be highlighted throughout this paper, and some of the remaining technical and non-technical hurdles which must be overcome will be identified.The food chain contributes to a substantial part of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and growing evidence points to the urgent need to reduce GHGs emissions worldwide. Among suggestions were proposals to alter food consumption patterns by replacing animal foods with more plant-based foods. However, the nutritional dimensions of changing consumption patterns to lower GHG emissions still remains relatively unexplored. This study is the first to estimate the composite nutrient density, expressed as percentage of Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR) for 21 essential nutrients, in relation to cost in GHG emissions of the production from a life cycle perspective, expressed in grams of CO2-equivalents, using an index called the Nutrient Density to Climate Impact (NDCI) index. The NDCI index was calculated for milk, soft drink, orange juice, beer, wine, bottled carbonated water, soy drink, and oat drink. Due to low-nutrient density, the NDCI index was 0 for carbonated water, soft drink, and beer and below 0.1 for red wine and oat drink. The NDCI index was similar for orange juice (0.28) and soy drink (0.25). Due to a very high-nutrient density, the NDCI index for milk was substantially higher (0.54) than for the other beverages. Future discussion on how changes in food consumption patterns might help avert climate change need to take both GHG emission and nutrient density of foods and beverages into account.Policymakers responsible for creating the skill base needed for future economic development need to have better understanding of the implications of radical technological change. In the long-term, such change can upset many of the forecasts based upon standard approaches to modelling employment and occupational trends. This study reviews some approaches to dealing with major new technologies, and then explores the usefulness of using familiar ideas from innovation research - diffusion and industry life-cycle analysis, thinking about technological paradigms and trajectories, for this purpose. Nanotechnology, in part because of its relative infancy, in part because of the intersection of numerous lines of knowledge development at the nano-scale, and in part because of the many contested claims about the scope and speed of its evolution, possess particular challenges. The material assesses how confident we can be about skill and employment projections related to nano-industries (and industrial applications of nanotechnology more generally), and proposes some ways in which we could increase our confidence and provide more policy-relevant intelligence.Effective addressing of global environmental problems is considered to be one of the most important issues for ongoing corporate activities. In its fourth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that emissions of greenhouse gases like CO(2), if left unchecked, could cause the average global temperature to rise by 2-6 degrees C by the end of the 21st century, leaving the future of mankind at risk. Innovation by information technology (IT) is indispensable in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050, and Fujitsu Laboratories initiated the development of diverse technologies for reducing the environmental load. Part of Fujitsu's development policy is to introduce its environmental perspectives into the R&D roadmap and to evaluate the development targets by life cycle assessment in order to predict the environmental load reductions beforehand. In addition, Fujitsu promotes total technology development from materials/devices to system/solutions, aiming at effective energy saving by integrating elemental technologies and building an ecological value chain. This paper outlines the latest activities of Fujitsu Laboratories toward environmental innovations.Sustainability of human activities is one of the most important concerns of the European Union. Consequently, the need to assess the level of sustainability achieved both at local and at government level is increasing. This process involves all economic sectors, including agriculture and, in particular, livestock. Until several years ago livestock production systems were mainly focused on production efficiency and qualitative characteristics of meat. However, nowadays rules regarding animal welfare and environmental impact are becoming more and more compulsory and require attention by all the poultry chain. European subsidies are in many cases linked to an environmentally sound behaviour of farms. However, there is still an ongoing discussion regarding the definition of sustainable-agriculture strategic objectives, the criteria to take into account, the actions to develop, and the methodological tools to use for the evaluation. This chapter provides suggestions for improving the environmental evaluation part of a process of sustainability assessment specific for intensive poultry production. The environmental sustainability of an intensive poultry-rearing system is evaluated through the use of three different methods: Emergy Evaluation, Ecological Footprint Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). For each of the three methods a review of its application in agriculture, and specifically in poultry breeding, is presented. Through Emergy Evaluation we found that diet is the most important impact factor for the analysed system, accounting for more than 82% of the total emergy flow. Our results obtained from Ecological Footprint Analysis point out that cropland, which is connected with chicken diet, is the main land component in the indicator, accounting for 73% of the total. Particularly, the high quantity of maize and soya needed for feed requires much cropland. Finally, using LCA, we found that feed production is the element which contributes the most to the environmental impacts of the system, influencing the impact category 'land use'. As Ecological Footprint, LCA regards the cultivation and the transformation of maize and soya as the processes with the strongest impact. Therefore, although the three methods use specific indicators and methodology, they come to the same conclusions for the system investigated. After applying each method to the poultry system, we propose a comparative analysis between the three methods, based on four different criteria: representativeness, verifiability, reproducibility, comprehensibility. By comparing the methods according to these criteria, we found that each of them shows both positive and negative aspects, strengths and weaknesses, but all of them are effective in representing the environmental features of a given activity, and the results can be used as input in the sustainability assessment process. The choice to use Emergy Evaluation, Ecological Footprint Analysis, or LCA can depend upon the main objective of the assessment process. However, in many cases it is not necessary a choice because the three methods can be used together, and the results can be integrated to build combined indicators, capable to ensure a wide and complete analysis.Greenhouse gas emission, which has increased remarkably due to tremendous energy use, has resulted in global warming, perhaps the most serious problem that humankind faces today. Numerous efforts have been made to mitigate the greenhouse gas emission from human activities. This study reveals that the global environment is influenced by bioenergy, cropping patterns, dietary choices, packaging, distribution and trade, and population growth might be the main key. The use of bioenergy has been emphasized not only to combat the global warming potential but also to reduce dependency on fossil fuels for smooth economic development. The rush toward liquid biofuels affects virtually every aspect of the field crop sectors, ranging from domestic demand and exports to price and the allocation of land area among crops. Crop residues should not be harvested for biofuels beyond the limits that reduce minimum soil organic carbon to maintain soil fertility and productivity, with the exception of a satisfactory supply of compost. The development and introduction of sustainable energy technology must occur in an affordable and socially acceptable manner. Production of genetically modified (GM) crops might be useful in reducing growing pressure on natural resources and on the environment, if that does not conflict with safety and biodiversity. The combination of population growth with economic development and increasing demand for quality food, especially in the developing countries, puts great stress on agriculture for food, feed, fibers and biofuel feedstocks. If the population can be stabilized to a 1990-level and food spoilage and other waste limited to 10%, then about 28% of the present world food supply could be conserved. It might open the door for future liquid biofuels and help to reduce poverty and to build a sustainable world.This chapter briefly summarizes some of the history and the technical research status of the wide field of interconnection materials and associated plating materials. The overview of different materials sets the scope and perspective of the following environmental life cycle assessments discussed in Chaps. 5 and 6. Solder pastes based on nanosized metal spheres are introduced. Research exploring ways to produce electronics without interconnection materials is considered. Extensive technical-based research has been done by several groups and the present summary is by no means comprehensive.This brief chapter describes the method and in more depth the LIME method before arriving at the need for the present research. The crucial treatment of allocation, system boundary, and uncertainty estimations within LCA as well as applications of the tool is brought to attention. The broad topic of environmental cost quantification is discussed, bridging to the LIME section. The most important work in the environmental assessment of interconnection materials is reflected upon including metals, alloys, solders, conductive adhesives, and platings. Finally, the research need is clarified by asking eight questions based on the two hypotheses in Chap. 1.This chapter describes in detail how LCIA calculations can be performed in practice to compare interconnection materials. Several software programs are discussed with special emphasis on the Excel-based software EMLCA. One possible methodology for performing an LCIA of interconnection materials is presented. Concerning consequential LCA, a procedure for identifying marginal consumers is proposed. This text makes a summary of the important issues regarding the remaining needs for carrying out a successful consequential LCA in practice. The effect on the markets of Pb, Ag, Sn, and Bi as a result of the Pb-free shift is explored.This chapter focuses on comparisons between conductive adhesives and solder pastes. First, plating technologies used by a quad flad pack component are compared using LIME. Then, the latest electric power and metal production LCI data from ecoinvent is used in earlier studies of high-temperature materials. As resource stress is one of the three pillars of life cycle product management, the third section explores the hidden resource flows by applying the ore-total material requirement model. The last section takes a look at future and Ag-free conductive adhesive material technologies. Moreover, traditional product level LCA (the relative LCAs for conductive adhesives) is scaled-up to global material flows to get a different distribution of the eco-profiles.The Environmental e-Health Research and Training Program has completed its scoping study to understand the breadth of a new field of research: Environmental e-Health. Nearly every aspect of modern life is associated, directly or indirectly, with application of technology, from a cup of coffee, through transportation to and from work, to appliances in the home and industrial activities. In recent decades the rapidly increasing application of information and communications technologies (ICT) has added to the cacophony of technological 'noise' around us. Research has shown that technology use, including ICTs, has impact upon the environment. Studying environmental impact in such a complex global setting is daunting. e-Health is now being used as a convenient microcosm of ICT application within which to study these impacts, and is particularly poignant given that e-Health's environmental harms conflict with its noble goals of 'doing no harm'. The study has identified impacts, both benefits and harms in all three life-cycle phases for e-Health: up-stream (materials extraction, manufacturing, packaging, distribution), mid-stream (use period), and downstream (end-of-life processes - disposal, recycling). In addition the literature shows that a holistic 'Life Cycle Assessment' approach is essential to understand the complexity of the setting, and determine the true balance between total harms and total benefits, and for whom.The antioxidant quercetin was extracted from yellow onion waste and converted to its aglycone form by a combination of subcritical water extraction and enzymatic hydrolysis. The hydrolytic step was catalysed by a double residue (N221S, P342L) mutant of the thermostable beta-glucosidase (TnBgl1A), isolated from the thermophile Thermotoga neapolitana and cloned and produced in E. coli. The activity of wt TnBgl1A was shown to be dependent on the position of the glucosylation on the quercetin backbone, favouring hydrolysis of quercetin-4'-glucoside over quercetin-3-glucoside. The mutated variant of the enzyme harboured a mutation in the +2 sub-site (N221S) and showed increased catalytic efficiency in quercetin-3-glucoside hydrolysis and also to a certain extent hydrolysis of quercetin-4'-glucoside. The mutated enzyme was used directly in yellow onion extracts, prepared by subcritical water extraction, resulting in complete hydrolysis of the glucosylated flavonoids quercetin-3,4'-diglucoside, quercetin-4'-glucoside, quercetin-3-glucoside, isorhamnetin-4'-glucoside and isorhamnetin-3,4'-diglucoside. To complete hydrolysis within five minutes, 3 mg of TnBgl1A_N221S was used per gramme of onion (dry weight). A life cycle assessment was done to compare the environmental impact of the new method with a conventional solid-liquid extraction-and-hydrolysis method utilising aqueous methanol and hydrochloric acid. Comparison of the methods showed that the new method is preferable regarding primary energy consumption and global warming potential. Another advantage of this method is that handling of toxic chemicals (methanol and HCl) is avoided. This shows that combined subcritical water extraction/enzyme hydrolysis is both a fast and sustainable method to obtain quercetin from onion waste.Life cycle assessment offers a unique opportunity to analyze emission reductions across all manufacturing sectors. However, few efforts have been made to apply this method to the pharmaceutical industry. Typically, between 80 and 90% of the total mass used in the production of an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) may be attributed to solvent use. Manufacture of virgin solvent and solvent waste management contribute significantly more life cycle emissions than comparable processes for commodity chemicals, with the majority of this waste consisting of CO(2) and other green house gas emissions. Three case studies from Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Novartis are examined. In these cases, solvent recovery and reduction techniques are integrated into API syntheses. It is shown that the actual extent of the environmental footprint reduction can only be realized with a full life cycle analysis.Green composites can be prepared by conventionally blending wheat gluten (WG) and other organic or inorganic components using conventional plastic processing equipment followed by thermo-molding of the mixture at elevated temperatures to crosslink the matrix. Glycerol as plasticizer might be used to overcome the brittleness and improve toughness of the composites. Addition of a secondary component in the filler form can significantly improve the Young's modulus and tensile strength of the plasticized composites, which is accompanied by a decrease in loss factor in the glass transition temperature region of the gluten-rich phase. Synthetic biodegradable polymers have also been used for preparing WG blends by incorporation of reactive compatibilizer or by chemical modification of WG proteins. The mechanical properties, moisture absorption, and molecular relaxation of the composites could be tailored by adjusting the contents of the secondary component and the plasticizer as well as the molding temperature and time.Among natural fibers, flax fibers are frequently used as reinforcing materials due to their characteristics properties such as high mechanical properties, low density, biodegradability, low cost, high specific strength and modulus, no health risk, easy availability in nature, renew ability etc. On account of its eco-friendly nature, flax fibers are considered as a future material for preparing reinforced composites. Over the last few years, there has been an ever-increasing interest in finding new features for flax-fiber-reinforced composites. This chapter introduces promising applications and recent developments of flax fiber and its composites. The physical properties of all natural fibers are mainly determined by the chemical and physical composition, such as the structure of fibers, cellulose content, angle of fibrils, the degree of polymerization etc. The physical structure of flax fiber can be modified by various surface treatments such as grafting, acetylation, silane treatment, mercerization, peroxide treatment etc. These different treatments modify hydrophilic character of the natural fibers, so that moisture effects in the composite are reduced. The application of flax fibers as reinforcements in composite materials requires a strong adhesion between the fiber and the matrix. This chapter also gives a survey about the chemical composition, various mechanical processes for the separation of flax fiber, mechanical properties, physical and chemical treatment methods that improve the flax fiber matrix adhesion, their results and special effects on the various properties of composites.In the recent years, great attention has been dedicated to the exploitation of natural fibers as reinforcement for plastics, replacing fibers synthetic materials. Objectives are not just environmental concerns and consumer pressure but also a unique combination of high performance, great versatility and processing advantages at low cost. However, certain drawbacks such as incompatibility with a hydrophobic polymer matrix, the tendency to form aggregates during processing and poor resistance to moisture reduce greatly the potential of natural fibers to reinforce polymers. On the other hand, various treatments are being used to improve fibre-matrix compatibility. This process is considered critical as a development phase of these materials due to strong interfiber hydrogen bonding, which holds fibers together. Methods for surface modification can be physical or chemical according to superficial modification approach of the fibre. In this review, the main results presented in the literature are summarized, with specific attention on the properties in terms of physical and chemical structure of natural fibers, thermal and mechanical properties, processing performance and final properties of natural fibers reinforcing high density polyethylene matrix. The use of physical and chemical treatments for the improvement of fibers-matrix interaction was also considered.Bamboo, a well known plant has a broad application in nutrition, construction, handicrafts as well as furniture and decoration. A huge amount of bamboo wastes are disposed continuously as a byproduct of its utilization in various purposes especially in wood and furniture industries. A wide variety of researches and activities have been performed on utilization of bamboo wastes in manufacturing of green composites and hence, a wide assortment of substances have been tested to act as the supplementary components such as Portland cement, petrochemical polymers (e.g. poly-ethylene, polyvinyl chloride, poly-propylene, polyester resins), and recently biodegradable polymer matrices such as poly-lactic acid, plant proteins and poly-butylene-succinate. Scientific efforts have been studied the different combinations of bamboo wastes with polymer matrices and/or coupling agents. The most important items in these researches have been the mixing ratios of materials as composite components, physical and chemical properties of ingredient materials, production techniques and qualitative properties of composites such as physical characteristics, mechanical strength, durability, water and moisture resistance, abrasion resistance and external appearance. Effects of pre-treatment of ingredients have been extensively investigated by purpose of modification and improvement of composite characteristics. Extractable proteins from soybean and corn have also been studied as polymer matrix for making green composites. Zein, a plant protein found in corn that is widely applicable as coating agent or adhesive, is an example that has fulfilled experiments for making particle boards. Further similar experiences have been carried out on making composites from wood or bamboo sawdust or fibers with soybean proteins. The more common objectives through the above mentioned researches have been to find the best mixing ratios, the most effective coupling agents and/or modifiers, the optimum operational parameters in manufacturing processes, the qualitative measures such as tensile strength, bending strength, internal bond, modulus of elasticity, water absorption, thickness swelling, density and porosity. This chapter reviews technical and scientific attempts on making composites from bamboo wastes and various matrices and coupling agents especially those which have been performed in Zhejiang University and academic organizations cooperating with.The growing environmental concerns together with the reduction of petroleum resources have been a motor for revitalizing the interest in using raw materials from renewable resources. Among those, vegetable oils constitute a valuable renewable source. Their chemical modification is a promising alternative to substitute (at least partially) petrochemical materials used in polymer formulations. In this chapter, the focus will be on the use of castor and tung oils to synthesize polyols for the polyurethane industry. The polymers derived from these polyalcohols present different properties depending on the vegetable sources, synthesis path for the polyol, additives, etc., and thus, polyurethanes can be produced to fit the requirements for different applications. The addition of lignocellulosic reinforcements like wood flour or plant fibers noticeably affect the properties of the polyurethanes due to the strong interaction that these fillers/reinforcements develop with the polar polyurethane matrix. The biocomposites prepared from the bio-based polymers and biofillers/biofibers can be a useful alternative to substitute synthetic composites (from solid composites to filled foams) reducing the environmental impact usually associated to traditional polymers. The physical, thermal and mechanical properties of the neat polyurethanes and derived composites are presented and analyzed in this chapter.To reinforce poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and take full advantage of chicken feather, the first time we used chicken feather fiber (CFF) as reinforcement for PLA, and prepared completely biodegradable PLA/CFF biocomposites by using melting compound method. By means of tensile test, dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), thermomechanical analysis (TMA), enzymatic degradation test and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the effect of CFF on the structural, thermal and mechanical properties and enzymatic degradation behavior of PLA matrix was investigated. As CFF was incorporated into PLA matrix, the tensile modulus of the PLA matrix was slightly increased, and the storage modulus (bending mode) could be remarkably enhanced at glass and rubbery regions of PLA. DMA results showed the motion of PLA chain segments could be effectively restricted when 10 wt% of CFF was added into the PLA matrix. On the other hand, the thermal stability and dimension stability of the PLA matrix became poorer with the addition of CFF. Moreover, the presence of CFF also significantly enhanced the enzymatic degradation ability and crystallization ability of the PLA matrix. The content of this chapter is believed to assist the development of environmentally-friendly composites from biodegradable polymers, especially for converting agricultural waste chicken feather into useful products.Low cost processing methods for natural fibre composites could be suitable for developing countries context. The challenge is to make composites with properties that are not overly compromised by the use of low technogly. Composites were made using corn/wheat stalk flour and waste high density polyethylene and were tested for moisture absorption, impact, tensile and flexural properties. The composites made from outer ring corn stalk flour absorbed more water than those made from whole corn stalk flour. When wheat stalk flour composites were extruded before being moulded, they absorbed about 15% less water at equilibrium than when they were just layered, shredded and moulded. The above mentioned parameters in both corn and wheat stalk composites did not make significant differences on impact properties of the composites. Sealing the wheat straw composites had the unexpected effect of absorbing about 5% more water at equilibrium than the unsealed wheat straw composites. Neither silane nor sodium hydroxide treatments improved the tensile or flexural properties of the corn stalk composites, likely due to poor mixing governed by the selected processing methods. By careful selection of the processing techniques and materials, it is possible to make composites that may be affordable without overly sacrificing their properties.The use of natural-organic fillers for polymer composites is mainly due to environmental and economical reasons. In fact, natural-organic fillers are usually cheap and easily available (often coming from wastes), are less abrasive to processing equipments, give less hazard concerns regarding health of production workers, provide a fundamental help in reducing the use of non-renewable sources throughout the life-cycle of the material. On the other hand, in order to achieve fully environmental-friendly products, a complete biodegradability is required. This can be obtained only by using polymer matrices which are biodegradable as well. One of the most widely known is the Mater-Bi (R) family. In this work, we have investigated on the preparation and characterization of Mater-Bi (R)/wood flour green composites. Since the actual composition of the Mater-Bi (R) grade used was proprietary, statistical analysis was carried out in order to individuate the most influential processing variables and their optimal values. Mechanical, rheological and morphological tests were carried out as well. Based on these results, another Mater-Bi (R) grade with the most suitable amount of wood flour was tested, and the analysis was focused mainly on the determination of the best processing technique. The investigation was completed by performing biodegradation tests which allowed assessing the actual biodegradability of the prepared green composites.Epoxy and vinyl polyester matrix composites reinforced with cellulose fibre were fabricated and characterized with respect to their flexural, fracture and impact properties. Reinforcement of the polymer by cellulose fibres resulted in a significant increase in the strain at failure, fracture toughness and impact toughness but only a moderate increase in flexural strength and flexural modulus. Moisture absorption of the composites in water was analysed. The kinetics of sorption-diffusion process was investigated and typical kinetic parameters D, k, and M were determined. The use of nano-clay in the composites was effective in imparting a substantial reduction in water permeability due to the tortuous path presented by high aspect ratio clay. Diffusion models for the water uptake behaviour in polymer composites are reviewed. The effect of accelerated exposure to seawater on the flexural and impact properties of composites was also investigated. The salient toughening mechanisms and crack-tip failure processes were identified and discussed in light of observed microstructures.Densified wood can be effectively utilized as raw material in the production of wood-base green composites. The viscoelastic thermal compression (VTC) process enabled the development of a high performance structural wood-based composite with low-density (undensified) wood in the core, and high-density VTC wood for the faces of the composite. Increased density of the face layers in these 3-layer VTC composites is advantageous for their mechanical performance. The aim of this chapter was to present the VTC process, the VTC wood and the 3-layer VTC composites. Additionally, the viscoelastic nature of wood and the stress-strain relationship in regard to glass transition temperature and moisture environment relevant for the density gradient formation in VTC wood are discussed. Namely, the density gradient of the VTC layer, which is obtained due to the viscoelastic nature of wood, local environment of moisture content and temperature during the densification process, affects the bending properties of the VTC composites.Evaluating what types of energy are sustainable is not a simple task. The entire life cycle of each energy source must be considered before it can be classified as sustainable. Within each life cycle there exist multiple indicators that should be included. Each of these indicators may impact or modify some phase of an energy source's life cycle that affects whether it is truly sustainable. An approach for analyzing current energy technologies and their appropriateness to be considered sustainable is the focus of our paper. Since the most recognized examples of sustainable technologies using renewable resources are wind power, biomass, and solar, these will be the primary focus of this assessment. Tools have been developed to assess the resiliency of natural environments to disturbances. However most of these tools have not been developed to measure social sustainability in the context of the natural environment. This makes it extremely difficult in the face of climate change to include metrics for evaluating the impact of our energy choices on societal resilience and societal vulnerability. But if social and cultural metrics are included in energy evaluations, energy choices can then be linked to not only environmental impacts but social impacts. Tools do exist to measure social sustainability but these approaches require a significant amount of data which diminishes their utility for selecting energy resources. For example, the large amounts of data that are needed to measure social sustainability would necessitate years of data collection. Since decisions need to be made today and not 20 years in the future, years of data collection are not an immediately useful option. Today, social aspects of sustainability are mainly measured using economic metrics. Because economic indicators are only one facet of social sustainability, they are not fully effective in assessing all aspects of social sustainability. There is a need to move beyond these narrow metrics because they may conclude that energy use in a locality is sustainable when in fact its society may not be truly sustainable. One approach to help achieve a more complete sustainability is to focus on cultural values as part of an assessment. This might then highlight additional indicators that may be more valuable to help assess, and to manage for, sustainability. Since sustainable energy cannot happen without sustainable societies, societal factors need to be a strong focus of any assessment analyzing what energy source to adopt. Therefore, this analysis will include a discussion of the metrics currently used to determine whether an energy source is truly sustainable and if it contributes to a sustainable society. In this paper we summarize the current indicators commonly used to determine the efficiency of energy options and whether they are appropriate measures given the particular cultural and economic values important for the rural and indigenous landscape context. We conclude this discussion by introducing an approach for how to use cultural metrics to design energy production systems for these environments. We make a case that sustainable energy consumption does not equate to sustainable societies. Without the inclusion of both cultural values and ecological health in the mechanism of assessment frameworks there is a major concern that social and ecological sustainability will be compromised.This paper investigates the embodied and operational energy of selected residential buildings with heritage values and provides appropriate intervention when necessary to improve their energy performance and environmental impacts. A number of buildings in Australia having heritage significance were investigated and modelled for their operational energy, embodied energy, maintenance and primary supply energy impacts. The buildings selected have heritage overlay controls, and represent different dominant archetypes in Australia ranging from the years 1826 to 2000. The operational energy consumption data has been analysed using the Australian 2nd generation residential energy rating software AccuRate. The life cycle and environmental impacts assessment has been analysed using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software, SimaPro. This paper demonstrates the importance of recognising issues governing the environmental performance of existing buildings with heritage values, particularly with respect to reducing CO2 emissions.The paper draws upon evidence of the environmental, social and economic threats perceived within the modern food system. The need for change towards sustainability pertains to consumers' eating habits, both within households and in out-of-home settings, conveying to further structural changes upstream the supply chain. This dynamics presents a huge systemic challenge in free market environment, in need of powerful infographic tools about sustainable food choice and its implementation by learning, negotiating and decision making by committed actors within the food system. This paper takes as its point of entry towards the systemic change the catering industry, serving a large proportion of population. The paper presents a panoramic tool for co-configuration of environmental impacts and nutritional aspects of meals, based on bottom-up (contextual) and modular life cycle analysis of staples and existing nutrition information. The tool applies puzzle design, which allows planning of sustainable meals piece by piece, both by playful as well as informed planning of more sustainable ingredients into the meals. The open access tool enables learning, implementation and dissemination of new sustainable food culture.Biomass availability is rather limited in Europe and, hence, it is of crucial importance to determine the optimal biomass-to-energy conversion pathway. This selection is somehow complex as there could be antagonistic motivations coming from industrial stake-holders, politicians, scientists or the society. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to present different biomass-to-biofuels alternatives that follows various economic, environmental and/or social drivers. Results are also compared with European Directives 2001/77/EC and 2009/28/EC. In General, maximizing bio-electricity over other biofuels turns out to be the best economical and environmental option. Combined with solar and wind energy, about 31% of the electricity production by 2020 could be renewable, i.e., 10 points higher than the target of Directive 2001/77/EC. If biomass is conducted to SNG production, fossil natural gas imports could be reduced by 1.63 EJ/yr in 2020, although this alternative implies higher costs and less CO2 savings than the previous bio-electricity solution. In case of promoting Fischer-Tropsch fuels, the share of biofuels in transport will be 9.5%, which is slightly below the 10% share target of Directive 2009/28/EC. H-2 is disregarded as feasible option for transport due to several technological barriers, although it would lead to substantial CO2 savings at a moderate price. Conversely, methanol results in the worst environmental solution as CO2 emissions are larger than those of conventional fossil fuels.Monitoring the environmental performance of a product is recognised to be increasingly important. The stakeholders are pressuring the manufacturers for improved information about the environmental burden caused by the manufacturing of a product. However, there are problems to accurately quantify the environmental burden of an individual product because the supply chains are dynamic. In this paper we present a model that enables calculating and monitoring the environmental performance of products at an item level in a dynamic supply chain and performing multidimensional analysis of environmental data.For the production, manufacture, application, and disposal of materials, numerous energy and resources are consumed, and environment deterioration occurs as a result. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technique for systematically analyzing a target from cradle to grave. It is an effective tool that not only gives a detailed information of environmental profiles of a material or a product, more importantly, the value of life cycle thinking lies in its ability to provide the decision making basis for sustainable development, making the products, industry and even the whole industry chain act more in line with the principles of sustainable development. However, life cycle assessment method itself has yet to be further improved. In the aspect of the actual application, it is required to combine with the specific conditions, such as the national level of industrial technology and the phases of economic development, before giving a full play of the realistic role that life cycle assessment can provide decision making basis for sustainable development. Some new progress, such as data quality, methodology localization, database and case study, related to materials life cycle assessment research and development in China are introduced in this article.Public awareness of climate change has made environmental impact a factor of growing importance in decision-making for municipalities. It follows that the environmental impacts of expanding and operating a water distribution system (WDS) should be considered alongside cost and hydraulic design. The paper presents a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) that minimizes capital and operating costs and environmental impacts in WDS design, while adhering to hydraulic constraints such as minimum pressure head, maximum velocity, and filling/emptying of tanks. A previously developed environmental impact (El) index is included in the environmental objective function of the optimization program. The El index normalizes and aggregates multiple environmental measures evaluated with an economic input-output life cycle analysis (EIO-LCA) model. The EIO-LCA-based NSGA-II is applied to the Anytown water distribution network (Walski et al. 1987) to examine its potential in identifying Pareto-optimal solutions for systems that have a low cost and low environmental impact.Recent emphasis on creating a sustainable society has motivated eco-friendly manufacturing. The focus of this study is on an investigation of environmental impact of downsized five-axis-controlled machine tool. The Life Cycle Assessment was carried out based on a novel approach that considered the life cycle of secondary tool. Further, the actual cutting test was performed to investigate the cutting potential of downsized machine tool. As a result, it was found that downsizing of the machine tool was effective to reduce the total global warming potential in the life cycle of secondary tool. Further, the cutting potential of downsized machine tool was enough for machining of small parts.Based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) theory, this paper defined the accounting scope of food life cycle carbon emissions, presented an inventory analysis of carbon emissions of every food cycle phase from raw materials production, processing, consumption to waste disposal, and provided an assessment framework and methods of food life cycle carbon emissions. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In the United States anaerobic digestion units are in place on several farms, but primarily handle manure and very small fractions of other organic material. AGreen Energy's business model aims to increase the profitability of dairy farmers and the food processing industry by utilizing organic feedstocks produced in urban areas, while reducing the risk to investors by installing an expensive technology which better meets the needs of environmental regulators. An assessment is conducted that quantifies environmental impact through estimates of useable energy produced and carbon emissions avoided by AGreen Energy's project to install anaerobic digesters on five Massachusetts farms. The analysis shows the anaerobic co-digestion of manure and source separated organics under project conditions results in a net energy gain of 1:2.9 and a GHG emissions reduction of 50% over business as usual, justifying the technique as a sustainable residual management tool for dairy operations as well as food industry businesses.This life cycle assessment aims to determine the most suitable operating conditions for algae biodiesel production in cold climates to minimize energy consumption and environmental impacts. Two hypothetical photobioreactor algae production and biodiesel plants located in Upstate New York (USA) are modeled. The photobioreactor is assumed to be housed within a greenhouse that is located adjacent to a fossil fuel or biomass power plant that can supply waste heat and flue gas containing CO2 as a primary source of carbon. Model results show that the biodiesel areal productivity is high (19 to 25 L of BD/m(2)/yr). The total life cycle energy consumption was between 15 and 23 MJ/L of algae BD and 20 MJ/L of soy BD. Energy consumption and air emissions for algae biodiesel are substantially lower than soy biodiesel when waste heat was utilized. Algae's most substantial contribution is a significant decrease in the petroleum consumed to make the fuel.Climate change and the wish to reduce the dependence on oil are the incentives for the development of alternative energy sources. The use of lignocellulosic biomass together with cellulosic processing technology provides opportunities to produce fuel ethanol with less competition with food and nature. Many studies on energy analysis and life cycle assessment of second- generation bioethanol have been conducted. However, due to the different methodology used and different system boundary definition, it is difficult to compare their results. To permit a direct comparison of fuel ethanol from different lignocelluloses in terms of energy use and environmental impact, seven studies conducted in our group were summarized in this paper, where the same technologies were used to convert biomass to ethanol, the same system boundaries were defined, and the same allocation procedures were followed. A complete set of environmental impacts ranging from global warming potential to toxicity aspects is used. The results provide an overview on the energy efficiency and environmental performance of using fuel ethanol derived from different feedstocks in comparison with gasoline.The dark side of Moore's Law is our society's insatiable need to constantly upgrade our computing devices. As a result, the typical processor is only used for a fraction of it's expected lifetime, despite the immense cost to produce a processor. While the rapid advance of technology makes silicon obsolete in a few years, we propose that chips should be reused for less demanding computing tasks. This re-use strategy creates a food chain of computing devices which amortizes the energy required to build processors over several computing generations. This paper is structured into two parts. First, we describe a proposed a processor re-use strategy, showing that processor re-use makes sense for low-power, embedded processors. These re-usable processors occupy a design space that requires us to implement flexible and reliable processors. The second part of this paper describes student efforts centered around re-usable processors at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo as well as the University of California, Santa Barbara.In this mixed-methods longitudinal study, 64 engineering students participated in a 15-minute lab-based engineering design task toward the end of their second and fourth years. Fifteen of those students also participated in open-ended interviews in their senior year, in which they were asked about their college experiences and conceptions of sustainable development. Analysis of these data reveal that while the students often talked about sustainable development in terms of limited resources and the life cycle of engineered products, relatively few considered the life cycle when actually engaged in engineering design. An in-depth examination of four students' educational experiences, narratives about sustainable development, and performance on the engineering task suggested implications for engineering education. Making sustainable development explicit in engineering classrooms and facilitating the development of self-directed learning skills in engineering students should improve students' abilities to develop knowledge about sustainable development and transfer such knowledge to new engineering contexts.The overall purpose of this research was to research attitudes and threshold concepts (key concepts or gate keeper concepts) of beginning engineering students towards the relationship between environment/ecology and engineering specifically towards choosing: either (a) engineering as a career to make an environmental impact or (b) choosing environmental and ecological engineering as a specific engineering profession. The project was situated in the context of life cycle analysis and the environmental impacts of design, manufacturing, use and disposal of products. The study employed also an innovative research design: The researchers investigated students' conceptions and attitudes (and change of both) by asking students to co-design an educational game with them-through a series of workshops. Of particular focus was the change of students' conceptual understanding of core environmental and ecological concepts during the design process. First, we reported the results of a survey of 1437 first-year engineering students at the Purdue University, West Lafayette campus. The survey tested student knowledge of environmental issues, their prioritization of sustainable development in various contexts, and also explored student attitude toward change. We observed positive correlations between the high school science courses or high school environmental education, and the average environmental knowledge scores. There was no difference in average knowledge scores when comparing male and female students. In addition, we reported the results of an analysis of students' data as collected within the workshops. Second, we reported on preliminary findings on the participatory design workshops (n=24). The study revealed several areas of 'troublesome' knowledge of students.Two projects combine selective deconstruction with job training. Beyond financial savings, training is a huge bonus during recession. Scarcity shows us opportunity. Waste is an unneeded expense, and deconstruction offers savings and jobs. We illustrate material donor and recipient economics. The road between includes contractors spending labour to lower the material 'price' and refurbishers who find broader markets for their product, partially because of green building popularity. The life cycle (LCA, 2001) includes community. Regulation can support conservation and local industry. If manufacturers relocate, displaced workers cannot afford (typically expensive) locally made goods. A local economy creates better quality of life.Oil palm requires 7-11 times less land area than soyabean, rapeseed and sunflower to produce the same amount of oil. Therefore, the use of palm oil for food and biofuel, has saved 97-159 million ha of land from being deforested for cultivation with lower yielding oil crops. This has avoided 27-45 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO(2)-e) emissions. Oil palm also sequesters eight times more CO(2) than soyabean. As a biofuel, the use of palm biodiesel results in 62-82% Life Cycle Analysis Greenhouse Gas (LCA GHG) reduction when compared with fossil fuel.This study presents the results of a life cycle assessment of energy usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electricity generation by small hydroelectric projects for understanding the characteristics of these systems from the perspective of global warming. Two types of hydropower schemes, viz. canal-based and dam-toe schemes, have been analyzed. The energy pay-back time for canal-based scheme is found in the range of 1.18-1.31 years. The corresponding values for dam-toe are 0.44-1.12 years. Similarly, GHG emissions (gCO2eq/kWhe) from canal-based and dam-toe schemes are in the range of 32.23-35.35 and 11.91-31.2 respectively. Using the economic input-output based life cycle assessment approach, energy pay-back timeand GHG emission have been quantified.Assuming that the goal of social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is to assess damage and benefits on its 'area of protection' (AoP) as accurately as possible, it follows that the impact pathways, describing the cause effect relationship between indicator and the AoP, should have a consistent theoretical foundation so the inventory results can be associated with a predictable damage or benefit to the AoP. This article uses two concrete examples from the work on SLCA to analyse to what extent this is the case in current practice. One considers whether indicators included in SLCA approaches can validly assess impacts on the well-being of the stakeholder, whereas the other example addresses whether the 'incidence of child labour' is a valid measure for impacts on the AoPs. The theoretical basis for the impact pathway between the relevant indicators and the AoPs is analysed drawing on research from relevant scientific fields. The examples show a lack of valid impact pathways in both examples. The first example shows that depending on the definition of 'well-being', the assessment of impacts on well-being of the stakeholder cannot be performed exclusively with the type of indicators which are presently used in SLCA approaches. The second example shows that the mere fact that a child is working tells little about how this may damage or benefit the AoPs, implying that the normally used indicator; 'incidence of child labour' lacks validity in relation to predicting damage or benefit on the AoPs of SLCA. New indicators are proposed to mitigate the problem of invalid impact pathways. However, several problems arise relating to difficulties in getting data, the usability of the new indicators in management situations, and, in relation to example one, boundary setting issues. The article shows that it is possible to assess the validity of the impact pathways in SLCA. It thereby point to the possibility of utilising the same framework that underpins the environmental LCA in this regard. It also shows that in relation to both of the specific examples investigated, the validity of the impact pathways may be improved by adopting other indicators, which does, however, come with a considerable 'price'. It is argued that there is a need for analysing impact pathways of other impact categories often included in SLCA in order to establish indicators that better reflect actual damage or benefit to the AoPs.To achieve sustainable development in industrial processes, attributed chemical risks as well as environmental impacts should be managed. Such non-monetary issues have been analyzed by scientific assessment methodologies such as various risk assessment (RA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) procedures. Local risks to be addressed in RA are microenvironments, including the workplace and neighborhood. Although a comprehensive interpretation of such risks is necessitated in industrial decision making, no practical method has been developed to interpret various types of risk with sufficient understandings of plant-specific functions and constraints. Because elaborate model-based approaches are inevitable for practical process development, actual case studies on chemical risks and detailed plant-specific functions and constraints should be performed. Manufacturing processes require that metal parts must be cleaned in preparation for surface treatments or the completion of metal processing. The significant amount of cleansing agents utilized in cleaning processes has become an issue in Japan. Almost all cleaning processes in Japan are carried out by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Machinery processes have not been systematically analyzed in terms of chemical risks and, in addition, the environmental management skills of SMEs are generally far behind those of large enterprises. The objective of this study is to reveal the relationships between chemical risks and plant-specific conditions for a practical risk reduction carried out by industrial decision makers. For this purpose, we aimed at the analysis of such relationships in metal-cleaning processes. Through this analysis, the correlation between local risks and global impacts were discussed in terms of plant-specific conditions. Through several investigations on cleaning processes, plant-specific functions and constraints were determined with process data required for plant-specific RA and LCA. By plant-specific RA, workers' and neighbors' health risks of inhalational exposure to the utilized cleansing agents were evaluated as unit exposure amount [mg center dot kg(-1)center dot day(-1)] and total exposure amount [mg center dot day(-1)] in the workplace and neighborhood. As global environmental impacts, human health impacts were evaluated by LCA using disability-adjusted life years through the life cycle of process chemicals including cleansing agents and utilities. On the basis of evaluation results, the relationships among plant-specific conditions and the results were analyzed and discussed by using the results of regression analyses and the Akaike information criterion (AIC). The impacts due to the use of cleansing agents contributed largely to total human health in the LCA results. The results of the functional unit "Cleaning of unit weight of products" demonstrated that the magnitudes of total impacts were not considerably different. In plant-specific RA results, the neighborhood concentrations in some cases were higher than the average concentration in Japan. The neighbors' total exposure amounts were highly connected with the emission amount of cleansing agents and population densities. Because workplace concentrations were different from site-to-site and do not have a simple relationship to the emission amount of cleansing agents, the exposure amounts of workers indicated complicated trends. According to detailed interpretation of all the results, a relationship between occupational exposure and agent emission was revealed. Some devices that enhance the process functions became emission factors, such as the local ventilation device installed to keep the workplace safe. Additionally, the shapes of metal parts to be cleaned and cleaning requirements increased the emission of cleansing agents to indoors and outdoors directly. Additionally, some regression analyses and AIC comparisons showed that these plant-specific conditions can be regarded as factors having non-negligible effects on local risks and global impacts. In cleaning processes, utilizing various agents to meet cleanliness requirements, plant-specific conditions should be taken into account in their assessments to reduce the chemical risks practically. Constraints from decision makers in the other stages of a product life cycle are unchangeable for on-site engineers in a given process. In this regard, however, the process functions for complying with the requirements originating from the constraints can be managed by on-site engineers. To deal with the risks originating from such factors, operations and devices should be appropriately designed. To achieve such designs, statistical approaches and process understandings should be used in a collaboration to reveal the practical relationship among local risks, global impacts, and process conditions. Local risks and global impacts attributable to metal parts cleaning processes were evaluated in terms of workers' and neighbors' health risks and global human health impacts. A careful interpretation of evaluation results revealed that local risks have features different from those of global impacts. In this paper, we demonstrate that local risks are highly connected with plant-specific conditions. For an appropriate practical implementation of local impacts, as well as plant specification, the characteristics of industrial sectors, including related laws and regulations, should be taken into account to address them from the viewpoint of agent emissions, which can be obtained in ordinary LCA. Otherwise, the data collected in life cycle inventory should be sufficiently expanded to estimate the requirements or to specify an appropriate model. The approach to analyze and relate the plant-specific functions and constraints with local risk and global impact can be useful and effective for revealing their factors, which can be supporting information of generating alternatives for reducing them. The application of such an approach can also clarify the plant-specific risk and LCA performance in general. Additionally, the clarified relationship might lead to the increase of the attention of global issues within the decision making including industrial process design and policy making. Several models should be developed for model-based decision making considering plant-specific conditions.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has traditionally been considered a site-independent tool, but nowadays, there is a trend towards making LCA more site-dependent. Site-dependent characterization factors have been calculated for regional impact categories such as acidification, terrestrial and aquatic eutrophication, and smog. Specifically, for aquatic eutrophication, characterization factors have been proposed for large geographical areas (mainly European and North American countries). Those factors are not detailed enough for countries which present large geographical, climatic, and economical variability such as Spain. Therefore, this work aims to calculate the characterization factors and the normalization reference for aquatic eutrophication at a regional level, using Galicia (NW Spain), a region with increasing problems of eutrophication, as a case study. Finally, the comparison of the factors obtained here with literature values will be used to analyze the influence of spatial differentiation with increasing coverage of the causality chain. Particular ecological and economic reasons justify the estimation of characterization factors in Galicia taking into account the specific characteristics of three different ecosystems: Atlantic Ocean, freshwaters, and rias (a specific ecosystem that takes place when a river valley is submerged by a rise in sea level). Taking into account that the state of the art does not allow the calculation of an exhaustive effect factor, the work was focused on the calculation of transport and equivalency factors. Both the principal pathways of transport and the sources of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) were considered to calculate the characterization factors, and from them, the normalization reference was also obtained. An analysis on uncertainty identified the estimations of fractions of NH(x)-N and NO(x)-N deposited on maritime waters, land, and freshwaters and the fraction of N and P deposited in the soil that reaches water ecosystems, as the more uncertain values. As the rias are both N- and P-limited ecosystems, which is a characteristic of coastal and brackish waters in general, the approximation followed in this study to establish characterization factors for the rias can be applied to these types of ecosystems elsewhere (e.g., fiords in Norway) in order to better define aquatic eutrophication impact. By comparing the results obtained with those available in the literature, it is clear that the application of transport factors in the calculation of characterization factors leads to a more realistic definition of aquatic eutrophication, especially when P inputs to the soil are present. When varying the spatial differentiation (continent, country, or region), characterization factors do not vary significantly; however, this variation is likely to increase as long as the definition of the causality chain is improved as it has been reported for other impact categories. In this sense, the equations used in this study can be adapted when those effect factors became available, being flexible and suitable for future applications in other regions. This study describes the process to calculate aquatic eutrophication characterization factors at a more detailed scale than country, with the particularity of differentiating three different aquatic ecosystems, considering for the first time the rias. The results show the importance of including transport factors in the calculation of characterization factors for aquatic eutrophication, while spatial differentiation is less important at this level of sophistication in terms of coverage of the causality chain. The estimation of effect and damage factors is regarded as the next step in the sophistication of this category. On the other hand, the significance of transport factors makes their estimation for other regions than Europe and North America (the only available at the moment) also desirable.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was initially developed to answer questions about the environmental impact of available products and services, implying that the product system under study was possible to investigate in detail; however, if new products or processes are to be evaluated, several complications occur. So, this paper aims to review the methodological issues that need careful attention when LCA is used for evaluating novel products, processes, or production from an environmental standpoint, as well as to draw some recommendations related to the best approach when dealing with them. An initial brainstorming on the identification of methodological issues when applying the standard LCA methodology for the evaluation of novel products allowed the identification of the relevant aspects, on which a literature review was then performed. Periodical meetings took place for discussion of the significant references and an agreed approach validated through three case studies on the food sector was defined as result of the procedure. Five elements were identified as relevant for the specific application of LCA to novel products: type of LCA, functional unit, system boundaries, data gathering, and scenarios development. An analysis of the state of the art of the LCA methodology concerning each of them led to the definition of the recommended approach: Type of LCA: prospective attributional LCA. Functional unit (FU): physical FU or the inclusion of the economic dimension in the FU. Scenarios development: future perspective of scenarios is required, although the particular method for scenarios development will depend on the aim of the study. System boundaries: system expansion when possible and exclusion of those steps that are not affected. Data gathering: specific data for the foreground system, while average data-but checking the suitability of using actual data-for the background system. The recommended approach was described through three case studies related to food products and processing. All were comparative studies, with the common element of including novel products (such as the production of new products from by-products) or novel processes (such as membrane technology or high pressure processing). This paper has, in our opinion, helped in cleaning the area of the application of LCA to novel systems in particular related to food products and food processing which is an area of great development in the last years. The working procedure defined and applied here has worked fluently allowing the identification of the key methodological elements of an LCA and the associated state of the art, together with the validation through different case studies. The general application of our approach is difficult to assess; however, we feel confident regarding the recommendations proposed here and we hope they can be of use for other LCA users. We recommend using the approach defined here in order to check its applicability to other industrial sectors. By doing so, both us and other LCA users will benefit from the methodological improvements of this environmental management tool.The availability of fossil resources is predicted to decrease in the near future: they are a non-renewable source, they cause environmental concerns, and they are subjected to price instability. Utilization of biomass as raw material in a biorefinery is a promising alternative to fossil resources for production of energy carriers and chemicals, as well as for mitigating climate change and enhancing energy security. This paper focuses on a biorefinery concept which produces bioethanol, bioenergy, and biochemicals from switchgrass, a lignocellulosic crop. Results are compared with a fossil reference system producing the same products/services from fossil sources. The biorefinery system is investigated using a Life Cycle Assessment approach, which takes into account all the input and output flows occurring along the production chain. This paper elaborates on methodological key issues like land use change effects and soil N2O emissions, whose influence on final outcomes is weighted in a sensitivity analysis. Since climate change mitigation and energy security are the two most important driving forces for biorefinery development, the assessment has a focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cumulative primary energy demand (distinguished into fossil and renewable), but other environmental impact categories (e.g., abiotic depletion, eutrophication, etc.) are assessed as well. The use of switchgrass in a biorefinery offsets GHG emissions and reduces fossil energy demand: GHG emissions are decreased by 79% and about 80% of non-renewable energy is saved. Soil C sequestration is responsible for a large GHG benefit (65 kt CO2-eq/a, for the first 20 years), while switchgrass production is the most important contributor to total GHG emissions of the system. If compared with the fossil reference system, the biorefinery system releases more N2O emissions, while both CO2 and CH4 emissions are reduced. The investigation of the other impact categories revealed that the biorefinery has higher impacts in two categories: acidification and eutrophication. Results are mainly affected by raw material (i.e., switchgrass) production and land use change effects. Steps which mainly influence the production of switchgrass are soil N2O emissions, manufacture of fertilizers (especially those nitrogen-based), processing (i.e., pelletizing and drying), and transport. Even if the biorefinery chain has higher primary energy demand than the fossil reference system, it is mainly based on renewable energy (i.e., the energy content of the feedstock): the provision of biomass with sustainable practices is then a crucial point to ensure a renewable energy supply to biorefineries. This biorefinery system is an effective option for mitigating climate change, reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels, and enhancing cleaner production chains based on local and renewable resources. However, this assessment evidences that determination of the real GHG and energy balance (and all other environmental impacts in general) is complex, and a certain degree of uncertainty is always present in final results. Ranges in final results can be even more widened by applying different combinations of biomass feedstocks, conversion routes, fuels, end-use applications, and methodological assumptions. This study demonstrated that the perennial grass switchgrass enhances carbon sequestration in soils if established on set-aside land, thus, considerably increasing the GHG savings of the system for the first 20 years after crop establishment. Given constraints in land resources and competition with food, feed, and fiber production, high biomass yields are extremely important in achieving high GHG emission savings, although use of chemical fertilizers to enhance plant growth can reduce the savings. Some strategies, aiming at simultaneously maintaining crop yield and reduce N fertilization application through alternative management, can be adopted. However, even if a reduction in GHG emissions is achieved, it should not be disregarded that additional environmental impacts (like acidification and eutrophication) may be caused. This aspect cannot be ignored by policy makers, even if they have climate change mitigation objectives as main goal.Life cycle assessment (LCA) enables the objective assessment of global environmental burdens associated with the life cycle of a product or a production system. One of the main weaknesses of LCA is that, as yet, there is no scientific agreement on the assessment methods for land-use related impacts, which results in either the exclusion or the lack of assessment of local environmental impacts related to land use. The inclusion of the desertification impact in LCA studies of any human activity can be important in high-desertification risk regions. This paper focuses on the development of a methodology for including the desertification environmental impact derived from land use in LCA studies. A set of variables to be measured in the life cycle inventory (LCI), their characterisation factors (CFs) and an impact assessment method for the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase are suggested. The CFs were acquired using a geographical information system (GIS). For the LCI stage it is necessary to register information on: (1) the four biophysical variables of aridity, erosion, aquifer overexploitation and fire risk, with a created scale of values; (2) the geographical location of the activity and (3) the spatial and temporal extension of the activity. For the CFs, the four LCI biophysical variables in (1) were measured for the main terrestrial natural regions (ecoregions) by means of GIS. Using GIS, calculation of the CF for the aridity variable shows that 38% of the world area, in eight out of 15 existing ecoregions, is at risk of desertification. The most affected is the tropical/subtropical desert. The LCIA model has been developed to identify scenarios without desertification impact. The developed method makes possible the inclusion of the desertification impact derived from land use in LCA studies, using data generally available to LCA users. While this LCIA model may be a simplified approach, it can be calibrated and improved for different case studies. The model proposed is suitable for assessing the desertification impact of any type of human activity and may be complemented with specific activity indicators, and although we have considered biophysical factors, the method can be extended to socio-economic vectors.A new trend driven by climate change concerns is the interest to label consumer products with a carbon footprint (CF) number. Here, we present a study that examines the uncertainty in the estimated CFs of a liquid and a compact powder detergent and how the uncertainty varies with the type of comparison one wishes to make. A simplified CF model for detergents, encompassing all life cycle stages, has been used for the calculation of CFs. The CFs for the two detergents were compared under three different cases: (1) a situation where most of life cycle assessment (LCA) system is similar, (2) a situation where the LCA background systems may be different but certain choices with regard to system boundaries are standardized, and (3) a situation where the LCA background system, choices of system boundaries, and foreground system may also be different. Uncertainty in the CFs was calculated for each of the three comparison situations using a stepwise sensitivity/uncertainty analysis approach. The stepwise approach makes it possible to obtain reliable uncertainty estimates without the need to have very good uncertainty descriptions for every input parameter. Only a few input parameters were found to drive the uncertainty of the CF values. For case 1, the uncertainties in the difference between the CF of the ultraliquid and compact powder products are very small. The CF of compact powder is always larger than that of the ultraliquid product. In case 3, the uncertainties become much larger, such that in 23% of the cases, a CF comparison would wrongly indicate that the compact powder product has a lower CF than the ultraliquid product. Case 2 falls between the extremes of cases 1 and 3. One of the challenges of developing user-friendly CF methods based on the ISO 14040 framework is to ensure a high level of comparability of CF values, such that misleading or oversimplified conclusions can be avoided. Our analysis shows how the uncertainty margins around the calculation of a CF for a set of given products will broaden as the assessment moves from an "internal" comparison to a comparison with data from third parties where there is no specific information how these data have been obtained. CF calculations based on internal comparisons can lead to very clear distinctions between products and illustrate the utility of a CF tool to optimize the environmental performance of products using difference analysis. CF calculations for products can only provide a fair comparison if the LCA background system used for the two products is the same and exactly the same choices in the foreground system are made. In practice, this would require consultation and agreement on specific product category rules. Simplification is needed for a wider adoption of uncertainty analysis in CF and LCA. This article introduces some first steps towards such simplification, but more work is needed both on the theoretical and practical aspects of simplified uncertainty analyses.Most life cycle inventory data for crops do not include the ultimate (marginal) land use induced by crop consumption. The aims of this study were to present, document and discuss a method which can solve this problem and, furthermore, to present concrete examples for wheat consumption in Brazil, China, Denmark and the USA. A global scope is applied and the simulated adaptation to increased wheat demand corresponds to a long-term temporal scope under present market conditions with present technology. The economic general equilibrium model, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) is modified and applied. Agricultural statistics and a number of global land use and land cover datasets are used in the modification and the processing of the model output. Some of the land use datasets are processed by use of a geographic information system tool. The net expansion of the global agricultural area per tonne of wheat consumed in Brazil, China, Denmark and the USA is estimated at 2,000, 260, 1,700, and 3,200 m(2), respectively. For Brazil, the expansion mainly affects tropical evergreen forest. For China and the USA, the expansion mainly affects boreal deciduous forest, savanna, open shrubland and tropical evergreen forest, and for Denmark, it mainly affects savanna, tropical evergreen forest and dense shrubland. The areas affected are quantified in the land use life cycle inventory (LCI) produced for the four countries. The method applied allows for an even more detailed land use LCI than the one presented in this study. Results are influenced by existing global trade patterns and their inertia. Such aspects should be acknowledged in life cycle assessment (LCA). The method takes its starting point in consumption rather than production. The method presented makes it possible to simulate the main mechanisms of the global agricultural system and thereby construct an LCI containing the land use induced by crop consumption in a given region and the nature types (biomes) affected. The results are sensitive to changes in the so-called Armington elasticities representing the inertia of global trade patterns. It is considered reasonable to double the standard elasticities in the GTAP model for the construction of LCI data. Wheat consumption in different countries result in different land use consequences due to differences in trade patterns, which are governed by transport and trade costs, among other factors. The modelling could be improved by incorporating a mechanism simulating legal fertiliser and pesticide restrictions, by better assessment of the amount of land suitable for livestock but not crop production (grazable land), by including irrigation and by a further differentiation of land fertility. Moreover, the method could be expanded to include intensification aspects in the LCI. The method could inspire a new approach to general LCI modelling in LCA and may also be of interest in the debate on the environmental impacts of biofuels.The building sector is strategically important for achieving sustainability. Therefore, the improvement of energy and environmental performances are relevant targets because precious building materials such as marble have a significant impact on the environment. The aim of this paper is an analysis of a typical Sicilian marble (Perlato di Sicilia) to evaluate its energy and environmental performance. Marble plays an important role in the economy of Italy and has a global market share of 58% in terms of exports. For the main production areas of marble, relevant environmental performance data are missing except for one region (Tuscany-Massa e Carrara province). Perlato di Sicilia, the main marble of Custonaci (Sicily), has never been analyzed previously. Life cycle assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14040/44 is applied to marble tiles and slabs. For the life cycle inventory, data were collected from a representative plant in the Custonaci basin. In this small area of 69 km(2), about 54 quarries and related cutting plants are concentrated. The impact assessment includes the following categories: global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), and photochemical oxidation (POCP), following the CML-IA baseline 2007. The results of the impact assessment for 1 mA(3) of marble tiles are 314.8 kg CO(2eq) of GWP, 1.19 kg SO(2eq) of AP, 0.073 g PO(4---eq) of EP, and 0.046 kg ethylene(eq) of POCP. For slabs, the corresponding results were 200.1 kg CO(2eq) of GWP, 0.77 kg SO(2eq) of AP, 0.053 kg PO(4---eq) of EP, and 0.029 kg ethylene(eq) of POCP. The total embodied energy values of tiles and slabs are, respectively, 1,772 MJ/m(3) and 1,168 MJ/m(3). This comparison shows that tiles manufacturing has higher values of embodied energy and environmental performance indicators. The value of the Custonaci slabs is reasonable compared to the Carrara marble (mainly slabs), and the embodied energy value of which is between 698 MJ/m(3) and 1,414 MJ/m(3). The main contribution to the energy consumption is due to electricity demand: 80% for tiles and 75% for slabs. Moreover, a comparison with the European type I Ecolabel criteria for natural hard floor coverings has been carried out to understand the range of the environmental impacts of Perlato di Sicilia compared to the thresholds reported in European Decision 272/2002. This study is the first LCA of a typical Sicilian marble. The environmental interventions of the Custonaci marble appear to be slightly higher than Carrara marble. The nature of Custonaci marble and the technology involved in its production have reached the same performance level as in Carrara. Nevertheless, Custonaci marble is on the way to being an environmentally friendly product, as is shown by the comparison with Ecolabel criteria. The hot spots determined in this study are: the amount of spoils produced during the extraction step, the disposal of sludge resulting from cutting and finishing directly in the sawmill, the lack of the water recycling treatment in the quarry itself (as outlined in the European Ecolabel criteria), and the high electricity consumption.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is becoming an increasingly widespread tool in support systems for environmental decision-making regarding the cleanup of contaminated sites. In this study, the use of LCA to compare the environmental impacts of different remediation technologies was reviewed. Remediation of a contaminated site reduces a local environmental problem, but at the same time, the remediation activities may cause negative environmental impacts on the local, regional, and global scale. LCA can be used to evaluate the inherent trade-off and to compare remediation scenarios in terms of their associated environmental burden. An overview of the assessed remediation technologies and contaminant types covered in the literature is presented. The LCA methodologies of the 12 reviewed studies were compared and discussed with special focus on their goal and scope definition and the applied impact assessment. The studies differ in their basic approach since some are prospective with focus on decision-support while others are retrospective aiming at a more detailed assessment of a completed remediation project. The literature review showed that only few life cycle assessments have been conducted for in situ remediation technologies aimed at groundwater-threatening contaminants and that the majority of the existing literature focuses on ex situ remediation of contaminated soil. The functional unit applied in the studies is generally based on the volume of contaminated soil (or groundwater) to be treated; this is in four of the studies combined with a cleanup target for the remediation. While earlier studies often used more simplified impact assessment models, the more recent studies based their impact assessment on established methodologies covering the conventional set of impact categories. Ecotoxicity and human toxicity are the impact categories varying the most between these methodologies. Many of the reviewed studies address the importance of evaluating both primary and secondary impacts of site remediation. Primary impacts cover the local impacts related to residual contamination left in the subsurface during and after remediation and will vary between different remediation technologies due to different cleanup efficiencies and cleanup times. Secondary impacts are resource use and emissions arising in other stages of the life cycle of the remediation project. Among the reviewed literature, different approaches for modeling the long-term primary impacts of site contamination have been used. These include steady state models as well as dynamic models. Primary impacts are not solely a soil contamination or surface water issue, since many frequently occurring contaminants, such as chlorinated solvents, have the potential to migrate to the groundwater as well as evaporate to ambient air causing indoor climate problems. Impacts in the groundwater compartment are not included in established impact assessment methodologies; thus, the potential groundwater contamination impacts from residual contamination are difficult to address in LCA of site remediation. Due to the strong dependence on local conditions (sensitivity of groundwater aquifer, use for drinking water supply, etc.) a more site-specific impact assessment approach than what is normally applied in LCA is of relevance. The inclusion of groundwater impacts from soil contaminants requires the definition of an impact category covering human toxicity via groundwater or the inclusion of these impacts in the human toxicity impact category and the associated characterization models and normalization procedures. When evaluating groundwater impacts, attention should also be paid to potentially degradable contaminants forming metabolites of higher human toxic concern than the parent compound.Lightweight design is a common means of reducing a passenger car's fuel consumption. In order to calculate the resulting fuel savings, one has to estimate the total energy that is needed to move a certain weight over a defined distance in a distinct way, and express this energy in liter of gasoline or diesel. This can be accomplished by the so-called fuel reduction value (FRV) and based on a standardized driving cycle, e.g., the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). The aim of this paper is to explain the theoretical background of the calculation of fuel savings in automotive lightweight life cycle assessments (LCAs) of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in greater detail than it has been done before, to describe the resulting factors and their different applications, and to point out some notable particularities that need to be taken into account when conducting this type of LCA study. The first part of the paper explains the theoretical background of the FRV based on physical correlations and simulations. Based on these findings, its application in the context of automotive LCAs is described. The respective characteristics and preconditions are explained in detail. It is shown that for LCAs that deal with automotive parts or assemblies, it is not permissible to multiply their respective net weight by the FRV under the assumption that the vehicle's performance remains unchanged. However, the consideration of secondary lightweight effects concerning engine displacement or gear ratio is only possible under this assumption. This entails a significantly higher FRV, but in turn only allows for the calculation of the net fuel reduction, which is zero for the reference part and carries a negative sign for all lightweight design options. In practice, both FRV (0.12 and 0.28 l/(100 km*100 kg) for diesel vehicles resp. 0.15 and 0.35 l/(100 km*100 kg) for gasoline vehicles) are equally likely in case that no comprehensive information is available about whether a weight-induced power train adaptation will take place or not. This approach stresses the decision makers' responsibility to ensure such measures. It appears to be indicated from a scientific point of view to include power train adaptations in automotive lightweight LCA studies in order to preserve functional equality in terms of the vehicle's driving performance. Yet, in practice this adaptation will most likely not take place if the weight difference is rather small. If there is no reliable information available that a weight-induced power train adaptation is guaranteed to take place, then a scenario without power train adaptation should be presented to the decision makers as well in form of an equally probable best and worst case. It has been shown that the fuel consumption in order to move a mass of 100 kg over 100 km can be obtained based on the NEDC driving cycle and the differential efficiency of gasoline and diesel engines. If possible secondary measures are taken into account (gear ratio and engine displacement) the resulting values can be augmented significantly. It has also been shown that it is advisable to utilize mass differences rather than mass ratios when calculating the lightweight effect on fuel consumption during the use stage. This implies that the resulting fuel saving of a lightweight component compared to the reference component carries a negative sign, while a lightweight vehicle's fuel consumption is positive. It is strongly recommended to follow the proposed calculation procedure in future automotive lightweight studies. The authors further recommend the use of both FRV (with and without secondary measures) and the appropriate and explicit communication of the resulting implications.Purpose - The increasing focus on environmental sustainability and social responsibility within business agendas often leads to expectations that solutions lie in the downscaling, decentralising and deconsolidating of supply chains and logistics systems. This is no more acute than within the climate change agenda, the single biggest environmental challenge to industry today. The purpose of this paper is to challenge these notions and suggest that environmental burden actually decreases across increasing logistical scale and supply chain sophistication. Design/methodology/approach - Primary and secondary life cycle analysis and carbon auditing case evidence detailing and describing operations throughout the food supply chain is used to show what happens to resource efficiency when we chose possible "downscaling" routes. Findings - The paper contends that the principle of economic efficiency leading to environmental efficiency (or "lean is green") is more generally applicable against our previous expectations and that supply chain sophistication and logistical scale is more likely to lead to environmental benefit rather than cost. Practical implications - From a commercial and industrial point of view, the paper provides evidence to promote conventional supply chain management good practice as a means of driving the demand needed for the technological change required to achieve climate change targets. This is good news for suppliers and distributors, particularly in the light of global economic conditions. From a consumer and policy perspective, the upshot of the paper is a call for more pragmatic thinking and a reminder that critical evidence-based decision making should be used when judging how best to formulate supply strategies. Originality/value - This paper represents a fresh way of thinking utilising more robust evidence amongst a set of issues that have become precariously muddled and confused.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and design for environment (DFE) methods were applied to assess opportunities for reducing the environmental impacts of forklift manufacturing unit processes and to redesign those unit processes to increase overall sustainability. The unit processes of forklift manufacture generating the most environmental emissions were identified by applying LCA methodology. The results show that eco-toxicity and human toxicity were the most significant impacts of the forklift manufacturing process overall. Also, within the manufacturing unit processes, cutting, welding and painting had the highest impact values. In order to minimise environmental impacts, a new paint was created with increased solid content over the existing solvent paint used in the painting process. In addition, by applying DFE methodology and the high solid paint, overcoat and drying steps were eliminated from the forklift painting process. As a result, the environmental index of a follow-up LCA showed that environmental impacts could be reduced by 20%, while volatile organic compound (VOC) and paint usage could be decreased by 30% and 20%, respectively.In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) method was used to examine the environmental impact of the rice production system in Taihu region, China. The LCA considered the entire system required to produce 1 t of rice. The analysis included raw material extraction and transportation, agrochemical production and transportation, and arable farming in the field. The result shows that the significance of environmental impacts, followed by aquatic eutrophication, water depletion, global warming, acidification, and energy depletion. As such, reducing nitrogen (N) fertilizer intensity and increasing utilization efficiency are the key points to control the life cycle environmental impacts of rice, which would decrease resource consumption and emissions not only directly in the arable farming subsystem but also indirectly in the upstream production stage. Strengthening water management, especially in the early growth stage, and reduction of paddy field water discharge are also significant measures with which to minimize N and phosphorus (P) runoff losses and control acidification potential (AP) and aquatic eutrophication potential (AEP), so as to reduce life cycle environmental impacts of the rice production system.The transport sector is responsible for a large and growing share of global emissions that affect climate change. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems have been identified as an efficient public transport option, but their total emissions across the entire operation chain have not been quantified. This paper proposed a carbon footprint model of the BRT system based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, with three components: infrastructures, fuels and vehicles. A case study of Xiamen City was carried out to offer a broader perspective on the greenhouse gas (GHG) impact. Results showed that the total carbon footprint of Xiamen's BRT system was 55,927 tCO2e per year. The main emission phases, infrastructure operations, vehicle fuel consumption and infrastructure material production, respectively, accounted for 31%, 30% and 23%. The direct emission from fuel consumption was 13,059 tCO2e per year, accounting for 23% of the total carbon footprint. Considering only direct emissions, the BRT system could achieve reductions of approximately 25,255 tCO2e per year compared to the no-build option. The carbon footprint model proved effective in identifying and measuring GHG emissions of each activity of the BRT life cycle.The cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept of McDonough and Braungart, which has a strong emphasis on materials strategy, gives a vision of a sustainable future, inspired by nature. Their guilt-free approach has enthused many new people, drawing them into the field of sustainability. However, the question of when and how the C2C concept can be applied successfully in business is still being debated. This paper takes a look at the applicability of the C2C concept in day-to-day product development in a business setting. Based on student design projects for several multinationals, the strengths and weaknesses of the concept are evaluated. In particular, the compatibility of C2C and life cycle assessment (LCA) is addressed. The authors conclude that LCA and C2C can and should be used as complementary tools. C2C's main value is that it triggers many questions about current business practice. Designers may play an interesting role in 'paving the way' for the restructuring of business operations according to C2C: through design pilots they can show how C2C could make business sense. LCA should be used to assess whether such pilots still make environmental sense if implemented in today's 'real world'.Much research effort is focusing on the reduction of man's carbon footprint in response to global energy and sustainability initiatives. The prudence of such activities is reliant on the embodied energy (EE) of materials and processes from cradle to gate, which influence overall energy of products and processes from cradle to grave. This paper evaluates the lifecycle energy and carbon intensity of a solar thermal collector with indirect coil heat exchange, for UK applications. The analysis is inclusive of materials, manufacture, transportation, installation and maintenance, and derives energy and carbon payback periods for a typical domestic system suitable for the domestic hot water needs of a three-bedroom home in the UK. The improvement analysis demonstrates how EE and carbon can be reduced through increased use of recycled materials, generating reductions in payback times of up to 10 months.Sustainability-related issues present significant financial, strategic, compliance and operational risks to manufacturers. Many of these risks directly or indirectly result from the way a product is designed and managed across its life cycle. Assessing sustainability risk (S-R) at the product design stage is crucial for the development of products that both minimise sustainability risk exposure and are environmentally sustainable. Managing the costs associated with these risks requires risk management intervention at the design stage before these costs are committed throughout the life cycle (production, use, end-of-life). The goal of the sustainability risk assessment (SRA) methodology is to provide an approach to comparing the financial cost of a 'sustainable product' vs. an 'unsustainable product', by factoring in the effects of S-R on life-cycle cost. The SRA methodology demonstrates that, in some cases, sustainable products cost less than unsustainable products when sustainability risk is considered in the costing analysis. This paper outlines the first step of the SRA methodology, which is a process for identifying SR inherent in the product life cycle. Once key risks are identified, the subsequent steps of the SRA assess and prioritise these risks for treatment through changes to product design and materials composition.Cement production accounts for approximately 5% of total global CO2 emissions from all human activities. In addition, the consumption of virgin aggregates for concrete infrastructure has created virgin material scarcity issues in many areas of the USA. High-performance green concrete (HPGC) with fly ash and recycled aggregates can help reduce the demand for material inputs and reduce pollution outputs associated with bulk material flow of urban concrete. Structural and durability tests showed that HPGC containing fly ash and 50% recycled aggregate (100% of the coarse aggregate fraction) performed equally or better than 100% ordinary Portland cement concrete with the same cementitious content. Durability improvements were more significant with Class F than Class C fly ash. For both Class F and Class C fly ash, greater per cent replacement of Portland cement with fly ash led to slower and lower strength gain, but still within acceptable strength criteria for Colorado Department of Transportation Class B concrete. This paper quantifies the sustainability of HPGC in urban infrastructure by addressing structural performance, environmental, economic and resource depletion impacts.International conferences in the framework of the United Nations are working towards an "Environmentally Friendly Vehicles" (EFV) concept. However, any claim about environmental friendliness is not in line with fundamental ISO rules to avoid misleading and vague claims. Nevertheless, there is the aim to establish an information system covering the environmental performance of vehicles to support public and private purchase decisions. Different approaches to establish such an information system are evaluated by a SWOT analysis. The result is that, based on current approaches, a definition of an EFV concept is technically not feasible. However, recommendations for further work arc derived.The main purpose of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to date has been to evaluate life cycle impacts of different design solutions and materials for a car, its sub-systems and components. Considerable number of publications are available on LCA of automotive components. This research aims to extend the LCA approach by evaluating and comparing the effects of mass reduction of passenger seats for different vehicle models in order to provide strategic support for decision making in the development process and to validate the environmental benefits of design alternatives under investigation. For this purpose, the paper presents a comprehensive LCA of passenger seats with detailed consideration of alternative scenarios for the use phase for different vehicle models.This paper introduces some methodological issues that arise when assessing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with a refrigerated product where several products are stored in one refrigeration facility. These products may be in the same room, or alternatively products in different rooms (at different temperatures) may use a common refrigeration plant. Assessment of the GHG emissions associated with any one product is complicated by differences in heat load (as influenced by initial product cooling, product respiration, room insulation quality, room door usage, seasonal weather conditions and storage temperature), refrigeration system effectiveness (Coefficient of Performance) and facility usage (space utilisation) on a daily basis. A simple hypothetical example is used to compare the results obtained from three alternative allocation methods for allocating GHG emissions between different stored products: allocation by mass (tonnes), storage time (tonne. day), and on the basis of heat load calculation and refrigeration effectiveness estimation (kWh).The construction and operation of transportation infrastructure, in particular roadway pavements, lies at the nexus of two major sources of our global sustainability challenge; large amounts of emissions from both transportation activities and construction materials production. Within this paper, the use of life cycle assessment models to quantify the impact of various pavement applications is discussed, along with the asphalt pavement durability models necessary for pavement service life prediction. These two concepts are then integrated though a probabilistic design framework for sustainable pavement infrastructure.This paper presents the life-cycle analysis approach used for pavement design, construction, and maintenance management. The traditional analysis considers agency costs and user costs associated with pavement service life. However, the impacts of pavement infrastructure on the environment and energy use have been historically ignored. Providing and maintaining pavements in a "sustainable" world requires pavement engineers to minimize demand on natural resources and impacts on the environment. These topics and mitigation strategies are discussed considering innovative pavement materials and construction methods, non-pavement features, vehicle improvements, and alternative renewable energy sources.This paper introduces the impact categories for life cycle assessment of sustainable asphalt pavements. Additional features of the major environmental impacts are also described. The description of this study is expected to be helpful for implementing the sustainable asphalt pavements.As regulation and competition drives the creation of environmentally sustainable systems, cradle-to-cradle life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies are becoming increasingly commonplace. However, existing LCA techniques are often laborious and costly to implement. Moreover, while LCA provides great insight into the impact of a given product or service, the translation of LCA outputs into iterative design inputs is not straightforward. A tighter linkage between product design and LCA methods is desired. In this paper, we propose creating such a linkage through the method of "exergo-thermo-volumes". Specifically, we consider the design of an enterprise server with multiple heat dissipating components. Each of these heat dissipating components can be represented as an exergo-thermo-volume (ETV). Simultaneously, the cooling solution that removes heat from each of these components is also treated as an ETV. We show that the optimal system design can be determined through superposition of each of these ETVs with appropriately coupled boundary conditions. The resulting ETV representation of discretized heat sources and companioned cooling solutions essentially leads to the creation of an ETV network, which can then be optimized for the minimum sustainability footprint. We find that the optimal solution predicted by the exergo-thermo-volume approach matches those that would be predicted intuitively based on general design-for-environment and thermal management practices, but using the current approach we are also able to quantitatively show the difference between the optimal and sub-optimal choices. We conclude by demonstrating the applicability of the exergo-thermo-volume approach for the sustainable design of an enterprise server.The production of table olives is one of the important agro food sectors in the Mediterranean Area. Both the cultivation and the processing of table olives have increased in recent years. Consumption has also gone up, not only in Mediterranean countries but also in northern Europe and in the USA. As the rise in the production of table olives has caused a considerable increase in the amount of waste generated by processing industries, the environmental impact is considerable. In the table olive sector alone the amount of waste water that has to be treated and disposed of is in excess of 750,000 tons/year. Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied to highlight the environmental hot spots arising during the production of green table olives, which are processed using the most commonly-used method world-wide: the Spanish-style. The analysis of the input and output materials and energy flows has enabled us to propose a hypothesis for reducing the impact on the environment.The aim of this contribution is to geve an overview about possible application of Life Cycle Assessment method in comparison of possible environmental impacts of various traffic scenarios. As an example demonstration of application of LCA on personal transport from Kladno town to Prague City is shown. The example study of selected commuter routes between two cities was performed. Use of several routes and various vehicles was taken into account - personal car, bus, train, metro, tram and their combinations. The potential of LCA in the field of passenger transport was discussed on the basis of the study.Assessment of the life cycle (LCA - Life Cycle Assessment) of a product, service or technology is one of the most important tools of environmental policy. This method is assumed to be a perspective voluntary instrument for implementation of sustainable development and allows us to assess both the demand for energy and raw materials, as well as the impacts on human life and on the life of ecosystems in the representative phases of product existence. The main objective of the article is presentation of the LCA method application on the standard car tyre focused on the impacts of the whole life cycle of tyre, individual phases in life cycle and comparison of different methods of treatment with used waste car tyres (cement works, pyrolysis, recycling). The results were evaluating by elementary flows and impact assessment. Dominative phase in the life cycle of car tyre is extraction of raw materials, the technologies for waste car tyre treatment are comparable in environemntal impacts. The software GaBi 4 Professional and methodology CML 2001 for impact assessment were used.Recently, sustainable materials have attracted attention because of the need to alleviate environmental problems. Bamboo, in particular, has attracted attention as a sustainable material because it has the fastest natural growth rate among various natural materials. A self-bonding fiberboard using high quality bamboo fiber extracted with a machining center has been enabled to be fabricated by hot press forming. Therefore, we propose a sustainable manufacturing system that focuses on bamboo. An environmental impact of our system was evaluated by life cycle assessment (LCA), comparing with a glass fiber reinforced plastic production. Additionally, based on the LCA result, higher efficient fiber extraction process was proposed by an application of in-situ measurement of uninformed bamboo shape with irregularity.Representative Life-Cycle Inventories (LCIs) are essential for Life-Cycle Assessments (LCAs) quality and readiness. Because energy is such an important element of LCAs, appropriate LCIs on energy are crucial, and due to the prevalence of hydropower on Brazilian electricity mix, the frequently used LCIs are not representative of the Brazilian conditions. The present study developed a LCI of the Itaipu Hydropower Plant, the major hydropower plant in the world, responsible for producing 23.8% of Brazil's electricity consumption. Focused on the capital investments to construct and operate the dam, the LCI was designed to serve as a database for the LCAs of Brazilian hydroelectricity production. The life-cycle boundaries encompass the construction and operation of the dam, as well as the life-cycles of the most important material and energy consumptions (cement, steel, copper, diesel oil, lubricant oil), as well as construction site operation, emissions from reservoir flooding, material and workers transportation, and earthworks. As a result, besides the presented inventory, it was possible to determine the following processes, and respective environmental burdens as the most important life-cycle hotspots: reservoir filling (CO(2) and CH(4) emission: land use); steel life-cycle (water and energy consumption; CO, particulates, SO(x) and NO(x) emissions); cement life-cycle (water and energy consumption; CO(2) and particulate emissions); and operation of civil construction machines (diesel consumption; NO(x) emissions). Compared with another hydropower studies, the LCI showed magnitude adequacy, with better results than small hydropower, which reveals a scale economy for material and energy exchanges in the case of ltaipu Power Plant. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of an environmental impact assessment of biodiesel production from soybean in Brazil. In order to achieve this objective, environmental impact indicators provided by Emergy Accounting (EA), Embodied Energy Analysis (EEA) and Material Flow Accounting (MFA) were used. The results showed that for one liter of biodiesel 8.8 kg of topsoil are lost in erosion, besides the cost of 0.2 kg of fertilizers, about 5.2 m(2) of crop area, 7.33 kg of abiotic materials, 9.0 tons of water and 0.66 kg of air and about 0.86 kg Of CO(2) were released. About 0.27 kg of crude oil equivalent is required as inputs to produce one liter of biodiesel, which means an energy return of 2.48 J of biodiesel per joule of fossil fuel invested. The transformity of biodiesel (3.90E + 05 seJ J(-1)) is higher than those calculated for fossil fuels as other biofuels, indicating a higher demand for direct and indirect environmental support. Similarly, the biodiesel emergy yield ratio (1.62) indicates that a very low net emergy is delivered to consumers, compared to alternatives. Obtained results show that when crop production and industrial conversion to fuel are supported by fossil fuels in the form of chemicals, goods, and process energy, the fraction of fuel that can actually be considered renewable is very low (around 31%). (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An assessment is made of the atmospheric emissions from the life cycle of fuel ethanol coupled with the cogeneration of electricity from sugarcane in Brazil. The total exergy loss from the most quantitative relevant atmospheric emission substances produced by the life cycle of fuel ethanol is 3.26E+05 kJ/t of C(2)H(5)OH, Compared with the chemical exergy of 1 t of ethanol (calculated as 34.56E + 06 kJ). the exergy loss from the life cycle's atmospheric emission represents 1.11% of the product's exergy. The activity that most contributes to atmospheric emission chemical exergy losses is the harvesting of sugarcane through the methane emitted in burning. Suggestions for improved environmental quality and greater efficiency of the life cycle of fuel ethanol with cogenerated energy are: harvesting the sugarcane without burning, renewable fuels should be used in tractors, trucks and buses instead of fossil fuel and the transportation of products and input should be logistically optimized. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study assesses the sustainability of ethanol produced from sugarcane and examines the environmental feasibility of a large-scale production through the use of. fossil fuel embodied energy and Emergy Assessment including farm and industrial production phases. The study indicates that about 1.82 kg of topsoil eroded, 18.41 of water and 1.52 m(2) of land are needed to produce 11 of ethanol from sugarcane. Also, 0.28 kg Of CO2 is released per liter of ethanol produced. The energy content of ethanol is 8.2 times greater than the fossil-based energy required to produce it. The transformity of ethanol is about the same as those calculated for fossil fuels. The Renewability of ethanol is 30%, a very low value; other emergy indices indicate important environmental impacts as well as natural resources consumption. The results obtained indicate that sugarcane and ethanol production present low renewability when a large-scale system is adopted. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mussels as a commercial product involve a range of activities which can be included within four different sub-sectors: culture, dispatch centres, canning factories and, finally, cooking plants. This paper deals with the environmental evaluation of the whole mussel sector from a Life Cycle Assessment approach. The use of exhaustive inventories led to the subsequent environmental characterization of the mussel sector in terms of the contribution observed for each of the sub-sectors. In this sense, the sub-sector associated with dispatch centres presented the largest contributions to the potential environmental impacts, clearly ahead of mussel farming. Furthermore, the sub-sectors of mussel cooking plants and canning factories showed a much lower contribution to the potential environmental impacts. Several improvement potentials were identified from the characterization results, stressing the minimization of the electric energy consumption in dispatch centres. A comparative LCA was performed in order to contrast the environmental performance of the three main commercial mussel products: fresh mussels, canned mussels and frozen mussels. The analysis showed that fresh mussels have the least favourable environmental profile. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Magnesium (Mg) has a great potential to reduce vehicle weight, fuel consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. The Chinese Mg industry has developed rapidly since the 1990s. The output of Mg reached 700,000 tons in 2006, accounting for more than 70% of global Mg production. Most of Mg is produced in China through the Pidgeon process that has an intensive energy usage and generates a large amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which may offset the potential advantage of using Mg parts in automobiles. It is critical to quantify the energy usage and GHG emissions through entire life cycle when the Mg are applied to automobiles. It is also essential to evaluate cost implications of the Mg parts application in automobiles and ensure it to be cost competitive. The objectives of this study are (1) Build a life cycle inventory (LCI) of Mg produced by Pidgeon process; (2) Establish an LCA model that can evaluate GHG emissions and energy usage for the Mg automotive application; (3) Estimate the cost implications of the Mg parts application in automobiles. An Mg LCI was built based on interviews and surveys and the GREET model was adapt for this study. The results indicated that, for each kilogram of Mg produced by Pidgeon process, GHG emissions and energy usage would be 27 kg CO(2)eq and 280 MJ, which are five times higher than steel production. Replacing steel with 82 kg Mg on a base automobile would lower curb weight by 5.7%, but only reduce life cycle GHG emissions and energy usage by 0.8% and 1.3%. Scenario analyses indicated that potential reduction of life cycle GHG emissions and energy usage could reach to 15%, if secondary weight saving and a smaller engine were included. Cost analyses also show 18% reduction when the additional weight saving and a smaller displacement engine were included, under a 100,000 km driving distance and gasoline price at $1.0/l. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has matured over the past decades and become part of the broader field of sustainability assessment. To strengthen LCA as a tool and eventually increase its usefulness for sustainability decision-making, it is argued that there is a need to expand the ISO LCA framework by integration and connection with other concepts and methods. This paper explores the potential options for deepening and broadening the LCA methodologies beyond the current ISO framework for improved sustainability analysis. By investigating several environmental, economic and social assessment methods, the paper suggests some options for incorporating (parts of) other methods or combining with other methods for broadening and deepening the LCA. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Paper pulp manufacturing is the main non-food industrial utilization of plant biomass. Non-wood and agricultural residues are potential raw materials in the production of specialty papers. This chapter aims to quantify the environmental impacts associated with non-wood high quality paper pulp manufacture via soda-anthraquinone (AQ) cooking process by means of the application of LCA methodology in a cradle-to-gate analysis. Hemp (Cannabis sativa) and Flax (Linum usitatissimum) were evaluated as raw materials for the production of high quality non-porous pulp. A specialty paper pulp mill was analysed in detail and process chain was divided in six subsystems: agricultural activities, chemicals production, electricity production, transport, pulp production and waste treatment. Inventory data came from interviews and Surveys (on-site measurements). When necessary, the data were completed with bibliographic resources. Abiotic resources depletion (AD), global warming (GW). ozone layer depletion (OLD), human toxicity (HT), ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidant formation (POF), acidification (A) and eutrophication (E) were the impact categories analysed in this study. According to the results, the environmental impact is mainly caused by the production of chemicals, electricity and fibres (agricultural activities) due to greenhouse gases emissions, phosphorous and nitrogen compounds emissions. The activities inside the pulp mill present minor contribution to almost all impact categories, excluding GW (15%) and E (6%) as well as OLD (25%). This study provides useful information for non-wood based industries related not only to pulp manufacture but also to panels or biorefineries with the aim of increasing their sustainability. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This two part paper presents general issues, methods and a case study for achieving production sustainability on a machining technology level. In order to tackle these issues, the paper promotes sustainable production via the alternative machining technologies, namely cryogenic and high pressure jet assisted machining that have a high potential to cut costs and improve competitiveness by reducing resource consumption and thus creating less waste. The general issues of sustainable technologies pointed out with a comparative case study life cycle assessment performed for alternative machining processes are covered in part I of the work, concluding that future of sustainable production is going to entail the use of alternative machining technologies to reduce consumption rates, environmental burdens, and health risks simultaneously, while increasing performances and profitability. As an upgrade to this part, overall cost evaluation is covered by a case study in part II of this work. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of hydrogen production in a 2-step fermentation process from potato steam peels was identified. Based on the ISO 14040, ISO 14044, ecoinvent data base and SimaPro 7.1 software, a life cycle inventory analysis was performed. Reflecting the current state of process development, the LCA shows an impact of 4.3 points (pts) which is at least 5.7 times higher than the selected reference technologies regarded as state-of-the-art. Over half (53.5%) of the environmental impact is generated by the use of phosphate in the fermentation processes. A sensitivity analysis shows a potential impact reduction of 65.8% due to recirculation of sewage or reduction of buffer concentration. The analysis also demonstrates that the production of the process ingredients cause 98.3% of the environmental impact. The impact of the process itself is 0.07 pts which is up to 10 times lower than the reference technologies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change became a priority issue on the agenda of the energy and environmental policy of the European Union. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are the main pillars to cope with climate change. Buildings consuming 40% of final energy in the European Union play a vital role here. This is the reason for changing attitude towards evaluation of the benefits of the renovation of existing buildings. Previously before making a decision on building renovation solutions the main factor was cost-efficiency. Today life-cycle approach taking into account energy consumption and abatement of greenhouse gases is more relevant. The goal of the paper is to compare different alternatives for the renovation of buildings taking into account energy, economic and environmental criteria while evaluating impact of renovation measures during their life cycle. The first alternative is renovation of a building up to the requirements of existing building codes. The second alternative is renovation of a building making its thermal characteristics of the envelopes by 25% better. The third alternative is renovation of a building making its thermal characteristics of the envelopes by 50% better. Possibility to use renewable energy in all the three alternatives is also investigated. The results of analysis show that in the case under consideration replacement of district heating, mostly based on fossil fuel, with a biomass boiler has an advantage in terms of environment and energy. However, economic attractiveness of these alternatives is rather moderate. Final choice of the alternatives depends on the priorities of a decision-maker.Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) represent pollutants of emerging concern, originating in surface and drinking waters largely from their persistence in wastewater effluent. Accordingly, a wealth of recent investigations has examined PPCP fate during wastewater treatment, focusing on their removal during conventional (e. g., activated sludge) and advanced (e. g., ozonation and membrane filtration) treatment processes. Here, we compile nearly 1500 data points from over 40 published sources pertaining to influent and effluent PPCP concentrations measured at pilot-and full-scale wastewater treatment facilities to identify the most effective series of technologies for minimizing effluent PPCP levels. Available data suggest that at best a 1-log(10) concentration unit (90%) of PPCP removal can be achieved at plants employing only primary and secondary treatment, a performance trend that is maintained over the range of reported PPCP influent concentrations (ca. 0.1-10(5) ng L-1). Relatively few compounds (15 of 140 PPCPs considered) are consistently removed beyond this threshold at facilities using solids removal and conventional activated sludge (CAS), and most PPCPs are removed to a far lesser extent. Further, increases in CAS hydraulic retention time or sludge retention time do not appreciably increase removal beyond this limit. In contrast, plants employing advanced treatment methodologies, particularly ozonation and/or membranes, remove the vast majority of PPCPs beyond 1-log(10) concentration unit and oftentimes to levels below analytical detection limits in effluent. Data also indicate that passive approaches for tertiary treatment (e. g., wetlands and lagoons) represent promising options for PPCP removal. We conclude by addressing future challenges and frontiers in wastewater management posed by PPCPs including analytical needs for their real-time measurement, energy demands associated with advanced treatment technologies, and byproducts arising from transformation of PPCPs during treatment.A life cycle assessment of sugar produced in South Africa evaluates the environmental impacts and energy consumption of the different life cycle phases of sugar production. The system studied includes sugar cane farming, fertiliser and herbicide manufacture, cane burning, sugar cane transportation and sugar manufacture. Inventory and impact assessment results show that non-renewable energy consumption is 5350 MJ per tonne of raw sugar produced and 40% of this is from fertiliser and herbicide manufacture. Reduction in the use or impact of fertiliser for cane farming could bring considerable savings in terms of fossil energy consumption and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.In the not too distant future several power plants throughout Europe will have to be replaced and the decision has to be made whether to build coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS). In a study for the city of Kiel in northern Germany only an 800MW coal power plant reaches a required minimum for rentability. This study looks at an additional economic and environmental evaluation of a coal plant with CCS. We find that in two out of three carbon and energy price scenarios integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants with CCS have the greatest rentability. Pulverised coal (PC) plants with CCS can only compete with other options under very favourable assumptions. Life-cycle emissions from CCS are less than 70% of a coal plant - compared with at least more than 80% when only considering direct emissions from plants. However, life-cycle emissions are lower than in any other assessed option.Picture this. On a freezing December day, a few days before Christmas, 2008 an electrical fire started in the basement utility room. The burn damage was so severe at the origin site that the exact cause could not be determined, but the theory is that a transfer switch connected to an emergency power generator started the fire when an auto test series was initiated. The fire quickly spread to the ceiling of the basement utility room, which was not fire rated, and burned the floor out of the kitchen above, at the center of the two-story home. In a very short time, the kitchen collapsed into the basement. The fire began shortly after the five family members left for work and school and was discovered by a worker who arrived to complete a bathroom remodel. Thick black smoke poured through every vent to the outside. By the time firefighters gained control of the blaze, the 3,000-sq-ft house and everything in it was ruined. If this image conjures a big black carbon cloud for you, imagine what the family was going through. Everything they owned was burned or covered with black soot and ice. It was a devastating blow to a smart young family going about their daily lives. It was the epitome of a dark cloud, and a silver lining seemed only like a myth. About the same time, a group of local tradesmen called the Hamptons Green Alliance (HGA), who organized a few months earlier, were busy soliciting local architects. Through the AIA Peconic, the HGA sent an e-mail blast to all members in order to find a project they could initiate in order to exercise their old and new sustainable building skills. Their goals were to apply their cumulative knowledge and expertise in sustainable practices and integrate them into a sum greater than the parts. Each individual company had experience, but never before had they consciously collaborated on a design that integrated all their systems at once. All would share the benefit and help the HGA raise the bar on sustainable building so they could offer experience, expertise, and specific energy usage and production data, including life cycle analysis, to future clients. They offered their services at their cost, to any architect's client interested in a new house or remodel that would be rebuilt with the highest and best sustainable practices possible. At the peak of the financial panic, AIA members found no takers. Richard (Ric) Stott, AIA LEED AP, architect, was a friend of the fire-struck family and of course offered help. After the first meeting with another family friend and architect Craig Lee, AIA, it struck Ric that this would be the perfect project for the Hamptons Green Alliance. The owner agreed, a meeting was scheduled, and a project involving all major trades, the architects, owners, and even the insurance adjusters was born. It was not hard for Ric to convince the team that the LEED for Homes program would be appropriate for this project and soon the team began meeting once a week to focus on goals, discuss strategy, and learn about the requirements of the LEED for Homes system. By default, it was an "Integrated Project Delivery" (IPD). All the team members were in play from the beginning, the budget was fixed at what the insurance claim paid, plus the owners' out-of-pocket expense to add a family room and bedroom. The commitment was made by the HGA members to work for no profit, which allowed the family to make the additions and improvements. At weekly meetings, the team decided to pursue LEED Platinum status, to incorporate all renewable technologies that were economically feasible, but first and foremost we would incorporate high performance building science as our basic energy conservation methodology. Besides aiming for LEED Platinum status, the team also established the goal to rebuild this project as carbon neutral. A major decision had to be made with respect to the existing structure. To demolish the house or salvage the frame was a dilemma. Building from scratch would be easier, faster, and probably cheaper, but was it the most sustainable? Does saving the remains of a charred wood frame add or subtract from the overall carbon footprint? Certainly, bringing the framing and sheathing to the landfill is not a carbon friendly concept. The family was concerned that if we saved the structure, it would retain the smoky smell and wanted a guarantee that no odors would be perceived, even on the hottest summer days. We contacted a number of fire renovation companies and they all agreed that full encapsulation would have to be performed on the structure after we cleared the burned and structurally compromised framing away. The majority of the frame was structurally sound and it would be difficult to recycle it, so the decision was made to re-use the frame and most of the exterior sheathing including a good portion of the existing cedar shingles.Innovative, sustainable construction products are emerging in response to market demands. One potential product, insulating concrete forms (ICFs), offers possible advantages in energy and environmental performance when compared with traditional construction materials. Even though ICFs are in part derived from a petroleum-based product, the benefits in the use phase outweigh the impacts of the raw material extraction and manufacturing phase. This paper quantitatively measures ICFs' performance through a comparative life cycle assessment of wall sections comprised of ICF and traditional wood-frame. The life cycle stages included raw materials extraction and manufacturing, construction, use and end of life for a 2,450 square foot house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Results showed that even though building products such as ICFs are energy intensive to produce and thus have higher environmental impacts in the raw materials extraction and manufacturing phase, the use phase dominated in the life cycle. For the use phase, the home constructed of ICFs consumed 20 percent less energy when compared to a traditional wood-frame structure. The results of the impact assessment show that ICFs have higher impacts over wood homes in most impact categories. The high impacts arise from the raw materials extraction and manufacturing phase of ICFs. But there are a number of embedded unit processes such as disposal of solid waste and transport of natural gas that contribute to this high impact and identifying the top unit process and substance contributors to the impact category is not intuitive. Selecting different unit processes or impact assessment methods will yield dissimilar results and the tradeoffs associated with every building product should be considered after studying the entire life cycle in detail.Typically the selection of a residential heating system focuses on first costs rather than the economic or environmental life cycle consequences. The use of life cycle assessment and life cycle cost methodologies in the design phase provide additional criteria for consideration when selecting a residential heating system. A comparative case study of a gas forced air and radiant solar heating system was conducted for a 3,000 square foot house located in Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S.A. The initial results of an analysis of the life cycle assessment and the life cycle cost data indicated the gas forced air system was superior, both environmentally and economically. Further data analysis pinpointed solar radiant system components for replacement in an effort to reduce both life cycle environmental emissions and costs. This analysis resulted in a hybrid radiant system using a high-efficiency gas-fired boiler, a choice that lowered both the solar radiant system's costs and emissions. This new system had slightly lower environmental impacts than both the gas forced air system and solar radiant system. Unfortunately the hybrid system had less impact on the life cycle cost with the hybrid system substantially more expensive then the gas-forced air alternative.Natural gas makes an increasing contribution to the European Union's energy supply. Due to its efficiency and low level of combustion emissions this reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to the use of other fossil fuels. However, being itself a potent greenhouse gas, a high level of direct losses of natural gas in its process chain could neutralise these advantages. Which effect will finally prevail depends on future economical as well as technical developments. Based on two different scenarios of the main influencing factors we can conclude that over the next two decades CH4 emissions from the natural gas supply chain can be significantly reduced, in spite of unfavourable developments of the supply structures. This, however, needs a substantial, but economically attractive investment into new technology, particularly in Russia.Biogas and bio-methane that are based on energy crops are renewable energy carriers and therefore potentially contribute to climate protection. However, significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from agricultural production processes must be considered. Among those, the production and use of fertilizer, and the resulting leaching of nitrous oxide (N2O), are crucial factors. This article provides an integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) of biogas (i.e. biomethane that has been upgraded and injected into the natural gas grid), taking into account the processes of fermentation, upgrading and injection to the grid for two different types of biogas plants. The analysis is based on different feedstocks from crop rotation systems for different locations in Germany. A special focus is on the sensitivity of assumptions of nitrous oxide emissions to overall GHG emissions. Much research exists on the measurement or modeling of the actual N2O emissions that result from farming processes. Since there is as yet no precise regional data, most analyses use tier-1 data from the IPCC national GHG inventories as a default. The present article coincides with recent research in indicating that this data varies at the regional level. However, it is not the scope of the article to evaluate the quality of existing data for N2O emissions, but to show the effects of different assumptions on the LCA of GHGs from bio-methane. Thus, a link between the provision of emission data and the practical implementation of biogas technology is provided. The main result is that the supply chain of substrates from agricultural processes appears to contribute the most to the GHG emissions of bio-methane. The "worst case'' scenario where 5% of the nitrogen fertilizer used is emitted in form of N2O shows that the GHG mitigation potential of bio-methane versus natural gas is very small, so there is not much margin for error in the plant technology.Several studies have reported laser printers as significant sources of nanosized particles (<0.1 mu m). Laser printers are used occupationally in office environments and by consumers in their homes. The current work combines existing epidemiological and toxicological evidence on particle-related health effects, measuring doses as mass, particle number and surface area, to estimate and compare the potential risks in occupational and consumer exposure scenarios related to the use of laser printers. The daily uptake of laser printer particles was estimated based on measured particle size distributions and lung deposition modelling. The obtained daily uptakes (particle mass 0.15-0.44 mu g d(-1); particle number 1.1-3.1 x 10(9) d(-1)) were estimated to correspond to 4-13 (mass) or 12-34 (number) deaths per million persons exposed on the basis of epidemiological risk estimates for ambient particles. These risks are higher than the generally used definition of acceptable risk of 1 x 10(-6), but substantially lower than the estimated risks due to ambient particles. Toxicological studies on ambient particles revealed consistent values for lowest observed effect levels (LOELs) which were converted into equivalent daily uptakes using allometric scaling. These LOEL uptakes were by a factor of about 330-1,000 (mass) and 1,000-2,500 (particle surface area) higher than estimated uptakes from printers. This toxicological assessment would indicate no significant health risks due to printer particles. Finally, our study suggests that particle number (not mass) and mass (not surface area) are the most conservative risk metrics for the epidemiological and toxicological risks presented here, respectively.This work shows the influence of using different allocation approaches when modelling the inventory analysis in a soybean biodiesel life cycle assessment (LCA). Results obtained using mass, energy and economic based allocations are compared, focusing on the following aspects: normalised potential environmental impact (PEI) categories, total PEI and relative contributions to the total PEI from each life cycle stage and environmental impact category. Similar results are obtained either using economic and energy based allocations. However, different results are obtained when mass based allocation is used when compared with the other two. This study also illustrates that using different allocation approaches in biodiesel LCA may influence the final conclusions, especially in comparative assertions, emphasising the need to perform a sensitivity analysis in the LCA interpretation step.The need for resource-saving, low-impact "green" desalination technologies is evident as the use of desalination accelerates in many parts of the world. The concept of "best available techniques" (BAT) aims at the identification of state of the art technologies, processes, or methods of operation which indicate the practical suitability for preventing or reducing pollution of the atmosphere, water and soil, as well as the quantities of waste, and for reducing the impact on the environment as a whole. This paper describes a general BAT approach for seawater desalination plants, focusing on the resource consumption of the different processes and methods of operation and their likely environmental impacts. The results may be a useful reference in the determination of individual BAT solutions on a case by case basis, taking site- and project-specific considerations into account, such as environmental regulations and local environmental conditions.Plastic recycling system is designed by various stakeholders, such as consumers and recycling manufactures. The effect of plastic recycling depends on conditions on recycle technology, collection, transportation, and the intended products to be substituted by plastic recycling. Therefore, the relationship between the conditions and effects needs to be analyzed in order to design an appropriate recycling system. In this research, we analyzed the relationships between plastic recycling conditions and effects such as the consumption of fossil resources and CO(2) emission toward appropriate Japanese plastic recycling system. An analytic tool utilizing optimization technique was constructed to evaluate and generate plastic recycling scenarios. By this tool, the reduction effect of the consumption of naphtha, fuel oil, coal, and natural gas can be evaluated with the reduction of CO(2) emission through plastic recycling. The system can analyze the optimal distribution scenario of plastic wastes on such reduction effect of fossil resource consumption under specific weighting factors to each resource by linear programming. Based on this analysis, it was demonstrated that 286 sets of weighting factors generated independent 135 candidates. Defining a constraint on the reduction effects of CO(2) emission and naphtha consumption, effective candidates can be selected. If the constraint is that the reduction effects should be higher than 50% of their potentials, 28 scenarios are selected. The constructed system makes it possible to support the design of plastic recycling system from the viewpoints of reducing environmental load including fossil resource consumption.This article presents a model for local energy planning and its application in a full-scale experiment in a Swedish municipality. The model is based on legal requirement, research findings and standards of good practice and includes a combination of analytical and procedural tools intended to support rational decision-making: external scenarios, a citizens' panel, life cycle analysis and qualitative environmental assessment (EA). The application of the model indicates that the decision-support tools selected can give several new and valuable inputs to local energy planning, such as local knowledge and values through citizen dialogue and comprehensive EAs. However, the experiment also shows that there are several challenges involved in applying the tools, for example, it is difficult to get citizens and the industry to participate and that it is complicated to combine several different tools for decision-making into a single planning process. Moreover, the experiences from the application suggest that the model for local energy planning show great potential but needs to be improved before it can be used as a standard of good practice.Local climate action, sustainable energy and urban planning are closely interconnected, focusing on action in the (municipal) government and whole community area. Change is needed to improve existing policies or develop new policies, raise peoples' awareness on the need for change and how to do so, apply existing effective technologies and measures, and, last but not least, sustaining this over the longer term to achieve the required results. Three streams of local climate action are presented in this article, namely: strategy and policy; technology and measures; people and lifestyle all closely inter-related, and linked to urban planning and sustainable energy. When addressing these issues, typical questions asked by local decision-makers and municipal staff revolve around aspects such as how to determine the right strategies and policies to guide the implementation of a Local Action Plan (LAP), where processes need to change, which key steps should form part of a LAP, how to select the right technologies, and how to engage people. The 'people stream' remains the largest challenge, in part also as it implies a redefinition of quality of life for all citizens engaging them, retaining their interest, encouraging them to take responsibility for their choices, and radically changing the way they live.A former coal mining and steel production hub, this case study on Gelsenkirchen shows that the concepts of renewable energy and energy efficiency can be attractive, also for a city with a declining population and rapid changes in economic structures rather typical for cities in former European coalfield regions. The city's urban planning policy is to explore and implement clean energy options in particular for the revitalisation of coal mine brownfields and the renewal of buildings connected to the coal mine industry. Specific projects implemented in Gelsenkirchen that are shared in this article vary from individual industrial buildings with energy efficient architecture to solar housing estates for approximately 2,000 inhabitants, in addition to the development of a new city district, under construction on the grounds of a former mining area.Purpose - This paper aims to focus on helping managers understand a factor that stimulates investment in R&D, namely, the R&D tax credit. Design/methodology/approach - The paper uses a sample of firms in Taiwan; the study period is 1999-2004. Four variables are used to categorize firms in life cycle stages, and these are ranked in a number of ways. Findings - It is found that the R&D tax credit has an influence of operating performance and that the association of R&D tax credit with operating performance is moderated by the stage of the firm in its respective life cycle. This association is also moderated by the size of the firm. Practical implications - Management perspective, managers of small, older firms with sales that are stagnant or declining will benefit most from the R&D tax credit. Managers of such companies should make a greater effort to negotiate tax credits as they will benefit the most. Originality/value - The paper adds to the literature on life cycle analysisPurpose - Building energy performance is a key element when assessing the sustainability, or otherwise, of the built environment. However, the prescriptive nature of current approaches to sustainability assessment stultifies innovative approaches to sustainable building design. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a current EU FP7-funded project, entitled "IntUBE - Intelligent Use of Buildings' Energy Information," will contribute to improving the measurement and evaluation of building energy performance. The paper also seeks to highlight the potential offered by the energy-profiling tools and techniques being developed as part of the project to contribute to the assessment of sustainable urban development. Design/methodology/approach - The IntUBE project is developing new methods of integrating the information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in the design and operation of buildings, with the aim of facilitating improvements in the energy performance of buildings and the measurement of that performance. To do so, the project will develop new methods and tools which integrate design phase and operational phase energy profiling. Findings - Integrating the ICTs used to assess the design and operation of buildings could significantly improve the way in which the energy performance of buildings is assessed. However, there are many barriers to the adoption of the energy-profiling software tools designed for professional use. This is problematic because a more generalised uptake of these tools is essential to improving the measurement and evaluation of building energy performance. Originality/value - It is important that the energy-profiling tools and techniques developed within the IntUBE project ameliorate as many of the barriers to the adoption of the energy-profiling software tools as possible. To do so new approaches to the following are under development; the integration of building information model authoring software and energy simulation software, the integration of simulation and real-time data-capturing sensors, and evaluating and selecting amongst the design alternatives offered by energy simulation software.Purpose - This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of corporate sustainability reporting strategies and communication tools that are increasingly being adopted to foster green market outlets, with focus on the building materials supply chain. Design/methodology/approach - The suitability, feasibility, appropriateness, effectiveness, completeness and redundancy of some of the most common sustainability reporting tools such as Sustainability Reporting (SR), Sustainable Development Indicators (SDI) and Green labels based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) were investigated. Findings - Focusing on the present Italian situation and with emphasis on ornamental stones, ceramic tiles, cement and concrete producers, the interest and the response in the building materials supply chain are highlighted, pointing out strengths, weaknesses and future perspectives. Practical implications - Green communication tools discussed in the paper can also be used to protect local markets against the unfair competition by those producers that can supply low price building products, but with much higher environmental externalities. Originality/value - The paper can be considered as a contribution to support the European Commission's and Member States' policymakers which are pushing for instruments that will improve the sustainability of the building products supply chain. The findings can encourage those producers who are more aware of the environmental consequences of extractive and manufacturing activities and that are actively engaged in Sustainable Development.Purpose - The objective of this paper is to discuss some scientific challenges related to the production and use of biomass for transport, heat and electricity. Design/methodology/approach - Specific attention is paid to the environmental assessment of liquid bio-fuels for transport and to the discussion of causes of uncertainties in the assessment. Three main topics are taken as examples, in order to illustrate the complexity of environmental assessment of bio-fuels and the difficulty in reducing uncertainties: agro-environmental impact of bio-ethanol (from sugar cane) in Brazil and bio-diesel (from palm oil) in Malaysia. These two tropical countries were selected because of their role as leaders at world level and their strong export potential to the European Union), N2O (Nitrous Oxide) emissions related to crop cultivation for bio-fuels and land use change; and GHG emissions and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of bio-diesel from palm oil in Malaysia. These three topics are discussed and complemented by considerations about biomass conversion issues. Findings - The quantification of the degree of the sustainability of the production and use of bio-fuels for transport is to a large extent related to the choice of farming practices during the feedstock production and their corresponding environmental impact. Practical implications - Recommendations are formulated so as to reduce scientific uncertainty, for example through the development of internationally-agreed sustainability certification systems with corresponding verification measures, or further research on emissions and indirect land-use change. Originality/value - The value of the paper on bio-energy research challenges is related to the combined analysis of European and tropical constraints in the field of biomass.Purpose - The aim of this research is to conduct a holistic sustainability life cycle assessment (LCA) comparison of different kinds of biofuels, integrating environmental, social, cultural and economic sustainability. The feasibility of a vision that by year 2015 households, companies, and other organizations all over the world will turn their sewages into biofuels, instead of discharging them into the environment is tested through these comparisons. Design/methodology/approach - Semi-structured interviews of biofuels' experts in Finnish companies, industry organizations, research institutions, and non-governmental organization were conducted. Findings - Biogases are environmentally more sustainable than bio-oils, field biomass, wood-based biomass and peat, all of which cause loss of biodiversity. Bio-oils and field biomass are socio-culturally unsustainable when they affect farming for food. Launching any kind of biofuel system is expensive, but running it reaps benefits. Biogases, bio-oils and liquid field biomass use the cradle-to-grave approach; solid field biomass, wood-based biomass and peat use the cradle-to-cradle approach in their life cycles. Biogases made of sewage have an endless supply with little need for an endless life cycle, which, however, could also be developed. Practical implications - Refining sewage into biofuels solves two global environmental problems at once: carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels contributing to climate change and over-fertilization of waterways causing sea, lake and river deaths. Hence, the launching expenses are well worth the effort. Yet other biofuels compete so heavily that large-scale global turning of sewage into biofuels by 2015 is unlikely. Originality/value - This is the first holistic sustainability LCA comparison of biofuels which integrates environmental, socio-cultural and economic sustainability views of industry, research and civil society experts.Traditionally LCA generally focus on a global scale and on steady-state, linear modeling. How to reflect the varying and complicated spatial characteristics of environmental impacts of large numbers of processes is in urgent need for improving the practicality of the LCA, especially for that with distinct environmental diversity in China. Based on the Chinese environmental policies and standards, a method of multi-environmental spatial scales division in LCA is proposed. First, environmental space types are discussed according to the relations between the life cycle inventories, impact categories of LCA and the environmental spatial characteristics. Second, the environmental spatial scale coefficient is proposed and defined in order to quantify the spatial characteristics and used in the calculation for the environmental impact potentials of products. The method of calculation for the coefficient is presented by analyzing the endure capacity of regional environment. Finally, this method is applied to study the spatial characteristics of ambient air quality and other environmental space types.Ceramic tile is one of the most widely used materials in construction. Due to the increased demand for environmentally responsible construction and the ever more restrictive environmental requirements derived from the legislation, there is a need for a tool to enable the environmental behaviour of such material to be evaluated. By the application of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, this study is focused on calculating indicators capable of measuring the environmental behaviour of ceramic tiles. Taking the production of 1 m(2) of ceramic as a functional unit, the aim was to perform a life cycle inventory that covers all the stages from mining the red clay and atomising it to glaze manufacture and the production of the ceramic tiles and their delivery to customers. Next, the stages/materials/processes that have the greatest impact were identified, and a series of improvements were proposed with a view to enhancing the energetic efficiency of the firing process and minimising the emissions into the atmosphere, while at the same time reducing the noise pollution resulting from the pressing process. The environmental and economic feasibility of such a improvements was also studied. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This chapter addresses recycling and life cycle considerations related to the growing use of lightweight materials in vehicles. The chapter first addresses the benefit of a life cycle perspective in materials choice, and the role that recycling plays in reducing energy inputs and environmental impacts in a vehicle's life cycle. Some limitations of life cycle analysis and results of several vehicle- and fleet-level assessments are drawn from published studies. With emphasis on lightweight materials such as aluminum, magnesium, and polymer composites, the status of the existing recycling infrastructure and technological challenges being faced by the industry also are discussed.Sustainability is a complex challenge facing the world today. It requires a holistic approach to thinking which brings together social, economic and environmental dimensions. The built environment, with its vast consumption of energy and resources, and resultant emissions has an important role to play in meeting this challenge. It follows that the manufacture and supply of building materials must contribute to this. Within this context, life cycle thinking and the examination of materials' embodied impact must go hand in hand with a broader agenda including healthy and safe materials, responsible sourcing and good resource management. This chapter examines these issues taking a focused look at embodied impacts and the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as an important tool with which to address the environmental sustainability of our building fabric.In addition to the impact on climate change resulting from the use of non renewable resources [1], the depletion of existing fossil fuel sources is inevitable. A major change of strategy is required. This article presents an analysis of a Flax fibre/PLLA biocomposite life cycle compared to common glass fibre reinforced polyester composites from manufacturing to mechanical design and end-of-life. Environmental impacts have been assessed by Standardized method called Life Cycle Analysis (ISO 14044). Flax fibre/PLLA biocomposites manufactured by film stacking have, for similar mass, tensile modulus close to that of Glass/Polyester. Besides being compostable at end of life, biocomposites have been proved to be recyclable which makes it possible to keep the whole carbon content and save primary resources. Methanization is another end of life scenario for biocomposites that enable biogas synthesis as well as carbon sequestration.This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) method in different design process. This method can help product designers to make more environmental friendly design decisions in the design process. In this method, product's LCA model is established in product conceptual design phase with the aid of decision matrix. Thereafter, the model is improved in the latter design phases, especially in product detail design phases. In this process, with the help of LCA software, designers can evaluate different design options and get LCA results when necessary to guide the design process. Finally, a case study of designing a coffee pot is provided in this paper to illustrate the efficiency and effectiveness of this method. The case study shows that the method performs very well in the design process. It can be used to help designers to make more environmental friendly design decisions.The growing global consumption of manufactured goods leads to the increasing formation of package waste. The aim of the paper is to analyze the peculiarities of the potential ecological design of packages. Analysis of the principles of ecological production design has been carried out, methods of paper and plastic package design have been discussed in terms of using more ecological materials, more rational package shape and "green engineering" principles. By applying the Ecoindicators '99 research methodology, the impact of paperboard and plastic packaging on the environment during its production, disposal and recycling has been defined. The type of the package wall deformation under static load has been determined. An overview of recent trends in the development of package technologies in the EU countries and in Lithuania has been presented.In the paper a topic of environmentally-oriented optimal design of means of transport is presented focusing on the example of reuse and recycling of materials. The following was applied in the field of environmental analysis of transport means: LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), LCC, LCI, DfE, DfR, DfD, end-of-life, assembly, disassembly, recycling, reuse, modeling of material separation. Results of the analysis enabled identification of components of transport means that dominate with respect to generated unfavorable environmental interactions. This allowed indicating areas, where modifications can strongly improve environmental image of means of transportation.Pioneer Natural Resources' multi-discipline Deep-water Exploration Operations team recently planned and operated the company's first deepwater (4946 WD) GOM well, Argo #1, using a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) planning process. As the closest offset well was 25 miles distant it was imperative to mine the maximum amount of pre-drill information from the prestack seismic data set. The team wanted a 3D seismic-based platform that would generate multi-discipline output for use throughout planning and drilling of the well. Of particular importance was the need for a tool that could be used onsite for real-time lithology, porosity, and fluids correlation and pore pressure and fracture gradient prediction. The multi-discipline solutions were provided in SEGY files for the Geophysical and Geological (G&G) team members and graphical documents for the Drilling/Completion & Reservoir team members. The seismic-based platform offered by the service provider was used successfully to plan, drill, and evaluate the well for the AFE'd cost. The service company provides two processes: The first process, DrilSeis, is a new, fully automated prestack seismic velocity extraction algorithm that generates pore pressure and fracture gradient volumes. The second process, LithSeis, is a prestack seismic-based petrophysical analysis that yields lithology, porosity, and possible hydrocarbon accumulations. LithSeis was used to aid in the confirmation of the prospective zones and to screen the shallow sediment section for possible "shallow water flow" SWF and shallow gas zones (Greve, 2001). Also, the pre-drill seismic pore pressure and petrophysical analysis (lithology, porosity, and fluids) provided the operator with the G&G and Engineering data that supported the approval from the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to eliminate the 20 conductor casing, resulting in significant cost savings. The seismic solutions platform enabled the multi-discipline team to conduct cost-effective deepwater drilling operations.Bio-energy recovery through fermentation is gaining importance because of limited fossil resources. Especially, bio-ethanol and biogas production are applied worldwide and have reached industrial scale. Other options such as bio-hydrogen, microbial fuel cells, and higher alcohol and acid fermentations are still in development. Current fields of intense research are the utilization of lignocellulose Substrates, intensification of the recovery of wastes and industrial byproducts for bio-energy recovery, optimization of process control (especially, in anaerobic digestion), and the optimal utilization scenario of byproducts from microbial bio-energy processes (e.g., stillage, digestate). For lignocellulose utilization, the optimal pretreatment technologies (heat, acid, enzyme, steam explosion, mechanical treatment) are being investigated. For methane production, benchmarks for fermentation parameters are presented, and current bottlenecks and deficiencies of the technology are discussed. As biomass is not only needed for energy conversion, but also for other purposes (food production, animal feed, raw material for industry), the conversion efficiency from Sunlight via plants to biomass and biofuels has to be enhanced. For this reason, research also focuses on increasing yields, improving conversion technologies, usage of the entire plant biomass, and improving the entire energy conversion system. Mass and energy balances, net energy balances, and combined heat and power usage are also considered. Current research tries to evaluate eco balances, greenhouse gas emissions, and the sustainability of the entire production process, in order to improve the entire conversion systems. In summary, microbial bio-energy conversion systems will be of great importance as part of a future energy mix, until alternative energy sources like direct conversion of sunlight (e.g., photovoltaics), nuclear technology (e.g., fusion), or other future energy sources can replace it.Metallic ore grades are failing globally as the higher grade reserves are exploited first and are progressively depleted. At the same time, the demand for primary metals extracted from these ores is expected to increase, despite increased levels of dematerialisation and recycling. Sustainability concerns have highlighted the need to meet these demands while at the same time minimising resource consumption and environmental emissions. A study was therefore undertaken using life cycle assessment methodology to examine various alternative processing routes for extracting metal from low grade ores (down to 0.1% metal), particularly those of copper and nickel, in terms of their life cycle-based energy consumption (embodied energy) and greenhouse gas emissions. The processing routes examined included conventional concentrating and smelting, direct ore smelting, heap leaching, pressure leaching and in situ leaching. This paper presents the results of this study. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedThe environmental performances of the industrial products can be evaluated using a number of methods. This evaluation should be made for the entire life cycle of the product. From this reason, the evaluation process is called Life Cycle Assessment. For evaluating the products, the processes or the services provided, some indicators can be used. The method using Eco-indicators is often used, being relatively fast, easy to perform and providing qualitatively good results. Besides these advantages, Eco-indicators method can be performed computer assisted, using the "Eco-indicator EI99" software. This paper presents the methods, describes the Eco-indicator EI99 and explains how it can be used, based on the example performed upon one product. Starting from the results of the evaluation, some recommendations to improving the products have been formulated.A review on research has been made regarding recent developments aiming at reducing the negative environmental impact (because sometimes it might be positive) derived from industrial manufacturing processes of lignocellulosic-derived products, from their utilization, and also from their disposal at the end of their life. The most common journals of the wood science and environmental fields have been screened and relevant papers on this topic are referred and commented. This paper covers mainly lignocellulosic-based products taken as materials. That is saying, materials of common use and that were made incorporating mostly raw materials from forest or agriculture plants. Examples of such products are particleboard, waferboard, MDF, OSB, plywood and lignocellulosic-plastic composites. Excluded from this review are utilizations of biomass for heat/energy production or its processing for chemicals (e. g., ethanol). Important issues for this paper are: lignocellulosic wastes and sub-products recycling, Wood preservation environmental issues, VOC - Volatile Organic Compounds emissions, adhesion of wood and LCA -Life-Cycle Assessment of forest products.This paper study about resource consumption and environmental pollution problems in computer industry. To PC as an example, for their life-cycle environmental load do a lot of data collection and collation, analysis the environmental load of Its manufacture, use, recycling, processing and regeneration aspects of detail. Specific data including the raw materials used by the number of links, the number of energy-consuming, the number and carbon dioxide emissions from waste and other emissions. Then through its life-cycle environmental impacts of the various parts of the analysis, further proposed strategy for the future of computing environment. Include green design, to enhance maintenance services, to establish a good scrap computer recycling system, and improve the related environmental regulations. And explain the rationale and importance.Over the past decade conservation groups have put considerable effort into educating consumers and changing patterns of household consumption. Many groups aiming to reduce overfishing and encourage sustainable fishing practices have turned to new market-based tools, including consumer awareness campaigns and seafood certification schemes (e.g. the Marine Stewardship Council) that have been well received by the fishing and fish marketing industries and by the public in many western countries. Here, we review difficulties that may impede further progress, such as consumer confusion, lack of traceability and a lack of demonstrably improved conservation status for the fish that are meant to be protected. Despite these issues, market-based initiatives may have a place in fisheries conservation in raising awareness among consumers and in encouraging suppliers to adopt better practices. We also present several additional avenues for market-based conservation measures that may strengthen or complement Current initiatives, such as working higher in the demand chain, connecting seafood security to climate change via life cycle analysis, diverting small fish away from the fishmeal industry into human food markets, and the elimination of fisheries subsidies. Finally, as was done with greenhouse gas emissions, scientists, conservation groups and governments should set seafood consumption targets.The aim of the present work is to demonstrate and compare the environmental effects of long-distance heating and hot water supplying systems, based upon the already existing geothermal energy in Hungary and comparing it with the non-renewable energy carrier (natural gas). We rely on the evaluations of the SimaPro 7.1 Life Cycle Assessment program.In this work, the optimal petroleum refinery topology is formulated as a conceptual process synthesis problem using the superstructure optimization approach. We begin with the development of a state-task network (STN)-based superstructure representation that is sufficiently rich to encompass all possible topology alternatives of a conventional oil refinery. Subsequently, a biobjective mixed-integer linear program (MILP) of maximization of profit and minimization of environmental impacts is formulated according to the constructed superstructure. Then, based on a given set of fixed amounts of desired products with available crude oil, the model is solved to generate an optimal topology. The proposed optimization framework also incorporates principles from life cycle analysis (LCA) to account for potential environmental impacts. A numerical example is illustrated to implement the modeling approach.Solar is the most abundant, permanent energy source in the world. The surface of the Earth receives over 100 000 TW of energy from the sun every year. In comparison, the global electricity generation in 2006 was 18 930 TWh, with electricity from solar energy contributing only 3.4 TWh. Clearly solar energy as a resource is not utilised to its potential. Since the first solar cells were developed in the 1970s, energy conversion efficiencies have increased, while materials and costs for manufacture of solar cells have decreased. Conventional comparison techniques suggest that solar electricity is far more expensive than electricity derived from fossil fuels, however as the world started to introduce a cost for carbon emissions, the economics of photovoltaics are expected to compare more favourably. Other parameters of importance for consideration when advancing the technological developments of photovoltaics are environmental factors that include water consumption, land degradation and social impacts where photovoltaic technology has favourable performance. This work discusses parameters that define the sustainability of photovoltaic power technology. The sustainability of photovoltaic has been assessed using an extensive literature review, according to economic, environmental and societal impacts. The key indicators of these impacts have been defined, on a per kilowatt hour basis, as the price, efficiency, carbon emissions, water use, land use, availability, limitations and social impacts. Each of these impacts has been compared, to conclude with the most sustainable aspects of photovoltaics. The most sustainable aspect of photovoltaic electricity production was found to be its availability, with no shortage of sunlight or silicon. Carbon emissions and water consumption are favourable at only 84 g CO2/kWh and 10 kg water/kWh, the majority of which are due to the intense energy requirements in the production of silicon crystals. There are very positive social advantages from photovoltaic installation, including the provision of electricity to remote and developing areas. Negative social impacts include the toxins produced during manufacture and glare. The photovoltaic energy efficiency from potential energy to electricity is only 15% with the maximum cell efficiency achieved at 39%. Due to their low efficiency, photovoltaic cells have a large area requirement. The two solutions to this problem are building integrated photovoltaics and large photovoltaic 'farms' in desert and arid regions. Currently, the least favourable aspect of photovoltaics is the cost for production of the cells. An average price is approximately USD$4/Wp and $0.25/kWh, making it the most expensive source of electricity in standard operation.Sustainability of products is related to Life Cycle Thinking and Assessment. It is widely understood that environmentally preferable products cannot be simply defined by "Recyclable," "natural," "renewable resource based," "biodegradable," "chlorine free," "reusable," or "organic." It is the product's complete life cycle that must be environmentally preferable. Misconceptions still exist, particular on plastics. But looking closer there is no environmentally good or bad material, there are only good or bad applications of a material. This means consistent rules for sustainability assessment on a life cycle basis are important. Standard approaches already used in industry practice and can be complemented with further aspects. Tools are established, databases exist, and experts are have already formed networks. Further improving polymers for more sustainable products is hence a process that has already started, by consistently combining existing life cycle approaches, tools, and databases. Herein are summarized misconceptions, rules, standard approaches and needed additions, tools, databases, and experts related to the Sustainability of polymers.This work concerns with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of constructive materials starting from the analysis of a steel construction building. The aim is to find a LCV representation which will be able to communicate the environmental performance in a more effective way the constructive systems for designers. Some methodologies and possible tools of LCA were studied and one of them was adapted concerning communicability of the results. The result is an organigram that indicates the material environmental performance for each constructive system, considering the covered aspects in the Life Cycle Assessment of the ABNT NBR ISO 14040: 2004.This paper examines the concept of adaptable buildings with respect to heat loss and life cycle assessment (LCA) of a building. Two different building standards are used: Technical Guidance Document Part L of the Irish Building Regulations and the Passive House Standard from the PassiveHaus Institut in Germany. The calculations for both heat loss and LCA of the dwelling concentrate on the external insulation only. This is to allow for a detailed comparison of one building element and to illustrate the effect that one building element can have on the entire dwelling. It is shown how an adaptable dwelling will consume less energy over the entire life cycle of its existence and also how different building standards affect heat loss and LCA. Finally, the effects of different types of insulations are discussed.The ceramic industry is a traditional sector in Portugal, with a typology of products adapted to the diverse habitat requirements. Brick is one of the most widely used materials in construction. The ceramic industry, like other sectors, generates impacts over its life cycle (from the extraction of resources until the final disposal of waste ceramics, ie from "cradle to grave"), such as consumption of resources, water and energy, air emissions, emissions to water, waste, noise, etc.. This Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) examines the stages of the brick from cradle to the customer's gate, including the process of mining and mining facilities, transport, production in factory and its later distribution to end users (base on scenarios). The methodology takes into account the IS014040, ISO 21930 and the EPD (environmental product declaration) rules. In general, the impacts are mostly focused on air quality, particularly at the production level in the firing operation.The evaluation of the environmental impacts of buildings should consider the source of the construction materials, the resources used in the execution, the maintenance operations, the expected service life, and the replacement and/or demolition operations of each of the building assemblies. The Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) integrated approach allows for the collection of the data concerning all these phases of the building's life-cycle and the evaluation of the corresponding environmental impacts. The envelope is one of the main parts of the buildings and the external walls directly influence the thermal and environmental performance of the building envelope. This paper presents a detailed review of LCA results of more than ten years of international research studies on the environmental impact of a building's external walls, including the summary of the main results. The recommendations to improve the reliability and widen the scope and usefulness of these research studies are also presented.The economical analysis of a construction project allows the feasibility evaluation on the monetary resources being applied, in terms of initial investment and / or future costs (operation, maintenance, etc.), considering equally technical liable options for construction. This analysis gives the investor a more realistic and comprehensive approach about the investment he is about to make, and in what this results in terms of building use. The cost-benefit analysis can precisely demonstrate which economical benefits can be reached with what costs. In this work the Life Cycle Cost - LCC - method (also called LCCA - Life Cycle Cost Analysis) was used to calculate the global cost associated to a construction project, though a specific period of time, comparing it to equivalent alternatives, so that the least global cost alternative could be defined. The development of this method starts by making a life cycle study identifying every steps in which a project, service or product development is engaged, since its conception to the end of its life cycle, where that project becomes obsolete. In a life cycle analysis, considering a sustainable point of view, environmental, social and economical aspects must be considered. In the specific LCC analysis only the economical aspects, associated with all evolved costs, are measured. Although the initial investment costs of a construction project can be very significant (construction stage) it's during the use stage that most costs are made, associated with normal use, maintenance, repairing, substation, etc., of the constructed space. This effect is also related to the duration of the use stage, compared to the construction stage. Also, the demolition, landfill and / or recycling costs must be considered as a part of all building costs. In this work an analysis about the LCC, its objective, functionality, applicability and advantages was made. It was also a goal of this work to test this method applicability to a sustainable construction case study. In this example the LCC method was applied to determine the least global cost of a housing project considering a conventional vs. sustainable alternative project.Sustainable building can be achieved with the use of specific methodologies and tools that aim at optimizing the design stage of a building project according to the principles of sustainable development. One of the most widely acknowledged and used sustainability evaluation method is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is based on the collection and management of environmental impact data most often drawn from available Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases. The present research forms the,basis of a newly developed LCI database focusing on steel structures. Hot rolled structural steel members are used as a reference point in order to collect the required data, through contact with one of the leading steel producing companies in Greece and detailed literature research. Data is analyzed and categorized with regard to the stages of the manufacturing process for hot rolled steel sections, from raw material acquisition to the storage of products ready for use (cradle-to-gate) and then transferred to computer software for processing and results interpretation. The outcome is presented in this paper, both as an available tool within the scope of LCA studies regarding steel structures and also as a framework which can be applied within other geographic regions for similar purposes.SPEAR is the acronym for the European research project Seismic Performance Assessment and Rehabilitation of existing buildings, and the SPEAR building is the three-storey replica of an existing non-seismic building, full-scale tested at the ELSA Laboratory. In previous studies, a practical cost-benefits analysis was used to compare the performance of the specimen in the two different rehabilitated configurations: GFRP-retrofitted specimen and RC-jacketed structure. This paper presents a method to assess the best solution between alternative interventions including sustainability issues in the economic evaluation. The main aim of this study, in fact, is to create an integrated approach as the key to make choices in terms of life cycle cost benefits analysis. Normally, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process, or activity by identifying and quantifying energy and materials used and wastes released to the environment (from the cradle to grave). In the present study LCA methodology is calibrated as a decision support tool for economic analysis. At this regard, the first step was the environmental impacts analysis derived from the production (pre-use phase), installation (use phase) and waste treatment (end of life phase) of the two retrofitting measures. SimaPro software (version 7.1.8) was used to implement LCA model and to carry out the assessment in terms of tons CO2 emissions. It is clear that environmental results are not compatible with cost analysis (expressed in Euro) for the two configurations; therefore, to define a global result, CO2 emissions are converted in Euro unit, considering both the costs of the expected damages and the benefits derived from global climate change.The global energy related challenges, mainly due to the worldwide growing energy consumption gone with a reduction of oil and gas availability, is leading to an increasing interest on hydrogen as energy carrier. Hydrogen could have the potential to reshape the entire energy industry since it can be produced from renewable energy sources and it can be consumed in fuel cells, with a significant reduction of air pollutants or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that is a significant reduction of its environmental impact. Nowadays, the most important tool to evaluate the environmental impact of a product is the life cycle assessment (LCA) that determines the overall impact of a product on the environment. To this aim, several impact categories are defined; among these the most important are the Global Warming, the Abiotic Depletion, the Eutrophication, the Acidification, the Land Use and the Human toxicity. The aim of this work is to present a the Life cycle Assessment of a novel hybrid plant for the production of a mixture of methane and hydrogen, called enriched methane, from a steam reforming reactor whose heat duty is supplied by a molten salt stream heated up by an innovative concentrating solar power (CSP) plant developed by ENEA. The performance of this plant will be evaluated from an environmental point of view by the use of a LCA software (SimaPro7) and compared with that ones of traditional plants (reformer and cracker for the hydrogen production) for the production of enriched methane.Natural gas has the largest share of utility power generation in Turkey, accounting for approximately 61.3% of all utility-produced electricity. Therefore, understanding the environmental implications of producing electricity from natural gas combined cycle is an important component of any plan to reduce total emissions and resource consumption. In this aim, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for production of electricity from natural gas was performed. A process consisting of only electricity generation was formed. CML 2 baseline 2000 method included in SimaPro 7.0 software was used for the assessment. 1 kWh electricity production was selected as the functional unit. Data regarding the average technology for similar production facilities were obtained from literature and website of a facility. The results were given from the perspectives of impact categories. According to results, NO(2) emissions were the main factor for human toxicity, acidification and eutrophication. On the other hand, CH(4) emissions due to 65% fuel use ratio were key contributors for global warming potential impact.In this paper a diagnosis of the air quality was made in the south-east zone of Santa Clara city, Cuba. For it is developed a methodology that includes: inventory of all the combustion fixed sources of this area, experimental evaluation of emission with the Emissions Analyzer System ECOM-SG(plus), modelling of the dispersion gases concentration by the methodology of the NC 39:1999, immissions measurement and evaluation of the environmental impacts of the sources emissions by applying the life cycle assessment. The method allows to evaluate the air quality in the zone which is acceptable with higher incidence is the SO2 pollutant in the area around the new hospital. Finally the life cycle analysis shows a low influence on the environmental performance of the sources for the generation of steam compared with generation of electricity source and a higher impact category is breathing for inorganic compounds.The paper provides an overview based on an experience and applications of process integration, modelling and optimisation software tools. The first part reviews the design practice and supporting software tools. General purpose optimisation and modelling tools overviews have been available from conferences and publication (Klemes, 1977; Friedler, 2009 and 2010; Klemes et al., 2010; Lam et al., 2010). Those are categorised as (i) Process integration and retrofit analysis tools (ii) Flowsheeting simulation and (iii) General mathematical modelling suites with optimisation libraries. The second part covers assessment of tools which enable the generation of sustainable alternatives. They deal with waste, environment, energy and material depletion and production cost constrains. Emphasis of the sustainable process design tools is on (a) Evaluation of process viability under sustainable economic conditions (b) Synthesis of sustainable processes and supply chains (c) Process maintenance and life cycle analysis. The concluding part provides an overview of software tools development and the potential of the research based tools in solving the problem of sustainable process design.Progressive depletion of conventional fossil fuels with increasing energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have led to a move towards renewable and sustainable energy sources. In this work, carob pod (Ceratonia Siliqua) is proposed as an economical source for ethanol production, especially, in arid regions. The carob tree is an evergreen shrub native to the Mediterranean region, cultivated for its edible seed pods and it is currently being reemphasised as an alternative in dryland areas, because no carbon-enriched lands are necessary. The global process of bioethanol production from carob pod by Saccharomyces Cerevisiae yeast cells were analyzed in a previous work. To take into account environmental impacts of the process, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique was applied, which allowed detailed analysis of material and energy fluxes. On the life-cycle basis, the net energy yield of carob pod (2.36 MJ/MJ) was found to be similar than to those values for traditional crops (i.e. Wheat, 2.25 MJ/MJ).Process intensification via continuously running syntheses in microstructured reactors offers new possibilities to realize environmentally benign chemical processes. To evaluate the environmental impacts induced by the reactions under investigation, a research accompanying life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied in several projects dealing with process intensification in microreactors. The same adapted method was applied during the development of a phase transfer catalytic process in microstructured reactors giving phenyl benzoate. It could be shown that the overall life cycle impact of this reaction highly depends on the yield of phenyl benzoate, but can be significantly improved by the implementation of ionic liquids as phase transfer catalysts compared to the same reaction without implementing any catalyst.This project develops an algorithm for allowing municipalities of dispersed villages of Cantabria, an Autonomous Community situated in the north coast of Spain, to check the environmental feasibility of extending the selective collection in their municipalities. The algorithm will allow these municipalities to introduce their own data and compare two waste management systems (Scenario A and B). Scenario A is referred to the current waste management system in which no selective collection is being carried out. Consequently, light packaging material (LP) and paper and cardboard (P/C) are collected together with the municipal solid wastes (MSW), following the same path. Scenario B is the hypothetic new waste management system in which selective collection is introduced. To determine the environmental preference of these scenarios, an algorithm based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been developed. Only if environmental impacts in Scenario B are lower than in A when running the model the extension of the selective collection for each individual municipality should be recommended.The environmental impact of hydrogen production from potato steam peels was identified. Based on the ISO 14040, ISO 14044, ecoinvent data base and SimaPro 7.1 software, a life cycle inventory analysis was performed. Reflecting the current state of process development, the LCA shows an impact of 4.3 points (pts) which is at least 5.7 times higher than the selected reference technologies regarded as state-of-the-art. Over half (53.5%) of the environmental impact is generated by the use of phosphate in fermentation processes. A sensitivity analysis shows a potential impact reduction of 65.8% due to recirculation of sewage or reduction of buffer concentration. The analysis also demonstrates that the production of the process ingredients cause 98.3% of the environmental impact. The impact of the process itself is 0.07 pts which is up to 10 times lower than the reference technologies.In this work, a novel integrated biorefinery framework is introduced. A 'cradle to grave' analysis is developed by adding novel steps into a basic biodiesel process involving the valorization of waste streams to value-added chemicals. Insights are given towards a new bioconversion route of glycerol to succinic acid. An unstructured model of batch experiments at different conditions is constructed. Experimental results at the bench scale are used to estimate kinetic parameters and to validate model predictions. The developed model is used in optimization studies to compute the best initial conditions for batch as well as the optimal feeding profiles for fed-batch processes to maximize succinic acid productivity. Finally, the above process is incorporated into a biorefinery scheme. Simulation and optimization in conjunction with life cycle analysis (LCA) is performed to simultaneously improve its sustainability and its economics.This paper provides an environmental assessment using LCA methodology for the production of biodiesel from microalgae. The life cycle stages evaluated were: production of biodiesel and distribution and use. The biodiesel plant was simulated on Aspen Plus (R) 2006.5 using as raw materials Chorella vulgaris microalgae oil and methanol. The Impact Assessment was made using SIMAPRO 7.1 software and ECOINVENT database, the impact categories evaluated were: climatic change (CCI), acidification (AI), eutrophication (EI), photochemical smog formation (POI), respiratory effects (REI) and non-renewable energy (NRE). The LCA methodology was applied following the procedures established by the ISO 14040 and 14044 (2006). According to the environmental profiles obtained, the stage of distribution and use of the B10 blend (10% biodiesel) has the greatest influence in the impact categories studied. This work was supported by the Ibero-American Program on Science and Technology for Development (CYTED) project 306RTO279 "New technologies for biofuels production" UNESCO codes 330303, 332205, 530603, 330999 and the Colombian Department of Science, Technology and Innovation COLCIENCIAS, projects CT 475-2007 and CT 272-2008.)In this paper LCA is applied to a biodiesel production process from African palm using lignocellulosic ethanol as a reagent in the transesterification reaction which is obtained from residues with high contents of cellulose resulting from the oil extraction stage. The LCA was evaluated through the biodiesel production chain starting with the land adaption stage, oil extraction, ethanol production from residual lignocellulosic biomass, transesterification of palm oil and ending with the distribution and use of the biofuel. This study was developed for Sabana de Torres (Santander - Colombia) region. The biodiesel plant was simulated by Aspen Hysys 2006.5; besides a parallel process was simulated to produce bioethanol from residual palm biomass. The last process is carried out in four steps: pretreatment of biomass, hydrolysis, fermentation and alcohol separation. The LCA was developed using SIMAPRO 7.1 software and database ECOINVENT with which the environmental profile of the system was elaborated evaluating different impact categories such as climate change (CCI), acidification (AI), eutrophication (EI), photochemical smog formation (POI), respiratory effects (REI) and non-renewable energy (NRE), among others. According to the environmental profiles obtained, the stage of distribution and use of the B10 blend (10% biodiesel) has the greatest influence in the output impact categories and the input impact category. The methodology was applied following the procedures established in the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards of 2006. This study was supported by the State Department of Science, Technology & Innovation (COLCIENCIAS), Projects CT 475-2007 and CT 272-2008. and the Ibero-American Program on Science and Technology for Development (CYTED) project 306RTO279 "New technologies for biofuels production" UNESCO codes 330303, 332205, 530603, 330999.High strength properties combined with low density has made magnesium alloys a highly attractive structural material, in particular where weight savings is of concern. In air and ground transport these alloys are used as alternative material in place of heavier ferrous or aluminium alloys. In this respect, much research has been directed at developing and deploying superior magnesium alloys using rare earth elements (REEs), an example the Mg-RE (Ce, Y, Nd) alloys for drive train components. With the overall aim of ascertaining the environmental impact of employing REEs as alloying agents in producing superior Mg-RE alloys, it is paramount that a fundamental understanding of the environmental burden imparted by the extraction and production of REEs be determined. This study reports on such an assessment of REEs by conducting a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) study of the environmental impact from mining to production of REEs.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an important environmental management tool, and is popularly used in many industries nowadays in the world. The environmental protection capability of textiles and competition strength of textile corporations can be improved with the application of LCA in textile industry. Cotton shopping bags and non-woven shopping bags were analyzed with LCA data lists, the results indicated that the environmental protection capability of the two kinds of shopping bags can be improved through the improvement of mechanical capability to increase the reuse times.To assess the life cycle health impact of the building objectively, this paper presents a building health impact assessment (HIA) model. Based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) theory, the model classifies the health impact of the building into three categories: global warming, respiratory effect and carcinogenesis. In each category, the link between an emission and the consequent potential damage is established by four procedures: fate analysis, exposure analysis, effect analysis and damage analysis. Furthermore, a set of databases needed in each procedures is developed. The paper is offering a general overview of how to identify and assess the health impacts of the building quantitatively. This model can be used as a tool for project manager to make environment-friendly decisions in construction plans.Petroleum sludge is a complicated complex and a mixture of hydrocarbons, water, metals and suspended fine solids. Kuwait's Petroleum Industries are burdened with the problem of handling large quantities of sludge. The oil sludge is gathered into open pits to separate the components. These oil gathering pits are full of hydrocarbon Waste, which is usually associated with lot of greenhouse gases such as CH(4), CO (2) and N (2) 0 to the open atmosphere. Sludge usually accumulates at the bottom of the pits and it is categorized as hazardous waste. This should be handled with special care to avoid any adverse problems. The paper demonstrates the significant impacts identified from the extensive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study undertaken for the project of removal and treatment of oil sludge from oil pit. This study investigates and identifies the environmental impact of oil pit and the significance of recovering the oil from pit, which was collected for several years as part of the oilfield activities. The process of removal and treating the oil and oil sludge from the pit will go through several technical processes.. The major significant environmental issue that is identified, detected and documented in the paper is related to land degradation from oil contamination, air quality deterioration, and impact on desert fauna. There is no indication of ground water or near surface water. The significance of the impact was evaluated based on the categorization of impacts into negative or positive, shorter or long term, reversible or irreversible, life cycle analysis, etc., for bio-physical and socioeconomic conditions.The article introduces the concept of green building of life cycle assessment, and then establishes the model of green building life cycle assessment from the perspective of "time", "space" and "subject". Also it clarifies definite responsibilities of involved subject in green building evaluation. Finally, the article puts forward a sound strategy for green building life cycle assessment from planning, design, construction, and operation and removal phases.The objective of this contribution is to evaluate such energetic plants that will not compete with conventional agriculture. Our analysis is based on definition of energetic plant - a plant grown as a low cost and low maintenance harvest used to make biofuels, or directly exploited for its energy content (heating or electric power production). It was emphasized that besides of woody plant species as energetic plants can be also used both crops and non-food plants. Besides switch grass (Panicum virgatum L), jatropha (Jatropha curcas L) or algae some species from family Euphorbiaceae and Asteraceae store high concentration of triacylglycerols and latex, that can be used for production of biocomponents into the fuels. Species Amaranthus sp., Miscanthus sinensis Anderss., Euphorbia marginata L. Ambrosia artemisifolia L, Helianthus tuberosus L, and Solidago canadensis L successfully grown under climatic conditions of Slovakia, are presented as a potentially used energetic plant species - herbs - that will not compete with the crops. However, it should be stressed that mentioned species are (like jatropha) invasive plants. Since production of biofuels from crops as well as from non-food plants is still actual, carbon dioxide emission and energy balance of biofuel production is presently intensively discussed. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) appeared as a useful tool to appreciate impact of biofuels on the environment. LCA is presented as a scientific method to record environmental impacts from fuel production to final disposal/recycling. This approach is also known as "well to wheel" for transport fuels or "field to wheel" for biofuels. In order to investigate the environmental impacts of bioenergy and biofuels it is necessary to account for several other problems such are acidification, nitrification. land occupation, water use or toxicological effects of fertilizers and pesticides.Clean Production is to apply the protection of the environment and resources to the production process and products so as to reduce the damage to human beings; the environment. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), also known as the environmental coordination evaluation, is one of the effective tools for environmental influence assessment on carrying out the clean production. This article applies the essential principle of LCA to the usage and protection of forest resources, starts with the discarded things of production and their existence in forest regions, carries on the supervision, evaluation and analysis of the whole process of the discarded things from their development to refinement, purification, and reuse, and supervises the behavior of enterprises during the clean production in forest regions.Wool is a natural and renewable protein fibre, however natural and renewable does not automatically equate to 'sustainable' and 'environmentally friendly'. Wool, like most other mainstream textile fibres, must examine its environmental credentials to meet the growing demand for ethical and sustainable textiles by the consumers, 'brands' and retailers from the major markets in Europe, Japan and North America. The merits of different environmental claims such as 'eco-' and 'organic' will be discussed, noting the value of Type 1 ecolabels such as the EU ecolabel in validating environmental claims. The International Wool Textile Organisation (IWTO) has restricted use of the term 'eco-wool' to wools that comply with the EU ecolabel standard at all stages of processing and production. The environmental impacts associated with Australian wool production, processing and use will be compared using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. While some caution must be used in interpreting LCA results, the process can provide useful insights for comparing the major environmental impacts associated with production, processing and use of wool and other fibres.The in-out life cycle inventories of synthetic leather manufacture in Zhejiang synthetic leather was carried out. When 1m(2) synthetic leather were processed, 114kg water, 1.596kg chemicals, and 4.3kwh power were consumed, producing 0.737kg qualified product, 0.053kg unqualified product, 0.4kg solid waste,1.123kg waste gas, which contained DMF 0.029kg, and 102kg waste water, which contained CODCr 22.94kg, DMF 0.0152kg, PVA 0.493g. And the life cycle assessment of synthetic leather was made, and in the end this paper made some suggestions on leather cleaner production, such as decreasing the water and power consumption, installing suction cover, using counter-current washing and so on.This paper describes the application of LCA in the packaging industry, and then analyzes the status quo of typical LCA software and databases, as well as the existing problems. To solve such problems, fundamental data of packaging material, performance index, typical production process and consumption of related manufacturing processes are conducted, and then packaging life cycle assessment model is set up. WEB2.0 technology is introduced into the design of the browser/server architecture packaging LCA analysis system consist of various function modules, which is investigated by typical packaging. Finally, three suggestions to improve the application of LCA in packaging industry are given.A carbon offset program is likely to be part of any future federal cap-and-trade program and is included in both the U.S. House of Representatives passed American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and the Kerry-Boxer Senate draft greenhouse gas legislation. Internationally, Energy-from-Waste (EfW) facilities in emerging economies are eligible for carbon offset credits under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. These carbon offset credits can be purchased by developed countries, such as those in Western Europe, to help comply with their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. Although a similar mandatory market does not yet exist in the United States, there is a growing voluntary market in carbon offsets and a set of standards designed to provide some order to this market. One of the key players in the voluntary market is the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS). Project types, such as EfW, that are eligible for credits under the Clean Development Mechanism are also eligible to generate voluntary carbon credits under the VCS. This paper reviews the current methodology for calculating offsets from EfW projects. The current methodology is very conservative, severely restricts the accounting for avoided landfill methane, and significantly underestimates greenhouse gas savings relative to life cycle assessments performed on waste management practices. The current methodology for offsets is compared and contrasted with a more realistic methodology more in line with life cycle assessment calculations. A review of the potential for EfW offsets under evolving state and federal programs and precedents for offsets generated based on avoided landfill methane is also completed.Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become an important tool in the context of environmental and industrial analysis, its limitations keep it from achieving wider acceptance. One limitation is its inability to forecast. LCA can present environmental impacts of established processes but cannot do so for emerging processes or developing products. We propose two different techniques as an addition to the traditional LCA to address these processes and products. In this paper, we compare the tools proposed, assess the limitations inherent in each technique, and finally formulate recommendations of systems where each technique can best serve the forecasting needs of an LCA. We also propose further work towards creating a functioning Predictive Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment that can provide insightful information on emerging situations in general.Proposed fuel economy standards in the U.S. require new vehicles to achieve at least 34.1 miles per gallon on average by 2016. Scenarios of vehicle technology deployment indicate that this target is aggressive, requiring significant changes. New vehicles must become, lighter, smaller and a greater number will use advanced, more fuel-efficient powertrains. These changes can reduce fuel use, and also have implications on automotive material use and their corresponding production energy demands. This paper explores these effects to assess the energy impact of the fuel economy standards over time.This study proposes an easy-to-use methodology to estimate the materials embodied energy and manufacturing energy for a product. The tool requires as input the product's Bill of Materials and the knowledge on how these materials are processed (or an educated guess); the resulting output represents the sum of all the energy inputs into a product system in the form of a value range on the energy requirements of the product during its beginning of life. This includes extraction of materials, processing, and manufacture of the final product.Design of 'green buildings' has become a major area of research in architecture and civil engineering. However, construction of buildings and infrastructure has not evolved at a similar pace. This paper uses various life cycle assessment techniques to examine the carbon dioxide emissions from the production of key materials used in the construction of a landmark pedestrian bridge and how those emissions add to the financial cost of the bridge. The carbon dioxide emissions from the construction of the actual Streicker Bridge are compared with two hypothetical bridges of identical design constructed in Germany and Spain. This case study serves as an example of further research that should be performed to lessen the environmental impacts of construction.A life-cycle energy consumption analysis of a Bridgeport manual mill and a Mori Seiki DuraVertical 5060 has been conducted. The use phase incorporated three manufacturing environments: a community shop, a job shop, and a commercial facility. The CO2-equivalent emissions were presented per machined part. While the use phase comprised the majority of the overall emissions, the manufacturing phase emissions were significant especially for the job shop, which is not as efficient as the other facilities due to its inherent need for flexibility. Since the Mori Seiki is heavier, the manufacturing phase of this machine tool had a greater impact on emissions than the Bridgeport. Transportation was small relative to the use phase, which was dominated by cutting, HVAC, and lighting. These results highlight areas for energy reductions in machine tool design as well as the importance of facility type to the manufacture of any product.Industrial ecology suggests innovative pathways for re-use and recovery of waste streams, but efforts to establish eco-industrial networks have encountered both technical and institutional barriers. To help overcome these challenges, an Industrial Ecosystem Toolkit has been developed to quantify how such collaborative networks can reduce costs, employ assets more efficiently, increase revenue, reduce risks, and conserve natural resources. The tools draw upon methods from network flow optimization modeling and environmental life cycle assessment, and enable real-time, interactive use by decision makers. Working with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U. S. Business Council for Sustainable Development, and other regional organizations, the Center for Resilience has applied these innovative tools to promote a systems approach based on sound science and informed decision-making. Future work will develop network models that represent synergies among industrial and ecological processes.The telecom industry is moving towards a "greener" supply chain for manufacturing. As part of this greening, more emphasis is being placed on logistics management, remanufacturing and recycling of e-waste. There has been much publicity concerning the environmental benefits of remanufacturing electronic equipment and reselling it to customers in lieu of manufacturing new like-kind equipment. This paper will provide an assessment of the environmental benefits associated with remanufacturing network telecommunications equipment by employing lifecycle assessment (LCA) methodology and commercially available LCA software / database information on these products. The results will demonstrate the significant environmental benefits of remanufacturing network telecommunications equipment as an "eco-sustainable" alternative to manufacturing new equipment.The use of consumer products requiring external power supplies (EPS) has surged in the last thirty years. This paper reviews global trends in mandated regulations and voluntary initiatives aimed at improving the energy efficiency of EPS. It also examines efforts to improve EPS performance, including energy efficiency, life cycle assessment, interoperability, and intelligent power supplies.This paper expands upon previously published work aimed at more fully assessing the lifecycle impacts of semiconductor manufacturing and product use. Specific focus is placed on energy and CO2 impacts associated with bringing materials to the high purity grade required for semiconductor manufacturing. Past studies have suggested that high purity materials account for a significant portion of the lifecycle CO2 impact of electronic products generally, and semiconductor products in particular. Although most high purity materials have a very high cost and obviously require more energy for additional purification, it is not accurate to assume that there is a linear correlation between chemical cost and energy intensity. While this relationship may hold for many commodity chemicals, it is likely to be less accurate for the specialty chemicals and materials used in semiconductor and electronic products. Other factors such as research and development costs or competitive advantages gained through intellectual property are more significant contributors to high input material costs. The authors performed a detailed study of the additional purification steps needed for many of the key chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing. Results will be presented that estimate the total contribution of high purity materials to the overall semiconductor energy and CO2 impact. The authors believe this information will be useful for future life cycle assessments for the semiconductor and ICT industries as it offers more accurate life cycle assessment data for chemicals and gases used for semiconductor manufacturing. By presenting more accurate data, the authors hope this will help identify areas of opportunity for energy and CO2 reduction. Additional recommendations will also be provided to assist future LCA work.It is commonly believed that telework is good for the environment because it saves energy through reduced commuting. Millions are teleworking worldwide. Some peer-reviewed publications in the last decade have shown that the principles of life-cycle assessment (LCA) have to be applied to telework (just like to other products and services) in order to arrive at a comprehensive assessment of all the facets of telework: transportation, building use (heating, cooling, lighting), electrical and electronic equipment use, and information and communication technology. Through the lens of LCA, telework may still turn out to be beneficial, but not everywhere and on every occasion. Indeed, it has been found that it depends on the individual or collective scenarios and modes of implementation whether telework can bring environmental benefits for an individual, company, or state. However, a critical mass of studies is still missing. A brief review is presented of the literature and state of knowledge about the environmental performance of telework, with areas noted where knowledge is scant and research is needed.The presented LCA-based method can be used when assessing the potential CO(2)e emission reduction from introducing an ICT-based service. The method was used to analyze the CO(2)e emissions from the communication networks in Sweden as well as on the effects of introducing smart work solutions at TeliaSonera. For TeliaSonera the CO(2)e reductions resulting from smart work sum up to about 40% per employee, or over 2.8 ton CO(2)e per employee and year. The total reduction potential due to smart work in the world was estimated to be 2 % - 4% of global CO(2)e emissions, if reductions of 20% - 40% can be achieved per employee in a 10 - 20 year timeframe.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method used to quantify the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service across its whole life cycle. One of the problems occurring when the system at hand involves processes delivering more than one valuable output (multi-functional processes) is the allotment of resources consumption and environmental burdens in the correct proportion amongst the products. Mathematically, this is represented by the solution of an over-determined system of linear equations. In the matrix method for the solution of the inventory problem, the system is solved by resorting to mathematical tricks to transform its rectangular coefficients matrix into a square and invertible one, inevitably introducing uncertainty in the solution. The paper describes the application of an iterative algorithm (called GeTLS) for the implementation of Total Least Square (TLS) regression to solve this kind of over-determined system directly in its rectangular form. The solutions obtained with the iterative method are compared with the direct TLS solutions obtained using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and with the classical Ordinary Least Square (OLS) solutions. The results obtained showed that in most cases the iterative method had a higher stability with respect to perturbations of the coefficients matrix.Wind energy conversion (WEC) is dependent on wind power density, which increases with elevation and swept area of the rotor. Many components are readily scalable and size-independent; whereas, turbine blades have presented a new frontier in aerodynamic design. As the limits of glass fiber-reinforced plastics (GFRP) have been reached in this field, there is now a materials development problem in achieving outlooks for larger, more resilient WEC systems. A hybrid material is under development, which uses vapor-grown carbon nanofibers (VGCNF or CNF) to reinforce the interface of a glass fiber/epoxy matrix. This research aims to determine life cycle effects of substituting GFRP in large turbine blades with the hybrid material. A review of literature, databases, and industry reports on life cycle data for wind turbines helped to establish a baseline descriptive life cycle assessment (LCA). Trends of new installations were assessed to determine appropriate boundaries for comparison. Results indicate that cradle-to-gate processing energy of the new material is 1.4-7.7 times greater than for the original GFRP material on a MJ/kg basis under implicit assumptions of weight savings. Effects on energetic return on investment (EROI) vary from insignificant to substantial according to upstream process choices for CNF manufacture and solvent handling. All conclusions inherently assume that CNF-incorporation would lead to realizable technologies for substantially increasing either size or life span of turbine blades concomitant with weight savings. It is not yet substantiated whether replacement of long carbon fibers is advantageous both mechanically and energetically.This document gives an overview of the author's efforts at the Hewlett-Packard Company to develop tools and processes to systematically estimate the life cycle carbon footprint of digital printers.The energy saving potential of reusing / reselling personal computer (PC) devices was evaluated relative to the choice of buying new. Contrary to the common belief of reuse leading to energy savings, with the advent of more efficient laptops and liquid crystal displays (LCD), reuse of an old personal computer device can lead to relative energy expenditure. We found that in certain scenarios this expenditure could be as large as 300% of the lifecycle energy inventory for the new device. As a result, it is essential to assess the reuse of personal computer devices more critically, incorporating the different factors that influence the analysis as discussed below.The resilience of earth systems depend on delicate balance of several natural cycles and phenomena. Recently, scientists have enumerated few of the significant Earth-system processess and their boundaries which should not be transgressed in order to make human activities sustainable. [1] It was found that we have already exceeded some of the safe operating limits, which motivates the integration of bio-geochemical cycles with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques to make more sustainable decisions. The framework of Ecologically Based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) is capable to capture the role of the bio-geochemical cycles in LCA. This article focuses on developing Carbon and Nitrogen Life Cycle Inventory by combining Eco-LCA framework with these nutrient cycle flows. It highlights the need of such comprehensive accounting and motivates the need of data collection for interaction of technical and natural systems.Greenhouse gas emissions from power generations are grave concerns around the world. Clean energy technologies such as Solar Photovoltaic, Wind, etc. have been recognized as viable solutions to greenhouse gas emission mitigation. Due to the high cost of clean energy electricity, various financial incentives such as Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) are available throughout the world to promote the applications of clean energy systems to reduce the environmental footprint of power generations. In this paper, we developed a simple mathematic method to characterize and benchmark the strength of different FITs in seven selected countries including United States (US), Germany (DE), South Africa (SA), China (CH), Italy (IT), Iran (IR), and South Korea (SK). The FITs are applied on the greenhouse gas emission mitigation in the selected seven countries. The benchmarking is made on the mitigation benefits relative to the total amount of incentive input in each country. The results demonstrate that China and South Africa have the highest mitigation potential for FIT promotion of wind power, while Iran and South Africa have the highest mitigation potential for solar.Environmental assessment of photovoltaic systems is a rich field, with representations of many technologies, regions and methodologies. This paper discusses some of the factors that strongly affect the outcomes of studies, encourages detailed reporting of normalization parameters and scope, and discusses a cradle to grave framework for benchmarking life cycle assessments of photovoltaic systems.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare landfilling and composting of municipal solid waste management in Tehran. We utilized Eco-Indicator 99 for impact assessment and we considered surplus energy, climate change, acidification, respiratory effect, carcinogenesis, ecotoxicity and ozone layer depletion in our assessment. The functional unit was a ton of Tehran's municipal solid waste. Composting was less damaging to human health; however it was more damaging to both mineral, fossil resources. But ecosystem quality was higher with composting. Over all, composting had higher environmental impact than landfilling. An integrated waste management system will ultimately be the most efficient system in terms of both environmental and economic benefits. In this paper, a cost evaluation shows that the unit cost per ton of waste in the 600000-ton landfill cell and the compost, with acceptance rates of 1078 and 617 ton per day and operation times of 1.5 and 4.2 years, are 15.28 and 32.39 US$, respectively. Results show landfilling as the preferable option both in environmental and economic aspects for Tehran in the current situation.With ascending concern on climate change and environment protection, renewable energy is paid more and more attention in recent years. As a main renewable energy technology, photovoltaic (PV) has become commercially available, now. However, we have exactly known what benefit PV system can bring to us. In this paper, the author assesses the performance of solar PV system in China, by the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA). The assessment results can be summarized as two roles: (1) the EPBT of solar PV in China is about 4years; (2) the GHGs emissions of China's solar PV in life cycle are 54g CO2/kwh. From the results, we can know that solar PV is an effective renewable energy technology for energy saving and GHG abatement, in China.Currently, industrial ecology system is still in the black-box analysis stage, which means that analysis of the inherent structures and function of the system remain fairly shallow. The conceptual model of eco-industrial parks is set up according to the natural ecosystem. The model comprises of (1) definition of species in an eco-industrial park, (2) the structure and function of an eco-industrial system, (3) the classification of the enterprises as producers, consumers, decomposers, and (4) the interactions of each component in an eco-industrial park. Methodology is very important for researching eco-industrial parks, and some analysis tools are in brief specialized, i.e. the network analysis, life-cycle assessment, input-output analysis, emergy analysis, industrial metabolism, and mass balance and material flow accounting.Increasing numbers of companies in the manufacturing industry have identified market potential for implementing sustainable and green manufacturing. Yet, current sustainability assessment tools for companies are complicated, requiring vast amounts of data and technical expertise to use them. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is founded on lean practices, and it uses a simple method to analyze various types of material, energy, and information flow needed to bring products and services to the end-customer. The objective of this paper is to introduce and illustrate the application of a VSM-based assessment, termed as Sustainable Manufacturing Mapping (SMM). SMM takes chosen sustainability indicators into consideration and is based on VSM, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Discrete Event Simulation (DES). The main phases of SMM include goal definition, identification of the sustainability indicators, and modeling the current and future state process maps. In this paper, some example indicators were identified and an SMM process map was generated for illustrative purposes.Under the current situation of the life cycle assessment work and combined with network technology, it is important to improve the old life cycle assessment databases and solve the problem that most databases are independent and information are not shared between apartments, regions and fields. This paper describes the design and implementation of a new life cycle assessment database system, as well as the framework for the research database. This paper also describes the details about the database system such as the components design, the goal and scope, basic rules, subsystem division, network design, interface design, data dictionary and database design, function design and system implementation. Above all, this paper emphasized on the system design, database design and goal and scope. This life cycle assessment database system provides network service and shared information to different apartments, different regions and different fields.Concrete is a widely used construction material. However, the production of concrete for new buildings and the eventual demolition of old buildings generate a large carbon footprint that causes global warming and a large volume of solid waste that uses up valuable landfill space. In order to mitigate these problems, there is a pressing need to reduce the consumption of concrete and extend the service life of concrete buildings. For such purposes, the authors have been advocating the usage of more high-performance concrete (HPC), which has higher strength, durability and workability than normal concrete. The higher strength could reduce the volume of concrete needed whereas the higher durability could extend the service life of concrete buildings. In this regard, there is often the misunderstanding that HPC, which usually contains more cementitious materials, would generate a larger carbon footprint. Herein, life-cycle analysis of the carbon footprint of concrete construction is conducted to demonstrate that although HPC. tends to have a higher cementitious material content per unit volume, due to the reduced volume of concrete needed and the extended service life of buildings, its carbon footprint is actually much lower.The Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) provides public rental housing for the low income families, which account for about 30% of the population of Hong Kong. So far we have produced a stock close to 700,000 flats, while about 100,000 units arc at design and construction stage. As a public service provider, we care for the people and the environment. We strive for sustainability in planning, design, construction and management of our public housing development by engaging relevant stakeholders at different points in time. In every project, we go through detailed analysis of the environmental and socio-economic structure pertinent to the site. We proactively engage community leaders and members to develop a design that well meet the public aspirations for sustainable living. Our objective is to create a harmonious living environment. To mitigate the impact of the climate change due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, HKHA has embarked on a number of green initiatives, including both vertical and horizontal greening for building roof and covered walkway at open space, use of green materials scrutinized by Life Cycle Analysis & Life Cycle Costing (LCA & LCC) assessment, modularization of flat designs to allow extensive prefabrication and precast construction, piloting use of renewable energy systems such as solar photovoltaic and wind-powered lighting installations, new refuse handling system and the installation of de-odourizers at refuse collection points for better environmental hygiene, and heritage preservation for local cultural sustainability.Sustainability has become a very significant research topic since it impacts many different manufacturing industries. The adoption of sustainable manufacturing practices and technologies offers industry a cost effective route to improve economic, environmental, and social performance. As a major manufacturing process, the machining system plays an important role for sustainable manufacturing on the factory floor. Therefore, technologies for monitoring, analyzing, evaluating, and optimizing the sustainability impact of machining systems are critical for decision makers. Modeling and Simulation (M&S) can be an effective tool for success of sustainable manufacturing through its ability to predict the effect of implementing a new facility, process without interrupting real production. This paper introduces a methodology that provides a traditional virtual Numerical Control (NC) machining model with a new capability to quantitatively analyze the environmental impact of machining system based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The objective of the methodology is to analyze the sustainability impacts of machining process and determine a better plan for improving the sustainable performance of machining system in a virtual environment before work orders are released to the shop floor. Testing different scenarios with simulation models ensures the best setting option available can be chosen. The virtual NC model provides the necessary data for this assessment. In this paper, a list of environmental impact indicators and their metrics has been identified, and modeling elements for sustainable machining have been discussed. Inputs and outputs of the virtual machining model for sustainable machining are described. A case study to experiment the proposed methodology is discussed.The current LCA methods assess a product's sustainability over its full life cycle, cradle-to-grave. While the number(s) obtained detail the contributions a process makes to a product in terms of energy intensity or the generation of wastes, it is insufficient to optimize a process for both sustainability and performance objectives. The Economic Input/Output Life Cycle Analysis (EIO-LCA) was used to investigate whether metrics could be identified which address sustainability - performance issues in materials processing. This method lends itself to the assessment of processes on a unit time basis while allowing for calculation of resources used and byproducts expelled. Productivity of manufacturing processes is also based on time. For example, material removal rate is related to processing feed, speed, and the geometry and tolerances established during design. A scaled waterjet cutting process was tested to investigate the unit time relationships. The EIO-LCA was conducted and the subsequent environmental impact in the form of total energy consumed and equivalent CO2 expelled evaluated per unit time, establishing the relationship to cutting speed. Although this is a static LCA at set conditions, it suggests that relationships can be explored between the regulation of resources, productivity, cost and environmental impact by varying the processing parameters.Excessive energy consumption has become a worldwide issue in today's design and manufacturing industry. A framework for estimating energy consumption that could later be used to integrate with CAD/CAM systems is in demand. This paper initially presents needs and requirements for a computational framework to estimate energy consumption during a product life-cycle, i.e., from extraction of raw materials to recycling or disposal. Energy estimations allow for asset management, thereby reducing the negative impacts of the product to the environment. At the manufacturing stage, asset management can be based on energy efficient process planning and scheduling. As a first step, the research presented in this paper proposes a framework that represents a generic shell for computing energy.Environment friendly design methodology is a valid trade-off between the degrees of freedom and the sustainable solution. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool to calculate the environmental impact from the product and the manufacturing systems from cradle to grave including the consumption of all types of the resources. However, complexity of the LCA restricts its usefulness in the current state-of- the-art product and process system development. Most often, companies ignore to adopt a top-down approach and make a post manufacturing environmental audit. In fast-paced new product design process, the longevity of the product and the process development time has been reduced to its lowest level. Therefore, it has become rather difficult to meet the increasing competition of involving change, quicker response to the market as there exists a rapid change in the market economy. Infact the broader design principles suggests to create a product with sole functions and the architecture with no waste or refuse of recycling or refuse of incinerators to go in to grave of the land fill. Therefore, the preliminary design stages are simple and a bottom-up approach for the environmentally- conscience design is insufficient. Thus, the proposal is to make more functionally-oriented set of specific principles to not only directly satisfy the regulations but also provide design valuable attribute. In this context, an integrated top down dynamic & hybrid life cycle analysis-based design approach is presented to address above-mentioned issues with the company policy perspective and to satisfy the regulations and national/ international standards in the wake of emerging localization paradigm in manufacturing system.The recent boom and collapse of the corn ethanol industry calls into question on the long-term sustainability of biofuels and traditional approaches to biofuel systems design. Compared with petroleum based transportation fuel production, biofuel production systems are so closely connected and heavily influenced by natural systems that they have to deal with high degrees of complexity, variability and unpredictability. Accordingly, a fundamental change in design philosophy is necessary for long-term viability of biofuel production. The new approach requires the system to be designed not for a narrowly defined efficiency (both economic and ecological), but for resilience (indicated by characteristics such as diversity, efficiency, cohesion and adaptability) to absorb unexpected disruptions and changes. Also, biofuel systems must be endowed with transformability to allow for "creative destruction" when current transportation fuels are eventually supplanted by new vehicle technologies and/or mode of transportation. This paper addresses important concepts in the design of coupled engineering-ecological systems (i.e. resilience, adaptability and transformability) that determine future system trajectories at multiple scales. In addition, several emerging biofuel conversion technologies are examined from a resilience perspective. It is suggested that the thermo-chemical conversion technologies may be preferable for biofuel production from resilience aspect. However, multiple technologies may increase the diversity and flexibility of the entire industry. This paper calls for the development of quantitative metrics for resilience assessment (similar to life cycle assessment for environmental sustainability) of industrial system, which are critical for integrating resilience into technology development and system design.This paper describes efforts taken to further transition life cycle analysis techniques from the latter, more detailed phases of design, to the early-on conceptual phase of product development. By using modern design methodologies such as automated concept generation and an archive of product design knowledge, known as the Design Repository, virtual concepts are created and specified. Streamlined life cycle analysis techniques are then used to determine the environmental impacts of the virtual concepts. As a means to benchmark the virtual results, analogous real-life products that have functional and component similarities are identified. The identified products are then scrutinized to determine their material composition and manufacturing attributes in order to perform an additional round of life cycle analysis for the actual products. The results of this research show that enough information exists within the conceptual phase of design (utilizing the Design Repository) to reasonably predict the relative environmental impacts of actual products based on virtual concepts.Reducing the environmental effects of products has become a significant focus of corporate strategies. As a result, easy-to-use ecodesign tools that can be implemented during the early design stage are essential for corporations to gain a competitive advantage in product development. A novel ecodesign method, the function impact matrix (FIM), is being developed as a tool to enable the development and evaluation of design concepts by correlating environmental impacts with product functions. This paper aims to illustrate the efficacy and relative ease of use of the FIM Understanding designers' interactions with visual tools and cognitive load analysis of designers can provide new insight that aids in the development of easy-to-use ecodesign tools. In this pilot study, design engineers with varying levels of experience and self-perceived eco-design knowledge are asked to redesign an alarm clock under four different design scenarios: 1) using no eco-design tools, 2) using the LiDS wheel and an ecodesign checklist, 3) raw life cycle assessment (LCA) data and 4) the function impact matrix. Surveying the designers reveals that the function impact method carried the highest overall rank compared to the other ecodesign tools with regard to ease of use, quality of data, ability for identifying redesign opportunities, and overall effectiveness. As suggested by the designers, a combination of a modified LiDS wheel with the FIM would lead to a helpful tool for sustainable concept generation.Power generation for the existing electrical grid is largely based on the combustion of fossil fuels. Global concerns have been raised regarding the environmental sustainability of the system due to life cycle impacts, including land losses from fuel extraction and impacts of combustion emissions. An approach to reduce carbon emissions of fossil fuel-based energy employs the conversion of wind energy to electrical energy. The work presented describes modern wind power plants and provides an environmental assessment of a representative wind park from a life cycle perspective. The empirical analysis uses commercially available data, as well as information from an existing wind power plant. The life cycle assessment (LCA) study for a modern wind farm in the northwestern U.S. found that environmental benefits of avoiding typical electricity production greatly outweigh the impacts due to wind turbine construction and maintenance. Effects of component reliability, varying capacity factors, and energy portfolio are explored.Product architecture significantly influences environmental impact. Modular architectures aid manufacture and reuse, thereby reducing manufacturing-related impacts and diverting usable waste from landfills. In contrast, modular product architectures may also sacrifice product performance or lead to over-designed products. These side-effects can increase environmental impact. The Black and Decker Firestorm and G5 George Foreman Griddle were studied to uncover and understand the effects of product architecture on energy and material efficiency. Both products incorporate component sharing for fulfilling multiple functions and incur environmental tradeoffs as a result. Experimentation, reverse engineering, and life cycle analysis of these products were used to inspire a number of guidelines for green design of modular product architectures. Difficulties involved the design of interfaces and selection of components for shared modules.Design for environment principles and guidelines help designers create greener products during the early stages of design when life cycle analysis is not feasible. However, the available guidelines are not exhaustive and a general methodology for discovering guidelines has yet to be proposed. In this paper, a method for identifying green design guidelines is presented, which aims to fulfill the need for more comprehensive guidelines. The method combines typical aspects of product design, such as customer needs analysis, with reverse engineering and life cycle analysis. Although reverse engineering is commonly applied to studies of disassembly and recyclability, the methodology and case study herein show how reverse engineering can be applied to areas of product utilization and energy consumption in particular. A general description of the methodology helps readers apply it to their own studies, and a case study of electric kettles shows how each step of the method was applied to reveal four new design guidelines.Through investigation of energy consumption for three typical villages in difference thermal partitioning and computer simulation, twelve energy schemes are evaluated by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The improved energy upstream inventory analysis model includes not only mining, production phases but also transportation and distribution phases, based on which and inventory analysis mode of energy use phase, life cycle energy consumption and environmental emission indexes of twelve different energy systems are calculated by the iterative method. Finally life cycle integrated indexes are reached by Environment Impact Assessment (EIA). Integrated indexes of renewable and clean energy systems (A(2), A(3),D-2, D-3, E-2, E-3) are 0.15,0.21,0.2,0.25,0.12,0.16, which are much more lower than the comparing traditional schemes (A(0). A(1). D-0. D-1. E-0. E-1). Consequently environment-friendly prospect of energy conservation and emission reduction for developing renewable and clean technology in rural areas can be verified by quantified indexes, which is practically significant for the construction of new socialistic villages in China.The sustainability of the US dairy industry is an increasingly significant issue. Producers are challenged with increasing the supply of dairy products to meet the demands of the growing population, whilst maintaining the tradition of environmental stewardship. Advances in nutrition, management, and genetics resulted in a fourfold improvement in dairy cow milk yield between 1944 and 2007. This allowed the US dairy industry to produce 59% more milk using 64% fewer cows and conferred considerable reductions in feed (77%), land (90%), and water (65%) use per gallon of milk. The carbon footprint of the entire US dairy industry was reduced by 41% over the same time period. The global livestock industry is thought to contribute 18% of greenhouse gases worldwide. However, this global average does not address the variability between systems. Instead, differences in system productivity demonstrate the considerable variation in potential environmental impact between dairy regions. Improving productivity arguably has the greatest potential to reduce the environmental impact of dairy production, regardless of system characteristics. As dairy industries worldwide pledge to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, attention should be focused on a whole-system life cycle assessment approach rather than racing to find a 'magic bullet' solution focused at a specific process that may confer negative trade-offs.The present article deals with the study of environmental impacts of using biodiesels derived from jatropha, karanja, and neem tree using an energy life-cycle analysis approach. To evaluate the energy consumption during the life cycle of jatropha, karanja, and neem biodiesel as fuel for compression ignition (CI) engine, a cradle-to-grave analysis is carried out. Net energy ratio is calculated for each biodiesel by the ratio of the energy output of the system in the form of fuel energy delivered to the compression ignition engine and the cumulative energy demand of the system. Net energy ratios for jatropha, karanja, and neem biodiesel life cycles are R(1) = 1.2325, R(2) = 1.6425, and R(3) = 1.6479, respectively. Life-cycle energy ratio of biodiesels shows that all the three fuels are renewable. It is concluded from the study that all biodiesels have higher output than inputs in terms of energy.A procedure based on digraph and matrix method is developed for modelling and evaluation of life-cycle assessment (LCA) of a triboelement. LCA parameters of a triboelement are identified and are called LCA attributes. Consideration of these attributes and their interrelations is rudiment in modelling and evaluation of LCA index. The LCA attributes of a triboelement are modelled in terms of LCA attributes digraph. The digraph is represented by a one-to-one matrix for the development of LCA expression, which is based on various LCA parameters/attributes. A variable LCA attributes relationship permanent matrix is defined to develop LCA expression (VPF-t), which is also useful in comparing two triboelements. LCA index of the triboelement is obtained from permanent of the matrix by substituting the numerical values of the attributes and their interrelations. A higher value of the index implies better LCA of the triboelement. The ideal value of LCA index (I(L)(t)) is also obtained from the matrix expression, which is useful in assessing the relative LCA (I(L)(t))(r) of the triboelement. The procedure is not only useful for evaluation of LCA of triboelements at operational stage, but can also be used for the design and development of a triboelement at system design stage from LCA point of view. A step-by-step procedure for evaluation of LCA index is also suggested and is illustrated by means of an example.Eco-design is a key trend in industry today. DCNS, a major French shipbuilder, has taken a position in this market thanks to a consortium of several concerned specialists: Arts et Metiers ParisTech, Ifremer, SITA Suez, and Bureau Veritas. The purpose is to create a tool to assess the impacts on the aquatic environment, but also an eco-design tool making it possible to improve design. Based on life cycle analysis (LCA) principles, it is improved by a specific eco-indicator for the maritime environment and the possibility of a return to design at the design stage. This tool is currently being developed by a computer engineer. The functionalities proposed and expected in the tool requirements are being tested by this development.In magnesia plant, annular vertical shaft kilns - high temperature processing units, are used for the production of dead burned Magnesia. Vertical Shaft kilns such as those operating at the reference magnesia plant are known to be efficient. However; the knowledge of thermal processes and physical behaviours inside the operating kiln has not yet been studied in detailed. This is mainly due to the high working temperature inside the kiln which makes temperature and pressure measurements very difficult and expensive or almost impossible. The inability to obtain such information has limited the optimisation of the kiln's process variables. With increasing knowledge and computing power, computational modelling is becoming a readily used resource for improving processes that occurs in a vertical shaft kiln. This study represents the review of the thermodynamic processes of dead burned magnesia production with an integrated view to improving energy efficiency of magnesia production and to achieve environmental sustainability.The evaporators of sugar plants in Brazil have used carbon steel intensively because of it is, a low priced material, which possesses inferior corrosion resistance. The materials more indicated for the substitution of carbon steel are stainless steels, however they are considered expensive. The environmental and financial performances of evaporator pipes constructed with carbon steel and with types AISI 304 444 and 439 stainless steel were evaluated. For the environmental evaluation, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology Was used and it, revealed that stainless steel is more environmentally efficient than carbon steel. The life cycle costing (LCC) technique was the tool chosen for the financial evaluation and it showed that stainless steel is a better investment option compared to carbon steel. The results also indicate that LCA and LCC methodologies must be used together Therefore, it can he seen that safer environmental products can come to be the most profitable investment options.As an alternative fuel for compression ignition engines, plant oils are in principle renewable and carbon-neutral. However, their use raises technical, economic and environmental issues. A comprehensive and up-to-date technical review of using both edible and non-edible plant oils (either pure or as blends with fossil diesel) in CI engines, based on comparisons with standard diesel fuel, has been carried out. The properties of several plant oils, and the results of engine tests using them, are reviewed based on the literature. Findings regarding engine performance, exhaust emissions and engine durability are collated. The causes of technical problems arising from the use of various oils are discussed, as are the modifications to oil and engine employed to alleviate these problems. The review shows that a number of plant oils can be used satisfactorily in CI engines, without transesterification, by preheating the oil and/or modifying the engine parameters and the maintenance schedule. As regards life-cycle energy and greenhouse gas emission analyses, these reveal considerable advantages of raw plant oils over fossil diesel and biodiesel. Typical results show that the life-cycle output-to-input energy ratio of raw plant oil is around 6 times higher than fossil diesel. Depending on either primary energy or fossil energy requirements, the life-cycle energy ratio of raw plant oil is in the range of 2-6 times higher than corresponding biodiesel. Moreover, raw plant oil has the highest potential of reducing life-cycle GHG emissions as compared to biodiesel and fossil diesel. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This analysis reviews and synthesizes the literature on the net energy return for electric power generation by wind turbines. Energy return on investment (EROI) is the ratio of energy delivered to energy costs. We examine 119 wind turbines from 50 different analyses, ranging in publication date from 1977 to 2007. We extend on previous work by including additional and more recent analyses, distinguishing between important assumptions about system boundaries and methodological approaches, and viewing the EROI as function of power rating. Our survey shows an average EROI for all studies (operational and conceptual) of 25.2 (n = 114; std. dev = 22.3). The average EROI for just the operational studies is 19.8 (n = 60; std. dev = 13.7). This places wind in a favorable position relative to fossil fuels, nuclear, and solar power generation technologies in terms of EROI. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing energy consumption has exerted great pressure on natural resources; this has led to a move towards sustainable energy resources to improve security of supply and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the rush to the cure may have been made in haste. Biofuels in particular, have a bad press both in terms of competition with good agricultural land for food, and also in terms of the associated energy balance with the whole life cycle analysis of the biofuel system. The emphasis is now very much on sustainable biofuel production; biofuels from wastes and lignocellulosic material are now seen as good sustainable biofuels that affect significantly better greenhouse gas balances as compared with first generation biofuels. Ireland has a significant resource of organic waste that could be a potential source of energy through anaerobic digestion. Ireland has 8% of the cattle population of the EU with less than 1% of the human population; as a result 91% of agricultural land in Ireland is under grass. Residues such as slurries and slaughter waste together with energy crops such as grass have an excellent potential to produce biogas that may be upgraded to biomethane. This biomethane may be used as a natural gas substitute; bio-compressed natural gas may then be an avenue for a biofuel strategy. It is estimated that a maximum potential of 33% of natural gas may be substituted by 2020 with a practical obtainable level of 7.5% estimated. Together with biodiesel from residues the practical obtainable level of this strategy may effect greater than a 5% substitution by energy of transport. The residues considered in this strategy to produce biofuel (excluding grass) have the potential to save 93,000 ha of agricultural land (23% of Irish arable land) when compared to a rapeseed biodiesel strategy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development requires methods and tools to measure and compare the environmental impacts of human activities for various products viz. goods, services, etc. This paper presents a review of life cycle assessment (LCA) of solar PV based electricity generation systems. Mass and energy flow over the complete production process starting from silica extraction to the final panel assembling has been considered. Life cycle assessment of amorphous, mono-crystalline, poly-crystalline and most advanced and consolidate technologies for the solar panel production has been studied. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, the Brazil automotive industry has been undergoing significant changes as a function of changes in the economic environment, both nationally and internationally. The trade and financial openness of the country led to a restructuring of the sector towards globalization of the supply chain and trade relations. The life cycle analysis can help identify the maturity of the product, thus giving a differential in relation to competitors. The study aims to identify, by observing the behavior of the vehicle units sold Gol VW (manufactured by Volkswagen of Brazil) in the Brazilian market from 1987 to 2010, the adhesion between the life cycle and strategies for renewal of product by the manufacturer. The behavior of the data suggests stages of life cycle defined for each generation and that the company uses strategies to prolong the stay of the vehicle on the market.Although rehabilitation of brownfields is an expensive undertaking, it can also be seen as a valuable initiative for promoting both local and global sustainable socio-economic development. As such, it can go beyond law-abiding practices in general, and become a domain of corporate or governmental social responsibility. The success of this kind of initiatives depends on the commitment of local authorities and other stakeholders, as well as from an understanding of the intrinsic environmental, social and economic value created. In Portugal, the state granted to EDM the concession to design and implement environmental rehabilitation projects and to promote the socio-economic enhancement of areas spoiled by earlier mining. This paper presents the REHMINE research project aiming the designing of a conceptual and methodological framework for establishing the threefold value induced by EDM's intervention at the Portuguese Sao Domingos abandoned mine. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the project will apply environmental, social and economic valuation methods, namely Life Cycle Assessment, Landscape Ethnography, Contingent Analysis and Multi Criteria Analysis to the value induced of mine rehabilitation in an integrated way.Prior technical work by various OEMs and lubricant formulators has identified lubricant-derived phosphorus as a key element capable of significantly reducing the efficiency of modern emissions control systems of gasoline-powered vehicles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13). However, measuring the exact magnitude of the detriment is not simple or straightforward exercise due to the many other sources of variation which occur as a vehicle is driven and the catalyst is aged (1). This paper, the second one in the series of publications, examines quantitative sets of results generated using various vehicle and exhaust catalyst testing methodologies designed to follow the path of lubricant- derived phosphorous transfer from oil sump to exhaust catalytic systems (1). Data discussed include a survey of TWC technologies used currently by the passenger car and light duty truck market, catalyst compatibility testing, paired vehicle dynamometer tests, field trials and life cycle analysis. Finally, post-mortem analysis of aged catalysts is used to both quantify the level of phosphorus exposure from the oil as well as estimate the loss of performance resulting from phosphorus deposition within the catalyst. Results reveal a significant and beneficial impact of reduced lubricant- derived phosphorus exposure on the life and efficiency of various three-way catalyst technologies when utilized in numerous vehicle types and driving cycles. A novel statistical model was developed which provides a quantitative measure of the effect of lubricant- derived phosphorous contamination of TWC. The overall environmental benefits of the specific motor oil formulations in this study with the novel ZDP versus conventional ZDP are clearly defined by means of the life cycle analysis (LCA).This paper demonstrates secondary aerosol generation potential of biofuel use in the energy sector from the photochemical interactions of precursor gases on a life cycle basis. The paper is divided into two parts-first. employing life cycle analysis (LCA) to evaluate the extent of the problem for a typical biofuel based electricity production system using five baseline scenarios; second, proposing adequate mitigation options to minimise the secondary aerosol generation potential on a life cycle basis. The baseline scenarios cover representative technologies for 2010 utilising energy crop (miscanthus), short rotation coppiced chips and residual/waste wood in different proportions. The proposed mitigation options include three approaches-biomass gasification prior to combustion, delaying the harvest of biomass, and increasing the geographical distance between the biomass plant and the harvest site (by importing the biofuels). Preliminary results indicate that the baseline scenarios (assuming all the biomass is sourced locally) bear significant secondary aerosol formation potential on a life cycle basis from photochemical neutralisation of acidic emissions (hydrogen chloride and sulphur dioxide) with ammonia. Our results suggest that gasification of miscanthus biomass would provide the best option by minimising the acidic emissions from the combustion plant whereas the other two options of delaying the harvest or importing biofuels from elsewhere would only lead to marginal reduction in the life cycle aerosol loadings of the systems. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The approach of material embodiment in agricultural production systems is important because it determines the convergence of inputs (indirectly, the natural resources) to the field. Additionally, material flow is the basis for both environmental (energy analysis, emergy synthesis, life-cycle analysis and carbon inventories) and economical analyses. Since different materials cannot compose a single index, generally these flows are not shown, making comparisons among approaches difficult. Another aspect that makes comparisons difficult is the definition of the boundary of the studied system. If these boundaries differ, results will also be different, hiding actual distinctions among systems. The present study aims to suggest an arrangement of existing models to determine material flow in agricultural production systems. The following steps were considered: i) the adoption of a diagram language to represent the analyzed system; ii) determination of the material flow for directly applied inputs; iii) determination of the material flow for indirectly applied inputs, which included: determination of the effective field capacity; fuel consumption; machinery depreciation; and labor. Data on fuel consumption were compared with the models presented. The best model applied was a fixed parameter based on engine power (0.163 L kW(-1) h(-1)). The determination of the material flow for maize silage production presented similar results as those obtained in regional databases.With increasing pressures on water resources throughout the world, the role of business in managing water resources is increasingly important. Corporately, the management of water resources is changing from one of compliance with local regulations to corporate water stewardship, where industry not only conserves water use within its direct control, "inside the facility fenceline" but also acts responsibly and seeks to influence water managed within the supply chain, the local communities and the wider regional, national and international watersheds, "beyond the fence line". Understanding the risks and opportunities at these different scales can be developed through water footprinting. The water footprint is a measure of freshwater use and impacts, a more comprehensive measure of freshwater resources appropriation than traditional water abstraction and discharge measures. The water footprint calculates the total water consumption and impact on water resources of a product or service. The footprint, when mapped against water availability, allows businesses to understand where the pressures may lie, so that appropriate strategies can be developed. This chapter presents the method, developed from its implementation across different products, and highlights how the results of the water footprint can help develop and manage appropriate water stewardship strategies.With the rapid economic development and accelerated urbanization, urban population has been expanding, which resulted in large amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in China. Therefore, the serious garbage siege in large number of china cities emerges. Taking the heated debate on construction of the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant in PanYu District of Guangdong Province as an example, the authors introduced this argument and discussed different views among three stakeholders from the perspective of public policy. At first, current state of WTE plants in China and their application in western countries is investigated. The investigation showed that waste incineration was a cost-effective way for MSW treatment, and the necessary prerequisites to reliable operation included suitable site selection, reasonable waste separation and recovery, advanced technology and equipment, professional personnel training and improved supervision and management system. In the game related to the public interest, only when the whole community joint together, can an effective way be found to resolve the disputes and keep the Nash equilibrium among the government and the public to achieve a harmonious society.The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impacts and benefits from municipal solid waste management systems in Xicheng district in Beijing. EASEWASTE, a life-cycle-based model, was used to evaluate different levels of the waste systems, including waste generation, collection, transportation, treatment and disposal technologies. Three integrated models were established according to the current and modified solid waste systems in Xicheng district. The investigation on the current waste system showed that, long distance transportation brought many impacts to photochemical ozone formation, acidification and global warming due to the fuel combustion during transportation. Furthermore, the methane emission from landfill was the dominate contributor to photochemical ozone formation and global warming. Introduction of a large transfer station could reduce the fuel consumption of transportation. The modified system where source separation of food waste was introduced and the remaining waste was assumed to be incinerated was then modeled. The results presented a significant improvement on photochemical ozone formation and global warming, which benefited from efficient incineration with energy recover. LCA methodology and a model like EASEWASTE were thus proven suitable for evaluating the environmental consequences and supporting the strategic decision making on municipal solid waste system.Remediation action is a critical procedure in the POPs contaminated site management. At present, dozens of remediation technologies are developed internationally and applied commercially. China is only at its preliminary stage and facing big challenges in the cleanup and remediation of POPs contaminated sites. Life cycle assessment (LCA) by Simapro 7.2 was carried out to study the positive and negative environmental impacts concerned with the application of two kinds of remediation technologies in a designated POPs contaminated site, including Base Catalyzed Decomposition (BCD) and Incineration. This study mainly focused on the main environmental factors of influence from economic benefit, technical characteristic and environmental effects, and analysis the environmental burdens. The LCA results of these two technologies were supposed to be provided for the environmental managers and factory managers as a theoretical basis for the remediation technologies selection.Incineration have been popular used in the modern city to handle the municipal solid waste, while the fly ash (FA) produced from the incineration plant, contains of heavy metals and dioxin, is sill a troublesome matter. Landfilling followed by solidification is commonly adopted in many countries, nevertheless, it still exist long term environmental and healthy risk; regeneration by melting process is generally used in Japan, while it is expensive since consumed much energy and need huge bottom ash to adjust the basicity. Sintering is a cheaper recycling method than melting, and brick is one of the typical products. Washing is a necessary pretreatment operation for the recycling of FA, which will remove most of the harmful salts during the sintering process. Milling is a helpful operation for the sintering, which will not only reduce the particle size to promote the quality of sintering product, but also provide mechano-chemical mechanism to enhance the Pb stabilization by phosphoric acid. In this study, FA was washed twice by liquid/solid ratio 5, wet-ball-milling in 10 min with proper quantity of cullet and phosphoric acid, substituting 20% of the feedstock clay, compress molding, and then oven heat at 900 degrees C. The result showed that, the quality of the product satisfied the standard of ordinary brick in Taiwan, the dioxin was below the detection limit and the destruction was > 99.9%, the Pb evaporation during the sintering was lower than 20%. The result of life cycle analysis (LCA) by Simapro program shows that the use of phosphoric acid was the largest loading to the environment; the second one was the energy consumption during the sintering. Dioxin and heavy metals risk to the health were only trace. When change the stabilizing agent to spent phosphoric acid, the environmental loading will be limited.Biofuel plant size is one of the key variables in biofuel supply chain analysis as it plays a pivotal role in controlling the efficacy of both feedstock supply and feedstock-to-biofuel conversion. The unit production cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of biofuels vary with plant size. We develop an analytical framework for integrating biofuel production costs and GHG balance derived from life-cycle analysis into supply chain optimization, followed by its application to ethanol production using forest biomass in the southern United States. We derive formulas for determining the optimal biofuel plant size and the corresponding feedstock supply radius based on the minimization of biofuel production costs less GHG benefits. Our results indicate that though biofuel plant size and feedstock supply radius should be augmented by considering GHG benefits, the GHG price will have a more significant impact on net biofuel production costs than on conversion plant size or feedstock supply radius. With a rise in the GHG price the net biofuel production cost tends to increase while the directions of change in plant size and feedstock supply radius are uncertain, depending upon the costs and GHG emissions of biomass transport and feedstock-to-fuel conversion. Combining GHG offset values with biofuel production costs enables us to more holistically examine the biofuel supply chain.Remediation of contaminated sites has obvious environmental benefits, but the remediation itself can cause environmental impacts. Impacts differ among technologies, and are likely to be greater at remote sites than in more populated areas due to transport over long distances. These impacts are seldom considered by the site-remediation industry. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) can quantify the overall environmental burdens of treatment systems, and help in selecting the most environmentally efficient approach. In this study, the environmental performance of three treatment options was compared, using LCA, for remediation of a remote diesel-contaminated site. The study focused on the secondary impacts of remediation (i.e. those associated with the remedial activities); the primary impacts (i.e. those associated with the changes in the site environmental quality) were handled through risk assessment. On-site ex-situ bioremediation in a temporary facility, followed by disposal in an unlined landfill, was found to have environmental impacts similar to in-situ treatment, but far less than those for off-site treatment. Transportation was the main contributor to overall pollution. Combining risk assessment with LCA may allow for more holistic management of contaminated sites, combining the benefits of a site-specific assessment and avoid shifting of the environmental burden.Environmental issues concerning wastewater treatment are considerable. Legislation is continuously refining the requirements for the level of removal of various pollutants in treated water. This often leads to a higher production of sludge, although ways to eliminate this sludge are becoming increasingly restricted. Most sludge has traditionally been incinerated (with energy recovery), disposed of in landfill sites or dumped into the sea. Today, however, ocean dumping has been banned in many areas. In Europe, landfill regulations for organic waste will become more and more stringent until 2015, when landfilling will be banned completely. Incineration is heavily regulated and facing strong social opposition, as the incineration of sludge leads to small atmospheric emissions of substances such as mercury and dioxins and generates ashes that need to be landfilled or handled as hazardous waste. Recycling sludge as fertilizer on agricultural soils is held by many governments to be the best environmental option, adding nutrients and organic content to the soil, although is banned in some areas. However, the content of heavy metals, pathogens and persistent and toxic organic compounds in sewage sludge make stringent regulation; necessary; this option is being increasingly questioned by farmers. The aim of this study is to assess alternatives for the final disposal of sewage sludge from wastewater treatment from a life cycle assessment (LCA) point of view in order to identify the best environmental alternatives. This study proposes five alternatives for final sludge applications: agricultural uses, compost plant, cement plant, incineration and landfill. LCA methodology is used to evaluate the environmental profile of the different studied alternatives in order to establish in a global, rigorous and objective way the most positive environmental alternative. Among the alternative final destinations of sludge studied here, the best environmental option is to combine agriculture use (fertilizer replacement) by using the sludge in a cement plant (as fuel replacement and raw material reduction) because this emphasizes their respective advantages and diminishes their respective disadvantages.Retail business connected producers and consumers, retail business' low-carbon extended from retail sectors to the upstream and downstream along retail supply chain. Based on product life cycle analysis, retail business' low-carbon first started from retail sectors, including smart technology systems, the use of scientific management system, building energy conservation and new energy use. The requirements of the supply chain from upstream to reduce packaging, improve logistics efficiency, gradually deepen to the development and production suppliers to develop low-carbon products; to downstream consumers not only propaganda and guidance, but also reduce the barriers.There are a number of factors that typically influence the selection of a structural system including code, cost, construction schedule and site constraints. As sustainability increasingly becomes an important goal during the design process, the role of structure in the overall sustainability of a building will need to be considered in terms of embodied energy, building longevity, reuse and deconstruction. The structure of a typical office building contributes roughly one-third to one-quarter of the total embodied energy and double the amount contributed by interior finishes. Consequently, the structure of a building should be a primary target for reducing the embodied energy of a building. While there has been much research on the embodied energy of structural materials, there has been less research into comparing the embodied energy of structural systems. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) tools exist to calculate the embodied energy of a proposed structural system during the early stages of the design process. However, the over simplified nature of these tools can provide misleading conclusions about which structural materials and systems will have the lowest environmental impact. To allow architects and engineers to consider issues of sustainability in the design and selection of a structural system, a transparent and easily understood metric for comparing the embodied energy of structural systems is required. In order to better understand the relationship between structural systems and embodied energy, this paper examines the embodied energy of materials used in typical steel and reinforced concrete structural systems by calculating the amount of material needed for different systems and the embodied energy of selected bay sizes. This method accounts for the varying size and amount of material needed for different spans and columns sizes. By using bay sizes, alternative structural systems are more easily compared to one another. Finally, a 4-story laboratory building, in design at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, was used as a case study to test the use of bay sizes as a comparative tool. Using schematic plans furnished by the architects to identify the bay sizes used in the building, a one-way concrete slab and beam or one-way joist slab proved to be the structural systems with the lowest embodied energy (both approximately 5,000 GJ).Sugar beet is a biennial plant, which produces an enlarged root and hypocotyl in the first year, in which it stores sucrose to provide energy to flower in the next season. Technically, conversion of sugar to ethanol is a simple process requiring only yeast fermentation. A 2006 USDA study calculated the yield of ethanol from the sucrose in a sugar beet was 103.5 L per tonne of root (wet weight). Life cycle analysis (LCA) indicates that bioethanol from sugar beet reduces green house gases as well or better than maize. Both nitrogen and water use efficiency may be superior to maize on average. However, sugar beet with an area of 465,000 ha in 2009, compared with about 32 million ha of maize, likely will not displace maize as the primary feedstock for bioethanol in the U.S. More likely, co-products like pulp and molasses will find use as bioenergy feedstocks, probably for high value specialty fuels or as feedstocks for a whole generation of petroleum plastic substitutes.In recent years, in Italy, a large quantity of construction and demolition (C&D) waste has been generated: in the year 2004 a production of about 46,0 Mt of C&D waste has been estimated. After mechanical treatment, this waste can be recovered and recycled as secondary raw material, determining economic and environmental benefits, by reducing landfill, transportation and primary resources consumption. To date, the recycling rate of C&D waste in Italy is only 10%, due to the amount of recycled product. This study is aimed at carrying out an analysis of C&D waste flow, in the Municipality of Rome, Italy, considering both the amount properly disposed or recycled, and the amount illegally dumped on the territory or in the containers for municipal solid waste. Furthermore, application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied in order to optimize C&D waste recycling, considering the environmental impact connected to different C&D waste management schemes. Data obtained from the LCA methodology allowed one to quantify the environmental performance, to estimate the costs of each scheme considered, and finally to evaluate the best C&D waste management.This chapter deals with the environmental impact of manufacturing used in the production of micro-devices. It focuses on methods to assess the environmental impact and is largely directed toward the Australian manufacturing industry but can be applied to the micro-device manufacturing industry in general. The relevance of life cycle analysis (LCA) and thermodynamic considerations are presented which form the current trends for analyzing the sustainability of manufacturing. This chapter concludes with a simple study of varying the spindle and slide speeds in the micro-end-milling production of T-junctions as an example that offers energy optimization in the micro-device manufacturing industry.Lightweight structures are by definition designed under the dictum of minimal material use. However, the impact on the environment is not only defined by the amount of used material. Also the ecological footprint of a material due to production conditions, maintenance circumstances and recycling possibilities has a large impact on the ecological rating of a structure or a structural component. The objective of this study is to evaluate the ecological footprint of conventional buildings, such as halls or sheds, covered with metal sheet construction, in comparison to membrane structures. The methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) is shortly described. In order to compare the embodied energy and the global warming potential (GWP) of textile structures and of conventional steel covered shed all building material is assessed based on the bill of quantities. Each building element was itemized into its material in order to allocate a LCA data for each product. To assess the overall environmental impact of a building each product used in the building has to be assessed. The sum of all building products used equals the overall LCA.The most important and widely used categories of shopping bags are: plastic [PE], paper, nonwoven [PP] and woven [Cotton] bags. This study revolves around the LCA [Cradle to Gate] of above mentioned shopping bag varieties. Cradle to Gate assessment was performed with a secondary data for all shopping bags. Life cycle impact assessment [LCIA] was accomplished by the eco-indicator' 99, a damage oriented method for LCIA in SIMAPRO 7.1. Comparative LCA results calculated by the Eco-indicator 99 were considered as a directive to compare the environmental impact made by these bags and a detailed explanation of results is provided in this article. From the results, it is found that reusable shopping bags- -nonwoven bags followed by woven bags are found to create lower environmental impacts compared to single use plastic and paper bags.In recent years the importance of eco-design in the design process of a product has drastically increased. Eco-design is a design methodology aimed at reducing the environmental impact of a product throughout its complete life cycle. Within this context, life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a powerful method of facilitating judgment on the environmental qualities of a design solution. However, before a complete LCA can be applied, the life cycle inventory (LCI) needs to be compiled. This is often a task too expensive and time consuming to complete in practice, since the data required is huge in amount and difficult to obtain. In this paper a novel approach is presented to supporting computer-aided compilation of life cycle inventories for simplified LCA. At the center of this approach is a software tool with an architecture that is capable of interfacing parameters of a LCA database with a PLM (Product Life cycle Management) database.Recycling of polymers has come into focus lately. Many polymers carry a backpack of energy from manufacturing, which is lost in present recycling of e.g. automotives and small house hold appliances. This calls for higher efficiency in recycling. To take a step in this direction a literature study is made and an experiment at a recycling plant for refrigerators and freezers. A batch of 30m3 of electronic waste was collected and processed in a so-called Hurricane machine. The experiment showed that recycling of polymers can be made on higher levels of efficiency with the used machine, if complemented with sorting and some initial processing before shredding. In order to improve polymer recycling a set of process steps must be designed in order to get secondary polymer fractions that can be used in products.In recent years, the reduction of freight truck trips has been a common policy goal. To this end, policies aimed at influencing load consolidation have been suggested and implemented, resulting in higher gross vehicle weights. The purpose of such policies has generally been to mitigate congestion and environmental impacts. However. trucks cause most of the damage incurred by pavements. The supply chain associated with pavement maintenance and construction releases significant air emissions, raising the question of whether increased vehicle weights may cause unintended environmental consequences. This paper presents scenarios with estimated emissions resulting from load consolidation and changes in load factors. These scenarios reveal several points having to do with the tradeoff between tailpipe versus pavement supply-chain emissions. In some cases, unintended emissions from the pavement supply chain are found to be significant. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, public agencies responsible for roads, streets, and highways are experiencing significant increases in the price of construction operations and asphalt binder availability; they are also experiencing limited available funds and the uncertainty of inflation. Those concerns are coupled with significant pressure to build, maintain, and rehabilitate "green," and agencies must look to alternative construction, rehabilitation, and maintenance methods as well as alternative materials that deliver on both of these seemingly different forces. Life-cycle assessment was used to evaluate roadway construction activities. Life-cycle assessment is similar to life-cycle cost analysis, except that environmental impact is considered over the analysis period. Life-cycle assessment includes energy consumption, emissions generation, and natural resource consumption in addition to price of the activity. All activities evaluated were compared with conventional materials and means of construction. Materials evaluated specific to hot-mix asphalt included reclaimed asphalt pavement, asphalt shingles, and warm-mix asphalt. Aggregate base stabilization and subgrade treatments were evaluated as part of a low- and high-traffic-volume facility. The final evaluation considered rehabilitation and maintenance activities that focused on in-place recycling, such as hot in-place and cold in-place recycling. In most instances, these activities can reduce energy consumption and emissions generation and can conserve natural resources (aggregate and asphalt binder), plus offer the benefit of reducing the price of construction. These materials and technologies show promise in helping agencies meet the rising price of construction while addressing public concern for the environment.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to identify the environmental impact of a product or process This paper compares three replacement options for an aging portland cement concrete (PCC) pavement with the use of an LCA process based protocol The options are to remove and replace the aging pavement with PCC pavement remove the aging pavement and replace It with hot mix asphalt (HMA) pavement and crack and seat the existing pavement and then place an HMA overlay Each option investigated Includes a detailed construction and rehabilitation schedule and is analyzed over 50 years The results show that materials production (e g cement asphalt PCC and HMA) dominates the energy use emissions and impacts for all three options In general HMA production tends to cause the HMA option to have the highest energy use whereas cement production tends to cause the PCC option to have the highest global warming potential (GWP) The crack seat and overlay option was the lowest energy user had the lowest GWP and produced the least emissions in more categories measured than the other two options This may become a strong argument for expansion of the crack seat and overlay method of rehabilitationEach year the United States places about $100 billion of roadway construction. This level of activity suggests possibly significant sustainability implications in the construction activities for this work. One means to quantify some of these impacts is through life-cycle assessment (LCA). A review of 14 roadway construction LCA papers reveals some common ideas about the ecological impacts of roadway construction. Some key observations are that (a) the energy expended during roadway construction is roughly equivalent to that used by traffic operating on the facility for 1 or 2 years, (b) total energy use during roadway construction varies but is typically on the order of 3 to 7 TJ/lane mile, (c) total CO2 emissions during roadway construction vary but are typically 200 to 600 Mg/lane mile, (d) materials production makes up 60% to 80% of energy use and 60% to 90% of CO2 emissions associated with construction, (e) construction activities at the jobsite make up less than 5% of energy use and CO2 emissions, and (f) transportation associated with construction makes up 10% to 30% of energy use and about 10% of CO2 emissions associated with construction.Although society is facing a variety of environmental issues, including the depletion of energy resources, and has a much greater awareness of climate change and its serious related social impacts, transportation systems have been pushed to increasingly greater limits because of the dramatic growth in traffic demand. A case study was performed to compare the contributions of green construction credits and those of environmentally sustainable traffic operations to reducing energy use and emissions. The study measured the impacts of green credits by using the Carnegie Mellon University economic input output life-cycle assessment model. These impacts were compared with those achieved through sustainable traffic operation strategies, consisting of a high-occupancy vehicle lane and access to public transit. The study shows that the energy and emissions reductions obtained by use of the traffic operation strategies eclipsed those obtained by use of the green credit measures in just 1 month of traffic operations. The carbon dioxide emissions created and the total energy consumed by only 1 month of traffic were three times greater and 30% more, respectively, than those obtained by repaving the same roadway. In addition to reducing emissions, environmentally sustainable traffic operations offer social sustainability benefits, such as reducing traffic delays and improving flow, which reduce the demand for transportation infrastructure and which can ultimately reduce the need for new roadway construction. Although both green credit measures and environmentally sustainable traffic operations are essential to true sustainability, the relative impacts of both traffic operations and construction credits should be considered when research and infrastructure investments are prioritized.This paper reviews calculation tools available for quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions associated with different types of public transit service and the tools' usefulness in helping a transit agency to reduce its carbon footprint through informed vehicle and fuel procurement decisions. Available calculators fall into two categories: (a) registry- and inventory-based calculators most suitable for standardized voluntary reporting, carbon trading, and regulatory compliance and (b) life-cycle analysis calculators that seek comprehensive coverage of all direct and indirect emissions. Despite significant progress in calculator development, no single calculator contains all information needed by transit agencies to develop a truly comprehensive, life cycle-based accounting of the emissions produced by vehicle fleet operations and for a wide range of vehicle and fuel technology options.The benefits of using recycled materials in highway pavements was assessed quantitatively by conducting life-cycle analysis and life-cycle cost analysis on pavements consisting of conventional and recycled materials for a highway construction project in Wisconsin. Results of the analysis indicate that using recycled materials in the base and subbase layers of a pavement can result in reductions in global warming potential (20%), energy consumption (16%), water consumption (11%), and hazardous waste generation (11%) while also extending the service life of the pavement. In addition, using recycled materials in the base and subbase layers can result in a life-cycle cost savings of 21%. The savings are even greater if landfill avoidance costs are considered for the recycled materials incorporated in the pavement. Extrapolation of the benefits to conditions nationwide indicates that modest changes in pavement design to incorporate recycled materials can contribute substantially to the emission reductions required to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at current levels.The management of agricultural wastes in distribution of scarce resources is an important factor in the economics. The task of the management of material flow becomes relevant for agriculture with the beginnings of the industrial production. Utilization of agricultural wastes for energy production means an income for agricultural sector. Agricultural sector is the largest business sector since the past in Turkey. Depending on the country's development reduces the share of this sector but maintains of total production and employment. In Turkey, the agricultural sector constitutes 90% of field crops and livestock (Kaya vd,2006) [1]. This study was constructed by considering the environmental, economical and social benefits and focus of this study is the production biogas from agricultural and animal wastes and utilization of obtained gases in integrated energy conversion technologies. The tasks in these study includes: review biogas and energy production technologies, system simulations and DSS modeling, design and development of two lab-scale (one for animal waste and other for agricultural waste) and one pilot scale (250 kW capacity) integrated biogas plant, integration of the pilot plant with energy conversion Systems, experimental study, feasibility study including techno-economical analysis of the whole system, life cycle analysis and dissemination of the project results.The main objective of this study is to compare the life cycle of fossil fuel (coal, natural gas and oil) in order to assess the overall environmental impact. In this respect it was analyzed the fossil fuels energy production based on the best available energy technologies for each fuel. The methodology used in order to evaluate the total environmental impact was Life Cycle Analysis. The method allowed on one side the identification of the pollutants generated in each stage: extraction, treatment, transportation and combustion, and on the other side identification of the main classes of impact according the pollutants inventory.The main objective of the paper consists in comparing the chains of electrical energy production from coal, natural gases and uranium from the point of view of their environmental impact. For a complete study of the three chains, inventory, impact, and sensitivity analyses have been used. Thus, the main pollutants generated during each stage: extraction, treatment, transport and combustion, the main impact classes based on the inventoried pollutants, respectively, have been identified. Within the sensitivity analysis, the impact indicators have been grouped into three classes, with different shares. In conclusion, the uranium chain is the least pollutant, while the coal chain has a great environmental impact, especially due to the lack of flue gas treatment equipment.The biodegradable plastics were introduced in the 1980s in order to detect possible renewable feedstock to produce non petroleum-based plastics, as well as to reduce the environmental burdens due to the landfill volume increase To this end, in the la I years different typologies of bioplastics like PHB, PCL, Mater-Br and PLA were introduced In order to verify the benefits of bioplastics in comparison to conventional plastics it is necessary to evaluate the environmental impact derived from production, utilization and disposal of the two kinds of material Nowadays, the most important tool to evaluate the environmental impact of a material (for example bio or conventional plastics) is the life cycle assessment (LCA) that determines the overall impact of a plastic on the environment by defining and analysing several impact indices In particular, global warming, human toxicity, abiotic depletion, eutrophication, acidification and many other impact indices directly related to the production, utilization and disposal of the plastics studied in this work, re considered In this paper an analysis of the different disposal scenarios (in particular composting and recycling processes) applied to the most important bioplastics currently on the market (PLA made from Nature Works and Mater-Br made from Novamont), was carried out by using the LCA methodology and by also taking into account the Land Use Change (LUC) emissions Cost and benefits of the bioplastic disposal were also compared to these of the conventional plasticsThis chapter analyzes municipal solid waste (MSW), its definition, brief history, and management. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which evaluates environmental impacts of MSW, is also referred. MSW is mentioned in terms of its characteristic as well as a method of collection, transport, recycling, treatment and disposal. The new methodology of sampling and analyses of MSW is also mentioned because the knowledge of the composition allows decision making based on what kind of handling will be optimal for wastes and the environment. MSW management is one of the major environmental problem not only in EU countries but all over the world.Seven filtration systems treating raw wastewater planted with helophytes and designed by Atelier Reeb between 1996 and 2003, have been closely monitored by the appropriate authorities. The most basic system, not including sequential feeding, and the most sophisticated system involving pumps, are compared with regard to their filtering capacities (the first being less efficient), their ageing (in general, vegetated systems have a long life and they age well) and their eco balance (the more basic systems are of interest here). The filters are grouped into four types of system according to feeding method, flow type within the filter and the number of stages of filtration. The three batch-fed systems have performed well with respect to French standards. The most basic system, with gravitational feeding, requires more careful monitoring and an additional treatment phase with a wooded buffer zone in order to obtain satisfactory results. Its very low costs of operation nevertheless make it a viable system in many cases, on condition that the design has been properly adapted.Many phenolic compounds show high boiling points, low molecular weights, moderate polarities or high toxicities Therefore, conventional wastewater treatment is limited or expensive Recycling of the separated compounds is often not possible But, if liquid-liquid reactive extraction is linked to a non-porous membrane, some or all of the above mentioned limitations may be overcome The key element is a composite membrane with a dense, hydrophobic top layer which avoids the mixing of the two aqueous fluid streams The dilute phenol stream is one of them, the other is caustic soda as stripping solvent Since the basics of this technology have been discussed before, the scope of this study is to facilitate process implementation and integration To this end, a life cycle assessment framework is used to identify the optimal equipment size for the treatment of wastewater that may, for example, originate from the production of polycarbonate Limiting for this application is not the environmental performance though, but most likely process economicsWater shortages and water pollution are a global problem Increases in population can have further acute effects on water cycles and on the availability of water resources Thus, wastewater management plays an important role in mitigating negative impacts on natural ecosystems and human environments and is an important area of research In this study, we modelled catchment-scale hydrology, including water balances, rainfall, contamination, and urban wastewater treatment The entire water resource system of a basin, including a forest catchment and an urban city area, was evaluated synthetically from a spatial distribution perspective with respect to water quantity and quality, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique was applied to optimize wastewater treatment management with the aim of improving water quality and reducing CO2 emissions A numerical model was developed to predict the water cycle and contamination in the catchment and city, the effect of a wastewater treatment system on the urban region was evaluated, pollution loads were evaluated quantitatively, and the effects of excluding rainwater from the treatment system during flooding and of urban rainwater control on water quality were examined Analysis indicated that controlling the amount of rainwater inflow to a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in an urban area with a combined sewer system has a large impact on reducing CO2 emissions because of the load reduction on the urban sewage systemAn energy consumption model was developed for evaluating sewage sludge treatment plants (SSTPs) incorporating various treatment processes such as thickening, anaerobic digestion, dewatering, incineration, and melting. Based on data analyses from SSTPs in Osaka, Japan, electricity consumption intensities for thickening, anaerobic digestion, dewatering, incineration, and melting and heat consumption intensities for anaerobic digestion, incineration, and melting were expressed as functions of sludge-loading on each unit process. The model was applied for predicting the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of SSTPs using various treatment processes and power and heat generation processes using digestion gas. Results showed that SSTPs lacking incineration and melting processes but having power generation processes showed excess energy production at the high sludge-loading rate. Energy consumption of the SSTPs without incineration and melting processes were low, but their GHG emissions were high because of CH(4) and N(2)O emissions from sludge cake at the landfill site. Incineration and melting processes consume much energy, but have lower CH(4) and N(2)O emissions.We discuss various views and conceptual frameworks put forward in the discussion of ICT and sustainable development: An optimistic and a pessimistic view of ICT with regard to sustainability, the three-pillar approach to sustainable development, the three-level approach to ICT impacts, the claim of human, social and ecological compatibility of ICT and the plain use of ICT for development. We show that each of these approaches has its problems and limitations and conclude with formulating the challenges of finding an analytical approach which will effectively support decision-makers in using ICT in the service of sustainable development.The purpose of Sustainable Design, SD, is to satisfy customer needs while reducing environmental impacts. The main challenge is to integrate Life Cycle Assessment, Product Service Systems, social and economic aspects while considering the tensions and trade-offs of each activity in depth. SD requires data from many sources in addition to many software tools to perform each analysis. In order to provide information systems for SD, the adoption of a Service-Oriented Architecture, SOA, is appropriate because of its integration requirements. SOA best practices recommend the design of a reference process prior to architectural definitions, so as to identify the complexities and provide a comprehensive solution to the problem. A reference process is presented here as the first step for building information systems for SD. In addition, the reference process presents a list of activities to be performed during the design stage and is very helpful as a guide for SD beginners.This contribution is based on Habermas' theory of communicative action and his distinction between lifeworld and social subsystems like the economy, science and public administration. This distinction does not only help in understanding the role of generalized action orientations and symbolic mechanisms in social subsystems, one important conclusion is that evolution and transition of orientations and mechanisms require communication and discourse: communication about problems, about problematic orientations, new ways and mutual insights etc. IT support in this regard (conversation support) plays a completely different role than "normal" information systems that are aimed at the stabilization of established orientations (like in economy profit maximization in combination with Taylor's efficiency thinking). This allows discussion of different IT solutions with respect to their capabilities supporting the transition phase of sustainable development, as well as their contributions to modified or new generalized action orientations: environmental management information systems (EMIS), specialized modeling tools (e.g. life cycle assessment tools) but also all-purpose tools such as Excel, Email and web-based social networks.In the last two decades substantial advances have been made in the understanding of the scientific basis of urban climates. These are reviewed here with attention to sustainability of cities, applications that use climate information, and scientific understanding in relation to measurements and modelling. Consideration is given from street (micro) scale to neighbourhood (local) to city and region (meso) scale. Those areas where improvements are needed in the next decade to ensure more sustainable cities are identified. High-priority recommendations are made in the following six strategic areas: observations, data, understanding, modelling, tools and education. These include the need for more operational urban measurement stations and networks; for an international data archive to aid translation of research findings into design tools, along with guidelines for different climate zones and land uses; to develop methods to analyse atmospheric data measured above complex urban surfaces; to improve short-range, high-resolution numerical prediction of weather, air quality and chemical dispersion through improved modelling of the biogeophysical features of the urban land surface; to improve education about urban meteorology; and to encourage communication across scientific disciplines at a range of spatial and temporal scales.Governments worldwide are promoting the development of biofuels in order to mitigate the climate impact of using fuels. In this article, I discuss the impacts of biofuels on climate change, water use, and land use. I discuss the overall metric by which these impacts have been measured and then present and discuss estimates of the impacts. In spite of the complexities of the environmental and technological systems that affect climate change, land use, and water use, and the difficulties of constructing useful metrics, it is possible to make some qualitative overall assessments. It is likely that biofuels produced from crops using conventional agricultural practices will not mitigate the impacts of climate change and will exacerbate stresses on water supplies, water quality, and land use, compared with petroleum fuels. Policies should promote the development of sustainable biofuel programs that have very low inputs of fossil fuels and chemicals that rely on rainfall or abundant groundwater, and that use land with little or no economic or ecological value in alternative uses. The framework for sustainability of urban areas is tied to the patterns of urban metabolism in which resources (water, food, energy, materials and chemicals) are delivered to an urban area, metabolized and changed to outputs. Under the current linear concept water, energy and other inputs generate waste and pollution. Furthermore, lack of conservation and waste within the city leads to shortages and, in the near future, to exhaustion of resources. There is a need to change the current linear urban metabolism to one that would reuse and recycle and in which used water and solids would become a resource. This would be a paradigm change of building and retrofitting the cities. The footprints are quantitative measures of sustainability and metabolism. Footprints covered in this article are water, energy/greenhouse emissions, and ecology. When the footprints are defined, development of sustainability criteria should follow. The footprints may be global, regional or local and can be hierarchically interconnected.In this paper I present a study regarding the institutional conditions of Mexican cities based on a post-petroleum urban model that considers transport, architecture, urban planning and land use, renewable energy sources, energy saving and efficiency, and urban metabolism issues. The model was constructed with recommendations of authors and organizations that have analysed the energy dimension of cities under an energy-availability, environmental or petroleum-independent view. To make the study I sent a questionnaire to some local governments of all the country. The information indicates that Mexican cities do not have institutional conditions to manage the urban-energy transition that signify the end of cheap oil and the peak of world oil production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the methodology and data used to determine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to ten cities or city-regions: Los Angeles County, Denver City and County, Greater Toronto, New York City, Greater London, Geneva Canton, Greater Prague, Barcelona, Cape Town and Bangkok. Equations for determining emissions are developed for contributions from: electricity; heating and industrial fuels; ground transportation fuels; air and marine fuels; industrial processes; and waste. Gasoline consumption is estimated using three approaches: from local fuel sales; by scaling from regional fuel sales; and from counts of vehicle kilometres travelled. A simplified version of an intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) method for estimating the GHG emissions from landfill waste is applied. Three measures of overall emissions are suggested: (i) actual emissions within the boundary of the city; (ii) single process emissions (from a life-cycle perspective) associated with the city's metabolism; and (iii) life-cycle emissions associated with the city's metabolism. The results and analysis of the study will be published in a second paper. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban metabolism research faces difficulties defining ecological trophic levels and analyzing relationships among the metabolic system's energy components. Here, we propose a new way to perform such research. By integrating throughflow analysis with ecological network utility analysis, we used network flows to analyze the metabolic system's network structure and the ecological relationships within the system. We developed an ecological network model for the system, and used four Chinese cities as examples of how this approach provides insights into the flows within the system at both high and low levels of detail. Using the weight distribution in the network flow matrix, we determined the structure of the urban energy metabolic system and the trophic levels; using the sign distribution in the network utility matrix, we determined the relationships between each pair of the system's compartments and their degrees of mutualism. The model uses compartments based on 17 sectors (energy exploitation; coal-fired power; heat supply; washed coal; coking; oil refinery; gas generation; coal products; agricultural; industrial; construction; communication, storage, and postal service; wholesale, retail, accommodation, and catering; household; other consuming; recovery; and energy stocks). Analyzing the structure and functioning of the urban energy metabolic system revealed ways to optimize its structure by adjusting the relationships among compartments, thereby demonstrating how ecological network analysis can be used in future urban system research. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urbanization is not only a socioeconomic phenomenon; it is also a process of ecological transformation by humans. Here we examine two aspects of resource use as a result of urbanization: (1) consumption of natural resources such as water and forest products; and (2) transformation and use of land for urban activities. We also review concepts and methodologies for framing urbanization and resource use such as urban metabolism and ecological footprint, and their recent applications. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of innovative urban and land use planning and management of urban development to minimize the resource demands of cities by reducing energy and material inflows and closing the urban metabolism loop.In the decades to come, the majority of humans will live in urban settings. Consequently, the role of cities in reducing socioeconomic material and energy flows is increasingly recognized. We examine the recent literature on urban energy and material use, and their reduction potential, focusing on three aspects: the urban form, the urban building stock, and urban consumption patterns. Although there is clear evidence of the huge saving potential resulting from better urban form and better building design, implementation remains an open issue. Regarding urban consumption patterns, we point out that there is increasing evidence that household income strongly correlates with embodied energy and material use. This has implications regarding how urban specific energy and material flows should be measured, but might also lead to the insight that technical fixes will eventually be offset by the income effect. Although not the focus of this review, social inequalities in using or having access to resources in cities are stressed as a largely neglected dimension of the debate.Sustainable development of urban areas has been a hot topic of ecosystem management research for years. Based on the account of the extended exergy utilization in the society of Beijing, which is considered as the composition of extraction (Ex), conversion (Co), agriculture (Ag), industry (In), transportation (Tr), tertiary (Te) and households (Do) sectors, an urban metabolism network models are constructed to gain insights into the metabolic processes that orient to sustainable urban development. The results showed that a great deal of energy and resources have to be consumed to maintain the structure and function of a city. The social system in Beijing is a highly competitive network, and there are 8 competitive relations and only two mutualistic ones. The Do- and Ag-sector are the major controlling factors of the system. Do- and In-sector have the larger environmental burden. The conclusions indicate that the exergy-based network analysis can be refined to become an integrative tool for evaluation, policy-making and regulation for ecosystem management concerning structure and efficiency at urban levels. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The system analysis of urban metabolic system, still a black box in urban research, has been underlined recently due to its important role in assessing the sustainability of urban ecosystem. An interpretation of the information indices from ecological network analysis when combined with urban metabolic research, however, has not been addressed systematically. In this study, a conceptual network model of urban metabolic systems was developed based on the identification of seven compartments. Emergy analysis and extended exergy analysis were introduced in order to define the proper way of quantifying the material and energy flows within the system. After that, the information indices derived from ecological network analysis such as developmental capacity, ascendancy, overload were proposed as the potential indicators reflecting the sustainability of urban development. An interpretation of these information indices when embedded into urban metabolic system was conducted to further demonstrate their potential application to urban research. With the qualification and interpretation of these information indices from network analysis, this study may provide some lights on unfolding the black box. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Analysis of the function of urban energy metabolic system is an important research subject under the policy of energy saving. We developed an ecological network model for the system, and used Beijing city as an example of how this approach provides insights into the flows within the system. The basic components of the model are energy exploitation, energy transformation, energy consumption, and energy recovery. Beijing's energy metabolic system in 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2007 were analyzed by this approach as examples. Network utility analysis was applied to analyze the complex relationships between the components within the system. Using the sign distribution in the network utility matrix, we determined the relationships between each pair of the system's components. Some of the energy metabolic relationships between sectors were the same in the four years, whereas others were different. The ecological relationships between the energy transformation and exploitation sectors, between the energy consumption and transformation sectors, and between the energy consumption and exploitation sectors were the same, but the ecological relationships between the energy recovery and other three sectors differed greatly. Using ecological network analysis to evaluate the structure of urban energy metabolic system provided sound suggestions for adjusting the relationships between components. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Urban areas, in particular cities, are significant consumers of materials and energy, either directly on their land areas or indirectly through the materials, goods and services they import or export; there are upstream and downstream consequences of the removal of resources and the discharge of waste materials (to the atmosphere, water and soils), with multiple impacts on the biosphere. The processes involved need to be better characterised to reduce these environmental pressures. This is a sustainable development issue and it is a major goal of a field ecology which has been described as urban, industrial or sometimes territorial. This paper reviews the specific origins and findings of studies on urban metabolism. It describes the analysis tools used, including material and substance flows, energy balances, ecological, water and, more generally, environmental footprints. Finally, recent findings and areas for future research in the dematerialisation of urban societies are summarised.Purpose - This paper is part of a PhD research in urban metabolism assessment tools. Its purpose is to propose a new strategic urban metabolism assessment tool that can be integrated in the urban ecosystem planning process. Design/methodology/approach - The paper uses the systemic approach to build a model of an urban ecosystem in order to understand its structure and function; understand its metabolism flows and how to assess and "control" it. This systemic model outlines the role of the ecological footprint (EF) in the assessment of urban metabolism flows and demonstrates the need for a new tool to assess the function of metabolism control. Findings - The research paper proposes a new strategic assessment tool composed of the EF, as an assessment tool of urban metabolism flows, and of a new tool dedicated to the assessment of the urban metabolism control function. This tool, fully integrated in the urban planning process, will bridge the gap between urban metabolism assessment and urban metabolism control and planning. Originality/value - There are many urban metabolism assessment tools that are developed to assess and evaluate urban metabolisms, but urban planning practitioners need a strategic tool to transform assessment results into urban actions integrated in the urban ecosystem planning process.The study of the urban transformations opens a space to analyze the case of the Parkway from the barrio La Soledad; an area that since its conception reflects a unique process in the development of the city, and still broadly keeps its physical structure, in both urban and architectural aspects, in spite of being immerse in the evolution of a community that changes constantly according to the facts of every moment. Unlike other sectors dating from the same era, the Parkway has kept current but important physical transformations. It still saves its essence as urban space. However these processes of change and adaptation could be generating deteriorations at both physical and spatial senses gradually taking this sector to obsolescence.

 The threat of climate change is now recognized as an imminent issue at the forefront of the forest sector. Incorporating adaptation to climate change into forest management will be vital in the continual and sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services. The objective of this study is to investigate climate change adaptation in forest management using the landscape disturbance model LANDIS-II. The study area was comprised of 14,000 ha of forested watersheds in central Nova Scotia, Canada, managed by Halifax Water, the municipal water utility. Simulated climate change adaptation was directed towards three components of timber harvesting: the canopy-opening size of harvests, the age of harvested trees within a stand, and the species composition of harvested trees within a stand. These three adaptation treatments were simulated singly and in combination with each other in the modeling experiment. The timber supply was found to benefit from climate change in the absence of any adaptation treatment, though there was a loss of target tree species and old growth forest. In the age treatment, all trees in a harvested stand at or below the age of sexual maturity were exempt from harvesting. This was done to promote more-rapid succession to climax forest communities typical of the study area. It was the most effective in maintaining the timber supply, but least effective in promoting resistance to climate change at the prescribed harvest intensity. In the composition treatment, individual tree species were selected for harvest based on their response to climate change in previous research and on management values at Halifax Water to progressively facilitate forest transition under the altered climate. This proved the most effective treatment for maximizing forest age and old-growth area and for promoting stands composed of climatically suited target species. The size treatment was aimed towards building stand complexity and resilience to climate change, and was the most influential treatment on the response of timber supply, forest age, and forest composition to timber harvest when it was combined with other treatments. The combination of all three adaptation treatments yielded an adequate representation of target species and old forest without overly diminishing the timber supply, and was therefore the most effective in minimizing the trade-offs between management values and objectives. These findings support a diverse and multi-faceted approach to climate change adaptation. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cinturon Andino is the largest biosphere reserve of Colombia, located in the southernmost region of the state, the so-called Macizo Colombiano. For years threatened by guerilla activities and internal conflicts between indigenas and campesinos, the farmers have now initiated new attempts to adapt to climate change, to implement organic farming in order to secure the water quality and supply for the large cities in the vicinity of the park, to improve their livelihood and to strengthen the social and human capital. This article describes the chosen path to sustainability and provides suggestions for the adaptation of the park to the UNESCO Seville Strategy for biosphere reserves.For the water sector, adapting to the effects of climate change is a highly complex issue. Due to its geographical position, The Netherlands is vulnerable to sea level rise, increasing river discharges and increasing salt intrusion. This paper deals with the question of to what extent the historically developed Dutch water safety institutions have the capacity to cope with the 'new' challenges of climate change. The Adaptive Capacity Wheel provides the methodological framework. The analysis focuses on three recent and major planning practices in the Dutch water safety domain: the development and implementation of the Room for the River project, the introduction of the flood risk approach and the introduction of the Second Delta Plan. The results show that Dutch water safety institutions enable climate change adaptation, but to a limited extent. They face five institutional weaknesses that may cause risks in particular in the long term. The paper concludes that for The Netherlands to be prepared for climate change, it is necessary to build capacity to improvise, to invest in and create room for collaborative leaders, and to find ways to generate financial resources for long-term innovative measures.Since 2006 the scientific community in California, in cooperation with resource managers, has been conducting periodic statewide studies about the potential impacts of climate change on natural and managed systems. This Special Issue is a compilation of revised papers that originate from the most recent assessment that concluded in 2009. As with the 2006 studies that influenced the passage of California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), these papers have informed policy formulation at the state level, helping bring climate adaptation as a complementary measure to mitigation. We provide here a brief introduction to the papers included in this Special Issue focusing on how they are coordinated and support each other. We describe the common set of downscaled climate and sea-level rise scenarios used in this assessment that came from six different global climate models (GCMs) run under two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios: B1 (low emissions) and A2 (a medium-high emissions). Recommendations for future state assessments, some of which are being implemented in an on-going new assessment that will be completed in 2012, are offered.Climate change impacts and potential adaptation strategies were assessed using an application of the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) system developed for the Sacramento River basin and Delta export region of the San Joaquin Valley. WEAP is an integrated rainfall/runoff, water resources systems modeling framework that can be forced directly from time series of climatic input to estimate water supplies (watershed runoff) and demands (crop evapotranspiration). We applied the model to evaluate the hydrologic implications of 12 climate change scenarios as well as the water management ramifications of the implied hydrologic changes. In addition to evaluating the impacts of climate change with current operations, the model also assessed the impacts of changing agricultural management strategies in response to a changing climate. These adaptation strategies included improvements in irrigation technology and shifts in cropping patterns towards higher valued crops. Model simulations suggested that increasing agricultural demand under climate change brought on by increasing temperature will place additional stress on the water system, such that some water users will experience a decrease in water supply reliability. The study indicated that adaptation strategies may ease the burden on the water management system. However, offsetting water demands through these approaches will not be enough to fully combat the impacts of climate change on water management. To adequately address the impacts of climate change, adaptation strategies will have to include fundamental changes in the ways in which the water management system is operated.California timber production has been declining in an era of warming, increased wildfires, land conversion, and growing emphasis on recreation. Climate change has the potential to further affect California timber production through changes in individual tree growth rates, forest dieback, and shifts in species ranges and ecosystem composition. Coupled with changes in global timber prices, themselves the result of productivity effects, these production impacts hold important consequences for California's private timberlands. This study uses models that project tree species productivity and movement across the landscape under climate change, coupled with economic models of landowner adaptation and returns from multiple harvest strategies. Our results show that under likely price scenarios, climate change will result in an overall decline in harvested timber value relative to no climate change, with decreases of 4.9 to 8.5% by the end of the century. The magnitude of decrease depends on climate change scenario, price scenario and management option - with dollar losses totaling up to $8.1 billion in total land value (-$2.7 billion given a 4% discount rate). There is substantial spatial variation in these changes; most areas show significant declines in timber value while some show modest increases relative to a no climate change baseline. If prices are not affected by climate change, more areas experience gains in value. We find that forestry management strategies can mitigate lost value, indicating that climate change adaptation programs can yield important economic benefits. Declining timber value corresponds disproportionately to areas already experiencing timberland conversion to housing or agriculture. Policy measures to stem conversion of devalued timberlands may warrant consideration.This paper explores what the San Diego region may look like in the year 2050 as projected changes in regional climate conditions take place. Focusing on interrelated issues of climate change, sea level rise, population growth, land use, and changes in water, energy, public health, wildfires, biodiversity, and habitat, the paper reviews the potential impacts of a changing climate by 2050 and makes recommendations for changes in planning processes at the local and regional levels to prepare for these impacts. The original research for this study was completed in 2008 by a team of 40 experts from the region including universities, nonprofit organizations, local governments, public sector agencies and private sector entities. This paper has now been updated with more recent research regarding climate change adaptation while preserving the integrity of the original research team's work. The simulated impacts discussed in this study are based on regional projections of climate change generated by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, employing three climate models and two emissions scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The impacts are discussed in the context of significant regional growth expected during the period as well as an aging population base. Key issues explored in the report include potential inundation of six selected low-lying coastal areas in San Diego due to sea level rise, potential shortfalls in water deliveries, peak energy demand increases due to higher temperatures, growing risk of devastating wildfires, migrations of species in response to higher temperatures in an increasingly fragmented natural habitat, and public health issues associated with extreme temperature events.Assisted colonization - also known as managed relocation or assisted migration - is one way of facilitating range shifts for species that are restricted in their ability to move in response to climate or other environmental changes. Over the past decade, a healthy debate has evolved in the scientific community over the costs and benefits of assisted colonization as a climate-adaptation strategy. This discussion has focused largely on the specific risks and benefits of intentionally moving species, and has led to the development of multiple frameworks and numerous recommendations for weighing and evaluating these factors. Here, we argue that this debate is, in part, misguided, and that a more productive discussion would result if the issue were reframed in light of (1) the goals of assisted colonization, (2) the realities of projected climate impacts, and (3) the use of complementary adaptation strategies, such as enhancing landscape connectivity.Managing an issue of the magnitude, scope and complexity of climate change is a daunting prospect, yet one which nations around the world must face. Climate change is an issue without boundaries impacts will cut across administrative and geographical borders and be felt by every sector of society. Responses to climate change will need to employ system approaches that take into account the relationships that cross organisational and sectoral boundaries. Solutions designed in isolation from these interdependencies will be unlikely to succeed, squandering opportunities for long-term effective adaptation. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) provides a structural approach to identify, evaluate and manage health impacts of climate change that is inclusive of a wide range of stakeholders. Climate change will affect decision-making across every government level and sector and the health implications of these decisions can also be addressed with HIA. Given the nature of the issue, HIA of climate change will identify a large number of variables that influence the type and extent of health impacts and the management of these impacts. In order to implement the most effective adaptation measures, it is critical that an understanding of the interactions between these variables is developed. The outcome of HIA of climate change can therefore be strengthened by the introduction of system dynamics tools, such as causal loop diagrams, that are designed to examine interactions between variables and the resulting behaviour of complex systems.Issue addressed: Decreasing the risk of heat-stress is an imperative in health promotion, and is widely accepted as necessary for successful adaptation to climate change. Less well understood are the vulnerabilities that air-conditioning use exacerbates, and conversely, the need for the promotion of alternative strategies for coping with heat wave conditions. This paper considers these issues with a focus on the role of air-conditioning in the everyday life of elderly public housing tenants living alone, a sector of the population that has been identified as being at high risk of suffering heat stress. Methods: A vulnerability analysis of domestic air-conditioning use, drawing on literature and policy on air-conditioning practices and ethnographic research with households. Results: Residential air-conditioning exacerbated existing inequities. Case studies of two specifically selected low-income elderly single person households revealed that such households were unlikely to be able to afford this 'solution' to increasing exposure to heat waves in the absence of energy subsidies. Residential air-conditioning use during heat waves caused unintended side-effects, such as system-wide blackouts, which, in turn, led to escalating electricity costs as power companies responded by upgrading infrastructure to cope with periods of excess demand. Air-conditioning also contributed to emissions that cause climate change. Conclusions: Residential air-conditioning is a potentially maladaptive technology for reducing the risk of heat stress.Coastal erosion and storms represent a source of risk for settlements and infrastructure along the coast. At the same time, coastal natural assets, including landscape, are threatened by increasing development mainly driven by tourism. The Mediterranean coast is especially vulnerable to these processes, considering its high biological and cultural diversity. An additional challenge is represented by climate change, as it will force coastal communities to apply more or less drastic adaptation strategies. Coastal setbacks, used to protect coastal communities and infrastructure from storms and erosion, and to preserve coastal habitats and landscapes from degradation, is one of the main instruments suggested by the Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management of the Barcelona Convention, entered into force on the 24 of March 2011. Its implementation has the potential to influence coastal policies in other regions, such as the neighbouring Black Sea. The CONSCIENCE project has formalized concepts and conducted specific studies to provide new tools for coastal erosion management practice. The objective of this paper is to present a synthesis of the research conducted into coastal setbacks for coastal erosion management and climate change adaptation. This is done by analysing the requirement of the Protocol, current processes and management practices in two case study areas (Costa Brava Bays in Spain and Danube Delta, in Romania) and the new challenges posed by climate change. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The projected impacts of climate change are likely to reverse social and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, exacerbating the challenges of advancing sustainable development and meeting the millennium Development Goals (mDGs). Given the rapid and widespread urbanization occurring throughout sub-Saharan Africa, in particular Malawi, these challenges will be increasingly concentrated in cities. However, climate change and sustainable development policies in Malawi focus largely on rural areas. As a consequence, the new environmental and demographic challenges facing cities and the clear and immediate need for spatial planning are not addressed. This paper draws on current literature to make the linkages between climate change adaptation and spatial planning and to investigate the potential of densification and disaster risk management as adaptation measures. However, policy gaps, the acute shortages of trained land professionals and arrested political decentralization remain significant challenges for policy implementation. The recommendations outlined in this paper are intended to inform more appropriate adaptations over the long term by identifying where further research is required and by identifying specific actions that can be taken by policymakers to improve Malawi's planned adaptation in urban areas. Due to the lack of research that exists on climate change adaptation from an urban perspective in Malawi, this paper is intended to provoke wider discussions of this subject across the planning, development and environmental management community. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuel production has increased dramatically over the past decade, among other to mitigate climate change. However, climate change vulnerability may currently not be sufficiently accounted for in national biofuel strategies, hence neglecting a possible link between mitigation and adaptation to climate change. To the best of our knowledge this potential link has received very little attention in the literature. One example is the Philippines, which is currently implementing an ambitious program of biofuel production. Its aim is to reduce dependency on imported fuel, increase rural employment and incomes, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The Philippines is frequently battered by tropical typhoons and from 1975 to 2002 the annual average damage to agriculture was 3.047 billion pesos. We calculate wind damage on biofuel feedstock production, and assess the effect that a future potential increase in tropical cyclone intensity would have on energy security, rural development and climate change mitigation in the Philippines. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to obtain the future expected development of typhoon impacts. Based on the Philippines legislated target of 10% biodiesel blend in gasoline by 2011, simulation of the affected area for each feedstock, and expected biofuel feedstock damage is computed for the Philippine's 80 provinces in 2050, for two different typhoon climate change scenarios. Additional indirect economic effects are assessed in a tentative way. The results suggest a modest decrease in biofuel feedstock productivity at the national level, but with strong local differences that are shown to affect the Philippine's policy goals. In a broader perspective the paper accentuates a so far little described link between climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. This link may merit further attention by policy makers and development planners in order to ensure that policies are economically sound not only in the short but also medium term. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water is increasingly becoming scarce due to competing demands from agriculture, industry, recreation and the environment. With increased concerns regarding climate change and environmental water demand, system managers and irrigators are being forced to consider deficit-irrigation options. This study illustrates the potentials of deficit irrigation as an effective adaptive response to climate change and environmental water demand in achieving efficiency gains, water saving and maximizing benefits that could be achieved at system level. We compared three scenarios: optimization with full irrigation, optimization with deficit irrigation and deficit irrigation without optimization. A non-linear optimization model, which uses crop production function and profit functions endogenously, was used to evaluate the potential of deficit irrigation. The results show that optimization with deficit irrigation could result in both environmental flows and maximizing net returns objectives, increase overall water use efficiency, and therefore offer an effective adaptive response against climate change. We envisage deficit irrigation could be used as a cost-effective adaptive response for meeting climate and environmental objectives. Water saved through deficit irrigation could be used to restore environmental balance through augmenting environmental flows. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A methodological proposal aimed at improving the effectiveness of interactions between the scientific community and local actors for decision-making processes in water management was developed and tested to two case studies, in Europe and Asia: the Upper Danube (Danube) and Upper Brahmaputra (Brahmaputra) River Basins. The general objectives of the case studies were about identifying and exploring the potential of adaptation strategies to cope with flood risk in mountain areas. The proposal consists of a sequence of steps including participatory local workshops and the use of a decision support systems (DSS) tool. Workshops allowed for the identification of four categories of possible responses and a set of nine evaluation criteria, three for each of the three pillars of sustainable development: economy, society and the environment. They also led to the ranking of the broad categories of response strategies, according to the expectations and preferences of the workshop participants, with the aim of orienting and targeting further activities by the research consortium. The DSS tool was used to facilitate transparent and robust management of the information, the implementation of multi criteria decision analysis and the communication of the outputs. The outcomes of the implementation of the proposed methods and DSS tool are discussed to assess the potential to support decision-making processes in the field of climate change adaptation (CCA) and integrated water resources management (IWRM). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiversity conservation in an era of global change and scarce funding benefits from approaches that simultaneously solve multiple problems. Here, we discuss conservation management of the island scrub-jay (Aphelocoma insularis), the only island-endemic passerine species in the continental United States, which is currently restricted to 250-square-kilometer Santa Cruz Island, California. Although the species is not listed as threatened by state or federal agencies, its viability is nonetheless threatened on multiple fronts. We discuss management actions that could reduce extinction risk, including vaccination, captive propagation, biosecurity measures, and establishing a second free-living population on a neighboring island. Establishing a second population on Santa Rosa Island may have the added benefit of accelerating the restoration and enhancing the resilience of that island's currently highly degraded ecosystem. The proactive management framework for island scrub-jays presented here illustrates how strategies for species protection, ecosystem restoration, and adaptation to and mitigation of climate change can converge into an integrated solution.Climate change is predicted to bring more extreme climatic variability to Australia. Yet recent reforms to Australian water law and governance have typically focused on water scarcity, not floods. In the summer of 2010/2011, devastating floods in a major urban centre and in regional areas were powerful reminders of the need for more systemic and adaptive responses for water resources management. Using Queensland and Victoria as case studies, the article demonstrates how the water law frameworks in both states assume 'stationarity' through the adoption of standards such as the 1: 100 year flood event probability-an assumption that climate change has rendered unreliable. The article then examines the consequences of reliance on these past modes, particularly in respect of land use planning measures for flood risk adaptation. Finally, this article considers systemic responses for improved flood management focussing on strategic government planning, driven in part by potential litigation in the courts, as well as more local 'autonomous' adaptation in community-based initiatives.This article explores the drivers, benefits, and challenges to climate change adaptation in Bangladesh. It specifically investigates the "Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change through Coastal Afforestation Program," a 5-year $5 million adaptation scheme being funded and implemented in part by the Government of Bangladesh, United Nations Development Program, and Global Environment Facility. The article explores how the CBACC-CA builds various types of adaptive capacity in Bangladesh and the extent its design and implementation offers lessons for other adaptation programs around the world. The first part of the study begins by describing its research methods consisting of research interviews, site visits, and a literature review. It then summarizes six primary sectors vulnerable to climate change in Bangladesh: water resources and coastal zones, infrastructure and human settlements, agriculture and food security, forestry and biodiversity, fisheries, and human health. The article next describes the genesis and background behind the CBACC-CA, with an emphasis on components that promote capacity development, demonstration projects, risk reduction, and knowledge management. The article concludes that technology by itself is only a partial component of successful adaptation efforts, and that multiple and integrated adaptation measures that cut across sectors and social, institutional, and infrastructural dimensions are needed to truly build resilience and effectiveness.By an interview survey with apple growers in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, we found that their recognition of and reaction to climate change depends on their sales channels. Against rising air temperature, more farmers on direct sales (Type D farmers) than those on sales via the markets (Type M farmers) recognized the delay in fruit maturity as the effect of climate change, specifically temperature rise, (Type D: 62%, Type M: 15%). In response to the delay in maturity, Type D farmers simply delayed the harvest to full maturity by about 10 days than they did 20 years ago. On the other hand, Type M farmers recognized delayed reddening of the fruits as the most salient result of climate change (Type D: 8%, Type M: 46%), and took measures to accelerate the coloring by placing reflective materials on ground and/or picking off leaves around the fruits. The contrasting behaviors can be explained by the difference in the critical trait of the products. For Type M farmers, timing of the shipment is critical to avoid competition with shipments from other apple growing areas, and the good coloring is the prerequisite for the shipment. For Type D farmers, by contrast, full maturity is more important than coloring, since their contract with the customers hinges on the palatability of the fruits rather than the timing. This study has thus identified positioning of the farmers with the sales channel as a determinant in their adaptation behavior and vulnerability to climatic changes.With growing evidence on how climate change impacts human health, public health agencies should develop adaptation programs focused on the impacts predicted to affect their jurisdictions. However, recent research indicates that public health agencies in the United States have done little to prepare the public for predicted climate change impacts, largely due in response to a lack of resources and priority. This study surveyed Environmental Health (EH) Directors across the United States to determine the extent to which individual level attitudes and beliefs influence the adoption of climate change adaptation programming in a department. The results indicate that an EH Director's perception of the health risk posed by climate change explained 27% of the variance in the number of climate change impacts being addressed. Furthermore, the study found that environmental attitude and political views made strong, unique contributions in explaining the variance in risk perception. The results provide evidence that individual-level attitudes and beliefs, as well as organizational-level barriers influence the adoption of climate change adaptation programs in public health agencies. As a result, increasing EH Directors' perception of risk by highlighting the likelihood and severity of localized impacts may increase the adoption of adaptation programming despite existing organizational barriers (e.g., lack of resources). Given the fact that risk perception has been shown to influence behavior across cultures, these findings are also useful for understanding the influence of individual decision makers on public health programming around the world.Andrew Macintosh* The Kyoto Protocol's forest management (FM) accounting framework contains a number of deficiencies that increase the risk of parties recording credits and debits that do not reflect the additional direct anthropogenic influence on net forest emissions. To rectify these flaws, it has been proposed that the current 'gross-net' approach be replaced with a baseline-and-credit system (FM reference levels), under which credits and debits would be determined on the basis of deviation of net FM emissions from a preset reference level. This article reviews the proposed FM reference level system and uses a case study on Australia to highlight its pros and cons. It is concluded that, while the system has the potential to lead to improved outcomes, these benefits are threatened by the refusal of several parties to adopt a principled approach to setting reference levels. Even if these fundamental issues are overcome, the success of the system will rely on improved transparency and a willingness of parties to make ex post adjustments to exclude non-anthropogenic and non-additional changes in net forest emissions from their accounts.BACKGROUND: Heat-related mortality is a matter of great public health concern, especially in the light of climate change. Although many studies have found associations between high temperatures and mortality, more research is needed to project the future impacts of climate change on heat-related mortality. OBJECTIVES: We conducted a systematic review of research and methods for projecting future heat-related mortality under climate change scenarios. DATA SOURCES AND EXTRACTION: A literature search was conducted in August 2010, using the electronic databases PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Pro Quest, and Web of Science. The search was limited to peer-reviewed journal articles published in English from January 1980 through July 2010. DATA SYNTHESIS: Fourteen studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Most projections showed that climate change would result in a substantial increase in heat-related mortality. Projecting heat-related mortality requires understanding historical temperature mortality relationships and considering the future changes in climate, population, and acclimatization. Further research is needed to provide a stronger theoretical framework for projections, including a better understanding of socioeconomic development, adaptation strategies, land-use patterns, air pollution, and mortality displacement. CONCLUSIONS: Scenario-based projection research will meaningfully contribute to assessing and managing the potential impacts of climate change on heat-related mortality.Climate adaptation strategies typically involve making adjustments to laws about planning, resource allocation, and infrastructure to ensure that the built and natural environments will continue to support human communities. The question investigated here is related but distinct. This essay interrogates the necessary conditions for indigenous communities to survive, and perhaps even thrive, while maintaining their unique cultures in the face of dramatic and/or unknowable material circumstances. In other words, rather than ask how indigenous communities will adjust to the effects of a changing climate, this article asks what the essential conditions are for indigenous communities themselves to consider the extent, scope, and terms of any and all necessary adjustments. The history of the Cherokee Nation's adaptation to their forced removal from their homelands in the Southeast to Oklahoma, explored briefly here, provides an initial set of hypotheses about the core components for successful adaptation to radically different territorial circumstances.Developing adaptation measures in forestry is an urgent task because the forests regenerated today will have to cope with climate conditions that may drastically change during the life of the trees in the stand. This paper presents a comprehensive review of potential adaptation options in forestry in Europe based on three pillars: a review of the scientific literature, an analysis of current national response strategies, and an expert assessment based on a database compiled in the COST Action ECHOES (Expected Climate Change and Options for European Silviculture). The adaptation measures include responses to both risks and opportunities created by climate change and address all stages of forestry operations. Measures targeted to reduce vulnerability to climate change may either aim to reduce forest sensitivity to adverse climate change impacts or increase adaptive capacity to cope with the changing environmental conditions. Adaptation measures mitigating drought and fire risk such as selection of more drought resistant species and genotypes are crucial. For adaptation to be successful it is of the utmost importance to disseminate the knowledge of suitable adaptation measures to all decision makers from the practice to the policy level. The analysis of the ECHOES database demonstrates that this challenge is well recognized in many European countries. Uncertainty about the full extent of climate change impacts and the suitability of adaptation measures creates a need for monitoring and further research. A better understanding of how to increase adaptive capacity is also needed, as well as regional vulnerability assessments which are crucial for targeting planned adaptation measures.Virtual globes, i.e., geobrowsers that integrate multi-scale and temporal data from various sources and are based on a globe metaphor, have developed into serious tools that practitioners and various stakeholders in landscape and community planning have started using. Although these tools originate from Geographic Information Systems (GIS), they have become a different, potentially interactive and public tool set, with their own specific limitations and new opportunities. Expectations regarding their utility as planning and community engagement tools are high, but are tempered by both technical limitations and ethical issues [1,2]. Two grassroots campaigns and a collaborative visioning process, the Kimberley Climate Adaptation Project case study (British Columbia), illustrate and broaden our understanding of the potential benefits and limitations associated with the use of virtual globes in participatory planning initiatives. Based on observations, questionnaires and in-depth interviews with stakeholders and community members using an interactive 3D model of regional climate change vulnerabilities, potential impacts, and possible adaptation and mitigation scenarios in Kimberley, the benefits and limitations of virtual globes as a tool for participatory landscape planning are discussed. The findings suggest that virtual globes can facilitate access to geospatial information, raise awareness, and provide a more representative virtual landscape than static visualizations. However, landscape is not equally representative at all scales, and not all types of users seem to benefit equally from the tool. The risks of misinterpretation can be managed by integrating the application and interpretation of virtual globes into face-to-face planning processes.Which destinations will be most impacted by environmental migration? Most research on environmental migration examines the drivers of mobility, identifying the locations that are most affected by environmental change. By contrast, little attention is paid to where migrants might move to in response to these changes. The paper argues that much can be learned from applying established knowledge from the migration research literature to the specifics of environmental mobility. Migration destinations of environmental movers are examined in two different contexts. First, research is reported relating to the migration destinations of populations affected by drought and food insecurity. Second, Europe is studied as a destination region for migration flows. The paper concludes that, in place of estimates of the number of environmental migrants, a more productive focus of research would be to achieve deeper understanding of the destinations selected by current environmental migrants, and to appreciate why immobility is as great a problem as movement to new locations for those concerned with climate adaptation planning.Effective flood risk management involves the quantification of flood risk and the implementation of cost-effective, sustainable, and environmentally and socially acceptable measures that reduce flood risk. However, making decisions on the most appropriate long-term intervention investments can be challenging; this is primarily because of the uncertainties associated with future climate change and socioeconomic development. Real Options analysis is a widely recognised approach for encouraging appropriate climate change adaptation and mitigation investment decisions. To date, however, there has only been limited use of Real Options Analysis Techniques within the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management community. In this paper, a methodology is described that has the capability to assess the most appropriate set of interventions to make in a flood system, given the future uncertainties. The methodology captures the concepts of Real Options and has the capability to value the flexibility associated with potential flood risk management intervention options across a range of future climate change and socioeconomic scenarios. The novel Real Options approach has been tested and verified on a real-life case study situated in the Thamesmead area of the Thames Estuary. The results obtained demonstrate the potential for substantial cost savings under future uncertainties when Real Options are used instead of more traditional, precautionary approaches.Coastal environments are susceptible to a range of impacts arising from medium and long-term climate change. However, as Ireland's population and industrial centres are concentrated in coastal locations, Ireland's coastal communities will be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Therefore, making the best use of existing knowledge to inform the establishment of governance structures capable of facilitating the measures and actions which may soon be required is a national imperative. Coastal communities worldwide have turned to integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) as a process to deliver sustainable development. This paper explores how experience gained from ICZM implementation can be harnessed to inform the development and implementation of climate adaptation policies, with a particular focus on the coastal zone. Using the principles and conceptual basis of Earth System Governance - an emerging approach to analyse complexity of governance under global environmental change - the paper maps the architecture of ICZM and climate governance in Ireland. The research identifies the main barriers to, and opportunities for, integrated application of the two policy domains. Barriers include the fragmentation of governance structures and responsibilities of key stakeholders, a lack of coordinated support for ICZM implementation at the national level, and a relatively weak awareness of the specifics of adaptation at the local level. Opportunities include the availability of expertise gathered from phases of ICZM implementation in Ireland, which encompasses mechanisms for science-policy integration, and invaluable experience of stakeholder participation and interaction. Current political and scientific support at national and EU levels give an additional impetus to climate research and actions which may bring additional opportunities and resources to coastal governance in Ireland. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Preparedness to adapt to the impacts of climate change was assessed for three important sectors of activity within the Irish coastal and marine environment, namely tourism, fisheries, and conservation of biodiversity. Information on the current status of each sector is a valuable point of reference in terms of accessing contribution to the implementation of future national adaptation efforts. A modified version of the National Adaptive Capacity (NAC) framework developed by the World Resources Institute was used to assess the three sectors of activity. This framework is structured around five functions: assessment, prioritisation, coordination, information management, and climate risk reduction; results of the assessment suggest that all three sectors are at the nascent stages of the climate change adaptation process. Currently there is no dedicated national policy guidance or legal support mechanism on adaptation in Ireland; hence there is no national financial commitment to support implementation of adaptation actions for any of the sectors assessed. Subjecting these three selected sectors of activity to such an assessment enables identification of existing actions that can potentially support current adaptation, as well as where issues such as knowledge gaps and lack of policy support hinder progress. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal planning represents a key avenue for local adaptation, but is subject to recognised constraints. To date, these constraints have focused on simplistic factors such as limited resources and lack of information. In this paper we argue that this focus has obscured a wider set of constraints which need to be acknowledged and addressed if adaptation is likely to advance through municipal planning. Although these recognised constraints are relevant, we argue that what underpins these issues are more fundamental challenges affecting local, placed-based planning by drawing on the related field of community-based environmental planning (CBEP). In considering a wider set of constraints to practical attempts towards adaptation, the paper considers planning based on a case study of three municipalities in Sydney, Australia in 2008. The results demonstrate that climate adaptation was widely accepted as an important issue for planning conducted by local governments. However, it was yet to be embedded in planning practice which retained a strong mitigation bias in relation to climate change. In considering the case study, we draw attention to factors thus far under-acknowledged in the climate adaptation literature. These include leadership, institutional context and competing planning agendas. These factors can serve as constraints or enabling mechanisms for achieving climate adaptation depending upon how they are exploited in any given situation. The paper concludes that, through addressing these issues, local, place-based planning can play a greater role in achieving climate adaptation.In recent years, Costa Rica has faced various natural hazards and experienced increasing economic loss from numerous small-scale local climate events. This growing trend of losses is triggered by, among other factors, global climate change. In order to meet the challenge of reducing local vulnerabilities, it is necessary to incorporate the potential impacts of climate change into DRM planning. The present study identifies opportunities and challenges for improving incorporation of climate change impacts into DRM planning at the local level in Costa Rica by applying a checklist to 17 municipalities. The study found overall unsatisfactory progress in DRM planning at the municipality level. However, results indicated that local governments' experiences and small actions related to climate change, based on their own needs and taken independently of the national policy priorities, are a key element in improving DRM at the local level. This study also identifies four challenges to further improving local level DRM.The majority of research and writing on climate change and planning focuses on mitigation, reducing emissions and climate change impacts over long time cycles. However, the realization that human settlements will see immediate and near-term impacts, regardless of emissions reductions, has given urgency to questions about how communities will adapt. We are interested in municipal level adaptation plans: "incipient plans" where implementation has either just begun or not even started, and evaluation and rethinking belong to the future. Our intention is to inform this process. We reviewed more than a dozen municipal and regional climate change and adaptation planning processes, and selected six to examine further. Our case selection includes plans from coastal and inland cities, both large and small, and all but one are from counties amongst the most vulnerable in the U.S. We found that while mitigation of green house gases (GHGs), which is important and necessary, was central to all plans, adaptation strategies were not considered to the same extent or left out completely. We argue that an adaptation strategy that uses a vulnerability approach can be the most effective way to assess climate risk because it puts people and communities at the center of the analysis; helps planners and policy makers to design adaptation strategies that will reduce suffering in local areas while making effective use of scarce resources; and enables better coordination among different elements of planning. To be efficient and effective, adaptation plans must be generated at different scales and must downscale climate information to a local level. Most importantly, the first step in adaptation planning must be to understand vulnerability and the full range of variables that contribute to it. We conclude by suggesting that cities must integrate climate action strategies into their long-range Comprehensive Plans to take full advantage of the targeting and coordination possibilities that a vulnerability approach offers.This paper characterises some of the main issues confronting water-catchment managing in a climate-changing world and addresses wide-spread concerns about the lack of connectivity between science, policy making and implementation. The paper's arguments are 'framed' within a paradigm of systemic and adaptive governing, regulating, planning and managing understood as a nested systemic hierarchy. It is argued that climate change adaptation is best understood as a coevolutionary dynamic, principally, but not exclusively between human beings and the biophysical world. Two forms of 'knowledge brokerage' based on mode 1 (knowledge) and mode 2 (knowing) are distinguished with practical implications. Drawing on extensive research by the authors, eight modalities for enacting 'knowledge brokerage' are introduced. The conditions for or against success in employing these modalities are described. Consistent with the views of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Report 2007, it is argued that water managing is a paradigmatic domain for making climate change adaptation 'real' and a systemic issue of global concern at the core of sustainable development.Background: Salt marshes lie between many human communities and the coast and have been presumed to protect these communities from coastal hazards by providing important ecosystem services. However, previous characterizations of these ecosystem services have typically been based on a small number of historical studies, and the consistency and extent to which marshes provide these services has not been investigated. Here, we review the current evidence for the specific processes of wave attenuation, shoreline stabilization and floodwater attenuation to determine if and under what conditions salt marshes offer these coastal protection services. Methodology/Principal Findings: We conducted a thorough search and synthesis of the literature with reference to these processes. Seventy-five publications met our selection criteria, and we conducted meta-analyses for publications with sufficient data available for quantitative analysis. We found that combined across all studies (n = 7), salt marsh vegetation had a significant positive effect on wave attenuation as measured by reductions in wave height per unit distance across marsh vegetation. Salt marsh vegetation also had a significant positive effect on shoreline stabilization as measured by accretion, lateral erosion reduction, and marsh surface elevation change (n = 30). Salt marsh characteristics that were positively correlated to both wave attenuation and shoreline stabilization were vegetation density, biomass production, and marsh size. Although we could not find studies quantitatively evaluating floodwater attenuation within salt marshes, there are several studies noting the negative effects of wetland alteration on water quantity regulation within coastal areas. Conclusions/Significance: Our results show that salt marshes have value for coastal hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation. Because we do not yet fully understand the magnitude of this value, we propose that decision makers employ natural systems to maximize the benefits and ecosystem services provided by salt marshes and exercise caution when making decisions that erode these services.Despite the growing number of studies and research projects on climate change adaptation, only a few have examined the gender and cultural dynamics of the adaptation process. Inequality has been identified as a major indicator of the vulnerability of individuals and groups; nevertheless, the gender and cultural aspects of inequality have not received much emphasis. The present article attempts to analyze the influence of gender and cultural relations on the process of climate change adaptation by presenting a study of Dalit and Lama households in the mountainous Humla District of Nepal. The inhabitants of Humla have been experiencing a shift in the monsoon season, a decrease in snowfall, and longer dry periods, with adverse effects on their livelihoods. The main focus of this article is to highlight the cultural, social, and economic dependency of the Lama and Dalit ethnic groups and to examine whether processes of adaptation exacerbate or alter gender inequalities and intercaste dependencies.Bee diversity of the Southwest Pacific has been reported as depauperate despite the otherwise rich biodiversity and complex geological history for this region. However, due to a lack of bee-specific sampling, there is potential for higher bee diversity than previous studies suggest. Here, we review the current literature to summarise the extant diversity for each of the main island groups, the likely passages of species dispersal, and outline the main threats to Southwest Pacific populations. As key pollinators for both cultivated and native angiosperms, ensuring the persistence of native bee populations is critical for both food security and biodiversity conservation. With impending threats from land use change, invasive species and climate change, among others, understanding the true species diversity is important for assigning conservation priorities. We argue that future research in the region must encourage local expertise and build this into global research directions in an effort to address a lack of fundamental knowledge of bee diversity in island ecosystems.In regulating residential landscaping and maintenance practices, homeowner associations (HOAs) are potentially important institutional actors in urban climate adaptation and water demand management. One view posits that HOAs will use outdoor landscaping and scarce water resources to maintain the aesthetic appearance and hence property values of homes in their domain. An alternative view from commons theory suggests that they will behave in a variety of ways and have diverse environmental resource management outcomes. This research compares water consumption in single-family residential communities with and without HOAs in Phoenix, Arizona. Findings reveal there is not a significant correlation between water consumption and presence or absence of HOAs, after accounting for other relevant variables. HOAs did not co-opt a disproportionate share of urban water use, lending credence to the claims of commons theory that similar institutional types may result in diverse resource outcomes, depending upon geographical and social context. Results suggest the potential to utilize HOAs as an entree-point for water demand reduction strategies.Rwanda has a high rate of rural poverty, population density and pressures on its natural resource base. One government response has been a social protection intervention, the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP). VUP provides 'public works' employment for members of extremely poor households with able-bodied members, and 'direct support' cash transfers for poor households without members who can work. Many public works projects focus on environmental protection. VUP also promotes risk reduction activities related to food security and related health or nutrition issues. With increasing weather-related hazards and possibly climate change, administrators recognise the need to 'climate-proof' VUP in a manner that integrates social protection with disaster risk management, climate change adaptation and food security. This article highlights the potential for social protection policies and programmes in Rwanda to increase household and community resilience, by applying concepts of adaptive social protection and 'no regrets' approaches in a territorial context.This article assesses the potential of cash transfer programmes to contribute to adaptation goals in developing countries. It argues that cash transfers are likely to contribute to adaptive capacity by (1) meeting basic needs; (2) helping the poor respond to climate-related shocks; (3) helping vulnerable households to manage risk and consider investment innovations that increase their adaptive capacity; (4) transferring money for investment in long-term adaptive capacity development; and (5) facilitating mobility and livelihood transitions. While the article acknowledges that cash transfers cannot address all areas of adaptation, these transfers may be a prerequisite for further adaptation to be equitable and effective. When compared with other adaptation options, cash transfers fare well as they are supported by a substantial evidence base, do not require much climate-related information, have a demonstrated potential for scaling up and are likely to gain local acceptance.Climate change is likely to have an impact on the discharge of the European river Rhine. To base adaptation strategies, to deal with these changing river discharges, on the best scientific and technical knowledge, it is important to understand potential climate impacts, as well as the capacity of social and natural systems to adapt. Both are characterized by large uncertainties, at different scales, that range from individual to local to regional to international. This review paper addresses three challenges. Dealing with climate change uncertainties for the development of adaptation strategies is the first challenge. We find that communication of uncertainties in support of river basin adaptation planning generally only covers a small part of the spectrum of prevailing uncertainties, e.g. by using only one model or scenario and one approach to deal with the uncertainties. The second challenge identified in this paper is to overcome the current mismatch of supply of scientific knowledge by scientists and the demand by policy makers. Early experiences with 'assess-risk-of-policy' approaches analysis of options, starting from the resilience of development plans, suggests that this approach better responds to policy makers' needs. The third challenge is to adequately capture the transnational character of the Rhine river basin in research and policy. Development and implementation of adaptation options derived from integrated analysis at the full river basin level, rather than within the boundaries of the riparian countries, can offer new opportunities, but will also meet many practical challenges.In the last two decades we witnessed a progressive shift in the approach towards the reduction of the impact of natural hazards. From a general reactive approach, focusing on strengthening disaster response mechanisms, we have moved to proactive approaches. There has been recognition that each element of society, from public institutions to private sector, from community-based organizations to every single individual, can make a difference by acting before disasters strike to reduce the associated risks of human and economic losses. This proactive approach can be summarized in three words: Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Today, DRR is an approach used in several sectors and research areas. In the Development sphere, DRR is considered a key feature for sustainability of economic and development gains - especially for developing countries. Significantly, the United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (2009) is titled "Risk and poverty in a changing climate" highlighting the importance of DRR in reducing poverty while being a means to address the challenges posed by adaptation to climate change. This paper, which serves as an introduction to the special issue of Environment Science & Policy on climate change impact on water-related disasters, intends to provide readers with an overview of the main policy frameworks addressing DRR internationally and in Europe. Further, it aims to offer some "food for thought" on the underlying opportunities we have to enhance the resilience of our communities towards the risks posed by weather-related hazards. It stresses the importance of governance of risks, which starts from an effective dialogue between the scientific community and the policy makers: those who have the responsibility to decide on the most cost-effective interventions to address climate change adaptation and risk reduction. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Australia is currently experiencing climate change effects in the form of higher temperatures and more frequent extreme events, such as floods. Floods are its costliest form of natural disaster accounting for losses estimated at over $300 million per annum. This article presents an historical case study of climate adaptation of an Australian town that is subject to frequent flooding. Charleville is a small, inland rural town in Queensland situated on an extensive flood plain, with no significant elevated areas available for relocation. The study aimed to gain an understanding of the vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity of this community by studying the 2008 flood event. Structured questionnaires were administered in personal interviews in February 2010 to householders and businesses affected by the 2008 flood, and to institutional personnel servicing the region (n = 91). Data were analysed using appropriate quantitative and qualitative techniques. Charleville was found to be staunchly resilient, with high levels of organisation and cooperation, and well-developed and functioning social and institutional networks. The community is committed to remaining in the town despite the prospect of continued future flooding. Its main vulnerabilities included low levels of insurance cover (32% residents, 43% businesses had cover) and limited monitoring data to warn of impending flooding. Detailed flood modelling and additional river height gauging stations are needed to enable more targeted evacuations. Further mitigation works (e.g., investigate desilting Bradley's Gully and carry out an engineering assessment) and more affordable insurance products are needed. Regular information on how residents can prepare for floods and the roles different organisations play are suggested. A key finding was that residents believe they have a personal responsibility for preparation and personal mitigation activities, and these activities contribute substantially to Charleville's ability to respond to and cope with flood events. More research into the psychological impacts of floods is recommended. Charleville is a valuable representation of climate change adaptation and how communities facing natural disasters should organise and operate.Few studies have empirically examined climate change impacts on managed forests in the southern United States. In this paper, we use the U. S. Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis Database to fit two growth models across the South and apply the four Hadley III climate scenarios developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report to project future growth and site productivity on loblolly pine plantations. The static growth model provides a direct test of whether a significant climate influence on forest growth can be statistically derived, while the dynamic growth model estimates climate effects through site productivity. Results indicate considerable spatial variation in potential future growth and productivity change on loblolly pine plantations due to climate change in the southern United States, while overall regional effects are projected to be marginal. The pattern of climate change impacts is consistent across the growth models and climate scenarios. These findings have several implications for climate change adaptation policies.The present study aims to assess the impacts of climate change on hydrology and rice yield in the Bhavani Basin of India using the SWAT model. The investigation indicates that SWAT can be applied under a changing climate as a decision support tool for framing adaptation strategies such as altering the method of cultivation by changing water and fertilizer management. Climate change scenarios were developed using the RegCM3 model with EH5OM GCM output for an A1B scenario. The RegCM3 model tended to slightly underestimate the maximum and minimum temperatures. The generated daily climate data were used in the SWAT model for assessing the impact on hydrology and rice productivity of the river basin for a continuous time period of 130 years (1971-2100). To validate the SWAT model, predicted rice yields for the Bhavani Basin over a period of 11 years (1999-2009) were compared with the observed rice yields of Erode district in which the Bhavani Basin is located and the results indicated the satisfactory performance of the model. It is shown that the SWAT model can be employed under different climate change and management scenarios for developing adaptation strategies to sustain rice production. The SRI system of rice cultivation is found to be a better adaptive technology for changing climatic conditions than the conventional flooding system of cultivation in regards to water conservation (300 mm) and increasing yield (26%).Throughout the world, previously extensive areas of natural habitats have been degraded and fragmented, and improving habitat connectivity may help the long-term persistence of species, and their ability to adapt to climate changes. We focused on Borneo, where many remaining areas of tropical forest are highly fragmented, and we assessed the extent to which Protected Areas (PAs) protect highly-connected forest sites. We analysed remotely-sensed land cover data (0.86 km(2) grid cell resolution) using 'Zonation' reserve design software, and we ranked grid cells (rank 0-1) according to forest extent and connectivity. PAs currently cover 9% of Borneo, but <20% of highly-connected cells (i.e. cells with Zonation ranks >= 0.9) lie within PAs. Approximately 65% of highly-connected cells were located above 400 m elevation, although >60% of Borneo's total land area lies below 200 m and only 15% of highly-connected cells occurred in these low elevation areas. These findings were relatively insensitive to assumptions about species' dispersal ability (within the range 1-20 km; representing relatively mobile animal species). The percentage of highly-connected grid cells within PAs could rise from 20 to 50% under proposed new PAs (including the 'Heart of Borneo' project), although many other highly-connected sites will remain unprotected. On-going land-use changes mean that existing PAs in lowland areas are likely to become increasingly isolated within inhospitable agricultural landscapes, and improving connectivity through reforestation and rehabilitation of degraded forest may be required to maintain the conservation value of these PAs in future.Assisted migration was proposed several decades ago as a means of addressing the impacts of climate change on species populations. While its risks and benefits have been debated, and suggestions for planning and management given, there is little consensus within the academic literature over whether to adopt it as a policy. We evaluated the main features of the assisted migration literature including the study methods, taxonomic groups, geographic regions and disciplines involved. We further assessed the debate about the use of assisted migration, the main barriers to consensus, and the range of recommendations put forth in the literature for policy, planning or implementation. Commentaries and secondary literature reviews were as prevalent as first-hand scientific research and attention focussed on a global rather than regional level. There was little evidence of knowledge transfer outside of the natural sciences, despite the obvious policy relevance. Scholarly debate on this topic has intensified during the last 3 years. We present a conceptual framework for evaluating arguments in the debate, distinguishing among the direct risks and benefits to species, ecosystems and society on the one hand, and other arguments regarding scientific justification, evidence-base and feasibility on the other. We also identify recommendations with potential to advance the debate, including careful evaluation of risks, benefits and trade-offs, involvement of relevant stakeholders and consideration of the complementarity among assisted migration and less risk-tolerant strategies. We conclude, however, that none of these will solve the fundamental, often values-based, challenges in the debate. Solutions are likely to be complex, context-dependent and multi-faceted, emerging from further research, discussion and experience. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Variation in the frequency, extent and intensity of wildfires can drive changes in the composition, structure, diversity and functioning of ecosystems in fire-prone regions worldwide. However, relationships between climatic variation and wildfire occurrence remain poorly understood in many fire-prone regions. We investigated fire occurrence and extent across 15,500 km(2) of semi-arid southwest Australia in relation to inter-annual and/or seasonal variation in regional climate and broad-scale circulation patterns. Superposed epoch analysis (SEA) was used to determine whether wildfire occurrence was related to anomalously high or low regional rainfall or temperature. In particular, we tested if years of minor fire extent (i.e., <250 km(2) burnt) and major fire extent (i.e., >1,000 km(2) burnt) occurred under different climatic conditions. We also used SEA to determine if wildfires occurred during or following periods of extremes of drivers of regional climate, including the El Nino southern oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean dipole, atmospheric blocking in the adjacent Southern Ocean, and the southern annular mode (SAM). Fire occurrence was linked to dry and hot conditions typically associated with the El Nino phase of ENSO, with few or no fires in years with cool and wet summers. However, major fire years tended to occur during drought conditions that followed wet and cool conditions in spring and summer of the preceding year. These wet and cool periods were typically associated with the presence of blocking highs in the Southern Ocean to the south of Western Australia. We hypothesise that high rainfall in spring and summer favours the growth of ephemeral plants while subsequent drought conditions promote fuel drying, resulting in more continuous and highly flammable fuel beds capable of sustaining larger fires. Regional climatic patterns are likely driven by interactions among the SAM, atmospheric blocking, and decaying tropical cyclones. As climatic extremes are expected to increase in intensity and frequency in the future, it is likely that the occurrence of extensive wildfires in semi-arid southwest Australia will also increase, potentially driving changes in the distribution and composition of fire-sensitive plant communities.Assessment of urban energy use may proceed by a number of methods. Here we derive an energy account from local statistics, and compare them with an input output (10) analysis as applied to Melbourne, Australia. These approaches highlight different aspects of urban energy use and comparable outputs are presented together to assess consistency, to identify complementarities and discuss the insight each approach brings to understanding urban energy. The 10 method captures the direct and embodied primary energy requirements of local household expenditure (235.8 GJ/capita/year) while the regional assessment more directly accounts for local production activity (258.1 GJ/capita/year). The parity of these results is unexpected for a developed city with a strong tertiary sector. Sectoral detail reveals differences between the primary energy required by Melbourne's economic structure and that ultimately required through the full supply chain relating to household expenditure. This is accompanied by an 10 analysis of the geography of Melbourne's 'energy catchment'. It is suggested that the 10 consumption and regional production approaches have particular relevance to policies aimed at consumption behaviour and economic, (re)structuring, respectively. Their complementarity further suggests that a combined analysis would be valuable in understanding urban energy futures and economic transitions elsewhere. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With increasing road encroachment, habitat fragmentation by transport infrastructures has been a serious threat for European biodiversity. Areas with no roads or little traffic ("roadless and low-traffic areas") represent relatively undisturbed natural habitats and functioning ecosystems. They provide many benefits for biodiversity and human societies (e.g., landscape connectivity, barrier against pests and invasions, ecosystem services). Roadless and low-traffic areas, with a lower level of anthropogenic disturbances, are of special relevance in Europe because of their rarity and, in the context of climate change, because of their contribution to higher resilience and buffering capacity within landscape ecosystems. An analysis of European legal instruments illustrates that, although most laws aimed at protecting targets which are inherent to fragmentation, like connectivity, ecosystem processes or integrity, roadless areas are widely neglected as a legal target. A case study in Germany underlines this finding. Although the Natura 2000 network covers a significant proportion of the country (16%), Natura 2000 sites are highly fragmented and most low-traffic areas (75%) lie unprotected outside this network. This proportion is even higher for the old Federal States (western Germany), where only 20% of the low-traffic areas are protected. We propose that the few remaining roadless and low-traffic areas in Europe should be an important focus of conservation efforts; they should be urgently inventoried, included more explicitly in the law and accounted for in transport and urban planning. Considering them as complementary conservation targets would represent a concrete step towards the strengthening and adaptation of the Natura 2000 network to climate change.Water is scarce in Mediterranean countries: cities are crowded with increasing demand; food is produced with large amounts of water; ecosystems demand more water that is often available; drought affects all. As climate change impacts become more noticeable and costlier, some current water management strategies will not be useful. According to the findings of CIRCE, the areas with limited water resources will increase in the coming decades with major consequences for the way we produce food and we protect ecosystems. Based on these projections this paper discusses water policy priorities for climate change adaptation in the Mediterranean. We first summarise the main challenges to water resources in Mediterranean countries and outline the risks and opportunities for water under climate change based on previous studies. Recognising the difficulty to go from precipitation to water policy, we then present a framework to evaluate water availability in response to natural and management conditions, with an example of application in the Ebro basin that exemplifies other Mediterranean areas. Then we evaluate adaptive capacity to understand the ability of Mediterranean countries to face, respond and recover from climate change impacts on water resources. Social and economic factors are key drivers of inequality in the adaptive capacity across the region. Based on the assessment of impacts and adaptive capacity we suggest thresholds for water policy to respond to climate change and link water scarcity indicators to relevant potential adaptation strategies. Our results suggest the need to further prioritise socially and economically sensitive policies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Translocations are being increasingly proposed as a way of conserving biodiversity, particularly in the management of threatened and keystone species, with the aims of maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function under the combined pressures of habitat fragmentation and climate change. Evolutionary genetic considerations should be an important part of translocation strategies, but there is often confusion about concepts and goals. Here, we provide a classification of translocations based on specific genetic goals for both threatened species and ecological restoration, separating targets based on genetic rescue of current population fitness from those focused on maintaining adaptive potential. We then provide a framework for assessing the genetic benefits and risks associated with translocations and provide guidelines for managers focused on conserving biodiversity and evolutionary processes. Case studies are developed to illustrate the framework.Aim Species distribution models (SDMs) have been used to address a wide range of theoretical and applied questions in the terrestrial realm, but marine-based applications remain relatively scarce. In this review, we consider how conceptual and practical issues associated with terrestrial SDMs apply to a range of marine organisms and highlight the challenges relevant to improving marine SDMs. Location We include studies from both marine and terrestrial systems that encompass many geographic locations around the globe. Methods We first performed a literature search and analysis of marine and terrestrial SDMs in ISI Web of Science to assess trends and applications. Using knowledge from terrestrial applications, we critically evaluate the application of SDMs in marine systems in the context of ecological factors (dispersal, species interactions, aggregation and ontogenetic shifts) and practical considerations (data quality, alternative modelling approaches and model validation) that facilitate or create difficulties for model application. Results The relative importance of ecological factors to be considered when applying SDMs varies among terrestrial and marine organisms. Correctly incorporating dispersal is frequently considered an important issue for terrestrial models, but because there is greater potential for dispersal in the ocean, it is often less of a concern in marine SDMs. By contrast, ontogenetic shifts and feeding have received little attention in terrestrial SDM applications, but these factors are important to many marine SDMs. Opportunities also exist for applying more advanced SDM approaches in the marine realm, including mechanistic ecophysiological models, where water balance and heat transfer equations are simpler for some marine organisms relative to their terrestrial counterparts. Main conclusions SDMs have generally been under-utilized in the marine realm relative to terrestrial applications. Correlative SDM methods should be tested on a range of marine organisms, and we suggest further development of methods that address ontogenetic shifts and feeding interactions. We anticipate developments in, and cross-fertilization between, coupled correlative and process-based SDMs, mechanistic eco-physiological SDMs, and spatial population dynamic models for climate change and species invasion applications in particular. Comparisons of the outputs of different model types will provide insight that is useful for improved spatial management of marine species.This paper describes a time-sensitive approach to climate change projections that was developed as part of New York City's climate change adaptation process and that has provided decision support to stakeholders from 40 agencies, regional planning associations, and private companies. The approach optimizes production of projections given constraints faced by decision makers as they incorporate climate change into long-term planning and policy. New York City stakeholders, who are well versed in risk management, helped to preselect the climate variables most likely to impact urban infrastructure and requested a projection range rather than a single "most likely" outcome. The climate projections approach is transferable to other regions and is consistent with broader efforts to provide climate services, including impact, vulnerability, and adaptation information. The approach uses 16 GCMs and three emissions scenarios to calculate monthly change factors based on 30-yr average future time slices relative to a 30-yr model baseline. Projecting these model mean changes onto observed station data for New York City yields dramatic changes in the frequency of extreme events such as coastal flooding and dangerous heat events. On the basis of these methods, the current 1-in-10-year coastal flood is projected to occur more than once every 3 years by the end of the century and heat events are projected to approximately triple in frequency. These frequency changes are of sufficient magnitude to merit consideration in long-term adaptation planning, even though the precise changes in extreme-event frequency are highly uncertain.In many statistical downscaling methods, atmospheric variables are chosen by using a combination of expert knowledge with empirical measures such as correlations and partial correlations. In this short communication, we describe the use of a fast, sparse variable selection method, known as RaVE, for selecting atmospheric predictors, and illustrate its use on rainfall occurrence at stations in South Australia. We show that RaVE generates parsimonious models that are both sensible and interpretable, and whose results compare favourably to those obtained by a non-homogeneous hidden Markov model (Hughes et al., 1999). Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change can significantly impact on the total energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of residential buildings. Therefore, climate adaptation should be properly considered in both building design and operation stages to reduce the impact. This paper identified the potential adaptation pathways for existing and new residential buildings, by enhancing their adaptive capacity to accommodate the impact and maintain total energy consumption and GHG emissions no more than the current level in the period of their service life. The feasibility of adaptations was demonstrated by building energy simulations using both representative existing and new housing in eight climate zones varying from cold, temperate to hot humid in Australia. It was found that, in heating dominated climates, a proper level of adaptive capacity of residential buildings could be achieved simply by improving the energy efficiency of building envelop. However, in cooling dominated regions, it could only be achieved by introducing additional measures, such as the use of high energy efficient (EE) appliances and the adoption of renewable energy. The initial costs to implement the adaptations were assessed, suggesting that it is more cost-effective to accommodate future climate change impacts for existing and new houses by improving building envelop energy efficiency in cooling dominated regions, but installing on-site solar PVs instead in heating and cooling balanced regions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a previous paper, we have reported that dilute nitric acid in reversed micelle systems can oxidize the Br- ion to Br-2 and proposed that the nitryl (or nitronium) ion NO2+ should be the active species in the oxidation process. Nitration of phenol in reversed micelle systems with dilute nitric acid, CHCl3/CFAC/H2O (2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 in the 1.0% (v/v) H2O phase), was performed at 35 degrees C to obtain 2- and 4-nitrophenols, where CTAC represents cetyltrimethylammonium chloride. In similar CTAC and AOT reversed micelle (CHCl3 or heptane/AOT) systems, 4-methylphenol was converted to 2-nitro-4-methylphenol, where AOT stands for sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate. In aqueous 2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 solution accompanied by 4.0 mol dm(-3) LiCl (and a small amount of LiBr as the bromide resource), trans-1,4-dibromo-2-butene was successfully brominated to 1,2,3,4-tetrabromobutane. This result is a good evidence that the Br- ion can be oxidized to Br-2 in dilute nitric acid (2.0 mol dm-3) provided that it contains concentrated salts. At 20-40 degrees C, the apparent oxidation-reaction rate constants (k/s(-1)) of Br- to Br-2 were evaluated in 0.1-2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 solution accompanied by concentrated LiCI (3.5-9.0 mol dm(-3)). For chloride salts, the cation effects increased as Et4N+ << Na+ < Li+ < C2+ < Mg2+. Even the evolution of Cl-2 was demonstrated from < 2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 solution containing concentrated LiCI, MgCl2, and CaCl2 as well as AlCl3, therefore, an indirect oxidation mechanism of the Br- ion through Cl-2 was proposed as follows: 2Cl(-) + NO2+ -> Cl-2 + NO2-; 2Br(-) + Cl-2 -> Br-2+ 2Cl(-). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Species distribution models (SDMs) to evaluate trees' potential responses to climate change are essential for developing appropriate forest management strategies. However, there is a great need to better understand these models' limitations and evaluate their uncertainties. We have previously developed statistical models of suitable habitat, based on both species' range and abundance, to better understand potential changes of 134 tree species habitats in the eastern United States (http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/atlas). Our focus here is to build on these results via a more robust assessment framework called modification factors (ModFacs) that is made up of five components. ModFac 1 addresses nine biological characteristics (e.g., shade tolerance and seedling establishment) that quantify the influence of species life-history traits. ModFac 2 considers 12 disturbance characteristics (e.g., insect pests, drought, and fire topkill) which address the capacity of a species to tolerate and respond to climate-induced changes in habitat. ModFac 3-5 distill the tree SDM results and facilitate communication of model uncertainty; we quantified the variability in projected change for General Circulation Models (GCM) and emissions scenarios (ModFac 3), the extent to which each species' habitat intersects novel climate conditions (ModFac4), and accounted for long-distance extrapolations beyond a species' current range (ModFac5). The life-history components of ModFacs 1 and 2 demonstrate the marked variability among species in terms of biological and disturbance characteristics, suggesting diverse abilities to adapt to climate change. ModFacs 3-5 show that the information from the SDMs can be enhanced by quantifying the variability associated with specific GCM/emission scenarios, the emergence of novel climates for particular tree species, and the distances of species habitat shifts with climate change. The ModFacs framework has high interpretive value when considered in conjunction with the outputs of species habitat models for this century. Importantly, the intention of this assessment was not to create a static scoring system, but to broadly assess species characteristics that likely will play an important role in adaptation to climate change. We believe these scores based on biological, disturbance, and model synthesis factors provide an important expansion of interpretive and practical value to habitat model projections. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The two principal policy approaches to global climate change include mitigation and adaption. In recent years, the interest in adaptation and "resilience'' has increased significantly in part because anthropogenic climate change appears unavoidable and mitigation agreements are difficult to achieve. This article takes a critical look at the emerging discourse over climate change adaptation and resilience. By drawing upon critiques of environmental resource management and adaptive comanagement, this paper argues that taking the concept of adaptation for granted as an appropriate bottom-up strategy for coping with anthropogenic climate change not only ignores the political and economic contexts in which this environmental strategy developed, but might also unintentionally subvert the vulnerable communities it intends to benefit. Using an ethnographic case study of the 2004 Boscastle Harbour flood in North Cornwall, England, this paper explores the paradoxical way in which adaptation and resilience work within the apparatus of the neoliberal state, which aims to shift responsibility for social and environmental problems to the individual. By better understanding the political and economic processes embedded in the concepts of adaptation and resilience, researchers will be more effective at finding equitable solutions to human ecological problems. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is vital in order to reduce the impacts of climate change that are happening now and increase resilience to future impacts (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).Changes in wind due to global warming may have large geophysical and societal impacts. The 10 m winds from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 multi-model ensemble are assessed against reanalysis winds and found to exhibit lowest skill over land areas. Maps of future change in mean wind speed, direction and 99th percentile wind speed are presented to convey spatial information as well as the multi-model agreement on sign and magnitude of the change. The utility of these maps in providing context for the design of more detailed impact studies, for which wind is a required input, is discussed. Copyright (C) 2011 Royal Meteorological SocietyClimate change is already affecting ecosystems in protected forest areas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted its impacts will accelerate rapidly over the coming decades. The components of vulnerability have been defined as exposure, sensitivity and the capacity to adapt to climate change. Vulnerability, however, is not an easy concept for policy makers, local communities and other affected stakeholders to understand. This paper illustrates the use of participatory processes in understanding climate change adaptation and defines indicators for assessing the vulnerability of the Javan rhino's national park habitat in Indonesia. The processes generated local vulnerability indicators, organised hierarchically as principles, criteria and indicators (PCIs). While vulnerability principles and criteria were pre-determined and globally defined, the indicators were designed to address the local context. We found the PCIs to be practical tools for communicating vulnerability and for multi-stakeholder dialogues on vulnerability to climate change.Directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, climate change will affect all sectors and regions of the United States. The impacts, however, will not be homogenous across regions, sectors, population groups or time. The literature specifically related to how climate change will affect rural communities, their resilience, and adaptive capacity in the United States (U. S.) is scarce. This article bridges this knowledge gap through an extensive review of the current state of knowledge to make inferences about the rural communities vulnerability to climate change based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios. Our analysis shows that rural communities tend to be more vulnerable than their urban counterparts due to factors such as demography, occupations, earnings, literacy, poverty incidence, and dependency on government funds. Climate change impacts on rural communities differs across regions and economic sectors; some will likely benefit while others lose. Rural communities engaged in agricultural and forest related activities in the Northeast might benefit, while those in the Southwest and Southeast could face additional water stress and increased energy cost respectively. Developing adaptation and mitigation policy options geared towards reducing climatic vulnerability of rural communities is warranted. A set of regional and local studies is needed to delineate climate change impacts across rural and urban communities, and to develop appropriate policies to mitigate these impacts. Integrating research across disciplines, strengthening research-policy linkages, integrating ecosystem services while undertaking resource valuation, and expanding alternative energy sources, might also enhance coping capacity of rural communities in face of future climate change.This study extends the emerging body of research on farmer adaptation to climate change, by segmenting farmers on the basis of specific attributes (health, values, belief about climate change, sense of responsibility for climate change, desire to change, social, human and financial capitals and farmer demographics) and considering such attributes as critical social aspects of the contextualized capacity to adapt. The segmental analysis was based on a nationally representative sample of 3,993 farmers concerned with farmer adaptation of climate risks. The resulting data were subjected to two-step cluster analysis to identify homogenous groups of farmers based on factors related to climate change adaptation. A three-cluster solution was identified wherein farmers were distinguishable on the basis of belief in climate change, desire for financial assistance and advice, social connectedness, information seeking, and adverse farm conditions. The largest group (Cluster 1: 55%) was characterized by farmers who recognized being affected by drought and drying and who were actively engaged in adaptive practices, despite the fact that they had little income and poor farm resources. One third of these farmers reported that their health was a barrier to sustained activity in farming. Cluster 2 (26%) was characterized by farmers not readily affected by drying, who enjoyed good incomes, good health and better farming conditions. They expressed little desire to adapt. The smallest cluster (Cluster 3: 19%) was also characterized by farmers who recognized that they were affected by drying. However, despite a desire to adapt, they had very little means to do so. They reported the poorest natural resources and the poorest health, despite being younger. The findings suggest that it is the intent to adapt, starting from where people are at, which is a more important indicator of the capacity to work towards sustainable practices than assets tests alone.Substantial investment in climate change research has led to dire predictions of the impacts and risks to biodiversity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report(1) cites 28,586 studies demonstrating significant biological changes in terrestrial systems(2). Already high extinction rates, driven primarily by habitat loss, are predicted to increase under climate change(3-6). Yet there is little specific advice or precedent in the literature to guide climate adaptation investment for conserving biodiversity within realistic economic constraints(7). Here we present a systematic ecological and economic analysis of a climate adaptation problem in one of the world's most species-rich and threatened ecosystems: the South African fynbos. We discover a counterintuitive optimal investment strategy that switches twice between options as the available adaptation budget increases. We demonstrate that optimal investment is nonlinearly dependent on available resources, making the choice of how much to invest as important as determining where to invest and what actions to take. Our study emphasizes the importance of a sound analytical framework for prioritizing adaptation investments(4). Integrating ecological predictions in an economic decision framework will help support complex choices between adaptation options under severe uncertainty. Our prioritization method can be applied at any scale to minimize species loss and to evaluate the robustness of decisions to uncertainty about key assumptions.This paper provides conceptual and methodological guidelines for researchers seeking to undertake an urban participatory climate change adaptation appraisal (PCCAA), illustrated with examples from appraisals in Mombasa (Kenya) and Esteli (Nicaragua). It highlights the importance of hearing local people's voices regarding incrementally worsening and often unrecorded severe weather. The conceptual framework distinguishes between the analysis of asset vulnerability and the identification of asset-based operational strategies, and sets out a number of methodological principles and practices for undertaking a PCCAA. This PCCAA addressed five main themes: community characteristics; severe weather; vulnerability to severe weather; asset adaptation; and institutions supporting local adaptation. For each of these, it identified potential tools for eliciting information, illustrated by examples from Mombasa and Esteli.This paper considers how to make pro-poor climate change adaptation more effective in the city of Chittagong. Drawing on discussions with residents in informal settlements and interviews with staff from government agencies, NGOs and donors, it shows the lack of connection between the formal institutional structure for disaster preparedness and the groups most at risk from extreme weather disasters and their community level actions. There is no clear definition of roles among local government agencies with regard to climate change adaptation. Although there is a donor-funded programme to reduce poverty and disaster risks, this is not being implemented in the settlements most at risk from landslides. Neither are there any measures underway to address the needs of the residents in these high risk settlements, in part because of the financial weakness of local government. Nor is there much support for this from national government - since national climate change adaptation policy does not consider urban adaptation and strengthening urban government capacity to reduce the vulnerability of the extreme poor as a priority. NGOs undertake programmes for community-based disaster risk reduction but their scale and scope are limited by not being integrated into local government.Ignorance is an inevitable component of climate change research, and yet it has not been specifically catered for in standard uncertainty guidance documents for climate assessments. Reports of ignorance in understanding require context to explain how such ignorance does and does not affect understanding more generally. The focus of this article is on dynamical sources of ignorance in regional climate change projections. A key source of ignorance in the projections is the resolution-limited treatment of dynamical instabilities in the ocean component of coupled climate models. A consequence of this limitation is that it is very difficult to quantify uncertainty in regional projections of climate variables that depend critically upon the details of the atmospheric flow. The standard methods for quantifying or reducing uncertainty in regional projections are predicated on the models capturing and representing the key dynamical instabilities, which is doubtful for present coupled models. This limitation does not apply to all regional projections, nor does it apply to the fundamental findings of greenhouse climate change. Much of what is known is not highly flow-dependent and follows from well grounded radiative physics and thermodynamic principles. The growing field of applications of regional climate projections would benefit from a more critical appraisal of ignorance in these projections.The topics of climate change and of what to do about it have been the subject of discussion for over two decades. Much of the focus has been on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the rate and magnitude of changes. Adapting to the impacts of those changes has received much less attention. In recent years, the development assistance community has recognized that climate change poses a stress on economic and social development in poor countries and has turned its attention to addressing climate stress. The US Agency for International Development developed a methodology of working with stakeholders to identify sources of climate related vulnerability and approaches to reducing that vulnerability. The methodology was developed iteratively with several pilot studies looking at vulnerability and adaptation in different sectors and settings.This study was undertaken to assess the potential impacts of climate change on agriculture in the Sikasso region of southern Mali, as part of an effort by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to integrate climate change adaptation considerations into their development projects. The region is considered to be the breadbasket of Mali, providing a substantial amount of the country's food supplies as well as cotton for exchange earnings. The project had two components: modeling how climate change could affect production of cereal and cash crops in southern Mali; and conducting a stakeholder-driven vulnerability and adaptation assessment to identify potential options for addressing current and projected risks to agriculture from climate change. Projected changes in crop yields were based on a previous analysis that was extended for the purposes of this study. The projections suggested that the sensitivity of maize to changing weather conditions is relatively small (generally less than 10% change) under both dry and wet scenarios in 2030 and 2060. White (Irish) potatoes, the primary cash crop, are the most sensitive to changing weather conditions, with yields decreasing under both dry and wet conditions; yields could decrease by about 25% by 2060. Stakeholder workshops, field interviews, and an expert analysis were used to assess current and future climate-related vulnerability and to identify potential adaptation options. The main focus of the assessment was farmers in a village of about 3,000 people in the Sikasso region that practiced a rice-potato rotation system typical to the region. The farmers emphasized adaptation measures that require outside financial and technical assistance, for example installation of a water gate that would retain more water in the inland valley and increase the water table to flood rice fields during the rainy season and for furrow irrigation of potatoes during the dry season. Adaptations emphasized by both the farmers and representatives of regional technical services were crop diversification and germplasm improvement; soil and water management; access to equipment (plows, carts, oxen, and improved stoves); credit stockage villageois (CSV); and fertilizer.Rapid climate change, in conjunction with other anthropogenic drivers, has the potential to cause mass species extinction. To minimize this risk, conservation reserves need to be coordinated at multiple spatial scales because the climate envelopes of many species may shift rapidly across large geographic areas. In addition, novel species assemblages and ecological reorganization make future conditions uncertain. We used a GIS analysis to assess the vulnerability of 501 reserve units in the National Wildlife Refuge System as a basis for a nationally coordinated response to climate change adaptation. We used measures of climate change exposure (historic rate of temperature change), sensitivity (biome edge and critical habitat for threatened and endangered species), and adaptive capacity (elevation range, latitude range, watershed road density, and watershed protection) to evaluate refuge vulnerability. The vulnerability of individual refuges varied spatially within and among biomes. We suggest that the spatial variability in vulnerability be used to define suites of management approaches that capitalize on local conditions to facilitate adaptation and spread risk across the reserve network. We conceptually define four divergent management strategies to facilitate adaption: refugia, ecosystem maintenance, "natural" adaptation, and facilitated transitions. Furthermore, we recognize that adaptation approaches can use historic (i.e., retrospective) and future (prospective) condition as temporal reference points to define management goals.Climate change will likely exacerbate already existing urban social inequities and health risks, thereby exacerbating existing urban health inequities. Cities in low- and middle-income countries are particularly vulnerable. Urbanization is both a cause of and potential solution to global climate change. Most population growth in the foreseeable future will occur in urban areas primarily in developing countries. How this growth is managed has enormous implications for climate change given the increasing concentration and magnitude of economic production in urban localities, as well as the higher consumption practices of urbanites, especially the middle classes, compared to rural populations. There is still much to learn about the extent to which climate change affects urban health equity and what can be done effectively in different socio-political and socio-economic contexts to improve the health of urban dwelling humans and the environment. But it is clear that equity-oriented climate change adaptation means attention to the social conditions in which urban populations live-this is not just a climate change policy issue, it requires inter-sectoral action. Policies and programs in urban planning and design, workplace health and safety, and urban agriculture can help mitigate further climate change and adapt to existing climate change. If done well, these will also be good for urban health equity.Climate change will pose increasingly significant challenges to managers of parks and other forms of protected areas around the world. Over the past two decades, numerous scientific publications have identified potential adaptations, but their suitability from legal, policy, financial, internal capacity, and other management perspectives has not been evaluated for any protected area agency or organization. In this study, a panel of protected area experts applied a Policy Delphi methodology to identify and evaluate climate change adaptation options across the primary management areas of a protected area agency in Canada. The panel identified and evaluated one hundred and sixty five (165) adaptation options for their perceived desirability and feasibility. While the results revealed a high level of agreement with respect to the desirability of adaptation options and a moderate level of capacity pertaining to policy formulation and management direction, a perception of low capacity for implementation in most other program areas was identified. A separate panel of senior park agency decision-makers used a multiple criterion decision-facilitation matrix to further evaluate the institutional feasibility of the 56 most desirable adaptation options identified by the initial expert panel and to prioritize them for consideration in a climate change action plan. Critically, only two of the 56 adaptation options evaluated by senior decision-makers were deemed definitely implementable, due largely to fiscal and internal capacity limitations. These challenges are common to protected area agencies in developed countries and pervade those in developing countries, revealing that limited adaptive capacity represents a substantive barrier to biodiversity conservation and other protected area management objectives in an era of rapid climate change.Combining a climatic envelope modelling technique with more than two centuries (1800-2009) of distribution records has revealed the effects of a changing climate on the egg-laying monotreme, the platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus. We show that the main factor associated with platypus occurrence switched from aquatic habitat availability (estimated by rainfall) to thermal tolerances (estimated by annual maximum temperature) in the 1960s. This correlates directly with the change in the annual maximum temperature anomaly from cooler to warmer conditions in southeastern Australia. Modelling of platypus habitat under emission scenarios (A1B, A2, B1 and B2) revealed large decreases (>30%) in thermally suitable habitat by 2070. This reduction, compounded by increasing demands for water for agriculture and potable use, suggests that there is real cause for concern over the future status of this species, and highlights the need for restoration of thermal refugia within the platypus' modelled range.The Convention on Biological Diversity requires that member nations establish protected area networks that are representative of the country's biodiversity. The identification of priority sites to achieve outstanding representation targets is typically accomplished through formal conservation assessments. However, representation in conservation assessments or gap analyses has largely been interpreted based on a static view of biodiversity. In a rapidly changing climate, the speed of changes in biodiversity distribution and abundance is causing us to rethink the viability of this approach. Here we describe three explicit strategies for climate change adaptation as part of national conservation assessments: conserving the geophysical stage, identifying and protecting climate refugia, and promoting cross-environment connectivity. We demonstrate how these three approaches were integrated into a national terrestrial conservation assessment for Papua New Guinea, one of the most biodiverse countries on earth. Protected areas identified based on representing geophysical diversity were able to capture over 90% of the diversity in vegetation communities, suggesting they could help protect representative biodiversity regardless of changes in the distribution of species and communities. By including climate change refugia as part of the national conservation assessment, it was possible to substantially reduce the amount of environmental change expected to be experienced within protected areas, without increasing the overall cost of the protected area network. Explicitly considering environmental heterogeneity between adjacent areas resulted in protected area networks with over 40% more internal environmental connectivity. These three climate change adaptation strategies represent defensible ways to guide national conservation priority given the uncertainty that currently exists in our ability to predict climate changes and their impacts. Importantly, they are also consistent with data and expertise typically available during national conservation assessments, including in developing nations. This means that in the vast majority of countries, these strategies could be implemented immediately.Uncertainty in future water supplies for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (Phoenix) are exacerbated by the near certainty of increased, future water demands; water demand may increase eightfold or more by 2030 for some communities. We developed a provider-based water management and planning model for Phoenix termed WaterSim 4.0. The model combines a FORTRAN library with Microsoft C# to simulate the spatial and temporal dynamics of current and projected future water supply and demand as influenced by population demographics, climatic uncertainty, and groundwater availability. This paper describes model development and rationale. Water providers receive surface water, groundwater, or both depending on their portfolio. Runoff from two riverine systems supplies surface water to Phoenix while three alluvial layers that underlie the area provide groundwater. Water demand was estimated using two approaches. One approach used residential density, population projections, water duties, and acreage. A second approach used per capita water consumption and separate population growth estimates. Simulated estimates of initial groundwater for each provider were obtained as outputs from the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) Salt River Valley groundwater flow model (GFM). We compared simulated estimates of water storage with empirical estimates for modeled reservoirs as a test of model performance. In simulations we modified runoff by 80%-110% of the historical estimates, in 5% intervals, to examine provider-specific responses to altered surface water availability for 33 large water providers over a 25-year period (2010-2035). Two metrics were used to differentiate their response: (1) we examined groundwater reliance (GWR; that proportion of a providers' portfolio dependent upon groundwater) from the runoff sensitivity analysis, and (2) we used 100% of the historical runoff simulations to examine the cumulative groundwater withdrawals for each provider. Four groups of water providers were identified, and discussed. Water portfolios most reliant on Colorado River water may be most sensitive to potential reductions in surface water supplies. Groundwater depletions were greatest for communities who were either 100% dependent upon groundwater (urban periphery), or nearly so, coupled with high water demand projections. On-going model development includes linking WaterSim 4.0 to the GFM in order to more precisely model provider-specific estimates of groundwater, and provider-based policy options that will enable "what-if" scenarios to examine policy trade-offs and long-term sustainability of water portfolios. Published by Elsevier Ltd.African agriculture is negatively affected by climate change. Adaptation is identified as one of the options to reduce the negative impact of the change. This study identified the adaptation techniques employed by farmers and analyze factors that determine the adaptation techniques among farmers in the study area. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logit were used to analyze data obtained from a cross-sectional survey of 10 villages in two local government areas of Osun State. The analysis of perception of farmers to climate change revealed a high increase in temperature, and decrease in rainfall. The result showed that six adaptation methods were employed by the farmers. The result also showed that explanatory variables compared to the null model give better accuracy for no adaptation, early and late planting, and tree planting. Moreover, the analysis of factors affecting adaptation to climate change indicates that, access to loan and livestock ownership compared to the rest of explanatory variables has more significant impact on adaptation. It is recommended that policy makers should enlighten the farmers more on the danger of climate change to productivity of crops and livestock and provide necessary logistics to support various alternative course of action.Developing robust species distribution models is important as model outputs are increasingly being incorporated into conservation policy and management decisions. A largely overlooked component of model assessment and refinement is whether to include historic species occurrence data in distribution models to increase the data sample size. Data of different temporal provenance often differ in spatial accuracy and precision. We test the effect of inclusion of historic coarse-resolution occurrence data on distribution model outputs for 187 species of birds in Australian tropical savannas. Models using only recent (after 1990), fine-resolution data had significantly higher model performance scores measured with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) than models incorporating both fine- and coarse-resolution data. The drop in AUC score is positively correlated with the total area predicted to be suitable for the species (R(2)=0.163-0.187, depending on the environmental predictors in the model), as coarser data generally leads to greater predicted areas. The remaining unexplained variation is likely to be due to the covariate errors resulting from resolution mismatch between species records and environmental predictors. We conclude that decisions regarding data use in species distribution models must be conscious of the variation in predictions that mixed-scale datasets might cause. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Premise of the Study: The distribution of species is determined in part by their functional traits. One important function is the ability of xylem to supply water to leaves and withstand water-stress-induced cavitation. These hydraulic traits are hypothesized to have evolved in response to selection by precipitation and temperature. Methods: We grew 26 species in the genus Pinus in a common environment and used phylogenetic comparative methods to examine whether the evolution of seedling hydraulic and wood density traits were associated with the climate of the extant geographic range of the species. We also examined whether these traits were correlated with each other, with integrated water-use efficiency (WUE), and with plant growth. Key Results: Contrary to predictions from a hydraulic model, we found no association between stem hydraulic conductivity (K-S) and precipitation, even though there was substantial variation for K-S in the genus. Nevertheless, K-S was positively correlated with temperature, plant biomass, and WUE. Wood density was infrequently associated with climate or correlated with other traits except for plant biomass. Conclusions: Reduced K-S in cold climates, if associated with reduced conduit diameter, likely evolved to increase resistance to freezing-induced xylem cavitation. The absence of a K-S-precipitation relationship among Pinus seedlings suggests that associations between hydraulic traits and precipitation found in adult trees arise through plastic responses to moisture availability and/or develop over ontogeny. The weak association among wood density, climate, and other traits suggest that this trait does not contribute to climate adaptation in Pinus.Recent suggestions by the World Commission on Protected Areas that conservation actions are likely to fail unless they are adjusted to take account of climate change, emphasize the need for protected areas agencies to begin mainstreaming climate change into policy, planning, and management. This article presents the results of a University of Waterloo and Canadian Council on Ecological Areas survey on the state of climate change adaptation in Canada's protected areas sector, including all federal, provincial, and territorial jurisdictions. Analysis revealed several important findings. First, three quarters of agencies surveyed reported that climate change impacts were already occurring within their respective protected areas systems. Second, climate change was perceived by 94 percent of respondents to be an issue that will substantially alter protected areas policy and planning over the next 25 years. Third, despite the perceived future importance of climate change, little policy, planning, management, or research response is currently being undertaken by most agencies. Overall, with 91 percent of the agencies conceding that they currently do not have the capacity necessary to respond effectively to climate change, the survey revealed an important gap between the perceived salience of climate change and the capacity of protected areas agencies to adapt. Constraints, such as limited financial resources, limited internal capacity, and lack of understanding of real or anticipated climate change impacts, will need to be overcome if Canada's protected areas agencies are to be able to deliver on their various protected areas-and biodiversity-related mandates, such as the perpetual protection of representative elements of Canada's natural heritage, in an era of rapid climate change.Aim Investigate the relative abilities of different bioclimatic models and data sets to project species ranges in novel environments utilizing the natural experiment in biogeography provided by Australian Acacia species. Location Australia, South Africa. Methods We built bioclimatic models for Acacia cyclops and Acacia pycnantha using two discriminatory correlative models (MAXENT and Boosted Regression Trees) and a mechanistic niche model (CLIM EX). We fitted models using two training data sets: native-range data only ('restricted') and all available global data excluding South Africa ('full'). We compared the ability of these techniques to project suitable climate for independent records of the species in South Africa. In addition, we assessed the global potential distributions of the species to projected climate change. Results All model projections assessed against their training data, the South African data and globally were statistically significant. In South Africa and globally, the additional information contained in the full data set generally improved model sensitivity, but at the expense of increased modelled prevalence, particularly in extrapolation areas for the correlative models. All models projected some climatically suitable areas in South Africa not currently occupied by the species. At the global scale, widespread and biologically unrealistic projections by the correlative models were explained by open-ended response curves, a problem which was not always addressed by broader background climate space or by the extra information in the full data set. In contrast, the global projections for CLIMEX were more conservative. Projections into 2070 indicated a polewards shift in climate suitability and a decrease in model interpolation area. Main conclusions Our results highlight the importance of carefully interpreting model projections in novel climates, particularly for correlative models. Much work is required to ensure bioclimatic models performed in a robust and ecologically plausible manner in novel climates. We explore reasons for variations between models and suggest methods and techniques for future improvements.Aim To explore whether the subspecific genetic entities of Acacia saligna occupy different bioclimatic niches in their native and introduced ranges and whether these niches are predictable using species distribution models (SDMs). Location Australia, South Africa and the Mediterranean Basin. Methods Species distribution models were developed in MAXENT using six climatic variables to calculate the climatic suitability of the ranges of A. saligna. We assessed (1) the subspecific niche differences identified by SDMs using measures of niche overlap and model performance; (2) the ability of SDMs to predict the most likely subspecific genetic entities present in South Africa based on comparisons to genetic data; and (3) the ability of SDMs to predict the most likely subspecific genetic entities present in the Mediterranean Basin. All model projections were assessed for sensitivity and modelled prevalence as indicators of model fit and predictability. Results The SDMs identified different subspecific bioclimatic niches in the native range. Sensitivity and modelled prevalence show that none of the models correctly predicted the full range of A. saligna in South Africa or the Mediterranean Basin. Models also show that the South African niche is different to that in the native range. Main conclusions Subspecies of A. saligna occupy quantifiably distinct bioclimatic niches in their native ranges, implying that they should occupy distinct niches in their invasive ranges. However, projections to the introduced range did not correspond with known occurrences. Our SDMs are unable to predict the full introduced niche of A. saligna at a species or subspecies level in either South Africa or the Mediterranean Basin. Range limits in the native and introduced ranges may be determined by additional factors not used in the SDMs developed in this study.Aim To identify whether eradication or containment is expected to be the most cost-effective management goal for an isolated invasive population when knowledge about the current extent is uncertain. Location Global and South Africa. Methods We developed a decision analysis framework to analyse the best management goal for an invasive species population (eradication, containment or take no action) when knowledge about the current extent is uncertain. We used value of information analysis to identify when investment in learning about the extent will improve this decision-making and tested the sensitivity of the conclusions to different parameters (e.g. spread rate, maximum extent, and management efficacy and cost). The model was applied to Acacia paradoxa DC, an Australian shrub with an estimated invasive extent of 310 ha on Table Mountain, South Africa. Results Under the parameters used, attempting eradication is cost-effective for infestations of up to 777 ha. However, if the invasion extent is poorly known, then attempting eradication is only cost-effective for infestations estimated as 296 ha or smaller. The value of learning is greatest (maximum of 8% saving) when infestation extent is poorly known and if it is close to the maximum extent for which attempting eradication is optimal. The optimal management action is most sensitive to the probability that the action succeeds (which depends on the extent), with the discount rate and cost of management also important, but spread rate less so. Over a 20-year time-horizon, attempting to eradicate A. paradoxa from South Africa is predicted to cost on average ZAR 8 million if the extent is known, and if our current estimate is poor, ZAR. 33.6 million as opposed to ZAR 32.8 million for attempting containment. Main conclusions Our framework evaluates the cost-effectiveness of attempting eradication or containment of an invasive population that takes uncertainty in population extent into account. We show that incorporating uncertainty in the analysis avoids overly optimistic beliefs about the effectiveness of management enabling better management decisions. For A. paradoxa in South Africa, attempting to eradicate is likely to be cost-effective, particularly if resources are allocated to better understand and improve management efficacy.In many places in the world the effects of common floods are increased by climate change. In the area around the Indonesian city of Semarang, the number and effects of tidal flooding are becoming more and more severe. We found that the inhabitants used different strategies against the impact of flooding. In both the existing and the predicted flood prone areas, most people appear not to intend to leave the area, even when the floods become everyday routine. People are connected to their dwellings in a way that abandoning is not a realistic scenario. This study provides relevant information about the way people in the affected areas perceive flood risks and adaptation opportunities. Governmental policy-makers and urban planners could base their strategies and actions on this information.Corals are an essential and threatened habitat for a diverse range of reef-associated animals. Episodes of coral bleaching are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity over coming decades, yet the effects of coral-host bleaching on the associated animal communities remain poorly understood. The present study investigated the effects of host-colony bleaching on the obligate coral-dwelling crab, Trapezia cymodoce, during a natural bleaching event in the lagoon of Lizard Island, Australia. Branching corals, which harbour the highest diversity of coral associates, comprised 13% of live coral cover at the study site, with 83% affected by bleaching. Crabs on healthy and bleached colonies of Pocillopora damicornis were monitored over a 5-week period to determine whether coral bleaching affected crab density and movement patterns. All coral colonies initially contained one breeding pair of crabs. There was a significant decline in crab density on bleached corals after 5 weeks, with many corals losing one or both crabs, yet all healthy colonies retained a mating pair. Fecundity of crabs collected from bleached and healthy colonies of P. damicornis was also compared. The size of egg clutches of crabs collected from bleached hosts was 40% smaller than those from healthy hosts, indicating a significant reduction in fecundity. A laboratory experiment on movement patterns found that host-colony bleaching also prompted crabs to emigrate in search of more suitable colonies. Emigrant crabs engaged in aggressive interactions with occupants of healthy hosts, with larger crabs always usurping occupants of a smaller size. Decreased densities and clutch sizes, along with increased competitive interactions, could potentially result in a population decline of these important coral associates with cascading effects on coral health.Developing management strategies for addressing global climate change has become an increasingly important issue influencing forest management around the globe. Currently, management approaches are being proposed that intend to (1) mitigate climate change by enhancing forest carbon stores and (2) foster adaptation by maintaining compositionally and structurally complex forests. However, little is known about the compatibility of these two objectives or the long-term efficacy of a given management regime at simultaneously achieving adaptation and mitigation. To address this need, we examined stand-level carbon and complexity responses using five long-term (> 50 yrs) silviculture experiments within the upper Great Lakes region, USA. In particular, live tree carbon stores and sequestration rates, and compositional and structural complexity were analyzed from three thinning experiments in Pinus resinosa and two selection method experiments in northern hardwood systems to elucidate the long-term effects of management on these ecosystem attributes and the general compatibility of mitigation and adaptation objectives. As expected, we observed a general increase in large tree densities with stand age and positive relationships between stand stocking level and live tree carbon stores. More importantly, our results clearly identify tradeoffs between the achievement of mitigation and adaptation objectives across each study. For example, maintaining higher stocking levels (i.e., enhanced mitigation by increasing carbon stores) resulted in decreases in stand-level structural and compositional complexity (i.e., reduced adaptation potential). In addition, rates of live tree carbon increment were also the lowest within the highest stocking levels; despite the benefits of these stand conditions to maximizing carbon stores. Collectively, these findings underscore the importance of avoiding rigid adherence to a single objective, such as maximum on-site carbon stores, without recognizing potential consequences to other ecosystem components crucial to ensuring long-term ecosystem functioning within the context of environmental change. One potential stand-level strategy for balancing these goals may be to employ multi-aged management systems, such as irregular shelterwood and selection systems, that maintain a large proportion of carbon stores in retained mature trees while using thinning to create spatial heterogeneity that promotes higher sequestration rates in smaller, younger trees and simultaneously enhances structural and compositional complexity. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article reconceptualizes current analyses of adaptation and vulnerability to climate change within an evolutionary theory of social change premised on the concept of a socially constructed adaptive landscape. The latter describes a negotiated and contested fitness terrain. Individual and corporate actors simultaneously adapt to and actively manipulate this terrain by using alternative collective action frames, mobilizing resources, and creating or exploiting political opportunities in order to legitimate or delegitimate social structures and their associated technologies at various levels of analysis. Adaptation is conceptualized as occurring through homeostatic, developmental, rational choice, and populational mechanisms. Vulnerability results from the adaptive failure of social structures sustaining individual and collective health, livelihood, and well-being. This framework combines organizational sociologists' insights into structure-environment interaction; constructionists' attention to agency, language, culture, and values; and political ecologists' concerns with power, inequality, and processes of marginalization.The countries Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti are facing the worst food crisis of the 21st century as a result of devastating droughts. The crisis is causing starvation and leading to a lack of access to clean water and sanitation for over 12 million people. Not only are the direct drought effects endured now by the population, but they have weakened response capacity and created diminished prospects of ever achieving future water and food security. Over the coming decades, temperatures in this region will continue to rise and rainfall patterns will change. This will create major problems for food production and availability. Thus, building resilience in communities is indispensable as we adapt our farming systems to the challenges of climate change. This will require practical solutions that can build on processes involving adaptation to climate change. The lessons learned from the UN-led project in Uganda, demonstrate the value of small scale innovative interventions, carried out using democratic approaches to help support adaptation to climate change whilst progressing to achieve food security and chart a new Path to eliminate hunger. These lessons should be our guiding vision as we address the current droughts plaguing the Horn of East Africa and elsewhere.All sea pens have been thought to anchor in soft sediment using a basal, sausage-shaped, muscular peduncle. Based on underwater images and examination of specimens, we report an adaptation of the proximal portion of the peduncle for attachment to solid surfaces. We document four species with this adaptation, three new, Anthoptilum lithophilum sp. nov. (California, 669-700 m), A. gowlettholmesae sp. nov. (Tasmania, 729-1803 m), and Calibelemnon francei sp. nov. (the Bahamas, 1969 m), and one known, A. decipiens Thomson & Henderson, 1906 (Sri Lanka, 925 m). The peduncle of a colony with this adaptation is greatly expanded by an outgrowth of the coenenchyme that forms a sucker-like structure, beneath which a conical mass of tough tissue surrounds the proximal end of the internal axis. We infer this structure affects suction, increasing or decreasing the strength of adhesion to the substratum, and discuss the systematics and functional morphology of this new ecological phenomenon-pennatulaceans fastened to hard substrata. We alter the definition of the genus Anthoptilum to accommodate this morphology, reporting on specimens of the type species, A. grandiflorum; compare the two sea pen families-Anthoptilidae and Scleroptilidae- and the two genera; and present a key to the known rock-inhabiting species.Although, the development and implementation of a global greenhouse gas reduction regime has dominated policy debates before the advent of the Kyoto Protocol (and remains a critical element of effective mitigation, communities have both direct control of critical sources of emissions and are the scale at which the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change will play out). As this paper shows, communities face a unique set of challenges as they navigate through the uncertain future presented by climate change. Even so, communities bring to the task of climate change adaptation and mitigation a unique set of tools and proficiencies that are often absent at the national and international scales. It was the ultimate aim of this paper to enhance this tool kit so that communities might effectively employ the various forms of capacity they possess to rise to the challenge presented by climate change.Background: Commercial forestry programs normally use locally collected seed for reforestation under the assumption that tree populations are optimally adapted to local environments. However, in western Canada this assumption is no longer valid because of climate trends that have occurred over the last several decades. The objective of this study is to show how we can arrive at reforestation recommendations with alternative species and genotypes that are viable under a majority of climate change scenarios. Methodology/Principal Findings: In a case study for commercially important tree species of Alberta, we use an ecosystem-based bioclimate envelope modeling approach for western North America to project habitat for locally adapted populations of tree species using multi-model climate projections for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s. We find that genotypes of species that are adapted to drier climatic conditions will be the preferred planting stock over much of the boreal forest that is commercially managed. Interestingly, no alternative species that are currently not present in Alberta can be recommended with any confidence. Finally, we observe large uncertainties in projections of suitable habitat that make reforestation planning beyond the 2050s difficult for most species. Conclusion/Significance: More than 50,000 hectares of forests are commercially planted every year in Alberta. Choosing alternative planting stock, suitable for expected future climates, could therefore offer an effective climate change adaptation strategy at little additional cost. Habitat projections for locally adapted tree populations under observed climate change conform well to projections for the 2020s, which suggests that it is a safe strategy to change current reforestation practices and adapt to new climatic realities through assisted migration prescriptions.Integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation measures into other policies is considered to be a precondition for effective climate policies. This paper explores the role of mass media coverage as a potential obstacle or enhancing factor in relation to this mainstreaming of climate policies. The paper presents a quantitative content analysis of the national-level press coverage of climate change from 1990 to 2010, focusing on Finland. The empirical results indicate four major phases of Finnish media coverage of climate change: a definition phase before the Kyoto meeting in 1997, a maturation phase after the Kyoto meeting, climate hype in 2006-2008, and a phase of levelling off that started in late 2008. The results suggest that climate issues have widely permeated various fields of newspaper coverage. This broad-based debate may create and sustain a public agenda potentially favourable to attempts to bring climate policies into the mainstream of other policy domains. However, it also may open doors for unexpected initiatives by various activists and lobbyists that employ climate concern as a tool to advance other interests. The role of mass media has received little attention in studies focusing on the mainstreaming of climate policies. This paper highlights the importance of taking media coverage into account as a key factor in the formulation and implementation of environmental policies aimed at broad-based actions.Multilateral support through programs like the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) targets countries widely considered to be the most vulnerable to climate change. Cambodia is one of the six Asian LDCF recipients and with UNDP support is implementing the first adaptation project to arise from its National Adaptation Program of Action. Drawing on primary research conducted in August 2010 through interviews with key stakeholders, this article investigates the project for the likely benefits and challenges it will face in promoting institutional, infrastructural, and community resilience to climate change impacts. We find that the country's ongoing decentralization reforms offer an effective opportunity to mainstream climate change planning into sub-national government operations, but that competing priorities for immediate investment in education, roads, and healthcare may prevent government officers from sustaining a focus on preventative adaptation measures. We conclude that through careful planning, water resources infrastructure and agricultural practices can be designed to withstand climate variability and avoid the need to replace or rehabilitate systems whose specifications were prematurely determined by international donors.In restructured power systems, there are many independent players who benefit from demand response (DR). These include the transmission system operator (TSO), distributors, retailers, and aggregators. This paper proposes a new concept-demand response eXchange (DRX)-in which DR is treated as a public good to be exchanged between DR buyers and sellers. Buyers need DR to improve the reliability of their own electricity-dependent businesses and systems. Sellers have the capacity to significantly modify electricity demand on request. Microeconomic theory is applied to model the DRX in the form of a pool-based market. In this market, a DRX operator (DRXO) collects DR bids and offers from the buyers and sellers, respectively. It then clears the market by maximizing the total market benefit subject to certain constraints including: demand-supply balance, and assurance contracts related to individual buyer contributions for DR. The DRX model is also tested on a small power system, and its efficiency is reported.Managed relocation is a controversial climate-adaptation strategy to combat negative climate change impacts on biodiversity. While the scientific community debates the merits of managed relocation(1-12), species are already being moved to new areas predicted to be more suitable under climate change(13,14). To inform these moves, we construct a quantitative decision framework to evaluate the timing of relocation in the face of climate change. We find that the optimal timing depends on many factors, including the size of the population, the demographic costs of translocation and the expected carrying capacities over time in the source and destination habitats. In some settings, such as when a small population would benefit from time to grow before risking translocation losses, haste is ill advised. We also find that active adaptive management(15,16) is valuable when the effect of climate change on source habitat is uncertain, and leads to delayed movement.The formulation and implementation of an adaptation strategy is of growing concern to governments. The adaptation policy framework (APF) sets out indicative activities and features of an adaptation strategy. Understanding the extent to which existing practices can support adaptation in societies and ecosystems is an important step towards the solution. This study uses vulnerability, policy and financial analyses to investigate the compatibility of the modified taungya system (MTS) (a reforestation programme) in Ghana with the indicative activities of the APF. The findings indicate that MTS takes into consideration most of the activities of an adaptation strategy, is a profitable venture (BCR > 1) and has a high potential to reduce vulnerability due to short-term food production and long-term plantation establishment. Resource management in MTS is promising in the short term, but challenges remain to meet livelihood and adaptation needs in the medium and long term. Policy instruments related to MTS align with the forestry, climate change and the development goals of Ghana. We conclude that MTS is a potential win-win practice for forestry and adaptation. The legalization of all contractual arrangements coupled with continuous monitoring, evaluation and improvement may drive MTS to become a lasting activity that will support the long-term horizon of an adaptation strategy. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two well-known methods for estimating statistical distributions in hydrology are the Method of Moments (MOMS) and the method of probability weighted moments (PWM). This paper is concerned with the case where a part of the sample is censored. One situation where this might occur is when systematic data (e.g. from gauges) are combined with historical data, since the latter are often only reported if they exceed a high threshold. For this problem, three previously derived estimators are the "B17B" estimator, which is a direct modification of MOM to allow for partial censoring; the "partial PWM estimator", which similarly modifies PWM; and the "expected moments algorithm" estimator, which improves on B17B by replacing a sample adjustment of the censored-data moments with a population adjustment. The present paper proposes a similar modification to the PWM estimator, resulting in the "expected probability weighted moments (EPWM)" estimator. Simulation comparisons of these four estimators and also the maximum likelihood estimator show that the EPWM method is at least competitive with the other four and in many cases the best of the five estimators. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation to climate change has become an important policy question in recent years. Agriculture is an economic activity that is most sensitive to climate change. We evaluate the dynamic effects of productivity change and individual efforts to adapt to climate change. Adaptation actions in agriculture are evaluated to determine how the climate affects production efficiency. In this paper, we use the bi-directional distance function method to measure Japanese rice production loss due to climate. We find that (1) accumulated precipitation has the greatest effect on rice production efficiency and (2) the climate effect on rice production efficiency decreases over time. Our results empirically support the benefit of the adaptation approach.As the impacts of climate-change on resource-dependent industries manifest, there is a commensurate effort to identify and implement strategies to reduce them. Yet, even when useful knowledge and tools exist, there can be poor adoption of adaptation strategies. We examine the reasons behind sub-optimal adoption of seasonal climate forecasts by graziers for managing climate variability. We surveyed 100 graziers in north-east Queensland, Australia and examined the influence of adaptive capacity, resource-dependency and forecast-perception on uptake. Technical perceptions were not important. Strategic skills, environmental awareness and social capital were. Results suggest that social factors (but not technical factors) are significant. These insights are important for adaptation planning and for maximising the resilience of communities and industries dependent on climate-sensitive resources.An extensive assessment of historical trends in winegrape maturity dates from vineyards located in geographically diverse winegrape growing regions in Australia has been undertaken. Records from 44 vineyard blocks, representing a range of varieties of Vitis vinifera L., were accessed. These comprise 33 short-term datasets (average 17 years in length) and 11 long-term datasets, ranging from 25 to 115 years in length (average 50 years). Time series of the day of the year grapes attain maturity were assessed. A trend to earlier maturity of winegrapes was observed in 43 of the 44 vineyard blocks. This trend was significant for six out of the 11 long-term blocks for the complete time period for which records were available. For the period 1993-2009, 35 of the 44 vineyard blocks assessed displayed a statistically significant trend to earlier maturity. The average advance in the phenology was dependent on the time period of observation, with a more rapid advance over more recent decades. Over the more recent 1993-2009 period, the average advance was 1.7 days year, whereas for the period 1985-2009 the rate of advance was 0.8 days yr(-1) on average in the 10 long-term vineyard blocks assessed for cross-regional comparison. The trend to earlier maturity was associated with warming temperature trends for all of the blocks assessed in the study.Background. Changes in global climate as well as changes in the German climate have been observed in recent years. Those changes are probably due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Even if human greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced, air temperature will continue to rise. Results. Four regional climate models were analysed for Germany. These models project an increase in mean annual air temperature between 1 and 2 degrees C for the middle of the twenty-first century and an increase between 2.5 and 4 degrees C for the end of this century with respect to the mean annual air temperature of the period 1971-2000. Conclusion. This change in climate also affects human health. More and more intense heat waves could for instance increase the risk of heat-related morbidity and mortality. In order to keep the impacts of climate change for humans and the environment as small as possible, there is an urgent need to adapt to the changing climate.Emergency managers will have to deal with the impending, uncertain, and possibly extreme effects of climate change. Yet, many emergency managers are not aware of the full range of possible effects, and they are unsure of their place in the effort to plan for, adapt to, and cope with those effects. This may partly reflect emergency mangers' reluctance to get caught up in the rancorous-and politically-charged-debate about climate change, but it mostly is due to the worldview shared by most emergency managers. We focus on: extreme events; acute vs. chronic hazards (floods vs. droughts); a shorter event horizon (5 years vs. 75-100 years); and a shorter planning and operational cycle. This paper explores the important intersection of emergency management, environmental management, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. It examines the different definitions of terms common to all three fields, the overlapping strategies used in all three fields, and the best means of collaboration and mutual re-enforcement among the three to confront and solve the many possible futures that we may face in the climate change world.Global climate models are constantly being upgraded, but it is often not clear what these changes have on climate change impact projections. We used difference maps to directly compare downscaled projections of temperature and precipitation across North America for two versions (or generations) of three different Atmospheric-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCM)s. We found that AOGCM versions differed in their projections for the end of the current century by up to 4 degrees C for annual mean temperature and 60% for annual precipitation. To place these changes in an ecological context, we reanalyzed our work on shifts in tree climate envelopes (CEs) using the newer-generation AOGCM projections. Based on the updated AOGCMs, by the 2071-2100 period, tree CEs shifted up to 2.4 degrees further north or 2.6 degrees further south (depending on the AOGCM) and were about 10% larger in size. Despite considerable differences between versions of a given AOGCM, projections made by the newer version of each AOGCM were in general agreement, suggesting convergence across the three models studied here. Assessing the AOGCM outputs in this way provides insight into the magnitude and importance of change associated with AOGCM upgrades as they continue to evolve through time.According to theory, gene flow to marginal populations may stall or aid adaptation at range limits by swamping peripheral populations with maladaptive gene flow or by enhancing genetic variability and reducing inbreeding depression, respectively. We tested these contrasting predictions by manipulating patterns of gene flow of the annual plant, Mimulus laciniatus, at its warm range limit. Gene flow was experimentally applied by using crosses within warm-limit populations (selfed and outcrossed), between warm-limit populations, and between warm-limit and central range populations across two elevational transects. We measured the fitness of offspring in a common garden at the warm-edge species range limit. All sources of gene flow increased seedling emergence at the range limit, suggesting local inbreeding depression at both range limit populations; however, lifetime reproductive success only increased significantly when pollen originated from another warm-limit population. Center-to-warm-edge gene flow was maladaptive by delaying time to development at this warm, fast-drying range limit, whereas edge-to-edge gene flow hastened emergence time and time to reproduction. By empirically testing theory on the effects of gene flow on the formation of geographic range limits, we find benefits of gene flow among populations to be greatest when gene flow is between populations occupying the same range limit. Our results emphasize the overlooked importance of gene flow among populations occurring near the same range limit and highlight the potential for prescriptive gene flow as a conservation option for populations at risk from climate change.This study has investigated gap winds to the west of the Soya Strait during the summer months. Low-level cool air associated with the developed Okhotsk high is dammed on the east sides of Sakhalin and Hokkaido, and enhances sea level pressure (SLP) gradient along the Soya Strait on a regional scale. The Soya Strait works as a conduit for the cool air from the Okhotsk Sea to the Japan Sea, and the outflowing air accelerates because of the along-strait SLP gradient. The intensity and duration time of the easterly gap winds depend on the activity of the Okhotsk high. Copyright (C) 2011 Royal Meteorological SocietyAn understanding of physiological sensitivity to temperature and its variability is important for predicting habitat suitability for disease vectors under different climatic regimes. In this study, we characterized the thermal sensitivity of larval developmental rates and survival in several Australian mainland populations of the dengue virus vector Aedes aegypti. Males developed more rapidly than females, but there were no differences among populations for development time or survival despite previously demonstrated genetic differentiation for neutral markers. Optimal development and survival temperatures were 37 degrees C and 25 degrees C, respectively. The values for maximal development and survival were similar to standard functions used in the container inhabiting simulation (CIMSIM) model for predicting population dynamics of Ae. aegypti populations, but CIMSIM assumed a lower optimal temperature. Heat stress experiments indicated that larvae could withstand water temperatures up to 44 degrees C regardless of the rate at which temperature was increased. Results from development time measured under constant temperatures could predict development time under fluctuating conditions, whereas CIMSIM predicted faster rates of development. This difference acts to reduce the predicted potential number of generations of Ae. aegypti per year in Australia, although it does not influence its predicted distribution, which depends critically on the nature of the aquatic breeding sites.Amory Lovins' distinction between 'soft' and 'hard' paths of energy technologies is applied, mutatis mutandis, to humanity's efforts to adapt to climate change. It is argued that hard adaptive measures involve capital-intensive, large, complex, inflexible technology and infrastructure, whereas soft adaptive measures prioritize natural capital, community control, simplicity and appropriateness. The prevalence of these two types of adaptation pathways is illustrated through two case studies from the Maldives: The Safer Island Development Program and the Integrating Climate Change Risks Program. Policymakers must be aware that hard and soft adaptation measures may trade off with each other, and give both paths due consideration.The role climate change may play in altering human health, particularly in the emergence and spread of diseases, is an evolving area of research. It is important to understand this relationship because it will compound the already significant burden of diseases on national economies and public health. Authorities need to be able to assess, anticipate, and monitor human health vulnerability to climate change, in order to plan for, or implement action to avoid these eventualities. Environmental health indicators (EHIs) provide a tool to assess, monitor, and quantify human health vulnerability, to aid in the design and targeting of interventions, and measure the effectiveness of climate change adaptation and mitigation activities. Our aim was to identify the most suitable framework for developing EHIs to measure and monitor the impacts of climate change on human health and inform the development of interventions. Using published literature we reviewed the attributes of 11 frameworks. We identified the Driving force-Pressure-State-Exposure-Effect-Action (DPSEEA) framework as the most suitable one for developing EHIs for climate change and health. We propose the use of EHIs as a valuable tool to assess, quantify, and monitor human health vulnerability, design and target interventions, and measure the effectiveness of climate change adaptation and mitigation activities. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for the future development of EHIs as a multidisciplinary approach to link existing environmental and epidemiological data and networks. Analysis of such data will contribute to an enhanced understanding of the relationship between climate change and human health.A growing literature emphasizes the importance of managing the adverse effects of climate change on animal and plant species, biological communities, natural areas, and ecosystems. Although replete with general 'climate adaptation' strategies, this literature provides relatively limited guidance on translating these strategies into actionable conservation prescriptions. This review synthesizes information from the conservation planning and climate adaptation literature, including climate adaptation plans developed in Canada, England, Mexico, South Africa, and USA, and presents elements of a general approach for developing actionable adaptation measures for wildlife species and conservation areas. Grounded in an adaptive management framework, this approach incorporates existing conservation tools for land and water protection, land and water management, species conservation, and monitoring, and also integrates new information from climate models, sensitivity analyses, and vulnerability assessments for species and ecosystems. (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 498-515 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.127Human-aided movement of species populations in large-scale reforestation programs could be a potent and cost-effective climate change adaptation strategy. Such large-scale management interventions, however, tend to entail the risks of unintended consequences, and we propose that three conditions should be met before implementing assisted migration in reforestation programs: (1) evidence of a climate-related adaptational lag, (2) observed biological impacts, and (3) robust model projections to target assisted migration efforts. In a case study of aspen (Populus tremuloides Michaux.) we use reciprocal transplant experiments to study adaptation of tree populations to local environments. Second, we monitor natural aspen populations using the MODIS enhanced vegetation index as a proxy for forest health and productivity. Last, we report results from bioclimate envelope models that predict suitable habitat for locally adapted genotypes under observed and predicted climate change. The combined results support assisted migration prescriptions and indicate that the risk of inaction likely exceeds the risk associated with changing established management practices. However, uncertainty in model projections also implies that we are restricted to a relatively short 20-year planning horizon for prescribing seed movement in reforestation programs. We believe that this study exemplifies a safe and realistic climate change adaptation strategy based on multiple sources of information and some understanding of the uncertainty associated with recommendations for assisted migration. Ad hoc migration prescriptions without a similar level of supporting information should be avoided in reforestation programs.Climate change scenarios concerning the Baltic Sea predict increase in surface water temperatures. Pikeperch (Sander lucioperca (L.)) inhabits the coastal areas of the northern Baltic Sea and is an important fish species for the Finnish fisheries. The year-class strength of pikeperch varies strongly between years and significantly depends on water temperature. We aimed to study the effects of changing temperature conditions on pikeperch fisheries and distribution based on commercial catch data from the period 1980-2008 in the Finnish coastal areas of the Baltic Sea. The results indicated that warmer summers will produce stronger pikeperch year-classes that consequently contribute significantly to the future catches. The average temperature in June-July explained 40% of the variation in the year-class catches in the Gulf of Finland and 73% in July-August in the Archipelago Sea. During the study period, the distribution of pikeperch catches expanded toward north along the coasts of the Bothnian Sea.The Environmental Health Research Division (EHRD) of the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Health Canada conducts science-based activities and research with Canadian Indigenous communities in areas such as climate change adaptation, environmental contaminants, water quality, biomonitoring, risk assessment, health impact assessment, and food safety and nutrition. EHRD's research activities have been specifically designed to not only inform Health Canada's policy decision-makers but as well, Indigenous community decision-makers. This paper will discuss the reasons why Indigenous community engagement is important, what are some of the barriers preventing community engagement; and the efforts by EHRD to carry out community-based participatory research activities with Indigenous peoples. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.For the last five years, climate change has been increasingly perceived as a challenge for regional development. Compared to other nations, Germany is relatively 'safe', but the German regions are prone to different impacts of climate change; some of them might be positive but most will be negative in the long run. Strategic concepts are therefore needed to reduce the negative impacts and use the potential positive effects. Due to enforced research funding, several German regions are currently developing adaptation strategies within transdisciplinary research projects. Based on a comparative case study analysis of three of these projects, this paper looks for the benefits of resilience thinking in the context of climate change adaptation. The analysis shows that the case study regions try to increase their resilience to climate change by strengthening the properties of (1) resistance, (2) recovery and (3) creativity. But the discussion also reveals that only parts, certain sectors or subjects, of the region can increase their distinct resilience. Regional stakeholder networks as established within the case study regions can make a significant contribution to linking different sectors and levels of action. Therefore, this approach seems to be applicable for integrating the need for adaptation within the whole region. It is believed that the regionalized communication of potential climate change impacts raises awareness for climate change adaptation, helps to develop appropriate adaptation measures and encourages action. Hence, different approaches can indeed lead to more resilient structures. But the resilient society at regional level remains utopia.Climate warming challenges our approach to building systems of protected areas because it is likely to drive accelerating shifts in species distributions, and the projections of those future species distributions are uncertain. There are several important sources of uncertainty intrinsic to using species occurrence projections for reserve system design including uncertainty in the number of occurrences captured by any reserve selection solution, and uncertainty arising from the different approaches used to fit predictive models. Here we used the present and future predicted distributions of Iberian herptiles to analyze how dynamics and uncertainty in species distributions may affect decisions about resource allocation for conservation in space and time. We identified priority areas maximizing coverage of current and future (2020 and 2080) predicted distributions of 65 species, under "Mild" and "Severe" uncertainty. Next, we applied a return-on-investment analysis to quantify and make explicit trade-offs between investing in areas selected when optimizing for different times and with different uncertainty levels. Areas identified as important for conservation in every time frame and uncertainty level were the ones considered to be robust climate adaptation investments, and included chiefly already protected areas. Areas identified only under "Mild" uncertainty were considered good candidates for investment if extra resources are available and were mainly located in northern Iberia. However, areas selected only in the "Severe" uncertainty case should not be completely disregarded as they may become climatic refugia for some species. Our study provides an objective methodology to deliver "no regrets" conservation investments. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A framework of adaptive capacity and prerequisites for planned adaptation are used to identify the resources and conditions that have enabled or constrained the development of planned adaptation at national to local levels in Italy, Sweden, Finland and the UK. Drawing on 94 semi-structured interviews with climate change actors at each scale, the study demonstrates that planned adaptation measures occur as a result of several inter-relating factors, including the existence of political will, public support (and relevant media portrayal of climate change), adequate financial resources, the ability to produce or access climate and other information, and the extent of stakeholder involvement in the design and application of adaptation measures. Specific national adaptation measures affect local capacities to implement planned adaptations, but in some cases have been complemented or substituted by internal and external networks that connect local authorities to information and resources. The study demonstrates that opportunities to engage in planned adaptation at local levels may occur given adequate interest and resources; however, both national authorities and non-governmental organizations continue to play an important role in fostering local capacities.Winter weather patterns are anticipated to become more variable with increasing average global temperatures. Research shows that excess morbidity and mortality occurs during cold weather periods. We critically reviewed evidence relating temperature variability, health outcomes, and adaptation strategies to cold weather. Health outcomes included cardiovascular-, respiratory-, cerebrovascular-, and all-cause morbidity and mortality. Individual and contextual risk factors were assessed to highlight associations between individual- and neighborhood-level characteristics that contribute to a person's vulnerability to variability in cold weather events. Epidemiologic studies indicate that the populations most vulnerable to variations in cold winter weather are the elderly, rural and, generally, populations living in moderate winter climates. Fortunately, cold-related morbidity and mortality are preventable and strategies exist for protecting populations from these adverse health outcomes. We present a range of adaptation strategies that can be implemented at the individual, building, and neighborhood level to protect vulnerable populations from cold-related morbidity and mortality. The existing research justifies the need for increased outreach to individuals and communities for education on protective adaptations in cold weather. We propose that future climate change adaptation research couple building energy and thermal comfort models with epidemiological data to evaluate and quantify the impacts of adaptation strategies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.Water management faces great challenges over the coming decades. Pressures include stricter water-quality standards, increasing demand for water and the need to adapt to climate change, while reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The processes of abstraction, conveyance and treatment of fresh water and wastewater all demand energy. Energy use in the water sector is growing, yet its importance is under-recognized, and gaps remain in our knowledge. Here we define the need to integrate energy use further into water resource management and identify opportunities for the water sector to understand and describe more effectively its role in greenhouse-gas emissions.Changing the patterns of energy use requires investigating how energy consumers not experts conceive of energy challenges. This article explores the varying beliefs, attitudes, and views on energy security in the United States among experts and residents. Based primarily on an academic literature review to distill expert views, and a survey distributed to hundreds of residents in the U.S. to capture consumer views, the study begins by explaining its methodology before identifying seven suppositions related to energy security. These suppositions involve security of fuel supply, energy democracy, energy research and development, affordability of energy services, environmental pollution, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. The second section of the study tests these suppositions with a survey distributed to 427 respondents in the United States. Three suppositions are supported, two are unsupported, and two are neither supported nor unsupported. The final section of the study offers implications for U.S. energy policy and scholarship. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Heatwaves present a significant health risk and the hazard is likely to escalate with the increased future temperatures presently predicted by climate change models. The impact of heatwaves is often felt strongest in towns and cities where populations are concentrated and where the climate is often unintentionally modified to produce an urban heat island effect; where urban areas can be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas. The purpose of this interdisciplinary study is to integrate remotely sensed urban heat island data alongside commercial social segmentation data via a spatial risk assessment methodology in order to highlight potential heat health risk areas and build the foundations for a climate change risk assessment. This paper uses the city of Birmingham, UK as a case study area. Results: When looking at vulnerable sections of the population, the analysis identifies a concentration of "very high" risk areas within the city centre, and a number of pockets of "high risk" areas scattered throughout the conurbation. Further analysis looks at household level data which yields a complicated picture with a considerable range of vulnerabilities at a neighbourhood scale. Conclusions: The results illustrate that a concentration of "very high" risk people live within the urban heat island, and this should be taken into account by urban planners and city centre environmental managers when considering climate change adaptation strategies or heatwave alert schemes. The methodology has been designed to be transparent and to make use of powerful and readily available datasets so that it can be easily replicated in other urban areas.Traditionally, people have inhabited places with ready access to fresh water. Today, over 50% of the global population lives in urban areas, and water can be directed via tens of kilometres of pipelines. Still, however, a large part of the world's population is directly dependent on access to natural freshwater sources. So how are inhabited places related to the location of freshwater bodies today? We present a high-resolution global analysis of how close present-day populations live to surface freshwater. We aim to increase the understanding of the relationship between inhabited places, distance to surface freshwater bodies, and climatic characteristics in different climate zones and administrative regions. Our results show that over 50% of the world's population lives closer than 3 km to a surface freshwater body, and only 10% of the population lives further than 10 km away. There are, however, remarkable differences between administrative regions and climatic zones. Populations in Australia, Asia, and Europe live closest to water. Although populations in arid zones live furthest away from freshwater bodies in absolute terms, relatively speaking they live closest to water considering the limited number of freshwater bodies in those areas. Population distributions in arid zones show statistically significant relationships with a combination of climatic factors and distance to water, whilst in other zones there is no statistically significant relationship with distance to water. Global studies on development and climate adaptation can benefit from an improved understanding of these relationships between human populations and the distance to fresh water.To capture a system's uncertainty, a participatory, integrated approach is a prerequisite of many scenario development projects. Increasingly, a toolbox of methods is employed to facilitate stakeholder input. In this paper we evaluate four potential added values of using a toolbox of methods and the effect on the quality of resulting scenarios. Ten case studies within a large project (SCENES), that set out to develop participatory scenarios for Europe's freshwaters, are used to test our hypotheses. We analysed a first series of scenario workshops, evaluating (dis)advantages of the toolbox and the quality of scenarios as perceived by stakeholders and local organisers. As can be deduced from the resulting scenarios, results indicate that all hypothesised added values materialised to some extent. Using a toolbox enlarges the possibilities to: (1) adapt to local circumstances; (2) adapt to a variety of stakeholders; (3) compare results across scales and across case studies; and (4) facilitate a link of models and stories. However, a careful balance has to be found between the length of workshop, number and type of tools employed, and previous experience of stakeholders and local organisers. The results have implications for practitioners setting out to develop water or climate adaptation scenarios that could benefit from all the added values tested here. Finally, employing a toolbox can positively influence scenario quality, although more structured tests are needed.This paper explores cross-scale governance between the European Union (EU) and Member State level arising from the identification of key policy priorities by stakeholders in six river basins across Europe and their relationship to EU policy development and implementation. Particular emphasis is given to interpretation of Good Ecological Status in implementing the EU Water Framework Directive, climate adaptation for water management, application of agri-environment measures to reduce agricultural impacts on water and control of discharges from industry. The paper also examines lessons from wider sources of information such as legal analysis of transposition of EU law at national level and the rulings of the European Court of Justice, The analysis identifies a number of different types of 'information' transmission between the different governance scales. Information includes a range of governance issues, including transmission of rules. These are exact 'information' transmission (water quality standards), national elaboration of information transmitted (adapting to climate change), national simplification of information transmitted (industrial pollution control), distributed information transmission On national transposition), fuzzy transmission of information (interpretation of Good Ecological Status) and barriers to transmission (available funding). The paper concludes by considering the importance of cross-scale analysis in assessing policy effectiveness and argues for further analysis drawing on cross-scale research derived from ecosystems analysis.This study examines teleconnections from the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), and atmospheric blocking to rainfall over the Australian continent. The analysis is carried out for observations and an atmospheric GCM driven by prescribed time-varying sea surface temperatures. The model rainfall teleconnection to the blocking index is well captured in each season, whereas the IOD rainfall teleconnection is only weakly evident in the model. The ENSO rainfall response in eastern Australia is evident in spring in the model, but not winter. The small scale topographically-induced rainfall teleconnections from SAM are generally not captured in the model. In observations, ENSO and IOD are well correlated in spring, as are SAM and blocking. Only the first of these relationships between drivers is evident in the model. These mixed results indicate the need to improve representation of teleconnection processes.In many river basins in the Japan Sea side of Japan, a drastic change in the river discharge occurring each April was noted between the 1980s and the 1990s. We conducted a climate simulation with 5 km grid spacing using a regional climate model to investigate the climatic change in snow water equivalent (SWE), which was closely related to the river discharge in spring. The decrease in the SWE from the 1980s to the 1990s is simulated for the entire Japan Sea side area from winter to early spring corresponding to the temperature increase of around 1 K. In the Agano River basin, the river discharge was more significantly influenced by the difference in the April SWE between the 1980s and the 1990s than by other factors such as snowfall, rainfall, and evaporation. The large reduction in the SWE in April was primarily caused by the large amount of snowmelt in winter in the 1990s. The increase in warm air advection frequency from the south may have caused the large amount of snowmelt. However, simulation data analysis indicated that the snowmelt was more greatly influenced by the large-scale temperature increase than by the increase in the frequency of warm air advection from the south. The surface heat and radiation budget under the snowmelt conditions showed that the accumulated shortwave radiation energy in the 1990s was greater than that in the 1980s, which contributed to the large amount of snowmelt because the snowmelt periods in the 1990s were much longer than those in the 1980s. Therefore, the temperature increase caused the long snowmelt period, and the increased snowmelt was promoted by the larger amount of shortwave radiation energy in the 1990s.We assess validity of a Gaussian error assumption, the basic assumption in data assimilation theory, and propose two kinds of constraints regarding non-Gaussian statistics. In the mixed water region (MWR) off the east coast of Japan exhibiting complicated frontal structures, a probability density function (PDF) of subsurface temperature shows double peaks corresponding to the Kuroshio and Oyashio waters. The complicated frontal structures characterized by the temperature PDF sometimes cause large innovations, bringing about a non-Gaussianity of errors. It is also revealed that assimilated results with a standard three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) scheme have some issues in MWR, arising from the non-Gaussianity of errors. The Oyashio water sometimes becomes unrealistically cold. The double peaks seen in the observed temperature PDF are too smoothed. To improve the assimilated field in MWR, we introduce two kinds of constraints, J (c1) and J (c2), which model the observed temperature PDF. The constraint J (c1) prevents the unrealistically cold Oyashio water, and J (c2) intends to reproduce the double peaks. The assimilated fields are significantly improved by using these constraints. The constraint J (c1) effectively reduces the unrealistically cold Oyashio water. The double peaks in the observed temperature PDF are successfully reproduced by J (c2). In addition, not only subsurface temperature but also whole level temperature and salinity (T-S) fields are improved by adopting J (c1) and J (c2) to a multivariate 3DVAR scheme with vertical coupled T-S empirical orthogonal function modes.Climate change has been identified by many scientists, engineers, and public officials as one of the significant challenges facing society over the next several decades. And of civil engineered facilities, the transportation network is likely to be one of the systems most affected by changing climate, weather, and local environmental conditions. This paper examines the current practice of looking at transportation system adaptation to climate changes and develops a conceptual framework of the different components of transportation infrastructure that will be affected differently by a range of climate changes. An adaptive systems management approach is suggested as one approach for transportation engineers to anticipate likely climate changes, identify vulnerabilities in the transportation system, and assess different strategies for mitigating potential impacts. The result of this approach is a strategic perspective on what transportation agencies should do today and in the future to respond to changing environmental conditions. Developing an organizational strategy for dealing with the different elements of these changes is a critical component of this strategic perspective. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)TE.1943-5436.0000108. (c) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.Core to the planning-implementation gap in conservation is the failure to achieve the necessary shared vision and collaboration among typically diverse stakeholder groups to translate conservation assessments and plans into sustained on-ground outcomes for conservation. We suggest that a process of describing and sharing mental models-the cognitive frameworks that people use to interpret and understand the world-provides promising and as yet underutilized techniques for conservation planners to improve implementation success. The processes and techniques associated with the mental models concept have been applied in a variety of fields including business and organization science, risk analysis, education, natural resource management, and climate change adaptation. Our review of mental models illustrates that their application can strengthen the success of conservation planning by: (1) contributing to clear and open communication between stakeholders; (2) aiding in overcoming obstacles to incorporating multiple sources of knowledge; (3) enabling shared ownership of a conservation plan; and (4) improving social assessments. Techniques to explicitly communicate mental models can contribute to each phase of a conservation planning process-assessment, planning, management, and review. Conservation planners have much to gain by eliciting and sharing mental models in conservation planning processes.Climate adaptation is a complex task surrounded by uncertainty. To support climate adaptation policies, a new scenario approach is pursued to explore possible discontinuous future developments of societal perspectives on climate adaptation issues. The scenario approach was tested for a case study on Dutch river management. In a series of scenario development workshops, a select group of stakeholders explored the perspectives on the management of the River Meuse in the past, present, and future. The process was supported by an analytical perspectives mapping tool to illustrate and analyze the development of perspectives over time. The process and analytical tools contributed to insight into the drivers of perspective change for the case study at hand. Moreover, the stakeholders highlighted the potential of the approach for water management policy for creating awareness about the plurality of perspectives and the dynamics of perspective change, monitoring perspectives and perspective change as part of a flexible policy approach, and anticipating on the occurrence of shock events. Further work is required to better represent the social dynamics of perspectives change, to better empirically ground the perspective change model, and to apply integrated water models in the scenario development process to assess water-society interactions.Because ecosystem services are generally not produced and used in the same place, their assessment should consider the flows of services from ecosystems to users. These flows depend on the characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems and users, the spatial relationships between them, and the presence of filters or barriers between ecosystems and users. The objective of this paper is to map the ecosystem services provided to the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan hydroelectric sectors, which are crucial sectors for national sustainable development and depend directly on hydrological ecosystem services. The paper presents an approach for modelling the flows of multiple services from diverse ecosystems to diverse users through different kinds of filters in a landscape. The approach uses expert knowledge and fuzzy numbers to handle uncertainties. The analyses for Costa Rica and Nicaragua show how the approach helps identify priority areas for the conservation and restoration of forests for the services they provide to the hydroelectric sector. As such, it is a useful tool for defining spatially targeted policies for the conservation of ecosystem services and for involving the users of ecosystem services in ecosystem management.The implementation of climate change adaptation polices has barely occurred in developed countries. This paper examines to what extent the perceptions of political actors might hinder the development of adaptation policies. We study the Swiss case using computer aided textual analysis. Our results demonstrate that adaptation is still not perceived as an important dimension of climate change policy. Decision makers do not perceive links between adaptation, the Swiss economy and the energy supply. Adaptation is mainly considered an issue for developing countries and not as a way to reduce the impacts of climate change in Switzerland. Right-wing parties tend to consider adaptation a secondary issue and are more likely than those to the left to object to the formulation or the implementation of public measures.P>1. Many studies have investigated adaptation to climate change. However, the term 'adaptation' has been used ambiguously and sometimes included parts of both classic evolutionary processes and conservation planning measures (i.e. human-mediated adaptation). 2. To reduce ambiguity, we define three classes of evolutionary processes involved in adaptation - migrational, novel-variant and plasticity. Migrational adaptation describes the process of redistribution of standing genetic variation among populations. Novel-variant adaptation describes the increase in frequency of beneficial, new genetic variants. Plasticity adaptation refers to adaptive plastic responses of organisms to environmental stressors. Quite separately, human-mediated adaptation aims to maintain these evolutionary processes. 3. Whilst the role of scattered trees in migrational adaptation of fauna may have been neglected in the past, their capacity to assist migrational adaptation of trees has been previously documented. However, their role in novel-variant and plasticity adaptation is generally unrecognised, and warrants further attention. 4. Synthesis and applications. By defining different aspects of adaptation carefully, we show that scattered trees should not be cleared since they may facilitate gene flow across fragmented landscapes. However, they should be avoided as dominant seed sources since their stock may be of poor quality.Global climate-change adaptation modelling from sources such as the United Nations Development Programme has emerged over the past few years to guide decision-making. In 2007/2008, Ku-ring-gai Council considered the various methods and selected two for review to inform Council's own adaptation plan. The models reviewed were the Australian Greenhouse Office model and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) model. These models were promoted as suitable for local government decision-making. The review found both models can identify key risks, and prioritise risks according to their magnitude. However, the capacity of these models to analyse effective and efficient adaptation appears limited, as they address only the first part of a very complex planning scenario. To plan effective risk-management options, a model needs to be able to evaluate the effect an option may have on reducing risk and highlight where an option may result in unintended consequences. In addition, the model must identify trade-offs or impacts, inform whether a response will increase resilience or reduce vulnerability across financial, social and environmental sectors, and satisfy due diligence in regard to the ecologically sustainable development principles. Both models have useful qualities and provide a basis on which to commence adaptation planning. However, the ICLEI model appears to be a superior guide to adaptation planning. Further development and refinement of these methods are required before a systematic, positive course can be charted for adaptation in local government.This paper reviews how the fields of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) have contributed to the understanding of how cities' are responding to climate change risks and hazards. A primary objective of the discussion is to highlight the connections, tensions, and areas for cross-fertilization between the two fields as defined within the recent literature. The paper focuses on three sites of overlap that include: (1) event likelihood: hazards, risks and uncertainty; (2) impact parameters: exposure, vulnerability, and equity; and (3) societal responses: adaptive capacity and resilience. Focusing on cities in both developing and developed countries, the authors assert that that the convergence and interplay between the two fields has already had impacts on both areas of study. The linkages between DRR and CCA strategies have started to change how researchers and practitioners conceive and approach the analysis and management of urban climate risk and associated impacts and response activities. The prospect for additional synergy is defined as strong.European cities face a range of challenges over the coming decades that will influence the nature of urban growth and development across the continent. Climate change is central amongst these, and will have direct implications for urban processes through changes to temperature and precipitation patterns. As European cities contribute to and are supported by tightly coupled global networks of socio-economic and biophysical goods and services, many of which are influenced by weather and climate, a changing climate will present complex and uncertain indirect impacts for cities to contend with. Climate change adaptation relates to responding to the risks and potential opportunities associated with changing climates. Although adaptation appears at present to be a relatively low priority issue for city planners and governors in Europe, there are examples from policy and practice that demonstrate positive activity in this field. Although these initiatives do not always have adaptation as their primary focus, they do highlight progress in this arena and offer transferable lessons to other cities aiming to address the impacts of a changing climate. However, there remain a series of barriers to progress that relate to issues such as policy and governance frameworks, and more nebulous issues including complexity and uncertainty in climate science and institutional structures. These barriers must be acknowledged and addressed as a part of an approach that responds holistically to the adaptation challenge that faces European cities in the coming decades.In Mozambique, weather extremes threaten development progress, while pronounced poverty aggravates the climate vulnerability of the population. With the country being a major recipient of official development assistance, Mozambique's development strongly depends on donor investments. Against this background, we aim to encourage the mainstreaming of climate adaptation into development assistance. An analysis of donor investments at a sub-national level showed that a significant proportion of development assistance was invested in climate-sensitive sectors in regions highly exposed to extreme weather conditions. Major damage caused by weather extremes motivates a stronger integration of climate policies into development assistance. Although Mozambique ha:; a supportive legislative environment and climate awareness among donors was found to be high, the limited institutional capacity restricted mainstreaming initiatives. Given major barriers at the national level, bilateral and multilateral donors are able to play a key role in fostering mainstreaming in Mozambique. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concrete ways to adapt to climate change are needed to help land-management agencies take steps to incorporate climate change into management and take advantage of opportunities to balance the negative effects of climate change. Because the development of adaptation tools and strategies is at an early stage, it is important that ideas and strategies are disseminated quickly to advance thinking and practice. Here, we offer an example of a successful workshop, focused on National Forests in the United States, which allowed quick dissemination of ideas and strategies for climate change adaptation in resource management through an interaction between scientists and managers. We share both the process used in the workshop and the outcome of facilitated dialogue at the workshop. By presenting concrete adaptation methods and showing the value of a focused scientist-manager dialogue, we hope to motivate the US Forest Service and other natural resource agencies to emulate our approach and begin the process of adapting to climate change.Cities are faced with a number of sustainability challenges in the context of climate change. There is an urgent need to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cities if ambitious mitigation targets are to be met. Meanwhile, cities are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change unless adaptation plans can be put in place. The need to connect climate change adaptation and mitigation with broader assessment of sustainability is becoming increasingly recognised. This paper describes an urban integrated assessment facility developed by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which simulates socio-economic change, climate impacts and greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the twenty first century at the city scale. The urban integrated assessment facility adopts a broad-scale systems approach to urban development and sustainability assessment. It incorporates a multi-sectoral model of the regional economy, hierarchical city-scale spatial interaction model and modules for assessment of climate impacts, adaptation options and greenhouse gas emissions. The paper demonstrates how the urban integrated assessment facility quantifies synergies and conflicts between adaptation to climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in order to improve decision making and facilitate the development of portfolios of planning policies that together have a realistic prospect of achieving sustainable outcomes for cities.Decision support resources are emerging across the United States to address the adaptation and mitigation challenges associated with climate variability and change. In theory, climate-related decision support identifies the need to move beyond the linear dissemination of information from experts to decision-makers. Interviews with researchers and federal program managers, however, show that in practice there are still wide gaps between the development of climate science and its application. Lessons learned in two example cases of decision support experiments are discussed to highlight some of the on-going challenges in applying climate science, e.g. defining decision support, involving decision-makers, and determining effectiveness. The published literature also shows these reoccurring challenges but emphasizes more collaboration between science and decision-makers as this improves the relevance, compatibility, and accessibility of climate science information and can increase users' receptiveness. This article proposes that the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) can help the development of decision support resources, in one way, by coordinating an Internet-based practitioners' network. A coordinated network could provide opportunities for climate-related decision support practitioners to build collaborative partnerships, share lessons-learned, provide feedback to the USGCRP, and thereby assist the transition of science into decision-making processes to better address adaptation planning.Bhutan, a small least developed country in the Himalayan Mountains, faces five current climate change related vulnerabilities: landslides and flooding, deteriorating agricultural production, impoverished forests, worsening health security, and impaired hydroelectricity generation. The country is attempting to adapt to these challenges through two globally sponsored adaptation efforts. One is the "Reducing Climate Change-induced Risks and Vulnerabilities from Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in the Punakha-Wangdue and Chamkhar Valleys" project, or GLOF, a $7.7 million project being funded by the Global Environment Facility, United Nations Development Program, and the government of Bhutan. Another is the GLOF Risk Reduction Project in the Himalayas, or GRRP, a $730,000 program funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). These projects offer great potential for improving infrastructural, institutional, and community resilience within Bhutan, but must also overcome a series of pernicious social, political, and economic challenges if they are to succeed.This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with developing and implementing National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) in Least Developed Countries. It uses a multiple scale approach in linking local priorities for adaptation and national priorities listed as NAPA interventions to examine the outcome of the NAPA process in Burkina Faso. The study also examines how the NAPA process considers ecosystem services and reflects the views of different social groups. The results show that participatory processes were not effectively integrated at the local level, but that broader and active participation of local communities, although important, is not always necessary. The proposed priority projects were limited to the institutional and specialized fields of the experts who conducted the NAPA process. However, these priority projects do generally reflect the priorities of the study area communities. These priorities include water resources, agricultural and livestock productivity, and forestry, and all depend directly or indirectly on ecosystem services. Factors determining the success of a NAPA are the level of funding, effectiveness of the coordination and implementation of the NAPA, and the importance decision makers give to adaptation. It is also important to focus on vulnerable groups, conduct regular reviews and improvements, and strengthen institutional collaboration. The study offers recommendations and concludes that ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation can be used to enhance the resilience of communities and ecosystems.The relationship of forests in water quantity and quality has been debated during the past years. At the same time, focus on climate change has increased interest in ecosystem restoration as a means for adaptation. Climate change might become one of the key drivers pushing integrated approaches for natural resources management into practice. The National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) is an initiative agreed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. An analysis was done to find out how widely ecosystem restoration and integrated approaches have been incorporated into NAPA priority adaptation projects. The data show that that the NAPAs can be seen as potentially important channel for operationalizing various integrated concepts. Key challenge is to implement the NAPA projects. The amount needed to implement the NAPA projects aiming at ecosystem restoration using integrated approaches presents only 0.7% of the money pledged in Copenhagen for climate change adaptation.A fine resolution atmospheric model is used to analyse changes in the climatology of tropical cyclones over the Australian region under future climate conditions. This model gives a good simulation of the observed climatological intensity distribution, which has been difficult to obtain in many previous studies. Projected changes for the end of the 21st century show a decrease of approximately 30% in numbers of tropical cyclones. There is an associated poleward shift in the regions of both genesis and dissipation of tropical cyclones. The dynamical mechanisms for this change are found to be changes in the vertical velocity and relative vorticity, which may be linked with anticipated future changes in the tropical circulation. Additionally, there are some small but significant future decreases in the percentage of mid-range intensity storms and a slight increase in the percentage of the most severe storms. Citation: Lavender, S. L., and K. J. E. Walsh (2011), Dynamically downscaled simulations of Australian region tropical cyclones in current and future climates, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L10705, doi:10.1029/2011GL047499.Background: Malaria in the western Kenya highlands is characterized by unstable and high transmission variability which results in epidemics during periods of suitable climatic conditions. The sensitivity of a site to malaria epidemics depends on the level of immunity of the human population. This study examined how terrain in the highlands affects exposure and sensitivity of a site to malaria. Methods: The study was conducted in five sites in the western Kenya highlands, two U-shaped valleys (Iguhu, Emutete), two V-shaped valleys (Marani, Fort-Ternan) and one plateau (Shikondi) for 16 months among 6-15 years old children. Exposure to malaria was tested using circum-sporozoite protein (CSP) and merozoite surface protein (MSP) immunochromatographic antibody tests; malaria infections were tested by microscopic examination of thick and thin smears, the children's homes were georeferenced using a global positioning system. Paired t-test was used to compare the mean prevalence rates of the sites, K-function was use to determine if the clustering of malaria infections was significant. Results and Discussion: The mean antibody prevalence was 22.6% in Iguhu, 24% in Emutete, 11.5% in Shikondi, 8.3% in Fort-Ternan and 9.3% in Marani. The mean malaria infection prevalence was 23.3% in Iguhu, 21.9% in Emutete, 4.7% in Shikondi, 2.9% in Fort-Ternan and 2.4% in Marani. There was a significant difference in the antibodies and malaria infection prevalence between the two valley systems, and between the two valley systems and the plateau (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the antibodies and malaria infection prevalence in the two U-shaped valleys (Iguhu and Emutete) and in the V-shaped valleys (Marani and Fort Ternan) (P > 0.05). There was 8.5-fold and a 2-fold greater parasite and antibody prevalence respectively, in the U-shaped compared to the V-shaped valleys. The plateau antibody and parasite prevalence was similar to that of the V-shaped valleys. There was clustering of malaria antibodies and infections around flat areas in the U-shaped valleys, the infections were randomly distributed in the V-shaped valleys and less clustered at the plateau. Conclusion: This study showed that the V-shaped ecosystems have very low malaria prevalence and few individuals with an immune response to two major malaria antigens and they can be considered as epidemic hotspots. These populations are at higher risk of severe forms of malaria during hyper-transmission seasons. The plateau ecosystem has a similar infection and immune response to the V-shaped ecosystems. The U-shaped ecosystems are transmission hotspots.Extensive cattle production currently occupies more than 27% of the rural landscapes in Latin America, and continues to expand. This activity, deeply rooted in the culture and rural economy of the region, requires an urgent transformation if it is to become both more efficient and environmentally friendly. Silvopastoral systems that incorporate native trees and shrubs are instrumental for the productive rehabilitation of cattle production and for biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes. We discuss research progress and adoption of intensive silvopastoral systems in Colombia and Mexico. Intensive silvopastoral systems (ISS) are a sustainable form of agroforestry for livestock production that combines fodder shrubs planted at high densities (more than 10,000 plants ha(-1)), trees and palms, and improved pastures. High stocking and the natural production of milk and meat in these systems are achieved through rotational grazing with electric fencing and a permanent supply of water for the cattle. While milk and meat production and cattle reproduction are enhanced, production costs decline as external inputs are replaced by natural processes related to fertility and biological control. We also discuss the importance of the ISS with native trees for climate change adaptation and mitigation, the barriers for their adoption, and how these have been successfully addressed using payment for environmental services, special credits and technical assistance. Finally, we highlight the need for enhancing landscape connectivity by integrating SPS to conservation corridors with native species to promote biodiversity conservation and other environmental services demanded by society. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article provides an evidence-based and policy-relevant contribution to understanding the phenomenon of policy learning and its structural constraints in the field of river basin management, in particular related to coping with current and future climatic hazards such as floods and droughts. This has been done by a formal comparative analysis of eight water management regimes, by using multi-value qualitative comparative analysis, focusing on the relationship between regime characteristics (as explanatory variables) and different levels of policy learning (as output value). This research has revealed the importance of the socio-cognitive dimension, as an essential emerging property of complex adaptive governance systems. This socio-cognitive dimension depends on a specific set of structural conditions; in particular, better integrated cooperation structures in combination with advanced information management are the key factors leading towards higher levels of policy learning. Furthermore, this research highlights a number of significant positive correlations between different regime elements, thereby identifying a stabilizing mechanism in current management regimes, and this research also highlights the necessity of fine-tuning centralized control with bottom-up approaches. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Climate change scenarios vary considerably over the Amazon region, with an extreme scenario projecting a dangerous (from the human perspective) increase of 3.8 degrees C in temperature and 30% reduction in precipitation by 2050. The impacts of such climate change on Amazonian land-use dynamics, agricultural production, and deforestation rates are still to be determined. In this study, the authors make a first attempt to assess these impacts through a systemic approach, using a spatially explicit modeling framework to project crop yield and land-use/land-cover changes in the Brazilian Amazon by 2050. The results show that, without any adaptation, climate change may exert a critical impact on the yields of crops commonly cultivated in the Amazon (e. g., soybean yields are reduced by 44% in the worst-case scenario). Therefore, following baseline projections on crop and livestock production, a scenario of severe regional climate change would cause additional deforestation of 181 000 km(2) (+20%) in the Amazon and 240 000 km(2) (+273%) in the Cerrado compared to a scenario of moderate climate change. Putting an end to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon forest by 2020 (and of the Cerrado by 2025) would require either a reduction of 26%-40% in livestock production until 2050 or a doubling of average livestock density from 0.74 to 1.46 head per hectare. These results suggest that (i) climate change can affect land use in ways not previously explored, such as the reduction of yields entailing further deforestation, and (ii) there is a need for an integrated/multidisciplinary plan for adaptation to climate change in the Amazon.This article addresses the nature and challenge of adaptation in the context of global climate change. The complexity of "climate change" as threat, environmental stressor, risk domain, and impacting process with dramatic environmental and human consequences requires a synthesis of perspectives and models from diverse areas of psychology to adequately communicate and explain how a more psychological framing of the human dimensions of global environmental change can greatly inform and enhance effective and collaborative climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and research. An integrative framework is provided that identifies and considers important mediating and moderating parameters and processes relating to climate change adaptation, with particular emphasis given to environmental stress and stress and coping perspectives. This psychological perspective on climate change adaptation highlights crucial aspects of adaptation that have been neglected in the arena of climate change science. Of particular importance are intra-individual and social "psychological adaptation" processes that powerfully mediate public risk perceptions and understandings, effective coping responses and resilience, overt behavioral adjustment and change, and psychological and social impacts. This psychological window on climate change adaptation is arguably indispensable to genuinely multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and policy initiatives addressing the impacts of climate change.This article addresses the link between research on adaptation to climate change and the related policy environment in which it operates. Drawing on recent case studies under the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) programme, we show how unpacking of policy processes through analysis of narratives, actors and politics can help shed light on important policy challenges for adaptation. The case studies reveal competing views on adaptation problems and strategies as well as their associated actors and political interests. They also identify spaces that could provide opportunities for policy engagement and influence, and ways of bridging research-policy gaps to support adaptation. We argue that such analyses are critical in order to provide greater coherence between evidence from adaptation research and emerging government policies and strategies on climate change in developing countries.Cities are key drivers of global climate change, with the majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions being tied to urban life. Local actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change are essential for stabilization of the global climate and can also help to address other urban ecological problems such as pollution, decreasing biodiversity, etc. Companies are important urban actors in the development of low-carbon cities because they provide a multitude of goods and services to city populations and directly influence urban carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This is a new area of research. While studies on corporate sustainability are numerous, there is little, if any, existing research that examines the role of companies in climate change adaptation and mitigation within specific urban areas. Urban ecologists also have not examined how corporate activity affects urban systems. Taking a multi-disciplinary systems approach, we present a conceptual model of the role of companies in managing urban interactions with the climate system. We also present empirical findings illustrating how one company 'partners' with the city of Rotterdam to test electric vehicles as a pilot project for urban climate adaptation and mitigation. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.This paper demonstrates the potential advantage of using a linear, mixed-effect state-space model for statistical downscaling of climate variables compared to the frequently used approach of linear regression. This comparison leads to the development of a method for estimation of model parameters using the EM algorithm approach. The model is applied to the prediction of temperature and rainfall statistics at both a sub-tropical and temperate location in Australia. The results indicate that for lead times of 1-10 years this state-space approach is able to predict observed seasonal temperature and rainfall means with substantially greater precision than climatology, multivariate linear regression (MLR) or a standard linear state-space (LSS) approach. The model is seen as a first step in the development of a short-term climate change projection system that will utilise both historical climate data as well as dynamically derived mean climate change projection information obtained from global climate models (GCMs). Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.P>1. Abrupt changes and regime shifts are common phenomena in terrestrial ecological records spanning centuries to millennia, thus offering a rich opportunity to study the patterns and drivers of abrupt ecological change. 2. Because Quaternary climate changes also often were abrupt, a critical research question is to distinguish between extrinsic versus intrinsic abrupt ecological changes, i.e. those externally driven by abruptly changing climates, versus those resulting from thresholds, tipping points, and other nonlinear responses of ecological systems to progressive climate change. Extrinsic and intrinsic abrupt ecological changes can be distinguished in part by compiling and analysing regional networks of palaeoecological records. 3. Abrupt ecological changes driven by spatially coherent and abrupt climate changes should manifest as approximately synchronous ecological responses, both among different taxa at a site and among sites. However, the magnitude and direction of response may vary among sites and taxa. Ecological responses to the rapid climatic changes accompanying the last deglaciation offer good model systems for studying extrinsic abrupt change. 4. When abrupt ecological changes are intrinsically driven, the timing and rate of ecological response to climate change will be strongly governed by local biotic and abiotic processes and by stochastic processes such as disturbance events or localized climatic extremes. Consequently, at a regional scale, one should observe 'temporal mosaics' of abrupt ecological change, in which the timing and rate of ecological change will vary among species within sites and among sites. These temporal mosaics are analogous to the spatial mosaics observed in ecological systems prone to threshold switches between alternate stable states. The early Holocene aridification of the North American mid-continent and the middle-Holocene aridification of North Africa may be good examples of temporal mosaics. 5. Synthesis. Past instances of extrinsic and intrinsic abrupt change are of direct relevance to global-change ecologists. The former allow study of the capacity of ecological systems to quickly adjust to abrupt climate changes, while the latter offer opportunities to understand the ecological processes causing abrupt local responses to regional climate change, to test tools for predicting critical thresholds, and to develop climate-adaptation strategies.Surface ozone (O(3)) is a potent phytotoxic air pollutant that reduces the productivity of agricultural crops. Growing use of fossil fuel and climate change are increasing O(3) concentrations to levels that threaten food supply. Historically, farmers have successfully adapted agricultural practices to cope with changing environments. However, high O(3) concentrations are a new threat to food production and possibilities for adaptation are not well understood. We simulate the impact of ozone damage on four key crops (wheat, maize, rice and soybean) on a global scale and assess the effectiveness of adaptation of agricultural practices to minimize ozone damage. As O(3) concentrations have a strong seasonal and regional pattern, the adaptation options assessed refer to shifting crop calendars through changing sowing dates, applying irrigation and using crop varieties with different growth cycles. Results show that China, India and the United States are currently by far the most affected countries, bearing more than half of all global losses and threatened areas. Irrigation largely affects ozone exposure but local impacts depend on the seasonality of emissions and climate. Shifting crop calendars can reduce regional O(3) damage for specific crop-location combinations (e.g. up to 25% for rain-fed soybean in India) but has little implication at the global level. Considering the limited benefits of adaptation, mitigation of O(3) precursors remains the main option to secure regional and global food production. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Eleven sites, representing different urban morphologies across central Beijing, are used to simulate urban heat island effects and explore the relationship between urban planning indicators and climate indicators such as daily maximum and minimum surface temperatures. The results indicate that mesoscale urban planning indicators can explain the majority of the urban climate differences among the sites. For example, green cover ratio and floor area ratio can explain 94.47-98.57% of the variance for daily maximum surface temperature, green cover ratio and building height can explain 98.94-99.12% of the variance for daily minimum surface temperature, and floor area ratio, green cover ratio and building density together can explain 99.49-99.69% of the variance for time of peak surface temperature. Furthermore, green cover ratio is identified as the most significant urban planning indicator affecting the urban thermal environment. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within a few decades, tens of billions, and possibly over a hundred billion, dollars will be needed for climate change adaptation in developing countries. In recent international climate negotiations, US$100 billion per year by 2020 was pledged by developed countries for mitigation and adaptation. Even if this pledge is realized, it is not clear that it will generate sufficient funds to address the adaptation needs of developing countries. A majority of what has been identified as climate change adaptation needs could be considered as funding for basic development. In addition, a large share of current development assistance is spent on climate-sensitive projects. With the potential for funding of climate change adaptation to fall short of what is needed and for development funding to continue funding many climate-sensitive activities, coordination of the two funding streams may enable more effective support for both sustainable development and climate change adaptation. Preliminary steps to facilitate such coordination are part of the Cancun Agreements and initiatives by other organizations.While current rates of sea level rise and associated coastal flooding in the New York City region appear to be manageable by stakeholders responsible for communications, energy, transportation, and water infrastructure, projections for sea level rise and associated flooding in the future, especially those associated with rapid icemelt of the Greenland and West Antarctic Icesheets, may be outside the range of current capacity because extreme events might cause flooding beyond today's planning and preparedness regimes. This paper describes the comprehensive process, approach, and tools for adaptation developed by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) in conjunction with the region's stakeholders who manage its critical infrastructure, much of which lies near the coast. It presents the adaptation framework and the sea-level rise and storm projections related to coastal risks developed through the stakeholder process. Climate change adaptation planning in New York City is characterized by a multi-jurisdictional stakeholder-scientist process, state-of-the-art scientific projections and mapping, and development of adaptation strategies based on a risk-management approach.We develop and apply a systematic mixed-methods literature review methodology to identify and characterize how climate change adaptation is taking place in developed nations. We find limited evidence of adaptation action. Where interventions are being implemented and reported on, they are typically in sectors that are sensitive to climate impacts, are most common at the municipal level, facilitated by higher-level government interventions, with responses typically institutional in nature. There is negligible description of adaptation taking place with respect to vulnerable groups, with reporting unequal by region and sector. The methodology offers important insights for meta-analyses in climate change scholarship and can be used for monitoring progress in adaptation over time.As adaptation is increasingly recognised as an important component in responding to climate change, adaptation measures are slowly emerging at different scales of governance across Europe and elsewhere in the industrialised North. The relative novelty of adaptation measures in this context opens up an opportunity to examine the ways in which more well-established systems of governance are able to address concerns of a changing climate and its expected effects. This paper examines the modes of climate change adaptation governance systems, by presenting two empirical multi-scale case studies in Finland and Italy. The two countries represent different stages of planned adaptation measures: while Finland began work on adaptation relatively early and elected for a mainstreaming approach, Italy has yet to form concrete national adaptation actions. In both cases, however, adaptation actions have autonomously emerged at lower scales of governance, railing questions as to the role and importance of vertical integration. This study concludes that the governance of adaptation is mainly taking place through both formal institutions and networks across actors at various scales. Though such networks present actors at sub-national scales the resources and opportunity to engage in planned adaptation, the ability of a wider set of actors to plan adaptation remains somewhat limited by a lack of coordination at the national scale. As a result, there exists an opportunity for increased interaction and participation of actors across scales. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change will affect both growth of agricultural crops and diseases that attack them but there has been little work to study how its impacts on crop growth influence impacts on disease epidemics. This paper investigates how impacts of climate change on wheat anthesis date will influence impacts on fusarium ear blight in UK mainland arable areas. A wheat growth model was used for projections of anthesis dates, and a weather-based model was developed for use in projections of incidence of fusarium ear blight in the UK. Daily weather data, generated for 14 sites in arable areas of the UK for a baseline (1960-1990) scenario and for high and low CO2 emissions in the 2020s and 2050s, were used to project wheat anthesis dates and fusarium ear blight incidence for each site for each climate change scenario. Incidence of fusarium ear blight was related to rainfall during anthesis and temperature during the preceding 6 weeks. It was projected that, with climate change, wheat anthesis dates will be earlier and fusarium ear blight epidemics will be more severe, especially in southern England, by the 2050s. These projections, made by combining crop and disease models for different climate change scenarios, suggest that improved control of fusarium ear blight should be a high priority in industry and government strategies for adaptation to climate change to ensure food security.This article is a synthesis of the salient topics discussed in the Climate Change Adaptation and Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) Workshop, held at the University of British Columbia, February 14-16, 2011, and lays out a research agenda based on the recommendations for future research that emerged in the workshop. The proposed research agenda is framed using the theory of reflexive modernization to enable the forest research community to consider how different modes of knowledge production can support adaptation within SFM. The workshop discussions highlighted the importance of considering extreme events and high uncertainty in planning for adaptation within SFM. Participants discussed the utility of climate change modeling and risk assessment for local decision-making. In addition, there was general agreement that adaptive collaborative management could facilitate adaptation within SFM, despite difficulties in implementation. The recommendations for future research that emerged from the workshop focused on climate change-related assessments, modeling techniques, and governance and institutional enablers/barriers to adaptation. This broad research agenda, however, can be approached using different modes of knowledge production, illustrating different orders of reflexivity. Apart from a call for more traditional academic research to improve SFM under climate change, workshop participants referred to the need for participatory research, in which researchers would be embedded in communities and other contexts of application, engaging in a "client-focused" partnership model to produce knowledge that is robust, compelling, legitimate and, above all, locally relevant. It is hoped that this alternative mode of knowledge production would result in a social license and greater political will to accelerate adaptation within SFM.In many Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), such as in Kiribati, formal national adaptation programmes are currently being operationalised or are in the pipeline. A key focus is on motivating householders to adapt in anticipation of climate change through pilot community projects. In this paper, we argue that the water sector must pay equal attention to how communities cognitively perceive the process of adaptation if interventions are to be effective. Adopting a cognitive model to gain such insights we conclude that individual's belief in their own abilities to manage water stress play a crucial role in driving intentions to adapt and therefore greater attention needs to be placed on understanding the underling drivers shaping such beliefs. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The agro-ecological knowledge held by Ovambo farmers in North Central Namibia has, for centuries, given them resilience to high levels of climate variability and associated impacts. New research, conducted in North Central Namibia, suggests that knowledge co-production between farmers and agricultural extension workers may, in addition, strengthen adaptive capacity to future climate change. However, this useful kind of knowledge co-production is far from automatic, and indeed the conditions which make it more likely to happen are not well understood. This paper explores agro-ecological knowledge in North Central Namibia as adaptive capacity, and suggests avenues for better conceptualising and understanding the conditions for adaptive capacity-enhancing knowledge co-production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Beach nourishment is a policy used to rebuild eroding beaches with sand dredged from other locations. Previous studies indicate that beach width positively affects coastal property values, but these studies ignore the dynamic features of beaches and the feedback that nourishment has on shoreline retreat. We correct for the resulting attenuation and endogeneity bias in a hedonic property value model by instrumenting for beach width using spatially varying coastal geological features. We find that the beach width coefficient is nearly five times larger than the OLS estimate, suggesting that beach width is a much larger portion of property value than previously thought. We use the empirical results to parameterize a dynamic optimization model of beach nourishment decisions and show that the predicted interval between nourishment projects is closer to what we observe in the data when we use the estimate from the instrumental variables model rather than OLS. As coastal communities adapt to climate change, we find that the long-term net value of coastal residential property can fall by as much as 52% when erosion rate triples and cost of nourishment sand quadruples. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Climate change can affect organisms both directly, by affecting their physiology, growth, and behaviour(1), and indirectly, for example through effects on ecosystem structure and function(1,2). For ectotherms, or 'cold-blooded' animals, warming will directly affect their metabolism, with growth rates in temperate species predicted to increase initially as temperatures rise, but then decline as individuals struggle to maintain cardiac function and respiration in the face of increased metabolic demands(3,4). We provide evidence consistent with this prediction for a marine fish (Cheilodactylus spectabilis) in the Tasman Sea; one of the most rapidly warming regions of the Southern Hemisphere ocean(5). We estimated changes in the species' growth rate over a 90-year period using otoliths-bony structures that fish use for orientation and detection of movement- and compared these changes to temperature trends across the species' distribution. Increasing temperatures coincide with increased growth for populations in the middle of the species range, but with reduced growth for those at the warm northern edge of the species' distribution, indicating that temperatures may have already reached levels associated with increased metabolic costs. If warming continues, the direct metabolic effects of increasing temperatures on this species may lead to declining productivity and range contraction.Considering climatic uncertainties in management planning is a prerequisite for sustainable forest management (SFM). The aim of the study was to evaluate climate change vulnerability of the current SFM strategy for commercial forests managed by the Austrian Federal Forests. To that end vulnerability indicators were defined in a stakeholder process (selected indicators were productivity, timber and carbon stocks, biodiversity, disturbances, a tree species' position in fundamental niche space, silvicultural flexibility and cost intensity) and their performance under climate change scenarios assessed with an ecosystem model. Multi criteria analysis techniques were employed in a partial aggregation of indicators to locate forest stands on a vulnerability surface. Results revealed high vulnerability particularly in the second half of the twenty-first century, where 39.6% of the 164.550 ha study area were assessed highly vulnerable to climate change, indicating a strong decline in the functions and services represented by the indicator system. Water-limited sites on calcareous bedrock were most negatively affected whereas assessment units at higher altitudes responded predominately positive to climate warming. The presented approach, transparently integrating multiple management objectives and allowing a quantitative comparison of vulnerabilities between sites and management strategies, contributes to the development of operational and efficient climate change adaptation measures in forest management.Within modern society, business organizations have a co-evolutionary relationship with society and ecosystems. Business organizations face highly diverse risks which they have to recognize, reflect on and handle. Climate change and its impacts clarify the need for managing overall system risk. Research has shown that climate vulnerability of business organizations in the German food industry is characterized by impacts that, in particular, affect business organizations indirectly. Indirect climate change caused impacts are complex, uncertain and characterized by a high degree of unpredictability. They focus on the derived social, ecological, economic and cultural consequences of the direct physical impacts from a worldwide perspective. This paper shows that introducing resilience thinking helps to identify strategic risks and opportunities coping with climate change caused impacts in sense of corporate climate adaptation strategies. Furthermore, it is shown from a strategic management perspective that mitigation is a profound element of long term adaptation strategies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental economic and psychological studies often implicitly assume homogeneity of respondents' decision strategies in questionnaire-based surveys. However, social psychology and behavioural research suggest that there is a wide variety of approaches that individuals use to make such choices. We explore this heterogeneity against the backdrop of so-called dual process models', analysing participants' responses in a survey of public beliefs about and preferences for climate change adaptation policies. We find that the postulate of two different types of decision-making, the systematic-analytical and the heuristic-holistic, does indeed help us to understand patterns in respondent behaviour that are, in turn, underpinned by respondents' motivation and ability to process information. Participants who were motivated and able to process the information provided were more likely to express preferences in line with their beliefs about adaptation policies, whereas those less motivated and more confused were more likely to use generalised rules-of-thumb that were not specific to the policy issue at hand. Depending on the theoretical framework of a study, such heterogeneity in response consistency and use of generic rules-of-thumb might have implications for the usefulness of survey outcomes. We discuss the implications of our findings, and draw conclusions for survey-based environmental research. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Altered patterns of malaria endemicity reflect, in part, changes in feeding behavior and climate adaptation of mosquito vectors. Aquaporin (AQP) water channels are found throughout nature and confer high-capacity water flow through cell membranes. The genome of the major malaria vector mosquito Anopheles gambiae contains at least seven putative AQP sequences. Anticipating that transmembrane water movements are important during the life cycle of A. gambiae, we identified and characterized the A. gambiae aquaporin 1 (AgAQP1) protein that is homologous to AQPs known in humans, Drosophila, and sap-sucking insects. When expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes, AgAQP1 transports water but not glycerol. Similar to mammalian AQPs, water permeation of AgAQP1 is inhibited by HgCl(2) and tetraethylammonium, with Tyr185 conferring tetraethylammonium sensitivity. AgAQP1 is more highly expressed in adult female A. gambiae mosquitoes than in males. Expression is high in gut, ovaries, and Malpighian tubules where immunofluorescence microscopy reveals that AgAQP1 resides in stellate cells but not principal cells. AgAQP1 expression is up-regulated in fat body and ovary by blood feeding but not by sugar feeding, and it is reduced by exposure to a dehydrating environment (42% relative humidity). RNA interference reduces AgAQP1 mRNA and protein levels. In a desiccating environment (< 20% relative humidity), mosquitoes with reduced AgAQP1 protein survive significantly longer than controls. These studies support a role for AgAQP1 in water homeostasis during blood feeding and humidity adaptation of A. gambiae, a major mosquito vector of human malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.Human-induced climate change is predicted to accelerate sea level rise and alter storm frequency along the US east coast. Rising sea level will enhance shoreline erosion, and recent work indicates changing storm patterns and associated changes in wave conditions can intensify coastal erosion along parts of a coastline. Investigations of coastal response to climate change typically consider natural processes in isolation - neglecting repeated changes to the coastline from human actions, primarily through shoreline nourishment projects, which add sand to the shoreline to counteract erosion. In a model coupling economically driven shoreline nourishment with wave-and sea level rise-driven coastline change, and accounting for dwindling sediment resources for nourishment, coastline response depends dramatically on the relationship between patterns of property value and erosion. Simulations show that when nourishment costs rise with depletion of sand resources, coastline change is tied to the interaction between patterns of erosion and property value. Simulations show that when high property values align with highly erosive locations, sand resources are depleted rapidly and nourishment in lower property value towns is quickly abandoned. Although our model simulates a particular coastal morphology, the result that future behavior of the coastline and the economic viability of nourishment in a given town depend on the regional interaction between patterns of property value and erosion is likely applicable to many coastal configurations. More broadly, coupling economic and physical models reveals equity and sustainability implications of coastal climate adaptation as well as patterns of coastline change that a physical model alone would overlook. Citation: McNamara, D. E., A. B. Murray, and M. D. Smith (2011), Coastal sustainability depends on how economic and coastline responses to climate change affect each other, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L07401, doi:10.1029/2011GL047207.Climate change has become a high priority worldwide at the level of governments, business, and community due to growing understanding of climate change's implications for trade, security, the economy, ecosystems, and the well-being of humans and other species. The strategic environmental assessment (SEA) process is well-positioned to systematically help strengthen treatment of climate change adaptation and mitigation in planning and development. This is due to its practical, analytical component, its participation component, and its ability to engage with ethical issues and reconcile competing agendas. This monograph explores criteria and good practices in addressing various climate change aspects in SEA and country environmental analysis (CEA). Climate change criteria are developed and applied to two datasets to provide an initial information baseline on climate change treatment in SEA and CEA, amended sets of climate change criteria for each, and an evidence-based resource for improving SEA and CEA guidance and practice amongst interested academics, professionals, and practitioners in the UK, EU, development banks, and developing countries. Overall findings are relevant to any individual, institution, or country interested in addressing climate change and climate-related natural hazards within an SEA or planning framework. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change resulting from increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide ([CO2]) is expected to result in warmer temperatures and changed precipitation regimes during this century. In the northwestern U.S., these changes will likely decrease snowpack, cause earlier snowmelt, increase summer evapotranspiration, and increase the frequency and severity of droughts. Elevated [CO2] and warmer temperatures may have positive effects on growth and productivity where there is adequate moisture or growth is currently limited by cold. However, the effects of climate change are generally expected to reduce growth and survival, predispose forests to disturbance by wildfire, insects, and disease; and ultimately change forest structure and composition at the landscape scale. Substantial warming will likely decrease winter chilling resulting in delayed bud burst, and adversely affect flowering and seed germination for some species. The extent of these effects will depend on the magnitude of climate change, the abilities of individual trees to acclimate, and for tree populations to adapt in situ, or to migrate to suitable habitats. These coping mechanisms may be insufficient to maintain optimal fitness of tree populations to rapidly changing climate. Physiological responses to climatic stresses are relatively well-understood at the organ or whole-plant scale but not at the stand or landscape scale. In particular, the interactive effects of multiple stressors is not well known. Genetic and silvicultural approaches to increase adaptive capacities and to decrease climate-related vulnerabilities of forests can be based on ecophysiological knowledge. Effective approaches to climate adaptation will likely include assisted migration of species and populations, and density management. Use of these approaches to increase forest resistance and resilience at the landscape scale requires a better understanding of species adaptations, within-species genetic variation, and the mitigating effects of silvicultural treatments. (c) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forest fire is of both local and global concern. Large scale fires are not part of the natural disturbance of tropical rain forests but this threat has increased in the last few decades. Under global warming, Indonesia is projected to have higher temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns. Southern Indonesia is predicted to be drier whereas the north is likely to become wetter. Inter-annual climate variability associated with phenomena such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation may cause big decreases in rainfall. This paper reviews the nature and extent of fire problem and the effectiveness of the current policy and institutional provisions in Indonesia in addressing forest fires under projected future climate change. We then consider possible strategies for improving their effectiveness. The review results indicate that first. Indonesia has enacted a number of regulations and established various institutions to tackle forest and other wildfires, but these have proved ineffective. Second, under future climate change scenarios and current fire management practices, Indonesia's tropical rain forests could be more susceptible to fire. Third, effectiveness could be improved by addressing the underlying causes of fires, involving a wide range of stakeholders in formulating the regulations and enhancing law enforcement. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Well-planned urban green landscapes, including wildscapes and green spaces, have the potential to contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Yet for cities in low-income countries, the value of these urban landscapes in climate change response strategies is often disregarded and remains largely unexploited and unaccounted for. This paper discusses the potential role of urban green landscapes as a "soft engineering" climate change response strategy, and calls for the pursuance of management practices that preserve and promote the use of these urban spaces. It does so by combining theoretical arguments with an empirical example based on an innovative and novel approach to landscape rehabilitation, the Lafarge Ecosystems Programme, in the coastal city of Mombasa, Kenya. The paper finds that a well-managed system of green landscapes in resource-poor urban areas can generate net social benefits under a range of future scenarios. It further finds that climate change adaptation and mitigation responses can be initiated by a range of stakeholders operating at all scales.This study examines farmers' perceptions of short- and long-term variability in climate; their ability to discern trends in climate and how the perceived trends converge with actual weather observations in five districts of Eastern Province in Kenya where the climate is semi-arid with high intra- and inter-annual variability in rainfall. Field surveys to elicit farmers perceptions about climate variability and change were conducted in Machakos, Makueni, Kitui, Mwingi and Mutomo districts. Long-term rainfall records from five meteorological stations within a 10 km radius from the survey locations were obtained from the Kenya Meteorological Department and were analysed to compare with farmers' observations. Farmers' responses indicate that they arc well aware of the general climate in their location, its variability, the probabilistic nature of the variability and the impacts of this variability on crop production. However, their ability to synthesize the knowledge they have gained from their observations and discern long-term trends in the probabilistic distribution of seasonal conditions is more subjective, mainly due to the compounding interactions between climate and other factors such as soil fertility, soil water and land use change that determine the climate's overall influence on crop productivity There is a general tendency among the farmers to give greater weight to negative impacts leading to higher risk perception. In chit ion to long-term changes in the climate, farmer observations in our study that rainfall patterns are changing corroborated well with reported perceptions from other places across the African continent but were not supported by the observed minds in rainfall data from the five study locations. The main implication of our findings is the need to be aware of and account for the risk during the development and promotion of technologies involving significant investments by smallholder farmers and exercise caution in interpreting farmers' perceptions about long-term climate variability and change.This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities' environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term "envirofied". Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management).Outlier detection methods were used to scan the genome of the boreal conifer black spruce (Picea mariana [Mill.] B.S.P.) for gene single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) potentially involved in adaptations to temperature and precipitation variations. The scan involved 583 SNPs from 313 genes potentially playing adaptive roles. Differentiation estimates among population groups defined following variation in temperature and precipitation were moderately high for adaptive quantitative characters such as the timing of budset or tree height (Q(ST) = 0.189-0.314). Average differentiation estimates for gene SNPs were null, with F-ST values of 0.005 and 0.006, respectively, among temperature and precipitation population groups. Using two detection approaches, a total of 26 SNPs from 25 genes distributed among 11 of the 12 linkage groups of black spruce were detected as outliers with F-ST as high as 0.078. Nearly half of the outlier SNPs were located in exons and half of those were nonsynonymous. The functional annotations of genes carrying outlier SNPs and regression analyses between the frequencies of these SNPs and climatic variables supported their implication in adaptive processes. Several genes carrying outlier SNPs belonged to gene families previously found to harbour outlier SNPs in a reproductively isolated but largely sympatric congeneric species, suggesting differential subfunctionalization of gene duplicates. Selection coefficient estimates (S) were moderate but well above the magnitude of drift (>> 1/N-e), indicating that the signature of natural selection could be detected at the nucleotide level despite the recent establishment of these populations during the Holocene.Atmospheric CO(2) is a major cause of reinforcement corrosion in bridges, buildings, wharves, and other concrete infrastructure in Australia, United States, United Kingdom and most other countries. The increase in CO(2) levels associated with global warming will increase the likelihood of carbonation-induced corrosion. Moreover, temperature rises will increase corrosion rates. Clearly, the impact of climate change on existing and new infrastructure is considerable, as corrosion damage is disruptive to society and costly to repair. The paper describes a probabilistic and reliability-based approach that predicts the probability of corrosion initiation and damage (severe cracking) for concrete infrastructure subjected to carbonation and chloride-induced corrosion resulting from elevated CO(2) levels and temperatures. The atmospheric CO(2) concentration and local temperature and relative humidity changes with time over the next 100 years in the Australian cities of Sydney and Darwin are projected based on nine General Circulation Models (GCMs) under (i) high CO(2) emission scenario, (ii) medium CO(2) emission scenario, and (iii) CO(2) emission reduction scenario based on policy intervention. The probabilistic analysis included the uncertainty of CO(2) concentration, deterioration processes, material properties, dimensions, and predictive models. It was found that carbonation-induced damage risks can increase by over 400% over a time period to 2100 for some regions in Australia. Damage risks for chloride-induced corrosion increase by no more than 15% over the same time period due to temperature increase, but without consideration of ocean acidity change in marine exposure. Corrosion loss of reinforcement is not significant. The results were most sensitive to increases in atmospheric CO(2). (C) 2001 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the increasing requirement for resource efficiency and climate change adaptation in the construction industry, there is a need for contractors to implement sustainable practices. Such action will also be the source of competitive advantage in the future. However, there are few studies investigating the contribution of sustainable construction practice to contractors' competitiveness. This paper is a review of sustainable practice in the construction industry and the relationship between sustainability performance and business competitiveness. A framework for implementing sustainable construction practice to improve contractors' competitiveness is introduced to help contractors develop their sustainable strategies for meeting a changing competition environment. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is considerable interest in understanding how management may help species and populations cope with climate change (climate change adaptation). I used a population model describing the demography of a southern range-margin European Golden Plover Pluvialis apricaria population vulnerable to climate change to assess the potential benefits associated with site-based adaptation management. Two forms of management were simulated: (1) counteracting management to reduce the severity of the negative climate change impacts, simulated by increasing tipulid (cranefly) abundance, and (2) compensatory management to increase populations through an alternative mechanism, simulated by manipulating nest and chick predation rates. A 1 degrees C rise was estimated to require a doubling of cranefly abundance, or a 35% increase in nest and chick survival rates, to maintain a stable population. For a 2 degrees C rise, a four-fold increase in craneflies or an 80% increase in survival rates would be required for population stability. A model based on likely realistic estimates of the magnitude of benefit associated with both adaptation management options showed that combined, they may significantly reduce the severity of population decline and risk of extinction associated with a relatively large increase in temperature of 5.8 degrees C above 1960-90 levels. Site-based adaptation management may therefore increase the resistance of Golden Plovers to some degree of future climate change. This model framework for informing climate change adaptation decisions should be developed for other species and habitats.Family Prostomidae, genus Prostomis, and species P. mandibularis are recorded for first time from Bulgaria. P. mandibularis, characteristic of decaying heartwood of rotting wood lying undisturbed on forest floors, is a species of conservation importance and indicator of use for assessment of natural old and well-preserved broad-leaved woodlands.The urgent need to reconfigure urban areas so that they consume fewer resources, emit less pollution (including GHGs), are more resilient to the impacts of climate change, and are more sustainable in general, is increasingly being recognized. Now that many urban areas have set themselves on a trajectory to becoming sustainable cities, it is timely to point out some potential pitfalls that may be encountered along this transition. This review considers pitfalls that range from the practicalities of analyzing sustainability in cities through to more philosophical issues such as our understanding of urban sustainability. If the type of mitigative actions proposed in this artile to avoid these pitfalls are not taken, then well-meaning sustainability initiatives may result in undesirable side effects. However, a more fundamental shift in the way we engage with our cities is required if we are to realize a genuinely sustainable city.Networks of sites of high importance for conservation of biological diversity are a cornerstone of current conservation strategies but are fixed in space and time. As climate change progresses, substantial shifts in species' ranges may transform the ecological community that can be supported at a given site. Thus, some species in an existing network may not be protected in the future or may be protected only if they can move to sites that in future provide suitable conditions. We developed an approach to determine appropriate climate-change adaptation strategies for individual sites within a network that was based on projections of future changes in the relative proportions of emigrants (species for which a site becomes climatically unsuitable), colonists (species for which a site becomes climatically suitable), and persistent species (species able to remain within a site despite the climatic change). Our approach also identifies key regions where additions to a network could enhance its future effectiveness. Using the sub-Saharan African Important Bird Area (IBA) network as a case study, we found that appropriate conservation strategies for individual sites varied widely across sub-Saharan Africa, and key regions where new sites could help increase network robustness varied in space and time. Although these results highlight the potential difficulties within any planning framework that seeks to address climate-change adaptation needs, they demonstrate that such planning frameworks are necessary, if current conservation strategies are to be adapted effectively, and feasible, if applied judiciously.Design and implementation of effective climate change adaptation activities requires quantitative assessment of the impacts that are likely to occur without adaptation, as well as the fraction of impact that can be avoided through each activity. Here we present a quantitative framework inspired by the greenhouse gas stabilization wedges of Pacala and Socolow. In our proposed framework, the damage avoided by each adaptation activity creates an 'adaptation wedge' relative to the loss that would occur without that adaptation activity. We use premium winegrape suitability in the western United States as an illustrative case study, focusing on the near-term period that covers the years 2000-39. We find that the projected warming over this period results in the loss of suitable winegrape area throughout much of California, including most counties in the high-value North Coast and Central Coast regions. However, in quantifying adaptation wedges for individual high-value counties, we find that a large adaptation wedge can be captured by increasing the severe heat tolerance, including elimination of the 50% loss projected by the end of the 2030-9 period in the North Coast region, and reduction of the projected loss in the Central Coast region from 30% to less than 15%. Increased severe heat tolerance can capture an even larger adaptation wedge in the Pacific Northwest, including conversion of a projected loss of more than 30% in the Columbia Valley region of Washington to a projected gain of more than 150%. We also find that warming projected over the near-term decades has the potential to alter the quality of winegrapes produced in the western US, and we discuss potential actions that could create adaptation wedges given these potential changes in quality. While the present effort represents an initial exploration of one aspect of one industry, the climate adaptation wedge framework could be used to quantitatively evaluate the opportunities and limits of climate adaptation within and across a broad range of natural and human systems.Determining the capacity of organisms to acclimate and adapt to increased temperatures is key to understand how populations and communities will respond to global warming. Although there is evidence that elevated water temperature affects metabolism, growth and condition of tropical marine fish, it is unknown whether they have the potential to acclimate, given adequate time. We reared the tropical reef fish Acanthochromis polyacanthus through its entire life cycle at present day and elevated (+1.5 and+3.0 degrees C) water temperatures to test its ability to thermally acclimate to ocean temperatures predicted to occur over the next 50-100 years. Fish reared at 3.0 degrees C greater than the present day average reduced their resting oxygen consumption (RMR) during summer compared with fish reared at present day temperatures and tested at the elevated temperature. The reduction in RMR of up to 69 mg O-2 kg-1 h-1 in acclimated fish could represent a significant benefit to daily energy expenditure. In contrast, there was no acclimation to summer temperatures exhibited by fish reared at 1.5 degrees C above present day temperatures. Fish acclimated to +3.0 degrees C were smaller and in poorer condition than fish reared at present day temperatures, suggesting that even with acclimation there will be significant consequences for future populations of tropical fishes caused by global warming.Climate change indicators are developed for Vermont in recent decades based on the trends in freeze dates, the length of the growing season, the frozen period of small lakes, and the onset of spring. These trends, which show a consistent pattern of a warming climate in Vermont during the past 50 yr, provide useful information for climate change adaptation planning for the state. The freeze period has become shorter and the growing season for frost-sensitive plants has become longer by about 3.7 (61.1) days decade 21, the date of the last spring freeze has come earlier by 2.3 (60.7) days decade 21, and the first autumn freeze has come later by 1.5 (60.8) days decade 21. The frozen period for small lakes, which depends on mean temperatures over longer periods, has decreased faster by 6.9 (61.5) days decade 21. Lake freeze-up has occurred later by 3.9 (61.1) days decade 21, while ice-out has come earlier by 2.9 (61.0) days decade 21. Lilac first leaf has also been coming earlier by 2.9 (60.8) days decade 21, while lilac first bloom has advanced more slowly, by 1.6 (60.6) days decade 21. The first leaf of Vermont lilacs, an indicator of early spring, is closely correlated with the ice-out of the small reference lake, Stile's Pond, because both are related to temperatures in February-April. In the past 40 yr, the growing season for frost-sensitive plants has increased by 2 weeks, and the growing season for frost-hardy plants may have increased more.Formal planning for climate change adaptation is emerging rapidly at a range of geo-political scales. This first generation of adaptation plans provides useful information regarding how institutions are framing the issue of adaptation and the range of processes that are recognized as being part of an adaptation response. To better understand adaptation planning among developed nations, a set of 57 adaptation plans from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States was evaluated against a suite of 19 planning processes identified from existing guidance instruments for adaptation planning. Total scores among evaluated plans ranged from 16% of the maximum possible score to 61%, with an average of 37%. These results suggest adaptation plans are largely under-developed. Critical weaknesses in adaptation planning are related to limited consideration for non-climatic factors as well as neglect for issues of adaptive capacity including entitlements to various forms of capital needed for effective adaptation. Such gaps in planning suggest there are opportunities for institutions to make better use of existing guidance for adaptation planning and the need to consider the broader governance context in which adaptation will occur. In addition, the adaptation options prescribed by adaptation plans reflect a preferential bias toward low-risk capacity-building (72% of identified options) over the delivery of specific actions to reduce vulnerability. To the extent these findings are representative of the state of developed nation adaptation planning, there appear to be significant deficiencies in climate change preparedness, even among those nations often assumed to have the greatest adaptive capacity.Two distinct views are evident in research on how rural communities in developing countries cope with extreme weather events brought by climate change: (i) that the resource-reliant poor are acutely vulnerable and need external assistance to prepare for such events, and (ii) that climate-related shocks can offer windows of opportunity in which latent local adaptive capacities are triggered, leading to systemic improvement. Results from a longitudinal study in a Tawahka community in Honduras before and after Hurricane Mitch (1994-2002) indicate that residents were highly vulnerable to the hurricane-due in part to previous development assistance-and that the poorest households were the hardest hit. Surprisingly, however, the disaster enabled the poor to initiate an institutional change that led to more equitable land distribution, slowed primary forest conversion, and positioned the community well to cope with comparable flooding occurring 10 y later. The study provides compelling evidence that communities can seize on the window of opportunity created by climate-induced shocks to generate sustained social-ecological improvement, and suggests that future interventions should foster local capacities for endogenous institutional change to enhance community resilience to climate shocks.Both the European Union (EU) and China are culturally, economically, climatologically and environmentally diverse polities. The EU is a multi-state grouping of economically developed democratic countries, while China is a unitary sovereign state and a developing economy with a strong government bureaucracy. Our hypothesis is that given their diverse political systems, the EU and China would develop different kinds of systems for the governance of adaptation to climate change. We test this hypothesis through a comparative analysis of policy documents from the two study areas, in which we examine framework policies, programmatic actions and specific actions that have been adopted to date in order to address climate change, with a specific focus on the water sector. We find that climate change adaptation began to be addressed through formal policy on a similar timeline in the two regions. The EU and China are also similar in that they use framework laws and existing sectoral policy, such as for the water sector. We find that the EU has primarily relied on integration of climate change adaptation concerns through legal instruments which set a framework for implementation of adaptation policy. In China, specific actions to be incorporated in socio-economic development plans under the existing legislation on adaptation have been the main mode for integrating adaptation into sectoral actions, though the future trend may be to develop more regulations.Over the last two decades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has come to define its conservation mission in the context of species protection. The concept of "trust species" is now a common focal point for the myriad responsibilities of the FWS. This has become problematic for one of the major programs of the agency: management of the world's largest biodiversity conservation network, the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS). A major legislative overhaul of the NWRS charter and the imperatives of climate change adaptation have weakened the concept as a reliable touchstone for NWRS management and expansion. The FWS should build on its culture and history to respond to new challenges that the conservation network cannot meet with the "trust species" concept alone. While management to benefit specific species offers a simple measure of accomplishment, as a policy tool it creates more problems than it solves. Adherence to the "trust species" theme limits full engagement with, and abdicates the FWS leadership role in, contemporary conservation challenges and science. This article makes the case for alternative measures of NWRS conservation success that move beyond just counting populations. Ecological integrity offers a more accurate theme for NWRS goals, a more robust tool for adapting to climate change, and a concept that the scientific literature recognizes and quantifies.WaterSim, a simulation model, was built and implemented to investigate how alternative climate conditions, rates of population growth, and policy choices interact to affect future water supply and demand conditions in Phoenix, AZ. WaterSim is a hierarchical model that represents supply from surface and groundwater sources and demand from residential, commercial, and agricultural user sectors, incorporating the rules that govern reservoirs, aquifer use, and land-use change. In this paper we: (1) report on the imperative for exploratory modeling in water-resource management, given the deep uncertainties of climate change, (2) describe the geographic context for the Phoenix case study, (3) outline the objectives and structure of WaterSim, (4) report on testing the model with sensitivity analyses and history matching, (5) demonstrate the application of the model through a series of simulation experiments, and (6) discuss the model's use for scenario planning and climate adaptation. Simulation results show there are significant challenges to Phoenix's water sustainability from climate change and rapid growth. Policies to address these challenges require difficult tradeoffs among lifestyles, groundwater sustainability, the pace of growth, and what is considered to be an appropriate level of risk of climate-induced shortage.In Florida, more than half of the state's sandy beach coastlines are designated as critical erosion areas by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP 2008). At the same time, the economic contribution of coastal construction is being confounded by the fiscal peril facing Florida (Bird in Ann Geomorph 57:1-9, 1985, Pew Center on the States 2009, U. S BEA 2009). It is therefore an opportune time for an evaluation of coastal erosion policy response which specifically addresses coastal construction. Furthermore in Florida, an increasing coastal population requiring the provision of structural development necessitates an improved understanding of how legislative intent which avoids the cumulative impacts of development is translated through quantified policy response. This study characterizes how coastal development trends in Florida have responded to critical erosion designation. Using spatial and temporal analysis of coastal construction permitting data from 1987 to 2007, three coastal counties in northwest Florida were selected for this study. This selection was based on proximity to the designated ecologically sensitive Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve (ANERR). This study has indicated that clusters of development have not been reduced or redirected by critical erosion designation in certain areas of the study counties. Therefore this study has implications for the regulatory framework governing coastal development permitting in Florida, which is of timely relevance for sea-level rise adaptation.The objective of this article is to systematically review and assess what is known about the impacts of climate change on aeroallergens and other naturally derived particulates, and the associated human health impacts, and to examine responses to these in Australia, focusing on adaptation. Prior research was searched using several general and discipline-specific research databases. The review concludes that whereas there is little original research on the impacts of climate change on aeroallergens and other naturally derived particulates in Australia, or the human health consequences of these, research from overseas suggests that these impacts may be adverse and of considerable magnitude. More research is required to assess the impacts of climate change on these airborne particles and associated diseases in Australia and other parts of the Asia-Pacific. There are important policy implications of this review. There is a need for enhanced monitoring of the atmospheric environment and associated health conditions in Australia. Education about climate change and human health in general, and air quality and related diseases specifically, is required for the community, health professionals, and others. Improvements are needed in the preparedness of infrastructure, such as health care facilities and early warning systems, particularly for aeroallergens, and all of these adaptive policy responses require further research.Climate change will have significant and diverse impacts on human health. These impacts will include changes in infectious disease incidence. In this article, the authors review the current situation and potential future climate change impacts for respiratory, diarrheal, and vector-borne diseases in Australia. Based on this review, the authors suggest adaptive strategies within the health sector and also recommend future research priorities.Population health is a function of social and environmental health determinants. Climate change is predicted to bring significant alterations to ecological systems on which human health and livelihoods depend; the air, water, plant, and animal health. Agricultural systems are intrinsically linked with environmental conditions, which are already under threat in much of southern Australian because of rising heat and protracted drying. The direct impact of increasing heat waves on human physiology and survival has recently been well studied. More diffusely, increasing drought periods may challenge the viability of agriculture in some regions, and hence those communities that depend on primary production. A worst case scenario may herald the collapse of some communities. Human health impacts arising from such transition would be profound. This article summarizes existing rural health challenges and presents the current evidence plus future predictions of climate change impacts on Australian agriculture to argue the need for significant augmentation of public health and existing health policy frameworks. The article concludes by suggesting that adaptation to climate change requires planning for worst case scenario outcomes to avert catastrophic impacts on rural communities. This will involve national policy planning as much as regional-level leadership for rapid development of adaptive strategies in agriculture and other key areas of rural communities.Vulnerabilities to floods in Thailand are changing as a result of many factors. Formal and informal institutions help shape exposure, sensitivity and capacities to respond of individuals, social groups and social-ecological systems. In this paper we draw on several case studies of flood events and flood-affected communities to first assess how current practices reflect various laws, procedures, programs and policies for managing floods and disasters and then explore the implications for dealing with additional challenges posed by climate change. Our analysis identifies several institutional traps which need to be overcome if vulnerability is to be reduced, namely capture of agendas by technical elites, single-level or centralized concentration of capacities, organizational fragmentation and overemphasis on reactive crisis management. Possible responses are to expand public participation in managing risks, build adaptive capacities at multiple levels and link them, integrate flood disaster management and climate change adaptation into development planning, prioritize risk reduction for socially vulnerable groups and strengthen links between knowledge and practice. Responses like these could help reduce vulnerabilities under current climate and flood regimes, while also improving capacities to handle the future which every way that unfolds.For coastal areas across the world, sea-level rise and problems of coastal erosion and coastal flooding are expected to increase over the next hundred years. At the same time political pressure for continued waterfront planning and development of coastal areas threatens to increase our societal vulnerability, and necessitating climate adaptation in coastal zone management. The institutional dimension has been identified as important for ensuring a more robust adaptation to both current climate variability and future climate change. In this paper, lessons regarding institutional constraints for climate adaptation are drawn from a Swedish case-study on local coastal zone management, illustrating the diverse and complex nature of institutional capacity-building. The aim of the paper is to illustrate critical factors that from an institutional perspective condition the capacity to achieve a more integrated, strategic and proactive climate adaptation and for turning "rules on paper" to working practice, based on case-study experiences from Coastby. Following and expanding a framework for analysing institutional capacity-building we learnt that a selective few key actors had played a critical role in building a strong external networking capacity with a flip-side in terms of a weak internal coordinating capacity and lack of mutual ownership of coastal erosion between sectoral units e.g. risk-management, planning and environment. We also found a weak vertical administrative interplay and lack of formal coherent policy, procedures and regulations for managing coastal erosion between local, regional and national administrations. Further, tensions and trade-offs between policy-agendas, values and political priorities posed a barrier for capacity-building in coastal zone management which calls for processes to mediate conflicting priorities in policy-making, planning and decision-making. The case-study suggests that the ability of the political administrative system to acknowledge and deal with institutional conflicts is a critical condition for ensuring an integrated and proactive climate adaptation in coastal zone management. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing the impact of climate change on species and associated management objectives is a critical initial step for engaging in the adaptation planning process. Multiple approaches are available. While all possess limitations to their application associated with the uncertainties inherent in the data and models that inform their results, conducting and incorporating impact assessments into the adaptation planning process at least provides some basis for making resource management decisions that are becoming inevitable in the face of rapidly changing climate. Here we provide a non-exhaustive review of long-standing (e.g., species distribution models) and newly developed (e.g., vulnerability indices) methods used to anticipate the response to climate change of individual species as a guide for managers grappling with how to begin the climate change adaptation process. We address the limitations (e.g., uncertainties in climate change projections) associated with these methods, and other considerations for matching appropriate assessment approaches with the management questions and goals. Thorough consideration of the objectives, scope, scale, time frame and available resources for a climate impact assessment allows for informed method selection. With many data sets and tools available on-line, the capacity to undertake and/or benefit from existing species impact assessments is accessible to those engaged in resource management. With some understanding of potential impacts, even if limited, adaptation planning begins to move toward the development of management strategies and targeted actions that may help to sustain functioning ecosystems and their associated services into the future.Although many governments are assuming the responsibility of initiating adaptation policy in relation to climate change, the compatibility of "governance-for-adaptation" with the current paradigms of public administration has generally been overlooked. Over the last several decades, countries around the globe have embraced variants of the philosophy of administration broadly called "New Public Management" (NPM) in an effort to improve administrative efficiencies and the provision of public services. Using evidence from a case study of reforms in the building sector in Norway, and a case study of water and flood risk management in central Mexico, we analyze the implications of the adoption of the tenets of NPM for adaptive capacity. Our cases illustrate that some of the key attributes associated with governance for adaptation-namely, technical and financial capacities; institutional memory, learning and knowledge; and participation and accountability-have been eroded by NPM reforms. Despite improvements in specific operational tasks of the public sector in each case, we show that the success of NPM reforms presumes the existence of core elements of governance that have often been found lacking, including solid institutional frameworks and accountability. Our analysis illustrates the importance of considering both longer-term adaptive capacities and short-term efficiency goals in public sector administration reform.The intention of this paper it to open up debate within the environmental modelling and software (EMS) community on how best to respond to the increasing desire to evaluate the success of EMS projects in terms of outcomes rather than outputs. Outcomes in these regards are changes beyond the walls of the research organisation (typically to values, attitudes and behaviour). The authors recognise that outcome evaluation is essential in ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of activities. To date, however, there is a limited appreciation within the EMS community of the nature of the challenge inherent in outcome evaluations. The paper presents an exploratory analysis of the challenges that outcome assessment raises for EMS. It does so using mutually reinforcing conceptual and practical perspectives. The paper presents a conceptual framework of three loosely coupled phases research, development and operations. The nature of activities and their interactions within these phases is outlined and the forms of evaluation associated with each stage set out. The paper notes how existing forms of evaluation (e.g. peer review, validation and relevance) underpin the delivery of outcomes but do not of themselves evaluate outcomes. The paper proposes that outcomes need conceptually to be seen as an element of complex social processes mediated by government, regulation, markets and the media rather than as simply another form of output from research and development projects. As such outcomes of EMS are: less easily tangible than are outputs; more likely to occur at a significant time lag after any intervention; more difficult to assign causality for and to be subject to significant contestation. Thus EMS activity, however well conducted technically, may only have a minor influence on outcomes and EMS practitioners will have limited control over those outcomes that do occur. The paper uses a series of linked EMS projects to populate the conceptual framework showing the role of evaluations in research, development and operations phases. The paper then presents two forms (quantitative and qualitative) of outcome evaluation used as part of an operational phase evaluation of a project communicating the consequences of climate change to remote-rural land managers in Scotland. The authors conclude that while the challenges of EMS evaluation can be met, there needs to be care from the EMS community not to raise expectations of outcomes that cannot be met. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change scenarios generated by general circulation models have too coarse a spatial resolution to be useful in planning disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies at regional to river basin scales. This study presents a new non-parametric statistical K-nearest neighbor algorithm for downscaling climate change scenarios for the Rohini River Basin in Nepal. The study is an introduction to the methodology and discusses its strengths and limitations within the context of hindcasting basin precipitation for the period of 1976-2006. The actual downscaled climate change projections are not presented here. In general, we find that this method is quite robust and well suited to the data-poor situations common in developing countries. The method is able to replicate historical rainfall values in most months, except for January, September, and October. As with any downscaling technique, whether numerical or statistical, data limitations significantly constrain model ability. The method was able to confirm that the dataset available for the Rohini Basin does not capture long-term climatology. Yet, we do find that the hindcasts generated with this methodology do have enough skill to warrant pursuit of downscaling climate change scenarios for this particularly poor and vulnerable region of the world.The spatial and temporal repercussions of climate change are of an extremely complex nature. Coping with climate change is, first and foremost, a challenge to political decision making and, considering the long-term effects of the climate system, to planning. However, there have never been more doubts that the political-administrative system is able to meet these requirements. Although much evidence has been put forward in favor of such skepticism, sometimes, it is dangerous to overstate the existing limits. Drawing on two case studies in the area of flood risk management in Germany, the article illustrates how and why significant path change came about. In both cases, the state proved to still being a pivotal actor, due to a number of functions that cannot be assumed by other actors. However, other actor groups-such as actors from science, the media, NGOs, and citizen groups-play a significant role as well by providing relevant expertise and influencing the public discourse, thus mobilizing significant political pressure.Nowadays, adaptation has become a key focus of the scientific and policy-making communities and is a major area of discussion in the multilateral climate change process. As climate change is projected to hit the poorest the hardest, it is especially important for developing countries to pay particular attention to the management of natural resources and agricultural activities. In most of these countries such as Cameroon, forest can play important role in achieving broader climate change adaptation goals. However, forest generally receives very little attention in national development programme and strategies such as policy dialogues on climate change and poverty reduction strategies. Using a qualitative approach to data collection through content analysis of relevant Cameroon policy documents, the integration of climate change adaptation was explored and the level of attention given to forests for adaptation analysed. Results indicate that, with the exception of the First National Communication to UNFCCC that focused mostly on mitigation and related issues, current policy documents in Cameroon are void of tangible reference to climate change, and hence failing in drawing the relevance of forest in sheltering populations from the many projected impacts of climate change. Policies related to forest rely on a generalized concept of sustainable forest management and do not identify the specific changes that need to be incorporated into management strategies and policies towards achieving adaptation. The strategies and recommendations made in those documents only serve to improve understanding of Cameroon natural resources and add resilience to the natural systems in coping with anthropogenic stresses. The paper draws attention to the need to address the constraints of lack of awareness and poor flow of information on the potentials of forests for climate change adaptation. It highlights the need for integrating forest for adaptation into national development programmes and strategies, and recommends a review of the existing environmental legislations and their implications on poverty reduction strategy and adaptation to climate change.Urban populations are growing rapidly throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Cities are vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change because of their concentration of people and infrastructure, the physical (geographical, material, and structural) attributes of the built environment, and the ecological interdependence with the urban ecosystem. Australia is one of the most highly urbanized countries in the region and its already variable climate is set to become hotter and drier with climate change. Climate change in Australia is expected to increase morbidity and mortality from thermal stress, bacterial gastroenteritis, vector-borne disease, air pollution, flooding, and bushfires. The cost and availability of fresh water, food, and energy will also likely be affected. The more vulnerable urban populations, including the elderly, socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, and those with underlying chronic disease, will be most affected. Adaptation strategies need to address this underlying burden of disease and inequity as well as implement broad structural changes to building codes and urban design, and infrastructure capacity. In doing so, cities provide opportunities to realize "co-benefits" for health (eg, from increased levels of physical activity and improved air quality). With evidence that climate change is underway, the need for cities to be a focus in the development of climate adaptation strategies is becoming more urgent.Nutritious, safe, affordable, and enjoyable food is a fundamental prerequisite for health. As a nation, Australia is currently classified as food secure with the domestic production exceeding domestic consumption of most major food groups. The domestic system is almost self-sufficient in terms of nutritious plant foods, although these foods have seen steady higher price increases relative to other foods, with nutrition equity implications. However, the viability of Australia's food security sits counter to the continued presence of a stable and supportive climate. This article reviews the current state of science concerning the interface between climate change, food systems, and human health to reveal the key issues that must be addressed if Australia is to advance human health and sustainable food systems under a changing climate.Although the implications of climate change for public health continue to be elucidated, we still require much work to guide the development of a comprehensive strategy to underpin the adaptation of the health system. Adaptation will be an evolving process as impacts emerge. The authors aim is to focus on the responses of the Australian health system to health risks from climate change, and in particular how best to prepare health services for predicted health risks from heat waves, bush fires, infectious diseases, diminished air quality, and the mental health impacts of climate change. In addition, the authors aim to provide some general principles for health system adaptation to climate change that may be applicable beyond the Australian setting. They present some guiding principles for preparing health systems and also overview some specific preparatory activities in relation to personnel, infrastructure, and coordination. Increases in extreme weather related events superimposed on health effects arising from a gradually changing climate will place additional burdens on the health system and challenge existing capacity. Key characteristics of a climate change prepared health system are that it should be flexible, strategically allocated, and robust. Long-term planning will also require close collaboration with the nonhealth sectors as part of a nationwide adaptive response.In this work, generalised additive models (GAMs) were used for the first time to model the fermentation of glutamate (Glu). It was found that three fermentation parameters fermentation time (T), dissolved oxygen (DO) and oxygen uptake rate (OUR) could capture 97% variance of the production of Glu during the fermentation process through a GAM model calibrated using online data from 15 fermentation experiments. This model was applied to investigate the individual and combined effects of T, DO and OUR on the production of Glu. The conditions to optimize the fermentation process were proposed based on the simulation study from this model. Results suggested that the production of Glu can reach a high level by controlling concentration levels of DO and OUR to the proposed optimization conditions during the fermentation process. The GAM approach therefore provides an alternative way to model and optimize the fermentation process of Glu. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The death toll of recent heat waves in developed countries has been remarkably high, contradicting the common assumption that high levels of economic and technological development automatically lead to lower vulnerability to weather extremes. Future climate change may further increase this vulnerability. In this article we examine some recent evidence of heat wave-related mortality and we conclude that while economic wealth and technological capacity might be a necessary condition for adequately coping with adverse climate change effects, they are not sufficient. Questions of awareness, preparedness, organizational issues, and actor networks have to be addressed in a proactive and focused manner in order to avoid future heat wave damages. We propose some practical consequences for heat wave adaptation measures by adopting a risk governance framework that can be universally applied, as it is sufficiently flexible to deal with the multi-level and often fragmented reality of existing coping measures.We examined the relationship between types of mosquito control programs and the mosquito-borne Ross River virus (RRV) disease in Queensland, Australia. Mosquito control information was collected through a survey of the responsible agencies (local governments), and RRV disease notification data were provided by the Queensland state health authority. The study developed a typology of mosquito control programs, based on the approaches used. Based on the analysis of data on RRV disease rates between mosquito control types within 4 climatic regions, each region had different combinations of mosquito control strategies in their programs; there were also general similarities in the relationship between program types and RRV rates between the regions. The long-term RRV disease rates were lower in areas where the mosquito control program included pre-emptive (rather than reactive) surveillance based on an extensive (rather than incomplete) knowledge of mosquito habitats, and where treatment of both saltwater and freshwater habitats (compared to only saltwater habitats, in coastal areas) occurred. The data indicate that mosquito control is an effective public health intervention to reduce mosquito-borne disease; hence, climate change adaptation strategies should ensure that adequate resources are available for effective vector control so as to manage the risk of mosquito-borne diseases.Water resources in Australia are sensitive to changes in rainfall. Ongoing droughts in south-west and south-east Australia are stressing water resources in the major cities and in agricultural regions. Climate change scenarios for Australia include reasonable prospects of long-term drying, which would exacerbate these issues. The dryer scenarios would entail major readjustments and costs on natural and human systems.Legal institutions and instruments will play an important role in climate change adaptation, along with technological, managerial, and behavioral strategies. Law can facilitate adaptation, using regulation to reduce exposure or sensitivity to climate hazards, establishing the legal architecture for new market mechanisms, and funding arrangements for adaptation costs and liability for climate impacts. It can also ensure the accountability of adaptation decision making and addressing some of the social justice dimensions of adaptation. Yet there are also characteristics of legal institutions, processes, and principles that may impede adaptation, including by creating compensable property rights that hinder new regulation. There are several characteristics of climate change and associated impacts that will make law-making for adaptation uniquely challenging. These include high levels of cascading uncertainty, irreversibility, the context-specificity of impacts, the long delay between emissions and impacts, and the interaction between climate change impacts and other environmental, social, and economic stressors. Laws dealing with substantive climate impacts may be appropriate and necessary in some cases, but the broader challenge for law-makers is to make legal processes and instruments more adaptive and responsive to change itself. (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 283-295 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.96Quantitative estimates of the economic damages of climate change usually are based on aggregate relationships linking average temperature change to loss in gross domestic product (GDP). However, there is a clear need for further detail in the regional and sectoral dimensions of impact assessments to design and prioritize adaptation strategies. New developments in regional climate modeling and physical-impact modeling in Europe allow a better exploration of those dimensions. This article quantifies the potential consequences of climate change in Europe in four market impact categories (agriculture, river floods, coastal areas, and tourism) and one nonmarket impact (human health). The methodology integrates a set of coherent, high-resolution climate change projections and physical models into an economic modeling framework. We find that if the climate of the 2080s were to occur today, the annual loss in household welfare in the European Union (EU) resulting from the four market impacts would range between 0.2-1%. If the welfare loss is assumed to be constant over time, climate change may halve the EU's annual welfare growth. Scenarios with warmer temperatures and a higher rise in sea level result in more severe economic damage. However, the results show that there are large variations across European regions. Southern Europe, the British Isles, and Central Europe North appear most sensitive to climate change. Northern Europe, on the other hand, is the only region with net economic benefits, driven mainly by the positive effects on agriculture. Coastal systems, agriculture, and river flooding are the most important of the four market impacts assessed.This article summarizes the main messages of UNCTAD's Least Developed Countries Report 2010. In the wake of global financial and economic crisis, the Report calls for a development paradigm shift and the creation of a New International Development Architecture ( NIDA) for the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world. NIDA would be embodied in new forms of development cooperation in the areas of finance, trade, commodities, technology and climate change adaptation and mitigation. It would include reforms in the global economic regimes that directly affect development and poverty reduction in the LDCs as well as a new generation of LDC-specific international support mechanisms and enhanced South-South development cooperation.In spite of 30 years of international support, the Least Developed Countries (LDC) have become increasingly marginalized. Their recent growth spurt was mainly driven by the pull-effect of the emerging Asian economies. Part of the problem is that the strategies adopted in the past to promote their development mainly emphasized on trade and aid measures, paid little attention to the removal of domestic obstacles, and hardly questioned the global governance system. UNCTAD's 2010 LDC Report addresses many of these problems. It proposes a systemic reforms of the global regimes for trade, FDI, official finance, technology transfers and climate change adaptation; the introduction of new measures addressing the structural weaknesses of the LDCs; and enhanced South-South coorperation with the fast-growing developing countries. By necessity, UNCTAD's Report has been selective in its approach, and has paid less attention to a few topics that are mentioned below for future consideration.Katharine Coman's "Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation," published in March 1911 in the first issue of the American Economic Review, addressed issues of water supply, rights, and organization. These same issues have relevance today, in the face of growing concern about the availability of fresh water worldwide. The central point of this article is that appropriative water rights and irrigation districts that emerged in the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in response to aridity to facilitate agricultural water delivery, use, and trade raise the transaction costs today of water markets. These markets are vital for smooth reallocation of water to higher-valued uses elsewhere in the economy and for flexible response to greater hydrological uncertainty. This institutional path dependence illustrates how past arrangements to meet conditions of the time constrain contemporary economic opportunities. They cannot be easily significantly modified or replaced ex post. (JEL N51, Q15, Q25, Q54)Agriculture, in its broadest form, is the greatest consumptive user of water resources in the United States and around the world. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing agricultural producers will be adapting water management to an increasingly variable climate. Adaptation will be extremely difficult, in part because other demands for water (e.g., energy, domestic, industrial, municipal) will continue to increase. Despite considerable improvements in irrigation technology, product development, and other water-saving approaches, agricultural producers will be expected to reduce water consumption and improve or protect water quality of water discharged from agricultural operations. In 2004, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture embarked on an effort to address Agricultural Water Security, ensuring sufficient water of the appropriate quality at the needed time to meet demands for food, fiber, and other agricultural goods and services. This effort identified six broad areas where agricultural research, education, and extension can impact water management to achieve agricultural water security. The six areas are: biotechnology, water reuse, general conservation, irrigation efficiency, water markets and trading, and drought preparedness. We present an overview of the six areas and opportunities for agriculture and specifically horticultural and specialty crop producers to adapt to climate change through improved water management.Public health adaptation to climate change is an important issue and inevitably is needed to address the adverse health impacts of climate change over the next few decades. This paper provides an overview of the constraints and barriers to public health adaptation and explores future research directions in this emerging field. An extensive literature review was conducted in 2010 and published literature from 2000 to 2010 was retrieved. This review shows that public health adaptation essentially can operate at two levels, namely, adaptive-capacity building and implementation of adaptation actions. However, there are constraints and barriers to public health adaptation arising from uncertainties of future climate and socioeconomic conditions, as well as financial, technologic, institutional, social capital, and individual cognitive limits. The opportunities for planning and implementing public health adaptation are reliant on effective strategies to overcome these constraints and barriers. It is proposed here that high research priority should be given to multidisciplinary research on the assessment of potential health impacts of climate change, projections of health impacts under different climate and socioeconomic scenarios, identification of health co-benefits of mitigation strategies, and evaluation of cost-effective public health adaptation options. (Am J Prev Med 2011;40(2):183-190) (c) 2011 American Journal of Preventive MedicineThis paper sets out a new approach to understanding the relationship between migration and climate change. Based on the understanding that migration is a significant, growing, but also complex phenomenon, this approach seeks to address the sensitivity of existing migration drivers in specific contexts to climate change. In contrast to existing approaches which have sought to generate global-level estimates of the numbers of 'climate migrants', this integrated assessment approach seeks instead to understand how and why existing flows from and to specific locations may change in the future, and provide a practical tool for climate adaptation planning. Examples of the application of this approach are provided for Ghana and Bangladesh.Adapting building designs for climate change is about managing the unavoidable. While there is debate around what level of adaptation is needed, there is growing awareness that design practices need to take into account predictions of increased risk and intensity of extreme events. This paper examines potential climate change effects on buildings, highlights the potential for capacity building through education, and presents examples of adaptive strategies for building design.Agriculture in Australia is highly vulnerable to climate change. Understanding the sector's vulnerability is critical to developing immediate policy for the future of the agricultural industries and their communities. This review aims to identify research priorities (frameworks and models) for assessing vulnerability of the Australian agriculture sector to climate change. It achieves this through three objectives: (i) review frameworks for conceptualising vulnerability in agriculture; (ii) document operational models that may contribute to the immediate analysis of vulnerability in Australian agriculture; and (iii) identify gaps in frameworks and models capacity for analysing the vulnerability of Australian agriculture to climate change. These were achieved by undertaking a literature review and organising a workshop of Australian agricultural climate change modelling experts. Current understanding of agricultural vulnerability uses the outcome vulnerability conceptual framework, it is linear and dependant on the biophysical models which have been developed. Three priorities for biophysical modelling research were identified: expansion to cover all major agricultural industries; address spatial gaps (e.g. south-west Australia); and develop scenarios for shifting between land-uses. However, there is little known on the contextual vulnerability of the Australian agricultural sector, therefore strategic investment into contextual vulnerability frameworks is necessary, i.e. open systems, multiple exogenous impacts, use qualitative methods, and generate spatially specific outcomes. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With current annual production at over 600 million tonnes, wheat is the third largest crop in the world behind corn and rice, and an essential source of carbohydrates for millions of people. While wheat is grown over a wide range of environments, it is common in the major wheat-producing countries for grain filling to occur when soil moisture is declining and temperature is increasing. Average global temperatures have increased over the last decades and are predicted to continue rising, along with a greater frequency of extremely hot days. Such events have already been reported for major wheat growing regions in the world. However, the direct impact of past temperature variability and changes in averages and extremes on wheat production has not been quantified. Attributing changes in observed yields over recent decades to a single factor such as temperature is not possible due to the confounding effects of other factors. By using simulation modelling, we were able to separate the impact of temperature from other factors and show that the effect of temperature on wheat production has been underestimated. Surprisingly, observed variations in average growing-season temperatures of +/- 2 degrees C in the main wheat growing regions of Australia can cause reductions in grain production of up to 50%. Most of this can be attributed to increased leaf senescence as a result of temperatures > 34 degrees C. Temperature conditions during grain filling in the major wheat growing regions of the world are similar to the Australian conditions during grain filling. With average temperatures and the frequency of heat events projected to increase world-wide with global warming, yield reductions due to higher temperatures during the important grain-filling stage alone could substantially undermine future global food security. Adaptation strategies need to be considered now to prevent substantial yield losses in wheat from increasing future heat stress.Most investigation into climate adaptation to date has focused on specific technological interventions and socio-economic aspects of adaptive capacity. New perspectives posit that socio-cognitive factors may be as or more important in motivating individuals to take adaptive actions. Recent research indicates that incorporating insights from motivation theory can enhance theorization of adaptive capacity. Yet unexplored, and what we propose here, is the addition of social identity to models of adaptive capacity and adaptation. To apply this conceptual framework, the first author undertook in-depth interviews with a sample of farmers who had participated in broader surveys the previous year to explore their perceptions of their social identity, climate-related information and its sources, and climate risk. These interviews elicited compelling evidence that social identity mediates between risk perception and adaptation through its influence on motivation. Interviews revealed significant links between social identity and perception of information, risk perception and adaptation, of which the most salient were the relative credibility and legitimacy of information sources (related to us vs. them social group differentiation); the role of coffee organizations; and ethnicity and geographic marginalization. Strong in-group identity and perceptions of potentially influential out-groups such as the scientific community appear to particularly influence perception and use of information. These findings have rich policy implications for adaptation management and merit further investigation to identify how, where and why social identity plays a role in climate-risk perception, motivation and adaptation in other geographic areas of vulnerability worldwide. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Interviews were conducted with risk managers in a case-study area in England to determine the factors influencing the choice between more traditional, engineering based, adaptation to flood risk and those focussing on vulnerability reduction. The findings of in-depth analysis of these interviews have implications for climate change adaptation as a whole. They suggest that government policies to implement a broader range of adaptation measures might be hampered by institutional cultures formed when structural, engineered approaches were the norm. Political decentralisation and the fashion for public consultation exacerbate this effect, leaving decision-makers more responsive to the influence of those directly affected by natural hazards than they are to the needs of the wider population or to policy pronouncements by government. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Seasonal forecasts have potential value as tools for the management of risks due to inter-annual climate variability and iterative adaptation to climate change. Despite their potential, forecasts are not widely used, in part due to poor performance and lack of relevance to specific users' decision problems, and in part due to a variety of economic and behavioural factors. In this paper a theoretical model of perceived forecast value is proposed and applied to a stylized portfolio-type decision problem with wide applicability to actual forecast users, with a view to obtaining a more complete picture of the determinants of perceived value. The effects of user wealth, risk aversion, and perceived forecast trustworthiness, and presentational parameters, such as the position of forecast parameter categories, and the size of probability categories, on perceived value is investigated. Analysis of the model provides several strong qualitative predictions of how perceived forecast value depends on these factors. These predictions may be used to generate empirical hypotheses which offer the chance of evaluating the model's assumptions, and suggest several means of improving understanding of perceived value based on qualitative features of the results. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need to tackle climate hazards and development efforts simultaneously is widely acknowledged. However, the possibility of alternative visions of development is seldom contemplated. Instead, adaptation research usually assumes monolithic claims about development constructed from the status quo of global capitalism. This paper outlines a critical approach to adaptation and explores the interplay between visions of development, governance structures, and strategies to cope with hurricanes in the Mexican Caribbean, a region at the 'front line' of both globalization and climatic extreme phenomena. Critical adaptation formulates the experiencing of hazards as essentially political and tied to contingent development paths, which may eventually become hegemonic. Over a hundred semi-structured and open interviews were held in Cancun, Mahahual, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum including academics, businesspeople, bureaucrats, journalists, non-governmental organizations and tourism workers in order to characterize development visions in the Mexican Caribbean. Findings show a prevalent hegemonic vision supporting mass tourism growth which encourages hurricane coping strategies based on effective evacuation and attracting investments for rapid economic recovery. The actual implementation of this vision increases social inequalities, degrades ecosystems, and amplifies overall exposure to extreme events. Mass tourism is enforced by undemocratic governance structures sustained by a coalition of government and tourism corporations (a government-capital bloc in Gramsci's sense). Some weak signs of counter-hegemony were identified in Playa del Carmen, Tulum and Mahahual. These isolated episodes of resistance might have triggered alternative coping strategies despite having little effect in altering the overall course of development. Further critical research is needed to unveil the socio-political foundations of development visions and their influence on capacities to cope with climatic extreme events. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation presents a paradox: climate change is a global risk, yet vulnerability is locally experienced. Effective adaptation therefore depends on understanding the local context of vulnerability, which requires deliberative and participatory approaches to adaptation policy-making. But, how can local inclusiveness be achieved in the context of global environmental risk, and what sorts of institutions are needed? This article examines one avenue for the participation of vulnerable groups in adaptation policy-making: National Adaptation Programmes of Actions (NAPAs). Drawing on the case study of Bangladesh, this article shows that the "adaptation paradox" creates a tension between local and global definitions of climate change risk, affecting the legitimacy of participatory processes under the NAPA. I propose that early analysis and engagement of existing local institutional frameworks as a starting point for national adaptation planning is one possible entry point for meaningful local deliberation in global climate change policy-making processes.Global warming has accelerated in recent decades and the years 1995-2006 were the warmest ever recorded. Also, in Finland, the last decade has been exceptionally warm. Hence, this study examines how current field crop cultivars, adapted to northern long-day conditions and short growing seasons, have responded to the elevated temperatures, especially with regard to determination of yield potential and quality. These comparisons were carried out with spring and winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), oats (Avena sativa L.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), winter rye (Secale cereale L.), pea (Pisum sativum L.) and rapeseed (turnip rape, Brassica rapa L. and oilseed rape, B. napus L.). Long-term data sets of MTT Official Variety Trials and the Finnish Meteorological Institute were used to study crop responses to precipitation and elevated temperatures at different growth phases. The MTT data sets were also grouped into experiments that could be considered typical of the temperature conditions in the period 1971-2000 seasons (termed '1985' conditions) or typical of the period 2010-39 (termed '2025'). At elevated temperatures, yields generally declined in these relatively cool growing conditions of northern Europe, except for pea. Elevated temperatures tended to have negative effects both in the pre- and post-anthesis phases, but the response depended on species. The response was probably associated with reduced water availability, which limited yield determination, especially in early growth phases. For example, in spring cereals a decrease in early summer precipitation by 10 mm decreased yields by 45-75 kg/ha. As warmer conditions also typically hastened development and growth in such generally cool growing conditions of Finland, it is essential that breeding programmes produce cultivars that are less sensitive to elevated temperatures, which are likely to become more frequent in future.The general decrease in the quality of climate model output with decreasing scale suggests a need for spatial smoothing to suppress the most unreliable small-scale features. However, even if correctly simulated, a large-scale average retained by the smoothing may not be representative of the local conditions, which are of primary interest in many impact studies. Here, the authors study this trade-off using simulations of temperature and precipitation by 24 climate models within the Third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, to find the scale of smoothing at which the mean-square difference between smoothed model output and gridbox-scale reality is minimized. This is done for present-day time mean climate, recent temperature trends, and projections of future climate change, using cross validation between the models for the latter. The optimal scale depends strongly on the number of models used, being much smaller for multimodel means than for individual model simulations. It also depends on the variable considered and, in the case of climate change projections, the time horizon. For multimodel-mean climate change projections for the late twenty-first century, only very slight smoothing appears to be beneficial, and the resulting potential improvement is negligible for practical purposes. The use of smoothing as a means to improve the sampling for probabilistic climate change projections is also briefly explored.Most climate change studies that address potential impacts and potential adaptation strategies are largely based on modelling technologies. While models are useful for visualizing potential future outcomes and evaluating options for potential adaptation, they do not adequately represent and integrate adaptive human agency. Richards' concept of 'agriculture as performance' is useful in counterbalancing the modelling approach to adaptation because it highlights how adaptive processes and technologies, whether short term or long term, are more than simple technical responses to biophysical conditions. Instead, adaptive processes are social phenomena whose significance and effects expand well beyond changing climate conditions. This examination of agriculture as performance in the context of climate adaptation draws on two different examples. The first example explores how technical aspects of climate adaptation in Mali are situated within the enactment of ethnic identities and political struggles between farmers and herders. The second example shows how farmers in southeastern United States approach climate variability and climate forecasts as risk management tools. There are substantial differences between approaching adaptation as a dynamic process that is socially embedded and approaching adaptation as a set of modelled responses to anticipated future conditions. It is unlikely that either is adequate to meet the challenges posed by the uncertainties associated with climate change. However, building a synergistic relationship between the two promises to be as difficult as it is necessary. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Royal Netherlands Society for Agricultural Sciences.Farm forestry is a very minor land use in the inland agricultural landscapes of Australia. The Australian Government intends to introduce a program to encourage landholders to trade the carbon sequestration value of plantations and this may change the relative profitability of plantations against other agricultural land uses. This research compares the returns from a timber and 'carbon' plantation, with those from grazing and a common crop rotation in the Kingaroy area of Queensland. Typical production patterns for all systems were developed from producer and expert knowledge and soil and vegetation sampling were used to estimate sequestration rates. The costs and benefits of all land use systems were converted into monetary terms and discounted to produce net present values. With a standard discount rate and average commodity prices based on recent history, cultivation is the most profitable option, followed by pasture and plantations. After the inclusion of carbon, plantations are the most profitable option, followed by pasture and cultivation. A number of qualifications of these findings are also discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With weakening prospects of prompt mitigation, it is increasingly likely that the world will experience 4 degrees C and more of global warming. In such a world, adaptation decisions that have long lead times or that have implications playing out over many decades become more uncertain and complex. Adapting to global warming of 4 degrees C cannot be seen as a mere extrapolation of adaptation to 2 degrees C; it will be a more substantial, continuous and transformative process. However, a variety of psychological, social and institutional barriers to adaptation are exacerbated by uncertainty and long timeframes, with the danger of immobilizing decision-makers. In this paper, we show how complexity and uncertainty can be reduced by a systematic approach to categorizing the interactions between decision lifetime, the type of uncertainty in the relevant drivers of change and the nature of adaptation response options. We synthesize a number of issues previously raised in the literature to link the categories of interactions to a variety of risk-management strategies and tactics. Such application could help to break down some barriers to adaptation and both simplify and better target adaptation decision-making. The approach needs to be tested and adopted rapidly.Social vulnerability analyses have typically relied upon narratives to capture the nuances of the concept. While narratives have enhanced our understanding of the multiple drivers of vulnerability, they have had limited influence on hazards and climate adaptation policy. This is partially a function of the different needs and goals of the policy and research communities. The former prioritises generalised quantitative information, while the latter is more concerned with capturing complexity. A theoretically driven and empirically tested quantitative vulnerability and capacities index (VCI) for use at the local scale is presented to help connect vulnerability research and policy. There are four versions of the index for use in rural and urban contexts at the household and community levels. There can be an infinite number of drivers of vulnerability, but the VCI draws upon 12 indicators to represent material, institutional and attitudinal aspects of differential vulnerability and capacities.Street trees provide a number of environmental and social benefits, including contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation and providing urban green space. In all settlements is important to know the quantity and quality of the trees and develop up-to-date tree cadastres. Frequently there is a need to place a monetary value on amenity trees, therefore several methods with different approaches have been developed. In our paper we discuss and compare some widely applied international and Hungarian methods taken into consideration their benefits and disadvantages. A tree survey was done in the year 2010, in one of the greenest districts of Budapest. Based on the survey species composition, distribution by age of the trees, condition of the trees, proportion of the fruit and ornamental trees were analysed and calculations were done regarding the tree values. Results show that good judgement through experience is important in selecting the method to use, for no one method can be used under every condition.During the last sixty years, there have been large changes in the southern hemisphere winter circulation and reductions in rainfall particularly in the southern Australian region. Here we examine the corresponding changes in dynamical modes of variability ranging from storm tracks, onset-of-blocking modes, northwest cloud-band disturbances, Antarctic low-frequency modes, intraseasonal oscillations, and African easterly waves. Our study is performed using a global two-level primitive equation instability-model with reanalyzed observed July three-dimensional basic states for the periods 1949-1968, 1975-1994, and 1997-2006. We relate the reduction in the winter rainfall in the southwest of Western Australia since the mid-1970s and in south-eastern Australia since the mid-1990s to changes in growth rate and structures of leading storm track and blocking modes. We find that cyclogenesis and onset-of-blocking modes growing on the subtropical jet have significantly reduced growth rates in the latter periods. On the other hand there is a significant increase in the growth rate of northwest cloud-band modes and intraseasonal oscillation disturbances that cross Australia and are shown to be related to recent positive trends in winter rainfall over northwest Western Australia and central Australia, in general. The implications of our findings are discussed.This paper discusses the vision and requirements of a highly interactive workbench which supports decision makers using distributed resources including models as automated components of an integrated environmental decision support system. The concepts discussed are results of the SUDPLAN project, an EU FP7 project which aims at developing advanced tools for climate change adaptation for city planners and city managers. To this end, SUDPLAN incorporates access to climate change models and model results as an important common service. This paper provides an overview of SUDPLAN, with special emphasis on the highly interactive Scenario Management System. It also includes an overview of the user requirements derived through a user-centred design process engaging highly diverse user representatives of four pilot application cities.A problem-oriented and interdisciplinary approach was employed at Alpine Shire, in northeast Victoria, Australia, to explore its tourism sector's contextual vulnerability and adaptability to stressors that include but are not limited to climatic change. Using a policy sciences approach, the objective was to identify factors that influence existing vulnerabilities and that might consequently act as barriers to effective adaptation. To do this, a particular focus was placed on identifying the underlying values embedded in social and decision processes and their role in shaping preferred adaptation outcomes. Analyses of social processes suggest that many threats, including the effects climate change, compete for the resources, strategy, and direction of local tourism management bodies. Many complex and interacting factors define the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of the shire's tourism sector to the challenges of global change, including local socioeconomic issues as well as exposure to external factors of macroscale. These issues represent more immediate concerns than future climate change scenarios, revealing an approximation of the common interest in working toward adaptation and sustainability.This article examines projected climate impacts and national planning efforts in three major countries: the USA, UK and China. The three countries are in varying stages of planning for climate adaptation. Planning frameworks in all three countries suffer from a lack of specificity and urgency. To address this situation, the article recommends two measures. The first is the use of scenario planning, including consideration of high-impact scenarios, to address the downside risks of climate change. Planning in the UK has begun to make use of scenario analysis, although in a less comprehensive manner, while the USA had an earlier experiment in the use of the worst-case scenario as a planning tool. The second recommendation is to identify and prioritise impacts on vulnerable populations such as the elderly, the poor and coastal communities. This recommendation has roots in the US planning proposals, but also resonates with international human rights law.Historical records have documented considerable changes to the global climate, with significant health, economic, and environmental consequences. Climate projections predict more intense hurricanes; increased sea level rise; and more frequent and more intense natural disasters such as heat waves, heavy rainfall, and drought in the future (1; 2). The coast along the Gulf of Mexico is particularly vulnerable to many of these environmental hazards and at particular risk when several strike simultaneously-such as a hurricane disrupting electricity transmission during a heat wave. Due to its significant contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the building sector already plays an important role in climate change mitigation efforts (e. g., reducing emissions). For example, voluntary programs such as the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Rating System (3), the Architecture 2030 Challenge (4), the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (5), and the Clinton Climate Initiative (6) focus almost exclusively on reducing energy consumption and increasing renewable energy generation. Mandatory regulations such as the International Energy Conservation Code (7), the International Green Building Code (8), and CalGreen (9) also emphasize GHG emission reduction targets. This leadership role is necessary. After all, the United States EPA estimates that the building sector accounts for 62.7% of total annual GHG emissions in the U. S., when the construction sector, facility operations, and transportation are factored in. In fact, the construction sector alone is the third largest industrial emitter of GHGs after the oil and gas and chemical industries, contributing 1.7% of total annual emissions (10; 11). As significant as these contributions appear, the built environment's true contribution to climate change is much larger than the GHG emissions attributed to building construction and operations. It is also a major determinant of which populations are vulnerable to climate change-related hazards, such as heat waves and flooding (12; 13). Architecture and land use planning can therefore be used as tools for building community resilience to the climate-related environmental changes underway (13). Climate change regulations and voluntary programs have begun to incorporate requirements targeting the built environment's ability to work in tandem with the natural environment to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect its occupants from the health consequences of a changing climate. For example, 11 states have incorporated climate change adaptation goals into their climate action plans (14). In 2010, the not-for-profit organization ICLEI: Local Governments for Sustainability launched a climate change adaptation program (15) to complement their existing mitigation program, which supports municipalities who have signed the U. S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement (16). New tools have been introduced to measure community vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. One of these tools, Health Impact Assessments (or HIAs), has emerged over the past decade as a powerful methodology to provide evidence-based recommendations to decision makers and community planning officials about the likely health co-benefits and co-harms associated with proposed policies and land use development proposals (17). While HIAs are becoming a more common feature of community planning efforts, this paper introduces them as an approach to designing climate change resilience into specific building projects. HIAs have been used in Europe and other parts of the world for decades to provide a science-based, balanced assessment of the risks and benefits to health associated with a proposed policy or program (18). In the U. S., they have been used over the past decade to evaluate transit-oriented developments, urban infill projects, and California's cap-and-trade legislation, among other topics (17; 19). To date, HIAs have been used mainly to inform large-scale community planning, land use, industrial, and policy decisions. However, the recommendations generated through the HIA process often bring to light previously unforeseen vulnerabilities, whether due to existing infrastructure, building technology, or socio-economic conditions. Designers can make use of the HIA process and its resulting recommendations to prioritize design/retrofit interventions that will result in the largest co-benefits to building owners, the surrounding community, and the environment. An HIA focused on the health impacts of climate change will likely generate recommendations that could enhance the longevity of a building project's useful life; protect its property value by contributing to the resilience of the surrounding community; and result in design decisions that prioritize strategies that maximize both short-term efficiencies and long-term environmental, economic, and social value.Water availability assessment is a complex undertaking and is becoming more challenging given the uncertainty associated with climate change. It requires the evaluation of not only water supplies, but also of the competing water demands for socio-economic development and maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Both water supplies and water demands are subject to significant seasonal and annual variation, which is expected to be exacerbated by climate change. By analysing the time varying water supplies and water demands, water availability can be presented in terms of probability or in a risk-management context. The large uncertainty surrounding climate change, as well as future socio-economic and other developments can be dealt with by using scenario analysis that incorporates a wide range of future socio-economic and climate scenarios or possibilities. Such analysis allows the establishment of the relative change in risk to the water resources system (e.g. frequency of occurrence of shortages) as a result of climate change (scenarios) and the analysis of the impacts of adaptation measures on reducing such risk.The Congo Basin region of Central Africa contains the second largest contiguous tropical rainforest in the world, which is an important source of livelihood for millions of people. It is also important for climate change adaptation, as well as mitigation policies on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). Men and women relate to and use the forest differently and so may experience the effects of climate change and REDD+ policies differently. Investigations through semi-structured interviews and document reviews in three countries of the region revealed that women have had limited participation in discussions on issues of climate change or REDD+. There is some evidence that gender consideration will become part of future national REDD+ strategies. Strategies to foster the effective participation of all stakeholders are essential to ensure that gender dimensions are addressed in issues of climate change, forest access, forest management and distribution of carbon benefits.The conceptual framework presented in this article brings together two bodies of work: social protection and climate change adaptation, through the sustainable livelihoods approach, to provide a viable framework for income and livelihood supporting interventions in the face of climate change. To date, there is scant and underdeveloped research that explores (i) why these two disciplines need to be brought together and (ii) how that can be done to assist climate-sensitive livelihoods in vulnerable communities. This article addresses this lacuna in existing literature and argues that climate change brings a new way of conceptualizing vulnerability to the traditional understanding of social protection, thereby altering who is targeted and how. Social protection interventions will only be able to assist climate-vulnerable rural livelihoods, once a wider and more flexible definition of vulnerability is recognized and accepted at a structural level.Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change and mainstreaming climate change adaptation considerations at the sectoral level is paramount. The current available climate projections are not sufficient to take decisive actions on the ground. Hence, a framework is required for mainstreaming adaptation concerns at sectoral level. Stakes in adaptation are high since several countries are vulnerable and huge amounts of funds would have to be spent for adaptation. Identifying and institutionalizing a set of adaptation metrics helps in tracking the progress in adaptation. In this paper, a framework was presented for mainstreaming adaptation concerns in agriculture sector, some adaptation metrics and challenges and opportunities were identified to operationalize adaptation metrics. It has been concluded that operationalization of adaptation metrics require a context such as adaptation benchmarks and targets and main hurdle in identification of adaptation metrics is deciding between a set of qualitative and quantitative metrics using multi-criteria analytical approaches.Ecosystems and economic systems are functionally intertwined. With respect to climate change and sustainability conflicting dynamics accelerate. A careful framing of issues is therefore seen as a precondition for structuring complexity without being exclusive. In the project northwest2050 research is conducted on climate adapted innovation strategies in the northwest of Germany. One issue is the regional regulation of land use conflicts. Anticipatory co-management of ecological and economic purposes will be supported by the use of dynamic modeling. Analyzing and regulating socioeconomic conflicts requires quantitative as well as qualitative data. Information that is scattered among multiple levels has to be identified, valued, and communicated on the ground. Hence, a semantic approach is presented here that is aimed at structuring the conceptual interfaces the dynamic model is working with. The integration of capabilities of economic actors, who make decisions, with the sensitive bundling of information is built on the concept of ecosystem services. The model serves as a tool for reflecting different settings and adjustments together with regional actors.Dynamical seasonal prediction has grown rapidly over the last decade or so. At present, a number of operational centres issue routine seasonal forecasts produced with coupled ocean-atmosphere models. These require real-time knowledge of the state of the global ocean since the potential for climate predictability at seasonal time scales resides mostly in information provided by the ocean initial conditions, in particular the upper thermal structure. The primary aim of the coupled model is to predict sea surface temperature variability and how this variability impacts regional climate through large scale teleconnections. This paper reviews recent advances in dynamical seasonal prediction using coupled ocean-atmosphere models. It discusses the sources of predictability at seasonal time scales, the probabilistic nature of seasonal forecasts, the ensemble methods used to deal with it, and the current levels of skill. The ocean initialisation receives special focus, with a discussion on initialisation strategies, ocean data assimilation methods, and the role of the observing system in seasonal forecast skill. Assimilation of observations into an ocean model forced by prescribed atmospheric fluxes is the most common practice for initialisation of the ocean component of a coupled model. Assimilation of ocean data reduces the uncertainty in the ocean estimation arising from the uncertainty in the forcing fluxes and from model errors. Although data assimilation also usually improves the skill of seasonal forecasts, its impact is often overshadowed by errors in the coupled models. The paper also briefly discusses decadal prediction, for which there is growing demand, particularly in the context of climate change adaptation. Although decadal prediction is still in its infancy, recent development shows promising results, highlighting the role of ocean initial conditions. The initialisation of the ocean for decadal predictions is a major challenge for the next decade.The demographic transition "theory" or framework has been the main preoccupation of modern scientific demography in the past 60 years. However, other than the generality of mortality declining before fertility, there is little consensus on the timing, pace and causality related to socio-economic development In heterogeneous sub-Saharan Africa, the western-based transition theory is not very predictive of the variation in the pace of the transition, and does not take into account the realities of multiple risks and the dynamics of on-going vulnerabilities and hazards in addressing poverty, instability, food insecurity, excess mortality and globalization. It is important that population dynamics are well integrated into poverty reduction, climate adaptation, and transformation and development policies and programs. To that end, over the past 15 years, we have been using the A. Adepoju approach to rethinking the study of population dynamics in Africa, and adapting the K Davis framework of multi-phasic change and response and the R. Bilsborrow focus on agricultural pressure and migration. In the volatile Horn of Africa, the human ecology and geo-political structure of the population-environment-economy-political-technology-socio-cultural nexus are the crucial context These produce short and long-term demographic responses, adaptation and social change at micro community, household and community levels, that in turn change the timing and pace of the demographic transition. Some of the key demographic responses to high vulnerability and frequent hazards and shocks include migration, labor mobility, delays in marriage and family formation, abortion and divorce. The role of a policy-relevant academic book is to foster research on innovative theories, realistic conceptual frameworks, rigorous evaluation and practical field methods. These can strengthen capacity for monitoring human development targets, but also for evidence-based evaluation and decision-making to accelerate the pace of the demographic transition and the capturing of the potential demographic dividend in sub-Saharan AfricaThis was a national, capacity-building vulnerability assessment and profiling project carried out in 16 carefully targeted drought-prone districts in 1999-2002 by the Ethiopian Federal government in collaboration with regional multisectoral government counterparts and university researchers. It used a coordinated, consensus-building approach of assessing interdisciplinary and multilevel aspects of population/food insecurity and disease interrelationships In the process, both Malthusian and Boserupian theories were used to hypothesize that demographic change and response are important risks as well as appropriate adaptations to frequent natural and human hazards. To compliment the scarcity and unreliability of secondary data and information systems from relevant ministries and international organizations, primary data were collected on a multistage, stratified random sample of 10,000 households in 93 communities in 16 drought-prone districts, and spread out in the four most populated regions. The most demographically vulnerable households were found to be either newly formed, or old age and/or female headed, or with many siblings under 10 years of age. The most important assets for household resilience to drought continue to be access to arable land, draft animals and adult labor Household coping strategies and resilience to structural vulnerability were common, with off-farm labor, temporary migration and income diversification as the more successful adaptations. This participatory research finds support for neither the Malthusian nor Boserupian effects, exclusively: there seems to be no direct and consistent causal relationship between crude population-land pressure, rapid population growth and vulnerability to food and nutrition insecurity. The effect of population density is a combination of contextual, technological, organizational, infrastructural and ecological factors and conditions. There are such large inter-district and agro-ecological variation in different types vulnerability that require contextual and micro-level assessment to establish valid criteria for targeting of more effective famine prevention, risk reduction and climate adaptation programs. As part of poverty and food insecurity/disaster risk reduction policies, demographic strategies would include labor migration, carefully planned resettlement, small and large urban center development, and delayed transitions to adulthood and childbearing.Research on the impacts of climate change suggests that developed countries are not immune to the effects of a changing climate. The assumption that because of their high adaptive capacity, developed countries will adapt effectively is beginning to be dispelled by empirical evidence. While advancements in projections have facilitated a move from the study of impacts to concrete adaptation strategies, research that focuses on the social process of adaptation has been relatively neglected. Yet, when viewed as a social process, the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of adaptation are exposed, which brings into focus the effects that values and power dimensions have on actual adjustments and their outcomes for adaptation. This chapter demonstrates that some of the critical barriers to adaptation in developed countries arise from perceptions and values. It argues that these barriers are hindering adaptation now and will continue to do so unless the intricacies of the social processes underpinning adaptation are taken into explicit consideration in research and policy. Drawing on recent theoretical and empirical studies, the examples highlighted here show that narratives of immunity to the impacts of climate change in developed countries, confidence in technology, and perceived lack of immediacy about climate change impacts have resulted in an unwarranted complacency about adaptation. Effective adaptation strategies should be informed by a deeper understanding of the social process of adaptation and need to address a wide range of barriers.Since the early years of the twenty-first century, the United States has been awakening rapidly to the fact that climate change is underway and that adaptation to the unavoidable impacts of climate change is needed and must be begun now. This chapter provides an historical overview of the public, political, and scientific concern with adaptation in America. It begins by describing the shift from the early concerns with climate change and adaptation to the more recent awakening to the need for a comprehensive approach to managing the risks from climate change, as reflected in the news media. This shift is evident from the recent debates and drafting of adaptation-related bills in Congress; to the rapidly expanding activities at the state and local government levels; to the increasing engagement of nongovernmental organizations, professional associations, scientists, and consultants. This policy rush is not underlain, however, by widespread public engagement and mobilization, nor does it rest on a solid research foundation. To help the United States prepare adequately for the impacts of climate change, funding for vulnerability and adaptation research must be significantly increased. This will facilitate establishing adequate decision support mechanisms; effective communication and public involvement; and building the necessary capacity in science, the consulting world, and in government agencies.Many regions in Europe are vulnerable to climate change impacts and these have already been observed in many human and natural systems. There is therefore a need for all European countries to adapt to climate change. However, climate change does not pose a threat at all levels of change, nor in a similar way across all economic sectors and regions. Impacts of climate change vary by region, with the Mediterranean basin, north western and central-eastern Europe, and the Arctic, together with many coastal zones and other areas prone to river floods, mountains, and cities being particularly vulnerable. Consequently, adaptation options have to be tailor-made to local geographic conditions in terms of vulnerable landscape types and sectors involved. This is why European and national adaptation strategies must be complemented by regional approaches that address implementation issues at this scale. The European Union (EU) Adaptation White Paper together with national and regional adaptation strategies provide key steps toward European frameworks for adaptation measures and policies to strengthen resilience to climate change impacts. Monitoring and evaluation methods must be further developed, so that adaptation practices can be assessed across time and space. A preliminary set of success factors and barriers to adaptation is also important to identify and assess the determinants of good practices and assist stakeholders in developing robust adaptation strategies that can make Europe more resilient to climate change. Potential conflicts, synergies, and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation have also to be identified early in the decision-making process, and adaptation and mitigation efforts should be coordinated.The past focus of climate change action in Australia was dominated by mitigation initiatives and these remain a critical and urgent issue. However, the global imperative for planning and action to adapt to likely climate change impacts articulated by the scientific community has now been adopted as a key imperative for governments, industries, and communities alike. While it is often difficult to separate climate change adaptation initiatives from existing risk management or sustainability initiatives, over recent years there has been clear identification of new climate change adaptation policies and programs. These initiatives range from local-scale planning to reduce vulnerability, to national research programs such as the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Climate Adaptation Flagship. The Australian Government has also created a Department of Climate Change to coordinate and support activities at the national level. One of the key challenges that remains is mainstreaming the understanding of vulnerability to climate change impacts and associated adaptation initiatives, across and within sectors. For example, the emphasis of research and action has been based on assessments of exposure, with only a limited number of past research projects focused on the understanding of sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Furthermore, climate change adaptation is usually framed within an economic rationalist paradigm, rather than a quality of life paradigm, and consequently there are challenges and potential paradoxes associated with achieving overriding goals such as short-term economic growth. Nevertheless, Australia continues to build upon existing mitigation and risk management initiatives and has now embraced a range of policies, strategies, and promising actions to enhance climate change adaptation.This chapter is a review of the landscape of adaptation science and policy stakeholders and networks in the United Kingdom. The aim is to broadly map the key stakeholders and the activities in the science and policy sectors, and across regions and the Devolved Administrations. This is done to gain a better understanding of the range and scope of adaptation actions in the United Kingdom to date. The chapter makes advances in understanding the evolution of the UK adaptation landscape and demonstrates how adaptation policy and science are building adaptive capacity across institutions and networks. We conclude that adaptation policy and actions represent a change to living with climate change futures. The chapter also highlights that there remain significant challenges ahead, in particular in the realm of science.The necessity for adaptation is now widely recognized in Canada. However, the developing pattern of response is an expanding mosaic. Individual pieces - i.e., initiatives at the provincial, territorial, and municipal levels are visible, but the overall strategic design is lacking clarity and cohesion. This is likely due, in part, to Canada's federalism, and to the conceptualization of adaptation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The negotiations leading to the UNFCCC conceived of adaptation as largely a place-based and local matter; of concern only to those most vulnerable communities and countries. In consequence, a bottom-up approach was viewed as the preferred option. Over the life of the UNFCCC, adaptation has grown in significance and has come to be seen as requiring top-down strategic approaches. A major challenge now facing Canada and indeed all Parties to the Convention will be the effective and simultaneous management and coordination of both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Currently, in Canada, the blend has been allowed to evolve almost unguided, with modest encouragement from the federal government. Leadership has emerged at both provincial and municipal levels across the country. But it is not clear what the consequences of such an approach will be.Climate change is expected to increase health risks in all countries. Although public health agencies and organizations have impressive records of controlling the burden of climate-sensitive health outcomes, current and planned programs and activities may need to be modified to address the additional risks of climate change. Programs and activities need to take an iterative risk management approach if they are to maintain current levels of health burdens as diseases change their geographic range and incidence in response to changing temperature and precipitation patterns and as the risks of adverse health outcomes from extreme weather events increase. Public health can learn from the experiences in ecosystem management with adaptive management, a structured and iterative process of decision-making in the face of imperfect information, with an aim of reducing uncertainty through monitoring and evaluation. Although many of the steps in adaptive management are familiar to public health, key differences include: a stronger emphasis on stakeholder engagement; taking a systems-based approach; developing interventions based on models of future impacts; and a strong and explicit focus on iterative management that can facilitate the capacity for further adaptation. Incorporating these elements into public health programs and activities will increase their effectiveness to address the health risks of climate change.This chapter examines the relationship between people's general sense of psychosocial well-being and their capacity to respond to climate change and extreme weather events. Many people, while aware and concerned about climate change, are preoccupied with more immediate worries such as financial and health concerns as well as crime and other neighborhood conditions. Should environmental and emergency preparedness programming be effective in promoting adaptive behavior, it is important that these programs take into account how people's daily needs, priorities, attitudes, and values influence their motivation to prepare for climate change impacts. As such, there must be flexibility in the delivery of information and programming. This cannot be effectively achieved without greater emphasis on a participatory and consultative approach aimed at identifying those individual and community needs and priorities that shape people's responsiveness to public messaging and programs. This in turn increases the likelihood that people will not only perceive greater relevance in community activities aimed at enhancing climate change awareness and personal emergency preparedness, but will allow people to see themselves as part of the solution to climate change and other risks.The unpredictable nature of climate change poses considerable challenges to public health because it acts as a multiplier on existing exposure pathways and thus exacerbates existing vulnerabilities. Urban settings are particularly susceptible to the impacts of extreme weather events due to high population densities with shared exposure pathways. Moreover, metropolitan areas tend to be at increased risk from heat waves because urban climates are often warmer than un-built surroundings. Three aspects of urban adaptation to climate change are addressed here: (1) social interventions that advance bonding, bridging, and linking social capital in order to enhance community capacity and resilience; (2) interventions that attenuate the negative consequences of climatic events by physically improving the built environment; and (3) social services interventions that integrate multiple sectors through emergency plans for risk reduction of vulnerable populations. These adaptation strategies in urban environments illustrate the concept of lateral public health based on transdisciplinary cooperation and community-based participation. In order to mount an effective response, public health practitioners need to transcend the traditional disciplinary boundaries and embrace lateral public health. This framework farms out public health action to other sectors of society, as well as community members of at-risk populations, in order to promote sustainable adaptation.The Swedish Government's Commission on Climate and Vulnerability (2005-2007) assessed local vulnerability to climate change and adaptation needs within the main sectors of society for the periods 2011-2040, 2041-2070, and 2071-2100. The workgroup on Health (human and animal) worked closely with that on water. This chapter presents the main findings of the section on water-related health consequences from climate change. Heavy rain, floods, landslides, and increases in water flows may directly or indirectly impact infrastructure, buildings, public services, water sources, etc., which could cause health consequences ranging from deaths, injuries, and outbreaks of infectious diseases, to exposure to toxic compounds, and allergic reactions. The Commission's recommendations to different governmental authorities on issues connected to water-related health consequences are presented, together with additional adaptive measures that were suggested by the Health and Water work-groups. The value of incorporating the added risks of climate change into existing programs and planning was emphasized. In response to the recommendations, the government has now created new funding opportunities for climate change-related scientific research, and for knowledge building within its agencies. At the local level, some county and municipality boards have themselves initiated vulnerability and adaptation assessments focusing on local conditions, as bases for further planning and responses.Climate change poses increasing risks to the health of Canadians, particularly those most vulnerable to the impacts. Effective adaptations are needed to help people safeguard their health and well-being. Governments and communities have an important role to play in protecting citizens from climate-related health risks. Individuals also have a central role in adapting to climate change. Information about the perceptions of climate-related health risks and current vulnerability to the impacts is limited, but this information is needed by public health and emergency management authorities to inform education and outreach programs to promote greater adaptation actions among Canadians. This case study reports on the results of a national survey that was conducted in spring 2008 to better understand how Canadians perceive risks to health from climate change. Canadians generally accept that the climate is changing and many are concerned about its impacts - 72% view climate change as at least a moderate risk to health, with 32% rating it as a major risk. However, few Canadians have knowledge of specific risks to health posed by climate change, and many are not responding to health messages encouraging them to take protective measures to reduce impacts from current climate-related hazards. Results of this case study suggest that greater efforts are needed to inform Canadians about specific health risks related to climate change and tailor messages to populations most vulnerable to the impacts, in order to facilitate the adoption of adaptive actions.The success of private industry has long been sensitive to weather conditions. Accordingly, companies regularly adjust their business practices with change in the weather and the climate. Accelerating climate change increases the importance for industry to manage weather risks, and it adds to the difficulty of this process. Case studies presented in this book from the electricity, construction, insurance, and forestry industries identify current barriers and constraints to adaptation, and showcase potential adaptive actions for companies seeking to manage climate risks. Research on adaptation by industry to climate change is typically addressed within a decision-making framework where complex issues are mainstreamed into a comprehensive risk management system. The specific consideration of any one issue, like climate change, to an overall business decision may be impossible to measure, yet there is a framework for decision-making using well-established tools that can address all potential risks within the broad context that supports action. Four industry case studies identify a number of challenges evident for private decision-makers and other interested stakeholders seeking to support better decision-making by industry with respect to adaptation to climate change. There are significant differences in climate sensitivity between industries and between companies within an industry, so support mechanisms ideally must be customized for the specific circumstance of each business. Businesses need detailed local projections for many climate variables beyond temperature and precipitation. The importance of climate change for industry decision-making is highly dependent on the planning horizon and climate sensitivity evident in each industry. Also the relative absence of research into anticipatory and reactive adaptation by private industry provides a challenge for private and public decision-makers seeking to understand industry best practices.The topic of this chapter is climate change adaptation options for the electricity sector in Germany and France. The impacts of weather and climate change on this sector are described first. Based on this, practical adaptation options are then specified for the better use of opportunities and minimizing the preventable risks in the energy industry. Since the impacts and possible adaptation measures need to be considered in regional and company-specific scales, the German energy company Energie Baden-Wurttemberg AG (EnBW) and the French company Electricite de France (EDF) are focused upon. The options for adaptation are distinguished between short- and medium-term measures on one hand, and long-term measures on the other. One short-term option for action is load management. By recognizing the changing consumer behaviors, both quantitatively and qualitatively, loads can be adjusted to the momentarily optimized generation of energy. An important medium-term option for action is research into impacts and adaptation. Identifying the impacts of climate change on the sector is essential, because even two companies' susceptibility in the same industry can differ considerably. A long-term measure for adaptation is to produce a diverse range and design of power plants. While this strategy should be initiated for several reasons, the risks of climate change can be dispersed better, because every type of power generation is affected by climate change in its own specific way.Insurance is a prominent, well-established mechanism for risk transfer in developed countries. While North American governments have stalled on both mitigation of and adaptation to Climate change, the insurance industry (globally and in North America) is already viewing recent catastrophic events as being partially climate change related and exploring new adaptation initiatives. In general, the intent of these initiatives is to assure the prosperity of the insurance sector, not to prevent damage to life and property. Reliance by insurers on predictive risk modeling continues to be limited, as new initiatives are prompted by extreme events rather than modeled projections of damage. As another example of reactive behavior, insurers rely on legal judgments to determine the extent of their liabilities. This pattern of learning and response has two implications. First, opportunities for anticipatory adaptation prompted by insurer initiatives are very limited, which guarantees continued large losses from extreme events into the future. Second, proactive risk mitigation will have to be pursued and implemented on behalf of public welfare by the relevant branches of government and cannot be left to market forces.The degree to which Canadian forest management policies, institutions, and other factors either support or hinder the development of climate change adaptive capacity is discussed. The analysis is based on discussions with government and industry forest managers across Canada. Managers feel that they have the tools and the technical capability to successfully adapt. However, while these tools and abilities are available to forest managers, they are not always utilized due to policy barriers or lack of resources. Also, the adaptive capacity requirements of forest managers may be increasing as a result of global warming, as well as broader social, economic, and market trends. A model of "embedded science," in which scientists closely interact with forest managers in planning exercises leads to increased adaptive capacity. Some institutions, such as forest certification, have the potential for providing a framework for determining adaptation and adaptive capacity requirements. However, they will need to be modified in order to realize that potential. Forest management policy generally supports adaptation, but may limit the implementation of adaptation options in cases where the required innovation lies far outside of business-as-usual activities. Forest management policy needs to become more flexible and forward-looking, focusing on expected future outcomes under potentially different conditions, while at the same time acknowledging the uncertainty in expected outcomes. Reforming existing forest tenure arrangements and providing forest managers with more flexibility and local autonomy will allow more timely adaptation to climate change as well as other sources of change.This overview chapter considers five questions that cut across the four case studies in the section to follow: Why are urban environments of particular interest? What does an "urban environment" mean as a focus for adaptation actions? What do we know about climate change vulnerabilities and adaptation potentials in urban areas? What can we expect in the future with adaptation in urban areas? And what is happening with climate change adaptation in urban areas?As evidence of climate change has increased, attention has shifted from "is it happening?" toward "what should be the response?" There is increasing focus on assessing climate change impacts at the local scale, and on developing practical responses. This chapter summarizes lessons for assessment methodologies and practical adaptive responses for small- to medium-sized urban settlements, drawing on integrated assessment (IA) of five Australia settlements. The chapter describes the IA methodology developed, the nature of detailed investigations into specific impacts, and insights regarding local assessment and adaptation.Local government plays an important role in facilitating adaptation to climate change at the community and regional level. Experiences and lessons from New Zealand suggest that the following elements together contribute to an enabling environment for local government: (I) raising community awareness of climate change; (2) engaging and developing the local expertise of professionals and decision-makers by presenting climate change science, scenarios and their uncertainties in locally relevant contexts and through interactive workshops; (3) adoption of a sequential approach to assess risks and identify vulnerabilities in the context of other socioeconomic and location-specific pressures; and (4) support from central government through regulation and guidance material. We outline the measures undertaken in each of those areas and discuss remaining barriers and uncertainties.This study analyzes processes of adaptation to climate change through participatory research in Sweden's two largest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg. Perceptions of climate risks and constraints to adaptation are discussed. Practitioners from the public and private sector have identified stakeholders who are, and who should be, giving attention to adaptation, including the risks and threats facing the regions and how and which factors hinder the implementation of adaptation. In this study, it is found that those issues where adaptation is considered most difficult are mainly related to response capacity.Agriculture is vulnerable to climate change but has considerable adaptation potential. The sector will be significantly transformed over the next few decades as it incorporates new technology and management and organization, that are in part a response to changing demands from growing population, changing incomes, other competition for land, resource and environmental protection, and the effects of environmental change, including climate change, on agriculture. Adaptation research to date has largely been about educating the sector about potential risks and possible adaptation strategies. As we move to more "client-based" research, these recommendations will need to be more precise and tailored to individual decision-makers. Given the likely changes in the sector, much adaptation information may be delivered to farmers through recommendations on crops, pest management, and other inputs and products delivered by input manufactures and suppliers, and so these organizations will be as, if not more important clients for adaptation research. Research also needs to focus on where markets may fail in being adequately prepared, such as from the risk of abrupt climate change. The challenge ahead for adaptation research is how to come up with concrete, tested, and robust strategies that are responsive to the decision time frames in agriculture (10-20 years), given the significant variability and noise in climate.The production of grain is common to many developed countries. This industry therefore provides numerous opportunities to compare the responses of developed countries, in adapting to the impacts of climate change. This chapter focuses on Canada and Australia. These countries are representative of developed countries because of their geographical locations, and wheat is a major industry in each. This chapter identifies (1) research efforts in each country that are focused on developing new adaptive technologies, strategies, and plans; and (2) current practices that encourage the implementation of adaptive strategies. This chapter compares the adaptation research and policy approaches taken by Canada and Australia, and identifies strengths, weaknesses, and best practices that can be shared among developed countries.Adaptation is gaining attention as an inevitable answer to the challenges posed by climate change. The increasingly uncertain climatic conditions to which actors are exposed are becoming a constraint for their well-being. This chapter looks at diversification of agricultural land use as a key factor in reducing risk and as a means of coping with an uncertain climate. Borrowing from economic theory, this chapter illustrates how cropping patterns influence the expected revenue and risk. The standard deviation of the land use revenue is used as a proxy for climate risk. Agricultural land use is associated with two competing land use and water management strategies in the Hungarian Tisza River Basin: intensive agriculture protected by flood levees, and water retention areas with extensive cattle breeding and orchards. To cope with flood risk, the Hungarian government supports water retention and land use change to replace or complement the prevailing intensive agriculture dependent on flood levees and drainage. Our analysis shows that revenues from agriculture are well adjusted to the current climate variability. Considering recent revenues, a shift from intensive agriculture to extensive cattle breeding and orchards increases both the expected revenue from agriculture and the risk.Agricultural land covers over 70% of England and provides a wide range of important benefits to the society. These benefits are vulnerable to both the direct and indirect effects of climate change. Successful adaptation by the agriculture and land management sector is therefore vital, and this adaptation must be sustainable. This chapter introduces the concept of sustainable adaptation and discusses the United Kingdom government's approach to adaptation by the agriculture and land management sectors in England. We explain the importance of agriculture in England and the multiple benefits provided by agricultural systems, and briefly outline the pressures from climate change. We then outline a set of principles and a framework for decision making we have developed to help achieve sustainable adaptation. We describe how this framework is being applied to the development of adaptation policy for agriculture, and summarize some initial adaptation priorities that have been identified. We discuss how sustainable adaptation by farmers and land managers can be encouraged, focusing on the role government can play, including the likely contribution that existing agricultural policies will make to adaptation. Significant challenges exist, not least uncertainty about the future. Nevertheless, the adaptation measures that we have identified as initial priorities correspond closely to existing agricultural and environmental good practice, providing a clear starting point for action. Agriculture policy and adaptation policy are largely devolved to the national assemblies of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Therefore this chapter will largely focus on England. However, in some cases policy or research (for example, the Climate Change Risk Assessment required by the Climate Change Act) is undertaken on a UK-wide basis, some statistics are collected for the UK as a whole, and many of the issues discussed are applicable across all administrations.Anthropogenic climate change will create a new decision environment for governments, both national and regional. In rural regions and small towns, which are already facing a wide range of social, economic, and environmental pressures, this challenge will be especially difficult because of lower capacities to adapt. There are, however, encouraging examples of rural regions and small communities that are finding innovative ways to create shared learning partnerships that could empower them to create their own response paths. While researchers offer new knowledge on future climate change impacts, local-based practitioners and knowledge holders provide insights on local systems and the importance of attachment to place. As rural regions and small towns begin to take on leadership roles in adaptation planning, researchers and higher levels of government can use their capacities to enable local adaptation as part of long-term development planning. Examples are provided from the literature, followed by five cases contributed to this volume.The Hamilton region in Victoria, Australia is a rural farming community consisting of several small towns and the regional center of Hamilton. The region is already experiencing climate change, with a steady decline in annual rainfall and available groundwater, and increased frequency of droughts. A prolonged drought has necessitated ongoing water restrictions and forced farmers to alter cropping and stocking practices. Rainfall patterns are predicted to shift further toward the dry, which will affect farm viability, as will increased transport costs due to rising oil prices. The challenges the community face have led to a high local interest in understanding and responding to climate change. When the authors organized a public meeting in April 2007, over 70 people attended. They wanted to take immediate action on climate change, not wait for new national policies. A scenario thinking workshop was held in February 2008. Forty-one representatives of different sectors within the community participated. They developed four different stories of the future and undertook an initial analysis to identify implications and adaptation strategies. This revealed that climate change could have far more complex impacts on the region than first imagined. Possible impacts included higher levels of financial pressures, stress, mental illness, and addictive behaviors, affecting community cohesion and quality of life, plus possible farm closures, high unemployment, and associated population losses, affecting the viability of small towns. Strategies identified to reduce the vulnerability of the region included altering farming practices, ensuring water security, building social cohesion, attracting new residents, and diversifying employment opportunities. The local shire council, regional health service, and others have used the workshop outcomes to rethink their strategic plans.Resource-dependent communities are likely to be disproportionately affected by climate change. Yet, natural resource management policies continue to be developed and implemented without considering climate change adaptation. We highlight that this lack of coordination is potentially harmful to natural resources and resource-dependent communities with an example from the Tibetan Plateau, a region where climate is changing rapidly. Tibetan pastoralists inhabit rangelands that are the focus of recent development and management policies that promote fencing, sedentarization, individual rangeland use rights, and the elimination of grazing in some areas. These policies may have a negative effect on herders' ability to adapt to climate change. China's National Climate Change Programme lists controlling or eliminating grazing in some areas as key for adaptation to climate change, but experimental results indicate that grazing may buffer the rangelands from the negative effects of warming. These findings indicate that policies that support the well-developed strategies of resource-dependent communities for living in uncertain and variable environments can also enhance adaptation of these social and ecological systems to climate change. We conclude that management and environmental protection policies developed separately from climate change policy face increased failure potential and may decrease the ability of natural resources and the communities that depend upon them to successfully adapt to climate change.Climate change will create numerous challenges for water managers. In Ontario, many parts of the province will experience decreased runoff and groundwater recharge, reduced lake levels, and more extreme precipitation events. Shift in patterns of precipitation also are expected, with more falling as rain rather than snow in winter, and with summers being drier. For water managers, the implications are serious. At the most basic level, long-term plans and investments that assume that future hydrological conditions in future will be the same as those of the past simply are not sensible. How can water managers at the local level, who already face considerable challenges in dealing with current climatic variability, adjust to this new reality? This chapter argues for adaptation through mainstreaming, in other words, building adaptation to climate change into existing decision-making and planning processes. Ongoing efforts to protect drinking water sources across Ontario currently afford the best opportunity to mainstream climate change into an existing water-related planning process. The chapter identifies challenges and opportunities for accomplishing this goal.This chapter describes various forces that influence the ability of decision-making and institutional structures in Canadian rural and resource-dependent communities to manage, plan for, and respond to future risks and uncertainties resulting from climate change. The context within which such communities make decisions related to capacity building is the outcome of historical development trajectories, interactions with higher levels of government, and macro-level economic structures and processes. The success of future capacity building and planning will be strongly influenced by such factors as improved coordination across different levels of government, the provision of locally geared information about environmental and climate change, economic diversification and the ability to adjust to and take advantage of rapidly changing demographic patterns in such communities.The majority of anticipatory adaptation frameworks applied in developed countries tend to idealize the institutional and cultural readiness for their successful deployment. We explore the validity of these assumptions for Arctic Canada, where marginalized communities are experiencing extreme climate change, as well as contending with many other external and internal stresses. Collaborations with communities in Nunavut revealed that they lack the resources, institutional capacity, and expertise to employ long-term strategic planning processes and conventional analytical decision methods. More importantly, their priorities and cultural perspective are inconsistent with underlying Western theory and its implicit assumptions. In light of these challenges, we recommend that efforts to mainstream climate change adaptation rely on frameworks that can (1) respect community priorities and introduce resilience to climate change as one part of meeting other critical development goals and (2) accommodate key cultural differences in decision-making, values, and the use of information.This chapter places the book in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and describes how the developing countries were the leaders in recognizing the need for greater attention to adaptation. The developed countries are now beginning to move rapidly into adaptation and an explosion of interest is bringing to the fore a long list of unresolved questions about adaptation to climate change and its relation to development, and its appropriate management from the local to the national level and for different socioeconomic sectors and a wide variety of climate-related risks. This book is at the leading edge of a rapidly expanding literature with many questions remaining to be addressed.The Regional Planning Association Western Pomerania conducts the research project 'Spatial Development Strategy for Climate Change in the Planning Region Western Pomerania'. This project is part of the action program 'Demonstration Projects of Spatial Planning' (MORO) of the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs. The Strategy aims at a combination of adaptation measures and measures for climate protection, which can be effectively communicated to the public. Five fields of action that are geared towards the most important spatial factors and that are discussed by experts and other stakeholders ensure an integrated Adaptation Strategy. The fields of action 'biodiversity', 'agriculture, forestry and fishery', 'water management and water cycle', and 'settlement and urban development, mobility, tourism, power generation and energy distribution' build on one another and show a number of interactions. The fifth field of action addresses the regional measures for climate adaptation. Upon project completion in 2011, a coherent Strategy for regional development will be presented. The Strategy will also address the parameters precipitation and temperature and the indicator rise in sea level, which are influenced by Climate Change. The Strategy contains the planning direction in terms of protection of regional biodiversity, adaptation of agriculture and forestry, protection of ground- and drinking water, settlement and urban development and tourism as well as new mobility and power generation concepts. Measures for climate protection that offer development opportunities for local authorities, industry and private enterprise receive a supporting regional context. The Spatial Development Strategy will be politically binding by way of the resolutions of the Regional Planning Association Western Pomerania and will direct regional planning in the coming years.Natural hazards play an increasingly important role in societal contexts due to rising casualties and costs observed in the last decades, which is often attributed to Climate Change impacts. Climate Change adaptation and natural hazards have entered European regional policy relatively recently but are quickly growing in importance. In addition to several national and regional Climate Change adaptation strategies the Territorial Agenda of the European Union and the EU White Paper on Climate Change Adaptation mention Climate Change and hazard related risk management as key role in European regional development. But in this argument it is often overlooked that human societies have developed settlements in hazard prone areas, sometimes despite better knowledge. Spatial planning could be a very useful tool to protect settlements from hazard impacts but its full range of potential is seldom applied or overruled by other priorities. It is of interest to observe how human beings have dealt with various natural hazards since the beginning of societies, first of all to understand motivations, and secondly to use this knowledge for new adaptation concepts, including potential impacts of Climate Change. The decision making processes that lead to hazard adaptation concepts are one of the key foci, as well as the possibilities and feasibilities to integrate Climate Change adaptation concepts. Concrete examples of human increases in vulnerabilities and the development of adaptation concepts are given from a case study in the Baltic Sea Region.The neoliberal transformation of the global political-economic system since the mid-1970s has led to profound and increasing inequality and has limited state capacities to tax, regulate and carry out socially supportive public policies. Neoliberalism, or the global institutionalization of laissez-faire economics, has helped to generalize individual and community vulnerability to climate-induced changes and decrease resilience by increasing poverty and thereby limiting options; the global majority face increasingly contingent employment and downward pressure on wages while global economic competition deprives smallholders of their assets. States compete to attract mobile capital by deregulating private activity such as logging and real estate development, increasing climate-related risks to individuals and communities. At the same time, neoliberal limits on the state have inhibited states' ability to fund and coordinate a range of necessary climate adaptations. Finally, neoliberalism undermines social cohesion and thereby limits the potential of civil society to substitute for the diminished state. Reforms to the global neoliberal system are therefore necessary if climate-vulnerable populations are to be protected.Local adaptation to climate change is essential for vulnerable coastal communities faced with increasing threats to livelihood and safety. This paper seeks to understand the micro-level enabling conditions for climate change adaptation through a livelihood lens in a study of six coastal villages in Bacacay in the province of Albay, Philippines. Albay is a high-risk province due to hydrometeorological and geophysical hazards. The analysis of livelihood resilience utilizing the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach shows that a soft adaptation strategy focusing on enhancing human and social capital needs to be undertaken to increase adaptive capacity and build resilience in the study area. Moreover, the micro-level variations in the villages suggest that the understanding of local conditions is indispensable in planning and formulation of appropriate adaptation strategies and actions at local level.This paper presents a probabilistic-based framework to assess the potential hurricane risks to residential construction under various wind speed change scenarios due to potential climate change. Every year hurricane (cyclone) hazards cause extensive economic losses and social disruption around the world. Annual hurricane damage in the United States (US) is around $6 billion in recent years. Hurricane intensity or/and frequency may change due to the increase in sea surface temperature as a result of climate change. Implications of the changing hazard patterns on hurricane risk assessment warrants an investigation to evaluate the potential impact of climate change. The framework includes probabilistic models of hurricane occurrence and intensity and conditional damage state probabilities (vulnerability model) for typical residential construction in the US, and an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of various climate change adaptation strategies. A case study of Miami-Dade County, Florida is presented to illustrate the framework under various scenarios of change in maximum annual wind speed over 50 years. Demographic information, such as median house value and changes in house numbers, and distribution of houses on different exposure, is used to estimate the time-dependent probable damage with or without possible climate change induced change in wind speed. This study shows that climate change may have a substantial impact on the damage and loss estimation in coastal areas, and that certain adaptation strategies can cost effectively decrease the damage, even if the wind speed does not change. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a geographic information system (GIS)-based risk assessment tool for visualising climate change impacts in agricultural industries and evaluating eventual adaptation strategies. Design/methodology/approach - A climate change adaptation strategy tool (CCAST) with built-in GIS capability has been developed for agricultural industries. Development of the GIS functionality within CCAST includes the implementation of map projection, boundary allocation, interpolation and a graphical display of spatial data, hi total, 20 climatic and crop indices are computed alongside basic climate variables (rainfall and temperature) from downscaled global climate models at 1,062 sites across the state of New South Wales (NSW) located in eastern Australia. Findings - A case study in Australia is used to demonstrate use of this tool. This shows selecting suitable genotypes of wheat is a key adaptation strategy to mitigate the impacts of climate change on wheat cropping. It shows that spring wheat genotypes will become predominate, while the winter genotypes will only be viable in clearly defined areas where sufficient days of cool temperature exist for completion of vernalisation in a future warmer climate. Originality/value - CCAST integrates knowledge relevant to climate impact management in a stand-alone environment. It benefits from statistical analysis and GIS functionalities and provides many user-friendly GIS features to make it suitable for practitioners on the ground.Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1986, the Mekong Delta has experienced an extensive transformation process in its agricultural sector. This transformation has been characterized by agricultural intensification, the enhanced use of agrichemicals (fertilizer, pesticides), and emerging concerns for human health and the environment. The predicted impacts of climate change such as sea level rise, greater seasonal variability in precipitation and river flows, and elevated temperature and CO(2) concentration will all likely also influence the agricultural landscape and thus agrichemical use. Against the background of the anticipated climate change impacts in the Mekong Delta, this chapter aims to draw a scenario for future agrichemical use and attendant environmental problems. This scenario is achieved through a review of the main climate change-mediated drivers for agrichemical use, with a focus on land-use changes and changes in pest and disease patterns. In addition, the chapter identifies possible adaptation measures that may be implemented by the agricultural sector in the Mekong Delta and explores the potential environmental effects of these adaptation strategies.In the international climate change negotiations, the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have emerged as a credible group through the AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) and have called for a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels. Whatever the outcomes of the negotiations, they are exacerbated by climate change and a rising sea level. Many share common characteristics of small size, high population density, limited land resources, vulnerability to natural hazards, threatened biodiversity, high dependence on tourism, and limited funds and human resources. The suggestions put forward for a research agenda for the SIDS include a comprehensive assessment of the SIDS as a group, a focused attention on oceans, increased development on renewable energy, inclusion of climate adaptation under natural disaster reduction, a strategy of 'save some islands rather than not to have any' for some SIDS, and large-scale modular mangrove planting for coastal protection and adaptation to sea-level rise. These suggestions could provide an expanded scope of adaptation for the SIDS. (c) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 1-6 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.84Over the last few decades, environmental scientists have played a critical role in tracking and describing the flows of urban resources such as energy, water, materials, wastes, greenhouse gases and chemical contaminants through cities, their regions and the global commons. There have been major technological advances in environmental chemistry, analytical instrumentation and numerical modelling of the transport of contaminants through air, water, soil and biota. There is now a much greater appreciation of the complexity of biogeochemical, hydrological, social and economic interactions that affect the behaviour of chemical contaminants in urban, industrial, agricultural and natural ecosystems. Arguably, this past emphasis has been on the descriptive and predictive approaches to urban environmental research with a strong emphasis on the biophysical, chemical, biogeochemical, hydrological and atmospheric sciences. The emerging challenge is how environmental scientists can more effectively bring their knowledge to those decision-makers who are responsible for changing urban and industrial processes that cause environmental impacts in the first place. As the global urban population grows, there are a range of new and complex urban climate adaptation challenges and opportunities in the built environment. These challenges include housing the vulnerable, improving indoor air quality, lowering health impacts in cities and adaptations to heat stress. The complexity and scale of these challenges will require environmental scientists to work collaboratively with other urban professionals, including engineers, planners, designers, economists, policymakers, managers and lawyers, and communities to bring about climate adaptation in urban environments.Climate change impacts in Pacific Northwest Region of North America (PNW) are projected to include increasing temperatures and changes in the seasonality of precipitation (increasing precipitation in winter, decreasing precipitation in summer). Changes in precipitation are also spatially varying, with the northwestern parts of the region generally experiencing greater increases in cool season precipitation than the southeastern parts. These changes in climate are projected to cause loss of snowpack and associated streamflow timing shifts which will increase cool season (October-March) flows and decrease warm season (April-September) flows and water availability. Hydrologic extremes such as the 100 yr flood and extreme low flows are also expected to change, although these impacts are not spatially homogeneous and vary with mid-winter temperatures and other factors. These changes have important implications for natural ecosystems affected by water, and for human systems. The PNW is endowed with extensive water resources infrastructure and well-established and well-funded management agencies responsible for ensuring that water resources objectives (such as water supply, water quality, flood control, hydropower production, environmental services, etc.) are met. Likewise, access to observed hydrological, meteorological, and climatic data and forecasts is in general exceptionally good in the United States and Canada, and is often supported by federally funded programs that ensure that these resources are freely available to water resources practitioners, policy makers, and the general public. Access to these extensive resources support the argument that at a technical level the PNW has high capacity to deal with the potential impacts of natural climate variability on water resources. To the extent that climate change will manifest itself as moderate changes in variability or extremes, we argue that existing water resources infrastructure and institutional arrangements provide a reasonably solid foundation for coping with climate change impacts, and that the mandates of existing water resources policy and water resources management institutions are at least consistent with the fundamental objectives of climate change adaptation. A deeper inquiry into the underlying nature of PNW water resources systems, however, reveals significant and persistent obstacles to climate change adaptation, which will need to be overcome if effective use of the region's extensive water resources management capacity can be brought to bear on this problem. Primary obstacles include assumptions of stationarity as the fundamental basis of water resources system design, entrenched use of historical records as the sole basis for planning, problems related to the relatively short time scale of planning, lack of familiarity with climate science and models, downscaling procedures, and hydrologic models, limited access to climate change scenarios and hydrologic products for specific water systems, and rigid water allocation and water resources operating rules that effectively block adaptive response. Institutional barriers include systematic loss of technical capacity in many water resources agencies following the dam building era, jurisdictional fragmentation affecting response to drought, disconnections between water policy and practice, and entrenched bureaucratic resistance to change in many water management agencies. These factors, combined with a federal agenda to block climate change policy in the US during the Bush administration have (with some exceptions) contributed to widespread institutional "gridlock" in the PNW over the last decade or so despite a growing awareness of climate change as a significant threat to water management. In the last several years, however, significant progress has been made in surmounting some of these obstacles, and the region's water resources agencies at all levels of governance are making progress in addressing the fundamental challenges inherent in adapting to climate change.Climate change represents the possibility of losing the quality of the existing ecosystems around the world. To manage such consequences, dedicated actions for resilience are needed and the process of adaptation is the key that has to be carried out at a regional level. The challenge at this level is not only to assess vulnerabilities and risks to each ecosystem, but also to develop policies to adapt so as to achieve sustainability. In this paper, we focus on the ecosystem of water and study the different impacts on it from the perspective of regional Australia. We then propose a digital ecosystem-based architecture in a multisystem approach, which can be utilised for the process of water sustainability adaptation in regional Australia.Tourism is one of the largest global economic sectors, is a vital contributor to the economy of many nations, and is highly promoted as an important means of future development and poverty reduction in developing countries. The interface between climate and tourism is multifaceted and complex, with broad significance for tourist decision-making and expenditures, as well as industry marketing and operations worldwide. With the close relationship of tourism to the environment and climate, the integrated effects of climate change are anticipated to markedly affect tourism businesses and destinations, as well as the destination choices and mobility of individual tourists in the decades ahead. As recent major natural, political, and economic shocks have demonstrated, the tourism sector has relatively high adaptive capacity. Improved climate services will be vital for travelers and tourism businesses and destinations to adapt to climate change in an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable manner. This paper outlines the range of applications of weather and climate information within the tourism sector and discusses priorities for future work to advance climate services for weather risk management and climate change adaptation for the tourism sector.As in other parts of the world, the indigenous people of Jharkhand hold important context-relevant knowledge and strategies for addressing dwindling natural resources base and climate change. The paper documents some of the collective wealth of indigenous knowledge related to agricultural practices, including land preparation/ manuring/ soil treatment, cropping systems, input management, water resource management and utilization, and soil and water conservation practices, used especially by tribal farmers of the region. Related research and policy issues essential for successful amalgamation of such indigenous knowledge in resource conservation and climate change adaptation are also discussed. It concludes that the indigenous knowledge will help to address food and nutritional security in the face of climate change.Integrated water resources management offers an ideal platform for addressing the goals of freshwater conservation and climate change adaptation. Environmental flow assessment and systematic conservation planning have evolved separately in respective aquatic and terrestrial realms, and both are central to freshwater conservation and can inform integrated water resources management. Integrating these two approaches is mutually beneficial. Environmental flow assessment considers dynamic flow regimes, measuring social, economic and ecological costs of development scenarios. Conservation planning systematically produces different conservation scenarios that can be used in assessing these costs. Integration also presents opportunities to examine impacts of climate change on conservation of freshwater ecosystems. We review progress in environmental flow assessment and freshwater conservation planning, exploring the mutual benefits of integration and potential ways that this can be achieved. Integration can be accomplished by using freshwater conservation planning outputs to develop conservation scenarios for assessment against different scenarios, and by assessing the extent to which each scenario achieves conservation targets. New tools that maximise complementarity by achieving conservation and flow targets simultaneously should also be developed.Hydrophobic prolamins are endosperm storage proteins accounting for about 40% of the total protein in most cereal seeds. Despite the absence of a reference method, several procedures have been periodically published to quantify prolamins in cereals. The aim of this study was to compare a conventional fractionation assay (LND) vs three other methods: one based on sequential extractions (HAM) and two rapid turbidimetric procedures (L&H and DRO). Prolamins were extracted in duplicate on barley, corn and wheat samples. For the turbidimetric prolamin evaluation in barley and wheat, a universally available purified gliadin, as alternative to purified zein, was also tested as standard reference material (SRM). The extraction prolamin values were different among grain types (P<0.01) and methods (P<0.01) without interaction (P>0.05). LND agreed sufficiently well both with HAM and with L&H methods (R-2=0.664 and R-2=0.703, respectively, P<0.01). On all tested cereals, LND and L&H gave similar prolamin extraction values (P>0.05), whereas a higher prolamin quantification was obtained using HAM (P<0.05). Overall, DRO did not provide similar comparison and performance parameters with respect to other method comparisons. The effect of changing purified zein with purified gliadin was noteworthy only for L&H, both for wheat and barley samples (P<0.01). Considering the increasing attention of animal nutritionists on prolamins, our results could get useful information for routine laboratory analysis.Planning for current and future climate risks depends on more than early warning signals and technical climate information. The management and enabling of effective risk approaches, we argue, is shaped by complex contextual settings. These contexts are shaped by decisions including: What climate risks are prioritised? Who makes decisions about risk response interventions and how do they make these decisions? This preliminary study uses observed changes in storm events in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) and the City's Climate Change Adaptation Plan as a lens through which the scope of such contexts and decisions can be interrogated. The study is used as a springboard from which to begin a dialogue on interactive approaches to adaptation and response planning for current and future climate change. We suggest that this dialogue may be required for a more proactive disaster-risk approach in the city. The major focus of the paper includes a statistical analysis of historical weather data from the OR Tambo Weather Station, located in close proximity to the city. Significant trends are identified in the frequency and intensity of thunderstorms for the period 1960-2009. This preliminary assessment shows some similarities with emerging climate change projections that suggest that heavy rainfall events may become more frequent and intense. The preliminary results presented here also concur with the recent findings contained in the CoJ's Climate Change Adaptation Plan (2009). While the study is in no way substantive and few wider generalisations and strong conclusions can be drawn from it, the study does provide a useful starting point for considering possible planning interventions. The potential value of using science and information from studies, such as this, is highlighted along with the possible ways in which such science can interact with and help inform a comprehensive planning agenda in the City. Finally, the paper calls for more attention to be paid to the contributions and perceptions of community awareness and understanding of climate risks.Few conservation projects consider climate impacts or have a process for developing adaptation strategies. To advance climate adaptation for biodiversity conservation, we tested a step-by-step approach to developing adaptation strategies with 20 projects from diverse geographies. Project teams assessed likely climate impacts using historical climate data, future climate predictions, expert input, and scientific literature. They then developed adaptation strategies that considered ecosystems and species of concern, project goals, climate impacts, and indicators of progress. Project teams identified 176 likely climate impacts and developed adaptation strategies to address 42 of these impacts. The most common impacts were to habitat quantity or quality, and to hydrologic regimes. Nearly half of expected impacts were temperature-mediated. Twelve projects indicated that the project focus, either focal ecosystems and species or project boundaries, need to change as a result of considering climate impacts. More than half of the adaptation strategies were resistance strategies aimed at preserving the status quo. The rest aimed to make ecosystems and species more resilient in the face of expected changes. All projects altered strategies in some way, either by adding new actions, or by adjusting existing actions. Habitat restoration and enactment of policies and regulations were the most frequently prescribed, though every adaptation strategy required a unique combination of actions. While the effectiveness of these adaptation strategies remains to be evaluated, the application of consistent guidance has yielded important early lessons about how, when, and how often conservation projects may need to be modified to adapt to climate change.A Statistical Downscaling Model (SDM) developed at the Bureau of Meteorology has now reached a stage where high resolution climate change projections of essential surface variables (rainfall and daily temperature), at a daily time scales, can be generated for the entire Australian continent. These projections are resolved onto on a horizontal grid of approximately 5-by-5km, and are based on an existing international database of global climate model projections used for assessment of climate change impacts as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The statistical linkage at the core of the SDM is based on the idea of daily meteorological analogues where optimal matching synoptic weather patterns are searched for in a historical database. The historical database employed here is made up of reanalyses of atmospheric circulation as observations for the large-scale predictors, and the Bureau of Meteorology's high quality in-situ observations consisting of a sparse network of about 100 to 200 stations across the continent. A combination of daily atmospheric variables are used for regional and seasonal optimization of the SDM (e. g. mean sea level pressure combined with an upper air moisture variable to predict rainfall or an upper level measure of temperature and air flow to predict surface temperatures) resulting in a total of 120 individual statistical models that describe a wide variety of Australian climates spanning from the tropical monsoon in the north to cool and temperate in the south. The 120 models are a product of: Regionalisation of the Australian continent into 10 climate zones where a different statistical model is optimized for each region; Meteorological analogues are chosen from within the same calendar season, thus 4 different models are optimized for each calendar season; and Analogues are searched separately for the three surface predictands (Rainfall, T-max and T-min). While the optimization and original application of the SDM was based on in-situ data, here we present the application of the technique to the latest surface gridded observations produced by the Bureau of Meteorology as part of the Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP). In this communication, we present and discuss the evaluation of the results using the gridded observations, including: The ability of the technique to reproduce the mean and variance of the observed local series; The ability of the technique to reproduce day-to-day variability, inter-annual variability and long-term trends; and The ability of the technique, despite being based on a univariate approach, to reproduce the observed relationships amongst individual predictands (rainfall and temperature). Following this, each of the individual SDMs are applied to climate scenarios described by a suite of global climate models. The flexibility and low cost of the SDM makes for easy application to the large number of existing climate simulations, and to sample the uncertainties attached to the plausible future emission trajectories as well as the possible response of the climate system as modelled by the current climate models. In this regard, the SDM represents an essential ingredient for assessing future climate change uncertainties at a scale relevant for local climate impact studies. It has been noted in recent applications of downscaled climate projections presented here, that researchers can produce detailed climate change impact studies allowing for the development of well informed climate change adaptation policies.Damage to infrastructure caused by anthropogenic climate change can cause dramatic economic loss and social disruption. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change may cause an increase in the intensity of droughts, the frequency of floods, and increasing coastal vulnerability to tropical cyclones, storm surges and sea-level rise. This paper uses the stochastic technique Monte Carlo technique to explore the time-dependent damage due to climate change, considering the hazard as a stochastic variable. Three different time periods were explored: 2010-2035, 2010-2050 and 2010-2100. The analysis investigated no climate change and with climate change scenarios that affect the probabilistic model of hazard occurrence, and vulnerability functions that represent the potential damage for a given hazard. The probabilistic model and vulnerability models used in this study are relatively simple, but they can help to generate a framework of the time-dependent climate change damage and understand its economic behaviour. Parametric studies are heavily used in this study to explore a range of possible conclusions. The sensitivity of the change of parameters such as threshold hT, discount rate r, and time T are considered. The results are given in terms of mean cumulative annual loss. The discount rate was found to be a key parameter affecting cumulative damage prediction. Since damage often only occurs once a threshold level of hazard has occurred (such as a flood level exceeding the floor level of a house), then the influence of this threshold value on damage is significant. Damage/impact models utilising probabilistic hazard were used to verify the robustness of results. Results are very sensitive to threshold. Time-dependent predictions of damage can help decision-makers assess the impact of climate change and the economic viability of climate change adaptation strategies.Australia is a continent subject to climatic extremes, and its losses from tropical cyclones and thunderstorms are significantly higher than other natural hazards. The number of severe tropical cyclones is likely to increase due to climate change. Brisbane and the northeast coast of Queensland are regions where design wind specifications may be inadequate under future climate conditions. For example, the Australia Building Codes Board is considering a shift in the boundary to cyclone Region C to extend it south on the Queensland coast to 27 degrees S to include areas in the Sunshine Coast. Hence, there is an urgent need to assess the risks and economic viability of these climate adaptation measures. An appropriate adaptation strategy may be one that increases design wind speeds for new houses leading to reduced vulnerability of new construction. The present paper will assess the damage risks, adaptation costs and cost-effectiveness of this adaptation measure for residential construction in the Queensland cities of Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and Brisbane assuming time-dependent changes in frequency and intensity of cyclonic and non-cyclonic winds to 2100. Advanced spatial and temporal stochastic simulation methods will be used to include uncertainty and variability of climate and building vulnerability on damage risks. The criteria for cost-effectiveness are reduction in present value measured by Net Present Value (NPV) and probability that NPV exceeds zero. The simulation analysis found that increasing the wind classification for design of new housing (at a cost of $3,700 per house) for all cities can produce a mean NPV that exceeds $8.3 billion by 2100 assuming a 4% discount rate (see Figure 1). The benefits are highest for Brisbane due to its high exposure (large population) and relatively high vulnerability of existing residential construction. Retrofitting older houses is a more costly adaptation strategy which mostly resulted in a net loss. We also showed that the benefits of adaptation strategies are maximised if they are implemented promptly, but deferral to 2020 or 2030 will still result in a net benefit.As a first step in responding to new phenomena such as climate change people need to make sense of these new phenomena. Social representations theory suggests that people first anchor new phenomena to what they already know and then through processes of social interaction such as conversation or engagement with public media, people objectify this anchored representation in the form of an image, metaphor or symbol. This objectification makes the phenomenon familiar and part of common sense. As such the objectified phenomenon is added as a new social object to the group's world. The social representations form an important underpinning feature of how people respond to phenomena such as climate change. The process of making sense of phenomena such as climate change is thus very much a social process and we need to understand how this process occurs in order to effectively model people's responses. In a similar vein, to understand how people respond to climate change we need to make sense of how they make sense of the situations they face; what enables and what constrains their ability to adapt to climate change. These enabling and constraining factors need to be understood as objects within the social world. Making sense of new phenomena is a highly complex process. As society grapples with making sense of climate change and having to adapt to climate change it is very difficult to predict what social objects will emerge and become objectified. This is a truly difficult situation to model. To build models of the social dimensions of climate change we will need as a first step, to be able to model this highly complex sense making process through which groups within, and society as a whole come to terms with climate change and what enables them to adapt to climate change. In this paper we describe some preliminary results from our investigations of sense making in relation to climate change and climate change adaptation among different social groups. Our data compromise almost 1000 narrative fragments of people's personal experiences of what enables and what constrains adaptation to climate change. We present some preliminary findings of patterns in how society in Australia and Canada, are making sense of adapting to climate change. Respondents in our survey revealed characteristics of their narratives and their own relationship to their narrative as well as a number of characteristics of themselves. We present preliminary results of mixed methods analysis of word association and narrative fragment data on what people think of in relation to climate change and in which factors help and which hinder adaptation to climate change. An important conclusion emerging from our preliminary analyses of the data was that there was no one consensual representation either of climate change or the factors that enable or constrain adaptation to climate change. The paper concludes by identifying some opportunities and difficulties that our analyses present for modelling the social dimensions of climate change.This action-research project investigates the extent to which current coastal planning arrangements can respond to climate change impacts such as coastal erosion and recession in the southwest of Western Australia. The complex social ecological system that comprises coastal planning in the region was modelled in a collaborative process. This took the form of a major action research workshop followed by further small workshops and interviews with key actors. The modelling process has implications for coastal planning as it shows that despite recent changes to coastal planning policy there are still significant areas of liability resulting from climate change that are not yet accounted for by governance. More generally, private and public coastal developments in WA are in a phase of rapid growth, with observable degradation of the coastal environment. Within the context of the model system, this implies that the positive feedback subsystems are strongly driving the system, and current levels of response to public liability and environmental advocacy are relatively weak and inadequate to achieve sustainable coastal management. For this system to be stable requires that negative system feedback be stronger than positive feedback. Future modelling efforts will investigate potential interventions and restructuring of governance system to achieve goals of sustainable development. Thus far, the main use of the model has been as a heuristic device to discuss the coastal planning system with key informants, and to identify constraints and opportunities to coastal adaptation through the planning system.This paper presents the creative use of Viable Systems Modelling (VSM) as a mechanism to help multiple interest groups develop a strategy for land use adaptation to climate change for the Victorian region of Gippsland. VSM is a technique for representing systems developed by Stafford Beer from the 1960s with a strong grounding in the cybernetics discipline (Beer 1966). Originally derived by examining organisms such as humans as a system, the conceptual framework of a recursive hierarchy where any system can be considered part of a supra-system and made up of sub-systems was formed. For a system to be 'viable', Beer and his colleagues established a number of requirements or laws about the sub-systems and information channel characteristics that join them. Furthermore, each of the sub-systems could be considered a viable system in its own right due to the nested nature of the structure of systems. Since the early development, Beer and many others have applied the theory of VSM to organisational management as a means to either design the structure of business or government organisations, or alternately to examine existing organisations with the view to diagnosing why they may not be viable. While there has been some application of VSM to government organisations, there has been only a few instances published where VSM has been applied to natural resource management problems (NRM). At the invitation of a group of local governments in Gippsland, Victoria, we have commenced the task of modelling the Gippsland Region as a viable system. Two subsystems of the Gippsland Regional System were chosen to demonstrate the approach. Agriculture, with the system in focus being a generic farm was chosen because it is intimately involved with natural resource management, economic production, and the social fabric of the region. Agriculture is also predicted to be subject to significant change over the coming decades especially due to climate change with possible large shifts in the optimum produce likely. Secondly, the government service industry, with the system in focus being local government was chosen because of its essential role in providing local infrastructure and planning strategies to allow the community and business (including farms) to exist and prosper. A critical aspect of VSM includes defining the best information that needs to flow between the sub-systems and the operating environment, and between different levels in the recursion to allow components to make effective decisions. To help structure this aspect of the research, an approach by (Bossel 2001) to define basic orientors of a system was used. For a system to be viable, 6 or 7 orientations of a system must be satisfied. These range from aspects such as resource use efficiency, to adaptability, and for sentient systems psychological wellbeing. For each of the orientors, indicators or indices are devised to capture the essence of the information about the system's response to the environment, which can collectively be used to judge the viability of the system. We contend that a system can be viable only if it has a viable structure as outlined by Beer and each of the orientations of the system and sub-system are in a satisfactory state as determined by Bossel's indicators. Considering the farm system, it is largely concerned with taking information and resources from the broader operating environment in order to undertake operations that are productive in the economic, social and natural resource management contexts. On the other hand, the local government system is largely about manipulating the broader environment, for example through infrastructure provision, to enable systems like farms to operate effectively. In order for local government to make resilient and effective decisions it must have a source of information about the systems it serves. We propose that a regional information system, from which farms and council can draw information about the their viability and farms can supply information about risks to their viability is the way forward is the way forward to support the decision making of both councils and farms. In particular, local government can seek information on risks to viability in the region in order to plan transformative adaptation responses to climate and structural change, and avoid the likelihood of investing in stranded assets.Floods, droughts, and climate change are the three most important influences of climate on Australia's water resources. Australia has a very variable climate, which is amplified as even greater variability in the river flows. Climate change impact on water availability will affect people, agriculture, ecosystems, industries and many other sectors. Climate science and modelling indicates that future winter and annual rainfall in southern Australia, where most water is consumed, is likely to decline and this will be amplified as an even bigger reduction in streamflow. The future hydroclimate of southern Australia will continue to be very variable with long wet and dry periods, but the decline in long-term average streamflow means that water resources systems need to cope with more frequent and potentially more severe droughts. As well as reducing streamflow, a warmer climate will also increase potential evaporation and hence increase the demand for water in irrigated agriculture, cities and for use by wetlands and water-dependent ecosystems. Thus climate change will not only reduce water availability but also increase the gap between supply and demand in southern Australia. Extreme rainfall events in most locations are likely to become more intense in the future, driven by a warmer atmosphere. This will lead to greater stormwater runoff and sewer overflows in urban areas, increase flood risks, and increase erosion and sediment and nutrient delivery to waterways. There may also be changes to other hydrological characteristics, but current scientific ability to predict them is limited. This paper provides a commentary on the current state of knowledge on climate variability and climate change, and the potential impact on water resources. It describes the methods used to predict climate impact on water resources, ranging from simple rules that can be used to estimate the sensitivity of long-term average streamflow to changes in rainfall and potential evaporation, to climate and hydrological modelling to predict climate change impact on the range of hydrological characteristics. Future runoff projections across continental Australia are also presented, together with the range of uncertainty. The considerable range in future runoff projections is mainly because of the uncertainty in future regional rainfall projections under a changed climate. In the near term, future streamflow is mainly influenced by rainfall, but longer-term projections must also consider the potential changes in rainfall-temperature-runoff relationship and surface-vegetation-atmosphere feedback in a warmer and enhanced CO2 climate. The considerable uncertainty in future hydroclimate projections makes planning adaptation measures difficult. Nevertheless, water managers and policy makers at all levels of governments in Australia are developing water strategies to cope with a variable and changing climate future. These strategies, which are not driven by climate change alone, centre on securing new water supplies, initiating demand measures, improving water delivery and water use efficiency and developing flexible and more equitable water sharing plans to cope with current and future climates.Considering the advantages and disadvantages of single air source heat pump, single solar energy heat pump and switch solar-air dual heat sources heat pump, a new solar-air composite heat source heat pump system (SACHP) was proposed. It can realize the use and complementary advantages of two kinds of renewable energy: air and solar. The SACHP performance experimental platform was set up and the heating performance was tested in three different heat source working modes. And experimental results show that: above 0(omicron)C of ambient temperature conditions, SACHP run by single air-source model; in 0 similar to 10(omicron)C, SACHP by solar-air dual heat mode, and below -10(omicron)C, SACHP by single solar heat mode can meet the heating needs of the user. This system is especially suitable to meet the heating and air conditioning demands for the urban villas residential areas and rural independent residential areas in cold areas. Additionally, it also provided a feasible method to improve the city's ecological environment, and plays a leading role in the villages and small towns' construction.Winters are typically harsh in the northernmost agricultural areas of Europe, and winter rye (Secale cereale L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) are the only winter grain crops that can be grown. However, climate change is projected to result in milder winters, which may enable cultivation of winter crops to a greater extent in the future than is possible today. In this study we aimed at identifying main temperature, precipitation events and characteristics that have resulted in past poor overwintering of rye and wheat in their current production areas in Finland. Using long-term (1970-2006), multi-location datasets, we compared our findings with the projected major changes attributable to climate change. Mixed models were used to estimate mutually comparable overwintering damage to all experiments and logistic regression was used to determine whether climatic parameters are related to high levels of overwintering damage. Severity of overwintering damage, and associated yield penalties, fluctuate considerably on a year-to-year basis and no consistent reduction in variability was recorded during the study period. Particularly for wheat, severity of winter damage in any one year was associated negatively with area sown in the following year. There was no evidence of consistent genetic improvements in winter hardiness, but rye was more winter hardy than wheat. Current risks associated with rye production related to low temperatures could be alleviated in the future, although overwintering damage currently enhanced by high autumn precipitation could increase due to climate change. For wheat, fluctuating conditions hampered overwintering, which may be an even harder challenge in future when weather variation is projected to increase and extreme weather events are projected to become more common.Mitigation of climate change, and adaptation to the inevitable changes in the climate, are equally important in suburban neighbourhoods, where 84 per cent of the British population choose to live. However, the policy on climate change adaptation of the existing built environment is only beginning to emerge in the UK. In this chapter, a robust methodological framework for quantifying climate change risks on a suburban neighbourhood level is described. Climate change hazards and impacts are first detailed using the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) data set. Climate change scenarios are then downscaled spatially and temporally, and cross-referenced with local environmental features of each city that may exacerbate or ameliorate the climate change impacts. Finally, a matrix of adaptation strategies on a neighbourhood, individual dwelling and occupant level are developed for specific suburban neighbourhoods in three UK cities (Bristol, Oxford and Stockport), in response to the impacts derived from possible future climate hazards.In the frame of a Swiss-Peruvian climate change adaptation initiative (PACC), operational and historical data series of more than 100 stations of the Peruvian Meteorological and Hydrological Service (SENAMHI) are now accessible in a dedicated data portal. The data portal allows for example the comparison of data series or the interpolation of spatial fields as well as download of data in various data formats. It is thus a valuable tool supporting the process of data homogenisation and generation of a regional baseline climatology for a sound development of adequate climate change adaptation measures. The procedure to homogenize air-temperature and precipitation data series near Cusco city is outlined and followed by an exemplary trend analysis. Local air temperature trends are found to be in line with global mean trends.The agriculture will be seriously affected in terms of less precipitations and higher temperature. The hydro-meteorological conditions of Bulgaria have been worsening. The long-term meteorological data analysis of different regions (1971-2000) shows a clear tendency of warming and drying. The rough estimation has been taken from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change 2007. The main goal of the research is to help the farming in adaptation with the climate change and to mitigate its impact for long term period 2020-2050-2070. it needs cost-benefit analysis of public investment in order to consider using an ecosystem-based approach for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The development of sustainable agriculture is not possible without applying an agro-climatic zoning. The objectives of the research are, as follows: - Analysis in order to recover the growth, development and the productivity of the agricultural crops by simulation models of production conditions and in correspondence with the expected climate change; - Bringing up-to-date the existing agro-climatic zoning of Bulgaria for the main cereals, fruits, vegetables, vineyards and forage herbs; to examine the interrelations among biological, economic and agro-climatic indicators in order to determine regions for irrigation and more suitable crops for it in low-favoured agricultural regions mitigating the climate change for 2020-2050-2070; - Finding hydrothermal indices and its applicability using an ecosystem-based approach; initiate the process of restructuring of agricultural production depending on the real and potential resources in order to mitigate the climate change. The final results of the research are recommendations for public administration to organize agro-climatic zoning and to achieve better investment of national and EU funds in agriculture development.Atmospheric CO2 is a major cause of reinforcement corrosion in bridges, buildings, wharves, and other concrete infrastructure. The increase in CO2 levels associated with global warming will increase the likelihood of carbonation-induced corrosion. Moreover, temperature rises will increase corrosion rates. Clearly, the impact of climate change on existing and new infrastructure is considerable, as corrosion damage is disruptive to society and costly to repair. The paper describes a probabilistic and reliability-based approach that predicts the probability of corrosion initiation and damage (severe cracking) for concrete infrastructure subjected to carbonation and chloride-induced corrosion resulting from elevated CO2 levels and temperatures. The atmospheric CO2 concentration and local temperature and relative humidity changes with time over the next 100 years in Australian cities are projected based on nine General Circulation Models (GCMs) under A1B, A1FI and 550 ppm stabilisation CO2 emission scenarios. The probabilistic analysis included the uncertainty of CO2 concentration, deterioration processes, material properties, dimensions, and predictive models. It was found that carbonation-induced damage risks can increase by over 400% over a time period to 2100 for some regions in Australia. Damage risks for chloride-induced corrosion increase by no more than 15% over the same time period due to temperature increase. Corrosion loss of reinforcement is not significant.This study examines the vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience of urban poor households living in the riverine communities of the three flood prone areas in Metro Manila, namely, (1) Pasig-Marikina River basin, (2) West Mangahan, and (3) the KAMANAVA area (Kalookan, Malabon, Navotas, Valenzuela). Based on a survey of 300 urban poor households in 14 communities located in these flood basins, the study found that the environmental-ecological vulnerability of the low-lying flood prone areas interacts strongly with the social vulnerability of urban poor households, highlighting the effects of climate related changes (sea level rise, increased typhoons, intensity of monsoon rains, floods and tidal/storm surges) on this vulnerable population. Most of the households have low-incomes, live in slum/squatter settlements and do not have adequate access to potable water, electricity, health, sewage and sanitation facilities. About two-thirds of them suffered losses (e. g., income, work, health/sickness, household appliances/things, housing damage) from typhoons, floods, and tidal/storm surges but only a small portion of them obtained help from formal institutions (e. g., local government units or LGUs, charitable agencies) and informal support networks (relatives/neighbors/friends). Of these, a third of these households appeared more vulnerable and consistently incurred higher losses (e. g., income and workdays) and intense inconveniences (e. g., water source buried by floods, toilets blocked and overflowed with wastes/large worms to their floors) compared to their neighbors. Both urban poor households and their local governments have formulated adaptation strategies in response to the increasing effects of climate change. Few of the local governments built river barriers, improved their drainage systems, installed water diversion techniques (e. g., "bombastic") and disaster warning systems and increased the capacity of their officials to assist during evacuations. Meanwhile, some urban poor households have adapted to a "water-based lifestyle" (e. g., raising the floors/increasing the number of floors of their homes, building makeshift bridges among households in swampy areas, building Styrofoam boats for transport, etc.). But on the whole, both the urban poor residents and the formal institutions (LGUs, national agencies) need resources and capability building to increase their capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change.The vulnerability of cities to inundation from the impacts of climate change associated with the increased inter-annual variability associated with extreme weather events has been highlighted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Predictions of an increased intensity of rainfall are likely to result in subsequent flood disaster events. Flood mitigation has been addressed by planning policy in Queensland through the State Planning Policy 1/03: Mitigating the Adverse Impacts of Flood, Bushfire and Landslide (SPP1/03) which will expire at the end of 2013 under the new Sustainable Planning Act 2009. The effectiveness of the SPP 1/03 was researched using two cases studies from the 2008 floods in Queensland: the rural town of Charleville was compared with the coastal city of Mackay.Since the 1980s and early 1990s, there have been few constructive developments towards a comprehensive and coherent productivity-enhancing agenda. Labor governments have often provided rhetorical support but have fought over whether industry policy represents a new protectionism or market-enhancing development policy. The Coalition in opposition and in office has generally opposed the idea of industry policy, but has continued to support ad hoc and costly policy interventions. Australia's 20 years without a recession has disguised the need to reconsider industry policy and questions of economic diversity. This article argues that dealing with problems of economic structure - particularly resource dependence and climate change adaptation - requires a revitalisation of the industry policy debate. It tracks the theory and practice of industry policy in Australia and concludes that advocates for industry policy must formulate new policy ideas outside the framework of the traditional divide between intervention and free markets.Climate adaptation has become a pressing issue. Yet little attention has been paid to the consequences of adaptation policies and practices for sustainability. Recognition that not every adaptation to climate change is a good one has drawn attention to the need for sustainable adaptation strategies and measures that contribute to social justice and environmental integrity. This article presents four normative principles to guide responses to climate change and illustrates the significance of the 'sustainable adaptation' concept through case studies from diverse contexts. The principles are: first, recognize the context for vulnerability, including multiple stressors; second, acknowledge that differing values and interests affect adaptation outcomes; third, integrate local knowledge into adaptation responses; and fourth, consider potential feedbacks between local and global processes. We argue that fundamental societal transformations are required in order to achieve sustainable development pathways and avoid adaptation funding going into efforts that exacerbate vulnerability and contribute to rising emissions. Despite numerous challenges involved in achieving such change, we suggest that sustainable adaptation practices have the potential to address some of the shortcomings of conventional social and economic development pathways.Integrating community-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) is identified at the policy and practical level as critical to aid effectiveness. Successful integration reduces both duplication of efforts and confusion at the community level, thus contributing to sustainable development. The challenges of integrating DRR and CCA are widely discussed from the global to the local level among policymakers, practitioners and academics alike. However, to date, little progress has been made in achieving practical solutions. By focusing on the governance aspects of DRR and CCA integration in the Pacific (with a particular focus on Fiji and Samoa), this study highlights potential pathways to overcome the separation of these two dynamic and overlapping fields. In applying the Earth System Governance framework as a novel analytical tool, we reveal that the issues of agency and architecture are especially significant as challenges to effectively integrating DRR and CCA.Climate change is expected to increase the health risks for Canadians from infectious diseases from our environment, including vector-borne, water-borne, and food-borne diseases. Adaptation efforts will be important to reduce the impact of these risks. Public health systems are in place in Canada to control many disease risks but there are still knowledge gaps on, and modifications needed to, existing approaches to protecting the population from endemic diseases and new or emerging pathogens. This chapter addresses five key questions on whether public health is on track to helping communities adapt to changing risks. The questions address adaptation to disease risk of climate change by exploring the following: assessments of disease risks, methods for adaptation, responsibility, resources, and public action and societal will. Overall, with these increasing risks to the health of Canadians, all sectors of society will need to participate in the adaptive response, while federal, provincial, and community public health bodies will need to work together to identify and communicate risk and promote and coordinate adaptation responses.High ambient temperatures are a cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in Japan. First, we describe the health impacts of heat waves, which include not only heatstroke, but also mortality and morbidity due to indirect effects of high temperatures. Older adults, young children, and persons with chronic medical conditions are particularly susceptible. Second, we discuss public health adaptation to projected increases in the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves due to climate change in Japan. These adaptation measures include those taken by the Ministry of Environment, and various local governments in response to local factors. Third, we discuss key challenges to adapting to high temperatures and minimizing heat-related health impacts. We finish by discussing the adaptation measures used by the government of Japan and some local cities to increase population resilience to heat waves. Critical issues include that measures should be suitable for the target populations (the vulnerable subgroups) and comprehensive.Society has developed numerous mechanisms for mitigating risks associated with the potential failure or underperformance of built infrastructure. An important subset are the codes, standards, and related instruments (CSRI) that establish tenets of reasonable practice with respect to the planning, engineering, construction, and management of built infrastructure. After introducing CSRI as fundamental risk management tools for society, this chapter identifies some of the ways in which climate change could begin to undermine these same critical functions of CSRI in the future. It investigates how CSRI and the processes involved in their development must change in order to properly account for climate change, and thereby allow CSRI to play a proactive role in facilitating adaptation on the part of planners, engineers, builders, and managers of built infrastructure. The chapter concludes by offering a number of recommendations for future work in the area of climate change and CSRI. Canada is the region of focus for this chapter, but the issues discussed are relevant for developed nations generally, since all developed nations rely upon CSRI to help set levels of safety and performance in relation to built infrastructure.King County, Washington, is a North American leader in the development and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies. This chapter describes the early experiences of King County in developing and implementing a climate change adaptation program under the leadership of King County Executive Ron Sims, during the years 2005-2009. Basic review of the King County example suggests that the county can serve as a useful model for other governments in launching and maintaining a successful climate change adaptation program. The King County experience also provides insights about types of external support a local government would need when establishing such a program.Climate change has created newer grounds for disaster vulnerability in South Asia. Two third of the natural disasters the region experiences are having climate origins. In the recent times, their intensity, frequency and unpredictability are on the rise. The political leadership of the region has been sensitive to this emerging challenge. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as a regional platform has made efforts to address the disaster vulnerability emanating from climate change collectively. The 29th Session of SAARC Council of Ministers, the SAARC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change on July 3,2008 at Dhaka signals a new beginning by adopting the SAARC Action Plan on Climate Change. SAARC Disaster Management Centre (SDMC), the product of a collective vision to harness regional cooperation and enhance the resilience of vulnerable South Asia to the natural disasters, has placed priorities on building regional cooperative mechanism addressing Climate Change Risks, Impacts and Adaptation and also developing a conceptual framework integrating Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies into Climate Change Adaptation (CCA). There are practices in the region which bring in convergence between DRR and CCA strategies, while there are also areas identified, especially on institutional and programmatic fronts, responsible for the existing divergence. Harnessing the advances in Science & Technology and the recent progress made in Early Warning Systems as well as networking of the knowledge institutions enable integrating the methods, tools & techniques of DRR with the multi-sectoral dimensions of CCA in the operational arena. Proof-of-the-concept could be seen if climate related disaster risk 'hotspots' are targeted for designing risk reduction strategies and integrating climate, weather & EWS information in decision makings for the causes and purposes common to both DRR & CCA. Following the participatory approach wherein the concerns and voices of all SAARC member countries find expressions, SDMC is evolving a road map addressing the growing vulnerability of region due to climate change to support the SAARC Member States.The economic impacts of climate-change-induced adjustments on the performance of the Tanzanian economy are analysed, using a countrywide computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The effect of overall climate change on agricultural productivity (modelled as reduced land productivity) is projected to be relatively limited until about 2030, thereafter becoming worse. The simulation results indicate that despite the projected reduction in agricultural productivity, the negative impacts can potentially be quite limited. This is because the timescales involved, as well as the low starting point of the economy, leave ample room for factor substitutability and increased overall productivity. This indicates that policies that give farmers the opportunity to invest in autonomous climate adaptation, as well as those that improve the overall performance of the economy, can be as important in reducing the impacts of climate change in the economy as direct government policies for adaptation.Evidence is reviewed from Chinese and international sources on the impacts of observed climate trends and extremes and of potential future climate change on agriculture. Recent climate behaviour in China shows progressive warming and complex patterns of precipitation variability and frequency of extreme events. Agricultural production data highlight substantial economic impacts from extreme climate events, with droughts causing the greatest effects on production. Observed warming has contributed to northward and northeastward expansion of winter wheat and maize cultivation, respectively. Multi-model climate change projections consistently predict warming throughout China and, with reasonable consistency, increases in precipitation across most of the country (averaging +5% to +7% by 2050, compared with 1961-1990). Studies of future climate change impacts on crops in China show a wide range of results, primarily due to differences among climate model projections, the methods used to assess crop impacts and whether the effects of CO(2) fertilisation are included. Because of China's large size and range of agro-ecological conditions, sensitivity and exposure can vary considerably, leading to complex spatial patterns of response. Crop type and variety, and whether a crop is irrigated or rain-fed also affect yield. The review highlights research priorities, which include the need to systematically monitor, retrieve and analyse observed data on climate-yield behaviour, compare results of different modelling approaches and climate scenarios, and integrate climate effects within a broader framing of food systems.Managing risks from extreme events will be a crucial component of climate change adaptation. In this study, we demonstrate an approach to assess future risks and quantify the benefits of adaptation options at a city-scale, with application to flood risk in Mumbai. In 2005, Mumbai experienced unprecedented flooding, causing direct economic damages estimated at almost two billion USD and 500 fatalities. Our findings suggest that by the 2080s, in a SRES A2 scenario, an 'upper bound' climate scenario could see the likelihood of a 2005-like event more than double. We estimate that total losses (direct plus indirect) associated with a 1-in-100 year event could triple compared with current situation (to $690-$1,890 million USD), due to climate change alone. Continued rapid urbanisation could further increase the risk level. The analysis also demonstrates that adaptation could significantly reduce future losses; for example, estimates suggest that by improving the drainage system in Mumbai, losses associated with a 1-in-100 year flood event today could be reduced by as much as 70%.,We show that assessing the indirect costs of extreme events is an important component of an adaptation assessment, both in ensuring the analysis captures the full economic benefits of adaptation and also identifying options that can help to manage indirect risks of disasters. For example, we show that by extending insurance to 100% penetration, the indirect effects of flooding could be almost halved. We conclude that, while this study explores only the upper-bound climate scenario, the risk-assessment core demonstrated in this study could form an important quantitative tool in developing city-scale adaptation strategies. We provide a discussion of sources of uncertainty and risk-based tools could be linked with decision-making approaches to inform adaptation plans that are robust to climate change.In an era of climate change, adaptive strategies and coastal management actions are needed to support the interdependent goals of maintaining biological diversity, ecosystem health, and the well-being of communities. California is in the forefront of developing science-based planning elements and programs that support a more integrative and adaptive approach to address climate impacts, including the development of new tools such as the designation of marine protected areas. California's coastal cities and counties are developing Climate Action Plans (CAPs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The state has also completed the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy that identifies goals and actions needed to better integrate scientific information into coastal planning. The article emphasizes the need to broaden the scope of local coastal plans to include new biodiversity protection and land-use elements that address the anticipated impacts from climate change on coastal ecosystems. A number of strategies to strengthen the connection between scientists, stakeholders, and local coastal planners are described in the article. In particular, science and scientists should play a crucial role in identifying coastal areas that may serve as "climate-change refugia" where species hit the hardest by climate impacts are projected to relocate.Discussions of where the costs of climate change adaptation and mitigation should fall often focus on the 'polluter pays principle' or the 'ability to pay principle'. Simon Caney has recently defended a 'hybrid view', which includes versions of both of these principles. This article argues that Caney's view succeeds in overcoming several shortfalls of both principles, but is nevertheless subject to three important objections: first, it does not distinguish between those emissions which are hard to avoid and those which are easy to avoid; second, its only partial reference to all-things-considered justice means it cannot provide a full account even of climate justice; and third, it assigns to the poor very limited duties to meet climate change costs, even where they have created those costs, which may incentivise them to increase emissions. An alternative pluralistic account which avoids these objections is presented.Climate change has the potential to permanently alter the attraction of many destinations and substantially impact the benefits derived from tourism. These impacts can be reduced if vulnerability to climate change is understood and operators take steps to adapt. Some of the more immediate and manageable impacts are likely to result from changes in tourist perceptions and attitudes towards climate change. We test for early impacts in the Red Sea region and for the awareness of tourism operators. We interviewed 150 tourists and 35 operators. Our data suggest that changes in tourist awareness are already apparent; yet, operators ascribe only a moderate level of environmental and climate awareness to them. This 'perception gap' increases the vulnerability of dive operators.Risk management is a well established tool for climate change adaptation. It is facing new challenges with the end of climate stationarity and the need to meaningfully engage people in governance issues. The ways in which conventional approaches to risk management can respond to these challenges are explored. Conventional approaches to risk management are summarized, the manner in which they are being advanced as a tool for climate change adaptation is described, and emerging themes in risk management and climate change adaption are documented. It is argued that conventional risk management for climate change adaptation can benefit from the insights and experiences of adaptive co-management. A hybrid approach termed adaptive collaborative risk management is thus envisaged that enriches conventional risk management with the critical features of adaptive co-management, i.e., collaboration and adaptation. Adaptive Collaborative Risk Management overcomes some of the challenges with conventional risk management, builds upon and complements other approaches to community climate change adaptation, and innovatively addresses both technical and governance concerns in a single integrated process.Policy design is largely informed by the traditional economic viewpoint that humans behave rationally in the pursuit of their own economic welfare, with little consideration of other regarding behavior or reciprocal altruism. New paradigms of economic behavior theory are emerging that build an empirical basis for understanding how humans respond to specific contexts. Our interest is in the role of human relationships in managing natural resources (forage and livestock) in semiarid systems, where spatial and temporal variability and uncertainty in resource availability are fundamental system drivers. In this paper we present the results of an economic experiment designed to explore how reciprocity interacts with variability and uncertainty. This behavior underpins the Australian tradable grazing rights, or agistment, market, which facilitates livestock mobility as a human response to a situation where rainfall is so variable in time and space that it is difficult to maintain an economically viable livestock herd on a single management unit. Contrary to expectations, we found that variability and uncertainty significantly increased transfers and gains from trade within our experiment. When participants faced variability and uncertainty, trust and reciprocity took time to build. When variability and uncertainty were part of the experiment trust was evident from the onset. Given resource variability and uncertainty are key drivers in semiarid systems, new paradigms for understanding how variability shapes behavior have special importance.Adaptation to the consequences of climate change can depend on efficient use of ecosystem services (ES), i.e. a better use of natural services through management of the way in which they are delivered to society. While much discussion focuses on reducing consumption and increasing production of services, a lack of scientific instruments has so far prevented other mechanisms to improve ecosystem services efficiency from being addressed systematically as an adaptation strategy. This paper describes new methodologies for assessing ecosystem services and quantifying their values to humans, highlighting the role of ecosystem service flow analysis in optimizing the efficiency of ES provision.The higher the adaptive capacity of a region, the lower its socio-economic vulnerability is. Regional adaptive capacity is dependent on conditions such as economic power, technology, knowledge, institutions, infrastructure, and social equity. Not only are the impacts of climate change regionally very diverse, but the regional conditions to adapt to climate change are too. The paper discusses the implication of knowledge, institutional and infrastructure conditions of adaptation and the interdependencies of these conditions. Empirical outcomes of the case study in Northern Hesse (Germany) give some examples for the challenges of establishing regional governance innovations to handle these interdependencies. Another dominant condition of adaptive capacity is the discursive frames of regional climate change. While in international agreements and policy advice, resource-intensive economies and lifestyles are criticized as the main polluters, climate change debates at the regional level stress the options of climate change to strengthen regional economic competition. The paper suggests a perspective on multi-level governance and a perspective on policy integration for climate change adaptation to create a wide analytical view on these complex factors.The Baltic Sea is located in northeastern Europe and is the largest brackish sea surrounded by nine countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Due to its fragile ecosystem, the Baltic Sea's vulnerability in climate change has been studied by several international organizations by multidisciplinary groups. With the release of the recommendation from the white paper by the European Union in April of 2009, the need for adaptation strategies is reaffirmed in the area and today consensus on the need for national adaptation policy has been built among Baltic Sea countries. This paper offers an overall assessment of adaptation strategies in the Baltic Sea Region and outlines the results of a comparative analysis of two countries, namely Latvia and Sweden. The two countries' advancements in terms of releasing official climate change adaptation strategies are presented, as well as the areas each of their policies or suggested policies cover. Finally, both countries are placed into context with Baltic Sea neighbours with similar socioeconomical characteristics to offer a more rounded view of the general situation in the region.A large part of the world's freshwater resources is contained in river basins and groundwater systems that are shared by two or more countries. As climate change essentially changes the hydrological situation in many basins, increasing the number of extreme situations of flooding and drought, transboundary management of these water resources in order to prevent negative effects of unilateral adaptation measures and in order to choose the most effective measures has become highly urgent. Transboundary water management is in essence more complex than national water management because the water management regimes usually differ more between countries than within countries. Transboundary water management requires coordination over different political, legal and institutional settings as well as over different information management approaches and financial arrangements. A Guidance on Water and Climate Adaptation has been developed under the UNECE Water Convention with the objective to support cooperation and decision making in transboundary basins, addressing adaptation to climate change impacts on water resources, such as flood and drought occurrences, water quality, and health related aspects, as well as practical ways to cope with the transboundary impacts. It illustrates steps and adaptation measures that are needed in order to develop a climate-proof water strategy, starting from the transboundary context. In all the work towards adaptation to climate change, the major challenge for politicians is to have a vision of how to implement the ideas, as well as the courage to withstand criticism and to share power with other actors.Starting from some key outcomes of the first agreement on the Protocol on ICZM (Integrated Coastal Zone Management) in the Mediterranean Region recently signed in Madrid, the paper seeks to contribute to an evaluation of what the application of climate change adaptation policies along Italian coasts really could mean. This research aims to provide a concrete comparison between the present coastal land use and substantive obligations stated in the Protocol. Among these, we have mainly considered building limitations in an area of at least one hundred metres from the sea. In this context, the paper analyses the present land use and its spatial features regarding the coastal vulnerability to climate change and the feasibility of adaptation strategies. An index-based evaluation of the aptness of application of the Protocol along Italian coasts has been prepared, showing substantial differences in regional potential. The research presents methods to select zones where the Protocol could be applied and used to consider non-standard solutions, such as converting the impact of the railways into a coastal protection perspective. This study intends to offer a concrete stimulus for a national coastal adaptation programme that is still lacking in Italy, suggesting innovative methods for a national comparison of regional particularities regarding coastal adaptation.Whereas the literature on adaptation is rich in detail on the impacts of, vulnerability to, and constraints of climate adaptation, less is known about the conditions that facilitate adaptation in practice. We examined the constraints and opportunities for adaptation in water and land use planning in three regions: the Guadiana River Basin in Spain and Portugal, the Tisza River Basin in Hungary and western Inner Mongolia in China. We analysed the conditions that either facilitate or constrain adaptation in relation to (1) adaptation actors, (2) adaptation strategies, and (3) adaptation objectives. Many adaptation assessments concentrate on climate impacts and the potential of adaptation strategies. The conditions that enable people to act on adaptation are less studied. Yet these have been identified as particularly important for successfully implementing adaptation. We find that adaptation is enhanced by pilot projects that test and debate new ideas through collaboration between recognized actors from civil society, policy, and science. Promising for adaptation is the integration of (traditional) agro-environmental land use systems that regulate regional climate impacts with new technologies, organizational responsibilities and financial instruments. A key challenge is to create flexible and equitable financial instruments that facilitate benefit and burden sharing, social learning, and that support a diverse set of potentially better adapted new activities rather than compensate for climate impacts on existing activities.Although there is growing evidence of climate warming, for many regions the broader effects of climate variation on marine top predators remains unknown owing to the difficulty in obtaining, for synthesis, long-term and short-term datasets on multiple species. In the Australian region, climatic and oceanographic variability and change have been shown to affect marine species, often with profound consequences. Many seabirds are apex predators for which changes in climatic and oceanic dynamics have driven range movements poleward, reduced breeding success and altered breeding timing for some species. Here we review the literature to assess and determine the vulnerability of Australian seabirds to variation and change in climate and identify which species and ecosystems may be more resilient to future climate warming. It is clear from this synthesis that not all Australian seabirds are affected similarly, with responses varying by species and location. In addition, the paucity of information on the distribution and biology of seabird prey, foraging patterns and movements of seabirds, and the ability of seabirds to switch between prey species or adjust timing of life-cycles make generalisations about potential effects of future climate change and adaptive capacity in seabirds difficult. This applies both within Australia and elsewhere, where data are similarly sparse.Many policy-makers view nuclear power as a mitigation for climate change. Efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, however, interact with existing and new nuclear power plants, and these installations must contend with dilemmas between adaptation and mitigation. This paper develops five criteria to assess the adaptation-mitigation dilemma on two major points: (1) the ability of nuclear power to adapt to climate change and (2) the potential for nuclear power operation to hinder climate change adaptation. Sea level rise models for nine coastal sites in the United States, a review of US Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents, and reports from France's nuclear regulatory agency provided insights into issues that have arisen from sea level rise, shoreline erosion, coastal storms, floods, and heat waves. Applying the criteria to inland and coastal nuclear power plants reveals several weaknesses. Safety stands out as the primary concern at coastal locations, while inland locations encounter greater problems with interrupted operation. Adapting nuclear power to climate change entails either increased expenses for construction and operation or incurs significant costs to the environment and public health and welfare. Mere absence of greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficient to assess nuclear power as a mitigation for climate change. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change studies have come to maturity with the 4th report of the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change in 2007. Conclusions about temperature increases, rainfall variations, climate change relationships with evaporation etc., have more or less reached consensus. However climatologists have to fine tune climate models to refine the predictions. It is now necessary to assess the sustainability of the water and its surrounding environment with the anticipated climate changes. As at present in Sri Lanka there is minimum research attempting to link climate change impacts to infrastructure development, and there is none in the area of irrigation. Therefore it is necessary for countries like Sri Lanka where majority of the population depends on irrigated agriculture utilising a large number of small reservoirs, to ascertain the effect on its irrigation systems and identify the adaptation measures that should be implemented. A significant increase of water for irrigation sector would mean pressure on others which compete for water. If water is inadequate for irrigation then it would certainly lead to socio economic issues commencing from the farming community. In order to address these issues and to identify suitable adaptation options, the present research carried out spatially distributed irrigation water demand modelling to assess the administrative district wise requirements in the year 2025. Reservoir water balance modelling was carried out for four selected districts to study the adequacy of minor irrigation reservoirs. Present work describes the modelling efforts that incorporated system deterioration due to lack of maintenance superimposed on the climate changes. The study used irrigation department guidelines, published data and made rational assumptions to quantify the impacts on the irrigation systems. It was revealed that it is necessary for water and related infrastructure managers and engineers to incorporate suitable maintenance programs, and make significant efforts to improve the project efficiencies as climate change adaptation measures.Climate Variability (CV), climate change (CC) and water crisis is the main environmental problems the world has to meet in XXI Century. The way they deal with each other is an obvious threat with serious implications in vulnerable societies. Colombia is rich in water, that's why resource management is a challenge, because there are problems such as high level of urbanization, population growth, poor sanitation and inequality, among others. This paper aims to: Summarize potential impacts of VC and CC on Colombian water resources, which would intensify existing. Define concepts of climate adaptation. Identify for future water managers how to measure responsiveness to VC and CC, according to strategies and guidelines such as: Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM); the precautionary, ecological sustainability, equity participation and economic efficiency principles, among others. And define the framework of a comprehensive and adaptive management strategy with public policy implications for water resources administration.This study assesses the impacts of climate change on road transport in Asia. It presents the findings of a survey of stakeholders from Asian countries on the existing state of awareness of climate change and its impacts on road transport. Issues related to emergency preparedness, infrastructure design standards and practices, policies, institutions, and coordination essential for implementation of adaptation strategies in the transport sector are also discussed. The study identifies the need to (1) raise awareness of stakeholders of climate change impacts; (2) review existing road design standards and construction practices considering likely impacts; (3) introduce climate change impact-assessment guidelines; (4) establish organizational units to implement adaptation strategies; and (5) enhance coordination among various stakeholders to develop resilient road infrastructure. The limited literature in the Asian context indicates further research is needed on climate change adaptation in Asia.The development-disaster risk management agenda has been shaped over the last 25 years by development policies and practices that have isolated lesser developed countries' development agenda from dealing with risk to natural hazards, by intentional actions to create a theory and practice of disaster risk management alongside other cross-cutting issues, by attempting to nurture emergency management in the context of disaster risk management and by fostering competition for resources. Sovereign states, multilateral development banks and the international development community should collaborate in shifting paradigms to: consider all development actions as initiatives to reduce risk; separate emergency management policy and practice from disaster risk management; fold disaster risk management and climate change adaptation into development planning and lending processes so as to address risk to natural hazards; promote hazard, vulnerability and risk information as a public good; and insist on accountability and responsibility to natural hazard risk all along the development continuum.Climate change adaptation strategies are emerging across Europe as societies attempt to adapt to the challenges of a changing environment. Social constructivist analyses of environmental policy-especially those emphasising 'framing' - can be very useful in teasing out the framings of policy problems such as adaptation. They can also shed light on the underlying assumptions that steer and guide public and environmental policy. Using the theoretical concept of framing to analyse adaptation policies across different scales of governance in four European countries - Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom and Italy-and drawing on policy documents from those countries, as well as semi-structured interviews with practitioners, the development of adaptation policy processes and especially how adaptation has been defined within these processes are examined. Four major framings of adaptation are identified: 'planning', 'economic risk', 'vulnerability' and 'existing measures'. These frames affect how adaptation is conceptualised, policy problems defined and, ultimately how policy develops.Although the development and implementation of a global greenhouse gas reduction regime has dominated policy debates even before the advent of the Kyoto Protocol (and remains a critical element of effective mitigation), communities in developing countries do not have direct control of critical sources of emissions or are not fully aware of the scale at which the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change will play out. This paper has undertaken a revision of scientific literature on climate change issues and has introduced the concept of response capacity, its links to adaptive and mitigative capacity, as well as action or behaviour change in response to climate change. As this paper shows, communities face a unique set of challenges as they navigate through the uncertain future presented by climate change. Even so, communities bring to the task of climate change adaptation and mitigation a unique set of tools and proficiencies that are often absent at the national and international levels. The paper investigates the complex relationship between capacity and action in response to global climate change, which represents a significant gap in the climate change literature and influences the ability of climate policies to build effective mitigation and adaptation strategies. It is the one aim of this paper to present some of the means via which communities might more effectively employ the various forms of capacity they possess to rise to the challenge presented by climate change.In Africa as well as in other developing countries, small communities are often the most severely impacted, yet often the least equipped to cope with the effects of climate variability and climate change. Even though the question of what exactly constitutes a successful adaptation to climate change is still unanswered and calls for further research, there is some evidence that many rural and indigenous communities are actively putting into place initiatives to adapt to climate change. But even in today's Internet age it seems difficult to identify these communities properly as information from Africa is fragmented, outdated or simply not to be found. Yet knowing what kind of adaptation is taking place on the local level is a prerequisite for successful approaches to state-of-the-art adaptation which link bottom-up action with top-down strategies. Addressing this knowledge need, this chapter presents the outcome of a 2010 mapping study on local community-based adaptation to climate change in Africa, illustrating how communities are integrated into local adaptation actions that tackle both development and climate change objectives. To reflect the complex nature of adaptation, the identified initiatives were grouped into two categories social and economic resilience and a range of emerging adaptation themes were identified. Comprising 39 local-and regional initiatives, the analysis provides some recent examples of concrete local adaptation that may possess a certain potential for replication, upscaling and mainstreaming. In this way, and combined with the continued demand for enhancing the scientific data base to reduce the uncertainty of current climate predictions for the African continent in particular, further research is needed to allow the design of tailored measures to respond to often unique regional adaptation needs.Tanzania is one of the world's leading nations in terms of wildlife conservation, with rich and diverse wildlife resources. Game controlled areas in Tanzania are used for wildlife conservation and most of them were set aside when human populations were low and global climate was stable. Under the climate change scenario realised for Tanzania for the next few decades, a 10% increase in annual inflow is predicted at the Kilombero Ramsar site. This may have varied impacts on the wildlife populations with consequences for the potential direct economic values from wildlife hunting. The current study assessed how rainfall may influence wildlife populations and their contribution to the national economy. Data was collected from discussions with game officials, literature searches, field observations and data was recorded for weather and hunting licences. We established a rainfall pattern based on trends observed over 40 years (1968-2008), and its correlation with wildlife outtake by both tourist and local hunters. The mean annual rainfall was 1,600 mm, with a probability of 0.90 of receiving (100 <= 300) of the mean annual rainfall especially for March and April point rainfall. Increased inflow of water is likely to be exacerbated by inflow from surrounding catchments. There were a total of 258 local and 78 tourist hunters respectively in the period from 2001 to 2008. There was a positive correlation between the number of animals hunted per species and point annual rainfall for buffalos, reedbuck, hippos, puku, warthog, crocodiles and hartebeest. Conversely, the availability of game birds declined with increased point rainfall. This would mean that revenues from buffalo, reedbuck, hippos, puku, warthog, crocodiles and hartebeest are likely to increase or remain the same with increasing point annual rainfall. On the other hand, hunting revenues from game birds is likely to decrease with point annual rainfall. The predicted hydrological change in the Kilombero River is likely to affect wildlife populations and the contribution of hunting industry to national earnings. Thus climate adaptation measures need to be instituted in order to accommodate climate-induced economic loses.Growing scientific evidence suggests that climate change will accelerate weather extremes and increase human vulnerability to disasters. Exposure of agro-pastoralists to erratic rainfall and cyclical droughts leads to frequent crop failures and livestock losses, with additional shocks from economic perturbations and erosion of household assets depriving this vulnerable group of "insurance" against adverse risks, driving them from a state of vulnerability to destitution. Despite the growing global agitation to mainstream community-based strategies for climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Kenya, existing institutional and policy formulation processes rarely incorporate the views and experiences of agro-pastoralists. This leads to policies that are neither responsive nor accountable to vulnerable groups. This paper identifies existing community strategies for CCA and DRR in Keiyo district and assesses their level of participation in policymaking, as well as key challenges and opportunities for mainstreaming agro-pastoralist involvement in policy formulation. The data was obtained through participatory approaches involving focus group discussions (FGDs), questionnaires and structured interviews. It is evident from the findings of the study that while agro-pastoralists have developed localised strategies for CCA and DRR, these are not fully recognised by existing government policy processes. Therefore, efforts should be made to mainstream the participation of agro-pastoralists in CCA and DRR policy formulation processes.The increasing changes in the frequency, intensity and persistence of rainfall and temperature extremes are key determinants of food security vulnerability in Kenya. Shorter growing seasons and prolonged intra-seasonal dry spells often trigger much larger and more frequent harvest collapses than subsistence households can cope with, leading to declining crop production and increased food insecurity risks. To survive these climate-induced shocks, communities in Nandi and Keiyo districts have developed indigenous practices that enable them reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and adapt to changing climatic conditions. Despite the critical role the indigenous knowledge system (IKS) plays in sustaining household food security, it is rarely considered or integrated into the design of scientific strategies for climate change adaptation. This paper highlights indigenous strategies used by the Nandi and Keiyo communities and explores opportunities for integrating IKS with scientific strategies for climate change adaptation in order to sustain efforts for climate change adaptation and food security risk reduction. Participatory rural appraisal comprising focus group discussions, key informant interviews and household questionnaire surveys were used in the study. The results indicate that while the impacts of climate change directly affect food security, most households integrate both indigenous and modem practices in adapting to climate change and coping with the resulting risks associated with food insecurity. As such, there is a need to reinforce the integration of indigenous and scientific techniques in order to enhance efforts for climate change adaptation, food security risk management and perpetuate intra/intergenerational transfer of IKS.Due to climate change, northern Kenya is experiencing intense droughts at shorter intervals with intermittent high precipitation and flooding. This has a major impact on livelihoods of the pastoral community, whose ways of life revolve around the availability of pasture and water for their livestock. Our study set out to determine the Samburu people's perception of climate change and how they cope with its effects. Such information is important in developing evidence-based policies on adaptation strategies for African dry-lands. Our study undertook a survey of knowledge, attitudes and life histories among the Samburu communities using semi-structured questionnaires and focus group discussions. Respondents indicated that climate change leads to soil erosion, local extinction of some faunal species, water and pasture scarcity, and intensification of conflicts over resources. This has negatively impacted on their livelihoods due to food shortage, human and livestock diseases, social and family instability, and general insecurity.Most dryland ecosystems are degraded and are currently far from saturated with carbon. This indicates their potential to sequester a significant amount of carbon through sequestration measures. In this study, we: (1) investigated changes in ecosystem carbon stocks following establishment of exclosure on communal grazing lands, and (2) identified easily measurable biophysical and management-related variables which can be used to predict ecosystem carbon stocks restoration in the semi-arid lowlands of northern Ethiopia. We measured above-ground and soil carbon stocks, determined soil characteristics and collected climatic data and management information from replicated (n = 3) exclosures of 5, 10 and 15 years old which were paired with grazing lands. All exclosures displayed higher ecosystem carbon stocks than the adjacent grazing lands. Differences in ecosystem carbon stocks between exclosures and grazing lands varied between 18 (+/- 2.8) and 40 (+/- 6.3) Mg C ha(-1) and increased with exclosure age. In exclosures and in communal grazing lands, much of the variability in ecosystem carbon stocks was explained by a combination of precipitation, silt and clay content, woody biomass, vegetation canopy cover and exclosure age. Our results help to establish baseline information for carbon sequestration projects such as the establishment of exclosures on communal grazing lands, and to predict the expected ecosystem carbon storage under exclosures.Coastal environments worldwide are going to be affected by climate change impacts in the future. These environments are densely populated especially in Africa and thus such impacts as rising sea level, increase in extreme storms and natural hazards, will have a bearing on local, regional and national levels. This research looks at environmental change, both past and current, on the east coast of Zanzibar, Tanzania in terms of the implications of sea level rise, extreme storms and the current vulnerability of coastal settlements. Current vulnerabilities in the area relate to deforestation, coastal erosion, and differential access to and ownership of natural resources. The creation and strengthening of coastal forest buffer zones is one of the suggested approaches for proactive adaptation, which aims to increase the resilience of the natural environment, while producing multiple benefits for multiple stakeholders. The study suggests that anticipatory adaptation needs to be first and foremost incorporated into the local realities in order to be effective and valued. Considering and understanding the value judgements and existing priorities among multiple stakeholders is crucial since otherwise adaptation efforts will remain conflicting and separate processes.Decentralisation refers to 'any act by which a central government cedes rights of decision-making over resources to actors and institutions at lower levels in a politico-administrative and territorial hierarchy'. Kenya's history of a highly centralised forest governance regime has recently seen a shift in policy and legislation authorising decentralisation in the sector. But what is it that gets decentralised in the forestry and natural resources sectors? Is decentralisation effective in meeting the goals of equity, sustainability, poverty reduction and climate change in an environment characterised by conflicting policies? This paper attempts to answer these questions. To understand the resource management outcomes of decentralised programmes, the rights and capacities that are transferred to actors at lower levels were examined. Using both primary and secondary data from two Kenyan forest resources, an analysis was done to find out key roles played by relevant institutions in understanding what is expected to be decentralised; and what policy environments are required to ensure the effectiveness of a decentralised forest resource management system. Results indicate that despite their similarities in ecology, prominence of both forest in local and national economies and conservation of biological diversity, there are some clear differences in institutional regimes for their management. The study concludes that heterogeneity of community stakeholders as government institutions (ministries), parastatals (KWS and KFS), international organisations and NGOs have overlapping mandates and policies that affect common pool resource management. The overlaps should be reduced to provide clear jurisdiction of governance and to enhance transparency in decision-making and equitable benefits distribution, which has long been wanting.The purpose of this study was to assess farmers' awareness, perceptions and coping options to deal with climate change shocks in semi-arid Kenya. Household heads who have been farming in the study areas for the last 15-20 years were identified by village leaders. By random selection, 100 households (in Gachoka division-Mbeere district) and 69 households (in Lare division-Nakuru district) were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. The household data was analysed using SPSS-a statistical package to establish levels of responses on each issue of climate change. The results indicated that over 90% of respondents have noticed changes in climatic patterns over the last 20 years. They have experienced increasing average temperatures, decreasing average annual rainfall and variable rainfall patterns, while incidences of malaria and animal diseases are on rise. These events are closely linked to the severe droughts of 1984 and 2006-2009 and too much rainfall in 1997/1998 and 2004. These had a negative impact on the livelihood systems of the vulnerable farming community. This data indicated that most fanners tended to adopt technologies/strategies that are related to crop production than to livestock farming. Few respondents did not perceive the critical role of soil and water management as a coping option for climate shocks. Failure to do nothing to climate shocks by over 30% of respondents in Mbeere district is worrying. Inadequate technical information and capital/credit sources hindered widespread adoption of different types of soil-improving fertilisers, change in planting dates and taking crop/livestock insurance against climate variability.The purpose of this paper is to develop a new concept and approach for extracting knowledge from satellite images for near real-time drought monitoring in areas experiencing food insecurity in order to mitigate climate change. The near real-time data downloaded from the Atlantic Bird satellite was used to produce the drought spatial distribution in the assessed areas. During the analysis, cloud-contaminated pixels were removed from each individual image by examining reflectance and temperatures. After completing the pre-processing of the satellite images, the NDVI values of the images were calculated, followed by the determination of the deviations associated with the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) values for the first decade (i.e. the first ten-day period) of October 2009. The actual drought condition data was obtained by comparing the NDVI from the MSG satellite for the first decade of October 2009 with the long-term mean NDVI from the NOAA satellite. Our results showed that approximately 40% of the observed areas exhibited negative deviation. This indicates drought conditions in 2009 in the East Africa and southern Asian regions. These results align with recorded rainfall data in 2009 for most parts of Ethiopia. In this study, the possibility of using the near real-time spatio-temporal MSG data for drought monitoring in food-insecure areas of Ethiopia was tested and promising results were obtained. In 2009, there was drought in most parts of Ethiopia and Sudan. Our retrospective analysis of this study also confirms this fact. The output of this research is expected to assist decision-makers in taking timely and appropriate action in order to save millions of lives in drought-affected areas by using advanced satellite technology.Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is currently given high priority as one of the means to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The purpose of this study is to examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are related to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation as a climate change mitigation strategy. REDD can contribute to funding sustainable forest management, carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. However, the amount of mitigation that REDD can achieve is limited. Furthermore, REDD is limited by its funding mechanism and geographical and sectoral leakages. Success in REDD may result in unintended effects such as increased human/wildlife conflicts as a result of increase in abundance of animals due to better conserved habitat and more severe accidental fires due to accumulated fuel loads as a result of fire prevention. Poor governance may lead to inequality in the distribution of benefits and costs of REDD. In spite of these weaknesses of REDD, most developing countries are willing to participate in REDD. There is also a lot that can be learnt from previous conservation and development initiatives that can benefit REDD. However, the success of REDD will largely depend on political stability and the continued interest of the international community in climate change mitigation. This is the first article to explicitly analyse REDD in the light of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Existing literature has so far only discussed these aspects of REDD as part of general discussions on REDD, without explicitly naming them as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Naming the aspects as such informs policy more directly.The paper aims to map Kenya's national development planning framework, investigate any environmental (including climate change) mainstreaming (EM) strategies employed, and identify the prospects and challenges for EM furtherance. The country's heavy reliance on environment and natural resources for socio-economic development makes it particularly vulnerable to climate change. Effective EM will thus ensure better resource management and utilisation, improve livelihoods and enhance climate change adaptation. EM strategies are investigated through a review of published literature, government policy documents and statements, and key informant interviews with representatives of institutions and organisations involved in national development policy and planning. Effectiveness of normative, organisational and procedural EM strategies employed is evaluated from a horizontal environmental policy integration perspective. The country's political commitment and strategic vision, administrative culture and practices, assessment of and participation in planning, monitoring and learning from experience, and use of policy instruments to achieve EM are analysed. The participatory and integrated district development planning framework offers a unique opportunity for EM. However, absence of environmental representation in key development planning agencies and processes, no coherent national sustainable development strategy or office to coordinate EM, non-greening of public procurement, and non-diversification of policy instruments are identified as major challenges. The paper is among the very few studies that have investigated cross-sectoral EM at a national level in Africa and will greatly contribute towards the achievement of Agenda 21s call for the integration of environment into national development policy and planning processes. The findings can be applied across sub-Saharan countries and beyond.This chapter evaluates methods to estimate terrestrial ecosystem carbon assimilation and to monitor it over time at both local and national scales. This study presents simulated models that rely on vegetation indices and cover from Landsat 7 ETM sensors and vegetation stress scalars of temperature and moisture generated from the Thornthwaite water balance model. Temperature and moisture are the main climatic variables that affect vegetation productivity in the context of climate change at the landscape level. The temperature stress scalar in this study was derived from the seasonal optimal temperature for plant production from 28 years of climate data, while water stress was estimated from monthly water deficits, based on comparison of observed moisture supply (precipitation) to potential evapotranspiration (PET) demand derived using the Thornthwaite and Mather method (1957). The Carnegie-Ames-Stanford approach (CASA) model was used to estimate monthly patterns of carbon fixation using 30 M resolution satellite remote sensing images of the surface vegetation characteristics and driven by spatially interpolated climate data. IPCC climate general circulation models (GCM) scenarios were downscaled using a statistical downscaling model (SDSM) to generate locally useful data for impact analysis. Different vegetation classes show significant levels of sensitivity to temperature and moisture variability depicted by the varied net primary productivity (NPP) levels. Indigenous vegetation is well adapted and generally exhibited high NPP around Mount Kenya. This method can be useful in monitoring and evaluating ecosystem function of carbon sequestration and in facilitating optimisation of reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) through vegetation selection in forestry programmes.The impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa are significant and call for concrete measures that allow a better understanding of these problems, as well as the identification of the means to address them. One of the means to tackle them is by using analogue locations, i.e. locations that have the climatic characteristics today that are expected tomorrow. This paper introduces the project "Developing promising strategies using analogue locations in Eastern and Southern Africa" (CALESA). Using a combination of model-based ex ante analyses and iterative field-based research on station and in farmers' fields, the project will test potential agricultural adaptation strategies for rain-fed agriculture in the semi-arid and dry sub-humid tropics. This will be achieved through choosing four currently important crop production zones (two in Kenya and two in Zimbabwe) and then identifying corresponding 'spatially analogue locations' for each production zone, providing experiences which may be replicable elsewhere.This chapter describes UNITAR Climate Change Programme and outlines the initiatives it has been undertaken to foster the cause of climate change adaptation in Africa.As a tropical country, Ethiopia has an enormous potential to develop and use environment-friendly sources of energy like solar power. Despite such huge potential to tap electricity form the sun (not to mention the 45,000 MW potential from water), access to electricity is only about 35%. Solar energy technologies, if used widely, could alleviate the problem of rural electrification. This, however, demands a sustained effort to raise awareness about the technologies and develop skills required to make use of them. To this end, a school-based pilot project was initiated in 2004 by a Faith-based Organization in Ethiopia. The principal aim of the project was to bring about a positive change on the environment by using primary schools as centers of such change. The major activities meant to achieve the aim of the pilot project included, among others, assessing the place of energy and environment in the existing curricula; and dissemination of solar energy know-how and technologies. This paper reports the findings of a comprehensive study conducted to examine the extent to which the aforementioned objectives have been achieved. The findings indicate that the existing textbooks offer adequate opportunity to enable schools to address issues related to energy and environment. A closer look at content of the textbooks and the way the issues have been presented reveals, however, that most of the topics related to energy and environmental management have been presented neither comprehensively nor systematically. On the other hand, the solar energy technologies installed in the school compounds attracted the attention of individuals and community based organizations. More importantly, the solar home systems are found to have been operating (in nine of the eleven schools) without a problem, years after the official end of the project. Based on this and other evidences on the ground, the paper concludes that schools in Ethiopia have a potential not only to serve as centers of dissemination of knowledge about alternative energy technologies but also as centers where skills are developed to seek sustainable solutions to key environmental problems like climate change.The projected impacts of climate change are expected to be adverse and particularly severe for the majority of Africans who currently rely heavily on climate-sensitive natural resources for their livelihoods and do not have the means to withstand shocks and multi-dimensional changes in their societies and ecosystems. Africans are, therefore, justifiably looking to their developed counterparts to assist them with technological options for adapting to climate change. In this quest, it is usually forgotten that indigenous knowledge systems can significantly contribute to location-specific sustainable climate change adaptation. This study used structured questionnaires, focus group discussions, participatory workshop techniques and literature reviews to explore the potential role of traditional knowledge and practices in climate change adaptation in Zambia. It was found that agricultural practices which embedded both scientific know-how and indigenous knowledge practices were by far superior in providing resilience to droughts and floods. Imported technologies that neglected ecological compatibility only served to provide improved short-term productivity but plunged communities into long-term livelihood hardships as they stripped the environment of its ecological sustainability. It was also found that local people used the phenology of plants and insects to forecast rainfall in the next season. The reliability and accuracy of this traditional knowledge has yet to be scientifically proven. It was concluded that the viability and utility value of indigenous knowledge can only be enhanced when integrated with scientific approaches and know-how.Throughout history, human societies have had to effectively devise ways and means to adapt to climate variability by altering their lifestyles, agriculture, settlements and other critical aspects of their economies and livelihoods. The capacity to adapt enables societies to deal with a range of uncertainties. Coping and adaptation is a way of life in Nigeria, where climate variability is the norm and where planting cycles in a largely rain-fed agricultural system are affected by reoccurring droughts, floods and other extreme weather events. Climate change scenarios for Nigeria suggest a warmer climate and projected changes in precipitation suggest it will be wetter in the south along the coast and drier in the northeast. The climate models also suggest more extreme heat events will occur. Resource dependent people, such as farmers, hunters and fishers, who depend directly on the productivity of natural resources around them for their livelihoods, are the first to be impacted by these changes in local environmental conditions. The Government of Nigeria is a signatory to the UNFCCC and there is an initiative underway to develop a national strategy for community-based climate change adaptation. Since 2007, the Nigerian Environmental Study/Action Team (NEST) is an NGO has been implementing the project Building Nigeria's Response to Climate Change (BNRCC). Pilot Projects are one component of BNRCC, and are designed to test adaptation options on a small scale in order to strengthen the resilience of communities to climate change, increase their adaptive capacity and provide recommendations based on lessons learned from community-based adaptation projects to the national strategy. The projects involve seven partner organizations who are working directly with 15 vulnerable communities spanning Nigeria from the Sahel in the north east to the Coastal/Rainforest in the south east. The projects include but are not restricted to: increasing food security by introducing improved crop varieties; testing alternative livelihood options such as aquaculture in order to provide a means of income and decrease reliance on dwindling forest resources; providing fuel efficient wood stoves; improving access to water sources to deal with water scarcity; and tree planting for ecosystem rehabilitation.The Andean region has three million domesticated South American camelids and one million in the wild, a valuable asset with underused potential for contributing to climate change adaptation, high-quality fine-fibre textiles, and the meat, leather and other industries. Camelid raising is unique in two respects: it is practised mainly at altitudes of 3,000 meters and above, in the fragile ecosystems where it evolved and to which it is perfectly adapted; and it is an asset of the poorest people living in this region. In short, this is essentially an activity of campesinos in the Andean highlands. In the past 20 years, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has invested in bringing together knowers and knowledge. Breeders, fibre sorters, artisans and microentrepreneurs linked to the camelid economy have exchanged and scaled up knowledge, with tangible results. IFAD has also cofinanced their enterprises and initiatives with support from national and local governments, businesses and other sources of cooperation. An estimated US$ 30 million has been invested in the sector in the past 15 years, generating an impact or incremental value of US$ 90 million in the pockets of producers. These are only the first steps in the process of developing the camelid economy and its contribution to mitigating climate change and combating rural poverty. In the four countries concerned, the sector could generate three times the current annual sales (US$ 300 million in the campesino sector and US$ 1,000 million if one includes the textile and garment industries and livestock sales). Such an increase will hinge on expanding incipient markets for meat (dried and fresh), leather manufactures and livestock by-products, as well as the textile market for vicuna fibre (guanaco fibre is still virtually unused). Knowledge exchanges need to be multiplied among local and international talents, because the thresholds for learning simple technologies and prerequisites to access solvent markets are beyond reach for many campesinos and artisans. This calls for cofinancing knowledge exchanges between subregions and countries, scaling up such knowledge to the majority, and selectively cofinancing the most promising and environmentally relevant initiatives to contribute positively to climate change (for instance, by substituting camelids for exotic livestock such as cattle and sheep in moist paramos or high steppe areas).Mountains are essential sources of freshwater for our world, but their role in global water resources could well be significantly altered by climate change. How well do we understand these potential changes today, and what are implications for water resources management, climate change adaptation, and evolving water policy? To answer above questions, we have examined 11 case study regions with the goal of providing a global overview, identifying research gaps and formulating recommendations for research, management and policy. After setting the scene regarding water stress, water management capacity and scientific capacity in our case study regions, we examine the state of knowledge in water resources from a highland-lowland viewpoint, focusing on mountain areas on the one hand and the adjacent lowland areas on the other hand. Based on this review, research priorities are identified, including precipitation, snow water equivalent, soil parameters, evapotranspiration and sublimation, groundwater as well as enhanced warming and feedback mechanisms. In addition, the importance of environmental monitoring at high altitudes is highlighted. We then make recommendations how advancements in the management of mountain water resources under climate change could be achieved in the fields of research, water resources management and policy as well as through better interaction between these fields. We conclude that effective management of mountain water resources urgently requires more detailed regional studies and more reliable scenario projections, and that research on mountain water resources must become more integrative by linking relevant disciplines. In addition, the knowledge exchange between managers and researchers must be improved and oriented towards long-term continuous interaction.Some of the most valued natural and cultural landscapes on Earth lie in river basins that are poorly gauged and have incomplete historical climate and runoff records. The Mara River Basin of East Africa is such a basin. It hosts the internationally renowned Mara-Serengeti landscape as well as a rich mixture of indigenous cultures. The Mara River is the sole source of surface water to the landscape during the dry season and periods of drought. During recent years, the flow of the Mara River has become increasingly erratic, especially in the upper reaches, and resource managers are hampered by a lack of understanding of the relative influence of different sources of flow alteration. Uncertainties about the impacts of future climate change compound the challenges. We applied the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to investigate the response of the headwater hydrology of the Mara River to scenarios of continued land use change and projected climate change. Under the data-scarce conditions of the basin, model performance was improved using satellite-based estimated rainfall data, which may also improve the usefulness of runoff models in other parts of East Africa. The results of the analysis indicate that any further conversion of forests to agriculture and grassland in the basin headwaters is likely to reduce dry season flows and increase peak flows, leading to greater water scarcity at critical times of the year and exacerbating erosion on hillslopes. Most climate change projections for the region call for modest and seasonally variable increases in precipitation (5-10%) accompanied by increases in temperature (2.5-3.5 degrees C). Simulated runoff responses to climate change scenarios were non-linear and suggest the basin is highly vulnerable under low (-3%) and high (+25%) extremes of projected precipitation changes, but under median projections (+7%) there is little impact on annual water yields or mean discharge. Modest increases in precipitation are partitioned largely to increased evapotranspiration. Overall, model results support the existing efforts of Mara water resource managers to protect headwater forests and indicate that additional emphasis should be placed on improving land management practices that enhance infiltration and aquifer recharge as part of a wider program of climate change adaptation.Climate time series are of major importance for base line studies for climate change impact and adaptation projects. However, for instance, in mountain regions and in developing countries there exist significant gaps in ground based climate records in space and time. Specifically, in the Peruvian Andes spatially and temporally coherent precipitation information is a prerequisite for ongoing climate change adaptation projects in the fields of water resources, disasters and food security. The present work aims at evaluating the ability of Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) to estimate precipitation rates at daily 0.25 degrees x 0.25 degrees scale in the Central Andes and the dependency of the estimate performance on changing spatial and temporal resolution. Comparison of the TMPA product with gauge measurements in the regions of Cuzco, Peru and La Paz, Bolivia were carried out and analysed statistically. Large biases are identified in both investigation areas in the estimation of daily precipitation amounts. The occurrence of strong precipitation events was well assessed, but their intensities were underestimated. TMPA estimates for La Paz show high false alarm ratio. The dependency of the TMPA estimate quality with changing resolution was analysed by comparisons of 1-, 7-, 15- and 30-day sums for Cuzco, Peru. The correlation of TMPA estimates with ground data increases strongly and almost linearly with temporal aggregation. The spatial aggregation to 0.5 degrees, 0.75 degrees and 1 degrees grid box averaged precipitation and its comparison to gauge data of the same areas revealed no significant change in correlation coefficients and estimate performance. In order to profit from the TMPA combination product on a daily basis, a procedure to blend it with daily precipitation gauge measurements is proposed. Different sources of errors and uncertainties introduced by the sensors, sensor-specific algorithm aspects and the TMPA processing scheme are discussed. This study reveals the possibilities and restrictions of the use of TMPA estimates in the Central Andes and should assist other researchers in the choice of the best resolution-accuracy relationship according to requirements of their applications.The growing risk of vulnerability to climate change is widely discussed in the scientific and political sphere. More evidence from local case studies emerges that document this risk. Vulnerability to climate change and variability appears most likely to negatively affect poor people, particularly women. Tendencies to widen existing inequalities have been observed. In the Lake Faguibine area in Northern Mali the social, political and ecological conditions have drastically changed in the last three decades. We conducted 6 single gender participatory workshops using PRA in two communities. The workshops assessed vulnerability and adaptive strategies to climate variability and change for livestock and forest based livelihoods. Our results show divergences in the adaptive strategies of men and women. Migration represented one of the most important strategies for men. Women perceived this strategy more as a cause of vulnerability than an adaptive strategy. Traditionally male activities have been added to the workload of women (e.g. small ruminant herding). The historical axes show that development projects targeting women have not integrated climate change and variability into their planning. Most activities have been built around small scale agriculture. With the drying out of Lake Faguibine, those water dependent activities are no longer relevant. Women have developed their own adaptive strategies based on newly emerged forest resources in the former lake area (e.g. charcoal production). However, women are hindered from realizing the potential of these new activities. This is due to loss of person power in the household, unclear access to natural resources, lack of knowledge and financial resources. Lack of power to influence decision at the household and community levels as well as limited market opportunities for women are additional factors. Even though women's vulnerability is increasing in the short term, over the long term the emerging changes in women's roles could lead to positive impacts. These impacts could be both societal (division of labor and power, new social spaces), and economic (market access, livestock wealth). Locally specific gender sensitive analysis of vulnerability is needed to understand dynamics and interaction of divergent adaptive strategies. Societal and political change at broader scales is needed to realize potential benefits for women in the long term.Purpose - The need to adapt to the effects of climate change requires the sharing of responsibility between the authorities and the public. It has been shown before that private building precautionary measures are able to significantly mitigate flood losses. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which factors are motivating people to undertake mitigation measures, with a particular focus on the perceptions of climate change. Design/methodology/approach - A total of 605 households in Dresden have been interviewed and their answers statistically analysed. Findings - Correlation and principal component analysis show a slight influence of the perception about consequences of climate change on the motivation to undertake flood emergency measures. However, other socio-economic factors such as the ownership of the residential building and the size of the household are much more important. Practical implications - In order to improve the uptake of flood mitigation and climate change adaptation measures, public awareness raising campaigns and schemes utilizing financial and non-financial incentives should be undertaken. Such campaigns should particularly focus on specific social-groups, like tenants or singles. Awareness raising campaigns focusing on the causes and consequences of climate change are expected to have little effect on peoples' motivation to act. Originality/value - This study has discovered very weak links between perceptions of climate change and the motivation of households to undertake precautionary measures, which is important for the design of awareness raising campaigns.Purpose - Insurance is widely regarded as a key adaptation option for climate change. Yet, the experience of the insurance sector in dealing with climatic hazards, particularly flooding, has been highly varied. Drawing from the experience of the US National Flood Insurance Program (NFEP), the purpose of this paper is to identify opportunities and challenges associated with using insurance as an adaptation strategy for climate change. Design/methodology/approach - This article critically reviews the history and recent performance of the NFIP and considers lessons for climate change adaptation through insurance. Findings - The US NFIP offers government-subsidized flood insurance for firms and residences. Over its 40-year history, the NFIP has struggled with financial instability and low levels of public participation in the program. The experience of the NFIP offers several lessons regarding the viability of insurance as an adaptation strategy: increasing insurance premiums to account for new climatic risks may mean that a growing segment of the population is unable or unwilling to purchase insurance, absent some other form of subsidization; educating the public on levels of risk and promoting appropriate risk mitigation are highly effective means for reducing damages from current and emerging weather-related risks; and close public-private cooperation is likely to be needed to prevent withdrawal of private insurers from high-risk areas and to ensure that insurance coverage continues to be widely available. Originality/value - Examination of past experience with insurance as a mechanism for climate adaptation offers lessons and insights that can inform development of effective strategies to address climate change.UNESCO's 207 natural heritage World Heritage Properties are at risk from climate change, but risk varies widely among properties. I offer a global model based on multi-model general circulation model (GCM) ensembles, vulnerability and Human Influence (HII), producing the World Heritage Vulnerability Index (WHVI), a measure of relative risk among properties. Nineteen properties are most at risk (i.e. WHVI >= mean + 1 SD). Those include islands (i.e. Vallee de Mai, Aldabra, East Rennell, Teide, Laurisilva of Maderia, Isole Eloie, Pitons Management Area, Morne Trois Pitons and Galapagos Islands), coastal properties (i.e. Everglades, Desembarco del Granma, High Coast and Kvarken Archipelago, Do ana, Brazilian Atlantic Islands, Ichkeul and the Sunderbans) and mountainous properties (i.e. the Pyrenees Mont Perdu, Nanda Devi and the Valley of Flowers, and Mount Kinabalu). Three properties (i.e. Teide, Isole Eloie and the Pitons Management Area) are geologic, apparently relatively resistant to short-term climactic changes. The remaining 16 are likely to respond to climactic changes in the next 40 years; those changes may threaten their World Heritage status. Those properties are where society could most effectively invest in adaptation. I identify adaptive strategies and next steps for proactive climate change adaptation in the 16 natural heritage properties on the World Heritage List most at risk.This paper describes a planning process combining river flood management with spatial planning. Within the IJssel Delta project, a river bypass in the river IJssel, one of the major Dutch rivers, is planned to reduce the risk of flooding in view of expected climate change effects. The challenge for this project was to combine various developments (bypass, urban development, nature, leisure, infrastructure and agriculture) in the area into a single integrated spatial development plan, acceptable to all stakeholders. This included resolving spatial conflicts between separate developments regarding (i) flood protection, (ii) infrastructure and (iii) housing. During the planning process various bypass alternatives were considered to determine the span width of possible solutions. Various technical issues related to the bypass design have been studied using state-of-the-art methods. A participatory approach involving public and private stakeholders has been used to secure a widely accepted development plan. The plan has been adopted by the responsible authorities. It is now in the final planning stage and is scheduled for execution from 2013 onwards.Cities are facing considerable challenges resulting from imminent climate change impacts. Urban planning to minimise adverse impacts of climate change at the city level can establish a climate-resilient city. Mitigation strategies to reduce CO2 emissions would lead to a climate-friendly city. Integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation into sustainable city planning should not be merely added as a single level of sustainable city planning, but requires a wide range of multi-level cooperation. Lijiang City has experienced climatic change during the last half century, and its CO2 emissions have increased faster than the GDP growth. Nearby glaciers on Yulong Snow Mountain have been retreating and losing mass since the early twentieth century. In this paper, we identify economic sectors that are vulnerable to climate change, including tourism, agriculture and water supply, and propose mitigation and adaptation strategies to cope with climate change in this tourism city. As energy use is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, renewable energy has enormous CO2 reduction potential. Land use practices, a sectoral approach and public participation are all considered adaptive in climate planning. The proposals outlined are valuable as they provide an understanding of how to implement integrated climate planning and integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation into sustainable city planning.In this paper we outline an analytical approach to identifying points in the policy process where management intervention to adjust organizational design could enhance delivery of innovation policy over time. We illustrate this approach using an example from native vegetation policy in the state of Victoria, Australia. We then use this approach to interpret recent reviews of the Australian Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program, a policy instrument aimed at enhancing national economic growth by fostering innovation in research and development. The approach described in this paper is grounded in the idea of policy as a complex and adaptive organizational system. From the findings it was apparent that reviews of the Australian CRC Program have recognized some of its complex and dynamic properties. However, they have been limited in their capacity to translate this recognition into practical recommendations for organizational design to improve delivery on innovation, particularly in relation to the uptake of research outputs by industries such as agriculture. We propose that this is likely to reflect the bureaucratic foundations of innovation policy and the difficulties associated with changing processes and ways of managing them that have become locked in to the organizational system. The design of policy instruments to deliver innovation, such as the CRC Program, should be informed by a detailed understanding of the dynamics that are mediating between policy objectives and outcomes over time. Dynamics such as the impact of bureaucratic constraints on the flexibility of policy processes and the participants engaged in them. In the absence of this sort of understanding, dynamics that critically affect the capacity of policy instruments to deliver innovation are likely to go unidentified and left to run their own course to an unpredictable and potentially counterproductive end. While the idea of policy as a complex organizational system is well known, there remains a substantive gap in knowledge as to how thinking about policy in this way might be applied to generate practical options for improving organizational design. The analytical approach described in this paper addresses this gap in knowledge. In the absence of such approaches, the effectiveness of policy instruments such as the CRC Program, which are intended to foster innovation, will continue to be limited by deficiencies in organizational design.This article discusses incentives to help make healthy choices the easy choices for individuals, operating at the levels of the individual, producers and service providers, and governments. Whereas paying individuals directly to be healthier seems to have a limited effect, offering financial incentives through health insurance improves health. Changing the environment to make healthier choices more accessible acts as an incentive to improve health. Employers can provide incentives to improve the health of their employees. Producers and service providers can take voluntary action to make their products less harmful, and they can be nudged into marketing healthier products within a regulatory environment. International agreements and monitoring systems can incentivize governments to do more for health. Lessons from climate change adaptation suggest that multilevel governance and policy integration are greater obstacles to policy change and implementation than knowing what has to be done. Policy change and implementation are triggered by many drivers, many of which are side effects of other policy pressures rather than of the direct policy goal itself. Effective action to reduce noncommunicable diseases will require leveraging social networks into a new ways of thinking about health; making better health prestigious and aspirational, and giving health and wellness a brand that encourages positive behavior change.Forests are an important store of carbon within the global carbon cycle and increasingly play a role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. The review illustrates that the cultural, economic and environmental services of forests that are utilized for tourism and recreation are being affected by climate change. In addition to the changes to the distribution and composition of forests as a result of climate change, forest tourism is also affected by changes in frequency and intensity of fires, storm damage and the introduction of alien species. On examining the relevant literature on forests, tourism and climate change, the review identifies the need for a greater understanding of tourist perception of forest change as a major research task. There is also a need for better understanding of systemic effects of tourism-related climate change adaptation and mitigation policies on forest conservation and deforestation. The need for further research of urban forests and woodlands for climate change adaptation and mitigation and their potential implications for tourism and leisure is also highlighted.This paper presents a public health narrative on Quebec's new climatic conditions and human health, and describes the transdisciplinary nature of the climate change adaptation research currently being adopted in Quebec, characterized by the three phases of problem identification, problem investigation, and problem transformation. A transdisciplinary approach is essential for dealing with complex ill-defined problems concerning human-environment interactions (for example, climate change), for allowing joint research, collective leadership, complex collaborations, and significant exchanges among scientists, decision makers, and knowledge users. Such an approach is widely supported in theory but has proved to be extremely difficult to implement in practice, and those who attempt it have met with heavy resistance, succeeding when they find the occasional opportunity within institutional or social contexts. In this paper we narrate the ongoing struggle involved in tackling the negative effects of climate change in multi-actor contexts at local and regional levels, a struggle that began in a quiet way in 1998. The paper will describe how public health adaptation research is supporting transdisciplinary action and implementation while also preparing for the future, and how this interaction to tackle a life-world problem (adaptation of the Quebec public health sector to climate change) in multi-actors contexts has progressively been established during the last 13 years. The first of the two sections introduces the social context of a Quebec undergoing climate changes. Current climatic conditions and expected changes will be described, and attendant health risks for the Quebec population. The second section addresses the scientific, institutional and normative dimensions of the problem. It corresponds to a "public health narrative" presented in three phases: (1) problem identification (1998-2002) beginning in northern Quebec; (2) problem investigation (2002-2006) in which the issues are successively explored, understood, and conceptualized for all of Quebec, and (3) problem transformation (2006-2009), which discusses major interactions among the stakeholders and the presentation of an Action Plan by a central actor, the Quebec government, in alliance with other stakeholders. In conclusion, we underline the importance, in the current context, of providing for a sustained transdisciplinary adaptation to climatic change. This paper should be helpful for (1) public health professionals confronted with establishing a transdisciplinary approach to a real-world problem other than climate change, (2) professionals in other sectors (such as public safety, built environment) confronted with climate change, who wish to implement transdisciplinary adaptive interventions and/or research, and (3) knowledge users (public and private actors; nongovernment organizations; citizens) from elsewhere in multi-contexts/environments/sectors who wish to promote complex collaborations (with us or not), collective leadership, and "transfrontier knowledge-to-action" for implementing climate change-related adaptation measures.With the likelihood of future changes in climate and climate variability, it is important to understand how human systems may be vulnerable. Rural communities in Saskatchewan having agricultural-based economies are particularly dependent on climate and could be among the most vulnerable human systems in Canada. Future changes in climate are likely to have significant impacts on rural livelihoods, and rural populations will face the challenge of coping with climate change in light of a multitude of other changing socio-economic and environmental conditions. The Rural Municipality of Rudy No. 284 was chosen as a case study due to its access to irrigation, a key tool in climate adaptation for the agricultural system in the area against one of its most notorious climatic features severe multi-year droughts. Further irrigation development would continue to reduce climate vulnerabilities. Even with irrigation however, the compounding effects of climate and other socio-economic changes will likely require modifications in current practices and policies in order to secure adequate livelihoods. Climate change adaptation in the RM must ensure equitable access to water and potentially irrigation, reduce barriers to collaboration when addressing communal problems, and provide more certainty in government programs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is increasingly acknowledged that adapting to climate change is important in developing countries, where the majority of people depend on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods, and their capacity to adapt to change is low. These people are especially vulnerable to climate change. This vulnerability was addressed together with options to adapt in a context of sustainable development at a two-week training course on climate adaptation. The course was developed and organised by a group of scientists from Wageningen UR with partners in East Africa. In addition to the training course, the team worked on the set-up of a collaborative process with partners from the region and policy advice, all with the support of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. The development of the training course is the focus of this chapter. The course assisted in bringing researchers, policymakers and practitioners together to learn about climate change adaptation in agriculture and natural resources management. The development of a conceptual framework as a joint understanding of climate change adaptation was an important element in the learning process.Global climate change threatens the structure and function of ecological communities in urban areas, including public and private gardens. An adaptation strategy was developed to accommodate the challenges of urban greenspace design under a changing climate. The strategy offers a protocol for planting design that focuses on adding resilience to plantings rather than matching specific plant species to specific predictions of climate change. The adaptation strategy begins by rating locally appropriate plant species on ecological criteria for plasticity, functional redundancy, response diversity, and structural diversity. The plant palette is then developed within the confines set by ecological value and aesthetic goals, plus cultural and financial considerations. Collective application of the strategy at smaller scales across the urban landscape has the potential to protect and expand nature corridors that are resilient to climate change and to provide a low cost version of assisted migration. Examples of how to apply the adaptation strategy demonstrate that the approach is not specific to place or scale, and does not require extensive training or bring added expense. The benefits and manageable challenges of the strategy are discussed in relation to biodiversity conservation, social impact, the opportunity for "designed" experiments that examine urban ecosystem processes, and existing model forecasts for climate change.Yemen faces formidable freshwater management challenges. Devising policies for sustainable use and allocation of limited water resources is made difficult by substantial population growth, degrading environmental quality and uncertainty regarding possible changes in water availability due to climate change. We use the Water Resources Evaluation and Planning software to evaluate water needs and scarcity for three case study areas in Yemen representing different ecological conditions (Sana'a, Sadah, and Aden City) under a range of scenarios that include potential climate change and adaptation strategies. These management strategies, identified by stakeholder processes, have the potential to reduce vulnerability and build resilience. The modelled results suggest that current and predicted patterns of water consumption will soon fully deplete available supplies, and are a bigger driver of vulnerability than potential climate change for the region. In the absence of new strategies to bring into balance water supply and demand patterns, results for all three case studies suggest the pressing water crisis will only worsen. Timely interventions, designed to build resilience to scarcity, are urgently needed.Local knowledge is a valuable asset in observing and managing environmental change, and importantly, is an unheralded source of adaptive capacity. Torres Strait Islanders are no exception, having used such knowledge to adapt to biophysical changes in their environment for centuries. This article explores the ways in which Islanders have coped in the past with environmental changes to plan for their future. This article focuses on Erub Island in the eastern group of islands in the Torres Strait and charts the adaptation actions or activities employed by respected locals (Elders and Aunties). Drawing on their local knowledge, these actions or activities have included the building of rock walls and wind breaks, using native species to re-vegetate sand cays and the coastal foreshore, applying self-sufficient practices such as fish traps and gardening, reading and respecting country, and transferring this knowledge to the younger generation. In this way, it is the Islanders themselves who detail, based on their local knowledge, what is most appropriate for their community.Climate change is expected to have significant impacts on hydrologic regimes and freshwater ecosystems, and yet few basins have adequate numerical models to guide the development of freshwater climate adaptation strategies. Such strategies can build on existing freshwater conservation activities, and incorporate predicted climate change impacts. We illustrate this concept with three case studies. In the Upper Klamath Basin of the western USA, a shift in land management practices would buffer this landscape from a declining snowpack. In the Murray-Darling Basin of south-eastern Australia, identifying the requirements of flood-dependent natural values would better inform the delivery of environmental water in response to reduced runoff and less water. In the Savannah Basin of the south-eastern USA, dam managers are considering technological and engineering upgrades in response to more severe floods and droughts, which would also improve the implementation of recommended environmental flows. Even though the three case studies are in different landscapes, they all contain significant freshwater biodiversity values. These values are threatened by water allocation problems that will be exacerbated by climate change, and yet all provide opportunities for the development of effective climate adaptation strategies.Dams affect rivers and other freshwater ecosystems around the world. The structural performance and service delivery of many dams has seldom been assessed; many are unsafe and no longer deliver designed benefits. Changes in hydrology from climate change will require assessment of safety and operations of infrastructure. This creates an opportunity during relicensing for modification or removal of dams to render them safe, maximise their services and minimise social and environmental impacts. We examined case studies of reassessment of dams from Australia (New South Wales), China, France and the United States that illustrated the following: the management challenge of aging and unsafe dams; unrealised opportunities to improve environmental, social and economic benefits; and the benefits of inventory and relicensing systems. Key elements of an ideal regulatory system to optimise water infrastructure performance are identified, comprising periodic (time-limited) relicensing of all infrastructure overseen by an independent regulatory agency that would take decisions in the public interest through a transparent process, involving public participation. Each dam would have an identified owner who must apply best-available technologies to maximise safety, socioeconomic and environmental performance. Dam renovation could minimise current non-climate impacts, improve migration of aquatic wildlife and even attenuate some climate impacts on freshwater biota.Climate change is predicted to affect the future supply and demand for water resources. Current water-management practices may not adequately cope with the impacts of climate change on the reliability of water supply, flood risk, health, agriculture, energy generation and aquatic ecosystems. Water managers can adapt to climate variability by structural change, such as increasing the size or number of dams, building desalination plants and transferring water between catchments; however, a broader set of alternatives with multiple beneficial outcomes for society and the environment should be explored. We discuss how modifying dam operations, 'dam reoperation', can assist with adaptation to climate change and help restore ecosystems. The main operating purpose of a dam (e. g. flood management, hydropower or water supply) will influence dam reoperation strategies. Reoperation may require integration across sectors or involve multiple dams, enhancing benefits such as water supply or hydropower while simultaneously achieving ecosystem restoration. We provide examples of lessons learned during extreme scenarios (e. g. floods and droughts), where operational flexibility has been demonstrated. We contrast structural climate-change adaptation strategies (e. g. building new dams) and their resulting detrimental environmental outcomes with dam reoperation, which can maximise benefits for ecosystems andOver the past 3 decades, thermal stress events have damaged corals globally. Few studies, however, have tracked the recovery process or assessed whether winners in the short term are also winners in the long term. In the present study, we repeatedly sampled a coral assemblage over a 14 yr period, from 1997 to 2010, through 2 thermal stress events (in 1998 and 2001). Our goal was to examine the consistency of short-term winner and loser outcomes over the recovery period. Although species richness had recovered after 10 yr, the reef composition had changed, and few pocilloporids were to be found. The short-term winners were the thermally tolerant encrusting and massive coral morphologies (Porites and faviids) and Acropora colonies <5 cm in diameter. Long-term winners were revealed as (1) thermally tolerant, locally persistent colonies, (2) remnant survivors that rapidly regrew, and (3) regionally persistent colonies that recruited.It is acknowledged by academics and development practitioners alike that many common strategies addressing community based disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation duplicate each other. Thus, there is a strong push to integrate the two fields to enhance aid effectiveness and reduce confusion for communities. Examples of community based disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) projects are presented to highlight some of the ways these issues are tackled in the Pacific. Various approaches are employed but all aim to reduce the vulnerability and enhance the resilience of local communities to the impacts of climate change and disasters. By focusing on three case studies, elements of best practice are drawn out to illustrate how DRR and CCA can be integrated for enhanced aid effectiveness, and also look at ways in which these two often overlapping fields can be better coordinated in ongoing and future projects. Projects that address vulnerability holistically, and target the overall needs and capacity of the community are found to be effective in enhancing the resilience of communities. By strategically developing a multi-stakeholder and multi-sector approach, community projects are likely to encapsulate a range of experience and skills that will benefit the community Furthermore, by incorporating local knowledge, communities are far more likely to be engaged and actively participate in the project. From selected case studies, commonly occurring best practice methods to integrate DRR and CCA are identified and discussed and recommendations on how to overcome the common challenges also presented.Climate change is expected to affect not only the means of climatic variables, but also their variabilities(1,2) and extremes such as heat waves(2-6). In particular, modelling studies have postulated a possible impact of soil-moisture deficit and drought on hot extremes(7-11). Such effects could be responsible for impending changes in the occurrence of heat waves in Europe(7). Here we analyse observational indices based on measurements at 275 meteorological stations in central and southeastern Europe, and on publicly available gridded observations(12). We find a relationship between soil-moisture deficit, as expressed by the standardized precipitation index(13), and summer hot extremes in southeastern Europe. This relationship is stronger for the high end of the distribution of temperature extremes. We compare our results with simulations of current climate models and find that the models correctly represent the soil-moisture impacts on temperature extremes in southeastern Europe, but overestimate them in central Europe. Given the memory associated with soil moisture storage, our findings may help with climate-change-adaptation measures, such as early-warning and prediction tools for extreme heat waves.This study examines the impacts of strong rain events on local stakeholders in New Delhi, India, with the aim of developing effective adaptation and impact abatement options. Impacts are presented for various social groups - i.e., street food vendors and service providers, students, planners, other professionals and researchers - and analysed with respect to transportation, energy, water, health, food security and other issue areas. Under progressive climate change, strong rain events are projected to increase. Without adaptation, then, impacts will also increase. We use a fuzzy cognitive mapping approach and let stakeholders draw cause-effect networks. By 'cutting' certain cause-effect relations, its after-effects can be reduced and any such measure can be regarded as an adaptation option. Analysis reveals that local service providers and street food vendors are substantially worried about the economic losses connected with strong rain events, while other social groups care more about traffic jams and impacts on health. Scenario runs have shown that a climate change adaptation strategy that involves a reduction of local flooding would substantially reduce a multitude of impacts for all.In 2009, for the first time in history, more people were found to live in urban areas than in rural settings. Predictions for 2025 are that 70% of the world's population will be urban. Urban dwellers in particular, then, will need to adapt to climate change. Urbanization occurs at a rapid pace in secondary cities across Africa. Indeed, half the increase of urban populations in the coming years is expected to occur in secondary cities. Poor settlements near water bodies (rivers, irrigation systems and large dams) are prone to flooding, which is likely to be exacerbated by climate change. Employing an ecohealth approach, this study explores the vulnerabilities and resilience of poor urban settlers in four secondary cities of West Africa, all located in close proximity to water bodies: Korhogo, Cote d'Ivoire (212,000 inhabitants, near a dam); Kaedi, Mauritania (71,000 inhabitants, near a river); Ziguinchor, Senegal (269,000 inhabitants, near a river); and Kara, Togo (120,000 inhabitants, near a river). The aim of this study is to reinforce the resilience of the most vulnerable of these communities and their capacity to adapt to processes of drought and flooding in two climatic contexts: semi-arid and tropical humid. Local governance authorities play a central role in this project, which emphasizes participatory research, and explores linkages between hazards, vulnerabilities and local adaptive capacity potentials, particularly in the water and health sectors.Numerous recommendations are emerging to guide cities in developing risk assessments and climate adaptation plans. In some instances, these recommendations are appropriate. However, since many are drawn from traditional approaches to comprehensive planning and from climate mitigation programs, they often do not account for the unique challenges associated with urban adaptation or provide guidance that is sensitive to the distinctive social, cultural, institutional, and administrative characteristics of particular locales. In this paper, which captures a panel discussion convened at the Resilient Cities Congress 2010, expert practitioners and academics review emerging wisdom about best practices in adaptation planning, draw on their experience and research findings to challenge these assumptions, and show what we can learn about process and outcomes from cities at the forefront.The imperative of adapting cities to risks associated with climate change will reveal the strong potential of political and administrative action at the level of local urban governments. Action at this level facilitates adaptation solutions that are closely linked to the specific needs, wants and capacities of local communities and economies. At the same time, the need to adapt to climate related impacts creates new, and in many cases, unprecedented challenges for local governments, often exceeding their current capacities in terms of risk awareness, expert knowledge, access to information, finance, or legal responsibility. This paradox is most apparent in emerging economies that have recently undergone, or are currently experiencing, political and economic transformations, including (re-)orientation towards market-oriented economies, administrative liberalisation, decentralisation, dynamic urbanisation and changing socio-political paradigms. Drawing on empirical research based on coastal and delta cities in Vietnam, focusing particularly on the example of Can Tho City in the Mekong Delta, this paper analyses the challenges local urban governments face with respect to formulating and implementing climate change adaptation strategies for their city in the context of transformation. The paper argues that challenges are particularly evident in the fields of urban growth and expansion, administrative reform and decentralisation, the fragmentation of sector responsibilities, the broadening of the actor spectrum and planning and management paradigms. Lessons learned can be utilised for other local urban governments experiencing similar conditions. Knowledge gaps and future research needs are also explored.Adapting to climate change means adapting the way we do things - in all areas of our lives - to respond to the changing circumstances (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), What is adaptation? http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climate/adaptation/what.htm 2008). Adaptation is fundamentally a local issue - flooding, coastal erosion, agricultural patterns, employment, regeneration and land use all impact the local level. It is now recognised that local governments have an important role in grappling with the complex impacts of climate change and setting in motion plans for their services and communities. Councillors (elected members) play a key role in championing adaptation at the local level. Their ongoing enthusiasm in driving forward the green agenda, their awareness of the risks of business as usual and their passion for community wellbeing puts them in the best position to develop public awareness of, and the political will, for taking action on adaptation. This paper identifies councillors' leadership role in the adaptation agenda. It presents a checklist with five suggested actions for councillors. On communicating the adaptation agenda to the public, councillors could use more simple language, give practical examples and use more innovative channels of communications. On supporting their councils to take action, councillors could present a business case for adaptation and help build partnerships for delivery.This contribution elaborates on the transdisciplinary research approach employed in the project plan B:altic which facilitates integration of practitioners throughout the entire research process. The project aims to show possible ways of developing adaptation strategies to climate change, to discuss jointly the transdisciplinary research and solution approach and to offer practitioners innovative suggestions. This paper focuses especially on preliminary experiences with the use of resilience thinking as a conceptual bridge between different disciplines and knowledge areas involved in the research process. Besides obvious strengths of the resilience concept such as addressing uncertainty, complexity and transformational change, its practical use as a guiding principle for developing adaptation strategies evokes a number of concerns, yet first and foremost the question of operationalization.Social and physical climate change scientists agree that to effectively address climate change, we will need new 'technologies' of cooperation. Placing collaborative governance at centre stage, this paper explores how best to develop resilient cities based on best practice and innovative design. After researching best practice stakeholder collaboration, this paper analyses the common themes that characterize climate adaptation strategies, and documents the success factors typifying best practice. Based on this research and experience, it outlines the IFOK model for new governance and supporting institutional strategies. In addition, the paper argues that a more radical redesign of engagement and governance will be critical in order to achieve community resilience and joint action. It outlines how this can be achieved through collaborative governance, involving the deliberated wisdom of ordinary citizens, i.e. by instituting deliberative democracy. Examples of deliberative democratic practice across the globe are highlighted, including an innovative initiative to develop a deliberative community and collaborative governance in regional Western Australia.Urban climate plans often focus primarily on reducing greenhouse gases. However, some plans are evolving from technical CO, emissions reduction strategies towards strategies that cover a broader range of issues. Adaptation or climate-proofing components are becoming a major focus of attention for climate plans. This study analyses the climate plans of ten cities and examines the adaptation requirements and strategies that each have included within their plans. It examines how each city perceives its hazard profile, and analyses what changes are to be expected under the influence of climate change. The paper also reviews each city's urban vulnerability and discusses the current and expected future vulnerability as explained in their climate plans. The interpretation of the climate risk of each city provides the analytical framework for the analysis of the adaptation strategies. The study reviews how the various components of the climate risk are being addressed. It carries out this strategic analysis across the ten cities globally, and analyses the differences and similarities between each. The paper concludes with recommendations for future urban climate plans and highlights how climate adaptation strategies can be mainstreamed.This paper focuses on the Quebec government's efforts in its fight against climate change through its support of the province's local and regional municipalities, as well as the role played by Ouranos, a government-initiated research consortium whose mandate is to inform and advise decision-makers on the impacts of climate change and options for adaptation. Beyond this support, some municipalities, such as the City of Quebec, have become very pro-active in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the inevitable impacts of climate change. This paper demonstrates how essential it has become to establish close links between different adaptation stakeholders to ensure the success of their combined efforts.Since cities are both a key source of greenhouse gas emissions and highly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, many are starting to take actions to mitigate and confront the anticipated effects. Latin America and the Caribbean, the most urbanized region worldwide after North America, are no exception. This contribution studies the state of adaptation strategies of two Latin American agglomerations: Sao Paulo and Santiago de Chile. The article, first, characterizes the adaptation efforts of the two cases based on local climate conditions with respect to actors, priorities and approaches. Second, it derives particular implementation challenges. It shows that each of the two approaches has distinct advantages as well as constraints. Common to both approaches is the challenge of preparing local governance for the long term risks of climate change. The research is based on a review of official documents, expert interviews, literature reviews and analysis of statistical data.This paper considers some of the opportunities and challenges of adapting to climate change across different scales of local government in England. Using two-tier municipalities (county and districts) in South East England as a case study, the authors suggest three themes that have proved important in shaping adaptation at the local government level: support by senior management, regulation (mostly in the form of a performance framework), and the challenge of finding the right level of prioritisation for adaptation. The research indicates that weather and climate risks can be limited in the case of the smaller district councils, but can be of higher priority for larger county councils, which have more substantial assets and services available to them. The paper concludes by suggesting that the focus of UK public sector reform on local partnerships may present an opportunity to increase cross-organisational understanding of adaptation at the local level. At the same time, it can increase awareness of climate vulnerability within localities as a whole.Major efforts in the struggle against climate change have been made in the Basque Country. These include instruments such as the Basque Climate Change Office, the Basque Plan to Combat Climate Change, and the many initiatives carried out under the framework of Udalsarea 21 Basque Network of Municipalities for Sustainability (made up of 199 municipalities and representing 98.8% of the population of the Basque Country). Moreover, specific legislation on climate change is expected to come into force in 2011. In particular, the Basque Government is developing the Climate Change Law and the Sustainable Mobility Law. Additionally, in response to the annual call for eco-innovation projects, the Basque Government is engaged in two climate change adaptation initiatives within the framework of the Udalsarea 21. Both initiatives aim at generating and piloting methodological resources to help municipal authorities establish adaptation policies. The main elements are: (1) methodological directives to draw up local adaptation strategies, and (2) preparation of specific criteria of urban adaptation to climate change to be incorporated into urban planning.This contribution presents case studies of nine Dutch municipalities. Interview-based data show that the drivers of local climate adaptation in these cases are determined more by local contextual factors than by past experience with flooding or an expected increase of climate change risk. The presence of larger institutional capacity did not prove to be determinative of the level of action in climate change adaptation policies. Only in urban cases where a green party administrator was responsible for environmental affairs was a high level of 'adaptation action' observed. Another mediating factor appeared to be the variation in quality of climate change information.In 2002, Dresden was hit by heavy rains and floods that caused severe and costly damages to the city. This event initiated the establishment of a new municipal water management system to address the various urban flood-risks associated with the city's urban creeks, groundwater, local sewage system, as well as the river Elbe. At the same time, the impact of climate change on urban structures, buildings, ecosystems and the technical infrastructure within Dresden are being systematically researched. This paper shares the first adaptation options being developed in response, specifically as they relate to the action fields advanced within the Dresden Flood Prevention Programme.This paper presents intermediate results of the research project 'Integrative Urban and Environmental Planning for the Adaptation of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) to Climate Change', which is part of the research initiative 'Sustainable Development of the Megacities of Tomorrow' of the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The overall objective of the research project is to develop and incorporate climate change adaptation strategies into urban decision-making and planning processes, which will increase resiliency to climate-related physical and social vulnerabilities for the urban system of HCMC. This paper argues that inclusive and effective urban planning is essential for climate adapted and energy efficient urban development. A dual strategy of top down and bottom up approaches is emphasized. It aims to improve local climate change response capacity and facilitate the integration of guidelines into the planning levels of the Vietnamese legal framework. The concept of 'three-level guidelines' is presented, providing a framework for climate change response on the conurbation, neighbourhood and building level. A Toolkit of Adaptation Measures and a Design Catalogue for the Promotion of Energy-Efficient and Climate Adapted Buildings as well as planning studies and a Community Based Adaptation Scheme are developed as part of the bottom-up activities.This paper examines the risk management process undertaken by Kogarah City Council to address climate change impacts using the tools and resources developed by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability through its Adaptive and Resilient Communities Program. The paper focuses on the experiences, challenges and learnings of the council when working through the different stages of the program. It highlights some of the strategies and initiatives Kogarah City Council has implemented in order to achieve its main climate change adaptation goals and objectives. This paper is therefore intended as a 'case study' for other local governments planning to carry out a risk management process within their organisation. It is concluded that the key immediate outcome of the program for Kogarah City Council was internal capacity building that was achieved by enabling staff to collaboratively engage with each other in a structured and facilitated manner.This paper outlines the conflicts and synergies between risk and resilience approaches to climate change adaptation planning in vulnerable coastal areas of Australia. It examines whether current planning processes shaping vulnerable coastal settlements in Australia are sufficiently informed to build adaptive capacity for their communities under climate change impacts. Considerable research to date has focused on the application of risk management in identifying vulnerabilities and predicted worst-case scenarios. This approach often proposes 'hard' infrastructure changes for climate change adaptation. However, little work has been done looking at the processes for implementing and supporting such adaptation strategies while addressing the inherent uncertainty of future climate change impacts. This so-called 'soft' infrastructure is critical to building a community's ability to innovate and prosper while adapting to unforeseen challenges posed by a changing climate. It is argued that introducing concepts of resilience to municipal planning processes for vulnerable coastal settlements, particularly in development control plans (DCP's) may provide a more comprehensive approach to climate change adaptation.As cities expand, so do the food needs of urban families. The situation of the urban poor is precarious in the present context of volatile food prices and the financial, fuel and economic crises. The urban poor, often located in the most vulnerable parts of cities and lacking the capacity to adapt to climate-related impacts, will be hit hardest. The challenges associated with supporting the urban poor demand urgent and adequate responses from city and national authorities and international organisations. Urban policies need to incorporate food security considerations and focus more on building cities that are more resilient to crises. There is growing recognition of urban and pen-urban agriculture (UPA) as an important strategy for climate change adaptation and mitigation, to a lesser extent. Metropolitan, municipal and other local government institutions can play a proactive and coordinating role in enhancing urban food security and cities resilience by: 1. Integrating urban food security/UPA into climate change adaptation and disaster management strategies 2. Maintaining and managing agriculture projects as part of the urban and peri-urban green infrastructure 3. Identifying open urban spaces prone to floods and landslides and protecting or developing these as permanent UPA/multi-functional areas 4. Integrating UPA into comprehensive city water(shed) management plans 5. Including UPA in social housing and slum upgrading programmes 6. Developing a municipal urban agriculture and food security policy and programme.Miami-Dade County is a diverse, low-lying county of approximately 2.5 million inhabitants, situated along the subtropical stretches of the southeastern United States. Situated at the tip of a peninsula, just feet above sea level, Miami-Dade County has long been aware of its acute vulnerability to climate change, particularly sea level rise. In this regard, Miami-Dade County began analyzing and implementing mitigation strategies decades before 'climate change' and `sustainability' became mainstream, and was one of the first local communities to begin actively planning for climate change. Through multiple partnerships and collaborations, the County has well established itself as a leader, and has been actively moving forward to make the community more sustainable and more resilient to existing and future projected climate change impacts. The County has taken active steps to engage and leverage support at the local, regional, state, and federal levels. This multiple level stakeholder engagement is one of Miami-Dade County's most valuable tools in becoming a more climate resilient community.This paper outlines the development of the first municipal adaptation plans for climate change in Durban, South Africa. Particular attention is paid to the storm water and coastal plans developed for the water sector. Key adaptation activities in the main operational departments are highlighted as well as the key challenges and lessons learned during the development of the plans. Three factors were significant in determining the success of the project: (1) the emergence of political and technical champions, (2) the existence of high level technical expertise within the municipality and (3) broad based and appropriate communication with stakeholders.In this paper, using a theoretical model with endogenous capital depreciation, we study the effects of climate change and adaptation on long-run development. We show that climate change affects economic growth depending on climate exposure and adaptation efficiency, which are asymmetric between different countries. Poor countries are likely to be hurt more, because of the negative effects of climate change on the rate of depreciation of the assets that represent the engine of growth. These asymmetries generally induce growth deficits and unsustainability traps in less-developed economies.The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) is an innovative transboundary effort to protect biodiversity and facilitate climate adaptation by linking large protected core areas through compatible land uses on matrix lands. The Y2Y organization acts as the keeper of the Y2Y vision and implements two interconnected programs Science and Action, and Vision and Awareness to promote the landscape, political, public, and financial conditions necessary for wildlife connectivity. The Y2Y vision has inspired many others who are also undertaking programs, projects, and actions contributing to its realization. This paper provides examples of projects being undertaken by the Y2Y organization as well as those being implemented by others and includes a brief summary of successes to date.Wintertime climate around Hokkaido is highly sensitive to fluctuations in snow and sea-ice. We examined future climate change in heavy snowfall region around Hokkaido, using the Pseudo-Global-Warming method (PGW) by a regional climate model. The boundary conditions of the PGW run were obtained by adding the difference between the future (2090s) and past (1990s) climates simulated by coupled general circulation models, into the 6-hourly reanalysis and daily sea surface temperature data. The PGW experiments show that snow depth decreases significantly over mountainous areas. However, snow cover decreases mainly over plain areas, which accelerates surface warming due to the decreased snow albedo. Despite the snow reductions, precipitation increases over the mountainous areas because of enhanced water vapor content. However, precipitation decreases over the Japan Sea and neighboring the coastal areas, suggesting a weakening of the convergent cloud band which is formed by convergence between cold northwesterly from the Eurasian continent and anticyclonic circulation over the Okhotsk Sea. Our results indicate the contrasting cloud responses to future climate change over the Japan and Okhotsk Seas in terms of meso-scale climate system.USABLE CLIMATE KNOWLEDGE? THE RELATIONSHIP OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES TO SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGES AND CLIMATE ADAPTATION This paper is an analysis of how local government employees domesticate climate science for the purpose of climate adaptation. Employees in Norwegian municipalities perceive the consequences of climate change as a serious challenge, but while placing trust in climate science they consider it too difficult to use. The paper discusses how these employees perceive the challenges of appropriating climate science knowledge and putting it to use. It is found that technologies of bureaucracy, such as new and updated standards and regulations, are in demand as they are considered vital in enabling practical knowledge as well as political authorization of its credibility.Transportation departments are beginning to recognize that adaptation for climate change must become an integral part of their planning efforts. However, staff members frequently lack the adequate local data, training, and guidance needed to begin adaptation planning assessments. As a result, planning for adapting to climate change has remained generally abstract and lacks the specificity needed to identify potential system vulnerabilities, assess risk, and prioritize responses. This report outlines a geographic information system-based method with which transportation departments can assess vulnerabilities to climate change in their multimodal surface transportation systems. The city of Portland, Oregon, is used as an illustrative case study. The proposed method allows for preliminary vulnerability identification, prioritization, and impact assessment and can also be used as a basis for more advanced analysis and scenario testing. This research also identifies and describes data gaps and other barriers to climate change adaptation planning for surface transportation.The concepts of variability and change are analyzed for the natural estuarine and coastal systems within restricted temporal and spatial scales. Change only occurs in those settings in which hydrological and erosional processes result in definitive and unrecoverable modifications in state after crossing certain thresholds. All other situations occurring at coastal settings have a temporal and spatial 'periodicity' which allow, at least partly, the return to the initial condition. The paths followed can be different but coastal settings will tend to recuperate based on their resilience. A set of factors controls the variability of the coastal settings. Dominance of a group of them (seldom only one is determinant) defines the particular environment observed. As a result of the natural variability of each of the factors and the nonlinear interaction among them, there is no actual possibility that any coastal setting will be equal to another. They can be similar but not equal. Given the predictions of effects of future climate change on coastal areas, the most appropriate strategy to increase community strength is to implement climate change adaptation and mitigation into an integrated coastal management that promotes community and multi-stakeholder participation. The implications of climate change for each coastal area vary significantly, so each environment requires independent assessment.This paper reports on the use of qualitative analysis to inform a risk analysis framework for decentralised water systems. To realise the benefits from these technologies, a methodology is applied to learn from previous difficulties in implementing and managing them. A workshop process was used to capture stories from industry professionals on difficulties they have encountered in planning and implementation. Qualitative analysis of story narratives revealed stages where there was some type of development process failure; as well as failure modes and factors influencing the difficulties encountered. The analysis also generated insights: difficulties in one part of the development process tends to propagate to subsequent stages; system difficulties most often occurred in the policy stage of development due to institutional inertia and lack of adaptive governance; and the best indicator of problems with a decentralised system was complaints of poor water quality. Furthermore, this paper also provides a method to learn from past difficulties by identifying what data needs to be collected in order to populate a risk model which can be used for improving risk assessment of the development process for decentralised systems. This can provide a basis for better decision making, policy and guidelines; an important factor in mainstream acceptance.The Star City rainwater harvesting system (RWHS) was featured in the December, 2008, issue of Water 21. The article highlighted that the RWHS has a 3,000 m(3) rainwater tank used in water saving, flood mitigation, and emergency response. Since then, many news media, public officials, and people from both South Korea and abroad have visited the RWHS. In this paper, two years of the system's operational data are presented and its role in short-and long-term climate change adaptation is investigated. The downstream sewer system has become safe for a 50-year rainfall without upgrading the existing sewer system, which was designed for a 10-year period. The 26,000 m(3) of water saved has reduced the energy requirement of transferring water from a distant area. The success of the Star City RWHS has influenced 47 cities across South Korea, including Seoul, to enact regulations on rainwater management. It has shown that decentralized rainwater management can supplement the existing centralized system to ensure its safety.Context. The impacts of climate change on the climate envelopes, and hence, distributions of species, are of ongoing concern for biodiversity worldwide. Knowing where climate refuge habitats will occur in the future is essential to conservation planning. The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is recognised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a species highly vulnerable to climate change. However, the impact of climate change on its distribution is poorly understood. Aims. We aimed to predict the likely shifts in the climate envelope of the koala throughout its natural distribution under various climate change scenarios and identify potential future climate refugia. Methods. To predict possible future koala climate envelopes we developed bioclimatic models using Maxent, based on a substantial database of locality records and several climate change scenarios. Key results. The predicted current koala climate envelope was concentrated in south-east Queensland, eastern New South Wales and eastern Victoria, which generally showed congruency with their current known distribution. Under realistic projected future climate change, with the climate becoming increasingly drier and warmer, the models showed a significant progressive eastward and southward contraction in the koala's climate envelope limit in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. The models also indicated novel potentially suitable climate habitat in Tasmania and south-western Australia. Conclusions. Under a future hotter and drier climate, current koala distributions, based on their climate envelope, will likely contract eastwards and southwards to many regions where koala populations are declining due to additional threats of high human population densities and ongoing pressures from habitat loss, dog attacks and vehicle collisions. In arid and semi-arid regions such as the Mulgalands of south-western Queensland, climate change is likely to compound the impacts of habitat loss, resulting in significant contractions in the distribution of this species. Implications. Climate change pressures will likely change priorities for allocating conservation efforts for many species. Conservation planning needs to identify areas that will provide climatically suitable habitat for a species in a changing climate. In the case of the koala, inland habitats are likely to become climatically unsuitable, increasing the need to protect and restore the more mesic habitats, which are under threat from urbanisation. National and regional koala conservation policies need to anticipate these changes and synergistic threats. Therefore, a proactive approach to conservation planning is necessary to protect the koala and other species that depend on eucalypt forests. A rapid and sustained transition to new energy systems for Australia was explored using the OzECCO model implemented in a systems dynamics simulation package. OzECCO simulates the close relationship between energy use and economic productivity at a sectoral level to explore scenarios of economic and biophysical function based on a calibration period of 1981-2005 and a scenario period 2006-2051. The core scenarios showed that a fully renewable (the renewables transition) or an advanced fossil and nuclear transition (the conventional wisdom transition), can reduce accumulated CO2 emissions from the Australian economy for the period 2006-2051 by 50%. Adding a low growth economy where GDP averages less than 1% annually extends this to a 60% reduction. Extensive reforestation of more than 50 million hectares extends the total reduction to 70% over the 45 year period and provides at 2051 a per capita emissions level of one to two tonnes which will be necessary if developed and developing countries are to converge on equal atmospheric impacts with reasonable lifestyle opportunities. Central to both the renewables and conventional-wisdom scenarios are substantial reductions in the physical dimensions of personal consumption, and the transfer of these avoided consumption opportunities to an intergenerational sovereign wealth fund. This fund, held outside day-to-day domestic activities, can buffer Australian society and future generations against shocks, financial or physical, that might lie waiting and unanticipated in our future. This study did not explore phasing out Australia's extensive coal and natural gas exports although their impact on global atmospheric concentrations is significant. Domestic combustion and exported fuels will add 82 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere in the scenario period 2006-2051, equivalent to a 20 ppm rise in atmospheric concentrations. The low-growth renewables transition with unconstrained exports reduces this rise to 15 ppm. The continued expansion of fuel exports thus expands atmospheric risk in physical terms but also entrains policy and strategic risks should carbon-based industries become pariahs in international commerce and political relations. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Alternative fuels represent a potential option for reducing the climate impacts of the aviation sector. The climate impacts of alternatives fuel are traditionally considered as a ratio of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to those of the displaced petroleum product; however, this ignores the climate impacts of the non-CO2 combustion effects from aircraft in the upper atmosphere. The results of this study show that including non-CO2 combustion emissions and effects in the life cycle of a Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (SPK) fuel can lead to a decrease in the relative merit of the SPK fuel relative to conventional jet fuel. For example, an SPK fuel option with zero life cycle GHG emissions would offer a 100% reduction in GHG emissions but only a 48% reduction in actual climate impact using a 100-year time window and the nominal climate modeling assumption set outlined herein. Therefore, climate change mitigation policies for aviation that rely exclusively on relative well-to-wake life cycle GHG emissions as a proxy for aviation climate impact may overestimate the benefit of alternative fuel use on the global climate system.An urban energy and water balance model is presented which uses a small number of commonly measured meteorological variables and information about the surface cover. Rates of evaporation-interception for a single layer with multiple surface types (paved, buildings, coniferous trees and/or shrubs, deciduous trees and/or shrubs, irrigated grass, non-irrigated grass and water) are calculated. Below each surface type, except water, there is a single soil layer. At each time step the moisture state of each surface is calculated. Horizontal water movements at the surface and in the soil are incorporated. Particular attention is given to the surface conductance used to model evaporation and its parameters. The model is tested against direct flux measurements carried out over a number of years in Vancouver. Canada and Los Angeles, USA. At all measurement sites the model is able to simulate the net all-wave radiation and turbulent sensible and latent heat well (RMSE = 25-47 W m(-2), 30-64 and 20-56 W m(-2), respectively). The model reproduces the diurnal cycle of the turbulent fluxes but typically underestimates latent heat flux and overestimates sensible heat flux in the day time. The model tracks measured surface wetness and simulates the variations in soil moisture content. It is able to respond correctly to short-term events as well as annual changes. The largest uncertainty relates to the determination of surface conductance. The model has the potential be used for multiple applications; for example, to predict effects of regulation on urban water use, landscaping and planning scenarios, or to assess climate mitigation strategies. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Limited resources are available to address the world's growing environmental problems, requiring conservationists to identify priority sites for action. Using new distribution maps for all of the world's forest-dependent birds (60.6% of all bird species), we quantify the contribution of remaining forest to conserving global avian biodiversity. For each of the world's partly or wholly forested 5-km cells, we estimated an impact score of its contribution to the distribution of all the forest bird species estimated to occur within it, and so is proportional to the impact on the conservation status of the world's forest-dependent birds were the forest it contains lost. The distribution of scores was highly skewed, a very small proportion of cells having scores several orders of magnitude above the global mean. Ecoregions containing the highest values of this score included relatively species-poor islands such as Hawaii and Palau, the relatively species-rich islands of Indonesia and the Philippines, and the megadiverse Atlantic Forests and northern Andes of South America. Ecoregions with high impact scores and high deforestation rates (2000-2005) included montane forests in Cameroon and the Eastern Arc of Tanzania, although deforestation data were not available for all ecoregions. Ecoregions with high impact scores, high rates of recent deforestation and low coverage by the protected area network included Indonesia's Seram rain forests and the moist forests of Trinidad and Tobago. Key sites in these ecoregions represent some of the most urgent priorities for expansion of the global protected areas network to meet Convention on Biological Diversity targets to increase the proportion of land formally protected to 17% by 2020. Areas with high impact scores, rapid deforestation, low protection and high carbon storage values may represent significant opportunities for both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, for example through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives.Background: Species may respond to a warming climate by moving to higher latitudes or elevations. Shifts in geographic ranges are common responses in temperate regions. For the tropics, latitudinal temperature gradients are shallow; the only escape for species may be to move to higher elevations. There are few data to suggest that they do. Yet, the greatest loss of species from climate disruption may be for tropical montane species. Methodology/Principal Findings: We repeat a historical transect in Peru and find an average upward shift of 49 m for 55 bird species over a 41 year interval. This shift is significantly upward, but also significantly smaller than the 152 m one expects from warming in the region. To estimate the expected shift in elevation we first determined the magnitude of warming in the locality from historical data. Then we used the temperature lapse rate to infer the required shift in altitude to compensate for warming. The range shifts in elevation were similar across different trophic guilds. Conclusions: Endothermy may provide birds with some flexibility to temperature changes and allow them to move less than expected. Instead of being directly dependent on temperature, birds may be responding to gradual changes in the nature of the habitat or availability of food resources, and presence of competitors. If so, this has important implications for estimates of mountaintop extinctions from climate change.Assessment of forest carbon (C) stock and sequestration and the influence of forest harvesting and climatic variations are important issues in global forest ecology. Quantitative studies of the C balance of tropical forests, such as those in Papua New Guinea (PNG), are also required for forest-based climate change mitigation initiatives. We develop a hierarchical Bayesian model (HBM) of aboveground forest C stock and sequestration in primary, selectively harvested, and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-effected lowland tropical forest from 15 years of Permanent Sample Plot (PSP) census data for PNG consisting of 121 plots in selectively harvested forest, and 35 plots in primary forest. Model parameters indicated: C stock in aboveground live biomass (AGLB) of 137 +/- 9 (95% confidence interval (CI)) MgC ha(-1) in primary forest, compared with 62 +/- 18 MgC ha(-1) for selectively harvested forest (55% difference); C sequestration in primary forest of 0.23 +/- 1.70 MgC ha(-1) y(-1), which was lower than in selectively harvested forest, 1.12 +/- 3.41 MgC ha(-1) y(-1); ENSO-induced fire resulted in significant C emissions (-6.87 +/- 3.94 MgC ha(-1) y(-1)). High variability between PSPs in C stock and C sequestration rates necessitated random plot effects for both stock and sequestration. The HBM approach allowed inclusion of hierarchical autocorrelation, providing valid CIs on model parameters and efficient estimation. The HBM model has provided quantitative insights on the C balance of PNG's forests that can be used as inputs for climate change mitigation initiatives.Policymakers are examining a wide range of alternatives for climate change mitigation, including carbon offset sales programs, to enhance sequestration in the forest sector. Under an offset sales program, on-the-ground forestry could change as a result of both afforestation and modifications in the management of existing forests. These effects could vary markedly by region in the United States because of differences in areas of agricultural land suitable for afforestation, forest carbon and volume growth characteristics, the structure of landownership, and forest industry concentration. Using a dynamic model of North American markets, our analysis of alternative carbon price levels suggests that the largest carbon increment response would come from changes in forest management: extending rotations, shifting silvicultural regimes, and reforestation to hardwood forest types (in some regions). Carbon payments could also stimulate a substantial afforestation response in eastern regions (North and South). Afforestation is particularly important in the North where timberland area could expand markedly. Much of the area would be planted to hardwoods, stemming the projected decline in hardwood forest types and growing stock volume.Expanding energy access to the rural population of India presents a critical challenge for its government. The presence of 364 million people without access to electricity and 726 million who rely on biomass for cooking indicate both the failure of past policies and programs, and the need for a radical redesign of the current system. We propose an integrated implementation framework with recommendations for adopting business principles with innovative institutional, regulatory, financing and delivery mechanisms. The framework entails establishment of rural energy access authorities and energy access funds, both at the national and regional levels, to be empowered with enabling regulatory policies, capital resources and the support of multi-stakeholder partnership. These institutions are expected to design, lead, manage and monitor the rural energy interventions. At the other end, trained entrepreneurs would be expected to establish bioenergy-based micro-enterprises that will produce and distribute energy carriers to rural households at an affordable cost. The ESCOs will function as intermediaries between these enterprises and the international carbon market both in aggregating carbon credits and in trading them under CDM. If implemented, such a program could address the challenges of rural energy empowerment by creating access to modern energy carriers and climate change mitigation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The taxation of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) represents an efficient means of achieving climate change mitigation, and this is often the starting point in any discussion of long run global GHG reduction. However, the direct effects of such a tax, or equivalently, an emissions trading scheme, will vary across countries and sectors according to the emissions intensity of the sector. We report, for the first time, estimates of such livestock emissions intensities for all regions of the world and decompose the intensities to understand the sources of regional variation. Our findings indicate that most of the variation is due to differences in the value of output per animal in different regions, which in turn is due to regional differences in output per animal (yield) and dollar per unit output (price). Animals with relatively low annual output values tend to be characterized by higher economic emissions intensities. We find this to be the case in many developing countries. Livestock activity in these high emissions intensity regions are hit especially hard by an emissions tax, resulting in disproportionate reductions in output and consumption in many regions already suffering from malnutrition.Biomass from cellulosic bioenergy crops is seen as a substantial part of future energy systems, especially if climate policy aims at stabilizing CO2 concentration at low levels. However, among other concerns of sustainability, the large-scale use of bioenergy is controversial because it is hypothesized to increase the competition for land and therefore raise N2O emissions from agricultural soils due to intensification. We apply a global land-use model that is suited to assess agricultural non-CO2 GHG emissions. First, we describe how fertilization of cellulosic bioenergy crops and associated N2O emissions are implemented in the land-use model and how future bioenergy demand is derived by an energy-economy-climate model. We then assess regional N2O emissions from the soil due to large-scale bioenergy application, the expansion of cropland and the importance of technological change for dedicated bioenergy crops. Finally, we compare simulated N2O emissions from the agricultural sector with CO2 emissions from the energy sector to investigate the real contribution of bioenergy for low stabilization scenarios. As a result, we find that N2O emissions due to energy crop production are a minor factor. Nevertheless, these co-emissions can be significant for the option of removing CO2 from the atmosphere (by combining bioenergy use with carbon capture and storage (CCS) options) possibly needed at the end of the century for climate mitigation. Furthermore, our assessment shows that bioenergy crops will occupy large shares of available cropland and will require high rates of technological change at additional costs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Issues addressed: Health promotion principles for practice are closely aligned with that of environmental sustainability. Health promotion practitioners are well positioned to take action on climate change. However, there has been scant discussion about practice synergies and subsequently the type and nature of professional competencies that underpin such action. Methods: This commentary uses the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA) national core competencies for Health Promotion Practitioners as a basis to examine the synergies between climate change and health promotion action. Results: We demonstrate that AHPA core competencies, such as program planning, evaluation and partnership building, are highly compatible for implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. We use food security examples to illustrate this case. Conclusions: There appears to be considerable synergy between climate change and health promotion action. This should be a key focus of future health promotion competency development in Australia.Issue addressed: This project explored the literature in which key concepts in primary health care and health promotion are overtly applied to the problem of climate change. This paper contains a discussion of the literature relevant to health promotion principles and intervention strategies for addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation in the primary health care sector. The concept of primary health care is that used by the World Health Organization, based on the Declaration of Alma Ata and often referred to as comprehensive primary health care to differentiate it from primary medical care. Methods: This was a review of literature identified in electronic databases using two sets of search terms. Set A consisted of 'climate change or global warming or greenhouse effect' and set B consisted of 11 key concepts in primary health care and health promotion, for example community resilience, health promotion, social change, food security and economic development. Relevant literature was identified at the intersection of search term A with a term from set B. A search was completed for each set B term. Results: This paper reports a discussion of major categories of health promotion interventions, namely health communication, community building and settings approaches and uses examples drawn from literature on community resilience and summer heat. These interventions are all applicable to the primary health care sector. Conclusion: There is a small literature on health promotion interventions for climate change mitigation and adaptation but it is incomplete and scattered across many sources. An important area for further research is to link the logic of service provision in primary health care to the logic of mitigation and adaptation in a changing environment. Interventions that link the logic must also link diverse services to provide coherent action on local and domestic scales, the scales at which primary health care acts. Another research gap is in regard to institutional change in the primary health care sector. How do the patterns of knowledge, practice and values need to change in the array of organisations that make up comprehensive primary health care?The Kyoto and Copenhagen Protocols on climate change mitigation postponed the specification of binding commitments to a future negotiation. This paper analyzes the strategic implications of delayed negotiations. While, as is well-understood, the incentive to free ride leads to excessive emissions prior to a binding agreement, the cost of delay is magnified by players' attempt to secure a favorable bargaining position in the future negotiation. A "brinkmanship", an "effort substitution", and a "raising rival's cost" effects all concur to generate high post-agreement emissions. The paper applies this general insight to the issuance of forward or bankable permits. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Changes in diet, reducing animal products and increasing consumption of vegetables can not only benefit human health and the overall use of land, but can also play a decisive role in the politics of climate change mitigation. In this sense, the Mediterranean diet (MD) is presented as a sustainable cultural model, respectful of the environment, whose adherence in Mediterranean countries should contribute to mitigating climate change. The recognition of the MD as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2010 obliges the Mediterranean Diet Foundation to continue waging this recovery process and to promote our ancient food traditions in a prism of sustainability and commitment to the environment.Saline-aquifer storage of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) has become recognized as an important strategy for climate-change mitigation. Saline aquifers have very large estimated storage capacities, are distributed broadly across the globe, and have the potential for geologic-scale retention times. Many of these storage sites are not well characterized, and it is critical to conduct detailed experiments and analysis to understand how features such as heterogeneity can influence the theoretical storage capacity, spatial extent of plume migration, and secondary trapping processes. Coreflooding experiments are used routinely by the oil and gas industry for such analysis and provide a very useful tool for studying saline-aquifer formations also. Numerical simulations of these coreflooding experiments can provide insight beyond the experimental measurements themselves, such as numerically studying how properties such as relative permeability and capillary pressure affect CO(2) distribution in these systems under various flow conditions. However, accurate subcore-scale simulations of these experiments have remained a challenge, and the issue of how to represent subcore-scale permeability has not been resolved previously. Laboratory coreflooding experiments injecting CO(2) into a saline-water-saturated Berea sandstone core have been conducted at reservoir conditions. Computed-tomography (CT) scans of the core show large spatial variations of CO(2) saturation, even within a relatively homogeneous core. Numerical simulations of the experiment have been conducted to study the effect of subcore-scale heterogeneity and the role of permeability in determining the subcore-scale CO(2) distribution in the core to explain these very large spatial variations in CO(2) saturation. Numerical simulations of the experiment consistently showed that use of traditional methods for estimating subcore-scale permeability, typically based solely on porosity distributions, results in subcore-scale saturation distributions that do not match experimental measurements. In this paper, we develop a new method for calculating subcore-scale permeability distributions on the basis of capillary pressure measurements and porosity distributions as an alternative to the traditional porosity-only-based models. Using experimentally measured saturation and porosity distributions and capillary pressure data to calculate permeability, simulations based on this new method show a substantial improvement both in the absolute value and in the spatial distribution of predicted CO(2)-saturation values. With this technique for accurately calculating permeability distributions, it is possible to study subcore-scale multiphase flow of brine and CO(2) to understand how small-scale heterogeneities influence the spatial distribution of CO(2) saturation and to improve our ability to predict the fate of stored CO(2).Many proposals have been made for the more successful inclusion of LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) in the Kyoto framework. Though the positions of individual states or the goal of avoided deforestation guide many approaches, our model sets cost-effective strategies for climate change mitigation and the efficient and balanced use of forest resources at its center. Current approaches to forest resource-based carbon accounting consider only a fraction of its potential and fail to adequately mobilize the LULUCF sector for the successful stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. The presence of a significantly large "incentive gap" justifies the urgency of reforming the current LULUCF carbon accounting framework. In addition to significantly broadening the scope of carbon pools accounted under LULUCF, we recommend paying far greater attention to the troika of competing but potentially compatible interests surrounding the promotion of standing forests (in particular for the purposes of carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection and ecosystem promotion/preservation), harvested wood products (HWP) and bioenergy use. The successful balancing of competing interests, the enhancement of efficiency and effectiveness and the balanced use of forest resources require an accounting mechanism that weighs and rewards each component according to its real climate mitigation potential. Further, our data suggest the benefits of such a broadly based carbon accounting strategy and the inclusion of LULUCF in national and international accounting and emission trading mechanisms far outweigh potential disadvantages. Political arguments suggesting countries could take advantage of LULUCF accounting to reduce their commitments are not supported by the evidence we present. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuel production has increased dramatically over the past decade, among other to mitigate climate change. However, climate change vulnerability may currently not be sufficiently accounted for in national biofuel strategies, hence neglecting a possible link between mitigation and adaptation to climate change. To the best of our knowledge this potential link has received very little attention in the literature. One example is the Philippines, which is currently implementing an ambitious program of biofuel production. Its aim is to reduce dependency on imported fuel, increase rural employment and incomes, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The Philippines is frequently battered by tropical typhoons and from 1975 to 2002 the annual average damage to agriculture was 3.047 billion pesos. We calculate wind damage on biofuel feedstock production, and assess the effect that a future potential increase in tropical cyclone intensity would have on energy security, rural development and climate change mitigation in the Philippines. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to obtain the future expected development of typhoon impacts. Based on the Philippines legislated target of 10% biodiesel blend in gasoline by 2011, simulation of the affected area for each feedstock, and expected biofuel feedstock damage is computed for the Philippine's 80 provinces in 2050, for two different typhoon climate change scenarios. Additional indirect economic effects are assessed in a tentative way. The results suggest a modest decrease in biofuel feedstock productivity at the national level, but with strong local differences that are shown to affect the Philippine's policy goals. In a broader perspective the paper accentuates a so far little described link between climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. This link may merit further attention by policy makers and development planners in order to ensure that policies are economically sound not only in the short but also medium term. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Projections of future climatic changes are a key input to the design of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Current climate change projections are deeply uncertain. This uncertainty stems from several factors, including parametric and structural uncertainties. One common approach to characterize and, if possible, reduce these uncertainties is to confront (calibrate in a broad sense) the models with historical observations. Here, we analyze the problem of combining multiple climate models using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to derive future projections and quantify uncertainty estimates of spatiotemporally resolved temperature hindcasts and projections. One advantage of the BMA approach is that it allows the assessment of the predictive skill of a model using the training data, which can help identify the better models and discard poor models. Previous BMA approaches have broken important new ground, but often neglected space-time dependencies and/or imposed prohibitive computational demands. Here we improve on the current state-of-the-art by incorporating space-time dependence while using historical data to estimate model weights. We achieve computational efficiency using a kernel mixing approach for representing a space-time process. One key advantage of our new approach is that it enables us to incorporate multiple sources of uncertainty and biases, while remaining computationally tractable for large data sets. We introduce and apply our approach using BMA to an ensemble of Global Circulation Model output from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report of surface temperature on a grid of space-time locations.Mangroves are an imperilled biome whose protection and restoration through payments for ecosystem services (PES) can contribute to improved livelihoods, climate mitigation and adaptation. Interviews with resource users in three Solomon Islands villages suggest a strong reliance upon mangrove goods for subsistence and cash, particularly for firewood, food and building materials. Village-derived economic data indicates a minimum annual subsistence value from mangroves of US$ 345-1501 per household. Fish and nursery habitat and storm protection were widely recognized and highly valued mangrove ecosystem services. All villagers agreed that mangroves were under threat, with firewood overharvesting considered the primary cause. Multivariate analyses revealed village affiliation and religious denomination as the most important factors determining the use and importance of mangrove goods. These factors, together with gender, affected users' awareness of ecosystem services. The importance placed on mangrove services did not differ significantly by village, religious denomination, gender, age, income, education or occupation. Mangrove ecosystem surveys are useful as tools for raising community awareness and input prior to design of PES systems. Land tenure and marine property rights, and how this complexity may both complicate and facilitate potential carbon credit programmes in the Pacific, are discussed.Enhanced energy security and renewable energy development are currently high on the public agenda in Southeast Asia, which features large populations and expansive economies. Biomass and Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) have widely been accepted as important locally-available renewable energy sources and represent one of the largest renewable energy sources worldwide. This article presents an evaluation of the potential of MSW incineration for climate change mitigation and promotion of biomass-based electricity production in a more sustainable direction in Thailand. The energy recovery potential of MSW is analyzed by investigating various types of incineration technologies. Both conventional technologies and more advanced hybrid dual-fuel cycles (which combine MSW and natural gas fuels) are considered in analyses covering cycle performance and CO(2) emissions. Results show that MSW incineration has the ability to lessen environmental impact associated with waste disposal, and it can contribute positively towards expanding biomass-based energy production in Thailand. Hybrid cycles can be proposed to improve system performance and overall electrical efficiency of conventional incineration. The hybrid cycle featuring parallel interconnection is somewhat more attractive in terms of efficiency improvement: electrical efficiency increases by 4% and CO(2) emission levels are reduced by 5-10% as compared to the reference incineration case. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is even more attractive when methane gas emitted fro m existing landfill sites is to be compared. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper presents the possibility for Thailand to become a low-carbon society ([CS). The methodology involves development of current CO(2)emission inventory, and quantification of socio-economic activity level in 2030. In this study, the increase of CO2 emissions is estimated based on i) 2030 BAU (business-as-usual) without mitigation measures, and ii) 2030 CM (climate change mitigation measures) assumptions of employed demand-side technologies as well as the potential to reduce the CO2 emissions by low-carbon measures available during 2005-2030. In this study, only selected climate change mitigation options, which have been found to be cost effective, are included in the 2030 CM scenario. Several comprehensive demand-side measures such as diffusion of low-carbon technologies in the residential sector, energy efficient buildings, energy efficient industry and fuel switching, and fuel substitution in the transport sector are proposed. Results show that i) the annual CO2 emissions in the base year of 2005 are 185,983 kilo-ton (kt) of CO2, ii) under the scenario without climate change mitigation measures (the BAU scenario), year 2030 CO2 emissions would increase to 563,730 kt-CO2 or 3.03 times that of the base year 2005, and iii) by adopting the selected climate change mitigation measures, CO2 emissions can be decreased approximately 28.4% compared to the 2030 BAU scenario, i.e. to 403,642 kt-CO2. The research findings hope to contribute to sustainable energy and environmental transition of Thailand, one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia, towards a Thai low carbon society. (C) 2011 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The study aims to reveal Australian households' perceptions of climate change and their preferences for mitigation action. A web-based survey was conducted in November 2008 in which over 600 households from the state of New South Wales were asked for their willingness to bear extra household expenditure to support the 'Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme', an emissions trading scheme proposed by the Australian government. The results of the study can be summarized in four key findings. First, respondents' willingness to pay for climate change mitigation is significantly influenced by their beliefs of future temperature rise. Support for the policy increased at a decreasing rate as the perceived temperature change rose. Second, perceptions of policy failure have a significant negative impact on respondents' support for the proposed mitigation measure. The higher the perceived likelihood that the measure would not deliver any outcome, the lower was the likelihood that respondents would support the policy. Third, respondent preferences for the proposed policy are influenced by the possibility of reaching a global agreement on emissions reduction. Sample respondents stated significantly higher values for the policy when the biggest polluting countries implement a similar scheme. Finally, respondents' willingness to take action against climate change, both at the national and household level, is found to be influenced by their level of mass-media exposure. Particularly, those respondents who watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' were significantly more likely to act for climate change mitigation than others.International climate negotiations that aim at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions are strongly influenced by a conflict between rich and poor countries and by a lack of consensus about the urgency of emission reduction measures. We have previously in an experimental game characterised the implied challenge of avoiding dangerous climate change as the "collective-risk social dilemma". Here we introduce heterogeneous wealth and two time horizons into the collective-risk social dilemma game. We show that rich players are willing to substitute for missing contributions by the poor, provided the players collectively face intermediate climate targets that, if not reached, are potentially followed by simulated intermediate costly climate risks. However, despite some increase in the contributions of the rich against the final collective target, the final target is reached less often than the intermediate target. Our results provide experimental evidence that similar, intermediate time horizons between climate risks and climate change mitigation planning are a necessary, though not sufficient, component of successful climate negotiations.Increased use of fluorescent lighting as a climate change mitigation strategy may increase eye disease. The safe range of light to avoid exposing the eye to potentially damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation is 2000 to 3500K and greater than 500 nanometers. Some fluorescent lights fall outside this safe range. Fluorescent lighting may increase UV-related eye diseases by up to 12% and, according to our calculations, may cause an additional 3000 cases of cataracts and 7500 cases of pterygia annually in Australia. Greater control of UV exposure from fluorescent lights is required. This may be of particular concern for aging populations in developed countries and countries in northern latitudes where there is a greater dependence on artificial lighting. (Am J Public Health. 2011;101:2222-2225. doi:10.2105/AJ PH.2011.300246)Kevin Houston(1,2) & Dave S Reay*(2) Information and communication technology (ICT) has the potential to either increase or decrease global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Through its various life cycle phases, ICT now represents a rapidly growing source of GHG emissions from the energy and manufacturing sectors, but through its use to avoid emissions in other sectors, in particular those of the transport sector, ICT also has the potential to significantly reduce emissions. Here we explore the potential of so-called 'virtual world' technologies to provide a substitute for physical meetings, highlighting the resulting GHG emission savings that can be achieved. These virtual world technologies exemplify the double-edged nature of ICT in climate change mitigation, as their use may generate significant direct emissions through energy use, while, at the same time, reduce emissions from other sources, such as business travel. Actual and potential use, of virtual world technology (VWT) in a nonrandom sample of four large organizations was assessed. For two of these organizations a quantitative assessment of the impact of VWT on net GHG emissions from a specific event was carried out. Subsequent to this, a qualitative assessment of the barriers to increased VWT was made for the other two organizations. We found that, in the two quantitative case studies, VWT was successfully used to substitute physical meetings with virtual ones and that the extent of avoided transport-related GHG emissions was several times greater than the direct emissions generated by the VWT in its use phase. However, our qualitative assessments of current and potential VWT use in the two additional organizations indicated the existence of significant technical and cultural barriers to more widespread use. We conclude that increased use of VWT can potentially lead to significant net GHG emissions savings - primarily via reduced business travel. However, there remain a number of barriers, such as low levels of user engagement, which must be overcome if uptake of VWT at the scale required for globally-significant emissions reductions is to be achieved.The transformation of single family home settlements is a central issue in the search for a more sustainable city. This residential model remains very popular among middle class households, in spite of the relevant costs and impacts related to its functioning. Local authorities are increasingly concerned with its associated impacts, even when they do not have clear planning strategies. The case study presented is about a municipality that is part of the Catania Metropolitan Area, in Italy. Built up areas cover more than 50% of the municipality's total land and the prevailing development type is the detached single family home. The existing settlement pattern is essentially an "automobile city" for about 20.000 inhabitants with a very limited presence of services. The analyses conducted show that this settlement is unsustainable, not in terms of insufficient green areas, or permeable soils but because it lacks any urban quality. The resulting impact on the environment is considerable both in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the contribution to urban water runoff. The paper presents the first results of a consulting activity for the local municipality that is revising its General Master Plan. This activity, conducted by the University of Catania, includes a set of analyses based on land use data and the definition of general planning criteria. The aim is develop a proposal, based on principles of sustainable urban planning, that can effect a change towards a new pattern of urban development characterised by densification, mixed use planning and reduced private car dependence by concentrating new services in pedestrian oriented areas. The challenge of the proposal presented is to define a set of specific rules that can limit the uncontrolled sprawl by contextualising these general and widely accepted principles to local conditions. The work is part of GRaBS (Green and Blue Space Adaptation for Urban Areas and Eco Towns), a project funded by the EU Interreg IV C programme). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is an issue of great importance for human rights, public health, and socioeconomic equity because of its diverse consequences overall as well as its disproportionate impact on vulnerable and socially marginalized populations. Vulnerability to climate change is determined by a community's ability to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of major weather events. Climate change will affect industrial and agricultural sectors, as well as transportation, health, and energy infrastructure. These shifts will have significant health and economic consequences for diverse communities throughout California. Without proactive policies to address these equity concerns, climate change will likely reinforce and amplify current as well as future socioeconomic disparities, leaving low-income, minority, and politically marginalized groups with fewer economic opportunities and more environmental and health burdens. This review explores the disproportionate impacts of climate change on vulnerable groups in California and investigates the costs and benefits of the climate change mitigation strategies specified for implementation in the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32). Lastly, knowledge gaps, future research priorities, and policy implications are identified.Though to-date the European Union (EU) has played the most significant leadership role in international negotiations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the emission-reducing performance of individual EU Member states has for many been less than stellar. Several EU15 Member states continue to raise rather than lower emissions. Analysing the most successful policy instruments, this paper argues EU policy efforts could benefit from three important innovations. The following strategies - the adoption of an EU-wide FIT (feed-in tariff), an EU-wide carbon tax and more flexibility in the trading of carbon credits - could significantly improve emission reductions, their relative cost-efficiency and spread burden-sharing more evenly across technologies and Member states. This raises important questions, both about the effectiveness of EU and Kyoto-style commitments, as well as the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). The commitment strategy, and in particular the EU ETS mechanism, have had the smallest impact on emission reductions. The proposed set of strategies could make a far greater contribution to future EU efforts and potentially lock in the impressive progress already made. Such a policy shift, if successful, would also greatly enhance the EU's already significant credibility and bargaining power in international climate negotiations.The relationship between air quality and climate change provides a scientific basis for developing integrative policies. Local governments in developing countries are expected to reap significant benefits from incorporating climate change concerns into air quality policies. In Africa, South Africa is also one of the few countries on the continent to have developed robust air quality legislation. South African municipalities or local governments are required to develop and implement air quality management plans (AQMPs), which present opportunities to integrate climate change considerations. The extent to which cities are currently incorporating climate change concerns into existing air pollution strategies, and the opportunities for improved integration of these two issues, and actions to support the implementation thereof, are presented in this paper using the city of Durban as a case study. The results from this case study suggest that in the short-to-medium-term, local AQMPs can be used to support climate change mitigation. These outcomes could be relevant to other countries that use a similar approach to air quality management and require local AQMPs to be developed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves are a commonly used policy tool indicating emission abatement potential and associated abatement costs. They have been extensively used for a range of environmental issues in different countries and are increasingly applied to climate change policy. However in the past, decisions in the complex field of climate policy have been partially based on MAC curves with methodological shortcomings. This paper investigates how their simplistic use has been misleading and finds that the limits of the MAC curve concept can lead to biased decision making. Nevertheless, MAC curves are a useful policy tool, if not relied on exclusively, providing an illustrative guide for subsequent analysis especially for iterative policy making as more information on costs and policy effectiveness is discovered. This paper identifies some steps to overcome present shortcomings in the generation of MAC curves. These include a systems approach to capture interactions, consideration of ancillary benefits, a better representation of uncertainties and representation of cumulative emission abatement to address time-related interactions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In terms of climate mitigation options, the theoretical potential of biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is substantial; introducing the prospect of negative emissions, it offers the vision of drawing atmospheric CO2 concentrations back down to pre-industrial levels. This paper reviews issues raised at a workshop on BECCS, convened in Scotland in late 2009. Presentations by bioenergy and CCS specialists covered topics including the climate policy rationale for BECCS, global biomass CCS potential, the UK potential for BECCS, the risk of fossil fuel lock-in via coal co-firing, and carbon market issues. In practice, the scale of the forestry and accessible CCS infrastructure required are among the obstacles to the large-scale deployment of BECCS in the near term. While biomass co-firing with coal offers an early route to BECCS, a quite substantial (>20%) biomass component may be necessary to achieve negative emissions in a co-fired CCS system. Smaller scale BECCS, through co-location of dedicated or co-combusted biomass on fossil CCS CO2 transport pipeline routes, is easier to envisage and would be potentially less problematic. Hence, we judge that BECCS can, and likely will, play a role in carbon reduction, but care needs to be taken not to exaggerate its potential, given that (i) there are few studies of the cost of connecting bio-processing (combustion, gasification or other) infrastructure with CO2 storage sites and (ii) that scenarios of global bioenergy potential remain contentious. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdFor the purpose of climate change mitigation, we previously reported bioethanol production from lignocelluloses using non-sulfuric acid pretreatments such as hydrothermal and mechanochemical treatments. In that study, to estimate the economics of the process by sensitivity analysis, a simulator was constructed and used to determine the effects of plant capacity, feedstock cost, enzyme cost, and enzyme loading on ethanol production costs. In this study, the effects of biomass composition and ethanol fermentation performance were quantitatively considered using the simulator. It was quantitatively determined that the effect of the degree of pentose conversion for broadleaf trees was larger than for conifers. For conifers, the fermentation of pentose should be conducted at a high reaction rate. A reaction rate above approximately 112%/day was required; without that, the production cost increased even if the ethanol yield increased. For broadleaf trees, the production cost decreased when the reaction rate was above approximately 12.5%/day. The development of pentose fermentation with a high reaction rate will be important in order to realize an economical bioethanol production process.The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for the northeastern states of the U.S. allows for terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration offsets generated by afforestation activities only. This paper estimates the maximum potential quantity and associated costs of increasing the storage of carbon by afforestation of existing agricultural land in the 11 states of the Northeast United States. The focus of the work was to describe location, the quantity, and at what cost it would be economically attractive to shift agricultural production to afforestation to increase carbon storage in the region. Widely available data sets were used to (1) identify spatially-explicit areas for lower costs carbon offsets and (2) estimate carbon supply curves related to afforestation of agricultural land over three time periods (10, 20, and 40 years). Carbon accumulation and total carbon offset project costs were estimated at a county scale and combined to identify expected costs per ton of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO(2)e). Large variation in estimated costs per ton of CO(2)e are driven by varying carbon accumulation potentials and opportunity costs of taking land out of agricultural production, as well as the duration of the project activity. Results show that the lowest cost carbon offset projects will be in certain counties of Maine, Vermont, and New York. Pasture land, with lower opportunity costs, generally presents the opportunity for lower cost carbon offset projects relative to cropland. This analysis estimates that afforestation of pasture land in the northeast will not become economically attractive until the price rises above $10 per metric tonne (MT) CO(2)e and that up to 583 million MT could be economically sequestered if the price were to rise to $50 per MT CO(2)e, based on a 40-year project life. With regard to cropland in the northeast, afforestation does not become economically advantageous for land owners until the price rises above $40 per MT CO(2)e. It is estimated that up to 487,000 MT could be sequestered from cropland if the price were to rise to $50 per MT CO(2)e, based on a 40-year project life.Global marine fisheries are underperforming economically because of overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation. Added to these threats is the looming challenge of climate change. Observations, experiments and simulation models show that climate change would result in changes in primary productivity, shifts in distribution and changes in the potential yield of exploited marine species, resulting in impacts on the economics of fisheries worldwide. Despite the gaps in understanding climate change effects on fisheries, there is sufficient scientific information that highlights the need to implement climate change mitigation and adaptation policies to minimize impacts on fisheries.Healthcare waste streams are persistent waste streams and which are consistently increasing in volume and complexity in developed and developing countries. When poorly managed, through inappropriate health care waste management systems, they can cause adverse effects to human health and the environment. This paper presents an evaluation of health care waste management systems in Cameroon, based on a survey of five health care facilities in the Southwestern Region of Cameroon. It is established that health care waste collection and handling systems including containers and bins for segregated wastes are generally in a poor state. A proportion of the waste stream is disposed of in open dumps in combination with municipal solid wastes while some are disposed of in incinerators which are often poorly designed. The waste stream is complex and heterogeneous with an average waste generation rate estimated at 4.4.9 kg/day equivalent to over 16 tonnes/annum comprising 49%, 16% and 14% of general, infectious and sharps respectively for a typical Health Care Facility in Buea which is a medium densely populated town. There is the potential to recover materials from this waste stream. if adequate waste management systems are developed and implemented. Separately recovering the uncontaminated general waste stream for a secondary market ultimately contributes to resource efficiencies and conservation of scarce natural resources. Reducing the waste quantities being incinerated results in less potential for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and greenhouse gases to be released into the environment, thus contributing to global environmental benefits through climate change mitigation and pollution reduction. The study establishes that the little attention given to medical waste management results from a lack of an integrated approach to policy making at the highest level of decision-making. There is the need for legislation to allow for a more defined roles and responsibilities for health care personnel responsible for the handling and disposal of the waste streams at the point of generation in the health care facilities. Overall, there is the need to formulate more sustainable health care waste management legislation. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article uses the European Patent Office Worldwide Patent Statistical Database to examine the geographic distribution and global diffusion of inventions in thirteen climate-mitigation technologies since 1978. The data suggest that until 1990 innovation was driven mostly by energy prices. Since then, environmental policies, and, more recently, climate policies, have accelerated the pace of innovation. The data also indicate that innovation is highly concentrated in three countries-Japan, Germany, and the United States-which together account for 60 percent of total inventions. Surprisingly, the contribution of emerging economies is far from negligible as China and Brazil together account for about 10 percent of total inventions. However, inventions from emerging economies are less likely to find markets beyond their borders, suggesting that inventions from emerging economies have less value. More generally, international transfers occur mostly between developed countries (73 percent of all exported inventions). Exports from developed countries to emerging economies are still limited (22 percent) but are growing rapidly, especially to China.This paper seeks to develop a deeper understanding of the research on climate change mitigation in transport. We suggest that work to date has focused on the effects of improvements in transport technologies, changes in the price of transport, physical infrastructure provision, behavioural change and alternative institutional arrangements for governing transport systems. In terms of research methodologies, positivist and quantitative analysis prevails, although there are signs of experimentation with non-positivist epistemologies and participatory methods. These particular engagements with climate change mitigation reflect mutually reinforcing tendencies within and beyond the academic transport community. We first draw on a revised version of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science to explore the path dependencies within transport studies, which are at least partly responsible for the predisposition towards quantitative modelling and technology, pricing and infrastructure oriented interventions in transport systems. We then employ the governmentality perspective to examine how transport academics' engagements with climate change mitigation depend on and align with more general understandings of climate change in UK society and beyond. The analysis makes clear that ecological modernisation and neo-liberal governmentality more generally provide the context for the current focus on and belief in technological, behaviour change, and especially market-based mitigation strategies. While current research trajectories are important and insightful, we believe that a deeper engagement with theoretical insights from the social sciences will produce richer understandings of transport mitigation in transport and briefly outline some of the contributions thinking on socio-technical transitions and practice theories can make. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste prevention has been addressed in the literature in terms of the social and behavioural aspects, but very little quantitative assessment exists of the environmental benefits. Our study evaluates the environmental consequences of waste prevention on waste management systems and on the wider society, using life-cycle thinking. The partial prevention of unsolicited mail, beverage packaging and food waste is tested for a "High-tech" waste management system relying on high energy and material recovery and for a "Low-tech" waste management system with less recycling and relying on landfilling. Prevention of 13% of the waste mass entering the waste management system generates a reduction of loads and savings in the waste management system for the different impacts categories; 45% net reduction for nutrient enrichment and 12% reduction for global warming potential. When expanding our system and including avoided production incurred by the prevention measures, large savings are observed (15-fold improvement for nutrient enrichment and 2-fold for global warming potential). Prevention of food waste has the highest environmental impact saving. Prevention generates relatively higher overall relative benefit for "Low-tech" systems depending on landfilling. The paper provides clear evidence of the environmental benefits of waste prevention and has specific relevance in climate change mitigation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study describes an integrated impact assessment tool for the net carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange in forest production. The components of the net carbon exchange include the uptake of carbon into biomass, the decomposition of litter and humus, emissions from forest management operations and carbon released from the combustion of biomass and degradation of wood-based products. The tool enables the allocation of the total carbon emissions to the timber and energy biomass and to the energy produced on the basis of biomass. In example computations, ecosystem model simulations were utilized as an input to the tool. We present results for traditional timber production (pulpwood and saw logs) and integrated timber and bioenergy production (logging residues, stumps and roots) for Norway spruce, in boreal conditions in Finland, with two climate scenarios over one rotation period. The results showed that the magnitude of management related emissions on net carbon exchange was smaller when compared with the total ecosystem fluxes; decomposition being the largest emission contributor. In addition, the effects of management and climate were higher on the decomposition of new humus compared with old humus. The results also showed that probable increased biomass growth, obtained under the changing climate (CC), could not compensate for decomposition and biomass combustion related carbon loss in southern Finland. In our examples, the emissions allocated for the energy from biomass in southern Finland were 172 and 188 kg CO2 MW h(-1) in the current climate and in a CC, respectively, and 199 and 157 kg CO2 MW h(-1) in northern Finland. This study concludes that the tool is suitable for estimating the net carbon exchange of forest production. The tool also enables the allocation of direct and indirect carbon emissions, related to forest production over its life cycle, in different environmental conditions and for alternative time periods and land uses. Simulations of forest management regimes together with the CC give new insights into ecologically sustainable forest bioenergy and timber production, as well as climate change mitigation options in boreal forests.Deforestation in mid-to high latitudes is hypothesized to have the potential to cool the Earth's surface by altering biophysical processes(1-3). In climate models of continental-scale land clearing, the cooling is triggered by increases in surface albedo and is reinforced by a land albedo-sea ice feedback(4,5). This feedback is crucial in the model predictions; without it other biophysical processes may overwhelm the albedo effect to generate warming instead(5). Ongoing land-use activities, such as land management for climate mitigation, are occurring at local scales (hectares) presumably too small to generate the feedback, and it is not known whether the intrinsic biophysical mechanism on its own can change the surface temperature in a consistent manner(6,7). Nor has the effect of deforestation on climate been demonstrated over large areas from direct observations. Here we show that surface air temperature is lower in open land than in nearby forested land. The effect is 0.85 +/- 0.44 K (mean +/- one standard deviation) northwards of 45 degrees N and 0.21 +/- 0.53 K southwards. Below 35 degrees N there is weak evidence that deforestation leads to warming. Results are based on comparisons of temperature at forested eddy covariance towers in the USA and Canada and, as a proxy for small areas of cleared land, nearby surface weather stations. Night-time temperature changes unrelated to changes in surface albedo are an important contributor to the overall cooling effect. The observed latitudinal dependence is consistent with theoretical expectation of changes in energy loss from convection and radiation across latitudes in both the daytime and night-time phase of the diurnal cycle, the latter of which remains uncertain in climate models(8).This paper studies patenting dynamics in efficiency improving electricity generation technologies as an important indicator of innovation activity. We build a novel database of worldwide patent applications in efficiency-improving fossil fuel technologies for electricity generation and then analyse patenting trends over time and across countries. We find that patenting has mostly been stable over time, with a recent decreasing trend. OECD countries represent the top innovators and the top markets for technology. Some non-OECD countries, and particularly China, are also very active in terms of patenting activity in this sector. The majority of patents are first filed in OECD countries and only then in BRIC and other non-OECD countries. BRIC and other non-OECD countries apply for patents that are mostly marketed domestically, but BRIC countries represent important markets for patent duplication of OECD inventions. These results are indicative of significant technology transfer in the field of efficiency-improving technologies for electricity production. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article challenges the notion that energy efficiency and 'clean' energy technologies can deliver sufficient degrees of climate change mitigation. By six arguments not widely recognized in the climate policy arena, we argue that unrealistic technology optimism exists in current climate change mitigation assessments, and, consequently, world energy and climate policy. The overarching theme of the arguments is that incomplete knowledge of indirect effects, and neglect of interactions between parts of physical and social sub-systems, systematically leads to overly optimistic assessments. Society must likely seek deeper changes in social and economic structures to preserve the climatic conditions to which the human civilization is adapted. We call for priority to be given to research evaluating aspects of mitigation in a broad, system-wide perspective. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to draw attention to the complex landscape of translating policy into implementation actions. It underscores the disjuncture between a broad global response to climate change mitigation measures and the requirements for national action in this regard. Individual countries face this challenge of interpreting and translating the cross-cutting response measures into local action. Climate change mitigation and energy security are two themes that are growing in importance in terms of its contribution towards South Africa's developmental agenda, thereby requiring an understanding of how policies and strategies are geared towards supporting this developmental agenda, in a way that does not compromise existing or future growth and progress. An assessment of the implementation of the South African energy efficiency strategy, demonstrates that the translation of policy intent into implementation is not self evident and associated with a number of prerequisites. These do not merely relate to the competence or capacity of an institution to implement the policy, but to a complex interrelationship of a number of factors. This includes supporting legislation, institutional arrangements, sources of finance and the need for co-operative governance.Ecoregional planning-broadly defined here as planning for regions delineated by natural boundaries-seemed poised to prosper in the early 1970s. Faced with immense political and economic challenges, however, it subsequently transformed itself, taking a more collaborative, less regulatory tack. Ecoregional planning capacity has expanded, though highly unevenly, at multiple spatial scales. Today's multiple initiatives receive financial, technical, and logistical support from federal and state funding programs, land trusts, watershed organizations, and ballot questions-and they may be further bolstered by climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. As they continue to develop, ecoregional programs must contend with issues of equity, efficiency, affordability, and intense opposition.Regardless of the policies used to mitigate climate change, a positive and relatively high price of carbon will have to be established, with slow convergence across regions, leading to huge rents up to capture, way beyond those that have been fought over in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)-based international trading system. The paper explores the political-economy, feasibility and desirability implications of the two main alternatives, a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade (CAT) system. Having the same concerns, CAT systems in the EU and the US have accounted for different outcomes in each case. Likely leakages under foreseeable carbon prices are estimated to be small and not of an order of magnitude justifying the special allowances sought across a wide spectrum of industries. The experience of the EU and US reviewed here suggests that mitigation is likely to continue to be carried out under a CAT, provided permits are distributed for free to the lobbies whose support is necessary to get adoption of mitigation policies. This quota mechanism, long-used to allocate scarcity in the international trading system both nationally and internationally, would end up with the most powerful receiving the quotas rents, giving them the leverage and resources to maintain allocation schemes favourable to them.This article summarizes the changes in landscape structure because of human land management over the last several centuries, and using observed and modeled data, documents how these changes have altered biogeophysical and biogeochemical surface fluxes on the local, mesoscale, and regional scales. Remaining research issues are presented including whether these landscape changes alter large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns far from where the land use and land cover changes occur. We conclude that existing climate assessments have not yet adequately factored in this climate forcing. For those regions that have undergone intensive human landscape change, or would undergo intensive change in the future, we conclude that the failure to factor in this forcing risks a misalignment of investment in climate mitigation and adaptation. (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Integrated Assessment models, widely applied in climate change mitigation research, show that renewable energy sources (RES) play an important role in the decarbonization of the electricity sector. However, the representation of relevant technologies in those models is highly stylized, thereby omitting important information about the variability of electricity demand and renewables supply. We present a power system model combining long time scales of climate change mitigation and power system investments with short-term fluctuations of RES. Investigating the influence of increasingly high temporal resolution on the optimal technology mix yields two major findings: the amount of flexible natural gas technologies for electricity generation rises while the share of wind energy only depends on climate policy constraints. Furthermore, overall power system costs increase as temporal resolution is refined in the model, while mitigation costs remain unaffected. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In climate simulations we find a pronounced meridional (equator to pole) gradient of climate response to land cover change. Climate response approaches zero in the tropics, and increases towards the poles. The meridional gradient in climate response to land cover change results from damping feedbacks in the tropics, rather than from polar amplification. The main cause for the damping in the tropics is the decrease in cloud cover after deforestation, resulting in increased incoming radiation at the surface and a lower planetary albedo, both counteracting the increase in surface albedo with deforestation. In our simulations, deforestation was also associated with a decrease in sensible heat flux but not a clear signal in evaporation. Meridional differences in climate response have implications for attribution of observed climate change, as well as for climate change mitigation strategies.The paper considers an endogenous growth model with climate change as well as three R&D sectors dedicated to energy, CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) and backstop efficiency. First, we characterize the set of decentralized equilibria: a particular equilibrium is associated with any vector of policy instruments including a carbon tax and a subsidy to each R&D sector. Second, we show that it is possible to express any equilibrium as the solution of a maximization program. Third, we solve the first-best optimum problem and thereby deriving the optimal instruments. Finally, we illustrate the theoretical model using calibrated functional specifications. In particular, we investigate the effects of various combinations of policy instruments (including the optimal ones) by determining the deviation of each corresponding equilibrium from the "laisser-faire" benchmark. We find notably that introducing an R&D subsidy hardly affects emissions when a carbon tax is already implemented, thus revealing a complementary effect between these two policy instruments. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is a fast growing megacity with a population of 12.8 million. Due to its tropical location, dense urban morphology and higher than average density of population, buildings in Dhaka are likely to be adversely affected by the projected changes in climate, in particular by the increases in temperature. Buildings play a vital role in most aspects of our lives and their energy consumption patterns affect climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. It is important to understand the likely impact of the projected increases in temperature on cooling and heating requirements in buildings in future climates. In this research, global projections on changes in temperature are temporally downscaled using a statistically averaged baseline present-day hourly weather data to generate future weather data in three timeslices: 2020s, 2050s and 2080s. Time series data for the present-day and future climates are analyzed as well as heating and cooling degree-days are calculated. Analysis shows that heating degree-days decrease whereas cooling degree-days continue to increase in future climates. The magnitude of change in monthly cooling degree-days is uneven and is greater in winter months than in summer and monsoon. Increased occurrences of temperatures above comfort threshold throughout the year are likely to have significant consequences for human health and wellbeing. The severity and duration of outdoor temperatures in the form of increased cooling degree-days in future climates will result in a surge in demand for energy for comfort cooling, which will add further stress to the already stressed energy infrastructure in the country. Prompt actions from stakeholders are, therefore, essential to enhance the resilience of Dhaka's buildings to climate change. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides one of the few assessments of the economic implications of climate change policies in the important region of Eastern Europe and post-Soviet states. We use an integrated assessment model to evaluate the consequences of implementing climate policies consistent with the targets proposed by the Major Economies Forum by mid-century. We decompose the economic impacts in terms of domestic abatement costs, of oil trading and of international emission permit trading for a variety of scenarios, and show that these could be substantial for this region. The results point towards innovation and economic diversification as key complementary measures to be implemented in preparation of climate mitigation strategies.The structure and function of Alaska's forests have changed significantly in response to a changing climate, including alterations in species composition and climate feedbacks (e. g., carbon, radiation budgets) that have important regional societal consequences and human feedbacks to forest ecosystems. In this paper we present the first comprehensive synthesis of climate-change impacts on all forested ecosystems of Alaska, highlighting changes in the most critical biophysical factors of each region. We developed a conceptual framework describing climate drivers, biophysical factors and types of change to illustrate how the biophysical and social subsystems of Alaskan forests interact and respond directly and indirectly to a changing climate. We then identify the regional and global implications to the climate system and associated socio-economic impacts, as presented in the current literature. Projections of temperature and precipitation suggest wildfire will continue to be the dominant biophysical factor in the Interior-boreal forest, leading to shifts from conifer-to deciduous-dominated forests. Based on existing research, projected increases in temperature in the Southcentral- and Kenai-boreal forests will likely increase the frequency and severity of insect outbreaks and associated wildfires, and increase the probability of establishment by invasive plant species. In the Coastal-temperate forest region snow and ice is regarded as the dominant biophysical factor. With continued warming, hydrologic changes related to more rapidly melting glaciers and rising elevation of the winter snowline will alter discharge in many rivers, which will have important consequences for terrestrial and marine ecosystem productivity. These climate-related changes will affect plant species distribution and wildlife habitat, which have regional societal consequences, and trace-gas emissions and radiation budgets, which are globally important. Our conceptual framework facilitates assessment of current and future consequences of a changing climate, emphasizes regional differences in biophysical factors, and points to linkages that may exist but that currently lack supporting research. The framework also serves as a visual tool for resource managers and policy makers to develop regional and global management strategies and to inform policies related to climate mitigation and adaptation.In order to reduce energy-related CO(2) emissions different options have been considered: energy efficiency improvements, structural changes to low carbon or zero carbon fuel/technologies, carbon sequestration, and reduction in energy-service demands (useful energy). While efficiency and technology options have been extensively studied within the context of climate change mitigation, this paper addresses the possible role of price-related energy-service demand reduction. For this analysis, the elastic demand version of the TIAM-UCL global energy system model is used in combination with decomposition analysis. The results of the CO(2) emission decomposition indicate that a reduction in energy-service demand can play a limited role, contributing around 5% to global emission reduction in the 21st century. A look at the sectoral level reveals that the demand reduction can play a greater role in selected sectors like transport contributing around 16% at a global level. The societal welfare loss is found to be high when the price elasticity of demand is low. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon-offsetting scheme Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has evolved into one of the most important instruments for the funding of renewable energy projects in mountain regions in developing and newly industrializing countries. The CDM allows industrialized states to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions by investing in climate change mitigation activities abroad. These offsetting projects are intended to avoid emissions while simultaneously contributing to sustainable development at the local level. The most common project type under the CDM is hydropower, with the majority of projects being located in the mountain areas of China and India. However, doubts about the scrutinizing methods of the CDM as well as the often controversial impacts of dam building on mountain environments and communities raise questions about the ability of these "clean development" dams to serve as a sustainable means of mitigating climate change. The objective of the present article is to assess the effectiveness of large CDM hydropower projects in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Analysis of planning documents and expert interviews revealed that "clean development" dams in the Himachal Himalaya fall short of achieving the goals of the CDM. Most projects are not in a position to compensate for emissions because they would have been built even without CDM support. Furthermore, it is arguable whether CDM dams contribute to sustainable mountain development, because the consequences of their construction are the same as for many other ordinary large dams, that is, environmental damage and conflicts that arise from the reallocation of land and water resources. Our results suggest that the promotion of large hydropower projects through the CDM in its current form is a highly ambivalent strategy. Shortcomings in the regulatory framework of the CDM may be undermining the environmental and social integrity of the CDM at both the global and local levels.The intensity of market penetration and hence the relevance of clean energy technologies in mitigating climate change will greatly depend on their cost-effectiveness. This paper discusses the economic and policy aspects of speeding up the market of these technologies to reach cost parity. A combination of historical energy market dynamics, technology diffusion and endogenous learning models were employed in the analyses. Starting from giving a preferential position to emerging renewable energy technologies in the energy and climate policy, which also means securing adequate financial resources for their deployment, could lead in the base scenario to a full-cost breakthrough of wind power around 2027 and of photovoltaics in 2032. The combined global market share of renewable electricity in 2050 could reach 62% of all electricity (now 19%) of which wind and solar power alone could account for almost two-thirds corresponding to a carbon saving in the range of 8-16 GtCO(2). However, if the new technologies were downgraded in the energy and climate policy context, the combined impact of solar and wind could remain at no less than 11% which would marginalize these technologies in the fight against climate change. The estimates for financial support to achieve cost parity were very sensitive to the assumptions of the input parameters: in the base case the extra costs or learning investments for solar power were (sic)1432 billion and for wind power (sic)327 billion, but with more conservative input data these values could grow manifold. On the other hand, considering the potentially cheaper electricity from new technologies above the cost parity point and putting a price on carbon could result in a positive yield from public support instead of it being regarded merely as unnecessary spending. The findings stress the necessity of long-term policies and strong commercialization strategies to bring the new energy technologies to breakeven point, but also highlight the complexity of assessing the true costs of making new energy technologies fully competitive. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism has the potential to provide the developing nations with significant funding for forest restoration activities that contribute to climate change mitigation, sustainable management, and carbon-stock enhancement. In order to stimulate and inform discussion on the role of ecological restoration within REDD+, we outline opportunities for and challenges to using science-based restoration projects and programs to meet REDD+ goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and storing carbon in forest ecosystems. Now that the REDD+ mechanism, which is not yet operational, has expanded beyond a sole focus on activities that affect carbon budgets to also include those that enhance ecosystem services and deliver other co-benefits to biodiversity and communities, forest restoration could play an increasingly important role. However, in many nations, there is a lack of practical tools and guidance for implementing effective restoration projects and programs that will sequester carbon and at the same time improve the integrity and resilience of forest ecosystems. Restoration scientists and practitioners should continue to engage with potential REDD+ donors and recipients to ensure that funding is targeted at projects and programs with ecologically sound designs.This article explores the technoenvironmental politics associated with government-sponsored climate change mitigation. It focuses on England's New Technologies Demonstrator Programme, established to test the "viability" of "green" waste treatments by awarding state aid to eight experimental projects that promise to divert municipal waste from landfill and greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The article examines how these demonstrator sites are arranged and represented to produce noncontroversial and publicly accessible forms of evidence and experience and, ultimately, to inform environmental policy and planning decisions throughout the country. As in experimental science, this process requires that some bear witness to the demonstrators, but in a disciplined way. Whether through the extrapolation of facts about technical performance by affiliated third-party consultants, or the orchestration of visitor centers open to the general public, making the demonstrators public involves controlling the ways in which they are interpreted and perceived. However, the unstable publicity of waste management facilities proliferates unofficial accounts as well. These acts of counterwitnessing, as I refer to them, not only potentially dispute the official evidence collected from the demonstrators, they also can pose a challenge to the understanding of technology upon which such government initiatives are based.An environmentally extended input output (EE-IO) analysis environmental impacts of material flows caused by the Finnish economy was carried out in order to improve data on production and consumption in Finland. The study resulted in the ENVIMAT model, which can be used to analyze the relationship between material flows, environmental impacts and the economy. The model is based on monetary and physical input output tables and an environmental life-cycle impact assessment. This article summarizes the main methodological aspects and findings regarding the material flows and climate impacts caused by the Finnish economy in 2002 and 2005. The Finnish model has relatively detailed input data with 150 industries and 918 products and the data on imports was assessed according to a mixed approach with the help of life-cycle inventory data. The results of the model showed that the Finnish economy uses imported material resources as much as domestic resources. Life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by imports were equivalent to 70-80% of domestic emissions. The GHG emissions embodied in imports (emissions abroad) and exports (emissions within Finland) were of the same magnitude. The analysis showed that the service sector accounted for 44% of GHG emissions caused by the domestic final use of products. Analysis of the results also showed that the indicator of total material requirement (TMR) should not be used for environmental impact comparisons of products and services. In the future, the aim is to use the ENVIMAT model for assessing temporal changes in the economy; for monitoring sustainable development: for planning climate change mitigation; and for identifying important factors in the economy and assessing their impacts. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article analyses the impact of waste recovery on climate change mitigation on a regional scale. We focus on the EU End of Waste (EoW) policy, which aims at reducing negative impacts on the environment through the minimization of generated waste. At the same time, the EU climate objectives set challenging goals for the industry to lower greenhouse gas emissions. We argue that the goals of these two policies are conflicting: under certain circumstances, the EoW will lead into increased greenhouse gas emissions because of a number of negative feedback effects that function on multiple spatial and temporal scales. To assess the effects of waste recovery on greenhouse gas emissions, we carry out a consequential life-cycle inventory on a proposed industrial ecosystem around the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden. The system recovers currently unutilized steelmaking dust and slag from four steel mills in Finland and Sweden and converts them into iron and zinc raw materials in a novel rotary hearth furnace. The recovered iron is led back into the blast furnace of one of the steel mills and zinc is treated in an existing zinc plant. In the European scale, the model system is significant in size, serving thus as a model for integrated EoW and carbon footprint assessments in other similar cases within the EU. The analysis reveals the relative greenhouse gas emissions from raw material extraction and production, heat and power generation, transport and the production process itself, in comparison to the present system with limited material recovery. To test the model viability, we conduct a sensitivity analysis with respect to increasing energy and production capacity. Our analysis shows that from the point of view of a single operator, material recovery may bring noteworthy reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. If the scale of the assessment is expanded beyond the confines of a single plant, however, we find limited potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through further recovery of steelmaking residues. In conclusion, we provide policy recommendations with which the EoW paradigm can provide better support for climate change mitigation on a regional scale. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The core issues of the Austrian energy policy agenda include reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. Within this study, the costs of GHG mitigation and fossil fuel replacement (abatement costs) of established and upcoming bioenergy technologies for heat, electricity and transport fuel production are assessed. Sensitivity analyses and projections up to 2030 illustrate the effect of dynamic parameters on specific abatement costs. The results show that the abatement costs of wood-based heat generation technologies substituting oil-fired boilers and gas-fired heating plants, respectively, are in the range of -45 (sic) per ton CO2-equivalent ((sic)/t CO2-eq.) and -11 (sic) per MW h higher heating value ((sic)/MWh(HHV)) to 93 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 24 (sic)/ MW h(HHV). Heating systems around 50 kW show the lowest abatement costs. For combined heat and power (CHP) plants, two different cases with regard to heat utilization are assumed. In an optimal mode (100% of generated heat displaces fossil fuel-based heat production), abatement costs of wood-based technologies, substituting electricity from modern combined cycle gas turbines, range from 5 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 1(sic)/MWh(HHV) to 201 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 38 (sic)/MW h(HHV). Representative values of typical CHP plants with a capacity of 1 MWel and more are in the magnitude of 50(sic)/t CO2-eq. and 10 (sic)/MW h(HHV). Under less favorable conditions (3000 heat full load hours per year), abatement costs of typical plants are around 100 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 17 E/MWh(HHV) brow higher. The costs of GHG mitigation and fossil fuel saving with established transport fuels (biodiesel and ethanol) range from 71 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 8 (sic)/MW h(HHV) to 200 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 82 (sic)/MWh(HHV). For liquid fuels from lignocellulosis, abatement costs are estimated 147 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 38 (sic)/MWh(HHV) to 240(sic)/t CO2-eq. and 59 (sic)/MWMWh(HHV). The abatement costs of synthetic natural gas are found to be significantly lower: 75 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 14 E/MWMWh(HHV) to 128 (sic)/t CO2-eq. and 23 E/MWh(HHV) . The results suggest that heat generation and - given favorable conditions - CHP generation are the most cost-efficient options for reducing GHG emissions and fossil fuel dependence in Austria. A core advantage of CHP is higher quantities of abatement per unit of biomass used. In contrast, this is found to be the main drawback of synthetic transport fuels from wood. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Gases like CH4, CO2 and H-2 may play a key role in establishing a sustainable energy system: CH4 is the least carbon-intensive fossil energy resource: CO2 capture and storage can significantly reduce the climate footprint of especially fossil-based electricity generation; and the use of H-2 as energy carrier could enable carbon-free automotive transportation. Yet the construction of large pipeline infrastructures usually constitutes a major and time-consuming undertaking, because of safety and environmental issues, legal and (geo)political siting arguments, technically un-trivial installation processes, and/or high investment cost requirements. In this article we focus on the latter and present an overview of both the total costs and cost components of the distribution of these three gases via pipelines. Possible intricacies and external factors that strongly influence these costs, like the choice of location and terrain, are also included in our analysis. Our distribution cost breakdown estimates are based on transportation data for CH4, which we adjust for CO2 and H-2 in order to account for the specific additional characteristics of these two gases. The overall trend is that pipeline construction is no longer subject to significant cost reductions. For the purpose of designing energy and climate policy we therefore know in principle with reasonable certainty what the minimum distribution cost components of future energy systems are that rely on pipelining these gases. We describe the reasons why we observe limited learning-by-doing and explain why negligible construction cost reductions for future CH4, CO2 and H-2 pipeline projects can be expected. Cost data of individual pipeline projects may strongly deviate from the global average because of national or regional effects related to the type of terrain, but also to varying costs of labor and fluctuating market prices of components like steel. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we estimate the effects of climate change on forest production in north-central Sweden, as well as the potential climate change mitigation feedback effects of the resulting increased carbon stock and forest product use. Our results show that an average regional temperature rise of 4 degrees C over the next 100 years may increase annual forest production by 33% and potential annual harvest by 32%, compared to a reference case without climate change. This increased biomass production, if used to substitute fossil fuels and energy-intensive materials, can result in a significant net carbon emission reduction. We find that carbon stock in forest biomass, forest soils, and wood products also increase, but this effect is less significant than biomass substitution. A total net reduction in carbon emissions of up to 104 Tg of carbon can occur over 100 years, depending on harvest level and reference fossil fuel. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A carbon tax is an efficient economic instrument to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning. If designed properly, it could also help significantly to promote renewable energy. Using a multi-sector, multi-country computable general equilibrium model this study investigates under what circumstances a carbon tax would help stimulate penetration of biofuels into the energy supply mix for road transportation in various countries and regions around the world. This study shows that a carbon tax cum biofuel subsidy policy, where a carbon tax is introduced to fossil fuels and part of the tax revenue is used to finance the biofuel subsidy, would significantly help stimulate market penetration of biofuels. On the other hand, a carbon tax alone policy, where the entire tax revenue is recycled to households through a lump-sum transfer, does not help stimulate biofuels significantly even at higher tax rates. Although the carbon tax cum subsidy policy would cause higher loss in economic output at the global level as compared to the carbon tax alone policy, the incremental loss is relatively small. The key policy insight drawn from the study is that if a carbon tax were to be implemented in an economy for the purpose of climate change mitigation, recycling part of its revenue to finance biofuel subsidies would significantly help stimulate biofuels. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is fast becoming the major environmental and energy concern worldwide. There is a major dilemma between the continued reliance on fossil fuel for our energy supply and the pressing need to address the problem of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from combustion process. This paper reviews the potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a part of the climate change mitigation strategy for the Malaysian electricity sector using a technology assessment framework. The nation's historical trend of high reliance on fossil fuel for its electricity sector makes it a prime candidate for CCS adoption. The suitability and practicality of the technology was reviewed from a broad perspective with consideration of Malaysia-specific conditions. It is apparent from this assessment that CCS has the potential to play an important role in Malaysia's climate change mitigation strategy provided that key criteria are fulfilled. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of comparative assessment of future road transport technologies is to find the cheapest motor vehicles in terms of private and external Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission costs under various international climate change mitigation scenarios in 2020 and 2050. The comparative assessment of the main road transport technologies ranging from conventional vehicles to hybrid electric vehicles was performed. The main indicators for comparative future motor vehicles assessment are: private costs and life cycle external costs of GHG emissions. The obtained ranking of road transport technologies allows to identify the most perspective future motor vehicles taking into account international climate change mitigation constraints and to promote these road technologies by policy tools. The cheapest road transport technologies in 2020 and 2050 are: the main results presented in this paper were obtained during EU financed Framework 7 project "PLANETS" dealing with probabilistic long-term assessment of new energy technology scenarios. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We investigate the potential environmental impacts of a large-scale adoption of wind power to meet up to 22% of the world's growing electricity demand. The analysis builds on life cycle assessments of generic onshore and offshore wind farms, meant to represent average conditions for global deployment of wind power. We scale unit-based findings to estimate aggregated emissions of building, operating and decommissioning wind farms toward 2050, taking into account changes in the electricity mix in manufacturing. The energy scenarios investigated are the International Energy Agency's BLUE scenarios. We estimate 1.7-2.6 Gt CO2-eq climate change, 2.1-3.2 Mt N-eq marine eutrophication, 9.2-14 Mt NMVOC photochemical oxidant formation, and 9.5-15 Mt SO2-eq terrestrial acidification impact category indicators due to global wind power in 2007-50. Assuming lifetimes 5 yr longer than reference, the total climate change indicator values are reduced by 8%. In the BLUE Map scenario, construction of new capacity contributes 64%, and repowering of existing capacity 38%, to total cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. The total emissions of wind electricity range between 4% and 14% of the direct emissions of the replaced fossil-fueled power plants. For all impact categories, the indirect emissions of displaced fossil power are larger than the total emissions caused by wind power.Effective management of climate change risk requires an understanding of how to encourage positive behaviour change at the collective level. The urgency of the problem and the social dilemma nature of decisions about whether to engage in pro-environmental behaviours raise particular challenges for policy makers and those involved in designing interventions. Evidence reveals that efficacy beliefs (judgements of the ease of carrying out a particular act) and outcome expectancy beliefs (judgements of the value of acts in reaching goals) function as important determinants of human motivation and action (Bandura, 1995). However, efficacy and associated constructs remain poorly theorised at the collective level, particularly in social dilemma situations where goals may exist at both individual and collective levels. We develop a framework that incorporates collective forms of efficacy and outcome expectancy for large-scale, social dilemma situations, and operationalise these constructs. We then discuss how this framework can support us in managing climate change risk by allowing us to identify the specific forms of efficacy and outcome expectancy that should be targeted in research, science communication and policy. Risk Management (2011) 13, 184-208. doi:10.1057/rm.2011.12This article analyses the debate associated with the ancillary impacts of climate change mitigation options in developing countries, with a particular focus upon Africa's 34 least developed countries. While these countries' emissions of greenhouse gases are relatively small (and they do not have emission limitation commitments in the current international regime), inattention to the mitigation agenda would mean that developing countries both miss potential funding opportunities and fail to 'climate-proof' their development strategies. A focus, therefore, upon the short-term, local, developmental impacts that serve to change the relative attractiveness of different mitigation options from the perspective of the developing country is in these countries' current strategic interests. In this article, I examine three energy-related climate change mitigation options: improved cookstoves, carbon-free electricity and improved energy efficiency in industry. Key ancillary impacts are better indoor air quality, better outdoor air quality and job creation (respectively). Further work to strengthen the evidence base regarding these impacts needs to be undertaken, potentially drawing upon broader work that has already been completed. Thus, in conclusion, a call for cross-fertilisation of information between heretofore disparate research communities is made. Additionally, the development of an integrated research agenda, forging linkages among cookstoves, indoor air quality and climate change mitigation research communities in Africa's least developed countries, is identified as a priority.Human activities have accelerated global nitrogen cycling by approx. a factor of two. Also under future environmental conditions, agricultural nitrogen use is expected to remain the leading cause of reactive nitrogen (N-r) release to the environment. The main process to remove N-r from the environment is microbial denitrification. Here we summarize potential mechanisms that may affect denitrification and associated nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in/from agricultural systems under future environmental conditions. Though changes in climate, specifically in temperature and precipitation, are likely to directly affect denitrification rates and N2O emissions, we identified several indirect mechanisms of global change that may potentially override direct effects. Among these are a) landscape scale changes of hotspots of denitrification: while the importance of non-hydromorphic upland soils for denitrification may decrease owing to limitations in soil moisture the importance of riparian areas as denitrification hotspots may further increase owing to the increased likeliness of flooding events leading to more frequent occurrences of aerobic-anaerobic cycles in riparian areas and, thus, increased denitrification, b) increased provision of labile carbon substrates via plant root exudation in the rhizosphere under elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, leading to increased microbial activity and higher denitrification rates in agricultural subsoils, thereby potentially reducing rates of nitrate leaching from agricultural soils and c) increased ammonia (NH3) volatilization from agricultural systems leading to increased denitrification rates and N2O emissions downwind from NH3 emission sources. Obviously, under future environmental conditions the mentioned mechanisms would further strengthen the regional disjunction of areas of N-r application from those of N-r removal by denitrlfication, thereby calling for a reappraisal of the importance of indirect emissions of N2O from agricultural N-r use. It remains unclear, to which extent climate change mitigation options such as the introduction of no-till systems or the increasing use of slow release fertilizers in conjunction with nitrification inhibitors or the adaptations of agricultural management practices to climate change such as altered timing of cultivation, choice of crop varieties and adaptation of water saving production systems may finally override direct and indirect climate change effects on denitrification and N2O emissions from agricultural systems.The purpose of this article is to show the carbon reduction strategy for the integrated regeneration of Playa de Palma, Palma de Mallorca. The article will describe the strategy which has been established and the measures planned in order to reach the target of zero CO(2) emissions for 2050, and will provide a description of an energy model based 100% on renewable energies. The strategies include not only technological measures aimed at energy efficiency and the integration of renewable energies in buildings and the urban environment, but also other measures designed to change energy consumption patterns. In this latter respect, in addition to citizen awareness programmes, energy demand management models based on intelligent electrical networks will be implemented. The viable implementation of the strategies requires the establishment of energy business models and models for the corporate structures set up around the Palma Beach energy agency.The impacts of the availability of low-carbon technologies on the regional distribution of mitigation costs are analyzed in a global multi-regional integrated assessment model. Three effects on regional consumption losses are distinguished: domestic measures, trade of fossil energy carriers and trade of emission permits. Key results are: (i) GDP losses and a redirection of investments in the energy system towards capital-intensive technologies are major contributions to regional consumption losses. (ii) A devaluation of tradable fossil energy endowments contributes largely to the mitigation costs of fossil fuel exporters. (iii) In case of reduced availability of low-carbon technologies, the permit market volume and associated monetary redistributions increase. The results suggest that the availability of a broad portfolio of low-carbon technologies could facilitate negotiations on the permit allocation scheme in a global cap-and-trade system. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Even as small island developing states (SIDS) like Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) increase industrialization and grapple with the challenges of increased pollution, few studies provide guidance to policy makers of such countries on appropriate policy measures and instruments that can be implemented to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Here we apply a multi-criteria evaluation methodology to ascertain preferences for policy measures and instruments in the power generation sector. Four broad policy measures and twelve policy instruments are assessed on criteria of environmental performance, feasibility of implementation and political acceptability. This method proves useful in T&T, since typical to many SIDS, the intensive data required by other policy assessment methods is unavailable. Results indicate little difference in preference among the four policy measures thereby indicating that a multi-pronged approach on several policy fronts is required. The most preferred policy instruments to operationalize measures included provision of subsidies for energy saving technologies, creating an industry wide carbon trading scheme and implementing a feed-in tariff to increase the use of renewable energy sources. This study therefore provides specific insights for policy makers in Trinidad and Tobago while also providing power generation sector specific guidance to other rapidly industrializing small island developing states. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the factors affecting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Greece, (i.e. the drivers of pressures on climate change), using environmental indicators related to energy, demographics and economic growth. The analysis is based on the data of 2008 and considers types of fuel and sectors. The Kaya identity is used to identify the relationship between drivers and pressures, using annual time series data of National GHG emissions, population, energy consumption and gross domestic product. The analysis shows that over the period 2000-2008, GHG emissions show a slight variation, but they are almost stabilised, with a total increase of 1.6%. Despite the economic growth over that period, this stabilisation may be considered as a combination of reductions in the energy intensity of GDP and the carbon intensity of energy, which are affected by improvements in energy efficiency and introduction of "cleaner" fuels, such as natural gas and renewables in the energy mixture of the country. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article investigates the environmental profile and costs of woody BTL production and use by reviewing existing LCA studies. The findings reveal that BTL from sustainably managed forest biomass and woody waste may have a lower overall environmental impact than fossil diesel. The benefits of using BTL instead of fossil diesel are largely due to savings in fossil energy use, which offer savings in GHG emissions since a large part of the lifecycle CO2 emissions are biogenic. Improvements in the impact category photosmog or summer smog have also been reported. On the other hand, wood based BTL may increase eutrophication and acidification, and increased ozone depletion and toxicity may also be expected. While global indicators like climate change, non-renewable resources and ozone depletion are fairly easy to interpret, the local indicators such as eutrophication, acidification, photosmog and toxicity are site specific, and an LCA will not take into account where, when and at which rate the emissions occur, which are important parameters when estimating local pollution effects. In addition, increased logging or the establishment of short rotation plantations may impact biodiversity, land-use changes and the value of nature. The reported results differed when assessing the same fuel due to differences in methodology and data assumptions. For the methodological part, differences in system boundaries, system completeness and chosen allocation methods contributed to the ranges in results. Differences regarding data inputs, such as plant efficiency and fuel consumption were also important for the differences in results. The most influential or sensitive factors within the reviewed studies were the assumed type of feedstock, plant efficiency and drivetrain. The reported production costs of BTL are in the range of 0.70-1.12 euros per liter. The costs are largely influenced by plant scale, biomass costs and plant efficiency. Biofuels are generally not considered a cost effective climate mitigation means, but there are no other feasible solutions than biofuels for the heavy transport sector in the short to medium term. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a quantitative analysis of international representation in the activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change using expert authorship counts by country in each of the four IPCC assessment reports (1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007). Overall, we find that 45% of countries, all Non-Annex 1, have never had authors participate in the IPCC process: on the other hand, European and North American experts are make up more than 75% of all authors (N = 4394). Generalized linear models using negative binomial regression were used to quantitatively estimate the effect of a number of socioeconomic, environmental and procedural factors influencing country-level participation in the IPCC. Per capita gross domestic product, population, English-speaking status, and levels of tertiary education were all found to be statistically significant drivers of authorship counts. In particular, participation by authors from English-speaking Non-Annex 1 countries is 2.5 times greater than those that are non-English speaking. Regionally small island nations of Oceania were the most severely under-represented group. South American and Asian countries had fewer authors, and African countries had more authors than what might be expected on the basis of demographic and socio-economic data. These differences across nations partly reflect existing scientific capacity that will be slow to change. However, the on-going under-representation of developing country scientists in the IPCC, particularly in the assessment of climate science (WGI) and climate mitigation (WGIII) warrants greater efforts to close the capacity gap. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a strong connection between economic growth and development of cities. Economic growth tends to stimulate city growth, and city economies have often shaped innovative environments that in turn support economic growth. Simultaneously, social and environmental problems related to city growth can be serious threats to the realization of the socio-economic contributions that cities can make. However, as a result of considerable diversity of competences combined with interactive learning and innovation, cities may also solve these problems. The 'urban order' may form a platform for innovative problem solving and potential spill-over effects, which may stimulate further economic growth and development. This paper discusses how waste problems of cities can be transformed to become part of new, more sustainable solutions. Two cases are explored: Aalborg in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden. It is shown that the cities have the potential to significantly contribute to a more sustainable development through increased material recycling and energy recovery. Waste prevention may increase this potential. For example, instead of constituting 3% of the total greenhouse gas emission problem, it seems possible for modern European cities to contribute to greenhouse gas emission reduction by 15% through up to date technology and integrated waste management systems for material and energy recovery. Going from being part of the problem to providing solutions; however, is not an easy endeavour. It requires political will and leadership, supportive regulatory frameworks, realistic timetables/roadmaps, and a diverse set of stakeholders that can provide the right creative and innovative mix to make it possible.Biodiversity conservation organisations have recently begun to consider a wider ecosystem services context for their activities. While the literature suggests the potential of 'win-win' situations where biodiversity conservation and the delivery of ecosystem services overlap, empirical evidence is wanting. Here we explore the role that species-led management for the benefit of biodiversity in cultural landscapes can play in the delivery of wider ecosystem services. We use UK lowland wetlands as a case study and show how successful delivery of species-led conservation through management interventions relies on practices that can affect greenhouse gas fluxes, water quality and regulation, and cultural benefits. In these wetlands, livestock grazing has potentially large effects on water and greenhouse gas related services, but there is little scope to alter management without compromising species objectives. Likewise, there is little potential to alter reedbed management without compromising conservation objectives. There is some potential to alter woodland and scrub management, but this would likely have limited influence due to the relatively small area over which such management is practiced. The management of water levels potentially has large effects on provision of several services and there does appear to be some scope to align this objective with biodiversity objectives. A comprehensive understanding of the net costs and benefits to society of these interventions will require fine-grained research integrating ecological, economic and social science research. However, a less analytic understanding of the potential costs and benefits can highlight ways by which land management principally to achieve biodiversity conservation objectives might be modified to enhance delivery of other ecosystem services.Protected areas are key conservation tools for biodiversity management, but they are failing to protect species from current climate change. Focusing on protected areas representing montane, arid, coastal, and marine ecosystems, we provide examples of climate change induced range dynamics, includihg species' moving out of protected areas, disease range expansions, severe population declines, and even extinctions. Climate change thus presents an immense challenge to protected areas but also an unparalleled opportunity to shift from managing for static, historical community composition toward managing for dynamic, novel assemblages, thus complementing the traditional individual-species approach with an ecosystem-services approach: In addition, protected areas are well positioned to lead the way in climate change mitigation. Protected area managers can start achieving these goals by strengthening their commitments in climate change research, community outreach, and sustainability.Jean Pierre Ometto(dagger 1), Ana Paula Dutra Aguiar(1) & Luiz Antonio Martinelli(2) The concept of global ecosystem services has become a powerful paradigm for understanding the link between ecosystem processes and related human activities, which is expressed by the economic and ecological quantification of the services in regards to sustainable development. The role of tropical forests in the global climate system and the uncertainty of the exact magnitude of this complex interaction has become a major concern to the scientific community. In this paper we review and synthesize the global effects of Amazon deforestation in Brazil, as well as drivers and challenges related to this process. To this end, we provide data on carbon emissions from combined annual maps of clear cutting of primary forests and spatial information on biomass distribution for different vegetation types and secondary vegetation growth, as well as the temporal dynamic related to the deforestation process and its interregional heterogeneity, the social and institutional drivers. In 2009, during the Conference of Parties, of the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (Copenhagen, Denmark), Brazil announced a voluntary commitment to reduce the national GHG emissions by 2020 and, to this end, such commitment requires reducing Amazon rainforest deforestation by 80% over a decade. To achieve this target, a set of consolidated remote sensing techniques have served to monitor and calculate the extent of deforestation, which became indispensable auditing tools for conservation, forest restoration and implementing climate change mitigation schemes.Paulo Moutinho(dagger 1), Osvaldo Stella Martins', Mariana Christovam(1), Andre Lima(1), Daniel Nepstad(1) & Ana Carolina Crisostomo(1) Brazil has exercised a leadership in the International scene about climate change mitigation and adaptation. Internally, it has been demonstrating institutional, legal and technical capacity to monitor and reduce deforestation in the Amazon, capacities also required to the development of a national Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) system. In this article, we present the progress on the REDD+ debate under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Brazilian government trajectory towards a positive REDD+ agenda. We also discuss the relevant Brazilian legislation that can support a REDD+ regime: the National Policy for Climate Change, the Amazon state plans for deforestation reduction and the current debate and proposal of a REDD+ regime in Brazil, discussing their contexts, threats and opportunities. Funding opportunities are also discussed, with emphasis on the role of the Amazon Fund on fostering the REDD+ activities in Brazil. At the end, we propose a mechanism of REDD+ benefits sharing, based on a stock-target and flow approach.This study aims to investigate a relationship between economic development and air pollution at the regional level, and further suggest energy policies for climate change mitigation. The present study examines an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis analyzing annual panel data of 16 metropolitan regions in Korea over a 16-year time period. The analysis results show that there is no one-dominant shape of EKC for SO2 and NO2; each region has its own EKC. That is, although we find the potential existence of U-shaped and N-shaped curves, the region-specific coefficients are enormously heterogeneous across regions. For CO, on the other hand, the random coefficient model shows that there is a dominant U-shaped curve across regions. In addition, energy consumption appears to be the most significant variable in explaining air pollution. Based on these results, we assert that environmental policy should consider the different characteristics of each region and type of pollutant. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production, transport and processing of food products have significant environmental impacts, some of them related to climate change. This study examined the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and transport to a port in Sweden (wholesale point) of 84 common food items of animal and vegetable origin. Energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for food items produced in different countries and using various means of production were compared. The results confirmed that animal-based foods are associated with higher energy use and GHG emissions than plant-based foods, with the exception of vegetables produced in heated greenhouses. Analyses of the nutritional value of the foods to assess the amount of protein delivered to the wholesale point per unit energy used or GHG emitted (protein delivery efficiency) showed that the efficiency was much higher for plant-based foods than for animal-based. Remarkably, the efficiency of delivering plant-based protein increased as the amount of protein in the food increased, while the efficiency of delivering animal-based protein decreased. These results have implications for policies encouraging diets with lower environmental impacts for a growing world population. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.1. Despite urbanization being a major driver of land-use change globally, there have been few attempts to quantify and map ecosystem service provision at a city-wide scale. One service that is an increasingly important feature of climate change mitigation policies, and with other potential benefits, is biological carbon storage. 2. We examine the quantities and spatial patterns of above-ground carbon stored in a typical British city, Leicester, by surveying vegetation across the entire urban area. We also consider how carbon density differs in domestic gardens, indicative of bottom-up management of private green spaces by householders, and public land, representing top-down landscape policies by local authorities. Finally, we compare a national ecosystem service map with the estimated quantity and distribution of above-ground carbon within our study city. 3. An estimated 231 521 tonnes of carbon is stored within the above-ground vegetation of Leicester, equating to 3.16 kg C m(-2) of urban area, with 97.3% of this carbon pool being associated with trees rather than herbaceous and woody vegetation. 4. Domestic gardens store just 0.76 kg C m(-2), which is not significantly different from herbaceous vegetation landcover (0.14 kg C m(-2)). The greatest above-ground carbon density is 28.86 kg C m(-2), which is associated with areas of tree cover on publicly owned/managed sites. 5. Current national estimates of this ecosystem service undervalue Leicester's contribution by an order of magnitude. 6. Synthesis and applications. The UK government has recently set a target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, from 1990 levels, by 2050. Local authorities are central to national efforts to cut carbon emissions, although the reductions required at city-wide scales are yet to be set. This has led to a need for reliable data to help establish and underpin realistic carbon emission targets and reduction trajectories, along with acceptable and robust policies for meeting these goals. Here, we illustrate the potential benefits of accounting for, mapping and appropriately managing above-ground vegetation carbon stores, even within a typical densely urbanized European city.Urban living is the new reality for the majority of the world's population. Urban change is taking place in a context of other global challenges-economic globalization, climate change, financial crises, energy and food insecurity, old and emerging armed conflicts, as well as the changing patterns of communicable and noncommunicable diseases. These health and social problems, in countries with different levels of infrastructure and health system preparedness, pose significant development challenges in the 21st century. In all countries, rich and poor, the move to urban living has been both good and bad for population health, and has contributed to the unequal distribution of health both within countries (the urban-rural divide) and within cities (the rich-poor divide). In this series of papers, we demonstrate that urban planning and design and urban social conditions can be good or bad for human health and health equity depending on how they are set up. We argue that climate change mitigation and adaptation need to go hand-in-hand with efforts to achieve health equity through action in the social determinants. And we highlight how different forms of governance can shape agendas, policies, and programs in ways that are inclusive and health-promoting or perpetuate social exclusion, inequitable distribution of resources, and the inequities in health associated with that. While today we can describe many of the features of a healthy and sustainable city, and the governance and planning processes needed to achieve these ends, there is still much to learn, especially with respect to tailoring these concepts and applying them in the cities of lower- and middle-income countries. By outlining an integrated research agenda, we aim to assist researchers, policy makers, service providers, and funding bodies/donors to better support, coordinate, and undertake research that is organized around a conceptual framework that positions health, equity, and sustainability as central policy goals for urban management.As the Copenhagen Accord indicates, most of the international community agrees that global mean temperature should not be allowed to rise more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels to avoid unacceptable damages from climate change. The scientific evidence distilled in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and recent reports by the US National Academies shows that this can only be achieved by vast reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Still, international cooperation on greenhouse gas emissions reductions suffers from incentives to free-ride and to renegotiate agreements in case of noncompliance, and the same is true for other so-called "public good games." Using game theory, we show how one might overcome these problems with a simple dynamic strategy of linear compensation when the parameters of the problem fulfill some general conditions and players can be considered to be sufficiently rational. The proposed strategy redistributes liabilities according to past compliance levels in a proportionate and timely way. It can be used to implement any given allocation of target contributions, and we prove that it has several strong stability properties.Increased attention is being paid to the role of reforestation in strategies for sustainable forest management, landscape restoration and carbon sequestration. Reforestation of drainage basins is generally assumed to reduce annual streamflow as well as peak and low flows. However, most studies of reforestation effects on streamflow have been conducted on small experimental basins, and the applicability of their results to larger basins is unclear. This study revisits an earlier examination of streamflow response to headwater reforestation in a 267 km(2) basin (Ganaraska River) in southern Ontario, Canada for 1945-2007. Forest cover in the basin headwaters increased from 13 km(2) in 1945 to 31 km(2) by 1990, with most of this change between 1950 and 1965. Streamflow metrics from the reforested basin and two headwater sub-basins were compared to those from a nearby basin and sub-basin of similar size and physiography to the Ganaraska basins but without extensive headwater reforestation. No temporal trends were found for inter-basin differences in annual runoff or runoff ratios for the entire Ganaraska basin or its largest sub-basin; however, reforestation appears to have reduced several metrics of peak streamflow at the basin and sub-basin scale. Relationships between high flows classified according to generating event type and the associated precipitation depth suggest that expansion of forest cover in the Ganaraska River basin (GRB) and associated changes in microclimatic conditions have reduced the potential for frozen soil to generate surface runoff and high flows in response to rain-on-snow during spring snowmelt. This was accompanied by increased low flows from the GRB and its sub-basins from 1960 to 2007 relative to the control basin, suggesting that the expanded forest cover has enhanced groundwater recharge by prolonging spring snowmelt and promoting infiltration of rainfall and snowmelt inputs relative to non-forested areas. Some discrepancies between these results and those of other studies of streamflow response to reforestation may be attributed to the relatively large size of the GRB and the limited extent of reforestation. Nevertheless, the results highlight the importance of considering how reforestation may affect key hydrologic processes in a given landscape when predicting the resulting streamflow response. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Climate change mitigation has become a binding driver in biofuels production. First generation bioethanol, initially indicated as the most competitive option, is now incurring in ever increasing discredits forcing the transition towards more sustainable productions (i.e. second and third generation technologies). This paper addresses the strategic design and planning of corn grain- and stover-based bioethanol supply chains through first and second generation technologies. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming framework is proposed to optimise the environmental and financial performances simultaneously. Multi-period, multi-echelon and spatially explicit features are embodied within the formulation to steer decisions and investments through a global approach. A demonstrative case study is proposed involving the future Italian biomass-based ethanol production. Results show the effectiveness of the optimisation tool at providing decision makers with a quantitative analysis assessing the economic and environmental performance of different design configuration and their effect in terms of technologies, plant sizes and location, and raw materials. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The combination of a gutted B.C. Forest Service, vast areas of not sufficiently restocked forest lands, a quirky loophole in the Kyoto Protocol and a provincial government ideologically driven to sell off public assets has created the perfect opportunity to burn down B.C.'s forests in a biofuel boondoggle and the last barriers to privatization of B.C.'s Crown forests. Interviews conducted with over a dozen ex-government foresters, industry representatives, contract foresters, silviculturalists, forest-sector round-table participants and political representatives point to this new direction that government is taking Crown forests with no public consultation and media, like the government, that are failing to serve public interests. The voices of the whistle blowers point to a colossal failure of imagination by government that has implications to forest health, climate change mitigation and adaptation, other public interests in Crown lands from public access to bio-diversity and water quality, First Nation interests, and international credibility on carbon accounting and standards and on certification. The lecture will explore the dystopic picture of what is planned and an alternative vision for Crown forests that has been put forward by the critics as a world leader in ecosystem services and valuation. The lecture notes were taken from an original longer article entitled The Big Burn, first published by Focus Magazine in August of 2010.(2)Forests have significant potential to mitigate climate change. Canada has 30% of the world's boreal forests. The ratification of the Kyoto Protocol commoditized carbon (C) on an international scale. To achieve Canada's emission reduction targets and mitigate climate change, the potential of forest C offset projects and forest C trading is being evaluated. Carbon trading and forest C management have economic and policy implications and potential trade-offs in other forest management objectives. We discuss how forest C management and trading can contribute to global efforts for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions reduction through either utilization and/or conservation strategies.Costs and benefits of building energy efficiency are estimated as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Pittsburgh, PA and Austin, TX. The analysis includes electricity and natural gas consumption, covering 75% of building energy consumption in Pittsburgh and 85% in Austin. Two policy objectives were evaluated: maximize GHG reductions given initial budget constraints or maximize social savings given target GHG reductions. This approach evaluates the trade-offs between three primary and often conflicting program design parameters: initial capital constraints, social savings, and GHG reductions. Results suggest uncertainty in local stocks, demands, and efficiency significantly impacts anticipated outcomes. Annual GHG reductions of 1 ton CO2 eq/capita/yr in Pittsburgh could cost near nothing or over $20 per capita annually. Capital-constrained policies generate slightly less social savings (a present value of a few hundred dollars per capita) than policies that maximize social savings. However, sectors and end uses targeted for intervention vary depending on policy objectives and constraints. Optimal efficiency investment strategies for some end uses vary significantly (in excess of 100%) between Pittsburgh and Austin, suggesting that resources and guidance conducted at the national scale may mislead state and local decision-makers. Results are used to provide recommendations for efficiency program administrators. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aims Accurate forecast of ecosystem states is critical for improving natural resource management and climate change mitigation. Assimilating observed data into models is an effective way to reduce uncertainties in ecological forecasting. However, influences of measurement errors on parameter estimation and forecasted state changes have not been carefully examined. This study analyzed the parameter identifiability of a process-based ecosystem carbon cycle model, the sensitivity of parameter estimates and model forecasts to the magnitudes of measurement errors and the information contributions of the assimilated data to model forecasts with a data assimilation approach. Methods We applied a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to assimilate eight biometric data sets into the Terrestrial ECOsystem model. The data were the observations of foliage biomass, wood biomass, fine root biomass, microbial biomass, litter fall, litter, soil carbon and soil respiration, collected at the Duke Forest free-air CO2 enrichment facilities from 1996 to 2005. Three levels of measurement errors were assigned to these data sets by halving and doubling their original standard deviations. Important Findings Results showed that only less than half of the 30 parameters could be constrained, though the observations were extensive and the model was relatively simple. Higher measurement errors led to higher uncertainties in parameters estimates and forecasted carbon (C) pool sizes. The long-term predictions of the slow turnover pools were affected less by the measurement errors than those of fast turnover pools. Assimilated data contributed less information for the pools with long residence times in long-term forecasts. These results indicate the residence times of C pools played a key role in regulating propagation of errors from measurements to model forecasts in a data assimilation system. Improving the estimation of parameters of slow turnover C pools is the key to better forecast long-term ecosystem C dynamics.Agriculture is responsible for 25-30% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but has thus far been largely exempted from climate policies. Because of high monitoring costs and comparatively low technical potential for emission reductions in the agricultural sector, output taxes on emission-intensive agricultural goods may be an efficient policy instrument to deal with agricultural GHG emissions. In this study we assess the emission mitigation potential of GHG weighted consumption taxes on animal food products in the EU. We also estimate the decrease in agricultural land area through the related changes in food production and the additional mitigation potential in devoting this land to bioenergy production. Estimates are based on a model of food consumption and the related land use and GHG emissions in the EU. Results indicate that agricultural emissions in the EU27 can be reduced by approximately 32 million tons of CO2-eq with a GHG weighted tax on animal food products corresponding to a,not sign60 per ton CO2-eq. The effect of the tax is estimated to be six times higher if lignocellulosic crops are grown on the land made available and used to substitute for coal in power generation. Most of the effect of a GHG weighted tax on animal food can be captured by taxing the consumption of ruminant meat alone.The World Bank is increasingly active in the area of climate change mitigation. While it justifies this engagement with its poverty reduction objective and its capacity to pave the way for new business activities in developing countries, critics blame the World Bank as a "climate profiteer" and as an unfair competitor in private markets. Our econometric analysis of over 2,000 projects registered until May 2010 under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol allows us to compare the activities of the Bank with those of other, primarily private actors. The results indicate that hardly any of the CDM projects can be considered as strongly pro-poor. Nevertheless, in comparison to the rest of the CDM projects, the Bank's portfolio shows a relatively clearer orientation towards poor countries. Within these countries, however, the Bank does not show any particular pro-poor focus, and tends to implement those projects that are commercially most attractive. Moreover, there is no evidence of the Bank phasing out its activities once the market becomes fully operational, which goes against its professed pioneering and catalytic role in carbon markets.Economic growth and development, along with expanding population, place a continuing pressure on our basic necessities in a world with depleting natural resources, overharvested ecosystems, and volatile commodity markets. These factors pose a range of competing demands relating to: economic and population growth and demographic changes; food, energy and resources security; ecological regime shifts; and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Key indicators of the processes that underlie these competing demands point to continuing food insecurity in low-income countries, exploitation of ecosystems, and depletion of natural resources. This emphasises the need for productivity improvements combined with innovation in institutional and governance structures to help foster global sustainability and ensure food security.Forests play a key role in the global carbon cycle, and programs aimed at mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through the protection and enhancement of forest carbon stocks are growing in number. Adding greenhouse gas mitigation as a management objective presents managers with a considerable challenge, because data and guidelines are scarce. Long-term inventory datasets have the potential to serve as a useful resource, providing data on carbon accumulation over time, as well as offering insight on strategies for managing forests for the objective of climate mitigation in the face of changing climate and disturbance regimes. We present long-term estimates of carbon accumulation developed from biometric measurements from two northern hardwood forests in the northeastern USA. The Bartlett Experimental Forest in central New Hampshire, USA, stored an estimated net average annual 0.53 tC/ha/yr between 1932-2001, for an increase of 50% in carbon stock per unit area; there were significant differences in accrual rates between age classes (38% for old unmanaged stands and 78% for younger unmanaged stands). The Kane Experimental Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania, USA, exhibited a 140% increase in carbon stored per unit area between 1932 and 2006, with an average annual accumulation rate of 0.89 tC/ha/yr. While both forests have experienced management activity and natural disturbances and differ in species composition, the average age of the forests is an important factor driving the differences in net accumulation rates.Natural disturbances like wildfire, windthrow and insect outbreaks are critical drivers of composition, structure and functioning of forest ecosystems. They are strongly climate-sensitive, and are thus likely to be distinctly affected by climatic changes. Observations across Europe show that in recent decades, forest disturbance regimes have intensified markedly, resulting in a strong increase in damage from wind, bark beetles and wildfires. Climate change is frequently hypothesized as the main driving force behind this intensification, but changes in forest structure and composition associated with management activities such as promoting conifers and increasing standing timber volume (i.e. 'forest change') also strongly influence susceptibility to disturbances. Here, we show that from 1958 to 2001, forest change contributed in the same order of magnitude as climate change to the increase in disturbance damage in Europe's forests. Climate change was the main driver of the increase in area burnt, while changes in forest extent, structure and composition particularly affected the variation in wind and bark beetle damage. For all three disturbance agents, damage was most severe when conducive weather conditions and increased forest susceptibility coincided. We conclude that a continuing trend towards more disturbance-prone conditions is likely for large parts of Europe's forests, and can have strong detrimental effects on forest carbon storage and other ecosystem services. Understanding the interacting drivers of natural disturbance regimes is thus a prerequisite for climate change mitigation and adaptation in forest ecosystem management.In this paper, we discuss a range of issues concerning developing country participation in current global climate change mitigation negotiations, especially India and China. We argue that the problem of redefining 'common yet differentiated responsibilities' in a way which allows developing countries room to pursue their individual development goals while still achieving the necessary level of carbon mitigation is central to the debate. The choice of negotiating instruments, effective technology transfer and financial support, and other related issues have been raised principally by China and India, and may also be raised by several other countries. Kyoto non-compliance by Annex 1 countries will also greatly impact the negotiating power of China and India and other developing countries. We conclude that, once basic principles are clearly defined, the greatest incentive for China and India to participate in climate change negotiations is the prospect of future negotiating rounds that can be linked to a large number of climate change related issues, such as intellectual property, the potential for financial transfers and trade/market access.The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows industrialized countries to comply with the Kyoto Protocol by using carbon offsets from developing countries. There are two puzzles within this carbon market: additionality (the proposed activity would not have occurred in its absence) and co-benefits (the project has other environmental benefits besides climate mitigation). This paper proposes an econometric approach to evaluate the CDM effect on sulfur dioxide emission reductions and assess its additionality indirectly. Our empirical model is applied to China's emissions at the prefecture level. We found that the CDM does not have a statistically significant effect in lowering sulfur dioxide emissions. This result casts doubt on additionality of these CDM activities, that is, they would have happened anyway. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The "Copenhagen Accord" issued after the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), while not unanimously adopted, was nevertheless an important decision relating to further development of the climate change regime. In this twelve-paragraph document, there are seven paragraphs that touch upon issues relating to financial resources and financial mechanisms. Furthermore, COP 16 to the UNFCCC adopted the Cancun Agreements, which also lay down various significant provisions for financial mechanisms, including the newly created Green Climate Fund. This illustrates the importance of financial mechanisms in the adoption and implementation of policies related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The design and effectiveness of such financial mechanisms-especially the role governance structure plays in ensuring the democratic outcome of producing fair and equitable resources generation and allocation processes-will determine whether any financial mechanism can achieve its goal of assisting developing countries to implement climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. International financial mechanisms for development assistance have been in operation since the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions, that is, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group in 1947. Five decades of intense scrutiny directed at the governance structure of the IMF finally resulted in a series of governance reforms in starting in 2008. Could the IMF's experience with these reforms offer valuable input regarding the design of the governance structure of existing or new financial mechanisms for climate change mitigation and adaptation? This will be the main research question this article seeks to answer.BACKGROUND: The UK government has published plans to reduce UK agriculture's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, the goal of global food security requires an increase in arable crop yields. Foliar disease control measures such as fungicides have an important role in meeting both objectives. RESULTS: It is estimated that UK winter barley production is associated with GHG emissions of 2770 kg CO2 eq. ha(-1) of crop and 355 kg CO2 eq. t(-1) of grain. Foliar disease control by fungicides is associated with decreases in GHG emissions of 42-60 kg CO2 eq. t(-1) in UK winter barley and 29-39 kg CO2 eq. t(-1) in UK spring barley. The sensitivity of these results to the impact of disease control on yield and to variant GHG emissions assumptions is presented. Fungicide treatment of the major UK arable crops is estimated to have directly decreased UK GHG emissions by over 1.5 Mt CO2 eq. in 2009. CONCLUSION: Crop disease control measures such as fungicide treatment reduce the GHG emissions associated with producing a tonne of grain. As national demand for food increases, greater yields as a result of disease control also decrease the need to convert land from non-arable to arable use, which further mitigates GHG emissions. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical IndustryBackground: The adverse respiratory effects of ground-level ozone are well established. Ozone is the air pollutant most consistently projected to increase under future climate change. Purpose: To project future pediatric asthma emergency department visits associated with ground-level ozone changes, comparing 1990s to 2020s. Methods: This study assessed future numbers of asthma emergency department visits for children aged 0-17 years using (1) baseline New York City metropolitan area emergency department rates; (2) a dose-response relationship between ozone levels and pediatric asthma emergency department visits; and (3) projected daily 8-hour maximum ozone concentrations for the 2020s as simulated by a global-to-regional climate change and atmospheric chemistry model. Sensitivity analyses included population projections and ozone precursor changes. This analysis occurred in 2010. Results: In this model, climate change could cause an increase in regional summer ozone-related asthma emergency department visits for children aged 0-17 years of 7.3% across the New York City metropolitan region by the 2020s. This effect diminished with inclusion of ozone precursor changes. When population growth is included, the projections of morbidity related to ozone are even larger. Conclusions: The results of this analysis demonstrate that the use of regional climate and atmospheric chemistry models make possible the projection of local climate change health effects for specific age groups and specific disease outcomes, such as emergency department visits for asthma. Efforts should be made to improve on this type of modeling to inform local and wider-scale climate change mitigation and adaptation policy. (Am J Prev Med 2011; 41(3): 251-257) (C) 2011 American Journal of Preventive MedicineChina and India are two Asian giants and global players. They both have large populations and booming economies hungry for energy. China and India will therefore play a major role in shaping future global emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper assesses emissions reductions targets that can be realistically adopted by China and India in the following rounds of climate negotiations. The analysis is based on a business-as-usual (BaU) scenario and on four carbon tax scenarios until 2050, developed using the WITCH model. Results show that the lowest level of taxation (starting at 10$ per tonne of CO2 in 2020) would reduce emissions in 2050 by 25% in China and by 30% in India, with respect to the BaU, at little cost. The marginal abatement cost curves are, however, steep and a higher level of taxation brings little emissions reductions at high costs. In China, only the two highest tax levels reduce emissions in 2050 below the 2005 level. In India, emissions in 2050 are higher than in 2005 even with the highest tax. Therefore, the pledge of the G8 and the MEF of reducing global emissions by 50% in 2050-with high-income countries cutting them by 80% and low-income ones by 25-30%-appears extremely costly and therefore unrealistic. A more sensible international climate architecture would push for the introduction of a moderate control of emissions in China and India and would avoid overly ambitious targets.The Climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 witnessed the emerging power of Brazil, South Africa, India, and China (BASIC). Although still focussed on domestic development goals, BASIC countries have made important steps toward a greater engagement in the global climate agenda. For India, the shift was marked by a voluntary, but conditional, target of reducing emission intensity, away from the past normative position based on "equal per capita," emissions entitlements. The new track aims at finding cost-effective mitigation strategies that align national development goals and climate actions. This paper examines the mitigation potential of a domestic sustainable development policy using a suite of integrated assessment models. The long-term goal is to keep temperature increase below 2A degrees C. This article shows that it is possible to match domestic development goals and climate mitigation. Win-win options exist and side benefits-in terms of energy security and local pollution-are important. However, development policies are not sufficient to achieve the desired emissions reductions. We find that it is necessary to introduce a constraint on the carbon budget. The price of carbon that emerges is however much lower than in a conventional mitigation scenario. Finally, this paper proposes to shift the negotiations away from the current climate-centric focus toward "development," in order to reduce conflicts and deliver greater global and national benefits.This review paper discusses the perspectives for development of low carbon technologies in the Brazilian energy sector, leading the country to less carbon intensive emission patterns within the next decades. Brazil's current plans for expansion of its electricity matrix and overall energy sector data are briefly presented along with demand growth expectancy to illustrate the challenge faced. Existing literature on development scenarios for the country's energy sector is then analyzed separately, including IPCC's global emission scenarios, International Energy Agency's scenarios for South American industry, specific country focused reports and ongoing governmental plans. Selected low carbon technologies for the energy sector are then individually reviewed, providing an insight into their current stage of development, perspectives and bottlenecks within Brazil, based on a diversity of sources. As a conclusion the authors expose their opinion on what can be expected for the future of Brazil's energy sector, based on the likeliness of deployment of the selected technologies, giving overall recommendations on how to achieve optimistic expectations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over 13 million ha of former cropland are enrolled in the US Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), providing well-recognized bio-diversity, water quality, and carbon (C) sequestration benefits that could be lost on conversion back to agricultural production. Here we provide measurements of the greenhouse gas consequences of converting CRP land to continuous corn, corn-soybean, or perennial grass for biofuel production. No-till soybeans preceded the annual crops and created an initial carbon debt of 10.6 Mg CO(2) equivalents (CO(2)e)center dot ha(-1) that included agronomic inputs, changes in C stocks, altered N(2)O and CH(4) fluxes, and foregone C sequestration less a fossil fuel offset credit. Total debt, which includes future debt created by additional changes in soil C stocks and the loss of substantial future soil C sequestration, can be constrained to 68 Mg CO(2)e center dot ha(-1) if subsequent crops are under permanent no-till management. If tilled, however, total debt triples to 222 Mg CO(2)e center dot ha(-1) on account of further soil C loss. Projected C debt repayment periods under no-till management range from 29 to 40 y for corn-soybean and continuous corn, respectively. Under conventional tillage repayment periods are three times longer, from 89 to 123 y, respectively. Alternatively, the direct use of existing CRP grasslands for cellulosic feedstock production would avoid C debt entirely and provide modest climate change mitigation immediately. Incentives for permanent no till and especially permission to harvest CRP biomass for cellulosic biofuel would help to blunt the climate impact of future CRP conversion.Anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) influences global mean temperatures via counteracting effects: CO(2) emissions contribute to global warming, while biogeophysical effects, in particular the increase in surface albedo, often impose a cooling influence. Previous studies of idealized, large-scale deforestation found that albedo cooling dominates over CO(2) warming in boreal regions, indicating that boreal reforestation is not an effective mitigation tool. Here we show the importance of past land use decisions in influencing the mitigation potential of reforestation on these lands. In our simulations, CO(2) warming dominates over albedo cooling because past land use decisions resulted in the use of the most productive land with larger carbon stocks and less snow than on average. As a result past land use decisions extended CO(2) dominance to most agriculturally important regions in the world, suggesting that in most places reversion of past land cover change could contribute to climate change mitigation. While the relative magnitude of CO(2) and albedo effects remains uncertain, the historical land use pattern is found to be biased towards stronger CO(2) and weaker albedo effects as compared to idealized large-scale deforestation. Citation: Pongratz, J., C. H. Reick, T. Raddatz, K. Caldeira, and M. Claussen (2011), Past land use decisions have increased mitigation potential of reforestation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L15701, doi:10.1029/2011GL047848.There is a large body of research and development into the low emission energy technologies that has the potential to assist developed and developing countries transition to more sustainable energy systems. It has long been recognised that public perceptions can have a fundamental effect on the market for technology and this issue raises questions about the role society will play in developing a low emissions energy future. Understanding how the public will respond to the range of low emission energy technologies as part of a climate change mitigation package is therefore critical for researchers, policy makers and industry stakeholders. In the current research, we investigated the Australian public's likely acceptance of a range of low emission energy technologies by assessing the diverse 'orientations' that have emerged in response to low emission energy technologies. In a survey of two Australian states we measured the support for, and knowledge of, a range of low emission energy technologies. Using self-organising maps, a relatively new approach for segmenting response profiles, we identified that at least four distinct 'orientations' have emerged toward the issue and are characterising the likely acceptance of these technologies: 'Disengaged', 'Nuclear Oriented', 'Renewables Oriented', and 'Engaged'. The implications of these multiple public viewpoints are described for climate change mitigation policy and for future research into the social acceptance of alternative energy technologies.The relevance and cost-effectiveness are key criteria for policymakers to select appropriate policy and economic instruments for reducing carbon emissions. Here we assess the applicability of carbon finance instruments for the improvement in building energy efficiency by adopting the high efficiency standards as well as advanced energy supply systems, building on a case study in a northern city in China. We find that upgrading the current Chinese BEE standard to one of the best practices in the world coupled with the state-of-the-art energy supply system implies an abatement cost at 16US$/tCO(2), which is compatible with the international carbon market price. The institutional reorganization turns out to be indispensable to facilitate the implementation of the proposed scheme of local government-led energy efficiency programme in the form of programmatic CDM in China's buildings sector. We show that with international support such as carbon finance, the BEE improvement will facilitate city's transition to low-carbon supply in the longer term. More importantly, it is argued that demand-side energy performance improvement in buildings should be considered a prerequisite to shifting low-carbon energy supply technologies such as fuel-switching, renewable power generation and Carbon Capture and Storage to address climate mitigation in light of cost-effectiveness and environmental integrity.We propose a blueprint for an international emission permit market such as the EU trading scheme. Each country decides on the amount of permits it wants to offer. A fraction of these permits is freely allocated, the remainder is auctioned. Revenues from the auction are collected in a global fund and reimbursed to member countries in fixed proportions. We show that international permit markets with refunding lead to outcomes in which all countries tighten the issuance of permits and are better off compared to standard international permit markets. If the share of freely allocated permits is sufficiently small, we obtain approximately socially optimal emission reductions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper provides a synthesis of current knowledge on the patterns, drivers, and characteristics of historical energy technology transitions. This historical evidence is then compared to the treatment of energy system dynamics in the scenario analysis on climate mitigation. The paper concludes with a discussion of generic implications for clean energy and technology innovation policy.Afforestation, the conversion of croplands or marginal lands into forests, results in the sequestration of carbon. As a result, afforestation is considered one of the key climate-change mitigation strategies available to governments by the United Nations(1). However, forests are also less reflective than croplands, and the absorption of incoming solar radiation is greater over afforested areas. Afforestation can therefore result in net climate warming, particularly at high latitudes(2-5). Here, we use a comprehensive Earth system model to assess the climate-change mitigation potential of five afforestation scenarios, with afforestation carried out gradually over a 50-year period. Complete (100%) and partial (50%) afforestation of the area occupied at present by crops leads to a reduced warming of around 0.45 and 0 : 25 degrees C respectively, during the period 2081-2100. Temperature benefits associated with more realistic global afforestation efforts, where less than 50% of cropland is converted, are expected to be even smaller, indicating that afforestation is not a substitute for reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. We also show that warming reductions per unit afforested area are around three times higher in the tropics than in the boreal and northern temperate regions, suggesting that avoided deforestation and continued afforestation in the tropics are effective forestmanagement strategies from a climate perspective.Characterizing the carbon footprint (CF) of agricultural production offers key information for pursuing low carbon agriculture and food consumption. While China has long strived for increasing food production capacity for its large and still growing population, the high emissions cost, especially from the over use of agro-chemicals, has been widely debated for the last decade. However, the CF of China's crop production has not yet been assessed. This paper reports a basic estimate of CF of crop production using national statistical data available for the period of 1993-2007. The dataset includes the amount of individual agricultural inputs (fertilizer, pesticide, diesel, plastic film, etc.), cultivation area and total of production whole crops. Using the emission factors estimated for China's agricultural features and available abroad, the mean overall CF of China's crop production was estimated to be 0.78 +/- 0.08 tCE ha(-1) yr(-1) and 0.11 +/- 0.01 tCEt(-1) yr(-1), for land use and bulk production respectively. For the duration the data covered, the carbon intensity under cultivation land use was seen to increase since 1993. Among the total, fertilizer induced emissions exerted the largest contribution of similar to 60%, being 0.45 +/- 0.04 tCE per ha and 0.07 +/- 0.01 tCE per ton of production, on average. Compared to the UK, the estimated overall CF of China's crop production was higher in terms of cultivation land use. While there was a significant positive correlation of carbon intensity with total production, carbon efficiency was shown in a decreasing trend during 2003-2007. Therefore, low carbon agriculture should be pursued, and the priority should be given to reducing fertilizer application in agriculture of China. However, for developing best management practices for climate change mitigation in crop production of China, further studies of crop and regional specific CFs and the variation with climate conditions and agricultural managements are needed. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Thermal energy storage (TES) is nowadays presented as one of the most feasible solutions in achieving energy savings and environmentally correct behaviors. Its potential applications have led to R&D activities and to the development of various technology types. However, so far there is no available data on a national scale in Spain and on a continental level in Europe, to corroborate the associated energetic and environmental benefits derived from TES. This is why, based on a previous potential calculation initiative model performed in Germany, this work intends to provide a first overview of the Spanish TES potential as well as an European overview. Load reductions, energy savings, and CO2 emissions reductions are tackled for the buildings and industrial sector. Results depend on the amount of implementation and show that, in the case of Europe for instance, yearly CO2 emissions may get to be cut down up to around 6% in reference to 1990 emission levels. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Guinean rain forest (GRF) of West Africa, identified over 20 years ago as a global biodiversity hotspot, had reduced to 113,000 km(2) at the start of the new millennium which was 18% of its original area. The principal driver of this environmental change has been the expansion of extensive smallholder agriculture. From 1988 to 2007, the area harvested in the GRF by smallholders of cocoa, cassava, and oil palm increased by 68,000 km(2). Field results suggest a high potential for significantly increasing crop yields through increased application of seed-fertilizer technologies. Analyzing land-use change scenarios, it was estimated that had intensified cocoa technology, already developed in the 1960s, been pursued in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon that over 21,000 km(2) of deforestation and forest degradation could have been avoided along with the emission of nearly 1.4 billion t of CO2. Addressing the low productivity of agriculture in the GRF should be one of the principal objectives of REDD climate mitigation programs.This article presents a review of recent developments in studies assessing the global-scale impacts of climate change published since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Literature covering six main impact sectors is reviewed: sea-level rise (SLR) and coastal impacts, ocean acidification, ecosystems and biodiversity, water resources and desertification, agriculture and food security, and human health. The review focuses on studies with a global perspective to climate change impacts assessment, although in the absence of global studies for some sectors or aspects of impacts, national and regional studies are cited. The review highlights three major emerging themes which are of importance for the policy- and decision-making process: (1) a movement towards probabilistic methods of impacts assessment and/or the consideration of climate modelling uncertainty; (2) a move towards assessing potential impacts that could be avoided under different climate change mitigation scenarios relative to a business-as-usual reference scenario; and (3) uncertainties that remain in understanding the relationship between climate and natural or human systems. Whether recent impact assessments show a changed risk of damage to human or natural systems since the AR4 depends upon the impact sector; whether the assessments are robust or not (i.e. will stand the test of time) requires additional expert judgement. However, using this judgement, overall we find an increased risk to natural systems, and in some components of human systems.Most soil surveys are based on soil geomorphic, physical and chemical properties, while many classifications are based on morphological properties in soil profile. Typically, microbial properties of the soil (e.g. biomass and functional diversity) or soil biological quality indicators (SBQIs) are not directly considered in soil taxonomic keys, yet soil classification schemes are often used to infer soil biological function relating to policy (e.g. soil pollution attenuation, climate change mitigation). To critically address this, our aim was to assess whether rates of carbon turnover in a diverse range of UK soils (n > 500) could effectively be described and sub-divided according to broadly defined soil groups by conventional soil classification schemes. Carbon turnover in each soil over a 90 d period was assessed by monitoring the mineralisation of either a labile (It-labelled artificial root exudates) or more recalcitrant C source ((14)C-labelled plant leaves) in soil held at field capacity at 10 degrees C. A double exponential first order kinetic model was then fitted to the mineralisation profile for each individual substrate and soil. ANOVA of the modelled rate constants and pool sizes revealed significant differences between soil groups; however, these differences were small regardless of substrate type. Principle component and cluster analysis further separated some soil groups; however, the definition of the class limits remained ambiguous. Exclusive reference values for each soil group could not be established since the model parameter ranges greatly overlapped. We conclude that conventional soil classification provides a poor predictor of C residence time in soil, at least over short time periods. We ascribe this lack of observed difference to the high degree of microbial functional redundancy in soil, the strong influence of environmental factors and the uncertainties inherent in the use of short term biological assays to represent pedogenic processes which have taken ca. 10,000 y to become manifest. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emergency managers will have to deal with the impending, uncertain, and possibly extreme effects of climate change. Yet, many emergency managers are not aware of the full range of possible effects, and they are unsure of their place in the effort to plan for, adapt to, and cope with those effects. This may partly reflect emergency mangers' reluctance to get caught up in the rancorous-and politically-charged-debate about climate change, but it mostly is due to the worldview shared by most emergency managers. We focus on: extreme events; acute vs. chronic hazards (floods vs. droughts); a shorter event horizon (5 years vs. 75-100 years); and a shorter planning and operational cycle. This paper explores the important intersection of emergency management, environmental management, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. It examines the different definitions of terms common to all three fields, the overlapping strategies used in all three fields, and the best means of collaboration and mutual re-enforcement among the three to confront and solve the many possible futures that we may face in the climate change world.For the world economy as a biophysical network associated with financial links, an ecological endowment inventory and corresponding ecological input-output modeling are presented to investigate the greenhouse gas emissions and natural resources use in 2000. A forty-sector global economic input-output table is constructed through an integration and extension of existing statistics which covers thirty-four countries accounting for about 80% of the world economy. Global inventories for ecological endowments of six categories, i.e., greenhouse gas emissions, energy sources, water resources, exergy resources, solar emergy resources, and cosmic emergy resources, are accounted in detail. As a result of the modeling, embodied intensities of different ecological endowments are obtained for all forty sectors, based on which the sectoral embodiments for consumptive and productive uses are presented separately. Results of this study provide a sound scientific database for policy making on global climate change mitigation as well as on global resources management. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) can affect biotic and abiotic conditions in soil, such as microbial activity and water content(1,2). In turn, these changes might be expected to alter the production and consumption of the important greenhouse gases nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) (refs 2, 3). However, studies on fluxes of N2O and CH4 from soil under increased atmospheric CO2 have not been quantitatively synthesized. Here we show, using meta-analysis, that increased CO2 (ranging from 463 to 780 parts per million by volume) stimulates both N2O emissions from upland soils and CH4 emissions from rice paddies and natural wetlands. Because enhanced greenhouse-gas emissions add to the radiative forcing of terrestrial ecosystems, these emissions are expected to negate at least 16.6 per cent of the climate change mitigation potential previously predicted from an increase in the terrestrial carbon sink under increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations(4). Our results therefore suggest that the capacity of land ecosystems to slow climate warming has been overestimated.Organic carbon solution and transport processes which occur during periods of heavy rainfall and periods or little or no rainfall, can exert a significant control over a systems' annual organic carbon budget. In addition, either or both extremes can be key contributors to contaminant release, water discolouration, flood risk or vegetation growth. Although there is an increasing body of work studying hydrological responses to peatland restoration, there are very little available data on the performance of restored peatlands during these key periods. This study builds on previous work from an upland peatland in Wales that has been restored through drain-blocking, and presents evidence from a landscape scale experimental study at the site. A comparison of sampling scales within the study demonstrates the necessity of larger spatial scales, in combination with high resolution datasets, in assessing catchment level responses. Our results suggest that drain blocking leads to higher and more stable water tables that are able to better resist drought periods, and thus lead to more stable discharge from the system. The shallower water tables and pooling in drains also appear to reduce the production and transport of fluvial organic carbon, and thus less organic material is available to be released as during peak flow or dry periods. Despite restoration apparently reducing the available water storage within the peat, the increase in overland flow and in pooling within blocked drains appears to have led to a less flashy system. Peak flow responses in both drains and upland streams are less severe, with more rainfall being retained within the bog. We suggest that restoration leads to a more buffered system, with more moderate responses to extreme events, and reduced release of both dissolved and particulate organic carbon. We discuss the implications of this for fluxes of fluvial organic carbon and sediment loss. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Quantification of the spatial distribution of sector-specific fossil fuel CO2 emissions provides strategic information to public and private decision makers on climate change mitigation options and can provide critical constraints to carbon budget studies being performed at the national to urban scales. This study analyzes the spatial distribution and spatial drivers of total and sectoral fossil fuel CO2 emissions at the state and county levels in the United States. The spatial patterns of absolute versus per capita fossil fuel CO2 emissions differ substantially and these differences are sector-specific. Area-based sources such as those in the residential and commercial sectors are driven by a combination of population and surface temperature with per capita emissions largest in the northern latitudes and continental interior. Emission sources associated with large individual manufacturing or electricity producing facilities are heterogeneously distributed in both absolute and per capita metrics. The relationship between surface temperature and sectoral emissions suggests that the increased electricity consumption due to space cooling requirements under a warmer climate may outweigh the savings generated by lessened space heating. Spatial cluster analysis of fossil fuel CO2 emissions confirms that counties with high (low) CO2 emissions tend to be clustered close to other counties with high (low) CO2 emissions and some of the spatial clustering extends to multistate spatial domains. This is particularly true for the residential and transportation sectors, suggesting that emissions mitigation policy might best be approached from the regional or multistate perspective. Our findings underscore the potential for geographically focused, sector-specific emissions mitigation strategies and the importance of accurate spatial distribution of emitting sources when combined with atmospheric monitoring via aircraft, satellite and in situ measurements.Efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and control climate change implicate a wide range of social, moral, economic, and political issues, none of them simple or clear. But when regulators use cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the desirability of climate change mitigation, one factor typically determines whether mitigation is justified: the discount rate, the rate at which future benefits are converted to their present value. Even low discount rates make the value of future benefits close to worthless: at a discount rate of three percent, ten million dollars five hundred years from now is worth thirty-eight cents today. Thirty-eight cents is therefore more than we would be willing to pay now to save a life in five hundred years. Discounting over very long periods, like in the context of climate change, has long perplexed economists, philosophers, and legal scholars alike. This Article evaluates the four principal justifications for intergenerational discounting, which are ofien conflated in the literature. It shows that none of these justifications support the prevalent approach of discounting benefits to future generations at the rate of return in financial markets and, more generally, that discounting cannot substitute. for a moral theory setting forth our obligations to future generations.Biomass from cellulosic bioenergy crops is expected to play a substantial role in future energy systems, especially if climate policy aims at stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration at low levels. However, the potential of bioenergy for climate change mitigation remains unclear due to large uncertainties about future agricultural yield improvements and land availability for biomass plantations. This letter, by applying a modelling framework with detailed economic representation of the land and energy sector, explores the cost-effective contribution of bioenergy to a low-carbon transition, paying special attention to implications for the land system. In this modelling framework, bioenergy competes directly with other energy technology options on the basis of costs, including implicit costs due to biophysical constraints on land and water availability. As a result, we find that bioenergy from specialized grassy and woody bioenergy crops, such as Miscanthus or poplar, can contribute approximately 100 EJ in 2055 and up to 300 EJ of primary energy in 2095. Protecting natural forests decreases biomass availability for energy production in the medium, but not in the long run. Reducing the land available for agricultural use can partially be compensated for by means of higher rates of technological change in agriculture. In addition, our trade-off analysis indicates that forest protection combined with large-scale cultivation of dedicated bioenergy is likely to affect bioenergy potentials, but also to increase global food prices and increase water scarcity. Therefore, integrated policies for energy, land use and water management are needed.Nuclear magnetic resonance is widely employed in studies of chemical reactions and molecular motions at moderate pressure and temperature, but for CO2 solutions under supercritical conditions encountered in geological or mineral sequestration (pressures to 150 atm and temperatures to 150 degrees C) a specialized variable-temperature probe is required. The critical component of such a probe is its pressure chamber, and our working design is presented along with examples of its use in C-13 NMR measurements of bicarbonate and dissolved CO2 fractions as functions of time, following initial pressurization to 70 atm. Also shown are final, steady-state values of these fractions as functions of temperature from 50 to 125 degrees C at 70 atm. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3608446]The role of renewable energy in climate change mitigation is explored through a review of 162 recent medium- to long-term scenarios from 15 large-scale, energy-economic and integrated assessment models. The current state of knowledge from this community is assessed and its implications drawn for the strategic context in which policymakers and other decision-makers might consider renewable energy. The scenario set is distinguished from previous ones in that it contains more detailed information on renewable deployment levels. All the scenarios in this study were published during or after 2006. Within the context of a large-scale assessment, the analysis is guided primarily by four questions. What sorts of future levels of renewable energy deployment are consistent with different CO2 concentration goals? Which classes of renewable energy will be the most prominent energy producers and how quickly might they expand production? Where might an expansion in renewable energy occur? What is the linkage between the costs of mitigation and an expansion of renewable energy?Climate change mitigation scenarios provide an integrated perspective on the technologies and policies that are required to achieve various mitigation targets as well as the related costs. With the threat of severe adverse impacts from climate change becoming more and more apparent and in view of the pledge by policy-makers to meet stringent stabilization targets, further exploration of low emission scenarios has become increasingly relevant. Although much progress has been made in recent years to provide the basis for a solid assessment of different stabilization targets and the related economic, environmental, and social consequences, a more structured approach within a more realistic framework is required. First, uncertainties in baseline assumptions that are independent of climate policy need to be taken into account. These uncertainties reflect the incomplete knowledge concerning drivers of real-world developments, e. g. assumptions on technology improvements or resource availability. In addition, it is necessary to analyze so-called second-best worlds in which constraints on the deployment of low-carbon technologies or imperfect climate policy regimes render the mitigation effort more difficult. The current challenge for Integrated Assessment Modeling is thus to explore feasibility and limitations of mitigation strategies along three directions: (1) ambitious mitigation targets, (2) explicit treatment of uncertainties in baseline assumptions, and (3) second-best policy or technology scenarios. With this article, we propose future research foci and priorities in the run-up to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 617-626 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.124In this study we analyze and compare the climate impacts from the recovery, transport and combustion of forest residues (harvest slash and stumps), versus the climate impacts that would have occurred if the residues were left in the forest and fossil fuels used instead. We use cumulative radiative forcing (CRF) as an indicator of climate impacts, and we explicitly consider the temporal dynamics of atmospheric carbon dioxide and biomass decomposition. Over a 240-year period, we find that CRF is significantly reduced when forest residues are used instead of fossil fuels. The type of fossil fuel replaced is important, with coal replacement giving the greatest CRF reduction. Replacing oil and fossil gas also gives long-term CRF reduction, although CRF is positive during the first 10-25 years when these fuels are replaced. Biomass productivity is also important, with more productive forests giving greater CRF reduction per hectare. The decay rate for biomass left in the forest is found to be less significant. Fossil energy inputs for biomass recovery and transport have very little impact on CRF. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Management decisions both at the field and off-site have the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Climate change threatens to increase the potential for soil erosion, reduce soil quality, lower agricultural productivity and negatively impact food security and global sustainability, making it one of the most severe challenges we will face in the 21st century This paper looks at the potential of management to help us, not only mitigate climate change, but also to help us adapt to a changing climate. Different aspects of carbon management, nitrogen management, manure management, management in low-input systems (sustainable agriculture), and grazing land management are discussed as examples. Management decisions regarding conservation practices, such as no-till, conservation agriculture, and returning crop residue to the field to increase nutrient cycling, can contribute to carbon sequestration and help us mitigate and adapt to climate change. Additionally, management of grasslands, restoration of degraded/desertified lands, nitrogen management to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, precision conservation management at a field and/or watershed level, and other management alternatives can also help us mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. Management for climate change mitigation and adaptation is key for environmental conservation, sustainability of cropping systems, soil and water quality and food security This paper suggests, based on a review of the literature, that management decisions that reduce soil erosion, increase carbon sequestration to improve soil functions, soil quality, and soil health, and contribute to the resilience of soils and cropping systems will be needed to respond to climate change and related challenges such as food security. Our review suggests that without management decisions that increase soil and water conservation, food security for the world's growing population will be harder to achieve.Promotion of energy from biomass for reducing greenhouse gas emissions has led to increased usage of freshwater, especially during the cultivation of biomass. This has raised concerns about the increase in water stress, particularly in countries that are already facing water shortages. Attempts are being made to characterize the effect of water demand induced inter alia by increased bioenergy usage. Also, alternatives are being developed to mitigate such impacts by improved management so that bioenergy can be beneficially utilized. Future studies on bioenergy will need to take into consideration the water aspect so that the trade-offs between climate change mitigation and water stress are addressed. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis study explores the motivation of domestic and international interregional collaboration on climate change mitigation through carbon crediting by Japanese local governments, using a social survey. The study finds balanced collaboration with domestic partner regions and developing countries is preferred in the case of collaboration, given that the unit cost of collaboration is assumed lower than that of no collaboration. Appreciation of benefits such as technology transfer and local environmental improvement in developing countries increases the preference of collaboration with developing countries. Two factors hinder Japanese local governments' collaboration with developing countries from the perspective of citizens: a sense of environmental responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the city and a preference for domestic orientation even if the collaboration with developing countries is less costly and has benefits of technology transfer and local environmental improvement. The preference for a lower total cost of GHG emissions reductions is confirmed except for those with a sense of environmental responsibility. The study also finds that provision of information on mitigation projects and co-benefits would increase the preference for interregional collaboration with developing countries depending on the types of collaborative project, except for those with a sense of environmental responsibility. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores the relationship between productivity of dairy production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on a global scale. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was used to assess GHG emissions from dairy production and processing chains. Milk yield expressed as kg fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) per animal was chosen as a proxy for system productivity. On a per cow basis, GHG emissions increase with higher yields. However. GHG emissions per kg FPCM decline substantially as animal productivity increases. The contribution of different gases to total GHG emissions of dairy production systems vary; methane and nitrous oxide emissions decrease with increasing productivity, while carbon dioxide emissions increase, but on a lower scale. Productivity increase therefore offers not only a pathway to satisfying increasing demand for milk but also a viable mitigation approach, especially in areas where milk yields are currently below 2000 kg/cow and year. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As policy makers become increasingly aware of the impact of their decisions on the global economy, as well as the impact of developments in the global economy on regional and national resource use, the demand for cross-scale analysis of economic and environmental policies has become a high priority. This paper contributes to this literature by developing a new methodology to link two widely used policy models in order to provide an integrated assessment of the environmental impacts of EU biofuels mandates. By combining the CAPRI model of EU agricultural production and resource use with the GTAP model of global trade and land use, we are able to estimate both the global impacts of EU biofuels policies as well as the detailed, regional changes in land use and nutrient surplus. The applicability of this combined modeling approach extends well beyond biofuels. It could offer important insights into the global impacts of EU agricultural policy reforms, as well as analysis of the EU-regional impacts of global agreements on trade policy or climate change mitigation. In short, the methodology developed in this paper holds great promise for future, cross-scale analysis of global issues bearing on agriculture, land use and the environment. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide sequestration in aquifers is seen as a potential climate change mitigation technique. One physical mechanism by which this could occur is capillary trapping of discrete pore-scale CO2 bubbles (referred to as ganglia) in the pore space. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques were used to quantify the spatial distribution and pore environment of such CO2 entrapment in a model porous medium (random glass bead packing). 3D images revealed a relatively macroscopically homogeneous CO2 entrapment, even though the image resolution is insufficient to resolve individual CO2 ganglia. Quantification of the pore environment of the CO2 ganglia was achieved using NMR displacement propagators (displacement probability distributions), acquired both before and after CO2 entrapment. Lattice Boltzmann (LB) simulations were used to facilitate interpretation of the propagator statistics by considering various pore environments in which CO2 could become trapped. Comparison with the experimental data suggests that CO2 is preferentially entrapped in comparatively larger pores. (C) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 57: 1700-1709, 2011The human thermal sensation inside a semi-outdoor space enclosed by a semi-transparent pitched roof, located in Parma, north of Italy, is compared with the outdoor sensation under the same climate conditions. The assessment of the semi-outdoor setting was performed using the Physiological Effective Temperature (PET) thermal sensation index. With the aim of mitigating the semi-outdoor climate, some natural means were considered at the design stage, namely, the solar radiation absorptivity of the glass sheet roof, natural airflow, space thermal capacity and roof evaporative cooling. The dynamic thermal simulation of the semi-outdoor space was performed for three representative weeks of the months of January. March and July by accounting for the actual climate of the location. The results show that the semi-transparent roof can improve the human thermal sensation inside the semi-outdoor space with respect to that of the outdoor space. The results also demonstrate the effect of each design parameter on the PET index. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in material quantities, globally, is a critical element in limiting the impacts of global warming. GHG emissions associated with energy extraction and use are a major component of any strategy addressing climate change mitigation. Non-emitting options for electrical power and liquid transportation fuels are increasingly considered key components of an energy system with lower overall environmental impacts. Renewable energy technologies (RETs) as well as biofuels technologies have been accelerating rapidly during the past decades, both in technology performance and cost-competitiveness - and they are increasingly gaining market share. These technology options offer many positive attributes, but also have unique cost/benefit trade-offs, such as land-use competition for bioresources and variability for wind and solar electric generation technologies. This paper presents a brief summary of status, recent progress, some technological highlights for RETs and biofuels, and an analysis of critical issues that must be addressed for RETs to meet a greater share of the global energy requirements and lower GHG emissions. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.The article by Douglas Arent, Alison Wise, and Rachel Gelman provides an excellent overview on the rapid development of the renewable energy sector. The article focuses on trends in renewable energy markets, the status and prospects of renewable energy technology (RET), and policy frameworks for RETs. It is more reticent on the role of renewable energy for combating global warming. This acknowledges the fact that a full assessment of the potential contribution of RETs requires an integrated systems perspective, including consideration of the climate change mitigation requirement and the status and prospects of alternative mitigation options (Edenhofer et al., 2009, 2010; Clarke et al., 2009). This comment will briefly review the article's perspective on the trends and prospects of renewable energy, and then move on to a short discussion of some system-level considerations for assessing the role of renewable energy for combating global warming. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The diverse nature and uncertain potential of the energy technologies that are or may be available to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions pose a challenge to policymakers trying to invest public funds in an optimal R&D portfolio. This paper discusses two analytical approaches to this challenge used to inform funding decisions related to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) applied energy R&D portfolio. The two approaches are distinguished by the constraints under which they were conducted: the need to provide an end-to-end portfolio analysis as input to internal DOE budgeting processes, but with limited time and subject to institutional constraints regarding important issues such as expert judgment. Because of these constraints, neither approach should be viewed as an attempt to push forward the state of the art in portfolio analysis in the abstract. Instead, they are an attempt to use more stylized, heuristic methods that can provide first-order insights in the DOE institutional context. Both approaches make use of advanced technology scenarios implemented in an integrated assessment modeling framework and then apply expert judgment regarding the likelihood of achieving associated R&D and commercialization goals. The approaches differ in the granularity of the scenarios used and in the definition of the benefits of technological advance: in one approach the benefits are defined as the cumulative emission reduction attributable to a particular technology; in the other approach benefits are defined as the cumulative cost reduction. In both approaches a return on investment (ROI) criterion is established based on benefits divided by federal R&D investment. The ROI is then used to build a first-order approximation of an optimal applied energy R&D investment portfolio. Although these methodologies have been used to inform an actual budget request, the results reflect only one input among many used in budget formulation. The results are therefore not representative of an official U.S. government or DOE funding recommendation but should instead be considered illustrative of the way in which methodologies such as these could be applied. Published by Elsevier B.V.Integrated assessment models are being used to support R&D portfolio decisions, in order to provide a more systems view on the impact of progress for individual technologies. While the model-supported assessment provides a more structured framework for analysis, it should not hide that there are large uncertainties. This paper shows that results are dependent on the model, the ambition of climate policy and other technology assumptions. It is important in R&D investment advice to realize these uncertainties, and assess the robustness of results against results of other models and studies. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Hindering urban sprawl is one of the main goals for contemporary urban planning. Urban density is considered crucial in climate change mitigation since it reduces automobile dependence and decreases unit sizes, for example. This letter analyzes the effect of density in a city context. In the study the Finnish capital Helsinki is divided into two areas of different urban densities: the high density downtown area and the more scarcely populated suburbs. The study is a continuation of a recently published study on the implications of urban structure on carbon emissions, and analyzes further the main finding of the first study-that higher urban density might have negligible or even reverse effect on the per capita carbon emissions. Similarly to the previous study, a consumption based tiered hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is employed in order to produce a comprehensive assessment, free of territorial boundaries and system cutoffs typical of traditional LCAs. Based on the findings of the previous study, it is hypothesized that when assessing city level carbon dioxide emissions from a wider, consumer oriented LCA perspective, increased urban density may not necessarily reduce carbon emissions. Surprisingly, the study finds that carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions are substantially higher in the dense downtown area than in the surrounding suburbs, which is suggested to imply that the increased consumption due to the higher standard of living increases emissions more than the higher density is able to reduce them. The results demonstrate that, while increasing urban density can be justified from a number of ecological, social and economic viewpoints, density is not necessarily a key parameter in the particular case of climate change. In cities like Helsinki, where wealth is concentrated in the downtown area, climate policies should give higher priority to the energy consumption of buildings, to alternative energy production and distribution modes, as well as to low carbon consumption within the city.Carbon dioxide storage in geological media is a climate change mitigation technology that is based on the ability of certain geological media to retain CO2 in supercritical phase or dissolved in formation water and to prevent its return to the atmosphere for very long periods of time. However, in certain cases there are flow pathways, natural or manmade, conducive to CO2 leakage. Depending on their condition, existing oil and gas wells may provide such leakage pathways due to either mechanical defects developed during well drilling, completion and/or abandonment, or to chemical degradation of well cements and/or casing. In the case of CO2 storage, there is a concern that well cement in existing wells will degrade in the presence of water-saturated CO2 and/or CO2 saturated formation water/brine, thus creating new leakage pathways and compromising the integrity and security of CO2 storage. In this paper we review the status of knowledge in regard to the failure of existing wells, with special attention to the laboratory experiments, field investigations and numerical simulations carried out in the last several years in attempts to elucidate the behavior of well cements in the presence of CO2. Extensive carbonation has been observed in well cements in both laboratory and field studies. However, in CO2-rich environments, severe cement degradation is associated with the dissolution of calcite from the carbonated cement. This is not expected under typical geological storage conditions because CO2-saturated brine is likely in equilibrium with carbonate minerals that are present in virtually all formation rocks. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The cities merit special attention in global warming since they produce up to 80% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Even though this has been widely acknowledged, only few papers exist that have studied cities holistically from a demand, i.e., consumption, perspective. The study presents a detailed analysis of the carbon footprint of two metropolitan cities from a consumption perspective. With the analysis of consumer carbon footprints (carbon consumption), the distribution of emissions in the key source categories is presented and compared. The study utilizes Finnish consumer survey data by cities, regional emission data for key processes, and general emission data to produce a hybrid LCA model for a holistic assessment of city-level greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption perspective. The study results showed the carbon consumption to be 13.2 t CO2e per person in Helsinki with a 17,400 a,not sign annual consumption expenditure and 10.3 t CO2e per person in Porvoo with a 15,900 a,not sign annual consumption expenditure, respectively. The dominant carbon sources for metropolitan living are heat and electricity, building and property, private driving, and services. Within the cities, some significant differences were found. The carbon emissions from energy consumption are 4.5 t CO2e for an average consumer in Helsinki, whereas an average consumer in Porvoo only causes 2.0 t CO2e due to the cleaner energy production in Porvoo. On the other hand, private driving causes 2.0 t CO2e in Porvoo, but only 1.3 t in Helsinki. The overall trip generation in Helsinki is only half of that in Porvoo, and also, the usage of public transport is at a substantially higher level in Helsinki. The current results contradict interestingly some earlier studies in finding that the theoretical carbon-reducing influence of city density is overridden with other factors, such as the type of energy production, energy efficiency of the housing stock, and increased use of services. In our study, Helsinki represents a metropolitan area with a denser structure and a more efficient public transport system, but still consuming around 25% more carbon emissions than the other city in the metropolitan area, Porvoo. The sensitivity analysis showed that even with the normalization of the key parameters between the two cities, the main finding still holds. The evaluation of the carbon footprint of cities from the consumption perspective, instead of a more traditional production perspective, seems to offer an interesting new insight into the carbon footprints of the cities. It identifies similar key sources of carbon as production-oriented studies but further emphasizes the significance of the utilized services in the carbon footprint evaluations. In the future, the carbon footprint of services, especially in the service-intensive economies and cities that tend to outsource their manufacturing and carbon emissions, should be further examined since they cause an ever increasing proportion of the carbon consumption of consumers.The use of forest biomass as a renewable energy source has received much attention as a response to climate change and the increasing global demands for energy. Local availability and conversion into secondary energy carriers with a lower capital investment shows more weights on its interests. The substitution of fossil fuel by biomass fuel can have a strong effect on the mitigation of climate change through reducing greenhouse gases, which can be an important consideration for CDM projects in Bangladesh. This study uses literature review to analyse the legal framework of carbon trading under CDM, CDM additionality, CDM and bioenergy promotion, land availability and technology for biomass production, and sustainability of CDM projects in Bangladesh. The barriers to CDM projects in Bangladesh are explained as well as measures for promoting biomass production. Biomass and bioenergy-based CDM projects can be attractive and support sustainable development in Bangladesh. The study suggests capacity building and policy changes needed in order to comply with CDM modalities. The study can be useful to the climate change mitigation and development policy makers in Bangladesh.The transport sector contributes significantly to the emission of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) resulting in a rise in global temperature and climate change. A troubling aspect of emissions from the transport sector is that they are increasing rapidly. With the ongoing rapid increase in population, expansion of middle class in developing countries, and availability of cheaper vehicles such as Tata Nano in India, the desire to own private vehicles is within reach now than ever for millions of people in the developing world. This could have a huge implication on ongoing effort towards containment of GHG emissions. We look at the role of urban design forms - settlement density - housing and employment activities and the effects they could have in reducing travel demands, motor vehicle dependency and GHG emissions. Although urban planning has a limited effect on the reduction of GHG emissions, in the short term, due to the time needed to build up the necessary infrastructures, in the long term, it can be very effective through the shift from private vehicle dependency to public and other alternative environmentally friendly modes of transports (such as walking and cycling). A mixture of high residential and employment density could influence shorter commuter journeys and a reduction in private vehicle use if it is supported by an efficient public transport system and appropriate fiscal and regulatory instruments. Among the set of available instruments to reduce GHGs from the transport sector, urban planning, may be equally important, if not more to contain emissions from the transport sector. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.International transfers in climate policy channeled from the industrialized to the developing world either support the mitigation of climate change or the adaptation to global warming. From a purely allocative point of view, transfers supporting mitigation tend to be Pareto-improving whereas this is not very likely in the case of adaptation support. We illustrate this by regarding transfer schemes currently applied under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto framework. However, if we enrich the analysis by integrating distributional aspects, we find that international adaptation funding may help both the developing and developed world. Interestingly this is not due to altruistic incentives, but due to follow-up effects on international negotiations on climate change mitigation. We argue that the lack of fairness perceived by developing countries in the international climate policy arena can be reduced by the support of adaptation in these countries. As we show - taking into account different fairness concepts - this might raise the prospects of success in international negotiations on climate change. Yet, we find that the influence of transfers may induce different fairness effects on climate change mitigation negotiations to run counter. We discuss whether current transfer schemes under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto framework adequately serve the distributive and allocative objectives pursued in international climate policy. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Developing countries are required to produce robust estimates of forest carbon stocks for successful implementation of climate change mitigation policies related to reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Here we present a "benchmark" map of biomass carbon stocks over 2.5 billion ha of forests on three continents, encompassing all tropical forests, for the early 2000s, which will be invaluable for REDD assessments at both project and national scales. We mapped the total carbon stock in live biomass (above-and belowground), using a combination of data from 4,079 in situ inventory plots and satellite light detection and ranging (Lidar) samples of forest structure to estimate carbon storage, plus optical and microwave imagery (1-km resolution) to extrapolate over the landscape. The total biomass carbon stock of forests in the study region is estimated to be 247 Gt C, with 193 Gt C stored aboveground and 54 Gt C stored belowground in roots. Forests in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia accounted for 49%, 25%, and 26% of the total stock, respectively. By analyzing the errors propagated through the estimation process, uncertainty at the pixel level (100 ha) ranged from +/- 6% to +/- 53%, but was constrained at the typical project (10,000 ha) and national (>1,000,000 ha) scales at ca. +/- 5% and ca. +/- 1%, respectively. The benchmark map illustrates regional patterns and provides methodologically comparable estimates of carbon stocks for 75 developing countries where previous assessments were either poor or incomplete.For some time now, Beijing has been known as a climate change laggard, refusing to commit to binding emission reduction targets at the international level. Although the Hu-Wen administration has elevated the energy and climate issue to the highest domestic political level, the rationale behind this move derives mainly from economic and energy security considerations. The framework of climate-relevant measures has been tightened, ambitious domestic targets to slow the growth of greenhouse gas output have been set out, and measures to promote the development and deployment of climate-friendly technologies implemented, thus suggesting that Beijing is increasingly incorporating environmental considerations in its policy formation. However, clearing the path toward an eco-modernized society requires major transformations in political, economic, and social institutions. This study analyzes developments in China's climate policy from an ecological modernization perspective. Although China has undertaken some remarkable climate-relevant action, this study concludes that its transition can only be partly explained by concepts of ecological modernization.Presenting data from Asian Development Bank (ADB), this paper attempts to examine the bank's energy for development portfolio within a 12-year period beginning in 1997, the year when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. This paper seeks to understand the implications of this particular assistance to climate change mitigation in terms of filling the gaps in providing resources for energy-related projects. With more than US $12 billion development assistance to support the energy sector in the last 12 years, ADB was able to mobilize substantial support from 2005 onwards. The paper also shows that annual energy assistance was virtually stagnant and even lacking before 2005. Evidence suggests that some efforts are being made to fill the resource gap and to mitigate climate change especially in 2008. While analysis suggests that there has been a substantial increase in financing to lower greenhouse gas emitting energy projects, the shift tends to be fragile. ADB still favors financing large profitable projects and concentrates its portfolio mostly to selected regions and countries. For ADB to provide significant contribution to climate change mitigation, several challenges remain to be met in the future from increasing funding to meet demands for increasing number of renewable and efficiency projects to expanding assistance especially in underserved countries and regions. (C) 2011 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The Cancun Agreements provide strong backing for a REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism whereby developed countries pay developing ones for forest conservation(1). REDD+ has potential to simultaneously deliver cost-effective climate change mitigation and human development(2-5). However, most REDD+ analysis has used coarse-scale data, overlooked important opportunity costs to tropical forest users(4,5) and failed to consider how to best invest funds to limit leakage, that is, merely displacing deforestation(6). Here we examine these issues for Tanzania, a REDD+ country, by comparing district-scale carbon losses from deforestation with the opportunity costs of carbon conservation. Opportunity costs are estimated as rents from both agriculture and charcoal production (the most important proximate causes of regional forest conversion(7-9).). As an alternative we also calculate the implementation costs of alleviating the demand for forest conservation thereby addressing the problem of leakage by raising agricultural yields on existing cropland and increasing charcoal fuel-use efficiency. The implementation costs exceed the opportunity costs of carbon conservation (medians of US$6.50 versus US$3.90 per Mg CO(2)), so effective REDD+ policies may cost more than simpler estimates suggest. However, even if agricultural yields are doubled, implementation is possible at the competitive price of similar to US$12 per Mg CO(2).In several countries biodiesel blending programs have been implemented looking for reduction in fossil fuel dependence and environmental benefits, including climate change mitigation. The current global biodiesel production, from different fatty raw materials, reaches about 6 billion liters per year and represents 10% of whole biofuel production. Nevertheless, in many cases the actual advantages of biodiesel production and usage are not clearly evaluated. Essentially, the feasibility of biodiesel production can be determined by its efficiency in solar energy conversion, as indicated by agro-industrial productivity and energy balance parameters, which expresses a relative demand of natural resources (land and energy) to produce biofuel. Taking into account the Brazilian conditions, in this paper an assessment of biodiesel production is presented, comparing four different productive systems. According to this evaluation, soybean and castor are limitedly feasible, whereas tallow and palm oil represent more suitable alternatives. The selection of an efficient productive system is crucial for the rationality of biodiesel production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The biogeochemical liabilities of grain-based crop production for bioenergy are no different from those of grain-based food production: excessive nitrate leakage, soil carbon and phosphorus loss, nitrous oxide production, and attenuated methane uptake. Contingent problems are well known, increasingly well documented, and recalcitrant: freshwater and coastal marine eutrophication, groundwater pollution, soil organic matter loss, and a warming atmosphere. The conversion of marginal lands not now farmed to annual grain production, including the repatriation of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and other conservation set-aside lands, will further exacerbate the biogeochemical imbalance of these landscapes, as could pressure to further simplify crop rotations. The expected emergence of biorefinery and combustion facilities that accept cellulosic materials offers an alternative outcome: agricultural landscapes that accumulate soil carbon, that conserve nitrogen and phosphorus, and that emit relatively small amounts of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere. Fields in these landscapes are planted to perennial crops that require less fertilizer, that retain sediments and nutrients that could otherwise be transported to groundwater and streams, and that accumulate carbon in both soil organic matter and roots. If mixed-species assemblages, they additionally provide biodiversity services. Biogeochemical responses of these systems fall chiefly into two areas: carbon neutrality and water and nutrient conservation. Fluxes must be measured and understood in proposed cropping systems sufficient to inform models that will predict biogeochemical behavior at field, landscape, and regional scales. Because tradeoffs are inherent to these systems, a systems approach is imperative, and because potential biofuel cropping systems and their environmental contexts are complex and cannot be exhaustively tested, modeling will be instructive. Modeling alternative biofuel cropping systems converted from different starting points, for example, suggests that converting CRP to corn ethanol production under conventional tillage results in substantially increased net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that can be only partly mitigated with no-till management. Alternatively, conversion of existing cropland or prairie to switchgrass production results in a net GHG sink. Outcomes and policy must be informed by science that adequately quantifies the true biogeochemical costs and advantages of alternative systems.Climate change mitigation and security of energy supply are important targets of Austrian energy policy. Bioenergy production based on resources from agriculture and forestry is an important option for attaining these targets. To increase the share of bioenergy in the energy supply, supporting policy instruments are necessary. The cost-effectiveness of these instruments in attaining policy targets depends on the availability of bioenergy technologies. Advanced technologies such as second-generation biofuels, biomass gasification for power production, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) will likely change the performance of policy instruments. This article assesses the cost-effectiveness of energy policy instruments, considering new bioenergy technologies for the year 2030, with respect to greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reduction and fossil fuel substitution. Instruments that directly subsidize bioenergy are compared with instruments that aim at reducing GHG emissions. A spatially explicit modeling approach is used to account for biomass supply and energy distribution costs in Austria. Results indicate that a carbon tax performs cost-effectively with respect to both policy targets if BECCS is not available. However, the availability of BECCS creates a trade-off between GHG emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution. Biofuel blending obligations are costly in terms of attaining the policy targets. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.How to sustain rapid economic and urban growth with minimised detriment to environment is a key challenge for sustainable development and climate change mitigation in developing countries, which face constraints of technical and financial resources scarcity as well as dearth of infrastructure governance capacity. This paper attempts to address this question by investigating the driving forces of transport demand and relevant policy measures that facilitate mitigating GHG emissions in the urban transport sector in Indian cities based on a critical review of the literature. Our overview of existing literature and international experiences suggests that it is critical to improve urban governance in transport infrastructure quality and develop efficient public transport, coupled with integrated land use/transport planning as well as economic instruments. This will allow Indian cities to embark on a sustainable growth pathway by decoupling transport services demand of GHG emissions in the longer term. Appropriate policy instruments need to be selected to reconcile the imperatives of economic and urban growth, aspiration to higher quality of life, improvements in social welfare, urban transport-related energy consumption and GHG emissions mitigation target in Indian cities. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The precautionary principle has been proposed as a means of providing increased safety for consumers of drinking water. While the principle has received increased attention over the past 2 decades, it remains rather poorly defined both in law and practice. Hence, the implications for application in risk-based decisions on water quality are not fully developed. This paper examines a series of philosophical, practical and decision-theoretic issues related to the application of the principle in such decisions, highlighting areas where at least the intent of the principle is already well embedded in environmental regulation through margins of safety, and identifying residual issues. A conclusion is drawn that full application of the principle may be driven forward both by programmes such as REACH in the EU, and by the emerging Water Framework Directive and multi-stakeholder approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the socio-natural relations inherent in the commodification of carbon reductions as they are generated in energy-based carbon offset project activities, and abstracted to wider market systems. The ability to commodify carbon reductions takes place through a socionatural-technical complex that is defined by the material nature of technology's interaction with the atmosphere, local social processes and the evolving governing systems of carbon markets. Carbon is not unproblematically commodified: some projects and technologies allow a more cooperative commodification than others. The examples of a hydroelectricity plant and an improved cookstove project in Honduras are used as empirical case studies to illustrate the difficulties and opportunities associated with the relational aspects of carbon commodification. Drawing upon select literatures from post-structural thought to complement the principal lens of a more structural, materiality of nature analysis, the paper also outlines the reasons why carbon offset reform is needed if offsets are to more progressively engage debates about climate mitigation and North-South development.In dealing with the complex issues of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and climate change mitigation, many interrelated factors such as cost, level of technology development, supply and demand of energy, structure of industry, and expenditures on research and development exist. Using indicators to monitor environmental impacts and evaluate the efficacies of policies and regulations has been practiced for a long time, and it can serve as a useful tool for decision making and for comparison between different countries. Although numerous indicators have been developed for relevant subjects, integrated approaches that consider individual changes, dynamic interaction, and multi-dimensions of indicators are scarce. This paper aimed to develop a Driving Force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to assess the problems. This DPSIR model is mainly related to energy consumption, environmental impacts, and policy responses. The objectives of the paper were: (1) conduct a literature review on the indicators that have been used in GHG-related studies; (2) develop a DPSIR model that incorporates GHG-related indicators and evaluate their relationships using a cause-effect chain of GHG emission; and (3) develop a calculative method that can be used to explain the dynamic correlation among the interdependent indicators. Taiwan is a significant source of global GHG emissions. A case study, using the developed framework and Taiwan's actual data of the past two decades, was conducted. The results indicate that regulatory strategies for pollution control are inadequate in terms of ensuring environmental quality, and the nature does not have the capability to revert the impacts from the existing level of pollution.The recent mass fruiting of forest trees in Borneo is an urgent wakeup call: existing policy instruments, financial mechanisms, and forestry infrastructure are inadequate to take full advantage of these infrequent opportunities for forest restoration and conservation. Tropical forest restoration can provide substantial benefits for biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and poverty alleviation. Yet the unpredictability of the synchronized flowering and consequent mass fruiting of many forest trees in Borneo presents a distinctive set of challenges for forest restoration. Significant financing and a considerable coordinated effort are required to prepare for future mass fruiting events if we are to capitalize on opportunities for ecological restoration. The continued high rate of forest clearance in this region and the rarity of mass fruiting events suggest that there may be few remaining opportunities to prevent widespread species extinctions. In this article we propose a facilitatory policy framework for forest restoration in Borneo to stimulate action in advance of the next mass fruiting of forest trees.Climate change mitigation and adaptation action plans are developing at a rapid pace, being driven by both local initiatives and emerging alliances and support organizations that cut across multiple jurisdictions. These plans include a broad range of approaches, many of which are evolving into best or leading practices and which will be increasingly used as a model for the plans of other locales. This paper draws attention to several best practices in both mitigation and adaptation for North American cities, and also highlights many of the supporting alliances and groups that disseminate key practices and drive potential synergies. Additionally, it is noted that despite the increasing rate of plan development, a continuing need exists for increased attention to adaptation at the local level.For the past two decades, international climate policy has been handled as a matter for State to State deliberation. Non-state actors have played at best marginal roles in making and implementing international policy. This paper argues that climate change remains an intractable transnational problem because State to State deliberations failed to acknowledge that both climate mitigation and adaptation require ongoing collaborative governance with non-State actors to shift normative behavior. This paper proposes experimenting with scaling up Dutch environmental covenants as an international co-regulation strategy to improve both the legitimacy and accountability of international climate governance. This paper specifically proposes in the context of climate change mitigation implementing a co-regulatory approach through a combination of State-approved emission targets and binding individual firm environmental agreements.As a member of the Annex 1 countries to the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Japan is committed to reducing 6% of the greenhouse gas emissions. In order to achieve this commitment, Japan has undertaken several major mitigation measures, one of which is the domestic measure that includes ecologically friendly lifestyle programs, utilizing natural energy, participating in local environmental activities, and amending environmental laws. Mitigation policies could be achieved if public responses were strong. As the internet has increasingly become an online platform for sharing environmental information, public responses to the need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions may be assessed using available online tools. We used Google Insights for Search, Google AdWords Keyword Tool, and Google Timeline View to assess public responses in Japan based on the interest shown for five search terms that define global climate change and its mitigation policies. Data on online search interests from January 04, 2004 to July 18, 2010 were analyzed according to locations and categories. Our study suggests that the search interests for the five chosen search terms dramatically increased, especially when new mitigation policies were introduced or when climate change related events were organized. Such a rapid increase indicates that the Japanese public strongly responds to climate change mitigation policies.The rapid development and adoption of biofuels has been driven by a wide range of targets and other policy instruments, but first-generation biofuels have been widely criticized. In light of the development of new biofuel technologies that aim to avoid the problems of the past, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics conducted an 18-month inquiry on the ethical, social and policy issues raised by both current and future biofuels. The Council concludes that many biofuels policies fail to take consideration of important ethical principles, such as protecting human rights, environmental sustainability, climate change mitigation, just reward, and equitable distribution of costs and benefits. It proposes an overarching ethical standard for biofuels, enforced by a certification scheme for all biofuels produced in and imported into Europe and ideally worldwide.The last decade has seen a significant increase in the research and development of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) technology. CCS is now considered to be one of the key options for climate change mitigation. This perspective provides a brief summary of the state of the art regarding CCS development and discusses the implications for the further development of CCS, particularly with respect to climate change policy. The aim is to provide general perspectives on CCS, although examples used to illustrate the prospects for CCS are mainly taken from Europe. The rationale for developing CCS should be the over-abundance of fossil fuel reserves (and resources) in a climate change context. However, CCS will only be implemented if society is willing to attach a sufficiently high price to CO2 emissions. Although arguments have been put forward both in favor and against CCS, the author of this perspective argues that the most important outcome from the successful commercialization of CCS will be that fossil-fuel-dependent economies will find it easier to comply with stringent greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets. In contrast, failure to implement CCS will require that the global community agrees almost immediately to start phasing out the use of fossil fuels; such an agreement seems more unrealistic than reaching a global agreement on stringent GHG reductions. Thus, in the near term, it is crucial to initiate demonstration projects, such as those supported by the EU. If this is not done, there is a risk that the introduction of CCS will be significantly delayed. Among the stakeholders in CCS technologies (R&D actors in industry and academia), the year 2020 is typically considered to be the year in which CCS will be commercially available. Considering the lead times for CCS development and the slow pace of implementation of climate policy (post-Copenhagen), the target year of 2020 seems rather optimistic. (c) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdSubstituting fossil fuel with woody biomass for bioelectricity production has great potentials for carbon emission reductions while increasing forest productivity to increase carbon sequestration and improve ecological functionalities. Until recently, study on such potentials was very limited. Beginning in 2007, Japan's special budgets were allocated for a 6-year intensive thinning on about 3.3 million ha of young stands for increasing carbon sinks in Japanese forests to meet the capped amount of 47.7 Tg CO2 year(-1) allowed under the Marrakesh Accord. Because of only 30% of the thinned wood were used for sawntimber, CO2 and CH4 must have been emitted from the disposed thinned wood and wood waste. Such emissions and reduction potentials need to be assessed to provide future alternatives for climate change mitigation. We assessed carbon emission reduction potentials when woody biomass from thinned wood is fully utilized for bioelectricity production as compared with the generation of the same amount of energy produced under coal, oil, and natural gas scenarios. Our analytical results show that if all disposed thinned wood and wood waste are utilized to generate energy, about 62.6, 58.3, and 37.8 Tg CO2 year-1 could be prevented from emitting depending on emission scenarios or about 33.2, 30.9, and 20.0% of Japan's reduction commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. On the other hand, if thinned wood and wood waste are not utilized, about 13.4 Tg CO2 year(-1) would be released due to thinning. Our results suggest that incentives to reducing emission reductions in forest sector in the future climate change mitigation agreements will likely lead to large emission reductions, otherwise leakages due to thinning are unavoidable.The New Economic Model (NEM) is a need-based concept intended to integrate innovative ideas in chartering the path of socio-economic development of Malaysia. NEM is timely for building resilience into the economic systems through the participation of all, and for the benefit of all sections of the society. In a high income society, there will have to be value for money and money for value, reduction in subsidies, efficient fiscal management to reduce unnecessary expenditure, management of value-added and market-driven products and services, revamping of the education system, reviewing of R&D priorities, enhancing staff efficiency, less discussion for more action, less paper work for more output, and realistic targets for delivery. The sustainability dimension of NEM should envisage sustainable management of natural resources. This is achievable by aligning our activities with the new concept of 'Green World Order' which expands the existing peace and stability mottos of the World Order to include environment and sustainability. Under this concept there is a need for making changes in our activities. For example, short-term economic gains at the expense of long-term benefits that produce footprints of irreversible damage have to be addressed. Our development planning requires resetting in the light of environmental limitations to achieve the goals of NEM. With the valuation of the ecosystem services becoming increasingly important, we should pursue this matter aggressively to seek best deals for the natural resources we are blessed with. We can claim a substantial amount of international climate change mitigation funds because some of our resources (forests, mangroves and coral reefs) are carbon sinks which international agencies are seeking for investment. This not only generates resources for conservation but also brings dividends to the custodians of the carbon sinks. With an effective action plan, Malaysia can take advantage of the growing carbon market and green economy. The main elements of the proposed action plan are discussed in this paper.The paper examined available information on the contribution of agriculture toward climate change, the effect of climate change on agriculture and the mitigation potentials of agriculture on climate change. Findings reveal that agriculture contributes to climate change majorly by the emission of methane, nitrous oxide and carbon (iv) oxide. Climate change affects agriculture through temperature rises which affect both crop and animal production, rising sea levels which causes farm land salinization and flooding and pests/diseases infestation. The mitigation potential of agriculture relies on sustainable agricultural practices which include organic farming, agro biodiversity, better land and water management practices, composting, vermicomposting, integrated pest management, cover cropping, mulching, use of bio fuel/bio energy, reduction of fertilizer use, crop rotations and soil conserving tillage which reduce soil erosion. For effective climate change mitigation through agriculture, the following recommendations were made (i) there is need for a systematic redirection of investment, funding, research and policy focus towards sustainable agriculture (ii) agricultural policies that encourage farming by subsidizing safe and sustainable farm inputs should be encouraged (iii) extension services should promote awareness-raising about sustainable agriculture and (iv) sustainable agriculture should be integrated into all level of the education system.Current policy developments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are falling behind ecological change. The prevalent policy response to mitigate climate change is based on carbon trading mechanisms, which after the 2010 U.S. House of Representatives election and the Cancun climate negotiations, face an uncertain future. After losing its political majority in congress, the Obama Administration has also lost its ability to implement a national cap and trade system in the United States. The inability of climate negotiators to cement clear GHG reduction targets and a firm commitment for a second period for the Kyoto Protocol (KP) in Cancun means that the longevity and widespread applicability of existing carbon trading mechanisms will remain in doubt until the next United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Durban, South Africa, at the end of 2011. These recent developments provide impetus to explore additional strategies to help achieve climate mitigation and the decarbonization of the energy systems of the Americas. Specifically, this article analyzes the feasibility of implementing new collaborative agreements such as the "California-Chile Partnership for the 21st Century" to advance domestic implementation of renewable energy (RE) initiatives. This article also examines the potential role that new organizations such as the International Renewable EnergyAgency (IRENA) can play in enhancing local capacity and policy development in Latin America.Over the past several decades, prominent international financial institutions (IFIs) have come to be seen as iconic representations of neoliberal globalization associated with a hegemonic definition of development. While the dominant discourse is one that justifies some negative environmental and social outcomes as a logical cost of development, the spotlight on the impacts of development projects in the recent past has led many multilateral development banks to reassess their existing social and environmental policies, or, in some cases, to develop new ones. This article traces the history of the World Bank's review and revision of its policy related to Indigenous Peoples as well as its lending for projects related to extractive industries. The goal in using these specific cases is to elucidate some of the political dynamics associated with international development and the role of IFIs. The analysis of recent IFI-based policy reviews is used to draw conclusions about current and near future implications of the policy terrain regarding the World Banks' continued emphasis on extractive industries (Bebbington et al 2008: 889) and its more recent involvement in projects associated with climate change mitigation. Using the case of the Bank's policy reviews, I analyze the ways in which Indigenous Peoples have engaged in the process of defining the World Bank's policy terrain that has more than semantic consequences. While the World Bank has attempted to maintain policies that facilitate accumulation through dispossession (Harvey 2003), Indigenous Peoples have strategically resisted this process by deploying a "rights-based" discourse (related to land tenure, governance dynamics, and "self-determination") that is being codified in other international policy-making processes. Specific examples of interactions between the World Bank and Indigenous Peoples illustrate the tension between discourses of capital accumulation and environmental or social responsibility.Coastal areas constitute important habitats, and they contain a large and growing population, much of it located in economic centers such as London, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Lagos. The range of coastal hazards includes climate-induced sea level rise, a long-term threat that demands broad response. Global sea levels rose 17 cm through the twentieth century, and are likely to rise more rapidly through the twenty-first century when a rise of more than 1 m is possible. In some locations, these changes may be exacerbated by (1) increases in storminess due to climate change, although this scenario is less certain, and (2) widespread human-induced subsidence due to ground fluid withdrawal from, and drainage of, susceptible soils, especially in deltas. Relative sea level rise has a range of potential impacts, including higher extreme sea levels (and flooding), coastal erosion, salinization of surface and ground waters, and degradation of coastal habitats such as wetlands. Without adaptation, large land areas and millions of people could be displaced by sea level rise. Appropriate responses include climate mitigation (a global response) and/or adaptation (a local response). A combination of these strategies appears to be the most appropriate approach to sea level rise regardless of the uncertainty. Adaptation responses can be characterized as (1) protect, (2) accommodate, or (3) retreat. While these adaptation responses could reduce impacts significantly, they will need to be consistent with responses to all coastal hazards, as well as with wider societal and development objectives; hence, an integrated coastal management philosophy is required. In some developed countries, including England and the Netherlands, proactive adaptation plans are already being formulated. Coastal cities worldwide will be a major focus for adaptation efforts because of their concentrations of people Sand assets. Developing countries will pose adaptation challenges, especially in deltaic areas and small islands, which are the most vulnerable settings.Cities are faced with a number of sustainability challenges in the context of climate change. There is an urgent need to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cities if ambitious mitigation targets are to be met. Meanwhile, cities are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change unless adaptation plans can be put in place. The need to connect climate change adaptation and mitigation with broader assessment of sustainability is becoming increasingly recognised. This paper describes an urban integrated assessment facility developed by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which simulates socio-economic change, climate impacts and greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the twenty first century at the city scale. The urban integrated assessment facility adopts a broad-scale systems approach to urban development and sustainability assessment. It incorporates a multi-sectoral model of the regional economy, hierarchical city-scale spatial interaction model and modules for assessment of climate impacts, adaptation options and greenhouse gas emissions. The paper demonstrates how the urban integrated assessment facility quantifies synergies and conflicts between adaptation to climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in order to improve decision making and facilitate the development of portfolios of planning policies that together have a realistic prospect of achieving sustainable outcomes for cities.Progress towards climate change aware regional sustainable development is affected by actions at multiple spatial scales and governance levels and equally impacts actions at these scales. Many authors and policy practitioners consider therefore that decisions over policy, mitigation strategies and capacity for adaptation to climate change require construction and coordination over multiple levels of governance to arrive at acceptable local, regional and global management strategies. However, how such processes of coordination and decision-aiding can occur and be maintained and improved over time is a major challenge in need of investigation. We take on this challenge by proposing research-supported methods of aiding multi-level decision-making processes in this context. Four example regionally focussed multi-level case studies from diverse socio-political contexts are outlined-estuarine management in Australia's Lower Hawkesbury, flood and drought management in Bulgaria's Upper Iskar Basin, climate policy integration in Spain's Comunidad Valenciana and food security in Bangladesh's Faridpur District-from which insights are drawn. Our discussion focuses on exploring these insights including: (1) the possible advantages of informal research-supported processes and specifically those that provide individual arenas of participation for different levels of stakeholders; (2) the complexity of organisation processes required for aiding multi-level decision-making processes; and (3) to what extent progress towards integrated regional policies for climate change aware sustainable development can be achieved through research-supported processes. We finish with a speculative section that provides ideas and directions for future research.International climate change mitigation initiatives such as REDD-plus have fuelled the need for forest monitoring efforts that focus especially on the carbon rich natural ecosystems that are found in the humid tropics. Such monitoring efforts must tackle challenges intrinsic to these regions, such as high atmospheric contamination from particulates and persistent cloud cover. The emergence of new high-resolution platforms like Google Earth offers new potential scientific uses that can help meet these challenges. Using data from MODIS and detailed observation of Google Earth images, we have produced a yearly time series of deforestation hotspots for the island of Borneo for the 2000 to 2009 period. Our workflow and results demonstrate how multiple free data sources can be combined to greatly enhance the individual capacities of each. The methodology employed to produce this time series demonstrates simple, low-expense techniques that can be used to circumvent the obstacles that typically hinder systematic remote sensing in Borneo and other heavily clouded areas.Food production and consumption have a range of sustainability implications, including their contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). As some foodstuffs entail higher GHG emissions than others, managing their use in tourism-related contexts could make a significant contribution to climate change mitigation. This article reviews the carbon intensity of selected foods and discusses how foodservice providers could adapt their practices. It shows that even though food management could substantially reduce the GHG emissions of foodservice providers, its application is currently hampered by the complexity of food production chains and a lack of dependable data on the GHG intensity of foodstuffs. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a number of recommendations in respect of how foodservice providers can better purchase, prepare and present foods. Further research is now needed to refine and extend our understanding of the contribution that food management can make to reducing tourism's carbon 'foodprint'. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Convincing data now show that temperatures are increasing, and that changing precipitation patterns are already affecting agriculture. Predicted future impacts vary by region, but all are projected to suffer productivity declines by the late twenty-first century unless successful mitigation measures are implemented soon. Exacerbating the climate change challenge, doubling of overall crop productivity will be required by mid-century. Clearly, crop protection will become increasingly difficult as higher-yielding varieties present a larger and more tempting target to all pests, and the pests themselves extend their ranges poleward and into other new geographies owing to reduced winter kill and longer growing seasons. Fortunately, good progress on enhancing crop protection technology to meet these challenges is already being made, but the scope of this climatic provocation is such that complacency is not an option. Increased investment into new technologies and adoption of new agricultural practices with improved adaptive and mitigation potential are both essential. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical IndustryNatural Resource Management (NRM) and Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) have been guiding frameworks in Australia for a number of decades. Recently, NRM and ESD have become central to climate change mitigation. In this paper, we explore the psychological paradoxes that function within climate change settings, with particular attention devoted to the way that research and development reinforces these paradoxes by advocating for participatory forms of inquiry. Paradox emerges in NRM at psychological, institutional, and organisational levels. Paradoxes are also features of different forms of democracy such as neoliberal and participatory democracy. Although NRM, ESD and climate change are often conceptualised as distinct issue domains, these policy areas are fundamentally interconnected in both theory and in practice. This interconnection between these policy and research settings, reflections on paradox, and the experience of incorporating community psychology into the paradoxical settings of NRM and climate change are captured in this paper.In the transition of socio-technical systems, local projects and experiments regarding the low carbon economy and climate mitigation/adaptation serve as transition places. In specific contexts, they become sites of innovation and creativity. This paper discusses and characterizes the innovative practices undertaken in local Danish arenas of transition, concentrating on technology and practice related to CO2 reductions within the housing and construction sector. In particular, the paper seeks to identify the various roles of local actors' deliberation in situated places of transition, thus contributing to the development of transition theories on actors and conditions for niche experimentation. Finally, the paper contributes to the building up of knowledge on transition dynamics related to low carbon construction and housing. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Remote sensing has demonstrated success in various environmental applications over the past three decades. This is largely attributed to its ability for good areal coverage and continued development in sensor technologies. Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) is an emerging climate change mitigation technology where monitoring is vital for its sustainability. This research investigates the use of spectral remote sensing imagery in detecting potential CO2 occurrences at the surface, should a leakage occur from subsurface reservoirs where CO2 is stored. Currently, there are no known leakages of CO2 at industrial storage sites, therefore, this research was carried out at the Latera natural analogue site in Italy, in order to develop the methodology described. This paper describes the use of a popular probabilistic information fusion theory, referred to as the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence, to analyse outlier pixels (anomalies). Outlier pixels are first determined using a new geostatistical image filtering methodology based on Intrinsic Random Function (IRF), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), and the industry standard parametric Reed-Xiaoli (RX) anomaly detection. Information fusion of detected outlier pixels and indirect surface effects of CO2 leakage over time, such as stressed vegetation or mineral alterations, assigns a confidence measure per outlier pixel in order to identify potential leakage points. After visual validation using direct field measurements, it was demonstrated that the proposed methodology is able to detect majority of the seepage points at Latera, and holds promise as a new unsupervised CO2 monitoring methodology. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article seeks to shed light on policy processes arising from interaction between indigenous rainmakers and meteorologists, in participatory action research aimed at increasing the capacity of a local community to adapt to climate change. Policy processes were analysed from the perspective of actors, their narratives and interests. At the beginning of the project, the interactions between the meteorologists and rainmakers was characterised by mutual scepticism. The two groups negotiated on modalities of working together and successfully made joint seasonal weather forecasts that showed good convergence. The analyses using the three lenses of actor-narrative-interest enabled the study to tease out policy dynamics that are often ignored in climate change mitigation studies. Understanding these dynamics is important to ensure that climate change strategies are designed in congruence with local policy dynamics.The reduction of CO2 emissions constitutes one of the largest challenges of the current era. Sustainable transportation, and especially cycling, can contribute to the mitigation of CO2 emissions since cycling possesses an intrinsic zero-emission value. Few studies have been conducted that appraise the CO2 reduction potential of cycling. Opportunity costs enable the estimation of avoided CO2 emissions resulting from bicycle trips. The methodology developed in this research allows the attribution of a climate value to cycling by substituting bicycle trips with their most likely alternative transportation modes and calculating the resulting additional CO2 emissions. The methodology uses data on the current modal shares of cycling mobility, the competition of cycling with other transportation modes, and CO2 emission factors to calculate the climate value of cycling. When it is assumed that the avoided CO2 emissions of cycling mobility could be traded on financial carbon markets, the climate value of cycling represents a monetary value. Application of the methodology to the case of Bogota, Colombia - a city with a current bicycle modal share of 3.3% on a total of 10 million daily trips - results in a climate value of cycling of 55,115 tons of CO2 per year, corresponding to an economic value of between 1 and 7 million US dollars when traded on the carbon market.Local jurisdictions play a critical role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. This study analyzes the theoretical framework of locally driven climate change actions and uses geographic information system (GIS) to map local jurisdictions' climate change policy efforts in three Pacific states California, Oregon, and Washington. The results of our study indicate statistically significant differences in geographic clusters and variations across jurisdictions. An Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model was used to examine climate risk, emission stress, and socioeconomic context variables to detect influence on local climate change policy efforts. The explanatory results indicate that coastal proximity, population density, vehicles emission, and education variables significantly influence local jurisdictions' climate change actions. The findings contribute to local organizational decision model research and can help local communities to develop more effective climate change policies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article examines the potential effectiveness of socially responsible investment (SRI) and investor environmentalism through carbon disclosure in terms of their key goal of creating real financial incentives, through share price performance, for firms to pursue climate change mitigation. It does so by theoretically assessing the two main assumptions which underpin investor environmentalism as promoted by SRI funds and NGOs such as the Carbon Disclosure Project: those concerning the power of institutional investors, and the "business case" for climate change mitigation. In doing so, it argues that the potential of using institutional investors to create real financial incentives for climate change mitigation, in the form of share price performance, has been considerably overestimated and that there is not even a strong theoretical case for why carbon disclosure should work in this regard. This is argued based on the structural constraints faced by most institutional investors, as well as the fundamentally incorrect assumption about climate change, that it is a form of market failure, which theoretically underpins these initiatives.Most people think climate change and sustainability are important problems, but too few global citizens engaged in high-greenhouse-gas-emitting behavior are engaged in enough mitigating behavior to stem the increasing flow of greenhouse gases and other environmental problems. Why is that? Structural barriers such as a climate-averse infrastructure are part of the answer, but psychological barriers also impede behavioral choices that would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental sustainability. Although many individuals are engaged in some ameliorative action, most could do more, but they are hindered by seven categories of psychological barriers, or "dragons of inaction": limited cognition about the problem, ideological worldviews that tend to preclude pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, comparisons with key other people, sunk costs and behavioral momentum, discredence toward experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and positive but inadequate behavior change. Structural barriers must be removed wherever possible, but this is unlikely to be sufficient. Psychologists must work with other scientists, technical experts, and policymakers to help citizens overcome these psychological barriers.This paper investigates which drivers affect the formation and stability of international climate agreements (ICAs). The applied model STACO is used to project costs and benefits of an international agreement on climate change mitigation activities. The simulation results show that an incentive-based permit allocation scheme is an essential driver in stabilizing larger coalitions. Regional damage shares turn out to be another driver of coalition formation but global damages do not seem to be, thus illustrating that international coalition formation is a matter of relative costs and benefits across regions. No allocation scheme can, however, assure the stability of a global agreement due to huge free-rider incentives. This requires alternative rules, such as a condition that some players are essential in a coalition, or accepting a small loss from cooperation.Keeping the global temperature increase below 2 degrees C will require concerted mitigation action by both, developed and developing countries. In the UN Framework Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord, developed countries have an obligation to provide finance for mitigation measures in developing countries. Estimates of incremental investment and incremental costs for mitigation action in developing countries are reviewed. These estimates cover developing countries as a group, individual countries and specific sectors. Many mitigation measures are more capital-intensive but have lower operating costs than the technologies they replace, so the incremental investment exceeds the incremental cost. There is no agreed basis for determining how much international financial support should be provided for mitigation measures in developing countries. Although the amount of international funding needed cannot be determined from the available analyses, it is likely to lie between the estimates of incremental cost and the incremental investment. The few estimates of incremental mitigation costs available suggest that these costs will rise substantially over the next two decades and exceed US$100 billion by 2030. The promises to increase international climate funding significantly over the next decade are encouraging, but it is not yet possible to determine whether the promised funding will be sufficient.Effective climate change actions demand collaborative action from public bodies at all levels, placing local governance at the forefront of delivery. Scottish legislation imposes some of the most demanding legally-binding requirements for reducing greenhouse gas emissions currently to be found anywhere in the world. The new climate change obligations on Scottish local government are reviewed in the context of current Scottish emissions and UK energy policies. Analysis indicates that the pattern of carbon consumption rather than its production must be targeted, and that local government is well-placed to deliver many of the policies to this end. Case studies of Fife and Highland Councils show how Scottish local authorities (SLAs) are planning to discharge their climate change mitigation and adaptation responsibilities. Energy efficiency is driving the mitigation of carbon consumption, while new techniques for measuring carbon footprints are being used to adapt the development process to a low carbon mode. SLAs must pursue low-cost local climate change solutions not just to enhance the resilience of Scottish communities but also to demonstrate the feasibility of such approaches for local governance systems elsewhere in the face of growing financial constraints. Recent changes in Scottish waste management practices indicate the potential in this respect.Climate change scholars generally urge that CO(2) emissions need to be cut rapidly if we are to avoid dangerous risks of climate change. However, climate change mitigation policies are widely perceived to have regressive effects - that is, putting a higher financial burden as a proportion of household income on poor than on rich households. This is one of several major barriers to the adoption of effective mitigation policies. They would also have considerable social justice implications requiring significant welfare state responses. We assess the claim that climate change policies have regressive effects by comparing different types of mitigation policies. We will argue that many of these are indeed likely to have regressive distributional implications but that there are several policy options to counteract regressive effects.Carbon sequestration in agricultural soils is a climate change mitigation option since most of cultivated soils are depleted of soil organic carbon and far from saturation. The management practices, most frequently suggested to increase soil organic carbon content have variable effects depending on pedo-climatic conditions and have to be applied for a long time periods to maintain their sink capacity. Biochar (BC), a carbon rich product obtained through carbonization of biomass, can be used for carbon sequestration by applying large amounts of carbon very resistant to decomposition. The BC remains into soil for a long time and there is evidence that the BC stores atmospheric carbon from centennial, to millennial timescales. However most of the agronomic studies on BC application have been made in tropical and sub-tropical climates, while there is a substantial lack of studies at mid-latitudes and in temperate climates. This paper presents the results on an investigation of large volume application of BC (30 and 60 t ha(-1)) on durum wheat in the Mediterranean climate condition, showing the viability of BC application for carbon sequestration on this crop. BC application also has positive effects up to 30% on biomass production and yield, with no differences in grain nitrogen content. Moreover no significant differences between the two BC treatments were detected, suggesting that even very high BC application rates promote plant growth and are, certainly, not detrimental. The effect of the biochar on durum wheat was sustained for two consecutive seasons when BC application was not repeated in the second year. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The application of calcium- and magnesium-rich materials to soil, known as liming, has long been a foundation of many agro-ecosystems worldwide because of its role in counteracting soil acidity. Although liming contributes to increased rates of respiration from soil thereby potentially reducing soils ability to act as a CO(2) sink, the long-term effects of liming on soil organic carbon (C(org)) sequestration are largely unknown. Here, using data spanning 129 years of the Park Grass Experiment at Rothamsted (UK), we show net C(org) sequestration measured in the 0-23 cm layer at different time intervals since 1876 was 2-20 times greater in limed than in unlimed soils. The main cause of this large C(org) accrual was greater biological activity in limed soils, which despite increasing soil respiration rates, led to plant C inputs being processed and incorporated into resistant soil organo-mineral pools. Limed organo-mineral soils showed: (1) greater C(org) content for similar plant productivity levels (i.e. hay yields); (2) higher 14C incorporation after 1950s atomic bomb testing and (3) lower C : N ratios than unlimed organo-mineral soils, which also indicate higher microbial processing of plant C. Our results show that greater C(org) sequestration in limed soils strongly reduced the global warming potential of long-term liming to permanent grassland suggesting the net contribution of agricultural liming to global warming could be lower than previously estimated. Our study demonstrates that liming might prove to be an effective mitigation strategy, especially because liming applications can be associated with a reduced use of nitrogen fertilizer which is a key cause for increased greenhouse gas emissions from agro-ecosystems.Over the past decade carbon capture and storage (CCS) has attracted increasing international attention as a climate change mitigation option and moved into the center of climate policy debates and negotiations. This special issue of Global Environmental Change brings together leading scholars to analyze the politics, policy and regulation of CCS in cross-country comparisons as well as in a global context. The aim is to contribute on two fronts: first, by applying concepts, theories and methodologies from the social and policy sciences, to elucidate how societies are engaging with CCS as a mitigation option; and secondly, to point toward a future research agenda which, while exploring basic aspects of technology development as situated in a social context, would also be aligned with the needs of the climate and environmental policy community. The contributions address at least one of three inter-related research areas; CCS and the emergence of long-term climate and energy strategies; regulation, policy instruments and public acceptance; and international politics and CCS in developing countries. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Demonstration of a fully integrated power plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) at scale has not yet been achieved, despite growing international political interest in the potential of the technology to contribute to climate change mitigation and calls from multiple constituents for more demonstration projects. Acknowledging the scale of learning that still must occur for the technology to advance towards deployment, multiple CCS demonstration projects of various scales are emerging globally. Current plans for learning and knowledge sharing associated with demonstration projects, however, seem to be limited and narrowly conceived, raising questions about whether the projects will deliver on the expectations raised. Through a comparison of the structure, framing and socio-political context of three very different CCS demonstration projects in different places and contexts, this paper explores the complexity of social learning associated with demonstration projects. Variety in expectations of the demonstration projects' objectives, learning processes, information sharing mechanisms, public engagement initiatives, financing and collaborative partnerships are highlighted. The comparison shows that multiple factors including the process of building support for the project, the governance context and the framing of the project matter for the learning in demonstration projects. This analysis supports a broader conceptualization of learning than that currently found in CCS demonstration plans a result with implications for both future research and practice. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a controversial climate change mitigation technology that has been receiving increased public and private investment over the past decade in several countries. During this time, a diverse international network of professionals focused on the advancement of CCS technology has emerged. Within this international CCS community, a shared perception of the value of advancing CCS technology is generally assumed, and this community has been influential in lobbying for increased support for the development of CCS in many countries and at the international level. The phenomenon of an apparently shared perspective within a specific community relates to Haas' (1992a) description of the evolution of an epistemic community, or a knowledge-based network of recognized experts who "not only hold in common a set of principled and causal beliefs but also have shared notions of validity and a shared policy enterprise". Understanding the extent to which a given community can be characterized as an epistemic community can provide insights about the effectiveness of its policy intervention, its association with the broader public, and the success of communicating the messages that it wants to convey. The goal of this research is to begin to explore the nature of the CCS community; to provide a preliminary characterization of the community, and to consider whether and in what ways the community might be considered to be an epistemic community or a compilation of multiple different epistemic communities. This characterization suggests that although the CCS community may be influencing decision-makers and successfully garnering political support for advancing CCS technology, a potential disconnect with the concerns of a broader public is deserving of more attention and social science research. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Scenarios are used to explore the consequences of different adaptation and mitigation strategies under uncertainty. In this paper, two scenarios are used to explore developments with (1) no mitigation leading to an increase of global mean temperature of 4 degrees C by 2100 and (2) an ambitious mitigation strategy leading to 2 degrees C increase by 2100. For the second scenario, uncertainties in the climate system imply that a global mean temperature increase of 3 degrees C or more cannot be ruled out. Our analysis shows that, in many cases, adaptation and mitigation are not trade-offs but supplements. For example, the number of people exposed to increased water resource stress due to climate change can be substantially reduced in the mitigation scenario, but adaptation will still be required for the remaining large numbers of people exposed to increased stress. Another example is sea level rise, for which, from a global and purely monetary perspective, adaptation (up to 2100) seems more effective than mitigation. From the perspective of poorer and small island countries, however, stringent mitigation is necessary to keep risks at manageable levels. For agriculture, only a scenario based on a combination of adaptation and mitigation is able to avoid serious climate change impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change has become a focal point in recent environmental debates and policymaking. Latest polls show rising consensus among the global public on the urgency of the problem. Home to the fastest growing economies as well as to four of the ten largest greenhouse gas emitters, Asia holds key to successful global coordination on climate change policy. This essay draws a contour of Asian public opinion on climate change issues based on multiple cross-national polls. While generally aware of climate change and seriously concerned about its effects, Asians turn out to be the least willing to bear the costs of climate change mitigation as compared to the residents of other regions of the world. This portends a great hurdle to devising and implementing proactive policies to address the challenges of climate change in the region.This study aims to assess the state of the art of practices and technologies of energy saving and renewable energy sources in hotels. This will contribute to determining the potential of efficient and sustainable energy technologies integration. Hotel managers were interviewed face to face and information sessions were provided. Special energy and environmental awareness campaigns, sectoral tourism programs for climate change mitigation and adaptation, supportive policies and hotel energy investments and renovation programs are some recommendations elicited from the results of this study. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Unilateral Clean Development Mechanism (uCDM) projects are planned, implemented and financed by a Non-Annex I entity yet without the direct involvement of an Annex I entity. Currently in the CDM project pipeline, unilateral projects grow continuously. On the basis of a questionnaire survey and formal and informal discussions with key CDM stakeholders in China, which dominate the world CDM market, this study tested seven propositions: (1) uCDM provision provides lower risk to the host country investor; (2) uCDM provision lowers transaction costs; (3) uCDM provision helps to keep rent in the host country; (4) uCDM provision offers less technology transfer than normal CDM projects; (5) delayed financial flow in uCDM projects will be a major problem for developing uCDM projects; (6) the Chinese Government will promote uCDM policy in the future; and (7) there will be more uCDM projects in China in the future. The first six hypotheses were accepted while the final one was rejected. Outcomes of this study may help refine future uCDM policy. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasingly, local governments are crafting policy to tackle climate change. This article examines why cities develop and implement climate change programs. The authors consider the impact of interest group pressure, political institutions, and problem severity on a city's decision to develop and implement climate protection programs. Their results suggest that organized interests influence both adoption and implementation of climate mitigation programs. This effect, however, is contingent on political institutions. In general, organized interests are more effective in mayoral as opposed to city manager forms of governments. Interestingly, while financially strapped cities may adopt climate mitigation programs to advance cobenefits or cost savings, fiscal stress also impedes program implementation.Future climate projections of Global Climate Models (GCMs) under different emission scenarios are usually used for developing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. However, the existing GCMs have only limited ability to simulate the complex and local climate features, such as precipitation. Furthermore, the outputs provided by GCMs are too coarse to be useful in hydrologic impact assessment models, as these models require information at much finer scales. Therefore, downscaling of GCM outputs is usually employed to provide fine-resolution information required for impact models. Among the downscaling techniques based on statistical principles, multiple regression and weather generator are considered to be more popular, as they are computationally less demanding than the other downscaling techniques. In the present study, the performances of a multiple regression model (called SDSM) and a weather generator (called LARS-WG) are evaluated in terms of their ability to simulate the frequency of extreme precipitation events of current climate and downscaling of future extreme events. Areal average daily precipitation data of the Clutha watershed located in South Island, New Zealand, are used as baseline data in the analysis. Precipitation frequency analysis is performed by fitting the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution to the observed, the SDSM simulated/downscaled, and the LARS-WG simulated/downscaled annual maximum (AM) series. The computations are performed for five return periods: 10-, 20-, 40-, 50- and 100-year. The present results illustrate that both models have similar and good ability to simulate the extreme precipitation events and, thus, can be adopted with confidence for climate change impact studies of this nature.Understanding the basic interaction mechanism among nations surrounding the CO(2) emissions is critically important for the policy formulation analysis in aviation sector at present, especially for market-based measures such as emission allowance trading. We performed simulation analysis of the effects on pricing of emission allowances by including major players such as China and India into the hypothetical global CO(2) emission trading scheme according to non-cooperative game framework. In the presence of a negative public good, i.e., CO(2), we extended the Lindahl-Bowen-Samuelson condition to include a class of uncertainty typical in climate change policy into utility. By using the result, we explained, with some numerical examples, the welfare effects caused by the changes of factors, such as level of uncertainty, degree of risk averse, asymmetric utility structure, initial allocation among players, based on our model surrounding the bargaining of CO(2) emissions allocation games. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rapidly increasing electricity demand for data center operation has motivated efforts to better understand current data center energy use and to identify strategies that reduce the environmental impact of these buildings. This paper builds on previous data center energy modeling efforts by characterizing local climate and mechanical equipment differences among data centers and then evaluating their consequences for building energy use. Cities in the United States with significant data center activity are identified. Representative climate conditions for these cities are applied to data center energy models for several different prototypical space types. Results indicate that widespread, effective economizer use in data centers could reduce energy demand for data centers by about 20-25%, equivalent to an energy efficiency resource in the US of similar to 13-17 billion kWh per year. Almost half of the potential savings would result from better airflow management and proper control sequences. The total energy savings potential of economizers, although substantial, is constrained by their limited potential for use in server closets and server rooms, which together are estimated to account for about 30% of all data center energy demand. Incorporating economizer use into the mechanical systems of larger data centers would increase the variation in energy efficiency among geographic regions, indicating that as data center buildings become more energy efficient, their locations will have an increasing effect on overall energy demand. Differences among regions become even more important when accounting for greenhouse-gas emissions. Future data center development could consider site location, along with efficiency measures, to limit the environmental impact attributable to this increasingly prominent economic sector. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Because of successive forest fires, closed-canopy black spruce forests are susceptible to a shift towards open lichen-spruce woodlands in parts of the boreal forest of eastern North America. The shift from dark black spruce canopies to pale lichen ground cover offers a dramatic contrast in reflectance that may compensate for the CO(2) emissions from forest fires in terms of radiative forcing. we have therefore looked at the climate change feedback that would result from the generation of lichen woodlands through changes in albedo and in stored carbon. Using albedo estimates based on MODIS imagery and incoming solar radiation for the period between 2000 and 2008 along with forest biomass estimates for eastern Canada, we have estimated that net radiative forcing for the conversion from closed-canopy coniferous forests to open lichen woodlands would be about -0.12 nW m(-2) ha(-1), and would therefore generate a cooling effect in the atmosphere. Based on current estimates of area in open lichen woodlands within the closed-canopy black spruce-moss forests of eastern Canada, we estimate that a current net forcing of -0.094 mW m(-2) has already arisen from such conversions. As projections of future climate have been linked to increased probability of forest fires, the generation of open lichen woodlands provides a possible negative feedback to climate change. Results also suggest that carbon sequestration through the afforestation of boreal lichen woodlands may not provide a climate change mitigation benefit. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Targets for bioenergy have been set worldwide to mitigate climate change. Although feedstock sources are often ambiguous, pledges in European nations, the United States and Brazil amount to more than 100 Mtoe of biorenewable fuel production by 2020. As a consequence, the biofuel sector is developing rapidly, and it is increasingly important to distinguish bioenergy options that can address energy security and greenhouse gas mitigation from those that cannot. This paper evaluates how bioenergy production affects land-use change (LUC), and to what extent land-use modelling can inform sound decision-making. We identified local and global internalities and externalities of biofuel development scenarios, reviewed relevant data sources and modelling approaches, identified sources of controversy about indirect LUC (iLUC) and then suggested a framework for comprehensive assessments of bioenergy. Ultimately, plant biomass must be managed to produce energy in a way that is consistent with the management of food, feed, fibre, timber and environmental services. Bioenergy production provides opportunities for improved energy security, climate mitigation and rural development, but the environmental and social consequences depend on feedstock choices and geographical location. The most desirable solutions for bioenergy production will include policies that incentivize regionally integrated management of diverse resources with low inputs, high yields, co-products, multiple benefits and minimal risks of iLUC. Many integrated assessment models include energy resources, trade, technological development and regional environmental conditions, but do not account for biodiversity and lack detailed data on the location of degraded and underproductive lands that would be ideal for bioenergy production. Specific practices that would maximize the benefits of bioenergy production regionally need to be identified before a global analysis of bioenergy-related LUC can be accomplished.Economic analyses of environmental mitigation and other interdisciplinary public policy issues can be much more useful if they critically examine what other disciplines have to say, insist on using the most relevant observational data and the scientific method, and examine lower cost alternatives to the change proposed. These general principles are illustrated by applying them to the case of climate change mitigation, one of the most interdisciplinary of public policy issues. The analysis shows how use of these principles leads to quite different conclusions than those of most previous such economic analyses, as follows: The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor (CSF) is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO2 emissions reductions on atmospheric CO2 appear to be short rather than long lasting. The costs of CO2 emissions reductions are very much higher than usually estimated because of technological and implementation problems recently identified. Geoengineering such as solar radiation management is a controversial alternative to CO2 emissions reductions that offers opportunities to greatly decrease these large costs, change global temperatures with far greater assurance of success, and eliminate the possibility of low probability, high consequence risks of rising temperatures, but has been largely ignored by economists. CO2 emissions reductions are economically unattractive since the very modest benefits remaining after the corrections for the above effects are quite unlikely to economically justify the much higher costs unless much lower cost geoengineering is used. The risk of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming appears to be so low that it is not currently worth doing anything to try to control it, including geoengineering.Lignocellulosic ethanol is a low carbon fuel source with the potential to assist in climate change mitigation. However, as a new technology in the process of moving toward commercial development, it is important to understand obstacles to its development. We focused on the role that policy may be playing in fostering or impeding its development in the U.S. One of the major ways of understanding technological development is the theory of the diffusion of innovation. This theory identifies factors that can impede and facilitate this diffusion. We assessed the degree to which three of the main U.S. federal energy policies aim at addressing three key aspects of innovation diffusion: time; risk; and communication. We determine that these policies focus more on the producer stage of the lignocellulosic ethanol lifecycle than the landowner or consumer stages. In addition, they contain many provisions aimed at overcoming risk- and communication-related impediments to adoption, but fewer aimed at speeding up the process. Finally, they contain at least one provision likely to be a serious impediment to adoption. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The extent to which an international mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) can also provide biodiversity co-benefits will depend on whether the mechanism results in the retention of forest in countries harboring substantial biodiversity. Countries' decisions whether or not to participate in REDD+ will be influenced by their national reference level of emissions from deforestation, below which their verified emissions can be credited as reductions. In this article, we explore the reduction in extinctions of forest species achieved under four alternative national reference level designs and three alternative levels of finance for REDD+. We use an 85-country partial equilibrium model and species-area relationships to estimate extinction rates for 2,472 nationally endemic forest-dependent amphibian, bird and mammal species if a REDD+ mechanism had been in place during 2005-2010. Our results indicate that elements of REDD+ that are most effective for climate change mitigation-greater finance combined with reference levels which reduce leakage by promoting broad participation across countries with both high and low historical deforestation rates-also offer the greatest benefits for biodiversity conservation.Policies that encourage greenhouse-gas emitters to mitigate emissions through terrestrial carbon (C) offsets - C sequestration in soils or biomass - will promote practices that reduce erosion and build soil fertility, while fostering adaptation to climate change, agricultural development, and rehabilitation of degraded soils. However, none of these benefits will be possible until changes in C stocks can be documented accurately and cost-effectively. This is particularly challenging when dealing with changes in soil organic C (SOC) stocks. Precise methods for measuring C in soil samples are well established, but spatial variability in the factors that determine SOC stocks makes it difficult to document change. Widespread interest in the benefits of SOC sequestration has brought this issue to the fore in the development of US and international climate policy. Here, we review the challenges to documenting changes in SOC stocks, how policy decisions influence offset documentation requirements, and the benefits and drawbacks of different sampling strategies and extrapolation methods.Although integrated assessment models (IAM) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consider population as one of the root causes of greenhouse gas emissions, how population dynamics affect climate change is still under debate. Population is rarely mentioned in policy debates on climate change. Studies in the past decade have added significantly to understanding the mechanisms and complexity of population and climate interactions. In addition to the growth of total population size, research shows that changes in population composition (i.e. age, urban-rural residence, and household structure) generate substantial effects on the climate system. Moreover, studies by the impact, vulnerability and adaptation (IAV) community also reveal that population dynamics are critical in the near term for building climate change resilience and within adaptation strategies. This paper explores how global population dynamics affect carbon emissions and climate systems, how recent demographic trends matter to worldwide efforts to adapt to climate change, and how population policies could make differences for climate change mitigation and adaptation.Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) has gained significant policy momentum as an international mechanism for global climate change mitigation. The mobilization of funding, technical activity and institutional engagement for REDD has been relatively quick and widespread. The policy and technical lessons learned over the evolution of REDD are not yet widely understood, nor have they been widely integrated into efforts aimed at enabling and incentivizing agricultural mitigation. Within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, there are opportunities to include agricultural mitigation through the ad hoc working groups and technical work programs. To create the policy space and operational feasibility necessary for an international mechanism for agricultural mitigation, parallel advancement is needed on developing a shared vision, tackling high-priority analysis, coordinating efforts among stakeholders and getting money to flow from donor governments, foundations and industry.There is a growing recognition that conservation often entails trade-offs. A focus on trade-offs can open the way to more complete consideration of the variety of positive and negative effects associated with conservation initiatives. In analyzing and working through conservation trade-offs, however, it is important to embrace the complexities inherent in the social context of conservation. In particular, it is important to recognize that the consequences of conservation activities are experienced, perceived, and understood differently from different perspectives, and that these perspectives are embedded in social systems and preexisting power relations. We illustrate the role of trade-offs in conservation and the complexities involved in understanding them with recent debates surrounding REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), a global conservation policy designed to create incentives to reduce tropical deforestation. Often portrayed in terms of the multiple benefits it may provide: poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and climate-change mitigation; REDD may involve substantial trade-offs. The gains of REDD may be associated with a reduction in incentives for industrialized countries to decrease carbon emissions; relocation of deforestation to places unaffected by REDD; increased inequality in places where people who make their livelihood from forests have insecure land tenure; loss of biological and cultural diversity that does not directly align with REDD measurement schemes; and erosion of community-based means of protecting forests. We believe it is important to acknowledge the potential trade-offs involved in conservation initiatives such as REDD and to examine these trade-offs in an open and integrative way that includes a variety of tools, methods, and points of view.Ecosystem services provided by wetlands on agricultural landscapes include fish and wildlife habitat support, mitigation of pollution effects, water conservation, and climate change mitigation. Riparian buffer practices are also considered in this synthesis due to their implementation in wetlands or effects on wetland ecosystem service provisioning when implemented adjacent to wetlands. Conservation practices are most extensive in the first three of the following seven regions analyzed: Mississippi Alluvial Valley, Glaciated Interior Plains, Piedmont-Coastal Plain, Prairie Pothole Region, California Central Valley, Appalachia, and the High Plains. Of the eight dominant practices available to establish and manage wetlands, the three most prevalent are Wetland Establishment, Wetland Management, and Riparian Buffer establishment and management. Differences in physiography among regions strongly influence the types of practices commonly applied. Highly altered drainage patterns and nutrient loading common to agriculture can make wetland establishment difficult. Nutrient enrichment, especially with nitrogen, can create trade-offs between reduced export of nutrients downstream (e. g., nitrate) and enhanced greenhouse gas emissions (e. g., nitrous oxide). Guidance is needed that considers the full array of ecosystem functions and services of multiple practices across a range of spatial scales. Both positive and negative effects need to be addressed given the trade-offs between enhancement of ecosystem services and the lack of knowledge of thresholds at which ecosystem functions are no longer ecologically or economically sustainable. In many cases, data are not presently available, nor is there a suitable monitoring process in place to assess the long-term effects of agriculture on additional wetlands and the potential services they provide, and vice versa. This points to the need to better match practices with goals, to evaluate restoration costs and benefits, and to optimize how decision-making is distributed between national and local levels.This paper revisits the recent developments in biofuel markets and their economic, social and environmental impacts. Several countries have introduced mandates and targets for biofuel expansion. Production, international trade and investment have increased sharply in the last few years. However, some analysts linked biofuels to the 2007-2008 global food crisis. Existing studies diverge on the magnitude of the projected long-term impacts of biofuels on food prices and supply, with studies that model only the agricultural sector showing higher impacts and studies that model the entire economy showing relatively lower impacts. In terms of climate change mitigation, biofuels reduces GHG emissions only if GHG emissions related to land-use change are avoided. When biofuel production entails conversion of forest to cropland, net reduction of GHG would not be realized for many years. Existing literature does not favor the diversion of food for large-scale biofuels production, but the regulated expansion of biofuels in countries with surplus lands and a strong biofuel industry cannot be ruled out. Developments in non-food based or cellulosic (or second generation) biofuels may offer some hope, yet they still compete with food supply through land use and are currently constrained by a number of technical and economic barriers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A greenhouse gas emission trading system is considered an important policy measure for the deployment of CCS at large scale. However, more insights are needed whether such a trading system leads to a sufficient high CO2 price and stable investment environment for CCS deployment. To gain more insights, we combined WorldScan, an applied general equilibrium model for global policy analysis, and MARKAL-NL-UU, a techno-economic energy bottom-up model of the Dutch power generation sector and CO2 intensive industry. WorldScan results show that in 2020, CO2 prices may vary between 20 E/tCO(2) in a GRAND COALITION scenario, in which all countries accept greenhouse gas targets from 2020, to 47 epsilon/tCO(2) in an IMPASSE scenario, in which EU-27 continues its one-sided emission trading system without the possibility to use the Clean Development Mechanism. MARKAL-NL-UU model results show that an emission trading system in combination with uncertainty does not advance the application of CCS in an early stage, the rates at which different CO2 abatement technologies (including CCS) develop are less crucial for introduction of CCS than the CO2 price development, and the combination of biomass (co-)firing and CCS seems an important option to realise deep CO2 emission reductions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recently, the international trade of various bioenergy commodities has grown rapidly, yet this growth is also hampered by some barriers. The aim of this paper is to obtain an overview of what market actors currently perceive as major opportunities and barriers for the development of international bioenergy trade. The work focuses on three bioenergy commodities: bioethanol, biodiesel and wood pellets. Data were collected through an internet-based questionnaire. The majority of the 141 respondents had an industrial background. Geographically, two-thirds were from (mainly Western) Europe, with other minor contributions from all other continents. Results show that import tariffs and the implementation of sustainability certification systems are perceived as (potentially) major barriers for the trade of bioethanol and biodiesel, while logistics are seen mainly as an obstacle for wood pellets. Development of technical standards was deemed more as an opportunity than a barrier for all commodities. Most important drivers were high fossil fuel prices and climate change mitigation policies. Concluding, to overcome some of the barriers, specific actions will be required by market parties and policy makers. Import tariffs for biofuels could be reduced or abolished, linked to multinational trade agreements and harmonization (including provisions on technical standards and sustainability requirements). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forestry - including afforestation (the planting of trees on land where they have not recently existed), reforesta tion, avoided deforestation, and forest management - can lead to increased sequestration of atmospheric carbor dioxide and has therefore been proposed as a strategy to mitigate climate change. However, forestry also influ ences land-surface properties, including albedo (the fraction of incident sunlight reflected back to space), surface roughness, and evapotranspiration, all of which affect the amount and forms of energy transfer to the atmos phere. In some circumstances, these biophysical feedbacks can result in local climate warming, thereby counter acting the effects of carbon sequestration on global mean temperature and reducing or eliminating the net value of climate-change mitigation projects. Here, we review published and emerging research that suggests ways ir which forestry projects can counteract the consequences associated with biophysical interactions, and highligh knowledge gaps in managing forests for climate protection. We also outline several ways in which biophysica effects can be incorporated into frameworks that use the maintenance of forests as a climate protection strategyAs countries around the globe introduce new strategies to address the effects of climate change on the agriculture sector, greater international coordination and discipline of these policies are increasingly important. Policies to boost renewable energy front agriculture feedstocks, for example, are widespread in the United States and the European Union (EU), despite the uncertainties concerning their impacts on commodity demand, trade flows, water use, and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. This article argues that there is a relationship between market-distorting farm policies and the respective level of environmental impact. This is particularly true in the case of policies that are not decoupled from production. Because the problems involving agriculture production and trade are global and systemic in nature, WTO rules play an important role in securing that new forms of agriculture protectionism, justified by legitimate policy objectives, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, do not jeopardize agriculture trade liberalization.We study the commitment to renewable energy sources, focusing on a set of 24 European countries, and applying panel dynamic estimators. Europe is a leading player in the fight against climate change, and the estimators we use reveal themselves to be appropriate in handling the persistency effect on renewables. The level of renewable energy use in the previous period has a positive and highly significant effect on the current level of use. Traditional energy sources restrain the impetus towards renewables. Social awareness of sustainability, climate change mitigation and CO(2) reduction targets are not enough to motivate the switch from traditional to renewables energy sources. Income and prices of fossil-based fuels were not significant for the development of renewables in the period from 1990 to 2006, suggesting that it was not the market that encouraged renewables. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Networks are a well-established feature in contemporary tourism governance and management. The aim of this article is to examine the extent to which there are differences among members and non-members of tourism networks in their efforts to introduce measures to mitigate the effects of climate change in their operations. Among accommodation providers in the South West of England, there is no significant difference between members and non-members of networks in the modest levels of innovation they have introduced. Possible reasons for the lack of difference are identified including the nature of the networks and the way in which knowledge is exchanged and retained among businesses. The article argues that, while formal networks still represent an important platform to promote climate change mitigation, their importance may also be in knowledge spillovers and boundary spanning behaviours 'beyond the network'.Initiatives for reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation require transparent and robust methodologies for the estimation of emissions reduction or removal. Although carbon (C) stock change in degradation and devegetation by remote sensing are becoming increasingly powerful, the drivers of degradation, wood collection and harvest dynamics, cannot be understood without "on the ground" sampling. A methodological tool for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of forest degradation is proposed as developed based on a research on the stump history in the black locust degrading stands sampled in southwest Romania. Based on the survey of stumps, the cutting regime and wood extraction is determined over a past period of some 15 years. Stump age classification comprises multiple qualitative criteria (i.e. bark features; adherence of sprouts; cut edge features; etc.). The method allows for a quantitative assessment of wood removal over time, and is suitable for the development of a dynamic baseline and monitoring of degradation avoidance activities.Forests provide climate change mitigation benefit by sequestering carbon during growth. This benefit can be reversed by both human and natural disturbances. While some disturbances such as hurricanes are beyond the control of humans, extensive research in dry, temperate forests indicates that wildfire severity can be altered as a function of forest fuels and stand structural manipulations. The purpose of this study was to determine if current aboveground forest carbon stocks in fire-excluded southwestern ponderosa pine forest are higher than prefire exclusion carbon stocks reconstructed from 1876, quantify the carbon costs of thinning treatments to reduce high-severity wildfire risk, and compare posttreatment (thinning and burning) carbon stocks with reconstructed 1876 carbon stocks. Our findings indicate that prefire exclusion forest carbon stocks ranged from 27.9 to 36.6 Mg C ha-1 and that the current fire-excluded forest structure contained on average 2.3 times as much live tree carbon. Posttreatment carbon stocks ranged from 37.9 to 50.6 Mg C ha-1 as a function of thinning intensity. Previous work found that these thinning and burning treatments substantially increased the 6.1 m wind speed necessary for fire to move from the forest floor to the canopy (torching index) and the wind speed necessary for sustained crown fire (crowning index), thereby reducing potential fire severity. Given the projected drying and increase in fire prevalence in this region as a function of changing climatic conditions, the higher carbon stock in the fire-excluded forest is unlikely to be sustainable. Treatments to reduce high-severity wildfire risk require trade-offs between carbon stock size and carbon stock stability.This work builds on a bottom-up market greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation approach to determine the mitigation potential of specific activities by introducing two new concepts: the "adaptation potential" (defined as the difference between the sum of costs and benefits of adaptation, over a specified interval), and; "no behest" opportunities (defined as when the benefits of an activity equal or exceed both the costs to the private investor and the society, excluding the benefits of avoided climate change). "No behest" activities are contrasted with "no regrets" opportunities, whose benefits are equal to, or exceed costs to society, excluding the benefits of avoided climate change. The word "behest" conveys the value of requiring little further incentive or regulation to motivate private investors to take advantage of existing economic opportunities. Therefore, "no behest" opportunities are similar to "no regrets" opportunities, but with a greater relevance to private investments that both mitigate and adapt by including the real market benefits and costs of cleaner development options. This work utilises several mathematical methods to remove information asymmetries between market decision-making and what is both economically and environmentally efficient. These methods can be used for both contextually based bottom-up and top-down scenarios in either an adaptation and mitigation framework. The outputs are a quantified change in profitability and parallel GHG emissions of specific activity baselines that are suitable for carbon (C) liability assessment, investment and government emission targets in the current and projected policy environments. These methods can also be used to determine "no behest" activities which have lower private barriers to implementation than "no regrets" activities. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The contemporaneous relationship between temperature and income is important because it enables economists to estimate the economic impact of global warming without assuming a structural model. Until recently, empirical evidence generally suggests that there is a negative relationship between temperature and income, and, therefore, global warming has an adverse impact on economic activity. However, Nordhaus (2006) argues that the temperature-income relationship depends on how income is measured. We show in this paper that the results of Nordhaus (2006) may be due to an omitted-variable problem. Based on a well-motivated temperature-income model, we find that the relationship between temperature and income is not dependent on income measurement. Our regression results show that the adverse impact of an increase of 1 C in temperature can be as much as a 3% decrease in total income for the G-7 nations. Therefore, our results suggest an aggressive climate mitigation policy. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forests contain the world's largest terrestrial carbon stocks, but in seasonally dry environments stock stability can be compromised if burned by wildfire, emitting carbon back to the atmosphere. Treatments to reduce wildfire severity can reduce emissions, but with an immediate cost of reducing carbon stocks. In this study we examine the tradeoffs in carbon stock reduction and wildfire emissions in 19 fuels-treated and -untreated forests burned in twelve wildfires. The fuels treatment, a commonly used thinning 'from below' and removal of activity fuels, removed an average of 50.3 Mg C ha(-1) or 34% of live tree carbon stocks. Wildfire emissions averaged 29.7 and 67.8 Mg C ha(-1) in fuels treated and untreated forests, respectively. The total carbon (fuels treatment plus wildfire emission) removed from treated sites was 119% of the carbon emitted from the untreated/burned sites. However, with only 3% tree survival following wildfire, untreated forests averaged only 7.8 Mg C ha(-1) in live trees with an average quadratic mean tree diameter of 21 cm. In contrast, treated forest averaged 100.5 Mg C ha(-1) with a live tree quadratic mean diameter of 44 cm. In untreated forests 70% of the remaining total ecosystem carbon shifted to decomposing stocks after the wildfire, compared to 19% in the fuels-treated forest. In wildfire burned forest, fuels treatments have a higher immediate carbon 'cost', but in the long-term may benefit from lower decomposition emissions and higher carbon storage. Published by Elsevier B.V.Atmospheric carbon dioxide sequestered as carbonates through the accelerated weathering of silicate minerals is proposed as a climate change mitigation technology with the potential to capture billions of tonnes of carbon per year. Although these materials can be mined expressly for carbonation, they are also produced by human activities (cement, iron and steel making, coal combustion, etc.). Despite their potential, there is poor global accounting of silicates produced in this way. This paper presents production estimates (by proxy) of various silicate materials including aggregate and mine waste, cement kiln dust, construction and demolition waste, iron and steel slag, and fuel ash. Approximately 7-17 billion tonnes are produced globally each year with an approximate annual sequestration potential of 190-332 million tonnes C. These estimates provide justification for additional research to accurately quantify the contemporary production of silicate minerals and to determine the location and carbon capture potential of historic material accumulations.Current climate mitigation policies have not fully resolved contentious issues regarding the inclusion of carbon sequestration through changes in forestry and agricultural management practices. Terrestrial carbon sinks could be a low-cost mitigation option that fosters conservation and development, yet issues related to accurately documenting the amount of carbon sequestered undermine confidence that emission offsets through sequestration are equivalent to emission reductions. From an atmospheric perspective, net of CO2 removals through sequestration are equivalent to emission reductions over a given period of time. But carbon will not remain sequestered in biomass or soils indefinitely and investments in sequestration could stifle investments in reducing emissions from other sources. Many international climate agreements cap emissions from some countries or sectors but enable participation of uncapped countries or sectors for forestry and agricultural sequestration. This structure can prompt emission increases in parts of the uncapped entities that weaken the value of emission reductions earned through sequestration. This has been a minor issue under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. Reduced emissions through deforestation and degradation is susceptible to the same problems. The purpose of this article is to review the science, politics, and policy that form the basis of arguments for and against the inclusion forestry and agricultural sequestration as a component of current and future international climate mitigation policies. (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 238-254 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.101In the run-up to the Copenhagen negotiations, commentators, politicians and the public had great expectations of some state taking the lead towards a new global climate deal. Is there something in such a call for leadership? In two steps, this article provides an empirically informed answer to that question. The first part develops a theoretical account of the relation between leadership and cooperation in international climate change mitigation policy (ICCMP). Starting from a five-dimensional leadership account and a simple game-theoretical analysis of the impediments to cooperation, it is predicted that (1) increased leadership facilitates cooperation in ICCMP and (2) different leadership modes contribute to cooperation in varying degrees. The second part tests these hypotheses: a new leadership index measures the extent to which the EU exhibited leadership at the negotiations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) between 1995 and 2008. This positively correlates with the level of cooperation arrived at. The result also holds for four out of five leadership modes.Decentralised bioenergy systems are receiving increasing attention due to the potential ability to support local development, create local employment, and contribute to climate change mitigation. These issues, along with other bioenergy sustainability issues, are reviewed through eighteen international case studies with the objective of identifying opportunities and threats to decentralised bioenergy systems. The case studies were selected based on feedstock type, bioenergy type, production capacity, synergistic alliances, ownership structure and physical locations. This variation was used to provide a basis for evaluating opportunities and threats from different contexts. Commercial viability remains the primary concern for the sustainability of decentralised bioenergy systems. There are, however, opportunities for compounding benefits through integrating small scale decentralised bioenergy systems with other production systems. Integrated production, including closed loop models, allow waste materials from one process to be used as inputs in other production processes, and thereby increasing economic, social and environmental outcomes. Synergistic opportunities along the bioenergy production chain, which include feedstock production, bioenergy marketing and distribution could also be exploited by communities and other investors to minimise decentralised production risk. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Does "climate change" seem like a less serious problem than "global warming" to Americans and Europeans? Does describing the costs of climate change mitigation in terms of "higher taxes" instead of "higher prices" reduce public support for such efforts? In an experiment embedded in an American national survey, respondents were randomly assigned to rate the seriousness of "global warming," "climate change," or "global climate change." Contrary to predictions made by a leading political strategist, the full sample and political Independents perceived "climate change" and "global warming" to be equally serious. Among Republicans, "climate change" was perceived to be more serious than "global warming," whereas the reverse was true among Democrats. A similar experiment embedded in a survey of residents of 31 European countries showed that "global warming" and "climate change" were perceived to be equally serious problems. And an experiment embedded in an American survey showed that describing the increased costs of climate change mitigation legislation via "higher taxes" instead of via "higher prices" did not reduce popular support for such legislation, also contradicting a political strategy memo. Thus, word choice may sometimes affect public perceptions of the climate change seriousness or support for mitigation policies, but a single choice of terminology may not influence all people the same way, making strategic language choices difficult to implement.Within national greenhouse gas inventories, many countries now use widely-accepted methodologies to track carbon that continues to be stored in wood products and landfills after its removal from the forest. Beyond simply tracking post-harvest wood carbon, expansion of this pool has further been suggested as a potential climate change mitigation strategy. This paper summarizes data on the fate of carbon through the wood processing chain and on greenhouse gas emissions generated by processing, transport, use and disposal of wood. As a result of wood waste and decomposition, the carbon stored long-term in harvested wood products may be a small proportion of that originally stored in the standing trees-across the United States approximately 1% may remain in products in-use and 13% in landfills at 100 years post-harvest. Related processing and transport emissions may in some cases approach the amount of CO(2)e stored in long-lived solid wood products. Policies that promote wood product carbon storage as a climate mitigation strategy must assess full life-cycle impacts, address accounting uncertainties, and balance multiple public values derived from forests.Production of bio-oil, gas and biochar from pyrolysis of biomass is considered a promising technology for combined production of bioenergy and recalcitrant carbon (C) suitable for sequestration in soil. Using a fast pyrolysis centrifuge reactor (PCR) the present study investigated the relation between fast pyrolysis of wheat straw at different reactor temperatures and the short-term degradability of biochar in soil. After 115 days incubation 3-12% of the added biochar-C had been emitted as CO2. On average, 90% of the total biochar-C loss occurred within the first 20 days of the experiment, emphasizing the importance of knowing the biochar labile fraction when evaluating a specific biochars C sequestration potential. The pyrolysis temperature influenced the outputs of biochar, bio-oil and syngas significantly, as well as the stability of the biochar produced. Contrary to slow pyrolysis a fast pyrolysis process may result in incomplete conversion of biomass due to limitations to heat transfer and kinetics. In our case chemical analysis of the biochars revealed unconverted cellulosic and hemicellulosic fractions, which in turn were found to be proportional with the short-term biochar degradation in soil. As these labile carbohydrates are rapidly mineralized, their presence lowers the biochar-C sequestration potential. By raising the pyrolysis temperature, biochar with none or low contents of these fractions can be produced, but this will be on the expense of the biochar quantity. The yield of CO2 neutral bio-oil is the other factor to optimize when adjusting the pyrolysis temperature settings to give the overall greatest climate change mitigation effect. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Baselines are generally accepted as a key input assumption in long-term energy modelling, but energy models have traditionally been poor on identifying baselines assumptions. Notably, transparency on the current policy content of model baselines is now especially critical as long-term climate mitigation policies have been underway for a number of years. This paper argues that the range of existing energy and emissions policies are an integral part of any long-term baseline, and hence already represent a "with-policy" baseline, termed here a Business-as-Unusual (BAuU). Crucially, existing energy policies are not a sunk effort; as impacts of existing policy initiatives are targeted at future years, they may be revised through iterative policy making, and their quantitative effectiveness requires ex-post verification. To assess the long-term role of existing policies in energy modelling, currently identified UK policies are explicitly stripped out of the UK MARKAL Elastic Demand (MED) optimisation energy system model, to generate a BAuU (with-policy) and a REF (without policy) baseline. In terms of long-term mitigation costs, policy-baseline assumptions are comparable to another key exogenous modelling assumption that of global fossil fuel prices. Therefore, best practice in energy modelling would be to have both a no-policy reference baseline, and a current policy reference baseline (BAuU). At a minimum, energy modelling studies should have a transparent assessment of the current policy contained within the baseline. Clearly identifying and comparing policy-baseline assumptions are required for cost effective and objective policy making, otherwise energy models will underestimate the true cost of long-term emissions reductions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nations around the world are considering strategies to mitigate the severe impacts of climate change predicted to occur in the twenty-first century. Many countries, however, lack the wealth, technology, and government institutions to effectively cope with climate change. This study investigates the varying degrees to which developing and developed nations will be exposed to changes in three key variables: temperature, precipitation, and runoff. We use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis to compare current and future climate model predictions on a country level. We then compare our calculations of climate change exposure for each nation to several metrics of political and economic well-being. Our results indicate that the impacts of changes in precipitation and runoff are distributed relatively equally between developed and developing nations. In contrast, we confirm research suggesting that developing nations will be affected far more severely by changes in temperature than developed nations. Our results also suggest that this unequal impact will persist throughout the twenty-first century. Our analysis further indicates that the most significant temperature changes will occur in politically unstable countries, creating an additional motivation for developed countries to actively engage with developing nations on climate mitigation strategies.Important transformations are underway in tropical landscapes in Latin America with implications for economic development and climate change. Landscape transformation is driven not only by national policies and markets, but also by global market dynamics associated with an increased role for transnational traders and investors. National and global trends affect a disparate number of social, political and economic interactions taking place at the local level, which ultimately shapes land-use and socio-economic change. This paper reviews five different trajectories of landscape change in tropical Latin America, and discusses their implications for development and conservation: (1) Market-driven growth of agribusiness; (2) expansion and modernization of traditional cattle ranching; (3) slow growth of peasant agriculture; (4) logging in production forest frontiers; and (5) resurgence of agro-extractive economies. Contrasting trade-offs between economic development and forest conservation emerge across these landscapes, calling for nuanced policy responses to manage them in the context of climate change. This discussion sets the background to assess how reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing carbon stocks (REDD+) aims should be better aligned with current landscape trajectories and associated actors to better address climate-change mitigation in forest landscapes with effective and equitable outcomes.Climate change can be addressed by mitigation (reducing the sources or enhancing the sinks of greenhouse gases) and adaptation (reducing the impacts of climate change). Mitigation and adaptation present two fundamentally dissimilar approaches whose differences are now well documented. Forest ecosystems play an important role in both adaptation and mitigation and there is a need to explore the linkages between these two options in order to understand their trade-offs and synergies. In forests, potential trade-offs can be observed between global ecosystem services, such as the carbon sequestration relevant for mitigation, and the local ecosystem services that are relevant for adaptation. In addition, mitigation projects can facilitate or hinder the adaptation of local people to climate change, whereas adaptation projects can affect ecosystems and their potential to sequester carbon. Linkages between adaptation and mitigation can also be observed in policies, but few climate change or forest policies have addressed these linkages in the forestry sector. This paper presents examples of linkages between adaptation and mitigation in Latin American forests. Through case studies, we investigate the approaches and reasons for integrating adaptation into mitigation projects or mitigation into adaptation projects. We also analyze the opportunities for mainstreaming adaptation-mitigation linkages into forest or climate change policies.The scale and magnitude of pressure perturbation and brine migration induced by geologic carbon sequestration is discussed assuming a full-scale deployment scenario in which enough CO2 is captured and stored to make relevant contributions to global climate change mitigation. In this scenario, the volumetric rates and cumulative volumes of CO2 injection would be comparable to or higher than those related to existing deep-subsurface injection and extraction activities, such as oil production. Large-scale pressure build-up in response to the injection may limit the dynamic storage capacity of suitable formations, because over-pressurization may fracture the caprock, may drive CO2/brine leakage through localized pathways, and may cause induced seismicity. On the other hand, laterally extensive sedimentary basins may be less affected by such limitations because (i) local pressure effects are moderated by pressure propagation and brine displacement into regions far away from the CO2 storage domain; and (ii) diffuse and/or localized brine migration into overlying and underlying formations allows for pressure bleed-off in the vertical direction. A quick analytical estimate of the extent of pressure build-up induced by industrial-scale CO2 storage projects is presented. Also discussed are pressure perturbation and attenuation effects simulated for two representative sedimentary basins in the USA: the laterally extensive Illinois Basin and the partially compartmentalized southern San Joaquin Basin in California. These studies show that the limiting effect of pressure build-up on dynamic storage capacity is not as significant as suggested by Ehlig-Economides and Economides, who considered closed systems without any attenuation effects. (c) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdPrevious research has primarily addressed people's perceptions of the properties of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) technology to predict public acceptance of this climate change mitigation option. This paper highlights another influential factor: Public trust in CCS stakeholders. Recent experimental research is reviewed and discussed to show that lay people's trust in stakeholders affects their acceptance of CCS implementation. This research further shows that people tend to trust environmental NGOs more than industrial stakeholders. This is caused by their perceptions of organizational motives-public-serving motives in the case of environmental NGOs and organization-serving motives in the case of industrial organizations-rather than by their perceptions of organizational competence concerning the issue. Stakeholders engender most trust by communicating arguments that are congruent with the organizational motives they are expected to act upon. Finally, people more readily accept CCS policy decisions when they know that relevant stakeholders receive an opportunity to voice their opinions in the decision-making process. The value of experimental research in the applied context of CCS and the practical implications of this research are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The vital role of forests in limiting the likelihood of dangerous climate change has precipitated renewed interest in debt-for-nature swaps. This article uses evidence on past debt-for-nature deals and similar debt mechanisms to assess a recent second wave of such swaps. It outlines five typical shortcomings of this form of financial transaction: that they often fail to deliver additional resources to the debtor country and/or debtor government budget; often fail to deliver more resources for conservation/climate purposes; often have a negligible effect on overall debt burdens (and, as such, do not generate more 'indirect' benefits); and are often in conflict with principles of alignment with government policy and alignment with government systems (these two last shortcomings being important elements within the new aid delivery paradigm). Our analysis is applied to a recent debt-for-nature swap between the United States and Indonesia. We show that this case, which we consider a litmus test for current swap practice, performs unevenly across the five shortcomings. First, although the US-Indonesian swap does increase available resources to Indonesia at the country level, it does not generate extra budgetary room for the Indonesian government. Second, the extent to which the resources provided by the swap are additional to other donor support and reserved domestic budget lines for conservation goals is unclear. Third, the swap is too insignificant to create indirect (positive) economic effects. Regarding alignment issues, fourth, the swap is very much in line with current national policy, but, fifth, appears at odds with the new aid delivery paradigm's insistence on system alignment. We argue that if a second generation of debt-for-nature swaps is to be pursued then they need to avoid the common pitfalls associated with this form of finance. Moreover, there is a need to debate broader ways of linking debt service repayments to climate mitigation and adaptation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recently, in the United Kingdom, two issues have dominated the energy policy agenda: effective climate change mitigation and energy security. Whilst evolving government policy has led to government support for new build nuclear power as part of the nation's future energy mix, limited attention has been devoted to examining how arguments were constructed to lead 'naturally' to nuclear new build as an option for addressing these two issues. Using Critical Discourse Analysis this paper analyses the struggles within the climate change mitigation and energy security discourses in generating and/or replacing meanings. In particular, it examines how construction of the dominant (hegemonic) discourses led 'naturally' to the necessity of new build nuclear power. This paper draws upon 24 stakeholder interviews to examine the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses. It outlines how climate change and energy security were perceived as motivators for energy policy; it shows how the combination of the dominant construction of climate change as an environmental issue and the construction of energy security as a 'gas gap' lent weight to the argument for nuclear new build. Struggling against these discourses is a counter-hegemonic discourse centred around climate change as a symptom of unsustainability and energy security as a lack of energy diversity. The latter, rather than 'naturally' proposing an urgent need for nuclear new build, lead to the argument for readdressing the focus of, and use of resources by, society - reducing energy demand and increasing energy supply diversity. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A carbon tax should be considered among the range of instruments available to the South African government, economy and society, as part of a broad portfolio of mitigation actions. A carbon tax was one of the most effective wedges or mitigation options analysed for the Long-term mitigation scenarios (LTMS) for South Africa. The LTMS strategic option 'Using the market' reduced emissions roughly as required by Science, for several decades. The LTMS research indicated that the effectiveness increases, up to certain tax levels. South Africa might consider a tax starting around R100-200 / t CO(2)eq, escalating in future. Our paper presents results on research on a carbon tax in South Africa conducted in 2008 and was presented at the Climate Change Summit 2009. The efficiency with which a carbon tax achieves the goal of reducing GHG emissions depends on responsiveness and substitutability. This is shown more fully on the supply-side, while further work will be needed to fully understand the response to a carbon tax on the demand side. Careful design of a carbon tax (or other economic instruments considered) will be important to ensure that it is effective in meeting its objective reducing GHG emissions. We propose a price discovery and adjustment mechanism that sets a band around the desired 'peak, plateau and decline' trajectory. Equity demands that poor households, in particular, be shielded from any burden. Off-setting incentives, such as food subsidies or reduced VAT on basic goods, should in finance measure that which will ensure that the package of tax and incentives is a net benefit to the poor and not to treat the tax as a revenue-raising instrument. With appropriate design, a carbon tax can be a powerful instrument of mitigation in South Africa, and at the same time, contribute to socio-economic objectives.The economic valuation of benefits resulting from environmental policies and interventions often assumes that environmental outcomes are certain. In fact, these outcomes are typically uncertain. This article proposes a methodological approach to incorporate delivery uncertainty into benefit estimation based on stated preference methods. In the study design of a choice experiment survey on land-based climate change mitigation, we explicitly include delivery uncertainty as the risk that a proposed mitigation project fails to deliver emission savings. We find that respondents' preferences do not change significantly after being confronted with choices that included risk of failure. However, failure risk itself does have an important impact on the preferences for delivering emission reductions. We show that delivery uncertainty can have a large impact on stated preference estimation of benefits of public programmes. This result should condition conclusions drawn from ex-ante environmental cost-benefit analyses that make use of such benefit estimates.Greenhouse gas mitigation strategies are generally considered costly with world leaders often engaging in debate concerning the costs of mitigation and the distribution of these costs between different countries In this paper the analyses and results of the design of a 100% renewable energy system by the year 2050 are presented for a complete energy system including transport Two short-term transition target years in the process towards this goal are analysed for 2015 and 2030 The energy systems are analysed and designed with hour-by-hour energy system analyses The analyses reveal that implementing energy savings renewable energy and more efficient conversion technologies can have positive socio-economic effects create employment and potentially lead to large earnings on exports If externalities such as health effects are included even more benefits can be expected 100% Renewable energy systems will be technically possible in the future and may even be economically beneficial compared to the business-as-usual energy system Hence the current debate between leaders should reflect a combination of these two main challenges (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedReducing energy use in buildings is a critical component of meeting carbon reduction commitments. There are several ways of accomplishing this goal, each of which emphasizes actions by a different set of stakeholders. This article argues that building users play a critical but poorly understood and often overlooked role in the built environment. In the face of climate change, the article finds purely architectural solutions, such as those proposed by the Architecture 2030 Challenge, to be necessary but not sufficient to achieve climate change mitigation targets. To fully address the task ahead, it argues that architects need to develop their professional expertise to improve buildings and seek ways of integrating user involvement in building performance. Moreover, from a professional standpoint, this paper suggests it may be wise for architects to claim a leadership role in this area before another group of building professionals does.Laurence A Wright(1), Jonathan Coello(1), Simon Kemp(1) & Ian Williams(dagger 1) A significant proportion of anthropogenic GHG-generating activities are concentrated in cities. As centers of high consumption, wealth and creativity, cities must play a significant role in tackling climate change. Action to reduce emissions at a local level requires that municipal and local governments have a good understanding of emissions sources and reduction potentials. To achieve this, municipal governments require adequate tools and resources to enable effective policy decision making. The carbon footprint is becoming an increasingly recognized tool for the management of climate change. The term carbon footprint originated in the 'gray literature', and it is widely recognized in the public arena. It offers the opportunity to municipal governments to develop models to inform climate change strategy decision making, and enables municipal authorities to localize the issue of climate change and promote the benefits of climate change mitigation at the local level. Existing framework guidance often fails to include all relevant emissions or follow widely varying methodologies, limiting comparability. This article examines the concept of climate change localization and management. The carbon footprint is explored in the context of a tool for municipal government management of GHG emissions. We conclude by suggesting that the carbon footprint become a cost-effective, practical and repeatable metric that can be adopted by municipal governments across the globe as a 'baseline' indicator.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities coupled to power plants provide a climate change mitigation strategy that potentially permits the continued use of fossil fuels whilst reducing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This process involves three basic stages: capture and compression of CO2 from power stations, transport of CO2, and storage away from the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. Potential routes for the capture, transport and storage of CO2 from United Kingdom (UK) power plants are examined. Six indicative options are evaluated, based on 'Pulverised Coal', 'Natural Gas Combined Cycle', and 'Integrated (coal) Gasification Combined Cycle' power stations. Chemical and physical CO2 absorption capture techniques are employed with realistic transport possibilities to 'Enhanced Oil Recovery' sites or depleted gas fields in the North Sea. The selected options are quantitatively assessed against well-established economic and energy-related criteria. Results show that CO2 capture can reduce emissions by over 90%. However, this will reduce the efficiency of the power plants concerned, incurring energy penalties between 14 and 30% compared to reference plants without capture. Costs of capture, transport and storage are concatenated to show that the whole CCS chain 'cost of electricity' (COE) rises by 27-142% depending on the option adopted. This is a significant cost increase, although calculations show that the average 'cost of CO2 captured' is 15 pound/tCO(2) in 2005 prices [the current base year for official UK producer price indices'. If potential governmental carbon penalties were introduced at this level, then the COE would equate to the same as the reference plant, and make CCS a viable option to help mitigate large-scale climate change. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The term 'carbon sequestration' is commonly used to describe any increase in soil organic carbon (SOC) content caused by a change in land management, with the implication that increased soil carbon (C) storage mitigates climate change. However, this is only true if the management practice causes an additional net transfer of C from the atmosphere to land. Limitations of C sequestration for climate change mitigation include the following constraints: (i) the quantity of C stored in soil is finite, (ii) the process is reversible and (iii) even if SOC is increased there may be changes in the fluxes of other greenhouse gases, especially nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane. Removing land from annual cropping and converting to forest, grassland or perennial crops will remove C from atmospheric CO2 and genuinely contribute to climate change mitigation. However, indirect effects such as conversion of land elsewhere under native vegetation to agriculture could negate the benefit through increased CO2 emission. Re-vegetating degraded land, of limited value for food production, avoids this problem. Adding organic materials such as crop residues or animal manure to soil, whilst increasing SOC, generally does not constitute an additional transfer of C from the atmosphere to land, depending on the alternative fate of the residue. Increases in SOC from reduced tillage now appear to be much smaller than previously claimed, at least in temperate regions, and in some situations increased N2O emission may negate any increase in stored C. The climate change benefit of increased SOC from enhanced crop growth (for example from the use of fertilizers) must be balanced against greenhouse gas emissions associated with manufacture and use of fertilizer. An over-emphasis on the benefits of soil C sequestration may detract from other measures that are at least as effective in combating climate change, including slowing deforestation and increasing efficiency of N use in order to decrease N2O emissions.Experimental studies suggest that tree growth is stimulated in a greenhouse atmosphere, leading to faster carbon accumulation (i.e., a higher rate of gap filling). However, higher growth may be coupled with reduced longevity, thus leading to faster carbon release (i.e., a higher rate of gap creation). The net effect of these two counteracting processes is not known. We quantify this net effect on aboveground carbon stocks using a novel combination of data sets and modeling. Data on maximum growth rate and maximum longevity of 141 temperate tree species are used to derive a relationship between growth stimulation and changes in longevity. We employ this relationship to modify the respective parameter values of tree species in a forest succession model and study aboveground biomass in a factorial design of growth stimulation x reduced maximum longevity at multiple sites along a climate gradient from the cold to the dry treeline. The results show that (1) any growth stimulation at the tree level leads to a disproportionately small increase of stand biomass due to negative feedback effects, even in the absence of reduced longevity; (2) a reduction of tree longevity tends to offset the growth-related biomass increase; at the most likely value of reduced longevity, the net effect is very close to zero in most multi- and single-species simulations; and (3) when averaging the response across all sites to mimic a "landscape-level" response, the net effect is close to zero. Thus, it is important to consider ecophysiological responses with their linkage to demographic processes in forest trees if one wishes to avoid erroneous inference at the ecosystem level. We conclude that any CO2 fertilization effect is quite likely to be offset by an associated reduction in the longevity of forest trees, thus strongly reducing the carbon mitigation potential of temperate forests.Improved energy efficiency in new residential buildings is typically being sought across the developed world through changing requirements in building and/or planning regulations. Stringency is set to further increase significantly in attempts to meet climate change mitigation goals. However, new regulation is usually met with reticence from sectors of the building industry, one reason being the additional costs implied in meeting higher performance standards for more energy efficient buildings. One low cost option, investigated in this paper, is to orient buildings in order to maximise their passive solar benefits. Using a range of 81 different detached dwelling designs, a modelling experiment was conducted in order to assess the implications of orientation on modelled thermal energy efficiency. Design adaptability to orientation change was modelled across two scenarios; current building energy efficiency standards and pending improved energy efficiency standards. The effect of size and overall energy efficiency rating was included in consideration of variance across orientations. Results show that higher standards are easier to apply to smaller dwellings, and costs are lower. Also, higher performing designs are more flexible across different orientations, producing lower standard deviations of mean ratings. The findings indicate that passive solar design is a concept that can readily be incorporated into house plans at the design stage. Recommendations for further empirical research are also made. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable energy sources (RES) are mainly used in the electrical sector. Electricity is not a storable commodity. Hence it is necessary to produce the requested quantity and distribute it through the system in such a way as to ensure that electricity supply and demand are always evenly balanced. This constraint is actually the main problem related to the penetration of new renewables (wind and photovoltaic power) in the context of complex energy systems. Moreover the design of optimal energy resource mixes in climate change mitigation actions is a challenge faced in many places. The paper analyzes the problem of new renewable energy sources penetration. The case of Italian scenario is considered as a meaningful reference due to the characteristic size and the complexity of the same. The various energy scenarios are evaluated with the aid of a multipurpose software taking into account the interconnections between the different energetic uses. In particular it is shown how the penetration of new renewable energy sources is limited at an upper level by technological considerations and it will be more sustainable if an integration of the various energy uses (thermal, mobility and electrical) will be considered. A series of optimized scenarios are developed. In each case the maximum RES penetration feasible with the constraints was defined. Then analysis is applied to an energy system model of Italy showing how an integrated development of CHP and electric mobility can aid a further integration of wind and photovoltaic energy power. Finally the primary energy consumption saving possible in case of consistent penetration of intermittent renewables and CHP was identified. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the objectives of climate change mitigation and energy independence, energy crops have been proposed as an alternative to fossil fuels. In recent years short rotation energy crops have been promoted because they provide biomass in short periods of time. However, the impacts of water consumption, in both the impact on the energy balance due to the consumption of irrigation as the impacts on existing water resources, have not been analyzed in depth. This study evaluates the relationship between water, energy and CO2 emissions of a plot of Populus spp. in Spain with the aim of evaluating the feasibility of its implementation as large-scale cultivation. For the energy and environmental assessment it has been used the life cycle analysis methodology. The results show positive energy balance and environmental improvement respect other energies such as natural gas. Consumption of water required to avoid a kg of CO2 is 4.6 m(3) and per unit of energy obtained is 45 m(3) GJ(-1) considering a life cycle approach and in relation to the water availability of the basin could increase the pressure. Hence, in order to establish energy crops for climate change mitigation water consumption associated must be taken into account for future energy planning. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar addition to agricultural soil has been suggested to mitigate climate change through increased biogenic carbon storage and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. We measured the fluxes of N2O, CO2, and CH4 after adding 9 t ha(-1) biochar on an agricultural soil in Southern Finland in May 2009. We conducted these measurements twice a week for 1.5 months, between sowing and canopy closure, to capture the period of highest N2O emissions, where the potential for mitigation would also be highest. Biochar addition increased CH4 uptake (96% increase in the average cumulative CH4 uptake), but no statistically significant differences were observed in the CO2 and N2O emissions between the biochar amended and control plots. Added biochar increased soil water holding capacity by 11%. Further studies are needed to clarify whether this may help balance fluctuations in water availability to plants in the future climate with more frequent drought periods. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Inclusion of improved forest management as a way to enhance carbon sinks in the Copenhagen Accord of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (December 2009) suggests that forest restoration will play a role in global climate change mitigation under the post-Kyoto agreement. Although discussions about restoration strategies often pertain solely to severely degraded tropical forests and invoke only the enrichment planting option, different approaches to restoration are needed to counter the full range of degrees of degradation. We propose approaches for restoration of forests that range from being slightly to severely degraded. Our methods start with ceasing the causes of degradation and letting forests regenerate on their own, progress through active management of natural regeneration in degraded areas to accelerate tree regeneration and growth, and finally include the stage of degradation at which re-planting is necessary. We argue that when the appropriate techniques are employed, forest restoration is cost-effective relative to conventional planting, provides abundant social and ecological co-benefits, and results in the sequestration of substantial amounts of carbon. For forest restoration efforts to succeed, a supportive post-Kyoto agreement is needed as well as appropriate national policies, institutional arrangements, and local participation.The range of future climate-induced sea-level rise remains highly uncertain with continued concern that large increases in the twenty-first century cannot be ruled out. The biggest source of uncertainty is the response of the large ice sheets of Greenland and west Antarctica. Based on our analysis, a pragmatic estimate of sea-level rise by 2100, for a temperature rise of 4 degrees C or more over the same time frame, is between 0.5m and 2m-the probability of rises at the high end is judged to be very low, but of unquantifiable probability. However, if realized, an indicative analysis shows that the impact potential is severe, with the real risk of the forced displacement of up to 187 million people over the century (up to 2.4% of global population). This is potentially avoidable by widespread upgrade of protection, albeit rather costly with up to 0.02 per cent of global domestic product needed, and much higher in certain nations. The likelihood of protection being successfully implemented varies between regions, and is lowest in small islands, Africa and parts of Asia, and hence these regions are the most likely to see coastal abandonment. To respond to these challenges, a multi-track approach is required, which would also be appropriate if a temperature rise of less than 4 degrees C was expected. Firstly, we should monitor sea level to detect any significant accelerations in the rate of rise in a timely manner. Secondly, we need to improve our understanding of the climate-induced processes that could contribute to rapid sea-level rise, especially the role of the two major ice sheets, to produce better models that quantify the likely future rise more precisely. Finally, responses need to be carefully considered via a combination of climate mitigation to reduce the rise and adaptation for the residual rise in sea level. In particular, long-term strategic adaptation plans for the full range of possible sea-level rise (and other change) need to be widely developed.Purpose - This paper aims to consider how climate change performance is measured and accounted for within the performance framework for local authority areas in England adopted in 2008. It critically evaluates the design of two mitigation and one adaptation indicators that are most relevant to climate change. Further, the potential for these performance indicators to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation is discussed. Design/methodology/approach - The authors begin by examining the importance of the performance framework and the related Local Area Agreements (LAAs), which were negotiated for all local areas in England between central government and Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs). This development is located within the broader literature relating to new public management. The potential for this framework to assist in delivering the UK's climate change policy objectives is researched in a two-stage process. First, government publications and all 150 LAAs were analysed to identify the level of priority given to the climate change indicators. Second, interviews were conducted in spring 2009 with civil servants and local authority officials from the English West Midlands who were engaged in negotiating the climate change content of the LAAs. Findings - Nationally, the authors find that 97 per cent of LAAs included at least one climate change indicator as a priority. The indicators themselves, however, are perceived to be problematic in terms of appropriateness, accuracy and timeliness. In addition, concerns were identified about the level of local control over the drivers of climate change performance and, therefore, a question is raised as to how LSPs can be held accountable for this. On a more positive note, for those concerned about climate change, the authors do find evidence that the inclusion of these indicators within the performance framework has helped to move climate change up the agenda for local authorities and their partners. However, actions by the UK's new coalition government to abolish the national performance framework and substantially reduce public expenditure potentially threaten this advance. Originality/value - This paper offers an insight into a new development for measuring climate change performance at a local level, which is relatively under-researched. It also contributes to knowledge of accountability within a local government setting and provides a reference point for further research into the potential role of local actions to address the issue of climate change.London Plan is the London mayor's Spatial Development Strategy. This strategic long-term plan comprises of proposals for different aspects of change within the London boundary. Furthermore, the proposals include chapters outlining adjustments in each facet. Policy 4A.2 reflects the Climate Change Mitigation scheme. Some consultations and research works have been performed to this point, but an extensive cost assessment has not been done. This paper reflects a financial assessment by means of Influence Diagrams based upon the London Plan policies 4A.X.Calculation of annual average evaporation and utilizable precipitation in South Xinjiang is carried out based on the precipitation and temperature monthly data for the period 1951-2006. Having analysed the change characteristics of precipitation, air temperature, evaporation, and utilizable precipitation in South Xinjiang during the last 50 years in detail, the changes in precipitation, air temperature and utilizable precipitation were simulated using the stepwise regressive periodic analytic method. Then these key climate variables were forecasted for the next 5 years. The results show that the temperature, precipitation and evaporation in South Xinjiang basically undergo an upward increasing trend since the 1970s. However, the change in utilizable precipitation displays a wave-like characteristic. It is concluded that climate warming does not necessarily lead to an increase in utilizable precipitation. Moreover, the forecasted utilizable precipitation for the next 5 years would possibly decrease. This study provides useful information and reference for decision-making on climate change mitigation.Sustainable tourism has been defined as a type of tourism that incorporates the principles of sustainable development, i.e. considering not only the economic but also the social and environmental bottom line. Recently, the idea of the triple bottom line has been expanded to a quadniple bottom line including climatic considerations. Climate change is a global phenomenon that will shape the future of tourism in largely unknown ways. As a contributor to climate change, tourism can actively lower the extent of climate change through mitigation. Next to supply-side mitigation measures to design less energy-intensive and more energy-efficient tourism offers, demand-side perspectives play a critical role as tourists directly and indirectly contribute to the extent of mitigation through their consumption and behavioral practices. The paper is part of a PhD project contributing to the discussion on demand focused climate change mitigation in the vacation context. It explores whether there are tourists that behave more climate friendly or whether climate friendly behavior has to be encouraged explicitly in the vacation context. The former case raises the question how climate friendly tourists can be identified and targeted. In the latter case, tourism providers like to know how to encourage climate friendly behavior of tourists. The discussion focuses primarily on the first part of these questions. The author refers to the literature on the topic and to findings of a scoping study undertaken with tourists to the Slovenian coast. The aim of this paper is to stimulate discussion and further research in order to improve strategies for sustainable tourism.Landscape approaches to carbon (C) accounting in agriculture, forest, and other land uses are being promoted as a win-win option for integrating climate change mitigation with sustainable rural development. However, limited data on the C sequestration potential of agroforestry systems in the semiarid tropics imply that subsistent farmers may not fully benefit from this opportunity. This chapter quantifies C stocks in biomass and soils in semiarid Morogoro, Tanzania to assess the potential of rotational woodlot systems to sequester C in the soil and offset carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Carbon levels in native vegetation fallows and forests were used as a reference to evaluate the efficacy of this system to minimize forest degradation and balance CO2 emissions. After a 5 year rotation, wood yield (23-51 Mg C ha(-1)) was sufficient to meet household demand for fuelwood. Carbon stocks in the highly productive fallows of Acacia crassicarpa A. Cunn. ex Benth., Acacia leptocarpa A. Cunn. ex Benth., and Acacia mangium Willd. (18-26 Mg ha(-1)) were similar to those in the Miombo forest reserves. Based on C accumulation rates, it would take 4-9 years for these fallows to recover C lost through forest clearance for agricultural expansion, compared to two or three decades for re-growing miombo woodlands. Tree fallows also enriched the soil organic C (16-26 Mg ha(-1)), in some cases (e.g., A. mangium) close to the reported value for miombo forest soils (28 Mg C ha(-1)). Overall, this study demonstrates the significant contributions of rotational woodlot systems to reduce forest degradation and offset CO2 emissions through on-farm wood supply. However, policies and programs that consider comprehensive approaches to avoid deforestation are needed to take full advantage of this system for climate change mitigation and adaptation.Carbon (C) is a new commodity that is now traded in financial markets and there is potential for farmers adopting agroforestry to sell C in addition to traditional timber and non-timber agroforestry commodities. Implementing agroforestry C offset projects is a challenging task, however, and it requires new, market-approved, C accounting methods that reduce transaction costs. This paper describes the Inpang Carbon Bank project in Northeast Thailand developed through collaboration between the Inpang Community Network, scientists at the Department of Forestry, Michigan State University (USA), Mahasarakham University (Thailand), and colleagues at the National Research Council of Thailand. Under this project a new protocol has been developed, which is in review by the Chicago Climate Exchange, besides an on-line C offset monitoring, verification, and reporting management system, called Carbon2Markets. A cost recovery analysis for the Inpang Carbon Bank smallholder teak (Tectona grandis L.f.) offset project shows that C would have to be sold at a value not less than US$1.66 per Mg CO2.In the context of rising legislative and consumer pressures for climate change mitigation actions, green marketing is a concept that has received increasing attention from academics, practitioners and researchers across the globe. This article is aimed at exploring the concept of green marketing, its characteristics and the various green marketing strategies that can be implemented in general, and in the Romanian construction industry (cement), in particular.In this paper we discuss the Future Delta game, as a time-forward 3-D visualization and simulation tool that aims to motivate actions and behavioral changes and to educate players about climate change mitigation and adaptations solutions and challenges. The game simulation is situated in a recognizable community locale: the flood-prone neighborhood of Delta, BC. Combining climate change modeling, socioeconomic scenario analysis and 3D modeling of real places with engaging soundscapes and imagery, our game is designed to make climate change science and solutions more salient and understandable to the layperson. The project comprises a game simulation and dynamic 3D visualizations of future local climate change scenarios to provide an environment for experiential learning tied to place attachment. The project builds on a foundation rich in research, experimentation, and production in the topic of climate change in Delta, but extends previous work into a new representational platform of virtual game. An initial testing of the game shows that engaging with the game strengthened the user's belief that action can be taken to mitigate climate change and increased their support for more transformative social changes to achieve climate mitigation and adaptation.Through the econometric studying on carbon sink benefits, the result show that the Coastal Shelterbelt System in Guangdong plays an active role in the carbon fixation and climate change mitigation, which is important to the development of low carbon economy in Guangdong Province. However, a variety of factors from natural environment and human activities will affect performance of the carbon sink about Coastal Shelterbelt; as a result, it is difficult to reach the its ideal level of effectiveness. This paper examines the route of interference factors acting on the carbon sink of Coastal Shelterbelt, and provides ideas and methods for regional ecological construction and sustainable development.The UK government believes that carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to be an important technology in climate change mitigation. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is supporting a programme of four commercial scale demonstration plants that will capture carbon dioxide from power stations and transport it to underground geological storage facilities located offshore. If the demonstrations are successful, the Government is expecting the wider deployment of CCS from 2020 onwards. The Environment Agency (EA) regulates the operation of fossil fuel power stations in England and Wales under the Environmental Permitting Regulations. It will issue permits for the operation of CCS equipment at power stations to ensure the protection of the environment and gather data on the performance of CCS technology. The Environment Agency has produced a qualitative environmental risk assessment (ERA) for CCS that provides a high level screening of the key regulatory issues that fall within its remit. It uses a classic source! pathway! receptor model, screens and ranks the risks as high/medium/low/very low and describes how the risks will be reduced to an acceptable level. These risk management measures will form the basis of the EA's action plan for regulating CCS technology up to 2020. In addition to this high level generic ERA, each operator wanting to install CCS technology at a power station will have to carry out a detailed site-specific ERA as part of their application for an environmental permit. The EA has published the ERA on its website to inform the public debate on CCS and demonstrate openness and transparency in its work as an environmental regulator.The CDM-AR project is a market-oriented approach to absorb carbon dioxide through afforestation and reforestation according to the Kyoto Protocol. This paper analysised the status of the CDM-AR projects in China, and asked why there are so few CDM-AR projects in China even in the world? The reasons include: Financial constraints, Constraints associated with knowledge, skills and other social factors. The particular reasons for China include: the specific terrains and soil fertility in China, the ownership of the forest land and so on. The CDM-AR project which can offer many economic, social and environmental benefits, is at the initial stage. It has great potential. The potentials of the CDM-AR project include: introduction of foreign capital and advanced technology from developed countries; establish of the forest ecological compensation mechanism in China; lower cost than the cutting emission ways at home for the developed countries.The aim of the paper is assess climate change mitigation measures in energy sector based on sustainable energy sector development targets. The main tasks to achieve this aim are: to develop indicators framework for sustainability assessment of climate change mitigation measures in energy sector; to apply this framework for sustainability assessment of climate change mitigation policies in Lithuanian energy sector. This methodological approach allows to achieve harmonization of climate change and energy policies and to enhance synergies between them. The main results presented in the paper. The system of indicators was developed based on EU energy policy targets. The assessment and ranking of market based climate change mitigation tools was performed by applying energy sector optimization model Message. The multi-criteria analysis of market based climate change mitigation tools was performed for Lithuania and the package of the best climate change mitigation tools in terms of achieving sustainable energy development targets in Lithuania was selected.The aim of the paper is comparative assessment, of energy technologies in power sectors based on life-cycle social costs. The main tasks are to develop the framework for comparative assessment of energy technologies based on future carbon prices imposed on economy by post-Kyoto climate change mitigation regimes. The assessment framework allows to compare power generation technologies based on social costs. The Main indicators selected for technologies assessment are: private costs and external costs of GHG emissions. The ranking of energy technologies based on total social costs allows to identify the most perspective technologies in future taking into account international climate change mitigation constraints in 2020 and 2050 and to promote these technologies by specific policy tools. The main results presented in this paper were obtained during EU financed Framework 7 project "PLANETS" dealing with probabilistic long-term assessment of new energy technology scenarios. For all policy scenarios electricity generation technologies ranking in 2020 and 2050 based on external GHG costs provides the same results as the same data on life cycle GHG emissions were applied for technologies ranking. The most competetive technology according all policy scenarios based on external GHG costs in 2020 and 2050 is biomass IGCC with CO2 capture biomass followed by other biomass technologies. Nuclear is ranked in the middle.This article explores the influence of personal values and ontological beliefs on people's perceptions of possible abrupt changes in the Earth's climate system and on their climate change mitigation preferences. The authors focus on four key areas of risk perception: concern about abrupt climate change as distinct to climate change in general, the likelihood of abrupt climate changes, fears of abrupt climate changes, and preferences in how to mitigate abrupt climate changes. Using cultural theory as an interpretative framework, a multi-methodological approach was adopted in exploring these areas: 287 respondents at the University of East Anglia (UK) completed a three-part quantitative questionnaire, with 15 returning to participate in qualitative focus groups to discuss the issues raised in more depth. Supporting the predictions of cultural theory, egalitarians' values and beliefs were consistently associated with heightened perceptions of the risks posed by abrupt climate change. Yet many believed abrupt climate change to be capricious, irrespective of their psychometrically attributed worldviews or "ways of life." Mitigation preferences-across all ways of life-were consistent with the "hegemonic myth" dominating climate policy, with many advocating conventional regulatory or market-based approaches. Moreover, a strong fatalistic narrative emerged from within abrupt climate change discourses, with frequent referrals to helplessness, societal collapse, and catastrophe.Extensive grazing systems in the tropics have large greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here an integrated cropping, livestock farming and saline pond aquaculture system is described which also reduces GHG emissions in tropical farming. The system was developed in the 1980s in the central Philippines and is re-evaluated in terms of its potential to reduce emissions from livestock production, particularly in wet and wet-dry tropical regions. The estimated cumulative annual GHG emission savings amount to 12.9 tonne CO2-e per head of cattle exiting the integrated feedlot system after 300 days. Use of silage from crop by-products and implementation of a feed-lot programme enabled immediate and significant reductions of GHG emissions over extensive cattle grazing. Integration with a saline animal waste processing pond allowed production of natural feed products, cyanobacteria algal mat for use in aquaculture, as crop fertiliser and soil amendment or in the silage manufacture process. Fish production from ponds receiving the harvested algal mat resulted in an annual average of 3300 kg/ha compared to an average 700 kg/ha in inorganic fertilised ponds. The unitised ratios for the integrated system were respectively: 1 ha sugarcane: 4 head of cattle: 0.13 ha saline waste processing pond. Stoichiometrically, bio-processing of waste material in saline ponds provides a novel solution to GHG emissions from feedlots. It uses a multi-step process dominated by cyanobacteria mats in which all the captured liquid and solid waste is passed through fermentation and a mixed aerobic and anaerobic photosynthesis/photosynthesis and mixed aerobic/anaerobic sulphate reduction pathway to use organic wastes and also reduce GHG emissions. Sulphate is reduced and sequestered as iron sulphide eliminating the potential for harmful sulphide emissions. Calcium carbonate precipitation in the cyanobacteria mats results in significant sequestration of carbon. The process produces organic feed matter with a three-fold increase in nitrogen levels arising from nitrogen fixation in the treatment pond.Previous attempts to estimate the supply of greenhouse gas emission reductions from reduced emissions from deforestation (RED) have generally failed to incorporate policy developments, country-specific abilities and political willingness to supply offsets for developed countries' emissions. To address this, we estimate policy-appropriate projections of creditable emission reductions from RED. Two global forest carbon models are used to examine major assumptions affecting the generation of credits. The results show that the estimated feasible supply of RED credits is significantly below the biophysical mitigation potential from deforestation. A literature review identified an annual RED emission reduction potential between 1.6 and 4.3 Gt CO(2)e. Feasible RED supply estimates applying the OSIRIS model were 1.74 Gt CO(2)e annually between 2011 and 2020, with a cumulative supply of 17.4 Gt CO(2)e under an 'own-efforts' scenario. Estimates from the Forest Carbon Index were very low at $5/t CO(2)e with 8 million tonne CO(2)e annually, rising to 1.8 Gt CO(2)e at $20/t CO(2)e. Cumulative abatement between 2011 and 2020 was 9 billion Gt CO(2)e ($20/t CO2e). These volumes were lower, sometimes dramatically, at prices of $5/t CO(2)e suggesting a non-linear supply of credits in relation to price at a low payment level. For policy makers, the results suggest that inclusion of RED in a climate framework increases abatement potential, although significant constraints are imposed by political and technical issues.The Asian Development Bank's (ADB) support for the development of the clean energy sector in Asia and the Pacific is examined, together with its implications for mitigating climate change. A key question is whether financing has shifted from fossil fuel projects to renewable energy and energy efficiency in the past decade (2000-2009). Financial data from the ADB - a multilateral source of significant financing in the region - are assessed, and 127 technology-deploying projects and 199 technical assistance projects are evaluated. The assessment suggests that clean energy assistance has gained momentum during the last few years, peaking in 2008, implying a considerable shift in energy investments from conventional fossil-fuel projects to clean energy. Although private sector involvement has been central to the ADB's investment policy, only 30% of funding has been channelled into this sector over the past decade. The reporting of clean energy investments has also progressed within the ADB by including renewable and energy efficiency components in conventional energy projects and other investments, which was not previously accounted for. Nevertheless, the ADB needs to address several challenges in the future, including sustaining funding for clean energy, strengthening private sector investments and improving financial reporting.Historical records have documented considerable changes to the global climate, with significant health, economic, and environmental consequences. Climate projections predict more intense hurricanes; increased sea level rise; and more frequent and more intense natural disasters such as heat waves, heavy rainfall, and drought in the future (1; 2). The coast along the Gulf of Mexico is particularly vulnerable to many of these environmental hazards and at particular risk when several strike simultaneously-such as a hurricane disrupting electricity transmission during a heat wave. Due to its significant contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the building sector already plays an important role in climate change mitigation efforts (e. g., reducing emissions). For example, voluntary programs such as the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Rating System (3), the Architecture 2030 Challenge (4), the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (5), and the Clinton Climate Initiative (6) focus almost exclusively on reducing energy consumption and increasing renewable energy generation. Mandatory regulations such as the International Energy Conservation Code (7), the International Green Building Code (8), and CalGreen (9) also emphasize GHG emission reduction targets. This leadership role is necessary. After all, the United States EPA estimates that the building sector accounts for 62.7% of total annual GHG emissions in the U. S., when the construction sector, facility operations, and transportation are factored in. In fact, the construction sector alone is the third largest industrial emitter of GHGs after the oil and gas and chemical industries, contributing 1.7% of total annual emissions (10; 11). As significant as these contributions appear, the built environment's true contribution to climate change is much larger than the GHG emissions attributed to building construction and operations. It is also a major determinant of which populations are vulnerable to climate change-related hazards, such as heat waves and flooding (12; 13). Architecture and land use planning can therefore be used as tools for building community resilience to the climate-related environmental changes underway (13). Climate change regulations and voluntary programs have begun to incorporate requirements targeting the built environment's ability to work in tandem with the natural environment to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect its occupants from the health consequences of a changing climate. For example, 11 states have incorporated climate change adaptation goals into their climate action plans (14). In 2010, the not-for-profit organization ICLEI: Local Governments for Sustainability launched a climate change adaptation program (15) to complement their existing mitigation program, which supports municipalities who have signed the U. S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement (16). New tools have been introduced to measure community vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. One of these tools, Health Impact Assessments (or HIAs), has emerged over the past decade as a powerful methodology to provide evidence-based recommendations to decision makers and community planning officials about the likely health co-benefits and co-harms associated with proposed policies and land use development proposals (17). While HIAs are becoming a more common feature of community planning efforts, this paper introduces them as an approach to designing climate change resilience into specific building projects. HIAs have been used in Europe and other parts of the world for decades to provide a science-based, balanced assessment of the risks and benefits to health associated with a proposed policy or program (18). In the U. S., they have been used over the past decade to evaluate transit-oriented developments, urban infill projects, and California's cap-and-trade legislation, among other topics (17; 19). To date, HIAs have been used mainly to inform large-scale community planning, land use, industrial, and policy decisions. However, the recommendations generated through the HIA process often bring to light previously unforeseen vulnerabilities, whether due to existing infrastructure, building technology, or socio-economic conditions. Designers can make use of the HIA process and its resulting recommendations to prioritize design/retrofit interventions that will result in the largest co-benefits to building owners, the surrounding community, and the environment. An HIA focused on the health impacts of climate change will likely generate recommendations that could enhance the longevity of a building project's useful life; protect its property value by contributing to the resilience of the surrounding community; and result in design decisions that prioritize strategies that maximize both short-term efficiencies and long-term environmental, economic, and social value.The paper presents results of the research in wood fuels consumption for household needs in Serbia. Research was performed during the period from October 2010 until April 2011, i. e. in the period of heating season in order to get the actual situation regarding the presence of certain fuel types in the consumption of households with special highlight on types and amounts of wood fuels. For this purpose, an adequate methodological concept was defined with the aim to primarily get relevant and reliable data on wood fuels consumption and afterwards, by using FAO WISDOM methodology and adequate GIS software packages to perform their analysis, mapping, and graphic representation. One of the most significant elements of the adopted methodological concept was field research-questionnaire of households which was conducted on the sample of 36.946 households out of which 20.725 urban and 16.221 rural in 22 municipalities in Serbia, which was 1.46% of the total number of households in Serbia. Results of the survey showed that 23.2% of the total number of households in Serbia used district heating system (based on conventional fossil fuels as dominant), 25.3% used electricity, and 10.6% used gas for heating purposes. Most households (40.9%) used solid fuels such as fuelwood, coal, briquettes, pellets, agricultural residues and combinations of solid and other fuels.The Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has developed an approach to impact evaluation that aims to go beyond causalities and counterfactuals into replication, up-scaling and longer-term lasting systemic changes. Starting from the OECD Development Assistance Committee glossary definition of impact and building on a theory-based approach to evaluation, several methods and tools have been developed that cover various aspects of the long road from outcomes to impact. This article presents both the development over time of these methods and tools and methodological considerations. Two full-scale impact evaluations were undertaken: the first on protected areas in Eastern Africa and the second on the GEF portfolio of projects supporting the removal from production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances in countries with economies in transition. In addition several other impact studies were undertaken. The evaluations of various aspects of the progress from outcome to impact were gathered and as far as possible aggregated in the Fourth Overall Performance Study of the GEF, which was presented in 2009 to the replenishment process of the GEF. An overview is presented of progress toward impact of the GEF portfolio of finished projects on climate change mitigation and on stemming the loss of biodiversity. The Office will continue to develop and use the variety of impact evaluation tools at its disposal.The fragile ecosystems of China mountain areas are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Sustainable mountain development provides essential ecosystem services and carbon sink opportunities for climate change mitigation. The paper elaborates the specific vulnerability contexts and situation of mountain ecological systems, highlights the importance of carbon finance for sustainable mountain development as well as downstream communities, and also explores the opportunities that are created by climate change.Preoccupation with global energy supplies and climate change in the global North, and a desire to improve the balance of trade and capture value in the emerging carbon market by developing countries, together place biofuels firmly on the map of global land use change. Much of this recent land use change is occurring in developing countries where large agro-ecologically suitable tracts of land may be accessed at lower economic and opportunity cost. This is leading to the gradual penetration of commercial crops that provide suitable biofuel feedstocks (e.g., sugarcane, soybean, oil palm, jatropha) into rural communities and forested landscapes throughout many areas of the global South. Expansion of biofuel feedstock cultivation in developing countries is widely embraced by producer country governments as a means to achieve energy security and stimulate rural economic development through employment and smallholder market integration. It is also expected that foreign and domestic investments in biofuel feedstock cultivation will lead to positive economic spillovers from knowledge transfer and investor contributions to social and physical infrastructure. While biofuel feedstocks are expanding through large industrial-scale plantations and smallholder production alike, the expansion of industrial-scale production systems has been countered by a critical response by civil society actors concerned about the implications for rural livelihoods, customary land rights, and the environmental effects of biofuel feedstock cultivation. To date, however, limited data exist to demonstrate the conditions under which widely anticipated economic and climate change mitigation benefits accrue in practice, and the implications of these developments for forests, local livelihoods, and the climate change mitigation potential of biofuels. In such a situation, debates are easily polarized into those for and against biofuels. This special issue seeks to nuance this debate by shedding light on the local social and environmental impacts accruing to date from the expansion of biofuel feedstock cultivation through in-depth case studies in 6 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Findings provide a more nuanced picture of costs and benefits, and point to a host of risks that need to be proactively managed to leverage the potential of the industry as an engine of national social and economic development.This chapter illustrates and discusses main objectives of biofuels policies viewed under multidirectional effects on economy, energy and environment. The analysis touches multiple effects of biofuels production and use such as the need for guaranteeing energy security and supply, environmental protection and land-use change, the expansion of rural areas and food safety and the increasing institutional support for biofuels policies including the contribution of these to climate change mitigation.During recent decades many environmental, social and legal conditions for sustainable management of forest resources have changed. Against this background, traditional and well-established silvicultural practices have to be reevaluated concerning their impact on conservation, biodiversity and environmental services and functions but also concerning their capability to ensure the ability of forest ecosystems to adapt to global environmental changes and to deliver the products and services that are requested by society. This chapter reviews exemplarily some of these new aspects, such as climate change, increased importance of goods and services other than timber and increased requirements for inventory, monitoring and planning as well as the consequences for silvicultural science and practice.Tropical wet forests were once extensive throughout the high rainfall (>2,000 mm per year) areas of the equatorial latitudes between 23 N and 23 S. Most of the of the forest in Asia, West Africa, Central America, and northern Latin America is either degraded from logging or has been cleared for agriculture. However, extensive forest remains in Central Africa, Amazonia, and parts of Asia. This chapter is a review of the autecology and forest dynamics of the timber-rich forest types of these regions, with special attention to work done on the silviculture and sustainable management of such forests. New insights are provided into management particularly in integrating nontimber forest products with timber for higher economic values that are competitive compared to other land uses, and in providing a strong case for episodic regeneration methods and their variants based on recent studies of the ecology of the tree species and their forest dynamics. More sophisticated silvicultural methods need to be implemented if the remaining forests are to be sustainably managed for timber and nontimber products. It is clear that silvicultural research both on timber and on nontimber species is lacking, and what information there is, is concentrated on only a few species and in particular regions. What is now being realized is that these forests provide much more than wood and nonwood products. Such realized provisions now include: (1) water for downstream urban drinking supply, hydroelectricity, and for irrigated agriculture; (2) climate mitigation through action as a store house and sequestration site for carbon; and (3) as moderator of surface temperatures and variability in rainfall functions that have global consequences if these forests are destroyed. It is therefore in our own best interests to protect and sustainably manage them.Increased aerosol concentrations can raise planetary albedo not only by reflecting sunlight and increasing cloud albedo, but also by changing cloud amount. However, detecting aerosol effect on cloud amount has been elusive to both observations and modeling due to potential buffering mechanisms and convolution of meteorology. Here through a natural experiment provided by long-term degassing of a low-lying volcano and use of A-Train satellite observations, we show modifications of trade cumulus cloud fields including decreased droplet size, decreased precipitation efficiency and increased cloud amount are associated with volcanic aerosols. In addition we find significantly higher cloud tops for polluted clouds. We demonstrate that the observed microphysical and macrophysical changes cannot be explained by synoptic meteorology or the orographic effect of the Hawaiian Islands. The "total shortwave aerosol forcin", resulting from direct and indirect forcings including both cloud albedo and cloud amount, is almost an order of magnitude higher than aerosol direct forcing alone. Furthermore, the precipitation reduction associated with enhanced aerosol leads to large changes in the energetics of air-sea exchange and trade wind boundary layer. Our results represent the first observational evidence of large-scale increase of cloud amount due to aerosols in a trade cumulus regime, which can be used to constrain the representation of aerosol-cloud interactions in climate models. The findings also have implications for volcano-climate interactions and climate mitigation research.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the public health and societal implications of climate change in South East Asia, and create a framework for planning national and regional responses. Design/methodology/approach - The paper elaborates on the adverse consequences of climate change in South East Asia, the current efforts taken by the regional countries, the current barriers to deal with the problems and presents a framework for planning responses. Findings - The consequences of climate change from a public health perspective, as well as from an economic, political and resource security standpoint, for South East Asia can be disastrous. Consequently, there is an urgent need to plan national and regional level measures for climate change mitigation and develop comprehensive plans in response to the current and projected climate-related health risks. Practical implications - The paper attempts to provide a detailed framework for addressing the health-related risks of climate change, in such a manner that it can be followed by all countries of the region. Originality/value - South East Asia could face disastrous public health consequences due to climate change. A detailed framework for mitigating climate change effects in the context of public health has been suggested, focusing on strengthening the evidence base to aid climate change policy, advancing knowledge and training to mitigate climate change, implementing adaptation measures, greenhouse gas reduction and developing collaborative work. Following the framework could yield substantial benefits for the South East Asian countries.Fossil fuels will remain the backbone of the global energy economy for the foreseeable future. The contribution of nuclear energy to the global energy supply is also expected to increase. With the pressing need to mitigate climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the fossil energy industry is exploring the possibility of carbon dioxide disposal in geological media. Geological disposal has been studied for decades by the nuclear industry with a view to ensuring the safe containment of its wastes. Geological disposal of carbon dioxide and that of radioactive waste gives rise to many common concerns in domains ranging from geology to public acceptance. In this respect, comparative assessments reveal many similarities, ranging from the transformation of the geological environment and safety and monitoring concerns to regulatory, liability and public acceptance issues. However, there are profound differences on a broad range of issues as well, such as the quantities and hazardous features of the materials to be disposed of, the characteristics of the targeted geological media, the site engineering technologies involved and the timescales required for safe containment at the disposal location. There are ample opportunities to learn from comparisons and to derive insights that will assist policymakers responsible for national energy strategies and international climate policies.Many governments are at various stages of planning to dispose of radioactive waste (RW) in geological formations. Many governments expressly expect to use geological formations to dispose of the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced in fossil fuel combustion. This chapter compares, in the light of climate change, the ethical issues involved in disposing of RW and CO2 in geological formations, given their potential to cause harm and given the risks involved in the deployment of these disposal technologies. It highlights the ethical issues triggered by the need for a high level of scientific certainty regarding the ability of potential disposal sites to counteract the migration of substances of concern away from disposal areas. However, the ethical issues entailed in geological disposal of RW and CO2 may need to be re-evaluated in light of the fact that disposal contributes to climate change mitigation. It is concluded, however, that as long as alternative methods for mitigating climate change are available that do not involve geological disposal of CO2 and as long as scientific uncertainty remains about the efficacy of disposal sites to contain RW and CO2, such alternative methods are ethically preferable. The chapter identifies another ethical issue, namely that the development and deployment of alternative technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could be delayed by reliance on geological disposal of CO2.Despite the scientific consensus on global warming, many people in the USA,-both ordinary citizens and elected leaders alike remain skeptical of the need to act, and in fact remain skeptical of the idea that humans are contributing to global warming at all. Thus, environmental justice arguments based on United States carbon emissions and the disproportionate impact of rising temperatures and rising sea levels on tropical developing nations such as Vietnam frequently fall on deaf ears. This chapter explores the political and cultural construction of this deafness, seeking a better understanding of how and why so many Americans refuse to act to address global warming. The two main sources of this deafness that this chapter address are (1) the politics of carbon-intensive energy producers such as the coal and oil industries, demonstrating the ways in which those industries have distorted the debate over global warming, have found eager allies in political candidates willing to accept large campaign contributions, and with the help of other industries such as automobile manufacturing and home construction have encouraged the second main source of denial: (2) a culture of aggrandized individualism that places greater value on personal identity construction than on the national and global common good. Once these sources are established, the chapter recommends strategies for using narrative to overcome cultural and political resistance to climate change mitigation that may be effective not only in the United States, but in Vietnam as well.The diagnostic potential natural vegetation (PNV) model, VERDE (Vegetation Reconstruction by Diagnostic Equilibrium), recently developed by the authors, is coupled to the Italian regional climate model (RegCM) ICTP, and is implemented in the European and Mediterranean regions. This study assesses the effect of anthropic land use on the present-day climate in these regions, and computes the climate associated with the PNV through iteration of a 2-step procedure, composed of a multi-annual model simulation and subsequent computation by VERDE of the PNV corresponding to the simulated climate. In the first iteration, RegCM adopts the present land use (which over Europe is dominated by crops and farming, with very little natural vegetation). The procedure is iterated until there is no appreciable difference between the PNV used by RegCM, and that associated with the climate that it produces, so that the PNV and model climate are consistent. The equilibrium PNV consists mainly of shrubs in the Mediterranean and deciduous broadleaf forest in central Europe. The effect of anthropic land use on climate is assessed by analyzing the difference between the simulated present-day anthropic land use and PNV climates, which is given by the difference between the first and the last iterations of the procedure. We found that anthropic land use produces cooler summers, and identified 2 different mechanisms: (1) over the Balkan Peninsula, anthropic land use modifies the surface energy balance by increasing evapotranspiration; (2) over central-western Europe, cooling is mostly due to cloudier sky conditions. These results show: (1) that reforestation may not be appropriate as a tool for climate change mitigation at the regional scale, and (2) expansion of agricultural land use may have reduced past warming signals at the regional scale, though historical records of land-use evolution suggest that this effect is probably small for Europe during the 20th century.Existing climate change mitigation policies are particularly concerned with the reconciliation of two seemingly conflicting aims: environmental protection and economic efficiency. The normative principles underlying these policies meanwhile focus on two central ideas: fair burden-sharing and agents' responsibility. However, both existing policy instruments and their supporting philosophical principles are highly problematic in terms of intergenerational justice and truly effective climate change mitigation. Three competing conceptions for allocating and distributing the burdens of climate change mitigation (cap-and-trade schemes, carbon emission taxes, and personal ecological space quotas) and their compatibility with principles of intra- and intergenerational justice are analysed and evaluated. None of the proposed instruments is able to satisfy the demands of effective mitigation and egalitarian justice on its own, which suggests that existing proposals for the distribution of emission rights and climate change-related costs need to be supported by a thicker account of intergenerational justice.During EU Framework 7 project PLANETS 10 policy scenarios were developed by applying 6 models covering different modelling philosophies and ranging from Top-down to Bottom-up models. These policy scenarios were developed by combining 2 alternatives climate targets and 5 different modes of achieving the different climate change mitigation targets. Analysis of scenarios results provides a lot of information however it is difficult to judge about these scenarios and to develop policy recommendations as some scenarios show better results according contradicting criteria such as costs and GHG emission reduction therefore the sustainability assessment approach was proposed seeking to rank policy scenarios. Criteria for sustainability assessment of policy scenarios were developed based on EU sustainable energy policy targets: increase use of renewable, increase of energy use efficiency and GHG emissions reduction. These main EU energy policy targets are called 20/20/20. The European Union's '20/20/20' targets for 2020 are the following: reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% comparing with 1990 level (to become a 30% reduction if other major global economies join); increase the share of renewable in the final energy consumption to 20% and to achieve 20% improvement in energy efficiency compared to the level in 2020 if existing trends were to continue. Therefore EU energy policy scenarios were ranked based on these criteria and scenario costs. The results of multi-criteria analysis performed in the paper allow indentifring the best EU energy policy scenarios in terms of energy sustainability.The conversion of vegetative biomass waste to biochar (biologically derived charcoal) is a source of carbon (C) that can be used to increase the level of soil organic C (SOC) in agricultural soils. This review collates available research into the effects of biologically derived C species with respect to the direct and indirect effects on agricultural productivity and their potential for use in Western Australian agricultural systems. There is a growing requirement to quantify the effect of specific biochar applications for agroecological purposes and to verify biosequestered C for climate-change-mitigation activities. This work provides a review and assessment of safe biochar application rates and examines the present levels of scientific uncertainty surrounding the efficacy and reliability of applying biochar to soils in relation to crop productivity.Turkey has a dynamic economic development and rapid population growth. Turkey has seven regions, all different from each other. The western part of Turkey has cosmopolitan centers of industry, finance, and trade especially in the major cities, whereas the eastern part of the country is relatively underdeveloped. Over the last few decades, numbers of Turkish citizens living in the eastern part of the country have migrated to the western part of the country. This caused some problems in energy utilization and environmental pollution in the western regions of Turkey. For this reason, in the coming decades, global environmental issues could significantly affect patterns of energy use in Turkey. Worldwide, hydropower has a great role in global environmental issues, such as environmental and air pollutions in Turkey. This article deals with the role of hydropower in energy utilization and environmental pollution in Turkey.This paper provides a meta-analysis of a broad set of recent studies of the economic impacts of climate change mitigation policies. It evaluates the influences of the impacts of causal factors, key economic assumptions and macroeconomic linkages on the outcome of these studies. A quantile regression analysis is also performed on the meta sample, to evaluate the robustness of those key factors throughout the full range of macro findings. Results of these analyses suggest that study results are strongly driven by data inputs, economic assumptions and modeling approaches. However, they are sometimes affected in counterintuitive ways.This study investigates factors driving investment in voluntary climate change mitigation among a selection of listed corporations in South Africa. Based on a review of the literature, a proposed conceptual framework is developed and empirically tested using case studies. A qualitative analysis of the data reveals three key motivational drivers: legitimacy, the financial business case and moral responsibility. In addition, a number of sub-drivers are identified which provide insights for engagement with companies in developing South Africa's response to climate change.The role of Indigenous and tribal peoples and their traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) is now greatly appreciated and recognized in developing location specific strategies and mitigation plans for coping with climate change. The goal of this research, based on six years of collaborative work with Adi tribal peoples from 14 villages of East and Upper Siang districts of Arunachal Pradesh, was to record Adi knowledge and experiences relating to biocultural resources and their interactions with climate change and livelihood sustainability. Data were collected using conventional interviews and village workshops. A total of 700 Adi people participated in these workshops, while two elderly Adi women were observed and interviewed over the course of 7 days, to document their deep knowledge on the subject. Results indicated that Adi people are rich ill knowledge relating to biocultural resources that play a pivotal role in coping with weather anomalies and any abrupt climatic changes in order to sustain their livelihoods. People are aware about climate change and its potential to threaten heir biocultural resources and livelihoods. To combat future climate change and ensure sustainable lifeways, they are interested in establishing 'community reserve forests' (CRF) within undisturbed community forest landscapes. These could be either at an individual or community level or even at both levels, provided that environmental agencies are able to link these 'CRFs' with REDD programs and that rewards and incentives are given to Adi tribe. The future of the Adi tribe's biocultural resources and livelihood sustainability depends very much on their TEK and their active role in research, planning and policy implementation for climate change mitigation and adaptation.This paper advances understanding of consumers who purchase voluntary carbon offsets (VCOs) for flights by profiling the socio-demographic characteristics of VCO purchasers in Australia and the UK and investigating their environmental attitudes and beliefs. Earlier research shows that there is confusion and lack of clarity around VCO schemes, yet small numbers of consumers continue to purchase them. Using an online panel survey of 502 respondents, this research considers whether those who purchase VCOs can be considered to be ecocentric, and whether they share a similar socio-demographic profile with those engaging in other forms of pro-environmental behaviour. The results suggest three groups: oEcocentricso (36%), oMiddle of the Roado (31%) and oAnthropocentricso (33%). While VCO purchasers appear to be ecocentric, not all ecocentric respondents purchased VCOs and, additionally, those who did purchase, appear to have a different socio-demographic profile from others engaging in pro-environmental behaviour. The study suggests that this segment of the flying public, already willing to contribute towards climate change mitigation, may be the best segment to target with behavioural change messages intended to encourage the structural changes in travel choices required to mitigate climate change. Earlier suggestions that older females are more likely to purchase VCOs are not supported.Whether companies invest in new power facilities at a particular point in time, or delay, depends upon the perceived evolution of uncertainties and the investors' attitudes to risk and return. With additional risks emerging through climate change mitigation mechanisms, the propensity to invest may increasingly depend upon how each technology and company is exposed to carbon price uncertainty We approach this by estimating the cumulative probabilities of investment over time in various technologies as a function of behavioral, policy, financial and market assumptions. Using a multistage stochastic optimization model with exogenous uncertainty in carbon price, we demonstrate that detailed financial analysis with real options and risk constraints can make substantial difference to the investment propensities compared to conventional economic analysis. Further, we show that the effects of different carbon policies and market instruments on these decision propensities depend on the characteristics of the companies and may induce market structure evolution.Use of biomass fuel in traditional cooking stoves (TCS) is a long-established practice that has incomplete combustion and generates substances with global warming potential (GWP). Improved cooking stoves (ICS) have been developed worldwide as an alternative household fuel burning device, as well as a climate change mitigation. A study was conducted among female Forest User Groups (FUGs) of Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh, to assess the status of ICS disseminated by the Forest Department (FD) under the Nishorgo (2009) Support Project, along with the community's biomass fuel consumption pattern. Wood consumption was highest (345kg month-1 household-1) followed by agricultural residues (60kg month-1 household-1), tree leaves (51kg month-1 household-1) and cow dung (25kg month-1 household-1). Neighbouring forests of the sanctuary was the core source for wood fuel, with little or no reduction in the extraction even after joining the FUG. Twenty-two species, both indigenous and introduced, were preferred as wood fuel. None of the respondents were found willing to use ICS although 43% owned one; either as a status symbol or to meet the conditions of the FD for membership in FUG. Seven negative features of the disseminated ICS were identified by households, which made them unwilling to use them further. Manufacturing faults may be responsible for some ICS demerits, while the FD failed to convince the community of the benefits. A proper examination of the disseminated ICS efficacy is crucial, with active involvement of community members. The Sustainable Energy Triangle Strategy (SETS) could be implemented for this purpose. Findings of the study are of immense importance in designing a strategy for the introduction of ICS into Bangladesh.Climate change mitigation is a dynamic area that, as it is addressed, brings new challenges to other environmental aspects. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) plants are the latest development in a series of environmental controls and have some distinctive features that could potentially lead to other wider environmental problems. Whilst CCS represents a significant step towards cutting greenhouse gas emissions, consideration needs to be given to the potential wider environmental consequences especially in terms of pollutant emissions and local air quality impacts. Challenges remain for existing plants which will need to consider the most cost-effective strategies for installation of CCS plant balanced against managing air quality impacts as dispersion characteristics change. In the case of post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technology, which is the focus of this paper, removal of CO2 from the main flue gas stream requires diversion of the flue gas through the CCS process, before it arrives at the exhaust stack. This flue gas stream may be all or part of the total plant flow or for multi-unit plants may be diverted from specific power generation units into the CCS plant before exhausting to atmosphere, either through returning back to the existing stack or through a new dedicated stack. This diversion and subsequent emission in itself poses an engineering challenge. In particular, the integration of the CCS process with the existing plant must also ensure that the diverted flue gas still achieves adequate dispersion as it contains residual levels of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphur dioxide (SO2), despite the fact that the CCS process itself may reduce some of these pollutant levels further as a process by-product. Power plants which incorporate CCS will still be required to adhere to the appropriate pollutant emission limits and ensure effective dispersion to minimise the risk of breaching local air quality standards. This paper draws on experience gained through post-combustion CCS projects and addresses the potential effects of CCS on air quality, in the case of carbon capture retrofits. The findings of this paper are relevant to project developers, power generators and policymakers globally who have an interest in the potential for CCS to provide an emissions abatement option for existing thermal assets in the short and long term. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The climate implications of technologies that capture CO2 to produce transportation fuels (CCTF) are investigated by studying two examples: biodiesel from microalgae and Sandia National Laboratory's S2P process. Simple performance and economic models for each technology are examined in the context of a bifurcated - "pre-CCS" vs. "post-CCS" - climate regime in which CCTF uses CO2 that is, respectively, captured from power plant flue gases or taken from CCS pipelines. CCTF promises to improve domestic energy security by converting sunlight and waste CO2 into transportation fuels; in addition, these fuels are roughly climate neutral when CO2 is captured from either flue gases or directly from the atmosphere. However, after the power sector becomes largely decarbonized under a stringent climate policy, large point sources of concentrated CO2 are likely to be relatively rare, and unfortunately, fuels made from pipeline CO2 destined for storage do not have markedly reduced net GHG emissions. Thus, absent the development of economical CO2 capture from air, it's difficult to see how CCTF can play a significant long term role in decarbonizing the US transportation sector (and thus reaching US climate goals). (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The present study aims at shedding light into the interaction of fluctuating renewables and the operational flexibility of post-combustion capture plants in the framework of a long-term model. We developed a model of the electricity sector taking into account both long-term investment time scales to represent plant fleet development under economic and climate constraints as well as short time scales to consider fluctuations of demand and renewable energy sources. The LIMES model allows us to determine the respective roles of renewables and CCS in climate change mitigation efforts within the electricity sector. Furthermore, we assess the influence of natural gas prices on fuel choice and investigate the shares of competing CCS approaches in the technology mix. We find that the optimal technology mix includes large shares of renewables and simultaneously different competing CCS technologies, depending on emission constraints and fuel prices. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The United States and China are the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world and their projected continued growth and reliance on fossil fuels - especially coal - make them strong candidates for the large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) systems in a greenhouse gas constrained world. Previous work has revealed that both nations have over 1600 large electric utility and other industrial point CO2 sources as well as very large CO2 storage resources on the order of 2000 billion metric tons (Gt) of onshore storage capacity. In each case, the vast majority of this capacity is found in deep saline formations. In both the USA and China, candidate storage reservoirs are likely to be widely accessible with over 80% of these large industrial CO2 sources having a CO2 storage option within just 80 km. This suggests a strong potential for CCS to help bring about meaningful, sustained CO2 emissions reductions for these large, vibrant economies. However, while the USA and China possess many similarities with regards to the potential value that CCS might provide, including the range of costs at which CCS may be available to most large CO2 sources in each nation, there are a number of more subtle differences that may help us to understand the ways in which CCS deployment may differ as the the two nations work together - and in step with the rest of the world - to most efficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper details the first ever analysis of CCS deployment costs in these two countries based on methodologically comparable CO2 source and sink inventories, economic analysis, geospatial source-sink matching and cost curve modeling. This type of analysis provides valuable insight into the degree to which early and sustained opportunities for climate change mitigation via commercial-scale CCS are available to the two countries, and could facilitate greater collaboration in areas where those opportunities overlap. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Capturing CO2 from air, referred to as air capture, is being proposed as a viable climate change mitigation technology. Technically, air capture is not a new technology; industrial applications can be traced back to the 1930s. This paper explores the feasibility of this technology as a climate change mitigation option. Two different pathways of air capture are assessed: direct air capture, which uses a chemical process to capture CO2, and biomass coupled with CO2 capture and storage (CCS), which utilizes the biological process of photosynthesis to remove CO2 from the air. We find that direct air capture has prohibitively high mitigation costs compared to the costs of climate change mitigation options being considered today. The pathway of biomass coupled with CCS has much more reasonable costs and could be used to offset certain emissions. However, the large land requirement may limit the amount of offsets available. We conclude that relying on air capture technology to play a major role in mitigating carbon emissions is a very risky policy decision. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study analyses the impact of techno-economic performance of the BIGCC process and the effect of different biomass feedstocks on the technology's long term deployment in climate change mitigation scenarios. As the BIGCC technology demands high amounts of biomass raw material it also affects the land-use sector and is dependent on conditions and constraints on the land-use side. To represent the interaction of biomass demand and supply side the global energy-economy-climate model ReMIND is linked to the global land-use model MAgPIE. The link integrates biomass demand and price as well as emission prices and land-use emissions. Results indicate that BIGCC with CCS could serve as an important mitigation option and that it could even be the main bioenergy conversion technology sharing 33% of overall mitigation in 2100. The contribution of BIGCC technology to long-term climate change mitigation is much higher if grass is used as fuel instead of wood, provided that the grass-based process is highly efficient. The capture rate has to significantly exceed 60 % otherwise the technology is not applied. The overall primary energy consumption of biomass reacts much more sensitive to price changes of the biomass than to techno-economic performance of the BIGCC process. As biomass is mainly used with CCS technologies high amounts of carbon are captured ranging from 130 GtC to 240 GtC (cumulated from 2005-2100) in different scenarios. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This work aims to provide an insight of the cost estimation for large scale CCS application in the Greek thermal power plants given the high dependency on fossil fuels for the bulk of the national electricity generation and the aim to fulfil Greece's share of the overall European energy policy targets. Greece generates almost 92% of its electrical power requirements from fossil fuels, with lignite accounting for about 63% of the total while the share of liquid fuels and natural gas is 14% and 22% respectively (2007). Total CO2 emissions increased from 83.15 Mt in 1990 to 113.56 Mt in 2007. This increase of 36.57% from 1990 to 2007 is mainly attributed to the increased electricity production (average annual rate of 3.6% for the period). Taking into consideration the forecasts for increase in the electricity demand over the coming years and the old and low-efficiency units that should be either renovated or replaced by new units, the capture and geological storage of CO2 is considered as a critical climate change mitigation option at national level. In particular, the cost calculations are focused on CO2 transport from a new capture-ready 650 MWe coal fired power plant using supercritical steam cycle, to be erected in the Region of Western Macedonia, to potential geological formations via pipeline and the subsequent storage in deep saline aquifers. The cost estimations are based on a pipeline transport infrastructure linking one large CO2 source with individual storage sites. The results from the geological characterisation and the storage capacity of the identified Prinos, West Thessaloniki, and Messohellenic Trough - Pentalophos saline formations in the Tertiary sedimentary rocks of Greece will be presented. To conclude, the geological properties of the sedimentary basins in Greece appear to to have the potential to sequester billions of tons of CO2 for CCS implementation. The identified geological reservoirs occur within approximately 100-200 km of the majority of stationary CO2 emissions in Greece, which is favourable in terms of infrastructure costs for the development of a CO2 pipeline transport network. However a range of R&D activities is required in order to assess the effective CO2 storage potential of saline aquifers in Greece like a more detailed site -specific geological analysis, stratigraphic mapping and correlation, petrophysical property characterization, generation of quantitative and dynamic 3-D geological models, geochemical simulations etc. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Most projected climate change mitigation strategies will require a significant expansion of CO2 Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in the next two decades. Four major categories of challenges are being actively researched: CO2 capture cost, geological sequestration safety, legal and regulatory barriers, and public acceptance. Herein we propose an additional major challenge category across all CCS operations: water management. For example a coal-fired power plant retrofitted for CCS requires twice as much cooling water as the original plant. This increased demand may be accommodated by brine extraction and treatment, which would concurrently function as large-scale pressure management and a potential source of freshwater. At present the interactions among freshwater extraction, CO2 injection, and brine management are being considered too narrowly -in the case of freshwater almost completely overlooked-in the technical and regulatory CCS community. This paper presents an overview of each of these challenges and potential integration opportunities. Active management of CCS operations through an integrated approach -including brine production, treatment, use for cooling, and partial reinjection- can address challenges simultaneously with several synergistic advantages. The paper also considers the related potential impacts of pore space competition (with future groundwater use, gas storage and shale gas) on CCS expansion. Freshwater and brine must become key decision making inputs throughout CCS operations, building on existing successful industrial-scale integrations. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The purpose of this report is to show the importance of CCS as a climate change mitigation technology by comparing it with other climate change mitigation technologies currently being developed. In order to objectively evaluate those technologies including CCS currently being researched and developed, the study conducted and compared these technologies in term of their potential in reducing GHG emissions at two set points in the future. The authors believe that the result of the study can be an effective way to promote public acceptance (PA) of CCS technology. The study was conducted with support from the 'R&D project of CO2 Geological Storage Technology' which is subsidized by Japan's METI. In the result of evaluation, it shows that in order for the CCS technology to become practical, risks must be more clearly identified and the economic viability must be improved. Therefore, preparing frameworks and building social systems that support CCS technology would be inferred to become critical elements. These analysis results can be re-assessed when situations change for each subject technology whenever appropriate and will help make it possible to deal with changing reality in a flexible manner. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Policies to develop and deploy CCS as a tool for climate change mitigation should consider the key differences between three classes of CCS projects: carbon-positive, near carbon-neutral and potentially carbon-negative. In class 1 are projects that are 'carbon positive' since they capture CO2 from the production of fossil hydrocarbon fuels and there is no guarantee that the CO2 generated when these are used will be captured and stored. Class 1 CCS might be treated as a condition of the 'licence to operate' for hydrocarbon production projects that emit large amounts of CO2, and be distinguished from other classes of CCS projects in any incentive framework. In the event of serious global action on climate change, it seems likely that class 1 CCS would be employed to minimise fossil fuel supply chain CO2 emissions, but in addition all fossil fuels would need to be used with class 2, near carbon neutral, CCS, so that the vast majority of fossil carbon is captured and stored and the main products are decarbonised energy vectors such as electricity, hydrogen and heat. Class 2 CCS projects are generally more expensive than class 1 projects and require more novel technologies, so they are unlikely to be widely deployed at present without specific incentives, an analogous situation to that for many renewable generation technologies. Carbon negative class 3 projects, where biomass use and CCS are combined, or where CO2 is captured directly from the air, could also be important since they have the potential to achieve a net reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, as well as to offset residual emissions from other classes of CCS. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.It is regularly argued that CCS deployment is more likely to occur in developed countries associated with high fossil fuels dependence levels, Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions sources and to the implementation of specific taxes to GHG. Somewhat counter-intuitively, though, two of the most progressive countries with respect to CCS deployment, Norway and Brazil, only partially fulfill these criteria. Our preliminary analysis suggests that CCS in both cases has been applied as a strategic tool for economic competitiveness, rather than a climate change mitigation option, with public and/or private regulatory arrangements providing initial incentives to take the technology off the ground. This has important implications for policy making since it, by alter our notion of the drivers for action, may call for alternative configurations of incentive structures and policy instruments. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Many states and countries have adopted or are in the process of crafting policies to enable geologic carbon sequestration projects. These efforts reflect the recognition that existing statutory and regulatory frameworks leave ambiguities or gaps that elevate project risk for private companies considering carbon sequestration projects, and/or are insufficient to address a government's mandate to protect the public interest. We have compared the various approaches that United States' state and federal governments have taken to provide regulatory frameworks to address carbon sequestration. A major purpose of our work is to inform the development of any future legislation in California, should it be deemed necessary to meet the goals of Assembly Bill 1925 (2006) to accelerate the adoption of cost-effective geologic sequestration strategies for the long-term management of industrial carbon dioxide in the state. Our analysis shows that diverse issues are covered by adopted and proposed carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) legislation and that many of the new laws focus on defining regulatory frameworks for underground injection of CO2, ambiguities in property issues, or assigning legal liability. While these approaches may enable the progress of early projects, future legislation requires a longer term and broader view that includes a quantified integration of CCS into a government's overall climate change mitigation strategy while considering potentially counterproductive impacts on CCS of other climate change mitigation strategies. Furthermore, legislation should be crafted in the context of a vision for CCS as an economically viable and widespread industry. In California, CCS is not included quantitatively as a strategy to reduce future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In part, this reflects the focus of most state agencies on short term goals, such as the AB 32 goal to return California emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It also reflects the lack of data necessary to predict how rapidly and to what degree CCS could be deployed to meet short or long term goals. The lack of timely consideration of CCS as a mitigation alternative, however, has the potential to lead, albeit unintentionally, to policies which may make CCS adoption less likely and more expensive in the long run. For example, consideration of the economic and other risks associated with CCS is presently a disincentive to adopt CCS if other alternatives, such as fuel switching, can meet legislated requirements to reduce carbon emissions. While an important function of new CCS legislation is enabling early projects, it must be kept in mind that applying the same laws or protocols in the future to a widespread CCS industry may result in business disincentives and compromise of the public interest in mitigating GHG emissions, particularly in cases where different stakeholders are responsible for capture, transport, and sequestration elements of a project. Protection of the public interest requires that monitoring and verification track the long term fate of pipelined CO2 regardless of its end use in order to establish that climate change goals are being met. Legislative mandates that require CO2 producers to verify carbon reductions via sequestration, and which are crafted under the assumption that CO2 capture, transport and storage is linear and maintained under a single stewardship, may result in reducing the incentive to participate in the efficiencies of a collective transport and sequestration system. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The deployment of large scale CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) may depend largely on the emissions price resulting from a greenhouse gas emission trading system. However, it is unknown whether such a trading system leads to a sufficient high CO2 price and stable investment environment for CCS deployment. To gain more knowledge, we soft-linked WorldScan, an applied general equilibrium model for global policy analysis, with MARKAL-NL-UU, a techno-economic energy bottom-up model of the Dutch power generation sector and CO2 intensive industry. Results from WorldScan show that CO2 prices in 2020 could vary between 20 (sic)tCO(2) in a GRAND COALITION scenario, in which all countries accept greenhouse gas targets from 2020, to 47 (sic)/tCO(2) in an IMPASSE scenario, in which EU-27 continues its one-sided emission trading system without the possibility to use the Clean Development Mechanism. Results from MARKAL-NL-UU show that an emission trading system in combination with uncertainty does not advance the application of CCS in an early stage, the rates at which different CO2 abatement technologies (including CCS) develop are less crucial for introduction of CCS than the CO2 price development, and the combination of biomass (co-) firing and CCS seems an important option to realise deep CO2 emission reductions. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Responding to growing international political interest in the potential of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to contribute to climate change mitigation, multiple CCS demonstration projects of various scales are emerging globally. A fully integrated power-plant with CCS has not yet been demonstrated at scale, and acknowledgement of the scale of learning that still must occur for the technology to advance toward deployment has resulted in calls from multiple constituents for more CCS demonstration projects. Among these demonstration projects, expectations for learning and knowledge-sharing structures vary considerably and attention to different approaches to facilitate learning has been minimal. Through a comparison of the structure, framing and socio-political context of three different CCS demonstration projects, this paper explores the complexity of social learning associated with demonstration projects. Variety in expectations of the demonstration projects' objectives, learning processes, information sharing mechanisms, public engagement initiatives, financing and collaborative partnerships are highlighted. The comparison shows that multiple factors influence the learning in CCS demonstration projects, including the process of building support for the project, the governance context and the framing of the project justification. This comparative analysis highlights the importance of integrating careful consideration of framing and social learning into CCS demonstration project planning. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.As the threats and realities of global warming, and the concomitant urgency of decarbonising cities and regions become increasingly apparent, academics, governments, NGOs, local and international think-tanks and policy initiators, continue to concentrate on initiatives largely aimed at reducing fossil fuels (specifically transport and energy use) and increasing development of economies based on renewable energies. Yet, to date, the progress has been slow. Despite being one of the greatest causes of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, meat production and consumption seldom get attention. The negative effects of the ever-increasing livestock sector are felt across a wide range of areas and much scientific evidence is left unnoticed. This includes serious contributions to environmental concerns, including climate change, water and air pollution, deforestation, land degradation, decreases in habitat and biodiversity as well as direct negative social impacts such as direct responsibility for deteriorating human physical and mental health, global inequality and world hunger, and non-sensitivity to factory farming and slaughter. This paper uses extrapolation and generalisation in assessing the impact of meat consumption on the globe, including putting it into perspective in comparison to other commonly acknowledged and accepted factors, such as transport. It also highlights some stumbling blocks, vested interests and existing attitudes that make the meat problem not only persist but also expand over the developing world. The study suggests that current decarbonising focuses are disempowering and as a result, to date, insufficiently effective. It proposes a new ethics model of increasing vegetarianism to empower individuals to make a meaningful and significant, personal contribution to climate change mitigation. It is easy and does not require significant policy, institutional or industrial changes. If adopted and implemented, such an ethics model will ensure that, individually and collectively we have the power not only to address and resolve a currently overwhelming number of social and environmental threats, but essentially, to change the current global warming trajectory and return the planet's climate patterns to safer levels.The transition to a low carbon economy provides potential opportunities for Indigenous communities living in remote areas of Australia. Recent studies and trial projects indicate a range of potential benefits from carbon management programs such as early season fire management, bio-sequestration, bio-energy production, and energy monitoring services. Remote Indigenous communities in Australia typically have few employment opportunities, and the health and socio-economic statistics of residents indicate several disadvantages compared to the average non-Indigenous Australian. Despite this many communities maintain a strong culture and a wealth of traditional knowledge, particularly in relation to natural resource management. These carbon management programs offer potential employment and business development prospects that utilise Indigenous knowledge and are in keeping with their caring for country preferences. There is little published information on the carbon profiles of these communities but they are expected to be highly carbon intensive due to their frequent reliance on diesel-powered electricity generators, fossil-fuelled vehicles that need to travel vast distances and housing that often requires energy-intensive thermal conditioning. Hence, efforts are also required to help reduce carbon emissions and associated costs, particularly rising electricity and fuel prices from direct use or those embedded in goods and services. To ascertain whether implementation of proposed carbon management programs can be combined to mitigate carbon emissions a method for estimating and comparing emission abatement across a range of scenarios is required. A carbon accounting model that quantifies the estimated carbon that can be mitigated from sources and sequestered in sinks for a given community has been developed. The model combines two methods of measurement: life cycle analysis and land use modelling techniques. LCA is an assessment of impacts throughout a product's life, or "cradle to grave", including raw material acquisition, through production, use and disposal. The AS/NZS ISO standard 14040:1998 Environmental Management-Life cycle assessment - principles and framework outlines the requirements and process for undertaking a life cycle impact assessment. The life cycle analysis is applied in the model to estimate key emission sources for greenhouse gases broadly categorised as follows: materials used for construction and maintenance, construction processes including transport, operating energy supply and demand, transport during the occupancy phase, water systems, and solid waste. Because a full life cycle analysis can be a time and data intensive undertaking only significant items in the community are included and some emissions related to transport and waste are based on annual inventory methods only. Embedded within the life cycle analysis is the model to estimate carbon sinks. The carbon sinks are modelled using a method in accordance with IPCC guidelines for land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF). This takes into account conversions for a variety of land use categories and, where significant, sub-categories of biomass, dead organic matter and soil. This allows sinks to be estimated within defined limits of uncertainty and a total sequestration quantity to be approximated. The combination of the two measurement methods provides an overall carbon cycle for a community and an estimate of the potential to provide climate change mitigation capacity including a quantitative basis for further economic analysis.In traditional industrialization, manufacturing industries are clustering with a large amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions which has been polluting the environment heavily and directly caused global climate change. Industry CO2 emissions reduction is the key point for global climate change mitigation. The authors in this paper introduce a new concept of industry CO2 emissions efficiency and relatively design an industry CO2 emissions coefficient to measure it. With a sample analysis of Chongqing China, the authors find that 11 of 18 sectors of Chongqing industry have their great potentials of industry CO2 emissions reduction comparing to those of China's national level in sample year of 2007. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of RIUDSA new course was developed to improve engineering students' understanding of the earth science associated with global climate change, human interactions with climate, mitigation technologies and policies, and adaption strategies. The three-credit course, entitled Global Climate Change: Science, Engineering, and Policy, is highly quantitative and taught through an inquiry-based pedagogical approach. Every student is required to address questions about climate change phenomenon and investigate the historical data, related model predictions for future scenarios, and potential for mitigation and adaption. Students use multiple sources for energy and climate data (DOE, NASA, NOAA, etc.), simulation results from global climate models, and results from their own simulations utilizing climate models (EdGCM). Extensive use of MS Excel and Matlab are required for processing and analysis of the large data sets. The impacts of the course on the students were assessed with a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Substantial quantitative gains were made in the students' climate literacy, especially in knowledge areas. Students also showed gains in their self-reported feelings that they could solve a new problem or tackle a challenge, were good at interpreting charts and graphs and manipulating databases, and were interested in pursuing a career in science or engineering that would contribute to solving global climate problems. Qualitative assessment results indicated that students felt more confident in their ability to contribute to climate change mitigation through both their personal knowledge and professional career options.This paper describes a modeling approach that simulates the impacts of different climate change mitigation technologies on power grids for power system planning purposes. Because the historical data is less credible when new technologies are being deployed to the system, it is then critical to model them to address their impacts. This paper illustrates how to integrate modeling results obtained from different modeling tools to give a reasonable forecast of the future. Building simulation tools, distribution power grid modeling tools, and power system planning tools are used to model and aggregate the impacts from the end-use to the system level. Electricity generation, production cost, emission, and transmission congestions are used to quantify the influence of different mitigation technologies. Modeling results have shown that the cross-discipline modeling approach provided the modeler with the necessary time resolution and input details to address the variables that influence the modeling results. Different modeling issues are also addressed in the paper.This paper presents the potential of renewable power generation in Thailand for CO2 mitigation under the framework of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). This study employed AIM/Enduse model of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) Japan for analyses of CO2 mitigation in the power sector. Results show that in the business-as-usual scenario CO2 emissions in the power sector will be 141.51 kt-CO2 in 2020. When the renewable energy sources under Thailand's renewable energy development plan and low-carbon options were pushed into NAMAs, CO2 emissions in 2020 will be decreased by 27.41 kt-CO2, and reduction will be 17.20 kt-CO2 with renewable power generation by adders. When both policy measures of adders and low-carbon options are considered, CO2 emissions will decrease to 98.17 kt-CO2. Thus, this CO2 mitigation of 30.6% in 2020 in power generation needs strong efforts from Thai government and international supports to achieve climate change mitigation under NAMAs mechanism.Bioenergy is regarded as the utilization of biomass as starting material for the production of sustainable fuels. First generation biofuels, primarily produced from food crops and oil seeds, however, are limited in their ability to achieve the desired targets for biofuel production, climate change mitigation and economic growth. These concerns have increased interest in developing second generation biofuels produced from non-food feedstocks. The present contribution is intended to present an overview of the application of membrane processes and, particularly, of membrane bioreactors in bioenergy, pointing out the engineering aspects related to some of the bio-catalytic processes involved in biofuels production.The agriculture will be seriously affected in terms of less precipitations and higher temperature. The hydro-meteorological conditions of Bulgaria have been worsening. The long-term meteorological data analysis of different regions (1971-2000) shows a clear tendency of warming and drying. The rough estimation has been taken from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change 2007. The main goal of the research is to help the farming in adaptation with the climate change and to mitigate its impact for long term period 2020-2050-2070. it needs cost-benefit analysis of public investment in order to consider using an ecosystem-based approach for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The development of sustainable agriculture is not possible without applying an agro-climatic zoning. The objectives of the research are, as follows: - Analysis in order to recover the growth, development and the productivity of the agricultural crops by simulation models of production conditions and in correspondence with the expected climate change; - Bringing up-to-date the existing agro-climatic zoning of Bulgaria for the main cereals, fruits, vegetables, vineyards and forage herbs; to examine the interrelations among biological, economic and agro-climatic indicators in order to determine regions for irrigation and more suitable crops for it in low-favoured agricultural regions mitigating the climate change for 2020-2050-2070; - Finding hydrothermal indices and its applicability using an ecosystem-based approach; initiate the process of restructuring of agricultural production depending on the real and potential resources in order to mitigate the climate change. The final results of the research are recommendations for public administration to organize agro-climatic zoning and to achieve better investment of national and EU funds in agriculture development.Algae are fast growing eukaryotes and contribute more than two third of the planet's photosynthesis. Concerns of sustainability and food security linked with the limited availability of land for cultivation of biodiesel crops and oil seed bearing trees have resulted in growing attention on algae based biodiesel production. Algae are the oldest and original oil producers on earth. Biodiesel produced by algae is considered as Green House Gas neutral. Oil producing macro and micro algae thus present promising Climate Change mitigation opportunities. The investment and other barriers could be overcome by carbon credit benefits coming from compliance and voluntary carbon market. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is attractive option for implementation of algal biodiesel based Climate Change mitigation projects in developing countries. There are opportunities in voluntary carbon markets also driven by the corporate social responsibility to offset emission footprints of activities, products and services of individuals and companies. Climate Change mitigation opportunities in algal biodiesel sector include- Bio-sequestration in green algal biomass; Biodiesel production and consumption as a replacement of conventional fossil fuel in energy generation activities; and energy generation from de-oiled algal biomass. Eligibility of these options has been assessed in the paper under the CDM and VCM (Voluntary carbon market) from the methodological aspects. Based on the assumptions from past studies it is estimated that the algal biodiesel alone can generate 30 carbon credits per ha per year, offering the revenue of . 360 per hectare per year. This is an estimate and varies on actual performance of algae, biodiesel plant and power plant.The demand for electricity closely linked to human, social, and economic development is expected to rise significantly in the coming decades, especially in developing countries. Coal power currently is, and is expected to remain, an important part of the global electric power mix with much of the future growth again in developing countries. At the same time, coal-based power generation results in multiple, significant externalities with human health and potential climate change impacts being particularly important. This has spurred much effort over the decades to better determine the range and value of the impacts. Although uncertainties still remain in many aspects, it has become quite clear that the existing health and potential climate impacts from coal-power use are considerable. More stringent regulations are already being enforced and planned in developed countries, and developing countries are beginning to follow suit. Improved coal-based power generation technologies (deployed often as a result of regulations) can play an important role in mitigating these impacts, but their further development and deployment is complicated by a number of interrelated factors: the urgency of the climate imperative, the lack of coherent policies, the scale and complexity of the transition to cleaner-coal power, and the level of technological effort being devoted to (or available for) such a transition. Looking ahead, even as the wait for more stringent climate policies continues, there is a need to catalyze the innovation cycle through research and development (R&D) efforts while facilitating uptake and appropriate international cooperation to ensure rapid technology adoption across the globe.Peatland restoration by inundation of drained areas can alter local greenhouse gas emissions as CO2 and CH4. Factors that can influence these emissions include the quality and amount of substrates available for anaerobic degradation processes and the sources and availability of electron acceptors. In order to learn about possible sources of high CO2 and CH4 emissions from a rewetted degraded fen grassland, we performed incubation experiments that tested the effects of fresh plant litter in the flooded peats on pore water chemistry and CO2 and CH4 production and emission. The position in the soil profile of the pre-existing drained peat substrate affected initial rates of anaerobic CO2 production subsequent to flooding, with the uppermost peat layer producing the greatest specific rates of CO2 evolution. CH4 production rates depended on the availability of electron acceptors and was significant only when sulfate concentrations were reduced in the pore waters. Very high specific rates of both CO2 (maximum of 412 mg Cd-1 kg(-1) C) and CH4 production (788 mg Cd-1 kg(-1) C) were observed in a new sediment layer that accumulated over the 2.5 years since the site was flooded. This new sediment layer was characterized by overall low C content, but represented a mixture of sand and relatively easily decomposable plant litter from reed canary grass killed by flooding. Samples that excluded this new sediment layer but included intact roots remaining from flooded grasses had specific rates of CO2 (max. 28 mg Cd-1 kg(-1) C) and CH4 (max. 34 mg Cd-1 kg(-1) C) production that were 10-20 times lower than for the new sediment layer and were comparable to those of a newly flooded upper peat layer. Lowest rates of anaerobic CO2 and CH4 production (range of 4-8 mg Cd-1 kg(-1) C and <1 mg C d(-1) kg(-1) C) were observed when all fresh organic matter sources (plant litter and roots) were excluded. In conclusion, the presence of fresh organic substrates such as plant and root litter originating from plants killed by inundation has a high potential for CH4 production, whereas peat without any fresh plant-derived material is relatively inert. Significant anaerobic CO2 and CH4 production in peat only occurs when some labile organic matter is available, e.g. from remaining roots or root exudates.The built environment is not exclusively influenced and shaped by the traditional supply-side and governmental (local and central) authorities. The financial sector has a significant influence on the built environment during the planning, construction, management and refurbishment stages. In particular, it exercises considerable influence on the realization of sustainable development principles in relation to an array of issues: climate change (mitigation and adaptation), energy efficiency, the closing of material cycles, and design and urban development quality. The major actors among financial stakeholders are differentiated and their various roles, interests, motives and options for influencing property and construction markets are analysed. The drivers are identified for increasing financial stakeholders' motivations and actions as positive agents for sustainable development in the built environment. The focus is on specific policy documents, instruments, products and mechanisms along with the supporting data, methods and decision-making processes.The ethical tension over whether countries have differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation evokes the tale of a master and a man. The one who thinks she is the master is analogous to the wealthier, industrialized nations and their market actors, and the human is the rest of humanity, particularly those citizens of less developed countries. Since 1992, there has been formal, stated agreement that there should be differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation between developed and developing nations, but differentiation remained a sticking point in negotiations over implementation at Copenhagen in 2009. Putting the parties in the climate change differentiation debate in analogy with the characters of Tolstoy 's story, "Master and Man," this paper seeks to advance the common appreciation for the moral foundations of differentiation.While the biological and ecological role of agroforestry (AF) on climate change mitigation has received considerable research attention lately, the role of socio-psychological factors in this context has been left largely unexplored. Socio-psychological variables such as culture, demography, economy, and social values play important roles in farmers' decision making with the land management, which in turn influence the ability of AF systems to sequester carbon (C). This chapter presents a case study from Thrissur, Kerala, India, which examined how different socio-psychological factors influence soil C sequestration through land management decisions in tropical homegardens (HGs), a popular agroforestry system in the tropics. This study used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as the theoretical framework to understand homegarden owners' perceptions on the adoption of five land management practices (i.e., tillage, tree planting, plant residue incorporation, manure usage, and fertilizer applications), which are known to impact C sequestration. Data collected using focus group and household interviews were analyzed by regression statistics. Results indicated that farmers' decision making processes were most influenced by factors such as ancestors and education, followed by peers, financial condition, and economic importance of the AF land holding. The results of this case study will not only benefit researchers and extension practitioners, but can also contribute to the policy platform to recognize the role of socio-psychological factors in agricultural decision making.Effectively managing disaster risks is a critical tool for adapting to the impacts of climate change. However, climate change mitigation and low-carbon development have often been overlooked in disaster risk management (DRM) research, policy and practice. This article explores the links between DRM and low-carbon development and thereby sheds light on a new and emerging research and development agenda. Taking carbon considerations into account for DRM and post-disaster reconstruction can contribute to laying the foundations for low-carbon development and the benefits it can bring. It can also provide an opportunity to combine adaptation and mitigation efforts. The article elaborates the carbon implications of DRM interventions and post-disaster reconstruction practices, drawing on case studies from flood risk reduction, coastal protection, drought risk reduction, post-disaster housing and energy supply reconstruction. Finally, the article makes suggestions about how the carbon implications of DRM measures could be accounted for in a coherent manner. Suggestions include calculating the carbon emissions from DRM and post-disaster interventions as part of globally standardized environmental impact assessments and improving the linkages between ministries of environment, energy and climate, and those ministries that deal with disasters.Land degradation and desertification are a real threat to the future of human civilization in addition to being large contributors to the risks of climate change. Iceland has a long history of desertification and land degradation since its settlement by humans about 1,100 years ago. Organized battle against destruction of woodlands and soil erosion in Iceland began with a law that was set in 1907, establishing the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service (ISCS). Experience from the last 100 years shows that the key to success is reaching people through involvement and education using participatory approaches to soil conservation. The current goals of the ISCS are mitigation of land degradation, revegetation of eroded land, and attaining sustainable land use. Climate mitigation through carbon sequestration in soil and vegetation with land restoration and revegetation must give full consideration to multiple goals, including those of the conventions of combating desertification and conserving biological diversity. In Iceland carbon sequestration is regarded as an added benefit of land restoration efforts, but not a goal in itself. Ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration through revegetation demonstrates the synergic effects of land degradation and desertification on other environmental goals.On a global scale, there is increasing evidence that climate is changing and of a discernible human influence. Many of scientists are confident that if current emissions of greenhouse gases continue, the world will be warmer, sea levels will rise and regional climate patterns will change. According to some scientist, global temperatures are expected to rise faster over the next century than over any time during the last 10,000 years. From this token, geothermal energy is now considered to be one of the most important alternative energy sources to minimize climate change. Geothermal technologies for power generation or direct use operate with little or no greenhouse gas emissions. Geothermal energy is generally accepted as being an environmentally-friendly energy source, particularly when compared to fossil fuel energy sources. Geothermal resources have long been used for direct heat extraction for district urban heating, industrial processing, domestic water and space heating, leisure and balneotherapy applications. Geothermal energy is used in more than 80 countries for direct heat application and 24 countries for power generation. Re-injection of fluids maintains a constant pressure in the reservoir, thus increasing the field's life and reducing concerns about environmental impacts. Geothermal energy has several significant characteristics that make it suitable for climate change mitigation.What could be the role of regional and urban planning in reducing greenhouse gas emissions? For some planners, the climate change mitigation is an opportunity to implement policies that they promote since a long time, but whose implementation is fickle: smart growth, public transportation priority and so on. For some scientists, regional and urban planning could only have very indirect and modest effects on greenhouse gas emissions. A scientific literature review on this topic is presented. Many researchers have described and analyzed the links between local or regional characteristics and energy consumption. The present article shows that planning could only indirectly and modestly contribute to climate change mitigation but contributes however to the social acceptance of energy transition.This paper examines the problem of achieving global cooperation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Contributions to this problem are reviewed from noncooperative game theory, cooperative game theory, and implementation theory. We examine the solutions to games where players have a continuous choice about how much to pollute, as well as games where players make decisions about treaty participation. The implications of linking cooperation on climate change with cooperation on other issues, such as trade, are also examined. Cooperative and noncooperative approaches to coalition formation are investigated in order to examine the behavior of coalitions cooperating on climate change. One way to achieve cooperation is to design a game, known as a mechanism, whose equilibrium corresponds to an optimal outcome. This paper examines some mechanisms that are based on conditional commitments, and their policy implications. These mechanisms could make cooperation on climate change mitigation more likely.With the intention to further promote the field of ecological engineering and the solutions it provides, a workshop on "Benefits of Ecological Engineering Practices" was held 3 Dec 2009. It was conducted by the International Ecological Engineering Society in Paris at the conference "Ecological Engineering: from Concepts to Application" organized by the Ecological Engineering Applications Group GAIE. This paper presents the results of the workshop related to three key questions: (1) what are the benefits of ecological engineering practices to human and ecosystem well-being, (2) which concepts are used or useful to identify, reference, and measure the benefits of ecological engineering practices, and (3) how and to whom shall benefits of ecological engineering practices be promoted. While benefits of ecological engineering practices are diverse, general conclusions can be derived to facilitate communication. Identifying benefits requires valuation frameworks reaching beyond the scope of ecology and engineering. A distinction between human and ecosystem well-being in this regard may not be easy or useful, but instead humans embedded in ecosystems should be addressed as a whole. The concepts of resource efficiency, ecosystem services, ecosystem health, and multifunctional land use could serve as suitable references to frame ecological engineering benefits, as well as referring to international political goals such as biodiversity protection, climate change mitigation and poverty reduction. Sector and application specific criteria of good practice could be worked out. Regional, area specific reference systems for sustainable development could provide comparative advantages for ecologically engineered solutions. Besides people with high decision making power and people with high motivation for change are good target groups to be addressed. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Laboratory "Biochemistry and ecology of continental environmentsc 2011 PublishedBiofuels are receiving growing negative attention. Direct and/or indirect land-use changes that result from their cultivation can cause emissions due to carbon losses in soils and biomass and could negate any eventual greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction benefit. This paper evaluates the implications of land-use change emission on the climate-change mitigation potential of different biofuel production systems in 12 case studies in six countries. We calculated carbon debts created by conversion of different land-use types, ranging from annual cropland to primary forest. We evaluated case studies using three different biofuel crops: oil palm, Jatropha, and soybean. The time needed for each biofuel production system to pay back its carbon debt was calculated based on a life-cycle assessment of the GHG reduction potentials of the system. Carbon debts range from 39 to 1743.7 Mg C0(2) ha(-1). The oil palm case studies created the largest carbon debts (472.8-1743.7 t C0(2) ha(-1)) because most of the area expansion came at the expense of dense tropical forest. The highest debt was associated with plantation on peatland. For all cases evaluated, only soybean in Guaranta do Norte and Alta Floresta, Brazil needed less than one human generation (30 years) to repay the initial carbon debt. Highest repayment times were found for Jatropha (76-310 years) and oil palm (59-220 years) case studies. Oil palm established in peatlands had the greatest repayment times (206-220 years). High repayment times for Jatropha resulted from the combined effects of land-cover change and low CO2 emission reduction rate. These outcomes raise serious questions about the sustainability of biofuel production. The carbon implications of conversion of (semi-) natural systems with medium to high biomass indicate that, in order to generate climate benefits, cultivation of biofuel feedstocks should be restricted to areas that already have low carbon content.The 2000s witnessed the rapid expansion of biofuel plantations in the global South in the context of a growing trend of crop plantation expansion. This trend has been spurred by policies in the European Union, United States, Brazil, and other countries favoring the use of biofuels in the transport sector to enhance energy security and reduce carbon emissions, as well as by the desire of governments in developing countries to harness the stimulus that new commercial investments provide to the agricultural sector and to national economies. Despite these potential benefits, a number of concerns have been raised about the local social and environmental impacts of biofuel feedstock expansion. We shed light on this debate through a synthesis of findings from case studies in six biofuel producer countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and a seventh paper exploring the implications of the land-use changes observed in these case studies for the climate mitigation potential of biofuels. We also explore the implications for governing the environmental impacts of biofuel feedstock production, protecting the rights of customary land users, and enabling smallholder-inclusive business models. Our analysis suggests that better governance of the sector's impacts is not the exclusive preserve of unitary sets of actors, but instead requires concerted and coordinated efforts by governments of producer and consumer countries, investors, civil society, and the financial sector to better capture the sector's potential while minimizing its social and environmental costs.High oil prices, recent commitments by industrialized countries to enhance the use of renewable energy, and efforts by developing countries to stimulate foreign investment as a pathway to development have fueled high levels of interest in the biofuel sector throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa. Zambia is no exception. A large, land-locked country with high pump prices and vast tracts of land considered by many to be "degraded" or "underutilized," investor interest in the sector has remained high despite uncertainties associated with unproven feedstocks and market fluctuations. While investment in multiple feedstock and production models may be observed, one of the primary investments has been in jatropha outgrower schemes in which small-scale farmers grow feedstock on contract with domestic and foreign investors. We assess the history and evolution of the largest such scheme in Zambia, as well as the social and environmental impacts in two districts with large numbers of outgrowers. Findings suggest that, although such a production model may hold promise for enhancing rural livelihood benefits from the emerging biofuel sector, to date, small-scale farmers have borne the brunt of the risk and uncertainty that are the trademarks of this emerging industry. We conclude with a discussion of options to minimize forest conversion and protect farmers against high-risk investments, while harnessing the potential of this business model for enhancing rural livelihoods in Zambia and elsewhere.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified a number of soil-management strategies that can be implemented to reduce GHG emissions. However, before deciding which of these strategies are most appropriate in any given situation, it is important to investigate how these strategies affect other aspects of sustainable development. For instance, some attempts to sequester carbon in the landscape could alter the soil's capacity to filter water. Alternatively, other strategies could unintentionally increase net energy consumption through greater fertilizer use. Focusing specifically on opportunities to implement soil-management strategies in the European Union (EU), we discuss the synergies and trade-offs of those strategies with respect to water resources management and energy security. The focus of the analysis is two-fold: first, we analyze the net benefit of strategies such as crop management, nutrient management, tillage and residue management, water management, and bioenergy vis-a-vis their implications for water resources and energy security; second, we undertake an assessment of the EU's relevant policy frameworks to assess whether the potential synergies from various soil-management strategies are being encouraged or, conversely, where perverse outcomes or trade-offs are likely. Our findings suggest there is much scope to encourage soil-management strategies in Europe that would mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but these synergies are currently not fully exploited at the EU policy level. We identify a number of options for better policy integration among the Common Agricultural Policy, the Water Framework Directive, and the Climate Action and Renewable Energy Package.Cultivation of soy for human and animal food has been growing rapidly in Brazil in the last thirty years, and the recent emergence of a biodiesel market in Brazil has stimulated this further. Soy occupies large parts of the Cerrado biome and has now reached the Amazon, and concerns have been raised about both the environmental and social impacts of this. This study combined data from literature with interview surveys in three areas in the soy belt: Sorriso, in the Cerrado; Guaranta do Norte and Alta Floresta, in the transitional zone between the Cerrado and the Amazon biome, and Santarem, which is fully in the Amazon biome, to understand these impacts from the perspective of the soy farmers, the other farmers, and the laborers. From the literature it is clear that at least 80% of the direct deforestation is due to clearance for cattle rearing, and we estimate that 13-18% is due to soy, although less than 6% can be attributed to biodiesel, since most soy is used for other products. In the Amazon biome, the Forest Law, the Soy Moratorium, improved monitoring and the general unsuitability of the land have combined to keep soy cultivation at a low level so far despite the construction of a port at Santarem, which makes this area much more accessible. In the site in the transition area little soybean is cultivated due to unsuitable configuration of land and to transportation costs. In the Cerrado, however, soy has proved itself to be a viable alternative to timber, as well as replacing grazing, which is most likely causing indirect deforestation elsewhere, although this effect could not be measured in this study. More than half of the soy farmers interviewed claimed to have converted grazing land as opposed to forest, although grazing land often contains some secondary forest as well as grassland. In the transition areas, the expectation of farmers is that when transport costs fall due to road improvements, soy will be cultivated in an integrated rotation system on grazing land, improving degraded pastures. Soy farmers, laborers and non-soy farmers all have a positive view of the social impacts of soy, borne out by the fact that average incomes in Sorriso, where there has been an enormous increase in soy production over the last 20 years, are 4.6 times higher than those in Guaranta do Norte, which is still dominated by cattle rearing. The PNPB program, which aims for social inclusion of small family farmers in the production of biofuel feedstock, has succeeded in forcing large soy purchasing companies to assist essentially uneconomic farms and has enabled some small farmers in agrarian reform settlements to profit. However, we found evidence of plots changing hands and being consolidated by farmers with greater skills and capital, resulting in incipient class formation. Moreover, the companies are selective in their choice of agrarian settlement, and were not operating in those in which land holdings are very small or where the terrain is too broken up for large-scale mechanization.The rapidly growing biofuel sector in Africa has, in recent years, been received with divided interest. As part of a contemporary wave of agricultural modernization efforts, it could make invaluable contributions to rural poverty. Conversely, it could also engender socioeconomically and environmentally detrimental land use changes as valuable land resources are converted to plantation agriculture. This research analyzes the impacts and impact pathways of biofuel feedstock development in Ghana. It finds that companies are accessing large contiguous areas of customary land through opaque negotiations with traditional authorities, often outside the purview of government and customary land users. Despite lack of participation, most customary land users were highly supportive of plantation development, with high expectations of 'development' and 'modernization.' With little opposition and resistance, large areas of agricultural and forested land are at threat of being converted to plantation monoculture. A case study analysis shows that this can significantly exacerbate rural poverty as communities lose access to vital livelihood resources. Vulnerable groups, such as women and migrants, are found to be most profoundly affected because of their relative inability in recovering lost livelihood resources. Findings suggest that greater circumspection by government is warranted on these types of large-scale land deals.Three case studies from Mexico are presented in which the impacts of the recent introduction of jatropha cultivation for biodiesel production are examined. In Chiapas and Michoacan, local social and environmental impacts were assessed using interviews with key informants and questionnaires directed at three groups of stakeholders: jatropha cultivators, farmers in the same areas who are not cultivating jatropha, and laborers on jatropha farms. Results show that the farmers are primarily motivated to participate by the subsidies offered in a government program in the first 2 years, rather than any proven economic benefit. Our farm budget study indicated that profits would be marginal for these farmers. However, no cases of land alienation were involved, and impacts on food security and deforestation are currently not significant. Employment opportunities for landless laborers have increased in areas where jatropha is now grown. The program is only in its third year currently, so these outcomes would need to be reexamined as it develops. In Yucatan, production is mainly in the hands of commercial companies, using estates formerly under low-intensity grazing and secondary forest. A carbon balance analysis indicated that there may be a significant loss of carbon stocks associated with jatropha plantation establishment on these estates. Depending on the maturity of the forest regrowth and the intensity of jatropha production, the carbon payback period varies from 2 to 14 years, although, in some scenarios, the carbon debt may never be recovered.This Article identifies and analyzes the obstacles that presently bar the rise of renewables, evaluates the role of the current policy favorite-emission pricing and offers design recommendations for a comprehensive U.S. renewables policy. Successful climate change mitigation requires a timely shift to renewable sources of energy, such as sunlight, wind, or tides, to decarbonize today's high-carbon electricity sector. But market pull alone is not strong enough. This Article discusses the most widely cited economic barriers and identifies and evaluates additional obstacles related to the electricity sector's market structure and regulatory framework. Emission pricing is largely considered the most efficient policy to drive the timely transition to a renewables-based electricity sector. This Article argues that, for political, conceptual, and, most of all, regulatory reasons, emission pricing will not fuel the rise of renewables at the speed necessary for successful climate change mitigation. Rather, a comprehensive renewables policy is required to address each and every one of the existing barriers. Drawing on the policy experience of other sectors and nations, I offer recommendations for the design of a comprehensive U.S. renewables policy. Many of the proposed policy recommendations aim at non-economic barriers, which can be overcome through regulatory intervention. Once these barriers have been removed, policy support for renewables can focus on the remaining economic barriers and, hence, becomes far less costly. In light of the plethora of obstacles to a timely transition to renewables, this Article calls for concerted policy action by scientists, engineers, economists, lawyers, marketers, and educators to fuel the renewables revolution.International carbon offset schemes allow industrialized countries and private entities to offset domestic greenhouse gas emissions by financing climate change mitigation projects in the developing world Large multinational corporations profit from the sale of surplus credits and carbon derivatives on the international carbon market. The Clean Development Mechanism is a compliance-offset scheme established by the Kyoto Protocol and administered by the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board Despite the mechanism's stated objective that projects contribute to sustainable development, corporate investors pursue low-cost emission reductions while imposing a range of environmental and socioeconomic costs on developing countries. Poorly implemented projects damage local biodiversity and displace vulnerable communities. In spite of these concerns, the parties to the Kyoto Protocol are currently considering the proposal for a Clean Development Mechanism appeals procedure. The proposal, if implemented in its current form, would favor project developers by allowing them to appeal adverse decisions of the Executive Board This Article presents an empirical critique of the Clean Development Mechanism's regulatory framework, focusing on access to information, public participation, environmental impact assessment, and access to justice. It argues for strengthened procedural requirements that would boost the mechanism's contribution to sustainable development and would enable non-governmental organizations to adequately scrutinize projects. The parties to the Kyoto Protocol should also grant local stakeholders and non-governmental organizations standing to appeal the registration of projects and the issuance of carbon credits to the impending Clean Development Mechanism Appellate Body. Without such reforms, the United Nations will continue to subsidize the destruction of biological diversity and the marginalization of the poorest communities in the developing world in the name of climate change mitigation.As Southeast Asia has registered an impressive economic growth in recent years, considerable stress to the environment in the form of an increasing level of emissions has also been paramount. Development failed to trickle down and energy poverty remains a significant issue in Asia. While it is important to amend the current emission trajectory and, at the same time, address issues about energy access, a colossal need to mobilize funding is necessary a gap which multilateral development banks are expected to fill. This article explores and assesses the important role the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has in addressing these issues. Drawing on the assessment of ADB Country Strategies and the energy sector portfolio in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, the enquiry reveals, among other things, that only 42% of ADB energy financed projects contain renewable components, and that data on how ADB projects addressed on the issue of energy poverty remains unavailable. On top of the quantitative data presented, this article also presents a critical engagement of ADB's policy environmental assumptions.This paper gives a structured overview about possible contributions of psychology to the climate change debate. As a starting point, it assumes that understanding people's behaviour related to climate change (mitigation and adaptation) is crucial for successfully dealing with the future challenges. Climate change-related behaviour includes voting, support for climate lobbyists, individual consumption, adapting new technology, and taking adaptive actions. A framework model is presented that assumes the following psychological processes to be relevant for people's climate related behaviour (1) experiencing climate change, (2) developing an understanding for climate change, (3) building up knowledge about climate change, (4) emotionally reacting to climate change, (5) the perception of risk, (6) making behavioural decisions, and (7) evaluating behavioural outcomes. Based on psychological theory and empirical findings, it is argued that climate change possesses certain features that make it hard for laypeople to develop an understanding, build correct knowledge, and react emotionally. Furthermore, explanations are presented for why the risk of climate change has a rather low perception among laypeople, and what possible factors there are that interfere with individual mitigation and adaptation. Finally, based on the presented findings, suggestions for climate policy are made.Politicians and high-level officials from all over the world will meet in Copenhagen in December 2009 to reach a global agreement on climate. Mitigation policies aiming at radical cuts in emissions, starting now, deepening over time, and widening their geopolitical coverage, will require domestic and international consensus, if they are to be agreed and implemented in the months and years to come. The paper explores the drivers for adoption of mitigation policies, with a special emphasis on those arising from the International Symposium on Innovative Economic Policies for Climate Change Mitigation, held in July 2009 at the Subiaco Monastery of St Scholastica (Italy). Instead of framing climate change mitigation as a burden, these policies are meant to generate a conducive environment for innovation, profits, employment, wages, and improvement of real quality of life. An exploration of their economic and environmental effectiveness is conducted, together with a limited analysis of possible political factors influencing the decision to adopt them. In the conclusions, the need to reframe the discourse on climate change is put forth for the success of climate negotiations.If climate change mitigation is a right of humanity and planet Earth, "Global Risk", as an index - the combined world political, economic, social and warfare risk that is rapidly resulting from the unparalleled planetary ecological degradation with strategic natural-resource scarcity, over pollution and contamination, drastic climate change, ozone layer depletion, excessive biodiversity loss, as well as nuclear weapons and waste build-up - needs to be thinned down as a political and economic priority of the world to mitigate both climate change and economic recession. It proposes a politically viable and integrative policy framework for a new climate treaty beyond Kyoto to unite all nations in a financially feasible way to achieve global scale climate change mitigation; that is, a fundamental shift in policy and tools, of moving out of a cost approach towards a profit-seeking one for the gradual build-up of the "Green Capitalist Economy", through vital enhancements of the Kyoto Protocol, including capital market instruments such as the "Ecological" stock in the climate change mitigation process within the short term, so that there will be no reason to wait until after 2012 to start profiting within the climate change mitigation process.Voluntary initiatives undertaken across private and public sectors have enabled innovative national and regional ICT practices, however fragmented and localized in scope these collaborations are. Policy proposals for an enabling environment have emerged from the voluntary actors, highlighting the need for a framework to spur adoption of carbon-friendly ICT practices. By exploring the links between ICT and climate change, this paper intends to highlight the policy gaps that exist to enable a wider use of ICT for climate change solutions. The study explores the potentials of climate change mainstreaming into global ICT policy platforms at the ITU, as it moves towards a framework regarding ICTs and climate change. A combination of supply and demand side policy analysis identified the forces that present both risk and opportunity for ITU to become a more meaningful player in this context. It was identified that ITU can enable greater coherence and catalysis among stakeholders and policy areas given the potentials across climate change mitigation, monitoring, and adaptation.Purpose: REDD is being criticized on several fronts and thus, there is a need for an integrated, comprehensive paradigm that incorporates emissions reduction, biodiversity conservation, and community development, and is leveraged towards sustainability in forests and livelihoods rather than narrower goals such as emissions reduction or conservation. Design/methodology/approach: A SWOT analysis of REDD is conducted and based on the results of the analysis, a new framework is proposed. Findings: Although REDD has enormous potential to not just reduce emissions but also provide significant co-benefits, there has also been criticism on various fronts. A new theoretical framework with carbon, conservation, and community as the three pillars has been proposed. Originality/value: The paper proposes a new paradigm that addresses GHG emission reduction, conservation of forests and biodiversity, community livelihoods support, and valuation of environmental services provided by forests. Forests, covering one-third of the earth's surface, are home to more than half of the biodiversity on earth, provide multiple ecosystem services, and contribute to more than a billion livelihoods globally. However, forests have largely been mismanaged and remain one of the key challenges in international as well as national policy and governance. The dual role of forests in climate change, both as a source and sink of GHG emissions, adds to the urgency for action. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is being intensely discussed for its likely role in climate change mitigation. The argument had originated with avoided deforestation, subsequently broadened to REDD and is currently being discussed around REDD+, an indication that there is more to this debate than just incentivizing emissions reduction. Although REDD has enormous potential to not just reduce emissions but also provide significant co-benefits, there has also been criticism on various fronts. The author proposes the climate, community, conservation, and sustainability (C3S) paradigm which would include objectives such as GHG emissions reduction, valuation of environmental services provided by forests, conservation of forests and biodiversity, and community livelihoods support.Ocean iron fertilization is currently being discussed as one measure that could contribute to climate change mitigation by stimulating the growth of phytoplankton in certain parts of the ocean and enhancing oceanic CO2 uptake. Its implementation is greatly debated however and its mitigation potential has not yet been explored well. At present, it is still not possible to use carbon offsets generated through iron fertilization projects for complying with the Kyoto Protocol as trading these offsets is currently only possible on voluntary carbon markets. Company interests in such a commercial use of ocean iron fertilization do however already exist. Consequently, there is a need to explore the potential of ocean iron fertilization as a climate change mitigation option as well as regulatory issues connected with its implementation. This article combines these two aims by first examining the scientific background, quantitative potential, side effects and costs of ocean iron fertilization. In a second step, regulatory aspects such as its legal status and open access issues are reviewed. Moreover, the chapter analyses how the regulations for afforestation and reforestation activities within the framework of the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) could be applied to ocean iron fertilization. The main findings of this chapter are that the quantitative potential of ocean iron fertilization is limited, that potential adverse side effects are severe, and that its costs are higher than it was initially hoped. Moreover, the legal status of ocean iron fertilization is currently not well defined, open access might cause inefficiencies, and the CDM regulations could not be easily applied to ocean iron fertilization.Coal is inexpensive, plentiful and will continue to play a major role in the global energy system for the foreseeable future with currently 40% of the world's electricity generated by coal. Climate change mitigation policies and measures will also continue to place stricter caps on emission of greenhouse gases. This paper is based on two TEA Clean Coal Centre reports that analyze what role clean coal technologies (CCTs) can play in a world where carbon emissions are constrained. The paper analyses economic instruments that could accelerate the implementation of CCTs. The paper's technical focus is on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. From a scenario analysis involving major world regions it appears that CCT technologies have a significant potential for climate change mitigation. The paper puts forward the premise that for CCTs the Kyoto Protocol and emissions trading has failed to fulfil this potential. The role and design of emission trading schemes is critical in encouraging CCTs implementation. The current post-2012 climate policy regime proposals involving CCS are unlikely to encourage rapid deployment of CCTs. A separate technology agreement specifically targeting CCTs is also put forward in this paper as another option to accelerate the implementation of CCTs and in particular CCS.Many policy-makers view nuclear power as a mitigation for climate change. Efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, however, interact with existing and new nuclear power plants, and these installations must contend with dilemmas between adaptation and mitigation. This paper develops five criteria to assess the adaptation-mitigation dilemma on two major points: (1) the ability of nuclear power to adapt to climate change and (2) the potential for nuclear power operation to hinder climate change adaptation. Sea level rise models for nine coastal sites in the United States, a review of US Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents, and reports from France's nuclear regulatory agency provided insights into issues that have arisen from sea level rise, shoreline erosion, coastal storms, floods, and heat waves. Applying the criteria to inland and coastal nuclear power plants reveals several weaknesses. Safety stands out as the primary concern at coastal locations, while inland locations encounter greater problems with interrupted operation. Adapting nuclear power to climate change entails either increased expenses for construction and operation or incurs significant costs to the environment and public health and welfare. Mere absence of greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficient to assess nuclear power as a mitigation for climate change. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a September 2010 media release the Prime Minister of Australia presented the terms of reference for the newly established Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. Although the Committee is charged with considering climate change mitigation measures in general, specifically the Committee must consider an appropriate mechanism for the establishment of a carbon price. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the mechanisms to be considered by the Climate Change Committee, including the use of emissions trading and carbon levies in other jurisdictions. This article argues that for any effective investigation of a carbon price for Australia to occur, a thorough knowledge of other jurisdictions' methods for carbon pricing is essential.After struggling for decades to get climate change mitigation onto the political agenda, environmentalists now not only find themselves enmeshed in internal conflict over how to proceed, but also find these conflicts themselves functioning to delay or forestall necessary action. Reframing climate change as an energy systems - rather than an emissions reduction problem allows us to see why these conflicts have arisen and what is at stake in them. This argument is illustrated through an examination of climate and energy politics in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Taking an energy systems perspective reveals both the complexity and importance of the political terrain activated by climate change: how societies reshape energy systems in response to climate change will have profound implications not only for their ecological impact but also for their political and social character.That climate change mitigation strategies may disproportionately affect rural people and communities is evidenced by the introduction of water mitigation policies in Australia. The significant consequences of water policy for irrigation farming families and communities in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin - the food bowl of Australia - are outlined. This policy emerges from a hierarchical model of governance and has resulted in uneven and perverse outcomes for people in rural areas. Lack of attention to metagovernance and a misplaced trust in the water market has left rural people and communities vulnerable to significant stress and disaffection, impacting on their resilience and adaptability to change. A partnership model of governance is suggested to guide climate change mitigation policies to ensure that the capacity of rural people and communities to adapt to significant change is enhanced rather than eroded.Facing great pressure of economic growth and energy crisis, China pays much attention to the renewable energy. Renewable energy development is one of the main targets of the Chinese government on the way to the sustainable development and climate change mitigation. China's energy policy target is to reach 15.4% renewable energy share by 2020 and 27.5% by 2050. China's total installed electrical power capacity reached 700 GW by the end of 2007 and is predicted to surpass 900 GW in 2010. A similar goal exists for the solar photovoltaic power sector which China intends to increase generating capacity from 0.14 GW as of 2009 to over 1.8 GW by 2020. In order to achieve this target, the Government has implemented many instruments from laws and policies and financial incentives. The paper gives introduction to the present situation of the solar energy development in China and overviews the main policies that China uses to promote and develop the solar energy. Also, the suggestions for the further development of solar energy technologies in China are given.Physical, chemical and bacteriological analyses of water samples from three boreholes located near a landfill at Akure, Nigeria was carried out to ascertain the magnitude of dumpsite pollution on groundwater quality. Borehole locations were at radial distances of 50m, 80m, and 100m respectively away from the landfill. The parameters determined included; turbidity, temperature, pH, Dissolved oxygen (DO), total dissolved solids (TDS), Total Hardness, Total Iron, Nitrate, Nitrite, Chloride, Calcium and heavy metals such as Copper, Zinc and Lead using standard laboratory procedures. Most of these parameters indicated traceable pollution but were below the World Health Organization (WHO) limit for consumption. The pH ranged from 5.7 to 6.8 indicating toxic pollution, turbidity values were between 1.6 and 6.6 NTU and temperature ranged from 26.5 to 27.5 degrees C. Concentrations of iron, nitrate, nitrite and calcium ranged from 0.9 to 1.4 mg L-1, 30 to 61 mg L-1, 0.7 to 0.9 mg L-1 and 17 to 122 mg L-1 respectively. For heavy metals, zinc ranged between 0.3 and 2.3 mg L-1 and lead ranged from 1.1 to 1.2 mg L-1. Statistical analyses indicated significant differences at 95% level. The results showed that all but one of the boreholes was strongly polluted but require urgently certain levels of treatment before use. Public enlightenment on waste sorting, adoption of clean technology, using climate change mitigation strategies and the use of sanitary landfill to prevent further contamination of ground water flow are recommended.Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is currently given high priority as one of the means to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The purpose of this study is to examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are related to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation as a climate change mitigation strategy. REDD can contribute to funding sustainable forest management, carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. However, the amount of mitigation that REDD can achieve is limited. Furthermore, REDD is limited by its funding mechanism and geographical and sectoral leakages. Success in REDD may result in unintended effects such as increased human/wildlife conflicts as a result of increase in abundance of animals due to better conserved habitat and more severe accidental fires due to accumulated fuel loads as a result of fire prevention. Poor governance may lead to inequality in the distribution of benefits and costs of REDD. In spite of these weaknesses of REDD, most developing countries are willing to participate in REDD. There is also a lot that can be learnt from previous conservation and development initiatives that can benefit REDD. However, the success of REDD will largely depend on political stability and the continued interest of the international community in climate change mitigation. This is the first article to explicitly analyse REDD in the light of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Existing literature has so far only discussed these aspects of REDD as part of general discussions on REDD, without explicitly naming them as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Naming the aspects as such informs policy more directly.Requirements for research, practices and policies affecting soil management in relation to global food security are reviewed. Managing soil organic carbon (C) is central because soil organic matter influences numerous soil properties relevant to ecosystem functioning and crop growth. Even small changes in total C content can have disproportionately large impacts on key soil physical properties. Practices to encourage maintenance of soil C are important for ensuring sustainability of all soil functions. Soil is a major store of C within the biosphere - increases or decreases in this large stock can either mitigate or worsen climate change. Deforestation, conversion of grasslands to arable cropping and drainage of wetlands all cause emission of C; policies and international action to minimise these changes are urgently required. Sequestration of C in soil can contribute to climate change mitigation but the real impact of different options is often misunderstood. Some changes in management that are beneficial for soil C. increase emissions of nitrous oxide (a powerful greenhouse gas) thus cancelling the benefit. Research on soil physical processes and their interactions with roots can lead to improved and novel practices to improve crop access to water and nutrients. Increased understanding of root function has implications for selection and breeding of crops to maximise capture of water and nutrients. Roots are also a means of delivering natural plant-produced chemicals into soil with potentially beneficial impacts. These include biocontrol of soil-borne pests and diseases and inhibition of the nitrification process in soil (conversion of ammonium to nitrate) with possible benefits for improved nitrogen use efficiency and decreased nitrous oxide emission. The application of molecular methods to studies of soil organisms, and their interactions with roots, is providing new understanding of soil ecology and the basis for novel practical applications. Policy makers and those concerned with development of management approaches need to keep a watching brief on emerging possibilities from this fast-moving area of science. Nutrient management is a key challenge for global food production: there is an urgent need to increase nutrient availability to crops grown by smallholder farmers in developing countries. Many changes in practices including inter-cropping, inclusion of nitrogen-fixing crops, agroforestry and improved recycling have been clearly demonstrated to be beneficial: facilitating policies and practical strategies are needed to make these widely available, taking account of local economic and social conditions. In the longer term fertilizers will be essential for food security: policies and actions are needed to make these available and affordable to small farmers. In developed regions, and those developing rapidly such as China, strategies and policies to manage more precisely the necessarily large flows of nutrients in ways that minimise environmental damage are essential. A specific issue is to minimise emissions of nitrous oxide whilst ensuring sufficient nitrogen is available for adequate food production. Application of known strategies (through either regulation or education), technological developments, and continued research to improve understanding of basic processes will all play a part. Decreasing soil erosion is essential, both to maintain the soil resource and to minimise downstream damage such as sedimentation of rivers with adverse impacts on fisheries. Practical strategies are well known but often have financial implictions for farmers. Examples of systems for paying one group of land users for ecosystem services affecting others exist in several parts of the world and serve as a model. (C) 2010 Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mangrove plays a significant role in climate change mitigation particularly in carbon absorption and minimizing the detrimental impacts of sea level rise, salt-water intrusion and tidal surges. In Bohol Province, Philippines, a small coastal island community known as Banacon is one of the successful cases in mangrove reforestation. Recognizing the site's potential for a carbon sequestration project, a biomass and carbon stock assessment of mangrove trees was done. Using standard sampling techniques and allometric equations, tree carbon storage was measured across stand ages, namely 15-,20-and 40-year-old plantations. Mature natural stands were also included in the assessment. By estimate, the 40-year-old plantation has the largest carbon density with 370.7 ton ha(-1), followed by the 15- year-old plantation with 208.5 ton ha(-1), 20-year-old plantation with 149.5 ton ha(-1), and lastly by natural stand with 145.6 ton ha(-1). Overall, Banacon mangroves are in a vigorous condition of storing vast amount of carbon. Local community and government should therefore sustain their commitment in coastal reforestation activities in order to enhance the mangrove carbon stocks. Policies and programs that can help provide incentives and livelihoods to local people who are largely dependent on mangroves should likewise be explored in order to sustainably reap the economic and ecological benefits of conserving mangrove forest.Many ecologically important, five-needle white pine forests that historically dominated the high elevation landscapes of western North America are now being heavily impacted by mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus spp.) outbreaks, the exotic disease white pine blister rust (WPBR), and altered high elevation fire regimes. Management intervention using specially designed strategic treatments will be needed to conserve these keystone species. The goal of this intervention is to promote self-sustaining five-needle white pine ecosystems that have both resilience to disturbances and genetic resistance to white pine blister rust. Many tools and methods are available for land managers. In this paper we outline important steps for implementation of restoration treatments in declining high elevation white pine stands and discuss a number of proactive treatments in threatened ecosystems to mitigate adverse impacts of rust, beetles, and lack of fire. These steps for restoration include (1) create a strategy for restoration across multiple scales, (2) develop materials and techniques for conducting restoration treatments, such as seed collections and rust resistance assessments of the genetic material, (3) prioritize stands or landscapes by integrating the strategy with other management issues, administrative barriers, climate change mitigation, and other local concerns, (4) implement silvicultural cuttings and prescribed fire according to landscape and stand level strategies, (5) conduct activities and assessments to enhance and ensure restoration treatments are effective including planting rust-resistant pine seedlings and protecting valuable seed-sources, and finally (6) monitor treated landscape and stands for effects and adjust and modify future treatment designs accordingly. Examples from whitebark pine ecosystems in the northern Rocky Mountains will be presented to demonstrate this process. For those high elevation white pine ecosystems that are threatened by white pine blister rust or mountain pine beetle, there are actions that can be taken proactively to gain necessary information to evaluate risk and prepare landscapes for invasion to mitigate future impacts. The proactive strategy includes: (1) educate and engage the public and managers to shift from crisis management to management for resiliency, (2) conserve genetic diversity from native populations before they are impacted by WPBR or other stresses, (3) conduct research on patterns, processes and responses of native ecosystems to provide process level understanding of ecosystem behavior and (4) develop and conduct appropriate management activities to increase the resiliency of high elevation five-needle pine ecosystems to prepare them for change. Whether it is restoring impacted landscapes or interventions to mitigate the development of impacts on threatened landscapes, there are two important factors that will govern the success of these species even with comprehensive and effective rangewide strategies: (1) the magnitude of resources available over time to conduct restoration efforts, and (2) the commitment of natural resource agencies to conduct restoration activities over the long term, most likely for many decades to centuries.The international mechanism for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) supposedly offers new opportunities for combining climate mitigation, conservation of the environment, and socio-economic development for development countries. In Laos REDD is abundantly promoted by the government and development agencies as a potential option for rural development. Yet, basic information for carbon management is missing: to date no knowledge is available at the national level on the quantities of carbon stored in the Lao landscapes. In this study we present an approach for spatial assessment of vegetation-based carbon stocks. We used Google Earth, Landsat and MODIS satellite imagery and refined the official national land cover data to assess carbon stocks. Our study showed that more than half (52%) of carbon stock of Laos is stored in natural forests, but that 70% of this stock is located outside of national protected areas. On the basis of two carbon-centered land use scenarios we calculated that between 30 and 40 million tons of carbon could be accumulated in shifting cultivation areas; this is less than 3% of the existing total stock. Our study suggests that the main focus of REDD in Laos should be on the conservation of existing carbon stocks, giving highest priority to the prevention of deforestation outside of national protected areas.Wetlands are highly productive ecosystems that provide a number of "life-supporting" services of significant value to mankind. Flood control, groundwater replenishment, sediment retention, water purification, recreation, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation, are just a few of the many valuable ecosystem services that wetlands provide. Despite these benefits, owing to the poorly understood economic value of these services, policy decisions are taken without considering them in the planning process. As a result wetlands are not only used but overused, misused and abused. This paper demonstrates the relevance of adopting an integrated approach, comprising wetland modelling based on water-quality parameters, to understand the dynamics of the ecosystem, followed by the estimation of economic benefits among various stakeholders and the exploration of incentive-based mechanisms and their role in the alleviation of poverty. These elements of a toolkit for wetland management will help planners and policy makers to make informed decisions for the sustainable management of Bhoj Wetland.Pressure is mounting from both ends of the power system on global system controllers. From the supply side they must deal with the implications of government-led climate change mitigation strategies; and on the demand side, new energy intensive technologies such as electric vehicles promise to drastically re-shape residential electricity demand profiles. Concurrently, controllers are faced with an ageing distribution network which is placing an aggressive cap on instantaneous and average power capacity. Some tools that system controllers can use to deal with this pressure are distributed energy generation, distributed energy storage and demand-side management. This situation provides researchers with an opportunity to innovate to shape the power system of the future. One option is the concept of the distributed generation demand control (DGDC) community or home. This paper offers a simulation platform upon which new energy management techniques for a DGDC system can be designed, built and tested with flexibility and ease.Since the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 bilateral and multilateral donors have stressed that development assistance has increasingly been oriented towards climate-friendly interventions. With respect to energy aid, this should lead to a substantial increase in projects related to renewable energy and energy efficiency. Given a new database of hundreds of thousands of bilateral development assistance projects, we can assess whether such a reorientation has indeed taken place. We find that, contrary to expectations, the share of bilaterally-funded renewable energy and energy efficiency projects did not increase over the period from 1980 to 2008. This share fluctuated greatly, following the price of oil, peaking with the second oil crisis of the early 1980s. The impacts of global climate policy treaties are minor or inexistent. 'Traditional' renewable energies such as hydro and geothermal declined, while 'new' renewables showed two peaks in the early 1980s and late 1990s. Differences between donor countries are huge. Several countries, including climate sceptics such as the US and Australia, but also the UK and Switzerland, saw a consistent decline. The self-proclaimed climate pioneers such as Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden show peaks related to both the oil crises and international climate policy. Only in Austria, Denmark, Finland and Spain can 'new' climate mitigation development assistance be found.This paper applies insights from behavioural economics literature to design options in climate policy in order to make suggestions on how to create and pass effective climate regulation. It posits that policymakers can have a more comprehensive toolkit for tackling climate change by utilising knowledge of flawed human behaviour. It makes three main suggestions. First, when pricing carbon, the use of policy bundling helps to counter cognitive biases such as 'loss aversion'. Second, financial incentives are required for clean tech and renewable energy sectors to become competitive with traditional energy markets. Third, climate policy needs to target the finance sector, particularly the banking industry, to encourage capital flow to these alternative energy markets. In this way, effective climate policy may have a nudging effect on a spectrum of decision-makers, with the net benefit of facilitating climate change mitigation and timely transition to a low-carbon global economy.Cities are facing considerable challenges resulting from imminent climate change impacts. Urban planning to minimise adverse impacts of climate change at the city level can establish a climate-resilient city. Mitigation strategies to reduce CO2 emissions would lead to a climate-friendly city. Integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation into sustainable city planning should not be merely added as a single level of sustainable city planning, but requires a wide range of multi-level cooperation. Lijiang City has experienced climatic change during the last half century, and its CO2 emissions have increased faster than the GDP growth. Nearby glaciers on Yulong Snow Mountain have been retreating and losing mass since the early twentieth century. In this paper, we identify economic sectors that are vulnerable to climate change, including tourism, agriculture and water supply, and propose mitigation and adaptation strategies to cope with climate change in this tourism city. As energy use is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, renewable energy has enormous CO2 reduction potential. Land use practices, a sectoral approach and public participation are all considered adaptive in climate planning. The proposals outlined are valuable as they provide an understanding of how to implement integrated climate planning and integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation into sustainable city planning.This review provides an insight for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology implementation possibilities in the niche of coal power generation plants. A brief explanation of the technology is necessary for understanding the technological and economic constraints affecting successful implementation. Barriers and opportunities for the technology are addressed, and the advantages for achieving climate change mitigation goals are discussed. Possible solutions to protect the technology and its implementation support are provided as well. This study maintains that international collaboration, government incentives, a positive investment climate, public awareness, and learning by doing experiments are needed to ensure that CCS technology operates successfully within coal power plants. Based on the conducted review, we conclude that renewable energy technologies must be developed rapidly and implemented as soon as possible; and until that time, CCS technology can provide a temporary solution by contributing to climate change mitigation plans.The extension of rotation lengths in forests has been proposed as an option for increasing carbon storage and contributing to climate change mitigation. This paper presents the results of a case study conducted on forests located in the southwest of France. The aim of this research was to assess the cost effectiveness of a subsidy/tax system on carbon fluxes. First, it is shown that such a mechanism leads forest owners to extend rotation lengths. However, cost effectiveness analysis shows that: (1) marginal social costs are more expensive than the private marginal costs of carbon sequestration: (2) marginal costs are higher when carbon stocks are discounted, ranging from 170.1 (sic)/tC to 719.8 (sic)/tC with discounted carbon stocks; and from 38.8 (sic)/tC to 78.4 (sic)/tC with undiscounted carbon stocks; (3) marginal costs are in the range of measures of the social value of carbon for France; (4) marginal costs increase with timber prices and increase with discount rate. (C) 2011 Department of Forest Economics, SLU UmeA, Sweden. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.In the absence of federal requirements, how do state- and municipal-level characteristics impact the probability of local policy innovation? This article provides insight by examining the adoption of sub-national climate change mitigation initiatives in the United States. Drawing from literature on policy innovation, a multilevel model is developed to examine the factors influencing over 900 U.S. cities to eschew free-rider tendencies and formally commit to greenhouse gas reduction. Multilevel analysis recognizes the nested structure of cities within states and accounts for the shared economic, political, and policy environments experienced by cities within the same state. The level of initiative state governments have taken toward climate protection varies considerably, and the influence of different state policies on related local decisions is empirically examined. Results are consistent with hypotheses derived from the innovation literature and suggest local-level characteristics are the dominant drivers of cities' decisions to commit to climate protection.Reducing the level of greenhouse gases (GHGs) entering the atmosphere has become a priority for international agencies and national governments in their attempts to avoid costly and catastrophic climate change (Garnaut 2008; IPCC 2007; Stem 2007; World Bank 2010). As conditions of production enabling industrial activity to occur without due consideration of the social and environmental impacts loses its legitimacy, GHG-intensive industries are coming under mounting pressure to reduce emissions and adopt more environmentally sustainable organisational practices. Changes to the conditions of production have implications for business owners, workers, trade unions, and labour processes in GHG-intensive industries. Researchers have documented both supportive and oppositional responses to climate change mitigation policies from the organisational interests found in these 'polluting' industries (Aras and Crowther 2009; Blair and Hitchcock 2001; Browne 2002; Dunn 2003; Gelbspan 2004; Leggett 2001; Goodell 2007; Monbiot 2007). These observations contribute to theoretical and conceptual challenges for understanding and explaining the behaviour of the organisational actors in such industries. This paper discusses these theoretical challenges and empirically considers them in relation to corporate and union responses to attempts by Australian governments to phase out a proportion of the country's coal-fired electricity power generators. A critical realist perspective is presented as offering an alternative approach to conceptualising the dilemmas, constraints, and opportunities for corporate and trade union actors in contributing to action on climate change and identifying where their roles and capacities diverge.The potential of agriculture, forestry, and other land uses to sequester carbon offers a powerful tool for controlling the global climate regime, but practices capable of creating 'collateral' benefits for landscape conservation have thus far been disregarded. This paper calls for greater integration of scattered trees into agricultural landscapes, hypothesizing that agroforestry practices effectively store carbon and deliver other important ecosystem services as well. Several agroforests from the Upper Lusatia area in eastern Germany have been selected for analysis. They cover relatively large areas of land (8.2%), even within this intensively used agricultural landscape, and their extent increased from 1964-2008 by 19.4%. Practices of conserving or promoting six agroforest classes are compared with a catalogue of essential properties for becoming effective 'carbon offset projects'. Criteria from mandatory and voluntary carbon markets for carbon sequestration are then applied (additionality, baselines, permanence, and carbon leakage). The study concludes that steps towards realization of 'carbon sequestration projects' should include collecting empirical evidence regarding the carbon sequestration potential of temperate agroforestry systems, developing localized demonstration projects, and upscaling these projects to participate in established carbon markets.Urban sustainability issues including climate change mitigation and adaptation, ecological enhancement and livability initiatives have become the rhetorical focus and rationale of many plans and policy documents created by American cities in the last decade. This paper analyses the recent environmentally focused plans for three largest cities of USA to determine how and if their strategies to protect the natural environment engage with the holistic nature of sustainable development strategies promulgated in the literature. Despite the mainstreaming of the sustainability concept, the research shows that these much-lauded and emulated plans largely fail to substantively engage with a fully realised holistic approach, failing to adequately address issues of equitable economic development and environmental justice in their attempts to create a more environmentally sustainable city. The lack of attention paid to such issues suggests not merely that they are perceived as being separate from environmental objectives, but that in some cases they may be seen as oppositional, particularly when contrasted with the way that environmental issues are seen to converge with global city and overall economic development aspirations.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate local climate change mitigation planning in California with the goal of understanding how the relationships between the state, the local air agencies, and the localities within their jurisdictions shape the willingness and capacity of local communities to plan for climate change mitigation through greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Design/methodology/approach - The research: analyses documents relating to localities' climate change mitigation planning activities, including the production of action plans, general plan elements, emissions inventories, or official resolutions supporting mitigation planning, establishment of partnerships with other governmental and non-governmental organizations, and development of community input processes and planning committee membership and structure. It also involves measurement and descriptive analysis of variables capturing: local air agencies' institutional character, orientation regarding climate change policymaking, and mitigation planning activities and programs; and localities' mitigation planning processes and policies, institutional and demographic characteristics, and relationships with other sub-state entities working on climate change mitigation. Findings - Intergovernmental partnerships can powerfully impact localities' technical and financial capacities for pursuing climate change mitigation planning. This exploratory study points to the potential for strong leadership by air quality control agencies to greatly influence the decision of localities within their jurisdictions to engage in voluntary mitigation planning. Furthermore, decentralized collaboration does not prevent, and may encourage, policy harmonization through localities' widespread reliance on the technical assistance from specialized non-governmental organizations. Practical implications - Findings might enable advocates of local-level climate change mitigation planning to target their resources for maximal returns in terms of geographic policy coverage and pledged GHG emissions reductions. Theoretically, this study contributes to discussions on the relationship between the quality of policy outputs and various forms of environmental governance. Originality/value - Climate change mitigation planning in the USA is in a formative stage. In fact, the authors found that even the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) must work continuously and with imperfect data to compile a list of the state's local-level mitigation planning efforts. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge of local planning policy innovations in California and highlights the importance of leadership from the regional scale for city-level engagement with mitigation planning.Using a map overlay procedure in a Geographical Information System environment, we quantify and map major land use and land cover (LULC) change patterns in Uganda period 1990-2005 and determine whether the transitions were random or systematic. The analysis reveals that the most dominant systematic land use change processes were deforestation (woodland to subsistence farmland-3.32%); forest degradation (woodland to bushland (4.01%) and grassland (4.08%) and bush/grassland conversion to cropland (5.5%) all resulting in a net reduction in forests (6.1%). Applying an inductive approach based on logistic regression and trend analyses of observed changes we analyzed key drivers of LULC change. Significant predictors of forest land use change included protection status, market access, poverty, slope, soil quality and presence/absence of a stream network. Market access, poverty and population all decreased the log odds of retaining forests. In addition, poverty also increased the likelihood of degradation. An increase in slope decreased the likelihood of deforestation. Using the stock change and gain/loss approaches we estimated the change in forest carbon stocks and emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Results indicate a negligible increase in forest carbon stocks (3,260 t C yr-1) in the period 1990-2005 when compared to the emissions due to deforestation and forest degradation (2.67 million t C yr-1). In light of the dominant forest land use change patterns, the drivers and change in carbon stocks, we discuss options which could be pursued to implement a future national REDD plus strategy which considers livelihood, biodiversity and climate change mitigation objectives.The utilisation of microalgal biomass as feedstock for bioethanol production has been very promising owing to the large amounts of carbohydrates embedded in the physiology of the microalgal cell. This is coupled with the potential of microalgae to achieve targets required for high growth rate bioethanol production, climate change mitigation and economic growth. The high content of complex carbohydrates entrapped in the cell wall of the microalgae makes it essential to incorporate a pre-treatment stage to release and convert these complex carbohydrates into simple sugars prior to the fermentation process. Hence, this study explores the influence of acid exposure as a microalgal pre-treatment strategy for bioethanol production. Different parameters were investigated: acid concentration, temperature, microalgae loading and pre-treatment time. A central composite design technique was employed to optimize the acid pre-treatment conditions. Results showed that the highest bioethanol concentration obtained was 7.20 g/L and this was achieved when the pre-treatment step was performed with 15 g/L of microalgae at 140 degrees C using 1% (v/v) of sulphuric acid for 30 min. In terms of ethanol yield, similar to 52 wt% (g ethanol/g microalgae) maximum was obtained using 10 g/L of microalgae and 3% (v/v) of sulphuric acid under 160 degrees C for 15 min. The statistical analysis revealed amongst the parameters investigated that temperature is the most critical factor during acid pre-treatment of microalgae for bioethanol production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rangeland ecosystems are capable of providing an array of ecosystem services important to the wellbeing of society. Some of these services (e. g. meat, fibre) are transported to markets and their quantity, quality and value are established via a set of widely accepted standards. Other services (e. g. climate mitigation, water quality, wildlife habitat) do not leave the land, but are, in fact, most valuable when they remain in situ. Determining their quantity, quality and value presents a challenge that must be met if there is to be a credible, accessible ecosystem services market for rangelands. In this paper we describe some of the ecosystem services that may be extracted from rangelands, discuss their unique ecological nature and relate those unique ecological properties to soil and vegetation attributes that can serve as a basis for measurement, both quality and quantity. We suggest the use of a soil/vegetation-based system in which similar climate, geomorphology and edaphic properties are grouped into ecological sites based on their response to disturbance. Within each ecological site, a unique state and transition model describes the dynamics of vegetation and soil surface properties, provides state indicators (vegetation structure, soil properties), predicts ecosystem services that may be derived at multiple scales, and organises information related to management to achieve ecosystem service objectives, including sustainability.This article presents a literature review to discuss some new technological options for climate change mitigation called as Geoengineering and the environmental impacts related to aerosol emissions. Some proposals to produce a cooler effect in the Earth surface at short term are defending the injection of a large quantity of aerosol particles in the stratosphere like a "virtual Pinatubo". In 15 June 1991 a volcanic eruption of the Pinatubo Mount in Philippines resulted in around -0.5 degrees C variation in Earth surface temperature in 1992 and only in 1995 the temperature returned back to the former one. Several important environmental issues arise from this kind of mitigation proposal. Some of the topics which may be considered relevant in such analysis are: the level of acceptable risk of this kind of technological option for the human and the environment as a whole; the foreseen linear and non-linear impacts resultant from the artificial cooling effect in the Earth surface; the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of this kind of proposals. The environmental problems associated to aerosols injections into the stratosphere are the main topic discussed in the present article. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increase of greenhouse gases has lead to climate change. This has a serious impact on the ecological balance of the planet. A decisive step in order to address this problem is to implement the use of renewable energy sources (RES) such as solar, aeolian, geothermal and other forms of energy. This study refers to the installations of photovoltaic systems in school units within the framework of national existing legislation and European Union (EU) directives. The case study that has been chosen in this report is the school units in Greece which has had operating photovoltaic systems installed. More specifically the research focuses on the benefits arising from the use of photovoltaic systems showing to what degree they can contribute to reducing greenhouse gases. The survey shows that the installation of photovoltaic systems in schools units contributes greatly to saving energy, reducing costs for energy consumption, protecting natural sources and thereby has a favourable effect on climate change mitigation. On the other hand, the research also shows that potentially windy areas should be preferred to invest in construction of aeolian parks, where it is possible, rather than installing photovoltaic systems in school units. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Numerous recommendations are emerging to guide cities in developing risk assessments and climate adaptation plans. In some instances, these recommendations are appropriate. However, since many are drawn from traditional approaches to comprehensive planning and from climate mitigation programs, they often do not account for the unique challenges associated with urban adaptation or provide guidance that is sensitive to the distinctive social, cultural, institutional, and administrative characteristics of particular locales. In this paper, which captures a panel discussion convened at the Resilient Cities Congress 2010, expert practitioners and academics review emerging wisdom about best practices in adaptation planning, draw on their experience and research findings to challenge these assumptions, and show what we can learn about process and outcomes from cities at the forefront.In many instances, climate impacts magnify the existing needs of businesses and local populations, and multiply their vulnerabilities. Strategies to reduce vulnerability are therefore increasingly placed within the broader context of social, economic and environmental policies. Within the narrower context of climate policy, co-benefits and co-costs of mitigation and adaptation have begun to inform investment and policy decisions. This paper explores mitigation and adaptation co-benefits and co-costs for a range of investment and policy cases for the coastal state of Maryland, USA.Energy cropping based around woody native plants has attracted attention as a future land use option for rural Australia, with mallee eucalypts a particular focus. Potential benefits could include income for landholders, climate change mitigation and adaptation, enhanced energy security and revegetation of degraded or vulnerable land. However, the success or otherwise of this prospective industry ultimately depends on its adoption by rural landholders. Due to the unique position of woody energy cropping at the intersection of the agriculture, plantation forestry and energy sectors, its adoption is influenced by issues arising within each of these sectors, as well as by those emerging within this overlap zone. This paper explores landholder adoption issues relating to the production of blue mallee (Eucalyptus polybractea) for bioenergy around Condobolin in the NSW Central West. Critical factors identified for landholder adoption at Condobolin include the size and consistency of returns from energy cropping, impacts on land use flexibility and past experiences with climate variability, regulatory change and government support mechanisms.Risk aversion plays a central role in the decisions made in the face of uncertainties, and climate-change mitigation should be no exception. However, the interlinkage of risk aversion and climate-change uncertainties has hardly been investigated numerically, in part because of the computational difficulties of stochastic optimization. In this paper, we apply the numerical techniques of stochastic optimization to the economic modeling of climate change, with the aim of modeling the decision preferences of a risk-conscious agent in the face of unpredictable climate change. The model underlines the critical role played by the risk-aversion parameter in determining the effects of uncertainties on mitigation, not only in level but also in sign.The combination of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions mitigation and geoengineering options of solar radiation management (SRM) such as placing sunshades in space and stratospheric aerosol injection is discussed quantitatively using an extended version of the DICE-2007, an integrated assessment model for climate policy analysis. Though SRM measures can contribute considerably to the cost-effectiveness of climate change mitigation, they might cause harmful side effects, such as rapid air temperature increases, if the SRM implementation were to be discontinued for any reason. The author suggests a guideline for the use of SRM: namely, that unexpected SRM termination at any time would not exceed the constraints on the rate of global warming recommended by the German Advisory Council on Global Change. The paper describes a method to incorporate this guideline in the DICE-2007 model, and shows the result of the extended model, which recommends an 80% reduction of global industrial CO2 emissions below the 2005 level by the end of the 21st century while implementing a complementary SRM option to mitigate climate change.Purpose - This paper seeks to discuss technology transfer - and its role in climate change mitigation - within the United Nations framework of sustainable development. Innovation is broadly considered as a tool to bring about breakthrough results in climate change alleviation. To ensure that innovative technology serves sustainable development, a massive international effort on the part of the regulators is required to create an integrated legislative framework to standardize eco-innovation policies worldwide. To facilitate a global ecological regulatory framework, it is essential to use universal measurement tools which provide input to the decision-making process at an international level, and address the mechanism of monitoring progress. Design/methodology/approach - The concept of eco-innovation potential is introduced as one of the inputs to the decision-making process on the global level. A composite index with such constituents as ecological balance (deficit or reserve), innovation, and energy intensity of economy, is built. The concept of innovation credits is introduced. Findings - The simulation shows that ecological balance can potentially be increased for countries with greater eco-innovation potential. The innovation credits can be given to countries with the highest eco-innovation potential to foster eco-innovation and perform technology transfer. Originality/value - Earlier research developed focus on innovation as a means to transition to sustainable development and to create climate positive technological regimes applied at a national or industry level. The paper illustrates that the eco-innovation potential index can be applied globally and can provide key input to the decision-making process at a global level.In Central Africa, important carbon stocks are stored in natural forest stands, while activities that modify the carbon storage occur in the forest landscape. Besides clean development mechanisms, the reduction of emission through deforestation and degradation (REDD) initiative is viewed as one way to mitigate climate change. Important forest habitat protection activities have already been implemented with the aim of conserving the biodiversity of the region in a sustainable manner. The main causes of land use changes in the region are small holder subsistence practices and logging activities. Agricultural production has low productivity levels and therefore investments in improved agricultural techniques can both reduce pressure on existing forests and perhaps allow for the reforestation of existing degraded lands. The logging industry is dominated by large, industrial scale, logging operations performing selective logging of specific species and large trees. The adoption of improved forest management practices can reduce the impact of such logging on the ecological integrity and carbon stocks. Some efforts to engage in the carbon market have begun in the region. Further research is needed into the types of projects that will most likely become successful in the region and what locations will offer the greatest benefits.Common agricultural practices such as excessive use of agro-chemicals, deep tillage and luxury irrigation have degraded soils, polluted water resources and contaminated the atmosphere. There is increasing concern about interrelated environmental problems such as soil degradation, desertification, erosion, and accelerated greenhouse effects and climate change. The decline in organic matter content of many soils is becoming a major process of soil degradation, particularly in European semi-arid Mediterranean regions. Degraded soils are not fertile and thus cannot maintain sustainable production. At the same time, the production of urban and industrial organic waste materials is widespread. Therefore, strategies for recycling such organic waste in agriculture must be developed. Here, we review long-term experiments (3-60 years) on the effects of organic amendments used both for organic matter replenishment and to avoid the application of high levels of chemical fertilizers. The major points of our analysis are: (1) many effects, e.g. carbon sequestration in the soil and possible build-up of toxic elements, evolve slowly, so it is necessary to refer to long-term trials. (2) Repeated application of exogenous organic matter to cropland led to an improvement in soil biological functions. For instance, microbial biomass carbon increased by up to 100% using high-rate compost treatments, and enzymatic activity increased by 30% with sludge addition. (3) Long-lasting application of organic amendments increased organic carbon by up to 90% versus unfertilized soil, and up to 100% versus chemical fertilizer treatments. (4) Regular addition of organic residues, particularly the composted ones, increased soil physical fertility, mainly by improving aggregate stability and decreasing soil bulk density. (5) The best agronomic performance of compost is often obtained with the highest rates and frequency of applications. Furthermore, applying these strategies, there were additional beneficial effects such as the slow release of nitrogen fertilizer. (6) Crop yield increased by up to 250% by long-term applications of high rates of municipal solid waste compost. Stabilized organic amendments do not reduce the crop yield quality, but improve it. (7) Organic amendments play a positive role in climate change mitigation by soil carbon sequestration, the size of which is dependent on their type, the rates and the frequency of application. (8) There is no tangible evidence demonstrating negative impacts of heavy metals applied to soil, particularly when high-quality compost was used for long periods. (9) Repeated application of composted materials enhances soil organic nitrogen content by up to 90%, storing it for mineralization in future cropping seasons, often without inducing nitrate leaching to groundwater.Micro combined-heat-and-power (micro-CHP) technology has potential to contribute significantly to the UK's climate change strategy. This study applies a technological innovation systems (TIS) analysis to the UK domestic micro-CHP sector to better understand the dynamics of this emerging technology, identify policy options for enhanced system development, while also assessing the effectiveness of the TIS framework as an analytical tool. Interviews with key system actors are used to understand system functions, enabling an analysis of system development over time in terms of inter-functional relations, and a brief comparison with the Dutch micro-CHP system. Specific policy recommendations are made, including clarification of government 'renewable' vs 'low-carbon' climate change mitigation objectives, establishing dedicated targets, incentives and supports for adoption, installation and industry representation. A critique of the TIS framework highlights the dangers of selectivity with regard to key functional patterns, underdevelopment of consumer influences, and insularity with respect to wider influences on innovation.Coastal regions, at the interface between terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems, play an important role in global biogeochemical cycles. This chapter reviews the climate regulation services of estuarine and coastal ecosystems (ECEs) including tidal salt marshes, mangroves, seagrass beds, macroalgal forests, coral reefs, and coastal shelf ecosystems. ECEs regulate global and regional climates by sequestering or releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). ECEs are extremely productive biologically, with net primary production rates per unit area among the highest of any ecosystem. Consequently, ECEs play a globally significant role as carbon sinks, with carbon storage rates per unit area of many habitats far exceeding that of land habitats at the rate of about 10 times that of temperate terrestrial forests and 50 times that of tropical forests. Furthermore, sedimentation does not reach an equilibrium carbon balance as occurs in terrestrial systems, whose sequestration capacity is forecasted to decrease this century. Conversely, they are large potential sources of GHG's if disturbed or misman-aged. Critically, carbon sequestration in many coastal habitats is superior to that of terrestrial habitats, as carbon is generally stored over long time frames (thousands of years) as a consequence of the large belowground biomass and the absence of fire threat. Furthermore, carbon is generally broken down anaerobically; hence, emissions of other potent GHGs such as methane and nitrous oxide are negligible. A review of literature provided sequestration rates for various coastal habitats. Using these in combination with global extent of selected habitats, this chapter finds that GHGs worldwide, mangroves, seagrass beds, and salt marshes combine to sequester a minimum of 136 000 tonnes C annually into long-term carbon storage. Assuming prices of CO2 epsilon from $10 to $90 per tonne, the value of the annual sequestration is $5-45 billion. This is an underestimate due to data gaps and, the limited assessment of the area of these three coastal ecosystem habitats, and relates only to long-term storage. The figures do not include short-term carbon storage in biomass, and further unaccounted for carbon sequestration occurs in kelp forests, estuaries, and coastal shelf seas. Many ECEs are under threat globally from sea-level rise, coastal development, pollution, and other anthropogenic stressors, and protection and restoration of ECEs may be an important tool for mitigating climate change. Currently, these habitats are not included in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) carbon accounting frameworks, and therefore are excluded from incentive schemes such as carbon markets and other incentive programs, but their inclusion deserves consideration due to their potential for mitigating global climate change. The global distribution of C sequestration in ECEs reveals that large areas of the tropics are home to the highest sequestration rates and occur in developing countries, which also have the highest rates of coastal habitat degradation. Schemes such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) may bring revenues and added benefits to developing countries for instigating projects and marine protected areas for conservation. Many small island nations and developing countries in the tropics are particularly vulnerable to climate change and contain large swathes of seagrasses and mangroves compared to overall land area, but do not contain large areas of forests or grasslands, which would apply to REDD in its current form. Coastal habitats thus not only present an untapped potential for inclusion in climate change mitigation schemes, but also present a little-recognized risk of loss of large carbon stocks if their degradation and destruction are not reduced or halted.Ageing domestic housing stock is frequently remodelled and remade to suit homeowners' aspirations and to comply with changing expectations about the home, its appearance and function. In the context of preparing for climate change, it can be argued that significant improvements to existing stock and changes to how it is inhabited are required to improve the environmental performance of residential dwellings. Yet home improvement, environmental performance and household practice rarely occur together in social enquiry. Drawing on Hobson's framing of the 'rationalisation discourse of sustainable consumption' we explore the assumed links between homeowners' concerns for the environment, home improvement consumption and household practice. Amongst other findings, we demonstrate that although there is some association amongst these elements, the links are weak. To achieve real change towards climate change mitigation we suggest future policy and programs need to look beyond such simple causal links between attitudes and behaviour and draw on a deeper understanding of the social practices and associated systems of provision implicated in daily life. With a need for the management of petroleum contaminated sites on Romanian territory, an experimental software platform involving ESRI-ArcGIS technologies (BIOREGIS) is presented in this study. The BIOREGIS platform is aimed to: (i) Build the structure of relational, standardized databases to store spatial and textual characteristic information on polluted sites for further risk analysis and planning of remediation actions, (ii) improve the pollution risk assessment methodology for Romanian petroleum contaminated sites and its informatics implementation, and (iii) develop and operate the software platform for pollution risk based management involving GIS/remote sensing technologies and remediation activities. The operation of BIOREGIS has been tested for a pilot contaminated area situated at Razvad Dambovita County, which has been subjected to in situ remediation procedures involving both bioremediation and electrokinetic processes.Self-organized anodic TiO2 nanotube arrays were sensitized with polyaniline by a simple electrodeposite method. The morphological and structural properties studied by scanning electron microscopy and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy reveal the successful deposition of polyaniline on the nanotube arrays. The polyaniline-sensitized TiO2 nanotube arrays exhibit a distinguishable red shift on the absorption spectrum. Electrochemical impedance investigation attested to a significant improvement of the interfacial electron-transfer kinetics for promoted electron-hole effective separation. The as-prepared samples showed a high efficiency for the photoelectrocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B under visible-light irradiation (lambda > 400 nm). The enhanced photoelectrocatalytic activity could be attributed to the extended absorption in the visible-light region by the polyaniline and the effective separation of photogenerated carriers driven by the photoinduced potential difference generated at the polyaniline/TiO2 nanotube arrays interface.ZnFe2O4/alpha-Fe2O3 composite hollow nanospheres were successfully fabricated via a facile one-pot solvothermal method, utilizing polyethylene glycol as soft template. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy analysis revealed that the prepared nanospheres with cubic spinel and rhombohedra composite structure had a uniform diameter of about 370 nm, and the hollow structure could be further confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. Energy dispersive X-ray, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared techniques were also applied to characterize the elemental composition and chemical bonds in the hollow nanospheres. The ZnFe2O4/alpha-Fe2O3 composite hollow nanospheres show attractive light absorption property for potential applications in electronics, optics, and catalysis. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The physical input-output table (PIOT) is a useful tool for analyzing the environmental sustainability of cities. Taking Chinese statistical sources as an example in this study, we discuss data acquisition methods for applying the PIOT to cities. We propose several methods and present a case study of Suzhou City to illustrate the proposed methods. These methods can provide foundations for constructing the PIOT of cities in other countries.The rare earth elements are indispensible in modern technology, especially in the applications of permanent magnets. Very little quantitative information is available on rare earth elements used in permanent magnets, however. This study looks back to 1983, when neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) permanent magnets were first manufactured, and reaches to 2007, when the market of permanent magnets was well developed. We draw on the historical data on permanent magnets from China, Japan, the United States, and Europe to provide the first estimates of global in-use stocks for four rare earth elementspraseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), terbium (Tb), and dysprosium (Dy)in NdFeB permanent magnets. In-use stocks amount to 62.6 gigagrams (Gg) Nd, 15.7 Gg Pr, 15.7 Gg Dy, and 3.1 Gg Tb; these stocks, if efficiently recycled, could provide a valuable supplement to geological stocks as they are almost four times the 2007 annual extraction rate of the individual elements.The notion of a (socio-) metabolic transition has been used to describe fundamental changes in socioeconomic energy and material use during industrialization. During the last century, Japan developed from a largely agrarian economy to one of the world's leading industrial nations. It is one of the few industrial countries that has experienced prolonged dematerialization and recently has adopted a rigorous resource policy. This article investigates changes in Japan's metabolism during industrialization on the basis of a material flow account for the period from 1878 to 2005. It presents annual data for material extraction, trade, and domestic consumption by major material group and explores the relations among population growth, economic development, and material (and energy) use. During the observed period, the size of Japan's metabolism grew by a factor of 40, and the share of mineral and fossil materials in domestic material consumption (DMC) grew to more than 90%. Much of the growth in the Japanese metabolism was based on imported materials and occurred in only 20 years after World War II (WWII), when Japan rapidly built up large stocks of built infrastructure, developed heavy industry, and adopted patterns of mass production and consumption. The surge in material use came to an abrupt halt with the first oil crisis, however. Material use stabilized, and the economy eventually began to dematerialize. Although gross domestic product (GDP) grew much faster than material use, improvements in material intensity are a relatively recent phenomenon. Japan emerges as a role model for the metabolic transition but is also exceptional in many ways.The aim of this article is to quantify the drivers for the changes in raw material consumption (domestic material consumption expressed in the form of all materials extracted and used in the production phase) in terms of technology, which refers to the concept of sustainable production; the product structure of final demand, which refers to the concept of sustainable consumption; and the volume of final demand, which is related to economic growth. We also aim to determine to what extent the technological development and a shift in product structure of the final demand compensate for the growth in final consumption volume. Therefore, we apply structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to the change in raw material consumption (RMC) of the Czech Republic between 2000 and 2007. To present the study in a broader context, we also show other material flow indicators for the Czech Republic for 2000 and 2007.Norway, like many countries, has realized the need to extensively plan its renewable energy future sooner rather than later. Combined heat and power (CHP) through gasification of forest residues is one technology that is expected to aid Norway in achieving a desired doubling of bioenergy production by 2020. To assess the environmental impacts to determine the most suitable CHP size, we performed a unit process-based attributional life cycle assessment (LCA), in which we compared three scales of CHP over ten environmental impact categoriesmicro (0.1 megawatts electricity [MWe]), small (1 MWe), and medium (50 MWe) scale. The functional units used were 1 megajoule (MJ) of electricity and 1 MJ of district heating delivered to the end user (two functional units), and therefore, the environmental impacts from distribution of electricity and hot water to the consumer were also considered. This study focuses on a regional perspective situated in middle-Norway's Nord- and Sor-Trondelag counties. Overall, the unit-based environmental impacts between the scales of CHP were quite mixed and within the same magnitude. The results indicated that energy distribution from CHP plant to end user creates from less than 1% to nearly 90% of the total system impacts, depending on impact category and energy product. Also, an optimal small-scale CHP plant may be the best environmental option. The CHP systems had a global warming potential ranging from 2.4 to 2.8 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule of thermal (g CO2-eq/MJth) district heating and from 8.8 to 10.5 grams carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule of electricity (g CO2-eq/MJel) to the end user.No life cycle assessment (LCA) of artisanal and small-scale mining activities (A&Sma) has been identified as of today, and there are limited studies about large-scale mining and alluvial mining. The A&Sma are relevant economic sectors in countries with large reserves of mineral resources. Gold is the most representative metal mined with these practices and is used not only in jewelry but also in several electronics appliances. South America accounted for 17% of the total worldwide gold extraction in 2005; A&Sma occurred mostly in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil.Establishing a comprehensive environmental footprint that indicates resource use and environmental release hotspots in both direct and indirect operations can help companies formulate impact reduction strategies as part of overall sustainability efforts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful approach for achieving these objectives. For most companies, financial data are more readily available than material and energy quantities, which suggests a hybrid LCA approach that emphasizes use of economic input-output (EIO) LCA and process-based energy and material flow models to frame and develop life cycle emission inventories resulting from company activities.This article presents a case study in a Nigerian firm of how waste costing can be applied to pollution prevention (P2) investment decisions. This case is informed by the priority accorded to P2 as a preferred alternative to end-of-pipe pollution control. It demonstrates that even in the absence of effective regulations in a developing country, cost accounting can spur P2 decisions by management through the system of waste cost allocation. The case used standard cost data from the Wonder Beauty Care Company and applied the activity-based costing (ABC) system to waste cost allocation using waste cost drivers, which yielded another genre of waste costswaste-induced overhead. Subsequently, the waste-induced overhead was applied to P2 investment analysis. This analysis indicated that the P2 investment alternative that incorporates the waste-induced overhead produced a preferred alternative choice. The case further revealed that managers knowledge of waste costs in a Nigerian firm may influence their P2 decisions. The case illustrates practically a possible dual advantage of an improved costing system for Nigerian firmscost reduction and cleaner production.This article reports a new application of material and energy accounting techniques to characterize and quantify the relationships between material input (and the related energy flows and emissions) and the services provided (i.e., material input per service unit [MIPS]) at the neighborhood level. The case study focuses on China's small residential district (SRD). It is concluded that linking a service (in this case, residential function) enabled by a given product (neighborhood development) to the amount of materials, energy, and emissions used or produced in creating that product offers a potential way to reduce the environmental impact of that service through more efficient use of materials, enlarged service scales, and improved buying decisions.The areas of energy, water and food policy have numerous interwoven concerns ranging from ensuring access to services, to environmental impacts to price volatility. These issues manifest in very different ways in each of the three "spheres", but often the impacts are closely related. Identifying these interrelationships a priori is of great importance to help target synergies and avoid potential tensions. Systems thinking is required to address such a wide swath of possible topics. This paper briefly describes some of the linkages at a high-level of aggregation - primarily from a developing country perspective - and via case studies, to arrive at some promising directions for addressing the nexus. To that end, we also present the attributes of a modelling framework that specifically addresses the nexus, and can thus serve to inform more effective national policies and regulations. While environmental issues are normally the 'cohesive principle' from which the three areas are considered jointly, the enormous inequalities arising from a lack of access suggest that economic and security-related issues may be stronger motivators of change. Finally, consideration of the complex interactions will require new institutional capacity both in industrialised and developing countries. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Silver is a compound that is well known for its adverse environmental effects. More recently, silver in the form of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) has begun to be produced in increasingly larger amounts for antibacterial purposes in, for instance, textiles, wound dressings, and cosmetics. Several authors have highlighted the potential environmental impact of these NPs. To contribute to a risk assessment of Ag NPs, we apply a suggested method named particle flow analysis to estimating current emissions from society to the environment. In addition, we set up explorative scenarios to account for potential technology diffusion of selected Ag NP applications. The results are uncertain and need to be refined, but they indicate that emissions from all applications included may increase significantly in the future. Ag NPs in textiles and electronic circuitry may increase more than in wound dressings due to the limited consumption of wound dressings. Due to the dissipative nature of Ag NPs in textiles, the results indicate that they may cause the highest emissions in the future, thus partly confirming the woes of both scientists and environmental organizations. Gaps in current knowledge are identified. In particular, the fate of Ag NPs during different waste-handling processes is outlined as an area that requires more research.This contribution presents the state of the art of economy-wide material flow accounting. Starting from a brief recollection of the intellectual and policy history of this approach, we outline system definition, key methodological assumptions, and derived indicators. The next section makes an effort to establish data reliability and uncertainty for a number of existing multinational (European and global) material flow accounting (MFA) data compilations and discusses sources of inconsistencies and variations for some indicators and trends. The results show that the methodology has reached a certain maturity: Coefficients of variation between databases lie in the range of 10% to 20%, and correlations between databases across countries amount to an average R2 of 0.95. After discussing some of the research frontiers for further methodological development, we conclude that the material flow accounting framework and the data generated have reached a maturity that warrants material flow indicators to complement traditional economic and demographic information in providing a sound basis for discussing national and international policies for sustainable resource use.The flower-like Ag/AgCl/BiOCl composite was prepared by a one-step chemical bath method at low temperature for the first time. The morphology, crystallinity, composition, and optical property were well characterized by scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray analysis, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectrophotometer and nitrogen adsorption-desorption. The Ag/AgCl/BiOCl composite displayed enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity against rhodamine B, which was much higher than Ag/AgCl or BiOCl. The mechanism for the degradation of rhodamine B over the Ag/AgCl/BiOCl was discussed. The superoxide radical and chlorine radical or the hole played critical roles instead of hydroxyl radicals. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The digital revolution affects the environment on several levels. Most directly, information and communications technology (ICT) has environmental impacts through the manufacturing, operation and disposal of devices and network equipment, but it also provides ways to mitigate energy use, for example through smart buildings and teleworking. At a broader system level, ICTs influence economic growth and bring about technological and societal change. Managing the direct impacts of ICTs is more complex than just producing efficient devices, owing to the energetically expensive manufacturing process, and the increasing proliferation of devices needs to be taken into account.The rare earth elements (REE) are a group of fifteen elements with unique properties that make them indispensable for a wide variety of emerging, critical technologies. Knowledge of the life cycles of REE remains sparse, despite the current heightened interest in their future availability. Mining is heavily concentrated in China, whose monopoly position and potential restriction of exports render primary supplies vulnerable to short and long-term disruption. To provide an improved perspective we derived the first quantitative life cycles (for the year 2007) for ten REE: lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), and yttrium (Y). Of these REE, Ce and Nd in-use stocks are highest; the in-use stocks of most REE show significant accumulation in modern society. Industrial scrap recycling occurs only from magnet manufacture. We believe there is no post-customer recycling of any of these elements.Anthocyanin accumulation in vegetative organs has a relationship to stress resistance in plants. In wheat, ability to accumulate anthocyanins in the coleoptile is inherited and controlled by the Rc (red coleoptile) genes. The aim of the current study was to find potential sources of 'strong' Rc alleles conferring very high levels of anthocyanin production and to study the effect of genetic background on Rc expression. We measured the relative anthocyanin content (OD530) in the coleoptile of different wheat and wheat-alien genetic stocks and accessions to find potential sources of 'strong' Rc alleles conferring very high levels of anthocyanin production. The OD530 values varied from 0.514 to 3.311 in genotypes having red coleoptiles. The highest anthocyanin content was detected in coleoptiles of four Triticum dicoccoides accessions originating from Israel and the Russian T. aestivum cultivar 'Novosibirskaya 67', suggesting that their Rc alleles can be used to increase anthocyanin content in the coleoptile of wheat cultivars. It is also suggested that rye Rc alleles, such as that of Russian cultivar 'Selenga', can be used to increase anthocyanin content in triticale seedlings.Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and dibenzofurans (PCDFs) binding with the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) have been correlated with many toxic responses. Hence, it is very necessary to study the interactions between these ligands and AhR for further understanding of the mechanism of toxicity. In this study, an integrated molecular docking and 3D-QSAR approach was employed to investigate the binding interactions between PCBs, PCDDs, PCDFs and AhR. From molecular docking, hydrogen-bonding and hydrophobic interactions were observed to be characteristic interactions between compounds and AhR. Based on the mechanism of interactions, an optimum 3D-QSAR model with good robustness (Q(CUM)(2) = 0.907) and predictability (Q(EXT)(2) = 0.863) was developed by partial least squares. Additionally, the developed QSAR model indicated that the molecular size, shape profiles, polarizability and electropological states of compounds were related to the binding affinities to AhR. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology is defined as the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems and as such may focus on a geographic area, resource and/or industry sector. In these types of setting, industrial ecology is also often known as industrial symbiosis (IS). The proximity of companies in industrial estates facilitates the linking of utilities and the exchange of wastes and by-products, which may eventually be useful inputs for adjacent industrial processes. The typical model that has been applied in several regions of the world is one where an anchor-tenant organization with energy and by-product linkages is connected to companies physically located nearby. In the case of biomass symbiosis, however, the resource chains are not explicitly arranged by their industrial setting and the supply of waste and by-products is able to be organized in a more scattered way.The objective of this paper is to construct a model and propose a typology of residual material reclamation practices in manufacturing facilities. The qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 60 managers demonstrated that residual material reclamation can be characterized by six key dimensions associated with the recovery and transformation of residuals: reclaiming goals, reclaiming scope, awareness of activities, manufacturing processes, environmental management and variety of materials used. The analysis of each dimension from a managerial point of view suggests five types of residual material reclamation: craft, broad consolidated, narrow consolidated, broad leverage and narrow leverage. The model and typology expand our understanding of residual material reclamation activities within organizations actively involved in sustainable initiatives. This study contributes to proposing an analytical framework aimed at understanding how practices concerning residual material reclamation are managed. Implications for organizational research and management are also discussed. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.While China's rapid growth rates have been widely admired, they have been accompanied by extensive pollution and waste. It is therefore unsurprising that China has adopted as its development model the Circular Economy (CE), encompassing notions of industrial ecology and resource reduction, reuse and recycling. This article analyses and appraises China's capacity to implement such a strategy. The article engages in a discussion of what China means by a CE and whether the policies of eco-industrial development being pursued actually fit with this general goal. We also offer our own econometric update on China's progress towards a CE. The article tests the conjecture that China is able to link its 'compressed development' strategy with industrial ecology ideas - seeing the CE as not only a source of competitive advantage, but also pointing towards a solution to global resource depletion and waste accumulation and devastation. While it must be understood that China faces enormous obstacles in implementing the CE idea, and starts from a very low base in doing so, nevertheless it has certain latecomer and administrative advantages in putting its economy on a new, closed-loop footing, as compared with more advanced countries with established industrial systems. Asian Business & Management (2011) 10, 463-484. doi:10.1057/abm.2011.18Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can be hydroxylated by CYP450-oxidases (1A1 and 1B1 mainly) and may cause DNA damage and cancer. However, the mechanism of such interactions has not been fully understood. In this study, an integrated molecular docking and QSAR approach was employed to further investigate the binding interactions between hydroxylated PAHs (HO-PAHs) and calf thymus DNA (CT-DNA). Molecular docking, hydrogen-bonding, hydrophobic and pi-pi interactions were observed to be characteristic interactions between HO-PAHs and DNA. An optimum QSAR model with good robustness and predictability was developed based on the molecular structural parameters calculated by the density function theory and partial least squares. Additionally, the developed QSAR model indicated that the molecular size, polarizability and electrostatic potential of HO-PAHs were related to the binding affinities to DNA. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial symbioses (ISs) and eco-industrial parks (EIPs) are key concepts of industrial ecology (IE). The aim of ISs and EIPs is to minimise inefficient material and energy use by utilising local by-product and energy flows. Industrial symbioses tend to develop through spontaneous action of economic actors, for gaining of economic benefit, but these systems can be designed and promoted via policy instruments as well. A literature review showed that national programmes for eco-industrial parks can be found in different parts of the world. In the action programmes and other sustainable consumption and production (SCP) policy documents of the EU, on the other hand, industrial symbioses gain less recognition as a path to enhanced sustainable production. In this article, we consider this and also analyse how the evolution and environmental performance of an industrial symbiosis system centred on a Finnish pulp and paper mill have been affected by SCP policy instruments. With regard to the system forming the subject of the case study, and Finnish industrial systems in general, policy instruments have succeeded in reducing emissions but not in systematically encouraging operators toward symbiosis-like activities. All in all, few studies exist on the overall impact of policy instruments promoting design of eco-industrial parks. It is not self-evident that symbiosis-like production systems would be sustainable in every case, as the background assumptions for political promotion of EIPs suggest. We concluded that industrial symbioses should be analysed and developed on a life cycle basis, with documentation of the real environmental benefits due to efficient resource use and decreased emissions in comparison to stand-alone production. ISs can then bring eco-competitiveness to companies in relation to SCP tools, such as environmental permits, ecolabels, and future product regulation based on the Ecodesign Directive in Europe. Indirect encouragement of symbiosis through land-use regulation and planning, in such a way that material fluxes between companies are possible both in operations and in financial terms, may prove effective. The same holds for waste policies that encourage increased reuse of a company's waste by other enterprises. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial parks play a significant role in the production and use of goods and services. However, this also means that the environmental problems of each company are concentrated in a relatively small area. One of these problems is solid waste disposal, which has become a critical issue because of its negative impacts as well as the resources consumed. Integrated solid waste management integrates cleaner and more sustainable production strategies by reducing resource consumption and applying mechanisms found in natural ecosystems to industrial systems. Nevertheless, one of the necessary conditions for the design of such a system is a preliminary study of waste generation management in the area. The study presented in this paper characterizes industrial waste production and management in the metropolitan area of Granada (Spain), and analyzes its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A similar typology of industrial activities, mainly in the distribution and transportation sector, as well as the proximity of various industrial parks could facilitate their partnership in environmental management. The results obtained in our study point to significant weaknesses in the system, such as the lack of effective waste management tools and training for waste management personnel. Other weaknesses were, the low percentage of selective waste collection and the existence of unauthorized collectors. The paper concludes with specific proposals for waste collection. These recommendations include the creation of the following: (i) a community responsible for waste management; (ii) recycling points in industrial parks: (iii) energy recovery from the waste; (iv) a market to sell, buy, and/or exchange waste; (v) one authorized set of waste management agents that would provide the advantages of an economy of scale. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of industrial ecology has been applied in this research to study possibilities to develop an eco-industrial cluster model for fishery production industry in Vietnam. By learning from experiments of other developed countries, we apply the principles of Industrial Ecology and of Ecological Modernization in the context of Vietnam. We design a physical-technological conceptual model for minimizing waste in agro-industries, with a case study of frozen shrimp production. The results indicate that it is possible and feasible to develop an eco-industrial cluster including aquaculture, fishery processing companies, by-product plants, and wastewater treatment units. By doing so, aquaculture and industry can cooperate for environmentally sound development. Actors and institutions that may govern the proposed ecoindustrial cluster of shrimp processing industry are also analysed in this paper. The economic feasibility of the designed eco-agro industrial cluster for fish production in Vietnam depends on the energy savings and effective revenues gained from selling the produced valuable materials, such as Chitosan and animal feed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The dyeing effluent of high alkalinity, which could not be treated efficiently by traditional wastewater technologies, highlighted the need to explore a technically feasible, highly efficient and cost effective method. Thus, a fast and highly efficient method for the removal of dyes under alkaline conditions using magnetic chitosan-Fe(III) hydrogel was proposed. Firstly, chitosan-Fe(III) hydrogel was prepared by a chelation procedure with cheap and environmentally friendly chitosan and iron salts. We characterized the sorption and desorption of C. I. Acid Red 73, a common type of anionic dye, on magnetic chitosan-Fe(III) hydrogel, to understand its availability for alkaline dyeing wastewater. Sorption of dye to chitosan-Fe(III) hydrogel was fast (adsorption could reach equilibrium in less than 10 min) in a wide pH range, and agreed well to the Langmuir-Freundlich adsorption model with a high maximum adsorption capacity of 294.5 mg/g under pH = 12. Meanwhile, 1 mol/L NaOH was used to desorb the dye efficiently (desorption efficiency 94.4%) and 0.1 mol/L HCl was applied to regenerate the chitosan-Fe(III) hydrogel. The results showed that the chitosan-Fe(III) hydrogel could retain its high efficiency after the desorption and regeneration. The common coexisting ions almost had no negative effect on the dye adsorption of chitosan-Fe(III) and the removals of a variety of anionic dyes suggest that the magnetic chitosan-Fe(III) hydrogel could efficiently adsorb both the acid and reactive dyes under alkaline condition. Overall, the results reported herein indicated that magnetic chtisoan-Fe(III) with high adsorption efficiency and strong magnetic property is very attractive and implies a potential of practical application for alkaline dyeing effluent treatment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Human activities disturb the long-term phosphorus (P) cycle in nature, whereby the resulting intensive release of P contributes to the eutrophication of surface water. Hence, a detailed understanding of P flow as it relates to socioeconomic systems is essential for effective nutrient management. This study develops a substance-flow-analysis model for P metabolism for the socioeconomic ecosystem of Shucheng County in Anhui Province in central China as a case study. We estimate P flow using data from questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, published literature, and official statistical databases. Our results show that P flow in Shucheng's current socioeconomic system is linear and openly metabolic. The total P input into Shucheng in 2008 reached 12 748 Mg, mainly as P ores and crops. In all, 43.83% of the total P input was exported, and 30.44% was discharged into surface water. More-balanced nutrient management and options for improving nutrient use efficiency are discussed. The quantifiable, science-based methods used in this study may be applied to neighboring regions of central China for sustainable development and water management.This article argues that industrial ecology has, to date, largely engaged with the ecological sciences at a superficial level, which has both attracted criticism of the field and limited its practical application for sustainable industrial development. On the basis of an analysis of the principle of succession, the role of waste, and the concept of diversity, the article highlights some of the key misconceptions that have resulted from the superficial engagement with the science of ecology. It is argued that industrial ecology should not be seen as a metaphor for industrial development; industrial ecology is the ecology of industry and should be studied as such. There are manifold general principles of ecology that underpin our understanding of the world; however, the physical manifestation and causal effects of these principles are particular to the system and its constituent elements under analysis. It is thus proposed that context-specific observation and analysis of industry are required before theoretical and practical advancement of the field can be achieved.Planning for "water-sensitive" cities has become a priority for sustainable urban development in Australia. There has been little quantification of the term, however. Furthermore, the water balance of most cities is not well known. Following prolonged drought, there has also been a growing need to make Australian cities more water self-reliant: to source water from within. This article formalizes a systematic mass-balance framework to quantify all anthropogenic and natural flows into and out of the urban environment. Quantitative performance indicators are derived, including (1) degree of system centralization; (2) overall balance; potential of (3) rainfall, (4) stormwater, and (5) wastewater to offset current demand; and (6) water cycle rate. Using the method, we evaluate Sydney, Melbourne, South East Queensland and Perth using reported and modeled data. The approach makes visible large flows of water that have previously been unaccounted and ignored. It also highlights significant intercity variation. In 2004-2005, the cities varied 54% to 100% in their supply centralization, 257% to 397% in the ratio of rainfall and water use, 47% to 104% in their potential stormwater recycling potential, and 26% to 86% in wastewater recycling potential. The approach provides a practical, water-focused application of the urban metabolism framework. It demonstrates how the principles of mass balance can help foster robust water accounting, monitoring, and management. More important, it contributes to the design and quantitative assessment of water-sensitive cities of the future.This article describes the development of a consequential life cycle assessment (cLCA) with endogenous market-driven design (MDD). Incorporation of MDD within cLCA (cLCA-MDD) is beneficial because design decisions, influenced by market forces, are a major source of environmental emissions and resource consumption in many life cycle systems. cLCA-MDD captures the environmental impact of these design responses resulting from industrial and policy decisions. We begin by developing the concept of cLCA-MDD, then present a case study that demonstrates how design responses can be endogenously captured in a cLCA analysis. The case study is in two parts: First, we incorporate endogenous design responses into a cLCA of a mid-size vehicle and, second, we conduct a policy analysis using a cLCA-MDD approach. The case study illustrates that cLCA-MDD can capture multiple "ripple effects" resulting from an industrial decision (e.g., downsizing a vehicle's engine) or a policy decision (e.g., raising gasoline taxes) and that these effects significantly influence results. A key challenge of the approach is appropriately managing and communicating uncertainties associated with the choice of economic parameters or models. We discuss sources of uncertainty in cLCA-MDD and demonstrate a presentation scheme to facilitate communication of result sensitivity to uncertainties from input parameters, models, and model structure.One strategy for mitigating the effects of rapidly growing global materials consumption is intensified recycling. A key barrier to recycling is the ability to segment or sort constituents within end-of-life products. Various sorting technologies hold promise, but each must demonstrate added value to achieve wide-scale deployment. Potential factors affecting such value include the mix of scrap supply, the nature and mix of finished goods demand, sorting technology performance, and costs. This article examines the use of optimization models to identify economically efficient sorting strategies and their impact on scrap usage. Using this method, this article attempts to identify the conditions that amplify and mute the value of sorting to facilitate recycling. When this method is applied to a case representative of European aluminum secondary production, it is clear that sorting methods can add value in a broad range of conditions. Although better sorting performance ( in the form of segmentation efficiency, referred to as recovery rate) correlates positively with cost savings and scrap utilization, it does not always vary monotonically with optimal sorter utilization (i.e., the fraction of scrap sorted rather than unsorted). Furthermore, the case analysis indicates that the value of sorting is more strongly dependent on recovery rate for the more heterogeneous fraction, which, in the case of aluminum, is the cast-like fraction. Ultimately, sorting increases production flexibility, making a recycler more economically resilient in the face of changing supply and production conditions.Increasing the eco-efficiency of fishing fleets is currently a major target issue in the seafood sector. This objective has been influenced in recent years by soaring fuel prices, a fact particularly relevant to a sector whose vessels present high energy consumption rates. Efforts to minimize fuel consumption in fishing fleets result in economic benefits and also in important reductions regarding environmental impacts. In this article, we combine life cycle assessment (LCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) to jointly discuss the operational and environmental performances of a set of multiple, similar entities. We applied the "five-step LCA + DEA method" to a wide range of vessels for selected Galician fisheries, including deep-sea, offshore, and coastal fleets. The environmental consequences of operational inefficiencies were quantified and target performance values benchmarked for inefficient vessels. We assessed the potential environmental performance of target vessels to verify eco-efficiency criteria (lower input consumption levels, lower environmental impacts). Results revealed the strong dependence of environmental impacts on one major operational input: fuel consumption. The most intensive fuel-consuming fleets, such as deep sea trawling, were found to entail the diesel consumption levels nearest to the efficiency values. Despite the reduced environmental contributions linked to other operational inputs, such as hull material, antifouling paint, or nets, these may contribute to substantial economic savings when minimized. Finally, given that Galicia is a major fishing region, many of the conclusions and perspectives obtained in this study may be extrapolated to other fishing fleets at the international level.This article investigates how value choices in life cycle impact assessment can influence characterization factors (CFs) for human health (expressed as disability-adjusted life years [DALYs]). The Cultural Theory is used to define sets of value choices in the calculation of CFs, reflecting the individualist, hierarchist, and egalitarian perspectives. CFs were calculated for interventions related to the following impact categories: water scarcity, tropospheric ozone formation, particulate matter formation, human toxicity, ionizing radiation, stratospheric ozone depletion, and climate change. With the Cultural Theory as a framework, we show that individualist, hierarchist, and egalitarian perspectives can lead to CFs that vary up to six orders of magnitude. For persistent substances, the choice in time horizon explains the differences among perspectives, whereas for nonpersistent substances, the choice in age weighting and discount rate of DALY and the type of effects or exposure routes account for differences in CFs. The calculated global impact varies by two orders of magnitude, depending on the perspective selected, and derives mainly from particulate matter formation and water scarcity for the individualist perspective and from climate change for the egalitarian perspective. Our results stress the importance of dealing with value choices in life cycle impact assessment and suggest further research for analyzing the practical consequences for life cycle assessment results.TRACI 2.0, the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts 2.0, has been expanded and developed for sustainability metrics, life cycle impact assessment, industrial ecology, and process design impact assessment for developing increasingly sustainable products, processes, facilities, companies, and communities. TRACI 2.0 allows the quantification of stressors that have potential effects, including ozone depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, tropospheric ozone (smog) formation, human health criteria-related effects, human health cancer, human health noncancer, ecotoxicity, and fossil fuel depletion effects. Research is going on to quantify the use of land and water in a future version of TRACI. The original version of TRACI released in August 2002 (Bare et al. J Ind Ecol 6: 49-78, 2003) has been used in many prestigious applications including: the US Green Building Council's LEED Certification (US Green Building Council, Welcome to US Green Building Council, 2008), the National Institute of Standards and Technology's BEES (Building for Environment and Economic Sustainability) (Lippiatt, BEES 4.0: building for environmental and economic sustainability technical manual and user guide, 2007) which is used by US EPA for Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (US Environmental Protection Agency, Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP), 2008d), the US Marine Corps' EKAT (Environmental Knowledge and Assessment Tool) for military and non-military uses (US Marine Corps, Environmental knowledge and assessment tool (EKAT): first time user's guide, 2007), and within numerous college curriculums in engineering and design departments.There is an increasing need for life cycle data for bio-based products, which becomes particularly evident with the recent drive for greenhouse gas reporting and carbon footprinting studies. Meeting this need is challenging given that many bio-products have not yet been studied by life cycle assessment (LCA), and those that have are specific and limited to certain geographic regions. In an attempt to bridge data gaps for bio-based products, LCA practitioners can use either proxy data sets (e.g., use existing environmental data for apples to represent pears) or extrapolated data (e.g., derive new data for pears by modifying data for apples considering pear-specific production characteristics). This article explores the challenges and consequences of using these two approaches. Several case studies are used to illustrate the trade-offs between uncertainty and the ease of application, with carbon footprinting as an example. As shown, the use of proxy data sets is the quickest and easiest solution for bridging data gaps but also has the highest uncertainty. In contrast, data extrapolation methods may require extensive expert knowledge and are thus harder to use but give more robust results in bridging data gaps. They can also provide a sound basis for understanding variability in bio-based product data. If resources (time, budget, and expertise) are limited, the use of averaged proxy data may be an acceptable compromise for initial or screening assessments. Overall, the article highlights the need for further research on the development and validation of different approaches to bridging data gaps for bio-based products.There is disagreement on whether the supply of lithium is adequate to support a future global fleet of electric vehicles. We report a comprehensive analysis of the global lithium resources and compare it to an assessment of global lithium demand from 2010 to 2100 that assumes rapid and widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Recent estimates of global lithium resources have reached very different conclusions. We compiled data on 103 deposits containing lithium, with an emphasis on the 32 deposits that have a lithium resource of more than 100,000 tonnes each. For each deposit, data were compiled on its location, geologic type, dimensions, and content of lithium as well as current status of production where appropriate. Lithium demand was estimated under the assumption of two different growth scenarios for electric vehicles and other current battery and nonbattery applications. The global lithium resource is estimated to be about 39 Mt (million tonnes), whereas the highest demand scenario does not exceed 20 Mt for the period 2010 to 2100. We conclude that even with a rapid and widespread adoption of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries, lithium resources are sufficient to support demand until at least the end of this century.The Norilsk industrial ore smelting complex (Taymyr Peninsula, Russian Federation) has significantly impacted many components of local terrestrial and aquatic environments. Whether it has had a major impact on the wider Russian Arctic remains controversial as studies are scarce. From 1986 to 2004, data on heavy metal (Cu, Ni, Zn, Hg, Cd and Hg) concentrations in fish (burbot), moss, lichens, periphyton, hydric soils and snow in and around Norilsk and the most northern parts of the Taymyr Peninsula were analysed. Very high concentrations of Cu (203 mu g L-1 +/- 51 mu g L-1) and Ni (113 mu g L-1 +/- 15 mu g L-1) were found in the water of the Schuchya River close to Norilsk. Heavy metal concentrations in burbot liver were highest in Lake Pyasino near Norilsk compared to other study regions that were > 100 km distant. From 1989-1996, Cu (121 mu g L-1 +/- 39 mu g L-1 SD), Zn (150 mu g L-1 +/- 70 mu g L-1) and Ni ( 149 mu g L-1 +/- 72 mu g L-1) snow concentrations were greatest in Norilsk, but were low elsewhere. By 2004, these concentrations had dropped significantly, especially for Cu-74 mu g L-1 (+/- 18.7 mu g L-1 SD), Zn-81.7 mu g L-1 (+/- 31.3 mu g L-1 SD) and Ni-80 mu g L-1 (+/- 18.0 mu g L-1 SD). Norilsk and its surroundings are subject to heavy pollution from the Norilsk metallurgical industry but these are absent from the greater Arctic region due to the prevailing winds and the Byrranga Mountains. Pollution abatement measures have been made so further investigations are necessary in order to assess their efficiency.Algal biorefinery-based integrated industrial ecology has received increased attention as a sustainable way of producing biofuel, food, high value products and feed ingredients in the Southwestern United States (US). However, these regions already face serious freshwater supply issues. Hence, new policies and regulations for water management and use is a high priority for the sustainable development of an algal biofuel sector to meet liquid fuel needs in the US without hampering the regional hydrologic pattern. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An ideal agropark is envisaged as a planned agribusiness system in which all activities are geared towards sustainable development based on the principles of industrial ecology. The agropark concept offers in theory a variety of economic advantages as well as environmental benefits. The implementation of the concept, however, has encountered many challenges. This paper introduced an analytical framework for evaluating the synergy and risk of agroparks. The analysis brought into prominence the impact of institutional arrangements on the success or failure of agropark formation. An overview of the risks related to the agropark concept was provided. It was concluded that the key to successful formation and operation of the an agropark is the choice of proper institutional arrangements that create high incentives to cooperate and incur low institution cost. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.The term 'sustainability science' has been used to mean the scientific activity oriented to promote the transition of societies toward sustainability but is not referred to a set of principles a scientific community is based on for building knowledge systematically about a study object, which is finally what characterized all sciences. This assay argues that within this scientific activity a science of sustainability is emerging as a modern one and not merely as a scientific practice. This conclusion is supported on the fact that it is possible to define social-ecological resilience of systems as study object of sustainability science, which is in turn the foundation of transdisciplines such as ecological economics, political ecology, environmental ethics, industrial ecology, cultural ecology and agroecology. Additionally, this study object has ontological and epistemological foundations.It has been argued by some that the substitution of biofuels for gasoline could increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, rather than reduce them. The increase is attributed to the indirect land use change effects of planting new grain and corn crops around the world to replace those progressively being devoted to ethanol production. In this paper, indirect effects are minimised by allowing land to be used for both food and fuel, rather than for one or the other. We present a sugarcane 'feed + fuel' biorefinery, which produces bioethanol and yeast biomass, a source of single-cell protein (SCP), that can be used as a high-protein animal feed supplement. The yeast SCP can partially substitute for grass in the feed of cattle grazing on pasture and thereby potentially release land for increased sugarcane production, with minimal land use change effects. Applying the concept conservatively to the Brazilian ethanol and livestock industry our model demonstrates that it would be technically feasible to raise ethanol production threefold from the current level of 27 GL to over 92 GL. The extra ethanol would meet biofuel market mandates in the US without bringing any extra land into agricultural or pastoral use. The analysis demonstrates a viable way to increase biofuel and food production by linking two value chains as called for by industrial ecology studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A TiO2/BDD heterojunction photoanode, utilizing the inherent properties of nanostructured titanium dioxide (TiO2) and boron-doped diamond (BDD), was prepared and used to determine chemical oxygen demand (COD) in wastewaters. The TiO2 nanoparticles were dip-coated on a BDD substrate and subject to calcination processes. A uniform, continuous and robust mixed-phase (anatase and rutile) TiO2/BDD heterojunction electrode was obtained. The TiO2/BDD heterojunction electrode was evaluated using a series of materials characterisation, electrical and electrochemical techniques. The preliminary results suggest the elevated photoelectrocatalytic activity over the oxidation of organic compounds stemmed from the formation of the p-n junction of the TiO2/BDD electrode. The TiO2/BDD electrode has an excellent resistance towards strong acid due to the use of BDD substrate, which is an added advantage for practical application. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the TiO2/BDD electrode is capable of indiscriminately oxidizing a wide spectrum of organic compounds in a photoelectrochemical thin-layer cell. This bestows the photoelectrochemical system with the ability to measure the COD of synthetic and real samples in a fast, sensitive, reproducible and accurate fashion. In particular, a typical analysis time of 5 minutes, a practical detection limit of 0.12 mg L-1 COD, a RSD% value of 1.5% and a linear range of 0-300 mg L-1 were achieved. The TiO2/BDD electrode can be an ideal sensor for online and in situ monitoring of organic pollutants in wastewaters.As the economic costs of energy and the negative externalities associated with the combustion of fossil fuels threaten the economic viability of greenhouses in northern climates there is a renewed interest in the use of waste heat. This paper presents a technical and economic methodology to determine the viability of establishing waste heat greenhouses using the waste heat from industrial processes in northern climates. A case study is presented of an exchange between a tomato greenhouse and a flat glass manufacturing plant, which found the waste heat system is significantly more economic to operate than a purely natural gas system. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Until now, only rough estimates were available for the number of televisions (TVs) added to the growing stockpile of obsolete TVs by the June 2009 federally mandated digital transition. This event caused millions of Americans either to replace functioning analog TVs with digital units and purchase cable or satellite service, or to purchase subsidized analog-to-digital converter boxes. In this context, this paper makes two contributions based on results of a survey of 3,156 U. S. households conducted between the end of December 2009 and January 2010. First, we estimate the number of analog TVs that were retired as a result of the digital transition and we analyze the socioeconomic characteristics of the households affected. Second, we quantify the volume of nine metals (antimony, cadmium, chromium, copper, gold, lead, palladium, silver, and zinc) contained in these retired TVs. Our results are important to understand the e-waste consequences of the digital transition and to inform U. S. e-waste policy.The current article looks into the development of an organic market segment in Norway by following organic milk and the controversies that have emerged in the trail of this morally infused artefact. In particular focus is the reformatting of organic milk around the turn of the millennium and the following attempts by various actors to make this product more accessible for a larger group of consumers. The approach favored in this undertaking is actor-network theory (ANT), which stresses the distributed nature of moral agency and that human and non-human elements of actor networks should be given equal attention when accounting for societal practices. Economic narratives such as the sovereign consumer are also used to shed light on the constitution of organic milk as a moral object and the positioning of this product relative to products stemming from conventional agriculture.Applications of information and communications technology (ICT) for the management of environmental data, if used during the design and at the end of the product life cycle, can improve the environmental performance of products. This specific application of ICT for data management is called product data technology (PDT) and is based on the use of international standards developed by ISO TC184/SC4. PDT enables the computerized representations of information about products, processes, and their properties that are independent of any proprietary computer system or software application. The standard product data models are designed to integrate the necessary information about materials used in the product, and such information can be accessed and used at any point in the life cycle, from design to disposal. In the article, we present how PDT can support life cycle assessment (LCA) by focusing on a series of standards for communicating data for design and manufacture and standards for business and commercial information. Examples of possibilities for using PDT and semantic web for LCA data are introduced. The findings presented here are based on DEPUIS (Design of Environmentally-Friendly Products Using Information Standards), a project aimed at improving the eco-design of new products and services through the innovative use of new information standards.Electronic textiles are a vanguard of an emerging generation of smart products. They consist of small electronic devices that are seamlessly embedded into clothing and technical textiles. E-textiles provide enhanced functions in a variety of unobtrusive and convenient ways. Like many high-tech products, e-textiles may evolve to become a mass market in the future. In this case, large amounts of difficult-to-recycle products will be discarded. That can result in new waste problems. This article examines the possible end-of-life implications of textile-integrated electronic waste. As a basis for assessment, the innovation trends of e-textiles are reviewed, and an overview of their material composition is provided. Next, scenarios are developed to estimate the magnitude of future e-textile waste streams. On that base, established disposal and recycling routes for e-waste and old textiles are assessed in regard to their capabilities to process a blended feedstock of electronic and textile materials. The results suggest that recycling old e-textiles will be difficult because valuable materials are dispersed in large amounts of heterogeneous textile waste. Moreover, the electronic components can act as contaminants in the recycling of textile materials. We recommend scrutinizing the innovation trend of technological convergence from the life cycle perspective. Technology developers and product designers should implement waste preventative measures at the early phases in the development process of the emerging technology.We estimated vertical and lateral fluxes of carbon for the isolated coastal city of Ensenada (Baja California, Mexico). In 2005, the city had a resident population of about 261,000, with tourism adding about 1.5%; it occupied an area of roughly 68 square kilometers (km(2)). Carbon (C) export was estimated at 400 gigagrams of carbon per year (Gg C/yr); notable sources to the atmosphere were combustion engines (42%), cement production (38%), water heating and cooking (7%), and human respiration (6%). Solid waste (6%) was exported for burial, but efflux to the bay was minor (about 0.1 Gg C/yr). Local deposition was limited to sewage sludge (about 2 Gg C/yr), asphalt, and extremely low primary production. Remote fluxes driven by local demand could be estimated only for electricity (61 Gg C/yr), but local flux from cement and other industrial production might be attributed largely to external demand. The urban system output to the atmosphere was about 6.4 kilograms of carbon per square meter per year (kg C/m(2)/yr), or roughly 23.6 kg/m(2)/yr in CO(2) equivalence. By comparison, net ecosystem productivity in the surrounding watershed has been estimated at 0.04 kg C/m(2)/yr, so the city's atmospheric output of C might be balanced by productivity over about 11,000 km(2) of the surrounding ecosystems. Between 2000 and 2005, C output increased faster than population growth, particularly from engine fuels.Southern pink shrimp (Penaeus notialis) are an important Senegalese export commodity. Artisanal fisheries in rivers produce 60%. Forty percent are landed in trawl fisheries at sea. The shrimp from both fisheries result in a frozen, consumer-packed product that is exported to Europe. We applied attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental impact of the two supply chains and identify improvement options. In addition to standard LCA impact categories, biological impacts of each fishery were quantified with regard to landed by-catch, discard, seafloor impact, and size of target catch. Results for typical LCA categories include that artisanal fisheries have much lower inputs and emissions in the fishing phase than does the industrial fishery. For the product from artisanal fisheries, the main part of the impact in the standard LCA categories occurs during processing on land, mainly due to the use of heavy fuel oil and refrigerants with high global warming and ozone depletion potentials. From a biological point of view, each fishery has advantages and drawbacks, and a number of improvement options were identified. If developing countries can ensure biological sustainability of their fisheries and design the chain on land in a resource-efficient way, long distance to markets is not an obstacle to sustainable trading of seafood products originating in artisanal fisheries.Founded in thermodynamics and systems ecology, emergy evaluation is a method to associate a product with its dependencies on all upstream environmental and resource flows using a common unit of energy. Emergy is thus proposed as an indicator of aggregate resource use for life cycle assessment (LCA). An LCA of gold mining, based on an original life cycle inventory of a large gold mine in Peru, is used to demonstrate how emergy can be incorporated as an impact indicator into a process-based LCA model. The results demonstrate the usefulness of emergy in the LCA context. The adaptation of emergy evaluation, traditionally performed outside of the LCA framework, requires changes to the conventional accounting rules and the incorporation of uncertainty estimations of the emergy conversion factors, or unit emergy values. At the same time, traditional LCA boundaries are extended to incorporate the environmental processes that provide for raw resources, including ores. The total environmental contribution to the product, dore, is dominated by mining and metallurgical processes and not the geological processes forming the gold ore. The measure of environmental contribution to 1 gram (g) of dore is 6.8E + 12 solar-equivalent Joules (sej) and can be considered accurate within a factor of 2. These results are useful in assessing a process in light of available resources, which is essential to measuring long-term sustainability. Comparisons are made between emergy and other measures of resource use, and recommendations are made for future incorporation of emergy into LCA that will result in greater consistency with existing life cycle inventory (LCI) databases and other LCA indicators.The pulp industry plays an important role in the structure of the European economy and society. The production of pulp has been traditionally considered an important source of pollution due to the use of large amounts of chemicals, fuels, and water and its intensive energy consumption. Currently, this situation is changing due to the potential use of biomass to produce value-added products, which minimizes environmental impacts and increases sustainability. This article uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify and quantify the environmental impacts associated with a Swedish softwood-based biorefinery where total chlorine-free (TCF) dissolving cellulose is produced together with ethanol and lignosulfonates. The system was defined according to a cradle-to-gate perspective-that is to say, from forest activities to the output of the biorefinery mill. According to the results, forest activities associated with the production of soft roundwood play a minor role in all the environmental impact categories under study. In contrast, the production of chemicals consumed in the cooking and bleaching stages, the sludge treatment generated in the wastewater treatment plant, and the on-site energy production system were identified as the elements that negatively contribute the most to all impact categories. The production of steam from biorefinery wastes, biogas, and methanol in external boilers reduces the environmental impact in all categories. Specific actions associated with the reuse of wastes and improved gas treatment systems would improve the environmental profile of this production activity.The industrial park of Herdersbrug (Brugge, Flanders, Belgium) comprises 92 small and medium-sized enterprises, a waste-to-energy incinerator, and a power plant (not included in the study) on its site. To study the carbon dioxide (CO(2)) neutrality of the park, we made a park-wide inventory for 2007 of the CO(2) emissions due to energy consumption (electricity and fossil fuel) and waste incineration, as well as an inventory of the existing renewable electricity and heat generation. The definition of CO(2) neutrality in Flanders only considers CO(2) released as a consequence of consumption or generation of electricity, not the CO(2) emitted when fossil fuel is consumed for heat generation. To further decrease or avoid CO(2) emissions, we project and evaluate measures to increase renewable energy generation. The 21 kilotons (kt) of CO(2) emitted due to electricity consumption are more than compensated by the 25 kt of CO(2) avoided by generation of renewable electricity. Herdersbrug Industrial Park is thus CO(2) neutral, according to the definition of the Flemish government. Only a small fraction (6.6%) of the CO(2) emitted as a consequence of fossil fuel consumption (heat generation) and waste incineration is compensated by existing and projected measures for renewable heat generation. Of the total CO(2) emission (149 kt) due to energy consumption (electricity + heat generation) and waste incineration on the Herdersbrug Industrial Park in 2007, 70.5% is compensated by existing and projected renewable energy generated in the park. Forty-seven percent of the yearly avoided CO(2) corresponds to renewable energy generated from waste incineration and biomass fermentation.Water resource management is a critical component of eco-industrial parks. This article proposes a methodology, termed the water resource management model for industrial parks, that integrates a water input-output table with water pinch technology. A case study of the Yixing Economic Development Zone (YEDZ) in China illustrates the methodology. Each sector's water utilization and direct and indirect intersectoral interactions of water and water pollutants in 2007 and 2015 are accounted for. It is proposed that water metabolism in 2015 could achieve certain objectives of water resource management in the YEDZ. In addition, future policies are proposed. The YEDZ needs to focus on improving various technologies regarding the manufacture of textiles, the manufacture of raw chemical materials and chemical products, and the production and supply of electric and heat power-which will promote the utilization of water cascading among sectors and encourage the reuse of treated water from wastewater treatment plants. Last, future work for water resource management is proposed.The concept of eco-efficiency can be defined with the "product value/environmental influence" ratio. Different models have been proposed to measure eco-efficiency. The main difference among them is the weighting system used to aggregate the environmental results. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) permits this aggregation without requiring a subjective judgment about the weights. In this study, we applied a DEA model to Spanish Mahon-Menorca cheese production to determine the most eco-efficient production techniques. To this end, 16 scenarios of Mahon-Menorca cheese production were built regarding technical (degree of automation) and cleaner production criteria. The environmental impacts were assessed by means of life cycle assessment. We carried out an economic assessment by determining the economic value added and the net income for each scenario. The results are referred to as 1 kilogram (kg) cheese ripened over 105 days. Through DEA, an eco-efficiency ratio between 0 and 1 was obtained. Three scenarios were found to be eco-efficient, with a high degree of automation (enclosed vat and molding and demolding machines) and accelerated cheese ripening. We used Monte Carlo simulation to carry out a sensitivity analysis to compare the influence of price changes on the eco-efficiency ratio. The results emphasize the consistency and stability of the eco-efficient scenarios.Product forums are a cooperative approach to integrated product policy. These forums, also referred to as product panels, are an effective platform for bringing together actors from all of the life cycle stages of a product. The Spanish experience in conducting a product panel for electrical and electronic toys identified key factors that are needed for ensuring success. Setting specific goals that are applicable to the actors involved was found to be vital, as were timing and the provision of adequate facilities. The chairperson also played an important role in facilitating discussion and opinion sharing among members.Density functional theory (DFT) was carried out to identify the existence of intermolecular dihydrogen bonds of the 2-pyridone (2PY)-diethylmethylsilane (DEMS) and 2PY-triethylgermanium (TEGH) clusters in the ground state. The H center dot center dot center dot H distances of both clusters are shorter than the sum of their van der Waals radii. Thus, intermolecular dihydrogen bonds N-HaEuro cent aEuro cent aEuro cent H-Si and N-HaEuro cent aEuro cent aEuro cent H-Ge exist in the 2PY-DEMS and 2PY-TEGH clusters, respectively. Based on the ground-state conformations, intermolecular dihydrogen bonds N-HaEuro cent aEuro cent aEuro cent H-Si and N-HaEuro cent aEuro cent aEuro cent H-Ge in the electronically excited state of the 2PY-DEMS and 2PY-TEGH clusters were also investigated using time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). Electronic transition of the 2PY-DEMS cluster resembles that of the 2PY-TEGH cluster. Their S-1 state is a locally excited (LE) state centered on 2PY moiety. The HaEuro cent aEuro cent aEuro cent H distances of the 2PY-DEMS and 2PY-TEGH clusters both stretch in the S-1 state compared to those in the ground state. Upon electronic excitation, intermolecular dihydrogen bonding N-HaEuro cent aEuro cent aEuro cent H-Si and N-HaEuro cent aEuro cent aEuro cent H-Ge can weaken with decreasing dihydrogen bonding energies.Standard life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been used to determine and compare the environmental impacts of three different cooking fuels used in Ghana, namely, charcoal, biogas, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). A national policy on the use of cooking fuels would have to look at the environmental, social, and cost implications associated with the fuel types. This study looked at the environmental aspect of using these fuels. The results showed that global warming and human toxicity were the most significant overall environmental impacts associated with them, and charcoal and LPG, respectively, made the largest contribution to these impact categories. LPG, however, gave relatively higher impacts in three other categories of lesser significance-that is, eutrophication, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity potentials. Direct comparison of the results showed that biogas had the lowest impact in five out of the seven categories investigated. Charcoal and LPG had only one lowest score each. From the global warming point of view, however, LPG had a slight overall advantage over the others, and it was also the most favorable at the cooking stage, in terms of its effect on humans.A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on 20 scenarios of microalgae cultivation. These scenarios examined the utilization of nutrients and CO2 from synthetic sources and waste streams as well as the materials used to construct a photobioreactor (PBR). A 0.2-m(3) closed PBR of Chlorella vulgaris at 30%-oil content by weight with the productivity of 25 g/m(2) x day was used as a case study. Results of the study show that the utilization of resources from waste streams mainly avoided global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication impacts. Impacts from the production of material used to construct the PBR dominate total impacts in acidification and ozone depletion categories, even over longer PBR lifetimes; thus, the choice of PBR construction materials is important. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Firms collaborate on environmental management issues for number of reasons, including cost reduction, risk sharing and managing competition. Industrial symbiosis represents a voluntary collaborative approach among firms in geographic proximity. Companies participating in industrial symbiosis have been found to improve their individual economic and environmental performance, while the regions where they are located are thought to benefit through enhanced environmental quality. However, too few studies have actually investigated whether this is always the case. This paper considers a single case on the island of Puerto Rico, where several firms in a predominantly pharmaceutical manufacturing cluster participated in symbiosis initiatives for several decades. It examines whether early stage symbiotic activities, specifically a shared utility, met technical performance and community expectations for improved environmental quality. Results suggest that collaboration does not necessarily lead to expected environmental performance goals. The paper details the circumstances that led to under-performance of the initiative and the lessons for symbiosis projects in general. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley &. Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The trend of clustering industries into regional estates or cities was adopted in the mid 1900's. At present, the number of industrial estates in the world is estimated to be between 12,000 and 20,000 (UNEP, 1997) and this trend is continuing to rise in both developed and developing countries. The implementation of the EIP concept continues to evolve especially with the environmental threats and impact on climate change that industries pose. However, there is not yet a fully developed EIP that is operating; although some successful examples of regional by-product exchanges are functioning (Lowe, 2001; Peck, 2002; Lowe et al., 1995: Chertow, 2000). Actually, a significant number of projects have failed or have abandoned the goal of becoming an EIP. Furthermore the current body of knowledge on industrial ecology is not sufficient to provide practical solutions to the obstacles facing EIPs. This paper is based upon the Ph.D. Doctoral thesis research of D. Sakr. It was prepared to examine means to improve the uptake of cleaner production & industrial symbiosis in industrial areas in Middle East & North Africa Region focusing on Egypt as a case study. An extensive literature review was performed on eco-industrial development projects' experiences around the world, in order to identify the critical driving and limiting factors for EIPs. This paper summarizes the lessons learned from worldwide EIP experiences as a basis for the planning and implementation of future EIPs. The paper reflects as well upon the Egyptian context for the identified EIP success and limiting factors. The identified key success and limiting factors are: the creation of symbiotic relationship, information sharing and awareness, financial benefits, organizational structure, and legal and regulatory framework. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Second Life is a virtual, open-access, and user-generated environment that has served as a platform for hosting everything from rock concerts to scientific conferences. Many institutions have also used Second Life as an educational tool, for example by, showcasing scientific exhibits or embedding video and images for learning purposes. Here we discuss the creation and use of an interactive, virtual industrial facility - the Elihu Paper Company - as a way to complement a traditional facility tours in a course in industrial environmental management. Virtual facilities offer a number of educational advantages over real-life ones: they are always open and available for tours, they can be accessed instantaneously from anywhere where there is an adequate Internet connection, and most importantly, tours and embedded information can be tailored to specific educational objectives. Our experience in using Elihu Paper as a formal facility visit for the past several years shows that students had significantly more time than usual to ask questions, could and did explore the facility independently, and were still able to produce facility reports that fulfilled the educational objectives of the visits, including mapping material flows and explaining pollution prevention and sustainability opportunities. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Material Flow Analysis (MFA), as a method of Industrial Ecology (IE), is a useful tool to measure and analyze the material metabolism or physical dimensions of a society's production and consumption at various scales. However, there are different MFA frameworks and points corresponding to different researching scales. This paper proposes to introduce a physical Input-Output Table (PIOT), as means to establish the Eco-industrial parks MFA model (EIPs-MFA) and indicator systems, for analyzing the material metabolism based eco-efficiency at the industrial area scale. The model is applied to a case study of the National Economic & Technological Development Area located in Zhengzhou (ZZEDA), Henan province, China, who faced the challenge of transformation into Eco-industrial parks (EIPs). By analyzing the accounting results, the paper found that there are different problems in different types of industrial sectors and companies. The indicators helped to detect many companies with high material consumption (including water) or inefficiency, which was especially concentrated in three enterprises in the sector of nonmetal mineral products making. It is necessary for these enterprises to increase their eco-efficiency, and ultimately improve their ecological or environmental performance.Organochlorine pesticides (OCP) were monitored at the Weissfluhjoch site (Switzerland) and the top of Mt. Sonnblick (Austria) with a low volume active air sampler and semipermeable membrane devices (SPMD). The air sampling rates (R (air)) of the SPMD for OCP were calculated. Statistical tests showed that there was no significant difference between R (air) at the two different sampling sites. Quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) models of the R (air) of the SPMD were developed for OCP using partial least square (PLS) regression. Quantum chemical descriptors computed by the semi-empirical PM6 method were used as predictor variables. The cumulative variance of the dependent variable explained by the PLS components and determined by cross-validation (Q (2) (cum)) was > 0.818 for each optimal model. This indicates that the model has good predictive ability and robustness. The R (air) of the SPMD for OCP is related to the total energy, the van der Waals area and the total dipole moment of the OCP molecules. The main factors governing R (air) values of OCP are intermolecular interactions and the energy required for cavity-formation in dissolution of OCP into triolein of the SPMD. The linear correlation coefficient between predicted and experimental values were all > 0.921.The rising prominence of life cycle assessment (LCA) and similar environmental accounting frameworks reflects increasing awareness of the pressing necessity of managing both for eco-efficiency and with respect to the macroscale, environmental dimensions of the material/energy flows and emissions that underpin all economic activity. However, by relying on environmentally myopic market signals to inform evaluations of the biophysical dimensions of economic activity through the widespread use of market information (in particular, via economic allocation) in LCA, we are concerned that researchers greatly compromise the value of their work to furthering these objectives. In response to this problem, we provide a systematic critique of the use of market information in attributional LCA and present the case for an ecological-economic approach to the execution, interpretation, and application of biophysically consistent LCA research specifically intended to elucidate the environmental dimensions of meeting human needs. We further argue that, although LCA has historically been limited to informing eco-efficiency considerations, it can and should also be used to manage for sustainable scale, which is the first condition of sustainability.The seasonal and hourly variation of electricity grid emissions and building operational energy use are generally not accounted for in carbon footprint analyses of buildings. This work presents a technique for and results of such an analysis and quantifies the errors that can be encountered when these variations are not appropriately addressed. The study consists of an hour-by-hour analysis of the energy used by four different variations of a five-story condominium building, with a gross floor area of approximately 9,290 square meters (m(2)), planned for construction in Markham, Ontario, Canada. The results of the case studied indicate that failure to account for variation can, for example, cause a 4% error in the carbon footprint of a building where ground source heat pumps are used and a 6% and 8% error in accounting for the carbon savings of wind and photovoltaic systems, respectively. After the building envelope was enhanced and sources of alternative energy were incorporated, the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were more than 50% of the building's operational emissions. This work illustrates the importance of short-time-scale GHG analysis for buildings.One of the key features of environmental policy integration in Sweden is sector responsibility. The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning is responsible for the building and real estate management sector and should, as a part of this responsibility, assess the environmental impacts of this sector. The aim of this study is to suggest and demonstrate a method for such an assessment. The suggested method is a life cycle assessment, based on an input-output analysis. The method can be used for regular monitoring and for prioritization between different improving measures. For the assessment to sufficiently cover the Swedish Environmental Quality Objectives, complementary information is needed, in particular with respect to the indoor environment. According to the results, the real estate management sector contributes between 10% and 40% of Swedish energy use; use of hazardous chemical products; generation of solid waste; emissions of gases contributing to climate change; and human toxicological impacts, including nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulates. Transport and production of nonrenewable building materials contribute significantly to several of the emissions. Heating of buildings contributes more to energy use than to climate change, due to the use of renewable energy sources. To reduce climate change, measures should therefore prioritize not only heating of buildings but also the important upstream processes.Urban metabolism is a critical component of urban sustainability. On the basis of the driving force-pressure-state-response (DPSR) model and using material flow analysis, this article proposes a framework for sustainable urban management and policy assessment. A case study city in China, Suzhou, illustrates this framework. The results show that resource consumption (excluding water), water consumption, and waste generation (excluding carbon dioxide) in Suzhou after implementation of proposed policies will be 14% lower than 2005 levels, 4.5% higher, and 28.9% higher, respectively, in 2015. Carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions in Suzhou will increase by 71.0% in 2015 over 2005 levels, whereas carbon intensity (CO2 emissions per unit of gross domestic product) will decrease by 44.9%. Future pollution control in Suzhou should pay more attention to pollution from vehicles. In addition, goals for relative dematerialization of energy and decarbonization in Suzhou will be achieved before absolute ones are. In the short term, the urban metabolism of Suzhou in 2015 may meet corresponding urban objectives. In the longer term, however, reducing the city's resource demand and waste generation will pose challenges for the sustainability of SuzhouLife cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely accepted methodology to support decision-making processes in which one compares alternatives, and that helps prevent shifting of environmental burdens along the value chain or among impact categories. According to regulation in the European Union (EU), the movement of waste needs to be reduced and, if unavoidable, the environmental gain from a specific waste treatment option requiring transport must be larger than the losses arising from transport. The EU explicitly recommends the use of LCA or life cycle thinking for the formulation of new waste management plans. In the last two revisions of the Industrial Waste Management Programme of Catalonia (PROGRIC), the use of a life cycle thinking approach to waste policy was mandated. In this article we explain the process developed to arrive at practical life cycle management (LCM) from what started as an LCA project. LCM principles we have labeled the "3/3" principle or the "good enough is best" principle were found to be essential to obtain simplified models that are easy to understand for legislators and industries, useful in waste management regulation, and, ultimately, feasible. In this article, we present the four models of options for the management of waste solvent to be addressed under Catalan industrial waste management regulation. All involved actors concluded that the models are sufficiently robust, are easy to apply, and accomplish the aim of limiting the transport of waste outside Catalonia, according to the principles of proximity and sufficiency.Backcasting has been widely used for developing energy futures. This paper explores the potential for using industrial ecology to guide the development of energy futures within a backcasting framework. Building on the backcasting work of Robinson [1], a seven step method is presented to embed industrial ecology principles within the development and assessment of future scenarios and transition paths toward them. The approach is applied to the case of backcasting regional energy futures in the Latrobe Valley, near Melbourne, Australia. This region has substantial brown coal deposits which are currently mined and used in coal-fired power stations to generate electricity. Bounded by a sustainability vision for the region in a carbon-constrained world, regional industrial ecologies in 2050 were backcast around three themes: bio-industries and renewables (no coal usage); electricity from coal with carbon capture and storage (low to high coal usage); and coal to products such as hydrogen, ammonia, diesel, methanol, plastics and char (demonstrating medium to high overall coal use relative to current levels). Potential environmental, technological, socio-political and economic impacts of each scenario across various life cycle stages were characterised. Results offer a platform for regional policy development to underpin deliberation on a preferred future by the community, industry and other stakeholders. Industrial ecology principles were found to be useful in backcasting for creatively articulating alternative futures featuring industrial symbiosis. However, enabling the approach to guide implementation of sustainable transition pathways requires further development and would benefit from integration within the Strategic Sustainable Development framework of Robert et al. [2]. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.There is increasing evidence that throughout the world, firms, governmental agencies and NGOs are seeking to stimulate industrial symbiosis. This concept and its application have also been the topic of extensive research. Up till now, this work lacks a more comprehensive theoretical framework, and this paper fills this gap. We provide a theoretical basis for understanding the dynamics through which regional industrial systems change their connectiveness in an attempt to reduce their ecological impact. We position our framework within the field of industrial symbiosis based on a comprehensive literature search in the ISI Web of Science database for publications that listed 'industrial symbiosis', 'eco-industrial park', or a combination of 'industrial-ecology' and 'regional' as a topic. The framework conceptualizes industrial symbiosis as a process at two levels: (1) the level of the regional industrial system (RIS), and (2) the societal level where the concept and routines of industrial symbiosis diffuse. We link the dynamics at these levels to changes in ecological impact and increase in institutional capacity. We conclude with a research agenda based on the variables and their basic relationships specified in our framework. The main line of research we propose is to systematically investigate how institutional capacity evolves over time in regional industrial systems and how it affects the ecological impact of such systems. We also propose to investigate how insights from existing literature about stimulating and impeding factors to industrial symbiosis can be understood in terms of mechanisms of transmission and how these mechanisms interact to create nationally distinct patterns of diffusion of industrial symbiosis. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The recycling of metals is widely viewed as a fruitful sustainability strategy, but little information is available on the degree to which recycling is actually taking place. This article provides an overview on the current knowledge of recycling rates for 60 metals. We propose various recycling metrics, discuss relevant aspects of recycling processes, and present current estimates on global end-of-life recycling rates (EOL-RR; i.e., the percentage of a metal in discards that is actually recycled), recycled content (RC), and old scrap ratios (OSRs; i.e., the share of old scrap in the total scrap flow). Because of increases in metal use over time and long metal in-use lifetimes, many RC values are low and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Because of relatively low efficiencies in the collection and processing of most discarded products, inherent limitations in recycling processes, and the fact that primary material is often relatively abundant and low-cost (which thereby keeps down the price of scrap), many EOL-RRs are very low: Only for 18 metals (silver, aluminum, gold, cobalt, chromium, copper, iron, manganese, niobium, nickel, lead, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, tin, titanium, and zinc) is the EOL-RR above 50% at present. Only for niobium, lead, and ruthenium is the RC above 50%, although 16 metals are in the 25% to 50% range. Thirteen metals have an OSR greater than 50%. These estimates may be used in considerations of whether recycling efficiencies can be improved; which metric could best encourage improved effectiveness in recycling; and an improved understanding of the dependence of recycling on economics, technology, and other factors.This article proposes a linear programming model that is based on the wastewater treatment input-output model ((WIO)-I-2) to identify the lowest-emission choice among alternative feasible options for wastewater treatment; this model can be considered as an application of the waste input-output linear programming model (WIO-LP) to wastewater issues. Using the data of the Tokyo metropolitan (WIO)-I-2 table, I apply this model to obtain the optimal wastewater treatment options under alternative scenarios. The Pareto frontiers of environmental loads are derived to show the trade-off relationships among various types of environmental load and the effect of the introduction of high-temperature incineration of dewatered sludge on the generation of environmental loads. The main conclusion of the study is that when all three types of environmental load (landfill level, global warming potential, and chemical oxygen demand) are considered, the introduction of high-temperature incineration causes the widening of the Pareto frontier of environmental loads and also causes it to move closer to the origin.Due to resource scarcity and environmental degradation, a new development concept emphasizing environmental concerns, called the circular economy (CE), has been enacted in legislation in China. This environmental management concept can be implemented at three levels, namely, region, industrial zone, and individual enterprise, with the objective of boosting economic development while lessening environmental and resource challenges. Environmental supply chain cooperation (ESCC), an approach that utilizes customer and supplier cooperation in environmental management, has been initiated among Chinese enterprises. Using survey data collected from 396 Chinese manufacturers, we examine the role of ESCC practices in influencing the relationship between implementing CE practices and the achievement of performance outcomes by testing the moderation and mediation effects of ESCC practices on the CE practice-performance relationship through hierarchical regression analysis. Our data analyses indicate that ESCC practices are useful by moderation and, in some cases, essential by mediation, for Chinese manufacturers seeking to realize the performance targets desired in CE practices. The results highlight the need for Chinese manufacturers to improve supply chain coordination in their implementation of CE. On the policy side, our research findings suggest that ESCC practices are beneficial and, in some cases, necessary for the development of CE in China.Eco-industrial initiatives, which close industrial loops by turning wastes at one point in a value chain into inputs at another point, are attracting growing interest as a solution to the problem of sustainability of industrial systems. Although Germany and Japan have made important advances in building recycling incentives into their industrial systems and sought competitive advantage from doing so, China is arguably taking the issue even further (in principle) through its pursuit of a circular economy, now enshrined in law as an official national development goal. In this article, we review a number of the eco-industrial initiatives taken in China and compare them using a common graphical representation with comparable initiatives taken in the West and elsewhere in East Asia. Our aim is to demonstrate some common themes across the case studies, such as the transformation from the former linear economy to a circular economy and the evolutionary processes in which dynamic linkages are gradually established over time. We discuss the drivers of these eco-industrial initiatives as well as the inhibitors, setting the initiatives in an evolutionary framework and introducing a notion of Pareto eco-efficiency to evaluate them. We make the argument that China might be capturing latecomer advantages through its systematic promotion of eco-industrial initiatives within a circular economy framework.The recovery of electric arc furnace (EAF) dust generates large amounts of an industrial byproduct called Waelz slag. This residue, consisting primarily of iron oxide contaminated with other metal oxides (including zinc and lead), is usually disposed of in landfill sites at a high economic and environmental cost. This paper investigates an alternative based on industrial ecology principles, which involves the incorporation of Waelz slag into clay ceramic construction bricks. For the purpose of this work, Waelz slag and raw materials employed in the manufacture of ceramic bricks (natural clays, wood pulp) were characterized. Subsequently, a series of brick specimens were manufactured according to commercial mixes and using industrial equipment and procedures. Similar specimens were also produced replacing 20-30 wt % of the clay with Waelz slag. The resulting products were analyzed for their physical (bulk density, water absorption, open porosity), mechanical (modulus of rupture), and chemical properties (soluble salts content) in order to evaluate compliance with quality standards for construction materials. The environmental consequences of incorporating slag into ceramic products were also investigated at three stages of their life cycle: release of potentially toxic species during their use (NEN 7345), leaching of heavy metals after disposal in landfill sites (EN 12457 1 and 2), and emission of atmospheric pollutants during the firing process. The experimental results demonstrate that incorporation of Waelz slag does not deteriorate the physical, mechanical, and chemical properties of the resulting products. The leaching of species during its useful lives show compliance with threshold values established according to the Dutch Building Materials Decree (DBMD), and Waelz slag containing bricks fall into the category of nonhazardous waste landfill, just like conventional bricks used at this work. Emissions of CO(2) and NO(x) were reduced versus the emissions of halogenated gases and SO(2), which were favored due to the thermal decomposition of S, Cl, and F contained in the waste material.The objectives of the research here described were to put in evidence the eco-profiles of two product-systems concerning bovine leather manufactured in Italy and Spain, to identify their hot spots and to find out if the different technologies and cooperative management solutions adopted led to significant environmental differences in the two systems analysed. The environmental impacts of two systems were analysed by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. At the macro-phase level, tanning resulted to be the most burdensome phase for almost all impact categories in both systems. At the level of the specific tannery phases, the main hot spots were tanning, dyeing-retaining and soaking in the Italian system, soaking-liming, tanning and retanning in the Spanish one. The main differences between the two systems and a few options for improvement were identified at three levels: energy mix, industrial processes and solid waste management. Despite the technological and waste management dissimilarity of the two systems, their total environmental burdens appeared quite similar. However, relevant differences in the most burdening phases, operations and substances are highlighted in this paper. Improvements in both systems should be aimed at by means of an optimisation of tanning processes and reduction of chemicals use. Further studies dealing with inventories of recovery processes and landfill disposal of wastes are recommended.Are companies better off acting collectively in sharing resources, such that one company's waste becomes another company's feedstock, or is it strategically preferable to act individually to minimize resource flows? Eleven enterprises on Oahu, HI, were found to be exchanging nine different materials, constituting previously undocumented industrial symbiosis collaboration, anchored by a coal-fired power plant in the Campbell Industrial Park. The environmental and economic performance of eight companies exchanging six of these materials is assessed based on price and quantity data collected during interviews with the participants. The largest environmental benefits were found to be reduced landfilling and conservation of primary materials, including 40 million gallons of fresh water and approximately 17 800 tons of coal annually. The research finds that symbiotic solutions, when made visible, are often preferable, especially on an island. Indeed, company managers who fail to consider symbiotic solutions for resource issues risk overlooking the most effective strategic options. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Presently, pollution of water bodies (rivers, lakes, seas, ground water, etc.) is a critical issue. While recognizing the great importance of water in human life, we all the same continue to exploit water resources severely, irreversibly altering their natural conditions by discharging wastes. Wastewater rank among the most noxious pollutants. In small quantities, they enrich water and promote growth of plants and fish, but in large quantities, destroy the ecosystem.Metals and materials play a pivotal role in society as their properties impart unique functionality to engineered structures and consumer products. Metals are theoretically infinitely recyclable; however, the functionality and design of consumer product complicate recycling due to their ever more complex structures producing unliberated low grade and complex recyclates. Metallurgical smelting ingenuity, good technology and intelligent use of thermodynamics and transfer processes gets metallurgists and recyclers a far way down the path of creating high recycling rates from a large range of primary concentrates and recyclates. However, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics teaches us the practical limits of recycling in terms of entropy creation, which is determined by the complexity of the recyclates and hence to the economics of processing/technology and metal/energy recovery. The usual simple accounting type tools do not rise to the challenge. Therefore, a key issue for the creation of "sustainable systems'' and hence the minimization of waste (or in other words achieve high recycling rates) is the creation of optimal industrial ecological systems with optimally linked Best Available Techniques (BAT). This must maximize the recovery of materials from ores and recyclates within the boundaries of consumer behaviour, product design/functionality, thermodynamics, legislation, technology and economics. Examples will show how recyclate quality/grade predicted by recycling models affects entropy creation, while also reviewing various published methodologies. This paper shows that simulation models are a prerequisite to designing "sustainable'' systems as these can predict recyclate grade/quality/losses/toxicity of streams, the link to entropy and economics and the realization of company ideals and mission statements in this regard. In other words, to dematerialize society requires detail input by engineers, their predictive tools and economic based design approaches to engineer a sustainable future.Urban water scarcity from ongoing drought and an increasing population are driving a range of water saving options to be explored in Melbourne (Australia). This paper assesses the cost effectiveness of five water treatment and industrial reuse options in the Fishermans Bend industrial area at Port Melbourne. In consultation with industrial stakeholders and the local water utility, the study design began by identifying potential water sources and sinks in the area. Treatment technologies for each option - using a combination of membrane bioreactors (MBR) and in some cases reverse osmosis (RO) technologies - were developed. In evaluating the potential for future implementation, the cost effectiveness ($/kiloLitre) was assessed relative to water supply augmentation and water demand management options available in Melbourne. Additionally, the opportunities and barriers for option implementation in Port Melbourne were contrasted with the Kwinana Industrial Area, Western Australia where many regional synergy projects have been undertaken. This research identifies that the future implementation of industrial ecology opportunities requires strong and ongoing stakeholder involvement as described in this paper. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Anthropogenic phosphorus load in the aquatic environment of Lujiang County, central China, may be a serious problem, greatly contributing to surface water eutrophication. Using substance flow analysis, this study develops a phosphorus-flow analytical model to trace the pathways of this limiting nutrient throughout Lujiang's socioeconomic system. The model includes six major subsystems: extraction, phosphorous chemical industry, agriculture, animal husbandry, human consumption, and phosphorous waste management. We conducted qualitative and quantitative analyses of the primary phosphorous flows and stocks within these subsystems in Lujiang County over 2008. Approaches to data include statistical reports and literature reviews, face-to-face interviews and questionnaire-based surveys. The results show the total phosphorus input and output were 8311.5 tons and 5664.6 tons, respectively, in Lujiang in 2008, resulting in a phosphorus surplus of 2646.9 tons in the socioeconomic system. The phosphorus load in the recipient waters, as part of the total phosphorus output, was estimated to be 1666.7 tons. Large-scale livestock operations contributed the most phosphorus to local surface waters, accounting for 55.8% and followed by human consumption (23.0%) and agriculture (21.2%). Consequently, it should be of central concern for policy makers to improve phosphorous reuse efficiency in order to reduce phosphorus release into the aquatic environment. Limitations of the methodology and data are also discussed. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The increase of the market demands on innovative, functional and aesthetic product, friendly with the environment, has given a great relevance to the design and development of sustainable products. To achieve this goal, it is important to undertake a process of innovative design that will include sustainability requirements so that the product and its associated system become eco-efficient in its life cycle. This is the reason of this study, aimed at developing a model of design and bioinspired development, within the areas of the research concept of "Cradle to Cradle" and also based on the professional performance of eco-innovation, eco-design, eco- industry and on a whole within industrial ecology. The Genomic Eco-design Model (GEM) is defined as a methodology for designing products based on satisfying both individual and collective needs under the new paradigm of Cradle to Cradle. It focuses on eco-friendly product design and it is integrated within the regulatory framework of ISO standards for life cycle analysis, eco-design and eco-labeling.The production of renewable clean energy is a prime necessity for the sustainable future existence of our planet. However, because of the resource-intensive nature, and other challenges associated with these new generation renewable energy sources, novel industrial frameworks need to be co-developed. Integrated renewable energy production schemes with foundations on resource sharing, carbon neutrality, energy-efficient design, source reduction, green processing plan, anthropogenic use of waste resources for the production green energy along with the production of raw material for allied food and chemical industries is imperative for the sustainable development of this sector especially in an emission-constrained future industrial scenario. To attain these objectives, the scope of hybrid renewable production systems and integrated renewable energy industrial ecology is briefly described. Further, the principles of Integrated Renewable Energy Park (IREP) approach, an example for macro-level energy production, and its benefits and global applications are also explored. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Classroom units were developed for high-school environmental science and college industrial ecology classes to introduce life-cycle perspectives and systems analysis of transportation fuel/vehicle systems. The units at both levels emphasize the need to consider energy and environmental issues related to the nation's transportation sector that extend well beyond the gasoline pump and vehicle emissions. The units include several lessons to introduce environmental issues, understand the fuel and vehicle technologies (high-school level only), and conceptually and quantitatively evaluate differences among the expected future fuels through a life-cycle assessment. The quantitative assessment of the high-school students shows that the units helped students to significantly raise their energy knowledge and change their attitudes. Anecdotal information from the students indicates that the increased awareness about the seriousness of energy issues has caused them to be more conservative and conscientious about their energy consumption behaviors. The evaluation of the class in the 2009-2010 academic year (AY09) was excellent, suggesting that the addition of the life-cycle assessment activities described in this paper were well received by the students. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000059. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.The objectives of this study were to describe two approaches to incorporating sustainability into the undergraduate engineering curricula and to list a variety of existing course resources that can easily be adopted or adapted by science and engineering faculty for this purpose. The two approaches described are (1) redesigning existing courses through development of new curricular materials that still meet the objectives of the original course and (2) developing upper division elective courses that address specific topics related to sustainability, such as manufacturing or life-cycle assessment, in depth. Case studies of three courses-Green Industrial Organic Chemistry, Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing (Kettering University), and Sustainable Engineering (University of Oklahoma)-are presented. Assessment results from Green Industrial Organic Chemistry indicate that alternative curricular materials incorporating green chemistry can be used to meet the learning objectives of more traditional courses in organic chemistry, which are already required for many engineering majors. Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing assessment data indicate that students increased their knowledge and application of industrial ecology topics as a result of taking the course. Preliminary assessment data from Sustainable Engineering indicate that students applied concepts of global resource reserves, sustainable growth and development, design for environment, and life-cycle assessment in their course work or employment approximately 1 year after finishing the course. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000049. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.P>This article discusses whether "sustainability" has a physical meaning in applied thermodynamics. If it has, then it should be possible to derive general principles and rules for devising "sustainable systems." If not, then other sides of the issue retain their relevance, but thermodynamic laws are not appropriate by themselves to decide whether a system or a scenario is sustainable. Here, we make use of a single axiom: that final consumption (material or immaterial) can be quantified solely in terms of equivalent primary exergy flows. On this basis, we develop a system theory that shows that if "simple" systems are based solely on the exploitation of fossil resources, they cannot be thermodynamically "sustainable." But as renewable resources are brought into the picture and the system complexity grows, there are thresholds below or beyond which the system exhibits an ability to maintain itself (perhaps through fluctuations), in a self-preserving (i.e., a sustainable) state. It appears that both complexity and the degree of nonlinearity of the transfer functions of the systems play a major role and-even for some of the simplest cases-lead to nontrivial solutions in phase space. Therefore, even if the examples presented in the article can be considered rather crude approximations to real, complex systems at best, the results show a trend that is worth further consideration.P>Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) sheds light on the dimmer side of production and consumption patterns in modern societies. The rapid increase in its quantity and complexity contribute to the challenges it poses to solid waste management systems. Several members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have relied on the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR) to tackle the issue, with varying degrees of success. Several non-OECD countries, including Thailand, are now developing WEEE programs and are looking for lessons from these first movers. This case study aims to provide an understanding both of this context and of the EPR program for WEEE proposed for Thailand. It finds that EPR mechanisms in general, and the proposed buy-back system financed by product fees in Thailand in particular, have a strong potential to consolidate WEEE collection for the formal recycling sector by offering end users monetary incentives. On the negative side, this is an expensive combination of policy instruments, and the institutional design of the governmental fund is rigid. The policy proposal also contains no mechanism for product redesign-one of the objectives in the national WEEE strategy. This article suggests that the effectiveness of the policy might benefit from more flexibility at the compliance scheme level, in order to lessen the monopoly of the governmental fund, as well as the introduction of differentiated fees to promote environmentally friendly products.P>Carbon footprints for several shopping bag alternatives (polyethylene, paper, cotton, biodegradable modified starch, and recycled polyethylene) were compared with life cycle assessment. Stochastic uncertainty analysis was used to study the sensitivity of the comparison to scenario and parameter uncertainty. On the basis of the results, we could give only a few robust conclusions without choosing a waste treatment scenario or limiting the parameter space. Given the scenario of current waste infrastructure in Finland, recycled polyethylene bags seem to be the most preferable (-7 to 24 g CO(2) eq./bag) and biodegradable bags the least preferable (38 to 60 g CO(2) eq./bag) option. In each analyzed waste treatment scenario, a few parameters dominated the uncertainty of results. Most of these parameters were downstream of the shopping bag manufacturing (consumer behavior, landfill conditions, method of waste combustion, etc.). The choice of waste treatment scenario had a greater effect on the ranking of bags than parameter uncertainty within scenarios. This result highlights the importance of including several scenarios in comparative life cycle assessments.P>In this study, we develop a framework for the multicriteria design of plastic recycling based on quality information and environmental impacts for the purpose of supporting collaborative decision making among consumers, municipalities, and recyclers. The subject of this article is the mechanical recycling of postconsumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. We present a "quality conversion matrix," which links the quality of recycled PET resin to the quality of waste PET bottles and operational conditions, described in terms of the functions of modules constituting the entire recycling process. We estimate the quality of recycled PET resin and simulate the applicability to the intended products as the primary criterion by confirming whether the estimated quality of recycled resin satisfies the quality demands of PET resin users. The amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and fossil resource consumption are also estimated as the secondary criteria. An approach to collaborative decision making utilizing mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) and Monte Carlo simulation is proposed on the premise of different objectives of various stakeholders, where all the feasible optimal solutions for achieving the quality demands are obtained. The quality requirements of waste bottles, along with the CO2 emissions and fossil resource consumption estimated for each solution, contribute to the collaborative multicriteria design of plastic recycling.P>This article characterizes the societal metabolism of the Colombian economy, identifying the main factors of natural resources use, overuse, or exhaustion. The environmental sustainability of a country depends to a large extent on the size of the economy compared to the available resource base. Material flow indicators provide an assessment of size or scale of economies. Direct material flow indicators are used to analyze the ecological dimension of economic activity in the period 1970-2007. Some resource extraction conflicts are briefly described in the light of material flow analysis. Foreign and domestic demand promotes increasing extraction and export of domestic natural resources. This is sometimes related to an irreversible deterioration of the local environment. The concept of "ecologically unequal exchange" with the rest of the world is analyzed in this context. Colombia has a large and growing negative physical trade balance, whereas per capita use of materials is still about half of the industrial countries' average.P>Human activities generate waste, whose amounts tend to increase as the demand for quality of life becomes greater and greater. Hazardous waste (HW) generally makes up only about 1% of all waste in Europe; nevertheless, it presents a serious risk to the ecosystem and human health unless managed and treated safely. Several countries of the European Union (EU) report treatment rates of HW in excess of 40%; the others export a large portion of it. Notwithstanding that lots of efforts have been made to properly identify, treat, recycle, store, transport, and dispose of HW, this is still a hot topic faced by the governments of many EU countries. The objective of this article is to present a sustainable indicators system to assist in the implementation of a modern and sustainable hazardous waste management (HWM) system in Lithuania. The specific goals are (1) to promote the development of a comprehensive monitoring and enforcement system for timely implementation of HWM rules and other related pieces of legislation and (2) to assist in the implementation of training and awareness of the programs of HWM in support of the development of background data for policy making, including improvement of a hazardous waste identification scheme. The emphasis is put on preventing future discharges of HW by promoting the actions that will result in avoidance, recycling, or recovery of the otherwise hazardous waste.P>Thermal insulation is a strategic product for reducing energy consumption and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the building sector. This study examines from a life cycle perspective the changes in GHG emissions resulting from the use of two rigid thermal insulation products manufactured and installed from 1971 to 2025. GHG emissions related to insulation production and fugitive releases of blowing agents are modeled and compared with GHG savings from reduced heating loads in North America, Europe, and Asia. Implementation of alternative blowing agents has greatly improved the carbon dioxide 100-year equivalent (CO(2)-eq) emission performance of thermal insulation. The net average CO(2)-eq savings to emissions ratio for current extruded polystyrene (XPS) and polyisocyanurate (PIR) insulation studied was 48:1, with a broad range from 3 to 1,800. Older insulation products manufactured with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can result in net cumulative GHG emissions. Reduction of CO(2)-eq emissions from buildings is governed by complex interactions between insulation thickness and placement, climate, fuel type, and heating system efficiencies. A series of charts mapping both emissions payback and net savings demonstrate the interactions between these factors and provide a basis for specific policy recommendations to guide effective insulation investments and placement.P>The disposal of scrap tires is one of the biggest solid waste issues facing some small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean. Dominica is a small Caribbean island nation that seeks to maintain its well-founded image as the "Nature Island of the Caribbean." The economy has seen a steadily increasing import of both tires and cars, with no mechanism for exportation of spent tires. This study used data gathered from both government and international sources to estimate the quantity of tires currently on the island and projected each year up to 2020 to determine potential reuse options. We performed a material flow analysis (MFA) using tire import, vehicle registration records, and projected per capita income to determine the expected accumulation of waste tires. Vehicle registration is expected to rise with the island's wealth, which will affect the annual flow of tires. Two methods were used to predict vehicle growth over time. Our analysis showed an average waste tire output from the economy of 47,000 to 50,000 passenger tire equivalents (PTEs) per year, or approximately 470 to 500 short tons per year of mass. Such an output does not justify large expenditures of tire shredding and processing equipment, but whole tire applications may be feasible as potential disposition options. The methods can be easily replicated to give low-range and high-range estimates of waste tires disposed in the environment.P>By-product synergy (BPS) is an industrial ecology practice that involves utilization of industrial by-products as feedstocks for other industrial processes. A novel decision support tool is developed to analyze BPS networks that involve material processing and transport among regional clusters of companies. Mathematical programming techniques are used to determine the optimal network design and the material flows that minimize total cost or environmental impacts. This methodology is incorporated into a graphical software package called Eco-Flow (TM). The tool has been applied to model and analyze available synergies in an existing BPS network centered in Kansas City, Missouri. A base case, which assumes no synergies, is compared with the optimal BPS solution found by Eco-Flow (TM). The results for Kansas City suggest that when companies in the network cooperate to optimize the system profitability, up to $15 million per year of savings are possible. The findings also indicate that the BPS approach would result in 29% reduction in total cost, 25.8% reduction in average company cost, 30% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and 37% reduction in waste to landfill. The modeling approach is being extended to better represent the dynamics of industrial and ecological processes.The primary objective of this case study is to discuss how a company can address environmental concerns raised by regional environmental regulatory authorities using a strategic plan based on ecoefficiency and industrial ecology for the purpose of ensuring the future sustainable development of the company. It places emphasis on the fact that, despite being the most important tactical asset in the operations of most companies, water resources are ignored and seen as inexhaustible. It is intended as a wake-up call for top management officials to realize that there is a need for a conceptual change because environmental department managers in many companies do not receive the necessary support for implementing new environmentally friendly technologies.P>This study defines a linear model of emission multipliers through the use of a national accounting matrix including environmental accounts (NAMEA) for the Catalan economy that integrates the regional economic information with the greenhouse gas emissions. As in the model of income multipliers, emission multipliers can be divided into own effects, open effects, and circular effects. This decomposition shows the channels of income generation and their effects on regional greenhouse gas emissions. Our results reveal significant differences among the three gases analyzed as well as important asymmetries at a sectorial level.Industrial ecology is a scope of application towards sustainable development targets. Implementation of industrial ecology at a territorial scale, called industrial symbiosis, allows a development of industrial activities more sustainable from an environmental point of view. This paper mainly aims at highlighting the benefits of scientific proximity field on industrial ecology analysis. Firstly, we refer to the theoretical frameworks on industrial ecology. Secondly, we would like to highlight that industrial ecology strategy could be considered like a territorial development dynamic. We take an interest in works made about geographical, organisational and institutional proximity, and about coordination between actors involved, in order to demonstrate that industrial ecology is dynamical process.The general methodological approach to the conservation of Earth's natural biota in a developing civilization based on mineral resources of the lithosphere is substantiated. The principles of interaction between the technosphere and biosphere that ensure their combined development are formulated on the basis of the concept of coevolution of antagonistic systems.A novel microextraction technique based on membrane-protected multiwalled carbon nanotubes coated with molecularly imprinted polymer (MWCNTs-MIP) was developed. In this technique, MWCNTs-MIP were packed inside a polypropylene membrane envelope, which was then clamped onto a paper clip. For extraction, the packed membrane envelope was first impregnated with toluene and then placed in sample solutions. Target analytes in the solutions were first extracted into toluene in the membrane envelope, and were then extracted specifically onto the MWCNTs-MIP. After the extraction, target analytes were desorbed in methanol for liquid chromatography analysis. MWCNTs-MIP of prometryn were used as a model to demonstrate the feasibility of this novel microextraction technique. Factors affecting the extraction including organic solvent, stirring rate, extraction time, salt concentration, and pH were investigated. Under the optimized conditions, the limits of detection (a signal-to-noise ratio of 3) for the selected triazine herbicides were 0.08-0.38 mu g/L. The prepared membrane envelope could be used at least 50 times. The developed method was used for the analysis of the triazines spiked in river water, wastewater, and liquid milk, with recoveries ranging from 79.3-97.4, 58.9-110.3 and 76.2-104.9%, respectively.Purification of oil-contaminated land may be carried out both in a static regime (under conditions of applying a biological preparation directly to the contaminated area) and also in a dynamic regime (land restoration in bioreactors taking account of intense mixing). Use of new bioremediation technology for contaminated soils under static conditions makes it possible to provide both effective destruction of oil products, and a significant reduction in the concentration of mobile forms of heavy metal in land. The basis of this biochemical technology is use of a combined preparation that is a mixture of humic-mineral concentrate and the biological compound Olevorin. In closed type reactors, purification of oil-contaminated soils may be carried out all year round due to the support of optimum temperature conditions required for replication of micro-organisms. By means of mixing soil, contaminated with hydrocarbons, in a bioreactor it is possible to reduce hydrocarbon concentration considerably during the first 20 h, and in a subsequent dynamic process to provide a significantly lower hydrocarbon content in soil.Life cycle assessment is used to determine the most environmentally beneficial alternatives for reuse of scrap tires, based on the concept of industrial ecology. Unutilized scrap tires can be a major source of pollution, and in the past decade Federal and state governments in the United States have encouraged the recycling and reuse of scrap tires in a number of applications, ranging from energy recovery to civil engineering materials to utilization of ground rubber in manufacturing. Life cycle inventory data are collected from primary industry sources as well as published literature, and life cycle impact analysis is performed using the TRACI tool. The results indicate that beneficial reuse of scrap tires, particularly in cement plants and artificial turf, provides reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air toxics, and water consumption. For example, every metric ton of tire-derived fuel substituted for coal in cement kilns avoids an estimated 543 kg (CO(2) equivalent) of direct and indirect GHG emissions. Taking into account the deductible CO(2) from natural rubber, the avoided GHG emissions would be 613 CO(2) kg eq. per metric ton. The use of scrap tires for fuel in cement plants provides more reductions in most environmental impact categories compared to other scrap tire applications, excluding application in artificial turf. Although the use of ground rubber for artificial turf offers the greatest environmental emission reductions, it has limited potential for large-scale utilization due to the saturated market for artificial turf. Therefore, the use of fuel derived from scrap tires in cement production appears to be an attractive option in view of its large market capacity and significant potential for environmental impact reductions.This article addresses a market-based management concept for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) known as the "best-of-two-worlds" approach. The concept is based on the idea that recyclers in developing countries and emerging economies can cooperate with technologically advanced refineries in industrialized countries to facilitate efficient recovery of valuable metals, such as gold and palladium, from e-waste. The article provides an overview of technical and environmental concerns underlying the concept and sheds light on the political framework, the waste-related trade issues, and the resource economics that need to be considered for further decision making. Building on this synthesis, I conduct a qualitative assessment of sustainability impacts of the proposed concept by analyzing two scenarios and their associated risks. The analysis suggests that, under certain preconditions, the best-of-two-worlds concept could yield significant improvements in terms of management of hazardous substances, resource efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, income generation, and investments into social and environmental standards. Generally, two potential implementation scenarios were identified: Whereas under Scenario 1 only WEEE generated within developing countries and emerging economies is managed through the best-of-two-worlds approach, Scenario 2 additionally incorporates WEEE imported from industrialized countries. Although both scenarios can yield a variety of benefits, Scenario 2 might cause a net flow of hazardous substances from industrialized countries into developing countries and emerging economies, thus leading to less beneficial sustainability impacts.This article proposes a multidisciplinary and systemic approach to sustainable consumption that combines environmental considerations of energy usage from a life cycle perspective with a social understanding of consumption grounded in economic anthropology. The goal is to understand both consumption patterns and drivers, with a focus on household energy used for cooling in the metropolitan region of Manila in the Philippines. For different socioeconomic groups, cooling devices also deliver social and cultural services, such as socializing or adhering to Western fashion trends. This article argues for the need to address these aspects if reductions in household energy usage are to become possible. The limits of individual-choice theories are rendered apparent, with examples of how institutional and structural conditions lock in consumption patterns and restrict household choices. The notion that emerging economies might be able to "leapfrog" over the environmental errors of more industrialized countries is also raised and critiqued.Continuous population growth is causing increased water contamination. Uneven distribution of water resources and periodic droughts have forced governments to seek new water sources: reclaimed and desalinated water. Wastewater recovery is a tool for better management of the water resources that are diverted from the natural water cycle to the anthropic one. The main objective of this work is to assess the stages of operation of a Spanish Mediterranean wastewater treatment plant to identify the stages with the highest environmental impact, to establish the environmental loads associated with wastewater reuse, and to evaluate alternative final destinations for wastewater. Tertiary treatment does not represent a significant increment in the impact of the total treatment at the plant. The impact of reclaiming 1 cubic meter (m(3)) of wastewater represents 0.16 kilograms of carbon dioxide per cubic meter (kg CO2/m(3)), compared to 0.83 kg CO2/m(3) associated with basic wastewater treatment (primary, secondary, and sludge treatment). From a comparison of the alternatives for wastewater final destination, we observe that replacing potable water means a freshwater savings of 1.1 m(3), whereas replacing desalinated water means important energy savings, reflected in all of the indicators. To ensure the availability of potable water to all of the population-especially in areas where water is scarce-governments should promote reusing wastewater under safe conditions as much as possible.The life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction benefits of vehicle lightweighting (LW) were evaluated in a companion article. This article provides an economic assessment of vehicle LW with aluminum and high-strength steel. Relevant cost information taken from the literature is synthesized, compiled, and formed into estimates of GHG reduction costs through LW. GHG emissions associated with vehicle LW scenarios between 6% and 23% are analyzed alongside vehicle life cycle costs to achieve these LW levels. We use this information to estimate the cost to remove GHG emissions per metric ton by LW, and we further calculate the difference between added manufacturing cost and fuel cost savings from LW. The results show greater GHG savings derived from greater LW and added manufacturing costs as expected. The associated production costs are, however, disproportionately higher than the fuel cost savings associated with higher LW options. A sensitivity analysis of different vehicle classes confirms that vehicle LW is more cost-effective for larger vehicles. Also, the cost of GHG emissions reductions through lightweighting is compared with alternative GHG emissions reduction technologies for passenger vehicles, such as diesel, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid electric powertrains. The results find intensive LW to be a competitive and complementary approach relative to the technological alternatives within the automotive industry but more costly than GHG mitigation strategies available to other industries.Life cycle impact of emissions, energy requirements, and exergetic losses are calculated for a novel process for producing titanium dioxide nanoparticles from an ilmenite feedstock. The Altairnano hydrochloride process analyzed is tailored for the production of nanoscale particles, unlike established commercial processes. The life cycle energy requirements for the production of these particles is compared with that of traditional building materials on a per unit mass basis. The environmental impact assessment and energy analysis results both emphasize the use of nonrenewable fossil fuels in the upstream life cycle. Exergy analysis shows fuel losses to be secondary to material losses, particularly in the mining of ilmenite ore. These analyses are based on the same inventory data. The main contributions of this work are to provide life cycle inventory of a nanomanufacturing process and reveal potential insights from exergy analysis that are not available from other methods.In many cases, policy makers and laymen perceive harmful emissions from chemical plants as the most important source of environmental impacts in chemical production. As a result, regulations and environmental efforts have tended to focus on this area. Concerns about energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, however, are increasing in all industrial sectors. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, we analyzed the full environmental impacts of producing 99 chemical products in Western Europe from cradle to factory gate. We applied several life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods to cover various impact areas. Our analysis shows that for both organic and inorganic chemical production in industrial countries, energy-related impacts often represent more than half and sometimes up to 80% of the total impacts, according to a range of LCIA methods. Resource use for material feedstock is also important, whereas direct emissions from chemical plants may make up only 5% to 10% of the total environmental impacts. Additionally, the energy-related impacts of organic chemical production increase with the complexity of the chemicals. The results of this study offer important information for policy makers and sustainability experts in the chemical industry striving to reduce environmental impacts. We identify more sustainable energy production and use as an important option for improvements in the environmental profile of chemical production in industrial countries, especially for the production of advanced organic and fine chemicals.Technological progress and adoption are fundamentally interconnected with environmental challenges faced by society. At the product level, researchers often explore the interplay between technological change and the environment by tracking trends in impacts per unit functionality-for example, gasoline consumed per distance traveled by a vehicle. In this article, we explore an alternative measure: "typical product." A typical product measure accounts for changes in consumers' demand and use of products as product quality improves-for example, gasoline consumed for a typical driving pattern for a vehicle. We compare and contrast functionality and typical product measures through a case study of electricity use to fabricate Intel desktop microprocessors from 1995 to 2006. The functionality normalization is measured in terms of electricity use per transistor produced. Results show rapid and sustained exponential decrease. The "typical product" measures electricity use per typical desktop microprocessor of a given year (e.g., a Pentium II in 1998, a Pentium IV in 2002). Results show that, despite fluctuations, energy use per typical microprocessor is roughly constant over the 12-year period. The explanation of this result is that although technological progress dramatically reduces the energy needed per transistor, it also induces demand for more powerful chips, which contain many more transistors. The typical product measure has applications in defining functional units in life cycle assessment, characterizing rebound effects, and measuring energy efficiency trends.This study analyzed the net carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emission reductions between 2005 and 2050 by using wood for energy under various scenarios of forest management and energy conversion technology in Japan, considering both CO(2) emission reductions from replacement of fossil fuels and changes in carbon storage in forests. According to our model, wood production for energy results in a significant reduction of carbon storage levels in forests (by 46% to 77% in 2050 from the 2005 level). Thus, the net CO(2) emission reduction when wood is used for energy becomes drastically smaller. Conventional tree production for energy increases net CO(2) emissions relative to preserving forests, but fast-growing tree production may reduce net CO(2) emissions more than preserving forests does. When wood from fast-growing trees is used to generate electricity with gas turbines, displacing natural gas, the net CO(2) emission reduction from the combination of fast-growing trees and electricity generation with gas turbines is about 58% of the CO(2) emission reduction from electricity generation from gas turbines alone in 2050, and an energy conversion efficiency of around 20% or more is required to obtain net reductions over the entire period until 2050. When wood is used to produce bioethanol, displacing gasoline, net reductions are realized after 2030, provided that heat energy is recovered from residues from ethanol production. These results show the importance of considering the change in carbon storage when estimating the net CO(2) emission reduction effect of the wood use for energy.Identification of the flow of materials and substances associated with a product system provides useful information for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and contributes to extending the scope of complementarity between LCA and Materials Flow Analysis/Substances Flow Analysis (MFA/SFA), the two major tools of industrial ecology. This paper proposes a new methodology based on input-output analysis for identifying the physical input-output flow of individual materials that is associated with the production of a unit of given product, the unit physical input-output by materials (UPIOM). While the Sankey diagram has been a standard tool for the visualization of MFA/SFA, with an increase in the complexity of the flows under consideration, which will be the case when economy-wide intersectoral flows of materials are involved, the Sankey diagram may become too complex for effective visualization. An alternative way to visually represent material flows is proposed which makes use of triangulation of the flow matrix based on degrees of fabrication. The proposed methodology is applied to the flow of pig iron and iron and steel scrap that are associated with the production of a passenger car in Japan. Its usefulness to identify a specific MFA pattern from the original 10 table is demonstrated.Studies of industrial symbiosis (IS) focus on the physical flows of materials and energy in local industrial systems. In an ideal IS, waste material and energy are shared or exchanged among the actors of the system, thereby reducing the consumption of virgin material and energy inputs, and likewise the generation of waste and emissions. In this study, the environmental impacts of an industrial ecosystem centered around a pulp and paper mill and operating as an IS are analyzed using life cycle assessment (LCA). The system is compared with two hypothetical reference systems in which the actors would operate in isolation. Moreover, the system is analyzed further in order to identify possibilities for additional links between the actors. The results show that of the total life cycle impacts of the system, upstream processes made the greatest overall contribution to the results. Comparison with stand-alone production shows that in the case studied, the industrial symbiosis results in modest improvements, 5% to 20% in most impact categories, in the overall environmental impacts of the system. Most of the benefits occur upstream through heat and electricity production for the local town. All in all it is recommended that when the environmental impacts of industrial symbiosis are assessed, the impacts occurring upstream should also be studied, not only the impacts within the ecosystem.This paper bases on the theory of industrial ecology, uses the method of social network analysis and bibliometrics, uses the statistical and visualization tools and get help from datas of patent databases and statistic yearbooks. This paper finds the evolution law between patent and new industry through the changes of patent quantity, quality and structure, in the hope of guiding the develop of related industries, especially strategic new industiy.Ambient air of Dalian was sampled with active high-volume air samplers in early spring time. The concentrations and the congeners between gas phase and particulate phase of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans(PCDD/Fs) in the air were measured. Samples analysis results showed that the concentration of PCDD/Fs in particulate phase was higher than that in gas phase. The ratio of PCDD to PCDF in gaseous phase and particulate phase was lower than 0.4. The main sources of atmospheric PCDD/Fs in Dalian early spring season were coal-related source. The total I-TEQ in gaseous phase and particulate phase was 30.3 and 143.6 fg m(-3), respectively. The I-TEQ of Dalian early spring atmosphere was lower than international standard, the atmospheric quality in Dalian was better.A Green Virtual Enterprise (GVE) is an emerging sustainable manufacturing and logistics networked enterprise model focused on offering, delivering and recovering green products to/from the market, under a lifecycle thinking and supported by its source network. In this paper, a GVE Breeding Environment Reference Framework is proposed as a common architectural framework offering a clear approach for conceiving sustainable and fully flexible forward and reverse supply networks, within a breeding environment context, based on a set of five building blocks: targets, main actors, operating principles, lifecycle and supporting technologies, to create and manage GVEs.Industrial ecologically equipped area model (APEA) has a key role to consolidate and attract businesses with a high level of technological content and, on the other hand, to contrast an indiscriminate occupational situation in productive areas based on logistics and heavy industry, which has a low added value and great environmental impact. In fact APEA is the expression of a selective, qualified policy for government of settlement policies for production that are based on adequate policies of environmental compensation and equalization. APEA model aims to developed innovation in production, strengthening research and development already carried out by leading companies in the territory, focusing attention and using available resources to save energy and concentrate on renewable sources as an opportunity for a wide range of innovations not only linked to the energy field, by also to production processes, the civil sector and transport. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAASUrban complexity is a hard-to-grasp concept. This paper firstly aims at investigating this issue through the prism of scale-hierarchic distributions: fractals, power laws, Zipf's laws and Pareto distributions. Authors notably emphasize the mathematical proximity between these distributions. Building on the convergence of Prigogine's dissipative structure theory, industrial ecology and Bejan's constructal law, authors then stress the crucial role that power law distributed complex urban structures have to play to make cities energy efficient and resilient. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAASThe shift towards service based economic growth in developed countries is typically viewed positively with respect to environmental impact. Research in the past decade, however, has shown that service industries actually account for a large portion of environmental loadings in terms of emissions and energy use. Recently, more research has focused upon the development of tools and methods to properly assess the impacts of service industries. This paper discusses the environmental and economic performance of one service based company, a civil engineering consulting firm. This analysis employed a hybrid-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model to analyze the impacts of the aforementioned case study firm. The evaluation also included an energy audit, waste audit, and a personnel survey. This paper primarily focuses on the findings and results of the energy and waste audits, the survey, and the LCA as well as programs and initiatives that came as a result of the study. The findings point to both the difficulty and the importance of improving staff awareness of the environmental impacts associated with their work habits.A TiO2 nanotube/Ag-AgBr three-component nanojunction with enhanced visible-light activity was synthesized by a two-step approach including an electrochemical anodization technique followed by an in situ photo-assisted dipping and deposition approach. Ag/AgBr nanoparticles with good dispersion were effectively deposited on both the inside and outside of the TiO2 nanotubes. Surface photovoltage measurements and luminescence spectra demonstrated that the Ag/AgBr loading enhanced the visible spectral absorption of TiO2 nanotube arrays, as well as their separation efficiency of photoinduced electron-hole pairs, which may due to the nanojunction built between Ag/AgBr and TiO2 in this system. The photoelectrochemical investigations verified that the TiO2 nanotube/Ag-AgBr nanojunction showed enhanced photocurrent generation efficiency and had a more effective photoconversion efficiency of 0.71% than the aligned TiO2 nanotube arrays alone. The enhanced photoelectrochemical properties can be attributed to the extended absorption in the visible light region resulting from Ag/AgBr nanoparticles, and the effective separation of photogenerated carriers driven by the photoinduced potential difference generated at the TiO2/Ag-AgBr nanojunction interface.This chapter highlights the significance of marketing products and services to customers from the sustainability perspective using green technology. It argues for proper awareness in the practice of environmental marketing. Figure 6.1 captures the essence of this approach by linking three abstract concepts: green marketing, environmental justice, and industrial ecology. 1 We explore the conceptual relationship between marketing and green marketing, and affirm that understanding sustainable/biodegradable/natural packaging hugely impacts sustainability practice. The past few decades have contributed substantially to increased consumer awareness of sustainable products and services.The integration of environmental impacts in the conceptual process design procedure can be achieved by combining Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools with flowsheeting software and process integration techniques. However, current LCI databases assume a given unit process chain for each product or waste, and do not allow for the systematic synthesis of the process chain minimizing the environmental impacts of raw materials or auxiliary flows, accounting systematically for the different alternatives and recyclings. This paper presents a methodology for systematically designing process units LCI database for the optimal design of integrated systems with a life cycle perspective.Ecological administration is a mode that economic development and environmental resources are in harmony, as well as the relationship between enterprises and society develops sustainablely and harmoniously. This mode integrates the ecological ideas with the whole administration process of pre-inter-post production based on the theory of ecological economics, and establishes the chain of industrial ecology encompasses "producer, consumer and restorer". Sichuan Tuopai Group reengineered the ecological structure of Liquor-making industrial system, and established the harmonious chain of industrial ecology in order to achieve the circulation utilization of materials and energy, thus has formed the harmonious and sustainable Liquor-making industrial system with low consumption and low pollution. It's obviously the vibrant practice of ecological administration in China.Industrial ecology (IE) intends to improve industrial processes in a way that the society benefits with as less damage of the environment as possible. As a concept it gives responses to environmental problems in the field of industry and technology and aims to enable management of human activity on a sustainable basis by minimizing energy and materials usage, ensuring acceptable quality of life for people, minimizing negative ecological impacts of human activity to levels natural systems can sustain, and maintaining economic viability of systems for industry, trade and commerce. Industrial ecology offers a systems methodology for the analysis of material and energy flows. Thereby an investigation of the connection between humans and nature, placing human activity in the larger context of the biophysical environment from which we obtain resources and into which we put our wastes is of essential importance. Since industrial ecology has been developed by engineers and natural scientists an ethical reflection of the concept is often neglected. Ubiquitarily manifests however in anthropocentric assertions such as harmonizing the contradiction between nature and culture with scientific expertise, appropriate technology and socio-economic management. This paper interprets industrial ecology ethically by relating values to specific characteristics of the systems methodology. This interpretation should provide a starting point for a debate within the field out from the concepts' own epistemological premises. The presumption for the value of this endeavour is that industrial ecology is not morally "neutral" but possesses an implicit normative potential for the design of a possible sustainable world. Following the introduction, which presents the systems methodology as a core concept in industrial ecology, the second section gives an overview over main environmental ethics positions to prepare the ground for the argument that industrial ecology might benefit from considering a moderate biocentrism. Section three examines three epistemological characteristics of the systems methodology: interdependence, diversity and complexity and explores their relationship to values in ethics: responsibility, openness and correspondence. Conclusively, the fourth section gives some reasons why a moderate biocentrism supplementing anthropocentric positions is advantageous for IE and what benefits can be gained for research and practice in the field.In this paper, exergy-based industrial ecology concept is demonstrated in terms of exergetic rate of resource depletion by analysing two different combined heat and power productions systems: the CGAM system and a Diesel Engine Powered Cogeneration (DEPC) system. The analysis indicates that exergy-based industrial ecology concept can be successfully applied to cogeneration systems, demonstrating advantages of integrated generation. The weighted depletion number for separate productions of electricity and steam is determined to be 0.673 whereas the value for the integrated CGAM system is 0.532. The corresponding depletion numbers for the DEPC system are determined to be 0.590 and 0.480, respectively. It is clear from these numerical results that separate power and heat production system causes greater non-renewable resource depletion when compared with integrated systems.This paper addresses issues concerning industrial growth and industrial pollution abatement in a developing region during the course of modernization. It follows the methodology of ecosystems to preserve the clean fresh water and the environments around the Po Yang Lake area in Jiangxi province where a state program has been recently approved for ecological experimentation. Thus, economic development as a whole is featured in pollution limits and environmental remediation in order to achieve dynamic ecological equilibrium and foster sustainable development. In conclusion, industrial ecology is presented along ecological economics through the mechanism of life-cycle management, firm retiring and energy saving by means of eco-design and advancement of environmental technologies.For a long period of time our technological society functioned in an unsustainable way, consuming the non-renewable resources with very high rates, polluting the environment and considering the nature a thing without any value. In these conditions were developed businesses in all fields with impressive economic results. Now it came the time to take into account the environment with all its problems caused by the human activities, to develop new businesses or to innovate the existing ones starting from a new base the sustainability. The well known economic criteria for the assessment of an activity have to be applied because the sustainability doesn 't exclude the profit. This paper aims to present the concept of industrial ecology and give some examples of new business ideas built and developed on it.Industrial ecology is an emerging concept which contributes to achieve ecologically sustainable development of industrial zones and estates in China. Optimizing materials and energy flows among facilities within specific regions or industrial ecosystems is a basic industrial ecology strategy. Life cycle analysis and management and green supply chain management are all approaches of circular economy. In this paper, the author describes the furniture industry in Ganzhou and its evolving integrated green supply chain management model. The author points out that the furniture industry in Ganzhou should begin with green design, then set up eco-industrial parks, and finally realize sustainable development.Industrial Ecology (IE) is a creative way to achieve sustainable development. Marine resource-based chemical industry is the chemical industry which utilizes marine as its main raw materials. It is usually the dominate industry in coastal regions. Water flow is an important material flow for marine resource-based chemical industry. This article describes an example of the water utilization of the Hai Hua industrial ecosystem (HHIE). HHIE is an important marine resource-based chemical industry base in China. There are three kinds of water in HHIE: underground brine, seawater and freshwater. The three-fold of water utilization in HHIE is described. The basic approaches and the limiting factors of water utilization in HHIE are analyzed. It can provide some experiences for water utilization of other marine resource-based chemical industries.Since it lacks theoretical and technological solutions for guiding the eco-transformation of 1st and 2nd generation of development estates (industrial parks) and construction of eco-industrial parks (EIP), the principles for construction and optimization of E1P were put forward through the analyzing of the function and structure of industrial eco-system in ElPs. The 3rd Party Reverse Logistic System (3PRLS) was then introduced to improve the efficiency of materials recycling rate in the operation of EIP. The operation and profit model of 3PRLS were provided, and its information platform was designed for accomplishing the former functions by applying the knowledge of expert system, network topology, and data base. This research introduced the "decomposer" the 3PRLS to traditional linear industrial system, which is satisfied with market condition as well as technologically feasibility. The technical solution for 3PRLS was also provided.In this work, both the intermolecular and intramolecular hydrogen bonding of 3-aminophthalimide (3AP) dimer complex in the electronically excited state have been investigated theoretically using the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) method. The calculated infrared spectrum of the hydrogen-bonded 3AP dimer complex for the S-1 state shows that the C=O and H-N bonds involved in the intramolecular hydrogen bond C-3=O-5 center dot center dot center dot H-8-N-6 and intermolecular hydrogen bond C-1=O-4 center dot center dot center dot H-7'-N-2' which are markedly red-shifted compared with those predicted for the ground state. The calculated length of the two hydrogen bonds C-3=O-5 center dot center dot center dot H-8-N-6 and C-1=O-4 center dot center dot center dot H-7'-N-2', are significantly shorter in S-1 state than in the ground state. However, the bond lengths of the intramolecular hydrogen bond C-3'=O-5 center dot center dot center dot H-8'-N-6', and intermolecular hydrogen bond C-1=O-4 center dot center dot center dot H-7'-N-2' nearly unchanged upon electronic excitation to the S-1 state. Thus, the intramolecular hydrogen bond C-3=O-5 center dot center dot center dot H-8-N-6 and intermolecular hydrogen bond C-1=O-4 center dot center dot center dot H-7'-N-2' of the hydrogen-bonded 3AP dimer complex are stronger in the electronically excited state than in the ground state. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the excited-state proton transfer reaction is facilitated by the electronic excited-state hydrogen bond strengthening. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The incongruence of genetic potential and apparent functions associated with enzyme production has attracted research attempts to elucidate the environmental influences on the molecular underpinnings of soil biogeochemistry. beta-glucosidase is a phylogenetically conserved enzyme that plays an important role in carbon cycling; and its involvement in the final stages of cellulose degradation suggests an important role for soil prokaryotes in moderating enzymatic diversity and function in environmentally dynamic niches. Therefore, detailed assessment of the molecular diversity of this enzyme in soils is critical for refining models of terrestrial carbon fluxes. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the availability of specific carbon substrates for beta-glucosidase constraint the diversity of phylogenetic groups that are enzymatically active in soils. To test this hypothesis, we constructed microcosms consisting of vegetation covered and bare soils amended either with cellobiose or glucose. We then proceeded to directly assess the responses of genomic and proteomic contexts of beta-glucosidase diversity over an incubation period. We monitored the relative population densities of bacteria capable of degrading cellulose, and we successfully designed and used a set of degenerate primers for real-time PCR to quantify genetic determinants of beta-glucosidase in composite bacterial DNA extracts. We also developed a complementary proteomic strategy for electrophoretically resolving beta-glucosidase activities in-gel. A pure culture of Pseudomonas putida capable of degrading cellobiose that we isolated from the natural soil was used as a positive control throughout the culture-independent experiments. We demonstrated that this organism contains three distinct proteins of molecular sizes 120, 300, and 669 kDa exhibiting beta-glucosidase activity, and we detected proteins in these size ranges in direct protein extracts from soil. Our results also show that there is a narrow range of bacteria capable of processing cellobiose in soil, but there is a broader versatility of enzyme action in the dominant organisms advantageously selected by amendment of soil with specific carbon sources. This study contributes to the strategies for molecular-level understanding of soil enzyme diversity and function in composite systems. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.Depletion of fossil fuels and climate change necessitate a transition to sustainable energy systems that make efficient use of renewable energy sources. Recently, the disciplines of building engineering, architecture and urban planning have begun embracing 'second-law thinking' to reduce energy consumption in the built environment. Second-law thinking, however, is not yet a part of spatial planning and landscape design. This is especially problematic because the concepts of exergy and entropy are imperative to sustainable development. This paper explores the Laws of Thermodynamics and related concepts to advance the planning and design of sustainable landscapes. We propose a number of exergy-conscious design principles, each one supporting sustainable energy transition.The main costs and advantages consequent to the transition toward green and sustainable economies and societies are here identified and discussed, although it is not possible to quantify them. The aspects considered are: non-renewable and renewable resources, technological and production trends, features of sustainable products, mission, size and relations of enterprises, levels and distribution of wealth, buying power and lifestyles, sustainable cities and transportation means. This first analysis aims to increase knowledge about the economic and social effects related to a green and sustainable economy, where priority is given to the basic question of natural resources (non-renewable and renewable), given their limitedness. It should be considered as a reference point to set their price, even in a differentiated manner, and to pursue their maximal utilisation. All other aspects stem directly from this, including environmental balances.As an important tool for environment management, eco-efficiency has been widely applied, but eco-effectiveness has only made progress on eco-design and life cycle management in recent years. Few have attempted to integrate eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness into sustainable industrial systems. In a new framework integrating eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness, both concepts can find unique roles and complement each other in industrial ecosystems to dissolve conflicts between industry and the environment. This article provides a case study of China in which eco-efficiency indicators (energy, water and waste utilisation intensity) have demonstrated great progress in China, but eco-efficiency cannot stop the increasing release of pollutants and their accumulating impact on ecological life-support systems. China must integrate eco-effectiveness and eco-efficiency into concrete sustainable development strategies, questioning whether limited resources are being used correctly. Both eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness are identified as important indicators in the development of sustainable industrial systems. In the framework of sustainable industrial systems, eco-effectiveness must begin to play a more important role.Papermaking enterprises are major polluters that cause water pollution and air pollution. This paper aims to provide analysis of the energy saving and emission reduction in papermaking enterprises. It is the inevitable choice of establishment industrial ecology park as the leading of the papermaking industry by the implementation of cleaner production and circulation economy. Shandong Haiyun efficient ecological park is taken for example. Researches of the developing strategies and policy support of energy saving and emission reduction is discussed. The paper is divided into five parts, the first part is the preface, the second part introduces the general of Haiyun efficient industrial park, the third part puts forward the scheme of clean production of Haiyun efficient ecological industrial park, the fourth part puts forward ecological industry pattern of Haiyun efficient ecological industrial park, the fifth part puts forward policy guarantee measures, and the sixth part makes the summary. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of RIUDSAccording to the industry ecology theory, in the simulating flowing way between substance and energy in the nature ecology, to design the industrial production systems can use less resource reasonably and reduce emissions. As the most important large iron & steel enterprise in Inner Mongolia, applying the theory of industrial ecology, the Baogang Group gains great achievement in energy saving and emission reduction in recent years. Based on the industrial ecology theory, this paper mainly analyzes the practice of energy-saving and ejection-decreasing of the BaoGang Group. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of RIUDSThrough statistical description and analysis of econometric models of energy consumption, environmental conditions, and their impact on economic development, we draw conclusions that present China's economic growth is at the cost of the huge energy consumption and environmental pollution. To maintain long-term sustainable economic development, and achieve intensive economic growth, it is necessary to take industrial ecology and green GDP accounting approach of management targets. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of RIUDSIndustrial engineers usually work in multidisciplinary environments where they have to create efficient, safe and cost-effective methods, turning the discoveries of the chemists into "real-world" products. Integrating multidisciplinary tasks, using qualitative methodologies, it is possible to develop an integral teaching and learning framework, aligning lab experiments and communication tasks, and addressing interpersonal team issues. Besides the experimental work, students must improve their communication skills by writing assignments. The ability to communicate clearly and concisely, both orally and in writing is an important skill that all engineers need to obtain to become truly successful in their professional career [1]. Poor verbal, written or visual communication will lead to confusion and the desired responses will be unsatisfying. This paper analyzes the results obtained in a survey conducted in engineering classrooms, where students were aimed at analyzing case studied focused on real world problems related with their future engineering professional profiles. A total of 52 students conducted the survey, where 19% were of second course, 10% were of third course, 19% were of fourth course, and 52% were of fifth course. Students were asked about contents of the Industrial Ecology Course, and they had to choose about a more theoretical background teaching in class, or an approximation to real world scenarios, choosing industry models involving ecology planning, and analyzing different problem solving, Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) or legislation. The results obtained evidence that the interest on real-world scenarios increases in the last-year students, with a 45% of the students interested in realizing EIA analysis, whereas only 8% of the second course students choose this option. Likewise, the interest for master classes with a more theoretical background decreases from a 42% of the second-year students, to a 24% of the fifth year students. Also, only the fifth-year students showed interest in learning legislation software. From the results obtained it can be concluded that addressing real-world scenarios increases the interest of the students, as analyzing case studies based on real-world problems give to the students the opportunity to compare their solutions to what happened in the industry, using roleplaying and thereby simulating the decision-making scenario that occurred in the industry [2].More than ever, we need global citizens with the ingenuity to solve complex problems. We are faced with many urgent challenges: climate change, pollution, and the shortage of energy, food, and water. These problems require technical, social, ecological, economical, and political solutions. Engineering education sits at the core of this, as many industries and various engineering professional bodies have identified "sustainability" as a top priority (Hesketh et al. 2004). In the field of chemical engineering education, the evolution of green chemistry and pollution prevention have led to dedicated courses such as green engineering and industrial ecology in the senior levels. However, in order to bring the concepts of sustainability into the basis of all engineering design and practice, "full integration of the sustainability concept into engineering curricula" (Glavic 2006) is required and an Integrated framework of sustainability in chemical engineering connecting the pathway from individual to global levels has been described as the hierarchy in sustainability (Batterham 2006). This paper presents a case study of how sustainability was incorporated into our 3rd year unit operations laboratory course. There are two unit operations laboratory courses taken by 3rd year students where ten lab stations are available, including fluidized beds, fuel cell, heat exchanger, sedimentation, rotary viscometer, rotary filtration, air cyclone, pumps and valves, and thermocouple data logging. The class was split into four groups with 8-9 students per group to work on each project. This project was part of the University of British Columbia (UBC) SEEDS (Social Ecological, Economic, Development Studies program - http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/seeds) with projects pre-arranged to work on the UBC aquatic centre, UBC steam plant, UBC farm, and UBC composting facility. The UBC SEEDS program is "Western Canada's first academic program that combines the energy and enthusiasm of students, the intellectual capacity of faculty, and the commitment and expertise of staff to integrate sustainability on campus" (http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/campus-sustainability/getting-involved/faculty-staff). Each group was responsible for contacting their campus client to define the scope of the project, conducting research, proposing solutions, and reporting. The output of the group project was a report and a presentation where they stated the problem (as defined with the client) and proposed a solution. The clients were invited to the presentations to participate in questioning and providing feedback. A section on "Reflections on UBC and Sustainability" in the final report emphasized their learning and understanding of where the university stands, and how their project can contribute to sustainability on campus.China is undergoing a rapid industrialization and has been considered as one of the biggest consumers of nature resources. The study of ecosystem development in China is important and has drawn large attention of Chinese government. For example, China's Agenda 21 highlighted the principles and sets the directions for eco-industrial development. Industrial symbiosis, which has emerged as a self-organizing business strategy among firms, is consistent with the one of the ecosystem's measure that relates to the systematic reuse of waste and by-products in order to progress toward sustainability. In China, industrial symbiosis has been implemented in the philosophy of circular economy which emphasizes the cooperation development to optimize material and energy flows. Industrial symbiosis is also consistent with the one of the ecosystem's measure that relates to the systematic reuse of waste and by-products in order to progress toward sustainability. In this study, we investigated the production statuses of several middle-sized chemical firms in an undeveloped town in south china and put forward the cooperative strategy for implementing industrial symbiosis. We finally analyzed the approached benefit on environment, economy even up to society.Within the field of industrial ecology, Industrial Symbiosis (IS) has emerged as a body of exchange structures to progress to a more eco-efficient industrial system. By establishing a collaborative web of knowledge, material and energy exchanges among different organisational units, IS networks aim to reduce the intake of virgin materials and lower the production of waste by the industrial sector. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the operation of IS networks by focussing on the structure and morphology of IS networks and their patterns of interaction and how this influences the outcomes of the collaboration, both in economic and environmental terms. Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been adopted here as the main methodological framework and has been applied to the IS network in Kalundborg (Denmark), proving useful in the analysis of the structural characteristics of the network and the understanding of the role that different actors play. The paper concludes that SNA provides a comprehensive methodological and analytical framework to understand the structural elements of IS networks. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.With the development of Caofeidian Recyclable/Circular Economy areas (Industrial ecology) of north China and the rise of energy consumption year by year. The researchers and engineers are advocated to wider use of natural ventilation. However, the natural ventilation has not yet been fully utilized. In this paper, the computational fluid dynamic(CFD) software AIRPAK was adopted in the evaluations. The influence of different opening configurations including the orientation, the window locations and the corresponding door arrangement on the natural ventilation performance is studied. The indoor airflow distribution of the residential unit of different openings configurations was simulated. Use air age to analyse and compare this three factors how to impact the performance of natural ventilation. It was found that ventilation performance of residential units is most affected by the orientation of window openings, thereafter are the window locations, and the door arrangements.Industrial Symbiosis is an important component of Industrial Ecology which studies the collaboration and coexistence of companies to achieve mutual benefits. Its concepts have traditionally focused on eco-efficiency and its direct benefits such as costs reduction, resources optimization and environmental impacts reduction. The paper introduces the use of externalities and collaborative networks as tools to amplify the spectrum of opportunities and, consequently, the potential value of Industrial Symbiosis development. Externalities are related to side effects of companies' decisions and acts. They offer a broader systemic view to Industrial Symbiosis planning and execution. Sustainable value brings up intangible value drivers such as institutional, organizational and relationship capital as well as risk management consideration. It helps companies to visualize the totality of potential value of Industrial Symbiosis.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a valid environmental evaluation method and enterprise environmental management tool used in industrial ecology areas. In this paper LCA was newly used to evaluate the environmental impact of manufacturing of alumina by Bayer process in china from two aspects of logistics and energy flow, GaBi software acted as analysis tools with evaluation model established, and several environmental impact assessment criteria were selected based on the actually typical date of Bayer alumina producing process. Evaluation results show that alumina manufacturing by the Bayer process has a great impact on the global warming and human health of respiration, even roasting process gives rise to the greatest impact of winter fog index. Scenario analysis proposed ways of reducing environmental load caused by Bayer process including: (1) the economic and efficient use of mineral processing technology; (2) optimization of energy use, saving power consumption or the use of new more economical source of energy; (3) actively promote the use of innovated technology and equipment in alumina manufacturing and waste such as red mud utilization process.A chance of reviving the Romanian industry sector is to realize a special type of public-private partnership (PPP), made by universities or university consortia and companies from the private sector. This kind of project, based on the concept of industrial ecology, represent a valid solution adequate to the environment. The most important role in the project is the role of universities that can find viable partners in sustainable development projects, attract financing funds and offer flexible solutions for stimulating an active management.To develop microorganism technology for removing SO2 and NOx from flue gas, this study sieved out a strain of nitrate-reducing, sulfide-oxidizing Paracoccus sp. ZGL1 from activated sludge and analyzed its phylogenetic characteristics. The optimal initial pH for the growth and removal of substrate of this strain is 7.0; the optimal temperature is 30 degrees C; the optimal rotating table speed is 50 r/min; the optimal substrate concentration is 10 mmol/L; and the best concentration of carbon source is 10 mmol/L. A preliminary analysis on the law of transforming thiosulfate and nitrate-nitrogen in systems under aerobic and anaerobic conditions was conducted.Industrialization has an important role within the attempts for development. Against the fact that it is indispensable, industrialization causes significant environmental problems. This progress, which is in disfavor of the natural areas and resources, can not be controlled with the existing industrial and environmental policies, and thus new approaches are needed. The concept of Eco-Industrial Parks is developed in line with this approach. It is accepted widely and there exist many examples in several countries. Unfortunately they are not known sufficiently in Turkey yet, and such applications don't exist. The purpose of this study is to identify the application potential of Eco-Industrial Parks in Turkey. In this study, Organized Industrial Zones located in Kocaeli shall be investigated in respect to their similarities to Eco-Industrial Parks, the potential for establishment of Eco-Industrial Parks in Turkey shall be assessed, and some proposals for more sustainable cities shall be developed.The necessity to follow the rules of sustainable development in the everyday industrial practice has led to the formulation of the concept of an industrial ecosystem mimicking the natural ecosystem, since about fourteen years old. The core of industrial ecology, the industrial ecosystem model has become a framework for studying the interactions of the modern technological society with the environment. The Strategies for manufacturing an industrial ecosystem is a system, in which the consumption of energy and material is optimized, waste generation is minimized and the effluents of one process serve as the raw material for another process. The concept of an industrial ecosystem was based on the flows of materials through the life cycles, otherwise known as industrial symbiosis. In the present study, we propose the mathematical modeling of different industrial symbiosis material/energy. To achieve the following aims: maximizing of flows, reducing the distances between different firms, reducing the wastes treatment cost, reducing the equipment treatment costs and connecting costs, we adopt the formulation of objective function, in which we detailed the different constraints in order to obtain the optimal material/energy flows an industrial cluster. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]This chapter introduces the thematic dossier of International Development Policy on the intimate relationship between energy and development. The authors discuss the centrality of fossil fuels in the economic growth of the Western world since the nineteenth century and the key role of oil in the twentieth century and question the future of this development model in the face of geological and climatic constraints. They examine the gaps and misunderstandings that separate social sciences and natural sciences as well as recent attempts to establish interdisciplinary dialogue around ecological economics and industrial ecology. The authors then analyse what is at stake for developing countries, inequalities in access to energy resources, the failure of the global governance system to deal with mounting tensions associated with the depletion of oil and the environmental consequences of an ever increasing consumption of non-renewable resources.One complicating factor in a reverse logistics activity is the uncertainty in the volume of the reverse product flow coupled with uncertain demand. These uncertainties are creating a problem for the reuse businesses because, in order to have a profitable business, their plants need some minimum number of used products to operate efficiently. Several researches have indicated that there is a significant quantity of used products that failed to enter the reverse channel. Therefore finding a way to ensure supply of used products is essential for the viability of the plant. In this paper, we propose the use of financial incentives (also referred to as 'return policy') so that adequate supply of the used products is ensured. We present a profit-maximisation model to obtain the optimal return policy. We also obtain a number of managerial guidelines for using marketing and operational strategy variables to influence the reaction parameters so as to obtain the maximum benefit from the market.Circular economy (CE) focuses on resource-productivity and eco-efficiency improvement in a comprehensive way, especially on the industrial structure optimization of new technology development and application, equipment renewal and management renovation. The leather industry on the one side boosts the local economic development, on the other side however leads to the tremendous environment pollution and biological chains destruction. The CE model has been implemented as a new way of raw materials, water and energy consumption reduction in the leather industry. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover of the tannery effluents have been discussed in detail according to the different operation processes. The successful treatment approaches with analysis in the aspects such as wastewater, solid waste, sulfide, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), ammonium salt, chloride and chrome of the leather tannery with CE model provide guidance for the sustainable development of leather industry in the future. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose - Owing to the manufacturing trend of stringent product disposal regulations, a new business scenario, which requires an alternative disposal option on consumer products and further product recovery operations, is increasingly important for promoting sustainable supply chain performance. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use to post-use stage of the product lifecycle, that may have significant potential for increasing product utilisation value and reducing product disposal to landfills. Design/methodology/approach - The paper proposes a re-classification of the 6R (reduce, recover, redesign, reuse, recycle, remanufacturing) methodology for rectifying waste minimisation along a supply chain, to increase product utilisation at the post-use stage. Findings - Intensive study of 6R considerations to improve end-of-life planning and strategy and extend of product lifecycle management is lacking. None of the existing supply chain frameworks clearly illustrates the aspects of 6R perspectives for the use to post-use stage. Research limitations/implications - The main limitation is that this study only focuses on 6R perspective for achieving waste minimisation along a supply chain. There is a need to explore various practical issues of the implementation, including the establishment of specific performance metrics for various manufacturing industries to assess organisational performance. Practical implications - This proposed sustainable supply chain for collaborative manufacturing may provide a very useful source of what needs to be implemented and achieved to meet the requirements of sustainability, which is the current and future trend of manufacturing. Originality/value - This paper provides some of the insights into holistic aspects of 6R perspective to increase product utilisation value between use and post-use stages.Food and fuel production are intricately interconnected. In a carbon-smart society, it is imperative to produce both food and fuel sustainably. Integration of the emerging biorefinery concept with other industries can bring many environmental deliverables while mitigating several sustainability-related issues with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel usage, land use change for fuel production and future food insufficiency. A new biorefinery-based integrated industrial ecology encompasses the different value chain of products, coproducts, and services from the biorefinery industries. This paper discusses a framework to integrate the algal biofuel-based biorefinery, a booming biofuel sector, with other industries such as livestock, lignocellulosic and aquaculture. Using the USA as an example, this paper also illustrates the benefits associated with sustainable production of fuel and food. Policy and regulatory initiatives for synergistic development of the algal biofuel sector with other industries can bring many sustainable solutions for the future existence of mankind. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical IndustryStreamlined Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is a pre-regulatory exercise that analyzes industrial processes and products to assess efficacy of existing production efforts and identify priorities for enhancing triple bottom line performance for product lines. SLCA includes aspects of standard Risk Assessment, Life Cycle Risk Assessment (LCRA), and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodologies. It also draws upon technical understanding of environmental management, health risk assessment, industrial ecology, energy management and real estate and business planning. Importantly, SLCA offers an effective high-level screening of key product design criteria that focuses subsequent deeper assessments, allowing for low cost and rapid product assessments built on LCA principles [1]. This process can be especially useful when applied to nanomaterial product development since nanomaterials are not yet widely regulated and their impacts have not yet been widely studied. However the framework is effective for screening potential impacts and risks of various sectors at both the facility and individual product level.Ecological industrial offers significant economic, social and environmental benefits, not only to individual firms, but also to a collection of firms. However, there are also several major barriers that have to be removed. This paper sets up a definition for the ecological industrial, and analyzes the drivers and limitations for its successful development, finally propose good suggest on the development Eco-industrial Park (EIP). The definition comprises of: definition of species in an eco-industrial park; the structure and function of an eco-industrial system; the classification of the enterprises as producers, consumers, decomposers, and the interactions of each component in an eco-industrial park. The paper offers suggest for improving their successful development and long-term viability.Based on the mechanism of action, a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) model for the depuration rate constants (k(d)) of 28 PAHs, 8 PBDEs and 28 PCBs in mussels (Elliptio complanata) was constructed by partial least squares (PLS) regression, following the guidelines for development and validation of QSAR models. For the training set of the QSAR model, r(2) = 0.953, the cross-validated regression coefficient (Q(CUM)(2)) was 0.947. The predicted log k(d) values for the validation set were consistent with the observed values, with a standard error (SE) of 0.160 log units and a squared correlation coefficient (Q(EXT)(2)) of 0.892. Comparatively, the developed QSAR model had good robustness, predictive ability and extended applicability domain. The electrophilicity index (omega), molecular polarizability (alpha), the averages of the negative potentials on the molecular surface ((V) over bar (-)(s)) and the balance parameter of surface potential (tau) were the key parameters governing the logk(d) values in the QSAR model, which indicated that the logk(d) value was mainly related to the partition ability, electrostatic interactions, and van der Waals interactions of compounds. In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from biomass combustion are traditionally assumed climate neutral if the bioenergy system is CO2 flux neutral, i.e. the quantity of CO2 released approximately equals the amount of CO2 sequestered in biomass. This convention is a plausible assumption for fast growing biomass species, but is inappropriate for slower growing biomass, like forests. In this case, the climate impact from biomass combustion can be potentially underestimated if CO2 emissions are ignored, or overestimated, if biogenic CO2 is considered equal to anthropogenic CO2. The estimation of the effective climate impact should take into account how the CO2 fluxes are distributed over time: the emission of CO2 from bioenergy approximately occurs at a single point in time, while the absorption by the new trees is spread over several decades. Our research target is to include this dynamic time dimension in unit-based impact analysis, using a boreal forest stand as case study. The boreal forest growth is modelled with an appropriate function, and is investigated under different forestry regimes (affecting the growth rate and the year of harvest). Specific atmospheric decay functions for biomass-derived CO2 are then elaborated for selected combinations of forest management options. The contribution to global warming is finally quantified using the GWP(bio); index as climate metric. Results estimates the effects of these practices on the characterization factor used for the global warming potential of CO2 from bioenergy, and point out the key role played by the selected time horizon. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The modification of emissions of climate-sensitive exhaust compounds such as CO2, NOx hydrocarbons, and particulate matter from medium-speed marine diesel engines was studied for a set of fossil and biogenic fuels. Applied fossil fuels were the reference heavy fuel oil (HFO) and the low-sulfur marine gas oil (MGO); biogenic fuels were palm oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, and animal fat. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the production of biogenic fuels were treated by means of a fuel life cycle analysis which included land use changes associated with the growth of energy plants. Emissions of CO2 and NOx per kWh were found to be similar for fossil fuels and biogenic fuels. PM mass emission was reduced to 10-15% of HFO emissions for all low-sulfur fuels including MGO as a fossil fuel. Black carbon emissions were reduced significantly to 13-30% of HFO. Changes in emissions were predominantly related to particulate sulfate, while differences between low-sulfur fossil fuels and low-sulfur biogenic fuels were of minor significance. GHG emissions from the biogenic fuel life cycle (FLC) depend crucially on energy plant production conditions and have the potential of shifting the overall GHG budget from positive to negative compared toNitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and methane are the main biogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) contributing to net greenhouse gas balance of agro-ecosystems. Evaluating the impact of agriculture on climate thus requires capacity to predict the net exchanges of these gases in a systemic approach, as related to environmental conditions and crop management. Here, we used experimental data sets from intensively monitored cropping systems in France and Germany to calibrate and evaluate the ability of the biophysical crop model CERES-EGC to simulate GHG exchanges at the plot-scale. The experiments involved major crop types (maize-wheat-barley-rapeseed) on loam and rendzina soils. The model was subsequently extrapolated to predict CO(2) and N(2)O fluxes over entire crop rotations. Indirect emissions (IE) arising from the production of agricultural inputs and from use of farm machinery were also added to the final greenhouse gas balance. One experimental site (involving a maize-wheat-barley-mustard rotation on a loamy soil) was a net source of GHG with a net GHG balance of 670 kg CO(2)-C eq ha(-1) yr(-1), of which half were due to IE and half to direct N(2)O emissions. The other site (involving a rapeseed-wheat-barley rotation on a rendzina) was a net sink of GHG for -650 kg CO(2)-C eq ha(-1) yr(-1), mainly due to high C returns to soil from crop residues. A selection of mitigation options were tested at one experimental site, of which straw return to soils emerged as the most efficient to reduce the net GHG balance of the crop rotation, with a 35% abatement. Halving the rate of N inputs only allowed a 27% reduction in net GHG balance. Removing the organic fertilizer application led to a substantial loss of C for the entire crop rotation that was not compensated by a significant decrease of N(2)O emissions due to a lower N supply in the system. Agro-ecosystem modeling and scenario analysis may therefore contribute to design productive cropping systems with low GHG emissions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Many studies have shown the effectiveness of pretreatments prior to anaerobic digestion of solid wastes, but to our knowledge, none analyzes their environmental consequences/costs. In this work, seven different pretreatments applied to two types of waste (kitchen waste and sewage sludge) have been environmentally evaluated by using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The results show that the environmental burdens associated to the application of pretreatments prior to anaerobic digestion cannot be excluded. Among the options tested, the pressurize-depressurize and chemical (acid or alkaline) pretreatments could be recommended on the basis of their beneficial net environmental performance, while thermal and zonation alternatives require energy efficiency optimization to reduce their environmental burdens. Reconciling operational, economic and environmental aspects in a holistic approach for the selection of the most sustainable option, mechanical (e.g., pressurize-depressurize) and chemical methods appear to be the most appropriate alternatives at this stage.Forest biodiversity is highly linked with the occurrence of certain forest development phases (fdp) within the forest life cycle. Generally, the disintegration phase provides the highest biodiversity. The objective of the study was to test different existing forest life cycle assessment approaches aiming at developing a common reliable fdp assessment method. We tested and compared three approaches to record fdp in beech, mixed beech and spruce forests, in managed and unmanaged forests, and in four different plot sizes ranging from 125 to 2000 m(2). The main results of the fdp comparison are as follows: (1) In approximately two thirds of the cases the three considered methods did not yield a corresponding fdp record. (2) Generally, the larger the plot sizes, the larger the average fdp deviation in forest reserves. (3) The fdp deviation is stronger in beech or spruce dominated forest reserves than in mixed beech forest reserves. (4) Plots of 500 m(2) show most distinct numbers of microhabitats corresponding to the fdp sequence within the forest life cycle. (5) Furthermore, the managed forests mostly show lower fdp deviation than the forest reserves. One approach resulted in the most differentiated portrayal of the studied forest structures compared to the other two as shown by the facts that, (a) the studied forests are seen to be divided up into more fdp than when applying the other two methods, and that (b) the dominant fdp changed depending on the forest community and plot size reflecting different growth conditions and probabilities to meet large dimensioned trees during records, respectively, and (c) considering the distribution of microhabitats which are crucial for xylobiontic (saproxylic) organisms, this approach resulted in the assumed biodiversity patterns with increasing microhabitat numbers up to the disintegration phase thus it was used as a basis for the creation of an optimized fdp assessment method as a tool for common and standardized use in forest ecology and biodiversity research. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Inclusion of Life Cycle Assessment during the planning of transport infrastructure is rarely used in practice, but is becoming a widely discussed issue nowadays. This study sought to improve understanding of the life cycle energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of transport infrastructure, using the example of a road tunnel. Two levels of analysis were used: 1) detailed data inventory for the construction of rock tunnels; and 2) screening assessment for the life cycle phases of the whole tunnel infrastructure (including its main parts: concrete and rock tunnels). The first level of analysis showed that production of materials (i.e. concrete and asphalt) made the largest contribution to Cumulative Energy Demand and Global Warming Potential. The second level of analysis indicated that concrete tunnels had much higher Cumulative Energy Demand and Global Warming Potential per lane-metre than rock tunnels. Moreover, the operational phase of the tunnel was found to have the highest share of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the tunnel's life cycle.Iran is one of the main producers of sugar beet in the Middle East. Despite its great contribution to both local and global environmental impact, agricultural production systems in Iran is not very well investigated environmentally. This study characterizes some aspects of the environmental emissions inventory of sugar beet production in Iran, and compares the environmental performance of different cropping systems which include mechanized, semi-mechanized and traditional systems. Life cycle assessment methodology was used to classify and quantify the environmental emissions of sugar beet production. The life cycle inventory data reflect the cultivation profile of 93 sugar beet farms in 26 locations in Khorasan region in the east of Iran. Results of this study demonstrated that sugar beet produced in more mechanized cropping systems, can help reduce environmental emissions per functional unit. Comparing different cropping systems in each location evaluated in this study, only 19.7% of Khorasan sugar beet area performed well from the viewpoint of heavy metal emissions to water and soil, nitrate leaching and total emissions to air. The results suggest the maximum allowable levels of main environmental emissions for the discussion of improving the overall environmental profile of Iranian sugar beet, as well as these allowable levels in each cropping systems.Extensive studies on biocomposites are already available in the literature. However the simple fact that they come from renewable resources does not necessarily mean that their environmental impact is lower. The aim of this paper is to quantify the environmental impacts of flax/PLLA biocomposites using a standard life cycle analysis (LCA) in order to evaluate their use as a replacement for glass/unsaturated polyester composites. To fulfil the same mechanical functions under tensile loading and over the life cycle flax/PLLA biocomposites require significantly less non-renewable energy than glass/unsaturated polyester (-97%), while a reduction in climate change (-38%), acidification (-36%), and human toxicity (-85%) are observed. A few indicators are nevertheless higher such as eutrophication (+60%), marine toxicity (+26%) and land use (+98%). Different end-of-life scenarios have been evaluated, including incineration, land-filling, aerobic and anaerobic composting and recycling. Although caution is required, as there is little experience to date, recycling appears to be the most appropriate end-of-life solution because it is top of the waste hierarchy. LCA allows new protocols for material selection to be developed. Two performance indicators are proposed here, which take the consumption of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions into account. The latter are greatly reduced for biocomposites, which further supports their use as a replacement for glass/polyester composites.This paper provides a comparative analysis using the concept of life cycle assessment (LCA), between high-sulfur (3 000 ppm) and low-sulfur diesel (500 ppm) diesel. The comparative LCA considers the stages of production, transport and oil refining, as well as the transport of refined products and their respective end use. This last stage of the life cycle is important for the analysis of potential environmental impacts, due to sulfur oxide (SOX) emissions, which contribute to the formation of acid rain, damage air quality and the ecosystem (land and water acidification), causing gradual damage to human health and the environment. Therefore, comparative LCA identifies critical points from the environmental perspective, weighing the contributions of pollutants (NO2, CH4 and CO2) known as greenhouse gases (GHG) and criteria pollutants (CO, SOX, NOXw, VOCs and PM). Simapro 7,2 (R) was used to simulate and evaluate potential environmental impacts generated during the production and use by end consumers of the two fossil fuels. In order to evaluate the impact categories, two methods available in said calculation tool were selected: the first is the IPCC-2007 (GWP-100 years), which estimates the carbon footprint and the contributions of each stage of the production chain to the "Global Warming" effect. The second method of evaluation is the Impact 2002+, which assesses the various contributions to the categories of toxicity to "Human Health", "Ecosystem Quality", "Climate Change" and "Depletion of Natural Resources'. Thus, the preliminary results of comparative LCA show a slight increase in the carbon footprint (total emissions of CO2 equivalent in the productive chain) of low-sulfur diesel, approximately 3,8% compared to high-sulfur diesel, as a result of the increased emissions generated by the operation of the hydrogenation plant. However, low-sulfur diesel achieves a significant reduction of about 80% in comparison with high-sulfur diesel, in terms of damage to "Human Health" and "Ecosystem Quality". On the contrary, there was an increase of 2% and 6% in the categories of "Climate Change" and "Depletion of Natural Resources", respectively. Finally, despite the minor increase in the carbon footprint, although with remarkable reductions in "Ecosystem Quality" and "Human Health", the production and use of low-sulfur diesel has a single score of environmental impact equivalent to 0,23 milli points (mPt) compared to the single score obtained by high-sulfur diesel of 1,23 (mPt).We compare energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with total household expenditures and activities in Canada and US in 1997, the first detailed estimate of environmental burdens for Canadian households. We estimate direct burdens from published government data and indirect burdens using an industry-by-commodity, bi-national economic input-output life cycle assessment model developed in this study. Comparing 30 expenditure and two activity categories, per capita US household expenditures were 70% higher, while per capita household energy use and GHG emissions were only 10% and 44% higher, respectively. Energy use/dollar of expenditure was higher in most Canadian categories, while the average ratio of GHG emissions/energy use was higher in the US (65 vs 50 kg Eq. CO2/GJ) due largely to a higher proportion of electricity from nonrenewable sources. Indirect environmental burdens represented 63-69% of total burdens and 62-70% of total burdens were associated with household operation and transportation. Key drivers of differences between energy profiles were: higher per capita electricity use by Canadian households, and higher US household private health care expenditures and motor fuel use. Energy-intensive production for export represented a higher proportion of Canadian production, resulting in less agreement between consumption and production-based analyses for Canada than US. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The way in which GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions associated with grid electricity consumption is handled in different LCA (life cycle assessment) studies, varies significantly. Apart from differences in actual research questions, methodological choices and data set selection have a significant impact on the outcomes. These inconsistencies result in difficulties to compare the findings of various LCA studies. This review paper explores the issue from a methodological point of view. The perspectives of ALCA (attributional life cycle assessment) and CLCA (consequential life cycle assessment) are reflected. Finally, the paper summarizes the key issues and provides suggestions on the way forward. The major challenge related to both of the LCA categories is to determine the GHG emissions of the power production technologies under consideration. Furthermore, the specific challenge in ALCA is to determine the appropriate electricity production mix, and in CLCA, to identify the marginal technologies affected and related consequences. Significant uncertainties are involved, particularly in future-related LCAs, and these should not be ignored. Harmonization of the methods and data sets for various purposes is suggested, acknowledging that selections might be subjective. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As part of a streetlight-retrofitting project in Pittsburgh, this study performed a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment of four lighting technologies: the widespread high-pressure sodium and metal halide lights, and the newer and more efficient induction and light-emitting-diode technologies. The study used a hybrid life-cycle-assessment approach to build life-cycle models for the various technologies, including manufacturing and installation data for process models and energy supply and input-output data to complete life-cycle models. Three different electricity scenarios were used to examine the sensitivity of the impacts to changes in energy supply: the United States average mix, the regional mix for the ReliabilityFirst Corporation region, and a scenario with 100% wind power. The results show that for all technologies, the impacts of electricity in the use phase dominates the results. Because of their lower wattage, light-emitting diode ( LED) and induction technology perform favorably and similarly. With anticipated improvements in technology, however, LEDs are expected to be more efficient than induction in the near future and have lower environmental impacts by the time that Pittsburgh and other cities buy and install lights as part of these streetlight projects, which have the potential to show large cost and emissions savings. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000064. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.It is not surprising that there has been a considerable increase in recent years in the number of research activities on the scientific and applicative level devoted to analyses of accelerated aging, determination of service life, and life-cycle assessment of constructional complexes. The primary objective of the research was to define the theoretical base supporting measurements of accelerated testing and the connection between aging and the service life of bituminous sheets. The Arrhenius law of accelerated testing as a theoretical support to experimental testing of bituminous sheets at high temperature and different exposure times was used. The current procedure of accelerated aging of bituminous sheets in accordance with European Norms (EN) takes 24 weeks at a testing temperature of +70 degrees C. The test procedure is fairly long and takes place at a relatively low temperature, which does not represent a significant thermal load in the aging of the majority of bituminous products. According to our measurements and calculations, a shortened testing time of accelerated aging of 12 weeks requires an equivalent aging temperature of +82.0 degrees C for oxidized bituminous products, +79.2 degrees C for atactic polypropylene (APP)-modified bitumen and +76.5 degrees C for styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS)-modified bitumen products, to achieve the same impact of accelerated aging on bituminous sheets, because it provides testing procedures according to the standard. These results are useful to control quality, test resistance to aging, and determine the life expectancy of bituminous products, the characteristics of which are determined in a significantly shorter time. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0000326. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.The results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study can be affected by several uncertainty sources, mainly due to the methodological choices, the initial assumptions, i.e. allocation rules, system boundaries and impact assessment methods, and the quality of the available data. Then, the experts should estimate the extent of the above-mentioned sources of uncertainty for improving the reliability and the representativeness of the obtained eco-profiles. To estimate the uncertainty is necessary to obtain reliable, transparent and representative LCA results and to correctly support decision-makers in the selection of different product or process options. The following paper starts from a LCA study of the so-called "Sicilian tiles", which are typical roof tiles employed in restoring old buildings of the Mediterranean area. The authors identify the most relevant sources of uncertainty in the LCA study. Then a sensitivity analysis is performed to estimate the effects on the tile eco-profile of different secondary input data and of the chosen methods for the environmental impact assessment. The results show that, in some cases, significant differences in the energy and environmental indices can be obtained, pointing out the need of developing sensitivity analysis for strengthening the reliability of the obtained eco-profiles. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The biomass to liquid refineries need to build on the need for sustainable chemical products through modern and proven green chemical technologies such as bioprocessing including pyrolysis, Fisher Tropsch, and other catalytic processes. This review focuses on cost effective technologies and the processes to convert biomass into useful liquid biofuels and bioproducts. One of the most promising options to produce transportation fuels from biomass is the so-called biomass to-liquid (BTL) route, in which biomass is converted to syngas from which high-quality Fischer-Tropsch (FT) fuels are synthesized. Pretreatment of biomass is an important part of the BTL route, both to allow feeding of the biomass into the selected entrained-flow gasifier and to reduce transport costs by densification. A large-scale, central, overseas BTL synthesis plant would be the most attractive route for BTL production and it identifies biomass-to-liquid (BTL) fuels as the most promising way to accomplish the target. The evaluation of the future role of BTL is difficult due to complex and uncertain interdependencies between factors of influence. This study elaborates a life cycle assessment of using of BTL-fuels and the possible implementation of BTL-fuel production processes would potentially help to achieve this goal. The emissions of greenhouse gases due to transport services could be reduced by 28-69% with the BTL-processes using straw, forest wood or short-rotation wood as a biomass input. The reduction potential concerning non-renewable energy resources varies between 37% and 61%. BTL-fuel from forest wood is an interesting option to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts. The LCA study shows that it is possible to produce BTL-fuels, which are competitive to fossil fuels from an environmental point of view. But, it also shows that for the use of agricultural biomass further improvements in the life cycle would be necessary in order to avoid higher environmental impacts than for fossil fuels. There is no general conclusion concerning the comparison of BTL-fuels with other renewable or fossil fuels due to the variety of different conversion concepts and possible biomass resources. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing demand for transport fuels has driven China to attach great importance to biodiesel development. To evaluate the environmental impacts caused by producing and driving with biodiesel made from soybean, jatropha, and microalgae under China conditions, the LCA methodology is used and the assessment results are compared with fossil diesel. The solar energy and CO2 uptake in biomass agriculture and reduction of dependency on fossil fuels lead to a better performance on abiotic depletion potential (ADP), global warming potential (GWP), and ozone depletion potential (ODP) in the life cycle of biodiesel compared to fossil diesel. Except for ADP, GWP and ODP, producing and driving with biodiesel does not offer benefits in the other environmental impact categories including eutrophication, acidification, photochemical oxidation, and toxicity. Jatropha and microalgae are more competitive biodiesel feedstock compared to soybean in terms of all impacts. By using global normalization references and weighting method based on ecotaxes, the LCA single score for the assessed 10 mid-point impact categories of soybean, jatropha, and microalgae based biodiesel is 54, 37.2 and 3.67 times of that of fossil diesel, respectively. Improvement of biomass agriculture management, development of biodiesel production technologies, bettering energy structure and promoting energy efficiency in China are the key measures to lower environmental impacts in the life cycle of biodiesel in the future. Various sensitivity analyses have also been applied, which show that, choice of allocation method, transport distance, uncertainty in jatropha and microalgae yield and oil content, and recycling rate of harvest water of microalgae have significant influence on the life cycle environmental performance of biodiesel. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In today's world, the definition of quality has been extended to more comprehensive level, which also comprises sustainable performance. The paper systematically builds an integrated model that includes quality as well as sustainable performance of the built environment and accompanying construction processes. This model for the "Integrated Quality and Sustainability Performance Assessment in Construction" presents a three-level arrangement, namely: the structure, process/project, and construction product. We propose a holistic sustainability assessment methodology based on the authors' previous research work for structures. The strict implementation of quality and environmental management systems in the participating organisations and in the whole construction project guarantees quality and environmental performance at project/process level. On the construction product level, we complement the existing requirement of providing a statement of conformity for each product of the structure with the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for all construction products. We use the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to obtain the EPDs for specific construction products; in this way, we can evaluate their environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a product or structure. On the structure level, a model for the integrated sustainability and quality assessment, which was previously proposed by the authors, is employed. Integration of all three levels ensures that the desired plateau of quality and sustainability performance is achieved for structures, processes and products. In the present version, the model is tailored to the specific features of buildings, and the sustainability aspect is limited to the environmental performance. An investigation of measures required to implement the proposed model into practice shows that clients have a major influence upon the procurement rules. Consequently, the targeted audience of potential users is that of clients procuring buildings.The sustainability aspects of land use were assessed with an environmentally extended input-output model of Finland in 2002. The main economic industries and products causing land use were identified and the impacts were estimated with three indicators: biocapacity, human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) and ecosystem degradation potential (EDP). The results correlated well with expert assessments on the threats to biodiversity, although the influence of animal farming was not clear in all indicators. Most of the domestic land use was caused by final demand outside Finland. Based on a simplified trade balance, Finland was a net exporter of land area, mainly through wood products. Two thirds of the domestic land use was driven by export production. Therefore a regional consumption based approach is not sufficient to mitigate and control the environmental impacts of land use even in a developed country like Finland. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy crops are expected to greatly develop in a very short-term bringing to significant social and environmental benefits. Nevertheless, a significant number of studies report from very positive to negative environmental implications from growing and processing energy crops, thus great uncertainty still remains on this argument. The present study focused on the cradle-to-grave impact assessments of alternative scenarios including annual and perennial energy crops for electricity/heat or first and second generation transport fuels, giving special emphasis to agricultural practices which are frequently surprisingly neglected in Life Cycle Assessment studies despite a not secondary relevance on final outcomes. The results show that cradle-to-farm gate impacts, i.e. including the upstream processes, may account for up to 95% of total impacts, with dominant effects on marine water ecotoxicity. Therefore, by increasing the sustainability of crop management through minimizing agronomic inputs, or with a complementary use of crop resides, can be expected to significantly improve the overall sustainability of bioenergy chains, as well as the competitiveness against fossil counterparts. Once again, perennial crops resulted in substantially higher environmental benefits than annual crops. It is shown that significant amount of emitted CO2 can be avoided through converting arable lands into perennial grasslands. Besides, due to lack of certain data, soil carbon storage was not included in the calculations, while N2O emission was considered as omitted variable bias (1% of N-fertilization). Therefore, especially for perennial grasses, CO2 savings were reasonably higher that those estimated in the present study. For first generation biodiesel, sunflower showed a lower energy-based impacts than rapeseed, while wheat should be preferred over maize for first generation bioethanol given its lower land-based impacts. For second generation biofuels and thermo-chemical energy, switchgrass provided the highest environmental benefits. With regard to bioenergy systems, first generation biodiesel was less impacting than first generation bioethanol; bioelectricity was less impacting than first generation biofuels and second generation bioethanol by thermo-chemical hydrolysis, but highly impacting than Biomass-to-Liquid biodiesel and second generation bioethanol through enzymatic hydrolysis. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.High performance glass such as low-e coated or heat reflective glass offers better thermal performance, preventing undesired heat loss or gain during a building operation phase. However, these coatings may not be as effective in certain climate zones and create glare problems for adjacent buildings. A transparent composite facade system (TCFS) was newly configured to provide a sustainable alternative to a high performance glass wall in that the biofiber composite core acts as a shading device while the airspace between the polymer skins provides adequate insulation. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) method was selected as a sustainability measuring tool to compare the environmental impacts of a TCFS with a glass curtain wall system (GCWS). In this paper, the environmental performance of a facade system is characterized by the energy consumption and CO(2) emissions through all stages of the life cycle. Comparative LCA results show that the total life cycle energy of the TCFS is estimated to be 93% of that of the uncoated GONS, and the total emissions of kg CO(2) equivalent for the TCFS is determined to be 89% of the uncoated GCWS. The use phase for both the TCFS and GCWS plays a dominant role in reducing environmental impacts while the impact associated with transportation and the end-of-life management is estimated to be insignificant in this study. The life cycle inventory data and analysis results provided in this paper are expected to assist designers with a better understanding of building material selection and system improvement from the whole life cycle perspectives. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to assess the consistency of Portuguese thermal building legislation in terms of energy and environmental performance. To illustrate this, a case study has been carried out for different scenarios of a dwelling home located in an extreme climate zone (I3, V1 north) in Portugal with a T3 typology: four occupants and net floor area of 150 m(2), modelled according to Regulation Thermal Performance Characteristics of Buildings and a Life Cycle Assessment approach. The results show that the Portuguese thermal building legislation can be considered consistent in terms of energy efficiency and environmental performance if we take the damage categories into account - "human health" or "ecosystem quality" or the impact category - "emission into air". It cannot be considered consistent if we take the damage category into account - "resources" or the impact category - "CO(2) eq" (equivalent carbon dioxide emissions)/"climate change"/"global warming". (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Nafferton Factorial Systems Comparison experiments were begun in 2003 to provide data on the production and quality effects of a whole spectrum of different crop production systems ranging from fully conventional to fully organic. In this paper, the crop production data for the first 4 years of the experiments have been used to conduct a life cycle analysis of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from organic and conventional production systems. Actual yield and field activity data from two of the treatments in the experiments (a stocked organic system and a stockless conventional system) were used to determine the GHG emissions per hectare and per MJ of human food energy produced, using both the farm gate and wider society as system boundaries. Emissions from these two baseline scenarios were compared with six other modelled scenarios: conventional stocked system, a stockless system where all crop residues were incorporated into the soil, two stocked systems where manure was used for biogas production, and two stockless systems where all crop residues were removed from the field and used for bio-energy production. Changing the system boundary from the farm gate to wider society did not substantially alter the GHG emissions per hectare of land when organic production methods were used; however, in conventional systems, which rely on more off-farm inputs, emissions were much greater per hectare when societal boundaries were used. Incorporating on-farm bioenergy production into the system allowed GHG emissions to be offset by energy generation. In the case of the organic system that included pyrolysis of crop residues, net GHG emissions were negative, indicating that energy offsets and sequestration of C in biochar can completely offset emissions of GHG from food production. The analysis demonstrates the importance of considering system boundaries and the end use of all agricultural products when conducting life cycle analyses of food production systems. (C) 2011 Royal Netherlands Society for Agricultural Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was performed on the management of waste computer monitors from King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties in Washington State considering four options for the final destination of the monitors; reuse, recycling, sanitary landfilling, or hazardous waste landfilling. The system was interpreted in two ways; comparing the disposal of a single cathode ray tube (CRT) and liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor and the expected regional change in monitor disposals between 2008 and 2010. The results were separated into two scenarios, one in which credit was given for the avoidance of primary material production in response to the generation of recyclables and one where credit was not given. The effect of avoiding primary material production was large enough to change the impact assessment results from a system that consumed energy, contributed to global warming, and generated air emissions to one that produced energy, reduced global warming, and was a sink of air emissions. LCD monitor disposal had lower impacts than CRT monitor disposal in all impact categories except for the management of mercury. This translates into a reduction of the impact or an increase in the benefit for each impact category, except the management of mercury, for the system from 2008 to 2010 due to changing composition of the monitor disposal stream from CRT to LCD technology. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Given the booming of bioenergy plants under construction in Piedmont, in Northern Italy, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used in order to assist public decision-makers during the evaluation of new bioenergy projects. Local administrators are in fact worried that public incentives granted to bioenergy producers, regardless of the overall environmental performance, might not encourage technological innovation and eco-efficiency, or bring unwanted indirect environmental effects. A detailed LCA of bioenergy production from dedicated crops (maize, sorghum, triticale and miscanthus) and manure through anaerobic digestion and combined heat and power generation was carried out. The LCA model was particularly focused on the end-of-life of digestate and site-specific data related to the impact of adopted energy conversion technologies. It was confirmed that bioenergy is not automatically synonymous with sustainable energy, as the differences in terms of environmental performance can be remarkable. EROI (Energy Return on Investment) index was estimated to be 3-5. The potential in terms of GHG saving depends on several factors and it is heavily influenced by the reference non-renewable energy to be substituted. End-of-life of digestate was found to be crucial for acidification and eutrophication, but also for GHG emissions. Finally, particulates equivalent emissions were found to be very large in comparison to modern natural gas power plants. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.How waste is managed - whether as a nuisance to be disposed of, or as a resource to be reused - directly affects local and global environmental quality. This analysis explores the GHG benefits of five treatment options for residual municipal solid waste (MSW) in California: Business As Usual (landfilling), Anaerobic Digestion, Incineration, 40% Reduction, and MaxEnergy (both incineration and anaerobic digestion). Because recycling efforts in California are already strong, this analysis focuses on non-recyclables and asks what else can be done with the material fractions that are currently reaching landfills. Using two different waste LCA models, EASEWASTE (a Danish model) and WARM (a U.S. model), we find that improved biogenic waste management through anaerobic digestion and waste reduction can lead to life-cycle GHG savings when compared to Business As Usual. The magnitude of the benefits depends strongly on a number of model assumptions: the type of electricity displaced by waste-derived energy, how biogenic carbon is counted as a contributor to atmospheric carbon stocks, and the landfill gas collection rate. Assuming that natural gas is displaced by waste-derived energy, that 64% of landfill gas is collected, and that our system boundary begins when waste is thrown away and ends with disposal or conversion to air emissions, reducing California's residual waste by 40% can lead to a savings of 6 Mt (million metric tonnes) of CO(2)-e per year, and digesting California's biogenic waste could save 0.6 Mt CO(2)-e per year. Source reduction is the most robust means to mitigate GHG emissions from waste, though either increasing landfill gas capture rates within the current management plan or digesting biogenic waste (and designing landfills to maximize carbon sequestration) provide two other important means for greenhouse gas mitigation from waste management. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of this article is to quantify the drivers for the changes in raw material consumption (domestic material consumption expressed in the form of all materials extracted and used in the production phase) in terms of technology, which refers to the concept of sustainable production; the product structure of final demand, which refers to the concept of sustainable consumption; and the volume of final demand, which is related to economic growth. We also aim to determine to what extent the technological development and a shift in product structure of the final demand compensate for the growth in final consumption volume. Therefore, we apply structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to the change in raw material consumption (RMC) of the Czech Republic between 2000 and 2007. To present the study in a broader context, we also show other material flow indicators for the Czech Republic for 2000 and 2007.Norway, like many countries, has realized the need to extensively plan its renewable energy future sooner rather than later. Combined heat and power (CHP) through gasification of forest residues is one technology that is expected to aid Norway in achieving a desired doubling of bioenergy production by 2020. To assess the environmental impacts to determine the most suitable CHP size, we performed a unit process-based attributional life cycle assessment (LCA), in which we compared three scales of CHP over ten environmental impact categoriesmicro (0.1 megawatts electricity [MWe]), small (1 MWe), and medium (50 MWe) scale. The functional units used were 1 megajoule (MJ) of electricity and 1 MJ of district heating delivered to the end user (two functional units), and therefore, the environmental impacts from distribution of electricity and hot water to the consumer were also considered. This study focuses on a regional perspective situated in middle-Norway's Nord- and Sor-Trondelag counties. Overall, the unit-based environmental impacts between the scales of CHP were quite mixed and within the same magnitude. The results indicated that energy distribution from CHP plant to end user creates from less than 1% to nearly 90% of the total system impacts, depending on impact category and energy product. Also, an optimal small-scale CHP plant may be the best environmental option. The CHP systems had a global warming potential ranging from 2.4 to 2.8 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule of thermal (g CO2-eq/MJth) district heating and from 8.8 to 10.5 grams carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule of electricity (g CO2-eq/MJel) to the end user.No life cycle assessment (LCA) of artisanal and small-scale mining activities (A&Sma) has been identified as of today, and there are limited studies about large-scale mining and alluvial mining. The A&Sma are relevant economic sectors in countries with large reserves of mineral resources. Gold is the most representative metal mined with these practices and is used not only in jewelry but also in several electronics appliances. South America accounted for 17% of the total worldwide gold extraction in 2005; A&Sma occurred mostly in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil.Establishing a comprehensive environmental footprint that indicates resource use and environmental release hotspots in both direct and indirect operations can help companies formulate impact reduction strategies as part of overall sustainability efforts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful approach for achieving these objectives. For most companies, financial data are more readily available than material and energy quantities, which suggests a hybrid LCA approach that emphasizes use of economic input-output (EIO) LCA and process-based energy and material flow models to frame and develop life cycle emission inventories resulting from company activities.Due to increased environmental awareness, planning and performance of waste management has become more and more complex. Therefore waste management has early been subject to different types of modelling. Another field with long experience of modelling and systems perspective is energy systems. The two modelling traditions have developed side by side, but so far there are very few attempts to combine them. Waste management systems can be linked together with energy systems through incineration plants. The models for waste management can be modelled on a quite detailed level whereas surrounding systems are modelled in a more simplistic way. This is a problem, as previous studies have shown that assumptions on the surrounding system often tend to be important for the conclusions. In this paper it is shown how two models, one for the district heating system (MARTES) and another one for the waste management system (ORWARE), can be linked together. The strengths and weaknesses with model linking are discussed when compared to simplistic assumptions on effects in the energy and waste management systems. It is concluded that the linking of models will provide a more complete, correct and credible picture of the consequences of different simultaneous changes in the systems. The linking procedure is easy to perform and also leads to activation of project partners. However, the simulation procedure is a bit more complicated and calls for the ability to run both models. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Studies associated with distributed civil infrastructure systems are usually very demanding from a computational point of view, especially when they involve life-cycle analysis, uncertainty, and optimization. For this reason, computational tools that enhance the efficiency of the analysis and make it feasible for complex practical applications are of utmost importance. In this paper, a computational technique for the efficiency enhancement of bridge network life-cycle analysis under uncertainty is presented and its impact in terms of CPU time reduction is investigated. The proposed technique consists in the joint use of random field theory and probabilistic reliability models for the simulation of the individual bridge service states over the life-cycle of the infrastructure. This random field based approach is extremely efficient and takes simultaneously into account the deterioration in time of the bridge reliability and the correlation in space of the service states of bridges belonging to the same transportation network. Compared to other techniques previously used to perform the same task, the proposed methodology is theoretically more solid and improves the computational efficiency by more than two orders of magnitude. A numerical example is provided to validate the proposed technique. Moreover, a second example involving the life-cycle performance analysis of a complex bridge network in Santa Barbara, CA, is presented. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Power electronics enables the efficient generation, use, and distribution of electrical energy because it substantially improves energy conversion efficiency. In order to realize the large electrical energy savings potential enabled by power electronics suitable technological solutions at acceptable cost levels are needed. Moreover, public policy and public acceptance must play an increasingly important role. An effective way to quantify the value of power electronics is needed and it must be presented in such a way that it is understood and appreciated by policymakers. In this paper, energy payback time is shown to be a powerful tool for weighing the value of energy savings achieved by using power electronics versus the energy needed to manufacture the systems. A life cycle analysis of two power electronic converters and their parts is performed. The benefits of energy savings versus energy invested in manufacturing and end-of-life management of power converters is analyzed. It is shown that power electronics systems have considerably shorter energy payback time compared to other technologies.Consumers often perceive that the modern beef production system has an environmental impact far greater than that of historical systems, with improved efficiency being achieved at the expense of greenhouse gas emissions. The objective of this study was to compare the environmental impact of modern (2007) US beef production with production practices characteristic of the US beef system in 1977. A deterministic model based on the metabolism and nutrient requirements of the beef population was used to quantify resource inputs and waste outputs per billion kilograms of beef. Both the modern and historical production systems were modeled using characteristic management practices, population dynamics, and production data from US beef systems. Modern beef production requires considerably fewer resources than the equivalent system in 1977, with 69.9% of animals, 81.4% of feedstuffs, 87.9% of the water, and only 67.0% of the land required to produce 1 billion kg of beef. Waste outputs were similarly reduced, with modern beef systems producing 81.9% of the manure, 82.3% CH4, and 88.0% N2O per billion kilograms of beef compared with production systems in 1977. The C footprint per billion kilograms of beef produced in 2007 was reduced by 16.3% compared with equivalent beef production in 1977. As the US population increases, it is crucial to continue the improvements in efficiency demonstrated over the past 30 yr to supply the market demand for safe, affordable beef while reducing resource use and mitigating environmental impact.The pressing need to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources and the emission of greenhouse gases into the environment, in recent decades has led to the wide development of bio-based plastics that are produced from renewable sources, such as corn, wheat, oil seeds etc. Actually, the most important bio-based plastics on the market are the poly(lactic acid) (PLA) produced from Nature Works (USA) and the Mater-Bi, a starch based bioplastics, made from Novamont (Italy). The aim of this work is not only to assess the actual energy and greenhouse gases (GHGs) savings resulting from the production of bioplastics, compared with the production of conventional plastics, but also to analyze what might be the best final disposition of bioplastic wastes in order to maximize the energy saving. Therefore, by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, LCAs cradle to gate and cradle to grave were carried out both for PLA and Mater-Bi, taking into consideration as final scenarios composting, incineration, anaerobic digestion and mechanical recycling processes. The work demonstrates how incineration, composting and anaerobic digestion processes are clearly under-performing, from an environmental point of view, with respect to the mechanical recycling process.The green environmental laws and regulations are legislated, implemented, and enforced in many countries and economic regions. The provision of green products and services are the fast growing trend in global consumer markets. Therefore, introducing new products with environmental considerations becomes critical for global brand manufacturers. This research depicts an integrated and intelligent eco- and inno-product design methodology to support environmental friendly green product development. The methodology adopts approaches, such as life cycle assessment (LCA), quality function deploymnet for environement (QFDE), theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) and back-propagation network (BPN) to achieve eco- and inno-design objectives. LCA evaluates and compares the environmental impacts of production. QFDE transforms high-level concerns of environment into design requirements. When there are many historical QFDE data, the BPN prediction model is trained and deployed to automate the specifications of green design improvement. TRIZ is to support the creation of innovative product design ideas effectively and efficiently during the concept design stage. Finally, this paper presents two eco-design cases of power adaptor to demonstrate the proposed methodology.Over the last two decades, the probabilistic assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) structures under seismic hazard has been developed rapidly. However, little attention has been devoted to the assessment of the seismic reliability of corroded structures. For the life-cycle assessment of RC structures in a marine environment and earthquake-prone regions, the effect of corrosion due to airborne chlorides on the seismic capacity needs to be taken into consideration. Also, the effect of the type of corrosive environment on the seismic capacity of RC structures has to be quantified.This article presents a comparative sustainability assessment of three biorefineries that produce liquid fuels used in current infrastructure. The three options considered are biochemical production of ethanol from grain and from cellulosic feedstocks and thermochemical production of Fischer-Tropsch diesel from biomass-derived syngas. These biorefineries were compared using numerous environmental, economic, and social metrics, with numerical values derived from a thorough review of recent literature. For each of the three biorefinery options, the metrics were not determined from a specific process design, but from a variety of different designs reported in literature. Where necessary, corn was selected as the feedstock for grain ethanol and switchgrass was selected for cellulosic ethanol and Fischer-Tropsch diesel. These sustainability metrics were used in an Analytic Hierarchy Process decision analysis to compare the sustainability of the different biorefineries. Thus, a new decision-making tool has been created in which the user can assign different weights to each category and its metrics. This tool was used to explore the influence of different weights, different market conditions, and uncertainties in the values of the metrics on the relative sustainability of the different options. Based on the results of this assessment, cellulosic ethanol biorefineries are modestly more sustainable than grain ethanol and Fischer-Tropsch diesel. Grain ethanol was favorable economically whereas Fischer-Tropsch diesel had the highest score on the societal metrics. (c) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2010The effects of the construction methods, materials of reactive media and groundwater constituents on the environmental impacts of a permeable reactive barrier (PRB) were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The PRB is assumed to be installed at a simulated site contaminated by either Cr(VI) alone or Cr(VI) and As(V). Results show that the trench-based construction method can reduce the environmental impacts of the remediation remarkably compared to the caisson based method due to less construction material consumption by the funnel. Compared to using the zerovalent iron (Fe(0)) and quartz sand mixture, the use of the Fe(0) and iron oxide coated sand (IOCS) mixture can reduce the environmental impacts. In the presence of natural organic matter (NOM) in groundwater, the environmental impacts generated by the reactive media were significantly increased because of the higher usage of Fe(0). The environmental impacts are lower by using the Fe(0) and IOCS mixture in the groundwater with NOM, compared with using the Fe(0) and quartz sand mixture. Since IOCS can enhance the removal efficiency of Cr(VI) and As(V), the usage of the Fe(0) can be reduced, which in turn reduces the impacts induced by the reactive media.An exergy life cycle assessment (ELCA) model based on life cycle assessment (LCA) and exergy methodology was developed to assess a 2x300 MW coal-fired power plant, and the results indicated that the exergy input in operation phase of power plant accounts for 99.89% of the total input and only 0.11% in construction and decommission phases. Direct and indirect exergy inputs account for 93.03% and 6.97%, respectively. Compared with coal-fired power generation system before carbon emission reduction, exergy input-output ratio of life cycle "CO2 zero-emission" energy system and exergy efficiency are about 5.563 and 17.97%, respectively, which increases by 62.47% and declines by 11.21% approximately. The model quantifies the energy, resource consumption and pollutant emissions of system life cycle using exergy as the basic physical parameter, which will make the assessment more objective and reasonable.To reduce the environmental impact of a product efficiently, it is crucial to consider the entire value chain of the product; that is, to apply life cycle thinking, to avoid suboptimization and identify the areas where the largest potential improvements can be made. This study analyzed the carbon footprint (CF) of butter and dairy blend products, with the focus on fat content and size and type of packaging (including product waste at the consumer level). The products analyzed were butter with 80% fat in 250-g wrap, 250-g tub, and 10-g mini tub, and blends with 80% and 60% fat in 250-g tubs. Life cycle assessment was used to account for all greenhouse gas emissions from cow to consumer. A critical aspect when calculating the CF is how emissions are allocated between different products. Here, allocation of raw milk between products was based on a weighted fat and protein content (1:1.7), based on the price paid for raw milk to dairy farmers. The CF (expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents, CO(2)e) for 1 kg of butter or blend (assuming no product waste at consumer) ranged from 5.2 kg (blend with 60% fat content) to 9.3 kg of CO(2)e (butter in 250-g tub). When including product waste at the consumer level, the CF ranged from 5.5 kg of CO(2)e (blend with 60% fat content) to 14.7 kg of CO(2)e (butter in mini tub). Fat content and the proportion of vegetable oil in products had the greatest effect on CF of the products, with lower fat content and a higher proportion of vegetable oil resulting in lower CF. Hence, if the same functionality as butter could be retained while shifting to lower fat and higher proportions of vegetable oil, the CF of the product would be decreased. Size and type of packaging were less important, but it is crucial to have the correct size and type of packaging to avoid product losses at the consumer. The greatest share of greenhouse gas emissions associated with butter production occurred at the farm level; thus, minimizing product losses in the whole value-chain from cow to consumer-is essential for efficient production.The incorporation of feed-use (FU) amino acids (AAs) in diets results in a reduced use of protein-rich ingredients such as soybean meal, recognized to have elevated contributions to environmental impacts. This study investigated whether the incorporation of L-lysine. HCl, L-threonine and FU-methionine reduces the environmental impacts of pig and broiler feeds using Life Cycle Assessment. The following impact categories were considered: climate change, eutrophication, acidification, terrestrial ecotoxicity, cumulative energy demand and land occupation. Several feeds were formulated either to minimize the cost of the formulation (with or without AA utilization), to maximize AA incorporation (i.e. the cost of AA was considered to be similar to that of soybean meal), or to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. For both pig and broiler feeds, calculations were made first using only cereals and soybean meal as main ingredients and then using cereals and several protein-rich ingredients (soybean meal, rapeseed meal and peas). In addition, these calculations were performed using two types of soybean meal (from Brazil, associated with recent deforestation or not). For broiler feeds, two types of maize (from France, irrigated, with mineral fertilization v. not irrigated, with animal manure fertilization) were also tested. Regarding the feeds formulated to minimize cost, incorporation of AA decreased the values for eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity and cumulative energy demand of both pig and broiler feeds, regardless of the base ingredients. Reduction in climate change and acidification due to the incorporation of AA depended on the nature of the feed ingredients, with the effect of AA incorporation being greater when combined with ingredients with high impacts such as soybean meal associated with deforestation. Feeds formulated to maximize AA incorporation generally had a similar composition to those formulated to minimize cost, suggesting that the costs of AA were not the limiting factor in their incorporation. Feeds formulated to minimize greenhouse gas emissions had the lowest values for climate change and cumulative energy demand, but not for other impacts. Further research is needed to elucidate whether the incorporation of additional AA (tryptophan and valine) along with L-lysine, L-threonine and FU-methionine could decrease on the environmental impacts of pig and broiler feeds further.The digestibility of a starch-polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) biopolymer insulated cardboard coolbox was investigated under a defined anaerobic digestion (AD) system with key parameters characterized. Laboratory results were combined with industrial operational data to develop a site-specific life cycle assessment (LCA) model. Inoculated with active bacterial trophic groups, the anaerobic biodegradability of three starch-PVOH biopolymers achieved 58-62%. The LCA modeling showed that the environmental burdens of the starch-PVOH biopolymer packaging under AD conditions on acidification, eutrophication, global warming and photochemical oxidation potential were dominated by atmospheric emissions released from substrate degradation and fuel combustion, whereas energy consumption and infrastructure requirements were the causes of abiotic depletion, ozone depletion and toxic impacts. Nevertheless, for this bio-packaging, AD of the starch-PVOH biopolymer combined with recycling of the cardboard emerged as the environmentally superior option and optimization of the energy utilization system could bring further environmental benefits to the AD process. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chase J Waddell*(1), Matthew D Hurteau(2) & Deborah Huntzinger(3) Limiting the effects of global climate change requires reductions in anthropogenic GHG emissions. However, without regulations mandating decarbonization of industrial society, emission reduction strategies must provide opportunities for generating profit. Product carbon footprinting (PCF) has emerged as a means to identify emission reduction opportunities for all economic activity by analyzing the full life cycle of goods and services. The detailed emissions inventories obtained through PCF can facilitate identification of areas in a supply chain where GHG emissions can be reduced with a positive return on investment. Despite recent efforts to standardize PCF, a lack of data and data uncertainty remain barriers to restructuring supply chains and manufacturing processes to achieve cost-effective emissions reductions. We provide a basic framework to conceptually demonstrate how data gaps can be filled and uncertainty in PCF can be more accurately assessed, while simultaneously reducing the costs of conducting PCF and yielding positive return on investment.Soil carbon stocks and sequestration have been given a lot of attention recently in the study of terrestrial ecosystems and global climate change. This review focuses on the progress made on the estimation of the soil carbon stocks of China, and the characterization of carbon dynamics of croplands with regard to climate change, and addresses issues on the mineralization of soil organic carbon in relation to greenhouse gas emissions. By integrating existing research data, China's total soil organic carbon (SOC) stock is estimated to be 90 Pg and its inorganic carbon (SIC) stock as 60 Pg, with SOC sequestration rates in the range of 20-25 Tg/a for the last two decades. An estimation of the biophysical potential of SOC sequestration has been generally agreed as being 2 Pg over the long term, of which only 1/3 could be attainable using contemporary agricultural technologies in all of China's croplands. Thus, it is critical to enhance SOC sequestration and mitigate climate change to improve agricultural and land use management in China. There have been many instances where SOC accumulation may not induce an increased amount of decomposition under a warming scenario but instead favor improved cropland productivity and ecosystem functioning. Furthermore, unchanged or even decreased net global warming potential (GWP) from croplands with enhanced SOC has been reported by a number of case studies using life cycle analysis. Future studies on soil carbon stocks and the sequestration potential of China are expected to focus on: (1) Carbon stocks and the sequestration capacity of the earths' surface systems at scales ranging from the plot to the watershed and (2) multiple interface processes and the synergies between carbon sequestration and ecosystem productivity and ecosystem functioning at scales from the molecular level to agro-ecosystems. Soil carbon science in China faces new challenges and opportunities to undertake integrated research applicable to many areas.The main purpose of this work is to examine whether or not, and to what extent, the environmental impacts of Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination varies due to different Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods. An RO desalination plant in the United States was chosen in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) using a generic LCIA method, CML2, and an US-specific method, TRACI, to assess the environmental cost in different impact categories. The input and output flows of the RO plants were based on the previous study. Life cycle inventory (LCI) used was adopted from the Ecoinvent Database with specific US datasets. The results indicated the choice of LCIA method did make a significant difference in the LCA characterization results of the desalination process. The divergence in the coverage level of different material flows, characterization models engaged in the method, and differentiation of environmental interventions between two LCIA methods were identified as the major reasons for the disparate characterization scores in various impact categories including acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation, human health, and ecotoxicity potentials. This work also provided some suggestions in choosing the appropriate LCIA method for desalination industry and developing desalination-specialized LCIA method. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greening the building envelope focusing on green facades with vegetation is a good example of a new construction practice. Plants and partly growing materials in case of living wall systems (LWS) have a number of functions that are beneficial, for example: increasing the biodiversity and ecological value, mitigation of urban heat island effect, outdoor and indoor comfort, insulating properties, improvement of air quality and of the social and psychological well being of city dwellers. This paper discusses a comparative life cycle analysis (LCA) situated in The Netherlands for: a conventional built up European brick facade, a facade greened directly, a facade greened indirectly (supported by a steel mesh), a facade covered with a living wall system based on planter boxes and a facade covered with a living wall system based on felt layers. Beside the environmental benefits of the above described greening systems, it is eventually not clear if these systems are sustainable, due to the materials used, maintenance, nutrients and water needed. A LCA is used to analyze the similarity and differences in the environmental impacts in relation with benefits estimated for two climate types for building energy saving (reduction of electrical energy used for building cooling and heating). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this research is twofold: first, to evaluate how occupant behavior in a neutral environment influences the overall greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption of multi-family apartment buildings, and second: to establish which activities associated with housing companies produce the most greenhouse gas emissions. The research comprised of a multiple cases of housing companies dating from the late 1960s and located in the Finnish capital Helsinki. The studied housing companies represent the least energy efficient third of the Finnish residential building stock, approaching obligatory large scale refurbishments. The analysis is conducted in two phases with a so called hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) technique. Using the technique, both economic and metric consumption data are analyzed to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions generated by activities associated with housing. In line with previous research, the study identifies heating energy as the single most significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The results also show that the carbon load associated with housing activities makes up one third of an individual resident's overall carbon footprint. Contrary to often stated belief, the study indicates that occupant behavior has only limited effect on the energy consumption and, consequently, carbon emissions derived from housing, particularly when multi-family housing connected to district heating is concerned. However, apartment size seems to have a two-way impact, the smallest and the largest being the least energy efficient. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The areas of energy, water and food policy have numerous interwoven concerns ranging from ensuring access to services, to environmental impacts to price volatility. These issues manifest in very different ways in each of the three "spheres", but often the impacts are closely related. Identifying these interrelationships a priori is of great importance to help target synergies and avoid potential tensions. Systems thinking is required to address such a wide swath of possible topics. This paper briefly describes some of the linkages at a high-level of aggregation - primarily from a developing country perspective - and via case studies, to arrive at some promising directions for addressing the nexus. To that end, we also present the attributes of a modelling framework that specifically addresses the nexus, and can thus serve to inform more effective national policies and regulations. While environmental issues are normally the 'cohesive principle' from which the three areas are considered jointly, the enormous inequalities arising from a lack of access suggest that economic and security-related issues may be stronger motivators of change. Finally, consideration of the complex interactions will require new institutional capacity both in industrialised and developing countries. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This note deals with the methods and tools for assessing the environmental performance of a building design in the early design phase of a building project. It describes building environmental performance assessment (EPA), explains how it is used in design, and points to a number of EPA modelling and rating tools that are commercially available in Australia, including energy performance tools, and life cycle analysis (LCA) tools.In Latvia, rapeseed methyl ester (RME) is generally considered to have a significant economic potential in the field of biofuels. As investments grow, it is important to evaluate the environmental impacts of this production and to highlight the main sources of these impacts. Nowadays, the share of biofuels in the transport sector in Latvia is attested to have a value of 0.3% (around 75% biodiesel and 25% bioethanol). Biofuel production in Latvia doubled in the last two years: the current total biodiesel production is approximately 64 ktonne/year (year 2009). The aim of this paper is to understand and model the environmental performance of the biodiesel produced from rapeseeds under the local Latvian conditions. Firstly, energy crops were evaluated by assessing their levels of biodiesel productivity. Secondly, the current Latvian climatic conditions and cultivation parameters were taken into account. To conclude, a comparison with the impacts of fossil based diesel was conducted.Rapid industrialization and urbanization in developing countries have created serious problems in municipal solid waste (MSW) management. New case studies can shed light on these problems and point the way to potential solutions for improving the overall eco-efficiency of MSW management. This paper employs a case study approach, analyzing MSW management in Inner Mongolia. This study encompasses all aspects of MSW management, including collection, separation, recycling, and disposal. Problems and challenges are identified through our analysis, and recommendations are raised by considering the local realities. Our main findings are: (1) while large cities have already established a solid foundation for MSW management, small- and medium-sized cities deserve more attention; (2) MSW in rural areas is even worse than urban areas; (3) enforcement of MSW regulations is ineffective and needs improvement; (4) lack of funds, R&D efforts and advanced technologies have impeded sustainable MSW management; (5) lack of coordination and communication among different stakeholders further damages the efforts for improvement of MSW management. Therefore, integrated efforts that combine the above concerns should be initiated so that the overall effectiveness and efficiency of MSW management can be improved.Despite substitution of wood by several other materials like plastics, steel, aluminium etc., wood is still regarded as one of the most versatile raw materials especially in the construction/building sectors. The consumption of industrial wood has risen over the last decade in every region of the world. Also there is a positive correlation between consumption of industrial wood and national income. It has been estimated that the present demand for industrial wood in India is 54 million cubic meters, while the availability is estimated as 30 million cubic meters. To meet the growing need of demand and supply, R&D support is very much needed to provide the acceleration to assure the growth and prosperity of wood and wood based panel industry in future. Wood based panel products industry needs innovative technology solutions that can transform the way traditional wood-derived products are made and enable significant improvements in environmental footprint, manufacturing efficiency and productivity. There are five categories of driving forces which have made impact on the wood and engineered wood product technologies viz., raw material supply, manufacturing costs, product attributes and performance and environment friendly innovative products. Development of formaldehyde and volatile organic compound emission free binder for panel products, formulation of product standards at par with international standards, enhancement of service life of products by treatment with eco friendly preservatives, development of bio adhesives, and fire resistant panel products are some of the priority research areas that need to be investigated. In India, grain and other seeds are the main products of the farming activity and there is great interest in developing uses for residues that are currently burned or ploughed back into the ground. India alone produces more than 400 million tones of agricultural waste annually. Evolving technologies for the substitution of wood by using these non-wood renewable fibers from agro residues and bamboo are another important research area which needs to be worked out to meet the growing demand of panel products. In today's highly sensitive environment, both products and the process have to confirm to certain environmental standards and therefore studies like life cycle analysis, carbon footprints and energy auditing on all next generation engineered wood products need to be investigated. The purpose of carrying out forestry/forest products research today should be to generate benefit for the people by the application of new knowledge generated so far in the field of natural resource management. There is a need for user friendly and problem solving thrust in the field of research, education and extension.The profile of seasonal foods has been raised in recent years, with information about 'in-season' produce being made available to consumers through a variety of channels, including television programmes, magazine articles and websites. 'Eating seasonally' has also increasingly been encouraged by government initiatives and supported by other agencies and organisations. This article draws on findings of recent research by ADAS, EuGeos and SERIO to explore the notion of 'seasonal food' and probe the link between 'eating seasonally' and a reduction of environmental impacts in the food chain.Aluminum is examined as energy storage and carrier. To provide the correct feasibility study the work includes the analysis of aluminum production process: from ore to metal. During this analysis the material and energy balances are considered. Total efficiency of aluminum-based energy storage is evaluated. Aluminum based energy generation technologies are reviewed. Technologies are categorized by aluminum oxidation method. Particularly, the work focuses on direct electrochemical (anodic) oxidation of aluminum, aluminum-water reaction in alkaline solution, mechanochemical activation of aluminum, mechanical activation of aluminum and high-temperature aluminum-water reaction. The objective is methods overview including technological principle, efficiency, urgent problems and possible application areas. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main objective of this study was to determine the global warming potential of several wood products as an environmental criterion for their ecodesign. Two methodologies were combined: the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions (equivalent CO2) of several representative wood based products from the furniture sector and the integration of environmental aspects into product design. The products under assessment were classified in two groups: indoor products and outdoor products, depending on their location. "Indoor products" included a convertible cot/bed, a kitchen cabinet, an office table, a living room furniture, a headboard, youth room accessories and a wine crate, while the "Outdoor products" analysed were a ventilated wooden wall and a wooden playground. Spanish wood processing companies located in Galicia (NW Spain) and Catalonia (NE Spain) were analysed in detail. The life cycle of each product was carried out from a cradle-to-gate perspective according to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, using global warming potential as the selected impact category. According to the results, metals, boards and energy use appeared to be the most contributing elements to the environmental impact of the different products under assessment, with total contributions ranging from 40% to 90%. Furthermore, eco-design strategies were proposed by means of the methodology known as Design for the Environment (DfE). Improvement strategies viable for implementation in the short term were considered and analysed in detail, accounting for remarkable reductions in the equivalent CO2 emissions (up to 60%). These strategies would be focused on the use of renewable energies such as photovoltaic cells, the promotion of national fibres or changes in the materials used. Other alternatives to be implemented in the long term can be of potential interest for future developments. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The authors of this paper have been involved in contentious discussion of the EROI of biomass-based ethanol. This contention has undermined, in the minds of some, the utility of EROI for assessing fuels. This paper seeks to understand the reasons for the divergent results.Stand-alone environmental indicators based on life cycle assessment (LCA), such as the carbon footprint and water footprint, are becoming increasingly popular as a means of directing sustainable production and consumption. However, individually, these metrics violate the principle of LCA known as comprehensiveness and do not necessarily provide an indication of overall environmental impact. In this study, the carbon footprints for six diverse beef cattle production systems in southern Australia were calculated and found to range from 10.1 to 12.7 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) live weight (cradle to farm gate). This compared to water footprints, which ranged from 3.3 to 221 L H(2)Oe kg(-1) live weight. For these systems, the life cycle impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use were subsequently modelled using endpoint indicators and aggregated to enable comparison. In all cases, impacts from GHG emissions were most important, representing 93 to 99% of the combined scores. As such, the industry's existing priority of GHG emissions reduction is affirmed. In an attempt to balance the demands of comprehensiveness and simplicity, to achieve reliable public reporting of the environmental impacts of a large number of products across the economy, a multi-indicator approach based on combined midpoint and endpoint life cycle impact assessment modelling is proposed. For agri-food products, impacts from land use should also be included as tradeoffs between GHG emissions, water use and land use are common.Buildings are major consumers of energy throughout their life cycle. Generation of energy primarily depends on conventional sources, which is the basic cause of environmental pollution. To improve environmental performance of building it is essential to involve all parameters which control its energy efficiency. Present paper identifies various parameters, viz. regulatory and voluntary policies, rating systems to assess energy efficiency, selection of energy efficient processes and materials through life cycle analysis and simulation and shifting to low embodied energy materials. A close control over each stage of development of a building is essential in the process of improvement in energy efficiency and reduction in carbon emission. In the following review construction of a building is divided in planning phase, designing phase, execution phase and operating phase. Policy makers, architects, structural designers, energy managers, construction managers and consultants must be involved in the development of a building for improving its overall environmental performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Waste prevention has been addressed in the literature in terms of the social and behavioural aspects, but very little quantitative assessment exists of the environmental benefits. Our study evaluates the environmental consequences of waste prevention on waste management systems and on the wider society, using life-cycle thinking. The partial prevention of unsolicited mail, beverage packaging and food waste is tested for a "High-tech" waste management system relying on high energy and material recovery and for a "Low-tech" waste management system with less recycling and relying on landfilling. Prevention of 13% of the waste mass entering the waste management system generates a reduction of loads and savings in the waste management system for the different impacts categories; 45% net reduction for nutrient enrichment and 12% reduction for global warming potential. When expanding our system and including avoided production incurred by the prevention measures, large savings are observed (15-fold improvement for nutrient enrichment and 2-fold for global warming potential). Prevention of food waste has the highest environmental impact saving. Prevention generates relatively higher overall relative benefit for "Low-tech" systems depending on landfilling. The paper provides clear evidence of the environmental benefits of waste prevention and has specific relevance in climate change mitigation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A keyword analysis was applied in this work to evaluate research trends of eutrophication papers published between 1991 and 2010 in any journal of all the subject categories of the Science Citation Index compiled by Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, USA. Eutrophication was used as a keyword to search parts of titles, abstracts, or keywords. The published output analysis showed that eutrophication research steadily increased over the past 20 years and the annual publication output in 2008, 2009, 2010 were about four times that of 1991. The whole paper published by China ranked at 3rd, but these papers' IF were lower than the average of the world. "Water Framework Directive" and "Life Cycle Assessment" were two of the most frequently used author keywords in the period between 1999 and 2010 whilst they did not appear before 1998. These new conception indicated eutrophication research trend was changing to policy and management from technological researches.Lignocellulosic biofuels can help fulfill escalating demands for liquid fuels and mitigate the environmental impacts of petroleum-derived fuels. Two key factors in the successful large-scale production of lignocellulosic biofuels are pretreatment (in biological conversion processes) and a consistent supply of feedstock. Cellulosic biomass tends to be bulky and difficult to handle, thereby exacerbating feedstock supply challenges. Currently, large biorefineries face many logistical problems because they are fully integrated, centralized facilities in which all units of the conversion process are present in a single location. The drawbacks of fully integrated biorefineries can potentially be dealt by a network of distributed processing facilities called 'Regional Biomass Processing Depots' (RBPDs) which procure, preprocess/pretreat, densify and deliver feedstock to the biorefinery and return by-products such as animal feed to end users. The primary objective of this study is to perform a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of distributed and centralized biomass processing systems. Additionally, we assess the effect that apportioning land area to different feedstocks within a landscape has on the energy yields and environmental impacts of the overall systems. To accomplish these objectives, we conducted comparative LCAs of distributed and centralized processing systems combined with farm-scale landscapes of varying acreages allocated to a 'corn-system' consisting of corn grain, stover and rye (grown as a winter double crop) and two perennial grasses, switchgrass and miscanthus. The distributed processing system yields practically the same total energy and generates 3.7% lower greenhouse gas emissions than the centralized system. Sensitivity analyses identified perennial grass yields, biomass densification and its corresponding energy requirements, transport energy requirements and carbon sequestration credits for conversion from annual to perennial crops as key parameters that significantly affect the overall results.The study describes an integrated impact assessment tool for the net carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange in forest production. The components of the net carbon exchange include the uptake of carbon into biomass, the decomposition of litter and humus, emissions from forest management operations and carbon released from the combustion of biomass and degradation of wood-based products. The tool enables the allocation of the total carbon emissions to the timber and energy biomass and to the energy produced on the basis of biomass. In example computations, ecosystem model simulations were utilized as an input to the tool. We present results for traditional timber production (pulpwood and saw logs) and integrated timber and bioenergy production (logging residues, stumps and roots) for Norway spruce, in boreal conditions in Finland, with two climate scenarios over one rotation period. The results showed that the magnitude of management related emissions on net carbon exchange was smaller when compared with the total ecosystem fluxes; decomposition being the largest emission contributor. In addition, the effects of management and climate were higher on the decomposition of new humus compared with old humus. The results also showed that probable increased biomass growth, obtained under the changing climate (CC), could not compensate for decomposition and biomass combustion related carbon loss in southern Finland. In our examples, the emissions allocated for the energy from biomass in southern Finland were 172 and 188 kg CO2 MW h(-1) in the current climate and in a CC, respectively, and 199 and 157 kg CO2 MW h(-1) in northern Finland. This study concludes that the tool is suitable for estimating the net carbon exchange of forest production. The tool also enables the allocation of direct and indirect carbon emissions, related to forest production over its life cycle, in different environmental conditions and for alternative time periods and land uses. Simulations of forest management regimes together with the CC give new insights into ecologically sustainable forest bioenergy and timber production, as well as climate change mitigation options in boreal forests.The aim of this work was to study the sensitivity of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from wood energy to different forest management regimes when aiming at an integrated production of timber and energy biomass. For this purpose, the production of timber and energy biomass in Norway spruce [Picea abies (L.) Karst] and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stands was simulated using an ecosystem model (SIMA) on sites of varying fertility under different management regimes, including various thinning and fertilization treatments over a fixed simulation period of 80 years. The simulations included timber (sawlogs, pulp), energy biomass (small-sized stem wood) and/or logging residues (top part of stem, branches and needles) from first thinning, and logging residues and stumps from final felling for energy production. In this context, a life cycle analysis/emission calculation tool was used to assess the CO2 emissions per unit of energy (kg CO2 MW h(-1)) which was produced based on the use of wood energy. The energy balance (GJ ha(-1)) of the supply chain was also calculated. The evaluation of CO2 emissions and energy balance of the supply chain considered the whole forest bioenergy production chain, representing all operations needed to grow and harvest biomass and transport it to a power plant for energy production. Fertilization and high precommercial stand density clearly increased stem wood production (i.e. sawlogs, pulp and small-sized stem wood), but also the amount of logging residues, stump wood and roots for energy use. Similarly, the lowest CO2 emissions per unit of energy were obtained, regardless of tree species and site fertility, when applying extremely or very dense precommercial stand density, as well as fertilization three times during the rotation. For Norway spruce such management also provided a high energy balance (GJ ha(-1)). On the other hand, the highest energy balance for Scots pine was obtained concurrently with extremely dense precommercial stands without fertilization on the medium-fertility site, while on the low-fertility site fertilization three times during the rotation was needed to attain this balance. Thus, clear differences existed between species and sites. In general, the forest bioenergy supply chain seemed to be effective; i.e. the fossil fuel energy consumption varied between 2.2% and 2.8% of the energy produced based on the forest biomass. To conclude, the primary energy use and CO2 emissions related to the forest operations, including the production and application of fertilizer, were small in relation to the increased potential of energy biomass.In the current scenario of depleting energy resources, increasing food insecurity and global warming, Jatropha has emerged as a promising energy crop for India. The aim of this study is to examine the life cycle energy balance for Jatropha biodiesel production and greenhouse gas emissions from post-energy use and end combustion of biodiesel, over a period of 5 years. It's a case specific study for a small scale, high input Jatropha biodiesel system. Most of the existing studies have considered low input Jatropha biodiesel system and have used NEB (Net energy balance i.e. difference of energy output and energy input) and NER (Net energy ratio i.e. ratio of energy output to energy input) as indicators for estimating the viability of the systems. Although, many of them have shown these indicators to be positive, yet the values are very less. The results of this study, when compared with two previous studies of Jatropha, show that the values for these indicators can be increased to a much greater extent, if we use a high input Jatropha biodiesel system. Further, when compared to a study done on palm oil and Coconut oil, it was found even if the NEB and NER of biodiesel from Jatropha were lesser in comparison to those of Palm oil and Coconut oil, yet, when energy content of the co-products were also considered, Jatropha had the highest value for both the indicators in comparison to the rest two. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the advancement of interdisciplinary approaches in today's modern engineering, current efforts in optimal design of composites include seeking material selection protocols that can (1) simultaneously consider a series of mechanical/electrical/chemical cost criteria over a set of alternative material options, and (2) closely take into account environmental aspects of final products including recycling and end-of-life disposal options. In this paper, in addition to a review of some recent experimental and methodological advances in the above areas, a new application of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) is presented to deal with decision conflicts often seen among design criteria in composite material selection with the help of life cycle assessment (LCA). To show the application, an illustrative case study on a plastic gear material selection is conducted where the cost, mechanical and thermal properties along with environmental impact criteria are to be satisfied simultaneously. A pure plastic gear is compared to a Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)/aluminum-powder composite alternative. Results suggest that simple MCDM models, including a signal-to-noise measure adapted to MCDM in the same case study, can be used to explore both trade-offs and design break-even points in large decision spaces as the decision maker's perspective over environmental, material performance and cost attributes change during the design process. More advanced topics including the account of material data uncertainties are addressed.The environmental consequences of replacing fish meal and fish oil with plant-based sources in salmonid feeds were investigated using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Two scenarios of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) farming were compared. The first scenario used a Standard Diet (STD) with high levels of fish meal and fish oil, and the second a Low Marine-Fishery-Capture Diet (LFD) in which fish meal and fish oil were replaced by plant protein and oil sources. Environmental impacts assessed were: acidification, eutrophication, climate change, terrestrial ecotoxicity, net primary production use (biotic resource use), water use, land occupation and total cumulative energy demand. The assessment confirmed the substantial contribution of feed to the environmental burdens of fish production and the LFD scenario led to a significant decrease in biotic resource use compared to the STD scenario with the same total energy demand. Environmental impacts of feeds depended highly on the geographic origins of feed ingredients from fishery (e.g., fish oil from Norway or Peru) and from terrestrial agricultural crop species (e.g., palm oil or rapeseed oil). This study demonstrated the importance of a multicriteria method to give stakeholders the most accurate information on the potential consequences of replacing fishery products with plant-based sources in aquafeeds. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration experiments using the accelerated carbonation of three types of steelmaking slags, i.e., ultra-fine (UF) slag, fly-ash (FA) slag, and blended hydraulic slag cement (BHC), were performed in an autoclave reactor. The effects of reaction time, liquid-to-solid ratio (L/S), temperature, CO2 pressure, and initial pH on CO2 sequestration were evaluated. Two different CO2 pressures were chosen: the normal condition (700 psig) and the supercritical condition (1300 psig). The carbonation conversion was determined quantitatively by using thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA). The major factors that affected the conversion were reaction time (5 min to 12 h) and temperature (40-160 degrees C). The BHC was found to have the highest carbonation conversion of approximately 68%, corresponding to a capacity of 0.283 kg CO2/kg BHC, in 12 h at 700 psig and 160 degrees C. In addition, the carbonation products were confirmed to be mainly in CaCO3, which was determined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) to analyze samples before and after carbonation. Furthermore, reaction kinetics were expressed with a surface coverage model, and the carbon footprint of the developed technology in this investigation was calculated by a life cycle assessment (LCA). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is to prevent pollution. However, it is necessary to assess their sustainability in order to ensure that pollution is being removed, not displaced. In this research, the performance of 24 WWTPs has been evaluated using a streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Global Warming Potential (GWP) as environmental indicators, and operational costs as economic indicators. WWTPs were further classified in six typologies by their quality requirements according to their final discharge point or water reuse. Moreover, two different functional units (FU), one based on volume (m(3)) and the other on eutrophication reduction (kg PO43- removed) were used to further determine sustainability. A correlation between legal requirements and technologies used to achieve them was found: Organic matter removal plants were found to be less costly both in environmental and economic terms if volume was used as the functional unit, while more demanding typologies such as reuse plants showed a trade-off between lower EP and higher cost and GWP; however, this is overcome if the second FU is used instead, proving the sustainability of these options and that this FU better reflects the objectives of a WWTP. (C) 2011. Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are considered as a carbon neutral alternative to hydrocarbons in the transport sector and this approach has triggered concerns about the impact the production of biofuels might have on land usage. Another option that might also lead to reduced emissions in the transport sector is electricity based on renewable energy sources such as biomass. Below, we assess the benefits and drawbacks of the joint production of ethanol and electricity in a sugar cane based refinery, and the use of both energy forms in privately owned automobiles. In this analysis, we have considered technology for energy production that is currently available and cost competitive. The results show that the amount of land that is required to power our current automobile use needs is less than what is typically stated. According to our results that are based on 2010 values, 2 million ha of land are sufficient to power the Brazilian automobile fleet, 25 million ha are enough to satisfy the needs of the U.S. fleet, and 67 million ha are sufficient to cover the global autofuel requirements. When minor efficiency gains are considered, 19 million ha will be enough to satisfy the fuel needs of the U.S. fleet in 2030, whereas land required to supply the Brazilian and global fleet remain basically unchanged. Our analysis shows that the harvested energy density of sugar cane is 306 GJ/ha/yr, which is 1.7 times the value usually reported in the literature for biofuels. As a result, taking advantage of the primary energy potential of sugar cane, only 4% of the world's available cropland area would be sufficient to produce fuels that would power the global car fleet.The oriented strand board (OSB) biorefinery is an emerging technology that could improve the building, transportation, and chemical sectors' environmental profiles. By adding a hot water extraction stage to conventional OSB panel manufacturing, hemicellulose polysaccharides can be extracted from wood strands and converted to renewably sourced ethanol and acetic acid. Replacing fossil-based gasoline and acetic acid has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, among other possible impacts. At the same time, hemicellulose extraction could improve the environmental profile of OSB panels by reducing the level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted during manufacturing. In this study, the life cycle significance of such GHG, VOC, and other emission reductions was investigated. A process model was developed based on a mix of laboratory and industrial-level mass and energy flow data. Using these data a life cycle assessment (LCA) model was built. Sensitive process parameters were identified and used to develop a target production scenario for the OSB biorefinery. The findings suggest that the OSB biorefinery's deployment could substantially improve human and ecosystem health via reduction of select VOCs compared to conventionally produced OSB, gasoline, and acetic acid. Technological advancements are needed, however, to achieve desirable GHG reductions.In response to the growing concerns of freshwater scarcity, two metrics are considered for assessing the impacts of consumptive water use of a kg of fresh tomato supplied to the Sydney market. The first is the water use efficiency (WUE)-commonly used by agronomists which considers the absolute volumes of water consumed, and second, a recently developed method for water footprints based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which describes the impacts in terms of contributing to freshwater scarcity. The results indicated that although a kg of tomato supplied from within Sydney had the highest water use efficiency (38 L for a kg of tomato as compared to 39-78 L from other regions of Australia), it had the biggest LCA-based water footprint (16 L for a kg of tomato as compared to 1.9-2.2 L from other regions of Australia). WUE as an indicator of agriculture water use is inappropriate to indicate the potential to contribute to local freshwater scarcity; potential stress on local and regional water resources, estimated using LCA-based water footprints, provide useful dimension to assess consumptive water use. Having both metrics will enable to achieve short term benefits at the farm level for saving water (through water use efficiency), while also recognising that longer term changes are required for alleviating freshwater scarcity (through LCA-based water footprints). Scenario modelling indicated relocation of production away from Sydney or modernisation of Sydney tomato greenhouse industry as a priority for reducing freshwater scarcity. The latter may be the best long term option to reduce additional emissions from transport and to take advantage of recycled water sources from Sydney's wastewater. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.After our previous study about methane (CH4) emissions from littoral marshes of the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR), Chinese dams have raised a world-wide concern. Through measurements from the surface of the TGR, a CH4 emission rate was recorded as 0.26 +/- 0.38 mg CH4 m(-2) h(-1) (Mean +/- SD), relatively low compared with those from other hydropower reservoirs. We also recorded CH4 emission rate from the surface of downstream water, which was also relatively low (0.24 +/- 0.37 mg CH4 m(-2) h(-1)). Such result may indicate that TGR is not a great CH4 emitter (not "CH4 menace"). One possible reason for such a low emission rate is that measures to maintain water quality and protect environment and ecosystem decrease the input of organic materials (for methanogenesis), which in turn limits the CH4 production in the sediment of the TGR. We also found that CH4 emission from the flooding drawdown area (0.29 +/- 0.37 mg CH4 m(-2) h(-1)) was higher than other permanently flooded sites (0.23 +/- 0.38 mg CH4 m(-2) h(-1)). Because of annual vegetation re-growth, the drawdown zone is the especially important carbon source for methanogenesis in flooding season. Interestingly, we also observed that mean CH4 emission was significantly higher in winter than in spring and summer. This was partly due to seasonal dynamics of hydrology. In order to estimate the net CH4 emissions caused by the reservoir and reservoir operation, the best approach would be Life Cycle Analysis.Whitman, T., Yanni, S.F. and Whalen, J.K. 2011. Life cycle assessment of corn stover production for cellulosic ethanol in Quebec. Can. J. Soil Sci. 91: 997-1012. The province of Quebec has a target of 5% ethanol (EtOH) content in fuel by 2012, which means the province will require about 400 million L of ethanol per year based on current consumption. Current research is focused on "second generation biofuels" such as cellulosic EtOH, which can be produced from agricultural by-products like corn stover. A life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates the "cradle to gate" impact of corn stover feedstock production for cellulosic EtOH production in three corn-producing regions in Quebec for two impact categories: energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts. The modelled system boundaries include in-field processes: corn stover production, collection, transport, soil organic carbon (SOC) loss, and N2O emissions, as well as background processes: herbicide, fertilizer, seed, and fuel production and transport. Sensitivity analyses vary the percentage of corn stover collected, contrast a multiple-pass with a one-pass stover-grain collection system, and compare mass, economic and system expansion allocation methods. Total energy impact is 931-1442 MJ t(-1) dry stover collected under 15% stover collection, with stover harvest, transport, and field operations contributing most strongly to the total impact. Total GHG emissions from corn stover production and transport of stover to the ethanol facility are 320-488 kg CO(2)e t(-1) dry stover under 15% stover collection, with SOC loss, N2O emissions, and stover harvest contributing the most to the total impact. Sensitivity analysis reveals that the energy and GHG impacts of stover production are strongly influenced by the mass of stover collected, the use of a one-pass system, and the choice of allocation methods. Scaling-up results from the modelled system suggest that 100% of Quebec's EtOH targets could technically be supplied using corn stover feedstock, but this may come at the expense of GHG emissions and soil health.Large quantities of greenhouse gases (GHG) are emitted in producing and acquiring materials for the construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation of highway infrastructure. The objective of this paper is to develop and illustrate a method that can be applied by state agencies to quantify the life-cycle emissions associated with different pavement designs. It applies existing life-cycle assessment (LCA) methods that integrate process-level construction data. The research emphasizes the construction phase and contributes a method that can be used to develop and analyze construction phase life-cycle inventories. It describes on-site collection of material and equipment usage data during construction and rehabilitation operations. Departing from traditional approaches that tend to use LCA as a way to compare alternative pavement materials or designs on the basis of estimated inventories, this paper proposes a shift to a context-sensitive process-based approach that uses actual observed construction data to calculate greenhouse gas emissions using a hybrid LCA. The goal is to support strategies that reduce long-term environmental impacts. A case study involving the rehabilitation of a concrete pavement was used to illustrate the proposed method. The key findings were as follows: total CO2 emissions are 787.19 and 1,383.28 MT per lane mile for Hybrid Models 1 and 2, respectively; the production of the materials, equipment, and fuel used to construct the project account for 90% and 94% of the total CO2 emissions throughout the construction phase for Hybrid Models 1 and 2, respectively; the equipment use and transportation impacts together only represent 6-10% of the total emission through the construction phase. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000349. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.The European iNTeg-Risk project is a large-scale integrated project aimed at improving the management of emerging risks related to new technologies in European industry. The project aims to build a new management paradigm for emerging risks as a set of principles supported by a common language, agreed tools and methods, and key performance indicators, all integrated into a single framework. It is using a number of Emerging Risk Representative Applications (ERRAs), or case studies, to inform the development of the framework; one of which concerns the carbon capture and storage (CCS) process. This paper describes the iNTeg-Risk CCS ERRA. Relevant hazards and properties of carbon dioxide are described and the emerging risks from CCS are discussed. Three new tools have been developed or trialled within the ERRA. These are: the DyPASI methodology for taking account of atypical (not usually identified) events during hazard identification; a methodology for including the time dimension in a risk assessment; and life-cycle approaches for risk management and communication. For CCS, the risk assessment needs to include both short-term potential accidents from capture, transport or injection, as well as very long-term risks from storage. Knowledge gaps which are generic to emerging risks are also identified. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Institution of Chemical Engineers. All rights reserved.Hydrogen is produced via steam methane reforming (SMR) for bitumen upgrading which results in significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Wind energy based hydrogen can reduce the GHG footprint of the bitumen upgrading industry. This paper is aimed at developing a detailed data-intensive techno-economic model for assessment of hydrogen production from wind energy via the electrolysis of water. The proposed wind/hydrogen plant is based on an expansion of an existing wind farm with unit wind turbine size of 1.8 MW and with a dual functionality of hydrogen production and electricity generation. An electrolyser size of 240 kW (50 Nm(3) H(2)/h) and 360 kW (90 Nm(3) H(2)/h) proved to be the optimal sizes for constant and variable flow rate electrolysers, respectively. The electrolyser sizes aforementioned yielded a minimum hydrogen production price at base case conditions of $10.15/kg H(2) and $7.55/kg H(2). The inclusion of a Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) of $0.13/kWh renders the production price of hydrogen equal to SMR i.e. $0.96/kg H(2), with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 24%. The minimum hydrogen delivery cost was $4.96/kg H(2) at base case conditions. The life cycle CO(2) emissions is 6.35 kg CO(2)/kg H(2) including hydrogen delivery to the upgrader via compressed gas trucks. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Algae cofiring scenarios in a 360 MW coal power plant were studied utilizing an ecologically based hybrid life cycle assessment methodology. The impacts on the ecological system were calculated in terms of cumulative mass, energy, industrial exergy, and ecological exergy. The environmental performance metrics, including efficiency, loading, and renewability ratios were also quantified to assess the sustainability of cofiring scenarios from a holistic perspective. The analysis results revealed that cumulative mass and ecological exergy consumption were higher for algae cofiring compared to single coal firing due to high material and energy inputs for the algae cultivation. On the contrary, total energy and industrial exergy utilization were reduced with an increasing share of algae cofiring where algae is dried with solar energy. Additionally, natural gas dried algae cofiring scenarios had a lower renewability ratio in comparison with single coal firing. The results of this study are vital for the policy makers to decide on more environmentally friendly algae cofiring options by considering the potential impacts on ecological system. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A transition from gasoline internal combustion engine vehicles to hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) is likely to emerge as a major component of the strategy to meet future greenhouse gas reduction, air quality, fuel independence, and energy security goals. Advanced infrastructure planning can minimize the cost of hydrogen infrastructure while assuring that energy and environment benefits are achieved. This study presents a comprehensive advanced planning methodology for the deployment of hydrogen infrastructure, and applies the methodology to delineate fully built-out infrastructure strategies, assess the associated energy and environment impacts, facilitate the identification of an optimal infrastructure roll-out strategy, and identify the potential for renewable hydrogen feedstocks. The South Coast Air Basin of California, targeted by automobile manufacturers for the first regional commercial deployment of FCEVs, is the focus for the study. The following insights result from the application of the methodology: Compared to current gasoline stations, only 11%-14% of the number of hydrogen fueling stations can provide comparable accessibility to drivers in a targeted region. To meet reasonable capacity demand for hydrogen fueling, approximately 30% the number of hydrogen stations are required compared to current gasoline stations. Replacing gasoline vehicles with hydrogen FCEVs has the potential to (1) reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by more than 80%, reduce energy requirements by 42%, and virtually eliminate petroleum consumption from the passenger vehicle sector, and (2) significantly reduce urban concentrations of ozone and PM2.5. Existing sources of biomethane in the California South Coast Air Basin can provide up to 30% of the hydrogen fueling demand for a fully built-out hydrogen FCEV scenario. A step-wise transition of judiciously located existing gasoline stations to dispense and accommodate the increasing demand for hydrogen addresses proactively key infrastructure deployment challenges including a viable business model, zoning, permitting, and public acceptance. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent challenges in solid waste management in Europe are intimately tied to the fulfillment of the prescribed targets of recycling and organic waste recovery in response to the requirements of European Directives. Challenges with characterizing and propagating uncertainty, and validating predictions permeate decision making. In order to retrieve the societal ramifications in decision making, this study integrates the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) for alternative screening and ranking to help decision makers in a Portuguese waste management system. To underscore the role of uncertainty in decision making for alternative ranking, a fuzzy interval multi-attribute decision analysis was carried out to aid in environmental policy decisions. While AHP was used to determine the essential weighting factors, screening and ranking was carried out by TOPSIS under uncertainty expressed by using an interval-valued fuzzy (IVF) method. Such an AHP-based IVF-TOPSIS approach driven by a set of weighting factors associated with the selected criteria has been proven useful for final ranking via an iterative procedure. The practical implementation was assessed by a case study in Setubal Peninsula, Portugal for the selection of the best waste management practices under an uncertain environment, which is geared toward the target fulfillment in the future. (C) 2011 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.Photovoltaic (PV) technologies have experienced considerable growth rates of up to 70% in the last years. This has been possible because of low total CO(2) emissions and a positive overall energy balance for PV. Several institutions have developed future scenarios which show an increase in global electricity demand from 17 000 TWh in 2005 to some 60000 TWh by 2050. A significant part of this amount should be supplied by PV installations. Based on selected scenarios material demand is calculated for four different PV technologies: crystalline silicon (c-Si), amorphous silicon (a-Si) in tandem configuration, cadmium tellurium (CdTe) and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS). As these technologies use rare metals it is shown, that particular scenarios are unlikely to be realized because of supply constraints and scarcity phenomena. Critical materials are silver, tellurium and indium. We consider photovoltaics as an appropriate example for the implementation of resource availability considerations into technology development strategies. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study was to identify a suitable type of mega-solar system from an environmental viewpoint. The authors evaluated six types of 20 different PV modules by life cycle analysis (LCA) with actual equipment data and output. The types were single crystal silicon (mu c-Si), amorphous silicon (a-Si)/sc-Si, multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si), a-Si, microcrystalline silicon (mc-Si)/a-Si and CIS. The boundaries of LCA were from the mining stage to that of waste management. Mining, manufacturing and waste management information was taken from an LCA database, while data on transport, construction and amounts of equipment were obtained from actual systems. Since the irradiation figures and electricity output were also actual data, we could avoid the difficulties of making assumptions for values such as the actual output power of thin films. In addition, installation at a single plant provided suitable conditions for comparing PV systems. The results showed an energy requirement ranging from 19 to 48 GJ/kW and an energy payback time of between 1.4 and 3.8 years. CO(2) emissions were from 1.3 to 2.7 t-CO(2)/kW, and CO(2) emission rates ranged from 31 to 67 g-CO(2)/kWh. The multicrystalline (mc-Si) and CIS types showed good results because mc-Si and CIS PV modules have high efficiency and a lower energy requirement. In particular, the CIS module generated more electricity than expected with catalogue efficiency. The single crystal silicon PV module did not produce good results because, considering their energy requirement, installed sc-Si PV modules do not have high efficiency. However, the operation data used covered only 1 year; data from a longer period should be collected to obtain long-term irradiation figures and clarify degradation. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Each year in Italy, millions of tons of fruits and vegetables are harvested, packed and transported to national and foreign retail outlets. Packaging is an essential component of this system, but what is its environmental impact? This study takes into consideration the delivery from the field to the retail outlet of 12 types of fruits and vegetables grown and harvested in Italy and sold in Italy and Europe. The study compares two different packaging and distribution systems: one-way with corrugated boxes and reusable with plastic containers. A number of different scenarios were generated by combining the most diffused packaging sizes with the most important production and selling locations for each type of fruit and vegetable and by considering the specific route required to perform the transportation with each distribution system. The environmental impact of each system in each scenario has then been analysed using the life cycle assessment methodology. Two algorithms and a number of coefficients were derived to simplify data collection and impact analysis for all scenarios. This provides an easy tool to evaluate the potential environmental burden of the two alternative distribution systems in a specific scenario by taking into consideration only a few variables (such as size of packaging and transportation distance). These algorithms and coefficients are presented in the work, along with the process that led to their generation and with considerations about the main critical environmental aspects for both distribution systems. The work aims to suggest possible design solutions that can make each system more sustainable. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The objective of this paper is to reveal to what degree biobased jet fuels (biojet) can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the U.S. aviation sector. A model of the supply and demand chain of biojet involving farmers, biorefineries, airlines, and policymakers is developed by considering factors that drive the decisions of actors (i.e., decision-makers and stakeholders) in the life cycle stages. Two kinds of feedstock are considered: oil-producing feedstock (i.e., camelina and algae) and lignocellulosic biomass (i.e., corn stover, switchgrass, and short rotation woody crops). By factoring in farmer/feedstock producer and biorefinery profitability requirements and risk attitudes, land availability and suitability, as well as a time delay and technological learning factor, a more realistic estimate of the level of biojet supply and emissions reduction can be developed under different oil price assumptions. Factors that drive biojet GHG emissions and unit production costs from each feedstock are identified and quantified. Overall, this study finds that at likely adoption rates biojet alone would not be sufficient to achieve the aviation emissions reduction target. In 2050, under high oil price scenario assumption, GHG emissions can be reduced to a level ranging from 55 to 92%, with a median value of 74%, compared to the 2005 baseline level.Growth in waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is posing increasing problems of waste management, partly resulting from its plastic content. WEEE plastics include a range of polymers, some of which can be sorted and extracted for recycling. However a nonrecyclable fraction remains containing a mixture of polymers contaminated with other materials, and pyrolysis is a potential means of recovering the energy content of this. In preparation for a life cycle assessment of this option, described in part 2 of this paper set, data were collected from trials using experimental pyrolysis equipment representative of a continuous commercial process operated at 800 degrees C. The feedstock contained acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and high impact polystyrene with high levels of additives, and dense polymers including polyvinylchloride, polycarbonate, polyphenylene oxide, and polymethyl methacrylate. On average 39% was converted to gases, 36% to oils, and 25% remained as residue. About 35% of the gas was methane and 42% carbon monoxide, plus other hydrocarbons, oxygen and carbon dioxide. The oils were almost all aromatic, forming a similar mixture to fuel oil. The residue was mainly carbon with inorganic compounds from the plastic additives and most of the chlorine from the feedstock. The results showed that the process produced around 70% of the original plastic weight as potential fuel.Although numerous lifecycle assessments (LCA) of microalgae-based biofuels have suggested net reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, limited experimental data exist on direct emissions from microalgae cultivation systems. For example, 80 nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas that has been detected from microalgae cultivation. However, little quantitative experimental data exist on direct N2O emissions from microalgae cultivation, which has inhibited LCA performed to date. In this study, microalgae species Nannochloropsis sauna was cultivated with diurnal light dark cycling using a nitrate nitrogen source. Gaseous N2O emissions were quantitatively measured using Fourier transform infrared spectrometry. Under a nitrogen headspace (photobioreactor simulation), the reactors exhibited elevated N2O emissions during dark periods, and reduced N2O emissions during light periods. Under air headspace conditions (open pond simulation), N2O emissions were negligible during both light and dark periods. Results show that N2O production was induced by anoxic conditions when nitrate was present, suggesting that N2O was produced by denitrifying bacteria within the culture. The presence of denitrifying bacteria was verified through PCR-based detection of norB genes and antibiotic treatments, the latter of which substantially reduced N2O emissions. Application of these results to LCA and strategies for growth management to reduce N2O emissions are discussed.A methodology based on key performance indicators was developed and applied to the design of sustainable industrial processes. The methodology provides a procedure for the definition of a dynamic set of quantitative key performance indicators suitable to capture the environmental, economic and societal impacts of process options, thus, tracing the sustainability footprint of alternatives. The preliminary design of a production plant for cyclohexanone is presented as the leading case in the discussion. The influence of design choices on environmental impact profiles, economic efficiency and inherent safety performance was pointed out. The application evidenced that the definition of appropriate indicators may have an important added value in supporting design activities, both for the correct assessment of alternative options and for the proactive identification of design improvements. (C) 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 57: 3063-3084, 2011Life cycle assessment (LCA) and manufacturing focused life cycle costing are used to evaluate the potential advantages of composites in automotive applications. The life cycle costs and environmental performance of several suitable lightweight polymer composites are quantified and compared against magnesium and steel for a representative component. The results indicate that weight reduction will not always lead to improved environmental performance. Materials offering high weight savings such as carbon fibres and magnesium have been shown to give limited or negative environmental benefits over their life cycles due to increased environmental burdens associated with their production. Lower performance materials such as sheet moulding compounds were found to perform better from a life cycle perspective despite not being recycled. Lighter weight vehicle components were found to be always more costly; however their use did lead to reduced costs for the consumer through lower fuel consumption. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The conversion of electricity in Thailand is mainly based on fossil fuels that account more than 90% of electricity generated in the country. The use of fossil fuels has large environmental impacts, and being largely imported, also affects the energy security of the country. From the oil shock situation in 1970s, there has been interest in renewable energy in Thailand resulting in the policy goal for the year 2020 to increase the portion of renewable energy to 20% of energy used in the country. Now, hydropower contributes a significant portion of the renewable energy in Thailand, and mini-hydropower (run-of-river type with capacity between 200 to 6000 kW) tends to be most attractive. This is particularly suitable for Thailand, and it is being applied at several locations. Thus, the overall life cycle assessment (LCA), from cradle to gate, of mini-hydropower plants needs to be assessed for quantitative evaluation. There are five mini-hydropower plants in this study. The inputs and outputs of materials and energy used since before construction stage to demolition stage are inventoried and assessed via LCA using the CML 2001 baseline methodology for impact assessment. The impact categories considered in this study are global warming (GWP), abiotic depletion (ADP), acidification (ACP), fresh water aquatic toxicity (FWAP), human toxicology (HTP), photochemical oxidation (POP), and fossil fuel resource depletion (FRP) potential. The functional unit used is 1 MWh electricity produced from mini-hydropower plants in Thailand, and the life span of the power plants is 50 years. For each of the environmental impact categories considered, the impact potentials were evaluated for each of the five mini-hydropower plants; 76.39-151.55 g Sb eq/MWh for ADP, 57.28-116.94 g SO(2) eq/MWh for ACP, 11.01-23.01 kg CO(2) eq/MWh for GWP, 23.01-52.05 kg 1,4-DB eq/MWh for HTP, 4.58-9.08 kg 1,4-DB eq/MWh for FWAP, 2.93-7.47 g C(2)H(4) eq/MWh for POP, and 35.11-79.13 g Sb eq/MWh for FRP. The main contributors to the impacts are the huge amount of materials used for construction of the mini-hydropower plant; sand, gravel, cement, reinforcement steel, pressure pipeline steel, iron, copper, and electric equipment and energy used for construction activities, construction equipment, and transportation. The remoteness of the mini-hydropower plants and the requirement of importing electric equipment technology from overseas are significant contributors to the environmental impacts. The environmental "hot spots" are construction and transportation stage because of remoteness, huge amount of materials and energy use in construction period, and the use of imported equipment. Mini-hydropower plants do not only generate power, but being in hilly regions that are often quite scenic, can serve as public knowledge centers for renewable energy. Thus, the multiple purposes of mini-hydropower power plants should be utilized in the future. The proper management of environmental and social issues throughout the project cycle is essential taking into consideration the hydrological cycle and seasonal variations. Fresh water is a necessary resource for many living things and hence necessary to be managed wisely. These study results would serve as basic information for decision makers, environmentalists, and all stakeholders and provide a general picture of environmental impacts from mini-hydropower plants in Thailand.High-quality wood production is based on both natural forestry populations and dedicated tree plantations, also mentioned as industrial plantations. The establishment of dedicated plantations needs high-quality seedlings, often grown in a nursery, having specific genetic and morphological features. From seed gathering to final selling, the growth of the seedlings needs human interventions and specific inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, substrates, and capital goods (e.g., pots and greenhouses). All these inputs of course can cause not negligible environmental impacts, due to their production, maintenance, and final disposal. For these reasons, the environmental impact due to seedlings production in a nursery deserves deep analysis to assess the overall impact linked to wood supply chain: it is important that wood products are able to meet high environmental standards. This study is focused on 1- and 2-year-old walnut tree (Juglans regia L.) seedlings, aimed to high-quality timber production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was adopted according to ISO 14040 standards. As case study, a nursery located in the South of Italy was studied. Both 1- and 2-year-old seedlings were analyzed from the LCA point of view and then compared, adopting 100 seedlings as functional unit. Three inputs, plastic production, forming, and disposal to landfill, can be identified as the greatest polluters for both 1- and 2-year-old seedlings; for all the impact categories taken into account, their emissions joined always exceeded the 50% of the total amount, reaching values up to 90% (e.g., abiotic depletion, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, and photochemical oxidation). Two-year-old production system needs more inputs than 1-year-old; therefore, its greatest environmental impact was expected, but it is interesting to stress the increasing registered over the second year of growing, which reaches values up to 747% (fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity), most of which is due to polypropylene (mulching cloth, trays, and first of all, the pots). For four out of ten impact categories, polypropylene caused the greatest impact; therefore, interventions in this phase of the production system could be useful to reduce the overall environmental impact. Further investigations regarding the mortality rate for 1- and 2-year-old seedlings (after the plantation) are needed to better compare practical, economic, and environmental aspects.The assessment of biofuels has until now mainly focused on energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. Only little attention has been given to other impacts, although the general importance of water use for the life cycle assessment (LCA) of agricultural products has been recognized in recent publications. The aim of this work is to assess in detail the water consumption along a biofuel production chain taking into account irrigation efficiencies, levels of water scarcity, and type of feedstock, and to integrate those results in a full LCA. Furthermore, we compare the results for biofuels from various feedstocks and regions with conventional petrol. We calculate the water consumption and overall life cycle assessment results in a case study for the production of methyl ester from irrigated and non-irrigated rapeseed. The results are compared with other irrigated and non-irrigated biofuels based on different feedstocks. Water consumption in biofuel production chains based on non-irrigated crops does not vary greatly and is in the same range as for fossil fuel. In contrast, as a consequence of irrigation, agricultural water consumption dominates the overall results of all irrigated crops. Consequently, the level of water scarcity plays a key role for the LCA results. In our case study, the environmental impacts of methyl ester from irrigated rapeseed in a water-scarce region, measured in aggregated Eco-Indicator 99 scores, are almost doubled by water consumption. Variations in irrigation efficiency, however, are of little influence on the results, as the assessment method used here is based on consumptive water, which depends mainly on the evapotranspiration of the crop. The focus on greenhouse gas emissions of the main regulatory schemes neglects other relevant environmental impacts and may provide the wrong incentives. Water consumption may thus become a major concern, offsetting the benefits of biofuel use with respect to climate change.Offshoring of pulpwood production outside Europe is more and more common, which increases transport distances and also changes production technologies, raw material supply and energy production profiles. In this paper, we aim to compare the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of pulp production from Finnish boreal hardwood and from South American eucalyptus. Special emphasis was placed on analysing the contribution of transport to overall climate impacts. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was used as the system modelling tool. The impact assessment was limited to climate change. Finnish and South American industrial data were combined with data from LCA databases in the life cycle inventory (LCI). Based on the results, offshoring of pulp production would decrease the global greenhouse gas emissions of pulp production itself. However, transport to Europe outweighs the benefit even if transported by energy efficient ships. In this case study, transportation accounted for 27% of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of South American pulp shipped to Europe. Outsourcing of biomass production offers opportunities for emission reductions. Such a conclusion may be valid if the distances between biomass production and upgrading processes were relatively short. However, this study reveals that the offshoring of biomass production contributes to a significant growth of transport emissions. The trend of offshoring provides challenges for the implementation of emission trading since the responsibility of countries to transoceanic transport is still unclear.Increasing mobility demands and growing industrial tissue come with a burden for the environment. Inventive solutions are necessary to address this challenge. This paper compares the environmental impact of two alternative container transportation methods over a 25-year time period for a specific trajectory and transport volume in the Antwerp harbor. One is a pipeline concept; the other a road concept to link the Deurganck dock with the right bank in order to transport 2 million containers per year. With a detailed bill of material and the use of the Ecolizer method, a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to calculate the environmental impact in terms of ECOPOINTS on a life cycle perspective. The results remark that in 94% of the cases the pipeline concept has less than half of the environmental impact of the road concept. Furthermore, in both concepts the operational phase is the largest contributor to the total environmental impact. The pipeline concept results suggest a much lower total environmental impact over a road concept if a large enough volume of containers can effectively be transported. Some considerations have to be given to the used electricity mix, the applied impact assessment method and the case specificities.The aim of this paper is to describe life cycle costing (LCC) practices in some Swedish organisations, investigate probable changes and determine whether and how environmental costs (internal and/or external) are considered in current LCC. This paper is based on interviews with LCC practitioners working in authorities and companies in Sweden, mainly the Swedish defence sector, but also other sectors to broaden the study. Those interviewees who use LCC all employ their own particular method, adjusted from case to case. Inclusion of future costs and use of interest rate is also decided from case to case. The inclusion of direct, indirect, contingent and intangible costs differs between organisations. Even when environmental costs are considered in the LCC, not all the internal (environmental) costs are included. All interviewees believe that LCC can be important for decision making and most also believe that environmental costs, like other costs, influence final decisions, but still LCC is not always performed or used. The companies represented are large, and a particular individual cannot have insights into all methods or procedures used in different departments. The results are thus based upon interviews with individuals representing the companies and the responses might have been different if different individuals had been interviewed. However, since the answers between the different time periods and between the organisations point in the same direction, we found no need to make further interviews.Intensive striped catfish production in the Mekong Delta has, in recent years, raised environmental concerns. We conducted a stakeholder-based screening life cycle assessment (LCA) of the intensive farming system to determine the critical environmental impact and their causative processes in producing striped catfish. Additional to the LCA, we assessed water use and flooding hazards in the Mekong Delta. The goal and scope of the LCA were defined in a stakeholder workshop. It was decided there to include all processes up to the exit-gate of the fish farm in the inventory and to focus life cycle impact assessment on global warming, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, and marine (MAET) and freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity (FWET). A survey was used to collect primary inventory data from 28 farms on fish grow-out, and from seven feed mills. Hatching and nursing of striped catfish fingerlings were not included in the assessment due to limited data availability and low estimated impact. Average feed composition for all farms had to be applied due to limitation of budget and data availability. Feed ingredient production, transport and milling dominated most of the impact categories in the LCA except for eutrophication and FWET. Most feed ingredients were produced outside Vietnam, and the impact of transport was important. Because of the screening character of this LCA, generic instead of specific inventory data were used for modelling feed ingredient production. However, the use of generic data is unlikely to have affected the main findings, given the dominance of feed production in all impact categories. Of the feed ingredients, rice bran contributed the most to global warming and acidification, while wheat bran contributed the most to eutrophication. The dominance of both was mainly due to the amounts used. Fishmeal production, transport and energy contributed the most to MAET. The biggest impacts of grow-out farming in Vietnam are on eutrophication and FWET. Water nutrient discharge from grow-out farming was high but negligible compared with the natural nutrient content of the Mekong River. The discharge from all grow-out farms together hardly modified river water quality compared with that before sector expansion. Feed production, i.e. ingredient production and transport and milling, remains the main contributor to most impact categories. It contributes indirectly to eutrophication and FWET through the pond effluents. The environmental impact of Pangasius grow-out farming can be reduced by effectively managing sludge and by using feeds with lower feed conversion ratio and lower content of fishery products in the feed. To consider farm variability, a next LCA of aquaculture should enlist closer collaboration from several feed-milling companies and sample farms using their feeds. Future LCAs should also preferably collect specific instead of generic inventory data for feed ingredient production, and include biodiversity and primary production as impact categories.The aim of this paper is to conduct a life cycle assessment study of ceramic tiles (single-fired glazed stoneware) in order to identify the stages that produce the greatest impact on the environment and the materials and/or processes that make the largest contribution to that impact. The life cycle is considered to be made up of seven stages: (1) mining the clay, (2) atomising the clay, (3) production of frits and glazes, (4) production of ceramic tiles, (5) distribution, (6) installation and usage, and, on ending their useful life (7) treatment as construction and demolition waste. A specific life cycle inventory was developed taking 1 m(2) of ceramic tile over a period of 20 years as the functional unit and using annual data gathered directly from 35 Spanish enterprises involved in the different stages of the life cycle of ceramic tiles. This inventory was then used to obtain environmental indicators (global warming, ozone layer depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation and human toxicity) for each enterprise and each stage of the life cycle under study. Environmental data were submitted to a statistical analysis. This analysis made it possible to model the distribution of environmental behaviour of the life cycle of ceramic tiles considering the different influences from the different companies that were consulted for each stage in the life cycle. The statistical study allowed also obtaining confidence intervals for the mean and standard deviation of the environmental results obtained for each impact category. The stage of the life cycle with the greatest environmental impact for all the impact categories is the manufacture of the tile, followed by the process of atomising the clay and the distribution of the product. There is a direct correlation between these findings and the high level of energy consumption (mainly natural gas and fuel) in these stages. Moreover, the statistical analysis provided 95% level of confidence intervals for the mean and the standard deviation very accurate which shows that using the mean inventory values from all the enterprises that were consulted within the same stage of the life cycle is a suitable method of working. Future users of the inventory may use the probability distributions obtained for calculating percentiles or other measures to assess their data.Raw material availability is a cause of concern for many industrial sectors. When addressing resource consumption in life cycle assessment (LCA), current characterisation models for depletion of abiotic resources provide characterisation factors based on (surplus) energy, exergy, or extraction-reserve ratios. However, all indicators presently available share a shortcoming as they neglect the fact that large amounts of raw materials can be stored in material cycles within the technosphere. These "anthropogenic stocks" represent a significant source and can change the material availability significantly. With new characterisation factors, resource consumption in LCA will be assessed by taking into account anthropogenic material stocks in addition to the lithospheric stocks. With these characterisation factors, the scarcity of resources should be reflected more realistically. This study introduces new characterisation factors-the anthropogenic stock extended abiotic depletion potentials-for the impact category depletion of abiotic resources. The underlying characterisation model is based on the conventional model but substitutes ultimate reserves by resources and adds anthropogenic material stocks to the lithospheric stocks. A fictional life cycle inventory, consisting of 1 kg of several metals, was evaluated using different characterisation factors for depletion of abiotic resources. Within this analysis it is revealed that materials with relatively large anthropogenic stocks, e.g. antimony and mercury, contribute comparatively less to abiotic depletion when using the new characterisation factors. Within a normalized comparison of characterisation factors, the impact of anthropogenic stock results in relative differences between -45% and +65%, indicating that anthropogenic stocks are significant. With the new parameterisation of the model, depletion of abiotic resources can be assessed in a meaningful way, enabling a more realistic material availability analysis within life cycle impact assessment. However, a larger set of characterisation factors and further research are needed to verify the applicability of the concept within LCA practice.Conventional agricultural life cycle assessments (LCAs) measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for biofuel pathways as the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per unit of energy provided by the pathway (i.e. gCO(2)e/MJ). This measure of GHG emissions, as computed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is then used to determine the extent to which the corresponding biofuel pathway complies with the GHG emission standards set forth by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007. Under current legislation, ethanol produced from corn grain is prohibited from qualifying as an advanced biofuel, even if it were to meet the GHG emission standards. This paper proposes a measure of GHG emissions based on a unit of land rather than the energy provided by a biofuel pathway utilizing only one feedstock. A hectare of corn thus provides two feedstocks for the biofuel pathway considered here; corn grain is used for production of ethanol while corn stover is subjected to fast pyrolysis for production of biochar and bio-oil. The bio-oil is then subsequently upgraded to a fuel suitable for use as a drop in fuel in internal combustion engines. A LCA of this pathway is conducted and it is found that such a pathway generates a 52.1% reduction in GHG emissions. This is a reduction that is sufficient to qualify the combined output of a hectare of corn as an advanced biofuel if the current restriction in EISA were removed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The embodied energy associated with water provision comprises an important part of water management, and is important when considering sustainability. In this study, an input-output based hybrid analysis integrated with structural path analysis was used to develop an embodied energy model. The model was applied to a groundwater supply system (Kalamazoo, Michigan) and a surface water supply system (Tampa, Florida). The two systems evaluated have comparable total energy embodiments based on unit water production. However, the onsite energy use of the groundwater supply system is approximately 27% greater than the surface water supply system. This was primarily due to more extensive pumping requirements. On the other hand, the groundwater system uses approximately 31% less indirect energy than the surface water system, mainly because of fewer chemicals used for treatment. The results from this and other studies were also compiled to provide a relative comparison of embodied energy for major water supply options. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mandatory targets for biofuels have led to their rapid global adoption, but ethical problems with their large-scale production are widely reported. Research is underway to find new biofuel technologies that mitigate climate change and can be produced sustainably and economically. Following an 18-month inquiry, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has developed an ethical framework for biofuels policy-making. Based on a number of widely held ethical values, six ethical principles are introduced that should be considered in biofuels policy-making. Many current biofuels policies fail this ethical test. An overarching ethical standard for biofuels is proposed that includes the protection of human rights and the environment, full life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions, trade principles that are fair, access and benefit-sharing schemes to encourage equitable distribution of costs and benefits, and instruments to incentivize the development of promising new approaches. The Council goes on to make recommendations for changes to current policy. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdLife cycle analysis is used to assess the energy requirements and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with extracting UK forest harvesting residues for use as a biomass resource. Three forest harvesting residues were examined (whole tree thinnings, roundwood and brash bales), and each have their own energy and emission profile. The whole forest rotation was examined, including original site establishment, forest road construction, biomass harvesting during thinning and final clear-fell events, chipping and transportation. Generally, higher yielding sites give lower GHG emissions per 'oven dried tonne' (ODT) forest residues, but GHG emissions 'per hectare' are higher as more biomass is extracted. Greater quantities of biomass, however, ultimately mean greater displacement of conventional fuels and therefore greater potential for GHG emission mitigation. Although forest road construction and site establishment are "one off" events they are highly energy-intensive operations associated with high diesel fuel consumption, when placed in context with the full forest rotation, however, their relative contributions to the overall energy requirements and GHG emissions are small. The lower bulk density of wood chips means that transportation energy requirements and GHG emissions are higher compared with roundwood logs and brash bales, suggesting that chipping should occur near the end-user of application. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lactic acid, the most important hydroxycarboxylic acid, is now commercially produced by the fermentation of sugars present in biomass. In addition to its use in the synthesis of biodegradable polymers, lactic acid can be regarded as a feedstock for the green chemistry of the future. Different potentially useful chemicals such as pyruvic acid, acrylic acid, 1,2-propanediol, and lactate ester can be produced from lactic acid via chemical and biotechnological routes. Here, we reviewed the current status of the production of potentially valuable chemicals from lactic acid via biotechnological routes. Although some of the reactions described in this review article are still not applicable at current stage, due to their "greener" properties, biotechnological processes for the production of lactic acid derivatives might replace the chemical routes in the future. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) contains up to 25% plastics. Extraction of higher quality fractions for recycling leaves a mix of plastic types contaminated with other materials, requiring the least environmentally harmful disposal route. Data from trials of pyrolysis, described in part 1 of this paper set, were used in a life cycle assessment of the treatment of WEEE plastics. Various levels of recycling of the sorted fraction were considered, and pyrolysis was compared with incineration (with energy recovery) and landfill for disposal of the remainder. Increased recycling gave reduced environmental impact in almost all categories considered, although inefficient recycling decreased that benefit. Significant differences between pyrolysis, incineration and landfill were seen in climate change impacts, carbon sent to landfill, resources saved, and radiation. There was no overall "best" option. Landfill had the least short-term impact on climate change so could be a temporary means of sequestering carbon. Incineration left almost no carbon to landfill, but produced the most greenhouse gases. Pyrolysis or incineration saved most resources, with the balance depending on the source of electricity replaced by incineration. Pyrolysis emerged as a strong compromise candidate since the gases and oils produced could be used as fuels and so provided significant resource saving without high impact on climate change or landfill space.The amount of waste generated in Europe and, beyond, by our production and consumption patterns is significant. A proper waste management is essential in order to reduce detrimental environmental impacts. For the European Union, the general principles of good waste management are outlined in the Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC). This directive establishes a five-step hierarchy of waste management starting with the preferred option of waste prevention followed by preparing waste for reuse, recycling and other recovery with disposal (such as landfill) as the last resort. The European Commission encourages the use of life cycle thinking (LCT) to complement the waste hierarchy for a more environmentally sound and factual support to decision-making in waste management. This has led to the development of a set of guidelines, tailored to the needs of different target audiences, which help apply LCT and quantitative tools such as life cycle assessment to waste management systems and strategies. The main aim of this paper is to present these guidelines, while also providing a structured overview on existing waste management criteria (e.g. the waste hierarchy), concepts and tools.First generation biofuels are widely available because the production technologies are well developed. However, growth of the raw materials conflicts with food security, so that first-generation biofuels are not so promising. The second generation of biofuels will not compete directly with food but requires several energy intensive processes to produce them, and also increases land-use change, which reduces its environmental and economic feasibility. The production of third-generation biofuels avoids the issues met with first-and second-generation biofuels, namely food-fuel competition, land-use change, etc., and is thus considered a viable alternative energy resource. On all dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social and economical), a life cycle assessment approach is most relevant to avoid issues in problem shifting. The utilization of organic waste and carbon dioxide in flue gases for the production of biomass further increases the sustainability of third generation biofuels, as it minimizes greenhouse gas emissions and disposal problems. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical IndustryThe aim of the study, on which this paper is based, was to provide guidance to consumers to make environmentally responsible choices in their food consumption, to assist food supply chain stakeholders to identify the key areas for environmental improvements, and to provide policy makers with a tool for monitoring the potential impacts on climate change resulting from developments within the food sector. At the macro level, the EIO-LCA model was developed specifically for the Finnish food chain: at the micro level, LCAs were performed on 30 lunch portions. The contribution of the Finnish food chain to climate change was 14%, which comprised 40% CO2 emissions, 25% CH4 emissions, and 34% N2O emissions. The share of impacts from domestic agricultural processes was the highest, at 69%. The impact of a single lunch portion ranged between 0.65 and 3.80 kg of equivalent CO2. According to the EIO-LCA model, the average impact was 7.7 kg CO2 eq/person daily. The consumer phase accounted for between 8 and 47% of the climate change impacts for homemade portions. In ready-to-eat portions industry and retail phases were emphasized, representing 25-38% of climate change impacts. We present an approach to steer the Finnish food sector onto an environmentally sustainable path; practical tools for consumers and farmers will especially need to be developed further. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The mineral processing and metal production sector is endeavouring to identify opportunities to improve the sustainability of its operations and reduce its greenhouse gas footprint, with improved energy efficiency receiving increased attention. However, if truly sustainable outcomes are to be obtained it is essential that a life cycle approach be adopted in evaluating these opportunities. In this paper, life cycle assessment methodology is used to indicate where in the metal production life cycle this focus on energy efficiency should be and to evaluate a number of potential opportunities for reducing the greenhouse gas footprint of primary metal production. Results from life cycle assessments of the main primary metal production processes, together with current and predicted global metal production rates, ore grades and grind or liberation size, have been used in a broad analysis to indicate that endeavours to improve the energy efficiency of primary metal production should focus mainly on the metal extraction stage, particularly for steel and aluminium. Declining ore grades and more complex ore bodies anticipated in the future can be expected to significantly increase the energy required for comminution of the main metal ores and will present opportunities for improving the energy efficiency of primary metal production. However, these opportunities will still be appreciably less than potential energy efficiency improvements in the extraction stage for these metals. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Strategies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions include substitution of fossil fuel with bioenergy from forests(1), where carbon emitted is expected to be recaptured in the growth of new biomass to achieve zero net emissions(2), and forest thinning to reduce wildfire emissions(3). Here, we use forest inventory data to show that fire prevention measures and large-scale bioenergy harvest in US West Coast forests lead to 2-14% (46-405 Tg C) higher emissions compared with current management practices over the next 20 years. We studied 80 forest types in 19 ecoregions, and found that the current carbon sink in 16 of these ecoregions is sufficiently strong that it cannot be matched or exceeded through substitution of fossil fuels by forest bioenergy. If the sink in these ecoregions weakens below its current level by 30-60 g Cm-2 yr(-1) owing to insect infestations, increased fire emissions or reduced primary production, management schemes including bioenergy production may succeed in jointly reducing fire risk and carbon emissions. In the remaining three ecoregions, immediate implementation of fire prevention and biofuel policies may yield net emission savings. Hence, forest policy should consider current forest carbon balance, local forest conditions and ecosystem sustainability in establishing how to decrease emissions.Modern society is demanding that the use of energy associated with construction and operation of structures be investigated during the planning and design phases. The engineering community has been striving to design more sustainable buildings in an attempt to reduce both raw material requirements and energy use during all phases of design. Structural engineers currently have very limited guidance on how to incorporate sustainability concepts in their designs. Innovative methods are needed to address the environmental impact, energy use, and other sustainability issues faced during planning and design of buildings. This paper investigates and discusses five sustainable structural design methodologies: Minimizing Material Use, Minimizing Material Production Energy, Minimizing Embodied Energy, Life-Cycle Analysis/Inventory/Assessment, and Maximizing Structural System Reuse. The goal of this paper is to describe and address issues associated with the proposed design methodologies to determine which, if any, can produce the most sustainable structural designs. It was determined that no single methodology can address all the issues surrounding sustainable structural design. Also, it was determined that combinations of two or more methodologies may increase the ability of design professionals to produce more sustainable designs. (c) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.In order to achieve progress towards sustainable resource management, it is essential to evaluate options for the reuse and recycling of secondary raw materials, in order to provide a robust evidence base for decision makers. This paper presents the research undertaken in the development of a web-based decision-support tool (the used tyres resource efficiency tool) to compare three processing routes for used tyres compared to their existing primary alternatives. Primary data on the energy and material flows for the three routes, and their alternatives were collected and analysed. The methodology used was a streamlined life-cycle assessment (sLCA) approach. Processes included were: car tyre baling against aggregate gabions; car tyre retreading against new car tyres; and car tyre shred used in land-fill engineering against primary aggregates. The outputs of the assessment, and web-based tool, were estimates of raw materials used, carbon dioxide emissions and costs. The paper discusses the benefits of carrying out a streamlined LCA and using the outputs of this analysis to develop a decision-support tool. The strengths and weakness of this approach are discussed and future research priorities identified which could facilitate the use of life cycle approaches by designers and practitioners.Rural electrification and the provision of low cost, low emission technology in developing countries require decision makers to be well informed on the costs, appropriateness and environmental credentials of all available options. While cost and appropriateness are often shaped by observable local considerations, environmental considerations are increasingly influenced by global concerns which are more difficult to identify and convey to all stakeholders. Life cycle assessment is an iterative process used to analyse a product or system. This study iteratively applies life cycle assessment (LCA) to a 3 kW community hydroelectric system located in Huai Kra Thing (HKT) village in rural Thailand. The cradle to grave analysis models the hydropower scheme's construction, operation and end of life phases over a period of twenty years and includes all relevant equipment, materials and transportation. The study results in the enumeration of the environmental credentials of the HKT hydropower system and highlights the need to place environmental performance, and LCA itself, in a proper context. In the broadest sense, LCA results for the HKT hydropower system are found to reflect a common trend reported in hydropower LCA literature, namely that smaller hydropower systems have a greater environmentally impact per kWh - perform less well environmentally - than larger systems. Placed within a rural electrification context, however, the HKT hydropower system yields better environmental and financial outcomes than diesel generator and grid connection alternatives. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Driven by a high increase of large scale biogas plants based on bio waste, agricultural by-products and waste from food industry, there is a rapid structural development of the agricultural holdings in Germany. Particularly in regions with intensive livestock husbandry, this leads to an overprovision of nutrients. New technologies have been introduced during the last years to treat biogas digestate for optimal transport and application conditions. An environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out in order to compare the environmental impacts and the energy efficiency of seven treatment options of biogas digestate. The treatment options include one conventional digestate management option (storage and application of untreated manure on agricultural land), one stabilization process (composting), three mechanical drying options (belt dryer, drum dryer and solar dryer), one option using thermal vaporization (concentration) and finally one physical-chemical treatment (combination of separation, ultra-filtration, reverse osmosis and ionic exchanger). Primary energy demand (PED), global warming potential (GWP) and acidification potential (AP) were analysed and presented per kg of digestate on the input side of the system as functional unit (fu). Based on the default parameter setting, four scenarios have been defined to analyse the influence of different feedstock, different kinds of energy supply, different emission reductions techniques and different logistic chains on the LCA results. In the overall comparison, solar drying, composting and physical-chemical treatment were identified to be the most suitable options to reduce the use of resources and environmental impacts compared to the conventional digestate management. Belt drying turned out to be the handling process with the highest PED demand, GWP and AP among the compared options. Total PED varies from -0.09 MJ/fu (i.e. savings) in the composting option up to 1.3 MJ/fu in the belt drying option. The GWP was in a range between 0.06 CO2 eq./fu for solar drying to 0.1 kg CO2 eq./fu for belt drying. The amount of AP ranged from 2.7 kg SO2 g eq./fu in composting to 7.1 g SO2 eq./fu in belt drying. The results indicate that the environmental impact depends largely on nitrogen related emissions from digestate treatment, storage and field application. Another important aspect is the amount and kind of fuel used for heat supply (biogas, natural gas) and the procedure chosen for the allocation among heat and power. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainability is on the international agenda, and is a driver for industry in international competition. Sustainability encompasses the three pillars: environment, society and economy. To prevent shifting of burden, the whole life cycle needs to be taken into account. For the environmental dimension of sustainability, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been practiced for a while and is a standardized method. A life cycle approach for the social and economic pillars of sustainability needs to be further developed. This paper investigates the application of life cycle costing (LCC) as part of a wider sustainability assessment where also social life cycle assessment (SLCA) and LCA are combined. LCA-type LCC is applied on a case study of remanufactured alternators. Remanufacturing of automobile parts is a fast growing important business with large potential for cost and resource savings. Three design alternatives for the alternator and three locations for the remanufacturing plant are evaluated. The remanufacturer perspective and the user perspective are investigated. The results for the LCA-type LCC show that the largest cost for the remanufacturer is the new parts replacing old warn parts. However, the user cost, and therein especially, cost for fuel used for the alternator's power production dominates and should be the focus for further improvement. In conducting the case study, it was revealed that the connection between the LCA-type LCC results and the economic dimension of sustainability needs to be further investigated and defined. For this purpose, areas of protection for life cycle sustainability assessment and LCA-type LCC in particular need further development.This study discusses the potential for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to be utilized for the environmental assessment of tourism accommodation facilities, and their contribution to global carbon footprint. To demonstrate the viability of employing LCA in the hotel sector, its simplified derivative, Life Cycle Energy Analysis (LCEA), is applied to two tourism accommodation facilities in Poole, Dorset (UK) to quantify their CO(2) emissions. The results indicate that the reviewed hotels are less energy and carbon-intense than the tourism accommodation establishments reported in the literature. This may indirectly imply the continuous progress of hotel's energy efficiency over time. The implications of the current energy use practices in the reviewed hotels are discussed and suggestions are made on how to further improve the energy performance and therefore cut the carbon footprint. Recommendations for hotel management and policy-making are developed to reduce the energy and carbon intensity of the hotel industry. A method for energy and carbon footprint analysis of outsourced laundries and breakfast services is also proposed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An extended Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed for evaluating the impacts of a woody biomass supply chain for heating plants in the alpine region. Three main aspects of sustainability are assessed: greenhouse gas emissions, represented by global warming potential (GWP) impact category, costs and direct employment potential. We investigate a whole tree system (innovative logging system) where the harvest of logging residues is integrated into the harvest of conventional wood products. The case study is performed in Valle di Fiemme in Trentino region (North Italy) and includes theoretical and practical elements. The system boundary is the alpine forest fuel system, from logging operations at the forest stand to combustion of woody biofuels at the heating plant. The functional unit is 1 m(3) solid over bark of woody biomass, delivered to the district heating plant in Cavalese (Trento). The relative sustainability of traditional and innovative systems is compared and energy use is estimated. Results show that the overall GWP and costs are about 13 kg CO(2equivalent) and 42 euro per functional unit respectively for the innovative system. Along the product supply chain, chipping contributes the greatest share of GWP and energy use, while extraction by yarder has the highest financial costs. The GWP is reduced by 2.3 ton CO(2equivalent) when bioenergy substitutes fuel oil and 1.7 ton CO(2equivalent) when it substitutes natural gas. The sensitivity analysis illustrates that variations in fuel consumption and hourly rates of costs have a great influence on chipping operation and extraction by cable yarder concerning GWP and financial analysis, respectively. This is confirmed by sensitivity analysis. Better technologies, the use of biofuels along the product supply chain and more efficient systems might reduce these impacts. Replacing the traditional system with the innovative one reduces emissions and costs. A low energy input ratio is required for harvesting logging residues. The direct employment potential is a conflicting aspect and needs further investigations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In environmental systems analysis tools such as cost-benefit analysis (CBA), life-cycle assessment (LCA) and Environmental Management Systems (EMS), weighting is often used to aggregate results and compare different alternatives. There are several weighting sets available, but so far there is no set that consistently use monetary values based on actual or hypothetical market valuation of environmental degradation and depletion. In this paper, we develop a weighting set where the values are based on willingness-to-pay estimates for environmental quality, and market values for resource depletion. The weighting set is applied to three case studies and the outcome is compared with the outcomes from three other weighting sets. Ecotax02, Ecoindicator99 and EPS2000. We find that the different sets give different results in many cases. The reason for this is partly that they are based on different values and thus should give different results. However, the differences can also be explained by data gaps and different methodological choices. If weighting sets are used, it is also important to use several to reduce the risk of overlooking important impacts due to data gaps. It is also interesting to note that though Ecovalue08 and Ecotax02 give different absolute values, the results are very similar in relative terms. Thus the political and the individual willingness-to-pay estimates yield a similar ranking of the impacts. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To meet the increasing need for practical life-cycle thinking in manufacturing, this paper proposes a method that includes the life-cycle perspective in manufacturing decision making. This method combines discrete-event simulation (DES) commonly used for the conceptual evaluation of manufacturing systems with life-cycle assessment (LCA). This combination captures the dynamic interrelationships between manufacturing processes in order to analyse systemic responses to configuration changes, something static LCA modelling cannot do. The method evolved when a bearing production line at SKF was being examined to relate manufacturing decision making to environmental consequences. This was done using DES to investigate how parameters normally used to optimize traditional manufacturing system performance influence energy use and material losses in manufacturing systems. The environmental consequences of this material loss and energy use are further calculated using LCA methodology. Results indicate that while the combination of the two methods increases the data collection workload, it uncovers previously hidden environmental consequences of manufacturing decision making and introduces a way to assess an industrial actor's manufacturing system using relevant LCA scenarios. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Modern industrial environmental management encompasses life-cycle thinking. This entails considering not only the emissions and resource use of the company's production processes, but also the environmental consequences of all processes related to a product's life cycle. However, no single actor can influence the whole life cycle of a product. To be effective, analysis methods intended to support improvement actions should therefore also consider the decision makers' power to influence. Regarding the life cycle of a product, there are at least as many perspectives on life-cycle thinking as there are actors. This paper presents an approach with which manufacturing decision makers can sharpen the focus in life-cycle assessment (LCA) from a conventional 'products or services' emphasis to a company's manufacturing processes. The method has been developed by combining knowledge gained from earlier LCA studies with new empirical findings from an LCA study of an SKF manufacturing line. We demonstrate how system boundaries and functional units in an LCA can be defined when adding the perspective of a manufacturing decision maker to the product life-cycle perspective. Such analysis helps manufacturing decision makers identify improvement potentials in their spheres of influence, by focusing on the environmental consequences of energy and material losses in manufacturing rather than merely accounting for the contributions of individual stages of the life cycle to the overall environmental impact. The method identifies and directly relates the environmental consequences of emissions or raw material inputs in the product life cycle to manufacturing processes. In doing so, the holistic systems perspective in LCA is somewhat diminished in favor of the relevance of results to manufacturing decision makers. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was used to compare the environmental impacts in the life cycle of two milk packaging systems, PA-PE-Al laminate a laminated foil made from paper, polyethylene and aluminum foil and polyethylene. The data for the mass, energy fluxes and environmental emissions were obtained from published literature and from site investigations, for the two systems being analyzed for environmental impacts. The application of LCA using Eco-Indicator 99 has made the comparison of the environmental impacts of the two milk packages possible. The results of this LCA study are discussed and the results reveal that the composite packaging has a slightly higher environmental impact than the plastic one. In addition, the environmental impact of raw material extraction is the highest in all of the life cycle stages except for disposal. The environmental impact of composite packaging mainly comes from the fossil fuels, land use and respiratory inorganics categories, while the plastic packaging mainly comes from the fossil fuels category. However, the composite packaging has a greater environmental impact because it has not been well recycled and reused. This environmental impact could be decreased by developing the technology to separate out polyethylene and aluminum from the packaging. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Carbon footprint (CFP) of sugar produced from sugarcane in eastern Thailand was estimated from greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, CH4, and N2O) during the sugarcane cultivation and milling process. The use of fossil fuels, chemical and organic fertilizer and sugarcane biomass data during cultivation were collected from field surveys, questionnaires and interviews. Sugar mill emissions, fossil fuel utilization and greenhouse gas emission from wastewater treatments were included. The results show that sugar production has a carbon footprint of 0.55 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) sugar. This carbon footprint was a sum of 0.49 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) sugar from sugarcane cultivation and 0.06 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) sugar from the milling process. For the cultivation part, most of the GHGs emissions were from fertilizer, fossil fuel use and biomass burning. The CFP in eastern Thailand is sensitive to the type of data selected for calculation and of variations of farm inputs during sugarcane cultivation. There was no significant difference of CFP among farm sizes, although small farms tended to give a relatively higher CFP than that of medium and large farms. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reviews current biosolids management options, and identifies incineration as a promising technology. Incineration is attractive both for volume reduction and energy recovery. Reported emissions from the incineration of biosolids were compared to various regulations to identify the challenges and future direction of biosolids incineration research. Most of the gaseous and metal emissions were lower than existing regulations, or could be met by existing technologies. This paper also presents the results of an experimental study to investigate the potential use of biosolids for co-incineration with wood pellets in a conventional wood pellet stove. Pilot scale combustion tests revealed that co-incineration of 10% biosolids with 90% premium grade wood pellets resulted in successful combustion without any significant degradation of efficiency and emissions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An environmentally extended input output (EE-IO) analysis environmental impacts of material flows caused by the Finnish economy was carried out in order to improve data on production and consumption in Finland. The study resulted in the ENVIMAT model, which can be used to analyze the relationship between material flows, environmental impacts and the economy. The model is based on monetary and physical input output tables and an environmental life-cycle impact assessment. This article summarizes the main methodological aspects and findings regarding the material flows and climate impacts caused by the Finnish economy in 2002 and 2005. The Finnish model has relatively detailed input data with 150 industries and 918 products and the data on imports was assessed according to a mixed approach with the help of life-cycle inventory data. The results of the model showed that the Finnish economy uses imported material resources as much as domestic resources. Life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by imports were equivalent to 70-80% of domestic emissions. The GHG emissions embodied in imports (emissions abroad) and exports (emissions within Finland) were of the same magnitude. The analysis showed that the service sector accounted for 44% of GHG emissions caused by the domestic final use of products. Analysis of the results also showed that the indicator of total material requirement (TMR) should not be used for environmental impact comparisons of products and services. In the future, the aim is to use the ENVIMAT model for assessing temporal changes in the economy; for monitoring sustainable development: for planning climate change mitigation; and for identifying important factors in the economy and assessing their impacts. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy from waste (EfW) has been identified as a source of 'green electricity' and has been used as a way of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Nevertheless, selecting an EfW strategy for municipal solid waste management is a challenging task not least because of the uncertainty involved in quantifying the potential economic and environmental impacts. This paper analyses five alternatives for managing the municipal solid waste of Sydney for their 'green electricity' and GHG savings potential under conditions of uncertainty. The impact of paper recycling on the ranking of alternatives was investigated, too. Our analysis shows that maximizing EfW generation potential does not result in greater GHG saving. A combination of food and green waste composting, recycling of metals, paper, glass and plastics while only landfilling waste fractions that are not recyclable may result in the best GHG savings. Furthermore, recycling of paper does not always achieve the best outcome; anaerobic digestion or composting may yield better results from an environmental and energy generation perspective. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Spray incineration and supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) processes have been used for detoxifying waste organic fluids in the University of Tokyo. In this study, we aim to elucidate the environmental aspects of these waste treatment processes by life cycle assessment (LCA). Through the investigation of actual plants, the inventory data and other characteristics of actual plants were collected and analyzed. To confirm the potential of SCWO, three modification types of the process and operation were considered and assessed on the basis of estimated inventory data. The results demonstrate that spray incineration has less environmental impact than SCWO in all scenarios. However. SCWO has various advantages for installation as a treatment process in universities such as negligible risk of creating dioxins and particulate matter. Proper choice of the treatment method for organic waste fluid requires a comprehensive analysis of risks. Spray incineration poses the risk of providing dioxins and particulate matter, while SCWO has such risk at negligible level. This means that waste including concerned materials related to such emission should be treated by SCWO. Using the right technologies for the right tasks in the detoxification of hazardous materials should be implemented for sustainable universities. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study deals with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of three different catalytic processes for biodiesel production. In the LCA study, a "cradle to gate" approach was adopted to estimate the environmental impact of different catalytic processes such as immobilized, soluble biocatalyst and alkali catalyst. The results revealed that, biodiesel production using immobilized biocatalyst has less environmental impact compared to alkali and soluble biocatalyst. The environmental impact of the immobilized biocatalyst depends on the reusability factor. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nitrogen (N) fertilization can increase bioenergy crop production; however, fertilizer production and application can contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, potentially undermining the GHG benefits of bioenergy crops. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of N fertilization on GHG emissions and biomass production of switchgrass bioenergy crop, in northern Michigan. Nitrogen fertilization treatments included 0 kg ha(-1) (control), 56 kg ha(-1) (low) and 112 kg ha(-1) (high) of N applied as urea. Soil fluxes of CO2, N2O and CH4 were measured every two weeks using static chambers. Indirect GHG emissions associated with field activities, manufacturing and transport of fertilizer and pesticides were derived from the literature. Switchgrass aboveground biomass yield was evaluated at the end of the growing season. Nitrogen fertilization contributed little to soil GHG emissions; relative to the control, there were additional global warming potential of 0.7 Mg ha(-1) y(-1) and 1.5 Mg ha(-1) y(-1) as CO2 equivalents (CO(2)eq), calculated using the IPCC values, in the low and high N fertilization treatments, respectively. However, N fertilization greatly stimulated CO2 uptake by switchgrass, resulting in 1.5- and 2.5-fold increases in biomass yield in the low and high N fertilization treatments, respectively. Nitrogen amendments improved the net GHG benefits by 2.6 Mg ha(-1) y(-1) and 9.4 Mg ha(-1) y(-1) as CO(2)eq relative to the control. Results suggest that N fertilization of switchgrass in this region could reduce (15-50%) the land base needed for bioenergy production and decrease pressure on land for food and forage crop production. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A water quality modeling study was conducted to determine and compare nitrogen loss from water flow to surface water and ground water from agricultural systems growing switchgrass and cotton in the southeastern USA. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to replicate field conditions observed at switchgrass research plots at Pee Dee Research and Educational Center at Florence, South Carolina. The plot scale modeling suggested that in the early years of growth there is significant nitrogen loss from switchgrass to streamflow and groundwater but the loss is significantly less as the switchgrass matures. During the second year of growth the modeled nitrogen loss from switchgrass was approximately 50% that of cotton. The long term nitrogen loss over the lifetime of switchgrass was approximately 10% that of cotton. The results also indicate that the use of computational models to quantify nitrogen fluxes in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of agricultural systems growing switchgrass gives a more accurate representation of the system than using constant emission factors. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of Finnish imports were modeled using alternative emission datasets. The first dataset was based on domestic technology assumptions from the Finnish environmentally extended input-output (EE-IO) model. In the second dataset, emissions of the largest volumes of imported goods were substituted for EIOLCA (USA) data and in the third option for data from Ecoinvent and the Danish LCA Food Database. Comparative results show that the environmental impacts of imports based on domestic emission intensities are mostly lower than the alternative approaches. Considering the high level of Finnish environmental protection we concluded that the impacts of imports are underestimated using domestic emission intensities. Additionally, we concluded that hybrid IO modeling will increase the accuracy of IO modeling by using process-based data for the most relevant material flows until a multi-regional IO model for Finland has been developed. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) impact category "global warming" compares emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases (LLGHGs) using Global Warming Potential (GWP) with a 100-year time-horizon as specified in the Kyoto Protocol. Two weaknesses of this approach are (1) the exclusion of short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs) and biophysical factors despite their established importance, and (2) the use of a particular emission metric (GWP) with a choice of specific time-horizons (20, 100, and 500 years). The GWP and the three time-horizons were based on an illustrative example with value judgments and vague interpretations. Here we illustrate, using LCA data of the transportation sector, the importance of SLCFs relative to LLGHGs, different emission metrics, and different treatments of time. We find that both the inclusion of SLCFs and the choice of emission metric can alter results and thereby change mitigation priorities. The explicit inclusion of time, both for emissions and impacts, can remove value-laden assumptions and provide additional information for impact assessments. We believe that our results show that a debate is needed in the LCA community on the impact category "global warming" covering which emissions to include, the emission metric(s) to use, and the treatment of time.Gas to liquids (GTL) products have the potential to replace petroleum-derived products, but the efficacy with which any sustainability goals can be achieved is dependent on the lifecycle impacts of the GTL pathway. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an internationally established tool (with GHG emissions as a subset) to estimate these impacts. Although the International Standard Organization's ISO 14040 standard advocates the system boundary expansion method (also known as the "displacement method" or the "substitution method") for life-cycle analyses, application of this method for the GTL pathway has been limited until now because of the difficulty in quantifying potential products to be displaced by GTL coproducts. In this paper, we use LCA methodology to establish the most comprehensive GHG emissions evaluation to date of the GTL pathway. The influence of coproduct credit methods on the GTL GHG emissions results using substitution methodology is estimated to afford the Well-to-Wheels (WTW) greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of GTL Diesel. These results are compared to results using energy-based allocation methods of reference GTL diesel and petroleum-diesel pathways. When substitution methodology is used, the resulting WTW GHG emissions of the GTL pathway are lower than petroleum diesel references. In terms of net GHGs, an interesting way to further reduce GHG emissions is to blend GTL diesel in refineries with heavy crudes that require severe hydrotreating, such as Venezuelan heavy crude oil or bitumen derived from Canadian oil sands and in jurisdictions with tight aromatic specifications for diesel, such as California. These results highlight the limitation of using the energy allocation approach for situations where coproduct GHG emissions reductions are downstream from the production phase.The implementation of energy crops in Chile is an option that requires prior environmental studies within the framework of a sustainable national policy of energy security. The aim of this study is to assess the environmental performance of rapeseed crop (Brassica napus L.) in Chile in view of its potential use for the production of biodiesel. Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the study quantifies the energy demand and the environmental impacts associated with the main tillage systems of Chilean rapeseed production on a national level: conventional tillage and zero tillage, and with four mineral fertilisation trials on a local level (combination of N, P and K rates). In the inventory, the agricultural inputs are obtained from national sources; international databases processes are partially adapted to Chilean conditions. For the impact assessment, the CML 2 baseline 2001 method is applied. The results indicate that the two tillage systems present similar energy demand and environmental impacts profile, with the exception of the categories photochemical ozone creation and freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity. In both systems, the use of mineral fertilisers has the greatest energy demand, with a contribution of over 75%, and the greatest environmental impacts. In contrast, fungicides and seeds have a minimum contribution, all together, less than 3%. The results of LCA of fertilisation trials show that higher fertilisation rates require an increase in seed yield to compensate additional impacts and to be environmentally favourable. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology that quantifies potential environmental impacts for comparative purposes in a decision-making context. While potential environmental impacts from pollutant emissions into water are characterized in LCA, impacts from water unavailability are not yet fully quantified. Water use can make the resource unavailable to other users by displacement or quality degradation. A reduction in water availability to human users can potentially affect human health. If financial resources are available, there can be adaptations that may, in turn, shift the environmental burdens to other life cycle stages and impact categories. This paper proposes a model to evaluate these potential impacts in an LCA context. It considers the water that is withdrawn and released, its quality and scarcity in order to evaluate the loss of functionality associated with water uses. Regionalized results are presented for impacts on human health for two modeling approaches regarding affected users, including or not domestic uses, and expressed in disability-adjusted life years (DALY). A consumption and quality based scarcity indicator is also proposed as a midpoint. An illustrative example is presented for the production of corrugated board with different effluents, demonstrating the importance of considering quality, process effluents and the difference between the modeling approaches.The total energy and CO2 emissions of a mineral carbonation process are investigated using a life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA investigation takes into account the energy and greenhouse gas emissions from mineral mining operations and shipment from Australia, the recovery of CO2 based on amine scrubbing technology (if required), and two possible options for mineral carbonation in Singapore where the final carbonate products have potential use in the construction industry and as land reclamation material. Four scenarios were investigated the first two with CO2 recovery via amine scrubbing prior to mineralization and the last two with direct mineralization of CO2 from the NGCC flue gas. The most promising options turned out to be scenarios 3 and 4 these cases result in 215 and 154 kg of CO2 avoided per 1 MWh, respectively. Scenario 1 results in 90 kg of CO2 avoided per 1 MWh. The life cycle costing results are 70.6-80.8 USD/tonne CO2 avoided for scenario 3 and 119.9-159.1 USD/tonne CO2 avoided for scenario 4.The aim of comparative assessment of future road transport technologies is to find the cheapest motor vehicles in terms of private and external Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission costs under various international climate change mitigation scenarios in 2020 and 2050. The comparative assessment of the main road transport technologies ranging from conventional vehicles to hybrid electric vehicles was performed. The main indicators for comparative future motor vehicles assessment are: private costs and life cycle external costs of GHG emissions. The obtained ranking of road transport technologies allows to identify the most perspective future motor vehicles taking into account international climate change mitigation constraints and to promote these road technologies by policy tools. The cheapest road transport technologies in 2020 and 2050 are: the main results presented in this paper were obtained during EU financed Framework 7 project "PLANETS" dealing with probabilistic long-term assessment of new energy technology scenarios. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life-cycle analysis (LCA) of photovoltaic (PV) systems is an important tool to quantify the potential environmental advantage of using solar technologies versus more traditional technologies, especially the ones relying on non-renewable fossil fuel sources. This work performs a life-cycle assessment on a 200 kW roof top photovoltaic (PV) system with poly-crystalline silicon modules and evaluates the net energy pay-back and greenhouse gas emission rates. The performed life-cycle assessment "upstream" and "downstream" processes are considered, such as raw materials production, fabrication of system components, transportation and installation. The energy pay-back time ratio is determined for the installed technology and two other technologies of PV modules (monocrystalline and thin-film). The analysed PV system, located in Pineda de Mar (Catalonia, Spain), has an energy pay-back time ratio of 4.36 years. Furthermore, a sensibility analysis on solar radiation has been performed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns is a key challenge for the future, in order to use the Earth resources efficiently, to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, and to decouple the economic growth from the environmental degradation. New or customized methods have to be applied to support decisions makers in the choice of environmental-friendly products, and to select policy priorities and sustainable strategies. A modified input-output model can aid to analyse the relationships among economic growth, energy consumptions and pollutants, in order to assess the energy and environmental impacts due to the actual production and consumption patterns. The following paper introduces an energy and environmental extended input-output model and combines it with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The authors apply this model to the Italian context in order to assess the energy and environmental impacts related to the consumptions of the Italian households in the period 1999-2006 and to identify the economic sectors involving the highest impacts. The paper represents one of the first Italian studies aimed at identifying those national economic sectors and final goods and services to be assumed prior in the definition of sustainable production and consumption strategies. Results show that about the 70% of the total energy, needed to meet the household final demand of products, is consumed by the productive sectors. In particular tertiary, "electricity, gas and vapour", road transports and "food and beverage" sectors are the roost contributors, accounting for about 75%. Further, the environmental impact analysis associated to Italian households consumptions is carried out, starting from three different data sources The results point out that, to include emissions arising both from energy and non-energy sources, in the assessment of environmental impacts is of paramount importance to obtain reliable simulations of the link between households consumptions and energy and environmental performances. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass is expected to play an increasingly significant role in the 'greening' of energy supply. Nevertheless, concerns are rising about the sustainability of large-scale energy crop production. Impacts must be assessed carefully before deciding whether and how this industry should be developed, and what technologies, policies and investment strategies should be pursued. There is need for a comprehensive and reliable sustainability assessment tool to evaluate the environmental, social and economic performance of biomass energy production. This paper paves the way for such a tool by analysing and comparing the performance and applicability of a selection of existing tools that are potentially useful for sustainability assessment of bioenergy systems. The selected tools are: Criteria And Indicators (C&I), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), Exergy Analysis (EA) and System Perturbation Analysis (SPA). To evaluate the tools, a framework was constructed that consists of four evaluation levels: sustainability issues, tool attributes, model structure, area of application. The tools were then evaluated using literature data and with the help of a Delphi panel of experts. Finally, a statistical analysis was performed on the resulting data matrix to detect significant differences between tools. It becomes clear that none of the selected tools is able to perform a comprehensive sustainability assessment of bioenergy systems. Every tool has its particular advantages and disadvantages, which means that trade-offs are inevitable and a balance must be found between scientific accuracy and pragmatic decision making. A good definition of the assessment objective is therefore crucial. It seems an interesting option to create a toolbox that combines procedural parts of C&I and EIA, supplemented with calculation algorithms of LCA and CBA for respectively environmental and economic sustainability indicators. Nevertheless, this would require a more comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to align the different tool characteristics and focuses. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We investigate the potential environmental impacts of a large-scale adoption of wind power to meet up to 22% of the world's growing electricity demand. The analysis builds on life cycle assessments of generic onshore and offshore wind farms, meant to represent average conditions for global deployment of wind power. We scale unit-based findings to estimate aggregated emissions of building, operating and decommissioning wind farms toward 2050, taking into account changes in the electricity mix in manufacturing. The energy scenarios investigated are the International Energy Agency's BLUE scenarios. We estimate 1.7-2.6 Gt CO2-eq climate change, 2.1-3.2 Mt N-eq marine eutrophication, 9.2-14 Mt NMVOC photochemical oxidant formation, and 9.5-15 Mt SO2-eq terrestrial acidification impact category indicators due to global wind power in 2007-50. Assuming lifetimes 5 yr longer than reference, the total climate change indicator values are reduced by 8%. In the BLUE Map scenario, construction of new capacity contributes 64%, and repowering of existing capacity 38%, to total cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. The total emissions of wind electricity range between 4% and 14% of the direct emissions of the replaced fossil-fueled power plants. For all impact categories, the indirect emissions of displaced fossil power are larger than the total emissions caused by wind power.This article presents a new approach for incorporating process-integration tools into life cycle analysis (LCA) for biofuel production. Process synthesis techniques using mass-and energy-integration tools are employed to generate various scenarios for reducing mass and energy consumption in the process. The global implications of these changes and the associated trade-offs are assessed using the LCA tool: GREET. The developed approach enables the consideration of several levels of process integration while tracking the process economics and the reduction of the net greenhouse gas emissions. Several cases of biofuels with different processing technologies have been considered in this study, and the results show that when the process-integration tools are effectively utilized and combined with LCA, better insights are obtained and the net greenhouse gas emissions decrease drastically for different biofuels.Estimated life cycle nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions of current biofuel production are strongly dependent on cropping system, climate, and the choice of the reference land-use system. The calculation of climate footprints of biofuels due to N2O emissions further depends on the time horizon of the impacts considered and the allocation of the emissions to co-products. Estimated life cycle nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions of current biofuels can contribute substantially to the effect of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of biofuels (up to 80%). The estimated percentage of the contribution of N2O emissions to the overall effect of biofuel life cycle greenhouse gas emissions may, however, vary by about two orders of magnitude. Life cycle emissions of N2O can be reduced by improving nitrogen use efficiency in the cultivation of biofuel crops.This article presents briefly the work Pilot study to reduce environmental impact: evaluation and assessment of a sustainable refurbishment of an existing residential building in Playa de Palma carried out by the Consortium of Palma Beach. It will be explained by how the environmental impacts of the building can be reduced by 50% or more as a result of future refurbishment and subsequent management, referring to both its current situation and refurbishment standards in residential buildings. It also includes an approximated evaluation of the CO(2) emission reduction achieved in the building life cycle and the projected costs for the various actions of the refurbishment model proposed by the Consortium, to be carried out in other renovation operations in Palma Beach.Currently available life cycle assessment (LCA) tools provide only a rough estimation of the environmental impact of different manufacturing operations (e.g. energy consumption). To address this limitation, a web-based and application programming interface (API) based process analysis software tools were developed to estimate the energy consumption of a computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tool operation and to evaluate its environmental impact as a first step towards sustainable manufacturing analysis. Acceleration/deceleration of machine tool axes and the direction of axes movement were considered to estimate the total energy demand and processing time of the machine tool operation. Several tool path generation schemes were tested to analyze the energy consumption and resulting green house gas emission of CNC machine tool operation. It showed that tool path generation schemes affect the amount of energy and the processing time required to machine the same part. and location of the machining resulted in different amount and characteristics of green house gas emission. (C) 2011 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy and exergy utilization and carbon dioxide emission during production of soybean, sunflower, and olive oils are assessed. In all cases, agriculture is the most energy and exergy intensive process and emits most of the carbon dioxide, and diesel is the dominant energy and exergy source. The cumulative degree of perfection (CDP) for soybean and olive oil is 0.92 and 0.98, respectively, whereas the CDP for the sunflower oil is 2.36. Decreasing diesel consumption with good agricultural practices and substituting with biodiesel from renewable resources would decrease the cumulative exergy consumption, as a result, CDP of olive and soybean oil rises to 1.6 and sunflower oil to 2.9. Major contribution to the carbon dioxide emission is due to the excessive use of fertilizers. The most energy intensive process is olive oil production. However, since the fertilizer consumption here is limited, total carbon dioxide emission is less than those of the other two processes are. On the other hand, excessive fertilizer consumption during the soybean agriculture results in a rather large CO2 emission. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The overall resource requirements for the production of germanium wafers for III-V multi-junction solar cells applied in concentrator photovoltaics have been assessed based on up to date process information. By employing the cumulative energy demand (CED) method and the cumulative exergy extraction from the natural environment (CEENE) method the following resources have been included in the assessment: fossil resources, nuclear resources, renewable resources, land resources, atmospheric resources, metal resources, mineral resources and water resources. The CED has been determined as 216 MJ and the CEENE has been determined as 258 MJ(ex). In addition partial energy and exergy payback times have been calculated for the base case, which entails the installation of the high concentration photovoltaics (HCPVs) in the Southwestern USA, resulting in payback times of around 4 days for the germanium wafer production. Due to applying concentration technology the germanium wafer accounts for only 3% of the overall resource consumption of an HCPV system. A scenario analysis on the electricity input to the wafer production and on the country of installation of the HCPV has been performed, showing the importance of these factors on the cumulative resource consumption of the wafer production and the partial payback times. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of this work is to assess the environmental impacts of the drilling mud system in Algeria's arid region. Water-based mud (WBM) and oil-based mud (OBM) are used during well drilling in Hassi Messaoud petroleum field, and have a considerable pollution potential particularly on the aquifer system which constitutes the single resource of drinking water in the Sahara. The Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach is applied to evaluate the impacts of several drilling mud systems across all stages of their life cycle, e.g. use, treatment and disposal. Environmental impacts of five treatments scenarios corresponding to the drilling waste management applied in Hassi Messaoud are compared: reserve pit without treatment (burial option), secondary high centrifugation (vertical cuttings dryer), stabilisation/solidification online, stabilisation/solidification off line and thermal desorption. The impact assessment is carried on using the LCIA models of Impact 2002+ method in SIMAPRO7 software. This assessment identifies human toxicity and terrestrial eco-toxicity as the major impact categories in this specific arid context and quantifies the emissions contributions. The local environmental impact is the most important of the drilling mud life cycle and is mainly linked to emissions from reserve pits, treated cuttings, and drilling phase 16 '' through the Turonian and Albian aquifer. The main contributing substances are aromatic hydrocarbons fraction and metals in particular barium, zinc, antimony, arsenic, and aluminium. Concerning the comparison of the treatment scenarios, it appears that stabilisation/solidification online is the best one; it has the lowest impact score in the two dominating categories because of the waste minimisation: mud storage avoided in the reserve pit. The second best scenario is the thermal desorption which obtains the lowest impact score in carcinogen effects due to hydrocarbons reduction (<1%) and avoided impacts of recovered oil. The toxic substances fate modeling will be improved by taking into account their site-specific impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A process based life cycle assessment of dimension stone production in the UK has been carried out according to PAS 2050. From a survey of eight production operations, on a cradle-to-site basis for UK destinations the carbon footprint of sandstone is 77 kgCO(2)e/tonne, that of granite is 107 kgCO(2)e/tonne and that of slate is 251 kgCO(2)e/tonne. These values are considerably higher for stone imported from abroad due to the impact of transport. Reducing the reliance on imported stone will contribute to emissions reduction targets as well as furthering the goals of sustainable development. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The United States needs many different types of forests: some managed for wood products plus other benefits, and some managed for nonconsumptive uses and benefits. The objective of reducing global greenhouse gases (GHG) requires increasing carbon storage in pools other than the atmosphere. Growing more forests and keeping forests as forests are only part of the solution, because focusing solely on the sequestration benefits of the forests misses the important (and substantial) carbon storage and substitution GHG benefits of harvested forest products, as well as other benefits of active forest management. Forests and global climate are closely linked in terms of carbon storage and releases, water fluxes from the soil and into the atmosphere, and solar energy capture. Understanding how carbon dynamics are affected by stand age, density, and management and will evolve with climate change is fundamental to exploiting the capacity for sustainably managed forests to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For example, even though emperate forests continue to be carbon sinks, in western North America forest fires and tree mortality from insects are converting some forests into net carbon sources. Expanding forest biomass use for biofuels and energy generation will compete with traditional forest products, but it may also produce benefits through competition and market efficiency. Short-rotation woody crops, as well as landowners' preferences-based on investment-return expectations and environmental considerations, both of which will be affected by energy and environmental policies-have the potential to increase biomass supply. Unlike metals, concrete, and plastic, forest products store atmospheric carbon and have low embodied energy (the amount of energy it takes to make products), so there is a substitution effect when wood is used in place of other building materials. Wood used for energy production also provides substitution benefits by reducing the flow of fossil fuel based carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The value of carbon credits generated by forest carbon offset projects differs dramatically, depending on the sets of carbon pods allowed by the protocol and baseline employed. The costs associated with establishing and maintaining offset projects depend largely on the protocols' specific.. Measurement challenges and relatively high transaction costs needed for forest carbon offsets warrant consideration of other policies that promote climate benefits from forests and forest products but do not require project-specific accounting. Policies can foster changes in forest management and product manufacture that reduce carbon emissions over time while maintaining forests for environmental and societal benefits. US policymakers should take to heart the finding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Fourth Assessment Report when it concluded that "In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing on annual sustained yield of timber, fibre, or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit." A rational energy and environmental policy framework must be based on the premise that atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are increasing primarily because of the addition of geologic fossil fuel-based carbon into the carbon cycle. Forest carbon policy that builds on the scientific information summarized in this article can be a significant and important part of a comprehensive energy policy that provides for energy independence and carbon benefits while simultaneously providing clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and other uses and values.This article describes the development of a consequential life cycle assessment (cLCA) with endogenous market-driven design (MDD). Incorporation of MDD within cLCA (cLCA-MDD) is beneficial because design decisions, influenced by market forces, are a major source of environmental emissions and resource consumption in many life cycle systems. cLCA-MDD captures the environmental impact of these design responses resulting from industrial and policy decisions. We begin by developing the concept of cLCA-MDD, then present a case study that demonstrates how design responses can be endogenously captured in a cLCA analysis. The case study is in two parts: First, we incorporate endogenous design responses into a cLCA of a mid-size vehicle and, second, we conduct a policy analysis using a cLCA-MDD approach. The case study illustrates that cLCA-MDD can capture multiple "ripple effects" resulting from an industrial decision (e.g., downsizing a vehicle's engine) or a policy decision (e.g., raising gasoline taxes) and that these effects significantly influence results. A key challenge of the approach is appropriately managing and communicating uncertainties associated with the choice of economic parameters or models. We discuss sources of uncertainty in cLCA-MDD and demonstrate a presentation scheme to facilitate communication of result sensitivity to uncertainties from input parameters, models, and model structure.Increasing the eco-efficiency of fishing fleets is currently a major target issue in the seafood sector. This objective has been influenced in recent years by soaring fuel prices, a fact particularly relevant to a sector whose vessels present high energy consumption rates. Efforts to minimize fuel consumption in fishing fleets result in economic benefits and also in important reductions regarding environmental impacts. In this article, we combine life cycle assessment (LCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) to jointly discuss the operational and environmental performances of a set of multiple, similar entities. We applied the "five-step LCA + DEA method" to a wide range of vessels for selected Galician fisheries, including deep-sea, offshore, and coastal fleets. The environmental consequences of operational inefficiencies were quantified and target performance values benchmarked for inefficient vessels. We assessed the potential environmental performance of target vessels to verify eco-efficiency criteria (lower input consumption levels, lower environmental impacts). Results revealed the strong dependence of environmental impacts on one major operational input: fuel consumption. The most intensive fuel-consuming fleets, such as deep sea trawling, were found to entail the diesel consumption levels nearest to the efficiency values. Despite the reduced environmental contributions linked to other operational inputs, such as hull material, antifouling paint, or nets, these may contribute to substantial economic savings when minimized. Finally, given that Galicia is a major fishing region, many of the conclusions and perspectives obtained in this study may be extrapolated to other fishing fleets at the international level.This article investigates how value choices in life cycle impact assessment can influence characterization factors (CFs) for human health (expressed as disability-adjusted life years [DALYs]). The Cultural Theory is used to define sets of value choices in the calculation of CFs, reflecting the individualist, hierarchist, and egalitarian perspectives. CFs were calculated for interventions related to the following impact categories: water scarcity, tropospheric ozone formation, particulate matter formation, human toxicity, ionizing radiation, stratospheric ozone depletion, and climate change. With the Cultural Theory as a framework, we show that individualist, hierarchist, and egalitarian perspectives can lead to CFs that vary up to six orders of magnitude. For persistent substances, the choice in time horizon explains the differences among perspectives, whereas for nonpersistent substances, the choice in age weighting and discount rate of DALY and the type of effects or exposure routes account for differences in CFs. The calculated global impact varies by two orders of magnitude, depending on the perspective selected, and derives mainly from particulate matter formation and water scarcity for the individualist perspective and from climate change for the egalitarian perspective. Our results stress the importance of dealing with value choices in life cycle impact assessment and suggest further research for analyzing the practical consequences for life cycle assessment results.Life cycle prediction of steel structures. The reinvestments into the civil engineering buildings in Germany can be substantially lowered by an extension of their service life. This paper gives an overview of methods which were developed by the Collaborative-Research-Center SFB 477 "Life cycle assessment of structures via innovative monitoring" at the Technischen Universitat Braunschweig. The main topic is the lifetime assessment of old steel buildings by monitoring, followed by an overview of different methods to determine the inherent damage in the structure. The reliable determination of weak points in the building is described and the correct choice of the monitoring strategy for a weak detail is explained. A procedure is presented to determine the life expectancy of fatigue-stressed buildings by monitoring and further attempts. The article is closed by a section over the flaw detection at buildings by using piezo arrays.Products other than biofuels are produced in biofuel plants. For example, corn ethanol plants produce distillers' grains and solubles. Soybean crushing plants produce soy meal and soy oil, which is used for biodiesel production. Electricity is generated in sugarcane ethanol plants both for internal consumption and export to the electric grid. Future cellulosic ethanol plants could be designed to co-produce electricity with ethanol. It is important to take co-products into account in the life-cycle analysis of biofuels and several methods are available to do so. Although the International Standard Organization's ISO 14040 advocates the system boundary expansion method (also known as the "displacement method" or the "substitution method") for life-cycle analyses, application of the method has been limited because of the difficulty in identifying and quantifying potential products to be displaced by biofuel co-products. As a result, some LCA studies and policy-making processes have considered alternative methods. In this paper, we examine the available methods to deal with biofuel co-products, explore the strengths and weaknesses of each method, and present biofuel LCA results with different co-product methods within the U.S. context. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With rapid social development and large-scale construction of infrastructure in China, construction projects have become one of the driving forces for the national economy, whose energy consumption, environmental emissions, and social impacts are significant. To completely understand the role of construction projects in Chinese society, this study developed input-output life-cycle assessment models based on 2002,2005, and 2007 economic benchmarks. Inventory indicators included 10 types of energy, 7 kinds of environmental emissions, and 7 kinds of social impacts. Results show that embodied energy of construction projects in China accounts for 25-30% of total energy consumption; embodied SO2 emissions are being controlled, and the intensities of embodied NOx and CO2 have been reduced. However, given that the construction sector related employment is 17% of the total employment in China, the accidents and fatalities related to the construction sector are significant and represent approximately 50% of the national total. The embodied human and capital investments in science and technology (ST) increased from 2002 to 2007. The embodied full time equivalent (FTE) of each ST person also increased while the personal ST funding and intramural expenditures decreased. This might result from the time lag between RD activities and large-scale implementation. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The main objective of this research is to quantify the impact of introducing electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles, including fuel cell on conventional fleets. The impact is estimated in terms of local pollutants, HC, CO, NOx, PM, and in terms of CO2 and water vapour global emissions. The specific fleet of Portugal, roughly 6 million light-duty vehicles (30% diesel, 70% gasoline) is considered, and the mobility indicator of the fleet, 90 thousand million p x km, is kept constant throughout the analysis. Probability density functions for energy consumption and emissions are derived for conventional, electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, in charge depleting and charge sustaining modes. The Monte Carlo method is used to obtain average distribution estimates for discounting values of "old vehicles" that are removed from the fleet, and to add average distribution estimates for the "new vehicles" entering the fleet. Considering the actual Portuguese fleet as the reference case, local pollutant emissions decrease by a factor of 10-53%, for 50% fleet replacement. A potential 23% decrease of CO2 is foreseen, and a potential 31% increase of H2O emissions is forecasted. Life cycle water vapour emissions tend to rise and are, typically, 2-4 times higher than CO2 values at the upstream stage, due to its release in the cooling towers of thermal power plants. It is interesting to note that considering 1 MJ of energy required at vehicle wheels, in an overall life cycle context, both fuel cell and electric modes have nearly twice as much H2O emissions than internal combustion vehicles. CO2 emissions tend to decrease with electric drive vehicles penetration due to the higher fleet life cycle efficiency. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of biological hydrogen production from sugarcane and potato peels using life cycle assessment methodology for the Portuguese scenario. Potato peels are assumed to be produced locally from Portuguese potato cultivation. Sugarcane is assumed to be imported from Brazil and fermented in Portugal. The uncertainty is quantified by a Monte Carlo approach. Biohydrogen was compared with natural gas reforming, electrolysis and other energy resources such as diesel and electricity. Between bioH(2) feedstocks, sugarcane stands out with the lowest values for energy consumption and CO2 emissions with 0.30-0.34 MJ of consumed energy and 24-31 g of CO2 emitted per 1 MJ of H-2 produced. However these results do not have a major contribution to the Portuguese energy independency problem. On the other hand potato peels feedstocks are more attractive, presenting values of 0.49-0.61 MJ/MJ(H2) and 60-77 gCO(2)/MJ(H2). According to Portuguese production capabilities, it is estimated that bio-hydrogen will be able to supply 3100 vehicles of a typical Portuguese urban taxi fleet or up to 1.4 million passenger cars with a daily commuting distance of 30 km. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study primarily focused on investigating energy conservation and carbon reduction performance assessment indexes as policy-making references for screening energy conservation and carbon reduction industries. Based on the perspectives of the value chain, the study classified these industries into energy supply, conversion, and utilization types. The upstream energy supply function was associated with the supply of energy sources; the midstream conversion function, with the conversion of energy sources into energy forms such as electricity or thermal energy; and the downstream utilization function, with the production of the function(s) required by users through electrical power or thermal energy. From the viewpoints of energy conservation and carbon reduction, this study divided the assessment indexes into five categories: energy supply efficiency, conversion efficiency, utilization efficiency, consumption, and carbon emission. This study first explained the investigation of energy conservation and carbon reduction indexes and then constructed an energy conservation and carbon reduction performance assessment model. Finally, as an example, a fuel cell-powered motorcycle developed by the hydrogen power and fuel cell industry was considered in order to estimate actual energy conservation and carbon reduction performance. Biomass fermentation was used to produce the hydrogen supply. The results indicated that this model could both estimate energy consumption and CO2 emission and analyze major energy conservation and carbon reduction sources for these industries. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Marcoeconomic models can be applied to forecast economic changes under particular scenarios. The input-output (IO) model, a macroeconomic model, can characterize interactions among all sectors in an economy using readily available IO databases. However, the main drawback of the conventional IO model is its inability to forecast economic changes recursively. This study extended the conventional IO model by incorporating a weighted share of new productivities and demands into the technical coefficients matrix and applied this novel IO model to forecast how investment will enhance production technology progress and how economic structure reformation will affect biohydrogen industry development in the US and China. Simulation results reveal that, although economic structures in the US and China differ markedly, progress for the biohydrogen industry is generally independent of economic structures or whether produced biohydrogen is used to power fuel cell cars. Conversely, the rate of development of the biohydrogen industry depends heavily on investment. By 2040, total production values from biohydrogen investments will be US$83.1 and US$67.0 billion in the US and China, respectively, generating investment multipliers of 9.30 and 8.96, respectively. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The integration of the environmental problem in the design of industrial products leads us to incorporate vegetal fibres and recycled polymers into composite materials. The aim of this work is to study the behaviour and the environmental interest of a recycled PP/hemp fibre after several injection cycles. The mechanical and rheological behaviour of recycled PP/hemp composite was first studied by using tensile, dynamical mechanic analysis and rheological measurements. Then, to better understand the influence of the recycling, a morphology study was carried out on composites by using optical and electron microscopy. Finally, we investigated the environmental advantages of our composite thanks to a simplified environmental assessment. Our results highlighted the environmental interest of using a recycled matrix to prepare composites reinforced with vegetal fibres and the interesting properties of this material after recycling. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study investigates the energy and environmental aspects of producing biohydrogen for bitumen upgrading from a life cycle perspective. Three technologies are studied for biohydrogen production; these include the Battelle Columbus Laboratory (BCL) gasifier, the Gas Technology Institute (GTI) gasifier, and fast pyrolysis. Three different biomass feedstocks are considered including forest residue (FR), whole forest (WF), and agricultural residue (AR). The fast pyrolysis pathway includes two cases: truck transport of bio-oil and pipeline transport of bio-oil. The net energy ratios (NERs) for nine biohydrogen pathways lie in the range of 1.3-9.3. The maximum NER (9.3) is for the FR-based pathway using GTI technology. The GHG emissions lie in the range of 1.20-8.1 kg CO2 eq/kg H-2. The lowest limit corresponds to the FR-based biohydrogen production pathway using GTI technology. This study also analyzes the intensities for acid rain precursor and ground level ozone precursor. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The economics surrounding five algae-to-fuels process scenarios were examined. The different processes modeled were as follows: an open pond producing either triacylglycerides (TAG) or free fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), a solar-lit photobioreactor producing either FAME or free fatty acids (FFA), and a light emitting diode irradiated (LED-lighted) photobioreactor producing TAG. These processes were chosen to represent both classical and esoteric approaches presented in the open literature. Viable (or suggested) processing techniques to liberate and purify (and convert) the microalgal triacylglycerides were then modeled to accompany each growth option. The investment and cost per kg of fuel or fuel precursor for each process was determined. The open pond produced TAG at similar to$7.50/kg, while the process using the LED-lit photobioreactor produced TAG at similar to$33/kg. The scenario containing the solar-lit photobioreactor produced FAME at similar to$25/kg, while the open pond produced FAME at similar to$4/kg. The scenario containing the solar-lit photobioreactor produced FFA at similar to$29/kg. The open pond scenarios appear to be closest to the $1/kg pricepoint at this time, and thus are the most viable economic options. Future technological advancements that reduce the cost of bioreactor vessels, LED lighting, and solvent recovery, may reduce the oil production costs of these scenarios to a more attractive level. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In life cycle assessments, material and energy flows are used to produce the life cycle inventory. The carbon footprint simplifies the life cycle assessment by referring to a single result factor. However, some parallels with cost accounting then become distinctly apparent, for instance the emission factors of raw materials or other preliminary inputs can be understood as "prices". Known cost-accounting methods can then be used for calculation and evaluation, enabling aspects such as joint processes, recycling processes, closed loop management or allocations to be solved elegantly. Challenges connected with the carbon footprint include how to handle carbon storage and carbon dioxide of biogenic origin, as well as how to consider changes in land use. The article points up how, by applying a stringent methodology, such issues can be treated in material and energy flow analyses.Ionic Liquids may act as homogeneous catalysts for transesterification processes. In contrast to conventional catalysts the ionic liquid may be separated after reaction and recycled. This study investigated the ecological effect of changing from sulfuric acid as catalyst to an ionic liquid. Three different eco-balance approaches have been applied. The EHS method proved to be the most suited tool to assess the ecological potential of process alternatives in the conceptual process design phase.Life Cycle Assessment, a product-related analysis tool in the area of ecological sustainability, has boomed in the last decades. One of the reasons is the fact that an increased amount of background databases is available for this instrumen. In this contribution, the most comprehensive and most transparent such database - the database ecoinvent, developed in Switzerland - is presented in detail; and its applicability for the chemical industry is outlined.It is reasonable to use methods from the environment, health and safety management as well as from life cycle assessment already in early stages of process development. Against the background of poor data availability and data quality applications of metrics in early stages of process development are presented for two case studies. A comparative assessment of two alternative synthesis routes to the production of an enantiomerically pure beta-amino acid has been realized. In addition to the analysis of the mass flows, material costs and different health assessment methods were explored. Using the example of the glutaraldehyde production it is demonstrated how the cumulated energy demand can be calculated with software tools in early stages of process development.Using a life cycle assessment various technological options to reduce hydrocarbon emissions in solar cell fabrication are studied. Here, the combustion process causes much more potential environmental impacts than the condensation or the biofilter. Compared with the direct emission of untreated exhaust air to the surroundings area, it is shown by the studied treatment methods that the intended reduction of health impacts is more than offset. The aim of the integrated pollution prevention and control directive of protecting the environment as a whole is not fulfilled by these methods.This article investigates the environmental profile and costs of woody BTL production and use by reviewing existing LCA studies. The findings reveal that BTL from sustainably managed forest biomass and woody waste may have a lower overall environmental impact than fossil diesel. The benefits of using BTL instead of fossil diesel are largely due to savings in fossil energy use, which offer savings in GHG emissions since a large part of the lifecycle CO2 emissions are biogenic. Improvements in the impact category photosmog or summer smog have also been reported. On the other hand, wood based BTL may increase eutrophication and acidification, and increased ozone depletion and toxicity may also be expected. While global indicators like climate change, non-renewable resources and ozone depletion are fairly easy to interpret, the local indicators such as eutrophication, acidification, photosmog and toxicity are site specific, and an LCA will not take into account where, when and at which rate the emissions occur, which are important parameters when estimating local pollution effects. In addition, increased logging or the establishment of short rotation plantations may impact biodiversity, land-use changes and the value of nature. The reported results differed when assessing the same fuel due to differences in methodology and data assumptions. For the methodological part, differences in system boundaries, system completeness and chosen allocation methods contributed to the ranges in results. Differences regarding data inputs, such as plant efficiency and fuel consumption were also important for the differences in results. The most influential or sensitive factors within the reviewed studies were the assumed type of feedstock, plant efficiency and drivetrain. The reported production costs of BTL are in the range of 0.70-1.12 euros per liter. The costs are largely influenced by plant scale, biomass costs and plant efficiency. Biofuels are generally not considered a cost effective climate mitigation means, but there are no other feasible solutions than biofuels for the heavy transport sector in the short to medium term. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recent legislation has stressed the need to decide the best end-of-life (EoL) option for post-consumer products considering their full life-cycle and the corresponding overall environmental impacts. The life cycle assessment (LCA) technique has become a common tool to evaluate those impacts. The present study aimed to contribute to the better understanding of the application of this technique, by evaluating the influence of the selection of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method in its results and conclusions. A specific case study was chosen, using previous information related to an anti-glare lamellae (AGL) for highway use, made with virgin and recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Five distinct LCIA methods were used: Eco-indicator 99, CML 2 (2000), EPS 2000, Eco-indicator 95 and EDIP 97. Consistent results between these methods were obtained for the Climate change, Ozone layer depletion, Acidification and Eutrophication environmental indicators. Conversely, the Summer smog indicator showed large discrepancies between impact assessment methods. The work sheds light on the advantages inherent in using various LCIA methods when doing the LCA study of a specific product, thus evidencing complementary analysis perspectives.The environmental impact of an extended property close source-separation system for solid household waste (i.e. a systems for collection of recyclables from domestic properties) is investigated in a residential area in southern Sweden. Since 2001, households have been able to source-separate waste into six fractions of dry recyclables and food waste sorting. The current system was evaluated using the EASEWASTE life cycle assessment tool. Current status is compared with an ideal scenario in which households display perfect source-separation behaviour and a scenario without any material recycling. Results show that current recycling provides substantial environmental benefits compared to a non-recycling alternative. The environmental benefit varies greatly between recyclable fractions, and the recyclables currently most frequently source-separated by households are often not the most beneficial from an environmental perspective. With optimal source-separation of all recyclables, the current net contribution to global warming could be changed to a net-avoidance while current avoidance of nutrient enrichment, acidification and photochemical ozone formation could be doubled. Sensitivity analyses show that the type of energy substituted by incineration of non-recycled waste, as well as energy used in recycling processes and in the production of materials substituted by waste recycling, is of high relevance for the attained results.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions emanating from waste management practices in five Norwegian military camps were assessed. The GHG emission accounting practices examined included fuel provision upstream of a material recovery facility (MRF), operational activities at the MRF, and downstream processes. The latter means recycling of waste compared to primary production using virgin materials, or the incineration of waste with energy recovery compared to heating based on the average energy mix for both EU and Norway. The results show that the operational activities at the MRF cause more GHG emissions than the provision of fuel upstream of the MRF (116 vs. 16-21 tonnes CO(2)-eq., respectively). Furthermore, the downstream activities provided far greater avoidance of GHG emissions than the load caused by upstream activities and the activities at the MRF. Recycling proves to be beneficial over incineration of waste when compared to the EU energy mix (savings of -257 tonnes CO(2)-eq.), and the advantage is even larger when compared to the average energy mix for Norway (savings of -779 tonnes CO(2)-eq.). In conclusion, the results show that sorting of mixed waste at military camp collection sites followed by recycling of the separated fractions at MRF would result in significant avoidance of GHG emissions, compared to the current practice of incineration with energy recovery of the mixed waste.In this study, the material-based energy use and carbon emission over the life cycle of a bamboo-structure residential building prototype with innovative insulation technologies are analyzed. In comparison with a typical brick-concrete building, the bamboo-structure building requires less energy and emits less carbon dioxide to meet the identical functional requirements, i.e., envelope insulation and structure supporting. In order to systematically assess the energy use and carbon emission, several scenarios are designed based on the LEED standard and the technical potentials. The results indicate that there is a potential to reduce 11.0% (18.5%) of the embodied energy (carbon) for the use of recycled-content building materials and 51.3% (69.2%) for the recycling of construction and demolition waste, respectively. However, the practical effect of the potentials varies significantly depending on project management levels and available technologies in the current market. The analysis provides an insight into the assessment of the material-based energy use and carbon emission over the life cycle of a building. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The number of electric and electronic equipment (EEE) owned by households has multiplied in the recent decade. We investigate the climate implications of the purchase, use and disposal of EEE by Norwegian households in 2008. While traditionally, large electric appliances such as washing machines, dryers, refrigerators and freezers have been responsible for most of the electricity use in households apart from heating and hot water, our results indicate that computers, TV sets and other electronic equipment are of comparable importance in terms of life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For this electronic equipment, the GHG emissions caused by manufacturing are equal to or larger than those caused by their electricity use in operation. The production of EEE purchased in 2008 caused on average 1.2 t CO(2)e ((divided by) (x) 2) per household. The electricity consumption for the use of EEE in 2008 caused between 0.15 and 1.7 t per household, assuming a Norwegian and an EU electricity mix, respectively. Telecoms networks and TV content caused between 0.13 and 0.3 t per household. The purchase rate of electronic products indicates that these products are replaced or down-cycled much more frequently than necessary based on their technical life span. To reduce the carbon footprint of EEE in Norwegian households, the rate of acquisition of new TVs and PCs needs to be reduced and the energy consumption in the production of these products needs to be addressed.Most pollutants are released into the environment in the presence of other contaminants, creating complex mixtures. In life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods, characterization factors (CFs) are used to obtain the potential impacts associated with each contaminant emission. Current LCIA methods do not include CFs to evaluate the potential impacts of complex organic mixtures on ecosystems. This study explores the possibility of developing new CFs for petroleum mixtures. Petroleum products are an example of mixtures whose constituents have a common toxic mode of action: the narcosis effect. Characterization factors were calculated for a series of representative constituents of a specific petroleum mixture and also for different fractions of the same mixture developed using the hydrocarbon block (HBM) and Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group (TPHWG) methods. Finally, CFs were developed for the mixture itself as a whole by using experimental property measurements and estimations. The soil-water partitioning coefficient, water solubility, degradation kinetic constant in soil, octanol-water partitioning coefficient, and vapor pressure were measured while the molar weight and the degradation kinetic constants in air, water, and sediments were estimated. The highest aquatic ecotoxicological CFs, no matter the approach chosen, were obtained for an emission to freshwater up to 2.2 x 10(+07) PAF.m(3).d/kg for the highest CF. CF distributions obtained using the different blocking method and experimental CFs obtained for oil as a whole are, on average, not significantly different, given the known uncertainty of ecotoxicological models in LCIA. Consequently, all the CFs obtained using the different blocking methods from the literature are considered relevant for characterizing the potential impact for aquatic ecotoxicity of petroleum substances. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2011;30:2342-2352. (C), 2011 SETACIn hatch process scheduling, production trade-offs arise from the simultaneous consideration of different objectives. Economic goals are expressed in terms of plant profitability and productivity, whereas the environmental objectives are evaluated by means of metrics originated from the use of life cycle assessment methodology. This work illustrates a novel approach for decision making by using multiobjective optimization. In addition, different metrics are proposed to select a possible compromise based on the distance to a nonexistent utopian solution, whose objective function values are all optimal. Thus, this work provides a deeper insight into the influence of the metrics selection for both environmental and economic issues while considering the trade-offs of adopting a particular schedule. The use of this approach is illustrated through its application to a case study related to a multiproduct acrylic fiber production plant, special attention is put to the influence of product changeovers. (C) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 57: 2766-2782, 2011In 2009 approx. 40 Mt of palm oil were produced globally. Growing demand for palm oil is driven by an increasing human population as well as subsidies for biodiesel and is likely to increase further in coming years. The production of 1 t crude palm oil requires 5 t of fresh fruit bunches (FFB). On average processing of 1 t FFB in palm oil mills generates 0.23 t empty fruit bunches (EFB) and 0.65 t palm oil mill effluents (POME) as residues. In this study it is assumed that land use change does not occur. In order to estimate the environmental impacts of palm oil production a worst and a best case scenario are assessed and compared in the present study using 1000 kg of FFB as functional unit. The production and treatment of one t FFB causes more than 460 kg CO2eq in the worst case scenario and 110 kg CO2eq in the best case scenario. The significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction is achieved by co-composting residues of the palm oil mill. Thus treating those residues appropriately is paramount for reducing environmental impacts particularly global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication potential (EP). Another important contributor to the EP but also to the human toxicity potential (HTP) is the biomass powered combined heat and power (CHP) plant of palm oil mills. Frequently CHP plants of palm oil mills operate without flue gas cleaning. The CHP plant emits heavy metals and nitrogen oxides and these account for 93% of the HTP of the advanced palm oil production system, of which heavy metal emissions to air are responsible for 79%. The exact emission reduction potential from CHP plants could not be quantified due to existing data gaps, but it is apparent that cleaning the exhaust gas would reduce eutrophication, acidification and toxicity considerably. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of greenhouse production in France is poorly documented. Environmental benefits versus drawbacks of greenhouse production are not well known. Assessments that intregrate pesticide toxicology and transfer of mass and energy are scarce. Here, we compared the main types of tomato production, heated, year-round production in plastic houses or glasshouses, and seasonal production under polytunnel. Environmental impacts where assessed by life cycle analysis. Analyses were performed after the construction of a database relating the integrality of matter and energy fluxes, regarding the structure of the system, the inputs for production, and the waste products. Results show that greenhouse heating had the highest environmental impacts, including toxicological impact. For instance, the mean environmental impact of heated crops under plastic or in glasshouses was 4.5 times higher than in tunnels. Furthermore, pesticides in tunnels had a 3- to 6-fold higher impact in terms of terrestrial or aquatic ecotoxicology or human toxicology. Our results were compared with data from other temperate production regions.Evaluation of the potential of algae production for biofuel and other products at various locations throughout the world requires assessment of algae productivity under varying light conditions and different reactor layouts. A model was developed to predict algae biomass production in flat panel photobioreactors using the interaction between light and algae growth for the algae species Phaeodactylum tricornutum and Thalassiosira pseudonana. The effect of location, variable sunlight and reactor layout on biomass production in single standing and parallel positioned flat panels was considered. Three latitudes were studied representing the Netherlands. France and Algeria. In single standing reactors the highest yearly biomass production is achieved in Algeria. During the year biomass production fluctuates the most in the Netherlands, while it is almost constant in Algeria. Several combinations of path lengths and biomass concentrations can result in the same optimal biomass production. The productivity in parallel place flat panels is strongly influenced by shading and diffuse light penetration between the panels. Panel orientation has a large effect on productivity and at higher latitudes the difference between north-south and east-west orientation may go up to 50%. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae have been proposed as possible alternative feedstocks for the production of biodiesel because of their high photosynthetic efficiency. The high energy input required for microalgal culture and oil extraction may negate this advantage, however. There is a need to determine whether microalgal biodiesel can deliver more energy than is required to produce it. In this work, net energy analysis was done on systems to produce biodiesel and biogas from two microalgae: Haematococcus pluvialis and Nannochloropsis. Even with very optimistic assumptions regarding the performance of processing units, the results show a large energy deficit for both systems, due mainly to the energy required to culture and dry the microalgae or to disrupt the cell. Some energy savings may be realized from eliminating the fertilizer by the use of wastewater or. in the case of H. pluvialis, recycling some of the algal biomass to eliminate the need for a photobioreactor, but these are insufficient to completely eliminate the deficit. Recommendations are made to develop wet extraction and transesterification technology to make microalgal biodiesel systems viable from an energy standpoint. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing global demand of biofuels for energy security and reduction in climate change effects generate the opportunity to explore new biomass sources. Algae is a very promising source of biomass in this context as it sequester a significant quantity of carbon from atmosphere and industrial gases and is also very efficient in utilizing the nutrients from industrial effluents and municipal wastewater. Therefore cultivation of algal biomass provide dual benefit, it provides biomass for the production of biofuels and also save our environment from air and water pollution. The life cycle assessment (LCA) of algal biofuels suggests them to be environmentally better than the fossil fuels but economically it is not yet so attractive. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Developing clean and renewable energy resources ranks as one of the greatest challenges facing mankind in the medium to long term. The issues associated with developing non-fossil energy are intimately connected with economic development and prosperity, quality of life and global stability, and require smart strategies for sustainable development. This study presents a relative sustainability assessment of biodiesel, taking into account its full life cycle with the main goal of comparing alternative feedstocks, either currently used or promising for future use such as microalgae. A set of sustainability metrics relevant for biodiesel is identified using only the data available in the literature and taking into account all the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, societal, and economic. Although this study does not attempt to identify which feedstock or process is the best, its procedural suggestions may be valuable to practitioners and policy makers seeking to identify the best alternatives. The conclusions, however, are limited by the availability and the quality of the data used in the analyses.TRACI 2.0, the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts 2.0, has been expanded and developed for sustainability metrics, life cycle impact assessment, industrial ecology, and process design impact assessment for developing increasingly sustainable products, processes, facilities, companies, and communities. TRACI 2.0 allows the quantification of stressors that have potential effects, including ozone depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, tropospheric ozone (smog) formation, human health criteria-related effects, human health cancer, human health noncancer, ecotoxicity, and fossil fuel depletion effects. Research is going on to quantify the use of land and water in a future version of TRACI. The original version of TRACI released in August 2002 (Bare et al. J Ind Ecol 6: 49-78, 2003) has been used in many prestigious applications including: the US Green Building Council's LEED Certification (US Green Building Council, Welcome to US Green Building Council, 2008), the National Institute of Standards and Technology's BEES (Building for Environment and Economic Sustainability) (Lippiatt, BEES 4.0: building for environmental and economic sustainability technical manual and user guide, 2007) which is used by US EPA for Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (US Environmental Protection Agency, Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP), 2008d), the US Marine Corps' EKAT (Environmental Knowledge and Assessment Tool) for military and non-military uses (US Marine Corps, Environmental knowledge and assessment tool (EKAT): first time user's guide, 2007), and within numerous college curriculums in engineering and design departments.The drive toward sustainability among businesses, governments, academic programs and individuals has resulted in much progress in the last several years. Methods such as life cycle assessment, carbon and water footprinting are increasingly popular. In addition, many regions are developing byproduct synergy networks to enhance resource efficiency by using waste from one industry as a resource in another. Most efforts toward sustainability in engineering, including these, focus on enhancing efficiency of resource and energy use for a process or life cycle. Unfortunately, these efforts need not lead to sustainability. Additional efforts are required to address several challenges. These include accounting for the role of ecosystem services in life cycle analysis and decision making, considering the strong multidisciplinary, complex and wicked nature of the sustainability challenge. Process systems engineers are in a position to address these challenges by working with researchers in other disciplines.Biofuels have been identified as a potential short-term solution for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from road transport. Currently, '1st generation' biofuels are produced from food crops, but there are concerns with the indirect effects of utilising edible crops for fuel. There is increased interest in producing '2nd generation' biofuels from woody crops and straw, as these can be grown on lower grade land or do not compete directly with food. In order to ensure that biofuels actually deliver emission savings, the overall GHG balance of producing them must be calculated accurately, and compared with conventional fossil fuels. The GHG balance can vary significantly however, depending on biomass type, the production processes, the indirect effects, and also by the method by which the GHG emission balance is calculated. Currently, in the UK, there are three main GHG methodologies that potentially affect biofuel producers. Each has a different approach to measure GHG emissions from biofuel production, and each provides a different result, causing difficulties for policy makers. This study performs a partial life cycle assessment for bioethanol production from wheat grain and wheat straw to demonstrate the variability of the results between methodologies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The biodegradable plastics were introduced in the 1980s to detect possible renewable feedstock to produce nonpetroleum-based plastics as well as to reduce the environmental problems due to the increase of landfill volume. Furthermore, the biodegradable plastics have been used to reduce the environmental impact (in terms of energy requirement from nonrenewable resources and CO2 gas emissions) derived from production, utilization, and disposal of petroleum-based plastics, like polyethylene terephthalate (PET). To this end, in the last years, different typologies of bioplastics were introduced (both biodegradable plastics and plastics made from renewable resources) like Mater-Bi (made from starch), poly-3-hydroxybuyrate, polycaprolactone, and polylactic acid (PLA). Nowadays, the most important tool to evaluate the environmental impact of a bioplastic and/or of a petroleum-based plastic (conventional plastic) is the life cycle assessment (LCA) that determines the overall impact of a plastic on the environment by defining and analyzing several impact indices directly related to production, utilization, and disposal of the considered plastics. In this work the LA (cradle to grave) of PLA bottles for drinking water was developed and compared to the LA of PET bottles for the same use. The obtained results highlighted that the true advantage of the PLA bottles with respect to the PET bottles arises from the use of renewable resources, but this benefit is paid in environmental terms due to the higher impact on human health and ecosystem quality (due to the use of pesticides, consumption of land, and consumption of water for the production of raw materials). (C) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 30: 459-468, 2011Increasing concerns about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States have spurred interest in alternate low carbon fuel sources, such as natural gas. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methods can be used to estimate potential emissions reductions through the use of such fuels. Some recent policies have used the results of LCAs to encourage the use of low carbon fuels to meet future energy demands in the U.S., without, however, acknowledging and addressing the uncertainty and variability prevalent in LCA. Natural gas is a particularly interesting fuel since it can be used to meet various energy demands, for example, as a transportation fuel or in power generation. Estimating the magnitudes and likelihoods of achieving emissions reductions from competing end-uses of natural gas using LCA offers one way to examine optimal strategies of natural gas resource allocation, given that its availability is likely to be limited in the future. In this study, the uncertainty in life cycle GHG emissions of natural gas (domestic and imported) consumed in the U.S. was estimated using probabilistic modeling methods. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to obtain sample distributions representing life cycle GHG emissions from the use of 1 MJ of domestic natural gas and imported LNG. Life cycle GHG emissions per energy unit of average natural gas consumed in the U.S were found to range between -8 and 9% of the mean value of 66 g CO(2)e/MJ. The probabilities of achieving emissions reductions by using natural gas for transportation and power generation, as a substitute for incumbent fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and coal were estimated. The use of natural gas for power generation instead of coal was found to have the highest and most likely emissions reductions (almost a 100% probability of achieving reductions of 60 g CO(2)e/MJ of natural gas used), while there is a 10-35% probability of the emissions from natural gas being higher than the incumbent if it were used as a transportation fuel. This likelihood of an increase in GHG emissions is indicative of the potential failure of a climate policy targeting reductions in GHG emissions.Glutamic acid is an important constituent of waste streams from biofuels production. It is an interesting starting material for the synthesis of biobased chemicals, thereby decreasing the dependency on fossil fuels. The objective of this paper was to compare the environmental impact of four biobased chemicals from glutamic acid with their petrochemical equivalents, that is, N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), N-vinylpyrrolidone (NVP), acrylonitrile (ACN), and succinonitrile (SCN). A consequential life cycle assessment was performed, wherein glutamic acid was obtained from sugar beet vinasse. The removed glutamic add was substituted with cane molasses and ureum. The comparison between the four biobased and petrochemical products showed that for NMP and NVP the biobased version had less impact on the environment, while for ACN and SCN the petrochemical version had less impact on the environment. For the latter two an optimized scenario was computed, which showed that the process for SCN can be improved to a level at which it can compete with the petrochemical process. For biobased ACN large improvements are required to make it competitive with its petrochemical equivalent. The results of this LCA and the research preceding it also show that glutamic acid can be a building block for a variety of molecules that are currently produced from petrochemical resources. Currently, most methods to produce biobased products are biotechnological processes based on sugar, but this paper demonstrates that the use of amino acids from low-value byproducts can certainly be a method as well.The production, transport and processing of food products have significant environmental impacts, some of them related to climate change. This study examined the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and transport to a port in Sweden (wholesale point) of 84 common food items of animal and vegetable origin. Energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for food items produced in different countries and using various means of production were compared. The results confirmed that animal-based foods are associated with higher energy use and GHG emissions than plant-based foods, with the exception of vegetables produced in heated greenhouses. Analyses of the nutritional value of the foods to assess the amount of protein delivered to the wholesale point per unit energy used or GHG emitted (protein delivery efficiency) showed that the efficiency was much higher for plant-based foods than for animal-based. Remarkably, the efficiency of delivering plant-based protein increased as the amount of protein in the food increased, while the efficiency of delivering animal-based protein decreased. These results have implications for policies encouraging diets with lower environmental impacts for a growing world population. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from biomass combustion are traditionally assumed climate neutral if the bioenergy system is carbon (C) flux neutral, i.e. the CO2 released from biofuel combustion approximately equals the amount of CO2 sequestered in biomass. This convention, widely adopted in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of bioenergy systems, underestimates the climate impact of bioenergy. Besides CO2 emissions from permanent C losses, CO2 emissions from C flux neutral systems (that is from temporary C losses) also contribute to climate change: before being captured by biomass regrowth, CO2 molecules spend time in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. In this paper, a method to estimate the climate impact of CO2 emissions from biomass combustion is proposed. Our method uses CO2 impulse response functions (IRF) from C cycle models in the elaboration of atmospheric decay functions for biomass-derived CO2 emissions. Their contributions to global warming are then quantified with a unit-based index, the GWP(bio). Since this index is expressed as a function of the rotation period of the biomass, our results can be applied to CO2 emissions from combustion of all the different biomass species, from annual row crops to slower growing boreal forest.Recovering energy from wastes is a useful strategy for integrated waste and energy management in an eco-industrial park (EIP) and gives promising reduction of wastes, total energy consumption and operation cost. In Jinqiao EIP, Pudong New Area, Shanghai, an industrial symbiosis, based on the energy recovery from municipal sewage sludge and re-refined oil, was proposed in the central heat-supplying company of Jinqiao EIP. It is expected that hot off-gas or part of the steam from the central heat-supplying company could be used for sludge drying and used oil re-refining while the dried sludge and refined oil can be partial substitution for fossil fuel. For the purpose of assessing the environmental performance of this industrial symbiosis, life cycle assessment (LCA) was used and different scenarios were set up in this study to evaluate the Global warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), Human toxicity air (HTA) and Total Environmental Impact Potential (TEIP) of the system. Results indicate that when the substitute ratio of coal by sludge is 14%, the proposed industrial symbiosis has the least environmental impact. Compared with the current situation (sludge is landfilled), co-combustion of dried sludge and re-refined oil with coal at optimal scale will release less CO2, CH4, NO.. N2O and CO, but more SO2, H2S, NH3, HCl, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) and heavy metals. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is an increasing need for life cycle data for bio-based products, which becomes particularly evident with the recent drive for greenhouse gas reporting and carbon footprinting studies. Meeting this need is challenging given that many bio-products have not yet been studied by life cycle assessment (LCA), and those that have are specific and limited to certain geographic regions. In an attempt to bridge data gaps for bio-based products, LCA practitioners can use either proxy data sets (e.g., use existing environmental data for apples to represent pears) or extrapolated data (e.g., derive new data for pears by modifying data for apples considering pear-specific production characteristics). This article explores the challenges and consequences of using these two approaches. Several case studies are used to illustrate the trade-offs between uncertainty and the ease of application, with carbon footprinting as an example. As shown, the use of proxy data sets is the quickest and easiest solution for bridging data gaps but also has the highest uncertainty. In contrast, data extrapolation methods may require extensive expert knowledge and are thus harder to use but give more robust results in bridging data gaps. They can also provide a sound basis for understanding variability in bio-based product data. If resources (time, budget, and expertise) are limited, the use of averaged proxy data may be an acceptable compromise for initial or screening assessments. Overall, the article highlights the need for further research on the development and validation of different approaches to bridging data gaps for bio-based products.As part of a feasibility study for introducing carbon labeling of fruit products in Korea, we explore the use of carbon footprints for Korean kiwifruit from Gyeongnam region as a case study. In Korea, the Korean Environmental Industry and Technology Institute (KEIT1) is responsible for the carbon footprint labeling certification, and has two types of certification programs: one program focuses on climate change response (carbon footprint labeling analysis) and the other on low-carbon products (reduction of carbon footprints analysis). Currently agricultural products have not yet been included in the program. Carbon labeling could soon be a prerequisite for the international trading of agricultural products. In general the carbon footprints of various agricultural products from New Zealand followed the methodology described in the ISO standards and conformed to the PAS 2050. The carbon footprint assessment focuses on a supply chain, and considers the foreground and the background systems. The basic scheme consists of four phases, which are the 'goal', 'scope', 'inventory analysis', and `interpretation' phases. In the case of the carbon footprint of New Zealand kiwifruit the study tried to understand each phase's contribution to total GHG emissions. According to the results, shipping, orchard, and coolstore operation are the main life cycle stages that contribute to the carbon footprint of the kiwifruit supply chain stretching from the orchard in New Zealand to the consumer in the UK. The carbon emission of long-distance transportation such as shipping can be a hot-spot of GHG emissions, but can be balanced out by minimizing the carbon footprint of other life cycle phases. For this reason it is important that orchard and coolstore operations reduce the GHG-intensive inputs such as fuel or electricity to minimize GHG emissions and consequently facilitate the industry to compete in international markets. The carbon footprint labeling guided by international standards should be introduced for fruit products in Korea as soon as possible. The already established LCA methodology of NZ kiwifruit can be applied for fruit products as a case study.Today, sustainability is the buzzword in the developmental parlance. This has brought the issue of availability and utilization of energy into sharp focus. There is an urgent need to find viable alternative to fossils, mainly petroleum. It not only provides the major share of our present energy needs but also feeds the organic chemicals industry with vital raw materials. Among many alternative energy sources being explored biomass is the only one that has the potential for such dual application. Comprehensive yet judicious exploitation of biomass is, therefore crucial. The emerging concept of biorefineries is important in this context which advocates multiprocess and multiproduct biomass based industries. But everything green need not always be clean and sustainable as populism often makes it to be. Needless to say. the choices of feedstocks, processes as well as product mix are many. There is a need to critically examine them. This paper presents a status review of biorefineries from the stand point of feedstocks, products and processes. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A more objective method for measuring the energy needs of businesses, System Energy Assessment (SEA), measures the combined impacts of material supply chains and service supply chains, to assess businesses as whole self-managing net-energy systems. The method is demonstrated using a model Wind Farm, and defines a physical measure of their energy productivity for society (EROI-S), a ratio of total energy delivered to total energy expended. Energy use records for technology and proxy measures for clearly understood but not individually recorded energy uses for services are combined for a whole system estimate of consumption required for production. Current methods count only energy needs for technology. Business services outsource their own energy needs to operate, leaving no traceable record. That uncounted business energy demand is often 80% of the total, an amount of "dark energy" hidden from view, discovered by finding the average energy estimated needs for businesses far below the world average energy consumed per dollar of GDP. Presently for lack of information the energy needs of business services are counted to be "0". Our default assumption is to treat them as "average". The result is a hard measure of total business demand for energy services, a "Scope 4" energy use or GHG impact assessment. Counting recorded energy uses and discounting unrecorded ones misrepresents labor intensive work as highly energy efficient. The result confirms a similar finding by Hall et al. in 1981 [1]. We use exhaustive search for what a business needs to operate as a whole, tracing internal business relationships rather than energy data, to locate its natural physical boundary as a working unit, and so define a business as a physical rather than statistical subject of scientific study. See also online resource materials and notes [2].Waste incineration can be considered a robust technology for energy recovery from mixed waste. Modern incinerators are generally able to maintain relatively stable performance, but changes in waste input and furnace operation may affect emissions. This study investigated how inorganic air emissions and residue composition at a full-scale incinerator were affected by known additions of specific waste materials to the normal municipal solid waste (MSW) input. Six individual experiments were carried out (% ww of total waste input): NaCl (0.5%), shoes (1.6%), automobile shredder waste (14%), batteries (0.5%), poly(vinyl chloride) (5.5%) and chromate-cupper-arsenate impregnated wood (11%). Materials were selected based on chemical composition and potential for being included or excluded from the waste mix. Critical elements in the waste materials were identified based on comparison with six experiments including 'as-large-as-possible' changes in furnace operation (oxygen levels, air supply and burnout level) only using normal MSW as input. The experiments showed that effects from the added waste materials were significant in relation to: air emissions (in particular As, Cd, Cr, Hg, Sb), element transfer coefficients, and residue composition (As, Cd, Cl, Cr, Cu, Hg, Mo, Ni, Pb, S, Sb, Zn). Changes in furnace operation could not be directly linked to changes in emissions and residues. The results outlined important elements in waste which should be addressed in relation to waste incinerator performance. Likely ranges of element transfer coefficients were provided as the basis for sensitivity analysis of life-cycle assessment (LCA) results involving waste incinerator technologiesIn Europe, about 20% of municipal solid waste is incinerated. Large differences can be found between northern and southern Europe regarding energy recovery efficiencies, flue gas cleaning technologies and residue management. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) of waste incineration often provides contradictory results if these local conditions are not properly accounted for. The importance of regional differences and site-specific data, and choice of LCA model itself, was evaluated by assessment of two waste incinerators representing northern and southern Europe (Denmark and Italy) based on two different LCA models (SimaPro and EASEWASTE). The results showed that assumptions and modelling approaches regarding energy recovery/substitution and direct air emissions were most critical. Differences in model design and model databases mainly had consequences for the toxicity-related impact categories. The overall environmental performance of the Danish system was better than the Italian, mainly because of higher heat recovery at the Danish plant. Flue gas cleaning at the Italian plant was, however, preferable to the Danish, indicating that efficient flue gas cleaning may provide significant benefits. Differences in waste composition between the two countries mainly affected global warming and human toxicity via water. Overall, SimaPro and EASEWASTE provided consistent ranking of the individual scenarios. However, important differences in results from the two models were related to differences in the databases and modelling approaches, in particular the possibility for modelling of waste-specific emissions affected the toxicity-related impact categories. The results clearly showed that the use of site-specific data was essential for the results.This review on Sustainability covers selected journal articles and conferences papers published in 2010 and is divided into the following sections(1): Sustainable water and wastewater utilities Sustainable water resources management Industrial and corporate approaches towards sustainability Stormwater and green infrastructure Sustainability in wastewater treatment Life cycle assessment (LCA) applications Sustainability and energy in wastewater industry Sustainability and climate change Sustainability and water reuse Sustainability rating systems The sustainable water and wastewater utilities reviewed sustainable practices and sustainable workforce management. The stormwater and green infrastructure (GI) described the current development in five categories: new studies of GI and low impact development ( LID) system performance; GI/LID system planning assessments; macro-scale hydrologic and hydraulic modeling of GI/LID systems; efforts to model changes of water flow and quality in individual GI/LID systems; and social implications of GI/LID systems. The sustainability in wastewater treatment reviewed wastewater treatment; source separation; anaerobic technologies; wetland and low impact treatment systems; algae technologies; and the microbial fuel cell technology.Although many aspects of environmental accounting methodologies in food production have already been investigated, the application of environmental indicators in the fruit sector is still rare and no consensus can be found on the preferred method. On the contrary, widely diverging approaches have been taken to several aspects of the analyses, such as data collection, handling of scaling issues, and goal and scope definition. This paper reviews studies assessing the sustainability or environmental impacts of fruit production under different conditions and identifies aspects of fruit production that are of environmental importance. Four environmental assessment methods which may be applied to assess fruit production systems are evaluated, namely Life Cycle Assessment, Ecological Footprint Analysis, Emergy Analysis and Energy Balance. In the 22 peer-reviewed journal articles and two conference articles applying one of these methods in the fruit sector that were included in this review, a total of 26 applications of environmental impact assessment methods are described. These applications differ concerning e.g. overall objective, set of environmental issues considered, definition of system boundaries and calculation algorithms. Due to the relatively high variability in study cases and approaches, it was not possible to identify any one method as being better than the others. However, remarks on methodologies and suggestions for standardisation are given and the environmental burdens of fruit systems are highlighted. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reviews a series of environmental indicators developed in the last years that were found suitable to be applied at corporate level for the evaluation of production processes and products. The indicators reviewed in this paper were classified into four main groups: 1) Indicators of Energy and Material Flows; 2) Indicators with a Territorial Dimension; 3) Indicators of Life-Cycle Assessment; 4) Indicators of Environmental Risk Assessment. Integrative and single index indicators such as the ecological footprint or carbon footprint were found as the most appealing for enterprises, although there is a need to advance in the field to combine the simplicity required at corporate level for tracking and reporting environmental data, and the scientific rigor and transparency necessary to make the scores reliable. Hence, for each of the indicators revised it was stated what they do and do not measure so that misleading information was not used for decision making at corporate level. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building school centers using industrialized technologies has been a common practice in Catalonia, Spain, since 2002. Over 200 public educational edifices have been assembled using these technologies, in order to provide the required number of schools in due time. These schools serve as examples of modern educational architecture and their building technologies have particular features compared to non-prefabricated ones. In this article these technologies are analyzed from a technical and sustainable point of view, in order to determine how they improve the quality of these buildings and reduce their environmental impact. A life cycle analysis has been carried out comparing the three main industrialized technologies and a non-prefabricated one. All of these technologies have weak points and this research recommends a new optimized technology based on them. Renewed current technologies could reduce both resources consumption and waste generation but would never be able to close the materials cycle as the recommended technology does. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Supply chains (SCs) are one of the most environment impacting systems. Analysis of such systems should thus take into account not only performance but also environment indicators. The amount of energy consumed for producing goods and the total emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) of an activity are examples of such indicators. This paper presents a framework for assessing performance as well as Global Warming Potential (GWP) and exergy indicators in SCs. In order, exergy accounting helps on finding reliable GWP indicators for different energy sources adopted in the supply chain. This framework supports the evaluation of supply chains' business and environment indicators trade-offs using a unified model. A real case study is conducted to demonstrate the application of the proposed modeling technique.A comparison was made between conventional binary distillation and four feasible alternatives flowsheets to separate acetic acid from water attending to both economic and environmental criteria. All extraction steps use diethyl ether as an extractant. Our goals were, first, to estimate the economic and environmental incentives for each of the alternatives proposed in order to understand the trade-offs associated with each system and second, to show how, in some flowsheets, it is possible to rigorously decompose the system and perform detailed optimization without the necessity of simultaneous optimization of all the equipment implied in the flowsheet. To carry out the economic evaluation, two simple criteria were used: Economic Potential and Total Annual Cost. These parameters were chosen because they can be used at various stages in the chemical plant design without the necessity of a complete picture of the industrial process. The environmental impacts are measured through the Ecoindicator-99 methodology, which reflects the advances in the damaged-oriented methodology recently developed for Life Cycle Assessment. For each of the alternatives, detailed optimization was performed to determine the Pareto's individual curves using the epsilon-constraint method. With the individual Pareto curves, it is also possible to obtain the compound Pareto's curve, and to then superimpose the individual Pareto's curves associated with the five alternatives to identify the trade-offs of this multiobjective optimization and ultimately determine the best alternatives, and even their optimum operational conditions.A two-scale evaluation concept of remediation technologies for a contaminated site was expanded by introducing life cycle costing (LCC) and economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA). The expanded evaluation index, the rescue number for soil (RNSOIL,) with LCC and EIO-LCA, comprises two scales, such as risk-cost, risk-energy consumption or risk-CO2 emission of a remediation. The effectiveness of RNSOIL, with LCC and EIO-LCA was examined in a typical contamination and remediation scenario in which dieldrin contaminated an agricultural field. Remediation was simulated using four technologies: disposal, high temperature thermal desorption, biopile and landfarming. Energy consumption and CO2 emission were determined from a life cycle inventory analysis using monetary-based intensity based on an input-output table. The values of RNSOIL. based on risk-cost, risk-energy consumption and risk-CO2 emission were calculated, and then rankings of the candidates were compiled according to RNSOIL. values. A comparison between three rankings showed the different ranking orders. The existence of differences in ranking order indicates that the scales would not have reciprocal compatibility for two-scale evaluation and that each scale should be used independently. The RNSOIL, with LCA will be helpful in selecting a technology, provided an appropriate scale is determined. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle thinking (LCT) is one of the philosophies that has recently appeared in the context of the sustainable development. Some of the already existing tools and methods, as well as some of the recently emerged ones, which seek to understand, interpret and design the life of a product, can be included into the scope of the LCT philosophy. That is the case of the material and energy flow analysis (MEFA), a tool derived from the industrial metabolism definition. This paper proposes a methodology combining MEFA with another technique derived from sustainable development which also fits the LCT philosophy, the BAT (best available techniques) analysis. This methodology, applied to an industrial process, seeks to identify the so-called improvable flows by MEFA, so that the appropriate candidate BAT can be selected by BAT analysis. Material and energy inputs, outputs and internal flows are quantified, and sustainable solutions are provided on the basis of industrial metabolism. The methodology has been applied to an exemplary roof tile manufacture plant for validation. 14 Improvable flows have been identified and 7 candidate BAT have been proposed aiming to reduce these flows. The proposed methodology provides a way to detect improvable material or energy flows in a process and selects the most sustainable options to enhance them. Solutions are proposed for the detected improvable flows, taking into account their effectiveness on improving such flows. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In order to understand wider sustainability impacts of consumption and to successfully promote and implement sustainable consumption and production policies, there is a need to capture the whole life-cycle impact of products and services across international supply chains. Multi-region input-output (MRIO) databases are a well described and suitable foundation for global sustainability analyses addressing a wide range of policy and research questions. In this paper we reflect on the reasons for the recent boom in MRIO compilation, summarise the current state of development and discuss future options for MRIO analysis. We list in detail the requirements for efficient and effective MRIO research and propose systemic and institutional changes. We deliberately try to go beyond existing ambitions for MRIO compilation and thus intend to stimulate discussion and to lay out the options for the future of MRIO research. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Fruit processing industries generate tremendous amount of solid wastes which is almost 35-40% dry weight of the total produce used for the manufacturing of juices. These solid wastes, referred to as, "pomace" contain high moisture content (70-75%) and biodegradable organic load (high BUD and COD values) so that their management is an important issue. During the management of these pomace wastes by different strategies comprising incineration, landfill, composting, solid-state fermentation to produce high-value enzymes and animal feed, there is production of greenhouse gases (GHG) which must be taken into account. In this perspective, this study is unique that discusses the GHG emission analysis of agro-industrial waste management strategies, especially apple pomace waste management and repercussions of value-addition of these wastes in terms of their sustainability using life cycle assessment (LCA) model. The results of the analysis indicated that, among all the apple pomace management sub-models for a functional unit, solid-state fermentation to produce enzymes was the most effective method for reducing GHG emissions (906.81 tons CO2 eq. per year), while apple pomace landfill resulted in higher GHG emissions (1841.00 tons CO2 eq. per year). The assessment and inventory of GHG emissions during solid-state fermentation gave positive indications of environmental sustainability for the use of this strategy to manage apple pomace and other agricultural wastes, particularly in Quebec and also extended to other countries. The analysis and use of parameters in this study were drawn from various analytical approaches and data sources. There was absence of some data in the literature which led to consideration of some assumptions in order to calculate GHG emissions. Hence, supplementary experimental studies will be very important to calculate the GHG emissions coefficients during agro-industrial waste management. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this article a study will be present on the different insulators that can be used for copper wiring manufacturing for the automotive sector. An analysis will be held on which of the insulators, with the same features, implies less energetic consume and less CO2 emissions during its life cycle. In order to do so, four scenarios will be proposed (Cu+ PVC, Cu+ PP, Cu+ XLPE y Cu+ PE), setting the functional unit in a meter cable, and an analysis will be performed on their life cycle (ACV). The use of an insulator PE for its copper wiring manufacturing for automotive sector is the best option considering that it consumes a 17% less than PVC and 3% less than PP and emits 63% less of CO2 than PVC and 22% less than PPNovel Process Windows (NPW) is the use of highly intensified, unusual and typically harsh process conditions to boost micro process technology and flow chemistry for the production of high-added value fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, etc. It is far from conventional processing and also from 'normal' micro processing, and enables "flash chemistry" (1) via kinetic-chemistry means tailored to the capability of the microreactors, whereas the micro processing on its own addresses mainly mass and heat transfer and safety issues. In this review, there are two parts introduced. In Part 1, we would like to give a short review on this subject and outline the coming research funded by the ERC Advanced Grant "Novel Process Windows" of Prof. Dr. Volker Hessel at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands. In Part 2, the details of the coming research in ERC Advanced Grant will be introduced. This truly comprehensive and holistic research comprises four projects with different facets of Novel Process Windows; starting from a molecular-mechanistic (New Chemical Transformations) and kinetic scale (High-Temperature / Pressure Processing) via the scale of reaction environment (Solvent-free Operation and Tuneable / Reactive Solvents) up to a process scale (Process Integration and Simplification). These individual measures are bundled and directed by a horizontal, generic project for deriving cross-cutting insight amongst the four NPW themes and to evaluate these through cost and life-cycle analysis. This paper is about Part 2.This paper provides an overview of software tools based on long experience and applications in the area of process integration, modelling and optimisation. The first part reviews the current design practice and the development of supporting software tools. Those are categorised as: (1) process integration and retrofit analysis tools, (2) general mathematical modelling suites with optimisation libraries, (3) flowsheeting simulation and (4) graph-based process optimisation tools. The second part covers an assessment of tools which enable the generation of new sustainable alternatives to adapt to the future needs. They deal with waste, environment, energy consumption, resources depletion and production cost constrains. The emphasis of the sustainable process design tools is largely on the evaluation of process viability under sustainable economic conditions, synthesis of sustainable process and supply chain process maintenance and life cycle analysis. Major software tools development and the potential of the research-based tools for sustainable process design task are overviewed in the concluding part. (C) 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology used in assessing the environmental impacts of products. Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) is one of the four components of LCA which quantifies flows of materials and pollutants in the entire life cycle (cradle-to-grave) of the product. Data are commonly collected from various sources (e. g. publications, databases and site-specific measurements) which may result in violations of mass and energy balances due to uncertainties. In such cases, the data can be adjusted using reconciliation methods to improve the reliability of the results. Another computational issue in LCI arises when two or more products are involved, known as the multi-functionality or allocation problem. The problem is how to allocate resource and emission streams to each product. This work describes a model using fuzzy optimization for solving both allocation and data reconciliation problems simultaneously. The model is illustrated on an aluminum industry case study involving open-loop recycling, and the approach is compared with two sequential allocation and data reconciliation methods. (C) 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A significant change is occurring in the global polymer industries. Development of a new generation of bio-based polymers, polymers derived from renewable resources, is progressing rapidly. Complementing historical biopolymers such as natural rubber and cellulosics, these new bioplastics include a growing number of commercial successes, including polylactides and polyhydroxyalkanoates. Many more bioplastics are on the near horizon, made possible by rapid advances in biotechnology. The molecular specificity of biochemical transformations is ideally suited for producing high purity monomers needed for making high molecular weight polymer molecules. Some of the newest developments involve the creation of well-established polymers (polyethylene, polybutlylene, poly(ethylene terephthalate)) via new biochemical pathways that start with renewable, rather than fossil, resources. This article highlights some recent advances in bio-based polymers. Specifically, this review includes topics ranging from novel biopolymer synthesis, new bio-based nanocomposites, novel processing, and holistic assessments of sustainability through quantitative life-cycle analysis. It is demonstrated that greener plastic materials can be produced through ecologically responsible conversion of renewable resources using industrial biotechnology and enhanced by nano technology. This emerging approach represents a triple technological convergence that promises to significantly alter the value chains of the global plastics industries.Bio-based plastics, in which the fossil carbon is replaced by bio/renewable-based carbon, offer the intrinsic value proposition of a reduced carbon footprint and are in complete harmony with the rates and time scale of the biological carbon cycle. Identification and quantification of bio-based content is based on the radioactive C-14 signature associated with (new) biocarbon. Using experimentally determined biocarbon content values, one can calculate the intrinsic CO(2) emissions reduction achieved by substituting petrocarbon with biocarbon-the material carbon footprint value proposition. The process carbon footprint arising from the conversion of feedstock to final product is computed using life-cycle assessment methodology. Biodegradability in conjunction with selected disposal systems such as composting and anaerobic digestion offers an end-of-life solution to completely remove the plastic substrate from the environment. Not all bio-based polymer materials are biodegradable, and not all biodegradable polymers are bio-based. Most importantly, complete biodegradability (complete utilization of the polymer by the microorganisms present in the disposal environment) is necessary as per ASTM and ISO standards, otherwise there could be serious health and environmental consequences.Biomass energy and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) can lead to a net removal of atmospheric CO2. This paper investigates environmental and economic performances of CCS retrofit applied to two mid-sized refineries producing ethanol from sugar beets. Located in the Region Centre France, each refinery has two major CO2 sources: fermentation and cogeneration units. "carbon and energy footprint" (CEF) and "discounted cash flow" (DCF) analyses show that such a project could be a good opportunity for CCS early deployment. CCS retrofit on fermentation only with natural gas fired cogeneration improves CEF of ethanol production and consumption by 60% without increasing much the non renewable energy consumption. CCS retrofit on fermentation and natural gas fired cogeneration is even more appealing by decreasing of 115% CO2 emissions, while increasing non renewable energy consumption by 40%. DCF shows that significant project rates of return can be achieved for such small sources if both a stringent carbon policy and direct subsidies corresponding to 25% of necessary investment are assumed. We also underlined that transport and storage cost dilution can be realistically achieved by clustering emissions from various plants located in the same area. On a single plant basis, increasing ethanol production can also produce strong economies of scale. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing environmental awareness and stringent environmental regulations have motivated many companies to incorporate ecodesign into product development. To assist companies to address the challenge, this research presents a design for environment (DfE) methodology to evaluate and improve derivative consumer electronic product development using a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) model and a technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. Based on use of a BPNN, the life cycle assessment (LCA) models are developed to estimate quantities of hazardous chemical substances and energy consumption for a derivative consumer electronic product throughout the product life cycle. A performance evaluation and improvement model for DfE is then devised based on the TOPSIS method to analyze the ecodesign performance and provide concrete improvement strategies. With the aforementioned analysis of environmental performance, an enterprise can profoundly understand and significantly enhance the relative DfE performance of a new product compared to the similar competitive products. Finally, we apply an optical mouse development project as a case to elaborate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. These analytical results can let us understand the DfE performance ranking and acquire the maximum reduced quantity of each DfE criterion for each module of a new product. Meanwhile, to enhance the green competitiveness of the new product, we recommend that the engineers should decrease the area of the circuit board of the new product. In addition, the material of the USB cable for the new product should be switched from the PVC material to the PE material.This paper disseminates the foreground of sustainable cryogenic machining technology that has a high potential to cut production costs and improve competitiveness by reducing resource consumption and creating less waste. The sustainability issues on a shop floor level are pointed out via a life cycle assessment, concluding that the future of sustainable production is going to entail the use of cryogenic machining to reduce environmental burdens and health risks, while increasing machining performance and profitability In addition, machining evaluation is covered by an experimental study undertaken to understand the likely impacts of the use of cryogenic technology on production costs. The case study refers to the machining of high-temperature Ni-alloy (Inconel 718). It is shown that tooling costs greatly contribute to the total production cost and that cryogenic machining offers a clean and a cost-effective route to improve sustainability performance in comparison to conventional machining. (C) 2011 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is a perennial warm-season grass native to North America. The species is currently being evaluated as a potential feedstock for bioenergy. Growth and yield of switchgrass vary substantially due to weather and soil conditions. The objective of this study was to determine the impact and implications of weather, climate, and soil variability on switchgrass production in the south-eastern USA using a crop simulation model. We simulated switchgrass growth and yield as a function of weather, soil, and crop management with the Agricultural Land Management Alternative with Numerical Assessment Criteria (ALMANAC) model. The model was first evaluated with switchgrass data from five field experiments conducted throughout Alabama. Subsequently, switchgrass growth and yield were simulated for climate and soil conditions representing the Tennessee River Valley region of northern Alabama and Georgia. Based on the simulations, we evaluated switchgrass production potential in this region under different climate and land-use scenarios. Weather data from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1980s were included to account for the climate variability during the twentieth century. The average annual simulated switchgrass yield across the region was significantly (P < 0.05) higher for the 1950s (13 740 kg d.m. ha(-1)) and the 1980s' climate (14 162 kg d.m. ha(-1)) than for the 1960s' climate (12 492 kg d.m. ha(-1)). The annual production potential for the region ranged from 64 977 and 83 915 metric t due to spatial variability in climate and soil conditions. Using results and implementing the approach from this study can help plan switchgrass-based bioenergy systems. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdSugarcane is currently the main renewable energy source in Brazil. Due to the importance of the cane industry and its contribution to a wide range of biobased energy and other products, LCA studies regarding cane-derived products are needed to assess their environmental benefits. The main objective of this work was the assessment of life cycle energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to cane sugar and ethanol, considering bagasse and electricity surpluses as coproducts. We performed an overall balance for the Brazilian Center-South Region, adopting different methods to evaluate sugar and ethanol production separately. The GREET 1.8c.0 model was used for the 'well-to-wheels' calculations but adapted to the comprehensive set of Brazilian parameters that best represent the Center-South Region. For the reference case, fossil energy use and GHG emissions related to sugar production were evaluated as 721 kJ/kg and 234 g CO(2)eq/kg, respectively. For the ethanol life cycle, these values were 80 kJ/MJ and 21.3 g CO(2)eq/MJ. Special attention was paid to the variation of some parameters among producing units based on data collected by industry. The consequent uncertainties in ethanol life cycle emissions were assessed through a Monte Carlo analysis based on assigned distribution of probability curves for eleven selected parameters and informed by partial statistical data available from industry for distribution generation. Projections were also made for 2020 scenario parameters based on the best in current class technologies and technological improvements deemed commercially possible today. Published in 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, LtdToday, almost 70% of the electricity is produced from fossil fuels and power generation accounts for over 40% of global CO2 emissions. If the targets to reduce climate change are to be met, substantial reductions in emissions are necessary. Compared to other sectors emission reductions in the power sector are relatively easy to achieve because it consists mainly of point-sources. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and the use of low-carbon alternative energy sources are the two categories of options to reduce CO2 emissions. However, for both options additional infrastructure and equipment is needed. This article compares CO2 emissions and metal requirements of different low-carbon power generation technologies on the basis of Life Cycle Assessment. We analyze the most critical output (CO2) and the most critical input (metals) in the same methodological framework. CO2 emissions and metal requirements are compared with annual global emissions and annual production for different metals. It was found that all technologies are very effective in reducing CO2 emissions. However. CCS and especially non-fossil technologies are substantially more metal intensive than existing power generation. A transition to a low-carbon based power generation would require a substantial upscaling of current mining of several metals. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to evaluate whether a specific recycling system for used oil filters (UOFs) is environmentally viable by considering all steps of the product's life cycle. In that aspect an analysis of the environmental impacts regarding different waste management scenarios of UOFs in Greece is presented using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Waste scenarios varied from maximum feasible recycling and recovery of metals and used lubricant oil, to disposal of UOFs to landfills without any prior treatment. In order to perform this analysis, the principles of ISO 14040 were followed and a relevant LCA software was used (SimaPro 7.2). Additionally, the results of a previous work conducted by the authors were deployed, including some experimental measurements undertaken so as to evaluate and quantify the factors affecting the recovery of the lubricant oil contained in used automotive filters. Indicatively, it was estimated that a maximum of 1340 tons of used oil and 1810 tons of steel are disposed every year in Greece. as a result of the non-effective management of used automotive filters. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Several alternatives exist for handling of individual waste fractions, including recycling, incineration and landfilling. From an environmental point of view, the latter is commonly considered as the least desirable option. Many studies based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) highlight the environmental benefits offered by incineration and especially by recycling. However, the landfilling option is often approached unjustly in these studies, maybe disregarding the remarkable technological improvements that landfills have undergone in the last decades in many parts of the world. This study, by means of LCA-modelling, aims at comparing the environmental performance of three major management options (landfilling, recycling and incineration or composting) for a number of individual waste fractions. The landfilling option is here approached comprehensively, accounting for all technical and environmental factors involved, including energy generation from landfill gas and storage of biogenic carbon. Leachate and gas emissions associated to each individual waste fraction have been estimated by means of a mathematical modelling. This approach towards landfilling emissions allows for a more precise quantification of the landfill impacts when comparing management options for selected waste fractions. Results from the life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) show that the environmental performance estimated for landfilling with energy recovery of the fractions "organics" and "recyclable paper" is comparable with composting (for "organics") and incineration (for "recyclable paper"). This however requires high degree of control over gas and leachate emissions, high gas collection efficiency and extensive gas utilization at the landfill. For the other waste fractions, recycling and incineration are favourable, although specific emissions of a variety of toxic compounds (VOCs, PAHs, NON, heavy metals, etc.) may significantly worsen their environmental performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Alfalfa is the major forage crop produced in temperate regions worlwide. Although this crop is currently used mainly for producing high-value livestock feed, its application for bioenergy production is a recent focus of interest. Even though it is not mandatory, alfalfa is normally dried in order to improve the quality of the final product. In this study, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to quantify the environmental impacts linked to alfalfa production in the major cultivation zone in Spain (Ebro Valley). including field activities, dehydration and transport to farms for livestock feeding. In addition, the identification of the most relevant processes contributing to the environmental impact and the potential improvements actions were also defined as objectives. Inventory data were obtained mainly from interviews with farmers complemented with published literature and comments from experts. LCA results were obtained for global warming, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidant Formation, land use, non-renewable cumulative energy demand and human, terrestrial and aquatic ecotoxicities. Within the life cycle of alfalfa, the dehydration process, production of phosphate fertilizer. application of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides, water consumption and final transport to the consumer (by road and ship) were identified as hot spots. Based on these, some improvement measures were proposed and evaluated: (i) reduction of the moisture content of alfalfa and the use of a higher percentage of biomass for combustion in the dehydration process, (ii) no application of nitrogen fertilizer in maintenance years and (iii) use of more efficient trucks for transport. Their implementation would produce significant reduction of eutrophication, global warming, acidification, non-renewable cumulative energy demand and, to a lesser extent, photochemical oxidation formation and human toxicity impacts. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is the prevailing framework for estimating the environmental performances of a product/service. The application of LCA frequently requires practitioners to address allocation issues, especially when a large number of co-products are produced. The choice of an allocation approach for multifunctional processes is among the most debated methodological aspects in the LCA community, given its potentially large influence on final outcomes. Despite numerous efforts, a uniform consensus on the best allocation practice is still lacking and no single method appears as the most suitable for all situations. The aim of this paper is to assess how different allocation methods affect the environmental performances of a lignocellulosic biorefinery. Biorefinery systems represent a good example of a multifunctional process, since they co-produce multiple energy and material products. The following allocation procedures are applied: system expansion (also named substitution method), partitioning method according to different features of co-products (mass, energy, exergy and economic value), and hybrid approach (given by a combination of the previous ones). In order to enhance the clarity of the discussion, a mathematical notation for these allocation procedures is adopted, and analytical interrelations are investigated. Results show the influence of the allocation methods on the environmental impacts assigned to the individual products, both on a unit and annual flow basis. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biohydrogen is considered as an attractive clean energy source due to its high energy content and environmental-friendly conversion. Analyzing various economic scenarios can help decision makers to optimize development strategies for the biohydrogen sector. This study surveys econometric models of biohydrogen development, including input-out models, life-cycle assessment approach, computable general equilibrium models, linear programming models and impact pathway approach. Fundamentals of each model were briefly reviewed to highlight their advantages and disadvantages. The input-output model and the simplified economic input-output life-cycle assessment model proved most suitable for economic analysis of biohydrogen energy development. A sample analysis using input-output model for forecasting biohydrogen development in the United States is given. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Whereas brownfield development is of widespread interest, there is scant literature on the environmental impacts of brownfield developments relative to conventional developments. We assembled a set of two residential brownfield and two conventional greenfield developments for a sample of U.S. cities including Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Using the travel time and modes of transportation information from the 2000 U.S. Decennial Census, we analyzed the long-term commuting impacts from the two types of developments. Relative to greenfield development neighborhoods, we find that the brownfield development neighborhoods are closer to center cities, have higher public transportation use for commuting, comparable average travel times to work, and lower energy and greenhouse gas emissions for commuting. Future work will extend these results to consider other differential impacts of the two types of developments. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)UP.1943-5444.0000072. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.CO2 capture from power plants, combined with CO2 storage, is a potential means for limiting the impact of fossil fuel use on the climate. In this paper, three oxy-fuel plants with incorporated CO2 capture are evaluated from an economic and environmental perspective. The oxy-fuel plants, a plant with chemical looping combustion with near 100% CO2 capture and two advanced zero emission plants with 100% and 85% CO2 capture are evaluated and compared to a similarly structured reference plant without CO2 capture. To complete the comparison, the reference plant is also considered with CO2 capture incorporating chemical absorption with monoethanolamine. Two exergy-based methods, the exergoeconomic and the exergoenvironmental analyses, are used to determine the cost-related and the environmental impacts of the plants, respectively, and to reveal options for improving their overall effectiveness. For the considered oxy-fuel plants, the investment cost is estimated to be almost double that of the reference plant, mainly due to the equipment used for oxygen production and CO2 compression. Furthermore, the exergoeconomic analysis reveals an increase in the cost of electricity with respect to the reference plant by more than 20%, with the advanced zero emission plant with 85% CO2 capture being the most economical choice. On the other hand, a life cycle assessment reveals a decrease in the environmental impact of the plants with CO2 capture, due to the CO2 and NOx emission control. This leads to a reduction in the overall environmental impact of the plants by more than 20% with respect to the reference plant. The most environmentally friendly concept is the plant with chemical looping combustion. (C) 2010 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A small fleet of classic London Taxis (Black cabs) equipped with hydrogen fuel cell power systems is being prepared for demonstration during the 2012 London Olympics. This paper presents a Life Cycle Analysis for these vehicles in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions, focusing on the impacts of alternative vehicle technologies for the Taxi, combining the fuel life cycle (Tank-to-Wheel and Well-to-Tank) and vehicle materials Cradle-to-Grave. An internal combustion engine diesel taxi was used as the reference vehicle for the currently available technology. This is compared to battery and fuel cell vehicle configurations. Accordingly, the following energy pathways are compared: diesel, electricity and hydrogen (derived from natural gas steam reforming). Full Life Cycle Analysis, using the PCO-CENEX drive cycle, (derived from actual London Taxi drive cycles) shows that the fuel cell powered vehicle configurations have lower energy consumption (4.34 MJ/km) and CO2 emissions (235 g/km) than both the ICE Diesel (9.54 MJ/km and 738 g/km) and the battery electric vehicle (5.81 MJ/km and 269 g/km). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main aim of this study is to evaluate whether the potential transformation of the existing sugar plants of Northern Greece to modern bioethanol plants, using the existing cultivations of sugar beet, would be an environmentally sustainable-decision. Using Life Cycle Inventory and Impact Assessment, all processes for bioethanol production from sugar beets were analyzed, quantitative data were collected and the environmental loads of the final product (bioethanol) and of each process were estimated. The final results of the environmental impact assessment are encouraging since bioethanol production gives better results than sugar production for the use of the same quantity of sugar beets. If the old sugar plants were transformed into modern bioethanol plants, the total reduction of the environmental load would be, at least, 32.6% and a reduction of more than 2 tons of CO(2)e/sugar beet of ha cultivation could be reached. Moreover bioethanol production was compared to conventional fuel (gasoline), as well as to other types of biofuels (biodiesel from Greek cultivations). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The assessment of a food product's environmental friendliness is highly challenging for consumers because such an assessment requires the consideration of various product characteristics. Furthermore, products often show conflicting features. This study uses a choice task and a questionnaire to examine how consumers judge the environmental friendliness of several vegetables. The consumers' assessment is compared with life cycle assessment (LCA) results, which represent the overall environmental impact of a product throughout its lifespan. In contrast to the LCA, consumers consider transportation distance rather than transportation mode and perceive organic production as very relevant for the environmental friendliness. Furthermore, consumers assess the environmental impact of packaging and conservation as more important than the LCA results show. Findings also suggest the current product information for vegetables is insufficient for judging their environmental friendliness. Implications for information campaigns and ecological food labeling are discussed.This paper describes the context, the basic assumptions and the main findings of a joint research project aimed at identifying the optimal breakdown between material recovery and energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW) in the framework of integrated waste management systems (IWMS). The project was carried out from 2007 to 2009 by five research groups at Politecnico di Milano, the Universities of Bologna and Trento, and the Bocconi University (Milan), with funding from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). Since the optimization of IWMSs by analytical methods is practically impossible, the search for the most attractive strategy was carried out by comparing a number of relevant recovery paths from the point of view of mass and energy flows, technological features, environmental impact and economics. The main focus has been on mature processes applicable to MSW in Italy and Europe. Results show that, contrary to a rather widespread opinion, increasing the source separation level (SSL) has a very marginal effects on energy efficiency. What does generate very significant variations in energy efficiency is scale, i.e. the size of the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant. The mere value of SSL is inadequate to qualify the recovery system. The energy and environmental outcome of recovery depends not only on "how much" source separation is carried out, but rather on "how" a given SSL is reached. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reports the environmental results, integrated with those arising from mass and energy balances, of a research project on the comparative analysis of strategies for material and energy recovery from waste, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. The project, involving the cooperation of five University research groups, was devoted to the optimisation of material and energy recovery activities within integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems. Four scenarios of separate collection (overall value of 35%, 50% without the collection of food waste, 50% including the collection of food waste, 65%) were defined for the implementation of energetic, environmental and economic balances. Two sizes of integrated MSW management system (IWMS) were considered: a metropolitan area, with a gross MSW production of 750,000 t/year and an average province, with a gross MSW production of 150,000 t/year. The environmental analysis was conducted using Life Cycle Assessment methodology (LCA), for both material and energy recovery activities. In order to avoid allocation we have used the technique of the expansion of the system boundaries. This means taking into consideration the impact on the environment related to the waste management activities in comparison with the avoided impacts related to the saving of raw materials and primary energy. Under the hypotheses of the study, both for the large and for the small IWMS, the energetic and environmental benefits are higher than the energetic and environmental impacts for all the scenarios analysed in terms of all the indicators considered: the scenario with 50% separate collection in a drop-off scheme excluding food waste shows the most promising perspectives, mainly arising from the highest collection (and recycling) of all the packaging materials, which is the activity giving the biggest energetic and environmental benefits. Main conclusions of the study in the general field of the assessment of the environmental performance of any integrated waste management scheme address the importance of properly defining, beyond the design value assumed for the separate collection as a whole, also the yields of each material recovered; particular significance is finally related to the amount of residues deriving from material recovery activities, resulting on average in the order of 20% of the collected materials. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To identify mitigation options to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from milk production (i.e. the carbon footprint (CF) of milk), this study examined the variation in GHG emissions among dairy farms using data from previous CF studies on Swedish milk. Variations between farms in these production data, which were found to have a strong influence on milk CF, were obtained from existing databases of 1051 dairy farms in Sweden in 2005. Monte Carlo (MC) analysis was used to analyse the impact of variations in seven important parameters on milk CF concerning milk yield (energy-corrected milk (ECM) produced and delivered), feed dry matter intake (DMI), enteric CH4 emissions, N content in feed DMI, N-fertiliser rate and diesel used on farm. The largest between-farm variations among the analysed production data were N-fertiliser rate (kg/ha) and diesel used (l/ha) on farm (CV=31% to 38%). For the parameters concerning milk yield and feed DMI, the CV was approximately 11% and 8%, respectively. The smallest variation in production data was found for N content in feed DMI. According to the MC analysis, these variations in production data led to a variation in milk CF of between 0.94 and 1.33 kg CO2 equivalents (CO(2)e)/kg ECM, with an average value of 1.13 kg CO(2)e/kg ECM. We consider that this variation of +/-17%, which was found to be based on the used farm data, would be even greater if all Swedish dairy farms were included, as the sample of farms in this study was not totally unbiased. The variation identified in milk CF indicates that a potential exists to reduce GHG emissions from milk production on both the national and farm levels through changes in management. As milk yield and feed DMI are two of the most influential parameters for milk CF, feed conversion efficiency (i.e. units ECM produced/unit DMI) can be used as a rough key performance indicator for predicting CF reductions. However, it must be borne in mind that feeds have different CF due to where and how they are produced.This study formulates a model to maximize the profit of a lignocellulosic biofuel supply chain ranging from feedstock suppliers to biofuel customers. The model deals with a time-staged, multi-commodity, production/distribution system, prescribing facility locations and capacities, technologies, and material flows. A case study based on a region in Central Texas demonstrates application of the proposed model to design the most profitable biofuel supply chain under each of several scenarios. A sensitivity analysis identifies that ethanol (ETOH) price is the most significant factor in the economic viability of a lignocellulosic biofuel supply chain. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Commercial food waste represents a relatively available high-quality feedstock for landfill diversion to biological treatment. A life-cycle assessment was performed for commercial food waste processed through aerobic composting systems of varying complexity, anaerobic digestion, and landfills with and without gas collection and energy recovery, as well as a bioreactor landfill. The functional unit was 1000 kg of food waste plus 550 kg of branches that are used as a bulking agent. For each alternative, global warming potential, NO(x) and SO(2) emissions, and total net energy use were determined. Anaerobic digestion was the most environmentally beneficial treatment option, leading to -395 kg net CO(2)e per functional unit. This result was driven by avoided electricity generation and soil carbon storage from use of the resulting soil amendment. The composting alternatives led to between -148 and -64 kg net CO(2)e, whereas the landfill alternatives led to the emission of -240 to 1100 kg CO(2)e. A traditional landfill with energy recovery was predicted to have lower emissions than any of the composting alternatives when a fertilizer offset was used. There is variation in the results based on uncertainty in the inputs, and the relative rankings of the alternatives are dependent on the soil amendment offset that is used. The use of compost to offset peat has greater emission offsets than the value of compost as a fertilizer.Algae are a widely touted source of bioenergy with high yields, appreciable lipid contents, and an ability to be cultivated on marginal land without directly competing with food crops. Nevertheless, recent work has suggested that large-scale deployment of algae bioenergy systems could have unexpectedly high environmental burdens. In this study, a "well-to-wheel" life cycle assessment was undertaken to evaluate algae's potential use as a transportation energy source for passenger vehicles. Four algae conversion pathways resulting in combinations of bioelectricity and biodiesel were assessed for several relevant nutrient procurement scenarios. Results suggest that algae-to-energy systems can be either net energy positive or negative depending on the specific combination of cultivation and conversion processes used. Conversion pathways involving direct combustion for bioelectricity production generally outperformed systems involving anaerobic digestion and biodiesel production, and they were found to generate four and fifteen times as many vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) per hectare as switchgrass or canola, respectively. Despite this, algae systems exhibited mixed performance for environmental impacts (energy use, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions) on a "per km" basis relative to the benchmark crops. This suggests that both cultivation and conversion processes must be carefully considered to ensure the environmental viability of algae-to-energy processes.Providing food, energy and materials for the rising global population is a challenge which is compounded by increased pressure on natural resources such as land, water and fossil sources of raw materials. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities have increased with industrial development and population expansion, and it is anticipated that resulting climate change might further limit agricultural productivity, through changes to weather patterns and global availability/distribution of agriculturally productive land. Growing crops as feedstocks for industrial uses is seen as one way of reducing GHG emissions and dependency on fossil resources. However, determining the extent to which the development of crops for industrial use will effect GHG balances and provide for a more energy efficient manufacturing system requires the development and use of appropriate calculation methodologies. Research at the Porter Institute has identified over 250 different scenarios for bioenergy production systems using commodity crops. In order to rationalise this complexity and diversity, a modular approach to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and sustainability analysis has been taken. This allows characterisation of discrete sections of supply chains and enables comparisons to be made between different crop production systems, different process systems and different end product uses. The purposes of this paper are to introduce the concepts of biofuel GHG and sustainability metrics, to introduce the approach taken by our organization and to use the example of UK grown willow in a lignocellulosic ethanol production system to demonstrate how GHG emission outcomes can be reviewed for "new" crops and technologies. The results show a range of variation, in both growing and process systems and how outcomes such as energy and GHG balances can be affected by various activities. LCA methodologies provide data to inform governments and industry of the potential specific supply chains may have for energy and GHG saving. However, methodological approaches can also affect assessment outcomes. Unresolved issues in LCA methodology must also be evaluated e.g. impacts resulting from land use change. Sustainability assessments of crop growing systems, irrespective of the end use, also assist in the assessment of environmental impacts of supply chains. However, it is critical that data continue to be collected, analysed and reviewed, to ensure that the most appropriate crops are grown and processed for the most appropriate end use. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article presents a nudtiobjective optimization model for the recycle and reuse networks based on properties while accounting for the environmental implications of the discharged wastes using life-cycle assessment. The economic objective function considers fresh sources and treatment costs, whereas the environmental objective function is measured through the eco-indicator 99. The model considers constraints in the process sinks as well as in the environment based on stream properties such as pH, chemical oxygen demand, toxicity, density, and color, in addition to the composition of the waste streams. A global optimization procedure is developed by indirectly tackling properties through property operators and by segregating the process streams before treatment. Three examples are included, and the results show that it is possible to consider simultaneously the trade-offs between the total annual costs and the overall environmental impact using the proposed methodology. (C) 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 57: 2369-2387, 2011Transmission operators and regulators face the enormous challenge to meet both the request for a high-performing grid as well as the public's concern about the burdens of electric power transmission. Although huge infrastructural projects for the development of interconnections are at several stages, the associated transmission burdens are not yet fully incorporated in the respective socioeconomic analysis. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to present a collective summary of electricity transmission burdens and their associated impacts. To increase coherence, the burdens have been classified in the following categories: transmission losses; electromagnetic fields; infrastructure; visual intrusion; noise; interruption of supply; land use; ecosystems; and property values. Moreover, the burdens relation with transmission technologies and associated impacts are illustrated in original overview tables. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In life cycle impact assessment, normalization can be a very effective tool for the life cycle assessment practitioner to interpret results and put them into perspective. The paper presents normalization references for the recently developed USEtox (TM) model, which aims at calculating globally applicable characterization factors. Normalization references for Europe and North America are determined, and guidance for expansions to other geographical regions is provided. The base years of the European and North American inventories are 2004 and 2002/2008, respectively. Emission data were extracted from two literature sources referring to each of the considered regions. The inventory for North America was adapted to avoid extrapolation of data from other regions and thus bring consistency with the emission inventory for Europe. In spite of different inventory assumptions, a similar coverage of substances was obtained for both regions with relatively high representation of metals and a number of organic compounds, mainly consisting of non-methane volatile organic compounds and pesticides. The two inventory sets were eventually characterized with the characterization factors (CFs) calculated with the version 1.0 of the USEtox (TM) model and substance database; both interim and recommended CFs were used. Normalization references are provided for Europe and North America for the three USEtox (TM) toxic impact categories; ratios between the normalization references for the two regions in all cases lie below a factor of 3. Causes for the observed discrepancies are found to be different inventory assumptions as well as variations in the type and intensity of actual emissions between the two regions. Additional causes are inventories that only cover a limited number of substances, and the characterization model, which can only provide interim factors for certain substances like metal compounds. Based on these causes and on a review of recent studies on normalization references, a list of substances to be prioritized when collecting emission data was built, demonstrating the importance of metals. In the perspective of further refining the presented normalization references and of calculating new references for other regions, guidance is provided including a list of priority substances that should be considered when building emission inventories for normalization references.Determination of the ecotoxicity effect factor (EF) in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is based on test data reporting the total dissolved concentration of a substance. In spite of the recognised influence of chemical speciation and physico-chemical characteristics of the aquatic systems on toxicity of dissolved metals, these properties are not considered when calculating characterization factors (CFs) for metals. It is hypothesised that the main cause of the variation in reported EC50 values of Cu among published test results lies in different speciation patterns for Cu in the test media, and that the toxicity of Cu is predominantly caused by the free Cu2+ ion. Hence, the free Cu2+ ion concentration should substitute the total dissolved metal concentration when determining the EF. The study was based on a review of published ecotoxicity studies reporting acute and chronic EC50 data for Cu to Daphnia magna and to different species of fish and algae. The speciation pattern of Cu in the different media applied in the studies was calculated using the Visual MINTEQ model. EFs were calculated according to the expression applied in the USEtox (TM) characterization model. Reported EC50 values for Cu show variations of one to several orders of magnitude for the same organism, but the study indicates that the large variation is caused by differences in water chemistry of the test media influencing the metal speciation. The relationship between the calculated free Cu2+ ion concentration and reported EC50 values indicates that the aquatic ecotoxicity of Cu to D. magna can be predicted from the free ion concentration. Other results confirm that the free Cu2+ ion concentration depends on the [Cu]/[DOC] ratio since the majority of the total dissolved Cu is present as Cu-DOC complexes when the media contains more than 1 mg/L of DOC, and since Cu in such complexes has limited availability to the test organisms. These results suggest that speciation should be taken into account in the modelling of both EFs and fate factors for LCIA, and the EF for Cu in the aquatic environment should be based on the concentration of the free Cu2+ ion.Previous methods of estimating characterization factors (CFs) of metals in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models were based on multimedia fate, exposure, and effect models originally developed to address the potential impacts of organic chemicals. When applied to metals, the models neglect the influence of ambient chemistry on metal speciation, bioavailability and toxicity. Gandhi et al. (2010) presented a new method of calculating CFs for freshwater ecotoxicity that addresses these metal-specific issues. In this paper, we compared and assessed the consequences of using the new method versus currently available LCIA models for calculating freshwater ecotoxicity, as applied to two case studies previously examined by Gloria et al. (2006): (1) the production of copper (Cu) pipe and (2) a zinc (Zn) gutter system. Using the same inventory data as presented by Gloria et al. (2006), we calculated and compared the LCIA outcomes for freshwater ecotoxicity of each case study using four models: USES-LCA 1.0, USES-LCA 2.0, USEtox (TM) using the previous approach, and USEtox (TM) using the new method. Since the new method requires specification of water chemistry for the freshwater compartment, we explored the effect of using seven freshwater archetypes. We analyzed the freshwater ecotoxicity outcomes of the two case studies with respect to the different models, infinite versus 100 years time scales for calculating impacts after metal emissions, and water chemistries representing environmental variability. Significant differences in CFs, overall freshwater ecotoxicity score (I pound CF x emissions) and the contributions of individual metals to the overall score were traced back to differences in modeling methods (e.g., variations in compartments included in the fate model), the choice of metal partition coefficients versus those explicitly calculated based on water chemistry (USEtox (TM) (new)), and the calculation of effect factors. Metal CFs calculated using USES-LCA 1.0 ranked Co > Ni > Cd a parts per thousand aEuro parts per thousand Cu > Zn > Pb, but changed using USEtox (TM) (new) to Cd > Co > Ni > Zn > Cu > Pb for the archetype of hard alkaline water and Cd > Ni > Co > Cu a parts per thousand aEuro parts per thousand Zn > Pb for the archetype of soft, acidic water. For the Cu pipe, total freshwater ecotoxicity scores for metal emissions into air and water ranged from 0.01 to 0.02 for USES-LCA1.0, similar to 1 for USEtox (TM) (previous) to 0.0002-0.01 1, 4-dichlorobenzene (DCB) eq. for USEtox (TM) (new) depending on the archetype. Whereas Cu followed by Ni emissions contributed most to total freshwater ecotoxicity estimated by USES-LCA1.0, Cu, Cd, Ni, and Zn, emissions were all important contributors towards freshwater ecotoxicity with USEtox (TM) (new), with differences in contributions dependent on the freshwater archetype. For the Zn gutter case study, the total scores varied from 10 for USEtox (TM) (previous) to 0.008 for USES-LCA 2.0 and 0.02-0.11 equal to 1, 4-DCB for USEtox (TM) (new). Zn contributed similar to 98% towards the freshwater ecotoxicity scores of metals in all models. For both case studies, differences in ecotoxicity scores were not significant for the infinite vs. 100 years time scale. Accounting for metal bioavailability and speciation by using USEtox (TM) (new) when calculating CFs decreased by 1-4 orders of magnitude the total metal freshwater ecotoxicity scores (I pound CF x emissions) attributable to metal emissions tallied for Cu pipe and Zn gutter system case studies (Gloria et al. 2006). This broad range came from the model used in comparison to USEtox (TM) (new) and the choice of freshwater archetype. Additionally, contributions of each metal to the total score of the Cu pipe case study changed significantly from the use of previous CFs (Huijbregts et al. 2000) versus the revised CFs (Gandhi et al. 2010). Metal CFs calculated using the method proposed by Gandhi et al. (2010) significantly lowers the total freshwater ecotoxicity impact of metal emissions. It is suggested that this lower estimate of potential impact from metal emissions is consistent with our understanding of metal chemistry. The magnitude of the potential freshwater ecotoxicity of metals depends on the chemistry of the modeled freshwater compartment, similarly to the dependence of acidification potential on regionally variant freshwater chemistry.The purpose of the study was to compare three recent Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) models in prioritizing substances and products from national emission inventories. The focus was on ecotoxic and human toxic impacts. The aim was to test model output against expert judgment on chemical risk assessment. An emission inventory was collected for Finland describing the year 2005. The inventory included publicly reported emissions to air and water and it was complemented by the emissions of tributyltin, benzene, and pesticides from research papers and statistics. The emissions were characterized with three LCIA models: IMPACT 2002+, ReCiPe, and USEtox and priority substances were identified. The results were connected to an environmentally extended input-output model to study priority products and supply chains. A comparison was made with two integrated assessments of the chemical status and human exposure in the Baltic region. The three assessed models presented very different priorities. In ecotoxicity, IMPACT2002+ and USEtox highlighted heavy metals while ReCiPe focused on tributyltin. The integrated assessment identified both groups. In human toxicity, IMPACT2002+ and the integrated assessment focused on organic air pollutants while USEtox and ReCiPe identified mainly metals. LCIA models can be used for priority setting in chemical emission control and consumption based analyses. However the models give differing prioritizations so care must be taken in model selection. The studied models differed from expert assessment mostly in substances which are bioaccumulative. Further studies in including bioaccumulation to LCIA models of toxic impact are recommended.Purpose USEtox (TM) (Rosenbaum et al. 2008) is a new model which can be used to calculate characterization factors for human and ecotoxicity impact categories used in life cycle assessment. The French ADEME-AFNOR (http://affichage-environnemental.afnor.org/) is currently considering this model to develop a new environmental labelling standard for consumer goods. The objective of this short study is to compare USEtox (TM) impact scores with critical dilution volume (CDV) scores from the European Ecolabel (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecolabel), a well-established tool widely used in Europe aiming at discriminating environmental friendly products. Material and methods The same range of chemicals (high scores to low scores) listed in both the USEtox (TM) database and the EU Ecolabel detergent ingredient database (DID-list) were used for the comparison. The DID-list is a reference list, which contains agreed and verified fate and ecotoxicity data. The ranking was made based on two different ranking parameters, one from each model: the environmental impact score from USEtox (TM) and the CDV from the EU Ecolabel. Additionally, a Spearman's rank correlation (rho) coefficient was calculated. Results and discussion Sixty-nine chemicals common in personal care and cleaning products were selected for the comparison between USEtox (TM) and EU Ecolabel methods. A "fair" agreement was found between the two models with a Spearman correlation coefficient rho of 0.74, but a significant number of chemicals was ranked rather differently. The presence of outliers (i.e., different ranking) may be explained by several factors, which include the use of discrete versus continuous values to estimate the substance's degradation constant. Another factor could be that the substances are grouped under classes in the DID-list, thus having average parameter values. The main factor though probably lays in the different sources of the physico-chemical, fate and ecotoxicity data within the two model databases and the different way they are used for the ranking parameter calculation. Conclusions Provided there is scientific consensus (and full transparency) on the raw data, both USEtox (TM) and EU Ecolabel methods are relevant for ranking chemicals based on their physico-chemical and toxicological properties, and therefore for calculating product environmental impact scores related to their hazard. However, the presence of a number of chemicals with different ranking scores creates the risk of inconsistent consumer product information when either the CDV (EU ecolabel) or USEtox (TM) (French "Affichage Environnemental") is used for environmental labelling. To date, and for sake of consistency with an existing and used labelling scheme, the CDV appears much easier to implement with less uncertainty to calculate ecotoxicity impact score of products.There is an increasing interest in the assessment and comparison of the environmental impacts of consumer products. Schemes such as Grenelle de l'Environnement, currently under development in France, aim to assess and communicate the life cycle impacts of consumer products. Freshwater ecotoxicity is one of the impact categories under consideration. This paper presents the results of a comparison of USEtox and critical dilution volume (CDV) approaches for assessing laundry products. The study focused only on the end-of-life stage, i.e. when the products are discharged after use into a sewage treatment plant and the environment. Two independent case studies were performed, in parallel, on three laundry product formats: powder, dilute liquid and concentrated liquid. For the USEtox assessment, new characterization factors (ChF) were calculated for all ingredients. The relative ranking of the laundry product formats was consistent across the two studies but not with the two methods. The dilute liquid format had the highest ecotoxicological impact potential with the CDV method, whereas the powder format was ranked highest with the USEtox method. A comparison was also made between published USEtox factors and those used in this work, suggesting that the published ones should be seen primarily as screening level values. While risk assessment is the recommended method for evaluating the safety of chemicals, the potential use of the CDV and USEtox methods for ranking products on their environmental ecotoxicity profile was evaluated. The two methods showed a lack of agreement, which can be attributed to their different conceptual approaches. The lack of concurrence between the methods raises the issue of whether either method is suitable for environmental product labelling. In addition, the current USEtox database does not cover many laundry ingredients, and furthermore, the USEtox method does not satisfactorily address inorganic chemicals, which are important ingredients in laundry products. The calculation of additional or revised ChFs for USEtox is a time-consuming task. In comparison, the CDV method covers most laundry ingredients, but its lack of comprehensive environmental fate modelling is an inherent weakness. A common limitation for both methods is the level of uncertainty in the impact scores, which can make it difficult to identify statistically significant differences between product scores.The purpose of this study is to document and assess the environmental impacts associated with two competing powder coating solutions using current life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and available data and to check whether there is a conflict between environmental performance and occupational health issues. Data have been gathered for the manufacture and application of the two different powder coatings. The case study is a cradle-to-gate study, using retrospective data. The data were entered into the SimaPro 7.2.4 LCA software and environmental impacts calculated using IPPC 2007, CML-IA and USEtox (TM) classification and characterisation methods. The USEtox methods were used both with and without interim factors, and this distinction was very important for the ranking of the alternatives. The study was performed using the functional unit: Surface treatment of the "foot-cross" of one H05 5300 office chair for 15 years (the lifetime of the chair), where the reference flow was 172 g of powder coating to fulfil this function. Literature about the known health effects associated with chemicals in the two solutions was also consulted in order to assess whether the main concerns driving the desire to replace the epoxy-based powder coating have been addressed and improved through using the polyester-based alternative. The life cycle environmental impacts evaluated show improvements in the potential environmental impacts analysed due to the substitute polyester-based coating. The results for human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity potentials are dependent on the inclusion of interim characterisation factors. Literature sources provide evidence of irritation and sensitisation effects associated with epoxy resin, but not for the polyester resin alternative. Substitution of the epoxy-based coating by a polyester-based alternative reduces the occupational health risk for workers coming into contact with the powder coating. The results show that this substitution has also led to reduced potential environmental impacts: global warming, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidant creation, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity, when the interim factors for some metals and organics are included in the USEtox calculations.In order to provide more sustainable fuels and address the depletion of oil as a feedstock, the automotive industry must adapt to a growing market share of alternative fuels. The environmental impacts of the automotive industry to date would suggest that these alternatives will be more environmentally friendly than petroleum-based fuels. This is nonetheless an assumption that cannot be confirmed without a systematic life cycle assessment (LCA). This article explores the feasibility of USEtox to provide information needed for automotive-fuel LCA. USEtox is tested on three energy pathways: gasoline, diesel fuel and hard coal electricity. The studied emissions are mainly volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and heavy metals. USEtox being dependent on the physicochemical and toxic properties of the studied species, a speciation of all VOCs emitted was performed. Moreover, since USEtox allows a distinction between rural and urban emissions, a geographical information system was developed in order to distinguish these emissions. Finally, because crude oil comes from various countries, characterization factors have been calculated for new regional compartments. Human health issues are caused by aldehydes and heavy metals while ecotoxicity is caused by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aldehydes and heavy metals. For organic compounds, a clear distinction is observed between urban and rural emissions while inorganic mechanisms are independent of this distinction. Among the three energy pathways, urban diesel is the more impacting. USEtox can be used for the assessment of automotive fuels, though it only addresses specific aspects of human health and ecotoxicity. The LCA practitioner must keep in mind that USEtox has to be used in conjunction with other indicators, such as ReCiPe or CML, to comprehensively cover the toxic and ecotoxic impacts of fuels. The level of analysis is dependent on the accuracy of the inventory, aldehydes and PAH playing a crucial role. Inorganic impacts are highly uncertain, contrary to organic compounds. The distinction between rural and urban emissions allows a better assessment of internal combustion engine-powered cars compared with electric and hybrid cars, which is especially useful for the automotive industry now that these technologies are clearly being developed.Indicators are needed to assess environmental sustainability of bioenergy systems. Effective indicators will help in the quantification of benefits and costs of bioenergy options and resource uses. We identify 19 measurable indicators for soil quality, water quality and quantity, greenhouse gases, biodiversity, air quality, and productivity, building on existing knowledge and on national and international programs that are seeking ways to assess sustainable bioenergy. Together, this suite of indicators is hypothesized to reflect major environmental effects of diverse feedstocks, management practices, and post-production processes. The importance of each indicator is identified. Future research relating to this indicator suite is discussed, including field testing, target establishment, and application to particular bioenergy systems. Coupled with such efforts, we envision that this indicator suite can serve as a basis for the practical evaluation of environmental sustainability in a variety of bioenergy systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We describe a novel solar-based process for the production of methanol from carbon dioxide and water. The system utilizes concentrated solar energy in a thermochemical reactor to reenergize CO2 into CO and then water gas shift (WGS) to produce syngas (a mixture of CO and H-2) to feed a methanol synthesis reactor. Aside from the thermochemical reactor, which is currently under development, the full system is based on well-established industrial processes and component designs. This work presents an initial assessment of energy efficiency and economic feasibility of this baseline configuration for an industrial-scale methanol plant. Using detailed sensitivity calculations, we determined that a break-even price of the methanol produced using this approach would be 1.22 USD/kg; which while higher than current market prices is comparable to other renewable-resource-based alternatives. We also determined that if solar power is the sole primary energy source, then an overall process energy efficiency (solar-to-fuel) of 7.1% could be achieved, assuming the solar collector, solar thermochemical reactor sub-system operates at 20% sunlight to chemical energy efficiency. This 7.1% system efficiency is significantly higher than can currently be achieved with photosynthesis-based processes, and illustrates the potential for solar thermochemical based strategies to overcome the resource limitations that arise for low-efficiency approaches. Importantly, the analysis here identifies the primary economic drivers as the high capital investment associated with the solar concentrator/reactor sub-system, and the high utility consumption for CO/CO2 separation. The solar concentrator/reactor sub-system accounts for more than 90% of the capital expenditure. A life cycle assessment verifies the opportunity for significant improvements over the conventional process for manufacturing methanol from natural gas in global warming potential, acidification potential and non-renewable primary energy requirement provided balance of plant utilities for the solar thermal process are also from renewable (solar) resources. The analysis indicates that a solar-thermochemical pathway to fuels has significant potential, and points towards future research opportunities to increase efficiency, reduce balance of plant utilities, and reduce cost from this baseline. Particularly, it is evident that there is much room for improvement in the development of a less expensive solar concentrator/reactor sub-system; an opportunity that will benefit from the increasing deployment of concentrated solar power (electricity). In addition, significant advances are achievable through improved separations, combined CO2 and H2O splitting, different end products, and greater process integration and distribution. The baseline investigation here establishes a methodology for identifying opportunities, comparison, and assessment of impact on the efficiency, lifecycle impact, and economics for advanced system designs.China and India are embarking on ambitious initiatives over the next decade to expand solar photovoltaic (PV) power in underserved regions. China proposes adding 1.6 GW of solar capacity by 2020, while India plans 12 GW in addition to 20 million solar lanterns by 2022. These technologies rely heavily on lead-acid batteries (LABs) for storage. China and India's lead mining, battery production, and recycling industries are relatively inefficient-33% and 22% environmental loss rates, respectively. Based on the quantity of lead batteries employed in existing PV systems, we estimate environmental lead emissions in China and India for new units installed under their solar energy goals. The average loss rates are 12 kg (China) and 8.5 kg (India) of lead lost per kW-year of installed PV capacity in these countries. The planned systems added in China and India will be responsible for 386 and 2030 kt of environmental lead loss, respectively, over their lifespan-equal to 1/3 of global lead production in 2009. Investments in environmental controls in lead smelting, battery manufacturing, and recycling industries along with improvements in battery take-back policies should complement deployment of solar PV systems to mitigate negative impacts of lead pollution. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we analyzed the effects of silvicultural treatments on carbon (C) budgets in Pinus taeda L. (loblolly pine) plantations in the southeastern United States. We developed a hybrid model that integrated a widely used growth and yield model for loblolly pine with published allometric and biometric equations to simulate in situ C pools. The model used current values of forest product conversion efficiencies and forest product decay rates to calculate ex situ C pools. Using the model to evaluate the effects of silvicultural management systems on C sequestration over a 200 year simulation period, we concluded that site productivity (site quality), which can be altered by silviculture and genetic improvement, was the major factor controlling stand C density. On low productivity sites, average net C stocks were about 35% lower than in stands with the default average site quality; in contrast, on high quality sites, C stocks were about 38% greater than average productivity stands. If woody products were incorporated into the accounting, thinning was C positive because of the larger positive effects on ex situ C storage, rather than smaller reductions on in situ C storage. The use of biological rotation age (18 years) was not suitable for C sequestration, and extended rotation ages were found to increase stand C stock density. Stands with an 18-year-rotation length had 7% lower net C density than stands with a 22-year-rotation length; stands with a 35-year-rotation length had only 4% more C than stands harvested at age 22 years. The C sequestered in woody products was an important pool of C storage, accounting for similar to 34% of the average net C stock. Changes in decomposition rate, associated with possible environmental changes resulting from global climate change, affected C storage capacity of the forest. When decay rate was reduced to 10% or increased to 20%, the C stock in the dead pool (forest floor and coarse woody debris) was reduced about 11.8 MgC.ha(-1) or increased about 13.3 MgC.ha(-1), respectively, compared to the average decay rate of 15%. The C emissions due to silvicultural and harvest activities were small (similar to 1.6% of the gross C stock) compared to the magnitude of total stand C stock. The C model, based on empirical and biological relationships, appears appropriate for use in regional C stock assessments for loblolly pine plantation ecosystems in the southern U.S.The USEtox model was developed in a scientific consensus process involving comparison of and harmonization between existing environmental multimedia fate models. USEtox quantitatively models the continuum from chemical emission to freshwater ecosystem toxicity via chemical-specific characterization factors (CFs) for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). This work provides understanding of the key mechanisms and chemical parameters influencing fate in the environment and impact on aquatic ecosystems. USEtox incorporates a matrix framework for multimedia modeling, allowing separation of fate, exposure, and ecotoxicity effects in the determination of an overall CF. Current best practices, such as incorporation of intermittent rain and effect factors (EF) based on substance toxicity across species, are implemented in the model. The USEtox database provides a dataset of over 3,000 organic chemicals, of which approximately 2,500 have freshwater EFs. Freshwater characterization factors for these substances, with a special focus on a subset of chemicals with characteristic properties, were analyzed to understand the contributions of fate, exposure, and effect on the overall CFs. The approach was based on theoretical interpretation of the multimedia model components as well as multidimensional graphical analysis. For direct emission of a substance to water, the EF strongly controls freshwater ecotoxicity, with a range of up to 10 orders of magnitude. In this release scenario, chemical-specific differences in environmental fate influence the CF for freshwater emissions by less than 2 orders of magnitude. However, for an emission to air or soil, the influence of the fate is more pronounced. Chemical partitioning properties between water, air, and soil may drive intermedia transfer, which may be limited by the often uncertain, media-specific degradation half-life. Intermedia transfer may be a function of landscape parameters as well; for example, direct transfer from air to freshwater is limited by the surface area of freshwater. Overall, these altered fate factors may decrease the CF up to 8 orders of magnitude. This work brings new clarity to the relative contributions of fate and freshwater ecotoxicity to the calculation of CFs. In concert with the USEtox database, which provides the most extensive compilation of CFs to date, these findings enable those undertaking LCIA to understand and contextualize existing and newly calculated CFs.The aim of this paper is to provide science-based consensus and guidance for health effects modelling in comparative assessments based on human exposure and toxicity. This aim is achieved by (a) describing the USEtox (TM) exposure and toxicity models representing consensus and recommended modelling practice, (b) identifying key mechanisms influencing human exposure and toxicity effects of chemical emissions, (c) extending substance coverage. The methods section of this paper contains a detailed documentation of both the human exposure and toxic effects models of USEtox (TM), to determine impacts on human health per kilogram substance emitted in different compartments. These are considered as scientific consensus and therefore recommended practice for comparative toxic impact assessment. The framework of the exposure model is described in details including the modelling of each exposure pathway considered (i.e. inhalation through air, ingestion through (a) drinking water, (b) agricultural produce, (c) meat and milk, and (d) fish). The calculation of human health effect factors for cancer and non-cancer effects via ingestion and inhalation exposure respectively is described. This section also includes discussions regarding parameterisation and estimation of input data needed, including route-to-route and acute-to-chronic extrapolations. For most chemicals in USEtox (TM), inhalation, above-ground agricultural produce, and fish are the important exposure pathways with key driving factors being the compartment and place of emission, partitioning, degradation, bioaccumulation and bioconcentration, and dietary habits of the population. For inhalation, the population density is the key factor driving the intake, thus the importance to differentiate emissions in urban areas, except for very persistent and mobile chemicals that are taken in by the global population independently from their place of emission. The analysis of carcinogenic potency (TD50) when volatile chemicals are administrated to rats and mice by both inhalation and an oral route suggests that results by one route can reasonably be used to represent another route. However, we first identify and mark as interim chemicals for which observed tumours are directly related to a given exposure route (e.g. for nasal or lung, or gastrointestinal cancers) or for which absorbed fraction by inhalation and by oral route differ greatly. A documentation of the human exposure and toxicity models of USEtox (TM) is provided, and key factors driving the human health characterisation factor are identified. Approaches are proposed to derive human toxic effect factors and expand the number of chemicals in USEtox (TM), primarily by extrapolating from an oral route to exposure in air (and optionally acute-to-chronic). Some exposure pathways (e.g. indoor inhalation, pesticide residues, dermal exposure) will be included in a later stage. USEtox (TM) is applicable in various comparative toxicity impact assessments and not limited to LCA.The impact assessment of chemical compounds in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) requires a vast amount of data on the properties of the chemical compounds being assessed. The purpose of the present study is to explore statistical options for reduction of the data demand associated with characterisation of chemical emissions in LCIA and ERA. Based on a USEtox (TM) characterisation factor set consisting of 3,073 data records, multi-dimensional bilinear models for emission compartment specific fate characterisation of chemical emissions were derived by application of Partial Least Squares Regression. Two sets of meta-models were derived having 63% and 75% of the minimum data demand of the full USEtox (TM) characterisation model. The meta-models were derived by grouping the dependent variables, the fate factors obtained from the USEtox (TM) data set and then selecting the independent chemical input parameters from the minimum data set, needed for characterisation in USEtox (TM), according to general availability, importance and relevance for fate factor prediction. Each approach (63% and 75% of the minimum data set needed for characterisation in USEtox (TM)) yielded 66 meta-models. In general, good correlation was obtained between the observed fate factors (those fate factors included in the USEtox (TM) data set) and the predicted fate factors (those fate factors obtained by the meta-models), and the validation regression coefficients were all in the range (R (2) = 0.41-0.96). The lower end of the regression coefficient range represents those few emission scenarios were the selected independent variables did not contain appropriate information. Hence, most meta-models yielded fate factors in good correlation with the observed fate factors and yielded correlation coefficients in the higher end of the range during validation. In general, the more data-demanding approach yielded the largest regression coefficients. The applied statistical approach illustrates that it is possible to derive meta-models from full fate and exposure models and that it is also possible to tailor the data demand of these meta-models according to various data and emission preferences. The results obtained in the study reveal that not all emission scenarios included in USEtox (TM) are exploiting the minimum data set equally and the minimum data set may thus in many cases contain underused data.Spatial differentiation is a topic of increasing interest within life cycle assessment (LCA). For chemical-related impacts, in this paper, we evaluate the relative influence of substance properties and of environmental characteristics on the variability in the environmental fate of chemicals using an advanced, spatially resolved model. The goal of this study is to explore spatial distribution and spatial variability of organic chemicals, assessing the variability of the removal rate from air with a multimedia spatially explicit model Multimedia Assessment of Pollutant Pathways in the Environment (MAPPE) Global with a resolution of 1 x 1A degrees. This provides basis to help identify chemicals for which spatial differentiation will be important in LCAs, including whether differentiation will have added benefits over the use of global generic default values, such as those provided by the USEtox model. A methodology was developed to explore spatial distribution and spatial variability of the fate of organic chemicals. Firstly, guidelines were developed to assign a hypothetical spatial distribution to chemicals which were clustered on the basis of their physical-chemical properties and persistence. Secondly, a test set of 34 representative organic chemicals was used to run MAPPE Global and USEtox model. The results of MAPPE Global were used to highlight spatial variability of removal rate from air amongst different chemicals and their related patterns of variability. A comparison between USEtox and MAPPE Global removal rates from air was performed for each chemical in order to highlight whether spatial differentiation is relevant for the assessment or not. Hypothetical spatial distribution of chemical fate was assigned to each combination of physical-chemical properties and persistence. Besides, spatial variability of removal rates from air was assessed running MAPPE model for the test set of 34 chemicals. The variability of results spans from less than one to over four orders of magnitude, showing differences in variability for each cluster of chemicals. Furthermore, different patterns of spatial variability are associated to each cluster of chemical as the spatial pattern is driven by a specific component of the overall removal rate. The comparison between MAPPE and USEtox removal rates from air shows that for 14 out of 34 chemicals within the test set, USEtox values are close to the median of the results of MAPPE. For 11 out of 34, USEtox underestimates the removal rate from air and the results are close to the fifth percentile of MAPPE ones. This is mainly related to how wet/dry deposition and gas exchange are accounted in the two models. This work has made further progress towards understanding and implementing how to develop a tailored-made guidance for assessing spatial differentiation in LCA. Results on spatial distribution and spatial variability of chemical are presented as a basis for defining patterns of variability and supporting further development of spatial scenarios and archetypes to be used for life cycle impact assessment. This provides insights into whether using generic global default factors is likely to result in high uncertainty depending on the type of chemical, as well as whether pattern-specific factors would reduce the uncertainty. Uncertainties related to spatial differentiation are presented and discussed.A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on winter wheat, based on real agricultural practices databases, on a sample divided into four production scenarios. The main objectives of this study are (1) to assess the environmental impact of winter wheat, using an LCA covering field practices, and the transport and storage of grain until it is sold to a miller; (2) to use the USEtox model (Rosenbaum et al. in Int J Life Cycle Assess 13:532-546, 2008) to assess the part of the total freshwater ecotoxicity impact due to pesticide use, its variability among plots, and to identify the active ingredients with the strongest impact; (3) and with the help of fungicide, insecticide, herbicide experts, to identify active ingredients to replace these high-impact pesticides and estimate the effect of such a substitution on total freshwater ecotoxicity. InVivo (the authors' company) is a French union of agricultural cooperatives that produces and sells, amongst other products and services, decision-making tools to help farmers manage fertilization and pesticide applications. With the help of cooperatives and with the help of these tools, pedologic, climatologic and agronomic (in particular for fertilization and pesticide applications practices) data can be collected for each agricultural plot of a farm. The main conclusions of this study are that : (1) when considering freshwater ecotoxicity impacts, pesticide use is predominant on the whole life cycle of winter wheat, (2) there is a huge scattering of the results observed between fields when compared to the low scattering of the results between the four production scenarios, (3) it is feasible, with the USEtox model, to identify the active ingredients with the strongest impact and to potentially decrease this average impact by 50% by substituting only three active ingredients. A further step to improve ecotoxicity assessment in LCA would be to develop a model to better estimate the pesticide emissions pattern on field, taking into account pedo-climatic conditions and farmers' practices.This study examines energy use patterns and the relationship between energy inputs and yield for canola production in Golestan province of Iran. Data used in this study were obtained from 130 randomly selected canola farms using a face to face survey. The results revealed that total energy of 17,786.36 MJ ha(-1) was required for canola production and fertilizer, diesel fuel and electricity were the main energy consuming inputs. Energy use efficiency and energy productivity were 3.02 and 0.12 kg MJ(-1), respectively. Moreover, in specifying a functional relationship the Cobb Douglas production function was applied and the results showed that machinery, fertilizer, diesel fuel and water for irrigation energies significantly contributed to yield. Also, the marginal physical productivity (MPP) technique was applied to analyze the sensitivity of energy inputs. It was found that, canola production had more sensitivity on machinery, fertilizer and water for irrigation energies; so that an additional use of 1 MJ from each of the machinery, total fertilizer and water for irrigation would lead to an increase in production by 0.93, 0.61 and 0.24 kg, respectively. However, electricity and seed energies were contributed negatively to yield, which may result in inverse effect on yield and impose risks to the environment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment was carried out using IMPACT2002+ to estimate the environmental impact of coated white board production, which is common in China. Normalized results showed that the potential impacts of respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, global warming, and non-renewable energy had a dominant contributions to overall environmental impact. Specifically, emissions from chemical and energy production processes exhibited higher potential impact (more than 80% of the total contribution) on the environment than that of emissions generated from transport, landfill, wastewater treatment, and paper plants infrastructure. Energy recovery from black liquor and energy generation based on natural gas are key factors in reducing overall environmental potential impact. The current paper presents improvements on the environmental performance of a coated white board production site in China. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need for environmental protection and increasing demands for natural resources are forcing companies to reconsider their business models and restructure their supply chain operations. Scholars and proactive companies have begun to create more sustainable supply chains. What has not been fully addressed is how organizations deal with short-term pressures to remain economically viable while implementing these newly modeled supply chains. In this study, we use theory-building through case studies to answer the question: how do organizations balance short-term profitability and long-term environmental sustainability when making supply chain decisions under conditions of uncertainty? We present five sets of propositions that explain how exemplars in green supply chain management make decisions and balance short and long term objectives. We also identify four environmental postures that help explain the decisions organizations make when dealing with strategic trade-offs among the economic, environmental and social elements of the triple-bottom-line. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In most of the architecture and construction firms service life planning is not considered in the process of architectural design, and neither is life cycle assessment; and even on occasions, sustainable design is neither taken into account in the processes of building creation because it is complex and specialists are needed to implement it. The objective of the present document is to approach this topic from the sustainable design viewpoint and to regard it accordingly, analyzing several concepts related to service life and durability of the building and the strategies the architect or constructor must follow in order to create totally of partially sustainable buildings, which prolong its service life in optimal conditions of performance, functionality and comfort, thus decreasing costs and environmental impacts during its service life. It is concluded that it is of the utmost importance to apply these models, methods and strategies of environmental design to attain the efficacy of the building, mainly on the stage of life service related to use, operation and maintenance of the building, which is the stage that impacts and pollutes the environment the most.While significant advances in our understanding of the behavior of engineered nanoparticles in the environment continue, there remains a need to engage the nanoparticle research community directly in the development and evaluation of environmentally benign nanoparticles to ensure that nanomaterial-based industries emerge as tools for sustainability rather than environmental liabilities. Current research efforts aimed at understanding the environmental implications of nanotechnology emphasize existing groups of nanoparticles and products already in commercial distribution. While this is clearly necessary, this approach fails to identify and address the many tradeoffs associated with product performance and environmental quality. We believe this to be a critical gap in the ongoing exploration of nanostructured materials and their properties and applications. We posit that a number of issues are not being holistically addressed, including resource availability and allocation, manufacturing energy requirements and embodied energy, material efficiency, environmental properties of nanomaterials and nanoproducts, and waste generation. An interdisciplinary approach to research, based on the life cycle paradigm and devoted to the identification, investigation, synthesis, testing, and analysis of groups of new, more environmentally conscious nanoparticles is needed. (C) 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, WeinheimStoring municipal solid waste (MSW) in landfills is the oldest and still the primary waste management strategy in many countries. Russia is the third largest methane (CH4) emitter country after USA and China, representing 5% of total global CH4 emissions from waste landfilling. Due to high economical growth, the amount of waste generated in Russia has risen sharply over the last ten years. However, waste management in Russia is mainly based on landfilling. In order to design an optimal MSW utilization system considering various aspects related to sustainable MSW management, a linear programming model was introduced for this research. The performance of the proposed MSW utilization system in the target area has been evaluated in light of energy, economic, and environmental (3Es) aspects, such as system net cost, annual energy generated from the waste, and the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the system. St. Petersburg city was considered as the target area for the present analysis. The results show that the introduction of the proposed MSW system with energy recovery from waste along with a high level of material recovery has energy, environmental and economic benefits compared to the conventional treatment system. This paper emphasizes the importance of introducing waste treatment methods as an alternative to landfilling, and to improve recycling activities in Russia.The objective of this review is to summarize research efforts and case studies to date of the environmental impacts from dairy processing. The pervasiveness of greenhouse gas emission, water use, consumer waste, and other environmental impacts of dairy are described. An outline of the method of choice, the life cycle assessment, for conducting research and deciding appropriate allocation of the impacts is provided. Specific research examples in dairy processing highlight how the representative final product is associated with environmental impacts to air, water, and land. The primary conclusion from the study was the usefulness of life cycle assessment methodology and the need for further research due to limited studies, variable data, and the magnitude of environmental impact.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a very important tool for the analysis of a process/system from its cradle to grave. This technique is very useful in the estimation of energy usage and environmental load by a product/system. The demand of sugar is very high in the world market. So sugar industry is the leading industry, which produces sugar with the help of sugarcane mostly. In sugar industry, different sizes of sugar crystals and also some by-products such as bagasse, molasses, filter cake and ash are produced. Out of these, some are used an input resource in other plants like power plant and distillery for optimal utilization of waste produced in sugar industry. The outputs of power plant (electricity and steam) used in mills, distilleries, residences of sugar industry and supply to grid for sell. The molasses is the waste of sugar which is used for the production of ethanol, so molasses is a by-product of sugar industry. LCA and waste management methods are very helpful to analyse and reduce the environmental effects. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment is an objective method evaluating the environment pressure of industrial products, process and activities. In this paper, the life cycle assessment method was used to investigate the energy consumption and environmental burden of acetylene production with partial oxidation technology with natural gas. Through analyzed, the result shows the impact of acidification potential was 93 % in the overall impact. The life cycle impact assessment of each pollutant showed that the direct emission of naphthalene is the main sources' of environmental burden and the share is 51.02 %. The impact of carbon dioxide and COD were in the second position, which shared 16.75 and 14.79 %, respectively.Process design can be influenced most in the early phases. Here, screening methods play a major role, as they reduce the complexity of a system studied by making a pre-selection from a set of alternatives available. The remaining alternatives can be analyzed in more detail in the subsequent design process, which increases design efficiency. The present paper focuses on a multi-stage screening approach for use in the early process development phase in particular. This approach is based on the use of non-compensatory decision support methods that are transferred to life cycle assessment. It may be divided into a first stage, in which the decision matrix used is developed on the basis of decision analysis principles, and a second stage, in which the decision matrix developed is further processed using non-compensatory decision support methods. An example of such a method is the pareto-dominance analysis applied here. The approach proposed is validated by application to the process of biomass gasification in supercritical water, which is being developed at the moment. Here, screening is performed to identify those life cycles, the potential environmental impacts of which contribute most to the total impacts. Attributes are selected in line with the requirement of a simple, but still sufficient modeling of these environmental impacts. By pareto-dominance analysis, emissions from the gasification of sewage sludge, the pre-chain of natural gas production, and from the construction of the supercritical gasification plant are identified to dominate over the remaining life cycles studied. Apart from the predominating alternatives, it is of particular importance to know the dominated alternatives. Due to their small shares in the result, no or only a small expenditure is needed to identify improvement potentials of these alternatives. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper is to assess the environmental effectiveness of a strategic measure aimed at resource productivity enhancement. The cement industry has been identified as a relevant sector for this global issue, since the related production process enables the use of waste in partial substitution of raw materials and in substitution of traditional fuels. The analysis of the cement production sector in Italy has been here performed, investigating the recovery of energy from waste through co-incineration. In terms of air emissions, the emission performances of cement kilns appear independent from the use of alternative fuels at the percentages usually employed. However, in order to measure the cleanliness of a production system, systematic analysis with global perspective is needed. For this aim, the principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) have been used for a case study analysis of an Italian active plant using an amount of recovered plastics as an alternative fuel resource. The improvement on the investigated process has been quantitatively measured as a way for cleaner production, first in terms of gross energy requirement, and then through an environmental performance comparison with a sector benchmark. The analysis has highlighted the benefits on the global environmental balance for the practice of co-incineration in the cement production process. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to contribute to the analysis of the environmental impacts deriving from common aspects of the service sector activity and to identify auxiliary actions and hot spots in order to improve the environmental performance of offices used for educational purposes. In that aspect, a screening life cycle assessment (LCA) for a university office-workstation of Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, was performed with the application of the SimaPro LCA software, and the Impact 2002+ method with fifteen impact categories for the interpretation of results. Findings from this research indicated that energy consumption for the powering electronic appliances was the key factor affecting most of the environmental impact categories examined. The impact categories most seriously affected by the office life cycle were the emissions of respiratory inorganics (39%), global warming (31%) and non-renewable energy use (27%). The saving of the energy consumed due to standby mode could lead to a reduction of 2.4% of the total energy consumption in the office in a yearly basis with proportional positive influence in all the respective impact categories. Additionally, utilization of solar energy through photovoltaic panels could lead to a reduction close to 90% for a number of impact categories. Therefore, actions and strategies for improving the environmental performance of academic offices should focus on the reduction of energy consumption. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper sets out to describe the environmental impact assessment for wood charcoal briquettes produced from eucalyptus wood in Brazil, with specific reference to those impacts associated with Global Warming Potential. To achieve that objective, the work was undertaken in accordance with ISO 14040 "Environmental management - Life cycle assessment - Principles and framework" which describes essential LCA characteristics and good practices. Charcoal briquettes are produced from two basic raw materials, charcoal fines and starch. The fines result from the production of charcoal from sustainably managed eucalyptus plantations. Starch is extracted from babacu pulp in the Amazon region. Multi -output processes were allocated based on income from the different by-products. The results showed that more than 90% of incoming CO(2) was due to biomass production for charcoal, and the remainder to starch biomass production. Based on Brazilian data, as well as information provided by the GaBi4.3 database, it turned out that supplying the energy content of 1 kg of briquettes resulted in the sequestration of 3.9690 kg of CO(2), i.e. around 4 kg of CO(2) per kg of briquettes produced. CO(2) emissions throughout the briquette production process are totally compensated for by the environmental quality of the raw materials used. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Utrecht University has conducted a pilot sustainability assessment for the executive board of the chemistry program ACTS (Advanced Chemical Technologies for Sustainability) of the Netherlands' Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). These assessments represent prospective, i.e. 'ex-ante' studies on the production of caprolactam by an improved catalyst and on different hydrogen storage options (i.e. compressed and liquefied hydrogen, storage in metal hydrides and storage in a metal organic framework). The pilot sustainability assessments followed the principles of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), thereby focusing on non-renewable energy use (NREU) and climate change (GWP100). It was found that caprolactam with the novel catalyst has lower impacts than petrochemical caprolactam production from benzene but higher impacts than bio-based caprolactam produced via fermentation. Regarding hydrogen storage, it was found that compressed and liquid hydrogen have the highest impacts. The impacts of the metal hydrides and the metal organic frameworks show by far the lowest environmental impacts. The main reason is that these materials can be reused up to 1500 times (refilling of tank), while for compressing and liquefaction of hydrogen energy is needed each time a tank needs to be refilled. The study demonstrates the successful application of ex-ante technology assessment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The effect of the integration of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology in a sugar ethanol factory on the environmental profile/footprint of the products (sugar, ethanol, electricity) is evaluated. The sugarcane is the primary feedstock and sugar, ethanol and electricity are the main products of the system, where the functional unit is defined as 9.86 ton/h of sugar, 2.195 ton/h of hydrated ethanol (96% w/w) and 847 kWh of electricity. A detailed set of material and energy inputs and outputs was obtained from a local factory and was completed using simulation data by Aspen Plus (R). The environmental impacts (greenhouse gases and air pollution), exergy efficiency and a renewability parameter have been considered as indicators for the comparative assessment with conventional sugar, ethanol and electricity production technologies. The results show that the use of a SOFC technology involves a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (52-55%) and non-renewable resources (60-64%) when compared with the conventional integrated sugar and ethanol plant. The higher renewability index (0.93) and exergy efficiency (38%) are noticed for the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell technology integrated in the sugar ethanol factory than conventional sugar ethanol plant. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A range of new nanomaterials to replace the active materials in lithium ion batteries are currently being studied and employed in an attempt to overcome various performance limitations of previous technologies. Nanomaterial production and manufacturing techniques appear to fit into a general trend towards more energy intensive production methods for high-tech goods. This does not necessarily imply an increase in lifecycle energy use; artefacts that consume or transform energy during use could possibly regain this increased initial input via increased efficiency in use. In particular, this paper highlights that larger gains could be possible if the artefact in question allows a given service to be provided via an alternative and more efficient system entirely. The lifecycle energy efficiencies of lithium ion batteries constructed from several new advanced materials are analysed with several different system boundaries. Although nanomaterials require more energy input to produce, the implications of nanomaterials for energy flows in the use phase (i.e. driving), and higher levels such as the architecture of future transport fuel production systems are much larger in magnitude than the initial lifecycle inputs for producing the materials in question. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) balances in production and use of molasses-based ethanol (EtOH) in Nepal. The total life cycle emissions of EtOH is estimated at 432.5 kgCO(2eq) m(-3) ethanol (i.e. 20.4 gCO(2eq) MJ(-1)). Avoided emissions are 76.6% when conventional gasoline is replaced by molasses derived ethanol. A sensitivity analysis was performed to verify the impact of variations in material and energy flows, and allocation ratios in the GHG balances. Market prices of sugar and molasses, amount of nitrogen-fertilizers used in sugarcane production, and sugarcane yield per hectare turn out to be important parameters for the GHG balances estimation. Sales of the surplus electricity derived from bagasse could reduce emissions by replacing electricity produced in diesel power plants. Scenario analysis on two wastewater processes for treatment of effluents obtained from ethanol conversion has also been carried out. If wastewater generated from ethanol conversion unit is treated in pond stabilization (PS) treatment process, GHG emissions alarmingly increase to a level of 4032 kgCO(2eq) m(-3) ethanol. Results also show that the anaerobic digestion process (ADP) and biogas recovery without leakages can significantly avoid GHG emissions, and improve the overall emissions balance of EtOH in Nepal. At a 10% biogas leakage, life cycle emissions is 1038 kgCO(2eq) m(-3) ethanol which corresponds to 44% avoided emissions compared to gasoline. On the other hand, total emissions surpass the level of its counterpart (i.e. gasoline) when the leakage of biogas exceeds 23.4%. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to two smallholder milk production systems in Peru in order to evaluate the environmental burden of milk produced in each. An Andean highland milk production system where livestock feeding is restricted to permanent pastures supplemented with on farm grown ryegrass-clover was opposed to a coastal system with dairy cows fed a diet consisting of fodder maize and purchased concentrate. Milk production levels (kg/cow day) differed considerably with 2.57 for the highland and 19.54 for the coastal system. A Life Cycle Inventory was calculated for the functional unit of 1 kg energy corrected milk (ECM) and the environmental impacts global warming, acidification and eutrophication were estimated for 1 kg ECM, 1 ha and 1 animal, considering the multi-functionality of the system. The highland system was characterized by a high land use (23.1 m(2)a/kg ECM vs. 1.71 m(2)a/kg ECM at the coast). Irrigation water and energy were on the other hand used to a much higher amount at the coast (7291 l/kg ECM and 8791 MJ/kg ECM, respectively) than in the highlands (848 l/kg ECM and 0.20 MJ/kg ECM). Global warming potential, acidification and eutrophication were higher for 1 kg ECM produced in the highlands than at the coast by 10.6 kg CO2 equivalents, 6.58 g sulfur dioxide equivalents and 10.63 g phosphate equivalents, respectively. Nevertheless, 5220 kg CO2 equivalents more were emitted per animal at the coast than in the highlands. Also acidification and eutrophication were estimated to be on average 6 and 4 times higher at the coast compared to the highlands when expressed for the functional units of 1 ha and 1 animal. Results: Whereas livestock is mainly responsible for impacts on the environment in the highlands, at the coast both livestock related emissions and forage cultivation play an important role. Furthermore CO2 releases from soybean cultivations heavily contribute to total emissions. Sensitivity analysis indicates that for dairy systems relying on crop by-products as feed the choice of the allocation method is a crucial point in a LCA study. Based on the results of this study, strategies in order to reduce the environmental burden of milk production should focus on an increase of production levels and a reduction of methane emissions from enteric fermentation in the highlands and a modification of the concentrate components replacing soya as the protein source at the coast. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Australian Stocks and Flows Framework (ASFF) was developed to assess the biophysical longevity of the Australian economy, with top-down coverage of the whole physical economy based on bottom-up process-based detail. The ASFF employs mass-balance identities associated with stock and flow dynamics throughout the national economy and associated interaction with the environment. We show that the ASFF shares common features with complementary approaches, including Mass Flow Analysis, Physical Input Output Tables, and Life Cycle Analysis, but is distinctly different from these because the biophysical processes throughout the economy and environment are represented explicitly. The detailed physical processes modelled have a strong empirical basis, being calibrated with six or more decades of historical data. Given the coverage of the entire economy in physical terms, it provides for many subject specific analyses such as water, energy, climate change, etc, which can also be assessed in integrated analysis of scenarios to 2100 in order to highlight conflicts, trade-offs, and synergies. The ASFF can be applied and adapted to represent specific interests in more detail and context, as demonstrated by multiple applications of the ASFF. Overall, it is designed to explore the possible trajectories of the national economic system over the long term within irrefutable biophysical constraints, and thereby inform development of appropriate policy. The open biophysical nature of the ASFF is intended for exploration and learning, rather than being normative or policy prescriptive. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The necessary reduction of the human footprint demanded by Sustainable Development can be measured by the entropy flow of the society to the environment. The classic tools of process evaluation as e.g. exergetic or life cycle analysis are able to evaluate existing solutions. But their use during the design phase is quite limited because of lacking information about the system and its components. They may be helpful for evolutionary development strategies on a long term only. But reversible process structures can be used as benchmarks already in the conceptual design phase to introduce the demands of the second law. It can be shown that basic human demands on housing, mobility, communication, and infrastructure and industry can be principally supplied by reversible process structures. Because the process logic is a virtual one, real processes can be engineered with a reversible structure however its components produce irreversible entropy flows. Hybrid cars are the most common examples here. The use of exergetic efficiencies allows a transfer of the results of reversible structures to real technology easily. The here presented methodology of sustainable engineering can be summarized by three design rules as using reversible structures, considering technology by exergetic efficiencies, and minimizing components' entropy export. The still increasing utilization of electricity in upcoming technologies is very helpful for introducing reversible structures within hybrid technologies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emerging technologies involving chemical catalytic processes to remove nitrate from water have proven efficient and cost-effective. However, the environmental impact of noble metals and metals at the nanoscale used in these processes has become a topic of serious concern. The aim of this research was to develop a system for evaluating the environmental impact of technologies associated with Pd-based catalytic denitrification. This research performed life cycle assessment (LCA) based on a detailed analysis of the technologies to examine the environmental burden associated with all stages of the removal process. We then applied analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the weights of various burdens. We implemented the proposed system to determine the relative environmental friendliness of 5 processes used for the removal of nitrate. These five methods use Cu-Pd/TNTs, H-2 + Pd-Cu/TiO2, Pd-Cu/TiO2, Pd/ZnO, and Pd-Cu/FeO as catalysts for the removal of nitrate. The results indicate that the use of palladium and the consumption of electricity have a major environmental impact: while the use of Pd-Cu/TiO2 as catalyst was the most environmentally friendly of the five processes evaluated. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over 13 million ha of former cropland are enrolled in the US Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), providing well-recognized bio-diversity, water quality, and carbon (C) sequestration benefits that could be lost on conversion back to agricultural production. Here we provide measurements of the greenhouse gas consequences of converting CRP land to continuous corn, corn-soybean, or perennial grass for biofuel production. No-till soybeans preceded the annual crops and created an initial carbon debt of 10.6 Mg CO(2) equivalents (CO(2)e)center dot ha(-1) that included agronomic inputs, changes in C stocks, altered N(2)O and CH(4) fluxes, and foregone C sequestration less a fossil fuel offset credit. Total debt, which includes future debt created by additional changes in soil C stocks and the loss of substantial future soil C sequestration, can be constrained to 68 Mg CO(2)e center dot ha(-1) if subsequent crops are under permanent no-till management. If tilled, however, total debt triples to 222 Mg CO(2)e center dot ha(-1) on account of further soil C loss. Projected C debt repayment periods under no-till management range from 29 to 40 y for corn-soybean and continuous corn, respectively. Under conventional tillage repayment periods are three times longer, from 89 to 123 y, respectively. Alternatively, the direct use of existing CRP grasslands for cellulosic feedstock production would avoid C debt entirely and provide modest climate change mitigation immediately. Incentives for permanent no till and especially permission to harvest CRP biomass for cellulosic biofuel would help to blunt the climate impact of future CRP conversion.The photo-Fenton process under solar irradiation (SPF) was coupled to an aerobic activated sludge biological treatment carried out in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR). The effectiveness of the coupling for the treatment of aqueous solutions polluted with non-biodegradable alpha-methyl-phenylglycine (alpha-MPG) was evaluated. Respirometry was chosen as alternative to other conventional tests (BOD(5)/COD, Zahn-Wellens, Microtox (R)) for the quantification of both biodegradability and toxic/inhibitory effect of the polluted water along the SPF time, the final goal being the determination of the suitable reaction time for chemical-biological coupling. The nitrification of the aqueous solution during the biological treatment, a process that might take place at the same time than the oxidation of organic matter and endogenous respiration, was evaluated along the different SBR cycles. Finally, a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of SPF and an integrated chemical-biological coupling (SPF-SBR) was carried out in order to identify the best alternative, from an environmental point of view, for the treatment of biorecalcitrant pollutants. The determination of the main impact factors of the biological treatment was also carried out. The results of the bench-scale study indicate that both the SPF and SPF-SBR treatments are environmentally friendly and effective alternative strategies for the treatment of water loaded with non-biodegradable compounds. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of algae as a feedstock for biodiesel production is a rapidly growing industry, in the United States and globally. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is presented that compares various methods, either proposed or under development, for algal biodiesel to inform the most promising pathways for sustainable full-scale production. For this analysis, the system is divided into five distinct process steps: (1) microalgae cultivation, (2) harvesting and/or dewatering, (3) lipid extraction, (4) conversion (transesterification) into biodiesel, and (5) byproduct management. A number of technology options are considered for each process step and various technology combinations are assessed for their life cycle environmental impacts. The optimal option for each process step is selected yielding a best case scenario, comprised of a flat panel enclosed photobioreactor and direct transesterification of algal cells with supercritical methanol. For a functional unit of 10 GJ biodiesel, the best case production system yields a cumulative energy demand savings of more than 65 GJ, reduces water consumption by 585 m(3) and decreases greenhouse gas emissions by 86% compared to a base case scenario typical of early industrial practices, highlighting the importance of technological innovation in algae processing and providing guidance on promising production pathways.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate the environmental impact of an oxidative chromium recovery method from tannery sludge, in comparison with the usual landfilling process. Three improvement options (water reduction, byproduct use and anaerobic sludge digestion) were considered. The results showed that the proposed chromium recovery process would be better environmentally than conventional landfilling in all the evaluated impact categories if the amount of chromium recovered was 43 kg per ton of sludge. This amount could be recovered if the chromium concentration was about 20 times higher than that considered in this study. Alternatively, a lower chromium concentration would produce a better result if the recovery method was optimized and implemented at industrial rather than laboratory scale, and if more accurate data were provided on environmental credits for avoiding the chromium production process. Thus, the recovery method is environmentally beneficial when tannery sludge contains a chromium concentration of about 100,000 ppm. According to the literature, such concentrations are not unusual. The results could serve as the basis for further environmental improvements in chromium recovery and tannery sludge management and should be used in decision-making processes, especially for end-of-pipe treatments. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Food consumption causes, together with mobility, shelter and the use of electrical products, most life cycle impacts of consumption. Meat and dairy are among the highest contributors to environmental impacts from food consumption. A healthier diet might have less environmental impacts. Using the E3IOT environmentally extended input output database developed in an EU study on Environmental Impacts of Products (EIPRO), this paper estimates the difference in impacts between the European status quo and three simulated diet baskets, i.e. a pattern according to universal dietary recommendations, the same pattern with reduced meat consumption, and a 'Mediterranean' pattern with reduced meat consumption. Production technologies, protein and energy intake were kept constant. Though this implies just moderate dietary shifts, impact reductions of up to 8% were possible in reduced meat scenarios. The slightly changed food costs do not lead to significant first order rebound effects. Second order rebounds were estimated by applying the CAPRI partial equilibrium model. This analysis showed that European meat production sector will most likely respond by higher exports to compensate for losses on the domestic meat market. Higher impact reductions probably would need more drastic diet changes. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A mixed-integer linear optimization formulation is developed to analyze the United States energy supply chain network for the hybrid coal, biomass, and natural gas to liquids (CBGTL) facilities. Each state is discretized into octants and each octant centroid serves as a potential location of one facility. The model selects the optimal locations of CBGTL facilities, the feedstock combination, and size of each facility that gives the minimum overall production cost. Two case studies are presented to investigate the effects of various technologies and hydrogen prices. The CBGTL network is capable to supply transportation fuel demands for the country at a cost between $15.68 and $22.06/GJ LHV ($76.55-$112.91/bbl crude oil) of produced liquid fuels for both case studies. Life cycle analysis on each facility in the supply chain network shows that the United States fuel demands can be fulfilled with an excess of 50% emissions reduction compared to petroleum based processes. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Traditionally the design of supply chains has been based on economic objectives. However, as societal environment concerns grows, environmental aspects are also emerging at academic and industry levels as decisive factors within the supply chain management context. The investment towards logistics structures that considers both economic and environmental performances is nowadays an important and current research topic. This paper addresses the planning and design of supply chain structures for annual profit maximization, while considering environmental aspects. The latter are accounted for through the Eco-indicator methodology. Profit and environmental impacts are balanced using an optimization approach adapted from symmetric fuzzy linear programming (SFLP), while the supply chain is modelled as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization problem using the Resource-Task-Network (RTN) methodology. The obtained model applicability is validated through the solution of a set of supply chain problems. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Multi-objective optimization has recently emerged as a useful technique in sustainability analysis, as it can assist in the study of optimal trade-off solutions that balance several criteria. The main limitation of multi-objective optimization is that its computational burden grows in size with the number of objectives. This computational barrier is critical in environmental applications in which decision-makers seek to minimize simultaneously several environmental indicators of concern. With the aim to overcome this limitation, this paper introduces a systematic method for reducing the number of objectives in multi-objective optimization with emphasis on environmental problems. The approach presented relies on a novel mixed-integer linear programming formulation that minimizes the error of omitting objectives. We test the capabilities of this technique through two environmental problems of different nature in which we attempt to minimize a set of life cycle assessment impacts. Numerical examples demonstrate that certain environmental metrics tend to behave in a non-conflicting manner, which makes it possible to reduce the dimension of the problem without losing information. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar energy can provide an abundant source of renewable energy (electrical and thermal). However, because of its unsteady nature, the storage of solar energy will become critical when a significant portion of the total energy will be provided by solar energy. In this paper, current solar energy storage technologies are reviewed. Storage methods can be classified into categories according to capacity and discharge time. New developments in solar energy storage require advances in chemical engineering and materials science. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important tool to evaluate energy consumption and environmental impact of renewable energy processes. LCAs of some of the storage methods are reviewed. It is important to note that, while using renewable energy sources such as solar power, storage methods based on nonrecyclable materials or methods that consume significant amounts of energy may undermine the effort to reduce energy consumption.In this paper, a comparative environmental study is reported of the Cu-Cl water-splitting cycle with various other hydrogen production methods: the sulphur-iodine (S-I) water-splitting cycle, high temperature water electrolysis, conventional steam reforming of natural gas and hydrogen production from renewable resources. The investigation uses life cycle assessment (LCA), which is an analytical tool to identify and quantify environmentally critical phases during the life cycle of a system or a product and/or to evaluate and decrease the overall environmental impact of the system or product. The LCA results for the hydrogen production processes indicate that the thermochemical cycles have lower environmental impacts while steam reforming of natural gas has the highest. Copyright (C) 2010, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A whole farm BEEF systems Greenhouse gas Emissions Model (BEEFGEM) was developed to determine the effect of varying management practices on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from pastoral beef production systems. BEEFGEM simulates two categories of GHG emissions: firstly, the direct GHG emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide from on-farm livestock production activities and secondly, indirect GHG emissions associated with inputs used on the farm and GHG emissions associated with nitrate leaching and ammonia volatilisation. The aim of this work was to investigate the effect of alternative production systems at farm level on GHG emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions were modelled for five contrasting beef production systems, one based on average farm conditions in Ireland and four based on research farm conditions. Both direct and total GHG emissions per hectare increased with increasing stocking rate for all scenarios tested. However, increasing stocking rate led to a reduction in GHG emissions per kg beef carcass, albeit with higher levels of production efficiency. At moderate stocking rates, increasing stocking rate further resulted in an increase in GHG emissions per kg beef carcass. Cattle production systems finishing males as bulls had lower GHG emissions than production systems finishing males as steers and thus, the lowest GHG emissions per kg beef carcass were achieved for bull beef production systems at moderate stocking rates which had direct and total system GHG emissions of 15.7 and 18.9 kg CO(2)e/kg beef carcass, respectively. Bull beef production systems at high stocking rates were most profitable. The highest GHG emissions were for the scenario representing average farm conditions in Ireland with direct and total emissions of 19.0 and 23.1 kg CO(2)e/kg beef carcass, respectively. This was also the least profitable scenario. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this work we explore the concept of integrated biorefineries, and we examine alternative schemes for the co-production of biofuels (biodiesel) and chemicals (succinic acid). Four different biorefinery schemes considering the different uses of crude glycerine from the biodiesel process are simulated and compared: (i) the disposal of crude glycerine as a waste, (ii) the purification (through distillation) of crude glycerine to 80%, (iii) the purification of glycerine to 95%. and (iv) the production of succinic acid from glycerine through fermentation. For the latter, we consider the bioprocess that converts the glycerol to succinate, and a downstream separation process that purifies and crystallises our product to the final succinic acid crystals. To apply complex kinetics for the fermentation we have linked Aspen Plus (2006.5) with Matlab (R2007b), where we have used the experimentally-based unstructured model from Vlysidis et al., 2009 and 2010. We first determine the operating parameters of the fermentor that have a significant effect on the economics of this scenario, i.e. the cycle time of the batch fermentation and the water flowrate entering the bioreactor. Subsequently, we perform single- and multi-objective optimisation to maximise the profit and/or to minimise the environmental impact of the overall process. We then analyse and compare the economics of the four different biorefinery schemes by using well-known profitability and/or emission criteria. Furthermore, we carry out sensitivity analysis that takes into consideration price variations for the most important materials and we extract firm conclusions about the profitability of each scenario. It is found that succinic acid co-production can enhance the profit of the overall biorefinery by 60% for a 20 years plant lifetime. These results indicate the importance of glycerol when it is utilised as a key renewable building block for the production of commodity chemicals. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy utilization and carbon dioxide emission during the production of fresh, peeled, diced, and juiced tomatoes are calculated. The energy utilization for production of raw and packaging materials, transportation, and waste management are also considered. The energy utilization to produce one-ton retail packaged fresh tomatoes is calculated to be 2412.8 MJ, whereas when the tomatoes are converted into paste, the energy utilization increases almost twofold; processing the same amount into the peeled or diced-tomatoes increases the energy utilization seven times. In case of juice production, the increase is five times. The carbon dioxide emission is determined by the source of energy used and is 189.4 kg/t of fresh tomatoes in the case of retail packaging, and did not change considerably when made into paste. The carbon dioxide emission increased twofold with peeled or diced-tomatoes, and increased threefold when juiced. Chemical fertilizers and transportation made the highest contribution to energy utilization and CO2 emission. The difference in energy utilization is determined mainly by water to dry solids ratio of the food and increases with the water content of the final product. Environmentally conscious consumers may prefer eating fresh tomatoes or alternatively tomato paste, to minimize carbon dioxide emission. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Biofuels are promoted in many parts of the world. However, concern of environmental and social problems have grown due to increased production of biofuels. Therefore, many initiatives for sustainability criteria have been announced. As a part of the European Union (EU) renewable energy promotion directive (RED), the EU has introduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emission-saving requirements for biofuels along with the first-ever mandate methodology to calculate the GHG emission reduction. As explored in this paper, the RED methodology, based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach, excludes many critical issues. These include indirect impacts due to competition for land, biomass and other auxiliary inputs. Also, timing issues, allocation problems, and uncertainty of individual parameters are not yet considered adequately. Moreover, the default values provided in the RED for the GHG balances of biofuels may significantly underestimate their actual impacts. We conclude that the RED methodology cannot ensure the intended GHG emission reductions of biofuels. Instead, a more comprehensive approach is required along with additional data and indicators. Even if it may be very difficult to verify the GHG emission reductions of biofuels in practice, it is necessary to consider the uncertainties more closely, in order to mitigate climate change effectively. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Variations of environmental impacts with lifetime and production capacity are reported for nuclear based hydrogen production plants using the three-, four- and five-step (copper-chlorine) Cu-CI thermochemical water decomposition cycles. Life cycle assessment is utilized which is essential to evaluate and to decrease the overall environmental impact of any system and/or product. The life cycle assessments of the hydrogen production processes indicate that the four-step Cu-Cl cycle has lower environmental impacts than the three- and five-step cycles due to its lower thermal energy requirement. Parametric studies show for the four-step Cu-Cl cycle that acidification and global warming potentials can be reduced from 0.0031 to 0.0028 kg SO(2)-eq and from 0.63 to 0.55 kg CO(2)-eq, respectively, if the lifetime of the system increases from 10 to 100 years. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We pose a reformulated model for optimal design and allocation of conventional (CV), hybrid electric (HEV), and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) vehicles to obtain global solutions that minimize life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the fleet. The reformulation is a twice-differentiable, factorable, nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model that can be solved globally using a convexification-based branch-and-reduce algorithm. We compare results to a randomized multistart local-search approach for the original formulation and find that local-search algorithms locate global solutions in 59% of trials for the two-segment case and 18% of trials for the three-segment case. The results indicate that minimum GHG emissions are achieved with a mix of PHEVs sized for 25-45 miles of electric travel. Larger battery packs allow longer travel on electrical energy, but production and weight of underutilized batteries result in higher GHG emissions. Under the current average U.S. grid mix, PHEVs offer a nearly 50% reduction in life cycle GHG emissions relative to equivalent conventional vehicles and about 5% improvement over HEVs when driven on the standard urban driving cycle. Optimal allocation of different PHEVs to different drivers turns out to be of second order importance for minimizing net life cycle GHGs. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4004538]The efficiencies of energy extraction and conversion systems are typically expressed using energy return ratios (ERRs) such as the net energy ratio (NER) or energy return on investment (EROI). A lack of a general mathematical framework prevents inter-comparison of NER/EROI estimates between authors: methods used are not standardized, nor is there a framework for succinctly reporting results in a consistent fashion. In this paper we derive normalized mathematical forms of four ERRs for energy extraction and conversion pathways. A bottom-up (process model) formulation is developed for an n-stage energy harvesting and conversion pathway with various system boundaries. Formations with the broadest system boundaries use insights from life cycle analysis to suggest a hybrid process model/economic input output based framework. These models include indirect energy consumption due to external energy inputs and embodied energy in materials. Illustrative example results are given for simple energy extraction and conversion pathways. Lastly, we discuss the limitations of this approach and the intersection of this methodology with "top-down" economic approaches.This article quantifies the global carbon footprint of mobile communication systems, and discusses its ecological and economic implications. Using up-to-date data and life cycle assessment models, we predict an increase of CO(2) equivalent emissions by a factor of three until 2020 compared to 2007, rising from about 86 to 235 Mto CO(2)e, suggesting a steeper increase than predicted in the well-known SMART2020 report. We provide a breakdown of the global carbon footprint, which reveals that production of mobile devices and global radio access network operation will remain the major contributors, accompanied by an increasing share of emissions due to data transfer in the backbone resulting from rising mobile traffic volumes. The energy bill due to network operation will gain increasing importance in cellular business models. Furthermore, technologies to reduce energy consumption are considered a key enabler for the spread of mobile communications in developing countries. Taking into account several scenarios of technological advancement and rollout, we analyze the overall energy consumption of global radio access networks and illustrate the saving potential of green communication technologies. We conclude that, conditioned on quick implementation and alongside other "classical" improvements of spectral efficiency, these technologies offer the potential to serve three orders of magnitude more traffic with the same overall energy consumption as today.Data mining techniques make it possible to automate product life-cycle assessment with reasonable accuracy, even in cases of low-quality inventory data.Applications of information and communications technology (ICT) for the management of environmental data, if used during the design and at the end of the product life cycle, can improve the environmental performance of products. This specific application of ICT for data management is called product data technology (PDT) and is based on the use of international standards developed by ISO TC184/SC4. PDT enables the computerized representations of information about products, processes, and their properties that are independent of any proprietary computer system or software application. The standard product data models are designed to integrate the necessary information about materials used in the product, and such information can be accessed and used at any point in the life cycle, from design to disposal. In the article, we present how PDT can support life cycle assessment (LCA) by focusing on a series of standards for communicating data for design and manufacture and standards for business and commercial information. Examples of possibilities for using PDT and semantic web for LCA data are introduced. The findings presented here are based on DEPUIS (Design of Environmentally-Friendly Products Using Information Standards), a project aimed at improving the eco-design of new products and services through the innovative use of new information standards.Southern pink shrimp (Penaeus notialis) are an important Senegalese export commodity. Artisanal fisheries in rivers produce 60%. Forty percent are landed in trawl fisheries at sea. The shrimp from both fisheries result in a frozen, consumer-packed product that is exported to Europe. We applied attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental impact of the two supply chains and identify improvement options. In addition to standard LCA impact categories, biological impacts of each fishery were quantified with regard to landed by-catch, discard, seafloor impact, and size of target catch. Results for typical LCA categories include that artisanal fisheries have much lower inputs and emissions in the fishing phase than does the industrial fishery. For the product from artisanal fisheries, the main part of the impact in the standard LCA categories occurs during processing on land, mainly due to the use of heavy fuel oil and refrigerants with high global warming and ozone depletion potentials. From a biological point of view, each fishery has advantages and drawbacks, and a number of improvement options were identified. If developing countries can ensure biological sustainability of their fisheries and design the chain on land in a resource-efficient way, long distance to markets is not an obstacle to sustainable trading of seafood products originating in artisanal fisheries.Founded in thermodynamics and systems ecology, emergy evaluation is a method to associate a product with its dependencies on all upstream environmental and resource flows using a common unit of energy. Emergy is thus proposed as an indicator of aggregate resource use for life cycle assessment (LCA). An LCA of gold mining, based on an original life cycle inventory of a large gold mine in Peru, is used to demonstrate how emergy can be incorporated as an impact indicator into a process-based LCA model. The results demonstrate the usefulness of emergy in the LCA context. The adaptation of emergy evaluation, traditionally performed outside of the LCA framework, requires changes to the conventional accounting rules and the incorporation of uncertainty estimations of the emergy conversion factors, or unit emergy values. At the same time, traditional LCA boundaries are extended to incorporate the environmental processes that provide for raw resources, including ores. The total environmental contribution to the product, dore, is dominated by mining and metallurgical processes and not the geological processes forming the gold ore. The measure of environmental contribution to 1 gram (g) of dore is 6.8E + 12 solar-equivalent Joules (sej) and can be considered accurate within a factor of 2. These results are useful in assessing a process in light of available resources, which is essential to measuring long-term sustainability. Comparisons are made between emergy and other measures of resource use, and recommendations are made for future incorporation of emergy into LCA that will result in greater consistency with existing life cycle inventory (LCI) databases and other LCA indicators.The pulp industry plays an important role in the structure of the European economy and society. The production of pulp has been traditionally considered an important source of pollution due to the use of large amounts of chemicals, fuels, and water and its intensive energy consumption. Currently, this situation is changing due to the potential use of biomass to produce value-added products, which minimizes environmental impacts and increases sustainability. This article uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify and quantify the environmental impacts associated with a Swedish softwood-based biorefinery where total chlorine-free (TCF) dissolving cellulose is produced together with ethanol and lignosulfonates. The system was defined according to a cradle-to-gate perspective-that is to say, from forest activities to the output of the biorefinery mill. According to the results, forest activities associated with the production of soft roundwood play a minor role in all the environmental impact categories under study. In contrast, the production of chemicals consumed in the cooking and bleaching stages, the sludge treatment generated in the wastewater treatment plant, and the on-site energy production system were identified as the elements that negatively contribute the most to all impact categories. The production of steam from biorefinery wastes, biogas, and methanol in external boilers reduces the environmental impact in all categories. Specific actions associated with the reuse of wastes and improved gas treatment systems would improve the environmental profile of this production activity.The concept of eco-efficiency can be defined with the "product value/environmental influence" ratio. Different models have been proposed to measure eco-efficiency. The main difference among them is the weighting system used to aggregate the environmental results. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) permits this aggregation without requiring a subjective judgment about the weights. In this study, we applied a DEA model to Spanish Mahon-Menorca cheese production to determine the most eco-efficient production techniques. To this end, 16 scenarios of Mahon-Menorca cheese production were built regarding technical (degree of automation) and cleaner production criteria. The environmental impacts were assessed by means of life cycle assessment. We carried out an economic assessment by determining the economic value added and the net income for each scenario. The results are referred to as 1 kilogram (kg) cheese ripened over 105 days. Through DEA, an eco-efficiency ratio between 0 and 1 was obtained. Three scenarios were found to be eco-efficient, with a high degree of automation (enclosed vat and molding and demolding machines) and accelerated cheese ripening. We used Monte Carlo simulation to carry out a sensitivity analysis to compare the influence of price changes on the eco-efficiency ratio. The results emphasize the consistency and stability of the eco-efficient scenarios.Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) are used to compare biofuels to fossil fuels. These analyses are made according to the ISO 14040-43 standards, which using a defined unit compare mass and energy balances for two or more comparison objects. In Spain, the Spanish government Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas, CIEMAT, has performed two LCA's in order to compare ethanol and ethanol mixtures with unleaded gasoline and biodiesel and biodiesel mixtures with fuel-oil according to these standards. Both LCA's conclude that biofuels require less primary energy than fossil fuels to be processed and that CO(2) emissions are lower when using biofuels instead of fossil fuels. However, these LCA's have been strongly criticized for several reasons. This report presents a new LCA model which allows the comparison of biofuels and fossil fuels based on the maximisation and optimisation of production resources avoiding the disadvantages of the traditional LCA model based on the ISO 14040-43 standards. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewability and cleanliness of bioenergy make itself one significant substitute of fossil energy. Estimate of carbon dioxide emission from bioenergy utilization is one of the basic steps to scientifically understand and evaluate the contribution of carbon dioxide emitted from bioenergy utilization. In this study, calculation methods of carbon dioxide emission from bioenergy utilization were summarized from the perspective of resources and utilization, mainly including five approaches: practical measurement method, material balance method, empirical coefficient estimation method, model method and life cycle assessment method. Valuable references for estimating carbon dioxide emission were provided and a series of feasible recommendations were also proposed for future use of bioenergy on the bases of analyzing advantages and disadvantages of each method and comparing them with methods used for fossil energy. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many policies are being designed to mitigate impacts of human activities on the environment. An environmental evaluation of these policies should include assessments of their impacts according to all known environmental impacts. Moreover, because policies may indirectly affect regions or economic sectors not initially targeted by these policies, indirect environmental consequences should be included in environmental balances. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a holistic method made to assess environmental impacts caused by products or services according to various environmental damage categories. However, the ability of LCA to model environmental consequences due to a change is restricted to marginal changes occurring in small life cycles. New methodological developments are needed to study major changes and their environmental consequences as they may happen when a policy is applied at large scale. For that purpose, the economic general equilibrium model GTAP has been used to predict global economic perturbation that would be caused by two different European energy policies (bioenergy policy and business as usual policy). LCA was then used to assess environmental impacts due to European energy generation and perturbation of world economy. Despite the bioenergy policy involves more energy from renewable technologies which are expected to be less polluting, results show that due to rebound effects, bioenergy policy results in more environmental impacts. Combining both GTAP and LCA improves environmental assessment made with GTAP because it allows computing environmental impacts according to products life cycles instead of using economic sector emission factors and because emissions and extractions from environment are related to impacts on environment. Regarding LCA method, this new approach allows studying significant changes affecting large systems with a global modeling of economy in a time dependent environment. However, more work is needed to evaluate this new approach, especially uncertainty should be studied. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conceptual modelling of municipal solid waste landfills is vital for prognosis of the long-term development and the assessment of risk potential. Landfills are considered as heterogeneous porous structures, in which flow and transport processes of gases and liquids are combined with local material degradation and mechanical deformation of the solid skeleton. This contribution deals with a constitutive model focusing on the mechanical deformation behaviour of the disposed waste dividing the solid material into two different fractions. The first fraction includes more grainy particles and has properties comparable with granular materials. The second fraction consists of more fibrous constituents having an important influence on the strength of the composite material. Stress-strain behaviour of the two fractions is modelled according to the theory of finite elasto-plasticity. Settlements generated by mechanical creep are also included in the model. The developed constitutive model is validated and calibrated on results from laboratory experiments applying genetic algorithms. Numerical analyses using the finite-element method show the capability of the presented approach.Phosphorus can be removed from wastewater biologically, chemically, or through a combination of the two. In this study, we applied environmental life-cycle assessment to develop a metric with which decision-makers can compare processes. Two phosphorus-removal scenarios were contrasted-one based on a desktop-level design and one based on full-scale operational data. To achieve 0.5 mg/L effluent phosphorus (desktop design), a biological-only process would incur 5.2% less effect on global warming potential, as contrasted with a chemical-only process. At an effluent quality of 0.1 mg/L (full-scale facilities), where a biological process augmented with chemicals was contrasted with a chemical-only process, the relative gap increases to 13.2%. As chemical usage increased, the adverse environmental effect of chemical treatment only increased. The results of this study suggest that best practices would center phosphorus removal first on the biological process, with chemical processes added only as necessary. Water Environ. Res., 83, 750 (2011).We conducted surveys of six hatcheries and 18 farms for data inputs to complete a cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental performance for intensive (for export markets in Chicago) and semi-intensive (for domestic markets in Shanghai) shrimp farming systems in Hainan Province, China. The relative contribution to overall environmental performance of processing and distribution to final markets were also evaluated from a cradle-to-destination-port perspective. Environmental impact categories included global warming, acidification, eutrophication, cumulative energy use, and biotic resource use. Our results indicated that intensive farming had significantly higher environmental impacts per unit production than semi-intensive farming in all impact categories. The grow-out stage contributed between 96.4% and 99.6% of the cradle-to-farm-gate impacts. These impacts were mainly caused by feed production, electricity use, and farm-level effluents. By averaging over intensive (15%) and semi-intensive (85%) farming systems, 1 metric ton (t) live-weight of shrimp production in China required 38.3 +/- 4.3 GJ of energy, as well as' 40.14 +/- 1.7 t of net primary productivity, and generated 23.1 +/- 2.6 kg of SO2 equiv, 36,9 4.3 kg of PO4 equiv, and 3.1 +/- 0,4 t of CO2 equiv. Processing made a higher contribution to cradle-to-destination-port impacts than distribution of processed shrimp from farm gate to final markets in both supply chains. In 2008, the estimated total electricity consumption, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions from Chinese white-leg shrimp production would be 1.1 billion kW.h, 49 million GJ, and 4 million metric tons, respectively. Improvements suggested for Chinese shrimp aquaculture include changes in feed composition, farm management, electricity-generating sources, and effluent treatment before discharge. Our results can be used to optimize market-oriented shrimp supply chains and promote more sustainable shrimp production and consumption.This study estimates of the life cycle greenhouse gas inventory for construction of high-speed rail infrastructure from San Francisco to Anaheim indicates it will result in 2.4 million metric tons of CO2 with material production comprising 80% of emissions and transportation of construction materials, 16%. While tunneling and aerial structures account for only 15% of the route's length, they are responsible for 60% of emissions. Based on estimates of avoided emissions from operation of the system of just over one million metric tons of CO2 per year, construction emissions would be recuperated in about two years and their global warming effect in about six after services begin. This range of recuperation times is relatively short given the long-life of the constructed infrastructure. Avoided emissions estimates are dependent on ridership and if low ridership lead to a 75% decrease in offset emissions, recuperation times may increase to more than 20 years. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.How to account for GHG emissions for public transport is now a key issue for low-carbon city development. This study provides a method to evaluate carbon footprinting for public transport systems in Xiamen city, China across the life cycle. This method, which was based on the life cycle assessment approach including three components - infrastructure, fuels and vehicles - was presented to account the GHG emissions of public transport. The GHG emissions of the two kinds of public transport systems (bus rapid transit [BRT] and normal bus transit [NRT]) in Xiamen City were compared. Results showed that the average carbon emissions of the BRT system was 638.44 gCO(2)e per person, and that of the NBT system was 2,088.38 gCO(2)e. If we only took the direct carbon emissions of fuel consumption in the vehicle operation into consideration, the average carbon emissions were, respectively, approximately 149.08 gCO(2)e per person and 260.84 gCO(2)e per person by BRT and NBT system. The results indicated that the effects of energy saving from the BRT system are better than NBT system, which is related to the features of the BRT system such as large volume, energy-saving and environment-friendly vehicle type and exclusive right-of way.The gaming and hospitality sector has been expanding rapidly in recent years. Concurrently energy consumption in this sector has surged significantly. This paper reviews the literature on the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth and introduces the 4-parameter logistic functions to model the growth of electricity consumption and other related parameters in the world's gaming center-Macao, China. The accuracy of the growth models were assessed by using the mean absolute percentage error and the root mean squared percentage error. The paper also introduces the application of life cycle analysis to greenhouse gases emissions for electricity consumption. As Macao in recent years has imported a significant amount of electricity from a coal-fired power plant in its nearby area - Zhuhai, the impact analysis included greenhouse gases emissions from the extraction, transportation, processing, and combustion along fuel life cycles in the local power plant as well as Zhuhai's power plant. We found that the emissions associated with the imported electricity contributed greatly to total emissions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concentrated solar power (CSP) plants are one of several renewable energy technologies with significant potential to meet a part of future energy demand. An integrated technology assessment shows that CSP plants could play a promising role in Africa and Europe, helping to reach ambitious climate protection goals. Based on the analysis of driving forces and barriers, at first three future envisaged technology scenarios are developed. Depending on the underlying assumptions, an installed capacity of 120 GW(el), 405 GW(el) or even 1,000 GW(el) could be reached globally in 2050. In the latter case, CSP would then meet 13-15% of global electricity demand. Depending on these scenarios, cost reduction curves for North Africa and Europe are derived. The cost assessment conducted for two virtual sites in Algeria and in Spain shows a long-term reduction of electricity generating costs to figures between 4 and 6 ct/kWh(el), in 2050. The paper concludes with an ecological analysis based on life cycle assessment. Although the greenhouse gas emissions of current (solar only operated) CSP systems show a good performance (31 g CO2-equivalents/kWh(el)) compared with advanced fossil-fired systems (130-900 CO2-eq./kWh(el)), they could further be reduced to 18 g CO2-eq./kWh(el) in 2050, including transmission from North Africa to Europe. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green roofs involve growing vegetation on rooftops and are one tool that can help mitigate the negative effects of pollution. This review encompasses published research to date on how green roofs can help mitigate pollution, how green roof materials influence the magnitude of these benefits, and suggests future research directions. The discussion concentrates on how green roofs influence air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, carbon sequestration, longevity of roofing membranes that result in fewer roofing materials in landfills, water quality of stormwater runoff, and noise pollution. Suggestions for future directions for research include plant selection, development of improved growing substrates, urban rooftop agriculture, water quality of runoff, supplemental irrigation, the use of grey water, air pollution, carbon sequestration, effects on human health, combining green roofs with complementary related technologies, and economics and policy issues. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper attempts to evaluate the positive effects of vegetation with a multi-scale approach: an urban and a building scale. Monitoring the urban heat island in four areas of New York City, we have found an average of 2 degrees C difference of temperatures between the most and the least vegetated areas, ascribable to the substitution of vegetation with man-made building materials. At micro-scale, we have assessed the effect of surface albedo on climate through the use of a climatological model. Then, using the CO2 equivalents as indicators of the impact on climate, we have compared the surface albedo, and the construction, replacement and use phase of a black, a white and a green roof. By our analyses, we found that both the white and the green roofs are less impactive than the black one: with the thermal resistance, the biological activity of plants and the surface albedo playing a crucial role. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Low Carbon Economy (LCE) is a popular term that refers to economic activities which has minimum output of greenhouse gas (specially the CO2). The main objectives of these activities are to avoid catastrophic climate change and initialization of an ideal zero carbon economic eras. Integration of different sectors like power generation, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture etc. is very much necessary to achieving LCE and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is to be mandatory for those sectors. Low carbon life style, low carbon diet habit, microgeneration technology in commercial houses, eco-design of home appliances are the ways to reach low carbon era.Purpose Most life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) approaches in life cycle assessment (LCA) are developed for western countries. Their LCIA approaches and characterization methodologies for different impact categories may not be necessarily relevant to African environmental conditions and particularly not for the timber sector in Ghana. This study reviews the relevance of existing impact categories and LCIA approaches, and uses the most relevant for the timber sector of Ghana. Materials and methods The study reviewed 23 life cycle inventories (LCIs) and LCAs on forestry, timber, and wood products for relevant impact categories and LCIA approaches for their relevance to the specific conditions in Ghana. This study uses an earlier LCI study of the timber industry as a starting point for an additional LCIA. We next performed a correlation and regression analysis to learn whether wood wastes may function as a reasonable single indicator for land use as proxy for biodiversity loss and the other impact categories. Results and discussion The literature review shows that no LCI or LCA studies were developed for Africa or the tropics. The LCIA approaches in the reviewed LCAs are indeed shown to take their basis in the environmental problems in western countries and characterization methodologies relating to how these problems manifest themselves in the western world. Characterization methodologies for different impact categories in CML-2000 and other LCIA approaches may not be necessarily relevant to African tropical environmental conditions and particularly not for the timber sector in Ghana. This situation hampers the reliability of our LCIA and points to a serious research gap in LCIA development in general. We applied the scientifically well-recognized CML 2000 to the earlier LCI results and characterized the preliminary selected impact categories of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation, and human toxicity. The correlation analysis indicated that wood waste is indeed strongly correlated with land use as proxy for biodiversity loss and also positively correlated with the other five potential impact results. It can be concluded that wood waste production is a major driving force for biodiversity loss and a sufficiently good single indicator for all other environmental performance indicators in the timber sector of Ghana. Conclusions This study and the previous LCI paper are pioneering a field not yet explored, since the correct environmental performance indicators are not yet developed or adapted to tropical conditions. The development of LCIA approaches in the tropics may be the start of a never-ending journey in LCA research in Africa, particularly Ghana.The purposes of this study were 1) to assess the effects of 3 high-concentrate diets on enteric CH4 production, total tract digestibility, and rumen fermentation of beef cattle, and 2) to evaluate, by life cycle assessment, the potential effects of these feeding systems on the environment. Six bulls (age of 12.4 mo and BW of 417 kg at midexperiment) of the Blond d'Aquitaine breed were assigned to 3 dietary treatments in a replicated 3 x 3 Latin square design. Diets consisted of 1) 49% natural grassland hay, 41% ground corn grain, and 10% soybean meal (hay); 2) 63% corn silage, 21% ground corn grain, and 16% soybean meal (CS); and 3) 70% ground corn grain, 16% soybean meal, and 14% wheat straw (CG). Daily CH4 emission (g/d), measured using the sulfur hexafluoride tracer technique, was similar for the hay and CS diets and was 56% greater than for the CG diet (P < 0.001). This difference between diets was maintained when CH4 output was expressed by unit of feed intake (P < 0.001) or digested feed (P < 0.001). Gross energy intake loss as CH4 averaged 6.9% for the hay and CS diets and 3.2% for the CG diet (P < 0.001). Organic matter intake and GE intake did not differ between diets. Organic matter digestibility was less for the hay diet than for the CS and CG diets (P = 0.008). Digestibility of NDF was greatest for the hay diet, intermediate for the CS diet, and least for the CG diet (P = 0.02), with ADF digestibility being similar between the hay and CS diets and greater than for the CG diet (P < 0.001). The rumen pH at 5 h postfeeding was less for animals fed the CG diet compared with those fed the other 2 diets (on average, 5.1 vs. 5.9, respectively; P < 0.001). Total CH4 emission (enteric + manure) was least for the CG diet, whereas N2O and CO2 emissions were greatest for the CG diet. Total greenhouse gas emissions were least for the CG diet when C sequestration by grasslands was not taken into account.Standard life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been used to determine and compare the environmental impacts of three different cooking fuels used in Ghana, namely, charcoal, biogas, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). A national policy on the use of cooking fuels would have to look at the environmental, social, and cost implications associated with the fuel types. This study looked at the environmental aspect of using these fuels. The results showed that global warming and human toxicity were the most significant overall environmental impacts associated with them, and charcoal and LPG, respectively, made the largest contribution to these impact categories. LPG, however, gave relatively higher impacts in three other categories of lesser significance-that is, eutrophication, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity potentials. Direct comparison of the results showed that biogas had the lowest impact in five out of the seven categories investigated. Charcoal and LPG had only one lowest score each. From the global warming point of view, however, LPG had a slight overall advantage over the others, and it was also the most favorable at the cooking stage, in terms of its effect on humans.Thin film technologies undergo rapid developments for increasing the module efficiencies and improving production technologies or recycling processes which affect the environmental profile of PV power generation and Energy Payback Time (EPBT). Therefore, especially for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of product systems with short development cycles, the environmental profiles need to be frequently updated to ensure the representativeness and validity of the environmental assessment. The update of LCA results in this paper demonstrates that considerable improvements were reached in the environmental profile of CdTe PV power and EPBT over the last four years. Depending on the location of installation in Europe, the corresponding Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions of PV power for ground mounted power plants are between 19 and 30 g CO2-equiv./kWh and between 0.7 and 1.1 years in terms of EBPT. Furthermore, for the first time, the environmental impacts due to an already applied recycling procedure of CdTe modules and it's relative contribution to the CdTe PV life cycle has been investigated. This paper presents the main approach, results and outcomes of the study. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Reducing the use of fossil fuel is one of the prime tasks for preventing climate change. The worst fossil fuel in this regard is coal, which is the largest CO2-emitting fossil fuel in terms of weight. Although decreasing the use of coal is difficult because of its increasing demand in worldwide, there is still a possibility of effectively reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by substituting biomass, even for a subset of coal. One way to reduce the use of coal is to implement co-firing of biomass with coal at coal thermal power stations. In this study, the business impact of GHG reduction from semi-carbonized fuel produced by co-firing woody biomass with coal in thermal power plants is evaluated from the perspective of life cycles, using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The case study area is the central region of Wakayama prefecture, Japan. In this study, a new business is considered whose operations would co-fire the woody biomass with coal. A life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis and a life cycle impact assessment are conducted to evaluate the GHG emissions, taking into account processes such as cutting timber, manufacturing semi-carbonized fuel, and co-firing with coal. LCI data was collected and calculated on the basis of the feasibility study and literature survey. The spatial distribution of the woody biomass was ascertained using a geographic information system, and the location of several facilities and a road transportation network were determined. Results showed that an annual reduction in GHG emissions of approximately 46,700 tonnes in the case study area is possible if the business is executed. The environmental impact taking into account climate change, acidification and land use was also reduced. As the result, this business is in fact advantageous to reduce GHG emissions as well as the environmental impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development and participatory governance are among the central policy priorities of our time. The challenge is at all scales of development and participation. Finding and validating methodological approaches has become urgent. Existing decision processes such as multi-criterion decision analysis (MCDA), multi-objective decision making (MODM), life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost-benefit analysis (CBA) are frequently used, with varying degrees of satisfaction reported. It appears that sustainable development can be assessed and analysed in different ways, any of which may be of use but none of which seems to be complete. The use of all, however, appears to involve such complexity as to be not feasible. There is a need for a more integrated and systematic approach to decision-making. In this paper, existing decision aid processes and frameworks are reviewed, and a novel evolutionary approach is proposed that can support them all. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle analysis is an invaluable tool for investigating the environmental profile of a product or technology from cradle to grave. Such life-cycle analyses of energy technologies are essential, especially as material and energy flows are often interwoven, and divergent emissions into the environment may occur at different life-cycle-stages. This approach is well exemplified by our description of material and energy flows in four commercial PV technologies, i.e., mono-crystalline silicon, multi-crystalline silicon, ribbon-silicon, and cadmium telluride. The same life-cycle approach is applied to the balance of system that supports flat, fixed PV modules during operation. We also discuss the life-cycle environmental metrics for a concentration PV system with a tracker and lenses to capture more sunlight per cell area than the flat, fixed system but requires large auxiliary components. Select life-cycle risk indicators for PV, i.e., fatalities, injures, and maximum consequences are evaluated in a comparative context with other electricity-generation pathways. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings account for nearly 50% of all greenhouse gases globally. While this has been widely recognized, the GHG mitigation strategies have traditionally concentrated on reducing the use phase emissions, as over 90% of the emissions are generated during the use phase according to several studies. However, two current developments increase the importance of the construction phase emissions and the embodied emissions of the building materials. Firstly, the improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings directly increase the relative share of the construction phase emissions. Secondly, the notification of the temporal allocation of the emissions increases the importance of the carbon spike from construction. While these perspectives have been noted, few studies exist that combine the two perspectives of the construction and the use phase. In this paper, we analyze the implications of low-carbon residential construction on the life cycle emissions of a residential area with a case study. Furthermore, we demonstrate that when the temporal allocation of the emissions is taken into account, the construction phase emissions can hinder or even reverse the carbon mitigation effect of low-carbon buildings for decades.Sustainable consumption has been addressed from different perspectives in numerous studies. Recently, urban structure-related lifestyle issues have gained more emphasis in the research as cities search for effective strategies to reduce their 80% share of the global carbon emissions. However, the prevailing belief often seen is that cities would be more sustainable in nature compared to surrounding suburban and rural areas. This paper will illustrate, by studying four different urban structure related lifestyles in Finland, that the situation might be reversed. Actually, substantially more carbon emissions seem to be caused on a per capita level in cities than in suburban and rural areas. This is mainly due to the higher income level in larger urban centers, but even housing-related emissions seem to favor less urbanized areas. The method of the study is a consumption-based life cycle assessment of carbon emissions. In more detail, a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) model, that is comprehensive in providing a full inventory and can accommodate process data, is utilized.For the evaluation of the environmental impacts of direct life cycle emissions resulting from electricity generation from biomass, various biomass conversion technologies (anaerobic digestion [five different plant types], combustion and gasification) are investigated on the basis of data from existing plants in Austria. The environmental impacts are analyzed in accordance with ISO 14040 for life cycle assessment (LCA). For the impact assessment the CML 2001 base line approach covering 11 impact categories is used. The results show how different life cycle stages dominate the emission profile in various impact categories and that the dominant life cycle stages differ depending on the conversion technology. The difference between the results for the various conversion technologies is up to a factor of 12. In the impact categories of climate change, acidification and eutrophication, direct life cycle emissions from anaerobic digestion plants are considerably higher than from combustion and gasification due to the differences in the nature of the co-products (digestate or ash). The LCA results show potentials for improvement which could achieve emission reductions of between 10 and 50% in certain impact categories. Based on the unweighed aggregation of all impact assessment results, the comparison shows that the ranking is led by anaerobic digestion using mainly energy crops, the combustion of wood chips, anaerobic digestion of primarily manure and the gasification of wood chips, followed by other types of anaerobic digestion plants.A life cycle assessment has been completed of potential biogas infrastructures on a regional scale. Centralised and distributed infrastructures were considered along with biogas end uses of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and injection to the gas grid for either transport fuel or domestic heating end uses. Damage orientated (endpoint) life cycle impact assessment method identified that CHP with 80% heat utilisation had the least environmental impact, followed by transport fuel use. Utilisation for domestic heating purposes via the gas grid was found to perform less well. A 32% difference in transportation requirement between the centralised and distributed infrastructures was found to have a relatively small effect on the overall environmental impact. Global warming impacts were significantly affected by changes in methane emissions at upgrading stage, highlighting the importance of minimising operational losses. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Low Impact Development (LID) is part of a new paradigm in urban water management that aims to decentralize water storage and movement functions within urban watersheds. LID strategies can restore ecosystem functions and reduce runoff loadings to municipal water pollution control facilities (WPCF). This research examines the avoided energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of select LID strategies using life cycle assessment (LCA) and a stochastic urban watershed model. We estimate annual energy savings and avoided GHG emissions of 7.3 GJ and 0.4 metric tons, respectively, for a LID strategy implemented in a neighborhood in New York City. Annual savings are small compared to the energy and GHG intensity of the LID materials, resulting in slow environmental payback times. This preliminary analysis suggests that if implemented throughout an urban watershed, LID strategies may have important energy cost savings to WPCF, and can make progress towards reducing their carbon footprint. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the environmental impacts linked to fish extraction on a temporal basis, in order to analyze the effect that stock abundance variations may have on reporting environmental burdens. Inventory data for the North-East Atlantic Mackerel (NEAM) fishing season were collected over an 8-year period and used to carry out a life cycle assessment (LCA). The selected fishery corresponds to the Basque coastal purse seining fleet. Materials and methods The functional unit (FU) was set as 1 t of landed round fish in a Basque port during the NEAM fishing season for each of the selected years. The selected data for the life cycle inventory were gathered from personal communication from ship owners and from a fish first sale register in the Basque Country. A series of fishery-specific impact categories and indicators were included in the evaluation together with conventional impact categories. Results and discussion Conventional LCA impact categories showed that the environmental impact is dominated by the energy use in the fishery, despite of the low fuel effort identified with respect to other purse-seining fisheries. Nevertheless, strong differences were identified between annual environmental impacts, attributed mainly to remarkable variations in NEAM stock abundance from 1 year to another, whereas the fishing effort remained relatively stable throughout the assessed years. Fishery-specific categories, such as the discard rate or seafloor impact showed reduced impacts of this fishery respect to other small pelagic fish fisheries. Finally, the fishery in balance (FiB) index identified the evolution of NEAM stock abundance for this particular fishery. Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first fishery LCA study in which there is sufficient inventory data in order to conduct the methodology throughout a wide period of time. The outstanding variance in environmental impacts from one season to another evidences the need to expand fishery LCAs in time, in order to attain a more integrated perspective of the environmental performance of a certain fishery or species. The extension of LCA inventories in the timeline may be an important improvement for activities that rely entirely on the extraction of organisms from wild ecosystems. For instance, future research will have to determine the importance of increasing the timeline in fishery LCAs for species that do not show large stock abundance variations through time, unlike NEAM.Purpose The main purpose of this study has been to document the environmental performance of products based on autoline-caught cod and the distribution of environmental impacts in the value chain from fishing to retail. Another aim has been to document the performed environmental improvement analyses. Methods Standard life cycle assessment methodology has been employed and the following impact categories studied: global warming potential (GWP), acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation, ozone layer depletion and cumulative energy demand. Results and discussion Products derived from autoline-caught cod have a GWP in the range of 0.16-7.6/1.7-4.4 kg CO2-eq/kg product delivered to consumer, using economic and mass allocation, respectively. The main impacts come from fuel consumption and release of refrigerants in the fishery. The products studied represent each of the four major processing outputs. The differences between the products can partly be attributed to differences in methodology (system borders, allocation), partly to actual physical differences. A comparison with published results from other studies indicates that seafood products sourced from Northeast Arctic cod fished with the autoline method has a relatively good environmental performance. A number of possible options for improving the environmental performance of the products were identified. The most internal improvement action was stopping leakages in fish freezers. Conclusions This study has given a detailed overview of the environmental performance of seafood products sourced from Northeast Arctic cod from autoline fisheries in Norwegian territorial waters. This study has demonstrated the usefulness of such results in improving the environmental performance of the products. However, the usefulness of the results in communication to external actors is limited because few data exists on other products fulfilling the same functions and using the exact same methodology and assumptions. In order to achieve comparability between results from competing products, it is necessary to use a standardised and detailed calculation method. At the moment, no such method seems to be available. The literature study indicated that the environmental impact of Northeast Arctic cod products sourced from autoline fisheries compares well with other cod products on the market. Some cod stocks are sustainably managed, others not. Hence, it is recommended to break down results not only to species level but also fish stock level when the aim is to guide seafood customers towards making informed purchasing decisions.Purpose As impact assessment methods for water use in LCA evolve, so must inventory methods. Water categories that consider water quality must be defined within life cycle inventory. The method presented here aims to establish water categories by source, quality parameter and user. Materials and methods Water users were first identified based on their water quality requirements. A list of parameters was then defined, and thresholds for these parameters were determined for each user. The thresholds were based on international standards, country regulations, recommendations and industry standards. Three different water sources were selected: surface water (including seawater), groundwater and rainwater. Based on the quality and water sources, categories were created by grouping user requirements according to the level of microbial or toxic contamination that the user can tolerate (high, medium or low). Results and discussion Seventeen water categories were created: eight for surface water, eight for groundwater and one for rainwater. Each category was defined according to 136 quality parameters (11 conventional parameters, 38 specific inorganic contaminants and 87 specific organic contaminants) and the users for which it can be of use. Conclusions A set of elementary flows is proposed in order to support a water inventory method oriented towards functionality. This can be used to assess potential water use impacts caused by a loss of functionality for human users.Purpose Few studies have examined differing interpretations of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results between midpoints and endpoints for the same systems. This paper focuses on the LCIA of municipal solid waste (MSW) systems by taking both the midpoint and endpoint approaches and uses LIME (Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method based on Endpoint Modeling, version 2006). With respect to global and site-dependent factors, environmental impact categories were divided into global, regional, and local scales. Results are shown as net emissions consisting of system emissions and avoided emissions. Materials and methods This study is divided into five segments. The first segment develops the LCIA framework and four MSW scenarios based on the current MSW composition and systems of Seoul, considering adaptable results from the hierarchy MSW systems. In addition, two systems are considered: main MSW systems and optional systems. Several "what if" scenarios are discussed, including various compositions and classifications of MSW. In the second segment, life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis is applied to define various inputs and outputs to and from MSW systems, including air (23 categories), water (28 categories) and land (waste) emissions, resource consumption, land use, recovered material, compost, landfill gas, biogas, and heat energy. The third segment, taking the midpoint approach, investigates the nine environmental impacts of the system and avoided emissions. In the fourth segment, this study, taking the endpoint approach, evaluates the damages, dividing the four safeguard subjects affected by 11 environmental impact categories of the system and avoided emissions. In these third and fourth segments, LCIA is applied to analyze various end-of-life scenarios for same MSW materials. The final segment defines the differences from the results in accordance with the two previous life cycle assessment methodologies (the LCIA and interpretations with respect to midpoints and endpoints). Results and discussion With the respect to midpoints, Scenario 1 (S1) using 100% landfills (L) is the worst performer in terms of global (global warming and resource consumption), regional (acidification, human toxicity, and ecotoxicity), and local (waste: landfill volume) impacts. In terms of all impacts except global warming and waste, Scenario 2 (S2) using 64.2% L and 35.8% material recycling (MR) was found to be the most effective system. With respect to global-scale endpoints, S1 was the worst performer in terms of human health and social assets, whereas the other scenarios with MR were poor and bad performers in terms of biodiversity and primary production. With respect to regional- and local-scale endpoints, S1 was the worst performer in terms of human health, biodiversity, and primary production, whereas Scenario 4 (S4) using 4.2% L (only incombustibles), 35.8% MR, 28.5% biological treatment (BT), and 31.5% incineration (I) was the worst performer in terms of social assets. S4 was the best performer in terms of global-scale endpoints, whereas S2 and Scenario 3 (S3, using 35.7% L, 35.8% MR, and 28.5% BT) were the best on regional- and local-scale endpoints, respectively. With respect to the monetization analysis, which considered net emissions and integrated all endpoints, S3 was found to be "the most effective system," indicating US $31.6 savings per ton-waste. Conclusions The results of this study illustrate the differences in the LCIA outcomes and interpretations with respect to the midpoint and endpoint approaches. In addition, it would be possible to interpret the effect of each indicator on safeguard subjects by integrating separate midpoints. The LCIA results of each endpoint for the scenarios were generally consistent with those of each midpoint. However, the results changed dramatically when the main contributor was a new category not included in midpoint categories. The key advantage with respect to grouping impact categories in the midpoint and endpoint approaches can be described as "the simplification of midpoints and the segmentation of endpoints." Recommendations and perspectives This research raises many questions that warrant further research. This method does not provide an uncertainty evaluation of input data at the inventory level; it addresses only the main contributor for each impact category to four endpoints. In addition, it would be beneficial to investigate the suitability of midpoints and endpoints for different stakeholders with a low or high level of environmental expertise by comparing previous studies.Purpose With increasing attention on sustainable development, the environmental and social relevance of palm oil production are now important trade issues. The life cycle assessment (LCA) study of Malaysian oil palm products from mineral soils including palm biodiesel was aimed to provide baseline information on the environmental performance of the industry for drawing up policies pertaining to the sustainable production. The share of greenhouse gas (GHG) contribution by the various subsystems in the oil palm supply chain is considered here. Materials and methods The life cycle inventory data for the study were collected based on subsystems, i.e., gate-to-gate. The subsystems include activities in oil palm nurseries and plantations, palm oil mills, refineries, biodiesel plants and the use of biodiesel in diesel engine vehicles. Two scenarios were considered: extraction of crude palm oil (CPO) in a mill without and with a system for trapping biogas from palm oil mill effluent (POME). Inventory data were collected through questionnaires. On-site visits were carried out for data verification. Background data for resource exploitation and production of input materials were obtained through available databases and literature. Foreground data for all subsystems were site-specific data from nurseries, plantations, palm oil mills and refineries and biodiesel plants in Malaysia. Results and discussion Using a yield of 20.7 t oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFB)/ha, the results showed that the production of 1 t of FFB produced 119 kg CO2 eq. The production of 1 t of CPO in a mill without and with biogas capture emitted 971 and 506 kg CO2 eq, respectively. For the production of 1 t of refined palm oil in a refinery which sourced the CPO from a mill without biogas capture and with biogas capture, the GHG emitted was 1,113 kg and 626 kg CO2 eq, respectively. For palm biodiesel, 33.19 and 21.20 g CO2 eq were emitted per MJ of biodiesel produced from palm oil sourced from a mill without and with biogas capture, respectively. Conclusions GHG contribution by the nursery subsystem was found to be minimal. In the plantation subsystem, the major sources of GHG were from nitrogen fertilizers, transport and traction energy. For the mill, biogas from POME was the major contributor if biogas was not trapped. Excluding contribution from upstream activities, boiler fuel and transport were the major sources of GHG in the refinery subsystem. In the biodiesel subsystem, activities for production of refined palm oil and methanol use were the most significant contributors.Purpose In May 2009, the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products (the Guidelines) were launched at the occasion of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26000 (Social Responsibility) meeting in Quebec City, Canada. Developed by a United Nations Environment Programme/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry ("UNEP/SETAC") Life Cycle Initiative project group on Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), the Guidelines provide a framework to assess social impacts across product life cycles. A year later, the Methodological Sheets for the Subcategories of Social LCA ("the Methodological Sheets") are being made available to support practitioners engaging in the field. The Methodological Sheets provide practical guidance for conducting S-LCA case studies by offering consistent, yet flexible assistance. Aim and scope A Methodological Sheet was developed for each of the 31 subcategories of assessment outlined in the Guidelines. Each sheet includes a subcategory definition tailored to S-LCA, an explanation of how the subcategory relates to sustainable development, information on data assessment, including examples of inventory indicators, units of measurement, and data sources, along with a reference section that points the user to further information. The data assessment section is intended to provide adaptable guidance to LCA practitioners by offering examples and does not prescribe comprehensive procedures. The Methodological Sheets do not provide guidance on aggregating subcategory indicators or characterization models, nor do they discuss interpretation of results. The sheets are focused on the inventory analysis phase of S-LCA. This article will detail the development process of this unique resource, its content and future development, and how it compares to other types of documents, such as the GRI G3, ISO 26000 guidelines on Social Responsibility and the Global Social Compliance reference code. Conclusions The Methodological Sheets support the framework of S-LCA offered in the UNEP/SETAC Guidelines. They provide consistent guidance to assist LCA practitioners in case studies. At the same time, they have been designed to encourage context-specific application. Content of the Methodological Sheets will continue to evolve. Over time, and when relevant, characterization and interpretation models will be added to the Methodological Sheets. The Methodological Sheets are currently under public review and available on the Life Cycle Initiative website. A finalized version will be available in 2011, integrating comments from the review process.Introduction Alternative ways and means of transportation are necessary in order to reduce the environmental impacts of mobility. In the recent years, biofuels were first seen as a main option and then LCA showed also possible hazards of this development. Recently, public interest is rapidly shifting towards electromobility. Therefore it is necessary to also gain better knowledge about the environmental impacts of this technology. This includes a modelling of the pathways of the necessary increase in electricity supply and an appropriate modelling of battery manufacture. Summary of data presented At this forum most recent results of life cycle assessment studies of electric car driving compared to driving fossil- and agro-fuelled cars were presented. The environmental performance of individual and public electric mobility was discussed in view of promising win-win strategies. Policy implications and research needs derived from current LCA work were highlighted. Conclusion The 43rd LCA forum profited from the input of several topical experts, covering aspects such as electricity demand of electric vehicles in everyday life, marginal electricity supply mixes, design, performance and manufacture of batteries as well as resource and raw materials availability. The following main conclusions were drawn: The main areas of improvement identified during the day are: weight of the car, battery manufacture, electricity mix used to load the batteries, technological dynamics (efficiency gains) and societal dynamics (changes in mobility habits, changing status symbols). All presentations shown during the day are available for download (www.lcaforum.ch).The term sustainable has many meanings, but in agriculture it generally refers to some balance between environmental, social, and economic goals. The objective of this project was to quantify inputs and outputs to assess the sustainability implications of 2 feedlot cattle management systems: Never Ever 3 (NE3) and a conventional (CON) system using metabolic modifiers. Angus-cross steers (n = 104) were stratified by BW (337 kg perpendicular to 17) and randomly assigned to 4 pens per treatment group. The NE3 cattle received no feed additives or implants, whereas CON were implanted with 100 mg of trenbolone acetate and 14 mg of estradiol benzoate on d 1 and 70, and were additionally fed monensin [330 mg/(animal.d)] and tylosin phosphate [90 mg/(animal.d)] in their ration throughout the course of the study, and ractopamine hydrochloride at 254 mg/(animal.d) for the last 29 d on feed. Cattle were shipped on a constant average pen weight basis (596 kg perpendicular to 32 BW). The CON cattle had greater ADG (1.81 vs. 1.35 kg, P < 0.01) and were on feed fewer days (146 vs. 188 d, P < 0.01) than the NE3 cattle. No significant differences were observed in HCW (P = 0.072) or dressing percentage (P = 0.62) between treatments (P > 0.05); however, CON carcasses averaged larger ribeye area (87 vs. 80 cm(2), P < 0.01), greater Warner-Bratzler shear force measurement (WBSF; 3.46 vs. 3.19 kg, P < 0.01), and smaller USDA marbling score (5.4 vs. 6.2, P < 0.01), and less backfat thickness (1.64 vs. 1.84 cm, P < 0.05) and yield grade (3.38 vs. 3.95, P < 0.01) than NE3 carcasses. Overall, CON cattle consumed 393 kg less DM in the feedlot (1,250 vs. 1,643 kg; P < 0.05). No treatment effects were observed for daily methane (CH4; P = 0.62) or nitrous oxide (N2O; P = 0.7) emissions per steer. Assuming a constant emission rate on a DMI basis throughout the course of the feedlot trial, CON feedlot management resulted in a 31% decrease in emissions per finished steer compared with NE3 management. Expressing CH4 emissions on a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) basis revealed a 1.10-kg CO2-eq difference per kilogram BW gain (5.02 kg of NE3 vs. 3.92 kg of CON) between the 2 feedlot management systems. Although the metabolic modifiers resulted in additional costs for the CON treatment group, the cost per kilogram of feedlot BW gain was significantly less ($1.12/kg vs. $1.35/kg; P < 0.05) than NE3. Both production systems satisfied some sustainability criteria, although neither concurrently fulfilled all of the environmental, social, and economic goals of agricultural sustainability.The methodologies, approaches and indicators for assessing the impacts of freshwater usage are still evolving. The development of the water footprint concept has been an important step in this direction but the existing methodologies mainly assess the quantity of water used rather than the related impacts. Although there is a recognised need to consider the latter, particularly on a life cycle basis, the difficulty is that there are little or no reliable data on water usage in life cycle databases; furthermore, there is no agreed life cycle impact assessment method for estimating impacts related to freshwater use. However, there have been some methodological developments which propose methods for inventory modelling and impact assessment for water use in life cycle assessment. This paper reviews some of these approaches and discusses their strengths and limitations through a case study, which considers the impacts of freshwater consumption from corn-derived ethanol produced in 12 different countries. The results show a huge variation in the results between different methods and demonstrate the need for a standardised methodology for assessing the impacts of water use on a life cycle basis. Specific recommendations for further research in this field have been made accordingly. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Products are produced by a series of energy-intensive transformations of raw materials such as crude oil. The life cycle inventory (LCI) of mass and energy usage in these supply chains is one measure of overall environmental performance. In this paper, we present a methodology to examine the life cycle choices available for a product and optimize these choices based on criteria derived from mass and energy efficiency. A two-phase framework for production path construction followed by optimal path selection was developed. This framework can be applied to improve the overall LCI energy characteristic of a product when there are different production and recycling options for different product constituents. The scope of the life cycle is from raw material extraction through the production system and does not include the use and disposal phases. The approach is illustrated in a case study of the EcoWorx (TM) carpet system of Shaw Industries, which includes the inclusion of several recycled material options. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper argues that corporate environmental management should be based on significant environmental aspects that result in significant environmental impacts. The Finnish forest industry has substantially reduced its emissions but, being heavy industry, it still causes significant environmental impacts. This paper presents expert views on environmental impacts and their measurement. They were gathered through semi-structured theme interviews. The most frequently mentioned environmental impacts and significant environmental impacts related to water, energy and air. Positive environmental impacts resulted from recycling, forest industry products and use of energy. Traditional emission measurement was considered a well-measured issue. The target subjects of the measurement and especially environmental impact measurement require improvement. The contribution of this research is concerned with the development of measurement and two issues arising from the research are emphasised. First, environmental impact measurement should be further developed. Second, the measurement of the production chain that is physically outside the boundaries of forest industry mills should also be developed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Objective: To use the north Queensland banana industry as a case study to examine the extent to which cosmetic standards set by retailers influence the amount of edible waste generated on-farm and the effect of this on the sustain-ability of the Australian food and nutrition system. Design: Waste audits were performed on-farm at a banana packing shed to quantify the amount of fruit discarded due to cosmetic imperfections. These data, together with production records provided by the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries and interviews with growers, were used to inform a nutritional analysis, a life cycle assessment and an economic analysis to quantify nutritional, environmental and economic impacts. Setting: North Queensland, Australia Subjects: Banana farms and packing shed. Result: Between 10 and 30% of the north Queensland banana crop is discarded on-farm. Of this, 78% was found to be due to cosmetic imperfections, which equates to an industry total of 37 000 tonnes per annum. This waste represents a loss of 137 billion kilojoules with accompanying macro-and micronutrients. The life cycle assessment indicated that approximately 16 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, 11.2 gigalitres of virtual water as well as other natural resources are embodied in the waste. There is an industry-wide, economic loss of approximately $AU 26.9 million per annum. Conclusions: The majority of on-farm banana waste is caused by arbitrary cosmetic standards set by retailers, resulting in significant nutritional, environmental and economic losses. Public health nutritionists have a role to play across the entire food chain to minimize the impacts of waste on the food system.Energy consumption in dwellings contributes significantly to their total negative environmental impact. This paper quantitatively assesses the environmental impact of building-related and user-related gas and electricity consumption in a Dutch apartment dwelling using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Several scenarios for gas and electricity consumption are compared to assess what effect changes in building characteristics and user behaviour have on the environmental impacts of energy consumption. This study shows that gas consumption significantly contributes to four environmental impact categories, which can be most effectively countered by reducing the heat demand of the dwelling. A 23% reduction in gas consumption leads to up to 13% less overall environmental impacts. Particularly in buildings with low heat demand, electricity consumption dominates all environmental impact categories. These can most effectively be reduced by changing the electricity demand of the user: 47% less electricity consumption leads to a 9-45% reduction in the total environmental impact. However, since electricity consumption continues to rise, the environmental effects of electricity use may be better reduced by changing the environmental impact of the electricity supply. Theoretically, when electricity consumption remains the same, over 90% less environmental impact could be reached by using 100% wind power to generate electricity. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compares the environmental impacts of a polycrystalline photovoltaic (PV) module and a wind turbine using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. This study models landfill disposal and recycling scenarios of the decommissioned PV module and wind turbine, and compares their impacts to those of the other stages in the life cycles. The comparison establishes that the wind turbine has smaller environmental impacts in almost all of the categories assessed. The disposal stage can become a major contributor to the environmental impacts, depending on disposal scenarios. Recycling is an environmentally efficient method, because of its environmental benefits derived from energy savings and resource reclaimed. The end-of-life recycling scenario for a wind turbine has a significant part on the environmental impacts and should not be ignored. However, many factors also influence the degree to which recycling can be beneficial. With the wind turbine recycling scenario, when large quantities of waste are recycled, the potential savings can be quite large, while with the PV module, small quantities of recycled waste mean that the benefits of recycling are not fully reaped. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a multiobjective optimization model based on a mathematical programming formulation for the optimal planning of a biorefinery, considering the optimal selection of feedstock, processing technology, and a set of products. The multiobjective optimization problem simultaneously considers the profit maximization and the environmental impact minimization. The economic objective function takes into account the availability of bioresources, processing limits, and demand of products, as well as the costs of feedstocks, products, and processing routes. On the other hand, the environmental assessment includes the overall environmental impact measured through the eco-indicator-99 based on the life cycle analysis methodology. The proposed methodology generates a Pareto curve that identifies the set of optimal solutions for both objectives, and it is applied to a case study for planning the production of a biorefinery in Mexico.Cultured meat (i.e., meat produced in vitro using tissue engineering techniques) is being developed as a potentially healthier and more efficient alternative to conventional meat. Life cycle assessment (LCA) research method was used for assessing environmental impacts of large-scale cultured meat production. Cyanobacteria hydrolysate was assumed to be used as the nutrient and energy source for muscle cell growth. The results showed that production of 1000 kg cultured meat requires 26-33 GJ energy, 367-521 m(3) water, 190-230 m(2) land, and emits 1900-2240 kg CO2-eq GHG emissions. In comparison to conventionally produced European meat, cultured meat involves approximately 7-45% lower energy use (only poultry has lower energy use), 78-96% lower GHG emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82-96% lower water use depending on the product compared. Despite high uncertainty, it is concluded that the overall environmental impacts of cultured meat production are substantially lower than those of conventionally produced meat.Remediation action is critical for the management of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated sites. Dozens of remediation technologies developed internationally could be divided in two general categories incineration and non-incineration. In this paper, life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to study the environmental impacts of these two kinds of remediation technologies in selected PCB contaminated sites, where Infrared High Temperature Incineration (IHTI) and Base Catalyzed Decomposition (BCD) were selected as representatives of incineration and non-incineration. A combined midpoint/damage approach was adopted by using SimaPro 7.2 and IMPACTA2002+ to assess the human toxicity, ecotoxicity, climate change impact, and resource consumption from the five subsystems of IHTI and BCD technologies, respectively. It was found that the major environmental impacts through the whole lifecycle arose from energy consumption in both IHTI and BCD processes. For IHTI, primary and secondary combustion subsystem contributes more than 50% of midpoint impacts concerning with carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, respiratory organics, terrestrial ecotoxity, terrestrial acidification/eutrophication and global warming. In BCD process, the rotary kiln reactor subsystem presents the highest contribution to almost all the midpoint impacts including global warming, non-renewable energy, non-carcinogens, terrestrial ecotoxity and respiratory inorganics. In the view of midpoint impacts, the characterization values for global warming from IHTI and BCD were about 432.35 and 38.5 kg CO(2)-eq per ton PCB-containing soils, respectively. LCA results showed that the single score of BCD environmental impact was 1468.97 Pt while IHTI's score is 2785.15 Pt, which indicates BCD potentially has a lower environmental impact than IHTI technology in the PCB contaminated soil remediation process. (C) 2011 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.This paper presents a methodology to integrate life cycle assessment (LCA) in thermo-economic models used for the optimal conceptual design of energy conversion systems. It is illustrated by an application to a thermo-economic model developed for the multi-objective optimization of combined synthetic natural gas (SNG) and electricity production from lignocellulosic biomass. The life cycle inventory (LCI) is written as a function of the parameters of the thermo-economic model. In this way, the obtained environmental indicators from the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) are calculated as a function of the decision variables of process design. The LCIA results obtained with the developed methodology are compared with the results obtained by a conventional LCA of the same process. Then, a multi-objective environomic (i.e. thermodynamic, economic, environmental) optimization of the process superstructure is performed. The results highlight the important effects of process configuration, integration, efficiency and scale on the environmental impacts. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The replacement of fossil fuels by biomass in the power generation process is an important strategy promoted by the European Union (EU). This is aimed at reducing the effects of climate change along with increased security of supply and diversification of energy sources. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an increasingly popular method for research due to the difficulties associated with environmental impact assessment. This technique is aimed at analysing and evaluating the environmental impact of materials, products or services through the entire cycle of production. The paper presents the application of an LCA study to assess the impact of energy crops on the environment. The aim of the study was to compare the environmental impact of various crops used for biofuel production. We have estimated the potential global warming, acidification and eutrophication for crops from the lignocelluloses group (willow, Miscanthus) and traditional plants for Polish agriculture (wheat, rapeseed, potato).A carbon footprint represents the overall CO(2) equivalent emissions embodied in a specific product over its entire life cycle. In this work we present an easy to use software tool developed in Excel which allows for the calculation of a carbon footprint to be conducted by non professional. The tool was specifically designed according to life cycle assessment (LCA) standards to be used with water treatment processes but can be modified for other processes as well. Using a case study involving the SWRO pre-treatment process in the Palm Jumeirah plant a calculation of the carbon footprint of 1 m(3) of pre-treated seawater was carried out and the hot spots at which process improvements can be made were identified.This study estimates the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the production of Marcellus shale natural gas and compares its emissions with national average US natural gas emissions produced in the year 2008, prior to any significant Marcellus shale development. We estimate that the development and completion of a typical Marcellus shale well results in roughly 5500 t of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions or about 1.8 g CO(2)e/MJ of gas produced, assuming conservative estimates of the production lifetime of a typical well. This represents an 11% increase in GHG emissions relative to average domestic gas (excluding combustion) and a 3% increase relative to the life cycle emissions when combustion is included. The life cycle GHG emissions of Marcellus shale natural gas are estimated to be 63-75 g CO(2)e/MJ of gas produced with an average of 68 g CO(2)e/MJ of gas produced. Marcellus shale natural gas GHG emissions are comparable to those of imported liquefied natural gas. Natural gas from the Marcellus shale has generally lower life cycle GHG emissions than coal for production of electricity in the absence of any effective carbon capture and storage processes, by 20-50% depending upon plant efficiencies and natural gas emissions variability. There is significant uncertainty in our Marcellus shale GHG emission estimates due to eventual production volumes and variability in flaring, construction and transportation.The internal recycling process of BOF slag which is one of the huge solid wastes from iron and steel industry was emphasized. Based on the four scenarios of different internal recycling strategies for BOF slag, life cycle assessment (LCA) as a valuable tool for industrial solid waste management was applied to analyze the contribution to reducing environmental impacts and resources burdens for each scenario. The global warming potential (GWP) results of the four scenarios show that the scenario which performs best in carbon reduction cuts off 14. 2% of GWP impacts of the worst scenario. The results of this study show that the optimized internal recycling process of BOF slag can improve the environmental performance of crude steel. It is important to assess and choose an appropriate strategy to recycle BOF slag from LCA perspective to reduce the environmental impacts and resource burdens as much as possible.Hybrid life cycle assessment is used to assess and compare the life cycle environmental impacts of electricity generation from coal and natural gas with various carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies consisting of post-combustion, pre-combustion or oxyfuel capture; pipeline CO(2) transport and geological storage. The systems with a capture efficiency of 85-96% decrease net greenhouse gas emission by 64-78% depending on the technology used. Calculation of other life cycle impacts shows significant trade-offs with fresh-water eutrophication and toxicity potentials. Human toxicity impact increases by 40-75%, terrestrial ecotoxicity by 60-120%, and freshwater eutrophication by 60-200% for the different technologies. There is a two- to four-fold increase in freshwater ecotoxicity potential in the post-combustion approach. The increase in toxicity for pre-combustion systems is 40-80% for the coal and 50-90% for the gas power plant. The increase in impacts for the oxyfuel approach mainly depends on energy demand for the air separation unit, giving an increase in various toxicity potentials of 35-70% for coal and 60-105% for natural gas system. Most of the increase in impacts with CCS systems is due to the energy penalty and the infrastructure development chain. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability rating of crop protection strategies in apple production Future plant protection strategies should be efficacious, economic and environmentally acceptable. The SustainOS methodology has been developed to assess the sustainability of crop protection strategies in apple orchards. The methodology consists of a system description structure, an assessment step for subcriteria of sustainability and an aggregation of these subcriteria to an overall sustainability. The method has been applied in a case study on four plant protection strategies in apple orchard systems in the Swiss Lake of Constance region. The strategies reached from a system strongly depending on pesticides to an innovative system in which pesticides were replaced to a large extend by alternative plant protection measures. It could be shown that ecotoxicity and other environmental impacts of plant protection measures could be improved by implementation of alternative plant protection measures available today. However, economic disadvantages were the drawback of the ecological progress. An improved economic situation could be achieved with future innovative crop protection strategies and new resistant varieties assuming higher and more stable yield.Increasing interest in renewable fuels inspired a three-day workshop in Toronto in February 2008, entitled: The Scientific Foundation for Sustainable Forest Biomass Harvesting Guidelines and Policy. In this paper, we summarized the biodiversity-focused content of the workshop, including potential implications of intensification of biomass removal on biodiversity, knowledge gaps identified by workshop participants, and implications for policy development. Woody debris represents an important habitat resource for a wide variety of forest organisms, and the presence and continued supply of fresh to highly decayed dead wood represents a key concern in managed forest systems. A key challenge in sustainable forests management is to determine to what extent biomass harvests can increase fibre use while sustaining biodiversity, its functions, and the broad suite of ecosystem services that it provides. For knowledge-based planning and policy development, researchers must provide complex information to policy-makers and forest managers in a clear, effective way. In particular, full life-cycle analysis of intensive forest biomass harvesting taking into account environmental consequences is needed to inform sound evidence-based policy and decision-making. In the absence of complete scientific information, forest managers and decision-makers are well-advised to proceed with caution within a well-developed adaptive management framework.Based on the need to reduce CO2 emissions and minimize energy dependency, the EU Member States have set ambitious energy policies goals and have developed respective, specific regulations, in order to improve the energy performance of the building sector. Thus, specific measures regarding the buildings' envelope, the use of efficient HVAC technologies and the integration of renewable energy systems are being constantly studied and promoted. The effective combination of these three main aspects will consequently result in maximum energy efficiency. Germany has played a key role in this development, with intensive work focusing in the improvement of the energy behaviour of the residential building stock. In this paper, the use of radiative heating systems placing special emphasis on infrared is being studied as part of the energy renovation of residential buildings from the 1970's. This is done by applying an integrated assessment model to evaluate specific interventions regarding the improvement of the energy behaviour of the buildings' envelope and the use of radiative heating systems, based on a thorough Life Cycle Analysis according to criteria of energy, economic and environmental performance, as well as thermal comfort. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper the results from a in-depth life cycle analysis of production and use of a novel grid-connected photovoltaic micromorph system are presented and compared to other thin film and traditional crystalline silicon photovoltaic technologies. Among the new thin film technologies, the micromorph tandem junction appears to be one of the most promising devices from the industrial point of view. The analysis was based on actual production data given to the authors directly from the PRAMAC Swiss Company and it is consistent with the recommendations provided by the ISO norms and updates. The gross energy requirement, green house gas emissions and energy pay-back time have been calculated for the electric energy output virtually generated by the studied system in a lifetime period of 20 years. A comparative framework is also provided, wherein results obtained for the case study are compared with data from literature previously obtained for the best commercially available competing photovoltaic technologies. Results clearly show a significant decrease in gross energy requirement, in green house gas emissions and also a shorter energy pay-back time for the micromorph technology. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy efficiency of agriculture needs improvement to reduce the dependency on non-renewable energy sources. We estimated the energy flows of a wheat-maize-soybean-maize rotation of three different cropping systems: (i) low-input integrated farming (LI), (ii) integrated farming following European Regulations (IFS), and (iii) conventional farming (CONV). Balancing N fertilization with actual crop requirements and adopting minimum tillage proved the most efficient techniques to reduce energy inputs, contributing 64.7% and 11.2% respectively to the total reduction. Large differences among crops in energy efficiency (maize: 2.2 MJ kg(-1) grain; wheat: 2.6 MJ kg(-1) grain; soybean: 4.1 MJ kg(-1) grain) suggest that crop rotation and crop management can be equally important in determining cropping system energy efficiency. Integrated farming techniques improved energy efficiency by reducing energy inputs without affecting energy outputs. Compared with CONV, energy use efficiency increased 31.4% and 32.7% in IFS and LI, respectively, while obtaining similar net energy values. Including SOM evolution in the energy analysis greatly enhanced the energy performance of IFS and, even more dramatically. LI compared to CONV. Improved energy efficiency suggests the adoption of alternative farming systems to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. However, a thorough evaluation should include net global warming potential assessment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Before further investments are made in utilizing biomass as a source of renewable energy, both policy makers and the energy industry need estimates of the net greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions expected from substituting biobased fuels for fossil fuels. Such GHG reductions depend greatly on how the biomass is cultivated, transported, processed, and converted into fuel or electricity. Any policy aiming to reduce GHGs with biomass-based energy must account for uncertainties in emissions at each stage of production, or else it risks yielding marginal reductions, if any, while potentially imposing great costs. This paper provides a framework for incorporating uncertainty analysis specifically into estimates of the life cycle GHG emissions from the production of biomass. We outline the sources of uncertainty, discuss the implications of uncertainty and variability on the limits of life cycle assessment (LCA) models, and provide a guide for practitioners to best practices in modeling these uncertainties. The suite of techniques described herein can be used to improve the understanding and the representation of the uncertainties associated with emissions estimates, thus enabling improved decision making with respect to the use of biomass for energy and fuel production. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Banana and cooking banana (Musa spp.) production systems accumulate a considerable quantity of discard due to high quality demands of markets. Ripe fruits have high sugar contents, which can be easily processed to ethanol. The present study aimed to quantitatively assess the production potential of ethanol from Musa spp. discard and to analyze the energy and carbon (C) footprints of this production system using a life cycle approach. The study compared three case studies differing in management practices, which were (I) a coffee producer's cooperative in Costa Rica using Musa spp. as shade trees, (II) organic banana producers from Ecuador, and (III) conventional banana producers from Ecuador. It was found that banana and cooking banana discard accumulated at a rate of 1.4-3.4 t ha(-1), of which around 118-2661 ethanol could be produced on a yearly basis. The case study from Costa Rica yielded a net-energy balance (NEB) of 19.3 MJ l(-1) and avoided carbon emissions of 0.48 kg l(-1). It was closely followed by the organic banana producers from Ecuador with a NEB of 17.1 MJ l(-1) and avoided carbon emissions of 0.44 kg l(-1). NEB and avoided carbon emissions for the conventional banana farms in Ecuador were much lower (7.2 MJ l(-1) and 0.34 kg l(-1)). Despite providing economic benefits to farmers through a biomass source that would have been otherwise lost, the study gave clear evidence that the ecological footprint of this ethanol production system is significantly influenced by the resource use during the ;production life cycle. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The conversion of wood to synthetic natural gas (SNG) via gasification and catalytic methanation is a renewable close to commercialization technology that could substitute fossil fuels and alleviate global warming. In order to assure that it is beneficial from the environmental perspective, a cradle to grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of SNG from a first-of-its-kind polygeneration unit for heating, electricity generation, and transportation was conducted. These SNG systems were compared to fossil and conventional wood reference systems and environmental benefits from their substitution evaluated. Finally, we conduct sensitivity analysis for expected technological improvements and factors that could decrease environmental performance. It is shown that substituting fossil technologies with SNG systems is environmentally beneficial with regard to global warming and for selected technologies also with regard to aggregated environmental impacts. On the condition that process heat is used efficiently, technological improvements such as increased efficiency and denitrification could further increase this advantage. On the other hand, lower GHG emissions and aggregated impacts are partly compensated by other environmental effects, e.g. eutrophication, ecotoxicity, and respiratory disease caused by inorganics. Since more efficient alternatives exist for the generation of heat and electricity from wood, it is argued that SNG is best used for transportation. In the light of a growing demand for renewable transportation fuels and commercial scale technological development being only in its initial stage, the production of SNG from wood seems to be a promising technology for the near future. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This perspective reviews water metrics for accounting total water demand to produce bioenergy at various spatial scales. Volumes of water abstracted, consumed, and altered are estimated to assess water requirements of a bioenergy product, providing useful tools for water resource management and planning at local, regional, and global scale. Blue-water use accounting, integrated over time and space, provides the most direct measurements of the effects of bioenergy production on freshwater allocation among various end-users, and on human and ecosystem health and well-being. Measurement of total water demand for crop evapotranspiration, which includes both blue and green water, communicates vital information of how land and water productivity supports/constrains bioenergy expansion, and helps identify potential areas to increase the productivity of agriculture through improved soil and water conservation, changes in crop choice, and improved crop management. Life-cycle water use accounting provides a useful comparison of water required for production and conversion of feedstock to various forms of energy, and opportunities to improve water use efficiency throughout the supply chain. In addition, life-cycle water use may be used to account for water use avoided as a result of displacement of products by coproducts of biofuel production; though these applications must be interpreted with caution. Local or regional conditions and the objective of the analysis at hand determine which water accounting metrics are most relevant and the relative importance of water use impact compared to other impacts, such as impacts to soil quality and biodiversity. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdBioenergy expansion can significantly impact water resources in the region in which it occurs. Investment, policy, and resource management decisions related to bioenergy should therefore take this critical consideration into account. Water resource impacts can defy easy quantification because water consumption varies spatially and temporally, different water sources are not necessarily commensurable, and impact depends on the state of the resource base that is drawn upon. This perspective offers an assessment framework that operators and policy-makers can use in evaluating projects to avoid or mitigate detrimental effects. We adapt water footprint (WF) and life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to the bioenergy context, describing comprehensive life cycle inventory (LCI) approaches that account for blue and green water use as well as for pollution effects, varying sources, coproduct allocation, and spatial heterogeneity. Impact assessment requires that characterization (weighting) factors be derived so that consumption values can be summed and compared across resources and locations. We recommend that characterization draw on metrics of water stress, accounting for environmental flow requirements, climatic variability, and non-linearity of water stress effects. Finally, we describe some location-specific impacts of concern that may not be revealed through common analytical approaches and may warrant closer consideration. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis paper explores the relationship between productivity of dairy production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on a global scale. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was used to assess GHG emissions from dairy production and processing chains. Milk yield expressed as kg fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) per animal was chosen as a proxy for system productivity. On a per cow basis, GHG emissions increase with higher yields. However. GHG emissions per kg FPCM decline substantially as animal productivity increases. The contribution of different gases to total GHG emissions of dairy production systems vary; methane and nitrous oxide emissions decrease with increasing productivity, while carbon dioxide emissions increase, but on a lower scale. Productivity increase therefore offers not only a pathway to satisfying increasing demand for milk but also a viable mitigation approach, especially in areas where milk yields are currently below 2000 kg/cow and year. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The rapidly expanding set of pavement life-cycle assessments (LCAs) available in the literature represents the growing interest in improving the sustainability of this critical infrastructure system. The existing literature establishes a foundational framework for quantifying environmental impact, but fails to deliver global conclusions regarding materials choices, maintenance strategies, design lives, and other best-practice policies for achieving sustainability goals. In order to comprehensively quantify environmental footprints and effectively guide sustainability efforts, functional units need to be standardized, systems boundaries expanded, data quality and reliability improved, and study scopes broadened. Improving these deficiencies will allow future studies to perform equitable and comparable assessments, thus creating a synergistic set of literature that continuously builds upon itself rather than generates independent and isolated conclusions. These improvements will place the body of pavement LCA research in a better position to confidently lead private industry and government agencies on successful paths towards sustainability goals. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As life-cycle assessment (LCA) increasingly is used to evaluate the environmental footprint of pavements, there is growing need to critique the state and utility of the supporting science. LCA is a data-intensive methodology that requires inputs and models from a variety of different scientific fields. While some data sources are mature, others are products of nascent and inexact research. Within pavement LCAs, traffic delay, rolling resistance, concrete carbonation, pavement albedo, lighting. leachate, and end of life allocation are areas where the supporting science is incomplete or is ineffectively incorporated into the pavement LCA framework. These components produce quantitative gaps in the assessment methodology, thus jeopardizing the accuracy of results and defensibility of conclusions. Benchmarking where the science stands allows practitioners to perform LCAs while incorporating the best available information, including best estimates and gross evaluations of the uncertainty. Moreover, identifying weaknesses in the fields that support pavement LCAs provides a transparent assessment framework and generates a focused research direction moving forward. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on 20 scenarios of microalgae cultivation. These scenarios examined the utilization of nutrients and CO2 from synthetic sources and waste streams as well as the materials used to construct a photobioreactor (PBR). A 0.2-m(3) closed PBR of Chlorella vulgaris at 30%-oil content by weight with the productivity of 25 g/m(2) x day was used as a case study. Results of the study show that the utilization of resources from waste streams mainly avoided global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication impacts. Impacts from the production of material used to construct the PBR dominate total impacts in acidification and ozone depletion categories, even over longer PBR lifetimes; thus, the choice of PBR construction materials is important. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The bulk of the Earth's biosphere is cold (e. g. 90% of the ocean's waters are <= 5 degrees C), sustaining a broad diversity of microbial life. The permanently cold environments vary from the deep ocean to alpine reaches and to polar regions. Commensurate with the extent and diversity of the ecosystems that harbour psychrophilic life, the functional capacity of the microorganisms that inhabitat the cold biosphere are equally diverse. As a result, indigenous psychrophilic microorganisms provide an enormous natural resource of enzymes that function effectively in the cold, and these cold-adapted enzymes have been targeted for their biotechnological potential. In this review we describe the main properties of enzymes from psychrophiles and describe some of their known biotechnological applications and ways to potentially improve their value for biotechnology. The review also covers the use of metagenomics for enzyme screening, the development of psychrophilic gene expression systems and the use of enzymes for cleaning.Environmental analysis tools as LCA and GIS have been combined to provide an integrated methodology able to determine suitable areas for cultivating Brassica spp. (B. carinata and B. napus) and Populus spp and for proposing local and decentralised energy production and consumption scenario. The methodology is applied and verified in a Catalonia (southern Europe) case study area but it can be extrapolated to other Mediterranean regions with similar agroclimates. The results obtained show that a high impact reduction in potential global warming category can be achieved annually (annual reduction of 1,954,904 Mg of CO2 eq.) in a local scale scenario. Environmental integration such as GIS and LCA provide a methodology capable of giving enough information and results to determine an energy crop implementation strategy for reducing energy consumption and CO2 eq. emissions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we analyze the impact of ventilation heat recovery (VHR) on the operation primary energy use in residential buildings. We calculate the operation primary energy use of a case-study apartment building built to conventional and passive house standard, both with and without VHR, and using different end-use heating systems including electric resistance heating, bedrock heat pump and district heating based on combined heat and power (CHP) production. VHR increases the electrical energy used for ventilation and reduces the heat energy used for space heating. Significantly greater primary energy savings is achieved when VHR is used in resistance heated buildings than in district heated buildings. For district heated buildings the primary energy savings are small. VHR systems can give substantial final energy reduction, but the primary energy benefit depends strongly on the type of heat supply system, and also on the amount of electricity used for VHR and the airtightness of buildings. This study shows the importance of considering the interactions between heat supply systems and VHR systems to reduce primary energy use in buildings. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As circumstances of operating and maintenance activities for landfilling and composting in Tehran metropolis differ from those of cities in developed countries, it was concluded to have an environmental impact comparison between the current solid waste management (MSW) strategies: (1) landfill, and (2) composting plus landfill. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare these scenarios for MSW in Tehran, Iran. The Eco-Indicator 99 is applied as an impact assessment method considering surplus energy, climate change, acidification, respiratory effect, carcinogenesis, ecotoxicity and ozone layer depletion points of aspects. One ton of municipal solid waste of Tehran was selected as the functional unit. According to the comparisons, the composting plus landfill scenario causes less damage to human health in comparison to landfill scenario. However, its damages to both mineral and fossil resources as well as ecosystem quality are higher than the landfill scenario. Thus, the composting plus landfill scenario had a higher environmental impact than landfill scenario. However, an integrated waste management will ultimately be the most efficient approach in terms of both environmental and economic benefits. In this paper, a cost evaluation shows that the unit cost per ton of waste for the scenarios is 15.28 and 26.40 US$, respectively. Results show landfill scenario as the preferable option both in environmental and economic aspects for Tehran in the current situation.Hindering urban sprawl is one of the main goals for contemporary urban planning. Urban density is considered crucial in climate change mitigation since it reduces automobile dependence and decreases unit sizes, for example. This letter analyzes the effect of density in a city context. In the study the Finnish capital Helsinki is divided into two areas of different urban densities: the high density downtown area and the more scarcely populated suburbs. The study is a continuation of a recently published study on the implications of urban structure on carbon emissions, and analyzes further the main finding of the first study-that higher urban density might have negligible or even reverse effect on the per capita carbon emissions. Similarly to the previous study, a consumption based tiered hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is employed in order to produce a comprehensive assessment, free of territorial boundaries and system cutoffs typical of traditional LCAs. Based on the findings of the previous study, it is hypothesized that when assessing city level carbon dioxide emissions from a wider, consumer oriented LCA perspective, increased urban density may not necessarily reduce carbon emissions. Surprisingly, the study finds that carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions are substantially higher in the dense downtown area than in the surrounding suburbs, which is suggested to imply that the increased consumption due to the higher standard of living increases emissions more than the higher density is able to reduce them. The results demonstrate that, while increasing urban density can be justified from a number of ecological, social and economic viewpoints, density is not necessarily a key parameter in the particular case of climate change. In cities like Helsinki, where wealth is concentrated in the downtown area, climate policies should give higher priority to the energy consumption of buildings, to alternative energy production and distribution modes, as well as to low carbon consumption within the city.Global crop production is causing pressure on water and land resources in many places. In addition to local resource management, the related environmental impacts of commodities traded along international supply chains need to be considered and managed accordingly. For this purpose, we calculate the specific water consumption and land use for the production of 160 crops and crop groups, covering most harvested mass on global cropland. We quantify indicators for land and water scarcity with high geospatial resolution. This facilitates spatially explicit crop-specific resource management and regionalized life cycle assessment of processed products. The vast cultivation of irrigated wheat, rice, cotton, maize, and sugar cane, which are major sources of food, bioenergy, and fiber, drives worldwide water scarcity. According to globally averaged production, substituting biofuel for crude oil would have a lower impact on water resources than substituting cotton for polyester. For some crops, water scarcity impacts are inversely related to land resource stress, illustrating that water consumption is often at odds with land use. On global average, maize performs better than rice and wheat in the combined land/water assessment. High spatial variability of water and land use related impacts underlines the importance of appropriate site selection for agricultural activities.This consequential life cycle assessment study highlights the key environmental aspects of producing biogas from separated pig and cow slurry, a relatively new but probable scenario for future biogas production, as it avoids the reliance on constrained carbon cosubstrates. Three scenarios involving different slurry separation technologies have been assessed and compared to a business-as-usual reference slurry management scenario. The results show that the environmental benefits of such biogas production are highly dependent upon the efficiency of the separation technology used to concentrate the volatile solids in the solid fraction. The biogas scenario involving the most efficient separation technology resulted in a dry matter separation efficiency of 87% and allowed a net reduction of the global warming potential of 40%, compared to the reference slurry management. This figure comprises the whole slurry life cycle, including the flows bypassing the biogas plant. This study includes soil carbon balances and a method for quantifying the changes in yield resulting from increased nitrogen availability as well as for quantifying mineral fertilizers displacement. Soil carbon balances showed that between 13 and 50% less carbon ends up in the soil pool with the different biogas alternatives, as opposed to the reference slurry management.Future energy technologies will be key for a successful reduction of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. With demand for electricity projected to increase significantly in the future, climate policy goals of limiting the effects of global atmospheric warming can only be achieved if power generation processes are profoundly decarbonized. Energy models, however, have ignored the fact that upstream emissions are associated with any energy technology. In this work we explore methodological options for hybrid life cycle assessment (hybrid LCA) to account for the indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of energy technologies using wind power generation in the UK as a case study. We develop and compare two different approaches using a multiregion input-output modeling framework - Input-Output-based Hybrid LCA and Integrated Hybrid LCA. The latter utilizes the full-sized Ecoinvent process database. We discuss significance and reliability of the results and suggest ways to improve the accuracy of the calculations. The comparison of hybrid LCA methodologies provides valuable insight into the availability and robustness of approaches for informing energy and environmental policy.Metal matrix composites (MIVICs) have become attractive for engineering structural applications due to their excellent specific strength and are increasingly seen as an alternative to conventional materials, particularly in the automotive industry. In this study, a historical background on the development and application of metal matrix composites for automotive brake rotors is presented. The discussion also includes an analysis of the product life cycle with stir casting as a case study. The historical review analysis revealed that gradual development of material and processing techniques have led to lighter weight, lower cost and higher performance brake rotors as a result of a better understanding of the mechanics of metal matrix composites. It emerged from the study that the stir casting technique provides ease of operation, sustainability and, most significantly, very competitive costs without sacrificing quality relative to other techniques; as such, it is the most attractive manufacturing process in the industry. These findings can be used for future design and manufacture of an efficient and effective aluminium matrix composite brake rotor for automotive and other applications.Hydrogen is considered to be an ideal energy carrier in the foreseeable future and can play a very important role in the energy system. A variety of technologies can be used to produce hydrogen. One of the most remarkable methods for large-scale hydrogen production is thermo-chemical water decomposition using heat energy from nuclear, solar and other sources. Detailed simulations of the two most promising water splitting thermo-chemical cycles (the Westinghouse cycle and the Sulphur Iodine cycle) were performed in Aspen Plus code and obtained results were used for life cycle analysis. They were compared with two different processes for hydrogen production (coal gasification and coal pyrolysis). Some of the results obtained from LCA are also reported in the paper. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The outcomes of biohydrogen from photosynthesis processes are still small, however different development methods and laboratory studies are carried out to increase the production yield and meanwhile optimize the process to lessen the negative impact on the environment and climate change. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) gives the possibility to compare different biohydrogen production approaches using different photosynthesis methods and, at the same time, identify the environmental "hot spots" of the whole process. Inventory analysis and the results of different researchers in this field allow to find values of selected ecoindicators in order to evaluate the biohydrogen production efficiency with the selection of the best initial data for life cycle analysis. These ecoindicators weigh the resources needed for biohydrogen production whole system. This paper presents the first aspects for the implementation of a life cycle assessment. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since 1990 FN S.p.A (a 98.65% ENEA participated Company), in collaboration with ENEA and AFCo-Ansaldo Fuel Cells Company, has been involved in research and development activities in the field of high temperature fuel cell porous components and in their traditional manufacturing processes (tape casting and sintering). In alternative to the traditional tape casting technology, FN has developed an innovative process based on the moulding plastic technology for the production of MCFC ceramic matrixes. With the new technology the environmental impact is reduced as it has been shown by LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) preliminary studies. These results are not the only advantages: the new process allows the realization of various and/or complex component shapes, a higher productivity level, cost reducing and the complete re-workability of rejects. In this paper a comparison between the traditional tape casting process and the new route process is shown. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The LCA is a method enabling the performance of a complete study on the environmental impacts of the product, taking into consideration all its life cycle (from the cradle to the tomb" or, better "from the cradle to the cradle" when also the maximum recycling/reusing of the materials is provided. There are many procedures to perform an LCA of the consumers' products. In particular, the SUMMA method (Sustainability Multi-criteria Multi-scale Assessment) allows obtaining a number of indices of efficiency and environmental sustainability which make the LCA assessment much more complete and significant. LCA method often represents the basis for an additional assessment of industrial products and processes, the LCC (Life Cycle Costing) which, allowing the association of economic variables to any phase of the life cycle, represents a useful tool for financial planning and management. The case study analysed in the present work concerns an LCA analysis, using the SUMMA method and the LCC of one small size molten carbonate fuel cell, 2.5 kW, assembled in the Fuel Cells Laboratory within the Educational Pole of Terni at the Universita degli Studi di Perugia. For sake of completeness of the results, the methods Ecoindicator99 and Impact2002 + were used in the analysis, as implemented in the used calculation software, the SimaPro 7.1 by PRe Consultants. From the registered results, it emerges that the environmental energy sustainability of the analysed element enables its widespread and in-depth employment in the phase subsequent to the optimisation of the connected economic frame; the scenarios opened by the present work envisage great margins of improvements of said aspects in the future experiments. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recently, the Thai government has been advancing the expanded use of biomass as an alternative source of energy substituting it for the fossil fuels that have been shown to be harmful to the environment. Rice husk, one of the main sources of biomass in Thailand, has already been used as an energy source in many different applications and has been successful in reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. At present (2011), the main use of rice husk in Thailand is as fuel to generate electricity. However, rice husk can potentially be used to produce other forms of energy such as cellulosic ethanol. This paper compares the environmental performance of the current main use of rice husk for energy purposes in the Thai context, i.e., for electricity generation with the prospective use, i.e., for cellulosic ethanol production. The results from this study will identify the more environmentally friendly option for use of rice husk for energy purposes. To determine the more environmentally friendly rice husk use option, that being the option that showed the greatest reduction of environmental impacts, the environmental impacts of the two selected rice husk use options were compared with the environmental impacts of their conventional energy production processes using the life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA software package SimaPro 7.1.6 was used to assist in the analysis of the environmental impacts, with the impact assessment method ReCiPe 2008. The system boundary of the study was expanded to take into consideration the effects caused by the consumption of coproducts generated within the two rice husk options. To make the options comparable, the functional units defined for both options were based on processing 1,000 tonnes of rice husk in both rice husk use systems studied. Based on the available data and assumptions made for this study, the results show that the use of rice husk in both electricity and cellulosic ethanol options had a significant effect in reducing the impacts on fossil fuel depletion and climate change, when compared with the conventional processes. However, the use of rice husk in both options caused a slightly higher impact on particulate matter formation than the conventional processes. The option of using rice husk to generate electricity was preferred over the option of using rice husk as a feedstock to produce cellulosic ethanol for all other impact categories analysed, except particulate matter formation, marine eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation and freshwater ecotoxicity. In addition, it was found that using rice husk to produce cellulosic ethanol caused a considerably greater impact on human toxicity than its conventional product. The environmental benefits gained by using rice husk depend on the materials that rice husk is replacing. This means that the reduction of environmental impact depends upon the use of the rice husk. Overall, the option of using rice husk to generate electricity shows benefits over the option of using rice husk to produce cellulosic ethanol for most impact categories analysed. However, the cellulosic ethanol option is better than the electricity option in terms of particulate matter formation, marine eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation and freshwater ecotoxicity. In the short run, the option of using rice husk to generate electricity is more environmentally friendly than the option of using rice husk to produce cellulosic ethanol. However, if rice husk is to be used for electricity generation, the ash generated in power plants should be sent out to be used in other industries. It should not be disposed of in landfills as it causes greater impacts than other ash use options. In the time of oil shortages, rice husk should be considered for use as a feedstock to produce cellulosic ethanol for use as a substitute for petrol to help reduce the dependency of oil importation for Thailand. However, the production process of cellulosic ethanol should be improved to help increase efficiency in reducing the environmental impacts in other impact categories.The goal of this paper is to describe the life cycle inventory (LCI) approach of energy produced by ArcelorMittal Steel Power Plant Poland (AMSPPP) in Krakow, Poland. The present LCI is representative for the reference year 2005 by application of ISO 14040: 2006. The system boundaries were labeled as gate-to-gate (it covered full process chain for energy production). Background data of inputs and outputs from the steel power plant have been inventoried as follows: consumption of energy and fuels, including: power coal (domestic), natural gas, blast furnace gas and coke oven gas, emission of air pollutants, emissions of particulate, air emissions from stockpiles, wastes, internal transport, and land use. LCI energy generation was developed mainly on the basis of following sources: site-specific measured or calculated data, life cycle assessment (LCA) study carried out by Polish Academy of Science in Krakw, AMSPPP Environmental Impact Report, Company and literature information and expert consultations. The functional unit is represented by 977 MW of generated electric and heat energies, distributed to ArcelorMittal Steel Plant processes and to the Krakow's grid. Time coverage is 2005. Operating parameters as well as air emissions associated with the power plant boilers were presented. The production data (steams: 9, 1.6, and 0.8 MPa, electric energy, degassing softening water, softening water heat, and blast furnace blow) were given. The emissions of SO(2), NO (x) , CO, CH(4), HCl, dust, heavy metals (Cr, Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, and Mn), pollution factors (BOD(5), COD) of waste water released from ash, slag, and sludge disposals were estimated. Finally, emission of CO(2) was calculated. Continuous monitoring of air pollutant emissions conducted in two emitter units related to 977 MW energy produced in AMSPPP was discussed. Related to 977 MW of energy production distributed by AMSPPP, the consumption of blast furnace gas, coke oven gas, and natural gas were 1,279.7, 47,441, and 2,080 Mm(3)/year, respectively. Other fuel consumption, power coal (domestic), was 315,680 Mg/year. The production data of steams: 9, 1.6, and 0.8 MPa were estimated at 3,689,640; 227,642; and 335,010 Mg, respectively. The volume of heat was about 1,529,610 GJ. Degassing softening water and softening water represented 1,066,674 and 2,124,466 m(3). Electric energy amount was on the order 441,188 MWh, and resulting value of the blast furnace blow was 3,076,606,000 m(3). Nominal powers of the power plant boilers ranged from 149 to 177 MW. Direct dust, SO(2), NO(2), and CO emissions into the air from seven boilers (Nos. 1-7) were 33, 159.9, 134, and 8 kg/h, and from boiler No. 8 (coal-only) were 17.70, 222.6, 112, and 1.11 kg/h, respectively. Total CO(2) emission was 1,802,902 Mg. Direct CO(2) emissions from burning of power coal, blast furnace gas, coke oven gas, and finally natural gas were 674,317, 1,084,797, 39,802, and 3,986 Mg, respectively. The amounts of SO(2), NO (x) (expressed as NO(2) eq.) CO, CH(4), HCl and dust emissions were 3,138.1, 2,648.5, 48.1, 575.08, 117.2, and 622.1 Mg, respectively. Contents of Mg, Cr, Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, Mn in ash were on the order of 19.4, 1.8, 60, 50, 45, and 475 mg/kg, respectively (max. values, 28.4, 2.3, 75, 68, 59, 682, respectively). COD and BOD(5) ranged 1.2 to 17 and 10.9 to 42.7 mg O(2)/dm(3), respectively. Contribution of power coal stockpiles to heavy metal emissions was relatively small. The amounts of ash-sludge mixtures and carbon volatile ash during stock of power coal were 53,078.1 and 11,272 Mg, respectively. Data concerning pollutants into air from continuous monitoring were not included due to a limitation of the available data. The time coverage of the data collected from continuous monitoring is 2006. This is the first tentative study to express energy generation in industry in Poland in terms of LCA/LCI for the energy power in steel industry. The results of the study suggest that reduction of the amount of power coal leads to saving of primary resources and reduction of SO(2) emissions, decrease land occupation caused by power coal stockpiles, and increase recovery of the blast furnace gas, as well as, coke oven gas surplus. The results may help ArcelorMittal Steel Plant government make decisions in policy making. Presentation of the study in this paper is suitable for the energy production processes, as well as other industries. The LCI offers environmental information consisting on the list of environmental loads. The impact assessment phase aims the results from the inventory analysis to be more understandable and life cycle impact assessment will be the direction for future research. Another issue to discuss is integration of LCA and risk assessment for industrial processes.The purpose of this study has been to investigate the effect of different allocation methods on life cycle assessment (LCA) results of products derived from line-caught cod and the consequences of applying these methods considering the main aims of this case study. These aims were for internal improvement work and communication of results to the market. Standard LCA methodology was applied. Mass allocation, economic allocation, a novel hybrid allocation and gross energy content allocation have been tested on a case study, and the results are discussed. In the case study, allocation problems in the studied case arose in the fishing and processing stages. Avoidance of allocation by splitting of processes, biological causality and system expansion or the avoided product approach was deemed to be not feasible. Economic allocation gave a much larger spread of impacts between the different products than mass allocation, especially for processing residue, due to large price differences. Hybrid allocation gave impacts in between mass and economic allocation because the set factors give a higher value for products that are for human consumption. Energy allocation gave results close to mass allocation because the energy content is quite similar in different species and products. Economic allocation is sensitive to price changes, the others are not. When used for evaluating environmental performance improvement measures that change the relative yields for human consumption and other purposes, the different methods used reflected very different results. When used in communication to the market, the different allocation methods yield results that could lead to different behaviours by market actors. The different allocation methods gave very different results for the studied products; hence in order to achieve comparability between products, the same method must be used in all the cases. Different allocation methods might be appropriate for different purposes. For external communication to the market, mass allocation might be the preferred method in most cases. For internal improvement work, both economic and mass allocation could be used, but economic allocation might be the best alternative. The comparability of LCA results of products from wild-caught fish is limited, due to the lack of an agreed standard method. It is recommended to consider the different applications of the results when developing such a method. Different purposes might require different methodological choices, e.g. allocation methodology.The demand of PET bottles has increased rapidly in the past decades. The purpose of this study is to understand the environmental impact of PET recycling system, in which used bottles are recycled into both fibre and bottles, and to compare the recycling system with single-use PET. Consequential LCA modelling was applied to understand four change-oriented effects for the recycling system. These include the effect of multiple-recycling trips, the effect of changing the share of recycled PET pellets used to make bottles or fibre, the effect of changing the reference system and the effect of introducing bio-based PET. The functional unit of the baseline case was determined as 350 kg of bottles and 650 kg of fibre based on the current market demand of PET. The system boundary is cradle to grave excluding the use phase. We applied the "system expansion" method to open-loop recycling. The analysis compares the baseline recycling system, where PET is recycled once, with the reference system, where PET is not recycled. The environmental impacts assessed are non-renewable energy use and global warming. The baseline recycling system reduces both impacts by 20% when compared to the reference system. Multiple-recycling trips can maximally reduce the impacts by 26% but the additional savings are negligible after three recycling trips. Bottle-to-fibre recycling offers more impact reduction than bottle-to-bottle recycling when more fibre is needed than bottles in a functional unit. The maximal impact reduction of 25% can be achieved when all recycled PET pellets are used to make fibre. If the functional unit is reversed, i.e. changed to 650 kg of bottles and 350 kg of fibre, 30% of the impact reduction can be achieved. Both impacts can be further reduced when the quantity of the recycled PET is maximised. The bio-based PET recycling system, offers at least 36% impact reduction, has the lowest impact among all systems studied. The sensitivity analyses show that the recycled PET content in a recycled bottle is not influential to the overall environmental performance. All PET recycling systems in this study show important impact reduction compared to the reference system. The impact savings are around 20-30% depends on the configurations of the recycling system. We conclude that the system's environmental impact can be optimised by maximising the amount of recycled PET in the system and by using bio-based polymers.This paper is the second part of a two-paper series dealing with the sustainability evaluation of a new communicative packaging concept. The communicative packaging concept includes a device that allows changing the expiry date of the product as function of temperature during transport and storage: a flexible best-before-date (FBBD). Such device was analysed in a consumer unit consisting of a nanoclay-based polylactic acid tray filled with pork chops. An economic assessment was made through the use of life cycle costing (LCC) methodology proposed by Bovea and Vidal (Resources, Conservation and Recycling Volume 41, Issue 2, May 2004, Pages 133-145) where both internal and external costs were considered. Furthermore, the social aspects were analysed using a contingent valuation (CV) of the willingness to pay (WTP). The sustainability assessment of FBBD was made through the combination of life cycle assessment (LCA) and LCC results, together with the CV of the WTP according to the method proposed by Bovea and Vidal. It was assumed that the use of the FBBD minimizes the food losses from 3.5% to 0.5%. LCC results show that internal costs related to pork chops and logistic supply chain life cycle represent more than 90% of life cycle cost. The use of FBBD communicative device could increase pork chop selling price between 0.01 and 0.1 a,not sign since the purchasing cost of this communicative device is included in this price. WTP results show that FBBD purchasing cost for consumer acceptance is estimated as 0.05 a,not sign/FBBD. Therefore, only pork chop selling price for scenarios 1 (0.05 a,not sign/device) and 3 (0.01 a,not sign/device) could be accepted by consumers. The most sustainable situation is reached when the cost of the FBBD is as less as possible (0.01 a,not sign). The use of FBBD communicative device has economic advantages for perishable products since it contributes to the increase in the economic savings due to the reduction of food losses. However, these economic savings represent a small percentage over pork chop selling price, and therefore, an FBBD price less than 0.02 a,not sign/device is required. If a lower price for the communicative device is reached, satisfying the WTP of consumers (0.05 a,not sign/FBBD), the communicative package will be much more sustainable. It is expected that the competitiveness of FBBD communicative device will be improved in the future. This might be accomplished by reducing FBBD production and distribution costs and increasing their social acceptance, providing more sustainable solutions.The agricultural sector fulfils several functions such as the production of food energy and landscape conservation. An equilibrium between economic development and environmental protection should be found and research should aid political decision-making. In recent years, great efforts have been made to assess the environmental and economic implications of changes in both environmental and agricultural policies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been extended by cost functions and social parameters. The validation of suggestions for political measures can be improved by combining existing environmental and economic models. This approach is applied in this paper in order to compare an increased support for organic farming with specific environmental policy measures, focusing on the resulting impacts and socioeconomic indicators. The LCA tool Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment (SALCA) has been linked with the economic optimisation model Swiss Agricultural Sector Forecasting System (SILAS). Since the focus lies on agricultural production, the farm gate represents the system boundary of the LCA. By linking SALCA with SILAS, the classic LCA impact categories have been extended by socioeconomic indicators. A reference scenario representing the assumed development of economic conditions between 2008 and 2015 was varied by a support for organic farming and four specific policy measures (support for ecological compensation areas and a tax on energy, fertiliser and concentrates, respectively). To remain comparable, the changes in total payments were set to the same amount in all scenarios (100 million CHF). A support for organic farming would have favourable effects on several environmental and socioeconomic indicators, but the differences compared to a combination of the four specific measures are small. However, some of these single measures could reach parts of the targets more efficiently: an energy tax would stimulate the application of available energy-saving measures, and a tax on concentrates would lead to a shift from intensive animal husbandry to crop production, reducing imports of concentrates and emissions of ammonia. Overall, the predicted developments in product and factor prices combined with the assumed reductions of public payments until 2015, as represented by the reference scenario, have the greatest effect on environmental impacts. Theoretically, specific policy measures are more efficient than measures directed towards multiple goals. Especially in the case of agriculture, however, a specific measure not only has an impact on the associated target but affects all agricultural functions. The results of the model combination suggest that a support for organic farming lowers the risk of undesirable side effects on environmental and socioeconomic indicators. Before implementing more specific measures, their impacts on the different functions should be estimated. For this purpose, a combination of decision-support models with LCA may be an appropriate instrument.The interest in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies has increased over the years, and one of the main ways of disseminating these studies is through the publication of articles in scientific journals. Coauthorship relations form a social network where it is possible to identify how research is organized and structured in a specific field of knowledge. This paper aims to show the spread of these studies and the configuration of a collaboration network based on coauthorship relations between researchers of LCA considering some properties of social networks. The research was based on a bibliometric approach of 1,386 articles related to LCA and published in journals indexed in the ISI/Web of Science until 2008. A free software, Pajek, which has been largely used for the representation and analysis of social networks, was employed in this work. The properties of social networks analyzed in this study were power law, degrees of separation, giant component, and clustering. The research showed a social network formed by 2,598 authors from 60 countries, 88% of coauthored articles, a mean of 1.87 authors per article; the distribution of articles per author follows a power law (f (z) = 2,134.3 x z (-2.544)) with a high regression coefficient (R (2) = 0.9704), a degree of separation of 6.5, a giant component embracing 37% of the authors, and a clustering coefficient of 0.75. The LCA coauthorship network has properties following power law patterns similar to other nets such as WWW. The community forms a giant component which is still small, but which, nevertheless, might experience considerable growth in the near future. The average distance between authors follows the small-world hypothesis. The clustering degree was also coherent with other scientific communities. In spite of being an area with less than 20 years of publications registered in the ISI/Web of Science, LCA is now experiencing fast dissemination involving a large number of articles, authors, and institutions. The LCA's coauthorship network can be characterized as a scientific community with properties verified in other networks of more consolidated academic collaboration.The cities merit special attention in global warming since they produce up to 80% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Even though this has been widely acknowledged, only few papers exist that have studied cities holistically from a demand, i.e., consumption, perspective. The study presents a detailed analysis of the carbon footprint of two metropolitan cities from a consumption perspective. With the analysis of consumer carbon footprints (carbon consumption), the distribution of emissions in the key source categories is presented and compared. The study utilizes Finnish consumer survey data by cities, regional emission data for key processes, and general emission data to produce a hybrid LCA model for a holistic assessment of city-level greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption perspective. The study results showed the carbon consumption to be 13.2 t CO2e per person in Helsinki with a 17,400 a,not sign annual consumption expenditure and 10.3 t CO2e per person in Porvoo with a 15,900 a,not sign annual consumption expenditure, respectively. The dominant carbon sources for metropolitan living are heat and electricity, building and property, private driving, and services. Within the cities, some significant differences were found. The carbon emissions from energy consumption are 4.5 t CO2e for an average consumer in Helsinki, whereas an average consumer in Porvoo only causes 2.0 t CO2e due to the cleaner energy production in Porvoo. On the other hand, private driving causes 2.0 t CO2e in Porvoo, but only 1.3 t in Helsinki. The overall trip generation in Helsinki is only half of that in Porvoo, and also, the usage of public transport is at a substantially higher level in Helsinki. The current results contradict interestingly some earlier studies in finding that the theoretical carbon-reducing influence of city density is overridden with other factors, such as the type of energy production, energy efficiency of the housing stock, and increased use of services. In our study, Helsinki represents a metropolitan area with a denser structure and a more efficient public transport system, but still consuming around 25% more carbon emissions than the other city in the metropolitan area, Porvoo. The sensitivity analysis showed that even with the normalization of the key parameters between the two cities, the main finding still holds. The evaluation of the carbon footprint of cities from the consumption perspective, instead of a more traditional production perspective, seems to offer an interesting new insight into the carbon footprints of the cities. It identifies similar key sources of carbon as production-oriented studies but further emphasizes the significance of the utilized services in the carbon footprint evaluations. In the future, the carbon footprint of services, especially in the service-intensive economies and cities that tend to outsource their manufacturing and carbon emissions, should be further examined since they cause an ever increasing proportion of the carbon consumption of consumers.Freshwater use and consumption is of high environmental concern. While research has primarily focused on agricultural water use, industrial water use has recently become more prominent. Because most industries employ relatively low amounts of water, our study focuses on electricity production, which is involved in almost all economic activities and has a considerable share of the global water consumption. Water consumption data for different power production technologies was calculated from literature. Due to the global importance of hydropower and the high variability of its specific water consumption, a climate-dependent estimation scheme for water consumption in hydroelectric generation was derived. Applying national power production mixes, we analyzed water consumption and related environmental damage of the average power production for all countries. For the European and North American countries, we further modeled electricity trade to assess the electricity market mix and the power-consumption related environmental damages. Using the Eco-indicator 99 single-score and compatible freshwater consumption damage assessments, the contribution of water consumption to the total environmental impact was quantified. Water consumption dominates the environmental damage of hydropower, but is generally negligible for fossil thermal, nuclear, and alternative power production. However, as the impact of water consumption has high regional variation, it can be relevant for many power technologies in water-scarce areas. The variability among country production mixes is substantial, both from a water consumption and overall environmental impact perspective. The difference between electricity production and market mixes is negligible for most countries, especially for big countries such as the USA. In Europe, where intensive international electricity trade exists, the difference is more significant. When contrasted with the relatively high uncertainties in water consumption figures particularly for hydropower, the additional error from using production mixes instead of market mixes is rather small. Power production is one of the major global water consumers and involved in life cycles of almost any human activity. Covering the water-consumption-related environmental damage of power generation closes one important gap in life cycle assessment and also improves data availability for the emerging field of water footprints.Collaborative activities with business partners have potential to improve environmental performance of product and life cycle assessment (LCA) is an essential technique to implement eco-design of product and production process. However, collection of LCA data from supply chain is a major issue for LCA practitioners. We propose a Supply Chain Collaboration Model (SCCM), which is a framework for collecting producer-specific LCA data from business partners and for promoting improvement activity of product environmental performance. We demonstrate the practicability of the SCCM using three case studies. In each case study, two or three partner companies organized a product improvement project and carried out process analysis techniques such as LCA and material flow cost accounting (MFCA). As a result, improvement activities from the economical standpoint could provide an incentive for business partners to collect LCA data, and thus the SCCM is an effective framework for eco-design. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we carry out a detailed environmental evaluation of geopolymer concrete production using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The literature shows that the production of most standard types of geopolymer concrete has a slightly lower impact on global warming than standard Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete. Whilst our results confirm this they also show that the production of geopolymer concrete has a higher environmental impact regarding other impact categories than global warming. This is due to the heavy effects of the production of the sodium silicate solution. Geopolymer concrete made from fly ashes or granulated blast furnace slags based require less of the sodium silicate solution in order to be activated. They therefore have a lower environmental impact than geopolymer concrete made from pure metakaolin. However, when the production of fly ashes and granulated blast furnace slags is taken into account during the life cycle assessment (using either an economic or a mass allocation procedure), it appears that geopolymer concrete has a similar impact on global warming than standard concrete. This study highlights that future research and development in the field of geopolymer concrete technology should focus on two potential solutions. First of all the use of industrial waste that is not recyclable within other industries and secondly on the production of geopolymer concrete using a mix of blast furnace slag and activated clays. Furthermore geopolymer concrete production would gain from using waste material with a suitable Si/Al molar ratio in order to minimise the amount of sodium silicate solution used. Finally, by taking into account mix-design technology, which has already been developed for OPC concrete, the amount of binder required to produce a geopolymer concrete could be reduced. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compared the environmental impact of a range of dairy production systems in terms of their global warming potential (GWP, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents, CO2-eq.) and associated land use and explored the efficacy of reducing said impact. Models were developed using the unique data generated from a long-term genetic line x feeding system experiment. Holstein-Friesian cows were selected to represent the UK average for milk fat plus protein production (control line) or were selected for increased milk fat plus protein production (select line). In addition, cows received a low forage diet (50% forage) with no grazing or were on a high forage (75% forage) diet with summer grazing. A Markov chain approach was used to describe the herd structure and help estimate the GWP per year and land required per cow for the 4 alternative systems and the herd average using a partial life cycle assessment. The CO2-eq. emissions were expressed per kilogram of energy-corrected milk (ECM) and per hectare of land use, as well as land required per kilogram of ECM. The effects of a phenotypic and genetic standard deviation unit improvement on herd feed utilization efficiency, ECM yield, calving interval length, and incidence of involuntary culling were assessed. The low forage (nongrazing) feeding system with select cows produced the lowest CO2-eq. emissions of 1.1 kg/kg of ECM and land use of 0.65 m(2)/kg of ECM but the highest CO2-eq. emissions of 16.1 t/ha of the production systems studied. Within the herd, an improvement of 1 standard deviation in feed utilization efficiency was the only trait of those studied that would significantly reduce the reliance of the farming system on bought-in synthetic fertilizer and concentrate feed, as well as reduce the average CO2-eq. emissions and land use of the herd (both by about 6.5%, of which about 4% would be achievable through selective breeding). Within production systems, reductions in CO2-eq. emissions per kilogram of ECM and CO2-eq. emissions per hectare were also achievable by an improvement in feed utilization. This study allowed development of models that harness the biological trait variation in the animal to improve the environmental impact of the farming system. Genetic selection for efficient feed use for milk production according to feeding system can bring about reductions in system nutrient requirements, CO2-eq. emissions, and land use per unit product.This study evaluated the environmental impact of integrated agriculture-aquaculture (IAA) farming systems in the Mekong Delta that differ in types of aquaculture intensification. Daily inputs and outputs for rice, fruits, vegetables, pigs, poultry, and fish were collected on 11 farms over a period of two years: three farms in a rice-based and high input fish system (R-HF); four in a rice-based and medium input fish system (R-MF); and four in an orchard-based and low input fish system (O-LF). For each farm, a detailed cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle assessment was performed. Kcal as functional unit (FU) enabled a comparison of the integral environmental impact among farming systems, and identification of major processes influencing the outcome of an impact category. kg product as RI enabled evaluation of impacts for the individual products of IAA farms. The environmental impact was also quantified for each farm as a whole to identify which farm components explained the majority of the environmental impact in absolute terms. Land use per kcal farm product did not differ among the three farming systems. Global warming potential (GWP), energy use and eutrophication potential (EP) per kcal farm product tended to be higher, whereas acidification potential (AP) was higher, in O-LF than in R-HF and R-MF, mainly due to the low calorie content of the two main products, fruits and vegetables, and the small fish yield in O-LF. One kg of fish produced in O-LF farms showed 28% higher land use, 35% higher energy use, 54% higher GWP, 45% higher EP, and 52% higher AP than the average kg of fish produced in the other two systems, due to the pond management system and small fish yield in O-LF. For each impact category, the impact per kg pig and poultry protein were on average 1.6-1.8 times higher than the impacts per kg fish protein. Overall, rice and pigs were the main contributors to the environmental impact of food production in the MD. Excessive and inefficient use of fertilizers, and CH4 emission from the paddy fields contributed most to the environmental impact in rice production, whereas the use of external feeds contributed most to the impact in pigs. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To achieve a sustainable cheese production chain, not only its ecological impact must be minimized, but economic value must be added along the chain also. The objectives of this study were to gain insight into ecological hotspots of the cheese chain, and to judge the ecological impact of chain stages in the context of their economic value added. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to determine hotspots for global warming potential (GWP), land use and fossil energy use during production of Dutch, semi-hard cheese. To place ecological impact in an economic perspective, eco-efficiency of chain stages was determined, which was defined as the ratio of gross value added, and ecological impact. LCA and economic computations were based on empirical data from a specific Dutch cheese chain. Production of 1 kg cheese resulted in a GWP of 8.5 kg CO(2)-eq., and required 6.8 m(2) land and 47.2 MJ energy. Of all stages, on-farm milk production contributed most to GWP (65%), and to land use (58%), followed by cultivation of concentrate ingredients (12% to GWP and 24% to land use). Regarding energy use, cultivation of concentrate ingredients had the highest contribution (33%). The after farm gate stages cheese-making, storage, and packaging each contributed about 7%-13% to energy use and about 3%-4% to GWP, whereas retail had a marginal impact. To decrease the ecological impact of cheese production, reducing the impact of on-farm milk production (e.g., by using feed ingredients that reduce enteric methane emission in the cow), and reducing the impact of cultivation of concentrate ingredients (e.g., by using locally produced ingredients or by-products) would be most effective. Stages after farm gate can lower their impact by minimizing use of fossil energy and use of alternative energy resources. Minimizing losses of milk and cheese in stages after farm gate, furthermore, is an important improvement option to reduce the impact per kg cheese of the whole chain. Total gross value added of the whole chain was (sic)5.94 per kg cheese. On-farm milk production added most economic value (34%), followed by retail (27%), cheese-making (17%), and packaging (17%). Total eco-efficiency of cheese was (sic)0.78 per kg CO(2)-eq., (sic)1.03 per m(2) land, and (sic)0.16 per MJ energy. Of all stages, cultivation of concentrate ingredients and storage had the lowest eco-efficiency for each impact, whereas retail had the highest. Combining ecological impact and eco-efficiency, shows that cultivation of concentrate ingredients is the most problematic stage. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The upcoming ban on battery cages in the European Union is expected to cause a shift in husbandry systems from predominantly battery cages to enriched cages and loose housing systems, such as barn, free range and organic systems. To gain insight into ecological and economic consequences of such a ban, we quantified the ecological and economic performance of the most commonly used egg production systems in the Netherlands, and identified which parameters explain differences in performance. We included the conventional battery cage system and the following loose housing systems: single and multi-tiered barn systems, single and multi-tiered free range systems, and single and multi-tiered organic systems. Ecological indicators used were deduced from a life cycle assessment, and were: global warming potential, energy use, land occupation, fossil phosphorus use, acidification potential, nitrogen and phosphorus deficit, and nitrogen and phosphorus surplus, each expressed per kg of egg. Economic indicator used was net farm income per full time employee. Based on our ecological evaluation of Dutch egg production systems, we predict that a ban on battery cages in the European Union will increase global warming potential, land occupation and acidification potential per kg of egg produced, whereas the effect on energy use, fossil phosphorus use, nitrogen and phosphorus deficit, and nitrogen and phosphorus surplus depends on relative importance of different loose housing systems. Of all loose housing systems, organic systems had lowest global warming potential, energy use, fossil phosphorus use, and nitrogen and phosphorus surplus, whereas land occupation and nitrogen and phosphorus deficit was lowest for barn systems. Acidification potential was lowest for a multi-tiered barn system. Differences in LCA results among production systems can be explained mainly by differences; in feed conversion, in parameters that determine ecological impact per kg feed ingredient (e.g., crop yield per ha; number field operations, type and amount of fertilization), in drying of grain, in transport of concentrates and manure, in type of hen house and in N excretion per hen per year. Free range systems had highest net farm income, followed by organic systems. Multi-tiered systems had a higher net farm income than single-tiered systems. In case differences among egg and cost prices of different systems do not change after a ban on the battery cage, multitiered free range and organic systems are economically most favourable. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Current environmental conditions demand revaluating the professional practice of architecture, urbanism and building construction. To serve that purpose, the article presents various certifications granted throughout the world to help the professionals above mentioned to put up "green" structures; other specifications for building materials to be considered "sustainable"; and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques to analyze constructions' cradle-to-grave behavior, for measuring building's environmental impact as well as corroborating its sustainability.In 2005, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) and global pharmaceutical companies established the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable to encourage the integration of green chemistry and engineering into the pharmaceutical industry. The Roundtable developed a list of key research areas in green chemistry in 2007, which has served as a guide for focusing green chemistry research. Following that publication, the Roundtable companies have identified a list of the key green engineering research areas that is intended to be the required companion of the first list. This publication summarizes the process used to identify and agree on the top key green engineering research areas and describes these areas, highlighting their research challenges and opportunities for improvements from the perspective of the pharmaceutical industry.Steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) is a construction material investigated for more than 40 years including for pavement applications. A number of studies have demonstrated the technical merits of SFRC pavements over conventional concrete pavements; however little work has been carried out on the environmental and economical impact of SFRC during the pavement's life cycle. Therefore, extended research was undertaken within the framework of the EU funded project "EcoLanes" to estimate the environmental and economical loadings of SFRC pavements. The innovative concept of the project is the use of recycled steel tyre-cord wire as concrete fibre reinforcement, which provides additional environmental benefits for tyre recycling over landfilling. Within the project framework a demonstration of a steel-fibre-reinforced roller-compacted concrete (SFR-RCC) pavement was constructed in a rural area in Cyprus. In order to assess the economical and environmental picture of the demonstration pavement, life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) studies were undertaken, which also compared the under study pavement design with four conventional alternatives. The main output of the studies is that SFR-RCC is more environmentally and economically sustainable than others. In addition, various concrete mix designs were investigated by considering parameters such as fibre type and dosage, cement type, and transportation distances to the construction site. Fibre dosage has been highlighted as a crucial factor compared with economical and environmental loadings in SFR-RCC pavement construction.Selection of optimum locations for locating new facilities and decision regarding capacities at the proposed facilities is a major concern for municipal authorities/managers. The decision as to whether a single facility is preferred over multiple facilities of smaller capacities would vary with varying priorities to cost and associated risks such as environmental or health risk or risk perceived by the society. Currently management of waste streams such as that of computer waste is being done using rudimentary practices and is flourishing as an unorganized sector, mainly as backyard workshops in many cities of developing nations such as India. Uncertainty in the quantification of computer waste generation is another major concern due to the informal setup of present computer waste management scenario. Hence, there is a need to simultaneously address uncertainty in waste generation quantities while analyzing the tradeoffs between cost and associated risks. The present study aimed to address the above-mentioned issues in a multi-time-step, multi-objective decision-support model, which can address multiple objectives of cost, environmental risk, socially perceived risk and health risk, while selecting the optimum configuration of existing and proposed facilities (location and capacities).In this paper, a comprehensive study on corn-based ethanol in a Canadian context is conducted, which uses the most reliable and up to date data, considers realistic assumptions, and applies sound methodology to provide a basis for developing future scenarios for corn-based ethanol and compared the results with the conventional fuel, such as gasoline. It is estimated that the net energy value (NEV), defined as the energy content of a liter of ethanol minus the total energy use to produce a liter of ethanol, is 9.6MJL(-1) (LHV), when co-products energy credits are not considered. In addition, a comparison of life cycle energy use for corn-based ethanol and gasoline reveals that the life cycle energy use to produce a liter of ethanol is considerably less than the life cycle energy use to produce a liter of gasoline. Furthermore, a comparison of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for corn-based ethanol and gasoline reveals that the life cycle GHG emissions released per liter of ethanol produced is an order of magnitude lesser than the life cycle GHG emissions released per liter of gasoline produced, when GHG emissions displaced by ethanol co-products are considered in the estimation. Finally, a comparison of our results in terms of net fossil fuel input, net fossil fuel ratio and GHG emissions is carried out with the results obtained from the ERG biofuel analysis meta-model (EBAMM) to reflect both Canadian and US perspectives. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The emergence of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on the global stage as a design and policy tool increases the importance of assessing and managing uncertainty. This article develops and implements uncertainty methods for hybrid LCA. Hybrid LCA combines a bottom up construction of the supply-chain based on facility-level data on material/energy use with a top down economic input output (EIO) model to account for processes for which direct data were unavailable. For the bottom up part of the LCA, we account for variability in process and usage pattern data by developing parameter ranges. For the EIO side we develop a method to assess price uncertainty. These methods are explored through a case study examining energy use and carbon dioxide emissions of manufacturing and use of a laptop computer, a 2001 Dell Inspiron 2500. Results show that manufacturing the computer requires 3010-4340 MJ of primary energy, 52-67% less than the energy to make a desktop computer, and emits 227-270 kg CO2. The manufacturing phase represents 62-70% of total primary energy of manufacturing and operation. This indicates, as for desktop computers, that mitigating manufacturing energy use, for example through extending lifespan, can be an important strategy to manage the life cycle energy of laptop computers. Results also indicate that truncation error from excluded processes in the bottom up process model is significant, perhaps particularly so due to complex supply chains of information technology products. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an environmental system study of the production of propionic acid in a biorefinery system based on agricultural by-products. Here, propionic acid is produced by fermentation of glycerol, a by-product from biodiesel production, as carbon source and potato juice, a by-product from starch production, as nitrogen source. Biomass-based propionic acid leads to a greenhouse gas reduction of 60% compared to propionic acid from fossil sources. However, the primary energy input is about twice as high for the biomass-based propionic acid. The choice of input energy and the efficiency of the process, as well as the technology applied, have high impacts on the environmental performance of the biorefinery concept. There is a potential for increased integration both on the input of substrates and the output of end products of the biorefinery system, which will further improve its environmental performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comparison between the most promising design configurations for the industrial application of gasification based, plastics-to-energy cogenerators in the 2-6 MWe range is presented. A pilot scale bubbling fluidized bed air gasifier, having a feeding capacity of 100 kg/h, provided experimental data: the syngas complete composition, the characterization of the bed material, the entrained fines collected at the cyclone and the purge material from the scrubber. Mass and energy balances and material and substance flow analyses have been therefore drawn to assess and compare design solutions utilizing two mixed plastic wastes (MPW) obtained from separate collection of plastic packaging, after different levels of pre-treatments. The related techno-economic performances have been finally estimated on the basis of the manufacturer's specifications. The study concludes that the MPW obtained after a very simple pretreatment and fed to a gasifier coupled with a steam turbine is the solution that currently offers the higher reliability and provides the higher internal rate of return for the investigated range of electrical energy production. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Landfills receiving a mix of waste, including organics, have developed dramatically over the last 3-4 decades; from open dumps to engineered facilities with extensive controls on leachate and gas. The conventional municipal landfill will in most climates produce a highly contaminated leachate and a significant amount of landfill gas. Leachate controls may include bottom liners and leachate collection systems as well as leachate treatment prior to discharge to surface water. Gas controls may include oxidizing top covers, gas collection systems with flares or gas utilization systems for production of electricity and heat. The importance of leachate and gas control measures in reducing the overall environmental impact from a conventional landfill was assessed by life-cycle-assessment (LCA). The direct cost for the measures were also estimated providing a basis for assessing which measures are the most cost-effective in reducing the impact from a conventional landfill. This was done by modeling landfills ranging from a simple open dump to highly engineered conventional landfills with energy recovery in form of heat or electricity. The modeling was done in the waste LCA model EASEWASTE. The results showed drastic improvements for most impact categories. Global warming went from an impact of 0.1 person equivalent (PE) for the dump to -0.05 PE for the best design. Similar improvements were found for photochemical ozone formation (0.02 PE to 0.002 PE) and stratospheric ozone formation (0.04 PE to 0.001 PE). For the toxic and spoiled groundwater impact categories the trend is not as clear. The reason for this was that the load to the environment shifted as more technologies were used. For the dump landfill the main impacts were impacts for spoiled groundwater due to lack of leachate collection, 2.3 PE down to 0.4 PE when leachate is collected. However, at the same time, leachate collection causes a slight increase in eco-toxicity and human toxicity via water (0.007E to 0.013PE and 0.002 to 0.003 PE respectively). The reason for this is that even if the leachate is treated, slight amounts of contaminants are released through emissions of treated wastewater to surface waters. The largest environmental improvement with regard to the direct cost of the landfill was the capping and leachate treatment system. The capping, though very cheap to establish, gave a huge benefit in lowered impacts, the leachate collection system though expensive gave large benefits as well. The other gas measures were found to give further improvements, for a minor increase in cost. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted due to waste management in the cities of developing countries is predicted to rise considerably in the near future; however, these countries have a series of problems in accounting and reporting these gases. Some of these problems are related to the status quo of waste management in the developing world and some to the lack of a coherent framework for accounting and reporting of greenhouse gases from waste at municipal level. This review summarizes and compares GHG emissions from individual waste management processes which make up a municipal waste management system, with an emphasis on developing countries and, in particular, Africa. It should be seen as a first step towards developing a more holistic GHG accounting model for municipalities. The comparison between these emissions from developed and developing countries at process level, reveals that there is agreement on the magnitude of the emissions expected from each process (generation of waste, collection and transport, disposal and recycling). The highest GHG savings are achieved through recycling, and these savings would be even higher in developing countries which rely on coal for energy production (e.g. South Africa, India and China) and where non-motorized collection and transport is used. The highest emissions are due to the methane released by dumpsites and landfills, and these emissions are predicted to increase significantly, unless more of the methane is captured and either flared or used for energy generation. The clean development mechanism (CDM) projects implemented in the developing world have made some progress in this field; however, African countries lag behind. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The feasibility of wind energy utilization at moderate wind fields was investigated for a typical touristic coastal site in Western Greece. Initially, the wind speed and direction as well as its availability, duration and diurnal variation were assessed. For an analysis period of eight years, the mean wind speed at ten meters was determined as 3.8 m s(-1) with a small variation in monthly average wind speeds between 3.0 (January) and 4.4 m s(-1) (October). The mean wind power density was less than 200 W m(-2) at 10 m indicating the limiting suitability of the site for the usual renewable energy applications. However, life cycle analysis for wind turbine generators with lower cut-in, cut-out, and rated speeds revealed that the energy yield ratio can reach a value of six for a service life of 20 years while the energy pay-back period can be 3 years with 33 kt CO2-e of avoided greenhouse emissions. Therefore, the recent technological turbine improvements make wind power viable even at moderate wind fields. Moreover, the study of electricity supply of typical small hotel-apartments in the region of Western Greece indicated that the installation of 300 wind turbine generators in these moderate wind fields would cover the total consumption during the open touristic period with profits during the rest of the year. According to these results, wind turbine generators are the 'greenest' way of generating electricity in touristic coastal sites, even of moderate wind speeds. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Potential environmental as well as socio-economic effects of the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) oilseed rape (OSR) may be caused by large-scale dispersal of transgenes. We present an up-scaling approach that was based on scenario assumptions concerning the percentage of GM cultivation and took into account natural and anthropogenic variation of involved dispersal processes. The applied methods include computer modelling and spatial analysis. A simulation model (GeneTraMP) was used to calculate the spatio-temporal pattern of the spread of a neutral transgene (without any specific function) in OSR. Basic scenario calculations were carried out for different spatial configurations covering 1 km(2) each and taking into account information on climate and cultivation systems of the region of the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. For the exemplary regional study presented here, we analysed the numbers of flowering plants of GM OSR in different types of locations as predicted by the model. The results confirmed the expectation of a very high variability of GM occurrences at distinguishable intensity levels which were closely related to the proximity of areas of intended GM oilseed rape cultivation and may be described by a combination of management parameters and location type. The up-scaling method included a spatial analysis of the target region. Based on satellite images and digital maps, the structure of the region was analysed resulting in a map of Schleswig-Holstein that represents each single field, also including information on crop rotation, ownership and production systems. Applying GIS queries to this database, we identified the area of relevant location types. Both, the model results and the spatial data were used to predict the total numbers of flowering GM OSR plants for the region of Schleswig-Holstein. As an important feature, the up-scaling of modelling results to a larger scale allows for a comprehensive analysis by also enclosing regional parameters, as, for example the cropping density. The presented methods can support decision making if they are incorporated into the planning of an environmental monitoring of commercial GM crops or into life cycle assessment and cost-benefit analyses of GMO cultivation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The following paper contains importance of LCA in the iron and steel industry. The metallurgy sector is highly energy intensive and the production of crude steel is associated with significant CO(2) emissions. ULCOS (Ultra Low CO(2) Steelmaking) is the world's initiative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50 % by 2 050 compared with today's best routes from steel production by developing new breakthrough technologies. A new environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method has been undertaken in ULCOS as the most holistic approach of assessing environmental impact and selecting new technologies. Usage of LCA enables to compare alternative metallurgical technologies.This study quantifies and compares greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of bovine milk production systems in 38 countries representing 70% of the world's bovine milk production. The analysis was based on the International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN) concept of typical dairy farms and the related globally standardized farms representing 45 dairy regions in 38 countries. Various concepts and coefficients from the literature were used to estimate GHG emission from each farm, and the IFCN software TIPI-CAL was used to conduct a partial life cycle assessment of GHG emissions from dairy production. This approach is seen as a first step towards a global comparison of GHG emissions from various dairy farming systems. Results show that GHG emissions at the farm level are 80 to 307 kg CO(2)-eqv 100/kg of energy corrected milk (ECM), and are lower in developed than in developing countries. Differences were mainly clue to the level of intensity (i.e., milk yield/cow) in milk production. Enteric CH(4) emissions comprised the highest proportion of GHG emissions. Enteric and manure related emissions accounted for 70-95% of total emissions farms depending on farming system. Comparison of various estimators for enteric CH(4) emissions suggests that these values might be underestimated. Therefore, in future research, dairy farms should be categorized into farming clusters based on their production intensity and feed usage, with equations to estimate enteric CH(4) emissions specific to cluster. This article is part of the special issue entitled: Greenhouse Gases in Animal Agriculture Finding a Balance between Food and Emissions, Guest Edited by TA. McAllister, Section Guest Editors: K.A. Beauchemin, X Hao, S. McGinn and Editor for Animal Feed Science and Technology, PH. Robinson. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Agriculture in Australia contributes 16% of national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with enteric CH(4) and N(2)O contributing 10.4% and 2.8% of national emissions, respectively. If agriculture is to face an emissions constrained future then it is important to understand the emission profiles of different agricultural land uses and emissions associated with different production systems. Using the Australian National Inventory methodology, whole farm GHG emissions were calculated for different farm types in south eastern Australia. Fourteen representative farms were examined that included production of Merino fine wool, prime lamb, beef cattle, milk, wheat and canola. These farm systems were defined by the production parameters of an average farm and a top producing farm, ranked on gross margin/ha/100 mm rainfall in benchmarking studies. Emissions from the systems were allocated to the primary product from each farm such as wool, meat, milk fat plus protein (MFP) or grains. The biophysical models GrassGro and DairyMod were used to simulate the livestock systems and model outputs were then used in an emissions calculator. This calculator used a yearly time frame and employed the International Panel on Climate Change methodology, as currently used in the Australian National Inventory. The calculator included CH(4) and N(2)O on-farm emissions but excluded emissions from pre- and post-farm processes, such as meat processing and fertiliser production. Energy and transport emissions were also excluded because they are not defined as agricultural emissions in the Australian National Inventory. Dairy farms produced the highest emissions/ha (8.4-10.5 t CO(2)-eqv/ha), followed by beef (3.9-5.1 t CO(2)-eqv/ha), sheep (2.8-4.3 t CO(2)-eqv/ha) and grains (0.1-0.2 t CO(2)-eqv/ha). When compared on an emissions intensity basis (i.e.. t CO(2)eqv/t product), cow/calf farms emitted the most (22.4-22.8 t CO(2)-eqvit carcass weight) followed by wool (18.l-18.7 t CO(2)-eqv/t clean fleece), prime lamb (11.4-12.0 t CO(2)-eqv/t carcass weight), dairy (8.5-9.4 t CO(2)-eqv/t milk fat + protein), steers (6.3-6.7 t CO(2)-eqv/t carcass weight) and finally grains (0.04-0.15 t CO(2)-eqv/t grain). Emissions intensities of top farms were not always less than average farms. If a C price were imposed on agriculture, emissions intensity provides insight about relative cost impacts of the C price on production of different agricultural products under different production systems. The incidence of the C price on different products and production systems could trigger land use change. This article is part of the special issue entitled: Greenhouse Gases in Animal Agriculture - Finding a Balance between Food and Emissions, Guest Edited by TA. McAllister, Section Guest Editors; K.A. Beauchemin, X. Hao, S. McGinn and Editor for Animal Feed Science and Technology, P.H. Robinson. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Numerous mitigation strategies are proposed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ruminants, with many aimed at reducing enteric CH4. Before implementing such practices, it is critical to evaluate their net impact on total farm GHG emissions. Thus, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted using HOLOS (i.e., a whole farm model based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methodology modified for Canadian conditions that considers all significant CH4, N2O and CO2 emissions from the farm) to establish whole farm GHG emission intensity for beef production in western Canada (i.e., baseline scenario) as affected by various mitigation practices. Mitigation practices were applied to the baseline scenario and their impacts on the intensity of GHG emissions assessed. Mitigation practices included dietary modifications aimed at reducing CH4 emissions (i.e.. changed forage use levels, dietary supplementation with polyunsaturated lipids, use of corn distillers dried grains, improved forage quality) and improved animal husbandry (i.e., increased longevity of breeding stock, improved reproductive performance of the herd). The simulated farm was a beef production operation comprised of 120 cows, 4 bulls, and their progeny, with the progeny fattened in a feedlot. The farm also included cropland and native prairie pasture for grazing to supply the feed required by the herd. The LCA was conducted over 8 years to fully account for lifetime GHG emissions from breeding stock, as well as the progeny raised for market. The baseline scenario estimated the GHG emission intensity of beef production at 22 kg CO2 equivalent/kg carcass; 80% of GHG emissions were from the cow calf system and 20% from the feedlot system, with enteric CH4 accounting for 63% of total emissions. Strategies applied to the cow calf herd individually reduced total farm GHG intensity by up to 8% with up to a 17% total reduction possible by combining strategies. In comparison, strategies applied to the feedlot had only a small impact on GHG emissions; reducing total GHG intensity by less than 2% when applied individually or by 3-4% when applied in combination. Although the North American beef production system is already highly efficient, a number of mitigation strategies could be implemented to further lower GHG emissions associated with producing beef, with a total reduction of about 20% attainable if multiple strategies are applied to both the cow herd and the feedlot. However, the biggest reductions in GHG emissions are achieved when mitigation practices target reducing enteric CH4 from the breeding herd. When the grassland in the baseline scenario was newly seeded onto previously cropped land, its soil C gain more than offset all GHG emissions, changing the beef production system from a net emitter to a net sink of C. Although such estimates of soil C gain have uncertainty, this scenario demonstrates that the net GHG balance of a beef production system is powerfully influenced by C dynamics in the associated land base, emphasizing the importance of including these dynamics in assessments of mitigation potential. This paper is part of the special issue entitled: Greenhouse Gases in Animal Agriculture - Finding a Balance between Food and Emissions, Guest Edited by T.A. McAllister, Section Guest Editors; K.A. Beauchemin, X. Hao, S. McGinn and Editor for Animal Feed Science and Technology, P.H. Robinson. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To comply with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting requirements, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) developed guidelines for calculating national GHG inventories in a consistent and standard framework. Although appropriate for national level accounting purposes, IPCC methodologies lack the farm level resolution and holistic approach required for whole farm systems analysis. Thus, whole farm systems modelling is widely used for farm level analysis. A review of 31 published whole farm modelling studies of GHG emissions from beef and dairy cattle production systems indicated a number of important outcomes. For example, improvements in animal productivity (i.e., liveweight gain milk production) and fertility (i.e., lower culling, lower replacement rates) can reduce GHG emissions/kg product. Additionally, intensification of production as output/ha can reduce emissions/kg product provided input requirements of feed and/or fertilizer are not excessive. Carbon sequestration into agricultural soils has the potential to offset emissions from pastoral based production systems. A product based metric is widely used and allows a wide range of objectives, including farm profitability and food security to be met. Variation in farm system parameters, and the inherent uncertainties associated with emission factors, can have substantial implications for reported agricultural emissions and thus, uncertainty or sensitivity analysis in any modelling approach is needed. Although there is considerable variation among studies in relation to quality of farm data, boundaries assumed, emission factors applied and co-product allocation approach, we suggest that whole farm systems models are an appropriate tool to develop and measure GHG mitigation strategies for livestock farms. This article is part of the special issue entitled: Greenhouse Gases in Animal Agriculture Finding a Balance between Food and Emissions, Guest Edited by TA. McAllister, Section Guest Editors; K.A. Beauchemin, X. Hao, S. McGinn and Editor for Animal Feed Science and Technology. P.H. Robinson. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Methane emissions from ruminant livestock are a contributor to total global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. We review the most promising dietary and farm system strategies to mitigate enteric CH4 emissions from ruminants, and their potential effects on animal production. Dietary supplementation with fat is the most promising dietary strategy, but the milk production and composition response to supplementary fat is complex and differs among diets. It is also affected by stage of lactation, degree of saturation of the added fat, amount of fat added, and the fat content and composition of the basal diet. To study effects of adding fat to diets on CH4 emissions, a meta-analysis using data from 27 studies was conducted. For diets containing up to 130 g fat/kg of dry matter (DM), there was a linear relationship between total fat content of the diet and CH4 yield (g/kg DM intake). The analysis re-run restricting diets to a practical feeding range of <80 g fat/kg DM, revealed a difference (P<0.001) between cattle (i.e., dairy and beef) and sheep in their CH4 response to dietary fat. For cattle, a 10 g/kg increase in dietary fat decreased CH4 yield by 1 g/kg DM intake, but for sheep the decrease was 2.6 g/kg, although the relationship for sheep was less precise due to less data (i.e., n = 59 for cattle and n = 17 for sheep). In the practical range of fat feeding, the relationship between concentration of fat in the diet and CH4 yield was not affected by form of added fat (i.e., oil versus seed), major fatty acids in the added fat (i.e., C12:0 and C:14, C18:1, C18:2, and C18:3), or fat source (i.e., canola, coconut, fatty acid, linseed, soya, sunflower, the basal diet without added fat). Data are also presented which show persistence of the reduction in CH4 emissions as a result of fat supplementation. An update on other dietary strategies such as higher starch diets, use of monensin, exogenous enzymes and use of direct-fed microbials is also provided. Recent studies of dairy and beef farming systems which investigated effects of management strategies on CH4 emissions and livestock production (i.e.. milk and beef) using modelling approaches and life cycle assessment are reviewed. Our review demonstrates that dietary and farm management options can be implemented to reduce CH4 emissions from beef and dairy cattle without lowering their production. This article is part of the special issue entitled: Greenhouse Gases in Animal Agriculture Finding a Balance between Food and Emissions, Guest Edited by T.A. McAllister, Section Guest Editors: K.A. Beauchemin, X. Hao, S. McGinn and Editor for Animal Feed Science and Technology, P.H. Robinson. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Human-induced changes in water consumption and global warming are likely to reduce the species richness of freshwater ecosystems. So far, these impacts have not been addressed in the context of life cycle assessment (LCA). Here, we derived characterization factors for water consumption and global warming based on freshwater fish species loss. Calculation of characterization factors for potential freshwater fish losses from water consumption were estimated using a generic species-river discharge curve for 214 global river basins. We also derived characterization factors for potential freshwater fish species losses per unit of greenhouse gas emission. Based on five global climate scenarios, characterization factors for 63 greenhouse gas emissions were calculated. Depending on the river considered, characterization factors for water consumption can differ up to 3 orders of magnitude. Characterization factors for greenhouse gas emissions can vary up to 5 orders of magnitude, depending on the atmospheric residence time and radiative forcing efficiency of greenhouse gas emissions. An emission of 1 ton of CO(2) is expected to cause the same impact on potential fish species disappearance as the water consumption of 10-1000 m(3), depending on the river basin considered. Our results make it possible to compare the impact of water consumption with greenhouse gas emissions.Greenhouse gas emissions are likely to rise faster than growth in population and more than double for water supply and waste-water services over the next 50 years in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia. New sources of water supply such as rainwater tanks, recycled water, and desalination currently have greater energy intensity than traditional sources. In addition, direct greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs and wastewater treatment and handling have potentially the same magnitude as emissions from the use of energy. Centralized and decentralized water supply and wastewater systems are considered for a scenario based upon a government water supply strategy for the next 50 years. Many sources of data have large uncertainties which are estimated following the IPCC Good Practice Guidelines. Important sources of emissions with large uncertainties such as rainwater tanks and direct emissions were identified for further research and potential mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.In addition to available country or site-specific life cycle studies on Jatropha biodiesel we present a generic, location-independent life cycle assessment and provide a general but in-depth analysis of the environmental performance of Jatropha biodiesel for transportation. Additionally, we assess the influence of changes in byproduct use and production chain. In our assessments, we went beyond the impact on energy requirement and global warming by including impacts on ozone layer and terrestrial acidification and eutrophication. The basic Jatropha biodiesel system consumes eight times less nonrenewable energy than conventional diesel and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 51%. This result coincides with the lower limit of the range of reduction percentages available in literature for this system and for other liquid biofuels. The impact on the ozone layer is also lower than that provoked by fossil diesel, although eutrophication and acidification increase eight times. This study investigates the general impact trends of the Jatropha system, although not considering land-use change. The results are useful as a benchmark against which other biodiesel systems can be evaluated, to calculate repayment times for land-use change induced carbon loss or as guideline with default values for assessing the environmental performance of specific variants of the system.The various catalytic methodologies for the utilisation of renewable biomass for the sustainable production of liquid fuels and commodity chemicals are reviewed. Attention is focused on second generation processes starting from lignocellulose as a sustainable feedstock, thus circumventing the food vs fuel dilemma, and on the green features of these new processes. Emphasis is also placed on the need for establishing a set of metrics for assessing the sustainability of different processes and products. It is concluded that one set of metrics is probably not sufficient to assess the sustainability of both biofuels and platform commodity chemicals. The latter can probably be evaluated on the basis of E factors (kgs waste/kg product) that take both the carbon dioxide derived from energy consumption and water usage into account, perhaps together with some form of life cycle assessment. With biofuels on the other hand, the sheer magnitude of the volumes involved present extra issues, such as land usage, and the goal is different, i.e. to produce a particular energy density for an economically viable price in a sustainable fashion. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forests play an important role on carbon concentration, unchecked harvesting could cause increase in carbon concentration. In this study, the environmental impact caused by paper production at Pars Paper Factory, Iran, was evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The ISO 14040 series were used as references. The functional unit considered was producing one metric tonne of paper for one year. The Centre of Environmental Science, Leiden University, NL, 2000 (CML2 Baseline2000) method was chosen for this LCA study. Ten impact categories were identified as follow: Abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidation. From the results, using bagasse and electricity contributed the lowest impact value because both of these inputs used renewable sources. However, using heavy fuel oil (in this case mazut) gives the highest impact to global warming. Chlorine from bleaching sector contributes the impact for photochemical oxidation and ozone layer depletion. From the results obtained, the use of bagasse instead of wood in paper and pulp factory, has potential to reduce global warming impact. Hydroelectricity as the source of energy has less impact on the environment, while mazut may result in acidification, global warming and ozone layer depletion.The contributions to sustainability of hydrogen and fuel cell systems are described, with the intention of providing a good understanding of the role hydrogen is expected to play in sustainable energy systems. It is demonstrated how the benefits and sustainability attributes of hydrogen systems can be observed using thermodynamics, life cycle assessment and other methods, and that hydrogen fuel cell systems can play a significant role, particularly by facilitating the use of renewable energy and by increasing efficiency. The usefulness of exergy methods for enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of hydrogen energy systems is also described. The importance of hydrogen energy and fuel cell systems in mitigating environmental impacts, including climate change, is highlighted throughout. Two illustrations are presented, one covering an efficiency assessment of a PEM fuel cell, and the other a life cycle assessment of fuel cell vehicles. The largest energy consumption for an internal combustion engine vehicle is in the usage stage. Energy consumption for PEM fuel cell vehicles in use is several times smaller. On a life cycle basis, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of the PEM fuel cell are less than half those for the internal combustion engine vehicle. These results can vary depending on the source of hydrogen. The results are expected to be useful to scientists, researchers and engineers as well as policy and decision makers. (C) 2011 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Carbon issue is becoming more important all over the world. Plate glass is a typical kind of building materials and the life cycle carbon emission of plate glass is a big contributor, resulting from the energy consumption in the stages of its life cycle which includes four aspects: raw materials acquirement, materials transportation, production and embodied consumption of energy carriers. Based on the relevant data calculation from China's condition, the life cycle carbon emission of plate glass is around 46.41 kg carbon/weight box. Among this, around 70% is contributed by production stage, while the stages of raw materials acquirement and transportation take the share of 29% and 1%, respectively. As regards the energy structure, coke is responsible for 41% emission and the contributions of power and oil products are 35% and 24%, respectively. From the results, the production stage is the key stage for carbon reduction of plate glass, while the stage of raw materials acquirement cannot be neglected since around 30% share by the stage.For the production of one tonne of palm oil 5 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches are necessary. During processing in the oil mill 1.15 t empty fruit bunches and 3.25 m(3) of waste water with high organic pollution (CODtot 50,000 mg/L) accrue. Usually the waste water is treated in anaerobic ponds before precipitation to the recipient. From the ponds the greenhouse gas methane escapes (CH4). From the dumping sites of empty fruit bunches both methane and laughing gas (N2O) are emitted. By co-composting of chopped empty fruit bunches with waste water in open windrows the total amount of water can be evaporated and the nutrients can be aggregated in the final product compost or mulch. Thereby the emissions of greenhouse gases can be reduced from 245 to 7.4 kg CO(2)eq/t fruit bunches. When the empty fruit bunches are utilised in plantations as mulch and the waste water is treated in ponds, the greenhouse gas potential is reduced from 245 to 125 kg CO(2)eq/t fruit bunches. By a previous biogas production from the waste water an emissions reduction from 7.4 to 5.1 kg CO(2)eq/t fruit bunches is possible. Is the methane loss rate to the atmosphere from the biogas plant and the post-storage more than 2 %, the biogas plant has a negative effect on the total greenhouse gas balance. In practice the methane emissions are many times higher than 2 %.A review of the materials used in liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors is followed by the development of a parametric model for the quantification of material masses from waste monitors. The model uses diagonal length as an input which is first translated into a range of screen areas using viewing area aspect ratios. Next, the model divides LCD monitor components into those that are scaled by the screen area and those that are not, and estimates the masses of materials based on when components are removed in a materials recovery facility. Model results are presented as the coefficients of linear functions which allow specific material quantities to be estimated for each diagonal length. Overall the screen area LCD material estimation model results compare well with the published data in terms of both unit masses and individual material masses. The model is applied in an example characterization of material stream purity and suggested for use in materials flow analysis, life cycle assessment and in the quantification of the materials management needs of a certain recycler or in a certain region or country.The environmental impact of different land-use systems for energy, up to the farm or forest "gate", has been quantified with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Four representative crops are considered: OilSeed Rape (OSR), Miscanthus, Short-Rotation Coppice (SRC) willow and forest residues. The focus of the LCA is on changes in Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) but energy use, emissions of GreenHouse Gases (GHGs), acidification and eutrophication are also considered. In addition to providing an indicator of soil quality, changes in SOC are shown to have a dominant effect on total GHG emissions. Miscanthus is the best land-use option for GHG emissions and soil quality as it sequesters C at a higher rate than the other crops, but this has to be weighed against other environmental impacts where Miscanthus performs worse, such as acidification and eutrophication. OSR shows the worst performance across all categories. Because forest residues are treated as a by-product, their environmental impacts are small in all categories. The analysis highlights the need for detailed site-specific modelling of SOC changes, and for consequential LCAs of the whole fuel cycle including transport and use. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper I discuss general conceptual issues in the estimation of the impacts of CO2 emissions from soils and biomass, over time, as a result of land-use change (LUC) due to increased demand for energy crops. The effect of LUC on climate depends generally on the magnitude and timing of changes in soil and plant carbon, and in particular on the timing and extent of the reversion of land to original ecosystems at the end of the bioenergy program. Depending on whether one counts the climate impacts of any reversion of land uses, and how one values future climate-change impacts relative to present impacts, one can estimate anywhere from zero to very large climate impacts due to land-use change (LUC). I argue that the best method is to estimate the net present value (NPV) of the impacts of climate change due to LUC. With this approach, one counts the reversion impacts at the end of the program and applies a continuous discounting function to future impacts to express them in present terms. In this case, the impacts of CO2 emissions from the initial LUC then are at least partially offset by the impacts of CO2 sequestration from reversion. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Arable land is a constrained production factor - particular in Switzerland. Merely 45% of the consumed crops are produced domestically. Hence, the additional cultivation of rape for producing methyl ester is assumed to substitute crops used for food production. Consequently, Switzerland has to face the decision either to use the arable land for food production and import fuels or to produce fuel from rape and import the displaced food. Using Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (CLCA), the environmental consequences have been assessed if rape for energetic utilization substitutes rape used as edible oil or barley used as animal fodder. The study shows, that displacing food production by RME production in Switzerland can reduce total GHG emissions, when GHG-intense soy meal from Brazil is substituted by rape and sunflower meal, which is a co-product of the vegetable oil production. On the other hand, an increased production of vegetable oils increases various other environmental factors, because agricultural production of edible oil is associated with higher environmental impacts than the production and use of fossil fuels. In summary, the environmental impacts of an increased RME production in Switzerland rather depend on the environmental scores of the marginal replacement products on the world market, than on local production factors. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper is to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions impacts of the use of different alternative biofuels in passenger vehicles in Spain in order to meet EU biofuel goals. Different crop production alternatives are analysed, including the possible import of some raw materials. Availability of land for national production of the raw materials is analysed and indirect land use changes and associated GHG emissions are quantified. There are important differences in GHG emissions of biofuels depending on the raw material used and whether this is domestically produced or imported. Ethanol production using imported cereals and FAME production using domestic rapeseed have the highest GHG emissions per kilometre driven. Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) production from sunflower has shown the lowest emissions. When taking into account the results of GHG emissions savings per hectare, these findings are somehow reversed. Production of ethanol and around 12% of FAME can be done domestically. The rest will need to be imported and will cause indirect land use change (ILUC). Therefore, ethanol production will not displace any land, whereas FAME production will displace some amounts of land. Calculated ILUC factors are 29%-34%. The additional GHG emissions due to these indirect land use changes are significant (67%-344% of life cycle GHG emissions). Standalone, the EU biofuel targets can have important benefits for Spain in terms of global warming emissions avoided. However, when considering the impact of land use change effects, these benefits are significantly reduced and can even be negative. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The combined sugar and ethanol production process from sugar cane is a paradigmatic application for energy integration strategies because of the high number of hot and cold streams involved, the external hot utility requirement at two temperature levels for juice evaporation and crystallization, and the electricity demand for juice extraction by milling. These conditions make it convenient to combine the sugar-cane process with a CHP system fuelled by bagasse, the main by-product from juice extraction. The strategies, tools and expertise on energy integration developed separately by the research teams authoring this paper are applied here jointly to optimize the synthesis and the design parameters of the process and of the total site starting from the basic idea of dissociating the heat exchanger network design problem from the total site synthesis problem. At first the minimization of the external heat requirement for the process alone is pursued and results show that a one third reduction can be achieved by optimal heat integration. Then the use of the by-product bagasse for on-site power generation is considered and two bagasse-fuelled CHP systems are along with some parts of the sugar and ethanol production process in order to obtain maximum total site net power. Results show a variety of interesting scenarios of combined sugar, ethanol and electricity production plants with considerably high electricity output. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays one of the most important environmental issues is the exponential increase of the greenhouse effect by the polluting action of the industrial and transport sectors. The production of biofuels is considered a viable alternative for the pollution mitigation but also to promote rural development. The work presents an analysis of the environmental impacts of the methanol production from sugarcane bagasse, taking into consideration the balance of the energy life cycle and its net environmental impacts, both are included in a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) approach. The evaluation is done as a case study of a 100,000 t/y methanol plant, using sugarcane bagasse as raw material. The methanol is produced through the BTL (Biomass to Liquid) route. The results of the environmental impacts were compared to others LCA studies of biofuel and it was showed that there are significant differences of environmental performance among the existing biofuel production system, even for the same feedstock. The differences are dependent on many factors such as farming practices, technology of the biomass conversion. With relation to the result of output/input ratio, the methanol production from sugarcane bagasse showed to be a feasible alternative for the substitution of an amount of fossil methanol obtained from natural gas. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper the authors compare monoethanolamine (MEA) to aqueous ammonia (AA) and a solvent mixture of aqueous ammonia and ethanol (EAA) with respect to their post-combustion CO2 capture performance and their environmental impact. Simulation of all processes was carried out with Aspen Plus (R) and compared to experimental results for CO2 scrubbing with ammonia. Of special interest was the formation of stable salts, which could be observed in the experimental CO2 capture with both ammonia solvents. If CO2 can be captured in the form of ammonium salts, energy requirements are greatly reduced, since no energy is required for solvent regeneration and CO2 compression. The environmental impact of CO2 capture was investigated for a 500 MW pulverised coal power plant employing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) using the software SimaPro (R). For a comprehensive evaluation of this impact, influencing factors such as solvent production and solvent emissions were included. With kinetics taken into account, no salt formation could be observed in CO2 removal with aqueous ammonia. The necessary reduction of ammonia emissions leads to further energy requirements, and solvent production as well as the remaining ammonia losses to the environment have a more significant environmental impact than CO2 removal with MEA. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The biogeochemical liabilities of grain-based crop production for bioenergy are no different from those of grain-based food production: excessive nitrate leakage, soil carbon and phosphorus loss, nitrous oxide production, and attenuated methane uptake. Contingent problems are well known, increasingly well documented, and recalcitrant: freshwater and coastal marine eutrophication, groundwater pollution, soil organic matter loss, and a warming atmosphere. The conversion of marginal lands not now farmed to annual grain production, including the repatriation of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and other conservation set-aside lands, will further exacerbate the biogeochemical imbalance of these landscapes, as could pressure to further simplify crop rotations. The expected emergence of biorefinery and combustion facilities that accept cellulosic materials offers an alternative outcome: agricultural landscapes that accumulate soil carbon, that conserve nitrogen and phosphorus, and that emit relatively small amounts of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere. Fields in these landscapes are planted to perennial crops that require less fertilizer, that retain sediments and nutrients that could otherwise be transported to groundwater and streams, and that accumulate carbon in both soil organic matter and roots. If mixed-species assemblages, they additionally provide biodiversity services. Biogeochemical responses of these systems fall chiefly into two areas: carbon neutrality and water and nutrient conservation. Fluxes must be measured and understood in proposed cropping systems sufficient to inform models that will predict biogeochemical behavior at field, landscape, and regional scales. Because tradeoffs are inherent to these systems, a systems approach is imperative, and because potential biofuel cropping systems and their environmental contexts are complex and cannot be exhaustively tested, modeling will be instructive. Modeling alternative biofuel cropping systems converted from different starting points, for example, suggests that converting CRP to corn ethanol production under conventional tillage results in substantially increased net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that can be only partly mitigated with no-till management. Alternatively, conversion of existing cropland or prairie to switchgrass production results in a net GHG sink. Outcomes and policy must be informed by science that adequately quantifies the true biogeochemical costs and advantages of alternative systems.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) can be used as a scientific decision support technique to quantify the environmental implications of various biorefinery process, feedstock, and integration options. The goal of DuPont's integrated corn biorefinery (ICBR) project, a cost-share project with the United States Department of Energy, was to demonstrate the feasibility of a cellulosic ethanol biorefinery concept. DuPont used LCA to guide research and development to the most sustainable cellulosic ethanol biorefinery design in its ICBR project and will continue to apply LCA in support of its ongoing effort with joint venture partners. Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel which has the potential to provide a sustainable solution to the nation's growing concerns around energy supply and climate change. A successful biorefinery begins with sustainable removal of biomass from the field. Michigan State University (MSU) used LCA to estimate the environmental performance of corn grain, corn stover, and the corn cob portion of the stover, grown under various farming practices for several corn growing locations in the United States Corn Belt. In order to benchmark the future technology options for producing cellulosic ethanol with existing technologies, LCA results for fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are compared to alternative ethanol processes and conventional gasoline. Preliminary results show that the DuPont ICBR outperforms gasoline and other ethanol technologies in the life-cycle impact categories considered here.European hake (Merluccius merluccius L), one of the main products in the Spanish diet, represents the highest economic income for Galician fishing fleets. In this study, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to assess the environmental impacts related to the extraction, processing and consumption of European hake captured by Galician trawlers and long liners in the Northern Stock. Furthermore, biological related impact categories, such as by-catch and discards were also considered in the analysis. Results show considerably lower environmental impacts for European hake fresh fillets arriving from long lining vessels, due mainly to the high energy demand of the analyzed trawlers. In this sense, the main part of the impact for hake arriving from both fishing fleets was attributable to marine diesel-linked activities. Post-fishing activities, such as land transport or electricity consumption, were also highlighted as important contributors within their subsystems. Global environmental performance of the system can only be reduced through fuel consumption minimization. However, impact minimization in the fresh hake post-harvesting activities may offer attractive cost reductions for retailers, wholesalers and consumers. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work examined the energetic performance of a 6-month semi-continuous cultivation of Scenedesmus obliquus in an outdoor photobioreactor at mid-temperate latitude, without temperature control. By measuring the seasonal biomass production (mean 11.31, range 1.39-23.67 g m(-2) d(-1)), higher heating value (22.94 kJ g(-1)) and solar irradiance, the mean seasonally-averaged photosynthetic efficiency (2.18%) and gross energy productivity (0.27 MJ m(-2) d(-1)) was calculated. When comparing the solar energy conversion efficiency to the energy investment for culture circulation, significant improvements in reactor energy input must be made to make the system viable. Using the data collected to model the energetic performance of a substitute photobioreactor design, we conclude that sustainable photobioreactor cultivation of microalgae in similar temperate climates requires a short light path and low power input, only reasonably obtained by flat-panel systems. However, temperature control was not necessary for effective long-term cultivation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To be a viable alternative, a biofuel should provide a net energy gain and be capable of being produced in large quantities without reducing food supplies. Amounts of agricultural waste are produced and require treatment, with rice straw contributing the greatest source of such potential bio-fuel in Taiwan. Through life-cycle accounting, several energy indicators and four potential gasification technologies (PGT) were evaluated. The input energy steps for the energy life cycle assessment (ELCA) include collection, generator, torrefaction, crushing, briquetting, transportation, energy production, condensation, air pollution control and distribution of biofuels to the point of end use. Every PGT has a positive energy benefit. The input of energy required for the transportation and pre-treatment are major steps in the ELCA. On-site briquetting of refused-derived fuel (RDF) provides an alternative means of reducing transportation energy requirements. Bio-energy sources, such as waste rice straw, provide an ideal material for the bio-fuel plant. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy and greenhouse gas footprints of some of the various technologies that are used for processing nickel laterite ores have been assessed using life cycle assessment methodology based largely on publicly reported inventory data. The results of the study were used to identify opportunities to improve the energy and greenhouse gas impacts of the various processes and to examine how they might be affected under different future scenarios such as falling laterite ore grades and the possible imposition of a carbon tax. The opportunities identified included the use of biochar as a fuel and reductant, along with slag waste heat recovery in ferronickel smelting, and the use of the emerging bath smelting technology for ferronickel production instead of the rotary kiln/electric furnace process. As a significant amount of the life cycle-based greenhouse gas emissions from the hydrometallurgical acid leaching processes are generated by acid neutralisation with lime or limestone, there may be opportunities to reduce these emissions by utilising other neutralising agents or possibly by considering non-acid leaching systems. Improving the energy efficiency of the electrowinning stage used to recovery nickel metal from the leach liquor is another possible way in which the sustainability of hydrometallurgical production of nickel from laterite ores could be improved. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The exergetic analysis model of municipal solid waste (MSW) was established to study the MSW management system in south Beijing. The materials and energy inventory of different processes, including transport, mechanical separation, compost, incineration and landfill, were analyzed. Based on the inventory analysis, the exergetic efficiencies of different unit technologies and management systems were studied, and the main results were: (1) the exergetic efficiency of compost and incineration is 5.98% and 14.23%, higher than landfill, 2.92%; (2) mechanical separation increases the exergetic efficiency of unit technologies. from 2.92% to 4.33% of landfill and from 14.23% to 15.59% of incineration; and (3) integrated treatment increases the comprehensive exergetic efficiency of the MSW management system, exergetic efficiency of MSW management system in south Beijing increased from 2.91% to 4.57% because the processes of mechanical separation and compost were introduced, furthermore, when the incineration facility is applied to treat the plastic and paper, exergetic efficiency of the system will increase to 13.95%. According to the exergetic analysis. HRRIS aims (harmless, recycling, reductive, industrializing and socializing) of MSW management system were put forward, and scavenger management, charging mechanism and integration of technologies were discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The study evaluates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions performance of future bioethanol systems in Thailand to ascertain whether bioethanol for transport could help the country mitigate a global warming impact. GHG emission factors of bioethanol derived from cassava, molasses, and sugar cane are analyzed using 12 scenarios covering the critical variables possibly affecting the GHG performance, i.e., (1) the possible direct land use change caused by expanding feedstock cultivation areas; (2) types of energy carriers used in ethanol plants; and (3) waste utilization, e.g., biogas recovery and dry distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) production. The assessment reveals that GHG performance of a Thai bioethanol system is inclined to decrease in the long run due to the effects from the expansion of plantation areas to satisfy the deficit of cassava and molasses. Therefore, bioethanol will contribute to the country's strategic plan on GHG mitigation in the transportation sector only if the production systems are sustainably managed, i.e., coal replaced by biomass in ethanol plants, biogas recovery, and adoption of improved agricultural practices to increase crop productivity without intensification of chemical fertilizers. Achieving the year 2022 government policy targets for bioethanol with recommended measures would help mitigate GHG emissions up to 4.6 Gg CO2-eq per year.The rising prominence of life cycle assessment (LCA) and similar environmental accounting frameworks reflects increasing awareness of the pressing necessity of managing both for eco-efficiency and with respect to the macroscale, environmental dimensions of the material/energy flows and emissions that underpin all economic activity. However, by relying on environmentally myopic market signals to inform evaluations of the biophysical dimensions of economic activity through the widespread use of market information (in particular, via economic allocation) in LCA, we are concerned that researchers greatly compromise the value of their work to furthering these objectives. In response to this problem, we provide a systematic critique of the use of market information in attributional LCA and present the case for an ecological-economic approach to the execution, interpretation, and application of biophysically consistent LCA research specifically intended to elucidate the environmental dimensions of meeting human needs. We further argue that, although LCA has historically been limited to informing eco-efficiency considerations, it can and should also be used to manage for sustainable scale, which is the first condition of sustainability.One of the key features of environmental policy integration in Sweden is sector responsibility. The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning is responsible for the building and real estate management sector and should, as a part of this responsibility, assess the environmental impacts of this sector. The aim of this study is to suggest and demonstrate a method for such an assessment. The suggested method is a life cycle assessment, based on an input-output analysis. The method can be used for regular monitoring and for prioritization between different improving measures. For the assessment to sufficiently cover the Swedish Environmental Quality Objectives, complementary information is needed, in particular with respect to the indoor environment. According to the results, the real estate management sector contributes between 10% and 40% of Swedish energy use; use of hazardous chemical products; generation of solid waste; emissions of gases contributing to climate change; and human toxicological impacts, including nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulates. Transport and production of nonrenewable building materials contribute significantly to several of the emissions. Heating of buildings contributes more to energy use than to climate change, due to the use of renewable energy sources. To reduce climate change, measures should therefore prioritize not only heating of buildings but also the important upstream processes.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely accepted methodology to support decision-making processes in which one compares alternatives, and that helps prevent shifting of environmental burdens along the value chain or among impact categories. According to regulation in the European Union (EU), the movement of waste needs to be reduced and, if unavoidable, the environmental gain from a specific waste treatment option requiring transport must be larger than the losses arising from transport. The EU explicitly recommends the use of LCA or life cycle thinking for the formulation of new waste management plans. In the last two revisions of the Industrial Waste Management Programme of Catalonia (PROGRIC), the use of a life cycle thinking approach to waste policy was mandated. In this article we explain the process developed to arrive at practical life cycle management (LCM) from what started as an LCA project. LCM principles we have labeled the "3/3" principle or the "good enough is best" principle were found to be essential to obtain simplified models that are easy to understand for legislators and industries, useful in waste management regulation, and, ultimately, feasible. In this article, we present the four models of options for the management of waste solvent to be addressed under Catalan industrial waste management regulation. All involved actors concluded that the models are sufficiently robust, are easy to apply, and accomplish the aim of limiting the transport of waste outside Catalonia, according to the principles of proximity and sufficiency.The high degree of renewability of wind power in China is illustrated by a case study of nonrenewable energy cost and greenhouse gas emission to a typical wind farm in Guangxi. The account for the life cycle of components manufacturing and transportation, installation, operation, maintenance, disassembly and disposal is based on the embodiment intensities of nonrenewable energy use and greenhouse gas emission by an environmental extended input-output analysis for typical commodities in the Chinese economy. The nonrenewable energy cost and greenhouse gas emissions are estimated, respectively, as 0.047 MJ and 0.002 kg CO2-eq for 1 MJ of electricity by the wind farm plant, respectively 56 and 108 times less than those of the average coal plant in China. Considering the dominance of coal power, the nonrenewable energy saving is estimated at 1.22E+10 MJ during its 20 years operating period, while the reduced greenhouse gas emissions are 1.03E+09 kg CO2-eq by the wind farm studied. Compared with the study of the wind farms worldwide, the nonrenewable energy cost intensity of Chinese 1.25 MW wind turbines is in the median range, and the GHG emission intensity is at the lower end of the scale. The concrete results have essential policy making implications supportive to a further spread of wind power technology in China. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) was done to identify the environmental impacts related to pentachlorophenol (penta)-treated wooden utility poles. Penta-treated utility poles commonly are used for electricity distribution and transmission, and telecommunications. In addition, this LCA has evaluated the opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts associated with penta-treated poles and has compared the penta-treated pole product to alternative products. A model of penta-treated utility pole life cycle stages was created and used to determine inputs and outputs during the pole production, treating, service life, and disposal stages. Pole production data are based on published sources. Primary wood preservative treatment data were obtained by surveying wood treatment facilities in the United States. Product service life and disposal inventory data are based on published data and professional judgment. Life cycle inventory inputs, outputs, and impact indicators for penta-treated utility poles were quantified per pole. In a similar manner, an inventory model was developed for the manufacture, service life, and disposal of the primary alternative products: steel and spun concrete utility poles. Impact indicator values, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fossil fuel and water use, and emissions with the potential to cause acidification, smog, ecological toxicity, and eutrophication were quantified for each of the pole products. The GHG, fossil fuel use, acidification, water use, eutrophication, and ecological toxicity impact indicator values for penta-treated poles are less than those for concrete poles. The GHG, fossil fuel use, acidification, water use, and ecological toxicity impact indicator values for penta-treated poles are less than those for steel poles. The values are about equal for eutrophication. The smog impact from penta-treated poles is greater than the smog impact from both concrete and steel poles. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Backcasting has been widely used for developing energy futures. This paper explores the potential for using industrial ecology to guide the development of energy futures within a backcasting framework. Building on the backcasting work of Robinson [1], a seven step method is presented to embed industrial ecology principles within the development and assessment of future scenarios and transition paths toward them. The approach is applied to the case of backcasting regional energy futures in the Latrobe Valley, near Melbourne, Australia. This region has substantial brown coal deposits which are currently mined and used in coal-fired power stations to generate electricity. Bounded by a sustainability vision for the region in a carbon-constrained world, regional industrial ecologies in 2050 were backcast around three themes: bio-industries and renewables (no coal usage); electricity from coal with carbon capture and storage (low to high coal usage); and coal to products such as hydrogen, ammonia, diesel, methanol, plastics and char (demonstrating medium to high overall coal use relative to current levels). Potential environmental, technological, socio-political and economic impacts of each scenario across various life cycle stages were characterised. Results offer a platform for regional policy development to underpin deliberation on a preferred future by the community, industry and other stakeholders. Industrial ecology principles were found to be useful in backcasting for creatively articulating alternative futures featuring industrial symbiosis. However, enabling the approach to guide implementation of sustainable transition pathways requires further development and would benefit from integration within the Strategic Sustainable Development framework of Robert et al. [2]. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Providing 100% of a building's heating and hot water using a solar thermal system in a European climate has been shown to be both practically feasible and functionally successful for a new apartment building in Switzerland. The research conducted a life cycle assessment of the solar thermal system and compared the results with an air-source heat-pump, ground-source heat pump, natural gas furnace, oil furnace and a wood-pellet furnace. Using a range of lifetime scenarios it was found that the solar thermal system displays potentially significant advantages over all other systems in terms of reductions for purchased primary energy (from 84 to 93%) and reductions in GHG emissions (from 59 to 97%). However, due to the heavy industrial processes and the particular metals used in manufacturing, the solar thermal system was shown to have a higher demand for resources which, in relation to the natural gas system, can be by a factor of almost 38. Potential impacts on ecosystem quality were marginally worse than for the heat-pump and fossil fuel systems due to resource use impacts whilst potential human health impacts were similar to the heat pump systems but better than the fossil and biomass fuelled systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The waste management of a chlor-alkali and calcium chloride industrial facility from southern Chile was the object of this study. The main solid waste materials generated in these processes are brine sediments and calcium chloride sediments, respectively. Both residues are mixed in the liquid phase and filtered in a press filter, obtaining a final low humidity solid waste, called 'mixed sediments', which is disposed of in an industrial landfill as non-hazardous waste. The aim of the present study was to compare by means of LCA, the current waste management option of the studied chlor-alkali facility, namely landfill disposal, with two new possible options: the reuse of the mixed sediments as mineral additive in compost and the use of brine sediments as an unconventional sorbent for the removal of heavy metals from wastewater. The functional unit was defined as 1 tonne of waste being managed. To perform this evaluation, software SimaPro 7.0 was used, selecting the Ecoindicator 99 and CML 2000 methodologies for impact evaluation. The obtained results indicate that the use of brine sediments as a novel material for the removal of heavy metals from wastewater (scenario 3) presented environmental benefits when compared with the waste management option of sediments landfilling (scenario 1). The avoided environmental loads, generated by the substitution of activated granular carbon and the removal of Cu and Zn from wastewater in the treatment process generated positive environmental impacts, enhancing the environmental performance of scenario 3.Information constitutes one of the main barriers for applying life cycle assessment (LCA) due to complexity and need for great amounts of it. However, most of the parameters that determine the data are defined early in the product development process. Knuckle boom cranes constitute a complex product which poses a particularly pressing need for simplification. This paper models the LCA inventory information out of design parameters. The paper also presents a tool implementing this. To develop the parametric model, a three-step approach is followed. In the first step, knuckle boom crane designers of an international manufacturer are asked to point out key design parameters. An LCA is then conducted for a representative crane of the same manufacturer. Interdependencies between design parameters and inventories are analyzed. Design parameters influencing the LCA results are defined as primary parameters. Parameters through which it is possible to calculate the LCA inventory are defined as secondary parameters. The relation between primary and secondary parameters is analyzed. Indicators are developed for comparison, and the validity of this parametric model is checked by analyzing six more cranes, different in size and performance. The parametric model presented in this paper contains 13 primary parameters. Their link to secondary parameters and inventory data is through formulas derived from existing documentation, physical interdependencies, or statistical data. To integrate this model in the design workflow, it is embedded into a software tool. Designers input the primary parameters, and the tool allows visualization and benchmarking of environmental impact results. Three indicators related to weight and environmental performance are defined, as well as the means to benchmark in relative terms. The model diverges in never more than 4% for six additional cranes analyzed. Through the parametric model, a rigorous estimation of the environmental profile of a crane can already be assessed in an early point of the product development process. Results can be used to define targets for design decisions based on the best-performing products. The statistics-based estimations carried out by the tool can be further improved, getting a wider range of cranes involved. Differences between these products can increase the understanding of the effect of technology choices in the final environmental impact of the product. This may become particularly useful in early design decisions. The potentials of this parametric approach can also be extended to other types of products.When performing a life cycle assessment (LCA), the LCA practitioner faces the need to express the characterized results in a form suitable for the final interpretation. This can be done using normalization against some common reference impact-the normalization references-which require regular updates. The study presents updated sets of normalization inventories, normalization references for the EDIP97/EDIP2003 methodology and guidance on their consistent use in practice. The base year of the inventory is 2004; the geographical scope for the non-global impacts is limited to Europe. The emission inventory was collected from different publicly available databases and monitoring bodies. Where necessary, gaps were filled using extrapolations. A new approach for inventorizing specific groups of substances-non-methane volatile organic compounds and pesticides-was also developed. The resulting inventory was combined with the most updated sets of characterization factors for each impact category in the EDIP methodologies. Normalization references are provided for global and non-global impact categories for the year 2004, and causes of variations compared to previous versions are identified. For the non-toxic impact categories, they mainly reflect demographic evolution or change in emission intensities. For the toxic impact categories, they are strongly dependent on improvements in the characterization models as well as on the inventory analysis. Differentiation of substance groups into individual substance emissions is an important source, which leads to identification of inconsistencies in the current practice and guidance to ensure compatibility between LCI and LCIA. Uncertainties are not quantified but are mainly expected to lie in the toxic substance inventories, which are known not to encompass all potentially harmful chemicals released in Europe, e.g. omitting some toxic metals. The present study provides the most updated set of publicly available normalization references for the EDIP methodology and emission inventories for Europe that may also serve for the calculation of normalization references for other impact categories. It is believed to be the best estimate available for Europe and is thus recommended for use along with the guidance provided in this study.There has been an increasing use of plastic motor car fuel tanks in recent decades with the expected benefits of lighter weight, shape flexibility and lower cost. In this paper, the environmental life cycle assessments of mild steel and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) car fuel tanks in Japan are compared for two cases, namely the current average processes (base case), and for the same processes with the maximum currently feasible pollution control technology installed. Primarily, data from Japan are used for a life cycle inventory analysis, followed by an impact assessment based on the Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method Based on Endpoint Modelling and five other indicators. Mild steel shows a notably higher inventory for resources iron, manganese, zinc, coking coal, combustion coal, dolomite, limestone; for the air pollutants nitrogen oxides (NOx) from mobile sources, PM10, sulphur dioxide, hydrocarbons; and for solid waste (slag). HDPE has a higher inventory for resources liquefied natural gas reserves, oil reserves, for the air pollutants carbon dioxide, NOx from non-mobile sources and sulphur oxides. The base case environmental impact assessment results for six indicators show HDPE and steel to have similar impacts for all but one of the indicators. With pollution control, the feasible reductions in respective pollutant inventories range from 0% to 97%, while the corresponding impact assessment shows indicator values reduced by 0% to 29%, with slightly improved performance of mild steel relative to HDPE. Accounting for a 62-year period of use and recycling for the mild steel would show a further decrease in the impact of the mild steel relative to HDPE.This paper describes part of the first detailed environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of Australian red meat (beef and sheep meat) production. The study was intended to assist the methodological development of life cycle impact assessment by examining the feasibility of new indicators for natural resource management (NRM) issues relevant to soil management in agricultural LCA. This paper is intended to describe the NRM indicators directly related to agricultural soil chemistry. Three nutrient management indicators-nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) balances-were estimated on the basis of 1 kg of hot standard carcass weight (HSCW) for three grazing properties in Australia. We also examined a soil acidification indicator based on the effects of agricultural practices. The N balance for the grazing properties varied from a loss of 28 g N/kg HSCW to an accumulation of 170 g N/kg HSCW. For comparison, the N content of cattle is about 24 g/kg liveweight. The main contributors to these changes were the growth of N-fixing pastures (or lack thereof) and the application of fertilisers. The P and the K balances showed similar results, varying from a 3.9-g loss to a 19-g accumulation of P and a 4-g loss to a 95-g accumulation of K per kilogram HSCW. Decisions about pasture management were also reflected in the results of the soil acidification indicator. We also identified that soil erosion at the grazing properties is a significant component of nutrient losses. The results suggest that reducing the leaching of soil N might be the best way to balance the N budget without causing acidification. The NRM indicators developed can be benchmarked against other production systems as the application of these indicators progresses.As new alternative automotive fuels are being developed, life cycle assessment (LCA) is being used to assess the sustainability of these new options. A fuel LCA is commonly referred as a "Well To Wheels" analysis and calculates the environmental impacts of producing the fuel (the "Well To Tank" stage) and using it to move a car (the "Tank To Wheels" stage, TTW). The TTW environmental impacts are the main topic of this article. Renault's cars pollutant emissions are measured on the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) to comply with Euro regulations. The results have been used to show the variability of the emissions in the TTW stage. Five E85 flex-fuel vehicles were also tested to check their compliance with Euro standards, enabling to show the effect of an alternative fuel such as ethanol on pollutant emissions. Finally, Euro standard emission thresholds were transposed into environmental impacts to see how they affect TTW results. The TTW stage is very significant for the environmental impacts selected. The results show the unpredictable variability of the impacts between vehicles and when switching from gasoline to ethanol (E85). However, this variability is inferior compared with the differences between cars complying with different Euro standards. Measured emissions on a car on NEDC cycle may not be suitable as the input data for TTW calculations. Euro standards associated with average fuel consumptions may be used as the basis for TTW impacts and should be chosen carefully in order to be relevant with the scope of the study. This leads to a functional unit, which is defined as the quantity of fuel needed to move a car that is representative of the average fleet that uses the fuel on 1 km.This study presents detailed and comprehensive inventories on the horticultural production of tomato using compost (CM) or mineral fertilizers (M), in both open-fields (OF) and greenhouses (GH), providing information on the environmental impacts and assessing the agronomic viability of the four cultivation options. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to calculate the potential environmental impacts of the tomato production cycle per ton of product. The stages in the assessment included: mineral and organic fertilizers production, fertilizers transport, cultivation stage and greenhouse stage. The data were obtained experimentally in pilot fields and in an industrial composting facility using municipal organic waste, both located in the Mediterranean area. The results indicate that replacing a fraction of the mineral fertilizers dosage with compost is a good option, as this did not alter yield or fruit size parameters. Greenhouse protection increased infrastructure materials requirements but enhanced harvest by almost 50% and reduced the water and pesticides requirement. Compost production and greenhouse stages were the most impacting stages. Without subtracting the avoided burdens by composting and not dumping organic waste, the cultivation option OF_M had the lowest and OF_CM the highest impact. When avoided burdens were taken into consideration, the environmental impacts of the four cultivation options varied, depending on the impact category, with bigger differences due to fertilization as a variable rather than the production system. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Efficient waste management is necessary in order to face up to increasing quantities of waste generated in modern societies. A technical solution using a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) enhanced Product-Service System (PSS) for bring-in waste glass collection is identified. Methodology based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is proposed. The results help understand the mechanisms of M2M PSS. Possible improvements are explored and the study shows how the PSS infrastructure impacts the environment. It examines the influence of major organisational parameters and contributes to eco-design and dimensioning of the M2M PSS. It reveals the interest of mutualisation to reduce environmental impacts and shows the importance of limiting data exchanges. It argues for the use of multi-criteria LCA on the complete system including the telecom infrastructures and employs realistic use scenarios derived from field studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CLAD (R) process (Direct additive laser manufacturing, Construction Laser Additive Directe in French) allows the direct manufacturing of small parts, and especially in case of complex shapes, giving equivalent properties with traditional processes such as conventional machining or casting techniques. Present environmental considerations are very important for updates in legislation or in order to make economic allowances. A specified mechanical Ti(6)Al(4)V part is used as a support and SimaPro software allows to perform Life Cycle Assessment. This study suggests that the absence of chips production, which represents up to 80% of the titanium consumption, provides to CLAD (R) process an unquestionable advantage. This process requires longer times of execution, which increase additional energy consumptions, and the comparison of this process with conventional machining demonstrates that damages to resources and to human health are highly reduced. In both cases a large part of the environmental impacts are due to the powder elaboration. Finally, CLAD (R) process can add shapes on machined/casted parts and it is possible to consider the manufacture of a mechanical part via a hybrid process. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) of nitrous oxides in a full-scale municipal solid waste incinerator was investigated using LCA. The relationship between NO(x)-cleaning and ammonia dosage was measured at the plant. Un-reacted ammonia - the ammonia slip - leaving the flue-gas cleaning system adsorbed to fly-ash or in the effluent of the acidic scrubber was quantified from the stoichiometric reaction of NO(x) and ammonia assuming no other reaction products was formed. Of the ammonia slip, 37% was associated with the fly-ash and 63% was in the effluent of the acidic scrubber. Based on NO(x)-cleaning efficiency, the fate of the ammonia slip as well as the environmental impact from ammonia production, the potential acidification and nutrient enrichment from NO(x)-cleaning was calculated as a function of ammonia dosage. Since the exact fate of the ammonia slip could not be measured directly, a number of scenarios were set up ranging from ''best case" with no ammonia from the slip ending up in the environment to "worst case" where all the ammonia slip eventually ended up in the environment and contributed to environmental pollution. In the "best case" scenario the highest ammonia dosage was most beneficial demonstrating that the environmental load associated with ammonia production is of minor importance. In contrast, in a "worst case" scenario" NO(x)-cleaning using SNCR is not recommendable at all, since the impacts from the ammonia slip exceed the saved impacts from the NO(x) removal. Increased dosage of ammonia for removal of NO(x) is recommendable as long as less than 10-20% of the ammonia slip to the effluent of the acidic scrubber ends up in the environment and less than 40% of the slip to the fly-ash ends up in the environment. The study suggests that the actual fate of the ammonia slip is crucial, but since the release of the ammonia may take place during transport and at the facilities that treat the wastewater and treat the fly-ash this factor depends strongly on local conditions and may be hard to determine. Thus, LCA-modeling proved useful in assessing the balance between ammonia dosage and NO(x)-removal in flue-gas cleaning from waste incineration. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was carried out to estimate the environmental impact of sewage sludge as secondary raw material in cement production. To confirm and add credibility to the study, uncertainty analysis was conducted. Results showed the impact generated from respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, global warming, and non-renewable energy categories had an important contribution to overall environmental impact, due to energy, clinker, and limestone production stages. Also, uncertainty analysis results showed the technology of sewage sludge as secondary raw material in cement production had little or no effect on changing the overall environmental potential impact generated from general cement production. Accordingly, using the technology of sewage sludge as secondary raw material in cement production is a good choice for reducing the pressure on the environment from dramatically increased sludge disposal. In addition, increasing electricity recovery rate, choosing natural gas fired electricity generation technology, and optimizing the raw material consumption in clinker production are highly recommended to reduce the adverse effects on the environment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to develop a sound material-cycle society, cost-effective municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems are required for the municipalities in the context of the integrated accounting system for MSW management. Firstly, this paper attempts to establish an integrated cost-benefit analysis (CBA) framework for evaluating the effectiveness of MSW management systems. In this paper, detailed cost/benefit items due to waste problems are particularly clarified. The stakeholders of MSW management systems, including the decision-makers of the municipalities and the citizens, are expected to reconsider the waste problems in depth and thus take wise actions with the aid of the proposed CBA framework. Secondly, focusing on the financial cost, this study develops a generalized methodology to evaluate the financial cost-effectiveness of MSW management systems, simultaneously considering the treatment technological levels and policy effects. The impacts of the influencing factors on the annual total and average financial MSW operation and maintenance (O&M) costs are analyzed in the Taiwanese case study with a demonstrative short-term future projection of the financial costs under scenario analysis. The established methodology would contribute to the evaluation of the current policy measures and to the modification of the policy design for the municipalities. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The issue of municipal solid waste (MSW) management has been highlighted in China due to the continually increasing MSW volumes being generated and the limited capacity of waste treatment facilities. This article presents a quantitative eco-efficiency (E/E) analysis on MSW management in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. A methodology for E/E analysis has been proposed, with an emphasis on the consistent integration of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). The environmental and economic impacts derived from LCA and LCC have been normalized and defined as a quantitative E/E indicator. The proposed method was applied in a case study of Tianjin, China. The study assessed the current MSW management system, as well as a set of alternative scenarios, to investigate trade-offs between economy and GHG emissions mitigation. Additionally, contribution analysis was conducted on both LCA and LCC to identify key issues driving environmental and economic impacts. The results show that the current Tianjin's MSW management system emits the highest GHG and costs the least, whereas the situation reverses in the integrated scenario. The key issues identified by the contribution analysis show no linear relationship between the global warming impact and the cost impact in MSW management system. The landfill gas utilization scenario is indicated as a potential optimum scenario by the proposed E/E analysis, given the characteristics of MSW, technology levels, and chosen methodologies. The E/E analysis provides an attractive direction towards sustainable waste management, though some questions with respect to uncertainty need to be discussed further. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examined the performance and emission characteristics of a household size trigeneration based on a diesel engine generator fuelled with hydrogen comparing to that of single generation, cogeneration using ECLIPSE simulation software. In single generation simulation, the engine genset is used to produce electricity only and the heat from the engine is rejected to the atmosphere. In cogeneration and trigeneration, in addition to the electricity generated from the genset, the waste heat rejected from the hot exhaust gases and engine cooling system, is captured for domestic hot water supply using heat exchangers and hot water tank; and a part of the waste heat is used to drive absorption cooling in trigeneration. Comparisons have been made for the simulated results of these three modes of operation for hydrogen and diesel. The results prove that hydrogen is a potential energy vector in the future which is a key to meeting upcoming stringent greenhouse gases emissions. The study show that hydrogen has very good prospects to achieve a better or equal performance to conventional diesel fuel in terms of energetic performance, and a near zero carbon emission, depending on the life cycle analysis of the way the hydrogen is produced. The results also show enormous potential fuel savings and massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions per unit of useful energy outputs with cogeneration and trigeneration compared with that of single generation. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The systematized study of urban morphology has led to the development of integrated tools based on the knowledge of the relation between physical density and urban form. These tools do help planners and decision makers; however, environmental data is rarely included in them. This paper presents the GWP-Chart, a method that combines urban planning tools with environmental data, obtained through the use of the life cycle assessment (LCA) results. In order to explain its use, three urban fabrics have been selected. According to their morphology and their ground space index (GSI) and public space ratio (PSR) values, the contribution of the sidewalk subsystem to the global impact per square meter of urban development can be quantified and communicated. The GWP-Chart is applicable to all types of urban fabrics and scales (street or square, island, fabric or district), as well as adaptable to any urban infrastructure or subsystem and can be extended to other environmental impacts. Its advantages lie in its accurateness, adaptability and ease of interpretation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rising concern towards environmental issues and, on the other hand, the need for more versatile polymer-based materials has led to increasing interest about polymer composites filled with natural-organic fillers, i.e. fillers coming from renewable sources and biodegradable. The composites, usually referred to as "green", can find several industrial applications. On the other hand, some problems exist, such as worse processability and reduction of the ductility. The use of adhesion promoters, additives or chemical modification of the filler can help in overcoming many of these limitations. These composites can be further environment-friendly when the polymer matrix is biodegradable and comes from renewable sources as well. This short review briefly illustrates the main paths and results of research (both academic and industrial) on this topical subject, providing a quick overview (with no pretence of exhaustiveness over such a vast topic), as well as appropriate references for further in-depth studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Modification of sugarcane bagasse with sulphuric acid improves the metal ion binding capacity of the bagasse. The process for this modification must be optimized for being cost effectively and environmentally accepted. In this regard, the objective of this study is to employ life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify and compare the potential environmental impacts of producing this modified biosorbent of heavy metals obtained from the sugarcane bagasse by a conventional process with two new alternatives proposed in this work. The results of the life cycle assessment on laboratory scale showed that the reuse of the non-reacted sulphuric acid and water of the washing and, drying the bagasse in trays under sun were of paramount importance because they involve a lower environmental impact. Therefore, it is recommended that this environmentally-friendly alternative be carefully considered in further assessments to develop and employ the production of chemically modified sugarcane bagasse on a larger scale.This article reviews and compares assessments of three biodiesel fuels: (1) transesterified lipids, (2) hydrotreated vegetable oils (HVO), and (3) woody biomass-to-liquid (BTL) Fischer-Tropsch diesel and selected feedstock options. The article attempts to rank the environmental performance and costs of fuel and feedstock combinations. Due to inter-study differences in goal and study assumptions, the ranking was mostly qualitative and intra-study results are emphasized. Results indicate that HVO made from wastes or by-products such as tall oil, tallow or used cooking oil outperforms transesterified lipids and BTL from woody material, both with respect to environmental life cycle impacts and costs. These feedstock options are, however, of limited availability, and to produce larger volumes of biofuels other raw materials must also be used. BTL from woody biomass seems promising with good environmental performance and the ability not to compete with food production. Production of biofuels from agricultural feedstock sources requires much energy and leads to considerable emissions due to agrochemical inputs. Thus, such biodiesel fuels are ranked lowest in this comparison. Production of feedstock is the most important life cycle stage. Avoiding detrimental land use changes and maintaining good agricultural or forestry management practices are the main challenges to ensure that biofuels can be a sustainable option for the future transport sector.Environmental information obtained through Life Cycle Analysis techniques has been incorporated into a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP). The solution of the model provides the optimal configuration and operation of an energy supply system to be installed, minimizing the environmental burden associated with production of equipment and consumption of resources. Starting from a superstructure of cogeneration system with additional components highly interconnected, the energy supply system was optimized considering specific demands of a hospital located in Zaragoza, Spain. The objective functions took into account the kilograms of CO2 released and Eco-indicator 99 Single Score. Also considered were price of energy resources, price and amortization possibilities of the equipment and options for selling surplus electricity to the electric grid. The effect of electricity generation conditions on the optimal configuration was examined by varying the source of electricity production in Spain and considering natural gas/electricity mixes from alternate countries. The ratio between local electricity emissions and natural gas emissions (alpha factor) was found to have the highest impact on the configuration of the system. Therefore the alpha factor could be considered the strongest influencing factor when deciding the optimal configuration of a system that minimizes environmental loads. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the importance of electricity production models based on the environmental impacts from a brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) plant. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to compare the environmental burdens of a BWRO plant with three different electricity production models in the United States, Singapore, and Spain. Input and output flows of BWRO plants are based on a study done by Munoz; life cycle inventories (LCIs) for the United States and Spain are adopted from Ecoinvent Database, while LCI for the Singapore electricity supply scheme is developed for the first time. The results highlight Singapore, the country with unique fuel mixes for electricity generation, achieves relatively better environmental savings in most impact categories at the current stage due to a high percentage of natural gas in the fossil fuel matrix. Results from uncertainty analysis further recognize the significance of this advantage. Furthermore, the results indicate the antiscalant application, power plant efficiency, and fuel exploration and production are also highly associated with the environmental performance of BWRO plant in certain categories. This work provides the first reference to conduct LCA of BWRO plant in Southeast Asia. It also provides a good reference for potential strategies to relieve environmental impacts of the RO desalination process.Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) constitute a group of microbial biopolyesters with important ecosystem functions and a high biotechnological potential. During the past decade, the rapid development of new molecular and microscopic techniques resulted in novel insights into the ecology of PHA-producing bacteria in aquatic and terrestrial microenvironments. Ecosystems showing fluctuating availability of carbon or transient limitation of essential nutrients, e. g. the rhizosphere of plants or estuarine sediments, contain a broad number of various PHA producers. PHA-producing microorganisms show a widespread phylogenetic diversity and are often characterized by a symbiotic or syntrophic life style. PHA are already produced commercially in large-scale fermentation. However, they have to compete economically with petrol-based polymers. Hence, the development of low-cost production strategies on the basis of diverse renewable materials is a crucial challenge. Ecological knowledge is required for these developments, which links both parts of the review together. The article highlights how a better understanding of the ecology of PHA-producing microorganisms can lead to a broader application of microbial biopolymers on the basis of sustainable production processes. These processes have to be evaluated by means of life cycle assessment and Cleaner Production studies prior to their industrial implementation.There is potential environmental benefit to be gained from the use of algae because of their ability to fix CO2, no need for direct land use and utilization of bio-waste (rich in potassium, phosphate and nitrogen based compounds) as a nutrients. The aim of the research is to assess the impact of biogas production and the final use in a cogeneration unit system from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in comparison with a similar reference system using a non-renewable source (e.g. natural gas). The paper is intended to be a preliminary study for understanding the implementation of this novel technology in a Latvian context.Like most other United States (US) governmental agencies, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was established and its purposes defined in US statutory law. Specifically, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) gave the CEQ responsibility for pursuing the development and implementation of policies that support and encourage environmental stewardship and sustainability. In this article, we examine what has happened to CEQ over the 40 years from its birth on January 1, 1970, to January 1, 2010. Among the key findings of the study is that the CEQ energetically and effectively pursued its assigned statutory goals during the 1970s, the first decade of its existence, but its capacity to do so was dramatically reduced during most of its second decade, the 1980s. The CEQ's capacity improved somewhat at the end of the second decade. Then the CEQ's fortunes declined again in the early years of the 1990s, its third decade, before recovering modestly in the middle of the decade. During most of its fourth decade, 2000-2008, the CEQ's energy level was elevated, but its presidentially assigned task seemed to be an inversion of its statutory purposes. These findings illustrate the malleability of statutory law in the American political context, and they illuminate gaps that exist in two prominent agency life-cycle theories.Short-rotation woody crops (SRWC) such as poplar and willow are an important source of renewable energy. They can be converted into electricity and/or heat using conventional or modern biomass technologies. In recent years many studies have examined the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of bioenergy production from poplar and willow using various approaches. The outcomes of these studies have, however, generated controversy among scientists, policy makers, and the society. This paper reviews 26 studies on energy and GHG balance of bioenergy production from poplar and willow published between 1990 and 2009. The data published in the reviewed literature gave energy ratios (ER) between 13 and 79 for the cradle-to-farm gate and between 3 and 16 for cradle-to-plant assessments, whereas the intensity of GHG emissions ranged from 0.6 to 10.6 g CO2 Eq MJ(biomass)-1 and 39 to 132 g CO2 Eq kWh-1. These values vary substantially among the reviewed studies depending on the system boundaries and methodological assumptions. The lack of transparency hampers meaningful comparisons among studies. Although specific numerical results differ, our review revealed a general consensus on two points: SRWC yielded 14.1-85.9 times more energy than coal (ERcoal similar to 0.9) per unit of fossil energy input, and GHG emissions were 9-161 times lower than those of coal (GHG(coal)similar to 96.8). To help to reduce the substantial variability in results, this review suggests a standardization of the assumptions about methodological issues. Likewise, the development of a widely accepted framework toward a reliable analysis of energy in bioenergy production systems is most needed.This paper investigates different methodologies of handling co-products in life cycle assessment (LCA) or carbon footprint (CF) studies. Co-product handling can have a significant effect on final LCA/CF results, and although there are guidelines on the preferred order for different methods for handling co-products, no agreed understanding on applicable methods is available. In the present study, the greenhouse gases (GHG) associated with the production of 1 kg of energy-corrected milk (ECM) at farm gate is investigated considering co-product handling. Two different milk production systems were used as case studies in the investigation of the effect of applying different methodologies in co-product handling: (1) outdoor grazing system in New Zealand and (2) mainly indoor housing system with a pronounced share of concentrate feed in Sweden. Since the cows produce milk, meat (when slaughtered), calves, manure, hides, etc., the environmental burden (here GHG emissions) must be distributed between these outputs (in the present study no emissions are attributed to hides specifically, or to manure which is recycled on-farm). Different methodologically approaches, (1) system expansion (two cases), (2) physical causality allocation, (3) economic allocation, (4) protein allocation and (5) mass allocation, are applied in the study. The results show large differences in the final CF number depending on which methodology has been used for accounting co-products. Most evident is that system expansion gives a lower CF for milk than allocation methods. System expansion resulted in 63-76% of GHG emissions attributed directly to milk, while allocation resulted in 85-98%. It is stressed that meat is an important by-product from milk production and that milk and beef production is closely interlinked and therefore needs to be considered in an integrated approach. To obtain valid LCA/CF numbers for milk, it is crucial to account for by-products. Moreover, if CF numbers for milk need to be compared, the same allocation procedure should be applied.The Polish Centre for life cycle assessment (LCA) is a non-profit organization founded in 2009 following the initiative of people involved in Polish scientific and R&D centers dealing with LCA. The role, mission as well structure and organization of PCLCA have been presented. Moreover, the current state of LCA implementation in Poland has been mentioned. However, LCA has been mainly used for scientific research less by industry and business.Over the past two decades, consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) has emerged as a modeling approach for capturing environmental impacts of product systems beyond physical relationships accounted for in attributional LCA (ALCA). Put simply, CLCA represents the convergence of LCA and economic modeling approaches. In this study, a systematic literature review of CLCA is performed. While initial efforts to integrate the two modeling methods relied on simple partial equilibrium (PE) modeling and a heuristic approach to determining affected technologies, more recent techniques incorporate sophisticated economic models for this purpose. In the last 3 years, Multi-Market, Multi-Regional PE Models and Computable General Equilibrium models have been used. Moreover, the incorporation of other economic notions into CLCA, such as rebound effects and experience curves, has been the focus of later research. Since economic modeling can play a prominent role in national policy-making and strategic/corporate environmental planning, developing the capacity to operate LCA concurrent to, or integrated with, these models is of growing importance. This paper outlines the historical development of such efforts in CLCA, discusses key methodological advancements, and characterizes previous literature on the topic. Based on this review, we provide an outlook for further research in CLCA.Lignocellulosic ethanol has received special research interest, driven by concerns over high fuel prices, security of energy supplies, global climate change as well as the search of opportunities for rural economic development. A well-to-wheel analysis was conducted for ethanol obtained from black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia L.) by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. This study assesses the environmental profile of using ethanol in mixtures E10 and E85 as transport fuel in comparison with conventional gasoline (CG). In addition, the best model of black locust cultivation was analysed under an environmental point of view. The standard framework of LCA from International Standards Organisation was followed. To compare the environmental profiles, the study addressed the impact potentials taking into account the distance travelled by vehicles with the fuel tank full of CG. The product system includes all the processes involved from the black locust cultivation to the final use of fuels in a vehicle. The transport of all the chemicals and products is also included in the system boundaries. According to the results, fuel ethanol derived from black locust biomass may help to reduce the contributions to global warming, acidification, eutrophication and fossil fuels use specifically due to the low input production regime of the agricultural stage. These reductions would be increased with the increasing ratio of ethanol in the blend. Moreover, the use of lignin, biogas and other solid waste as fuel to meet the energy requirements of the plant, positively contribute to the environmental profile of cellulosic ethanol. On the contrary, ethanol blends are less environment friendly that CG in terms of photochemical oxidants formation. The cultivation of black locust following a low-input production regime, without agrochemicals application and extra irrigation is an important reason for the environmental improvement. Efforts should be made to promote the production of black locust according to principles of sustainable cultivation. Moreover, technological development in ethanol production could help to improve the environmental profile in the life cycle of ethanol-based fuels. It could be interesting to develop a strategic planning which allows identifying the potential regions not only in Italy but also in other European countries in order to increase the black locust biomass yield. The cultivation of short rotation forestry and/or short rotation coppices under low-input regimes presents potential environmental benefits and advantages for the future of second-generation ethanol production in Europe.Growing crops for bioenergy or biofuels is increasingly viewed as conflicting with food production. However, energy use continues to rise and food production requires fuel inputs, which have increased with intensification. Focussing on the question of food or fuel is thus not helpful. The bigger, more pertinent, challenge is how the increasing demands for food and energy can be met in the future, particularly when water and land availability will be limited. Energy crop production systems differ greatly in environmental impact. The use of high-input food crops for liquid transport fuels (first-generation biofuels) needs to be phased out and replaced by the use of crop residues and low-input perennial crops (second/advanced-generation biofuels) with multiple environmental benefits. More research effort is needed to improve yields of biomass crops grown on lower grade land, and maximum value should be extracted through the exploitation of co-products and integrated biorefinery systems. Policy must continually emphasize the changes needed and tie incentives to improved greenhous gas reduction and environmental performance of biofuels.This article proposes a linear programming model that is based on the wastewater treatment input-output model ((WIO)-I-2) to identify the lowest-emission choice among alternative feasible options for wastewater treatment; this model can be considered as an application of the waste input-output linear programming model (WIO-LP) to wastewater issues. Using the data of the Tokyo metropolitan (WIO)-I-2 table, I apply this model to obtain the optimal wastewater treatment options under alternative scenarios. The Pareto frontiers of environmental loads are derived to show the trade-off relationships among various types of environmental load and the effect of the introduction of high-temperature incineration of dewatered sludge on the generation of environmental loads. The main conclusion of the study is that when all three types of environmental load (landfill level, global warming potential, and chemical oxygen demand) are considered, the introduction of high-temperature incineration causes the widening of the Pareto frontier of environmental loads and also causes it to move closer to the origin.The US Sustainable Remediation Forum (SURF) proposes a nine-step process for conducting and documenting a footprint analysis and life-cycle assessment (LCA) for remediation projects. This guidance is designed to assist remediation practitioners in evaluating the impacts resulting from potential remediation activities so that preventable impacts can be mitigated. Each of the nine steps is flexible and scalable to a full range of remediation projects and to the tools used by remediation practitioners for quantifying environmental metrics. Two fictional case studies are presented to demonstrate how the guidance can be implemented for a range of evaluations and tools. Case-study findings show that greater insight into a study is achieved when the nine steps are followed and additional opportunities are provided to minimize remediation project footprints and create improved sustainable remediation solutions. This guidance promotes a consistent and repeatable process in which all pertinent information is provided in a transparent manner to allow stakeholders to comprehend the intricacies and tradeoffs inherent in a footprint analysis or LCA. For these reasons, SURF recommends that this guidance be used when a footprint analysis or LCA is completed for a remediation project. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Solar PV is widely considered as a "green" technology. This paper, however, investigates the environmental impact of the production of solar modules made from thin-film silicon. We focus on novel applications of nano-crystalline Silicon materials (nc-Si) into current amorphous Silicon (a-Si) devices. Two nc-Si specific details concerning the environmental performance can be identified, when we want to compare to a-Si modules. First, in how far the extra (and thicker) silicon layer (s) affects upstream material requirements and energy use. Second, in how far depositing an extra silicon layer may increase emissions of greenhouse gases as additional emissions of Fluor gases (F-gases) are associated to this step. The much larger global warming potential of F-gases (17 200-22 800 times that of CO2) may lead to higher environmental burdens. To date, no study has yet analyzed the effect of F-gas usage on the environmental profile of thin-film silicon solar modules. We performed a life-cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the current environmental usefulness of pursuing this novel micromorph concept. The switch to the new micromorph technology will result in a 60-85% increase in greenhouse gas emissions (per generated kWh solar electricity) in case of NF3 based clean processing, and 15-100% when SF6 is used. We conclude that F-gas usage has a substantial environmental impact on both module types, in particular the micromorph one. Also, micromorph module efficiencies need to be improved from the current 8-9% (stabilized efficiency) toward 12-16% (stab. eff.) in order to compensate for the increased environmental impacts. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A limited life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed on a combined biological and chemical process for the production of adipic acid, which was compared to the traditional petrochemical process. The LCA comprises the biological conversion of the aromatic feedstocks benzoic acid, impure aromatics, toluene, or phenol from lignin to cis, cis-muconic acid, which is subsequently converted to adipic acid through hydrogenation. Apart from the impact of usage of petrochemical and biomass-based feedstocks, the environmental impact of the final concentration of cis, cismuconic acid in the fermentation broth was studied using 1.85% and 4.26% cis, cis-muconic acid. The LCA focused on the cumulative energy demand (CED), cumulative exergy demand (CExD), and the CO(2) equivalent (CO(2)eq) emission, with CO(2) and N(2)O measured separately. The highest calculated reduction potential of CED and CExD were achieved using phenol, which reduced the CED by 29% and 57% with 1.85% and 4.26% cis, cis-muconic acid, respectively. A decrease in the CO(2)eq emission was especially achieved when the N(2)O emission in the combined biological and chemical process was restricted. At 4.26% cis, cis-muconic acid, the different carbon backbone feedstocks contributed to an optimized reduction of CO(2)eq emissions ranging from 14.0 to 17.4 ton CO(2)eq/ton adipic acid. The bulk of the bioprocessing energy intensity is attributed to the hydrogenation reactor, which has a high environmental impact and a direct relationship with the product concentration in the broth. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2011; 108: 1298-1306. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.The purpose of this work was to estimate GHG emissions and energy balances for the future expansion of sugarcane ethanol fuel production in Mexico with one current and four possible future modalities. We used the life cycle methodology that is recommended by the European Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which distinguished the following five system phases: direct Land Use Change (LUC); crop production; biomass transport to industry; industrial processing; and ethanol transport to admixture plants. Key variables affecting total GHG emissions and fossil energy used in ethanol production were LUC emissions, crop fertilization rates, the proportion of sugarcane areas that are burned to facilitate harvest, fossil fuels used in the industrial phase, and the method for allocation of emissions to co-products. The lower emissions and higher energy ratios that were observed in the present Brazilian case were mainly due to the lesser amount of fertilizers applied, also were due to the shorter distance of sugarcane transport, and to the smaller proportion of sugarcane areas that were burned to facilitate manual harvest. The resulting modality with the lowest emissions of equivalent carbon dioxide (CO2e) was ethanol produced from direct juice and generating surplus electricity with 36.8 kgCO(2e)/GJ(ethanol). This was achieved using bagasse as the only fuel source to satisfy industrial phase needs for electricity and steam. Mexican emissions were higher than those calculated for Brazil (27.5 kgCO(2e)/GJ(ethanol)) among all modalities. The Mexican modality with the highest ratio of renewable/fossil energy was also ethanol from sugarcane juice generating surplus electricity with 4.8 GJ(ethanol)/GJ(fossil). (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green roofs have been increasingly enlisted to alleviate urban environmental problems associated with urban heat island effect and stormwater quantity and quality. Most studies focus on extensive green roofs, with inadequate assessment of the complex intensive type, subtropical region, and thermal insulation effect. This study examines the physical properties, biological processes, and thermal insulation performance of an intensive green roof through four seasons. An experimental woodland installed on a Hong Kong building rooftop was equipped with environmental sensors to monitor microclimatic and soil parameters. The excellent thermal performance of the intensive green roof is verified. Even though our site has a 100 cm thick soil to support tree growth, we found that a thin soil layer of 10 cm is sufficient to reduce heat penetration into building. Seasonal weather variations notably control transpiration and associated cooling effect. The tree canopy reduces solar radiation reaching the soil surface, but the trapped air increases air temperature near the soil surface. The substrate operates an effective heat sink to dampen temperature fluctuations. In winter, the subtropical green roof triggers notable heat loss from the substrate into the ambient air, and draws heat upwards from warmer indoor air to increase energy consumption to warm indoor air. This finding deviates from temperate latitude studies. The results offer hints to optimize the design and thermal performance of intensive green roofs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The loss of strength in a structure as a result of cyclic loads over a period of life time is an important phenomenon for the life-cycle analysis. Service loads are accentuated at the areas of stress concentration, mainly at the connection of components. Structural components unavoidably are affected by defects such as surface scratches, surface roughness and weld defects of random sizes, which usually occur during the manufacturing and handling process. These defects are shown to have an important effect on the fatigue life of the structural components by promoting crack initiation sites. The value of equivalent initial flaw size (EIFS) is calculated by using the back extrapolation technique and the Paris law of fatigue crack growth from results of fatigue tests. We try to analyze the effect of EIFS distribution in a multiple site damage (MSD) specimen by using the extended finite element method (XFEM). For the analysis, fatigue tests were conducted on the centrally-cracked specimens and MSD specimens.Ecological and human risks often drive the selection of remedial alternatives for contaminated sediments. Traditional human and ecological risk assessment (HERA) includes assessing risk for benthic organisms and aquatic fauna associated with exposure to contaminated sediments before and after remediation as well as risk for human exposure but does not consider the environmental footprint associated with implementing remedial alternatives. Assessment of environmental effects over the whole life cycle (i.e., Life Cycle Assessment, LCA) could complement HERA and help in selecting the most appropriate sediment management alternative. Even though LCA has been developed and applied in multiple environmental management cases, applications to contaminated sediments and marine ecosystems are in general less frequent. This paper implements LCA methodology for the case of the polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and -furans (PCDD/F)-contaminated Grenland fiord in Norway. LCA was applied to investigate the environmental footprint of different active and passive thin-layer capping alternatives as compared to natural recovery. The results showed that capping was preferable to natural recovery when analysis is limited to effects related to the site contamination. Incorporation of impacts related to the use of resources and energy during the implementation of a thin layer cap increase the environmental footprint by over 1 order of magnitude, making capping inferior to the natural recovery alternative. Use of biomass-derived activated carbon, where carbon dioxide is sequestered during the production process, reduces the overall environmental impact to that of natural recovery. The results from this study show that LCA may be a valuable tool for assessing the environmental footprint of sediment remediation projects and for sustainable sediment management.The presence of variability in life cycle analysis (LCA) is inherent due to both inexact LCA procedures and variation of numerical inputs. Variability in LCA needs to be clearly distinguished from uncertainty. This paper uses specific examples from the production of diesel and jet fuels from 14 different feedstocks to demonstrate general trends in the types and magnitudes of variability present in life cycle greenhouse gas (LC-GHG) inventories of middle distillate fuels. Sources of variability have been categorized as pathway specific, coproduct usage and allocation, and land use change. The results of this research demonstrate that subjective choices such as coproduct usage and allocation methodology can be more important sources of variability in the LC-GHG inventory of a fuel option than the process and energy use of fuel production. Through the application of a consistent analysis methodology across all fuel options, the influence of these subjective biases is minimized, and the LC-GHG inventories for each feedstock-to-fuel option can be effectively compared and discussed. By considering the types and magnitudes of variability across multiple fuel pathways, it is evident that LCA results should be presented as a range instead of a point value. The policy implications of this are discussed.This study presents the life cycle assessment (LCA) of three batteries for plug-in hybrid and full performance battery electric vehicles. A transparent life cycle inventory (LCI) was compiled in a component-wise manner for nickel metal hydride (NiMH), nickel cobalt manganese lithium-ion (NCM), and iron phosphate lithium-ion (LFP) batteries. The battery systems were investigated with a functional unit based on energy storage, and environmental impacts were analyzed using midpoint indicators. On a per-storage basis, the NiME technology was found to have the highest environmental impact, followed by NCM and then LFP, for all categories considered except ozone depletion potential. We found higher life cycle global warming emissions than have been previously reported. Detailed contribution and structural path analyses allowed for the identification of the different processes and value-chains most directly responsible for these emissions. This article contributes a public and detailed inventory, which can be easily be adapted to any powertrain, along with readily usable environmental performance assessments.A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed to compare nanosilver T-shirts with conventional T-shirts with and without biocidal treatment. For nanosilver production and textile incorporation, we investigate two processes: flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) and plasma polymerization with silver co-sputtering (PlaSpu). Prospective environmental impacts due to increased nanosilver T-shirt commercialization are estimated with six scenarios. Results show significant differences in environmental burdens between nanoparticle production technologies: The "cradle-to-gate" climate footprint of the production of a nanosilver T-shirt is 2.70 kg of CO2-equiv (FSP) and 7.67-166 kg of CO2-equiv (PlaSpu, varying maturity stages). Production of conventional T-shirts with and without the biocide triclosan has emissions of 2.55 kg of CO2-equiv (contribution from triclosan insignificant). Consumer behavior considerably affects the environmental impacts during the use phase. Lower washing frequencies can compensate for the increased climate footprint of FSP nanosilver T-shirt production. The toxic releases from washing and disposal in the life cycle of T-shirts appear to be of minor relevance. By contrast, the production phase may be rather significant due to toxic silver emissions at the mining site if high silver quantities are required.The objective of this work is to present a quantitative tool to support decision-making in the area of optimal design of supply chains (SC) for the combined production of sugar and ethanol. The problem is formulated as a multiobjective mixed-integer linear program that seeks to optimize simultaneously the economic and environmental performance of the production chain. The advantages of the approach presented are illustrated through its application to a case study, in which a trade-off exists between the economic and environmental performance of the network. Our method provides valuable insight into the problem and a guide to adopt more sustainable strategic alternatives in the design of SCs with embedded biorefineries.Huge and ever-increasing energy consumption and consequent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions pose unprecedented challenges to the sustainable development of the international human society. Our existing energy systems, where primary energy is converted to all sorts of final energy services, remain the major contributor to these global energy and environmental challenges. It is becoming a consensus that the conventional energy conversion and utilization mode should make place for a more sustainable one with higher energy conversion efficiency, lower air pollutions and GHG emissions, less dependence on fossil fuels, and more utilization of renewable energy. However, although there exist many technical options and technology pathways to enable this transition, they are usually treated separately by their very own technical communities and political groups without coordination with others, and the overall effect and potential is therefore greatly constrained as compared to a systematic approach where all alternatives are taken into consideration in an integrated way. Energy systems engineering provides a methodological modeling and optimization framework to address the complex energy and environmental problems existed in design and operation of energy systems in an integrated manner. This methodological framework is generic, and it can help to produce optimal design and operational plans for energy systems ranging from nanoscale, microscale, mesoscale, to mega-scale levels over operating horizons from milliseconds to months and years. This Article first gives a brief overview of typical methodologies of energy systems engineering, comprising superstructure based modeling, mixed-integer linear and nonlinear programming, multiobjective optimization, optimization under uncertainty, and life-cycle assessment. The concept of energy systems engineering and these methodologies are further illustrated via their applications in some typical real-life energy systems of very different nature and scale, ranging from polygeneration energy systems, hydrogen infrastructure planning, energy systems in commercial buildings, and biofuel supply chains.The objectives of the research here described were to put in evidence the eco-profiles of two product-systems concerning bovine leather manufactured in Italy and Spain, to identify their hot spots and to find out if the different technologies and cooperative management solutions adopted led to significant environmental differences in the two systems analysed. The environmental impacts of two systems were analysed by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. At the macro-phase level, tanning resulted to be the most burdensome phase for almost all impact categories in both systems. At the level of the specific tannery phases, the main hot spots were tanning, dyeing-retaining and soaking in the Italian system, soaking-liming, tanning and retanning in the Spanish one. The main differences between the two systems and a few options for improvement were identified at three levels: energy mix, industrial processes and solid waste management. Despite the technological and waste management dissimilarity of the two systems, their total environmental burdens appeared quite similar. However, relevant differences in the most burdening phases, operations and substances are highlighted in this paper. Improvements in both systems should be aimed at by means of an optimisation of tanning processes and reduction of chemicals use. Further studies dealing with inventories of recovery processes and landfill disposal of wastes are recommended.In the last few years we have seen the creation of an everyday larger and varied series of are creating large and varied series of environmental management tools used to analyze and classify environmentally each mineral and its physical, economic and environmental circumstances. Thus we now, count with the Material Flow Analysis (MFA) of a mining operation, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Energy and Exergy Analysis, Cost Benefit Environmental Analysis, Carbon Footprints, the Best Available Technology (BTA) and many others able to analyze and classify ore deposit site types, availability of resources, environmental impact conditions, transparency in communication and almost all crucial aspects related with the environmental geometry of the mining production process. This paper focuses on the application of some management tools that best fit to the minerals used in the ceramic and glass industry.The first comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) for soybean biodiesel produced in the U.S. was completed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 1998, and the energy inventory for this analysis was updated in 2009 using 2002 data. The continual adoption of new technologies in farming, soybean processing, and for biodiesel conversion affects the life-cycle energy use over time, requiring that LCA practitioners update their models as often as possible. This study uses the most recently available data to update the energy life-cycle of soybean biodiesel and makes comparisons with the two past studies. The updated analysis showed that the fossil energy ratio (FER) of soybean biodiesel was 5.54 using 2006 agricultural data. This is a major improvement over the FER of 3.2 reported in the 1998 NREL study that used 1990 agricultural data and significantly better than the FER of 4.56 reported using 2002 data. The improvements are primarily due to improved soybean yields and more energy-efficient soybean crushing and conversion facilities. The energy input in soybean agriculture was reduced by 52%, in soybean crushing by 58% and in transesterification by 33% per unit volume of biodiesel produced. Overall, the energy input reduction was 42% for the same amount of biodiesel produced. The addition of secondary inputs, such as farm machinery and building materials, did not have a significant effect on the FER. The FER of soybean biodiesel is likely to continue to improve over time because of increases in soybean yields and the development of increasingly energy-efficient technologies.Due to better wind conditions at sea, offshore wind farms have the advantage of higher electricity production compared to onshore and inland wind farms. In contrast, a greater material input, leading to increased energy consumptions and emissions during the production phase, is required to build offshore wind farms. These contrary effects are investigated for the first German offshore wind farm alpha ventus in the North Sea. In a life cycle assessment its environmental influence is compared to that of Germany's electricity mix. In comparison to the mix, alpha ventus had better indicators in nearly every investigated impact category. One kilowatt-hour electricity, generated by the wind farm, was burdened with 0.137 kWh Primary Energy-Equivalent and 32 g CO(2)-Equivalent, which represented only a small proportion of the accordant values for the mix. Furthermore, the offshore foundations as well as the submarine cable were the main energy intensive components. The energetic and greenhouse gas payback period was less than one year. Therefore, offshore wind power, even in deep water, is compatible with the switch to sustainable electricity production relying on renewable energies. Additional research, taking backup power plants as well as increasingly required energy storage systems into account, will allow further calculation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green Public Procurement (GPP) is a significant policy tool for reducing the environmental impacts of services and products throughout their whole life cycle. Scientific and easily verifiable environmental criteria, based on a life cycle approach, should be developed and used within procurement procedures. In this paper, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to wood windows showing how it can support the criteria definition. After a foreword on GPP development in Italy, the evaluation features of the environmental performances of building materials and components are outlined. The LCA case study is then presented, describing the use of the analysis results to define the environmental criteria. LCA allowed to identify the main impacts and the critical processes of the window life cycle, giving a scientific framework to discuss GPP criteria with manufacturers associations and stakeholders. Nevertheless, it couldn't help neither in identifying detailed criteria for GPP nor to define numerical thresholds to be used as reference in procurement procedures. The appropriate strategies should be selected taking into account the technical status of the market, the standard development and the voluntary industry commitments, involving manufacturers associations. Finally, some elements to develop a structured approach for GPP of construction materials are presented. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of production and distribution of densified form of lignocellulosic biomass (i.e., agri-residue based pellets) in Western Canada in terms of energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission was assessed. The results show that energy usage and resulted emissions are highest in field activities especially if emission and energy are attributed to straw in farming stage where nitrogen fertilizer is the highest contributor. Significant reduction of energy use (64%) and emission (65%) are possible if the organic fertilizer is used in farming. Adopting the zero tillage option instead of conventional practice results in energy saving (10%) and emission reduction (8%). From the scenario analyses it is also evident that using biomass as an energy source during drying or no drying in pellet production stage or using alternate mode (i.e., truck and train) of transport for pellet delivery result in less than 5% reduction of the energy use and emissions compared to the base case. Agri-pellet has the potential to offset substantial amount of GHG emission compared to other fuel sources including wood pellets. The energy and emission of production chain of agri-pellets may vary between countries but overall trend compared to other fuel sources would be similar. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of two axes tracking systems has been widely implemented because of the higher rates in energy production that these systems can achieve. However, the reduction of the PV modules cost makes the economic advantage of these tracking systems not so evident and this has aroused the interest of analysing them from other points of view such as efficiency or energy performance and environmental impact. Most of the existing LCA studies related to Photovoltaic systems are focused in the comparison of the different technologies used for cell production; some reports include also the module assembly, but there is little information regarding the environmental impact caused by the complete solar photovoltaic plant. In this paper, a Life cycle analysis of two types of installations (with and without solar tracking) in different geographic locations is presented. The methodology, based on recognized international standards, provides the best framework for assessing the most relevant factors causing the environmental impacts and gives relevant information for further improvements. The results also allow the comparison of different solutions and the calculation of the Energy and Environmental Payback time of both configurations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The replacement of natural gas combustion for district heating by wood waste and wood pellets gasification systems with or without emission control has been investigated by a streamlined LCA. While stack emissions from controlled gasification systems are lower than the applicable regulations, compared to the current base case, 12% and 133% increases are expected in the overall human health impacts for wood pellets and wood waste, respectively. With controlled gasification, external costs and GHG emission can be reduced by 35% and 82% on average, respectively. Between wood pellets and wood waste, wood pellets appear to be the better choice as it requires less primary energy and has a much lower impact on the local air quality. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hybrid life cycle assessment has been used to assess the environmental impacts of natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) electricity generation with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). The CCS chain modeled in this study consists of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) capture from flue gas using monoethanolamine (MEA), pipeline transport and storage in a saline aquifer. Results show that the sequestration of 90% CO(2) from the flue gas results in avoiding 70% of CO(2) emissions to the atmosphere per kWh and reduces global warming potential (GWP) by 64%. Calculation of other environmental impacts shows the trade-offs: an increase of 43% in acidification, 35% in eutrophication, and 120-170% in various toxicity impacts. Given the assumptions employed in this analysis, emissions of MEA and formaldehyde during capture process and generation of reclaimer wastes contributes to various toxicity potentials and cause many-fold increase in the on-site direct freshwater ecotoxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity impacts. NO(x) from fuel combustion is still the dominant contributor to most direct impacts, other than toxicity potentials and GWP. It is found that the direct emission of MEA contribute little to human toxicity (HT <1%), however it makes 16% of terrestrial ecotoxicity impact. Hazardous reclaimer waste causes significant freshwater and marine ecotoxicity impacts. Most increases in impact are due to increased fuel requirements or increased investments and operating inputs. The reductions in GWP range from 58% to 68% for the worst-case to best-case CCS system. Acidification, eutrophication and toxicity potentials show an even large range of variation in the sensitivity analysis. Decreases in energy use and solvent degradation will significantly reduce the impact in all categories. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle analysis for automotive transportation, commonly known as well-to-wheels (WTW) analysis, has traditionally focused on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and primary energy consumption. Clearly, economizing on the use of primary energy sources and the amount of GHG emissions associated with automotive transportation are important sustainability metrics. Other important metrics are water usage and cost of vehicle operation. Thus, we propose the evaluation of four economies in WTW analysis: primary energy consumption, GHG emissions, water usage, and cost of vehicle operation. No scenario is likely to simultaneously minimize all four metrics, suggesting the identification of a single figure of merit that encompasses all four economies of transportation fuels. We employed a normalization scheme that allowed calculation of a single composite score for each scenario called the CWEG (Cost-Water-Energy-GHG) score. Automotive transportation scenarios evaluated in this paper include a variety of fossil and renewable primary energy sources; several energy carriers as transportation fuels; and three distinct vehicle platforms including internal combustion engines, battery electric vehicles, and fuel cell electric vehicles. Compressed natural gas scored highest, with CWEG scores of 71-74 out of a possible score of 100, well above the next highest score, which was 45 for conventional diesel hybrid electric vehicles. Fuel cell vehicles running on hydrogen generated using power from the US electric grid had the lowest CWEG scores, ranging from 13 to 15. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdBecause of the existence of infrastructures all around the world, the use of fossil resources as raw materials for hydrogen production can be a midterm solution in the implementation of hydrogen as a transport fuel. Therefore, the fuel processing technology used for the production of hydrogen should produce the lowest amount of greenhouse gases, with the highest energy efficiency and the lowest environmental impact. In this work, several options for hydrogen production from fossil fuels are evaluated: steam reforming, autothermal reforming of hydrocarbons, coal gasification, and methane decomposition. A system for the capture of CO(2) is supposed to be integrated in the reforming and gasification processes. This study evaluates the overall life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, the fossil energy consumption, and the environmental impact for the current and future energy scenarios. The autothermal reforming, decomposition of natural gas, and coal gasification are the best options from all of the points of view, while extrapolations to future scenarios predict very similar impacts. The economic analysis of methane decomposition processes reveals that the carbon selling price and the conversion of methane are the main factors influencing the cost-efficiency of produced hydrogen.Malaysia's transportation sector accounts for 41% of the country's total energy use. The country is expected to become a net oil importer by the year 2011. To encourage renewable energy development and relieve the country's emerging oil dependence, in 2006 the government mandated blending 5% palm-oil biodiesel in petroleum diesel. Malaysia produced 16 million tonnes of palm oil in 2007, mainly for food use. This paper addresses maximizing bioenergy use from oil-palm to support Malaysia's energy initiative while minimizing greenhouse-gas emissions from land-use change. When converting primary and secondary forests to oil-palm plantations between 270-530 and 120-190 g CO(2)equivalent per MJ of biodiesel produced, respectively, is released. However, converting degraded lands results in the capture of between 23 and 85 g CO2-equivalent per MJ of biodiesel produced. Using various combinations of land types, Malaysia could meet the 5% biodiesel target with a net GHG savings of about 1.03 million tonnes (4.9% of the transportation sector's diesel emissions) when accounting for the emissions savings from the diesel fuel displaced. These findings are used to recommend policies for mitigating GHG emissions impacts from the growth of palm oil use in the transportation sector. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) of slow pyrolysis biochar systems (PBS) in the UK for small, medium and large scale process chains and ten feedstocks was performed, assessing carbon abatement and electricity production. Pyrolysis biochar systems appear to offer greater carbon abatement than other bioenergy systems. Carbon abatement of 0.7-1.3 t CO2 equivalent per oven dry tonne of feedstock processed was found. In terms of delivered energy, medium to large scale PBS abates 1.4-1.9 t CO(2)e/MWh, which compares to average carbon emissions of 0.05-0.30 t CO(2)e/MWh for other bioenergy systems. The largest contribution to PBS carbon abatement is from the feedstock carbon stabilised in biochar (40-50%), followed by the less certain indirect effects of biochar in the soil (25-40%)-mainly due to increase in soil organic carbon levels. Change in soil organic carbon levels was found to be a key sensitivity. Electricity production off-setting emissions from fossil fuels accounted for 10-25% of carbon abatement. The LCA suggests that provided 43% of the carbon in the biochar remains stable, PBS will out-perform direct combustion of biomass at 33% efficiency in terms of carbon abatement, even if there is no beneficial effect upon soil organic carbon levels from biochar application. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emissions from agricultural tractors have a detrimental impact on health and the environment. Stricter emission standards have resulted in great reductions in emissions from new vehicles. However, the long life time of tractors means that emissions from older vehicles remain substantial. One way to reduce these emissions is to retrofit catalytic converters, but the manufacture and use of catalytic converters consumes resources and slightly reduces engine efficiency. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to determine their full environmental impact. This study considered three after-treatment options: no retrofit; a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC)/diesel particulate filter (DPF) system; and a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalytic converter. Two vehicle usage patterns were considered, one following the legal test cycle (used for all off-road vehicles) and one corresponding to average agricultural tractor usage. With most of the assessment methods used in LCA, the impact change was small and totally dominated by changes in tractor emissions. All assessment methods gave the SCR catalytic converter a better value than the DOC/DPF system. The DOC/DPF system decreased the impact on human health, while the SCR catalytic converter decreased the acidification and eutrophication impact. Both catalytic converter increased abiotic resource consumption substantially. The legal test cycle produced similar results to the agricultural tractor usage cycle. (C) 2011 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the Chinese economy has become an integral part of the global supply chain, quantifying the environmental impacts by Chinese industry is indispensible to understanding the environmental performance of products in general. Comprehensive and consistent environmental data infrastructure, however, is lacking in China, hindering such an understanding. In this paper, we demonstrate a simplified method for assembling and harmonizing various data sources to develop a sectoral environmental database for input-output life cycle assessment (IO-LCA). We first identified key substances by analyzing previous normalization studies and other countries' sec:oral environmental databases. Data for priority substances were compiled and then adjusted and validated. The database created from this process was then used to analyze the direct and indirect environmental impacts generated by Chinese rural and urban consumptions. Expenditures on food and other basic household needs like heating and cooking were found to play a dominant role in generating environmental impacts in China, while previous studies of industrialized countries also highlighted the importance of transportation. This database provides background information for LCA through, for example, the hybrid approach, and is also conducive to ongoing efforts to develop generic life cycle inventory databases in China.Use of ethanol as a transportation fuel in the United States has grown from 76 dam(3) in 1980 to over 40.1 hm(3) in 2009 - and virtually all of it has been produced from corn. It has been debated whether using corn ethanol results in any energy and greenhouse gas benefits. This issue has been especially critical in the past several years, when indirect effects, such as indirect land use changes, associated with U.S. corn ethanol production are considered in evaluation. In the past three years, modeling of direct and indirect land use changes related to the production of corn ethanol has advanced significantly. Meanwhile, technology improvements in key stages of the ethanol life cycle (such as corn farming and ethanol production) have been made. With updated simulation results of direct and indirect land use changes and observed technology improvements in the past several years, we conducted a life-cycle analysis of ethanol and show that at present and in the near future, using corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emission by more than 20%, relative to those of petroleum gasoline. On the other hand, second-generation ethanol could achieve much higher reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In a broader sense, sound evaluation of U.S. biofuel policies should account for both unanticipated consequences and technology potentials. We maintain that the usefulness of such evaluations is to provide insight into how to prevent unanticipated consequences and how to promote efficient technologies with policy intervention. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work examined the energy return of Chlorella vulgaris and Dunaliella tertiolecta cultivated in a gas-sparged photobioreactor design where the power input for sparging was manipulated (10, 20, and 50 W m(-3)). Dry weight, organic carbon and heating values of the biomass were measured, plus a suite of variables including Fv/Fm and dissolved oxygen. A model for predicting the higher heating value of microalgal biomass was developed and used to measure the energetic performance of batch cultivations. High power inputs enhanced maximum biomass yields, but did not improve the energy return. Cultivation in 10 W m(-3) showed up to a 39% higher cumulative net energy return than 50 W m(-3), and increased the cumulative net energy ratio up to fourfold. The highest net energy ratio for power input was 19.3 (D. tertiolecta, 12% CO2, 10 W m(-3)). These systems may be a sustainable method of biomass production, but their effectiveness is sensitive to operational parameters. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The building industry uses great quantities of raw materials that also involve high energy consumption. Choosing materials with high content in embodied energy entails an initial high level of energy consumption in the building production stage but also determines future energy consumption in order to fulfil heating, ventilation and air conditioning demands. This paper presents the results of an LCA study comparing the most commonly used building materials with some eco-materials using three different impact categories. The aim is to deepen the knowledge of energy and environmental specifications of building materials, analysing their possibilities for improvement and providing guidelines for materials selection in the eco-design of new buildings and rehabilitation of existing buildings. The study proves that the impact of construction products can be significantly reduced by promoting the use of the best techniques available and eco-innovation in production plants, substituting the use of finite natural resources for waste generated in other production processes, preferably available locally. This would stimulate competition between manufacturers to launch more eco-efficient products and encourage the use of the Environmental Product Declarations. This paper has been developed within the framework of the "LoRe-LCA Project" co-financed by the European Commission's Intelligent Energy for Europe Program and the "PSE CICLOPE Project" co-financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and the European Regional Development Fund. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper tackles the environmental impact assessment of different energy systems for rural communities in developing countries. Ten systems are proposed, modelled, and assessed by five published methods: ReCiPe indicator combined with exergy, exergy wasted, thermo-ecological cost, extended exergy accounting, and extended thermoeconomics. All the methods constitute life cycle assessment (LCA) and mathematically take a similar form, combining an environmental impact assessment with exergetic analysis. Despite the inevitable difference of weighting between methods, most showed clear benefits to using responsibly grown Jatropha oil (rather than diesel) to generate electricity and all showed clear benefits of biogas over solar thermal or fuelwood heat. Analyses of error and sensitivity are presented at the end of the results and discussion section. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the past two decades, the globalization of financial markets and multinational trade has intensified internationally, and become increasingly competitive. In the construction industry, critical changes are initiated to reduce operating costs for achieving sustainable operation. Conventional cost pricing for building projects no longer apply as energy shortage and environmental pollution are new challenges faced by construction companies. Many countries have attempted to solve the CO2 emission problems by levying a carbon tax, which leads to a higher cost for construction companies. Therefore, this study aims to adopt life cycle assessment (LCA) in order to assess CO2 emission costs and apply a mathematical programming approach to allocate limited resources to maximize profits for construction companies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle analysis (LCA) on a product integrated polymer solar module is carried out in this study. These assessments are well-known to be useful in developmental stages of a product in order to identify the bottlenecks for the up-scaling in its production phase for several aspects spanning from economics through design to functionality. An LCA study was performed to quantify the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electricity use in the manufacture of a light-weight lamp based on a plastic foil, a lithium-polymer battery, a polymer solar cell, printed circuitry, blocking diode, switch and a white light emitting semiconductor diode. The polymer solar cell employed in this prototype presents a power conversion efficiency in the range of 2 to 3% yielding energy payback times (EPBT) in the range of 1.3-2 years. Based on this it is worthwhile to undertake a life-cycle study on the complete product integrated polymer solar cell. We have compared this portable lighting system with other lighting solutions, namely: a kerosene lamp in a remote rural area in Africa (Ethiopia), as a replacement of a silicon PV based lamp, in place of a torch with non-rechargeable lead-acid battery and instead of a battery charging station. The analysis reveals that the OPV lamp has a significant advantage provided that some of the challenges facing this novel technology are efficiently met such that it can enter the market of portable lighting devices.Calculating the carbon footprint (CF) of food is becoming increasingly important in climate change communication. To design effective CF labelling systems or reduction measures, it is necessary to understand the accuracy of the calculated CF values. This study quantified the uncertainty in the CF of wheat and of a common refined wheat-based product, pasta, for different resolutions of farm-level in-data to gain an increased understanding of the origins and magnitude of uncertainties in food CFs. A 'cradle-to-retail' CF study was performed on Swedish pasta and wheat cultivated in the region of SkAyenne on mineral soils. The uncertainty was quantified, using Monte Carlo simulation, for wheat from individual farms and for the mixture of wheat used for pasta production during a year, as well as for the pasta production process. The mean pasta CF was 0.50 kg CO(2)e/kg pasta (0.31 kg CO(2)e/kg wheat before the milling process). The CF of wheat from one farm could not be determined more accurately than being in the range 0.22-0.56 kg CO(2)e/kg wheat, even though all farm-level primary data were collected. The wheat mixture CF varied much less, approximately +/- 10-20% from the mean (95% certainty) for different years. Reducing farm-level data collection to only the most influential parameters-yield, amount of N and regional soil conditions-increased the uncertainty range by between 6% and 19% for different years for the wheat mixture. The dominant uncertainty was in N2O emissions from soil, which was also the process that contributed most to the CF. The variation in the wheat mix CF uncertainty range was greater between years, due to different numbers of farms being included for the different years, than between collecting all farm-level primary data or only the most influential parameters. More precise methods for assessing soil N2O emissions are needed to decrease the uncertainty significantly. Due to the difficulties in calculating accurate values, finding other ways of differentiating between producers than calculating numerical CFs might be more fruitful and fair. When legislation requires numerical CF values, CF practitioners have little option but to continue using existing methods and data collection strategies. However, they can provide input on improvement, contribute to standardisation processes and help raise awareness and knowledge of the associated uncertainty in the data through studies like this one.The aim of this study has been to estimate the carbon footprint of bread produced and consumed in the UK. Sliced white and wholemeal bread has been considered for these purposes and the functional unit is defined as "one loaf of sliced bread (800 g) consumed at home". The influence on the carbon footprint of several parameters has been analysed, including country of origin of wheat (UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and USA), type of flour (white, brown and wholemeal) and type of packaging (plastic and paper bags). The effect on the results of the type of data (primary and secondary) has also been considered. The carbon footprint has been estimated in accordance with the PAS 2050 methodology. The results have also been calculated following the ISO 14044 methodology to identify any differences in the two approaches and the results. Primary data for the PAS 2050-compliant study have been collected from a UK bread supply chain. Secondary data have been sourced from the UK statistics, life cycle inventory databases and other published sources. The carbon footprint results range from 977 to 1,244 g CO2 eq. per loaf of bread. Wholemeal thick-sliced bread packaged in plastic bags has the lowest carbon footprint and white medium-sliced bread in paper bag the highest. The main hot spots are wheat cultivation and consumption of bread (refrigerated storage and toasting), contributing 35% and 25% to the total, respectively. The carbon footprint could be reduced on average by 25% by avoiding toasting and refrigerated storage of bread. Further reductions (5-10%) could be achieved by reducing the amount of waste bread discarded by consumers. The contribution of transport and packaging to the overall results is small. Similar trends in the results are also found in the study based on the secondary data and following the ISO 14044 methodology.The actuators' mechanical properties evaluation is a fuzzy concept with multiple properties and classes. The fuzzy data quantification, analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (AHP-FCE) methods are combined to establish the actuators' mechanical properties evaluation (MPE) model. The flowchart of actuators' MPE and selection on AHP-FCE was considered and characterized in detail. The weighted average principle has been taken to replace the maximum membership principle in dealing with the actuator' mechanical properties comprehensive value. One pneumatic actuator and one electric actuator in same working demand are taken as an example to verify the evaluation model. The result shows that it is effective, correct, easy to apply and worth to being recommended in similar evaluation field.Of the many sources of urban greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, solid waste is the only one for which management decisions are undertaken primarily by municipal governments themselves and is hence often the largest component of cities' corporate inventories. It is essential that decision-makers select an appropriate quantification methodology and have an appreciation of methodological strengths and shortcomings. This work compares four different waste emissions quantification methods, including Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1996 guidelines, IPCC 2006 guidelines, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Waste Reduction Model (WARM), and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities-Partners for Climate Protection (FCM-PCP) quantification tool. Waste disposal data for the greater Toronto area (GTA) in 2005 are used for all methodologies; treatment options (including landfill, incineration, compost, and anaerobic digestion) are examined where available in methodologies. Landfill was shown to be the greatest source of GHG emissions, contributing more than three-quarters of total emissions associated with waste management. Results from the different landfill gas (LFG) quantification approaches ranged from an emissions source of 557 kt carbon dioxide equivalents (CO(2)e) (FCM-PCP) to a carbon sink of -53 kt CO(2)e (EPA WARM). Similar values were obtained between IPCC approaches. The IPCC 2006 method was found to be more appropriate for inventorying applications because it uses a waste-in-place (WIP) approach, rather than a methane commitment (MC) approach, despite perceived onerous data requirements for WIP. MC approaches were found to be useful from a planning standpoint; however, uncertainty associated with their projections of future parameter values limits their applicability for GHG inventorying. MC and WIP methods provided similar results in this case study; however, this is case specific because of similarity in assumptions of present and future landfill parameters and quantities of annual waste deposited in recent years being relatively consistent.In this article, process design alternatives in biodiesel production process is investigated from an environment impacts point of view. Jatropha in Thailand was assumed as the raw material for the evaluated process. Process alternatives using two different catalysts, i.e. sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide, were design and compared in terms of environmental impact and optimum operation. Estimation of process inventories was performed using Aspen Plus (R) simulation software, while the environmental impacts were evaluated by Eco-indicator 99 in SimaPro 7. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to estimate environmental impacts in three categories: human health, ecosystem quality, and resource depletion. The results show that the process using sodium hydroxide has greater environmental impacts on human health and the ecosystem; however, resource depletion is lower. (C) 2010 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper presents a probabilistic-based framework for the design of civil infrastructure repair to achieve targeted improvements in quantitative sustainability indicators. The framework consists of two types of models: (i) service life prediction models combining one or several deterioration mechanisms with a suite of limit states and (ii) life cycle assessment (LCA) models for measuring the impact of a given construction work; here repair understood in general terms as repair, rehabilitation, or strengthening.Air emissions from shipping have received attention in recent years and the shipping industry is striving for solutions to reduce their emissions and to comply with stricter regulations. Strategies to reduce emissions can consist of a fuel switch, engine changes, or end-of-pipe technologies, but they do not necessarily imply reduced life cycle emissions. The present paper assesses the environmental performance of marine fuels from well-to-propeller using life cycle assessment (LCA). Four fossil fuels are compared: heavy fuel oil (HFO), marine gas oil, gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel, and liquefied natural gas (LNG), combined with two exhaust abatement techniques: open-loop scrubber and selective catalytic reduction. LNG and other alternatives that comply with the SECA 2015 and Tier III NOx requirements give decreased acidification and eutrophication potentials with 78-90 per cent in a life cycle perspective compared with HFO. In contrast, the use of LNG does not decrease the global warming potential by more than 8-20 per cent, the amount depending mainly on the magnitude of the methane slip from the gas engine. None of the fossil fuels scrutinized here would decrease the greenhouse gas emissions significantly from a life cycle perspective. The study supports the need for LCA when evaluating the environmental impact of a fuel change, e.g. it is found that the highest global warming potential during the whole life cycle is connected to the alternatives with GTL fuel.Realizing and installing renewable energy plants have an environmental "footprint" that has to be evaluated to quantify the real impact of renewable technologies on the environment. Nowadays, the most important tool to evaluate this impact of a product is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The aim of this work is to present a Life Cycle Assessment of an innovative solar technology, the molten salt concentrating solar power (CSP) plant combined with a biomass Back-Up Burner, developed by Italian Research Centre ENEA and able to produce clean electricity by using solar energy. The Life Cycle Assessment was carried out by means of the SimaPro7 software, one of the most used LCA software in the world. In the second part of the study the environmental performance of the CSP plant was compared with these of conventional oil and gas power plants. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle analysis was performed on a full roll-to-roll coating procedure used for the manufacture of flexible polymer solar cell modules. The process known as ProcessOne employs a polyester substrate with a sputtered layer of the transparent conductor indium-tin-oxide (ITO). The ITO film was processed into the required pattern using a full roll-to-roll process, employing screen printing of an etch resist and then applying etching, stripping, washing and drying procedures. The three subsequent layers: ZnO, P3HT:PCBM and PEDOT:PSS were slot-die coated and the silver back electrode was screen printed. Finally the polymer solar modules were encapsulated, using a polyester barrier material. All operations except the application of ITO were carried out under ambient conditions. The life cycle analysis delivered a material inventory of the full process for a module production, and an accountability of the energy embedded both in the input materials and in the production processes. Finally, upon assumption of power conversion efficiencies and lifetime for the modules, a calculation of energy pay-back time allowed us to compare this roll-to-roll manufacturing with other organic and hybrid photovoltaic technologies. The results showed that an Energy Pay-Back Time (EPBT) of 2.02 years can be achieved for an organic solar module of 2% efficiency, which could be reduced to 1.35 years, if the efficiency was 3%. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Rice straw in Thailand could be utilized for heat and power generation contributing substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions for both heat and power generation. Rice straw in the central provinces is sufficient to supply fuel demand for the existing industrial boilers in the region. For power generation, the provincial implementable capacity falls in the range of 15-79 MW. The smaller capacity at district and sub-district levels would be more economical with reduced supply cost. The capacity range 1-5 MW is suitable to operate in 86 districts (54%) and 5-16 MW is possible for 17 districts. Powerplants with a capacity of 1-2 MW have a high potential capacity in 611 sub-districts (44%). The current high rice straw supply cost could be reduced to make rice straw more competitive with coal and other biomass for both heat and power generation by two alternatives; (1) supply of higher density bales; and (2) supply of briquette/pellet form if the cost of collection plus briquetting/pelleting could be competitive with the cost of collection plus baling. Certified emissions reduction could provide added benefits.Metals and materials play a pivotal role in society as their properties impart unique functionality to engineered structures and consumer products. Metals are theoretically infinitely recyclable; however, the functionality and design of consumer product complicate recycling due to their ever more complex structures producing unliberated low grade and complex recyclates. Metallurgical smelting ingenuity, good technology and intelligent use of thermodynamics and transfer processes gets metallurgists and recyclers a far way down the path of creating high recycling rates from a large range of primary concentrates and recyclates. However, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics teaches us the practical limits of recycling in terms of entropy creation, which is determined by the complexity of the recyclates and hence to the economics of processing/technology and metal/energy recovery. The usual simple accounting type tools do not rise to the challenge. Therefore, a key issue for the creation of "sustainable systems'' and hence the minimization of waste (or in other words achieve high recycling rates) is the creation of optimal industrial ecological systems with optimally linked Best Available Techniques (BAT). This must maximize the recovery of materials from ores and recyclates within the boundaries of consumer behaviour, product design/functionality, thermodynamics, legislation, technology and economics. Examples will show how recyclate quality/grade predicted by recycling models affects entropy creation, while also reviewing various published methodologies. This paper shows that simulation models are a prerequisite to designing "sustainable'' systems as these can predict recyclate grade/quality/losses/toxicity of streams, the link to entropy and economics and the realization of company ideals and mission statements in this regard. In other words, to dematerialize society requires detail input by engineers, their predictive tools and economic based design approaches to engineer a sustainable future.One effect of climate change may be increased hurricane frequency or intensity due to changes in atmospheric and geoclimatic factors. It has been hypothesized that wetland restoration and infrastructure hardening measures may improve infrastructure resilience to increased hurricane frequency and intensity. This paper describes a parametric decision model used to assess the tradeoffs between wetland restoration and infrastructure hardening for electric power networks. We employ a hybrid economic input-output life-cycle analysis (EIO-LCA) model to capture: construction costs and life-cycle emissions for transitioning from the current electric power network configuration to a hardened network configuration; construction costs and life-cycle emissions associated with wetland restoration; and the intrinsic value of wetland restoration. Uncertainty is accounted for probabilistically through a Monte Carlo hurricane simulation model and parametric sensitivity analysis for the number of hurricanes expected to impact the project area during the project cycle and the rate of wetland storm surge attenuation. Our analysis robustly indicates that wetland restoration and undergrounding of electric power network infrastructure is not preferred to the "do-nothing" option of keeping all power lines overhead without wetland protection. However, we suggest a few items for future investigation. For example, our results suggest that, for the small case study developed, synergistic benefits of simultaneously hardening infrastructure and restoring wetlands may be limited, although research using a larger test bed while integrating additional costs may find an enhanced value of wetland restoration for disaster loss mitigation.Environmental research has contributed significantly since 1990 to a strong reduction of environmental pollution associated with dairy farming in the Netherlands. To judge possible pollution, state indicators and threshold values are distinguished. Threshold values for: (i) N and P in ground- and surface-water, (ii) air quality in terms of ammonia and greenhouse gasses and (iii) deposition rates of N on nature areas, are still exceeded. New approaches are needed as the EU dairy quota system will expire in 2015 and production is likely to increase. Four are suggested: (i) change the top-down character of regulations to a bottom-up self-governing procedure where farmers receive clear guidelines and are challenged by government and assisted by research to meet them. The future commitment of farmers is crucial as "the low environmental fruit" has been harvested; (ii) abolish confusing and overly complex proxy systems and focus on direct measurement of state indicators, using newly developed sensing systems and proper statistical sampling procedures for expressing variability; (iii) make the derivation of threshold values for environmental state indicators more science-based and transparent and start with focusing on individual farms and nature areas to be followed by upscaling to regions and the entire country. (iv) Follow the recommendations of the Trojan report and develop comprehensive regional management plans and a strategic plan for the entire country. Environmental research has been fragmented and often reactive rather than pro-active. Recent research on farm level, using life cycle analysis, applies an integrated approach to study water, air and soil qualities as well as economic aspects and can therefore form the basis for future management plans on farm level and for regional and national plans, all to be focused on sustainable development. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background, aim and scope Tank-to-Wheels (TtW) makes the largest contribution to the total Well-to-Wheels (WtW) energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil-derived transportation fuels. The most commonly adopted TtW methodologies to obtain vehicle energy consumption, energy efficiency, and GHG emissions used to date all have significant limitations. A new TtW methodology, which combines micro-scale virtual vehicle simulation with macro-scale fleet modeling, is proposed in this paper. The models capabilities are demonstrated using a case study based on data from the passenger car sector in Great Britain. Methods A simplified internal combustion engine model was developed in-house to simulate engine behaviors across a wide range of engine capacities and technologies. Vehicle simulation was then carried out using the efficiency map output by the simplified engine model for any given gasoline or diesel engine; the simulation was validated for 37 vehicles available on the UK market in terms of their vehicle-certification fuel consumption, with a discrepancy generally within 3%. Real-world fleet and driving data from the Great Britain's car fleet was extracted from the Transport Statistics Great Britain (TSGB) database between 2001 and 2007TSGB 2001-2007. A virtual fleet was constructed with the validated virtual vehicles to represent the real-world passenger car fleet in terms of its composition and operating characteristics. This fleet model was shown to match the real-world fleet-averaged fuel consumption within 3% for the gasoline fleet and within 6% for the diesel fleet. Finally, several scenarios were analyzed using the validated fleet model, covering a projection for 2008, driving pattern, lubrication, and fuel. The vehicle-to-vehicle variation was found to be significant in some scenarios, indicating that a fleet-based methodology would be more rigorous and flexible. Discussion Energy consumption and CO2 emission figures from previous, well-recognized Europe-oriented studies (e.g., the 2008 JRC/EUCAR/CONCAWE study) were significantly lower than the TSGB real-world results based on the new TtW methodology. It is apparent that using a single vehicle to represent the whole fleet could be misleading; in particular, the relative energy efficiency and CO2 emission of diesel over gasoline cars might follow a different trend with time for the real-world fleet from that shown in previous studies. Conclusions Future WtW studies can benefit from the modeling toolset and methodology reported herein in a number of ways: TtW analysis can be carried out thoroughly-on a fleet basis independently-involving less proprietary information impartially-not concentrating on a specific vehicle model and flexibly-allowing detailed analysis of physics, chemistry, and vehicle component performance. When comparing different WtW energy pathways, e.g., gasoline vs. diesel passenger cars or natural gas vs. bio-diesel fuelled busses, the absolute aggregate fleet impact can be investigated-conclusions based on a single vehicle may overlook vehicle-to-vehicle variations and potentially mislead policy making. Using the virtual fleet database as a platform, a large number of scenarios can be analyzed and detailed impact of fuels properties, vehicle technologies and driving patterns on WtW results investigated. The models will evolve in time together with the researchers' knowledge base and data base. Recommendations and perspectives The virtual engine/vehicle/fleet model developed in this work can readily be expanded and upgraded in the future, in terms of model details, coverage, and data quality. The methodology itself is generically applicable to any defined fleet (passenger cars, commercial vehicles, etc.) with any operating characteristics at any given timeframe from any geographic region. Various subjects and their implications for fleet energy consumption and GHG emissions could be studied including, but not restricted to, the following: Fuels-injector/valve cleanliness, anti-knock properties, dieselization, bio-components, gaseous fuels etc. Engine/vehicle technology-friction and weight reduction, advanced combustion, hybridization etc. Driving pattern-vehicle loading, gear-shifting schedule, tire maintenance, cold start, etc.Lubricants are used in numerous applications in our society, for instance, as hydraulic fluids. When used in forestry, 60-80% of these hydraulic fluids are released into the environment. This is one of the reasons for the growing interest for developing and utilising hydraulic fluids with good environmental performance. Another driving force in the development of hydraulic fluids is to replace fossil products with renewable ones. The aim of this paper is to investigate the environmental impact of two types of hydraulic fluids, one based on mineral oil and one on vegetable oil. The difference in environmental impact of using chemical or biocatalytic production methods is also assessed. This life cycle assessment is from cradle-to-gate, including waste treatment. A complementary, laboratory, biodegradability test was also performed. The functional unit is 1 l of base fluid for hydraulic fluids, and mass allocation is applied. A sensitivity analysis is performed to assess the impact of the energy used and of the allocation method. The impact categories studied are primary energy consumption, global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EP), acidification potential (AP), photooxidant creation potential (POCP) and biodegradability. The contribution to GWP and primary energy consumption was higher for the mineral oil-based hydraulic fluid than the vegetable oil-based hydraulic fluids. The contributions to EP and AP were higher for the vegetable oil-based hydraulic fluid than the mineral oil-based one. The vegetable oil-based hydraulic fluid had better biodegradability than the one based on mineral oil. The impact of production method was minor, thus the biocatalytic method gives no significant advantage over chemical methods concerning energy and environmental performance. For the environmental impact categories GWP, POCP and primary energy consumption, hydraulic fluids based on rapeseed oil make a lower contribution than a mineral oil-based hydraulic fluid. For EP and AP, the contributions of TMP oleate are higher than the contribution of mineral oil-based hydraulic fluid. The difference between the chemically catalysed method and the ezymatically catalysed method is negligible because the major environmental impact is due to the production of the raw materials. The vegetable oil-based hydraulic fluid, TMP oleate, was more biodegradable than the mineral oil-based hydraulic fluid.The interest in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling is quite recent, but it has been growing steadily over the past few years. In this context, the aim of this paper is to assess the eco-profile, the energy savings and the environmental benefits of the use of recycled raw materials to manufacture products for thermal insulation of buildings in Italy (i.e., PET bottles post-consumer). The life cycle analysis is developed according to ISO 14040/44. In this paper, based on the LCA, the main types of environmental impact of a thermal insulation product have been outlined. This study is specifically focused on polyester nonwovens, produced by a company located in Italy. The cradle-to-gate life cycle inventory is performed for the mass of product needed to give a thermal resistance R of 1 (m(2) K/W). The calculation of the impacts is done with SimaPro software. With an environmental product declaration-oriented approach, a set of impact categories is used for the classification and characterisation of the life cycle impact assessment. The results of the impact assessment for 1m(2) K/W of thermal insulation panels made with recycled PET are then compared with similar products made with virgin PET. The lower impact associated with the recycled PET for each category is underlined: the percentage reduction is around 46% in the GWP category. In the production process, the fiber-spinning phase results as the most relevant in terms of energy consumption. In addition, the energy saved when applying the thermal insulation in a building is estimated at 87 MJ/m(2) per unit area per year in Rome. All the energy used during the production of a thermal insulation panel is recovered in about 2 years. The product shows significantly low environmental impacts thanks to the use of non-virgin PET, thus maintaining high mechanical and physical properties. If the recovery of PET from separate waste collection in Italy increases, this would reduce the share of waste PET purchased from foreign countries and would therefore reduce further the impact of transports for the production of the thermal insulation panel under investigation.This paper presents a study related to the application of the reliability-based life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess different alternatives for solid waste management in the SetA(0)bal peninsula, Portugal. The current system includes waste collection, transport, sorting, recycling, and mechanical and biological treatment (MBT) by means of aerobic treatment and landfill. In addition, some future expansion plans are discussed. The proposed 18 alternatives were examined with respect to six impact categories based on a customized life cycle inventory (LCI). All the alternatives are designed to comply with the targets prescribed in the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive and the Landfill Directive. These 18 alternatives were eventually assessed by using the reliability-based LCA methodology with respect to some uncertain parameters and scenarios. The results show that solutions based on anaerobic digestion at the MBT followed by energy recovery are the most advantageous options. Overall, recycling may help to avoid most environmental impacts. Alternatives which treat massively biodegradable municipal waste are also competitive. In addition to the recycling options, electricity production is also an influential determinant which affects the results. The uncertainty analysis focused on testing different energy-from-waste options (like landfill and MBT biogas electricity production) and different recycling substitution ratios. Such a quantitative analysis is proved effective to confirm the reliability of the LCI in the study. In order to improve the sustainability of the solid waste management (SWM) system, final suggestions may concentrate on the closure of aerobic MBT, the enhancement of anaerobic digestion MBT treatment, and the maximization of energy recovery from high calorific fractions of the waste streams. However, the option of stabilized residue applications cannot be encouraged at this stage, especially due to the absence of Portuguese regulations to control the quality of organic products issuing from biological treatment units.There is a need to assess social impacts of products along the full life cycle, not only to be able to address the "social dimension" in sustainability, but also for potentially improving the circumstances of affected stakeholders. This paper presents a case study for a social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) based on the recently published "Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products" developed by the United Nations Environment Programme/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (UNEP/SETAC) working group. General aim is to "try out" the proposed method. The case study itself compares the impacts of rose production in Ecuador with the Netherlands. Furthermore, the objective is to identify differences and similarities in environmental and social life cycle modelling and both social and environmental hot spots in each of the life cycles. The study considers the production of rose blossoms and the cutting and packaging process in two fictitious companies in Ecuador and the Netherlands. Both rose bouquets are delivered to the European market and auctioned in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands. The social assessment is based on the UNEP/SETAC guidelines for S-LCA. Data are mainly obtained from governmental and non-governmental organisations. For the calculation of the environmental burden, a screening-type LCA is conducted, including midpoint impact assessment. This paper asserts that rose production in Ecuador is associated with many negative social effects, e.g. child labour, unfair salary, or bad impairment to health. The rose production in the Netherlands has no obvious negative social impacts but rather ecological consequences. Responsible for this is the high-energy consumption of the greenhouses. Application of the UNEP/SETAC guidelines in case studies can be encouraged based on results of this case study. The consideration of different stakeholder groups with corresponding, very diverse themes allows a comprehensive analysis of the actual conditions. However, finding suitable indicators to measure the status of the subcategories may be challenging. Moreover, the case study shows that results can be completely different for the environmental and for the social dimension, so that it often will be needed to perform both assessments if a complete picture is required. It will be interesting to apply the UNEP/SETAC approach of S-LCA to other products; products with a more complex life cycle will be a special challenge. As with any new method, getting experience on data collection and evaluation, building a data stock, integrating the method in software, and finding ways for effective communication of results are important steps until integrating S-LCA in routine, recognized decision support.This paper aims at spelling out the area of protection (AoP), namely the general concept of human well-being and the impact categories in social life cycle assessment (SLCA). The applicability of the so-called capabilities approach-a concept frequently used for evaluating human lives-is explored. It is shown how the principles of the capabilities approach can be transferred to the impact assessment within SLCA. The literature concerning the AoP and the impact assessment has been critically reviewed from an applied philosophy perspective. The capabilities approach has been adopted for defining both the AoP and the impact categories. The main results are the following: (1) The AoP is defined as autonomy, well-being freedom and fairness; (2) using the dimensions which constitute well-being together with the concept of fairness eight impact categories are proposed: life, knowledge and aesthetic experience, work and play, friendship, self-integration, self-expression, transcendence and fairness itself and (3) by examining the 'Guide to Social LCA: Methodological Sheets', it is demonstrated that our proposed framework can be used for structuring the previous work on impact assessment. The capability approach is one possibility for addressing the question 'what is of importance in a human life?' When applied in a practical field, like SLCA, this framework is not only useful for structuring data but also for disclosing our own normative assumptions about what counts as valuable in a human life. Thus, the normative evaluation is more coherent.Biodiesel has attracted considerable attention as a renewable, biodegradable, and nontoxic fuel and can contribute to solving the energy problems, significantly reducing the emission of gases which cause global warming. The first stage of this work was to simulate different alternative processes for producing biodiesel. The method used for the production of biodiesel is the transesterification of vegetable oils with an alcohol in the presence of a catalyst. The raw materials used were palm oils and waste cooking oil. The second stage was a life cycle analysis for all alternatives under study, followed by an economic analysis for the alternatives that present minor impacts and which are more promising from an economic point of view. Finally, we proceeded to compare the different alternatives from both the point of view of life cycle and economic analysis. The feasibility of all processes was proven and the biodiesel obtained had good specifications. From the standpoint of life cycle analysis, the best alternative was the process of alkaline catalysis with acid pretreatment for waste cooking oil. The economic analysis was done to the previous mentioned process and to the process that uses raw virgin oils. methanol, and sodium hydroxide. This process has lower investment costs but the process of alkaline catalysis with acid pre-treatment, whose main raw material is waste oil, is much more profitable and has less environmental impacts. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper a life cycle perspective is used to analyse Europabanan, a proposed high-speed rail track in Sweden. The life cycle emissions reductions are found to be 550,000 tons of CO(2)-equivalents per annum by 2025/2030 with almost 60% of this coming from a shift from truck to rail freight and 40% from a shift from air and road travel to high-speed rail travel. In contexts similar to Sweden, it is thus an important issue whether a large increase is required in freight rail capacity anyway, since high-speed rail investments may not be justified for the passenger markets alone. The study also indicates that a substantial share of emissions due to construction of the new railway could be counterbalanced through the reduced need for building and maintaining roads and airports, and for manufacturing cars. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a mathematical programming formulation for the synthesis of heat exchanger networks minimizing simultaneously the total annual cost and the environmental impact. The proposed model consists of a Multiobjective Mixed Integer Non-Linear programming problem that considers the optimal location and use of different types of hot and cold utilities available through disjunctive formulations. The total annual cost objective function considers the minimization of the cost for the utilities and capital for the heat exchanger units, whereas the environmental impact objective function is calculated through the eco-indicator 99 for the different types of utilities using the life cycle analysis methodology. Three example problems are presented to show the applicability of the proposed methodology without numerical complications. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) collection and recovery have significantly gained in importance all over Europe in the last 15 years, comprehensive studies assessing the environmental loads and benefits of these systems still are not common. In this paper we present the results of a combined material flow analysis and life cycle assessment study, which aimed to calculate the overall environmental impacts of collection, pre-processing and end-processing for the existing Swiss WEEE collection and recovery systems, as well as of incineration and land filling scenarios, in which the same amount of WEEE is either incinerated in a an MSWI plant or landfilled. According to the calculations based on the material flow data for the year 2009 and a new version of the ecoinvent life cycle inventory database (ecoinvent v2.01), collection, recovery and disposal result in significantly lower environmental impacts per t of WEEE for midpoint indicators such as global warming or ozone depletion and the endpoint indicator Eco-Indicator '99 points. A comparison between the environmental impacts of the WEEE recovery scenarios 2009 and 2004, both calculated with ecoinvent v2.01 data, shows that the impacts per t of WEEE in 2009 were slightly lower. This appears to be mainly due to the changes in the treatment of plastics (more recycling, less incineration). Compared to the overall environmental impacts of the recovery scenario 2004 obtained with an old version of ecoinvent (ecoinvent v1.1), the calculation with ecoinvent v2.01 results in an increase of the impacts by about 20%, which is primarily the consequence of a more adequate modeling of several WEEE fractions (e.g. metals, cables or CRT devices). In view of a further increase of the environmental benefits associated with the Swiss WEEE collection and recovery systems, the recovery of geochemically scarce metals should be further investigated, in particular. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is often used for the environmental evaluation of agri-food systems due to its holistic perspective. In particular, the assessment of milk production at farm level requires the evaluation of multiple dairy farms to guarantee the representativeness of the study when a regional perspective is adopted. This article shows the joint implementation of LCA and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in order to avoid the formulation of an average farm, therefore preventing standard deviations associated with the use of average inventory data while attaining the characterization and benchmarking of the operational and environmental performance of dairy farms. Within this framework, 72 farms located in Galicia (NW Spain) were subject to an LCA + DEA study which led to identify those farms with an efficient operation. Furthermore, target input consumption levels were benchmarked for each inefficient farm, and the corresponding target environmental impacts were calculated so that eco-efficiency criteria were verified. Thus, average reductions of up to 38% were found for input consumption levels, leading to impact reductions above 20% for every environmental impact category. Finally, the economic savings arising from efficient farming practices were also estimated. Economic savings of up to 0.13 (sic) per liter of raw milk were calculated, which means extra profits of up to 40% of the final raw milk price. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The increase of the market demands on innovative, functional and aesthetic product, friendly with the environment, has given a great relevance to the design and development of sustainable products. To achieve this goal, it is important to undertake a process of innovative design that will include sustainability requirements so that the product and its associated system become eco-efficient in its life cycle. This is the reason of this study, aimed at developing a model of design and bioinspired development, within the areas of the research concept of "Cradle to Cradle" and also based on the professional performance of eco-innovation, eco-design, eco- industry and on a whole within industrial ecology. The Genomic Eco-design Model (GEM) is defined as a methodology for designing products based on satisfying both individual and collective needs under the new paradigm of Cradle to Cradle. It focuses on eco-friendly product design and it is integrated within the regulatory framework of ISO standards for life cycle analysis, eco-design and eco-labeling.This paper illustrates the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) activities performed during the preparation of the Spanish Product Category Rules (PCR) relative to the construction sector. Specifically, the study presents the results obtained from the life cycle analysis of the floor and wall tile sector, which served as the basis for the drafting of the PCR required for the definition of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). More than 50 Spanish companies in the ceramic tile sector participated in the study, providing inventory data on the manufacture of their products. Additionally, bibliographic information and the GaBi 4 software database by PE International were used to complete background and generic data, such as those related to energy and transportation processes. EPDs are voluntary declarations based on LCA studies that permit the disclosure and dissemination of environmental information quantified over the life cycle of a product. The definition of PCRs for ceramic tiles was performed in accordance to the UNE EN ISO 14025 and ISO 21930 standards and they have been submitted to industries and professional association public consultations. PCRs have been developed in the context of the DAPc program (promoted by the Catalan Government and CAATEEB) and represents the first ecolabelling activity for building products in Spain.Over the last 20+ years, multinational corporations (MNCs) have been confronted with accusations of abuse of market power and unfair and unethical business conduct especially as it relates to their overseas operations and supply chain management. These accusations include, among others, worker exploitation in terms of unfairly low wages, excessive work hours, and unsafe work environment; pollution and contamination of air, ground water and land resources; and, undermining the ability of natural government to protect the well-being of their citizens. MNCs have responded to these accusations by creating voluntary codes of conduct which commit them to specific standards for addressing these issues. These codes are created at both the industry-wide and the individual company level. Unfortunately, these codes have generated little credibility and public trust because their compliance claims cannot be independently verified, and they lack transparency and full public disclosure. In this article, we present a case study of the voluntary code of conduct by Mattel, Inc., the world's largest toy company. The code, called the Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP), confronts the general criticism leveled against voluntary codes of conduct by (a) creating detailed standards of compliance, (b) independent external monitoring of the company's compliance with its code of conduct, and (c) making full, and uncensored public disclosure of the audit findings and company's response in terms of remedial action. We present a detailed account of how Mattel's voluntary code of conduct was created, implemented, and ultimately abandoned over 9 years. We provide an evaluative analysis of the company's GMP compliance throughout its life span, which suggests a bell-shaped curve, where early top management commitments were met with pockets of resistance from operational groups, who were concerned about balancing GMP compliance efforts with traditional performance criteria. The early stage response from Mattel's top management was quick and supported with the requisite resources. As a result, the compliance process accelerated, becoming increasingly more robust and effective. The success of code compliance and increased transparency in public disclosure energized field managers with a sense of professional satisfaction and publicly recognized accomplishments. The decline in GMP compliance was equally steep. When all the easily attainable targets had been reached at the company-operated plants, addressing vendor plants' compliance presented a new set of challenges, which taxed corporate resources and management commitment. It would seem that value-based and ethics-oriented considerations, i.e., doing the right thing for the right reason, were no longer the driving force for Mattel's management. Mattel did not see any economic benefit from its proactive stance, when competitors did not seem to suffer adverse consequences for not following suit. The final contributing factor to the code's abandonment was a widely publicized series of product recalls which absorbed top management's attention.With two regulations, 244/2009 and 245/2009, the European Commission recently put into practice the EuP Directive in the area of lighting devices, aiming to improve energy efficiency in the domestic lighting sector. This article presents a comprehensive life cycle assessment comparison of four different lighting technologies: the tungsten lamp, the halogen lamp, the conventional fluorescent lamp and the compact fluorescent lamp. Taking advantage of the most up-to-date life cycle inventory database available (ecoinvent data version 2.01), all life cycle phases were assessed and the sensitivity of the results for varying assumptions analysed: different qualities of compact fluorescent lamps (production phase), different electricity mixes (use phase), and end-of-life scenarios for WEEE recycling versus municipal solid waste incineration (disposal phase). A functional unit of "one hour of lighting" was defined and the environmental burdens for the whole life cycle for all four lamp types were calculated, showing a clearly lower impact for the two gas-discharge lamps, i.e. the fluorescent and the compact fluorescent lamp. Differences in the product quality of the compact fluorescent lamps reveal to have only a very small effect on the overall environmental performance of this lamp type; a decline of the actual life time of this lamp type doesn't result in a change of the rank order of the results of the here examined four lamp types. It was also shown that the environmental break-even point of the gas-discharge lamps is reached long before the end of their expected life-span. All in all, it can be concluded that a change from today's tungsten lamp technology to a low-energy-consuming technology such as the compact fluorescent lamp results in a substantial environmental benefit. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.In this piece, two very concrete aspects of the theories that deal with territorial agglomerations of companies (or clusters) are analyzed. These are, on the one hand, the factors that cause the development of such clusters, studying their origins and life cycles in a particular way. On the other hand, we look at those policies and actions that can be carried out in order to harness these territorial agglomerations. The work aims to obtain a holistic vision of the aforementioned aspects, drawing from significant studies from both academia and the private sector. Among the main conclusions of the article, we highlight the fact that clusters always have a stressed life cycle, in which both internal and external factors influence the formation of clusters. In this sense, the factors that cause a cluster to remain in its stages of growth and maturity for as long as possible, without entering into a phase of decay, are indicated.Biomass produced on farm land is a renewable fuel that can prove suitable for small-scale combined heat and power (CHP) plants in rural areas. However, it can still be questioned if biomass-based energy generation is a good environmental choice with regards to the impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and if there are negative consequences of using of agricultural land for other purposes than food production. In this study, a simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted over four scenarios for supply of the entire demand of power and heat of a rural village. Three of the scenarios are based on utilization of biomass in 100 kW (e) combined heat and power (CHP) systems and the fourth is based on fossil fuel in a large-scale plant. The biomass systems analyzed were based on 1) biogas production with ley as substrate and the biogas combusted in a microturbine, 2) gasification of willow chips and the product gas combusted in an IC-engine and 3) combustion of willow chips for a Stirling engine. The two first scenarios also require a straw boiler. The results show that the biomass-based scenarios reduce greenhouse gas emissions considerably compared to the scenario based on fossil fuel, but have higher acidifying emissions. Scenario 1 has by far the best performance with respect to global warming potential and the advantage of utilizing a byproduct and thus not occupying extra land. Scenario 2 and 3 require less primary energy and less fossil energy input than 1, but set-aside land for willow production must be available. The low electric efficiency of scenario 3 makes it an unsuitable option. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is currently used to a very limited extent in the building sector, for several reasons. Firstly, making an LCA evaluation of a building demands a specific tool to handle the large dataset needed and this tool has to be adaptable to the different decisions taken throughout the life cycle of the building. Such tools have been developed in a few countries, but they are exceptions. However, useful experience has been gained in these countries, providing a valuable source of data for developing guidelines for application in other countries. Since the results of a building LCA may contain complex information, the great challenge is to devise efficient ways for communication of the results to users and clients. The simplified methodology presented in this paper adopt a systematic approach guiding the user through the Life Cycle process and clarifying key issues that usually cause difficulty, e.g. choice of assessment tool, definition of system boundaries, options for simplifying the process, etc. The guidelines were developed within the framework of the ENSLIC Building Project, which was co-funded by the European Commission Intelligent Energy for Europe Programme and by nine European organisations that included more than 15 LCA experts and architects. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.European Union countries' current energy policies for the transport sector promote, amongst other initiatives; urban mobility plans, the renewal of fleets of cars and industrial vehicles and the introduction of biofuel. From the point of view of eco-efficiency and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), energy policies must go further. The objective of this paper is to analyse the current transport model and the policies on energy efficiency being promoted in the EU from a LCA point of view. Special attention has been paid to private vehicles, in assessing the environmental impact of the various stages of manufacture, their use and disposal, and the consequences of plans to renew fleets. How old should a vehicle ideally be so that when it is changed, the embodied energy in the materials of the vehicle is less than the gain in energy efficiency due to changing the model for example? In addition the paper analyses the different means of transport in the energy consumption time ratio from a LCA viewpoint. The fact that reducing transport times leads to greater energy consumption gives rise to the question: how long does nature take to repair the environmental damage caused? (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Steam methane reforming (SMR) is one of the most promising processes for hydrogen production. Several studies have demonstrated its advantages from the economic viewpoint. Nowadays process development is based on technical and economical aspects; however, in the near future, the environmental impact will play a significant role in the design of such processes. In this paper, an SMR process is studied from the viewpoint of overall environmental impact, using an exergoenvironmental analysis. This analysis presents the combination of exergy analysis and life cycle assessment. Components where chemical reactions occur are the most important plant components from the exergoenvironmental point of view, because, in general, there is a high environmental impact associated with these components. This is mainly caused by the exergy destruction within the components, and this in turn is mainly due to the chemical reactions. The obtained results show that the largest potential for reducing the overall environmental impact is associated with the combustion reactor, the steam reformer, the hydrogen separation unit and the major heat exchangers. The environmental impact in these components can mainly be reduced by improving their exergetic efficiency. A sensitivity analysis for some important exergoenvironmental variables is also presented in the paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Europe, buildings tend to be equipped with individual air conditioners, which constitute a fast growing electrical end-use. In this context, this study aims to assess the environmental impacts of European individual air conditioners and to analyse policy strategies to reduce these impacts. After analysing the European context concerning individual air conditioners, the environmental impacts of European air conditioners are assessed using a Life Cycle Analysis approach. The following step consists in studying, both technically and economically, different improvement options aiming at reducing the environmental impacts of these appliances. These results, obtained at the product level, are then generalised at the European level and different policy measures are defined and analysed. The main conclusion is that the implementation of a Minimum Energy Performance Standard based on Least Life Cycle Costs could save up to 49 TWh and 20 MtCO(2-eq) in 2020 and be economically beneficial to the European end-user. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Classroom units were developed for high-school environmental science and college industrial ecology classes to introduce life-cycle perspectives and systems analysis of transportation fuel/vehicle systems. The units at both levels emphasize the need to consider energy and environmental issues related to the nation's transportation sector that extend well beyond the gasoline pump and vehicle emissions. The units include several lessons to introduce environmental issues, understand the fuel and vehicle technologies (high-school level only), and conceptually and quantitatively evaluate differences among the expected future fuels through a life-cycle assessment. The quantitative assessment of the high-school students shows that the units helped students to significantly raise their energy knowledge and change their attitudes. Anecdotal information from the students indicates that the increased awareness about the seriousness of energy issues has caused them to be more conservative and conscientious about their energy consumption behaviors. The evaluation of the class in the 2009-2010 academic year (AY09) was excellent, suggesting that the addition of the life-cycle assessment activities described in this paper were well received by the students. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000059. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.The objectives of this study were to describe two approaches to incorporating sustainability into the undergraduate engineering curricula and to list a variety of existing course resources that can easily be adopted or adapted by science and engineering faculty for this purpose. The two approaches described are (1) redesigning existing courses through development of new curricular materials that still meet the objectives of the original course and (2) developing upper division elective courses that address specific topics related to sustainability, such as manufacturing or life-cycle assessment, in depth. Case studies of three courses-Green Industrial Organic Chemistry, Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing (Kettering University), and Sustainable Engineering (University of Oklahoma)-are presented. Assessment results from Green Industrial Organic Chemistry indicate that alternative curricular materials incorporating green chemistry can be used to meet the learning objectives of more traditional courses in organic chemistry, which are already required for many engineering majors. Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing assessment data indicate that students increased their knowledge and application of industrial ecology topics as a result of taking the course. Preliminary assessment data from Sustainable Engineering indicate that students applied concepts of global resource reserves, sustainable growth and development, design for environment, and life-cycle assessment in their course work or employment approximately 1 year after finishing the course. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000049. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.In this paper, the development and the advantages of a methodology which allows the systematic assessment of the environmental impact on the resource side of specific pharmaceutical production processes with limited data entry is presented. The quantification of the process-specific mass and energy balances over three different system boundaries (process, gate-to-gate, and cradle-to-gate) is based on the methodology explained in Van der Vorst et al. (hid. Eng. Chem. Res. 2009, 48(11), 5344-5350). These mass and energy balances are now coupled with the thermodynamic term exergy allowing the quantification of the resource efficiency at the process and gate-to-gate level and the environmental impact at the cradle-to-gate level. The advantages of such a calculation tool for the resource evaluation are illustrated with five consecutive pharmaceutical production steps which are part of the galantamine (anti-Alzheimer medication) pathway. It is shown that such a quantitative and systematic evaluation tool allows a detailed and relatively fast evaluation of the resource efficiency of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production processes at the three different levels. Combining thermodynamics and the systematic data inventory methodology for the quantification of the resource efficiency first allows results to be merged into a single impact value (exergy loss/mol API or CEENE/mol API) for fast benchmarking and evaluation of different API production processes. Second, it also allows results to be divided over different categories depending on the users' interest and make thorough analysis of processes in order to pinpoint process improvements and quantitatively justify the introduction of second generation production processes or production techniques.This study expands and uses the GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) model to assess the effects of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and cellulosic biomass and coal cofeeding in Fischer-Tropsch (FT) plants on energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of FT diesel (FTD). To demonstrate the influence of the coproduct credit methods on FTD life-cycle analysis (LCA) results, two allocation methods based on the energy value and the market revenue of different products and a hybrid method are employed. With the energy-based allocation method, fossil energy use of FTD is less than that of petroleum diesel, and GHG emissions of FTD could be close to zero or even less than zero with CCS when forest residue accounts for 55% or more of the total dry mass input to FTD plants. Without CCS, GHG emissions are reduced to a level equivalent to that from petroleum diesel plants when forest residue accounts for 61% of the total dry mass input. Moreover, we show that coproduct method selection is crucial for LCA results of FTD when a large amount of coproducts is produced.Although many regard it as the most important step of life cycle assessment, improvement analysis is given relatively. little attention in the literature. Most available improvement approaches are highly subjective, and traditional LCA methods often do. not account for resources other than fossil fuels. In this work exergy is evaluated as a thermodynamically rigorous way of identifying process improvement opportunities. As a case study, a novel process for producing titanium dioxide nanoparticles is considered. A traditional impact assessment, a first law energy analysis, and an exergy analysis are done at both the process and life cycle scales. The results indicate that exergy analysis provides insights not available via other methods, especially for identifying unit operations with the greatest potential for improvement. Exergetic resource accounting at the life cycle scale shows that other materials are at least as significant as fossil fuels for the production of TiO2 nanoparticles in this process.While the use of biodiesel appears to be a promising alternative to petroleum fuel, the replacement of fossil fuel by biofuel may not bring about the intended climate cooling because of the increased soil N2O emissions due to N-fertilizer applications. Using a life cycle assessment approach, we assessed the influence of soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions on the life cycle global warming potential of the production and combustion of biodiesel from canola oil produced in a semiarid climate. Utilizing locally measured soil N2O emissions, rather than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) default values, decreased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the production and combustion of 1 GJ biodiesel from 63 to 37 carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-e)/GJ. GHG were 1.1 to 2.1 times lower than those from petroleum or petroleum-based diesel depending on which soil N2O emission factors were included in the analysis. The advantages of utilizing biodiesel rapidly declined when blended with petroleum diesel. Mitigation strategies that decrease emissions from the production and application of N fertilizers may further decrease the life cycle GHG emissions in the production and combustion of biodiesel.P>Carbon footprints for several shopping bag alternatives (polyethylene, paper, cotton, biodegradable modified starch, and recycled polyethylene) were compared with life cycle assessment. Stochastic uncertainty analysis was used to study the sensitivity of the comparison to scenario and parameter uncertainty. On the basis of the results, we could give only a few robust conclusions without choosing a waste treatment scenario or limiting the parameter space. Given the scenario of current waste infrastructure in Finland, recycled polyethylene bags seem to be the most preferable (-7 to 24 g CO(2) eq./bag) and biodegradable bags the least preferable (38 to 60 g CO(2) eq./bag) option. In each analyzed waste treatment scenario, a few parameters dominated the uncertainty of results. Most of these parameters were downstream of the shopping bag manufacturing (consumer behavior, landfill conditions, method of waste combustion, etc.). The choice of waste treatment scenario had a greater effect on the ranking of bags than parameter uncertainty within scenarios. This result highlights the importance of including several scenarios in comparative life cycle assessments.P>In this study, we develop a framework for the multicriteria design of plastic recycling based on quality information and environmental impacts for the purpose of supporting collaborative decision making among consumers, municipalities, and recyclers. The subject of this article is the mechanical recycling of postconsumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. We present a "quality conversion matrix," which links the quality of recycled PET resin to the quality of waste PET bottles and operational conditions, described in terms of the functions of modules constituting the entire recycling process. We estimate the quality of recycled PET resin and simulate the applicability to the intended products as the primary criterion by confirming whether the estimated quality of recycled resin satisfies the quality demands of PET resin users. The amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and fossil resource consumption are also estimated as the secondary criteria. An approach to collaborative decision making utilizing mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) and Monte Carlo simulation is proposed on the premise of different objectives of various stakeholders, where all the feasible optimal solutions for achieving the quality demands are obtained. The quality requirements of waste bottles, along with the CO2 emissions and fossil resource consumption estimated for each solution, contribute to the collaborative multicriteria design of plastic recycling.P>Thermal insulation is a strategic product for reducing energy consumption and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the building sector. This study examines from a life cycle perspective the changes in GHG emissions resulting from the use of two rigid thermal insulation products manufactured and installed from 1971 to 2025. GHG emissions related to insulation production and fugitive releases of blowing agents are modeled and compared with GHG savings from reduced heating loads in North America, Europe, and Asia. Implementation of alternative blowing agents has greatly improved the carbon dioxide 100-year equivalent (CO(2)-eq) emission performance of thermal insulation. The net average CO(2)-eq savings to emissions ratio for current extruded polystyrene (XPS) and polyisocyanurate (PIR) insulation studied was 48:1, with a broad range from 3 to 1,800. Older insulation products manufactured with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can result in net cumulative GHG emissions. Reduction of CO(2)-eq emissions from buildings is governed by complex interactions between insulation thickness and placement, climate, fuel type, and heating system efficiencies. A series of charts mapping both emissions payback and net savings demonstrate the interactions between these factors and provide a basis for specific policy recommendations to guide effective insulation investments and placement.We have investigated the catalytic treatment of a crude algal liquefaction bio-oil in supercritical water to discover how the properties of the treated oil depend on the experimental conditions. An L(9) (3(4)) orthogonal array design (OAD) with four factors at three levels was employed. The four factors were temperature (varied from 430-530 degrees C), time (varied from 2-6 h), catalyst type (Pt/C, Mo(2)C, HZSM-5), and catalyst loading (varied from 5-20 wt%). We used a direct analysis to determine the relationship between experimental conditions and properties of treated oils. The oil properties we examined were elemental composition, atomic ratios, chemical composition, and higher heating value. Of the four factors, the 100 degrees C variation in temperature was always the most influential for each of the oil properties examined. Of the remaining three factors, catalyst type had the greatest influence on the fatty acid content of the treated oil and the fraction of N- and O-containing compounds in the oil. Catalyst loading had the greatest effect on the higher heating value and O/C ratio in the treated oil. Reaction time had the greatest effect on the H/C and N/C ratios. The results demonstrated that treatment in supercritical water at 430 degrees C led to roughly a halving of the N and O content of the oil, a reduction in S to below detection limits, and about a 10% improvement in the higher heating value of the bio-oil. Within the parameter space investigated, the conditions leading to the highest content of saturated compounds in the treated oil are 430 degrees C, 6 h, with a 10 wt% loading of Mo(2)C as the catalyst. Around 76 wt% of the carbon in the feedstock was retained in the treated oil at these conditions.Traditional process design concentrates on process simulation and profitability. However, for design for environment one has to extend the simulation framework to include chemical and process synthesis steps and multiple objectives for environmental and societal impacts. This article describes the developments in process design for environmental considerations. Incorporating environmental considerations in the early stages of design like chemical synthesis and process synthesis has larger impact on the design. Therefore, number of approaches and case studies in chemical and process synthesis for environment are presented here. Defining environmental impacts is more difficult than profitability. New models for defining environmental impacts is the focus of some papers important for design for environment. Uncertainties are large in these steps and need to be included in the computational procedures. Further, multiple objectives are involved in process design increasing the complexity of problem.As states in the U.S. adopt new energy codes, it is important to understand the benefits for each state and its building owners. This paper estimates life-cycle energy savings, carbon emission reduction, and cost-effectiveness of conventional energy efficiency measures in new commercial buildings using an integrated design approach. Results are based on 8208 energy simulations for 12 prototypical buildings in 228 cities, with 3 building designs evaluated for each building-location combination. Results are represented by easy-to-understand mappings that allow for regional and state comparisons. The results show that the use of conventional energy efficiency technologies in an integrated design framework can decrease energy use by 15-20% on average in new commercial buildings, and over 35% for some building types and locations. These energy reductions can often be accomplished at negative incremental life-cycle costs and reduce a building's energy-related carbon footprint by 9-33%. However, generalizing these results on energy use, life-cycle costs, and carbon emissions misses exceptions in the results that show the importance of location-specific characteristics. Also, states do not appear to base energy code adoption decisions on either potential energy savings or life-cycle cost savings. Published by Elsevier B.V.The amount of waste produced and the control of separate collection are crucial issues for the planning of a territorial Integrated Waste Management System, enabling the allocation of each sorted waste fraction to the proper treatment and recycling processes. The present study focuses on assessing indicators of different waste management systems in areas characterized by different territorial conditions. The investigated case study concerns the municipalities of Emilia Romagna (northern Italy), which present a rather uniform socioeconomic situation, but a variety of geographic, urban and waste management characteristics. A survey of waste generation and collection rates was carried out, and correlated with the different territorial conditions, classifying the municipalities according to altitude and population density. The best environmental performances, in terms of high separate collection rate, were found on average in rural areas in the plain, while the lowest waste generation was associated with rural hill towns. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study aims at evaluating the potential environmental impact of using recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) in the production of an anti-glare lamella (AGL), a road safety device currently manufactured from virgin (not recycled) polymer. The impact was evaluated using the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique and comparing two alternative systems: current AGL, manufactured from virgin HDPE, and optional AGL, made with recycled HDPE obtained from post-consumer packages. The AGL manufacturing phase was found to be responsible for most of the impacts in both systems, with the production of the raw material being the largest contributor for that phase. The present study makes a contribution to the problem of developing value-added products made from post-consumer polymeric recyclates.Steps taken to counter the climate change problem have a significant impact on the municipal solid waste management (MSW) sector, which must tackle regional environmental problems such as the shortage of sanitary landfills, especially in Japan. Moreover, greenhouse gas emissions and final disposal have a trade-off relationship. Therefore, alleviation of both these environmental problems is difficult, and Japanese local municipalities are anxious for action to solve these problems and reduce treatment costs. Although ambitious waste management measures have been enacted in many countries, they appear to lack a holistic view and do not adopt a life cycle approach. Therefore, it is important to reconstruct the MSW management system, taking into account environmental and economic aspects. In the present study, life cycle assessment and mathematical modelling were used to seek ways of redesigning the MSW management system in order to minimize environmental impacts and/or reduce treatment costs. One economic block was selected as the study area (Iwate Prefecture in Japan). The life cycle inventory and costs data for every MSW transportation and treatment process in this region were collected and processed. Then, taking account of geographic information, an optimal solution for the minimization of environmental impact or treatment costs was derived. To solve the trade-off problem, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to find optimal reduction targets for climate change and final disposal.The objective of this study was to compare two standard methodologies, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) method and life cycle analysis (LCA), for quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dairy farms. Both methods were applied to model the GHG emissions from 9 dairy farm systems differing in strain of Holstein-Friesian cow and type of grass-based feed systems using the physical performance findings of previously published work. The strains of Holstein-Friesian cow used were; high milk production North American (HP), high fertility and survival (durability) North American (HD), and New Zealand (NZ). The alternate grass-based feed systems were; high grass allowance (HG, control); high stocking rate (HS) and high concentrate supplementation (HC). The milk production systems were modelled using a previously developed integrated economic-GHG farm model. The model calculated GHG emissions using the LCA approach and was extended to quantify GHG emissions using the IPCC method. The study found that the method of reporting GHG emissions (per unit of product or per unit area) affected the ranking of emissions of dairy systems investigated. Greenhouse gas emission were greater when calculated using the LCA method rather than the IPCC method. Both methods found reducing inputs or the intensity of dairy production reduced GHG emissions per hectare. When emissions were expressed per unit of product the methodologies did not rank farming systems in the same order. The effect of feed system on emissions per unit of product was inconsistent between methodologies because the IPCC method excludes indirect GHG emissions from farm pre-chains, i.e. concentrate production. Both methodologies agreed that animals selected solely for milk production (HP) had higher GHG emissions per unit of product relative to strains selected on a combination of traits. The results indicate that if dairy systems targeting a net reduction in global GHG for projected increases in meat and milk production are to be developed, a holistic approach such as LCA, should be used to assess emissions on a per unit product basis. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The path towards energy sustainability is commonly referred to the incremental adoption of available technologies, practices and policies that may help to decrease the environmental impact of energy sector, while providing an adequate standard of energy services. The evaluation of trade-offs among technologies, practices and policies for the mitigation of environmental problems related to energy resources depletion requires a deep knowledge of the local and global effects of the proposed solutions. While attempting to calculate such effects for a large complex system like a city, an advanced multidisciplinary approach is needed to overcome difficulties in modeling correctly real phenomena while maintaining computational transparency, reliability, interoperability and efficiency across different levels of analysis. Further, a methodology that rationally integrates different computational models and techniques is necessary to enable collaborative research in the field of optimization of energy efficiency strategies and integration of renewable energy systems in urban areas. For these reasons, a selection of currently available models for distributed generation planning and design is presented and analyzed in the perspective of gathering their capabilities in an optimization framework to support a paradigm shift in urban energy systems. This framework embodies the main concepts of a local energy management system and adopts a multicriteria perspective to determine optimal solutions for providing energy services through distributed generation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Monitoring and Influence Lines Based Performance Indicators Monitoring is of most practical significance for the design and assessment of new as well as of existing engineering structures. Practical experience and observations show that monitoring can provide the basis for new code specifications or efficient maintenance programs. Moreover, monitoring systems can avoid considerable costs of repairs and inconvenience to the public due to interruptions. This gives rise to the need for a thorough investigation to achieve an effective implementation of recorded monitoring data in numerical or analytical structural models that allow the detection of a deviant behavior from the proposed and the detection of initial deterioration processes. This study attempts to derive a concept for the effective incorporation of monitoring information in numerical models based on the concept of model correction factors. In particular, these studies are performed on the abutment free bridge structure S33.24 that has been proof loaded in February 2010 and monitored since December 2008. A merit of models derived based on monitoring data is that they are directly related to performance indicators which can be used for the assessment of the existing structural capacity and for an efficient life cycle analysis.The scalability of microalgae growth systems is a primary research topic in anticipation of the commercialization of microalgae-based biofuels. To date, there is little published data on the productivity of microalgae in growth systems that are scalable to commercially viable footprints. To inform the development of more detailed assessments of industrial-scale microalgae biofuel processes, this paper presents the construction and validation of a model of microalgae biomass and lipid accumulation in an outdoor, industrial-scale photobioreactor. The model incorporates a time-resolved simulation of microalgae growth and lipid accumulation based on solar irradiation, species specific characteristics, and photobioreactor geometry. The model is validated with 9 weeks of growth data from an industrially-scaled outdoor photobioreactor. Discussion focuses on the sensitivity of the model input parameters, a comparison of predicted microalgae productivity to the literature, and an analysis of the implications of this more detailed growth model on microalgae biofuels lifecycle assessment studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One way of producing nearly CO(2) free electridty is by using biomass as a combustible. In many cases, removal of CO(2) in biomass grown is almost the same as the emissions for the bioelectricity production at the power plant. For this reason, bioelectricity is generally considered CO(2) neutral. For large-scale biomass electricity generation two alternatives can be considered: biomass-only fired power plants, or cofiring in an existing coal power plant. Among other factors, two important aspects should be analyzed in order to choose between the two options. Firstly, which is the most appealing alternative if their Greenhouse Gases (GHG) Emissions savings are taken into account. Secondly, which biomass resource is the best, if the highest impact reduction is sought. In order to quantify all the GHG emissions related to each system, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been performed and all the processes involved in each alternative have been assessed in a cradle-to-grave manner. Sensitivity analyses of the most dominant parameters affecting GHG emissions, and comparisons between the obtained results, have also been carried out. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels world production has increased sharply in recent years. Oil reserves depletion, the oil high price and the confidence in biofuels "carbon neutrality" are the main causes of this phenomenon. However, claims related to the negative consequences of biofuel programs are frequent; mainly those related to the biofuels/food competition and sustainability. This paper aims to contribute for the development of a framework for sustainability indicators as a tool for performance assessment. The most used indicators to measure the biofuels sustainability are: Life Cycle Energy Balance (LCEB), quantity of fossil energy substituted per hectare, co-product energy allocation, life cycle carbon balance and changes in soil utilization. On the other hand, existing assessment tools, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA), are compared emphasizing their advantages and disadvantages. Main constraints related to the studied frontiers, as well as the lack of reliable data and their effects are also discussed. Discussions are held on the basis of real life cycle studies carried out by the authors about palm oil biodiesel and different alternatives for the stillage treatment and disposal. Finally, suggestions and recommendations are made to improve existing methodologies for biofuels sustainability evaluation, all this from a south perspective. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment was done to identify the environmental impacts related to alkaline copper quaternary (ACQ)-treated lumber used for decking and to determine how the impacts compare to the primary alternative product, wood plastic composite (WPC) decking. A model of ACQ-treated lumber life cycle stages was created and used to calculate inputs and outputs during the lumber production, treating, use, and disposal stages. Lumber production data are based on published sources. Primary wood preservative treatment data were obtained by surveying wood treatment facilities in the United States. Product use and disposal inventory data are based on published data and professional judgment. Life cycle inventory inputs, outputs, and impact indicators for ACQ-treated lumber were quantified using functional units of 1000 board feet and per representative deck (assumed to be 320 square feet (30 square meters) of surface decking material) per year of use. In a similar manner, an inventory model was developed for the manufacture, use, and disposal of the primary alternative product, WPC. Impact indicator values, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fossil fuel use, water use, acidification, smog forming potential, ecological toxicity, and eutrophication were quantified for each of the two decking products. National normalization was done to compare the significance of a representative deck surface per year of use to a family's total annual impact footprint. If an average U.S. family adds or replaces a deck surfaced with ACQ-treated lumber, their impact "footprint" for GHG emissions, fossil fuel use, acidification, smog forming potential, ecological toxicity, and eutrophication releases each is less than one-tenth of a percent of the family's annual impact. ACQ-treated lumber impacts were fourteen times less for fossil fuel use, almost three times less for GHG emissions, potential smog emissions, and water use, four times less for acidification, and almost half for ecological toxicity than those for WPC decking. Impacts were approximately equal for eutrophication. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment was done to identify the environmental impacts related to borate-treated lumber used as structural framing and to determine how the impacts compare to the primary alternative product, galvanized steel framing members. Borate-treated lumber may be used for framing buildings in locations of high decay or termite hazard. A model of borate-treated lumber life cycle stages was created and used to calculate inputs and outputs during the lumber production, treating, use, and disposal stages. Lumber production data are based on published sources. Primary wood preservative treatment data were obtained by surveying wood treatment facilities in the United States. Product use and disposal inventory data are based on published data and professional judgment. Life cycle inputs, outputs, and impact indicators for borate-treated lumber were quantified using life cycle assessment LCA methodologies at functional units of 1000 board feet, 100 linear feet (30.5 linear meters) of structural perimeter wall framing, and framing required for the perimeter walls of one representative home. In a similar manner, a life cycle inventory model was developed for the manufacture, use, and disposal of the primary alternative product, galvanized steel framing, and comparisons were done using an equivalent measure of 100 linear feet of structural perimeter wall framing. Impact indicator values such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fossil fuel use, water use, acidification, ecological toxicity, smog forming potential, and eutrophication were quantified for each of the two framing products. National normalization was done to compare the significance of the framing in a representative U.S. family home to the family's total annual impact footprint. If a U.S. family of three builds a 2225 square feet (207 square meters) home using borate-treated lumber for structural perimeter wall framing, the framing impact "footprint" (normalized over the use life of the structure) for GHG emissions, fossil fuel use, acidification, ecological toxicity, smog forming potential, and eutrophication each is less than one-tenth of a percent of the family's annual overall impact. The cradle-to-grave life cycle impacts of borate-treated lumber framing were approximately four times less for fossil fuel use, 1.8 times less for GHGs, 83 times less for water use, 3.5 times less for acidification, 2.5 times less for ecological impact, 2.8 times less for smog formation, and 3.3 times less for eutrophication than those for galvanized steel framing. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The assessment of eco-toxicological impacts related to the emission of contaminants into the environment has peculiar characteristics in the context of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and many different Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodologies can be used. However, previous studies recognized the presence of high uncertainties in the process, in particular when the analysis focuses on metal emissions. Metals are diverse inorganic substances relevant for their characteristic environmental chemistry, their high persistency into the environment and their toxicity at even low environmental concentrations. This study aims at expanding the discussion about how, and how differently, various methods for LCIA are estimating the impacts related to metals emissions, with a focus on eco-toxicological impacts. A comparison between eight different LCIA methods is presented in relative terms, using a contribution analysis at two levels: general and specific. Results show that there is a poor agreement between methods in the determination of the total eco-toxic impact attributable to metals, and in defining which metal provokes the highest eco-toxic impact per unitary emission. Furthermore, the characterization phase is critical in determining the disagreement between methods. However, some similarities were found: there is the tendency in most methods to associate the largest share of the total eco-toxicological impacts to metals. Theoretical and practical differences between methods are discussed and suggestions for the choice of the proper, case-specific, LCIA method are provided. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Besides the apparent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, other important factors contributing to the renewed interest in biofuels are energy security concerns and the need of sustainable transportation fuel. Nearly 30% of the annual CO2 emissions in the U.S. come from the transportation sector and more than half of the fuel is imported. Biofuels appear to be a promising option to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and the reliance on imported oil concomitantly. The interest on (ligno) cellulosic ethanol is gaining momentum as corn-based ethanol is criticized for using agricultural outputs for fuel production. Among many lignocellulosic feedstocks, woodchips is viewed as one of the most promising feedstocks for producing liquid transportation fuels. The renewable and carbon neutral nature of the feedstocks, similar chemical and physical properties to gasoline, and the low infrastructure cost due to the availability of fuel flex vehicles and transportation networks make (ligno) cellulosic bioethanol an attractive option. An in-depth LCA of woodchips shows that harvesting and woodchips processing stage and transportation to the facility stage emit large amount of environmental pollutants compared to other life cycle stages of ethanol production. Our analysis also found that fossil fuel consumption and respiratory inorganic effects are the two most critical environmental impact categories in woodchips production. We have used Eco-indicator 99 based cradle-to-gate LCA method with a functional unit of 4 m(3) of dry hardwood chips production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the past few decades, solid waste management systems in Europe have involved complex and multifaceted trade-offs among a plethora of technological alternatives, economic instruments, and regulatory frameworks. These changes resulted in various environmental, economic, social, and regulatory impacts in waste management practices which not only complicate regional policy analysis, but also reshape the paradigm of global sustainable development. Systems analysis, a discipline that harmonizes these integrated solid waste management strategies, has been uniquely providing interdisciplinary support for decision making in this area. Systems engineering models and system assessment tools, both of which enrich the analytical framework of waste management, were designed specifically to handle particular types of problems. Though how to smooth out the barriers toward achieving appropriate systems synthesis and integration of these models and tools to aid in the solid waste management schemes prevalent in European countries still remains somewhat uncertain. This paper conducts a thorough literature review of models and tools illuminating possible overlapped boundaries in waste management practices in European countries and encompassing the pros and cons of waste management practices in each member state of the European Union. Whereas the Southern European Union (EU) countries need to develop further measures to implement more integrated solid waste management and reach EU directives, the Central EU countries need models and tools with which to rationalize their technological choices and management strategies. Nevertheless, considering systems analysis models and tools in a synergistic way would certainly provide opportunities to develop better solid waste management strategies leading to conformity with current standards and foster future perspectives for both the waste management industry and government agencies in European Union. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The focus of this research is to analyze potential environmental impact in the supply chain of palm oil biodiesel industries. Simple Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to analyze impacts, produced by the three main units in the supply chain of Palm-Oil-based Biodiesel, which are Palm Plantation, CPO mill, and Biodiesel Plant. We developed LCA calculation model using spreadsheet software, used to assess a number of input scenarios to evaluate the best scenario, in variation of: land quality, land area and the rate of clearing, land clearing technique and type of the original land. The biggest potential environmental impact is the contribution to global warming impact which emissions are produced mostly from unit plantation. Although plantation has biggest potential to contribute to environmental impact, it also gives biggest reduction to global warming impact. In general, the biggest environmental impact in the LCA category is climate change, followed by photo-oxidant formation and eutrophication. The biggest impacts in the supply chain are from the plantation, especially when choosing the right technique for land clearing. In addition, due to LCA linearity nature, the scenario that we tested does not change the total accumulative environmental impacts.Global environmental concerns and the escalating demand for energy, coupled with steady progress in renewable energy technologies, are opening up new opportunities for utilization of renewable energy resources. Solar energy is the most abundant, inexhaustible and clean of all the renewable energy resources till date. The power from sun intercepted by the earth is about 1.8 x 10(11) MW, which is many times larger than the present rate of all the energy consumption. Photovoltaic technology is one of the finest ways to harness the solar power. This paper reviews the photovoltaic technology, its power generating capability, the different existing light absorbing materials used, its environmental aspect coupled with a variety of its applications. The different existing performance and reliability evaluation models, sizing and control, grid connection and distribution have also been discussed. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Recently increasing attention has been paid to complementing environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with social aspects. The paper discusses the selection of social impacts and indicators from existing frameworks like Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) and Social Impact Assessment (SIA). Two ongoing case studies, addressing sustainability assessment within decision support, were considered: (1) Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in Indonesia; and (2) Integrated Packaging Waste Management in Spain and Portugal (FENIX). The focus was put on social impacts occurring due to decisions within these systems, such as choice of technologies, practices or suppliers. Thus, decision makers-here understood as intended users of the studies' results-are not consumers that buy (or do not buy) a product, such as in recent SLCA case-studies, but mainly institutions that decide about the design of the water or packaging waste management system. Therefore, in the FENIX project, a list of social impacts identified from literature was sent to the intended users to be ranked according to their priorities. Finally, the paper discusses to what extent the entire life cycle is reflected in SLCA impact categories and indicators, and explains how both life-cycle and on-site-related social impacts were chosen to be assessed. However, not all indicators in the two projects will assess all stages of the life cycle, because of their varying relevance in the different stages, data availability and practical interest of decision makers.The environmental impacts of municipal solid waste management in Beijing City were evaluated using a life-cycle-based model, EASEWASTE, to take into account waste generation, collection, transportation, treatment/disposal technologies, and savings obtained by energy and material recovery. The current system, mainly involving the use of landfills, has manifested significant adverse environmental impacts caused by methane emissions from landfills and many other emissions from transfer stations. A short-term future scenario, where some of the landfills (which soon will reach their capacity because of rising amount of waste in Beijing City) are substituted by incinerators with energy recovery, would not result in significant environmental improvement. This is primarily because of the low calorific value of mixed waste, and it is likely that the incinerators would require significant amounts of auxiliary fuels to support combustion of wet waste. As for the long-term future scenario, efficient source separation of food waste could result in significant environmental improvements, primarily because of increase in calorific value of remaining waste incinerated with energy recovery. Sensitivity analysis emphasized the importance of efficient source separation of food waste, as well as the electricity recovery in incinerators, in order to obtain an environmentally friendly waste management system in Beijing City. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, numerous attempts have been made to reduce the global environmental and associated socio-economic impacts of construction activities to achieve sustainable development goals. A sustainable system or activity refers to an eco-friendly, cost effective and socio-politically viable solution. This paper utilizes triple-bottom-line (TBL) sustainability criteria for the selection of a sustainable flooring system in Tehran (Iran). Three types of block joisted flooring systems - concrete, clay, and expanded polystyrene (EPS) blocks - have been investigated using life cycle analysis (LCA). Proposed approach provides a comprehensive evaluation system based on TBL criteria that are further divided into thirteen sub-criteria. It includes: (1) Environmental concerns (resource depletion, waste and emissions, waste management, climate change, environmental risk, embodied energy and energy loss); (2) Economic concerns (material cost, construction cost, and occupation and maintenance cost); and (3) Socio-political issues (social acceptance, vulnerability of area, and building weight). Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used as a multi-criteria decision making technique that helps to aggregate the impacts of proposed (sub)criteria into a sustainability index (SI) through a five-level hierarchical structure. Integration of AHP and LCA provides a framework for robust decision making that is consistent with sustainable construction practices. A detailed analysis shows that the EPS block is the most sustainable solution for block joisted flooring system in Tehran. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most market products are offered to consumers in a wide range of packaging alternatives and the proportion of municipal solid waste attributed to packaging increases year after year. This study assesses the environmental impact of the commonest packaging options on the Spanish market for juice, beer and water. The production of different packaging materials and sizes was evaluated along with their method of final disposal (landfilling, incineration and recycling). Recycling was found to be the most environmentally friendly disposal option for all the packaging alternatives compared, and either incineration or landfilling was considered the second best option depending on the packaging material. The packaging options with the lowest environmental impacts were aseptic carton and plastic packaging (for sizes greater than 1 I). The environmental profile of the whole beverage life cycle was evaluated. The results of the evaluation of the entire life cycle show that the impact of beer packaging is similar to the impact of beer production and these are the highest impact stages in the life cycle of beer. Packaging was found to have the highest environmental impact in the life cycles of water and juice. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy and environment are drawing greater attention today, particularly with the rapid development of the economy and increase consumption of energy in China. At present, coal-fired power plants are mainly responsible for atmospheric air pollution. The selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology is a highly effective method for NO(x) control. The present study identified and quantified the energy consumption and the environmental impacts of SCR system throughout the whole life cycle, including production and transportation of manufacturing materials, installation and operation of SCR technology. The analysis was conducted with the utilization of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology which provided a quantitative basis for assessing potential improvements in the environmental performance of the system. The functional unit of the study was 5454 t NO(x) emission from an existing Chinese pulverized coal power plant for 1 year. The current study compared life cycle emissions from two types of de-NO(x) technologies, namely the SCR technology and the selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) technology, and the case that NO(x) was emitted into atmosphere directly. The results showed that the environmental impact loading resulting from SCR technology (66810 PET(2000)) was smaller than that of flue gas emitted into atmosphere directly (164121 PET(2000)) and SNCR technology (105225 PET(2000)). More importantly, the SCR technology is much more effective at the elimination of acidification and nutrient enrichment than SNCR technology and the case that NO(x) emitted into atmosphere directly. This SCR technology is more friendly to the environment, and can play an important role in NO(x) control for coal-fired power plants as well as industrial boilers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents rigorous experimental outdoor performance of a 2.32 kW(P) stand-alone photovoltaic (SAPV) system in New Delhi (India) for four weather types in each month such as clear, hazy, partially cloudy/foggy and fully cloudy/foggy weather conditions respectively. The daily power generated from the existing SAPV system was experimentally found in the range of 4-6 kW h/day depending on the prevailing sky conditions. The number of days and daily power generated corresponding to four weather types in each month were used to determine monthly and subsequently annual power generation from the existing SAPV system. There are three daily load profiles with and without earth to air heat exchanger suitable for three seasons like summer (3.75-6.15 kW h/day), winter (2.79-5.19 kW h/day) and rainy (3.75 kW h/day). The hourly efficiency of the SAPV system components are determined and presented in this paper. The life cycle cost (LCC) analysis for the existing typical SAPV system is carried out to determine unit cost of electricity. The effect of annual degradation rate of PV system efficiency is also presented in this paper. The energy production factor (EPF) and the energy payback time (EPBT) of the SAPV system was also determined and presented in this paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An estimated 32,000 golf courses worldwide (approximately 25,600 km(2)), provide ecosystem goods and services and support an industry contributing over $124 billion globally. Golf courses can impact positively on local biodiversity however their role in the global carbon cycle is not clearly understood. To explore this relationship, the balance between plant-soil system sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from turf management on golf courses was modelled. Input data were derived from published studies of emissions from agriculture and turfgrass management. Two UK case studies of golf course type were used, a Links course (coastal, medium intensity management, within coastal dune grasses) and a Parkland course (inland, high intensity management, within woodland). Playing surfaces of both golf courses were marginal net sources of greenhouse gas emissions due to maintenance (Links 0.4 +/- 0.1 Mg CO(2)e ha(-1) y(-1); Parkland 0.7 +/- 0.2 Mg CO(2)e ha(-1)y(-1)). A significant proportion of emissions were from the use of nitrogen fertiliser, especially on tees and greens such that 3% of the golf course area contributed 16% of total greenhouse gas emissions. The area of trees on a golf course was important in determining whole-course emission balance. On the Parkland course, emissions from maintenance were offset by sequestration from trees which comprised 48% of total area, resulting in a net balance of -4.3 +/- 0.9 Mg CO(2e) ha(-1)y(-1). On the Links course, the proportion of trees was much lower (2%) and sequestration from links grassland resulted in a net balance of 0.0 +/- 0.2 Mg CO(2e) ha(-1)y(-1). Recommendations for golf course management and design include the reduction of nitrogen fertiliser, improved operational efficiency when mowing, the inclusion of appropriate tree-planting and the scaling of component areas to maximise golf course sequestration capacity. The findings are transferrable to the management and design of urban parks and gardens, which range between fairways and greens in intensity of management. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recent life cycle assessment studies have revealed the relevance of cooling agent leakage when assessing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by fishing vessel operations. The goal of this communication is to update the carbon footprinting of the Galician fishing activity (NW Spain) by including the GHG emissions from cooling agent leakage. Results proved the relevant role played by refrigerants regarding their contribution to the carbon footprint of fishing activities. Thus, an overall increase of 13% was found when comparing the final global carbon footprint for the Galician fishing activity with previous calculations that did not include these emissions. Nevertheless, further efforts should be made in order to provide robust data in this respect. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change and water scarcity are important issues for today's power sector. To inform capacity: expansion decisions, hybrid life cycle assessment is used to evaluate a reference design of a parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP) facility located in Daggett, CA, along four sustainability metrics: life cycle (LC) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption, cumulative energy demand (CED), and energy payback time (EPBT). This wet-cooled, 103 MW plant utilizes mined nitrates salts in its two-tank, thermal energy storage (TES) system. Design alternatives of dry-cooling, a thermocline TES, and synthetically derived nitrate salt are evaluated. During its LC, the reference CSP plant is estimated to emit 26 g of CO2eq per kWh, consume 4.7 L/kWh of water, and demand 0.40 MJ(eq)/kWh of energy, resulting in an EPBT of approximately 1 year. The dry cooled alternative is estimated to reduce LC water consumption by 77% but increase LC GHG emissions and CED by 8%. Synthetic nitrate salts may increase LC GHQ emissions by 52% compared to mined. Switching from two tank to thermocline TES configuration reduces LC GHG emissions, most significantly for plants using synthetically derived nitrate salts. CSP can significantly reduce GHG emissions compared to fossil-fueled generation; however, dry cooling may be required in many locations to minimize water consumption.Fullerenes are increasingly being used in medical, environmental, and electronic applications due to their unique structural and electronic properties. However, the energy and environmental impacts associated with their commercial-scale production have not yet been fully investigated. In this work, the life cycle embodied energy of C-60 and C-70 fullerenes has been quantified from cradle-to-gate, including the relative contributions from synthesis, separation, purification, and functionalization processes, representing a more comprehensive scope than used in previous fullerene life cycle studies. Comparison of two prevalent production methods (plasma and pyrolysis) has shown that pyrolysis of 1,4-tetrahydronaphthalene emerges as the method with the lowest embodied energy (12.7 GJ/kg of C-60). In comparison, plasma methods require a large amount of electricity, resulting in a factor of 7-10x higher embodied energy in the fullerene product. In many practical applications, fullerenes are required at a purity >98% by weight, which necessitates multiple purification steps and increases embodied energy by at least a factor of 5, depending on the desired purity. For applications such as organic solar cells, the purified fullerenes need to be chemically modified to [6,6]-phenyl-C-61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), thus increasing the embodied energy to 64.7 GJ/kg C-60-PCBM for the specified pyrolysis, purification, and functionalization conditions. Such synthesis and processing effects are even more significant for the embodied energy of larger fullerenes, such as C-70, which are produced in smaller quantities and are more difficult to purify. Overall, the inventory analysis shows that the embodied energy of all fullerenes are an order of magnitude higher than most bulk chemicals, and, therefore, traditional cutoff rules by weight during life cycle assessment of fullerene-based products should be avoided.It is expected that biodiesel production in the EU will remain the dominant contributor as part of a 10% minimum binding target for biofuel in transportation fuel by 2020 within the 20% renewable energy target in the overall EU energy mix. Life cycle assessments (LCA) of biodiesel to evaluate its environmental impacts have however questionable, mainly because of the adoption of a traditional process analysis approach resulting in system boundary truncation and because of issues regarding the impacts of land use change and N2O emissions from fertilizer application. In this Study, a hybrid LCA methodology is used to evaluate the life cycle CO2 equivalent emissions of rape methyl ester (RME) biodiesel. The methodology uses input-output analysis to estimate upstream indirect emissions in Order to complement traditional process LCA in a hybrid framework. It was estimated that traditional LCA accounted for 2.7 kg CO2-eq.per kg of RME or 36.6% of total life cycle emissions of the RME supply chin. Further to the inclusion of upstream indirect impacts in the LCA system (which accounted for 23% of the total life cycle emissions), emissions due to direct land change (6%) and indirect land use change (16.5%) and N2O emissions from fertilizer applications (17.9%) were also calculated. Structural path analysis is used to decompose upstream indirect emissions paths of the biodiesel supply chain in order to identify, quantify, and rank high carbon emissions paths or hot spots' in the biodiesel supply chain. It was shown, for instance, that inputs from the Other Chemical Products' sector (identified as phosphoric acid, H3PO4) into the biOdiesel production process represented the highest carbon emission path (or hot-spot) with 5.35% of total upstream indirect emissions of the RME biodiesel supply chain.This paper proposes a methodology, IECP (integrated environmental and cost potential), for the integrated environmental and cost evaluation of a process design option. It is designed for a quick quantitative evaluation of a design option at different levels of process synthesis or retrofit applications. A hazard based approach, Pro-hazard, has been developed for the quantitative evaluation of environmental potential of design options by using a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment. This assigns an environmental potential index to a design option by comparing its environmental performance with respect to the base option. To quickly evaluate the cost of the resulting option a simple approach, Eco-index, has been developed. It gives a cost potential index to a specific design option by comparing its unit operating and fixed cost with respect to that of the base option. In the IECP framework, both the environmental potential and cost potential indices for a design option are combined by assigning an appropriate weighting factor to each index, which gives an integrated index, IECP, for the design option. In this paper, the IECP methodology has been combined with a process simulator, Aspen HYSYS, to obtain the necessary data to quickly and accurately determine the IECP index. The applicability of the proposed IECP approach has been demonstrated through a case study for the selection of potential NOx prevention options in a 125 MW combined cycle power plant from a large number of options related to flue gas recirculation, steam and water injection to the furnace. (C) 2011 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Waste reduction algorithm (WAR) is a tool desgined to help process engineers for environmental impact assesment. The WAR algorithm is a methodology for determining the potential environmental impact (PEI) of a chemical process. In particular, the bitumen production process was analyzed in the following three stages: a) atmospheric distillation unit, b) vacuum distillation unit, and c) bitumen production unit. The study was developed for a middle-sized oil refinery with a capacity of 5000000 t of crude oil per year. The results highlight the most vulnerable aspects of the environmental pollution that arise during the manufacturing process of bitumen. The overall rates of PEI leaving the system (PEI/h) - lout PEI/h are: a) 2.14x10(5), b) 7.17x10(4) and c) 2.36x10(3), respectively. The overall rates of PEI generated within the system - Igen PEI/h are: a) 7.75x10(4), b) -4.31x10(4) and c) -4.32x10(2), respectively. The atmospheric distillation unit had the higest overalll rate of PEI while the bitumen production unit had the lowest overall rate of PEI. Comparison of lout PEI/h and Igen PEI/h values for the atmospheric distillation unit showed that the overall rate of PEI generated in the system was 36.21% of the overall rate of PEI leaving the system. In the cases of vacuum distillation and bitumen production units, the overall rate of PEI generated in system had negative values, i.e., the overall rate of PEI leaving the system was reduced at 60.11 (in the vacuum distillation unit) and at 18.30% (in the bitumen production unit). Analysis of the obtained results for the overall rate of PEI, expressed by weight of the product, confirmed the conclusions.Health and safety have been the major concerns in waste management Waste must be managed in a way that minimizes risk to human health. Environmental concerns over the management and disposal of waste can be divided into two major areas: conservation of resources and pollution of the environment. Integrated Waste Management (IWM) systems combine waste streams waste collection, treatment and disposal methods, with the objective of achieving environmental benefits, economic optimization and societal acceptability. Integrated waste management using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) attempts to offer the most benign options for waste management. LCA is a compilation and evaluation of the inputs, the outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle. It can be successfully applied to municipal solid waste management systems to identify the overall environmenta burdens and to assess the potential environmental impacts. This paper deals with LCA of two waste management options for final disposal of municipal waste, land-filling (landfill without landfill gas collection or leachate collection) and sanitary landfilling (landfill with landfill gas collection and recovery and leachate collection and treatments) analyzed for town Sombor. The research was conducted by use the Software Package IWM-2. The indicators used in assessment were air and water emissions of toxic compounds. The results indicated that waste disposal practice has a significant effect on the emission of toxical components and environmental burdens. Sanitary landfilling of municipal solid waste importantly reduces toxic emission and the negative influence on the environment.The main objective of this life cycle assessment (LCA) study is to determine the environmental consequences of the inclusion of second-generation biofuels (bioethanol from palm oil biomass) toward current palm oil biodiesel production through a 'seed-to-wheel' LCA analysis. Their energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission indicators are evaluated with consequential approach for system delimitation. Although all scenarios provide positive environmental impact, it is found that the inclusion of bioethanol production in the current palm oil processing will decrease the net energy ratio (NER) and net carbon emission ratio (NCER) values by 27.5% and 66.6%, respectively. Moreover, carbon emission savings (CES) value is also found to decrease by a total of 21.9%. This indicates that a higher amount of energy input and GHG emissions is actually required for the bioethanol processing than the amount of energy it will produce and the GHG from fossil fuels it will displace. The sensitivity analysis performed on the yields of bioethanol shows that the minimum conversion threshold should be larger than 60% in order to have a higher energy and GHG emission ratio than current palm oil biodiesel processing. Sensitivity analysis on direct land use change and waste-water treatment is also carried out which discourages the expansion of palm oil plantation to primary forest (including peatland) and emphasizes the need for a biogas harvesting system. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdIn this study, an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed, in which a sugar cane bagasse food tray (produced by Roots Biopack) is compared to food trays made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polylactide (PLA) and moulded pulp. This LCA study has been conducted both for the system boundary "cradle-to-factory gate" and "cradle-to-grave." As default case, electricity from wind energy is assumed for the bagasse tray factory in China. The cradle-to-factory gate results show that the bagasse tray has lowest impacts for non-renewable energy use (NREU) global warming, abiotic depletion and acidification. The PET tray has highest environmental impacts for NREU, global warming and abiotic depletion. Compared to PLA, the bagasse tray has lower impacts for NREU, abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming and land use, but higher impacts for renewable energy use (REU) and photochemical oxidant formation. If incineration with energy recovery is applied in the waste stage, the environmental impacts decrease, except for global warming. A contribution analysis of the full life cycle of the bagasse tray (cradle-to-grave) shows that waste management and the production of the sugar cane bagasse contribute most to the total environmental impacts. All in all, it can be concluded that the bagasse tray has good environmental performance.We evaluated three free software applications for administrative archives management and their implementation in university archives. Software evaluated was: Archon, Archivists' toolkit and ICA-AtoM. The comparative analysis considered 12 requirements concerning metadata management, description standards and lending, and document life-cycle analysis. The results show the requirements met by each software application evaluated. Although currently they do not satisfy all archive management requirements, open software can be customized and integrated with new contexts.The portable computer or notebook has become an integral and even essential aspect of modern life. Year-in-year its price to the consumer falls while its performance grows, yet recent analysis suggests that pound-for-pound its environmental costs are amongst the highest of any product on the planet. In this paper we explore the market price of "sustainable" notebooks. Drawing on the framework of the 'tragedy of the commons' we postulate that as manufacturers shift costs away from the commons to comply with sustainability standards, the cost to the consumer will inevitably rise. We test our hypothesis by comparing the prices of EPEAT Gold certified notebooks with uncertified portable computers. The results are discussed, alternative hypotheses explored and further research outlined. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper reviews the energy efficiency of optical-packet-switching (OPS) systems in comparison with electronic packet switching and hybrid packet switching in the context of future networks. The paper will first discuss the energy efficiency metrics that should include considerations for life-cycle analysis, applications, and network-wide goodput. The state-of-the-art electronic packet switching router is currently energy-limited in scalability as it is difficult to implement a router with more than 1 MW power consumption. The OPS router that imitates electronic router's store-and-forward schemes is expected to suffer poor energy efficiency due to the complexity in the high-speed control plane necessary to control many optical buffer stages. The hybrid optical router achieves easier buffer management but its energy efficiency is still limited by the store-and-forward approach. The OPS router based on all-optical contention resolution without relying on store-and-forward method can keep the control plane very simple and achieve very high energy efficiency. Network-wide performance and energy efficiency in the context of generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS)- and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-based networking are also discussed.We compare seven major European and North American sustainability analyst organizations on how they rank-order the same set of companies with regards to environmental performance. We also compare the analyst organizations' environmental rating schemes with regards to which evaluation criteria they include. Two industries are investigated: automobile and paper/forestry. Although there is fairly broad consensus on which automobile companies have the worst environmental performance, there is considerable disagreement about best-performers. The pattern is less clear for paper/forestry companies. With some notable exceptions, and for both industries, all rating schemes contain evaluation criteria targeting those aspects of company performance associated, according to life-cycle assessments, with the largest potential environmental impact. There are, however, significant divergences as to how many, and which, criteria of medium to low relevance are applied. Sustainability analyst organizations should make explicit to investors and evaluated companies on which theoretical and empirical grounds environmental evaluation criteria are selected. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Organic farming (OF) is considered a promising solution for reducing environmental burdens related to intensive agricultural management practices. The question arises whether OF really reduces the environmental impacts once lower yields and all the changes in farming methods are taken into consideration. This question is addressed in a comprehensive study of Swiss arable cropping and forage production systems comparing OF to integrated production (IP) systems by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The LCA study investigated the environmental impacts of two long-term farming system experiments: the DOC experiment comparing bio-dynamic, bio-organic and conventional/integrated farming and the "Burgrain" experiment encompassing integrated intensive, integrated extensive and organic production. All treatments received similar amounts of farmyard manure. The system boundary encompasses the plant production system; storage and application of farmyard manure is included in the system boundary, the animal husbandry is not included. The Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment method (SALCA) was used to analyse the environmental impacts. In the overall assessment OF was revealed to be either superior or similar to IP in environmental terms. OF has its main strengths in better resource conservation, since the farming system relies mainly on farm-internal resources and limits the input of external auxiliary materials. This results in less fossil and mineral resources being consumed. Moreover the greatly restricted use of pesticides makes it possible to markedly reduce ecotoxicity potentials on the one hand, and to achieve a higher biodiversity potential on the other. This overall positive assessment is not valid for all organic products: some products such as potatoes had higher environmental burdens than their counterparts from IP. The main drawbacks identified for Swiss OF systems are lower yields. As a consequence some production factors are used less efficiently, thus partly negating the advantages of OF. Furthermore, the different manure management strategy leads to relatively high nutrient losses in relation to yield. These two :points were shown to be the main priorities for the environmental optimisation of OF systems. The differences between the bio-organic and the bio-dynamic farming systems consisted in a slightly higher input of organic matter, a few applications of mineral fertilisers and copper applications in the former. The eco-efficiency analysis led to the conclusion that the optimisation of OF is mainly output-driven, i.e. that higher yields of good quality should be achieved with the available (limited) resources. On the contrary, optimisation of IP was found to be input-driven; the inputs should be used in a quantity and manner which minimise the environmental burdens per unit produced. The study showed that despite the efforts of recent years, there is still considerable room for the environmental optimisation of Swiss farming systems. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extensive or low-input farming is considered a way of remedying many problems associated with intensive farming practices. But do extensive farming systems really result in a clear reduction in environmental impacts, especially if their lower productivity is taken into account? This question is studied for Swiss arable cropping and forage production systems in a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) study. Three long-term experiments (DOC experiment comparing bio-dynamic, bio-organic and conventional farming, the "Burgrain" experiment including integrated intensive, integrated extensive and organic systems and the "Oberacker" experiment with conventional ploughing and no-till soil cultivation, are considered in the LCA study. Furthermore, model systems for arable crops and forage production for feeding livestock are investigated by using the Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment method (SALCA). The analysis covers an overall extensification of cropping systems and forage production on the one hand and a partial extensification of fertiliser use, plant protection and soil cultivation on the other. The overall extensification of an intensively managed system reduced environmental impacts in general, both per area unit and per product unit. In arable cropping systems medium production intensity gave the best results for the environment, and the intensity should not fall below the environmental optimum in order to avoids deterioration of eco-efficiency. In grassland systems, on the contrary, a combination of both intensively and extensively managed plots was preferable to medium intensity practices on the whole area. The differences in yield, production intensity and environmental impact were much more pronounced in grassland than in arable cropping systems. Partial extensification of a farming system should be conceived in the context of the whole system in order to be successful. For example, the extensification solely of fertiliser use and soil cultivation resulted in a general improvement in the environmental performance of the farming system, whereas a reduction in plant protection intensity by banning certain pesticide categories reduced negative impacts on ecotoxicity and biodiversity only, while increasing other burdens such as global warming, ozone formation, eutrophication and acidification per product unit. The replacement of mineral fertilisers by farmyard manure as a special form of extensification reduced resource use and improved soil quality, while slightly increasing nutrient losses. These results show that a considerable environmental improvement potential exists in Swiss farming systems and that a detailed eco-efficiency analysis could help to target a further reduction in their environmental impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Domestic energy use generates a significant proportion of anthropogenic global carbon emissions. To date, many reduction programmes in the domestic sector have focused on increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption in the home. Consumer goods manufacturers also have a role to play in raising consumer awareness and encouraging behavioural change. The first step in identifying opportunities for decreasing carbon emissions is to understand emission sources and quantify their relative importance. This study investigates energy and associated carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions from dishwashing. Specifically, it assesses the relative CO(2)e profiles of washing dishes by hand (manual dishwashing) and using a machine (automatic dishwashing) and included consumer behaviours. This study also specifically considers the relative efficiencies of appliances used to heat water. The study followed recognized international protocols for life cycle assessment and carbon footprinting. On this basis, the same assessment boundary was applied to both processes. Output comparisons were based on: 1 the sources of energy uses (e. g. electricity, gas, etc.); 2 the associated CO2e emissions; and 3 the cost of energy used. Various data sources have been used and are referenced. Calculations of appliance energy use for manual dishwashing considered country-specific data for water heaters including fuel types and efficiencies. Automatic dishwashing appliance energy use was calculated from machine manufacturers' electricity use data. The conclusions show that, for each of the six European countries assessed and based on the study assumptions, the automatic dishwashing process uses less life cycle energy than manual dishwashing and consequently results in lower CO2e emissions. Differences in country-specific energy generation mixes, consumer behaviour and boiler efficiencies show variations in the outcomes; overall, however, there appears to be a clear benefit in switching from manual to automatic dishwashing both in terms of CO2e emissions and in terms of annualized costs.The environmental impacts of coffee consumption inter alia depend on the preparation method used by consumers. Preparation methods such as filter drip, pod machines and fully automatic coffee machines are the most common ones in Germany: 62% of the consumers use a filter drip machine to brew their coffee, 23% use filter pad machines and 15% use espresso machines such as fully automatic coffee machines or capsule systems. The aim of the different studies presented in this paper was to identify the critical environmental issues along the life cycle of coffee and to compare the different preparation methods of coffee regarding their influence on the environmental impacts. Within the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) Pilot Project Germany, the PCF of one cup of a special type of coffee was analysed on behalf of Tchibo GmbH (Uberseering, Hamburg, Germany). As the results show, the preparation by the consumer is one crucial part of the entire life cycle of coffee, making up a share of 30% of the overall emissions. Another hot spot is the cultivation of coffee beans with 55%. Concerning the use phase, research shows that environmental impacts vary significantly depending on the preparation method used by the consumer. Main drivers are differences in power consumption of the respective technologies. Furthermore, different packagings of the coffee play a decisive role. Comparing the analysed appliances and defined usage scenarios in this study, the French press and filter drip machine performed best, followed by the filter pad machine. In contrast, the environmental impacts of the analysed fully automatic coffee machine and the capsule machine were highest. The reason for this was the high power consumption, especially in the machines' sleep and standby mode. Additionally, capsule machines contribute to the environmental impacts because of the aluminium and/or plastic packaging of the capsules, automatic coffee machines because of their cleaning and rinsing programmes. The detailed results indicate a significant savings potential in the use phase. The impacts not only depend on the specific energy efficiency of the chosen appliance but also on the usage behaviour.Changing lifestyles and family structures have changed consumer domestic washing behaviour in our country, with growing use of washer-dryers and changing detergent preferences, including use of concentrated detergents. In particular, there has also been an increase in the number of combined washer-dryers, which both save space and reduce the housework burden. However, power consumption for drying is extremely high compared to that for washing. This study reveals the drying performance of sweat-absorbent, quick-drying clothing in domestic washing, and uses the life cycle assessment method to evaluate washing and drying with heat-pump washer-dryers compared with the conventional washer-dryer. In this study, it was assumed that drying was used on 99 days per year, based on the mean number of 99 days per year with rainfall in Tokyo. Both types of washer-dryer showed high CO(2eq) emission levels for usage, with the highest levels for power consumption during drying. Compared with the conventional washer-dryer, the heat-pump washer-dryer was able to reduce CO(2eq) emissions significantly through power savings and used less water as well, although it did require the use of larger amounts of detergent. However, the largest portion of CO(2eq) emissions was attributable to the drying process, and the use of sweat-absorbent, quick-drying clothing enabled these emissions to be reduced by approximately 10%. The residual moisture content of clothing after washing and spin-drying, which significantly affects the amount of CO(2eq) emissions generated at the drying stage, depended on spin-drying times and the proportion of polyester fibres in the clothing.Given declining reliance on fossil fuels because of both their greenhouse gas emissions and depletion of reserves, renewable energy (RE) will need to become the main energy form. Most of the technical potential for RE is in intermittently available sources, mainly wind and solar. As penetration from these sources rises, conversion to another energy form, and energy storage, will be needed. Here we assume the energy carrier is hydrogen. This paper examines the consequences for net energy output over time for various rates of growth of wind-hydrogen systems. Wind energy is chosen for this case study because its output is presently far greater than solar, and because its costs are lower. We find that high growth rates of turbine-hydrogen installations lead to 'boom and bust' cycles in both equipment manufacture, and in net energy output. The main reason for these cycles is that such systems have high up-front input energy costs. To avoid these large swings, the rate of installation will have to be cut back, which limits the rate at which energy alternatives can supplant fossil fuels. Copyright (C) 2010, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The exploration of life-cycle energy use and environmental effects from U. S. water infrastructure has been limited in spite of the strong connection between energy and water use. This research presents a methodology for quantifying the life-cycle energy consumption and associated air emissions from water supply, treatment, and distribution. A decision-support tool, the Water-Energy Sustainability Tool (WEST), has been developed to aid such analysis. WEST calculates the environmental effects of material production, including the supply chain, material delivery and transportation, construction and maintenance equipment use, energy production, and sludge disposal. Deterministic and probabilistic results for a California case study utility are provided to show the tool's capabilities. Results indicate that producing a million liters of water consumes 5.4 GJ and produces 390 kg of CO(2)-equivalent greenhouse gases. Energy production is the most significant activity (50%), but material production, especially for treatment chemicals, is also important (37%). This case study is contrasted with two previously published case study utilities, and the reasons for the range of results are analyzed. The results demonstrate that estimating water supply's energy needs and emissions without a life-cycle lens can underestimate the total effects significantly. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000036. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.Considering the volume of concrete produced and the number of concrete structures built, the problem of the associated environmental impact forms a significant part of the entire global problem of sustainable development. Utilization of environmentally optimized concrete structures thus creates a potential for increasing the quality of construction and consequently a reduction of the environmental impact. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is a complex, multi-parametric assessment of the environmental impact of the structure over its whole life cycle. It covers, in one assessment process, all the essential environmental issues, including CO(2) emissions, energy consumption, water consumption, waste generation, etc. In the case of concrete, selected criteria should support the design and construction of high-quality and at the same time environmentally friendly concrete structures. The principal problem is to collect relevant environmental input data for specific concrete types plus transport and production processes which can be used in the LCA procedure.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become a vital tool in determining the sustainability of bioenergy. Matthew Aylott, Adrian Higson, Geraint Evans, Alison Hamer - from the UK's National Non-Food Crops Centre - and Nigel Mortimer - North Energy Associates - explain how the assumptions we make and the method by which emissions are allocated in LCAs can have serious impacts on the conclusions we come to; conclusions which will shape the growth of the bioenergy sector. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdGrass biomethane surpasses the 60% greenhouse gas (GHG) savings relative to the fossil fuel replaced required by EU Directive 2009/28/EC. However, there are growing concerns that when the indirect effects of biofuels are taken into account, GHG savings may become negative. There has been no research to date into the indirect effects of grass biomethane; this paper aims to fill that knowledge gap. A causal-descriptive assessment is carried out and identifies the likely indirect effect of a grass biomethane industry in Ireland as a reduction in beef exports to the UK. Three main scenarios are then analyzed: an increase in indigenous UK beef production, an increase in beef imported to the UK from other countries (EU, New Zealand and Brazil), and a decrease in beef consumption leading to increased poultry consumption. The GHG emissions from each of these scenarios are determined and the resulting savings relative to fossil diesel vary between -636% and 102%. The significance of the findings is then discussed. It is the view of the authors that, while consideration of indirect effects is important, an Irish grass biomethane industry cannot be held accountable for the associated emissions. A global GHG accounting system is therefore proposed; however, the difficulty of implementing such a system is acknowledged, as is its probable ineffectualness. Such a system would not treat the source of the problem - rising consumption. The authors conclude that the most effective method of combating the indirect effects of biofuels is a reduction in general consumption. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe oil price instability and the measures taken to reduce the increase in greenhouse gas emissions are the main factors promoting the development and use of environmentally friendly energies. From an energy efficiency point of view, biofuels constitute a renewable energy source and its use helps to reduce energy dependency on fossil fuels. The most used biofuels for transport worldwide are biodiesel (BD) and bioethanol. However, there are other options such as straight vegetable oil (SVO). SVO can be small-scale produced in local cooperatives through pressing, filtering and conditioning processes which are much simpler than the ones required for BD production. In this study a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of two biofuels obtained from Spanish rapeseed, namely small-scale SVO and large-scale BD, is performed. The LCA methodology allows the two biofuels' production and their rate of consumption in a vehicle (a truck) to be compared. In this manner, it is possible to assess which is environmentally advantageous: to use SVO directly as biofuel or to convert it to BD. Moreover, LCA is used in the study to calculate the energy return on investment index (EROI) and an energy conversion ratio to evaluate which biofuel is more energy efficient. The obtained results show the environmental benefits of using SVO instead of BD by analyzing representative impact categories defined by the CML and EDIP methods. A sensitivity analysis has also been conducted. EROI indexes for SVO and BD production show a clear preference for SVO as compared to BD. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The most well-known reason of global warming is equivalent carbon dioxide (CO(2equ)) emitted from fossil fuels combustion in on-road and off-road vehicles. An appreciable portion of off-road pollution is allocated to farm implements. All cited studies have shown that renewable based electric vehicles (EVs) decrease petroleum consumption and consequently reduce criteria emissions under nearly all circumstances. Considering this, a Solar Assist Plug-in Hybrid electric Tractor (SAPHT) was designed, constructed and evaluated. This research evaluated the life cycle analysis of SAPHT project and compared the results with that of an internal combustion engine tractor (ICET). The life cycle was analyzed based on economical cost and environmental emissions. The externality of environmental pollutions was calculated to derive the life-cycle costs (LCC). The results showed that substituting each ICET by SAPHT can prevent 14 ton CO(2equ) emission to atmosphere annually. Also it prevents a high volume of other emissions such as CO, NO(x) and PM(10) entering the atmosphere. LCC assessment emphasizes on economical effectiveness of SAPHT rather than ICET at any diesel fuel price, therefore, increasing fuel unit prices leads to more effectiveness. It is concluded that levelized cost of energy (LCE) in (sic)/kW h for ICET is almost twice as that of SAPHT. Some of these advantages for SAPHT are offset in part by high purchase costs, heavy and massive batteries and low operating range. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, untreated and treated jute fiber composites were investigated as candidates to replace glass fibers as reinforcement to produce structural composites with better environmental performance. The surface of the jute fibers was modified by drying and bleaching/drying treatments to improve the wetting behavior of the apolar polyester, improving the mechanical properties of the composites. The mechanical characterization of the composites was obtained according to the ASTM standards (D-3039/D-790) and dynamic mechanical analysis. The environmental characterization was obtained by life-cycle assessment method. The treatment characterization was obtained by horizontal attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetry. Finally, jute composites were compared with glass composites and results show that the jute fiber treatments imply a significant increase of the mechanical properties of the composites without damaging their environmental performances.Life cycle considerations as a base for assessment of the sustainability of road bridges. Life cycle considerations are important for the assessment of the sustainability of constructions. Taking the life cycle into account it is not only possible to determine single environmental impacts and investment costs arising during the construction of buildings, but also to assess the consecutive ecological and economical impacts. The aim of this study was to define a consistent average value for ecological as well as economical impacts of road bridges by evaluating two viaducts and two overcrossings. This article deals with the determination of those reference values and presents an approach how to deal with the recycling potential of materials within the life cycle assessment.This article uses life-cycle assessment to evaluate the role of long-life pavements in achieving environmental goals. The success of such pavements in reducing environmental impacts over their life cycle hinges on their ability to serve their intended purpose for their design life. Those pavements that do serve for their entire design life offer extreme longevity at only a marginal environmental cost. However, the return on the initial environmental investment occurs after many decades of use and is often beyond conventional analysis periods. Evolving performance expectations and demand create uncertainty regarding the ability of long-life pavements to reach environmental goals because time-dependent factors, such as technology shifts and functional obsolescence, affect their ability to serve for their entire design life. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food and drink products are the basis of life. However, it is recognised that their supply also contributes to the environmental impacts associated with production and consumption. Recently, an increasing number of food chain partners and public authorities have introduced a widening range of initiatives to provide information about the environmental performance of food and drink products. These initiatives show a high degree of diversity in terms of their chosen scope, assessment methodologies and means of communication, which has the potential to confuse or even mislead consumers and other stakeholders. In this context, the European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Round Table was launched by food supply chain partners and the European Commission with the vision of promoting a science-based, coherent approach to sustainable consumption and production in the European food sector. This article presents this European initiative by introducing its Guiding Principles and summarizing the proceedings of the scientific workshop held in Ispra on 14-15 June 2010. The aim of the workshop was to identify scientific inputs for developing the harmonised framework methodology for assessing the environmental issues of food and drink products. In this context, the main purpose was to provide a common understanding of what is involved in reliable and robust environmental assessments of the food chain, current limitations, and how to go from detailed assessments to more focused criteria, guidance and tools. The current experiences presented in the workshop demonstrate that much advancement has already been made towards the measurement and management of the environmental performance of food and drink products. Detailed methodologies and tools are already being used by various players. According to the workshop speakers, the definition of methodological choices concerning the functional unit, system boundaries, cut-off criteria, allocation rules and environmental impact categories are some of the key issues to be fixed in the harmonised framework methodology. The Round Table process has the potential to make a substantial contribution to the sustainable consumption and production of food and drink products. This model might be proposed and reiterated for other sectors as well.Among other regional impact categories in LCA, land use still lacks a suitable assessment method regarding the least developed "soil ecological quality" impact pathway. The goals of this study are to scope the framework addressing soil ecological functions and to improve the development of regionalized characterization factors (CFs). A spatially explicit approach was developed and illustrated for the Canadian context using three different regional scales and for which the extent of spatial variability was assessed. A model framework based on the multifunctional character of soil and the ecosystem services defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is suggested. This framework includes land use impacts on soil ecological quality evaluated regarding the change in soil capacity to fulfill a range of soil ecological functions. Four impact indicators, namely erosion resistance, groundwater recharge, mechanical, and physicochemical filtration, proposed by the functional method of Baitz (2002), were used to assess three major degraded regulating services: erosion regulation, freshwater regulation, and water purification. Spatially differentiated CFs were calculated based on the principles proposed by the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative for two Canadian spatial models (15 ecozones, 193 ecoregions) along with a non-spatial one (one generic). Seven representative land use types were tested. Using the ecozone-based scale, an overall result comparison between the non-spatial and spatial models indicates significant differences between ranges across land use types and results up to four times larger than what the generic scale can capture. This highlights the importance of introducing a regionalized assessment. When considering the impacts from a specific land use type, such as urban land use, generic CFs fail to adequately represent spatial CFs because they tend to be highly dependent on the biogeographical conditions of the location. When comparing all three resolution scales, CF results calculated using the ecoregions spatial scale generally show a larger spread across each land use type. Interesting variations and extreme scenarios are revealed which could not be observed using a coarser scale-based model such as the ecozone resolution scheme. This work demonstrates the accomplishment of developing spatially differentiated CFs addressing impacts of different land use types on soil ecological functions. For a large territorial area spreading over many biomes, such as Canada, accounting for ecological unit boundaries proves to be necessary since the generic scale is not sufficiently representative. An evaluation of the extent of spatial differentiation emphasized the influence on the variability of regionalized CFs.There has been an increased interest in utilizing renewable energy sources in district heating systems. District heating systems are centralized systems that provide heat for residential and commercial buildings in a community. While various renewable and conventional energy sources can be used in such systems, many stakeholders are interested in choosing the feasible option with the least environmental impacts. This paper evaluates and compares environmental burdens of alternative energy source options for the base-load of a district heating center in Vancouver, British Columbia (BC) using the life cycle assessment method. The considered energy sources include natural gas, wood pellet, sewer heat, and ground heat. The life cycle stages considered in the LCA model cover all stages from fuel production, fuel transmission/transportation, construction, operation, and finally demolition of the district heating system. The impact categories were analyzed based on the IMPACT 2002+ method. On a life-cycle basis, the global warming effect of renewable energy options were at least 200 kgeqCO2 less than that of the natural gas option per MWh of heat produced by the base-load system. It was concluded that less than 25% of the upstream global warming impact associated with the wood pellet energy source option was due to transportation activities and about 50% of that was resulted from wood pellet production processes. In comparison with other energy options, the wood pellets option has higher impacts on respiratory of inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, acidification, and nutrification categories. Among renewable options, the global warming impact of heat pump options in the studied case in Vancouver, BC, were lower than the wood pellet option due to BC's low carbon electricity generation profile. Ozone layer depletion and mineral extraction were the highest for the heat pump options due to extensive construction required for these options. Natural gas utilization as the primary heat source for district heat production implies environmental complications beyond just the global warming impacts. Diffusing renewable energy sources for generating the base-load district heat would reduce human toxicity, ecosystem quality degradation, global warming, and resource depletion compared to the case of natural gas. Reducing fossil fuel dependency in various stages of wood pellet production can remarkably reduce the upstream global warming impact of using wood pellets for district heat generation.The paper presents a discussion on the possibilities of using LCA in identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems based on the requirements of the international ISO14001 standard and the European Union EMAS regulation. Some modifications of LCA methodology are proposed in Part 1 while the results of a review of environmental aspects for 36 organisations with implemented EMS are presented in Part 2 of the article. The scope of the systems analysed in EMS and in LCA is different. This comes as the result of the fact that both ISO 14001 and EMAS are focused on an organisation on contrary to ISO14040x which are focused on a product life cycle. For the present work, this resulted in a need of adjusting the LCA methodology to EMS specificity and vice versa. Some suggestions of such modifications are presented and discussed in the paper. A preliminary analysis was carried out on 36 organisations which have environmental management systems compliant with the ISO14001 or EMAS regulations. A certain disproportion between input and output related environmental aspects included in most of the analysed registers was found. The probable reasons for such disproportion could be the fact that the output related environmental aspects are easier to manage by organisation and are often regulated by laws. Legal requirements are a significant criterion in the environmental aspects assessment. Based on the assessments carried out and the observations made, some conclusions have been drawn with regard to weaknesses and strengths and usefulness of LCA, as a result of a comparison to the traditional approaches used in EMS in the discussed area. LCA has evident advantages like: standardised methodology, possibility of inclusion of the quantitative information, presence of some methodological steps enabling the verification of the collected data, and ability to generate of reproducible results. At the same time, the following potential weak points can be observed: a complexity of the procedure, higher time, and cost requirements (especially related to an inventory phase); difficulties with assessing of environmental aspects with the qualitative character and these related to emergency situations; and limitation related to the lack of relevant characterisation factors in the currently used life cycle impact assessment methods. LCA ought to be considered as a tool used for identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems. The listed limitations do not disqualify its suitability to be used. After certain simplifications, LCA seems to be a valuable alternative to the methodologies currently in use.The use of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer matrix composites is gaining momentum with the pressure to lightweight vehicles; however energy intensity and cost remain major barriers to the wide-scale adoption of this material for automotive applications. This study determines the relative life cycle benefits of two precursor types (conventional textile-type acrylic fibers and renewable-based lignin), part manufacturing technologies (conventional SMC and P4), and a fiber recycling technology. A representative automotive part, i.e., a 30.8-kg steel floor pan having a 17% weight reduction potential with stringent crash performance requirements, has been considered for the life cycle energy and emissions analysis. Four scenarios-combinations of the precursor types and manufacturing technologies-are compared to the stamped steel baseline part. The analysis finds the lignin-based part made through P4 technology to offer the greatest life cycle energy and CO(2) emissions benefits. Carbon fiber production is estimated to be about 14 times more energy-intensive than conventional steel production; however, life cycle primary energy use is estimated to be quite similar to the conventional part, i.e., 18,500 MJ/part, especially when considering the uncertainty in LCI data that exist from using numerous sources in the literature. The sensitivity analysis concludes that with a 20% reduction in energy use in the conversion of lignin to carbon fiber and no energy use incurred in lignin production since lignin is a by-product of ethanol and paper production, a 30% reduction in life cycle energy use could be obtained. A similar level of life cycle energy savings could also be obtained with a higher part weight reduction potential of 43%.When substance substitution is implemented to reduce the target risk of production processes, countervailing risks may occur. The goal of this study is to analyze the risk trade-off relationships between organic solvents and aqueous agents in the case study of metal cleaning processes. Global environmental impacts and local risks were evaluated for the eight scenarios by life cycle and risk assessments, respectively. The results show that the contribution of the processes using chlorinated solvents to photochemical ozone creation, human toxicity, ozone depletion, and ecotoxicity was larger than processes using aqueous detergents, while the contribution of aqueous processes to eutrophication was larger than chlorinated processes. Neighbors' health risk around a cleaning site using chlorinated solvents was sufficiently small in all scenarios, whereas ecological risk due to surfactants which are contained in aqueous detergents and emitted to the local aquatic environment should be reduced. Cleansing agents and process facilities should be selected on the basis of the comprehensive analysis of risk trade-off relationships for feasible and cleaner production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the publicity of nanotechnologies in high tech industries including the photovoltaic sector, their life-cycle energy use and related environmental impacts are understood only to a limited degree as their production is mostly immature. We investigated the life-cycle energy implications of amorphous silicon (a-Si) PV designs using a nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) bottom layer in the context of a comparative, prospective life-cycle analysis framework. Three R&D options using nc-Si bottom layer were evaluated and compared to the current triple-junction a-Si design, i.e., a-Si/a-SiGe/a-SiGe. The life-cycle energy demand to deposit nc-Si was estimated from parametric analyses of film thickness, deposition rate, precursor gas usage, and power for generating gas plasma. We found that extended deposition time and increased gas usages associated to the relatively high thickness of nc-Si lead to a larger primary energy demand for the nc-Si bottom layer designs, than the current triple-junction a-Si. Assuming an 8% conversion efficiency, the energy payback time of those R& D designs will be 0.7-0.9 years, close to that of currently commercial triple-junction a-Si design, 0.8 years. Future scenario analyses show that if nc-Si film is deposited at a higher rate (i.e., 2-3 nm/s), and at the same time the conversion efficiency reaches 10%, the energy-payback time could drop by 30%. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Comparative analysis of the energy and carbon balances of wood vs. non-wood products is a complex issue. In this paper we discuss the definition of an appropriate functional unit and the establishment of effective system boundaries in terms of activity, time and space, with an emphasis on the comparison of buildings. The functional unit can be defined at the level of building component, complete building, or services provided by the built environment. Energy use or carbon emissions per unit of mass or volume of material is inadequate as a functional unit because equal masses or volumes of different materials do not fulfil the same function. Activity-based system boundaries include life cycle processes such as material production, product operation, and post-use material management. If the products compared are functionally equivalent, such that the impacts occurring during the operation phase are equal, we suggest that this phase may be dropped from the analysis allowing a focus on material flows. The use of wood co-products as biofuel can be analytically treated through system expansion, and compared to an alternative of providing the same energy service with fossil fuels. The assumed production of electricity used for material processing is another important energy-related issue, and we suggest that using marginal production data is more appropriate than average production. Temporal system boundaries include such aspects of the wood life cycle as the dynamics of forest growth including regeneration and saturation, the availability of residue biofuels at different times, and the duration of carbon storage in products. The establishment of spatial boundaries can be problematic, because using wood-based materials instead of non-wood materials requires more land area to capture solar energy and accumulate biomass. We discuss several possible approaches to meet this challenge, including the intensification of land use to increase the time rate of biomass production. Finally, we discuss issues related to scaling up an analysis of wood substitution from the micro-level to the macro-level of national, regional or global.In order to manage strategies to curb climate change, systemic benchmarking at a variety of production scales and methods is needed. This study is the first life cycle assessment (LCA) of a large-scale, vertically integrated organic dairy in the United States. Data collected at Aurora Organic Dairy farms and processing facilities were used to build a LCA model for benchmarking the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption across the entire milk production system, from organic feed production to post-consumer waste disposal. Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for the entire system (averaged over two years of analysis) were 18.3 MJ per liter of packaged fluid milk and 2.3 kg CO(2) equiv per liter of packaged fluid milk, respectively. Methane emissions from enteric fermentation and manure management account for 27% of total system GHG emissions. Transportation represents 29% of the total system energy use and 15% of the total GHG emissions. Utilization of renewable energy at the farms, processing plant, and major transport legs could lead to a 16% reduction in system energy use and 6.4% less GHG emissions. Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis reveal that alternative meat coproduct allocation methods can lead to a 2.2% and 7.5% increase in overall system energy and GHG, respectively. Feed inventory data source can influence system energy use by -1% to +10% and GHG emission by -4.6% to +9.2%, and uncertainties in diffuse emission factors contribute -13% to +25% to GHG emission.Experiments were done employing cane particles obtained from sugarcane at different growth stages until maturation in order to estimate the sugarcane growth stage where production of ethanol and carbohydrate consumption were optimized. The non-flowering cane variety NA56 was cultivated and samples taken at different time intervals for two consecutive years. Two Saccharomyces cerevisae strains were selected from four strains initially compared. Sucrose was poorly consumed in young cane which was an unexpected result. Fructose on the other hand was the hexose that remained in the medium at the end of fermentations especially when using mature sugarcane. There was an increasing trend in ethanol production as a function of DAP (days after planting) as expected, however a plateau was reached after 225 DAP and the maximum value obtained was between 300 and 325 DAP. The NA56 cane variety is usually harvested around 350 DAP for commercial sugar production. Hence a difference of approximately 25 days less in the field might be needed for maximum ethanol production. On the other hand, it was clear from the data that cane harvesting for ethanol production should not be done after the recommended DAP for commercial sugar production. If this is done, the excess fructose present will not be completely utilized by yeast. Finally it was found that yeasts showing more affinity to sugarcane fibers showed better ethanol yields in all the DAP interval. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change has made environmental impact a factor of growing importance in decision making for municipalities. Increasingly, the environmental impacts of expanding and operating a water distribution system (WDS) are considered alongside the cost and hydraulic design. This paper presents a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) that minimizes capital costs, annual pumping energy use, and environmental impacts in WDS design that adheres to hydraulic constraints. A previously developed environmental impact (EI) index is included in the environmental objective function of the optimization program. The EI index normalizes and aggregates multiple environmental measures evaluated with an economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) model. The EIO-LCA-based NSGA-II was applied to the Anytown network. Annual pumping energy use was found to dominate the EI index while capital cost and the EI index were inversely related, and the annual pumping energy use and the EI index followed a near linear relationship. The location and shape of the Pareto fronts were sensitive to demand and roughness coefficient (C-factor) adjustments with greater sensitivity observed for changes in demand than changes in the C-factor. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000101. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) is an environmental accounting system, in physical unit, able to quantify the total amount of ecosystem resources required by a region or by a production process. This methodology is both scientifically robust and widely diffused for territorial and productive analysis. The application of EFA to agricultural systems are still uncommon and examples in the fruit sector rare. In this work a detailed application of EFA to an experimental trial in a commercial nectarine orchard in Piedmont (Italy) is presented. The field trial is focused on the evaluation of agronomical benefit of various kinds of swine manure for fertilizing orchards. Four productive systems were established from 2008: liquid slurry (LS), covered slurry (CS), solid fraction (SF), mineral nutrition (MN). All the environmental impacts of the four systems were quantified both directly on field and with extrapolations from farmer knowledge. As previous studies suggested, we considered not only the one-year field operations, but also the whole lifetime of the orchard. The environmental costs of each system are presented and related to each other on the basis of their relative footprint value. Results highlight almost the same ecological footprint for the three manure fertilized systems (LS, CS and SF) with average of 0.96 gha t(-1)) and the highest ecological footprint can be found in the MN system (1.14 gha t(-1)). Interesting remarks can be done comparing the contributions to the ecological footprint of the field operations related to fertilization in the four systems. In the manure fertilized systems the fertilizer contribution goes from 0.9% to 1.2% of the total ecological footprint; but in the MN system the fertilizer contribution is 6.6% of the total ecological footprint. Results support the hypothesis that internal recycle and connections among different systems increasingly resulted in high system benefit and sustainability. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of structural aircraft materials has been utilised to assess and compare the total emissions produced during manufacturing, use and disposal of aerospace materials and their selected components. First, a comparison of aluminium, GLARE and carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates was performed to investigate the potential of lightweight composites in reducing aviation emissions. Subsequently, a case study is presented on a tubular component for which more accurate manufacturing data were directly available. A structural steel tube was replaced with a composite tubular component. The analysis has shown that once the composite material is used as a component in the aircraft, there is a cumulative saving of aircraft fuel and emissions, in particular from CFRP structures. The environmental analysis included the long-term use predictions for CFRPs, involving detailed raw materials production, use and operation, and disposal scenarios.Within national greenhouse gas inventories, many countries now use widely-accepted methodologies to track carbon that continues to be stored in wood products and landfills after its removal from the forest. Beyond simply tracking post-harvest wood carbon, expansion of this pool has further been suggested as a potential climate change mitigation strategy. This paper summarizes data on the fate of carbon through the wood processing chain and on greenhouse gas emissions generated by processing, transport, use and disposal of wood. As a result of wood waste and decomposition, the carbon stored long-term in harvested wood products may be a small proportion of that originally stored in the standing trees-across the United States approximately 1% may remain in products in-use and 13% in landfills at 100 years post-harvest. Related processing and transport emissions may in some cases approach the amount of CO(2)e stored in long-lived solid wood products. Policies that promote wood product carbon storage as a climate mitigation strategy must assess full life-cycle impacts, address accounting uncertainties, and balance multiple public values derived from forests.In this study in-situ measurements of sound propagating over flat extensive green roofs are presented for 5 cases Measurements were performed Just before and just after the placement of the green roof (under dry conditions) with an identical source-receiver configuration in both situations allowing a direct estimate of the acoustical effect Situations involving a single and double diffraction over the green roof were considered for substrate thicknesses ranging from 20-30 mm to 180 mm and for vegetation cover ranging from absence to 100% The green roof acoustic effect was analyzed for propagation path lengths interacting with the roofs ranging from 2 5 m to 25 m Measurements show that green roofs might lead to consistent and significant sound reduction at locations where only diffracted sound waves arrive relative to common non-vegetated roofs A single diffraction case with an acoustic green roof improvement exceeding 10 dB was found for sound frequencies between 400 Hz and 1250 Hz although the green roof interaction path length was only 45 m For less shielded receivers a change in interference pattern might be observed leading to positive or negative effects relative to a non-vegetated roof top For the double diffraction cases the green roof improvement is less frequency-dependent and a case with positive effects up to 10 dB was found (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedPoliticians and policymakers are searching for alternatives for current energy conversion systems in order to reduce environmental pollution whilst preserving scarce natural resources. When defining new alternatives it is important to find out how environmentally friendly and sustainable these alternatives are, and which of them will ensure a major improvement in environmental issue. To answer such questions the present work proposes a new type of indicator based on exergy life cycle data. Alternative energy routes towards different services and commodities are compared in terms of environmental impact and indirect natural resource costs. Two case studies are presented using data from the Ecoinvent database (v2.01 2007) to compare alternatives to petrol transport and fuel oil power generation. The alternative transport routes assessed were methanol and biogas fueled cars, and wind electricity in the case of power generation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to compare the environmental profile of a semi-indirect ceramic evaporative cooler (SIEC) with low environmental impact and heat pipe (HP) heat-exchanger battery with that of a Split class heat pump. The comparison is carried out for two different climate areas in Spain, one a continental or inland climate (Valladolid) and the other representative of a Western European climate (Bilbao). The environmental and economic study is conducted using life cycle assessment (LCA) with two software tools provided by SimaPro (R) 7.1 LCA suite (Eco-indicator'99 (R) and EPS 2000 (R)). After the LCA sensitivity analysis results it can be clearly inferred that the major contribution to the categories of damage in both facilities (SIEC and heat pump) is the class of abiotic resources, followed by human health. The high contribution to environmental impact of the evaporative condenser, part of the SIEC-HP, should also be emphasized. With regard to the heat pump, electricity proves to be the main environmental burden, followed by the pump infrastructure, in which the compressor, the external battery, the external fan and the connection have the highest impacts, respectively. The ceramic evaporative cooler SIEC-HP is both environmentally and economically more profitable than the heat pump in the region of Castilla y Leon (Valladolid), whereas in humid coastal areas it proves less useful due to the higher operating costs associated to this equipment. Finally, the electricity savings expressed in CO2 emissions are compared. In the inland or dry area of Spain, the ceramic evaporative cooler is the most suitable option, whilst the heat pump proves more appropriate for cities with a humid climate such as those in the Basque Country (Bilbao). (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life-cycle assessment (LCA) of corn ethanol was conducted to determine the reduction in the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for corn ethanol compared to gasoline by integrating biomass fuels to replace fossil fuels (natural gas and grid electricity) in a U.S. Midwest dry-grind corn ethanol plant producing 0.19 hm(3) y(-1) of denatured ethanol. The biomass fuels studied are corn stover and ethanol co-products [dried distillers grains with solubles (DOGS), and syrup (solubles portion of DDGS)]. The biomass conversion technologies/systems considered are process heat (PH) only systems, combined heat and power (CHP) systems, and biomass integrated gasification combined cycle (BIGCC) systems. The life-cycle GHG emission reduction for corn ethanol compared to gasoline is 38.9% for PH with natural gas, 57.7% for PH with corn stover, 79.1% for CHP with corn stover, 78.2% for IGCC with natural gas, 119.0% for BIGCC with corn stover, and 111.4% for BIGCC with syrup and stover. These GHG emission estimates do not include indirect land use change effects. GHG emission reductions for CHP, IGCC, and BIGCC include power sent to the grid which replaces electricity from coal. BIGCC results in greater reductions in GHG emissions than IGCC with natural gas because biomass is substituted for fossil fuels. In addition, underground sequestration of CO2 gas from the ethanol plant's fermentation tank could further reduce the life-cycle GHG emission for corn ethanol by 32% compared to gasoline. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioenergy and energy crops are an important part of the UK's renewable energy strategy to reach its greenhouse gas reduction target of 80% by 2050. Ensuring the sustainability of biomass feedstocks requires a greater understanding of all aspects of energy crop production, their ecological impacts and yields. This work compares the life-cycle environmental impact of natural gas and biomass from two energy crop systems grown under typical UK agronomic practice. As reported in previous studies the energy crops provide significant reductions in global warming potential (GWP) compared to natural gas. Compared to no fertiliser application, applying inorganic fertiliser increases the GWP by 2% and applying sewage sludge increases the GWP by a lesser extent. In terms of an equivalent GWP savings per unit area of land, the emissions associated with fertiliser production and application can be offset by a yield increase of <0.2 t/ha. However, very large increases in eutrophication and acidification levels are incurred compared to the natural gas reference case when applying either fertiliser. For sewage sludge the impact of varying the allocation factor between the function of wastewater treatment and that of crop growth is also illustrated. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays, there is a tremendous global interest in the biofuels production. However, first generation biofuels have been debated about that energy-crop compete with food crops and thus cause food deficiency and price increases. In this sense, researchers have started looking for potential feedstock for ethanol such as lignocellulosic biomass (e.g., sugarcane bagasse), which does not affect food security. In this paper, the integrated use of sugarcane bagasse is analyzed as raw material for second generation of biofuels production. This case study implements a design and process integration to compare several biorefinery topologies using the typical mass flow rate of residual biomass produced by the sugar industry (1200 ton per day). Based on evaluation of chemical composition of bagasse (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) several process schemes for integral utilization of biomass were proposed. This paper is the first part of the study on the exergy, life cycle analysis (LCA) and economic analysis of sugarcane bagasse for sustainable biofuels production using Aspen Plus (TM) software. Part 1 presents the exergy and life cycle analysis developed while part 2 describes economic analysis and selection of an optimal configuration with minimal environmental impact, by means of the combined use of raw material and energy integration.This paper presents for the first time a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of electricity generation in Mexico. The electricity mix in Mexico is dominated by fossil fuels, which contribute around 79% to the total primary energy; renewable energies contribute 16.5% (hydropower 13.5%, geothermal 3% and wind 0.02%) and the remaining 4.8% is from nuclear power. The LCA results show that 225 TWh of electricity generate about 129 million tonnes of CO2 eq. per year, of which the majority (87%) is due to the combustion of fossil fuels. The renewables and nuclear contribute only 1.1% to the total CO2 eq. Most of the other LCA impacts are also attributed to the fossil fuel options. The results have been compared with values reported for other countries with similar electricity mix, including Italy, Portugal and the UK, showing good agreement. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Alternative uses of waste for energy production become increasingly interesting when considered from two perspectives, that of waste management and the energy system perspective. This paper presents the results of an enquiry into the use of waste in a future energy system. The analysis was performed using the energy system analysis model, Balmorel. The study is focused on Germany and the Nordic countries and demonstrates the optimization of both investments and production within the energy systems. The results present cost optimization excluding taxation concerning the use of waste for energy production in Denmark in a 2025 scenario with 48% renewable energy. Investments in a range of waste conversion technologies are facilitated, including waste incineration, co-combustion with coal, anaerobic digestion, and gasification. The most economically feasible solutions are found to be incineration of mixed waste, anaerobic digestion of organic waste, and gasification of part of the potential RDF (refuse derived fuel) for CHP (combined heat and power) production, while the remaining part is co-combusted with coal. Co-combustion mainly takes place in new coal-fired power plants, allowing investments to increase in comparison with a situation where only investments in waste incineration are allowed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We compare the production of four biofuels - ethanol, butanol, fatty acid ethyl ester (palmitate ethyl ester, PEE), and hydrogen from renewable carbohydrate (glucose) based on the energy-retaining efficiency that is greatly influenced by thermodyanimcs, bioenergetics, and product separation. Ethanol and butanol are produced in anaerobic fermentations; PEE is produced in semi-aerobic fermentation; hydrogen is produced by cell-free synthetic enzymatic pathway biotransformation (SyPaB), where enzymes are produced from carbohydrate by microbial fermentations. A decreasing order in theoretical energy efficiency determined by thermodynamics is hydrogen, ethanol, butanol, and PEE. Bioenergetics analysis suggests that a small fraction of carbohydrate (e.g., 5-15%) is allocated to the synthesis of cell mass in anaerobic fermentations (e.g., ethanol and butanol), a significant fraction (e. g., 20-30% or higher) has to be allocated to the synthesis of cell mass for semi-aerobic fermentations (e.g., PEE production), and a very small fraction (e.g., less than 1%) is used to produce the enzyme mixtures. A decreasing order in product separation energy is hydrogen, secreted PEE, ethanol, butanol, and intracellular PEE. Hydrogen production by SyPaB would be most appealing because its energy-retaining efficiency is similar to 49% higher than ethanol, similar to 55% higher than butanol, and similar to 87% higher than PEE, even without considering higher hydrogen-fuel cell efficiency than those of biofuel-internal combustion engines. Our analysis suggests that it may be difficult to produce some advanced biofuels economically through aerobic fermentations due to low energy efficiency, as compared to ethanol, butanol, and hydrogen.European governments see that heat pumps could reduce carbon emissions in space- and hot-water heating. EU's Renewable Energy Directive designates heat pumps as renewable - eligible for various subsidies - if their carbon footprints are below an implied, average threshold. This threshold omits carbon generated by manufacture and emission of a heat-pump's fluorocarbon refrigerant. It also omits the footprint of the heat pump's hardware. To see if these omissions are significant, this study calculated carbon footprints of representative, residential heat pumps in the UK. Three findings emerged. First, in relation to power generation, which accounts for most of a heat-pump's greenhouse-gas emissions, fluorocarbons add another 20% to the footprint. Second, at UK efficiencies a heat-pump footprint (in kg CO(2)e emitted per kWh delivered) is comparable or higher than footprints of gaseous fuels used in heating. It is lower than the footprint of heating oil and far lower than the footprints of solid fuels. Third, production and disposal of a heat pump's hardware is relatively insignificant, accounting for only 2-3% of the overall heat-pump footprint. Sensitivities to the results were assessed: key factors are footprint of electricity generation, F-gas composition and leak rates and type of wall construction. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.How to wean humanity off the use of fossil fuels continues to receive much attention but how to replace these fuels with renewable sources of energy has become a contentious field of debate as well as research, which often reflects economic and political factors rather than scientific good sense. It is clear that not every advertized energy source can lead to a sustainable, humane and environment-friendly path out of a future energy crisis. Our proposal is based on two assertions: that the use of food crops for biofuels is immoral, and that for this purpose using land suitable for growing crops productively is to be avoided. We advocate a focus on new "extremophile" crops. These would either be wild species adapted to extreme environments which express genes, developmental processes and metabolic pathways that distinguish them from traditional crops or existing crops genetically modified to withstand extreme environments. Such extremophile energy crops (EECs), will be less susceptible to stresses in a changing global environment and provide higher yields than existing crops. Moreover, they will grow on land that has never been valuable for agriculture or is no longer so, owing to centuries or millennia of imprudent exploitation. Such a policy will contribute to striking a balance between ecosystem protection and human resource management. Beyond that, rather than bulk liquid fuel generation, combustion of various biomass sources including extremophiles for generating electrical energy, and photovoltaics-based capture of solar energy, are superbly suitable candidates for powering the world in the future. Generating electricity and efficient storage capacity is quite possibly the only way for a sustainable post-fossil and, indeed, post-biofuel fuel economy.Energy production and consumption cause environmental and human health damages. Their exclusion by the market leads to inefficient resource allocations. Because of weak market regimes in developing countries, the conventional development pathways overlook these inefficiencies. A sustainable energy system would need to ameliorate this adverse trend while maintaining the equilibrium path that represents true life-cycle cost of energy resources. This paper considers life cycle analysis (LCA) for full accounting of externalities of energy use with specific focus on electricity sector. The LCA is carried out for major energy resources and technologies. The dynamic equilibrium analysis is carried out, spanning period up to year 2050 using an energy system model, ANSWER-MARKAL. The results show that the shift to an efficient frontier can be made at a very low cost by introduction of technologies that mitigate local air pollutants like SO2, NOx and SPM. Internalization of these local externalities too results in co-benefits including reduction in carbon intensity of energy. In addition, the inclusion of life carbon price in life cycle equilibrium leads to further reduction in carbon emissions, besides also delivering the local air quality co-benefits. Our results show that renaissance of domestic coal in India could last so far as national policymakers are concerned with local pollutants. However, mitigation of CO2 emissions to achieve low stabilization target would significantly shift the energy system equilibrium, notwithstanding the introduction of CCS technology. Finally, a generic lesson from our analysis is that the inclusion of all external cost of each energy technology and resource still leads to 'no silver bullet', i.e. a single dominant technology, which dominate future energy system. The energy-environment efficient frontier thus would evolve through a mix of choices from a portfolio of energy resources and technology options. The diversity of these options including their cost structures; multiple objectives of energy-environmental policies and the varied inter-linkages of energy and environmental policy dynamics call for a hybrid package of direct regulation and market based economic instruments to sustain energy-environment-economy frontier on the efficient path.Life cycle assessment studies on clothes, detergents and washing machines show that the use period is usually the most energy-demanding period during these products' life cycle, even higher than production or transportation phases. Laundering practices are constantly changing and influenced by social, cultural and moral norms. Even though the technologies in clothes cleaning have improved greatly, the length of time that consumers use for washing clothes has not been reduced. We own more clothing and wash it more frequently. This increased amount of washing counteracts the technological improvements in laundry. This paper discussed the options of changing consumer habits in clothing maintenance to a more environmentally friendly direction and attempts to evaluate which changes would be the most feasible and efficient. Laboratory trial results on washing were compared with earlier research on consumers' washing habits. Laboratory-based tests measuring cleaning effect, energy and water consumption were performed in order to evaluate the consequences of changing the washing temperature, filling grade, detergent dosage or drying method. The cleaning effect tests showed that today's detergents are suitable for low temperature washing, and by selecting an efficient detergent, the cleaning result can be better at 30 degrees C than with a less efficient detergent at 40 degrees C. When washing only slightly soiled textiles or small loads of laundry, the detergent amount can be reduced. Many textiles changed more in colour or strength if they were washed at higher temperature (60 degrees C) than at lower temperature (40 degrees C or below). Tumble-dried textiles shrank more than line dried. These facts can be used to motivate consumers to change behaviour in order to reduce the environmental impacts of textile maintenance.The main objective of this study is to combine the environmental evaluation of a basic wood box used to store wine bottles by means of the integration of two environmental methodologies: a quantitative methodology known as life cycle assessment (LCA) and a qualitative methodology which is useful in integrating environmental aspects into design, that is, the design for the environment (DfE). The LCA study covers the life cycle of wood box production from a cradle-to-gate perspective. A wood processing company located in Galicia (NW, Spain) was analysed in detail, dividing the process chain into five stages: cogeneration unit, material assembling, painting, packaging and distribution to clients. Abiotic depletion (AD), acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion (OD), photochemical oxidant formation (PO), human toxicity (HT) and toxicological impact categories (HT, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity) were the impact categories analysed in the LCA study. According to the environmental results, the assembling stage contributed more than 57% to all impact categories, followed by the cogeneration unit and packaging. Contributions from packaging are mainly due to transoceanic transport activities related to the rope distribution and wood-based materials production. In addition, it is interesting to remark that all energy requirements were produced by on-site cogeneration boilers using a non-renewable fossil fuel. Several processes were identified as hot spots in this study: medium density fibreboards (MDF) production (with large contribution to ecotoxicity categories), energy production (with contributions to AD, GW and OD) and finally, the transportation of jute fibres (the main contributor to all the impact categories). Concerning the results from the DfE, the proposed eco-design strategies were evaluated from a technological, economic and social point of view by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and enterprise's workers. The results show that the strategies with more viability of improvement were: reduction of resources used, multifunctional design, substitution of MDF by plywood, substitution of jute fibres, alternatives to the ink, optimization of energy requirement, transport alternatives for the final product and inputs distribution and definition of a protocol for disassembling the product. The results obtained in this work allow forecasting the importance of the chosen raw materials as well as their origin for the environmental burdens associated with the wood-based box manufacture. Future work will focus on the manufacturing of a prototype eco-designed wood-based box.Nanostructured polymer particles are produced to be used in ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale packaging (CSP). The technology could replace conventional BGA and CSP metal balls, and the hypothesis is that the shift could be eco-efficient as polymer core particles increase the reliability. For the first time, these particles are environmentally evaluated. The change in GWP100 and Eco-Indicator'99 (H) scores when replacing traditional component packaging, here quad flat pack to BGA/CSP, was explored both on component and printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) level. This was followed by comparisons between BGA packages using different types of metal-plated monodispersed polymer particle (MPP) balls and conventional balls, respectively. For BGAs, the silicon (Si) die dominates CO(2)e emissions, but for Eco-Indicator'99(H), solder balls are not negligible. Excluding the Si die and component assembly, the LFBGA-84 to WCSP-64 would reduce CO(2)e by about 98% and Eco-Indicator'99 (H) by about 90%. Overall, for BGA-256 using same size balls, gold-plated MPP technology decreases the Eco-Indicator'99(H) score by about 25% compared to Pb-based or Pb-free balls. Gold production dominated GWP100 and Eco-Indicator'99 (H) for the gold-plated MPP. Each microsystem is unique, and new environmental impact estimations must be done for the sub-structures of each electronic device. Screening process-sum life cycle assessment (LCA) gives similar understanding of impacts as resource productivity methods. Even though the metal mass per ball is greatly reduced, it is a weak indicator of environmental impacts which are driven by each material's specific environmental characteristics. The ball share of the BGA-256 GWP100 and Eco-Indicator'99 (H) score is small, and the BGA/CSP producers can marginally improve the environmental performance by focusing on the balls. On a comparable IC packaging basis, the introduction of WCSP packaging technology implies a significant environmental footprint reduction. On PCBA level, the contribution of BGA balls is negligible. Results for metal-plated MPP BGA balls suggest that gold usage is the key environmental performance indicator of interest. Even though WCSP clearly reduces the component level impacts, the PCBA (board) level impact could increase as the CSP miniaturisation is paralleled with more PWB layers. This effect should be included in further system expansions. For LCA, in general, update of all LCIA methods, which include ozone depletion, with the latest results for dinitrogen monoxide is needed.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to assess product development processes "from cradle to grave" for many years. With the current push toward sustainable construction, LCA has gained importance as an objective method to evaluate the environmental impact of construction practices. A substantial amount of construction-related LCA work has been published recently; however, most of this work has been fragmented and a systematic compilation of this literature has not been undertaken. This article presents a structured review of building construction-related LCA literature, classified under four categories: LCA applications for construction products selection; LCA applications for construction systems/process evaluation; LCA tools and databases related to the construction industry; and LCA methodological developments related to the construction industry. Current challenges for using LCA in construction are discussed and potential areas for future research are highlighted. This review and similar efforts may provide the construction industry and associated researchers the necessary background to make better-informed construction decisions and assist the development of an agenda for further research. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.Industrial symbiosis (IS) studies the physical flows of materials and energy in local industrial systems using a systems approach. In this study the total fuel and energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions are calculated for an 'industrial park' operating in the same manner as an IS. Moreover the relevance of industrial symbiosis, particularly one centred on pulp and paper manufacturing, in moving towards more sustainable fuel consumption and reduced greenhouse gas emissions is discussed. The system is compared to hypothetical stand-alone production. Moreover, possibilities to reduce the energy use and total greenhouse gas emissions of the park are identified. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.European consumption of wood-based panels reached record levels in recent years driven mostly by demand from end-use sectors: residential construction, furniture, cabinets, flooring and mouldings. The main panel types are composite boards such as particleboard, high density fiberboard (HDF), medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and other adhesively bonded composites such as plywood and wet-process fiberboard (hardboard). The synthetic resins used in their manufacture come from non-renewable resources, such as oil and gas. Several consequences are associated to this type of adhesives: variation in the availability and cost of these wood adhesives depends on raw materials, the formaldehyde emissions as well as the limited recyclability of the final product. Hence, in the search for alternatives to petroleum-based wood adhesives, efforts are being devoted to develop adhesives by using phenolic substitutes based on lignin, tannin or starch. In this context, the forest industry is increasingly approaching to enzyme technology in the search of solutions. The main goal of this study was to assess the environmental impacts during the life cycle of a new process for the manufacture of hardboards manufacture, considering the use of a two-component bio-adhesive formulated with a wood-based phenolic material and a phenol-oxidizing enzyme. This new product was compared to the one manufactured with the conventional phenol-formaldehyde resin. The study covers the life cycle of green hardboards production from a cradle-to-gate perspective, analysing in detail the hardboard plant and dividing the process chain in three subsystems: Fibers Preparation, Board Forming and Board Finishing. Auxiliary activities such as chemicals, bio-adhesive, wood chips, thermal energy and electricity production and transport were included within the system boundaries. Global warming (GW), photochemical oxidant formation (PO), acidification (AC) and eutrophication (EP) were the impact categories analysed in this study. Additionally, the cumulative energy demand was evaluated as another impact category. According to the results, four stages significantly influenced the environmental burdens of the production system: laccase production, on-site thermal energy and electricity production as well as wood chipping stage. Due to the environmental impact associated to the production of green bonding agents, a sensitivity analysis with special focus on the eutrophying emissions was carried out by evaluating the amount of laccase and lignin based phenolic material used. The combined reduction in both bonding agents may slightly reduce the contributions to this impact category. In addition, a hypothetical scenario with no laccase and with a higher concentration of the lignin based material (25% more) could improve the environmental profile in all impact categories with a reduction of 1.5% in EP. Further research should focus mainly on laccase production, in order to reduce its energy demand as well as on the amount of green adhesive required to obtain mechanical and swelling properties similar to those of conventional hardboard. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method regulated by ISO that conveys the environmental impact of products. LCA studies of the same product should be comparable to benefit environmental policy making. LCA of milk production has evaluated environmental issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, resource utilisation and land use change. Thirteen LCA studies of European milk production were analysed for comparability, and direct comparison was difficult due to technical issues, arbitrary choices and inconsistent assumptions. The strengths and weaknesses of LCA for evaluating an agricultural system are identified and improvements for comparability of future studies are also considered. Future LCA of milk production should ensure that: (1) the production system is appropriately characterized according to the goal of study; (2) a clear description of the system boundary and allocation procedures is provided according to ISO standards; (3) a common functional unit, probably Energy Corrected Milk, should be used or assumed fat and protein content presented to enable comparisons; (4) where appropriate, site-specific emission factors and characterization factors should be used in environmental hotspots (e.g. manure management, spreading of synthetic fertilzier, production of purchased feed), and phosphorous loss should be better addressed; (5) a range of impact categories including climate change, energy use, land use, acidification and eutrophication should be used to assess pollution swapping, all of which are subject to national or regional directives; perhaps in the future biodiversity should also be included; and (6) the sensitivity to choices of methods and uncertainty of final results should be evaluated. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The current sanitation technology in developed countries is based on diluting human excreta with large volumes of centrally provided potable water. This approach is a poor use of water resources and is also inefficient, expensive, and energy intensive. The goal of this study was to compare the standard sanitation technology (Scenario 1) with alternative technologies that require less or no potable water use in toilets. The alternative technologies considered were high efficiency toilets flushed with potable water (Scenario 2), standard toilets flushed with rainwater (Scenario 3), high efficiency toilets flushed with rainwater (Scenario 4), and composting toilets (Scenario 5). Cost, energy, and carbon implications of these five design scenarios were studied using two existing University of Toledo buildings. The results showed that alternative systems modeled in Scenarios 2, 4, and 5 were viable options both from an investment and an environmental performance perspective. High efficiency fixtures that use potable water (Scenario 2) is often the most preferred method in high efficiency buildings due to reduced water use and associated reductions in annual water and wastewater costs. However, the cost, energy, and CO2EE analyses all showed that Scenarios 4 and 5 were preferable over Scenario 2. Cost payback periods of scenarios 2, 4 and 5 were less than 10 years; in the future, increase in water and wastewater services would further decrease the payback periods. The centralized water and wastewater services have high carbon footprints; therefore if carbon footprint reduction is a primary goal of a building complex, alternative technologies that require less potable water and generate less wastewater can largely reduce the carbon footprint. High efficiency fixtures flushed with rainwater (Scenario 4) and composting toilets (Scenario 5) required considerably less energy than direct energy demands of buildings. However, the annual carbon footprint of these technologies was comparable to the annual carbon footprint from space heating. Similarly, the carbon savings that could be achieved from Scenario 4 or 5 were comparable to a recycling program that can be implemented in buildings. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since the beginning of the sustainability debate approximately 20 years ago, all parties involved in the urban planning process have been expected to devise sustainable solutions to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Potential to include sustainability criteria is present in the strategic planning stage and during the initial studies of a project. However, instruments available at these early stages are rare and show numerous weaknesses. The present study intends to close this gap by developing an instrument for the prioritization of sustainability criteria in urban planning processes. It is based on the Sustainable Building Tool 07 (SBTool 07), a comprehensive and well-established tool for the assessment of sustainability of construction projects, key issues pertaining to the initial planning stages are identified via a materiality matrix-a method established for corporate sustainability reporting. The resulting method has been tested in a competition in the Icelandic city of Reykjavik. Results include a materiality matrix on stakeholder priorities and the relevance of criteria to sustainability across the life cycle as well as a core set of 19 criteria to be addressed in Reykjavik. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)UP.1943-5444.0000038. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.This study presents the first comprehensive estimation of discard amounts in the Galician fishing fleet in order to provide an integral view of this increasing environmental problem at a regional scale Subsequently a series of improvement actions relating to discard minimization are suggested with the goal of enhancing the performance of the Galician fishing fleet through discard minimization Discard estimates were constructed individually for the different Galician fisheries by aggregating primary data obtained from a total of 89 fishing vessels and secondary data for those fleets that were not directly sampled Results showed that roughly 60 250 t of marine organisms were discarded by the Galician fleet in 2008 representing 16 9% of the total capture Moreover an important percentage of these discards were linked mainly to trawling vessels and to a lesser extent to certain long lining fisheries Therefore improved management measures in target stocks should take into account the fact that alternative fishing gears other than trawl nets may reduce the amount of discards for certain species This estimation may Improve the assessment of stocks and help to quantify the damage that discards may have on wild ecosystems (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedAs the demand for renewable energy increases, it becomes important to critically examine the environmental impacts of renewable energy production. Often, the approach has been trial and error in renewable energy with respect to its impact on the environment. Hydrokinetic Energy Extraction (HEE) has been seen as a potentially "benign" form of renewable hydropower. This paper provides a benchmark for initial measurement of HEE environmental impacts, since negative outcomes have been present with previously assumed "benign" renewable hydropower. A Gorlov system was used to represent a HEE system. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was utilized to compare the environmental impacts of HEE with small hydropower, coal, natural gas and nuclear power. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criteria air emissions were quantified and compared over the life cycle of the systems. Life cycle air emissions were used in combination with TRACI to compare the systems. The Gorlov system was found to have the lowest life cycle impact with a system lifetime comparison, and did compare closely with small hydropower. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy production from two types of municipal solid waste was evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA): (1) mixed high calorific waste suitable for production of solid recovered fuels (SRF) and (2) source separated organic waste. For SRF, co-combustion was compared with mass burn incineration. For organic waste, anaerobic digestion (AD) was compared with mass burn incineration. In the case of mass burn incineration, incineration with and without energy recovery was modelled. Biogas produced from anaerobic digestion was evaluated for use both as transportation fuel and for heat and power production. All relevant consequences for energy and resource consumptions, emissions to air, water and soil, upstream processes and downstream processes were included in the LCA. Energy substitutions were considered with respect to two different energy systems: a present-day Danish system based on fossil fuels and a potential future system based on 100% renewable energy. It was found that mass burn incineration of SRF with energy recovery provided savings in all impact categories, but co-combustion was better with respect to Global Warming (GW). If all heat from incineration could be utilized, however, the two alternatives were comparable for SRF. For organic waste, mass burn incineration with energy recovery was preferable over anaerobic digestion in most impact categories. Waste composition and flue gas cleaning at co-combustion plants were critical for the environmental performance of SRF treatment, while the impacts related to utilization of the digestate were significant for the outcome of organic waste treatment. The conclusions were robust in a present-day as well as in a future energy system. This indicated that mass burn incineration with efficient energy recovery is a very environmentally competitive solution overall. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We examine whether climate benefits warrant policies promoting biofuel production from agricultural crops when other environmental impacts are accounted for. We develop a general economic-ecological modelling framework for integrated analysis of biofuel policies. An economic model of farmers' decision making is combined with a biophysical model predicting the effects of farming practices on crop yields and relevant environmental impacts. They include GHG emissions over the life cycle, nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, and the quality of wildlife habitats. We apply our model to crop production in Finland. We find that under current biofuel production technology the case for promotion of biofuels is not as evident as has been generally thought. Only reed canary grass for biodiesel is unambiguously desirable, whereas biodiesel from rape seed and ethanol production from wheat and barley cause in most cases negative net impacts on the environment. Suggested policies in the US and the EU tend to improve slightly the environmental performance of biofuel production. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A shift to utilize more renewable energy sources has been motivated by issues of energy security, environmental protection, and sustainable development. Biofuels are among the promising forms of renewable energy as they can be produced from a wide variety of feedstocks (e.g., traditional agriculture crops, energy crops, forestry products, municipal solid waste, etc.). Biorefineries are processing facilities that convert biomass into value-added products such as biofuels, specialty chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. To enhance material and energy recovery within processing facilities, an integrated biorefinery is proposed. Since the potential pathways and products in an integrated biorefinery are extensive, product allocation is a complex task. The main challenge in designing an integrated biorefinery is to synthesize a sustainable biorefinery with maximum economic performance while causing minimum environmental impact. Since such objectives are often conflicting in nature, fuzzy mathematical programming is adapted in this work to synthesize a sustainable integrated biorefinery that fulfills both considerations simultaneously.A comparative ethical analysis of three different methods for destroying ammunition was performed using a three-party model for ethical risk analysis presented by Hermansson and Hansson. The model was also evaluated by applying it for the case of destruction of a 40-mm grenade in Sweden. A general observation is that future generations and people in foreign countries will be negatively affected by the destruction of ammunition, although they quite often receive no benefit or compensation. A number of groups exposed to risks or environmental impacts will have some benefits from the destruction. However, it is difficult to determine the extent of this benefit or the fairness of the distribution of risks and benefits. This highlights some important limitations of the Hermansson and Hansson model. Risk Management (2011) 13, 63-79. doi:10.1057/rm.2011.2Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to compare the environmental impacts of vertical flow constructed wetlands (VFCW) and horizontal flow constructed wetlands (HFCW). The LCAs include greenhouse gas (N2O, CO2 and CH4) emissions. Baseline constructed wetland designs are compared to different treatment performance scenarios and to conventional wastewater treatment at the materials acquisition, assembly and operation life stages. The LCAs suggest that constructed wetlands have less environmental impact, in terms of resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The VFCW is a less impactful configuration for removing total nitrogen from domestic wastewater. Both wetland designs have negligible impacts on respiratory organics, radiation and ozone. Gaseous emissions, often not included in wastewater LCAs because of lack of data or lack of agreement on impacts, have the largest impact on climate change. Nitrous oxide accounts for the increase in impact on respiratory inorganic, and the combined acidification/eutrophication category. The LCAs were used to assess the importance of nitrogen removal and recycling, and the potential for optimizing nitrogen removal in constructed wetlands. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background, aim and scope In the context of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is one of the central issues with respect to modelling and methodological data collection. The thesis described in this paper focusses on the assessment of toxicity-related impacts, and on the collection of normalisation data. A view on the complementary roles of LCA toxicity assessment on the one hand and human and environmental risk assessment (HERA) on the other is presented, and the global, spatially differentiated LCA toxicity assessment model GLOBOX for the assessment of organics and metals is described. Normalisation factors for the year 2000 are calculated on a global as well as on a European level. Goal Adding to the reliability and accuracy of LCIA takes a central place. A global coverage, spatial differentiation, and a distinction between potential and actual impacts are considered as important aspects in this context. Structure The thesis consists of seven chapters. The chapters 1 and 7 are a general introduction and discussion, respectively. The chapters 2 and 3 form a theoretical basis, focussing on the relationship between LCA toxicity assessment and HERA, and their respective roles in environmental protection. In chapters 4 and 5, the newly developed software model GLOBOX is described, along with conclusions, drawn from an analysis of the results of the model for the substance nitrobenzene. Chapter 6 describes a practical update of LCA normalisation for all LCA impact categories. Conclusion LCA toxicity assessment and HERA are distinct tools with different goals and outputs, but with an overlap with respect to environmental fate and human intake calculation. Although they cannot be merged, it is proposed to combine them in a common software model, which would offer harmonised results with respect to both types of outputs. Existing multimedia fate and exposure models form a useful basis, but to be applicable in LCA, they should combine global coverage with spatial differentiation, and they should allow for the assessment of metal emissions. The GLOBOX model offers this combination of features. At the level of separate countries and seas, spatial differentiation of environmental and human exposure characteristics turns out to show large differences between regions with respect to the toxic impacts, calculated to result from a certain emission of the test substance nitrobenzene. Finally, the GLOBOX model demonstrates that it is possible not only in HERA, but also in LCIA, to assess actual environmental impacts, along with the potential impacts on which LCA traditionally focuses.Purpose This paper presents the results of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) study for integrated systems (IS) of mixed municipal waste (MMW) management in the Czech Republic. The seven IS categories assessed were: (a) incineration with slag recovery, (b) incineration without slag recovery, (c) landfills with incineration of the landfill gas by flaring, (d) landfills with recovery of the landfill gas, (e) mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) with aerobic treatment, (f) MBT biodrying with co-incineration of refuse-derived fuel, and (g) MBT biodrying with incineration of refuse-derived fuel from a monosource. Methods The environmental impacts were evaluated using the CML 2001 methodological approach. The methodology from EDIP 2003 was used for performing the sensitivity analysis on the selection of the methodologies for characterization. The treatment of 1 t of MMW was the functional unit selected. Data was collected from both within the Czech Republic (for incineration plants and landfills), as well as from abroad (for the MBTs). The IS assessed were modelled on the basis of available data and using the best processes and data available from the LCA software. Results and discussion We established that the integrated system of mixed municipal waste management (IS) of landfills without energy recovery of the landfill gas, as well as the aerobic MBT have the highest environmental impacts. On the other hand, the lowest environmental impacts were found for the MBT biodrying IS. An overall assessment of this IS, both with and without the toxicity and ecotoxicity impact category pollutants and emissions indicators, were compared. Conclusions A comparison of the environmental impacts of IS landfills to the other IS categories should be made, using both a detailed and long-term inventory. Further, this should also include the closures of the landfill sites, as well as all of the future environmental impacts. It would also be appropriate to include several additional aspects (such as social, technical, and economic factors) for a fully objective assessment and in making the optimal choice of an IS.Purpose This work generates attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) results for products produced from Australian sugarcane-raw sugar, molasses, electricity (from bagasse combustion), and ethanol (from molasses). It focuses on cane processing in sugar mills and is a companion to the work presented in (Renouf et al. 2010), where the focus is on cane growing. This work also examines the preferred approach for assigning impacts to the multiple products from cane processing, and the influence that variability in cane growing has on the results. Method Initially, global warming potentials were generated for a range of cane processing models, using economic allocation (EA), mass allocation (MA), and system expansion (SE). A preferred approach was identified and applied to generate results for a wider set of impact categories based on the Impact 2002+ method. Uncertainty in the results due to cane-growing variability was assessed using Monte Carlo analysis and compared with the results for substitute products to determine the significance of the variability. Results While the generation of results using SE was appealing for assessing the determining product (raw sugar), it was found to be less valid for the co-products (molasses, electricity, and ethanol). Results could be generated more consistently across all products using allocation. MA was found to be best suited to sugarcane products, whereas EA posed some problems. The uncertainty due to variability in sugarcane growing was found to be significantly higher than that of substitute products. Conclusions and recommendations LCA results for sugarcane products are influenced by (1) the nature of cane processing system, (2) variability in sugarcane growing, and (3) the approach taken for assigning impacts to the multiple products from sugarcane processing. The first two factors imply that results should be specific to the cane-growing region and the cane processing used to produce them. In relation to the latter issue, for generating attributional LCA results that are consistent across all sugarcane products, the recommended approach is to use mass allocation (with energy allocation for bagasse combustion and cogeneration).Purpose The sale and distribution of books are activities that have changed through increased use of the internet. The main aim of this paper was to determine the potential environmental impacts of paper books and identify key issues determining the magnitude of those impacts. A second aim was to study the environmental difference between a paper book bought in a traditional bookshop and through an internet bookshop. In addition, areas with a lack of data and major uncertainties were to be noted. Materials and methods A screening life cycle assessment was performed on an average hardback novel produced and read in Sweden. The data used were general data from Ecoinvent 2.0 and site-specific data from companies participating in the study, whenever average data were not available. Results and discussion The results showed the most important processes to be pulp and paper production. However, if a substantial distance was travelled by car, to buy a book or collect it, this had a major influence on the environmental performance. Comparing the two bookshop alternatives, the results showed a slight benefit for the internet bookshop due to fewer books being returned to the publisher and the avoidance of energy use at the traditional bookshop. The buyer of a book could significantly influence the total impact by choosing to walk to the bookshop or to combine the trip with several other activities to decrease the impact of the travel per activity performed. When books ordered via the internet were sent by postal services directly to the end consumer, the climate change impact was lowered. Conclusions This study showed that, in addition to the paper used, the way books are bought and distributed, including possible personal transportation, can significantly affect the total environmental impact of paper books. The impact per book read can be significantly decreased by sharing books with others.Purpose The classification step is systematically neglected in the calculation of life cycle impact assessment indicators: for several direct contribution of one pollutant to several impact categories, the distribution between these impact categories is not accounted. The proposed approaches of non-redundant classification are based on the probability that an emitted substance and its chemically degraded forms are involved into several environmental impacts. Methods Two types of repartitions are examined in this paper: (1) one called equiprobable classification, based on identical probability of contributions to several impact categories, and (2) and one called zone classification based. Both methods are based on a classification coefficient alpha and require categorization of chemical pathways (reactive, suspensive, direct, indirect). The first method, the equiprobable classification, is a quick method that allows avoiding multiple counting of pollutants. The second method, the zone classification method, is based on two steps: (1) the first step requires defining an impacted zone around the source, inside which the emitted chemicals are expected to majorly diffuse or spread, and (2) in the second step, the score of the chemical is set according to the occurrence of the chemical target inside the impacted zone. Results Both methods are applied on a case study of NOx emissions in Paris. Results highlight big differences (33% to 47%) when using or not the classification coefficient. Coefficients calculated using equiprobable or zone classifications are of the same order of magnitude except for indirect contributions. Discussion The zone classification method is compared to other site-specific life cycle assessment methods. The choices of impacted zone and of chemical targets are discussed with the aim to meeting paradoxical constraints: local parameters must be sufficiently detailed in the majority of cases, but generic enough to avoid time consuming researches. The availability of data is also discussed as well as the possibility to include indirect impacts into the environmental system. Conclusions The conceptual frame suggested for classification of pollutants into emission-based impact categories is a first approach for a scientific question that was raised in the 90s. Equiprobable classification is easy to apply but not entirely satisfying from a physical and chemical background. Zone classification relies upon the specificity of emission compartments and occurrence of chemical targets in the impacted zone. It still needs improvements. It has important consequences in terms of data collection, system boundaries, and only practice will show its actual feasibility.Purpose This study compares environmental impacts of two primary packaging alternatives used for injectable drugs: the traditional method based on glass vials and the method developed by Aseptic Technologies based on polymer vials. A critical review by an external LCA expert was made. Methods The boundaries of the systems include the packaging production, the product assembly, the filling process, the distribution and the packaging end-of-life by incineration. The study was made in accordance with the international standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. Some data were obtained in the scientific literature or by interview with packaging producers. Ecoinvent databases were also used. The LCA study was made using two methodologies: IMPACT 2002+ and ReCiPe. Some sensibility analyses were performed on different points of uncertainty both on method and on systems (polymer vial body and transport conditions). Results and discussion Results show an environmental gain using a polymer vial over glass. The impact is reduced by 23% for global warming, 25% for primary energy and 32% for respiratory inorganics. For each production step, the environmental impact of both technologies is nearly the same except for the material production, the filling step and the transportation of the finished goods. The production of the polymer vials, made of fuel, leads to a more important environmental impact, especially concerning global warming and primary energy. On the contrary, the two others steps, i.e. filling and transport of the finished goods are more favourable for the polymer vials. This technology allows the elimination of preparation and sterilisation steps which are highly energy consuming and mandatory in the case of the glass vials filling which are supplied unclean and unsterile. The major source of energy consumption comes from water heating, in order to clean the glass vial components. In addition, the filling process, made with a needle through the cork followed by laser re-sealing, is strongly simplified with additional beneficial impact as reduction of energy consumption and pollutants emissions. The transportation step has shown a more positive impact especially when exported over long distance. The sensitivity analyses show that the hypotheses made in both scenarios are rather conservative. Conclusions The life cycle assessment methodology has been successfully applied to both systems of production, filling, distribution and end-of-life of vials for injectable drugs. For identical disclosers, the polymer vials system has lower environmental impacts than the glass vials system.Purpose The paper presents a discussion on the possibilities of using life cycle assessment (LCA) in identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems based on the requirements of the international ISO14001 standard and the European Union EMAS regulation. Some modifications of LCA methodology are proposed in part 1, while the results of a review of environmental aspects for 36 organisations with implemented environmental management systems (EMS) are presented in part 2 of the article. Materials and methods The scope of the systems analysed in EMS and in LCA is different. This comes as the result of the fact that both ISO 14001 and EMAS are focused on an organisation contrary to ISO14040x, which are focused on a product life cycle. For the present work, this resulted in a need of adjusting the LCA methodology to EMS specificity, and vice versa. Some suggestions of such modifications are presented and discussed in the paper. Results A preliminary analysis was carried out on 36 organisations, which have EMS compliant with the ISO14001 or EMAS regulations. It has found a certain disproportion between input and output-related environmental aspects included in most of the analysed registers. The probable reasons for such disproportion could be the fact that the output-related environmental aspects are easier to manage by organisation and are often regulated by laws. Legal requirements are a significant criterion in the environmental aspects assessment. Discussion Based on the assessments carried out and the observations made, some conclusions have been drawn with regard to weaknesses and strengths and usefulness of LCA, as a result of a comparison to the traditional approaches used in EMS in the discussed area. LCA has evident advantages like: standardised methodology; possibility of inclusion of the quantitative information; presence of some methodological steps enabling the verification of the collected data; ability to generate of reproducible results. At the same time, the following potential weak points can be observed: a complexity of the procedure; higher time and cost requirements (especially related to an inventory phase); difficulties with assessing of environmental aspects with the qualitative character and these related to emergency situations; limitation related to the lack of relevant characterisation factors in the currently used LCIA methods. Conclusions LCA ought to be considered as a tool used for identification and assessment of environmental aspects in EMS. The listed limitations do not disqualify its suitability to be used. After certain simplifications, LCA seems to be a valuable alternative to the methodologies currently in use.This article presents research, criteria, framework, and guidance which were developed to provide recommendations for land use impact assessment specific to biofuels, but applicable to a variety of land uses. The criteria for land use modeling were developed along with a 10-step framework including a comprehensive ecosystem services valuation of scenarios. This research program is defined which includes the development of a user-friendly ecosystem services tool with accompanying default values and recommendations on input parameters which are necessary to develop the scenarios, integration curves, maps, and ecosystem profiles of each scenario. Based on these scenarios, curves, maps, and profiles, additional recommendations may be made on land use practices or regional selections. Finally, a discussion of implementation of the theory behind this methodology focuses on an analysis of biofuels.Life cycle assessment is used to determine the most environmentally beneficial alternatives for reuse of scrap tires, based on the concept of industrial ecology. Unutilized scrap tires can be a major source of pollution, and in the past decade Federal and state governments in the United States have encouraged the recycling and reuse of scrap tires in a number of applications, ranging from energy recovery to civil engineering materials to utilization of ground rubber in manufacturing. Life cycle inventory data are collected from primary industry sources as well as published literature, and life cycle impact analysis is performed using the TRACI tool. The results indicate that beneficial reuse of scrap tires, particularly in cement plants and artificial turf, provides reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air toxics, and water consumption. For example, every metric ton of tire-derived fuel substituted for coal in cement kilns avoids an estimated 543 kg (CO(2) equivalent) of direct and indirect GHG emissions. Taking into account the deductible CO(2) from natural rubber, the avoided GHG emissions would be 613 CO(2) kg eq. per metric ton. The use of scrap tires for fuel in cement plants provides more reductions in most environmental impact categories compared to other scrap tire applications, excluding application in artificial turf. Although the use of ground rubber for artificial turf offers the greatest environmental emission reductions, it has limited potential for large-scale utilization due to the saturated market for artificial turf. Therefore, the use of fuel derived from scrap tires in cement production appears to be an attractive option in view of its large market capacity and significant potential for environmental impact reductions.Continuous population growth is causing increased water contamination. Uneven distribution of water resources and periodic droughts have forced governments to seek new water sources: reclaimed and desalinated water. Wastewater recovery is a tool for better management of the water resources that are diverted from the natural water cycle to the anthropic one. The main objective of this work is to assess the stages of operation of a Spanish Mediterranean wastewater treatment plant to identify the stages with the highest environmental impact, to establish the environmental loads associated with wastewater reuse, and to evaluate alternative final destinations for wastewater. Tertiary treatment does not represent a significant increment in the impact of the total treatment at the plant. The impact of reclaiming 1 cubic meter (m(3)) of wastewater represents 0.16 kilograms of carbon dioxide per cubic meter (kg CO2/m(3)), compared to 0.83 kg CO2/m(3) associated with basic wastewater treatment (primary, secondary, and sludge treatment). From a comparison of the alternatives for wastewater final destination, we observe that replacing potable water means a freshwater savings of 1.1 m(3), whereas replacing desalinated water means important energy savings, reflected in all of the indicators. To ensure the availability of potable water to all of the population-especially in areas where water is scarce-governments should promote reusing wastewater under safe conditions as much as possible.The life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction benefits of vehicle lightweighting (LW) were evaluated in a companion article. This article provides an economic assessment of vehicle LW with aluminum and high-strength steel. Relevant cost information taken from the literature is synthesized, compiled, and formed into estimates of GHG reduction costs through LW. GHG emissions associated with vehicle LW scenarios between 6% and 23% are analyzed alongside vehicle life cycle costs to achieve these LW levels. We use this information to estimate the cost to remove GHG emissions per metric ton by LW, and we further calculate the difference between added manufacturing cost and fuel cost savings from LW. The results show greater GHG savings derived from greater LW and added manufacturing costs as expected. The associated production costs are, however, disproportionately higher than the fuel cost savings associated with higher LW options. A sensitivity analysis of different vehicle classes confirms that vehicle LW is more cost-effective for larger vehicles. Also, the cost of GHG emissions reductions through lightweighting is compared with alternative GHG emissions reduction technologies for passenger vehicles, such as diesel, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid electric powertrains. The results find intensive LW to be a competitive and complementary approach relative to the technological alternatives within the automotive industry but more costly than GHG mitigation strategies available to other industries.In many cases, policy makers and laymen perceive harmful emissions from chemical plants as the most important source of environmental impacts in chemical production. As a result, regulations and environmental efforts have tended to focus on this area. Concerns about energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, however, are increasing in all industrial sectors. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, we analyzed the full environmental impacts of producing 99 chemical products in Western Europe from cradle to factory gate. We applied several life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods to cover various impact areas. Our analysis shows that for both organic and inorganic chemical production in industrial countries, energy-related impacts often represent more than half and sometimes up to 80% of the total impacts, according to a range of LCIA methods. Resource use for material feedstock is also important, whereas direct emissions from chemical plants may make up only 5% to 10% of the total environmental impacts. Additionally, the energy-related impacts of organic chemical production increase with the complexity of the chemicals. The results of this study offer important information for policy makers and sustainability experts in the chemical industry striving to reduce environmental impacts. We identify more sustainable energy production and use as an important option for improvements in the environmental profile of chemical production in industrial countries, especially for the production of advanced organic and fine chemicals.Technological progress and adoption are fundamentally interconnected with environmental challenges faced by society. At the product level, researchers often explore the interplay between technological change and the environment by tracking trends in impacts per unit functionality-for example, gasoline consumed per distance traveled by a vehicle. In this article, we explore an alternative measure: "typical product." A typical product measure accounts for changes in consumers' demand and use of products as product quality improves-for example, gasoline consumed for a typical driving pattern for a vehicle. We compare and contrast functionality and typical product measures through a case study of electricity use to fabricate Intel desktop microprocessors from 1995 to 2006. The functionality normalization is measured in terms of electricity use per transistor produced. Results show rapid and sustained exponential decrease. The "typical product" measures electricity use per typical desktop microprocessor of a given year (e.g., a Pentium II in 1998, a Pentium IV in 2002). Results show that, despite fluctuations, energy use per typical microprocessor is roughly constant over the 12-year period. The explanation of this result is that although technological progress dramatically reduces the energy needed per transistor, it also induces demand for more powerful chips, which contain many more transistors. The typical product measure has applications in defining functional units in life cycle assessment, characterizing rebound effects, and measuring energy efficiency trends.The emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO(x)) from ship engines constitute an increasing part of the total global emissions of NO(x) while the share from land-based sources is decreasing. In the coming years, new regulations will set limits to emissions in specific areas and various technical countermeasures will be developed and implemented. However, when taking technical measures against emissions on a local scale, there is always a risk of inducing an increase in the total environmental impact related to the technology used, owing to increased energy use and emissions in other places. In the present study, an investigation of the difference in environmental impact from passenger transport vessels with and without catalytic NO(x) emission purification was performed in a life cycle assessment. The production and transport of chemicals used in the catalyst are included in the study. The study shows that the use of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) gives a considerable decrease in the environmental impact compared with using a diesel engine without a catalyst. The transport of urea solution over a 500 km distance makes a very small contribution to the total environmental impact. The global warming potential is the only impact category for which values are increased when including the urea production and transport. When looking at the contribution from urea to the total impact from the SCR process, the increase is less than 10 per cent for most impact categories.Identification of the flow of materials and substances associated with a product system provides useful information for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and contributes to extending the scope of complementarity between LCA and Materials Flow Analysis/Substances Flow Analysis (MFA/SFA), the two major tools of industrial ecology. This paper proposes a new methodology based on input-output analysis for identifying the physical input-output flow of individual materials that is associated with the production of a unit of given product, the unit physical input-output by materials (UPIOM). While the Sankey diagram has been a standard tool for the visualization of MFA/SFA, with an increase in the complexity of the flows under consideration, which will be the case when economy-wide intersectoral flows of materials are involved, the Sankey diagram may become too complex for effective visualization. An alternative way to visually represent material flows is proposed which makes use of triangulation of the flow matrix based on degrees of fabrication. The proposed methodology is applied to the flow of pig iron and iron and steel scrap that are associated with the production of a passenger car in Japan. Its usefulness to identify a specific MFA pattern from the original 10 table is demonstrated.Solid state drives (SSDs) show potential for environmental benefits over magnetic data storage due to their lower power consumption. To investigate this possibility, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of NAND flash over five technology generations (150 nm, 120 nm, 90 nm, 65 nm, and 45 nm) is presented to quantify environmental impacts occurring in flash production and to view their trends over time. The inventory of resources and emissions in flash manufacturing, electricity generation, and some chemicals are based on process data, while that of fab infrastructure, water and the remaining chemicals are determined using economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) or hybrid LCA. Over the past decade, impacts have fallen in all impact categories per gigabyte. Sensitivity analysis shows that the most influential factors over the life-cycle global warming potential (GWP) of flash memory are abatement of perfluorinated compounds and reduction of electricity-related emissions in manufacturing. A limited comparison between the life-cycle energy use and GWP of a 100GB laptop SSD and hard disk drive shows higher impacts for SSD in many use phase scenarios. This comparison is not indicative for all impact categories, however, and is not conclusive due to differences in boundary and functional unit.Water network synthesis has focused on maximizing water reuse to minimize freshwater consumption, even though the adverse effect of water use has not been examined until now. This study evaluates and analyzes the positive and negative effects of excessive water reuse on the environmental and economic performance of a water network system. Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing are used to evaluate the environmental impacts and economic costs of the three water systems with the different levels of water reuse. Networking for low water reuse enhances both environmental and economic performance of a water system. However, networking for excessive water reuse deteriorates the economic performance of the water system, even though this networking enhances its environmental performance. Therefore, the positive and negative effects of excessive water reuse should be taken into account in developing new pinch analysis methodologies and mathematical optimization models for water network synthesis.Once ratified the Kyoto protocol, Spain arises the great challenge of reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. Among the measures proposed is the introduction of biofuels in the market, both for the transport sector and for the production of heat. This paper compares the environmental impact from the production of biofuels whose origin is the oil obtained from sunflower, rapeseed and soybeans. The environmental impact of each production is performed by applying the methodology of life cycle analysis (LCA). The categories where you get a greater impact are land use, fossil fuels, carcinogens, inorganic respiratory and climate change. The cause is mainly due to the processes of seed production. We have also found a significant impact on the drying and preparation processes of the seed as well as the crude soybean oil extracting process. Moreover as the LCA shows production of rapeseed and sunflower has a positive contribution to climate change. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon footprint is widely accepted as an indicator of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Modeling carbon footprints based on life cycle assessment is applied as a way to evaluate the net contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere from orchard production systems over one growing year. This net balance approach considers the sources and sinks of carbon and therefore provides a better reflection of an orchard system's net contribution to climate change. Carbon footprinting of organic kiwifruit and apple production systems in New Zealand indicated that the studied systems had a net sequestration from 2.4 to 5 t of CO(2)e/ha/year and therefore can be potentially considered as carbon sinks under the Kyoto Protocol. This finding implies that the organic kiwifruit and apple orchardist can gain a monetary benefit by earning carbon credits. However, further research to improve and validate this approach is essential before it can be practically used for decision-making at the orchard level and for policymaking at the national level.The environmental consequences of soil remediation through biofuel or through dig-and-dump were compared using life cycle assessment (LCA). Willow (Salix viminalis) was actually grown in-situ on a discontinued oil depot, as a phytoremediation treatment. These data were used for the biofuel remediation, while excavation-and-refill data were estimated from experience. The biofuel remediation had great environmental advantages compared to the ex situ excavation remediation. With the ReCiPe impact assessment method, which included biodiversity, the net environmental effect was even positive, in spite of the fact that the wood harvest was not utilised for biofuel production, but left on the contaminated site. Impact from the Salix viminalis cultivation was mainly through land use for the short rotation coppice, and through journeys of control personnel. The latter may be reduced when familiarity with biofuel as a soil treatment method increases. The excavation-and-refill remediation was dominated by the landfill and the transport of contaminated soil and backfill. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was performed to quantify and compare the energetic and environmental performances of hydrogen from wheat straw (WS-H-2), sweet sorghum stalk (SSS-H-2), and steam potato peels (SPP-H-2). Inventory data were derived from a pilot plant. Impacts were assessed using the impact 2002+ method. When co-product was not considered, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 5.60 kg CO2eq kg(-1) H-2 for WS-H-2, 5.32 kg CO2eq kg(-1) H-2 for SSS-H-2, and 5.18 kg CO2eq kg(-1) H-2 for SPP-H-2 center dot BioH(2) pathways reduced GHG emissions by 52-56% compared to diesel and by 54-57% compared to steam methane reforming production of H2. The energy ratios (ER) were also comparable: 1.08 for WS-H-2, 1.14 for SSS-H-2 and 1.17 for SPP-H-2. A shift from SPP-H-2 to WS-H2 would therefore not affect the ER and GHG emissions of these BioH2 pathways. When co-product was considered, a shift from SPP-H2 to WS-H2 or SSS-H2 decreased the ER, while increasing the GHG emissions significantly. Co-product yield should be considered when selecting BioH(2) feedstocks. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a new decision-support framework and software platform for an integrated assessment of options for sustainable management of urban pollution. The framework involves three steps: (1) mapping the flow of pollutants associated with human activities in the urban environment; (2) modelling the fate and transport of pollutants; and (3) quantifying the environmental, health and socio-economic impacts of urban pollution. It comprises a suite of different models and tools to support sustainability appraisals including life cycle assessment, substance flow analysis, source and pollutants characterisation, pollutant fate and transport modelling, health impact analysis, ecological impact assessment, and multi-criteria decision analysis. The framework can be used at different levels, from simple screening studies to more detailed assessments. The paper describes the decision-support framework and outlines several case studies to demonstrate its application. The software tool is available free of charge at www.pureframework.org. Practical applications: The PUrE framework and software platform can be applied to assess and compare the sustainability of different technologies, products, human activities or policies. Example applications of the framework have so far included sustainability comparisons of technologies for thermal treatment of municipal solid waste; generation of electricity from coal and biomass; environmental and health impacts of a mixture of pollutants in Sheffield; the role of urban green space in reducing the levels of particulate matter in London and the impacts of environmental policy on legacy pollution in Avenmouth.Laurence A Wright(1), Simon Kemp(1) & Ian Williams(dagger 1) As the threat of climate change becomes more acute, so does the need for adequate measures of impact(s), management and mitigation. Although carbon footprints are increasingly being used by organizations in the public and private sectors, a number of challenges and questions need to be addressed; among them, what does the term 'carbon footprint' actually mean? The term needs a universally accepted definition before a consistent, accurate, comparable and transferable methodology can be developed. This article investigates the range of current definitions proposed for a carbon footprint in the context of inventoried emissions, applications, boundaries and limitations. We argue that to only account for CO2 emissions would result in the omission of almost a third of GHGs and a significant gap in their global management, whilst inclusion of all GHGs is very time-consuming and expensive, and should be considered only in system-specific life cycle-based assessments; this requires a separate definition, name and methodology. We suggest that as data collection for CO2 and CH4 emissions is relatively straightforward, these two carbon-based gases should be used in the determination of a carbon footprint. This should allow the carbon footprint to become a cost-effective, practical and repeatable metric that can be adopted by all types of organizations across the globe as a 'baseline' indicator. However, it is likely that a more comprehensive metric will be required in some circumstances and by some organizations, so we also propose further GHG inclusion for full life cycle assessment-based assessments; where complete data is obtainable it can be used to provide a 'climate footprint'. This name reflects the addition of noncarbon-based gases and encompasses the full range of gases used in the global political community's response in managing climate change. We conclude by considering lessons learnt with the proposal of sound and pragmatic definitions.Beverly Elizabeth Law(dagger 1) & Mark E Harmon(1) The objective of this review is to give ecologists, land managers and policy makers a better understanding of important issues related to forest sector carbon management, measurement and verification, as well as policy related to mitigation and the adaptation of forests to climate change. The focus is on carbon sequestration processes; appropriate measurements for international, regional and local scale assessment of net ecosystem carbon balance; and life cycle analysis, with special attention given to the concept of substitution of fossil fuels with bioenergy from forests. Given the slow dynamic of forest carbon, life cycle analysis needs to account for pre-existing forest conditions, since carbon neutrality (i.e., net ecosystem carbon balance of forests is zero) can take at least a century to achieve in many cases. The substitution of wood for more energy-intensive materials has probably been overestimated compared with cases in which additionality, permanence and saturation of wood building stores are considered. GHG emission policies will need to account for emissions associated with bioenergy, which is currently not considered internationally. Thus, GHG emissions resulting from substitution for fossil fuels will have to be more accurately represented if their true impact is to be understood.This paper shows the work made by the Ecodesign Learning Centre of Engineering School at the University of the Basque Country and at Mondragon University. Some engineering students have carried out Life Cycle Assessment, Ecodesign and applied research projects in some Basque Companies. One of those projects consisted in a Life cycle assessment of a hydraulic press. The aim of this project was to point out some improvement measures to be used in future designs of machine tools. That kind of products will soon be affected by the Energy using Products Directive. In another project, an environmental product declaration was made for a radio controlled electronic lock. The last project which is presented in this paper is a research work comparing three life cycle impact assessment methodologies and its application on one case study. In all of the three projects useful results were obtained for the stakeholder companies and for the industrial sector as well, giving help to the development of methodologies and other related projects in the Basque industry.Agricultural management practices that promote net carbon (C) accumulation in the soil have been considered as an important potential mitigation option to combat global warming. The change in the sugarcane harvesting system, to one which incorporates C into the soil from crop residues, is the focus of this work. The main objective was to assess and discuss the changes in soil organic C stocks caused by the conversion of burnt to unburnt sugarcane harvesting systems in Brazil, when considering the main soils and climates associated with this crop. For this purpose, a dataset was obtained from a literature review of soils under sugarcane in Brazil. Although not necessarily from experimental studies, only paired comparisons were examined, and for each site the dominant soil type, topography and climate were similar. The results show a mean annual C accumulation rate of 1.5 Mg ha-1 year-1 for the surface to 30-cm depth (0.73 and 2.04 Mg ha-1 year-1 for sandy and clay soils, respectively) caused by the conversion from a burnt to an unburnt sugarcane harvesting system. The findings suggest that soil should be included in future studies related to life cycle assessment and C footprint of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol.In a recent letter to the editor, Jorgensen et al. questioned that life cycle costing (LCC) is relevant in life cycle-based sustainability assessment (LCSA). They hold the opinion that environmental and social aspects are sufficient. We argue that sustainability has three dimensions: environment, economy, and social aspects in accordance with the well-accepted "three pillar interpretation" of sustainability, although this is not verbally stated in the Brundtland report (WCED 1987). An analysis of the historical development of the term "sustainability" shows that the economic and social component have been present from the beginning and conclude that LCSA of product systems can be approximated by LCSA = (environmental) LCA + (environmental) LCC + S-LCA where S-LCA stands for social LCA. The "environmental" LCC is fully compatible with life cycle assessment (LCA), the internationally standardized (ISO 14040 + 14044) method for environmental product assessment. For LCC, a SETAC "Code of Practice" is now available and guidelines for S-LCA have been published by UNEP/SETAC. First examples for the use of these guidelines have been published. An important practical argument for using LCC from the customers' point of view is that environmentally preferable products often have higher purchasing costs, whereas the LCC may be much lower (examples: energy saving light bulbs, low energy houses, and cars). Also, since LCC allows an assessment for different actor perspectives, the producers may try to keep the total costs from their perspective below those of a conventional product: otherwise, it will not succeed at the market, unless highly subsidized. Those are practical aspects whichfinally decide about success or failure of "sustainable" products. Whether or not an analysis using all three aspects is necessary will depend on the exact question. However, if real money flows are important in sustainability analysis of product systems, inclusion of LCC is advisable.Purpose In recent years, a new perspective for food packaging has emerged as a result of several issues like quality, safety, competitive prices or providing of useful information to consumers. This new perspective is called communicative packaging. Communicative packaging may influence consumers/companies on purchasing decisions. Since the environmental evaluation of such systems has not yet been performed, this paper is focused on the environmental evaluation of a flexible best-before-date (FBBD) communicative device on a packaging consumer unit and its implications on reducing environmental impacts related to fresh products. This consumer unit consists of a nanoclay-based polylactic acid tray filled with pork chops. Methods The environmental assessment of the consumer unit was made through life cycle assessment (LCA) using a cradle-to-gate approach. Environmental impacts were assessed according to the Eco-Indicator 99 v 2.1 methodology in Individualist (I) perspective. Results and discussion Several results were obtained from the LCA. With regard to environmental impacts of the FBBD, most of them were due to the paper substrate used for the manufacture of this communicative packaging concept as well as to the transports for delivering the components of the FBBD communicative device. On the other hand, when environmental impacts of packaging system with and without FBBD were compared, a large environmental load was detected for the system that has the communicative device affixed as a result of the higher weight of the package. However, the environmental load caused by the use of the FBBD was minimal in comparison with the total environmental load of the whole packaging system. On the contrary, the consumer unit that has the communicative device affixed showed less environmental burden than the consumer unit that has not affixed the device. This was due to the environmental benefits that the communicative device provides by reducing the amount of out-of-date packaged products at retailer outlets. Conclusions The use of a FBBD contributes to minimize environmental burdens related to the production, packaging and delivery of pork chops since it facilitates a dynamic control of out-of-date products even though the consumer unit with FBBD weighs 1 g more than the consumer unit that does not use the communicative device. Recommendations The results presented in this paper are estimated results of a specific case study for a prototype of communicative packaging device. Consequently, these results must be considered as a first approach according to future developments on communicative packaging.This paper explores relationships between lean manufacturing practices, environmental management (e.g., environmental management practices and environmental performance) and business performance outcomes (e.g., market and financial performance). The hypothesized relationships of this model are tested with data collected from 309 international manufacturing firms (IMSS IV) by using AMOS. The findings suggest that prior lean manufacturing experiences are positively related to environmental management practices. Environmental management practices alone are negatively related to market and financial performance. However, improved environmental performance substantially reduces the negative impact of environmental management practices on market and financial performance. The paper provides empirical evidences with large sample size that environmental management practices become an important mediating variable to resolve the conflicts between lean manufacturing and environmental performance. Additional contextual analyses suggest that differences exist in terms of the strengths and statistical significance of some of the proposed relationships. Thus, for effective implementation of environmental management, firms need to measure environmental performance through which the impact of environmental management on other business performance outcomes is examined. Published by Elsevier B.V.Studies of industrial symbiosis (IS) focus on the physical flows of materials and energy in local industrial systems. In an ideal IS, waste material and energy are shared or exchanged among the actors of the system, thereby reducing the consumption of virgin material and energy inputs, and likewise the generation of waste and emissions. In this study, the environmental impacts of an industrial ecosystem centered around a pulp and paper mill and operating as an IS are analyzed using life cycle assessment (LCA). The system is compared with two hypothetical reference systems in which the actors would operate in isolation. Moreover, the system is analyzed further in order to identify possibilities for additional links between the actors. The results show that of the total life cycle impacts of the system, upstream processes made the greatest overall contribution to the results. Comparison with stand-alone production shows that in the case studied, the industrial symbiosis results in modest improvements, 5% to 20% in most impact categories, in the overall environmental impacts of the system. Most of the benefits occur upstream through heat and electricity production for the local town. All in all it is recommended that when the environmental impacts of industrial symbiosis are assessed, the impacts occurring upstream should also be studied, not only the impacts within the ecosystem.In this study, a rapidly solidified aluminum alloy was compared with beryllium copper and 6061 aluminum alloys in terms of their wear rates, hardness and performance as mold insert materials. A Vickers hardness measuring machine and a tribometer were used to determine the hardness values and wear rates of the materials. Three sets of mold inserts were made of these materials, and the insert surfaces and the molded plastic lens surfaces were characterized using a scanning electron microscope and a surface profilometer, respectively. The investigation results indicate that the BeCu alloy has the lowest wear rate, while aluminum 6061-T6 has the highest wear rate. Although the rapidly solidified aluminum alloy is not as hard as the BeCu alloy, the differences between their wear rates and hardness values are not as great as the differences between aluminum 6061-T6 and the BeCu alloy. The results also indicate that the rapidly solidified aluminum alloy performs much better than aluminum 6061-T6 in molding of plastic lenses and is comparable to the BeCu alloy. It is able to attain finer surfaces of the molded plastic lenses. This is an important finding, and this means that the rapidly solidified aluminum alloy can replace the BeCu alloy as a good mold insert material, because beryllium (Be) is a toxic element. The finding gives the industry a better choice for selection of mold insert materials. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Plant growth and development is profoundly influenced by environmental conditions that laboratory experimentation typically attempts to control. However, growth conditions are not uniform between or even within laboratories and the extent to which these differences influence plant growth and development is unknown. Experiments with wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana were designed to quantify the influences of parental environment and seed size on growth and development in the next generation. A single lot of seed was planted in six environmental chambers and grown to maturity. The seed produced was mechanically sieved into small and large size classes then grown in a common environment and subjected to a set of assays spanning the life cycle. Analysis of variance demonstrated that seed size effects were particularly significant early in development, affecting primary root growth and gravitropism, but also flowering time. Parental environment affected progeny germination time, flowering and weight of seed the progeny produced. In some cases, the parental environment affected the magnitude of (interacted with) the observed seed size effects. These data indicate that life history circumstances of the parental generation can affect growth and development throughout the life cycle of the next generation to an extent that should be considered when performing genetic studies.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for systematically analyzing the environmental impacts and resources used throughout a target's life cycle, i.e. from raw material acquisition, via production and use phases, to waste management. It is an effective tool that gives a detailed information of environmental profiles of a material or a product. More importantly, the value of life cycle thinking lies in its ability to provide the decision making basis for sustainable development, making the products, industries and even the whole industry chain act more in line with the principles of sustainable development. The recent developments of LCA methods and applications of materials life cycle assessment in China were reviewed. In the sections on LCA methodology, the data quality analysis, the impact of land use and abiotic resource depletion as well as the weakness in life cycle impact assessment were discussed. In relation to the applications, the Chinese materials database (SinoCenter Database) and several representative case studies such as life cycle analysis of civilian buildings and metal production in China were introduced.The wind speed and direction as well as the availability, the duration and the diurnal variation of two offshore sites, Zakinthos and Pylos (BZK and BPY) in the Ionian Sea were assessed. For an analysis period of two years, the mean wind speed at 10 m was determined as 5.7 +/- 0.1 m s(-1) and 5.8 +/- 0.1 m s(-1) for the BZK and BPY sites, respectively. The wind speed variations over the hours of the day were quite small. The monthly variation in the average wind speeds was between 4.3 (May) and 7.5 m s(-1) (December) for the BZK site and 4.4 (August) and 7.3 m s(-1) (December) for the BPY site. Moreover, QuikSCAT satellite mean values for the grids of the two buoy regions were systematically overestimated in comparison to the buoy data with differences in the range from 8 to 13%. Statistical analysis revealed the high QuikSCAT data uncertainty for wind speeds less than 5 in s(-1) as the major factor of the observed mean value differences. The mean wind power densities were calculated with the buoy wind speed measurements and were found more than 250W m(-2) at 10 m, suggesting the suitability of the sites for offshore wind energy applications. Capacity factors of up to 48% for energy production were calculated with the existing offshore turbines technology at a hub height of 100 in. Furthermore, the energy yield for different wind turbines and a service life of 20 years were determined from 6.5 to 8.7 and the energy pay-back periods from 2.8 to 2.1 years, respectively. The maximum avoided greenhouse emissions were 140 kt CO2-e for an offshore turbine generator of 5 MW and a period of 20 years. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions associated with biofuels should not only consider fossil fuel inputs, but also N(2)O emissions and changes in carbon stocks of (agro) ecosystems linked to the cultivation of biofuel crops. When this is done, current plant oils such as European rapeseed oil and oil from soybeans and oil palms cultivated on recently deforested soils have higher life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than conventional diesel. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the objectives of climate change mitigation and energy independence, energy crops have been proposed as an alternative to fossil fuels. In recent years short rotation energy crops have been promoted because they provide biomass in short periods of time. However, the impacts of water consumption, in both the impact on the energy balance due to the consumption of irrigation as the impacts on existing water resources, have not been analyzed in depth. This study evaluates the relationship between water, energy and CO2 emissions of a plot of Populus spp. in Spain with the aim of evaluating the feasibility of its implementation as large-scale cultivation. For the energy and environmental assessment it has been used the life cycle analysis methodology. The results show positive energy balance and environmental improvement respect other energies such as natural gas. Consumption of water required to avoid a kg of CO2 is 4.6 m(3) and per unit of energy obtained is 45 m(3) GJ(-1) considering a life cycle approach and in relation to the water availability of the basin could increase the pressure. Hence, in order to establish energy crops for climate change mitigation water consumption associated must be taken into account for future energy planning. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) are devices capable of converting organic waste fraction present in wastewaters into useful energy vectors such as electricity or hydrogen. In recent years a large amount of research has been done on these unique systems in order to improve their performance both in terms of waste treatment as well as electric current production. Already there are plans to upscale this technology to convince the end-users of its potential. However, there are not many studies available on the life cycle of these systems with the current state of the art. In this article a methodology has been proposed to perform the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the BESs and some recommendations have been given which may be useful in carrying out LCA of these systems. Not only the direct benefits in terms of energy saved in aerating the wastewater treatment plants, but also the resulting saving in cost and electric power produced should be factored as well. The results of LCA should show that with current knowledge and existing materials, how well the MFCs compares with the existing treatment methods such as anaerobic digestion. Further, given the amount of research going on in this field, it is expected that with cheaper materials and better microorganisms, the technology will breakthrough even soon. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To mitigate anthropogenic climate change greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) must be reduced; their major source is man's use of energy. A key way to manage emissions is for the energy consumer to understand their impact and the consequences of changing their activities. This paper addresses the challenge of delivering relevant, practical and reliable greenhouse gas 'footprint' information for small and medium sized businesses. The tool we describe is capable of ascribing parts of the total footprint to specific actions to which the business can relate and is sensitive enough to reflect the consequences of change. It provides a comprehensive description of all emissions for each business and sets them in the context of local, national and global statistics. It includes the GHG costs of all goods and services irrespective of their origin and without double accounting. We describe the development and use of the tool, which draws upon both national input-output data and process-based life cycle analysis techniques; a hybrid model. The use of national data sets the output in context and makes the results consistent with national and global targets, while the life cycle techniques provide a means of reflecting the dynamics of actions. The model is described in some detail along with a rationale and a short discussion of validity. As the tool is designed for small commercial users, we have taken care to combine rigour with practicality; parameterising from readily available client data whilst being clear about uncertainties. As an additional incentive, we also report on the potential costs or savings of switching activities. For users to benefit from the tool, they need to understand the output and know how much confidence they should place in the results. We not only describe an application of non-parametric statistics to generate confidence intervals, but also offer users the option of and guidance on adjusting figures to examine the sensitivity of the model to its components. It is important that the user does not see the model as a calculator that will generate one truth, but as a method of gaining insight and informing management decisions. We describe its application in tourism businesses in North West England as a demonstrator for the service sector remote from simple primary production, with brief case studies. We discuss its success compared to traditional approaches and outline further development work. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.About 130 studies were analyzed to compare farm-level energy use and global warming potential (GWP) of organic and conventional production sectors. Cross cutting issues such as tillage, compost, soil carbon sequestration and energy offsets were also reviewed. Finally, we contrasted E and GWP data from the wider food system. We concluded that the evidence strongly favours organic farming with respect to whole-farm energy use and energy efficiency both on a per hectare and per farm product basis, with the possible exception of poultry and fruit sectors. For GWP, evidence is insufficient except in a few sectors, with results per ha more consistently favouring organic farming than GWP per unit product. Tillage was consistently a negligible contributor to farm E use and additional tillage on organic farms does not appear to significantly deplete soil C. Energy offsets, biogas, energy crops and residues have a more limited role on organic farms compared to conventional ones, because of the nutrient and soil building uses of soil organic matter, and the high demand for organic foods in human markets. If farm E use represents 35% of total food chain E use, improvements shown of 20% or more in E efficiency through organic farm management would reduce food-chain E use by 7% or more. Among other food supply chain stages, wholesale/retail (including cooling and packaging) and processing often each contribute 30% or more to total food system E. Thus, additional improvements can be obtained with reduced processing, whole foods and food waste minimization.Environmental considerations have called for new developments in building technologies to bridge the gap between this need for lower impacts on the environment and ever increasing comfort. These developments were generally directed at the reduction of the energy consumption during operations. While this was indeed a mandatory first step, complete environmental life cycle analysis raises new questions. For instance, for a typical low thermal energy consumption building, the embodied energy of construction materials now becomes an important component of the environmental footprint. In addition, the usual practice in life cycle analysis now appears to call for some adaptation-due to variable parameters in time-to be implemented successfully in building analysis. These issues bring new challenges to reach the goal of integrated design, construction, commissioning, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning of sustainable buildings.Co-firing biomass with coal is being increasingly seen in the EU region as an option that could contribute not only towards reaching the Kyoto targets on greenhouse gas emissions but also towards compliance with the EU directives on renewable energy and large combustion plants. Perennial grasses, short rotation coppice, seasonal agricultural residues and waste forestry wood are all considered as viable alternatives. However, although the use of biomass for electricity generation could help reduce direct emissions of pollutants generated during combustion of coal, including carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the whole life cycle implications of using biomass are less clear. This paper uses a life cycle approach to evaluate the environmental impacts and economic costs of co-firing with coal three types of biomass: miscanthus, willow and waste forest wood. Both direct combustion and gasification of biomass are considered. The results of life cycle assessment indicate that all biomass options lead to a substantial reduction in the environmental impacts compared to the coal-only power generation. Overall, use of waste wood appears to be environmentally the most sustainable option. In comparison to direct combustion, biomass gasification has higher global warming potential due to the higher consumption of biomass and energy for gasification. The results of the life cycle economic costing show that electricity from biomass is economically less attractive than from coal. Direct firing is two times more expensive than coal and gasification up to three times. Therefore, while attractive from the environmental point of view, biomass appears currently to be less sustainable economically.Biomass is expected to become an important energy source in U.S. electricity generation under state-lead renewable portfolio standards. This paper investigated the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for energy generated from forest resources through pyrolysis-based processing. The GHG emissions of producing pyrolysis bio-oil (pyrolysis oil) from different forest resources were first investigated; logging residues collected from natural regeneration mixed hardwood stands, hybrid poplar cultivated and harvested from abandoned agricultural lands, short rotation forestry (SRF) willow plantations and waste wood available at the site of the pyrolysis plant. Effects of biomass transportation were investigated through a range of distances to a central pyrolysis facility through road transport by semi-truck. Pyrolysis oil is assumed to be converted to electrical power through co-combustion in conventional fossil fuels power plants, gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) and diesel generators. Life cycle GHG emissions were compared with power generated using fossil fuels and power generated using biomass direct combustion in a conventional Rankine power plant. Life cycle GHG savings of 77%-99% were estimated for power generation from pyrolysis oil combustion relative to fossil fuels combustion, depending on the biomass feedstock and combustion technologies used. Several scenario analyses were conducted to determine effects of pyrolysis oil transportation distance. N-fertilizer inputs to energy crop plantations, and assumed electricity mixes for pyrolysis oil production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, emergy accounting (EA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) methods are employed to investigate a typical urban wetland park, the Green Lake Urban Wetland Park (GLUWP) of Beijing, in terms of its environmental and capital inputs, ecosystem services and organic matter yields, environmental support, and sustainability. The LCA method is also used to obtain a quantitative estimation of the environmental impact of discharges during the entire life cycle of the GLUWP. Various emergy-based indices, such as emergy yield ratio (EYR), environmental load ratio (ELR), emergy sustainability index (ESI), net economic benefit (Np), and environmental impacts of process-based LCA, including global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication (EU), nonrenewable resource depletion (RU), energy consumption (EN), acidification potential (AP), photochemical oxidant creation potential (POCP), particulate matter (PM) and wastes (W), are calculated. The results show that the GLUWP has higher proportions of renewable resource input, less pressure on the environment, more environmental support and better ecological and economic benefits, which can be considered as an environment-friendly and long-term sustainable ecological practice, compared with another constructed wetland in Beijing. Meanwhile, the dominant environmental impact is induced by POCP with the construction phase contributing the most on the entire life cycle. It is expected that increasing green area, extensively using environment-friendly materials, optimizing construction techniques and reducing power consumption can promote the sustainability of the GLUWP. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An operational method to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with groundwater use is currently lacking in life cycle assessment (LCA). This paper outlines a method to calculate characterization factors that address the effects of groundwater extraction on the species richness of terrestrial vegetation. Characterization factors (CF) were derived for The Netherlands and consist of a fate and an effect part The fate factor equals the change in drawdown due to a change in groundwater extraction and expresses the amount of time required for groundwater replenishment It was obtained with a grid-specific steady-state groundwater flow model. Effect factors were obtained from groundwater level response curves of potential plant species richness, which was constructed based on the soil moisture requirements of 625 plant species. Depending on the initial groundwater level, effect factors range up to 9.2% loss of species per 10 cm of groundwater level decrease. The total Dutch CF for groundwater extraction depended on the value choices taken and ranged from 0.09 to 0.61 m(2).yr/m(3). For tap water production, we showed that groundwater extraction can be responsible for up to 32% of the total terrestrial ecosystem damage. With the proposed approach, effects of groundwater extraction on terrestrial ecosystems can be systematically included in LCA.To perform life-cycle assessment studies, data on the production and use of the products is required. However, often only few data or measurements are available. Estimation of properties can be performed by applying scaling relationships. In many disciplines, they are used to either predict data or to search for underlying patterns, but they have not been considered in the context of product assessments hitherto. The goal of this study was to explore size scaling for commonly used energy conversion equipment, that is, boilers, engines, and generators. The variables mass M, fuel consumption Q, and costs C were related to power P. The established power-law relationships were M = 10(0.73.. 1.89) P-0.64.. 1.23 (R-2 >= 0.94), Q = 10(0.06.. 0.68) P-0.82.. 1.02 (R-2 >= 0.98) and C = 10(2.46.. 2.86) P-0.83.. 0.85 (R-2 >= 0.83). Mass versus power and costs versus power showed that none of the equipment types scaled isometrically, that is, with a slope of 1. Fuel consumption versus power scaled approximately isometrically for steam boilers, the other equipments scaled significantly lower than 1. This nonlinear scaling behavior induces a significant size effect. The power laws we established can be applied to scale the mass, fuel consumption and costs of energy conversion equipments up or down. Our findings suggest that empirical scaling laws can be used to estimate properties, particularly relevant in studies focusing on early product development for which generally only little information is available.The potential of forest-based bioenergy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when displacing fossil-based energy must be balanced with forest carbon implications related to biomass harvest We integrate life cycle assessment (LCA) and forest carbon analysis to assess total GHG emissions of forest bioenergy over time. Application of the method to case studies of wood pellet and ethanol production from forest biomass reveals a substantial reduction in forest carbon due to bioenergy production. For all cases, harvest-related forest carbon reductions and associated GHG emissions initially exceed avoided fossil fuel-related emissions, temporarily increasing overall emissions. In the long term, electricity generation from pellets reduces overall emissions relative to coal, although forest carbon losses delay net GHG mitigation by 16-38 years, depending on biomass source (harvest residues/standing trees). Ethanol produced from standing trees increases overall emissions throughout 100 years of continuous production: ethanol from residues achieves reductions after a 74 year delay. Forest carbon more significantly affects bioenergy emissions when biomass is sourced from standing trees compared to residues and when less GHG-intensive fuels are displaced. In all cases, forest carbon dynamics are significant Although study results are not generalizable to all forests, we suggest the integrated LCA/forest carbon approach be undertaken for bioenergy studies.Selected energy and material resource conversion systems are compared in this paper under an extended LCA point of view. A multi-method multi-scale assessment procedure is applied in order to generate consistent performance indicators based on the same set of input data, to ascertain the existence of constraints or crucial steps characterized by low conversion efficiency and to provide the basis for improvement patterns. Optimizing the performance of a given process requires that many different aspects are taken into account. Some of them, mostly of technical nature, relate to the local scale at which the process occurs. Other technological, economic and environmental aspects are likely to affect the dynamics of the larger space and time scales in which the process is embedded. These spatial and time scale effects require that a careful evaluation of the relation between the process and its surroundings is performed, so that hidden consequences and possible sources of inefficiency and impact are clearly identified. In this paper we analyse and compare selected electricity conversion systems, alternative fuels and biofuels, waste management strategies and finally the time evolution of an urban system, in order to show the importance of a multiple perspective point of view for the proper evaluation of a system's environmental and resource use performance. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global climate change, driven by the buildup of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere, is challenging the dairy industries in the United States and throughout the world to develop sustainable initiatives to reduce their environmental impact. The U. S. dairy industry has committed to lowering the GHG emissions, primarily CH4, N2O, and CO2, in each sector of the fluid milk supply chain which extends from the farm, to the processing plant, and to distribution of the packaged product, where it is refrigerated by the retailer and then the consumer. This chapter provides an overview of the life cycle analysis (LCA) technique and its use in identifying the GHG emissions in each sector of the fluid milk supply chain, from cradle to grave, and the best practices and research that is currently being conducted to reduce or mitigate GHG emissions in each sector. We also discuss the use of on-farm and off-farm process simulation as tools for evaluating on-farm mitigation techniques, off-farm alternative processing scenarios, and use of alternative energy management practices.Target setting in ecodesign generally requires of handling environmental information in the early design stages. Even if commonly encouraged in literature, recent research in the field of creativity show that exposure to models of the product can hinder creativity in the idea generation process. This papers discusses a case study where three experts in design are asked to rate the ideas previously generated by 56 students. These students had been originally delivered different types of environmental information, usually available in the early design stages. The perception of the experts regarding creativity, feasibility and originality of ideas were analyzed and conclusions are drawn for the sort of information that should be used in the early design stages.In this paper the lifetime of the power semiconductors in the rotor side converter of a wind turbine with Doubly Fed Induction Generator (DFIG) concerning their power cycle capability is examined. Based on the offshore wind velocity data of one year (FINO station), the corresponding temperature cycles of the power semiconductors in the converter are simulated for a 2 MW DFIG. The simulation is based on a partial load control strategy and an adequate selection of the power module. With three different cycles-to-failure statistics, the lifetime consumption of one year is estimated.This paper discusses a design methodology for power electronic converters according to the Global Energy Requirement (GER) criterion, i.e. the primary energy consumption over their entire life cycle. For given specifications of the converter, each power component of a self-oscillating flyback converter and the main control parameters are optimized using scaling laws for given technologies. Models linking sizes of components, loss parameters and embodied energy parameters are presented. Finally a comparison is realized between a GER-designed converters and a classical one (designed from thermal criteria) which concludes to an improvement of efficiency for a given consumption profile.Green Packaging is a part of Green Design. It focuses on the balance between human beings and the natural environment, aiming to minimize the damage of living environment, and to promote the development of economy, culture and society. Based on the study of theories and methods of green packaging design, several current problems of China packaging were mainly discussed in this paper; then the developing direction of China green packaging was explored. The appearance of green packaging fully embodies the idea of the sustainable development strategy and the coordination of environmental protection and economic development. Green packaging will become the mainstream of packaging design.Strain hardening cementitious composites (SHCC) have demonstrated durability superior to that of conventional reinforced concrete due to their unique cracking behavior which influences transport, as well as corrosion propagation and damage development. In addition to more durable infrastructure, SHCCs can result in more sustainable infrastructure when accounting for life cycle performance. Focusing on numerical modeling of SHCC deterioration, this paper presents an approach to operationalize SHCC design and maintenance for improved sustainability. This framework consists of two types of models: (i) material degradation models and (ii) life cycle assessment models. Numerical modeling of deterioration is used to estimate the time to each repair. These deterioration models are coupled with environmental impact models of a given repair, rehabilitation, or strengthening activity based on a process-based LCA of individual repair activities. All models are formulated stochastically so that the time to repair and total sustainability impact are described by a probability density function. Results facilitate decision-making by infrastructure stakeholders when designing to meet sustainability targets.Most academic work on sustainability has been focused on the organizational level, reflecting the popular "business case for sustainability" idea. However, organizations are certainly not the only locus of entrepreneurial action for sustainability, nor are they the most ideal. This chapter reports on a six-year study of the Sustainability Consortium, a collaboration started in 1999 between large companies that were seeking to lead their industry through innovative initiatives for sustainability. The findings, based on 60 interviews and many other sources of data, identify eight "ecologies of entrepreneurial action," all of which were critical for driving change. These ecologies are: Individual Aspiration; Network Affiliation; Process Optimization; Entrepreneurial Innovation; Value Chain Collaboration; Industry/Sector Coordination; System-Wide Integration; and Social Transformation. As shown by complexity theory, the interdependent and interconnected nature of these ecologies means that only by expanding beyond organizationally focused endeavors can we help generate the social transformation that will lead to a sustainable world.Wind power is considered as one of the most promising renewable energy sources in China. Presented in this study is a life cycle analysis of energy performance and greenhouse gas emission for a typical wind farm in Guangxi, with different stages of manufacturing, transportation, and installation of mechanical components, operation and maintenance, and disassemble and disposal taken into account. Results show that the nonrenewable energy cost and greenhouse gas emission to generate 1 MJ of electricity for the grid are 0.046 MJ and 0.002 kg CO2 equivalent, respectively. In consideration of the dominant power generation technology of coal combustion in China, the nonrenewable energy saving brought about by the concerned wind farm is estimated at 1.22E+7GJ during its twenty year operating period, while the reduced greenhouse gas emissions are as much as 1.03E+06 ton CO2 equivalent. It is believed that this successful example can lend solid support to a future wide use of wind power in China. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.With the research on some critical technology going deeply, the problem of technology route and project approach for the saving energy & reducing consumption have become the focus of municipal wastewater treatment process. In this article, LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) is applied to identify and compare the energy consumption of each stage of different technologies in municipal wastewater treatment from the view of whole process. This is carried out after reviewing the condition of energy utilizing of typical technologies in China. And some measures are brought forward to improve the efficiency of energy utilizing. Integrated Oxidation Ditch (IOD) is taken as an example and the energy consumption from its raw and processed materials exploitation, construction, treatment and running, rebuilding to its discarding and removing is identified and quantified, which is also compared with traditional treatment process of wastewater and waste sludge in China. This study shows that application of the high-energy-efficiency aeration device and optimizing control operation are essential paths to improve the energy consumption of IOD during its life cycle. And LCA is an important foundation of improving products quality and a main measure of sales promotion for manufacturers in recent years. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.It is commonly assumed that the application of solar power system can save energy and relief global climate change. Presented in this study is the account of energy performance and greenhouse gas emissions of a planned solar tower power plant in China based on the life cycle analysis method. The conservative estimation of energy cost for the concerned plant is 1.21 times of the electricity output, which is a relatively decent performance amongst power generation technologies. In order to analyze the greenhouse gas performance, a comparison is carried out between the solar tower power plant and conventional coal-fired power plant in China. Results show the application of this solar system obtains a net greenhouse gas emission reduction of 0.31E+06 ton CO2 equivalent, during its operating period of twenty years. It is believed that this successful example can lend solid support to a future wide use of solar power in China. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The present paper research propose the comparative evaluation of durable development strategy for a public University UGAL(Dunarea de Jos University) using 2 assesment tools: ecological footprint(EF) versus Eco-Indicator 99. The durable development indicators were calculated based on the evaluation of 2010 total flows for foods,energy,transport system and wastes management using Life Cycle Assesment(LCA)methodology. The general aim is to reduce the Ecological Footprint of the public institution by a rational use of natural resources and to educate the university community on the ethics of sustainability. In addition, the assesment of ecological impact of activities related with the University management due to a green strategy to addopt in the sustainability of buildings and green areas, energy and resources use. "Greening" Romanian University campuses is a social responsibility which must be imposed by the academic media and involve the development of a more sustainable rsouce using,transportation systems as well as the reduction of on-campus consumption. The evaluation of the ecological impact of a public university activities is a original action in Romania.According to the original model of Wackernagel and Rees a modified model for EF evaluation is applied in the present paper research,addapted to the complex menuThe number of experimental and industrial applications of non-thermal plasmas for environmental pollution control is rapidly growing. Applications of plasma processes for treatment of combustion and ventilation exhausts, disinfection and decontamination of potable and waste water have been reported. The main issue of application of plasma processes for pollutant decontamination lies in the fact that these processes are highly energy-consuming and may not be efficient from the entire life cycle perspective. The removal of VOCs from ventilation exhaust gases is usually complicated due to diverse nature and complex composition of volatile organic compounds. Usually, end-of-pipe techniques such as biofiltration, adsorption, chemical and thermal oxidation are employed for the removal of VOCs from exhaust gas streams. In turn, plasma-based VOC oxidation method, based on dielectric barrier discharge was proved to be highly efficient and capable in oxidizing various organic pollutants. For the comparison, life cycle analysis (LCA) was utilized, which took into account the usage of materials, waste generation and energy consumption.Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) is a relatively new technology that allows significant lowering of the production and pavement temperature of conventional Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA). It promises various benefits, but probably the most significant is the possibility to reduce the energy demand for asphalt industry thus supporting the demands of Kyoto protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emission in the atmosphere. An easy to use life cycle assessment tool would be beneficial in assessing the environmental benefits of WMA in comparison with HMA, however developing an entire calculation model for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is very complex. This is mostly because of immense information that needs to be included, many variables and questions about the long-term performance of WMA pavements that need to be answered. The calculation model, presented in the paper, was developed as inventory of energy flow for asphalt production, which is the first phase in developing LCA tool. The calculation involves all the main areas that can be influenced by choosing WMA instead of HMA, including production, paving and compaction of asphalt, mining and/or manufacturing of all component materials and transportation. The amount of used energy and the energy sources were defined for each of the processes allowing to express the results in terms of total energy demand distribution by the energy source or by unit process, which is significant in further calculation of carbon footprint. The case study results present the comparison of asphalt energy consumption for seven different modules. Transportation distances and the asphalt type were defined as typical for a paving site in Latvia. The results showed 7% to 18% energy gain for the WMA in comparison with the reference HMA and indicated that the amount of reduction is mostly attributed to the reduction in heating temperature of the production plant.There is a growing demand for products with low environmental impact due to current and upcoming environmental regulations/policies and increased environmental consumer awareness. Thus, integration of tools, methods, techniques for sustainability into design processes is becoming essential to design greener products. This paper presents a novel environmental impact assessment of lighting products' conducted at the design stage, with the support of Life Cycle Assessment methods and related tools including Software Simapro. Two lighting products are used in the assessment, the results showed that one of the lighting products had less (total) impact on the environment than the other one, the main difference of impact between both products was located at the manufacturing phase, and their transport and use phases have higher impact within the life-cycle of the products.With the development of economy and growth of population, China's building materials has seen tremendous growth in recent years, more attention is paid to help manage the sustainability challenges of building materials. This paper tries to build a conceptual framework to integrate The Natural Step Framework, Life Cycle Assessment and Ecological Footprint and attempt to analyse how it works in the management of a sustainable transition.In this study, cost-benefit analyses based on life cycle assessment is applied to optimize the recycling of processing water for semiconductor factories. A representative 8-inch semiconductor wafer manufacturing plant is selected and seven existing or potential processing water-recycling sources were set, reverse osmosis (RO) reject, ultrafilter (UF) reject, multimedia filter (MMF), on-line analyzer drain, cation/anion (C/A) filter and merry-go-round (MGR) filter backwash water (including C/A sensor drain), wafer process organic drain and wafer process inorganic drain, marked as point 1 to 7, respectively. To sort the water-recycling sources in ascending order of the results of life cycle cost analyses, they were point 4, 5, point 2, 3, point 1, 7 and point 6, with life cycle the cost about 100,000$, 350,000$, 1000,000$ and 2000,000$, respectively. The order changed when they were sorted by their unit recycling-water costs; that was point 1, 2, point 5, point 3, 4 and point 7, with the unit recycling-water costs 0.2$/ton, 0.3$/ton, 0.4$/ton and 0.5$/ton, respectively. The analyses also evaluated the water recycling practice for various assumed unit tap water price. The optimal processing water recycling strategies based were proposed and corresponding optimal water-recycling rates were 24%, 64%, 81%, and 85% for water price 0.373$/ton, 0.578$/ton, 0.75$/ton and 0.945$/ton, respectively.Ceramic tapes are traditionally produced by tape casting using organic solvents. The use of organic solvents has been questioned due to health, environmental and fire hazard risks. The use of water-based tape casting can reduce these problems. This study contains an environmental assessment of ceramic tapes in a life cycle perspective. Two tape casting techniques, using different solvents during the tape casting, are analyzed from cradle to grave, ie, from raw material production, manufacturing, application and recycling. The functional unit was defined as tape with 1000 gram of alumina content. Tape casting with water based solvent was compared to tape casting with hydrocarbon based solvent. In principal, only differing processes were examined. There are also quality issues associated with water based tape casting: the drying is slower and can cause cracking, air bubbles can be entrapped, and in some cases there can be problems with wetting. These problems can be handled by controlling the colloidal and rheological properties and using a system with high solids loading. In conclusion the results show that water based tape casting gives tapes of high quality and that a lower environmental impact is possible compared to solvent based tape casting. It is further shown that the sintering of the green tape, which follows the tape casting, is probably the process with most climate impact in the life cycle of a ceramic tape.Green concrete is a concrete that supports the content of CO2 emissions reductions by using waste industries as cement replacement. The waste industries that commonly can be used in green concrete mixture design are fly ash, blast furnace slag, silica fume, and rice husk ash. The present of supplementary cementitous material in green concrete mixture can increase both compressive strength and cement efficiency. The higher of cement efficiency, the higher compressive strength and the lower cement content will be. Densified Mixture Design Algorithm (DMDA) is a method that has been widely applied to concrete constructions in Taiwan. DMDA method can support the higher of cement efficiency in green concrete design. By using DMDA to create green concrete with supplementary cementitous material can increase the life of concrete and hence reduce life-cycle cost.This paper focuses on the external economy of energy development using oil trees, and explores methods and ways to quantify. According to the idea of life cycle assessment, using CO2 as a unified index, monetary value of external economy can be estimated by means of carbon trading prices in international carbon exchange market. In this case, we try to demonstrate the economic and environmental benefits of energy development using oil trees in more intuitive approaches.Dependence of European Union on primary energy sources import is high. Fossil fuels still remain the most intensively used fuel in energy mix. European policies aimed at reduction of CO2 emissions and increase share of renewable energy sources. Environmental impact became more important and energy mix has to be qualified to this task. Energy mix of Slovakia is consider to be balanced, shared with fossil fuels used in conventional power plants, nuclear fuels and water energy. The impact to the environment of the electricity production in Slovakia where analyzed via life cycle analysis performed in SimaPro software. The results from the simulations are presented in the paper.Purpose - A greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory was conducted for Yale University's procurement of goods and services over a one-year period. The goal of the inventory was to identify the financial expenditures resulting in the greatest "indirect" GHG emissions. This project is part of an ongoing effort to quantify and reduce the university's environmental impacts. Design/methodology/approach - The impacts of institutional purchases were analyzed using publicly available economic input-output life cycle assessment software. This model allows users to estimate the indirect GHG emissions of procured goods and services using expenditure data for different categories of purchases. The results are based on national averages for the USA. Findings - The findings of this inventory indicate that indirect GHG emissions from procured goods and services are the greatest source of the university's emissions. A total of 15 of the university's 142 financial expenditure categories accounted for 80 percent of the GHG emissions. Many of these categories were expected, including energy purchases, construction activities, and air travel. Others were more surprising, particularly architectural and engineering services, laboratory supplies, and software. Practical implications - This Study is expected to assist Yale University in its efforts to reduce GHG emissions by providing a quantitative basis for prioritizing green supply chain management decisions. Originality/value - This study demonstrates that universities and other organizational entities can proficiently assess indirect GHG emissions from goods and services using publicly available software, and that these efforts are significant for understanding the environmental impacts of higher education.Colombia is the second-largest exporter of flowers in the world. The major production hub is placed around the capital city, Bogota. Approximately 7266 ha are devoted to production of ornamental species under greenhouse conditions, the most important being roses (Rosa spp.) and carnations (Dianthus caryophyllus). Concern about the environmental performance of the industry is growing among the international market. The aim of this work was to explore technological alternatives to reduce the environmental impact exerted by the supply chain (production, marketing and consumption) of cut roses under greenhouse but at the same time looking for a production model that improves actual yields. The Life Cycle Assessment method was used to evaluate the environmental performance of the actual production system as well as a proposed technological alternative. The supply chain was divided into three stages: 1. cropping system including infrastructure, pest management, fertilization, harvest and residues; 2. postharvest including grading, packaging and storage and, 3. transportation to markets in the United States. The number of rose stems produced per square meter of soil was defined as the functional unit. Addition of a heating system to the actual cropping system in order to increase yields and reduce pest incidence was considered. Previous studies have shown that transportation of the flowers by aircraft imposes the major environmental impact by the product. Alternative transportation by ship is discussed in the present study. Results indicated the feasibility of including heating systems actual production schemes due to increase in energy use efficiency. In the overall impact assessment, this alternative will reduce the environmental impact of the actual cropping system. This study demonstrated that technological improvements to the supply chain can result in environmental benefits in order to preserve the competitiveness of the flower industry in Colombia.With huge population and vast exports of textiles, China has become the largest textile production and consumption centre in the world. However, the industrial production process of textiles consumes lots of electricity, coal oil, gas and other energy which have caused lame amounts of GHG emissions. Therefore, it is important and necessary to reduce GHG emissions and improve the carbon efficiency of textiles production process in China. Focusing on the GHG emission in the process of textile production, we investigated the theory and methods of GHG assessment and production process of typical textile enterprises, discussed the implication of industrial carbon footprint in textile industry from the viewpoint of life-cycle approach, and analyzed the constitution and structure of the industrial carbon footprint. We divided the industrial carbon footprint of textiles into two parts: direct emissions which were caused by combustion of fossil fuel such as coal, oil and gas etc and indirect emissions which were caused by the consumption of secondary energy. And we proposed system boundary, composition, assessment methods of industrial carbon footprint in textile industry. Finally, we discussed the application mechanism and development of the industrial carbon footprint in textile industry. We hope the implication, composition and assessment methods of industrial. carbon footprint in textile industry can help in improving carbon efficiency of textile production and stimulating low-carbon textile consumption.Evaluation indexes system has been put forward in this paper for quantifying the systematical energy consumption, resources consumption, total emissions' change and waste disposal capacity in road construction with recycled waste materials involved. With help of this evaluation indexes system, the contributions to environmental improvement caused by recycling waste materials in road construction can be quantified through calculating savings on environmental impact potentials, savings on energy consumption, on virgin materials' consumption and waste disposal capacity provided by road construction. Based on the construction project of a road section numbered No.20 EWK0+400 similar to EWK0+600 of North highway to Shanghai Pudong international airport, which was the first trial project of using several kinds of recycled waste materials including bottom ash from incinerators to replace commonly used materials such as gravel in large scale in road pavement, the results of the four indexes, namely, savings on energy consumption and virgin materials' consumption, environmental impact potentials as well as waste disposal capacity were obtained. It was found out that with multi recycled waste materials replacing part of the common construction material, systematical energy consumption can be reduced by 30%, a large amount of virgin resource consumption can be avoid and road construction also provides a remarkable large "dumping site" for solid wastes; while at the same time environmental impact potentials were saved for most impact categories except for increase in Ecotoxicity, water chronic, which was caused by heavy metals' leaching and can be prevented by pre-treatment. Those results are useful for guiding the utilization of recycled waste materials, as well as for developing new technology process and advanced materials in road construction.For rather more than the last decade the world's car makers have been making major efforts to reduce the mass of their vehicles. As magnesium is the lightest structural metal, much attention has been devoted to increasing its use in motor cars and considerable success has been achieved with high pressure die castings. This chapter describes the excellent superplastic properties that can be obtained from magnesium alloys, but also outlines the problems such as corrosion and lack of ambient temperature ductility that, from a technical viewpoint, have restricted its application. The major economic and environmental issues (life cycle analyses (LCA)) holding back its use are also reviewed and prospects for future application considered.In the context of sustainable development, this paper presents a methodologie for an economic and environmental evaluation within a cementry by applying life cycle analysis (LCA) method. We have to sum up the impacts and make a constat of economical activities which spread up on environment. The constant degradation of environment and many environmental desasters have given to the environment theme an increasing importance. The economic grawth represents a danger from the point of view of ressources (soil-water-energy), of pollution, and over exploitation of natural systems have became a new research theme. It is determinant to know if this methodology can in suffisant manner, concretises and be adapted to pratical application(s) for this, the integration of a demarch, or a tool which undergoing this analysis, in order of obtaining results which can be interpretated. The LCA built a precise diagnosis of development methods of a technology or a product and suggests mecanisms and measures of sustainable development which will move forward the entreprise.Traditional project performance studies that are composed of time and cost have been enlarged to include other parameters recently. Although parameters such as safety and quality have been considered widely, the analysis of environmental impacts together with time and cost is still an emerging concept. Construction industry shares a considerable portion in consuming energy and natural resources both in the U.S. and around the world. Therefore, it represents the best chance to reduce environmental impacts. The impacts of construction processes, materials, and technologies on the natural environment need more attention in order to be reduced and controlled. With environmental concerns as another dimension of constraints on the built environment, significant changes may happen to building designs. Such changes can lead to a new paradigm of project management that aims at managing and controlling intricate relationships among time, cost and environmental impact. Although literature involves plenty of studies that emphasize the importance of environmental impact, sustainable movement has not been fully integrated with other project objectives such as time and cost. Additionally, the effect of changing project conditions on environmental impacts as well as time and cost of construction projects has not been studied in detail. This paper discusses a case study on a highway construction project. A decision-making model is created to analyze time, cost and environmental impact objectives in construction projects. The study includes the application of life cycle assessment in the environmental impact calculations, as well as decision analysis to model agents and project conditions in the construction environment. The output of the model helps to view the influence of decision-making models on the selection of construction operations when there are three potentially conflicting objectives as time, cost and environmental impact.A cost combined life cycle assessment was carried out to estimate the economic and environmental impact of redmud as aggregate in cement production. Results showed that the raw materials, transport, electricity and coal had the highest contribution to overall cost, while coal production and direct emissions represented the dominant contribution to overall environment impact. Improving energy and raw material efficiency and minimizing raw materials transport distance are the efficient way to minimize overall environmental and economic impacts.During the last two decades, many approaches to corporate and industrial environmental management as well as tools and sustainability programmes have been created and implemented. Sustainable business is business that is rewarding in economic, social and ecological approach people creating these new ways of doing business [1]This is a complete assembly of process life cycle assessment (LCA) of textiles, complemented with a novel simplified method: the ecological key figures (EKF) for the value-added chain of textiles. LCA is based on individual measurement, including process variations from cotton growing, spinning, weaving, finishing and consumption, and is interpreted with relation to scale and scope and functionality. EKF are based on equations for individual processes along the value-added chain, taking into account main specific settings in production as well as basic environmental impact assessment.Agriculture sector is the second biggest source of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission, and rice is one of the most important grains in China. Reducing rice carbon emission is playing an important role in low-carbon agriculture. Based on life-cycle assessment, this paper assesses rice carbon footprint (CF) of 17 main rice-producing provincial areas in China respectively, and analyzed change trend of rice CF amount and structure from 1997 to 2008. The results show that: the CF produced in extraction and transportation of raw materials, and arable farming is accounted to 90%-97% of the total rice CF. The proportion of CF that emerged in the production and transportation of agrochemical was decreasing gradually during the time from 1997 to 2008. And the CF of each ton of rice in developed coastal regions such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, was several times. higher than other regions. It suggests to improve the process of energy extraction and to develop energy-saving technologies in the rice cultivation, meantime, promoting clean energy, biomass energy and renewable energy in rural areas continuously, and adjusting the production structure of rice production are the ways to reduce rice carbon emission.China is the largest primary magnesium producer in the world, because of nearly 80% of the global market share. In the present paper, an approach of life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to build an inventory of air emissions and to analyze the environmental impact of the global warming potential (GWP) and the acidification potential (AP) related to the production of AZ91D magnesium alloy. A summary of environmental impacts of primary magnesium and primary aluminum production with various studies was made to show the influence of uncertainties on the impacts. The results showed that the cumulative GWP and the acidification potential (AP) of AZ91D Mg-alloy are 33.4 t CO2 eq/t ingot and 139 kg SO2 eq/t ingot, with the range of 29.5-36.3 t CO2 eq/t ingot and 104-152 kg SO2 eq/t ingot, respectively. The GWP and AP of primary magnesium account for 90% and 77% of the cumulative environmental impact of AZ91D Mg-alloy. Under the grand background of advancing the development strategy of energy-saving and emission-reducing, China magnesium smelting and manufacture industry has made rapid progress in the structure optimization, energy efficiency improvement, and environment protection. The calculated data show that the improvement measures, e.g. reduction of dolomite consumption and energy consumption, in Chinese Pidgeon process led to 23% decrease of the GWP for the primary magnesium production in 2009 compared with 2005. The global warming reduction potential for 1 ton AZ91D alloy ingots produced in China was estimated of substituting HFC-134a for SF6 as a cover gas.According to the materials of casing, frame, and cushion, this research aims to investigate the environmental impact assessment of sofas. With reference to this characteristic, this assessment is based on the evaluation model "Eco-indicator 99" of Sima Pro and the results are listed as below: Regarding sofa materials which are brought about the negative influence to the environment: Sofa casing: polyester fiber > leather > imitation leather > cotton; sofa frame: wood > plastic > metal; sofa cushion: TDI foam > MDI foam. If we deal with sofa materials by chemical methods, respiratory inorganics are caused from a great quantity of fossil fuels during production and the huge negative influence will result in climate change. Concerning the waste influence on the environment when sofas are end of life: Sofa casing: To incinerate or landfill polyester fiber is more seriously; sofa frame: To incinerate or landfill wood is more critically; sofa cushion: to incinerate TDI or MDI is more harmfully than to landfill or recycle them. It will have positive help and decrease garbage if we can recycle sofa waste.The ecological footprint (EF) analyses were conducted in order to evaluate the environment impact of improving actual catering system by replacing 50-100% of red meat products (beef) with local/regional fishy products in the weekly meals created for 'Dunarea de Jos' University (UGAL) students in 2010. Product-specific EF was calculated from consistent and quality-controlled life-cycle information of food products and services, including energy, materials, transport, waste treatment and infrastructural processes. The reducing of red meat products in the student daily menus with 50% and the reducing of long food chain at the local/regional level determined 36.24% average decreasing of actual menu EF and the replacing of red meat with fishy products - 72.2% reducing of eco-menus EF. At least 20.83% less amount of money could be saved in the menu criteria and if we replace one day in a week 50% meat with local fishy products and the average reducing EF for menu creation in an academic year could be in average 17.27%.Life-cycle assets management (LCAM) is promising for improving power system efficiency and reliabilities, lowering life-cycle costs of smart grid. This paper, after investigating and redesigning traditional assets management processes with integration-centered optimization, puts forward a life-cycle assets management system model with multi-agent style, in which life cycle analysis (LCA) can be executed with collected and retrieved data from heterogeneous agents in complex multi-level environment. Related critical issues are also discussed about system modeling and implementation. Finally, technical solutions are proposed about agent communication mechanisms and information security. Research results can be extended to enhance information capacities in related fields.Greenhouse gases in cattle breeding : evaluation and mitigation strategies In today's environmental context, as much political (the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) as social (consumer demands for information concerning food products), there is a need to determine the influence of ruminant livestock on climate change. It has become crucial to quantify precisely the levels of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and carbon sequestration for different ruminant livestock systems by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to calculate the carbon footprint of dairy and beef farms. This approach allows us to account for GHG in relation with direct and indirect emissions. Thus in the French dairy system, the average gross carbon footprint is 1.26 kg CO2 /kg milk. Carbon sequestration under grassland and hedges compensates for GHG emissions ranging from 6 to 43% according to the system utilized. Consequently the net carbon footprint is 1.0 kg CO2 / kg milk. In the French beef system, the gross carbon footprint for raw materials is comprised between 14.8 and 16.5 kg CO2 / kg of live meat depending on the production system. It must be mentioned that carbon sequestration represents compensation in a range of 24 to 53% and the net carbon footprint is between 7.9 and 11.3 kg CO2 / kg of live meat. These investigations demonstrate that numerous mitigation actions have been identified in the livestock systems to reduce the carbon footprint of milk and meat at the farm gate. Some of them concern management practices (adjustment of dietary intake, fertilization management...) which result in substantial savings in agricultural expenses. Others require the installation of new technologies which would require additional funds to improve the production processes.Transparent and credible environmental labeling of products is vital for a sustainable future. Ecolabeling shows information on the environmental performance of products, processes, and services. This article focuses on one type of ecolabeling referred to as environmental product declarations (EPDs) that provide environmental impact information based on life cycle assessment (LCA) data. Businesses and consumers who are not familiar with life cycle analysis can use LCA-based EPDs for comparison between competing products, much like using nutritional labels. In addition, this article describes the process of developing EPDs from LCA data in conjunction with product category rules and the status and future needs of EPDs in the U.S. forest products industry.This paper presents the application of neural networks in the design process of new technologies taking into account factors such as their influence on the environment and the economic effects of their implementation. The use of neural networks allowed eco-efficiency assessment of technologies based on highly reduced number of descriptive design parameters, which are very difficult to collect at the conceptual design stage. The great diversity of technologies involved along with the small number of available examples made difficult to construct a neural model and demanded careful data preprocessing and network structure selection.Engineers will play a significant role in designing, building and implementing creative solutions to major global challenges that we face. To prepare the 21st century engineer, sustainability concepts needs to be covered systematically throughout the curriculum and in all majors of the engineering departments. This NSF-funded project is integrating fundamental concepts of sustainability into two core lower division engineering courses (Introduction to Engineering and Introduction to Materials). The outcome of the project is three learning modules covering the topics of renewable and non-renewable energy sources, energy conversion and efficiency, water and energy, and product life cycle analysis. The modules include lectures, hands-on laboratories, and interactive Excel spreadsheets. The modules, along with the accompanying equipment and software, are currently being piloted in SJSU courses and will be disseminated to local the community colleges through a hands-on workshop for community college teachers. Preliminary assessment materials have been collected for the past year to determine effectiveness of the modules.For years, research on the life cycle of conventional building materials (e. g. reinforced concrete and metal structures) has been studied; however very little literature can be found in non-conventional materials such as timber. Ever since the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake that happened in Taiwan, many traditional timber framework buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. For the past decade, enormous amount of resources have been invested by the Taiwanese government to begin various studies on traditional timber building techniques, timber material testing etc. Although correct building technique or proper use of building material are crucial towards establishing a structurally-sound timber framework, without proper building maintenance, the structural integrity will also be jeopardised in future. With the continual decline of timber supply, re-using existing timber materials becomes especially important in building conservation. In this paper, eight Taiwanese traditional temples are used to study the life cycle of historic timber framework. Based on past records of each building's restoration process, statistical calculations of various timber components at different repair stages and oral interviews with the traditional master carpenters, architects and timber surveying units, results shown that alteration design during repair stage is recommended as it enables architects to give more informed repair advice. However if improper or unsuitable measures are carried out during emergency rescue work, timber deterioration will only aggravate further instead of being salvaged. Lastly, a theoretical calculation method for timber framework life span is proposed by using 50% as the critical point for overall structural failure. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Renewable systems for heating and cooling (RES-HC) systems in last ten years have gradually increased their importance and their presence in the global heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) market. Many energetic analysis and impact assessments have been made, which have demonstrated the convenience, respect to traditional HVAC systems, of solutions such as solar thermal or low enthalpy geothermal systems in terms of: energy consumption reduction, renewable energy use increase and emissions decrease. However, the several analysis made, up to date, only have considered the operation period of such systems, and consequently the comparison has been made only in terms of energy vectors used, omitting materials, components and processes. This paper aims to give a new perspective, showing how a correct environmental analysis should take into account all the life cycle of a system, from the cradle to grave, also if the system concerns a renewable energy source. In the specific case, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) will be presented, focusing on two currently popular RES-HC systems: solar thermal and low enthalpy geothermal, compared to the same functional unit. The results of this analysis could be a good starting point for future work on impact assessment of more complex and integrated HVAC systems. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAASAlthough operational energy is currently the main focus of sustainability in building regulations, embodied energy and associated environmental impacts are gaining importance in absolute and percentage terms, as operational energy consumption is reduced. This paper assesses three types of partition wall system using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques: brick from clay; hollow block from concrete; and traditional timber frame. The results showed that clay brick wall is the most significant wall in terms of consumed energy and environmental impacts associated with the entire life cycle. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAASLife Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used successfully to make decisions in sustainable building design and construction. Nevertheless, the method is rarely utilized for many reasons. First of all, in the common practice the energy consumption during the period of use is considered the main indicator of the environmental impact of buildings. Secondarily, databases relative to products, components and their installation cannot be found so easily. The goal of this paper is to make a comparison between two different construction technologies through Life Cycle Assessment methods, trying to understand the potentialities and the limitations of the available LCA tools. Although results may be limited to the specific context of Europe, we try to put in evidence the usefulness of the method in a design perspective, if carefully selected and adapted. The comparison regards two different structural solutions for a mid-sized green building: an innovative wood structure and a reinforced concrete structure, built with a consolidated technology. According to the LCA approach, overall wood structures are environmentally less impactful than concrete ones, but different kinds of impact emerge in a wider perspective. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAASSustainability can be defined as 'meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs'. Life cycle assessment (LCA), taking into account all inputs (including energy) and outputs (including greenhouse gases), shows that poultry, including laying hens, compare favourably with other farm livestock. This is largely because biological overheads are relatively low because of rapid maturation and high fecundity. Also, genetic selection, along with control of nutrition and environment, has allowed the industry to respond to challenges linked either with selection for productivity or with intensive housing and nutrition. Issues of pollution by poultry are often related to disposal of wastes in limited and sensitive areas rather than total quantities. Emerging challenges for the poultry industry include competition with biofuel production, itself ostensibly developed with sustainability in mind.In the aim of promoting the responsible and sustainable management of the European fishing activity, the European Commission took a number of actions oriented to the implementation of "no-discard" and "zero-waste" policies to be followed by the European fishing fleets in the near future. In particular, actions were directed to the development of policies to reduce unwanted by-catches and eliminate discards in European fisheries, as well as to make the best possible use of the captured resources avoiding its waste. In this sustainability framework, the FAROS Projects (co-funded under the LIFE+ Environmental Program of the European Union) aims at developing and implementing an efficient and integral discards and by-catch management network based on a global and real-time information system both on board and in land. This network implies all actors present in the fishing sector (fleets, ports, auctions, industries, etc.) and takes advantage of the existing synergies between them in order to attain the minimization of discards/by-catch as well as their optimal valorization to recover and to produce valuable chemicals of interest in the food and pharmaceutical industry.When evaluating remediation technologies for contaminated soil and groundwater, the beneficial effects of the remediation, namely cleaner soil and groundwater, are mostly emphasized without consideration of the environmental impact of the remediation activities themselves. In the present study, the environmental impact of two soil remediation techniques was evaluated. Based on the detailed analysis of a case study, the results of a life cycle-based analysis (Risk Reduction, Environmental Merit and Costs (REC)) were compared with the results of a best available technology not entailing excessive costs (BATNEEC) analysis, a method that is currently applied in Flanders (Belgium) to evaluate the feasibility of remediation technologies for soil and groundwater. According to the REC analysis, in situ thermal treatment showed a lower global environmental impact than soil excavation and off-site treatment, mainly because there were fewer emissions from the transport of contaminated soil. Within the environmental aspects group of the BATNEEC method, soil excavation performed better than thermal soil remediation because it obtained a better score to meet the legal objectives for soil and groundwater quality. It also showed fewer environmental liabilities and obtained a better score for a decrease in the contaminants' content in soil and groundwater. The BATNEEC method does not take into account the emissions from the transport of the soil. Despite these differences between both methods, thermal remediation technology obtains the best overall score in terms of both assessment methods (taking into account the environmental, financial, and technical aspects). Although an life cycle analysis (LCA) based evaluation method is much more complex and requires much more data than a classical BATNEEC analysis, both evaluation tools could be used in a complementary way. A preliminary selection of remediation technologies could be based on a BATNEEC analysis, followed by a detailed analysis of the selected remediation options by means of LCA.The paper focuses on the role of simulation within the RSB GHG Tool, which is a web-based decision support tool that assesses greenhouse gas emissions of biofuels according to the principles of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels. Using a questionnaire, each operator can specify his individual data and calculate the GHG emission for his production step. To derive the environmental flows required for the impact assessment, the tool applies simulation, which allows generating a full inventory on the basis of the limited input data the operator can provide. This is the basis for the interactive assessment of the GHG emissions of individual steps of biofuels pathways, without the need of conducting a time and resource-intensive Life Cycle Assessment study. In this paper, we focus on the simulation for the emissions caused by land use change since such emissions can play a dominating role in the GHG balance of a biofuel.This paper discusses what is known about the life-cycle burdens of lithium ion batteries. Constituent-material production and the subsequent manufacturing of batteries are emphasized. Of particular interest is estimation of the impact of battery material recycling on battery manufacturing. Because some materials come from comparatively less plentiful resources, the recycling of lithium ion batteries and the potential impact on battery-production life-cycle burdens are discussed. This effort represents the early stage of lithium ion battery life-cycle analysis, in which processes are characterized preparatory to detailed data acquisition. Notwithstanding the lack of data on production of battery materials, it is estimated that the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with battery manufacturing make up only a small percentage of a plug-in hybrid vehicle's total life-cycle energy use. Further, the recycling of battery materials potentially can significantly reduce the material production energy.This study aims to estimate the necessary scale of additional mass transit on trunk lines to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from regional passenger transport in Japan. First, a local transport region is defined as an area within which most daily transport is conducted. In each region, the target of CO2 emissions from local passenger transport activities in 2050 is set to 20% of those emissions in 2000. The amount of CO2 exhaust from local passenger transport can be estimated on the basis of technological innovation; thus, the amount of reduction needed to achieve the target can be calculated. Second, changes in CO2 emissions from the introduction of a mass transit system are evaluated, considering their reduction from replacing private vehicles and the emissions from constructing and operating the mass transit system. For this purpose, life-cycle assessment is applied. The total amount of CO2 emissions from infrastructure construction, vehicle production, and operation from mass transit is calculated. The transport density of each route is estimated with population density in a densely inhabited district of each local transport region. The transit system that emits the least CO2 per passenger kilometer is selected. The extent of new services needed to achieve the CO2 reduction target is calculated. A series of calculations provides the lengths of additional mass transit routes required to reduce traffic volumes sufficiently to achieve the CO2 reduction target for local passenger transport by 2050.The exponential growth of the semiconductor industry raises serious environmental concerns. Accurate life-cycle data are critical for both appropriate product eco-design and life-cycle analysis (LCA) of new electronic applications. Previous semiconductor LCA efforts were based on generic studies dealing with an average component description such as microprocessors, DRAM or Flash memories without taking into account the broad application range of each component. In this paper, we show that accurate life-cycle data can only be obtained with an application-aware approach. We demonstrate this with a life-cycle energy evaluation of microprocessors for five different applications: from high-performance 32 nm CPUs for servers and laptops to low-power 45 nm processors for set-top boxes and smart phones to ultra-low-power 130 nm MCUs for wireless sensors. For each category, we model the energy of the CMOS processing steps for integrated circuit (IC) fabrication as well as the use phase energy demand including both active and stand-by modes. Results show that life-cycle energy varies by a factor 20000x between the high-performance and the ultra-low-power ends.This paper summarizes the goals and initial findings from a project whose aim is to create robust and practical life cycle assessment (LCA) tools to assess the performance of buildings. A central feature of this project is the concept of a dynamic LCA framework for buildings, which should include, but is not limited to; considering temporal variations in internal and external conditions during a building's operating lifetime, and incorporating the ability to rapidly update the LCA results based on changes to the building's design or operation (dynamic scenario modeling). A life cycle assessment (LCA) framework is necessary to understand how buildings and their occupants use materials, water, and energy resources, and are affected by the building's internal environmental quality throughout the its lifetime. However, LCA is not commonly used in building industry practice. This disparity is hypothesized to be the result of several factors: the perceived and actual complexity of LCA's application; the lack of inclusion of internal building effects important to practitioners and users, such as indoor environmental quality (IEQ); and the lack of detailed information on the dynamics of the building's use phase. This paper describes the feasibility of deploying a real-time, wireless sensor network to generate a dynamic LCA for buildings. Using the data collected from a sensor network, projections of the environmental impact of a building's use phase can be validated or improved. Building systems that demonstrate a highly variable impact on the LCA results or diverge widely from current predictions can be selected for additional study, and choices regarding where to expend finite resources in sensor applications can be refined.Modeling of ecosystem services using a multiphysics approach shows promise in detailing the contribution and interaction of constituent underlying processes. Such detail is required to enable ecosystem service valuation based on functional substitutability, whereby the market value of an equivalent engineered system provides a basis of value amenable to international financial accounting norms. One multiphysics package - COMSOL Multiphysics - is used as part of a greater framework to value the ecosystem service of phosphorus removal from stormwater runoff via soil.Rapid growth in demand for electricity production, agricultural commodities and industrial uses are depleting the world's freshwater supply either in terms of quantity or quality, a problem exacerbated by climate change's influence on freshwater supply. With demand and stress still rapidly increasing, it is already estimated that there are two billion people without proper sanitation systems and approximately one billion people lacking access to safe drinking water. Water footprinting and related impact assessment tools are being developed to provide a quantitative and scientific measurement system for use in managing freshwater impact. The demand for business transparency, along with operational, regulatory and business image risks, is driving multinational companies towards more holistic assessments of their water footprint and associated impact. By developing a water use inventory a company can quantify the freshwater required or associated with a particular product or process. By applying impact assessments, a company can better understand if the water uses in that inventory are likely to cause stress on human welfare, impact environmental quality, or create a reputational or financial risk. Water assessment tools ultimately can help a company determine which project, product, process or even choice of facility location is the best decision, and develop programmatic changes to reduce the impact of their freshwater footprint. This paper presents an update to Intel Corporation's (Intel's) first water footprint assessment and was developed in partnership with Quantis International, a third-party life cycle assessment company. Whereas the original assessment included facility water use and some aspects of supply chain, this paper expands on facility and supply chain water use, the influence of renewable energy credits (RECs) on water footprinting, and the water impact of the consumer use phase of Intel's products. The paper also discusses the process used in making these enhanced assessments and their implications in comparison with Intel's original water assessment.Determining whether an appliance should be reused or recycled is an important environmental issue. Reducing the life cycle impact of appliance is paramount. The argument for recycling focuses on the usage phase of appliances accounting for more than 80% of the life cycle impact. In order to deduce what the actual environmental effects of the usage phase, cumulative energy demand (CED) life cycle assessment (LCA) incorporating electricity generation is employed. Future possible reductions in the life cycle impact of the usage phase are examined through the introduction of demand side management (DSM). This paper demonstrates that DSM can be used to increase the contribution of renewable energy to an appliances demand, reducing the usage phase impact of the LCA.Polylactic acid (PLA) has been identified as one of the most promising biobased plastics for various applications. The nonrenewable energy use of 1 kg PLA produced in an integrated system where both corn grain and corn stover are harvested and used for lactic acid production has been assessed through life cycle assessment. The overall findings are that PLA produced from integrated system does not show advantages compared with current corn starch based system. Feedstock consumption of producing 1 kg PLA is about 1.62 kg corn grain and 0.81 kg corn stover. Nonrenewable energy use associated with PLA resin produced in the integrated system is about 58.9 MJ/kg. In order to facilitate future large scale biobased PLA production, and also reduce its dependence on corn grain which increase food costs, more efforts are needed to focus on choosing appropriate lignocellulosic raw materials and developing more efficient technologies.It is now illegal in many states to idle heavy-duty trucks to supply the cabin electrical needs of the driver. An alternative approach is the solid oxide fuel cell-based auxiliary power unit (APU), which can produce electrical power with much higher efficiency and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The "standard" APU system includes a fuel reformer, which converts on-board diesel fuel into a hydrogen-rich effluent that is delivered to the anode side of the fuel cell stack. As renewable bio-fuels begin to realize greater market penetration, there is a need to determine which bio-fuel option provides the optimal pathway to economic value and emissions reduction when converted for use in a fuel cell APU system. The results of this study indicate that biodiesel from waste cooking oil may be the optimal bio-fuel option because of its relatively low energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as chemical and physical properties that are similar to those of petroleum-based diesel fuel.This article addresses different land use change scenarios, as well as uncertainty issues related to parameters and concerning how co-product credits are accounted for in the life-cycle modeling of rapeseed oil (RO). A comprehensive assessment of different land use change scenarios (rapeseed cultivation in former agricultural land and grassland) and agricultural practices has been conducted, which results in different carbon stock change values. RO GHG intensity and GHG emission implications when RO displaces petroleum diesel have been assessed in terms of probability distributions using a substitution method, three allocation approaches and ignoring co-product credits. The net GHG balance of rapeseed oil is strongly influenced by soil carbon stock variations due to land use change and by the magnitude of nitrous oxide emissions from cultivated soil. Depending on prior land use, GHG emissions may comply with the European renewable energy directive target of 35% GHG emission savings (arable land converted to rapeseed cultivation) or, conversely, may completely offset carbon gains attributed to rapeseed oil production for several decades (conversion of grassland).One of the goals of The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) is to bridge the divide between rigorous scientific analysis of the life cycle of consumer goods and the ability of the purchaser/ consumer to absorb and act on the environmental impact information provided from such an analysis. TSC has approached this issue through the development of the Sustainability Measurement and Reporting System (SMRS), which describes a process that facilitates the communication of environmental impacts derived from life cycle analysis to a broader lay audience. Based on ISO 14025 Type III environmental declarations, the SMRS provides the common rules for reporting impacts and creates a product declaration that can underpin any number of consumer communication modes. This paper presents the SMRS methodology and its application to laptop computers.There are numerous eco-analysis tools that are indicative of a product's environmental performance using indicators such as eco-toxicity and damage to human health. Many of these tools are resource intensive, require significant expertise and are hence unsuitable for Small to Medium size Enterprises (SMEs). As SMEs represent a substantial proportion of the economy, targeting these companies presents an opportunity to significantly enhance implementation of ecodesign practice in Welsh businesses. The following paper seeks to explore the benefits and barriers associated with utilizing three current eco-analysis tools for an SME. It explores how Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C), Carbon Footprinting (CFP) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) can be utilised by SMEs to comprehensively evaluate a product's environmental performance. To achieve this, the paper presents a case study of Orangebox, a furniture design company based in Wales that has an ecodesign led approach to New Product Development (NPD). The support this, the company recently undertook a C2C analysis for the Ara, an innovative, award winning task chair design. This case study evaluates the potential long-term benefits associated with using these tools, such as embedding life cycle thinking within an SME's design culture.The shift towards service based economic growth in developed countries is typically viewed positively with respect to environmental impact. Research in the past decade, however, has shown that service industries actually account for a large portion of environmental loadings in terms of emissions and energy use. Recently, more research has focused upon the development of tools and methods to properly assess the impacts of service industries. This paper discusses the environmental and economic performance of one service based company, a civil engineering consulting firm. This analysis employed a hybrid-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model to analyze the impacts of the aforementioned case study firm. The evaluation also included an energy audit, waste audit, and a personnel survey. This paper primarily focuses on the findings and results of the energy and waste audits, the survey, and the LCA as well as programs and initiatives that came as a result of the study. The findings point to both the difficulty and the importance of improving staff awareness of the environmental impacts associated with their work habits.The traditional Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) methods study a static snapshot of resource flow or emissions in life cycle networks by utilizing aggregated environmental metrics. It is likely that these networks can provide additional insight about the sustainability of systems that is currently not captured by any of the aggregated metrics. This includes insights such as resilience, vulnerability and many more, which motivates exploration of methods that can extract such information from these networks. This article focuses on applying the network analysis approach to life cycle networks to obtain additional insights about the sustainability of systems. Network analysis of corn-ethanol & gasoline network shows that one fuel is not consistently better over the other and several metrics need to be combined to gauge the true risks associated with each fuel. Results also show that two fuels will require different management strategies based on critical path (as indicated by degree strengths) in case of particular resource disruption. Further flow structure shows that current economy needs to integrate recycling strategies within structure of economy for various resources which is missing. The strengths and limitations of some of those methods for Input Output Life Cycle networks is also highlighted.To reduce the cost associated with screening lifecycle assessments (LCAs), we propose treating LCA as a data mining problem and automating the process of assigning impact factors to inventory components. We describe three sub-problems involved in automating LCA and provide illustrative case studies for each. The results from an automated data mining approach are comparable to those obtained from the more laborious manual LCA process.There is growing need for effective and efficient environmental assessment tools for information technology (IT) products. This paper presents a streamlined life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology using a screening and triage approach. The methodology is applied to the case study of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Global warming potential uncertainty is reduced by identifying and resolving uncertainty around key drivers of impact. The resolution of impact continues until a meaningful level of reduction of uncertainty is achieved, such as the ability to discriminate one class of LCD from another.Electronic and electrical devices have become key parts of modern society and their rapid and global proliferation improves quality of life in both developed and developing countries. However, the current patterns of design, manufacturing, use, and disposal of these devices are far from sustainable, and to date there are only limited educational efforts on preparing next generation engineers to change these patterns. This paper reports an effort at Purdue University to develop project-based course modules on sustainable electronics. Interdisciplinary student teams were formed to work on sustainability issues related to flat panel displays under the supervision of faculty from material engineering, mechanical engineering, and anthropology. Selected project topics include disassembly of LCD and plasma TVs, e-waste recycling and material availability, life cycle analysis of biopolymers for electronics, and people and cultural issues. Students involved in the course module developed deem this as a very interesting learning experience and are working to develop a YouTube video for outreach to general public. Future efforts include adding an international component to the module.Waste disposal is one of the most pressing concerns facing modern society. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the majority of organic waste from various residential, agricultural, and industrial sources can be converted by microorganisms into biofuels. These fuels provide valuable renewable energy sources that could significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions such as the passive release of methane from landfill sites. There are four types of biofuels that are produced by microbial action: (i) algal lipids, (ii) alcohols, (iii) methane, and (iv) hydrogen. In contrast to the others, methane production is the product of relatively robust microbial communities. Furthermore, methane can be produced from the residues of other biofuel production systems. The other biofuels are generally produced in single-organism systems, but there is increasing interest in employing syntrophic interaction between microorganisms for their manufacture. This is particularly true for the cellulosic production of ethanol and hydrogen, where cellulose must first be degraded into glucose. Algal lipids made with waste CO2 from the burning of fuel, and wastewater and wastewater sludge as nutrients, is the only biofuel efficiently produced by algae; however, algae grown on waste material also shows promise as feedstock for the production of other biofuels. The processing of biomass through two or more of these production systems would optimize waste conversion into biofuels.Working alongside operational trials, a comprehensive research programme was developed to evaluate sustainability, life-cycle analysis, soil productivity, wildlife, and water resource impacts. The hydrology field studies consist of three sets of forested watersheds, each with mid-rotation pine reference, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) interplanted, typical silvicultural, and switchgrass only sub-watershed treatments. Two of the three locations will also have a woody biomass understory treatment. Each of the 14 sub-watersheds is instrumented and collecting detailed hydrology, water quality, and climate data. While these on-going, detailed studies are necessary for understanding processes such as field evapotranspiration and nutrient cycling, three shorter-term, complementary studies of intercropped sites were completed: groundwater table response and soil compaction in artificially drained blocks in North Carolina; soil moisture response and soil compaction in an uplands site in Mississippi; and sediment production across operational tracts in Mississippi and Alabama. The results of these three studies are presented, along with the large watershed plan and status, and implications under possible climate change scenarios.This paper presents the results of a data collection effort, allowing to assess the overall environmental impact of the air bending process using the CO2PE!-Methodology. First the different modes of the air bending process are investigated, including both productive and non-productive modes. In particular consumption of electric power is recorded for the different modes. Subsequently, time studies allow determining the importance of productive and nonproductive modes of the involved process. The study demonstrates that the influence of standby losses can be substantial. In addition to life cycle analysis, in depth process analysis also provides insight in achievable environmental impact reducing measures towards machine tool builders and eco-design recommendations for product developers. The energy consumption of three different machine tool architectures are analysed and compared within this paper.The growing awareness of involving the criterion of sustainability in building design imposes questions of economic assessment of the proposed solutions. The aim of this research is to assess the economic benefits of sustainable construction in Greece. A questionnaire posed to 19 experts (consultant engineers, construction managers and contractors) based on the Delphi technique was carried out in order to gather experience on the economic benefits of sustainable construction. In particular, it is more economical at the operation phase of life cycle assessment and sufficiently important to be adopted at the design phase. Among the economic benefits of sustainable construction, reduce energy usage (REU) ranks first, followed by protection of the natural and social environment (NSE) and providing a healthy comfortable living environment (HLE). The results of the study show that the majority of experts believe that sustainable construction is overall more economical than standard practice.This paper discusses how energy consumption can be significantly reduced in mobile networks by introducing discontinuous transmission (DTX) on the base station side. By introducing DTX on the downlink, or cell DTX, we show that it is possible to achieve significant energy reductions in an LTE network. Cell DTX is most efficient when the traffic load is low in a cell but even when realistic traffic statistics are considered the gains are impressive. The technology potential for a metropolitan area is shown to be 90% reduced energy consumption compared to no use of cell DTX. The paper also discusses different drives for the increased focus on energy efficient network operation and also provides insights on the impact of cell DTX from a life cycle assessment perspective.China is the world's largest paper producer. China's paper industry is inefficient in its consumption of natural resources. Whereas the proportion of wood pulp used by the paper industry in developed countries is up to 63%, the corresponding figure for China is only 23% leading to high energy consumption and severe environmental pollution. This paper presents a systematic analysis using life cycle assessment of the environmental risks and carbon footprints associated with the straw-pulp and wood-pulp paper industries in China. Risk prevention measures are proposed based on the results of this analysis. The study has important ramifications for the sustainable development of China's paper industry.The tracing of resources and emissions has been recognised increasingly important in supply chains. The developed traceability graph enables tracing of information associated with products and their parts. Tracing in a supply chain requires the three integrated levels of actions: 1 at the physical level the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is used for physical objects 2 at the data-storing level logical counterparts of RFID tags and database objects are mapped 3 operational actions determine how recourses, emissions etc. are portioned in different parts of the traceability graph. Briefly, we integrate RFID technology with databases and operational actions of the supply chain.The challenge for agricultural production in the 21st century is to produce sufficient high-quality food whilst minimizing impact. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can help by identifying the parts of a supply chain with the greatest environmental impact, and to determine which technologies - for example plant breeding - may be most appropriately employed to minimize negative impacts. A 'plough-to-plate' LCA of a porridge oat production chain was undertaken using data that corresponds to the inputs and outputs of an indicative supply chain. The greatest environmental impact of the porridge oats life cycle occurs in crop production and cooking. There are traits for oats that are available for manipulation by plant breeders, which can influence these areas; these include yield, nitrogen use efficiency and beta-glucan content. Therefore plant breeding may be a useful strategy for improving the sustainability of the crop. However LCA cannot be a definitive tool to guide plant breeding and therefore this approach needs to compliment others. Nevertheless this study highlights that porridge oat supply chain sustainability would benefit from an integrated effort stretching from the geneticist to consumer; a finding that is likely to be relevant to other food supply chains.In this paper, we propose a machining microeconomic model that can optimize machining parameters and include all energy and environmental costs. A survey of microeconomic machining cost models is covered, with the result that a new cost model has been developed based on life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology. The scope includes the initial part production. Theoretical and actual experimental results are used to illustrate the model's implications with respect to carbon emissions and cost sensitivity. It is shown that for a manufacturing strategy, more certainty is required for inputs like carbon pricing to reduce financial risk. The limitations of the model, policy issues and future work are outlined. (C) 2011 CIRP.Tidal and wave energy devices are often discussed as a future contributor to the UK's energy mix. Indeed, marine energy resources are said to have the potential to supply up to 20 per cent of the nation's electricity demand. However, these technologies are currently at the development stage and make no meaningful contribution to the national grid. A number of devices have been developed, but no single method has emerged as the leading technology. This paper aims to compare two promising devices, one wave device and one tidal device, and assess the life cycle properties of each. A life cycle assessment of the Oyster wave energy device was conducted as part of this study, and a comparison of this and the SeaGen marine current turbine was undertaken. In both cases a 'cradle-to-grave' assessment was carried out, calculating emissions from materials, fabrication, transport, installation, lifetime maintenance, and decommissioning (including recycling). The SeaGen tidal device was calculated to have an energy payback period of 14 months, and a CO(2) payback period of 8 months. The equivalent figures for the Oyster device were 12 and 8 months, respectively. The respective energy and carbon intensities for the two devices were 214 kJ/kWh and 15 gCO(2)/kWh for the SeaGen and 236 kJ/kWh and 25 gCO(2)/kWh for the Oyster. The calculated intensities and payback periods are close to those of established wind turbine technologies, and low relative to the 400-1000 g CO(2)/kWh of typical fossil fuel generation. With further developments in construction and deployment efficiency these intensities are expected to fall, so the devices appear to have the potential to offer a viable contribution to the UK's future energy mix.Assessments of carbon capture and storage (CCS) document possible CO2 leakage from subsurface storage reservoirs, such as failed wells, and through permeable faults. Previous studies have dealt with the future potential of CCS only in terms of annual or cumulative avoided CO2 emissions, and with impermanent storage only in terms of allowed CO2 emissions in stabilization scenarios, but not in terms of resulting atmospheric CO2 concentrations or global warming effects. The author provides a thorough analysis of the relationship between CO2 emissions from CCS and global temperature change for a range of capture and leakage rates.The environmental assessment of human activities is presently a hot topic. It is not only important from an ecological perspective, but also from the view of efficient utilisation of limited natural resources such as fuel, land area, water und phosphorus. The environmental impact of food of animal origin is currently quantified by so-called CO2eq-footprints (Carbon Footprints: CF). To define CF, emissions arising along the food chain will be calculated according to their greenhouse potentials (carbon dioxide = 1 eq; methane: approximate to 23 eq, laughing gas: approximate to 300 eq). For the primary production of milk, meat and eggs, emissions during crop production, transportation, the storing and processing of feeds, animal keeping, enteric losses and excrement management can be mentioned as examples. Data for CF of food of animal origin and edible protein are deduced in the paper. Furthermore reduction potentials and research need are summarised.Afforestation is one of the most promising methods for the fixing of carbon dioxide. In this research, a target area of unused land, not competitive with food production and with a large area, was selected in the arid land near Leonora in Western Australia. It was necessary to select suitable tree species for afforestation in the target arid area. The objective of this work was to establish a method for the estimation of the amount of water used per net carbon intake. In this study, a method for the estimation of the water use efficiency (WUE) using nutrient tracers is suggested and established. Calcium was the most suitable nutrient for use as a tracer for this estimation method. The sampling strategies for the measurements were decided, and the nutrient concentrations in the tree organs and sap and content of carbon were determined. In particular, a method through which the calcium content in the sap is corrected using the calcium concentration in the organs of a tree was examined. It was confirmed that the WUE value obtained with this method was comparable to those determined by conventional methods. Finally, it is suggested that the present method for WUE determination is characterized by the advantages of short measurement terms and low cost.Biomass utilization is one of the most important methods for global warming mitigation from the viewpoints of both carbon sequestration and carbon-neutral energy use. Carbon sequestration potential should result from phytomass stock expansion, and in this study, the potential of phytomass stock expansion due to afforestation/rehabilitation with additional special water management was estimated by using several sets of global geographical information systems (GIS) data. The estimation was conducted under unified conditions for all the world areas by using a computer program based on the GIS data. The carbon sequestration potential of a land area was assumed to be primarily determined by its precipitation level if the area satisfied certain meteorological and geographical conditions for phytomass stock expansion, such as land use, temperature, slope, and soil type, and the sensitivities of these conditions were studied. The carbon sequestration potential due to regular afforestation/rehabilitation was estimated to be about 169 GtC in the world, and the effective regions for carbon sequestration were Brazil, etc. On the other hand, the increase in the carbon sequestration potential due to the additional special water management was estimated to be about 21 GtC in the world, and the effective regions were Saudi Arabia, west Australia, etc.Decisions for environment-friendly production and environmentally acceptable products are becoming a necessity and one of very important objectives of timber companies next to already existing economic criteria. Individual products and their manufacture have different influences on the pollution of the environment. Therefore it is necessary to determine the ecological quality of individual products, which means analyzing their ecological suitability during their life cycle. In our research we developed the methodology for establishing the ecological quality of furniture, based on three scientific methods: the method of life cycle analysis, ABC analysis, modified for our case, and the multi-criteria decision-making method. We analyzed the ecological quality of three kitchens of a well-known manufacturer. The results of the research are the basis for developing an optimal business strategy from the viewpoint of determining a production assortment. The used methodology is also suitable for studying other furniture products and for accepting optimal environmentally acceptable decisions in wood companies.To prepare for a carbon (C) constrained economy, crop production energy audits or life cycle analysis (LCA) must be conducted. However, energy audits may not maximize profitability. This study conducted simultaneous production, economic, and energy audits to evaluate differences among these assessments. The 2005 and 2006 South Dakota field experiment contained two nitrogen (N; 0 and 224 kg N ha(-1)) rates, two corn, population levels (76,500 and 149,000 plants ha(-1)), and two simulated landscape positions (upper backslope and lower backslope). The energy inputs, outputs, and net energy gain for corn grain used in ethanol production were calculated using the Nebraska Biofuel Energy Simulator (BESS) version 2008.3.1. For LC analysis, corn grain was used in ethanol production and dry distiller's grain was used as a livestock feed. Manure was not applied to the field. A partial economic analysis to examine profitability was conducted where seed, N fertilizer, and corn values were $312 (100,000 seeds)(-1), $1.25 (kg N)(-1), and $ 158 (Mg grain at 15.5% moisture)(-1), respectively. Results showed that: 1) to maximize profitability and energy gains, inputs must closely match crop needs for a site; 2) increasing the population level from 74,500 to 149,000 plants ha(-1) increased energy input and output, increased yield and energy gain by 11%, but did not influence profitability; 3) increasing N from 0 to 224 kg N ha(-1) increased yield 7%, reduced profit by $ 145/ha, increased energy input and output values, but did not impact energy gain; and 4) corn grown in high yielding areas of landscapes may have higher yields (P = 0.08), profitability (P = 0.08), and energy gains (P = 0.08) than other areas. These calculations demonstrate that yield, profitability, and energy audits may have divergent results.The kinetic energy of wind is harvested using wind turbines to generate electricity. Among various renewable energy sources, wind energy is the second most technologically advanced renewable energy source; hydropower is the first. Although there is a significant potential for converting wind energy to electricity, a number of issues must be addressed before it can be used to its full potential. Wind blows in every corner of the earth; however, it does not blow constantly. In addition, it must maintain a certain speed to be effective for running a wind turbine and generating electricity. In this chapter, various aspects of wind energy including types of wind turbines, onshore and offshore wind farms, the cost of wind energy, and steps necessary for installing a wind turbine are discussed.Secondary resources are not derived from mining or chemical processes compared to primary resources. They are resources that had been already in use and are processed afterwards. Some secondary resources may be waste material in their original application but they might be useful in other applications. The goal of each recycling process should be to generate material streams with a quality that ensures further usage in any way. Since it is not possible to achieve this goal for all life cycles the goal has to be to maintain specific material properties as long as possible. It is desirable to forecast specific material properties for choosing processes with the best performance. A rough prediction on material flows, costs and environmental impacts can be assessed through combining the methods Material Flow Assessment (MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). But these methods lack of the description of material properties and their variations and uncertainties respectively. Uncertainties are related to data defects. The presented chapter will demonstrate a strategy for developing a recycling model that is able to handle data defects. Future prospects of the quality of secondary resources, including their input and output properties may be helpful to assess their potential to substitute primary resource for example.This chapter aims at the strategic tools for achieving sustainability. For methodological and pedagogical convenience a global perspective is employed here, spanning multiple approaches to integrate the core values of sustainability in business decisions and strategic planning. The development of strategic tools that are rooted in sustainability core values assists organizations in reaching their overall sustainability goals without compromising any long-term financial viability. Strategy is subsequently characterized as the process of positioning the sustainability concepts within business goals and objectives; developing guidelines that can delineate how specific tools, techniques, and business models can identify environmental sustainability-related issues, and instituting mechanisms to gather data and formulate economically and socially acceptable solutions. Business drivers for sustainability are identified and discussed in addition to providing a framework for the development and implementation of business models, strategies, programs, and systems rooted in core sustainability values. Case studies are utilized to illustrate the utility of corporate social responsibility, environmental management systems, Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and management, product stewardship, and the Practical Sustainability System (Stakeholder, Externality, and Asset [SEA] framework) in assisting organizations to meet their business sustainability goals.This case study illustrates the application of environmental management accounting in a medium-sized coffee refining and exporting enterprise in Southern Vietnam, with the example of the Neumann Gruppe Vietnam Ltd. It examines the relevance of environment-related supply chain information derived from life cycle assessments for environmental management accounting and reveals possibilities to improve eco-efficiency at the site level and for its supply chain. All company-related information provided in this case study has been disclosed by Neumann Gruppe Vietnam Ltd. and cross-checked by the authors. The information is partly simplified to ensure both confidentiality and a better understanding of the case.The performance of asphalt-treated mixtures used in low-volume roads was evaluated, and their environmental benefits were assessed. Laboratory tests, including permeability, modified Lottman, Hamburg-type loaded wheel tracking, flow number, semicircular bend, dissipated creep strain energy, and dynamic modulus tests, were performed to examine the physical and mechanical properties of the asphalt-treated mixtures. Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) software was used to compare the performance of low-volume pavement sections with asphalt-treated mixtures to that of a conventional hot-mix asphalt (HMA) mixture. Life-cycle assessment was also conducted to quantify the environmental impacts of using asphalt-treated mixtures in lieu of conventional HMA mixtures in the construction of low-volume roads. Test results demonstrated that asphalt-treated mixtures containing limestone and reclaimed asphalt pavement exhibited similar properties to those of well-performing conventional HMA mixtures. MEPDG analysis showed that pavement sections with asphalt-treated mixtures exhibited similar performance to those with conventional low-volume HMA mixtures. Life-cycle assessment indicated that using asphalt-treated mixtures in low-volume roads could result in reductions of up to 29% in carbon dioxide emissions, 29% in energy consumption, 39% in water consumption, and 42% in hazardous waste generation.In this work, we analyze the effect of demand uncertainty on the multi-objective optimization of chemical supply chain (SC) networks considering simultaneously their economic and environmental performance. We present a novel multi-scenario mixed-integer stochastic linear programming (MILP) model with the unique feature of accounting for the effects of demand uncertainty on the life cycle environmental performance of the network. The uncertain parameter is modeled by a set of scenarios with given probability of occurrence. The environmental performance is quantified following life cycle assessment (LCA) principles, which are explicitly incorporated in the model formulation through standard algebraic equations. The capabilities of the approach presented are illustrated through a case study.The integration of environmental impacts in the conceptual process design procedure can be achieved by combining Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools with flowsheeting software and process integration techniques. However, current LCI databases assume a given unit process chain for each product or waste, and do not allow for the systematic synthesis of the process chain minimizing the environmental impacts of raw materials or auxiliary flows, accounting systematically for the different alternatives and recyclings. This paper presents a methodology for systematically designing process units LCI database for the optimal design of integrated systems with a life cycle perspective.The past years have seen a growing attention to incorporating sustainability into the manufacturing supply chain. However, compared to the economic and environmental dimensions, the social dimension of sustainability has not been as well-defined. This is due to the difficulties in quantifying social themes into metric indicators. This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the sustainability of a detergent supply chain through integration of supply chain dynamic simulation and environmental-and societal-Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).This work addresses the strategic planning of integrated bioethanol-sugar supply chains (SCs) with economic and environmental concerns. We present a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation that accounts for the simultaneous minimization of cost and environmental impact. The latter criterion is assessed according to the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The mathematical model is applied to a case study based on the Argentinean sugarcane industry in order to highlight its main advantages.The importance of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an environmental decision support tool continues to increase rapidly in the recent years. Research on the environmental impacts of chemical engineering has gain a lot of popularity but it still needs bundles of improvement and expansion for its implementation in the industrial process evaluation. In this study, Life Cycle Assessment of biofuel production from Jatropha Curcas L. was conducted using an attributional approach. The assessment encompasses the cultivation of the crop, the oil extraction stage and finally, the biofuel production stage. IMPACT 2002+ based on mid-point perspective was applied. This study demonstrates the potential of second generation biofuel production to reduce environmental impact. While LCA method is mainly focus on products and raw data collection, we want to define a new approach based on process system engineering. We suggest ways for an integrated LCA and CAPE approach especially for agro-chemical applications.This contribution presents the development of sustainable life-cycle assessment (LCA)-based mixed-integer programming (MIP) synthesis of processes. The approach was applied to the synthesis of biogas processes from different raw materials under different anaerobic conditions by considering different water supplies, wastewater treatment technologies, and the option of a rendering plant for the utilization of slaughterhouse waste. The developed aggregated model by Drobez et al. (2010a), with an economic objective function was upgraded with LCA using a novel concept of eco-profit. The results show that this biogas production process is an economically and environmentally sustainable solution for utilizing animal and organic wastes, whilst also obtaining significant eco-profit.This chapter is based on research to establish what constitutes an environmentally friendly textile, from the perspective of a practising designer. It identifies the environmental issues, the new goals and objectives, and the role of the designer in manifesting the necessary changes across the whole industry. The chapter identifies key environmental design strategies, and gives practical advice in the form of questions and exercises so that designers may engage their creativity to develop interpretations and alternatives based on their own methods of life cycle analyses. Because designers are in such key positions, the chapter also endeavours to explain the unique qualities that comprise the nature of design practice to others working within the field. There are also websites and suggestions for further enquiry.Although recycled polymers and reinforced polymer composites have been in use for many years there is little information available on their environmental impacts. The goal of the present study is to analyze the environmental impact of new composite materials obtained from the combination of recycled thermoplastics (polypropylene [PP] and polyethylene [PE]) with mineral fillers like talc and with glass fiber. The environmental impact of these composite materials is compared to the impact of virgin PP and PE. The recycled and virgin materials were compared using life cycle assessment method according to their environmental effects. Within the scope of the study, GaBi software was used for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. From cradle-to-grave life cycle inventory studies were performed for 1 kg of each of the thermoplastics. Landfilling was considered as reference scenario and compared with filled recycled plastics. A quantitative impact assessment was performed for four environmental impact categories, global warming (GWP) over a hundred years, human toxicity (HTP), abiotic depletion (ADP) and acidification potential (AP) were taken into consideration during LCA. In the comparison of recycled and virgin polymers, it was seen that recycling has lower environmental effect for different impact assessment methods like acidification potential, abiotic depletion, human toxicity and global warming.Many factors enforce the intensification of grassland utilization which is associated with significant environmental impacts subjected to various legislative constraints. Nevertheless, the need for diversification in agricultural production and the sustainability in energy within the European Union have advanced the role of grassland as a renewable source of energy in grass biomethane production with various environmental and socio-economic benefits. Here it is underlined that the essential question whether the gaseous biofuel meets the EU sustainability criteria of 60% greenhouse gas emission savings by 2020 can be met since savings up to 89.4% under various scenarios can be achieved. Grass biomethane production is very promising compared to other liquid biofuels either when these are produced by indigenous or imported feedstocks. Grass biomethane, given the mature and well known technology in agronomy and anaerobic digestion sectors and the need for rural development and sustainable energy production, is an attractive solution that fulfils many legislative, agronomic and environmental requirements.Biofuels have a potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from transport because the biomass used in their production is considered carbon neutral. This is the main reason for a growing interest in biofuels. However, there are certain aspects, particularly of the first-generation biofuels, which may render them unsustainable, including the increased use of land and competition with food production. Therefore, sustainability of biofuels should be assessed carefully, considering all relevant environmental, economic and social aspects. To prevent shifting the impacts along the supply chains, sustainability should be assessed considering the whole life cycle of biofuels, including cultivation of the feedstock and biofuel production processes. This chapter reviews various sustainability aspects of biofuels and illustrates how environmental and economic sustainability can be assessed on a life cycle basis. The environmental impacts considered include water use, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and loss of biodiversity while economic aspects include feedstock costs, capital costs and biofuel prices. Future viability of biofuels is also discussed.The performances for controlling a rotating machine by using either an Electromagnetic Actuator or a Piezoelectric Actuator are compared in this work. The aim is to establish selection criteria based on environmental impact. Life Cycle Analysis shows that the operating stage has a considerable impact. In this study, only the operating stage is considered. The energy consumed by the actuators seems to be the appropriate indicator for the same "mechanical" performances. Numerical studies are carried out in order to quantify the energy consumed in each case. Modal control strategy with a fuzzy controller is used. The controller inputs are displacements and velocities. The system studied is modeled by using finite element method and the electrical circuit of each actuator is modeled by using basic electricity and electromagnetism theories. Several configurations are assessed and defined by using the chosen Functional Unit. The results obtained show that both controllers are efficient and enable recommendations for optimal control procedures design for the energy consumed.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to test the efficacy of the concept of food miles that has proved so popular with the public as a means of assessing the sustainability of produce. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses data from a UK major food importer and retailer to correlate carbon emissions from transport, and transport-related storage, with food miles by creating farm-specific mode-weighted emission factors. Findings - The correlation is found to be poor for a wide range of products and locations and it is clear that the mode of transport is as important as the distance, with sourcing from parts of the Mediterranean resulting in emissions greater than those from the Americas. Practical implications - It is concluded that it is difficult to justify the use of food miles when attempting to influence purchasing behaviour. Because of this result, processes and tools have been developed that relay information on true transport-related carbon emissions to customers and bulk purchasers that allow them to make informed decisions. Originality/value - This paper questions the value of using the concept of food miles as a driving force for changing purchasing behaviour by either the customer or the purchasing department of a retailer.In response to climate change, research is being undertaken to understand the on-farm greenhouse gas emissions and water use for agricultural systems and investigate options farmers may have for mitigating or offsetting emissions. In the present study, a life cycle assessment framework is used to determine on-farm GHG emissions and water use, and the overall 'cradle-to-farm gate' GHG emissions and water use attributed to beef production. The total on-farm emissions for the two properties were 2984 t CO(2)-e/year (or 1.93 t CO(2)-e/livestock unit) for the 634-cow enterprise turning off weaner cattle at Gympie and 5725 t CO(2)-e/year (or 1.70 t CO(2)-e/livestock unit) for the 720-cow enterprise turning off finished steers in the Arcadia Valley. The on-farm emissions are largely attributable to enteric methane emissions from the beef herd. The overall 'cradle-to-farm gate' GHG emissions associated with enterprise products were 3145 t CO(2)-e/year at Gympie and 7253 t CO(2)-e/year in the Arcadia Valley, with the additional emissions coming from off-farm inputs (fuel for farm vehicles and earth-moving equipment, electricity, supplementary feed, agricultural chemicals, farm services) and additionally, for the Arcadia Valley enterprise, from purchased store steers. The carbon footprint of beef products at the farm gate ranged from 17.5 to 22.9 kg CO(2)-e/kg liveweight at Gympie, where wearers are the primary product, and from 11.6 to 15.5 kg CO(2)-e/kg liveweight in the Arcadia Valley, where finished steers are the primary product. Green water use ranged from 7400 to 12 700 L/kg liveweight depending on class of livestock, with on-farm blue water use of 51-96 L/kg liveweight and off-farm blue water use of 0.1-59 L/kg liveweight. The ability to offset on-farm GHG emissions through reforestation varied between the two locations, with predicted biosequestration rates of 19.3-34.7 t CO(2)-e/ha per year at Gympie (rainfall 1200 mm/year) from eucalypt plantation and 1.5-9.8 t CO(2)-e/ha per year in the Arcadia Valley (rainfall 600 mm/year) through reforestation from a combination of brigalow regrowth, leucaena and environmental eucalypt plantings. The area that would need to be reforested to offset on-farm emissions (over a 30-year time horizon) would be 86-155 ha at Gympie (7-13% of the holding) and 629-4108 ha in the Arcadia Valley (9-60%). If carbon sequestration could be achieved at the higher end of the rates nominated, a significant proportion of on-farm emissions could be offset by sequestration in timber, with minimal impact on beef production. However, at the lower end of the forest sequestration range, the required level of land-use change would reduce the carrying capacity, and hence beef production, especially at the Arcadia Valley site.Norwegian mountain forests represent interesting sources of wood biomass for bioenergy. This case study gives a life cycle assessment of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and costs of forest management, harvest and transport operations in the mountainous areas of Hedmark and Oppland counties in Norway. Low-intensity forest management characterizes the study sites. The study shows that transportation to the terminal is the operation with the highest GHG impacts in the examined supply chain and that the bundling of forest residues has the highest financial cost. The mountain forest system analyzed emits 17,600 g CO(2)e per solid cubic meter over bark. Transportation to the terminal accounts for 31% of the emissions and 23% of the costs, while bundling accounts for 25% of the total emissions and 19% of the total costs. The study shows that there is a considerable quantity of woody biomass available for bioenergy purpose from mountain areas. In the short term, it is possible to integrate harvesting of logging residues in the conventional logging operations. However, it is necessary to improve forest management, logistic and technology for reducing emissions and operative costs, ensuring the achievement of a sustainable system at the same time.This paper considers biodiesel production from residues; tallow and used cooking oil (UCO). The tallow system is more complex involving two processes. The first process is rendering in which tallow (animal fat) and Meat and Bone Meal (MBM) are produced from the slaughter of cattle. MBM is assumed as a thermal energy source for cement manufacture and thus is not used for biodiesel production. The second process is biodiesel production from tallow. Three methodologies are employed to examine sustainability of the biodiesel. The no allocation approach assigns all the parasitic demands to the tallow; thus all energies required to make both MBM and tallow are associated with the tallow biodiesel. The resulting energy balance is negative. The substitution approach allocates the energy in MBM (used to produce cement) to tallow biodiesel. This results in the net energy being greater than the gross energy. The allocation by energy content method divides the parasitic demands of the rendering process between tallow and MBM by energy content. The parasitic demands of the biodiesel process are divided by energy content of the biodiesel, glycerol and K-fertiliser. For tallow biodiesel this yielded a net energy value of 38.6% of gross energy. The same method generated a net energy value of 67% for UCO biodiesel. More importantly the recommended method (allocation by energy content) generated a value of 54% greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings for tallow and a value of 69% for UCO. Plants commencing after 2017, need to have a 60% GHG emission savings, to be considered sustainable. Thus a facility treating both feedstocks would need to treat a maximum of 60% tallow to be considered sustainable after 2017. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For structures located in aggressive environments and earthquake regions, it is important to consider the effect of material corrosion on seismic performance. This chapter presents a seismic analysis methodology for corroded reinforced concrete (RC) bridges. It is shown that the analytical results are in good agreement with the experimental results regardless of the amount of steel corrosion. The proposed method is applied to lifetime seismic reliability analysis of corroded RC bridge piers, and the relationship between steel corrosion and seismic reliability is presented. After the occurrence of crack corrosion, seismic reliability of the pier is significantly reduced. If corrosion cracks in the bridge pier are detected by visual inspection, additional detailed inspections need to be performed.Concerns over global climate change, nonrenewable resource consumption, energy depletion, and sustainable development are increasingly coming to the forefront of large infrastructure and building projects worldwide. The ability to design materials, structures, and building systems that improve the sustainability of built environments is becoming an essential tool for engineers. This chapter frames the challenge of a sustainable built environment, highlights the role of SHCC materials in meeting that challenge, and details specific design approaches for the incorporation of green SHCC materials in sustainable infrastructure. Specifically, the use of SHCC bridge elements to replace failing expansion joints in the USA results in a one third reduction in bridge life-cycle energy consumption when compared to a traditional bridge. Total economic costs are reduced by 15% as a result of less maintenance, lower construction traffic congestion, and fewer environmental impacts. Similarly, using SHCC rigid pavement overlays (rather than concrete or asphalt) to rehabilitate existing rigid pavements can reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by nearly one third. The incorporation of life cycle assessment with design to measure sustainability can greatly improve the sustainability of built environments. Accordingly, SHCC materials can play a significant role in improving the sustainability of these environments and systems.Continuously running syntheses in microstructured reactors offers novel ways to intensify conventional chemical processes. An outstanding advantage of microreaction technology is the high surface-to-volume-ratio which enables intensive mixing phenomena as well as high mass and heat transfer rates. Thus, microstructured reactors may be a suitable means to improve multiphase reactions by increasing the interfacial area and the intensification of internal mixing. This improvement in reaction performances may lead to reduced environmental burdens of the process under consideration. The method of simplified life cycle assessment (SLCA) is a suitable tool to evaluate the environmental burdens caused by chemical processes. It has been applied already in research and development to identify the key parameters for a deliberate green process design of two biphasic reactions, the esterification of phenol and benzoyl chloride resulting in phenyl benzoate and the synthesis of one of the corresponding phase transfer catalysts, [BMIM]Cl. Further, SLCA is complemented by a simple cost estimation to investigate the main cost drivers relevant for possible industrial application of the syntheses investigated.The environmental burdens of the synthesis of rose oxide have been evaluated by means of green metrics (EATOS, LCA) applied to six thermal and photochemical processes. The contributions of supplied energy, employed chemicals (including solvents and additives) and waste disposal have been investigated. The results pointed out that the methods used for the assessment suffered from important limitations. At any rate, the photochemical alternative for this synthesis clearly has the advantage.This paper examines the economy-wide environmental impacts linked to the manufacturing of PVC and ductile iron (DI) pipes, steel tanks, and to the generation of electricity for pumping in water distribution network optimization. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to generate Pareto-optimal solutions of the benchmark 'Anytown' network expansion problem. Selected Pareto-optimal solutions of the 'Anytown' network are evaluated with an economic input-output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) and 14 environmental measures on air emissions, non-renewable energy use and environmental releases. The major findings suggest that DI and PVC pipe manufacturing and electricity generation activities (for pumping) have higher environmental impacts than steel tank manufacturing and construction activities in the 'Anytown' network. The EIO-LCA suggests that DI pipe manufacturing is linked to: (i) carbon monoxide emissions from truck transportation and wholesale trade and (ii) land and underground toxic releases from metal mining activities. PVC pipe manufacturing is linked to: (i) carbon monoxide emissions from truck transportation, (ii) toxic air releases from the plastics material and resin manufacturing sector, (iii) land and underground toxic releases from metal mining and resin manufacturing, and (iv) natural gas use for plastics material and resin manufacturing.Biofuels are fuels produced from biomass, mostly in liquid form, within a time frame sufficiently short to consider that their feedstock (biomass) can be renewed, contrarily to fossil fuels. This paper reviews the current and future biofuel technologies, and their development impacts (including on the climate) within given policy and economic frameworks. Current technologies make it possible to provide first generation biodiesel, ethanol or biogas to the transport sector to be blended with fossil fuels. Still under-development 2nd generation biofuels from lignocellulose should be available on the market by 2020. Research is active on the improvement of their conversion efficiency. A ten-fold increase compared with current cost-effective capacities would make them highly competitive. Within bioenergy policies, emphasis has been put on biofuels for transportation as this sector is fast-growing and represents a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Compared with fossil fuels, biofuel combustion can emit less greenhouse gases throughout their life cycle, considering that part of the emitted CO2 returns to the atmosphere where it was fixed from by photosynthesis in the first place. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly used to assess the potential environmental impacts of biofuel chains, notably the impact on global warming. This tool, whose holistic nature is fundamental to avoid pollution trade-offs, is a standardised methodology that should make comparisons between biofuel and fossil fuel chains objective and thorough. However, it is a complex and time-consuming process, which requires lots of data, and whose methodology is still lacking harmonisation. Hence the life-cycle performances of biofuel chains vary widely in the literature. Furthermore, LCA is a site- and time-independent tool that cannot take into account the spatial and temporal dimensions of emissions, and can hardly serve as a decision-making tool either at local or regional levels. Focusing on greenhouse gases, emission factors used in LCAs give a rough estimate of the potential average emissions on a national level. However, they do not take into account the types of crop, soil or management practices, for instance. Modelling the impact of local factors on the determinism of greenhouse gas emissions can provide better estimates for LCA on the local level, which would be the relevant scale and degree of reliability for decision-making purposes. Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of the processes involved, most notably N2O emissions, is still needed to definitely improve the accuracy of LCA. Perennial crops are a promising option for biofuels, due to their rapid and efficient use of nitrogen, and their limited farming operations. However, the main overall limiting factor to biofuel development will ultimately be land availability. Given the available land areas, population growth rate and consumption behaviours, it would be possible to reach by 2030 a global 10% biofuel share in the transport sector, contributing to lower global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 1 GtCO(2)eq per year (IEA, 2006), provided that harmonised policies ensure that sustainability criteria for the production systems are respected worldwide. Furthermore, policies should also be more integrative across sectors, so that changes in energy efficiency, the automotive sector and global consumption patterns converge towards drastic reduction of the pressure on resources. Indeed, neither biofuels nor other energy source or carriers are likely to mitigate he impacts of anthropogenic pressure on resources in a range that would compensate for this pressure growth. Hence, the first step is to reduce this pressure by starting from the variable that drives it up, i.e. anthropic consumptions.As world water demand continues to grow there is a critical need to develop sustainable water treatment solutions. This chapter describes the potential for nanomaterials to improve the sustainability of water treatment. Nanomaterial-driven advances in disinfection, oxidation, membrane separation and groundwater remediation are discussed with a view towards their potential to improve existing technologies. Disinfection technologies include oligodynamic processes with silver nanoparticles to effectively inactivate microorganisms without disinfection byproducts being formed. Oxidation technologies include metal oxide semiconductors and fullerene-based sensitisers acting as light-driven catalysts. Membrane separation processes include the embedding of materials such as zeolites, carbon nanotubes and metal oxides to improve selectivity and reduce fouling. Remediation technologies include iron particles designed to target and transform waste compounds in situ. These and other emerging water treatment technologies must be assessed with life-cycle analysis to determine the full materials and embodied energy costs of acquiring raw materials, manufacturing, use and end of life for the materials contained within each process. These costs must be weighed against the potential benefits for water treatment to determine their sustainability.Weed management is a major constraint in organic crop production Propane flaming could be an additional tool for weed control in organic maize (Zea mays L) production However tolerance of maize to broadcast flaming must be determined first to optimize the use of propane Field experiments were conducted at the Haskell Agricultural Laboratory of the University of Nebraska Concord NE in 2008 and 2009 to determine maize response to five propane doses applied at three growth stages of V2 (2-leaf) V5 (5-leaf) and V7 (7-leaf) The propane doses tested were 0 13 24 44 and 85 kg ha(-1) Flaming treatments were applied utilizing a custom built research flamer mounted on the back of a four-wheeler moving at a constant speed of 6 4 km h(-1) The response of maize to propane flaming was evaluated in terms of visual crop injury (1 7 14 and 28 days after treatment DAT) effects on dry matter (14 DAT) yield components (plants m(-2) ears plant(-1) kernels cob(-1) and 1000-kernel weight) and grain yield The response of different growth stages of maize to propane doses was described by log-logistic models Overall maize response to broadcast flaming varied among growth stages and propane doses In general maize at V5 was the most tolerant stage for broadcast flaming whereas V2 stage was the most susceptible to flaming resulting in the highest visual crop injury ratings dry matter reductions and the largest loss of yield and its components At 28 DAT the maximum visual crop injury rating of 7% was estimated for flaming done at V5 stage compared to significantly higher injuries of 43% and 12% for V2 and V7 growth stages respectively An arbitrarily assigned 2 5% yield reduction was evident with 33 16 and 11 kg ha-1 of propane for V5 V2 and V7 growth stages respectively suggesting that maize flamed at V5 stage can tolerate higher dose of propane for the same yield reduction compared to other growth stages Moreover the maximum yield reductions with the highest propane dose of 85 kg ha(-1) were 3% for V5 11% for V7 and 17% for V2 stage Based on these results flaming has a potential to be used effectively in organic maize production when conducted properly at V5 stage However there are both benefits and concerns associated with the use of flame weeding The preservation of the soil from erosion and the protection of the surface and underground water from chemical pollution can be seen as benefits while the concerns include higher energy use and the release of greenhouse gasses (C) 2010 Elsevier BV All rights reservedIndustrial ecology is an emerging concept which contributes to achieve ecologically sustainable development of industrial zones and estates in China. Optimizing materials and energy flows among facilities within specific regions or industrial ecosystems is a basic industrial ecology strategy. Life cycle analysis and management and green supply chain management are all approaches of circular economy. In this paper, the author describes the furniture industry in Ganzhou and its evolving integrated green supply chain management model. The author points out that the furniture industry in Ganzhou should begin with green design, then set up eco-industrial parks, and finally realize sustainable development.We are witnessing an explosion in carbon calculators for estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (i.e., carbon footprint) of households, buildings, cities, and processes. Seeking to capitalize on the emergent ogreeno consumer, corporations are leading the next iteration in carbon footprinting: consumer products. This potentially lucrative low-carbon frontier, however, faces steep challenges due to complexities of scale, largely a function of the number of actors and geographies involved in globalized commodity and energy networks, and scope, which increasingly demands inclusion of emissions due to land use change (e.g., biofuel production, timber harvest, livestock grazing, mining). Life cycle assessment (LCA)the principal method behind product-level GHG emissions footprint protocolsfrequently avoids these challenges by narrowly delineating system boundaries, thereby excluding the omessinesso of space and place. Through a comparative model of energy sources and emissions in the globalized paper industry, this article reveals how complexities associated with geographic variation and land use change create indeterminacy in footprints based on these protocols. Using industry and trade data, the authors develop geographic information system transportation and energy models to map the globally dispersed pulp supply networks and to rescale Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change GHG inventory guidelines to include carbon loss associated with land use change in the carbon footprint of coated paper. Given their integrative abilities to conceptualize and model coupled human-ecological systems, sophisticated understanding of time-space dynamics and critical theoretical insights, geographers have much to contribute to the LCA and product carbon footprinting enterprise, which to date has been largely the intellectual domain of engineers.Recent years have seen explosive growth in research concerning the use of cellulosic materials, either in their as-recieved state or as modified products, for the removal of heavy metal ions from dilute aqueous solutions. Despite highly promising reports of progress in this area, important questions remain. For instance, it has not been clearly established whether knowledge about the composition and structure of the bioadsorbent raw material is equally important to its availability at its point of use. Various physical and chemical modifications of biomass have been shown to boost the ability of the cellulose-based material to bind various metal ions. Systems of data analysis and mechanistic models are described. There is a continuing need to explain the mechanisms of these approaches and to determine the most effective treatments. Finally, the article probes areas where more research is urgently needed. For example, life cycle analysis studies are needed, comparing the use of renewable biosorbents vs. conventional means of removing toxic metal ions from water.Recently there has been an increased focus on the environmental aspects of the manufacturing industry across the world. Boeing and NIST have studied the incorporation of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) parameters into Discrete Event Simulation (DES) as a means to analyze sustainable performance in the manufacturing area. Accurate analysis of manufacturing processes using Discrete Event Simulation requires detailed CNC production data. Using MTConnect, production LCA data from Boeing shop floor machine tools was acquired and was used to develop Discrete Event Simulation models. We will discuss our implementation, and analyze results of incorporating shop floor LCA data directly in DES models.In spite of the many potential benefits and applications of nanoparticles, concerns have been raised regarding their production, use, and ultimate fate due to poor process yields and uncertain health and environmental impacts. Production of commercial nanoparticles is growing as they find increasing use in industrial and consumer products. Nickel nanoparticles (NiNPs) have shown promise as a single element braze material, but the energy and material efficiencies of NiNP production remain uncertain. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) is employed to compare three different NiNP synthesis methods in terms of environmental impact. The study reveals challenges in using LCA to assess nanomanufacturing processes. Sensitivity analysis is performed across several process parameters to demonstrate an approach for addressing data uncertainties. The relative performance of the NiNP synthesis processes are discussed, and potential environmental implications for other NiNP synthesis processes are introduced. Policy change may be necessary to provide adequate transparency in assessing nanotechnologies for engineering applications.Seven scenarios for energy use of sawmill residue were evaluated from the viewpoint of impact on climate change by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with data from the literature and some plants. The scenarios evaluated are use of sawmill residue for fuel in lumber drying (2 scenarios), for fuel in wood biomass power generation (2 scenarios) and for raw material for wood pellets (3 scenarios). Then, sensitivity analysis was made of data which may have both uncertainty and influence on the result of the LCA. This study clarified that it is more conducive for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to use the residue for fuel in lumber drying than in wood biomass power generation, and that it might increase greenhouse gas emissions to burn the residue in fluidized bed boilers. This study also clarified that it is conducive to reducing greenhouse gas emissions when wood pellets were used for heating as a substitute for kerosene or gas stoves.Reducing energy consumption and environment pollution is an important part in energy sustainability. Building energy conservation evaluation will drive the application of the new energy conservation technology. For building an energy conservation evaluation, energy conservation and environment impacts in all stages of the life cycle should be assessed. In this paper, the fuzzy analytic hierarchical process method and life-cycle assessment theory are adopted for building energy conservation evaluation. Factors in different hierarchies are weighted with linguistic variables by pair-wise comparisons, and factors in the lowest hierarchy within the different second hierarchy factors are also evaluated by linguistic variables. The membership degrees and integrated evaluation values are calculated. Then an example is studied to illustrate the proposed approach. The validity of the proposed method is verified and it demonstrates the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed approach. The results provide guidance in evaluating building energy conservation and determining the energy conservation grade of the building.Because of the simplification for scenario choices and few reflections of space-time characters, product designers or police makers can't reference effectively the results of LCA. This paper proposed a new LCA method for design scheme based on multi-scenarios coexistence. First, various life-cycle scenarios of product are summarized and the common attributes are extracted to generate the scenario model. Second, the choice matrix of multi-scenarios is founded based on product statistic. And the probabilities of scenarios calculated from the choice matrix are used to gather together the environmental impacts of multi-scenarios in proportion. Third, the inventory data are collected as per scenario including pollution emissions and character information. The later are used to generate personnel, spatial and temporal factors which reflect the diversity of environmental impacts in different scenarios. Finally, the related issues are discussed including matters needing attention in practical application and what need to research in future.The transdisciplinary field of agroecology provides a platform for experiential learning based on an expanded vision of research on sustainable farming and food systems and the application of results in creating effective learning landscapes for students. With increased recognition of limitations of fossil fuels, fresh water, and available farmland, educators are changing focus from strategies to reach maximum yields to those that feature resource use efficiency and resilience of production systems in a less benign climate. To help students deal with complexity and uncertainty and a wide range of biological and social dimensions of the food challenge, a whole-systems approach that involves life-cycle analysis and consideration of long-term impacts of systems is essential. Seven educational case studies in the Nordic Region and the U.S. Midwest demonstrate how educators can incorporate theory of the ecology of food systems with the action learning component needed to develop student potentials to create responsible change in society. New roles of agroecology instructors and students are described as they pursue a co-learning strategy to develop and apply technology to assure the productivity and security of future food systems.The practice of co-processing of residues has increased due to the requirement of environmental and social friendly disposal of dangerous wastes from several industrial processes. The aim of this work was to perform a revision of co-processing of residues in Brazil and in the world, aiming at process optimization and also to identify the aspects already studied as well as those which still request research efforts. Social, environmental, and technological aspects of co-processing were discussed in the present work as well as the life cycle analysis (LCA) in the cement production and the technical and scientific literature about co-processing.Aimed at few reflections on the scenario characteristics in the most methods of LCA, this paper presents a new approach taking specific information of scenario into account in the environmental impact of product. By analyzing the relation between scenario and environmental impact, the attributes of space, time and person are extracted as the most basic characteristics. In order to avoid the deficient of science modeling between the scenario attributes and the environmental impact processes and to use conveniently, the concept of scenario characteristic coefficient is proposed and the three types of coefficients are expressed in detail applying the existing data or statistic. The method of LCIA considering scenario characteristics is presented by integrating the characteristic coefficients into the LCI processes. And this method is applied to study the scenario characteristics of an LCA of electromotor.So far, there are major weaknesses in applying existing life cycle impact assessment characterization models to metals and more specifically to Aluminum-based products, which can lead to biased estimates of damage. To estimate the damage of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in aluminum production sites, this study applies a life cycle assessment for pre-training electrolytic aluminum production in China. Results showed approximately 46% impact of the "average PAHs" was overestimated than existing life cycle impact assessment model (Impact2002+). Results also demonstrated the feasibility and the potential significance of including worker exposure to PAHs. Recommendations are presented to consider and compare both indoor (worker exposure) and outdoor emission of PAHs, differentiating the impact between various PAHs. These improvements are crucial for the future development of impact assessment methods that lead to comparable results between organic and inorganic substances.A life cycle assessment was carried out to estimate the environmental impact of industry waste as aggregate in cement production. To confirm and add credibility to the study, an uncertainty analysis was also carried out. Results showed the impact seen from climate change, human toxicity, marine eutrophication, marine ecotoxicity, and freshwater eutrophication categories had an important contribution to overall environmental impact, due to energy use and direct emissions from clinker and limestone production stages. The most significant substances contribute to the climate change is CO2 to air; for the human toxicity, it is Hg to air and Mn to water; for the marine eutrophication and marine ecotoxicity, it is nitrate and Ni to water, respectively; for the freshwater eutrophication, it is phosphorus to water. Increasing electricity recovery rate, optimizing the raw material consumption for clinker production are highly recommended to reduce the adverse impact on the environment, and therefore reduce the pressure on the environment from dramatically increased hazardous industry waste disposal.A life cycle assessment was carried out to estimate the environmental and economic impact s of pre-training electrolytic aluminum systems. The technology significantly contributed to non-carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, global warming and non-renewable energy potential impacts. The technology played only a small role in the adverse impact of carcinogens, aquatic ecotoxicity, and mineral extraction categories, while the influence of the technologies on the way other elements affect the environment was ignorable. Specifically, the emissions from the aluminum oxides production and electricity consumption stages involved played an important role, while potential impact generated from transport, infrastructure, waste treatment, cryolite production, and aluminum fluoride production was quite small. Energy generation based on natural gas is an effective way to minimize overall environment impact. This research indicates that there are high potentials for improving environmental performance of the electrolytic aluminum production in China.A life cycle assessment was carried out to estimate the environmental and economic impacts of recycled aluminum alloy production. The impact seen from non-carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, global warming and non-renewable energy categories played an important role to overall environmental impacts. The impact seen from carcinogens and aquatic ecotoxicity played relatively small role, while the impact seen from the rest categories affect the environment was ignorable. Specifically, the emissions from the aluminum and silicon production stages involved played an important role due to high energy consumption, while potential impact generated from other elements was quite small. Similarly, the cost of old aluminum scrap represented the dominant contribution to overall economic impacts. Accordingly, choosing natural gas based electricity production technology and improving old aluminum scrap consumption efficiency are the efficient way to minimize the overall environmental and economic impact, respectively.In recent years, the construction industry has realised a need to be environmentally responsible and has adopted activities and processes that minimise the negative environmental impacts. Therefore, building deconstruction can be used as a waste minimisation strategy in order to reduce the waste generated by the construction industry. Deconstruction also means dismantling buildings with the goal of maximising the recyle and re-use potentials of its components. This study explores the strategies that could be used for temporary earthquake houses in the efficient construction and demolition (C&D) waste management context for recycle and re-use of the temporary earthquake housing materials including infrastructure and superstructure. The study also focuses on ways to reduce the burden on landfills by focusing deconstruction process of temporary houses. The Turkey case will be analysed according to the life cycle of the temporary earthquake houses which covers construction, occupancy, dismantling and re-use phases of the temporary houses. Consequently, strategies for C&D waste management and sustainable temporary earthquake housing design were determined. In the context of preserving quality of liveable environment and the sustainability of natural resources, it is necessary to develop a strategy for the prevention/reduction of waste generation, and to encourage methods for recycling and re-use of construction materials/components.LCA, Printed circuit boards scraps, Bioleaching, Copper, Environmental impact. Abstract. Recently, a few studies have been undertaken for the extracting of metallic copper from electronic scrap/printed circuit boards by bioleaching - solvent extraction-electrowinning. Results of the present investigation indicate that bioleaching-solvent extraction-electrowinning could be a new cleaner hydrometallurgy route for recovery copper from the PCBs.The life cycle assessment method was used to investigate the environmental impacts of the new biohydrometallurgical process of production of metallic copper. The energy consumption, greenhouse effect, acidification in the new processes is studied and compared. The results indicate that the environmental impacts of bioleaching - solvent extraction-electrowinning technology is less than the conventional mechanical-pyrometallurgical processes and pyrometallurgical processes.The recycling process of waste textile fiber materials could be divided into two parts: one is that waste textile fiber materials turn into recycled fibers, and the other is the use of recycled fiber process. To solve the first problem, it's important to classify it in a reasonable way. In accordance with the main characteristics of fiber materials, new model of classification is established through three elements: color, finishing agents and twist. According to the new model of classification and different requests in recycled fiber, twenty-seven methods are proposed. Furthermore, taking waste polyester fiber materials as an example, economic cost analysis is used to assess the feasible ways in recycling waste fiber materials.Urban governments are continually striving to improve air quality by making public transportation more environmentally friendly. H-2 fuel cell buses (FCBs) offer one of the best ways to reduce air pollution. FCB has high energy efficiency and lower air pollutant emissions than conventional buses (e.g. diesel bus/Compressed natural gas bus, CNGB), and H-2 is an attractive alternative energy source in the face of depleting fossil fuels and global warming. H-2 can be produced via fossil fuels and renewable sources and then stored and distributed in a variety of different ways. While many contend that H-2 and FCB are not yet commercially viable, H-2 technology has developed a great deal over recent years. This fact alone demands that governments as well as for-profit businesses take a discerning look at what H-2 and FCB have to offer in terms of both environmental and economic opportunities. In this study, environmental and economic aspects of hydrogen pathways are analyzed according to plausible production methods and capacity, and distribution options in Korea using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methods. This study considers the following means of hydrogen production: naphtha steam reforming (Naphtha SR), natural gas steam reforming (NG SR), and water electrolysis (WE). Additionally, conventional fuels (Diesel and CNG) are also included as target fuel pathways in order to identify which hydrogen pathway in particular has the greatest environmental advantage over conventional fuels. This study aimed to identify whether H-2 and FCB can compete with conventional fuels used in buses in terms of the eco-efficiency method, which focuses on economic feasibility and environmental improvement. The conclusion of this study is that H-2 pathways, especially, Naphtha SR [C] and NG SR [S], are more competitive than conventional fuels from an eco-efficiency perspective. As a result, switching from conventional transportation fuel to these suggested H-2 pathways is expected to offer an economically and environmentally more eco-efficient means of transportation. Henceforth, drawing upon evidence within this report, decision-makers would be wise to invest in more cost-effective and environment-friendly fuels by constructing an optimal H-2 infrastructure. (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Market based policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have become increasingly popular in the last decade. These policies provide economic incentives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A life-cycle inventory model was developed to evaluate three alternatives for the management of waste hot mix asphalt (HMA) including, (I) recycling as new aggregate, (2) recycling as new HMA, and (3) disposal in a landfill. Global warming potential, environmental emissions, and total energy use were quantified for each management alternative. The recycling of used asphalt into new HMA results in a reduction of 16 kg CO(2)e compared to landfilling. Recycling used HMA as aggregate reduced GHG emissions by 9 kg CO(2)e. A Monte Carlo analysis on the alternatives showed that the range of reduction for recycling as HMA was 12 to 26 kg CO(2)e and for recycling as aggregate 6 to 11 kg CO(2)e.The role of straw bale as a construction material for reducing the whole-life impacts of housing is examined. The embodied and operational CO2 emissions in a recently completed UK social housing project are compared using alternative domestic external wall constructions and the effects on the resulting CO2 emissions. It is estimated that over 15 tonnes of CO2 may be stored in biotic materials of each of the semi-detached houses, of which around 6 tonnes are sequestered by straw and the remaining by wood and wood products. This suggests the carbon lock-up potential of renewable construction materials is capable of reducing the case study house's whole-life CO2 emissions of the house over its 60-year design life by 61% when compared with the case without sequestration. The practical implications of construction, detailing, maintenance, cost and self-build potentials of straw-bale construction are also considered. The potential for load-bearing straw-bale walls is examined through the whole-life performance of straw-bale construction with alternative conventional external walling systems.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been identified as one of Unilever's priority environmental impact themes: this assessment was therefore conducted to help the Knorr brand measure and understand the GHG emissions related to its product portfolio, identify opportunities to manage GHG emissions in the Unilever-owned operations (manufacture) and influence managed reductions elsewhere in the Knorr product lifecycles, and assess the impact of the brand's innovation and portfolio strategies on its GHG footprint. A bottom-up product-based life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was considered impractical to assess Knorr's portfolio's complexity. Thus, a meta-product-based accounting LCA approach was followed (MilA i Canals et al. 2009). Up to 16 product types or "meta-products" were assessed in each geographical region, with a total of 36 meta-products assessed globally. Then, the Knorr GHG footprint was derived by multiplying the impacts calculated per tonne of each product type with the sales volumes in 2007. Data for ingredients and processing technologies were gathered from the literature and suppliers; data from Knorr factories were used for the manufacturing stage. The variability in ingredients' production and processing and in manufacture was factored in and propagated through the calculations to assess the robustness of the results. The profiles of different meta-products within a product group (e.g. dry soups) follow similar patterns in terms of absolute GHG per tonne and distribution of such emissions along the life cycle. Variations are observed due to recipe composition and electricity mixes in the different regions. The range of variability around absolute results is significant and varies between meta-products. Aggregating the results for individual meta-products with their production volumes, the global Knorr brand GHG footprint in 2007 was estimated to be in the region of 3-5 million tonnes CO(2)e/annum (95% confidence interval). In spite of the significant variability ranges found, the results are useful for target setting and identification of opportunities for improvement. This is the world's first life cycle GHG assessment at brand's product portfolio level. The meta-product approach simultaneously allows for the assessment and comparison of individual product types as well as for the estimation of a brand's total GHG. The variability assessment enhanced robustness of the results by identifying a confidence range; given the complexity of the studied supply chains and the current data quality translated in wide confidence ranges, single number on-pack carbon labels seem questionable and not robust enough to inform consumers.The armor layer on the sea side of a rubble structure must be designed to protect against incident waves during storms. Formulas for armor stability and damage progression have been developed and are widely used for practical applications. However, none of the formulas accounts for the water depth at the toe of the structure explicitly. An alternative approach based on the maximum wave momentum flux at the toe of the structure is proposed in this article. Equations for sizing stable armor stone for constant incident waves and water level are proposed and calibrated using available data. Equations are also developed for determining damage progression in a life-cycle analysis involving varying wave and water level characteristics. The developed equations are calibrated using the damage progression tests conducted previously by the authors and verified using an additional 10 tests conducted for this article.This article is concerned with a life-cycle assessment (LCA) study of bioenergy production systems basedonoilseed rape cultivation. Inparticular, the study compares the production of biodiesel via transesterification of rapeseed oil, power generation through diesel engines fuelled by raw vegetable oil, and power generation through steam power plants fuelled by the overall aboveground biomass. The results of the LCA study show that bioenergy systems based on power generation perform better than bioenergy systems based on biodiesel production. In particular, the best energy and environmental performance are achieved with steam power plants fuelled by the overall aboveground biomass, which allow a reduction of primary energy consumption by about 75 per cent, the greenhouse impact by about 60 per cent, and the acidification impact by about 52 per cent with respect to conventional power generation plants. A favourable energy and environmental profile can also be achieved by diesel power systems (DPSs) and biodiesel fuel systems (BFSs), especially if the straw is used for power generation. In particular, the primary energy saving is about 58 per cent for DPSs and 72 per cent for BFSs without any straw energy use and about 67 per cent and 74 per cent with straw energy use, respectively. Moreover, these systems allow a reduction of the greenhouse (by about 55-58 per cent) and acidification impacts (from 21 per cent to 38 per cent), except for the BFS without any straw energy use, which increases the acidification impact by about 42 per cent. The study also demonstrates that crop cultivation greatly affects the performance, owing to the use of fuels and fertilizers.There is wide public debate about which electricity generating technologies will best be suited to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Sometimes this debate ignores real-world practicalities and leads to over-optimistic conclusions. Here we define and apply a set of fit-for-service criteria to identify technologies capable of supplying baseload electricity and reducing GHGs by amounts and within the timescale set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Only five current technologies meet these criteria: coal (both pulverised fuel and integrated gasification combined cycle) with carbon capture and storage (CCS); combined cycle gas turbine with CCS; Generation III nuclear fission; and solar thermal backed by heat storage and gas turbines. To compare costs and performance, we undertook a meta-review of authoritative peer-reviewed studies of levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and life-cycle GHG emissions for these technologies. Future baseload electricity technology selection will be influenced by the total cost of technology substitution, including carbon pricing, which is synergistically related to both LCOE and emissions. Nuclear energy is the cheapest option and best able to meet the IPCC timetable for GHG abatement. Solar thermal is the most expensive, while CCS will require rapid major advances in technology to meet that timetable. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Screening-level life cycle assessment (LCA) can provide a quick tool to identify the life cycle hot spots and focus research efforts to help to minimize the burdens of a technology while maximizing its benefits. The use of nanoscale silver in consumer products has exploded in popularity. Although its use is considered beneficial because of antimicrobial effects, some attention must be given to the potential environmental impacts it could impart on the life cycle of these nanoproducts as production demands escalate. This work examines the environmental impact of including silver nanoparticles in commercially available socks using screening-level LCA. Initial results suggest washing during the use phase contributes substantially more than the manufacturing phase to the product life cycle impacts. Comparison of nanoparticles prepared by either chemical reduction, liquid flame spray (LFS), or plasma arc demonstrate how the type of manufacturing process used for the nanoscale silver can change the resulting life cycle impact of the sock product. The magnitude of this impact will depend on the type of process used to manufacture the nanoscale silver, with LFS having the most impact because of the need for large quantities of hydrogen and oxygen. Although the increased impacts for a single nanoproduct may be relatively small, the added environmental load can actually be a significant quantity when considered at the regional or global production level.Power plant cycling in thermal plants typically implies high costs and emissions. It is, therefore, important to find ways to reduce the influence of variations in wind power generation on these plants without forsaking large amounts of wind power. Using a unit commitment model, this work investigates the possibility to reduce variations by means of a moderator, such as a storage unit or import/export capacity. The relation between the reduction in CO2-emissions and the power rating of the moderator is investigated, as well as the benefit of a moderator which handles weekly variations compared with a moderator which has to be balanced on a daily basis. It is found that a daily balanced moderator yields a decrease in emissions of about 2% at 20% wind power grid penetration. The reduction in emissions is mainly due to an avoidance of start-up and part load emissions and a moderator of modest power rating is sufficient to achieve most of this decrease. In the case of a weekly balanced moderator, emissions are reduced as the moderator power rating increases. At 40% wind power grid penetration, a weekly balanced moderator reduces emissions with up to 11%. The major part of this reduction is due to the avoidance of wind power curtailment. The simulated benefit (CO2-emissions and costs) from adding a general moderator is compared with emissions from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies and cost data of five available moderator technologies; transmission capacity, pumped hydro power, compressed air energy storage, flow batteries and sodium sulphur batteries. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.We report the environmental assessment of the cultivation cycle of cauliflower (Brassica oleracea L. var. botrytis), chosen due to its high levels of natural bioactive compounds, using different fertilization practices. The functional units used during the impact assessment were linked with the quantity produced, considering different units of commercialization, or with the cauliflower quality, considering its antioxidant compounds content. Although nutrient content has been described and used as a possible functional unit, using antioxidant compounds as a functional unit has not previously been published. Three cultivation options with similar dosages of total nitrogen were considered: using mineral fertilizers (M) alone or mineral fertilizers plus compost, with a high (C(H)) or a low (C(L)) dosage. During the cultivation period, the soil characteristics and nitrogen and moisture content of the fruit were monitored, and the yield and the fruit size were analyzed. In addition, the glucosinolates and the phenolic compounds (sinapic acid, phenols, and flavonoids) content were assessed for the three options. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to determine the environmental impacts of the whole cauliflower production cycle, including production of mineral and organic fertilizers, fertilizers transport, and crop stage. Commercial yields were higher for cultivation options with M and C(L) than for option C(H), while higher levels of bioactive compounds were detected in the latter. For C(H) and C(L), eutrophication, global warming and ozone layer depletion potentials were generally lower and photochemical oxidation potential was always higher than for the M option, regardless of the functional unit. Regarding functional units involving production (yield, fruit and dry matter harvest), there were higher impacts with the C(H) cultivation option than with M for abiotic depletion, acidification, photochemical oxidation, and cumulative energy demand. When the differences in bioactive compounds content (total sinapic acid derivatives and total phenols) were sufficiently high, this was reversed, with C(H) having lower impacts for all the environmental categories apart from photochemical oxidation and abiotic depletion. The differences in the magnitude of individual environmental impacts between cultivation options, and also the order, were highly dependant on the functional unit considered. When functional units associated with production and total phenols content were considered, the C(H) cultivation option had the highest impact in four out of seven categories, whereas for the functional unit involving sinapic acid content, this cultivation option had the least impact in five out of seven categories.This study used life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to examine the environmental effects associated with sub-therapeutic tylosin and chlortetracycline (CTC) antimicrobial use within US Northern Great Plains (NGP) swine-production facilities. Antimicrobial feed-additive use is widespread within this industry and is expected to play an integral role within future carbon-management strategies due to its ability to increase feed efficiency and control disease. The LCA model system boundaries for this study were: (1) antimicrobial manufacturing; (2) feed manufacturing; (3) transport of antimicrobials to the feed-mill and completed feed to the swine-production facility; (4) electricity and propane use associated with swine-production operations; and (5) swine enteric and manure-storage and handling emissions. The functional unit is the growth life cycle of one head of swine from starter (7 kg) to finisher (111 kg market weight; "wean-to-finish") production stages. Environmental impacts considered include global warming, acidification and eutrophication, ecotoxicity, and fossil-fuel use following EcoIndicator 99 assessment methodology. High-estimated energy requirements associated with CTC and tylosin manufacturing, coupled with the large transportation distances to the feed manufacturing and swine-production facilities increased climate change and ecotoxicity impacts compared with a no antimicrobial-use scenario. However, feeding CTC resulted in several local positive changes including increased feed utilization, lower producer costs due to shortened production times, and reduced manure greenhouse gas emissions. These positive changes in the local environment however did not offset negative global impacts associated with material manufacturing and transport for the specific scenarios analyzed. Increased use of renewable-energy sources for both swine and antimicrobial production resulted in net environmental enhancement. This study demonstrates both the beneficial and negative environmental aspects associated with sub-therapeutic antimicrobial within the swine-production industry, and provides swine producers and environmental practitioners with tangible alternatives for meeting both livestock-health management and future carbon-management constraints within a reduced-carbon-emission consumer and regulatory marketplace.There is no clear guidance for responsible food service operations to reduce their environmental footprint, so the efforts put forth by a restaurant may not have the environmental impact intended. As a result, Green Seal conducted life cycle assessment research on restaurants and food service operations to define priorities for environmental improvement. This information was then used to develop a sustainability standard and certification (i.e., ecolabel) program. The life cycle assessment study focused on the day-to-day activities of running a restaurant, including direct and indirect contributions. To do this, a restaurant and food service operations model was developed by grouping the operational activities into four subsystems: food procurement, food storage, food preparation and cooking, and service/support. Data was collected from a range of restaurants in the United States. The impact categories examined included respiratory inorganics, acidification/eutrophication, fossil fuels, ecotoxicity, carcinogens, land use, and climate change. Of all the subsystems, food procurement contributed hotspots in all impact categories examined. On the contrary, the food storage subsystem contributed no hotspot in any of the impact categories examined. Normalization of the results confirmed that food procurement was the largest source of environmental impacts. In addition, it was found that the impacts of food services were dominated by land use, respiratory inorganics, and fossil fuels. The impacts could be reduced with various preferable practices. As a result, a sustainability standard for restaurants and food services was developed to include these preferable practices, the Green Seal Standard for Food Services, GS-46. This study presents an overview of the main environmental impacts from the operation of a restaurant or food service. The results provided direction in the development of a sustainability standard and ecolabel program. This standard, the Green Seal Standard for Restaurants and Food Services, GS-46, is a comprehensive framework for operations to make meaningful reductions in their environmental impact. Further, operations that meet the requirements in the GS-46 standard have demonstrated significant reduction in their environmental impact. Finally, it was found that this environmental impact reduction can be done without added cost (e.g., cost neutral, with potential for financial gains).Water scarcity is a critical environmental issue. In particular, domestic water is a necessary resource for our fundamental activities, and poor water quality may lead to damage to health caused by infectious diseases. However, there is no methodology to assess the damage of domestic water scarcity (low accessibility to safe water) caused by water consumption. The main objectives of this study are to model the health damage assessment of infectious diseases (ascariasis, trichuriasis, hookworm disease, and diarrhea) caused by domestic water scarcity and calculate damage factors on a country scale. The damage to health caused by infectious diseases was assumed to have resulted from domestic water scarcity due to loss of accessibility to safe water. Damage function of domestic water scarcity was composed of two steps, including assessments of water accessibility and health damage. This was modeled by applying regression analyses based on statistical data on a country scale. For more precise and realistic modeling, three explanatory variables (domestic use of fresh water, gross domestic product per capita and gross capital formation expenditure per capita) for water accessibility assessment and seven explanatory variables (the annual average temperature, the house connection to water supply, the house connection to sanitation, average dietary energy consumption, undernourished population rate, Gini coefficient of dietary energy consumption, and health expenditure per capita) for the health damage ssessment were chosen and non-linear multiple regression analyses were conducted. Water accessibility could be modeled by all three explanatory variables with sufficient explanatory power (R (2) = 0.68). For the health damage assessment, significant explanatory variables were different from those for diseases, but the R (2) values of the regression models for each infectious disease were calculated as more than 0.4. Furthermore, the house connection to water supply rate showed a high correlation with every infectious disease. This showed that domestic water scarcity is strongly linked to health damage caused by infectious diseases. Based on the results of the regression analyses, the calculated damage factors of domestic water scarcity ranged from 1.29E-11 to 1.81E-03 [Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs)/m(3)], and the average value (weighted mean value by domestic use of fresh water for each country) was 3.89E-07 [DALYs/m(3)] and the standard deviation of damage factors was 1.40E-07 [DALYs/m(3)]. According to the calculated damage factors for each country, countries sensitive to domestic water scarcity appeared to be located in the African region, and in addition, the amount of available domestic water tended to be less in the most sensitive countries. Water production technologies represented by desalination are expected to be a countermeasure for the reduction of water stress. As an example of the application of damage factor analysis, health damage improvement compared with the effects of CO2 emission caused by the introduction of desalination plants showed that there were several countries where desalination was worth introducing after considering the advantages and disadvantages of the environmental impact. Damage assessment models of domestic water scarcity were developed by applying non-linear multiple regression analysis. Damage factors could be calculated for most countries, except for those without statistical data for the analysis. Damage factors are applicable to not only the assessment of water consumption, but also the evaluation of benefits of water production in countries suffering from water scarcity. The analyses of this study were conducted by applying data on a country scale, and the regional and local characteristics within each country are expected to be taken into account in future studies. The water resource amount, which was represented by the amount of domestic use of fresh water in this study, should be estimated with consideration of the effects due to climate change.Even though the necessity of a sustainable use of natural resources is widely accepted, there is neither consensus on how "resource use" is clearly defined nor how it should be measured. Depending on the definition, it can comprise raw material consumption only or the consumption and pollution of natural resources. Consequently, lots of indicators can be applied, and the result of a life cycle assessment study aiming to quantify resource use seems to depend on the selection of impact categories. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing life cycle impact assessment results obtained by means of several indicators to check if different indexes lead to similar results and if the number of indicators can be reduced. Life cycle impact assessment results of 100 materials from the GaBi and ecoinvent databases were compiled using the GaBi 4.3 software. The results obtained by different resource- and emission-oriented as well as single-score indicators were compared by means of correlation analysis to check for potential dependencies between indicators. The analyses revealed large differences regarding the correlations between indicators. While no significant correlations were found between emission-oriented indexes (R (2) = 0.40-0.62), strong linear regressions were identified between indicators assessing raw material consumption (R (2) = 0.65-0.98). This can be explained by the facts that all indicator results are dominated by the consumption of fossil fuels and that characterization models of correlating indexes rely on net calorific values when computing characterization factors for fossil energy carriers. In material groups that consist of energy carriers themselves, like monomers and polymers, significant linear regressions were identified between all resource-oriented indicators (R (2) = 0.78-1.00). Depending on the definition, different life cycle impact assessment indicators can be used for measuring resource use. Following the broader definition, a wide range of impacts has to be evaluated as no significant correlations between indexes assessing resource consumption and pollution were identified. In contrast, since strong linear regressions were revealed among some resource-oriented indicators, the number of indexes can be reduced when defining resource use in a conventional sense.In spite of the increasing application of life cycle assessment (LCA) for engineering evaluation of systems and products, the application of LCA in the mining industry is limited. For example, a search in the Engineering Compendex database using the keywords "life cycle assessment" results in 2,257 results, but only 19 are related to the mining industry. Also, mining companies are increasingly adopting ISO 14001 certified environmental management systems (EMSs). A key requirement of ISO certified EMSs is continual improvement, which can be better managed with life cycle thinking. This paper presents a review of the current application of LCA in the mining industry. It discusses the current application, the issues, and challenges and makes relevant recommendations for new research to improve the current situation. The paper reviews the major published articles in the literature pertaining to LCA methodology as applied in the mining industry. The challenges associated with LCA applications in mining are discussed next. Finally, the authors present recommended research areas to increase the application of LCA in the mining industry. The literature review shows a limited number of published mining LCA studies. The paper also shows the variation in functional unit definition for mining LCA studies. The challenges and research needed to address the problems are highlighted in the discussions. The limited number of mining LCAs may be due to the lack of life cycle thinking in the industry. The paper, however, highlights the major contributions in the literature to LCA practice in the mining industry. This paper discusses the lack of LCA awareness and tools for mining LCAs, issues relating to functional unit and scoping of mining product systems, defining adequate and appropriate impact categories, and challenges with uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. The authors recommend that future research focus on the development of a mining-specific LCA framework, data uncertainty characterization, and software development to increase the application of LCA in mining. LCA presents beneficial insights to the mining industry as it seeks to develop world-class EMSs and environmentally sustainable projects. However, to take full advantage of this technique, further research is necessary to improve the level of LCA application in mining. Major challenges have been identified, and recommended research areas have been proposed to improve the situation. The paper outlines the benefits of increased application of LCA in the mining industry to LCA databases and all practitioners. It is recommended that additional research be undertaken through industry-academia partnerships to develop a more rigorous mining-specific LCA framework. Such a framework should allow for sensitivity and uncertainty analysis while allowing for suitable data collection that still covers the temporal and spatial dimensions of mining. Research should also be carried out to develop objective ways of characterizing the uncertainty introduced in a LCA study due to the use of secondary data (emissions factors) from prior studies. Finally, new software or GUIs that address the peculiarities of mining should be developed to help mining professionals with basic LCA knowledge to undertake LCA studies of their systems and mines.In a comparative approach, a life cycle assessment for the production phases of two different CO2-capture facilities was made. Amine wash facilities are currently the most discussed way to capture CO2 in the post-combustion technology route. An equally promising competing technology uses polymeric membranes to extract CO2 from the flue gas. Additionally to the examination of the different production processes, the results were comparatively placed into an approximate life cycle analysis. The results for the membrane facility scenarios vary broadly. All of the investigated factors (e.g. laboratory/large scale membrane production; steel usage and membrane area demand) have a significant effect on the emissions. The best case scenario with low membrane area and steel demand presents a competitive capacity to the reference amine wash case. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The use of water is a critical aspect in the design, engineering and operation of any fossil-fuel-fired power plant and it is an important element in any environmental assessment and life cycle analysis. A large amount of water is needed to generate electricity from any fossil-fuel-fired power plant. This paper summarizes the results of a study carried out by Foster Wheeler for the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme (IEA GHG) with the purpose of evaluating the water usage in plants with and without CO2 capture. The study focuses on the techno-economic evaluation of five different alternatives establishing, for each of them, the water usage and the possibility of reducing the water consumption in areas where availability of water could be limited. The study evaluates several alternative bituminous-coal-fired power plant configurations based on the following technologies: Pulverised coal-fired power plant with ultrasupercritical steam cycle (USC-PC); Pulverised coal-fired power plant with ultrasupercritical steam cycle using oxyfuel combustion; IGCC using GEE quench-type gasifier. All cases are evaluated without and with capture of the CO2. The CO2 capture rate is assumed to be at least 85% of the total CO2 emissions. In all cases the plant is located in an area where water supply could be severely limited and therefore special attention is paid to any possibility of reducing the water usage and consumption. Reference plants located in areas without water limitations, used as a basis for this study, are taken from reports already issued by IEA GHG R&D Programme, assessing the performance of power plants with and without CO2 capture. Some of the reference reports have been developed by Foster Wheeler and some by other engineering companies. The following study objectives are pursued: To establish a rigorous accounting of water usage throughout the different power plants and compare water usage in power plants with and without CO2 capture, providing a breakdown of water consumption for each case. To establish an acceptable methodology that can be used to compare water usage in power plants and provide a baseline set of cases and water loss data for assessing potential improvements and evaluating R&D programs. To evaluate water usage and loss of power plants using oxyfuel, pre- or post combustion CO2 capture technologies. To assess and evaluate the performance, the costs and the potential impact on the water usage of power plants with CO2 capture located in areas where water supply could be severely limited. The performance of the power plants is estimated based on the power plants that could be ordered today, including all the features needed to reduce the water consumption (e. g. maximization of air cooling, recycle of treated water to the process up to a zero discharge plant, etc). (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.An energy network with polygeneration system and CCS suitable for China was proposed in our previous work in consideration of low-cost CCS and energy providing safety. In this paper, based on life-cycle analysis, the role of the Energy Network has been investigated at the national level. Results show that with the import dependency of oil controlled in the range of 40%-60% during 2020 to 2030, up to 22% of the total capacity of coal fired supercritical power plants may be replaced by hundreds of new polygeneration plants for electricity and alternative fuels. When the oil import dependency will be kept from 40% to 60%, the Energy Network can save 20%-30% of energy and cut down 30%-40% of total costs every year compared to the present method with coal fired supercritical power plants and traditional alternative fuel plants with CO2 capture. And the Energy Network can capture more than 0.1 billion tons of CO2 with high concentration over 98% each year. Moreover, from the aspect of CCS, this Energy Network can realize as low as 15$/t of total CCS cost due to the quite low energy penalties of CO2 capture in the polygeneration systems and the combination of CO2 sources and storage sites. The new Energy Network has realized the proper combination of energy utilization and CO2 capture and storage according to the unique state of China. It is suitable for China and may play an important role in CCS in the future. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In the last years several studies have investigated carbon capture and storage (CCS) from a life cycle perspective focusing on the environmental performance. Scope of this study is to compare systematically the different approaches, to summarise the results, address methodological variations and formulate guidelines to assign the various conclusions gathered from the studies. CCS is a wide field with various technological options. All studies show the expected reduction in GWP but often an increase in other impact categories, regardless of capture technology and fuel considered. Three parameter sets have been identified, which have a significant impact on the results: a) development of plant efficiencies and energy penalties; b) capture efficiency and purity of the CO2; c) fuel origin and composition. Although there are still big differences in the underlying assumptions of the studies and also some methodological shortcomings, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has proved to be a helpful tool to investigate the environmental consequences related to the introduction of CCS. Nevertheless, the number of existing studies is not sufficient to give a comprehensive picture and there is still a wide field of subjects and technologies which have not been covered yet. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology for reducing the amount of CO2 to be emitted into the air, by storing the CO2. However, a CCS project itself emits some CO2. Therefore, to estimate CCS's net CO2 reduction effect, it is effective to apply life cycle assessment (LCA) to CCS projects. In this paper, we assumed a number of CCS project models to be feasible in Japan, and estimated the amount of CO2 emissions to store one ton of CO2 by applying LCA to the CCS projects. As a result, depending on the model case, 50% or more of the CO2 amount to be stored was emitted. The study also revealed that approximately 80% of the CO2 emissions at CCS-applied facilities derived from the energy consumed to re-heat the liquid absorbent that absorbed CO2. The study also indicated that a substantial amount of CO2 emissions can be reduced if heat integration is conducted between the production equipment and the CCS equipment for energy utilization, such as bleeding CO2 from a power station and other production equipment. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Increasing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere influences global climate change even though the level of impact is still unclear. Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is increasingly seen as an important component of broadly based greenhouse gases reduction measures, such as the use of renewable energy sources or nuclear energy. Although the other greenhouse gases are more potent, the sheer volume of CO2 makes it dominant in term of its effect in the atmosphere. The International Energy Agency (IEA) uses 19% of emission reduction requirements as the target for CCS. Although a fossil fuel power plant is a large source of CO2 emissions, with CO2 capture these emissions can be reduced substantially. However, it must be recognized that CO2 capture significantly decreases power plant efficiency; therefore, extra resources (for example, coal in the case of a coal-fired power plant) are needed to compensate for the lost capacity. Extensive application of CO2 capture will require the construction of replacement power plants to compensate for the loss of electricity to the grid. CO2 transport and storage also contribute to an increase in emissions and waste generation, as well as an increase in energy and other resource consumption. To understand the implications, CCS activities should be studied from a full life cycle perspective. The objectives of this study is to conduct life cycle assessment of combining two energy systems, coal-fired power plant and CO2 EOR, as a new tool to evaluate environmental LCA of CCS with CO2 EOR option. In addition, this is an attractive tool for decision making of any CCS project. Various equations are applied into the GaBi software (a LCA software) to model this tool. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the primary approach used in this study to create the tool for CCS environmental evaluation. The Boundary Dam Power Station (BDPS) and the Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project in Saskatchewan, Canada, are studied and modified as the case scenarios to find the potential and encourage the applications of CCS on both energy systems. Energy, using GJ as one of its unit, is considerably the product of this combining two energy resources as one system. The application of this tool effectively demonstrates the result of CCS system as life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) on carbon footprint and resource depletion. Other environmental impacts can, therefore, be analyzed by this tool as well. Three processes; coal mining, power plant including CO2 capture unit operation, and crude oil usage, must be presented when the global warming potential (GWP) of CCS is performed. In addition, the result demonstrates the GWP reduction is directly related to fossil fuel resource use efficiency. This means the lower GWP of CCS, the lower efficiency of fossil fuel resource use as well. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The aim of the study has been to compare the environmental impacts of four different gas power plant scenarios, both with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS). The functional unit is 1 TWh electricity generated and delivered to the grid. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology based on the ISO-standards 14040/44 was used. The study concludes that the CCS scenarios have reduced impacts for the global warming potential category only. However, process integration is the best CCS option of the scenarios analysed. One obvious way to reduce the environmental effects from the CCS system is to reduce the efficiency penalty, the steam consumption for regenerating amines and the emissions of MEA, ammonia and acetaldehyde. Compression, pipeline transport, injection and storage of CO2 has almost negligible impacts for all of the impact categories analysed. It is still important to find more optimal design options. Focus should be on process integration, since this scenario has proved to be the best of the CCS scenarios analysed. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study presents life cycle assessments of different capturing technologies with natural gas and hard coal feedstock for fossil fuel power plant. Post-combustion capture with amine-based absorption, pre-combustion capture with selexol absorption and oxyfuel-combustion capture by condensation of flue gas from oxygen fired fuel combustion are considered. The captured CO2 is transported over 500km pipeline and sequestered in secure geological storage. Results show a substantial decrease in greenhouse gas emissions for all CO2 capture approaches in comparison with power plants without CCS, reducing the net global warming potential (GWP) by 64-78% depending on the technology used. The emissions at the plant and in the chain leads to considerable increase in toxicity and eutrophication impacts. Human toxicity impact increases by 40-75%, terrestrial ecotoxicity by 60-120%, and freshwater eutrophication by 60-200% for different technology. The detailed assessment of the impacts quantifies impact contribution from various processes in the chain and identifies the energy penalty and infrastructure as the major contributing processes to the increase in most of the impacts. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Mineral carbonation has been identified as a potentially suitable means of CO2 sequestration in Singapore due to the nation's lack of land for geological or deep ocean storage of CO2. In this article, the total energy, CO2 emissions and costs of mineral carbonation are investigated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The life cycle investigation took into account energy and greenhouse gas emissions from mineral mining activities and shipment, the recovery of CO2 based on amine scrubbing technology and simulated scenarios of the net energy requirements for the carbonation process based on 'ideal' and worst case energy requirements. The CO2 avoided results from a total of 4 scenarios were in the range of 106.9 kg to 175.9 kg per 1 MWh. The percentage sequestration effectiveness results are from 32.9% to 49.7%. The life cycle costing results are 105.6 USD/tonne CO2 avoided and 127.2 USD/tonne CO2 avoided for two of the most favorable scenarios. However, it is highlighted that various engineering challenges have to be overcome before the 'ideal' carbonation reaction conditions represented in the simulation model can be achieved. The results will most likely fluctuate somewhere between the ideal and worst case conditions. The main energy penalties and associated CO2 emissions come mostly from CO2 recovery, pretreatment and mineralization process itself. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The oxy-fuel combustion CO2 capture route and post-combustion CO2 capture route involve different energy consumption rates and subsequent environmental impacts. The holistic perspective offered by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can help decision makers to compare alternative CO2 capture and storage technologies in a life cycle perspective. This paper, at first, introduces the principles of the dynamic LCA model developed for oxy-fuel combustion and post-combustion power generation with CO2 capture, transport and injection processes. Next, a comparative life cycle assessment of alternative CO2 capture technologies is presented. Results show that, at life-cycle level, the post-combustion and oxy-fuel combustion CCS cases can reduce the life-cycle Global Warming Potential (GWP) by 78.8% and 80.0% respectively compared to conventional power plant without CCS. Other environmental impacts, such as Ecotoxicity, Human toxicity and Acidification, vary significantly with the different CO2 capture routes employed. Finally, by comparing the results obtained with the most recent LCA studies of post-combustion power generation with CO2 capture and storage, it is shown that the plant level, gate-to-gate studies provide significantly variable results and generally overestimate life cycle environmental impacts. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper presents an environmental assessment of three scenarios postulating a national deployment of the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) chain by 2020-2050 on the French biggest industrial CO2 emitters (41 emitters among 9 industrial sectors) that had been carried out as part of the SOCECO2 project (1). This analysis is based on the comparison of these CCS scenarios with reference scenarios without CCS at the same timeframe. Results detailed below focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption, although NOx and SOx emissions balances have also been evaluated in the same project. Conclusions of this study provide information about the extent and main contributing factors of potential environmental outcomes (negative or positive) associated to CCS deployment. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Carbon capture and storage is significant technology in the limitation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere worldwide. Carbon capture and storage consists of four general processes within the system: carbon capture, carbon compression and transport, carbon injection and carbon storage. All the processes require energy to operate the system and therefore produce additional amount of carbon dioxide emissions. The energy penalty decreases the efficiency of the plant: the total conditional efficiency of the CCS system is often characterised as difference between CO2 emissions eliminated by CCS and CO2 emissions produced by CCS processes. Additionally, CCS is associated with environmental, safety and human consequences because of CO2 leakage from storage sites and its impact to ecosystems, stability of geological layers and changes in geological properties of formations, etc. This paper is aimed at the identification and optimisation of costs and the environmental impact categories caused by energy consumption at a CCS power plant for the realization of carbon compression, pipeline transport and carbon injection phases. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The objective of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is to reduce emissions to the atmosphere through the sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in deep geologic formations. Recent studies of life-cycle emissions from CCS projects that sequester CO2 captured from coal-fired power generation through EOR show that net emissions from this process are positive due to the CO2 emissions embodied in produced oil. For geologic sequestration through enhanced oil recovery (GS-EOR) to be effective, life cycle GHG emissions from the system must be small and consumption of the energy produced should not result in larger emissions than would otherwise happen in the absence of the GS-EOR project. In the best case, where relatively high emissions intensity oil and electrical generation are being displaced, the emissions reduction potential is greater than the amount of CO2 purchased by the project; however, where a relatively light crude and carbon free marginal generation is being displaced, the GS-EOR project results in an emissions increase. As a matter of public policy, if reducing emissions of CO2 is of great importance, encouraging GS-EOR will not be as effective as geologic sequestration in deep saline aquifers, or other means of reducing emissions that do not result in increased production of fossil fuels. Nonetheless, it is likely that GS-EOR projects will happen in the absence of emissions reduction incentives because they bring other benefits. The nature and scope of a GHG reduction program will determine the accounting approach needed to accurately estimate the emissions from GS-EOR, but in general, components that do not fall under an emissions cap will need to be accounted for via life cycle assessment. While further study is needed, it appears that allocating the emissions reduction to an electric power generator would be less complex and more effective that allocating it to the oil or fuels producer. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The environmental impact of a multilayer polymer film, Low Density Poly Ethylene/Polyamide system (LDPE/PA), generally used on food packaging field, was estimated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The aim of the work was to understand how to reduce the environmental pressure from plastic packages for its lower recovery and reuse, which can be improved by developing material recovery or other appropriate recycling technology to improve the cyclic materials flows and recycling ratio. LCA is a tool specifically developed for assessing the overall environmental burden of a product, including the system used for manufacturing it and its end-of-life treatment. This work provides a cradle-to-grave LCA study of a food packaging envelope made with a multilayer polymer film, with two different depth of 70 and 90 micron, and a study of the possibility to utilize a 50% of recycled LDPE and PA polymer pellets in order to reduce the environmental impact. A one square meter envelope is used as functional unit. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of 11th International Congress on Engineering and Food (ICEF 11) Executive Committee.Norwegian seafood products are important export products with regard to volume and value. More than 400 trucks of fresh fish products are weekly transported from Norway to European countries. The traditionally chilled fish is packed in boxes filled with approximately 30 % ice (equivalent to approximately 130 trucks) to keep the temperature low during transport and storage. Superchilled fish contains 10-15 % ice. The ice serves as a heat sink and thus, do not require use of ice during transport and storage. Compared with traditionally chilled foods, advantages related to superchilling are among others, extended shelf life, higher yield and reduced microbiological risk. Extended shelf life of superchilled products make it possible to sell a food product as fresh during a longer period of time. The results show that the traditionally chilled fillets have approximately 30 % higher impact potentials than the superchilled fillets for all environmental impact categories. This number is a direct reflection of the ice content in the boxes with chilled fillets, and this is thus, the most important parameter in this assessment. Transportation by truck and packaging material are by far the two biggest contributors to impact potentials, in both systems, while the electricity used in the ice machine (chilled case) and in the Contact Blast Chiller (superchilled case) have only insignificant contributions. The results indicate the potential for saving in environmental impacts when switching from chilled to superchilled value chains. The truck export of fresh fish from Norway to Europe constitutes a potential for reducing the impact on global warming by approximately 78x10(6) kg of CO2-equivilants per year. This corresponds to an annual emissions of roughly 24 000 cars. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of 11th International Congress on Engineering and Food (ICEF 11) Executive Committee.Combining life cycle analysis (LCA) and simulation modelling (SM) has been used to assess and improve a collective manure management plan set up in Brittany (north-western France) by a group of farmers to comply with current Nitrogen reduction regulations in agriculture. The plan studied aimed at organizing the spreading of slurry surpluses produced by 11 pig farms (representing 57.6 tons N/year) on crop land loaned by 22 crop farms located approximately 44 km away. LCA was used according to its normalized methodology to statically assess the potential environmental impacts based on 4 criteria: eutrophication, climate change, acidification and use of non-renewable energy. COMET, the dynamic systems model used in this study, has been implemented with the Vensim (R) software by coupling: logistics models, to simulate the transportation and spreading of manure, both at the individual (within farms) and collective (transfer plan) levels; biophysical models, mainly empirical, to simulate ammonia (NH3) and methane (CH4) emissions as the main criteria of the environmental evaluation with COMET. The approach encompassed four steps that alternated between the LCA and SM methodologies: (i) LCA was initially performed to assess the environmental impacts of two disposal scenarios, i. e. slurry biological treatment or transfer for application to remote crop farms. The analysis concluded the transfer scenario had the least environmental impact as, if properly implemented, it may save on the use of chemical fertilizers. (ii) SM using the COMET model simulated the logistics and agricultural feasibility of the transfer scenario to verify to what extent the collective management plan can be fully completed in due time on appropriate cropping systems. (iii) A second iteration of LCA was made to assess the environmental impacts of simulated variants of the transfer scenario, this time using simulation outputs instead of reference database information. These analyses showed important differences of impacts among the management options simulated. (iv) Finally, simulations with COMET were performed to examine the interaction between the individual level of management (manure spreading within animal farms) and the collective level (manure transfer plan to land loaners' crop farms). The variability of impacts between individual situations was very high, suggesting that farmer equipment should be adapted and collective rules made flexible to secure farm stock management. Beyond the results from the first three steps, this paper emphasises the more realistic outcomes achieved in the fourth and final step. This step allowed the variability of individual pig farm logistics and gas emissions to be analyzed, as well as simple techniques, that could be implemented by individual farmers to improve the whole system agricultural and environmental performance, to be checked. This paper concludes that benefits can be drawn from combining LCA and SM, as this makes possible to consider the diversity of actual farming situations and practices and, so, to design management rules balancing individual and collective needs.The imperative to reduce atmospheric carbon is well documented and one significant area of production is from the built form which is responsible for up to 40% of global energy consumption and 30% of the world's carbon emissions (UNEP, 2009). Over the full life cycle of buildings, which includes construction and demolition, 80-90% of this energy is used during the operational phase to heat, cool, ventilate, light and run appliances (ibid). The balance of 10-20% represents the embodied energy and is consumed during the building process of construction and production of the raw materials themselves (ibid). The embodied energy proportion varies considerably according to the life expectancy of the building. This proportion of the overall emissions will increase as the life span decreases and in the context of mine site village development is certainly on the higher side as most sites have a life span of less than 20 years. The need for the transport of goods and services, delivery of water and waste services to and from buildings adds further to account of emissions that the built form is responsible for and the total can be described as the carbon footprint. Measuring this and reducing it to a point of carbon neutrality is the overall aim of our research. The term 'carbon neutral' has been defined largely by popular usage in the past (Murray and Dey, 2007). Even within scientific literature the academic definitions are few and varied, despite a raft of papers on life cycle analysis, input and output methods and tools for carbon accounting, especially when considering which emissions of the built form life cycle are actually to be included (Wiedmann and Minx, 2008). Murray and Dev (2007) discuss the terms 'carbon neutral' and 'carbon footprint' with several references on the subject. One such, Wiedmann and Minx (2008) concludes that a carbon footprint should only include CO2 and no other greenhouse gases (GHG) from indirect, upstream emissions, as well as direct onsite emissions. In contrast, and in the context of this paper, the calculation of the carbon footprint is regarded as comprising of all the carbon emissions from the complete life cycle of the mine site village that can reasonably be calculated, from a clear site for development through to the remediation of the site following removal or demolition. Determining which emissions can 'reasonably' be included and how they are calculated will determine the potential applicability of the model to mine site village development generally. A specific case study has been secured of a recently constructed mine site village in the heart of the Western Australia's Pilbara region built to accommodate 142 staff with an anticipated occupancy rate of 80%. This paper details the methodology employed to calculate the total carbon emissions, the carbon footprint of this purpose built village and how to reduce it effectively to a point where carbon neutrality can be claimed. A conceptual model has been developed for calculating the emissions and is represented schematically in the paper with explanation of its parts. Once the carbon account, the overall footprint, is known then the task of building a strategy for reduction can commence. This will include: reduction of the embodied energy of construction; implementation of operational energy efficiency measures; renewable energy system offsets; and accredited biomass and carbon offset of the remaining emissions. In respect of operational energy measurement data has been provided from a similar sized village which highlighted the major energy consuming circuits and systems. Consequently, the Pilbara village has been designed by electrical engineers according to this data and once in full operation needs to be verified. To achieve this a metering and remote sensing system has been designed and installed on site to measure these circuits and systems, some detail of which follows in the methodology section of this paper. The system is expected to provide substantial information which, once analysed, will provide a basis upon which to redesign the power generation and distribution systems throughout the village and make a definite contribution to the overall operational energy reduction strategy.The transition to a low carbon economy provides potential opportunities for Indigenous communities living in remote areas of Australia. Recent studies and trial projects indicate a range of potential benefits from carbon management programs such as early season fire management, bio-sequestration, bio-energy production, and energy monitoring services. Remote Indigenous communities in Australia typically have few employment opportunities, and the health and socio-economic statistics of residents indicate several disadvantages compared to the average non-Indigenous Australian. Despite this many communities maintain a strong culture and a wealth of traditional knowledge, particularly in relation to natural resource management. These carbon management programs offer potential employment and business development prospects that utilise Indigenous knowledge and are in keeping with their caring for country preferences. There is little published information on the carbon profiles of these communities but they are expected to be highly carbon intensive due to their frequent reliance on diesel-powered electricity generators, fossil-fuelled vehicles that need to travel vast distances and housing that often requires energy-intensive thermal conditioning. Hence, efforts are also required to help reduce carbon emissions and associated costs, particularly rising electricity and fuel prices from direct use or those embedded in goods and services. To ascertain whether implementation of proposed carbon management programs can be combined to mitigate carbon emissions a method for estimating and comparing emission abatement across a range of scenarios is required. A carbon accounting model that quantifies the estimated carbon that can be mitigated from sources and sequestered in sinks for a given community has been developed. The model combines two methods of measurement: life cycle analysis and land use modelling techniques. LCA is an assessment of impacts throughout a product's life, or "cradle to grave", including raw material acquisition, through production, use and disposal. The AS/NZS ISO standard 14040:1998 Environmental Management-Life cycle assessment - principles and framework outlines the requirements and process for undertaking a life cycle impact assessment. The life cycle analysis is applied in the model to estimate key emission sources for greenhouse gases broadly categorised as follows: materials used for construction and maintenance, construction processes including transport, operating energy supply and demand, transport during the occupancy phase, water systems, and solid waste. Because a full life cycle analysis can be a time and data intensive undertaking only significant items in the community are included and some emissions related to transport and waste are based on annual inventory methods only. Embedded within the life cycle analysis is the model to estimate carbon sinks. The carbon sinks are modelled using a method in accordance with IPCC guidelines for land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF). This takes into account conversions for a variety of land use categories and, where significant, sub-categories of biomass, dead organic matter and soil. This allows sinks to be estimated within defined limits of uncertainty and a total sequestration quantity to be approximated. The combination of the two measurement methods provides an overall carbon cycle for a community and an estimate of the potential to provide climate change mitigation capacity including a quantitative basis for further economic analysis.As an important renewable energy, wind power has been paid more and more attentions in China recent years, in order to weaken the influence of climate change. We should know exactly the benefits wind power can produce, before government formulates relevant policies to accelerate its deployment. In this paper, we calculate the quantity of fossil energy saving and pollutant abatement in its life cycle, comparing with the baseline technology, i.e. 600MW coal-fired thermal power. Considering the damage cost of the pollutants, we can assess the benefits of development of wind power. By our model, we know that wind power can save 0.3839 kgce and avoid 0.203 yuan environmental cost when it generates 1 kWh electric quantity, comparing with coal-fired thermal power. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]According to the samples of 1781 literatures about environmental impact assessment (EIA) of SCI and SSCI databases from 1973 to 2009, this paper analyzes the literatures in their trend of growth, subject categories and journals, International collaborations, geographic distribution of publications and scientific research issues by using bibliometrics analysis. The result shows that EIA research steadily increases over the past 40 years and the annual number of papers published in 2009 is 50 times than that in 1973. EIA was involved into 130 kinds of subjects and appeared in 587 journals. The main study area with strong scientific research capabilities distributed in USA and European Union, while the USA was the largest contributor in EIA research and had a central position in collaboration networks. A keyword analysis found that the priority in assessment would gradually change from project environmental impact assessment to Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Plan Environmental Impact Assessment (PEIA); EIA research would focus on using and improving new techniques and methods, such as "life cycle assessment (LCA)", " geographic information system (GIS)" and "modeling" etc.; "biodiversity" and "climate change" would attract more attention and will be the emphasis of EIA; the improvement of developing countries' EIA system became popular research. This study reveals patterns in scientific outputs and academic collaborations and serves as an alternative and innovative way of identifying global research trends in EIA. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Intelligent Information Technology Application Research Association.Many urban areas are densely populated, often resulting in increases in various types of environmental pollution. Correspondingly, urban acoustic sustainability has become an important concern, especially in urban residential areas. This study aims at systematically examining the urban acoustic sustainability, from three main and typical facets. Firstly, it focuses on people's perception, trying to understand the effects of behaviour/experience in residential areas. Secondly, a series of building life cycle analysis and building acoustic performances are examined in an integrative way, demonstrating that acoustic factors should be combined into the overall environmental sustainability consideration. Finally, a typical kind of renewable energy technique, wind farms, are studied from an acoustic viewpoint, showing that further attention should be paid to noise effects, especially at the planning stage. Overall, whilst the acoustic effects in the overall urban sustainability might not be always straightforward, longterm effects and multi-factors should be considered.A case study of typical Litopenaeus vannamei comprehensive utilization system in a factory has been performed. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a quantitative basis for assessment environmental and economic impact of a food production system. According to LCA methodology, the system investigated was divided into four subsystems: raw material acquisition, production, packaging, and transportation. The results showed that the comprehensive utilization patterns could create greater added value, and the enviromnental impact could be less than the previous production system. The most impact category is greenhouse effect (1.89x105). Thus, the utilization model of I,. vannamei production belongs to clean production mode. To processing 1,000 kg L. vannamei, the total cost is (sic) 38,966. The total products value of frozen headless shrimp, seasoning matmial and feed additive is (sic) 53,355. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Conference ESIAT2011 Organization Committee.Green roofs have been more common in central Europe and are now being constructed on buildings around the world. As powerful mapping software, Google Earth can provide satellite photos of three-dimensional building roofs in big cities to GIS system. An application system integration with basic function of the environmental effect assessment and energy saving on green roof was designed by the technology of GIS and Google Earth. It is hoped that this designed application system can offer certain reference value for green roof management in urban area. This application system of green roofs assessment has been conducted to estimate the environment efficiency and energy saving compared to none green roof area in city. The green roof with useful environment efficiency including stormwater management, energy conservation, urban heat island effects mitigation, noise and air pollution reduce, urban biodiversity increase and more aesthetically pleasing environment, can be effectively assessed by designed application system. It is very evident that this application system with GIS and Google Earth technology can play an important role to manage and improve the green roof function. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Conference ESIAT2011 Organization Committee.Based on the analysis of the load of the tip set extra hard of the Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher, a finite element analysis of the tip set extra hard was made via the finite element analysis software-COSMOS, from which we made out the condition of stresses and strains; thereafter, we found that the greatest stress would occur its inside edge, with a larger stress concentration. Obtaining its maximum stress value, we conducted the evaluation of the minimum safety factor. On that basis, we derived a representative load and made a fatigue damage analysis of the tip set extra hard; at last, we attained its life-cycle analysis diagram, which has some certain significance in enhancing the life span of the crusher.One of the course objectives for the junior-level Thermodynamics course being taught to our mechanical engineering (ME) majors is "students will analyze engineering systems to evaluate their thermodynamic designs". The Rankine Cycle and its application to power plants were studied intensely. Students were provided with the results of the campus Energy Usage and Emissions Inventory. 1 Some key data which they noted was (1) 74% of the campus energy usage was electricity purchased from the local distributor (2007), (2) roughly 90% of the campus energy usage over the past 10 years was attributed to either purchased electricity or purchased natural gas, and (3) while the student body has grown a modest 8% over the past 10 years, the dollar amount of the energy purchased by Cedarville University has risen 50% over that same 10-year period. Students were then placed onto teams and assigned one of six alternative energy sources (wind, natural gas, fuel cell, solar, biodiesel, or nuclear) for which they developed a Partial Replacement of Campus Electricity plan. Student teams were required to identify Cedarville's electricity supplier's energy source, its cost of purchasing the electricity, and the carbon output resulting from the electricity purchased by the university. Their task was to locate an existing commercial power generating unit which could generate at least 15% of Cedarville's current electricity demands, compute the capital expenditure to purchase and install the unit, and perform a life-cycle analysis in order to compute total cost to the university over a 30-year period for implementing their plan. Though Congress has yet to finalize "Cap-and-Trade" legislation, students were also asked to compute the cost savings to the university for a "carbon credit" of $50 per tonne of CO2 saved. The student teams then developed conclusions as to the viability of their proposals. They freely expressed their feelings about the relative importance of "carbon neutrality" versus their personal educational expenses.We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. This quote, often referred to as an ancient Native American Indian proverb, summarizes the principle of sustainability: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Bruntland[1]). The importance of sustainability becomes clear as we try to meet the constantly increasing needs of our society with limited resources on Earth. Systems Engineers can play a very important role in this, that is why, at the Systems Engineering and Engineering Management Program of University of North Carolina at Charlotte, we are looking for ways to incorporate sustainability into the curriculum. The purpose of this study is to provide a preliminary road-map for Systems Engineering programs for curriculum design to incorporate sustainability into their curriculum. As part of this process, our specific objectives are 1) to identify learning objectives and topics, and 2) courses and levels of courses where sustainability and sustainable design can be taught. A brief summary of sustainability curriculum practices at different institutions is also provided. Some of the possible sustainability topics that are considered in this research are life cycle assessment, alternative energy sources, principles of sustainability, greenhouse gases, carbon footprint, energy audits, design for sustainability, managing systems based on triple bottom line (environment, economy and society), reverse logistics, and sustainability metrics for continuous improvement. For courses and their levels, we are considering the options of either creating a new course entirely dedicated to sustainable system design and/or hosting relevant topics in some of the relevant existing courses. Some of these potential courses being evaluated for sustainability integration include SEGR 2101 (System Engineering Concepts), SEGR 3101 (System Design and Deployment), SEGR 4131 (Product and Process Design). Our preliminary findings based on benchmarking of other programs indicate that while some engineering and business fields offer a more extensive sustainability-related curriculum, there is still a growth opportunity for systems engineering programs in the area of sustainability and sustainable design.According to The Engineer of 2020 (National Academy of Engineering, 2004), to maintain the nation's economic competitiveness and improve the quality of life for people around the world, engineering educators and curriculum developers must anticipate dramatic changes in engineering practice and adapt their programs accordingly. Current environmental issues have caused society to realize that industries and individuals must have sustainable systems to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). Therefore, one of the main goals of the present paper is to show how sustainability engineering curriculum has been included into the Industrial Engineering curricula to respond to current demands to produce environmentally conscious engineers capable of understanding sustainable practices and their implications. For the authors, creating a special topics class for the new course within the industrial engineering department seemed very appropriate since industrial engineering has always focused in the optimization of resources, thus there is a natural connection between the sustainability definition and what industrial engineers have always practiced. The main objective of this paper is to present the approach used to integrate sustainability engineering content into the engineering curriculum at our University. The approach involves offering a multidisciplinary class in sustainability engineering which was offered to junior or senior engineering students as a technical elective class with no prerequisites. The class was divided in four main modules which are Life Cycle Assessment, Energy Management, Design for Sustainability, and Ethical Consumerism. A team teaching approach was used to teach the class with faculty members from the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering Department. In the class, students were required to work in teams to solve two different projects. The first project was mainly related to life cycle assessment (LCA) in which students were asked to perform an LCA for a particular product and provide an analysis of their results. The second project involved a presentation to expand one of the main modules of the class. Finally, the course was evaluated using student questionnaires and exit interviews. Moreover, one additional survey was sent to the students six months after they took the class to collect data and assess student learning.Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was performed on decision-making of PV modules for very large scale photovoltaic systems using sc-Si, mc-Si, a-Si, CdTe and CIS from both economic and environmental viewpoints. The amount of module, land requirement, transportation, array support and foundation varies depending on the type of PV module because of the differences of price and efficiency. In order to objectively reflect those changes and to avoid the uncertainty of the pair-wise comparison due to the subjectivity of personal judgment, the classical AHP method was improved as following: (1) Quasi-optimal matrix was introduced to meet the demands of accuracy, simplicity, rapidity and consistency. (2) Weights factors were readjusted to their contribution to the criteria of the previous level, depending on the previous cost and life-cycle analysis results of VLS-PV systems done by IEA/PVPS Task 8. From the AHP results, we obtained a conclusion that mc-Si was the optimum option for the assumed 100MW VLS-PV power generation system which was to be installed in the Gobi desert. From the analysis procedure we could see that the analytic hierarchy process provided an analyzed tool effectively for the project appraisal and the decision-making on PV module for VLS power generation systems. The analytic hierarchy structure and its weights might be further modified according to the future project requirements.Waste and recycling resource management is one of the most important application areas of life cycle assessment. This article first points out the importance of using the life cycle assessment in waste and recycling resource decision making, and then analyses current life cycle studies in China of different types of recycling resources, such as scrap iron and steel, scrap nonferrous metals, plastics, paper and paperboard. Studies show that, although the life cycle assessment study in China for recycling resources is limited, it is off to a good start. Preliminary findings indicate that recycling resources have significant environmental benefits, but the pollution in the regeneration process needs to be controlled.A relative significance factor of an impact category is the external weight of the impact category and plays an important role in life cycle assessment(LCA). Many multiattribute decision-making (MADM) methods such as analytical hierarchy process(AHP), the rank-order centroid method and the fuzzy method are proposed to determine the relative significance factor of an impact category. However, in previous research, it is shown that, the AHP approach is difficult for experts rendering consistent judgment when the number of pairwise comparisons increases, the rank-order method has some insurmountable shortcomings, the key issue to use fuzzy set theory is its complexity. In order to address this problem, a new simple and efficient method is proposed to determine relative significance factor in a more efficient manner. An example to determine relative significance factor of impact categories is shown to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.The goal of the present study is to provide a comparison between a new common power supplies (CPS) prototype and the old version of power supplies, suitable for powering the same type of device, in order to weigh up according to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach the possible environmental and energetic implications. The comparison was developed in the framework of the most recent HGI and ETSI specifications and the power supplies considered perform the same services, specifically for a modem/access gateway used for providing the broadband service at customer's premises. The LCA methodological approach supported the quantitative description of the ecoefficiency of these CPSs and the system boundaries were defined from the cradle to the use phase.The wind power sector in the US is poised to see increased growth as concerns over the consumption of non-renewable energy resources and climate change intensify. While wind power systems produce near-zero emissions during operation, a significant amount of energy required for their production comes from carbon emitting energy sources. The embodied carbon (EC) of wind systems varies depending on the geographical region in which these systems are produced. This paper suggests that certain regions of the U. S. are better suited for the production of wind systems because the energy supplied to industry by utilities has a higher proportion of low carbon fuel sources.The increased use of palm oil as feedstock for biodiesel production has been a focus of discussion due to several environmental problems. This paper presents a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of biodiesel from palm oil (PME). Alternative land use change (LUC) scenarios and fertilization types have been evaluated. A life-cycle inventory and modeling of palm plantation and oil extraction in Colombia, transportation and biodiesel production in Europe has been implemented. Life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results in terms of global warming potential. acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion and photochemical oxidation are presented for the various LUC scenarios and types of fertilization.Data centers are growing consumers of energy and emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) worldwide. This paper examines data center power and locational workload management as strategies for energy savings and GHG emissions reduction. The case study examined focuses on GHG emissions from the electricity grid supply in a controlled small-scale computer cluster experiment and location (Philadelphia, PA). Virtualization is a technique that consolidates multiple online services onto fewer computing resources within a data center and deploys computing resources only as needed. The method can be applied not only within a data center, but also among multiple data centers in different locations, thereby taking advantage of deploying data centers that are linked to "low-carbon" electricity grids. Understanding the interaction between data center location and real time power consumption is critical to optimizing computer cluster usage, since demand during certain times of the day may rely on coal as the marginal source. Using the power savings results generated from the virtualization experiments performed on a small computer cluster at Drexel University, and power supply from the electricity grid serving the data center over a 24-hour day during a peak electricity summer month, we examine the time of day for shifting data center workloads in order to minimize GHG emissions.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly recognized as the proper framework for understanding the environmental impacts of nanotechnologies. In practice, applying LCA to nanotechnology is problematic. The performance, emissions, and inventory data collected at the laboratory scale may not be representative of the commercial scale. Despite the high uncertainty, LCA may guide nascent technologies towards being environmentally beneficial through early identification of leverage points. This research applies novel LCA methods based on laboratory-scale manufacturing data and battery performance modeling to quantify the energy tradeoffs associated with nano-enabled lithium ion batteries. At present, the large energy demands of nanomanufacturing processes make commercial scale application of nano-enabled batteries impracticable. This case study reveals both the challenge and value of applying prospective LCA to nanomaterials.The problem of system Integration in the context of an Industrial Enterprise is a multidimensional problem with fundamental dimensions those of: (i) Purpose, goals and objectives, (ii) Overall process operations, (ii) Overall System Design/Redesign, (iii) Information, Data and Software, and (iv) Verification, validation and assurance. Each of the above areas is addressed by respective groups which consider their area as representing the entirety of the problem and they frequently ignore the other important dimensions. The aim of this paper is to consider first the general problem of integration from all its fundamental aspects and focus on the key paradigm of Global Operations. Within this area we consider the issues of system organization and in particular the problems relating to hierarchical organization of the different operational functionalities, the issues of aggregation and disaggregation and the related problems of the "top-down" and "bottom up" approaches. System complexity is considered within this framework and the notion of emergent properties is then considered as a problem of aggregation of behaviours, which may be also seen as projections within the setup of a control and information architecture. Such an architecture is defined for the multi-level hierarchical organisational structure that we consider. We show that systems and control concepts and problems play a central role the development of an overall integration methodology and interpreting the features of the different emergent properties. The subject of modelling emerges with a central role in the effort to develop a methodology for systems integration, as well as quantifying the predictors of relevant emergent properties. The approach introduced here is intimately linked to Multilevel hybrid systems (Hierarchy of Operations), and provides a complementary dimension to issues of System Design (and Re-design) dominated by the theory of Structure Evolving systems [10] (in the total Design and Life-cycle analysis) emerges as the central approach. This paper provides an overview of the subject area and focuses on the development of the general conceptual framework for integration. We additionally develop and propose a systems framework for the evolutionary integration in this paper.Drinking water quality deteriorates badly in aged pipes. Replacement of the aged pipes in a scientific way is essential to ensure the water quality from better water sources. A modified LCA method was used to find the optimal service period of a pipe by cost analysis in its whole life circle. And the basic concepts of water distribution system blocks were introduced for water quality purpose.The packaging rationality of two kinds of milk packaging, one of which is plastic made from polyethylene and the other is composite material made from laminating Al/PE/Paper, was evaluated and compared adopting the approach of LCA, respectively. Firstly, the hierarchy structure of evaluation index system was established, taking its practical function, acceptable environment and feasible economic roles into consideration. Then weight of each item in the evaluation system was obtained using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) was used for final rationality evaluation. Combined with LCA, AHP and FCE, a rationality evaluation method was developed for milk packages comprehensively considering environmental, economic and functional factors, and the rationality of two kinds of milk packages were evaluated as case study. The results indicated that the composite package was more feasible than plastic packaging and would be a sustainable choice for milk package if improvements were made on its environmental and economic aspects. The method was proved simple and feasible for rationality evaluation of package products. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Organizers of 2011 International Conference on Energy and Environmental Science.Study the situation of environmental impact in borax's production process,(compression to alkaline degradation method and alkali carbonate method). Improves and perfects the AT&T matrix system evaluation method, contrasting borax's production process (compression to alkaline degradation method and alkali carbonate method), and outlines the legend of the corresponding factor (stage)-environmental effects. Result shows that the life-cycle analysis based on the framework of LCA is a practical analysis theory of resources utility and environmental management. Actively explore the leading technical path of borax's preparation using alkali carbonate method, and taking into account compression to alkaline degradation method as borax industrial ecological technology, would be more directional approach to solve boron industrial resources and environmental problems. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Organizers of 2011 International Conference on Energy and Environmental Science.The design of green buildings requires an integrated progressive approach by designing of constructions. It is necessary to focus on all components of building and to keep interrelationship between buildings, its surroundings and its users on regard. The building envelope should be high-performance, should create healthy indoor environment and provide sufficient comfort by minimal total energy balance and balance of equivalent of CO2. This paper presents optimization of constructions in order to elimination carbon footprint and assessment of design optimized passive house, based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) method.Heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems have a very important impact on the environment. The process of life cycle term of HVAC consumes great energy and emits large quantity of carbon dioxide gas in manufacture, construction, operation and maintenance, and demolition phases. The objectives of this paper are (1) to present the life cycle assessment and calculation methods for variable air volume (VAV), underfloor air delivery (UAD) and chilled beam systems; and (2) to compare the energy consumption and green house factors for these systems. A typical thirteen-story office building, located in Melbourne, was examined. The results show that the operation phase is responsible the greatest environmental impacts of the whole life cycle emissions. It is observed that the carbon emission from the operation represents between 29% and 73% of the life cycle carbon emission of a HVAC system. Manufacture ranks the second position in the overall life cycle. It represents 24%, 35% and 14% of the total life cycle carbon emission in VAV, chilled beam and UAD system respectively.Based on the analysis of the load of the tip set extra hard of the Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher, a finite element analysis of the tip set extra hard was made via the finite element analysis software---COSMOS, from which we made out the condition of stresses and strains; thereafter, we found that the greatest stress would occur its inside edge, with a larger stress concentration. Obtaining its maximum stress value, we conducted the evaluation of the minimum safety factor. On that basis, we derived a representative load and made a fatigue damage analysis of the tip set extra hard; at last, we attained its life-cycle analysis diagram, which has some certain significance in enhancing the life span of the crusher.Sustainable cities of the future apart from having low energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions should also adopt the "zero waste" principle. Geopolymers are cementitious materials with three dimensional structures that are formed by chemical activation of Al and Si containing solid materials at relatively low temperatures. Several wastes or by-products, including coal combustion ashes, metallurgical slags, construction and demolition wastes can be utilized for the production of geopolymer concrete and construction components. The present paper outlines briefly the potential of geopolymer technology towards green buildings and future sustainable cities with a reduced carbon footprint. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAASGreen buildings are increasingly gaining attention in the building industry globally. Green building rating systems have been instrumental in driving this front. Increasing number of green rated buildings and the national and international level rating systems speak for the importance of green buildings. A majority if not all rating systems are established on the same fundamental principles which are reflected in their credit categories, credit distribution and weighting. Life Cycle Assessment has been adopted in LEED rating system to rationalize the possible impacts and hence the credit weighting. Although the logic is well rationalized, this distribution is not reflected in actual practice due to many reasons such as cost implications, practical limitations and regional variations. Therefore certain credit categories that are most prevalent in LEED rated projects in the US might not be reflected important in LEED rated projects in Asia. Considering the rapidly progressing adaptation of LEED system in Asia, this paper intends to explore adaptation trends in LEED system comparing projects in the US and in Asia. Our study analyses fifty urban office projects in the US and in Asia that have achieved either Gold or Platinum level rating under LEED for New Construction and Major Renovations rating system version 2 and 2.2. Size of the projects will be determined by benchmarks specified by Core & Shell system. Data will be primarily obtained from LEED score sheets. Data will be analysed based on simple statistical analysis methods. Findings are expected to reflect how rating system requirements are adopted in practice, and regional trends and which will lead to suggestions how rating systems should be more encompassing and be inline with practical implementation. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAASThe manufacturing, as one of the main links between resource consumption and environmental emissions, is poorly documented in terms of carbon footprint. There lacks a holistic concept to calculate the CO2 emissions emitted in product producing and to recognize the reduction opportunities. On this account this paper proposes a systematic approach to calculation of the emissions with using a hybrid emission analysis model. The paper shifts the perspective of life-cycle assessment (LCA) from the conventional entire product life cycle emphasis to the manufacturing phase. This approach permits identification of opportunities for reducing CO2 emissions at the process level and driving the manufacturing system towards low carbon.LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) method is adopted and data inventory of maintenance event is gotten through collecting input and output of each maintenance activity based on decomposing maintenance event. Then data types and environment impact types of maintenance event are classified. Environment impact degree of maintenance is quantified by using Analytic Hierarchy Process method. Finally key impact factors are described and measures are presented to reduce environment impact of maintenance activity and realize green maintenance.Environmental indexes such as carbon footprint, ecological footprint or eco-efficiency have been seriously considered in several global organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Commission on Environment and Development. In addition, environmental evaluation methods such as Life Cycle Assessment or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System have also been considered. However, it is hard to say if the standards for evaluating the progress of a given action towards the realization of a low carbon society have been precisely established. In this paper, I suggest a standard index for evaluating actions for the realization of a low carbon society and a concrete evaluation method.In this work we present a novel framework for the optimal design of biotechnological processes that enables decision-makers to asses economic and environmental concerns simultaneously at the design step. Our approach relies on the combined use of process simulation, multi-objective optimization and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The design task is mathematically formulated as a multi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear programming (moMINLP) problem, which is solved by a decomposition method that iterated between primal and master sub-problems. The capabilities of the proposed methodology are illustrated through the production of the amino acid L-lysine.Optimal storage conditions are usually defined as those that maximise storage duration. In an energy conscious world, optimal could be redefined as those conditions that result in sufficient preservation whilst minimising energy consumption. Benefits of reducing energy consumption during storage by operating at higher temperatures are counteracted by increased rates of deterioration. Complimentary storage technologies such as controlled atmospheres and/or 1-methylcyclopropene offer opportunities to reduce the impact of higher temperatures on quality deterioration and shift the balance between energy use and quality deterioration. This paper reviews the possible approaches to reducing energy costs during apple storage and presents results of an investigation of the potential risks of applying load shifting techniques to controlled atmosphere stored apples. The results indicate that increased mean or oscillations of temperature in a controlled atmosphere environment have little influence on apple quality suggesting that complimentary storage technologies offer an opportunity for substantial energy cost savings with acceptably small impacts on product outturn.The retail food sector is energy intensive and has a significant environmental impact in the UK; refrigeration systems as well as Refrigerated Display Cabinets (RDC) are their primary energy consumers and carbon emitters. RDC have a substantial embodied carbon as typically their mass varies between 100 and 1,000 kg. Their lifecycle oscillates between 5 years and 9 years and according to estimation, the UK uses 793,804 RDC. Despite proven viability, asset renewal decisions are primarily capital cost based as only 12.5% is remanufactured or refurbished. Consequently, lifecycle thinking and its environmental translation, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), are used to identify the environmental hotspots. This paper focuses on a literature review of LCA of remanufactured RDC. It presents in turn, a historical account of RDC, their context, their disposal scenarios and legislation and finally the application of LCA.Over the past three years, the lighting laboratory of Laborelec has measured many LED luminaires in order to follow the evolution of the technology. These tests are financed by the Belgian grid operator among which Sibelga, which is responsible of the Brussels region, capital of Belgium and Europe. Conscious of the possibilities but especially the current limitations of the technology, Sibelga has started a reasoned approach based on studies (questionnaires, life-cycle analysis,...) and practical approach (use of LED luminaires in Intelligent Street Lighting, installation and monitoring of hybrid LED luminaire (with photovoltaic and wind turbine), test sites,.) which are presented in this paper.Global regime on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction has changed at the end of 2009. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has revealed some critical defects and all participants recognize less profit than they had expected and are disappointed with agricultural fields. There are 2 issues that brought less profit - Price of GHG and Verification before Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) would be issued by the CDM Executive Board and credited to the participants of a project. Therefore, at the end of 2009, Bilateral Offset Mechanism has launched, which could be considered to be revised CDM. However, in the agricultural field, no precedent has been shown between Japan and Asian countries. Under Kyoto Protocol Regime, United Nation CDM executive board has adopted baseline method and not adopted Life-cycle Assessment (LCA) method. Under Bilateral Offset Mechanism, however, LCA method might be adopted, if 2 participants agreed LCA method in stead of baseline method. 5 scenarios would be compared on GHG reduction by LCA method, because LCA method might be used under Bilateral Offset Mechanism or Post Kyoto Protocol Regime. Reduced greenhouse gas (GHGs; CO2, CH4, and N2O) emissions of the alternative systems instead of conventional systems were estimated by using LCA method preparing for Bilateral Offset Mechanism or Post Kyoto Protocol (post-Kyoto) regime. If GHG from the agricultural sector in developed countries would be taken into account on Bilateral Offset Mechanism or post-Kyoto Protocol Regime, reduced GHG from the agricultural sector in developed countries could be available. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.For the purposes of helping conceptualize the nature and extent of GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions, creating a frame of reference to set GHG reduction goals and to evaluate alternative scenarios, a study of GHG accounting methods for quantifying low carbon districts in China has been carried out. The scope of GHG emissions contains building, transportation, industry, municipal infrastructure, water resource, solid waste, and carbon capture sectors, with life-cycle analysis. Getting started, local energy use and GHG emissions is calibrated for accessing existing conditions. Then, factors influencing changes to GHG emissions are analyzed. Based on a great deal of cases investigation, a strategy called CLEAR principle for GHG reduction is proposed, which contains carbon capture, circular utilization, renewable resources, high efficiency and low demand, and industry structure optimization. Considering the CLEAR principle, the future scenarios are designed and measured, and the goal achievement of district low carbon planning is quantified.A truncation error resulting from the omission of environmental loads on the higher upstream orders of product system occurs in process life cycle assessment, which causes underestimation of inventory analysis results. The incompleteness of energy life cycle inventory analysis result is quantified by iterative calculation method, the magnitude of this truncation error varies with the type of energy system considered, but can be up to 23%. The completeness significantly increases with increasing iteration times, and surpass 99% at three times order.Energy-efficient retrofitting of existing buildingsis a huge contribution to sustainability of the society since building energy consumes more than one fourth of total energy consumption. The application of external shading system could block out unwanted radiant heat gain, thus reduces the indoor space cooling load. Life cycle assessment could be an important reference during the decision-making period of a retrofitting project. In this paper, a case study involving an overhang system design and payback period analysis in a university campus in HongKong is presented.Result shows that due to the requirements of structural strength under typhoon situation, although introducing overhang shading system could reduce almost half of the cooling load in the related area, the energy and CO2 emission payback periodsof the project are still unrealistically long.A cost combined life cycle environmental assessment was carried out to estimate the economic and environmental impact of wastewater treatment in the pulp production site of China. Results showed that the impact seen from abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, and marine aquatic ecotoxicity categories represented an important contribution to the overall environmental impact, while the impact seen from human toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and photochemical oxidation categories played relatively small role. Specifically, the machine, electricity, coagulant production processes had the highest contribution to the overall environmental and economic impact. Improving electricity and chemicals applications efficiency are the efficient way to minimize overall environmental and economic impacts.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become an important tool for assessing the impact of alternative hydrocarbon fuel conversion when compared with existing technologies. This has a great impact particularly towards informing developers, users and policy makers about advantages and drawbacks of new technologies or modifications of existing processes. Different LCAs can express different impacts, depending on framework element implementation. An LCA outcome should be viewed in terms of its scope definition, how the data was gathered during inventory analysis and analysed during impact assessment, and how overall interpretation was conducted. Future trends within LCA will be to further standardise the framework and build robust databases that can help reduce sensitivity issues and uncertainties.Biofuels are fuels produced from biomass, mostly in liquid form, within a time frame sufficiently short to consider that their feedstock (biomass) can be renewed, contrarily to fossil fuels. This paper reviews the current and future biofuel technologies, and their development impacts (including on the climate) within given policy and economic frameworks. Current technologies make it possible to provide first generation biodiesel, ethanol or biogas to the transport sector to be blended with fossil fuels. Still under-development 2nd generation biofuels from lignocellulose should be available on the market by 2020. Research is active on the improvement of their conversion efficiency. A ten-fold increase compared with current cost-effective capacities would make them highly competitive. Within bioenergy policies, emphasis has been put on biofuels for transportation as this sector is fast-growing and represents a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Compared with fossil fuels, biofuel combustion can emit less greenhouse gases throughout their life cycle, considering that part of the emitted CO2 returns to the atmosphere where it was fixed from by photosynthesis in the first place. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly used to assess the potential environmental impacts of biofuel chains, notably the impact on global warming. This tool, whose holistic nature is fundamental to avoid pollution trade-offs, is a standardised methodology that should make comparisons between biofuel and fossil fuel chains objective and thorough. However, it is a complex and time-consuming process, which requires lots of data, and whose methodology is still lacking harmonisation. Hence the life-cycle performances of biofuel chains vary widely in the literature. Furthermore, LCA is a site- and time-independent tool that cannot take into account the spatial and temporal dimensions of emissions, and can hardly serve as a decision-making tool either at local or regional levels. Focusing on greenhouse gases, emission factors used in LCAs give a rough estimate of the potential average emissions on a national level. However, they do not take into account the types of crop, soil or management practices, for instance. Modelling the impact of local factors on the determinism of greenhouse gas emissions can provide better estimates for LCA on the local level, which would be the relevant scale and degree of reliability for decision-making purposes. Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of the processes involved, most notably N2O emissions, is still needed to definitely improve the accuracy of LCA. Perennial crops are a promising option for biofuels, due to their rapid and efficient use of nitrogen, and their limited farming operations. However, the main overall limiting factor to biofuel development will ultimately be land availability. Given the available land areas, population growth rate and consumption behaviours, it would be possible to reach by 2030 a global 10% biofuel share in the transport sector, contributing to lower global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 1 GtCO(2) eq center dot year(-1) (IEA, 2006), provided that harmonised policies ensure that sustainability criteria for the production systems are respected worldwide. Furthermore, policies should also be more integrative across sectors, so that changes in energy efficiency, the automotive sector and global consumption patterns converge towards drastic reduction of the pressure on resources. Indeed, neither biofuels nor other energy source or carriers are likely to mitgate the impacts of anthropogenic pressure on resources in a range that would compensate for this pressure growth. Hence, the first step is to reduce this pressure by starting from the variable that drives it up, i.e. anthropic consumptions.This paper proposes a novel multi-criteria decision making method under uncertainty that combines the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the belief function theory. Our method, named belief AHP, allows the expert to express incomplete and imprecise information about groups of alternatives instead of single ones. On the other hand and in order to judge the importance of criteria, he can also present his opinions on groups of criteria. Then, the uncertainty will be taken into account in the final decision. Finally, another purpose of this paper is also to solve a real application problem which deals with the PVC life cycle assessment.This paper reports the outcomes from an International Workshop on 'Animal Production in a Changing World' held in Clermont-Ferrand (INRA-Theix, France) on 9-10 September 2009 in which 35 participants from 15 different countries participated. The main objective was to discuss the main challenges within the livestock sector: its environmental impact and role in global climate change; balancing the need for increased production of animal products coupled with a lower footprint and addressing societal needs in terms of product quality for the consumer. Five key lectures presented the main drivers of animal agriculture: population growth, environmental impact, mitigation and adaptation options, efficiency of production and quality of animal products. The key lectures highlighted the synergies between research needs and strategies dedicated to improving food quality and safety and those devoted to decreasing the environmental impact of ruminant livestock production. After the lectures two discussion groups were set up to discuss the main research priorities in relation to reducing environmental footprint and improving product quality. The main remarks from the group working on product quality were that the existing knowledge is not fully applied, the priorities with regards to quality differ between developing and developed countries and that, as one component in assessing food quality, an environmental index needs to be established taking into account carbon footprint, water and energy use. The discussion within the group working on environmental issues highlighted the importance of focusing on whole life cycle analysis in the mitigation area, while the adaptation strategy should be based on selection for profitable animals under different production systems. In summary, a fundamental shift in designing our production systems is required to help ensure present needs for animal products are met without compromising future generations.The relationships between energy use in food systems, food system productivity, and energy resource constraints are complex. Moreover, ongoing changes in food production and consumption norms concurrent with urbanization, globalization, and demographic changes underscore the importance of energy use in food systems as a food security concern. Here, we review the current state of knowledge with respect to the energy intensity of agriculture and food systems. We highlight key drivers and trends in food system energy use along with opportunities for and constraints on improved efficiencies. In particular, we point toward a current dearth of research with respect to the energy performance of food systems in developing countries and provide a cautionary note vis-a-vis increasing food system energy dependencies in the light of energy price volatility and concerns as to long-term fossil energy availabilities.Green chemistry and engineering seek to maximize efficiency and minimize health and environmental hazards throughout the chemical production process. This review demonstrates how green chemistry principles and metrics can influence the entire life cycle of a chemical from design through disposal. After reviewing essential metrics and recent advances in the field within this context, we consider the case of nanotechnology. As an emerging field, nanotechnology provides an instructive framework to consider the influence and application of green chemistry. Interdisciplinary innovation guides both fields, and both seek to transform the nature of technology. The applications and implications of emerging green technology are discussed, and future opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations are highlighted.The energy consumption of concrete is considered as the research object, and the life cycle theory is applied in the energy consumption analysis of concrete, the life cycle energy consumption inventory analysis of concrete is set up, the concrete's whole life cycle is divided into four stage. Each stage's energy consumption is carried out a detailed analysis. Based on the inventory analysis, an energy calculation model of concrete is established.Life-cycle analysis of civil structures has emerged as a valuable approach to support management of infrastructure, prioritization of investments, and selection of upgrades. Although such analyses applied to bridge systems tend to neglect the effects of natural hazards, deteriorating highway bridges are highly susceptible to damage from threats such as seismic events. Repair and rehabilitation of bridges following seismic damage would naturally consume more material and energy, as well as increase expected life-cycle costs. While life-cycle analyses of bridge structures traditionally emphasize costs, other critical metrics such as embodied energy expenditures are required to understand the true sustainable impacts of coupled bridge deterioration and natural hazard risks. The present study captures these effects using a non-homogeneous Poisson process model integrated with damage probability, repair modeling, and associated embodied energy estimates. The methodology is demonstrated with a deteriorating multi-span continuous steel girder bridge assumed to be located in the state of Tennessee. The results show that neglecting the effects of aging and deterioration leads to potential underestimation in life-cycle embodied energy estimates. They also highlight structural components and repair methods that contribute the most to energy expenditure of the bridge's lifetime exposure to seismic hazards.Monitoring is of most practical significance for the design and assessment of new and existing engineering structures. Practical experience and observations show that monitoring can provide the basis for new code specifications or efficient maintenance programs. Moreover, monitoring systems can avoid considerable costs of repairs and inconvenience to the public due to interruptions. This gives rise to the need for a thorough investigation to achieve an effective implementation of recorded monitoring data in numerical or analytical structural models that allow the detection of a deviant behavior from the proposed and the detection of initial deterioration processes. This study attempts to derive a concept for the effective incorporation of monitoring information in numerical models based on the concept of model correction factors. In particular, these studies are performed on the abutment free bridge structure S33.24 that has been proof loaded and monitored since December 2008. A merit of models derived based on monitoring data is that it is directly related to performance indicators that can be used for the assessment of the existing structural capacity and for an efficient life cycle analysis.The life-cycle assessment of structural systems suffers from uncertainty, and therefore probabilistic modelling is required. Each probabilistic approach suffers of two kinds of uncertainty: epistemic and aleatory. Both these uncertainties can be reduced but not eliminated, and they can compromise the modelling. This paper investigates the effect of the epistemic uncertainty on the service life prediction of a steel truss subjected to deterioration. For this purpose, an opportune credibility indicator will be introduced. It will be able to compare different models and decide which one is the most reliable for the modelling of a given problem. The deterioration process of a structural system can be considered as a transition process between different performance states, and its modelling can follow a Markovian approach; a semi-Markov approach will be the approach proposed here. The development of an appropriate "aid" index has shown the influence of the epistemic uncertainty on the lifetime prediction and, consequently, on possible maintenance strategies and their related costs.The cost of biodiesels varies depending on the feedstock, geographic area, methanol prices, and seasonal variability in crop production. Most of the biodiesel is currently made from soybean, rapeseed, and palm oils. However, there are large amounts of low-cost oils and fats (e.g., restaurant waste, beef tallow, pork lard, and yellow grease) that could be converted to biodiesel. The crop types, agricultural practices, land and labor costs, plant sizes, processing technologies and government policies in different regions considerably vary ethanol production costs and prices by region. The cost of producing bioethanol in a dry mill plant currently totals US$1.65/galon. The largest ethanol cost component is the plant feedstock. It has been showed that plant size has a major effect on cost. The plant size can reduce operating costs by 15-20%, saving another $0.02-$0.03 per liter. Thus, a large plant with production costs of $0.29 per liter may be saving $0.05-$0.06 per liter over a smaller plant. Viscosity of biofuel and biocrude varies greatly with the liquefaction conditions. The high and increasing viscosity indicates a poor flow characteristic and stability. The increase in the viscosity can be attributed to the continuing polymerization and oxidative coupling reactions in the biocrude upon storage. Although stability of biocrude is typically better than that of bio-oil, the viscosity of biocrude is much higher. The bio-oil produced by flash pyrolysis is a highly oxygenated mixture of carbonyls, carboxyls, phenolics and water. It is acidic and potentially corrosive. Bio-oil can also be potentially upgraded by hydrodeoxygenation. The liquid, termed biocrude, contains 60% carbon, 10-20 wt.% oxygen and 30-36 MJ/kg heating value as opposed to <1 wt.% and 42-46 MJ/kg for petroleum. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Well-to-Meter (WTM) analysis module in the Tsinghua-CA3EM model has been used to examine the primary fossil energy consumption (PFEC) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for electricity generation and supply in China. The results show that (1) the WTM PFEC and GHG emission intensities for the 2007 Chinese electricity mix are 3.247 MJ/MJ and 297.688 g carbon dioxide of equivalent (gCO(2,e))/MJ, respectively; (2) power generation is the main contributing sub-stage; (3) the coal-power pathway is the only major contributor of PFEC (96.23%) and GHG emissions (97.08%) in the 2007 mix; and (4) GHG emissions intensity in 2020 will be reduced to 220.470 gCO(2,e)/MJ with the development of nuclear and renewable energy and to 169.014 gCO(2,e)/MJ if carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology is employed. It is concluded that (1) the current high levels of PFEC and GHG emission for electricity in China are largely due to the dominant role of coal in the power-generation sector and the relatively low efficiencies during all the sub-stages from resource extraction to final energy consumption and (2) the development of nuclear and renewable energy as well as low carbon technologies such as CCS can significantly reduce GHG emissions from electricity. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To respect and conserve the environment, many companies are trying to improve their plants and production processes to reduce contaminant generation. In this regard, asphalt mix industries are also making their contribution to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and benzene during the manufacturing and laying processes of bituminous mixes, as well as reducing waste generation when eliminating aged pavements or manufacturing surplus. In order to achieve this objective, mixes that can be produced and compacted at lower temperatures are becoming increasingly popular to bring about a reduction in gas emissions and obtain improvements in working conditions for employees in contact with them, without losing the mechanical characteristics of the conventional asphalt mixes (manufactured and compacted at 160 degrees C and 130 degrees C, respectively). This article summarizes the main techniques currently existing in the manufacture and placement of bituminous mixtures at lower temperatures, as well as the techniques applicable in the reuse of aged pavement, and introduces the use of some methods to assess the choice between different types of mixes, such as analysis of the life cycle and its economic variants.Nitrogen (N) fertilizer plays an important role in agricultural systems in terms of food yield. However, N application rates (NARs) are often overestimated over the rice (Oryza sativa L.) growing season in the Taihu Lake region of China. This is largely because negative externalities are not entirely included when evaluating economically-optimal nitrogen rate (EONR), such as only individual N losses are taken into account, or the inventory flows of reactive N have been limited solely to the farming process when evaluating environmental and economic effects of N fertilizer. This study integrates important material and energy flows resulting from N use into a rice agricultural inventory that constitutes the hub of the life-cycle assessment (LCA) method. An economic evaluation is used to determine an environmental and economic NAR for the Taihu Lake region. The analysis reveals that production and exploitation processes consume the largest proportion of resources, accounting for 77.2% and 22.3% of total resources, respectively. Regarding environmental impact, global warming creates the highest cost with contributions stemming mostly from fertilizer production and farming processes. Farming process incurs the biggest environmental impact of the three environmental impact categories considered, whereas transportation has a much smaller effect. When taking account of resource consumption and environmental cost, the marginal benefit of 1 kg rice would decrease from 2.4 to only 1.05 yuan. Accordingly, our current EONR has been evaluated at 187 kgNha(-1) for a single rice-growing season. This could enhance profitability, as well as reduce the N losses associated with rice growing.Today's bioenergy systems are very different in cultivation, conservation, conversion of the biomass as well as in the form of the final energy. The assessment of bioenergy systems concerning environmental impacts is increasingly up for discussion. Future challenges will be the development of procedures which reconcile high-yielding and efficient approaches with environment friendly production. Against this background the system of Integrated Generation of Solid Fuel and Biogas from Biomass (IFBB) was suggested to increase net energy yields over a wide range of energy crops in order to obtain a higher biodiversity in energy crop cultivation. In the IFBB procedure the ensiled biomass is separated into a liquid phase for biogas production and into a solid fraction for combustion. This work is aimed at the assessment of the IFBB system in comparison to whole crop digestion (WCD). The assessment is based on crop production in a double-cropping system where winter rye and maize are grown subsequently within one growing season. The main parameters investigated are the efficiency of the whole process, primary energy and greenhouse gas savings as well as potentials of acidification and eutrophication according to principles of Life Cycle Assessment. The calculation of energy efficiency shows a superiority of the IFBB system due to a mainly thermal use of the biomass. Savings of fossil primary energy average at a similar level, whereas greenhouse gas savings are slightly higher for WCD. Investigations on acidification and eutrophication show that both bioenergy systems caused higher emissions compared to the fossil-based reference technique. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current US transportation sector mainly relies on liquid hydrocarbons derived from petroleum and about 60% of the petroleum consumed is from areas where supply may be disturbed by regional instability. This has led to serious concerns on energy security and global warming. To address these issues, numerous alternative energy carriers have been proposed. Among them, second generation biofuel is one of the most promising technologies. Gasification-based thermochemical conversion will bring flexibility to both feedstock and production sides of a plant, thus presents an attractive technical route to address both the energy security and global warming concerns. In this paper, thermochemical ethanol production using multiple-feedstock (corn stover, municipal solid waste, and wood chips) is simulated using Aspen Plus and compared with the single-feedstock scenario, in terms of economic performances, life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and survivability under extreme weather conditions. For a hypothetical facility in southwest Indiana it is found that multiple-feedstock strategy improves the net present value by 18% compared to single-feedstock strategy. This margin is increased to 57% when effects of extreme weather conditions on feedstock supply are considered. Moreover, multiple-feedstock fuel plant has no potential risk of bankruptcy during the payback period, while single-feedstock fuel plant has a 75% chance of bankruptcy. Although the multiple-feedstock strategy has 26% more GHG emission per liter of ethanol produced than the single-feedstock strategy, the trend is reversed if feedstock supply disruption is taken into account. Thus the idea of multiple-feedstock strategy is proposed to the future thermo chemical biofuel plants. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the potential environmental impacts and economic viability of producing biodiesel from microalgae grown in ponds. A comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of a notional production system designed for Australian conditions was conducted to compare biodiesel production from algae (with three different scenarios for carbon dioxide supplementation and two different production rates) with canola and ULS (ultra-low sulfur) diesel. Comparisons of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions (g CO(2)-e/t km) and costs (not subset of/t km) are given. Algae GHG emissions (-27.6 to 18.2) compare very favourably with canola (35.9) and ULS diesel (81.2). Costs are not so favourable, with algae ranging from 2.2 to 4.8, compared with canola (4.2) and ULS diesel (3.8). This highlights the need for a high production rate to make algal biodiesel economically attractive. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research examines the life-cycle water and nutrients usage of microalgae-based biodiesel production. The influence of water types, operation with and without recycling, algal species, geographic distributions are analyzed. The results confirm the competitiveness of microalgae-based biofuels and highlight the necessity of recycling harvested water and using sea/wastewater as water source. To generate 1 kg biodiesel, 3726 kg water, 0.33 kg nitrogen, and 0.71 kg phosphate are required if freshwater used without recycling. Recycling harvest water reduces the water and nutrients usage by 84% and 55%. Using sea/wastewater decreases 90% water requirement and eliminates the need of all the nutrients except phosphate. The variation in microalgae species and geographic distribution are analyzed to reflect microalgae biofuel development in the US. The impacts of current federal and state renewable energy programs are also discussed to suggest suitable microalgae biofuel implementation pathways and identify potential bottlenecks. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to resource depletion and climate change, lipid-based algal biofuel has been pointed out as an interesting alternative because of the high productivity of algae per hectare and per year and its ability to recycle CO2 from flue gas. Another option for taking advantage of the energy content of the microalgae is to directly carry out anaerobic digestion of raw algae in order to produce methane and recycle nutrients (N, P and K). In this study, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of biogas production from the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris is performed and the results are compared to algal biodiesel and to first generation biodiesels. These results suggest that the impacts generated by the production of methane from microalgae are strongly correlated with the electric consumption. Progresses can be achieved by decreasing the mixing costs and circulation between different production steps, or by improving the efficiency of the anaerobic process under controlled conditions. This new bioenergy generating process strongly competes with others biofuel productions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of different input data, functional units, allocation methods, reference systems and other assumptions complicates comparisons of LCA bioenergy studies. In addition, uncertainties and use of specific local factors for indirect effects (like land-use change and N-based soil emissions) may give rise to wide ranges of final results. In order to investigate how these key issues have been addressed so far, this work performs a review of the recent bioenergy LCA literature. The abundance of studies dealing with the different biomass resources, conversion technologies, products and environmental impact categories is summarized and discussed. Afterwards, a qualitative interpretation of the LCA results is depicted, focusing on energy balance, GHG balance and other impact categories. With the exception of a few studies, most LCAs found a significant net reduction in GHG emissions and fossil energy consumption when bioenergy replaces fossil energy. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A rigorous chemical engineering mass balance/unit operations approach is applied here to bio-diesel from algae mass culture. An equivalent of 50,000,000 gallons per year (0.006002 m(3)/s) of petroleum-based Number 2 fuel oil (US, diesel for compression-ignition engines, about 0.1% of annual US consumption) from oleaginous algae is the target. Methyl algaeate and ethyl algaeate diesel can according to this analysis conceptually be produced largely in a technologically sustainable way albeit at a lower available diesel yield. About 11 square miles of algae ponds would be needed with optimistic assumptions of 50 g biomass yield per day and m(2) pond area. CO2 to foster algae growth should be supplied from a sustainable source such as a biomass-based ethanol production. Reliance on fossil-based CO2 from power plants or fertilizer production renders algae diesel non-sustainable in the long term. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The agricultural industry today consumes large amounts of fossil fuels. This study used consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) to analyse two potential energy self-sufficient systems for organic arable farms, based on agricultural residues. The analysis focused on energy balance, resource use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A scenario based on straw was found to require straw harvest from 25% of the farm area: 45% of the total energy produced from the straw was required for energy carrier production and GHG emissions were reduced by 9% compared with a fossil fuel-based reference scenario. In a scenario based on anaerobic digestion of ley, the corresponding figures were 13%, 24% and 35%. The final result was sensitive to assumptions regarding, e.g., soil carbon content and handling of by-products. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Supply chain and delivered cost models for seven feedstocks (loblolly pine, Eucalyptus, natural hardwood, switchgrass, Miscanthus, sweet sorghum, and corn stover) were built, simulating a supply of 453,597 dry tons per year to a biorefinery. Delivered cost of forest-based feedstocks ranged from $69 to $71 per dry ton. On the other hand, delivered cost of agricultural biomass ranged from $77.60 to $102.50 per dry ton. The total production area required for fast growing feedstocks was estimated as between 22,500 to 27,000 hectares, while the total production area for feedstocks with lower biomass productivity ranged from 101,200 to 202,300 hectares (corn stover and natural hardwood, respectively). Lower delivered cost per ton of carbohydrate and million BTU were found for loblolly pine, Eucalyptus, and natural hardwood. In addition, agricultural biomass had higher delivered costs for carbohydrate and energy value.As a promising "green" technology, nanotechnology has great potential for improving environmental quality, reducing consumption of resources and energy, and allowing environmentally benign economic development. However, rapid development and expanding use and disposal of nano-products very likely poses complex risks to the environment and biological systems due to the tiny size and high surface area of nanoparticles. This chapter provides a brief review on the current and potential applications and hazards of nanotechnology to the bio-environmental systems. It is suggested that environmental safety regulations must ensure that benefits significantly outweigh the risks of each new nanotechnology before it is used on a large scale. For this, a multi-dimensional life cycle analysis that involves both biotic and abiotic systems should be performed to assess the long-term impacts of nanoparticles in terms of their type, structure, size, and application. Uncertainty associated with life-cycle risk assessment must be clarified. A social alerting system should be established to make consumers aware of nanomaterial-containing products, their potential hazards, and the best disposal methods (e.g., via barcode labeling). Nanotechnology may represent one of the most profound impacts of humans on nature in the long term. Therefore, nanotechnology development must be driven by long-term benefits and strict risk mitigation policy on a global scale.What are the limitations of regulatory measures to decrease environmental impacts of buildings? The case of Norway's wood-fired mountain cabins is used to explore whether strict energy-efficiency requirements in building regulations are appropriate and effective. A self-service (holiday) cabin is analysed in three different scenarios. The carbon emissions from the extra material required to meet the new regulations are calculated and compared with the emissions saved by the expected decrease in operational energy demand over a 50-year life cycle. The results show that in all three scenarios the carbon emissions from the extra material use and their transport outweighs the savings from reduced heating. As expected, the frequency of use (occupancy rate) is shown to be an important variable to determine the usefulness of technical upgrading. Alternative measures for decreased environmental impacts are considered. Suggested solutions for long-term reductions in carbon emissions for wood-fired mountain cabins are area efficiency (reduced floor area), low-carbon materials and the reuse of components instead of improved U-values. Regulatory measures that create universal standards for all buildings fail to account for particular circumstances and create revenge effects. Increased flexibility in regulatory mechanisms could reduce these problems.Maintenance is essential for long-term performance of any building. It enables the simultaneous retention of value in a structure and contributes to a country's gross domestic product. The efficacy of maintenance interventions for historic buildings can be assessed based on cost, conformity to building conservation philosophy and, increasingly, environmental sustainability. Carbon and energy savings in historic buildings are considered difficult to achieve due to limited retrofitting capability. Maintenance is one mechanism by which it may be possible to achieve carbon savings, initiated through necessary proactive and reactive regimes. A model for evaluating the efficacy of maintenance interventions is proposed, utilizing material life cycle data and 'cradle-to-site' techniques for embodied CO2 determination. Additionally, formulaic expressions can be used to calculate the relative merits of any selected maintenance intervention over a given timeframe. Internationally, the model represents a framework for selection of maintenance interventions in relation to cost, philosophy and carbon emissions. The strength of this integrated multi-criteria approach to decision-making is that it enables carbon emissions to be accounted for in the determination of efficacy of masonry repair types.As the focus of environmental policy and management shifts from cleaner production at the process level towards greener products as a whole, stakeholders ask for transparency throughout the entire value chain. This article assesses the comprehensiveness and the value of currently reported quantitative environmental disclosures of 97 listed companies from the automotive, banking, pharmaceutical and electronic hardware sectors. Findings indicate that quantitative environmental disclosures have many limitations, including incompleteness and inconsistency regarding corporate activities and sites, and limited internal data coherence. For many sectors, corporate disclosures only cover a very small share of the total environmental burden of products. A stepwise procedure is proposed to verify and improve the quality and completeness of reporting using life cycle approaches. We present simple data quality tests, and we introduce the concept of the environmental influence matrix, which provides a solid basis for the identification and prioritization of key performance indicators and areas of action. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Current methods of estimating potential environmental impacts of metals in hazard and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) do not consider differences in chemistry and landscape properties between geographic sites. Here, we developed and applied a model for regional aquatic impact characterization of metals using an updated method for estimating environmental fate factor (FF), bioavailability factor (BF) and aquatic ecotoxicity factor (EF). We applied the model to analyze differences in Comparative Toxicity Potentials (CTPs) of Cu, Ni and Zn for 24 Canadian ecoregions. The combined impacts of regional variability in ambient chemistry (in particular DOC, pH and hardness) and landscape properties (water residence time) can change the CTPs of these metals for freshwater by up to three orders of magnitude and change the relative ranking of metal hazard between ecoregions. Variation among Canadian freshwater chemistries and landscape characteristics influence the FFs within two orders of magnitude, BFs within two orders of magnitude for Ni and Zn and four orders of magnitude for Cu, and EFs within one order of magnitude. Sensitivity of metal FFs to environmental parameters alone spans three orders of magnitude when a constant water chemistry was used for all ecoregions. These results indicate that application of regionalised metal CTPs can have a significant influence in the analysis of ecotoxicological impacts in the life cycle assessment of products and processes. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Use of freshwater gives rise to important environmental impacts to consider in the sustainability analysis of an industry or a product. Water use impacts are highly dependent on the local or regional conditions, and apart from the quantity that is extracted and used, the impact of the freshwater use also depends on the local sensitivity to freshwater extraction, and the change in the quality from water intake to discharge of the used water. A methodology is presented catering to these characteristics of the water use issue and demonstrated on an industrial case study from the biotech industry. (C) 2011 CIRP.The development of new methodologies and tools supporting the design and management of eco-effective manufacturing systems represents a major challenge for the emerging sustainable production paradigm. Novel methodologies based on Life Cycle Assessment will be powerful tools to quantify the environmental impacts of factories and manufacturing system operations. The full exploitation of Life Cycle Assessment tools within frameworks for production process development still needs significant research efforts. A modular calculation of Environmental Profiles for a Production Line is proposed as a structured approach. An industrial application is described, with reference to a woodworking production line, outlining the major benefits of the approach. (C) 2011 CIRP.The focus of sustainable manufacturing has been to integrate environmental requirements into product development due to increasing environmental requirements from both customers and regulations. Manufacturers can monitor and improve the environmental performance of their products by assessing environmental impacts for all product life cycle stages. Nevertheless, the complexity of such assessment can be a challenge as it is a time and cost consuming process which involves many factors and stakeholders throughout the life cycle stages. The manufacturing supply chain can be seen as another alternative which is relatively simple for a manufacturer to start the implementation of sustainable manufacturing. As a consequence, this research investigates the embodied energy of a product life cycle that is manufactured under different manufacturing supply chains using life cycle assessment. A roofing system is chosen as a case study, in which its current supply chains have been assessed and compared with 10 different supply chain scenarios. Three associated factors of the supply chain are varied across those scenarios which are manufacturing location, travel distance and transportation type. The results are presented in two fundamental units of the embodied energy analysis which are mega joules equivalent and kilogram of carbon dioxide equivalent. (C) 2011 CIRP.Presented as a low-carbon building evaluation framework in this paper are detailed carbon emission account procedures for the life cycle of buildings in terms of nine stages as building construction, fitment, outdoor facility construction, transportation, operation, waste treatment, property management, demolition, and disposal for buildings, supported by integrated carbon intensity databases based on multi-scale input-output analysis, essential for low-carbon planning, procurement and supply chain design, and logistics management. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The International Ergonomics Association (IEA) Technical Committee for HF/E and Sustainable Development was formed in 2009. This paper introduces some ideas on new roles and opportunities for the HF/E community related to Sustainable Development generally and climate change in particular. These include involvement in the design of: systems related to the transition to low carbon economies, decision support, distributed working, and transportation. We also offer a cautionary note that social responsibility and social life cycle analysis efforts may have unwanted exclusionary impacts. It concludes that the HF/E community is well equipped to play a valuable part, both in applying traditional skills to new industries, and in new roles in wider teams.The authors review the status of heterogeneous catalytic oxidation processes with hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant in a liquid phase. They focus on the priority organic pollutant-phenol as one of the most common persistent organic water contaminants, toxic even at low concentrations. A wide range of heterogeneous catalysts is covered, with a special emphasis on rapidly developing new catalytic systems. Generally accepted mechanisms of the catalytic oxidation via the formation of the most abundant reaction intermediates and terminal products followed by the conceptual kinetic models developed especially for the oxidation of phenol with hydrogen peroxide are also discussed. Theoretical methods, widely used to gain a profound process understanding, such as factorial design and life-cycle assessment, are summarized with popularization of their main principles, based on the most recent studies. The main idea is to identify and resume the main points of interest and problems encountered, estimate the attribution of operation parameters for catalyst selectivity and activity, elucidate the role of reactive oxidizing species in the process, and evaluate process potential for the future applications.Solid waste management is a significant issue for sustainable development that involves the technical, socioeconomic, legal, ecological, political, and even cultural components. For this reason, systems analysis has been uniquely providing interdisciplinary support for policy analysis and decision making in solid waste management for the last few decades. Considering these challenges and accomplishments retrospectively, this paper presents a thorough literature review and in-depth discussions of systems analysis models that are promising for providing forward-looking, cost-effective, risk informed, and environmentally benign decisions for sustainable solid waste management. To simplify the discussion, the spectrum of these systems analysis models was divided into three broadly based domains associated with fourteen categories, although some of them may be intertwined with each other. The first domain comprises systems engineering models including cost-benefit analysis, forecasting analysis, simulation analysis, optimization analysis, and integrated modeling system; the second domain introduces systems analysis platforms, such as management information systems/decision support systems/expert systems; and the third domain introduces system assessment tools including scenario development, material flow analysis, life-cycle assessment, risk assessment, environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, socioeconomic assessment, and sustainable assessment. While some models or tools may be elucidated with respect to multiple managerial purposes, such as integrated modeling system and sustainable assessment, others may cover extended foci of market-based instruments and regulatory requirements, such as socioeconomic assessment and environmental impact assessment. The authors use the term systems analysis as a placeholder for the disparate strands of research and practice at this intersection between environmental systems engineering and sustainability science. Given that the sustainable management is necessary at all phases of impact from the interactions among several prescribed paradigms, current and future solid waste management strategies in relation to systems analysis were particularly discussed. Such a critical review paper may aid the prediction of the possible challenges and the preparation of the appropriate tactics in dealing with large-scale complex solid waste management systems under normal operation and special conditions. It should lead the authors to echo some of their real world observational evidence in terms of cost-benefit-risk trade-off in decision analysis for solid waste management.Organic agriculture refers to a farming system that enhance soil fertility through maximizing the efficient use of local resources, while foregoing the use of agrochemicals, the use of Genetic Modified Organisms (GMO), as well as that of many synthetic compounds used as food additives. Organic agriculture relies on a number of farming practices based on ecological cycles, and aims at minimizing the environmental impact of the food industry, preserving the long term sustainability of soil and reducing to a minimum the use of non renewable resources. This paper carries out a comparative review of the environmental performances of organic agriculture versus conventional farming, and also discusses the difficulties inherent in this comparison process. The paper first provides an historical background on organic agriculture and briefly reports on some key socioeconomic issues concerning organic farming. It then focuses on how agricultural practices affect soil characteristics: under organic management soil loss is greatly reduced and soil organic matter (SOM) content increases. Soil biochemical and ecological characteristics appear also improved. Furthermore, organically managed soils have a much higher water holding capacity than conventionally managed soils, resulting in much larger yields compared to conventional farming, under conditions of water scarcity. Because of its higher ability to store carbon in the soil, organic agriculture could represent a means to improve CO2 abatement if adopted on a large scale. Next, the impact on biodiversity is highlighted: organic farming systems generally harbor a larger floral and faunal biodiversity than conventional systems, although when properly managed also the latter can improve biodiversity. Importantly, the landscape surrounding farmed land also appears to have the potential to enhance biodiversity in agricultural areas. The paper then outlines energy use in different agricultural settings: organic agriculture has higher energy efficiency (input/output) but, on average, exhibits lower yields and hence reduced productivity. Nevertheless, overall, organic agriculture appears to perform better than conventional farming, and provides also other important environmental advantages, such as halting the use of harmful chemicals and their spread in the environment and along the trophic chain, and reducing water use. Looking at the future of organic farming, based on the findings presented in this review, there is clearly a need for more research and investment directed to exploring potential of organic farming for reducing the environmental impact of agricultural practices; however, the implications of reduced productivity for the socioeconomic system should also be considered and suitable agricultural policies should be developed.Carbon dioxide is an appealing renewable feedstock for industrial chemical processes. This does not mean, however, that all chemical processes using CO2 are environmentally-friendly. Perspectives on the sustainability of CO2 utilization and artificial photosynthesis are provided. The discussions focus on the photocatalytic production of C-x (x >= 2) compounds, where all the carbon in the products is derived from CO2. This area of research, while promising, has received far less attention than analogous systems leading to C-1 products.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the leading tool for estimating environmental effects of products and processes. Despite this wide use, LCA analysis remains problematic and limited. Within the printing industry, one of the primary problems is non-standardized assumptions and practices. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to compare the life cycle impacts of products. This paper will compare LCA studies performed within the printing industry in order to identify common practices, limitations, areas for improvement, and opportunities for standardization. This comparison is focused on the data sources and methodologies used in the particular studies.A recent life-cycle assessment (LCA) on remanufacturing of toner cartridges in partnership with a major office supplies retailer determined that the toner is responsible for a significant portion of the full life cycle energy and environmental impact, as well as the energy required to produce a remanufactured cartridge. The details and results of this LCA will be discussed in this paper. Since toner resulted in a key component of the life cycle, there is considerable opportunity to reduce the environmental impact and energy use of a toner cartridge through the use of more environmentally friendly toners. In anticipation of companies designing copiers and printers that use more environmentally friendly toners, this paper investigates the environmental impacts of these toners. Examples of toners that claim a smaller environmental footprint are emulsion-aggregation toner from Xerox, Simitri HD toner from Konica Minolta, and bio-based toner resin, BioRez (R) by Advanced Image Resources, Inc. The life-cycle impact of the toners and a qualitative assessment of the environmental tradeoffs associated with petroleum based toners versus bio-based toners are investigated in order to more accurately compare these toners.VTT conducted the LEADER project (2007-2010) to study the environmental impacts occurring during the life cycle of different print products. Communication was selected as one of the focus areas to increase the usability of the life cycle assessment and carbon footprint results among the industrial stakeholders. One key issue was how to present the results in an informative manner for non-expert stakeholders. The environmental issues in the print products' value chain are for the most part communicated between companies, by professionals and very few actors have direct contact to the end users. The needs and also the ability to make use of new environmental information and new tools vary a lot within the value chain. An informative way to present the results of the LCA and carbon footprint case studies was to produce case specific presentation material in the form of printed and electronic brochures, titled fact sheets. Besides the numerical results of the LCA- and CF-calculations, the brochures include basic information about the research methods, products, assumptions made in the study and life cycle stages included. Guidance for interpreting the results was also added. This paper shows the development steps of the brochure and how the stakeholders have used it and what further needs they have for environmental communication of print products.Biofuels are receiving growing negative attention. Direct and/or indirect land-use changes that result from their cultivation can cause emissions due to carbon losses in soils and biomass and could negate any eventual greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction benefit. This paper evaluates the implications of land-use change emission on the climate-change mitigation potential of different biofuel production systems in 12 case studies in six countries. We calculated carbon debts created by conversion of different land-use types, ranging from annual cropland to primary forest. We evaluated case studies using three different biofuel crops: oil palm, Jatropha, and soybean. The time needed for each biofuel production system to pay back its carbon debt was calculated based on a life-cycle assessment of the GHG reduction potentials of the system. Carbon debts range from 39 to 1743.7 Mg C0(2) ha(-1). The oil palm case studies created the largest carbon debts (472.8-1743.7 t C0(2) ha(-1)) because most of the area expansion came at the expense of dense tropical forest. The highest debt was associated with plantation on peatland. For all cases evaluated, only soybean in Guaranta do Norte and Alta Floresta, Brazil needed less than one human generation (30 years) to repay the initial carbon debt. Highest repayment times were found for Jatropha (76-310 years) and oil palm (59-220 years) case studies. Oil palm established in peatlands had the greatest repayment times (206-220 years). High repayment times for Jatropha resulted from the combined effects of land-cover change and low CO2 emission reduction rate. These outcomes raise serious questions about the sustainability of biofuel production. The carbon implications of conversion of (semi-) natural systems with medium to high biomass indicate that, in order to generate climate benefits, cultivation of biofuel feedstocks should be restricted to areas that already have low carbon content.The water footprint has been introduced as a potential sustainability indicator for human-induced water consumption, and has frequently been studied at local, national and international scales during the last decade. While water footprints are sometimes understood as a measure that includes environmental impact assessment, the water footprint as used in this paper refers to volumes of water consumed, without including weighting procedures to allow for the assessment of impacts. Two types of approaches have been applied to calculate the water footprint in the literature: bottom-up and top-down approaches. This study compares and discusses advantages and limitations of the water footprint of nations based on two input-output top-down approaches (Water Embodied in Bilateral Trade (WEBT) and Multi-regional Input-Output Analysis (MRIO)) and of the existing national water footprint accounts from the literature based on the bottom-up approach. The differences in the bottom-up and WEBT approaches are caused by inter-sectoral cut-off, because bottom-up approaches do not consider the entire industrial supply chains, while the WEBT method covers the water footprint by tracing the whole domestic supply chain of each country. The differences in the WEBT and MRIO approaches are due to an inter-regional cut-off effect, as the WEBT approach only traces domestic supply chains whereas the MRIO approach traces entire global supply chains. We found that both bottom-up and top-down approaches are heavily dependent on the quality of existing datasets, and differ substantially. The total water footprints of nations based on different approaches vary by up to 48%, and this variation is even larger at the sector level.Agriculture faces new and rapidly changes: increasing cost of technical means for production, new machinery and new crops (e.g. biomass crops), new low-input techniques, EU policies and contribution. On the other hand new information is requested by the market or by public agencies: energy balance and life cycle analysis of crop cultivation, labor budget, etc. This situation challenges the farmers, which need standard data and procedures in order to compare the cultivation systems, and to make all the requested assessment. The aim of the research is contributing to knowledge which can be exploited in designing and evaluating biomass production system, within a standardized system approach. The proposed WEB application, developed with ASP.NET (R) technology with a SQL server database within the frame of the IEE Project Bioenergy Farm allow the user, in anonymous way, to compute its own crop cultivation costs, including the use of machinery, manpower, and production factors in order to compare different farming systems. Both field and logistic operations could be evaluated. The application represents a step toward the standardization of data and calculation procedures for working time, energy balance and operation costs. The interface to the application is provided in English, Italian, Polish, German, Dutch, Estonian and French languages. The data provided are general (to allow comparison of scenarios between biomass production processes within the EU) but there is also a local dataset, which allows the user to do calculation with country specific data (e.g. yield range, fuel cost, energy coefficients and so on). The application also allows detailing the type of field where the cultivation takes place (different yield, irrigation type, field shapes and distances). In this way the user could compute average or field specific performance of its farming activities. The short rotation forestry and the forestry activities will be included into the web application as well by may 2011.There is a growing interest in comparing the energy and consequential carbon embodied in buildings using different methods of construction and alternative materials This paper compares the embodied carbon in a low energy affordable house constructed using a novel offsite panellised modular timber frame system in Norfolk UK with two traditional alternative scenarios A lifecycle assessment (LCA) framework is used to conduct a partial LCA from cradle to site of the construction An inventory of the materials and fossil fuel energy utilised in the construction was used to calculate the primary energy consumed and the associated embodied carbon The embodied carbon was found to be 346 tonnes CO2 for a 3 bedroom semi-detached house 405 kgCO(2) per m(2) of useable floor area When compared with traditional methods of construction the modern methods of construction (MMC) house resulted in a 34% reduction in embodied carbon Despite timber being the predominant structural and cladding material concrete is the most significant material (by proportion) in embodied carbon terms responsible for 36% of materials related embodied carbon (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reservedWith the increasing seriousness of climate change problem, carbon footprint has become a very useful method to measure carbon emissions and has been widely accepted. In modern industry, electricity is almost consumed in all industry processes, and electricity is the first "footprint" of most products. As carbon emissions is always measured by theoretical estimation from input inventory but not experimental data, the input inventory of electricity generation becomes very important in carbon footprint analysis. Electricity generation is a very complex process, where all input items inter-dependant on each other and the whole system is an infinite cycle net. But in the traditional calculation model of input inventory, the interaction effect of production system is usually neglected. The major work of this study is to make clear the carbon emissions of provision 1kWh thermal power generation to consumers in China in 2006, since thermal power generation takes the most proportion of Chinese electricity. This study used a matrix-based model which includes interaction effect of the system to calculate the input inventory of electricity generation, and then the carbon emissions of thermal electricity generation in China in 2006 can be calculated. The final result of this paper can be used in carbon footprint, Life Cycle Assessment or some other related fields.The application of biomass, such as starch, cellulose, wood, and sugar, used to substitute fossil resources for the production of plastics, is a widely accepted strategy towards sustainable development. In fact, this way a significant reduction of non renewable energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission is accomplished. In recent years, several typologies of bioplastics were introduced and the most important are those based on cellulosic esters, starch derivatives, polyhydroxybutyrate, polylactic acid, and polycaprolactone. Nowadays, the most important tool to evaluate the environmental impact of a (bio) plastic is the life cycle assessment that determines the overall impact of a plastic on the environment by defining and analyzing several impact categories index like the global warming; the human toxicity; the abiotic depletion; the eutrophication; the acidification; and many others directly related to the production, utilization, and disposal of the considered plastics. The aim of this work is to present a comparison between bioplastics and conventional plastics through the use of the "Life Cycle Assessment" methodology. In particular, the life cycle assessment's Cradle to Grave of shoppers made from Mater-Bi (starch-based plastic) an polyethylene were reported and compared as a case study in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the bioplastics and the conventional plastics.In 2009 the German funding programme for "Promoting Projects to Optimise the Use of Biomass for Energy Production" ("Biomass for Energy") has started and fostered a wide range of projects to combine sustainable energy supply and climatic protection. Certain projects are described to give an idea of the wide range of projects and the different aspects of sustainability which are addressed. Additionally a first product for the planned quality assurance of the results via a dedicated method handbook is given.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a valid environmental evaluation method and enterprise environmental management tool used in industrial ecology areas. In this paper LCA was newly used to evaluate the environmental impact of manufacturing of alumina by Bayer process in china from two aspects of logistics and energy flow, GaBi software acted as analysis tools with evaluation model established, and several environmental impact assessment criteria were selected based on the actually typical date of Bayer alumina producing process. Evaluation results show that alumina manufacturing by the Bayer process has a great impact on the global warming and human health of respiration, even roasting process gives rise to the greatest impact of winter fog index. Scenario analysis proposed ways of reducing environmental load caused by Bayer process including: (1) the economic and efficient use of mineral processing technology; (2) optimization of energy use, saving power consumption or the use of new more economical source of energy; (3) actively promote the use of innovated technology and equipment in alumina manufacturing and waste such as red mud utilization process.Building materials play important role in buildings construction as well as have massive contribution to impact of buildings on environment. Materials influence global climate by emitting greenhouse gasses, acidification becomes evident regionally, but building materials also have considerable effect on occupants' health. It is important to quantify effects of building on environment. However, some effects are easier to measure than others and also importance of certain effect needs to be defined. Life cycle assessment appears to be the most appropriate method for environmental evaluation. This paper presents one example of environmental assessment of building materials and illustrates environmental profile of particular constructions of selected building in Slovak Republic. Environmental parameters, such as amount of embodied energy, global warming potential and acidification potential were evaluated. For selected constructions the optimization of materials was done with aim of minimizing the negative effect of building materials on environment. The decreasing of the values of primary energy, global warming potential and acidification potential were reached for evaluated structures as well as for whole building (at about 3.3 - 12.3 %) only by a change of building materials.The main purpose of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is to assess the possible impact of the implementation of intended activities, or a planning document, on the environment and to subsequently develop proposals for the prevention or decreasing of negative effects in order to beyond compliance specified in regulatory enactments. The EIA 85/337/EEC was adopted and proclaimed 25 years ago, during these years a system for impact assessment was built and many projects have been conducted including the methodology. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia belong to the same region, however, significant differences in the procedure exist. In the Baltic States the EIA procedure has been carried out for more than ten years, every country has its own procedure for screening and scoping. In the same period the development of alternative methodology started blooming in Europe: the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. LCA is a specific procedure for product or process impact assessment specified in the ISO Standards 14040-44. LCA differs from EIA in its primary holistic approach that is referenced not on the evaluation of the impacts of a particular site or facility but on the entire environmental effects (direct and indirect) of a certain product or system among all their single life processes (cradle-to-grave thinking). The LCA and EIA tools are compared in this article. The examples of how LCA methodology and results of LCA can be used to improve the EIA procedure are also presented. The work concludes with the suggestions how to include principles of LCA in the EIA procedure for the improvement of the impact assessment in the Baltic States.Nowadays a new generation building has a variety of definitions, namely, low energy building, passive house, nearly zero energy building. These definitions refer to the building with a very high energy performance and a significant share of energy supply from renewable energy sources. Therefore, the common target of implementing these types of buildings is to reduce the demand for operating energy. However, the energy use, related to the production, construction and delivery of the building and its components, is ignored. The article's subject is the evaluation of the energy and environmental performance of the low energy building in a life cycle perspective. A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been performed for the low energy family house built in Lithuania.Sustainability in construction industry became a concurrent part of contemporary building development. The reason is not only increased account of building maintenance, but there is another part of this problem it is an impact of building's life cycle on the environment. Part of this article is intended to a building life-cycle assessment (LCA) in sustainability and the conception of sustainability. Authors proposed the review of the LCA and sustainability in construction industry. The main purpose of sustainable building is to reduce the building impact on environment, during all buildings' life, using environmental friendly technologies. The paper deals with a few building alternatives, which describes two types of living apartments with few different types of heating system. All the alternatives are defined with several criteria. Those criteria are not only an emission of construction process, but the construction price, work input, fuel annual price, water, energy and material, used for construction process and etc. By using Complex PRoportion ASsessment (COPRAS) multi-criteria method, the best alternative of viewed buildings is developed.Material and cost flows play an important role within manufacturing systems in setting the structural interdependences among a supply chain of production processes. Environmentally-extended input-output analysis provides a computational structure that takes these interdependences into account. This is interesting for many applications within supply chain analysis and business processes analysis, especially as far as cost accounting is concerned. This chapter addresses the emerging issue of incorporating costs into life cycle assessment as a premise to outline a concept of life cycle costing based on an input-output technological model. This model is common to both physical accounting and cost accounting. It allows product costing and resource planning to be carried out while taking into account issues concerning inter-organisational cost management, multi-product systems, closed-loop recycling, pollution abatement processes, and the production and disposal of waste. Such a framework can also be employed in order to evaluate what effect different design solutions are likely to have on both the material flows, and even the associated whole-of-life costs.Urban structure influences directly or indirectly the majority of all green house gas (GHG) emissions in cities. The prevailing belief is that dense metropolitan areas produce less carbon emissions on a per capita basis than less dense surrounding rural areas. Consequently, density targets have a major role in low-carbon urban developments. However, based on the results of this study, the connection seems unclear or even nonexistent when comprehensive evaluation is made. In this letter, we propose a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) method for calculating the consumption-based carbon footprints in metropolitan areas, i.e. carbon consumption, with the emphasis on urban structures. The method is input-output-based hybrid LCA, which operates with the existing data from the region. The study is conducted by performing an analysis of the carbon consumption in two metropolitan areas in Finland, including 11 cities. Both areas consist of a dense city core and a less dense surrounding suburban area. The paper will illustrate that the influence of urban density on carbon emissions is insignificant in the selected metropolitan areas. In addition, the utilized consumption-based method links the climate effects of city-level development to the global production of emissions.Polymer science is an interdisciplinary field as it involves the synthetic polymers, biopolymers, polymer characterization, designing and fabrication of new innovative products related to safer and sustainable environment. Polymeric composite materials have the base matrix of polymers containing the reinforcement fillers and additives. They have a wide array of applications ranging from packaging, spacecrafts, smart or specialized polymers to nano based textile material and biological implants. Different polymers used as matrix material to prepare composites with improved mechanical, thermal and electrical properties includes plastics of different constitution like polyester, polyamide etc. Growing public concern about environmental pollution has led to development and design of biodegradable composite materials. Knowledge and implementation of relevant regulatory guidelines are vital from safety and environmental viewpoint. New methods are being devised for polymerization using super critical CO2 along with additives. They have potential market applications along with the elimination of toxic moieties generated in conventional manufacturing techniques. Green chemistry concepts may be utilized for eco-friendly materials and to minimize the toxic implications of organic chemicals such as toluene, methylene chloride which pose potential risks to human health. The holistic and concerted efforts are needed for the development of new composites for minimization of environmental impact of polymer composite production. The life cycle assessment is of paramount importance at every stage of a product's life from initial synthesis to final disposal for a sustainable environment. The regulatory assessment and monitoring procedures as per the National/International guidelines are required to be reviewed wherever needed. They must be updated periodically depending upon the composition, intended usage conditions in order to promote clean processing, applications, biodegradation, recycling and reprocessing.The prevailing belief is that dense metropolitan areas produce less carbon emissions on per capita basis than the less dense surrounding and rural areas. This issue seems to be much more complex, and the situation might even be reversed when comprehensive analyses are conducted. In this paper we present a consumption based life cycle assessment (LCA) approach on the metropolitan carbon management, that is both comprehensive in incorporating all living related carbon emissions, and accurate in the results. Also, the method allows analyses on sub-city level without boundary cutoffs, and thus provides a sustainable basis for effective carbon management. In addition, the method enables global comparisons. The presentation of the utilized LCA method is conducted via a representative analysis of carbon consumption in a Northern European metropolis. The emphasis in the analysis is on urban structure, where we demonstrate that dense structure is not necessarily a precondition in creating low-carbon communities.Incineration technology refers to treatment methods using high-temperature combustion to transform the waste into stable substances and gases with energy or other usable resource recovery. However, the exhaust gas produced by incineration process still generates several problems threatening human's health and environment. Hence, the environmental impact of incineration technology should be discussed more comprehensively. Two type's incinerators including fluidized-bed and mechanical-grate patterns operated in Taiwan were selected to evaluate the environmental impact by life cycle perspective in this study. Through the skills of life cycle inventory and impact assessment, the environmental impacts intensity was illustrated by nine categories. It can be found that the total environmental impacts of mechanical-grate incinerator is 0.74654, which is little higher than fluidized-bed incinerator as 0.70137 in the study cases. The result also shows the heavy metal damage and global warming are the most critical environmental impact in fluidized bed incinerator and mechanical-grate incinerator respectively. The study would be helpful for improving the decision quality for choosing the municipal solid waste treatment system.The study estimates greenhouse gases generated by suburban housing companies with the use of a hybrid LCA model where IO-LCA methodology is used together with process data. The aim of the research was to learn which activities associated with housing companies generate most greenhouse gases, as well as by whom the emissions could be diminished. In addition, the applicability of hybrid life cycle assessment approach to the housing company context is tested in the study. A case residential area from suburban Helsinki is studied. All housing companies within the residential area share the same property manager and energy provider. Consequently, comparable consumption data (both economic and metric) was available for analysis. The first phase of the analysis utilizes an economic input-output (EIO)-LCA model developed by the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). With the model, relationships between the different activities can be established, which allows the activities with the most climate effect to be taken into more detailed review. This combined method, where IO-LCA is expanded with process data, can be described as a tiered hybrid LCA approach. The research confirms that heating energy is the most significant contributor to greenhouse gases derived from housing. Furthermore, the study infers that a significant portion of the climate impact of residents derive from activities associated with the housing companies, limiting the potential of the individual residents to affect the impact.Buildings account for roughly one third of all green house gas emissions globally. Identifying the sources of these emissions and understanding their relations to the construction phase is essential in diminishing the emissions. The study evaluates the CO2-emissions caused by a residential construction project in Finland. The research method is modified tiered hybrid life cycle assessment. An input-output method EIO-LCA forms the basis of the tool which is enhanced with current and local process data. The results of the study reveal that the sources of the CO2-emissions of residential area construction projects are divided into numerous categories. Thus diminishing the emissions is difficult as there are no dominant materials in terms of CO2-emissions. The results of the study provide an estimate of the CO2-emissions of the case project and also the relative shares of the most important construction materials and functions. The results of the study may be applied to the evaluations of similar construction projects. The research method may also be used in future research as well as in further development of hybrid LCA-methods.A product carbon labeling methodology has been under development to promote low-carbon production and consumption in Singapore. This paper discusses the challenges and emerging solutions to the development of the methodology. It reviews the major carbon labeling schemes worldwide and highlights a number of methodological issues. The existing and emerging standards for carbon footprint of product are examined to address some of the issues highlighted. Through analyzing the characteristics of the Singapore product systems, the specific challenges facing Singapore carbon footprinting and labeling are identified and potential solutions are explored. This helps remove some hurdles in the development and implementation of the carbon labeling methodology, thus to contribute to Singapore's transition to a recognized low carbon economy.Hafting current rates of biodiversity loss will be a defining challenge of the 21st century. To assess the effectiveness of strategies to achieve this goal, indicators and tools are required that monitor the driving forces of biodiversity loss, the changing state of biodiversity, and evaluate the effectiveness of policy responses. Here, we review the use of indicators and approaches to model biodiversity loss in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a methodology used to evaluate the cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of products. We find serious conceptual shortcomings in the way models are constructed, with scale considerations largely absent Further, there is a disproportionate focus on indicators that reflect changes in compositional aspects of biodiversity, mainly changes in species richness. Functional and structural attributes of biodiversity are largely neglected. Taxonomic and geographic coverage remains problematic, with the majority of models restricted to one or a few taxonomic groups and geographic regions. On a more general level, three of the five drivers of biodiversity loss as identified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment are represented in current impact categories (habitat change, climate change and pollution), while two are missing (invasive species and overexploitation). However, methods across all drivers can be greatly improved. We discuss these issues and make recommendations for future research to better reflect biodiversity loss in LCA.Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) has developed fast over the last three decades. Whereas LCA developed from merely energy analysis to a comprehensive environmental burden analysis in the 1970s, full-fledged life cycle impact assessment and life cycle costing models were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s, and social-LCA and particularly consequential LCA gained ground in the first decade of the 21st century. Many of the more recent developments were initiated to broaden traditional environmental LCA to a more comprehensive Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis (LCSA). Recently, a framework for LCSA was suggested linking life cycle sustainability questions to knowledge needed for addressing them, identifying available knowledge and related models, knowledge gaps, and defining research programs to fill these gaps. LCA is evolving into LCSA, which is a transdisciplinary integration framework of models rather than a model in itself. LCSA works with a plethora of disciplinary models and guides selecting the proper ones, given a specific sustainability question. Structuring, selecting, and making the plethora of disciplinary models practically available in relation to different types of life cycle sustainability questions is the main challenge.The climate change impacts of U.S. petroleum-based fuels consumption have contributed to the development of legislation supporting the introduction of low carbon alternatives, such as biofuels. However, the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions estimated for these policies using life cycle assessment methods are predominantly based on deterministic approaches that do not account for any uncertainty in outcomes. This may lead to unreliable and expensive decision making. In this study, the uncertainty in life cycle GHG emissions associated with petroleum-based fuels consumed in the U.S. is determined using a process-based framework and statistical modeling methods. Probability distributions fitted to available data were used to represent uncertain parameters in the life cycle model. Where data were not readily available, a partial least-squares (PLS) regression model based on existing data was developed. This was used in conjunction with probability mixture models to select appropriate distributions for specific life cycle stages. Finally, a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to generate sample output distributions. As an example of results from using these methods, the uncertainty range in life cycle GHG emissions from gasoline was shown to be 13% higher than the typical 10% minimum emissions reductions targets specified by low carbon fuel policies.Biofuels have received legislative support recently in California's Low-Carbon Fuel Standard and the Federal Energy Independence and Security Act. Both present new fuel types, but neither provides methodological guidelines for dealing with the inherent uncertainty in evaluating their potential lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions reductions are based on point estimates only. This work demonstrates the use of Monte Carlo simulation to estimate life-cycle emissions distributions from ethanol and butanol from corn or switchgrass. Life-cycle emissions distributions for each feedstock and fuel pairing modeled span an order of magnitude or more. Using a streamlined life-cycle assessment, corn ethanol emissions range from 50 to 250 g CO(2)e/MJ, for example, and each feedstock-fuel pathway studied shows some probability of greater emissions than a distribution for gasoline. Potential GHG emissions reductions from displacing fossil fuels with biofuels are difficult to forecast given this high degree of uncertainty in life-cycle emissions. This uncertainty is driven by the importance and uncertainty of indirect land use change emissions. Incorporating uncertainty in the decision making process can illuminate the risks of policy failure (e.g., increased emissions), and a calculated risk of failure due to uncertainty can be used to inform more appropriate reduction targets in future biofuel policies.It is hard to determine in numbers the energy requirement of clay masonry during its life cycles, although it is very clear that every life cycle requires hardly any or no energy at all, therefore has less impact on the environment. Whereas the majority of more energy consuming procedures can be replaced by human work thus creating more jobs. On areas where there is no inland water or danger of flood adobe architecture has a reason for existence. Due to the economic crisis, there are less and less houses built in Hungary today. There are many families though, who may even have land to built on, would be glad to have their houses built by using locally available, no expensive building materials with perhaps the supervision of a skilled builder. In such cases adobe and demolished materials could evidently be applied. In case of building family houses, clay masonry attracts the use of other natural materials. For example timber roof instead of reinforced concrete slab or wooden openings instead of plastic ones, etc. match better to clay masonry. There is no need to put aside adobe neither in case of storey houses, where adobe can be used as partition walls in flats and offices and in communal areas creating artistically designed resting places of a pleasant inner climate.This paper presents a probabilistic-based framework for the design of civil infrastructure repair and rehabilitation to achieve targeted improvements in sustainability indicators. The framework consists of two types of models: (i) service life prediction models combining one or several deterioration mechanisms with a suite of limit states and (ii) life cycle assessment (LCA) models for measuring the impact of a given repair, rehabilitation, or strengthening. The first type of model estimates the time to the first repair (from the time of initial construction) and given the structural condition after a repair the time to any subsequent repair. The second type of model estimates the impact of the chosen repair or rehabilitation based on a process-based LCA of individual repair activities. Both models (service life or LCA) are formulated stochastically so that the time to repair and total impact are described by a probability density function. This leads to a fully probabilistic calculation of accrued cumulative impacts (which can be annualized) throughout the service life of a structure from initial construction up to the time of functional obsolescence (end of life). These are then compared to design targets taken from policy goals such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report (IPCC AR4).Foundations and other funders can use life cycle analysis tools to assess a nonprofit network as a precursor to funding network activities. Characteristics that determine a network's readiness for funding include network cohesion (trust and communication), cooperation (mutual purpose and goals), and capacity for externally focused action. The Network Mindset Survey analysis can help determine a network's readiness for funding by measuring members' understanding of the power and utility of networks; degree of membership engagement; identification of specific, common concerns; and readiness for productive action.Due to the sporadic characteristics of solar and wind power it has been a challenge to generate a highly reliable power with photovoltaic and or wind turbines alone. A fuel cell as a supplementary energy source is an alternative to overcome this challenge. PV/wind/fuel cell hybrid power system may be a feasible solution for stand-alone applications. In this study, which is a preliminary work of a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), comparison of the power generation alternatives in terms of environmental impacts by evaluating their environmental and energy efficiencies and impacts during the productions of the system components was given. Also, impacts during the production of wind turbines, PV panels, fuel cells and diesel generators were inspected. Eco-Indicator 99 impact assessment method was used as the impact assessment method. It was shown that the in human health and ecosystem quality damage categories the PV panels are less environmentally efficient when compared with other power generation technologies with similar capacities.The main goal of this paper is to assess alternative exterior walls options to support decision at project level of new buildings in Portugal towards reduced life cycle energy and environmental impacts. A life-cycle model for buildings has been developed focusing on alternative external wall systems (single, double) and contemporary materials. A comprehensive life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is presented, including results for two wellknown LCIA methods: CML2001 and Eco-indicator' 99, which are compared on their performance through application to the same life cycle inventory for a single-family house in Portugal.Building and construction has consumed a lot of various resources and emitted pollution. These cause environmental problems, especially global warming. The buildings and constructions in various regions and different styles will lead to different environmental problems and levels of seriousness. The objective of this research is to assess the global warming impact from the use of construction materials in residential buildings since this type of building represents about 89% of all buildings in Thailand. The principles of ISO 14040: 2006 and ISO 14044: 2006 were used as the research methodology. The study started with collection of data and analysis of residential buildings in Thailand to conclude which type of building would be studies. Based on the data collected, most of the residential buildings in Thailand are two-storey reinforced concrete houses with an average space of 152 m2 consisting of 3 bedrooms, 2 restrooms, 1 kitchen, 1 dining room, 1 living room, hip roof and 1 car-parking area. This information was used as the functional unit. The system boundary of this study included all life cycles of building materials i.e. raw material extraction and processing, product manufacturing, transportation, installation, operation and maintenance, and disposal (at the end of the life-span of the materials). The life-span of the building is 50 years. From the calculation, it is found that the value of global warming potential of Thai housing is 4.98E+07 gCO(2) eq. A reinforced concrete causes global warming of 4.98E+07 gCO(2) eq, and concrete is the construction material having the greatest environmental impact representing up to 2.55E+07 g CO2 eq or 54.80%, followed by mortared brick wall of 1.35E+07 gCO(2) eq or 29.08%, and steel structures of 6.12E+06 gCO(2) eq or 13.13%. However, laminated timber and door timber both have a positive effect upon the environment.In this paper the expected environmental impacts of the industrial cellulose dissolution with the ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ( Bmim Cl) were analyzed through a "cradle to gate" Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In order to weigh up the "greenness" of the process, the analysis was performed through a comparison with the well established environmental friendly N-methyl-morpholine-N-oxide (NMMO)/H2O process. Although dissolution of cellulose in Bmim Cl has not been used for industrial production of cellulose fibers to date, results from LCA suggest that it could be interesting from an environmental point of view since its impacts are similar to those of the NMMO/H2O process. Specifically, the process with Bmim Cl generates a higher environmental load on abiotic resource depletion, emissions of volatile organic compounds and ecotoxicity than the NMMO/H2O process. Conversely it has some environmental advantages with regards to human toxicity. In both cellulose dissolution processes, the major contributions to the environmental impacts come from precursor syntheses. In addition to the comparative analysis of the two cellulose dissolution processes, the paper reports the complete life cycle inventory (LCI) of the two solvents, Bmim Cl and NMMO, and their life cycle impact assessment (LCIA).Beginning with an historical background, tracing the origins of reusable healthcare textiles and their contribution to the development of the sterile field, the overview details products used in the twenty-first century. Surgical packs and their components, protective apparel and incontinence materials are discussed, among other medical textile products. Physical properties and performance characteristics of various reusable items are outlined for numerous products. Factors related to the environment and health and safety issues are also discussed. The chapter offers a broad coverage of reusable medical textiles for both experienced readers and those new to the subject.This paper describes the iNTeg-Risk Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) case study including: identification of example hazards in the CCS process including capture, transport, injection and storage; analysis using bow-tie techniques; modification of risk matrix approaches to include potential releases in the very long term from storage sites; use of life cycle analysis approaches; possible key performance indicators (KPIs); and knowledge gaps in terms of addressing emerging risk issues. One of the key features of the CCS case study is the need to include the time dimension in the risk assessment. The assessment needs to include both short-term potential accidents (from capture, transport or injection) as well as very long term risks from storage.In recent years, the horticultural sector has been confronted with questions about the carbon footprint of its products. However, the global standards used to calculate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have some gaps that do not address the sector-specific issues for horticulture, such as crop rotation, land use of soil organic matter and the use of combined heat and power (CHP). The need for a sector-specific standard which addresses these interpretation gaps was identified. In response to this need, the 'Carbon footprinting of horticulture products protocol' (DNCF2009) was developed by the Dutch horticultural sector. The protocol is intended to follow the guidelines of PAS 2050 for the life cycle analysis of horticultural products; a lot of situations in greenhouse horticulture have to be described in so-called "Best Practices". In greenhouse cultures, energy consumption is the main component of the CO2 emission. To save energy, many Dutch greenhouse companies use CHP to heat their greenhouses. These growers may sell the superfluous electricity produced by the CHP to the national grid, thereby generating two products; the horticultural product, e.g., a tomato and the electricity. The CO2 emission of the electricity production should be deducted from the total CO2 production of the CHP, in order to calculate the CO2 emission that should be assigned to the production of the crop. To investigate the carbon footprint of organic crop production, an organic crop production system and a conventional crop production system are compared, and the effect on carbon emissions of a CHP system is studied for both production methods. An example for organically grown tomatoes is worked out. It shows the specific organic input factors and their impact on the CO2 footprint. The functional unit used is kg CO2 per 1000 kg product, and the system boundary is from seedling production until the delivery of product at the distribution center of wholesalers or supermarkets. The CO2 footprint of the organic tomato crop grown without cogeneration is 10% higher than that of the conventional crop grown without cogeneration and more than double that of the conventional crop grown with CHP. The higher footprint compared with the footprint of conventional growing without CHP can be mainly explained by the lower yield of the organic crops. With CHP, the organic and conventional tomato crops have an equal CO2 footprint. The use of CHP is a way to reduce the CO2 footprint for both organic and conventional tomato growers.This analysis is a partial study of inventory over a Wastewater Treatment Plant (WTP), and establishing the main impacts in the Life Cycle of municipal wastewater treatment systems with the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) according with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. The results showed, in the inventory assessment, an important decreasing in the Biochemical Oxygen Demand and Total suspends solids (75 and 77 percent, respectively). On the other hand, it was observed a reduction in Ecotoxicity category in the impacts assessment stage. Finally, consumption of additive and energy as well as the generation waste do not imply in a considerable increase of other impacts.In a world where the climate has begun to change and the resources are limited, it's imperative to optimize the amount of energy used in any system. The distribution system of electrical energy in any country must be the leader providing the exact infrastructure to give to his clients a service at low cost, trustable, and most important without affecting their environment. In this chapter we present the model of a system to provide electrical energy, heat and in some cases cool services using bio-inspired algorithms to optimize several objectives. The model designed must be able to predict changes in the future based on the growing or decreasing of the system. This model has been implemented using Wolfram Mathematical and the optimization method used were Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization, to find the Pareto's Front in a multi-objective, multi-step system to distribute electrical energy and heat to the city of Santa Clara, Cuba.The requirements of customers and society significantly increase the ever higher and higher requirements on quality, cost and delivery time of technical products. This consequently imposes higher and higher demands on quality and truncation of the engineering design process which substantially affects these products' competitive attributes as has been declared and proved many times. There are many approaches, methodologies or tools which support the engineering,design process with the aim of designing such a technical product, which occupies its right place on the market and becomes fully competitive. The Design Process, as with other activities, also brings risks to the Product Life Cycle. Analysis of current approaches/methods are briefly mentioned in this paper and then a pure new concept for risk indication is presented.To ensure sustainable development regarding solid waste management three areas have to be ensured: environmental sustainability, economical sustainability and social acceptance. This means that an environmental estimate is not sufficient to base decisions upon, why models for evaluating environmental consequences of a solid waste management system are decision support tools rather than decision tools. The result from an environmental evaluation must be considered along with financial costs and acceptability in society. The main aim of this article study is to develop a user-friendly and flexible computer based calculation model for environmental estimate of waste management systems for municipal solid waste. The model enables, by the use of life cycle assessment, comparisons between different waste management strategies and different technologies within a waste treatment method.Based on the methodology of life cycle inventory, the environmental impacts of seven clean coal-fired power generation technologies are evaluated and material consumption and environmental emissions is analyzed quantification ally. The results support the decision-making theory of the scheme and policy of the development of clean coal-fired power generation technology.Typical crustal rocks such as basalt, limestone, and anorthosite are used in stone wool insulation products. The raw materials for stone wool production are not specific to any rare mineral source but depend upon the mixture of materials having the correct chemical composition, exemplified by 40 wt% basalt, 20 wt% anorthosite, and 40 wt% cement-bonded renewable materials. This study provides an overview of the natural cycle of these resources, including their abundances in nature, and sets the consumption by the stone wool industry and other human activities in perspective. Basalt, anorthosite, and carbonates are widespread on all continents. Although basaltic rocks cover most of the ocean floor, these reserves are hidden below several kilometres of water and therefore are regarded as inaccessible. Instead, large igneous provinces on land constitute major basaltic reserves useful for human rock exploration. Globally, anorthositic provinces comprise smaller volumes than do limestone or basalt, but still occur in sufficient amounts to supply for the production of insulation materials indefinitely. An evaluation of the modern consumption rates and reserves shows that the crustal inventories of these rock types are so large that they could supply current human demand for millions of years. The natural degradation of surface rocks occurs by physical and chemical weathering creating sediment that is transported along rivers and deposited in the ocean. Sediments are either obducted with continental lithosphere or subducted with oceanic crust and recycled through the mantle by plate tectonics. Insulation products have a chemical composition similar to average crustal rocks and participate in the natural rock cycle. However, these products need not accumulate in nature, inasmuch as old insulation materials serve as excellent source materials for new products. Moreover, current production lines exploit more than 30 natural and 20-30 synthetic source materials that circumvent regional depletion and contribute to the recycling of other industrial materials.The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the agricultural sector account for about 25.5% of total global anthropogenic emission. While CO2 receives the most attention as a factor relative to global warming, CH4, N2O and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) also cause significant radiative forcing. With the relative global warming potential of 25 compared with CO2, CH4 is one of the most important GHGs. This article reviews the prediction models, estimation methodology and strategies for reducing enteric CH4 emissions. Emission of CH4 in ruminants differs among developed and developing countries, depending on factors like animal species, breed, pH of rumen fluid, ratio of acetate:propionate, methanogen population, composition of diet and amount of concentrate fed. Among the ruminant animals, cattle contribute the most towards the greenhouse effect through methane emission followed by sheep, goats and buffalos, respectively. The estimated CH4 emission rate per cattle, buffaloe, sheep and goat in developed countries are 150.7, 137, 21.9 and 13.7 (g/animal/day) respectively. However, the estimated rates in developing countries are significantly lower at 95.9 and 13.7 (g/animal/day) per cattle and sheep, respectively. There exists a strong interest in developing new and improving the existing CH4 prediction models to identify mitigation strategies for reducing the overall CH4 emissions. A synthesis of the available literature suggests that the mechanistic models are superior to empirical models in accurately predicting the CH4 emission from dairy farms. The latest development in prediction model is the integrated farm system model which is a process-based whole-farm simulation technique. Several techniques are used to quantify enteric CH4 emissions starting from whole animal chambers to sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) tracer techniques. The latest technology developed to estimate CH4 more accurately is the micrometeorological mass difference technique. Because the conditions under which animals are managed vary greatly by country, CH4 emissions reduction strategies must be tailored to country-specific circumstances. Strategies that are cost effective, improve productivity, and have limited potential negative effects on livestock production hold a greater chance of being adopted by producers. It is also important to evaluate CH4 mitigation strategies in terms of the total GHG budget and to consider the economics of various strategies. Although reductions in GHG emissions from livestock industries are seen as high priorities, strategies for reducing emissions should not reduce the economic viability of enterprises.To evaluate the benefits of Taiwan's bio-ethanol crop cultivation promotion on the environment, energy efficiency and economy, we undertake a recording of cultivation resources inputs data in 2007 and 2008 of four energy crops based on the LCA method. We find the net energy balance signifies energy conversion efficiency. As to the GHG, using sugarcane ethanol to replace gasoline could decrease 1.25 kg CO(2)e/litre. This paper will look at various aspects of overseas biofuel efforts, policy and strategies, together with Taiwan's biofuel policy, and analyse energy balance, GHG and production costs as references for Taiwan's national biofuel industry policy.Oxyfuel combustion is considered to be an energy efficient process for carbon capture and storage in power plants. Compared to cryogenic air separation, oxygen supply by means of an oxygen transport membrane (OTM) is more energy efficient. This paper describes possible implementations of an OTM into an oxyfuel process, in particular that is three-end and four-end integration of the membrane whereby the focus is put on overall cycle efficiency and possible measures to improve cycle efficiency. Starting from a simple conservative integration of the membrane, several steps for improvement of the process efficiency are shown. With a three-end integration the maximum achievable efficiency is 40.1%, with a four-end integration of the membrane an overall efficiency of 40.7% including CO2 compression with 90% capture can be achieved for a hard coal fired power plant of 1210 MWth compared to 45.9% efficiency for a reference power plant without carbon sequestration. In this case the effective energy demand for oxygen production can be reduced to 26 kWh/t(O2). In a process variant in which the expansion turbine for the oxygen depleted air is co-fired, the combined efficiency reaches 46.1%. Although OTM operation in four-end design is preferable due to higher achievable net efficiencies, OTM operation in three-end design is likely to be technically viable at first since up to now no membrane material is available which withstands contact with flue gas. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Ecodesign Directive and the extent to which it provides a regulatory framework for life-cycle assessment approaches which underlie integrated product policy (IPP), thus providing a horizontal approach to product legislation as a new approach to regulating pollution. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws on academic commentary as well as official papers, European communications and legislation. Findings - The development and application of the Ecodesign Directive is highlighted along with the different regulatory approach it poses which is shown to result from the application of life-cycle assessment and IPP. Practical implications - The impact on the development of products will be extensive in that they will be required by mandatory rules to be designed with a view to the reduction of their whole life environmental impacts. Originality/value - The approach is to highlight a new paradigm for regulating pollution and environmental impacts.Life cycle assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14040 standard (ISO-LCA) is applied to assess the environmental impact per functional unit of new or modified products. However, new or modified products can also induce demand changes-so-called rebound effects. If overall environmental impact is of interest, there is a need to assess the potential magnitude of such rebound effects and to allow recommendations on how to mitigate these effects. To do so, this study proposes to complement the constant demand assumption (implicitly assumed by the ISO-LCA), commonly known as the ceteris paribus assumption, with a consumption-as-usual assumption allowing a systematic stepwise inclusion of rebound effects. We base our results on a formal description of household consumption. To indicate the relevance of the proposed integration of rebound effects, different comparative LCAs are reviewed and the concept is applied to mobility as illustrative examples. Based on a description of household demand and consumption feedback loops, we propose the consumption-as-usual concept, which in contrast to the constant demand assumption assumes that (1) the use of household resources for consumption does not change and (2) preferences remain the same. Household resources for example are purchasing power (we assume that households do not work less), time, and living space. We outline how this concept allows integrating potential rebound effects into ISO-LCA by considering three different cases of reallocating freed household resources. To illustrate the use of the consumption-as-usual concept, we draw implications for different comparative LCAs from the literature and illustrate cases with income and time rebound for different personal travel modes. The consumption-as-usual concept is applicable to a broad range of product modifications and allows an important complementation of the LCA regarding rebound effects. For products with various changes in the need for household resources, the assessment becomes however a challenging task. The limits of the consumption-as-usual concept are mainly given by its two underlying assumptions. Therefore, new or modified products with the potential to change consumer preferences or even the amount of household resources used for consumption go beyond this concept. The integration of rebound effects is feasible for many comparative LCAs. It helps in increasing the reliability of the assessment of overall environmental impact reduction through new or modified products. In addition, a basis is provided with which to mitigate rebound effects and give appropriate recommendations to product users. Potential rebound effects should be included in LCA in order to guide consumers and policy towards sustainable consumption. We recommend the consumption-as-usual concept for this purpose. To predict rebound effects under consumption as usual instead of outlining potential amplitudes, further research on household preferences is needed and an optimisation model should be applied for household consumption. However, even if data are available for such a prediction, the assessment of potential rebound effects is still recommended in order to recognise dangers and opportunities in consumption changes.Life Cycle Impact Assessment methodology is still lacking a procedure that relates phosphorus emission to ecological damage in freshwater ecosystems. The aim of this study is to apply new insights in the characterization of aqueous eutrophication at the end-point level. Characterization factors for freshwater eutrophication in European waters caused by emissions of phosphorus to agricultural soils and freshwater were developed. The characterization factors are representative for emissions to the 101 most important European river catchments west of the Ural Mountains. We combined site-generic fate factors of total phosphorus, calculated by means of the integrated assessment model CARMEN, with damage factors based on a concentration-response relationship between the concentration of total phosphorus and occurrence of macrofauna species in freshwaters. Environmental fate processes, such as surface run off, groundwater drainage, and hydrological freshwater residence times, are included in the fate factor which relates emission of phosphorus from wastewater treatment plants and due to agricultural supply of manure and fertilizer, to concentrations in freshwater. The product of fate factor and damage factor constitutes the characterization factor at the endpoint level with the following results: 1.1 center dot 10(3), 1.2 center dot 10(3), and 2.1 center dot 10(4) disappeared fraction of species center dot m(3)center dot day/kg phosphorus emission for manure, fertilizer, and sewage treatment plants, respectively. Normalization factors are based on the emission of total phosphorus in Europe resulting in 60.1 disappeared fraction of species center dot m(3)/person with a relative contribution of 16% by manure application, 18% by fertilizer application, and 66% by sewage treatment plant emissions. From intervention (P emission) to ecological damage of inland waters, most relevant site-specific processes are included to derive a characterization factor at the damage level. Although the characterisation factor for P due to agricultural application is a factor of 20 lower compared to emissions to freshwater, the nutrient enrichment of European freshwaters is still for one third attributed to agricultural application of phosphorus.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), in addition to other sister methods, represents nowadays a renown established tool for carrying out environmental assessment. Yet, this tool is in fact a kind of "vertical assessment" while the other axis, i.e. horizontal environmental assessment, is still yet an emerging topic proposed and discussed by Abukhader and Jonson (2003) [4]. This paper builds on and extends their work through testing two proposed ideas. For this purpose, Delphi method is employed to run an experiment of assessing postponement strategy (a strategy in logistics management field) using the Horizontal Environmental Assessment model. The aim is to discuss possibilities and limitations of carrying out this first-of-its-kind environmental evaluation, and whether it is possible to arrive at or formulate an environmental judgment on supply chain strategies (Postponement strategy taken as a case in this paper).This research work focuses on the application of life-cycle assessment methodology to determine the carbon footprint of different players involved in a supply chain of the textile sector. A case study of a product by a textile leader company was carried out. This study demonstrates that, in the textile chain, the main contribution to the greenhouse effect is provided by the electrical and thermal energy used and by the transportation (since different production phases are delocalised in a wide range that goes from South Africa, Italy, Romania and all around the world, from the distribution centre to the stores). The Monte Carlo analysis has been used in order to obtain, for each calculated impact, not only the average value but also the distribution curve of the results characterised by uncertainty parameters. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to evaluate the impact of management choices such as: a change in the transportation modality, from aeroplane to boat; a combination of road and rail transportation; and a selection among suppliers that allows the firm to cut environmental impacts.In the early stages of product development, designers need to take environmental performance into account together with traditional design objectives. Sustainable products are products that are fully compatible with nature throughout their entire life cycle. This paper presents a case study in which the integration of environmentally conscious quality function deployment (ECQFD) and life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied to enable sustainable product development of an electric vehicle. In this study, ECQFD has been used to handle environmental and traditional quality requirements of the product, whereas LCA has been used for assessing the environmental impact of products and processes. A cost model has been developed by integrating production and environmental costs as well as the technical status of an old part product for reuse. The results obtained from the case study reveal that integration of ECQFD and LCA considers the equal importance of environmental requirements to the traditional requirements of cost and quality thereby ensuring sustainability in product design in an electric vehicle.Over the last three decades, new concepts, strategies, frameworks and systems have been developed to tackle the sustainable development issue. This paper reviews the challenges, perspectives and recent advances in support of sustainable production operations decision-making. The aim of this review is to provide a holistic understanding of advanced scientific analysis methodologies for the evaluation of sustainability, to provide efficient decision support. Over 100 publications have been analysed, and a characterisation of state-of-the-art sustainability analysis methodologies has been produced, which includes life cycle assessment and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), along with their applications to three key areas of production operations: sustainable design, sustainable manufacture and sustainable supply chain management. Distribution of existing work is discussed and future research directions are elicited from the literature. The paper finds three trends in supporting sustainable production operations decisions: (a) sustainability analysis has moved to whole life cycle assessment from single-stage assessment, (b) sustainability analysis has shifted away from single criterion to MCDA and (c) sustainability analysis has evolved from stand-alone approaches to integrated systematic methodologies. The paper concludes that integrated sustainability analysis can provide more efficient and effective support to complex decision-making in sustainable production operations.Sustainability has become a very significant research topic as it impacts many different manufacturing industries. Therefore, the technologies for monitoring, analysing, evaluating and optimising the sustainability performance of manufacturing processes and systems are very critical for decision makers on the shop floor. This paper introduces a decision guidance management system that provides actionable recommendations through quantitative analysis of the sustainability measures of manufacturing processes and systems based on life cycle assessment. The system determines decision preferences through dynamically collected data and decision makers' responses, taking into account the prevailing constraints. Optimal decisions can be derived using mathematical and constraint programming. By using decision guidance query language, this methodology allows users to make optimal decisions without an extensive mathematical or operations research background. Knowledge of relational databases is sufficient for a user to formulate the optimisation problem and obtain optimal solutions. The methodology is demonstrated with a machining operation case study, in which a list of sustainability metrics are identified and sustainability modelling methods are proposed. Important sustainable machining performance measures are optimised, resulting in actionable recommendations.The main objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that the growing media coming from production processes with minimum environmental impact were also those guaranteeing the best performances to the plant. Our focus is also on the adoption of growing media in ornamental nurseries that are considered "sustainable", particularly those that protect the environment. The research has been divided into four phases which chronologically followed one another: composts production; growing media preparation and characterization; environmental analysis; rosemary bio-agronomical evaluation. Six different biomasses, mixed with different percentage relations, were composted for 4 months, obtaining eight composts with which as much peat free growing media have been prepared (S-C1 - S-C8). LCA of growing media production in Southern Italy has been carried out to gain more knowledge about the environmental impact and resource use along the substrata chain. Chemical and physical analyses have been realized on the nine growing media. Furthermore, a bio-agronomical trial has been conducted comparing the eight peat-free growing media with the conventional peaty one (S-peat), in order to evaluate the visual quality in rosemary containerised plants. The original hypothesis has turned out, in the experimental conditions in which we have worked, only partly valid. Among the three growing media with a low environmental impact productive cycle only the S-C5 guarantees to the rosemary plants good productive performance, even if statistically different from those obtained with S-peat. It is necessary to go on with the research even using different composting technologies.The role of titanium dioxide photocatalysis in the frame of green chemistry is discussed on the basis of a review of published life cycle assessments. It appears that the environmental impact of photocatalysis when applied to the mineralization of pollutants is generally worse than that of other advanced oxidation processes when lamps are used, but becomes appealing under solar light. The potential of photocatalysis for organic synthesis - that in principle should minimize the generation of pollutants - is likewise discussed. Here again, however, the method is competitive with thermal procedures only when solar light is used.In this study the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Arundo donax production process for energy purpose is proposed. The cultivation of this type of herbaceous biomass, irrigated with urban wastewater, was carried out in an experimental field, sited in eastern Sicily (Italy). The analysis by LCA makes it possible, among other things, to evaluate the potential environmental impacts related to each phase of the process. In this study a sensitivity analysis of the LCA results were carried out by varying the process stages. Furthermore the incidence of each process stage on the damage categories by varying the cultivation-cycle length was evaluated. The stages constituting the Arundo donax production process, considered in this assessment, regard seedling production, agronomic practices, irrigation, and transport to boiler. The functional unit used in the analyses was 1 ton of biomass and crop productivity values were derived from literature. The analyses allowed to identify the most significant stages of the Arundo donax production process related to the experimental field. In detail, this study highlights that seedling production and irrigation stages contributed most of all to the overall environmental burden, whereas agronomic practices stage showed a minor influence on the process.Some emerging technologies are expected to be pivotal for solving many of the environmental challenges faced today, especially those related to energy. However, many of these technologies may incur significant environmental impacts over their life cycle, while having environmental benefits during their use. This paper presents results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a proposed type of nanophotovoltaic, quantum dot photovoltaic (QDPV) module. The LCA is confined to the stages of raw materials acquisition, manufacturing, and use. The impacts of QDPV are compared with other types of PV modules and energy sources both renewable and nonrenewable. To provide a comprehensive comparative assessment, QDPV modules were compared with mature as well as emerging PV types for which data are available. Comparative assessment with other types of energy sources includes coal, oil, lignite, natural gas, diesel, nuclear, wind, and hydropower. QDPV modules may have the potential to overcome two current barriers of solar technology: low efficiencies and high manufacturing costs. If higher efficiencies are realized, QDPV modules could pave the way to large scale implementation of solar energy, helping nations move toward greater energy independence. On the other hand, candidate materials as quantum dots for solar cell applications are mostly compound semiconductors such as cadmium selenide, cadmium telluride, and lead sulfide which may be toxic and for which renewable options are limited. Toxic effects of these materials may be exacerbated by their nanoscale features. The LCA was carried out using the software SimaPro, and the Ecoinvent Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) database supplemented with available literature and patent information. Our results indicate that while QDPV modules have shorter Energy PayBack Time (EPBT), lower Global Warming Potential (GWP), SOx and NO emissions than other types of PV modules, they have higher heavy metal emissions, underscoring the need for investigation of emerging technologies, especially nano-based ones, from a life cycle perspective. QDPV modules are better in all impact categories assessed than carbon-based energy sources but they have longer EPBT than wind and hydropower and higher GWR (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Time and again, there has been a hue and a cry that the world is running out of natural resources and the most prominent among those is the famous study entitled 'The Limits to Growth' by the 'Club of Rome'. Since then the fear of scarcity of abiotic resources has been challenging human societies around the globe, particularly the research community. In this paper we will examine the case of the steel industry to argue how and why mineral resources depletion is an issue that needs to be addressed through life cycle assessment in more detail. This paper shows that a more comprehensive understanding about the current production trends of iron ore and steel, which also requires several vital metals such as copper, manganese, nickel and so on, can provide useful insights in assessing the potential future threat of shortages due to depletion of abiotic mineral resources. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses biofuels from agricultural crops in northern Europe regarding area and energy efficiency, greenhouse gases and eutrophication. The overall findings are that direct land use changes have a significant impact on GHG balances and eutrophication for all biofuels, the choice of calculation methods when by-products are included affecting the performance of food crop-based biofuels considerably, and the technical design of production systems may in specific cases be of major importance. The presented results are essential knowledge for the development of certification systems. Indirect land use changes are recognised but not included due to current scientific and methodological deficiencies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment of hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) biofuel was performed. The study was commissioned by Volvo Technology Corporation and Volvo Penta Corporation as part of an effort to gain a better understanding of the environmental impact of potential future biobased liquid fuels for cars and trucks. The life cycle includes production of vegetable oil from rape, oil palm or Jatropha, transport of the oil to the production site, production of the HVO from the oil, and combustion of the HVO. The functional unit of the study is 1 kWh energy out from the engine of a heavy-duty truck and the environmental impact categories that are considered are global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP) and embedded fossil production energy. System expansion was used to take into account byproducts from activities in the systems; this choice was made partly to make this study comparable to results reported by other studies. The results show that HVO produced from palm oil combined with energy production from biogas produced from the palm oil mill effluent has the lowest environmental impact of the feedstocks investigated in this report. HVO has a significantly lower life cycle GWP than conventional diesel oil for all feedstocks investigated, and a GWP that is comparable to results for e.g. rape methyl ester reported in the literature. The results show that emissions from soil caused by microbial activities and leakage are the largest contributors to most environmental impact categories, which is supported also by other studies. Nitrous oxide emissions from soil account for more than half of the GWP of HVO. Nitrogen oxides and ammonia emissions from soil cause almost all of the life cycle EP of HVO and contribute significantly to the AP as well. The embedded fossil production energy was shown to be similar to results for e.g. rape methyl ester from other studies. A sensitivity analysis shows that variations in crop yield and in nitrous oxide emissions from microbial activities in soil can cause significant changes to the results. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are heavily debated as to their potential to reduce transport-related greenhouse gas emissions. Life cycle thinking gave rise to formal evaluations of the energy balance of such fuels, which led to the vigorously conducted "corn to ethanol" debates. Just as consensus was building on such evaluations came the "carbon debt" insights, a result of applying consequential Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) backed by advanced economic modeling. Increasingly, hopes have shifted to the 2nd generation biofuels, viewed as a "technological home run". Could this also backfire? We investigate a simple South African case in which there might not be improvements in environmental performance: a sugar mill sells its bagasse, currently used at low efficiency to provide process heat, to an advanced biofuels producer, and buys an equivalent amount of coal without investing in efficiency improvements. Seven scenarios are generated, ranging from the status quo, where no bagasse is diverted, to 100% bagasse diversion, with one scenario including an energy efficiency improvement in the sugar mill. A consequential LCA is applied to the seven scenarios, covering global warming potential (GWP), non-renewable energy use, aquatic eutrophication and terrestrial acidification. A basic financial analysis of the proposed scenarios shows that they are realistic, with potentially lucrative returns. Results show that diverting bagasse without efficiency improvements from its current use to an ethanol bio-refinery would indeed backfire for all environmental impacts studied. The base case outperforms all the other scenarios, with the 100% bagasse diversion scenario emerging the worst. Investments into energy efficiency are therefore a precondition for diverting cellulosic residues into biofuel production. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In environmental systems analysis tools like Life Cycle Assessment, strategic environmental assessment, cost benefit analysis and environmental management systems, results need to be presented in a comprehensible way to make alternatives easily comparable. One way of doing this is to aggregate results to a manageable set by using weighting methods.. In this paper, we explore how weighting methods are used in some selected Environmental Systems Analysis Tools (ESATs), and suggest possible developments of their use. We examine the differences in current use patterns, discuss the reasons for and implications of such differences, and investigate whether observed differences in use are necessary. The result of our survey shows that weighting and valuation is broadly used in the examined ESATs. The use of weighting/valuation methods is different in different tools, but these differences are not always related to the application; rather, they are related to traditions and views on valuation and weighting. Also, although the requirements on the weights/values may differ between tools, there are intersections where they coincide. Monetary weights, using either endpoint or midpoint methods, are found to be useful in all the selected tools. Furthermore, the inventory shows that that there is a common need for generic sets of weights. There is a need for further research focusing on the development of consistent value sets derived with a wide range of methods. In parallel to the development of weighting methods it is important with critical evaluations of the weighting sets with regard to scientific quality, consistency and data gaps. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The wine industry has developed greatly over recent years, and it could be stated that what was once a traditional industry has become a very productive and technical sector. One aspect that has not been studied until now is the cork stopper, despite the fact that most wine bottles are sealed with this product, and practically all corks are produced in the Iberian Peninsula. This study presents the environmental analysis of the production of natural cork stoppers, using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The research was supported by data from four Catalan representative companies and all the stages involved in the production after the forest management have been taken into account. The purpose of this research was to provide reference data for the Catalan cork industrial sector (Northeast Spain), and also contribute to deciding which aspects of natural cork stopper production must be improved and further researched. Another objective of this research was to emphasise and demonstrate that LCA methodology could be an interesting tool for improving traditional industry, from a cleaner production perspective. Results could be used by other sector companies to analyse and compare themselves with in order to know if they could improve their production with the current available technology. Impact assessment results indicate that the manufacturing stage was the stage causing the greatest impact, but also an evaluation of the influence of the initial transport from the forest reveals that this stage could notably increase the impact when raw cork was moved from distant forests. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) regarding personal electronic products receives little attention, probably due to the fact that most of them are compact in size; hence, the environmental impact per unit is relatively lightweight. In this connection, how to perform eco-design for electronic products in practice with respect to all phases of their life cycle is unclear. However, taking their total (annual) consumption into consideration, the total impact cannot be underestimated. The main objective of this paper is to fill this gap by analysing a personal electronic product from the eco-design point of view. The results are presented in terms of different environmental aspects (like emissions to air) and associated suggestions for eco-redesign. More specifically, this paper aims to: (i) reveal a case study in which LCA is applied to an electronic product. The focus is on how to collect relevant data in this regard; (ii) summarise the results in terms of a variety of environmental impacts so that key items or key issues can be identified and quantified accordingly and (iii) suggest a set of associated eco-redesign options responding to the aforementioned issues. Improvement of the new design is then compared with the original design.Bacteria can synthesize cytoplasmic granules known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), which are carbon and energy storage reserves, from organic carbon when subject to stressful environmental conditions. PHAs are also biodegradable thermoplastics with many potential commercial applications. The purpose of the research reported herein was to evaluate the feasibility of integrating PHA production within a municipal wastewater treatment (WWT) configured as a sequencing batch reactor (SBR). Four bench-scale WWT SBRs were tested at decreasing organic loading rates to assess the potential to enrich for microbes capable of feast/famine PHA synthesis. For each treatment SBR, sidestream batch reactors receiving higher quantities of primary solids fermenter liquor were operated to produce PHA. Results from this study demonstrate that a treatment SBR supplied moderate strength wastewater can enrich for the target microorganisms, with PHA yields of 0.23-0.31-mg PHA per mg chemical oxygen demand, and produce high quality effluent. In sidestream batch reactors, microorganisms that fed excess quantities of substrate can rapidly synthesize significant quantities of PHA. Based on the results of this study, we estimate that a 1 million gallon per day SBR WWT-PHA production system could generate 11-36 t (12-40 t) of PHA annually.Urban water supplies are traditionally based on limited freshwater resources located outside the cities However a range of concepts and techniques to exploit alternative water resources has gained ground as water demands begin to exceed the freshwater available to cities Based on 113 cases and 15 in-depth case studies solutions used to increase water self-sufficiency in urban areas are analyzed The main drivers for increased self-sufficiency were identified to be direct and indirect lack of water constrained infrastructure high quality water demands and commercial and institutional pressures Case studies demonstrate increases in self-sufficiency ratios to as much as 80% with contributions from recycled water seawater desalination and rainwater collection The introduction of alternative water resources raises several challenges energy requirements vary by more than a factor of ten amongst the alternative techniques wastewater reclamation can lead to the appearance of trace contaminants in drinking water and changes to the drinking water system can meet tough resistance from the public Public water-supply managers aim to achieve a high level of reliability and stability We conclude that despite the challenges self-sufficiency concepts in combination with conventional water resources are already helping to reach this goal (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reservedA comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of solar photo-Fenton and solar photoelectro-Fenton, two solar-driven advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) devoted to the removal of non-biodegradable pollutants in water, is performed. The study is based on the removal, at laboratory scale, of the amino acid alpha-methylphenylglycine, a good example of soluble and non-biodegradable target pollutant. The system under study includes chemicals, electricity, transport of all raw materials to the plant site, and the generation of emissions, but it does not take into account the impact of the infrastructure needed to build a hypothetical solar plant. Nine environmental impact categories are included in the LCA: global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, aquatic eutrophication potential, acidification potential, human toxicity potential, photochemical ozone formation potential, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity potential, marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential, and terrestrial ecotoxicity potential and abiotic resource depletion potential. Although previous experimental results show that both AOPs are able to efficiently degrade the pollutant, the LCA indicates that solar-driven photo-Fenton is the most environmentally friendly alternative, mainly because the use of electricity in solar photoelectro-Fenton experiments involves high environmental impacts.This study aims at evaluating the effect of an in situ laser remelting treatment of NiCrBSi coatings, deposited by plasma spraying. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was used to estimate the environmental impacts of coating processes. It was demonstrated with this LCA that the in situ remelting process was clean. Microstructural results were also evaluated. A good metallurgical bond was formed at the remelted coating interface. Scanning electron microscopy observation revealed also that laser treatment induces a change of the microstructure from lamellar to columnar dendritic. The dependence between the microstructure of NiCrBSi coatings, which was modified by laser treatment, and corrosion resistance has been evaluated by potentiodynamic polarization curves. Results show that, the corrosion resistance was increased because of a finer structure and higher densities of the coatings, but corrosion mechanisms occurring in all cases were different. From the electrochemical experiments in NaCl solution it can be deduced that laser remelting of as-sprayed coatings does not affect their corrosion rate. Corrosion evolves due to a progressive penetration of the electrolyte through the disturbed structure of the as-sprayed samples, whereas the substrate surface of remelted coating is not reached, because of a higher density. But ClMO intermediate species were formed on the surface, because Cl- can destroy the protective film on the coating. The hybrid plasma/laser process was cleaner than hard chromium plating and its corrosion behavior is superior too. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Floor covering materials have an important role for building and decoration sectors. Functionality, economy and esthetical factors sustain the options for floor covering material production. Vinyl covering and laminated parquet are the most preferable floor covering materials for their economical and easy caring functions. In this study, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was used to compare two floor covering materials; laminated parquet and vinyl covering. Functional unit was selected as 1 m(2) floor covering and the regarding data was evaluated by CML2 baseline 2000 method that included by SimaPro 7.0. Evaluation was conducted under four impact categories; abiotic depletion, global warming, human toxicity and acidification.Building design in the profession of architecture becomes concrete with building material. In the traditional context various properties such as technical performance, aesthetic concerns, short and long term costs and social parameters should are taken into account for the building material selection. However, building materials have crucial roles for the definition of buildings in ecological, livable and sustainable contexts. In this framework, the characteristics of environment-product relationship gains importance for the building material selction under sustainable architecture approach. Building materials cause distinct environmental effects in each phase of life cycles. Therefore, there should be a selection by evaluating the building material-environment interaction during the processes of raw material acquisition, production, application to the building, utilization, recycling, and disposal. In this study, models that are primarily developed for material selection are analyzed. A building material selection model is examined in parallel with sample models and in the context of environmental effects by associating it with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) system that is effective in sustainable building design.This paper reviews existing approaches to assessing tourism sustainability, especially its contribution to climate change. It assesses ecological footprint analysis, environmental impact assessment and input-output analysis but finds them inaccurate and unreliable. It goes on to argue that life cycle assessment (LCA) is a more promising tool for tourism climate change impact assessment, highlighting important areas where LCA application can contribute towards better understanding of tourism's role in global climatic changes. To demonstrate the applicability of the LCA methodology, a case study of a short weekend holiday trip is presented. Related greenhouse gas emissions are measured comparing LCA and alternative carbon footprint calculation methods. The comparison demonstrates markedly different results. The reasons for the discrepancy along with the potential of LCA to estimate the oindirecto carbon contribution of the holiday trip's components are discussed. A key feature of the LCA calculation is that for short-haul trips the proportional impact of accommodation-related emissions is shown to be larger than in earlier calculations, while transport impacts are reduced.In recent years magnesium and its alloys have been successfully introduced into weight-saving applications in the transportation industries in order to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions as well as to increase the performance of modern cars. Besides advantages, e. g. superior specific strength and excellent processability, applications of magnesium alloys are limited due to their inferior properties at elevated temperatures, e.g. low creep resistance and reduced corrosion behavior, especially when in galvanic contact with other metallic materials. Current developments are revealing possibilities to improve these properties by using modern alloys and processing routes. While the majority of industrial applications utilize cast products, the use of wrought magnesium alloys is still at an early stage. Within the framework of ongoing research and development, the corrosion behavior of both cast and wrought magnesium materials in standalone uses or in galvanic couples with other metallic materials is gaining increasing attention. New coating systems tailored to selected applications will have to be developed in order to increase the usage of magnesium alloys in the transportation industries in the future. This work also needs to be coordinated with new processes for joining magnesium alloys with similar and dissimilar metals and alloys, to achieve a broad spectrum of materials that fulfill the requirements given by the applications. After years of intensive research in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, an increase in these activities has taken place in recent years, in particular in China and Korea. The magnesium industry has to face new challenges with regard to market issues, the breakdown of the Western magnesium industry and finally the carbon footprint discussion of the life-cycle assessment of components for the transportation industry. This presentation will first address these issues and challenges, then discuss new developments and finally show some examples of new applications. In the conclusions, gaps and challenges will be analyzed and recommendations for sustainable research and development will be given.The subject of environmental concerns with magnesium production and magnesium processing first started showing up in technical analysis of problems about the time of Life Cycle Analysis articles. Magnesium is produced and processed in relatively small quantities throughout the world. Annual magnesium production has been around 500-700,000 metric tons per year. This compares to aluminum which is produced in annual amounts up to 35 million metric tons. There have been some excellent review papers done, but a great amount of the work related to electrolytic magnesium production which was the predominant method of production. That situation has changed totally in the past 10 years and now 85% of the world's magnesium is produced by thermal processes and most of that is in China. Comparison papers have been written on the environmental impacts of the two main magnesium production processes. As the measurement technology improves and as the total information references are better understood the environmental challenges can be more clearly identified. This paper reviews the situation and suggests some forward looking steps that might need to be taken.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to compare various landfill gas (LFG) and leachate treatment technologies in a life-cycle perspective. Design/methodology/approach - Since a landfill causes emissions for a very long-time period, life-cycle-based environmental assessment was carried out to compare different technological options for sustainable leachate treatment and LFG collection and utilization. WAMPS, the life-cycle assessment (LCA) model for waste management planning, was used for the environmental assessment of selected leachate and LFG treatment technologies. Findings - Results of both direct measurements in the studied landfills and LCA support the fact that leachate treatment with reverse osmosis has the best environmental performance compared to aerobic-activated sludge treatment. Recently, the collection efficiency of LFG in the studied landfills is relatively low. In order to improve the overall environmental performance of LFG management the gas collection rate should be improved. LFG utilisation for energy recovery is an essential part of the system. The results of the study show that the avoided impacts of energy recovery can be even greater than direct impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from landfills. Therefore, measures which combine LFG collection with energy generation should be preferred to treatment in flare. Research limitations/implications - It should be noted that the results of this study do not express the total environmental impacts of the entire landfill system, but only the eutrophicating impacts and global warming related to the studied leachate and LFG management options. Therefore, it is recommended that further LCAs investigate also other relevant impact categories. Practical implications - The results of LCA modelling show that it is important to ensure the highest collection and treatment efficiency of leachate and LFG, since poor capture compromises the overall environmental performance of a landfill. Originality/value - The paper provides a site-specific data on sustainable leachate and LFG management in selected Estonian conventional municipal solid waste landfills. As such, the paper contributes to the development of the regional reference input data for LCA in waste management.The paper is orientated towards the development of clean technologies in the area of asphalt mixtures. The purpose is to point out the benefits of a recycled mixture in the context of environmental impact evaluation. The procedure is implemented in a life cycle assessment (LCA) perspective and considers the importance of computer software as new technology for the research. I intend to evaluate the ecological impact of clean technologies in transport infrastructure. The research is based on the environmental impact of recycled materials and uses the asPECT computer software for analysis in a cradle-to grave perspective. The methods and techniques have been used for a comparative approach, which reflects advantages and disadvantages of traditional versus recycled asphalt mixture. The interdependence with other researches results from the evaluation of sustainability components, new methodologies and clean technologies applied in the research area. The research methodology is based on the literature on ecological impact and sustainability. The theory is implemented towards creating a new asphalt mixture composition based 75% on the recycled material, promotes the clean technologies, IT analysis in the area of asphalt mixtures and minimum environmental impact. It highlights the benefits of recyclability process and advantages of new models and technologies in transport infrastructure. The evaluation results are interim and the research is limited by the lack of data and use of fictive information. This study addresses to researchers and practitioners in the area of sustainable transport infrastructure offering a new point of view on clean technologies, environmental impact and new materials. It provides an orientation towards recyclability, support for the use of recycled and composite materials, towards new and ecological technologies in the construction area. The paper originality consists in the ecological evaluation of a recycled mixture composition in comparison with a traditional mixture using the LCA methodology and asPECT computer software. The information used for the analysis is original and the comparison results are unique. The analysis addresses to researchers in the area of new technologies and analysis models, sustainable development, highway engineering and transportation companies.Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are now found ubiquitously in the aquatic environment and biota, and there is a growing concern that PBDEs may disrupt endocrine systems, leading to reproductive impairments of aquatic animals. In our study, zebrafish (Danio rerio) were exposed to the 5 ng/L, 1 mu g/L and 50 mu g/L of DE-71 for the duration of the whole life cycle (120 days, from eggs to adults). The expression of selected genes along the brain-pituitary-gonadal (BPG) axis and liver, and the levels of plasma sex hormones were examined. In male fish, up-regulation of GnRH in brain, FSH beta and LH beta in pituitary, FSH-receptor, LH-receptor, and CYP19a in testis was clearly evident, while down-regulation of CYP11a and 3 beta-HSD was found in testis. In female fish, a 2.4-fold up-regulation of 3 beta-HSD was found in ovary upon exposure to 50 mu g/L of DE-71. GnRH in brain, FSH beta and LH beta in pituitary were also up-regulated, while ER beta, TH and TPH in brain and GnRH-receptor in pituitary were significantly down-regulated. Hepatic ER alpha, AR and VTG in males were all down-regulated, while hepatic ER alpha and AR in female were up-regulated. Serum estradiol (E-2) was reduced in both male and female upon exposure to DE-71, while significant increases in serum testosterone (T) and 11-keto-testosterone (11-KT) were only found in male but not female fish. The ratio of T/E-2 as well as the ratio of 11-KT/E-2 in male fish increased in a dose-dependent manner upon exposure to DE-71. Our overall results showed that whole life exposure of DE-71 altered the expression of regulatory genes and receptors at all three levels of the BPG axis in zebrafish, and the responses are sex dependent. The observed disruption of GnRH and GtHs can be further related to the subsequent disruption in both levels and balance sex steroid hormones. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper assessment results of environmental impacts in conventional blast furnace iron-making system based on LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) will be presented. LCA is important tool in implementing the Environmental Management System (EMS). LCA is a technique for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with the product or technology. LCA is an environmental assessment tool for evaluation of impacts that a technology or product has on the environment over the entire period of its life - from the extraction of the raw material through the manufacturing, packaging and marketing processes, the use, re-use and maintenance of the product, to its eventual recycling or disposal as waste at the end of its useful life. LCA analysis will be carried out in accordance with standard EN ISO 14040: 2006, by four phase: goal and scope definition of LCA, inventory analysis LCI (Life Cycle Inventory), impact assessment LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment) and interpretation. The input and output data needed to perform the LCA will be collected and presented. Evaluating iron-making processes to assess their environmental impacts is often difficult due to the many inputs and outputs involved. Tests will be performed at the Central Mining Institute. In order to perform LCA analysis for ferrous metallurgy will be used SimaPro 7 software and will be applied two of the life cycle impact assessment methods - Ecoindicator 99 and IPCC GWP 100a.In automotive industry high strength steels are applied in order to obtain a significant weight reduction and high impact strength. The aim of this paper is to establish an overview about a new high strength steel generation in terms of impact response, economic and environmental impacts all over the product life cycle. This paper characterized a new high strength steel, DOCOL 1400 electrogalvanized, in terms of impact behaviour. The impact energy, maximum force, damage size and elastic recuperation were obtained. Comparing the results with similar ones presented in literature it is possible to conclud that higher yield stress promote better impact performances. The effect of damages was also studied. The position of the defects presents a significant influence and when positioned in the rolling direction can stop the crack It is possible to conclude that these materials promote significant increases in terms of impact strength, cost/benefit and a significant thickness reduction.This review explains the potential use of the so-called "green coal" for biofuel production. A comparison between microalgae and other crops is given, and their advantages are highlighted. The production of biofuels from microalgae biomass is described, such as the use of algae extracts (e.g. biodiesel from oil, bioethanol from starch), processing the whole biomass (e.g. biogas from anaerobic digestion, supercritical fluid, bio-oil by pyrolysis, syngas by gasification, biohydrogen, jet fuel), as well as the direct production (e.g. alcohols, alkanes). Microalgal biomass production systems are also mentioned, including production rates and production/processing costs. Algae cultivation strategy and the main culture parameters are point out as well as biomass harvesting technologies and cell disruption. The CO2 sequestration is emphasised due to it's undoubted interest in cleaning our earth. Life cycle analysis is also discussed. The algal biorefinery strategy, which can integrate several different conversion technologies to produce biofuel is highlighted for a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable production of biofuels. The author explains some of the challenges that need to be overcome to ensure the viability of biofuel production from microalgae. This includes the author's own research, the use of microorganism fuel cells, genetic modification of microalgae, the use of alternative energies for biomass production, dewatering, drying and processing. The conclusion of the manuscript is the author's view on the potential of microalgae to produce biofuels; the drawbacks and what should be done in terms of research to solve them; which technologies seem to be more viable to produce energy from algae; and which improvements in terms of microalgae, systems, and technologies should take place to enable the algae to fuels concept a reality.Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is a pre-regulatory exercise that analyzes industrial processes and products to assess efficacy of existing production efforts and identify priorities for enhancing triple bottom line performance for product lines. SLCA includes aspects of standard Risk Assessment, Life Cycle Risk Assessment (LCRA), and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodologies. It also draws upon technical understanding of environmental management, health risk assessment, industrial ecology, energy management and real estate and business planning. Importantly, SLCA offers an effective high-level screening of key product design criteria that focuses subsequent deeper assessments, allowing for low cost and rapid product assessments built on LCA principles [1]. This process can be especially useful when applied to nanomaterial product development since nanomaterials are not yet widely regulated and their impacts have not yet been widely studied. However the framework is effective for screening potential impacts and risks of various sectors at both the facility and individual product level.Since the construction sector uses 50% of the earth's raw materials and produces 50% of its waste, the development of more durable and sustainable building materials is crucial. Today, Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) is mainly used in low level applications, namely as unbound material for foundations, e.g. in road construction. Mineral demolition waste can be recycled as crushed aggregates for concrete, but these reduce the compressive strength and affect the workability due to higher values of water absorption. To advance the use of concrete rubble, Completely Recyclable Concrete (CRC) is designed for. reincarnation within the cement production, following the Cradle-to-cradle (C2C) principle. By the design, CRC becomes a resource for cement production because the chemical composition of CRC will be similar to that of cement raw materials. If CRC is used on a regular basis, a closed concrete-cement-concrete material cycle will arise, which is completely different from the current life cycle of traditional concrete. Within the research towards this CRC it is important to quantify the benefit for the environment. Therefore, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) needs to be performed. This paper presents the results of this analysis. It was observed that CRC could lower the overall environmental impact of concrete with 25 to 60%, depending on the application field.In this study we carry out a detailed environmental evaluation of geopolymer concrete production using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The literature shows that the production of most standard types of geopolymer concrete has a slightly lower impact on global warming than standard Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete. Whilst our results confirm this they also show that the production of geopolymer concrete has a higher environmental impact regarding other impact categories than global warming. This is due to the heavy effects of the production of the sodium silicate solution. Geopolymer concrete made from fly ashes or granulated blast furnace slags based require less of the sodium silicate solution in order to be activated. They therefore have a lower environmental impact than geopolymer concrete made from pure metakaolin. This study highlights that future research and development in the field of geopolymer concrete technology should focus on two potential solutions. First of all the use of industrial waste that is not recyclable within other industries and secondly on the production of geopolymer concrete using a mix of blast furnace slag and activated clays. Furthermore geopolymer concrete production would gain from using waste material with a suitable Si/Al molar ratio in order to minimize the amount of sodium silicate solution used. Finally, by taking into account mix-design technology, which has already been developed for OPC concrete, the amount of binder required to produce a geopolymer concrete could be reduced.As part of a systemic assessment toward social sustainability of egg production, we have reviewed current knowledge about the environmental impacts of egg production systems and identified topics requiring further research. Currently, we know that 1) high-rise cage houses generally have poorer air quality and emit more ammonia than manure belt (MB) cage houses; 2) manure removal frequency in MB houses greatly affects ammonia emissions; 3) emissions from manure storage are largely affected by storage conditions, including ventilation rate, manure moisture content, air temperature, and stacking profile; 4) more baseline data on air emissions from high-rise and MB houses are being collected in the United States to complement earlier measurements; 5) noncage houses generally have poorer air quality (ammonia and dust levels) than cage houses; 6) noncage houses tend to be colder during cold weather due to a lower stocking density than caged houses, leading to greater feed and fuel energy use; 7) hens in noncage houses are less efficient in resource (feed, energy, and land) utilization, leading to a greater carbon footprint; 8) excessive application of hen manure to cropland can lead to nutrient runoff to water bodies; 9) hen manure on open (free) range may be subject to runoff during rainfall, although quantitative data are lacking; 10) mitigation technologies exist to reduce generation and emission of noxious gases and dust; however, work is needed to evaluate their economic feasibility and optimize design; and 11) dietary modification shows promise for mitigating emissions. Further research is needed on 1) indoor air quality, barn emissions, thermal conditions, and energy use in alternative hen housing systems (1-story floor, aviary, and enriched cage systems), along with conventional housing systems under different production conditions; 2) environmental footprint for different US egg production systems through life cycle assessment; 3) practical means to mitigate air emissions from different production systems; 4) process-based models for predicting air emissions and their fate; and 5) the interactions between air quality, housing system, worker health, and animal health and welfare.Solar energy systems are a source of "clean" energy. Yet, if power generation from photovoltaic (PV) systems is free from fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a considerable amount of energy is consumed in the manufacturing and transport of the elements of the system. Silicon is currently the most widely used material for solar cell design. In this context, life cycle assessment (LCA) studies play a major role to compare and analyze the environmental impacts of products and services along their life cycle. This work aims at determining a general methodology for designing large scale photovoltaic systems, taking into account both technico-economic and environmental considerations. In this paper, only the environmental issue tackled by Life Cycle Assessment has been implemented to quantify the environmental impacts related to three technology of crystalline silicon for photovoltaic modules (PV) that are monocrystalline, multicrystalline and ribbon silicon.The presented research analyses the economical benefit, environmental burdens, and social impacts of biomass and bioenergy regional supply chains, through a multi-criteria optimization approach. The supply chains typically consist of four-layers and are comprised of agricultural, pre-processing, processing, and distribution layers (sectors). An integrated model for efficient biomass and bioenergy network optimisation is applied, as previously developed by Cucek et al. (2010), and now extended for explicit evaluation of the most relevant sustainability indicators and performance of life-cycle assessment (LCA). The synthesis of a biomass and bioenergy supply chain is accomplished by employing a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model (MINLP) incorporating mass and energy balances, feedstocks, heat and power integration, and the integration of different technologies into an overall network. LCA includes several environmental and social impacts from "cradle" to "grave". Besides the carbon footprint (CFP) as evaluated in the previous work by Cucek et al. (2010), additional footprints (De Benedetto and Klemes, 2010) are also considered in this study. Economic, environmental, and social criteria are considered simultaneously during multi-objective optimization, in order to assess the trade-offs between the sustainability aspects.Building industry has leading position in deterioration of environment. Therefore environmental assessment of building materials is very important. Life Cycle Assessment is the most complex method for quantifying of environmental impact and performing optimization. A single-family residential house was selected for evaluation and optimization of building materials, as presented in this paper. Building materials were divided into 10 groups of structures on the basis of calculation tool of Createrra. Contribution of building and particular structures in terms of used materials was enumerated. The highest contribution to global warming (GWP = 17770.5 kg CO(2)eq), acidification (AP = 57.2 kg SO(2)eq) and the highest consumption of primal energy (PEI = 153 350.4 MJ) was calculated for materials used in foundations. Some structures were selected for further material optimization to minimize their negative impact. It was proven that the proper selection of materials can lead to minimizing of the negative impact on environment by reducing energy consumption and CO2 and SO2 emissions.In this study, we investigate the upgrading of biodiesel plants into integrated biorefineries. Economic analysis and a life cycle assessment studies have been implemented for an integrated biodiesel biorefinery using its side-product (glycerol) to produce succinic acid (SA), a value-added chemical. Four process scenarios considering different uses of glycerol are simulated in Aspen Plus and MatLab and compared in this study. We examine simple utilisation methods of this side-product such as the disposal, distillation (80 %) and purification (95 %) of glycerol and we compare them in terms of economic and environmental impact with an integrated approach that produces SA via fermentation. For the latter case, we have incorporated into the overall process a batch fermenter to convert glycerol into succinate followed by a purification/recovery process to produce pure SA crystals. Furthermore, we have performed optimisation studies to compute the maximum profit and simultaneously to reduce the environmental impact. Profitability indicators are used to compare the developed biorefinery cases while environmental impact is calculated based on the CO2 emissions for each scenario.Previous studies have suggested considerable environmental impacts and resource consumption of construction processes. Although literature involves plenty of studies that emphasize the importance of environmental impact, sustainable movement has not been fully integrated to the other project objectives, such as time and cost. Additionally, the effect of changing project conditions on environmental impacts, as well as time and cost of construction projects has not been studied in detail. The project conditions can be unexpected events in addition to the resource-related problems of the project. For example, delay in the delivery of resources can affect the construction professional to decide on a different construction operation. As the changing project conditions influence the behavior of project patties in a complex construction system, the decisions of project parties have a significant impact on the success of project objectives. Yet, the effect of project conditions on the relationship between time, cost and environmental impact (TCEI) is unknown by the contractors. Due to the multi-objectives nature of construction projects and the lack of understanding of such relationship, it is important to have a method for construction professionals to select the most "appropriate" construction operations. This paper proposes a model to simulate the selection of construction operations when environmental impact is considered as an additional performance criterion. The study includes the application of decision analysis to model the behavior of project parties as agents and project conditions in the highway construction projects. The complex construction system is modeled by using a system dynamics approach. The output of the model helps to determine the influence of project conditions and correspondingly the decisions of agents on the selection of highway construction operations, when there are three potentially conflicting objectives as time, cost and environmental impact.There is a wide range of indicators available for use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). For designers with limited experience of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), it is difficult to decide which is the most likely to lead to a more environmentally friendly product. In industry, and in SMEs in particular, designers lacking the expertise needed to use LCA in an eco-design approach are liable to pay insufficient attention to indicator selection and may use inappropriate indicators that result in design faults. The lack of sector-specific methodological guidelines to assist them is another similar cause of problems. This article describes the methodology of choice for selecting the most appropriate impact categories and characterisation models for a LCIA in order to facilitate the choice of eco-design solutions. The two main stages of the methodology are described and explained. This procedure can be used directly by individuals carrying out an LCA or by developers of specialised LCA tools that choose indicators for the user. This methodology will make the LCA technique more accessible and better suited to designers' needs and so help encourage wider acceptance of the eco-design approach.This study aims at estimating the energy and environmental performances of a new cogenerative configuration of the waste to energy (WTE) plant in Piacenza. At present, the plant is authorized to treat 120,000 t/y of waste, but this limit does not represent the full treatment capacity of the facility. To exploit the plant potential and, at the same time, to reduce total equivalent emissions of the WTE process, a cogenerative configuration has been proposed. In this new scenario a back pressure turbine would be installed in parallel to the existing one, in order to supply heat to the district heating network of Piacenza and the total amount of waste treated per year by the facility would be increased to 134,100 t. The increase of 14,100 t should be satisfied by industrial and commercial waste, which would otherwise go to landfill. To compare the cogenerative scenario with the current situation, the environmental impact for the two cases has been evaluated by means of a life cycle assessment methodology. The results of the analysis show that the new configuration can ensure significant energy and environmental benefits.Discrete event simulation (DES) provides engineers with a flexible modeling capability for extensive analysis of a production flow and its dynamic behavior. Activity based costing (ABC) modeling can provide additional knowledge about the monetary costs related to the manufacturing processes in DES. In addition, ABC modeling has been proposed as a tool for environmental impact analysis. Thus, previous studies have separately brought ABC into DES and ABC into environmental impact analysis. Bringing all three areas together, an ABC environmental simulation could provide deeper understanding about environmental impacts in the manufacturing processes than a regular Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. This paper proposes to use ABC modeling in conjunction with DES to perform a more detailed economic and environmental impact cost analysis. It is emphasized that the time to perform both analysis in one simulation is shorter or equal to perform them separately. Moreover, the approach can resolve some LCA problems.Effective assessment and communication of the environmental footprint is increasingly important to process development and marketing purposes. Traditionally, static methods have been applied to analyze the environmental impact during a product's life cycle; however, they are unable to incorporate dynamic aspects of real world operations. This paper discusses a method using Discrete Event Simulation (DES) to analyze production systems and simultaneously enable labeling of products' environmental footprint. The method steps include data management, determination of environmental footprint, and communication of the results. The method is developed during a case study of a job-shop-production facility. To evaluate the DES method, the DES results were compared with the results of a Simplified Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) conducted on the same production system. The case study demonstrates the possibility for the DES method to determine the variation between products in terms of the environmental footprint and highlights some of the difficulties involved.This paper presents a study on the environmental impacts of two design alternatives for a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) visitor centre at Sukau, Sabah, using life cycle analysis. The design alternatives include a land-based and floating design, for the same timber-based superstructure. In both scenarios, the life cycle covers the phases of raw materials acquisition, manufacturing, use and maintenance, recycle and disposal phases. To enumerate the environmental impacts, the potential environmental emissions created for each phase will be calculated by referring to a life cycle inventory (LCI). A life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is then performed to assess the potential human and ecological effects of energy, water, materials usage, and the environmental releases identified in the LCI. Results showed that the floating option potentially generates more severe environmental impacts than the land-based option. The differences in environmental impacts are mainly due to the selection of materials and maintenance frequency during the construction, and use and maintenance phases of both design alternatives. As for disposal methods during the end-of-life phase, timber disposal by landfill produces higher environmental impacts than disposal by incineration. Overall, the steel piles used in the design of the floating structure caused higher environmental impacts.A representative composite bridge has been selected by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for the international collaboration between the Long Term Bridge Performance Project (LTBP) initiated in the U.S. and the FP7 Project IRIS in Europe. Various teams from the U.S., Japan, Korea, UK and EU have performed separate assessment routines including dynamic monitoring and system identification. The various approaches were compared and harmonised in order to achieve a standard model for this type of bridge, representing more than 40% of the bridge stock in the FHWA network. This comprises a total of about 240.000 bridges which could subsequently be tested and assessed following a standard procedure. The present paper intends to present a strongly life-cycle oriented approach, developed by the authors. This is based on a dynamic monitoring campaign and an accompanying visual inspection at the Wayne Bridge, New Jersey.The necessity for environmentally conscious vehicle designs in conjunction with increasing concerns regarding U.S. dependency on foreign oil and climate change have induced significant investment towards enhancing the propulsion portfolio with new technologies. More recently, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have held great intuitive appeal and have attracted considerable attention. PHEVs have the potential to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the commercial transportation sector. They are especially appealing in situations where daily commuting is within a small amount of miles with excessive stop-and-go driving. The research effort outlined in this paper aims to investigate the implications of motor/generator and battery size on fuel economy and GHG emissions in a medium-duty PHEV. An optimization framework is developed and applied to two different parallel powertrain configurations, e.g., pre-transmission and post-transmission, to derive the optimal design with respect to motor/generator and battery size. A comparison between the conventional and PHEV configurations with equivalent size and performance under the same driving conditions is conducted thus allowing an assessment of the fuel economy and GHG emissions potential improvement. The post-transmission parallel configuration yields higher fuel economy and less GHG emissions compared to pre-transmission configuration partly attributable to the enhanced regenerative braking efficiency.As efforts continue to incorporate environmental sustainability into product design, struggles persist to concurrently consider the environmental impacts resulting from transportation planning and supply chain network design. In fact, the transportation sector is the second largest contributor to direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, following electricity generation. To address these concerns and consider environmental issues more holistically during the development of products, Design for X (X: manufacturing, environment, etc.) methods, such as environmentally benign manufacturing (EBM) and life cycle assessment (LCA) continue to be advanced through research. In spite of improving environmental performance through design, supply chain related impacts are not well understood and can be impacted by decisions made during product design. Thus, the aim of this research is to explore how changes to the design of a product affect manufacturing supply chain configurations and, in turn, influence product environmental sustainability. The environmental impacts for producing several three-ring binder design variations are predicted by assuming a given set of suppliers that provide materials and components to the manufacturer. Supply chain transportation impacts are also accounted for in the analysis. Transportation impacts are found to be minor compared to materials and manufacturing impacts.Nanomaterials and nanomanufacturing is one of the fast growing and interesting fields in recent research and industries, and gaining huge interest around the world. As the nanomaterials has a higher physical and mechanical properties compared to their metal counterparts, it is expected that significant amount (15-20%) of nanomaterials will be put into use in less than five years periods almost in all fields of manufacturing. As the nanomaterial manufacturing is new, it is essential to establish an optimal method so as to reduce wastages and to increase the ratio of output to input materials used. It's important to use the minimal energy, water and other raw materials. Thus, this review will more concentrate on the sustainability of inputs, need to improve or optimize the production methods or sustainable manufacturing and green gas production and its global effects. Suitability of both top-down and bottom-up processing for nanoparticles will be addressed. Need of life cycle analysis to understand feasibility of recyclable at the end of the life with least possible wastage and reduced energy. Current research on environmental benefits and risk of potential toxicity and health effects of nanoproducts will be discussed.Sustainable manufacturing has been defined by the U.S. Department of Commerce as the creation of manufactured products using processes that minimize negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities, and consumers, and are economically sound. Thus, it requires simultaneous consideration of economic, environmental, and social implications associated with production and delivery of goods. Research in sustainable manufacturing is an important activity that informs product development from a life cycle perspective. At the process level, sustainable manufacturing research addresses issues related to planning, analysis and improvement, and the development of processes. At a systems level, sustainable manufacturing research addresses challenges relating to supply chain design, facility design and operations, and production planning. Though economically vital, manufacturing processes and systems have retained the negative image of being inefficient, polluting, and dangerous. Through strategic activities focused on sustainable processes and systems, industrial and academic engineering researchers are re-imagining manufacturing as a source of innovation to meet society's future needs. Recent research into concepts, methods, and tools for sustainable manufacturing are highlighted at the systems level, and explored more deeply as they relate to discrete manufacturing process development and analysis. Despite recent developments in decision making, and process- and systems-level research, many challenges and opportunities remain. Several of these in manufacturing research, development, implementation, and education are highlighted.Biofuels have been promoted as one strategy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mitigate the threat of climate change. To assess the effectiveness of biofuels in reducing emissions, the scientific and policy communities have turned to life-cycle GHG assessments. As these analyses have begun to be included in policy, the methodology has come under intense scrutiny, which has led to a rapid evolution in its complexity and scope. This has, sometimes dramatically, changed the perceived benefits of different types of biofuel. While the building sector has made some use of life-cycle GHG assessments, the methods used have typically been simpler than those in the bioenergy sector. As such analyses are likely to become increasingly relevant in building standards and policy, the building sector should actively engage with the life-cycle assessment (LCA) expert community to help shape effective policy on the embodied energy of buildings. This paper provides a brief introduction to LCA, reviews trends in their use in the bioenergy sector, compares these with the analysis included in building standards, and provides some suggestions as to changes that the use of the methodology is likely to undergo in the building sector.The present paper investigates the performance of a special micro-wind turbine designed to capture wind energy in rural as well as urban environments. Different from traditional kilo- to megawatt size wind turbines which can be connected directly to the grid, the micro-wind turbine system is flexible in size and linked with small generators that generate electric power at the site of installation for easy applications. The main advantage of this micro-wind turbine, apart from its low cost, is that it can be propelled by a wind speed as low as 2 m/s. To extract more wind energy, several such micro-wind turbines can be connected together by their external gears into an array to increase their swept areas and hence power. In the study, the performance of a single micro-wind turbine was simulated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and validated through physical experiments. The experimental results on angular velocity and power developed showed a good agreement with those predicted by the CFD simulation. The validated computer model was then used for a parametric study of the wind turbine with varying blade subtend angles and number of blades, both of which affect the torque acting on the wind turbine and the power performance. The design of the wind turbine blade was optimized through the CFD simulation. This paper considers mainly the aerodynamic performance of a single turbine and issues relating to its practical deployment are not dealt with.FROM THE MILL TO A BIOREFINERY. THE SUGAR FACTORY AS AN INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE FOR THE GENERATION OF BIOCHEMICALS AND BIOFUELS. A sugar cane mill is at the present moment a modest biorefinery producing few products such as sugar, ethanol and polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB). In the near future, this mill can expand its production using several renewable feedstock's to produce biofuels and high value biobased chemicals. However, the choice of appropriate products for addition to the portfolio is challenged by a lack of broad-based conversion technology coupled with a plethora of potential targets. The intent of this revision was to catalyze research efforts to expand the list of products and to present an updated evaluation of potential target structures for chemical production.Photovoltaic installations (PV-systems) are heavily promoted in Europe. In this paper, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) method is used to find out whether the high subsidy cost can be justified by the environmental benefits. Most existing LCAs of PV only use one-dimensional indicators and are only valid for regions with a high solar irradiation. This paper, however, presents a broad environmental evaluation of residential PV-systems for regions with a rather low solar irradiation of 900-1000 kWh/m(2)/year, a value typical for Northern Europe and Canada. Based on the Ecoinvent LCA database, six Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods were considered for six different PV-technologies; the comprehensive Eco-Indicator 99 (EI 99) with its three perspectives (Hierarchist, Egalitarian and Individualistic) next to three one-dimensional indicators, namely Cumulative Energy Demand (CED), Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the Energy Payback Time (EPT). For regions with low solar irradiation, we found that the EPT is less than 5 years. The Global Warming Potential of PV-electricity is about 10 times lower than that of electricity from a coal fired plant, but 4 times higher when compared to a nuclear power plant or a wind farm. Surprisingly, our results from the more comprehensive EI 99 assessment method do not correlate at all with our findings based on EPT and GWP. The results from the Individualist perspective are strongly influenced by the weighting of the different environmental aspects, which can be misleading. Therefore, to obtain a well-balanced environmental assessment of energy technologies, we recommend a carefully evaluated combination of various impact assessment methods. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents the results of an energy and environmental assessment of a set of retrofit actions implemented in the framework of the EU Project "BRITA in PuBs" (Bringing Retrofit Innovation to Application in Public Buildings - no: TREN/04/FP6EN/S07.31038/503135). Outcomes arise from a life cycle approach focused on the following issues: (i) construction materials and components used during retrofits: (ii) main components of conventional and renewable energy systems; (iii) impacts related to the building construction, for the different elements and the whole building. The results are presented according to the data format of the Environmental Product Declaration. Synthetic indices, as energy and GWP payback times, and energy return ratio, are defined to better describe the energy and environmental performances of the actions. The project highlights the role of the life cycle approach for selecting the most effective options during the design and implementation of retrofit actions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development requires methods and tools to measure and compare the environmental impacts of human activities for various products (goods and services). Providing society with goods and services contribute to a wide range of environmental impacts. Environmental impacts include emissions into the environment and the consumption of resources as well as other inventions such as land use etc. In order to create an environmentally-conscious building, the environmental impacts of entire service life must be known. The aim of this study is to review various buildings at different places, whose LCA has been performed and to see that which phase of the life cycle of building and which type of building consumes more energy and have more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It has been observed that operational phase alone contributes more than 50% to GHG emissions and is highest energy consumer (80-85%) which is a matter of concern and cannot be ignored. Now there is a need for some alternative ways to design buildings for a sustainable future. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The work is focused on the assessment of the fuel chips production technology from the locality "stump" up to delivery to the customer. Energy demand was assessed by using the LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) method with a special focus on the energetically most intensive part - operation. After the deduction of all energy costs, the technology is effective and brings additional energy of 18.39 GJ on the input to the customer for each delivered atroton of green chips with an average caloric value of the supplied chips amounting to 20 GJ. At-1 (SIMANOV 1993). In the case of the customer Elektrarna Porici (Electric Power Plant), this means 1.8 MWh of energy that is supplied additionally with each ton of dendromass into the energy supply network. The highest energy demand is shown in the operational part (1.37 GJ. At-1) where the most energetically intensive operation is removal of slash (0.64 GJ. At-1). The second most demanding operation is haulage with a share of 0.43 GJ. At-1 in total energy costs. Haulage effectiveness depends on the hauling distance and on the amount of dendromass transported per haul. The share of the technology manufacture in the total energy balance amounts only to 10% of energy costs. Results of this work facilitate a comparison with other technologies and establishment of procedures with the lowest demand of energy.In this article, the definition of sustainability is discussed, particularly in relation to the use of marine feed resources. The current review gives an overview of the development of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) aquaculture and how it has evolved due to changes in legal and management framework conditions. Atlantic salmon production is characterized with high utilization of nutrients, a high yield of production, and a large demand for rendered by-products. All of these factors compare favorably to production of most terrestrial farm animals. Historically, salmon feed has contained fishmeal and fish oil as the primary protein and fat source. Rising demand for feed ingredients has not increased pressure on forage fish resources. Rather, there has been an increased use of plant protein and fat sources. Increased utilization of plant ingredients may not be as sustainable as often claimed. Provided that marine harvest is carried out within legal frames, harvesting the marine ecosystem is a sustainable operation, and at present, the only significant source of long chain n-3 fatty acids. It is concluded that Atlantic salmon farming can be compared to raising a marine "super chicken" being among the most sustainable meat products in the world food market.In field conditions was evaluated behavior improved bush bean genotypes UDENAR ANDINO 100 FACIANAR LIMONENO 100 with regional varieties in the municipalities of Yacuanquer, Iles and Imues. We used a randomized block design with three treatments and three replications. This research was made a life cycle assessment and yield components, the data was the analysis of variance and Tukey comparison of average 95%. The evaluation highlighted the improved genotypes UDENAR ANDINO 100 FACIANAR LIMONENO 100 in different localities, and the most precocious of Zaragoza (Yacuanquer) with 45.49 and 46.15 days to harvest maturity. Imbabello regional genotype was the most delayed flowering with 67.45 days, 119.57 days a pod filling and 158.0 days to harvest maturity in the town of Almag (Imues). In terms of performance highlighted the improved genotypes UDENAR ANDINO 100 FACIANAR LIMONENO 100 in all locations, obtaining the highest performance in Tablon Alto (Iles) to 2310.47 and 2000.67 kg / ha respectively. The production was lower regional line 2001 with 990.54 and 567.57 kg / ha in Guaca and Zaragoza (Yacuanquer). Net income improved genotypes were obtained with the UDENAR ANDINO 100 FACIANAR LIMONENO 100 High (Iles) with $ 3,073,795 and $ 2,824,385 respectively. Bachue was the highest net income among the regional genotypes in Cuarchud $ 2.721286 (Imues).The variety of ranges, modalities and meanings of metropolitan daily travels depends on numerous and combined factors. When confronting daily mobilities and other relationships between an individual and the urban territory, especially the house conceived as its practical and symbolic axis, individual territorial configurations appear and reveal the meaning of urban -both daily and residential-(in) mobilities. The case of low-incoome households settled in a suburban neighbourhood of Santiago, Chile, expose several configurations between the neighbourhood withdrawal and the metropolitan mobility. Each one of these two poles can be read as the product of a peculiar distribution of socio-economic resources, which refers to an opposition between social classes: lower-local class and middle-metropolitan class. The dwellers with more community resources move within their neighbourhood, whereas the ones with more individual resources travel at a metropolitan range. But a life cycle analysis reveals that age provokes the local withdrawal too. Each interpretation complements the other one and describe the ambivalent inclusion of low-income dwellers simultaneously in their city and in their class, which leads us to consider a so-called "middled" class.In this paper, based on the practice of manganese production in China, a preliminary life cycle assessment (LCA) of the electrolytic manganese industry is provided, and an analysis of its environmental impact is carried out. A comparison is made between China and South Africa. By comparison, it can be seen that the environmental impact of the manganese production industry in China is more serious. New process technology can be expected to save energy and clean up production.Renewable energy sources (RES) are an alternative for conventional fuels in energy production processes both heat and electricity. Are seen as beneficial for the environment inter alia because the fact that they don't cause depletion of fossil fuel resources. Their promotion is one of the most important policy objectives in EU and Polish. The main source of renewable energy in Poland is biomass, from which in 2009 3.4% of electricity was produced. Moreover, it is increasingly being used to produce thermal energy in small installations. Presented model solutions for the energy use of biomass in small boilers, taking into account the legal aspects, market and environmental factors indicate the importance of market conditions (local market). Using the methodology of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) to assess the potential environmental impact of energy production from biomass showed the importance of transport in the process of obtaining heat energy from biomass. The assessment was carried out for four installation in public buildings in Malopolska region with small biomass boilers. Analyzed installations are located in: Schools of Economics and Food Management in Wojnicz. Installation for thermal use of biomass consists of two boilers (WEISS type Combicraft VOD) with a total capacity 1MW of heat energy, which are used for prepare hot water and heating buildings in the complex of school (main building with classrooms, workshop to provide practical training, a canteen, a gymnasium, a residential building for teachers, dormitory), with a total floor area of about 7 000 m(2). Boilers are fired with wood chips that come from aesthetic deforestation along roads and in parks in the district. Nursing Home in Lyszkowice. Installation for thermal use of biomass consists of three boilers (BIO PLEX's THERMOSTAL HL) with a total capacity of 553 kW heat energy, which are used for prepare hot water and heating of buildings with a total cubature of approximately 25 000 m(3). The installation uses as a fuel surplus and waste from the production of cereals from the local agricultural production and the wood pellets, purchased from domestic suppliers. Primary School in Jordanow. Installation for thermal use of biomass consists of two boilers (BIO-VOLCANO) with a total capacity of 240 kW heat energy, used for heating purposes for schools building (cubature 6 000 m(3)). Fuel used to operate this installation is mainly wood pellets, which is purchased from suppliers, both domestic and foreign. Volunteer Fire Brigade Building and Municipal Center of Culture and Promotion. Small biomass heating system that uses a boiler (THERMOSTAL) with a total capacity of 60 kW heat energy is used to heat the two buildings with total floor space about 1 200 m(2), and the fuel used in this installation is mainly cereals (oats, corn) coming from surplus and waste from local agricultural production. Miechow Municipality. In the 42 households have been installed boilers with a capacity of 25 kW heat energy each, designed to burn oat. They are used by farmers to heat their household, and as fuel they use surplus and waste from agricultural production.This article describes the influence of the production process of a new type of flocculant obtained from the post-production waste of phenolformaldehyde resin on the quality of environment. Flocculants, used mainly in the processes of treatment of industrial and municipal wastewater, may also be employed in numerous industrial processes, such as thickening of suspensions in the processing of zinc and copper, carbon thickening and filtration, flocculation of ores after enrichment during the flotation process. Implementation of new technologies requires application of adequate methods for assessing the obtained ecological effects, which may contribute towards a higher ecological level of production. One of the methods which allows to determine the impact of a designed/implemented technology on the environment throughout the entire life cycle is the LCA - Life Cycle Assessment. The basis for the environmental research was the bench-scale technological research of the production process of amine derivatives of post-production waste of phenol-formaldehyde resin - SE novolac. The purpose of the analysis was to determine the environmental impact of the process of modification of post-production waste of SE novolac. In order to perform the LCA of the production of a potential flocculant, a production line was designed for the production of a new type of goods. The technological assumptions for the production of a new type of flocculant served as the basis for producing inventory tables on the basis of which a potential environmental impact of the product was determined, by application of the LCA, with the use of the SimaPro software, selecting three different methods of analysis: Eco-indicator 99, IMPACT 2002+, and ReCiPe. The functional unit was assumed to be 100 kg of amine derivative of SE novolac, as this was presumed to be the daily amount of production. Conducted with the application of the Eco-indicator 99, ReCiPe and Impact 2002+ methods, the LCA of the production process of amine derivative of SE novolac showed high variance in the results obtained, which is caused by different amounts of years for the normalization stage, as well as different weighing techniques in individual methods. This is why the ISO standards do not recommend announcing any results after the weighing stage. Such results may, however, be used in interpreting results of a sensitivity analysis, etc. High discrepancies in the final results suggest that the cause may well be the application of different characterization parameters for the same categories of influence in the applied methods. In all the methods applied, the factor influencing the environment is chiefly tin chloride. This is due to the fact that tin metal, hydrochloric acid, and electricity are used in its production. The environmental impact of hydrochloric acid is also considerable, as it is used in direct production of the discussed flocculant and of tin chloride. The analysis showed that the production of amine derivative of SE novolac involves high levels of reagents. Producing 1 Mg of flocculant requires the use of over 4 Mg of sulphuric acid, approx. 1.6 Mg of nitric acid, 4.8 Mg of hydrochloric acid, approx. 4 Mg of tin chloride, and 3 Mg of water. Their negative environmental impact is not reduced by using 1.5 Mg of post-production waste of phenol-formaldehyde resins. Variance in the results is also a proof of development and improvement of the LCA methodology.Environmental and energetic evaluation of biogas production from plant biomass is presented in the paper. Environmental assessment of biogas production technology has been analysed in terms of life cycle assessment methodology and energetic evaluation has been performed including direct and indirect energy inputs of soil tillage, cultivation, sowing, fertilization, yield harvesting, transportation, ensiling and digesting to biogas. Perennial grasses - cocksfoot grass (Dactylis glomerata), reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) and tall fescue grass (Festuca arundinacea) have been investigated. It is determined that emissions of direct energy input during the digestion tall fescue grass and reed canary grass - 0,069 and 0,067 kgCO(2)/kg biomass were the highest. The highest gas leakage found to be in the cocksfoot grass biomass digestion case -0,072 kgCO(2)/kg biomass. Results of analysis of total energy input for plant biomass show energy input of 0,714 MJ/kg biomass for tall fescue grass, 0,755 MJ/kg biomass - reed canary grass and 0,869 MJ/kg biomass - cocksfoot grass. Energy potential of cocksfoot grass, tall fescue grass and reed canary grass have been found to be 4,03, 4,03 and 3,37 MJ/kg biomass respectively. These results suggest that cultivation of perennial grasses and anaerobic digestion to biogas is energy efficient and environment friendly way of renewable energy creation.In this case study, forest fuel procurement chains of stumps and logging residues were evaluated using a Life Cycle Assessment perspective. Direct emissions from combustion were not included, but soil organic carbon change was included as changes in carbon stocks in litter and soil. The results showed that primary forest biomass for energy has a climate impact which is time dependent. However, in long-time perspectives, there are large greenhouse gas (GHG) savings. In a short-term (20 years), there were no GHG savings when natural gas or coal was replaced. This is due to the fact that the harvest lead to decreased input of organic matter to the soil which is compared to a reference where biomass are left to decompose. The reduction in soil organic carbon may have been underestimated in the stump harvest systems studied, as the effect of soil disturbance per se was not included. Important factors when assessing GHG balance of forest fuels, besides the time horizon used, were site productivity, geographical position and forest fuel resource (stumps or logging residues). When assessing the greenhouse gas savings, efficiency of the end-use, allocation method between heat and power and type of fossil fuel replaced were also important.In Polish conditions, one of the types of investments which bring financial benefits for the investor and also reduce the load of the environment is thermal insulation. This article shows how to make an evaluation of sample of investment, which is the thermal insulation of the exterior boundary walls, from the financial side. Indicators to assess the investment in ecological terms, using life cycle assessment LCA are also proposed. An analysis of different options depending on the thermal insulation was made. Analysis includes: properties of the exterior boundary walls against thermal insulation, the type of thermal insulation and type of heat source in the building.The paper describes a framework for promoting sustainability by using indicators for sustainable production. The concept of sustainable production is described as it is viewed by various organisms actions involved in the analysis of the sustainable industrial systems. The measure of sustainability is approached considering indicators of sustainable production, addressing both their dimensions and qualitative and quantitative features. The proposed framework refines the sustainability dimension for a case study which envisages sustainability in paper manufacturing. The analysis takes into account the life cycle analysis for the considered process since the environmental impact is seen as an essential sustainability indicator. Paper recycling and reuse is associated environmental and social costs, as a preferred alternative in waste minimization hierarchy in the manufacturing of non-trees eco-friendly paper. Proactive initiatives to improve the environmental performances of production process are considered as powerful tools for improving the paper manufacturing environmental footprint.An assessment was conducted of the known and documented effects of electricity generation on vertebrate wildlife in the New York/New England (NY/NE) region. A Comparative Ecological Risk Assessment incorporating Life Cycle Assessment (CERA(LCA)) was constructed to make objective comparisons among the six types of electricity generation important to the NY/NE region: coal, oil, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Nonrenewable electricity generation sources, such as coal and oil, pose higher risks to wildlife than renewable electricity generation sources, such as hydro and wind. Based on the comparative amounts of SO2, NOx, CO2, and mercury emissions generated from coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro and the associated effects of acidic deposition, climate change, and mercury bioaccumulation, coal as an electricity generation source is by far the largest contributor to risks to wildlife found in the NY/NE region. The focus of this chapter is primarily on the role of stakeholders and how interactions between the authors and these stakeholders influenced and improved the final product. Thus, while the scientific aspects of the study have been much condensed to provide a full accounting of the stakeholder process, we hope that sufficient coverage of the technical aspects has been provided for the reader to fully appreciate the derivation of our conclusions. For those who would like additional information on the original study, we refer them to the March 2009 report available on line at http://www.nyserda.org/publications/Report%2009-02%20Wildlife%20report%20-%20web.pdf.After initial success stories structural health monitoring saw some setback due to the miss match between costumer's expectations and practical performance. These deficits are mainly attributable to the fact that monitoring and engineering expertise for structures does not go hand in hand. Monitoring shall not replace visual inspection but rather improve it. Therefore it is essential that inspectors see the benefit from monitoring and apply it. Not enough has been done to offer them services in a way they need it and where the impact is clearly visible. SHM requires international guidelines, which structure the process from the initial concept to system installation, engineering services till the periodic maintenance and update activities. The co-existence with visual inspection and traditional methods has to be demonstrated. Finally the interface to the clients and owners has to be put into the focus of our community. They are neither interested in data nor in complicated explanations. They require information on which decisions can be made. This has to be targeted and concise expertise which fits into their working process. The paper will show how a monitoring process can lead to a condition assessment which is needed to improve the life cycle assessment.Adequate structural safety should be ensured by proper design, fabrication and operation as well as by appropriate quality assurance and control throughout the life-cycle. The focus of this paper is to determine the design, inspection and repair procedures required to ensure satisfactory safety with respect to degradation. Design and inspection criteria are specified in codes in a generic manner. Hence, particular features of individual structures revealed during fabrication and operation need to be accounted for in updating inspections plans. In this regard, fatigue cracks are of special concern. Recent efforts to establish rational, reliability-based procedures for life-cycle assessment of fixed offshore platforms are outlined. The implication of gross errors which affect the initial crack size of welded structures is especially discussed.For predicting the life-cycle of guyed structures under turbulent wind loads, a model-chain has to be applied including models for: wind-loading; mechanical behaviour of the structure; and fatigue analysis. Each model affects the predicted lifetime. Unsteady wind load models in the frequency domain require a linearisation of the structure's nonlinearities due to the sagging cables. Quasi-steady models for the wind loading in the time domain lead to forces that correspond to measurements only in high winds. This paper gives an overview of the identification of complex aerodynamic admittances in full-scale measurements. Aerodynamic impulse response functions in combination with nonlinear numerical simulations of guyed masts in the time domain under turbulent wind are used for a life-cycle analysis. The results indicate a reduction of the predicted damage compared with common quasi-steady simulations of buffeting wind loads.We depend on our forests and agricultural lands to supply most of our biofiber needs. For pulp and paper, we depend on a sustainable wood resource while turning to nonwood agricultural biomass for alternative supply. For building materials, such as biofiber boards, we also depend on wood however many countries are running out of wood and are beginning to depend more and more on biofibers from nonwood resources. While wood is the largest single source of biofiber in the world, nonwood agricultural biomass including bast, leaf and seed also contain biofibers that can be utilized. Biofibers can be used to produce a wide variety of products including biofiber boards (both flat and three dimensional, with and without an added adhesive, low to high density), molded biofiber (with and without added adhesives) for non-structural applications, biofiber nonwoven for filters and sorbents, and biofiber-reinforced composites for automobile and construction applications. Since biofibers are degradable by microorganisms, swell and shrink with changing moisture contents, combust and are degraded by ultraviolet radiation, we can modify the fibers to improve performance and increase the service life of the biofiber composites.The laundering procedures for health institutions and the food-processing industry must ensure the elimination of impurities and appropriate levels of hygiene. In addition to the classical combination of chemo-thermal disinfection procedures, the laundering procedure based on the liquid carbon dioxide (LCO) technology is becoming more and more assertive. In the previous studies on laundry care processes, the evaluations of disinfection effects have become prominent, while sadly the environmental impacts have remained in the background. The research focused on comparing the environment impacts caused by chemical-thermal and CO, laundering procedures regarding medical textiles. Bioindicators, classical and prototype LCO, equipment for the textile laundry, detergents, disinfectants and auxiliary agents, as well as the sampling equipment and sampling methods were used for the evaluation of disinfection effects. This paper introduces performed wastewater ecological analyses using a chemo-thermal procedure in accordance with the Slovenian regulation on the substance emission during the removal of wastewater from laundries and dry-cleaner's (Slovenian Official Gazette 41/2007). Energy and environmental balances for both laundering procedures were prepared. Life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle inventories (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies were taken into account. The results of our investigation point to the fact that the energy used for 1 kg of textiles during one-bath LCO2 procedure is in comparison with the chemo-thermal procedure lower by 2,800 kJ. It was also discovered that a classical chemo-thermal procedure has four times higher global warming potential (GWP(TG)) and acidification potential (AP) than the one-bath LCO2 laundering procedure, regarding disinfection.Transportation engineers, planners, and policy makers are currently faced with the need to incorporate sustainability issues such as energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and overall health impacts into the decisionmaking process. Life-cycle environmental analysis (LCEA) is one of the evolving tools available to assist in this effort. LCEA differs from traditional environmental analysis in that LCEA takes a more comprehensive look, or global perspective, at the environmental and resource burden of specific management decisions as opposed to traditional environmental analysis, which tends to focus almost exclusively on specific impacts at the activity or in the immediate geographic vicinity of the activity. The results of a study are presented: the computer program Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment Tool for Environmental and Economic Effects (PaLATE) was used to compare the environmental burden of employing cold in-place recycling with the environmental burden of the conventional maintenance options of a 3-in, mill and fill and a 3-in. hot-mix asphalt overlay. The results illustrate the potential of life-cycle environmental models to assist transportation officials in developing 21st century transportation policy as well as the current limitations associated with their use.Computer-based Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) models were carried out to compare lightweight composites with the traditional aluminium over their useful lifetime. The analysis included raw materials, production, useful life in operation and disposal at the end of the material's useful life. The carbon fibre epoxy resin composite could in some cases reduce the weight of a component by up to 40 % compared to aluminium. As the fuel consumption of an aircraft is strongly influenced by its total weight, the emissions can be significantly reduced by increasing the proportion of composites used in the aircraft structure. Higher emissions, compared to aluminium, produced during composites production meet their 'break even' point after certain number of time units when used in aircraft structures, and continue to save emissions over their long-term operation. The study highlighted the environmental benefits of using lightweight structures in aircraft design, and also showed that utilisation of composites in products without energy saving may lead to increased emissions in the environment.Low waste collection efficiency and financial constraints along with poor planning and lack of study on changing complexities of municipal waste lead to worsening of municipal solid waste related problem, which results in masking the goal of sustainable management of municipal solid waste (MSW). An integrated planning and capacity building is required backed by financial support to control the situation. Life cycle assessment, categorisation, recycling and reduction in all types of wastes and proper landfilling are required.Contribution of beef and dairy cattle production in the United States (U.S.) to anthropogenic climate change is a growing public policy concern. In recent years, research in this area has begun to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emission sources from beef and dairy cattle production systems and develop initial mitigation strategies to reduce GHG emissions without compromising animal productivity. Developing an in-depth and accurate understanding of GHG emission sources from these cattle systems is challenging because of the variability across farms, ranches, and feedlots, and the variation between animal types on individual operations. Emission sources can be distinguished into two main categories: enteric fermentation and manure. However, to fully quantify all GHG emission sources from the beef and dairy production systems, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) should be completed that includes all emission sources from cradle to fork. Included in this assessment would be GHG sources associated with animal management, emissions during processing, and emissions associated with transportation of the finished product to the consumer. This chapter focuses on GHG emissions from the dairy and beef production systems derived from enteric fermentation and manure.As the global population increases, more milk, meat and eggs need to be produced using fewer resources and with a lower environmental impact. Over the past century, improving productivity has considerably reduced the carbon footprint of dairy and beef production, yet consumers often perceive extensive, 'traditional' systems to have a low carbon footprint. Scientific analysis shows that intensive animal production systems have a lower carbon footprint than extensive systems - improved education of consumers, retailers and media is therefore required to overcome popular misconceptions relating to the carbon footprint of animal agriculture.The paper notes that operational standards about life cycle are required new knowledge. In such a context the present paper addresses the following issues: - present some brief observations regarding the structure and actual content of LCA; - present some improvement proposals for the content of LCA and the methods used, insists on the role of their stages of use and scrapping of the product; - prove the influence of pollution and process pollutants upon LCA components; - social aspects regarding life cycle;With the increasing attention on developing a low-carbon economy, it is necessary to seek appropriate ways on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through innovative municipal solid waste management (MSWM), such as urban symbiosis. However, quantitative assessments on the environmental benefits of urban symbiosis, especially in developing countries, are limited because only a limited number of planned synergistic activities have been successful and it is difficult to acquire detailed inventory data from private companies. This paper modifies and applies a two-step simulation system and used it to assess the potential environmental benefits, including the reduction of GHG emissions and saving of fossil fuels, by employing various Japanese plastics recycling/energy-recovery technologies in Shenyang, China. The results showed that among various recycling/energy-recovery technologies, the mechanical waste plastics recycling technology, which produces concrete formwork boards (NF boards), has the greatest potential in terms of reducing GHG emissions (1.66 kg CO(2)e/kg plastics), whereas the technology for the production of refuse plastic fuel (RPF) has the greatest potential on saving fossil fuel consumption (0.77 kgce/kg-plastics). Additional benefits can be gained by applying combined technologies that cascade the utilization of waste plastics. Moreover, the development of clean energy in conjunction with the promotion of new waste plastics recycling programs could contribute to additional reductions in GHG emissions and fossil fuel consumption. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sludge treatment wetlands (STW) emerge as a promising sustainable technology with low energy requirements and operational costs. In this study, technical, economic and environmental aspects of STW are investigated and compared with other alternatives for sludge management in small communities (< 2000 population equivalent). The performance of full-scale STW was characterised during 2 years. Sludge dewatering increased total solids (TS) concentration by 25%, while sludge biodegradation lead to volatile solids around 45% IS and DRI24h between 1.1 and 1.4 gO(2)/kgTS h, suggesting a partial stabilisation of biosolids. In the economic and environmental assessment, four scenarios were considered for comparison: 1) STW with direct land application of biosolids, 2) STW with compost post-treatment, 3) centrifuge with compost post-treatment and 4) sludge transport to an intensive wastewater treatment plant. According to the results, STW with direct land application is the most cost-effective scenario, which is also characterised by the lowest environmental impact. The life cycle assessment highlights that global warming is a significant impact category in all scenarios, which is attributed to fossil fuel and electricity consumption; while greenhouse gas emissions from STW are insignificant. As a conclusion, STW are the most appropriate alternative for decentralised sludge management in small communities. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment was used to evaluate environmental impacts associated to a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Barcelona Metropolitan Area, with a treatment capacity of 2 million population equivalent, focussing on energy aspects and resources consumption. The wastewater line includes conventional pre-treatment, primary settler, activated sludge with nitrogen removal, and tertiary treatment; and the sludge line consists of thickening, anaerobic digestion, cogeneration, dewatering and thermal drying. Real site data were preferably included in the inventory. Environmental impacts of the resulting impact categories were determined by the CLM 2 baseline method. According to the results, the combustion of natural gas in the cogeneration engine is responsible for the main impact on Climate Change and Depletion of Abiotic Resources, while the combustion of biogas in the cogeneration unit accounts for a minor part. The results suggest that the environmental performance of the WWTP would be enhanced by increasing biogas production through improved anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge.An ASM2da model of the full-scale waste water plant of Bree (Belgium) has been made. It showed very good correlation with reference operational data. This basic model has been extended to include an accurate calculation of environmental footprint and operational costs (energy consumption, dosing of chemicals and sludge treatment). Two optimisation strategies were compared: lowest cost meeting the effluent consent versus lowest environmental footprint. Six optimisation scenarios have been studied, namely (i) implementation of an online control system based on ammonium and nitrate sensors, (ii) implementation of a control on MLSS concentration, (iii) evaluation of internal recirculation flow, (iv) oxygen set point, (v) installation of mixing in the aeration tank, and (vi) evaluation of nitrate setpoint for post denitrification. Both an environmental impact or Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based approach for optimisation are able to significantly lower the cost and environmental footprint. However, the LCA approach has some advantages over cost minimisation of an existing full-scale plant. LCA tends to chose control settings that are more logic: it results in a safer operation of the plant with less risks regarding the consents. It results in a better effluent at a slightly increased cost.Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to evaluate three different water systems of the water sector in Copenhagen, Denmark, including technologies within water supply, facilities recycling water and treatment of sewer overflow. In these three water systems LCA was used to evaluate the environmental impacts of each of the processes involved. The overall conclusion was that LCA is suitable as a decision support tool in the water sector as it provides a holistic evaluation platform of the considered alternatives categorised in environmental impact categories. The use of LCA in the water sector of this region has limitations since it does not yet consider impact categories assessing freshwater scarcity and ecological sustainability.Resource efficiency of wastewater management is a question of optimizing at the same time the management of resources in wastewater (e. g. water), the resources spent on treatment and transport (e. g. energy), the natural resources to protect (e. g. the receiving waters), and the anthropogenic resources (e. g. capital). For instance, wastewater can be treated to any given quality, but only at the expense of energy and investment costs. Today, many up-coming problems are solved incrementally, leading to resource consuming solutions optimized for water pollution control in well off countries, whereas large parts of the world have at the best very simple wastewater treatment. From a global point of view, a system change is necessary in order to solve the immense problems arising from global population growth, urban development and climate change. Source separation is a promising concept for resource efficient wastewater management, but a more concerted effort is necessary from the international community in order to develop competitive technologies and overcome the inflexibility of the present end-of-pipe technology. Much more research and development are necessary, not only in the area of engineering, but also with respect to the socio-economic dimensions, especially in the area of regulation, suitable governance and management models, and concerning the involvement of industrial partners.Between 1999 and 2007, several successive years of severe drought put South East Queensland's water supply under immense pressure. The decision was taken in 2005 to build a seawater desalination plant and three water recycling advanced treatment plants as part of a large investment plan to secure the region's potable water supply. The infrastructure built and commissioned in the past 3 years has a combined capacity producing more than 350,000 m(3) per day of very high quality water that can be used either directly (seawater desalination) or indirectly (recycled water) for supplying drinking water. All the plants primarily rely on reverse osmosis membranes for water purification which is an effective and reliable barrier to contaminants, but also requires high energy consumption and a high level of pre-treatment and chemicals. In this paper, the actual energy consumption of two of the plants (the seawater desalination plant and one water recycling plant) was investigated with the perspective of drinking water production over the July 2009-June 2010 period. Eolia (TM) Potable Water, a Life Cycle Analysis tool developed by Veolia Environnement Research & Innovation, was used to model the processes and estimate the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from both plants. As expected, the energy requirement of the desalination was higher (approximately 2.2 times) than the water recycling plant. The plants were found to be significantly more energy efficient when operated at higher flow. In both cases, the purchase of electrical energy represented by far the major contribution to GHG emissions. Indirect GHG emissions from chemical consumption could be reduced at the water recycling plant by optimising the dose of ferric chloride used at the plant and sourcing the chemical from a less distant supplier.The management of natural resources is a subject that often arises when sustainable development is considered. Use of wood products results in lower GHG emissions into the atmosphere than competing products and thus a lower overall environmental impact. As renewable biological raw material, wood is used in numerous applications, and is therefore gaining in its importance. However, to achieve sustainable development, certain criteria within a framework of economic, environmental and social systems must be followed. Only effective use of wood through the whole value chain from forest management and multiple uses of forest resources through new wood and fibre-based materials and processing technologies to new end use concepts e.g. in the area of construction, can lead to sustainable development. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA analysis) must be performed across all product stages, from primary processing, through use, to disposal. The aim of this paper is to present the applicability of LCA analysis in new products development on the example of carbon footprint calculations of recently developed multifunctional furniture, in which thermally modified wood is incorporated.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to help readers understand the nature of the food supply chain and the way that environmental "costs" are accumulated along its length, with a view to developing more sustainable supply chains from political, social, economic technological and environmental perspectives. Design/methodology/approach - In order to do this, the authors have examined elements of the supply chain starting off by looking at consumer expectations and moving on to the environmental impact of different food types, different production systems, food transport and food waste. A series of calculations looking at the costings for different types of meals, with different environmental credentials, that might be served at different events is included to put some of the more abstract ideas of and environmental cost/benefit into context. Findings - Performing a thorough life cycle analysis of a meal is a very complex and far from certain procedure. It is essential for us to develop our techniques in order to make informed decisions, but in a commercial world probably the best approach is to adopt a broad set of criteria that are likely to give environmental benefits both to the business, the consumer and broader society. In some cases, this may be best achieved by adopting or developing some sort of accreditation scheme or brand. Practical implications - This paper gives event managers and others involved in the food supply chain context within which to start thinking about more environmentally sound peculiar and of foodstuffs. Originality/value - This paper represents a broad overview pulling together many sets of original findings from a very diverse interdisciplinary literature base.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to evaluate the environmental load of a product, process, or activity throughout its life cycle. Such assessment comprises four steps: (1) goal definition and scoping, (2) life cycle inventory analysis (LCI), (3) impact assessment, and (4) interpretation. Protected cultivation is a promising production system for stable supply of vegetables. On the other hand, environment control, e. g., temperature and light, inside the greenhouse requires the use of energy and it results the environmental load. In this study, a LCI was conducted to evaluate the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from two different types of plant factories, where leafy vegetables were grown. Depending upon the degree of the growth environmental control, one is called a perfect control type, and the other is called a hybrid type meaning the sunlight is used in addition to the use of artificial illuminants in the facility. The functional unit (FU) was set as the amount of CO2 emission per kg of vegetable. In a perfect controlled facility, the amount of 6.4 kg of CO2 was emitted per kg of leaf lettuce production, and 2.3 kg of CO2 was emitted by spinach production in the hybrid type plant factory. The amount of CO2 emission from lighting and air-conditioning tended to be large in both plant factories. 90 and 70% of CO2 were emitted from the use of artificial light and air-conditioning system in the perfectly controlled factory and the hybrid factory, respectively. The result suggested that consumption of electric power was highly responsible for the amount of CO2 emission in the plant factories.The taxonomic position of Hormaphis similibetulae Qiao & Zhang, 2004 has been reexamined. The phylogenetic position of H. similibetulae was inferred by maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses on the basis of partial nuclear elongation factor-1 alpha and mitochondrial tRNA leucine/cytochrome oxidase II sequences. The results showed that this species fell into the clade of Hamamelistes species, occupying a basal position, and was clearly distinct from other Hormaphis species. A closer relationship between H. similibetulae and Hamamelistes species was also revealed by life cycle analysis. Therefore, we conclude that H. similibetulae should be transferred to the genus Hamamelistes as Hamamelistes similibetulae (Qiao & Zhang), comb. n. To date, key water energy connections have not been systematically quantified. Nor has their potential for contributing to greenhouse gas mitigation been evaluated. Lack of knowledge of these links, particularly within cities, is viewed as a major limitation to energy-sensitive urban water management and integrated urban design. This paper fills part of this void. The key contribution is a new conceptual model coupled with a systematic review of the connections of influence. Drawing on Australian and international data, the results provide a structured estimate of water-related energy use and associated emissions in a hypothetical city of 1,000,000 people. This demonstrates that water-related energy use accounts for 13% of total electricity and 18% of the natural gas used by the population in the average case. This represents 9% of the total primary energy demand within Australia or 8% of total national territorial greenhouse gas emissions. Residential, industrial and commercial water-related energy use constitutes 86% of water-related greenhouse gas emissions. We conclude that urban water is a significant and overlooked lever that could significantly influence urban energy consumption.The physical input-output table (PIOT) is a useful tool for analyzing the environmental sustainability of cities. Taking Chinese statistical sources as an example in this study, we discuss data acquisition methods for applying the PIOT to cities. We propose several methods and present a case study of Suzhou City to illustrate the proposed methods. These methods can provide foundations for constructing the PIOT of cities in other countries.Urban green space and particularly the tree canopy have been highlighted as offering a mitigation potential against atmospheric particulate pollution. In this paper current and future particulate (PM(10)) deposition to the urban tree canopy of the Greater London Authority (GLA) was estimated. A modelling approach was used based on the Urban Forest Effects Model (UFORE) and a modified version. Here we give evidence showing that these deposition models can be adapted to run from annual mean meteorological and PM(10) concentration data, thus providing a methodology to examine future scenarios. Depending on the modelling approach, the urban canopy of the GLA is currently estimated to remove between 852 and 2121 tonnes of PM(10) annually: representing between 0.7% and 1.4% of PM(10) from the urban boundary layer. Estimates of PM(10) removal which take into account a planned increased in tree cover, from the current 20% to 30% of the GLA land area, suggest deposition of 1109-2379 tonnes (1.1-2.6% removal) by the year 2050. The evidence provided here suggests that the targeting of tree planting in the most polluted areas of the GLA and particularly the use of street trees which have the greatest exposure to PM(10), would have the greatest benefit to future air quality. The increased deposition would be greatest if a larger proportion of coniferous to broadleaved trees were used at such sites. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Planning for "water-sensitive" cities has become a priority for sustainable urban development in Australia. There has been little quantification of the term, however. Furthermore, the water balance of most cities is not well known. Following prolonged drought, there has also been a growing need to make Australian cities more water self-reliant: to source water from within. This article formalizes a systematic mass-balance framework to quantify all anthropogenic and natural flows into and out of the urban environment. Quantitative performance indicators are derived, including (1) degree of system centralization; (2) overall balance; potential of (3) rainfall, (4) stormwater, and (5) wastewater to offset current demand; and (6) water cycle rate. Using the method, we evaluate Sydney, Melbourne, South East Queensland and Perth using reported and modeled data. The approach makes visible large flows of water that have previously been unaccounted and ignored. It also highlights significant intercity variation. In 2004-2005, the cities varied 54% to 100% in their supply centralization, 257% to 397% in the ratio of rainfall and water use, 47% to 104% in their potential stormwater recycling potential, and 26% to 86% in wastewater recycling potential. The approach provides a practical, water-focused application of the urban metabolism framework. It demonstrates how the principles of mass balance can help foster robust water accounting, monitoring, and management. More important, it contributes to the design and quantitative assessment of water-sensitive cities of the future.Following formative work in the 1970s. disappearance in the 1980s, and reemergence in the 1990s, a chronological review shows that the past decade has witnessed increasing interest in the study of urban metabolism. The review finds that there are two related, non-conflicting, schools of urban metabolism: one following Odum describes metabolism in terms of energy equivalents: while the second more broadly expresses a city's flows of water, materials and nutrients in terms of mass fluxes. Four example applications of urban metabolism studies are discussed: urban sustainability indicators; inputs to urban greenhouse gas emissions calculation; mathematical models of urban metabolism for policy analysis; and as a basis for sustainable urban design. Future directions include fuller integration of social, health and economic indicators into the urban metabolism framework, while tackling the great sustainability challenge of reconstructing cities. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities can be modeled as if they were superorganisms with a range of metabolic processes. Research on this urban metabolism can contribute to solving urban environmental problems by revealing details of the metabolic throughput of the system. A key issue is how to find a common basis for measuring the environmental and economic values. By providing a single unified unit, emergy theory integrates the natural and socioeconomic systems and thoroughly evaluates a system's metabolism. We analyzed Beijing's urban metabolic system using emergy synthesis to evaluate its environmental resources, economy, and environmental and economic relations with the regions outside the city during 14 years of development. We compared Beijing's emergy indices with those of five other Chinese cities and of China as a whole to assess Beijing's relative development status. These indices are the emergy self-support ratio (metabolic dependence), the environmental load ratio (metabolic loading), empower density (metabolic pressure), emergy used per person (metabolic intensity per capita), and the monetary equivalent of emergy (emdollars: metabolic intensity). Based on our emergy analysis, Beijing's socioeconomic system is not self-sufficient, and depends greatly on external environmental resources. Its GDP is supported by a high percentage of emergy purchased from outside the city. During the study period, Beijing's urban system showed an increasing dependence on external resources for its economic development. Beijing's loading and pressure on the ecological environment is continuously increasing, accompanied by continuously increasing human emergy consumption. In the future, it will become increasingly necessary to improve Beijing's metabolic efficiency. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban metabolism is a critical component of urban sustainability. On the basis of the driving force-pressure-state-response (DPSR) model and using material flow analysis, this article proposes a framework for sustainable urban management and policy assessment. A case study city in China, Suzhou, illustrates this framework. The results show that resource consumption (excluding water), water consumption, and waste generation (excluding carbon dioxide) in Suzhou after implementation of proposed policies will be 14% lower than 2005 levels, 4.5% higher, and 28.9% higher, respectively, in 2015. Carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions in Suzhou will increase by 71.0% in 2015 over 2005 levels, whereas carbon intensity (CO2 emissions per unit of gross domestic product) will decrease by 44.9%. Future pollution control in Suzhou should pay more attention to pollution from vehicles. In addition, goals for relative dematerialization of energy and decarbonization in Suzhou will be achieved before absolute ones are. In the short term, the urban metabolism of Suzhou in 2015 may meet corresponding urban objectives. In the longer term, however, reducing the city's resource demand and waste generation will pose challenges for the sustainability of SuzhouThis paper aims to measure raw material inputs and waste flows in an Irish city-region in order to analyse (i) whether there was absolute dematerialisation in the particular case study over the period 1992-2002 and (ii) whether material consumption and waste generation were decoupled from economic growth and increases in disposable income over the same period. It was found that the selected material flow indicators showed no evidence of absolute dematerialisation over the given study period, although more recent evidence at the national level suggests that a decline in construction activity and extraction of non-metallic minerals has resulted in an absolute reduction in material consumption and it is likely that this will be mirrored at the system boundary level. It was found that Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) per capita and Direct Material Input (DMI) per capita increased at a faster rate than Domestic Processed Output (DPO) per capita and Direct Material Output (DMO) per capita between 1992 and 2002, which indicates relative decoupling of consumption from waste generation. In addition, it was found that there was relative decoupling of consumption and waste generation from disposable income growth over the study period. Finally, it was found that average DMC and DMI figures for the selected case study were lower than the national averages but broadly similar to results for other city-regions in the European Union (EU). On a methodological note, it was concluded that material flow accounting (MFA) for city-regions in Ireland is constrained due to a lack of disaggregated data for material flows, with the exception of local waste data, and it is recommended that bottom-up analysis should be used to complement disaggregated top-down data. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Following the announcement of the China's 2020 national target for the reduction of the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45% compared with 2005 levels, Chinese provincial governments prepared to restructure provincial energy policy and plan their contribution to realizing the State reduction target. Focusing on Fujian and Anhui provinces as case studies, this paper reviews two contrasting policies as a means for meeting the national reduction target. That of the coastal province of Fujian proposes to do so largely through the development of nuclear power, whilst the coal-rich province of Anhui proposes to do so through its energy consumption rate rising at a lower rate than that of the rise in GDP. In both cases renewable energy makes up a small proportion of their proposed 2020 energy structures. The conclusion discusses in depth concerns about nuclear power policy, energy efficiency, energy consumption strategy and problems in developing renewable energy. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, GHG inventories of cities have expanded to include extra-boundary activities that form part of the city's urban metabolism and economy. This paper centers on estimating the emissions due to seaports, in such a way that they can be included as part of the city's inventory or be used by the port itself to monitor their policy and technology improvements for mitigating climate change. We propose the indicators GHG emissions per ton of cargo handled or per passenger and emissions per value of cargo handled as practical measures for policy making and emission prevention measures to be monitored over time. Adapting existing methodologies to the Port of Barcelona, we calculated a total of 331,390 tons of GHG emissions (CO2 equivalents) for the year of 2008, half of which were attributed to vessel movement (sea-based emissions) and the other half to port, land related activities (land-based emissions). The highest polluters were auto carriers with 6 kg of GHG emissions per ton of cargo handled. Knowing the highest emitters, the port can take action to improve the ship's activities within the port limits, such as maneuvering and hotelling. With these results, the port and the city can also find ways to reduce the land-based emissions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This emergy-based urban economic account provided a historical portrait of the urban economy and its structures to understand the overload of the biosphere's assimilative capacity. The basic situation of the urban economy, involving the indigenous resources base, emergy consumption patterns, emergy exports and imports, was investigated, accounted and discussed. Using a series of ratios and indices arising from emergy analysis, including emergy intensity, environmental load ratio and environmental sustainability, this paper analyzed the economic development in Beijing during the years of 1999 to 2006 and the heavy pressure it has put on the environment. Results showed that the development of economy in Beijing was closely correlated with the consumption of the non-renewable resources and it was exerting rising loads on the environment. Of the total emergy use by the economic system, the imported non-renewable resources from other provinces contributed most with increasing use from imported nonrenewable resources. Emergy intensity kept rising during the periods, with the increase of the environmental loads. The pressure of environmental protection, which was caused by the over-heated investments in Beijing, could be released after the completion of the infrastructure construction. On the whole, the results of this paper outlined a frame of reference towards how the urban metabolic analysis could drive the economic policies and sustainability. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Presented in this paper is an overview of environmental impacts in 31 typical Chinese cities in view of spatial variations based on emergy analysis. Moreover, the economic and ecological loss varies significantly across cities both in total sum due to diversities of geographic features, economic development levels and local energy use availability. A relative ranking of ESI variance ratio from the worst to best off showed the distribution of China's urban ecosystem metabolic levels. The results offer not only a classification of urban emissions' impacts during the investigation period, but also the spatial hierarchy which may explain the spatial pattern of the landscape. This paper provides a reference towards how the urban environmental impacts drive economic policy and sustainability.This emergy-based four angle model application is used to depict the variations of urban metabolic profile (energy and money) based on the changes experienced across the economic sectors over the years. The urban metabolic structure and efficiency results obtained for Beijing are compared to those for other European cities. In addition, for the Beijing's case, the study creates the foundation for a future analysis comparing the development of Beijing with that of Rome. The results imply that over three decade Beijing's urbanizing movement has greatly promoted the sustained development of the real estate and growth of urban household. The results also indicate that the emergy-based four angle model can be refined to become an integrative tool for evaluation, policy-making and regulation for ecosystem management concerning structure and efficiency at urban levels. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The flows of carbon and energy produced by urbanized areas represent one of the aspects of urban sustainability that can have an important impact on climate change. For this reason, in recent years the quantitative estimation of the so-called urban metabolism components has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers from different fields. On the other hand, it has been well recognized that the structure and design of future urban development can significantly affect the flows of material and energy exchanged by an urban area with its surroundings. In this context, the paper discusses a software framework able to estimate the carbon exchanges accounting for alternative scenarios which can influence urban development. The modelling system is based on four main components: (i) a Cellular Automata model for the simulation of the urban land-use dynamics; (ii) a transportation model, able to estimate the variation of the transportation network load and (iii) the ACASA (Advanced Canopy-Atmosphere-Soil Algorithm) model which was tightly coupled with the (iv) mesoscale weather model WRF for the estimation of the relevant urban metabolism components. An in-progress application to the city of Florence is presented and discussed.The process of urbanization is one that is inextricably linked with the consumption of material, energy, and water resources. Urban metabolism provides a framework for characterizing the magnitudes of these urban resource requirements by considering the extended analogy of the biological metabolic process. In this study we propose a System Dynamics approach for linking the stocks and flows of urban metabolism with the socioeconomic activities of cities. We also present initial results from its application to the island city-state of Singapore. In the long term, we intend this technique of dynamic urban metabolism to be both descriptive and predictive, the former to better understand different historical modes of urban resource consumption, and the latter to inform strategies for resource efficient urban development in an increasingly resource-scarce world.Beyond energy efficiency, there are now urgent challenges around the supply of resources, materials, food and water. After debating energy-efficiency for the last decade, the focus has shifted to include resource and material-efficiency. In this context, urban farming has emerged as a valid urban design strategy in Europe, where food is produced and consumed locally within city boundaries, turning disused sites into productive urban landscapes and community gardens. Agricultural activities allow for effective composting of organic waste, returning nutrients to the soil and improving biodiversity in the urban environment. Urban farming will help to feed the 9 billion by 2050 (predicted population growth, UN-Habitat forecast 2009). This paper reports on best practice of urban design principles in regard to materials flow, material recovery, adaptive re-use of building elements and components ('design for disassembly'; prefabrication of modular building components), and other relevant strategies to implement zero waste by avoiding waste creation, reducing harmful consumption and changing behaviour. The paper touches on two important issues in regard to the rapid depletion of the world's natural resources: the construction sector and the education of architects and designers. The construction sector: Prefabricated multi-story timber buildings for inner-city living can set new benchmarks for minimizing construction wastage and for sustainable on-site assembly. Today, the construction and demolition (C&D) sector is one of the main producers of waste; it does not engage enough with waste minimization, waste avoidance and recycling. Education and research: It's still unclear how best to introduce a holistic understanding of these challenges and to better teach practical and affordable solutions to architects, urban designers, industrial designers, and so on. One of the findings of this paper is that embedding 'zero-waste' requires strong industry leadership, new policies and effective education curricula, as well as raising awareness (education) and refocusing research agendas to bring about attitudinal change and the reduction of wasteful consumption.Transplanting recovery of urban trees is an essential first step in their acclimation from nursery to challenging urban growing sites. Changes in crown allometry during this period are not well known. We followed annual shoot extension, crown structure and leaf area of Alnus glutinosa and Tilia x vulgaris street trees for six years from transplanting into their growing site. The growing site of Tilia trees suffered from excessive soil moisture whereas the Alnus site was more normal regarding soil water relations with periods of drought. The transplanting recovery of Tilia trees was delayed due to the deleterious influence of excessive soil water, but Alnus trees recovered substantially within the first 2-3 years. Leaf area in relation to branch basal area changed throughout the research period, indicating tree adaptation to new growing conditions. (C) 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.Carbon emitted from urban metabolism constitutes a substantial proportion of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission which is at least partially responsible for the recent global warming Part of the urban carbon emission comes from residential energy consumption Given the ongoing rapid urbanization and strict emission-reduction requirement understanding the urban home energy usage carbon emission (UHEUCE) is of great importance to optimize the sustainability of social and economic developments in China For this reason a survey has been conducted to exam the condition of home energy usage in Xiamen Island SE China This study was based on 340 valid responses and a general linear model for univariate method The analysis showed (1) among the residential building characteristics window thermal insulation has the greatest effect on UHEUCE (2) Construction age and wall thermal insulation could also influence UHEUCE in areas where summer is hot and winter is warm The better heat prohibiting effect of external wall and window as well as the newer construction the more UHEUCE can be generated The survey provided helpful first-hand data for design and planning on urban energy saving emission reduction and for relevant scientific researches (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reservedThe notion of local (city-level) sustainable development (LSD) is explored against the backdrop of urban dynamics and the international discussions on sustainable development. Urban metabolism is a key concept used in the analysis. Overall, sustainable urban development is seen to have an internal dimension and an external dimension, even though urban jurisdictions may be restricted to the former. Sustainable cities (SCs) and policies for LSD are discussed conceptually and in terms of their operational use, with a focus on urban policies in developing and emerging countries. Examples are given of SCs in China. Cities with strategies related especially to climate change are considered separately and analysed in terms of developed-developing, adaptation or mitigation focus. Again, examples of especially 'low-carbon' cities in China are presented. From these elements, this paper extracts some elements of a (social science) research agenda in urban environmental studies.An urban metabolic optimization model of energy resources consumption and airborne pollution emissions is built up in this paper, and taken as a yardstick for the efficiency of the four different scenarios measures for urban development. Sensitivity Analysis is proposed to the emergy approach in order to explain the procedure and the obtained results for the selected case study of Beijing metabolic system in the year 2006. The solution to the urban optimization problem can be obtained using the optimal control theory as an analytical tool. In this case, the theory of optimal control gives a normative answer to the question how the utilization of the resources inputs and the environment has to be chosen to maximize inter-temporal welfare. The results imply that during the investigation period, steel and iron have the most significant correlation between global environment impact and local economic development, which results from rapid construction growth favored by the local government in Beijing based on the results of the optimization and the comparison with different options of Chinese resource restructuring strategy, the following ranking of strategic options can be derived: increasing energy efficiency, implementing greenhouse gas control and air pollution treatment after the end of major infrastructure construction. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Beyond energy efficiency, there are now urgent challenges around the supply of resources, materials, energy, food and water. After debating energy efficiency for the last decade, the focus has shifted to include further resources and material efficiency. In this context, urban farming has emerged as a valid urban design strategy, where food is produced and consumed locally within city boundaries, turning disused sites and underutilized public space into productive urban landscapes and community gardens. Furthermore, such agricultural activities allow for effective composting of organic waste, returning nutrients to the soil and improving biodiversity in the urban environment. Urban farming and resource recovery will help to feed the 9 billion by 2050 (predicted population growth, UN-Habitat forecast 2009). This paper reports on best practice of urban design principles in regard to materials flow, material recovery, adaptive re-use of entire building elements and components ('design for disassembly'; prefabrication of modular building components), and other relevant strategies to implement zero waste by avoiding waste creation, reducing wasteful consumption and changing behaviour in the design and construction sectors. The paper touches on two important issues in regard to the rapid depletion of the world's natural resources: the built environment and the education of architects and designers (both topics of further research). The construction and demolition (C&D) sector: Prefabricated multi-story buildings for inner-city living can set new benchmarks for minimizing construction wastage and for modular on-site assembly. Today, the C&D sector is one of the main producers of waste; it does not engage enough with waste minimization, waste avoidance and recycling. Education and research: It's still unclear how best to introduce a holistic understanding of these challenges and to better teach practical and affordable solutions to architects, urban designers, industrial designers, and so on. How must urban development and construction change and evolve to automatically embed sustainability in the way we design, build, operate, maintain and renew/recycle cities? One of the findings of this paper is that embedding zero-waste requires strong industry leadership, new policies and effective education curricula, as well as raising awareness (through research and education) and refocusing research agendas to bring about attitudinal change and the reduction of wasteful consumption.We have only rudimentary understanding of the complex and pervasive connections between water and energy in cities. As water security now threatens energy and economic security, this is a major omission. Understanding the water-energy nexus is necessary if we want to contribute to solving water and energy issues simultaneously; if we want to stop moving problems from one resource dimension to another. This is particularly relevant in the Australian context where energy use for water supplies is forecast to rapidly escalate, growing around 300% from 2007 levels, by 2030. This paper presents a literature review with an aim of characterising the research to date with a particular focus on cities, the major centres of consumption and growth. It systematically analyses a wide range of papers and summarises the diverse objectives, dimensions, and scale of the research to-date together with knowledge gaps. There are many major gaps. These include energy use associated with water in industrial and commercial operations as well as socio-political perspectives. A major gap is the lack of a unifying theoretical framework and consistent methodology for analysis. This is considered a prerequisite for quantitative trans-city comparisons.

 Landscape connectivity is crucial for many ecological processes, including dispersal, gene flow, demographic rescue, and movement in response to climate change. As a result, governmental and non-governmental organizations are focusing efforts to map and conserve areas that facilitate movement to maintain population connectivity and promote climate adaptation. In contrast, little focus has been placed on identifying barriers-landscape features which impede movement between ecologically important areas-where restoration could most improve connectivity. Yet knowing where barriers most strongly reduce connectivity can complement traditional analyses aimed at mapping best movement routes. We introduce a novel method to detect important barriers and provide example applications. Our method uses GIS neighborhood analyses in conjunction with effective distance analyses to detect barriers that, if removed, would significantly improve connectivity. Applicable in least-cost, circuit-theoretic, and simulation modeling frameworks, the method detects both complete (impermeable) barriers and those that impede but do not completely block movement. Barrier mapping complements corridor mapping by broadening the range of connectivity conservation alternatives available to practitioners. The method can help practitioners move beyond maintaining currently important areas to restoring and enhancing connectivity through active barrier removal. It can inform decisions on trade-offs between restoration and protection; for example, purchasing an intact corridor may be substantially more costly than restoring a barrier that blocks an alternative corridor. And it extends the concept of centrality to barriers, highlighting areas that most diminish connectivity across broad networks. Identifying which modeled barriers have the greatest impact can also help prioritize error checking of land cover data and collection of field data to improve connectivity maps. Barrier detection provides a different way to view the landscape, broadening thinking about connectivity and fragmentation while increasing conservation options.The opportunities available for rural households in the Himalayan region to cope with changing climate should involve acting in shorter timescales with development agenda of the region. The present article is an attempt to propose pathways of using available climate information to solve local problems caused by climate change. Existing information systems and databases can be organized to understand the solutions of climate change which can be appropriately implemented in highland areas. The study suggests systematically capitalizing the existing indigenous wisdom, current climate variability databases and growing information technology to help highland people cope under the local climatic constraints.The focus of this paper is to understand the multi-decadal oscillatory component of variability in the Okavango River system, in southwestern Africa, and its potential evolution through the 21st century under climate change scenarios. Statistical analyses and hydrological modelling are used to show that the observed multi-decadal wet and dry phases in the Okavango River and Delta result from multi-decadal oscillations in rainfall, which are likely to be related to processes of internal variability in the climate system, rather than external natural or anthropogenic forcing. Analyses of changes in this aspect of variability under projected climate change scenarios are based on data from a multi-model ensemble of 19 General Circulation Models, which are used to drive hydrological models of the Okavango River and Delta. Projections for the 21st century indicate a progressive shift towards drier conditions attributed to the influence of increasing temperatures on water balance. It is, however, highly likely that multi-decadal oscillations, possibly of similar magnitude to that of 20th century, will be superimposed on the overall trend. These may periodically offset or amplify the mean drying trend. This effect should be accounted for in water and catchment management and climate change adaptation strategies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We examined adaptive clinal variation in seed mass among populations of an invasive annual species, Echium plantagineum, in response to climatic selection. We collected seeds from 34 field populations from a 1,000 km long temperature and rainfall gradient across the species' introduced range in south-eastern Australia. Seeds were germinated, grown to reproductive age under common glasshouse conditions, and progeny seeds were harvested and weighed. Analyses showed that seed mass was significantly related to climatic factors, with populations sourced from hotter, more arid sites producing heavier seeds than populations from cooler and wetter sites. Seed mass was not related to edaphic factors. We also found that seed mass was significantly related to both longitude and latitude with each degree of longitude west and latitude north increasing seed mass by around 2.5% and 4% on average. There was little evidence that within-population or between-population variation in seed mass varied in a systematic manner across the study region. Our findings provide compelling evidence for development of a strong cline in seed mass across the geographic range of a widespread and highly successful invasive annual forb. Since large seed mass is known to provide reproductive assurance for plants in arid environments, our results support the hypothesis that the fitness and range potential of invasive species can increase as a result of genetic divergence of populations along broad climatic gradients. In E. plantagineum population-level differentiation has occurred in 150 years or less, indicating that the adaptation process can be rapid.Few regions of the world are at higher risk for environmental disasters than the Pacific Island countries and territories. During 2004 and 2005, the top public health leadership from 19 of 22 Pacific Island countries and territories convened 2 health summits with the goal of developing the world's first comprehensive regional strategy for sustainable disaster risk management as applied to public health emergencies. These summits followed on the objectives of the 1994 Barbados Plan of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and those of the subsequent Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World. The outputs of the 2004 and 2005 Pacific Health Summits for Sustainable Disaster Risk Management provide a detailed description of challenges and accomplishments of the Pacific Island health ministries, establish a Pacific plan of action based upon the principles of disaster risk management, and provide a locally derived, evidence-based approach for many climate change adaptation measures related to extreme weather events in the Pacific region. The declaration and outputs from these summits are offered here as a guide for developmental and humanitarian assistance in the region (and for other small-island developing states) and as a means for reducing the risk of adverse health effects resulting from climate change. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2012; 6:415-423)Although previous climate change research has documented the effects of linking mitigation and adaptation in the energy sector, there is still a lack of integrated assessment, particularly at national level. This paper may contribute to fill this gap, identifying the interactions between climate change and the energy demand in Macedonia. The analyses are conducted using the MARKAL (MARKet ALlocation)-Macedonia model, with a focus on energy demand in commercial and residential sectors (mainly for heating and cooling). Three different cases are developed: 1) Base Case, which gives the optimal electricity production mix, taking into account country's development plans (without climate change); 2) Climate Change Damage Case, which introduces the climate changes by adjusting the heating and cooling degree days inputs, consistent with the existing national climate scenarios; and 3) Climate Change Adaptation Case, in which the optimal electricity generation mix is determined by allowing for endogenous capacity adjustments in the model. This modeling exercise will identify the changes in the energy demand and in electricity generation mix in the Adaptation Case, as well as climate change damages and benefits of the adaptation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Southwest China's Yunnan province has been affected throughout history by climate-induced water stresses, with the 2009 drought as a recent example. To deal with such stresses, mountain farmers have developed many local coping strategies. This paper provides case studies of these coping mechanisms in three mountain communities in Baoshan Municipality, Yunnan province. To minimize water-related environmental and economic vulnerabilities, our results show that upland farmers employ strategies both individually and collectively, which vary according to agroecological zone, economics, and historical period. Climate change is also emerging as an ongoing environmental challenge. We explore China's options for introducing and implementing adaptation policies that link with farmer strategies to respond more effectively to water stresses induced by climate change and other forces.The nexus of water and energy and greenhouse gas emissions is now well recognised, however, quantifying the energy savings from (hot) water-efficient technologies has been largely based on modelled or assumed consumption data from water use appliances and fixtures. The aim of this paper is to determine water, energy and greenhouse gas emission savings from resource-efficient household stock using empirical water end-use data and detailed stock specifications for homes in Queensland, Australia. Hot water system type is considered with comparisons made between intervention scenarios with and without inclusion of a low energy heating system. The results confirm the significant impact that coal-fired electricity water heating has on total household energy consumption. Further, it appears that substantial savings can be achieved by substituting water (e.g. high star rating appliances) and energy (e.g. solar hot water system) efficient appliances in the home. The findings also suggest that retrofitting cheaper resource-efficient technologies are still an effective means of reducing both water and energy consumption, regardless of hot water system type. Future work in this area is needed to expand the current research outcomes, such as the consideration of all thermal losses from heating systems and the use of empirical energy end-use data. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change means that buildings must greatly reduce their energy consump-tion. It is however paradoxical that climate mitigation in Denmark has created negative energy and indoor climate problems in housing that may be made worse by climate change. A literature review has been carried out of housing schemes where climate mitigation was sought through reduced space heating demand, and it is shown that extensive problems with overheating exist. A theoretical study of regulative and design strategies for climate mitigation in new build housing has therefore been carried out, and it is shown that reducing space heating with high levels of thermal insulation and passive solar energy results in overheating and a growing demand for cooling. Climate change is expected to reduce space heating and increase cooling demand in housing. An analysis of new build housing using passive solar energy as a climate mitigation strategy has therefore been carried out in relation to future climate change scenarios. It is shown that severe indoor comfort problems can occur, questioning the relevance of passive solar energy as a climate mitigation strategy. In conclusion, a theoretical study of the interplay between climate adaptation and mitigation strategies is carried out, with a cross-disciplinary focus on users, passive design and active technologies. It is shown that the cumulative use of these strategies can create an adaptation buffer, thus eliminating problems with overheating and reducing energy consumption. New build housing should therefore be designed in relation to both current and future climate scenarios to show that the climate mitigation strategies ensure climate adaptation.Climate change: the question is not anymore if it happens, but what the impact is of its effects such as drought, heat waves and increased precipitation on the quality of our lives in cities, offices and houses. A significant share of the Northern European housing stock is owned and maintained by large stock owners, such as housing associations. It is their responsibility to be aware of changes and risks that might challenge the quality of life of their tenants. Moreover, in order to provide housing with a good market value in the future, adaptation to climate change can no longer be overlooked. With the aim to discover the level of awareness of climate change adaptation among Dutch housing associations, a content analysis was undertaken on the policy plans and the annual reports of the 25 largest housing associations. Subsequently they were classified according to their level of awareness. The analysis returned no topics that directly referred to climate change adaptation, which implies that all housing associations are categorised as being 'unaware'. Therefore, in order to reach higher levels of awareness and to incentivize the implementation of adaptation measures, appropriate governance strategies need to be developed. Future research will define the characteristics of these strategies in relation to the level of awareness of the housing associations. Adoption of the measures could be easier if adaptation measures are combined with maintenance activities, as this has been the case with mitigation measures.Buildings play a vital economic and social role in society and are vulnerable to climate change. This paper suggests a strategic approach for existing buildings to withstand climate change. It emphasises the most likely climate impacts, including the change in mean year values as well as the extent of maximum and minimum extremes, which are pointed out and set against a background of national and international agreements. Assumptions that form the basis for the scenarios are outlined and evaluated in a Danish context and similar evaluations can be drawn for other countries. As climate change progresses, the uncertainty of the scenarios leaves major challenges that will grow far more serious, if not addressed and taken into account in building design and into a strategy for the adaptation of existing buildings. An outline of the actions needed for developing abroad strategic approach to the adaptation to climate change for buildings is given. The actions include four stages: a survey of the performance, the impact of climate change, the vulnerability of the existing building stock and climate adaptation needs. This leads to the identification of a risk-based strategic framework for adaptation to climate change based on the results of a vulnerability analysis. In addition, this paper describes some issues that must be addressed in case a strategic approach is not developed, as the building sector is continuously investing in measures to adapt to climate change.The excessive use of water is damaging European groundwater and rivers: their environmental conditions are often below the "good status" that-according to Water Framework Directive 2000/60-should be reached by 2015. The already critical situation is tending to get worse because of climate change. Even in water rich countries, urban wastewater is still one of the main sources of water pollution. Currently, urban soil sealing and "conventional" rainwater management, which were planned to quickly move rainwater away from roofs and streets, are increasing the flood risk. "Green" technologies and approaches would permit a reduction in water abstraction and wastewater production while improving urban hydrological response to heavy rains. The Life+ WATACLIC project has been implemented to promote such sustainable technologies and approaches in Italy, however the results show huge difficulties: apparently water saving and sustainable urban water management have only low interest amongst the general public and even with public administrations and the relevant industrial sectors. In such a cultural and technical context, the project is bringing a new point of view to public debate. In the long term, the project will certainly have a positive impact, but most likely it will require more time than initially expected.Combining remote sensing data and socio-economic data to quantitatively analyze urban growth is a topic growing in importance. We used square grid cells to investigate the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban growth in the Tokyo, japan, metropolitan area by using remote sensing imagery from 1972 to 2011 and census population data from 1970 to 2010. First, we used the subspace classification method to produce land-cover maps by using Landsat images from 1972, 1987, 2001, and 2011. Next, we integrated the land-cover maps with basic grid cell maps (using the standard 1 km(2) grid cell system of Japan) to represent the proportion of each land-cover category within each 1 km(2) grid cell area. Finally, we combined the proportional land-cover maps and population census data to investigate the relationship between land-cover changes and population density change based on grid cells. By using grid cells it is straightforward to (i) integrate remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS), and statistical data within the cells; (ii) quantify land-cover changes in terms of the percentage of area affected and rates of change and compare them with population census data: and (iii) analyze the spatial-temporal dynamics of urban growth patterns. Between 1972 and 2011 the rapid expansion of the urban area was accompanied by extensive shrinking of the agricultural area around the new settlements. As a result, the urban growth rate exceeded the population growth rate by more than a factor of 2.6. We used the grid cells to investigate the spatial relationship between the changes of land-cover classes and population density change, and then calculated the correlation coefficients of land-cover categories and population density changes for 3 intervals between 1972 and 2011 (1972-1987, 1987-2001, and 2001-2011). The results showed that the urban/built-up density decreased in the metropolitan inner core as the city center experienced depopulation. Spatial correlation analysis showed a strong positive correlation between urban expansion and population density change (r = 0.59), and that urban expansion was strongly negatively correlated with cropland change (r = -0.77). The results also demonstrated that grid cells allow remote sensing and statistics data to be combined, improving the knowledge, understanding, and analysis of urban dynamics. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.We develop and apply a judgment-based approach to selecting robust alternatives, which are defined here as reasonably likely to achieve objectives, over a range of uncertainties. The intent is to develop an approach that is more practical in terms of data and analysis requirements than current approaches, informed by the literature and experience with probability elicitation and judgmental forecasting. The context involves decisions about managing forest lands that have been severely affected by mountain pine beetles in British Columbia, a pest infestation that is climate-exacerbated. A forest management decision was developed as the basis for the context, objectives, and alternatives for land management actions, to frame and condition the judgments. A wide range of climate forecasts, taken to represent the 1090% levels on cumulative distributions for future climate, were developed to condition judgments. An elicitation instrument was developed, tested, and revised to serve as the basis for eliciting probabilistic three-point distributions regarding the performance of selected alternatives, over a set of relevant objectives, in the short and long term. The elicitations were conducted in a workshop comprising 14 regional forest management specialists. We employed the concept of stochastic dominance to help identify robust alternatives. We used extensive sensitivity analysis to explore the patterns in the judgments, and also considered the preferred alternatives for each individual expert. The results show that two alternatives that are more flexible than the current policies are judged more likely to perform better than the current alternatives on average in terms of stochastic dominance. The results suggest judgmental approaches to robust decision making deserve greater attention and testing.This paper describes a software modelling system, SimCLIM, for simulating the effects of climate variability and change, and demonstrates its application to domestic rainwater harvesting (RWH). The paper first describes SimCLIM and then focuses on a case study of the reliability of domestic RWH systems as the sole source of water in South East Queensland, a region of high spatial and temporal variability in rainfall. Using the SimCLIM scenario generator along with gridded daily time-series data and a domestic water tank model, 'risk landscapes' are created based on the risk of failure of the domestic systems to provide water under both current climate and scenarios of future change. Steep risk gradients were found, with major implications for RWH system configuration. Simulations are then performed in order to examine the trade-offs between two broad strategies - increasing runoff area and increasing tank size - required to maintain a reliable system. The paper concludes that, instead of set specifications, location-specific customisation of RWH systems is preferable in order to ensure reliability under current rainfall variability and sustainability over the long term under climate change. The availability of gridded daily rainfall datasets along with modelling tools like SimCLIM makes this customisation practicable.This study will examine the state of local capacity building for local climate adaptation in Japan. Climate mitigation needs to be led by both global strategies and national mandates in an integrated way, but climate change impacts are manifested locally and adaptive capacity is determined by local conditions. The article first lays out the basic components of local capacity for decentralized policy making and assesses the current local capacity in view of Japan's climate policy. The bulk of data employed in the study is derived from existing up-to-date government databases. It found that only the largest municipalities as well as prefectures have governing capacities to develop a comprehensive approach to climate adaptation, while medium-sized municipalities have a potential to take a participatory approach to climate policy. It argues that some pioneering localities realize their potentials to take initiatives under political leadership but most localities act in a piecemeal fashion according to clear national-level guidance on climate change.Climate change will have a major impact on freshwater environments globally. The management of these ecosystems is one of the key challenges currently facing environmental policymakers and producing well-informed climate change adaptation strategies is a priority. Links between climate, hydrology and ecology are poorly understood, and relatively little study has taken place on conservation of standing freshwaters, particularly with respect to landscape context and connectivity in a changing environment. Scotland's lakes (termed lochs in Scotland) contain more than 90% of Great Britain's total freshwater resource. They are distributed across the country, occurring in a wide variety of types and sizes, together providing habitats of international importance for numerous species. There is a pressing need across all geographic scales to conserve these environments in the face of changing water body, catchment and global pressures, including climate change in particular. Here, we introduce a new conceptual framework (ESVRA), designed to inform climate change adaptation strategies for standing freshwaters at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Adaptation actions will be contingent on the nature and scale of the climate changes, the sensitivity of different lake types to change and the resilience of the specific conservation interests involved. As such, potential adaptation actions are situated within current debates in conservation management surrounding priority species and habitats, threats from multiple stressors, invasive non-native species and the potential benefits of catchment-scale management. Following the ESVRA framework, we present an analysis of climate projections for Scotland; discuss potential climate impacts on the physico-chemical, hydromorphological and ecological processes within lakes; offer a spatial risk assessment for the conservation of Scottish lakes; and advance the adaptation discussion, moving from broad adaptation principles to specific adaptation actions protecting the conservation interests of individual lakes.The European Union took its first strategic step on the topic of climate adaptation in 2009 with publication of a White Paper on Adaptation. Since its publication, many researchers and analysts have criticized the White Paper for its lack of concrete and enforceable actions. In this paper, we analyse the White Paper as an instrument of soft law. First, we provide background on the theory of soft law, its terms of applicability, and the standards by which to judge its success. Second, we analyse the content and context of the White Paper according to soft law principles. We find that the conditions under which the White Paper was adopted were exactly those suited to a soft law approach and highly determined by the European multi-level governance context. As such, the White Paper has managed to achieve several of the common objectives of soft law in particular in setting up processes allowing information-sharing and subsidiarity. However it has failed to achieve several others especially in fostering the commitment of the states, and in moving the European Union in the direction of binding regulation. Further strategy development will be required to fix these deficiencies.An important challenge for conservation is a quantitative understanding of how multiple human stressors will interact to mitigate or exacerbate global environmental change at a community or ecosystem level. We explored the interaction effects of fishing, ocean warming, and ocean acidification over time on 60 functional groups of species in the southeastern Australian marine ecosystem. We tracked changes in relative biomass within a coupled dynamic whole-ecosystem modeling framework that included the biophysical system, human effects, socioeconomics, and management evaluation. We estimated the individual, additive, and interactive effects on the ecosystem and for five community groups (top predators, fishes, benthic invertebrates, plankton, and primary producers). We calculated the size and direction of interaction effects with an additive null model and interpreted results as synergistic (amplified stress), additive (no additional stress), or antagonistic (reduced stress). Individually, only ocean acidification had a negative effect on total biomass. Fishing and ocean warming and ocean warming with ocean acidification had an additive effect on biomass. Adding fishing to ocean warming and ocean acidification significantly changed the direction and magnitude of the interaction effect to a synergistic response on biomass. The interaction effect depended on the response level examined (ecosystem vs. community). For communities, the size, direction, and type of interaction effect varied depending on the combination of stressors. Top predator and fish biomass had a synergistic response to the interaction of all three stressors, whereas biomass of benthic invertebrates responded antagonistically. With our approach, we were able to identify the regional effects of fishing on the size and direction of the interacting effects of ocean warming and ocean acidification.Natural resource (NR) outcomes at catchment scale rely heavily on the adoption of sustainable practices by private NR managers because they control the bulk of the NR assets. Public funds are invested in capacity building of private landholders to encourage adoption of more sustainable natural resource management (NRM) practices. However, prioritisation of NRM funding programmes has often been top-down with limited understanding of the multiple dimensions of landholder capacity leading to a failure to address the underlying capacity constraints of local communities. We argue that well-designed participatory monitoring and evaluation of landholder capacity can provide a mechanism to codify the tacit knowledge of landholders about the social-ecological systems in which they are embedded. This process enables tacit knowledge to be used by regional NRM bodies and government agencies to guide NRM investment in the Australian state of New South Wales. This paper details the collective actions to remove constraints to improved NRM that were identified by discrete groups of landholders through this process. The actions spanned geographical and temporal scales, and responsibility for them ranged across levels of governance.This study maps current understanding and research trends on the human dimensions of climate change (HDCC) in the eastern and central Canadian Arctic. Developing a systematic literature review methodology, 117 peer reviewed articles are identified and examined using quantitative and qualitative methods. The research highlights the rapid expansion of HDCC studies over the last decade. Early scholarship was dominated by work documenting Inuit observations of climate change, with research employing vulnerability concepts and terminology now common. Adaptation studies which seek to identify and evaluate opportunities to reduce vulnerability to climate change and take advantage of new opportunities remain in their infancy. Over the last 5 years there has been an increase social science-led research, with many studies employing key principles of community-based research. We currently have baseline understanding of climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability in the region, but key gaps are evident. Future research needs to target significant geographic disparities in understanding, consider risks and opportunities posed by climate change outside of the subsistence hunting sector, complement case study research with regional analyses, and focus on identifying and characterizing sustainable and feasible adaptation interventions.Alternative stable state theory has been applied to understanding the control by landscape fire activity of pyrophobic tropical rain forest and pyrophytic eucalypt savanna boundaries, which are often separated by tall eucalypt forests. We evaluate the microclimate of three vegetation types across an elevational gradient and their relative fire risk as measured by McArthur's Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI). Microclimatic data were collected from rain forest, tall eucalypt forest and savanna sites on eight vegetation boundaries throughout the humid tropics in north Queensland over a 3-year period and were compared with data from a nearby meteorological station. There was a clear annual pattern in daily FFDI with highest values in the austral winter dry season and lowest values in the austral summer wet season. There was a strong association of the meteorological station FFDI values with those from the three vegetation types, albeit they were substantially lower. The rank order of FFDI values among the vegetation types decreased from savanna, tall eucalypt forest, then rain forest, a pattern that was consistent across each transect. Only very rarely would rain forest be flammable, despite being adjacent to highly flammable savannas. These results demonstrate the very strong effect of vegetation type on microclimate and fire risk, compared with the weak effect of elevation, consistent with a firevegetation feedback. This study is the first demonstration of how vegetation type influences microclimate and fire risk across a topographically complex tropical forestsavanna gradient.While previous research has documented marine fish and invertebrates shifting poleward in response to warming climates, less is known about the response of fisheries to these changes. By examining fisheries in the northeastern United States over the last four decades of warming temperatures, we show that northward shifts in species distributions were matched by corresponding northward shifts in fisheries. The proportion of warm-water species caught in most states also increased through time. Most importantly, however, fisheries shifted only 10-30 % as much as their target species, and evidence suggested that economic and regulatory constraints played important roles in creating these lags. These lags may lead to overfishing and population declines if not accounted for in fisheries management and climate adaptation. In coupled natural-human systems such as fisheries, human actions play important roles in determining the sustainability of the system and, therefore, future conservation and climate mitigation planning will need to consider not only biophysical changes, but also human responses to these changes and the feedbacks that these responses have on ecosystems.Despite reaching heights of >6 m and destroying a sizeable coastal settlement at the head of Baie Martelli (Pentecost Island, Vanuatu, South Pacific), the 26 November 1999 tsunamis caused only five fatalities from a threatened population of about 300 persons, most of whom fled inland and upslope before the waves struck. This remarkable survival rate is attributed to both indigenous knowledge, largely in the form of kastom knowledge, and information obtained from a video about tsunamis that was shown in the area three weeks earlier. Interviews with 55 persons who experienced this tsunami suggest that indigenous knowledge about tsunami risk and response in Baie Martelli was well known among key members of the community and was probably largely responsible for the appropriate response. Future strategies for disaster risk reduction should involve maintaining such indigenous knowledge in such communities and supplementing this where needed with scientific knowledge filtered through indigenous culture and language.The study used the innovation system approach to ascertain the intensity and trends of linkages among key actors in the climate change and food security innovation system in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Data were collected through the use of semi structured interview schedule, key informant interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) and analyzed using percentages, mean scores and trend analysis. Only 1.8% of the farmers from Nigeria, 2.5% from Sierra Leone and 0.7% from Liberia possessed special training on climate change adaptation and food security issues. The presence of local collaboration among actors was higher in Nigeria than in Sierra Leone and Liberia. There was nonexistence of overseas linkages with majority (89.0% for Nigeria; 98.0 for Sierra Leone and 96.8% for Liberia) of the farmers across the three countries. The intensity of linkages / collaborations existing among actors in the enterprise domain, in the three countries, outweighs that with other domains, with higher collaborations existing among the small-scale farmers and famers' associations. However, there was a perceived increase in the trend of linkage between farmers and R & D institutions in Nigeria between 2007 and 2009, with a linkage index of more than 2. There was also an increasing higher linkage index (of more than 2) between farmers and technology delivery institutions in Nigeria than in Sierra Leone and Liberia, but a low linkage index of less than 2 between farmers and policy making bodies for all the countries. Poor generation of innovations over the past ten years and poor domestic support for climate change adaptation and food security in the West African sub-region were identified. The study points to the need to intensify the collaboration efforts, between local and foreign partners, as this will bring about the generation of better and improved innovations on food security and adaptive measures.A probe was carried out to ascertain fisherfolk ownership of physical assets for fisheries activities in fishing communities' vis-a-vis implication of climate change around Kainji Lake. Interview schedule was employed to generate primary data from 165 respondents in eleven fishing communities on western side of the lake and analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics. Information on personal characteristics revealed that most of the respondents were advanced in age, small scale artisan fisherfolk with many years of experience, self employed and married with children but had poor education. Physical assets owned fall into three categories of fishing asset (33.3%), fish processing asset (41.7%) and accessories (25%). Conspicuous assets owned were fishing net, wooden canoe, hook & line, fish drying net, improved banda and modified drum smoking kiln. Physical assets that use wood and fuelwood which impinged on climate change were fishing canoe, improved banda and modified drum smoking kiln. Correlates of improved banda and modified drum kiln were marital status and number of wives. It implies that marital family's ownership of fish smoking processing assets contributed to climate change problems through deforestation thereby causing desertification, soil erosion, destruction of ecosystem and weather variations with serious consequences on water bodies, fisheries, and livelihood in fishery around the lake. Worrisome is zero ownership of solar tent dryer which uses renewable energy of the sun and friendly to climate change adaptation. In view of prevailing evidence, adaptation to climate change is subject to modification of solar net drier to meet fish smoking needs. In alternative is exploration of biomass energy sources that is sustainable like rice husk for fish smoking as a mitigation strategy.General principles of climate change adaptation for biodiversity have been formulated, but do not help prioritize actions. This is inhibiting their integration into conservation planning. We address this need with a decision framework that identifies and prioritizes actions to increase the adaptive capacity of species. The framework classifies species according to their current distribution and projected future climate space, as a basis for selecting appropriate decision trees. Decisions rely primarily on expert opinion, with additional information from quantitative models, where data are available. The framework considers in-situ management, followed by interventions at the landscape scale and finally translocation or ex-situ conservation. Synthesis and applications: From eight case studies, the key interventions identified for integrating climate change adaptation into conservation planning were local management and expansion of sites. We anticipate that, in combination with consideration of socio-economic and local factors, the decision framework will be a useful tool for conservation and natural resource managers to integrate adaptation measures into conservation plans.For informed decision making about the current state and near future of any city, it is important to consider the long-term resource use trajectory and legacy of its past. Such information is not always readily available. Urban metabolism analysis for any given time period can be challenging due to the lack of metropolitan-or city-level data, and reconstructing a time series of urban energy or material flows is seldom attempted. For the case of Melbourne, Australia, we demonstrate how time series operational energy demand and supply data can be reconstructed from original sources. Primary energy consumption is calculated based on direct and upstream energy use in common with "scope 2" standards for emissions reporting. This extends the usual treatment of energy in urban metabolism studies by (1) providing time series data and (2) attributing upstream primary energy consumption to sectors based on their direct secondary energy usage. Results indicate that the transport, commercial, manufacturing, and residential sectors have contributed most to the doubling of Melbourne's energy consumption over four decades. We discuss recent urban development history and its relation to energy consumption and briefly examine potential scenarios of and responses to future change.Decentralized approaches to managing urban stormwater are gaining increased attention within the contexts of urban sustainability, climate change adaptation, and as a means of reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs). This study applied a life cycle assessment (LCA) to comparing the environmental efficiency of three means of equivalently reducing CSOs to the Bronx River (Bronx, NY, USA). Strategy 1 featured decentralized green infrastructure technologies, while "grey" strategies 2 and 3 detained, and detained and treated, respectively, excess flows at the end of pipe. We estimated greenhouse gas emissions (in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents [t CO2-eq]) over the construction, operation, and maintenance phases, including energy consumed at the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), carbon sequestered, and shading provided by vegetation (in the case of the green approach) over a 50-year analysis period. The study area comprised the entire drainage area contributing to New York State permitted CSO discharge points associated with the Hunts Point WWTP. The analysis was performed using a hybrid of process and economic input-output (EIO) LCA methods. The decentralized green strategy outperformed the two grey strategies in terms of this set of environmental metrics. The net emissions of the green strategy over 50 years was 19,000 t CO2-eq, whereas the grey strategies emitted 85,000 t CO2-eq (detention) and 400,000 t CO2-eq (detention and treatment). These results were significantly influenced by the emissions associated with the operation and maintenance activities required for strategies 2 and 3, and the carbon sequestered and shading provided by the vegetation in strategy 1, and suggest that watershed managers who seek to reduce CSOs and reduce carbon footprints would opt for the green approach.Climate change adaptation in the low laying developing countries is becoming crucial at the present time. However, the local knowledge regarding climate change adaptation is not well focused. This study evaluates climate related perception and identifying various adaptation strategies in the low lying areas of North-Eastern Bangladesh. Six focus group discussions and 120 households' survey were carried out to identify the major climate events in our study areas which were temperature change, drought, heavy rainfall and cyclone and storm surges. Furthermore, main livelihood problems arising from these events were lack of fish availability, scarcity of water in drought seasons and frequent flood in the rainy seasons. Results also revealed that a little portion (10%) of the respondents had well knowledge about the present climate change. However, seasonal livelihood and hazard calendar demonstrated that local people were increasingly changing their livelihood status with changing climatic hazards. At that situation local people tried to adapt themselves with the changing climate through changing their own behavior and introducing some adaptation strategies. We recognized total 16 adaptive measures in the study areas within which crop diversification, floating garden, duck rearing, cage aquaculture, wave protection walls, re-digging of canal and construction of embankments were popular. The present study revealed that local experiences in the face of climate change adaptation have merits which need special consideration. Continuous research and more incentives required for proper documentation and relegate the local adaptation knowledge in the tropic.This paper develops a methodology for climate change adaptation planning in remote, resource-dependent communities. The methods are structured using a vulnerability framework, and community members, local stakeholders and researchers are engaged in an iterative planning process to identify, describe, prioritize and pilot adaptation actions. The methods include: (1) analysis of secondary sources of information, (2) community collaboration and partnership building, (3) adaptation planning workshops, (4) adaptation plan development, (5) key informant and community review and (6) pilot adaptation actions. Vulnerability to climate change is assessed in the context of other nonclimatic factors-social, political, economic and environmental, already being experienced in communities and which influence how climate change is experienced and responded to. Key exposure-sensitivities and related adaptation options are identified in five sectors of a community: business and economy, culture and learning, health and wellbeing, subsistence harvesting, and transportation and infrastructure. This organization allows for focused discussions and the involvement of relevant stakeholders and experts from each sector. The methodology is applied in Paulatuk, an Inuit community located in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR), Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada, and key findings are highlighted. The methods developed have important lessons for adaptation planning in remote, resource-dependent communities generally and contributes to a small but growing scholarship on methodology in the human dimensions of climate change.The integration of scientific knowledge about possible climate change impacts on water resources has a direct implication on the way water policies are being implemented and evolving. This is particularly true regarding various technical steps embedded into the EU Water Framework Directive river basin management planning, such as risk characterisation, monitoring, design and implementation of action programmes and evaluation of the "good status" objective achievements (in 2015). The need to incorporate climate change considerations into the implementation of EU water policy is currently discussed with a wide range of experts and stakeholders at EU level. Research trends are also on-going, striving to support policy developments and examining how scientific findings and recommendations could be best taken on board by policy-makers and water managers within the forthcoming years. This paper provides a snapshot of policy discussions about climate change in the context of the WED river basin management planning and specific advancements of related EU-funded research projects. Perspectives for strengthening links among the scientific and policy-making communities in this area are also highlighted. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines a sample of three Asian Development Bank (ADB) energy projects to determine how they holistically address the energy sector challenges of the region. The paper firstly establishes four fundamental social and environmental sustainability principles that have influenced ADB's new energy policy. These are (1) improving energy efficiency; (2) promoting renewable energy; (3) reducing energy poverty; and (4) enhancing climate change adaptation. These inform the policy's new four-fold implementation strategy of scaling up renewable energy, advocating efficiency, enhancing energy access to benefit livelihoods and improving energy sector governance. The study then investigates the historical genesis, drivers, and advantages and challenges facing three recent ADB energy projects: a $76.75 million biomass power plant in Thailand, a $32.6 million energy efficiency initiative in the Philippines, and a $153.5 million program for off-grid renewables in Vietnam. The final part of the study evaluates each of these cases based on how they embody each of the four sustainability principles that uphold the new energy policy. The paper concludes by distilling lessons and presenting general recommendations for planners at the ADB and in Asia more generally. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We evaluated the impacts of historical land-use changes (LUCs) from 1987 to 2006 on surface warming rates and rice yields on the island of Shikoku, Japan. We performed two types of numerical simulations (with historical LUCs and with fixed land uses) using a regional atmospheric model (JMA-NHM) and a large-area rice-growth model (PRYSBI). During our study period in Shikoku, the area of paddy fields decreased markedly and the area of building lots and roads increased. Our evaluation suggests that these LUCs caused warming rates in and around paddy fields that were five times those in and around other land uses. The simulated rice yield in 2006 was 0.27% lower (0.012 t ha(-1)) than in 1987 in response to the change in thermal and solar radiation conditions. These results suggest that decreases of crop yield due to environmental deterioration will be found in other regions where similar LUCs are occurring. Citation: Yoshida, R., T. Iizumi, M. Nishimori, and M. Yokozawa (2012), Impacts of land-use changes on surface warming rates and rice yield in Shikoku, western Japan, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L22401, doi:10.1029/2012GL053711.Monthly average sea-surface temperatures (SST) derived from NOAA-AVHRR remote sensing data are analyzed for the period 1982-2011 for the Gulf of St. Lawrence (Canada) and compared to monthly average air temperature. Results show that SST increased by 1 to 1.5 degrees C during the period when averaging from May to November of each year, a change associated with interdecadal variability rather than a long term trend. SST averaged over the ice-free months of May-November is strongly correlated to an index of the April-November air temperature anomaly, capturing up to 90% of the variance, suggesting strong coupling between air and sea-surface temperatures on seasonal time scales. The air temperature anomaly index series can be used as a proxy for longer term climate variability of SST prior to 1982. Overall warming trends in air temperature of 0.9 degrees C and 0.6 degrees C per century were found using data from weather stations dating back to 1873 and from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis that goes back to 1871. The strong co-variations of SST and air temperature indicate that the SST has likely increased by a similar amount. These co-variations will help to predict the response of the Gulf water temperature to changing climate as well as provide a perspective with respect to changes that have occurred in the previous century. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Kiribati, a small Pacific island nation, is at severe risk of climate change. The geography and historic, linear development of its capital on the South Tawara atoll mean that many key public assets are at risk from impacts of coastal erosion and thus vulnerable to climate-change effects. An adaptation project started in 2003, which included developing a means of assessing coastal vulnerability and a process for proactive management of the coast. Guidelines offering alternatives to traditional coastal engineering methods were provided, and practical application of these guidelines was demonstrated at selected high-risk pilot sites in 2006-2010. Appropriate technology for increasing resilience was shown through application of simple but effective tools to identify and select adaptation options; recognition that customary responses ingrained over lifetimes will not be changed by a short-term project; and use of tried-and-tested quality improvements to traditional construction techniques. Rather than introducing completely new and unfamiliar measures, the pilot works enhanced and built on existing knowledge.Adaptation to climate change requires urban water providers to develop a complex understanding of how temperature affects water use patterns. We used a geographic information system and statistical analysis to compare the spatial relationships among single-family residential water use patterns, land use characteristics, and temperature in Portland, Oregon and Phoenix, Arizona. We developed mean water use patterns at the census block group level using data from 2002 to 2009 in Portland and from 2000 to 2008 in Phoenix. These mean values were used to estimate the localized temperature sensitivity of water use in each census block group through an ordinary least squares regression with summer average air temperature. Taking the slopes of regression estimates as our dependent variable, we examined spatial relationships among temperature-sensitive water use patterns, housing density, impervious surfaces, low vegetation, and tree canopy extent. Temperature sensitive water use was found to be positively correlated with low vegetation and negatively correlated with impervious surfaces in both cities. Tree canopy coverage tends to increase with sensitivity in Portland, while the reverse relationship is found for Phoenix. Regression analysis indicates that building density explained the most variation in the dependent variable in Portland whereas, in Phoenix, the strongest correlations related to vegetation patterns. A comparative approach highlights the complex, localized correlations that exist among local climate regimes, urban landscapes, and water use patterns. Census block group-level water use analyses equips water providers with detailed information on the sensitivity of local water use to temperature variation, which could prove valuable to developing a viable municipal climate change adaptation strategy. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tidal flats provide habitat for biodiversity, protection from storm surges and sea level rise, and a range of other ecosystem services. However, no simple method exists for mapping tidal flats over large (> 1,000 km) extents, and consequently their global status and distribution remain poorly understood. Existing mapping methods are restricted to small areas with known tidal regimes because tidal flats are only fully exposed for a brief period around low tide. Here we present a method for mapping tidal flats over very large areas and demonstrate its utility by mapping the tidal flats of China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea. We (i) generated tide height predictions at the acquisition time of all Landsat Archive images of our study area using a validated regional tide model, (ii) selected suitable images acquired in the upper and lower 10% of the tidal range, (iii) converted high and low tide images to a land and water class image derived from the Normalized Differenced Water Index (NDWI) and, (iv) subtracted the high tide classified image from the low tide classified image, resulting in delineation of the tidal flat. Using this method, we mapped the tidal flats for 86.8% of the study area coastline (13,800 km). A confusion matrix for error assessment indicated an accuracy of > 85% for the resulting tidal flat map. Our method enables coastal morphology to be mapped and monitored at continental scales, providing critical data to inform coastal adaptation measures for sea level rise, for monitoring coastal habitat loss and for developing ecosystem-based coastal conservation measures.Populus tremula is a favoured tree species in short-rotation forestry with a recognised large intraspecific variation in productivity. We compared the growth potential of 1-yr-old saplings of four Central European aspen collectives with different climate adaptation on a low-fertility site and searched for growth-determining physiological and morphological traits and their dependence on genetic constitution. Among the 35 investigated traits were photosynthetic capacity and mean assimilation rate, quantum yield and carboxylation efficiency, leaf water potential, leaf phaenology and the ratio of leaves lost to leaves produced (LP ratio), leaf size and total leaf area, axes length growth and canopy carbon gain as an estimate of productivity. The collectives differed by more than 30% in cumulative carbon gain with a large genotype effect, while mean assimilation rate and most photosynthetic and water status traits showed a relatively small intraspecific variation with no significant influence on the variation in C gain. The timing of the beginning of net leaf loss (leaf abscission > leaf production) in August differed between the four collectives and resulted in different maximum leaf areas and LP ratios, which were identified as key factors controlling C gain. Mean assimilation rate, though not related to cumulative C gain, was positively correlated with the light, CO2 and water use efficiencies of photosynthesis. We conclude that genotype selection for high-yielding aspen in short-rotation forestry at low-fertility sites should focus on the parameters leaf phaenology, LP ratio at the end of the growing season, and the resulting total leaf area as key traits. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As part of the great global movement of plants in the 18th and 19th centuries, many valuable and commercial plants were sent from the Neotropics to Europe as seeds or as live specimens. Cecropia (Urticaceae) was in cultivation in England in 1789, yet species delimitation was not well-understood until much later, long after subsequent introductions to other tropical regions where alien populations are now invasive. The earliest record of Cecropia being cultivated in Malesia is based on material of C. peltata thought to have been sent from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew to 's Lands Plantentuin (Buitenzorg) in Jawa, Indonesia, sometime between 1862 and early 1868. In 1902, C. peltata was first cultivated in the botanical gardens of Singapore and introduced to Peninsular Malaysia in 1954. The source of these latter introductions is uncertain. Many researchers have assumed that C. peltata is the only species of Cecropia introduced in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. We confirm that C. peltata is naturalised in Singapore and is invasive on the island of Jawa, Indonesia, and in Peninsular Malaysia. However, a second introduced species, C. pachystachya, has also been discovered as invasive in both Jawa and Singapore. There is no evidence for the third previously introduced species, C. palmata, being extant in Malesia.This communication discusses climate change adaptation efforts underway in Vanuatu. In particular, it uncovers why community-based approaches to adaptation are more likely to bear fruit than ones driven from the top-down at the national level. The authors make this claim based on early evidence that small-scale projects (a) support community ownership over adaptation, (b) provide ongoing technical learning lessons (c) relieve pressure from capacity constraints at national administrative bodies, and (d) expedite implementation by avoiding cumbersome multilateral procedures. The first section discusses its research methods and presents important characteristics of the Vanuatu economy, people and geography. The communication then moves on to discuss Vanuatu's vulnerability to the effects of climate change. It specifically investigates on-going efforts to adapt to natural climatic hazards in Vanuatu. Early evidence and analysis reveals lessons salient for energy and climate policy. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecosystems provide important services that can help people adapt to climate variability and change. Recognizing this role of ecosystems, several international and nongovernmental organizations have promoted an ecosystem-based approach to adaptation. We review the scientific literature related to ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) with forests and trees, and highlight five cases in which forests and trees can support adaptation: (1) forests and trees providing goods to local communities facing climatic threats; (2) trees in agricultural fields regulating water, soil, and microclimate for more resilient production; (3) forested watersheds regulating water and protecting soils for reduced climate impacts; (4) forests protecting coastal areas from climate-related threats; and (5) urban forests and trees regulating temperature and water for resilient cities. The literature provides evidence that EBA with forests and trees can reduce social vulnerability to climate hazards; however, uncertainties and knowledge gaps remain, particularly for regulating services in watersheds and coastal areas. Few studies have been undertaken on EBA specifically, but the abundant literature on ecosystem services can be used to fill knowledge gaps. Many studies assess the multiple benefits of ecosystems for human adaptation or well-being, but also recognize trade-offs between ecosystem services. Better understanding is needed of the efficiency, costs, and benefits, and trade-offs of EBA with forests and trees. Pilot projects under implementation could serve as learning sites and existing information could be systematized and revisited with a climate change adaptation lens. WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:581596. doi: 10.1002/wcc.195 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.This paper develops a spatial rural economy model of adaptation to climate change that accounts for a multitude of rural enterprises across a diversity of ecosystems in South America using household surveys. We model adoptions of crops, livestock, and forests. Both specialized and diversified enterprises are modelled. This paper finds that livestock, forests, and a diversification into crops, livestock, and forests are key adaptation strategies. Under the UKMO (United Kingdom Meteorological Office) scenario, a livestock-only enterprise would expand by 4 per cent, a crops-livestock-forests by 3 per cent, and a forests-only by 3 per cent. Adaptation behaviours are closely tied with ecosystem changes under global warming. A livestock-only would increase especially in the grasslands. A crops-livestock-forests enterprise expands into xeromorphic forests. A crops-livestock expands in Andean grasslands and tall grasslands. A forests-only expands in the coasts and woody zones. A crops-only enterprise decreases across South America.Seasonal rainfall forecasts have been shown to have significant skill in many parts of the world. In this study, seasonal forecasts were used together with a crop simulation model and a simple pasture growth curve to inform several decisions on year-to-year farm management, including on land-allocations in a mixed wheat-sheep farming system. In seasons where "above-median" rainfall was forecast, N fertiliser applications in cropping were increased to support the higher grain yield potential, sheep stocking rates were increased to take advantage of higher pasture growth and unused pasture land was made available for cropping. In seasons where "below-median" rainfall was forecast. N fertiliser applications in cropping were reduced to minimise costs, and traditional conservative sheep stocking rates were used. Application of the Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model for Australia (POAMA) seasonal rainfall forecast yielded additional profit of up to A$66 ha(-1) per annum, equivalent to A$200,000 y(-1) for an average size farm in Western Australia. The largest benefit from applying a forecast in wheat-sheep farms comes from the increase of more profitable cropping during "above-median" rainfall seasons. This is well above the benefit of previous single-commodity forecast applications, and therefore has widespread potential to improve decision making on mixed crop-livestock farms. With the projected decline of rainfall in the Australian and other rain-fed crop-livestock regions of the world, skilful seasonal forecasting systems will become increasingly valuable as they will assist farm managers to capture the benefits in the declining number of potentially high-production seasons and minimise the input costs in the increasing number of low-production seasons. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changes in land use and land cover alter the local energy balance and contribute to distinct urban climates. This paper presents a local-scale above-canopy study of intra-urban land cover mixes in two cities to analyse the relative effects of surface morphology and local climate on the surface energy balance (SEB). The study is conducted for urban areas in Phoenix, Arizona, and Portland, Oregon, cities with distinct climates but similarly warm and dry summers. A Local-Scale Urban Meteorological Parameterization Scheme (LUMPS) is used to analyse the relative contributions of local weather extremes and land cover variations on the urban energy balance. The partitioning of net all-wave radiation into turbulent sensible and latent heat fluxes as well as heat storage is investigated for a typical dry summer month and two extreme weather scenarios in the two cities. Results of sensitivity analyses show that incoming solar radiation is an important driver of the SEB in LUMPS and should be considered in the generation of climate scenarios. The relationship between individual land cover fractions and SEB fluxes is not clear because of interrelated effects of surface characteristics in the land cover mix. Daytime Bowen ratios vary inversely with vegetation fraction between and within cities for all weather scenarios. Impervious surface cover is positively correlated to the available energy that is partitioned into sensible heat. Cumulative evapotranspiration (ET) is similar for average weather conditions across medium wet sites in Phoenix and Portland but varies more in Portland than in Phoenix under extreme weather conditions. Results suggest that land cover manipulation could offset influences of weather extremes on ET in Portland to a certain degree but not in Phoenix. These findings highlight the importance of spatial and climatic context in the urban design process to mitigate the effects of urbanization. Copyright (c) 2011 Royal Meteorological SocietyThe dominant approach to mainstreaming climate adaptation into sectoral policies relies on an 'upscaling' model in which it is envisaged to extract lessons from local change processes to inspire generic sub-national and national policies. One of the central methodological questions, which remain unanswered in climate change adaptation research, is exactly how public policy can learn from highly contextual experiences of community-based adaptation and what role should be played by case study research. In this paper we undertake a comparison between three large research projects in Sweden, Canada and Indonesia, which aim to study and/or foster local adaptation in selected case studies through a process of social learning. We present a novel framework based on mapping of 'sense-making perspectives', which enables analysis of the multiple ways case study research can support local climate adaptation and link such efforts to higher level public policy. The analysis demonstrates how methodological choices shape how case study research works at the interface between planned (steered/regulatory policy) and self-organised adaptation of stakeholders (non-coercive policy). In this regard, there is a need for a high degree of transparency from the research community to enable local professionals to decide on their stakes and interests when inviting researchers into their grounded activities. We conclude that case study research can achieve new significance if viewed as a platform to leverage stakeholder competencies when informing existing social structures and enable the implementation of political objectives, but equally driving the very reinvention and improvement of these institutions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The National Biodiversity Strategies and Actions Plans (NBSAP), required by Article 6 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, have been developed to make them meaningful as strategic instruments. One objective is to make the benefits of conservation more visible and build support for conservation activities. However, so far determining the benefits within the NBSAP has rarely taken place. This paper presents results from a nationwide contingent valuation study investigating the benefits of implementing a set of measures derived from the National Strategy on Biological Diversity (NBS) in Germany. Results from a survey employing the contingent valuation method interviewing more than 2300 people indicate that implementing the NBS would generate substantial benefits, ranging between (sic)2.3 billion and (sic)9.3 billion per year. Monetizing benefits arising from the strategy provide important information for policy makers, especially as biodiversity conservation will very likely face stronger competition with alternative land uses such as food or biomass production in the future. Comparing the benefits to the opportunity and management costs shows that implementing the NBS in Germany is economically sensible. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation to climate change is increasingly recognized as a necessary complement to mitigation, resulting in a growing number of adaptation policies and actions across the globe. This study applies John Kingdon's theory of agenda setting through a multi-level approach to explain the ways in which the climate change adaptation issue has recently developed in four European countries: the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and Italy. The study illustrates that a multi-level adaptation policy window has been opened in the context of the UK, whereas adaptation has mainly developed on the national and in specific local cases in Finland and Sweden, while in Italy the issue remains off the agenda. The study thus shows that policy windows may be supported through the interaction of streams at both national and sub-national levels, particularly buttressed by focusing climate events and media reporting. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentThis review provides a critical overview of the literature published in the area of lactate in human sweat between 1934 and the present. The first section summarizes the relevant pieces of literature, the second evaluates the literature across a range of topics and the third presents potential applications for sweat lactate measurements. Key factors that may affect sweat lactate are discussed in detail in the second section of this review. Both acetylcholine and catecholamine hormonal signals can trigger sweating independently of one another; differences in sweat output and lactate concentrations are compared. The primary triggers for sweating, exercise and heat are also compared, with exercise-induced sweating being further examined with respect to the exercise intensity. This review examines the significant variations in sweat lactate between bodily sites as well the relationship to physiological parameters such as gender, age and physical fitness, along with the effect of climate adaptation on sweat lactate concentrations.Provision of urban water supplies to rapidly growing cities of South East Asia is difficult because of increasing demand for limited water supplies, periodic droughts, and depletion and contamination of surface and groundwater. In such adverse environments, effective policy and planning processes are required to secure adequate water supplies. Developing a Water Needs Index reveals key elements of the complex urban water supply by means of a participatory approach for rapid and interdisciplinary assessment. The index uses deliberative interactions with stakeholders to create opportunities for mutual understanding, confirmation of constructs and capacity building of all involved. In Can Tho City, located at the heart of the Mekong delta in Vietnam, a Water Needs Index has been developed with local stakeholders. The functional attributes of the Water Needs Index at this urban scale have been critically appraised. Systemic water issues, supply problems, health issues and inadequate, poorly functioning infrastructure requiring attention from local authorities have been identified. Entrenched social and economic inequities in access to water and sanitation, as well as polluting environmental management practices has caused widespread problems for urban populations. The framework provides a common language based on systems thinking, increased cross-sectoral communication, as well as increased recognition of problem issues; this ought to lead to improved urban water management. Importantly, the case study shows that the approach can help to overcome biases of local planners based on their limited experience (information black spots), to allow them to address problems experienced in all areas of the city. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study investigated recent changes in the characteristics of explosively developing extratropical cyclones over the northwestern Pacific region in winter from 1979/80 to 2010/11 by using reanalysis data from the Japanese 25-yr Reanalysis/Japan Meteorological Agency Climate Data Assimilation System (JRA-25/JCDAS). The results showed that the frequency of explosive cyclones increased in the northwestern Pacific region east of Japan. This increase was accompanied by a decrease in the number of slowly developing cyclones, indicating an increase in the cyclone growth rate. Moreover, most of the increased explosive cyclones east of Japan originated southwest of Japan. A comparison of the dynamical features and energy budgets of two composite cyclones in the earlier and later halves of the study period suggested that the increase was due to an enhancement of the low-level baroclinicity to the east of Japan and an increase in humidity associated with sea surface temperature warming and enhanced evaporation along the eastern shore of the Asian continent.Climate change has been identified as an additional major risk for pollinators, but pollinators are key species for agriculture, interaction within interdependent ecosystems and climate change adaptation of agro-ecosystems. Though agro-ecologists proved enhancement of crop production by wild pollinators, applied agricultural research and development did not take up such results to increase farm income as an incentive for farmers to engage in protection of wild pollinators. We suggest farming with alternative pollinators (FAP) as an integrated agro-ecological-socio-economic approach and a self-sustaining win-win-strategy for farmers, agro-ecosystems and climate change adaptation. In the course of climate change we regard wild pollinators and FAP as more reliable option than honeybees, particularly in higher elevations. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation is widely acknowledged as an urgent need for African countries. However, African governments face considerable challenges in prioritising adaptation interventions and, in particular, aligning these adaptation interventions with existing national development priorities. This article focuses on the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) as a case study to investigate what African countries perceive to be priority adaptation interventions. The AAP provides support to 20 African countries to identify and implement priority adaptation interventions under five AAP outcomes. This is achieved using participatory and consensus-based consultation with a wide range of stakeholders across a range of sectors. We classified each adaptation intervention identified in AAP project documents based on the following categories: (1) soft versus hard, (2) scale, (3) sector, and (4) type of intervention. We found that AAP countries selected predominantly soft adaptation interventions covering multiple sectors at the national scale. Of note, development of human and financial capital at a national scale was prioritised over hard or soft interventions at a local scale (e. g. hard infrastructure and restoration of natural capital). This suggests that (1) stakeholders were concerned with risks associated with such interventions; (2) capacity was limited to make informed decisions; and/or (3) there was a lack of coordination to create a consensus on the interventions. Our study highlights the importance of creating an enabling environment for more informed adaptation decisions and practices in African countries.Climate change adaptation is a priority and is fundamentally about sound and resilient development tailored to local conditions and needs. Several researchers have underscored the importance of community-based adaptation in achieving this. This article examines community-based approaches in order to build an understanding of community vulnerability to current and future climate risks in eastern Uganda. Primary data were collected at the community and household level applying participatory vulnerability and capacity assessment, in-depth household, and key informant interviews. Major climate risks in eastern Uganda that exacerbate community and household vulnerability are heavy and erratic rainfall leading to landslides in hilly areas and floods in low-lying areas, and droughts within the year and mid-season, affecting crop and livestock yields. Communities and households have innovative coping mechanisms based on past experiences, local knowledge and expertise albeit in an ad hoc manner. Household labour endowment, farm size, livestock ownership, access to weather information and credit positively and significantly affect the adoption of adaptation technologies by households. At community level, inherent knowledge and skills, and social and financial capital, play a critical role in shaping adaptation to climate risks. This study therefore strongly suggests that analyses of climate change impacts and design of adaptation projects should take into account community perspectives, knowledge and resources. Government and other stakeholders should identify and evaluate potential, location-specific adaptation measures, and incorporate them into the country's development policy and management practices particularly national development plan.We assessed the capability of the regional climate model (RCM) approach in simulating the monthly 50th and 99th percentiles of marine wind speed and significant wave height on the Japanese coast during tropical cyclone season (June-October) of 2002-2004. To simulate the marine winds, we performed dynamical downscaling of the Japanese Reanalysis (JRA-25) using three RCMs. We found that, by applying the Brier skill score, coastal wind speed of the RCMs is closer to the observed, when compared to the JRA-25. The better performance of the RCM approach was found to come from a successful reduction of the bias rather than that of the root mean square error. The RCMs, however, simulate erroneously low (high) marine wind speed northeast of Japan (along the Pacific coast and Kuroshio Extension). The erroneous marine wind speed was found to be related with the sea surface temperature bias associated with the coarse horizontal resolution of the JRA-25. We employed the dynamically-downscaled marine winds to force a wave model (Wave WATCH-Ill), and found that the marine winds of the RCMs are more effective than the JRA-25 in reproducing significant wave height on the Japan Sea coast.Given that climate change is likely to exacerbate drought in certain parts of the world, a critical issue is how appropriate context-relevant drought policy can be crafted. This paper examines how China is developing policies to rural people to cope with drought disaster. Based on content analysis of relevant policies from governance perspective, the study concludes that the complex governance structure shows that (a) drought policies include general climate change policies, drought relief policies and adaptive policies; (b) there is a shift from hierarchical line management to co-management at national level; (c) policy incentives are mostly regulatory, economic, or both; (d) drought management paradigm is still disaster management rather than risk management; (e) with retreat of governmental organizations from local level, grass root organizations become more important in policy implementation; and (f) adopting market mechanisms and involving stakeholders are obvious trends in drought policies, but which are still in nascent stage.Decadal climate prediction is a branch of climate modelling with the theoretical potential to anticipate climate impacts years in advance. Here we present analysis of the ENSEMBLES decadal simulations, the first multi-model decadal hindcasts, focusing on the skill in prediction of temperature and precipitation-important for impact prediction. Whilst previous work on this dataset has focused on the skill in multi-year averages, we focus here on the skill in prediction at smaller timescales. Considering annual and seasonal averages, we look at correlations, potential predictability and multi-year trend correlations. The results suggest that the prediction skill for temperature comes from the long-term trend, and that precipitation predictions are not skilful. The potential predictability of the models is higher for annual than for seasonal means and is largest over the tropics, though it is low everywhere else and is much lower for precipitation than for temperature. The globally averaged temperature trend correlation is significant at the 99% level for all models and is higher for annual than for seasonal averages; however, for smaller spatial regions the skill is lower. For precipitation trends, the correlations are not skilful on either annual or seasonal scales. Whilst climate models run in decadal prediction mode may be useful by other means, the hindcasts studied here have limited predictive power on the scales at which climate impacts and the results presented suggest that they do not yet have sufficient skill to drive impact models on decadal timescales.In a range of international reports Vietnam is pointed out as among the 5 to 10 most climate-vulnerable countries, which are taking center stage in global climate change assistance and thus attracting huge amounts of foreign aid for research, mitigation, adaptation, disaster management, etc. However, for various reasons relating to global and domestic politics, climate change adaptation and mitigation in Vietnam are separating from general environmental management, while at the same time failing to address social inequality. From a global justice perspective this may seem irrelevant but when the resulting technocratic approaches are applied to aid programs, addressing climate change as an autonomous field, the problems on the ground become distorted. Based on field studies in central Vietnam, the paper argues that fragmented approaches risk missing the target of helping the most vulnerable population groups, while ignoring the structural and environmental issues, which in many cases constitute more immediate threats to their livelihoods.Sea-level rise is one of the consequences of global warming that has the potential to affect the infrastructure of coastal urban areas. In this context, it is important to perform vulnerability assessments in order to understand how this infrastructure may be at risk, and, if necessary, adapt and maintain functionality of infrastructure systems. This study investigates the vulnerability of the wastewater collection and disposal infrastructure (i.e. pipelines and manholes, pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants) to sea-level rise in eThekwini Municipality, South Africa. By using geographical information systems (GIS) and a multi-criteria analysis considering elevation, operational capacity and connectivity, a scale of vulnerability was established and the most vulnerable infrastructural elements were identified in the municipality. These should be prioritised for detailed monitoring and adaptive interventions in order to maintain the functionality of the wastewater system as sea level is predicted to rise. As such this study presents a model of how vulnerability of wastewater systems can be evaluated in coastal cities.Urban sustainability research, despite rapid growth in research activity in recent years, still lacks integrative conceptual and methodological approaches that account for the full spectrum of urban processes and variables that determine human and ecosystem health and natural resource use. Once developed, such approaches would allow assessment of cities and urban policy and planning options in terms of the extent to which they satisfy the biologically determined health needs of people and maintain the integrity of the ecosystems on which cities depend. Integrated analysis and assessment of cities with regard to human health, ecosystem integrity and resource use would build on evolutionary and historical perspectives, and assist in understanding current environmental and health impacts of urbanism and options for the future.This article explores the drivers, benefits, and challenges facing climate change adaptation in the Maldives. It specifically investigates the "Integrating Climate Change Risks into Resilient Island Planning in the Maldives" Program, or ICCR, a four-year $9.3 million adaptation project being funded by the Least Developed Countries Fund, Maldivian Government and the United Nations Development Program, and nationally executed by the Ministry of Housing, Transport and Environment of the Maldivian Government. The article asks: what is the perception of coastal adaptation in the Maldives, and what are the potential contributions from the ICCR project? To answer this question, the article summarizes eight primary sectors vulnerable to climate change in the Maldives: human settlements, critical infrastructure, tourism, fisheries, health systems, water, food security, and coral reef biodiversity. It then describes the genesis and background behind the ICCR, which addresses many of these vulnerabilities by demonstrating coastal protection measures. Benefits to the ICCR include improving physical resilience by deploying "soft" infrastructure, institutional resilience by training policymakers and enhancing good governance, and community resilience by strengthening community assets and awareness. Challenges include ensuring that adaptation efforts are enough to truly respond to climate vulnerability, lack of coordination, and short-term thinking among business and community leaders.Conservation science strives to inform management decisions. Applying niche models in concert with future climate projections to project species vulnerability to extinction, range size loss, or distribution shifts has emerged as a potentially useful tool for informing resource management decisions. Making climate change niche modeling useful to conservation decisions requires centering studies on the types of decisions that are made regarding the focal taxa of a niche model study. Recent recommendations for climate adaptation strategies suggest four types of decision makers: policy, habitat protection, habitat management, species management. Targeting research to questions relevant for management decisions will increase utility of a niche model study. Constraints to the accuracy and precision of niche models to project potential future distributions are well-recognized. How to incorporate these uncertainties into management decision-making remains a challenge. Refining estimates and making sound management recommendations is critical because species that are generally modeled to be the most vulnerable to climate change (i.e., narrow endemics), are also the most vulnerable to bad decisions based on uncertain models. I review uncertainties of niche models to assert that there is an inherent bias for models to over-estimate climate-driven vulnerability to extirpation. Explicit recognition of this bias leads to a decision framework that accommodates unbalanced uncertainty. Namely, niche models may be more useful for identifying conservation opportunities identifying newly available habitats under changing climate than they are for asserting where current habitat will no longer exist under future climate states. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is expected to affect the poor in low- and middle-income countries most, particularly in the next few decades, through increased flooding and droughts. A very large number of these poor live in informal urban settlements, where they rely on water kiosks and pit latrines and where there is usually inadequate provision for drainage. Despite an abundance of publications on climate change, there is little advice that is specific to those providing water and sanitation services to the urban poor in these countries. This paper presents a Rapid Climate Adaptation Assessment (RCAA) for water and sanitation providers that generates recommendations on climate proofing for local service providers, utilities and local governments. Overall, the RCAA converts regional climate predictions into recommendations for local adaptations. The methodology was developed through fieldwork with communities in Lusaka (Zambia), Naivasha (Kenya) and Antananarivo (Madagascar). The paper describes the methodology, summarizes the results of its application (and the implications for adaptation) and discusses its wider application and limitations. In most cases, the proposed adaptations are not new actions, and could be described as "good water management".This article seeks to draw possible lessons for adaptation programmes in Bangladesh by examining whether cyclone preparedness and relief interventions are subject to corrupt practices. Based on a random sample survey of 278 households, three focus-group discussions and seven key-informant interviews, the article investigates the nature and extent of corruption in pre- and post-disaster interventions in Khulna before and after Cyclone Aila in May 2009. Ninety nine percent of households reported losses from corrupt practices. Post-disaster interventions (such as food aid and public works schemes) suffered from greater levels, and worse types, of corruption than pre-disaster interventions (such as cyclone warning systems and disaster-preparedness training). Using an asset index created using principal component analysis, the article assesses how corruption affected wealth quartiles. Ultra-poor households were affected more by corruption in pre-disaster interventions, the wealthiest quartile more in certain post-disaster interventions, in particular public works and non-governmental interventions. These findings may hold lessons for attempts to increase resilience as current adaptation measures mirror some cyclone preparedness and relief efforts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Influence of the Kuroshio in the East China Sea on the baiu rainband is examined using satellite observations, a reanalysis dataset, and a regional atmospheric model from 2003 to 2008. Satellite observations and reanalysis data reveal that precipitation over the Kuroshio is the highest in early summer (June), when the baiu rainband covers the East China Sea. The high rainfall is collocated with the warm sea surface temperature (SST) tongue of the Kuroshio. This locally enhanced precipitation is embedded in the large-scale baiu rainband, so that the amplitude of precipitation over the Kuroshio is twice as large as that in its surrounding area. The Kuroshio is also accompanied by high surface wind speed, energetic evaporation, and wind convergence. This wind convergence likely results from the SST influence on atmospheric pressure through not only temperature changes, but also humidity changes. Furthermore, the Kuroshio anchors the ascent motion and large diabatic heating with a peak in the midtroposphere, suggesting that the influence of the Kuroshio extends to the upper troposphere. It is also found that the East China Sea in June is the region of the strongest deep atmospheric response to western boundary currents along with the Gulf Stream region in summer. The observational results are well reproduced by the regional atmospheric model. The model indicates that when the SST tongue of the Kuroshio is smoothed, the enhanced precipitation, the energetic evaporation, and the wind convergence over the Kuroshio disappear, although the large-scale structure of the baiu rainband is not essentially changed.While researchers are aware that a mix of Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK), community-based resource management institutions, and higher-level institutions and policies can facilitate pastoralists' adaptation to climate change, policy makers have been slow to understand these linkages. Two critical issues are to what extent these factors play a role, and how to enhance local adaptation through government support. We investigated these issues through a case study of two pastoral communities on the Tibetan Plateau in China employing an analytical framework to understand local climate adaptation processes. We concluded that LEK and community-based institutions improve adaptation outcomes for Tibetan pastoralists through shaping and mobilizing resource availability to reduce risks. Higher-level institutions and policies contribute by providing resources from outside communities. There are dynamic interrelationships among these factors that can lead to support, conflict, and fragmentation. Government policy could enhance local adaptation through improvement of supportive relationships among these factors. While central government policies allow only limited room for overt integration of local knowledge/institutions, local governments often have some flexibility to buffer conflicts. In addition, government policies to support market-based economic development have greatly benefited adaptation outcomes for pastoralists. Overall, in China, there are still questions over how to create innovative institutions that blend LEK and community-based institutions with government policy making.In Cameroon and elsewhere in the Congo Basin, the majority of rural households and a large proportion of urban households depend on plant and animal products from the forests to meet their nutritional, energy, cultural and medicinal needs. This paper explores the likely impacts of climate-induced changes on the provisioning of forest ecosystem goods and services and its effect on the economic and social well-being of the society, including the national economy and the livelihoods of forest-dependent people. The analysis focuses on four identified vulnerable sectors - food (NTFPs), energy (fuelwood), health (medicinal plants) and water (freshwater) through a multi-stakeholder dialog at national and regional levels. We use a vulnerability assessment framework by combining the elements of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity to conceptualize vulnerability in these sectors. The identified sectors in relation to the forest ecosystem are discussed in view of providing an understanding of the sector's potential adaptive capacities for policy intervention. Our analysis presents the possible implications of the vulnerability of these sectors for planning local and national adaptation strategies. Local and national adaptive capacities to respond to climate impacts in the forest sectors includes: reducing poverty, enhancing food security, water availability, combating land degradation and reducing loss of biological diversity. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper investigates how transportation sector managers perceive and utilize climate science, and subsequently, how they appropriate the climate change problem. The analysis focuses on which devices they qualify as useful for translating between knowledge, policy and practice concluding with a discussion of what this suggests in the development of efficient climate adaptation strategies. The paper demonstrates that although transportation sector managers accept the findings of climate science knowledge presented to them, their understanding of the climate change problem and the range of qualifying anchoring devices used in the development of climate adaption strategies are differentiated according to where they are located in the institutional context. For transportation sector managers on the regional and district level, the climate problem is largely perceived through the occurrence of extreme weather rather than through climate science. However, this knowledge basis is not considered sufficient to support 'knowing how to act' and has resulted in waiting for the authorities to make standards and regulations that would translate climate change knowledge into methods of practice. We argue that the development of standards and regulations might be underestimated in relation to user demands in climate adaptation work that involves reconciling scientific information.This paper examines the processes by which the generic adaptive capacity of a system is translated into adaptation to climate change, what form it takes, and what factors facilitate or restrain such processes. This is done by an in-depth analysis of climate change adaptation in the Water supply and Wastewater (WW) sector of the Stockholm region. Observed adaptations are categorized in terms of building adaptive capacity and implementing adaptive decisions, and these measures are analyzed using a model of the adaptation process based on organizational learning theories. In particular, the concept of an organization's actual adaptation space is defined and used as a means to understand the adaptation options that different WW organizations can pursue, as well as why such options might be pursued. The paper finds that most adaptation measures in the WW sector of the Stockholm region are aimed at building the adaptive capacity of the sector. It also finds that the extent to which adaptation measures can be pursued by the WW organizations is determined principally by how able the organization is to justify the additional resources required for adaptation. The analysis shows that there are two main routes to address this: use of climate knowledge to argue that adaptation is needed, and reference to rules and regulations to show that it is required.Taylor S, Kumar L & Reid N (2012). Impacts of climate change and land-use on the potential distribution of an invasive weed: a case study of Lantana camara in Australia. Weed Research.52, 391401. Summary Lantana camara (lantana) is an extremely invasive species in many countries, including Australia. Biosecurity agencies will benefit from prior knowledge of the potential distribution of L. camara, under current and future climate scenarios. A process-based niche model for this species was developed using the CLIMEX modelling package. The potential distribution generated from this model was refined by incorporating existing land-use data in a Geographical Information System (GIS). The potential distribution of L. camara under current climate indicated that L. camara occupies almost the full extent of climatically suitable habitat available to it in Australia. Under future climate scenarios, L. camara range expands into new areas in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, while the northern parts of the continent become climatically unsuitable. This trend continued with the inclusion of land-use data, although with a more restricted distri-bution, as locations with suitable climate but unsuitable land-use were excluded. Weed control authorities in the new areas at risk of invasion under climate change need to be alerted to this emerging threat, so that effective response measures can be taken.This article presents a summary of findings and recommendations from an Australian research project funded by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF). 1 This case study examined the role of insurance as a mechanism for climate change adaptation. It is based on interviews about bushfire management in Tasmania. Interviews were conducted with staff in state, regional and local government agencies and with representatives of the housing construction, property development and insurance sectors. The results are discussed in the context of international examples and practice, and with regard to the three key themes of insurance affordability and availability; current and potential roles for insurance; and constraints and opportunities in governance. We conclude that insurance is critical to disaster recovery but its role in preparedness remains poorly understood, under-developed and under-utilised.Climate change will have unavoidable impacts on urban systems and populations, especially in Asia where many large cities are exposed. Climate adaptation will be essential, and planning for adaptation can be simplified through operationalizing concepts of climate resilience and vulnerability. This article reviews concepts and theories in a range of diverse fields to illustrate how the general notion of urban climate resilience can be developed into an operational framework for planning practitioners. The framework integrates theoretical and empirical knowledge of the factors contributing to resilience with processes for translating those concepts into practice. The framework includes characteristics of urban systems, the agents (people and organizations) that depend on and manage those systems, institutions that link systems and agents, and patterns of exposure to climate change. It operationalizes these concepts through structured and iterative shared learning approaches that allow local planners to define these factors in their own context, in order to develop practical strategies for local action. The viability of the framework is demonstrated through examples from resilience planning activities undertaken in 10 cities across Asia through the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.eScience is an umbrella concept which covers internet technologies, such as web service orchestration that involves manipulation and processing of high volumes of data, using simple and efficient methodologies. This concept is normally associated with bioinformatics, but nothing prevents the use of an identical approach for geoinfomatics and OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) web services like WPS (Web Processing Service). In this paper we present an extended WPS implementation based on the PyWPS framework using an automatically generated WSDL (Web Service Description Language) XML document that replicates the WPS input/output document structure used during an Execute request to a server. Services are accessed using a modified SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) interface provided by PyWPS, that uses service and input/outputs identifiers as element names. The WSDL XML document is dynamically generated by applying XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) to the getCapabilities XML document that is generated by PyWPS. The availability of the SOAP interface and WSDL description allows WPS instances to be accessible to workflow development software like Taverna, enabling users to build complex workflows using web services represented by interconnecting graphics. Taverna will transform the visual representation of the workflow into a SCUFL (Simple Conceptual Unified Flow Language) based XML document that can be run internally or sent to a Taverna orchestration server. SCUFL uses a dataflow-centric orchestration model as opposed to the more commonly used orchestration language BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) which is process-centric. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change presents cities with significant challenges such as adaptation to dynamic climate risks and protection of critical infrastructure systems and residents' livelihoods. City governments and inhabitants must continually respond to a variety of urban environmental risks. Understanding how cities have begun to extend these experiences to the context of climate change adaptation as well as mitigation is crucial for the development and identification of climate action best practices. The focus of this paper will be to document and explore how the city of New York has begun to define and implement a set of climate actions over the past half decade. These actions are presented within a discussion of past and future climate risks and vulnerabilities, and of climate and sustainability programmes that the city government has developed recently. Even as a mature, mega-city in a developed country, lessons from the New York City experience can be transferred to a variety of other urban contexts.Despite many strides made in the development of global circulation models as well as the expansive understanding of meteorological phenomena, many countries still lack sufficient meteorological information that can be conveniently utilized for a hydrologic outlook. This paper suggests a technique of processing the meteorological information, which is not only difficult to differentiate by reducing to a specific basin because of extensive data, but is also impossible to be led to a quantitative drought outlook because of its presentation in qualitative forms. To assess the drought conditions, two indices were selected-the standardized precipitation index (SPI), which is a meteorological index, and the soil moisture index (SMI), an agricultural index. The long-range forecasts, provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) to target the Korean peninsula, were used to predict these indices. As a means to convert the qualitative interval forecast into a quantitative probability forecast, previous data on temperature and precipitation were used to create a compatible probability distribution that was then divided into three intervals. Based on the interval forecast provided by the KMA, the forecast probability of corresponding intervals were differentiated and optimized for each study basin by modifying the probability adjustment coefficient. The quantified probability forecast established in this manner was applied to three basins in Korea, and was verified by applying the ranked probability skill score (RPSS). The results proved that accuracy was ensured in both SPI and SMI.In order to incorporate climate adaptation in spatial planning change is required, because climate change impacts the way we live. This implies that spatial planning, as the arranger of the spatial organisation and layout needs to be able to support this change. Current spatial planning is not yet well equipped to play this role. In this research article three possible routes to navigate change are explored. Incremental change is seen as a slow process, which modifies the landscape only slightly. Transition is seen as a fluent change towards a new future, which is an improved version of the existing; and transformation is seen as a change towards a future that is fundamentally different from the existing. The three pathways are compared and it is concluded that transformational change offers the best perspective in dealing with uncertain, unexpected and unprecedented futures, such as developing in times of climate change. Therefore, transformation is theoretically further elaborated and it is found that a transformational change to a new system already starts at a time when the existing system still fully operates. The change to a new system (called B in this article) therefore already started and the predecessors of B already existed. These 'B-minuses' of the new system can be found through network analysis, where the most intense and connective nodes are the most likely 'B-minuses'. Alternatively B-minuses can be created through locating the areas where key-nodes and existing infrastructure can be related to existing urban functions. As illustrated in the case-study design, these principles are able to guide the design of a climate proof landscape.For tourism stakeholders in the South Pacific, the need to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change is urgent and crucial. Adaptation is costly and puts significant pressure on government resources. Using Samoa as a case study, this research examines if and how public-private partnerships (PPPs) may help the tourism sector in Small Island Developing States and Territories (SIDST) in the South Pacific adapt. Policy-makers and business owners were interviewed. The paper illustrates the different perspectives of the stakeholders, and suggests what can be done to exploit the potential contribution of PPP in adaptation. This research also contributes to the body of literature by demonstrating how existing theories related to PPP can be applied to climate change adaptation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Operations of existing reservoirs will be affected by climate change. Reservoir operating rules developed using historical information will not provide the optimal use of storage under changing hydrological conditions. In this paper, an integrated reservoir management system has been developed to adapt existing reservoir operations to changing climatic conditions. The reservoir management system integrates: (1) the K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) weather generator model; (2) the HEC-HMS hydrological model; and (3) the Differential Evolution (DE) optimization model. Six future weather scenarios are employed to verify the integrated reservoir management system using Upper Thames River basin in Canada as a case study. The results demonstrate that the integrated system provides optimal reservoir operation rule curves that reflect the hydrologic characteristics of future climate scenarios. Therefore, they may be useful for the development of reservoir climate change adaptation strategy.Interannual variation in global tropospheric ozone associated with meteorological variability is characterized in this study using a global chemical transport model CHASER. We focus on five meteorological variability: El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), Arctic Oscillation (AO), Hadley, and monsoon circulations. Results show that the anomaly in tropospheric column ozone (TCO) is positive (1-1.5 DU) in the western Pacific including Indonesia and negative (-2.5 DU) in the eastern Pacific in October-November-December (OND) during positive phase of ENSO. The model exhibits TCO increase (0.5-1.5 DU) in the central to eastern Pacific over the subtropics. During the positive phase of IOD, the model shows TCO increase (1.5-2 DU) in the west of 90 degrees E with a decrease (1-1.5 DU) in the east. Intensified Hadley circulation causes TCO increase (0.8 DU) in North America in DJF. Intensified monsoon circulation enhances TCO (1.2 DU) in the western Indian Ocean. During positive phase of AO, TCO is decreased (1 DU) in the high northern latitudes. The contribution of meteorological variability to total interannual variation in global and regional TCO is also quantified in this study. The results suggest that interannual variation of TCO in the tropics and high northern latitudes are generally explainable by ENSO, IOD, AO, and interannual variation in Hadley and monsoon circulations. ENSO explains 79% of the variance in the tropical eastern Pacific in OND. AO explains 72% of the variance in the high northern latitudes in DJF.Background: Projections of health risks of climate change are surrounded with uncertainties in knowledge. Understanding of these uncertainties will help the selection of appropriate adaptation policies. Methods: We made an inventory of conceivable health impacts of climate change, explored the type and level of uncertainty for each impact, and discussed its implications for adaptation policy. A questionnaire-based expert elicitation was performed using an ordinal scoring scale. Experts were asked to indicate the level of precision with which health risks can be estimated, given the present state of knowledge. We assessed the individual scores, the expertise-weighted descriptive statistics, and the argumentation given for each score. Suggestions were made for how dealing with uncertainties could be taken into account in climate change adaptation policy strategies. Results: The results showed that the direction of change could be indicated for most anticipated health effects. For several potential effects, too little knowledge exists to indicate whether any impact will occur, or whether the impact will be positive or negative. For several effects, rough 'order-of-magnitude' estimates were considered possible. Factors limiting health impact quantification include: lack of data, multi-causality, unknown impacts considering a high-quality health system, complex cause-effect relations leading to multi-directional impacts, possible changes of present-day response-relations, and difficulties in predicting local climate impacts. Participants considered heat-related mortality and non-endemic vector-borne diseases particularly relevant for climate change adaptation. Conclusions: For possible climate related health impacts characterised by ignorance, adaptation policies that focus on enhancing the health system's and society's capability of dealing with possible future changes, uncertainties and surprises (e. g. through resilience, flexibility, and adaptive capacity) are most appropriate. For climate related health effects for which rough risk estimates are available, 'robust decision-making' is recommended. For health effects with limited societal and policy relevance, we recommend focusing on no-regret measures. For highly relevant health effects, precautionary measures can be considered. This study indicated that analysing and characterising uncertainty by means of a typology can be a very useful approach for selection and prioritization of preferred adaptation policies to reduce future climate related health risks.In 75% (v/v) DMSO/H2O solvent mixture, salt effects on the solvolysis reaction rates of haloalkanes and related compounds (RX) have been examined. In spite of the decreased water activity in the solvent mixture, the log(k/s(-1)) values of typical S(N)1 substrates, such as 1-bromoadamantane, increase with increasing concentration of added metal perchlorates (the order: Li+ < Na+ < Mg2+ < Ba2+), which is attributed to the direct chemical interaction between the leaving-group anion and the metal cation in the "modified" solution. Contrastingly, the log(k/s(-1)) value of an S(N)2 substrate decreases with increasing concentration of the metal perchlorates. When nonmetallic salts containing anions (Y- = Cl- or Br-) different from RX (X- = Cl-, Br-, or TsO-) are present, solvolyses of S(N)2, such as 1-bromohexane, are subjected to an anion-exchange reaction. By the detailed examination of Delta log(k/s(-1))/Delta[Mg(ClO4)(2)] for typical S(N)1, S(N)1-S(N)2 borderline, and S(N)2 substrates, we were able to demonstrate a linearity between the Mg(ClO4)(2) effects in the solvolysis rates and the carbocation stabilities expressed by the Gibbs free energy values (Delta G degrees) of RX in the gas phase. The salt effects on the solvolyses of S(N)1 to S(N)2 substrates are accounted for without relying on Winstein's reaction scheme or the arbitrary function of ion pairs of two types.This research develops a multistage stochastic linear programming (LP) model to assist in the process of water system planning and management under demographic and climate change in Amman, Jordan, over the next 75 years. Climate change is projected to have a gradual exacerbating effect on Amman's water stress over the next century, and water resources management strategies and policies put in place now will likely influence water use patterns for generations to come. A multistage decision model allows the identification of both adaptation strategies that should be implemented now and actions likely to be needed later, depending on future climate and demographic conditions. For Amman, the model recommends that household water reuse be expanded immediately, large-scale wastewater reclamation begin within 25 years, and mega-scale water import projects be postponed for several decades. Although these recommendations for the future will almost certainly change as additional information is acquired, by identifying now the actions most likely to be needed in the future, options for their implementation can be reserved, and feasibility studies begun. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000172. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Background-Extreme temperatures are associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths. Previous studies have investigated the relative CVD mortality risk of temperature, but this risk is heavily influenced by deaths in frail elderly people. To better estimate the burden of extreme temperatures, we estimated their effects on years of life lost due to CVD. Methods and Results-The data were daily observations on weather and CVD mortality for Brisbane, Australia, between 1996 and 2004. We estimated the association between daily mean temperature and years of life lost due to CVD, after adjusting for trend, season, day of the week, and humidity. To examine the nonlinear and delayed effects of temperature, a distributed lag nonlinear model was used. The model's residuals were examined to investigate whether there were any added effects due to cold spells and heat waves. The exposure-response curve between temperature and years of life lost was U-shaped, with the lowest years of life lost at 24 C. The curve had a sharper rise at extremes of heat than of cold. The effect of cold peaked 2 days after exposure, whereas the greatest effect of heat occurred on the day of exposure. There were significantly added effects of heat waves on years of life lost. Conclusions-Increased years of life lost due to CVD are associated with both cold and hot temperatures. Research on specific interventions is needed to reduce temperature-related years of life lost from CVD deaths. (Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2012;5:609-614.)Australia and New Guinea contain high levels of endemism and biodiversity, yet there have been few evaluations of population-level genetic diversity in fauna occurring throughout the Australo-Papuan region. Using extensive geographical sampling, we examined and compared the phylogenetic relationships, phylogeography and population structure of Anopheles farauti, An. hinesorum and An. irenicus throughout their ranges in the southwest Pacific using mitochondrial (mtDNA COI) and nuclear (ribosomal protein S9 and ribosomal DNA ITS2) loci. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that the ability to utilize humans as hosts has been lost repeatedly, coincident with independent colonizations of the Solomon Islands. As some of the species under investigation transmit malaria in the region, this is a medically important finding. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of nuclear loci also showed that the three species are monophyletic. However, putative introgression of An. hinesorum mtDNA onto a nuclear background of An. farauti was evident in populations from Queensland, Torres Strait and southern New Guinea. Haplotype networks and pairwise FST values show that there is significant genetic structure within New Guinea and Australia in both An. farauti and An. hinesorum, consistent with a long-term history of low gene flow among populations.Reforestation efforts in dryland ecosystems frequently encounter drought and limited soil productivity, although both factors usually interact synergistically to worsen water stress for outplanted seedlings. Land degradation in drylands (e.g. desertification) usually reduces soil productivity and, especially, soil water availability. In dry sub-humid regions, forest fires constitute a major disturbance affecting ecosystem dynamics and reforestation planning. Climate change projections indicate an increase of drought and more severe fire regime in many dryland regions of the world. In this context, the main target of plantation technology development is to overcome transplant shock and likely adverse periods, and in drylands this is mostly related to water limitations. In this paper, we discuss some selected steps that we consider critical for improving success in outplanting woody plants, both under current and projected climate change conditions including: (1) Plant species selection, (2) Improved nursery techniques, and (3) Improved planting techniques. The number of plant species used in reforestation is increasing rapidly, moving from a reduced set of well-known, easy-to-grow, widely used species, to a large variety of promising native species. Available technologies allow for reintroducing native plants and recovering critical ecosystem functions for many degraded drylands. However, climate change projections introduce large uncertainties about the sustainability of current reforestation practices. To cope with these uncertainties, adaptive restoration approaches are suggested, on the basis of improved plant quality, improved techniques for optimizing rain use efficiency in plantations, and exploring native plant species, including provenances and genotypes, for their resilience to fire and water use efficiency.This paper presents a reliability assessment of railway track buckling during extreme heatwave events. Monte Carlo simulation is used to estimate the probability of track buckling. The effects of important predictor parameters such as the effective buckling length and buckling modes of the rails, as well as the rail temperatures at the time of their installation and during the heatwave are taken into account in the simulation. The results show that the probability of the buckling of tracks during an extreme heatwave similar to the event that took place in Melbourne in January 2009 is about 2/100,000 on average, which is a good estimate of the number of the track segments that were actually observed to have buckled in the Melbourne railway network. This assessment demonstrates a science-based approach to reliability assessment for track buckling during heatwaves.This research highlights the spatial planning approach for coastal sustainability and adaptation to climate change. The dilemma of spatial planning in a dynamic and complex coastal environment as well as the establishment of a coastal buffer zone as an adaptation measure for climate change are elaborated upon. In particular, this study outlines the limitations of two of the traditional approaches used for spatial planning (optimization and simulation) and the opportunities that present themselves when combining both models for coastal zone planning. As a result, this study has developed an integrated modeling framework called MOPSD (multi-Objective Programming and System Dynamic) that can be used for spatial land use planning in coastal areas. The case study is Cijin Island, located next to the Kaohsiung harbor, Taiwan; this location demonstrates that the proposed MOPSD modeling approach generates superior results when compared to each of the two traditional methods. This is mainly attributed to the consideration of deterministic and dynamic characteristics when evaluating the climate change adaptation at risk of coastal erosion. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental change often requires evolutionary responses, and therefore understanding the genetic architecture of susceptible populations is essential for predicting their capacity to respond adaptively. However, quantitative genetic studies are rarely targeted at populations considered vulnerable to such environmental perturbations. Here, we assess the level of heritable variation in the ability of embryos to tolerate desiccation stress in Pseudophryne guentheri, a terrestrial-breeding frog that is currently experiencing a drying climate. We applied a North Carolina II breeding design to identify sources of genetic and environmental variance, and genotype-by-environment interactions (GEIs), underlying the expression of embryo survival, hatching times, hatchling mass, size, and shape. Our analysis revealed highly significant effects of water potential and maternal effects on all measured traits, while additive genetic effects were significant for hatchling shape, and nonadditive effects were observed for embryo survival. Interestingly, GEIs, including for some traits complex three-way sire-by-dam-by-environment interactions, were significant, indicating that progeny from certain malefemale crosses were more tolerant to water stress than others. These findings suggest a limited capacity of P. guentheri to respond to a drying climate, but also reveal that the detrimental effects of nonviable malefemale crosses (i.e., genetic incompatibility) can be masked in benign environments.Located in a relatively dry region and characterized by mainly sandy soils, the German Federal State of Brandenburg (surrounding the capital city of Berlin) is especially vulnerable to climate change impacts (e.g., summer droughts) and cascading effects on ecological systems (e.g., decreasing ground water tables, water stress, fire risk, productivity losses) with socioeconomic implications. Furthermore, a complex interplay of unemployment, rural exodus, and an aging population challenges this structurally weak region. We discuss adaptation measures that are either implemented or planned, as well as research into adaptation strategies to climate change for the sectors forestry, agriculture, and water management as well as in nature conservation in light of socioeconomic and ecological challenges and benefits. In doing so, we adopt a systemic view of Brandenburg where the sectors discussed are seen as subsystems embedded in a larger regional system. This at least partially holarchical approach enables the identification of conflicts between adaptation measures, but also of synergies among the sectors that pertain to successful adaptation to climate change. The insights gained ultimately highlight the need for cross-sectoral, adaptive management practices that jointly target a sustainable regional development.The idea that integration and synthesis are critical for designing climate change adaptation and mitigation is well entrenched conceptually. Here, we review the concepts of adaptation, synthesis and integration and apply them to the case study of coastal wetlands in South East Queensland, Australia. The distribution and condition of coastal wetlands will change as climate changes. This will create conservation challenges and economic costs, but these can be minimised by drawing from a broad sectoral perspective in undertaking adaptation planning and by ensuring integration into policy. Our review indicates that adaptations to sea level rise that are focussed on wetland and biodiversity conservation are likely to have impacts for urbanisation patterns. Planning regulations that provide spatial buffering around wetlands may give rise to more compact urban forms that may lead to reductions in the cost of defence against sea level rise, reduce energy usage per person and provide more green space. However, more compact urban forms could exacerbate heat island effects and place greater burden on the economically disadvantaged as, for example, single-family homes become more expensive. Planning for climate change needs to balance these equity and cross-sectoral issues in order to reduce the likelihood of unforeseen negative consequences.Spatial planning has been identified as a critical mechanism through which climate change adaptation can be facilitated. We review the role of spatial planning as a tool for adaptation to climate change. In doing so, we describe common planning processes and tools. Six capacities of spatial planning that have the potential ability to facilitate climate change adaptation are identified and discussed. These principally relate to spatial planning's ability to: act on matters of collective concern; manage competing interests; cut across scales; reduce and act on uncertainty; act as a knowledge repository; and be oriented to the future while integrating a range of diverse systems. Methods (tools) for planning which have the capacity to address climate change adaptation are presented and discussed. In light of these capacities and acknowledged limitations in planning practice, we identify three key challenges to spatial planning for adaptation: (1) developing conviction; (2) facilitating equitable processes and outcomes; and (3) transforming planning systems from passive to proactive. WIREs Clim Change 2012 doi: 10.1002/wcc.183 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.This essay assesses the "Integrating Climate Change Risks into Resilient Island Planning in the Maldives" Program, or ICCR, a four-year $9.3 million adaptation project supported by the Least Developed Countries Fund, Maldivian Government and the United Nations Development Program. The essay elaborates on the types of challenges that arise as a low-income country tries to utilize international development assistance to adapt to climate change. Based primarily on a series of semi-structured research interviews with Maldivian experts, discussed benefits to the ICCR include improving physical resilience by deploying "soft" infrastructure, institutional resilience by training policymakers, and community resilience by strengthening assets. Challenges include ensuring that adaptation efforts are sufficient to reduce vulnerability, lack of coordination, and the values and attitudes of business and community leaders.Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is predicted to experience considerable negative impacts of climate change. The IPCC Fourth Assessment emphasizes that adaptation strategies are essential. Addressing adaptation in the context of small-scale, semi-subsistence agriculture raises special challenges. High data demands including site-specific bio-physical and economic data are an important constraint. This paper applies a new approach to impact assessment, the Tradeoff Analysis model for Multi-Dimensional Impact Assessment (TOA-MD), which simulates technology adoption and associated economic, environmental and social outcomes in a heterogeneous farm population for a regional impact assessment. The methodology uses the kinds of survey, experimental and modeled data that are typically available in countries where semi-subsistence systems are important, combined with future socio-economic scenarios based on new scenario pathway concepts being developed by the climate change and impact assessment modeling communities. Characteristics of current and future agricultural systems, including land use, output, output price, cost of production, and farm and household size are analyzed and compared for both current and projected future climate (2030), with and without adaptation, and for different socio-economic scenarios. The methodology is applied to two study areas in Kenya. These case studies show the potential of this approach to provide a flexible, generic framework that can use available and modeled data to evaluate climate impact and adaptation strategies under a range of socio-economic scenarios. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Research on the human dimensions of climate change (HDCC) in the Canadian Arctic has expanded so rapidly over the past decade that we do not have a clear grasp of the current state of knowledge or research gaps. This lack of clarity has implications for duplication of climate policy and research, and it has been identified as a problem by communities, scientists, policy makers, and northern organizations. Our review of current knowledge about the HDCC in Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut indicates that the effects of climate change on subsistence harvesting and other land-based activities and the determinants of vulnerability and adaptation to such changes are well understood. However, the effects of climate change on health are less known. In the nascent research on this topic, studies on food security and personal safety dominate, and little peer-reviewed scholarship focuses on the business and economic sector. Published research shows a strong bias toward case studies in smaller communities, especially communities in Nunavut. Such studies have focused primarily on negative impacts of climate change, present-day vulnerabilities, and adaptive capacity, but studies proposing opportunities for adaptation intervention are beginning to emerge. While documenting the serious risks posed by climate change, they also highlight the adaptability of northern populations and the effects of economic-political stresses on vulnerability to changing climate. We note the absence of studies that examine how Northerners can benefit from new opportunities that may arise from climate change, or assess how the interaction of future climatic and socio-economic changes (specifically, resource development and enhanced shipping) will affect their experience of and response to climate change, or discuss the broader determinants of vulnerability and adaptation.Aim An important consideration when planning to conserve a species under climate change is to understand how the distribution of its food resources may also contract or shift under those same climatic conditions. Here, we use a case study to demonstrate a spatial conservation planning approach to inform decisions about where, under climate change, to protect and restore critical food and habitat resources for highly specialized species. Location Eastern Australia. Methods We developed fitted models for the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) and five of its key eucalypt food trees using the maximum entropy algorithm available in Maxent. We then projected these models using a range of IPCC A1FI climate change scenarios and identified areas with a higher probability of occurrence. We calculated where the koala and its food trees may co-occur under future climate change. Results The koala and its food trees experienced significant range contractions as climate change progressed, sometimes to regions outside their current distributions. The inland species Eucalyptus camaldulensis and Eucalyptus coolabah contracted from the more arid interior, which is outside the koala range, but persisted in the eastern regions of the koalas range, while Eucalyptus viminalis, Eucalyptus populnea and Eucalyptus tereticornis contracted eastwards and southwards, with a fragmented distribution. The highest probabilities of overlap between koalas and their food trees were identified in fragmented coastal and southern regions of the koalas current range. Main conclusions The application of a robust species distribution modelling decision support tool identified important changes, under climate change, in the distribution of a specialist species and its key food trees. These distributions did not change in complete synergy and therefore areas of overlap varied, depending on the food tree species modelled. This is of particular importance in a conservation planning context, when considering targeted protection and restoration of species-specific habitat resources.In response to climate change and other threatening processes there is renewed interest in the role of refugia and refuges. In bioregions that experience drought and fire, micro-refuges can play a vital role in ensuring the persistence of species. We develop and apply an approach to identifying potential micro-refuges based on a time series of remotely sensed vegetation greenness (fraction of photosynthetically active radiation intercepted by the sunlit canopy; fPAR). The primary data for this analysis were NASA MODIS 16-day L3 Global 250 m (MOD13Q1) satellite imagery. This method draws upon relevant ecological theory (source sink habitats, habitat templet) to calculate a micro-refuge index, which is analyzed for each of the major vegetation ecosystems in the case-study region (the Great Eastern Ranges of New South Wales, Australia). Potential ecosystem greenspots were identified, at a range of thresholds, based on an index derived from: the mean and coefficient of variance (COV) of fPAR over the 10-year time series; the minimum mean annual (PAR; and the COV of the 12 values of mean monthly fPAR. These greenspots were mapped and compared with (1) an index of vascular plant species composition, (2) environmental variables, and (3) protected areas. Potential micro-refuges were found within all vegetation ecosystem types. The total area of ecosystem greenspots within the upper 25% threshold was 48 406 ha; around 0.2% of the total area of native vegetation (23.9 x 10(6) ha) in the study region. The total area affected by fire was 3.4 x 10(6) ha. The results of the environmental diagnostic analysis suggest deterministic controls on the geographical distribution of potential micro-refuges that may continue to function under climate change. The approach is relevant to other regions of the world where the role of micro-refuges in the persistence of species is recognized, including across the world's arid zones and, in particular, for the Australian, southern African, and South American continents. Micro-refuge networks may play an important role in maintaining beta-diversity at the bio-region scale and contribute to the stability, resilience, and adaptive capacity of ecosystems in the face of ever-growing pressures from human-forced climate change, land use, and other threatening processes.Projecting future distributions of ecosystems or species climate niches has widely been used to assess the potential impacts of climate change. However, variability in such projections for the future periods, particularly the variability arising from uncertain future climates, remains a critical challenge for incorporating these projections into climate change adaptation strategies. We combined the use of a robust statistical modeling technique with a simple consensus approach consolidating projected outcomes for multiple climate change scenarios, and exemplify how the results could guide reforestation planning. Random Forest (RF) was used to model relationships between climate (1961-1990), described by 44 variables, and the geographic distribution of 16 major ecosystem types in British Columbia (BC), Canada. The model predicted current ecosystem distributions with high accuracy (mismatch rate = 4-16% for most ecosystem classes). It was then used to predict the distribution of ecosystem climate niches for the last decade (2001-2009) and project future distributions for 20 climate change scenarios. We found that geographic distributions of the suitable climate habitats for BC ecosystems have already shifted in 23% of BC since the 1970s. Consensus projections for future periods (2020s, 2050s, 2080s) indicated climates suitable for grasslands, dry forests, and moist continental cedar-hemlock forests would substantially expand; climate habitat for coastal rainforests would remain relatively stable; and habitat for boreal, subalpine and alpine ecosystems would decrease substantially. Using these consensus projections and data on the occurrence of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii [Mirb.] Franco) in BC ecosystems, we estimated a twofold increase in seedling demand for this frost-sensitive, commercially important timber species, suggesting managers could begin planning to expand seed inventories and seed orchard capacity to more widely plant this species on logged sites. The results of this work demonstrate the power of RF for building climate envelope models and illustrate the utility of consensus projections for incorporating uncertainty about future climate into management planning. It also emphasizes the immediate need for adapting natural resource management to a changing climate. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The distributional ranges of many species are contracting with habitat conversion and climate change. For vertebrates, informed strategies for translocations are an essential option for decisions about their conservation management. The pygmy bluetongue lizard, Tiliqua adelaidensis, is an endangered reptile with a highly restricted distribution, known from only a small number of natural grassland fragments in South Australia. Land-use changes over the last century have converted perennial native grasslands into croplands, pastures and urban areas, causing substantial contraction of the species' range due to loss of essential habitat. Indeed, the species was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 1992. We develop coupled-models that link habitat suitability with stochastic demographic processes to estimate extinction risk and to explore the efficacy of potential climate adaptation options. These coupled-models offer improvements over simple bioclimatic envelope models for estimating the impacts of climate change on persistence probability. Applying this coupled-model approach to T. adelaidensis, we show that: (i) climate-driven changes will adversely impact the expected minimum abundance of populations and could cause extinction without management intervention, (ii) adding artificial burrows might enhance local population density, however, without targeted translocations this measure has a limited effect on extinction risk, (iii) managed relocations are critical for safeguarding lizard population persistence, as a sole or joint action and (iv) where to source and where to relocate animals in a program of translocations depends on the velocity, extent and nonlinearities in rates of climate-induced habitat change. These results underscore the need to consider managed relocations as part of any multifaceted plan to compensate the effects of habitat loss or shifting environmental conditions on species with low dispersal capacity. More broadly, we provide the first step towards a more comprehensive framework for integrating extinction risk, managed relocations and climate change information into range-wide conservation management.An increasing body of research has demonstrated the often idiosyncratic responses of organisms to climate-related factors, such as increases in air, sea and land surface temperatures, especially when coupled with non-climatic stressors. This argues that sweeping generalizations about the likely impacts of climate change on organisms and ecosystems are likely less valuable than process-based explorations that focus on key species and ecosystems. Mussels in the genus Mytilus have been studied for centuries, and much is known of their physiology and ecology. Like other intertidal organisms, these animals may serve as early indicators of climate change impacts. As structuring species, their survival has cascading impacts on many other species, making them ecologically important, in addition to their economic value as a food source. Here, we briefly review the categories of information available on the effects of temperature change on mussels within this genus. Although a considerable body of information exists about the genus in general, knowledge gaps still exist, specifically in our ability to predict how specific populations are likely to respond to the effects of multiple stressors, both climate and non-climate related, and how these changes are likely to result in ecosystem-level responses. Whereas this genus provides an excellent model for exploring the effects of climate change on natural and human-managed ecosystems, much work remains if we are to make predictions of likely impacts of environmental change on scales that are relevant to climate adaptation.1. Short-term measures of metabolic responses to warmer environments are expected to indicate the sensitivity of species to regional warming. However, given time, species may be able to acclimate to increasing temperature. Thus, it is useful to determine if short-term responses provide a good predictor for long-term acclimation ability. 2. The tropical reef fish Acanthochromis polyacanthus was used to test whether the ability for developmental thermal acclimation of two populations was indicated by their short-term metabolic response to temperature. 3. While both populations exhibited similar short-term responses of resting metabolic rate (RMR) to temperature, fish from the higher-latitude population were able to fully acclimate RMR, while the lower-latitude population could only partially compensate RMR at the warmest temperature. These differences in acclimation ability are most likely due to genetic differences between the populations rather than differences in thermal regimes. 4. This research indicates that acclimation ability may vary greatly between populations and that understanding such variation will be critical for predicting the impacts of warming environmental temperatures. Moreover, the thermal metabolic reaction norm does not appear to be a good predictor of long-term acclimation ability.This paper uses two alternative economic analysis approaches, net present value (NPV) and real in options (RIO), to show how the failure to incorporate uncertainty and flexibility in the economic analysis of flood risk and coastal management strategies can result in maladaptive decisions. RIO offers a major development on the conventional NPV approach, because it integrates expected changes in future levels of uncertainty into economic analysis. This study applies RIO analysis to the semihypothetical case study of a coastal defense system to demonstrate its applicability for decision making on climate change adaptation. In the case study, two different adaptive strategies are analyzed, consisting of a hard and soft structural alternative. Soft strategies are often inherently more flexible than hard strategies. The results of the case study show that the NPV approach increases the relative cost of soft strategies for the two alternatives compared with hard strategies, because it does not account for the value of flexibility built into adaptive strategies. It is therefore recommended that RIO analysis be used for the choice between hard and soft strategies to avoid maladaptation. This is particularly significant in cases where there is both high climate uncertainty and high decision uncertainty concerning the best strategy. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WW.1943-5460.0000142. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.In the United States and Europe, at present 91% and 78% (ref. 1) of the total electricity is produced by thermoelectric (nuclear and fossil-fuelled) power plants, which directly depend on the availability and temperature of water resources for cooling. During recent warm, dry summers several thermoelectric power plants in Europe and the southeastern United States were forced to reduce production owing to cooling-water scarcity(2-4). Here we show that thermoelectric power in Europe and the United States is vulnerable to climate change owing to the combined impacts of lower summer river flows and higher river water temperatures. Using a physically based hydrological and water temperature modelling framework in combination with an electricity production model, we show a summer average decrease in capacity of power plants of 6.3-19% in Europe and 4.4-16% in the United States depending on cooling system type and climate scenario for 2031-2060. In addition, probabilities of extreme (>90%) reductions in thermoelectric power production will on average increase by a factor of three. Considering the increase in future electricity demand, there is a strong need for improved climate adaptation strategies in the thermoelectric power sector to assure future energy security.While the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada, provides guidelines for flood risk management, it is local governments' responsibility to delineate their own flood vulnerability, assess their risk, and integrate these with planning policies to implement adaptive action. However, barriers such as the lack of locally specific data and public perceptions about adaptation options mean that local governments must address the need for adaptation planning within a context of scientific uncertainty, while building public support for difficult choices on flood-related climate policy and action. This research demonstrates a process to model, visualize and evaluate potential flood impacts and adaptation options for the community of Delta, in Metro Vancouver, across economic, social and environmental perspectives. Visualizations in 2D and 3D, based on hydrological modeling of breach events for existing dike infrastructure, future sea level rise and storm surges, are generated collaboratively, together with future adaptation scenarios assessed against quantitative and qualitative indicators. This 'visioning package' is being used with staff and a citizens' Working Group to assess the performance, policy implications and social acceptability of the adaptation strategies. Recommendations based on the experience of the initiative are provided that can facilitate sustainable future adaptation actions and decision-making in Delta and other jurisdictions.Changes to tropical sea surface temperature and plankton communities are expected to occur over the next 100 years due to climate change. There is a limited understanding of how these environmental changes are likely to impact coral reef fishes, especially in terms of population replenishment through the quality of progeny produced. The present study investigated the effect that elevated sea water temperature and changes to food availability may have on the production of offspring by the reef fish Acanthochromis polyacanthus (Pomacentridae), as well as the performance of progeny in environments of varying food availability. An orthogonal design of three water temperatures and two food availabilities (high and low ration) was used, with water temperatures being the current-day average for the collection location (28.5 A degrees C), +1.5 A degrees C (30.0 A degrees C) and +3.0 A degrees C (31.5 A degrees C), representing likely temperatures by 2100. Generally, an increase in the water temperature for adults resulted in a reduction in the size, weight and amount of yolk possessed by newly hatched offspring. Offspring whose parents were maintained under elevated temperature (30.0 A degrees C high ration) had lower survival than offspring produced by parents at the current-day temperature (28.5 A degrees C high ration) at 15 days post-hatching, but only when juveniles were reared under conditions of low food availability. In contrast, by 30 days post-hatching, the growth and condition of these offspring produced by parents held under elevated temperature (30.0 A degrees C high ration) were the best of all treatment groups in all levels of juvenile food availability. This result illustrates the potential for initial parental effects to be modified by compensatory growth early in life (within 1 month) and that parental effects are not necessarily long lasting. These findings suggest that the performance of juvenile reef fish in future ocean conditions may not only depend on initial parental effects, but the interaction between their parentally mediated phenotype and their present food availability.Buildings represent long-term, capital-intensive investments designed to perform for decades into the future. Consequently, the potential for changes in climate across the design lifetime of built environments represents an immediate challenge for planning, design, and construction. In this study, we consider the opportunities to assess Climate Sensitivity and adaptive opportunities associated with green building practice. We developed a pair of complementary indicators called the Climate Sensitivity Index (CSI) and Climate Adaptation Opportunity Index (CAOI). These indicators are applied to evaluate individual strategies ("credits") within the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED (TM)) for New Construction rating system. The indices provide two complementary scores for each strategy. The CSI reflects potential sensitivity to changing conditions (i.e., risks to performance outcomes), and the CAOI indicates potential adaptive opportunities (i.e., plausible strategies to adapt to changing conditions). We apply the indices to retrospectively examine the prevalence of potentially sensitive and adaptive practices among a global set of 2440 LEED-certified projects. Adaptive opportunities were more prevalent than sensitivities in the LEED-NC rating system. The CSI and CAOI indices illustrate how information can be derived by interpreting patterns of LEED credit achievement. The indices will be available within a suite of analytical tools in the Green Building Information Gateway (www.gbig.org). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The benefits of protected areas (PAs) for biodiversity have been questioned in the context of climate change because PAs are static, whereas the distributions of species are dynamic. Current PAs may, however, continue to be important if they provide suitable locations for species to colonize at their leading-edge range boundaries, thereby enabling spread into new regions. Here, we present an empirical assessment of the role of PAs as targets for colonization during recent range expansions. Records from intensive surveys revealed that seven bird and butterfly species have colonized PAs 4.2 (median) times more frequently than expected from the availability of PAs in the landscapes colonized. Records of an additional 256 invertebrate species with less-intensive surveys supported these findings and showed that 98% of species are disproportionately associated with PAs in newly colonized parts of their ranges. Although colonizing species favor PAs in general, species vary greatly in their reliance on PAs, reflecting differences in the dependence of individual species on particular habitats and other conditions that are available only in PAs. These findings highlight the importance of current PAs for facilitating range expansions and show that a small subset of the landscape receives a high proportion of colonizations by range-expanding species.Background: Predicting effects of rapid climate change on populations depends on measuring the effects of climate stressors on performance, and potential for adaptation. Adaptation to stressful climatic conditions requires heritable genetic variance for stress tolerance present in populations. Methodology/Principal Findings: We quantified genetic variation in tolerance of early development of the ecologically important sea urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii to near-future (2100) ocean conditions projected for the southeast Australian global change hot spot. Multiple dam-sire crosses were used to quantify the interactive effects of warming (+2-4 degrees C) and acidification (-0.3-0.5 pH units) across twenty-seven family lines. Acidification, but not temperature, decreased the percentage of cleavage stage embryos. In contrast, temperature, but not acidification decreased the percentage of gastrulation. Cleavage success in response to both stressors was strongly affected by sire identity. Sire and dam identity significantly affected gastrulation and both interacted with temperature to determine developmental success. Positive genetic correlations for gastrulation indicated that genotypes that did well at lower pH also did well in higher temperatures. Conclusions/Significance: Significant genotype (sire) by environment interactions for both stressors at gastrulation indicated the presence of heritable variation in thermal tolerance and the ability of embryos to respond to changing environments. The significant influence of dam may be due to maternal provisioning (maternal genotype or environment) and/or offspring genotype. It appears that early development in this ecologically important sea urchin is not constrained in adapting to the multiple stressors of ocean warming and acidification. The presence of tolerant genotypes indicates the potential to adapt to concurrent warming and acidification, contributing to the resilience of C. rodgersii in a changing ocean.Studies on the effects of anthropogenic climate change have found that the magnitude and frequency of intense precipitation events are expected to increase over the next century for the midwestern United States. The goal of this study was to use statistically down-scaled and debiased precipitation projections for the state of Wisconsin derived from 14 general circulation models (GCMs) to assess the projected precipitation changes for the mid-21st century in a way that is relevant to water-resource decision making. The authors analyzed metrics that are relevant to storm-water design, such as the 100-year, 24-h quantile, and the authors also evaluated the changes in a risk-assessment context using idealized damage functions that translate precipitation depths into economic damages. The results of our design-metric analysis show that the 100-year, 24-h quantiles for Wisconsin are projected to have significant but modest increases of approximately 11% over the next 50 years. Our risk assessment shows that the largest percent changes in risk for Wisconsin are projected to be in the northeast portion of the state. Both of these analyses will be used as part of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) to develop climate-change adaptation strategies for communities throughout the state. DOI:10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0000513. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Human adaptation to climate change is gaining increasing academic as well as political attention. Understanding how and what people around the world adapt to is, however, difficult. Climate change is often, if not always, only one of a multiplicity of exposures perforating local communities. In Biidi 2, a small Sahelian village in northern Burkina Faso, climate variability have had a great influence on inhabitants' lives since the major droughts of the early 1970s and 1980s. Tracing the intertwinement of drought, diminishing agricultural production and the need to buy food, this article explores how villagers attempt to attract development projects and negotiate with political parties in order to negate the impact of the global food crisis on their livelihoods. In doing so the article attempts to show how adaptation to climate variability is related to multiple, intersecting processes, and in this specific case is a matter of navigating changing socioeconomic factors. Using recent theory from social anthropology, adaptation is explored as a matter of social navigation. It is suggested that this theoretical approach might help nuance and elucidate how, and to what, local people around the world adapt. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Internationally, there is increasing responsibility on local governments to prepare and adapt to global climate change through climate adaptation planning. This study evaluated seven local climate adaptation plans in Southeast Queensland, Australia by developing and applying a quantitative, multi-criteria analysis framework. The results indicated that local governments were not effectively planning for climate impacts. While they were aware of expected climate change impacts, their capacity to use this information to develop geographically specific action plans was limited. We discuss the wider relevance of the evaluation framework, its potential uses outside the study area and how it may be adjusted to suit different local and regional needs and context. We also discuss key structural, procedural and contextual limitations that emerged from our evaluation of Southeast local governments, and provide recommendations to improve the development of the next generation of local climate adaptation plans. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global climate change will have a strong impact on Nigeria, particularly on agricultural production and associated livelihoods. Although there is a growing scientific consensus about the impact of climate change, efforts so far in Nigeria to deal with these impacts are still rudimentary and not properly coordinated. There is little evidence of any pragmatic approach towards tracking climate change in order to develop an evidence base on which to formulate national adaptation strategies. Although Nigeria is not alone in this regard, the paper asserts that National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy could help address this situation by guiding the integration of climate change adaptation into government policies, strategies, and programs, with particular focus on the most vulnerable groups and the agricultural sectors. There is an urgent need to adopt abatement strategies that will provide economic incentives to reduce the risk from disasters, such as developing agricultural practices that are more resilient to a changing climate.The impacts of recurrent droughts have increased vulnerability and reduced the adaptive capacity of the people living in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALS) of Kenya. Current interventions are short-term and curative in nature, hence unsustainable. Some of the most arid and semi-arid lands are located within the Kenyan Rift system, which has an estimated geothermal potential of about 7000 to 10,000 MWe, out of which only 200 MWe has been developed, and about 5000 MWe planned by 2030. Recent power sector reforms have built institutional structures that will accelerate development of geothermal energy. The paper analyses the potential use of geothermal energy resources in eastern Baringo lowlands between Lake Bogoria and Silali prospects, which has an estimated potential of >2700 MWe, in creating the necessary adjustments needed to adapt to the impacts of recurrent droughts by locals. Opportunities for direct and indirect uses of geothermal energy exist in climate vulnerable sectors, such as, agriculture, fisheries, water, livestock production as well as alternative income generating activities such as, tourism, micro enterprises, aloe, honey and beeswax production, fabric dyeing and others using resources sourced from within a 50 km radius. The possibility of accelerated geothermal development and proposed utilisation schemes in causing maladaptation if unsustainably implemented is also discussed. The paper draws a Lindal diagram adapted to the study area showing potential utilisation in the above sectors, and new flow diagram showing potential for cascaded use of geothermal hot water through the different processes. An estimated capacity of 100 MWt and 100 MWe can be used in the potential utilisation schemes discussed in this article to meet local adaptation and lighting needs and much less in a cascaded process. Potential barriers and possible solutions are also discussed. The study concludes that geothermal energy is a vital option for adaptation in the study area if sustainably used. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This postscript highlights questions that are particularly germane for thinking about how to use modern, state of the art investigations of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability to advance a broader decision-supporting research agenda. They are drawn from the fundamental conclusion from the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeResponding to climate change involves an iterative risk management process that includes both adaptation and mitigation . . . . They are: 1 How do we mainstream climate adaptation into decision-making with multiple stresses? 2 Are we now at a juncture where we can begin to calibrate the value of mitigation over the short to medium term? 3 How do we know, as is often claimed, that adaptive capacity will be overwhelmed by unabated climate change? 4 What does iterative mean in practice? This collection of essays might show the way so that, in 5 or 10 years time, we have better answers.This action-research project aimed to test a participatory mapping methodology using Google Earth to develop shared understandings among participants about sustainability and climate change. The process focused on improving knowledge uptake and enabling dialogue among participants in order to develop adaptation strategies for Rottnest Island, off the Western Australian coast. Project results indicate increased levels of knowledge and commitment to active involvement in sustainability and climate change issues. Common threads came together in a coherent set of recommendations that will contribute to ongoing climate change and sustainability planning by the Rottnest Island Authority. Major conclusions drawn include: the usefulness of Google Earth for participatory planning for climate adaptation and sustainability; the methodology enables social, economic, ecological and cultural layers to be considered without any having primacy; care must be taken to ensure knowledge and power differential are managed effectively; and, the methodology brought together stakeholders and scientists to co-produce knowledge and decisions. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article investigates the climate vulnerabilities of four least developed Asian countries Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, and the Maldives-before discussing how efforts are underway to strengthen infrastructural, organizational, and community-based adaptation. Infrastructural adaptation refers to the assets, technologies, or "hardware" that can withstand climate change impacts, such as climate-proofed irrigation systems, roads, or electricity networks. Organizational adaptation refers to the endurance of an effective institution or set of institutions, usually government ministries or departments, in charge of planning and policy, as well as its capacity to develop and revise climate policies. Social adaptation refers to the cohesion of communities and the livelihoods of the people that compose them. We argue that resilient adaptation infrastructures can recover quickly from climate disruptions, resilient organizations can cope with new stresses and changes and still function, resilient communities have assets such as education or wealth that enable them to survive or even thrive in the face of climate-related challenges. Ongoing adaptation efforts in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, and the Maldives are examples of projects that simultaneously attempt to enhance all three dimensions of adaptation. Data for these cases comes primarily from a review of country National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) supplemented with research interviews and site visits. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Based on the same data source of Landsat TM/ETM+ in 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, all urban built-up areas in China are mapped mainly by human interpretation. Mapping results were checked and refined by the same analyst with the same set of criteria. The results show during the last 20 years urban areas in China have increased exponentially more than 2 times. The greatest area of urbanization changed from Northeastern provinces in 1990s to the Southeast coast of China in Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, and Zhejiang in 2010s. Urban areas are mostly converted from croplands in China. Approximately 17750 km(2) croplands were converted into urban lands. Furthermore, the conversion from 2000 to 2010 doubled that from 1990 to 2000. During the 20 years, the most urbanized provinces are Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong and Zhejiang. We also analyzed built-up areas, gross domestic production (GDP) and population of 147 cities with a population of greater than 500000 in 2009. The result shows coastal cities and resource-based cities are with high economic efficiency per unit of built-up areas, resource-based cities have the highest population density, and the economic efficiency of most coastal provinces are lower than central provinces and Guangdong. The newly created urban expansion dataset is useful in many fields including trend analysis of urbanization in China; simulation of urban development dynamics; analysis of the relationship among urbanization, population growth and migration; studies of carbon emissions and climate change; adaptation of climate change; as well as land use and urban planning and management.In the North China Plain, the grain yield of irrigated wheat-maize cropping system has been steadily increasing in the past decades under a significant warming climate. This paper combined regional and field data with modeling to analyze the changes in the climate in the last 40 years, and to investigate the influence of changes in crop varieties and management options to crop yield. In particular, we examined the impact of a planned adaptation strategy to climate change -"Double-Delay" technology, i.e., delay both the sowing time of wheat and the harvesting time of maize, on both wheat and maize yield. The results show that improved crop varieties and management options not only compensated some negative impact of reduced crop growth period on crop yield due to the increase in temperature, they have contributed significantly to crop yield increase. The increase in temperature before over-wintering stage enabled late sowing of winter wheat and late harvesting of maize, leading to overall 4-6% increase in total grain yield of the wheat-maize system. Increased use of farming machines and minimum tillage technology also shortened the time for field preparation from harvest time of summer maize to sowing time of winter wheat, which facilitated the later harvest of summer maize.Failure to act quickly on evidence of rapid population decline has led to the first mammal extinction in Australia in the last 50 years, the Christmas Island Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus murrayi). The fate of another iconic species, the migratory Orange-bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster), monitored intensively for over 20 years, hangs in the balance. To inform future conservation management and decision making, we investigate the decision process that has led to the plight of both species. Our analysis suggests three globally relevant recommendations for minimizing species extinction worldwide: (1) informed, empowered, and responsive governance and leadership is essential; (2) processes that ensure institutional accountability must be in place, and; (3) decisions must be made whilst there is an opportunity to act. The bottom line is that, unless responsive and accountable institutional processes are in place, decisions will be delayed and extinction will occur.This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of climate change on agriculture in a typical developing country. The economic implications of climate change are estimated by using both a farm productivity and a Ricardian framework. Data are drawn from about 1,000 farms producing cereal crops in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. The thin plate spline method of spatial interpolation was used to predict household specific rainfall and temperature values using meteorological station data collected for 30 years across the regions. We found that climate change adaptation has a significant impact on both farm productivity and farm net revenues. We complement the analysis by providing an estimation of the determinants of adaptation. Extension services (both formal and farmer to farmer), as well as access to credit and information on future climate changes are key drivers of adaptation.One of the central questions in climate change debates concerns fair burden-sharing, i.e. justice in the distribution of costs of undertaking climate-managing policies. In this paper it is argued that in order to distribute such costs justly, it is necessary to have a nuanced understanding of what types of burdens they represent. Climate managing policies are usually divided into responses that seek to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mitigation) and responses that seek to prevent harm arising from a changing climate (adaptation). Some have argued that there are normatively significant differences between mitigation and adaptation: that the two responses adhere to different logics and evoke different patterns of burden-sharing. This paper argues that the relevant distinction is instead between negative and positive climate duties, i.e. whether an agent has a duty to undertake climate-managing policies on account of the harm its excessive emissions are causing or simply on account of its ability to assist those in need. The paper offers a typology of the different mitigation and adaptation responses that can be sorted under the negative/positive distinctions. This way of conceptualizing the issue not only enables us to better address the burden-sharing question, offering a more nuanced understanding of the types of climate burdens that are ascribable to agents and pointing out the appropriate roles of contributory responsibility and ability. It also clarifies aspects of the climate negotiations, and explains why it matters whether adaptation finance transferred to vulnerable countries is portrayed as compensation for harmful emissions or simply as donor countries discharging their humanitarian duties. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Policies to secure energy and water supplies from the impacts of climate change are currently being developed or are in place in many developed nations. Little is known about how these policies of security, and the systems of resource provision they prioritise, affect householders' capacity to adapt to climate change. To better understand the connections between resource provision and consumption, this paper explores the notion that different 'energies' and 'waters' can be conceptualised as material elements of social practices, which shape the way practices are performed. We draw on a study of Australian migrants and their experiences with different resource provision systems in multiple countries, time periods and contexts across three generations. We discuss the differing characteristics of energy and water provision across three broad resource 'eras', and the way resources enable or reduce resourcefulness, adaptive capacity and resilience. We find that policy makers may inadvertently reduce householders' capacity to respond and adapt to climate change impacts by prioritising the resource characteristics of immateriality, abundance and homogeneity. We conclude that policy which prioritises the resource characteristics of materiality, diversity and scarcity is an important, underutilised and currently unacknowledged source of adaptive capacity. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Facing climate change and global warming, outdoor climatic environment is an important consideration factor for planners and policy makers because improving it can greatly contribute to achieve citizen's thermal comfort and create a better urban living quality for adaptation. Thus, the climatic information must be assessed systematically and applied strategically into the planning process. This paper presents a tool named Urban Climate Map System (UCMS) that has proven capable of helping compact cities to incorporate climate effects in planning processes in a systematic way. UCMS is developed and presented in a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform in which the lessons learned and experience gained from interdisciplinary studies can be included. The methodology of UCMS of compact cities, the construction procedure, and the basic input factors - including the natural climate resources and planning data - are described. Some literatures that shed light on the applicability of UMCS are reported. The Municipality of Arnhem is one of Dutch compact urban areas and still under fast urban development and urban renewal. There is an urgent need for local planners and policy makers to protect local climate and open landscape resources and make climate change adaptation in urban construction. Thus, Arnhem is chosen to carry out a case study of UCMS. Although it is the first work of Urban Climatic Mapping in The Netherlands, it serves as a useful climatic information platform to local planners and policy makers for their daily on-going works. We attempt to use a quick method to collect available climatic and planning data and create an information platform for planning use. It relies mostly on literature and theoretical understanding that has been well practiced elsewhere. The effort here is to synergize the established understanding for a case at hand and demonstrate how useful guidance can still be made for planners and policy makers. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Scientific consensus shows that the changes related to climate change are already occurring and will intensify in the future. This will likely result in significant alterations to coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, increase coastal hazards and affect lifestyles of coastal communities. There is increasing speculation that mangrove, a socio-economically important ecosystem, will become more fragile and sensitive to uncertain climate variability such as sea level rise. As a result, mangrove-dependent societies may find themselves trapped in a downward spiral of ecological degradation in terms of their livelihoods and life security. Strengthening the resilience capacity of coastal communities to help them cope with this additional threat from climate change and to ensure sustainability calls for immediate action. In this context, this paper critically examines the regional implications of expected sea level rise and threats to mangrove-dependent communities through a case study approach. The main objective is to highlight the requirement for climate change communication and education to impart information that will fulfil three expectations: (1) confer understanding; (2) assess local inference on climate change through a participatory approach; and (3) construct a framework for climate change awareness among mangrove-dependent communities through community-based non-formal climate change education. This scale of approach is attracting increasing attention from policymakers to achieve climate change adaptation and derive policies from a social perspective.The Gold Coast, Australia is a coastal resort city whose urban environment has evolved through a series of human interventions on the natural shoreline. Such cities rely on a perceived high quality environment which in turn is reliant on continuing maintenance (e.g. beach nourishment, inlet dredging, drainage). Climate change consequently holds particular challenges for coastal resort cities. Sea-level rise impacts are likely to be manifest in increased frequency of flooding and beach erosion episodes. Here we consider adaptation options for the city under various future sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios at the high end of current predictions for the next century (+1 m, +2 m and +5 m) with the proviso that the beach and waterways must be preserved to enable the city to continue to exist as a resort. We conclude that pre-planned adaptation would probably enable the city to survive SLR of 1 m. An unplanned response to the same SLR would likely be characterised by periodic crises, growing uncertainty and public unease and would have marginal chances of success. For a 2 m SLR we contend that even with an adaptation plan in place, the scale of measures required would severely stretch the city's resources. Under a 5 m SLR over the next century we do not believe that any amount of planning would enable the city to survive as a coastal resort. Any adaptation to SLR would involve increased cost to maintain the artificial coastal environment. Adaptation options are particularly constrained by the widespread development around the waterways of the back-barrier area. Unlike other coastal cities, resorts depend on a public perception of a high quality environment. Maintaining this perception under SLR imposes particular adaptation constraints on resort cities. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change, resilience building and vulnerability reduction are emerging issues in spatial development and spatial planning in Germany, the European Union and globally. This paper introduces different concepts of and views on adaptation, vulnerability and resilience and outlines their implications for spatial planning in the context of a changing climate. On the basis of a conceptual discussion of key terms, the authors underscore the importance of assessing vulnerability as baseline information for the promotion of resilience and the enhancing of adaptation. The challenges of identifying and assessing vulnerability are illustrated through a case study of local flood vulnerability in Cologne with a specific focus on the vulnerability of different population groups as well as critical infrastructures. The respective key elements and phases of such assessments are identified. New challenges with regard to systemic risks are addressed and recommendations for improved linkages between spatial planning and civil protection formulated. The final part of the paper evaluates the upcoming challenges for adaptive planning in the context of climate change adaptation, for example regarding scenario development and its application.Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are vulnerable to climate change impacts including sea level rise, invasive species, ocean acidification, changes in rainfall patterns, increased temperatures, and changing hazard regimes including hurricanes, floods and drought. Given high dependencies in Caribbean SIDS on natural resources for livelihoods, a focus on ecosystems and their interaction with people is essential for climate change adaptation. Increasingly, ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) approaches are being highlighted as an approach to address climate change impacts. Specifically, EbA encourages the use of local and external knowledge about ecosystems to identify climate change adaptation approaches. This paper critically reviews EbA in Caribbean SIDS, focusing on the need to integrate local and external knowledge. An analysis of current EbA in the Caribbean is undertaken alongside a review of methodologies used to integrate local and external expertise for EbA. Finally key gaps, lessons learnt and suggested ways forward for EbA in Caribbean SIDS and potentially further afield are identified.Mangrove and saltmarsh ecosystems appear particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and their effective management will require forecasts of how these wetland habitats are likely to respond to sea-level rise through the twenty-first century. We describe a preliminary study of a small stand of mangrove and saltmarsh that involves measuring of elevation change and accretion, mapping of wetland communities, and modelling of their potential response to sea-level rise. The wetland occurs on the banks of the Minnamurra River estuary in southern New South Wales and has been the focus of several studies over recent decades. The research includes empirical measurements of sedimentation at sites in both mangrove and saltmarsh vegetation using the surface elevation table-marker horizon technique. This is a site at which mapping has been undertaken to delineate the extent of each vegetation community from a time-series of aerial photographs using geographical information systems; the gradual incursion of the mangrove, Avicennia marina, into more landward saltmarsh communities, observed over past decades for many systems in southeastern Australia, has continued into the twenty-first century. The observed patterns of change are compared with simulations of how this wetland system might respond to future sea-level rise, adopting several different approaches and the upper and lower bounds of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sea-level rise projections. The model results show considerable variability in response depending on the parameters adopted. We advocate the need for the integration of these three approaches, measuring, mapping and modelling, as a basis for future management and adaptation. Our study demonstrates the considerable opportunities to refine the data input and model outputs as part of adaptive management, as more sophisticated technologies and data become available.Our aim was to model the current and future potential global distribution of Chloris truncata (windmill grass) based on the plant's biology, soil requirements and colonisation success. The growth response of C. truncata to constant temperatures and soil moisture levels were measured and estimated respectively, to develop parameters for a CLIMEX bioclimatic model of potential distribution. The native distribution in eastern Australia and naturalised distribution in Western Australia was also used to inform the model. Associations with soil types were assessed within the suitable bioclimatic region in Australia. The global projection of the model was tested against the distribution of soil types and the known successful and failed global introductions. The verified model was then projected to future conditions due to climate change. Optimal temperature for plant development was 28 degrees C and the plant required 970 degree-days above a threshold of 10 degrees C. Early collection records indicate that the species is native to Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. The plant has been introduced elsewhere in Australia and throughout the world as a wool contaminant and as a potential pasture species, but some of the recorded establishments have failed to persist. The CLIMEX model projected to the world reflected effectively both the successful and failed distributions. The inclusion of soil associations improved the explanation of the observed distribution in Australia, but did not improve the ability to determine the potential distribution elsewhere, due to lack of similarity of soil types between continents. The addition of a climate change projection showed decreased suitability for this species in Australia, but increased suitability for other parts of the world, including regions where the plant previously failed to establish.A process-based niche model of L. camara L. (lantana), a highly invasive shrub species, was developed to estimate its potential distribution using CLIMEX. Model development was carried out using its native and invasive distribution and validation was carried out with the extensive Australian distribution. A good fit was observed, with 86.7% of herbarium specimens collected in Australia occurring within the suitable and highly suitable categories. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to identify the model parameters that had the most influence on lantana distribution. The changes in suitability were assessed by mapping the regions where the distribution changed with each parameter alteration. This allowed an assessment of where, within Australia, the modification of each parameter was having the most impact, particularly in terms of the suitable and highly suitable locations. The sensitivity of various parameters was also evaluated by calculating the changes in area within the suitable and highly suitable categories. The limiting low temperature (DV0), limiting high temperature (DV3) and limiting low soil moisture (SM0) showed highest sensitivity to change. The other model parameters were relatively insensitive to change. Highly sensitive parameters require extensive research and data collection to be fitted accurately in species distribution models. The results from this study can inform more cost effective development of species distribution models for lantana. Such models form an integral part of the management of invasive species and the results can be used to streamline data collection requirements for potential distribution modelling.Climate variability is set to increase, characterised by extreme conditions in Africa. Southern Africa will likely get drier and experience more extreme weather conditions, particularly droughts and floods. However, while climate risks are acknowledged to be a serious threat to smallholder farmers' livelihoods, these risks do not exist in isolation, but rather, compound a multiplicity of stressors. It was important for this study to understand farmer perceptions regarding the role of climate risks within a complex and multifarious set of risks to farmers' livelihoods. This study used both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate farmers' perceptions regarding threats to livelihoods in southern Zambia and south-western Zimbabwe. While farmers report changes in local climatic conditions consistent with climate variability, there is a problem in assigning contribution of climate variability and other factors to observed negative impacts on the agricultural and socio-economic system. Furthermore, while there is a multiplicity of stressors that confront farmers, climate variability remains the most critical and exacerbate livelihood insecurity for those farmers with higher levels of vulnerability to these stressors. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study applies programme theory to analyse ways in which adaptation to climate change may emerge as a consequence of development polices, specifically by examining the case of rice production in Mozambique. The case study indicates that adaptation and development interact better when policies are designed to integrate different needs, and that existing processes like the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) can help to mainstream adaptation into development policies while keeping objectives separate. The assessment shows that synergies between development and adaptation can be promoted to increase adaptive capacity and implement adaptation measures. A Sustainable Development Policies and Measures (SD-PAM) mechanism, similar to the one more commonly discussed for mitigation, can also be used to identify, finance and monitor adaptation through development activities. NAPAs can further facilitate the identification of common resources, leverage mechanisms and activities required for success in adaptation and development interventions. Adaptation can be integrated into development interventions, as well as into institutional arrangements, resource management and legal frameworks. Integration of adaptation can also support sustainable development through a systemic consideration of the assumptions and interventions in development policies. The implementation of adaptation could be advanced through targeted development interventions that create traceable adaptation benefits through mechanisms that incentivize and support sustainable development policies and measures.An evaluation of weather risk entails two important objectives: indicating the economic impact of weather variability and climate change, and evaluating the use of weather derivatives in weather risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategy. This paper illustrates a straightforward approach for measuring weather risk, which captures both the exposure and the sensitivity of business and economic indicators to weather variability. Using the example of the accommodation industry in Kitzbuehel (Austria), it is demonstrated that the risk measure Weather-VaR can be used to serve both ends. It is found that compared to a normal climatological season, adverse snow conditions (at the level of a 1 in 20-yr event) result in a substantial financial loss of approximately 4 million euros. However, results show that quantification of weather risk is substantially affected by the choice of the weather variable or index, the time period under consideration, the model specification for estimating the sensitivity parameter, and whether time trends are considered when estimating the probability of unfavorable weather conditions.Extreme precipitation can cause flooding, result in substantial damages and have detrimental effects on ecosystems(1,2). Climate adaptation must therefore account for the greatest precipitation amounts that may be expected over a certain time span(3). The recurrence of extreme-to-heavy precipitation is notoriously hard to predict, yet cost-benefit estimates of mitigation and successful climate adaptation will need reliable information about percentiles for daily precipitation. Here we present a new and simple formula that relates wet-day mean precipitation to heavy precipitation, providing a method for predicting and downscaling daily precipitation statistics. We examined 32,857 daily rain-gauge records from around the world and the evaluation of the method demonstrated that wet-day precipitation percentiles can be predicted with high accuracy. Evaluations against independent data demonstrated high skill in both space and time, indicating a highly robust methodology.Malaria is still responsible for 10% of the total disease burden in Africa. This study was an empirical investigation addressing the extent to which, and the ways in which, sociocultural, family-based, demographic and economic circumstances in a poor rural African environment influence levels of active malaria infection risk awareness. Face-to-face interviews were conducted and the questions included both open-ended questions allowing for unprompted replies and closed fixed-answer alternative (prompted) items. The adult female responsible for the day-to-day care of the children in 156 homesteads (60 in each of two malaria villages and 36 in a reference village) was interviewed. The families received financial assistance but little physical support from the fathers. Unemployment, poverty, crime and clean water were perceived as the main, unprompted threats, and everyday awareness appeared to exclude the potentially serious disease threats of malaria. Only when malaria was prompted did the concerns rise to 52% and 38% in the sprayed villages. The apparent discrepancy between actual daily and potential future threats significantly increases the difficulty of mobilising communities for preventive action regarding potential threats. The lack of community involvement in an existing community-passive malaria control system may become a problem when promoting new/additional measures to reduce exposure to indoor residual spraying chemicals. (C) 2012 Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Computer simulation is a powerful technology which could be used by the emergency management sector to improve an understanding of complex scenarios. We present two emerging simulation technologies, Agent Based Modelling and Modular simulation development, and describe how they could aid with communication, collaboration and understanding of complex emergency management scenarios.(R)This paper explores the links between economic growth and the impacts of climate change. Inclusive, pro-poor growth is central to the development of low-income countries. There is also a broad consensus that growth and development are important to reduce vulnerability to climate change. Growth does not automatically reduce vulnerability, only the right kind of growth does. The paper aims to develop a better understanding of what the "right kind of growth" may be. We find that many growth policies, such as investment in skills and access to finance, indeed reduce vulnerability to climate change. However, climate change calls for some adjustments in growth policy. In particular, investment in infrastructure and efforts to stimulate entrepreneurship and competitive markets must take more of a risk management perspective and recognise climate risks.This article explores several key ingredients for successful and sustainable interactions of people and oceans, based on an integrative social-ecological systems perspective. Several key themes are examined: governance and decision-making, livelihoods and well-being, and the modern challenge of adaptation to current and future climate change. Each of these applies at various scales, from the local to the global. While much attention in the literature lies on global and large-scale systems, the smaller scale is deserving of at least as much attention; this point is illustrated by a local-level example. Indeed, cross-scale linkages that connect scales of impacts and levels of decision-making are key elements in improving the governance of marine systems.This paper reviews the key evidence for global climate change and outlines the trends of climate change in Scotland, the potential impacts and the implications for policy makers. Human activity is causing a rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and there is little doubt that this is contributing to global warming. There is greater uncertainty about how this global trend will play out at a regional scale and also how close we are to climatic tipping points. Instrumental records document the overall trends and variability in Scotland's climate since 1914. These show that since the 1960s, Scotland's average climate has proved to be wetter (especially in the west) and warmer. This trend is expected to continue throughout the 21st Century with, on average, hotter and drier summers and milder and wetter winters. However, extreme events will continue to affect Scotland, as they have always done, and the severity and frequency of these events may increase. Sea levels will continue to rise modestly, especially in the Outer Hebrides and the Northern Isles. Some of the uncertainty in climatic predictions is captured in the probabilistic outputs of Defra's UK Climate Projections 2009 programme. An initial attempt to assess the likely impacts of climate change is provided in Defra's 2012 Climate Change Risk Assessment, which includes a report specific to Scotland. Whilst most of the risks involve negative impacts, with increased flooding and loss of biodiversity being especially adverse, there are also positive impacts with associated opportunities, especially in terms of increased agricultural production and larger numbers of tourists. The report on Scotland will allow different groups of policy makers to refine the risks associated with specific activities. But given the fragile nature of many of the metrics underpinning the report, caution should be exercised in using it to frame climate adaptation strategies.This paper provides an overview of the climate change trends and their potential effects on children in East Asia and the Pacific that appeared in studies covering five countries that were commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund. The purpose of the studies was to analyse children's specific vulnerabilities to climate change that need to be taken into account in policy development. Scientific research indicates that existing vulnerabilities are likely to be exacerbated by continued climate change. Because children have unique perspectives of their environment, they can be important actors in enhancing community capacity to address climate-related risks. In the UNICEF research, children noted a range of experiences, ranging from livelihood insecurity in Mongolia to threats of sea level rising in the Pacific Islands to massive flooding of their neighbourhoods in the Philippines and crop failures in Indonesia. Involving children in the design of policy, and designing climate change policies with children's rights in mind, are essential to creating policies that do not have unintended negative consequences. (C)) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is altering the productivity of natural resources with far-reaching implications for those who depend on them. Resource-dependent industries and communities need the capacity to adapt to a range of climate risks if they are to remain viable. In some instances, the scale and nature of the likely impacts means that transformations of function or structure will be required. Transformations represent a switch to a distinct new system where a different suite of factors become important in the design and implementation of response strategies. There is a critical gap in knowledge on understanding transformational capacity and its influences. On the basis of current knowledge on adaptive capacity we propose four foundations for measuring transformational capacity: (1) how risks and uncertainty are managed, (2) the extent of skills in planning, learning and reorganizing, (3) the level of financial and psychological flexibility to undertake change and (4) the willingness to undertake change. We test the influence of place attachment and occupational identity on transformational capacity using the Australian peanut industry, which is presently assessing significant structural change in response to predicted climatic changes. Survey data from 88% of peanut farmers in Queensland show a strong negative correlation between transformational capacity and both place attachment and occupational attachment, suggesting that whilst these factors may be important positive influences on the capacity to adapt to incremental change, they act as barriers to transformational change.Climate change may shrink and/or shift plant species ranges thereby increasing their vulnerability and requiring targeted conservation to facilitate adaptation. We quantified the vulnerability to climate change of plant species based on exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity and assessed the effects of including these components in complementarity-based spatial conservation prioritisation. We modelled the vulnerability of 584 native plant species under three climate change scenarios in an 11.9 million hectare fragmented agricultural region in southern Australia. We represented exposure as species' geographical range under each climate change scenario as quantified using species distribution models. We calculated sensitivity as a function of the impact of climate change on species' geographical ranges. Using a dispersal kernel, we quantified adaptive capacity as species' ability to migrate to new geographical ranges under each climate change scenario. Using Zonation, we assessed the impact of individual components of vulnerability (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity) on spatial conservation priorities and levels of species representation in priority areas under each climate change scenario. The full vulnerability framework proved an effective basis for identifying spatial conservation priorities under climate change. Including different dimensions of vulnerability had significant implications for spatial conservation priorities. Incorporating adaptive capacity increased the level of representation of most species. However, prioritising sensitive species reduced the representation of other species. We conclude that whilst taking an integrated approach to mitigating species vulnerability to climate change can ensure sensitive species are well-represented in a conservation network, this can come at the cost of reduced representation of other species. Conservation planning decisions aimed at reducing species vulnerability to climate change need to be made in full cognisance of the sensitivity of spatial conservation priorities to individual components of vulnerability, and the trade-offs associated with focussing on sensitive species.Over the last 50 years, the cost of natural disasters has increased globally and in Indonesia (EM-DAT 2012). We therefore need more systematic efforts in trying to reduce disaster risks. In 2005, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction created the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015: 'Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities', in order to enable a more systematic planning, implementation and evaluation of disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities. In this paper, we examine Indonesia's success in improving DRR by reviewing the country's progress in implementing the HFA Priorities for Actions. This includes an analysis of the drivers, challenges and emerging issues in building resilience to natural hazards. The study is undertaken through literature reviews and interviews with 26 representatives of key organisations in DRR and climate change adaptation (CCA) in Indonesia. Our findings indicate that the building disaster resilience in Indonesia has been, to a large extent, driven by the existence of the necessary regulatory policies and frameworks and the participation of various non-government stakeholders. Impediments to process include a lack of capacity and capability for DRR at the local government level, a lack of systematic learning and a lack of commitment from government to mainstream DRR into broader development agendas. Emerging pressing issues that are likely to challenge future resilience building activities include the integration of DRR and CCA and urban risk governance.Soil water availability determines the vitality of trees and forest stands to a large degree. Over the last decades, an increasing number of drought spells has been observed in several parts of Europe. Our study aims to estimate long-term trends of soil drought at Scots pine ( L.) stands along the prevailing climatic gradient in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, northeastern Germany. To this end, soil water balance simulations were carried out at 24 sites over the period from 1951 to 2009 with the physically based model LWF-BROOK90. As a threshold for soil water stress, we used 40% of relative extractable water (REW). The results indicated an increased number of drought days further east, together with declining totals of precipitation. However, specific site conditions had a large influence on the occurrence of soil drought, partly overriding the climatic differences across the study area. Soil drought has distinctly increased in the recent past, both in duration and in intensity, affecting the eastern sites more than the western sites. The increased soil dryness could be attributed to higher atmospheric evaporative demand due to higher temperatures, as well as slightly lower precipitation sums during the summer months. To mitigate the negative effects of future climate change, adaptation measures should preferably be conducted in the eastern parts of northeastern Germany.Continuous simulation for design flood estimation is increasingly becoming a viable alternative to traditional event-based methods. The advantage of continuous simulation approaches is that the catchment moisture state prior to the flood-producing rainfall event is implicitly incorporated within the modeling framework, provided the model has been calibrated and validated to produce reasonable simulations. This contrasts with event-based models in which both information about the expected sequence of rainfall and evaporation preceding the flood-producing rainfall event, as well as catchment storage and infiltration properties, are commonly pooled together into a single set of "loss" parameters which require adjustment through the process of calibration. To identify the importance of accounting for antecedent moisture in flood modeling, this paper uses a continuous rainfall-runoff model calibrated to 45 catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia. Flood peaks derived using the historical daily rainfall record are compared with those derived using resampled daily rainfall, for which the sequencing of wet and dry days preceding the heavy rainfall event is removed. The analysis shows that there is a consistent underestimation of the design flood events when antecedent moisture is not properly simulated, which can be as much as 30% when only 1 or 2 days of antecedent rainfall are considered, compared to 5% when this is extended to 60 days of prior rainfall. These results show that, in general, it is necessary to consider both short-term memory in rainfall associated with synoptic scale dependence, as well as longer-term memory at seasonal or longer time scale variability in order to obtain accurate design flood estimates.Background: Climate change is among the major challenges for health this century, and adaptation to manage adverse health outcomes will be unavoidable. The risks in Ontario - Canada's most populous province - include increasing temperatures, more frequent and intense extreme weather events, and alterations to precipitation regimes. Socio-economic-demographic patterns could magnify the implications climate change has for Ontario, including the presence of rapidly growing vulnerable populations, exacerbation of warming trends by heat-islands in large urban areas, and connectedness to global transportation networks. This study examines climate change adaptation in the public health sector in Ontario using information from interviews with government officials. Methods: Fifty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted, four with provincial and federal health officials and 49 with actors in public health and health relevant sectors at the municipal level. We identify adaptation efforts, barriers and opportunities for current and future intervention. Results: Results indicate recognition that climate change will affect the health of Ontarians. Health officials are concerned about how a changing climate could exacerbate existing health issues or create new health burdens, specifically extreme heat (71%), severe weather (68%) and poor air-quality (57%). Adaptation is currently taking the form of mainstreaming climate change into existing public health programs. While adaptive progress has relied on local leadership, federal support, political will, and inter-agency efforts, a lack of resources constrains the sustainability of long-term adaptation programs and the acquisition of data necessary to support effective policies. Conclusions: This study provides a snapshot of climate change adaptation and needs in the public health sector in Ontario. Public health departments will need to capitalize on opportunities to integrate climate change into policies and programs, while higher levels of government must improve efforts to support local adaptation and provide the capacity through which local adaptation can succeed.The objective of this article is to review: (a) the principles that underpin conservation agriculture (CA) ecologically and operationally; (b) the potential benefits that can be harnessed through CA systems in the dry Mediterranean climate; (c) current status of adoption and spread of CA in the dry Mediterranean climate countries; and (d) opportunities for CA in the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region. CA, comprising minimum mechanical soil disturbance and no-tillage seeding, organic mulch cover, and crop diversification is now practised on some 125 million ha, corresponding to about 9% of the global arable cropped land. The area under CA is spread across all continents and many agro-ecologies, including the dry Mediterranean climate. Empirical and scientific evidence is presented to show that significant productivity, economic, social and environmental benefits exist that can be harnessed through the adoption of CA in the dry Mediterranean climates, including those in the CWANA region. The benefits include: higher productivity and income; climate change adaptation and reduced vulnerability to the erratic rainfall distribution; and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. CA is now spread across several Mediterranean climate countries outside the Mediterranean basin particularly in South America, South Africa and Australia. In the CWANA region, CA is perceived to be a powerful tool of sustainable land management but it has not yet taken off in a serious manner except in Kazakhstan. Research on CA in the CWANA region has shown that there are opportunities for CA adoption in rainfed and irrigated farming systems involving arable and perennial crops as well as livestock. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study proposes the stochastic weather generator (WG)-based bootstrap approach to provide the probabilistic climate change information on mean precipitation as well as extremes, which applies a WG (i.e., LARS-WG) to daily precipitation under the present-day and future climate conditions derived from dynamical and statistical downscaling models. Additionally, the study intercompares the precipitation change scenarios derived from the multimodel ensemble for Japan focusing on five precipitation indices (mean precipitation, MEA; number of wet days, FRE; mean precipitation amount per wet day, INT; maximum number of consecutive dry days, CDD; and 90th percentile value of daily precipitation amount in wet days, Q90). Three regional climate models (RCMs: NHRCM, NRAMS and TWRF) are nested into the high-resolution atmosphere-ocean coupled general circulation model (MIROC3.2HI AOGCM) for A1B emission scenario. LARS-WG is validated and used to generate 2000 years of daily precipitation from sets of grid-specific parameters derived from the 20-year simulations from the RCMs and statistical downscaling model (SDM: CDFDM). Then 100 samples of the 20-year of continuous precipitation series are resampled, and mean values of precipitation indices are computed, which represents the randomness inherent in daily precipitation data. Based on these samples, the probabilities of change in the indices and the joint occurrence probability of extremes (CDD and Q90) are computed. High probabilities are found for the increases in heavy precipitation amount in spring and summer and elongated consecutive dry days in winter over Japan in the period 2081-2100, relative to 1981-2000. The joint probability increases in most areas throughout the year, suggesting higher potential risk of droughts and excess water-related disasters (e. g., floods) in a 20 year period in the future. The proposed approach offers more flexible way in estimating probabilities of multiple types of precipitation extremes including their joint probability compared to conventional approaches.Drought-induced proline accumulation is widely observed in plants but its regulation and adaptive value are not as well understood. Proline accumulation of the Arabidopsis accession Shakdara (Sha) was threefold less than that of Landsberg erecta (Ler) and quantitative trait loci mapping identified a reduced function allele of the proline synthesis enzyme.1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthetase1 (P5CS1) as a basis for the lower proline of Sha. Sha P5CS1 had additional TA repeats in intron 2 and a G-to-T transversion in intron 3 that were sufficient to promote alternative splicing and production of a nonfunctional transcript lacking exon 3 (exon 3-skip P5CS1). In Sha, and additional accessions with the same intron polymorphisms, the nonfunctional exon 3-skip P5CS1 splice variant constituted as much as half of the total P5CS1 transcript. In a larger panel of Arabidopsis accessions, low water potential-induced proline accumulation varied by 10-fold and variable production of exon 3-skip P5CS1 among accessions was an important, but not the sole, factor underlying variation in proline accumulation. Population genetic analyses suggest that P5CS1 may have evolved under positive selection, and more extensive correlation of exon 3-skip P5CS1 production than proline abundance with climate conditions of natural accessions also suggest a role of P5CS1 in local adaptation to the environment. These data identify a unique source of alternative splicing in plants, demonstrate a role of exon 3-skip P5CS1 in natural variation of proline metabolism, and suggest an association of P5CS1 and its alternative splicing with environmental adaptation.Because very few measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) are available in the tropics, estimates of surface CO2 fluxes in tropical regions are beset with considerable uncertainties. To improve estimates of tropical terrestrial fluxes, atmospheric CO2 inversion was performed using passenger aircraft based measurements of the Comprehensive Observation Network for Trace gases by Airliner (CONTRAIL) project in addition to the surface measurement data set of GLOBALVIEW-CO2. Regional monthly fluxes at the earth's surface were estimated using the Bayesian synthesis approach focusing on the period 2006-2008 using the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model-based Transport Model (NICAM-TM). By adding the aircraft to the surface data, the posterior flux errors were greatly reduced; specifically, error reductions of up to 64% were found for tropical Asia regions. This strong impact is closely related to efficient vertical transport in the tropics. The optimized surface fluxes using the CONTRAIL data were evaluated by comparing the simulated atmospheric CO2 distributions with independent aircraft measurements of the Civil Aircraft for the Regular Investigation of the atmosphere Based on an Instrument Container (CARIBIC) project. The inversion with the CONTRAIL data yields the global carbon sequestration rates of 2.22 +/- 0.28 Pg C yr(-1) for the terrestrial biosphere and 2.24 +/- 0.27 Pg C yr(-1) for the oceans (the both are adjusted by riverine input of CO2). For the first time the CONTRAIL CO2 measurements were used in an inversion system to identify the areas of greatest impact in terms of reducing flux uncertainties.Water is the primary medium through which climate change influences the Earth's ecosystems and therefore people's livelihoods and wellbeing. Besides climatic change, current demographic trends, economic development and related land use changes have direct impact on increasing demand for freshwater resources. Taken together, the net effect of these supply and demand changes is affecting the vulnerability of water resources. The concept of 'vulnerability' is not straightforward as there is no universally accepted approach for assessing vulnerability. In this study, we review the evolution of approaches to vulnerability assessment related to water resources. From the current practices, we identify research gaps, and approaches to overcome these gaps a generalized assessment framework is developed. A feasibility study is then presented in the context of the Lower Brahmaputra River Basin (LBRB). The results of the feasibility study identify the current main constraints (e.g., lack of institutional coordination) and opportunities (e.g., adaptation) of LBRB. The results of this study can be helpful for innovative research and management initiatives and the described framework can be widely used as a guideline for the vulnerability assessment of water resources systems, particularly in developing countries.Recent literature outlines significant impacts from climate change on many areas of the world, with much focus on causes and impacts. However the long-term trends demand adaptation strategies. While a variety of solutions have been suggested, some politically viable, others not, perhaps the most significant barrier to a cohesive approach to climate adaptation is the failure from the public and policy-makers to realize that different areas will be affected differently and that "one-size-fits-all" policy solutions will not be successful. In addition, as one area may identify and respond to challenges in their location, others should be supportive of those efforts, realizing that while such actions may be neither desirable nor appropriate for them, they may need support for solutions in the future in their areas. This project was designed as a framework to identify solutions and demonstrate differences between small regions and locales based on field conditions. The State of Florida was used as a case example to outline these differences because Florida is faced with significant challenges in the coming years related to water resources, the use of funds and political capital, and the potential for economic disruption. The intent is that the results of this project will lead to a series of recommendations and action steps for policy makers to conserve the state's assets. A similar approach can be used in other states and countries to assess the likely policy and infrastructure needs for different locales.The diurnal characteristics of summer rainfall in the contiguous United States and northern Mexico were examined with the United States reanalysis for 5 years in 10-km horizontal resolution (US10), which is dynamically downscaled from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) Global Reanalysis 1 using the Regional Spectral Model (RSM). The hourly precipitation outputs demonstrate a realistic structure in the temporal evolution of the observed rainfall episodes and their magnitudes across the United States without any prescriptions of the observed rainfall to the global reanalysis and the downscaled regional reanalysis. Nighttime rainfall over the Great Plains associated with eastward-propagating, mesoscale convective systems originating from the Rocky Mountains is also represented realistically in US 10, while the original reanalysis and most general circulation models (GCMs) have difficulties in capturing the series of nocturnal precipitation events in summer over the Plains. The results suggest an important role of the horizontal resolution of the model in resolving small-scale, propagating convective systems to improve the diurnal cycle of summer rainfall.Data analysis and regional atmospheric model (RAM) experiments revealed key factors in the control of wintertime cyclone passage routes from Northeast Asia to the western North Pacific. The cyclone routes were independent of the global flow pattern in the interannual variability, while cyclone growth closely agreed with linear baroclinic theory. The RAM experiments with a different lateral boundary condition composed of a combination of monthly mean and transient components also showed that the upstream eddies are important for the track route, but the background states are not. Additionally, the RAM experiments showed that the mean flow controlled the growth rate of cyclones.Changes in snow amount in northern Europe are analysed from 11 regional model simulations of 21st century climate under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B scenario. These high-resolution models collectively indicate a future decrease in the water equivalent of the snow pack (SWE). Although winter precipitation increases, this is insufficient to compensate for the increased fraction of liquid precipitation and increased snowmelt caused by higher temperatures. The multi-model mean results suggest a slight increase in March mean SWE only locally in mountains of northern Sweden, and even there, snow is reduced earlier in winter and later in spring. The nature of the changes remains the same throughout the 21st century, but their magnitude increases with time as the greenhouse gas forcing grows larger. The geographical patterns of the change support the physically intuitive view that snow is most vulnerable to warming in areas with relatively mild winter climate. A similar relationship emerges when comparing the 11 simulations with each other: the ratio between the relative SWE decrease and winter mean temperature change is larger (smaller) for simulations with higher (lower) late 20th century winter temperatures. Despite the decrease in long-term mean SWE, individual snow-rich winters do occur in the simulations, but they become increasingly uncommon towards the end of the 21st century.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies Bangladesh as one of the countries that will be hardest hit by the anticipated effects of climate change. The poorest people are the most vulnerable, as they do not have sufficient means to cope with environmental risks. In the absence of effective safety nets, poor people become trapped in chronic poverty due to the recurrent damage caused by natural disasters. Recently, there has been growing optimism among policy makers and practitioners about the role of microinsurance as a safety net against weather risks for the poorest and most vulnerable people of Bangladesh. This article sheds light on this issue by synthesizing the findings of half a decade of research on the prospects of weather microinsurance in Bangladesh. Three key conclusions are drawn from the synthesis. First, the market for a standard, stand-alone weather microinsurance in Bangladesh is characterized by low demand, poor governance, and lack of prospects for commercial viability. Second, although the index-based flood insurance model has theoretical appeal (i.e., no moral hazard or adverse selection and low transaction cost), high economic cost might be associated with its highly complex practical implementation. Finally, the current (un)regulatory arrangement of microinsurance supply in Bangladesh, which does not guarantee accountability and protect clients' rights, is likely to increase rather than decrease poor people's vulnerability. The study makes two key recommendations: (1) exploring options for nontraditional insurance models (e.g., group-based and ex-post premium-based models), and (2) considering regulatory reforms to ensure good governance and to foster market efficiency through low-cost delivery and product innovation.This paper investigates the structures of and diurnal variations in low-level easterly winds blowing through the Tsugaru Strait and Mutsu Bay on 5-10 June 2003 using a numerical weather prediction model. Cool air that accompanies prevailing easterly winds owing to the persistence of the Okhotsk high intrudes into the strait and the bay below 500 m during the nighttime and retreats during the daytime. This cool-air intrusion and retreat induce diurnal variations in the winds in the east inlet of the strait, in Mutsu Bay, and in the west exit of the strait. In the east inlet, a daytime increase in air temperature within the strait produces a large air temperature difference with the inflowing cool air, and the resulting pressure gradient force accelerates the winds. The cool air flowing into Mutsu Bay is heated over land before entering the bay during the daytime. The resulting changes in cool-air depth and in pressure gradient force strengthen the daytime winds. In the west exit, local pressure gradient force perturbations are induced by the air temperature difference between warm air over the Japan Sea and cool air within the strait, and by variations in the depth of low-level cool air. The accelerated winds in the west exit extend southwestward in close to geostrophic balance during the daytime and undergo a slight anticyclonic rotation to westerly during the nighttime owing to the dominance of the Coriolis effect.Fears of the movement of large numbers of people as a result of changes in the environment were first voiced in the 1980s (ref. 1). Nearly thirty years later the numbers likely to migrate as a result of the impacts of climate change are still, at best, guesswork(2). Owing to the high prevalence of rainfed agriculture, many livelihoods in sub-Saharan African drylands are particularly vulnerable to changes in climate. One commonly adopted response strategy used by populations to deal with the resulting livelihood stress is migration. Here, we use an agent-based model developed around the theory of planned behaviour to explore how climate and demographic change, defined by the ENSEMBLES project(3) and the United Nations Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs(4), combine to influence migration within and from Burkina Faso. The emergent migration patterns modelled support framing the nexus of climate change and migration as a complex adaptive system(5). Using this conceptual framework, we show that the extent of climate-change-related migration is likely to be highly nonlinear and the extent of this nonlinearity is dependent on population growth; therefore supporting migration policy interventions based on both demographic and climate change adaptation.This paper explores two issues that have been receiving increasing attention in recent decades, climate change adaptation and natural disaster risk reduction. An examination of the similarities and differences between them reveals important linkages but also significant differences, including the spectrum of threats, time and spatial scales, the importance of local versus global processes, how risks are perceived, and degree of uncertainty. Using a risk perspective to analyze these issues, preferential strategies emerge related to choices of being proactive, reactive, or emphasizing risk management as opposed to the precautionary principle. The policy implications of this analysis are then explored, using Canada as a case study.Glacier hazards threaten societies in mountain regions worldwide. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) pose risks to exposed and vulnerable populations and can be linked in part to long-term post-Little Ice Age climate change because precariously dammed glacial lakes sometimes formed as glaciers generally retreated after the mid-1800s. This paper provides an interdisciplinary and historical analysis of 40 years of glacier hazard management on Mount Hualcan, at glacial Lake 513, and in the city of Carhuaz in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range. The case study examines attempted hazard zoning, glacial lake evolution and monitoring, and emergency engineering projects to drain Lake 513. It also analyzes the 11 April 2010 Hualcan rock-ice avalanche that triggered a Lake 513 GLOF; we offer both a scientific assessment of the possible role of temperature on slope stability and a GIS spatial analysis of human impacts. Qualitative historical analysis of glacier hazard management since 1970 allows us to identify and explain why certain actions and policies to reduce risk were implemented or omitted. We extrapolate these case-specific variables to generate a broader socio-environmental framework identifying factors that can facilitate or impede disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Facilitating factors are technical capacity, disaster events with visible hazards, institutional support, committed individuals, and international involvement. Impediments include divergent risk perceptions, imposed government policies, institutional instability, knowledge disparities, and invisible hazards. This framework emerges from an empirical analysis of a coupled social-ecological system and offers a holistic approach for integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.1. Resilient and functional landscapes are essential for climate change adaptation. Thermodynamic theory has been applied increasingly to ecological studies to understand ecosystem resilience and integrity. Resilient ecosystems have complex structure and greater levels of biomass and functional diversity, which act to enhance the degradation of solar energy. Forests that exhibit these characteristics express thermodynamic efficiency through a greater capacitance effect that promotes cooler surface temperatures under extreme weather conditions. 2. With forest disturbance, complex structures and functional linkages are simplified, reducing the capacity of the system to degrade energy. Such changes can lead to dysfunctional ecosystem states, impaired provision of ecosystem services and a weakened resilience. 3. This study has applied indicators based on thermodynamic theory to a chronosequence of forest ecosystems in the UK, Germany and Ukraine. Surface temperatures were measured to test thermodynamic theories relating to energy degradation and temperature moderation. Grimes CSR model was applied to plant data to compare functional complexity in vegetation between stands. 4. Old-growth woodlands are shown to attenuate surface temperature more effectively than native species plantations. Consistently lower temperatures were observed in European old-growth forests with high proportions of biomass when compared to managed stands of similar species composition, suggesting a greater efficiency of energy degradation in complex forest ecosystems, particularly at higher temperatures. 5. Analysis of plant species data using Grimes CSR model indicated that old-growth forests ordinate towards competitive and stress-tolerant communities in contrast to intensively managed forests, which had a greater proportion of generalist and ruderal species. High CSR functional scores were associated with moderated temperature extremes. 6. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest an important thermodynamic basis for conservation in the context of climate change. Conservation practice and management policy, which is based on preserving ecosystem complexity and function, can aid in mitigating the effects of extreme temperatures, enhancing vital services such as climate regulation, primary production and water retention. Old-growth forests have a significant climate mitigation role alongside other recognised ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration.Many studies predict effects of future climate scenarios on species distributions, but few predict impacts on landscapes or ecological communities, the scales most relevant to conservation management. We combined expert knowledge with community-level spatial modelling (using artificial neural networks, ANN, and generalised dissimilarity modelling, GDM) to inform climate adaptation management in widespread but highly threatened temperate grassy ecosystems (TGE) of Australian agricultural landscapes. GDM predicted high levels of 'biotically-scaled environmental stress' (scaled in terms of potential change in species composition of communities) for plants, reptiles and snails within the TGE under medium, and especially high, 2070 climate scenarios. Predicted stress was lower for birds, mammals and frogs, possibly owing to generally wider species distributions, but these models do not account for changing habitat characteristics. ANN predicted environments within the current TGE biome will become increasingly favourable for formations such as chenopod shrublands, L. forests and Vent. forests by 2070, although classification error for eucalypt woodland in current climates was high. Expert knowledge and GDM suggest these predictions may be mediated by attributes such as environmental heterogeneity that confer resilience, but GDM confirms that widespread degradation has greatly compromised the capacity of TGE to adapt to change. Based on model predictions and expert knowledge we discuss five potential climate change outcomes for TGE: decreasing fire frequency, structural change, altered functional composition, exotic invasion, and cascading changes in ecological interactions. Although significant ecological change in TGE is likely, it is feasible to ameliorate non-climatic limits to adaptation and promote reassembly by native rather than exotic species. Current conservation efforts already target similar goals, and reinforcing and adjusting these approaches offer the highest priority, lowest risk climate adaptation options. We conclude that despite high uncertainties, combining community-level modelling with expert knowledge can guide climate adaptation management.This article investigates linkages between soil conditions, farm-level vulnerability, adaptation, and rural migration during periods of drought. It begins by reviewing existing literature on climate adaptation in agricultural populations and on relationships between soil and rural migration. This is followed by a detailed case study of rural migration patterns that emerged in the Swift Current district of Saskatchewan, Canada, during a period of extended droughts and severe economic conditions in the 1930s. Using a combination of secondary literature, interviews with surviving first-hand observers and GIS modeling, the study shows how the interacting effects of household indebtedness, social capital, government relief programs, and farm-level soil quality helped stimulate population loss in many rural townships across the study area. The study focuses particularly on the role played by differential soil quality across the Swift Current district and how farms situated on sandier soils were typically more sensitive and vulnerable to drought than those situated on clay soils. Higher-than-average rates of population loss were associated with townships containing areas of poorer quality agricultural soils, an association replicable using GIS software and existing soil and population datasets. The findings from the case study are discussed within the context of the broader existing literature, and suggestions are provided on future directions for research, planning, and modeling to assist planners and policymakers concerned with rural adaptation and migration.We investigate the effect of climate change on population growth in 18th and 19th century Iceland. We find that annual temperature changes help to determine the population growth rate in pre-industrial Iceland: a year 1 degrees C cooler than average drives down population growth rates by 0.57% in each of the next two years, for a total effect of 1.14%. We also find that 18th and 19th century Icelanders adapt to prolonged changes in climate: these adaptations take about 20 years and reduce the short run effect of annual change in temperature by about 60%. Finally, we find that a 1 degrees C sustained decrease in temperature decreases the steady state population by 10% to 26%. We argue that our results may provide some information about the effects that future global warming will have on poor populations in warmer countries.The principles of systematic conservation planning are now widely used by governments and non-government organizations alike to develop biodiversity conservation plans for countries, states, regions, and ecoregions. Many of the species and ecosystems these plans were designed to conserve are now being affected by climate change, and there is a critical need to incorporate new and complementary approaches into these plans that will aid species and ecosystems in adjusting to potential climate change impacts. We propose five approaches to climate change adaptation that can be integrated into existing or new biodiversity conservation plans: (1) conserving the geophysical stage, (2) protecting climatic refugia, (3) enhancing regional connectivity, (4) sustaining ecosystem process and function, and (5) capitalizing on opportunities emerging in response to climate change. We discuss both key assumptions behind each approach and the trade-offs involved in using the approach for conservation planning. We also summarize additional data beyond those typically used in systematic conservation plans required to implement these approaches. A major strength of these approaches is that they are largely robust to the uncertainty in how climate impacts may manifest in any given region.Climate change is likely to affect the persistence of large, space-requiring species through habitat shifts, loss, and fragmentation. Anthropogenic land and resource use changes related to climate change can also impact the survival of wildlife. Thus, climate change has to be integrated into biodiversity conservation plans. We developed a hybrid approach to climate-adaptive conservation landscape planning for snow leopards in the Himalayan Mountains. We first mapped current snow leopard habitat using a mechanistic approach that incorporated field-based data, and then combined it with a climate impact model using a correlative approach. For the latter, we used statistical methods to test hypotheses about climatic drivers of treeline in the Himalaya and its potential response to climate change under three IPCC greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. We then assessed how change in treeline might affect the distribution of snow leopard habitat. Results indicate that about 30% of snow leopard habitat in the Himalaya may be lost due to a shifting treeline and consequent shrinking of the alpine zone, mostly along the southern edge of the range and in river valleys. But, a considerable amount of snow leopard habitat and linkages are likely to remain resilient to climate change, and these should be secured. This is because, as the area of snow leopard habitat fragments and shrinks, threats such as livestock grazing, retaliatory killing, and medicinal plant collection can intensify. We propose this approach for landscape conservation planning for other species with extensive spatial requirements that can also be umbrella species for overall biodiversity. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The global Slow Movement, a response to negative effects of speed on everyday life, seeks to reconnect people and their social and ecological environments. Slow Food and Cittaslow (Slow Cities) are allied Slow Movement networks operating in over 150 countries, including the United States (US). These two networks involve the interrelationship of numerous place-based factors important to socialecological resilience: local and regional food markets, recovery and protection of biodiversity and local ecologies, support for cultural traditions, agricultural policy reform, climate adaptation planning, economic development, social inclusion, quality of life in the built environment, and the politics of land development. This article presents the philosophical underpinnings of Slow Food and the associated membership requirements of Cittaslow by using the example of Sonoma Valley, California, the first certified Cittaslow in the US (2009). The article then describes Sonoma Valley's Cittaslow Pollinator Stewardship Collaborative to show how the nascent organization has begun its work by facilitating the participation of environmental professionals in community life. In its first year, Cittaslow Sonoma Valley has used a combination of pleasure and responsibility to increase both the visibility of environmental concerns and the opportunities for diverse residents to act locally and globally on issues integrating environmental and economic support. Because it offers a different approach to environmental responsibility, the Slow Movement may be of particular interest to environmental professionals who are concerned about so-cietal response to the complexity and uncertainty of global environmental change.The design of adaptation strategies that promote urban health and well-being in the face of climate change requires an understanding of the feedback interactions that take place between the dynamical state of a city, the health of its people, and the state of the planet. Complexity, contingency and uncertainty combine to impede the growth of such systemic understandings. In this paper we suggest that the collaborative development of conceptual models can help a group to identify potential leverage points for effective adaptation. We describe a three-step procedure that leads from the development of a high-level system template, through the selection of a problem space that contains one or more of the group's adaptive challenges, to a specific conceptual model of a sub-system of importance to the group. This procedure is illustrated by a case study of urban dwellers' maladaptive dependence on private motor vehicles. We conclude that a system dynamics approach, revolving around the collaborative construction of a set of conceptual models, can help communities to improve their adaptive capacity, and so better meet the challenge of maintaining, and even improving, urban health in the face of climate change.The study ascertained the innovative adaptive measures used by farmers in northern Nigeria to cushion the harmful effects of climate change. Quantitative and qualitative approaches (Rapid Rural Appraisal, focus group discussions, and semi - structured interview schedule) were used to elicit information from a total of 500 farmers, which were selected using multistage random sampling technique. Findings revealed that 84% and 79% of the farmers were aware and knowledgeable of climate change issues, respectively, while 81% of them noted that they had at various times experienced climate change incidences. Farmers reported that factors which informed their perception of climate change incidence were: unusual early rains followed by weeks of dryness (M= 2.84), erratic rainfall pattern (M= 2.66), drought (M=2.68), reduction in farm yields (M=2.68) and high rate of disease incidence (M= 2.67). Adaptive measures used by the farmers in northern Nigeria included: changes in planting dates (88.4%) and harvesting dates (85.4%), multiple cropping (81.8%), intensive manure application (69.2%), shift to different sites (56.8%) and use of wetland/river valley (fadama) for farming (52.6%). The study concludes that there is need for government to make concrete efforts to enact appropriate policies on climate change adaptation and assist local farmers in the short and long term to improve their resilience to climate change impact.Socio-economic and climatic stresses affect local communities' vulnerability to flooding. Better incorporation of socio-economic stress in local vulnerability assessments is important when planning for climate adaptation. This is rarely done due to insufficient understanding of their interaction, in both theory and practice. The omission leads to critical weaknesses in local adaptation strategies. This study analyses how socio-economic stress interact with climatic stress and shape local vulnerability to flooding, and how such stress can be more efficiently managed within local government organisations. A framework containing potential stresses was developed and applied to investigate how socio-economic stress affected exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity in two case studies, using interview and group exercise transcripts. Cases consisted of major development projects in two Swedish municipalities, Gothenburg and Lilla Edet. The cases were similarly exposed to climatic stress but differed in socio-economic context, and previous professional climate change experience. Fierce foreign competition and market structure were seen as the two most significant socio-economic stresses influencing local vulnerability to flooding through shaping the 'local' worldview. In falling order sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity were seen to be influenced by the socio-economic stresses. Two approaches to efficiently incorporate climatic and socio-economic stress in local management are proposed: shifting the focus of vulnerability assessments towards future sensitivity of people and settlements, rather than on the current infrastructure's sensitivity, would facilitate their use in planning and by 'mainstreaming' adaptation into long-term strategic planning vulnerability would be more dynamically addressed and periodically revised.We explored the possible future impacts of increased coastal flooding due to sea level rise and the potential adaptation responses of two urban, environmental justice communities in the metropolitan Boston area of Massachusetts. East Boston is predominantly a residential area with some industrial and commercial activities, particularly along the coastal fringe. Everett, a city to the north of Boston, has a diversified industrial and commercial base. While these two communities have similar socioeconomic characteristics, they differ substantially in the extent to which residents would be impacted by increased coastal flooding. In East Boston, a large portion of residents would be flooded, while in Everett, it is the commercial/industrial districts that are primarily vulnerable. Through a series of workshops with residents in each community, we found that the target populations do not have an adaptation perspective or knowledge of any resources that could assist them in this challenge. Furthermore, they do not feel included in the planning processes within their communities. However, a common incentive for both communities was an intense commitment to their communities and an eagerness to learn more and become actively engaged in decisions regarding climate change adaptation. The lessons that can be applied to other studies include 1) images are powerful tools in communicating concepts, 2) understanding existing cultural knowledge and values in adaptation planning is essential to the planning process and 3) engaging local residents at the beginning of the process can create important educational opportunities and develop trust and consensus that is necessary for moving from concept to implementation.Global sea level has been rising over the past half century, according to tide-gauge data(1,2). Thermal expansion of oceans, melting of glaciers and loss of the ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica are commonly considered as the largest contributors, but these contributions do not entirely explain the observed sea-level rise(1). Changes in terrestrial water storage are also likely to affect sea level(3-6), but comprehensive and reliable estimates of this contribution, particularly through human water use, are scarce(1). Here, we estimate sea-level change in response to human impacts on terrestrial water storage by using an integrated model that simulates global terrestrial water stocks and flows (exclusive to Greenland and Antarctica) and especially accounts for human activities such as reservoir operation and irrigation. We find that, together, unsustainable groundwater use, artificial reservoir water impoundment, climate-driven changes in terrestrial water storage and the loss of water from closed basins have contributed a sea-level rise of about 0:77 mm yr(-1) between 1961 and 2003, about 42% of the observed sea-level rise. We note that, of these components, the unsustainable use of groundwater represents the largest contribution.Flooding is the most common natural hazard and third most damaging globally after storms and earthquakes. Anthropogenic climate change is expected to increase flood risk through more frequent heavy precipitation, increased catchment wetness and sea level rise. This paper reviews steps being taken by actors at international, national, regional and community levels to adapt to flood risk from tidal, fluvial, surface and groundwater sources. We refer to existing inventories, national and sectoral adaptation plans, flood inquiries, building and planning codes, city plans, research literature and international policy reviews. We distinguish between the enabling environment for adaptation and specific implementing measures to manage flood risk. Enabling includes routine monitoring, flood forecasting, data exchange, institutional reform, bridging organizations, contingency planning for disasters, insurance and legal incentives to reduce vulnerability. All such activities are 'low regret' in that they yield benefits regardless of the climate scenario but are not cost-free. Implementing includes climate safety factors for new build, upgrading resistance and resilience of existing infrastructure, modifying operating rules, development control, flood forecasting, temporary and permanent retreat from hazardous areas, periodic review and adaptive management. We identify evidence of both types of adaptation following the catastrophic 2010/11 flooding in Victoria, Australia. However, significant challenges remain for managing transboundary flood risk (at all scales), protecting existing property at risk from flooding, and ensuring equitable outcomes in terms of risk reduction for all. Adaptive management also raises questions about the wider preparedness of society to systematically monitor and respond to evolving flood risks and vulnerabilities.The implementation of climate change adaptation strategies mainly takes part at a regional scale. This scale refers to the functional and spatial dimensions of most climate change effects. Therefore, the regional scale is most adequate for processing cooperative governance formations, for progressing the regulatory framework, for implementing institutional innovations and conducting collective conflict solutions. One of the main findings in the new field of climate adaptation research refers to the necessity of an intersectoral and integrative cross-cutting issue for the consideration of climate change effects. The main aspects of an integrative perspective include a reconciliation of adaptation measures with global climate change mitigation goals, dealing with uncertainties in climate change scenarios, the integration of adaptation measures into various sectors and creating of acceptance for adaptation measures and their implementation instruments. These aspects lead to extensive discussion and coordination needs between governmental and civil society actors. This paper summarizes a framework of regional climate change governance and offers conclusions for the local practice and climate adaptation research. Referring to the action fields of spatial and regional planning, forestry and agriculture in the model region of Northern Hesse, generalizable good practice examples of institutional settings, governance formations and instruments for conducting successful adaptation strategies will be presented.Climate change is an increasingly salient issue for societies and policy-makers worldwide. It now raises fundamental interdisciplinary issues of risk and uncertainty analysis and communication. The growing scientific consensus over the anthropogenic causes of climate change appears to sit at odds with the increasing use of risk discourses in policy: for example, to aid in climate adaptation decision making. All of this points to a need for a fundamental revision of our conceptualization of what it is to do climate risk communication. This Special Collection comprises seven papers stimulated by a workshop on Climate Risk Perceptions and Communication held at Cumberland Lodge Windsor in 2010. Topics addressed include climate uncertainties, images and the media, communication and public engagement, uncertainty transfer in climate communication, the role of emotions, localization of hazard impacts, and longitudinal analyses of climate perceptions. Climate change risk perceptions and communication work is critical for future climate policy and decisions.The minimum water temperature for development (t0) and the thermal constant (K) for the development of immature stages of Simulium damnosum s.l. (Diptera: Simuliidae) in West Africa were estimated as 20.1 degrees C and 93 day-degrees, respectively, based on analyses of published data on development rates of eggs, larvae and pupae at different water temperatures (24.0 degrees C and 31.5 degrees C). Thus, at a constant water temperature of 30.0 degrees C (approximately 10 degrees C above t0), adult flies would emerge about 9 days after oviposition. Analysis of a dataset probably restricted to S. damnosum s.s., but for which the temperature for the egg stage varied, revealed a much lower t0 (16.3 degrees C) and a much higher K (181 day-degrees), suggesting that the insects' thermal relations may be cytoform-specific. The results will aid control decisions and predictions of possible effects of climate change on sizes and geographic distributions of populations of onchocerciasis vectors in West Africa.Human-induced climate change will affect the lives of most populations in the next decade and beyond. It will have greatest, and generally earliest, impact on the poorest and most disadvantaged populations on the planet. Changes in climatic conditions and increases in weather variability affect human wellbeing, safety, health and survival in many ways. Some impacts are direct-acting and immediate, such as impaired food yields and storm surges. Other health effects are less immediate and typically occur via more complex causal pathways that involve a range of underlying social conditions and sectors such as water and sanitation, agriculture and urban planning. Climate change adaptation is receiving much attention given the inevitability of climate change and its effects, particularly in developing contexts, where the effects of climate change will be experienced most strongly and the response mechanisms are weakest. Financial support towards adaptation activities from various actors including the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations is increasing substantially. With this new global impetus and funding for adaptation action come challenges such as the importance of developing adaptation activities on a sound understanding of baseline community needs and vulnerabilities, and how these may alter with changes in climate. The global health community is paying heed to the strengthening focus on adaptation, albeit in a slow and unstructured manner. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of adaptation and its relevance to global health, and highlight the opportunities to improve health and reduce health inequities via the new and additional funding that is available for climate change adaptation activities.Advanced statistical methods are employed to analyze three long-term time series of geomagnetic activity indices (aa, IHV, and IDV) together with sunspot number (Rz) to examine whether or not the aa index can realistically represent long-term variations of geomagnetic activity. We make use of a decomposition method called STL, which is a time domain filtering procedure that decomposes a time series into trend, cyclic, and residual components using nonparametric regression. A Bayesian change point analysis is also applied to the geomagnetic indices, as well as to sunspot number, to detect abrupt changes that may be caused by either instrumental changes, calibration errors, or sudden changes in solar activity. Our analysis shows that all three long-term geomagnetic indices share a similar centennial-scale variation that resembles the long-term trend of sunspot number Rz. The amplitude ratio between the centennial-scale variation and 11-year cycle of aa and IHV are closely comparable. Overall, our analysis suggests that the majority of the changes in the aa index are controlled by solar activity. Instrumental change or site relocation has only a limited effect on the long-term trend of aa. This is in good agreement with those previous studies which have shown aa to be a reliable long-term index.Knowledge of awareness, behavior and barriers to putting carbon management in place is particularly useful for policy-makers in providing favorable conditions in support of firms' climate change adaptation measures. According to unique data from in-depth interviews with firms from the most fossil fuel-intensive industries in Fujian, China, the present study indicated that the firms were relatively well informed of the knowledge and value of carbon management, and had a strong willingness to act. Nevertheless, there was no indication of actual behavior by these firms to enact carbon management, and a striking gap existed between awareness and behavior. The results also indicated the barriers, which were categorized into structural, regulatory, contextual and cultural. These barriers and their mutually reinforcing effects hampered the process of translating awareness into actual behavior. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Little is known about the potential of Brachypodium distachyon as a model for low temperature stress responses in Pooideae. The ice recrystallization inhibition protein (IRIP) genes, fructosyltransferase (FST) genes, and many C-repeat binding factor (CBF) genes are Pooideae specific and important in low temperature responses. Here we used comparative analyses to study conservation and evolution of these gene families in B. distachyon to better understand its potential as a model species for agriculturally important temperate grasses. Results: Brachypodium distachyon contains cold responsive IRIP genes which have evolved through Brachypodium specific gene family expansions. A large cold responsive CBF3 subfamily was identified in B. distachyon, while CBF4 homologs are absent from the genome. No B. distachyon FST gene homologs encode typical core Pooideae FST-motifs and low temperature induced fructan accumulation was dramatically different in B. distachyon compared to core Pooideae species. Conclusions: We conclude that B. distachyon can serve as an interesting model for specific molecular mechanisms involved in low temperature responses in core Pooideae species. However, the evolutionary history of key genes involved in low temperature responses has been different in Brachypodium and core Pooideae species. These differences limit the use of B. distachyon as a model for holistic studies relevant for agricultural core Pooideae species.Mountain ecosystems and watersheds are essential for long-term sustainable global development and poverty alleviation and can make an important contribution to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Freshwater, rich biodiversity, and other natural resources provided by mountains are vital for the livelihood of billions of people. However, recent environmental, economic, and social developments such as climate change, increasing natural disasters, population growth, the expansion of commercial agriculture, and urbanization compromise the ability of mountain ecosystems and watersheds to provide essential environmental goods and services. Degradation and decreasing water flows seriously affect agricultural production and food security and threaten the supply of water to large urban centers in the lowlands, while water, energy, and food are likely to be the main scarcities in the coming decades. Watershed management and sustainable mountain development (SMD) are necessary and appropriate approaches to address these challenges and need a prominent place on the international agenda.The specter of climate change threatens fresh water resources along the U.S.-Mexico border. Water managers and planners on both sides of the border are promoting desalination-the conversion of seawater or brackish groundwater to fresh water-as an adaptation response that can help meet growing water demands and buffer against the negative impacts of climate change on regional water supplies. However, the uneven distribution of costs and benefits of this expensive, energy-intensive technology is likely to exacerbate existing social inequalities in the border zone. In this paper, we examine the discourses employed in the construction of the climate problem and proposed solutions. We focus our analysis on a proposed Arizona-Sonora binational desalination project and use insights from risk and hazards literature to analyze how, why, and to what effect desalination is emerging as a preferred climate change adaptation response. Our risk analysis shows that while desalination technology can reduce some vulnerabilities (e.g., future water supply), it can also introduce new vulnerabilities by compounding the water-energy nexus, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, inducing urban growth, producing brine discharge and chemical pollutants, shifting geopolitical relations of water security, and increasing water prices. Additionally, a high-tech and path-dependent response will likely result in increased reliance on technical expertise, less opportunity for participatory decision-making and reduced flexibility. The paper concludes by proposing alternative adaptation responses that can offer greater flexibility, are less path dependent, incorporate social learning, and target the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community. These alternatives can build greater adaptive capacity and ensure equity. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of a future post-2012 global climate-change treaty would aim to give incentive to tropical countries to reduce deforestation and thus forest-carbon emissions. It would do so by crediting tropical countries for reducing deforestation relative to a baseline scenario describing carbon emissions and removals from forest-cover change expected in the absence of REDD+. Defining a credible and accurate baseline is both critical and challenging. One approach considered promising is spatial modelling to project forest-cover change on the basis of historical trends: yet few such projections have been validated at a national scale. We develop and validate a novel GEOMOD projection of forest-cover change in Panama over 2000-2008, based on trends over 1990-2000 and 25 drivers of forest-cover change. Compared with the actual landscape of 2008, our projection is 85.2% accurate at a 100-m pixel resolution. More error is attributable to the location of projected forest (8.6%) than to its area (6.2%). Accuracy was least where forest regeneration predominated (80%), and greatest where deforestation predominated (90%). Despite the sophistication of our projection, it is slightly less accurate than if we had assumed no forest-cover change over 2000-2008. We identify factors limiting projection accuracy, including the complexity of forest-cover change, the spatial variability of forest-carbon density, and the relatively small area of change at the national scale. We conclude that, with the exception of contexts where forest-cover change is significant and straightforward and where forest-carbon density relatively uniform (e.g., agricultural frontiers), spatially projected baselines are of limited value for REDD+ - their accuracy is too limited given their relative lack of transparency. Simpler, relatively coarse scale, retrospective baselines are recommended instead. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Victorian farmers have experienced significant impact from climate change associated with drought and more recently flooding. These factors form a convergence with a complex of other factors to change production systems physically; and farmers' decision making is variously described as adaptive or maladaptive to these drivers of change. Recently updated State Government policies on farming, climate and water have immediate and long term implications for food production systems but are not readily interpreted at a local scale. Further, peak oil and energy security are only partially integrated into either climate or water policy discourse. In effect, despite some far-sighted words about the meaning of climate change, uncertainty is largely met with a 'business as usual' mantra. Farmer narratives are used to demonstrate their systemic and increasing vulnerability and likelihood of perverse outcomes. The Future Farming strategy and Our Water Our Future are briefly analyzed, as are potential implications of the rhetoric of newly elected conservative government. Using ideas from Bourdieu and Bhabha we suggest that the reliance on farmers being able to innovate and take up opportunities associated with the uncertainty of large scale changes in climate and energy availability are misguided. It is more likely that current policy directions entrench the values of the global market and its elite, leaving farmers locked-in to historical structural responses that will not be successful in the long-term and will diminish their ability to imagine radical and diverse ways of avoiding the maladaptive structures currently surrounding their production systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The wine industry is increasingly recognized as especially vulnerable to climate change due to the climate sensitivity of both winegrape yields and quality, making it an important model system for the agricultural impacts of global changes. However, agricultural production is strongly influenced by the management decisions of growers, including their practices to modify the microclimate experienced by the growing crop; these adaptations have not been studied at the vineyard level, where managers on the ground are on the front lines of responding to global change. We conducted 20 in-depth interviews with winegrowers to examine farm-scale adaptive responses to environmental stresses, to understand the views and motivations of agricultural managers, and to explore adaptive capacity in practice. We found that growers tend to respond to stresses individually rather than collectively, except when facing severe, unfamiliar pests and diseases. Responses may be reactive or anticipatory; most anticipatory strategies have been short-term, in response to imminent threats. Growers tend to rely on their own experience to guide their management decisions, which may offer poor guidance under novel climate regimes. From using a Vulnerability Scoping Diagram, we find that changing exposure (vineyard location) and sensitivity (planting choices such as vine variety) have the biggest impact on reducing vulnerability, but that adaptations in growing or processing the crop in the vineyard and winery are easier to implement, much more commonly undertaken, and may also offer substantial adaptive capacity. Understanding the context of adaptations, as well as the decision-making processes motivating them, is important for understanding responses to global change. These findings highlight some innovations in adapting to global change, as well as some of the barriers, and point to the need for strategic investments to enhance agricultural resilience to climate change. In particular, strategies to enhance both effective and easy to implement farming adaptations, as well as broader-scale anticipatory, collective responses, could reduce vulnerability in the context of climate change. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyzes discourses and practices of flood response and adaptation to climate change in Mozambique. It builds on recent publications on climate change adaptation that suggest that the successes and failures of adaptation highly depend on the cultural and political realms of societal perceptions and the sensitivity of institutions. To capture this, the paper adopted a multi-sited ethnographic approach. Acknowledging that there is no central locus of representation that can unveil the working of disaster response in Mozambique, the paper brings together five vignettes of research in different 'sites' of concern to the rise in floods in Mozambique. These are the politics of climate change adaptation at the national institutional level, societal responses to increased flooding, local people's responses to floods, the evacuation and resettlement programme following the 2007 flood. The paper finds how adaptation to climate change becomes part of everyday politics, how actors aim to incorporate responses into the continuation of their normal behavior and how elites are better positioned to take advantage of adaptation programmes than the vulnerable people that were targeted. It argues that climate change adaptation must be made consonant with historically grown and ongoing social and institutional processes. It concludes with lessons that the analysis and methodology of the research can provide for the practice of climate change adaptation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most research on climate change adaptation emphasizes the material and objective assets that build the capacity to adapt. Nonmaterial or subjective attributes of adaptation (e.g. identity, beliefs, and values) are more difficult to quantify, and research in this area is less developed. Further effort is required to develop and test frameworks that facilitate a systematic examination of the subjective attributes of climate change adaptation. This article outlines the contribution of place identity theory as a lens through which to systematically examine how personplace bonds influence climate change adaptation. We provide a working typology of three interconnected place identity approaches to help elucidate this relationship. Each has strengths and weaknesses, depending on the theoretical and practical contexts within which they are used. The cognitive-behavioral approach has important utility in addressing how place identity shapes climate change perceptions and behavior; it can, however, be limited due to cognitive complexity and lack of richness from quantitative methodologies. The health and well-being approach addresses the often underemphasized health and well-being impacts from climate change on place and identity, though the subjective nature of health must be considered in such an approach. The collective action approach offers important insight into using place identity as a mechanism to foster collective opportunities for climate change adaptation. With such an approach, however, care must be taken to ensure inclusive representation of subgroup identities. We conclude by reflecting on how place identity theory can foster improved understanding in a critically important and emerging area of climate change adaptation research. WIREs Clim Change 2012. doi: 10.1002/wcc.164 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .A new approach to probabilistic projections of regional climate change is introduced. It builds on the already established quasi-linear relation between global-mean temperature and regional climate change found in atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs). The new approach simultaneously 1) takes correlations between temperature- and precipitation-related uncertainty distributions into account, 2) enables the inclusion of predictors other than global-mean temperature, and 3) checks for the interscenario and interrun variability of the scaling relationships. This study tests the effectiveness of SOx and black carbon emissions and greenhouse gas forcings as additional predictors of precipitation changes. The future precipitation response is found to deviate substantially from the linear relationship with global-mean temperature change in some regions; thereby, the two main limitations of a simple linear scaling approach, namely having to rely on exogenous aerosol experiments (or ignoring their regional effect), and ignoring changes in scaling coefficients when approaching equilibrium conditions, are addressed. The additional predictors can markedly improve the emulation of AOGCM simulations. In some regions, variations in hydrological sensitivity (the percentage change of precipitation per degree of warming) across different scenarios can be reduced by more than 50%. Coupled to probabilistic projections of global-mean temperatures and greenhouse gas forcings, bidimensional distributions of regional temperature and precipitation changes accounting for multiple uncertainties are derived. Based on 20 Fourth Assessment Report AOGCMs (AR4 AOGCMs), probabilistic projections are provided for two representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios and 31 world regions (online database at www.pik-potsdam.de/primap/regional_temp_and_precip). As an example application of the projections for climate adaptation and vulnerability studies, future changes in the surface mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet are computed.Climate change is likely to lead more frequent droughts in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of America. Rising air temperature will reduce winter snowfall and increase earlier snowmelt, subsequently reducing summer flows. Longer crop-growing season caused by higher temperatures will lead to increases in evapotranspiration and irrigation water demand, which could exacerbate drought damage. However, the impacts of climate change on drought risk will vary over space and time. Thus, spatially explicit drought assessment can help water resource managers and planners to better cope with risk. This study seeks to identify possible drought-vulnerable regions in the Willamette River Basin of the PNW. In order to estimate drought risk in a spatially explicit way, relative Standardized Precipitation Index (rSPI) and relative Standardized Runoff Index (rSRI) were employed. Statistically downscaled climate simulations forcing two greenhouse gas emission scenarios, A1B and B1, were used to investigate the possible changes in drought frequency with 3-, 6-, 12-, and 24-month time scales. The results of rSPI and rSRI showed an increase in the short-term frequency of drought due to decreases in summer precipitation and snowmelt. However, long-term drought showed no change or a slight decreasing pattern due to increases in winter precipitation and runoff. According to the local index of spatial autocorrelation analysis, the Willamette Valley region was more vulnerable (hot spot) to drought risk than the mountainous regions of the Western Cascades and the High Cascades (cold spot). Although the hydrology of the Western Cascades and the High Cascades will be affected by climate change, these regions will remain relatively water-rich. This suggests that improving the water transfer system could be a reasonable climate adaptation option. Additionally, these results showed that the spatial patterns of drought risk change were affected by drought indices, such that appropriate drought index selection will be important in future studies of climate impacts on spatial drought risk.Recent research and practice from the fields of climate change adaptation and disaster management has created a shift from emphasis of children's vulnerability and need for protection towards their potential as agents of change before, during and after disaster events. This article examines lessons from action research into children's agency in disaster-prone communities of El Salvador and the Philippines. We describe some of the participatory risk management methods that were adapted for use with children, the centrality of ethics to our approach and the importance of working with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) partner that provides ongoing support in the study communities. The research design was led by external agents in order to cross-compare findings across locations and countries. However, we argue that by engaging children in a process of knowledge generation and analysis, the research broke down some of the assumed hierarchies between researcher and researched common to orthodox approaches.This article reflects upon the opportunities and challenges of using Participatory Action Research (PAR) with community radio broadcasters in southern Ghana to investigate the impacts of climate change. Through a detailed outline of the methodological approach employed in this initiative as well as the findings that it produced, we consider how action research might serve to reveal the power relations, systemic drivers of vulnerability, and opportunities for sustainable action for social change related to climate impacts. As co-facilitators of this process based in a Northern research institution, we reflect upon the challenges, limitations and benefits of the approach used in order to identify potential areas for improvement and to understand how the dynamics of this partnership shaped collaboration. We also discuss how employing a systemic approach to action research helped to provide insights into the interactions between the physical and environmental impacts of climate change and related systems such as land tenure and agricultural production. A systemic approach to PAR, we argue, lends itself especially well to analysis of climate change adaptation and resilience, both of which are embedded within complex systems of institutions, assets, individuals and structures, and therefore not appropriate for narrow or one-dimensional analyses. Finally, we consider the specific contributions and challenges that engaging community radio as a research partner may offer to investigations on climate change.Current evidence is that climate change is occurring, it is largely manmade and it will have significant implications for human civilisation. Australia is particularly vulnerable to the anticipated effects of climate change, creating major challenges for water resource management and water supply security. Climate change adaptation offers a means by which we can reduce our exposure to future climate change risks, whilst at the same time exploiting any potential benefits that may arise from climatic changes. This review outlines the current major climate change adaptation challenges facing the water supply industry at large, with a particular focus on these challenges in an Australian context. It also aims to highlight the critical knowledge gaps and strategies required to assist in the formulation of adaptation responses to the range of potential impacts on water infrastructure and future water security. A diverse range of management and assessment techniques are used by relevant professions in industry. Here, an adaptive management approach is presented highlighting the important information required for robust assessment.In this study, I investigated the source(s) of variation in the body temperatures of mammals. I also attempted to reconstruct ancestral normothermic rest-phase body temperature states using a maximum parsimony approach. Body temperature at the familial level is not correlated with body mass. For small mammals, except the Macroscelidae, previously identified correlates, such as climate adaptation and zoogeography explained some, but not all, T (b) apomorphies. At the species level in large cursorial mammals, there was a significant correlation between body temperature and the ratio between metatarsal length and femur length, the proxy for stride length and cursoriality. With the exception of two primate families, all supraendothermic (T (b) > 37.9A degrees C) mammals are cursorial, including Artiodactyla, Lagomorpha, some large Rodentia, and Carnivora. The ruminant supraendothermic cursorial pulse is putatively associated with global cooling and vegetation changes following the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Reconstructed ancestral body temperatures were highly unrealistic deep within the mammalian phylogeny because of the lack of fossil T (b) data that effectively creates ghost lineages. However, it is anticipated that the method of estimating body temperature from the abundance of C-13-O-18 bonds in the carbonate component of tooth bioapatite in both extant and extinct animals may be a very promising tool for estimating the T (b) of extinct mammals. Fossil T (b) data are essential for discerning derived T (b) reversals from ancestral states, and verifying the dates of supraendothermic pulses.Developing adaptation strategies for deltaic and coastal regions is a major challenge, due to future uncertainties of climate change and complexity of the social-ecological systems to be managed. This paper investigates how desirable futures or normative scenarios approaches, in particular backcasting, can be used to develop more robust climate strategies in coastal regions. The paper develops a methodology in which participatory backcasting and adaptive management are combined, and its applicability is demonstrated for the Breede-Overberg coastal region in South Africa where a catchment management strategy has been developed. It is concluded that the methodology offers an adequate framework for developing and implementing long-term climate adaptation strategies and policies, including a transition management scheme for intermediate assessments. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores how the history-futures interface can inform a set of concrete adaptation options to climate change for stakeholders in South East Queensland, Australia. It is based on research undertaken as part of the Commonwealth funded South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQ-CARI) that profiled 33 historical case studies to identify common themes in the ways societies responded to stress. The case studies are intended to provide a context for thinking about adaptive capacity with stakeholders in the four areas of human settlement and health; energy: agriculture, forestry and fisheries; and ecosystems and biodiversity. The case studies demonstrate that adaptive capacity varies with context and is affected by the complexity, technology, leadership, institutions and imaginative resources inherent to the social system examined. To increase the possibilities for reflection by stakeholders, the case studies were used to create a set of historical scenarios that explore some of the key features of human responses to challenges such as climate change. This paper draws on this work to suggest a set of 'practical' lessons for those engaged with climate change today and into the future. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is likely to affect plants in multiple ways, but predicting the consequences for habitat suitability requires a process-based understanding of the interactions. This is at odds with existing approaches that are mostly phenomenological and largely restricted to predicting the effects of changing temperature and rainfall on species distributions at a coarse spatial scale. We examine the multiple effects of climate change, including predicting the effects of altered flood regimes and land-use change, on the potential distribution of the invasive riparian species lippia (Phyla canescens) across a 26 000 km2 catchment in eastern Australia. We determined habitat suitability for lippia by combining process-understanding of experts and an eco-physiological bioclimatic model within a Bayesian belief network. The bioclimatic model predicted substantial changes in habitat suitability by 2070 under both a wetter (Echam Mark 3) and drier (Hadley Centre Mark 2) climate change scenario, but only the more likely drier scenario reduced suitability in our test region. The area suitable for lippia was predicted to increase at least threefold with increased flooding under a wet climate scenario, although this would be partially negated by land-use change to cultivation. The region would become unsuitable to lippia with reduced flooding under a drier scenario irrespective of land-use changes, although existing populations would persist if grazing persisted. Independent field validation verified model structure and parameterization, and therefore the opinion of experts, but identified site-scale deficiencies in the available environmental data layers. Model predictions suggest that adaptation options for managing lippia will be greatly reduced under a drying scenario, but identify potential restoration opportunities under either scenario. This work highlights the value of predictive models that incorporate process-understanding at sufficiently fine spatial resolution to capture the important processes underpinning habitat suitability.The effects of near-future ocean acidification/hypercapnia on larval development were investigated in the sea urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii, a habitat-modifying species from eastern Australia. Decreased pH (-0.3 to -0.5 pH units) or increased pCO(2) significantly reduced the percentage of normal larvae. Larval growth was negatively impacted with smaller larvae in the pH 7.6/1800 ppm treatments. The impact of acidification on development was similar on days 3 and 5, indicating deleterious effects early in development. On day 3, increased abnormalities in the pH 7.6/1600 ppm treatment were seen in aberrant prism stage larvae and arrested/dead embryos. By day 5, echinoplutei in this treatment had smaller arm rods. Observations of smaller larvae in C. rodgersii have significant implications for this species because larval success may be a potential bottleneck for persistence in a changing ocean.Climate change has not only brought about many natural hazards but also threaten the sustainable development of industry. This study is to investigate the adaptive implications for energy-intensive industries of China in response to climate change impacts. For this purpose, a deep and comprehensive analysis on the change of CO2 emission for 6 energy-intensive sectors is explored over the period of 2000-2007. A Log-Mean Divisia Index based on time series is also introduced in our study to identify the key factors toward the change of CO2 emission. It is shown that there were 146.1 million metric tons carbon increased in energy-intensive industries from 2000 to 2007. And the excessive growth of industrial output and increasingly fossil-intensive energy consumption structure were the main driving forces for the increased CO2 emission. Nevertheless, energy intensity change and declining emission coefficient of electricity played negative role in the growing trend of CO2 emission. On the basis of these four determinants (namely industrial output, energy intensity, fuel mix effect, and emission coefficient), it is suggested that both economic motives and technologically feasible approaches should be implemented to control the scale of excessive productions and improve energy efficiency toward the energy-intensive industries. And more importantly, strengthening energy-intensive sectors' awareness of climate change adaptation should be given stronger emphasis as long-term work with the help of some propaganda campaigns for instance.Climate change is widely recognised as serious threat along the coastal areas of the Mediterranean Basin, where increased erosion patterns, decreased sediment discharge, intensification of floods, saltwater intrusion and loss of biodiversity increase vulnerability. These issues are of particular concern for the Ebro Delta. This article examines the vulnerability of the Spanish Ebro Delta to climate change effects using existing studies, projections, and interviews. The aim is to identify possible options for climate change adaptation in order to moderate the vulnerability to problematic conditions. The results show that to date human management has had a higher impact on this area than climate change. It was also shown that the majority of interviewees recommend the softest option for adaptation, the one that is most in harmony with the nature. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Heat waves, defined as an interval of abnormally hot and humid weather, have become a prominent killer in recent years. With heat waves worsening with climate change, adaptation is essential; one strategy has been to issue heat wave warnings and undertake awareness campaigns to bring about behavioral changes to reduce heat stroke. Since 2002, the Indian state of Odisha has been undertaking a grassroots awareness campaign on "dos and don'ts" during heat wave conditions through the disaster risk management (DRM) program. The selection criteria for DRM districts were earthquake, flood and cyclone incidence; but subsequently, heat wave awareness also received intensive attention in these districts. We present quasiexperimental evidence on the impact of the program, taking DRM districts and periods as treatment units and the rest as controls, analyzing the impact on the death toll from heat stroke for the 1998 to 2010 period, using difference-in-difference (DID) regressions with a district level panel data set and a set of control variables. We find indications of program effectiveness with initial DID specifications, but results are not always robust. We then take into account a statewide heat wave advertising program, to which the poor have limited exposure but which may also provide spillover benefits, using a triple differencing approach; results suggest the heat wave awareness programs may have complementary impacts. We examine research strategies for further improvement in the precision of impact evaluation results for innovative programs of this type.This paper presents an empirical analysis of the role of different climate change adaptation strategies in supporting food productivity in Ethiopia. The analysis relies on unique primary survey data on 1000 farms producing cereal crops in the Nile Basin, Ethiopia. Based on monthly collected meteorological station data, the Thin Plate Spline method of spatial interpolation is used to impute the household specific rainfall and temperature values of each household. The rainfall data is disaggregated at season level (Meher and Belg). Econometric results show that the implementation of adaptation strategies supports farm productivity. Changing crops is found to be the most successful strategy, followed by the implementation of soil conservation and tree planting. We complement the analysis with some evidence on the determinants of adaptation. We find that extension services (both formal and farmer-to-farmer) and information on future climate changes affect positively and significantly the probability of adaptation through changing crops and tree planting. This finding highlights the crucial role played by information dissemination in improving farmers' decision-making.Adaptations are changes in behavior and capital motivated by climate change. Economic theory suggests that adaptations are efficient (desirable) only if their benefit exceeds their cost. Private adaptations are likely to be efficient because the benefits and cost accrue to the decision maker. With some important exceptions, private adaptation is likely to be done efficiently by markets. Public adaptations, however, benefit many people. Markets are not likely to make efficient public adaptations because they cannot coordinate payments from multiple consumers. Governments need to be responsible for public adaptations. However, government must think carefully about being efficient. Empirically, little is known about what precise changes in behavior are efficient, where such changes should take place and when they should take place. The empirical literature has largely focused on how actors have adapted to the current range of climates across the earth. From these studies, researchers are extrapolating what changes would make sense in the future as climate changes. The results suggest that adaptations are local in nature and therefore look like patchwork adjustments across space. They depend on the current local climate, how it changes and the various local conditions. Although public adaptations in health and conservation look promising, there are virtually no economic analyses of their potential. Overall, adaptation can be very effective at reducing damages, for example, by building sea walls to protect from inundation, and seizing new opportunities, for example, by growing in crops in places that were previously too cold. Research must now focus on making the practical steps that turn that potential into reality.This review describes environmental factors that influence severity of crop disease epidemics, especially in the UK and north-west Europe, in order to assess the effects of climate change on crop growth and yield and severity of disease epidemics. While work on some diseases, such as phoma stem canker of oilseed rape and fusarium ear blight of wheat, that combine crop growth, disease development and climate change models is described in detail, climate-change projections and predictions of the resulting biotic responses to them are complex to predict and detailed models linking climate, crop growth and disease development are not available for many crop-pathogen systems. This review uses a novel approach of comparing pathogen biology according to 'ecotype' (a categorization based on aspects such as epidemic type, dissemination method and infection biology), guided by detailed disease progress models where available to identify potential future research priorities for disease control. Consequences of projected climate change are assessed for factors driving elements of disease cycles of fungal pathogens (nine important pathogens are assessed in detail), viruses, bacteria and phytoplasmas. Other diseases classified according to 'ecotypes' were reviewed and likely changes in their severity used to guide comparable diseases about which less information is available. Both direct and indirect effects of climate change are discussed, with an emphasis on examples from the UK, and considered in the context of other factors that influence diseases and particularly emergence of new diseases, such as changes to farm practices and introductions of exotic material and effects of other environment changes such as elevated CO2. Good crop disease control will contribute to climate change mitigation by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture while sustaining production. Strategies for adaptation to climate change are needed to maintain disease control and crop yields in north-west Europe.This paper uses a planning experiment to empirically investigate possible social learning outcomes of landscape and urban planning with benefits for decision-making. Building on C. Steinitz' Framework for Alternative Futures Studies, a framework for participatory scenario-based landscape planning (SLP) is developed and used in a three-month climate adaptation planning process involving up to 37 local actors in Gartow, Germany. The evaluation of social learning outcomes follows the premise of action research and employs a mixed-method approach. The research shows that SLP can successfully generate social learning outcomes among participants. Observed social learning outcomes include gains in substantive knowledge (e.g. on climate change impacts), procedural knowledge (e.g. on alternative adaptation strategies), understanding of different perspectives, as well as social and technical skills. Participants named several potential impacts of social learning outcomes on their future decision-making, including enhanced awareness, altered agendas, and better social relations. The SLP process and its results formed the basis and inducement for further collaboration of local actors and external consultants in the development of a coordinated mission statement (Leitbild) for climate change adaptation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Adaptive divergence driven by environmental heterogeneity has long been a fascinating topic in ecology and evolutionary biology. The study of the genetic basis of adaptive divergence has, however, been greatly hampered by a lack of genomic information. The recent development of transcriptome sequencing provides an unprecedented opportunity to generate large amounts of genomic data for detailed investigations of the genetics of adaptive divergence in non-model organisms. Herein, we used the Illumina sequencing platform to sequence the transcriptome of brain and liver tissues from a single individual of the Vinous-throated Parrotbill, Paradoxornis webbianus bulomachus, an ecologically important avian species in Taiwan with a wide elevational range of sea level to 3100 m. Results: Our 10.1 Gbp of sequences were first assembled based on Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata) and chicken (Gallus gallus) RNA references. The remaining reads were then de novo assembled. After filtering out contigs with low coverage (<10X), we retained 67,791 of 487,336 contigs, which covered approximately 5.3% of the P. w. bulomachus genome. Of 7,779 contigs retained for a top-hit species distribution analysis, the majority (about 86%) were matched to known Zebra Finch and chicken transcripts. We also annotated 6,365 contigs to gene ontology (GO) terms: in total, 122 GO-slim terms were assigned, including biological process (41%), molecular function (32%), and cellular component (27%). Many potential genetic markers for future adaptive genomic studies were also identified: 8,589 single nucleotide polymorphisms, 1,344 simple sequence repeats and 109 candidate genes that might be involved in elevational or climate adaptation. Conclusions: Our study shows that transcriptome data can serve as a rich genetic resource, even for a single run of short-read sequencing from a single individual of a non-model species. This is the first study providing transcriptomic information for species in the avian superfamily Sylvioidea, which comprises more than 1,000 species. Our data can be used to study adaptive divergence in heterogeneous environments and investigate other important ecological and evolutionary questions in parrotbills from different populations and even in other species in the Sylvioidea.The threat posed by invasive species, in particular weeds, to biodiversity may be exacerbated by climate change. Lantana camara L. (lantana) is a woody shrub that is highly invasive in many countries of the world. It has a profound economic and environmental impact worldwide, including Australia. Knowledge of the likely potential distribution of this invasive species under current and future climate will be useful in planning better strategies to manage the invasion. A process-oriented niche model of L. camara was developed using CLIMEX to estimate its potential distribution under current and future climate scenarios. The model was calibrated using data from several knowledge domains, including phenological observations and geographic distribution records. The potential distribution of lantana under historical climate exceeded the current distribution in some areas of the world, notably Africa and Asia. Under future scenarios, the climatically suitable areas for L. camara globally were projected to contract. However, some areas were identified in North Africa, Europe and Australia that may become climatically suitable under future climates. In South Africa and China, its potential distribution could expand further inland. These results can inform strategic planning by biosecurity agencies, identifying areas to target for eradication or containment. Distribution maps of risk of potential invasion can be useful tools in public awareness campaigns, especially in countries that have been identified as becoming climatically suitable for L. camara under the future climate scenarios.This study examined the role of indigenous knowledge in climate change adaptation in Uganda with specific focus on the Teso sub-region. Specifically, the study identified indigenous knowledge practices used in climate change adaptation, documented indigenous knowledge in climate observation, and identified constraints to indigenous knowledge use for climate change adaptation. Data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires, individual interviews, focused group discussions and observation of local traditional rites. Local observations confirmed altered climate patterns noticeable from the changes in the planting, weeding and harvesting periods in agriculture, in tree growth, and in wind directions. Farmers still observe the intensity of East-West blowing winds, colour of the clouds in the East, and plant traits for rainfall prediction. In addition, they also rely on the meteorological information disseminated through the local radio stations. Low mastery of indigenous knowledge practices by younger community members and persistently changing weather patterns have challenged community reliance on indigenous knowledge for climate change adaptation. There is need to strengthen dissemination of indigenous knowledge and to integrate modern approaches that strengthen indigenous knowledge in climate change adaptation and resilience.Climate change and land degradation result in decreasing yields and crop failures in Northern Ghana and have caused further impoverishment of Ghana's poorest region. Farmers have diversified their livelihoods to adapt to uncertain environmental conditions in various ways. While traditionally a diversification of the production and migration were the prime means of adaptation, many farmers have started to intensify their production by adopting shallow groundwater irrigation for vegetable gardening for Ghana's urban markets. This has helped to cope with a changing environment, ameliorated poverty and reversed rural-urban migration, while the local hydrology curbed an over-exploitation of groundwater resources, commonly associated with an uncontrolled farmer-driven expansion of groundwater irrigation. This research confirms that farmer-driven small-scale irrigation can play an important role in the process of climate change adaptation. However, while farmers tried to integrate in the larger economy, they have become subject to market failures that in their essence are caused by unfair and unpredictable patterns of global trade. It is this double exposure to global environmental change and economic globalization that need to be taken into consideration when local adaptive capacities are discussed. Many convincing arguments call for the revision of some of the most unfair and devastating economic practices; however, the need to enhance adaptive capacity towards global climate change for poor parts of the population in the south should be added to the discussion.Climate change is a large-scale and emerging environmental risk. It challenges environmental health and the sustainability of global development. Wastewater irrigation can make a sterling contribution to reducing water demand, recycling nutrients, improving soil health and cutting the amount of pollutants discharged into the waterways. However, the resource must be carefully managed to protect the environment and public health. Actions promoting wastewater reuse are every where, yet the frameworks for the protection of human health and the environment are lacking in most developing countries. Global change drivers including climate change, population growth, urbanization, income growth, improvements in living standard, industrialization, and energy intensive lifestyle will all heighten water management challenges. Slowing productivity growth, falling investment in irrigation, loss of biodiversity, risks to public health, environmental health issues such as soil salinity, land degradation, land cover change and water quality issues add an additional layer of complexity. Against this backdrop, the potential for wastewater irrigation and its benefits and risks are examined. These include crop productivity, aquaculture, soil health, groundwater quality, environmental health, public health, infrastructure constraints, social concerns and risks, property values, social equity, and poverty reduction. It is argued that, wastewater reuse and nutrient capture can contribute towards climate change adaptation and mitigation. Benefits such as avoided freshwater pumping and energy savings, fertilizer savings, phosphorous capture and prevention of mineral fertilizer extraction from mines can reduce carbon footprint and earn carbon credits. Wastewater reuse in agriculture reduces the water footprint of food production on the environment; it also entails activities such as higher crop yields and changes in cropping patterns, which also reduce carbon footprint. However, there is a need to better integrate water reuse into core water governance frameworks in order to effectively address the challenges and harness the potential of this vital resource for environmental health protection. The paper also presents a blueprint for future water governance and public policies for the protection of environmental health. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.. All rights reserved.Indentifying common priorities in shared natural resource systems constitutes an important platform for implementing adaptation and a major step in sharing a common responsibility in addressing climate change. Predominated by discourses on REDD + (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries) with little emphasis on adaptation there is a risk of lack of policy measures in addressing climate change in the Congo Basin. Forest products and ecosystem services provide security portfolios for the predominantly rural communities, and play major roles in national development programmes in both revenue and employment opportunities. Thus, raising the profile of forests in the policy arena especially in the twin roles of addressing climate change in mitigation and adaptation and achieving resilient development is crucial. Within the framework of the Congo Basin Forests and Climate Change Adaptation project (COFCCA) project, science policy dialogue was conducted to identify and prioritize forest based sectors vulnerable to climate change but important to household livelihoods and national development. The goal of the prioritization process was for the development of intervention in forest as measures for climate change adaptation in Central Africa. Participants constituted a wide range of stakeholders (government, Non Governmental Organizations, research institutions, universities, community leaders, private sectors etc.) as representatives from three countries directly involved in the project: Cameroon, Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo. Building on national priorities, four forest related sectors were identified as common priorities at the regional level for focus on climate change adaptation. These sectors included: (1) energy with emphasis on fuel wood and Charcoal; (2) Water principally quality, quantity, accessibility, etc.; (3) Food with emphasis on Non Timber Forest Products, and (4) Health linked to healthcare products (medicinal plants). Using these prioritized sectors, the project focused on addressing the impacts of climate change on local communities and the development of adaptation strategies in the three pilot countries of the Congo Basin region. The four sectors constitute the key for development in the region and equally considered as priority sectors in the poverty reduction papers. Focused research on these sectors can help to inject the role of forests in national and local development and their potentials contributions to climate change adaptation in national and public discourses. Mainstreaming forest for climate change adaptation into national development planning is the key to improve policy coherence and effectiveness in forest management in the region.The lack of progress in establishing ambitious and legally binding global mitigation targets means that the need for locally based climate change adaptation will increase in vulnerable localities such as Africa. Within this context, "ecosystem-based adaptation" (EBA) is being promoted as a cost-effective and sustainable approach to improving adaptive capacity. Experience with the ongoing development of Durban's Municipal Climate Protection Programme indicates that achieving EBA in cities means moving beyond the conceptualization of a uniform, one-size-fits-all layer of street trees and parks to a more detailed understanding of the complex ecology of indigenous ecosystems and their resilience under climate change conditions. It also means engaging with the role that this "bio-infrastructure" plays in improving the quality of life and socioeconomic opportunities of the most vulnerable human communities. Despite the long-term sustainability gains of this approach, implementation in Durban has been shown to be both technically challenging and resource intensive. The close association between human and ecological systems in addressing climate change adaptation has also led to the development of the concept of "community ecosystem-based adaptation".Dhaka is one of the largest megacities in the world and its population is growing rapidly. Due to its location on a deltaic plain, the city is extremely prone to detrimental flooding, and risks associated with this are expected to increase further in the coming years due to global climate change impacts as well as the high rate of urbanization the city is facing. The lowest-lying part of Dhaka, namely Dhaka East, is facing the most severe risk of flooding. Traditionally, excess water in this part of the city was efficiently stored in water ponds and gradually drained into rivers through connected canals. However, the alarming increase in Dhaka's population is causing encroachment of these water retention areas because of land scarcity. The city's natural drainage is not functioning well and the area is still not protected from flooding, which causes major threats to its inhabitants. This situation increases the urgency to adapt effectively to current flooding caused by climate variability and also to the impacts of future climate change. Although the government is planning several adaptive measures to protect the area from floods, a systematic framework to analyze and assess them is lacking. The objective of this paper is to develop an integrated framework for the assessment and prioritization of various (current and potential) adaptation measures aimed at protecting vulnerable areas from flooding. The study identifies, analyzes, assesses and prioritizes adaptive initiatives and measures to address flood risks in the eastern fringe area, and the adaptation assessment is conducted within the framework of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) methodology. MCA facilitates the participation of stakeholders and hence allows normative judgements, while incorporating technical expertise in the adaptation assessment. Based on the assessment, adaptive measures are prioritized to indicate which actions should be implemented first. Such a participatory integrated assessment of adaptation options is currently lacking in the decision-making process in the city of Dhaka and could greatly help reach informed and structured decisions in the development of adaptation strategies for flood protection.This paper presents a strategy for scaling climate change adaptation within urban areas. The strategy specifically focuses on the requirements for mobilizing large amounts of capital for adaptation and other urban risk reduction above and beyond the amounts that will likely be mobilized through new international adaptation funds. The paper, based on a report published by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability,(1) proposes a re-framing of the urban adaptation and disaster reduction challenge. The approach shifts the adaptation focus from risk reduction as a primary end in itself to a broader development focus on financing the performance of urban assets, areas and/or systems. This emphasis is elaborated through the concept of "resilience", an urban design and investment metric that measures the ability of urban areas and their individual assets to perform for users and their investors under a wide range of conditions. The paper argues that such a performance-oriented approach provides a business logic that can attract conventional, private investment flows to climate and disaster risk reduction measures and thereby "mainstream" them.Climate change adaptation measures can generate long-term unintended consequences, as this paper demonstrates through an empirical case study of water conflicts at Lake Paron in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range. This decade-long struggle culminated in 2008 when a coalition of local groups (stakeholders) from the Cruz de Mayo and Caraz communities in the Callejon de Huaylas seized control of the Lake Paron reservoir from a private multinational corporation, Duke Energy. This clash over Paron's water in the Llullan and Santa River watersheds emerged much earlier than climatic-hydrologic models had predicted, and it occurred, this paper argues, largely because of previously successful climate adaptation measures. The drainage tunnel and floodgates originally installed at Paron in the 1980s to prevent a climate-related outburst flood led to unintended or perverse outcomes because these technological artifacts subsequently allowed a diversity of stakeholders including rural subsistence farmers, urban residents, national park officials, tourism promoters, the state energy company Electroperu, and Duke Energy to manage water differently depending on their priorities and the existing governance structures. Neoliberal reforms that altered state-society-environment relations in Peru played a key role in these changing stakeholder power dynamics that were reflected in the management of water infrastructure at Paron. Examining this water conflict that emerged from the unintended effects of climate adaptation demonstrates not only how technology and society are mutually constitutive, but also why the politics of technologies must be considered more carefully in the analysis of social-ecological systems, hydro-social cycles, and climate change adaptation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While adaptation to climate change is primarily thought of as a water, weather, and infrastructure issue, air quality and air quality management are important aspects of climate change adaptation. Air quality and climate change are so heavily intertwined that air quality needs to be considered not only for mitigation strategies but also in management of and adapting to climate change. Published by Elsevier Ltd.We evaluate the potential of combined Advanced Land Observing Satellite Advanced Visible and Near-Infrared (AVNIR-2) and fully polarimetric Phased-Array-type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) data for land cover classification. Optical AVNIR-2 and fully polarimetric PALSAR can provide both surface spectral information and scattering information of the ground surface. The fully polarimetric PALSAR is particularly important for land cover classification because quad-polarization PALSAR data and its polarimetric parameters contain additional surface information. As a consequence, by combining optical AVNIR-2, PALSAR, and polarimetric parameters into a single data set, land cover classification accuracy may be further improved. For efficient and convenient handling of the combined multisource data, we used a subspace method for the classification and estimated its classification capability for various combinations of optical, PALSAR, and polarimetric parameter data sets in the Lake Kasumigaura region of Japan. We also compared the results obtained using the subspace method with those obtained by the support vector machine (SVM) and maximum-likelihood classification (MLC) methods. The classification results confirm that, when the combined optical AVNIR-2, PALSAR, and polarimetric coherency matrix data were used, the classification accuracy of the subspace method was better than that when other data combinations were used. The subspace method also performed better than the SVM or MLC method in high-dimensional data set classification. Moreover, the experimental results demonstrated that the proposed subspace method is robust for data classification when there is data redundancy and thus allows optimal feature selection procedures to be avoided.The 2007 launch of the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) introduced a new mechanism of state security against the uncertainties of climate change. Proponents argue that increasing the ability of member-states to finance disaster recovery through catastrophe insurance mitigates the effects of increasingly frequent and intense hurricanes and thus contributes to climate change adaptation. In contrast, I offer a critical analysis of the CCRIF that draws out how it facilitates what I call the 'financialization of disaster management'. The introduction of financial logics and techniques enables the state and capital to visualize a population's self-organizing adaptive capacity as both a threat to state-based forms of order and a value that can be leveraged on capital markets as catastrophe risk. Leveraging enhances a state's ability to repair its critical infrastructure and preemptively negate undesirable adaptations. The CCRIF blends risk pooling with parametric insurance techniques to turn the uncertainty surrounding a population's immanent adaptability into catastrophe risks that can be leveraged to enhance state security and capital accumulation in an emergent environment.Line-shaped rainbands (LRBs) are severe storm events that cause torrential rainfall across the mid-latitudes and are difficult to accurately predict because of their complex physical processes. We examined the occurrence of LRBs in boreal summer in northern Japan over the period 1990-2010. In years with anomalously many LRBs, the development of LRBs over northern Japan was driven by a combined positive anomaly of warm sea-surface temperatures and westerly moisture flux associated with the prominent pattern of the surface pressure anomalies between the main island of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. In contrast, the number of LRBs were significantly small with opposite characteristics. Copyright (C) 2012 Royal Meteorological SocietyMatching supply and demand for knowledge in the fields of global change and sustainability is a daunting task. Science and public policy differ in their timeframes, epistemologies, objectives, process-cycles and criteria for judging the quality of knowledge, while global change and sustainability issues involve value pluralities and large uncertainties. In literature and in practice, it is argued that joint knowledge production in projects through collaboration between (and within) science and policy serves as a means to bridge the gap between the two domains. However, an assessment framework for analysing the merits and limitations of such projects, identifying good practices and enabling adaptive management as well as social learning had not yet been developed. This paper aims to develop such a framework. We portray joint knowledge production projects as policy arrangements in which the degree of success depends on the actors involved, contents of dominant discourses, presence of rules and the availability of resources. Literature was discussed to specify these four dimensions into seven success conditions for joint knowledge production. Scholars, boundary organizations and actors in projects can use the framework for retrospective analyses of projects, providing joint knowledge production with the empirical basis it still requires. The framework can also be used for promoting reflection in action as well as for formative assessments enabling social learning. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Trends in phenological phases associated with climate change are widely reported-yet attribution remains rare. Attribution research in biological systems is critical in assisting stakeholders to develop adaptation strategies, particularly if human factors may be exacerbating impacts(1). Detailed, quantified attribution helps to effectively target adaptation strategies, and counters recent tendencies to overattribute phenological trends to climate shifts(2). Wine grapes have been ripening earlier in Australia in recent years(3), often with undesirable impacts. Attribution analysis of detected trends in wine-grape maturity, using time series of up to 64 years in duration, indicates that two climate variables-warming and declines in soil water content-are driving a major portion of this ripening trend. Crop-yield reductions and evolving management practices have probably also contributed to earlier ripening. Potential adaptation options are identified, as some drivers of the trend to earlier maturity can be manipulated through directed management initiatives, such as managing soil moisture and crop yield.Temperature is an important determinant of health. A better knowledge of how temperature affects population health is important not only to the scientific community, but also to the decision-makers who develop and implement early warning systems and intervention strategies to mitigate the health effects of extreme temperatures(1,2). The temperature-health relationship is also of growing interest as climate change is projected to shift the overall temperature distribution higher(3,4). Previous studies have examined the relative risks of temperature-related mortality, but the absolute measure of years of life lost is also useful as it combines the number of deaths with life expectancy. Here we use years of life lost to provide a novel measure of the impact of temperature on mortality in Brisbane, Australia. We also project the future temperature-related years of life lost attributable to climate change. We show that the association between temperature and years of life lost is U-shaped, with increased years of life lost for cold and hot temperatures. The temperature-related years of life lost will worsen greatly if future climate change goes beyond a 2 degrees C increase and without any adaptation to higher temperatures. This study highlights that public health adaptation to climate change is necessary.Adaptation to climate change is becoming a prominent issue in both landscape research and land-use planning. Current research focuses mainly on the description of potential impacts for different societal sectors and in general fails to provide useful information to help define climate adaptation strategies and specific policy measures or development plans. This editorial briefly explores the reasons why this may be the case and proposes a conceptual framework for more effective climate adaptation research. Furthermore, it introduces three papers that address adaptation of landscape systems to climate change as an integrated multi-level challenge. The included papers focus on the relationship between climate-induced changes in the natural system and the economics-oriented societal system and specifically address the interdependencies across scales.Policy initiatives targeting carbon management are increasingly linking climate change mitigation and adaptation with efforts to reduce poverty and advance sustainable development. This article draws on empirical semi-structured interview data and documentary analyses to present an assessment of the challenges and opportunities faced by national policymakers and other key stakeholders in achieving these 'multiple wins' in Malawi and Zambia. Lessons emerging from these study countries provide a useful basis for informing integrated carbon management, poverty reduction and sustainable development projects more widely in the southern Africa region. The findings reveal that multistakeholder partnerships are increasingly necessary, and we identify examples to illustrate that such collaborations are being established with varying degrees of success. The article suggests that discrete projects need to be adequately coordinated by umbrella organizations operating over larger scales in order to promote the longevity of project impacts at the local scale and to allow experiences and good practices to feed into national policy development. Capacity-building and resource investments across different levels are also shown to be vital.Widespread human modification and conversion of land has led to loss and fragmentation of natural ecosystems, altering ecological processes and causing declines in biodiversity. The potential for ecosystems to adapt to climate change will be contingent on the ability of species to move and ecological processes to operate across broad landscapes. We developed a novel, robust modeling approach to estimate the connectivity of natural landscapes as a gradient of permeability. Our approach yields a map capable of prioritizing places that are important for maintaining and potentially restoring ecological flows across the United States and informing conservation initiatives at regional, national, or continental scales. We found that connectivity routes with very high centrality intersected proposed energy corridors in the western United States at roughly 500 locations and intersected 733 moderate to heavily used highways (10(4)-10(6) vehicles per day). Roughly 15% of the most highly connected locations are currently secured by protected lands, whereas 28% of these occur on public lands that permit resource extraction, and the remaining 57% are unprotected. The landscape permeability map can inform land use planning and policy about places potentially important for climate change adaptation.How current coping capacity could be transformed into longer term adaptive capacity is a crucial question for those involved in adaptation planning, especially to enhance sustainability. To shed light on this question, this manuscript will review how coping capacity and adaptive capacity have been conceptualised in resilience and vulnerability approaches to climate change adaptation. The four key challenges to understand the transformation of coping to adaptive capacity include (1) the concealed nature of adaptive capacity; (2) the temporal trade-offs between coping and adaptive capacity; (3) the limited focus to date on rural communities, and; (4) the lack of empirical evidence. The manuscript suggests that institutions play a key role in mediating the transformation of coping capacity into adaptive capacity and that its role can be best researched by combining vulnerability and resilience approaches to climate change adaptation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change and habitat loss are both key threatening processes driving the global loss in biodiversity. Yet little is known about their synergistic effects on biological populations due to the complexity underlying both processes. If the combined effects of habitat loss and climate change are greater than the effects of each threat individually, current conservation management strategies may be inefficient and at worst ineffective. Therefore, there is a pressing need to identify whether interacting effects between climate change and habitat loss exist and, if so, quantify the magnitude of their impact. In this article, we present a meta-analysis of studies that quantify the effect of habitat loss on biological populations and examine whether the magnitude of these effects depends on current climatic conditions and historical rates of climate change. We examined 1319 papers on habitat loss and fragmentation, identified from the past 20 years, representing a range of taxa, landscapes, land-uses, geographic locations and climatic conditions. We find that current climate and climate change are important factors determining the negative effects of habitat loss on species density and/or diversity. The most important determinant of habitat loss and fragmentation effects, averaged across species and geographic regions, was current maximum temperature, with mean precipitation change over the last 100 years of secondary importance. Habitat loss and fragmentation effects were greatest in areas with high maximum temperatures. Conversely, they were lowest in areas where average rainfall has increased over time. To our knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a global terrestrial analysis of existing data to quantify and test for interacting effects between current climate, climatic change and habitat loss on biological populations. Understanding the synergistic effects between climate change and other threatening processes has critical implications for our ability to support and incorporate climate change adaptation measures into policy development and management response.Rainfall in North West Australia (NWA) has been increasing over the past decades, occurring mainly in the austral summer season (December-March). A range of factors such as decreased land albedo in Australia and increasing anthropogenic aerosols in the Northern Hemisphere, identified using simulations from climate models, have been implicated in this wetting trend. However, the impact of land albedo and aerosols on Australian rainfall remains unclear. In addition, previous studies showed that dominant sea surface temperature (SST) signals in the Pacific-Indian Ocean including El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), ENSO Modoki, and the Indian Ocean dipole mode have no significant impact on the NWA rainfall trend. The present study proposes another viewpoint on the remote influence of tropical Atlantic atmospheric vertical motion on the observed rainfall variability and trend in NWA. It is found that, with the atmospheric ascent instigated by the warming of SST over the tropical Atlantic, a Rossby wave train is emanating southeastward from off the west coast of subtropical South America to the midlatitudes of the South Atlantic Ocean. It then travels eastward embedded in the westerly jet waveguide over the South Atlantic and South Indian Oceans. The eastward-propagated Rossby wave induces an anticyclonic anomaly in the upper troposphere over Australia, which is at the exit of the westerly jet waveguide. This leads to an in situ upper-tropospheric divergence, ascending motion and a lower-tropospheric convergence, and the associated increase in rainfall in NWA. Thus, the increasing trend in atmospheric upward motion induced by the warming trend of SST in the tropical Atlantic may partially explain the observed rainfall trend in NWA.Drawing primarily from original data collected from more than 100 semi-structured research interviews, this study discusses the benefits of four climate change adaptation projects being implemented in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, and the Maldives. The article begins by explaining its research methods and selecting a sample of Global Environment Facility-Least Developed Country Fund projects being implemented in Asia to analyze. It then describes ongoing adaptation efforts in each of these four countries. It finds that projects enhance infrastructural resilience by building relevant, robust, and flexible technologies. They build institutional resilience by creating strong, permanent, legitimate organizations in place to respond to climate change issues. They promote community resilience by enhancing local ownership, building capacity, and creating networks that help ordinary people learn and adapt to climate change. We find that all four of our case studies couple adaptive improvements in technology and infrastructure with those in governance and community welfare, underscoring the holistic or systemic aspect of resilience. Our study also demonstrates the salience of a functions-based approach to resilience and adaptive capacity rather than an asset-based one. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Measures of climate change adaptation often involve modification of land use and land use planning practices. Such changes in land use affect the provision of various ecosystem goods and services. Therefore, it is likely that adaptation measures may result in synergies and trade-offs between a range of ecosystems goods and services. An integrative land use modelling approach is presented to assess such impacts for the European Union. A reference scenario accounts for current trends in global drivers and includes a number of important policy developments that correspond to on-going changes in European policies. The reference scenario is compared to a policy scenario in which a range of measures is implemented to regulate flood risk and protect soils under conditions of climate change. The impacts of the simulated land use dynamics are assessed for four key indicators of ecosystem service provision: flood risk, carbon sequestration, habitat connectivity and biodiversity. The results indicate a large spatial variation in the consequences of the adaptation measures on the provisioning of ecosystem services. Synergies are frequently observed at the location of the measures itself, whereas trade-offs are found at other locations. Reducing land use intensity in specific parts of the catchment may lead to increased pressure in other regions, resulting in trade-offs. Consequently, when aggregating the results to larger spatial scales the positive and negative impacts may be off-set, indicating the need for detailed spatial assessments. The modelled results indicate that for a careful planning and evaluation of adaptation measures it is needed to consider the trade-offs accounting for the negative effects of a measure at locations distant from the actual measure. Integrated land use modelling can help land use planning in such complex trade-off evaluation by providing evidence on synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services, different policy fields and societal demands.Global climate change is predicted to shift seasonal temperature and precipitation patterns. An increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as heat waves and prolonged droughts is predicted, but there are high levels of uncertainty about the nature of local changes. Crop adaptation will be important in reducing potential damage to agriculture. Crop diversity may enhance resilience to climate variability and changes that are difficult to predict. Therefore, there has to be sufficient diversity within the set of available cultivars in response to weather parameters critical for yield formation. To determine the scale of such 'weather response diversity' within barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), an important crop in northern conditions, the yield responses of a wide range of modern and historical varieties were analysed according to a well-defined set of critical agro-meteorological variables. The Finnish long-term dataset of MTT Official Variety Trials was used together with historical weather records of the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The foci of the analysis were firstly to describe the general response of barley to different weather conditions and secondly to reveal the diversity among varieties in the sensitivity to each weather variable. It was established that barley yields were frequently reduced by drought or excessive rain early in the season, by high temperatures at around heading, and by accelerated temperature sum accumulation rates during periods 2 weeks before heading and between heading and yellow ripeness. Low temperatures early in the season increased yields, but frost during the first 4 weeks after sowing had no effect. After canopy establishment, higher precipitation on average resulted in higher yields. In a cultivar-specific analysis, it was found that there were differences in responses to all but three of the studied climatic variables: waterlogging and drought early in the season and temperature sum accumulation rate before heading. The results suggest that low temperatures early in the season, delayed sowing, rain 3-7 weeks after sowing, a temperature change 3-4 weeks after sowing, a high temperature sum accumulation rate from heading to yellow ripeness and high temperatures (>= 25 degrees C) at around heading could mostly be addressed by exploiting the traits found in the range of varieties included in the present study. However, new technology and novel genetic material are needed to enable crops to withstand periods of excessive rain or drought early in the season and to enhance performance under increased temperature sum accumulation rates prior to heading.Human migration has been described as one of the conflict constellations in regions affected by climate change, but can also contribute to climate adaptation. Migrant social networks can help to build social capital to increase the social resilience in the communities of origin and trigger innovations across regions by the transfer of knowledge, technology, remittances and other resources. These could increase the flexibility, diversity and creativity of communities in addressing climate stress and open new pathways for co-development connecting the home and host communities. Based on a conceptual framework connecting migration and adaptation, the paper explores possible opportunities, innovative approaches and institutional mechanisms for migration as a contribution to climate adaptation. The Western Sahel will be used as a case study region, with a focus on Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, using qualitative and quantitative analysis of remittances at the national level, and a micro-level analysis on the role of migrant networks in these countries in specific co-development projects in water, food and energy. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In African communities, informal associations are becoming increasingly important in shaping and mediating local adaptation practices. The study suggests that the concept of social innovation is useful for analyzing climate adaptation in the multiscale institutional environments with complex vulnerability contexts. Small-scale local associations have a potential to facilitate collective experimentation and risk management, contributing to the resilience and sustainability of the social-ecological system. Ethnographic focus is on the informal associations of economic cooperation and dispute mediation of Kuria people of northwest Tanzania, and the ways these institutional forms facilitate resource management and the negotiation of difference under income diversification. Organizational features of the groups are examined that facilitate social innovation and alternative patterns of communication, effecting flexible and relational connections between scales. The study examines the features of the local institutions that have a potential to enhance local adaptive capacity, and discusses possible challenges to sustainable climate adaptation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change has been linked to well-documented changes in physiology, phenology, species distributions, and in some cases, extinction. Projections of future change point to dramatic shifts in the states of many ecosystems. Accommodating these shifts to effectively conserve biodiversity in the context of uncertain climate regimes represents one of the most difficult challenges faced by conservation planners. A number of adaptation strategies have been proposed for managing species and ecosystems in a changing climate. However, there has been little guidance available on integrating climate change adaptation strategies into contemporary conservation planning frameworks. The paper reviews the different approaches being used to integrate climate change adaptation into conservation planning, broadly categorizing strategies as continuing and extending on "best practice" principles and those that integrate species vulnerability assessments into conservation planning. We describe the characteristics of a good adaptation strategy emphasizing the importance of incorporating clear principles of flexibility and efficiency, accounting for uncertainty, integrating human response to climate change and understanding trade-offs.Many countries are developing national strategies and action plans aimed at minimising the negative impacts of climate change on biodiversity. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview not only of strategies and plans that have been developed in Australia, but also of research that has been carried out in Australia by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Climate Adaptation Flagship to assist the development of future strategies and plans. Major points are summarised from key policy documents such as the National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan 2004-2007, and Australia's Biodiversity Conservation Strategy 2010-2030, as well as the 2009 report on "Australia's Biodiversity and Climate Change". Within the first three years of its existence, the Natural Ecosystems theme in CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship has carried out studies analysing impacts and identifying potential adaptations across the whole of Australia's vast terrestrial and marine environments. Techniques used in these studies could be applied easily in other countries and could assist the development of more effective national strategies and adaptation action plans for the conservation of biodiversity under climate change.In the U.S. Southwest, global climate change, acting in concert with extant stressors such as urbanization and over-allocation of water resources, is changing ecosystems in measureable and sometimes dramatic ways. Twenty-first century projections indicate accelerating climate change and cascading ecological consequences. Effects observed to date include large-scale forest dieback, large and severe wildfires, and changes in the flow regimes of rivers and streams with attendant changes to riparian and aquatic ecosystems. Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are pushing ecosystems across physiological and ecological thresholds, causing widespread mortality and, in some cases, major changes in composition, structure and function. These changes have prompted action by the conservation community to reduce the adverse effects of climate change. The Southwest Climate Change Initiative (SWCCI), a project led by The Nature Conservancy, works with local stakeholders in affected landscapes, reduces adverse impacts on ecological and social systems using scientific knowledge and practical tools. The Initiative has learned through practical experience that: 1) managers must embrace change and manage for resilience rather than resistance; 2) strong local science-management partnerships are critical to effective adaptation planning and implementation; 3) planners and managers must broaden the scope and accelerate the pace of conservation activities if ecosystem services are to be sustained; 4) adaptation often does not require radically new or different management practices, rather, conservationists already have many of the tools they need; and 5) rapid documentation and widespread communication of methods and findings can build rapidly regional capacity for climate change adaptation. Our experience suggests that adaptation efforts can be effective if they are focused at the local scale; employ learning networks; and engage in ecosystem-based adaptation: the sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems so that they continue to provide the services that allow people to thrive in changing environments.Conservationists must develop new strategies and adapt existing tools to address the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. To support statewide climate change adaptation, we developed a framework for assessing climate change vulnerability of California's at-risk birds and integrating it into the existing California Bird Species of Special Concern list. We defined climate vulnerability as the amount of evidence that climate change will negatively impact a population. We quantified climate vulnerability by scoring sensitivity (intrinsic characteristics of an organism that make it vulnerable) and exposure (the magnitude of climate change expected) for each taxon. Using the combined sensitivity and exposure scores as an index, we ranked 358 avian taxa, and classified 128 as vulnerable to climate change. Birds associated with wetlands had the largest representation on the list relative to other habitat groups. Of the 29 state or federally listed taxa, 21 were also classified as climate vulnerable, further raising their conservation concern. Integrating climate vulnerability and California's Bird Species of Special Concern list resulted in the addition of five taxa and an increase in priority rank for ten. Our process illustrates a simple, immediate action that can be taken to inform climate change adaptation strategies for wildlife.Accurate simulation of summertime convection associated with the Asian monsoon trough over the subtropical western Pacific is important but difficult to achieve in many general circulation models (GCMs). This study reports a case in which bias could be reduced by introducing a higher-resolution regional atmospheric model (RAM), two-way nested in an atmospheric GCM over the western Pacific. Additional partial-coupling experiments revealed that GCM bias correction was insensitive to the coupling domain. The two-way nesting effect was similar to one phase of a leading mode of natural variability in the system. This is indicative that the two-way nesting model provides more realistic tropical heating that effectively excites a correct phase of the intrinsic dynamical mode to reduce GCM bias.Global climate issues and a looming energy crisis put agriculture under pressure in Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate adaptation measures must entail sustainable development benefits, and growing crops for food as well as energy may be a solution, removing people from hunger and poverty without compromising the environment. The present study investigated the feasibility of using non-food parts of cassava for energy production and the promising results revealed that at least 28% of peels and stems comprise dry matter, and 10 g feedstock yields > 8.5 g sugar, which in turn produced > 60% ethanol, with pH a parts per thousand 2.85, 74-84% light transmittance and a conductivity of 368 mV, indicating a potential use of cassava feedstock for ethanol production. Thus, harnessing cassava for food as well as ethanol production is deemed feasible. Such a system would, however, require supportive policies to acquire a balance between food security and fuel.Using a case study from Ethiopia, this article examines the ways in which climate information and economic development interact in climate adaptation programmes. Microinsurance programmes have become very popular as an adaptation strategy but there has been little attention paid to the social, economic and political aspects of implementation. Examining one case in relation to the broader literature on climate adaptation projects suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to existing coping strategies, introduction of additional market risks, local capacity building and the socio-political context of implementation. Climate change cannot be viewed as a technical problem only; it has a social dimension as well.The shift from framing climate change adaptation as vulnerabilityimpacts to adaptation pathways is also a shift from a predict-and-provide approaches to understanding dynamic processes. Studies of the economics of adaptation relying only on the comparative statics of reference and climate impacts scenarios ignore the more challenging frontier of representing decision processes and uncertainty. The logic of the shift to dynamic-pathway approaches is widely accepted in principal. Effective analytical tools are only beginning to appear. Further case studies are required to explore the matrix of uncertainty in future climate conditions against the range of metrics for valuing impacts in decision processes. WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:161170. doi: 10.1002/wcc.157The nature and structure of institutional mechanisms is fundamental for commons management, and yet has received relatively little attention for ecosystem service provision. In this paper, we develop and employ a value-focused structured decision process for a negotiation analysis about mechanisms to maintain and enhance ecosystem service (ES) provision at the watershed scale. We use a case study in the Birris watershed of Costa Rica where upstream farmers and downstream hydropower might jointly benefit from the design of a mechanism to foster the provision of soil regulation services (SRS). We identify and use parties' fundamental objectives, and views on means to achieve these objectives, to structure a negotiation template representing the important components that a soil conservation program should include. A voting-based elicitation process was employed to identify sub-alternatives acceptable both parties, which in turn identifies the zone of bargaining, or negotiation space in which future negotiations should focus. We conclude with discussion of the potential for application of this approach to other ES contexts, and the importance of the overall policy framework to provide resources and incentives to achieve enhance ES provision. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Management of forests, rangelands, and wetlands on public lands, including the restoration of degraded lands, has the potential to increase carbon sequestration or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions beyond what is occurring today. In this paper we discuss several policy options for increasing GHG mitigation on public lands. These range from an extension of current policy by generating supplemental mitigation on public lands in an effort to meet national emissions reduction goals, to full participation in an offsets market by allowing GHG mitigation on public lands to be sold as offsets either by the overseeing agency or by private contractors. To help place these policy options in context, we briefly review the literature on GHG mitigation and public lands to examine the potential for enhanced mitigation on federal and state public lands in the United States. This potential will be tempered by consideration of the tradeoffs with other uses of public lands, the needs for climate change adaptation, and the effects on other ecosystem services.In this study climate change impacts on water balance components were estimated from transient climate scenarios for 1951-2099 in Finland. The future changes in evapotranspiration and discharge in annual and seasonal scales as well as annual mean high and low flows were projected for four catchments in different parts of Finland. The assessment was carried out using temperature and precipitation series simulated by four regional climate models (RCMs) as input to a conceptual hydrological model. The daily data from RCMs was bias corrected with the quantile-quantile mapping method and statistical properties of the simulated discharges were analysed to detect trends over time. Without bias correction the simulated discharges in the control period did not match the observed discharges, but the fit was improved considerably after bias correction. The results showed that seasonal changes, most importantly increase in winter runoff, were clearly visible and consistent in different climate scenarios and catchments. Individual scenarios also produced changes in annual mean, high and low flows, but without consistency in scenarios. The use of bias corrected RCM data as input to the hydrological model enables transient simulations, but the simulation results aggregate considerable uncertainties from the climate modelling, bias correction and the hydrological model.Adaptation is now broadly accepted as a necessary response to climate change. Local adaptation strategies should be developed with decision-makers familiar with the unique characteristics of a community. As part of ongoing research on adaptation in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada we hosted a workshop with City staff and community stakeholders to build local capacity and initiate an adaptation strategy. Past climate trends and future scenarios were used to gain a better understanding of the changes occurring and expected in the region. The highest priorities identified for Prince George relate to forest fires, flooding, emergency response to extreme events, water supply and transportation infrastructure. The workshop framework represents a tool which communities can apply to outline adaptation priorities within a limited time frame. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved..HILL, D., 2012. The lessons of Katrina, learned and unlearned. Journal of Coastal Research, 28(2), 324-331. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Originally planned to evaluate storm surge barriers, the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) instead developed a process for government agencies and private stakeholders to adapt critical infrastructure in New York City to the effects of climate change. In its influential 2010 report, the NPCC ignored the literature documenting the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina striking New Orleans in 2005. A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) sums up these lessons in 10 calls to action. An examination of the NPCC report suggests that half of these lessons have been learned and half have not. Essentially, the ASCE makes public safety, health, and welfare, not adapting critical infrastructure, its top priorities. The NPCC report fails to quantify the risks, does not address the question of an acceptable level of risk, and does not evaluate the consequences of severe coastal flooding. Although storm surge barriers have been found to be hydrologically and technically feasible, they are dismissed as mere contributions to the discussion that are not needed for at least the next several decades, despite the report's own accounting of the extreme uncertainty and possible effects of severe hurricanes and nor'easters. The NPCC report features Flexible Adaptation Pathways to plan and revise adaptation measures over time, which ignore the possibility of hedging strategies and the well-established precautionary principle. Without an engineering presence, the NPCC also overlooks consideration of lead times in planning major projects. It is concluded that the NPCC report is delaying regional measures against severe coastal flooding, discouraging hedging and the precautionary principle, and deterring adequate measures to protect public safety, health, and welfare.Extreme weather events can have severe consequences for the local environment and population. Projected future changes in climate (e.g. UKCP09) indicate that North West England is likely to experience an increasing frequency and intensity of meteorological extremes, leading to flooding, heat waves and storms. Consequently, it is important that the region enhances its preparedness for such events. This paper explores the possibility of developing quantifiable climate risk indices for the case study area of Greater Manchester, using a combination of archival research and statistical analysis of past climate data. For extremes which are the function of a single meteorological variable (e.g. heat waves, pluvial flooding and heavy snowfall) the thresholds proved to be reliable and skillful. Days with maximum daily temperature greater than or equal to 29.2 degrees C, daily snowfall amount greater than or equal to 6 cm or maximum gust speed greater than or equal to 60 knots are found to be indicative of weather-related impacts which have in the past affected human health/well-being, have caused damage to the urban infrastructure or have severely disrupted services. Extreme events which are the result of a more complex interaction between variables (e.g. drought, freezing conditions) were less well captured by applying the thresholds associated with a single variable in isolation. Such critical threshold indices can be used in conjunction with future projections of climate change to establish weather-related risk for the future. This risk-based approach can subsequently be integrated to climate change adaptation strategies and development planning to ensure future preparedness. Copyright (c) 2011 Royal Meteorological SocietyVietnam's coastal zone provides a diverse range of natural resources and favourable conditions for social and economic development. However, its coastal ecosystems are highly vulnerable, due to several natural coastal hazards, over-exploitation and other human activities. In spite of diverse interventions, Vietnam's coastal zone continues to experience significant damage from floods, erosion and typhoons. These hazards are being intensified by climate change and associated rising sea levels. This paper assesses the potential vulnerability of Vietnam's coast to climate change and discusses possible adaptation policies and plan to reduce the impacts. GIS analysis was used for the assessment of coastal vulnerability. Related literature was reviewed to develop detailed understanding of coastal adaptation to climate change. Adaptation policies and plans were appraised to identify potential coastal adaptation policies and plans that could be adapted by Vietnam. It was identified that vulnerability of the coastal zone of Vietnam could not be attributed only to climatic factors, but also to the physical condition of the coastline. Much of Vietnam's coastline, particularly, areas around the Red River delta and the Mekong River have elevations below 1 m. These coastlines are largely developed and serve as economic centres of the country, which makes the coast more vulnerable to climate change and the rising sea level. The paper concluded that a non-structural approach (coastal buffer zones, building houses on stilts, storm warning systems, growing of flood-resistant crops and elevated storm shelters with medicine and food storage) could be used by Vietnam to adapt her low-lying coastline around the two deltas to climate change as this strategy enables vulnerable areas to be occupied for longer before eventual retreat. However, for these policies to be successful, it should be planned, implemented well in advance, monitored and evaluated over time.In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, societies worldwide have to cope with the potential impacts of climate change. The central question of this paper is to what extent our historically grown institutions enable actors to cope with the new challenges of climate adaptation. We present six qualities of governance institutions that are crucial to allow for, and encourage adaptation, and apply them to the National Adaptation Strategies of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden. We conclude that although the governance institutions involved seem to have the basic qualities required, they face five institutional weaknesses, causing tensions on the long term: (1) lack of openness towards learning and variety; (2) strong one-sided reliance on scientific experts; (3) tension between top-down policy development and bottom-up implementation; (4) distrust in the problem-solving capacity of civil society; and (5) wickedness of reserving funding for long-term action.A changing climate will exacerbate many of the problems currently faced by California's public health institutions. The public health impacts of climate change include: an increase in extreme heat events and associated increases in heat-related morbidity and mortality, increases in the frequency and severity of air pollution episodes, shifts in the range and incidence of vector-borne diseases, increases in the severity of wildfire, increased risks of drought and flooding, and other extreme events. This article assesses the readiness of California's public health institutions to cope with the changes that will accompany a changing climate and how they relate to strategies laid out in the state's Climate Adaptation Strategy. County-level health offices are the front line actors to preserve public health in the face of numerous threats, including climate change. Survey results show that local health officers in California believe that climate change is a serious threat to public health, but feel that they lack the funding and resources to reduce this risk. Local health agencies also have a number of tools in place that will be helpful for preparing for a changing climate.Climate change in California is altering habitat conditions for many species and exacerbating stress from other factors such as alien invasive species, pollution, and habitat fragmentation. However, the current legal and planning framework for species protection does not explicitly take climate change into account. The regulatory framework is primarily reactive, kicking in only after species' health is gravely threatened. Neither federal nor state regulations require forward-looking, climate-sensitive species or ecosystem protection plans. Habitat planning is poorly funded and often piecemeal. In this context, the wrong lands may be protected, with development allowed to occur in areas that would be most beneficial for species conservation in the future. A more forward-looking approach to habitat conservation is needed, one based on a statewide strategy to identify and protect critical habitat areas, including corridors to enable species migration. The approach would also require development of assessment indicators and assistance strategies not dependent on current habitat structure, and a governance structure to implement regular, periodic updates of management plans in relation to agreed-upon performance indicators. Such a strategy should integrate habitat conservation planning with other state and regional plans and objectives, such as for transportation infrastructure, urban development, and mitigation of climate change.The ability to ascribe native or alien status to species in a rapidly changing world underpins diverse research fields that overlap with global change and biological invasions via biodiversity. Current definitions generally link alien status to anthropogenic dispersal events, but this can create conflicts for active management and global change adaptation strategies, such as managed relocation and restoration ecology. Here we propose a unifying approach that allows for the incorporation of rapid global change into biological invasion terminology. We introduce the concept of a projected dispersal envelope (PDE) to define the region where a species is or could be native, irrespective of human involvement. The PDE integrates biogeography and niche theory with existing invasion terminology to place a spatial and temporal context on species movements. We draw on a diverse suite of topical organism movements to illustrate these concepts. Our restructured definitions allow for native species to move into or with rapidly shifting climatic regions, as well as identifying the inappropriate introduction of alien species to new areas. Moreover, our definitions framework forms a timely and essential component of adaptation policies and responses for invasive species management and the enhancement of biodiversity in a rapidly changing world.Public engagement and support is essential for ensuring adaptation to climate change. The first step in achieving engagement is documenting how the general public currently perceive and understand climate change issues, specifically the importance they place on this global problem and identifying any unique challenges for individual communities. For rural communities, which rely heavily on local agriculture industries, climate change brings both potential impacts and opportunities. Yet, to date, our knowledge about how rural residents conceptualise climate change is limited. Thus, this research explores how the broader rural community-not only farmers-conceptualises climate change and responsive activities, focussing on documenting the understandings and risk perceptions of local residents from two small Australian rural communities. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted in communities in the Eden/Gippsland region on the border of New South Wales and Victoria and the north-east of Tasmania. There are conflicting views on how climate change is conceptualised, the degree of concern and need for action, the role of local industry, who will 'win' and 'lose', and the willingness of rural communities to adapt. In particular, residents who believed in anthropogenic or human-induced factors described the changing climate as evidence of 'climate change', whereas those who were more sceptical termed it 'weather variability', suggesting that there is a divide in rural Australia that, unless urgently addressed, will hinder local and national policy responses to this global issue. Engaging these communities in the twenty-first-century climate change debate will require a significant change in terminology and communication strategies.Aim Fire is a major driver of ecosystem structure and process, and shifts in fire regimes are implicated in the decline of many species. Shifting fire regimes have been documented around the world, and fire frequency and extent is predicted to increase in many areas because of changes in both climate and land management. Here, we evaluate how predicted increases in fire frequency are likely to impact on species distributions. Location The tropical savannas of northern Australia. Methods We developed distribution models for 44 bird species using the modelling algorithm Maxent. Our models incorporated bird locality records and environmental variables including climate, total fire frequency and the subset of fire frequency occurring late in the dry season. We investigated the effect of increasing total fire frequency and increasing fire late in the dry season, on species distributions by projecting species model algorithms onto scenarios of incrementally increased total fire frequency. Results The probability of presence for most species was higher when fire frequency late in the dry season was low. Species showed a mixed response to an overall increase in total fire frequency, with one-third predicted to increase in distribution. However, almost all species (98%) showed a decrease in predicted range with increased late-dry season fire, and species distribution area was generally negatively correlated with an increase in late-dry season fire. Main conclusions Our study highlighted the array of responses of species to increasing fire frequency and suggested that increased fire frequency late in the dry season is detrimental to most savanna-restricted bird species. The understanding of individual species' preferences for particular fire frequencies is important for informed conservation planning.Context: Climate-change adaptation strategies that address locally specific climate hazards are critical for preventing negative health outcomes, and local public health care officials are key foci for adaptation planning. Objective: To assess New York State Local Health Department officials' perceptions and preparedness related to climate-sensitive health areas, and compare these with a national sample. Design: Online survey instrument, originally used in a national survey of local health department (LHD) officials. Setting: New York State. Participants: Eligible participants included all New York State city and county LHD officials, 1 respondent per LHD. Main Outcome Measures: LHD officials' perceptions of (1) local climate-related public health effects, (2) preparation status and programming areas of LHDs, and (3) necessary resources to better address climate-related health risks. Results: Survey participants, representing a 54% response rate (with 93% of respondents completing more than 90% of the questions), perceived climate change as relevant to public health, and most noted that some of their existing programs already use or are planning to use climate adaptation strategies. Overall, fewer New York State respondents identified concerns or related expertise compared with the previous national survey. Many respondents expressed uncertainty regarding necessary additional resources. Conclusions: This type of assessment makes clear the high variability in perceived impacts and capacity at the level of LHD jurisdictions, and underscores the importance of sustained support for local climate-change preparedness programming. The implications of these findings are germane to other states with similar decentralized jurisdiction of public health. Findings from such surveys can bolster existing LHD programs, as well as inform long-term and emergency planning for climate change.The detection of climate-driven changes in coupled human-natural systems has become a focus of climate research and adaptation efforts around the world. High-resolution gridded historical climate (GHC) products enable analysis of recent climatic changes at the local/regional scales most relevant for research and decision-making, but these fine-scale climate datasets have several caveats. We analyzed two 4 km GHC products to produce high-resolution temperature trend maps for the US Northeast from 1980 to 2009, and compared outputs between products and with an independent climate record. The two products had similar spatial climatologies for mean temperatures, agreed on temporal variability in regionally averaged trends, and agreed that warming has been greater for minimum versus maximum temperatures. Trend maps were highly heterogeneous, i.e., a patchy landscape of warming, cooling and stability that varied by month, but with local-scale anomalies persistent across months (e.g., cooling 'pockets' within warming zones). In comparing trend maps between GHC products, we found large local-scale disparities at high elevations and along coastlines; and where weather stations were sparse, a single-station disparity in input data resulted in a large zone of trend map disagreement between products. Preliminary cross-validation with an independent climate record indicated substantial and complex errors for both products. Our analysis provided novel landscape-scale insights on climate change in the US Northeast, but raised questions about scale and sources of uncertainty in high-resolution GHC products and differences among the many products available. Given rapid growth in their use, we recommend exercising caution in the analysis and interpretation of high-resolution climate maps.The effectiveness of climate change responses is influenced by the adaptive capacity of communities within regions over spatial and temporal scales. While climate change projections are commonly used to set policy and management responses, they are not always coupled with socio-economic projections over the same time periods. This article explores the interplay between socio-economic characteristics and their potential implications for regional vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Population growth presents one of the biggest challenges for the South East Queensland region (SEQ) of Australia. Indigenous people, the aged, lone person households and single parent families show marked increases relative to other population segments. The literature suggests that these groups are more vulnerable to the risks associated with climate change. Population growth will not only increase the number of vulnerable groups, but also the demand for land, goods and services, including energy, infrastructure and ecosystem services. However, such data need to be integrated with context-specific data to account for spatial and temporal variations (or differences) in the adaptive capacity of communities.Wetlands in general and mires in particular belong to the most important terrestrial carbon stocks globally. Mires (i.e. bogs, transition bogs and fens) are assumed to be especially vulnerable to climate change because they depend on specific, namely cool and humid, climatic conditions. In this paper, we use distribution data of the nine mire types to be found in Austria and habitat distribution models for four IPCC scenarios to evaluate climate change induced risks for mire ecosystems within the 21st century. We found that climatic factors substantially contribute to explain the current distribution of all nine Austrian mire ecosystem types. Summer temperature proved to be the most important predictor for the majority of mire ecosystems. Precipitation-mostly spring and summer precipitation sums-was influential for some mire ecosystem types which depend partly or entirely on ground water supply (e.g. fens). We found severe climate change induced risks for all mire ecosystems, with rain-fed bog ecosystems being most threatened. Differences between scenarios are moderate for the mid-21st century, but become more pronounced towards the end of the 21st century, with near total loss of climate space projected for some ecosystem types (bogs, quagmires) under severe climate change. Our results imply that even under minimum expected, i.e. inevitable climate change, climatic risks for mires in Austria will be considerable. Nevertheless, the pronounced differences in projected habitat loss between moderate and severe climate change scenarios indicate that limiting future warming will likely contribute to enhance long-term survival of mire ecosystems, and to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions from decomposing peat. Effectively stopping and reversing the deterioration of mire ecosystems caused by conventional threats can be regarded as a contribution to climate change mitigation. Because hydrologically intact mires are more resilient to climatic changes, this would also maintain the nature conservation value of mires, and help to reduce the severe climatic risks to which most Austrian mire ecosystems may be exposed in the 2nd half of the 21st century according to IPCC scenarios.Assisted migration of forest trees has been widely proposed as a climate change adaptation strategy, but moving tree populations to match anticipated future climates may disrupt the geographically based, coevolved association suggested to exist between host trees and ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) communities. We explored this issue by examining the consistency of EMF communities among populations of 40 year-old Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) trees in a common-garden field trial using four provenances from contrasting coastal climates in southwestern British Columbia. Considerable variation in EMF community composition within test sites was found, ranging from 0.38 to 0.65 in the mean similarity index, and the divergence in EMF communities from local populations increased with site productivity. Clinal patterns in colonization success were detected for generalist and specialist EMF species on only the two productive test sites. Host population effects were limited to EMF species abundance rather than species loss, as richness per site averaged 15.0 among provenances and did not differ by transfer extent (up to 450 km), while Shannon's diversity index declined slightly. Large differences in colonization rates of specialist fungi, such as Tomentella stuposa and Clavulina cristata, raise the possibility that EMF communities maladapted to soil conditions contributed to the inferior growth of some host populations on productive sites. The results of the study suggest locally based specificity in host fungal communities is likely a contributing factor in the outcome of provenance trials, and should be a consideration in analyzing seed-transfer effects and developing strategies for assisted migration.Scientists overwhelmingly agree that the climate is changing and that the changes are largely due to increased levels of carbon emissions into the atmosphere that are caused by human activities. The recommended response from society to climate change involves two sets of activities: mitigation and adaptation. Adaptation includes activities that attempt to adjust or respond to changes to the environment caused by climate change. For wildlife, a consensus is forming around an approach to adaptation planning that would improve the ability of an ecosystem to resist dramatic changes to habitats; build resilience into the ecosystem to recover from extreme weather events and changes in temperature and precipitation that may cause increased floods, wildfires, insect outbreaks, etc.; and lastly build realignment into our ecosystems through wildlife corridors or other connections through matrix landscape types that allow species to shift their ranges and transition into new areas when the need becomes inevitable. This commentary outlines a climate change adaptation strategy for wildlife within an eight-state region (Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio) of the Midwest United States (US) focused on the design of an interconnected green infrastructure network of natural areas that helps refine future wildlife habitat conservation priorities while also providing other natural and human benefits to residents of the Midwest US. A landscape-scale green infrastructure network will be developed for this area within the next 18-24 months thanks to a grant from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to the eight Midwest states, and the strategy outlined here serves as the foundation for implementing effective wildlife habitat protection projects in response to climate change.Several major articles from the past decade and beyond conclude the impact of reforestation or afforestation on water yield is negative: additional forest cover will reduce and removing forests will raise downstream water availability. A second group of authors argue the opposite: planting additional forests should raise downstream water availability and intensify the hydrologic cycle. Obtaining supporting evidence for this second group of authors has been more difficult due to the larger scales at which the positive effects of forests on the water cycle may be seen. We argue that forest cover is inextricably linked to precipitation. Forest-driven evapotranspiration removed from a particular catchment contributes to the availability of atmospheric moisture vapor and its cross-continental transport, raising the likelihood of precipitation events and increasing water yield, in particular in continental interiors more distant from oceans. Seasonal relationships heighten the importance of this phenomenon. We review the arguments from different scales and perspectives. This clarifies the generally beneficial relationship between forest cover and the intensity of the hydrologic cycle. While evidence supports both sides of the argument trees can reduce runoff at the small catchment scale at larger scales, trees are more clearly linked to increased precipitation and water availability. Progressive deforestation, land conversion from forest to agriculture and urbanization have potentially negative consequences for global precipitation, prompting us to think of forest ecosystems as global public goods. Policy-making attempts to measure product water footprints, estimate the value of ecosystem services, promote afforestation, develop drought mitigation strategies and otherwise manage land use must consider the linkage of forests to the supply of precipitation.This paper will outline and discuss the growth of anticipatory and interventionist practices in 'niches' where policy-as-usual is being modified. Four niches are described: initiating and achieving 'sustainability transitions'; industry adaptation and transformation strategies; governing emerging technologies to enable responsible innovation; and experimentation with planning and policy-making approaches for more uncertain futures (e.g. in climate change adaptation). Intervention by foresight practitioners in such developing niches is recommended. In doing so, the paper also outlines: 1) the rapidly evolving social context for applied foresight work; and 2) emerging methodological approaches, and associated action frameworks combining futures methods with prescriptions for interventionist actions, which are being developed. These approaches are argued to be responses to the increasing problematisation of the future generated by climate change and other important wicked problems. Such changes also make visible a potential shift away from technocratic, or 'modernist', styles of planning and policy towards a new 'anticipatory interventionist paradigm'.Cities throughout the world face the challenge of preparing for climate change impacts. Since urban climate adaptation is an emerging policy domain, however, few institutions exist to guide cities among the first to take action. Drawing on institutional theory and case study research, this article examines the initiation and development of adaptation planning in two cities in the global south: Durban and Quito. The cases suggest that action in nascent policy domains is motivated by endogenous factors and sustained by taking advantage of opportunities rising and creatively linking new agendas to existing goals, plans, and programs.With rapid urbanization and population growth in Beijing, urban heat island (UHI) effects have become ever stronger. Methods for reducing the UHI effects by landscape design are becoming increasingly critical in urban planning studies. Water bodies form urban cooling islands (UCI) to mitigate the UHI effects. This study investigated the UCI intensity and efficiency of 197 water bodies in Beijing, and their relationships with four descriptors of microclimatic landscape design, including the water body area (WA), geometry (landscape shape index, LSI), location (DIST) in reference to a defined city center, and surrounding built-up proportion (PB). Data of land cover and land surface temperature (LST) were extracted from ASTER images of August 8 of 2007. The UCI intensity was defined as the maximum LST gradient outside a water body area, while the UCI efficiency was used to represent the UCI intensity per unit area of a water body. The results indicated that: (1) the mean UCI intensity and efficiency was 0.54 degrees C/hm and 1.76 degrees C/hm/ha, respectively: (2) the UCI intensity was positively correlated with WA and PB, and negatively correlated with LSI and DIST; and (3) the UCI efficiency was positively correlated with PB, and negatively correlated with WA, LSI and DIST. Results of this study may help urban planners and designers in decision making to achieve optimal urban landscape designs for a more ecologically sound and pleasant living environment. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper provides a first quantitative estimate of the potential number of people and value of assets exposed to coastal flooding in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The study used an elevation-based geographic information system-analysis based on physical exposure and socio-economic vulnerability under a range of climate and socio-economic scenarios. It particularly considered a worst-case scenario assuming even if defences (natural and/or man-made) exist, they are subjected to failure under a 100-year flood event. About 8% of Dar es Salaam lies within the low-elevation coastal zone (below the 10 m contour lines). Over 210,000 people could be exposed to a 100-year coastal flood event by 2070, up from 30,000 people in 2005. The asset that could be damaged due to such event is also estimated to rise from US$35 million (2005) to US$10 billion (2070). Results show that socio-economic changes in terms of rapid population growth, urbanisation, economic growth, and their spatial distribution play a significant role over climate change in the overall increase in exposure. However, the study illustrates that steering development away from low-lying areas that are not (or less) threatened by sea-level rise and extreme climates could be an effective strategic response to reduce the future growth in exposure. Enforcement of such policy where informal settlements dominate urbanisation (as in many developing countries) could undoubtedly be a major issue. It should be recognised that this analysis only provides indicative results. Lack of sufficient and good quality observational local climate data (e.g. long-term sea-level measurements), finer-resolution spatial population and asset distribution and local elevation data, and detailed information about existing coastal defences and current protection levels are identified as limitations of the study. As such, it should be seen as a first step towards analysing these issues and needs to be followed by more detailed, city-based analyses.This paper presents a preliminary analysis of work conducted along altitudinal gradients in the mountains and plains of northern Tanzania. We find evidence of a high degree of interdependence among groups of people of different language/cultural groups and socio-economic status interacting along environmental gradients from high to low altitude. We call this "socio-geographical adaptation" to climate change. However, our analysis and discussion adds complexity to any simple notion of "adaptation to climate change" since changes are multiple and adaptation is complex.This paper examines the impacts of climate change on cassava production in Africa, and questions whether cassava can play an important role in climate change adaptation. First, we examine the impacts that climate change will likely have on cassava itself, and on other important staple food crops for Africa including maize, millets, sorghum, banana, and beans based on projections to 2030. Results indicate that cassava is actually positively impacted in many areas of Africa, with -3.7% to +17.5% changes in climate suitability across the continent. Conversely, for other major food staples, we found that they are all projected to experience negative impacts, with the greatest impacts for beans (-16%+/- 8.8), potato (-14.7 +/- 8.2), banana (-2.5%+/- 4.9), and sorghum (-2.66%+/- 6.45). We then examined the likely challenges that cassava will face from pests and diseases through the use of ecological niche modeling for cassava mosaic disease, whitefly, brown streak disease and cassava mealybug. The findings show that the geographic distribution of these pests and diseases are projected to change, with both new areas opening up and areas where the pests and diseases are likely to leave or reduce in pressure. We finish the paper by looking at the abiotic traits of priority for crop adaptation for a 2030 world, showing that greater drought tolerance could bring some benefits in all areas of Africa, and that cold tolerance in Southern Africa will continue to be a constraint for cassava despite a warmer 2030 world, hence breeding needs to keep a focus on this trait. Importantly, heat tolerance was not found to be a major priority for crop improvement in cassava in the whole of Africa, but only in localized pockets of West Africa and the Sahel. The paper concludes that cassava is potentially highly resilient to future climatic changes and could provide Africa with options for adaptation whilst other major food staples face challenges.This paper addresses the dual challenge faced by Burkina Faso engineers to design sustainable low-energy public buildings while still providing the required thermal comfort under warmer temperature conditions caused by climate change. In this article, we discuss current and potential future energy demand for public buildings air conditioning in the context of climate change. Past and projected future trends of electricity demand for air conditioning in public buildings from 2010 to 2080 have been investigated. Moreover, this paper highlights the fact that the predicted mean temperature using climate change SRES scenario B2 will increase by about 2 degrees C by 2050 which can cause a significant increase in air conditioning energy consumption. This paper then considers the impact of different shading devises and building envelopes characteristics on the demand for air-conditioning in Burkina Faso public buildings. It is estimated that with climate change, in order to maintain a thermally comfortable 25 degrees C inside public buildings, the projected annual energy consumption will have to increase by 56% and 99% respectively for the period between 2030 to 2049 and 2060 to 2079 compared to the base situation (energy consumption between 2010 and 2029). Moreover, the results have shown that shading devices could reduce the cooling load by up to 40%. Therefore shading devices could play a significant role in climate change adaptation in the built environment for Burkina Faso. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate in Finland offers challenging conditions for commercial horticulture. The short and insufficient growing season together with risky overwintering strongly limits species suitable for cultivation. The aim of this study was to examine the climatic conditions around Finland in the aspect of horticulture, focusing on processes relevant to woody plants and species with photoperiod controlled growth cessation, and how these conditions may be expected to change due to the projected global warming. For this, a set of temperature-related indices and threshold events were used. These indices represent the severity of coldness during winter, wintertime thaws, and frost events close to the onset and ending of the growing season. The combined results of 19 GCMs (General Circulation Model) from the CMIP3 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3) multi-model data set under SRES-B1 and SRES-A2 (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) emission scenarios were used to produce the future projections. By mid-century our results suggest wintertime conditions with reduced cold stress, caused by less frequent and shorter periods of severe frost together with a rise in the extreme minimum temperature. Conversely, an increase in the number and intensity of wintertime thaw events leads to a higher risk in overwintering. Also the risk of spring frost damage is projected to decrease slightly, and the conditions for cold hardening process to improve, as the first autumnal frosts occur later.Severe downslope winds accompanying turbulence, which are of great concern to aviation safety, often occur on the lee side of Zao mountain range in winter. Special Doppler lidar observations and numerical simulations with a grid spacing of 100 m were carried out focusing on the downslope winds around the Sendai airport on 14 February 2008. The model reproduced stationary lee waves with an approximate 20-km wavelength, consistent with the observed horizontal scale in water vapor images from the Japanese geostationary multifunctional transport satellite (MTSAT-1R). The simulated lee waves are accompanied by strong vertical shear, which leads to the separation of a vortex sheet from the surface, where small-scale vortices are generated successively. The vortex sheet is under favorable conditions for Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and may account for the generation of small-scale vortices. The simulated vortices, which are advected downstream, are accompanied by weak low-level wind patches. The Doppler lidar observation also captured the weak low-level wind patches with a horizontal scale of 1000-m moving downstream near the surface. An observed temporal variability in line-of-site wind speed decreased with increasing altitude from the surface. This feature was reproduced by the model in a qualitative sense, although the model tended to overestimate (underestimate) the variability below (above) a height of approximately 800 m.Mountain springs emanating naturally from unconfined aquifers are the primary source of water for rural households in the Himalayan region. Due to the impacts of climate change on precipitation patterns such as rise in rainfall intensity, reduction in its temporal spread, and a marked decline in winter rain, coupled with other anthropogenic causes, the problem of dying springs is being increasingly felt across this region. This study was taken up in the Sikkim Himalaya, which has received limited attention despite being a part of the Eastern Himalaya global biodiversity hot spot. The objective of this study was to understand the basic characteristics of the springs and to demonstrate methods for reviving them. We found the rural landscape dotted by a network of microsprings occurring largely in farmers' fields, with an average dependency of 27 (630) households per spring. The spring discharge generally showed an annual periodic rhythm suggesting a strong response to rainfall. The mean discharge of the springs was found to peak at 51 L/min during the postmonsoon months (September-November) and then diminish to 8 L/min during spring (March-May). The lean period (March-May) discharge is perceived to have declined by nearly 50% in drought-prone areas and by 35% in other areas over the last decade. The springshed development approach to revive 5 springs using rainwater harvesting and geohydrology techniques showed encouraging results, with the lean period discharge increasing substantially from 4.4 to 14.4 L/min in 2010-2011. The major challenges faced in springshed development were the following: identifying recharge areas accurately, developing local capacity, incentivizing rainwater harvesting in farmers' fields, and sourcing public financing. We recommend further action research studies to revive springs to advance the outcomes of this pilot study and mainstreaming of springshed development in watershed development, rural water supply, and climate change adaptation programs, especially in the Himalayan region.The energy problem has been redefined as one of the most important elements of sustainable development by climate change, adaptation and mitigation. Meeting energy needs is always a current issue in Hungary, irrespective of climate change because of the country's high dependency on oil and gas imports, limited opportunities to replace them with domestic production, and the pollution associated with using fossil energy sources. Increasing effectiveness and saving energy can provide relatively short-term solutions with bearable costs and a relatively quick return on investment. The aim of the present paper is to give an overview about the climate and energy policy in Hungary with a special focus on the new energy strategy. Energy policy has a pivotal role in the economic recovery plan of the Hungarian government. The National Energy Strategy 2030 taking shape in Hungary takes climate policy into account with respect to adaptation and mitigation and lists renewable energy sources as the second most important tool for achieving strategic goals. As in most countries, it is also possible in Hungary to introduce climate strategy measures with zero social costs. The expedient management of climate change requires the combination of prevention, adaptation and dissemination initiatives. Strategies must meet a dual requirement: they must face the economic risks associated with premature measures, while also considering the adverse effects of delay.Adaptation to climate change is already being delivered by public and private actors, yet there has been little analysis of the relationships between the providers and beneficiaries of adaptation. This paper reviews the type of actors that are supplying adaptation services and their motivations. We then focus on a specific, under-explored case of adaptation: that of privately provided adaptation public goods and services, the realization of which is contingent on the individual management of private goods and private risks. Following the work of Olson (1965) we find that the benefits of the privately provided adaptation public good do not necessarily accrue back to the (same) individuals who are the providers. The characteristics of this particular form of public good pose specific institutional challenges. In this paper we: 1) explore the characteristics and defining features of these privately provided adaptation public goods; 2) argue that this form of adaptation provisioning is increasingly recognised as a feature in climate change adaptation (and/or social transformation) problems; 3) review existing cases of effective/ineffective management of these public goods; and 4) outline the institutions that may be required to facilitate the management of these public goods for adaptation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides an evidence-based contribution to understanding processes of climate change adaptation in water governance systems in the Netherlands, Australia and South Africa. It builds upon the work of Ostrom on institutional design principles for local common pool resources systems. We argue that for dealing with complexities and uncertainties related to climate change impacts (e.g. increased frequency and intensity of floods or droughts) additional or adjusted institutional design propositions are necessary that facilitate learning processes. This is especially the case for dealing with complex, cross-boundary and large-scale resource systems, such as river basins and delta areas in the Netherlands and South Africa or groundwater systems in Western Australia. In this paper we provide empirical support for a set of eight refined and extended institutional design propositions for the governance of adaptation to climate change in the water sector. Together they capture structural, agency and learning dimensions of the adaptation challenge and they provide a strong initial framework to explore key institutional issues in the governance of adaptation to climate change. These institutional design propositions support a "management as learning" approach to dealing with complexity and uncertainty. They do not specify blueprints, but encourage adaptation tuned to the specific features of local geography, ecology, economies and cultures. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Human-driven changes in the global environment pose an increasingly urgent challenge for the management of ecosystems that is made all the more difficult by the uncertain future of both environmental conditions and ecological responses. Land managers need strategies to increase regional adaptive capacity, but relevant and rapid assessment approaches are lacking. To address this need, we developed a method to assess regional protected area networks across biophysically important climatic gradients often linked to biodiversity and ecosystem function. We plot the land of the southwestern United States across axes of historical climate space, and identify landscapes that may serve as strategic additions to current protected area portfolios. Considering climate space is straightforward, and it can be applied using a variety of relevant climate parameters across differing levels of land protection status. The resulting maps identify lands that are climatically distinct from existing protected areas, and may be utilized in combination with other ecological and socio-economic information essential to collaborative landscape-scale decision-making. Alongside other strategies intended to protect species of special concern, natural resources, and other ecosystem services, the methods presented herein provide another important hedging strategy intended to increase the adaptive capacity of protected area networks. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The response of photosynthesis to temperature is a central facet of plant response to climate. Such responses have been found to be highly variable among species and among studies. Understanding this variability is key when trying to predict the effects of rising global temperatures on plant productivity. There are three major factors affecting the response of leaf net photosynthesis to temperature (A(n)-T): (i) photosynthetic biochemistry, (ii) respiration and (iii) vapour pressure deficit (D) and stomatal sensitivity to vapour pressure deficit during measurements. The overall goal of our study was to quantify the relative contribution of each of these factors in determining the response of A(n) to temperature. We first conducted a sensitivity analysis with a coupled photosynthesis-stomatal (A(n)-g(s)) model, using ranges for parameters of each factor taken from the literature, and quantified how these parameters affected the A(n)-T response. Second, we applied the A(n)-g(s) model to two example sets of field data, which had different optimum temperatures (T-opt) of A(n), to analyse which factors were most important in causing the difference. We found that each of the three factors could have an equally large effect on T-opt of A(n). In our comparison between two field datasets, the major cause for the difference in T-opt was not the biochemical component, but rather the differences in respiratory components and in D conditions during measurements. We concluded that shifts in A(n)-T responses are not always driven by acclimation of photosynthetic biochemistry, but can result from other factors. The D conditions during measurements and stomatal responses to D also need to be quantified if we are to better understand and predict shifts in A(n)-T with climate.It is now recognized that climate change affects human health. The question is how to adapt. This article examines mainstreaming climate considerations into public health programs and the utility of climate change and health adaptation frameworks, using Ontario, Canada, as a case study. A literature review identified climate change and health adaptation frameworks for comparison with the Ontario Public Health Standards. Key informant interviews gauged the extent to which climate change risks are currently considered in policy and planning. Ontario's Public Health Standards already require many of the risk management activities identified in climate change and health adaptation frameworks. However, public health officials require additional information about linkages between climate change and health to manage risks. Risk management activities such as population health assessments, surveillance and public education and outreach can address many key risks related to climate hazards when information about the risks, vulnerable populations and time scales is made available to health officials. The development, analysis and transfer of this information should be considered a priority at all levels within the public health sector.Climate variability and change mitigation and adaptation policies need to prioritize land users needs at local level because it is at this level that impact is felt most. In order to address the challenge of socio-economic and unique regional geographical setting, a customized methodological framework was developed for application in assessment of climate change vulnerability perception and adaptation options around the East African region. Indicators of climate change and variability most appropriate for the region were derived from focused discussions involving key informants in various sectors of the economy drawn from three East African countries. Using these indicators, a structured questionnaire was developed from which surveys and interviews were done on selected sample of target population of farming communities in the Mt. Kenya region. The key highlights of the questionnaire were vulnerability and adaptation. Data obtained from respondents was standardized and subjected to multivariate and ANOVA analysis. Based on principle component analysis (PCA), two main vulnerability categories were identified namely the social and the bio-physical vulnerability indicators. Analysis of variance using Kruskal-Wallis test showed significant statistical variation (P <= 0.05) in the perceived vulnerability across the spatial distribution of the 198 respondents. Three insights were distinguished and were discernible by agro-ecological zones. Different vulnerability profiles and adaptive capacity profiles were generated demonstrating the need for prioritizing adaptation and mitigation efforts at local level. There was a high correlation between the bio-physical and social factor/livelihood variables that were assessed.It is now widely accepted that climate change is happening and that future changes will impact on many aspects of society, including agriculture. To maintain food supplies, the agricultural industry must address climate change adaptation. Key to this is the attitudes of those within the industry likely to have responsibility for adapting. This study investigated stakeholder attitudes towards adaptation to climate change in the livestock industry. Findings reveal four attitudinal groups. First, there is a 'farmer-focused group' that has a positive attitude about the ability of livestock farmers to adapt to climate change, but that also has the opinion that they will need additional support to adapt. Second, there is an 'incentive for enterprise, anti-GM (genetic modification) group' with an attitudinal position stressing that the government should have a role in implementing regulations and providing finance. This group has a negative attitude towards GM technology and does not think it will be the answer to climate change. Third, there is an 'information and education group' whose attitude is that the provision of information is crucial for ensuring that the livestock industry adapts. Fourth, there is a 'pro-technology group' who have a positive attitude towards GM technology and who are therefore willing to embrace it as the route to adaptation. Three of these four groups favour soft adaptations that maintain flexibility within the system, and only the fourth is of the opinion that adaptive capacity is not an issue and that the industry is ready to implement hard adaptations.The extensive mortality of yellow-cedar along more than 1000 kilometers of the northern Pacific coast of North America serves as a leading example of climate effects on a forest tree species. In this article, we document our approaches to resolving the causes of tree death, which we explain as a cascade of interacting topographic, forest-structure, and microclimate factors that act on a unique vulnerability of yellow-cedar to fine-root freezing. The complex causes of tree mortality are reduced to two risk factors-snow depth and soil drainage-which are then used to model present and future cedar habitat suitability. We propose a dynamic, comprehensive conservation strategy for this valuable species on the basis of zones created by shifting climate, cedar's ecological niche, and observed risk factors. Research on yellow-cedar decline is offered as a template for understanding and adapting to climate change for other climate forest issues.This paper presents the design and evaluation of an effective market-clearing scheme for trading demand response (DR) in a deregulated power system. The proposed scheme is called demand response exchange (DRX), in which DR is treated as a public good to be exchanged between two groups of participating agents, namely DR buyers and DR sellers. While buyers require DR and are willing to pay for it, sellers have the capacity to curtail customer loads to supply DR on request. The DRX market clearing scheme uses Walrasian auctions, where agents update their DR quantity bids in response to prices adjusted by the market operator. This auction is repeated iteratively until market equilibrium is obtained at the point where the market outcome is proven to be Pareto optimal. The proposed scheme is tested on a small power system and its effectiveness substantiated.This paper provides data on the changing character of river restoration within one country within a single policy and legislative framework. The information gathered was based on web searches, meetings and questionnaire responses with organizations and individuals working as environmental policy developers, stakeholders and practitioners of catchment management and river restoration. The paper utilizes this information to explore generic issues promoting and constraining a move to integrated catchment scale river restoration. Catchment scale river restoration was defined as any river restoration activity that singly, or in combination, restores natural catchment processes and a naturally functioning ecosystem and brings benefit or environmental services to the whole catchment and not just to the site of restoration. The river restoration project data compiled showed that the number of projects in Scotland is on a strong upward trajectory, but the number of catchment scale projects is still limited. The data also showed a trend towards a range of underpinning reasons for river restoration. Traditionally the reasons for river restoration in Scotland have been strongly fisheries focussed, with another key driver being biodiversity conservation. Sustainable flood management and climate change adaptation are seen as emerging drivers of river restoration. In terms of the individuals interviewed, most appreciated that river restoration can bring about multiple benefits and should be underpinned by a good understanding of catchment processes. Our overall assertion based on our study is that unless there is a fundamental paradigm shift, a change in the nature and level of funding for river restoration and a single organization is given overall authority to direct river restoration. 'business as usual' will continue and the benefits of catchment scale river restoration will be limited. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The durability of concrete is determined largely by its deterioration over time which is affected by the environment. Climate change may alter this environment, causing an acceleration of deterioration processes that will affect the safety and serviceability of concrete infrastructure in Australia, U.S., Europe, China and elsewhere. This investigation of concrete deterioration under changing climate in Australia uses Monte-Carlo simulation of results from General Circulation Models (GCMs) and considers high greenhouse gas emission scenarios representing the A1FI schemes of the IPCC. We present the implications of climate change for the durability of concrete structures, in terms of changes in probability of reinforcement corrosion initiation and corrosion induced damage at a given calendar year between 2000 and 2100 across Australia. Since the main driver to increased concrete deterioration is CO(2) concentration and temperature, then increases in damage risks observed in Australia are likely to be observed in other concrete infrastructure internationally. The impact of climate change on the deterioration cannot be ignored, but can be addressed by new approaches in design. Existing concrete structures, for which design has not considered the effects of changing climate may deteriorate more rapidly than originally planned.BACKGROUND: Climate change is expected to have a range of health impacts, some of which are already apparent. Public health adaptation is imperative, but there has been little discussion of how to increase adaptive capacity and resilience in public health systems. OBJECTIVES: We explored possible explanations for the lack of work on adaptive capacity, outline climate-health challenges that may lie outside public health's coping range, and consider changes in practice that could increase public health's adaptive capacity. METHODS: We conducted a substantive, interdisciplinary literature review focused on climate change adaptation in public health, social learning, and management of socioeconomic systems exhibiting dynamic complexity. DISCUSSION: There are two competing views of how public health should engage climate change adaptation. Perspectives differ on whether climate change will primarily amplify existing hazards, requiring enhancement of existing public health functions, or present categorically distinct threats requiring innovative management strategies. In some contexts, distinctly climate-sensitive health threats may overwhelm public health's adaptive capacity. Addressing these threats will require increased emphasis on institutional learning, innovative management strategies, and new and improved tools. Adaptive management, an iterative framework that embraces uncertainty, uses modeling, and integrates learning, may be a useful approach. We illustrate its application to extreme heat in an urban setting. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing public health capacity will be necessary for certain climate-health threats. Focusing efforts to increase adaptive capacity in specific areas, promoting institutional learning, embracing adaptive management, and developing tools to facilitate these processes are important priorities and can improve the resilience of local public health systems to climate change.This paper discusses the discourses on climate change adaptation and mitigation that are currently at the forefront in the Congo Basin. On mitigation, the forests have enormous opportunities to contribute to the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) mechanism. But the forest itself and its multiple dependent societies and sectors need to adapt to potential climate risks. Hence, actors are debating the design of climate change policy in the forest sector. Theoretically, we combine the agency-focus of frame analysis and discourse theory to analyze how different agents hold frames on climate change adaptation and mitigation policies in the region. This paper draws upon interviews with 103 different actors from government, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, research institutions and private sector in three countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Three discourses were found on policy response to climate change in the forest sector: mitigation policy only, separated policy on adaptation and mitigation, and an integrated policy on adaptation and mitigation. The various frames articulated around each discourse by the coalitions include elements of: costs and benefits, scale of operation, effectiveness, financial resources and implementation mechanisms. Overall, the mitigation discourse, through its mix of actors, resources and interests seems to be stronger than the adaptation discourse. The paper finally outlines a number of implications of the discourses for policy design. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate adaptation is uniquely linked to location, making it predominantly a local government and community responsibility. Despite the obligation to act, local governments are hindered by the absence of applicable guides to adaptation decision-making, especially adaptation to extreme events. In this paper, we describe a framework for prioritising adaptation options that could be locally implemented and illustrate it with a study of flooding in Kochi: a city in southern India. Unlike many demand driven, economics based studies, our new framework also incorporates non-economic dimensions of the extremes and potential adaptation options. Local knowledge is used to tackle data gaps and uncertainty related to extreme events: local experts select adaptation options that offer additional benefits besides those related to climate change. These co-benefits aid decision making under uncertainty by giving weight to community priorities. The Indian case study reveals that, risk evaluation and reduction need to be locally contextualised based on resources available, immediate community requirements, planning periods and local expert knowledge. Although there will be residual damage even after implementing selected options, we argue that, climate response will be most likely to be accepted when it also supports pressing needs. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.1. Designing practical rules for controlling invasive species is a challenging task for managers, particularly when species are long-lived, have complex life cycles and high dispersal capacities. Previous findings derived from plant matrix population analyses suggest that effective control of long-lived invaders may be achieved by focusing on killing adult plants. However, the cost-effectiveness of managing different life stages has not been evaluated. 2. We illustrate the benefits of integrating matrix population models with decision theory to undertake this evaluation, using empirical data from the largest infestation of mesquite (Leguminosae: Prosopis spp) within Australia. We include in our model the mesquite life cycle, different dispersal rates and control actions that target individuals at different life stages with varying costs, depending on the intensity of control effort. We then use stochastic dynamic programming to derive cost-effective control strategies that minimize the cost of controlling the core infestation locally below a density threshold and the future cost of control arising from infestation of adjacent areas via seed dispersal. 3. Through sensitivity analysis, we show that four robust management rules guide the allocation of resources between mesquite life stages for this infestation: (i) When there is no seed dispersal, no action is required until density of adults exceeds the control threshold and then only control of adults is needed; (ii) when there is seed dispersal, control strategy is dependent on knowledge of the density of adults and large juveniles (LJ) and broad categories of dispersal rates only; (iii) if density of adults is higher than density of LJ, controlling adults is most cost-effective; (iv) alternatively, if density of LJ is equal or higher than density of adults, management efforts should be spread between adults, large and to a lesser extent small juveniles, but never saplings. 4. Synthesis and applications. In this study, we show that simple rules can be found for managing invasive plants with complex life cycles and high dispersal rates when population models are combined with decision theory. In the case of our mesquite population, focussing effort on controlling adults is not always the most cost-effective way to meet our management objective.1. Gridded climatologies have become an indispensable component of bioclimatic modelling, with a range of applications spanning conservation and pest management. Such globally conformal data sets of historical and future scenario climate surfaces are required to model species potential ranges under current and future climate scenarios. 2. We developed a set of interpolated climate surfaces at 10' and 30' resolution for global land areas excluding Antarctica. Input data for the baseline climatology were gathered from the WorldClim and CRU CL1.0 and CL2.0 data sets. A set of future climate scenarios were generated at 10' resolution. For each of the historical and future scenario data sets, the full set of 35 Bioclim variables was generated. Climate variables (including relative humidity at 0900 and 1500 hours) were also generated in CLIMEX format. The Koppen-Geiger climate classification scheme was applied to the 10' hybrid climatology as a tool for visualizing climatic patterns and as an aid for specifying absence or background data for correlativemodelling applications. 3. We tested the data set using a correlative model (MaxEnt) addressing conservation biology concerns for a rare Australian shrub, and a mechanistic niche model (CLIMEX) to map climate suitability for two invasive species. In all cases, the underlying climatology appeared to behave in a robust manner. 4. This global climate data set has the advantage over theWorldClimdata set of including humidity data and an additional 16 Bioclim variables. Compared with the CRU CL2.0 data set, the hybrid 10' data set includes improved precipitation estimates as well as projected climate for two global climate models running relevant greenhouse gas emission scenarios. 5. For many bioclimatic modelling purposes, there is an operational attraction to having a globally conformal historical climatology and future climate scenarios for the assessments of potential climate change impacts. Our data set is known as 'CliMond' and is available for free download from http://www.climond.org.The ecosystem service concept has emphasized the role of people within socio-ecological systems (SESs). In this paper, we review and discuss alternative ways of representing people, their behaviour and decision-making processes in SES models using an agent-based modelling (ABM) approach. We also explore how ABM can be empirically grounded using information from social survey. The capacity for ABM to be generalized beyond case studies represents a crucial next step in modelling SESs, although this comes with considerable intellectual challenges. We propose the notion of human functional types, as an analogy of plant functional types, to support the expansion (scaling) of ABM to larger areas. The expansion of scope also implies the need to represent institutional agents in SES models in order to account for alternative governance structures and policy feedbacks. Further development in the coupling of human-environment systems would contribute considerably to better application and use of the ecosystem service concept.Climate change is likely to affect the water cycle by influencing the precipitation patterns. It is important to integrate the anticipated changes into the design of urban drainage in response to the increased risk level in cities. This paper presents a pluvial flood risk assessment framework to identify and assess adaptation options in the urban context. An integrated approach is adopted by incorporating climate change impact assessment, flood inundation modeling, economic tool, and risk assessment, hereby developing a step-by-step process for cost-benefit assessment of climate change adaptation measures. A Danish case study indicates that the introduced framework presented in the paper can be considered as an important decision support tool that can supplement and further develop existing decision practices in relation to urban drainage. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Spatial connectivity of areas of dry fuels is considered a significant influence on the incidence of large fires. Precipitation patterns can dynamically affect fuel connectivity through controls on the distribution of dry fuels. Spatio-temporal monitoring of precipitation-driven variations in dry fuel connectivity patterns could therefore offer the potential to monitor fire danger. In this paper we present an innovative graph theoretic-based approach to monitor fire danger using remotely sensed patterns of dry fuel connectivity. We analysed the temporal evolution of dry fuel connectivity in south-eastern Australia during recent fire seasons. The analysis showed that rapid changes in the connectivity of dry fuels determine the pre-conditions for major fires. We found that large fires affected highly connected dry portions of the landscape, confirming the potential of this approach to monitor the temporal evolution of fire danger. Citation: Caccamo, G., L. A. Chisholm, R. A. Bradstock, and M. L. Puotinen (2012), Using remotely-sensed fuel connectivity patterns as a tool for fire danger monitoring, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L01302, doi:10.1029/2011GL050125.Accelerating urbanization has been viewed as an important instrument for economic development and reducing regional income disparity in some developing countries, including China. Recent studies (Bloom et al. 2008) indicate that demographic urbanization level has no causal effect on economic growth. However, due to the varying and changing definition of urban population, the use of demographic indicators as a sole representing indicator for urbanization might be misleading. Here, we re-examine the causal relationship between urbanization and economic growth in Chinese cities and provinces in recent decades, using built-up areas as a landscape urbanization indicator. Our analysis shows that (1) larger cities, both in terms of population size and built-up area, and richer cities tend to gain more income, have larger built-up area expansion, and attract more population, than poorer cities or smaller cities; and (2) that there is a long-term bidirectional causality between urban built-up area expansion and GDP per capita at both city and provincial level, and a short-term bidirectional causality at provincial level, revealing a positive feedback between landscape urbanization and urban and regional economic growth in China. Our results suggest that urbanization, if measured by a landscape indicator, does have causal effect on economic growth in China, both within the city and with spillover effect to the region, and that urban land expansion is not only the consequences of economic growth in cities, but also drivers of such growth. The results also suggest that under its current economic growth model, it might be difficult for China to control urban expansion without sacrificing economic growth, and China's policy to stop the loss of agricultural land, for food security, might be challenged by its policy to promote economic growth through urbanization.The Gnangara Groundwater System meets about 50% of all water needs for the Perth Peel region of Western Australia (population 1.7 million). Much of the water is contained in an unconfined aquifer which occurs in coastal sand dunes and supports ecologically-important throughflow wetlands. The system has been subject to significant climate change since about 1975, although the persistent and unidirectional nature of the change was not recognised for some time. As well as climate, groundwater levels are affected by land use (e.g. plantation forestry, urbanisation) and land management (e.g. how plantations and stormwater are managed) as well as by the amount of groundwater abstraction from each of several inter-connected aquifers. Land, water and forests are managed by different government agencies with their own policy objectives. Maintaining groundwater levels within an agreed range of values to protect the wetlands requires informed and early adaptation by these agencies as well as a supportive community. Adaptation was hampered because there was little or no experience of managing groundwater for climate change and the causes of declining levels were neither clear nor agreed. Even when target water level decisions were agreed, their achievement required the cooperation of parties with different priorities. This paper examines some of the lessons learned from this experience and the current approach to manage the land, water and forest resources to meet multiple objectives in a system that is undergoing transitional change rather than reaching a new equilibrium. Climate change impacts have been progressive and the concept of a system that can respond in a resilient manner after a temporary perturbation is not an appropriate concept in this example. Climate adaptation involves significant social and institutional change as well as biophysical changes to make the most of a changing system.In several Western European countries, scientists, policymakers and other actors collaborate in regional climate change adaptation projects. Such joint knowledge production is often assumed to lead to reconciliation of supply and demand for knowledge. Many conceptual analyses of joint knowledge production have been performed, yet systematic empirical assessments of the phenomenon are lacking. This chapter aims to address this gap by providing a retrospective analysis of six Dutch regional climate change adaptation projects, which were all part of two large programs, 'Climate Changes Spatial Planning' and 'Living with Water'. The analysis is based on desk research and 27 semi-structured interviews with researchers, policymakers and project funders. The chapter first explores how the success of joint knowledge production can be analyzed and, second, how differences in success can be explained. Based on the analysis, two variables are proposed clarifying the context in which a project takes place: (1) epistemological distance between participating actors; and (2) normative consensus. The chapter denominates some initial design principles for joint knowledge production. It is concluded that science-policy cooperation in regions seems to provide opportunities for transformative cross-boundary learning.Impact of users on thermal behaviour of a building and a building's impact on the use of different spaces are two aspects that are subject of post occupancy evaluation of the present paper. The building was designed according to passive concepts, including Insulated envelope and internal thermal mass; also computer simulations were used to optimize thermal performance of different components of the design. The evaluation was done by using quantitative method to document climate and interior lighting. A qualitative method was also used for analysis of building use and perception of indoor climate by users. High windows were placed in the hall and lobby for night flush to cool the building during summer. However, the difficulty of opening them had led that night ventilation was never practiced. In winter, less window's areas would be sufficient to satisfy the thermal comfort during the day while ensuring a sufficient level of natural lighting. Daylight level measured in the morning shows that the level of illumination is acceptable; however it remains below the required minimum during the afternoon during fall, winter and spring. Small to medium windows, (4-10% of floor area) on west orientation could improve the daylight during the afternoon. Also, a late closing of the youth club would be desirable for the spring, summer and fall when days are long. The results of the interviews describe a high level of satisfaction from users with regard to indoor climate. Bioclimatic design has a positive impact on the use of the youth. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Since 1989, the Garlic Project of INTA (The National Institute of Agricultural Technology, Argentina) has obtained an important number of clonal cultivars by means of clonal selection. Those high yielding and top quality cultivars allow extending the technological alternatives for the industry. However, all those clones have been obtained in a same location (La Consulta, Mendoza; 33.70 degrees S; 69.7 degrees W, 950 m a.s.l.) and little is known about their stability of response in environments outside the main producing region. The aim of this work was to study yield stability of clonal cultivars from different ecophysiological groups (EG), all selected at 33.70 degrees S, in promising locations for garlic production around northern Patagonia. Throughout 2005-2008 ten clones were proven in four sites. Each year the seed was provided from the site of origin of the clones (Experiment Station La Consulta). Cultivars studied were 'Morado INTA' (EG-II); 'Lican INTA', 'Norteno INTA', 'Nieve INTA', 'Perla INTA' and 'Union' (EG-III); 'Gostoso INTA', 'Fuego INTA' and 'Sureno INTA' (EG-IVa); 'Castano INTA' (EG-IVb). Sites for the survey were Cinco Saltos (Rio Negro; 38.82 degrees S; 68.7 degrees W, 290 m a.s.l.), Hilario Ascasubi (Buenos Aires; 39.38 degrees S 62.62 degrees W, 15 m a.s.l.), Viedma (Rio Negro; 40.78 degrees S; 63.5 degrees W, 9 m a.s.l.) and Trevelin (Chubut; 43.12 degrees S; 71.52 degrees W, 360 m a.s.l.). Bulb weight (g per plant) was analyzed by AMMI and SREG models through the software InfoGen. Although Morado INTA belongs to the EG-II (subtropical climate adaptation) it showed higher yields among clones proven in northern Patagonia (62.73 g on average), besides highly unstable. Clones of EG-III produced an intermediate and more stable response (bulb mean weight about 50 g). 'Gostoso INTA' gave the worst yield across all locations. The four sites in this study, although contrasting in latitudes and seasonal temperatures, would be considered belonging to a same mega-environment.there is substantial proof that the world is warming. The International Panel of Climate Change reported that there might be a continuous rise in the ambient temperature throughout the end of the 21st century. With a rising international worry about global warming, the construction sector is confronting the question of how forecasted changes in climate will affect the overall performance of buildings all over the world. This is resulting in a fast-growing field of study that concentrates on the adaptation and strength of buildings to a varying climate. Global warming can tremendously result on the overall energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of residential buildings. Hence, climate adaptation must be effectively regarded both in design and operation phases to eliminate impact. This paper examines (or reviews) the connection between climate change and buildings and the growing body of knowledge on the issue, and also classifying and reviewing the contributions of other researcher.A variety of stressors have been identified that threaten the sustainability of water resources. The availability and predictability of water resources are at the core of considering the role of climate for humans and natural ecosystems. The hydrological cycle defines available water resources in a river basin, but to ensure sustainability, it is important to examine other factors within river basin borders influencing the quality and quantity of water. Preparing for pressures and building adaptive capacity require a holistic assessment of the current status and possible future impacts on the freshwater resources. This chapter describes a case study focusing on the Irrawaddy and Salween Rivers that form a major part of Myanmar's water resources. Despite their importance, these basins have been little studied. The basins were divided according to ecological zones and terrain slope into subareas, and a vulnerability assessment based on 22 indicators was conducted. Indicators represent publicly available global spatial data on temperature, precipitation, hydrology, glaciers, state of wetlands, population distribution, land cover, nitrogen load, and water use. Indicators were based either on model outputs or on land cover and land-use information, representing variably current situations or future projections. Besides describing the case study, this chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities of linking large-scale spatial modeling results to local-level management and adaptation planning. Challenges arise first from the process of modeling and input data characteristics that manifest as questions of scale and uncertainty. Secondly, the process of distributing the results for the relevant stakeholders (if identified and reached) can turn out to be tricky. Opportunities exist if attention is given to impact of scale and unit of analysis in (especially spatial) data ensuring best applicability in local-scale management. Also improving information management with a systematic approach in identifying knowledge gaps and synthesizing existing information is crucial for improving linkages between researchers, policy-makers, and local decision-makers. Finally, modeling should be developed toward acknowledging the value of the process of modeling rather than the actual results. This would provide possibilities for translating the increasing amounts of information into understanding among the relevant stakeholders.Hydrological and climatological modeling is increasingly being used with the intent of supporting community-based climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH), as well as filling critical data gaps in a region that contributes significantly to the water resources and ecosystem diversity of Asia. As the case studies presented in the previous chapters illustrate, the utility of modeling in informing and supporting CCA and DRR initiatives depends on a number of criteria, including: appropriate model selection; ability to interpret models to local contexts; and community engagement that incorporates and addresses underlying vulnerabilities within the community. There are significant challenges to meeting all three of these criteria. However, when these criteria are met, we find: There is a clear role for modeling to support CCA. The climate is changing now and will continue to do so for several centuries, even if carbon emissions were to stabilize tomorrow. Models, and other scenario development tools, provide our best insight into what the future climate might be and resulting impacts on dynamic social, environmental, political, and economic systems. There is a clear role for local CCA. The impacts of climate change will be felt mostly at local levels, necessitating community adaptation responses. At the same time, most of the HKH communities and countries engaged in CCA initiatives have pressing, immediate development and livelihood needs. Making current development and livelihood initiatives incorporate climate adaptation considerations is the best way to ensure that the choices made today can set us on paths of increasing resilience, rather than almost inevitable disaster, for the future. To achieve the best of both modeling and CCA requires thoughtful and patient application of modeling, tailored to local needs, conditions, and politics, with communities engaged around all stages of generating, interpreting, and applying the results. This requires a rare combination of technical skill, cultural sensitivity, political awareness, and above all, the time to continually engage with and build relationships within the community in order to foster resilient change.Global challenges stress out the impact of climate change on development and the linkage between energy security, demography and sustainable development. The emergence of climate change and climate change adaptation is a political and financial issue for development stressed in the Kyoto Protocol United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and European Union Emissions Trading System EU ETS. In this study I examine the use of wood products as a source to reduce CO2 and increase carbon sinks. Wood and wood products can be seen as potential solutions to gain added "green" value. The opportunities and challenges that Romania currently faces in terms of environmental improvement and poverty alleviation must be understood against the background of crisis. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Emerging Markets Queries in Finance and Business local organizationUrbanization, climate change and social developments increase the vulnerability of cities. This chapter provides an outline and the features of future water cities. A number of properties of future watercities are discussed and illustrated with examples from Japan and the Netherlands. Future water cities are sustainable, climate robust, adaptable, healthy and pleasant. Reliable technologies are available to achieve this. Mainstreaming them would be the next logical step. Two key conditions for mainstreaming of these urban water management innovations are presented in this chapter. The first condition is including urban water management innovations in spatial planning and development. The second condition is stakeholder receptivity to urban water management innovations. These key conditions are discussed and illustrated with examples from the Netherlands and Japan.Conference of European Road Directors, CEDR, initiated work on studying the effects of climate change on roads. The work belongs to Strategic Plan 2 (2009-2013), Thematic Domain Operation and is organised as twin tasks dealing with adaptation on one hand (task 16) and mitigation of climate change on the other hand (task 17). This paper describes the work within task group 16 on adaptation to climate change, from the initiation of the work to the publishing of the report to CEDR, October 2011. The mandate of the adaptation group can be summarised as follows: Show the consequences of climate change for infrastructures, and propose actions towards adapting the road network and management procedures to climate change. The work started by performing two surveys in road administrations in the participating countries: a survey of risks related to climate change, and a survey of ongoing adaptation work. The report to CEDR consists of a summary of the results of the surveys, and is followed by a more detailed examination of the effects of climate change on the road network. Suggestions for adaptation work are offered and criteria for prioritising possible actions are proposed. A thematic collection of examples demonstrating adaptation work in the participating countries is integrated in the report. Some of the examples refer to R&D programmes. Others describe current practice in one country that may be useful and relevant for application in another country. The report also suggests topics for future research, including opportunities for trans-European joint research programmes. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena 2012A sustainable human settlement is a healthy environment to work and live in. The need is becoming obviously in the decline in environmental quality as well as global climate change. Climate change and related hazards are having impacts on human settlements causing major loss of life, social disruption and economic hardship. The unvalued nature of sustainable human settlement makes it difficult to incorporate the environment in the normal calculation schemes of rational market behavior. Linking of climate change adaptation with sustainable human settlement is important and starting to happen although there are significant barriers. Many settlements in China are at risk and need to adapt and reduce risk. Addressing the challenge of climate change must be established to meet the needs of providing a sustainable human settlement base on which to develop and implement public policies.Increasingly, departments of transportation (DOTs) are being subjected to higher maintenance costs because of extreme weather events. Maintenance managers are not imagining things; the amount of rainfall during intense precipitation has increased 20% over the past century. A survey of DOTs shows that maintenance demands in response to flooding and snowfall have increased precipitously in many states. This study began with a discussion at the 2011 AASHTO maintenance meeting and proceeded with an inquiry to all 50 states to scan the growth in extreme weather events and the impacts that DOTs have experienced. The impacts of the increase in wind, dust storms, snow and ice, flooding, and other events are discussed in this paper, with some attention devoted to the impacts of rising sea levels and erosion. The case studies reported here of extreme weather events offer a place to start to assess the potential costs of climate change, at least in the initial years, and to plan for adaptation. Recommendations by DOT maintenance and operation managers on how to respond to extreme weather events are also summarized in this paper.Time-varying visualization is always an important topic in the field of scientific visualization. Due to the large data size and complex grid, the unstructured time-varying visualization is still a hard problem. In this paper, we propose a temporal coherence based framework for visualizing large-scale time-varying unstructured volume with the Particle-based volume rendering (PBVR).PBVR is a visibility sorting free rendering method, which can render a large-scale unstructured grid dataset efficiently. However, the pre-process of PBVR, which is to generate particles from the original volume, can always cost too much time. To overcome this problem, we utilize the temporal coherence between consecutive time steps to decrease the particle generation time. After the particle generation, we also compress the particle data before it is stored in hard disk. In account of the compressed data size, the loading time of the particle data during the rendering process is decreased obviously. And after the loading of the particle data, our system can render the data as an animation very smoothly by utilizing the LOD control of PBVR. We applied our system to rendering of 465 time steps of 3,676,828 hexahedral cell grid dataset to confirm the effectiveness.In this paper, we present two different FlowVR systems aiming to render remote data using a Particle-based Volume Renderer (PBVR). The huge size of irregular volume datasets has always been one of the major obstacles in the field of scientific visualization. We developed an application with the software FlowVR, using its functionalities of "modules" which can be mapped and executed on remote computers, and communicating via ssh connections. Using a "Pixels Read-back and Send" and a "Particles Send" algorithms, we succeeded in creating an application designed for developing visualization programs with remote data particle-based rendering.This article contributes to our understanding of community resilience. Community resilience is the ability of a community to cope and adjust to stresses caused by social, political, and environmental change and to engage community resources to overcome adversity and take advantage of opportunities in response to change. Through an analysis of local responses to multiple challenges, six dimensions of community resilience were found in one village in northern Norway. These dimensions; community resources, community networks, institutions and services, people-place connections, active agents, and learning; are activated in processes and activities in the village to respond to current challenges. Although this corroborates findings from other community resilience research, this research suggests that community resilience is both complex and dynamic over time. Although communities may consider themselves resilient to today's challenges, the rate and magnitude of expected systemic global changes, especially climate change, means that future resilience cannot be taken for granted. This work concludes that there is a risk that community resilience may be an illusion, leading to complacency about the need for adaption to multiple factors of change. Hence, the ability of communities to actively engage in reflexive learning processes is of importance for both adaptation and future resilience.Climate adaptation policies are meant to reduce the negative consequences of the impacts associated with anthropogenic climate change, and in turn their success often depends on causal relationships within natural and human systems. In this paper, I examine the use of narratives about these causal relationships and explore why narratives with little basis in observation can persist in guiding policy. I examine three case studies, one concerning a narrative of climate impacts, a second concerning the relationship between household wealth and vulnerability, and the third concerning the procedures and needs of policy-makers themselves. In each case, I find that the narrative that was needed to legitimize and continue the resource flow within an existing policy process continued, despite growing empirical and model-driven evidence to suggest that the narrative may not be correct. I compare these stories with theories from sociological and evolutionary theory and suggest the importance of correcting or improving policy processes to avoid this pathology.This article unpacks the problematic relationship between emerging climate change adaptation norms and changes underway in agricultural extension. It is increasingly recognised that in order to apply new knowledge about climate change in rural development practice a more institutional perspective is needed, but there is no clear consensus on what this implies. This article looks at agricultural extension as an example of a meso-level institution that is frequently assumed to be a major potential "implementing partner" in climate adaptation efforts, at the same time as it is also often portrayed as a worst-case example of the obstacles encountered in changing the focus of a path dependent bureaucracy. This article contrasts the perspectives of normative climate adaptation frameworks (exemplified by the 2011 World Resources Report) with what is known about prevailing extension trends and realities. It is suggested that long lists of recommended climate adaptation tasks and technologies may distract from an understanding of the institutional change processes underway within meso-level institutions, wherein the climate agenda would need to be merged with other agendas related to pluralistic, pragmatic, accountable, sustainable and market-oriented rural development.Estimation of belowground carbon stocks in tropical wetland forests requires funding for laboratory analyses and suitable facilities, which are often lacking in developing nations where most tropical wetlands are found. It is therefore beneficial to develop simple analytical tools to assist belowground carbon estimation where financial and technical limitations are common. Here we use published and original data to describe soil carbon density (kgC m(-3); C-d) as a function of bulk density (gC cm(-3); B-d), which can be used to rapidly estimate belowground carbon storage using B-d measurements only. Predicted carbon densities and stocks are compared with those obtained from direct carbon analysis for ten peat swamp forest stands in three national parks of Indonesia. Analysis of soil carbon density and bulk density from the literature indicated a strong linear relationship (C-d = B-d x 495.14+5.41, R-2 = 0.93, n = 151) for soils with organic C content > 40 %. As organic C content decreases, the relationship between C-d and B-d becomes less predictable as soil texture becomes an important determinant of C-d. The equation predicted belowground C stocks to within 0.92% to 9.57% of observed values. Average bulk density of collected peat samples was 0.127 g cm(-3), which is in the upper range of previous reports for Southeast Asian peatlands. When original data were included, the revised equation C-d = B-d x 468.76 + 5.82, with R-2 = 0.95 and n = 712, was slightly below the lower 95% confidence interval of the original equation, and tended to decrease C-d estimates. We recommend this last equation for a rapid estimation of soil C stocks for well-developed peat soils where C content > 40 %.The aim of our study was to use the coupled climate-carbon cycle model HadCM3C to quantify climate impact of ecosystem changes over recent decades and under future scenarios, due to changes in both atmospheric CO2 and surface albedo. We use two future scenarios - the IPCC SRES A1B scenario, and a climate stabilisation scenario (2C20), allowing us to assess the impact of climate mitigation on results. We performed a pair of simulations under each scenario - one in which vegetation was fixed at the initial state and one in which vegetation changes dynamically in response to climate change, as determined by the interactive vegetation model within HadCM3C. In our simulations with interactive vegetation, relatively small changes in global vegetation coverage were found, mainly dominated by increases in shrub and needleleaf trees at high latitudes and losses of broadleaf trees and grasses across the Amazon. Globally this led to a loss of terrestrial carbon, mainly from the soil. Global changes in carbon storage were related to the regional losses from the Amazon and gains at high latitude. Regional differences in carbon storage between the two scenarios were largely driven by the balance between warming-enhanced decomposition and altered vegetation growth. Globally, interactive vegetation reduced albedo acting to enhance albedo changes due to climate change. This was mainly related to the darker land surface over high latitudes (due to vegetation expansion, particularly during December-January and March-May); small increases in albedo occurred over the Amazon. As a result, there was a relatively small impact of vegetation change on most global annual mean climate variables, which was generally greater under A1B than 2C20, with markedly stronger local-to-regional and seasonal impacts. Globally, vegetation change amplified future annual temperature increases by 0.24 and 0.15K (under A1B and 2C20, respectively) and increased global precipitation, with reductions in precipitation over the Amazon and increases over high latitudes. In general, changes were stronger over land - for example, global temperature changes due to interactive vegetation of 0.43 and 0.28K under A1B and 2C20, respectively. Regionally, the warming influence of future vegetation change in our simulations was driven by the balance between driving factors. For instance, reduced tree cover over the Amazon reduced evaporation (particularly during June-August), outweighing the cooling influence of any small albedo changes. In contrast, at high latitudes the warming impact of reduced albedo (particularly during December-February and March-May) due to increased vegetation cover appears to have offset any cooling due to small evaporation increases. Climate mitigation generally reduced the impact of vegetation change on future global and regional climate in our simulations. Our study therefore suggests that there is a need to consider both biogeochemical and biophysical effects in climate adaptation and mitigation decision making.Purpose - This paper aims to illustrate how the climate change-vulnerability-risk model (CCVRM) can be used to analyze the changes in system vulnerabilities and risks, as a result of implementing a community-based early warning system (EWS). Design/methodology/approach - The CCVRM is used to examine the community-based EWS being implemented in the municipalities of Infanta and General Nakar in Quezon Province, Philippines. The levels of vulnerabilities and risks of the two localities are assessed through qualitative analysis using the CCVRM as framework. The model is also used to analyze the effects of the EWS in addressing the localities' vulnerabilities and risks. Findings - Technological and institutional vulnerabilities of the Infanta and General Nakar systems have lessened when the EWS project was implemented. Technological and institutional vulnerabilities have direct correlations with mortality risk; thus, when the levels of the former decrease, so does the latter. Although the reduced technological and institutional vulnerabilities have an effect on the other type of risks present in the municipalities, the effects were not as significant as that of with mortality risk. Research limitations/implications - Due to limited time and resources, only one adaptation program is analyzed, specifically, the community-based EWS being implemented in the municipalities of Infanta and General Nakar, Philippines. An integrated analysis of different measures is not done. Although investigating a multi-adaptation program is possible, this would require more time and resources to implement. Likewise, only a simple evaluation based on model definitions is conducted, instead of a more extensive risk and vulnerability assessment. Originality/value - The CCVRM acts as an analytical guide in understanding the effects of climate change adaptive measures. Accordingly, this paper investigates the effects of an implemented adaptive measure. The study also shows how the CCVRM can be used to analyze planned measures and identify the types of risks and vulnerabilities that this type of adaptive measure can influence.The Holocene history of sweet chestnut (Castanea, sativa Mill.) on the northern slopes of Belasitsa Mountain was studied by pollen analysis and radiocarbon dating of a core collected from a small mire. The results showed that more than 8000 years ago this tree was spontaneously growing in the mountain before the first Neolithic inhabitants settled in the Struma River Valley and its tributaries. The enlargement of the areas occupied by sweet chestnut started with its wide cultivation since the time of the Roman colonization. The new palynological information supports the hypothesis for possible existence of refugia for Castanea sativa in Southwestern Bulgaria.The performance of the pseudo-global-warming downscaling (PGWDS) method is tested by comparison with the assumed true climate (ATC), which is a downscaling using a general circulation model (GCM) output data directly. The PGWDS is a simple way to downscale for a future climate using current weather data of a GCM added by the long-term mean difference between the present and the future climate projected by a GCM. The verification focuses on the East Asia during the rainy season of June. A significant change in the 30-year averaged monthly precipitation is found around the rain band in the future in both downscaling methods. Between the experiments of the PGWDS and the ATC, no significant differences in temperature and precipitation can be seen except for limited small areas. The findings indicate that the PGWDS has a highly potential to the reliable downscaling of the future climate. In smaller downscaling domains, however, the differences in precipitation increase remarkably near the upstream side of the lateral boundaries. The choice of the downscaling area is a critical issue for accuracy.Understanding how and why farmers have responded to past climatic change is a necessary step to informing how to support current and future adaptation. This paper explores commercial farmers' perceptions of and responses to shifting climates in the Little Brak River area along South Africa's south coast. It aims to evaluate changes in the climate experienced in the area by comparing quantitative statistical analyses of temperature, rainfall and wind data recorded from 1967 to 2009, with qualitative historical narratives and formulated perceptions of change for the same period. This was undertaken in order to test the robustness of the narratives and to understand how farmers' perceptions and experiences drive their climate-related decisions. The narratives revealed that the farmers perceived a gradual but dramatic shift in climate over almost four decades, including increasing temperatures, changing annual rainfall patterns and shifts in predominant wind direction, mirrored by the recorded weather data that show similar results to the narratives. It is evident that farmers' experience with shifting climates has played a large part in driving their adaptive decision-making, but financial capital of these commercial farmers has also been a major factor enabling certain responses. This research contributes to the growing local and regional evidence of variability and change to climate systems, and documents how people have already responded to change in order to help build locally relevant climate change adaptation approaches that could potentially benefit a wider range of farmers.Cocoa production in Nigeria is vulnerable to climate change. This study analyzed the factors influencing different climate change adaptation choices by cocoa farmers in southwest Nigeria. We sampled 515 farmers from three cocoa producing states, using the multistage sampling procedure. We analyzed cocoa farmers' climate change adaptation choices with Probit regression. All the farmers have noticed climate change and 78.72% noted excessive rainfall in 2011. Years of education, age of farmers and cocoa land areas significantly reduces (p<0.10) the probability of engaging in crop diversification. It, however, increases with male headship, household size, member sick, age of cocoa, ownership of radio and bicycle. Also, years of education, number of cocoa farms and cocoa farm distance reduces the chance of noting weather (p<0.10). It also increases with member sick, ownership of radio, car, mobile phone and extension contact. The chance of adequately spraying cocoa pods significantly reduces (p<0.10) with number of cocoa farms and increases with farming as primary occupation, member sick, age of cocoa trees, ownership of radio, motorcycle, car, and mobile phone. We recommended that effort to address climate adaptation among cocoa farmers should be gender sensitive, among others.The agricultural commodity market is sensitive to variations in weather and climate, which can disrupt supply and cause price fluctuations. Some of the key positive and negative impacts of climate change on agricultural commodities, using the examples of wheat and barley, are identified; of particular significance are temperature changes, water availability, and CO2 fertilization. Although they are not exempt from the negative impacts of climate change, higher latitude regions of production, including Canada and Russia, will benefit the most from climate change. The impacts on other important production regions, such as parts of Europe, the US, and Argentina, will be more mixed. Market stability in all regions will also be affected by changes in climate and weather extremes. To increase resilience to the effects of weather events and climate change on the agricultural commodity market, countries should diversify their sources of supply, encourage more countries to grow and export the relevant commodities, and support crop research and climate adaptation. Policy relevance Climate change will substantially affect future food security and the price of agricultural commodities. This study takes a broad approach to identify the key aspects of the agricultural commodities market that are vulnerable to climate change and suggests ways in which policy makers might improve its resilience.Recent studies have identified the Philippines as one of the Asian countries subject to the major effects of climate change. Provinces situated along the Philippine coasts are considered the most vulnerable to the immediate consequences of sea level rise. Researches have confirmed the varying trends in sea level in the South China Sea, which is one of the largest semi-enclosed marginal seas in the northwest Pacific Ocean. An integrated vulnerability assessment is required to determine the degree of risks and the extent of the potential effects of sea level rise in order to formulate effective and efficient policies/measures related to climate change adaptation. Bolinao, Pangasinan is a province located in northwestern Luzon and bounded on the west by the South China Sea. In this study, three coastal communities in Bolinao, Pangasinan, namely, barangays Luciente 1.0, Germinal and Concordia were assessed for their natural and socioeconomic vulnerability to sea level rise. The socioeconomic data from each barangay were obtained through a qualitative survey. The Socioeconomic Vulnerability Index (SVI) was computed based on population, age, gender, literacy, employment, source of income and household size. Additional parameters include the family's capacity to recover from damage caused by flooding and typhoons and the community's awareness to the changing coastal environment. The Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) is calculated using parameters that describe the natural conditions, which include sea level anomalies, coastal topography, tidal range, recorded significant wave heights and coastal geomorphology. Sea level anomalies recorded by satellite altimeters validate the trends in mean sea level for the past decade. Coastal topography was assessed using a digital elevation model (DEM) extracted from high resolution satellite images and elevation values obtained using a terrestrial laser scanner. The tidal range was obtained from existing tide gauge records. All the included parameters for the SVI and CVI are weighted, classified and combined in ArcGIS for the determination of the Total Vulnerability Index (TVI). The integrated vulnerability for the three barangays is characterized in five classes, from very low to very high vulnerability.This article analyses the capacity for climate change adaptation (CCA) in the Swedish electricity grid sector. Utilizing two perspectives from organization theory it directs attention to changes in the sector, from the 1980s until 2010, with radical change with an NPM-reform in 1996. For the time before 1996 findings indicate a high CCA capacity. The reform led to a reduction in this capacity through an increased emphasis on economic efficiency, although there also has been some room for robustness-considerations. This article shows that organizational culture and formal structure influence the capacity to adapt to climate change.Although links exist between development targets, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and climate change goals of adaptation and mitigation, the nature and extent of those links have only been loosely explored in the literature. While efforts to integrate climate change adaptation into development are increasingly prevalent, gaps remain in understanding the specific relationships, potential synergies, and trade-offs in the integration process. This article reviews the links and identifies and analyses three main themes. First, the review suggests that tools are needed to more effectively capture interactions within decision-making processes, and proposes a framework for more focused analyses of these relationships. Second, the framework supports examination of the two sets of goals - development and climate - together, evaluating alternative policies and programmes for their outcomes and identifying key relationships between development, poverty alleviation, and climate goals in both present and future planning processes (such as the MDGs beyond 2015). Finally, by using analytical visualizations, policy and decision makers assisted by relevant stakeholders could identify potential synergies and trade-offs, propose adaptation and mitigation actions, and design appropriate measurements and evaluations. The framework is designed to help direct efforts toward policy and programme outcomes that can best support development and mitigation and adaptation to climate change goals.Disaster impacts are more frequent, deadly and costly. The social and environmental consequences are increasingly complex and intertwined. Systematic as well as innovated strategies are needed to manage the impacts. Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is a systematic approach to manage disaster risks while adaptive governance (AG) is suggested as an alternative approach for governing complex problems such as disasters. The author proposes that the AG can be practicalised through a mechanism of multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs), interpreted as multiplicity of organisations at different scales of governance working towards more coordinated and integrated actions in DRR. Ten MSPs are selected at the global, regional, national and local level, focussing on the Indonesian MSPs. The literature reviews and in-depth interviews with key respondents in Indonesia show that the international and regional MSPs tend to have more human, technical and financial capacity than national and local MSPs. The author finds that most MSP roles focus on the coordination amongst multitudes of organisations. Only those MSPs that are able to generate new funding have the capacity to implement direct risk reduction activities. The development of the MSP is highly influenced by the UNISDR system operating at different levels. Particularly in Indonesia, MSP are also influenced by the operations of various UN and international organisations. Finally, the paper suggests the need for more provision of technical supports to local MSPs, more linkages with established networks in DRR and broader stakeholders involvement within the MSPs.Research has largely been driven by the quest for innovation, new knowledge and improving the general wellbeing of the human race. Monumental challenges that plague humanity tend to, from time to time, shape research and take it to new heights, and one of such is the global water crisis [1,2]. To restate the obvious that water is the basis of life and the engine for social and economic growth, water resource engineering research attempts to address challenges related to: (i) how water of sufficient quantity and quality can be made available to meet various competing sectoral demands; (ii) how development and exploitation of the resource can be carried out in a sustainable manner so that its benefits extend to future generations; (iii) what adaptation and mitigating measures can be put in place to minimize the impacts of global climate change. This paper, therefore, presents trends in four areas of research in water resources engineering that focus on the paradigm shifts in water supply and sanitation, integrated modeling in order to give quantitative expression to integrated water resources management (IWRM), thereby achieving a more defined space for decision making, new and emerging cost-effective water treatment technologies, and research developments in adaptation measures to climate change.Climate change adaptation is inherently local, contextual, and political, a problem distinct from the global collective action problem that is climate stabilization. Climate change vulnerability is a function not only of hydro-meteorological changes, specific geographic contexts, ecosystem integrity, and economic poverty, but also of the social and political institutions of a given local or regional context. The uncertainty, complexity, and inherent politics of climate change adaptation in particular places mean that adaptive institutions, if they are to be more than just disaster prediction and response mechanisms, must be flexible, dynamic and capable themselves of adapting quickly to changing environmental, economic, and social conditions. Certain approaches to adaptation have moved away from rigid orthodox development models. Nonetheless, they are often so general as to be impractical, or in effect comprise repackaged concepts and methods borrowed from climate change mitigation efforts and international development institutions. This study discusses the epistemic dimension of democracy at the level of international environmental institutions and at the level of local, contextually unique adaptation projects. Development and adaptation practices that involve democratic participation do so largely in accordance with norms of fairness and justice, which are unquestionably important. Attaching democracy exclusively to transcendent norms of justice, however, belies concrete possibilities for democratic approaches to climate adaptation. These possibilities reside in the epistemic dimension of democracy, a pragmatic notion developed. The account suggests that an epistemic democratic conceptual framework can inform adaptation institutions that are better able to cope with complexity and uncertainty, even ultimately directing these lessons towards the international sphere's institutional focus on mitigation.Only democratic political systems can ensure a reliable and continuous inclusion of the interests of citizens and a commitment to addressing their needs. This contribution focuses on how citizens can engage in developing answers in fighting climate change and adapting to its impacts. Employing the function model of civil society developed by Merkel and Lauth, it draws on practical experience revealed by concrete examples and offers a systematization of the roles and functions that civil society can play in combating climate change. Examples of successful civic engagement on the community and national levels cover different perspectives and entry points, such as human rights, environmental and energy issues, and consumer protection. Transitions to stable democracy have become the object of significant international democracy support, so the account concludes that democracy's international supporters must understand the complexity that climate change brings to livelihoods at the community level and the potential benefits of pursuing greater interaction with civic engagement at the local and national levels.Adaptation is a key feature of sustainable social-ecological systems. As societies traverse various temporal and spatial scales, they are exposed to differing contexts and precursors for adaptation. A cursory view of the response to these differing contexts and precursors suggests the particular ability of persistent societies to adapt to changing circumstances. Yet a closer examination into the meaning of adaptation and its relationship to concepts of resilience, vulnerability, and sustainability illustrates that, in many cases, societies actually manipulate their social-ecological contexts rather than adapt to them. It could be argued that manipulative behaviors are a subset of a broader suite of adaptive behaviors; however, this paper suggests that manipulative behaviors have fundamentally different intentions and outcomes. Specifically, adaptive behaviors are respectful of the intrinsic integrity of social-ecological systems and change is directed toward internal or self-regulating modification. By way of contrast, manipulative behaviors tend to disregard the integrity of social-ecological systems and focus on external change or manipulating the broader system with the aim of making self-regulation unnecessary. It is argued that adaptive behaviors represent long-term strategies for building resilience, whereas manipulative behaviors represent short-term strategies with uncertain consequences for resilience, vulnerability, and the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Of greatest significance; however, is that manipulative strategies have the potential to avoid authentic experiences of system dynamics, obscure valuable learning opportunities, create adverse path dependencies, and lessen the likelihood of effective adaptation in future contexts.We employ a nested system of global and regional climate models, linked to regional and urban air quality chemical transport models utilizing detailed inventories of present and future emissions, to study the relative impact of climate change and changing air pollutant emissions on air quality and population exposure in Stockholm, Sweden. We show that climate change only marginally affects air quality over the 20-year period studied. An exposure assessment reveals that the population of Stockholm can expect considerably lower NO2 exposure in the future, mainly due to reduced local NOx emissions. Ozone exposure will decrease only slightly, due to a combination of increased concentrations in the city centre and decreasing concentrations in the suburban areas. The increase in ozone concentration is a consequence of decreased local NOx emissions, which reduces the titration of the long-range transported ozone. Finally, we evaluate the consequences of a planned road transit project on future air quality in Stockholm. The construction of a very large bypass road (including one of the largest motorway road tunnels in Europe) will only marginally influence total population exposure, this since the improved air quality in the city centre will be complemented by deteriorated air quality in suburban, residential areas.It is now widely recognized that stakeholder interaction and dialogue is essential to improve decisions about and awareness of climate change. The term 'stakeholder' is broad and researchers and practitioners may have interrelated and contrasting views on who is a stakeholder or who is (or should be) responsible for adaptation to climate change. To engage stakeholders in research or other projects on adaptation thus requires a careful mapping of the stakeholder landscape and identification of relevant actors at different levels. Through a case study approach, based on studies of two Swedish urban regions, Stockholm and Gothenburg, this paper proposes a systematic method to analyse and identify roles and responsibilities in the stakeholder landscape. The initial mapping exercise was complemented by participatory studies of local and regional stakeholders' perceptions of who is, or should be, involved in adaptation and their significance for climate change adaptation in the respective regions. The results indicate the value of careful stakeholder analysis for sustainable, effective, planned adaptation that is flexible, but also systematic enough to fulfil practical and scientific requirements for the study and advancement of ongoing adaptation processes and implementation.Although in practice the division of responsibilities in adaptation to climate change is often not explicitly decided upon, governments appear to be primary actors in adaptation planning. However, literature suggests that the governance of adaptation requires roles for both public and private actors so that responsibilities can be shared and all of society's resources can be fully exploited. Active involvement of all societal actors might overcome problems of inefficiency and raise the legitimacy of adaptation action. This article presents a framework that enables the characterization and explanation of existing governance arrangements in terms of responsibility divisions among public and/or private actors, and that facilitates the search for alternative responsibility divisions and their associated advantages and disadvantages. The framework is illustrated with an example of a governance arrangement for green roofs as an adaptation measure for storm water retention in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The merit of the framework is that it promotes the conscious deliberation of considerations in the public-private divide, taking into account some specific challenges to the governance of climate adaptation. It may, therefore, support well-informed decisions on responsibility divisions in climate adaptation by local governments.The urban heat island phenomenon is one of the greatest challenges of the present days regarding the sustainability of our cities and settlements. A great amount of research has already been completed considering the urban heat island, with a significant part of them based on the utilization of remote sensing. The results show that in the case of the densely built-up areas of Hungary the maximal intensity of the urban heat island can be experienced in the industrial areas and in the extremely densely built-up zones, while water bodies and surfaces covered by vegetation proved to be the coolest zones under all circumstances. Thus, according to the results only water and green surfaces are capable of effectively reducing the urban heat island. Firstly, urban green surfaces and water bodies must be created to become capable of decreasing the urban heat island to the maximal extent. Secondly, it is possible to maximize the rate of green and water coverage within settlements only with the tools of urban planning. Thus it is essential in the case of urban planning to implement the existing regulation tools to prevent or minimize the further intensifying of the urban heat island.Adaptation to climate change is increasingly becoming a priority for policy action. In April 2009, the European Commission released a White Paper outlining a proposed framework for action to reduce vulnerability and adapt to climate change (European Commission, 2009). The White Paper refers to the importance of a climate adaptation strategy and sustainability that integrates all areas of regional and municipal development including agriculture, forestry, fishery, energy, public infrastructure (incl. building, transport, energy and water supply), tourism, human, animal and plant health, water resources and ecosystem loss (including marine ecosystems and biodiversity). One of the main issues is how to and why integrating the green developments into urban policies. In this paper we show the main objectives of London's greening program, and some possible elements of the green developments in Csomor's adaptation strategy. Comparing the two examined cities there are differences according to their size, population, greening possibilities and financial backgrounds. However, it can be seen that the focus points of the adaptation strategies are more close to each other.Climate change is likely to influence the water cycle by changing the precipitation patterns, in some cases leading to increased occurrences of precipitation extremes. Urban landscapes are vulnerable to such changes due to the concentrated population and socio-economic values in cities. Feasible adaptation requires better flood risk quantification and assessment of appropriate adaptation actions in term of costs and benefits. This paper presents an economic assessment of three prevailing climate adaptation options for urban drainage design in a Danish case study, Odense. A risk-based evaluation framework is used to give detailed insights of the physical and economic feasibilities of each option. Estimation of marginal benefits of adaptation options are carried out through a step-by-step cost-benefit analysis. The results are aimed at providing important information for decision making on how best to adapt to urban pluvial flooding due to climate impacts in cities.We focus on the dramatic decrease in the snow cover on the Japan Sea side of Central Japan in the late 20th century. Using a regional climate model, a control experiment (CTL) was conducted, and it accurately simulated the dramatic decrease in maximum snow depth (SNDmax) between the 1980s and the 1990s. We then conducted a pseudo climate simulation (PCS) in the 1990s, which assumes the mean atmospheric fields in the 1990s and the perturbation from the mean atmospheric fields in the 1980s. The PCS method is expected to evaluate only the impacts of changes in the mean atmospheric fields on the snow cover changes. The PCS simulates the decreases in SNDmax over the coastal area, which are comparable to the changes simulated by the CTL. On the other hand, changes in SNDmax are negligible in the PCS over the mountainous area, where the slight increases in SNDmax are simulated by the CTL. Therefore, the changes in the mean atmospheric fields, especially, the mean temperature rise, are main factors of the snow cover decrease over the coastal area, while changes in both the mean atmospheric fields and the perturbation contribute to the snow cover changes over the mountainous area.With a worldwide increase in disasters, the effects of climate change are already being felt, and it is the urban poor in developing countries who are most at risk. There is an urgent need to better understand the factors that determine people's capacity to cope with and adapt to adverse climate conditions. This paper examines the influence of formal education in determining the adaptive capacity of the residents of two low-income settlements: Los Manantiales in San Salvador (El Salvador) and Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), where climate-related disasters are recurrent. In both case study areas, it was found that the average levels of education were lower for households living at high risk, as opposed to residents of lower risk areas. In this context, the influence of people's level of education was identified to be twofold due to (a) its direct effect on aspects that reduce risk, and (b) its mitigating effect on aspects that increase risk. The results further suggest that education plays a more determinant role for women than for men in relation to their capacity to adapt. In light of these results, the limited effectiveness of institutional support identified by this study might also relate to the fact that the role of formal education has so far not been sufficiently explored. Promoting (improved access to and quality of) formal education as a way to increase people's adaptive capacity is further supported with respect to the negative effects of disasters on people's level of education, which in turn reduce their adaptive capacity, resulting in a vicious circle of increasing risk.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to review and document some of the climate change impacts which may burden the African continent, and to suggest policy options for adaptation. Design/methodology/approach - The paper presents a comprehensive review of published papers on climate change impacts and adaptation. Findings - It has been documented that by 2050, the world will have to limit emissions of all greenhouse gases to the equivalent of 400 GT of carbon in order to stand a 75 per cent chance of avoiding more than 2 degrees C of warming. This is practically impossible because there are not enough resources and technology to achieve that target. Even if all of the emissions are stopped in next few years, it will take the next 40 years for the world to follow its current trend before full recovery. Thus, climate will continue to change, its impacts will continue to increase and Africa is placed as the most vulnerable continent. The only best solution is that the vulnerable population should be first in line for support to adapt to climate change impacts. In such instances adaptation policy should recognise and support a wide range of options for building resilient and sustainable livelihoods, enhancing opportunities available for adaptation, without ignoring the need to address the existing developmental challenges. Research limitations/implications - This paper relies on secondary source of information. Practical implications - The paper is a valuable input towards the preparation of adaptation policy in developing countries. Originality/value - This paper relied on review of secondary data (published articles) thus providing critical findings from a number of field studies.Purpose - Capacity assessment is increasingly identified as a vital tool for effective capacity development for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. However, most internationally supported capacity assessments focus mainly on one administrative level in their attempts to understand the current capacities and capacity needs of the system under study. This article aims to investigate the potential for discrepancies between what stakeholders on different administrative levels in Fiji express when explaining how their system for managing risk and disaster situations functions. Design/methodology/approach - The study includes semi-structured interviews with involved stakeholders from all administrative levels in Fiji, who are asked to describe what information and assistance is given or requested between administrative levels, in everyday circumstances and in disaster situations. The data were then analysed to identify similarities and differences in descriptions. Findings - The study illustrates that there may be substantial discrepancies between accounts on different administrative levels concerning key functions of their system. Research limitations/implications - The study is not claiming that this always is the case, only that there may be a possibility for it. Potentially undermining the effectiveness of ensuing capacity development activities. Practical implications - Given that capacity assessment is to create a coherent foundation for capacity development, the study indicates that it would beneficial to include a wider range of administrative levels in attempting to construct one comprehensive view of the current capacities and future capacity needs. Originality/value - The research topic is novel and valuable for stakeholders in the international community active in capacity development.Richards, Lundqvist-Korf and Hossfeld growth functions were fitted to age-height data of European chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) dominant trees on the northern slopes of Belasitsa mountain, Southwest Bulgaria. The model prediction performance was evaluated using quantitative as well as qualitative examinations. Goodness of fit of each model was estimated by the coefficient of determination, F-test for significance of the regression and t-tests for significance of the coefficients of the model. Models were further compared by the evaluation of the standard error of the model and Akaike's Information Criteria. Site index curves were constructed following the "guide curve method" procedure. In accordance with the evaluation tests, the Richards function was chosen as most adequate to express the age-dominant height relationship. Accordingly, it was further employed as a guide function to derive site index curves for studied chestnut population. It was recommended that the growth model and the site index curves elaborated in the current study are used within the data range 10-110 years.Climate change presents a range of challenges for animal agriculture in Australia. Livestock production will be affected by changes in temperature and water availability through impacts on pasture and forage crop quantity and quality, feed-grain production and price, and disease and pest distributions. This paper provides an overview of these impacts and the broader effects on landscape functionality, with a focus on recent research on effects of increasing temperature, changing rainfall patterns, and increased climate variability on animal health, growth, and reproduction, including through heat stress, and potential adaptation strategies. The rate of adoption of adaptation strategies by livestock producers will depend on perceptions of the uncertainty in projected climate and regional-scale impacts and associated risk. However, management changes adopted by farmers in parts of Australia during recent extended drought and associated heatwaves, trends consistent with long-term predicted climate patterns, provide some insights into the capacity for practical adaptation strategies. Animal production systems will also be significantly affected by climate change policy and national targets to address greenhouse gas emissions, since livestock are estimated to contribute similar to 10% of Australia's total emissions and 8-11% of global emissions, with additional farm emissions associated with activities such as feed production. More than two-thirds of emissions are attributed to ruminant animals. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities facing livestock industries in Australia in adapting to and mitigating climate change. It examines the research needed to better define practical options to reduce the emissions intensity of livestock products, enhance adaptation opportunities, and support the continued contribution of animal agriculture to Australia's economy, environment, and regional communities.Australia's future landscapes will be shaped by global climatic, economic, and cultural drivers. Landscapes evolve. They are manifestations of the complex negotiations between nature and cultures, over millennia. In the Anthropocene, humans are the dominant evolutionary force reshaping the biosphere. Landscape management involves all human activities and interventions that change the forms and functions of landscapes. It also involves the ways we learn about, and understand the world, and our place in it. Responses to climate change are driving changes in natural resources policy, research and management. Building capability for large-scale, adaptive management is critical in an era of global change. By rigorously examining and learning from recent experience-bioregional conservation planning, natural resource management (NRM), landcare, and water reform-Australia can build capacity for integrated and adaptive resource management. Climate change compounds existing stressors on ecosystems. It adds complexity and presents new challenges for integrated assessment, planning, and management of natural resources. Given the dynamic nature of the ecosystems, static conservation paradigms and stationary hydrology models are increasingly redundant. In the face of inherent complexity and uncertainty, 'predict and control' strategies are likely to be less useful. Adaptive approaches are called for, due to the complex relationships and non-linear feedbacks between social, ecological, and climatic systems. Australia should invest in building professional and community capacity. Australia's scientific and professional capacity in natural resources provides useful foundations, but substantially increased investment is called for. Research should be focused on guiding and influencing management at large scales and on avoiding undesirable thresholds or tipping points in complex ecological systems. Cultural and governance aspects are emphasised as central to effective adaptation strategies, because landscape management is an intergenerational, societal challenge that requires participatory, adaptive learning approaches.Climate change presents the need and opportunity for what the Stern report called 'major, non-marginal change'. Such transformational adaptation is rapidly emerging as a serious topic in agriculture. This paper provides an overview of the topic as it applies to agriculture, focusing on the Australian situation. It does so by first defining transformational adaptation, distinguishing it from other more incremental but overlapping modes of climate change adaptation and positing its emergence in agriculture as a response to both drivers and opportunities. The multiple dimensions of transformational adaptation are highlighted before two types or cases are focussed upon in order to tease out issues and highlight two major examples of transformation in agriculture in the past. Four key issues about climate change adaptation in agriculture particularly pertinent for transformational adaptation are then reviewed: the identification, level, distribution and management of the costs of adaptation; the definition, potential for and need to avoid maladaptation; the capacity demands that this level of adaptation presents; and the role of government in adaptation. Overall, transformational adaptation poses potential great gains but also great risks. It reinforces the realisation that agricultural research can no longer remain insulated from off-farm, non-science or non-agricultural knowledge or processes. Support and guidance of transformational adaptation requires that we understand how Australian agriculture is currently, and could be, positioned within the landscape, rural communities, and broader social, political and cultural environment.There is increasing evidence that climate change will be one of the primary challenges facing future development and agriculture. Farmers, whether crop or livestock farmers, will be faced with tradeoffs and constraints as climate change exposes them to greater risk and renders some of their current practices unworkable. This study assessed commercial livestock and game farmers' knowledge and perceptions of climate variability and change in the semiarid Great Fish River Valley, South Africa, and their coping responses to a severe regional drought in 2009/2010. Detailed questionnaires revealed that farmers' knowledge of global climate change was incomplete, suggesting that measures are needed to increase their understanding and awareness of likely impacts. Farmers were able to articulate a consistent story regarding how they believed local climate to have changed and most had implemented a variety of coping strategies in order to endure the drought. Some of these strategies were seen to have the potential to become longer-term adaptive practices. Farmers were, on the whole, open to considering new approaches and land uses such as carbon farming with Portulacaria afra (spekboom) to help them adapt to a more uncertain future.Adaptation has lagged behind mitigation in climate change research and action, and there are currently few examples of proactive community adaptation plans in Canada or around the world. However, adaptation is being increasingly recognized as a necessary action to respond to changes in the climate as societies concurrently mitigate to minimize future anthropogenic climatic forcing. Environmental planners will play a leading role in assisting communities as they face the challenge of preparing for a changing and uncertain future. This research uses a self-assessment survey and workshop to provide a perspective of planner knowledge of climate change adaptation. It also explores climate impacts in communities across the province of British Columbia, Canada, and barriers to effective adaptation. The results indicate that planners do not have a high level of knowledge regarding climate change adaptation. The top impacts that planners believe will affect British Columbia are related to forests, agriculture and river flooding. Planners want adaptation incorporated into existing documents (such as community, regional and provincial plans) rather than separate adaptation plans. The findings of this study demonstrate the need to promote capacity building related to climate change adaptation among planners.Adaptation to climate change in urban areas requires public and private actors to engage in governance of complex problems in conditions of uncertainty. The property development 'industry' consists of diverse private actors with considerable financial, political or technical resources. However, there is no empirical research to date on the potential contribution of these actors, and particularly property developers, to climate adaptation, in terms of their preferences, capabilities and perceptions. This article reports on findings from a survey of, and discussions with, Australian property developers, their representative industry bodies, and technical and advisory service providers to developers. Amongst other themes, we focus here on: participation and capacity; effectiveness of current polices; risks and opportunities; and cost-sharing considerations as perceived by these groups. Results indicate that developers and their interest groups are seeking greater levels of participation and joint decision-making in public-adaptation policy and its implementation. The results also suggest that while developers and their service providers recognise a shift towards greater levels of responsibility and cost sharing for adaptation, perceptions of operational ambiguities and financial risks hinder progress in this area. Given this, the authors point to the need to further examine the potential of new deliberative arenas that can balance and complement existing regulatory controls in the governance of urban adaptation.Live fuel moisture content is an important variable for assessing fire risk. Satellite observations provide the potential for monitoring fuel moisture across large areas. The objective of this study was to use data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer to monitor live fuel moisture content of three fire-prone vegetation types (shrubland, heathland and sclerophyll forest) in south-eastern Australia. The performances of four spectral indices (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, Visible Atmospherically Resistant Index, Normalised Difference Infrared Index centred on 1650 nm and Normalised Difference Water Index) were compared. Models based on Visible Atmospherically Resistant Index and Normalised Difference Infrared Index centred on 1650 nm provided the best results (R-2 values of 0.537 and 0.586). An empirical model based on these two indices was developed and its performance compared with a meteorological index traditionally used in this context, the Keetch-Byram Drought Index. The empirical model (R-2 = 0.692) outperformed the meteorological index (R-2 = 0.151), showing an enhanced capability to predict live fuel moisture content of the fire-prone vegetation types considered.Management strategies that increase biological diversity and promote varied approaches to population protection are more likely to succeed during a future in which global warming drives rapid environmental change and increases uncertainty of future conditions. We describe how the concept of a diverse management portfolio can be applied to native trout conservation by increasing representation (protecting and restoring diversity), resilience (having sufficiently large populations and intact habitats to facilitate recovery from rapid environmental change), and redundancy (saving a sufficient number of populations so that some can be lost without jeopardizing the species). Saving diversity for native trout requires the conservation of genetically pure populations, the protection and restoration of life history diversity, and the protection of populations across the historical range. Protecting larger stronghold populations is important because such populations will have a better chance of surviving future disturbances, including those associated with climate change. The long-term persistence of populations is likely to require management for larger population sizes and larger habitat patches than currently exist for many native trout populations. Redundancy among these elements is important given that many populations are small and occupy reduced habitat in fragmented stream systems and therefore are increasingly vulnerable to extirpation. Application of the concept is further described in case studies of Yellowstone cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkii bouvieri and Rio Grande cutthroat trout O. clarkii virginalis, two subspecies that illustrate many of the challenges that are common to management of western native trout.Climate change threatens to bring enormous infrastructural challenges for low-lying regions, and the capacity for adaptation is highly uneven on a global scale. Guyana, a developing country in South America, is highly susceptible to sea-level rise and flooding, because much of the population lives at or below sea level and depends upon old and decaying coastal infrastructure. This article examines the efforts of the Guyanese state to prioritize climate change adaptation, drawing from budgetary and documentary analyses and in-depth interviews with key informants in pertinent government ministries and non-governmental organizations. The Guyana government clearly recognizes the country's acute vulnerability to climate change - which has been accentuated by multiple recent flood events - and focuses on the need for vast infrastructural rehabilitation and enhancement as the main adaptation priority. However, while Guyana has emerged as a champion of climate change mitigation through averted deforestation, government investment in adaptation remains relatively small, and although a limited budget is one of the reasons for this, a number of other impediments complicate the issue. These include limited technical skills, low public awareness and the longer time-scale of threats relative to other national priorities. Ultimately, this case highlights some of the formidable challenges which poor countries face in prioritizing investments in adaptation.Tourism is a growing economic sector in the South Pacific providing the region with great potential for economic development. Vanuatu and its neighbouring Small Island Developing States and Territories experience a high vulnerability to climate change impacts. The tourism sector in Vanuatu is particularly vulnerable, and it needs to develop and implement effective adaptation strategies to reduce climate change risks. Policies play an important role by providing the platform on which adaptation can occur and resilience be built. This study examines the policy environment in Vanuatu for its conduciveness to climate change adaptation. It identifies the types of adaptation processes (explicit or implicit) and types of adaptation measures (technical, business management, behavioural, policy, and research and education) and critically analyses the current tourism-related policies for their effectiveness in assisting the sector to address climate change. It is found that the majority of policies identified deal with climate change through implicit adaptation processes and mainly through the use of policy and research and education measures. The authors argue that in order to strengthen the resilience of the tourism industry, the Government of Vanuatu needs to develop and implement explicit climate change adaptation policies for the tourism sector.Managed retreat - the relocation of homes and infrastructure under threat from coastal flooding - is one of the few policy options available for coastal communities facing long-term risks from accelerated sea level rise. At present, little is known about how the Australian public perceives policy options to mitigate sea level rise risks. This paper explores a range of different decision-making criteria used to assess a managed retreat scheme. A metatheoretical social functionalist framework is used to make sense of personal concerns elicited from an online survey asking respondents to consider a managed retreat scheme. The framework proposes that people can act intuitively as scientists, economists, politicians, prosecutors and theologians, when considering a complex topic such as managed retreat policy. The research found that the survey respondents are more likely to consider the topic of managed retreat from multiple functional perspectives than from a single functional perspective. The type of social functionalist frameworks that people used to assess the Conditional Occupancy Rights scheme was found to be influenced by their perceptions of sea level rise risk. The findings have implications for public debates about the long-term risks of sea level rise and for engaging with the community about managed retreat policy options.The drier inland edge of the Australian grain belt, where wheat cropping transitions into extensive grazing, is an important economic and ecological margin. This margin is determined primarily by climate rather than topography or soil type. In South Australia a line drawn by the Surveyor General George Goyder in 1865 between land that was reliable for wheat growth and land that was unreliable has become an icon of land use planning. In this study we compare Goyder's Line with maps of pre-European vegetation, climate variables such as temperature, rainfall, ratio of precipitation to evaporation (P: E ratio), current land use as measured by the edge of grain farming in 2008 and crop simulation on a transect. Although Goyder's Line is a reasonable representation of the margin of reliable cropping in some regions, it is internally inconsistent and care should be used if interpreting it as an isopleth of crop production risk. A better fit to the South Australian and Australian grain belt was the ratio between rainfall (P) during the growing season (April to October) and potential evaporation (E) of 0.26. The surprisingly close fit of this ratio with much of the Australian grain belt suggests a climatically determined hard edge to the cropping zone. The paper explores how the 0.26 P: E ratio may shift under projected changes in climate using 2 global climate models, one 'dry' and one 'wet'. We observe that the speed of change in km decade(-1) will be greater where the edge of grain farming is on extensive plains than in those areas where it is topographically determined.As sustainable forest management is threatened by climate change, adaptation measures may be needed to maintain the productive capacity of tropical forests. Yet the extent to which foresters across the tropics implement adaptation actions in anticipation to climate change impacts remains largely unexplored. In this paper, an assessment of the perceptions of climate risks and the implementation of adaptation actions by forest managers and decision makers dealing with natural and planted tropical forests destined for production purpose; is presented. An electronic questionnaire was disseminated globally during 2009, and 152 responses were received from Africa, the Americas, and Asia and the Pacific. Respondents perceived that natural and planted forests are at risk from being affected by climate change. However, they seemed ambivalent when asked if investing in adaptation was currently justified. The results of this survey provide initial insights into how climate considerations are being anticipated in tropical forest management and planning yet further examination at the national and local levels is warranted on how foresters, including those from the tropics, perceive climate change risks and handle current uncertainties in order to take action. The fact that climate change ranked below other threats to forests such as commercial agriculture and unplanned logging nevertheless suggests that long-term forest planning and management is not perceived by respondents as viable given other major drivers of forest loss and degradation.In this article, we argue that sectoral adaptation efforts to climate change, e. g. of the ports sector, are also struggles to reshape economic space according to sectoral needs. Addressing globalisation, the effects on economic spatial hierarchies among regions and the active promotion of regionalisation are seen as important. Applied to the port industry, this allows approaching the fierce competition among European north range ports from an action- and power-oriented perspective. Climate adaptation of ports is predominantly referred to as technical responses to extreme events (e.g. coastal protection). A differentiated conceptualisation (based on still ongoing research), however, also addresses impacts on specific elements of the transport chain, and effects on the spatial function of a port (e.g. the changing competitiveness within the European port system). Hence, the ability of a specific port to adapt will also encompass the management of regional target conflicts, and of multi-level relations. Thus, climate adaptation becomes part of positional struggles in spatial hierarchies among regions and of conflicts about political priorities within them. At the same time, the limits of exclusively regional approaches in addressing sustainability issues without higher level support become evident. The article gives an overview of the literature on climate adaptation and its application to ports and provides a preliminary typology of forms of sectoral adaptation to climate change.This article investigates emerging governance arrangements at the intersection between forest management and climate policy. The authors deploy the symposium's three-dimensional framework to describe and evaluate developments within two distinct policy sectors (forestry/climate change adaptation and mitigation) at several levels of governance (bi-national, national, and sub-national) to explore the nature and operation of the emerging governance arrangements, and assessing and measuring change within these arrangements over time. Drawing on four contemporary case studies from the US and Canada, New Zealand, British Columbia and Alaska, the authors discern little evidence of a generalized, linear trend from government to governance. Instead, they conclude, across institutional, political and regulatory dimensions of governance, a more variegated and diverse picture emerges. Their analysis also lends support for the Trubek and Trubek (2007) hypothesis that emerging governance arrangements typically interact with extant ones through modalities of rivalry, complementarity and transformation.The durability of concrete is determined largely by its deterioration over time which is affected by the environment. Climate change may alter this environment, especially in the longer term, causing an acceleration of reinforcement corrosion that will affect the safety and serviceability of concrete infrastructure in Australia, US, Europe, China and elsewhere. This paper reviews advanced simulation procedures to predict increases in damage (corrosion) risks under a changing climate in Australia in terms of changes in probability of reinforcement corrosion initiation and corrosion induced damage due to (i) increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and changes to (ii) temperature and (iii) humidity. These time and spatial variables will affect the penetration of aggressive agents CO2 and chlorides into concrete, and the corrosion rate once corrosion initiation occurs. The effectiveness of adaptation measures for new and existing buildings, bridges, and other concrete infrastructure is then assessed. Carbonation-induced damage risks may increase by more than 16% which means that one in six structures will experience additional and costly corrosion damage by 2100. We show that the impact of climate change on infrastructure deterioration cannot be ignored, but can be addressed by changes to design procedures including increases in cover thickness, improved quality of concrete, and coatings and barriers. For example, an increase in design cover of 10 mm and 5 mm for structures where carbonation or chlorides govern durability, respectively, will ameliorate the effects of a changing climate. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze vulnerability of food crop production to heavy precipitation in north-eastern Ghana, specifically, the upper east region (UER) and the policy implications for adaptation. Heavy precipitation events are a common part of climatic variability; but little attention is given to its impact on livelihoods as compared to droughts in research and policy domains. Design/methodology/approach - This paper draws on both quantitative and qualitative research methods and data. Rainfall data are analyzed using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). This is compared with quantitative analysis of crop yields and complemented by narratives of farmers from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Findings - The results show that heavy precipitation events often lead to low food crop productivity and this suggests that the latter is vulnerable to the former. Originality/value - Although some adaptation is occurring through a wide range of local measures, these are inadequate for eliminating vulnerability. Thus, additional policy measures are recommended for enhancing farmer adaptation, including: incorporating climate change adaptation policies, including adaptation to heavy precipitation into District Development Planning; building human resource capacity for effective implementation of climate change adaptation policies at district levels; improving market access to seed through improved market infrastructure and rural transportation; establishing Community Seed Banks (CSBs) as back up sources of seed; promoting "nursing and transplant" as an alternative planting method for millet and guinea corn; promoting low costs solar drying technologies for drying food crops; and supporting livelihood diversification through credit and business development services.The aim of this article is to give an overview and systematic characterization of different national approaches to developing strategies of climate change adaptation from a spatial planning or regional development perspective, respectively. Based on this analysis, recommendations are made for the implementation of the Territorial Agenda of the European Union. The central research hypotheses addressed in this article are: (1) climate change impacts in Europe are distributed differently in European regions which influence the design of national adaptation strategies (NASs) in Europe as well as the planning-related fields of action; (2) the legal framework and the political-administrative system significantly determine how national adaptation responses are designed and by which institutions they are implemented and (3) spatial planning has the potential to play an important role in climate change adaptation due to its integrative, cross-sectoral character. In order to discuss the hypotheses, a meta-evaluation of already existing assessments of climate adaptation strategies was carried out, as well as nine in-depth country studies (Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Spain, The Netherlands and the UK). The results show that spatial planning is only given minor attention in the assessed analyses and national strategies and that it is rather a matter of political willingness and capacity building than particular instruments or a high climate change vulnerability if spatial planning, however, plays an important role in an NAS.Climate mitigation credits have mobilized considerable resources for projects in developing countries, but similar funding to adapt to climate change has yet to emerge. The Copenhagen Accord targets up to US$50 billion per year in adaptation funding, but commitments to date have been trivial compared to what is needed. Although there are some studies and suggestions, it remains unclear where the money will come from and how it will be disbursed. Beyond this, many development experts believe that the main hurdle in climate adaptation is effective implementation. A framework, based on the polluter pays principle, is presented here regarding the mobilization of resources for adaptation in developing countries using market mechanisms. It is assumed that mitigation and adaptation are at least partly fungible in terms of long-term global societal costs and benefits, and that quantifying climate vulnerability reductions is possible at least sometimes. The scheme's benefits include significant, equitable and flexible capital flows, and improved and more efficient resource allocation and verification procedures that incentivize sustained project management. Challenges include overcoming political resistance to historical responsibility-based obligations and scepticism of market instruments, and, critically, quantifying climate impact costs and verifying investments for vulnerability reduction credits.Sustainable management of fisheries is often compromised by management delaying implementation of regulations that reduce harvest, in order to maintain higher catches in the short term. Decreases or increases in fish population growth rate driven by environmental change, including ecosystem and climate change, affect the harvest that can be taken sustainably. If not acted on rapidly, environmental change could result in unsustainable fishing or missed opportunity for higher catches. Using simulation models of harvested fish populations influenced by environmental change, we explore how long fisheries managers can afford to wait before changing harvest regulations in response to changes in population growth. If environmental change causes population declines, delays greater than five years increase the probability of population collapse. Species with fast and highly variable population growth rates are more susceptible to collapse under delays and should be a priority for revised management where delays occur. Generally, the long-term cost of delay, in terms of lost fishing opportunity, exceeds the short-term benefits of overfishing. Lowering harvest limits and monitoring for environmental change can alleviate the impact of delays; however, these measures may be more costly than reducing delays. We recommend that management systems that allow rapid responses to population growth changes be enacted for fisheries management to adapt to ecosystem and climate change.North China is the most important food basket of China, where the majority of wheat and corn are produced. Most crops grown in North China are irrigated, thus water security is food security. Since the 1980s, drying has been frequently observed, as shown by a reduction in precipitation, cutoff in riverflow, and shrinkage of lakes. This increase in drying cannot be explained by climate change alone. We propose that intensive land-use in this area in recent decades has had a significant impact. The objectives of the study are to develop a quantitative model of the concurrent processes of climate change and land-use in North China, and to estimate the relative contributions of each on the observed drying. We integrated relevant socioeconomic data, land-use data, and climate data in the model, and carried out a detailed multi-temporal (decade, year, day) analysis. Results showed that land-use has greatly changed since 1999. This change is mainly associated with an extremely important 1999 national policy of "returning farmland and grazing land to forest and grassland". We found an interesting interaction between climate change and land use policy on riverflow, runoff, and evapotranspiration. During 1970s and 1980s, climate change explained more than 80%, while the land-use change explained only 10% of the riverflow change. The relative contributions were 45 and 45% in the 1980s-1990s and 35 and 55% in the 1990s-2000s respectively for climate change and land-use change. Since the 1990s land-use change has also contributed more to runoff change than climate change. The opposite trend was found for changes in evapotranspiration. Water availability for agriculture in northern China is simultaneously stressed by extensive changes in land-use and rapid climate change. Adaptation of ecological principles, such as the "returning farmland/grazing land to forest and grassland" policy, and other adjustments of economic developmental strategies can be effective tools to mitigate the water shortage problem in northern China and promote sustainable agricultural and food development.Climate change is one of the drivers of change in the Ganges River Basin, together with population growth, economic development and water management practices. These changing circumstances have a significant impact on key social and economic sectors of the basin, largely through changes in water quantity, quality and timing of availability. This paper evaluates the impact of water on changing circumstances in three sectors of the Ganges Basin - agriculture, ecosystems and energy. Given the inherent interconnectedness of these core sectors and the cross-cutting impact of changing circumstances on water resources, we argue that adaptation should not be viewed as a separate initiative, but rather as a goal and perspective incorporated into every level of planning and decision making. Adaptation to changing circumstances will need to be closely linked to water resource management and will require significant collaboration across the sectors.The brown carpet beetle Attagenus smirnovi, Zhantiev 1973 (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) is an important pest of objects of organic origin in museums of cultural and natural history in Europe. Future climate changes are expected to lead to increasing temperatures, which will affect the pest status of this species. In the present study a laboratory investigation was conducted to elucidate the effect of temperature and humidity on the amounts of organic material consumed by larvae of A. smirnovi. In the case of new and old skin, consumption was approximately twice as high at 28 degrees C compared to 20 degrees C. Wool was consumed in the greatest amounts: 169 mg of wool was consumed in three months by 30 A. smirnovi larvae. The expected future climate changes in Scandinavia are assumed to lead to higher temperatures in museums and stores where climate is not regulated. Updated data on the present distribution of A. smirnovi in Europe show that it is widespread and common, also in regions with a climate that does not support its survival out of doors. Thus, dispersal of this pest probably only rarely occurs by flight, but usually with human activity. Due to the widespread distribution of A. smirnovi, it is likely that damages in museums and collections in Scandinavia due to this pest will increase as climate changes come into effect. (C) 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.The temperature thresholds and timings of the 24 climatic Solar Terms in China are determined from a homogenized dataset of the surface air temperature recorded at 549 meteorological stations for the period 1960-2008 employing the ensemble empirical mode decomposition method. Changes in the mean temperature and timing of the climatic solar terms are illustrated. The results show that in terms of the mean situation over China, the number of cold days such as those of Slight Cold and Great Cold has decreased, especially by 56.8% for Great Cold in the last 10 years (1998-2007) compared with in the 1960s. The number of hot days like those of Great Heat has increased by 81.4% in the last 10 years compared with in the 1960s. The timings of the climatic Solar Terms during the warming period (around spring) in the seasonal cycle have advanced significantly by more than 6 d, especially by 15 d for Rain Water, while those during the cooling period (around autumn) have delayed significantly by 5-6 d. These characteristics are mainly due to a warming shift of the whole seasonal cycle under global warming. However, the warming shift affects the different Solar Terms to various extents, more prominently in the spring than in the autumn. The warming tendencies for Rain Water, the Beginning of Spring, and the Waking of Insects are the largest, 2.43 degrees C, 2.37 degrees C, and 2.21 degrees C, respectively, for the period 1961-2007 in China as a whole. Four particular phenology-related climatic Solar Terms, namely the Waking of Insects, Pure Brightness, Grain Full, and Grain in Ear, are found to have advanced almost everywhere. In semi-arid zones in northern China, advances of the timings of these four climatic Solar Terms are significant, 12-16, 4-8, 4-8, and 8-12 d, respectively, for the period 1961-2007. These quantitative results provide a scientific base for climate change adaptation, especially in terms of agricultural planning and energy-saving management throughout a year.Indices that rate the vulnerability of species to climate change in a given area are increasingly used to inform conservation and climate change adaptation strategies. These species vulnerability indices (SVI) are not commonly associated with landscape features that may affect local-scale vulnerability. To do so would increase their utility by allowing managers to examine how the distributions of vulnerable species coincide with environmental features such as topography and land use, and to detect landscape-scale patterns of vulnerability across species. In this study we evaluated 15 animal species that had been scored with the USDA-Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station's system for assessing vulnerability of species to climate change. We applied the vulnerability scores to each species' respective habitat models in order to visualize the spatial patterns of cross-species vulnerability across the biologically diverse Coronado national forest, and to identify the considerations of spatially referencing such indices. Across the study extent, cross-species vulnerability was higher in higher-elevation woodlands and lower in desert scrub. The results of spatially referencing SVI scores may vary according to the species examined, the area of interest, the selection of habitat models, and the method by which cross-species vulnerability indices are created. We show that it is simple and constructive to bring species vulnerability indices into geographic space: landscape-scale patterns of vulnerability can be detected, and relevant ecological and socioeconomic contexts can be taken into account, allowing for more robust conservation and management strategies.Climate change and disasters pose a serious risk to sustainable development. In the South, local coping strategies are an important element of adaptation to climate and disaster risk. Such strategies have emerged because of the limited assistance provided by urban actors and associated social security and governance systems. In the North, in contrast, local coping strategies are comparatively poorly developed. However, the extent of the changing climatic conditions is also reducing the capacity of Northern institutions to deal with climatic extremes and variability, which emphasises the need for more local-level engagement in the North. This paper analyses the differences in local and institutional responses to climate change and disasters in a Southern and a Northern city (San Salvador, El Salvador, and Manchester, United Kingdom, respectively), and highlights how the lessons learned might be translated into an improved distributed governance system; that is, an integrated engagement model, where local and institutionalised responses support rather than hinder each other, as is currently the case.This paper advocates the use of Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory as a framework to analyse resilience at diverse scales. Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory can be employed to (a) benchmark social resilience, (b) target the priority interventions required and (c) measure progress arising from these interventions to enhance resilience to natural disasters. First, the paper explores resilience to natural disasters in the context of climatic change as building resilience is seen as a way to mitigate impacts of natural disasters. Second, concepts of resilience are systematically examined and documented, outlining resilience as a trait and resilience as a process. Third, issues arising in relation to the measurement of resilience are discussed. Fourth, Bronfenbrenner's bioecological systems theory is described and proffered to model and assess resilience at different scales. Fifth, studies are described which have supported the use of the bioecological systems theory for the study of resilience. Sixth, an example of the use of Bronfenbrenner's theory is offered and the paper concludes with suggestions for future research using Bronfenbrenner's theory.Sea level rise threatens to increase the impacts of future storms and hurricanes on coastal communities. However, many coastal hazard mitigation plans do not consider sea level rise when assessing storm surge risk. Here we apply a GIS-based approach to quantify potential changes in storm surge risk due to sea level rise on Long Island, New York. We demonstrate a method for combining hazard exposure and community vulnerability to spatially characterize risk for both present and future sea level conditions using commonly available national data sets. Our results show that sea level rise will likely increase risk in many coastal areas and will potentially create risk where it was not before. We find that even modest and probable sea level rise (.5 m by 2080) vastly increases the numbers of people (47% increase) and property loss (73% increase) impacted by storm surge. In addition, the resulting maps of hazard exposure and community vulnerability provide a clear and useful example of the visual representation of the spatial distribution of the components of risk that can be helpful for developing targeted hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation strategies. Our results suggest that coastal agencies tasked with managing storm surge risk must consider the effects of sea level rise if they are to ensure safe and sustainable coastal communities in the future.Climate models are increasingly being used to force dynamical wind wave models in order to assess the potential climate change-driven variations in wave climate. In this study, an ensemble of wave model simulations have been used to assess the ability of climate model winds to reproduce the present-day (1981-2000) mean wave climate and its seasonal variability for the southeast coast of Australia. Surface wind forcing was obtained from three dynamically downscaled Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP-3) global climate model (GCM) simulations (CSIRO Mk3.5, GFDLcm2.0 and GFDLcm2.1). The downscaling was performed using CSIRO's cubic conformal atmospheric model (CCAM) over the Australian region at approximately 60-km resolution. The wind climates derived from the CCAM downscaled GCMs were assessed against observations (QuikSCAT and NCEP Re-analysis 2 (NRA-2) reanalyses) over the 1981-2000 period and were found to exhibit both bias in mean wind conditions (climate bias) as well as bias in the variance of wind conditions (variability bias). Comparison of the modelled wave climate with over 20 years of wave data from six wave buoys in the study area indicates that direct forcing of the wave models with uncorrected CCAM winds result in suboptimal wave hindcast. CCAM winds were subsequently adjusted for climate and variability bias using a bivariate quantile adjustment which corrects both directional wind components to align in distribution to the NRA-2 winds. Forcing of the wave models with bias-adjusted winds leads to a significant improvement of the hindcast mean annual wave climate and its seasonal variability. However, bias adjustment of the CCAM winds does not improve the ability of the model to reproduce the storm wave climate. This is likely due to a combination of storm systems tracking too quickly through the wave generation zone and the performance of the NRA-2 winds used as a benchmark in this study.While increasing research is focusing on the effective adaptation to climate change in richer (developed) countries, comparatively little has focused specifically on this subject in poorer (developing) countries such as most in the Pacific Islands region. A significant barrier to the development of effective and sustainable adaptive strategies for climate change in such places is the gap between risk and perceived risk. This study looks at a vulnerable location in Fiji-the densely populated Rewa River Delta where environmental changes resulting from shoreline retreat and floods are expected to increase over the next few decades and entail profound societal disruption. The numbers of people living in the Rewa Delta who know of climate change and could correctly identify its contributory causes are few although many rank its current manifestations (floods, riverbank erosion, groundwater salinization) as among their most serious environmental challenges. While lack of awareness is a barrier to adaptation, there are also cultural impediments to this such as short-term planning perspectives, spiritual beliefs, traditional governance structures. One way forward is to empower community leaders in places like the Rewa Delta to make appropriate decisions and for regional governments to continue working together to find solutions that acknowledge the variation in sub-regional trans-national vulnerability to climate change.Although sub-Saharan Africa does not contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, significant adverse impacts of climate change are anticipated in this region. Countries in West Africa, which are heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, are projected to experience more frequent and intense droughts, altered rainfall patterns and increases in temperature through the end of this century. Changes in hydrology and temperature are likely to affect crop yields, thereby placing pressure on scarce resources in a region that is characterised by limited social, political, technical and financial resources. The success with which communities cope with the impacts of climate change is influenced by existing conditions, forces and characteristics which are peculiar to each of these communities. This paper assesses the preferred adaptation strategies during floods and droughts of males and females in three different occupations (farming, fishing, and charcoal production). Findings are based upon an analysis of focus group discussions and a ranking of preferred adaptation options in three communities in the Afram Plains of Ghana. Assessments of this nature should aid in the selection and implementation of adaptation options for communities and households, which is the level at which climate change adaptation is likely to occur in West Africa.There was realized university-municipality research and development project by the case study research methodology, with the aim of performing an interdisciplinary situation audit on the climate change adaptation local policy existing practice conditions and development possibilities for coastal municipality of Salacgriva (Latvia), and as the result, relevant governance guidelines were elaborated [12]. Besides auditing and further on developing climate change integrations into three main sustainability dimensions, there is necessity to work with additional and separate dimension, the so called governance environment, which is to be considered the unifying horizontal element encircling all the three vertical sustainability dimensions and intentionally is to be the called "integrating medium" as well and subsequently separately studied, planned and managed. Further work was organized by North Vidzeme Biosphere Reserve administration and municipality and after public/expert hearing documents were transferred into very first municipal climate change adaptation strategy in Latvia.A wide range of Risk and Vulnerability Analysis (RVA) methods exist in the literature and are also used in relation to climate changes. A traditional approach to RVA might be sufficient to assess risks and vulnerabilities on a superior level, but for climate change adaption more detailed analyses are necessary to improve the results. For flooding this involves detailed mathematical and probabilistic modeling of hydrology, surface absorption capacities, snow melting, and failure or breakdown of critical components or system. The challenge is to link the identified threats and vulnerabilities to the risk picture taking physical models and climate projections explicitly into account. The objective of the paper is therefore to extend current RVA methods to combine physical models with results from climate projections. In the paper, a typical approach to RVA is applied to a flooding event and challenges associated with the method and the results of the analysis are discussed as basis for evaluating the need for extensions of the traditional RVA. We propose a seven steps method that integrate the dose-response analysis related to flooding into RVA.Sustainable production and biodiversity conservation can be mutually supportive in providing multiple ecosystem services to farmers and society. This study aimed to determine the contribution of agroforestry systems, as tested by family farmers in the Brazilian Rainforest region since 1993, to tree biodiversity and evaluated farmers' criteria for tree species selection. In addition, long-term effects on microclimatic temperature conditions for coffee production and chemical and biological soil characteristics at the field scale were compared to full-sun coffee systems. A floristic inventory of 8 agroforests and 4 reference forest sites identified 231 tree species in total. Seventy-eight percent of the tree species found in agroforests were native. The variation in species composition among agroforests contributed to a greater gamma-diversity than a-diversity. Monthly average maximum temperatures were approximately 6 C higher in full-sun coffee than in agroforests and forests. Total soil organic C,N mineralization and soil microbial activity were higher in forests than in coffee systems, whereas the chemical and biological soil quality in agroforests did not differ significantly from full-sun coffee after 13 years. Given its contribution to the conservation of biodiversity and its capacity to adapt coffee production to future climate change, coffee agroforestry offers a promising strategy for the area. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of a poll conducted among cocoa and coffee growers in central Santander, the purpose of which was to understand their perceptions on the phenomena of climate variability and climate change. Results show that variability is a well-known problem because people can clearly explain changes in their regional climate, its causes and its impacts. Furthermore, results reveal the existence of cultural practices such as spontaneous climate change adaptation strategies. Climate change, as a phenomenon, is recognised but not very well known and there is little knowledge of its causes, its consequences and ways of dealing with it; nevertheless, it is perceived as a local, regional and global problem that could potentially be solved through collective action.The rapid rate of current global climate change is having strong effects on many species and, at least in some cases, is driving evolution, particularly when changes in conditions alter patterns of selection. Climate change thus provides an opportunity for the study of the genetic basis of adaptation. Such studies include a variety of observational and experimental approaches, such as sampling across clines, artificial evolution experiments, and resurrection studies. These approaches can be combined with a number of techniques in genetics and genomics, including association and mapping analyses, genome scans, and transcription profiling. Recent research has revealed a number of candidate genes potentially involved in climate change adaptation and has also illustrated that genetic regulatory networks and epigenetic effects may be particularly relevant for evolution driven by climate change. Although genetic and genomic data are rapidly accumulating, we still have much to learn about the genetic architecture of climate change adaptation.This paper examines the role of local institutions in supporting climate change adaptation action from a public policy perspective. While certain adaptation actions will provide public benefits, many others will offer private benefits. The paper argues that adaptation investments and assigning the adaptation responsibility across various actors should be guided by a clear public-private benefit framework. A case study of adapting to a `low water future' in North East Victoria is used to discuss the role of local institutions and industries in formulating climate change adaptation strategies. The findings indicate that formulating adaptation strategies, at the local level, has been complicated by the existence of considerable uncertainty in the nature and magnitude of adverse climatic impacts. The planning problem is further exacerbated by considerable information asymmetries and moral hazard issues inhibiting climate change adaptation for reduced water supply by local institutions and industries.Adapting to climate change requires governments to design and implement policies capable of dealing with long-term problems. This poses significant policy design and implementation challenges since policies must also be multi-level and multi-sectoral in nature given the cross-sectoral and international character of climate change issues. Responsive policy-making on climate change issues thus requires both sophisticated policy analysis as well as an institutional structure which allows problems to be dealt with in a way which corresponds with changing organizational mandates, resources and network structures. Designing such policies requires matching policy analytical resources in relevant government departments and agencies with new and expanded mandates, a process which is not always necessarily successful. This introductory article presents the framework utilized in a collaborative study of climate change adaptation capacity in four Canadian policy sectors (agriculture, finance, infrastructure, and transportation) and one US case (the energy sector in Colorado). The study framework and subsequent analysis examine policy from a three-level perspective including (1) the macro nature of the subsystem involved, (2) the meso level of the organization or lead-agency in charge of the issue and (3) the micro level nature of policy work being undertaken in each sector.Policy capacity in web-based settings is largely the product of nodality, which provides centralized actors with enhanced opportunities to detect information and affect behavior. This paper examines four Canadian virtual policy networks (VPN) currently facing policy challenges associated with climate change adaptation including finance, infrastructure, transportation, and forestry. The four sectors each face specific types of challenges that will presumably influence government's policy capacity to respond to climate change adaptation, which in turn will affect the state's nodal positioning in the VPNs. At the macro level governing capacity will vary considerably among these sectors with some more able to affect social behavior and evidence-informed learning, while others will struggle to lead policy discourse and development. It is hypothesized that the Canadian federal government's nodality, which is shaped by both reputational capital and information credibility, will also be influenced by the nature of actors involved and the degree to which the VPN is internationalized.Responsive policy-making on climate change issues requires both sophisticated policy analysis as well as an institutional structure which allows problems to be dealt with on a multi-level and multi-sectoral basis. Designing such policies requires a high level of policy capability in relevant government departments and agencies matching changing organizational mandates in the area. This paper examines Infrastructure Canada's evolving mandate over the past decade and assesses whether or not its resource allocation has matched any shifts in government expectations for the agency due arising from climate change challenges. Provincial data are also examined in a similar light.Although a widely used term in the literature, much of what we know about "policy capacity" in government is limited to anecdotal evidence. Policy scholars have not systematically investigated the ability of policy professionals to provide good advice in relation to new policy challenges; indeed many are skeptical that policy capacity (understood as the potential for "evidence based policy learning") is an important driver of policy change in the first place. Despite these empirical and theoretical problems, governments remain committed to improving policy capacity in the pursuit of better public policy. This paper offers some preliminary observations on the difficulty of studying and operationalizing policy capacity through an examination of the finance sector in relation to climate change adaptation; part of a large collaborative SSHRC CEI project. Drawing on the existing literature on Canadian finance policymaking dynamics, a survey of policy professionals in the area, and an illustrative case study, the paper makes two claims. It suggests that viewing capacity as involving both the cognitive skills of professionals (or "analytical capacity"), and the institutional arrangements in which policy research is conducted (or "governance arrangements"), is a useful starting point. However, as the findings in this paper highlight, if capacity is the ability to provide effective advice in relation to specific problems, then the nature of the problem itself (how "wicked" or otherwise it might be) will also impact capacity.The original hypothesis is that forests will be a policy subsector in which the challenges of climate change adaptation lead to broader policy mandates but that the declining role of the industry in the Canadian economy will cause departmental resources to be stable or decreasing. The result will be ineffective policy capacity, leading to adaptation policies that are poorly designed, incomplete or missing altogether. This paper provides some evidence to support this hypothesis, though the situation is complicated by the dominant role played by the provinces in both ownership and jurisdiction. While the leading federal department, Natural Resources Canada, has shed other mandates to focus on climate change, provincial agencies are already caught between the added costs of addressing climate change impacts, notably wildfire, and the need to plan for and implement long term adaptive policies with stable or declining resources. Much will depend on coordination between First Nations, the provinces and the federal government in a policy subsector with a history of conflict between the different orders of government.An ongoing concern with many Canada's governments is avoiding climate change related policy failure, including that associated with climate change. In response, there has been a spate of government-led climate change vulnerability and risk assessments, studies, and strategies. With a growing attention on developing the 'right' policies and program to address climate change needs to be examined as an important factor in 'adaptive capacity'. As governments turn their attention from broad strategizing to policy-making, we argue that a consideration of the often overlooked micro-level and seemingly routine government based capacity-especially the advice needed to formulate and implement policy changes-is required. A high level of policy capacity is an important factor in avoiding policy failures. The questionnaire was delivered through a web-based survey of 1469 Canadian provincial and territorial government policy analysts working in nine provinces and three territorial jurisdictions in the climate change, environmental, financial, forestry, natural resource, infrastructure, transportation, and water sectors. A comparison of mean scores across key indicators of policy work was conducted. A number of policy implications were raised. First, those in financial sector do very little climate change policy work. Second, the fracturing of roles in those departments responsible for forestry reflects the complexity of the climate change issue and a developed division of labour. Those who identified with forestry sector, under performed despite their concern about climate change, in terms of key policy tasks, the level of complexity that the issues were addressed and a low level engagement with stakeholders with those outside of government. Policy capacity was also undermined with a view that departments were committed vis a vis their mission statements but that this commitment was not reflected in their daily operations.This paper examines the challenges and opportunities for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to integrate climate change adaptation into development projects, focusing on the potential contribution of community-generated information. The research, undertaken with agricultural NGO FARM-Africa, centres upon subsistence farming communities in the Kenyan Districts of Mwingi and Kitui, where a succession of droughts has blighted agricultural production in recent years. Discussions with FARM-Africa staff highlight how recent climate variability and possibly climate change, is already affecting project-level operations. In particular, the interaction between the secondary impacts of climate hazards and livelihood responses presents a challenge to local staff as there is no obvious means of reflecting the complexity of local experiences and impacts within project planning processes. In response, drawing upon discussions with Farmer Groups, a matrix for each community was developed comprising environmental, social and agro-economic hazard (drought) consequence indicators and corresponding measures under 'extreme', 'severe' and 'moderate' scenarios. This paper concludes that a structured approach to gathering locally held knowledge on the consequences of climate hazards appears to present a potentially valuable means of exploring the complex web of interactions between climate, livelihoods and vulnerability. Such community-generated information can be used to inform future project planning and community decision making, increasing the likelihood of achieving locally appropriate adaptation outcomes.Summer daytime cooling efficiency of various land cover is investigated for the urban core of Phoenix, Arizona, using the Local-Scale Urban Meteorological Parameterization Scheme (LUMPS). We examined the urban energy balance for 2 summer days in 2005 to analyze the daytime cooling-water use tradeoff and the timing of sensible heat reversal at night. The plausibility of the LUMPS model results was tested using remotely sensed surface temperatures from Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery and reference evapotranspiration values from a meteorological station. Cooling efficiency was derived from sensible and latent heat flux differences. The time when the sensible heat flux turns negative (sensible heat flux transition) was calculated from LUMPS simulated hourly fluxes. Results indicate that the time when the sensible heat flux changes direction at night is strongly influenced by the heat storage capacity of different land cover types and by the amount of vegetation. Higher heat storage delayed the transition up to 3 h in the study area, while vegetation expedited the sensible heat reversal by 2 h. Cooling efficiency index results suggest that overall, the Phoenix urban core is slightly more efficient at cooling than the desert, but efficiencies do not increase much with wet fractions higher than 20%. Industrial sites with high impervious surface cover and low wet fraction have negative cooling efficiencies. Findings indicate that drier neighborhoods with heterogeneous land uses are the most efficient landscapes in balancing cooling and water use in Phoenix. However, further factors such as energy use and human vulnerability to extreme heat have to be considered in the cooling-water use tradeoff, especially under the uncertainties of future climate change.The importance of ecological management for reducing the vulnerability of biodiversity to climate change is increasingly recognized, yet frameworks to facilitate a structured approach to climate adaptation management are lacking. We developed a conceptual framework that can guide identification of climate change impacts and adaptive management options in a given region or biome. The framework focuses on potential points of early climate change impact, and organizes these along two main axes. First, it recognizes that climate change can act at a range of ecological scales. Secondly, it emphasizes that outcomes are dependent on two potentially interacting and countervailing forces: (1) changes to environmental parameters and ecological processes brought about by climate change, and (2) responses of component systems as determined by attributes of resistance and resilience. Through this structure, the framework draws together a broad range of ecological concepts, with a novel emphasis on attributes of resistance and resilience that can temper the response of species, ecosystems and landscapes to climate change. We applied the framework to the world's largest remaining Mediterranean-climate woodland, the 'Great Western Woodlands' of south-western Australia. In this relatively intact region, maintaining inherent resistance and resilience by preventing anthropogenic degradation is of highest priority and lowest risk. Limited, higher risk options such as fire management, protection of refugia and translocation of adaptive genes may be justifiable under more extreme change, hence our capacity to predict the extent of change strongly impinges on such management decisions. These conclusions may contrast with similar analyses in degraded landscapes, where natural integrity is already compromised, and existing investment in restoration may facilitate experimentation with higher risk options.The PubMed and ScienceDirect bibliographic databases were searched for the period of 1998-2009 to evaluate the impact of climatic and environmental determinants on food- and waterborne diseases. The authors assessed 1,642 short and concise sentences (key facts), which were extracted from 722 relevant articles and stored in a climate change knowledge base. Key facts pertaining to temperature, precipitation, water, and food for 6 selected pathogens were scrutinized, evaluated, and compiled according to exposure pathways. These key facts (corresponding to approximately 50,000 words) were mapped to 275 terminology terms identified in the literature, which generated 6,341 connections. These relationships were plotted on semantic network maps to examine the interconnections between variables. The risk of campylobacteriosis is associated with mean weekly temperatures, although this link is shown more strongly in the literature relating to salmonellosis. Irregular and severe rain events are associated with Cryptosporidium sp. outbreaks, while noncholera Vibrio sp. displays increased growth rates in coastal waters during hot summers. In contrast, for Norovirus and Listeria sp. the association with climatic variables was relatively weak, but much stronger for food determinants. Electronic data mining to assess the impact of climate change on food- and waterborne diseases assured a methodical appraisal of the field. This climate change knowledge base can support national climate change vulnerability, impact, and adaptation assessments and facilitate the management of future threats from infectious diseases. In the light of diminishing resources for public health this approach can help balance different climate change adaptation options.Climate change in Australia is expected to influence crop growing conditions through direct increases in elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) and average temperature, and through increases in the variability of climate, with potential to increase the occurrence of abiotic stresses such as heat, drought, waterlogging, and salinity. Associated effects of climate change and higherCO(2) concentrations include impacts on the water-use efficiency of dryland and irrigated crop production, and potential effects on biosecurity, production, and quality of product via impacts on endemic and introduced pests and diseases, and tolerance to these challenges. Direct adaptation to these changes can occur through changes in crop, farm, and value-chain management and via economically driven, geographic shifts where different production systems operate. Within specific crops, a longer term adaptation is the breeding of new varieties that have an improved performance in 'future' growing conditions compared with existing varieties. In crops, breeding is an appropriate adaptation response where it complements management changes, or when the required management changes are too expensive or impractical. Breeding requires the assessment of genetic diversity for adaptation, and the selection and recombining of genetic resources into new varieties for production systems for projected future climate and atmospheric conditions. As in the past, an essential priority entering into a ` climate-changed' era will be breeding for resistance or tolerance to the effects of existing and new pests and diseases. Hence, research on the potential incidence and intensity of biotic stresses, and the opportunities for breeding solutions, is essential to prioritise investment, as the consequences could be catastrophic. The values of breeding activities to adapt to the five major abiotic effects of climate change (heat, drought, waterlogging, salinity, and elevated CO2) are more difficult to rank, and vary with species and production area, with impacts on both yield and quality of product. Although there is a high likelihood of future increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures across Australia, there is uncertainty about the direction and magnitude of rainfall change, particularly in the northern farming regions. Consequently, the clearest opportunities for ` in-situ' genetic gains for abiotic stresses are in developing better adaptation to higher temperatures (e. g. control of phenological stage durations, and tolerance to stress) and, for C-3 species, in exploiting the (relatively small) fertilisation effects of elevated CO2. For most cultivated plant species, it remains to be demonstrated how much genetic variation exists for these traits and what value can be delivered via commercial varieties. Biotechnology-based breeding technologies (marker-assisted breeding and genetic modification) will be essential to accelerate genetic gain, but their application requires additional investment in the understanding, genetic characterisation, and phenotyping of complex adaptive traits for climate-change conditions.In 2008 the South African National Disaster Management Centre commissioned a study into measures taken by local municipalities to plan for climate change. Two areas were selected for their dissimilar climatic challenges: the //Khara Hais Municipality,(1) a semi-desert area in the Northern Cape Province plagued by droughts and severe weather events, and the George Municipality, an area in the Western Cape Province plagued by droughts, the rising sea level and flash floods. It was found that despite South African laws and regulations requiring local government to take action to reduce the risk of disasters, planning for climate change is still no more than sophisticated rhetoric in the two municipalities. This lack of urgency can be ascribed to local municipalities having other more pressing developmental priorities. It would, however, be short-sighted of municipalities not to plan for climate change, as major setbacks in hard-won economic and social development follow a disaster.Climate change and adaptation have become major issues in contemporary tourism development and policy discussions, especially in southern Africa where the tourism industry is largely based on the natural environment and wildlife. Previous studies on tourism and climate change have mainly focused on the global north and snow-based winter tourism activities. This study aimed to fill the gap by examining tourism operators' perceptions of climate change in Kgalagadi South District, southwest Botswana, and looking at their adaptation strategies, if any. It was found that these operators were aware of the general impacts of climate change but most saw no impacts on the tourism industry and none recognised any impacts on their own operations. Most did, however, envisage challenges to future business growth and Botswana's tourism competitiveness. The perception that climate change did not currently have any impacts may explain why there were almost no adaptation strategies in place.Aim The dimensions of species vulnerability to climate change are complex, and this impedes efforts to provide clear advice for conservation planning. In this study, we used a formal framework to assess species vulnerability to climate change quantifying exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity and then used this information to target areas for reducing vulnerability at a regional scale. Location The 6500-km(2) Mount Lofty Ranges region in South Australia. Methods We quantified the vulnerability of 171 plant species in a fragmented yet biologically important agro-ecological landscape, typical of many temperate zones globally. We specified exposure, using three climate change scenarios; sensitivity, as the adverse impact of climate change on species' spatial distribution; and adaptive capacity, as the ability of species to migrate calculated using dispersal kernels. Priority areas for reducing vulnerability were then identified by incorporating these various components into a single priority index. Results Climate change had a variable impact on species distributions. Those species whose range decreased or shifted geographically were attributed higher sensitivity than those species that increased geographic range or remained unchanged. The ability to adapt to range changes in response to shifting climates varies both spatially and between species. Areas of highest priority for reducing vulnerability were found at higher altitudes and lower latitudes with increasing severity of climate change. Main conclusions Our study demonstrates the use of a single spatially explicit index that identifies areas in the landscape for targeting specific conservation and restoration actions to reduce species vulnerability to climate change. Our index can be transferred to other regions around the world in which climate change poses an increasing threat to native species.Hazard impact assessments of vulnerability to climate change inherently fail to provide the context-specific understanding required to precipitate informed development of adaptation policies and actions. We demonstrate how this can occur by comparing a stakeholder participatory approach to assessing rural livelihood vulnerability across Pacific Island countries, with a widely used non-contextual approach, the Environmental Vulnerability Climate Change sub-index. The participatory approach was conducted in collaboration with a group of regional Pacific representatives. The approach included three activities: (i) producing a shared vision of the characteristics of vulnerability, (ii) estimating the relative vulnerability and capacity to adapt of Pacific Island communities using the Sustainable Livelihoods conceptual framework, and (iii) producing a post-hoc perspective of desirable policy-relevant outcomes to enhance adaptive capacity using Public Values Mapping analysis. The comparison of outputs derived from the two vulnerability assessment methods highlighted two notable differences: (i) different rankings of the vulnerability status of rural livelihoods in individual Pacific island countries, and (ii) differing capacities to support the delivery of action-orientated outputs and policy development. We argue that the participatory approach is more likely to result in effective policy outcomes, i.e. a reduction in the policy relevance gap and increased capacity to adapt. We substantiate this argument by attempting to create policy relevant outcomes from both vulnerability approaches. We show that the three-stage participatory approach is more able to satisfy the demand for decision-making processes relating to the allocation of climate change adaptation resources to be transparent and based on scientific evidence, as well as delivering outcomes that are in the public's interest. Output from the Environmental Vulnerability Climate Change sub-index was considered inadequate to effectively inform the development of policies and adaptation actions to reduce vulnerability in rural livelihoods. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We present three rights-based approaches to research and policies on gender justice and equity in the context of climate change adaptation. After a short introduction, we describe the dominant discourse that frames climate change and provide an overview of the literature that has depicted women both as vulnerable victims of climatic change and as active agents in adaptive responses. Discussion follows on the shift from gendered impacts to gendered adaptive capacities and embodied experiences, highlighting the continuing impact of social biases and institutional practices that shape unequal access to and control over household and community decision-making processes undermining timely, fair, and successful adaptive responses. Assessment of rights-based frameworks considers the space they provide in addressing persistent gender and other inequalities, at different political and operational scales. We argue that a human security framework is useful to fill the gap in current gender and climate justice work, particularly when implemented through the entry point of adaptive social protection. Gender justice in climate change adaptation is an obligation for transformational social change, not just rights. The time is ripe to replace narrow-minded vulnerability studies with a contextualized understanding of our mutual fragility and a commitment to enhanced livelihood resilience, worldwide.Urban centres play a crucial role in managing global carbon emissions (mitigation) and reducing vulnerability to climate change (adaptation). This paper describes some of the mitigation and adaptation entry points and challenges for city-relevant planning and policy-making posed by the processes defining urban greenhouse gas emissions, vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities. It finds that although many cities are already responding to the climate challenge, existing initiatives are fragmented and a piecemeal rather than a strategic approach is very common. Frequently mitigation and adaptation responses do not address many of the key drivers and determinants involved (e. g. consumption patterns and equity issues determining differentiated access to the determinants of adaptive capacity), nor do they fit with the issues they are intended to address. This is so because climate responses and the issues they are intended to address are multi-scale in nature because most of the processes involved operate at multiple sectoral, temporal and spatial levels. In the face of the complexity of the interconnected processes involved in the relationships between cities and climate change, it is not surprising that local authorities tend to move towards rhetoric rather than meaningful responses.The issue of climate change has shed a new light on the migration/development nexus and led to reflection on the link between population displacement and adaptation to environmental degradation. This article examines how the rethinking of population displacements through the climate prism - mainly happening in western countries - impacts climate adaptation and migratory policy-making in least developed countries. It primarily questions the foundations of a widespread approach which tends to address climate-related migration as a new kind of displacement, disconnected from economic, political or social factors and that should be addressed at the global level by specific legal responses and new international settings. Through a reflection on the causes and impacts of climate-related migration, it insists on the complexity of the linkage between population displacements and adaptation. It secondly draws the first conclusions of a case study lead in Mali. While investigating a topic recently put on the agenda of LDCs (climate change) and a renewed conceptualisation of migration issues, this national lens shows that national political responses actually reflect usual donors' and recipients' strategies and dynamics in aid-dependent countries. Despite a lack of reliable data, policy documents relay the common assumption linking climate to migration. This might be explained by external influence on agenda-setting and policy formulation but also by an instrumentalization of these topics by national actors. Furthermore, an analysis of the national framework unveils a poor articulation of migration and climate issue on the field and the weight of a national network of experts.TURAS is a five year Project that will develop visions, feasible strategies, spatial scenarios and guidance tools to help cities address the urgent challenges of: climate change, adaptation and mitigation natural resources shortage, unsustainable urban growth.Background: Australia has a hot climate with maximum summer temperatures in its major cities frequently exceeding 35 degrees C. Although 'heat waves' are an annual occurrence, the associated heat-related deaths among vulnerable groups, such as older people, suggest that Australians could be better prepared to deal with extreme heat. Objective: To understand ways in which a vulnerable sub-population adapt their personal behaviour to cope with heat within the context of Australians' relationship with heat. Design: We draw upon scientific, historical and literary sources and on a set of repeat interviews in the suburbs of Western Sydney with eight older participants and two focus group discussions. We discuss ways in which this group of older people modifies their behaviour to adapt to heat, and reflect on manifestations of Australians' ambivalence towards heat. Results: Participants reported a number of methods for coping with extreme heat, including a number of methods of personal cooling, changing patterns of daily activity and altering dietary habits. The use of air-conditioning was near universal, but with recognition that increasing energy costs may become more prohibitive over time. Conclusions: While a number of methods are employed by older people to stay cool, these may become limited in the future. Australians' attitudes may contribute to the ill-health and mortality associated with excessive heat.The variety of anthropogenic stressors to the marine environment - including, increasingly, climate change - and their complex and synergistic impacts on ocean ecosystems testifies to the failure of existing governance regimes to protect these ecosystems and the services that they provide. Marine spatial planning has been widely hailed as a means of improving ocean governance through holistic ecosystem-based planning. However, that concept arose without reference to climate change, and hence it does not automatically account for the dynamic alterations in marine ecosystems that climate change is bringing. This Article attempts to adapt marine spatial planning to climate change adaptation. In so doing, it explores three main topics. First, it examines how established marine protected areas can aid climate change adaptation. Second, it looks at how nations have incorporated climate change considerations into marine spatial planning to increase marine ecosystem resilience, focusing on the international leader in marine spatial planning: Australia. Finally, the Article explores how marine spatial planning could become flexible enough to adapt to the changes that climate change will bring to the world's oceans, focusing on anticipatory zoning. Governments, of course, can establish marine zoning governance regimes in anticipation of climate change impacts, as has already occurred in the Arctic. However, drawing on work by Josh Eagle, Barton H. Thompson, and James Sanchirico, this Article argues that governments could also combine anticipatory zoning and comprehensively regulated marine use rights bidding regimes to encourage potential future private users to make informed bets about the figure productivity value of different parts of the ocean, potentially improving both our ability to anticipate climate change impacts on particular marine environments and the ocean governance regimes for climate-sensitive areas.Techniques are proposed for developing a monthly and weekly drought outlook and the drought outlook components are evaluated. A drought index, the surface water supply index (SWSI) was modified and used for the drought outlook. A water balance model (abcd) was successfully calibrated using a regional regression, including monthly and weekly factors, and was used to convert meteorology to hydrology. For the monthly drought outlook, an ensemble technique was applied, both with and without monthly industrial meteorology information (MIMI). For the weekly drought outlook, a deterministic forecasting technique was applied employing the Global Data Assimilation and Prediction System (GDAPS). The methodologies were applied to the Geum River basin in Korea. While only the weekly outlook using the GDAPS has sufficient forecasting capability to suggest it might be useful, the accuracy of the monthly drought outlook is expected to improve as the climate forecast accuracy increases.Impacts on water resources produced by climate change can be exacerbated when occurring in regions already presenting low water resources levels and frequent droughts, and subject to imbalances between water demands and available resources. Within Europe, according to existing climate change scenarios, water resources will be severely affected in Spain. However, the detection of those effects is not simple, because the natural variability of the water cycle and the effects of water abstractions on flow discharges complicate the establishment of clear trends. Therefore, there is a need to improve the assessment of climate change impacts by using hydrological simulation models. This paper reviews water resources and their variability in Spain, the recent modelling studies on hydrological effects of climate change, expected impacts on water resources, the implications in river basins and the current policy actions.The present paper investigated the extent of the flood propagation in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta under different projected flood hydrographs, considering the 2000 flood event (the 20-yr return period event, T. V. H. Le et al., 2007) as the basis for computation. The analysis herein was done to demonstrate the particular complexity of the flood dynamics, which was simulated by the 1-D modelling system ISIS used by the Mekong River Commission. The floods of the year 2050 are simulated using a projected sea level rise of +30 cm. The future flood hydrograph changes at Kratie, Cambodia, were also applied for the upstream boundary condition by using an adjusted regional climate model. Two future flood hydrographs were applied at the upstream part of the delta, the first one in a scenario of climate change without considering developments in the Mekong Basin, and the second one in a scenario of climate change taking into account future development of the delta. Analyses were done to identify the areas sensitive to floods, considering the uncertainty of the projection of both the upstream and downstream boundary conditions. In addition, due to the rice-dominated culture in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, possible impacts of floods on the rice-based farming systems were also analysed.Purpose - For communities threatened by current or impending climate change, adaptation is becoming a necessity. Although little research has been done on human competences so far, this research shows that some appear to facilitate the adaptation process. The purpose of this multiple-case study is to identify adaptive competences demonstrated by two groups of Canadian citizens: municipal employees in a coastal community and farmers. Design/methodology/approach - As part of workshops based on a problem solving process, the two groups analyzed the impacts of climate change in their field of work and geographical area, chose a problem related to these impacts, suggested and then implemented adaptation measures. The municipal employees worked on sea level rise, whereas the farmers focused on poor soil quality, which makes it vulnerable to bad weather. Findings - By thematically analyzing the verbatim transcripts of the workshops and by building narratives, the authors were able to identify similar adaptive competences in both groups: local knowledge, futures thinking, hindsight, risk prediction, critical thinking, decision-making, and problem solving (highlighting key problem components, suggesting solutions, and identifying constraints). However, two competences were chiefly found in the group composed of farmers: optimism and openness to novelty. Originality/value - This study is one of the first to lead to recommendations regarding the pedagogical support of citizens during an adaptation process to climate change. These recommendations might be helpful in many communities where adaptation to climate change is a pressing issue.Purpose - The Philippines is among the countries vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. However, many local government units (LGUs) and the people themselves are not aware of the climate change phenomenon and do not have the capacity to undertake appropriate climate change adaptation measures. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the climate change adaptation strategies of communities and LGUs and the barriers and recommendations to enhance their adaptive capacity. Design/methodology/approach - The study covered five communities vulnerable to climate change impacts. Information on extreme climatic events and their impacts and adaptation strategies undertaken were gathered through focus group discussions (FGDs) and key informant interviews. LGU staff members were assisted in the preparation of their climate change adaptation plan (CCAP). Findings - The LGUs and communities have low adaptive capacity and employed temporary adaptation strategies. Strong social cohesion and spontaneous collective action are factors that could enhance the communities' adaptive capacity. The pursuit of awareness raising and capacity building activities on climate change phenomena, alternative livelihood, preparedness and adaptation possibilities, technology and infrastructure development and collective action, which are critical adaptive capacity enhancement factors were laid-out in the CCAP. Originality/value - The paper presents the barriers that constrain the adaptive capacity of communities and LGUs, the recommended adaptive capacity enhancement measures to overcome these barriers and the highlights of the CCAP jointly prepared by the partner LGUs and scientists.Civil protection authorities, transport companies and operators need detailed information about the impacts of weather extremes on transportation systems in order to adapt risk and emergency management strategies. Due to the lack of data for Germany a pragmatic strategy to establish links between extreme weather events and adverse effects on road and rail transportation is proposed exploiting official annual reviews of the German Weather Service (DWD). In Germany road transportation is mainly disrupted due to ice and snow while rail transportation is most vulnerable to strong winds and winter conditions as well. Through the empirical evidence provided, hotspots for risk and emergency management in road and rail transportation concerning extreme weather events can be set. Recommendations for instruments to integrate extreme weather events into the risk and emergency management of road and rail transportation are given.World population growth, overconsumption of resources, competition among countries and climate change are putting significant pressure on agriculture. In Canada, changes in precipitation, the appearance of new pests and poor soil quality are threatening the prosperity of small farmers. What human competencies could facilitate citizens' adaptation to climate change? The competencies displayed by six Canadian farmers were observed as they tried to improve the quality of their soil in order to increase its climate resilience. The farmers in the case study demonstrated a wide array of skills while adapting to climate change. Used to adjusting their farming practices to bad weather, the participants predicted that their already declining soil was very vulnerable to extreme events. They implemented some adaptations: planting forage radish and practicing more crop rotations. During the adaptation process, the farmers showed indepth local and agricultural knowledge, critical thinking (which they used to assess the solutions), futures thinking and hindsight, identification and control of the variables affecting the crops, openness to novelty, collaboration, optimism and self-efficacy. The research, which results in the identification of competencies conducive to adaptation, leads to the recommendation of a few educational strategies to strengthen adaptive competencies when supporting citizens in a climate change adaptation process.Extreme weather events, such as unusually high or low temperatures, severe winds and heavy precipitation, pose a threat to people and property in cities, and are expected to become more frequent and intense as a result of climate change. Managing this risk requires effective climate adaptation policies - strategic courses of action designed to strengthen urban resilience to climate-related stress. City governments have a key role to play in adaptation policy design, but they appear to face challenges in marshalling political commitment and technical capacity. This article examines elements of urban climate adaptation policy targeting extreme weather and analyzes the policy development process in two major Canadian cities, Toronto and Halifax.Using the Foucauldian theoretical framework of governmentality, this paper examines the role of regulative 'technologies of government' in climate change adaptation. The paper examines such technologies and underlying rationalities in a multi-level context, in three European countries that represent different stages of adaptation policy development: the UK, Finland and Sweden. Drawing upon policy documents and interviews at different levels, the paper illustrates differences in technologies of government for adaptation between the relatively 'regulative' UK state system and Finland and Sweden's traditional legalistic and welfarist systems. The study illustrates that, while the treatment of adaptation as an issue on a national level coheres with national rationalities, local and regional levels show a diversity in the development of bottom-up adaptation technologies.Although the public governance of climate change adaptation gained increasing attention among both policy-makers and researchers in recent years, it is still largely unclear how governments aim to develop and implement adaptation policies. This paper takes stock of respective institutional innovations at the national level in 10 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. It first introduces four challenges that are key in the context of climate adaptation policy-making, that is, (i) how to better integrate adaptation policies horizontally across policy sectors and (ii) vertically across jurisdictional levels, (iii) how to integrate knowledge, and (iv) how to involve non-state stakeholders in adaptation policy-making. Based on a desk research and semi-structured interviews, this paper then highlights a variety of institutional innovations (here referred to as governance approaches) that the selected governments employ to address these four challenges. Overall, it is shown that most of these approaches are restricted to soft, voluntary ways of coordination and steering that often address more than one of the four challenges at a time and that national adaptation strategies usually mark the centrepiece of adaptation governance around which other governance approaches emerge.Although much research on climate change has focused on its disproportionate effects on the Global South, communities-particularly indigenous populations-within "developed" nations in the Global North can also face significant effects and inadequate assistance. One example is the native village and city of Kivalina in northwest Alaska. Through a case study of Kivalina, this article explores the gaps in U. S. policy for relocating Alaska Natives due to the effects of climate change. There is currently no policy in placewithin the United States or internationally-for the resettlement of communities displaced by climate change. And in the United States there is no lead agency in charge of relocating displaced communities, despite several U.S. government reports stating that at least four Alaska Native villages, including Kivalina, must be resettled due to warming Arctic temperatures and erosion. This leaves government agencies in charge of assisting villages like Kivalina, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, who are responsible for helping ensure Kivalina's safety but are not empowered to innovate new procedures and holistically address what is an unprecedented problem: climate change. This has left Kivalina in what is termed here an administrative orbit, with residents made to work their way through a patchwork of various government programs and procedures that are time-consuming and often insufficient. In exploring these intra-national inequities, this article examines how a protocol specifically designed for those displaced by climate change, such as "climigration," could be merged with existing government efforts around emergency management to help prevent disasters before they occur, and to protect at-risk communities like Kivalina.This paper explores community perspectives of environmental change and the role development actors in the regional Nepali town of Nepalganj. Understanding these perceptions is crucial for planning future adaptation to climate change and ensuring that these measures are sustainable and in line with community priorities. Firstly, I contend that whilst the local community in Nepalganj may be experiencing the impacts of climate change, they are unfamiliar and disassociated with the concept. Secondly, I identify a number of risks and opportunities around the role of local government, international development organisations and local non-government organisations in future adaptation actions. Participant perceptions of these institutions in their community reinforce a number of established critiques of development around themes such as poor consultation and short project timelines. The long-term success of adaptation actions will be shaped by the ability and willingness of development actors to evolve their practices by listening to local communities.This paper considers the Australian federal government's approach to climate adaptation policy for remote northern Indigenous communities through the close examination of a seminal Scoping Study. This approach is taken to illustrate the lag between adaptation theory and practice, and to highlight important considerations to enable the development of a just and effective policy. The analysis suggests that policy in this area would benefit from the further consideration of three factors, namely the role of uncertainty in climate policy, the need for meaningful consultation with communities, and the benefit of integrating contextual and bottom-up assessment of vulnerability with decision-making in an iterative manner. The paper concludes by suggesting that the current approach to vulnerability assessment is insufficiently nuanced to allow an adequate appreciation of factors that influence social vulnerability in remote communities, and consequently, policy developed from it is likely to be ineffective.Moving towards a more sustainable adaptation process requires closer integration of policies related to the environment. An important actor in this is the local government. This paper examines to what extend adaptation is currently being integrated into Dutch local policies, and what the role is of a municipality's size, risk and experience in the encountered manifestations of adaptation. First, it was determined that adaptations taking place only anticipate currently perceivable weather extremes - mostly increasing precipitation. Second, it was determined that the realisation of further adaptations is hindered by a strongly sectoral divided reality. Adaptation is now heavily dominated by the water department, while spatial planning and the environment are only limitedly involved. Finally, it was observed that the contextual factor size proved to most important for horizontal policy integration, whereas the contextual factor extreme-weather experience was the most definite for the realisation of adaptations. We conclude that a more sustainable adaptation should first tackle the sectoral divides which requires administrative efforts, for example, professional training. These would preferably be initiated from a vertical direction.Norwegian experiences on local environmental policy, Local Agenda 21 (LA21), local climate change mitigation (CCM) and local climate change adaptation (CCA) are compared in this article. One conclusion is that local CCA lacks the normative impetus for local action that LA21 and local CCM have had, thus making it harder to include CCA in serious policy-making at the local level of governance. Another conclusion is that local CCA like mainstream local environmental policy, but unlike that of LA21 and local CCM, is exclusively framed in a local context. By focusing only on the local effects of climate change taking place locally, and not looking into possible local effects of climate change taking place elsewhere, climate change vulnerability assessments in rich countries like Norway tend to conclude on far less dramatic consequences than what is up in the general climate change debate. This way of framing climate change vulnerabilities may prove to be counterproductive for the purpose of gaining support for climate change adaptation, as well as mitigation policies.Adaptation to climate change has to various degrees been added to the political agenda in all industrialised countries. In most of these countries, adaptation measures are yet to be implemented in legislation and are, therefore, in practice voluntary undertakings. At the local level of the government, this means that adaptation has to compete with other non-mandatory issues. This raises the question as to what degree adaptation can and will be implemented. This paper examines how the implementation of climate adaptation measures has proceeded in eight Norwegian municipalities. These municipalities were among the first movers on adaptation to climate change in Norway. In order to measure the degree of implementation, a set of indicators has been developed and the eight case municipalities have been analysed according to these indicators. We found that seven of eight municipalities have implemented or have specific plans to implement adaptation measures. These findings show that municipalities are able to implement adaptation policies that are not initiated at the central level, but are contingent upon a number of factors: the efforts of individuals within the municipal organisation, municipal size, and the use of external expertise.This article investigates how Danish municipalities adapt to climate change and how added value can be achieved by a change of governance modes. The article is based on a quantitative survey, a qualitative analysis of 10 municipal climate change adaptation strategies, and interviews with planners from five municipalities. The study shows that adaptation is rather narrowly defined to mainly be about water management and that adaptation planning and implementation takes place in technical departments in the municipalities. Cross-sector collaboration is limited, and so is the involvement of citizens and external resources. This articles argues that increased collaboration and meta-governance is called for to aid the municipalities in their efforts and open collaboration venues with, for example, professionals from other sectors, researchers, citizens, and companies whose resources have not yet been fully involved, and to stimulate inter-municipal and cross-sectoral collaboration in order to produce adaptation measures with added value.Climate change adaptation presents a challenge for all levels of governance. As impacts of climate change are most acutely felt at the regional and local level, there is a need to understand the limits and barriers of the design and implementation of adaptation measures on these levels. The aim of this paper is to focus on the regional level in Finland in order to identify the limits and barriers to regional implementation of climate change adaptation in the absence of steering from the national level. In order to do this, the paper draws on two empirical studies on adaptation within the regions of Uusimaa and Pirkanmaa in Finland. The paper describes the manner in which voluntary initiatives at the regional and local level have emerged, and regions have acted on adaptation in the absence of clear steering from the national level.Adaptation to climate change often involves long-time frames and uncertainties over the consequences of chosen adaptation measures. In this study, two tools designed for assisting local decision-makers in adaptation planning were tested: socio-economic scenarios and sustainability analysis. The objective was to study whether these tools could be of practical relevance to Swedish municipalities and facilitate local-level climate change adaptation. We found that the municipal planners who participated in the testing generally considered the tools useful and of high relevance, but that more time was needed to use the tools than was provided during the test process.Integrating policy on climate change adaptation into civil protection is explored through studies of extreme weather management at the national level in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, and through local case studies of the three coastal cities of Bergen, Malmo and Rotterdam. The research issues addressed have been the extent to which, and in what form, climate change adaptation policy has been integrated into civil protection, how the observed policy integration can be explained and how such integration can be improved. Different degrees of policy integration may stem from perceived vulnerabilities and varying needs for renewed legitimacy within the civil protection system following the end of the Cold War. A set of socio-historic characteristics of the "environment" and "civil protection" policy domains illuminate conditions for an improved outcome of the policy integration process.Within the scope of this project, tools for conducting systematic and integrated climate vulnerability and sustainability assessments have been developed. Two municipalities in the lower Gota Alv catchment were selected as study cases. Together with representatives from key municipal departments and national government agencies, the interdisciplinary research team designed and conducted a co-production process. Results obtained using the developed tools demonstrate that conducting such a systematic assessment of the current situation and potential impacts of climate change adaptation measures would contribute to synergies between adaptation strategies and other policy arenas. Our recommendation for enhancing the capacity of local vulnerability management in Sweden is to shift foci in four fields: from static analysis of climate vulnerability to a dynamic approach to social vulnerability, from a sector-wise fragmented approach to integrated management, from a focus on technical fixes and physical measures to institutional adaptation measures, and, finally, from sustainability-blind adaptation investments to long-term sustainable climate adaptation measures. The processes and mechanisms for succeeding in this requires that knowledge be produced, shared, and managed in partly new ways, allowing stakeholders both inside and outside local government administration to voice and synergise their concerns and solutions.Adaptation to climate change is often perceived as a local concern; yet local stakeholders are influenced by knowledge and politics from international and national contexts. Based on a review of Swedish climate change adaptation policy and interviews and focus groups in the Stockholm region, this paper discusses how knowledge relevant to climate change adaptation has been institutionalised in Sweden and how this may affect the potential for learning. The results indicate that the institutionalising of knowledge and knowledge exchange has been weak, especially compared to the implementation of Local Agenda 21, which also calls for action at the local level. So far, Swedish adaptation policy has relied mainly on soft governance tools. Further, we conclude that there is need for improved mechanisms for feedback from the local to the national level in this rapidly evolving policy field.The impact of the extreme heat wave that affected Melbourne, Australia, in two distinct phases in January and February 2009 was severe, with 374 (heat) and 173 (bushfire) excess deaths. Whilst the human health issues have been covered in detail in policy and academic arenas, much less attention has been paid to the adverse impacts on urban infrastructure. Analysis of this event, underpinned by participatory actor-based research, has shown that the impacts were experienced disproportionately across different infrastructure types. For water, telecommunications and airports, the impacts were relatively minor and the impact on rail transport and roads (and to a lesser extent, seaports) was of moderate significance, whereas research findings indicate that the electricity sector was found to be the most vulnerable. This paper focuses on the sectors that were worst impacted: electricity, rail and road transport. Commentary identifies the direct and indirect impacts of the heat event, including associated cascading effects, as well as considering actual and potential adaptation responses both before and after the event. Concluding, the authors reflect on the implications of the heat wave for urban resilience, emphasising the crucial importance of understanding the urban environment as a complex and interconnected system.This paper characterises climate change as a "transformative stressor". It argues that institutional change will become increasingly necessary as institutions seek to reorientate governance frameworks to better manage the transformative stresses created by climate change in urban environments. Urban and metropolitan planning regimes are identified as central institutions in addressing this challenge. The operationalisation of climate adaptation is identified as a central tenet of a comprehensive urban response to the transformative stresses that climate change is predicted to create. Operationalisation refers to climate adaptation becoming incorporated, codified and implemented as a central tenet of urban planning governance. This paper has three purposes. First, it examines conceptual perspectives on the role of transformative stressors in compelling institutional change. Second, it establishes a conceptual approach that characterises climate change as a transformative stressor requiring institutional change within planning frameworks. Third, it reports emergent results and analysis from an empirical inquiry which examines how the metro-regional planning regime of Southeast Queensland has responded to climate change as a transformative stressor via institutional change and the operationalisation of climate adaptation.Several Torres Strait communities have significant infrastructure and sacred sites located only a few metres above sea level. As a consequence, these areas are vulnerable to erosion due to the projected increase in storm surge intensity caused by climate change. Common sense suggests that Islanders would welcome new scientific research about how climate change might affect them, in order to understand the significance of these impacts and the timeframes involved. However, one leader has taken a seemingly counterintuitive stance, and has refused to let new climate research occur. We explore why this position was taken, and the implications of this decision for ongoing scientific research. In order to carry out this analysis, we provide a contextual background by assessing Islanders' recent experience with scientific researchers, and the response of policy-makers to it. We find that despite a clearly documented problem with "top-down" decision-making, this process remains. In this instance, we find that there is a systemic lack of collaboration with Islanders to allow them to prioritise their concerns, and a lack of adequate resources to allow them to build their resilience to climate impacts. We conclude that only through a genuine collaborative approach to climate adaptation can activities be properly developed, prioritised and undertaken.This chapter deals with the conceptualization, identification and assessment of the vulnerability of different social groups to water related hazards in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta is globally seen as one of the key hotspots of climate change related risks due to its exposure to floods, salinization and potential sea level rise. In order to underline the multifaceted nature of vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change the paper outlines vulnerability pro files of different households and socio-economic groups in selected hazard prone areas, notably in rural communities exposed to high floods, coastal communities exposed to saline intrusion and urban communities exposed to urban and tidal flooding. The different locations selected for the assessment of vulnerability allow comparing how different local context situations and hazard phenomena might in fluence specific coping and adaptation strategies. The socio-economic transformation processes and policy reforms that have affected all three locations are examined in terms of their in fluence on vulnerability and capacities. The chapter provides a contribution to a further enhancement of methods, data bases and quality criteria for moving from an impact oriented risk assessment to a forward-looking vulnerability assessment that can inform future adaptation strategies. In this regard the chapter makes a contribution for linking disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) discourses. Particularly, the analysis of vulnerabilities to creeping-changes has often not been sufficiently addresses and incorporated in DRR strategies in Vietnam.Understanding the capacity of species to acclimate and adapt to expected temperature increases is critical for making predictions about the biological impacts of global warming, yet it is one of the least certain aspects of climate change science(1-4). Tropical species are considered to be especially sensitive to climate change because they live close to their thermal maximum and exhibit limited capacity for acclimation(5-7). Here, we demonstrate that a tropical reef fish is highly sensitive to small increases in water temperature, but can rapidly acclimate over multiple generations. Acute exposure to elevated temperatures (+1.5 degrees C and +3.0 degrees C) predicted to occur this century caused a 15% and 30% respective decrease in individual's maximum ability to perform aerobic activities such as swimming or foraging, known as aerobic scope. However, complete compensation in aerobic scope occurred when both parents and offspring were reared throughout their lives at elevated temperature. Such acclimation could reduce the impact of warming temperatures and allow populations to persist across their current range. This study reveals the importance of transgenerational acclimation as a mechanism for coping with rapid climate change and highlights that single generation studies risk underestimating the potential of species to cope.Environmental policy research continues to advance toward a more Kuhnian normal science where theory and empirical tools are brought to bear on real-world policy systems to better understand social processes and determine the context in which policies work best. Traditional environmental policy tools now involve more flexible market-based instruments, voluntary agreements, and information provision tools like ecolabels and sustainability indicators. Policy process theories continue to be refined through hypothesis testing and are evolving into more integrative and multidisciplinary frameworks. Interdisciplinary methods are also being employed to better measure and analyze environmental outcomes, which has always been a major challenge in environmental policy research. These research tools are being explored in emerging policy approaches like collaborative partnerships and with novel environmental issues like climate change adaptation, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, and nanotechnology.A new two-dimensional threshold diagram (2D-THR) has been developed based on maximum likelihood cloud classification results, which can readily be applied for Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) split window datasets. Because 2D-THR was trained using northern summer 2010 data for Japan and its surrounding area, it is typically suitable only for summer. Comparison of snapshot cloud type distributions showed that 2D-THR images and the corresponding night-time microphysical colour composite images as well as 2D-THR images and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) cloud type images are in good agreement. A time series inter-comparison of the hourly 2D-THR cloud classification results with the JMA cloud type classification data product was performed by calculating spatial correlation of cloud percentage for 1 degrees x 1 degrees grid cells. For cumulonimbus, high-level, middle-level and low-level clouds over tropical and subtropical areas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean region, the spatial correlation between 2D-THR and JMA is moderate. Thus, 2D-THR cloud classification algorithm can be applied in both regions.This paper reviews the values and benefits of geodiversity and geoconservation in the context of the Strategic Objectives and National Outcomes in the Scottish Government's National Performance Framework, particularly in relation to: economic development; climate change adaptation; biodiversity; science and education; and recreation, health and cultural inspiration. A key challenge is to improve the integration of geodiversity in environmental policy and its implementation in order to deliver more holistic and sustainable environmental management and wider public benefits. This requires greater awareness and recognition of the key benefits and ecosystem services that geodiversity provides for society. With an overall objective of promoting integration of geodiversity into relevant policies and decision frameworks, we advocate a more strategic, ecosystem-based approach to address: the future-proofing of ecosystem services, particularly in a context of climate change and rising sea-levels; conservation and sustainable management of geodiversity both in designated sites and in the wider countryside; raising awareness of the value of geodiversity and its contribution to ecosystem services; and improving understanding of geodiversity and key knowledge gaps. Such an approach is adopted in the Scotland's Geodiversity Charter.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to build a bridge between climate change adaptation and spatial planning and design. It aims to develop a spatial planning framework in which the properties of climate adaptation and spatial planning are unified. Design/methodology/approach - Adaptive and dynamical approaches in spatial planning literature are studied and climate adaptation properties are defined in a way they can be used in a spatial planning framework. The climate adaptation properties and spatial planning features are aggregated in coherent groups and used to construct the spatial planning framework, which subsequently has been tested to design a climate adaptive region. Findings - The paper concludes that the majority of spatial planning methods do not include adaptive or dynamic strategies derived from complex adaptive systems theory, such as adaptive capacity or vulnerability. If these complex adaptive systems properties are spatially defined and aggregated in a coherent set of spatial groups, they can form a spatial planning framework for climate adaptation. Each of these groups has a specific time dimension and can be linked to a specific spatial planning "layer". The set of (five) layers form the spatial planning framework, which can be used as a methodology to design a climate adaptive region. Originality/value - Previous research did not connect the complex issue of climate change with spatial planning. Many frameworks are developed in climate change research but are generally not aiming to meet the needs of spatial planning. This article forms the first attempt to develop a spatial planning framework, in which non-linear and dynamical processes, such as climate adaptation, is included.In this study, we review the literature on climate change adaptation measures in the transport sector. Many of the measures proposed are rather conceptual and far from concrete, probably due to the fact that climate change effects on transport are either unknown or highly uncertain. Given the limited information on the potential magnitude of climate damages and the various uncertainties involved, postponement of adaptation investments may well be the most sensible strategy at the moment, especially when investments are substantial and irreversible. Furthermore, monitoring of relevant climatic changes and ongoing research into climate change effects are important elements of a pro-active adaptation strategy. Irreversible decisions, such as the ones on spatial organization, likely require a more active strategy, e. g. in the form of making spatial reservations. We further discuss the interdependency between optimal mitigation and adaptation, an issue that is often overlooked in the literature. Finally, most operators and governmental bodies are not used to dealing with risk and uncertainty, and generally base their decisions on single risk values only, likely leading to under- or overinvestment. We discuss several relevant topics in this area and highlight methods that can be used to better deal with these issues.Purpose - Adapting local areas to climate change is a wicked challenge for local administrations. A participatory research is applied to explore how local experience shared by local experts can inform decision and adaptation planning by taking into account local area characteristics and their interrelationships. Methodology/approach - We turned to local actors, who live or work in the city and who can be seen as urban experts. Their experiential knowledge has given us a better understanding of the characteristics of their communities. These experts are likely to possess a representation that reflects the local territorial sensitivities, which can help us determine how these characteristics might be impacted by climate change. Findings - A participatory approach bears many benefits such as mobilizing local stakeholders to find collective solutions. It also allows us to focus on common practices in the urban context, which are likely to be altered by changes in mean temperatures, precipitations, etc. It offers the additional benefit of putting into perspective the relations between a variety of urban issues. Research limitations - A participatory approach means relying on subjective assessments of the possible effects of climate change, which could challenge the relevance of perceived risks and the scope and types of actions taken. Originality/value of paper - The number of the available adaptation planning processes involving community stakeholders and assessments of these processes is very limited. A participatory process such as the cross-sectoral initiative organized in Quebec City can have significant repercussions on local engagement in climate change adaptation. This provides evidence of the potential of deliberation or interaction of territorial actors to improve their understanding of the issues and their adaptive capacity. On a methodological level, the participatory process in itself and the steps to organize it offered a planning frame that can be reproduced.Purpose - This work offers an investigation of the planning and implementation of climate-adaptation and vulnerability-reduction strategies in coastal mega-cities of the Global South, utilizing Kolkata, India, as a case study. This research is designed to identify factors that aid the implementation of climate-centered action in resource-constrained environments of developing countries and provide a set of policy guidelines reflecting best practices. Methodology/approach - This work draws principally upon analysis of semistructured field interviews conducted in Kolkata, India, during December 2010 and January 2011. The findings are informed by additional data sources as well, including field observations, informal dialogues and meetings, and a review of secondary literature. Findings - This work identifies several key success factors, including organizational restructuring, resource redistribution, technological innovation, use of external consultants, coupling of climate and development projects, and integration of climate approaches into infrastructure projects. Research limitations - This research draws upon Kolkata as a case study; thus the work's broader applicability and utility depend on the similarities between the situation in Kolkata and that of other urban areas. As a local study, this work may also offer fewer insights for regional and national policy. Originality and value - This work fills a timely, unmet need for a greater understanding of climate-adaptation action in the context of cities of the developing world. The extensive use of personal interviews provides unique insights into the minds of planning officials and professionals and draws upon their practical experience to draw lessons for a wide range of similar environments.Purpose - Many cities are located in coastal areas and many of them are identified as prone to climate change impacts, especially sea level rise and floods. Master plans of cities can feature responses to these challenges, as in the case of Jakarta's master plan 2010-2030. However, as this chapter will argue, the top-down nature of planning would likely produce, reproduce, or reaffirm unjust urban geographies in the name of climate change adaptation. North Jakarta and its coastal area, which were prone to climate change risks, has been home for more than 40,000 poor households, most of which live in houses less than 50 m(2) in informal settlements with lack of basic needs infrastructures. This chapter addresses the question, "How are poor communities in the north coast of Jakarta affected by extreme weather events, and how are their everyday experiences addressed in master plan Jakarta 2010-2030?" Methodology/approach - Analysis is based on community profiles, census information, and a workshop with representatives of these communities. This chapter will also analyze relevant parts of Jakarta's 2010-2030 master plan. The discussion covers the following: (1) the making of place-based communities of the urban poor in the north coast of Jakarta compared to the master plan, and (2) the impact of climate change on the urban poor's livelihoods in the north coast. Findings - The current master plan 2010-2030 features plans to mitigate climate change and environmental risks for the coastal area, especially sea level rise, land subsidence, and pollution. The study reveals that North Jakarta communities were unaware of what the city planners have drafted, but most of them realized climate challenges based on their everyday experience. They aspired to be involved in the planning process, but their informal status hampered their opportunity to be heard. Originality/value of chapter - Rather than looking at how Jakarta as a city is affected by climate change, this chapter focuses on specific communities in North Jakarta that are prone to climate change-induced risks. Climate change impacts are spatially unequal, and even in the same region that theoretically bears the same risks, the impact distribution of climate change can be unequal for different social groups. The chapter also questions the ability of urban planning to respond to these challenges when planning practice itself has not yet taken into account citizens' social awareness and participation meaningfully.Urban flood risk is increasing as a consequence of climate change and growing impervious surfaces. Increasing complexity of the urban context, gradual loss of tacit knowledge and decreasing social awareness are at the same time leading to inadequate choices with respect to urban flood risk management (UFRM). The European Flood Risk Directive emphasises the need for non-structural measures aimed at urban resilience and social preparedness. The Three Points Approach (3PA) provides a structure facilitating the decision making processes dealing with UFRM. It helps to accept the complexity of the urban context and promotes transdisciplinarity and multifunctionality. The 3PA introduces three domains wherein water professionals may act and where aspects valued by different stakeholders come into play: (1) technical optimisation, dealing with standards and guidelines for urban drainage systems; (2) spatial planning, making the urban area more resilient to future changing conditions; and (3) day-to-day values, enhancing awareness, acceptance and participation among stakeholders. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in The Netherlands and Denmark, we describe the complexity of decision making in practical UFRM and explain how the 3PA can be used when organising participatory processes. We introduce a theoretical framework characterising the large range of aspects involved in decision making related to UFRM and evaluate the usefulness of the 3PA in dealing with it. We conclude that the 3PA offers water managers and operators an efficient communication tool and thinking system, which helps to reduce complexity to a level suitable when organising strategy plans for UFRM and urban adaptation to climate change.This paper presents a model of Andean glacier hydrology which can be used to assess the water management implications of possible future glacier retreat. The approach taken uses the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) system and integrates both hydrologic processes and representations of the operations of built infrastructure. The model is applied in the Rio Santa watershed in Peru to illustrate how alternative water management strategies can be simulated. The WEAP platform built for this study has been used to engage with local stakeholders for water management.To achieve a successful and sustainable adaptation to climate change we need to transform the way we think about change. Much water management research has focused on technical innovation with a range of new solutions developed to achieve a 'more sustainable and integrated urban water management cycle'. But Danish municipalities and utility companies are struggling to bring such solutions into practice. 'Green infrastructure', for example, requires the consideration of a larger range of aspects related to the urban context than the traditional urban water system optimization. There is the need for standardized methods and guidelines to organize transdisciplinary processes where different types of knowledge and perspectives are taken into account. On the basis of the macro-meso-micro pattern inspired by complexity science and transition theory, we developed a conceptual framework to organize processes addressing the complexity characterizing urban water management in the context of climate change. In this paper the framework is used to organize a research process aiming at understanding and unfolding urban dynamics for sustainable transition. The final goal is to enable local authorities and utilities to create the basis for managing and catalysing the technical and organizational innovation necessary for a sustainable transition towards climate change adaptation in urban areas.Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and intensity of weather-related hazards such as flooding, heavy rainfall and drought as well as coastal hazards such as coastal inundation and erosion. Many of New Zealand's urban areas, due to their location near the coast and/or on major rivers and their reliance on ageing infrastructure, are particularly vulnerable to these natural hazards and therefore to the likely impacts of climate change. It is therefore vital that local and regional government, upon whom the task of protecting urban communities from such hazards primarily falls, are better able to understand and evaluate these potential future hazards, the associated risks to infrastructure and buildings, and the options available to maintain a sufficient level of protection and service. This paper describes a new suite of guidance and decision tools that have been designed to enhance the understanding of the potential impacts of climate change in urban environments in New Zealand. A web-based Toolbox is presented, which has been produced to package the tools in a logical risk assessment-based structure. We also present a decision-making framework for climate change adaptation in urban environments which steps users through a staged process of assessing priorities, identifying high risk areas, selecting risk-reduction options, and establishing a preferred solution. The paper is the first of three papers published in this special issue. The second and third papers demonstrate the use of some of the tools described in the Toolbox. Paper 2 steps through an analysis of changes to future rainfall and sea levels and the effect on flood peaks and inundation. It also demonstrates a hazards risk model, Riskscape, which can estimate the impact of flooding on buildings and infrastructure (e.g. in terms of repair costs etc.). Paper 3 then looks at methods to narrow down and evaluate adaptation options to reduce the effect of flooding. Both papers use the town of Westport as a case study example.This paper presents a simplified or rapid process for evaluating adaptation responses to projected climate change impacts as part of community planning, using flooding scenarios in Westport as a case study. The paper draws upon many of the tools found in "Impacts of Climate Change on Urban Infrastructure and the Built Environment Toolbox", and builds on the results presented in the second paper of this special issue. A key finding from the flood adaptation options case study for Westport was a demonstration of the process of an initial options assessment. This was in the context of constraints on resources and information, which is likely to be starting point for many climate change adaptation processes. For Westport, a preferred adaptation option was developed from a list of four options by varying the climate change parameters and running sensitivity tests. This was achieved using a rapid benefit-cost ratio approach with the proviso that the results provide a strategic direction on where more detailed planning and investigation would be beneficial. The Westport case study showed that more stopbanks is the best option for flood protection for further study. In some circumstances, raising houses above the flood level is also an option deserving further investigation. In this context a long term plan to renew/rebuild structures at higher foundation levels could progressively reduce flood risks. On the other hand, options requiring extensive earthworks to widen the river and provide extra overflow capacity were shown to be poor options, even under a range of inputs conditions, and could be removed from further consideration. In this paper we present an estimate of the economic value of carbon sequestration in olive grove soils derived from the implementation of different agricultural management systems. Carbon sequestration is considered jointly with other environmental co-benefits, such as enhanced erosion prevention and increased biodiversity. The estimates have been obtained using choice experiments and show that there is a significant demand from society for these environmental services. From a policy perspective, an agri-environmental scheme that delivers the highest level of each environmental service would be valued by society at 121 Euros per hectare. If we focus on carbon sequestration, each ton of CO2 would be valued at 17 Euros. These results show that there is scope to include agricultural soil carbon sequestration in climate change mitigation strategies and to provide guidance for setting payments for agri-environmental schemes promoting soil management changes. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In June 2012, Brazil hosted Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) marking the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit. The Rio+20 outcome document entitled The future we want provides general guidance to shape sustainable development policies, but fell short of providing legally binding agreements or pragmatic goals. Negotiators agreed to develop a process for the establishment of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), building upon the Millennium Development Goals, and setting the foundation for the post-2015 UN development agenda. Our objective is to argue that discussions beyond Rio+20 and toward the adoption of SDGs offer a critical opportunity to re-assess the major challenges for global health and sustainable development. There is an urgent need to translate the general aspirations put forth by Rio+20 into concrete health outcomes and greater health equity. The way toward the post-2015 SDGs will likely be more effective if it highlights the full gamut of linkages between ecosystem processes, anthropogenic environmental changes (climate change, biodiversity loss, and land use), socio-economic changes, and global health. Negotiations beyond Rio+20 should strongly acknowledge the global health benefits of biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, which reduce diseases of poverty and protect the health of the most vulnerable. We argue that health and ecosystems are inextricably linked to all development sectors and that health should remain a critical priority for the upcoming SDGs in the context of global environmental change.C Boisvenue*(1), Y Bergeron(2), P Bernier(3) & C Peng(4) Background: Forests have become a focal point of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and of tradable credit systems, due to their carbon storage potential. But are the objectives evolving from climate-responsible stewardship and environmental certification conflicting? Results: We present modeled evidence showing that ecosystem management and minimizing carbon emissions are not mutually exclusive in boreal forests. Conclusion: Management decisions have substantial implications for forest carbon maintenance, but carbon sequestered outside the system or emission savings from product substitution are also important. A careful accounting will be necessary to properly evaluate ecosystem services trade-offs for forest management. Of further concern is the projected reduction in fire cycle lengths potentially reducing the carbon sequestered in the boreal landscape.Adrian Muller* Agriculture contributes to climate change and at the same time has a huge climate change mitigation potential - this lies mainly in increased soil carbon sequestration. This article discusses the mitigation potential of soil carbon sequestration, the underlying processes and main challenges for its utilization. There are difficulties of reliable quantification, aspects of leakage and system boundaries. Utilization of this mitigation potential is currently mainly via offset mechanisms. Due to the named challenges, offset mechanisms are not adequate for this and more aggregate approaches should be employed.In recent years, China has made great efforts in energy saving and carbon emission reduction by pushing forward domestic sustainable development along with global climate change mitigation. The efforts have paid off with a dramatic decrease in carbon intensity. Nevertheless, China is still confronted with tough challenges in emission control due to the fast pace of industrialization, large total historical emission and high growth rate of emissions. Therefore, China should give priority to energy saving by improving energy efficiency and sectoral structure adjustment and upgrade, and develop sustainable and renewable energy to optimize energy mix and its carbon content. China should continue to regard significant reduction of energy intensity and carbon intensity as the main objective in the near future, strive to achieve peak emissions around 2030, and realize a relatively sharp emissions reduction by 2050 in order to address climate change to meet the goal of making the warming less than 2 degrees. During the 12th Five Year Plan (FYP), China will further strengthen measures to control the amount of energy consumption, establish a statistics, accounting and evaluation system of carbon emissions, and promote a market-based carbon emissions trading mechanism to facilitate the low-carbon transformation of China's economy. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Commitment to increase public awareness of climate change mitigation has risen substantially and so has the appreciation of the impact that comes from voluntary behaviour change. We aimed to test whether a process could be designed that encouraged individuals - from within their existing social networks - to facilitate energy reduction discussions that ultimately changed the way they consumed energy. Our "Energymark" process was grounded in the idea that change is facilitated by several supporting factors including the provision of tailored information, social support, encouragement to set goals, and access to feedback. In this paper we report on the first trial with members of the Australian public. By the end of the trial an average emissions reduction of 20% was reported using a pre- and post-trial carbon calculator incorporating the energy used at home, waste, spending on products and services, beef consumption, and transport. While many identified as climate change aware, and had the socio-economic capacity to make changes, we found that participants of widely varying demographics and dispositions responded to program features, achieving equivalent emissions reductions. This bodes well for the program's effectiveness and warrants further testing of the impact of voluntary action with social processes such as Energymark. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In 2010, Asia accounted for 60% of global population, 39% of Gross World Product, 44% of global energy consumption and nearly half of the world's energy system CO2 emissions. Thus, Asia is an important region to consider in any discussion of climate change or climate change mitigation. This paper explores the role of Asia in mitigating climate change, by comparing the results of 23 energy-economy and integrated assessment models. We focus our analysis on seven key areas: base year data, future energy use and emissions absent climate policy, the effect of urban and rural development on future energy use and emissions, the role of technology in emissions mitigation, regional emissions mitigation, and national climate policies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper explores the variation in Asian energy systems in the energy-economic and integrated assessment models participating in the Asian Modeling Exercise (AME). Consistent with previous studies, there is substantial variation in energy system configurations across the AME scenarios, a reflection of the inherent uncertainty in how countries might undertake climate mitigation and associated energy system decisions. The paper also explores the degree to which scenarios from individual models retain regional differences in energy system configurations over time. The scenarios are mixed in this regard. Some models tend to converge toward common energy systems that focus on the utilization of a common set of options across regions, while others retain strong differences among regions. A review of modeling approaches indicates that the participating models are constructed to represent many, but not all, of the real-world forces leading to regional variation. The models do not have the capability to represent some of the most important social and political factors that influence energy technology decision making, raising important questions about how decision makers should interpret regional variations across models, particularly over the medium to long term. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Energy consumption in residential, commercial and transport sectors have been growing rapidly in the non-OECD Asian countries over the last decades, and the trend is expected to continue over the coming decades as well. However, the per capita projections for energy demand in these particular sectors often seem to be very low compared to the OECD average until 2050, and it is clear that the scenario assessments of final energy demands in these sectors include large uncertainties. In this paper, a sensitivity analysis have been carried out to study the impact of higher rates of energy demand growths in the non-OECD Asia on global mitigation costs. The long term energy and emission scenarios for China, India and South-East Asia have been contributed as a part of Asian Modeling Exercise (AME). The scenarios presented have been modeled by using a global TIMES-VIT energy system model, which is based on the IEA-ETSAP TIMES energy system modeling framework and the global ETSAP-TIAM model. Our scenario results indicate that the impacts of accelerated energy demand in the non-OECD Asia has a relatively small impact on the global marginal costs of greenhouse gas abatement. However, with the accelerated demand projections, the average per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the OECD were decreased while China, India, and South-East Asia increased their per capita greenhouse gas emissions. This indicates that the costs of the greenhouse gas abatement would especially increase in the OECD region, if developing Asian countries increase their final energy consumption more rapidly than expected. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper explores the impacts of long-term technology and climate uncertainties on the optimal evolution of the World energy system. Stochastic programming with the TIAM-World model is used for a parametric analysis of hedging strategies, varying the probabilities associated to each of two contrasted technology outlooks. The parametric analysis constitutes an original supplement to the computation of hedging strategies by identifying technologies that are robust under a broad range of probabilities of the two technology outlooks. Natural gas appears to be one of the most appealing robust options in an uncertain technological context, especially in China, given its relatively low emissions and the low capital cost of associated technologies. Natural gas and some other options are in fact considered as "super-hedging" actions, penetrating more in the hedging solution than in any of the deterministic scenarios. Nuclear power and CCS use are less robust: they depend much more on either the level of the climate target or the probabilities of the technology outlooks. The analysis also shows that technological uncertainty has a greater impact under milder climate targets than under more severe ones. Future research might consider a larger set of possible technology outlooks, as well as specific analyses focused on key characteristics of low-carbon technologies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.When carbon markets are fragmented and carbon prices vary across regions, concerns arise that acting countries may encounter competitiveness and welfare losses and changes in production may lead to carbon leakage. Border Carbon Adjustments (BCAs) have been proposed as a response measure to address these issues. However, more cooperative response policies, such as linking carbon markets, can also reduce the burden of emission reduction in acting countries and help level carbon prices. This paper analyses the effects of BCAs and both direct and indirect linking on welfare, competitiveness and carbon leakage within a global recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Results illustrate that an uneven carbon pricing can indeed lead to substantial competitiveness and welfare losses for acting countries as well as to carbon leakage. Of the instruments investigated in this paper, BCAs appear to be the best measure to preserve the competitiveness of acting countries as they shift part of the burden of emission reductions to non-acting countries. While BCAs are effective for acting countries, they cause severe welfare and competitiveness losses for non-acting countries. As a result, BCAs are less effective than linking in reducing global welfare losses, as linking tends to be beneficial for both acting and non-acting countries. The advantages of BCAs diminish as the carbon market is extended to more emission sources or to a wider international participation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.R&D industry is introduced into a CGE model (KEI-Linkages) as a means to mimic the endogenous technological progress in the Korean economy. We found that providing across-the-board subsidy on R&D expenditure may lead to an increase in the carbon intensity, as well as the real GDP for the Korean economy. However, when R&D subsidies are combined with a carbon tax, real GDP can grow without increasing CO2 emissions. Carbon tax on top of R&D subsidy represses the growth of carbon intensive industries compared to the case of stand-alone R&D subsidy policy. Furthermore, carbon intensive industries reduce carbon intensity by way of fuel mix change to cope with a higher carbon tax rate to meet the national CO2 reduction target. The final outcome impinges on the industry structure of the economy. Therefore, a careful study of the industry structure of the economy is warranted to maximize the effectiveness of climate change policy-mix. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We use the ReMIND-R model to analyze the role of Asia in the context of a global effort to mitigate climate change. We introduce a novel method of secondary energy based mitigation shares, which allows us to quantify the economic mitigation potential of technologies in different regions and final energy carriers. The 2005 share of Asia in global CO2 emissions amounts to 38%, and is projected to grow to 53% under business-as-usual until the end of the century. Asia also holds a large fraction of the global mitigation potential. A broad portfolio of technologies is deployed in the climate policy scenarios. We find that biomass in combination with CCS, other renewables, and end-use efficiency each make up a large fraction of the global mitigation potential, followed by nuclear and fossil CCS. We find considerable differences in decarbonization patterns across the final energy types electricity, heat and transport fuels. Regional differences in technology use are a function of differences in resource endowments, and structural differences in energy end use. Under climate policy, a substantial mitigation potential of non-biomass renewables emerges for China and other developing countries of Asia (OAS). Asia also accounts for the dominant share of the global mitigation potential of nuclear energy. In view of the substantial near term investments into new energy infrastructure in China and India, early adoption of climate policy prevents lock-in into carbon intensive infrastructure and thus leads to a much higher long-term mitigation potential. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Every possible technology is pursued in order to achieve strict radiative forcing targets. Nuclear energy and Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) are regarded as important mitigation options. However, harsh criticisms have been directed at Japanese nuclear energy policy after the Fukushima nuclear accident, and the Japanese government will be required to re-evaluate not only its energy policy, but also the GHG reduction target itself. Like nuclear energy, CCS might not be regarded as a suitable option for GHG mitigation because its long-term safety has not been revealed. In this paper we analyze the energy policy response to an absence of nuclear energy and CCS, especially focusing on Japan, China and India. We find that the appropriate energy strategies against the unproven technologies differ between regions due to the uneven pre-existing nuclear energy, CCS potential and renewable energy potential, and the resource endowments and the levels of economic development. We also find that the strict mitigation target can be achieved even if nuclear energy and CCS are not available. In such a case, however, significant enhancement of renewable energy is needed, as well as particular fossil fuel alternatives based on region-specific availabilities and costs. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change means that buildings must greatly reduce their energy consump-tion. It is however paradoxical that climate mitigation in Denmark has created negative energy and indoor climate problems in housing that may be made worse by climate change. A literature review has been carried out of housing schemes where climate mitigation was sought through reduced space heating demand, and it is shown that extensive problems with overheating exist. A theoretical study of regulative and design strategies for climate mitigation in new build housing has therefore been carried out, and it is shown that reducing space heating with high levels of thermal insulation and passive solar energy results in overheating and a growing demand for cooling. Climate change is expected to reduce space heating and increase cooling demand in housing. An analysis of new build housing using passive solar energy as a climate mitigation strategy has therefore been carried out in relation to future climate change scenarios. It is shown that severe indoor comfort problems can occur, questioning the relevance of passive solar energy as a climate mitigation strategy. In conclusion, a theoretical study of the interplay between climate adaptation and mitigation strategies is carried out, with a cross-disciplinary focus on users, passive design and active technologies. It is shown that the cumulative use of these strategies can create an adaptation buffer, thus eliminating problems with overheating and reducing energy consumption. New build housing should therefore be designed in relation to both current and future climate scenarios to show that the climate mitigation strategies ensure climate adaptation.Buildings have a considerable impact on the environment being responsible for a substantial proportion of global energy consumption, thus contributing significantly to the anthropogenic CO2 emissions, which evidence suggests is the main cause of climate change. Mitigation and adaptation measures are required to tackle the challenges of climate change. Adaptive measures - structural and behavioural strategies - are the focus of this paper. Structural strategies include flexible and adaptive structural systems; while behavioural strategies cover the spatial, personal, and psychological control measures which may influence the design and operations of buildings. The study explores the adaptive thermal comfort of occupants and examines the design strategies for adapting buildings to climate change in the tropical context, with a view to determine the effectiveness of these strategies as observed in the case study. The study was conducted during the rainy and dry seasons in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria, located in a warm humid climate zone. The Institute of Venture Design student hostel was used as case-study to conduct the survey on a sample of 40 respondents by means of structured questionnaire. The respondents' thermal sensation and access to thermal controls were determined, and their thermal sensation and thermal adaptability in both seasons comparatively analyzed. Indoor environmental parameters including air temperature, mean radiant temperature, relative humidity and air velocity were also measured. The data were analyzed using relevant descriptive and inferential statistics. The study discussed the effectiveness of design strategies available for building adaptation in an era of climate change within the warm humid environment, concluding on the need for greater synergy between the techno-structural and socio-behavioural dimensions of building adaptation.The REDDplus mechanism currently negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has developed rapidly but not as expected. Treating deforestation as a climate mitigation issue, the negotiations have raised high expectations and triggered remarkable developments in the global forest sector and activities on all policy levels, based on the wide consensus among private and public actors that deforestation and climate change constitute urgent environmental problems that must be addressed simultaneously. Despite the stalemate of the UNFCCC process, the implementation of readiness and pilot activities began, and with it, the notion of the REDDplus debate changed. Concerns arose regarding the effectiveness and the integrity of REDDplus, in particular owing to the absence of clear modalities and funding. Such developments and the erratic course of the negotiations have revealed the shortcomings of the presumably simple approach. As the debate matured it recently shifted its focus to the complex reality of forest governance in developing countries.Interventions designed to reduce emissions of atmospheric heat-trapping gases from tropical forest degradation are more likely to succeed if based on previous experiences and if they are clearly linked to other on-going conservation and development initiatives. Links between forest management certification, climate change mitigation, and forest product legality assurance already being made on the ground by forest auditors should be recognized and enhanced. Similar synergies are also important at the international policy level, but we focus at the forest level and on the decisions of individual workers and the effectiveness of forest auditors. We stress how designs of linked conservation interventions should be based on theories of change that recognize the complexity of issues at stake across the hierarchy of actors and re-contextualize the processes so as to direct them towards emission-reductions and other desired outcomes. We posit the need to invest in building the capacity of both those responsible for and affected by forest loss and degradation for more efficient and accountable implementation of REDD+ and related conservation interventions.Climate change mitigation schemes, such as REDD and biodiversity conservation in tropical rainforests, necessitate remote sensing based forest monitoring capabilities with high spatial resolution and temporal coverage. Regular monitoring has to be capable of detecting rapid changes in forest extent, i.e. deforestation, and subtle changes to the forest cover caused by logging and/or fire, described as forest degradation. Particularly the early detection of illegal logging activities is important for the conservation of tropical forests. In the present study, a forest disturbance monitoring approach was developed and tested, which makes use of high resolution satellite imagery. A time series consisting of three images, acquired between May 2009 and June 2010, was analyzed covering a remote area of tropical peat swamp forest in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The forest area was assessed by an object-oriented classification. Logging activities and the impact of fire were detected by a pixel-based spectral mixture analysis. Forest, non-forest and logging trails could be differentiated with an overall classification accuracy of 91.5% (Kappa of 0.87). A high forest disturbance rate of 8.7% was found in the study area. Low impact logging could be detected reliably and the progress was tracked over time. The results show that the timely detection of forest disturbances is necessary because of the fast regrowth of vegetation. The study emphasises the importance of high resolution satellite imagery for tropical forest monitoring and for timely updating forest status assessments, which is important for the implementation of REDD.Improving the efficiency and performance of the UK residential sector is now necessary for meeting future energy and climate change targets. Building performance evaluation and certification (BPEC) tools are vital for estimating and recommending cost effective improvements to building energy efficiency and lowering overall emissions. In the UK, building performance is estimated using the standard assessment procedure (SAP) for new dwellings and Reduced SAP (RdSAP) for existing dwellings. Using a systems based approach we show there are many opportunities for improving the effectiveness of BPEC tools. In particular, if the building stock is going to meet future energy and climate change targets the system driving building energy efficiency will need to become more efficient. In order to achieve this goal, building performance standards across Europe are compared highlighting the most effective strategies where they are found. It is shown that the large variance between estimated and actual energy performance from dwellings in the UK may be preventing the adoption of bottom-up energy efficiency measures. We show that despite popular belief, SAP and RdSAP do not estimate building energy efficiency but instead attempt to estimate the cost-effective performance of a building and thus create perverse incentives that may lead to additional CO2 emissions. In this regard, the SAP standard confounds cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency and environmental performance giving an inadequate estimate of all three policy objectives. Important contributions for improving measurement, analysis, synthesis and certification of building performance characteristics are offered. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article is based on a keynote presentation given at the 18th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association in Recife, Brazil, February 2012. It considers new, and not so new, approaches and practical roles for the emerging field of human factors/ergonomics (HFE) in sustainable development (SD). The material for this article was largely drawn from the literature in the fields of human development, sustainability, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and social/environmental impact assessment. Identifying the role of HFE in SD is not a simple one and from the outset is complicated by the widely differing ideas in the sustainability literature about what exactly it is we are hoping to sustain. Is it individual companies, business models, cultures, or the carrying capacity of our planet? Or combinations of these? For the purposes of this article, certain assumptions are made, and various emerging opportunities and responsibilities associated with our changing world of work are introduced. First, there are new versions of traditional tasks for us, such as working with the people and companies in the renewable energy sectors. Beyond this, however, it is suggested that there are emerging roles for HFE professionals in transdisciplinary work where we might play our part, for example, in tackling the twinned issues of climate change and human development in areas of significant poverty. In particular we have the tools and capabilities to help define and measure what groups have reason to value, and wish to sustain. It is suggested, that to do this effectively, however, will require a philosophical shift, or perhaps just a philosophical restatement at a collective level, regarding who and what we ultimately serve.The global metals industry is faced with multifaceted challenges as it is required to deal with declining ore grades, meet more stringent environmental regulations and be more energy efficient, all while remaining cost competitive. Using a case study of the nickel industry, the objectives of this research are to explore how climate change policies would influence the current industry operation and to evaluate their potential to achieve pollution prevention co-benefits. A multi-criteria decision analysis model was used to simulate industrial decision making and policy scenarios. The results suggest that prices in the range of US $30-80 per tonne of carbon dioxide will likely promote efficiency improvements and energy recovery. However, they are not sufficient to drive innovations in processing methods or upstream pollution prevention. The co-benefits of climate change mitigation and pollution prevention cannot be readily realized under climate change policy alone. Increased coordination in policy making is necessary. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study will examine the state of local capacity building for local climate adaptation in Japan. Climate mitigation needs to be led by both global strategies and national mandates in an integrated way, but climate change impacts are manifested locally and adaptive capacity is determined by local conditions. The article first lays out the basic components of local capacity for decentralized policy making and assesses the current local capacity in view of Japan's climate policy. The bulk of data employed in the study is derived from existing up-to-date government databases. It found that only the largest municipalities as well as prefectures have governing capacities to develop a comprehensive approach to climate adaptation, while medium-sized municipalities have a potential to take a participatory approach to climate policy. It argues that some pioneering localities realize their potentials to take initiatives under political leadership but most localities act in a piecemeal fashion according to clear national-level guidance on climate change.Climate change poses serious threats to human health and well-being. It exacerbates existing health inequities, impacts on the social determinants of health and disproportionately affects vulnerable populations. In the Australian region these include remote Aboriginal communities, Pacific Island countries and people with low incomes. Given health promotions remit to protect and promote health, it should be well placed to respond to emerging climate-related health challenges. Yet, to date, there has been little evidence to demonstrate this. This paper draws on the findings of a qualitative study conducted in Victoria, Australia to highlight that; while there is clearly a role for health promotion in climate change mitigation and adaptation at the national and international levels, there is also a need for the engagement of health promoters at the community level. This raises several key issues for health promotion practice. To be better prepared to respond to climate change, health promotion practitioners first need to re-engage with the central tenets of the Ottawa Charter, namely the interconnectedness of humans and the natural environment and, secondly, the need to adopt ideas and frameworks from the sustainability field. The findings also open up a discussion for paradigmatic shifts in health promotion thinking and acting in the context of climate change.Land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities will play an important role in global climate change mitigation. Many carbon schemes require the delivery of both climate and rural development benefits by mitigation activities conducted in developing countries. Agroforestry is a LULUCF activity that is gaining attention because of its potential to deliver climate benefits as well as rural development benefits to smallholders. There is hope that agroforestry can deliver co-benefits for climate and development; however experience with early projects suggests co-benefits are difficult to achieve in practice. We review the literature on agroforestry, participatory rural development, tree-based carbon projects and co-benefit carbon projects to look at how recommended project characteristics align when trying to generate different types of benefits. We conclude that there is considerable tension inherent in designing co-benefit smallholder agroforestry projects. We suggest that designing projects to seek ancillary benefits rather than co-benefits may help to reduce this tension.The implementation of an international programme for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) can help to mitigate climate change and bring numerous benefits to environmental conservation. Information on land change modelling and carbon mapping can contribute to quantify future carbon emissions from deforestation. However limitations in data availability and technical capabilities may constitute an obstacle for countries interested in participating in the REDD programme. This paper evaluates the influence of quantity and allocation of mapped carbon stocks and expected deforestation on the prediction of carbon emissions from deforestation. The paper introduces the conceptual space where quantity and allocation are involved in predicting carbon emissions, and then uses the concepts to predict carbon emissions in the Brazilian Amazon, using previously published information about carbon mapping and deforestation modelling. Results showed that variation in quantity of carbon among carbon maps was the most influential component of uncertainty, followed by quantity of predicted deforestation. Spatial allocation of carbon within carbon maps was less influential than quantity of carbon in the maps. For most of the carbon maps, spatial allocation of deforestation had a minor but variable effect on the prediction of carbon emissions relative to the other components. The influence of spatial carbon allocation reaches its maximum when 50% of the initial forest area is deforested. The method can be applied to other case studies to evaluate the interacting effects of quantity and allocation of carbon with future deforestation on the prediction of carbon emissions from deforestation.Transformation of the south-western Australian landscape from deep-rooted woody vegetation systems to shallow-rooted annual cropping systems has resulted in the severe loss of biodiversity and this loss has been exacerbated by rising ground waters that have mobilised stored salts causing extensive dry land salinity. Since the original plant communities were mostly perennial and deep rooted, the model for sustainable agriculture and landscape water management invariably includes deep rooted trees. Commercial forestry is however only economical in higher rainfall (>700 mm yr(-1)) areas whereas much of the area where biodiversity is threatened has lower rainfall (300-700 mm yr(-1)). Agroforestry may provide the opportunity to develop new agricultural landscapes that interlace ecosystem services such as carbon mitigation via carbon sequestration and biofuels, biodiversity restoration, watershed management while maintaining food production. Active markets are developing for some of these ecosystem services, however a lack of predictive metrics and the regulatory environment are impeding the adoption of several ecosystem services. Nonetheless, a clear opportunity exists for four major issues - the maintenance of food and fibre production, salinisation, biodiversity decline and climate change mitigation - to be managed at a meaningful scale and a new, sustainable agricultural landscape to be developed. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Policy measures regarding adaptation to climate change include efforts to adjust socio-economic and ecologic systems. Colombia has undertaken various measures in terms of climate change mitigation and adaptation since becoming a party of the Kyoto protocol in 2001 and a party of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1995. The first national communication to the UNFCCC stated how Colombian agriculture will be severely impacted under different emission scenarios and time frames. The analyses in this document further support that climate change will severely threaten the socioeconomics of Colombian agriculture. We first query national data sources to characterize the agricultural sector. We then use 17 Global Circulation Model (GCM) outputs to quantify how Colombian agricultural production may be affected by climate change, and show the expected changes to years 2040-2069 ("2050") under the A2 scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES-A2) and the overall trends in both precipitation and temperature to 2100. We then evaluate expected changes within different regions and measure the proportion of area affected within each crop's distributional range. By 2050, climatic change in Colombia will likely impact 3.5 million people, 14 % of national GDP corresponding to agriculture, employment of 21 % of the population, agro-industries, supply chains, and food and nutritional security. If no adaptation measures are taken, 80 % of crops would be impacted in more than 60 % of their current areas of cultivation, with particularly severe impacts in high value perennial and exportable crops. Impacts also include soil degradation and organic matter losses in the Andes hillsides; likely flooding in the Caribbean and Pacific coasts; niche losses for coffee, fruit, cocoa, and bananas; changes in prevalence of pests and diseases; and increases in the vulnerabilities of non-technically developed smallholders. There is, however, still time to change the current levels of vulnerability if a multidisciplinary focus (i.e., agronomic, economic, and social) in vulnerable sectors is undertaken. Each sub-sector and the Government need to invest in: (1) data collection, (2) detailed, regionally-based impact assessments, (3) research and development, and (4) extension and technology transfer. Support to vulnerable smallholders should be given by the state in the form of agricultural insurance systems contextualized under the phenomenon of climate change. A national coordination scheme led by (but not restricted to) the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR) with the contributions of national and international institutions is needed to address agricultural adaptation.While previous research has documented marine fish and invertebrates shifting poleward in response to warming climates, less is known about the response of fisheries to these changes. By examining fisheries in the northeastern United States over the last four decades of warming temperatures, we show that northward shifts in species distributions were matched by corresponding northward shifts in fisheries. The proportion of warm-water species caught in most states also increased through time. Most importantly, however, fisheries shifted only 10-30 % as much as their target species, and evidence suggested that economic and regulatory constraints played important roles in creating these lags. These lags may lead to overfishing and population declines if not accounted for in fisheries management and climate adaptation. In coupled natural-human systems such as fisheries, human actions play important roles in determining the sustainability of the system and, therefore, future conservation and climate mitigation planning will need to consider not only biophysical changes, but also human responses to these changes and the feedbacks that these responses have on ecosystems.The deficit-model of science communication assumes increased communication about science issues will move public opinion toward the scientific consensus. However, in the case of climate change, public polarization about the issue has increased in recent years, not diminished. In this study, we draw from theories of motivated reasoning, social identity, and persuasion to examine how science-based messages may increase public polarization on controversial science issues such as climate change. Exposing 240 adults to simulated news stories about possible climate change health impacts on different groups, we found the influence of identification with potential victims was contingent on participants' political partisanship. This partisanship increased the degree of political polarization on support for climate mitigation policies and resulted in a boomerang effect among Republican participants. Implications for understanding the role of motivated reasoning within the context of science communication are discussed.Widespread land use changes, and ensuing effects on ecosystem services, are expected from expanding bioenergy production. Although most U. S. production of ethanol is from corn, it is envisaged that future ethanol production will also draw from cellulosic sources such as perennial grasses. In selecting optimal bioenergy crops, there is debate as to whether it is preferable from an environmental standpoint to cultivate bioenergy crops with high ecosystem services (a "land-sharing" strategy) or to grow crops with lower ecosystem services but higher yield, thereby requiring less land to meet bioenergy demand (a "land-sparing" strategy). Here, we develop a simple model to address this question. Assuming that bioenergy crops are competing with uncultivated land, our model calculates land requirements to meet a given bioenergy demand intensity based upon the yields of bioenergy crops. The model combines fractional land cover of each ecosystem type with its associated ecosystem services to determine whether land-sharing or land-sparing strategies maximize ecosystem services at the landscape level. We apply this model to a case in which climate protection through GHG regulation-an ecosystem's greenhouse gas value (GHGV)-is the ecosystem service of interest. Our results show that the relative advantages of land sparing and land sharing depend upon the type of ecosystem displaced by the bioenergy crop; as the GHGV of the unfarmed land increases, the preferable strategy shifts from land sharing to land sparing. Although it may be preferable to replace ecologically degraded land with high-GHGV, lower yielding bioenergy crops, average landscape GHGV will most often be maximized through high-yielding bioenergy crops that leave more land for uncultivated, high-GHGV ecosystems. Although our case study focuses on GHGV, the same principles will be applicable to any ecosystem service whose value does not depend upon the spatial configuration of the landscape. Whenever bioenergy crops have substantially lower ecosystem services than the ecosystems with which they are competing for land, the most effective strategy for meeting bioenergy demand while maximizing ecosystem services on a landscape level is one of land sparing: focusing simultaneously on maximizing the yield of bioenergy crops while preserving or restoring natural ecosystems.Ecosystem services science has developed at a fast rate in Latin America, a region characterized by a high biological and cultural diversity, strong emphasis in foreign investment, and high socioeconomic inequities. Here we conducted the following analyses at the regional and national scales: (1) how and when did the study of ecosystem services arise in each country?, (2) what is our present understanding of ecosystem service supply, delivery to societies, and social and economic values?, (3) what is the state of the art in integrating tradeoffs among services and in using interdisciplinary perspectives?, and (4) how has ecosystem service research been connected to policy design or management for sustainability? A large literature review ( > 1000 references) showed that in Latin America ES supply and links to policy have been the most frequently assessed. Overall, emphasis has been placed on a few services, namely carbon and water. Payments for ecosystem services have received considerable attention in the region, though with strong differences across nations and with important limitations in their application. The future of the ecosystem service paradigm in Latin America will largely depend on its capacity to demonstrate effectiveness in meeting both conservation and development goals. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forest ecosystems are the most important terrestrial carbon (C) storage globally, and presently mitigate anthropogenic climate change by acting as a large and persistent sink for atmospheric CO2. Yet, forest C density varies greatly in space, both globally and at stand and landscape levels. Understanding the multi-scale drivers of this variation is a prerequisite for robust and effective climate change mitigation in ecosystem management. Here, we used airborne light detection and ranging (Lidar) and a novel high-resolution simulation model of landscape dynamics (iLand) to identify the drivers of variation in C density for an old-growth forest landscape in Oregon, USA. With total ecosystem C in excess of 1 Gt ha(-1) these ecosystems are among the most C-rich globally. Our findings revealed considerable spatial variability in stand-level C density across the landscape. Notwithstanding the distinct environmental gradients in our mountainous study area only 55.3% of this variation was explained by environmental drivers, with radiation and soil physical properties having a stronger influence than temperature and precipitation. The remaining variation in C stocks was largely attributable to emerging properties of stand dynamics (that is, stand structure and composition). Not only were density- and size-related indicators positively associated with C stocks but also diversity in composition and structure, documenting a close link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We conclude that the complexity of old-growth forests contributes to their sustained high C levels, a finding that is relevant to managing forests for climate change mitigation.We use the MESSAGE model to examine multiple dimensions of sustainable development for three Asian regions in a set of scenarios developed for the Asian Modelling Exercise. Using climate change mitigation as a starting point for the analysis, we focus on the interaction of climate and energy with technology choice, energy security, energy access, and air pollution, which often have higher policy priority than climate change. Stringent climate policies drive the future energy supply in Asia from being dominated by coal and oil to a more diversified system based mostly on natural gas, coal with CCS, nuclear and renewable energy. The increase in diversity helps to improve the energy security of individual countries and regions. Combining air pollution control policies and universal energy access policies with climate policy can further help to reduce both outdoor and indoor air pollution related health impacts. Investments into the energy system must double by 2030 to achieve stringent climate goals, but are largely offset by lower costs for O&M and air pollution abatement. Strong focus on end-use efficiency also helps lowering overall total costs and allows for limiting or excluding supply side technologies from the mitigation portfolio. Costs of additional energy access policies and measures are a small fraction of total energy system costs. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Agriculture emits more than 11 per cent of the greenhouse gases (GHG) from the EU-27. In this article we point out the shortcomings of the European Commissions Reform Proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) towards effective climate change mitigation and present some specifications to be included in the main text or the implementing regulations to support European agriculture in its transition towards climate-friendly production. The Proposals set the aspiration to respond to climate change but fail to provide incentives to make a quantifiable step. Yet the CAP Reform Proposals can still set enabling framework conditions for mitigation, define binding targets and produce verifiable mitigation results. This article proposes inter alia: (1) to evaluate the GHG impacts of CAP measures and stop negative incentives e.g. support of intensive land use on carbon-rich soils; (2) fostering a learning process by making GHG mitigation measures with verifiable results a mandatory part of the 2nd Pillar; (3) implementing measures along the food processing chain via improved resource efficiency, investments, innovation and knowledge transfer, and not just through area-based measures; and (4) providing a separate CAP budget for mitigating CO2 emissions from agricultural soils, which are outside the EU Climate and Energy Package.Fish farming has great potential for mitigating the decreasing landings from capture fisheries arising from climate change, pollution, over-exploitation and use of obnoxious fishing methods. There is strong evidence that the fisheries sub-sector of agriculture is experiencing major challenges and some of these challenges are directly linked to climate change. Therefore, the present study attempts to investigate fish farmers' perception of climate change impact on fish production in Delta State. Respondents in the area perceived climate change factors to include variability of temperature, air humidity and total rainfall. The study further revealed that respondents perceived low yield from fish culture to be a consequence of the negative impact of climate change. This study concluded that there's a need for the active involvement of stakeholders in developing policies relating to climate change mitigation and beneficial response strategies to global warming.Livestock's contribution to climate change is now an established fact and closeness of livestock to human beings in urban areas portends many health and environmental implications. The study ascertained farmer's perception of health and environmental hazards posed by livestock keeping in Enugu Urban, Nigeria and its implication for climate change mitigation. Seventy five heads of households were freely characterized and data were obtained through interview. Data were analyzed using percentage and mean. Majority of the farmers kept improved chicken under intensive system. All the respondents were aware of health and environmental implications of livestock keeping in urban areas, though only few (4.0%) indicated being aware that livestock could cause climate change. Other environmental issues identified by them included: destruction of crops (89.3%) filth in urban areas (89.3%); noise making (88.0%). The health issues included spreading of diseases (50.7%); causing of accidents (46.7%); bad smell (86.7%). The control measures as perceived by the respondents included proper disposal of waste (M=1.79), seeking veterinary services (M=1.85), cleaning shed regularly (M=1.80) and provision of extension services (M=1.85). It was recommended that urban agriculture should be integrated into urban health and environmental policies. Extension services should also raise awareness among urban livestock keepers of the impact of livestock on climate change and offer them useful advice on appropriate mitigation measures.A management unit (MU) of a forest concession holder implementing the sustainable forest management (SFM) principles, could be involved in reducing Emmission from Reforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and carbon trading project. The fact the strategic in implementing the REDD+ and carbon trading in MU level is still lack of pilot project and methodology. Therefore, some scenarios must be developed and tested to find out the best potential of carbon credit in MU level. The objectives of the research were: to calculate carbon credit in some SFM scenarios, to analyze of carbon trading project feasibility, and to determine carbon stock recovery period of logged over area (LOA). The result revealed that carbon stock and carbon credit of LOA was affected by timber cutting intensity. The 6th scenario with lowest annual allowable cutting (AAC) obtained greater carbon credit and profit coming from timber harvesting income and carbon trading. In other hand, this scenario has shortest duration of carbon stock recovery period (27 years) and shorter than its cutting cycle. In this case, the MU has to recalculate and to decrease its AAC to have highest benefits from carbon trading in the same cutting cycle period. It will provide double benefits from carbon trading, those are contribution in achieving the SFM purposes (production, ecology, social) and climate change mitigation.The ongoing biodiversity crisis is pushing ecologists and conservation biologists to develop models to foretell the effects of human-induced transformation of natural resources on the distribution of species, although ecology and biogeography still lacks a paradigmatic body of theory to fully understand the drivers of biodiversity patterns. Two decades of research on ecological niche models and species distributions have been characterized by technical development and discussions on a plethora of methods or algorithms to infer and predict species distributions. Here we suggest a metaphorical classification scheme for some of the most popular models based on their complexity, interpretability and suitability for specific applications in ecology and conservation biology. Our purpose is not to compare methods by their capacity to accurately predict the observed distribution of species, nor to criticize how they are commonly used in applied studies. Instead, we believe that a simple classification scheme can potentially highlight how some methods are more suited for specific applications in ecology and conservation biology. Envelope and distance-based models are grouped into the "fish bowl" category, for their transparency and simplicity. Statistical models are classified as "turbine" models, because of their hidden complexity and general applicability. Finally, machine-learning models are classified as "vault" models, for their high complexity and lack of interpretability of fit parameters. We conclude that the diversity of species distribution models used today is expected for a young research field, but the choice of modeling strategy depends on the purpose of the study. We provide some general guidelines for choosing models for studies of conservation planning and climate change mitigation and suggest models of intermediate complexity for conservation planning and forecast of climate change effects on biodiversity as they provide a good balance between interpretability, predictive power and robustness to model over-fit.The sugarcane industry in many parts of the world produces food and energy (stationary and fuel). The industry is well positioned to offer greenhouse gas abatement and climate change mitigation. The thermal conversion, via a slow pyrolysis process, of cane residues such as green harvest trash and bagasse can produce thermal or electrical energy as well as biochar. Studies have shown that a commercial slow pyrolysis unit could generate over 1 MWhr of electricity from every two tonnes of trash (dry basis), with a biochar recover of between 31.3-33.6 %. Due to its highly stable nature, biochar has recently been suggested as a sequestration pathway to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. One tonne of bagasse derived biochar would sequester in the order of 2.3 tonnes of CO2 equivalents. In addition to C sequestration, biochar has other significant benefits (when used as a soil amendment) such as offering improved soil quality, higher CEC and nutrient availability, and improved soil physical characteristics. This work demonstrates that biochar application can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from cane soils, such as nitrous oxide. Biochars derived from cane trash and bagasse were applied in incubation studies to soils from the Burdekin region in Australia. We found declines in emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O), from urea-fertilised soil when bagasse biochar was applied at a rate of 10 t/ha. The agronomic performance of biochar is being assessed in a 15 plot trial conducted on a sugar cane property in the Tweed Valley, NSW. Biochars (from non-sugarcane sources) were tested using relevant controls. Each plot consists of 3 rows of cane and was 30 m in length to enable commercial-scale harvesting. Although no significant effects in yield have been recorded this trial is expected to continue for several more seasons allowing additional data on yield effects to be evaluated. Our work has demonstrated that implementing slow pyrolysis and biochar utilisation in the sugarcane industry has potential to provide (1) renewable energy (2) income from waste (3) climate mitigation through stabilisation of carbon and (4) climate mitigation through reduced emission of N2O from soil. Further research is required to demonstrate agronomic benefits of sugarcane biochars and to develop an understanding of how they may address soil constraints in these systems.Climate change is happening and already manifested in a range of ways, including: global warming, rising sea levels, floods, heat-waves, stronger and more frequent storms, and droughts. One of the major factors in climate change is anthropogenic fossil fuel combustion for energy generation and it is increasing throughout the world. Fossil fuel burning results in carbon emissions. On the basis of the most recent evidence, this article presents some new insights into the carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology, which can be an environmentally sustainable way to control carbon emissions. The article also focuses on various relevant facts and figures from the literature on CCS technology and explores various challenges that the technology may face in future. (C) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2012Enhanced carbon sequestration is one means to mitigate climate change. Rangelands are arid and semi-arid lands, typified by relatively low and variable levels of net primary productivity, where carbon sequestration might be increased via alterations in land management. Rangelands are vast in size and dominate the land area in the western US and worldwide. It has been estimated that privately owned rangelands in the US could sequester an additional 60 million tons of carbon annually, roughly equal to five percent of the US annual CO2 emissions. Ranchers are the target population that could implement changes in rangeland management to promote carbon sequestration, but little is known about how they might receive such programs. Therefore, for Utah, we conducted a combined mail and telephone survey of 495 randomly selected ranchers to assess their knowledge of and attitude toward carbon sequestration, possible benefits of carbon sequestration as perceived by ranchers, and factors influencing their likelihood of participating in carbon sequestration programs. Overall, despite that 70 percent of respondents had little or no self-reported knowledge about carbon sequestration, 63 percent had negative views about it. Ranchers reporting the most knowledge also tended to have the most negative attitudes. The least important benefit that might accrue to ranchers from carbon sequestration was seen as climate change mitigation, while the most important benefit was improved land stewardship. Only four percent of respondents indicated an unconditional willingness to participate in carbon sequestration programs, but 71 percent could be interested depending on new information received. Before carbon sequestration programs are developed for rangelands, further research is needed to clarify why more knowledge of carbon sequestration can lead to greater skepticism of relevant programs. We respect this finding, as it may be based on well-founded rancher concerns such as technical or administrative efficacy. If such concerns can be overcome, extension efforts should be tailored to emphasize the ecological merits of carbon sequestration for rangeland management, which will facilitate the ability of ranchers to achieve their personal goals. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Australian Government is meeting the challenge of water scarcity and climate change through significant on-farm infrastructure investment to increase water use efficiency and productivity, and secure longer term water supplies. However, it is likely that on-farm infrastructure investment will alter energy consumption and therefore generate considerable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, suggesting potential conflicts in terms of mitigation and adaptation policies. In particular, the introduction of a price on carbon may influence the extent to which new irrigation technologies are adopted. This study evaluated trade-offs between water savings, GHG emissions and economic gain associated with the conversion of a sprinkler (hand shift) irrigation system to a drip (trickle) irrigation system for a lettuce production system in the Lockyer Valley, one of the major vegetable producing regions in Australia. Surprisingly, instead of trade-offs, this study found positive synergies - a win-win situation. The conversion of the old hand-shift sprinkler irrigation system to a drip irrigation system resulted in significant water savings of almost 2 ML/ha, as well as an overall reduction in GHG emissions. Economic modelling, at a carbon price of $ 30/t CO(2)e, indicated that there was a net benefit of adoption of the drip irrigation system of about $ 4620/ML/year. We suggest priority should be given, in the implementation of on-farm infrastructure investment policy, to replacing older inefficient and energy-intensive sprinkler irrigation systems such as hand shift and roll-line. The findings of the study support the use of an integrated approach to avoid possible conflicts in designing national climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, both of which are being developed in Australia. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar application to agricultural soils can change the surface albedo which could counteract the climate mitigation benefit of biochar systems. However, the size of this impact has not yet been quantified. Based on empirical albedo measurements and literature data of arable soils mixed with biochar, a model for annual vegetation cover development based on satellite data and an assessment of the annual development of surface humidity, an average mean annual albedo reduction of 0.05 has been calculated for applying 30-32 Mg ha(-1) biochar on a test field near Bayreuth, Germany. The impact of biochar production and application on the carbon cycle and on the soil albedo was integrated into the greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of a modeled pyrolysis based biochar system via the computation of global warming potential (GWP) characterization factors. The analysis resulted in a reduction of the overall climate mitigation benefit of biochar systems by 13-22% due to the albedo change as compared to an analysis which disregards the albedo effect. Comparing the use of the same quantity of biomass in a biochar system to a bioenergy district heating system which replaces natural gas combustion, bioenergy heating systems achieve 99-119% of the climate benefit of biochar systems according to the model calculation.Cork oak grows endemically in a narrow region bordering the western Mediterranean, and especially in the Iberian Peninsula. The importance of cork agro-forestry systems lies in the fact that a natural and renewable raw material - cork - can be extracted sustainably without endangering the tree or affecting biodiversity. This paper describes an environmental analysis of the extraction of raw cork in cork oak forests in Catalonia, using data from five representative local forest exploitations. The evaluation was carried out using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, and all the forestry management required to obtain a tonne of raw cork was included. The aim of the study was to evaluate the environmental impacts - in terms of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, and so on - caused by cork extraction and determine the carbon dioxide balance of these forestry systems, with a tree lifespan of about 200 years. During the life cycle extraction of cork in Catalonia, 0.2 kg of CO2 eq. was emitted per kg of raw cork extracted. Moreover, cork cannot be extracted without the tree, which will be fixing carbon dioxide throughout its technological useful life (200 years), despite the fact that the bark is removed periodically: every 13-14 years. If the emission from extraction and the carbon contained in the material is discounted, the carbon dioxide balance indicates that 18 kg of CO2 are fixed per kg of raw cork extracted. Therefore, cork is a natural, renewable and local material that can replace other non-renewable materials, at local level, to reduce the environmental impacts of products, and particularly to reduce their carbon footprint. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Probabilistic estimates of the cost and performance of future nuclear energy systems under different scenarios of government research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) spending were obtained from 30 U.S. and 30 European nuclear technology experts. We used a novel elicitation approach which combined individual and group elicitation. With no change from current RD&D funding levels, experts on average expected current (Gen. III/III+) designs to be somewhat more expensive in 2030 than they were in 2010, and they expected the next generation of designs (Gen. IV) to be more expensive still as of 2030. Projected costs of proposed small modular reactors (SMRs) were similar V to those of Gen. IV systems. The experts almost unanimously recommended large increases in government support for nuclear RD&D (generally 2-3 times current spending). The majority expected that such RD&D would have only a modest effect on cost, but would improve performance in other areas, such as safety, waste management, and uranium resource utilization. The U.S. and E.U. experts were in relative agreement regarding how government RD&D funds should be allocated, placing particular focus on very high temperature reactors, sodium-cooled fast reactors, fuels and materials, and fuel cycle technologies.To mitigate greenhouse gas and comply with cap-and-trade systems, the carbon capture and storage (CCS) is presently unviable for industrials dealing with low concentration of CO2 emissions. Alternatively, a new offset opportunity is being analysed in Canada: the afforestation of open woodlands (OWs) in the boreal territory. The results obtained from model simulations (with CBM-CFS3) showed that afforestation of boreal OWs can be a low C-intensive mitigation activity, in particular when understory planting is the chosen silvicultural approach, so that only 8-12 years are needed to reach a net positive C balance with the afforestation of OWs. A large-scale afforestation of boreal OWs - scheduled at 20 kha per year during 20 years for a maximum of 400 kha - could provide capped industrials with a significant offset potential, for instance up to nearly 8% offset of all Quebec industrial process emissions (2009 data) after 45 years. In spite of a certain number of issues that can contribute to the uncertainty of the real environmental and economical benefits from the afforestation of OWs as a mitigation activity - most of which issues are discussed in this paper - this study presented a first glimpse at the extent to which the afforestation of boreal OWs in Quebec can provide large emitters with eventually substantial and efficient GHG offset potential, especially those emitters tied up with incompressible GHG emissions. (C) 2012 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forest ecosystems can act as C sinks, thus absorbing a high percentage of atmospheric CO2. Appropriate silvicultural regimes can therefore be applied as useful tools in climate change mitigation strategies. The present study analyzed the temporal changes in the effects of thinning on soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics and on soil CO2 emissions in radiata pine (Pinus radiata D. Don) forests. Soil C effluxes were monitored over a period of 2 years in thinned and unthinned plots. In addition, soil samples from the plots were analyzed by solid-state C-13-NMR to determine the post-thinning SOM composition and fresh soil samples were incubated under laboratory conditions to determine their biodegradability. The results indicate that the potential soil C mineralization largely depends on the proportion of alkyl-C and N-alkyl-C functional groups in the SOM and on the microbial accessibility of the recalcitrant organic pool. Soil CO2 effluxes varied widely between seasons and increased exponentially with soil heating. Thinning led to decreased soil respiration and attenuation of the seasonal fluctuations. These effects were observed for up to 20 months after thinning, although they disappeared thereafter. Thus, moderate thinning caused enduring changes to the SOM composition and appeared to have temporary effects on the C storage capacity of forest soils, which is a critical aspect under the current climatic change scenario.The paper evaluates the impacts on investments and public finance of a transition to a green, low carbon, economy induced by carbon taxation. Four global tax scenarios are examined using the integrated assessment model WITCH. Taxes are levied on all greenhouse gases (GHGs) and lead to global GHG concentrations equal to 680, 560, 500 and 460 ppm CO2-eq in 2100. Investments in the power sector increase with respect to the Reference scenario only with the two highest taxes. Investments in energy-related R&D increase in all tax scenarios, but they are a small fraction of GDP. Investments in oil upstream decline in all scenarios. As a result, total investments decline with respect to the Reference scenario. Carbon tax revenues are high in absolute terms and as share of GDP. With high carbon taxes, tax revenues follow a "carbon Lifter" curve. The model assumes that tax revenues are flawlessly recycled lump-sum into the economy. In all scenarios, the power sector becomes a net recipient of subsidies to support the absorption of GHGs. In some regions, with high carbon taxes, subsidies to GHG removal are higher than tax revenues at the end of the century. 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reaching the economic, environmental and sustainability objectives of all societies requires overcoming several major energy challenges; it necessitates rapid progress in multiple areas. The scenario pathways presented in this paper describe transformative changes toward these goals, taking a broad view of the four main energy challenges faced by society in the 21st century: providing universal access to modern energy for all; reducing the impacts of energy production on human health and the environment; avoiding dangerous climate change; and enhancing energy security. The overarching objective of the paper is to provide policy guidance on how to facilitate the transformation of the energy system to achieve these multiple energy objectives. Particular focus is given to the required pace of the transformation at both the global and regional levels, and to the types of financial and policy measures that will be needed to ensure a successful transition. Synergies and trade-offs between the objectives are identified, and co-benefits quantified. The paper makes an important contribution to the scenario literature by approaching the global transition toward sustainable development in a more integrated, holistic manner than is common in other studies.Many of the numerous difficult issues facing the world today involve relationships entailing trade-offs and synergies. This study quantitatively assesses some alternative scenarios using integrated assessment models, and provides several indicators relating to sustainable development and climate change, such as indicators of income (per capita GDP), poverty, water stress, food access, sustainable energy use, energy security, and ocean acidification, with high consistencies among the indicators within a scenario. According to the analyses, economic growth helps improve many of the indicators for sustainable development. On the other hand, climate change will induce some severe impacts such as ocean acidification under a non-climate intervention scenario (baseline scenario). Deep emission reductions, such as to 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial level, could cause some sustainable development indicators to worsen. There are complex trade-offs between climate change mitigation levels and several sustainable development indicators. A delicately balanced approach to economic growth will be necessary for sustainable development and responses to climate change.Assessing the potential impacts of climate Change on individual species and populations is essential for the stewardship of ecosystems and biodiversity. Critically endangered leatherback turtles in the eastern Pacific Ocean are excellent candidates for such an assessment because their sensitivity to contemporary climate variability has been substantially studied(1-4). If incidental fisheries mortality is eliminated, this population still faces the challenge of recovery in a rapidly changing climate. Here we combined an Earth system model(5), climate model projections assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(6) and a population dynamics model to estimate a 7% per decade decline in the Costa Rica nesting population over the twenty-first century. Whereas changes in ocean conditions had a small effect on the population, the similar to 25 degrees C warming of the nesting beach was the primary driver of the decline through reduced hatching success and hatchling emergence rate. Hatch ling sex ratio did not substantially change. Adjusting nesting phenology or changing nesting sites may not entirely prevent the decline; but could offset the decline rate. However, if future observations show a long-term decline in hatching success and emergence rate, anthropogenic climate mitigation of nests (for example, shading, irrigation)(7,8) may be able to preserve the nesting population.About one-third of the Swiss nuclear capacity is due to be retired in the next ten years, creating a short-term supply gap. In addition, the Swiss Federal Council has decided to phase out nuclear power over the longer term by not replacing existing nuclear power plants after retirement. We have analysed possible electricity supply options for responding to these two developments under different conditions using the Swiss TIMES electricity sector model-a least-cost optimization framework. Short-term demand can be cost-effectively met with new investment in gas-fired generation capacity. However, meeting the government's CO2 emission and renewable electricity targets requires an accelerated investment in renewable generation and/or increased reliance on imported electricity. In the medium and longer term, nuclear represents the most cost-effective option. The alternatives to nuclear lead to increased dependence on imported natural gas, seasonal renewables and imported electricity. All non-nuclear supply options increase the cost of electricity supply by between 50 and 150%, and create a range of tradeoffs between supply security and climate change mitigation goal. However, it is expected that an accelerated uptake of end-use efficiency measures and demand side management would reduce future electricity demand, thus reducing the need for some expensive supply options. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lithuania has developed several important climate change mitigation policy documents however there are no attempts in Lithuania to develop local climate change mitigation policies or to decentralize climate change mitigation policy. Seeking to achieve harmonization and decentralization of climate change mitigation and energy policies in Lithuania the framework for local climate change mitigation strategy need to be developed taking into account requirements, targets and measures set in national climate change mitigation and energy policy documents. The paper will describe how national climate change mitigation and energy policies can be implemented via local energy and climate change mitigation plans. The aim of the paper is to analyze the climate change mitigation policy and its relationship with policies promoting sustainable energy development in Lithuania and to present a framework for local approaches to climate change mitigation in Lithuania, in the context of the existing national and supranational energy, climate change, and rural development policies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The UK government has established ambitious policies to address climate change and promote renewable energy, and has set targets both for reducing carbon emissions and for deploying renewables. Scotland, a constituent nation of the UK, has also set its own targets for climate change mitigation and renewable electricity. This paper analyses the energy, economic and environmental implications of carbon and renewable electricity targets in Scotland and the UK using a newly developed two-region UK MARKAL energy system model, where Scotland (SCT) and rest of the UK (RUK) are the two regions. The paper shows that meeting Scotland's carbon targets does not require additional decarbonisation effort if the UK meets its own targets at least cost: and that Scotland's renewable energy ambitions do imply additional costs above the least cost path to the meeting the UK's obligations under the EU renewable energy directive. Meeting Scottish renewable electricity targets diverts investment and deployment in renewables from rest of the UK to Scotland. In addition to increased energy system cost, Scottish renewable electricity targets may also require early investment in new electricity transmission capacity between Scotland and rest of the UK. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most experts agree that the greatest risk associated with climate change is pretending that the problem does not exist, or that it does not require immediate attention and action. That said, the potential pathways for mitigating the effects of greenhouse gas emissions are not created equal in terms of the risks and benefits they entail. Public discourse tends to focus on the most optimistic scenarios for implementing new technologies and to ignore not only the hazards but also the non-climate-related benefits associated with some approaches. Climate mitigation strategies currently undergo economic and engineering analyses, but they are not consistently subjected to rigorous risk assessment and risk management. The author offers the beginnings of a more cohesive decision-support analysis framework. Assessments of various mitigation strategies by the world's largest industry-insurance-are critically important in this process because insurers can provide a dispassionate view and internalize the costs of risk through pricing. Bank financing cannot be mobilized without insurance, and the public sector may be forced to assume many of the risks associated with emerging technologies if insurers opt out. A century of dangerously blending technological enthusiasm with lack of care in assessing the comparative risks of energy and land-use choices ushered in today's climate crisis. Continued inattention threatens to saddle society with new risks from poorly prioritized efforts to solve the climate problem. Procrastination is painting humankind into a corner in which progressively riskier and unproven technologies will be required to mitigate climate change.Disturbances are widespread and may affect community assembly, species composition, (functional) diversity and hence ecosystem processes. It remains still unclear to what extent disturbance-mediated species changes scale-up to changes in community functional properties, especially for species-rich tropical forests. A large-scale field experiment was performed in which the dynamics of 15 000 stems >10 cm in diameter was monitored for 8 years in 44 one-ha forest plots. Twelve functional effect and response traits were measured for the most dominant tree species. The effects of different intensities of disturbance caused by logging and silvicultural treatments on the species and functional diversity of a Bolivian tropical forest community were evaluated, along with how these changes were driven by underlying demographic processes. Disturbance treatments did not affect species diversity or functional diversity indices based on multiple traits related to primary productivity and decomposition rate. This result suggests that species richness is conserved, and trait variation is maintained, which can buffer the community against environmental change. In contrast, disturbance intensity affected the average plant trait values in the community (the community-weighted mean) for seven of 12 traits evaluated. At high disturbance intensity, the community had a lower wood density of stem and branches, lower leaf toughness and dry matter content, but higher specific leaf area and leaf N- and P concentration, with the value of these traits changing on average 6% over the 8-year period. The functional spectrum of the community changed, therefore, from slow, conservative, shade-tolerant species towards fast, acquisitive, light-demanding species. These functional changes in mean trait values may enhance primary productivity and decomposition rate in the short term. Temporal changes in community functional properties were mainly driven by recruitment, and little by mortality or survival. Synthesis. Moderate levels of (logging) disturbance neither affected species diversity nor functional diversity per se in the 8-year period after logging. Disturbance did, however, change the functional community composition towards fast species with more acquisitive traits, thus potentially fuelling primary productivity and nutrient and carbon cycling. In conclusion, tropical forest management may contribute to conserving functional biodiversity of trees while providing forest resources.Reforestation or afforestation of marginal agricultural lands offers opportunities to sequester soil organic carbon (SOC), improve the quality of degraded soils, and provide ecosystem services. The objectives of this study were to identify the extent and distribution of marginally productive cropland in the state of Iowa and to quantify the changes in SOC and relevant soil properties following tree planting. A geographic information system (GIS) analysis was used to identify 1.05 million ha of marginal cropland within the state. Soil samples were collected from four locations with (< 51 yr-old) forest plantations and adjacent crop fields. Soil samples were analyzed for SOC, total nitrogen (TN), pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), ammonium acetate-extractable K, Ca, Mg, and Na, and particle size. The forested soils had 30.0 +/- 5.1 % (mean +/- standard error) more SOC than the tilled cropland. The average annual change in SOC following tree planting was estimated to be 0.56 +/- 0.05 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). Differences were observed in several soil properties but strong correlations with SOC content were only observed for bulk density and extractable Ca. These results indicate that within 5 decades of tree planting on former cropland or pasture there was consistently and significantly greater SOC in soil beneath the trees.Uncertainty and learning play an important role in the management of many environmental and resource problems and in particular in climate change. In stylized game-theoretic models of international environmental treaty formation, which capture the strategic interactions between nations, learning usually has a negative impact on the success of cooperation. We use a richer climate model that captures the large heterogeneity between different world regions and considers uncertainty about the benefits and costs from climate mitigation. By explicitly exploiting differences between regions and allowing transfers to mitigate free-rider incentives, we derive much more positive conclusions about the role of learning. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We use a two-period model to investigate intertemporal effects of cost reductions in climate change mitigation technologies for the power sector. The effect of cost reductions for CCS depends on how carbon taxes are set. If there is no carbon tax in period 1, but an optimally set carbon tax in period 2, a CCS cost reduction may reduce early emissions. Such an innovation may therefore be more desirable than comparable cost cuts related to renewable energy. The finding rests on the incentives fossil fuel owners face. If future profitability is reduced, they speed up extraction (the 'green paradox'), and vice versa. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.If major emitters fail to mitigate global warming, they may have to resort to geoengineering techniques that deflect sunlight from planet Earth and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In this article, I develop a strategic theory of geoengineering. I emphasize two key features of geoengineering. First, whereas emissions reductions can be mandated now, geoengineering techniques are only available in the future. Second, major powers can unilaterally implement geoengineering projects that may hurt other countries. My game-theoretic analysis demonstrates that unilateral geoengineering presents a difficult governance problem if it produces negative externalities in foreign countries. Interestingly, countries may be tempted to reduce emissions now, so as to prevent a harmful geoengineering race in the future. The theoretical results can help scholars and policymakers understand the relationship between climate mitigation and geoengineering.The net CO2 exchange of forests was investigated to study net atmospheric impact of forest bioenergy production (BP) and utilization in Finnish boreal conditions. Net CO2 exchange was simulated with a life cycle assessment tool over a 90-year period and over the whole Finland based on National Forest Inventory data. The difference in the net exchanges between the traditional timber production (TP) and BP regime was considered the net atmospheric impact of forest bioenergy utilization. According to the results, forests became net sources of CO2 after about 20 years of simulation, and the net exchange was higher in the BP regime than in the TP regime until the middle of the simulation period. From 2040 onwards, the net exchange started to decrease in both regimes and became higher in the TP regime, excluding the last decade of the simulation. The shift of forests to becoming a CO2 source reflected the decrease in CO2 sequestration due to the increasing share of recently harvested and seedling stands that are acting as sources of CO2, and an increase of emissions from degradation of wood products. When expressed in terms of radiative forcing, the net atmospheric impact was on average 19% less for bioenergy compared with that for coal energy over the whole simulation period. The results show the importance of time dependence when considering dynamic forest ecosystems in BP and climate change mitigation. Furthermore, the results emphasize the dualistic role and possibilities of forest management in controlling the build and release of carbon into and from the stocks and in controlling the rate of the build speed, i.e. growth. This information is needed in identifying the capability and possibilities of ecosystems to produce biomass for energy, alongside other products and ecosystem services (e.g. pulp wood and timber), and simultaneously to mitigate climate change.The capacity for forests to aid in climate change mitigation efforts is substantial but will ultimately depend on their management. If forests remain unharvested, they can further mitigate the increases in atmospheric CO2 that result from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. Alternatively, they can be harvested for bioenergy production and serve as a substitute for fossil fuels, though such a practice could reduce terrestrial C storage and thereby increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the near-term. Here, we used an ecosystem simulation model to ascertain the effectiveness of using forest bioenergy as a substitute for fossil fuels, drawing from a broad range of land-use histories, harvesting regimes, ecosystem characteristics, and bioenergy conversion efficiencies. Results demonstrate that the times required for bioenergy substitutions to repay the C Debt incurred from biomass harvest are usually much shorter (< 100 years) than the time required for bioenergy production to substitute the amount of C that would be stored if the forest were left unharvested entirely, a point we refer to as C Sequestration Parity. The effectiveness of substituting woody bioenergy for fossil fuels is highly dependent on the factors that determine bioenergy conversion efficiency, such as the C emissions released during the harvest, transport, and firing of woody biomass. Consideration of the frequency and intensity of biomass harvests should also be given; performing total harvests (clear-cutting) at high-frequency may produce more bioenergy than less intensive harvesting regimes but may decrease C storage and thereby prolong the time required to achieve C Sequestration Parity.The climate model (CM) of the A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics (TAP), Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), was used to estimate the geoengineering effect on the characteristics of the climate and carbon cycles. The geoengineering impact is implemented in the model during the period of 2020-2070 to mitigate the warming in the case of the aggressive anthropogenic scenario RCP 8.5. Assuming that stratospheric sulfates are distributed horizontally uniform, complete compensation of the globally averaged anthropogenic warming, which, in this scenario, is developing in the 21st century, reduces the amount of precipitation and is accompanied by regional temperature anomalies. The geoengineering effect on the solar radiative influx to the Earth's surface and on the fraction of diffuse radiation in this influx depends substantially on the season. Geoengineering suppresses the gross primary production of plants and decreases the carbon stock in terrestrial vegetation, especially in Siberian taiga regions. In this case, when compared to no-geoengineering calculations, the global gross primary production during 2060-2070 decreases by 17 PgC.yr(-1), and the global carbon stock in terrestrial vegetation decreases by 33 PgC. On the other hand, the geoengineering mitigation of the warming leads to the effect that the soil accumulates carbon, rather than losing it, in the 21st century. The maximal difference in soil carbon stock between geoengineering and no-geoengineering calculations is 97 PgC. Thus, the geoengineering slows down the CO2 buildup in the atmosphere by 52 ppm in the case of anthropogenic emissions in the last years of the 21st century, but this does not influence appreciably the climatic efficiency of geoengineering.Information disclosure policies represent an additional policy mechanism that can be used to foster reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. These informational efforts could be either mandatory or voluntary, but in each case government regulation could play a productive role by establishing common structures for the information and providing criteria to ensure the accuracy and credibility of the information. Unlike most previous uses of environmental information disclosure, such as the Toxic Release Inventory and pesticide warnings, carbon footprint labeling does not communicate information about immediate private benefits. While considerable insight can be gleaned by examining the principles for effective warnings generally, additional research would further our understanding of how to best design a successful information effort directed at varied future environmental benefits. Care is needed as green labeling may distort consumer decisions if undue prominence is given to environmental consequences as compared to other valued attributes, such as safety.Without effective developing country (DC) participation in climate mitigation, it will be impossible to meet global concentration and climate change targets. However, DCS are unwilling and, in many cases, unable to bear the mitigation cost alone. They need huge transfers of resources - financial, knowledge, technology and capability - from industrialized countries (ICs). In this paper, we evaluate instruments that can induce such resource transfers, including tradable credits, mitigation funds and results-based agreements. We identify key constraints that affect the efficiency and political potential of different instruments, including two-sided private information leading to adverse selection; moral hazard and challenging negotiations; incomplete contracts leading to under-investment; and high levels of uncertainty about emissions paths and mitigation potential. We consider evidence on the poor performance of current approaches to funding DC mitigation - primarily purchasing offsets through the Clean Development Mechanism - and explore to what extent other approaches can address problems with offsets. We emphasize the wide spectrum of situations in DCS and suggest that solutions also need to be differentiated and that no one policy will suffice: some policies will be complements, while others are substitutes. We conclude by identifying research needs and proposing a straw man to broaden the range of "contracting" options considered.Climate change is already having impacts on terrestrial ecosystem services and such impacts are only expected to broaden and worsen as greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) continue at their historic levels. To set appropriate policies for reducing GHG emissions, economists recommend the use of cost-benefit analysis. To perform such analyses, the predominant approach has been to use integrated assessment models. There is a need for more targeted valuation studies to serve as further evidence about the willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce climate change. The purpose of this brief paper is to sample and classify the literature valuing terrestrial ecosystem services and make some judgments about its usefulness to benefits analysis associated with climate change mitigation. With an emphasis on nonuse values, this paper focuses on stated preference studies. We find that with the pervasiveness of the effects of global warming on all types of natural and human systems, and given the interconnectedness of those systems, it seems too reductionist to focus on valuation of changes to specific resources or systems, in this case terrestrial ecosystems. That is, the value of slowing climate change needs to be estimated from a holistic perspective. To do so, the only possible way to go is with the top-down studies, recognizing that these studies can never provide the detail and the preciseness of commodity definition that is desirable in, say, natural resource damage assessments. However we must ask ourselves as a society if we are willing to trade off precision for comprehensiveness and breadth. The vast literature simply valuing ecosystem services is not largely motivated or directly applicable to climate change. And use of these studies in benefits transfers therefore involves huge assumptions and, even then, there will be gaps in geographic coverage. There are an increasing number of ecosystem valuation studies motivated by climate change that have the right scale and type of commodities being valued. Yet, such studies are invariably place-based and draw relatively tight, rather than porous boundaries between the ecosystem of interest and its linkages to other systems. Thus, one will not be able to easily aggregate such studies, properly account for overlaps and gaps and eventually come out with a cost of carbon. However, examining such studies one at a time and drawing insights out of them may both inform the design of information treatments for the studies and lead to a more qualitative/ judgmental basis for settling on a "cost of carbon" number.BACKGROUND: Anthropogenic climate change will affect global food production, with uncertain consequences for human health in developed countries. OBJECTIVES: We investigated the potential impact of climate change on food security (nutrition and food safety) and the implications for human health in developed countries. METHODS: Expert input and structured literature searches were conducted and synthesized to produce overall assessments of the likely impacts of climate change on global food production and recommendations for future research and policy changes. RESULTS: Increasing food prices may lower the nutritional quality of dietary intakes, exacerbate obesity, and amplify health inequalities. Altered conditions for food production may result in emerging pathogens, new crop and livestock species, and altered use of pesticides and veterinary medicines, and affect the main transfer mechanisms through which contaminants move from the environment into food. All these have implications for food safety and the nutritional content of food. Climate change mitigation may increase consumption of foods whose production reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Impacts may include reduced red meat consumption (with positive effects on saturated fat, but negative impacts on zinc and iron intake) and reduced winter fruit and vegetable consumption. Developed countries have complex structures in place that may be used to adapt to the food safety consequences of climate change, although their effectiveness will vary between countries, and the ability to respond to nutritional challenges is less certain. CONCLUSIONS: Climate change will have notable impacts upon nutrition and food safety in developed countries, but further research is necessary to accurately quantify these impacts. Uncertainty about future impacts, coupled with evidence that climate change may lead to more variable food quality, emphasizes the need to maintain and strengthen existing structures and policies to regulate food production, monitor food quality and safety, and respond to nutritional and safety issues that arise.Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) is heavily promoted in Laos. REDD+ is often perceived as an opportunity to jointly address climate change and poverty and, therefore, could come timely for Laos to combine its prominent national target of poverty eradication with global climate mitigation efforts. Countrywide planning of the right approaches to REDD+ combined with poverty alleviation requires knowledge of the spatial combination of poverty and carbon stocks at the national level. This study combined spatial information on carbon stored in vegetation and on poverty and created carbon-poverty typologies for the whole country at the village level. We found that 11% of the villages of Laos have high to very high average village-level carbon stock densities and a predominantly poor population. These villages cover 20% of the territory and are characterized by low population density. Shifting cultivation areas in the northwestern parts of the country have a higher carbon mitigation potential than areas in the central and eastern highlands due to a more favorable climate. Finally, we found that in Laos the majority (58%) of poor people live in areas with low carbon stock densities without major potential to store carbon. Accordingly, REDD+ cannot be considered a core instrument for poverty alleviation. The carbon-poverty typologies presented here provide answers to basic questions related to planning and managing of REDD+. They could serve as a starting point for the design of systems to monitor both socioeconomic and environmental development at the national level.Research is lacking concerning soil water retention (SWR) and infiltration rates (q(s)) as affected by long-term tillage and crop rotation. Thus, soil hydrological properties were measured at two long-term experimental sites near Wooster (49 yr) and Hoytville (47 yr) in central Ohio. The Wooster soil is silt loam in texture and well-drained, whereas, the Hoytville soil is clay loam in texture and poorly-drained. Tillage treatments were, no-tillage (NT), minimum-tillage (MT), and plow-tillage (PT), and crop rotations were continuous corn (Zea mays L), and corn-soybean (Glycine max L.) in a 2-yr rotation. Soil hydrological properties were compared with those of adjacent and undisturbed woodlots (WL). The SWR characteristics indicated higher volumetric water content at almost all matric potentials (Psi(m)) under WL soils than for the three tillage systems at both sites. Among tillage treatments, soils under NT had higher SWR than those under MT and PT for all four (0-10, 10-20, 20-30, and 30-40 cm) depths. In general, long-term NT contained a higher proportion of macropores (>1000 mu m) and micropores (<10 mu m), and hence had higher SWR than MT and PT for all depths. The q(s) was 1.9 and 4.2 times higher in well-drained soils under NT as compared to those under MT and PT, respectively, and 2.1 and 4.2 times higher in poorly-drained soils. Two physical based infiltration models, Green-Ampt and Parlange, fitted the measured infiltration data well with the coefficients of determination (r(2)) ranging from 0.91 to 0.98, and root mean square error values from 0.06 to 0.66 mm h(-1). Results support the conclusion that long-term (47-49 yr) use of NT practices in both well-drained and poorly-drained soils improves SWR, pore-size distribution, and q(s) compared to PT and MT practices.Emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) lead to formation of ozone, which is an important greenhouse gas. Despite its relevance, little emphasis was previously given on verifying approaches to calculate contributions of individual emissions to ozone and hence to climate change. Basically two methods (perturbation method and tagging method) were used in the past. We demonstrate that both methods are valid and have their area of application, but only tagging calculates contributions of emissions to concentrations, whereas the perturbation method identifies changes in the ozone concentrations due to emission changes. Our results show that the contribution of road traffic emissions to climate change is underestimated by a factor of 5 in the perturbation method. This is caused by non-linear compensating effects from other emission sectors, which are concealed in the perturbation method but disclosed with tagging. Consequently, the effectiveness of mitigation measures for individual sectors (i.e. concentrating on road traffic induced ozone) is only correctly expressed by the tagging method. The perturbation method provides accurately the total impact (i.e. total ozone) of a mitigation measure. However, current approaches, which evaluate the effectiveness of a mitigation measure based on the perturbation approach, do not reflect changes in the chemical state of the atmosphere (i.e. ozone production rates). These largely affect the effectiveness of subsequent measures and hence make the evaluation of the effectiveness of two measures dependent on their chronology of application. We show that also in this regard, the tagging method is better suited to evaluate the effectiveness of a mitigation measure than the perturbation method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A fleet of over two million motorcycles (MC) in Hanoi is believed to contribute a substantial emission of air pollutants and climate forcers but has not been thoroughly characterized. This study conducted a survey of the MC technologies and activities in Hanoi using questionnaires. GPS monitoring, and video camera in 2008. The data were collected for three typical road types (highways, arterials, residential streets) in 3 zones of the city. Majority of MC in Hanoi were relatively new (3.6 years), had 4-stroke engine, but only 6% was equipped with catalyst exhaust control devices. About 35% of the fleet did not comply with any EURO standards. The MC daily driving was 20 km, mostly done on arterial streets. The main driving features in Hanoi arterials and residential streets were of low speeds with frequent starts/stops and idling. International Vehicle Emissions (WE) model produced adjusted emission factors (EFs) that were compared with the limited available measurement data. The fleet emission was estimated for 2008 as a base case and for two "what-if" faster technology implementation scenarios: scenario 1 assumed that the entire fleet in 2008 conformed at least EURO2 and scenario 2 assumed 100% MC met the EURO3 standard. Total emissions from the fleet in 2008 of CO, VOC, NOx, SO2, PM10, and CH4 were 158, 51.5, 9.5, 0.17, 2.4 and 9.5 kt, respectively. Emissions of 1,3-butadiene, acetaldehydes, formaldehydes and benzene were 0.26, 12, 4.9 and 2.1 kt, respectively. Faster EURO3 technology intrusion in scenario 2 would significantly reduce the emission of pollutants (by 53-94%) and climate forcers in CO2-equivalent (53% for 20-year and 38% for 100-year horizon), which tripled the reductions obtained under scenario 1. Substantial co-benefits for air quality and climate forcer mitigation could be achieved by the faster technology implementation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We design a global refunding scheme as a new international approach to address climate change. Participating in the global refunding system requires an initial payment. It allows each country to set its carbon emission tax, while aggregate tax revenues are partially refunded to member countries in proportion to the relative emission reductions they achieve within a given period. The refunding scheme reduces the intertemporal climate change problem into a static public goods problem. In a simple model we show that a suitably designed global refunding scheme achieves the social global optimum, provided that all countries participate. We discuss several procedures to achieve initial participation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a climate-change mitigation strategy that requires an investment of many billions of dollars and tens of thousands of miles of dedicated CO2 pipelines. To be effective, scientists, stakeholders, and policy makers will have to understand how as well as when to deploy large-scale CCS infrastructure. This will require comprehensive modeling that takes into account detailed costs, engineering, and environmental concerns. We introduce a new and comprehensive model, SimCCS(TIME), that is capable of spatially and temporally optimizing CO2 management-capture, transport, and storage of large quantities of CO2. The model minimizes CCS infrastructure costs while simultaneously deciding where, how much, and when to capture, transport, and store CO2. We demonstrate the SimCCS(TIME) model using real data from the Texas panhandle. Results show that the model minimizes CCS costs, while meeting rising demand to capture and store CO2, by gradually expanding the CCS network. The model identifies non-intuitive cost savings by overbuilding infrastructure in early time periods, and then fully utilizing this infrastructure in later years. Further, results show that there is significant benefit for planning a cooperative and integrated CCS system. Finally, we show how SimCCS(TIME) offers significant advantages over myopic models that cannot integrate infrastructure through time. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The events of March 2011 at the nuclear power complex in Fukushima, Japan, raised questions about the safe operation of nuclear power plants, with early retirement of existing nuclear power plants being debated in the policy arena and considered by regulators. Also, the future of building new nuclear power plants is highly uncertain. Should nuclear power policies become more restrictive, one potential option for climate change mitigation will be less available. However, a systematic analysis of nuclear power policies, including early retirement, has been missing in the climate change mitigation literature. We apply an energy economy model framework to derive scenarios and analyze the interactions and tradeoffs between these two policy fields. Our results indicate that early retirement of nuclear power plants leads to discounted cumulative global GDP losses of 0.07% by 2020. If, in addition, new nuclear investments are excluded, total losses will double. The effect of climate policies imposed by an intertemporal carbon budget on incremental costs of policies restricting nuclear power use is small. However, climate policies have much larger impacts than policies restricting the use of nuclear power. The carbon budget leads to cumulative discounted near term reductions of global GDP of 0.64% until 2020. Intertemporal flexibility of the carbon budget approach enables higher near-term emissions as a result of increased power generation from natural gas to fill the emerging gap in electricity supply, while still remaining within the overall carbon budget. Demand reductions and efficiency improvements are the second major response strategy.The adverse consequences of particulate matter (PM) on human health have been well documented. Recently, special attention has been given to mineral dust particles, which may be a serious health threat. The main global source of atmospheric mineral dust is the Sahara desert, which produces about half of the annual mineral dust. Sahara dust transport can lead to PM levels that substantially exceed the established limit values. A review was undertaken using the ISI web of knowledge database with the objective to identify all studies presenting results on the potential health impact from Sahara dust particles. The review of the literature shows that the association of fine particles, PM2.5, with total or cause-specific daily mortality is not significant during Saharan dust intrusions. However, regarding coarser fractions PM10 and PM2.5-10 an explicit answer cannot be given. Some of the published studies state that they increase mortality during Sahara dust days while other studies find no association between mortality and PM10 or PM2.5-10. The main conclusion of this review is that health impact of Saharan dust outbreaks needs to be further explored. Considering the diverse outcomes for PM10 and PM2.5-10, future studies should focus on the chemical characterization and potential toxicity of coarse particles transported from Sahara desert mixed or not with anthropogenic pollutants. The results of this review may be considered to establish the objectives and strategies of a new European directive on ambient air quality. An implication for public policy in Europe is that to protect public health, anthropogenic sources of particulate pollution need to be more rigorously controlled in areas highly impacted by the Sahara dust. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Production of biomass for bioenergy can alter biogeochemical and biogeophysical mechanisms, thus affecting local and global climate. Recent scientific developments have mainly embraced impacts from land use changes resulting from area-expanded biomass production, with several extensive insights available. Comparably less attention, however, has been given to the assessment of direct land surface-atmosphere climate impacts of bioenergy systems under rotation such as in plantations and forested ecosystems, whereby land use disturbances are only temporary. Here, following IPCC climate metrics, we assess bioenergy systems in light of two important dynamic land use climate factors, namely, the perturbation in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration caused by the timing of biogenic CO2 fluxes, and temporary perturbations to surface reflectivity (albedo). Existing radiative forcing-based metrics can be adapted to include such dynamic mechanisms, but high spatial and temporal modeling resolution is required. Results show the importance of specifically addressing the climate forcings from biogenic CO2 fluxes and changes in albedo, especially when biomass is sourced from forested areas affected by seasonal snow cover. The climate performance of bioenergy systems is highly dependent on biomass species, local climate variables, time horizons, and the climate metric considered. Bioenergy climate impact studies and accounting mechanisms should rapidly adapt to cover both biogeochemical and biogeophysical impacts, so that policy makers can rely on scientifically robust analyses and promote the most effective global climate mitigation options.Cities worldwide are increasingly becoming agents of climate change mitigation, while simultaneously aiming for other goals, such as improved accessibility and clean air. Based on stakeholder interviews and data analysis, we assess the current state of urban mobility in the four European cities of Barcelona, Malmo, Sofia and Freiburg. We then provide scenarios of increasingly ambitious policy packages, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from urban transport by up to 80% from 2010 to 2040. We find significant concurrent co-benefits in cleaner air, reduced noise ambience, fewer traffic-related injuries and deaths, more physical activity, less congestion and monetary fuel savings. Our scenarios suggest that non-motorized transport, especially bicycles, can occupy high modal shares, particularly in cities with less than 0.5 million inhabitants. We think that this kind of multi-criteria assessment of social costs and benefits is a useful complement to cost-benefit analysis of climate change mitigation measures.Soil carbon (C) storage potential has received considerable attention for its role in climate change mitigation, and much research work has been devoted to studying the effect of land-use change, including land abandonment, on carbon dynamics. A comparative analysis of soil organic carbon (SOC), easily extractable Bradford-reactive soil protein (EE-BRSP) and Bradford-reactive soil protein (BRSP) was carried out at monthly intervals in a land-use sequence including cultivated soils, forest soils, shrubs and pasture in northeast Spain. In general, greater seasonal variations of both EE-BRSP and BRSP were found in soils with less carbon storage capacity. Turnover of glomalin into more stable C forms was associated with a small EE-BRSP:BRSP ratio in better structured soils and BRSP was related to organic carbon, suggesting positive contributions to both the recalcitrant carbon pool and soil structure. This effect seemed to be more pronounced in August when more BRSP was found, probably because of high temperature and dry soils in which glomalin may react to preserve residual adsorbed water and provide better protection in soil microsites. The role of glomalin was further enhanced by the structural stability of aggregates (WSA) investigated in two aggregate fractions (0.252.00 and 2.005.60 mm), indicating its beneficial effect in aggregation and carbon storage potential. BRSP, SOC and WSA increased significantly (P < 0.001) along the transect and abandonment sequence; the largest WSA values were generally greater in summer in both aggregate fractions. However, values in cultivated soils were always smaller than in soils under shrubs and pasture. Similarly, soils with a smaller carbon pool had the largest proportion of carbon loss as CO2-C when land use changes from vines to pasture. The role of aggregates in protecting organic carbon against mineralization was therefore postulated and highlighted the importance of soil monitoring after land abandonment.Carbon footprint (CF) refers to the total amount of carbon dioxide and its equivalents emitted due to various anthropogenic activities. Carbon emission and sequestration inventories have been reviewed sector-wise for all federal states in India to identify the sectors and regions responsible for carbon imbalances. This would help in implementing appropriate climate change mitigation and management strategies at disaggregated levels. Major sectors of carbon emissions in India are through electricity generation, transport, domestic energy consumption, industries and agriculture. A majority of carbon storage occurs in forest biomass and soil. This paper focuses on the statewise carbon emissions (CO2. CO and CH4), using region specific emission factors and statewise carbon sequestration capacity. The estimate shows that CO2, CO and CH4 emissions from India are 965.9, 22.5 and 16.9 Tg per year, respectively. Electricity generation contributes 35.5% of total CO2 emission, which is followed by the contribution from transport. Vehicular transport exclusively contributes 25.5% of total emission. The analysis shows that Maharashtra emits higher CO2, followed by Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The carbon status, which is the ratio of annual carbon storage against carbon emission, for each federal state is computed. This shows that small states and union territories (UT) like Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where carbon sequestration is higher due to good vegetation cover, have carbon status > 1. Annually, 7.35% of total carbon emissions get stored either in forest biomass or soil, out of which 34% is in Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Globally, the cement industry accounts for approximately 5 percent of current anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. World cement demand and production are increasing significantly, leading to an increase in this industry's absolute energy use and CO2 emissions. Development of new energy-efficiency and CO2 emission-reduction technologies and their deployment in the market will be key for the cement industry's mid- and long-term climate change mitigation strategies. This paper is an initial effort to compile available information on process description, energy savings, environmental and other benefits, costs, commercialization status, and references for emerging technologies to reduce the cement industry's energy use and CO2 emissions. Although studies from around the world identify a variety of sector-specific and cross-cutting energy-efficiency technologies for the cement industry that have already been commercialized, information is scarce and/or scattered regarding emerging or advanced energy-efficiency and low-carbon technologies that are not yet commercialized. This paper consolidates available information on eighteen emerging technologies for the cement industry, with the goal of providing engineers, researchers, investors, cement companies, policy makers, and other interested parties with easy access to a well-structured database of information on these technologies. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Among the different strategies for CO2 emissions reduction and climate change mitigation that are being considered, valorisation of CO2 appears as a more interesting option than carbon storage, since it allows the recycling of CO2 into added-value products. The purpose of this work is to study the influence of key variables on the performance of an experimental system for continuous electro-reduction of CO2 to formate in aqueous solutions under ambient conditions, using a filter-press electrochemical reactor with a lead plate as cathode. A 2(2) factorial design of experiments at different levels of current density ("j") and electrolyte flow rate/electrode area ratio ("Q/A ratio") was followed by additional tests at the mean level of each variable. The obtained results confirmed general suggested trends in previous works, but they also offered a detailed analysis of the influence of these variables. Regarding j, it should be emphasised that a significant increase of the rate of formate production was observed at the expense of lowering the Faradaic efficiency when increasing j up to a limit value of 10.5 mA cm(-2), where a Faradaic efficiency of 57% was maintained. The influence of Q/A turned out to be more limited than that of j, since the results revealed that increasing the catholyte flow to overcome mass transport limitations only had beneficial effects for the lowest Q/A ratios (i.e. <= 0.76 mL min(-1) cm(-2)). This study is a reference for the evaluation of future improvements in the development of these continuous electro-reduction processes for CO2 valorisation, derived from further research to overcome current limitations. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Between 1980 and 2007, in the Chinese building sector in urban and rural areas, coal was mainly substituted with electricity and natural gas. Growing income will further increase energy consumption and CO2-emissions in the building sector. Using an econometric model, disaggregated energy demand and related CO2-emissions in the residential sector as well for the whole economy are estimated and forecasted until 2050. In 2009, the Chinese government pledged itself to reduce CO2-intensity by 40%-45% in 2020 compared to 2005. Aim of this article is to assess to which extent the measures in the building sector in China can contribute to this target. Main results of the analysis are: (a) The primary energy source coal was mainly substituted by electricity generated with coal. Apart from convenience gains, the environmental advantages are questionable. (b) Between 2010 and 2050, energy demand in the building sector will grow by 2.0%-4.1% per annum leading to CO2-emissions at least almost tripling from about 560 mill. tons in 2010 to about 1,500 mill. tons in 2050. (c) The energy efficiency gains in the building sector and other sectors of the Chinese economy, however, are not enough to fulfill the national CO2-intensity targets. The reduction of the CO2-intensity of GDP would be 37.2% in the BAU-scenario, and 31.9% in the LOW-scenario. Only in the HIGH-scenario (46.3%), the economy is growing efficient enough relative to the induced CO2-emissions. The remaining CO2-emission reductions could be gained by additional promotion of renewable energies (mainly solar and geo-thermal) in the building sector.A MULTINATIONAL COURSE ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE A novel multinational course on global climate change was developed by East Carolina University in collaboration with five international universities and the U.S. Department of State. This course was developed to help foster the global conversation needed for developing successful solutions to some of the challenges posed to society by climate change. Using web conferencing technology, students from East Carolina University, Faculdade Jaguariuna in Brazil, Shadong University in China, University of Jammu in India, Universidad Regiomontana in Mexico, and Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia met 2 or 3 times per week in the Global Classroom to learn about climate change science, mitigation and adaptation strategies, and domestic and international climate policy issues. In addition to learning about climate change, students worked in teams composed of members from each country to create locally implementable strategies for climate change mitigation and/or adaptation. Toward this end, students learned and were challenged to apply important cross-cultural negotiation and project building skills necessary to achieve consensus and ensure effective communication and team function. This article presents the course design, including content and the use of technology, as well as a discussion of the challenges and rewards associated With getting people from five countries together in a common pursuit of knowledge and consensus.Several Southeast Asian states have been working feverishly to design and implement REDD policy frameworks to fulfil their commitment to global climate change mitigation. In doing so, state agencies will be challenged to design REDD plus policies that value and conserve forest carbon in ways that align with national policies and local priorities for managing forest landscapes defined by complex property rights regimes. However, as with other market-based policies, the expeditious delivery of REDD could bypass critical analysis of potential interactions with national tenure regimes, customary property rights, and local livelihoods. Drawing on the case of Palawan Island-a forested frontier island in the Philippines-we examine how nascent REDD policies can articulate with state sanctioned tenure, customary tenure, and forest uses in changing livelihood contexts. This paper draws on research among Tagbanua and Pala'wan people to illustrate how complex and changing tenure structures, commodity markets and livelihood dynamics may influence how REDD plus interventions affect indigenous customary lands and forest use. We argue that the ability of indigenous forest users to maintain stored carbon and improve livelihoods is contingent upon the 'socio-material' form of carbon-a commodity defined in relation to the resources and social processes of which it is part.Agroforestry systems can mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, conserve biodiversity and generate income. Whereas the provision of ecosystem services by agroforestry is well documented, the functional relationships between species composition, diversity and carbon (C)-storage remain uncertain. This study aimed to analyze the effects of management (conventional vs. organic), woody plant diversity and plant composition on aboveground and belowground C-storage in coffee agroforestry systems. It was expected that organic farms would store more C, and that an increase in plant diversity would enhance C-storage due to complementarity effects. Additionally, it was expected that steep slopes decrease C-storage as a result of topsoil erosion. Woody plants were identified on 1 ha plots within 14 coffee farms (7 conventional and 7 organic). C-stocks in trees, coffee plants and roots were estimated from allometric equations. C-stocks in litter and topsoil (0-25 cm) were estimated by sampling. On average, farms stored 93 +/- A 29 Mg C ha(-1). Soil organic carbon accounted for 69 % of total C. Total C-stocks were 43 % higher on organic farms than on conventional farms (P < 0.05). Conventional and organic farms differed in vegetation structure, but not in species diversity. It was found that the combined effect of farm type, species richness, species composition and slope explained 83 % of the variation in total C-storage across all farms (P < 0.001). Coffee agroforestry in general and organic farms in particular may contribute to GHG mitigation and biodiversity conservation in a synergistic manner which has implications for the effective allocation of resources for conservation and climate change mitigation strategies in the agricultural sector.Agroforestry systems have the potential to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, data on tree and soil organic carbon (SOC) pools for most agroforestry systems are lacking because reliable methods for estimating ecosystem carbon (C) pools are scarce. This study quantified the effects of five Leucaena species (L. leucocephala, L. macrophylla, L. diversifolia, L. collinsii and L. pulverulenta) on vegetal and soil C stocks and on mean annual increment (MAI) in aboveground tree C stocks. Specifically, it tested the validity of the CO2FIX model using empirical data from 7 year-old woodlots at Msekera, Zambia, and assessed the impact of converting a degraded agricultural ecosystem to woodlots on C stocks. Measured above- and below-ground tree C stocks and MAI of aboveground biomass differed significantly among the Leucaena species. Measured stem and total aboveground tree C stocks in seven-year old woodlots ranged from 17.1 to 29.2 and from 24.5 to 55.9 Mg ha(-1), respectively. Measured SOC stocks at 0-200 cm depth in Leucaena stands ranged from 106.9 (L. diversifolia) to 186.0 Mg ha(-1) (L. leucocephala). Modeled stem and branch C stocks closely matched measured stocks, but the soil module of CO2FIX did not predict the soil C. The soil C data are inconclusive at this stage. We recommend that a fractionation and a soil aggregate hierarchy study backed by C dating is carried out to explain soil C dynamics in these soils. However, the model can be used only for estimating changes in aboveground tree C stocks in woodlots until soil C module is proven to predict SOC stocks.Climate change has become an increasingly important issue in Malaysia. The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between firm characteristics, firm ownership, business networks and climate change mitigation activities in Malaysia. Firms' annual report and corporate social reporting (CSR) content analysis are used to obtain the climate change mitigation activities. Five main themes adopted from Freedman and Jaggi (2005) were measured using the weighted weighting schemes. The 2009 annual reports and CSR of 100 companies from seven industry memberships were selected. Of the 100 companies, 35 were members of the sustainable business networks in Malaysia. Size, profitability, industry membership, government ownership and business network were found to be positively and significantly related to climate change mitigation efforts. Only foreign ownership was found to be negatively related. This research suggests that climate change mitigation efforts from members of sustainability business network are higher compared to those of non-members. This implies that such networks could help to promote better sustainability practices.With the ongoing development of Australian anthropogenic climate change mitigation policies, there has been a steady increase in modelling studies undertaken to estimate Australian carbon prices and their impact on existing electricity markets. This article summarises some of the more prominent studies completed by many of Australia's foremost economic modelling firms. We developed a simple approach for testing the consistency of these studies and their findings in relation to carbon pass-through. Unfortunately, we have established that the studies are entirely inconsistent in their estimation of carbon pass-through. Furthermore, we were unable to establish why the estimation of carbon pass-through varies so significantly. This has important implications for policy makers given much of the compensation to be paid to households and businesses under the Clean Energy Future package is predicated on simple assumptions of carbon pass-through. Based upon our analysis of these economic studies, our conclusion is that Australian policy makers are best guided by relying upon the numerous a posteriori estimations of pass-through in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) rather than Australian a priori studies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper we present and discuss the results of an expert elicitation survey on solar technologies. Sixteen leading European experts from the academic world, the private sector and international institutions took part in this expert elicitation survey on Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies. The survey collected probabilistic information on (1) how Research, Development and Demonstration (RD&D) investments will impact the future costs of solar technologies and (2) the potential for solar technology deployment both in OECD and non-OECD countries. Understanding the technological progress and the potential of solar PV and CPS technologies is crucial to draft appropriate energy policies. The results presented in this paper are thus relevant for the policy making process and can be used as better input data in integrated assessment and energy models. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper estimates the potential for energy-related greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reductions in Brazil, their abatement costs and proposes a number of policies to achieve these reductions. The Brazilian energy system is very peculiar as renewable energy accounts for some 45% of total primary energy and 85% of electricity production. The following sectors are covered in this paper: industry, transports and petroleum sector. Compared to a business-as-usual reference scenario, results show a potential to reduce future energy-related GHG emissions by 27% in 2030. However, in spite of that, the mitigation potential identified here is not large enough, in absolute terms, to reduce energy-related GHG emissions below the current level in Brazil by 2030. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent practise has revealed that conservation interventions that seek to achieve multiple benefits generally face significant, if under-recognized trade-offs. REDD+ policies present prospective win-win solutions for climate change mitigation, rural development and biodiversity conservation. Notably, protecting, enhancing and restoring forests for their carbon sequestration services has the potential to additionally promote the conservation of imperiled tropical biodiversity. However, it has become increasingly apparent that efforts to design a REDD+ mechanism that optimizes emissions reductions and associated co-benefits face significant environmental and economic trade-offs. We provide a framework for conceptualizing the major related policy options, presenting the associated trade-offs as a continuum and as functions of two key factors: (1) geographic targeting, and (2) the selection of specific forest management activities. Our analysis highlights the challenges of assessing trade-offs using existing data and valuation schemes, and the difficulty of paying for and legislating biodiversity co-benefits and safeguards within a future REDD+ mechanism. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Accurate monitoring of the effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) in decreasing deforestation is increasingly important given the vital role of forest protection in climate change mitigation. Recent studies on PA effectiveness have used remote-sensing imagery to compare deforestation rates within PAs to surrounding areas. However, remote-sensing data used in isolation provides limited information on the factors contributing to effectiveness. We used landscape-modelling techniques to estimate the effectiveness of ten PAs in Madre de Dios, Peru. Factors influencing PA effectiveness were investigated using in situ key-informant interviews. Although all of the PAs studied had positive effectiveness scores, those with the highest scores were ecotourism and conservation concessions, where monitoring and surveillance activities and good relations with surrounding communities were reported as possible factors in decreasing deforestation rates. Native community areas had the lowest scores, with deforestation mainly driven by internal resource use and population growth. Weak local governance and immigration were identified as underlying factors decreasing the effectiveness of protection, whereas good relations with surrounding communities and monitoring activity increased effectiveness. The results highlight the need to combine remote sensing with in situ information on PA management because identification of drivers and deterrents of deforestation is vital for improving the effectiveness of protection.Although widely considered to be a core aspect of quality assurance of climate change mitigation activities, additionality remains a source of much controversy in relation to carbon accounting and carbon markets. This article illuminates the multi-faceted nature of the concept and develops a taxonomy of different forms. It provides an overview of how additionality is currently applied in relation to both compliance and voluntary carbon markets, including tests used and underlying evidence base requirements. This draws upon and updates an earlier review commissioned to help inform development of a Woodland Carbon Code designed to underpin climate change mitigation activities in the UK by the forest sector. Sources of uncertainty and trade-offs in practical application of the concept are highlighted, and potential perverse incentives explored.The issues surrounding rising levels of atmospheric CO2 and climate change have become part of the collective conscious and the vernacular of world leaders, media, and the public alike. Despite the widespread concern and attention, attempts to achieve a global commitment to mitigate climate change are failing. In this article, we suggest that the Actualizing Social and Personal Identity Resources model (ASPIRe; Haslam, Eggins, & Reynolds, 2003), developed to help organizations become more sustainable and productive, can promote more efficient negotiations in matters of global environmental concern. Using this model as a framework, the dynamics of the United Nations (UN) meeting in Copenhagen are scrutinized along with suggestions for how to structure future negotiations. Building on an understanding of existing UN-type committee structures, it is argued that as the interests of individual nations and those of like-minded other nations (subgroup interests) become the real basis for decision making on the issue of climate change the more likely it is that a higher-order superordinate identity will emerge, which promotes aligned action. To date, the psychological aspects of social and behavioral change have been neglected, which could be a factor in explaining the lack of coordinated action on climate change.Carbon sequestration in agricultural soil has been identified as a potential strategy to offset greenhouse gas emissions. Within the public debate, it has been claimed that provision of positive incentives for farmers to change their land management will result in substantial carbon sequestration in agricultural soils at a low carbon price. However, there is little information about the costs or benefits of carbon sequestration in agricultural soils to test these claims. In this study, the costeffectiveness of alternative land-use and land-management practices that can increase soil carbon sequestration is analysed by integrating biophysical modelling of carbon sequestration with wholefarm economic modelling. Results suggest that, for a case study model of a crop-livestock farm in the Western Australian wheatbelt, sequestering higher levels of soil carbon by changing rotations (to include longer pasture phases) incur considerable opportunity costs. Under current commodity prices, farmers would forego more than $80 in profit for every additional tonne of CO2-e stored in soil, depending on their adoption of crop residue retention practices. This is much higher than the initial carbon price of $23 t(-1) in Australia's recently legislated carbon tax. This analysis does not incorporate the possibility that greenhouse gas emissions may increase as a result of including longer pasture phases. Accounting for emissions may substantially reduce the potential for net carbon sequestration at low carbon prices. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An important consideration in forest management to mitigate climate change is the balance between forest carbon (C) storage and ecological sustainability. We explore the effects of management strategies on tradeoffs between forest C stocks and ecological sustainability under five scenarios, three of which included management and two scenarios which provide baselines emulating the natural forest. Managed forest scenarios were: (a) Protection (PROT), i.e., management by suppression of natural disturbance and harvest exclusion; (b) Harvest at a higher rate removing all sustainably available wood (HHARV); (c) Harvest at the lower historical average rate of harvest, AHARV. Both harvest scenarios reflected current forest management practices in the study area, including suppression of natural disturbance and a large (>20% of total) forest area reserved from harvest. Scenarios (d) and (e) simulated "natural" forest with unsuppressed fire at higher (NDH) or lower (NDL) levels and no harvest. Ecological sustainability was evaluated using a coarse filter approach where forest age class and tree species composition were indicators of condition. The study area encompassed 3.4 million hectares of forest in northeastern Ontario at the interface between the temperate hardwood and boreal forest zones. Future forest condition for each scenario was modeled using a timber supply model (SFMM), and C stored in forests and wood products were estimated using the FORCARB-ON model. Forest protection (PROT) resulted in greatest forest C stocks, especially in the near term, but was within 95% of its maximum, becoming saturated within 30 years. Harvesting (HHARV and AHARV) resulted in less forest C stock compared to PROT, however, after 100 years of adding C in wood products to that in regenerating forests total C storage was equivalent or greater than forest C with PROT. In contrast, removing management (NDH and NDL) decreased C relative to any of the management regimes, though in NDL the decrease was delayed for 30 years compared to HHARV. Forest sustainability measured by similarity to natural forest age class was superior with HHARV and AHARV compared to PROT, although no management regime produced a fully natural result. PROT in particular largely lacked younger age classes. All management regimes produced species composition that was near or within the range of natural variation. This analysis provides an example of the types of tradeoffs that can be considered in evaluating the contribution of forests to climate change mitigation, either in a commercial forestry context or in an approach based on protected areas. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Given the recognized role of agroforestry systems (AFS) in climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration, it is important to have rigorous and consistent procedures to measure the extent of C sequestration. The methods used currently vary widely and the estimations entail several assumptions, some of which are erroneous. Large-scale global models that are based on such measurements and estimations are thus likely to result in serious under- or overestimations. These methodological problems, though common to most land-use systems, are of a higher order of magnitude in AFS compared with agricultural systems because of the integrated nature of AFS and the lack of rigorous data on the area under the practice. While there are no easy, fast, and pragmatic solution to these complex issues in the short term, agroforestry researchers could, at the very minimum, include accurate description of the methods and procedures they use, such as sampling scheme, analytical details, and computational methods, while reporting results. That will help other researchers to examine the datasets and incorporate them in larger databases and help agroforestry earn its deserving place in mainstream efforts. Missing the opportunity to capitalize on the environmental services of agroforestry for the lack of rigorous and consistent procedures for data collection and reporting will be a serious setback to the development of agroforestry.Since the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, international efforts were aimed at limiting global change, and at managing and reducing its inevitable impacts. The growing concern on climate change related issues lead to create international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, and to establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change aimed at studying climate evolution and at defining common actions through the adoption of joint climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. From the time when international Task Forces, projects and programs were shared in order to deal with the reduction of environmental exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), international organisations have also been committed to estimate how climate change may affect POPs' environmental behaviour and distribution. In this review paper, we report the track of POPs' regulation efforts driven towards decreasing POPs' environmental concentrations through reducing or banning POP emissions in the environment. We also report scientific studies on climate change related effects on POPs' environmental behaviour in order to feature how climate change is influencing POPs' fate and transport. Our final aim is to identify how POPs-related regulations may take into account climate change in managing current or future POPs sources. We find in several case studies on this topic that climate change is considered to contribute to enhance POPs' long-range transport and that remote areas are considered likely to be the most impacted by POPs' pollution under a climate change perspective. Our findings also consider that continuous monitoring programs oriented towards the observation of secondary POP sources and the enhancement of inventories reporting primary and secondary POP emissions are useful in dealing with POPs' exposure under climate change scenarios. We also suggest how communication between science and regulation should be driven towards considering climate change effects into chemicals' legislation. (C) Author(s) 2012. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.Tropical deforestation continues to be the major driver of biodiversity loss and a considerable contributor to climate change. Increasing numbers of forest-dependent rural poor rely on degraded forest for their livelihoods. Ecological restoration of tropical forests has the potential to not only contribute to biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation, but also poverty alleviation. REDD+ provides a potentially powerful mechanism for supporting ecological restoration of tropical forests in developing countries. Decisions on when and how forest restoration activities should be implemented will require a detailed understanding of the ecological and socioeconomic context of the particular region. This paper focuses on three seed-related ecological traits of tropical trees which limit the likelihood of natural regeneration of degraded secondary forest or the recovery of abandoned agricultural land. These factors may also provide significant constraints to restoration through direct seeding and planting. A comprehensive review of 367 papers was conducted to evaluate masting phenology, seed storage and seed dispersal distances across important tropical timber tree families. This information is synthesised to identify the implications of these seed-related traits for ecological restoration of tropical forests and its integration into the REDD+ framework. Phenological monitoring, targeted nursery capacity building with a focus on recalcitrant and threatened timber species, the promotion of trees within the agricultural matrix, and conservation of remnant trees, are all important considerations. There is a major gap in our understanding of seed dispersal in heterogeneous landscapes, which must be addressed if we are to develop sustainable strategies for restoration in human dominated landscapes. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green buildings, often defined as those featuring natural ventilation capabilities, i.e. low-energy or free-running buildings, are now at the forefront of building research and climate change mitigation scenarios. This paper follows the results of recent post-occupancy evaluation (POE) surveys within two academic office buildings located in sub-tropical Sydney, Australia. Supplemented with an environmental attitudes questionnaire, based upon the New Ecological Paradigm [1]), it was found that occupant satisfaction levels on the POE were positively associated with environmental beliefs. Occupants with higher levels of environmental concern were more forgiving of their building, particularly those featuring aspects of green design, such as natural ventilation through operable windows. Despite their criticisms of the building's indoor environmental quality, the 'green' occupants were prepared to overlook and forgive less-than-ideal conditions more so than their 'brown' (non-green) counterparts. These results support the hypothesis that pro-environmental attitudes are closely associated with the stronger 'forgiveness factor' often observed in green buildings, but the question of causality remains moot. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an assessment of global economic energy potentials for all major natural energy resources. This work is based on both an extensive literature review and calculations using natural resource assessment data. Economic potentials are presented in the form of cost-supply curves, in terms of energy flows for renewable energy sources, or fixed amounts for fossil and nuclear resources, with strong emphasis on uncertainty, using a consistent methodology that allow direct comparisons to be made. In order to interpolate through available resource assessment data and associated uncertainty, a theoretical framework and a computational methodology are given based on statistical properties of different types of resources, justified empirically by the data, and used throughout. This work aims to provide a global database for natural energy resources ready to integrate into models of energy systems, enabling to introduce at the same time uncertainty over natural resource assessments. The supplementary material provides theoretical details and tables of data and parameters that enable this extensive database to be adapted to a variety of energy systems modelling frameworks. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Even though energy poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation are inextricably linked policy goals, they have remained as relatively disconnected fields of research inquiry and policy development. Acknowledging this gap, this paper explores the mainstream academic and policy literatures to provide a taxonomy of interactions and identify synergies and trade-offs between them. The most important trade-off identified is the potential increase in energy poverty levels as a result of strong climate change action if the internalisation of the external costs of carbon emissions is not offset by efficiency gains. The most significant synergy was found in deep energy efficiency in buildings. The paper argues that neither of the two problems - deep reductions in GHG emissions by mid-century, and energy poverty eradication - is likely to be solved fully on their own merit, while joining the two policy goals may provide a very solid case for deep efficiency improvements. Thus, the paper calls for a strong integration of these two policy goals (plus other key related benefits like energy security or employment), in order to provide sufficient policy motivation to mobilise a wide-scale implementation of deep energy efficiency standards. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The present research proposes a macroeconomic assessment of the role of waste incineration with energy recovery (WtE) and controlled landfill biogas to electricity generation and their potential contribution to a CO2 emission reduction policy, within a recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model. From the modeling viewpoint, introducing these energy sectors in such a framework required both the extension of the GTAP7 database and the improvement of the ICES production nested function. We focus our analysis on Italy as a signatory of the GHG reduction commitment of 20 % by 2020 with respect to 1990 levels proposed by the European Community; the rest of the world is represented by 21 geo-political countries/regions. It is shown that albeit in the near future WtE and landfill biogas will continue to represent a limited share of energy inputs in electricity sector ( in Italy, around 2 % for WtE and 0.6 % for biogas in 2020), and they could play a role in a mitigation policy context. The GDP cost of the EU emission reduction target for the Italian economy can indeed be reduced by 1 % when the two energy generating options are available. In absolute terms, this translates into an annuitized value of 87-122 million epsilon.The Low Carbon Path Calculator is an excel-based model to project greenhouse gas emissions from 2009 to 2050, which is based on the 2050 Pathways Calculator developed by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Scenarios are developed to reduce GHG emissions in Korea at 50% based on 2005 levels by 2050 using a Low Carbon Path Calculator. They were classified in four different cases, which are high renewable, high nuclear, high CCS and mixed option scenarios. The objectives of this study are to compare scenarios in terms of GHG emissions, final energy, primary energy and electricity generation and examine the usefulness of that model in terms of identifying pathways towards a low carbon emission society. This model will enhance the understanding of the pathways toward a low carbon society and the level of the climate change policy for policy makers, stakeholders, and the public. This study can be considered as a reference for developing strategies in reducing GHG emissions in the long term.This article reviews the existing literature on the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), focusing on empirical ex-post research since the end of the first period (2007). The literature is presented through a multi-criteria evaluation. Concerning environmental effectiveness, despite over-allocation during the first period, abatement is estimated between -2.5% and -5%. Trade-driven carbon leakage was not observed, even if long-term economic models predict divergent leakage estimates for certain at-risk sectors. The abatement target was likely to be below an economically efficient level, but was reached in a fairly cost-effective way, even if free allocation gave rise to several distortional effects. Equity concerns were manifold and constitute a major drawback to the policy. Finally, institutional feasibility can be considered positive in that the EU ETS passed the European legislative process, unlike the previously proposed EU-wide carbon tax. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As international negotiations struggle to deliver timely, binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels, the environmental legal community has begun to contemplate the scope for climate governance 'beyond' the international climate change regime. Many see merit in a more decentralized, disaggregated approach, operating across multiple governance levels. This article examines the development of climate change law in an era of multi-level governance. It analyzes several case studies of current manifestations of multi-level governance in climate change law, including the fragmented global emissions trading system, developing arrangements governing forests and land-based sinks, the growth of climate litigation establishing transnational liability principles, efforts to ensure adaptation to unavoidable climate change, and the emergence in federal systems of a decentralized approach to climate change regulation. The article concludes by considering whether the emerging multi-level system of climate governance is adequate to meet broader international goals of climate change mitigation and adaptation.Global agriculture lies in intersection of two inescapable issues of the present times, viz, keeping pace with growing food demand and participating in climate change mitigation efforts. Rice cultivation is a major emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and no tillage of soil is becoming popular due to low economic investments with improved soil conditions. However, how these arrangements will affect GHG emissions need to be quantified. Therefore, monitoring over diverse agricultural practices is essential for optimum utilization of cultivable land and resources, while identifying the chances of emission reductions. We assessed the impacts of four tillage practices in rice-wheat cultivation system on fluxes of GHGs (CH4, N2O and CO2) and yield of rice. The tillage practices were tilling of soil before sowing of every crop (RCT-WCT), tillage before sowing of rice but no tillage before sowing of wheat (RCT-WNT), tillage before sowing of wheat but no tillage before sowing of rice (RNT-WCT), and no tillage before sowing of rice as well as wheat (RNT-WNT). Reduction in tillage frequency led to significant reductions in fluxes of CH4 and N2O, but increased CO2 while permutations of tillage and no tillage influenced grain yield. RNT-WCT produced next to or comparable to the most yielding RCT-WCT. Although it is difficult to select the best performer since no single tillage permutation showed consistent increment in yield with accompanied emission reductions, RNT-WCT, however may be considered as better agricultural practice for the study region. Long term and extensive spatio-temporal monitoring is still required before making any recommendation. It is also essential for understanding the factors that cause declination in yields under no tillage. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Monitoring landscape carbon storage is critical for supporting and validating climate change mitigation policies. These may be aimed at reducing deforestation and degradation, or increasing terrestrial carbon storage at local, regional and global levels. However, due to data-deficiencies, default global carbon storage values for given land cover types such as 'lowland tropical forest' are often used, termed 'Tier 1 type' analyses by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Such estimates may be erroneous when used at regional scales. Furthermore uncertainty assessments are rarely provided leading to estimates of land cover change carbon fluxes of unknown precision which may undermine efforts to properly evaluate land cover policies aimed at altering land cover dynamics. Here, we present a repeatable method to estimate carbon storage values and associated 95% confidence intervals (CI) for all five IPCC carbon pools (aboveground live carbon, litter, coarse woody debris, belowground live carbon and soil carbon) for data-deficient regions, using a combination of existing inventory data and systematic literature searches, weighted to ensure the final values are regionally specific. The method meets the IPCC 'Tier 2' reporting standard. We use this method to estimate carbon storage over an area of 33.9 million hectares of eastern Tanzania, reporting values for 30 land cover types. We estimate that this area stored 6.33 (5.92-6.74) Pg C in the year 2000. Carbon storage estimates for the same study area extracted from five published Africa-wide or global studies show a mean carbon storage value of similar to 50% of that reported using our regional values, with four of the five studies reporting lower carbon storage values. This suggests that carbon storage may have been underestimated for this region of Africa. Our study demonstrates the importance of obtaining regionally appropriate carbon storage estimates, and shows how such values can be produced for a relatively low investment.The primary objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that will avoid dangerous climate impacts. However, greenhouse gas concentration stabilization is an awkward framework within which to assess dangerous climate change on account of the significant lag between a given concentration level and the eventual equilibrium temperature change. By contrast, recent research has shown that global temperature change can be well described by a given cumulative carbon emissions budget. Here, we propose that cumulative carbon emissions represent an alternative framework that is applicable both as a tool for climate mitigation as well as for the assessment of potential climate impacts. We show first that both atmospheric CO2 concentration at a given year and the associated temperature change are generally associated with a unique cumulative carbon emissions budget that is largely independent of the emissions scenario. The rate of global temperature change can therefore be related to first order to the rate of increase of cumulative carbon emissions. However, transient warming over the next century will also be strongly affected by emissions of shorter lived forcing agents such as aerosols and methane. Non-CO2 emissions therefore contribute to uncertainty in the cumulative carbon budget associated with near-term temperature targets, and may suggest the need for a mitigation approach that considers separately short-and long-lived gas emissions. By contrast, long-term temperature change remains primarily associated with total cumulative carbon emissions owing to the much longer atmospheric residence time of CO2 relative to other major climate forcing agents.The intention of this review is to place crop albedo biogeoengineering in the wider picture of climate manipulation. Crop biogeoengineering is considered within the context of the long-term modification of the land surface for agriculture over several thousand years. Biogeoengineering is also critiqued in relation to other geoengineering schemes in terms of mitigation power and adherence to social principles for geoengineering. Although its impact is small and regional, crop biogeoengineering could be a useful and inexpensive component of an ensemble of geoengineering schemes to provide temperature mitigation. The method should not detrimentally affect food security and there may even be positive impacts on crop productivity, although more laboratory and field research is required in this area to understand the underlying mechanisms.Background: Southeast Asian deforestation rates are among the world's highest and threaten to drive many forest-dependent species to extinction. Climate change is expected to interact with deforestation to amplify this risk. Here we examine whether regional incentives for sustainable forest management will be effective in improving threatened mammal conservation, in isolation and when combined with global climate change mitigation. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using a long time-series of orangutan nest counts for Sabah (2000-10), Malaysian Borneo, we evaluated the effect of sustainable forest management and climate change scenarios, and their interaction, on orangutan spatial abundance patterns. By linking dynamic land-cover and downscaled global climate model projections, we determine the relative influence of these factors on orangutan spatial abundance and use the resulting statistical models to identify habitat crucial for their long-term conservation. We show that land-cover change the degradation of primary forest had the greatest influence on orangutan population size. Anticipated climate change was predicted to cause reductions in abundance in currently occupied populations due to decreased habitat suitability, but also to promote population growth in western Sabah by increasing the suitability of presently unoccupied regions. Conclusions/Significance: We find strong quantitative support for the Sabah government's proposal to implement sustainable forest management in all its forest reserves during the current decade; failure to do so could result in a 40 to 80 per cent regional decline in orangutan abundance by 2100. The Sabah orangutan is just one (albeit iconic) example of a forest-dependent species that stands to benefit from sustainable forest management, which promotes conservation of existing forests.Global aerosol direct radiative forcing (DRF) is an important metric for assessing potential climate impacts of future emissions changes. However, the radiative consequences of emissions perturbations are not readily quantified nor well understood at the level of detail necessary to assess realistic policy options. To address this challenge, here we show how adjoint model sensitivities can be used to provide highly spatially resolved estimates of the DRF from emissions of black carbon (BC), primary organic carbon (OC), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and ammonia (NH3), using the example of emissions from each sector and country following multiple Representative Concentration Pathway (RCPs). The radiative forcing efficiencies of many individual emissions are found to differ considerably from regional or sectoral averages for NH3, SO2 from the power sector, and BC from domestic, industrial, transportation and biomass burning sources. Consequently, the amount of emissions controls required to attain a specific DRF varies at intracontinental scales by up to a factor of 4. These results thus demonstrate both a need and means for incorporating spatially refined aerosol DRF into analysis of future emissions scenario and design of air quality and climate change mitigation policies.Reducing emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses is considered an essential ingredient of an effective strategy to mitigate global warming. Required changes in land use and forestry, however, often imply foregoing returns from locally more attractive resource use strategies. We assess and compare the prospects of mitigating climate change through emission reductions from forestry and agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon. We use official statistics, literature, and case study material from both old and new colonization frontiers to identify the scope for emission reductions, in terms of potential additionality, opportunity costs, technological complexity, transaction costs, and risks of economic and environmental spillover effects. Our findings point to a comparative advantage in the Brazilian Amazon of forest conservation-based over land-use modifying mitigation options, especially in terms of higher potential additionality in emission reductions. Low-cost mitigation options do exist also in use-modifying agriculture and forestry, but tend to be technologically complex thus requiring more costly intervention schemes. Our review points to a series of regional development deficits that may come to hamper attempts to tap into the large-scale climate change mitigation potential often associated with the Amazon. Low-hanging fruits for mitigation do exist, but must be carefully identified based on the performance indicators we discuss.This pieces introduces the papers brought together in this special section of journal of Transport Geography. It explores some of the difficulties of decarbonising transport and argues that the social sciences, including human geography and its many sub-disciplines, can make important contributions to understanding the links between climate change, energy use and transport. Some research priorities for social scientists interested in these issues are outlined, and reflections are offered on how the social sciences can make further contributions to the thinking about transport's decarbonisation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work introduces a model of Future Technology Transformations for the power sector (FIT:Power), a representation of global power systems based on market competition, induced technological change (ITC) and natural resource use and depletion. It is the first component of a family of sectoral bottom-up models of technology, designed for integration into the global macroeconometric model E3MG. ITC occurs as a result of technological learning produced by cumulative investment and leads to highly nonlinear, irreversible and path dependent technological transitions. The model uses a dynamic coupled set of logistic differential equations. As opposed to traditional bottom-up energy models based on systems optimisation, such differential equations offer an appropriate treatment of the times and structure of change involved in sectoral technology transformations, as well as a much reduced computational load. Resource use and depletion are represented by local cost-supply curves, which give rise to different regional energy landscapes. The model is explored for a single global region using two simple scenarios, a baseline and a mitigation case where the price of carbon is gradually increased. While a constant price of carbon leads to a stagnant system, mitigation produces successive technology transitions leading towards the gradual decarbonisation of the global power sector. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within the framework of achieving the European environmental targets towards climate change mitigation, as well as decreasing the fossil fuel dependence and its negative effects on global warming, renewable energy sources (RES) promotion has become a major issue of concern in most European Union (EU) countries. In the above context, most EU countries have endorsed initiatives to foster RES implementation development and inclusion in the energy mix, aiming to endeavor and further impel the benefits deriving from RES and harmonize to the EU Directive or Kyoto Protocol. Nevertheless, only few sporadic efforts have been examining countries and compare the requirements for promoting RES implementation that lack specific RES obligations or a framework set by the Kyoto Protocol or the EU Directive, and particular Balkans countries with great RES potential, such as BiH and Serbia. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the conditions and modalities for RES progress within the economic, political and institutional dimension, in these two neighboring countries located in the vicinity of EU Member States (MS), which appear to have a similar historical, political and economical background and an extensive RES potential. The analysis indicated that RES development in BiH seems to be a slow process, its institutional framework is partly established and further strengthening is required. In Serbia, the institutional framework is efficiently established, are in the process of developing new legislation to facilitate renewable energy development. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Turkey, there is a much more potential for renewables, but represent about 37% of total energy production and 10% of total energy consumption. This share is not enough for the country and the governments should be increase to this situation. Renewable energy technologies of wind, biomass, hydropower, geothermal, solar thermal and photovoltaics are finally showing maturity and the ultimate promise of cost competitiveness. With respect to global environmental issues, Turkey's carbon dioxide emissions have grown along with its energy consumption. States have played a leading role in protecting the environment by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. In this regard, renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solutions for clean and sustainable energy development in Turkey. Turkey's geographical location has several advantages for extensive use of most of these renewable energy sources. Certain policy interventions could have a dramatic impact on shaping the relationship between geological, geographic and climatic conditions and energy production. This study shows that there is enough renewable energy potential in Turkey for fuels and electricity. Especially hydropower and biomass are very well. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study uses a hybrid Life Cycle Assessment approach to evaluate the environmental impacts of large-scale deployment of Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) in coal and natural gas based electricity generation, based on IEA scenarios. For the Baseline scenario, all impact categories would increase 2-3-fold in 2050 from 2005 levels. Green House Gas (GHG) emissions are found to decrease by similar to 40% in ACTmap scenario and by similar to 75% in more CCS-intensive BLUEmap scenario. These climate mitigation scenarios also show significantly reduced impacts of acidification, particulate matter formation and human toxicity, suggesting the existence of co-benefits. For eutrophication, all scenarios indicate substantial increases, but the increases are largest in the Baseline scenario. For photochemical oxidant formation, only the mitigation scenarios manage to stabilize this impact from fossil fuel based power production. This study does not assess the impact of alternative power generation or energy efficiency technology that replaces part of the fossil fuel power in the mitigation scenarios. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Earth system interactions, as highlighted by the planetary boundaries framework, occur within and across natural, social and economic systems and shape global environmental change. This paper addresses the multi-level governance problem of coherently addressing key interactions between four Earth sub-systems - climate change, freshwater use, land use and biodiversity - taking into account concerns over problem shifting. After discussing possibilities for regional downscaling of the boundaries, we explore challenges for the EU region to coherently address this particular set of interacting Earth sub-systems and reduce the risk of problem shifting. This analysis demonstrates that Earth system interactions can be governed, but that they likely require comprehensive packages of governance responses across both sub-systems and levels. Three overarching governance functions are tentatively identified that directly or indirectly address Earth system interactions: reduction of system stress, risks and vulnerabilities; triggering and navigation of transformation of economic activity: and development of a diversity of options. Finally, the paper briefly discusses political and institutional challenges for developing, enabling and stabilising these governance functions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The rise of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology as a driver of rural electrification in the developing world and a contributor to climate change mitigation suggests that innovations enhancing PV efficiency and scalability could make considerable strides in reducing both poverty and greenhouse gas emissions. The nearly global access to the solar resource coupled to innovation-driven decreases in the costs of PV provides a path for a renewable energy source to accelerate sustainable development. Open-source software development has proven to produce reliable and innovative computer code at lower costs than proprietary software through sharing development responsibility with a large community of invested individuals. Concepts of open-source design have been applied to other fields in an attempt to reap the same benefits realized within software development: however, applying open-source strategies to solar PV research is uncommon. This paper reviews and examines how open-source design can be utilized to catalyze rapid innovation in the PV industry. The results show how successful open design and development methods can be created and utilized by identifying business models that provide PV researchers, turnkey suppliers and solar PV module manufacturers with the opportunity to utilize open-source design principles to accelerate innovation. (C) 2012 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Global deforestation and forest degradation have led to massive loss of biodiversity and decline of ecosystem services. Against this prospect, it is important not only to protect, but also to restore forest ecosystems. The paper analyzes the current and future role of the restoration of forests and degraded lands starting with the definition of various techniques, scales and objectives of forest restoration. Three key motivations for and targets of forest restoration are then discussed: forest biodiversity protection, biomass production, climate change mitigation and adaptation. The paper also briefly discusses three tools of increasing relevance for supporting forest restoration policies: the development of forest nursery techniques and the improvement of quality of forest reproductive material, the use of standard and certification tools, and financing of restoration investments, including projects aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. We conclude by making some final remarks on the future challenges of forest restoration policies.This article summarizes a presentation given at 'Health and Well-being: the 21st Century Agenda', which focused on the potential to make progress by making appropriate connections between activity to promote health and respond to the threat of climate change. It argues that a transition to a low carbon economy would bring together two of our greatest public health challenges, supporting action to improve public health within resource constraints and action to avert climate change as far as possible. Deep cuts in emissions are needed to prevent dangerous consequences arising from climate change. In addition, many of the policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will, in themselves, have beneficial effects on public health. This article provides an overview of several modelling studies which demonstrate that well-designed initiatives that curb greenhouse gas emissions in energy, residential construction, urban transport and agricultural systems can enhance global public health, including improving health among poor populations. Some of these health co-benefits can be achieved in a relatively short time frame, and they can help offset the costs of climate change mitigation policies. (C) 2012 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comprehensive investigation was conducted to evaluate the efficiency of newly installed biogas digesters in saving biomass resources and addressing energy squandering. Compared with traditional coal-based or firewood dominated energy consumption, the biogas digesters economize on energy resources due to higher heat efficiency. Furthermore, since crop residues of straw and other domestic animal and human excreta are effectively recycled and reused as anaerobic fermentation materials of biogas digesters, greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced by converting the previous extensive combustion of such into a sustainable and highly efficient practice in the rural region. The results in this study show that total energy consumption is 412 kgce (kgce: 1 kg standard coal. 1 kgce = 29.31 MJ) in Xiyang Township in 2009. The construction of biogas digesters significantly contributes to the transformation of rural household energy consumption structure, though biogas as a renewable energy only accounts for 6.31% of the total household energy consumption. Per capita rural household energy consumption is 393.07 kgce in household with biogas digesters and 437.60 kgce in household without biogas digesters. In addition, application of biogas dregs, slurry, and marsh liquid to the agricultural crops have greatly reduced the expenditure of buying chemical fertilizers. The average commercial fertilizer per mu (0.067 ha) in rural households using biogas digesters is 12.43 kg and the cost per mu is 29.53 yuan (1 yuan = 0.1523 dollar), while rural households without biogas digesters use 25.22 kg of commercial fertilizers and cost 59.71 yuan per mu. The utilization of biogas in rural semi-arid regions of China is a potentially clean development mechanism (CDM) and has profound implications for applied energy. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper investigates whether coal-fired Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (IGCC) power plants can be an economically viable future technology for providing less carbon-intensive electricity and heat energy in Germany than today. In the context of CO2 emission mitigation in power generation, energy conversion technologies enabling the implementation of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) need to be considered. IGCC is such a technology, as it utilizes coal but does not necessarily emit CO2. In our study we investigate, from an economic perspective, whether IGCC plants can be an alternative to nuclear and/or conventional coal-fired power plants. The research is based on scenario analysis. The starting point is the expected shut-down of nuclear power stations and outdated coal-fired power plants, as well as the projected evolution of the CO2 price. The hot gas cleaning option in IGCC plants is of particular interest, as it allows a significant enhancement of the efficiency of the IGCC technology and the use of combined heat and power production (CHP). Corresponding supplementary earnings (incl. subsidies) are compared with an increase in specific investment costs. Besides hot gas cleaning, we also investigate the economic impact of injecting pure CO2 (separated from the IGCC process) into oilfields, as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) can help to reduce the costs of CO2 transport and storage. Based on the results from our analysis we find that the replacement of currently operating power plants by IGCC facilities is only reasonable under certain circumstances, e.g. for locational reasons. Furthermore, from today's perspective, and due to its various advantages, a complete abandonment of the IGCC technology seems rather unlikely. Our analysis of NPVs of total costs indicates that some IGCC designs exist that are less expensive to set up and operate than a conventional reference power plant. The option of injecting CO2 sequestered from the power plant process into almost depleted oil fields appears attractive for a utility investing in IGCC technology, rendering such a plant configuration as likely cost-competitive. However, with regard to climate change mitigation, the least-cost investment alternative is not necessarily the one with the lowest GHG emissions. Significant cost reductions can be achieved by improving the efficiency or the availability of the plant. Finally, the NPV changes markedly when the heat-to-power ratio is altered, and high ratios are found to be incompatible with NPV minimization. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the economic potential for fire management to provide offsets to carbon markets in the savannas of northern Australia. Long-term field trials in Australia's savannas have quantified greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions abatement resulting from improved fire management. However, little is known about the economic potential of fire management projects or the locations where projects might be economically viable for providing GHG offsets. A benefitcost analysis of fire management for GHG offsets is presented here, which includes spatially explicit estimates for GHG abatement under three assumptions of management efficacy (conservative, empirically based, upper potential). The total supply of GHG abatement is estimated under different prices and management efficacy assumptions, and areas that pass the benefitcost analysis are identified. At the Australian Government's carbon price of A$23 per metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-e), fire management would be economically viable across 51 million hectares, all within the higher monsoonal rainfall regions of northern Australia, abating 1.6 million tonnes of CO2-e per year. These estimates suggest that fire management projects can contribute to GHG abatement targets and be financially viable across large areas of northern Australia. Additional benefits are anticipated from these projects for biodiversity conservation, livelihoods for indigenous Australians and economic development in remote regions.This paper analyzes the regional distribution of climate change mitigation costs in a global cap-and-trade regime. Four stylized burden-sharing rules are considered, ranging from GDP-based permit allocations to schemes that foresee a long-term convergence of per-capita emission permits. The comparison of results from three structurally different hybrid, integrated energy-economy models allows us to derive robust insights as well as identify sources of uncertainty with respect to the regional distribution of the costs of climate change mitigation. We find that regional costs of climate change mitigation may deviate substantially from the global mean. For all models, the mitigation cost average of the four scenarios is higher for China than for the other macro-regions considered. Furthermore, China suffers above-world-average mitigation costs for most burden-sharing rules in the long-term. A decomposition of mitigation costs into (a) primary (domestic) abatement costs and (b) permit trade effects, reveals that the large uncertainty about the future development of carbon prices results in substantial uncertainties about the financial transfers associated with carbon trade for a given allocation scheme. This variation also implies large uncertainty about the regional distribution of climate policy costs.This paper compares the results of the three state of the art climate-energy-economy models IMACLIM-R, ReMIND-R, and WITCH to assess the costs of climate change mitigation in scenarios in which the implementation of a global climate agreement is delayed or major emitters decide to participate in the agreement at a later stage only. We find that for stabilizing atmospheric GHG concentrations at 450 ppm CO2-only, postponing a global agreement to 2020 raises global mitigation costs by at least about half and a delay to 2030 renders ambitious climate targets infeasible to achieve. In the standard policy scenario-in which allocation of emission permits is aimed at equal per-capita levels in the year 2050-regions with above average emissions (such as the EU and the US alongside the rest of Annex-I countries) incur lower mitigation costs by taking early action, even if mitigation efforts in the rest of the world experience a delay. However, regions with low per-capita emissions which are net exporters of emission permits (such as India) can possibly benefit from higher future carbon prices resulting from a delay. We illustrate the economic mechanism behind these observations and analyze how (1) lock-in of carbon intensive infrastructure, (2) differences in global carbon prices, and (3) changes in reduction commitments resulting from delayed action influence mitigation costs.In the last 20 years, the Mocoties watershed in the Venezuelan Andes has experienced an intense process of land-use change, with natural forests being replaced by "sun grown coffee" (Coffea arabica) monocultures in sites of high slope, increasing risk conditions and the vulnerability of people living in lower parts of the watershed. Using a local-scale approach, 37 productive units (10% of total) in the San Isidro micro-watershed (51.85 km(2)) were assessed in order to evaluate local socioeconomic conditions and perceptions of ecosystem services, and how both are affected by human activity. Almost 65% of residents work in small farms of less than 5 ha, while family ownership remains the most important form of management. A significant lack of financial support was detected, support which is required to improve coffee productivity and improve conservation practices. Severe soil loss was detected in 45% of the area, associated with cultivation on steep slopes and the use of chemical fertilizers. Agroforestry and tree planting are well-regarded, as locals tend to recognize soil protection and climate change mitigation as two of the most important ecosystem services. Using a small-scale forestry approach, it is believed that current land management could be greatly improved to: (1) progressively introduce tree cover into coffee monocultures; (2) restore degraded areas where forest cover is lost and (3) reduce deforestation. Recommended policies and actions include institutional strengthening, decentralization and the development of community-based forest enterprises. The general principles presented in this work could provide a preliminary basis for basin-wide land restoration.It is estimated that 87 million acres of forestland in the United States (US) is managed by private industrial forestland owners (nearly 14% of the forestland nationwide). Private industrial forestland owners include forest product companies, Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Current regulatory and voluntary carbon markets, as well as proposed national emission reduction legislation, in the US make provisions for substantial carbon offsets from domestic forestry projects. This research employs the theory of planned behavior by means of an online questionnaire in order to survey large industrial forestland owners (>30 000 acres) regarding intentions to manage forestland for carbon sequestration and trading. Quantitative results suggest that very few organizations (18%) were managing forestland for carbon values. Attitudes towards carbon sequestration and trading were significantly influenced by the managers' beliefs that emission reduction legislation would become law and that US forest carbon offsets can be used as a legitimate climate change mitigation tool. Qualitative results revealed that most organizations are taking a passive approach to carbon sequestration and trading until a suitable regulatory framework emerges and carbon prices provide the conditions for a sound investment. The researchers suggest that, given the size and scope of the climate change phenomenon as well as the multifaceted and unified mitigation strategy required to address it, the development of functional carbon markets will be an iterative process and may require a global carbon framework that reflects the globalized nature of the forest economy. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentEvidence suggests that in addition to sequestering carbon (C), biochar amendment can increase crop yields, improve soil quality and nutrient cycling, reduce the leaching of nutrients from soil and stimulate soil microbial activity. However, biochar application primarily benefits soils of intrinsic poor quality, thus the advantages of adding biochar to temperate agricultural soils remains controversial. In addition, there is limited information about the longer term effects of biochar application, or of increasing the rate of biochar loading to soil. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of biochar residency time and application rate on soil quality, crop performance, weed emergence, microbial growth and community composition in a temperate agricultural soil. We used replicated field plots with three wood biochar application rates (0, 25 and 50 t ha(-1)). Three years after biochar amendment, the plots were further split and fresh biochar added at two different rates (25 and 50 t ha(-1)) resulting in double-loaded reapplications of 25 + 25 and 50 + 50 t ha(-1). After a soil residency time of three years, there were no significant differences in soil nutrients, microbial growth, mycorrhizal colonisation or weed emergence between biochar amended and unamended soil. In contrast, the reapplication of biochar had a significant effect on soil quality, (e.g. increased PO43-, K+ and Ca2+, DOC, soil moisture, organic matter and EC), microbial growth, (e.g. decreased saprophytic fungal growth), increased mycorrhizal root colonisation and inhibition of weed emergence. Whilst biochar application is unquestionably a strategy for the sequestration of C, in this case, other benefits, e.g. improved soil nutrient levels or crop performance, seemed to be short lived. Reapplication of biochar exemplifies the transient nature of biochar-mediated benefits rather than any lasting differences in soil nutrient dynamics or microbial communities. These results emphasise the need for more long-term field studies to provide data that can meaningfully inform agronomic management decisions and climate change mitigation strategies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Various forms of energy are used during a wastewater treatment process like electrical, manual, fuel, chemical etc. Most of the earlier studies have focused only on electrical energy intensity of large-scale centralized wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). This paper presents a methodological framework for analysing manual, mechanical, chemical and electrical energy consumption in a small-scaled WWTP. The methodology has been demonstrated on a small-scale WWTP in an institutional area. Total energy intensity of the plant is 1.046 kWh/m(3) of wastewater treated. Electrical energy is only about half of the total energy consumption. Manual energy also has a significant share, which means that the small-scale treatment plants offer significant employment opportunities in newly industrializing countries and replaces fossil fuelbased energy with renewable. There is a lack of sufficient data in the literature for comparison, and few studies have reported values that vary significantly due to the difference in scale, scope of the study and the choice of the treatment technologies. Replication of similar studies and generation of data in this area will offer directions for decision on choice of the scale of wastewater treatment process from the considerations of energy and climate change mitigation strategies.As more than a third of all carbon dioxide emissions in the UK are generated by the domestic sector, individuals need to make drastic changes to their current lifestyle in order to play their part in climate change mitigation. Not only do they need to change their personal behaviour, they also have to accept new low-carbon technologies in order to decarbonise the energy they are using. This study uses an adapted version of the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) model (Stern, 2000) to examine individual-motivational factors in the acceptability of demand-side and supply-side strategies to reduce carbon emissions. The study found that environmental identity, climate change concern, and personal norms are all significantly associated with the acceptability of both demand-side measures and supply-side technologies. While personal values were also important, their associations were mediated by more specific factors. Overall, the adapted VBN model was better able to explain the acceptability of low-carbon behaviours than of low-carbon energy-supply technologies. Concern about energy security appeared to be of limited importance. It was negatively associated with the willingness to engage in low-carbon behaviours, suggesting that a shift in focus towards energy security issues may not necessarily help a transition to a low-carbon society. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy-efficient lighting is one of the key measures for addressing electric power shortages and climate change mitigation, and fluorescent lamps are expected to dominate the lighting market in China over the next several years. This review presents an overview on the emissions and risk of mercury from fluorescent lamps during production and disposal, and discusses measures for reducing the mercury risk through solid waste management and source reduction. Fluorescent lamps produced in China used to contain relatively large amounts of mercury (up to 40 mg per lamp) due to the prevalence of liquid mercury dosing, which also released significant amounts of mercury to the environment. Upgrade of the mercury dosing technologies and manufacturing facilities had significantly reduced the mercury contents in fluorescent lamps, with most of them containing less than 10 or 5 mg per lamp now. Occupational hygiene studies showed that mercury emissions occurred during fluorescent lamp production, particularly in the facilities using liquid mercury dosing, which polluted the environmental media at and surrounding the production sites and posed chronic health risk to the workers by causing neuropsychological and motor impairments. It is estimated that spent fluorescent lamps account for approximately 20% of mercury input in the MSW in China. Even though recycling of fluorescent lamps presents an important opportunity to capture the mercury they contain, it is difficult and not cost-effective at reducing the mercury risk under the broader context of mercury pollution control in China. In light of the significant mercury emissions associated with electricity generation in China, we propose that reduction of mercury emissions and risk associated with fluorescent lamps should be achieved primarily through lowering their mercury contents by the manufacturers while recycling programs should focus on elemental mercury-containing waste products instead of fluorescent lamps to recapture mercury from the waste stream cost-effectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To quantify the climate change impacts of forestry and forest management options, we must consider the entire forestry system: the carbon dynamics of the forest, the life cycle of harvested wood products, and the substitution benefit of using biomass and wood products compared to more greenhouse gas intensive options. This paper presents modelled estimates of the greenhouse gas balance of two key native forest areas managed for production in New South Wales for a period of 200 years, and compares it to the option of managing for conservation only. These two case studies show that forests managed for production provide the greatest ongoing greenhouse gas benefits, with long-term carbon storage in products, and product substitution benefits critical to the outcome. Thus native forests could play a significant part in climate change mitigation, particularly when sustainably managed for production of wood and non-wood products including biomass for bioenergy. The potential role of production forestry in mitigating climate change, though substantial, has been largely overlooked in recent Australian climate change policy.The rapid emergence of carbon markets internationally, and rising concerns about the impact of such schemes on Indigenous and local community interests, rights and traditional knowledge, present a strong need to examine legal regulation, protection and promotion of equitable outcomes for the effective engagement of Indigenous peoples and local forest subsistence communities in climate change mitigation. This is particularly so in the context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD and REDD+ as it later became known) - a scheme that will significantly affect the 'roperty' rights and interests of such communities. The pace and enthusiasm for investment in, and implementation of, this scheme necessitate scrutiny of the foreseeable consequences at a local level, including the potential of this global project to act as a form of neo-colonialism, co-opting Indigenous and local community interests where the value of the carbon 'ffset' may not accrue to local inhabitants of the forested areas. Accordingly, this paper seeks to present a series of fundamental questions raised by the programme, particularly in respect of differing conceptions of property, as it uniquely relates to and impacts upon Indigenous peoples.The authors apply Ulrich Beck's theory of reflexive modernization to examine how farmers in the United States perceive and respond to climate change. Using a case study, the authors identify diversions from Beck's original theory and explore the importance of social constructionist and political economy perspectives. The article focuses on corn farmers in southwestern Michigan to examine climate risk recognition and reflexive responses, concentrating on the role of nitrogen fertilizer as a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Results from interviews, focus groups, and a mail survey indicate that dualistic worldviews and exposure to limited and/or biased information can inhibit farmers from acknowledging climate change as a risk. In addition, structural barriers inhibit farmers from reducing nitrogen fertilizer application in response to climate change. These findings offer insights applicable to climate change mitigation efforts and also demonstrate the importance of both social constructionist and political economy perspectives to identify barriers to reflexive modernization.The benefits of promoting renewable energy are regularly claimed to be energy security, climate change mitigation and job creation. While the first two benefits are generally accepted, the impact of renewable energy on employment is still disputed. This paper presents a discussion of the various factors that influence the analysis of renewable energy and its impact on employment. The advantages and disadvantages of input-output methods and analysis methods are discussed as well as the issues surrounding the measurement of job creation. A critical evaluation of the literature reveals factors that should be considered when completing a study about renewable energy and employment: labour intensity of renewables: cost increases and availability of investments; counting job losses; job quality and skills, model assumptions and sources of information. Analytical studies using extensive surveys were found to be more appropriate for regional studies while input-output methods were better suited to national and international studies. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global warming is a grave environmental issue that has caught the attention of the globe. Due to the consequences of global warming, UNFCCC has established the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord as measures of combating climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases. It has been three years since the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord was just newly established. Therefore, there is a necessity to evaluate the performance of the Kyoto Protocol and to comment upon the Copenhagen Accord in its contributions toward climate change mitigation. Major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters who are among the Kyoto Protocol ratifying developed nations exhibit the potential to achieve the desired Kyoto pledges through the aid of Clean Development Mechanisms (mainly from using renewable energy), as proposed in the Kyoto Protocol. However, the nullifying effects from non-ratified major emitters like the US and ratified but still developing countries have difficulties in adhering to the Kyoto Protocol. The Copenhagen Accord, on the other hand, is considered to be less ambitious and provides limited financial aid through the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund. The formulation of such a document indicates that modern societies continues to waste time in negotiations that emphasize on individual economic and political advantages, rather than taking into account true global considerations. It raises questions regarding how much time is needed before we decide to fully commit to the effective and collective efforts of climate change mitigation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tillage influence on soil properties and crop productivity depends on soil, crop, climate, and duration. Two long-term experimental sites with contrasting soils were selected to assess the influence of no-till (NT), minimum tillage (MT), and plow tillage (PT) under continuous corn (Zea mays L.) and corn-soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] (CS) rotations on soil organic C (SOC) stock, bulk density (rho(b)), water-stable aggregation (WSA), aggregate tensile strength, penetration resistance, available water capacity (AWC), and corn yield. Experiments began in 1962 in northeast Ohio on a well-drained silt loam soil and in 1964 in northwest Ohio on a poorly drained clay loam soil. Results were compared with soil under an adjacent undisturbed woodlot (WL). The WL soils had the highest SOC content and stock. In the cultivated silt loam soil, stock was higher under NT (20.7 Mg ha(-1)) followed by MT (17.3 Mg ha(-1)) and PT (16.8 Mg ha(-1)) for the 0- to 10-cm depth. Soil rho(b) for this depth was lower under NT by 8 and 3% than PT and MT, respectively. The percentage of total WSA >2000 mu m in soil under NT (47%) was significantly higher than under MT (38%) or PT (34%). A similar trend was observed for the clay loam soil. Rotation also influenced soil properties. Corn yields were higher (3 yr) and lower (1 yr) during 5 yr for the silt loam soil under PT than NT and unaffected or slightly higher under NT for the clay loam soil. Long-term (47-49 yr) use of NT practices are highly sustainable and result in higher SOC and WSA, lower rho(b), and greater AWC content than MT or PT.Consumers influence climate change through their consumption patterns and their support or dismissal of climate mitigation policy measures. Both climate-friendly actions and policy support comprise a broad range of options, which vary in manifold ways and, therefore, might be influenced by different factors. The aims of the study were, therefore, two-fold: first, we intended to find a meaningful way to classify different ways of addressing climate change. Second, we aimed to examine which determinants influence people's willingness to engage in these behaviors. We conducted a large-scale mail survey in Switzerland in which respondents rated, among other items, their willingness to act or support a range of possible actions and mitigations measures. A principal component analysis indicated that a distinction in terms of a behavior's directness as well as a differentiation according to perceived costs seem to be appropriate to classify climate-friendly actions. Multiple regression analyses showed that perceived costs and perceived climate benefit turned out to be the strongest predictors for willingness to act or to support climate policy measures. The strong influence of perceived climate benefit might reflect a strategy of reducing cognitive dissonance. As high-cost behaviors are more difficult to adopt, consumers may reduce dissonance by dismissing high-cost behaviors as not effective in terms of climate mitigation. Political affiliation proved to be another strong determinant of willingness to act or support. Participants on the right wing were less willing to show indirect climate-friendly behaviors, change their mobility behaviors, and to support any type of climate mitigation policy measures. Climate-friendly low-cost behaviors, however, were not influenced by political affiliation. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Atmospheric black carbon (BC) warms Earth's climate, and its reduction has been targeted for near-term climate change mitigation. Models that include forcing by BC assume internal mixing with non-BC aerosol components that enhance BC absorption, often by a factor of similar to 2; such model estimates have yet to be clearly validated through atmospheric observations. Here, direct in situ measurements of BC absorption enhancements (E-abs) and mixing state are reported for two California regions. The observed E-abs is small-6% on average at 532 nm-and increases weakly with photochemical aging. The E-abs is less than predicted from observationally constrained theoretical calculations, suggesting that many climate models may overestimate warming by BC. These ambient observations stand in contrast to laboratory measurements that show substantial E-abs for BC are possible.CO2 capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to develop into an important tool to address climate change. Given society's present reliance on fossil fuels, widespread adoption of CCS appears indispensable for meeting stringent climate targets. We argue that for conventional CCS to become a successful climate mitigation technology-which by necessity has to operate on a large scale-it may need to be complemented with air capture, removing CO2 directly from the atmosphere. Air capture of CO2 could act as insurance against CO2 leaking from storage and furthermore may provide an option for dealing with emissions from mobile dispersed sources such as automobiles and airplanes.Although international climate change negotiations focus on global mean temperature targets, it is also important to assess the impact of emission scenarios on climate extremes at the global and regional scale. This paper examines how temperature and precipitation extremes indices are projected to change around the globe during the 21st Century under an aggressive climate change mitigation scenario in the United Kingdom Met Office Hadley Centre HadGEM2-AO coupled climate model, and how these changes might differ from a mid-range non-intervention scenario. Even under an aggressive mitigation strategy there are projected increases in warm temperature extremes on a global and regional scale up to the mid-21st Century, and temperature extremes tend to follow a similar trajectory to the projected global mean temperature change associated with each scenario. Changes in precipitation-related extremes are projected to be more variable. There are regional differences in the direction of changes and it appears that the aerosol forcing associated with the scenarios could have an important influence. The regions which are projected to benefit most from mitigation vary depending on the index being considered, but in general absolute increases in temperature extremes are reduced in the northern midlatitudes, whereas for frequency based indices it is northern South America, parts of the USA, Africa and Asia which see the largest avoided increases. For precipitation indices, northern South America sees the most consistent signal toward avoided drying conditions, along with the Mediterranean and parts of Russia and central Asia.The world faces multiple challenges in producing global public goods, such as climate change mitigation, financial stability, security from nuclear terror, knowledge production, and the eradication of infectious diseases. International law scholarship, in the meantime, takes a turn towards celebrating pluralism without sufficiently accounting for institutional variation to address different contexts. Those writing on global public goods challenges, at the same time, tend to come from disciplines other than law. So what is international law's role in the production of global public goods? Where are greater international legal constraints and international institutions needed, and where should international law retain slack? Three analytic frameworks (global constitutionalism, global administrative law, and legal pluralism) have been advanced to address international law's place in global governance, but these frameworks have not explicitly addressed the challenges of producing global public goods. This article breaks down different types of global public goods, and explores how these different frames apply to them. Grounded in pragmatism, the article shows why there is no single best approach. Rather, legal policy should be tailored to the type of global public good at stake in light of comparative, real world, institutional trade-offs.Public scepticism surrounding climate change is an obstacle for implementing climate change mitigation measures in many countries. However, very little is known about: (1) the nature and sources of climate change scepticism; and (2) its influence on preferences for climate change mitigation policies. In this paper, we investigate these two issues using evidence and analysis from an Australian public survey and choice experiment. The study has three key findings. First, the intensity of scepticism varies depending on its type; we observed little scepticism over the cause, trend and impact of climate change and widespread scepticism over the effectiveness of mitigation measures and global co-operation. Second, cause and mitigation scepticism play significant roles in determining public support for climate change abatement. Respondents who believed in human-induced climate change were significantly more supportive of mitigation. Likewise, respondents who believed that mitigation would be successful in slowing down climate change were significantly more likely to be supportive. Third, the general public tend to give the benefit of the doubt to supporting mitigation. Those who expressed higher uncertainty about climate outcomes were more supportive of mitigation than others with similar expectations but lower uncertainty. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study investigates the key drivers affecting emission increases in terms of population growth, economic growth, industrial transformation, and energy use in six Chinese megacities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. The six cities represent the most-developed regions in China and they have similar per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as many developed countries. There is an urgent need to quantify the magnitude of each factor in driving the emissions changes in those cities so that a potential bottom-up climate mitigation policy design at the city and sectoral levels can be initiated. We adopt index decomposition analysis and present the results in both additive and multiplicative approaches to reveal the absolute and relative levels of each factor in driving emission changes during 19852007. Among all cities, economic effect and energy intensity effect have always been the two dominant factors contributing to the changes in carbon emissions. This study reveals that there are large variations in the ways driving forces contribute to emission levels in different cities and industrial sectors.Over the last two decades; technical, economic and environmental benefits of hydroelectric power make it an important contributor to the future world energy mix, particularly in the developing countries. Turkey has a total gross hydropower potential of 433 GWh/yr, but only 125 GWh/yr of the total hydroelectric potential of Turkey can be economically used. By the commissioning of new hydropower plants, which are under construction, 36% of the economically usable potential of the country would be tapped. Turkey's total economically usable small hydropower potential is 3.75 GWh/yr. It is expected that the demand for electric energy in Turkey will be about 580 billion kWh by the year 2020. Turkey is heavily dependent on expensive imported energy sources that place a big burden on the economy and air pollution is becoming a great environmental concern in the country. In this regard, renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solutions for clean and sustainable energy development in Turkey. Environmentally friendly energy development has enormous implications for developing countries as major emitters due to their rapid economic and population growth. With some possible options, the paper concludes that the reduction of emissions can only be achieved when policies are supportive and well targeted, standards and incentives are realistic and flexible, and the public is actively responsive to environmental degradation. Turkey's high rate of energy-related carbon emissions growth is expected to accelerate, with emissions climbing from 57 million tons in 2000 to almost 210 million tons in 2020. Carbon intensity in Turkey is higher than the western developed nation average. In this regard, renewable energy resources appear to be one of the most efficient and effective solutions for clean and sustainable energy development in Turkey. This paper deals with Turkey's renewables energy sources for sustainable environment. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Imperfect knowledge arising from unpredictable climate leads inexorably to uncertainty in decision making in agriculture. Uncertainty estimates are needed in descriptive and prescriptive analysis and in validation studies at both farm level and policy level agricultural decision making. This study assessed the trends and uncertainty of the global climate model (GCM) derived net irrigation water requirement (NIR) predictions estimated by the Food and Agriculture CROPWAT model for Natural Agro-ecological Region II in Zimbabwe. The trends and uncertainty were assessed with the aid of descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis on the simulated climate parameters, crop water requirement and NIR. The temperature and reference evapotranspiration were projected to increase while rainfall was predicted to decrease in the future periods. NIR was projected to increase by an average (and range) of 33% (-22-92%), 66% (15-168%) and 99% (17-205%) in the 2020s, 2050s and 2090s time slices respectively from a baseline of 67 mm. The NIR relative standard deviation and 95% confidence interval averaged 22% and 10% respectively in the 2020s time slice and were projected to increase in the future. Further quantitative expert elicitation that identifies the divergence of opinion within the subject of uncertainty and advocates for policies on a combination of climate mitigation and adaptation measures is recommended. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is a common perception that, if human societies make the significant adjustments necessary to substantively cut emissions of greenhouse gases, global temperature increases could be stabilized, and the most dangerous consequences of climate change could be avoided. Here we show results from global coupled climate model simulations with the new representative concentration pathway mitigation scenarios to 2300 to illustrate that, with aggressive mitigation in two of the scenarios, globally averaged temperature increase indeed could be stabilized either below 2 degrees C or near 3 degrees C above pre-industrial values. However, even as temperatures stabilize, sea level would continue to rise. With little mitigation, future sea-level rise would be large and continue unabated for centuries. Though sea-level rise cannot be stopped for at least the next several hundred years, with aggressive mitigation it can be slowed down, and this would buy time for adaptation measures to be adopted.Local and regional governments have developed climate action plans with significant implications for forests and wildlife. The effectiveness of climate mitigation through forest carbon sequestration depends on understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC). Few studies project future LCLUC effects on forest carbon sequestration, and even fewer examine the resulting consequences for forest connectivity and wildlife habitat. First, we asked what forest-relevant climate mitigation strategies have been identified in US state climate mitigation plans, and do they consider implications for wildlife habitat and forest connectivity? Second, for Wisconsin, a partially forested state, what are the effects of three future LCLUC scenarios on afforestation, forest loss, carbon sequestration and storage, forest connectivity, and wildlife habitat? The 35 US states with climate mitigation plans recommended woody biomass for biofuels or energy production (27 states), forest loss prevention (24 states), and afforestation (17 states). Most plans (24 states) anticipated positive wildlife impacts while 7 plans indicated potential negative wildlife impacts from biomass energy; only 3 plans anticipated tradeoffs among afforestation and energy production. A LCLUC model for Wisconsin revealed substantial local variation in potential afforestation and forest loss, carbon sequestration, and wildlife habitat across LCLUC scenarios that range from no change in current conditions (Static Forest) to maximum afforestation potential (All Forest). Projected increases in forest cover under the Dynamic Forest scenario equated to 0.41 TgC sequestered per year, or 1.3% of Wisconsin's emissions of 33 TgC per year. Potential increases in core forest area and connectivity would increase habitat for 60 forest-associated species of greatest conservation need, but may decrease habitat for 48 grassland-associated species of greatest conservation need. These results indicate the importance of synergistic evaluation of multiple policy goals and LCLUC scenarios to examine tradeoffs and spatial dynamics of climate change mitigation strategies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coal power coupled with Carbon [Dioxide] Capture and Storage (CCS), and Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies are often included in the portfolio of climate change mitigation options intended to decarbonize electricity systems. Both of these technologies can provide baseload electricity, are in early stages of maturity, and have benefits, costs, and obstacles. We compare and contrast CCS applied to coal-fired power plants with CSP. At present, both technologies are more expensive than existing electricity-generating options, but costs should decrease with large-scale deployment, especially in the case of CSP. For CCS, technological challenges still remain, storage risks must be clarified, and regulatory and legal uncertainties remain. For CSP, current challenges include electricity transmission and business models for a rapid and extensive expansion of high-voltage transmission lines. The need for international cooperation may impede CSP expansion in Europe. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are an important tool to compare the costs and benefits of different climate policies. Recently, attention has been given to the effect of different discounting methods and damage estimates on the results of IAMs. One aspect to which little attention has been paid is how the representation of the climate system may affect the estimated benefits of mitigation action. In that respect, we analyse several well-known IAMs, including the newest versions of FUND, DICE and PAGE. Given the role of IAMs in integrating information from different disciplines, they should ideally represent both best estimates and the ranges of anticipated climate system and carbon cycle behaviour (as e.g. synthesised in the IPCC Assessment reports). We show that in the longer term, beyond 2100, most IAM parameterisations of the carbon cycle imply lower CO2 concentrations compared to a model that captures IPCC AR4 knowledge more closely, e.g. the carbon-cycle climate model MAGICC6. With regard to the climate component, some IAMs lead to much lower benefits of mitigation than MAGICC6. The most important reason for the underestimation of the benefits of mitigation is the failure in capturing climate dynamics correctly, which implies this could be a potential development area to focus on.Communication researchers and practitioners have suggested that framing climate change in terms of public health and/or national security may make climate change more personally relevant and emotionally engaging to segments of the public who are currently disengaged or even dismissive of the issue. To evaluate these assumptions, using a nationally representative online survey of U.S. residents (N = 1,127) conducted in December, 2010, we randomly assigned six previously identified audience segments on climate change to one of three experimental conditions. Subjects were asked to read uniquely framed news articles about climate change emphasizing either the risks to the environment, public health, or national security and the benefits of mitigation and adaptation-related actions. Results show that across audience segments, the public health focus was the most likely to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Findings also indicated that the national security frame may possibly boomerang among audience segments already doubtful or dismissive of the issue, eliciting unintended feelings of anger.Built environment carbon reduction strategies materialize predominantly in city-level greenhouse gas (GHG) management, where new residential development appears as one of the key instruments. However, city-level assessments are often incapable of producing data at a community or neighborhood level and thus they may heavily underestimate the emissions from new construction. This paper explores the implications of low-energy residential construction as an instrument of climate change mitigation in the built environment and demonstrates why city-level approaches easily fail to identify the significance of the emissions from construction. We employ a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to demonstrate that, when the temporal allocation of emissions from the construction and use phases is taken into account, construction phase emissions come to have a central role in finding effective GHG mitigation strategies-even when the emissions from all consumption activities during the use phase are included in the assessment. In fact, their role would seem to be so central that new residential construction cannot be utilized as an instrument of city carbon management, even over a relatively long period. While we analyze a case study from Finland, the analysis intends to highlight the situation throughout the globe.In order to feed the world we need innovative thinking on how to increase agricultural production whilst also mitigating climate change. Agriculture and land-use change are responsible for approximately one-third of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but hold potential for climate change mitigation but are only tangentially included in UNFCCC mitigation policies. To get a full estimate of GHG emissions from agricultural crop production both energy-based emissions and land-based emissions need to be accounted for. Furthermore, the major mitigation potential is likely to be indirect reduction of emissions i.e. reducing emissions per unit of agricultural product rather than the absolute emissions per se. Hence the system productivity must be included in the same analysis. This paper presents the Kaya-Porter identity, derived from the Maya identity, as a new way to calculate GHG emissions from agricultural crop production by deconstructing emissions into five elements; the GHG intensity of the energy used for production (kg CO2-eq./MJ), energy intensity of the production (MJ/kg dry matter), areal productivity (kg dry matter/ha), areal land-based GHG emissions (CO2-eq./ha) and area (ha). These separate elements in the identity can be targeted in emissions reduction and mitigation policies and are useful to analyse past and current trends in emissions and to explore future scenarios. Using the Kaya-Porter identity we have performed a case study on Danish crop production and find emissions to have been reduced by 12% from 1992 to 2008, whilst yields per unit area have remained constant. Both land-based emissions and energy-based emissions have decreased, mainly due to a 41% reduction in nitrogen fertilizer use. The initial identity based analysis for crop production presented here needs to be extended to include livestock to reflect the entire agricultural production and food demand sectors, thereby permitting analysis of the trade-offs between animal and plant food production, human dietary preferences and population and resulting GHG emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.[1] This paper analyses the potential conflict between resilience of the Earth system and global freshwater requirements for the dual task of carbon sequestration to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, and food production to feed humanity by 2050. It makes an attempt to assess the order of magnitude of the increased consumptive water use involved and analyses the implications as seen from two parallel perspectives; the global perspective of human development within a "safe operating space" with regard to the definition of the Planetary Boundary for freshwater; and the social-ecological implications at the regional river basin scale in terms of sharpening water shortages and threats to aquatic ecosystems. The paper shows that the consumptive water use involved in the dual task would both transgress the proposed planetary boundary range for global consumptive freshwater use and would further exacerbate already severe river depletion, causing societal problems related to water shortage and water allocation. Thus, strategies to rely on sequestration of CO2 as a mitigation strategy must recognize the high freshwater costs involved, implying that the key climate mitigation strategy must be to reduce emissions. The paper finally highlights the need to analyze both water and carbon tradeoffs from anticipated large scale biofuel production climate change mitigation strategy, to reveal gains and impact of this in contrast to carbon sequestration strategies.Conservation of tropical forests is of outstanding importance for mitigation of climate change effects and preserving biodiversity. In Borneo most of the forests are classified as permanent forest estates and are selectively logged using conventional logging techniques causing high damage to the forest ecosystems. Incorporation of sustainable forest management into climate change mitigation measures such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) can help to avert further forest degradation by synergizing sustainable timber production with the conservation of biodiversity. In order to evaluate the efficiency of such initiatives, monitoring methods for forest degradation and above-ground biomass in tropical forests are urgently needed. In this study we developed an index using Landsat satellite data to describe the crown cover condition of lowland mixed dipterocarp forests. We showed that this index combined with field data can be used to estimate above-ground biomass using a regression model in two permanent forest estates in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Tangkulap represented a conventionally logged forest estate while Deramakot has been managed in accordance with sustainable forestry principles. The results revealed that conventional logging techniques used in Tangkulap during 1991 and 2000 decreased the above-ground biomass by an annual amount of average -6.0 tC/ha (-5.2 to -7.0 tC/ha, 95% confidential interval) whereas the biomass in Deramakot increased by 6.1 t C/ha per year (5.3-7.2 t C/ha, 95% confidential interval) between 2000 and 2007 while under sustainable forest management. This indicates that sustainable forest management with reduced-impact logging helps to protect above-ground biomass. In absolute terms, a conservative amount of 10.5 t C/ha per year, as documented using the methodology developed in this study, can be attributed to the different management systems, which will be of interest when implementing REDD+ that rewards the enhancement of carbon stocks. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biochar application to soil has significant potential as a climate change mitigation strategy, due to its recalcitrant C content and observed effect to suppress soil greenhouse gas emissions such as nitrous oxide (N2O). Increased soil aeration following biochar amendment may contribute to this suppression. Soil cores from a Miscanthus X. giganteus plantation were amended with hardwood biochar at a rate of 2% dry soil weight (22 t ha(-1)). The cores were incubated at three different temperatures (4,10 and 16 degrees C) for 126 days, maintained field moist and half subjected to periodic wetting events. Cumulative N2O production was consistently suppressed by at least 49% with biochar amendment within 48 h of wetting at 10 and 16 degrees C. We concluded that hardwood biochar suppressed soil N2O emissions following wetting at a range of field-relevant temperatures over four months. We hypothesised that this was due to biochar increasing soil aeration at relatively high moisture contents by increasing the water holding capacity (WHC) of the soil: however, this hypothesis was rejected. We found that 5% and 10% biochar amendment increased soil WHC. Also, 10% biochar amendment decreased bulk density of the soil. Sealed incubations were performed with biochar added at 0-10 % of dry soil weight and wetted to a uniform 87% WHC (78% WFPS). Cumulative N2O production within 60 h of wetting was 19, 19, 73 and 98% lower than the biochar-free control in the 1, 2, 5 and 10% biochar treatments respectively. We conclude that high levels of biochar amendment may change soil physical properties, but that the enhancement of soil aeration by biochar incorporation makes only a minimal contribution to the suppression of N2O emissions from a sandy loam soil. We suggest that microbial or physical immobilisation of NO3- in soil following biochar addition may significantly contribute to the suppression of soil N2O emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Spatially-explicit estimation of aboveground biomass (AGB) plays an important role to generate action policies focused in climate change mitigation, since carbon (C) retained in the biomass is vital for regulating Earth's temperature. This work estimates AGB using both chlorophyll (red, near infrared) and moisture (middle infrared) based normalized vegetation indices constructed with MCD43A4 MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and MOD44B vegetation continuous fields (VCF) data. The study area is located in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, a region that comprises a part of the upper limit of the intertropical zone. AGB estimations were made using both individual tree data from the National Forest Inventory of Mexico and allometric equations reported in scientific literature. Linear and nonlinear (exponential) models were fitted to find their predictive potential when using satellite spectral data as explanatory variables. Highly-significant correlations (p = 0.01) were found between all the explaining variables tested. NDVI62, linked to chlorophyll content and moisture stress, showed the highest correlation. The best model (nonlinear) showed an index of fit (Pseudo - r(2)) equal to 0.77 and a root mean square error equal to 26.00 Mg/ha using NDVI62 and VCF as explanatory variables. Validation correlation coefficients were similar for both models: linear (r = 0.87**) and nonlinear (r = 0.86**).Establishment of marine protected areas, including fully protected marine reserves, is one of the few management tools available for local communities to combat the deleterious effect of large scale environmental impacts, including global climate change, on ocean ecosystems. Despite the common hope that reserves play this role, empirical evidence of the effectiveness of local protection against global problems is lacking. Here we show that marine reserves increase the resilience of marine populations to a mass mortality event possibly caused by climate-driven hypoxia. Despite high and widespread adult mortality of benthic invertebrates in Baja California, Mexico, that affected populations both within and outside marine reserves, juvenile replenishment of the species that supports local economies, the pink abalone Haliotis corrugata, remained stable within reserves because of large body size and high egg production of the protected adults. Thus, local protection provided resilience through greater resistance and faster recovery of protected populations. Moreover, this benefit extended to adjacent unprotected areas through larval spillover across the edges of the reserves. While climate change mitigation is being debated, coastal communities have few tools to slow down negative impacts of global environmental shifts. These results show that marine protected areas can provide such protection.Understanding how a changing boreal fire regime is likely to influence regional climate requires detailed information about fire effects on the surface radiation budget. We used time series of satellite observations of surface albedo from 2000-2011 and fire perimeters since 1970 to study post-fire changes in surface net shortwave radiation along a latitudinal transect in central Canada. Fire-induced surface shortwave forcing (SSF) integrated over an annual cycle for the first 30 years after fire was similar (-4.1 W m(-2) with a 95% confidence interval of -4.5 to -3.7 W m(-2)) between southern and northern boreal regions. The lack of a latitudinal difference in SSF was caused by counteracting latitudinal trends in seasonal contributions. Spring (March, April, and May) SSF increased with latitude, from -7.2 W m(-2) in the south to -10.1 W m(-2) in the north, primarily because of delayed snow melt, which amplified albedo differences between unburned forests and recovering stands. In contrast, winter incoming solar radiation and summer albedo change decreased from south to north, resulting in a decreasing latitudinal trend in winter and summer SSF. Vegetation recovery was slower in the north, leading to smaller increases in summer albedo during the first decade after fire, and a prolonged phase of elevated spring albedo during the second decade. Our results indicate that fires reduce surface net shortwave radiation considerably for many boreal forest ecosystems in North America, providing further evidence that disturbance-mediated shifts in surface energy exchange need to be considered in efforts to manage these forests for climate change mitigation. Citation: Jin, Y., J. T. Randerson, M. L. Goulden, and S. J. Goetz (2012), Post-fire changes in net shortwave radiation along a latitudinal gradient in boreal North America, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L13403, doi:10.1029/2012GL051790.This viewpoint introduces the broader purpose and conceptual premises of the larger research project that makes up this special issue. It starts off from two emerging strands in the international climate policy debate i.e. (1) the notion that climate change action may be driven by other development priorities; and (2) the growing skepticism regarding the UN system's capacity to deliver effective climate policies and raises the broader question as to whether development-driven climate action could be incentivized through an internationally agreed upon mechanism within UNFCCC. The concrete objective of the project is to identify the opportunities and challenges of a future Sustainable Development Policies and Measures (SD-PAM) mechanism, the latter being a precursor for National Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA). To achieve this objective the project holds the following traits. First, it introduces intervention theory as the guiding theoretical framework for all empirical studies. Second, it combines an analysis of the suggested SD-PAM mechanism with selected case studies of potential national SD-PAM projects in Brazil (bio-energy), China (transportation and biogas production) and Mozambique (agriculture). The broader ambition is to identify the circumstances under which development policies may serve as a vehicle for effective climate change mitigation and adaptation.This study analyses the feasibility of China's electric car policies as a potential Sustainable Development Policies and Measures (SD-PAM)/National Appropriate Mitigation Action credited action. In doing so, it brings an additional perspective to the discussion regarding institutional arrangements intended to promote climate mitigation through development policies, by highlighting the particular challenges of introducing a new technology in an environment where there have been no previous policies. The article confirms the large mitigation potential of similar policies in the Chinese context. Yet, it also highlights some potential problems in making it an SD-PAM. One concerns the challenges of establishing baseline criteria and time scales for greenhouse gas mitigation as well as finding a suitable definition of additionality. Second, it provides insights into some particular implementation problems in the Chinese context related to appointment and budget matters. Third, it illustrates the problems of finding external support for a technology transfer that effectively helps the Chinese to leapfrog many development steps to effectively create a gigantic and competitive market. Finally, it argues that there might be geopolitical reasons why China may not be interested in national SD-PAM projects.This article discusses the opportunities and pitfalls of linking a future Sustainable Development Policies and Measures (SD-PAM) mechanism to Mozambican rice policies. It concludes that there are various ways in which the ambition to increase the production of rice can also reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Moreover, the analysis suggests that an SD-PAM mechanism may be instrumental in supporting this type of co-benefits. This implies that the pursuit of development policies as a precursor for climate mitigation is valid also for the agricultural sector and, similarly, least developed countries (LDCs) may have a role to play. Three traits of the LDC setting will influence the design of a future SD-PAM mechanism. One is the way contextual factors influence individual policy programmes. Another is the need for capacity building in its broader sense, which then emerges as another leverage mechanism in addition to funding, credits and technology transfer. Finally, it requires the recognition that GHG mitigation in LDCs is not about reducing emissions in an absolute sense but, rather, a question of changing development paths and thereby avoiding future GHG emissions.New methods are needed to accelerate clean energy policy adoption. To that end, this study proposes an innovative financing scheme for renewable and energy efficiency deployment. Financing barriers represent a notable obstacle for energy improvements and this is particularly the case for low income households. Implementing a policy such as PACE-property assessed clean energy-allows for the provision of upfront funds for residential property owners to install electric and thermal solar systems and make energy efficiency improvements to their buildings. This paper will inform the design of better policies tailored to the creation of the appropriate conditions for such investments to occur, especially in those countries where most of the population belongs to the low-middle income range facing financial constraints.A better understanding of the global carbon cycle as well as of climate change mitigation options such as carbon sequestration requires the quantification of natural and socioeconomic stocks and flows of carbon. A so-far under-researched aspect of the global carbon budget is the accumulation of carbon in long-lived products such as buildings and furniture. We present a comprehensive assessment of global socioeconomic carbon stocks and the corresponding in-and outflows during the period 1900-2008. These data allowed calculation of the annual carbon sink in socioeconomic stocks during this period. The study covers the most important socioeconomic carbon fractions, i.e. wood, bitumen, plastic and cereals. Our assessment was mainly based on production and consumption data for plastic, bitumen and wood products and the respective fractions remaining in stocks in any given year. Global socioeconomic carbon stocks were 2.3 GtC in 1900 and increased to 11.5 GtC in 2008. The share of wood in total C stocks fell from 97% in 1900 to 60% in 2008, while the shares of plastic and bitumen increased to 16% and 22%, respectively. The rate of gross carbon sequestration in socioeconomic stocks increased from 17 MtC yr(-1) in 1900 to a maximum of 247 MtC yr(-1) in 2007, corresponding to 2.2%-3.4% of global fossil-fuel-related carbon emissions. We conclude that while socioeconomic carbon stocks are not negligible, their growth over time is not a major climate change mitigation option and there is an only modest potential to mitigate climate change by the increase of socioeconomic carbon stocks.The Australian Government is currently addressing the challenge of increasing water scarcity through significant on-farm infrastructure investment to facilitate the adoption of new water-efficient pressurized irrigation systems. However, it is highly likely that conversion to these systems will increase on-farm energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, suggesting potential conflicts in terms of mitigation and adaptation policies. This study explored the trade-offs associated with the adoption of more water efficient but energy-intensive irrigation technologies by developing an integrated assessment framework. Integrated analysis of five case studies revealed trade-offs between water security and environmental security when conversion to pressurized irrigation systems was evaluated in terms of fuel and energy-related emissions, except in cases where older hand-shift sprinkler irrigation systems were replaced. These results suggest that priority should be given, in implementing on-farm infrastructure investment policy, to replacing inefficient and energy-intensive sprinkler irrigation systems such as hand-shift and roll-line. The results indicated that associated changes in the use of agricultural machinery and agrochemicals may also be important. The findings of this study support the use of an integrated approach to avoid possible conflicts in designing national climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, both of which are being developed in Australia.The concept of "stabilization" of atmospheric CO2 concentration is re-examined in connection with climate-change mitigation strategies. A new "zero-emissions stabilization (Z-stabilization)" is proposed, where CO2 emissions are reduced to zero at some time and thereafter the concentration is decreased by natural removal processes, eventually reaching an equilibrated stable state. Simplified climate experiments show that, under Z-stabilization, considerably larger emissions are permissible in the near future compared with traditional stabilization, with the same constraint on temperature rise. Over longer time scales, the concentration and temperature decrease close to their equilibrium values, much lower than those under traditional stabilization. The smaller temperature rise at final state is essential to avoid longer-term risk of sea level rise, a significant concern under traditional stabilization. Because of these advantages a Z-stabilization pathway can be a candidate of practical mitigation strategies as treated in Part 2.During the 21st century, climate-driven changes in fire regimes will be a key agent of change in forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW). Understanding the response of forest carbon (C) dynamics to increases in fire will help quantify limits on the contribution of forest C storage to climate change mitigation and prioritize forest types for monitoring C storage and fire management to minimize C loss. In this study, we used projections of 21st century area burned to explore the consequences of changes in fire regimes on C dynamics in forests of Washington State. We used a novel empirical approach that takes advantage of chronosequences of C pools and fluxes and statistical properties of fire regimes to explore the effects of shifting age class distributions on C dynamics. Forests of the western Cascades are projected to be more sensitive to climate-driven increases in fire, and thus projected changes in C dynamics, than forests of the eastern Cascades. In the western Cascades, mean live biomass C is projected to decrease by 24-37%, and coarse woody debris (CWD) biomass C by 15-25% for the 2040s. Loss of live biomass C is projected to be lower for forests of the eastern Cascades and Okanogan Highlands (17-26%), and CWD biomass is projected to increase. Landscape mean net primary productivity is projected to increase in wet low-elevation forests of the western Cascades, but decrease elsewhere. These forests, and moist forests of the Okanogan Highlands, are projected to have the greatest percentage increases in consumption of live biomass. Percentage increases in consumption of CWD biomass are greater than 50% for all regions and up to four times greater than increases in consumption of live biomass. Carbon sequestration in PNW forests will be highly sensitive to increases in fire, suggesting a cautious approach to managing these forests for C sequestration to mitigate anthropogenic CO2 emissions.Recent efforts to endogenize technological change in climate policy models demonstrate the importance of accounting for the opportunity cost of climate R&D investments. Because the social returns to R&D investments are typically higher than the social returns to other types of investment, any new climate mitigation R&D that comes at the expense of other R&D investment may dampen the overall gains from induced technological change. Unfortunately, there has been little empirical work to guide modelers as to the potential magnitude of such crowding out effects. This paper considers both the private and social opportunity costs of climate R&D. Addressing private costs, we ask whether an increase in climate R&D represents new R&D spending, or whether some (or all) of the additional climate R&D comes at the expense of other R&D. Addressing social costs, we use patent citations to compare the social value of alternative energy research to other types of R&D that may be crowded out. Beginning at the industry level, we find no evidence of crowding out across sectors that is, increases in energy R&D do not draw R&D resources away from sectors that do not perform R&D. Given this, we proceed with a detailed look at alternative energy R&D. Linking patent data and financial data by firm, we ask whether an increase in alternative energy patents leads to a decrease in other types of patenting activity. While we find that increases in alternative energy patents do result in fewer patents of other types, the evidence suggests that this is due to profit-maximizing changes in research effort, rather than financial constraints that limit the total amount of R&D possible. Finally, we use patent citation data to compare the social value of alternative energy patents to other patents by these firms. Alternative energy patents are cited more frequently, and by a wider range of other technologies, than other patents by these firms, suggesting that their social value is higher. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Swedish energy strategies for transportation, space heating and pulp industries were evaluated with a focus on bioenergy use. The aims were to 1) study trade-offs between reductions in CO2 emission and oil use and between Swedish reductions and EU reductions, 2) compare the potential contributions of individual reduction measures, 3) quantify the total CO2 emission and oil use reduction potentials. Swedish energy efficiency measures reduced EU CO2 emission by 45-59 Mt CO2/a, at current biomass use and constant oil use. Doubling Swedish bioenergy use yielded an additional 40 Mt CO2/a reduction. Oil use could be reduced, but 36-81 kt of reductions in CO2 emission would be lost per Pi of oil use reduction. Swedish fossil fuel use within the studied sectors could be nearly eliminated. The expansion of district heating and cogeneration of heat with a high electricity yield were important measures. Plug-in hybrid electric cars reduced CO2 emission compared with conventional cars, and the difference was larger with increasing oil scarcity. The introduction of black liquor gasification in pulp mills also gave large CO2 emission reduction. Motor fuel from biomass was found to be a feasible option when coal is the marginal fuel for fossil motor fuel production. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Afforestation has been proposed as a climate change mitigation strategy by sequestrating atmospheric carbon dioxide. With the goal of increasing carbon sequestration, a Congressional project has been planned to afforest about 18 million acres by 2020 in the Southeast United States (SEUS), the Great Lake states, and the Corn Belt states. However, biophysical feedbacks of afforestation have the potential to counter the beneficial climatic consequences of carbon sequestration. To assess the potential biophysical effects of afforestation over the SEUS, the authors designed a set of initial value ensemble experiments and long-term quasi-equilibrium experiments in a fully coupled Community Climate System Model, version 3.5 (CCSM3.5). Model results show that afforestation over the SEUS not only has a local cooling effect in boreal summer [June-August (JJA)] at short and long time scales but also induces remote warming over adjacent regions of the SEUS at long time scales. Precipitation, in response to afforestation, increases over the SEUS (local effect) and decreases over adjacent regions (remote effect) in JJA. The local surface cooling and increase in precipitation over SEUS in JJA are hydrologically driven by the changes in evapotranspiration and latent heat flux. The remote surface warming and decrease in precipitation over adjacent regions are adiabatically induced by anomalous subsidence. Our results suggest that the planned afforestation efforts should be developed carefully by taking account of short-term (local) and long-term (remote) biophysical effects of afforestation.Climate change and biodiversity loss are leading environmental crises that converge most critically in tropical forests. Policies for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation are often portrayed as win-win solutions for forest-based climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. However, the win-win narrative has obscured necessary trade-offs and a range of alternative policy approaches, insulating policymakers from difficult, potentially unpopular decisions. We provide a typology that characterizes the five underlying policy approaches for linking forest-based climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation and their related trade-offs. Such clarification will enable policymakers and stakeholders to better articulate their positions in the protracted and controversial biodiversity co-benefits debate that is at the centre of contemporary conservation efforts.Concerns about domestic energy security and global climate change mitigation have led the European Union, the United States, and others to introduce policies to enhance the use of biofuels in the transport sector fuel mix. While countries throughout the global South are positioning themselves to capture the economic benefits of this fuel transition, their capacity to do so is highly variable. This paper reviews the early evolution of the biofuel sector in Zambia to explore the extent to which the country is positioned to leverage future benefits of the emerging industry while forestalling negative social and environmental costs. In doing so, it sheds light on an under-researched dimension of the ongoing debate over large-scale land acquisitions and foreign investment: the role of legal and institutional frameworks in host countries in shaping outcomes. The analysis draws on the following: policy documents; stakeholder interviews with government departments, investors, and civil society stakeholders; and published and reported data on investments. Findings suggest that while existing and incipient policies and legislation provide an important foundation for attracting investors and achieving diverse sector aims, a number of gaps remain that are likely to hinder efforts to leverage meaningful benefits while minimizing negative impacts.In this article we examine the technological feasibility of the global target of reducing GHG emissions to 50 % of the 1990 level by the year 2050. We also perform a detailed analysis of the contribution of low-carbon technologies to GHG emission reduction over mid- and long-term timeframes, and evaluate the required technological cost. For the analysis we use AIM/Enduse[Global], a techno-economic model for climate change mitigation policy assessment. The results show that a 50 % GHG emission reduction target is technically achievable. Yet achieving the target will require substantial emission mitigation efforts. The GHG emission reduction rate from the reference scenario stands at 23 % in 2020 and 73 % in 2050. The marginal abatement cost to achieve these emission reductions reaches $150/tCO(2)-eq in 2020 and $600/tCO(2)-eq in 2050. Renewable energy, fuel switching, and efficiency improvement in power generation account for 45 % of the total GHG emission reduction in 2020. Non-energy sectors, namely, fugitive emission, waste management, agriculture, and F-gases, account for 25 % of the total GHG emission reduction in 2020. CCS, solar power generation, wind power generation, biomass power generation, and biofuel together account for 64 % of the total GHG emission reduction in 2050. Additional investment in GHG abatement technologies for achieving the target reaches US$ 6.0 trillion by 2020 and US$ 73 trillion by 2050. This corresponds to 0.7 and 1.8 % of the world GDP, respectively, in the same periods. Non-Annex I regions account for 55 % of the total additional investment by 2050. In a sectoral breakdown, the power generation and transport sectors account for 56 and 30 % of the total additional investment by 2050, respectively.Climate mitigation at the local level plays a highly important role in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions mitigation. This research presents a summary of the local efforts in China's ecological industrial parks (EIPs) to assess GHG emissions and identify potential mitigation measures. Through field study and interviews in Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), in Jiangsu Province, we conducted an energy-based GHG emissions inventory for SIP area from 2005-2010, with forecasts to 2015. The area emitted a total of 10.30 MMT CO2E in 2010. Three development strategies including business-as-usual (BAU), existing and pending regulations (EPR) and voluntary mitigating efforts (VME) were introduced to estimate the energy-related GHG emissions in 2015. The results projected that emissions will increase to 17.16 Mt in 2015 with no change in policy or practice, but 3.42 Mt of emissions are avoidable with full compliance with national and provincial energy policies (1.41 Mt), as well as local efforts (2.01 Mt). This study furthers the understanding of the potential effectiveness of carbon reduction strategies of industrial parks in China, including the development industrial symbiosis (IS) and on-site renewable energy projects. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Countries with low marginal costs of abating carbon emissions may have high total costs, and vice versa, for a given climate mitigation policy. This may help to explain different countries policy stances on climate mitigation. We hypothesize that, under a common percentage cut in emissions intensity relative to business as usual (BAU), countries with higher BAU emission intensities have lower marginal abatement costs, but total costs relative to output will be similar across countries, and under a common carbon price, relative total costs are higher in emission-intensive countries. Using the results of the 22nd Energy Modeling Forum (EMF-22), we estimate marginal abatement cost curves for the US, EU, China and India, which we use to estimate marginal and total costs of abatement under a number of policy options currently under international debate. This analysis provides support for our hypotheses, although its reliability is limited by the shortcomings of the EMF-22 models and the degree to which our econometric model can adequately account for the substantial differences among them.Legislation to decarbonise energy systems within overall greenhouse gas reduction targets represents an immense and unprecedented energy policy challenge. However there is a dichotomy between this level of policy ambition and prior modelling studies that find such targets economically, technologically and socially feasible under idealised aEuro center dot first-best policies. This paper makes a significant contribution to current analytical efforts to account for realistic aEuro center dot second-best climate mitigation policy implementation. This is achieved via a technical classification of secondbest common mode issues at a detailed national level: both internal (behavioural change, infrastructure implementation) and external (new technologies, resource availability). Under a combinatory second-best scenario, meeting targets greater than a 70% reduction in CO2 by 2050 entail costs above a subjective barrier of 1% of GDP, while extreme mitigation scenarios (> 90% CO2 reduction) are infeasible. These high costs are equally due to disappointing progress in behavioural and technological mitigation efforts. Expensive second-best mitigation scenarios can still rely on extreme assumptions including the full deployment of the UK's offshore wind resource or the complete diffusion of energy efficiency measures in end-use sectors. By demonstrating the fragilities of a low carbon energy system pathway, policy makers can explore protective and proactive strategies to ensure targets can actually be met. Additionally, systematic analysis of failure in stringent long term decarbonisation scenarios teaches energy analysts about the trade-offs in model efficacy vs. confidence.Combining policies to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere with policies to reduce emissions could decrease CO2 concentrations faster than possible via natural processes. We model the optimal selection of a dynamic portfolio of abatement, research and development (R&D), and negative emission policies under an exogenous CO2 constraint and with stochastic technological change. We find that near-term abatement is not sensitive to the availability of R&D policies, but the anticipated availability of negative emission strategies can reduce the near-term abatement optimally undertaken to meet 2A degrees C temperature limits. Further, planning to deploy negative emission technologies shifts optimal R&D funding from "carbon-free" technologies into "emission intensity" technologies. Making negative emission strategies available enables an 80% reduction in the cost of keeping year 2100 CO2 concentrations near their current level. However, negative emission strategies are less important if the possibility of tipping points rules out using late-century net negative emissions to temporarily overshoot the CO2 constraint earlier in the century.Although Scottish and UK governments have ambitious targets for climate change mitigation, and there is increased understanding of the risks to future prosperity of fossil fuel energy dependence, limited practical progress has been made by the advanced economies in reducing carbon emissions, especially when embedded emissions in imported consumer goods are taken into account. Significant contributory factors are the social and cultural values, beliefs and practices, which result in risks of climate change being regarded as secondary to short-term pressures for economic growth and increased consumer spending. The result is that climate change and transition to a low-carbon society become 'back of the mind' issues. Current policy designed to lower carbon emissions from household consumption treats society as a series of individuals, each responding rationally to market incentives to maximise short-term personal gain. 'Greener choices' are incentivised and encouraged by social marketing, but, at best, this approach will achieve only very gradual change. An alternative model treats society as comprising historically evolving, dynamic social systems and cultures that are capable of dealing with transformational change, when there is a shared understanding of the reasons for acting. From this perspective, society can implement step changes in behaviour through collaborative action in the interests of the longer-term common good. Political momentum can be gathered for new legislative and/or taxation measures, as for example in the case of the strong programme for tobacco control legislation in Scotland and the UK. By focusing on social and technical infrastructures, the built environment, and the regeneration of local economies, rather than on individual behaviours, government investment can have far greater impact. A distinctively Scottish narrative for a low-carbon society can create momentum for transition through shared understanding of the risks of climate change, and its meanings for social life, cultures, economic relationships and values.Thailand as one of the global food exporting countries shares the worldwide concerns on climate change and initiated carbon footprinting and labeling in 2008. Individual quick frozen fried chicken meat and canned tuna in sunflower oil were selected as the pioneering case studies for carbon footprinting using the PAS 2050:2008 standard. It was revealed that broiler farm and tuna fisheries are the key stages contributing significantly to the total carbon footprint of the two products considered. The study also revealed the need for using representative data of raw materials according to the local context requiring the urgent development of agricultural and food databases. The rules of using substitute data must also be clearly defined. The industry argued for using a mass instead of the economic basis required by PAS 2050:2008 in allocating the carbon footprint to chicken parts and tuna white and red meat. The commitment of producers to reduce the size of carbon footprint is suggested to be emphasized for carbon labeling rather than displaying a carbon footprint value to avoid the comparison between products. Product Category Rules (PCRs) should be developed with stakeholder consultations and harmonized at the global scale. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As reported by FAO (2005 State of the World's Forests (Rome: UNFAO), 2010 Forest Resource Assessment (FRA) 2010/095 (Rome: UNFAO)), Indonesia experiences the second highest rate of deforestation among tropical countries. Hence, timely and accurate forest data are required to combat deforestation and forest degradation in support of climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation policy initiatives. Within Indonesia, Sumatra Island stands out due to the intensive forest clearing that has resulted in the conversion of 70% of the island's forested area through 2010. We present here a hybrid approach for quantifying the extent and change of primary forest in Sumatra in terms of primary intact and primary degraded classes using a per-pixel supervised classification mapping followed by a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based fragmentation analysis. Loss of Sumatra's primary intact and primary degraded forests was estimated to provide suitable information for the objectives of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD and REDD+) program. Results quantified 7.54 Mha of primary forest loss in Sumatra during the last two decades (1990-2010). An additional 2.31 Mha of primary forest was degraded. Of the 7.54 Mha cleared, 7.25 Mha was in a degraded state when cleared, and 0.28 Mha was in a primary state. The rate of primary forest cover change for both forest cover loss and forest degradation slowed over the study period, from 7.34 Mha from 1990 to 2000, to 2.51 Mha from 2000 to 2010. The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) data set was employed to evaluate results. GLAS-derived tree canopy height indicated a significant structural difference between primary intact and primary degraded forests (mean height 28 m +/- 8.7 m and 19 m +/- 8.2 m, respectively). The results demonstrate a method for quantifying primary forest cover stand-replacement disturbance and degradation that can be replicated across the tropics in support of REDD+ initiatives.While buildings are often credited as accounting for some 40% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the construction phase is typically assumed to account for only around one tenth of the overall emissions. However, the relative importance of construction phase emissions is quickly increasing as the energy efficiency of buildings increases. In addition, the significance of construction may actually be much higher when the temporal perspective of the emissions is taken into account. The construction phase carbon spike, i. e. high GHG emissions in a short time associated with the beginning of the building's life cycle, may be high enough to question whether new construction, no matter how energy efficient the buildings are, can contribute to reaching the greenhouse gas mitigation goals of the near future. Furthermore, the construction of energy efficient buildings causes more GHG emissions than the construction of conventional buildings. On the other hand, renovating the current building stock together with making energy efficiency improvements might lead to a smaller construction phase carbon spike and still to the same reduced energy consumption in the use phase as the new energy efficient buildings. The study uses a new residential development project in Northern Europe to assess the overall life cycle GHG emissions of a new residential area and to evaluate the influence of including the temporal allocation of the life cycle GHG emissions in the assessment. In the study, buildings with different energy efficiency levels are compared with a similar hypothetical area of buildings of the average existing building stock, as well as with a renovation of an area with average buildings from the 1960s. The GHG emissions are modeled with a hybrid life cycle assessment. The study suggests that the carbon payback time of constructing new residential areas is several decades long even when using very energy efficient buildings compared to utilizing the current building stock. Thus, while increasing the overall energy efficiency is important in the long term, the construction of new energy efficient buildings cannot be used as a means to achieve the short term and medium term climate change mitigation goals as cities and governments often suggest. Furthermore, given the magnitude of the carbon spike from construction and its implications, the climate change mitigation strategies should set reduction targets for the construction phase emissions alongside the ones for the use phase, which currently receives almost all of the attention from policy-makers.Bioenergy from crops is expected to make a considerable contribution to climate change mitigation. However, bioenergy is not necessarily carbon neutral because emissions of CO2, N2O and CH4 during crop production may reduce or completely counterbalance CO2 savings of the substituted fossil fuels. These greenhouse gases (GHGs) need to be included into the carbon footprint calculation of different bioenergy crops under a range of soil conditions and management practices. This review compiles existing knowledge on agronomic and environmental constraints and GHG balances of the major European bioenergy crops, although it focuses on dedicated perennial crops such as Miscanthus and short rotation coppice species. Such second-generation crops account for only 3% of the current European bioenergy production, but field data suggest they emit 40% to >99% less N2O than conventional annual crops. This is a result of lower fertilizer requirements as well as a higher N-use efficiency, due to effective N-recycling. Perennial energy crops have the potential to sequester additional carbon in soil biomass if established on former cropland (0.44 Mg soil C ha(-1) yr(-1) for poplar and willow and 0.66 Mg soil C ha(-1) yr(-1) for Miscanthus). However, there was no positive or even negative effects on the C balance if energy crops are established on former grassland. Increased bioenergy production may also result in direct and indirect land-use changes with potential high C losses when native vegetation is converted to annual crops. Although dedicated perennial energy crops have a high potential to improve the GHG balance of bioenergy production, several agronomic and economic constraints still have to be overcome.Biochar application to soil has drawn much attention as a strategy to sequester atmospheric carbon in soil ecosystems. The applicability of this strategy as a climate change mitigation option is limited by our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the observed changes in greenhouse gas emissions from soils, microbial responses, and soil fertility changes. We conducted an 8-wk laboratory incubation using soils from PASTURE (silt loam) and RICE PADDY (silt loam) sites with and without two types of biochar (biochar from swine manure [CHAR-M] and from barley stover [CHAR-B]). Responses to addition of the different biochars varied with the soil source. Addition of CHAR-B did not change CO2 and CH4 evolution from the PASTURE or the RICE PADDY soils, but there was a decrease in N2O emissions from the PASTURE soil. The effects of CHAR-M addition on greenhouse gas emissions were different for the soils. The most substantial change was an increase in N2O emissions from the RICE PADDY soil. This result was attributed to a combination of abundant denitrifiers in this soil and increased net nitrogen mineralization. Soil phosphatase and N-acetylglucosaminidase activity in the CHAR-B-treated soils was enhanced compared with the controls for both soils. Fungal biomass was higher in the CHAR-B-treated RICE PADDY soil. From our results, we suggest CHAR-B to be an appropriate amendment for the PASTURE and RICE PADDY soils because it provides increased nitrogen availability and microbial activity with no net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Application of CHAR-M to RICE PADDY soils could result in excess nitrogen availability, which may increase N2O emissions and possible NO 3 leaching problems. Thus, this study confirms that the ability of environmentally sound biochar additions to sequester carbon in soils depends on the characteristics of the receiving soil as well as the nature of the biochar.As the effects of global warming have become more evident, ambitious short-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have been set in recent years. Many cities worldwide have adopted an active approach to climate change mitigation, but policy makers are not always knowledgeable of the true effects of their planned mitigation action. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of different mitigation strategies in achieving low-carbon urban communities. The assessment is conducted via means of consumption based hybrid life-cycle assessment, which allows the reduction potential to be analyzed from the perspective of an individual resident of the urban community. The assessed actions represent strategies that are both adopted by the case cities and possible to implement with current best practices in Finland. The four assessed actions comprise: (1) dense urban structure with less private driving; (2) the use of energy production based on renewable sources; (3) new low-energy residential construction; and (4) improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings. The findings show that the effectiveness depends greatly on the type of city, although in absolute terms the most significant reduction potential lies with lowering the fossil fuel dependence of the local energy production.Poland is a country where a climate change warming signal can be detected in temperature, but observed changes in other variables, and especially in precipitation, are complex. Temperature projections indicate further warming, but models do not agree as to seasonal distribution of changes in precipitation. This article reviews evidence for climate change and its impacts in Poland, in the context of observations and projections. It also reviews various aspects of climate change mitigation policy in the country whose energy supply is more coal-dominated than any other country. This is one reason why climate change mitigation efforts are modest and climate policy largely passive. The dramatic decline of industrial production involving a rapid decline in CO2 emissions during 19891992 was the crucial element of the Poland's position in the negotiations of international agreements. The European Union (EU) accession in 2004 tied Poland to EU climate policy. This cautious approach is largely in harmony with public attitudes. Poles are aware of climate change, but it is not considered as a priority issue and public opinion is divided about the issues of mitigation. Adaptation to climate change impacts in Poland is driven by the fact that observed impacts are not very large and there is no persuasive attribution of these impacts to greenhouse gas emissions. Reactive adaptation to climate change is preferred over anticipatory adaptation. There are several special care areas in Poland in terms of adaptation: the mountains; the coastal zone of the Baltic Sea; and the river valleys. WIREs Clim Change 2012 doi: 10.1002/wcc.175 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .The year 2012 would mark 20 years since the birth of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As stated under Article 2 of this Convention, the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. In support of this objective, the Convention required parties to 'take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects'. (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.At least half of the world's population resides in the coastal zone and the livelihoods of billions of people are affected either directly or indirectly by the production and sustainability of nearshore fisheries. Landscape change, specifically development of tree plantations, is accelerating worldwide as developing countries integrate into global markets to sell goods, offer climate-mitigation services (carbon), and/or provide renewable energy. These changes can release excess nutrients into adjacent coastal waters causing eutrophication that alters the structure and function of coastal ecosystems. This study examined the relationship between coastal drainage basin land use/land cover change (LCLUC), specifically development of tree plantations, patterns of chlorophyll-a in nearshore coastal waters, and the biological condition of commercially important shellfish, Concholepas concholepas (loco) in southern Chile. Locos (N similar to=similar to 1374) were sampled across 13 watersheds (35 similar to 853 similar to km2) and 42 fisheries management areas (spanning 250 similar to km of coastline). Locos harvested from management areas influenced by tree plantations had approximately 30% more endobiont (shell-boring) phoronids, almost twice as many endobiont polychaetes and twice as many epibiont (shell-attaching) barnacles than locos from areas in close proximity to watersheds dominated by native forests (1520% of the watershed). Phoronid infested locos from coastal waters adjacent to watersheds with tree plantations were of relatively poor biological condition (smaller and narrower in width) and of reduced market value. Our study suggests that tree plantations result in indirect ecological impacts to coastal fisheries (more nutrients and higher phytoplankton biomass, resulting in smaller, low quality locos), and costs are born by coastal fishers (lower prices for locos). Increases in tree plantations could thus potentially significantly impact coastal fisheries worldwide and such problems should be managed as an interconnected network of land use change, oceanic ecosystems, and economic systems that are considered an integrated socio-ecological system.Here we analyse the radiative forcing implications of forest fertilization and biomass substitution, with explicit consideration of the temporal patterns of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to and removals from the atmosphere (net emissions). We model and compare the production and use of biomass from a hectare of fertilized and non-fertilized forest land in northern Sweden. We calculate the annual net emissions of CO2, N2O and CH4 for each system, over a 225-year period with 1-year time steps. We calculate the annual atmospheric concentration decay of each of these emissions, and calculate the resulting annual changes in instantaneous and cumulative radiative forcing. We find that forest fertilization can significantly increase biomass production, which increases the potential for material and energy substitution. The average carbon stock in tree biomass, forest soils and wood products all increase when fertilization is used. The additional GHG emissions due to fertilizer production and application are small compared to increases in substitution benefits and carbon stock. The radiative forcing of the 2 stands is identical for the first 15 years, followed by 2 years during which the fertilized stand produces slightly more radiative forcing. After year 18 the instantaneous and cumulative radiative forcing are consistently lower for the fertilized forest system. Both stands result in long-term negative radiative forcing, or cooling of the earth system. By the end of the 225-year simulation period, the cumulative radiative forcing reduction of the fertilized stand is over twice that of the non-fertilized stand. This suggests that forest fertilization and biomass substitution are effective options for climate change mitigation, as climate change is a long term issue.The article reviews and summarizes the climate change mitigation and adaptation work undertaken by ICRISAT. The effects of climate change are already being experienced in several parts of the world. Even though the effects of climate change will be felt over all kinds of agricultural production systems, they will be more pronounced in dryland areas where agriculture is totally dependent on rainfall. Simulation output analyses reveal that crop yield will decrease due to climate change and variability in drylands, but this can be mitigated in large parts by the application of existing knowledge on crop, soil and water management, and by re-targeting and redeployment of the existing germplasms of the crops in the medium term (2010-2050). Integrated watershed management is an important tool to mitigate the climate change effects through soil conservation, improved water availability and other secondary benefits. Similarly, conservation agriculture practices under the integrated genetic and natural resources management strategy can help minimize the adverse effects of climate change on dryland agricultural productivity.The meeting on 'Genetic Resources in the Face of New Environmental, Economic and Social Challenges' held in Montpellier (France) from 20-22 September 2011 brought together about 200 participants active in research and management of the genetic diversity of plant, animal, fungal and microbial species. Attendees had the rare opportunity to hear about agronomy, botany, microbiology, mycology, the social sciences and zoology in the same conference. The research teams presented the results of about 50 projects funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity to preserve genetic diversity carried out in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. These projects aimed to better understand and manage genetic resources in a rapidly changing world (e. g. structural changes in the agricultural industry, the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation, the challenge of achieving food security despite the growing world population and changing dietary habits, the opportunities provided by the many new molecular biology tools, the problems caused by widespread scientific budget cuts). The meeting also hosted some roundtables open to all participants which provided a forum to establish a much needed dialogue between policy-makers, managers and researchers.The Haloxylon vegetation in Central Asia has undergone vast changes throughout the last century, which has lead to a strong degradation and desertification of the desert ecosystems in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. In terms of combating desertification and restoration of ecosystems, two pilot-projects recently are aiming at the reforestation of Haloxylon ecosystems. Hereby, two of the internationally discussed climate change mitigation activities may be of higher relevance: (I) to sequester CO2 through afforestation and reforestation and (II) to substitute fossil fuels by sustainable utilization of regenerative bio-fuels. With particular focus on Central Asian desert ecosystems, the questions arose: (I) to which extent Haloxylon species - the dominant shrub species - sequester CO2, (II) what the recent carbon pool related to Haloxylon ecosystems is, and (Ill) in which magnitude the existing and/or reforested ecosystems could be utilized for bio-fuels sustainably. Therefore, this study aims at the derivation of allometric models including carbon contents for the two Haloxylon species in Central Asian desert ecosystems. A first application to measured transect data across Central Asia is carried out to reflect the recent biomass variability of the two study species. We found, that above- and below-ground biomass for both species is best modeled when taking growth height, basal area, and canopy area of shrubs into account (0.87 < r(2) < 0.97 for the top-models). Regarding the transect data, Haloxylon aphyllum showed a significantly higher variability of measured and modeled variables as well as higher maximum and average biomass estimates when compared to Haloxylon persicum. As our study sites partly include regions with moderate to strong human impact, the observed biomass variability represents differing ecological conditions as well as anthropogenic effects, with the latter also being reflected in the observed shrub species compositions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The intricacies of international land-use change and forestry policy reflect the temporal, technical and political difficulty of integrating biological systems and climate change mitigation. The plethora of co-existing policies with varied technical rules, accreditation requirements, accounting methods, market registries, etc., disguise the unequal efficacies of each mechanism. This work explores the co-evolution and convergence of Australian voluntary and mandatory climate-related policies at the biosequestration-bioenergy interface. Currently, there are temporal differences between the fast-evolving and precise climate-change mechanisms, and the long-term 'permanence' sought from land use changes encouraged by biosequestration instruments. Policy convergence that favours the most efficient, appropriate and scientifically substantiated policy mechanisms is required. These policies must recognise the fundamental biological foundation of biosequestration, bioenergy, biomaterial industrial development and other areas such as food security and environmental concerns. Policy mechanisms that provide administrative simplicity, project longevity and market certainty are necessary for rural and regional Australians to cost-effectively harness the considerable climate change mitigation potential of biological systems.Cordillera Blanca (White Mountains) home of the indigenous Quechua-speaking people. Some even go so far as to say Peruvians have paid a higher price than most for melting glaciers. Yet, despite convincing arguments in call-to-action internet bulletins and scientific articles, little information is available regarding human responses to, or societal impacts of, diminishing glaciers in mountain regions, especially those in developing countries.This paper assesses the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction impacts of urban water conservation. Using California as a case study, it estimates this co-benefit of California's statewide urban water conservation goal of 20% per capita reduction by 2020 (relative to a year 2000 baseline). We developed a model of a water supply system to assess the impact of reduced urban water demand on emissions. Embedded energy and emissions were established for each stage of the water supply cycle: supply and conveyance, treatment, distribution, end use and wastewater treatment. We conclude that water conservation, in addition to being an important strategy for adaptation to climate change, represents a significant opportunity for mitigation. Under policies that prioritize savings of water that is heated, the most energy-intensive process in the supply cycle, water conservation offers the potential to conserve 3.5 Mt CO(2)e in 2020. This result suggests that water conservation could be an important mitigation strategy in other states, even those that are not water-constrained and do not have highly energy intensive supply sources.1. Climate change is a major threat to biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. Mitigating its effects on living organisms and societies will be at the heart of most environmental management strategies, which will need to be informed by integrative scientific approaches. This Issues Special Profile provides examples of such approaches. 2. Responses of species to change in climatic conditions will range from thriving (i.e. species capable of living under the new set of conditions) to adapting (i.e. species capable of surviving a change in global conditions by changing their ecology and/or distribution) and going extinct. Yet there is a need to identify which species will fall into which categories, as well as a need to understand how to facilitate species ability to adapt to change. 3. Landscape management will be key to ensuring that functional, resilient ecosystems are maintained. Preserving the complexity and function of ecosystems can help mitigate the impact of extreme climatic conditions on the delivery of vital services such as climate regulation, primary production and water retention. 4. To mitigate further biodiversity loss, healthy habitats will also need to be better connected. In many situations, developing ecological networks will require costly habitat restoration at large spatial scales: to maximise opportunities for these networks to be created and be successful, landscape-scale assessments of the provision and value of multiple ecosystem services under alternative management regimes will need to inform decisions as to where and how to implement their creation. 5. Synthesis and applications. Climate change is only starting to shape the ecological research agenda, as the complexity of the impact of this phenomenon on biodiversity and ecosystem services slowly unveils. Because changes in climatic conditions are expected to hit everyone everywhere, effective solutions for climate change mitigation will require science to truly engage with society and support decision-making processes at local, national and international scales.1. Resilient and functional landscapes are essential for climate change adaptation. Thermodynamic theory has been applied increasingly to ecological studies to understand ecosystem resilience and integrity. Resilient ecosystems have complex structure and greater levels of biomass and functional diversity, which act to enhance the degradation of solar energy. Forests that exhibit these characteristics express thermodynamic efficiency through a greater capacitance effect that promotes cooler surface temperatures under extreme weather conditions. 2. With forest disturbance, complex structures and functional linkages are simplified, reducing the capacity of the system to degrade energy. Such changes can lead to dysfunctional ecosystem states, impaired provision of ecosystem services and a weakened resilience. 3. This study has applied indicators based on thermodynamic theory to a chronosequence of forest ecosystems in the UK, Germany and Ukraine. Surface temperatures were measured to test thermodynamic theories relating to energy degradation and temperature moderation. Grimes CSR model was applied to plant data to compare functional complexity in vegetation between stands. 4. Old-growth woodlands are shown to attenuate surface temperature more effectively than native species plantations. Consistently lower temperatures were observed in European old-growth forests with high proportions of biomass when compared to managed stands of similar species composition, suggesting a greater efficiency of energy degradation in complex forest ecosystems, particularly at higher temperatures. 5. Analysis of plant species data using Grimes CSR model indicated that old-growth forests ordinate towards competitive and stress-tolerant communities in contrast to intensively managed forests, which had a greater proportion of generalist and ruderal species. High CSR functional scores were associated with moderated temperature extremes. 6. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest an important thermodynamic basis for conservation in the context of climate change. Conservation practice and management policy, which is based on preserving ecosystem complexity and function, can aid in mitigating the effects of extreme temperatures, enhancing vital services such as climate regulation, primary production and water retention. Old-growth forests have a significant climate mitigation role alongside other recognised ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration.Several technology and fuel options could be used to lower the strong oil dependence of the transportation sector. To formulate policies and to cost-effectively meet oil reduction objectives, assessments and comparisons of the long-term economic performances of different technology trajectories are essential. In this work, the energy and technology costs associated with reducing oil consumption in passenger cars in Sweden are calculated for a number of possible future transport fuel pathways and for different energy prices and climate policies. An optimisation model is applied in a simulatory multiple-run approach for this purpose. The model encompasses the transportation sector, as well as the stationary energy system. In terms of results, a methanol-based pathway gives incremental system costs in the range of -0.9-3 billion EUR for a complete phase-out of passenger car oil up to 2030. As compared to the methanol pathway, other biomass gasification-based fuel pathways involve additional incremental system costs in the region of 3 billion EUR, whereas ethanol- and electricity-based pathways give additional incremental system costs of 4-5 billion EUR. At lower oil reduction levels, the cost differences between the pathways are smaller and the electricity-based pathway is significantly more cost-competitive. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The large majority of biofuels to date is "first-generation" biofuel made from agricultural commodities. All first-generation biofuel production systems require phosphorus (P) fertilization. P is an essential plant nutrient, yet global reserves are finite. We argue that committing scarce P to biofuel production involves a trade-off between climate change mitigation and future food production. We examine biofuel production from seven types of feedstock, and find that biofuels at present consume around 2% of the global inorganic P fertilizer production. For all examined biofuels, with the possible exception of sugarcane, the contribution to P depletion exceeds the contribution to mitigating climate change. The relative benefits of biofuels can be increased through enhanced recycling of P, but high increases in P efficiency are required to balance climate change mitigation and P depletion impacts. We conclude that, with the current production systems, the production of first-generation biofuels compromises food production in the future.There is growing concern about climate change impacts on local government areas. In Australia, the federal carbon tax (from 1 July 2012) will also increase costs for local councils. This paper evaluates what carbon mitigation (i.e. energy, water, and waste management) actions have been implemented by metropolitan Adelaide councils (n=14) and why (or why not). A survey of environmental officers profiled carbon mitigation actions, emissions auditing, and motives for emissions reduction by Adelaide councils. The main reasons for adopting carbon actions were a climate change plan, climate leadership, and cost savings. Internal council governance of climate change actions was also evaluated. A climate governance framework based on adaptive management, communication, and reflective practice (Nursey-Bray 2010) was applied to assess climate mitigation by Adelaide councils.This paper illustrates the static optimisation strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation using net marginal benefit analysis, and goes on to develop a dynamic optimisation solution using a modified Hotelling approach. Unfortunately, the situation required for a Hotelling-type optimisation to hold is rarely observed in practice, as there are numerous sources of uncertainty that impact upon a forward-looking optimisation exercise. The situation is no different within the climate change debate, with opportunities and threats to the value-maximising exercise arising as uncertainties are resolved through new information. Choices of how to deal with and take advantage of these opportunities and threats are keys to identifying the optimal trade-off between the strategies, and need to be included in the calculation of the optimal mixture of mitigation and adaptation activities. Based on reasonable assumptions, this paper discusses the impact of the real options valuation technique on the theoretical Hotelling-type optimisation to show what the effects of its application would have on the theoretical dynamic optimal solution and what those economic implications represent to public policy.The goal of this paper is to analyse the volumes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the European Union Emissions Trading System's (EU ETS) participants in Latvia in relation to their participation therein. After describing and discussing the EU ETS mechanism and its operation in Latvia in the period 2005-2010, the interconnectedness between the GHG emissions and the EU ETS participants' operation is analysed. The analysis concludes that, although the EU ETS has contributed towards GHG emission reduction, due to the growth of the economy, overall GHG emissions from the EU ETS participants in Latvia are increasing.This commentary is prompted by Thomas Wiedmann's Defining (Urban) Producer and Consumer Sinks published in this issue. In his article, Wiedmann presents a new framework for categorizing carbon sinks by borrowing practices from carbon emissions accounting and, essentially, proposing a carbon sink footprint model for urban inventories. While this is a valuable new concept, we argue that it is difficult to apply accurately given current knowledge and practices in urban life cycle assessment. Instead, a direct versus embodied classification based on where the sequestration service exists, not where the sink is located, is more useful from the perspective of municipal control and influence over creating and managing carbon sinks. This is ultimately important for the development of urban climate change mitigation measures.The implementation of climate change adaptation strategies mainly takes part at a regional scale. This scale refers to the functional and spatial dimensions of most climate change effects. Therefore, the regional scale is most adequate for processing cooperative governance formations, for progressing the regulatory framework, for implementing institutional innovations and conducting collective conflict solutions. One of the main findings in the new field of climate adaptation research refers to the necessity of an intersectoral and integrative cross-cutting issue for the consideration of climate change effects. The main aspects of an integrative perspective include a reconciliation of adaptation measures with global climate change mitigation goals, dealing with uncertainties in climate change scenarios, the integration of adaptation measures into various sectors and creating of acceptance for adaptation measures and their implementation instruments. These aspects lead to extensive discussion and coordination needs between governmental and civil society actors. This paper summarizes a framework of regional climate change governance and offers conclusions for the local practice and climate adaptation research. Referring to the action fields of spatial and regional planning, forestry and agriculture in the model region of Northern Hesse, generalizable good practice examples of institutional settings, governance formations and instruments for conducting successful adaptation strategies will be presented.Rapid climate change has been occurring for the past few decades (IPCC 2012). These climate changes are predicted to continue and possibly accelerate for many decades to come (IPCC 2012). One of the industries most affected by climate change is the insurance industry; for instance, changing weather patterns could lead to increases in damages from events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods (Mufson 2007). Fortunately, however, the insurance industry is uniquely positioned to lead the way with regard to climate change mitigation and risk management. Insurers can promote a more sustainable future through better risk-based modeling and product pricing; through innovative green products; through partnering with businesses for better environmental governance; through alliances with policy-makers and regulators to ensure voluntary market adjustments for risk; and by championing the enforcement of building code efforts (Lloyd's 2006; Liedtke, Schanz, and Stahel 2009). Finally, while insurers can potentially have a major influence over the management of climate change risk in society, they must first model sustainability in order to be credible advisors to customers and other constituents.Climate Change Mitigation Technologies (CCMTs) are becoming increasingly more important, both politically and economically. Having recognized this, the EPO cooperated with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the International Centre on Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and produced a study on Patents and Clean Energy. To consolidate the efforts invested in this study, the Y02 patent classification was created. This is a tagging scheme developed by experienced examiners working in the relevant fields, in cooperation with external experts, for patent documents related to CCMTs, which provides additional classification next to the regular ECLA and IPC classification of such documents. Patent documents were tagged by means of search strategies by experienced expert examiners, which were formalized into algorithms that can be re-run periodically to update the classes. Currently there are 2 subclasses: Y02C (for Greenhouse gas capture and storage) and Y02E (CCMTs relating to energy generation, transmission or distribution). At the time of writing, over 650,000 documents have been tagged with Y02 codes. A comparison between published patent documents with Y02 tags and published patent documents in general confirms that over the last 15 years the annual amount of patents related to "clean energy" has grown more than twice as fast as the average of all patents. The Y02 codes are available and searchable through Espacenet or PATSTAT. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Protecting natural habitats in priority areas is essential to halt the loss of biodiversity. Yet whether these benefits for biodiversity also yield benefits for human well-being remains controversial. Here we assess the potential human well-being benefits of safeguarding a global network of sites identified as top priorities for the conservation of threatened species. Conserving these sites would yield benefits - in terms of a) climate change mitigation through avoidance of CO2 emissions from deforestation; b) freshwater services to downstream human populations; c) retention of option value; and d) benefits to maintenance of human cultural diversity - significantly exceeding those anticipated from randomly selected sites within the same countries and ecoregions. Results suggest that safeguarding sites important for biodiversity conservation provides substantial benefits to human well-being.Recent high-profile efforts have called for integrating ecosystem-service values into important societal decisions, but there are few demonstrations of this approach in practice. We quantified ecosystem-service values to help the largest private landowner in Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, design a land-use development plan that balances multiple private and public values on its North Shore land holdings (Island of O'ahu) of similar to 10,600 ha. We used the InVEST software tool to evaluate the environmental and financial implications of seven planning scenarios encompassing contrasting land-use combinations including biofuel feedstocks, food crops, forestry, livestock, and residential development. All scenarios had positive financial return relative to the status quo of negative return. However, tradeoffs existed between carbon storage and water quality as well as between environmental improvement and financial return. Based on this analysis and community input, Kamehameha Schools is implementing a plan to support diversified agriculture and forestry. This plan generates a positive financial return ($10.9 million) and improved carbon storage (0.5% increase relative to status quo) with negative relative effects on water quality (15.4% increase in potential nitrogen export relative to status quo). The effects on water quality could be mitigated partially (reduced to a 4.9% increase in potential nitrogen export) by establishing vegetation buffers on agricultural fields. This plan contributes to policy goals for climate change mitigation, food security, and diversifying rural economic opportunities. More broadly, our approach illustrates how information can help guide local land-use decisions that involve tradeoffs between private and public interests.Recent social scientific research has often dealt with public perceptions of climate change as an isolated topic. In contrast, we explored through qualitative interviews (n?=?202) across five European countries how members of the public conceptualized climate change within a wider context of energy and the future, drawing on social representation theory. Our analysis suggests that, rather than separating between environmental issues, participants interpreted both climate change and energy consumption in a context of unsustainable resource use. Views on climate change were often very sceptical, but the unsustainability of contemporary resource use was almost unanimously of great concern. However, despite their strong plea for political change towards sustainability, many interviewees found it challenging to translate their views into behaviour. We argue that obstacles for behavioural change might lie in the tensions between cognitive, normative and affective aspects of people's representations, and conclude with recommendations for European climate change mitigation policies. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentA small (but increasing) number of economists has recently started to recognize that the costs of climate change mitigation measured as reduced growth in GDP need not reduce welfare in view of the weak correlation between the two in richer economies, provided that mitigation and employment policies are properly combined. In this paper we sketch neglected links between these now major research areas and discuss how subjective well-being and employment could be raised in the medium term by cost-effective mitigation and green fiscal policy, in addition to the long-run benefits of greenhouse gas reductions. A green new deal placing more emphasis on climate change mitigation and happiness (rather than GDP as the key proxy for welfare) could be the appropriate strategy in the current economic climate of austerity and worsening recession, while also initiating the large-scale mitigation investment for job creation that is so urgently needed. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Climate change is likely to adversely affect many countries throughout the world, but the responses of different countries to this threat vary widely. Attempts to explain the differences in countries' mitigative policies have been largely deficient. This study seeks to assess the degree to which vulnerability may improve the level of explanation of adopted mitigation policies, studying over 90 countries between 1990 and 2011. Vulnerability is defined to be comprised of two basic factors: impacts (expected damages due to climate change) and adaptive capacity (the ability to adjust to these damages). As there may be a gap between declared and implemented policies, these components of mitigation policy are examined separately. In addition, other variables which mediate between these 'extreme ends' of mitigation policies are tested. The effect of vulnerability on climate change mitigation policies is examined by multiple regressions, incorporating a wide range of control variables. The results indicate that climate impacts do not affect mitigation policies. Adaptive capacity has a positive effect on the level of declared policy, but this effect becomes insignificant once implemented policy is examined. However, other tests suggest a possible transition from declarations to actions by high adaptive capacity countries. This finding suggests that high adaptive capacity countries do not view mitigation and adaptation as substitutes. Further analyses indicate that the insignificancy of impacts is caused by the uncertainty in their assessment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are many options for expanding bioenergy that contribute positively to environmental protectionAn increasing number of mitigation scenarios with deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions have focused on expanded use of demand-side electric technologies, including battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and heat pumps. Here we review such "electricity scenarios" to explore commonalities and differences. Newer scenarios are produced by various interests, ranging from environmental organizations to industry to an international organization, and represent a variety of carbon-free power generation technologies on the supply side. The reviewed studies reveal that the electrification rate, defined here as the ratio of electricity to final energy demand, rises in baseline scenarios, and that its increase is accelerated under climate policy. The prospect of electrification differs from sector to sector, and is the most robust for the buildings sector. The degree of transport electrification differs among studies because of different treatment and assumptions about technology. Industry does not show an appreciable change in the electrification rate. Relative to a baseline scenario, an increase in the electrification rate often implies an increase in electricity demand but does not guarantee it. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concern over climate change has increased the efforts for climate change mitigation in cities and companies. At the same time, the EU policies promote material and energy recovery from waste, and the production of energy from renewable sources. In the energy system, the replacement of another energy production plant with a waste to energy plant (WTE) may either increase or decrease the total emissions. Cities and companies calculate their greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprints using various calculation protocols, and a change from landfilling to waste incineration affects the emissions of these actors in various ways depending on the system boundaries. In this contribution, impact of a change from landfilling to WTE on the emissions of different actors is calculated for the case in which WTE replaces separate production of district heat (DH) by natural gas and electricity by coal. In the case of a waste management company, emissions decreased from about 51 kt CO2-eq in 2009 (before introduction of the WTE) to -33 kt CO2-eq in 2030. Emissions of DH company decreased by 40%, whereas at the city-level the combined emissions of waste management and district heat consumption decreased 60% between 2009 and 2030. The significance of the energy source to be replaced by energy from WTE on the potential GHG emission reductions was also calculated for different options. The emissions of electricity and district heat produced by WTE were 35-60% smaller than emissions from separate production of district heat by oil or natural gas and production of electricity by natural gas or coal. When electricity and DH produced by the WTE replaced those produced by alternative CHP plants, the impact varied from increase of emissions by 50% to decrease of emissions by 40% depending on the fuel of the CHP plant and electricity source used to cover the smaller electricity generation by the WTE. However, in all the cases, when the avoided emissions from landfilling were taken into account, the emissions of WTE were smaller than those of alternative waste management and energy generation options over time. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a climate-change mitigation technology that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the near future. To have a meaningful impact, CCS infrastructure will have to be deployed on a massive scale: in the U.S. this will require capturing CO2 from hundreds of fossil fuel power plants and building a dedicated pipeline network to transport a volume of CO2 greater than domestic oil consumption. In this paper, we analyze the effect of geologic reservoir uncertainty on constructing CCS infrastructure-geologic uncertainty can impact reservoir cost and capacity estimates by as much as an order of magnitude. This uncertainty propagates through the capture-transport-storage system, influencing decisions including where and how much CO2 should be captured. We demonstrate the effect of geologic uncertainty using a proposed oil shale industry that could generate tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 each year. We show that uncertainty can make transport and storage costs deviate by over 100% and that CCS infrastructure, particularly the optimal pipeline network, can considerably diverge spatially. Finally, we draw conclusions on how geologic uncertainty may end up being a driving factor on how major industries decide to manage produced CO2. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) assesses the role of bioenergy as a solution to meeting energy demand in a climate-constrained world. Based on integrated assessment models, the SRREN states that deployed bioenergy will contribute the greatest proportion of primary energy among renewable energies and result in greenhouse-gas emission reductions. The report also acknowledges insights from life-cycle assessments, which characterize biofuels as a potential source of significant greenhouse-gas emissions and environmental harm. The SRREN made considerable progress in bringing together contrasting views on indirect land-use change from inductive bottom-up studies, such as life-cycle analysis, and deductive top-down assessments. However, a reconciliation of these contrasting views is still missing. Tackling this challenge is a fundamental prerequisite for future bioenergy assessment.Deforestation is a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions(1), and the greatest single driver of species extinctions(2). The reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDO) has been formally recognized as a climate change mitigation option. REDO might have important co-benefits for biodiversity conservation(3-10), yet the extent of these benefits will depend on as-yet untested associations between fine-scale spatial patterns of deforestation, species distributions and carbon stocks. Here we combine a global land-use model(11) and spatial data on species distributions(12-14) to explore scenarios of future deforestation within REDO-eligible countries, to quantify and map the potential impacts on species extinctions as increased by forest loss and decreased by carbon conservation. We found that the continuation of historical deforestation rates is likely to result in large numbers of species extinctions, but that an adequately funded REDO programme could substantially reduce these losses. Under our deforestation scenarios, the projected benefits of REDO were remarkably consistent across the four methods used to estimate extinctions, but spatially variable, and highly dependent on the level of carbon payments. Our results indicate that, if well designed, adequately funded and broadly implemented, carbon-based forest conservation could play a major role in biodiversity conservation as well as climate change mitigation.The barriers to concerted political action on climate change mitigation are steep, especially in multilevel systems where power is diffused and authority contested. This article seeks to explain how mobilizationgalvanizing resources and people to participate activelyoccurs in complex multilevel systems. It compares two different politiesthe United States and the European Unionto tease out the key features of multilevel systems and how they affect climate activism and mobilization. To capture this dynamic, it proposes a three-staged model of mobilization: awareness building, alliance building, and network creation. The latter stage features mobilization networksstakeholder networks able to transcend levels and institutional inertia and steer polities toward particular climate goals. The article demonstrates how each stage of mobilization is highly contingent on stakeholders' ability to exploitor at least navigatemultilevel institutional barriers.Passenger transport affects climate through various mechanisms involving both long-lived and short-lived climate forcers. Because diesel cars generally emit less CO2 than gasoline cars, CO2 emission taxes for vehicle registrations and fuels enhance the consumer preference for diesel cars over gasoline cars. However, with the non-CO2 components, which have been changed and will be changed under the previous and upcoming vehicle emission standards, what does the shift from gasoline to diesel cars mean for the climate mitigation? By using a simple climate model, we demonstrate that, under the earlier emissions standards (EURO 3 and 4), a diesel car causes a larger warming up to a decade after the emissions than a similar gasoline car due to the higher emissions of black carbon and NOx (enhancing the O-3 production). Beyond a decade, the warming caused by a diesel car becomes, however, weaker because of the lower CO2 emissions. As the latter emissions standards (EURO 5 and 6) are phased in, the short-term warming due to a diesel car becomes smaller primarily due to the lower black carbon emissions. Thus, although results are subject to restrictive assumptions and uncertainties, the switch from gasoline to diesel cars encouraged by CO2 taxes does not contradict with the climate mitigation focusing on long-term consequences.The European Union (EU) has sought to lead the world in the adoption of ambitious climate change mitigation targets and policies. In an attempt to characterize and broadly explain the resulting pattern of EU climate governance, scholars have employed the term "multi-level reinforcement." This term does help to account for the paradoxical situation whereby the EU seeks to lead by example but is itself a relatively leaderless system of governance. Drawing on a much fuller empirical account of the evolution of EU climate governance, this article finds that the term captures some but not all aspects of the EU's approach. It identifies four other paradoxical features of the EU's approach and assesses the extent to which they exhibit "multi-level reinforcement." It concludes by looking forward and examining the extent to which all five features are expected to enable and/or constrain the EU's ability to maintain a leading position in climate governance.Ignoring plant diseases misinforms the climate change and food security debate. Diseases are expected not only to cause more severe crop loss in many areas in the world and threaten food security, but also to decrease the climate change mitigation capacity of forests, of other natural ecosystems and of producing crops. However, if research, policy and industry join forces to obtain the multidisciplinary knowledge necessary to adapt integrated pest management (IPM) to the changing climate, it is expected that sufficiently resilient cropping systems can be developed in time. This was the main conclusion of the International Conference on Climate Change and Plant Disease Management held in Evora, Portugal, in November 2010.This paper intends to assess Taiwan's energy security situation under current and future development of global environment. We construct a static computable general equilibrium model for Taiwan to fulfill our purpose. The model is benchmarked in 2006 and includes detailed specification of power generation technology and renewable energy producing sectors. It also distinguishes sources of imported energy to reflect Taiwan's current policy of diversifying sources of supply for energy. Simulations using the model have been focused on both changes in energy price and quantity of energy supply under specific specifications of the development of renewable energy technologies and CO2 emission reduction requirements. Our simulation results demonstrate that energy security and climate change mitigation interact each other, and under a specific emission reduction target, the effect of exogenous energy shocks on the economy will be partially absorbed by the internal adjustment mechanism of the economy.Commercial fishing is an important socio-economic activity in coastal regions of the UK and Ireland. Oceanatmospheric changes caused by greenhouse gas emissions are likely to affect future fish and shellfish production, and lead to increasing challenges in ensuring long-term sustainable fisheries management. The paper reviews existing knowledge and understanding of the exposure of marine ecosystems to ocean-atmospheric changes, the consequences of these changes for marine fisheries in the UK and Ireland, and the adaptability of the UK and Irish fisheries sector. Ocean warming is resulting in shifts in the distribution of exploited species and is affecting the productivity of fish stocks and underlying marine ecosystems. In addition, some studies suggest that ocean acidification may have large potential impacts on fisheries resources, in particular shell-forming invertebrates. These changes may lead to loss of productivity, but also the opening of new fishing opportunities, depending on the interactions between climate impacts, fishing grounds and fleet types. They will also affect fishing regulations, the price of fish products and operating costs, which in turn will affect the economic performance of the UK and Irish fleets. Key knowledge gaps exist in our understanding of the implications of climate and ocean chemistry changes for marine fisheries in the UK and Ireland, particularly on the social and economic responses of the fishing sectors to climate change. However, these gaps should not delay climate change mitigation and adaptation policy actions, particularly those measures that clearly have other co-benefits. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Korea has been one of the most aggressive countries pursuing nuclear power expansion, ranking in the top five nations globally for the installation capacity of nuclear power plants, nuclear power generation, and the number of reactors in operation. Even after the Fukushima accident, the Korean government has made no policy changes in regards to nuclear power, and public support for nuclear power remains relatively high. This study focuses on the role of the mass media in representing the Korean government's benefit-oriented nuclear frame and the persistence of public support in the country for nuclear power. The study further aims to answer the following questions: What kind of frame was mobilized by the mass media? What kinds of speakers were chosen by the media to represent a particular side to the issue? A total of three conservative, progressive, and business newspapers were analyzed. The benefits and/or risks of nuclear power in the context of climate change were major topics in the three newspapers. The benefit and risk frame constructed in these three newspapers was characterized as "slightly risky but significantly beneficial" in the conservative Chosun Daily and MK Business and "seemingly beneficial but intrinsically risky" in the progressive Hankyoreh. Different frames were contested in the three newspapers; however, because the influential power of Korean progressive newspapers is weak, arguments supporting the growth and benefits of nuclear power have become pervasive in Korea.Substitution between energy and CO2 intensive materials is a potentially important climate mitigation strategy. We compare buildings with concrete frames and wooden frames concerning their life-time carbon dioxide emissions as well as their total material, energy and carbon dioxide costs. By using consistent energy systems scenarios meeting stringent targets for atmospheric CO2 concentrations we investigate the impact of higher energy and carbon dioxide prices as well as of the availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. We find that wooden frames cause lower carbon dioxide emissions given the prevailing energy system, but concrete frames obtain about the same emissions as the wood frame in a system where CCS is not used for wood incineration in the demolishing phase. The net present costs for the different buildings are also affected by the future energy supply system, even though the impact is small, especially compared to the total construction cost. We conclude that it is unclear whether wood framed buildings will be a cost-effective carbon mitigation option and that further analyses of costs should be performed before prescriptive materials policies are enforced in the buildings sector. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although there is evidence that CO2-efficiency enhancing innovations in one country diffuse into other countries to contribute to the goals of climate change mitigation, very little is known about the conditions under which such international spillovers are most likely to take place. Our contribution in the present article seeks to address this gap by examining whether the strength of cross-border CO2-efficiency spatial dependence working through import ties and inward foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks is greater in (a) countries with lower existing levels of domestic CO2-efficiency and (b) countries with greater social capabilities in terms of a better educated workforce and higher institutional quality. We find that less CO2-efficient countries and countries with higher institutional quality experience stronger FDI-weighted CO2-efficiency spillovers, whereas a higher level of human capital increases receptivity to import-weighted international spillovers.Approaches to reduce N2O emission from crop ecosystems deserves urgent need for climate change mitigation in world agriculture. Yet, unique ecological measures to depress N emission while conserving crop productivity have not yet been well developed for wide ranges of crop ecosystems. In order to establish an ecological engineering option to mitigate N2O emission in rice ecosystems, we conducted a field experiment with biochar amendment on N2O emission from rice paddies in three sites across South China in 2010. This experiment was performed with 6 treatments of biochar rates of O. 20. and 40 t ha(-1) with and without N fertilization respectively. The rice ecosystem was managed with conventional crop production practices as seasonally man-managed wetlands, which were under flooding after seedling transplantation till panicling and drainage during spiking followed by a subsequent moist condition (F-D-M) till harvest across sites. Emission of N2O from rice soil was monitored with closed chambers at 7 days interval throughout the whole rice growing season (WRGS) and the gas samples analyzed with a gas chromatograph (Agilent 7890D) equipped with an electron capture detector (ECD). Total emission of N2O-N ranged from 1.5 kg N2O-N ha(-1) to 1.9 kg N2O-N ha(-1) without biochar, and from 0.8 kg N2O-N ha(-1) to 1.3 kg N2O-N ha(-1) and from 0.7 kg N2O-N ha(-1) to 0.9 kg N2O-N ha(-1) with biochar amendment at 20 t ha(-1) and 40 t ha(-1), respectively. Thus, biochar amendment depressed total N2O emission from chemical N fertilizer, as the calculated EF of N2O-N emission was reduced from 0.57 +/- 0.15% under chemical N fertilizer only to 0.36 +/- 0.08% and 0.22 +/- 0.04% under biochar amendment at 20 t ha(-1) and 40 t ha(-1) respectively. The value under biochar amendment at 40 t ha(-1) was found even much smaller than that of a continuously flooding rice ecosystem. As soil pH (H2O), content of soil organic carbon and total N were all upraised significantly, biochar amendment improved rice ecosystem functioning by decreasing N2O-N emission per metric ton of rice production from 0.17 +/- 0.02 kg N2O-N without biochar to 0.10 +/- 0.02 and 0.07 +/- 0.03 kg N2O-N under biochar respectively at 20 t ha(-1) and 40 t ha(-1). Thus, soil amendment of biochar from crop straw could be adopted as a unique ecological engineering measure to reduce N2O emission while enhancing soil fertility and sustaining rice productivity in rice ecosystems. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.'Carbon footprints' represent the amount of carbon (or carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions associated with a given activity or community, and are closely related to ecological or environmental footprints. But, unlike the latter, they are generally presented in terms of units of mass or weight (kilograms per functional unit), rather than in spatial units (such as global hectares). These carbon footprints have become the 'currency' of debate in a climate-constrained world. They are increasingly popular ecological indicators, adopted by individuals, businesses, governments, and the media alike. The influence of economic wealth, population density, and pollutant emission intensity upon national carbon footprints has been correlated using a 'power-law' equation. This analysis provides a greater understanding of the carbon footprint concept and its national determinants in a bipolar world: one embracing the countries of the prosperous or industrialised North of the planet and the other covering the developing, 'Majority' South, where some 80% of the global population resides. Such a bipolar world is depicted by highlighting the countries that make up some of the largest economies in the form of the G-20 nations. This international grouping encompasses nation states from both the North and South. Emerging countries from the South with large populations (such as China and India) now have economies whose overall size rivals those of the North. Here the factors that are principally responsible for driving national carbon footprints are illustrated in the context of their potential consequences for global warming. An insight into these parameters is important in a period when the international community is seeking to agree a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change mitigation. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This review describes environmental factors that influence severity of crop disease epidemics, especially in the UK and north-west Europe, in order to assess the effects of climate change on crop growth and yield and severity of disease epidemics. While work on some diseases, such as phoma stem canker of oilseed rape and fusarium ear blight of wheat, that combine crop growth, disease development and climate change models is described in detail, climate-change projections and predictions of the resulting biotic responses to them are complex to predict and detailed models linking climate, crop growth and disease development are not available for many crop-pathogen systems. This review uses a novel approach of comparing pathogen biology according to 'ecotype' (a categorization based on aspects such as epidemic type, dissemination method and infection biology), guided by detailed disease progress models where available to identify potential future research priorities for disease control. Consequences of projected climate change are assessed for factors driving elements of disease cycles of fungal pathogens (nine important pathogens are assessed in detail), viruses, bacteria and phytoplasmas. Other diseases classified according to 'ecotypes' were reviewed and likely changes in their severity used to guide comparable diseases about which less information is available. Both direct and indirect effects of climate change are discussed, with an emphasis on examples from the UK, and considered in the context of other factors that influence diseases and particularly emergence of new diseases, such as changes to farm practices and introductions of exotic material and effects of other environment changes such as elevated CO2. Good crop disease control will contribute to climate change mitigation by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture while sustaining production. Strategies for adaptation to climate change are needed to maintain disease control and crop yields in north-west Europe.Crop disease not only threatens global food security by reducing crop production at a time of growing demand, but also contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by reducing efficiency of N fertiliser use and farm operations and by driving land use change. GHG emissions associated with adoption of reduced tillage, organic and integrated systems of field crop production across the UK and selected regions are compared with emissions from conventional arable farming to assess their potential for climate change mitigation. The reduced tillage system demonstrated a modest (< 20%) reduction in emissions in all cases, although in practice it may not be suitable for all soils and it is likely to cause problems with control of diseases spread on crop debris. There were substantial increases in GHG emissions associated with the organic and integrated systems at national level, principally due to soil organic carbon losses from land use change. At a regional level the integrated system shows the potential to deliver significant emission reductions. These results indicate that the conventional crop production system, coupled to reduced tillage cultivation where appropriate, is generally the best for producing high yields to minimise greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to global food security, although there may be scope for use of the integrated system on a regional basis. The control of crop disease will continue to have an essential role in both maintaining productivity and decreasing GHG emissions.Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) is being proclaimed as "a new direction in forest conservation" (Anglesen, 2009: 125). This financial incentives-based climate change mitigation strategy proposed by the UNEP, World Bank, GEF and environmental NGOs seeks to integrate forests into carbon sequestration schemes. Its proponents view REDD+ as part of an adaptive strategy to counter the effects of global climate change. This paper combines the theoretical approaches of market environmentalism and environmental narratives to examine the politics of environmental knowledge that are redefining socio-nature relations in the Rufiji Delta, Tanzania to make mangrove forests amenable to markets. Through a case study of a "REDD-readiness" climate change mitigation and adaptation project, we demonstrate how a shift in resource control and management from local to global actors builds upon narratives of environmental change (forest loss) that have little factual basis in environmental histories. We argue that the proponents of REDD+ (Tanzanian state, aid donors, environmental NGOs) underestimate the agency of forest-reliant communities who have played a major role in the making of the delta landscape and who will certainly resist the injustices they are facing as a result of this shift from community-based resource management to fortress conservation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soils have historically been considered a temporary sink for organic C, but deeper soils may serve as longer term C sinks due to the sorption of dissolved organic C (DOC) onto Fe- and clay-rich mineral soil particles. This project provides an improved understanding and predictive capability of the physical and chemical properties of deep soils that control their sorptive capacities for DOC. Two hundred thirteen subsurface soil samples (72 series from five orders) were selected from the eastern and central United States. A characterized natural DOC source was added to the soils, and the Langmuir sorption equation was fitted to the observed data by adjusting the maximum DOC sorption capacity (Q(max)) and the binding coefficient (k). Different isotherm shapes were observed for Ultisols, Alfisols, and Mollisols due to statistically significant differences in the magnitude of k, while Q(max) was statistically invariant among these three orders. Linear regressions were performed on the entire database and as a function of soil order to correlate Langmuir fitted parameters with measured soil properties, e.g., pH, clay content, total organic C (TOC), and total Fe oxide content. Together, textural clay and Fe oxide content accounted for 35% of the variation in Q(max) in the database, and clay was most important for Alfisols and Ultisols. The TOC content, however, accounted for 27% of the variation in Q(max) in Mollisols. Soil pH accounted for 45% of the variation in k for the entire database, 41% for Mollisols, and 22% for Alfisols. Our findings demonstrate that correlations between Langmuir parameters and soil properties are different for different soil orders and that k is a more sensitive parameter for DOC sorption than is Q(max) for temperate soils from the central and eastern United States.In order to infer reactions of treeline and alpine vegetation to climatic change, past vegetation changes are reconstructed on the basis of pollen, macrofossil and charcoal analysis. The sampled sediment cores originate from the small pond Emines, located at the Sanetsch Pass (connecting the Valais and Bern, Switzerland) at an altitude of 2288 m a.s.l. Today's treeline is at ca. 2200 m a.s.l. in the area, though due to special pass (saddle) conditions it is locally depressed to ca. 2060 m a.s.l. Our results reveal that the area around Emines was covered by treeless alpine vegetation during most of the past 12,000 years. Single individuals of Betula, Larix decidua and possibly Pinus cembra occurred during the Holocene. Major centennial to millennial-scale responses of treeline vegetation to climatic changes are evident. However, alpine vegetation composition remained rather stable between 11,500 and 6000 cal. BP, showing that Holocene climatic changes of +1-1 degrees C hardly influenced the local vegetation at Emines. The rapid warming of 3-4 degrees C at the Late Glacial/Holocene transition (11,600 cal. BP) caused significant altitudinal displacements of alpine species that were additionally affected by the rapid upward movement of trees and shrubs. Since the beginning of the Neolithic, vegetation changes at Sanetsch Pass resulted from a combination of climate change and human impact. Anthropogenic fire increase and land-use change combined with a natural change from subcontinental to more oceanic climate during the second half of the Holocene led to the disappearance of P. cembra in the study area, but favoured the occurrence of Picea abies and Alnus viridis. The mid- to late-Holocene decline of Abies alba was primarily a consequence of human impact, since this mesic species should have benefitted from a shift to more oceanic conditions. Future alpine,vegetation changes will be a function of the amplitude and rapidity of global warming as well as human land use. Our results imply that alpine vegetation at our treeline pass site was never replaced by forests since the last ice-age. This may change in the future if anticipated climate change will induce upslope migration of trees. The results of this study emphasise the necessity of climate change mitigation in order to prevent biodiversity losses as a consequence of unprecedented community and species displacement in response to climatic change. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In carbon capture and storage (CCS), CO2 is captured at power plants and then injected underground into reservoirs like deep saline aquifers for long-term storage. While CCS may be critical for the continued use of fossil fuels in a carbon-constrained world, the deployment of CCS has been hindered by uncertainty in geologic storage capacities and sustainable injection rates, which has contributed to the absence of concerted government policy. Here, we clarify the potential of CCS to mitigate emissions in the United States by developing a storage-capacity supply curve that, unlike current large-scale capacity estimates, is derived from the fluid mechanics of CO2 injection and trapping and incorporates injection-rate constraints. We show that storage supply is a dynamic quantity that grows with the duration of CCS, and we interpret the lifetime of CCS as the time for which the storage supply curve exceeds the storage demand curve from CO2 production. We show that in the United States, if CO2 production from power generation continues to rise at recent rates, then CCS can store enough CO2 to stabilize emissions at current levels for at least 100 y. This result suggests that the large-scale implementation of CCS is a geologically viable climate-change mitigation option in the United States over the next century.The way that carbon accounting is done greatly influences the value attributed to maintaining tropical forests. Accounting choices will be determining factors in the role that Brazil's Amazon forest plays in global mitigation efforts and in the role that funds from mitigation will play in redirecting the course of history in Amazonia. Critical decisions include the form of accounting (stocks versus flows) that are applicable under different circumstances, baselines for establishing additionality, and the restrictions and adjustments (including discounting to attribute value to time) applied to reflect differences in permanence, leakage and uncertainty. None of these problems is insurmountable, but addressing them will require both academic effort and the political courage of decision-makers to act on available information.Coffee plays a key role in sustaining millions of livelihoods around the world. Understanding GHG emissions from coffee supply chains is important in evaluating options for climate change mitigation within the sector. We use data from two long-term coffee agroforestry experiments in Costa Rica and Nicaragua to calculate carbon footprints (CF) for coffee and identify emission hotspots within different management systems, levels of inputs and shade types. Management system and input level were the main cause of variation in CFs. Carbon footprints for 1 kg of fresh coffee cherries were between 0.26 and 0.67 kgCO(2)e for conventional and 0.12 and 0.52 kgCO(2)e for organic management systems. The main contributor to GHG emissions for all management systems was the inputs of organic and inorganic nitrogen. Nitrous oxide emissions from pruning inputs contributed between 7% and 42% of CFs. However, these estimates were strongly influenced by the choice of emission factor used in the calculations. Research is required to develop emission factors that account for different qualities and management of nitrogen inputs to enable effective calculation of the CF from different management strategies, and especially from the pruning and organic inputs managed in agroforestry systems. As such, effective climate change mitigation strategies can only be developed from site-specific studies which utilise accurate accounting and regional-specific emission factors. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.For climate mitigation it is important to identify and protect landscape units that have disproportionally large carbon storage (CS). Here we report on CS of the upper 30 and 60 cm of soil in transects of vegetation types in stream valleys in the Brazilian Cerrado savanna, including Pasture, nearly native Cerrado vegetation, Vereda wetlands, and Gallery Forests. We chose three areas with varying types of human impacts in each of which three degraded and reference transects were compared. For the 60 cm CS in undisturbed sites, maximum and average values per area were highest for Gallery Forest (360.0 and 206.5 Mg C ha(-1)) and Vereda wetland (201.9 and 142.4 Mg C ha(-1)), while those of Cerrado (57.7 and 52.7) and Pasture (62.3 and 52.7 Mg C ha(-1)) were considerably lower. Variation between the three areas was high. In an area degraded by cattle trampling, losses in the upper 60 cm compared to reference sites were highest in the carbon-rich vegetation types Vereda (72%) and Gallery Forest (71%) and lower in the carbon-poorer Pasture (33%) and Cerrado (7%). In areas degraded by fire or by erosion, results were less conclusive. Our data appeal to an improved conservation of riparian ecosystems of the Cerrado biome. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study analyzes the environmental and economic feasibility of ethanol produced from sugarcane for use as a potential gasoline substitute in the Mexican transport sector from 2010 to 2030. One scenario was created by projecting the historical trend of energy demand assuming that a fraction of this demand is satisfied with ethanol produced from the cultivation of 2.9 million hectares of sugarcane. A life cycle study was performed according to the recommendations from the European Union Directive on Renewable Energies (that include direct land use change emissions) and was used to estimate life cycle Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The method used by Fingerman et al. (2010) was adopted to estimate the water consumption. In the economic analysis, the production cost of ethanol was calculated, and a mitigation cost for carbon dioxide equivalent emissions was estimated. The potential for employment generation was also estimated. The results demonstrate that water use increases by 29.4 times and that the costs increase by 10,706 million USD with the alternative scenario. This scenario, however, has the potential to create 560,619 direct jobs. Furthermore, GHG mitigation is confirmed since the reference scenario resulted in GHG gasoline life cycle emissions of 78.7 kgCO(2e)/GJ while the alternative scenario resulted in Ethanol GHG emissions in the life cycle of 57.52 kgCO(2e)/GJ. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fast economic growth in China has generated energy and environmental problems. Fixed-asset investments have contributed significantly to energy consumption. In China, an energy conservation assessment (ECA), a mechanism similar to the existing environmental impact assessment (EIA), has been applied to improve the energy efficiency of new fixed-asset investment projects. In this paper the origin and development of the ECA system is analyzed and the major features of ECA are discussed. To identify the success and failure of the ECA system, case studies are analyzed and comparison between ECA and EIA, which has been used in China for over 30 years, is made. Based on the analysis, recommendations are provided for the improvement of the ECA system in China. Despite the ECA system only being established for a relatively short time, it has clearly achieved significant success. With further efforts it could play an important role in achieving the goals of improving China's energy efficiency and reducing green house gas emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Management of forest carbon (C) stocks is an increasingly prominent land-use issue. Knowledge of carbon storage in tropical forests is improving, but regional variations are still poorly understood, and this constrains forest management and conservation efforts associated with carbon valuation mechanisms (e.g., carbon markets). This deficiency is especially pronounced in tropical islands and low-lying coastal areas where climate change impacts are expected to be among the most severe. This study presents the first field estimate of island-wide carbon storage in ecosystems of Oceania, with special attention to the regional role of coastal mangroves, which occur on islands and coastal zones throughout the tropics. On two island groups of Micronesia (Yap and Palau), we sampled all above- and belowground C pools, including soil and vegetation, in 24 sites distributed evenly among the three major vegetation structural types: mangroves, upland forests, and open savannas (generally on degraded lands formerly forested). Total C stocks were estimated to be 3.9 and 15.2 Tg C on Yap and Palau, respectively. Mangroves contained by far the largest per-hectare C pools (830-1218 Mg C ha(-1)), with deep organic-rich soils alone storing more C (631-754 Mg C ha(-1)) than all pools combined in upland systems. Despite covering just 12-13% of land area, mangroves accounted for 24-34% of total island C stocks. Savannas (156-203 Mg C ha(-1)) contained significantly lower C stocks than upland forests (375-437 Mg C ha(-1)), suggesting that reforesting savannas where appropriate has high potential for carbon-based funding to aid restoration objectives. For mangroves, these results demonstrate the key role of these systems within the broader context of C storage in island and coastal landscapes. Sustainable management of mangrove forests and their large C stocks is of high importance at the regional scale, and climate change mitigation programs such as REDD+ could play a large role in avoiding deforestation of mangroves where this is a management objective. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is fast turning the corner from demonstration technology to a key tool for assessing carbon stocks in tropical forests. With its ability to penetrate tropical forest canopies and detect three-dimensional forest structure, LiDAR may prove to be a major component of international strategies to measure and account for carbon emissions from and uptake by tropical forests. To date, however, basic ecological information such as height-diameter allometry and stand-level wood density have not been mechanistically incorporated into methods for mapping forest carbon at regional and global scales. A better incorporation of these structural patterns in forests may reduce the considerable time needed to calibrate airborne data with ground-based forest inventory plots, which presently necessitate exhaustive measurements of tree diameters and heights, as well as tree identifications for wood density estimation. Here, we develop a new approach that can facilitate rapid LiDAR calibration with minimal field data. Throughout four tropical regions (Panama, Peru, Madagascar, and Hawaii), we were able to predict aboveground carbon density estimated in field inventory plots using a single universal LiDAR model (r (2) = 0.80, RMSE = 27.6 Mg C ha(-1)). This model is comparable in predictive power to locally calibrated models, but relies on limited inputs of basal area and wood density information for a given region, rather than on traditional plot inventories. With this approach, we propose to radically decrease the time required to calibrate airborne LiDAR data and thus increase the output of high-resolution carbon maps, supporting tropical forest conservation and climate mitigation policy.Policy initiatives targeting carbon management are increasingly linking climate change mitigation and adaptation with efforts to reduce poverty and advance sustainable development. This article draws on empirical semi-structured interview data and documentary analyses to present an assessment of the challenges and opportunities faced by national policymakers and other key stakeholders in achieving these 'multiple wins' in Malawi and Zambia. Lessons emerging from these study countries provide a useful basis for informing integrated carbon management, poverty reduction and sustainable development projects more widely in the southern Africa region. The findings reveal that multistakeholder partnerships are increasingly necessary, and we identify examples to illustrate that such collaborations are being established with varying degrees of success. The article suggests that discrete projects need to be adequately coordinated by umbrella organizations operating over larger scales in order to promote the longevity of project impacts at the local scale and to allow experiences and good practices to feed into national policy development. Capacity-building and resource investments across different levels are also shown to be vital.The debate on climate change and ecosystem services has grown substantially over the past two decades. The post-Kyoto protocol period particularly has witnessed increased formulation of financial mechanisms to compensate for green efforts towards carbon sequestration and reduction in deforestation. In most cases, communities substantially depend on forests for their livelihoods or their actions have a direct bearing on the sustainability of the forests. Will the economic incentives from emerging initiatives offer new sources of income to support rural livelihoods and reduce poverty? There is some doubt about this potential, because there is enormous evidence across the world to show that forest exploitation and use has not substantially, benefited local people and Ghana is no exception. This paper draws on existing evidence in Ghana to show that the lack of secure community tenure rights and the dominance of unaccountable authority-which leads to benefit capture by local elites are critical constraints to equitable forest benefit sharing. Building on the evidence,lis paper argues that unless these issues are addressed in policy and practice, the potential economic benefits from the various emerging mechanisms under climate change and ecosystem services may not benefit local people; they may even reinforce the gap between the rich and the poor.Many researchers and policy makers argue for a radical change in the current energy system. This paper presents a transdisciplinary case study of a rural, developing Swiss community in which a number of alternative, ambitious goals for the energy system were developed and critically reviewed by both academics and practitioners, such as energy consumers, energy industry representatives, and experts. The study shows that in the beginning the community was not ready to discuss energy issues on a detailed and ambitious level; a focus on local community development was more promising a beginning than global goals, such as climate change mitigation. Moreover, there is a need to open up to many different visions and be more explicit about the concrete energy measures needed and their potential consequences. Some visions need stricter planning and are, thus, less robust with respect to implementation and consensus. Finally, we argue that moderate, flexible energy goals will likely meet less resistance in implementation. We claim that similar results can be expected elsewhere and, thus, more general lessons can be learned from this case study. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Tropical wetlands have been shown to exhibit high rates of net primary productivity and may therefore play an important role in global climate change mitigation through carbon assimilation and sequestration. Many permanently flooded areas of tropical East Africa are dominated by the highly productive C4 emergent macrophyte sedge, Cyperus papyrus L. (papyrus). However, increasing population densities around wetland margins in East Africa are reducing the extent of papyrus coverage due to the planting of subsistence crops such as Colocasia esculenta (cocoyam). In this paper, we assess the impact of this land use change on the carbon cycle and in particular the impacts of land conversion on net ecosystem carbon dioxide exchange. Eddy covariance techniques were used, on a campaign basis, to measure fluxes of carbon dioxide over both papyrus and cocoyam dominated wetlands located on the Ugandan shore of Lake Victoria. Peak rates of net photosynthetic CO2 assimilation, derived from monthly diurnal averages of net ecosystem exchange, of 2835 similar to mu mol CO2 similar to m-2 similar to s-1 and 1520 similar to mu mol CO2 similar to m-2 similar to s-1 were recorded in the papyrus and cocoyam wetlands, respectively, whereas night-time respiratory losses ranged between 10 and 15 similar to mu mol CO2 similar to m-2 similar to s-1 at the papyrus wetland and 510 similar to mu mol CO2 similar to m-2 similar to s-1 at the cocoyam site. The integration of the flux data suggests that papyrus wetlands have the potential to act as a sink for significant amounts of carbon, in the region of 10 similar to t C similar to ha-1 similar to yr-1. The cocoyam vegetation assimilated similar to 7 similar to t C similar to ha-1 similar to yr-1 but when carbon exports from crop biomass removal were accounted for these wetlands represent a significant net loss of carbon of similar magnitude. The development of sustainable wetland management strategies are therefore required to promote the dual wetland function of crop production and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions especially under future climate change scenarios.Achten et al. (2010) note that small-scale, local shifts towards growing the inedible, biodiesel crop Jatropha curcas (Jatropha) may overcome some of the negative points inherent in popular biofuel-focused debates, including those on food insecurity and environmental degradation concerns. In this short response, we assess the views expressed by Achten et al. (2010) in light of recent case study-based research in Malawi that identifies and analyses the current context and potential for rural development of both local-level community-led and larger-scale private sector Jatropha projects in Malawi. Although large-scale cultivation of Jatropha is at risk of economic loss resultant from knowledge gaps and unpredictable yields, our research shows that small-scale initiatives do have the potential to contribute positively to rural livelihoods. Sales of seeds or production of Jatropha oil for stoves, engines, soap and paraffin can result in reduced household expenditure or increased incomes. In order for these benefits to be realised and up-scaled, further institutional support in terms of knowledge and technical provision is vital, and must be communicated through established and context-specific, locally-appropriate channels. While the biofuel debate remains global, we assert that actions should be focused at the local level in order to realise developmental, sustainability and climate change mitigation benefits across a range of scales. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Leading climate change experts within the international scientific community support the use of forest carbon sinks as a climate change mitigation tool. Functioning regulatory and voluntary carbon offset frameworks within the United States recognize forest offsets with varying levels of stringency. Emerging carbon emission reduction legislation outlines a regulatory cap-and-trade system with provisions for significant domestic forest-related offsets. Given the opportunity for forest carbon offsets in the United States, there exists minimal enquiry regarding the attitudes of nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners regarding the management of their forestland for carbon sequestration and trading. The current research uses a nationwide survey of forest landowners and investigates the effect of land characteristics, land-use planning, and demographics on NIPF owners' attitudes toward these carbon sequestration opportunities. Overall, only 37% of respondents held positive attitudes regarding the management of their forestland for carbon sequestration and trading. Results suggest that increasing acreage size and absentee ownership tended to negatively influence attitudes whereas plans to harvest timber, plans to bequeath to heirs, and education level positively influenced attitudes.A method is presented for estimating the global warming impact of forest biomass life cycles with respect to their functionally equivalent alternatives based on fossil fuels and non-renewable material sources. In the method, absolute global warming potentials (AGWP) of both the temporary carbon (C) debt of forest biomass stock and the C credit of the biomass use cycle displacing the fossil and non-renewable alternative are estimated as a function of the time frame of climate change mitigation. Dimensionless global warming potential (GWP) factors, GWP(bio) and GWP(biouse), are derived. As numerical examples, 1) bioenergy from boreal forest harvest residues to displace fossil fuels and 2) the use of wood for material substitution are considered. The GWP-based indicator leads to longer payback times, i.e. the time frame needed for the biomass option to be superior to its fossil-based alternative, than when just the cumulative balance of biogenic and fossil C stocks is considered. The warming payback time increases substantially with the residue diameter and low displacement factor (DF) of fossil C emissions. For the 35-cm stumps, the payback time appears to be more than 100 years in the climate conditions of Southern Finland when DF is lower than 0.5 in instant use and lower than 0.6 in continuous stump use. Wood use for construction appears to be more beneficial because, in addition to displaced emissions due to by-product bioenergy and material substitution, a significant part of round wood is sequestered into wood products for a long period, and even a zero payback time would be attainable with reasonable DFs.Soils deliver several ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling, which are of central importance to climate mitigation and sustainable food production(1-3). Soil biota play an important role in carbon and nitrogen cycling, and, although the effects of land use on soil food webs are well documented(4-6), the consequences for their resistance and resilience to climate change are not known. We compared the resistance and resilience to drought-which is predicted to increase under climate change(2,7)-of soil food webs of two common land-use systems: intensively managed wheat with a bacterial-based soil food web and extensively managed grassland with a fungal-based soil food web. We found that the fungal-based food web, and the processes of C and N loss it governs, of grassland soil was more resistant, although not resilient, and better able to adapt to drought than the bacterial-based food web of wheat soil. Structural equation modelling revealed that fungal-based soil food webs and greater microbial evenness mitigated C and N loss. Our findings show that land use strongly affects the resistance and resilience of soil food webs to climate change, and that extensively managed grassland promotes more resistant, and adaptable, fungal-based soil food webs.There is a growing body of knowledge about the impacts of climate change on tourism destinations and about tourism's commitment to address these impacts. However, there has been limited research about climate change responses by national or sub-national tourism agencies and the role they play in providing information, incentives and leadership to encourage the uptake of climate change actions by the industry. This paper assesses the climate change responses of nine Australian government tourism agencies. Information on climate change, sustainability and green business practices is drawn from the corporate websites, annual reports, tourism plans, fact sheets, and case studies produced by one national, six state and two territory tourism agencies from 2007 to 2010. The paper focuses on how government tourism agencies are addressing climate change mitigation by promoting carbon reduction initiatives and carbon offsetting schemes. Climate change tourism responses are more developed in Australian states with climate change policies and in destinations vulnerable to the impacts of climate change or dependent on long haul travellers. To date, few government tourism agencies report on their own carbon footprint or mitigation and offset measures. This study highlights a range of mitigation options that will assist government tourism agencies to address climate change impacts through policies, strategic plans and green business advice for tourism operators.There is a compelling argument for developing a low carbon emissions trajectory to mitigate climate change and for doing so urgently. What is needed is a transformation of the energy sector and an 'energy revolution'. Such a revolution can only be achieved through effective energy governance nationally, regionally, and globally. But frequently such governance is constrained by the tensions between energy security, climate change mitigation and energy poverty. At national level, there is a chasm between what is needed and what governments do 'on the ground', while regionally and globally, collective action challenges have often presented insurmountable obstacles. The article examines what forms of energy law, regulation and governance are most needed to overcome these challenges and whether answers are most likely to be found in hierarchy, markets, or networks.The development towards high energy efficiency and low environmental impact from human interactions has led to changes at many levels of society. As a result of the introduction of penalties on carbon dioxide emissions and other economic instruments, the energy industry is striving to improve energy efficiency and climate mitigation by switching from fossil fuels to renewable fuels. Biomass-based combined heat and power (CHP) plants connected to district heating networks have a need to find uses for the excess heat they produce in summer when the heat demand is low. On the other hand, the transport sector makes a substantial contribution to the increasing CO2 emissions, which have to be reduced. One promising alternative to address these challenging issues is the integration of vehicle fuel production with biomass-based CHP plants. This paper presents the configuration and operating profits in terms of electricity, heat and ethanol fuel from cellulosic biomass. A case study of a commercial small scale CHP plant was conducted using simulation and modeling tools. The results clearly show that electricity production can be increased when CHP production is integrated with cellulosic ethanol production. The findings also show that the economic benefits of the energy system can be realized with near-term commercially available technology, and that the benefits do not rely solely on ethanol yields. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change mitigation strategies cannot be evaluated solely in terms of energy cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential. Maintaining GHGs at a "safe" level will require fundamental change in the way we approach energy production, and a number of environmental, economic, and societal factors will come into play. Water is an essential component of energy production, and water resource constraints will limit our options for meeting society's growing demand for energy while also reducing GHG emissions. This study evaluates these potential constraints from a global perspective by revisiting the climate wedges proposal of Pacala and Socolow (Science 2004, 305 (5686), 968-972) and evaluating the potential water-use impacts of the wedges associated with energy production. GHG mitigation options that improve energy conversion or use efficiency can simultaneously reduce GHG emissions, lower energy costs, and reduce energy impacts on water resources. Other GHG mitigation options (e.g., carbon capture and sequestration, traditional nuclear, and biofuels from dedicated energy crops) increase water requirements for energy. Achieving energy sustainability requires deployment of alternatives that can reduce GHG emissions, water resource impacts, and energy costs.Background: In recent decades the frequency and severity of natural disturbances by e. g., strong winds and insect outbreaks has increased considerably in many forest ecosystems around the world. Future climate change is expected to further intensify disturbance regimes, which makes addressing disturbances in ecosystem management a top priority. As a prerequisite a broader understanding of disturbance impacts and ecosystem responses is needed. With regard to the effects of strong winds - the most detrimental disturbance agent in Europe - monitoring and management has focused on structural damage, i.e., tree mortality from uprooting and stem breakage. Effects on the functioning of trees surviving the storm (e.g., their productivity and allocation) have been rarely accounted for to date. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we show that growth reduction was significant and pervasive in a 6.79.million hectare forest landscape in southern Sweden following the storm Gudrun (January 2005). Wind-related growth reduction in Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) forests surviving the storm exceeded 10% in the worst hit regions, and was closely related to maximum gust wind speed (R-2 = 0.849) and structural wind damage (R-2 = 0.782). At the landscape scale, wind-related growth reduction amounted to 3.0 million m(3) in the three years following Gudrun. It thus exceeds secondary damage from bark beetles after Gudrun as well as the long-term average storm damage from uprooting and stem breakage in Sweden. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that the impact of strong winds on forest ecosystems is not limited to the immediately visible area of structural damage, and call for a broader consideration of disturbance effects on ecosystem structure and functioning in the context of forest management and climate change mitigation.Transit funding is often reduced, sometimes severely, during periods of economic downturn. Very little is known about how transit agencies modify operations when funds become scarce, particularly when they are being asked to carry a larger share of travelers. In this paper, we examine the performance of transit agencies since 1991, including during the recent economic crisis, to assess how transit operations have changed in response to changing economic circumstances. Using California data, we find that the effect of subsidies varies by the source of funding and the size of operator. For example, state subsidies and local subsidies are associated with increasing efficiency (vehicle revenue-miles per operating expenditures). We also identify the recent economic downturn's negative effect on both efficiency and overall operator performance (unlinked passenger trips per operating expenditures). Decreasing efficiency and overall performance are evidence of service-cutting behavior in the wake of operating shortfalls. Service cuts have a direct effect on revenue vehicle miles and ridership and would tend to decrease efficiency while increasing effectiveness (unlinked passenger trips per vehicle revenue miles) for the same number of trips. This study begins to unravel the practical effects of changing subsidies and lays the groundwork for further analysis. We conclude that without increasing funds for transit operations, this mode's hoped for role in climate change mitigation will remain only a fantasy.This study presents a computational methodology to estimate the maximum probable leakage of CO2 along old wells in a geological sequestration operation. The methodology quantifies the maximum probable CO2 leakage as a function of the statistical characterization of existing wells. We use a Monte Carlo approach based on a computationally efficient simulator to run many thousands of realizations. Results from the Monte Carlo simulations are used to determine maximum leakage rates at 95% confidence. Uncertainty in the analysis is due to leaky well parameters, which are known to be highly uncertain. We consider a wide range of parameter values, with our focus on assignment of effective well permeability values and the correlation of those values along individual wells. We use a specific location in Alberta, Canada, to demonstrate the methodology using a hypothetical injection and an assumed probability structure for the well permeabilities. We show that for a wide range of parameter values, the amount of leakage is within the bounds suggested as acceptable for climate change mitigation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using energy systems analysis, we examine the potential to reduce CO2 emissions and oil use by integrating motor biofuel production with pulp mills. BLG-DME (black liquor gasification with di-methyl ether production) is compared with solid biomass gasification with BIG-Fr (solid biomass gasification with Fischer-Tropsch fuel production). The studied systems are expanded with stand-alone production of biomass-based electricity and motor fuel so that they yield the same functional unit in terms of motor fuel and electricity as well as pulp or paper product, in order to facilitate comparison. More motor biofuel can be produced in integration with the studied mills with BLG-DME than with BIG-FT because the black liquor flow is large compared with other fuel streams in the mill and the integration potential for BIG-FT is limited by the mill's heat demand. When both systems are required to produce the same functional unit, the BLG-DME system achieves higher system efficiency and larger reductions in CO2 emissions and oil use per unit of biomass consumed. In general, integration of motor biofuel production with a pulp mill is more efficient than stand-alone motor biofuel production. Larger reductions in CO2 emissions or oil use can, however, be achieved if biomass replaces coal or oil in stationary applications. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For effective climate change mitigation, the global use of fossil fuels for electricity generation, transportation and other industrial uses, will need to be substantially curtailed this century. In a recent Viewpoint in Energy Policy, Trainer (2010) argued that non-carbon energy sources will be insufficient to meet this goal, due to cost, variability, energy storage requirements and other technical limitations. However, his dismissal of nuclear fission energy was cursory and inadequate. Here I argue that fossil fuel replacement this century could, on technical grounds, be achieved via a mix of fission, renewables and fossil fuels with carbon sequestration, with a high degree of electrification, and nuclear supplying over half of final energy. I show that the principal limitations on nuclear fission are not technical, economic or fuel-related, but are instead linked to complex issues of societal acceptance, fiscal and political inertia, and inadequate critical evaluation of the real-world constraints facing low-carbon alternatives. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Italy there has been considerable political debate around the new energy policy, which is specifically designed to contribute to climate change mitigation. While there is renewed interest in nuclear energy generation, there has been heated debate concerning wind farms that have rapidly expanded and are dramatically changing the landscape in many rural areas. Finally, interest has also increased in biomass as an energy source. However, in this case, a significant part of the population is worried about landscape change and primary crop reduction. In this study we report the results from a nation-wide survey (=504 households) in Italy undertaken during summer 2009. A Latent Class Choice Experiment was used to quantify household preferences over different energy sources. Our results show that Italian households can be split into three segments with homogeneous preferences. The first segment (35% of the population) shows strong preference for wind and solar energy and dislikes both biomass and nuclear. The second (33% of the population) shows moderate preference for solar and wind energy and, as with the first segment, dislikes both nuclear and biomass. The third (32% of the population) shows a strong preference for green energy (solar, wind and biomass) and is very much against nuclear energy. The three segments were also characterized in terms of household socio-economic characteristics. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article briefly discusses climate mitigation policy in Italy. It first reviews the recent policy action and then assesses the challenges ahead. It shows that emissions in 2012 will be below the Kyoto target only if the carbon intensity of the economies continues to decline at the pre-crisis rate. Even in this favorable case, the use of Kyoto mechanisms will likely be necessary to compensate for the high emissions of 2008. This article then examines the implications of reducing emissions in 2050 by 80% with respect to the present level, as proposed by Major Economies Leaders during the 2009 G8 meeting. In particular, the article focuses on the transformations needed in the power sector. Scenarios developed using the integrated assessment model World Induced Hybrid Technical Change (WITCH) and an analysis of historical data show that (1) electricity in 2050 must come with zero (or possibly negative) emissions, and therefore, absent nuclear power and (2) carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) must play a major role in future power supply, even with a massive development of wind and photovoltaic. The article then proposes five pillars on which a sensible, long-term, ambitious Italian climate mitigation policy should rest. WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:171183. doi: 10.1002/wcc.159Kerosene subsidies intended for Indian households have been known for their poor targeting and high fiscal costs. However, the distributional benefits to the 160 million households that use kerosene are not well understood. In this paper, the kerosene subsidy is formally assessed as an instrument of income redistribution. The subsidy incidence, progressivity and efficacy of the kerosene subsidy are calculated for the state of Maharashtra, under actual and ideal implementation conditions. The analysis shows that kerosene subsidies are regressive and of minimal financial value to poor rural households. This is in part because household quotas are based on cooking needs, but kerosene is used predominantly for lighting. In urban areas, subsidies are progressive, and provide benefits of up to 5 to 10% of household expenditure among poorer households which lack affordable access to LPG and biomass. Overall, only 26% of the total subsidy value directly reaches households. This analysis suggests that subsidies targeted only to kerosene-dependent urban areas would have a higher efficacy than broad-based subsidies. (C) 2012 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The present study presents a draft national Clean Coal Technologies and Carbon Capture and Storage Technology Roadmap to policy makers.. Various technical and non-technical (economic and social) challenges that currently prevent clean coal technologies and carbon capture and storage from being a widely used commercial technology are discussed and the goals for each research pathway are defined. The process of creating the roadmap started with a review and assessment of the existing national and international technology roadmaps, which represent a global picture of the state of the art and national and international plans fur the future on clean coal technologies and carbon capture and storage research development, demonstration, and deployment. Following this step, the national situation, capacities, and priorities were examined. Finally, research development, demonstration, and deployment actions discussed in the existing roadmaps and/or new actions were carefully selected and suggested as a draft Turkish Clean Coal Technologies and Carbon Capture and Storage Roadmap that needs further development and discussion by the input of interdisciplinary national stakeholders. As a conclusion, a number of technical and non-technical suggestions are delivered.Forest plantations have the ability to sequester carbon in their biomass and reduce the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Therefore, plantation forestry forms an important option for mitigating global warming and consequent climate change. The objective of the present study was to estimate the biomass and carbon stocks of the existing forest plantations in Sri Lanka. Height and diameter measurements of the trees at breast height from 22 monocultures and 51 mixed-cultures, established and maintained by the Forest Department, were obtained from the FORDATA data base and used to calculate the existing carbon stocks using allometric relationships. The total estimated monoculture C stock in 2008 amounted to 4.23 million metric tons in an area of 57618.8 ha. Around 89% of this total C stock in monocultures is contributed by five tree species, namely, Pinus caribaea (44%), Tectona grandis (21%), Eucalyptus grandis (11%), Eucalyptus camaldulensis (7%) and Swietenia macrophylla (6%), occupying 92% of the area. Total C stock in mixed cultures in 2008 amounted to 0.681 million tons in 5949.6 ha. Five mixed cultures, i.e. Eucalyptus robusta and E. grandis (17%), Pinus mixed (13%), E. grandis and E. microcotys (12.5%), Eucalyptus mixed (7%) and Acacia mangium and A. auriculiformis (5%), contributed to 55% of this C stock. Monocultures, which showed the highest per ha C stocks were Pinus caribaea in Badulla (205 t ha(-1)) and Nuwara Eliya (164 t ha(-1)) and Eucalyptus grandis in Ratnapura (197 t ha(-1)) and Nuwara Eliya (168 t ha(-1)). Mixed plantations of Acacia decurrens and different species of Eucalyptus grown in Nuwara Eliya showed the highest combined per ha C stocks ranging from 226 279 t ha(-1). The maximum per ha C stock in some of the Sri Lankan forest plantations in different climatic zones were either on par or above the benchmark average C stock values specified by the IPCC for the respective climatic zones. Age distribution of the monoculture C stocks showed that the highest percentage (i.e. 39%) was in the 21-30 year plantations, followed by the 31-40 year plantations (32%).The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of proposed Canadian climate change mitigation policies (discounting and carbon pricing) on cost, energy use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the single-objective design/expansion optimization of the Amherstview water distribution system in Amherstview, Ontario, Canada. The single-objective optimization problem is solved with the elitist genetic algorithm (EGA). The optimization approach is used in a parametric analysis to examine the impact of discounting and carbon pricing on GHG reductions for cement-mortar ductile iron and polyvinyl chloride pipe materials. Preliminary results indicate that the discount rate and carbon prices investigated had no significant influence on energy use and GHG mass in the Amherstview system and did not meet the emission-reduction targets set by the Canadian government. This result was attributed to a number of factors, including adequately installed hydraulic capacity in the Amherstview system, the use of a time-declining GHG emission intensity factor, and the scope of the expansion problem. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000158. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Earth system interactions, as highlighted by the planetary boundaries framework, occur within and across natural, social and economic systems and shape global environmental change. This paper addresses the multi-level governance problem of coherently addressing key interactions between four Earth sub-systems - climate change, freshwater use, land use and biodiversity - taking into account concerns over problem shifting. After discussing possibilities for regional downscaling of the boundaries, we explore challenges for the EU region to coherently address this particular set of interacting Earth sub-systems and reduce the risk of problem shifting. This analysis demonstrates that Earth system interactions can be governed, but that they likely require comprehensive packages of governance responses across both sub-systems and levels. Three overarching governance functions are tentatively identified that directly or indirectly address Earth system interactions: reduction of system stress, risks and vulnerabilities; triggering and navigation of transformation of economic activity; and development of a diversity of options. Finally, the paper briefly discusses political and institutional challenges for developing, enabling and stabilising these governance functions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+) is regarded by its proponents as one of the more efficient and cost effective ways to mitigate climate change. There was further progress toward the implementation of this mechanism at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) in Cancun in December 2010. Many countries in southern African, including South Africa, have not been integrated (do not participate) into the UN-REDD+ programme, probably due to their low forest cover and national rates of deforestation. This paper discusses the potential contribution of REDD+ activities to the South African Government's pledge of reducing national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 34% below business as usual by 2020. A number of issues such as complex land tenure system, limited forest cover and other conflicting environmental issues present challenges for REDD+ in South Africa. Despite these genuine concerns, REDD+ remains a practical strategy to contribute to climate change mitigation for South Africa. The paper raises the need for development of a variety of emission reduction programmes - not only in the energy sector. The paper also assesses several national options and opportunities towards a working REDD+ mechanism. It concludes by identifying key mechanisms for moving forward to prepare for REDD+ actions in South Africa and raises the urgent need for national dialogue between stakeholders and institutions to evaluate the feasibility of making use of the mechanism in South Africa and the Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) region. The paper further addresses possible synergies and conflicts between the national climate change and forestry policies towards REDD+ development. It suggests that REDD+ should be part of the national dialogue on policy to respond to climate change and should be integrated into the national flagship programmes that the national climate change white paper seeks to implement. A multiple-benefit REDD+ initiative for South Africa can benefit from these international financial initiatives. It is anticipated that this initiative will provide a platform to enhance policy, institutional and technical stakeholder capacities to access financial incentives that may lead to sound environmental practises. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.India is the world's tenth most forested nation with 76.87 M ha of forest and tree cover occupying 23.4% of its geographical area. Forests-with their intrinsic of carbon sequestration and storage values-are in the front line of India's climate change mitigation strategies. This paper provides estimates of sequestered carbon in India's forest and tree cover for the years 1995 and 2005 as per the IPCC good practice guidelines method. It is based on the primary data for the soil carbon pool through collecting soil samples by laying out quadrats across the country and secondary data for the growing stock of all forest and tree cover in the country. The estimates are compared with current and future projected emissions. It is found that conservation policies have resulted in increase of the country's forest carbon stocks from 6244.8 to 6621.6 Mt with an annual increment of 37.7 Mt of the carbon from 1995 to 2005. Annual CO2 removal by the forests is enough to neutralise 9.3% of the country's 2000 level emissions. Continued removals by the forest and tree cover would offset 6.5 and 4.9% of India's projected annual emissions in 2010 and 2020 respectively. Economically, the annual value of this forest carbon in the international market is about US $188 million. The result is of use in the REDD and REDD+ context for India.This paper considers unilateral border measures, as contemplated by a number of developed states in conjunction with domestic emissions reduction schemes, as they relate to international trade and international environmental law. Specifically, I argue that to the extent that WTO-compliance requires strict adherence to the principle of nondiscrimination, as embodied in the national treatment and most-favored nation provisions in the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, there is the potential for conflict with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), both as a free-standing principle of customary international law and as set out in various multilateral environmental agreements and, in particular in the climate change context, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. This is insofar as the unilateral imposition of BCAs by developed countries shifts costs of compliance with environmental legislation in developed economies onto the developing world. Such allocation may conflict with the principle of CBDR, which recognizes the unequal contribution to environmental degradation of developed countries as well as their enhanced ability to address the challenges presented by such degradation and, as a consequence, requires that they undertake more onerous obligations with respect to climate change mitigation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the extent to which this conflict is illustrative of a deeper tension between efficiency and equity considerations inherent in the intersection of international economic law and international environmental law.Leakage from policies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) must be monitored, measured and mitigated to ensure their effectiveness. This paper reviews research on leakage at the large (international and national) and small (subnational and project) scales to summarize what we already know, and highlight areas where research is urgently needed. Most (11 of 15) studies published until 2005 estimated leakage of fossil-fuel-based emissions from large-scale interventions such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Kyoto Protocol. Many studies on leakage from landuse-based emissions more relevant for REDD+ emerged afterwards (11 of 15), mostly focusing on smaller-scale interventions (8 of the 11 studies). There is a deficiency in qualitative studies showing how leakage develops from an intervention, and the factors influencing this process. In-depth empirical research is needed to understand activities and actors causing emissions (Emissions), the way those activities move spatially in response to policies (Displacement), the way policies affect carbon (C) emitting activities (Attribution) and the amount of resulting emissions produced (Quantification). The cart is thence before the horse: the knowledge necessary to form practical and accurate working definitions, typologies and characterizations of leakage is still absent. Despite this, there is a rush to measure, monitor and mitigate leakage. The concept of leakage has not matured enough, leading to vague definitions of leakage, its components, and scale. We suggest ways to improve the concept of leakage and argue for more empirical research and at various scales to add to our collective knowledge of Emissions, Displacement, Attribution and Quantification.This paper analyzes the economic and investment implications of a series of climate mitigation scenarios, characterized by different levels of ambition for long-term stabilization goals and transitional pathways. Results indicate that although milder climate objectives can be achieved at moderate costs, stringent stabilization paths, compatible with the 2A degrees C target, might require significant economic resources. Innovation and technology are shown to be able to mitigate, but not structurally alter, this trade-off. Technologies that allow capturing CO2 from the atmosphere are shown to be important for expanding the feasibility space of stringent climate policies, though only if deployed at a scale which would represent a tremendous challenge. In general, the analysis indicates that the timing of mitigation is an important factor of cost containment, with early action being desirable. It also elaborates on the set of mitigation strategies and policies that would be required to achieve climate protection at maximum efficiency.Bioenergy from forest residues can be used to avoid fossil carbon emissions, but removing biomass from forests reduces carbon stock sizes and carbon input to litter and soil. The magnitude and longevity of these carbon stock changes determine how effective measures to utilize bioenergy from forest residues are to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the energy sector and to mitigate climate change. In this study, we estimate the variability of GHG emissions and consequent climate impacts resulting from producing bioenergy from stumps, branches and residual biomass of forest thinning operations in Finland, and the contribution of the variability in key factors, i.e. forest residue diameter, tree species, geographical location of the forest biomass removal site and harvesting method, to the emissions and their climate impact. The GHG emissions and the consequent climate impacts estimated as changes in radiative forcing were comparable to fossil fuels when bioenergy production from forest residues was initiated. The emissions and climate impacts decreased over time because forest residues were predicted to decompose releasing CO2 even if left in the forest. Both were mainly affected by forest residue diameter and climatic conditions of the forest residue collection site. Tree species and the harvest method of thinning wood (whole tree or stem-only) had a smaller effect on the magnitude of emissions. The largest reduction in the energy production climate impacts after 20years, up to 62%, was achieved when coal was replaced by the branches collected from Southern Finland, whereas the smallest reduction 7% was gained by using stumps from Northern Finland instead of natural gas. After 100years the corresponding values were 77% and 21%. The choice of forest residue biomass collected affects significantly the emissions and climate impacts of forest bioenergy.A computer based building simulation model was developed to examine the energy load and environmental management in The National Archives Q1 repository building in Kew, UK to optimise environmental management and examine the impacts of climate change. The need to accurately simulate the hygrothermal environment inside the archive building which houses mainly paper-based records led to the choice of EnergyPlus as the modelling software. The study presents the simulation results of five environmental strategies which predict energy saving potential as high as 43% without significantly affecting the quality of the preservation environment. The effect of climate change is predicted to have little impact on the archive environment due to the filtering effect of the air conditioning system. On the other hand, an increase in total energy load by 15% and 24% is predicted under the worst case climate change scenario in 2050 and 2080, respectively, if the current environmental management practice is continued into the future. However, the identified energy saving strategies could represent possible mitigative solutions in reducing future energy load against the impact of climate change. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wetlands in general and mires in particular belong to the most important terrestrial carbon stocks globally. Mires (i.e. bogs, transition bogs and fens) are assumed to be especially vulnerable to climate change because they depend on specific, namely cool and humid, climatic conditions. In this paper, we use distribution data of the nine mire types to be found in Austria and habitat distribution models for four IPCC scenarios to evaluate climate change induced risks for mire ecosystems within the 21st century. We found that climatic factors substantially contribute to explain the current distribution of all nine Austrian mire ecosystem types. Summer temperature proved to be the most important predictor for the majority of mire ecosystems. Precipitation-mostly spring and summer precipitation sums-was influential for some mire ecosystem types which depend partly or entirely on ground water supply (e.g. fens). We found severe climate change induced risks for all mire ecosystems, with rain-fed bog ecosystems being most threatened. Differences between scenarios are moderate for the mid-21st century, but become more pronounced towards the end of the 21st century, with near total loss of climate space projected for some ecosystem types (bogs, quagmires) under severe climate change. Our results imply that even under minimum expected, i.e. inevitable climate change, climatic risks for mires in Austria will be considerable. Nevertheless, the pronounced differences in projected habitat loss between moderate and severe climate change scenarios indicate that limiting future warming will likely contribute to enhance long-term survival of mire ecosystems, and to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions from decomposing peat. Effectively stopping and reversing the deterioration of mire ecosystems caused by conventional threats can be regarded as a contribution to climate change mitigation. Because hydrologically intact mires are more resilient to climatic changes, this would also maintain the nature conservation value of mires, and help to reduce the severe climatic risks to which most Austrian mire ecosystems may be exposed in the 2nd half of the 21st century according to IPCC scenarios.Assisted migration of forest trees has been widely proposed as a climate change adaptation strategy, but moving tree populations to match anticipated future climates may disrupt the geographically based, coevolved association suggested to exist between host trees and ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) communities. We explored this issue by examining the consistency of EMF communities among populations of 40 year-old Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) trees in a common-garden field trial using four provenances from contrasting coastal climates in southwestern British Columbia. Considerable variation in EMF community composition within test sites was found, ranging from 0.38 to 0.65 in the mean similarity index, and the divergence in EMF communities from local populations increased with site productivity. Clinal patterns in colonization success were detected for generalist and specialist EMF species on only the two productive test sites. Host population effects were limited to EMF species abundance rather than species loss, as richness per site averaged 15.0 among provenances and did not differ by transfer extent (up to 450 km), while Shannon's diversity index declined slightly. Large differences in colonization rates of specialist fungi, such as Tomentella stuposa and Clavulina cristata, raise the possibility that EMF communities maladapted to soil conditions contributed to the inferior growth of some host populations on productive sites. The results of the study suggest locally based specificity in host fungal communities is likely a contributing factor in the outcome of provenance trials, and should be a consideration in analyzing seed-transfer effects and developing strategies for assisted migration.California has taken a leading role in regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, requiring that its economy-wide emissions be brought back down to the 1990 level by 2020. The state also has a long-term, aspirational goal of an 80 percent reduction below the 1990 level by 2050. While the steps needed to achieve the near-term target have already been clearly defined by California policy makers, the suite of transformational technologies and policies required to decarbonize the energy system over the long term have not yet been explored. This paper describes an effort to fill this important gap, introducing CA-TIMES, a bottom-up, technologically-rich, integrated energy-engineering-environmental eeconomic systems model that has been developed to guide the long-term policy planning process. CA-TIMES is useful for exploring low-carbon scenarios, and the analyses described here focus on the potential evolution of the transportation, fuel supply, and electric generation sectors over the next several decades in response to various energy and climate policies. We find that meeting California's 80% emission reduction goal can be achieved through a combination of mitigation strategies, including managing the growth in energy service demand, increasing investments in efficiency and low-carbon energy supply technologies, and promoting demand technologies that facilitate end-use device electrification and a decrease in the direct use of hydrocarbon fuels through efficiency improvement and fuel switching. In such deep emission reduction scenarios, we estimate that energy system costs (accounting for investments on the energy supply side and in transportation demand technologies, as well as fuel and O&M costs) could be around 8 -17% higher than in a reference case. Meanwhile, average abatement costs could range from $107 to $225/tCO(2). These estimates are very much dependent on a range of sociopolitical and technological uncertainties, for instance, the availability and cost of biomass, nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, and electric and hydrogen vehicles. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The proposed hierarchy of production forest management provides modus operandi for forest concessions to move incrementally towards Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) via Reduced-Impact Logging (RIL) and forest certification. Financial benefits are sourced in the "Additionality Zone", financing the rise in the hierarchy and offsetting prohibitive forest and carbon certification costs. RIL carbon registration components consist of developing credible baseline, additionality and leakage arguments around the business-as-usual scenario through the quantification of historical forest inventory and production records, forest infrastructure records and damage to the residual forest. If conventional harvesting is taken as a baseline, research indicates RIL can potentially reduce emissions by approximately 1-7 tCO(2)e ha(-1)yr(-1). The current market price of USD $7.30 per tCO(2)e may result in over USD $50 ha(-1)yr(-1) in additional revenue, well above the estimated USD $3-5 ha(-1) in carbon transaction costs. Concessions in Sabah Malaysia demonstrate the financial viability of long-term RIL and certification planning. This may act as a basis for future planned forest management activities involving RIL, carbon and forest certification through the hierarchy of production forest management.To better understand how businesses' motivation and support for green projects varies by their organizational objectives and characteristics, this study investigates a case of urban forestry carbon credits in a broader context of climate change mitigation efforts. Companies and organizations currently participating in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) were surveyed regarding their perception of consumers' concerns with climate change, attitudes toward government regulations, factors important to their emission management decisions, and their interest in buying and paying premiums for carbon credits sourced from urban forestry. Statistical analysis of the responses reveals noticeable differences among various types of business organizations. The findings are useful for understanding how businesses respond to different kinds of green products and will help in the development of green product markets. Finally, the results will help in developing effective environmental policies that respond well to businesses' objectives and preferences. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Expert elicitations are a promising method for determining how R&D investments are likely to have an impact on technological advance in climate change energy technologies. But, expert elicitations are time consuming and resource intensive. Thus, we investigate the value of the information gained in expert elicitations. More specifically, given baseline elicitations from one study, we estimate the expected value of better information (EVBI) from revisiting and improving these assessments. We find that the EVBI is very large in comparison with the cost of performing expert elicitations. We also find that EVBI is higher on technologies with larger budgets and with net values that are not too high or too low.Geologic CO2 storage (GCS) has been proposed as a potentially viable climate change mitigation option. Among the trapping mechanisms known for permanent CO2 storage in saline aquifers, solubility and residual trapping are important for safe short-term entrapment. These storage mechanisms are hampered by density-driven upward CO2 movement that inhibits the lateral migration of the plume, leaving a large portion of the aquifer volume unexposed to CO2 and unavailable for storage. Heterogeneity of aquifer hydraulic properties and high horizontal/vertical hydraulic conductivity ratio of geologic formations are two competing mechanisms that can hinder upward CO2 migration. Postinjection displacement of free-phase CO2 is somewhat controlled by the heterogeneity in rock permeability and porosity distributions. In particular, low permeability shale layers that act as vertical flow barrier and high-permeability horizontal channels that form flow conduits can spread the CO2 plume laterally in the aquifer. In this paper, we consider CO2 storage in heterogeneous saline aquifers and propose controlled CO2 injection, based on existing knowledge of heterogeneity, to increase CO2 contact with brine and improve the solubility and residual trapping and the overall aquifer storage potential. We examine two optimization methods: directly maximizing the total stored gas in the aquifer, and maximizing the sweep efficiency of the CO2 flood to promote uniform displacement in all directions. We consider the effect of geologic uncertainty on the performance of the controlled injection schemes by using an ensemble of model realizations to represent the uncertainty in aquifer property distribution. We also show how a controlled injection can be used to mitigate the risk of leakage from potential pathways, such as an abandoned well, by restricting CO2 movement toward the leakage zone. Our results suggest that controlled injection can lead to substantial improvements in residual and dissolution trapping and can be used to divert a CO2 plume from approaching sensitive zones or leakage pathways.In vast expanses of the oceans, growth of large phytoplankton such as diatoms is limited by iron availability. Diatoms respond almost immediately to the delivery of iron and rapidly compose the majority of phytoplankton biomass. The molecular bases underlying the subsistence of diatoms in iron-poor waters and the plankton community dynamics that follow iron resupply remain largely unknown. Here we use comparative metatranscriptomics to identify changes in gene expression associated with iron-stimulated growth of diatoms and other eukaryotic plankton. A microcosm iron-enrichment experiment using mixed-layer waters from the northeastern Pacific Ocean resulted in increased proportions of diatom transcripts and reduced proportions of transcripts from most other taxa within 98 h after iron addition. Hundreds of diatom genes were differentially expressed in the iron-enriched community compared with the iron-limited community; transcripts of diatom genes required for synthesis of photosynthesis and chlorophyll components, nitrate assimilation and the urea cycle, and synthesis of carbohydrate storage compounds were significantly overrepresented. Transcripts of genes encoding rhodopsins in eukaryotic phytoplankton were significantly underrepresented following iron enrichment, suggesting rhodopsins help cells cope with low-iron conditions. Oceanic diatoms appear to display a distinctive transcriptional response to iron enrichment that allows chemical reduction of available nitrogen and carbon sources along with a continued dependence on iron-free photosynthetic proteins rather than substituting for iron-containing functional equivalents present within their gene repertoire. This ability of diatoms to divert their newly acquired iron toward nitrate assimilation may underlie why diatoms consistently dominate iron enrichments in high-nitrate, low-chlorophyll regions.The plan to introduce a carbon pricing scheme in Australia has focused attention on the future relevance and necessity of using other policy instruments to reduce carbon emissions. Significant reports, including the Wilkins Review and reports by the Productivity Commission, have argued using the standard neoclassical economics framework that once a carbon price is established, it should be (almost) the only instrument needed to tackle climate change mitigation in Australia. With a small number of exceptions for complementary instruments to address some market failures, the use of other climate policy instruments, it is argued, will result only in unnecessary duplication and potential distortions. The aim of this article is to show that there are, in fact, a significant number of rationales for implementing several climate policy instruments in combination with a carbon price, and we should not be too quick to dismiss certain climate policy instrument combinations.Passenger car traffic is among the main contributors to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are responsible for climate change. It is also an important indicator used to forecast these emissions in integrated climate-economic models. This paper develops scenarios for global passenger car stock until 2050. The study adopts a global regionalized approach, encompassing 11 world regions. Car stock projections are obtained using a multi-model approach, which includes a consumer demand model based on utility maximization, a non-linear Gompertz model and a panel estimate of the income elasticity of demand for cars. The main hypothesis underlying these projections is that preferences for purchasing cars are similar across cultures and nations and that the demand for cars is largely determined by disposable income. We apply scenarios for the average traffic volume and fuel efficiency developed in previous work together with the average carbon content of fuels to obtain the CO2 emissions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In 2007 the UK government's public consultation on the future of nuclear power courted much criticism. Three studies were conducted to assess whether key arguments used by government within this consultation might have influenced public opinion about the technology. Participants first read a passage of text that made salient certain positive (climate change mitigation, increased energy security) or negative (nuclear waste) aspects of the nuclear debate. Participants then completed a task that required them to create an electricity mix for the UK by varying the contributions made by each of five energy sources (coal, gas, nuclear, renewables and electric import). Study 1 seemed to indicate that pitching the debate in terms of climate change mitigation was effective in increasing endorsement of nuclear power. The results of studies 2 and 3, however, contested this conclusion, suggesting that these arguments were having little direct impact upon participants' preferences for nuclear power. The results of these studies hold implications for UK energy policy and attitude assessment and can contribute to the understanding of how the arguments used by government in the 2007 consultation might have influenced public opinion. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The twelfth five-year plan (FYP) endorsed by the People's National Congress in March 2011 plays a crucial role in shaping China's development trajectory over the next decades, and especially for the fulfillment of the 40-45 carbon intensity reduction target by 2020. The plan will condition both the medium and long term perspectives of economic restructuring, rebalance between the inclusive economic growth and environmental objectives, which are compounded by multiple constraints faced by China such as aging population, natural resources depletion, energy supply security and environmental deterioration. This article investigates the major energy and climate targets and actions specified in the 12th FYP to gain insights into the nature and magnitude of challenges and difficulties with regard to the medium and long run economic and environmental policies. It points out that China should articulate sectoral policies with the global climate mitigation targets to avoid long term carbon lock-in. Based on an in-depth analysis of the objectives in the plan, it is argued that the implementation should include mainstreaming developments of appropriate instruments to support cost-effective energy efficiency improvements and carbon intensity reduction in the next five years. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the links between dematerialisation and climate change mitigation. Methods used for material flow analyses (MFA) within the wider context of industrial ecology (which includes a focus on all resource flows in an economy, not purely material tonnage) tend to focus either on detoxification and pollution reduction or dematerialisation and resource productivity. An environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) model incorporates both aspects, which need to be dealt with when looking at how to meet challenging greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. The approach understands both production systems and consumption patterns and has the ability through scenarios to analyse the (GHG) effectiveness of a wide range of material efficiency options. This analysis adopts an environmentally extended input-output approach to assess the role of material efficiency measures in reducing UK GHG emissions by 2050. A method for projecting the variables and parameters in the model, including the supply of and demand for materials and products, is presented and applied to investigate thirteen material efficiency strategies in the UK. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) refers to the capture, transport and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) from emissions, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. In order to be effective in climate change mitigation, the storage of CO2 will be required for many hundreds of years until well past the end of the fossil fuel era (www.sepa.org.uk/climate_change/solutions/carbon_capture_and_storage.aspx). It is through avoiding the release of CO2 into the atmosphere that CCS is considered to offer an opportunity to help mitigate the effects of climate change. Scotland has the potential to be the location of one of the world's first full chain CCS Projects and, although all parts of the CCS chain have been demonstrated, and the chain itself demonstrated at small scale, as confirmed by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI) in its 2011 report The Global status of CCS' there are still no examples of a full chain commercially sized CCS Project in operation anywhere in the world. There are a series of risks embedded in the development and implementation of CCS and it is the focus of Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), as the environmental regulator in Scotland alongside other regulators, to assess and manage these risks to an acceptable mitigation state and then operationalise the regulatory requirements. This article provides an overview of the issues and the process for risk management. In order to consider the effectiveness of the regulatory framework and to expose and address any potential risks ahead of any live CCS Projects, SEPA worked with the Scottish Government to develop an innovative project designed to test Scotland's regulatory framework through a novel assessment methodology based on emergency planning scenarios. The principal objectives were to identify regulatory gaps or overlaps and elements that could be streamlined or better managed, and to evaluate the risks, barriers, information gaps and any other issues that would affect the successful demonstration and deployment of CCS in Scotland. Risk Management (2012) 14, 27-41. doi:10.1057/rm.2011.11This article takes its point of departure in two approaches to integrating climate change into Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA): Mitigation and adaptation, and in the fact that these, as well as the synergies between them and other policy areas, are needed as part of an integrated assessment and policy response. First, the article makes a review of how positive and negative synergies between a) climate change mitigation and adaptation and b) climate change and other environmental concerns are integrated into Danish SEA practice. Then, the article discusses the implications of not addressing synergies. Finally, the article explores institutional explanations as to why synergies are not addressed in SEA practice. A document analysis of 149 Danish SEA reports shows that only one report comprises the assessment of synergies between mitigation and adaptation, whilst 9,4% of the reports assess the synergies between climate change and other environmental concerns. The consequences of separation are both the risk of trade-offs and missed opportunities for enhancing positive synergies. In order to propose explanations for the lacking integration, the institutional background is analysed and discussed, mainly based on Scott's theory of institutions. The institutional analysis highlights a regulatory element, since the assessment of climate change synergies is underpinned by legislation, but not by guidance. This means that great focus is on normative elements such as the local interpretation of legislation and of climate change mitigation and adaptation. The analysis also focuses on how the fragmentation of the organisation in which climate change and SEA are embedded has bearings on both normative and cultural-cognitive elements. This makes the assessment of synergies challenging. The evidence gathered and presented in the article points to a need for developing the SEA process and methodology in Denmark with the aim to include climate change in the assessments in a more systematic and integrated manner. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.At Copenhagen, the developed countries agreed to provide up to $100 bn per year to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation by developing countries. Projects aimed at cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will need to be evaluated against dual criteria: from the viewpoint of the developed countries they must cut emissions of GHGs at reasonable cost, while host countries will assess their contribution to development, or simply their overall economic benefits. Co-benefits of some types of project will also be of interest to host countries: for example some projects will contribute to reducing air pollution, thus improving the health of the local population. This paper uses a simple damage function methodology to quantify some of the health co-benefits of replacing coal-fired generation with wind or small hydro in China. We estimate the monetary value of these co-benefits and find that it is probably small compared to the added costs. We have not made a full cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy in China as some likely co-benefits are omitted from our calculations. Our results are subject to considerable uncertainty however, after careful consideration of their likely accuracy and comparisons with other studies, we believe that they provide a good first cut estimate of co-benefits and are sufficiently robust to stand as a guide for policy makers. In addition to these empirical results, a key contribution made by the paper is to demonstrate a simple and reasonably accurate methodology for health benefits estimation that applies the most recent academic research in the field to the solution of an increasingly important problem. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The literature on global climate change has largely ignored the small but positive steps that many public and private actors are taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A global policy is frequently posited as the only strategy needed. It is important to balance the major attention on global solutions as the only strategy for coping with climate change. Positive actions are underway at multiple, smaller scales to start the process of climate change mitigation. Researchers need to understand the strength of polycentric systems where enterprises at multiple levels may complement each other. Building a global regime is a necessity, but encouraging the emergence of a polycentric system starts the process of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and acts as a spur to international regimes to do their part.Background: Scientific evidence shows that climate change is very likely the product of human behaviour and lifestyle. The effects of climate change on human health are diverse in nature and range from direct effects due to extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods and storms, to indirect effects such as those caused by water and food shortages. Methods: A telephone survey was conducted between January and February 2009, on a stratified representative random sample of the Maltese population over the age of 18 years (N = 310 819). Results: Five hundred and forty-three individuals successfully participated in the survey giving a response rate of 92.7%. The respondent sample was very similar to the target population by gender ( P = 0.977), age (P = 0.767) and district (P = 0.812). The results of the study demonstrate a very strong relationship between the perception of climate change as a threat to health and well-being, support for climate change mitigation policy and a willingness to implement measures to address climate change. Conclusion: The findings of this study show that the perception that climate change may claim lives, cause disease, reduce the standard of living and worsen water shortages, may be the strongest driver behind support for climate change mitigation policy and a willingness to act. It is recommended that, in order to gain more public support, climate change campaigns and risk communication strategies should frame climate change as a threat to human health and general well-being.If costly and catastrophic climate change is to be avoided, there is an immediate need to stabilize and reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) entering the atmosphere. The electricity generation sector, responsible for the highest percentage of the world's GHGs, is under mounting social and political pressure to minimize its GHG emissions. In many countries privatization has resulted in previously vertically integrated public electricity utilities being owned and managed by large energy corporations. The implications of electricity privatization for addressing major environmental issues such as climate change were not considered by governments at the time of sale nor have they been widely studied or understood since. This article adopts a political economy approach to examine corporate behaviour in the electricity generation sector and whether private ownership of this sector impacts on state action to reduce emissions. In examining this issue, we consider the carbon strategies of four energy corporations with a stake in Australia's power generation industry. We consider the relationship between the policy statements of these firms on climate change and carbon emission reductions with the action and strategies of their carbon-intensive power generation assets in the Australian state of Victoria. This integrated analysis and assessment of responses at the various organizational levels of these corporations highlights their complex, and in some cases contradictory, responses towards climate change mitigation and how their behaviour constitutes a significant barrier to GHG emission policies.The purpose of the study is to analyze feasibility and a roadmap of a low-carbon society in Japan by 2050, while satisfying required demands. Future technology roadmaps, CO2 emission pathways and energy mix transitions leading Japan are calculated using the AIM/Backcasting Model based on backcasting methodology with taking into consideration that one of the keys for technological market penetration is the preferences of consumers. Under the CO2 emission target of 80% reduction as compared to 1990 level by 2050, it is found from the results that the target is feasible in Japan by implementing actions toward low-carbon society as early as possible. From the perspective of minimizing the total costs, it would be best to target a reduction rate of 16-20% in 2020,31-35% in 2030 and 53-56% in 2040 within the range of Scenarios A and B. During this process, major investment will be needed in the early stage of the analytical periods, especially in the residential, commercial and transport sectors. However, viewed in the long term, this can be recovered by reduction in energy consumption. Moreover, the analysis suggests that returns that balance the total investment may be possible. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the context of climate change mitigation mechanisms for avoiding deforestation, i.e., reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), comprehensive forest monitoring, especially in tropical regions, is of high relevance. A precise determination of forest carbon stocks or above-ground biomass (AGB) for large areas is of special importance. This study analyzes and compares three different methods for retrieving AGB in Indonesia's peat swamp forests from multi-frequency SAR backscatter data. Field inventory AGB data were related to LiDAR measurements allowing plentiful accurate AGB estimations. These estimatedAGB data provided a powerful basis for SAR based AGB model calibration and validation. Multivariate linear regression (MLR), artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector regression (SVR) were examined for their performance to retrieve AGB on the basis of multi-temporal TerraSAR-X and ALOS PALSAR imagery. The MLR model resulted in lower coefficients of determination and higher error measures than the other two approaches and showed significant overestimations in the high biomass range. The SVR modeled AGB was more accurate than ANN modeled AGB in terms of independent validation, but showed less variation in the spatial distribution of AGB and saturated at approximately 260 t/ha. The ANN model showed a superior performance for modeling AGB up to 650 t/ha without a saturation in the lower biomass ranges. For the needs of REDD+, it is very important to know the possibilities, constraints and uncertainties of AGB retrieval based on satellite imagery.This research develops models and simulations of technical performance, net emission reductions, and discounted market values of thirteen small-scale (<= 6 kW(e)) renewable energy projects. The research uses a simple methodology suitable for small private entities and governments to compare alternative investment options for both climate change mitigation and adaptation in the southwest of Western Australia. The system simulation and modelling results indicate that privately-owned, small-scale, grid-connected renewable energy systems were not competitive options for private entities relative to sourcing electricity from electricity networks, despite subsidies. The total discounted capital and operating costs, combined with the minimal mitigation potentials of the small-scale renewable energy systems resulted in unnecessarily high electricity costs and equivalent carbon prices, relative to grid-connection and large-scale clean energy systems. In contrast, this research suggests that small-scale renewable energy systems are cost-effective for both private entities and governments and exhibit good mitigation potentials when installed in remote locations far from the electricity network, mostly displacing diesel capacity. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While many laboratory studies have focused on the short term effects of biochar addition to soil), there have been comparatively few tracing its longer term effects in the field. This study investigated the multiyear impact of biochar on crop performance and soil quality with specific emphasis on carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling over a 3 y period. Biochar was added to an agricultural field at 0, 25 and 50 t ha(-1) and planted with maize (year 1) and grass (years 2 and 3). Biochar addition affected plant performance in the grass crop with significant increases in foliar N (year 2) and above-ground biomass (year 3). Below-ground, biochar increased soil respiration, fungal and bacterial growth rate and turnover in year 2. This change coincided with a shift toward a bacterial dominated decomposer community, suggesting a decrease in the potential for microbially mediated C sequestration. Biochar did not affect dissolved organic C (DOC) and N (DON), NO3- or NH4+ pool sizes. Similarly, biochar addition had limited effects on the turnover of C-14-labelled SOC (plant litter), DOC (sugars and organic acids) and DON (amino acids) and no long term effect on N mineralization, NH3 volatilization, denitrification and NH4+ sorption. After 3 years in the field, the alkalinity associated with the biochar had been fully neutralized and biochar lost most of its cations (K, Na, Ca) but had built up an associated microbial community. We conclude that biochar addition to soil causes small and potentially transient changes in a temperate agroecosystem functioning. Importantly, many of the short-term effects of biochar on plant growth and soil behavior reported from laboratory studies were not observed in the field emphasizing the need for long term field trials to help inform agronomic management decisions involving biochar. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the options that can contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions for climate change mitigation is the so-called CO2 sequestration by mineral carbonation, or CO2 mineral sequestration. Steel manufacturing could benefit from this option by utilizing its own by-products, i.e. steelmaking slags to combine with CO2. We have recently studied a method, where aqueous solution of ammonium salt (e.g. ammonium acetate, ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride) is used to extract calcium selectively from the steel converter slag, followed by precipitation of pure calcium carbonate by bubbling CO2 through the produced solution. The ammonium salt solution is recovered and re-used. The purpose of this research was to determine if the economic potential of the method warrants moving forward to large-scale application. Despite the small solvent losses, the method was found to have economical potential. In addition, it has significant CO2 emission reduction potential as well. Scaling up the reactor from the small laboratory scale will allow more detailed design for the process to be made followed by a full economical evaluation including all of the important operational and capital investment costs. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We show in climate model experiments that large-scale afforestation in northern mid-latitudes warms the Northern Hemisphere and alters global circulation patterns. An expansion of dark forests increases the absorption of solar energy and increases surface temperature, particularly in regions where the land surface is unable to compensate with latent heat flux due to water limitation. Atmospheric circulation redistributes the anomalous energy absorbed in the northern hemisphere, in particular toward the south, through altering the Hadley circulation, resulting in the northward displacement of the tropical rain bands. Precipitation decreases over parts of the Amazon basin affecting productivity and increases over the Sahel and Sahara regions in Africa. We find that the response of climate to afforestation in mid-latitudes is determined by the amount of soil moisture available to plants with the greatest warming found in water-limited regions. Mid-latitude afforestation is found to have a small impact on modeled global temperatures and on global CO2, but regional heating from the increase in forest cover is capable of driving unintended changes in circulation and precipitation. The ability of vegetation to affect remote circulation has implications for strategies for climate mitigation.This chapter uses the discourse concept and theory to explore discourses of community forestry. The concept of community forestry (CF) was introduced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the 1970s and promoted by them since then. Three major shifts in CF discourses are described: the forest resource scarcity CF discourse, the tropical forest conservation CF discourse and the community enterprise CF discourse, leaving the question unanswered whether they should be considered as distinctive discourses, or rather as one discourse with different key elements. These three are the most prominent manifestations of the CF discourse, but other more specific discourses could also be identified as CF discourses or modifications of the CF discourse, such as the forest common property discourse and the adaptive forest management discourse. I analyse each of the three CF discourses, reviewing their main arguments, their main protagonists and their public manifestations. The chapter also reviews wider societal trends and how they link to the shifts in CF discourses. The forest resource scarcity CF discourse emerged shortly after the beginning of the international concern about whether the world's limited natural resources will be sufficient to meet future economic growth and related consumption. The tropical forest conservation CF discourse appears to have been a result of international concern about tropical deforestation, which has dominated international environmental agendas since the 1980s. Finally, the community enterprise CF discourse appears closely linked to a worldwide shift towards neoliberal economic policies, a reduction in the role of government in non-public affairs and a focus on poverty reduction in international development assistance. The three examples suggest a close relation between CF discourses and practice and other wider societal environmental and economic concerns and discussions. Given the emerging concern about climate change issues, it can be predicted that a future CF discourse will likely incorporate climate change mitigation elements.In order to contribute to high living standards, climate mitigation and energy supply security, future urban energy systems require a holistic approach. In particular an intelligent integration of thermal networks is necessary. This paper will briefly present the "smart city" concept and introduce an associated definition for smart thermal networks defined on three levels: 1. the interaction with urban planning processes and the interface to the overall urban energy system, 2. the adaptation of the temperature level and 3. supply and demand-side management strategies.Edmonton's cold climate and strong economic connections to the energy sector have made energy vital to the city's quality of life. The fossil fuel industry has helped the city's economy grow and Edmonton boasts one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada at just over four percent. But Edmonton's economic prosperity does not shelter it from the realities of global environmental challenges. Just like other jurisdictions, climate change and the possibility of future energy constraints means that Edmonton must reevaluate its sources and use of energy across all sectors, including its buildings. To this end, on June 20, 2012, the Edmonton City Council approved the Green Building Plan and Policy, designed to help accelerate the greening of Edmonton's building stock. The policy outlines the strong role the city of Edmonton can play in supporting a green building sector to improve the environmental, health, and socioeconomic performance of all existing and new commercial, institutional, industrial, mixed-use, multifamily residential, and single-family residential buildings in Edmonton. The policy goes on to provide the mandate for the city to lead and support the delivery of public and industry education campaigns, provide incentives and engage in capacity-building activities, and use its authority in land-use planning and development approvals to help transform the local green building market. The Green Building Plan outlines the high-level approach and details a suite of tools and programs that will help Edmonton achieve its Green Building Policy. The information and recommendations in the plan are the results of collaboration between the city of Edmonton and building industry representatives. Over the course of nearly a year, from the autumn of 2010 to the autumn of 2011, the city of Edmonton coordinated conversations, meetings, and workshops to confirm the case for action, understand market transformation theory and how it could be applied in Edmonton, clarify the role of local government, and research local market conditions in an effort to develop an implementation approach that will make the policy reality. Using a Community Energy and Emissions Mapping and Planning (CEEMAP) tool and assisted by HB Lanarc (now Golder Associates), the city of Edmonton evaluated the energy and emissions implications of program implementation.Due to climate change and uncertainties in the future weather conditions, drought information mining research has got the attention of both politicians and scientists. In the past, there were limited tools available for extracting and converting the huge data available from different sources to actionable information. The objective of this article was to develop a new information extraction concept from satellite images for improved drought characterization and prediction. In this experimental analysis, a total of 11 attributes characterizing drought were identified. The regression tree models developed were found to have accuracies ranging from 0.71 to 0.95 in predicting DroughtObject. The process of the system that uses the concepts was also demonstrated on an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI). The output of this new concept can be developed to a full system and helpful in extracting the freely available satellite images for drought monitoring and climate change mitigation applications at different levels of decisions making.Offshore wind power is an emerging technology capable of providing coastal cities, states, and countries with a substantial portion of their energy needs. The vast potential of offshore wind power has not been fully explored. This work endeavors to perform a review of the literature on offshore wind power. Structural, economic, and environmental aspects are discussed keeping in mind the current status of offshore wind power development around the world. Offshore wind power is a relatively new technology being used by countries such as Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and China to provide larger and larger portions of their total energy needs. In 1991 Denmark opened its first commercial offshore wind farm in Vindeby producing a mere 4.95 MW of power. More ambitious projects followed and in 2001 the Middelgrunden, Copenhagen wind farm opened producing 40 MW of power. Then in 2000 the Horns Rev wind farm was put online producing 160 MW of power. The United Kingdom has many offshore wind power projects as well. The Blyth Offshore was opened in 2000 and produces 3.8 MW of power and several others in the United Kingdom produce anywhere from 10 to 90 MW of power. By 2007 end, Denmark had 402 MW and the UK had 395 MW, Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands had varying amounts. Countries such as China and Germany are also leaders in the development of offshore wind power. In the United States, commercial offshore wind projects had a late start. The first operational offshore wind farms opened in 2007. However, the United States does not lag behind in wind power. In 2008 the United States produced more megawatt of wind power than any other country, making them the leader of wind power production. Offshore wind, however, only constitutes a tiny portion of the total wind power production of the United States. Recent advancements in the technology associated with wind power as a renewable energy source have made it a feasible form of climate change mitigation. Recent development has led countries such as Denmark, Portugal, and Spain to devote as much as 19% of their total energy production to wind power as of 2008, and is encouraging many other developed countries to do the same. This paper performs a review of the status of offshore wind projects internationally. It considers specifically the potential of the West Wind Drift near the southernmost tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula as a geographically and meteorologically advantageous location for the implementation of these wind technologies. Many of the more general problems associated with the use of wind turbines are eliminated by location alone. The winds that cause the Antarctic Circumpolar Currents (ACC) have a consistent west to east pattern and are some of the strongest winds on Earth, both ideal qualities when considering the possibility of wind power, and the wind in this area has very low intermittency. The average wind speed between 40 S and 60 S is 15 to 24 knots with strongest winds typically between 45 S and 55 S. Cape Horn is about 56 S [1]. Historically, the ACC has been called the 'West Wind Drift' because the prevailing westerly wind and current are both eastward. Owing to the remoteness of the Cape Horn area and Antarctica, many of the social matters associated with the development of wind farms are eliminated. Obvious factors must be considered when developing in such an area. The paper will cover the engineering requirements of turbines functioning in subzero temperatures consistently as well as the long distance transmission associated with development in this area and its economic feasibility. It will also cover the environmental and regulatory issues associated with the development in such an area.The dependence on inefficient cookstoves using firewood in Kenya has far-reaching consequences on the environment, health and economic development. The CDM Program of Activities presented in this paper, aims to manufacture and distribute on the long term 100,000 improved cook stoves (called Konsava stove) to rural households in Kenya, in order to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Results of performance tests of the Konsava stove show a thermal efficiency of 24.3% and a specific fuel consumption of 147g/l. Fuel wood savings are assessed at 58.8% compared to the traditional open three stones cooking stove widely used in rural Kenya. Thus, the implementation of this new sustainable technology is expected to significantly contribute not only to the improvement of environmental conditions (climate change mitigation, reduced deforestation), but also to rural populations livelihoods (improvement of indoor air quality, savings of money and/or time collecting firewood).Purpose - To examine the relationship between aviation and climate change, and the international dimensions of air transport. Methodology/approach - A review of aviation's impacts on the global climate, mitigation strategies to reduce this impact, and the possible consequences of climate change for commercial aviation. Findings - Although a range of mitigation measures have been developed and implemented to reduce aircraft emissions in the short term, with some environmental benefit, there is a real need for the aviation sector to identify the possible impacts of climate change on air travel operations, both to aircraft in flight and to operations at airports. A further challenge will be to devise adaptation plans that will address the vulnerabilities and thus ensure safe aviation-related operations. Social implications - The climate change impacts of aviation will adversely affect society. In addition, some individuals may have to reduce or stop flying as a result of increased taxes and legislation implemented in response to climate change. Originality/value of paper - There is a novel focus on the adaptation challenges for the aviation industry in response to climate change.To contribute to solving earth and environmental issues, particularly climate change mitigation and adaptation, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has developed and operated several types of earth observation remote sensing satellites starting with the Marine Observation Satellite-1 (MOS-1) in 1987. At the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the GEO (Group on Earth Observation) was proposed and established by the G8 (Group of Eight) leading industrialized countries. The GEO is constructing a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) on the basis of a 10-Year Implementation Plan for the period of 2005 to 2015. The Plan defines a vision statement for GEOSS, its purpose, scope, expected benefits, and the nine "Societal Benefit Areas" of disasters, health, energy, climate, water, weather, ecosystems, agriculture, and biodiversity. JAXA's earth observation satellite program is expected to develop GEOSS, particularly the areas of climate, water, and disaster. This paper describes the outline of JAXA's earth observation program including operating satellites [Greenhouse gas Observing SATellite (GOSAT), Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), and Global Change Observation Mission-Water 1 (GCOM-W1)] as well as new generation satellites [Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS)- 2/3, GCOM-C, Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), Earth Cloud, Aerosol, and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) and GOSAT-2].Climate change mitigation mechanisms, such as REDD+, which aim at avoiding deforestation and forest degradation, require an accurate aboveground biomass (AGB) monitoring. In the present study, multi-temporal X-(TerraSAR-X) and L-band (ALOS PALSAR) SAR data and a multispectral RapidEye image were analyzed for their ability to estimate AGB in a tropical forested peatland area in Central Kalimantan on Borneo, Indonesia. Field inventory AGB data was used to calibrate regression models based on SAR backscatter values and spectral unmixed fractions of the RapidEye image. The independent validation indicated that the estimated AGB using optical data is more accurate (RMSE=44%) than the SAR estimated AGB (RMSE=82%). AGB derived from RapidEye data overestimates AGB on burned areas, but these estimations depict degradation through low impact selective logging. The SAR model estimated AGB accurately in lower biomass ranges and on burned scars.In this work, the authors present a mathematical model capable of calculating CO2, NOx and PM emissions, based on statistical data for emission sources at country level. The underlying methodology has been based on both the IPCC guidelines and the EMEP/CORINAIR air pollutant emission inventory guidebook. The case study focuses on Cyprus and investigates the application of specific climate change mitigation scenarios. The key results of the study show that an increased use of biomass and diesel can promote decarbonisation, but fail to reduce air pollution, while hybrid technologies and natural gas offer significant improvements for both goals. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena 2012In this study, we have demonstrated the capability of full polarimetric ALOS/Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar data for the characterization of the forests and deforestation in Cambodia, to support climate change mitigation policies of Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). We have observed mean backscattering coefficient (sigma degrees), entropy (H), alpha angle (alpha), anisotropy (A), pedestal height (PH), Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) and Freeman-Durden three-component decomposition parameters. The observations show that the forest types and deforested area are showing variable polarimetric and backscattering properties because of the structural difference. Evergreen forest is characterized by a high value of sigma degrees HV (-12.96 dB) as compared with the deforested area (sigma degrees HV = -22.2 dB). The value of polarimetric parameters such as entropy (0.93), RVI (0.91), PH (0.41) and Freeman-Durden volume scattering (0.43) is high for evergreen forest, whereas deforested area is characterized by the low values of entropy (0.36) and RVI (0.17). Based on these parameters, it is found that sigma degrees HV, entropy, RVI and PH provide best results among other parameters.Clean Development Mechanism is one of the Climate Mitigation tools with the purposes to reduce GHGs. We resemble the one-shot public-goods game to deduce the constraints for CDM's long-term effectiveness. By studying PDDs of China's registered programs, we find the effect of technology transfer is not obvious. The dilemma between CDM's additionality and host countries' environment policies, as well as the dilemma between CDM as public good and technology as private good can account for the uncertainty about CDM after the expiring of Kyoto Protocols. Our analysis shows with the development of Carbon Finance of the host countries and the symmetry of information between each participant have a positive affect on the effectiveness of CDM.Application of environmental policies to prevent climate change, mitigation of climate change, the progressive reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases under commitments, encourage reducing energy consumption by using technologies that are efficient and support production of cheap and clean energy sources should be a priority for contemporary society. Given the above goals, the application presented in this article represents a model of how we addressed the question of the correct size of local wind turbines to provide energy coverage of a community. This method involves an analysis of environmental factors, followed by the analysis of wind in the area and continued to calculate the energy potential of the area and capable energy and wind turbines provided consumer choice.A systematic comparison and optimization of thermo-chemical hydrogen production processes with CO2 capture is performed. The process options include the resource type, the syngas production method and the hydrogen purification technology, including CO2 separation by ab- or adsorption or membrane processes. With regard to climate change mitigation, the removed CO2 can be compressed for storage. To analyze the competitiveness of different CO2 capture options and H-2 process alternatives a consistent multi-objective optimization methodology combining energy-flow models with process integration techniques and economic and environmental evaluation is applied. The potential of efficient decarbonization in fossil and renewable H-2 processes is highlighted. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association.Results presented in this paper(1) are obtained from the analysis of the most important eco certification schemes for wood fuels which apply in Europe. Eco certificates confirm that by using, or combusting wood fuels no gas emissions occur that might have harmful effect on environment. Apart from fuels, the analysis included eco certification of wood fuels burning appliances as well, since their characterictics also impact combustion quality and composition of gas emissions generated in that process. By applying this type of certificates, consumers are enabled to have direct impact on environment protection and climate change mitigation by selecting eco products.In order to observe the effects of use of wood energy for the purpose of this paper, the survey of fuel consumption for heating of all school buildings in Serbia was conducted. In this aim, the surveying of 4,892 school buildings in 24 districts in Serbia was conducted. Out of that number, 2,324 school buildings are using coal or combination coal/wood for purpose of heating. In the aim of analyzing the ecological and economic effects of conversion of coal with wood fuels, the data on energy value of all types of coal used in these school buildings, as well as their procurement prices were collected. Based on executed calculations, the total demands for energy for heating as well as the total costs of heating in all the school buildings using coal in Serbia were obtained. Benchmark analysis of quantities showed the ecological and economic effects of conversion of coal with wood fuels for school buildings in all districts in Serbia.To contribute to solving earth and environmental issues, particularly climate change mitigation and adaptation, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has developed and operated several types of earth observation remote sensing satellites starting with the Marine Observation Satellite-1 (MOS-1) in 1987. At the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the GEO (Group on Earth Observation) was proposed and established by the G8 (Group of Eight) leading industrialized countries. The GEO is constructing a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) on the basis of a 10-Year Implementation Plan for the period of 2005 to 2015. The Plan defines a vision statement for GEOSS, its purpose, scope, expected benefits, and the nine "Societal Benefit Areas" of disasters, health, energy, climate, water, weather, ecosystems, agriculture, and biodiversity. JAXA's earth observation satellite program is expected to develop GEOSS, particularly the areas of climate, water, and disaster. This paper describes the outline of JAXA's earth observation program including operating satellites [Greenhouse gas Observing SATellite (GOSAT), Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), and Global Change Observation Mission-Water 1 (GCOM-W1)] as well as new generation satellites [Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS)-2/3, GCOM-C, Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), Earth Cloud, Aerosol, and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) and GOSAT-2].The aim of our study was to use the coupled climate-carbon cycle model HadCM3C to quantify climate impact of ecosystem changes over recent decades and under future scenarios, due to changes in both atmospheric CO2 and surface albedo. We use two future scenarios - the IPCC SRES A1B scenario, and a climate stabilisation scenario (2C20), allowing us to assess the impact of climate mitigation on results. We performed a pair of simulations under each scenario - one in which vegetation was fixed at the initial state and one in which vegetation changes dynamically in response to climate change, as determined by the interactive vegetation model within HadCM3C. In our simulations with interactive vegetation, relatively small changes in global vegetation coverage were found, mainly dominated by increases in shrub and needleleaf trees at high latitudes and losses of broadleaf trees and grasses across the Amazon. Globally this led to a loss of terrestrial carbon, mainly from the soil. Global changes in carbon storage were related to the regional losses from the Amazon and gains at high latitude. Regional differences in carbon storage between the two scenarios were largely driven by the balance between warming-enhanced decomposition and altered vegetation growth. Globally, interactive vegetation reduced albedo acting to enhance albedo changes due to climate change. This was mainly related to the darker land surface over high latitudes (due to vegetation expansion, particularly during December-January and March-May); small increases in albedo occurred over the Amazon. As a result, there was a relatively small impact of vegetation change on most global annual mean climate variables, which was generally greater under A1B than 2C20, with markedly stronger local-to-regional and seasonal impacts. Globally, vegetation change amplified future annual temperature increases by 0.24 and 0.15K (under A1B and 2C20, respectively) and increased global precipitation, with reductions in precipitation over the Amazon and increases over high latitudes. In general, changes were stronger over land - for example, global temperature changes due to interactive vegetation of 0.43 and 0.28K under A1B and 2C20, respectively. Regionally, the warming influence of future vegetation change in our simulations was driven by the balance between driving factors. For instance, reduced tree cover over the Amazon reduced evaporation (particularly during June-August), outweighing the cooling influence of any small albedo changes. In contrast, at high latitudes the warming impact of reduced albedo (particularly during December-February and March-May) due to increased vegetation cover appears to have offset any cooling due to small evaporation increases. Climate mitigation generally reduced the impact of vegetation change on future global and regional climate in our simulations. Our study therefore suggests that there is a need to consider both biogeochemical and biophysical effects in climate adaptation and mitigation decision making.Water quality markets are gaining worldwide popularity as strategies to provide flexibility and cost savings to sources managing pollution. One prominent example is the establishment of water quality trading programs in the Chesapeake Bay watershed in the United States to manage nonpoint and point source pollution. Some of the agricultural land use practices that can be used to generate offsets in water quality markets in this region have other environmental benefits including greenhouse gas (GHG) sequestration. This study describes the structure of Maryland's water quality trading program, its climate co-benefits and its potential link with GHG markets. Results reveal that Maryland's agricultural sector could offset half of its GHG emissions by 2020 through projects primarily designed to improve water quality. The potential opportunity for agricultural sources to participate in multiple markets could provide incentives for the adoption of management practices that have climate co-benefits. The results of this study could guide the continued development of multiple markets in the Bay watershed and other regions of the world where ecosystem markets play a role in pollution management.Power sector is responsible for about 40% of the total CO2 emissions in the world and plays a leading role in climate change mitigation. In this study, measures that lower CO2 emissions from the supply side, demand side, and power grid are discussed, based on which, an integrated optimization model of CO2 mitigation (IOCM) is proposed. Virtual energy, referring to energy saving capacity in both demand side and the power grid, together with conventional energy in supply side, is unified planning for IOCM. Consequently, the optimal plan of energy distribution, considering both economic benefits and mitigation benefits, is figured out through the application of IOCM. The results indicate that development of demand side management (DSM) and smart grid can make great contributions to CO2 mitigation of power sector in China by reducing the CO2 emissions by 10.02% and 12.59%, respectively, in 2015, and in 2020.This paper proposes the need for heritage strategies and policies to engage with the psychological literature on risk perception because current heritage processes exclude many groups of people due to the psychological processes that are favoured in current procedures. Risk perception research has affected mitigation strategies in the realms of natural disaster planning (for example, earthquake preparedness) and, more recently, climate change mitigation. The paper outlines relevant psychological research and highlights areas that have the potential to inform heritage loss mitigation.In the report 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that climate could warm by as much as 10 degrees F over the next 100 years and we already observed a warming of about 1 degrees F since 1900. Therefore, how to mitigate the greenhouse gas effect is a very important issue since it affects everyone alive and not born. This paper mainly discusses the impacts of greenhouse gas emission that affects people the most. This paper mainly discusses the following questions: 1) what factors lead to the greenhouse gas effect? 2) How can pyrolysis become a potential source to mitigate the greenhouse gas effect and what are the choices we may have? Pyrolysis, as another bioenergy alternative, helps climate change mitigation while it also produces biochar that fixes carbon as a more stable form that has additional value when applied in agricultural land. GHGs come from the use of fossil fuel (CO2), nitrogen fertilizer application (N2O), and livestock enteric fermentation (NH4) and we need to find some strategies to reduce the emissions of GHGs such as crop fertilization alteration, crop tillage alteration, livestock management, manure management and biofuel production. Since CO2 play the most important role in the GHG effects, the goal of this paper is to find the alternative energy to help mitigate the GHG effects by reducing the amount of CO2 emissions. The forest can be a candidate because it has the function of carbon sink and is able to produce energy biomass. Forests really do a good job that reduce the amount of CO2 in the air, however, since the carbon value and interest rate will affect the optimal rotation length, it becomes uncertain whether or not the forest will be able to provide a stable input for energy production.Ambient air pollution has significant impacts on global climate change in complex ways, involving both warming and cooling, and causes an estimated one million deaths every year. Modeling studies and observations from a suite of platforms, including those that are space based, have revealed that air pollution is a widespread global phenomenon. The net effect of air pollution is a global cooling that is masking 50% of the committed greenhouse gas (GHG) warming from the Industrial Revolution. Aggressive air pollution abatement and climate stabilization strategies that reduce cooling pollutants may lead to a short-term warming surge that is unsafe for ecosystems and the human population, imposing complex trade-offs in policy making. Conversely, selective reduction of warming air pollutants to mitigate near-term climate change may offer opportunities for synergistic policy development. Reducing and preventing the accumulation of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is the only sustainable way to protect climate safety in the long term. Here, the current understanding of air pollution effects on global climate change is reviewed, including assessment by individual pollutant, precursor emission, economic sector, and policy-relevant scenarios.Municipal solid waste (MSW) reflects the culture that produces it and affects the health of the people and the environment surrounding it. Globally, people are discarding growing quantities of waste, and its composition is more complex than ever before, as plastic and electronic consumer products diffuse. Concurrently, the world is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate. These trends pose a challenge to cities, which are charged with managing waste in a socially and environmentally acceptable manner. Effective waste management strategies depend on local waste characteristics, which vary with cultural, climatic, and socioeconomic variables, and institutional capacity. Globally, waste governance is becoming regionalized and formalized. In industrialized nations, where citizens produce far more waste than do other citizens, waste tends to be managed formally at a municipal or regional scale. In less-industrialized nations, where citizens produce less waste, which is mostly biogenic, a combination of formal and informal actors manages waste. Many waste management policies, technologies, and behaviors provide a variety of environmental benefits, including climate change mitigation. Key waste management challenges include integrating the informal waste sector in developing cities, reducing consumption in industrialized cities, increasing and standardizing the collection and analysis of solid waste data, and effectively managing increasingly complex waste while protecting people and the environment.Climate change adaptation is inherently local, contextual, and political, a problem distinct from the global collective action problem that is climate stabilization. Climate change vulnerability is a function not only of hydro-meteorological changes, specific geographic contexts, ecosystem integrity, and economic poverty, but also of the social and political institutions of a given local or regional context. The uncertainty, complexity, and inherent politics of climate change adaptation in particular places mean that adaptive institutions, if they are to be more than just disaster prediction and response mechanisms, must be flexible, dynamic and capable themselves of adapting quickly to changing environmental, economic, and social conditions. Certain approaches to adaptation have moved away from rigid orthodox development models. Nonetheless, they are often so general as to be impractical, or in effect comprise repackaged concepts and methods borrowed from climate change mitigation efforts and international development institutions. This study discusses the epistemic dimension of democracy at the level of international environmental institutions and at the level of local, contextually unique adaptation projects. Development and adaptation practices that involve democratic participation do so largely in accordance with norms of fairness and justice, which are unquestionably important. Attaching democracy exclusively to transcendent norms of justice, however, belies concrete possibilities for democratic approaches to climate adaptation. These possibilities reside in the epistemic dimension of democracy, a pragmatic notion developed. The account suggests that an epistemic democratic conceptual framework can inform adaptation institutions that are better able to cope with complexity and uncertainty, even ultimately directing these lessons towards the international sphere's institutional focus on mitigation.The world's increasing population growth has led to a rapidly rising building sector. A major source of global energy consumption are buildings and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. Therefore, the energy-efficient operation of buildings and HVAC systems as well as the optimal use of renewable energy sources have become the crucial factor with respect to the goals of reducing energy consumption and hence contribute to the desired climate change mitigation. More intelligent automation and control for buildings and their energy systems represent a simple and cost-effective way how to achieve the desired goal of lower energy consumption and to promote the use of alternative energy sources. In contrast to the conventional control approaches, employing model based predictive control techniques provides for the possibility to exploit the potentials of the controlled HVAC systems in a larger scale and therefore contribute to the energy efficient building operation. This paper presents the design of a model based predictive controller for a solar powered HVAC system. The advantages of the predictive control concept are emphasized on the basis of a comparison of the MPC control approach supplied with correct and incorrect weather forecast information.We address the environmental behaviour of citizen-consumers in a globalised setting. We argue for the importance of national and international policies directed at changing the everyday life consumption practices of citizen-consumers from a sustainable development viewpoint. In order to explore the roles that citizen-consumers can play in the greening of consumption, we review the literatures on ecological citizenship (highlighting political roles of consumers), sustainable consumption (concerned with the environmental impact of consumption), and global civil society (relating the roles of consumers and citizens in a global context). Next to this theoretical perspective, we present the results from four Dutch policy projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of consumption. They show that the impact can be reduced if the technical, social, and political aspects of citizen-consumer behaviour are considered simultaneously. One of the lessons learned from the pilot studies is that national environmental policies should be geared to attuning supply and demand in the context of greening consumption practices. Besides, national governments have a role to play in bridging the growing distance between international developments and domestic commitment to environment and climate change mitigation. We conclude that national environmental policies targeting consumption behaviour of citizen-consumers require an integrative policy approach, a challenge which globalisation has only enhanced over recent years.Carbon trading is one of the most innovative instruments in modern environmental policy-making. Emissions trading, in its cap-and-trade or off setting form, attempts to incentivise much-needed greenhouse gas emission reductions by putting in action market instruments to complement other, more conventional forms of environmental regulation. While the market solution faces a range of challenges, the magnitude of resources required for effective climate change mitigation demands the effective and prompt engagement of private capital. Emissions trading is able to achieve this by creating flexibility for cross-sector mitigation activities, triggering transnational cooperation, and tapping into economically efficient emission reductions at a global scale.John Holdren states there are three responses to climate change: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. Research abounds in framing mitigation and adaptation policies. Furthermore, many suffering criteria exist in the health care literature as a physiological and psychological component to patients' care, but not in the technological aspects to hospitals. In this paper, the socio-technological challenges of renewable electricity in Uganda are explored to frame the reality of unreliable electricity within a suffering criteria. For this paper, we define suffering criteria as avoidable damage (unmet power load) which is highly dependent on balancing variability and uncertainty. For example, there is a measurable variable solar radiance profile. On any specific day, dispatch microgrid control algorithms consider the measured variability as an uncertainty, but here we define uncertainty as adding random noise to the measured variability using Monte-Carlo simulations. By doing this, we have a renewable energy system defined within a suffering criteria that is clearly illustrated within bounds (no variability, measured variability, and simulated additional variability from uncertainty). Unmet load data is generated using HOMER Energy. This study can help further understand variability and uncertainty in renewable energy sources in hybrid microgrids as it is framed within a suffering criteria - avoidable damage on health care due to unmet power load. It is vitally important due to renewable energy system trade-offs between overdesign (levelized cost of electricity > $1/kWh) and underdesign (capacity shortage > 50%). It leads to motivations for redundancy in microgrids similar to redundancy in large-scale centralized grids.The CO2 capture and storage (CCS) technology is since more than ten years considered one of the key options for the future climate change mitigation. This paper discusses the implications for the further development of CCS, particularly with respect to climate change policy in an international geopolitics context. The rationale for developing CCS should be the over-abundance of fossil fuel reserves (and resources) in a climate change context. From a geopolitical point, it can be argued that the most important outcome from the successful commercialisation of CCS will be that fossil fuel-dependent economies with large fossil fuel resources will find it easier to comply with stringent greenhouse gas reduction targets (i. e. to attach a price to CO2 emissions). This should be of great importance since, from a geopolitical view, the curbing on greenhouse gas emissions cannot be isolated from security of supply and economic competition between regions. Thus, successful application of CCS may moderate geopolitical risks related to regional differences in the possibilities and thereby willingness to comply with large emission cuts. In Europe, application of CCS will enhance security of supply by fuel diversification from continued use of coal, especially domestic lignite. Introduction of CCS will also make possible negative emissions when using biomass as a fuel, i. e. in so called Biomass Energy CCS (BECCS). Yet, the development of BECCS relies on the successful development of fossil fuelled CCS since BECCS in itself is unlikely to be sufficient for establishing a cost efficient CCS infrastructure for transport and storage and because BECCS does not solve the problem with the abundant resources of fossil fuels. Results from research and development of capture, transport and storage of CO2 indicate that the barriers for commercialization of CC'S should not be technical. Instead, the main barriers for implementation of CCS seem to be how to reach public acceptance, to reduce cost and to establish a high enough price on CO2 emissions. Failure to implement CCS will require that the global community, including Europe, agrees to almost immediately to start phasing out the use of fossil fuels, an agreement which seems rather unlikely, especially considering the abundant coal reserves in developing economies such as China and India.As European Union candidate country, Macedonia is in the process of adoption of the EU strategic energy policies, harmonization of the national legislation with the EU legislation and defining the respective national goals. In this regard, the Government has recently adopted the National Strategy for Utilization of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), prepared by the Research Center for Energy. Informatics and Materials at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The main goal of this paper is to assess the potential for greenhouse gases emissions reduction by implementation of 21%-RES-scenarios from the Strategy. The corresponding emissions reduction is calculated against the baseline (reference) scenario developed within the Second National Communication on Climate Change. Furthermore, all potential RES technologies are analyzed from economic aspect and combined in a form of emissions reduction cost curve, displaying the total marginal cost of the greenhouse gases emissions reduction by RES. Finally, on the bases of the environmental and economic effectiveness of the considered RES technologies, as well as taking into account the country specific barriers, the priority actions for greenhouse gases emissions reduction are identified.Over the last 10 years there has been a unique regulator-led programme involving extensive development of regional groundwater models across England and Wales for water resources purposes by the Environment Agency for England and Wales. Eight regionally managed programmes are underpinned by a framework, which has allowed a coordinated national approach. The main uses of the models are for catchment abstraction management and licensing. Models have also assisted in monitoring network design, investigating groundwater quality and implementing groundwater source protection zones. A five-yearly review of the programmes recognized the importance of benefit realization and stakeholder involvement as well as technical good practice. The programme already delivered provides a solid foundation for supporting the management decisions required in areas such as climate change mitigation and integrated catchment management using appropriate tools at a time of rapid organization change and financial uncertainty.The paper proposes novel carbon indicators as effective control instruments to design the post-Kyoto Protocol climate change mitigation law. The allocation of Ecologically Allowable Carbon Emissions (EACE) to countries show that a group of countries needs no emissions reductions today because their actual carbon emissions are below the EACE. The presented approach offers improved flexibility because it is neither population nor economic growth path dependent. It is also suitable for accounting of all existing carbon management mechanisms. The study is summarised by providing the main legislative goals of the proposed methodology and its realisation algorithm at national level.The aim of the paper is to evaluate GHG emission reduction potential because of energy saving in households sector by applying behavioral changes. The main tasks of the paper are: to analyse GHG emissions and energy consumption trends Lithuanian household sector; to assess GHG emission reduction potential in household sector by changing population behavior; to define the main drivers of changes of human behavior towards sustainable consumption and sustainable lifestyles; to develop recommendation for new climate change mitigation policies targeting energy demand in Lithuania. The main research methodology is based on households' surveys and autonomous registration of energy consumption by households. The main results of the paper addresses the comparison of climate change mitigation tools in terms of GHG emission abatement potential and costs. The evaluated GHG emission reduction potential because of energy saving in households sector of Lithuania makes about 5 Mt of CO2 per year at no costs.Estimating tree volume and biomass constitutes an essential part of the forest resources assessment and the evaluation of the climate change mitigation potential of forests through biomass accumulation and carbon sequestration. This research article provides stem volume and biomass equations applicable to five tree species, namely Afzelia africana Sm. (Caesalpiniaceae), Anogeissus leiocarpa (DC.) Guill. and Perr. (Combretaceae), Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn. (Bombacaceae), Dialium guineense Willd. (Caesalpiniaceae), Diospyros mespiliformis Hochst. ex A. DC. (Ebenaceae) in natural protected tropical forests and, in addition, Tectona grandis L.f. (Verbenaceae) in plantations. In addition to the tree species specific equations, basic wood density, as well as carbon, nitrogen, organic matter and ash content were determined for these tree species in tropical conditions in West Africa. One hundred and sixty-two sample trees were measured through non-destructive sampling and analysed for volume and biomass. Stem biomass and stem volume were modelled as a function of diameter (at breast height; Dbh) and stem height (height to the crown base). Logarithmic models are presented that utilise Dbh and height data to predict tree component biomass and stem volumes. Alternative models are given that afford prediction based on Dbh data alone, assuming height data to be unavailable. Models that include height are preferred, having better predictive capabilities. Ranges in carbon, nitrogen and ash contents are given as well. The successful development of predictive models through the use of non-destructive methods in this study provide valuable data and tools for use in determining the contribution of these major African rainforest tree species to global carbon stocks, while ensuring the preservation of this valued African resource. This study needs to be expanded to further regions and tree species to complete a full inventory of all tree species, emphasising the relevance of African trees to carbon stocks at a global scale.A number of investigations have examined the impact of the use of biodiesel on the emissions of carbon dioxide and regulated emissions, but limited information exists on the chemical composition of particulate matter from diesel engines burning biodiesel blends. This study examines the composition of diesel particulate matter (DPM) emissions from a commercial agriculture tractor burning a range of biodiesel blends operating under a load that is controlled by a power take off (PTO) dynamometer. Ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel was blended with soybean and beef tallow based biodiesel to examine fuels containing 0% (B0), 25% (B25), 50% (B50), 75% (B75), and 100% (B100) biodiesel. Samples were then collected using a dilution source sampler to simulate atmospheric dilution. Diluted and aged exhaust was analyzed for particle mass and size distribution, PM2.5 particle mass, PM2.5 organic and elemental carbon, and speciated organic compounds. PM2.5 mass emissions rates for the B25, B50, and B75 soybean oil biodiesel mixtures had 20%-30% lower emissions than the petroleum diesel, but B100 emissions were about 40% higher than the petroleum diesel. The trends in mass emission rates with the increasing biodiesel content can be explained by a significant decrease in elemental carbon (EC) emissions across all blending ranges and increasing organic carbon (OC) emissions with pure biodiesel. Beef tallow biodiesel blends showed similar trends. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the study measurements are based on low dilution rates and the OC emissions changes may be affected by ambient temperature and different dilution conditions spanning micro-environments and atmospheric conditions. The results show that the use of biodiesel fuel for economic or climate change mitigation purposes can lead to reductions in PM emissions and a co-benefit of EC emission reductions. Detailed speciation of the OC emissions were also examined and are presented to understand the sensitivity of OC emissions with respect to biodiesel fuel blends.Climate change is one of the most challenging problems the world is currently facing. Among its most severe consequences are uneven and sometimes inadequate rainfall, increases in temperature, and unpredictable and extreme weather (e.g., storms, surges, etc.) that can cause catastrophes. The impacts of climate change are now real, and many countries are particularly vulnerable to its consequences, partly because of their limited capacity to adapt. Against this background, this study paper introduces some ideas and concepts regarding the multidisciplinary approach and the challenges to low-carbon growth policies as tools for achieving long-term intelligent solutions to the problem.How should changes in environmental quality occurring in the future be discounted? To answer this question we consider a model of "ecological discounting", where the representative consumer has a utility function defined over two attributes, consumption and environmental quality, which evolve stochastically over time. We characterize the determinants of the social discount rate and its behavior over time using a preference structure that disentangles attitudes towards intertemporal inequality, attitudes towards risk, and tastes over consumption and environmental quality. We show that the degree of substitutability between consumption and environmental quality, the degree of risk aversion, the degree of inequality aversion, and the rate at which these attitudes change as natural and man-made resources evolve over time are all important aspects of the ecological discount rate and its term structure. Our analysis suggests that over medium and long term horizons the ecological discount rate should be below the rate of time preference, supporting recent proposals for immediate action towards climate change mitigation.Hydropower is a key source for renewable electricity generation and it has an important potential to be marketed as green energy. There has been a substantial increase in the number of hydroelectric power plants in recent years in Turkey. While offering ecological advantages from a global perspective, such as climate change mitigation, emergency management, and reduction of flooding risk, the operation and construction of hydroelectric power plants may cause some environmental impacts on the local and regional level. These include harm to fish populations, a loss of aquatic habitat, a significant change in natural flow regimes, and deterioration of the landscape. The article aims to suggest various ways to resolve these issues, and to research the problems of 24 hydroelectric power plants operated and constructed on dams, rivers, and canals by the State Hydraulic Works (DSI) or private sector in the Buyuk Menderes Basin and in the West Mediterranean Basins in Turkey.Purpose - The present study seeks to evaluate the role of village bamboo management in the rural landscape of North East India in global climate change mitigation. Design/methodology/approach - A set of 100 home gardens and 40 bamboo groves were selected from Irongmara and Dargakona village, in Cachar district, Assam, North East India through random sampling. Sampling was done mostly for smallholders. Culm growth, carbon storage, carbon sequestration and carbon in litter floor mass and soil of bamboo growing areas in homegarden was explored from 2003-2007. Findings - Culm growth extension revealed the brief periodicity of culm growth in a single growth period. Of the total carbon storage soil contributed 84.6 per cent of the total (50.1 Mg ha(-1)) followed by carbon in above ground vegetation 15 per cent (9 Mg ha(-1)) and carbon in litter floor mass 0.4 per cent (0.2 Mg ha(-1)). Practical implications - Bamboo plantation development and its management in home gardens has social, ecological and economical benefits for the rural life in North East India and its promotion can become an effective choice for climate change mitigation strategy. Originality/value - Bamboo forms an important component in the traditional home garden system of North East India where the practice of bamboo cultivation and management provides an important sink for CO2. Village bamboos play an important role in local economics, societies and environments and, considering its potential to mitigate global climate change, the authors recommend the promotion of bamboo in agroforestry expanding practices and rehabilitation of degraded lands. Management of village bamboos in rural landscape is highlighted in context to environmental sustainability and as a sink measure under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of Kyoto Protocol.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered a potential climate change mitigation option, but public opposition may hamper its implementation. A quasi-experimental approach is used to examine whether 'not in my back yard' (NIMBY) sentiments can be anticipated at the initial stage when CO2 storage locations have been selected and communicated to the public. Furthermore, the psychological structure of initial reactions to CO2 storage plans is studied to ascertain the differences between people living in the direct vicinity of a proposed CO2 storage location (i.e. onsite residents) and people who do not (i.e. offsite residents). The results indicate that initial reactions to local CCS plans are not necessarily dominated by NIMBY sentiments. For onsite residents as well as offsite residents, trust in government affects their judgements of the risks and benefits associated with CCS, which in turn affects their inclination to protest against CCS plans. Onsite residents' inclination to protest is affected by their perceptions of local safety risks, but this is less of a concern for offsite residents. The inclination to protest against CCS is unrelated to concern about climate change.What are relevant urban development investment strategies for improving building energy efficiency (BEE) and decarbonizing the urban district heating supply in rapidly urbanizing China? Different trajectories of BEE and energy supply technologies are compared in the urban context in a northern Chinese city. Vigorous improvement of BEE will significantly enhance the prospective financial capacity to facilitate deployment of backstop technologies (e.g. carbon capture and storage) in order to decarbonize the energy supply and achieve the long-term targets of low-carbon buildings. Carbon finance instruments should be used to facilitate public policy to accompany the necessary transition in the urban development process. The government-run efficiency procurement scheme will overcome the problem of insufficient incentive and high transaction costs associated with individual Clean Development Mechanism projects. Appropriate investment strategies (allocation of financial resources over the time frame) will allow local governments to harness the large potentials of carbon emissions mitigation while minimizing the risk of long-term technical lock-in in the built environment in Chinese cities.There has been a general expectation that the emerging economies of South Africa and China, which are heavily dependent upon fossil fuels, could successfully leverage the potential of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). However, experience to date indicates that South Africa has significantly lagged behind China in the uptake of CDM, accounting for only 0.9 per cent of the worldwide registered annual Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), whereas China has dominated the market, generating 54 per cent of the annual worldwide CERs. This article provides a comparative analysis of the CDM experience in China and South Africa to identify the underlying drivers and obstacles to CDM in both countries. The analysis reveals that a strong industrial and energy policy in the host country plays a crucial role in the development of CDM. Our analysis indicates that policies which foster a low-carbon pathway encourage CDM uptake, rather than CDM driving a low-emission development pathway. In addition, the active engagement by key government and private sector stakeholders and the presence of a friendly business environment to uptake CDM significantly impact the utilization of the mechanism.Climate change threatens to bring enormous infrastructural challenges for low-lying regions, and the capacity for adaptation is highly uneven on a global scale. Guyana, a developing country in South America, is highly susceptible to sea-level rise and flooding, because much of the population lives at or below sea level and depends upon old and decaying coastal infrastructure. This article examines the efforts of the Guyanese state to prioritize climate change adaptation, drawing from budgetary and documentary analyses and in-depth interviews with key informants in pertinent government ministries and non-governmental organizations. The Guyana government clearly recognizes the country's acute vulnerability to climate change - which has been accentuated by multiple recent flood events - and focuses on the need for vast infrastructural rehabilitation and enhancement as the main adaptation priority. However, while Guyana has emerged as a champion of climate change mitigation through averted deforestation, government investment in adaptation remains relatively small, and although a limited budget is one of the reasons for this, a number of other impediments complicate the issue. These include limited technical skills, low public awareness and the longer time-scale of threats relative to other national priorities. Ultimately, this case highlights some of the formidable challenges which poor countries face in prioritizing investments in adaptation.Politicians hope that technological innovation will mitigate the threat of climate change and expect that capitalism will most efficiently deliver the necessary technologies. Yet capitalism is not monolithic. The Varieties of Capitalism approach suggests that capitalist states fall within a spectrum between liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). How do the relative styles of technological innovation in LMEs versus CMEs affect their ability to reduce carbon emissions? This article addresses this question by investigating the relative technological styles and strengths of LMEs and CMEs, and comparing them to the technological development needed to combat climate change. While technological change in CMEs tends to be more incremental, LMEs, with their greater orientation to competitive markets, are said to better support radical technological change. This article finds that the US's LME variety of capitalism hampers its ability to address climate change by comparison to CMEs such as Germany and Japan, and therefore suggests that the US's lack of leadership on climate change is as much a consequence of its variety of capitalism as an absence of political will.Climate change has come to hold a central position within many policy arenas. However, a particular framing of climate change and climate science, underpinned by modernist assumptions, dominates policy discourse. This leads to restricted policy responses reflecting particular interests and socio-political imaginaries. There is little public debate concerning this framing or the assumptions underpinning approaches to climate policy. The implications of this are illustrated by considering the ways in which UK planning policy has adapted to reflect commitments to mitigate climate change. It is shown that the importance attributed to climate change mitigation has had negative impacts on democratic involvement in planning processes. Given the uncertainty and high stakes of climate science (typical of post-normal science), value may be gained by incorporating the views and perspectives of 'extended peer communities', to question not only the processes and findings of climate science but also the ways in which the science is interpreted and responded to through policy.The aim of this paper is to examine the application of environmental policy instruments for the implementation of sustainable energy development. The paper analyses environmental policy approaches with emphasis on ecological tax reform and the need for implementation of green accounting. Also relations between the sustainable development and climate change are investigated. The last chapter of the paper is dedicated to the discussion upon the optimization model of climate change mitigation measures' selection. The paper concludes that the essence of ecological tax reform lies in the increase of Eco-tax, at the same time reducing labor taxation, and at the same time not increasing the overall tax burden. Selection of climate change mitigation measures or their combinations can be done using models of energetic optimization.This comparison of the effects of national approaches to encouraging local climate mitigation initiatives in four municipalities in Norway and Sweden suggests that the development of such initiatives depend not only on the comprehensiveness and ambitions of central government efforts, but more crucially on characteristics of the targeted municipalities. We argue that local coalitions of committed individuals forming implementation structures of varying cohesiveness are important for understanding variations in the effects of government programmes on the development of local mitigation initiatives.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine how well local planners have recognized the issues surrounding climate change, the analysis that jurisdictions have conducted on climate change, and policies that have been implemented to address climate change. Design/methodology/approach - This study. conducted a mail questionnaire survey for 214 counties' planning directors in the USA and received 53 effective responses. This survey examined how well local planning directors have been prepared for climate change, including awareness, analysis scope, and implementation strategy. Findings - The descriptive results indicate that the directors who responded to this survey had a relatively high (79.87 percent) level of awareness for climate change; but they had limited (34.94 percent) analysis scopes to assess the sources, impacts, and risk of climate change in their jurisdictions. These directors had partially but not fully (51.51 percent) developed local land use planning implementation strategies to mitigate or adapt climate change. The regression model indicates that the political commitment and planning personnel resources have significant influence on local planning directors' actions for climate change. Originality/value - This paper provides policy implications to improve local land use planning ability for climate change mitigation and adaptation.Plant breeding and improved management options have made remarkable progress in increasing crop yields during the past century. However, climate change projections suggest that large yield losses will be occurring in many regions, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa. The development of climate-ready germplasm to offset these losses is of the upmost importance. Given the time lag between the development of improved germplasm and adoption in farmers' fields, the development of improved breeding pipelines needs to be a high priority. Recent advances in molecular breeding provide powerful tools to accelerate breeding gains and dissect stress adaptation. This review focuses on achievements in stress tolerance breeding and physiology and presents future tools for quick and efficient germplasm development. Sustainable agronomic and resource management practices can effectively contribute to climate change mitigation. Management options to increase maize system resilience to climate-related stresses and mitigate the effects of future climate change are also discussed.Climate mitigation credits have mobilized considerable resources for projects in developing countries, but similar funding to adapt to climate change has yet to emerge. The Copenhagen Accord targets up to US$50 billion per year in adaptation funding, but commitments to date have been trivial compared to what is needed. Although there are some studies and suggestions, it remains unclear where the money will come from and how it will be disbursed. Beyond this, many development experts believe that the main hurdle in climate adaptation is effective implementation. A framework, based on the polluter pays principle, is presented here regarding the mobilization of resources for adaptation in developing countries using market mechanisms. It is assumed that mitigation and adaptation are at least partly fungible in terms of long-term global societal costs and benefits, and that quantifying climate vulnerability reductions is possible at least sometimes. The scheme's benefits include significant, equitable and flexible capital flows, and improved and more efficient resource allocation and verification procedures that incentivize sustained project management. Challenges include overcoming political resistance to historical responsibility-based obligations and scepticism of market instruments, and, critically, quantifying climate impact costs and verifying investments for vulnerability reduction credits.Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries can voluntarily participate in climate change mitigation through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in which industrialized countries, in order to meet their mitigation commitments, can buy emission reduction credits from projects in developing countries. Before its implementation, developing-country experts opposed the CDM, arguing that it would sell-off their countries' cheapest emission reduction options and force them to invest in more expensive measures to meet their future reduction targets. This 'low-hanging fruit' argument is analysed empirically by comparing marginal abatement cost curves. Emissions abatement costs and potentials for CDM projects are estimated for different technologies in eight countries, using capital budgeting tools and information from project documentation. It is found that the CDM is not yet capturing a large portion of the identified abatement potential in most countries. Although the costs of most emissions reduction opportunities grasped are below the average credit price, there are still plenty of available low-cost opportunities. Mexico and Argentina appear to use the CDM predominantly for harvesting the low-hanging fruit, whereas in the other countries more expensive projects are accessing the CDM. This evidence at first sight challenges the low-hanging fruit claim, but needs to be understood in the light of the barriers for the adoption of low-cost abatement options.Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is increasingly seen as a way for society to enjoy the benefits of fossil fuel energy sources while avoiding the climate disruption associated with fossil CO2 emissions. A decision to deploy CCS technology at scale should be based on robust information on its overall costs and benefits. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a framework for holistic assessment of the energy and environmental footprint of a system, and can provide crucial information to policy-makers, scientists, and engineers as they develop and deploy CCS systems. We identify seven key issues that should be considered to ensure that conclusions and recommendations from CCS LCA are robust: energy penalty, functional units, scale-up challenges, non-climate environmental impacts, uncertainty management, policy-making needs, and market effects. Several recent life-cycle studies have focused on detailed assessments of individual CCS technologies and applications. While such studies provide important data and information on technology performance, such case-specific data are inadequate to fully inform the decision making process. LCA should aim to describe the system-wide environmental implications of CCS deployment at scale, rather than a narrow analysis of technological performance of individual power plants. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We quantify the potential effects of intensive forest management activities on forest production in north-central Sweden over the next 100 years, and calculate the potential climate change mitigation feedback effect due to the resulting increased carbon stock and increased use of forest products. We analyze and compare four different forest management scenarios (Reference, Environment, Production, and Maximum), all of which include the expected effects of climate change based on SRES B2 scenario. Forest management practices are intensified in Production scenario, and further intensified in Maximum scenario. Four different models, BIOMASS, HUGIN, Q-model, and Substitution model, were used to quantify net primary production, forest production and harvest potential, soil carbon, and biomass substitution of fossil fuels and non-wood materials, respectively. After integrating the models, our results show that intensive forestry may increase forest production by up to 26% and annual harvest by up to 19%, compared to the Reference scenario. The greatest single effect on the carbon balance is from using increased biomass production to substitute for fossil fuels and energy intensive materials. Carbon stocks in living tree biomass, forest soil and wood products also increase. In total, a net carbon emission reduction of up to 132 Tg (for Maximum scenario) is possible during the next 100 years due to intensive forest management in two Swedish counties, Jamtland and Vasternorrland. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper investigates how key actors perceive the future of the forest sector: how they position themselves in relation to climate, energy and demography related trends. Actors' perceptions of future challenges and opportunities influence their choice of strategy and action. Actors' relative capacity to realise their visions, in turn, shape future forest use. Frame analysis is used to explore selected actor's perceptions and strategies and the existence of major divisions, i.e. frame conflicts. Empirically, the study is based on the case of Sweden as a typical boreal forest producing region. Actors' perceptions of the challenges facing the forest sector diverge widely. Yet, most actors see the future of the forest sector as linked to broader issues of climate mitigation and energy transition. These issues trigger fundamental discussions about social change and the role of forests in future society. A major division separates actors who perceive biomass supply as unlimited, or at least not constraining, and those who stress scarcity and re-distribution of resources. This difference, or frame conflict, is reflected in actors' forest related strategies and may fuel future forest debates and conflicts.A growing number of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes are being implemented at the community level in developing countries, especially in the context of climate change mitigation efforts to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). In parallel, there is vigorous commentary about the implications of market-based or neoliberal conservation strategies, and their potential effects on communities that depend on natural resources. This article explores the political dimensions of community-level PES in Cambodia, where contracts for avoided deforestation and biodiversity conservation were implemented in five communities. The research examines three aspects of the community-level PES model that are inherently political: the engagement of communities as single homogeneous entities, capable of entering PES contracts; the simplification of land-use practices and resource rights; and the assumption that contracts are voluntary or reflect community choice. These elements of PES work both discursively and practically to silence certain voices and claims, while privileging others. Therefore, the problematic nature of community-level PES is not that it is a market per se, but that it is a powerful intervention masquerading as a market. This process of market masquerades emerges as a key element in the politics of neoliberal conservation in practice.Employing rangelands for climate change mitigation is hindered by conflicting reports on the direction and magnitude of change in soil organic carbon (Delta SOC) following changes in woody cover. Publications on woody thickening and deforestation, which had led to uncertainty in Delta SOC, were re-evaluated, and the dimensional-dependence of their data was determined. To model the fundamentals of SOC flux, linked SOC pools were simulated with first-order kinetics. Influences from forest development timelines and location of mature trees, with a potential for deep-set roots, were considered. We show that controversy or uncertainty has arisen when Delta SOC data were not measured along sufficient lengths of the three Cartesian axes and the time axis, i.e. in 4D. Thickening and deforestation experiments have particularly neglected factors affecting the time and depth axes, and sometimes neglected all four axes. Measurements of thickening must use time-spans beyond the calculable breakeven date - when thickening just recovers the SOC lost through land degradation: then all ecosystems are likely to incur net sequestration. The similarity between half-life of carbon pools, and the half-time required for sequestration, mandates that millennial time-spans must be considered in design of SOC experiments. Spatial and temporal averaging of Delta SOC data that accounted for environmentally dependent decomposition rates, revealed that deforestation to pasture incurred a higher and longer-term net emission than earlier reported. Published reports on thickening or deforestation appear no longer contradictory when one considers that they only presented views from lengths of the 4D axes that were too limited. Adoption of this understanding into carbon accounting will allow more precise estimates of carbon fluxes for emission trading schemes and national reports. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, human population growth is one of the two primary causes of increased greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating global climate change. Slowing or ending population growth could be a cost effective, environmentally advantageous means to mitigate climate change, providing important benefits to both human and natural communities. Yet population policy has attracted relatively little attention from ethicists, policy analysts, or policy makers dealing with this issue. In part, this is because addressing population matters means wading into a host of contentious ethical issues, including family planning, abortion, and immigration. This article reviews the scientific literature regarding voluntary population control's potential contribution to climate change mitigation. It considers possible reasons for the failure of climate ethicists, analysts, and policy makers to adequately assess that contribution or implement policies that take advantage of it, with particular reference to the resistance to accepting limits to growth. It explores some of the ethical issues at stake, considering arguments for and against noncoercive population control and asking whether coercive population policies are ever morally justified. It also argues that three consensus positions in the climate ethics literature regarding acceptable levels of risk, unacceptable harms, and a putative right to economic development, necessarily imply support for voluntary population control. WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:4561. doi: 10.1002/wcc.153A growing partisan divide in Congress stalled almost all new federal climate policy in 2011. The divide frustrated efforts to pass a cap-and-trade carbon permitting system, spawned a battle between the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Congress, pushed most substantive climate change policy down to the municipal level and hindered US ability to effectively negotiate an international climate agreement. Amid the federal partisan wrangling, US cities have enacted far-sighted climate policy initiatives, and the growing cost of fossil fuels has stimulated investment in renewable energy, edging the country closer to commercially viable alternatives to fossil fuels. These trends could help provide an alternate route to climate mitigation, even without international treaties or national legislation. But the inevitable shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources would be greatly hastened by federal action to tax carbon dioxide emissions and use the revenue generated to support alternative energy technologies. That action is extremely unlikely to occur unless climate change comes to be seen in the United States as a practical, rather than ideological, issue.Waternet is responsible for drinking water treatment and distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, and surface water management and control (quality and quantity) in and around Amsterdam. Waternet has the ambition to operate climate neutral in 2020. To realise this ambition, measures are required to compensate for the emission of 53,000 ton CO2-eq/year. Energy recovery from the water cycle looks very promising. First, calculations reveal that energy recovery from the water cycle in and around Amsterdam may contribute to a total reduction in greenhouse gas emissions up to 148,000 ton CO2-eq/year. The challenge for the coming years is to choose combinations of all the possibilities to fulfil the energy demand as much as possible. Only then the use of fossil fuel can be minimized and inevitable greenhouse gas emissions can be compensated, supporting the target to operate climate neutral in 2020.Ongoing negotiations under the UNFCCC center around the possibilities for stabilization of greenhouse gases at a "safe" level. New energy technologies are assumed to make major contributions to this goal. However, in the light of scientific uncertainty (e.g. about climate sensitivity, feedback effects, etc.), market uncertainty (e.g. fuel price volatility), technological uncertainty (e.g. availability of renewable technology), socio-economic uncertainty (e.g. development of different macroeconomic factors) and policy uncertainty (e.g. about commitment to specific targets and stability of CO2 prices), it is difficult to assess the importance of different technologies in achieving robust long-term climate risk mitigation. One example currently debated in this context is biomass-based energy, which can be used to produce both carbon-neutral electricity and at the same time offer the possibility of "negative emissions" by capturing carbon from biomass combustion at the conversion facility and permanently storing it. In this study, we analyze the impact of uncertainty on investment decision-making at the plant level in a real options valuation framework, and then use the GCI Scenario Database (HASA, 2009) as a point of departure for deriving optimal technology portfolios across different socio-economic scenarios for a range of stabilization targets, focusing, in particular, on the new, low-emission targets using alternative risk measures. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing the Willingness to Pay (WTP) of the general public for climate change mitigation programmes enables governments to understand how much taxpayers are willing to support the implementation of such programs. This paper contributes to the literature on the WTP for climate change mitigation programmes by investigating, in addition to global benefits, the ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation. It does so by considering local and personal benefits arising from climate change policies. The Contingent Valuation Method is used to elicit the WTP for ancillary and global benefits of climate mitigation policies in the Basque Country, Spain. Results show that WTP estimates are 53-73% higher when ancillary benefits are considered.Afforestation with short-rotation coppice (SRC) willow plantations for the purpose of producing bioenergy feedstock was contemplated as one potential climate change mitigation option. The objectives of this study were to assess the magnitude of this mitigation potential by addressing: (i) the land area potentially available for SRC systems in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada; (ii) the potential biomass yields of SRC plantations; and (iii) the carbon implications from such a large-scale afforestation program. Digital soils and land-use data were used to identify, map, and group into clusters of similar polygons 2.12 million hectares (Mha) of agriculturally marginal land that was potentially suitable for willow in the Boreal Plains and Prairies ecozones in Saskatchewan. The Physiological Principles in Predicting Growth (3PG) model was calibrated with data from SRC experiments in Saskatchewan, to quantify potential willow biomass yields, and the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3), was used to simulate stand and landscape-level C fluxes and stocks. Short-rotation willow plantations managed in 3 similar to year rotations for seven consecutive harvests (21 years) after coppicing at Year 1 produced about 12 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) biomass. The more significant contribution to the C cycle was the cumulative harvest. After 44 similar to years, the potential average cumulative harvested biomass C in the Prairies was 244 Mg C ha(-1) (5.5 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1)) about 20% higher than the average for the Boreal Plains, 203Mg C ha(-1) (4.6 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1)). This analysis did not consider afforestation costs, rate of establishment of willow plantations, and other constraints, such as drought and disease effects on biomass yield. The results must therefore be interpreted as a biophysical mitigation potential with the technical and economic potential being both lower than our estimates. Nevertheless, short-rotation bioenergy plantations offer one potential mitigation option to reduce the rate of CO2 accumulation in the earth's atmosphere and further research is needed to operationalise such a mitigation effort.This article investigates the role that architecture can play in mitigating climate change by comparing the environmental impact of construction material use in two existing South African Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) stations in Johannesburg and Cape Town and a proposed BRT station for Tshwane. The article will generate guidelines to improve the resource efficiency of future BRT trunk-route stations. The climate change mitigation potential of BRT stations has been determined by analysing their carbon footprint and embodied energy over the cradle to gate(1) period. The quantity of construction material used in each station was calculated, while the carbon footprint intensity and embodied energy intensity were determined by means of the Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) carbon and embodied energy calculator. Calculations of embodied energy of structural systems and material use reveal that the Cape Town station is 36.5% more efficient in terms of carbon footprint intensity and embodied energy intensity than the Johannesburg station and 23.2% more efficient than the Tshwane station. The station base is the most energy-intensive component, contributing an average of 38% to the total embodied energy. It was concluded that steel contributes more than 50% to the total carbon footprint and embodied energy of each station. The analysis determines that lower scaled, spatially economical structures using low embodied energy materials will positively contribute to reduced carbon footprints and thus climate change mitigation strategies. The outcomes of the article also set a benchmark for prospective life-cycle assessments (LCA) and establish design guidelines for the design of future BRT stations.In forest, reduction of emission from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is considered as low carbon instrument. Financial Incentive scheme of this new climate change mitigation approach generates query about REDD's economic implication in developing country. This study is to examine empirically low carbon potential from avoided deforestation in Nepal. The case study is the Kafle community forest of Nepal. We used 10 meter radius circle sample plot for carbon inventory data collection. In addition, we conducted household survey through 48 households for data set collection. This study finds that community forest contributes 45 percent livelihood income (fire wood, leaf litter, grass, water) to the forest dependent stakeholder's total income. This labor incentive based on labor contribution in forest management is distributed among the member households. This study further finds huge carbon income potentials. Annually, KCF can earn carbon income Rs. 39, 81,196, if KCF enters in REDD. It is 41 times higher than the present mean income Rs 24, 549.55 from the forest product sale. In mixed familiarity about REDD, the study finds only 44 percent households expecting that REDD will be a better livelihood alternative to the poor. 63 percent responds need and use of carbon income for livelihood objectives. From estimation, household stakeholders who have good asset holdings (land and Rlivestock) think that REDD will be not a better livelihood alternative to the poor. However, the household stakeholders who have literacy, different food sufficiency level, land holding (1>), different earning per day, Rsex, per day earning and age think that REDD will be a better alternative. Thus, the poor households expects livelihood role from REDD in Nepal. Therefore, REDD should be more beneficial to the poor household stakeholders and their livelihoods.Results from the UK were reviewed to quantify the impact on climate change mitigation of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks as a result of (1) a change from conventional to less intensive tillage and (2) addition of organic materials including farm manures, digested biosolids, cereal straw, green manure and paper crumble. The average annual increase in SOC deriving from reduced tillage was 310 kg C +/- 180 kg C ha(-1) yr(-1). Even this accumulation of C is unlikely to be achieved in the UK and northwest Europe because farmers practice rotational tillage. N2O emissions may increase under reduced tillage, counteracting increases in SOC. Addition of biosolids increased SOC (in kg C ha(-1) yr(-1) t(-1) dry solids added) by on average 60 +/- 20 (farm manures), 180 +/- 24 (digested biosolids), 50 +/- 15 (cereal straw), 60 +/- 10 (green compost) and an estimated 60 (paper crumble). SOC accumulation declines in long-term experiments (>50 yr) with farm manure applications as a new equilibrium is approached. Biosolids are typically already applied to soil, so increases in SOC cannot be regarded as mitigation. Large increases in SOC were deduced for paper crumble (>6 t C ha(-1) yr(-1)) but outweighed by N2O emissions deriving from additional fertiliser. Compost offers genuine potential for mitigation because application replaces disposal to landfill; it also decreases N2O emission. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Legal commitments to reduce CO2 emissions require policy makers to find cost-efficient means to meet these obligations. Marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves, which illustrate the economics associated with climate change mitigation, have recently attracted a great amount of attention. A number of limitations with MAC curves are explained by the implication they should be just one tool in a broader set of decision-making aids used in assessing climate policy. MAC curves, for example, omit ancillary benefits of greenhouse gas emission abatement, treat uncertainty in a limited manner, exclude intertemporal dynamics and lack the necessary transparency concerning their assumptions. MAC curves based on the individual assessment of abatement measures suffer from additional shortcomings such as the non-consideration of interactions and non-financial costs, a possibly inconsistent baseline, double counting and limited treatment of behavioural aspects. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation exhibit many of the above-mentioned problems, making it particularly difficult to capture in a cost curve. Policy makers should therefore be cautious when interpreting MAC curves, pay attention to the underlying assumptions, consider non-financial costs and be aware of the important uncertainties and underlying path dependencies.Many tools that are helpful for evaluating emissions mitigation measures, such as carbon abatement cost curves, focus exclusively on cost and emissions reduction potential without quantifying the direct and indirect impacts on stakeholders. The impacts of climate change will be the most severe and immediate for billions of poor people, especially for those whose livelihoods are based on agriculture and subsistence activities and are directly dependent on weather patterns. Thus, equity and vulnerability considerations must be central to GHG emissions reduction strategies. A case study of a carbon abatement cost curve for an electricity system in two Nicaraguan rural villages is presented and is complemented with assessments based on the poverty metrics of the poverty headcount, the Gini coefficient, and the Kuznets ratios. Although these metrics are relatively easy to calculate, the study provides a general indication as to how the social impacts of mitigation strategies on the poor ( whether they are in rural or urban environments, developed or developing countries) can be revealed and highlights the inequalities that are embedded in them. Further work analysing how mitigation measures affect the various more detailed poverty indices, such as the Human Development, Gender Equality, or Multidimensional Poverty indices, is needed.Owing to globalization, the potential impacts of climate change/sea-level rise in one country/region are likely to affect and be felt elsewhere. Such indirect impacts could be significant but have received a limited analysis. This deficiency is addressed here using the indirect impacts on coastal infrastructure for the UK as an example. National opportunities and threats are identified. Potential indirect national threats include disruption of supply chains, security threats due to forced migration, a decline in national prestige, and impacts on the finance and insurance industries. Potential opportunities include export of world-leading coastal hazard and management expertise, and benefits to national prestige conferred by a strong response to climate change. Such opportunities and threats depend on several distinct dimensions of change, especially the magnitude of climate and socio-economic change, and the success/failure of appropriate responses. Promoting adaptation and climate mitigation is important to exploit the opportunities and address the threats. Adaptation should deal with more than the effects of climate change and link to the wider development agenda. These lessons are transferable to other developed countries and, indeed, many of the actions will be strengthened by collective action. Policy relevance National-level measures to address these indirect impacts will make a positive contribution to the global effort in addressing climate change (e.g. supporting emissions reductions). Countries should include the indirect effects of climate change in national assessments so that the national context and useful responses can be identified. Cooperation between nations is also important; countries must act together to more effectively address the direct and indirect effects of climate change (e.g. promoting a widespread adaptation response). International initiatives (such as the Belmont Forum initiative on Coastal Vulnerability) should be promoted and global environmental change research shared (e.g. within multilateral institutions).Although levels of concern and awareness about climate change have been rising in many nations over the past 20 years, climate change remains of low importance relative to other global or personal issues. Powerful contextual barriers act to prevent public engagement with it, such as psychological distancing and externalized responsibility. Despite extensive media coverage of the issue since 2006 there was a gradual decrease in public concern between 2006 and 2010. Possible explanations are issue fatigue, the impact of the global financial crisis, distrust, and the deepening politicization of the issue. Risk and uncertainty will become part of the debate about climate change policy in the future. Although engaging both the public and decision makers needs to draw upon the best guidance already developed in communicating risk, it is also likely that a radical reframing of the terms of public debate and new approaches to 'risk communication' will be needed. The most significant risk to achieving ambitious climate mitigation and adaptation goals appears to be the 'governance trap' engendered by current national and international systems of governance, such that the public and governments each seek to attribute responsibility for instigating change to the other.Climate change is expected to cause significant changes in the future distribution of precipitation, as well as in the frequency and intensity of high and low rainfall events across the world. In particular, there is an expectation of drying in southern Europe and wetting in northern Europe, with some regions such as southern UK experiencing drier summers and wetter winters. In this study, a community integrated assessment system (CIAS) is used to project the impacts of climate change associated with various emissions scenarios and in particular to demonstrate the extent to which climate mitigation policy might reduce the projected changes in drought regime for Europe under climate change scenarios over the 21st century. Components of CIAS include a simple climate model, MAGICC, and a spatial climate scenario generator, ClimGen, tuned to emulate 3 global general circulation model behaviours and climate change patterns. In baseline (no mitigation policy) cases, very large increases in drought are projected for southern Europe. However, stringent mitigation policy, in which CO2 concentrations stabilize at 450 or 400 ppm, produces very large reductions in both drought frequency and in total months of drought which would otherwise be experienced during 2050 to 2099, regardless of the global circulation model used to project the patterns of climate change across Europe. The study also illustrates a possible range of future drought scenarios which adaptation planners across Europe need to consider.Dealing with the threat of anthropogenic climate change has been a challenge for policy makers for a long time. In recent years, the problems posed by climate change and solutions proposed to mitigate its effects have been framed by lexical 'carbon compounds', such as carbon footprint or carbon trading and by one dominant metaphor, the market metaphor. Through a detailed content analysis of industry and press coverage from 1985 to the present, this paper examines the fate of one important lexical compound in this context, namely low carbon, which can be used as an adjective or a noun. Over the last two decades this lexical compound moved across and between three discourses, the steel industry, the car industry and what one might call the climate change industry. Using insights from ecolinguistics and the sociology of expectations, the paper discusses how the lexical compound low carbon in general and the metaphor low carbon future in particular came to prominence in policy discourses, especially in the UK, and how they were used to frame expectations of a prosperous low carbon future, while sidelining deeper social and cultural reflections on climate change mitigation.Offshore wind power plants are expected to expand rapidly in the coming years. These large engineering construction projects are important for climate change mitigation. The paper contributes to socio-technical understanding of engineering construction. Cost, time, delays and performance results of selected British plants are investigated, with a focus on strategic misrepresentation. This megaproject concept is combined with a socio-technical content analysis of offshore wind farms and provides a technologically precise and contemporary conceptualization in comparison with complex engineering and megaproject approaches. Based on publicly available data, budget and time overruns and underperformance are demonstrated. Budget overruns range from 0% to 65%; time overruns from 9% to 100%. Operational performance indicators reveal plants far below and just below estimations. These are all indications of strategic misrepresentation, but according to project players, the delays originate from weather, product technology, site features and processes. The findings thus indicate a latent controversy regarding reasons for overruns. A socio-technical variant of reference class forecasting (RCF) is developed to explore whether RCF could improve the estimates. Socio-technical RCF is developed for 10 plants that share foundation, national and geotechnical conditions. This provides an illustrative example of a proposed uplift for London Array. Such an RCF should be orchestrated with more governance mechanisms in order to improve future investments in engineering construction, including offshore plants.In 2008 the South African National Disaster Management Centre commissioned a study into measures taken by local municipalities to plan for climate change. Two areas were selected for their dissimilar climatic challenges: the //Khara Hais Municipality,(1) a semi-desert area in the Northern Cape Province plagued by droughts and severe weather events, and the George Municipality, an area in the Western Cape Province plagued by droughts, the rising sea level and flash floods. It was found that despite South African laws and regulations requiring local government to take action to reduce the risk of disasters, planning for climate change is still no more than sophisticated rhetoric in the two municipalities. This lack of urgency can be ascribed to local municipalities having other more pressing developmental priorities. It would, however, be short-sighted of municipalities not to plan for climate change, as major setbacks in hard-won economic and social development follow a disaster.Digital soil assessment is crucial for DSM to be useful. Assessment can be driven by stakeholders, or by soil scientists themselves. Stakeholder-driven assessments are largely motivated by global issues such as food, water and energy security; climate change mitigation and provision of environmental-services. Each of these motivations requires an appropriate set of soil properties, quality assessment methods and tools. Soil-science-led assessment based on multiple soil properties has a long history, beginning with land evaluation and recently expanding to include assessment of Soil Quality and Soil Protection. Soil scientists can also provide valuable contributions to assessments driven by wider groups of stakeholders and include Environmental Life Cycle Analysis and Soil as Natural Capital. The relative utility and value of stakeholder assessments versus soil-science-led assessment requires evaluation. The potential to greatly expand the use of DSM products in the construction of assessments with a wide range of motivations and goals has considerable implications for the further development of digital soil mapping. In general, more emphasis is needed on both the current and potential future contributions of DSM to various assessments, which should be done with expedition.There is a controversy on the role methane (and other short-lived species) should play in climate mitigation policies, and there is no consensus on what an optimal methane CO2-equivalence should be. We revisit this question by discussing some aspects of physically-based (i.e. global warming potential or GWP and global temperature change potential or GTP) and socio-economically-based climate metrics. To this effect we use a simplified global damage potential (GDP) that was introduced by earlier authors and investigate the uncertainties in the methane CO2-equivalence that arise from physical and socio-economic factors. The median value of the methane GDP comes out very close to the widely used methane 100-yr GWP because of various compensating effects. However, there is a large spread in possible methane CO2-equivalences from this metric (1-99% interval: 10.0-42.5; 5-95% interval: 12.5-38.0) that is essentially due to the choice in some socio-economic parameters (i.e. the damage cost function and the discount rate). The main factor differentiating the methane 100-yr GTP from the methane 100-yr GWP and the GDP is the fact that the former metric is an end-point metric, whereas the latter are cumulative metrics. There is some rationale for an increase in the methane CO2-equivalence in the future as global warming unfolds, as implied by a convex damage function in the case of the GDP metric. We also show that a methane CO2-equivalence based on a pulse emission is sufficient to inform multi-year climate policies and emissions reductions, as long as there is enough visibility on CO2 prices and CO2-equivalences for the stakeholders.This paper reviews the development of oil palm with linkages to biofuel in Indonesia and analyzes the associated environmental and socioeconomic impacts. We selected three plantation study sites in West Papua (Manokwari), West Kalimantan (Kubu Raya), and Papua (Boven Digoel) to assess the impacts. Research findings indicate that the development of oil palm in all three sites has caused deforestation, resulting in significant secondary external impacts such as water pollution, soil erosion, and air pollution. In terms of social impacts, many stakeholder groups, i.e., employees, out-growers, and investing households, report significant gains. However, we found these benefits were not evenly distributed. Other stakeholders, particularly traditional landowners, experienced restrictions on traditional land use rights and land losses. We observed increasing land scarcity, rising land prices, and conflicts over land in all sites. Three major trade-offs are associated with the development of oil palm plantations, including those related to biofuels: unevenly distributed economic benefits are generated at the cost of significant environmental losses; there are some winners but also many losers; and economic gains accrue at the expense of weak rule of law. To reduce the negative impacts and trade-offs of oil palm plantations and maximize their economic potential, government decision makers need to restrict the use of forested land for plantation development, enforce existing regulations on concession allocation and environmental management, improve monitoring of labor practices, recognize traditional land use rights, and make land transfer agreements involving customary land more transparent and legally binding.Recent changes in 2011 to the Victorian planning framework for windfarm developments raise significant questions about the capacity of planning law to balance local concerns regarding development impacts with the need to facilitate the uptake of wind energy to meet Australia's Renewable Energy Target and to contribute to its climate mitigation effort. The pre-amendment planning law framework, despite being strategically geared toward promoting renewable energy at the policy level, had a number of shortcomings. The 2011 amendments fundamentally changed the nature of planning decisions around windfarm developments by greatly extending spatial development controls via windfarm no go zones and by shifting the focus of assessment to local impacts. In light of this reorientation in Victorian planning law, this article considers the features of an effective windfarm planning framework that can effectively balance local and global interests. It draws in part on a comparative case study of German planning law, which has enabled Germany to successfully increase the proportion of wind energy in its energy profile.Studies dealing with media coverage of climate change have increased steadily over the last decade or so, alongside the media coverage of climate change itself. This article aims to contribute to this growing literature on two levels: to deepen understanding of distinctive patterns of language use across nations speaking a common language and to demonstrate the usefulness of a new approach for finding such patterns. Articles in The (London) Times and the New York Times, published between 2000 and 2009, were analyzed using methods related to computational linguistics. Results show that the US seemingly still constructs climate change as a problem, whereas the UK focuses on finding solutions for the (established) problem of climate change. This linguistic and conceptual gap may hamper mutual understanding and the crafting of global climate change mitigation policies.After initial debates and controversies, from the late 1980s onwards market instruments became fully accepted in environmental governance. However, with their inclusion in transnational and global environmental governance, market institutions seem to be in for a new round of discussions. Transnational carbon markets stand out in these debates, especially since the recent financial crisis made the world aware of the vulnerability of global financial markets. This paper uses a sociology of flows perspective to review current debates on the emerging global carbon markets as new initially state-created institutions to mitigate climate change. Do carbon markets aim primarily at climate change mitigation or mainly at financial gains? Who controls the functioning and outcome of these transnational carbon markets? And is there a risk of a global carbon market crisis, not unlike the global financial crisis? The paper concludes that current discussions and decisions on carbon market architectures are conducive for the future role of carbon markets in climate change mitigation. States are just one of the many actors shaping carbon markets and thus managing carbon flows. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The threat of long-term climate change has driven a number of international and national bodies to call for a re-direction of development pathways so that they are more resource efficient and use less carbon (C) in the form of fossil fuel per unit of economic growth and cause lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Agriculture is one of the largest anthropogenic sources of GHG emissions yet few authorities take account of this fact in their proposals and programmes for low C development. Hence this policy review examines the case for promoting strategies and policies for low C agricultural growth. Most of the policy and technological options that it considers have already been put forward by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and others in the context of climate change mitigation, but constraints to their implementation have often been underestimated. This review reassesses their potential contribution in the light of known bio-physical, socio-economic and institutional limitations. It concludes that there is a very strong case for greatly increasing the priority given to policies for low C growth which can be true winwinwin responses. Many of them are more cost-effective than the responses available to other sectors. They can be pro-poor and have other socio-economic benefits. They not only limit GHG emissions but also provide a range of other environmental and ecosystem benefits. However there can be significant barriers to implementation that must be overcome by national policies shaped to meet the needs of different farmer groups and agricultural systems. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.Countries are implementing CO2 emission reduction targets in order to meet a globally agreed global warming limit of +2 degrees C. However, it was hypothesised that these national reduction targets are not translated to regional or state level planning, and are not considered through Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in order to meet emission reduction obligations falling on the transport, energy, housing, agriculture, and forestry sectors. SEAs of land use plans in the German state of Saxony, and the English region of the East of England were examined for their consideration of climate change impacts based on a set of criteria drawn from the literature. It was found that SEAs in both cases failed to consider climate change impacts at scales larger than the boundary of the spatial plan, and that CO2 reduction targets were not considered. This suggests a need for more clarity in the legal obligations for climate change consideration within the text of the SEA Directive, a requirement for monitoring of carbon emissions, a need for methodological guidance to devolve global climate change targets down to regional and local levels, and a need for guidance on properly implementing climate change protection in SEA. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Using wood as a building material affects the carbon balance through several mechanisms. This paper describes a modelling approach that integrates a wood product substitution model, a global partial equilibrium model, a regional forest model and a stand-level model. Three different scenarios were compared with a business-as-usual scenario over a 23-year period (2008-2030). Two scenarios assumed an additional one million apartment flats per year will be built of wood instead of non-wood materials by 2030. These scenarios had little effect on markets and forest management and reduced annual carbon emissions by 0.2-0.5% of the total 1990 European GHG emissions. However, the scenarios are associated with high specific CO2 emission reductions per unit of wood used. The third scenario, an extreme assumption that all European countries will consume 1-m(3) sawn wood per capita by 2030, had large effects on carbon emission, volumes and trade flows. The price changes of this scenario, however, also affected forest management in ways that greatly deviated from the partial equilibrium model projections. Our results suggest that increased wood construction will have a minor impact on forest management and forest carbon stocks. To analyse larger perturbations on the demand side, a market equilibrium model seems crucial. However, for that analytical system to work properly, the market and forest regional models must be better synchronized than here, in particular regarding assumptions on timber supply behaviour. Also, bioenergy as a commodity in market and forest models needs to be considered to study new market developments; those modules are currently missing.Planning in England(1) represents an important arena for the development and contestation of environmental discourses. Over the last century the changing assumptions about human-nature relationship have led to numerous meanings of "the environment" in planning. These have in turn influenced the choices made between: preserving, enhancing, protecting, compromising, trading, exploiting or guarding against, the environment. While recognizing the nuances of the environmental discourses, this paper identifies eight distinct meanings of the environment in contemporary plans including the environment: as local amenity, as heritage landscape, as nature reserve, as storehouse of resources, as tradable commodity, as problem, as sustainability and as risk. The latter has emerged as a result of growing climate change awareness. The paper argues that, while the emphasis on climate change mitigation has reinforced some aspects of the sustainability discourse, the adaptation agenda has introduced a new meaning of the environment as risk. This portrays the environment not so much in terms of assets to be sustained for human benefit, but in terms of threats against which human well-being should be safeguarded. Framed in the language of risk and security, this new discourse is bringing to the fore some of the outmoded approaches to planning.The World Bank is among the most dominant actors in defining objectives for energy development. It has announced that it is committed to nothing less than a revolution in the rate and scale of investments in renewables. Renewable energy production is seen to create win-win situations, where both poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation targets can be met. Synergies within the energy poverty-climate nexus are, however, not self-evident. This article analyzes, firstly, how the win-win policy narrative has emerged in the World Bank's energy policy. Secondly, it assesses how the World Bank has responded to the twin challenge of poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation in its renewable energy projects. In recent years, the two main renewable energy forms the Bank has financed have been large-scale hydropower as an on-grid solution and solar home systems (SHS) as an off-grid solution. Laos is an illustrative case for these trends. There, the World Bank has on the one hand supported controversial largescale hydropower development that is linked to regional power trade scheme in the Mekong region. On the other hand, it has also funded rural electrification projects that include an off-grid component implemented with SHS. The article discusses what these developments in Laos tell about the World Bank's role in conducting a revolution in renewables. The research material consists of policy and project documents, expert interviews and village-level fieldworkClimate change is one of today's most pressing global issues. Policies to guide mitigation and adaptation are needed to avoid the devastating impacts of climate change. The health sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, and its climate impact in low-income countries is growing steadily. This paper reviews and discusses the literature regarding health sector mitigation potential, known and hypothetical co-benefits, and the potential of health information technology, such as eHealth, in climate change mitigation and adaptation. The promising role of eHealth as an adaptation strategy to reduce societal vulnerability to climate change, and the link's between mitigation and adaptation, are also discussed. The topic of environmental eHealth has gained little attention to date, despite its potential to contribute to more sustainable and green health care. A growing number of local and global initiatives on 'green information and communication technology (ICT)' are now mentioning eHealth as a promising technology with the potential to reduce emission rates from ICT use. However, the embracing of eHealth is slow because of limitations in technological infrastructure, capacity and political will. Further research on potential emissions reductions and co-benefits with green ICT, in terms of health outcomes and economic effectiveness, would be valuable to guide development and implementation of eHealth in health sector mitigation and adaptation policies.The European project Multisward aims to increase reliance on grasslands and on multi-species swards for competitive and sustainable ruminant production systems. This contributes to food security and enhanced environmental goods. As part of Multisward, an inventory was made of requirements and expectations of stakeholders with respect to the multi-functionality of grasslands in EU countries. The traditional foursome of primary producer, policy maker, research and advice were identified as the most important stakeholders, followed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (nature, environment), education and industry. A first international stakeholder consultation revealed the appreciation of current and future functions of grasslands in Europe. In general the economic functions of grasslands, mainly feed for herbivores, were considered the most important. Stakeholders expected this to remain unchanged in future. Environmental functions of grasslands were placed second: water quality and quantity, adaptation to climate change, mitigation and biodiversity. Finally, social services were mentioned.The aim of the article is to overview measures relating to climate change mitigation policy in the Walloon Region. The first part discusses Belgian's commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and internal burden-sharing agreement between the three Belgian regions. The author also presents the most important strategic documents adopted in the Walloon Region and actions recommended in these documents aimed at limiting GHG emissions. The last part of the article presents some of the instruments used in the region for addressing climate change.Purpose - Optimization of energy planning for growth and sustainable development has become very important in the context of climate change mitigation imperatives in developing countries. Existing models do not capture developing country realities adequately. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualizes a framework for energy strategy optimization of the Indian energy sector, which can be applied in all emerging economies. Design/methodology/approach - Hierarchical multi-objective policy optimization methodology adopts a policy-centric approach and groups the energy strategies into multi-level portfolios based on convergence of objectives appropriate to each level. This arrangement facilitates application of the optimality principle of dynamic programming. Synchronised optimization of strategies with respect to the common objectives at each level results in optimal policy portfolios. Findings - The reductionist policy-centric approach to complex energy economy modelling, facilitated by the dynamic programming methodology, is most suitable for policy optimization in the context of a developing country. Barriers to project implementation and cost risks are critical features of developing countries which are captured in the framework in the form of a comprehensive risk barrier index. Genetic algorithms are suitable for optimization of the first level objectives, while the efficiency approach, using restricted weight stochastic data envelopment analysis, is appropriate for higher levels of the objective hierarchy. Research limitations/implications - The methodology has been designed for application to the energy sector planning for India's 12th Five Year Plan for which the objectives of faster growth, better inclusion, energy security and sustainability have been identified. The conceptual framework combines, within the policy domain, the bottom-up and top-down processes to form a hybrid modelling approach yielding optimal outcomes, transparent and convincing to the policy makers. The research findings have substantial implications for transition management to a sustainable energy framework. Originality/value - The methodology is general in nature and can be employed in all sectors of the economy. It is especially suited to policy design in developing countries with the ground realities factored into the model as project barriers. It offers modularity and flexibility in implementation and can accommodate all the key strategies from diverse sectors along with multiple objectives in the policy optimization process. It enables adoption of an evidence-based and transparent approach to policy making. The research findings have substantial value for transition management to a sustainable energy framework in developing countries.This paper reviews the scope for the rural land use sector to support emissions reduction with particular reference to the role of forestry. A bottom-up approach is adopted to explore the relative contribution of different land-based activities in the region and explore the Scottish policy context and the scope for emissions reduction through new tree planting. It is concluded that the institutional architecture is incomplete, in that although the Rural Development Programme supports afforestation, informal institutions, especially farmer antipathy, militate against afforestation. Ground-truthing indicates scope for major efficiency gains in emissions reduction if tradable solutions are pursued. There is scope for policy enhancement and, if land use sector carbon emissions were offset against farm-produced renewable energy and carbon emissions were taxed, a significant flow of money from low ground farms to the disadvantaged hill areas would be likely, as these areas have the greatest potential with respect to climate change mitigation.Carbon management has gradually gained attention within the overall environmental management and corporate social responsibility agendas. The clean development mechanism, from Kyoto Protocol, was envisioned as connecting carbon market and sustainable development objectives in developing countries. Previous research has shown that this potential is rarely being achieved. The paper explores how the incorporation of the human side into carbon management reinforces its contribution to generate human development in local communities and to improve the company's image. A case study of a Brazilian company is presented, with the results of the application of an analytical model that incorporates the human side and human development. The selected project is an 'efficient stoves' programme. 'Efficient stoves' are recognised in Brazil as social technologies. Results suggest that the fact that social technologies value the human side of the technology plays a key role when it comes to analysing the co-benefits of the project implementation.This paper explores a Post Keynesian, 'new economics' approach to climate policy, assessing the opportunities for investment in accelerated decarbonisation of the global economy to 2020 following the Great Recession of 2008-2009. The risks associated with business-as-usual growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere suggest that avoiding dangerous climate change will require that the world's energy-economy system is transformed through switching to low-carbon technologies and lifestyles. Governments have agreed a target to hold the increase in temperatures above pre-industrial levels to at most 2 degrees C and have offered reductions by 2020 in GHG emissions or the carbon-intensity of GDP. The effects of policies proposed to achieve pathways to 2020 towards this target are assessed using E3MG, an Energy-Environment-Economy (E3) Model at the Global level. E3MG is an annual simulation econometric model, estimated for 20 world regions over 1972-2006 adopting a new economics approach. Additional low-GHG investment of some 0.7% of GDP, with carbon pricing and other policies, is sufficient to achieve a pathway consistent with a medium chance of achieving the long-term target. GDP is above reference levels because decarbonisation reduces world oil prices and increases investment. Employment is some 0.9% above reference levels by 2020 and public finances are almost unaffected.Land grabbing has gained momentum in Latin America and the Caribbean during the past decade. The phenomenon has taken different forms and character as compared to processes that occur in other regions of the world, especially Africa. It puts into question some of the assumptions in the emerging literature on land grabbing, suggesting these are too food-centered/too food crisis-centered, too land-centred, too centred on new global food regime players - China, South Korea, Gulf States and India - and too centred on Africa. There are four key mechanisms through which land grabbing in Latin American and the Caribbean has been carried out: food security initiatives, energy/fuel security ventures, other climate change mitigation strategies, and recent demands for resources from newer hubs of global capital. The hallmark of land grabbing in the region is its intra-regional character: the key investors are (Trans-)Latin American companies, often in alliance with international capital and the central state. Initial evidence suggests that recent land investments have consolidated the earlier trend away from (re) distributive land policies in most countries in the region, and are likely to result in widespread reconcentration of land and capital.Skiing tourism is an important income source in Austria. The future development of skiing tourism is essential for Austria's rural and peripheral areas and their socio-cultural and economic wellbeing, and relevant for the entire Austrian economy. Though a number of factors driving tourism development can be found in the scientific literature, studies on the future of skiing tourism are largely restricted to the potential impacts of climate change. In this paper, potential impacts on the ski tourism industry in Austria caused by climate change and demographic changes were compared. Demographic changes were found to have a higher impact on skiing tourism than climate change in the first half of the twenty-first century, while climate change could be the more dominant driving force towards the end of the century. Demographic changes include population declines in source countries, and a trend to ageing populations. Other complicating factors include possible developments in snowmaking technology and also rising energy/transport costs resulting from climate change mitigation measures. Thus, the tourism industry is required to diversify its product portfolio and foster snow-linked and snow-independent tourism activities that are attractive for older age groups.Climate change mitigation has become one of the most relevant topics today, and it will continue for years to come. It is a concern that has implications in economics, law, science, human rights, technology, international relations and ethics, to name but a few fields of knowledge. Climate change is a global problem that knows no geographical barriers. International law is not well equipped to face the challenges of climate change. Global climate is an indivisible public good. International law currently faces the challenge of fragmentation and the need to bring greater coherence to a fragmented system in combating climate change. The aim of this article is to explain the trade implications of climate change mitigation policies by analyzing a couple of areas where the international regimes for trade and climate change mitigation/energy may potentially clash: 1) border carbon adjustments and 2) applying subsidies and similar measures in order to encourage environmentally-friendly technologies. After the introduction, Section 2 provides an analysis on the link between the legal regimes of international trade and climate change. Section 3 compares both regimes and Section 4 offers an overview of unilateral trade-related climate change measures. Section 5 examines the main WTO provisions on subsidies and analyzes the WTO cases on subsidies for renewable energy. Section 6 focuses on the inclusion of aviation in the EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the potential expansion of the EU ETS to the shipping industry. Section 7 concludes the article.The article studies discursive (re)construction of market-based solutions to climate change through the use of so-called 'carbon compounds'-lexical combinations of at least two roots such as carbon footprint - in the UK national newspapers between 1990 and 2009. Applying techniques of corpus-assisted discourse analysis, compounds are identified and grouped according to their frequency and chronological appearance. The analysis then focuses on (1) finance compounds used between 1990 and 2005 and (2) compounds modified by low-, zero- carbon and carbon neutral which became popular after 2005. It is argued that the representation of market-based initiatives with the help of carbon compounds has restricted the debate on climate change mitigation scenarios by relying on calculation and monetization of emissions as the starting point. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Moving towards a more sustainable adaptation process requires closer integration of policies related to the environment. An important actor in this is the local government. This paper examines to what extend adaptation is currently being integrated into Dutch local policies, and what the role is of a municipality's size, risk and experience in the encountered manifestations of adaptation. First, it was determined that adaptations taking place only anticipate currently perceivable weather extremes - mostly increasing precipitation. Second, it was determined that the realisation of further adaptations is hindered by a strongly sectoral divided reality. Adaptation is now heavily dominated by the water department, while spatial planning and the environment are only limitedly involved. Finally, it was observed that the contextual factor size proved to most important for horizontal policy integration, whereas the contextual factor extreme-weather experience was the most definite for the realisation of adaptations. We conclude that a more sustainable adaptation should first tackle the sectoral divides which requires administrative efforts, for example, professional training. These would preferably be initiated from a vertical direction.Norwegian experiences on local environmental policy, Local Agenda 21 (LA21), local climate change mitigation (CCM) and local climate change adaptation (CCA) are compared in this article. One conclusion is that local CCA lacks the normative impetus for local action that LA21 and local CCM have had, thus making it harder to include CCA in serious policy-making at the local level of governance. Another conclusion is that local CCA like mainstream local environmental policy, but unlike that of LA21 and local CCM, is exclusively framed in a local context. By focusing only on the local effects of climate change taking place locally, and not looking into possible local effects of climate change taking place elsewhere, climate change vulnerability assessments in rich countries like Norway tend to conclude on far less dramatic consequences than what is up in the general climate change debate. This way of framing climate change vulnerabilities may prove to be counterproductive for the purpose of gaining support for climate change adaptation, as well as mitigation policies.Sustainable development has emerged as a distinctive marker of place identity in addition to traditional markers such as buildings and spectacles. Climate change mitigation as a potential place brand, indicating sustainable development, is in focus of this article, comparing such efforts in three Swedish towns. Based on documentary studies and interviews, it demonstrates how one town has been successful in branding itself as "the Greenest City in Europe", whereas mitigation efforts in two other towns are barely known outside the town halls. In the first case, a combination of material, symbolic, and institutional components has been decisive in establishing a brand with internal and external legitimacy. This case highlights the importance of a dedicated network of influential actors and a potent governance structure visualising the will of a town to make its climate mitigation efforts known. Despite similar material conditions, the two others come short on the symbolic and the institutional dimensions, although they may still have a potential for future success in terms of mitigation both in practice and as a marker of identity.Organic agricultural development is an adaptation strategy to climate change, is a concrete and promising option for new countryside construction or urban-rural integrated development and has additional potential as a mitigation strategy. Mitigation and adaptation based on organic agricultural development can build on well-established traditional Chinese peasant's practice because organic agriculture is a sustainable livelihood strategy with thousands of years in use in China. The paper argues that subsidies for agricultural development may be justified by a mitigation or adaptation strategy. This paper therefore highlights some of the persistent challenges associated with sustainable organic agricultural development in China. We aim to explore how organic agricultural development can maintain sustainable rural development and thereby serve as mitigation and an adaptation option is a possible future transition towards a low-carbon economy.Demand for renewable energy, the threat of global warming and climate change and the question of how to make the transition to an economy based on fossil-fuel alternatives are concerns for everyone. Washington State University (WSU) has joined the 'green innovation' race to help transform to a global economy based on safer, more diverse energy alternatives; and to develop innovative ideas and technologies that balance climate change mitigation and increased global energy needs. This paper highlights WSU's experience in using interdisciplinary and innovative approaches to accelerate research, development, and commercialization of clean technologies. WSU's experience shows how creative efforts can generate valuable 'public goods' via: 1) prioritization and implementation of transformational research linked to learning and scholarship; 2) formation of innovation partnerships and stakeholder engagement; 3) innovation sharing, intellectual property rights protection, and new modes of technology transfer; and 4) development and implementation of progressive policies. The paper's reflection on WSU's successes and future challenges in managing and delivering new and innovative clean technologies to bring economic value can serve as important reference for other public research institutes, policymakers, and businesses wanting to help contribute to the further establishment of a bio-economy and spur sustainable growth, nationally and globally.Global climate change is a change in the long-term weather patterns that characterize the regions of the world. Scientists state unequivocally that the earth is warming. Natural climate variability alone cannot explain this trend. Human activities, especially the burning of coal and oil, have warmed the earth by dramatically increasing the concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The more of these gases humans put into the atmosphere, the more the earth will warm in the decades and centuries ahead. The impacts of warming can already be observed in many places, from rising sea levels to melting snow and ice to changing weather patterns. Climate change is already affecting ecosystems, freshwater supplies, and human health. Although climate change cannot be avoided entirely, the most severe impacts of climate change can be avoided by substantially reducing the amount of heat-trapping gases released into the atmosphere. However, the time available for beginning serious action to avoid severe global consequences is growing short. This paper reviews assessing of such climate change impacts on various components of the ecosystem such as air, water, plants, animals and human beings, with special emphasis on economy. The most daunting problem of global warming is also discussed. This paper, further reviews the mitigation measures, with a special focus on carbon sequestration and clean development mechanism (CDM). The importance of synergy between climate change mitigation and adaptation has been discussed. An overview of the relationship between economy and emissions, including Carbon Tax and Emission Trading and the policies are also presented. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An important measure for climate change mitigation is reduction of energy use in buildings worldwide. To decrease the energy use of a building in a Nordic climate, increased thermal resistance of the building envelope is a suitable measure. Adding more insulation in combination with climate change may increase the risk of mould growth within the building envelope. This study evaluates hygrothermal conditions for three different wood frame wall assemblies and four different locations in Sweden. The evaluation is based on simulations where the exterior climate is based on a climate scenario from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. The evaluation of the climate scenarios show a trend of increased precipitation and temperature. Examining the hygrothermal conditions; all evaluations models indicate an increased risk of mould growth over time due to climate change. Adding more insulation to a building envelope will decrease the dehydration of built-in moisture. However, adding more insulation to the exterior side of a wood frame construction results into more stabile hygrothermal conditions. Based on the results from the simulations it is recommended that all constructions with bio gradable materials should be given exterior insulation to decrease the risk of mould growth. Furthermore, building elements must always be designed to have the ability to dehydrate moisture that has entered, whether it is due to driving rain, built in moisture or other reasons.This article outlines the National Solar Mission's role as India's major climate change mitigation policy, arguing that India's National Solar Mission (NSM) was initially conceived to bolster India's position against legally binding commitments on carbon emissions. However, the NSM also has twin objectives in energy security. Progress in the NSM is outlined before its problems are examined in order to clarify how the Indian government may direct its development to fulfil energy security and energy access goals. This includes examining possibilities in indigenisation of solar manufacture and international funding before concluding that formal co-operation with China, the dominant photovoltaic manufacturer, could be considered.To support international climate change mitigation efforts, the United Nations REDD+ initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) seeks to reduce land use induced greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. It requires independent monitoring of forest cover and forest biomass information in a spatially explicit form. It is widely recognised that remote sensing is required to deliver this information. Synthetic Aperture Radar interferometry (InSAR) techniques have gained traction in the last decade as a viable technology from which vegetation canopy height and bare earth elevations can be derived. The viewing geometry of a SAR sensor is side-looking where the radar pulse is transmitted out to one side of the aircraft or satellite, defining an incidence angle (theta) range. The incidence angle will change from near-range (NR) to far-range (FR) across of the track of the SAR platform. InSAR uses image pairs and thus, contain two set of incidence angles. Changes in the InSAR incidence angles can alter the relative contributions from the vegetation canopy and the ground surface and thus, affect the retrieved vegetation canopy height. Incidence angle change is less pronounced in spaceborne data than in airborne data and mitigated somewhat when multiple InSAR-data takes are combined. This study uses NEXTMap (R) single-and multi-pass X-band HH polarized InSAR to derive vegetation canopy height from the scattering phase centre height (h(spc)). Comparisons with in situ vegetation canopy height over three test sites (Arizona-1, Minnesota-2); the effect of incidence angle changes across swath on the X-HH InSAR h(spc) was examined. Results indicate at steep incidence angles (theta = 35 degrees, more exposure of lower vegetation canopy structure (e.g. tree trunks) led to greater lower canopy double bounce, increased ground scattering, and decreased volume scattering. This resulted in a lower scattering phase centre height (h(spc)) or a greater underestimation of vegetation canopy height given by the single-pass X-HH InSAR data. The opposite effect occurs in the far range (theta = 55 degrees), an increase in volume scattering resulted in more accurate vegetation canopy heights when compared to in situ measurements. These findings indicate that incidence angle corrections should be applied to airborne X-HH single-pass InSAR. In contrast, NEXTMap X-HH (multi-pass data) hspc data experienced little or no effect of incidence angle, possibly because NEXTMap is an aggregation of multi-pass flight line strips, which averages data over several incidence angles. These results may aid in the understanding of potential incidence angle effects in Astrium spaceborne Tandem-X data, which will have global digital surface elevation coverage by 2015. A sustainable global community requires the successful integration of environment and engineering. In the public and private sectors, designing cyclical ("closed loop") resource networks increasingly appears as a strategy employed to improve resource efficiency and reduce environmental impacts. Patterning industrial networks on ecological ones has been shown to provide significant improvements at multiple levels. Here, we apply the biological metric cyclicity to 28 familiar thermodynamic power cycles of increasing complexity. These cycles, composed of turbines and the like, are scientifically very different from natural ecosystems. Despite this difference, the application results in a positive correlation between the maximum thermal efficiency and the cyclic structure of the cycles. The immediate impact of these findings results in a simple method for comparing cycles to one another, higher cyclicity values pointing to those cycles which have the potential for a higher maximum thermal efficiency. Such a strong correlation has the promise of impacting both natural ecology and engineering thermodynamics and provides a clear motivation to look for more fundamental scientific connections between natural and engineered systems. Citation: Layton A, Reap J, Bras B, Weissburg M (2012) Correlation between Thermodynamic Efficiency and Ecological Cyclicity for Thermodynamic Power Cycles. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51841. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051841Community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting is confounded by the relatively small spatial size of cities compared to nations-due to which, energy use in essential infrastructures serving cities, such as commuter and airline transport, energy supply, water supply, wastewater infrastructures, and others, often occurs outside the boundaries of the cities using them. The trans-boundary infrastructure supply chain footprint (TBIF) GHG emissions accounting method, tested in eight U.S. cities, incorporates supply chain aspects of these trans-boundary infrastructures serving cities, and is akin to an expanded geographic GHG emissions inventory. This article shows the results from applying the TBIF method in the rapidly developing city of Delhi, India. The objectives of this research are to (1) describe the data availability for implementing the TBIF method within a rapidly industrializing country, using the case of Delhi, India; (2) identify methodological differences in implementation of the TBIF method between Indian versus U.S. cities; and (3) compare broad energy use metrics between Delhi and U.S. cities, demonstrated by Denver, Colorado, USA, whose energy use characteristics and TBIF GHG emissions have previously been shown to be similar to U.S. per capita averages. This article concludes that most data required to implement the TBIF method in Delhi are readily available, and the methodology could be translated from U.S. to Indian cities. Delhi's 2009 community-wide GHG emissions totaled 40.3 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (t CO2-eq), which are normalized to yield 2.3 t CO2-eq per capita; nationally, India reports its average per capita GHG emissions at 1.5 t CO2-eq. In-boundary GHG emissions contributed to 68% of Delhi's total, where end use (including electricity) energy in residential buildings, commercial and industrial usage, and fuel used in surface transportation contributed 24%, 19%, and 21%, respectively. The remaining 4% of the in-boundary GHG emissions were from waste disposal, water and wastewater treatment, and cattle. Trans-boundary infrastructures were estimated to equal 32% of Delhi's TBIF GHG emissions, with 5% attributed to fuel processing, 3% to air travel, 10% to cement, and 14% to food production outside the city.Within the framework of sustainable development, it is important to take into account environmental aspects of urban areas related to their energy use. In this article a methodology is proposed for assessing residential energy uses for buildings and transport at the city scale. This method is based on the use of geographic information system (GIS) tools combined with a statistical treatment of urban and transport criteria. The methodology allows us to model building and transport energy use at the city scale, as well as to consider the possible evolution of city energy consumption and to simulate the effects of some strategies of urban renewal. An application is given to study different energy management strategies for the urban area of Liege, Belgium. Building and transport energy consumption are compared at the city scale and their possible evolution in the future is highlighted. Forecast scenarios on future energy policies for Liege's building stock show that the European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings and even more selective energy policies applied only to new buildings are not sufficient to widely decrease building energy consumption at the city scale. Renovation of the existing building stock has a much larger positive impact on city energy consumption reductions. The methodology developed in this article can be adapted or reproduced for many other urban regions in Belgium, but also in Europe and even further.The concept of urban metabolism, referring to the exchange processes that produce the urban environment, has inspired new ways of thinking about how cities can be made sustainable and has also raised criticisms about the specific social and economic arrangements in which some forms of flow are prioritized or marginalized within the city. This article explores how the concept of urban metabolism travels across disciplines, using a comparative analysis of different approaches to urban metabolism within industrial ecology, urban ecology, ecological economics, political economy and political ecology. The analysis reveals six main themes emerging within interdisciplinary boundaries in relation to urban metabolism, and how this concept enables new understandings of (1) the city as an ecosystem, (2) material and energy flows within the city, (3) economic-material relations within the city, (4) economic drivers of rural-urban relationships, (5) the reproduction of urban inequality, and (6) attempts at resignifying the city through new visions of socioecological relationships. The article suggests potential areas for cross-disciplinary synergies around the concept of urban metabolism and opens up avenues for industrial ecology to engage with the politics and the governance of urban development by examining the city and its metabolism.Urban metabolism is an important technique for understanding the relationship between cities and the wider environment. Such analyses are typically performed at the scale of the whole city using annual average data, a feature that is driven largely by restrictions in data availability. However, in order to assess the resource implications of policy interventions and to design and operate efficient urban infrastructures such as energy systems, greater spatial and temporal resolutions are required in the underlying resource demand data. As this information is rarely available, we propose that these demand profiles might be simulated using activity-based modeling. This is a microsimulation approach that calculates the activity schedules of individuals within the city and then converts this information into resource demands. The method is demonstrated by simulating electricity and natural gas demands in London and by examining how these nontransport energy demands might change in response to a shift in commuting patterns, for example, in response to a congestion charge or similar policy. The article concludes by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, as well as highlighting future research directions. Key challenges include the simulation of in-home activities, assessing the transferability of the complex data sets and models supporting such analyses, and determining which aspects of urban metabolism would benefit most from this technique.In tightly coupled socioecological systems, such as cities, the interactions between socioeconomic and biophysical characteristics of an area strongly influence ecosystem function. Very often the effects of socioeconomic activities on ecosystem function are unintended, but can impact the sustainability of a city and can have irreversible effects. The food system in its entirety, from production to treatment of human waste, is one of the most important contributors to the way phosphorus (P) cycles through cities. In this article we examined the changes in P dynamics at the urban-agricultural interface of the Phoenix, Arizona, USA, metropolitan area between 1978 and 2008. We found that the contribution of cotton to harvested P decreased while the contribution of alfalfa, which is used as feed for local dairy cows, increased over the study period. This change in cropping pattern was accompanied by growth in the dairy industry and increased internal recycling of P due to dairy cow manure application to alfalfa fields and the local recycling of biosolids and treated wastewater. The proximity of urban populations with dairies and feed production and low runoff in this arid climate have facilitated this serendipitous recycling. Currently P is not strongly regulated or intentionally managed in this system, but farmers' behaviors, shaped largely by market forces and policies related to water recycling, unintentionally affect P cycling. This underscores the need to move from unintentional to deliberate and holistic management of P dynamics through collaborations between practitioners and researchers in order to enhance urban sustainability.Electronic waste (e-waste) recycling is a critical sector for sustainable urban industrial systems. U.S. residents and businesses generate an estimated 3.2 million tons of electronic waste each year; most is not recycled and is generated in urban areas. However, adoption of state environmental regulations for e-waste recycling is increasing. Between 2003 and mid-2011, 25 states passed e-waste laws. There are a growing number of e-waste collectors and certified processors in U.S. urban areas. While the landscape of e-waste recycling is changing, there is little analysis on the economic impacts of this industry. The research presented here synthesizes e-waste management policy developments and growth of the e-waste recycling industry. We present an economic impact analysis at the metropolitan level through constructing an extended input-output (IO) model that specifies an e-waste recycling sector. In a case study, we examine changes in e-waste recycling activities in the Seattle metropolitan area and provide simulation results of new regional economic impacts.The urban environment is characterized by multiple interactions between its parts, and any change can determine a modification in its metabolism. Typically life cycle assessment (LCA) takes into account only part of the interactions. The main aim of this study was to present a hybrid analysis for enhancing the spatial resolution of LCA, focusing on surface albedo evaluation. In this article the substitution in New York City, New York, USA, of traditional roofs with a mean albedo of 0.32 with white roofs with an albedo of 0.9 has been hypothesized. A multiscale approach was used to evaluate the impact of variation in urban albedo, since it can influence the urban heat island (UHI), energy use, and atmospheric chemistry, affecting radiative forcings. The impact on global climate has been translated, through the use of a climatological model, into equivalents of carbon dioxide and added to the impact of the white roof. The effect of the summer UHI mitigation on human health has been assessed through the use of a hybrid model. Finally, the environmental burdens of a square meter of roof have been evaluated by considering the elementary flows-excluding the energy use-and added to the results deriving from the evaluation of the effects on human health and on climate change. In time horizons of 50 and 100 years, it shows that the increase in rooftop albedo plays an important role in decreasing the impact of rooftops on the climate-change and human health impact categories.This study presents a model designed to determine the feasibility of municipal scale water exchange aimed at reducing overall water and energy use. Water and energy balances are performed using a combination of process simulation and a geographic information system (GIS). Objective functions manipulate results from the balances to find optimal inter-company water reuse relationships that maximize the quantity of water reused, where water quality is adequate and the required pumping energy is minimized. Optimization results are presented as GIS maps that can be included as layers within existing municipal GIS maps.Designed to facilitate economic development, the corporate form now threatens human survival. This article presents an argument that organisations are yet to be 'fit for purpose' and that the corporate form needs to be re-designed to reach sustainability. It suggests that organisations need to recognise their agent status amongst a much wider and highly complex array of interconnected, dynamic economic, environmental and social systems. Human Factors theory is drawn on to propose that business systems could be made sustainable through re-design. They could fit their environment more appropriately by improving: Efficiency, Adaptability and Social Cohesion. Leaders of organisations would also need to take a holistic approach to alter the organisation proactively to adapt to the systems within which it is embedded.Urban policy makers and researchers consistently recognize the challenge of more effectively reshaping the linkages between cities, urban infrastructure, ecosystem services, and natural resources. The aim of this article is to consider the potential value of developing connections between two currently disconnected approaches to resource use and cities-material flow analysis (MFA) and transitions analysis (TA). This article attempts to address this deficit and looks critically at resource flows through cities and the infrastructures that have been-or could be-reconfigured to more effectively manage these flows from the perspectives of MFA and TA. This is an issue that has not been addressed, with the result that inadequate attention has been paid to the reconfiguring of urban infrastructures whose construction and maintenance are, in turn, often the largest expenditures at the city government level. Insufficient attention has been given to the fact that the design, construction, and operation of infrastructures (specifically energy, waste, water, sanitation, and transport infrastructures) create a sociotechnical environment that plays an important role in shaping, and potentially reshaping, how resources are procured, used, and disposed of by the city. The challenge, of course, is how such a transition takes place, who leads it and what social and governance processes are best suited to facilitate such city transitions. This article assesses the role of MFA and TA in understanding these resource flows and urban infrastructures, making it possible to begin to tackle this challenge in practical transformative ways.Cities are embedded within larger-scale engineered infrastructures (e. g., electric power, water supply, and transportation networks) that convey natural resources over large distances for use by people in cities. The sustainability of city systems therefore depends upon complex, cross-scale interactions between the natural system, the transboundary engineered infrastructures, and the multiple social actors and institutions that govern these infrastructures. These elements, we argue, are best studied in an integrated manner using a novel social-ecological-infrastructural systems (SEIS) framework. In the biophysical subsystem, the SEIS framework integrates urban metabolism with life cycle assessment to articulate transboundary infrastructure supply chain water, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission footprints of cities. These infrastructure footprints make visible multiple resources (water, energy, materials) used directly or indirectly (embodied) to support human activities in cities. They inform cross-scale and cross-infrastructure sector strategies for mitigating environmental pollution, public health risks and supply chain risks posed to cities. In the social subsystem, multiple theories drawn from the social sciences explore interactions between three actor categories-individual resource users, infrastructure designers and operators, and policy actors-who interact with each other and with infrastructures to shape cities toward sustainability outcomes. Linking of the two subsystems occurs by integrating concepts, theories, laws, and models across environmental sciences/climatology, infrastructure engineering, industrial ecology, architecture, urban planning, behavioral sciences, public health, and public affairs. Such integration identifies high-impact leverage points in the urban SEIS. An interdisciplinary SEIS-based curriculum on sustainable cities is described and evaluated for its efficacy in promoting systems thinking and interdisciplinary vocabulary development, both of which are measures of effective frameworks.Now that more than half of the world's population lives in cities, improving urban resource cycles is crucial for sustainable urban development. Currently cities are highly dependent on external supplies of water, energy, nutrients, and other materials, while local possibilities of self-production of such resources are generally overlooked. This article describes a novel method, the urban harvest approach (UHA), its rationale, and the steps toward sustainable urban resource planning. The UHA is based on the urban metabolism concept. Herein, a city is regarded to have multiple potentials in the form of untapped primary and secondary (already used) resources that can be utilized. The UHA works on the principle that urban systems and their direct peri-urban surroundings can become self-sufficient by applying three strategies: minimizing demand, minimizing outputs, and multisourcing. An elaboration of the UHA for the resource "water" at the building scale is also presented in this article. A freestanding house in the Netherlands and a similar house in Australia were studied, with a focus on indoor consumption. Results showed a 40% demand reduction when water-saving technologies were implemented. In both cases, after demand minimization, local resources were sufficient to cover the demand by recycling grey water and harvesting rainwater. These findings confirm that a multimeasure implementation according to the three different strategies is needed to achieve sustainable urban water systems. The UHA helps to structure large influences of urban context on water and other resource cycles as an aid to urban planners and water managers in designing sustainable urban areas.For informed decision making about the current state and near future of any city, it is important to consider the long-term resource use trajectory and legacy of its past. Such information is not always readily available. Urban metabolism analysis for any given time period can be challenging due to the lack of metropolitan-or city-level data, and reconstructing a time series of urban energy or material flows is seldom attempted. For the case of Melbourne, Australia, we demonstrate how time series operational energy demand and supply data can be reconstructed from original sources. Primary energy consumption is calculated based on direct and upstream energy use in common with "scope 2" standards for emissions reporting. This extends the usual treatment of energy in urban metabolism studies by (1) providing time series data and (2) attributing upstream primary energy consumption to sectors based on their direct secondary energy usage. Results indicate that the transport, commercial, manufacturing, and residential sectors have contributed most to the doubling of Melbourne's energy consumption over four decades. We discuss recent urban development history and its relation to energy consumption and briefly examine potential scenarios of and responses to future change.Cities globally are in the midst of taking action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. After the vital step of emissions quantification, strategies must be developed to detail how emissions reductions targets will be achieved. The Pathways to Urban Reductions in Greenhouse Gas Emissions (PURGE) model allows the estimation of emissions from four pertinent urban sectors: electricity generation, buildings, private transportation, and waste. Additionally, the carbon storage from urban and regional forests is modeled. An emissions scenario is examined for a case study of the greater Toronto, Ontario, Canada, area using data on current technology stocks and government projections for stock change. The scenario presented suggests that even with some aggressive targets for technological adoption (especially in the transportation sector), it will be difficult to achieve the less ambitious 2050 emissions reduction goals of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is largely attributable to the long life of the building stock and limitations of current retrofit practices. Additionally, demand reduction (through transportation mode shifting and building occupant behavior) will be an important component of future emissions cuts.Decentralized approaches to managing urban stormwater are gaining increased attention within the contexts of urban sustainability, climate change adaptation, and as a means of reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs). This study applied a life cycle assessment (LCA) to comparing the environmental efficiency of three means of equivalently reducing CSOs to the Bronx River (Bronx, NY, USA). Strategy 1 featured decentralized green infrastructure technologies, while "grey" strategies 2 and 3 detained, and detained and treated, respectively, excess flows at the end of pipe. We estimated greenhouse gas emissions (in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents [t CO2-eq]) over the construction, operation, and maintenance phases, including energy consumed at the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), carbon sequestered, and shading provided by vegetation (in the case of the green approach) over a 50-year analysis period. The study area comprised the entire drainage area contributing to New York State permitted CSO discharge points associated with the Hunts Point WWTP. The analysis was performed using a hybrid of process and economic input-output (EIO) LCA methods. The decentralized green strategy outperformed the two grey strategies in terms of this set of environmental metrics. The net emissions of the green strategy over 50 years was 19,000 t CO2-eq, whereas the grey strategies emitted 85,000 t CO2-eq (detention) and 400,000 t CO2-eq (detention and treatment). These results were significantly influenced by the emissions associated with the operation and maintenance activities required for strategies 2 and 3, and the carbon sequestered and shading provided by the vegetation in strategy 1, and suggest that watershed managers who seek to reduce CSOs and reduce carbon footprints would opt for the green approach.Due to the finite nature of mineral phosphorus reserves, effective management of anthropogenic phosphorus flows is currently under investigation by the international research community. This article emphasizes the importance of urban phosphorus flows, which are often marginalized due to the greater magnitude of agricultural phosphorus flows. A study on phosphorus flows in Gothenburg, Sweden, points out the potential role of solid waste in nutrient management, as the amounts of phosphorus in solid waste and in wastewater were found to be equal. Importation of food commodities accounts for 50% of the total inflow of phosphorus, and food waste is a major contributor of phosphorus to solid waste. The results suggest that solid waste incineration residues represent a large underestimated sink of phosphorus. Focusing on wastewater as the sole source of recovered phosphorus is not sufficient. The Swedish national goal on phosphorus recycling, which is limited to sewage sludge, targets only a part of the total phosphorus flow that can potentially be recovered. In contrast to previous studies, agricultural flows in Gothenburg were marginal compared to flows related to the urban waste management infrastructure. We emphasize the need for debate on preferable routes for disposal of waste with a high phosphorus content. Both recovery potential and usefulness of the recovered product for agricultural purposes have to be considered. Impacts of five waste management strategies on phosphorus flows were evaluated: incineration of all the waste, comprehensive food waste separation, installation of kitchen grinders, urine diversion, and separation of blackwater and food waste.P.I.V.E.R.T. is an ambitious project of development of the 3rd generation biorefinery by 2020. Conceived around a technological complex with strict environmental criteria (aiming at obtaining a label HQE), P.I.V.E.R.T. federates all the national and main roads lifeblood, of the sector (some international partnerships are also under development). The major objectives of the P.I.V.E.R.T. project are: a valorization of oilseeds, proteins and lignocellulosic plant in its entirety (approach "entire plants''); an operation in closed circuit on the level of water and energy exchanges, the platform providing for its own needs, in a logic of industrial ecology; collection and valorization of a significant part of the CO2 produced by the activities of the refinery. Two strategies will be developed jointly: on one hand the development of "platform'' molecules entering the traditional circuits of chemistry, on the current markets with the renewable character, in addition, the development of new molecules having new properties, thus giving access to new markets. Thanks to the research and development realized by researchers dedicated to P.I.V.E.R.T., the industrial partners will have access to a capable structure to develop, and to test demonstrators preceding future industrial production units. Certain technological bricks could be tested in a large scale industrial platform dedicated to operational integration of innovations. The development of programming technologies of refineries will give to P.I.V.E.R.T. the means to develop new innovative processes and will give to the industrials the possibility of modeling their future production units.The Bi2WO6/BiVO4 photocatalyst with heterojunction structure was synthesized. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images indicated that Bi2WO6 nanoplate was loaded on the BiVO4 surface. UV vis diffusion absorption spectra (DRS) displayed no obvious difference between the band gap absorption edges of the BiVO4 and Bi2WO6/BiVO4. It was found that the phenol degradation rate with Bi2WO6/BiVO4 was 2.55 times as great as that with the BiVO4 under visible light (A > 400 nm) by the photocatalytic measurements. The enhanced photocatalytic performance of the Bi2WO6/BiVO4 sample was attributed to the improved separation efficiency of photogenerated hole electron pairs generated by the heterojunction between Bi2WO6 and BiVO4. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) is a persistent environmental contaminant found in human and wildlife tissues. It has been reported that PFOS can cause atrophy of the immune organs and apoptosis of immunocytes in rodents. However, the mechanism behind such cause is still unclear. To understand the model of cell death and its mechanism on lymphoid cells in vivo, we conducted a dose/response experiment in which 4 groups of male adult C57BL/6 mice (12 mice per group) were dosed daily by oral gavage with PFOS at 0, 0.0167, 0.0833, or 0.8333 mg/kg/day, yielding targeted Total Administered Dose (TAD) of 0, 1, 5, or 50 mg PFOS/kg, respectively, over 60 days. The results showed that spleen and thymus weight were significantly reduced in the highest PFOS-dose-group (TAD 50 mg PFOS/kg) compared to the control group, whereas liver weight was significantly increased. We analyzed the cell death via apoptosis with an annexin-V/propidium iodide assay by flow cytometry, and observed that both the percentage of apoptosis and the expression of the pro-apoptotic proteins p53 in splenocytes and thymocytes increased in a dose-related manner after PFOS treatment. We also observed that PFOS induced p53-dependent apoptosis through the cooperation between the Bcl-xl down regulation without changing the Bcl-2 and Bax expression. The down regulation of Bcl-xl was strongly indicating mitochondria! involvement in apoptosis. It is confirmed by the release of cytochrome c and activation of caspase-3. All of these findings establish an important role of p53 and mitochondrial function in PFOS induced toxic environment in the host. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Today 50 percent of the world's population lives in cities. This entails an excessive exploitation of natural resources, an increase in pollution, and an increase in the demand for food. One way of reducing the ecological footprint of cities is to introduce agricultural activities to them. In the current food and agriculture model, the fragmentation of the city and the countryside means energy use, CO2 emissions from transport, and large-scale marketing requirements. Rooftop Eco.Greenhouses (RTEG) consist of a greenhouse connected to a building in terms of energy, water, and CO2 flows; it is a new model for a sustainable production, an eco-innovative concept for producing high quality vegetables and improving the sustainability of buildings in cities. The main objective of this study is to examine the barriers and opportunities regarding the implementation of RTEG in Mediterranean cities in Europe. The work method consisted of discussion seminars involving an interdisciplinary group of experts in the area of agronomy, architecture, engineering, environmental sciences, industrial ecology, and other related disciplines. The barriers and opportunities of RTEG take into account social, economic, environmental, and technological aspects and were determined and analyzed according to three scenarios of implementation: residential buildings, educational or cultural buildings, and industrial buildings. We would highlight the interconnection of the building and the greenhouse as an opportunity of RTEG, making use of water, energy, and CO2 flows between both, as well as the decrease in food transportation requirements. The methodology applied to the study was positive due to the interdisciplinary participation of experts which facilitated a global vision of the implementation of the project.Municipal solid waste is a central concern for environmental policy, and the sociomateriality of waste-the ways in which waste is socially defined and dealt with-is an important issue for sustainability. We show how applying the European Union's waste policy through the European Waste Hierarchy (EWH) affects the sociomateriality of waste. The EWH ranks the desirability of different waste-management approaches according to their environmental impact. We investigate how the EWH has been acknowledged and interpreted in five different organizational contexts with relevance for Swedish waste management: EU environmental policy, the Swedish EPA, two municipal waste-management companies, and the trade organization Swedish Waste Management which represents the interests of municipal bodies involved with waste. In addition to preventing the production of waste, the EWH aims to disassemble, circulate, and reintroduce as much material as possible into production processes. We show how these aims shape paradoxical relationships between economy and society on the one hand, and environment and nature on the other, and open the way for a discussion of a politics of consumption through material management.Reusing heat through process integration in heat exchanger networks has long been a key measure for increasing energy efficiency in energy-intensive industries. Thermal pinch analysis is commonly used for a systematic matching of process streams and thus planning of optimal process integration in large chemical plants. The possible savings increase with the amount of heat and the number of integrated process streams. Therefore co- siting of several companies in a symbiotic network opens new opportunities for process integration even in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), but also introduces new challenges. Thermal pinch analysis is extended here to account for piping distances and fluctuations and limited availability of energy flows by adding additional costs for the piping system and a backup utility system in the optimization function. Cooperative game theory is proposed to derive a sharing of savings between the partners of the industrial symbiosis that is optimal for each partner and should prevent partners from leaving the network because of higher benefits in a subgroup or alone. It is argued that knowledge about the optimality of a network for each partner creates trust between the partners that is a necessary base for the long-term commitment needed in industrial symbioses. An exemplary symbiotic network combining the production of pulp and woody biomass energy carriers is used to illustrate the proposed approaches.Aging urban infrastructure is a common phenomenon in industrialized countries. The urban water supply pipeline network in the city of Oslo is an example. Even as it faces increasing operational, maintenance, and management challenges, it needs to better its environmental performance by reducing, for instance, the associated greenhouse gas emissions. In this article the authors examine the environmental life cycle performance of Oslo's water supply pipelines by analyzing annual resource consumption and emissions as well as life cycle assessment (LCA) impact potentials over a period of 16 years, taking into account the production/manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, and retirement of pipelines. It is seen that the water supply pipeline network of Oslo has already reached a state of saturation on a per capita basis, that is, it is not expanding any more relative to the population it serves, and the stock is now rapidly aging. This article is part of a total urban water cycle system analysis for Oslo, and analyzes more specifically the environmental impacts from the material flows in the water distribution network, examining six environmental impact categories using the SimaPro (version 7.1.8) software, Ecoinvent database, and the CML 2001 (version 2.04) methodology. The long-term management of stocks calls for a strong focus on cost optimization, energy efficiency, and environmental friendliness. Global warming and abiotic depletion emerge as the major impact categories from the water pipeline system, and the largest contribution is from the production and installation phases and the medium-size pipelines in the network.When mining is included in life cycle assessment (LCA), the solving of multifunctionality can be necessary in the inventory phase, as many mines produce multiple metals. Although the methodology of LCA is standardized, the methodology for solving this multifunctionality by allocation has remained controversial. In this article, we review the problems of allocation in the context of mining and introduce a new allocation method applicable to metal mining. The new normalized mass-based (NMB) allocation method is a derivative of a mass-based (MB) allocation method. In the new method, the masses of mined metals are normalized with predefined reference values to enable better description of the physical and economic causalities of the mining system. The NMB allocation method is compared to the MB and value-based (VB) allocation methods in case studies. The results indicate that the most suitable methods for allocation in metal mining are NMB allocation and VB allocation (when based on average prices). The ability to reflect changes in production and the economic value of metals without the need for additional price data make the NMB allocation method a reasonable option for allocation in environmental studies related to metal mining.Municipal residual waste (RW) produced in the Venice area undergoes mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) in the Fusina plant to produce refuse-derived fuel (RDF) that is then co-combusted in a nearby coal-fired power station. Being the first significant project for RDF co-firing in power plants in Italy, a number of different testing phases were performed starting in 2003, aimed at evaluating differences between so-called blank operation (i.e., with only coal feeding) and RDF co-firing at different feeding rates. The analysis of data gathered during the industrial experimentation shows a savings of 0.7 tonnes (t) of coal per each tonne of co-fired RDF; stack concentrations of some pollutants (hydrochloric acid [HCl], ammonia [NH3], carbon monoxide [CO], chromium [Cr], and lead [Pb]) appear slightly higher during co-combustion compared with blank operation, whereas concentrations of dust, sulfur oxides (SOx), and some metals (manganese [Mn], nickel [Ni], vanadium [V]) are lower. To assess the overall environmental performance of this practice, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study was then performed, where different strategies of energy recovery from RW were compared: production of RDF and its co-combustion in the Fusina power plant, RW combustion without any pretreatment in a mass-burn waste-to-energy (WTE) plant, and production of RDF and its combustion in a dedicated WTE plant. The LCA results show that co-combustion of RDF performs better than the other strategies for all impact categories evaluated. The only exception is when the WTE plant operates in combined heat and power mode, with very high overall conversion efficiencies.Fuel economy has been an effective indicator of vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for conventional gasoline-powered vehicles due to the strong relationship between fuel economy and vehicle life cycle emissions. However, fuel economy is not as accurate an indicator of vehicle GHG emissions for plug-in hybrid (PHEVs) and pure battery electric vehicles (EVs). Current vehicle labeling efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation have been focused on providing energy and environmental information to consumers based on U.S. national average data. This article explores the effects of variations in regional grids and regional daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on the total vehicle life cycle energy and GHG emissions of electrified vehicles and compare these results with information reported on the label and on the EPA's fuel economy Web site. The model results suggest that only 25% of the life cycle emissions from a representative PHEV are reflected on current vehicle labeling. The results show great variation in total vehicle life cycle emissions due to regional grid differences, including an approximately 100 gram per mile life cycle GHG emissions difference between the lowest and highest electric grid regions and up to a 100% difference between the state-specific emission values within the same electric grid regions. Unexpectedly, for two regional grids the life cycle GHG emissions were higher in electric mode than in gasoline mode. We recommend that labels include stronger language on their deficiencies and provide ranges for GHG emissions from vehicle charging in regional electricity grids to better inform consumers.This article reviews the scope of the discipline of industrial ecology and, in the context of an urgent requirement for substantial and rapid change in the face of global sustainability challenges, argues that the discipline could embrace a more proactive, interventionist stance in the form of renewable eco-industrial development. Existing eco-industrialism is presented as flawed, with many cases premised on the use of nonrenewable resources. Renewable eco-industrial development, while still nascent, has the potential both to resolve some sustainability challenges and to offer a new area of endeavor for industrial ecology, albeit one with its own unique difficulties, such as conflict with food production. Renewable eco-industrial development is further argued to bring industrial ecology into a more socially critical stance as it concerns the future allocation of scarce resources.Publicly Available Specification 2050-2011 (PAS 2050), the Green House Gas Product Protocol (GHGPP) standard and forthcoming guideline 14067 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have helped to propel carbon footprinting from a subdiscipline of life cycle assessment (LCA) to the mainstream. However, application of carbon footprinting to large portfolios of many distinct products and services is immensely resource intensive. Even if achieved, it often fails to inform company-wide carbon reduction strategies because footprint data are disjointed or don't cover the whole portfolio. We introduce a novel approach to generate standard-compliant product carbon footprints (CFs) for companies with large portfolios at a fraction of previously required time and expertise. The approach was developed and validated on an LCA dataset covering 1,137 individual products from a global packaged consumer goods company. Three novel techniques work in concert in a single approach that enables practitioners to calculate thousands of footprints virtually simultaneously: (i) a uniform data structure enables footprinting all products and services by looping the same algorithm; (ii) concurrent uncertainty analysis guides practitioners to gradually improve the accuracy of only those data that materially impact the results; and (iii) a predictive model generates estimated emission factors (EFs) for materials, thereby eliminating the manual mapping of a product or service's inventory to EF databases. These autogenerated EFs enable non-LCA experts to calculate approximate CFs and alleviate resource constraints for companies embarking on large-scale product carbon footprinting. We discuss implementation roadmaps for companies, including further road-testing required to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach for other product portfolios, limitations, and future improvements of the fast footprinting methodology.One method to assess the sustainability performance of products is life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), which assesses product performance considering the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of the life cycle. The results of LCSA can be used to compare different products or to support decision making toward sustainable production and consumption. In both cases, LCSA results could be too disaggregated and consequently too difficult to understand and interpret by decision makers. As non-experts are usually the target audience of experts and scientists, and are also involved in decision-making processes, the necessity for a straightforward but comprehensive presentation of LCSA results is becoming strategically important. The implementation of the dashboard of sustainability proposed in this article offers a possible solution. An outstanding characteristic of the dashboard of sustainability is the communicability of the results by means of a graphical representation (a cartogram), characterized by a suitable chromatic scale and ranking score. The integration of LCSA and the dashboard of sustainability into a so-called Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard (LCSD) is described here. The first application of LCSD to a group of hard floor coverings is presented to show the applicability and limitations of the methodology.We used a thermodynamic framework to characterize the resource consumption of the construction sector in 2001 in Catalonia, the northeast region of Spain. The analysis was done with a cradle-to-product life cycle approach using material flow analysis (MFA) and exergy accounting methodologies to quantify the total material and energy inputs in the sector. The aim was to identify the limitations of resource metabolism in the sector and to pinpoint the opportunities for improved material selection criteria, processing, reuse, and recycling for sustainable resource use. The results obtained from MFA showed that nonrenewables such as minerals and natural rocks, cement and derivatives, ceramics, glass, metals, plastics, paints and other chemicals, electric and lighting products, and bituminous mix products accounted for more than 98% of the input materials in the construction sector. The exergy analysis quantified a total 113.1 petajoules (PJ) of exergy inputs in the sector; utilities accounted for 57% of this exergy. Besides exergy inputs, a total of 6.85 million metric tons of construction and demolition waste was generated in 2001. With a recycling rate of 6.5%, the sector recovered 1.3 PJ of exergy. If the sector were able to recycle 80% of construction and demolition waste, then exergy recovery would be 10.3 PJ. Hence the results of this analysis indicate that improvements are required in manufacturing processes and recycling activities, especially of energy-intensive materials, in order to reduce the inputs of utilities and the extraction of primary materials from the environment.This article describes an approach developed to estimate the environmental external costs of the Belgian building sector. Several existing methods and related data sets for determining the monetary value of environmental impacts were reviewed and compared in light of their relevance to an impact assessment of the construction sector. This study concludes that the methods available consider different impacts and differ substantially in monetary values for identical impacts. A harmonized and transparent method is recommended to improve the feasibility and acceptance of internalizing external costs; agreement on the impacts to be assessed and their external costs based on current insights is important. Here, a new method is proposed for a life cycle impact assessment-based valuation of environmental external costs for application to the Belgian building sector. To enable a comprehensive assessment, it became clear that solely considering key pollutants is insufficient. Although this article focuses on the development and not on the implementation of the method proposed, implementation revealed that the life cycle environmental external cost of new buildings (meeting current insulation standards or better) is relatively small compared to the life cycle financial cost.The concept of sustainable manufacturing is a form of pollution prevention that integrates environmental considerations in the production of goods while focusing on efficient resource use. Taking the industrial ecology perspective, this efficiency comes from improved resource flow management. The assessment of material, energy and waste resource flows, therefore, offers a route to viewing and analysing a manufacturing system as an ecosystem using industrial ecology biological analogy and can, in turn, support the identification of improvement opportunities in the material, energy and waste flows. This application of industrial ecology at factory level is absent from the literature. This article provides a prototype methodology to apply the concepts of industrial ecology using material, energy and waste process flows to address this gap in the literature. Various modelling techniques were reviewed and candidates selected to test the prototype methodology in an industrial case. The application of the prototype methodology showed the possibility of using the material, energy and waste resource flows through the factory to link manufacturing operations and supporting facilities, and to identify potential improvements in resource use. The outcomes of the work provide a basis to build the specifications for a modelling tool that can support those analysing their manufacturing system to improve their environmental performance and move towards sustainable manufacturing.Integrated ecological-environmental management represents a new approach to traditional environmental management as it is to be understood as environmental management that also include ecological principles. It may be described by a procedure which follows 7 steps: (1) define the problem, (2) determine the ecosystem(s) involved, (3) identify causes and quantify all the sources to the problem, (4) set up a diagnosis to understand the relation between the problem and the sources, (5) determine the tools we need to implement to solve the problem, (6) take the proper measures or actions and (7) follow the recovery process. Steps 4-6 require the use of recently developed ecological disciplines and concepts. First, it involves ecological modelling, ecological indicators and ecosystem services, fields which are used to gain insight, increase understanding and set up a diagnosis for the problems of ecosystems. Second, it is necessary to identify measures and find solutions. This involves the use of environmental technology, one of the earliest initiatives, followed by ecological engineering (also designated ecotechnology), environmental legislation and cleaner technology, including industrial ecology, as tools to solve the problems. Without these seven relatively new ecological disciplines, it would not be possible to make an up-to-date integrated and holistic ecological-environmental management. These new disciplines serve to build an indispensable and strong bridge from ecology to environmental management. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Without monitoring anthropogenic pressures on the water environment, it is difficult to set realistic river restoration targets in relation to water quality. Therefore a more holistic approach is needed to systematically explore the links between socio-economic drivers and observed water quality-related impacts on river ecosystems. Using the DPSIR (Drivers-Pressures-State of the Environment-Impacts-Responses) framework, this study linked ecological river restoration with the socio-economic sector, with the focus on promoting a pressure-oriented water quality monitoring system. Based on the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) and relevant literature, it was found that most water quality-related indicators employed today are state/impacts-oriented, while very few are pressure-oriented. As a response, we call for more attention to a DPR (Drivers-Pressures-Responses) framework in developing an industrial ecology-based pressure-oriented water quality monitoring system for aiding ecological river restoration planning. This approach is characterized in general by accounting for material-related flows throughout the socio-economic sector in relation to river ecosystem degradation. Then the obtained information would help decision makers take appropriate measures to alleviate various significant human-induced wastes and emissions at their sources. We believe that such a pressure-oriented monitoring system will substantially complement traditional state/impacts-oriented environmental and ecological monitoring and help develop more proactive planning and decision-making processes for specific river restoration projects and general water quality management.Environmentally sound technologies are a key to reduce resource use and environmental impact. The paper reviews the state of knowledge of an analysis tool, life cycle assessment (LCA), by addressing three issues: 1) methodological foundations of LCA, 2) lifecycle inventory modeling, and 3) environmental performance indicators for wood supply systems. The study results in the following findings: 1) LCA is still not widely used and accepted in the forest operations engineering. 2) Only a few studies are based on state-of-the-art life cycle inventory analysis. 3) The boundaries of the studied systems are often too narrow, limiting comparability with standard LCA studies. 4) Most forest-related studies are based on direct process energy input only and are neglecting environmental burdens of upstream processes. 5) "Truncated LCAs", neglecting embodied burdens of road infrastructure and forest machines always result in an underestimation of environmental impacts or an overestimation of environmental performance, respectively. There is a need for LCA capacity building in the forest operations community, on the basis of which forest-related LCA studies should become more comprehensive and comparable with studies of the core LCA community.In this study, photocatalysts of ZnAl2O4 nanorods were obtained by adjusting pH values of the solution through hydrothermal routes, and then the Ag/ZnAl2O4 catalysts under pH = 6 were synthesized via loading different amounts of silver. Their structural properties were systematically investigated by SEM, TEM, XRD, BET, DRS, XPS and FTIR techniques. The photocatalytic performances and activities of the prepared samples and commercial P25 were comparatively studied by the degradation of gaseous toluene under UV irradiation in in situ FT-IR reactor. The results revealed that the prepared Ag/ZnAl2O4 nanorods with loading 1 wt.% Ag were more active than other prepared samples and commercial P25 in photocatalytic oxidation of gaseous toluene. Hydroxyl groups on the surface of Ag/ZnAl2O4 nanorods are able to react with photo-produced benzaldehyde, which is then retained on the catalyst surface leading to the progressive deactivation of the catalyst in the gas-solid system. The photocatalytic oxidation of gaseous pollutant over UV-illuminated Ag/ZnAl2O4 nanorods is a promising technique for air purification. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial Symbiosis entails the transformation of linear industrial processes into closed loop systems: matter and energy flows that were wastes become resources for other processes (by-products), resulting in a reduction of both natural resources consumption and waste production. Thermoeconomics has two key advantages as analysis method for Industrial Symbiosis: it provides a systemic and rigorous framework and, due to the use of exergy for flow quantification, streams of different nature are measured in the same unit. The goal of the paper is to analyze in depth the process of exergy cost formation of flows within a system, which change when it is integrated with other systems, by using two complimentary approaches. First, a strategy based on irreversibility of the different components and effects of waste internalization already developed is applied for the first time to an example of Industrial Symbiosis. Second, a new method tracing the origin of the different resources consumed by the system is developed. This approach is very interesting for Industrial Symbiosis examples, characterized by a diversity of resources. A system composed of a coal-fired power plant, a cement kiln and a gas-fired boiler operating in isolated and integrated fashion is analyzed by using both presented approaches. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.PCDD/Fs in the urban air of Dalian, China were monitored with high-volume active sampler from November 2009 to October 2010. The concentration of Cl4-8DD/Fs ranged from 3065 to 49538 fg m(-3), with an average of 10249 fg m(-3). The international toxic equivalents (I-TEQ) value of that was 61.8-1182 fg m(-3), with an average of 235 fg m(-3), which was comparable to those in the other urban locations around the world. It was found that the Cl4-8DD/Fs appeared to be present mainly in the particle phase during winter, spring and autumn, while during summer which were dominantly in gas phase. The ratio of Cl4-8DD/Fs present in particle phase increased with the increasing level of chlorination. The concentrations of PCDFs and PCDDs decreased with the increase of chlorinated level, while the concentrations of 2,3,7,8-PCDDs congeners increased with the increase of chlorination level. The homolog profiles of the concentrations of PCDFs presented were higher than those of the PCDDs, which indicated the PCDD/Fs pollution source of the air in Dalian was characteristic for thermal source pollution. The correlation analysis of meteorological parameters with the concentrations of Cl4-8CDD/Fs was conducted using SPSS packages, and it was found that the ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure were important factors influence the concentration of PCDD/Fs in the air. The respiratory risk and intake dioxins of the residents around the sampling sites were studied in the paper. It was found that Junge-Pankow model was much more accurate in predicting the gas-particle partitioning behavior of PCDD/Fs homologues during winter, while the Harner-Bidleman model shows better agreement with the measured data during winter and summer.Biological reduction of Fe(III)EDTA is one of the key steps in nitrogen oxides removal in the integrated approach of metal chelate absorption combined with microbial reduction. Paracoccus denitrificans ZGL1 was used as a model bacterium to evaluate the process of Fe(III)EDTA reduction by such microorganisms that could carry out the simultaneous reduction of NO chelated by Fe(II)EDTA (Fe(II)EDTA-NO) and Fe(III)EDTA. Enzymes analysis indicated Fe(III)EDTA reductase of ZGL1 was located both in the membrane and cytoplasmic fractions. Glucose was identified as the most efficient electron donor for Fe(III)EDTA reduction. Better reduction performance was obtained with higher initial cell concentration corresponding to a specific reduction rate of 8.7 mu mol h(-1) mg protein(-1). The presence of sulfate and thiosulfate had no influences on both cell growth and Fe(III)EDTA reduction. Fe(III)EDTA reduction rate and cell growth could be inhibited by addition of sulfite mainly due to its direct and indirect toxic effects. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is a well-established analytical method to quantify environmental impacts, which has been mainly applied to products. However, recent literature would suggest that it has also the potential as an analysis and design tool for processes, and stresses that one of the biggest challenges of this decade in the field of process systems engineering (PSE) is the development of tools for environmental considerations. This article attempts to give an overview of the integration of LCA methodology in the context of industrial ecology, and focuses on the use of this methodology for environmental considerations concerning process design and optimization. The review identifies that LCA is often used as a multi-objective optimization of processes: practitioners use LCA to obtain the inventory and inject the results into the optimization model. It also shows that most of the LCA studies undertaken on process analysis consider the unit processes as black boxes and build the inventory analysis on fixed operating conditions. The article highlights the interest to better assimilate PSE tools with LCA methodology, in order to produce a more detailed analysis. This will allow optimizing the influence of process operating conditions on environmental impacts and including detailed environmental results into process industry.Industrial Ecology (IE) is considered a recent but very promising research field; it offers new perspectives of solutions to environmental problems related to production that combines the aim of sustainability, both global and local, with the competitiveness of companies. The application of IE principles at the local level lead to the development of Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs). An EIP can arise spontaneously, by the initiative of companies, or be guided by local government; it can result in the creation of a new industrial site or in the involvement of production plants already present in a given region. A number of factors may promote or prevent the implementation of an EIP: level of analysis; geographic and technical requirements; homogeneity/heterogeneity of industries; stakeholders and local community involvement; regulatory system. We call them Key Drivers. Industrial cluster is the referential model of territorial agglomeration of companies; it has been proven to be one of the best models of Italian industrial development in terms of efficiency and flexibility, with a strong involvement of local community. EIPs could be considered a viable solution to increase sustainability and competitiveness of existing industrial clusters, exploiting common features of both models, primarily, the geographic proximity of companies. However, also in countries characterized by a large diffusion of industrial clusters, such as Italy, there are no operating EIPs. This paper presents the results of a research project, originally aimed at revitalizing a historical chemical site located in Bussi sul Tirino (Abruzzo Region-Italy) through the application of IE principles. Furthermore, the role of Key Drivers in the specific context of existing industrial cluster is analysed. Empirical evidences show a particular suitability of the Bussi Chemical Site to evolve into an EIP, leading towards economic, environmental and social benefits. The involvement of neighbouring industrial clusters and the establishment of new companies in the chemical site are considered in potential scenarios design. Results also point out that the history of the long-standing industrial cluster influenced the presence and the role played by some Key Drivers, especially local community, which proved to be crucial in preventing the full implementation of the EIP. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although, in the theory of industrial ecology, a recycling industry is essential in order to establish a closed loop material system, in practice, the contribution of that industry is still limited, and more studies are needed to enlarge its role. The objective of this paper is to quantitatively analyze factors that influence the performance of recycling projects in Japanese Eco-Towns. We develop two multi-regression models using questionnaire survey data from recycling facilities and cross-sectional data from 23 Eco-Towns to analyze the amount of waste treated by and the operating rate of recycling facilities. Dependent variables are introduced through a review of the literature on industrial symbiosis and the situation of Japanese Eco-Towns, focusing on three necessary features: recycling boundaries, government policy intervention, and local collaboration and partnership. The results of two simple regression models of recycling facilities in Eco-Towns offer several fruitful insights that aid in understanding the performance of recycling projects. First, recycling facilities' geographical proximity to users of recycled products can contribute to high operating rates. Second, subsidies for constructing facilities do not improve recycling projects' operating rates. Third, collaboration, rather than competition, among recycling facilities can improve their operating rates. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A review of the situation of bio-fuels in the world, mainly of biodiesel is made. A comparison among the different raw materials for the synthesis of biodiesel is done and it is emphasized in the production of biodiesel from microalgae. The different fresh and salt water micro-algae in its lipid content and productivity are compared. A review of the process of biosynthesis of lipids in microalgae and how to improve the production of lipids in microalgae is shown. It is discussed the importance of the genetic manipulation to highly lipid-producing microalgae (example: Botryrococuus braunni, Nannochloropsis sp, Noechlorisoleobundans and Nitschia sp.). A study of the advantages and disadvantages of the different systems of cultivation of microalgae is also made. Finally, it is shown a perspective of biofuels from microalgae. Among the main challenges to overcome to produce biodiesel from microalgae are: the cost of production of biomass, which involves the optimization of media, selection and manipulation of strains and photobioreactors design. The process of separation of biomass, the extraction of oils and by-products, the optimization of the process of transesterification, purification and use of by-products must also be considered.This article is an intellectual history of two enduring binariessociety-nature and city-countrysideand their co-identification, told through evolving uses of the concept of urban metabolism. After recounting the emergence of the modern society-nature opposition in the separation of town and country under early industrial capitalism, I interpret three ecologiessuccessive periods of urban metabolism research spanning three disciplines within the social sciences. The first is the human ecology of the Chicago School, which treated the city as an ecosystem in analogy to external, natural ecosystems. The second is industrial ecology: materials-flow analyses of cities that conceptualize external nature as the source of urban metabolism's raw materials and the destination for its social wastes. The third is urban political ecology, a reconceptualization of the city as a product of diverse socio-natural flows. By analyzing these three traditions in succession, I demonstrate both the efficacy and the limits to Catton and Dunlap's distinction between a human exemptionalist paradigm and a new ecological paradigm in sociology.China is one of the largest glyphosate producers in the world. The production process consumes a large amount of energy and discharges a huge volume of wastewater. In the glyphosate production system, the by-product recovery process consumes the largest amount of energy. To conserve energy consumption and minimize wastewater discharge, the study applies pinch technology to optimize the heat exchanger network of the by-product recovery subsystem. The results show that the optimal temperature for the process is 8A degrees C. Theoretically, the optimized heat exchanger network has the potential to reduce the annual consumption of steam, condensed water, and the freshwater resource by 1.53, 26.84 and 56.72%, respectively, when compared with current consumption levels. At the same time, the total annual cost can be reduced by 100,000 dollars per year, which means that the optimization can achieve the win-win objective of the economic and environmental benefits in the glyphosate production process.Sustainable waste management in the industrial ecology perspective brings enormous challenges to the existing methodology of waste analysis at the industrial park (IP) scale. In this study, a four-step method was proposed for industrial solid waste (ISW) flow analysis of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) and applied to two IPs in eastern China. According to a park-wide census of 619 industrial enterprises and 105 questionnaires by a survey from 2006 to 2008, the results indicated that: 1) at the enterprise scale, more than 60% of enterprises were small-ISW-generation enterprises which encountered great difficulties on effective waste management; 2) at the IP scale, though the two IPs have set up their own environmental management systems and passed the ISO 14001 certification, the efficiencies of the ISW management systems have yet to be improved in the industrial ecology perspective; and 3) at the regional scale, more than 97% of ISW flowed within the provincial region, indicating that the provincial governments prevented the wastes from flowing into their own "back yard". Effective waste management should be placed in a broader perspective. Approaches to sustainable waste management may include wastes exchange, efficient waste and information flow, virtual EIP, waste minimization clubs and regionalization of waste management.The global consumption of natural resources is soaring, especially in rapidly industrializing economies. This increasing demand is depleting resource stocks and is a major driver of other environmental problems, including climate change and waste. With rising prices and growing concerns about resource access, these trends are increasingly attracting policy makers attention. Some developed countries have devised indicator systems, based on economy-wide material flow analysis/accounting (EW-MFA), to monitor resource consumption. This article consists of two separate but related parts: (1) a study of how EW-MFA indicators are used in a number of developed countries, including analysis of the commonalities between countries that are actively using these indicators in policy, and (2) a survey of the current capacity for EW-MFA in developing countries, including data availability and policy uptake. This study found that countries in which policy makers show a great interest in EW-MFA indicators are characterized by large resource imports and large net export of manufactured goods. Many rapidly industrializing countries demonstrate similar characteristics. The study of developing countries found that many of the data for EW-MFA exist, but collection is fragmented and access is limited. This article recommends that capacity development of EW-MFA in rapidly industrializing economies should first coordinate a national focal point and then raise awareness among government officials, strengthen institutions collecting EW-MFA data, and train researchers and experts in EW-MFA techniques and effective policy interaction.Acid rain remains an important environmental problem. The Chinese steel industry is becoming a key domestic emitter of sulfur dioxide (SO2), the central molecular component of acid rain. In this study SO2 emission potential is assessed by developing a material flow analysis (MFA) model and generating four different SO2 industry emission scenarios from 2006 to 2030, with each scenario representing a possible development path for the industry. When SO2 emission factors in every unit of steel production are presumed to remain constant through 2030, scenario analysis results show that under a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario SO2 emissions will experience sustained growth to a peak value of 1.73 million metric tons (megatons, Mt) through 2020, approximately 52% higher than that in 2006, and that this trend is unlikely to be reversed. The high scenario and medium scenario demonstrate that it is difficult to control SO2 emissions to an acceptable level by only upgrading technology and making industrial structural adjustments. Yet through the incorporation of sintering gas desulfurization, the low scenario can smoothly bridge the gap between the simulative SO2 emissions and the envisioned value, since sintering is the biggest emitter in this industry. Once the desulfurization rate of sintering gas reaches 60%, SO2 emissions will be less than the level of 0.60 Mt in 2030 and will also meet the reduction goals. Moreover, scenario analysis suggests that single terminal control cannot solve the problem of high SO2 emissions. Therefore, in order to control the total SO2 emissions of the steel industry it is imperative that two or more measures be combined.This study introduces the 2005 life cycle data for nickel in 50 countries and presents a comparative analysis of the 2000 and 2005 nickel and stainless steel cycles for these countries. The life cycles of the two metals are linked by nickel's role as a major alloying element in most stainless steels. Between 2000 and 2005, the global use of both metals grew, driven by China's extraordinary growth and despite the fact that many industrialized countries decreased their metal use during that time. China's and India's growth of stainless steel use was greater than that of nickel use, a result of price-driven substitution away from nickel-containing stainless steels. The intensity of use (IU) in industrialized countries is about 30 to 50 kilograms (kg) nickel/million U.S. dollars (USD), and 300 to 500 kg stainless steel/million USD. High-income countries decreased their IU of both metals between 2000 and 2005, while low- and medium-income countries increased their IU of stainless steel. At the per capita level, average industrialized countries use about 1 kg of nickel and 11 kg of stainless steel. Were China's and India's projected urban areas in 2025 to use similar amounts of the two metals, they alone would require the equivalent of global nickel production in 2000, and 200% of the world's stainless steel production in 2005. In China, substantial nickel and stainless steel end-of-life flows will arise between 2015 and 2020, and efficient collection and separation systems should be prepared now to maximize the potential environmental and resource benefits of recycling.This study estimated paper and paperboard demand, pulpwood demand, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from production of paper and paperboard through 2050 in ten Asian countries. Under scenarios of varying population, gross domestic product (GDP), and per capita paper and paperboard demand, we analyzed the relationship between economic growth and consumption of paper and paperboard. We also evaluated options to reduce CO2 emissions through increased use of black liquor, waste paper pulping, and wood chemical pulping, as well as improvements in pulp, paper, and paperboard production technology. The quadratic curve model (inverted U) for per capita consumption of paper and paperboard against per capita GDP resulted in significant regression coefficients and higher adjusted R2 values than linear and logarithmic curve models for all uses of paper and paperboard. The estimated paper and paperboard demand in the ten countries in 2050 ranged from 112% (328%) to 156% (454%) of total 2005 consumption for the world (for the ten Asian countries). Of this estimated paper and paperboard demand, China accounted for about 50% and India 20%. The estimated pulpwood demand in these ten countries in 2050 ranged from 13% (48%) to 21% (84%) of global (ten country) 2005 wood supply potential. The introduction or increase of the use of black liquor, waste paper pulping, the combination of wood chemical pulping and black liquor, and technological improvements produced CO2 reductions of 24%, 5%, 32%, and 25%, respectively, compared to 2050 emission levels in the no-measure (unadjusted) option, assuming sustainable forest management.This study evaluates the sustainability of biodiesel for transport in Thailand in terms of the availability of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) and crude palm oil (CPO) supply to satisfy the future demands for food and fuel, and the contribution of palm biodiesel to mitigating climate change if biodiesel induces land-use change (LUC). Five land conversions including rubber, cassava, paddy field, set-aside land, and forest land to oil palm are considered along with their displacement effects to other land types to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the direct and indirect land-use impacts. The net feedstock balance reveals that the policy to expand 0.4 million hectare (Mha) for new oil palm plantations accompanied with an increase of FFB yield to 22 megagrams per hectare (Mg/ha) by 2012 would help avoid a CPO shortage; however, this increase in land use needs to be strongly encouraged. The GHG analyses show a wide range of net GHG balances compared to diesel depending on which type of land is converted and which options are used to treat the oil palm wastes. Except for forest land conversion, direct LUC emissions from converting other lands to oil palm will render benefit to the GHG balance of biodiesel. Indirect LUC emissions through crop displacements, however, will generally worsen the balance. Several recommendations are therefore suggested for sustainable palm biodiesel production in the future.As some of the most rapidly urbanizing places in the world, China's cities have a unique relationship with global climate change. The economies found in Chinese cities are extremely resource and energy intensive; as a result, they produce significant levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This article provides comprehensive and detailed emissions inventories for Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin, which were found to be responsible for 12.8, 10.7, and 11.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita (t CO2-eq/capita), respectively, in 2006. The majority of emissions were from electricity production, heating and industrial fuel use, and ground transportation. The prevalence of coal in the energy supply mix (including up to 98% in Tianjin) was a fundamental cause of high energy emissions. Non-energy emissions from industrial processes were also significant, including emissions from cement and steel production. The GHG inventories for Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin point to sectors requiring the most attention in terms of low-carbon growth. Compared to ten other global cities, Chinese cities are among the highest per capita emitters, alluding to the important challenge China faces of reducing emissions while improving the quality of life for urban residents. Accordingly, this article concludes with a discussion of the opportunities and issues concerning low-carbon growth in China, including the potential for renewable energy and the difficulties associated with emissions relocation and policy adoption.This study investigates the key drivers affecting emission increases in terms of population growth, economic growth, industrial transformation, and energy use in six Chinese megacities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. The six cities represent the most-developed regions in China and they have similar per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as many developed countries. There is an urgent need to quantify the magnitude of each factor in driving the emissions changes in those cities so that a potential bottom-up climate mitigation policy design at the city and sectoral levels can be initiated. We adopt index decomposition analysis and present the results in both additive and multiplicative approaches to reveal the absolute and relative levels of each factor in driving emission changes during 19852007. Among all cities, economic effect and energy intensity effect have always been the two dominant factors contributing to the changes in carbon emissions. This study reveals that there are large variations in the ways driving forces contribute to emission levels in different cities and industrial sectors.This study is based on the three types of residential buildings with framework structures in Beijing: concrete framework construction (CFC), light-gauge steel framework construction (SFC), and wood framework construction (WFC). The analysis of the environmental load across the life cycle of the three types of buildings is conducted using life cycle assessment (LCA) according to the protocols of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040/44. The functional unit is the three material building designs, which possess the same function and design plan, and are built in concrete, light-gauge steel, and light frame wood, inclusive of their respective envelope materials. Throughout the investigation, the calculations of the environmental load data of materials, energy consumption, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are comprehensively assessed and compared. The study shows that over the life cycle, the energy consumption of CFC is almost the same as that of SFC, and each of them is approximately 30% higher than that of WFC. Building use, steel material production, cement production, gypsum board production, and material transport are the main construction activities related to the energy consumption; the net CO2 emission of CFC is 44% higher than that of SFC and 49% higher than that of WFC. The main source of CO2 emission is the use of electricity; its contributions to the net CO2 emissions of WFC, SFC, and CFC are 67%, 64%, and 44%, respectively. The net CO2 emissions in the transport category cannot be ignored, with proportions amounting to 8%, 12%, and 11% for WFC, SFC, and CFC, respectively.Due to its position as the world's largest energy consumer and carbon emitter, China is facing the great challenge of controlling its rising carbon emissions. As a large country with great disparities in economic development and industrial structure among its regions, it is essential to understand the carbon emission characteristics of regions and industrial sectors in order to formulate effective and targeted policies to achieve domestic carbon emission reduction targets. For this reason, we have conducted a comprehensive analysis in this article of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions structure and major responsible sectors for 19 provincial regions of mainland China. Great disparities in direct CO2 emissions and intensities are identified across regions. We show that the direct CO2 intensities in regions are affected by not only the economic development level, but also by the structure of the carbon-intensive sectors and sectoral CO2 emissions intensities. A region-by-region fine-scale breakdown analysis demonstrates that both the direct CO2 emissions and total CO2 emissions are highly concentrated in a minority of sectors: the construction sector is the major contributor to the total CO2 emissions in all regions, followed by the services sectors as a whole. Moreover, the petroleum and chemicals sector, nonmetallic mineral products sector, metal products sector and electricity and steam production sector should also receive more attention, as they are identified as highly carbon intensive in most of the regions studied, especially through the close linkage with the construction sector. Based on these results, we discuss and propose policy implications for controlling the rising CO2 emissions in regions of mainland China.This study analyzes the potential environmental impacts and socioeconomic benefits of installing a pilot plant for biodiesel production from used cooking oil (UCO) collected from hotels, restaurants, and bars in the Copacabana district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Currently much of this oil is used to produce soaps or simply disposed of directly into the sewage system, contributing to the eutrophication of bodies of water. An analysis is made of the production of biodiesel by the alkaline transesterification of UCO with ethanol using a sodium hydroxide catalyst. In order to analyze the environmental impacts, the ten stages of the life cycle of biodiesel made from UCO are assessed. The environmental impact of producing 1 metric ton of biodiesel is evaluated on the basis of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. In order to assess the economic feasibility of the pilot plant, a cash flow deterministic method was employed to evaluate the investment required. The social performance of the project was assessed using Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators. The environmental analysis showed that ethanol production and fuel combustion are the stages that had the highest environmental impact. The findings of the economic analysis showed that it would be feasible for the Rio de Janeiro city council to implement a pilot plant in the Copacabana district of the city. The results of the social performance analysis indicated that the project would have a positive impact on local job and income generation.This paper traces the history, and current challenges, of climate science and urban design in Greater Manchester, UK. The Mancunian metropolis is a remarkable example of a 'climatic city', one that shapes its climate as much as it is shaped by it. From the efforts to control smoke and clear slums in the 19th century, to today's race to be at the forefront of 'green' and 'sustainable' cities, climate is a central actor in Manchester's history and will likely be so in the near future. We analyse the continuities and inflections of this history of climate science and urban planning in the metropolis by drawing on historical material and interviews with key local stakeholders, to understand the natural, social and political construction of this singular 'industrial ecology'. Ultimately, we ask whether stakeholders in the Greater Manchester area can overcome existing challenges to go towards a greener, more resilient and sustainable city. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Growing environmental concerns caused by natural resource depletion and pollution need to be addressed. One approach to these problems is Sustainable Development, a key concept for our society to meet present as well as future needs worldwide. Manufacturing clearly has a major role to play in the move towards a more sustainable society. However it appears that basic principles of environmental sustainability are not systematically applied, with practice tending to focus on local improvements. The aim of the work presented in this paper is to adopt a more holistic view of the factory unit to enable opportunities for wider improvement. This research analyses environmental principles and industrial practice to develop a conceptual manufacturing ecosystem model as a foundation to improve environmental performance. The model developed focuses on material, energy and waste flows to better understand the interactions between manufacturing operations, supporting facilities and surrounding buildings. The research was conducted in three steps: (1) existing concepts and models for industrial sustainability were reviewed and environmental practices in manufacturing were collected and analysed; (2) gaps in knowledge and practice were identified; (3) the outcome is a manufacturing ecosystem model based on industrial ecology (IE). This conceptual model has novelty in detailing IE application at factory level and integrating all resource flows. The work is a base on which to build quantitative modelling tools to seek integrated solutions for lower resource input, higher resource productivity, fewer wastes and emissions, and lower operating cost within the boundary of a factory unit. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Natural resources provide the basis for our life on Earth. This article presents the accounts of China's direct material input (DMI) during 19982008. Using decomposition, we examine factors that have influenced changes in recent resource use in China. China's resource demand in 20112015 is projected, based on China's 12th Five-Year Plan. Finally, effective policies to restrain China's resource demand are discussed with the following conclusions: (1) During 19982008, China's DMI doubled, from 11 gigatons (Gt) to 22 Gt. Metallic minerals had the strongest growth, quadrupling; nonmetallic minerals and fossil fuels more than doubled, but biomass remained stable. In relative terms, nonmetallic minerals dominated, with more than 60% of total DMI. (2) Factors of affluence (A) and material use intensity (T), respectively, contributed most to the increase and decrease of DMI, but the overall decrease effect is much smaller. Factors of population (P) and recycling (R) only slightly affected changes in China's DMI. (3) During 20082015, China's DMI is expected to increase by 27% to 38%, from 22 Gt to 28 to 31 Gt. The average annual rate of increase of DMI would drop to 3% to 5%, from 7% during 19982008. (4) Designing new products and infrastructure that use less energy and materials and changing consumption patterns to be more sustainable are crucial to the future resource strategy of China. More policies are expected to improve China's material use intensity and recycling levels.Rapid industrialization and urbanization has been occurring in China since the introduction of the opening-up policy in 1978. The demands of building and infrastructure construction have increased rapidly, especially in the transportation and housing sectors in China. Large amounts of construction materials have been required in building construction and maintenance of the railway and road systems, especially steel and cement. Continued cement and steel production will require heavy raw material resource consumption and will emit a great deal of carbon dioxide (CO2). This study forecasts future steel and cement demand and related resource consumption and CO2 emissions for building and transportation infrastructure based on a material flow analysis of China. Furthermore, the effect of prolonging the lifetime of building and transportation infrastructure is appraised. The results indicate that building and transportation infrastructure will increase sharply through 2030. Although the demand for new construction will then decrease, steel and cement consumption will remain at a high level through 2050 because these are needed to maintain roads and railways. In addition, prolonging the lifetime of buildings and infrastructure is a useful way to avoid more raw material consumption and to mitigate CO2 emissions. However, its main effect is to decrease the demolition of buildings and reduce material use for the maintenance of roads and railways. Currently not enough countermeasures have been implemented to realize a low carbondematerialization society in the building and transportation construction sector. Future comprehensive efforts should include the reuse of waste construction material and a reduction in raw material consumption intensity by applying technical innovations.Urbanization has significant impacts on local, regional, and global biogeochemical cycles, including through nutrient enrichment by food consumption, and especially in rapidly urbanizing countries. This article presents a time-series estimation of phosphorus (P) metabolism through food consumption in Chinese cities and examines its relationship to income level during the period 19852006. Our results show that approximately 39% of the total dietary P inflow is exported through direct sewage discharge without treatment, 35% is exported via the output of solid human excreta, 7% is exported through sewage sludge landfill, and 19% is left within urban areas. The total inflow of dietary P to urban systems increases with per capita disposable income level. Furthermore, the ratio of dietary P remaining in urban systems to total dietary P inflow, the dietary P remaining in urban systems per capita, and the dietary P remaining per unit urban built-up area respond in an inverted U shape to increases in per capita disposable income; the per capita outflow of dietary P shows a U-shaped response. These relationships may indicate that the impact of urban dietary P on urban environmental systems follows the traditional environmental Kuznets curve, while the environmental impact of urban dietary P on surrounding nonurban ecosystems initially decreases but then increases with the rising income of urban residents.China faces the challenge of balancing unprecedented economic growth and environmental sustainability. Rather than a homogenous country that can be analyzed at the national level, China is a vast country with significant regional differences in physical geography, regional economy, demographics, industry structure, and household consumption patterns. There are pronounced differences between the much-developed Eastern-Coastal economic zone and the less developed Central and Western economic zones in China. Such variations lead to large regional discrepancies in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Using the 28 regional input-output tables of China for 2002 and 2007 and structural decomposition analysis (SDA), we analyze how changes in population, technology, economic structure, urbanization, and household consumption patterns drive regional CO2 emissions. The results show a significant gap between the three economic zones in terms of CO2 emission intensity, as the Eastern-Coastal zone possesses more advanced production technologies compared to the Central and Western zones. The most polluting sectors and largest companies are state-owned enterprises and thus are potentially able to speed up knowledge transfer between companies and regions. The greening of the more developed areas is not only a result of superior technology, but also of externalizing production and pollution to the poorer regions in China. The results also show that urbanization and associated income and lifestyle changes were important driving forces for the growth of CO2 emissions in most regions in China. Therefore, focusing on technology and efficiency alone is not sufficient to curb regional CO2 emissions.We use the input-output tables in constant prices extended with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for examining the development of China, a country undergoing rapid growth. We undertake this empirical analysis in terms of a new and therefore rarely applied methodology: instead of average coefficients characterizing the average (old) technology operating throughout a particular reporting year, we calculate marginal coefficientsin monetary and CO2 termsthat capture the additional (new) technology installed after that year. Marginal coefficients are increasingly recommended in the literature for applications such as consequential life cycle assessment, where they are supposed to lead to more realistic results, especially in prospective analyses. Our work provides a first, broad overview about the magnitude and distribution of these coefficients across recent years in China's rapidly growing economy for which marginal coefficients could be expected to differ greatly from average coefficients. We find that (1) marginal coefficients can differ substantially from average coefficients, thus lending support to the need expressed in the literature for coining consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) and similar prospective assessment in marginal rather than average terms; (2) marginal CO2 emissions coefficients differ more from their average counterparts than marginal monetary coefficients, showing that for China, within-sector technological solutions to emissions abatement have played a more important role than the reorganization of supply structures; and (3) there exists considerable scatter and variation of marginal coefficients across years, which to a certain extent precludes the identification of clear temporal and sectoral trends.Production in emerging economies, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and Argentina (BRICSA), increased substantially over the past two decades. This is, on the one hand, due to growing domestic demand within these countries, and, on the other hand, due to a deepened international division of work. Global trade linkages have become denser and production chains are no longer restricted to only one or two countries. The volume of international trade in intermediate inputs as well as final consumption goods has tripled in the past two decades. With this, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and materials embodied in traded goods have increased, making it increasingly difficult to identify the actual causes of emissions and material extractions, as producing and extracting countries are not necessarily consuming the resulting goods. Using the multiregional input-output Global Resource Accounting Model (GRAM), this article shows how global carbon emissions and materials requirements are allocated from producing/extracting countries to consuming countries. It thereby contributes to the rapidly growing body of literature on environmental factors embodied in international trade by bringing two key environmental categoriesCO2 emissions and materialsinto one consistent and global framework of analysis for the first time. The results show that part of the increase in carbon emissions and materials extraction in BRICSA is caused by increasing amounts of trade with countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as well as a growing demand for goods and services produced within BRICSA.The South-to-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) is planned in China to alleviate the problem of the heterogeneous distribution of water resources. The project is expected to reduce water stress and decrease associated environmental impacts in northern China. This article utilizes life cycle impact assessment modeling, including regionalized water consumption impact assessment and an interregional input-output model, to examine the potential of the SNWTP to reduce the impact of water consumption embodied in final demand. The environmental impacts of water consumption embodied in final demands within northern and southern China are calculated based on current conditions and on the scenario that the water transfer project is completed. The results show that the SNWTP increases the environmental impact of water consumption in southern China and reduces it in northern China. In total, the SNWTP will lead to a 5.74% net reduction in the environmental impact of water consumption embodied in the final demand from both southern and northern China. When monetized, the environmental benefit of the SNWTP could translate into 436 million euro (570 million U.S. dollars) per year, paying the total project cost back over 30 years without considering non-environmental benefits and costs.Foundry sand and Waelz slag have been used to replace clay in the production of red clay bricks. These are both problematic wastes in Northern Spain that are currently landfilled. A semi-scale industrial trial incorporating 20-40 weight percent additions to bricks has been completed. Trial samples have been compared with control bricks containing no waste additions. The physico-chemical, mechanical and environmental properties have been evaluated. Incorporating Waelz slag and foundry sand in the mix allows the production of more resource efficient, lower cost bricks. Performance benefits included improved extrusion properties during forming, lower water absorption of the sintered brick due to reduced connected porosity, significant reductions in CO2 and NOx emissions during firing and improvements in potential leachability of some pollutants in relation to samples containing only Waelz slag or foundry sand. However, it is necessary to limit the addition of Waelz slag to less than 30 wt.% in order to meet regulatory leaching limits for Mo. Other physico-chemical and mechanical parameters were not significantly affected by the addition of these industrial by-products. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study was to examine if long-term anaerobic digestion of food waste in a semi-continuous single-stage reactor could be stabilized by supplementing trace elements. Contrary to the failure of anaerobic digestion of food waste alone, stable anaerobic digestion of food waste was achieved for 368 days by supplementing trace elements. Under the conditions of OLR (organic loading rates) of 2.19-6.64 g VS (volatile solid)/L day and 20-30 days of HRT (hydraulic retention time), a high methane yield (352-450 mL CH4/g VSadded) was obtained, and no significant accumulation of volatile fatty acids was observed. The subsequent investigation on effects of individual trace elements (Co, Fe, Mo and Ni) showed that iron was essential for maintaining stable methane production. These results proved that the food waste used in this study was deficient in trace elements. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Polypyrrole (ppy)-modified electrode was used for electroreduction of Cr(VI) and showed favorable advantage with extremely higher removal percentage and current efficiency over stainless steel (SS) electrode. In potentiostatic (PS) process and in stagnant solution. ppy electrode achieved a Cr(VI) removal efficiency of 16% and a current efficiency of 23% compared to 0 for SS electrode at a potential of -0.8 V. In potentiodynamic (PD) process and in stagnant solutions, ppy electrode exhibited a Cr(VI) removal efficiency of 56% at a potential range from -0.8 to 0.8 V whereas SS electrode presented none at the same conditions. Solution stirring promoted mass transportation and dramatically improved Cr(VI) removal efficiency, achieving 92% (ppy electrode) and 18% (SS electrode) in PS process and 100% (ppy electrode) and 36% (SS electrode) in PD process at 100 rpm. ppy electrode exhibited an efficient Cr(VI) reduction at a wide potential range from -0.8 to 0.8V than the potential ranges of -0.8 to 0 V and 0-0.8 V. While ppy stability under PD condition of -0.8 to 0.8 V was not as satisfactory as PS condition at -0.8 V. but better than PS condition at 0.8 V. These results demonstrate that ppy-modified electrode in PD process may be a promising alternative for Cr(VI) electroreduction. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.When planning for a new urban settlement, industrial ecology tools like scenario building and life cycle assessment can be used to assess the environmental quality of different infrastructure solutions. In Trondheim, a new greenfield settlement with carbon-neutral ambitions is being planned and five different scenarios for the waste management system of the new settlement have been compared. The results show small differences among the scenarios, however, some benefits from increased source separation of paper and metal could be found. The settlement should connect to the existing waste management system of the city, and not resort to decentralised waste treatment or recovery methods. However, as this is an urban development project with ambitious goals for lifestyle changes, effort should be put into research and initiatives for proactive waste prevention and reuse issues. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Enantiomeric separations of 18 chiral polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were investigated on three polysaccharide-type chiral stationary phases (CSPs; Sino-Chiral OJ, Chiralpak IB, and Chiralcel OD) by supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). With these commonly used polysaccharide CSPs, 17 PCBs except PCB 135 (R (S) = 0.81) were well resolved (R (S) > 1.5) under appropriate mobile phases and temperatures. Using Sino-Chiral OJ, 14 PCBs could be baseline-separated, while only one and nine PCBs could be completely separated using Chiralpak IB and Chiralcel OD, respectively. The influence of column temperature was studied for the optimization of resolution, as well as for the type and percentage of organic modifier in the mobile phase. The resolution decreased as the temperature increased in the range of 26-40 A degrees C in which the enantiomeric separations were an enthalpy-driven process. The addition of modifiers in the mobile phase decreased the resolution of the PCB enantiomers, but it clearly shortened their retention time. These separation results indicate that SFC is a promising chromatographic technique for chiral separation and enantiopure standard preparation.Coal fly ash is generated during the combustion of coal for energy production. Its utilisation as an industrial by-product has received a great deal of attention over the past two decades as more sustainable solutions to waste problems have been sought. The present paper reviews the potential applications for coal fly ash as a raw material: as a soil amelioration agent in agriculture, in the manufacture of glass and ceramics, in the production of zeolites, in the formation of mesoporous materials, in the synthesis of geopolymers, for use as catalysts and catalyst supports, as an adsorbent for gases and waste water processes, and for the extraction of metals. The review then analyses the impact that a multi-stage process could have by examining the technology capable of a series of separations to produce hollow microspheres, enriched carbon, magnetic spheres, fine ash product, and coarse ash product. The applications for these coal fly ash derived products were also reviewed. It was found that there is significant potential for the increased utilisation of coal fly ash both in its raw and refined state. It is suggested that, by processing the coal fly ash, the scope for creating new industrial synergies is enhanced. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hematite (alpha-Fe2O3) particles with hollow spindle-shaped microstructure were successfully synthesized by a one-pot hydrothermal approach in large scale. The structural properties of the sample were systematically investigated by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectrum, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, selected-area electron diffraction techniques, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy techniques. The characterization results revealed that the alpha-Fe2O3 microparticles with a single-domain crystalline structure was mainly grown along the (1 0 4) crystal plane. The valence states and the surface chemical compositions of alpha-Fe2O3 were further identified by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The feature of photo-induced charge separation on spectrum was demonstrated by the surface photovoltage measurement under different external biases. The observed photoelectric characteristics of the as-fabricated material are beneficial for various optical and electronic applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) cultivate symbiotic relationships by developing waste and by-product networks among companies in a mutual and systematic manner. In the past, the development of self-organized symbioses has been demonstrated to be more successful and beneficial. However, in the absence of effective communication channels among companies, efforts to transform the conventional industrial complexes into EIPs need to stimulate the development of symbioses with a systematic design approach. To develop and implement such symbioses (described as 'designed' networks), the Ulsan EIP center devised a 'research and development into business' (R&DB) framework for the effective expansion of symbioses in the industrial complexes. Based on this framework, the Ulsan EIP center has so far facilitated forty symbioses, out of which thirteen networks are currently in operation, twenty are under negotiation and/or design, and seven are under feasibility investigation/evaluation. This paper might serve as an "out of experience" guideline for other worldwide EIP initiatives, wherein we demonstrate the viability of 'designed' symbiosis networks using policy instruments like national EIP programs, the presence of facilitators such as an EIP center, and an enabling framework such as the R&DB framework that are observed to be critical factors for retro-fitting the conventional industrial complexes into EIPs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Magnesium ferrite/hematite heterostructured hollow nanospheres were successfully fabricated via a facile solvothermal method. The products were well characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. UV-vis absorption spectroscopy and surface photovoltage spectroscopy. From the absorption edge in the UV-vis absorption spectrum of MgFe2O4/alpha-Fe2O3 hollow nanospheres, an optical band-gap energy of about 1.986 eV was estimated. Furthermore, it was observed that the heterostructured hollow nanospheres presented a remarkable surface photovoltage response in UV and visible spectral region, which was attributed to the effective formation of chemical interface between the two crystalline phases of MgFe2O4 and alpha-Fe2O3. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article outlines the subsector of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry concerned with reducing the economy's environmental impact, dubbed ICT-enabled low carbon technologies (ICTeLCTs). The article is based on a study funded by United Kingdom (UK) Trade and Investment, a division of the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. ICTeLCTs can be segmented into specialist and generalist operators. Specialists focus on one or two ICT applications to monitor or reduce environmental issues, while generalists supply products and services enabling a firm or a private household to reduce the environmental impact of its activities. The subsector can be further segmented into green ICT, energy management, building management, carbon accounting, waste management, intelligent transport systems (ITSs), and water management. The main factors driving ICTeLCTs include legislation, voluntary environmental standards, corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, customer demand, and competitive market factors. Policy makers should continue to drive the growth of ICTeLCTs with the introduction and refinement of environmental legislation regulating energy use and markets.This contribution was prompted by the article Gross Direct and Embodied Carbon Sinks for Urban Inventories by Mohareb and Kennedy published in this issue. The authors define two types of urban carbon sinksdirect and embodiedand discuss their relation to producer and consumer emissions (and sinks) accounting. This commentary continues that discussion by clarifying boundary considerations and definitions between producer and consumer sinks, and between direct and indirect sinks. Extending the notion of production- versus consumption-based emissions accounting, a corollary for producer and consumer sinks can be drawn. Producer sinks would include direct sequestration through industrial and private activities occurring within a defined territory. Consumer sinks would refer to direct and indirect sequestration activities associated with the consumption of goods and services within the same territory, wherever that sequestration may occur. As with emissions accounting, in carbon sinks accounting I propose that the exact categorization depends on the perspective taken. Clear boundaries and well-defined terminologyhistorically present in emissions accountingare critical to this novel approach to sinks accounting.A healthy debate on the treatment of metals recycling in the life cycle assessment (LCA) community has persisted for more than a decade. While no clear consensus across stakeholder groups has emerged, the metals industry has endorsed a set of recycling facts that support a single approach, end-of-life recycling, for evaluating the environmental benefits of metals recycling. In this article we draw from research conducted in several disciplines and find that three key tenets of the metals industry capture the theoretical potential of metals recycling from a metallurgical standpoint rather than reflecting observed behavior. We then discuss the implications of these conclusions on environmental emissions from metals production and recycling. Evidence is provided that, contrary to the position of the metals industry, metals are not necessarily recycled at high rates, are recycled only a small number of times before final disposal, and are sometimes limited in recycling potential by the economics of contaminant removal. The analysis concludes that metal recycled from old scrap largely serves as an imperfect substitute for primary metal. As a result, large-scale displacement of primary production and its associated environmental emissions is currently limited to a few specific instances.Markov chain (MC) modeling is a versatile tool in policy analysis and has been applied in several forms to analyze resource flows. This article builds on previous discussions of the relationship among absorbing Markov chains (AMCs), material flow analysis (MFA), and input-output (IO) analysis, and presents a full-scale application of MC modeling for a particular globally relevant, nonrenewable resource, namely nickel. The MC model presented here is built on comprehensive, recently compiled nickel flow data for 52 geographic regions. Considering all possible cycles of recycling and reuse, nickel extracted in 2005 is estimated to have a technological lifetime of 73 +/- 7 years. During its global journey, nickel enters use, for some application somewhere in the world, an average of three times, the largest share of which occurs in China. Nickel entering fabrication in 2005 is estimated to enter use approximately four times. Over time, nickel is lost to the environment and as a tramp element in carbon steel; the final distribution of nickel among these absorbing states is 78% and 22%, respectively. Of all the nickel in ore extracted in 2005, fully 28% will eventually end up in the tailings, slag, and landfills of China. MC results are also combined with geographically specific life cycle inventory data to determine the overall energy invested in nickel during its many cycles of use. MCs provide a powerful tool for tracking resources through the network of global production, use, and waste management, and opportunities for further integration with other modeling efforts are also discussed.This article presents material flows and material productivity data and indicators for Australia, China, and Japan for the period 1970 to 2005. The main data used come from a new material flows database for the Asia-Pacific region that was assembled using up-to-date standardized methodologies of material flow accounting and significantly extends the knowledge base available for studies on resource use dynamics in the region. We show that the three nations studied here have diverging patterns of resource use, and that these patterns can be linked to interdependencies between them and the very different roles each nation plays within a globalized system of natural resource exploitation. We also conduct a brief analysis of the most important drivers of changes in their resource use over the period, using an IPAT framework (Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology). The fundamentally different economic structures and trading roles of each country, that is, primary resource provider (Australia), mature and advanced manufacturer (Japan), and rapidly industrializing developing country (China), lead to starkly different contexts in which appropriate policies to encourage sustainable resource use must be formulated.The United States is not only the world's largest economy, but it is also one of the world's largest consumers of natural resources. The country, which is inhabited by some 5% of the world's population, uses roughly one-fifth of the global primary energy supply and 15% of all extracted materials. This article explores long-term trends and patterns of material use in the United States. Based on a material flow account (MFA) that is fully consistent with current standards of economy-wide MFAs and covers domestic extraction, imports, and exports of materials for a 135-year period, we investigated the evolution of the U.S. industrial metabolism. This process was characterized by an 18-fold increase in material consumption, a multiplication of material use per capita, and a shift from renewable biomass toward mineral and fossil resources. In spite of considerable improvements in material intensity, no dematerialization has happened so far; in contrast to other high-income countries, material use has not stabilized since the 1970s, but has continued to grow. This article compares patterns and trends of material use in the United States with those in Japan and the United Kingdom and discusses the factors underlying the disproportionately high level of U.S. per capita resource consumption.The aim of this article is to calculate energy intensity and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Andalusia, the largest and most populated region of Spain. Energy intensities for five energy commodities used in production activities are calculated using a social accounting matrix (SAM) model with three alternative scenarios, each utilizing differing closure rules. More interestingly, by using 2005 data and updating the values of exogenous accounts, the article also provides estimates of CO2 emissions ten years out from the 1995 base year. Finally, counterfactual experiments are performed to quantify the overall reduction in direct energy coefficients that would have made it possible to maintain constant production-sector emissions from 1995 to 2005. The results indicate that there is a strong interdependence among energy sectors and the most intensive energy users; they also indicate the importance of induced effects when factor accounts and private consumption are endogenous. The estimates obtained concerning CO2 emissions are close to official estimates, both from 1995 and 2005. The counterfactual experiments indicate that a 26.5% cut in the size of direct energy requirements would have made it possible to maintain constant emissions. They also indicate that efforts to curtail emissions should be focused on improving efficiency in coal extraction and combustion and oil refining.This article examines methods for analyzing allocation in life cycle assessment (LCA); it focuses on comparisons of economic allocation with other feasible alternatives. The International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) guideline 14044 indicates that economic allocation should only be used as a last resort, when other methods are not suitable. However, the LCA literature reports several examples of the use of economic allocation. This is due partly to its simplicity and partly to its ability to illustrate the properties of complex systems. Sometimes a price summarizes complex attributes of product or service quality that cannot be easily measured by physical criteria. On the other hand, economic allocation does have limitations arising, for example, from the variability of prices and the low correlation between prices and physical flows. This article presents the state of the debate on the topic and some hypothetical examples for illustration. A general conclusion is that it is not possible to determine one best allocation method. The allocation procedure has to be selected on a case-by-case basis and no single approach is suitable for every situation. Despite its limitations, economic allocation has certain qualities that make it flexible and potentially suitable for different contexts. In some situations, economic allocation should not be the last methodological resort. The option of economic allocation should be considered, for example, whenever the prices of coproducts and coservices differ widely.Data (un)availability and uncertainty are recurring problems in life cycle assessment, and particularly inventory analysis. Advances in life cycle inventory have focused on the propagation and management of uncertainty, but this article addresses the question of how to account for unavailable data and corresponding uncertainty. Large and complicated systems often lack complete data due to confidential practices or the efforts required in the data collection process. Electricity production with multiple processes generating a single product is a classic example. Instead of the conventional process-based models to estimate missing data, the approach developed in this article divides systems based on functionally equivalent objects. Each one of these objects is then described in terms of characteristic variables, such as power capacity. Kriging, a flexible statistical estimator, allows for the estimation of unknown material and energy flows based on the objects characteristic variables. Both univariate and multivariate kriging are tested and compared to regression analysis. It is found that kriging performs better than linear regression, according to the mean absolute error criterion. Multivariate kriging provides an even more accurate joint estimation method to bridge data gaps scattered across inventories and when observable values of material and energy flows differ from one object to the next. Parameters of the underlying models are interpreted in terms of data uncertainty.An end-point life cycle impact assessment is used to evaluate the damages of electricity generation from fossil fuel-based power plants with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology. Pulverized coal (PC), integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), and natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants are assessed for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, pipeline transport, and storage in a geological formation. Results show that the CCS systems reduce the climate change-related damages but increase the damages from toxicity, acidification, eutrophication, and resource consumption. Based on the currently available damage calculation methods, it is concluded that the benefit of reducing damage from climate change is larger than the increases in other damage categories, such as health effects from particulates or toxic chemicals. CCS significantly reduces the overall environmental damage, with a net reduction of 60% to 70% in human health damage and 65% to 75% in ecosystem damage. Most of the damage is due to fuel production and combustion processes. The energy and infrastructure demands of CCS cause increases in the depletion of natural resources by 33% for PC, 19% for IGCC, and 18% for NGCC power plants, mostly due to increased fossil fuel consumption.A potential strategy for tackling the negative environmental impact of conventional plastics is to produce them from renewable resources. However, such a strategy needs to be assessed quantitatively, by life cycle assessment (LCA) for example. This screening LCA is intended to identify key aspects that influence the environmental impact of sugarcane low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and compare these results against fossil-based LDPE. The study showed that the major contributors to the environmental impact of sugarcane LDPE are ethanol production, polymerization, and long-distance sea transport. The comparison between sugarcane- and oil-based plastics showed that the sugarcane alternative consumes more total energy, although the major share is renewable. Moreover, for their potential impacts on acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical ozone creation, no significant difference between the two materials exists. However, with regard to global warming potential (GWP), the contribution of land use change (LUC) is decisive. Although the range of LUC emissions is uncertain, in the worst case they more than double the GWP of sugarcane LDPE and make it comparable to that of fossil-based LDPE. LUC emissions can thus be significant for sugarcane LDPE, although there is need for a consistent LUC assessment method. In addition, to investigate the influence of methodological choices, this study performed attributional and consequential assessments in parallel. No major differences in key contributors were found for these two assessment perspectives.Using algae to simultaneously treat wastewater and produce energy products has potential environmental and economic benefits. This study evaluates the life cycle energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, eutrophication potential, and cost impacts of incorporating an algal turf scrubber (ATS) into a treatment process for dairy wastewater. A life cycle inventory and cost model was developed to simulate an ATS treatment system where harvested algae would be used to generate biogas for process heat and electricity generation. Modeling results show that using an ATS significantly reduces eutrophication impacts by reducing chemical oxygen demand, nitrogen, and phosphorus in the wastewater. With low water recirculation rates through the ATS and high algae productivity, inclusion of the ATS results in net energy displacement and a reduction of GHG emissions compared to a system with no ATS. However, if high water recirculation rates are used or if algae biosolids from the digester are dried, the system results in a net increase in energy consumption and GHG emissions. The life cycle treatment cost was estimated to be $1.42 USD per cubic meter of treated wastewater. At this cost, using an ATS would only be cost effective for dairies if they received monetary credits for improved water quality on the order of $3.83 per kilogram of nitrogen and $9.57 per kilogram of phosphorus through, for example, nutrient trading programs.Little is known about the estrogenic activities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the underlying mechanisms on estrogenic activities are still unclear. Molecular docking and quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) were used to understand the relationship between molecular structural features and estrogenic activity, and to predict the binding affinity of PAHs to estrogen receptor alpha (ER alpha). From molecular docking analysis, hydrogen bonding as well as hydrophobic and pi interactions were found between PAHs and ER alpha. Based on the docking results, appropriate molecular structural parameters were adopted to develop a QSAR model. Five descriptors were included in the QSAR model, which indicated that the estrogenic activity was related to molecular size, van der Waals volumes, shape profiles, polarizabilities and electropological states were significant parameters explaining the estrogenicity. Comparatively, the developed QSAR model had good robustness, predictive ability and mechanistic interpretability. Moreover, the applicability domain of the model was described. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc.. All rights reserved.In this work, hollow "spindle-like" alpha-Fe2O3 nanoparticles were synthesized by a hydrothermal route. The Ag/alpha-Fe2O3 catalyst was prepared based on the spindle-shaped alpha-Fe2O3 with CTAB as the surfactant, which showed excellent photoelectric property and photocatalytic activity. The structural properties of these samples were systematically investigated by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electronic microscopy, transmission electronic microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectra, and UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy techniques. The photo-induced charge separation in the samples was demonstrated by surface photovoltage measurement. The photocatalytic performances of the Ag/alpha-Fe2O3 and alpha-Fe2O3 samples were comparatively studied in the degradation of toluene under xenon lamp irradiation by in situ FTIR spectroscopy. Benzaldehyde and benzoic acid species could be observed on the alpha-Fe2O3 surface rather than Ag/alpha-Fe2O3 surface. The results indicate that the Ag/alpha-Fe2O3 sample exhibited higher photocatalytic efficiency. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities and urban regions are undertaking efforts to quantify greenhouse (GHG) emissions from their jurisdictional boundaries. Although inventorying methodologies are beginning to standardize for GHG sources, carbon sequestration is generally not quantified. This article describes the methodology and quantification of gross urban carbon sinks. Sinks are categorized into direct and embodied sinks. Direct sinks generally incorporate natural process, such as humification in soils and photosynthetic biomass growth (in urban trees, perennial crops, and regional forests). Embodied sinks include activities associated with consumptive behavior that result in the import and/or storage of carbon, such as landfilling of waste, concrete construction, and utilization of durable wood products. Using methodologies based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2006 guidelines (for direct sinks) and peer-reviewed literature (for embodied sinks), carbon sequestration for 2005 is calculated for the Greater Toronto Area. Direct sinks are found to be 317 kilotons of carbon (kt C), and are dominated by regional forest biomass. Embodied sinks are calculated to be 234 kt C based on one year's consumption, though a complete life cycle accounting of emissions would likely transform this sum from a carbon sink to a source. There is considerable uncertainty associated with the methodologies used, which could be addressed with city-specific stock-change measurements. Further options for enhancing carbon sink capacity within urban environments are explored, such as urban biomass growth and carbon capture and storage.This commentary is prompted by Thomas Wiedmann's Defining (Urban) Producer and Consumer Sinks published in this issue. In his article, Wiedmann presents a new framework for categorizing carbon sinks by borrowing practices from carbon emissions accounting and, essentially, proposing a carbon sink footprint model for urban inventories. While this is a valuable new concept, we argue that it is difficult to apply accurately given current knowledge and practices in urban life cycle assessment. Instead, a direct versus embodied classification based on where the sequestration service exists, not where the sink is located, is more useful from the perspective of municipal control and influence over creating and managing carbon sinks. This is ultimately important for the development of urban climate change mitigation measures.Several authors have highlighted the potential risks of nanoparticles (NPs). Still, little is known about the magnitude of emissions of NPs from society. Here, the method of explorative particle flow analysis (PFA), a modification of the more well-known substance flow analysis (SFA), is suggested. In explorative PFA, particle number instead of mass is used as flow and stock metric and explorative scenarios are used to account for potential technology diffusion and, consequently, potentially higher emissions. The method has been applied in a case study of the use phase of titanium dioxide (TiO2) NPs in paint, sunscreen and self-cleaning cement. The results indicate that the current largest emissions of TiO2 NPs originate from the use of sunscreen. One scenario implies that, in the future, the largest flows and stocks of TiO2 NPs could be related to self-cleaning cement. Gaps in current knowledge are identified and suggestions for future research are given.I have published many articles arguing that industrial and inter-firm recycling was widespread before 1900 and overwhelmingly the result of market forces. Treating my papers to 2005, Frank Boons (2008) challenges those conclusions. He also criticizes me for neglecting structural, cultural, and political considerations. As a result, he suggests, my case on behalf of free enterprise as the preferred coordinating arrangement to stimulate inter-firm recycling is untenable. In this article I reply to Boons and treat related work by business historian Christine Meisner Rosen. I stand by my earlier claims and support them with additional evidence. I then provide short critiques of Boons's other arguments, evidence, and interpretations.In 2008 I published a critique of Pierre Desrochers' early work on industrial by-product exchanges; Desrochers has now written a reply, and this is my rejoinder. Studying by-product exchanges among firms in relation to the reduction of ecological impact of economic activities is not served by drawing them into a contest to verify a hypothesis about the superiority of the market over the state as a coordination mechanism, as Desrochers continues to do. The analysis of historical and current evidence on how such exchanges come about and cluster into larger systems is best advanced by exploring the interplay between several coordination mechanisms, as is currently done by industrial ecologists.This piece is a response to Pierre Desrochers' criticism of an article by me. This response challenges Desrochers' argument that market forces compelled nineteenth- and early twentieth-century manufacturers to recycle, voluntarily, the vast majority of their wastes. I argue that Desrochers provides no counter-evidence that disproves my findings and that he bases some of his criticism on conjecture that is factually inaccurate and/or overly simplistic. I conclude that to do justice to this important and complex subject, historians need to investigate the barriers that discouraged manufacturers from using their wastes, as well as the full range of regulatory as well as market-based drivers that encouraged them to do so.A steel mill is a large logistical hub, with raw materials and energy as input and steel plus some other materials as output. The vocabulary to designate the latter is fuzzy and changing, and it depends on who speaks about them: co-products, byproducts, residues, waste, emissions, pollutants, discharge, etc., are used in different contexts. This profusion of names echoes the conceptual hurdles that block the way when numbers have to be attributed to the co-products, related to either environmental footprints or economic values, especially if both are mixed. The paper focuses on the example of blast furnace slag, which is sold to the cement industry in large quantities as a substitute to clinker. The practice is a lively example of an industrial ecology synergy between two economic sectors: both sectors, collectively, decrease their environmental footprints in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, resource depletion, etc., in an unambiguous way. Many issues arise, however, when exact figures have to be worked out to allocate a footprint to each partner in the synergy. Life cycle assessment seems like a good candidate to do that job, but from a practical standpoint, the method can be implemented in so many versions and flavours that the answers end up in a series of very different figures, which confuse rather than clarify the issue. What is argued here is that these difficulties are due to the fact that the underlying problems are not yet solved, and that it is naive to ask a technology like life cycle assessment to solve issues related to the allocation of the cost of the climate change externality to commodity materials like cement and steel. Unsolved problems are due to the uncertainties related to this process. Until these issues are cleared, it is proposed either to focus mainly on the synergistic benefits of the cooperation between the two sectors or to accept different estimates of the footprint of the co-products in the two sectors. This example is a typical case in point related to what we have called the collision between the ecosphere and the anthroposphere.Bifunctional TiO2 photocatalysts co-doped with nitrogen and sulfur were prepared by the controlled thermal decomposition of ammonium titanyl sulfate precursor. They have both photocatalytic activity and Bronsted acidity, and thus are active in the photoreduction of Cr(VI) under solar light irradiation without the addition of acids. The activity is superior to that of Degussa P25 in the acidified suspension at the same pH adjusted by H2SO4.This article compares life cycle assessment studies performed on imaging equipment for the consumer market in order to identify common practices, limitations, areas for improvement, and opportunities for standardization. The analysis suggests that comparisons across studies are significantly hampered by variability in scope, transparency, data sources, and assumptions; it identifies sources of discrepancy and variability. Of particular concern to printing devices was the definition of a functional unit, which can vary significantly depending on the capabilities and use patterns of a printer. Standardization of the functional unit and related assumptions has a high potential to increase quantitative comparability across studies. At the same time, standardizing the functional unit by paper usage excludes the possibility of comparison to alternative communication media.In reviewing life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of utility-scale concentrating solar power (CSP) systems, this analysis focuses on reducing variability and clarifying the central tendency of published estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through a meta-analytical process called harmonization. From 125 references reviewed, 10 produced 36 independent GHG emissions estimates passing screens for quality and relevance: 19 for parabolic trough (trough) technology and 17 for power tower (tower) technology. The interquartile range (IQR) of published estimates for troughs and towers were 83 and 20 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively; median estimates were 26 and 38 g CO2-eq/kWh for trough and tower, respectively. Two levels of harmonization were applied. Light harmonization reduced variability in published estimates by using consistent values for key parameters pertaining to plant design and performance. The IQR and median were reduced by 87% and 17%, respectively, for troughs. For towers, the IQR and median decreased by 33% and 38%, respectively. Next, five trough LCAs reporting detailed life cycle inventories were identified. The variability and central tendency of their estimates are reduced by 91% and 81%, respectively, after light harmonization. By harmonizing these five estimates to consistent values for global warming intensities of materials and expanding system boundaries to consistently include electricity and auxiliary natural gas combustion, variability is reduced by an additional 32% while central tendency increases by 8%. These harmonized values provide useful starting points for policy makers in evaluating life cycle GHG emissions from CSP projects without the requirement to conduct a full LCA for each new project.A systematic review and harmonization of life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of utility-scale wind power systems was performed to determine the causes of and, where possible, reduce variability in estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Screening of approximately 240 LCAs of onshore and offshore systems yielded 72 references meeting minimum thresholds for quality, transparency, and relevance. Of those, 49 references provided 126 estimates of life cycle GHG emissions. Published estimates ranged from 1.7 to 81 grams CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), with median and interquartile range (IQR) both at 12 g CO2-eq/kWh. After adjusting the published estimates to use consistent gross system boundaries and values for several important system parameters, the total range was reduced by 47% to 3.0 to 45 g CO2-eq/kWh and the IQR was reduced by 14% to 10 g CO2-eq/kWh, while the median remained relatively constant (11 g CO2-eq/kWh). Harmonization of capacity factor resulted in the largest reduction in variability in life cycle GHG emission estimates. This study concludes that the large number of previously published life cycle GHG emission estimates of wind power systems and their tight distribution suggest that new process-based LCAs of similar wind turbine technologies are unlikely to differ greatly. However, additional consequential LCAs would enhance the understanding of true life cycle GHG emissions of wind power (e.g., changes to other generators operations when wind electricity is added to the grid), although even those are unlikely to fundamentally change the comparison of wind to other electricity generation sources.Published scientific literature contains many studies estimating life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of residential and utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PVs). Despite the volume of published work, variability in results hinders generalized conclusions. Most variance between studies can be attributed to differences in methods and assumptions. To clarify the published results for use in decision making and other analyses, we conduct a meta-analysis of existing studies, harmonizing key performance characteristics to produce more comparable and consistently derived results. Screening 397 life cycle assessments (LCAs) relevant to PVs yielded 13 studies on crystalline silicon (c-Si) that met minimum standards of quality, transparency, and relevance. Prior to harmonization, the median of 42 estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from those 13 LCAs was 57 grams carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), with an interquartile range (IQR) of 44 to 73. After harmonizing key performance characteristics (irradiation of 1,700 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year (kWh/m2/yr); system lifetime of 30 years; module efficiency of 13.2% or 14.0%, depending on module type; and a performance ratio of 0.75 or 0.80, depending on installation, the median estimate decreased to 45 and the IQR tightened to 39 to 49. The median estimate and variability were reduced compared to published estimates mainly because of higher average assumptions for irradiation and system lifetime. For the sample of studies evaluated, harmonization effectively reduced variability, providing a clearer synopsis of the life cycle GHG emissions from c-Si PVs. The literature used in this harmonization neither covers all possible c-Si installations nor represents the distribution of deployed or manufactured c-Si PVs.We present the process and the results of harmonization of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during the life cycle of commercial thin-film photovoltaics (PVs), that is, amorphous silicon (a-Si), cadmium telluride (CdTe), and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS). We reviewed 109 studies and harmonized the estimates of GHG emissions by aligning the assumptions, parameters, and system boundaries. During the initial screening we eliminated abstracts, short conference papers, presentations without supporting documentation, and unrelated analyses; 91 studies passed this initial screening. In the primary screening we applied rigorous criteria for completeness of reporting, validity of analysis methods, and modern relevance of the PV system studied. Additionally, we examined whether the product is a commercial one, whether the production line still exists, and whether the study's core data are original or secondary. These screenings produced five studies as the best representations of the carbon footprint of modern thin-film PV technologies. These were harmonized through alignment of efficiency, irradiation, performance ratio, balance of system, and lifetime. The resulting estimates for carbon footprints are 20, 14, and 26 grams carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively, for a-Si, CdTe, and CIGS, for ground-mount application under southwestern United States (US-SW) irradiation of 2,400 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year (kWh/m2/yr), a performance ratio of 0.8, and a lifetime of 30 years. Harmonization for the rooftop PV systems with a performance ratio of 0.75 and the same irradiation resulted in carbon footprint estimates of 21, 14, and 27 g CO2-eq/kWh, respectively, for the three technologies. This screening and harmonization rectifies previous incomplete or outdated assessments and clarifies variations in carbon footprints across studies and amongst thin-film technologies.A full life cycle assessment (LCA) is usually a time, energy, and data-intensive process requiring sophisticated methodology. Our meta-analysis of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of wind electricity highlights several key, sensitive parameters to provide a better understanding of the variability in LCA results, and then proposes a methodology to establish a simplified, streamlined approach based on regressions built on these key parameters. Wind electricity's environmental performance can be linked to three essential components: technological (e.g., manufacturing), geographical (e.g., wind speed), and LCA methodology (e.g., product lifetime). A regression has been derived based on detailed LCA results from a representative sample of 17 industrial wind turbines manufactured and recently installed in Europe on average land configurations. Simple GHG performance (i.e., emissions) curves depending on average on-site wind speed and wind turbine lifetime are proposed. Whatever the system power, considering the full range of possible wind speeds in Europe (4 to 9 meters per second [m/s]) and a lifetime of 10 to 30 years, emissions vary from 8.7 to 76.7 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh) when the wind speed is less than 6.5 m/s, and from 4.5 to 22.2 g CO2-eq/kWh when the wind speed is 6.5 m/s or greater. This second situation with a turbine lifetime of 20 years is assumed to be most realistic based on economic criteria. This research presents simplified models as an alternative to detailed LCA. The methodology has been applied as a first trial to wind electricity and could be applied to other energy pathways.Meta-analyses of life cycle assessments (LCAs) have become increasingly important in the context of renewable energy technologies and the decisions and policies that influence their adoption. However, a lack of transparency in reporting modeling assumptions, data, and results precludes normalizing across incommensurate system boundaries or key assumptions. This normalization step is critical for conducting valid meta-analyses. Thus it is necessary to establish clear methods for assessing transparency and to develop conventions for LCA reporting that promote future comparisons. While concerns over transparency in LCA have long been discussed in the literature, the methods proposed to address these concerns have not focused on the transparency and reporting characteristics required for performing meta-analyses. In this study we identify guidelines for assessing reporting transparency that anticipate the needs of meta-analyses of LCA applied to renewable energy technologies. These guidelines were developed after an attempt to perform a meta-analysis on wind turbine LCAs of 1 megawatt and larger, with the goal of determining how life cycle performance, as measured by global warming intensity, might trend with turbine size. The objective was to normalize system boundaries and environmental conditions, and reinterpret global warming potential with new impact assessment methods. Previous wind LCAs were reviewed and assessed for reporting transparency. Only a small subset of studies proved to be sufficiently transparent for the normalization of system boundaries and modeling assumptions required for meta-analyses.In the last decade, numerous life cycle assessments (LCAs) on environmental impacts of electricity generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been conducted. This meta-analysis comprises 15 LCAs of the three CCS technologies (postcombustion, oxyfuel, precombustion) with a focus on greenhouse gas reduction for different regions (Europe, United States, Japan, global), different fuels (hard coal, lignite, natural gas), and different time horizons (between the present and 2050). It presents a condensed overview of methodological variations, findings, and conclusions gathered from these LCAs. All LCAs show the expected reduction in global warming potential but an increase in many other impact categories, regardless of capture technology, time horizon, or fuel considered. Three parameter sets have been identified that have a significant impact on the results: (1) power plant efficiency and energy penalty of the capture process, (2) carbon dioxide capture efficiency and purity, and (3) fuel origin and composition. This meta-analysis proves that LCA is a helpful tool to investigate the variety of environmental consequences associated with CCS. However, there are differences in the underlying assumptions of the LCAs as well as methodological shortcomings that yield heterogeneity of results. Without a better understanding of the technology, it is not possible to give a comprehensive picture. There also remains a wide field of subjects and technologies that have not yet been covered.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of desktop personal computers (PCs) are analyzed to assess the environmental impact of PCs and to explain inconsistencies and disagreements across existing studies. Impacts, characterized in this work in terms of primary energy demand and global warming potential, are decomposed into inventory components and impact per component in order to expose such inconsistencies. Additional information from related studies, especially regarding use-phase energy consumption, helps interpret the LCA results. The weight of evidence strongly suggests that for primary energy demand and contribution to climate change, the use phase is the dominant life cycle phase; manufacturing impacts are smaller but substantial, and impacts due to product transportation and end-of-life activities are much smaller. Each of the few LCA studies that report manufacturing impacts as being greater than use-phase impacts make unrealistically low assumptions regarding use-phase energy consumption. Estimates of manufacturing impacts, especially those related to printed circuit boards and integrated circuits, are highly uncertain and variable; such estimates are very difficult to evaluate, and more systematic research is needed to reduce these uncertainties. The type of computer analyzed, such as low-power light desktop or high-power workstation, may dominate the total impact; future studies should therefore base their estimates on a large sample to smooth out this variation, or explicitly restrict the analysis to a specific type of computer.A systematic review and harmonization of life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of nuclear electricity generation technologies was performed to determine causes of and, where possible, reduce variability in estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to clarify the state of knowledge and inform decision making. LCA literature indicates that life cycle GHG emissions from nuclear power are a fraction of traditional fossil sources, but the conditions and assumptions under which nuclear power are deployed can have a significant impact on the magnitude of life cycle GHG emissions relative to renewable technologies. Screening 274 references yielded 27 that reported 99 independent estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from light water reactors (LWRs). The published median, interquartile range (IQR), and range for the pool of LWR life cycle GHG emission estimates were 13, 23, and 220 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively. After harmonizing methods to use consistent gross system boundaries and values for several important system parameters, the same statistics were 12, 17, and 110 g CO2-eq/kWh, respectively. Harmonization (especially of performance characteristics) clarifies the estimation of central tendency and variability. To explain the remaining variability, several additional, highly influential consequential factors were examined using other methods. These factors included the primary source energy mix, uranium ore grade, and the selected LCA method. For example, a scenario analysis of future global nuclear development examined the effects of a decreasing global uranium market-average ore grade on life cycle GHG emissions. Depending on conditions, median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050.Concerns over climate change and the security of industrial feedstock supplies have been opening a growing market for biobased materials. This development, however, also presents a challenge to scientists, policy makers, and industry because the production of biobased materials requires land and is typically associated with adverse environmental effects. This article addresses the environmental impacts of biobased materials in a meta-analysis of 44 life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. The reviewed literature suggests that one metric ton (t) of biobased materials saves, relative to conventional materials, 55 +/- 34 gigajoules of primary energy and 3 +/- 1 t carbon dioxide equivalents of greenhouse gases. However, biobased materials may increase eutrophication by 5 +/- 7 kilograms (kg) phosphate equivalents/t and stratospheric ozone depletion by 1.9 +/- 1.8 kg nitrous oxide equivalents/t. Our findings are inconclusive with regard to acidification (savings of 2 +/- 20 kg sulfur dioxide equivalents/t) and photochemical ozone formation (savings of 0.3 +/- 2.4 kg ethene equivalents/t). The variability in the results of life cycle assessment studies highlights the difficulties in drawing general conclusions. Still, common to most biobased materials are impacts caused by the application of fertilizers and pesticides during industrial biomass cultivation. Additional land use impacts, such as the potential loss of biodiversity, soil carbon depletion, soil erosion, deforestation, as well as greenhouse gas emissions from indirect land use change are not quantified in this review. Clearly these impacts should be considered when evaluating the environmental performance of biobased materials.This systematic review and harmonization of life cycle assessments (LCAs) of utility-scale coal-fired electricity generation systems focuses on reducing variability and clarifying central tendencies in estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Screening 270 references for quality LCA methods, transparency, and completeness yielded 53 that reported 164 estimates of life cycle GHG emissions. These estimates for subcritical pulverized, integrated gasification combined cycle, fluidized bed, and supercritical pulverized coal combustion technologies vary from 675 to 1,689 grams CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh) (interquartile range [IQR]= 8901,130 g CO2-eq/kWh; median = 1,001) leading to confusion over reasonable estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from coal-fired electricity generation. By adjusting published estimates to common gross system boundaries and consistent values for key operational input parameters (most importantly, combustion carbon dioxide emission factor [CEF]), the meta-analytical process called harmonization clarifies the existing literature in ways useful for decision makers and analysts by significantly reducing the variability of estimates (-53% in IQR magnitude) while maintaining a nearly constant central tendency (-2.2% in median). Life cycle GHG emissions of a specific power plant depend on many factors and can differ from the generic estimates generated by the harmonization approach, but the tightness of distribution of harmonized estimates across several key coal combustion technologies implies, for some purposes, first-order estimates of life cycle GHG emissions could be based on knowledge of the technology type, coal mine emissions, thermal efficiency, and CEF alone without requiring full LCAs. Areas where new research is necessary to ensure accuracy are also discussed.Rapid growth in life cycle assessment (LCA) methodological developments has generated a large body of work that may appear to lack direction. In this article we developed and applied a structured approach, inspired by the meta-analysis concept, to examine literature and identify research thrusts on how to further develop LCA. The procedure consists of four steps: (1) definition of the research question; (2) carrying out a literature review concerning more than 280 articles, selected from about 2,000 articles according to predefined criteria, which resulted in the identification of some 60 main methodological topics; (3) research gap analysis, in which the methodological topics identified in the previous step were compared with the research priorities identified through a users needs survey; and (4) interpretation of results, in which the results of both the previous steps were evaluated and organized into coherent research thrusts. Overall the analysis delivered two main research thrusts: one devoted to increase the practicability of LCA, the other to increase model fidelity. The former is aimed at making knowledge available in an easily usable way, while the latter focuses on better describing the complexity of the systems analyzed and those interrelations that are really meaningful. Specific research topics were identified for each thrust, which suggests that sophistication and practicability can and should coexist in the same method.Systematic review, including meta-analysis, is increasingly utilized in life cycle assessment (LCA). There are currently no widely recognized guidelines for designing, conducting, or reporting systematic reviews in LCA. Other disciplines such as medicine, ecology, and software engineering have both recognized the utility of systematic reviews and created standardized protocols for conducting and reporting systematic reviews. Based largely on the 2009 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, which updated the preferred format for reporting of such reviews in biomedical research, we provide an introduction to the topic and a checklist to guide the reporting of future LCA reviews in a standardized format. The standardized technique for assessing and reporting reviews of LCA (STARR-LCA) is a starting point for improving the utility of systematic reviews in LCA.Unsustainable private consumption causes energy and environmental problems. This occurs directly (resource depletion and emissions through using cars for transport) or indirectly (purchase of consumer goods and services for which the production uses energy and emits damaging gases). A hybrid energy analysis proved that indoor energy consumption, mobility, and vacations are the main consumer categories from an energy point of view. Although energy is often used as a proxy for environmental load from private consumption, there are other proxies likemethane (CH4), sulfur oxides (SOx), and land use. This article describes the results of the extension of the hybrid energy analysis with energy and ten environmental stressors (CH4, nitrous oxide [N2O], nitrogen, phosphate, SOx, nitrogen oxides [NOx], ammonia [NH3], nonmethane volatile organic compounds [NMVOCs], particulate matter [PM10], and land use), combined in five impact categories (global warming potential [GWP], acidification, eutrophication, summer smog, and land use). Household consumption was analyzed by dividing Dutch household expenditure into 368 consumer items in 11 categories. The results show that food impacts, in particular, are underestimated when only energy is taken into account. Food makes the highest contribution in three out of five impact categories when all ten stressors are taken into account. Within the food domain, meat and dairy consumer items have the highest environmental impact, about 45% of total food impact on average across all five impact categories. Looking in detail (368 consumer items), there are nine food items in the top ten most-polluting items. Salad oil and cheese are the most polluting food items.Substance flow analysis (SFA) is a frequently used industrial ecology technique for studying societal metal flows, but it is limited in its ability to inform us about future developments in metal flow patterns and how we can affect them. Equation-based simulation modeling techniques, such as dynamic SFA and system dynamics, can usefully complement static SFA studies in this respect, but they are also restricted in several ways. The objective of this article is to demonstrate the ability of agent-based modeling to overcome these limitations and its usefulness as a tool for studying societal metal flow systems. The body of the article summarizes the parallel implementation of two models-an agent-based model and a system dynamics model-both addressing the following research question: What conditions foster the development of a closed-loop flow network for metals in mobile phones? The results from in silico experimentation with these models highlight three important differences between agent-based modeling (ABM) and equation-based modeling (EBM) techniques. An analysis of how these differences affected the insights that could be extracted from the constructed models points to several key advantages of ABM in the study of metal flow systems. In particular, this analysis suggests that a key advantage of the ABM technique is its flexibility to enable the representation of societal metal flow systems in a more native manner. This added flexibility endows modelers with enhanced leverage to identify options for steering metal flows and opens new opportunities for using the metaphor of an ecosystem to understand metal flow systems more fully.Copper (Cu) is an essential but supply-restricted resource in China. Characterization of in-use stocks can provide useful instruction for the future recycling of copper. This article attempts to estimate copper in-use stocks in a Chinese city. To this purpose, an extensive bottom-up estimate of copper stocks in use in Nanjing in the year 2009 was conducted. The results are a total stock estimate of 295 gigagrams (Gg) of copper or 46.9 kilograms (kg) of copper per capita for 2009. Infrastructure, equipment, and buildings contain 42.0%, 26.1%, and 28.1% of the total stock, respectively, indicating that these three categories are principal potential reservoirs of a secondary copper resource. The copper in transportation amounts to only about 3.7% of the total amount. The per capita stock was compared with similar studies carried out in other regions of the world, and the results show that the Nanjing level is significantly lower than developed countries. On the whole, our results show that electric power transmission and distribution systems, buildings, household durables, and industrial equipment are the four largest potential reservoirs of copper scrap.This study presents the carbon footprint of a paperback book for which the cover and inside papers were produced in the United States and printed in Canada. The choice of paper mills for both cover and page papers was based on criteria such as percentage of recycled content in the pulp mix, transport distances (pulp mill to paper mill, paper mill to print), and technologies. The cradle-to-gate assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions follows recognized guidelines for carbon footprint assessment. The results show that the production of 400,000 books, mainly distributed in North America, would generate 1,084 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq), or 2.71 kilograms (kg) CO2-eq per book. The impact of using deinked market pulp (DMP) is shown here to be detrimental, accounting for 54% of total GHG emissions and being 32% higher than reference virgin Kraft pulp. This supports findings that DMP mill GHG emissions strongly correlate with the carbon intensity of the power grid supplying the pulp mill and that virgin Kraft mills that reuse wood residue and black liquor to produce heat and electricity can achieve lower GHG emissions per tonne of pulp produced. Although contrary to common thinking, this is consistent with the Paper Task Force 2002 conclusion for office paper (the closest paper grade to writing paper or fine paper) (EDF 2002a). To get a cradle-to-grave perspective, three different end-of-life (EOL) scenarios were analyzed, all of which included a harvested wood product (HWP) carbon storage benefit for 25 years. The GHG offset concept within the context of the book editor's carbon-neutral paper claims is also discussed.This article presents a tool and data for calculation of the carbon footprint of rendering operations in North America, quantifying Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) greenhouse gas emissions. Scope 3 (life cycle) emissions are not included. According to the sample data, in one year an average-size rendering plant in North America processes 100,000 tonnes (t) of meat by-products, fallen animals, and restaurant grease and produces 40,000 t of marketable fats and proteins. A plant of this size emits directly about 20,000 t of carbon dioxide (CO2), mostly by burning fuels to operate cookers that destroy pathogens, drive off moisture, and separate the fat and protein. Another 4,000 t of CO2 is emitted by utility companies to provide electricity for the rendering process. These direct and indirect emissions are equivalent to about 30% of the CO2 that would be released if all of the carbon in the rendered raw material were decomposed into CO2.There is a strong need for methods within life cycle assessment (LCA) that enable the inclusion of all complex aspects related to land use and land use change (LULUC). This article presents a case study of the use of one hectare (ha) of forest managed for the production of wood for bioenergy production. Both permanent and temporary changes in above-ground biomass are assessed together with the impact on biodiversity caused by LULUC as a result of forestry activities. The impact is measured as a product of time and area requirements, as well as by changes in carbon pools and impacts on biodiversity as a consequence of different management options. To elaborate the usefulness of the method as well as its dependency on assumptions, a range of scenarios are introduced in the study. The results show that the impact on climate change from LULUC dominates the results, compared to the impact from forestry operations. This clearly demonstrates the need to include LULUC in an LCA of forestry products. For impacts both on climate change and biodiversity, the results show large variability based on what assumptions are made; and impacts can be either positive or negative. Consequently, a mere measure of land used does not provide any meaning in LCA, as it is not possible to know whether this contributes a positive or negative impact.In this study we discuss impact categories and indicators to incorporate local ecological impacts into life cycle assessment (LCA) for aquaculture. We focus on the production stages of salmon farmingfreshwater hatcheries used to produce smolts and marine grow-out sites using open netpens. Specifically, we propose two impact categories: impacts of nutrient release and impacts on biodiversity. Proposed indicators for impacts of nutrient release are (1) the area altered by farm waste, (2) changes in nutrient concentration in the water column, (3) the percent of carrying capacity reached, (4) the percent of total anthropogenic nutrient release, and (5) release of wastes into freshwater. Proposed indicators for impacts on biodiversity are (1) the number of escaped salmon, (2) the number of reported disease outbreaks, (3) parasite abundance on farms, and (4) the percent reduction in wild salmon survival. For each proposed indicator, an example of how the indicator could be estimated is given and the strengths and weaknesses of that indicator are discussed. We propose that including local environmental impacts as well as global-scale ones in LCA allows us to better identify potential trade-offs, where actions that are beneficial at one scale are harmful at another, and synchronicities, where actions have desirable or undesirable effects at both spatial scales. We also discuss the potential applicability of meta-analytic statistical techniques to LCA.The human health impact of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials manufactured by the pultrusion industry is not fully understood. In particular, it is unclear whether the human health impact of toxic chemicals present in low concentrations in fire retardant pultruded FRP materials is disproportionately high. This impact may be an important criterion when making boundary selection decisions in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of these materials. The North American pultrusion industry was surveyed to determine resin mix concentration levels and workplace inhalation toxicity exposure levels. LCAs were then conducted on three building panel resin mixes to determine whether the human health impact of toxic chemicals used in the mixes was low enough to exclude the chemicals from the life cycle inventory (LCI) boundary. The first resin mix represented a typical pultruded product, the second mix removed toxic chemicals present in small concentrations, and the third mix replaced toxic chemicals present in small concentrations with a nontoxic chemical. Results showed that toxicity levels fell below exposure limits and no significant difference in human health impact existed among the LCAs. The research concludes that human health impact is a useful criterion when defining an LCI boundary. Toxic chemicals present in small concentrations in pultruded FRP materials may be excluded from the LCI boundary, as their human health impacts are low. Because these levels are marginal in North American pultrusion factories, no changes in resin mixes are recommended for the pultrusion industry.Zinc oxide (ZnO) polycrystalline ceramics are the focal point of lightning arrester technology. These semiconductor materials are able to switch rapidly from high to low impedance while handling large amounts of electrical energy. Since the early 1970s, considerable efforts have been made to improve the specific energy absorption capacity and device reliability of such components. This document describes a case study carried out on the life cycle impacts of three different designs of electroceramics made of ZnO. Results show that the best design involves decreasing the diameter while maintaining the thickness of the compound. Of the production, transport, use, and end-of-life phases, the use phase is found to contribute by far the most to environmental impacts, with leakage currents in the 10-6 ampere range. The next-largest impacts come in the transport and production stages. Sensitivity analysis shows that impacts associated with the production stage originate from ZnO production and are related to the by-products (heavy metals) of zinc metallurgy.On page 526 of this article, equations (4), (5), and (7) should be corrected as follows. Equation (4) should read:Corporate leaders and employees have been increasingly recognising their role in contributing to sustainability. In this context, different voluntary tools, approaches, and initiatives have been developed by and for corporations to engage with sustainability. However, there has been a lack of clarity in explaining how the initiatives address the different elements of the company system (operations and processes, management and strategy, organisational systems, procurement and marketing, and assessment and communication), how they contribute to sustainability's dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and time), how they are linked, or combined to help leaders better embed sustainability into their company's system. The paper provides an analysis of sixteen of the most widely used initiatives (e.g. life cycle assessment, eco-design, cleaner production, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability reporting). Each initiative was analysed on how it contributes or addresses the four dimensions of sustainability, and the company system. It was found that each initiative has advantages with respect to scope and focus for the sustainability dimensions and the company system's elements, but it has certain disadvantages when it comes to dealing with the complexity and broadness of sustainability. The paper discusses how relying on one initiative can result in a limited and narrow contribution to sustainability and curtail coverage of the company's system. The results indicate that the least addressed elements of the company system have been organisational systems and procurement and marketing. A new framework, the Corporate Integration of Voluntary Initiatives for Sustainability (CIVIS), is proposed with two purposes: (1) to help company leaders better understand how to improve their company's contribution to sustainability, and (2) to foster a holistic approach through the combination of company initiatives that would help to embed sustainability into a company's system with the least effort and maximum results. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this project is to obtain quantitative data on the metabolic flows (energy consumption, not only by the establishment but also in the transportation of workers and customers, and packaging use) and their resulting environmental impacts of a standard shopping basket purchase in five city center municipal markets and a hypermarket in a suburban retail park in the province of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). The main results show that a standard shopping basket purchased in a retail park requires 20 times more energy than one purchased in a municipal market (11.1 kWh and 0.57 kWh, respectively). Customer transportation represents 83.2% of energy consumption in a retail park, while the greatest impacts in a municipal market stem from the establishment itself (49.5%) and worker transportation (40.4%). Secondly, the packaging use inventory is higher in a hypermarket (253 g) than in a municipal market (102 g). However, the overall environmental impact associated with a standard shopping basket is 10 times higher on average in a hypermarket than in a municipal market, and the carbon footprints of the hypermarket and the municipal market are 3.8 and 0.4 kg of CO2 eq., respectively. According to the sensitivity analysis, current policies for reducing the amount of plastic bag packaging have little repercussion in a retail park because its relative weight in terms of total packaging use is only 7%. Nevertheless, they have notable effects in municipal markets where plastic bags represent 25% of the packaging use. Finally, if customers selected the least packaged products available in hypermarkets, each shopping basket could reduce up to 47.2% of its used packaging weight and between 15.4 and 59.0% of its associated environmental impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent years have seen increasing interest in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions accounting, also known as carbon footprinting, due to drivers such as transportation fuels policy and climate-related eco-labels, sometimes called carbon labels. However, it remains unclear whether applications of greenhouse gas accounting, such as carbon labels, are supportable given the level of precision that is possible with current methodology and data. The goal of this work is to further the understanding of quantitative uncertainty assessment in carbon footprinting through a case study of a rackmount electronic server. Production phase uncertainty was found to be moderate (+/-15%), though with a high likelihood of being significantly underestimated given the limitations in available data for assessing uncertainty associated with temporal variability and technological specificity. Individual components or subassemblies showed varying levels of uncertainty due to differences in parameter uncertainty (i.e., agreement between data sets) and variability between production or use regions. The use phase displayed a considerably higher uncertainty (+/-50%) than production due to uncertainty in the useful lifetime of the server, variability in electricity mixes in different market regions, and use profile uncertainty. Overall model uncertainty was found to be +/-35% for the whole life cycle, a substantial amount given that the method is already being used to set policy and make comparative environmental product declarations. Future work should continue to combine the increasing volume of available data to ensure consistency and maximize the credibility of the methods of life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprinting. However, for some energy-using products it may make more sense to increase focus on energy efficiency and use phase emissions reductions rather than attempting to quantify and reduce the uncertainty of the relatively small production phase.Modular construction practices are used in many countries as an alternative to conventional on-site construction for residential homes. While modular home construction has certain advantages in terms of material and time efficiency, it requires a different infrastructure than conventional home construction, and the overall environmental trade-offs between the two methods have been unclear. This study uses life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impacts of constructing a typical residential home using the two methods, based on data from several modular construction companies and conventional homebuilders. The study includes impacts from material production and transport, off-site and on-site energy use, worker transport, and waste management. For all categories considered, the average impacts of building the home are less for modular construction than for conventional construction, although these averages obscure significant variation among the individual projects and companies.Micro/nanospheres have been intensively investigated recently because of their attractive applications. While long reaction times, harsh reaction conditions or multiple steps are generally required for the effective synthesis of ferrites, in this study, Ca0.15Fe2.85O4 microspheres were successfully fabricated via a facile one-pot solvothermal method, utilizing polyethylene glycol as a surfactant. XRD, HRTEM, and SEM analysis revealed that the Ca0.15Fe2.85O4 microspheres prepared were monodisperse in nature, with uniform diameters of about 450 nm and porous interior structure. The Ca0.15Fe2.85O4 microspheres exhibited a clear absorption capacity in the visible light region and the band-gap energy was about 1.95 eV. Furthermore, photovoltaic response of the Ca0.15Fe2.85O4 microspheres was shown in the UV-Visible spectral region, due to the effective photo-induced charge carrier separation. The Ca0.15Fe2.85O4 microspheres may find potential applications in many fields, such as photocatalysis, photovoltaics, sensors, optical, and biomedical devices.The term Anthropocene, which is used by many scientists to refer to the current era, reflects various environmental issues caused by anthropogenic activities. The energy flows and conversions in the anthroposphere and the anthropogenic impacts on the ecosphere, as two major aspects of the physical part of industrial ecology, are both subject to the laws of thermodynamics. After an introduction to human-environment systems and industrial ecology in the Anthropocene, this review focuses on the role and applications of thermodynamic analysis in industrial ecology based on a thermodynamic definition of human-environment systems at four levels, i.e., the ecosphere (A), the anthroposphere (B), the supply chain (C), and the foreground system (D). It argues that process engineering thermodynamics (at level D) and ecological energetics (at level A) are the most mature applications, and the primary benefit added by thermodynamic analysis to industrial ecology lies in the physical validation and quantitative formulation of thermodynamics. The review also indicates the challenges of using thermodynamic analysis to understand the physical complexity of industrial ecology and to guide sustainability decision-making call for a joint effort by thermodynamic analysis and ecosystems ecology and for more insights from social sciences. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the present work, in order to investigate the electronic excited-state intermolecular hydrogen bonding between the chromophore coumarin 153 (C153) and the room-temperature ionic liquid N, N-dimethylethanolammonium formate (DAF), both the geometric structures and the infrared spectra of the hydrogen-bonded complex C153-DAF(+) in the excited state were studied by a time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) method. We theoretically demonstrated that the intermolecular hydrogen bond C-1=O-1 center dot center dot center dot H-1-O-3 in the hydrogen-bonded C153-DAF(+) complex is significantly strengthened in the S-1 state by monitoring the spectral shifts of the C=O group and O-H group involved in the hydrogen bond C-1=O-1 center dot center dot center dot H-1-O-3. Moreover, the length of the hydrogen bond C-1=O-1 center dot center dot center dot H-1-O-3 between the oxygen atom and hydrogen atom decreased from 1.693 angstrom to 1.633 angstrom upon photoexcitation. This was also confirmed by the increase in the hydrogen-bond binding energy from 69.92 kJ mol(-1) in the ground state to 90.17 kJ mol(-1) in the excited state. Thus, the excited-state hydrogen-bond strengthening of the coumarin chromophore in an ionic liquid has been demonstrated theoretically for the first time.Environmental considerations are receiving an increased amount of attention in both the residential and industrial sectors. In order to achieve a reduction in emissions of harmful substances to the air, water and land to meet national targets, industrial chemical producers must explore new avenues to reduce the impact that they have on the environment. Utilizing an optimization approach applied to an eco-park network allows for energy and materials to be conducted between network nodes in a manner that reduces emissions by utilizing process co-products and reduces the environmental and economic costs associated with transportation of feedstock and products. A small case eco-park is modelled in GAMS software to show the economic and environmental feasibility of this type of network and the approach to this type of problem. A dual-objective function is created in order to address the environmental concerns of the government and public while continuing to address economic factors presented by processing facilities. Exchanging materials and energy to reduce the life-cycle impact of the products allows for cost savings for the processor as well as reducing the emissions associated with the product; therefore, this type of arrangement is beneficial for producers as well as for society as a whole. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using concepts from environmental psychology and economics, we investigate U.S. households' willingness to engage in a form of pro-environmental behavior: recycling electronic waste (e-waste) at drop-off locations. We rely on rich dataset from a 2006 national survey of U.S. households (N = 2136). Our internal variables include a modified version of the New Ecological Paradigm scale, a moral norm scale based on Schwartz's norm-activation model, and indicators of social pressure for recycling. External variables consist of detailed socio-demographic characteristics. Our logit model shows that external variables do not help characterizing people with e-waste recycling experience, except that they tend to have larger families or to be over 60 years old. However, knowing that e-waste contains potentially toxic materials, recycling conventional materials at work or at school, and especially having strong moral norms helps explain e-waste recycling behavior. Using a generalized ordered logit model, we then show that the most important variables for explaining household willingness to recycle e-waste are internal variables, followed by recycling convenience, knowledge of the potential toxicity of e-waste, prior e-waste recycling experience, as well as gender and marital status; education, age, and ethnicity play only a minor role, while knowledge of e-waste laws, availability of curbside recycling for domestic waste, and income are not statistically significant. Our results suggest that e-waste recycling can be stimulated by promoting moral norms, educating the public about the benefits of recycling e-waste, and making e-waste recycling more convenient but other measures will likely be necessary to tackle the e-waste problem. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study uses a site-specific life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental profile and energy and water demand of potential production options for rapeseed biodiesel in Chile. The first step is the analysis of the biodiesel supply chain in a standard scenario, associated with the most likely production conditions. The second step is the evaluation of the following alternative scenarios related to a production strategy involving low-impact or renewable resources: (1) Addition of livestock manure as organic fertilizer, (2) Use of degraded grassland, (3) Biodiesel transport by rail, and (4) Use of forest residues for industrial steam. The results show that the biodiesel in the standard scenario has less environmental impacts than fossil diesel in 4 of the 13 indicators evaluated. The rapeseed production is the stage with the highest contribution to impacts. The scenario 1 presents the best environmental profile. The scenario 2 reduces the greenhouse gas emissions of biodiesel. The scenarios 3 and 4 moderately improve the profile of the biofuel. The four situations could be implemented in the short term, but should be backed up by economic and social studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Metals are used in a variety of ways, many of which lead to dissipative releases to the environment. Such releases are relevant from both a resource use and an environmental impact perspective. We present a historical analysis of copper dissipative releases in the United States from 1975 to 2000. We situate all dissipative releases in copper's life cycle and introduce a conceptual framework by which copper dissipative releases may be categorized in terms of intentionality of use and release. We interpret our results in the context of larger trends in production and consumption and government policies that have served as drivers of intentional copper releases from the relevant sources. Intentional copper releases are found to be both significant in quantity and highly variable. In 1975, for example, the largest source of intentional releases was from the application of copper-based pesticides, and this decreased more than 50% over the next 25 years; all other sources of intentional releases increased during that period. Overall, intentional copper releases decreased by approximately 15% from 1975 to 2000. Intentional uses that are unintentionally released such as copper from roofing, increased by the same percentage. Trace contaminant sources such as fossil fuel combustion, i.e., sources where both the use and the release are unintended, increased by nearly 50%. Intentional dissipative uses are equivalent to 60% of unintentional copper dissipative releases and more than five times that from trace sources. Dissipative copper releases are revealed to be modest when compared to bulk copper flows in the economy, and we introduce a metric, the dissipation index, which may be considered an economy-wide measure of resource efficiency for a particular substance. We assess the importance of dissipative releases in the calculation of recycling rates, concluding that the inclusion of dissipation in recycling rate calculations has a small, but discernible, influence, and should be included in such calculations. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper describes the scientific framework established within doctoral and postdoctoral programs designed to contribute to a thorough understanding of the specific processes involved in environmental engineering and protection, as to improve the environmental management and performance in an efficient and sustainable way. A coherent conceptual framework is developed for the analysis and management of some specific approaches in engineering and environmental protection (pollution phenomena, decontamination processes/remediation, reactive and proactive advances), evaluated by applying a set of sustainable development indicators, able to compare, evaluate and develop a set of methods and approaches based on concepts and scientific methods, which will make process analysis solid. The study includes some groups of activities such as: selection and processes analysis considering pollution/remediation based on the behaviour of environmental contaminants, considering the source-pathway-receptor chain, starting with process baseline, target and projection; selection of the most relevant sustainability indicators for the evaluation of prevention, control and remediation of environmental components processes; performance evaluation, thresholds, causal loops, model construction and scenario analysis. Various approaches are applied to provide a systematic categorization of socio-economic, environmental and natural resource information under four headings: pressure (stresses or agents of environmental change), state (resources assets, environmental quality), impact and societal response. Indicator integration is also addressed as a means by which individual and quite different indicators in a framework can somehow be viewed together to provide a global view of sustainable development. Sustainability diagrams, as well as indices would ensure clarity for users offering a high level of prominence.The most commonly cited definition of industrial symbiosis (IS), by Chertow (2000), has served well to foster discussion and research for more than a decade. The definition reflected the state of research and practice at the time; as both have advanced, some terms have been interpreted in substantially different ways. In this article we analyze those generally used terms for their connection to the ecological metaphor that is the root of industrial ecology, and their varied interpretations in IS research and practice over time. We then propose an updated definition intended to communicate the essence of IS as a tool for innovative green growth: IS engages diverse organizations in a network to foster eco-innovation and long-term culture change. Creating and sharing knowledge through the network yields mutually profitable transactions for novel sourcing of required inputs and value-added destinations for non-product outputs, as well as improved business and technical processes. We posit that, although geographic proximity is often associated with IS, it is neither necessary nor sufficientnor is a singular focus on physical resource exchange.By working with the willing, the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) has successfully facilitated industrial symbiosis throughout the United Kingdom and, in the process, delivered significant economic and environmental benefits for both Programme members and the country as a whole. One of the keys to NISP's success is that, unlike failed attempts to plan and construct eco-industrial systems from scratch, the Programme works largely with existing companies who have already settled in, developed, and successfully operate within a given locale. This article argues that existing and mature industrial systems provide the best prospects for identifying opportunities for, and ultimately facilitating, industrial symbiosis. Due to levels of diversification and operational fundamental niches that, in the fullness of time, develop within all industrial systems, industrially mature areas are deemed to be industrial symbiosis conducive environments. Building on the conservation biology concept of a habitat suitability index, the article presents a methodology for comparing a potential site for eco-industrial development to a known baseline industrial habitat already identified as being highly conducive to industrial symbiosis. The suitability index methodology is further developed and applied to a multi-criteria evaluation geographic information system to produce a habitat suitability map that allows practitioners to quickly identify potential industrial symbiosis hotspots (the methodology is illustrated for England). The article concludes by providing options for the development of symbiosis suitability indices and how they can be used to support the facilitation of industrial symbiosis and regional resource efficiency.One assumption underlying the work on industrial symbiosis (IS) is that certain social conditions must be fulfilled in order for firms to develop symbiotic linkages. In this article we add depth to this insight by using institutional capacity as an underlying concept for these conditions, and we propose that such capacity influences IS by altering the opportunity set of actors. We then test the assumption on a dataset of 233 projects aiming to develop eco-industrial parks. We find that the link between institutional capacity and the opportunities for symbiotic linkages perceived by actors is not always present and is more complicated than has been recognized thus far. We discuss potential alternative ways in which institutional capacity might influence IS and present ideas for future research to shed light on this important relationship.Like many economic exchanges, industrial symbiosis (IS) is thought to be influenced by social relationships and shared norms among actors in a network. While many implicit references to social characteristics exist throughout the literature, there have been few explicit attempts to operationalize and measure the concepts. The short mental distance,trust,openness, and communication recorded among managers in Kalundborg, Denmark, set a precedent for examining and encouraging social interactions among key personnel in the dozens of eco-industrial networks around the world. In this article we explore the relationships among various aspects of social embeddedness, social capital, and IS. We develop a conceptual framework and an approach using quantitative and qualitative methods to identify and measure these social characteristics, including social network structure, communication, and similarities in norms and conceptions of waste, and apply them in an industrial network in Nanjangud, South India. The findings suggest that there is a fairly high level of shared norms about dealing with wastethe short mental distancein this network, but by-product transactions are only weakly correlated with the structure and content of communication among managers. Replication of this approach can increase the understanding and comparability of the role of social characteristics in eco-industrial activities around the world.While much work has been done on the conditions surrounding the emergence and establishment of industrial symbiosis (IS), new attention is being paid to understanding the evolution of IS over time. We demonstrate empirically how a new, facilitated IS initiative developed and evolved over an 8-year period. We explore its network evolution by considering how the facilitator's actions enabled and precluded two fundamental network processesserendipitous and goal-directed processes. We discuss implications for a more generalized theory of IS development by exploring why and how different evolutionary trajectories may unfold.The longer term sustainability of the minerals sector may hinge, in large part, on finding innovative solutions to the challenges of energy intensity and carbon dioxide (CO2) management. This article outlines the need for large-scale carbon solutions that might be shared by several colocated energy-intensive and carbon-intensive industries. In particular, it explores the potential for situating a mineral carbonation plant as a carbon sink at the heart of a minerals and energy complex to form an industrial symbiosis. Several resource-intensive industries can be integrated synergistically in this way, to enable a complex that produces energy and mineral products with low net CO2 emissions. An illustrative hypothetical case study of such a system within New South Wales, Australia, has been constructed, on the basis of material and energy flows derived from Aspen modeling of a serpentine carbonation process. The synergies and added value created have the potential to significantly offset the energy and emission penalties and direct costs of CO2 capture and storage. This suggests that greenfield minerals beneficiation and metals refining plants should consider closer integration with the power production and energy provision plants on which they depend, together with a carbon solution, such as mineral carbonation, as a critical element of such integration. Other sustainability considerations are highlighted.China is coal dependent, and this situation will persist for a long time. Because more and more attention has been paid to energy security, the coal-chemical industry has become a hot topic and has developed quickly. To improve efficiency and reduce emissions, industrial symbiosis (IS) can be introduced when establishing a coal-chemical eco-industrial system to achieve harmonious development between nature, industry, and society. In order to learn the influence of IS on the current industrial system, a model of coal-chemical eco-industrial systems was built. Using scenario optimization and linear programming, the behaviors and optimal industrial structures of the system under different scenario settings were compared, and industrial ecological analysis was performed. By comparative analysis, results showed that the greatest proportional decrease in the use of coal for coking was 15% compared with actual data for 2005. The resource-productivity and eco-productivity were 828 yuan/ton and 2.51, which are much higher than the values of 548 yuan/ton and 1.23 in 2005. The symbiosis index and the link density were found to be 0.675 and 1.67, compared with 0.588 and 0.94 in 2005. Research results showed that the coal-chemical eco-industrial system achieved a high value-added utilization of coal and an updated product profile. Such systems will constitute the main direction and the inevitable trend of China's coal utilization in the future, which will reduce the harm to the environment from increased coal use and benefit the energy industry, the economy, and society.This research analyzes the Green City project in the town of Tres Coroas, Brazil. We describe its management system, evaluating the change process and the economic, social, and environmental benefits since the recycling center has been in service. We demonstrate a successful case of operational and cultural change in the disposal of industrial waste, describing the key points that helped the adoption of a new set of procedures, and illustrating the role of the champion in the implementation of a symbiotic cluster.This article applies principles of industrial ecology to small- and medium-sized biodiesel production facilities. A large potential for gains in efficiency and profit are realized through technology retrofits and the novel application and reuse of process materials. Our basic criteria for sustainability of farm-scale biodiesel production systems are measured by the following questions: Are all of the resources, mass, and energy flows in the system rational and harmonized? Is the feedstock produced without adverse effects on natural resources or the food chain? We answer these questions by presenting and applying the latest chemical engineering and technology research to support the harmonized and rationalized use of resources and energy within the system boundaries of a farm economy. The feedstock must include refuse and secondary oil sources with low impact on the food chain. Emissions must be reduced to a minimum for a smaller carbon footprint and positive emissions balance from seed to exhaust. Discharges should be avoided; wastes must be turned into primary and intermediary products or energy resources. Proper techniques and routines should serve environmental and human health and safety targets. Reuse of existing assets is considered for improving unit capacity and efficiency, thus lowering costs of conversion. Significant benefits in profitability and production capacity, combined with improved environmental performance, are the main outcomes of the recommended restructuring of production at farm-scale.This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the links between dematerialisation and climate change mitigation. Methods used for material flow analyses (MFA) within the wider context of industrial ecology (which includes a focus on all resource flows in an economy, not purely material tonnage) tend to focus either on detoxification and pollution reduction or dematerialisation and resource productivity. An environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) model incorporates both aspects, which need to be dealt with when looking at how to meet challenging greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. The approach understands both production systems and consumption patterns and has the ability through scenarios to analyse the (GHG) effectiveness of a wide range of material efficiency options. This analysis adopts an environmentally extended input-output approach to assess the role of material efficiency measures in reducing UK GHG emissions by 2050. A method for projecting the variables and parameters in the model, including the supply of and demand for materials and products, is presented and applied to investigate thirteen material efficiency strategies in the UK. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.TiO2-SiO2 composite nanotubes were successfully synthesized by a facile sol-gel technique utilizing ZnO nanowires as template. The nanotubes were well characterized by transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, N-2 adsorption-desorption analysis and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The nanotubular TiO2-SiO2 composite photocatalysts showed diameter of 300-325 nm, fine mesoporous structure and high specific surface area. The results indicated that the degradation efficiency of gaseous toluene could get 65% after 4 h reaction using the TiO2-SiO2 composite as the photocatalyst under UV light illumination, which was higher than that of P25. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A regional industrial ecosystem faces the challenge of boundaries, which are barriers to its evolution and development. Crossing various boundaries is necessary in order to achieve extension of industrial ecosystems. This article described and analyzed the case of going beyond the sectoral boundary practice of the Hai Hua industrial ecosystem (HHIE) in China. In this case, the traditional planned economic system of China was the main reason for the existence of the sectoral boundary in HHIE. The sectoral boundary restricted the establishment of potential symbiotic linkages between companies. Going beyond the sectoral boundary was necessary in order to promote industrial ecosystem development. The government played a crucial role in breaking the sectoral boundary. It was "a key stage" in the development of HHIE. Breaking the sectoral boundary was achieved through the approach of establishing a salt-soda combination, i.e., establishing the Hai Hua Group (HHG). From this case, some conclusions on development of industrial ecosystems were drawn. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.UV-vis spectra, XRD, H-2-TPR, TEM and ESR were used to characterize a series of Cu/gamma-Al2O3 catalysts, which were prepared by incipient wetness impregnation using copper nitrate, copper acetate or copper sulfate as precursors, to study the role of Cu species on Cu/gamma-Al2O3 catalysts for NH3-SCO reaction. It was found that the mixture of CuO phase and CuAl2O4 phase formed on various Cu/gamma-Al2O3 catalysts, and the Cu species and dispersion had significant influence on the Cu/gamma-Al2O3 activity. Highly dispersed CuO phase on the support would be related with its high activity for the NH3-SCO reaction. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.Industrial symbiosis examines cooperative management of resource flows through networks of businesses known in the literature as industrial ecosystems. These industrial ecosystems have previously been portrayed as having characteristics of complex adaptive systems, but with insufficient attention to the internal and external phenomena describing their genesis. Drawing on biological, ecological, organizational, and systems theory, a discontinuous three-stage model of industrial symbiosis is presented. The model proceeds from a random formative stage involving numerous actors engaging in material and energy exchanges, to conscious recognition and intentional pursuit of network benefits, to institutionalization of beliefs and norms enabling successful collaborative behavior. While there is much variation, with no single path to this outcome, the recognition of benefits is seen as an emergent property characteristic of these self-organized systems that move beyond the initial stage.In view of recent studies of the historical development and current status of industrial symbiosis (IS), life cycle assessment (LCA) is proposed as a general framework for quantifying the environmental performance of by-product exchange. Recent guidelines for LCA (International Reference Life Cycle Data System [ILCD] guidelines) are applied to answer the main research questions in the IS literature reviewed. A typology of five main research questions is proposed: (1) analysis, (2) improvement, and (3) expansion of existing systems; (4) design of new eco-industrial parks, and (5) restructuring of circular economies. The LCA guidelines were found useful in framing the question and choosing an appropriate reference case for comparison. The selection of a correct reference case reduces the risk of overestimating the benefits of by-product exchange. In the analysis of existing systems, environmentally extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) can be used to streamline the analysis and provide an industry average baseline for comparison. However, when large-scale changes are applied to the system, more sophisticated tools are necessary for assessment of the consequences, from market analysis to general equilibrium modeling and future scenario work. Such a rigorous application of systems analysis was not found in the current IS literature, but would benefit the field substantially, especially when the environmental impact of large-scale economic changes is analyzed.Many scholars of industrial ecology have focused on the institutional and organizational challenges of building and maintaining regional industrial symbiosis through the synergistic integration of material and energy flows. Despite the promise that these intellectual developments hold for the future dematerialization of industrial production, they rarely address the actual regulatory obstacles of turning wastes into raw materials. In this article we introduce a potential future industrial symbiosis around the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden, and assess the regulatory bottlenecks related to waste by-product consideration.Innovative waste recycling through industrial processes such as industrial and urban symbiosis has long been practiced and recently received much attention in the field of industrial ecology, with researchers making efforts to identify key contributing factors to successful industrial symbiosis. By analyzing 88 sample recycling projects in 23 eco-towns in Japan, this article focuses on the factors of project scale, recycling boundary, and types of waste in relationship to environmental benefits and operational performance. The results showed that larger eco-towns achieved more savings of virgin materials and higher stability in operation. Large-scale projects tended to locate closer to the users of recycled products than did small-scale projects. For treating similar types of waste, projects producing recycled products for special users (e.g., feedstock to a blast furnace for iron production) tended to locate closer to the users than those not producing for special users. The type of waste had a strong effect on the savings of virgin materials and recycling boundaries, while local factors had significant impacts on operational performance. The results also showed that agglomeration did not significantly contribute to the environmental benefits or operational performance of eco-town projects. Another finding was that national agencies were helpful for facilitating cross-prefecture transportation and long-distance transaction of wastes. Implications of the findings are also discussed.The relationship between electronic spectral shifts and hydrogen-bonding dynamics in electronically excited states of the hydrogen-bonded complex is put forward. Hydrogen bond strengthening will induce a redshift of the corresponding electronic spectra, while hydrogen bond weakening will cause a blueshift. Time-dependent density function theory (TDDFT) was used to study the excitation energies in both singlet and triplet electronically excited states of Benzonitrile (BN), 4-aminobenzonitrile (ABN), and 4-dimethylaminobenzonitrile (DMABN) in methanol solvents. Only the intermolecular hydrogen bond Ca parts per thousand N...H-O was involved in our system. A fairly accurate forecast of the hydrogen bond changes in lowlying electronically excited states were presented in light of a very thorough consideration of their related electronic spectra. The deduction we used to depict the trend of the hydrogen bond changes in excited states could help others understand hydrogen-bonding dynamics more effectively.Magnetic Fe3O4 particles, which are uniquely superior in separation and recyclability, are widely applied in environmental remediation. However, the limited diffusion of Fe3O4 particles in aqueous solutions leads to a low adsorption rate and available capacity. Thus, a novel and simple method to enhance the adsorption ability of Fe3O4 particles via HCl-assisted sonication was proposed. The Fe3O4 particles, pretreated via HCl-assisted sonication, were found to have a positive effect for the removal of C. I. Reactive Blue 194 from a weak acid solution. We characterized the sorption and desorption on pretreated Fe3O4 particles to understand its availability for dyeing waste water treatment. Sorption of dye to pretreated Fe3O4 particles was fast (adsorption could reach equilibrium in less than 40 min) in a wide pH range, and agreed well to the kinetics of pseudo-second-order and the Langmuir adsorption model. Meanwhile, after an effective regeneration with 0.1 M H2O2 solution and sonication for an hour, the pretreated Fe3O4 remains good adsorption activity which could remain the dye removal rate about 90% after five recycles. Thus, using pretreated Fe3O4, which has high adsorption efficiency and strong magnetic property, was an efficient and environment friendly method for dyeing waste water treatment. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.At present, Colombia is facing increased growth in the mining industry; this has sparked a discussion around both positive and negative effects on Colombia's economy, environment and communities. Moreover, the Colombian mining sector has come under tremendous pressure to improve its sustainable development. The Industrial ecology (IE) framework provides a useful systems perspective and innovative solutions to support sustainable development. In this paper the current state and desired end state of the Colombian mining sector in terms of sustainable development are discussed. Besides, the role of the IE framework in meeting sustainable needs of the Colombian mining sector has been analyzed, and the critical factors for a successful implementation of industrial ecology have been identified. The paper provides ten strategies for implementing an IE framework to face the sustainable development needs of the Colombian mining sector.A Green Virtual Enterprise Breeding Environment (GVBE) is a long-term strategic alliance of green enterprises and their related support institutions aimed at offering the necessary conditions to efficiently promote the sharing and recycling of resources such as: information, materials, water, energy and/or infrastructure with the intention of achieving sustainable development in a collaborative way. A GVBE can be a three-level holistic sustainable industrial development model for achieving a Circular Economy at a micro-level with its green enterprises development, at meso-level with green virtual enterprises creation and at a macro-level with the GVBE it-self as an intelligent network for competencies and resources management from different green enterprises aiming to combine their green capabilities to develop triple top-line strategies to create sustainable value. This paper provides basic concepts and general guidelines to create sustainable industrial development models for Circular Economy based-on Collaborative Networked Organisations.Based on the resource, energy anti:environmental problems from the traditional mode of economic development, in order to realize economic, societal, and environmental coordinated development, we must change the mode of economic development, improve the industrial development pattern, and vigorously promote the ecological industry, thus realizing the transformation of economic development to ecological industry oriented. We should focus on recycling the utilization of resources, improve resource utilization efficiency, adhere to industry cluster and ecological development direction, take a new road to industrialization, construct ecological industry and circular economy system, and finally realize a harmonious unity among economic benefits, social benefits and ecological benefits.The exchange of wastes among plants within an eco-industrial park (EIP) creates potential for significant gains in sustainability through efficient use of resources and reduction of environmental discharges. If the establishment of such resource conservation networks (RCNs) is not economically optimal, intervention of an EIP authority will be necessary in order to induce companies to act in an environmentally responsible manner. This conflict of interest between the EIP authority and the industrial plants results in a Stackelberg game, which may be represented as a bi-level optimization model. In this work, a bi-level linear integer programming model for optimizing waste exchange in an EIP is developed. Then, an inverse optimization approach is used to solve it. An auxiliary model is used to determine the best set of incentives and disincentives to induce the plants in the EIP to form an optimal RCN. The methodology is demonstrated using an illustrative case study.The integration of environmental impacts in the conceptual design of energy systems can be achieved by combining Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with process integration techniques. The use and the disaggregation of life cycle inventory (LCI) databases allows for extending the systematic generation of resources to services conversion chains and for including the environmental impacts in the process design procedure. This paper presents how to systematically generate the superstructure of the energy conversion system, how to solve the urban energy system design using a multi-period multi-objective optimization and how the environmental objectives can be integrated in the process design procedure.The imitation of foreign industrial eco-chain makes the Industrial Ecology (IE) only a formality and ends up in an awkward situation of being "ecological", but not "profitable", which cannot ensure the achievement of the goal of coordinating economic development with the protection of resource and environment. In this paper, the authors stress that regional difference is a new point for IE research, and it may be much helpful for the applications of IE in China. By broadly classifying 30 provinces (cities) of China into different regions, the authors propose the path of industrial ecology for each typical region.This chapter introduces the field of industrial ecology, including an exploration of its main tool, life cycle analysis (LCA), and discusses how it relates to metropolitan sustainability. The chapter first goes through a brief history of the development of LCA, then runs through some examples of its application to urban sustainability measurement. It also briefly touches on other tools such as materials flow analysis and concludes with an applied example of LCA and a discussion of its benefits and drawbacks.The effect of nanometer anatase TiO2 was investigated on the photocatalytic degradation of phenanthrene on soil surfaces under a variety of conditions. After being spiked with phenanthrene, soil samples loaded with different amounts of TiO2 (0 wt.%, 1 wt.%, 2 wt.%, 3 wt.%, and 4 wt.%) were exposed to UV-light irradiation for 25 hr. The results indicated that the photocatalytic degradation of phenanthrene followed the pseudo first-order kinetics. TiO2 significantly accelerated the degradation of phenanthrene with the half-life reduced from 45.90 to 31.36 hr for TiO2 loading of 0 wt.% and 4 wt.%, respectively. In addition, the effects of H2O2, light intensity and humic acid on the degradation of phenanthrene were investigated. The degradation of phenanthrene increased with the concentration of H2O2, light intensity and the concentration of humic acids. It has been demonstrated that the photocatalytic method in the presence of nanometer anatase TiO2 was a very promising technology for the treatments of soil polluted with organic substances in the future.Photolysis is expected to be a major degradation process for pollutants in surface water. This paper studied the photodegradation of metribuzin, a widely used herbicide, in aqueous solution under simulated solar light irradiation. Photolysis of metribuzin was enhanced by the higher light intensity, and the major products were deaminometribuzin and nitrite ions. Metribuzin degradation was inhibited in the absence of oxygen and at higher pH value. In addition, iron in water promoted the degradation of metribuzin, while dissolved organic matter lowered the degradation rate. This investigation is helpful for better understanding the transformation and the potential ecological risk of metribuzin in natural water.Phosphorus is an abundant resource, even though the most economically attractive reserves are geographically concentrated, so that whether and when production will peak are highly uncertain. However, analysis of the global use of phosphorus primarily in agriculture (including animal husbandry), reveals an exceptionally "leaky" supply chain: losses, including leaching from soils and animal excreta, amount to some 90% of the inputs. The potential for innovation to improve the efficiency of phosphorus use is therefore enormous, going beyond recovery of phosphorus from waste water to reducing the losses from the whole use system. Drivers to improve the system efficacy include the concerns over distribution and possibly security of supply and also the environmental impacts of phosphorus emissions. Future production, use and price of phosphorus therefore depend as much on changes in food consumption and agricultural practices as on changes in mining and processing. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of SYMPHOS 2011Imitating the natural eco-system, the eco-industrial estates emerged as one of effective ways to manage industrial systems. Aiming to create a sustainable industrial ecosystem required balancing of demand and supply of materials, energy, and wastes. Eco-industrial estate development strategies initiated by the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand (IEAT) were announced to industrial estates and public, which consisted of 5 aspects and 22 areas and claimed as business model initiatives. At the present, industrial estates throughout the country are being transformed to eco-industrial estate and network. Preliminary study on the Community-Based-Eco-Industrial Estate (CBEIE) development of Northern Region Industrial Estate (NRIE), Thailand was focused. Findings from the survey, suggestions and improvement needs were recommended by respondents in order to build stakeholders' trust and to balance their mutual benefits for further CBEIE development of NRIE. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Asia Pacific Business Innovation and Technology Management SocietyIndustrial ecology explores the analogical relationships between biological ecosystems and anthropogenic systems, in order to optimize the latter's resource management inspired by the former's mechanisms. A renewed conception of industrial ecology consists in considering it as the building process of a collective territorial knowledge, in its two complementary dimensions: the development of a collective knowledge and the development of the collective through knowledge. It proposes a collaborative construction of a territorial definition, through the sharing and mutualization of information flow, transmitted by the territory and interpreted by actors, leading to a collective decision process. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Asia Pacific Business Innovation and Technology Management SocietyEndangering environment and its protection have been representing a problem for the mankind throughout decades. Disappearance of harmony between man and nature has created numerous dangers which degrade the accomplishments of the civilisation achieved so far, cause enormous damaging effect on people, their lives and health, body integrity and many other values. Therefore, the significance of the environmental protection is highlighted as the most important global challenge of the modem society, especially in the field of industrial ecology. Thus, various issues from and related to the field of environment form an important part of the activity of the EU, that has lately been undertaking more comprehensive and more intensive political actions in this domain. The authors studied the synergy of the legislative and the actual state of pollution of soil, water and air, industrial pollution on the basis of exact parameters due to the particular territory of the Republic of Serbia, assessing the quality of legal provisions and their applicability, pointing to possible failures in legislation and in implementing these provisions. They also pointed out that environmental crime today is considered to be a serious and widely spread phenomenon which has got to be suppressed on transnational level. For that matter, criminal-legal protection of environment is a final, but also a very efficient and more than a necessary measure.The rapid development of eco-industrial parks is indicative of one practical pattern of theories and methods in industrial ecology. By using a social network analysis method, we could go into the interior of the network and analyze the structural attributes of it, therefore finding out the management problems in the corresponding eco-industrial park. In this paper, we provide a primary guide to establishing evaluation indicators for an eco-industrial park, including the nodal degree, centralization, density, average distance, core-periphery and cohesive sub-groups, as well as other structural attribute indicators like centralizing and closing degrees of the network, or relations of subgroups. Through this kind of review, we could provide some theoretical bases for evaluating eco-industrial parks, as well as enrich the technologies and methods for the study of industrial ecology. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of School of Environment, Beijing Normal University.With the rapid increase of mobile phone applications, its security becomes a hit issue recently. The chain of mobile phones is composed by numerous manufacturers, services providers, consumers, and the government. They are also the participants of the mobile phone security industry. An ecosystem of mobile phone security industry has been established. Lots of research was focused on the single security problem of mobile, while the relationship among them was ignored. This paper focuses on some key characteristics of the mobile phone security and analyses the ecosystem environment which the industry faces. It also discusses how to keep the ecological balance of the mobile phone security industry.Traditional linear industries led to dwindling resources and even exhaustion, as well as worsening pollution, it is a short-sighted unsustainable developing mode of the economy. Ecological industry is to realize the harmonious development between economy and environment by planning industrial systems according to material cycle in the natural ecological system. The Eco-industry coordinates discrete enterprises and industries and integrates them into optimized industrial ecology chains which establish the "resources - products - renewable resources" of the circular economy mode. This paper conducts comprehensive comparison between traditional industry and eco-industry in 10 areas, such as guiding ideology, resource utilizing, environment preservation and waste disposing etc. The core essence of the eco-industrial system is the layer of material circulation and delivery of energy use; it is a new, sustainable economic developing model. The paper further does investigation on strategies for industry ecology system(IES) construction, which include establishing and improving the legal system and industrial policies to promote industrial ecology, constructing information sharing platform, government coordination and maintenance functions as well as establish mechanisms for fostering trust between enterprises etc.Emergy analysis provides a new way of thinking about the uniform evaluation of natural resource, human society and economy, and leads to some new analysis methods for industrial ecology system. Some existing related theories are summarized and analyzed. On the basis of them, this paper proposes some methods where emergy theory can be applied to analysis of industrial ecology system.Municipal solid waste (MSW) reflects the culture that produces it and affects the health of the people and the environment surrounding it. Globally, people are discarding growing quantities of waste, and its composition is more complex than ever before, as plastic and electronic consumer products diffuse. Concurrently, the world is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate. These trends pose a challenge to cities, which are charged with managing waste in a socially and environmentally acceptable manner. Effective waste management strategies depend on local waste characteristics, which vary with cultural, climatic, and socioeconomic variables, and institutional capacity. Globally, waste governance is becoming regionalized and formalized. In industrialized nations, where citizens produce far more waste than do other citizens, waste tends to be managed formally at a municipal or regional scale. In less-industrialized nations, where citizens produce less waste, which is mostly biogenic, a combination of formal and informal actors manages waste. Many waste management policies, technologies, and behaviors provide a variety of environmental benefits, including climate change mitigation. Key waste management challenges include integrating the informal waste sector in developing cities, reducing consumption in industrialized cities, increasing and standardizing the collection and analysis of solid waste data, and effectively managing increasingly complex waste while protecting people and the environment.Process industries strategic environmental assessment (PISEA) involves some industry, is an extremely complicated system, it is difficult or impossible to been full studied by a single approach, and must rely on a comprehensive, sound methodology. Base on the traditional method of environmental impact assessment, policy science assessment and system integration, combining with practical industry background, presenting an decision-making integration methodology. On this basis, constructing methodology of PISEA matrix model based on the integration of Decision-making. The study results show that the matrix methodology will integrate the processes of PISEA and strategy development, reflecting the guidance of PISEA methodology supporting decision-making.Biodegradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is very difficult in saline-alkaline soil due to the inhibition of microbial growth under saline-alkaline stress. The microorganisms that can most effectively degrade PAHs were screened by introducing microorganisms immobilized on farm byproducts and assessing the validity of the immobilizing technique for PAHs degradation in pyrene-contaminated saline-alkaline soil. Among the microorganisms examined, it was found that Mycobacterium sp. B2 is the best, and can degrade 82.2% and 83.2% of pyrene for free and immobilized cells after 30 days of incubation. The immobilization technique could increase the degradation of pyrene significantly, especially for fungi. The degradation of pyrene by the immobilized microorganisms Mucor sp. F2, fungal consortium MF and co-cultures of MB+MF was increased by 161.7% (P < 0.05), 60.1% (P < 0.05) and 59.6% (P < 0.05) after 30 days, respectively, when compared with free F2, MF and MB+MF. Scanning electron micrographs of the immobilized microstructure proved the positive effects of the immobilized microbial technique on pyrene remediation in saline-alkaline soil, as the interspace of the carrier material structure was relatively large, providing enough space for cell growth. Co-cultures of different bacterial and fungal species showed different abilities to degrade PAHs. The present study suggests that Mycobacterium sp. B2 can be employed for in situ bioremediation of PAHs in saline-alkaline soil, and immobilization of fungi on farm byproducts and nutrients as carriers will enhance fungus PAH-degradation ability in saline-alkaline soil.The end of life tyres (ELT) management generates CO2-eq emissions due to the involved processes. Therefore. this research has been conducted with the aim of quantifying the environmental performance of an ELT management system, in terms of CO2-eq emissions, which includes the recycling operation through the ELT treatment plant, the transport system and the secondary raw material derived from ELT processing; apart from other different ELT recovery methods. To this end, the environmental performance method based on life cycle assessment and complemented with the Clarke and Wright's saving algorithm has been developed in order to evaluate and optimise the location of the ELT treatment plants. To validate the proposed method, the Autonomous Community of Aragon in Spain is shown as a case study. Different ELT management scenarios have been analysed for the Aragon's ELT treatment plant and the optimisation of transportation of the baseline scenario is carried out by means of the Clarke and Wright algorithm. By applying the proposed methodology it has been identified that the current location of the Aragonese treatment plant has benefits in net CO2-eq emissions for the different radii studied with a maximum of 200 km. On the other hand, The Clarke and Wright method has been applied in order to obtain the transportation optimisation of the total travelled distance from the 42 collection/sorting centres to the treatment plant. As a result, the travelled distance can be reduced about 15%.This chapter is devoted to the conceptual foundations of industrial ecology, an interdisciplinary field that draws parallels between the natural world of organisms, their use of energy and resources and the interactions between them and the world of enterprises that also interact, use energy and resources and differ from natural entities in peculiar ways. The subject of biogeochemical cycles, underpinning the ideas of industrial ecology is introduced alongside three major analytical methods which can be used to study the environmental effects of economic interactions: those of life cycle analysis, material flows analysis and environmentally extended input-output analysis. A series of diagrams illustrates the global distribution of material flows of a particular kind or the differences between industrial and ecological systems.Based on the theory of industrial ecology, the connotation of comprehensive utilization of energy in iron & steel industry was analyzed and the he importance of comprehensive utilization of energy was expounded in terms of resources-conversion and environment-protection. Recovery approaches of secondary energy in iron & steel industry were studied. Finally, the paper put forward some advices of energy policy through analyzed problems of old policy system of the industry in our country. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAPIE Organization Committee.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to show how industrial ecology can facilitate the achievement of sustainable development through its incorporation into an engineering curriculum. Design/methodology/approach - A model has been developed for assessing sustainability learning outcomes due to the incorporation of the concept of industrial ecology into undergraduate and postgraduate engineering programs. This model assesses how the Engineering Faculty at Curtin University has included a core engineering unit (Engineering for Sustainable Development) and four postgraduate units (Cleaner Production Tools, Eco-efficiency, Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Technology) in its undergraduate and postgraduate engineering program, to enable modern engineering education to reflect the benefits of industrial ecology in the implementation of sustainable engineering solutions and decision-making processes. Using this model, this paper demonstrates how the syllabus, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary assignment tasks, lectures and tutorials have been developed since 2006 in order to develop the concept of industrial ecology in undergraduate and postgraduate engineering education. The paper has also analysed the different teaching methods that have been applied since 2006 to generate increased student satisfaction in these new and challenging subjects. Findings - The university environment can temper the potential outcomes from increasing the sustainability content in engineering education, given the general lack of student maturity in understanding the value of sustainability objectives together with course limitations on sustainability content and the arduous and lengthy processes involved in changing course curricula. Research limitations/implications - Since the Engineering for Sustainable Development unit has been introduced only recently, it was beyond the scope of the research to interview graduate engineers who completed this unit to investigate how they have applied the concept of industrial ecology to achieve sustainability outcomes in their workplaces. Originality/value - This research is distinct in that it investigated the implications of the incorporation of industrial ecology into the engineering curriculum.The heart rate and calpain activity of blue mussels Mytilus edulis from the sublittoral zone, exposed to different levels of water-borne copper and cadmium, was investigated in a long-term experiment. The content of cadmium and copper in the blue mussel was determined using flame and graphite Atomic absorption spectroscopy. The observed concentrations ranged from 2.5 to 89.1 mu g/g dry weight for cadmium and from 6.1 to 51.0 mu g/g dry weight for copper in the control and highest concentration, respectively. Initially, increase in cardiac activity in response to copper and Cadmium exposure was observed under all pollutant concentrations (5-250 and 10-500 mu g/L, respectively). The calpain-like activity in gills and hepatopancreas of the mussels treated with metals changed in dose- and time-dependent manner: from a sharp rise at the 250 mu g/L concentration of copper on the first day to a significant decrease under the effect of Cadmium in the concentration of 500 mu g/L on the third day of the experiment. These results suggest that: (i) heart rate oscillation may reflect active adaptation of blue mussels to contamination and (ii) animals have different sensitivity to copper and Cadmium according to the role of the metals in the mussels' life activity.The concept of regenerative design and development is situated within the broader theoretical context of sustainability. The emerging regenerative paradigm is contrasted with the two current sustainability paradigms - internationally negotiated 'idealistic' public policy and private sector 'Ecological Modernization' - that seek to maintain the status quo. Each of these sustainability paradigms is explained though a brief historical narrative to illustrate their response to broader social pressures, the main critiques of each and some commonalities. It is argued that the dominant sustainability paradigms are reaching the limitations of their usefulness due to their conceptual foundation in an inappropriate mechanistic worldview and their tacit support of a modernization project that prevents effective engagement with a complex, dynamic and living world. The regenerative paradigm provides an alternative that is explicitly designed to engage with a living world through its emphasis on a co-creative partnership with nature based on strategies of adaptation, resilience and regeneration. It provides a foundation for a sustainability paradigm that is relevant to an ecological worldview.From thought to action, ideas to implementation ... that is the way to go. Industrial ecology as a set of tools and strategies to shape the world of the future and enable it to develop sustainably, needs to adjust and evolve over time. There is often a risk of having to rob Peter to pay Paul which must be minimized. The wheels-within-wheels nature of sustainable development needs to be appreciated and accepted in advance, even if one may agree that it would be difficult to please everyone equally. Something's gotta give, as they say, for something else to stay. Industrial ecology as a field of education and research is in its teens now, raring to go. In the days to come, even as it entrenches itself as a mature discipline in university campuses across the world, it is vital and extremely necessary to ensure that the links to society, government and industry are strengthened and researchers in this discipline do not become ivory-tower idealists dishing out theories ad infinitum, which do not have any relevance to ground realities.Though the development of biofuel has attracted numerous studies for quantifying potential water demand applying life cycle thinking, the impacts of biofuel water consumption still remain unknown. In this study, we aimed to quantify ecological impact associated with corn-based bioethanol water consumption in Minnesota in responding to different refinery expansion scenarios by applying a life cycle impact assessment method. This ecological damage assessment method for quantifying water consumption impacts was proposed by Pfister et al. in 2009 (Environ Sci Technol 43: 4098-4104, 2009) using an impact characterization factor integrating terrestrial net primary production and precipitation. In this study, we derived the spatially explicit eco-damage characterization factors for 81 watersheds in Minnesota and compiled location-specific water consumption data for all current and planned bioethanol production facilities and feedstock production. The ecological damage caused by bioethanol production (Delta EQ(EtOH) in m(2)a <...yr) was then calculated on both watershed and refinery-plant levels. Additional refinery expansion scenarios were established for testing the effectiveness in changing Delta EQ(EtOH). The results show that ecological impact Delta EQ(EtOH) varied by more than a factor of 3 between watersheds. Minnesota consumed 40 billion liters of water to produce 2.3 billion liters of ethanol as of 2007 (17 L water per liter of ethanol). The geographical distribution of Delta EQ(EtOH) was shown to be uneven with a cluster of high-impact regions around the center of the state. The planned refinery expansion is expected to increase the state's corn ethanol production capacity by 75% and Delta EQ(EtOH) by 65%. However, strategically locating the planned expansion in the low-impact areas is expected to minimize the increases in Delta EQ(EtOH) down to 19% from 65%. The scenario analysis shows that strategically sourcing corn from low-impact regions can result in significantly less water use impact compared to a baseline scenario. The results indicate that employing the water consumption impact assessment can provide additional insights in policy making. The environmental impacts related to the change of plant infrastructure and agricultural practices associated with the development of the renewable energy industry should be considered as well for identifying the most sustainable alternatives.The pith of the strategy of development of the Ecoindustrial Park Rasa is presented. The Park is situated in the bay of Rasa, unique but improperly used and maintained Croatian fjord. The starting point in conceiving of the Ecoindustrial Park Rasa is synergy of service and production activities, successful cooperation of companies aiming to achieve results on the following principle: unity is more successful than the amount of successfully combined activity of singular companies, units of the system. The contribution will be the care about industrial ecology, strengthening of the integration of economic raise and protection of environment as well as industrial symbiosis that will improve the economy and the quality of life in the Community of Rasa.The training program on industrial ecology and environment hosted by Mahidol University is designed to provide an understanding of the principles concept and practice of industrial ecology, which had a benefits directly to the sustainable development of industrial sectors in Asia. In 2011, the problem based training was firstly applied as a main idea for designing the course structure of the 3rd international training course on industrial ecology. Three modules, which are in class learning, field study (learning by doing), and group discussion (analysis and synthesize idea), were offered as a framework for this course. There are 14 participants from 9 participating countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East that joined this training program. Sustainability management of the Northern Region Industrial Estate (NRIE) and community area were delivered as a project study, which referred to the three main issues of the focused area including water quality of the Kuang river, soil contaminated problem, and community feedback to the NRIE. The results from the training program revealed that industrial activities in the NRIE did not affect the water quality of Kuang river and soil quality around NRIE area. In addition, the local people who live within or near that area have positive attitude towards the NRIE. This training approach was a challenge for the majority of participants who had not previously been exposed to it. Participant feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Participant satisfaction with the training program had a mean score of 4.92 (out of 5) with all participants agreeing or strongly agreeing with using the problem based training methodology, which can delivered the transdisciplinarity between academics and practitioners, self-regulated learning, and collaboration.A total of 834 individual aerosol particles were collected during October and November 2010 in urban Shanghai, China. Particles were sampled under different weather and air quality conditions. Morphologies, compositions and mixing states of carbonaceous aerosols were investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX). Structures of some particles were verified using selected-area electron diffraction (SAED). Among the aerosol particles observed, carbonaceous aerosols were mainly categorized into four types: polymeric organic compound (POC), soot, tar ball, and biogenic particle. Based on the detailed TEM-EDX analysis, most of the particles were coated with secondary organic aerosols (SOA), which commonly formed through condensation or heterogeneous reactions of precursor gases on preexisting particles. Aged particles were associated with days with low wind velocities, showed complex structures, and were bigger in size. The internally mixed particles of sulphates, organics and soot were encountered frequently. Such internally mixed particles may be preferentially formed during a stagnated air mass during serious pollution events, such as on 13 November. Although relative number counts varied with different species, sulphates (38-71 %) and soot (11-22 %) constituted the most dominant species observed in the samples. However, soil-derived particles (68 %) were relatively more frequently observed on the sample collected on 12 November during a dust storm.With intensified contradiction between the rapid development of modern industry and the carrying capacity of natural environment, coordinating the relationship between economic benefits and ecological benefits is a significant issue to be solved for modern industrial engineering. This paper firstly conducts the comparative analysis between traditional and ecological industry as well as traditional and modern industrial engineering, and indicates that eco-industrial engineering is an inevitable choice for sustainable development of modern industrial engineering; Then, based on industrial ecology, environmental economics and sustainable development theory, the connotation and definition of eco-industrial engineering are proposed, and the theoretical and practical development of the concepts of eco-industrial engineering are further investigated. Furthermore, the research subject, research content, academic system architecture and evaluation methods of eco-industrial engineering are discussed. Finally, combining the current scientific and technological development, we put forward the important scientific value and practical significance of constructing eco-industrial engineering for the utilization of these concepts.In this paper, a comprehensive study regarding the assessment of sustainable development (SD) integration in Greek schools of engineering is presented. More specifically, the undergraduate and graduate curricula and websites of all schools of engineering in Greece were examined to identify SD-related content and actions. Moreover, a simple guide for embedding SD into engineering schools was established, based on the experiences of successful implementation and strategies from highly recognised technical universities worldwide, to benchmark the Greek experience and to propose indicative measures for incorporating SD teaching in Greek universities. Results indicated that changing the curriculum is not the only way to efficiently incorporate SD in universities, whereas there are gaps concerning the integration of sustainability principles and tools in Greek engineering universities. Furthermore, the initial steps of incorporating SD-related actions at an engineering department are presented and analysed indicating some characteristic key factors affecting the efficient incorporation of SD tools in engineering courses.The anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process was successfully started up from conventional activated sludge using a hybrid bioreactor within 2 months. The average removal efficiencies of ammonia and nitrite were both over 80%, and the maximum total nitrogen removal rate of 1.85 kg(1.)N/(m(3).day) was obtained on day 362 with the initial sludge concentration of 0.7 g mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS)/L. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation of the granular sludge in the hybrid reactor clearly showed a high degree of compactness and cell sphericity, and the cell size was quite uniform. Transmission electron microscope photos showed that cells were round or oval, the cellular diameter was 0.6-1.0 mu m, and the percentage of the anammoxosome compartment was 51%-85% of the whole cell volume. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis (FISH) indicated that anammox bacteria became the dominant population in the community (accounting for more than 51% of total bacteria on day 250). Seven planctomycete 16S rRNA gene sequences were present in the 16S rRNA gene clone library generated from the biomass and affiliated to Candidatus Kuenenia stuttgartiensis and Candidatus Brocadia sp., a new anammox species. In addition, the average effluent suspended solid (MLSS) concentrations of outlets I (above the non-woven carrier) and II (below the non-woven carrier) were 0.0009 and 0.0035 g/L, respectively. This showed that the non-woven carrier could catch the biomass effectively, which increased biomass and improved the nitrogen removal rate in the reactor.Developing photocatalysts with specific morphology promises good opportunities to discover the geometry-dependent properties. Herein, flower-like anatase TiO2 assemblies with dominant {001} facets exposed were successfully synthesized via a simple, economical hydrothermal route with titanium sulfate and hydrofluoric acid. Their surface morphology and structure were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction. X-ray diffraction, and Brunauer-Emmet-Teller N-2 gas adsorption-desorption isotherms. The optical property and the photo-induced charge carriers of the flower-like TiO2 were studied by UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and transient photovoltage technique. The flower-like TiO2 particles exhibited a good photocatalytic activity in degrading rhodamine B. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sensitive and selective detection strategies for toxic heavy metal ions, which are rapid, cheap and applicable to environmental and biological fields, are of significant importance. As a result of specific interaction between thiol(s) used as ligands and heavy metal ions, the photoluminescence intensity of quantum dots (QDs) in PBS buffer solution was quenched and the aggregation of QDs was formed at the same time. Herein, we present water-soluble, low toxic QDs, ZnSe/ZnS, which were applied for ultrasensitive Hg2+ ion detection with a low detection limit (2.5 nM). In addition, a model has been proposed to explain the aggregation of QDs in the presence of heavy metal ions such as Hg2+ ions.With the economic and social development, the High-tech Zones will become the effective vehicle for industrial and economic transition. The paper firstly illustrates the connotation of industrial cluster and industrial ecology and the interaction mechanism between them. Both of them emphasize the long-term symbiosis and coexistence within a specific region. Lanzhou National High-tech Zone, for example, is in the stage from factors clustering to industries leading like the other national high-tech zones and is still facing the challenges of sustainable development. Then according to the analysis on these problems at present, the paper points out the transition way of Lanzhou National High-tech Zone that the industries should develop for clustering and greening on the basis of the interaction mechanism between industrial cluster and industrial ecology during the period of 12th five-year economic growth. Finally, the paper puts forward the transition support respectively from infrastructure, planning, market, policy, information, and management.The design, development and calculation of the Ecological Footprint are a universally accepted concept to measure and dimension the impact of human activities on natural resources. This article is the result of the investigation conducted at the Zoo of Cali (Colombia), in which an instrument was designed, applied and validated to determine the ecological footprint of the exhibition areas the different species of animals between July and November 2009. This is the first experience in Colombia to measure the footprint in a Zoo, which regards this service as a unique and exceptional activity. The development of this trail involved the lifting of eco maps and operational processes of each exhibition, as well as evaluating the types of resources consumed and the amount of waste they generate, to proceed to the calculation of the overall impact. The article is accompanied by an Excel tool, available for download at the site of the magazine.This chapter describes ways to enhance the operational potential of Industrial Ecology. Attention is paid to specific challenges for sustainable development beyond the broad aims of achieving economic competitiveness, ensuring environmental stewardship, and promoting both intra- and inter-generational equity. The focus is on the distributed decision making practices of individual agents within networks of industry, business and government, which, in various combinations, provide the underlying structure of any industrial ecology. Here, we consider the need for design and analysis tools to engage with the dynamics and uncertainty which characterize complex hierarchical socio-technical systems, including the ability to observe and interrogate system behaviour over multiple spatial and temporal scales, and to embrace the vitality which comes from human judgment in decision making within these systems. This capability should support the transition of such networks to ones which are both resilient and adaptive whilst pursuing. sustainability goals. We explore the role of both simulation and optimization toolkits in this regard, and conclude that there is value in a dual approach. Agent-based models of industrial ecosystems can be coupled with scenario analysis techniques to engage with future uncertainties. The way in which individual agents internalize such "world view" scenarios in their own distributed decision making practices, is highlighted. The effectiveness of agent interventions to support successful transitions to more sustainable practices can be measured against goal programming objectives, which in turn are defined by exploring the dynamic multiple objective optimisation decision space.This chapter presents a systems analysis perspective that extends the traditional plant design framework to green engineering, green energy and industrial ecology leading to sustainability. For green engineering this involves starting the design decisions as early as chemical and material selection stage on one end, and managing and planning decisions at the other end. However, uncertainties and multiple and conflicting objectives are inherent in such a design process. Green engineering principles are illustrated here using a green energy sector case study. Uncertainties increase further in industrial ecology. The concept of overall sustainability goes beyond industrial ecology and brings in time dependent nature of the ecosystem and multi-disciplinary decision making. Optimal control methods and theories from financial literature can be useful in handling the time dependent uncertainties in this problem. Decision making at various stages starting from green plant design, green energy, to industrial ecology, and sustainability is illustrated for the mercury cycling. Power plant sector is a major source of mercury pollution. In order to circumvent the persistent, bioaccumulative effect of mercury, one has to take decisions at various levels of the cycle starting with greener power systems, industrial symbiosis through trading, and controlling the toxic methyl mercury formation in water bodies and accumulation in aquatic biota.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to trace the impact that the ecological approach has in international development programs in both the USA and Europe. It discusses the applications of sustainability by international donor agencies among bilateral and multi-lateral organizations in developing economies. It outlines the influence of sustainability in the US Federal Government agencies to protect and maintain environmentally-based development programs. Design/methodology/approach - The paper compares industrial ecology and ecological anthropology approaches to sustainability development. It discusses their policy implications for international development assistance programs. It describes how anthropological and sociological approaches to sustainability have impacted the development policies and programs of bilateral and multilateral organizations, as well as those of multi-national corporations. Findings - There are common sustainability trends among the four competing donor organizations in approaching sustainability development by bilateral and multilateral international development organizations. These organizations - the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, the United Nations and its affiliated Organizations, and the US Federal government agencies, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency - have shaped and influenced the policies and programs of sustainability development in business organizations and in developing economies. Originality/value - Sustainability has been a subject of interest in international development assistance programs in both bilateral and multilateral organizations since the 1970s. Over time, the subject of sustainability received prominence in the developed world. It can be argued that sustainability has its roots in the developing economy and has been adapted/modified to meet the environmental and natural resources conservation and management policies of the developed economies.Investigating impacts of urban solid waste recycling on urban metabolism contributes to sustainable urban solid waste management and urban sustainability. Using a physical input-output model and scenario analysis, urban metabolism of Suzhou in 2015 is predicted and impacts of four categories of solid waste recycling on urban metabolism are illustrated: scrap tire recycling, food waste recycling, fly ash recycling and sludge recycling. Sludge recycling has positive effects on reducing all material flows. Thus, sludge recycling for biogas is regarded as an accepted method. Moreover, technical levels of scrap tire recycling and food waste recycling should be improved to produce positive effects on reducing more material flows. Fly ash recycling for cement production has negative effects on reducing all material flows except solid wastes. Thus, other fly ash utilization methods should be exploited. In addition, the utilization and treatment of secondary wastes from food waste recycling and sludge recycling should be concerned. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The proper estimation of the energy content of the residual fraction from mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plants is essential for planning and promoting different methods to decrease its environmental impact, to lower the consumption of energy resources, and to reduce economic costs. Currently, in many countries, the residual fraction from these plants is disposed of in a landfill with few recovery actions. This paper proposes a methodology for estimating the energy content of the aforementioned fraction. To validate it, the methodology is applied to a MBT plant in Zaragoza that collects residual household waste from municipal solid waste (MSW) from 62 municipalities in four regions of Aragon - Zaragoza, Ribera Baja del Ebro, Campo de Carifiena, and Campo de Belchite. From the methodology, an energy potential of 17929.24 kJ/kg of the residual fraction from this MBT plant is estimated, which is equivalent to 100.18 ktoe per year. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.TiO2-xNx powders with low N-doping concentrations (0.021 < x < 0.049) were prepared by annealing commercial TiO2 (P-25) under an NH3 flow at 550 degrees C. Regardless of UV or visible case, the photoactivities of the samples decreased as x increased, and TiO1.979N0.021 showed the highest activity for the 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) decomposition under the visible-light irradiation. The visible-light response for N-doped TiO2 could arise from an N-induced midgap level, formed above the valence band (O 2p). Electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements and the radical scavenger technologies gave the combined evidence that the active species (center dot OH and O-2 center dot(-)) are responsible for the photodecomposition of 4-CP over TiO2-xNx under the visible irradiation. A possible photocatalytic mechanism was discussed in detail. Fertilizer use, widely practiced in forest plantation management to stimulate tree growth, contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We explore how accounting for GHG consequences affects optimal fertilizer application rates of commercial forest plantations. A generic model that maximizes the equivalent annual net benefit of timber production and GHG balance is developed and applied to loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations in the southern United States. We find that fertilizer use still is a viable practice for managing loblolly pine plantations in the region although fertilizer application rate should be reduced when GHG consequences are valued. A greater reduction in fertilizer application rate is recommended where wood is used for paper production because life cycle GHG emissions of paper products are much higher than those of solid wood or bioenergy products. A higher fertilizer rate should be applied when forest residues are used for the production of bioenergy that offsets GHG emissions from consuming fossil fuels. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many technological alternatives for wastewater treatment are available, ranging from advanced technologies to conventional treatment options. It is difficult to select the most appropriate technology from among a set of available alternatives to treat wastewater at a particular location. Many factors, such as capital costs, operation and maintenance costs and land requirement, are involved in the decision-making process. Sustainability criteria must also be incorporated into the decision-making process such that appropriate technologies are selected for developing economies such as that of India. A scenario-based multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) methodology has been developed and applied to the selection of wastewater treatment alternative. The four most commonly used wastewater treatment technologies for treatment of municipal wastewater in India are ranked for various scenarios. Six scenarios are developed that capture the regional and local societal priorities of urban, suburban and rural areas and translate them into the mathematical algorithm of the MADM methodology. The articulated scenarios depict the most commonly encountered decision-making situations in addressing technology selection for wastewater treatment in India. A widely used compensatory MADM technique, TOPSIS, has been selected to rank the alternatives. Seven criteria with twelve indicators are formulated to evaluate the alternatives. Different weight matrices are used for each scenario, depending on the priorities of the scenario. This study shows that it is difficult to select the most appropriate wastewater treatment alternative under the "no scenario" condition (equal weights given to each attribute), and the decision-making methodology presented in this paper effectively identifies the most appropriate wastewater treatment alternative for each of the scenarios. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work, we address the problem of reducing the environmental impact of biodiesel plants through their integration with a solar thermal energy system that generates steam. A mathematical model of the solar energy system that includes energy storage is constructed and coupled with a rigorous simulation model of the biodiesel facility developed in Aspen Plus. The solar energy system model takes the form of a bicriteria nonlinear programming (biNLP) formulation that accounts for the simultaneous minimization of cost and global warming potential (GWP). A detailed cost and environmental analysis of the integrated facility is presented based on data available in the literature. The environmental impact is quantified in terms of contribution to GWP using the CML2001 methodology, a framework based on life cycle assessment (LCA) principles. Numerical results indicate that it is possible to reduce the current natural gas consumption required in the biodiesel facility by more than 94.87% compared to the initial base design, which results in an improvement of 19.88% in green house gases (GHG) emissions.The demand for animal protein is expected to rise by 70-80% between 2012 and 2050, while the current animal production sector already causes major environmental degradation. Edible insects are suggested as a more sustainable source of animal protein. However, few experimental data regarding environmental impact of insect production are available. Therefore, a lifecycle assessment for mealworm production was conducted, in which greenhouse gas production, energy use and land use were quantified and compared to conventional sources of animal protein. Production of one kg of edible protein from milk, chicken, pork or beef result in higher greenhouse gas emissions, require similar amounts of energy and require much more land. This study demonstrates that mealworms should be considered a more sustainable source of edible protein.In the endeavor of optimizing the sustainability of bioenergy production in Denmark, this consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluated the environmental impacts associated with the production of heat and electricity from one hectare of Danish arable land cultivated with three perennial crops: ryegrass (Lolium perenne), willow (Salix viminalis) and Miscanthus giganteus. For each, four conversion pathways were assessed against a fossil fuel reference: (I) anaerobic co-digestion with manure, (II) gasification, (III) combustion in small-to-medium scale biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plants and IV) co-firing in large scale coal-fired CHP plants. Soil carbon changes, direct and indirect land use changes as well as uncertainty analysis (sensitivity, MonteCarlo) were included in the LCA. Results showed that global warming was the bottleneck impact, where only two scenarios, namely willow and Miscanthus co-firing, allowed for an improvement as compared with the reference (-82 and -45 t CO2-eq. ha(-1), respectively). The indirect land use changes impact was quantified as 310 + 170 t CO2-eq. ha(-1), representing a paramount average of 41% of the induced greenhouse gas emissions. The uncertainty analysis confirmed the results robustness and highlighted the indirect land use changes uncertainty as the only uncertainty that can significantly change the outcome of the LCA results.Municipal wastewater treatment has emerged as one of the largest resource consumers in the US. As a result, the goal of municipal wastewater systems has extended from protecting receiving water and human health to improving the system sustainability. This study used the embodied energy and the associated carbon footprint to measure the resource consumption and recovery in wastewater systems. Three resource recovery methods were specifically investigated: onsite energy generation through combined heat and power systems, nutrient recycling through biosolids land application, and water reuse for residential irrigation. The embodied energy and the associated carbon footprint were estimated through an input-output based hybrid energy analysis method and carbon emission factors. A wastewater treatment plant in Tampa, Florida was studied to investigate the possibility of carbon neutrality of wastewater treatment systems. It was shown that the integrated resource (energy, nutrient and water) recovery has the potential to offset all the direct operational energy; however, it is not able to offset the total embodied energy of the treatment plant to achieve carbon neutrality. Among the three resource recovery methods, water reuse has the highest potential of offsetting carbon footprint, while nutrient recycling has the lowest. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comparative life cycle assessment is presented for four different management options for a trichloroethene-contaminated site with a contaminant source zone located in a fractured clay till. The compared options are (i) long-term monitoring (ii) in-situ enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD), (iii) in-situ chemical oxidation (ISCO) with permanganate and (iv) long-term monitoring combined with treatment by activated carbon at the nearby waterworks. The life cycle assessment included evaluation of both primary and secondary environmental impacts. The primary impacts are the local human toxic impacts due to contaminant leaching into groundwater that is used for drinking water, whereas the secondary environmental impacts are related to remediation activities such as monitoring, drilling and construction of wells and use of remedial amendments. The primary impacts for the compared scenarios were determined by a numerical risk assessment and remedial performance model, which predicted the contaminant mass discharge over time at a point of compliance in the aquifer and at the waterworks. The combined assessment of risk reduction and life cycle impacts showed that all management options result in higher environmental impacts than they remediate, in terms of person equivalents and assuming equal weighting of all impacts. The ERD and long-term monitoring were the scenarios with the lowest secondary life cycle impacts and are therefore the preferred alternatives. However, if activated carbon treatment at the waterworks is required in the long-term monitoring scenario, then it becomes unfavorable because of large secondary impacts. ERD is favorable due to its low secondary impacts, but only if leaching of vinyl chloride to the groundwater aquifer can be avoided. Remediation with ISCO caused the highest secondary impacts and cannot be recommended for the site. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impact assessment of agriculture has received increased attention over recent decades, leading to development of numerous methods. Among them, three deal with energy use: Energy Analysis (EA), Ecological Footprint (EF) and Emergy synthesis (Em). Based on a review of 197 references applying them to a variety of agricultural systems, this paper evaluates their ability to assess energy use. While EF assesses energy use as land use via a global accounting approach in which energy is only one component of the assessment, EA and Em are energy-focused and appear more appropriate to highlight ways to increase energy-use efficiency. EA presents a clear methodology via fossil energy use and its associated impacts but does not consider all energy sources. With inclusion of natural and renewable resources, Em focuses on other energy resources, such as solar radiation and energy from labour, but does not present impact indicators nor establish a clear link between activities and their environmental impacts. Improvements of the EA and Em methods could increase their ability to perform realistic and unbiased energy analysis or the diversity of livestock systems encountered in the world. First, to consider all energy sources, as Em does, EA could include solar radiation received by farm surfaces and energy expenditure by humans and animals to accomplish farm operations. Second, boundaries of the studied system in EA and Em must include draft animals, humans and communal grazing lands. Third, special attention should be given to update and locally adapt energy coefficients and transformities. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to reduce our environmental impact, methods for environmental assessment of human activities are urgently needed. In particular in the case of assessment of land planning scenarios, there is presently no consensual and widely adopted method although it is strongly required by the European Directive (2001/42/EC) on Strategic Environmental Assessment. However, different kinds of tools and methods are available such as human and environmental risk assessment, the ecological footprint, material flow analysis, substance flow analysis, physical input output table, ecological network analysis, exergy, emergy or life cycle assessment. This review proposes a discussion on these tools and methods specifically applied to territories. After the meaning of territory is clarified, these approaches are presented and analyzed based on "key features" such as formalization, system modeling, inventoried flows, indicators provided and usability. This comparison highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. It also emphasizes that the approach of life cycle assessment could provide a relevant framework for the environmental assessment of territories as it is the only method which can avoid burden shifting between life cycle stages, environmental impacts and territories. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Organic farming practices have been promoted as, inter alia, reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. This meta-analysis systematically analyses published studies that compare environmental impacts of organic and conventional farming in Europe. The results show that organic farming practices generally have positive impacts on the environment per unit of area, but not necessarily per product unit. Organic farms tend to have higher soil organic matter content and lower nutrient losses (nitrogen leaching, nitrous oxide emissions and ammonia emissions) per unit of field area. However, ammonia emissions, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions per product unit were higher from organic systems. Organic systems had lower energy requirements, but higher land use, eutrophication potential and acidification potential per product unit. The variation within the results across different studies was wide due to differences in the systems compared and research methods used. The only impacts that were found to differ significantly between the systems were soil organic matter content, nitrogen leaching, nitrous oxide emissions per unit of field area, energy use and land use. Most of the studies that compared biodiversity in organic and conventional farming demonstrated lower environmental impacts from organic farming. The key challenges in conventional farming are to improve soil quality (by versatile crop rotations and additions of organic material), recycle nutrients and enhance and protect biodiversity. In organic farming, the main challenges are to improve the nutrient management and increase yields. In order to reduce the environmental impacts of farming in Europe, research efforts and policies should be targeted to developing farming systems that produce high yields with low negative environmental impacts drawing on techniques from both organic and conventional systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Harvesting of secreted fuel precursors is an alternative approach to sustainable biofuel production from algae, and relies on selective separation of growth media from algal suspensions. Membrane fouling and species fractionation for selected ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) membranes were investigated for this purpose. Suspensions were filtered using total recycle, flux-stepping protocols to measure fouling rates and subsequent fouling reversibility. Severe fouling was observed at high flux values for 50 kg/mol UF and 0.22 mu m MF membranes, with much of the fouling irreversible. In contrast, a 5 mu m MF membrane showed essentially no increase in resistance, even though the whole algal cells were rejected to form a cake on the membrane surface. Analysis of the permeate from the 5 mu m MF filtration indicated the presence of "protein-like", "humic-like", and high-molecular-mass polymeric materials, as well as submicron particles. However, model solutions of dissolved organic material showed very low fouling compared to the as-grown algal suspensions. Instead, submicron particles present in the algal suspensions and in the 5 mu m MF permeate are thought to be the primary foulants by forming high-resistance cakes on the UF and 0.22 mu m MF membranes and also by plugging the pores of 0.22 mu m MF membranes. Thus, the flux decline and lack of "easy" reversibility for our algal suspensions, filtered on specific membranes, appears to be primarily associated with deposition of smaller colloidal species within the membrane and/or near its surface, rather than with macromolecules or a cake of whole algal cells. Furthermore, membrane characteristics similar to those of the 5 mu m MF membrane employed may offer a unique strategy for separation of these undesirable particulate materials from healthy cultures of algae with large-enough size. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The primary intent of this research is to identify and demonstrate a quantitative methodology for assessing uncertainty in a Physics-of-Failure (PoF) model of a vibrating environment. Solder joint fatigue-life models are used for analysis. Identifying an approach for quantifying the impact of uncertainty on input parameters enables the determination of more realistic confidence limits on PoF predictions. We can decompose the elements of any mathematical model into the physical parameters used in forming the model equations, such as the material properties or geometric dimensions of the model structure. These parameters result from simplifications, assumptions, and approximations. Variability in these physical parameters can be addressed using existing stochastic methods, which are designed to propagate probability distributions of the parameters through a fixed model structure to estimate the statistics of interest on the model response quantities. This paper focuses on uncertainty analysis, that is, how uncertainty in the input data affects the uncertainty in the output data. We assume the model is correct and only address uncertainties arising from variations in the input parameters. Output uncertainty, that is, uncertainty in the correction factor, is determined using Monte Carlo simulations. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work presents a computational approach for the simultaneous minimization of the total cost and environmental impact of thermodynamic cycles. Our method combines process simulation, multi-objective optimization and life cycle assessment (LCA) within a unified framework that identifies in a systematic manner optimal design and operating conditions according to several economic and LCA impacts. Our approach takes advantages of the complementary strengths of process simulation (in which mass, energy balances and thermodynamic calculations are implemented in an easy manner) and rigorous deterministic optimization tools. We demonstrate the capabilities of this strategy by means of two case studies in which we address the design of a 10 MW Rankine cycle modeled in Aspen Hysys, and a 90 kW ammonia-water absorption cooling cycle implemented in Aspen Plus. Numerical results show that it is possible to achieve environmental and cost savings using our rigorous approach. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A framework is proposed for integration of unit modeling, process synthesis, analysis, optimization, and process design of coal gasification-based energy and chemical processes. The conceptual models of these processes are built by the modeling and synthesis blocks in the framework, which are the bases of analysis and optimization. A number of analysis techniques are employed in the framework to fully understand the characteristics of the processes and their performances from technical, economic, and environmental points of view. Life cycle assessment and sustainability analysis are also included in the framework. According to these multilayer analyses, optimization is included in this framework to explore the best process or the best operational parameter set. Because of the systematic integration of the above techniques, the proposed framework could provide a comprehensive study for coal gasification-based processes. Three coal gasification-based processes are selected as the study cases in this Article. They are an integrated gasification combined cycle process, a methanol production, and a coproduction process combining the first two processes. The exergy efficiencies and economic investments of the three processes are analyzed and compared. The key parameters for material distribution in the coproduction process are optimized from the exergy efficiency and the investment points of view.In the life cycle assessment (LCA) of products, the increasing scarcity of metal resources is currently addressed in a preliminary way. Here, we propose a new method on the basis of global ore grade information to assess the importance of the extraction of metal resources in the life cycle of products. It is shown how characterization factors, reflecting the decrease in ore grade due to an increase in metal extraction, can be derived from cumulative ore grade-tonnage relationships. CFs were derived for three different types of copper deposits (porphyry, sediment-hosted, and volcanogenic massive sulfide). We tested the influence of the CF model (marginal vs average), mathematical distribution (loglogistic vs loglinear), and reserve estimate (ultimate reserve vs reserve base). For the marginal CFs, the statistical distribution choice and the estimate of the copper reserves introduce a difference of a factor of 1.0-5.0 and a factor of 1.2-1.7, respectively. For the average CFs, the differences are larger for these two choices, i.e. respectively a factor of 5.7-43 and a factor of 2.1-3.8. Comparing the marginal CFs with the average CFs, the differences are higher (a factor 1.7-94). This paper demonstrates that cumulative grade-tonnage relationships for metal extraction can be used in LCA to assess the relative importance of metal extractions.The carbon footprint of beef cattle is presented for Canada, The United States, The European Union, Australia and Brazil. The values ranged between 8 and 22 kg CO(2)e per kg of live weight (LW) depending on the type of farming system, the location, the year, the type of management practices, the allocation, as well as the boundaries of the study. Substantial reductions have been observed for most of these countries in the last thirty years. For instance, in Canada the mean carbon footprint of beef cattle at the exit gate of the farm decreased from 18.2 kg CO(2)e per kg LW in 1981 to 9.5 kg CO(2)e per kg LW in 2006 mainly because of improved genetics, better diets, and more sustainable land management practices. Cattle production results in products other than meat, such as hides, offal and products for rendering plants; hence the environmental burden must be distributed between these useful products. In order to do this, the cattle carbon footprint needs to be reported in kg of CO(2)e per kg of product. For example, in Canada in 2006, on a mass basis, the carbon footprint of cattle by-products at the exit gate of the slaughterhouse was 12.9 kg CO(2)e per kg of product. Based on an economic allocation, the carbon footprints of meat (primal cuts), hide, offal and fat, bones and other products for rendering were 19.6, 12.3, 7 and 2 kg CO(2)e per kg of product, respectively.Globally, methane emissions account for 40-45% of greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock, with over 90% of these emissions arising from enteric fermentation. Consequently, enteric CH4 emissions are by far the single most important emission source that can be targeted for mitigation within the ruminant production cycle. This review aims to update nutritional and management abatement strategies for enteric methane emissions. Each ruminant production system is unique, and therefore a holistic, life cycle assessment should be considered when determining the potential value of any abatement strategy. It is important to bear in mind that any abatement strategy will only be adopted if it passes regulatory requirements and if there is an economic incentive for its implementation.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remain an important field of agricultural research. Apart from measuring, simulations are frequently used to investigate management impacts on GHG emissions. The HOLOS model has been developed (using country specific emission factors) to explore potential mitigation practices with respect to GHG emission reduction or increased carbon storage. However, avoided GHG emissions can create nutrient surpluses, and thus other environmental hazards (e.g. for human and/or ecosystem health). We propose to expand the Virtual Farm concept by connecting the budgets carbon, nitrogen, and energy flows, and thus estimate environmental impacts as a function of management choices, environment, and climate influence. Initial tests to combine HOLOS with the carbon model Introductory Carbon Balance Model (ICBM) in Norway have been promising. The approach will be further developed for Canadian farming systems, based on a minimum of required input data, but with the option of using specific inputs if the data are available.More than half the annual dry matter intake (DMI) of feed by dairy cows can be roughage. Its production and storage constitute a significant part of the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from milk production. This study estimated and analysed the impact of grass/clover silage production practices in five climatically different dairy production regions in Sweden on emitted GHG. GHG emissions calculated by the life cycle assessment method were 0.46-0.54 and 0.48-0.63 kg carbon dioxide equivalents per kg silage DMI for normal and higher silage nutrient quality, respectively. Crop cultivation for higher nutrient quality through an extra cut and increased nitrogen fertilisation rates increased GHG emissions by up to 16%. Varying the yield level by +/-20% decreased (11%)/increased (15%) GHG emissions per kg DMI. Improved management practices can reduce GHG emissions feed production, but accurate estimates of yield levels and feed losses are needed to reduce uncertainties.We assessed the environmental impacts of producing bread, as delivered to the consumer, assuming the use of Norwegian ingredients only. Ten impact categories, including global warming potential (GWP), were quantified by mixed modelling and life cycle assessment. Firstly, we quantified the impacts of growing barley, oats, winter and spring wheat on 93 farms that were representative of the main cereal production regions in Norway. We used wide system boundaries, which included all relevant processes occurring both pre-farm and on-farm. Secondly, we assessed a representative production chain for bread, including transport, milling, baking and packing processes. On-farm processes accounted for a large share of the environmental impacts attributable to the production of bread (e.g. 50% for GWP). There is thus considerable potential for environmental improvements through changes in farm management. In total, the GWP per kg of bread (freshweight) was 0.95 kg CO2-equivalent. The environmental footprint of transport was small.This paper presents an assessment of atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and associated land use for the production of milk, beef, grain and potatoes. It compares the less intensive (i.e. organic) farming system with the more intensive (i.e. conventional) food production system. The emission sources, trade-offs with land and potential for reduction of GHG emissions were analysed. The sources for farm accounts data on inputs and outputs are representative farm types constructed from data from the Norwegian Farm Accountancy Data Network. The analysis was carried out with life cycle assessment, including processes from manufacturing of inputs to farms, and on-farm production up to the farm gate. The results show that it is worthwhile considering a greater proportion of food energy from vegetable rather than from animal products, analysing grass-based meat production in more detail and reducing mineral fertilizer use.Improving the treatment efficiency of a primary wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), in Alexandria, Egypt, was studied. In order to improve the treatment efficiency of the plant, different improving scenarios were proposed and evaluated. The improvement scenarios are: scenario 1, use of engineered wetland instead of the current treatment system, scenario 2, use of the engineered wetland as a secondary treatment after the existing treatment system and scenario 3, replace the existing treatment system with a secondary WWTP. The scope of this study is to environmentally assess the existing primary WWTP, in addition to assess the possibility of using the engineered wetland for improving the primary WWTP. To evaluate the performance of each treatment system, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was applied. Based on the results, the main improvement achieved in all the scenarios is in the category of eutrophication and acidification, as the three scenarios have higher removal efficiency for the nutrients than the current system. Unlike the total reduction in the environmental impact, scenario 3 gave the highest reduction in the category of eutrophication and acidification (25%) followed by scenario 2 (24%) and the lowest reduction achieved by scenario 1 (13%). The analysis revealed that the use of combined system from natural and traditional systems (scenario 2) is the best scenario. However, scenario 3 achieved a very close result.The urban environment is characterized by multiple interactions between its parts, and any change can determine a modification in its metabolism. Typically life cycle assessment (LCA) takes into account only part of the interactions. The main aim of this study was to present a hybrid analysis for enhancing the spatial resolution of LCA, focusing on surface albedo evaluation. In this article the substitution in New York City, New York, USA, of traditional roofs with a mean albedo of 0.32 with white roofs with an albedo of 0.9 has been hypothesized. A multiscale approach was used to evaluate the impact of variation in urban albedo, since it can influence the urban heat island (UHI), energy use, and atmospheric chemistry, affecting radiative forcings. The impact on global climate has been translated, through the use of a climatological model, into equivalents of carbon dioxide and added to the impact of the white roof. The effect of the summer UHI mitigation on human health has been assessed through the use of a hybrid model. Finally, the environmental burdens of a square meter of roof have been evaluated by considering the elementary flows-excluding the energy use-and added to the results deriving from the evaluation of the effects on human health and on climate change. In time horizons of 50 and 100 years, it shows that the increase in rooftop albedo plays an important role in decreasing the impact of rooftops on the climate-change and human health impact categories.Past studies show that only a small percent of organizations implement and enforce formal rules or informal guidelines for the planning, design and development, usage, modification, and disposition stages of spreadsheet models. Due to the lack of such policies, there has been little research on how companies can effectively govern spreadsheets throughout their life cycle. This paper describes a survey involving 43 participants from the United States, representing companies that were working on compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) as it relates to spreadsheets for financial reporting. The findings of this survey describe specific controls that organizations have implemented to manage spreadsheets for financial reporting throughout a spreadsheet's life cycle. Our findings indicate that there are problems in all stages of a spreadsheet's life cycle and we suggest several important areas for practice and future research. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of fossil fuels for electricity generation contributes to local air pollution as well as to the greenhouse effect. Electricity generation technologies contribute to environmental impacts including acidification, eutrophication, resource depletion, and climate change. This paper presents the environmental assessment of the centralized grid-connected electricity production in Tanzania using a life cycle approach for the years 2000. 2015, 2020. 2026 and 2030. according to the Tanzania Electricity Supply Company Limited, TANESCO's, plans for power system expansion (power system master plan of the year 2009). The results of this study show that in all the chosen impacts categories, based on the absolute annual electricity production, environmental impacts increase significantly with time when comparing the years 2000, 2015, 2020, 2026 and 2030. (c) 2012 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to explore how tax credits for research and development influence innovative activity (as measured by investment in R&D) with emphasis on the moderating role of the firm's stage in its respective life cycle. Our sample comprised all electronics firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taiwan's Over-the-Counter Market from 2002-2007. Our final sample comprised 943 firm-year observations. We ran regressions and our findings indicate that the R&D tax credit has the greatest impact on innovative activity when the firm is in the stagnant stage and the least impact when the firm is in the growth stage. Our contribution to the extant literature in innovation is severalfold. First, in prior studies, the R&D tax credit is measured as a dummy variable. In this study we use actual R&D tax credit data. Second, prior research examining the association between the R&D tax credit and innovative activity has shown mixed results. We provide an explanation for the inconclusive results by showing that the association is contingent on the stage of the firm in its life cycle. This was not addressed in prior studies. From the public policy standpoint, our findings imply that governments should provide companies with increased tax incentives to stimulate innovative activity, especially when companies are in the stagnant stage in their respective life cycle.The use of biomass for energy production has increasingly been encouraged in the United States, in part motivated by the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to fossil fuels. However, the GHG-intensity of biomass-derived energy is highly dependent on how the biomass is obtained and used. We explore scenario uncertainty in GHG estimates in the Calculating Uncertainty in Biomass Emissions (CUBE) model and find that direct land-use change emissions that result during the biomass production often dominate the total "farm-to-hopper" GHGs. CUBE represents each land-use change decision as a conversion of land from one of four specified baseline ecosystem to produce one of seven feedstock crops, both distinct by geographic region, and then determines the implied changes in soil organic carbon, root carbon, and above-ground biomass. CUBE therefore synthesizes and organizes the existing literature to represent direct land-use change emissions in a way that can be more readily incorporated into life cycle assessment. Our approach to representing direct land-use change literature has been applied to a specific set of data and offers immediate implications for decisionmakers, but it can also be generalized and replicated in the future, making use of improved scientific data on the magnitude and rates of direct land-use change emissions as it becomes available. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Algae are an attractive energy source, but important questions still exist about the sustainability of this technology on a large scale. Two particularly important questions concern the method of cultivation and the type of algae to be used. This present study combines elements of life cycle analysis (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) to evaluate open pond (OP) systems and horizontal tubular photobioreactors (PBRs) for the cultivation of freshwater (FW) or brackish-to-saline water (BSW) algae. Based on the LCA, OPs have lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions than PBRs; e.g., 32% less energy use for construction and operation. According to the LCC, all four systems are currently financially unattractive investments, though OPs are less so than PBRs. BSW species deliver better energy and GHG performance and higher profitability than FW species in both OPs and PBRs. Sensitivity analyses suggest that improvements in critical cultivation parameters (e.g., CO2 utilization efficiency or algae lipid content), conversion parameters (e.g., anaerobic digestion efficiency), and market factors (e.g., costs of CO2 and electricity, or sale prices for algae biodiesel) could alter these results. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The knowledge of the potentially achievable reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by biomass co-firing is a powerful tool in supporting decision makers when it comes to undertaking energy planning. The main goal of this work was to develop a methodology by which significant biomass co-firing potentials and subsequent reduced GHG emissions, could be obtained at large territories. This methodology has been applied to Spain. It has been found that agricultural and forestry residual biomass feedstocks, available within 100 km of coal-fired power plants (CPP), currently total up to 75.8 PJth/yr. If energy crop feedstocks are included, this quantity increases up to 91.1 PJth/yr. However, the utilisation of biomass in CPPs is constrained by technical limitations. Taking into account these restrictions, biomass could be co-fired to generate up to 7.7% of electricity produced in CPPs (42.1 PJth/yr of biomass). A life cycle assessment has been performed to all the processes involved. The results indicate that up to 87 tCO(2eq) can be reduced by utilising 1 TJth of biomass replacing coal. The combination of these figures points out that biomass co-firing could contribute to mitigating 3.4 MtCO(2eq) in Spain annually. This value equates to almost 1% of its total GHG emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Economic, energy, and environmental impacts of 11 types of bioethanol feedstock in China were evaluated using a mixed-unit input-output life cycle assessment model. Corn grain and wheat grain had higher negative economic, energy, and environmental impacts. Sweet sorghum, cassava, sugar beet, and sugarcane showed better economic performance but increasing negative energy and environmental impacts. Cellulose-based feedstocks in general showed positive economic, energy, and environmental performance; but may lead to increasing negative impacts on freshwater use, global warming, toxicity, and aquatic ecotoxicity. Sugarcane-based bioethanol had the potential to provide positive economic, energy, and environmental impacts in China. Scrap paper-derived ethanol could also become promising under significant government support. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessment of environmental impacts of a power system exploiting a renewable energy needs a large number of geographically-dependent data and of technological data. These data are located in various sources and available in various formats. To avoid the burden of data collection and reformatting, we exploit the interoperability capabilities set up in GEOSS and combine them with other GEOSS-compliant components proposed by projects funded by the European Commission. This is illustrated by the case of photovoltaic systems. A Web-based tool links the various sources of data and executes several models to offer various impacts factors in different areas: human health, climate change, primary energy, and ecosystems.Beef production is a recognized source of greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia (NH3) emissions; however, little information exists on the net emissions from beef production systems. A partial life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted using the Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM) to estimate GHG and NH3 emissions from representative beef production systems in California. The IFSM is a process-level farm model that simulates crop growth, feed production and use, animal growth, and the return of manure nutrients back to the land to predict the environmental impacts and economics of production systems. Ammonia emissions are determined by summing the emissions from animal housing facilities, manure storage, field applied manure, and direct deposits of manure on pasture and rangeland. All important sources and sinks of methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide are predicted from primary and secondary emission sources. Primary sources include enteric fermentation, manure, cropland used in feed production, and fuel combustion. Secondary emissions occur during the production of resources used on the farm, which include fuel, electricity, machinery, fertilizer, and purchased animals. The carbon footprint is the net exchange of all GHG in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) units per kg of HCW produced. Simulated beef production systems included cow-calf, stocker, and feedlot phases for the traditional British beef breeds and calf ranch and feedlot phases for Holstein steers. An evaluation of differing production management strategies resulted in ammonia emissions ranging from 98 +/- 13 to 141 +/- 27 g/kg HCW and carbon footprints of 10.7 +/- 1.4 to 22.6 +/- 2.0 kg CO(2)e/kg HCW. Within the British beef production cycle, the cow-calf phase was responsible for 69 to 72% of total GHG emissions with 17 to 27% from feedlot sources. Holstein steers that entered the beef production system as a by-product of dairy production had the lowest carbon footprint because the emissions associated with their mothers were primarily attributed to milk rather than meat production. For the Holstein system, the feedlot phase was responsible for 91% of the total GHG emission, while the calf-ranch phase was responsible for 7% with the remaining 2% from transportation. This simulation study provides baseline emissions data for California beef production systems and indicates where mitigation strategies can be most effective in reducing emissions.Increased animal performance is suggested as one of the most effective mitigation strategies to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia (NH3) emissions from livestock production per unit of product produced. Little information exists, however, on the effects of increased animal productivity on the net decrease in emission from beef production systems. A partial life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted using the Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM) to estimate GHG and NH3 emissions from representative beef production systems in California that use various management technologies to enhance animal performance. The IFSM is a farm process model that simulates crop growth, feed production, animal performance, and manure production and handling through time to predict the performance, economics, and environmental impacts of production systems. The simulated beef production systems compared were 1) Angus-natural, with no use of growth-enhancing technologies, 2) Angus-implant, with ionophore and growth-promoting implant (e. g., estrogen/trenbolone acetate-based) application, 3) Angus-beta 2-adrenergic agonists (BAA; e. g., zilpaterol), with ionophore, growth-promoting implant, and BAA application, 4) Holstein-implant, with growth implant and ionophore application, and 5) Holstein-BAA, with ionophore, growth implant, and BAA use. During the feedlot phase, use of BAA decreased NH3 emission by 4 to 9 g/kg HCW, resulting in a 7% decrease in NH3 loss from the full production system. Combined use of ionophore, growth implant, and BAA treatments decreased NH3 emission from the full production system by 14 g/kg HCW, or 13%. The C footprint of beef was decreased by 2.2 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e)/kg HCW using all the growth-promoting technologies, and the Holstein beef footprint was decreased by 0.5 kg CO(2)e/kg HCW using BAA. Over the full production systems, these decreases were relatively small at 9% and 5% for Angus and Holstein beef, respectively. The growth-promoting technologies we evaluated are a cost-effective way to mitigate GHG and NH3 emissions, but naturally managed cattle can bring a similar net return to Angus cattle treated with growth-promoting technologies when sold at an 8% greater premium price.Many international groups study environmental health and safety (EHS) concerns surrounding the use of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs). These researchers frequently use the "Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies" (PEN) inventory of nano-enabled consumer products to prioritize types of ENMs to study because estimates of life-cycle ENM releases to the environment can be extrapolated from the database. An alternative "snapshot" of nanomaterials likely to enter commerce can be determined from the patent literature. The goal of this research was to provide an overview of nanotechnology intellectual property trends, complementary to the PEN consumer product database, to help identify potentially "risky" nanomaterials for study by the nano-EHS community. Ten years of nanotechnology patents were examined to determine the types of nano-functional materials being patented, the chemical compositions of the ENMs, and the products in which they are likely to appear. Patenting trends indicated different distributions of nano-enabled products and materials compared to the PEN database. Recent nanotechnology patenting is dominated by electrical and information technology applications rather than the hygienic and anti-fouling applications shown by PEN. There is an increasing emphasis on patenting of nano-scale layers, coatings, and other surface modifications rather than traditional nanoparticles, and there is widespread use of nano-functional semiconductor, ceramic, magnetic, and biological materials that are currently less studied by EHS professionals. These commonly patented products and the nano-functional materials they contain may warrant life-cycle evaluations to determine the potential for environmental exposure and toxicity. The patent and consumer product lists contribute different and complementary insights into the emerging nanotechnology industry and its potential for introducing nanomaterials into the environment.Streetworks to repair buried pipes and cables use many different technologies and working methods. These are usually determined by the dual pressures of time, and economic costs. However, many other constraints should be imposed by the need to minimise both environmental costs and social costs, as these drivers, taken together, cover a range of other impacts. Given that the boundaries between the different categories of costs are often blurred, and different stakeholders hold different views on what to account for, the calculation is complex. This review paper focuses on the drivers for, and barriers to, the delivery of a balanced solution in the UK, and explores whether currently available methodologies are able effectively to assess different solutions to this complex problem. Following a review of the full range of potential impacts caused by streetworks in the UK, it concludes that a bespoke assessment framework needs to be developed for streetworks - application of general frameworks will not serve adequately.Green roofs, which have been used for several decades in many parts of the world, offer a unique and sustainable approach to stormwater management. Within this paper, evidence is presented on water retention for an irrigated green roof system. The presented green roof design results in a water retention volume on site. A first principle mass balance computer model is introduced to assist with the design of these green roof systems which incorporate a cistern to capture and reuse runoff waters for irrigation of the green roof. The model is used to estimate yearly stormwater retention volume for different cistern storage volumes. Additionally, the Blaney and Criddle equation is evaluated for estimation of monthly evapotranspiration rates for irrigated systems and incorporated into the model. This is done so evapotranspiration rates can be calculated for regions where historical data does not exist, allowing the model to be used anywhere historical weather data are available. This model is developed and discussed within this paper as well as compared to experimental results.The amount of trace organic acids must be controlled in the fuel ethanol product in order to reduce the chance to corrode automotive cylinder. Ion-exchange resin was investigated to remove acids from fuel ethanol in this paper. Industrial resins, D301R, 330, 201x7, and D201, were selected as candidates, and a series of experiments were carried out to determine which one is the best. Acetic acid was employed as a simulated compound in these experiments for it is the main residual acid in fuel ethanol product. The results showed that the 330 resin was the most effective one to remove acid from fuel ethanol, and then, both static and dynamic experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of the 330 resin. It was found that equilibrium data can be well described by Langmuir isotherm during the temperature range from 25 to 35 degrees C. The kinetic data fitted well with the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Furthermore, a bench scale fixed bed was set up to determine the optimal adsorption and regeneration conditions. When the initial concentration of acetic acid solution was 200 mg/L, the optimum operating conditions were as follows: A flux of 6.37 BV/h at a temperature of 30 degrees C. The optimum regeneration conditions were determined as follows: A 4% solution of sodium hydroxide, flux was 3.18 BV/h, and the temperature was 30 degrees C. A refined product with acidity under 56 mg/L was obtained under optimal operating conditions. At last, industrial fuel ethanol was used to test the selected resin and the established process conditions. No obvious difference was observed after five adsorption and regeneration cycles. Therefore, it can be concluded that the ion-exchange method would be a successful industrial process to remove acids from fuel ethanol.The current study was undertaken to address the general question of whether there is an environmental advantage for renewable, starch-polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) biopolymer blends over petrochemical polymers. This was addressed using life cycle assessment (LCA) over a set of multiple case studies based on a consistent set of parameters and methodological background. A group of starch-PVOH blended biopolymers derived from different feedstocks (wheat, potato, maize) were compared with high density polyethylene (HDPE), low density polyethylene (LDPE) and expanded polystyrene (EPS) in a range of applications. The results suggest that a general environmental advantage does not exist for the starch-PVOH blended biopolymers over their petrochemical counterparts in all applications and, instead, a case-by-case approach is necessary to evaluate environmental pros and cons, based on specific comparisons. Overall, starch-PVOH biopolymers were found to offer environmentally superior options to LDPE in thermal packaging applications. However, this was not the case in other applications, where the outcome of comparisons between starch-PVOH biopolymers and HDPE/EPS varied according to various factors, including the specific end-of-life scenarios and the recycled content of the petrochemical polymers. A hierarchy of critical parameters for LCA-based decision-making concerning starch-PVOH biopolymers is suggested as a general outcome of this research.Over half of the global raw materials are consumed in the construction of buildings and roads, their associated greenhouse gas emissions from excavation to final disposal are pivotal to the change in global climate. Hemp is a natural resource that has recently been used as a low environmental impact material in a number of composite products. In buildings, it is increasingly used with a lime base binder in wall constructions. There are limited data available to evaluate the environmental impact of this type of construction in the UK. This research aims to identify the processes and materials involved in the construction of hemp-lime walls and to establish their life cycle impact on climate change. The study follows assessment procedures and guidelines of international (ISO14040) and UK (PAS2050) standards. The functional unit defined for the hemp-lime wall construction is 1 m square in area, 300 mm thick with timber frame support inside. Primary data were collected for processes and materials that have no existing information. Other processes with impact data available from credible database were adapted in the assessment by taking into account the conditions and practice in the UK. Assessment was carried out using the SimaPro LCA tool over a lifetime of 100 years. Within the boundary and assumptions made, results showed the functional unit could sequestrate 82.7 kg of carbon dioxide with a net life cycle reduction of greenhouse gas emission of 36.08 kg CO2e. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A mathematical model based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) results is developed to assess the environmental efficiency of the end-of-life management of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. For this purpose, multiobjective optimization and decision support tools are used to define optimal targets for efficient waste management. The global environmental impacts associated with the treatment of PET bottles from their cradle to their ultimate graves (incineration, landfill, recycling by mechanical, chemical or thermal processes) are computed in function of the flow of bottles in the different valorization paths. They are based on the calculation of the impacts involved in each elementary process with a LCA software tool, using the CML impact assessment method. The model takes into account the fraction A of PET regenerated into bottles that can be further recycled, the global impacts being the cumulative impacts corresponding to each "end-of-life". A nonlinear model for the bottle waste collection stage is considered, reflecting that the more diffuse the flow of bottles is, the more difficult it is to collect and consequently, the more environmentally impacting. The resulting multiobjective problem is to find the allocation of bottles between valorization paths that minimizes the environmental impacts of bottle end-of-lives. It is solved using a genetic algorithm, and the trade-off between environmental impacts is illustrated through Pareto curves. A decision support tool then determines the best compromise among the set of solutions. The model is applied to the case of France in 2010. The variables that minimize simultaneously abiotic depletion, acidification and global warming potential are determined, in particular the number of recycling loops. The approach can be easily adapted to any specific product like bio-based plastics or organic wastes to find the optimal allocation between valorization paths. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The possible contribution of local sales chains to the reduction of energy consumption has been hotly debated in recent years. Some authors establish a link between the reduction of distances traveled by food and lower energy consumption due to transportation, while others hold that local supply chains have a poor energy performance. This article engages this debate by comparing the rates of energy consumption attributable to different modes of distribution of fruits and vegetables in a region of France. By studying actors' actual practices, we show that the establishment of local food systems leads to organizational efforts at the local level or in the form of geographically centralized networks which allow energy expenditures linked to distribution to be minimized. The studied chains' performances are variable, from 13.5 to 44.8 GOE/sic (Gram of Oil Equivalent per euro) of product, bringing them close to long chains in the best examples. Comparison with other research underscores the diversity of methods which are put in place. They also show that energy performance remains very dependent on where the study was conducted. Ultimately this study invites us to better analyze the ways in which actors collaborate to optimize energy expenditures relative to the distribution of food products in local sales chains. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Vietnam is the largest producer for the export of striped catfish. Traditionally striped catfish production in the Mekong Delta took place in integrated agricultureaquaculture systems, but has shifted recently to intensive systems to meet increasing export demands. A recent study quantified the environmental impact of intensive striped catfish production in Vietnam. Another did the same for integrated systems. Both studies used life cycle assessment, covered similar environmental impact categories, and were roughly matched in the production stages included. However, an environmental comparison of both systems has not been made so far. The objective of this paper is to make a comparative life cycle assessment of striped catfish production in intensive and integrated systems. The comparison was based on existing life cycle assessments on these systems, but their methodological choices and data had to be aligned. The results show that striped catfish production in intensive systems contributes considerably more to seven of the nine assessed impact categories (global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation, human toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, fossil depletion). Only contributions to eutrophication and freshwater ecotoxicity were higher for the integrated systems than for the intensive systems. In both systems, grow-out fish farming contributes most to eutrophication and freshwater ecotoxicity, whereas feed production contributes most to all other impact categories. The environmental performance of integrated striped catfish production is convincingly better in most impact categories. This raises questions about whether (elements of) these systems can be used to mitigate the environmental impact of intensive striped catfish production.In recent years, the destruction of the ecological environment and the exhaustion of natural resources have become increasingly severe. The demand for environmental protection has attracted worldwide attention. If a company cannot address changes in ecological law, its products will no longer have access to world markets. For this reason, companies should introduce the concept of design for environment (DfE) to the product development process to alleviate the impacts of a product on the ecological environment throughout the product life cycle. To help companies effectively meet the challenges cited above, this study develops an intelligent benchmark-based DfE system for derivative electronic products. The architecture of the intelligent system includes three parts. In the first part, a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) is used to create the analysis of approximate life cycle inventory (LCI). The first part is utilised to estimate the amounts of hazardous chemical substances produced by the material extraction, manufacturing and usage phases as well as the amounts of energy consumed by the production and usage phases. In the second part, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied to develop the models of benchmark-based DfE evaluation for a product and a component or part. The models are used to identify which hazardous chemical substances are excessive and to calculate the needed reductions in the quantities of these hazardous chemical substances. The third part of the intelligent DfE system is used to generate analysis and suggestions for improvement in the design of parts or components. The analysis and suggestion model utilises the second-part analytical results and a BPNN to identify concrete directions for improvement and to generate suggestions that can be used to achieve the ultimate goal of DfE. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The most widely used approaches for handling of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are: (1) storage in smaller retention basins and local decentralised treatment; and (2) storage in larger retention basins and treatment at a central wastewater treatment plant. This paper compares the environmental impact including carbon footprint for these two approaches using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, and provides a holistic view of how CSO is to be treated considering technical, economic and environmental issues. The analysis is based on the results of the EU-financed Lot Water project and 9 years of operational data from wastewater treatment in Copenhagen. All technologies are analysed for handling of 1 m(3) of CSO. However, costs are compared based on cost per reduced area. The study showed that decentralised treatment of CSO is the cheapest method and the power consumption for the decentralised treatment is five times less than that for central treatment of CSO. However, central treatment of CSO appeared to be most efficient in reducing discharge of nutrients and environmental toxics. The LCA showed that the largest environmental impacts from handling CSOs are eutrophication and aquatic ecotoxicity. This study concludes that focusing on global warming alone in the form of reduced energy consumption could result in negative impacts on recipient waters.The primary goal of waste regulations is to protect human health and the environment. This requires the removal from the material cycle of those materials that cannot be processed without harm. Policies to promote recycling hold a risk that pollutants are dispersed. Materials have an environmental impact during their entire life cycle from extraction through production, consumption and recycling to disposal. Essentially there are only two routes for pollutants that cannot be rendered harmless: storage in sinks or dispersion into the environment. Many sinks do not contain substances absolutely, but result in slow dispersion. Dispersion leads to exposure and impact to human health and the environment. It is therefore important to assess the impact of the release to the environment. Based on various sources this paper discusses important material flows and their potential impact. This is compared with the intentions and achievements of European environmental and resource policy. The polluter pays principle is being implemented in Europe, but lags behind implementation of waste management regulations. As long as producers are allowed to add hazardous substances to their products and don't take their products back, it is in society's best interest to carefully consider whether recycling or storage in a sink is the better solution. This requires further development of life-cycle assessment tools and harmonization of regulations. In many cases the sink is unavoidable. Landfills as sinks will be needed in the future. Fail-safe design and construction as well as sustainable management of landfills must be further developed.Activities in the area of sustainable consumption and production in Lithuania started in 1993 when the first cleaner production projects were implemented. The capacity in the area of cleaner production enabled further development and implementation of preventive environmental initiatives. Cleaner production activities have been followed by establishment of a system for development, financing and implementation of preventive innovations, implementation of environmental management systems (including development of new approaches for implementation, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises), product-oriented measures such as life cycle assessment, eco-design, and sustainability reporting. A very important role in building the basic capacity level and implementing the sustainable consumption and production initiatives in Lithuania has been played by the Institute of Environmental Engineering (APINI) at Kaunas University of Technology. This article presents an overview of activities in the area of sustainable consumption and production in Lithuania since 1992 as well as results/lessons learnt from these activities. To overcome barriers and to ensure progress in the area of sustainable consumption and production, a model of a system of sustainable consumption and production has been developed. The objective of the system is to minimise energy and material use as well as waste output, and to eliminate the "rebound" effect.The Solaire Building has the first facade building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) array in New York City. This paper presents the life cycle impacts of the Solaire BIPV and extrapolates its performance to other facade systems. Engineering diagrams, detailed material inventories and 5?years of irradiation and actual performance data in 15-min intervals offer insights into current BIPV construction and performance. The Solaire BIPV employs waste-stream monocrystalline silicon wafers. Correspondingly, zero energy input was allocated to this BIPV from wafer production, resulting to a very low energy payback time (EPBT) and global warming potential burden (0.8?years and -10.2?g?CO2/kWh, respectively). A negative EPBT results from subtracting the impact of the thermally and structurally equivalent concrete and brick wall that the BIPV array replaced. Data from current photovoltaic-dedicated Si wafer supply were also used; these resulted with an EPBT of 3.8?years and a global warming potential of 61?g?CO2/kWh. The performance ratio and EPBT of the Solaire system were compared with those in the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Task 2 inventory database. The drawback of facade BIPV is its vertical orientation, receiving lower incident irradiation than rooftop and ground installations. Nevertheless, BIPV offers two main advantages over such installations: it does not require any virgin land for its operation, and it replaces structural units, thus avoiding the cost, embodied energy and corresponding emissions related to those. We detail herein how the replacement of traditional cladding materials can offset the performance drawback of BIPV, in terms of environmental burden and EPBT. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Enzymes and yeast are important ingredients in the production of ethanol, yet the energy consumption and emissions associated with their production are often excluded from life-cycle analyses of ethanol. We provide new estimates for the energy consumed and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted during enzyme and yeast manufacture, including contributions from key ingredients such as starch, glucose, and molasses. We incorporated these data into Argonne National Laboratory's Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation model and observed that enzymes and yeast together contribute 1.4 and 27 % of farm-to-pump GHG emissions for corn and cellulosic ethanol, respectively. Over the course of the entire corn ethanol life cycle, yeast and enzymes contribute a negligible amount of GHG emissions, but increase GHG emissions from the cellulosic ethanol life cycle by 5.6 g CO(2)e/MJ.In order to properly assess the climate impact of temporary carbon sequestration and storage projects through land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), it is important to consider their temporal aspect. Dynamic life cycle assessment (dynamic LCA) was developed to account for time while assessing the potential impact of life cycle greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. In this paper, the dynamic LCA approach is applied to a temporary carbon sequestration project through afforestation, and the results are compared with those of the two principal ton-year approaches: the Moura-Costa and the Lashof methods. The dynamic LCA covers different scenarios, which are distinguished by the assumptions regarding what happens at the end of the sequestration period. In order to ascertain the degree of compensation of an emission through a LULUCF project, the ratio of the cumulative impact of the project to the cumulative impact of a baseline GHG emission is calculated over time. This ratio tends to 1 when assuming that, after the end of the sequestration project period, the forest is maintained indefinitely. Conversely, the ratio tends to much lower values in scenarios where part of the carbon is released back to the atmosphere due to e.g. fire or forest exploitation. The comparison of dynamic LCA with the ton-year approaches shows that it is a more flexible approach as it allows the consideration of every life cycle stage of the project and it gives decision makers the opportunity to test the sensitivity of the results to the choice of different time horizons.Current trends in integrated project design and delivery methods demand the development of new software competencies in interior design pedagogy. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has revolutionized visualization, preconstruction simulation, life cycle analysis, and enabled faster construction, thus promoting more sustainable integrated practices with a rich repertoire of building information available for the design team. This new tool presents opportunities for interior design educators to teach software and skills that are necessary to prepare students for integrated practice. This article discusses an instructional design approach of introducing BIM and Revit into the interior design curriculum at University of Minnesota. John Robert Anderson's ACT-R (Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational) theory is utilized to guide students through the learning process. ACT-R theory focuses on three stages of skill acquisition: cognitive, associative and autonomous stages. These three stages present implications for teaching interior design students about BIM and Revit.Ethanol produced from lignocelluloses is expected to make a major contribution on transportation fuel markets. In this paper, a life cycle assessment was carried out to assess the environmental burdens of ethanol production from wheat straw and its use as ethanol blend fuels. Two ethanol based fuel E15 (a mixture of 15% ethanol and 85% petrol by volume) and E85 (85% ethanol and 15% petrol by volume) were assessed and results were compared to those of conventional petrol (PT) in 1 km driven by an equivalent car. The environmental performance was studied using ReCiPe methodology and includes global warming, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, water depletion and fossil depletion. The results show that, compared to petrol, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions are lower for ethanol blends, with a 73% reduction for an E85-fuelled car and 13% reduction with E15. A modest savings of 40% in fossil depletion was also found when using E85 and 15% when using E15. Similar results are also observed for ozone depletion. The findings highlight a number of environmental issues such as acidification, eutrophication, ecotoxicity and water depletion for which areas ethanol blend use does not offer any advantages compared with petrol. A further analysis of ethanol production at well to gate level helps identify the key areas in the ethanol production life cycle. The results indicate where effort needs to be placed to improve the technology performance and process design which can help in lowering the environmental impacts in the whole life cycle. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Acoustical sustainable materials, either natural or made from recycled materials, are quite often a valid alternative to traditional synthetic materials. The production of these materials generally has a lower environmental impact than conventional ones, though a proper analysis of their sustainability, through Life Cycle Assessment procedures, has to be carried out. Airborne sound insulation of natural materials such as flax or of recycled cellulose fibres is similar to the one of rock or glass wool. Many natural materials (bamboo, kenaf, coco fibres) show good sound absorbing performances; cork or recycled rubber layers can be very effective for impact sound insulation. These materials also show good thermal insulation properties, are often light and they are not harmful for human health. Furthermore, many of these materials are currently available on the market at competitive prices. There is however a need to complete their characterization, both from an experimental and a theoretical point of view, and especially to propose a standard and unique procedure to evaluate their sustainability. The paper presents an updated survey on the acoustical properties of sustainable materials, both natural and from recycled materials, including mixed and composite materials and systems such as green roofs and green walls, and is completed by a wide selection of recent related bibliography.Window frame material has significant impact on the thermal performance of the window. Moreover, with sustainable design becoming a necessity, window frame materials need to have higher levels of environmental performance to be considered sustainable. As a result, a holistic performance metric is needed to assess window frame material. Three similar frames were considered, manufactured from aluminum, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and wood. First their thermal performance was evaluated and compared using a heat transfer model. Then, carbon footprints of the three materials were considered for 1m(2) of window area with a similar thermal performance. It was found that the thermal, as well as the environmental, performance of the wooden window frame was superior to those of aluminum and PVC. On the other hand aluminum frames had high environmental impacts and comparatively lower thermal performance. This study provides a holistic viewpoint on window frames by considering both environmental and thermal performance.Widespread land use changes, and ensuing effects on ecosystem services, are expected from expanding bioenergy production. Although most U. S. production of ethanol is from corn, it is envisaged that future ethanol production will also draw from cellulosic sources such as perennial grasses. In selecting optimal bioenergy crops, there is debate as to whether it is preferable from an environmental standpoint to cultivate bioenergy crops with high ecosystem services (a "land-sharing" strategy) or to grow crops with lower ecosystem services but higher yield, thereby requiring less land to meet bioenergy demand (a "land-sparing" strategy). Here, we develop a simple model to address this question. Assuming that bioenergy crops are competing with uncultivated land, our model calculates land requirements to meet a given bioenergy demand intensity based upon the yields of bioenergy crops. The model combines fractional land cover of each ecosystem type with its associated ecosystem services to determine whether land-sharing or land-sparing strategies maximize ecosystem services at the landscape level. We apply this model to a case in which climate protection through GHG regulation-an ecosystem's greenhouse gas value (GHGV)-is the ecosystem service of interest. Our results show that the relative advantages of land sparing and land sharing depend upon the type of ecosystem displaced by the bioenergy crop; as the GHGV of the unfarmed land increases, the preferable strategy shifts from land sharing to land sparing. Although it may be preferable to replace ecologically degraded land with high-GHGV, lower yielding bioenergy crops, average landscape GHGV will most often be maximized through high-yielding bioenergy crops that leave more land for uncultivated, high-GHGV ecosystems. Although our case study focuses on GHGV, the same principles will be applicable to any ecosystem service whose value does not depend upon the spatial configuration of the landscape. Whenever bioenergy crops have substantially lower ecosystem services than the ecosystems with which they are competing for land, the most effective strategy for meeting bioenergy demand while maximizing ecosystem services on a landscape level is one of land sparing: focusing simultaneously on maximizing the yield of bioenergy crops while preserving or restoring natural ecosystems.To assess the environmental sustainability of industrial products and services, tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) have been developed. In LCA, the total environmental impact of resource extraction and emissions during a product's life cycle is quantified. To better quantify this impact, first the alteration of ecosystems induced by those processes needs to be accounted for. Second, the flow networks of ecosystems, responsible for the formation of the extracted resources, should be included in the product's life cycle. To achieve these two objectives, a tool was selected which studies the flow networks of ecosystems: ecological network analysis (ENA). In ENA, total system indicators are calculated which assess an ecosystem's functioning (e.g. cycling). Alterations of ecosystems can be represented by changes in the values of those indicators. ENA is based on the computational framework of input-output analysis (IA). This framework is also used in LCA allowing for a possible extension of a product's life cycle in an LCA with the ecosystem flow networks of ENA. The ENA/IOA framework itself was revised and improved in this study to better fit in an LCA framework, prior to integration and application in LCA. The major adaptation was to enable physical compartmentalization of the surrounding environment of the studied (eco)system. This allows for a specification of destinations and sources of export and import flows, respectively, which is desired in LCA to assess the impact of these flows. Next to that, the adapted framework was made applicable to non-steady-state systems by applying Finn's concept (1976, 1977), in which increase, increment, and decrease, depletion, in stock are considered abstract export and import flows, respectively. As an example, the adapted ENA framework was applied to a forest ecosystem. However, there are no standards yet for the different choices in the ENA methodology, which can have an influence on the indicator values. Hence, defining such standards is a next important research step. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study is aimed at providing a contribution in overcoming the current gap, especially in Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Benefit Cost (BCA) analyses, due to the lack concerning the green roof disposal costs. Therefore, we have applied to an actual extensive green roof the LCC methodology suggested by D. G. Woodward (that appears like one of the most formalized and generalizable), but we have extended the analysis to the disposal phase. This will allow a complete and proper application of the LCC methodology in order of achieving an economic accounting of this component through its life cycle. In this way, it is possible to achieve the complete evaluation of the "green roof' performance by a life cycle perspective (the environmental performances, in fact, are assessed by means of the classical Life Cycle Assessment approach). Needed steps for accomplishing the cost analysis of the disposal phase of this building component have been applied and discussed. These steps help to formalize the procedure, so attributing it an approach which may be generalized. The relative contribution of production, maintenance and end of life phases to the whole cost of this extensive green roof has been illustrated as well. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study is the comparison of green roof systems with conventional isolated and non- isolated ones in order to identify the potential energy savings of green roofs and the benefits provided in comparison with the cost of construction to the buildings. The region of interest is the Watergraafsmeer area in the city of Amsterdam. The method evaluates literature reports - mostly from 2003 to 2010 - that present the advantages of green roofs. Examples in real implementation of green roofs in USA, UK and Germany, retention of rainfall and a Life Cycle Assessment from a residential construction in Madrid will be introduced, showing the energy savings from insulation and heating/cooling that can be gained. All the reports have shown a reduction in energy costs and in runoff of water. Hence, costs and retrofitting potential completes the research. The age of buildings and the absence of insulation make green roofs an ideal alternative project for the retrofit of Watergraafsmeer.Animal husbandry, aquaculture and fishery have major impacts on the environment. In order to identify the range of impacts and the most important factors thereof, as well as to identify what are the main causes of the differences between products, we analysed 52 life cycle assessment studies (LCAs) of animal and vegetal sources of protein. Our analysis was focused only on land requirement and carbon footprints. In a general conclusion it can be said that the carbon footprint of the most climate-friendly protein sources is up to 100 times smaller than those of the most climate-unfriendly. The differences between footprints of the various products were found mainly to be due to differences in production systems. The outcomes for pork and poultry show much more homogeneity than for beef and seafood. This is largely because both beef and seafood production show a wide variety of production systems. Land use (occupation), comprising both arable land and grasslands, also varies strongly, ranging from negligible for seafood to up to 2100 m(2) y kg(-1) of protein from extensive cattle farming. From farm to fork the feed production and animal husbandry are by far the most important contributors to the environmental impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Natural resource scarcity and the effects of environmental destruction have pushed societies to use and reuse resources more efficiently. Waste should no longer be seen as a burden but rather as another source of material such as energy fuel. This study analyzes the potential of three waste management scenarios that include the combination of four waste management technologies - incineration with energy recovery, composting, anaerobic digestion, and sanitary landfill gas collection - as ways to recover energy and material from municipal solid waste. The study applies the environmental load point (ELP) method and utilizes municipal waste characteristics and composition from India, Indonesia, and China as case studies. The ELP methodology employs integrated weighting in the quantification process to get a one-unit result. This study particularly uses analytic hierarchical process questionnaires to get the weighting value of the nine impact categories: energy depletion, global warming, ozone depletion, resource consumption, ecosystem influence, water pollution, waste disposal, air pollution, and acid rain. The results show that the scenario which includes composting organic waste and sanitary landfill with gas collection for energy recovery has medium environmental impact and the highest practicability. The optimum material and energy potential is from the Chinese case study in which 254 tonnes of compost fertilizer and 60 MWh of electricity is the estimated output for every 1,000 tonnes of waste treated.The aim of the current study was to analyse the environmental impacts of fattening bull systems using life cycle assessment (LCA). Three contrasting bull-fattening systems practised in France were compared. Diets H, MS and C differed by the nature of the forage consumed (hay, maize silage and wheat straw, respectively) and the proportion of concentrate, i.e. ground maize grain and soybean meal (0.51, 0.37 and 0.86, respectively) in the diets. Diet MS resulted in the lowest cumulative energy demand and in the highest acidification potential per kg of body weight gain (BWG). Eutrophication potential per kg of BWG was highest for diet C and the lowest for diet H. The relative contribution of eutrophication and acidification impacts by feeds and manure varied according to diet. The system using a hay-based diet resulted in the highest land occupation per kg of BWG and in the lowest impact per ha of land occupied for all impacts. It was found that the use of LCA, involving a multi-criteria assessment allowing the expression of results according to several functional units (kg of BWG and ha of land occupied) is essential to analyse the effectiveness of a pollution reduction strategy.The recycling of packaging waste is an objective of the Community with clear targets set in the European law. The study of the institutional arrangements, recycling systems and of the costs that resulted from this environmental policy represents an ongoing effort. While each member state has currently its own packaging waste management system, there is still a lack of evidence regarding the actual costs of recycling and on how these costs have been distributed among stakeholders. This paper addresses the Portuguese framework and discusses the financial transfers undertaken by the entity that manages the Green Dot scheme. For this purpose, we use data from the entities in charge of selective collection and sorting of household packaging waste for the year 2010. We compare the financial transfers of the Green Dot company with the costs incurred by the local authorities (which are generally in charge of selective collection and sorting) and open a discussion on the extent to which the principles of the Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste are being fulfilled in practice. Currently, the Green Dot company is only bearing 77% of the financial costs of the recycling systems in operation in Portugal. The unit cost of the selective collection and sorting of packaging waste is estimated to be 204 (sic)/ton collected. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, a comparative Life Cycle Assessment has been performed with the aim of finding out how the environmental impact derived from biodiesel production (using raw sunflower oil or waste cooking oils) could be affected by the degree of decentralization of the production (number of production plants in a given territory). The decentralized production of biodiesel has been proposed for several reasons, such as the possibility of small scale production, the fact that there is no need to use high technology or make large investments, and because small plants do not need highly specialized technical staff. Thus, hypothetical territories (considering scenarios in which the production and area were theoretically modified), as well as real territories, have been analyzed to determine which environmental indicators were most affected. Results showed that the optimum degree of centralization was different for each analyzed case. In general, in small territories centralized production was more suitable for the environment, decentralization being more advisable as the territory increased in area. For each of the cases analyzed, an optimum number of plants, which minimized the environmental impacts, was found. This work illustrates the importance of considering the number of industrial plants in the production design, not only from an economic aspect but also from an environmental point of view. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Fossil energy analysis, also called cumulative energy demand, is a current method for environmental assessment of agricultural systems. It consists of assessing fossil energy directly consumed on the farm and indirectly consumed to produce farm inputs. Application of the method is based on the sum of the quantity of each farm input multiplied by its energy coefficient, which represents fossil energy use during the life cycle of the input, including extraction, manufacturing and disposal of the raw and auxiliary materials. The range of values for energy coefficients proposed in the literature and variability in their context of application challenges the confidence in estimates of fossil energy use. To offer an initial representation of this uncertainty and to propose improvements for including uncertainty in energy coefficients, a fossil energy analysis completed by uncertainty and sensitivity analyses was applied to dairy farms from two differing French territories: Poitou-Charentes (PC) and Reunion Island (RI). Monte-Carlo simulation of 30,000 sets of coefficients randomly drawn from the ranges of values found in the literature shows a 95% confidence interval ranging from 3.6 to 5.0 MJ L-1 of raw milk for PC and 5.8-8.2 MJ L-1 of raw milk for RI. This represents a variation around the mean of +/- 16% for PC and +/- 17% for RI. This also highlights the need for a standardized and clearly defined method for calculating energy coefficients, especially regionally adapted ones, to accurately estimate fossil energy use of agricultural systems throughout the world. Calculation of a more accurate energy coefficient could be associated with a preliminary sensitivity analysis performed with minimum and maximum values of energy coefficients from the literature to identify the most influential coefficients and adapt them to local conditions. This avoids time-consuming adaptation of all energy coefficients, but requires accurate information about life-cycle inputs. Since energy coefficients are not the only source of uncertainty in fossil energy analysis, however, other guidelines are provided, especially concerning data inputs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aimed to analyze the sustainability of different poultry production systems and was intended as an integrated systems approach to address human food needs, environmental preservation, economic feasibility and quality of life. The sustainability of the following three poultry production systems was compared: conventional, organic and organic-plus (this category is comprised of more restrictive requirements to improve animal welfare and meat quality). A bio-economic model combining on-farm data recording with a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) was assessed. To make a general sustainability evaluation, the following four dimensions were considered: economic, social, environmental and quality. The majority of the data was collected directly on the farms, and the environmental indicators were estimated with life cycle assessment (LCA), ecological footprints and emergy analysis. To develop the MCDA, six indicators for each dimension (economic, social, qualitative and environmental) were selected. The analyzed farming systems showed different results based on the stakeholder being considered (scientists, consumers and producers). The OP system showed the best performance when economic, social and environmental dimensions were integrated following the scientist and consumer stakeholders criteria. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities are embedded within larger-scale engineered infrastructures (e. g., electric power, water supply, and transportation networks) that convey natural resources over large distances for use by people in cities. The sustainability of city systems therefore depends upon complex, cross-scale interactions between the natural system, the transboundary engineered infrastructures, and the multiple social actors and institutions that govern these infrastructures. These elements, we argue, are best studied in an integrated manner using a novel social-ecological-infrastructural systems (SEIS) framework. In the biophysical subsystem, the SEIS framework integrates urban metabolism with life cycle assessment to articulate transboundary infrastructure supply chain water, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission footprints of cities. These infrastructure footprints make visible multiple resources (water, energy, materials) used directly or indirectly (embodied) to support human activities in cities. They inform cross-scale and cross-infrastructure sector strategies for mitigating environmental pollution, public health risks and supply chain risks posed to cities. In the social subsystem, multiple theories drawn from the social sciences explore interactions between three actor categories-individual resource users, infrastructure designers and operators, and policy actors-who interact with each other and with infrastructures to shape cities toward sustainability outcomes. Linking of the two subsystems occurs by integrating concepts, theories, laws, and models across environmental sciences/climatology, infrastructure engineering, industrial ecology, architecture, urban planning, behavioral sciences, public health, and public affairs. Such integration identifies high-impact leverage points in the urban SEIS. An interdisciplinary SEIS-based curriculum on sustainable cities is described and evaluated for its efficacy in promoting systems thinking and interdisciplinary vocabulary development, both of which are measures of effective frameworks.Decentralized approaches to managing urban stormwater are gaining increased attention within the contexts of urban sustainability, climate change adaptation, and as a means of reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs). This study applied a life cycle assessment (LCA) to comparing the environmental efficiency of three means of equivalently reducing CSOs to the Bronx River (Bronx, NY, USA). Strategy 1 featured decentralized green infrastructure technologies, while "grey" strategies 2 and 3 detained, and detained and treated, respectively, excess flows at the end of pipe. We estimated greenhouse gas emissions (in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents [t CO2-eq]) over the construction, operation, and maintenance phases, including energy consumed at the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), carbon sequestered, and shading provided by vegetation (in the case of the green approach) over a 50-year analysis period. The study area comprised the entire drainage area contributing to New York State permitted CSO discharge points associated with the Hunts Point WWTP. The analysis was performed using a hybrid of process and economic input-output (EIO) LCA methods. The decentralized green strategy outperformed the two grey strategies in terms of this set of environmental metrics. The net emissions of the green strategy over 50 years was 19,000 t CO2-eq, whereas the grey strategies emitted 85,000 t CO2-eq (detention) and 400,000 t CO2-eq (detention and treatment). These results were significantly influenced by the emissions associated with the operation and maintenance activities required for strategies 2 and 3, and the carbon sequestered and shading provided by the vegetation in strategy 1, and suggest that watershed managers who seek to reduce CSOs and reduce carbon footprints would opt for the green approach.The growing interest in bio-polymers as a packaging material, particularly from companies looking to reduce their environmental footprint, has resulted in wider adoption. Traditionally the selection and specification of packaging materials was based on aesthetic, technical and financial factors, for which established metrics exist. However with bio-polymers, where the primary rationale for their use is environmental, alternative metrics are required. Furthermore, there is a significant strategic element to the decision process that requires a broader range of horizontal and vertical inputs, both within the business and the wider supply chain. It is therefore essential that a holistic approach is taken to the bio-polymer based packaging design process to ensure that the final packaging meets the original strategic intent and overall requirements of the business. Current eco-packaging design tools are generally limited to professional users, such as designers or packaging engineers, and generally provide tactical rather than strategic support. This disconnect, between the need for inclusivity and greater strategic support in holistic design, and the exclusivity and largely tactical support of current eco-design support tools, indicates a clear need for a new decision support tool for sustainable pack design using bio-polymers. This paper proposes a framework for an eco-design decision support tool for bio-polymer based packaging that has been developed using a predominantly qualitative research approach based on reviews, interviews and industrial packaging design experience and is an extension of previously published work. This research investigates further how existing eco-design methods, such as the 'Balanced Score Card', can be applied within the tool and how the shortcomings associated with incorporating social and environmental aspects can be partly resolved, through a simplified set of metrics tailored specifically for bio-polymer packaging decisions. The results of this research is a framework for the development of a three tier eco-design tool for bio-polymer packaging that provides decision support at the three critical stages of the design process: strategic fit, Feasibility assessment and concept/pack development.In this work, the water extraction and particle formation on-line (WEPO) process has been used to obtain dry antioxidant powder from rosemary leaves. This process includes pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE) and on-line drying of the extracts in one step. Based on previous works, water extraction at 200 degrees C was selected to achieve the maximum antioxidant activity while water flow rate was studied to determine its influence on powder formation. Other parameters influencing the drying process, such as scCO(2) pressure (80 bar) and flow rate (2.5 mL/min) and N-2 flow rate (0.6 mL/min) were settled to obtain a fine and constant spray. Powders obtained were evaluated in terms of particle size and morphology by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) as well as antioxidant capacity by an in vitro DPPH antioxidant assay. In order to assess the environmental performance of the WEPO process, this has been compared in terms of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to other green processes typically used for antioxidant extraction from rosemary leaves, such as supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) and a static pressurized hot water extraction, PHWE, carried out with a commercial equipment, both followed by a conventional drying step. The WEPO process, carried out in one step, giving dry bioactive extracts from rosemary, results in lower environmental impacts and energy consumption than the other green processes studied. The sensitivity assessment demonstrated the importance of primary energy sources in the production of electricity used, especially when green processes are being implemented. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The core element of all waste management systems that determines further treatment is the collection, transportation and sorting of waste. There is a spectrum of options that ranges from the complete source separation of waste with little or no consecutive sorting to the minimum separation at source and the consecutive central sorting of fully commingle waste. As each of the collection - transportation - sorting methods has particular characteristics, in assessing the most sustainable solution, a number of factors have to be taken into consideration. To assist decision makers (ad exemplum local authorities), the authors of this article has specified environmental, economic and social criteria that need to be considered while designing the integrated waste management systems. They can be grouped into environmental effectiveness (conservation of resources and reduction of environmental pollution), economic affordability and social acceptability. The article refers to the authors' research on "The application of life cycle assessment in the integrated municipal waste management" founded by DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst).Second-generation biomass production might be an opportunity for organic farmers to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, to advance economic development and a way to diversify risk. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework for estimating second-generation biodiesel impact assessment has been defined. Theory and principles of method, process flow diagram structuring and questionnaire for data collection have been analyzed. LCA study reliability depends strongly on data of good quality. It is essential that data collected are specific and of primary origin (collected directly on the field) in order to have a reconstruction of the system as objective as possible. The questionnaire contains all inputs and outputs processes and sub-processes. The flow diagram defines the spatial, temporal and production chain limits of the process.Traditionally, packaging design has had a subordinate role with respect to product design and production systems design; however, its impact on supply chain costs and performances can be devastating. Only in the past few years its strategic role has been recognized both in theory and in practice. Although packaging design research attracted considerable attention in the recent past, the purpose of this article is to broaden the field even further in two main directions. First, an attempt is made to review the status of literature on packaging design: a total of 89 articles published between 1990 and 2011 are reviewed and classified by content. In this contest, related International Standards are also presented and discussed, and a conceptual framework for packaging design is presented. Second, an agenda for future research in this area is provided. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This paper presents results on energy and environmental implications of construction of a standard social house in Chile. A simplified life cycle assessment approach was used here, in order to identify environmental impacts at different stages in the building life cycle under specific Chilean conditions. One square meter of a standard house was used as the Functional Unit, and energy consumption and material requirements were recorded for all stages. The carbon footprint of the construction phase was also estimated. The system limits included all energy requirements related to the manufacturing of building materials used in foundations and enclosures, construction and the house usage phase. Deconstruction or end of life phases were excluded from the system limits under study. Results indicate that energy consumption during the house construction phase could be neglected as compared with requirements in other life cycle stages. Additionally, manufacturing of housing foundations and bricks accounted for most of carbon footprintOrganic materials have recently become of great interest for photovoltaic applications, due to their potential to utilise high throughput, solution phase processing, which will lead to low cost electricity production. Hybrid solar cells combine organic and inorganic materials with the aim of utilising the low cost cell production of organic photovoltaics (OPV) as well as obtaining other advantages, such as tuneable absorption spectra, from the inorganic component Whilst hybrid solar cells have the potential to achieve high power conversion efficiencies (PCE), currently obtained efficiencies are quite low. The design of the inorganic material used as the electron acceptor in hybrid solar cells, particularly the electronic structure, is crucial to the performance of the device. There exists an optimal electronic structure design for an inorganic acceptor. To date, four major material types have been investigated, being cadmium compounds, silicon, metal oxide nanoparticles and low band gap nanoparticles. Currently, Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) quantum dots represent the state of the art, yielding a PCE of greater than 4%. This review compares the electronic structure of these materials with the optimal design components of an inorganic material and also explores possible limitations to the PCE of these devices, such as nanomorphology control and nanoparticle surface chemistry. This report provides the reader with a concise synthesis of the current state of the art for bulk heterojunction organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells. Additionally, it highlights key research areas which require attention to allow for the commercialisation of this technology. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A total of 33 publications have been reviewed in order to determine the current state-of-the-art of LCA development in fishery based seafood production systems, focusing mainly on methodological innovations and the different assumptions that are taken into consideration in the different stages of LCA. The assessment revealed a strong proliferation of LCA in seafood systems in recent years, but unequal levels of methodological development. Based on this evaluation, the article proposes a simple and straightforward guideline to set a common denominator for future seafood system LCA studies. Finally, innovation pathways that may potentially turn LCA into a more integrated methodology to evaluate the environmental performance of seafood systems are discussed throughout the review.Twenty-five comparative cycle assessments (LCAs) addressing food waste treatment were reviewed, including the treatment alternatives landfill, thermal treatment, compost (small and large scale) and anaerobic digestion. The global warming potential related to these treatment alternatives varies largely amongst the studies. Large differences in relation to setting of system boundaries, methodological choices and variations in used input data were seen between the studies. Also, a number of internal contradictions were identified, many times resulting in biased comparisons between alternatives. Thus, noticed differences in global warming potential are not found to be a result of actual differences in the environmental impacts from studied systems, but rather to differences in the performance of the study. A number of key issues with high impact on the overall global warming potential from different treatment alternatives for food waste were identified through the use of one-way sensitivity analyses in relation to a previously performed LCA of food waste management. Assumptions related to characteristics in treated waste, losses and emissions of carbon, nutrients and other compounds during the collection, storage and pretreatment, potential energy recovery through combustion, emissions from composting, emissions from storage and land use of bio-fertilizers and chemical fertilizers and eco-profiles of substituted goods were all identified as highly relevant for the outcomes of this type of comparisons. As the use of LCA in this area is likely to increase in coming years, it is highly relevant to establish more detailed guidelines within this field in order to increase both the general quality in assessments as well as the potentials for cross-study comparisons. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Uncertainty analysis in LCA studies has been subject to major progress over the last years. In the context of waste management, various methods have been implemented but a systematic method for uncertainty analysis of waste-LCA studies is lacking. The objective of this paper is (1) to present the sources of uncertainty specifically inherent to waste-LCA studies, (2) to select and apply several methods for uncertainty analysis and (3) to develop a general framework for quantitative uncertainty assessment of LCA of waste management systems. The suggested method is a sequence of four steps combining the selected methods: (Step 1) a sensitivity analysis evaluating the sensitivities of the results with respect to the input uncertainties, (Step 2) an uncertainty propagation providing appropriate tools for representing uncertainties and calculating the overall uncertainty of the model results, (Step 3) an uncertainty contribution analysis quantifying the contribution of each parameter uncertainty to the final uncertainty and (Step 4) as a new approach, a combined sensitivity analysis providing a visualisation of the shift in the ranking of different options due to variations of selected key parameters. This tiered approach optimises the resources available to LCA practitioners by only propagating the most influential uncertainties. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, the material and spatial characterization of the flows within a municipal solid waste (MSW) management system are combined through a Network-Based Spatial Material Flow Analysis. Using this information, two core indicators are developed for the bio-waste fraction, the Net Recovery Index (NRI) and the Transport Intensity Index (TII), which are aimed at assessing progress towards policy-related sustainable MSW management strategies and objectives. The NFU approaches the capacity of a MSW management system for converting waste into resources through a systematic metabolic approach, whereas the TII addresses efficiency in terms of the transport requirements to manage a specific waste flow throughout the entire MSW management life cycle. Therefore, both indicators could be useful in assessing key MSW management policy strategies, such as the consecution of higher recycling levels (sustainability principle) or the minimization of transport by locating treatment facilities closer to generation sources (proximity principle). To apply this methodological approach, the bio-waste management system of the region of Catalonia (Spain) has been chosen as a case study. Results show the adequacy of both indicators for identifying those points within the system with higher capacity to compromise its environmental, economic and social performance and therefore establishing clear targets for policy prioritization. Moreover, this methodological approach permits scenario building, which could be useful in assessing the outcomes of hypothetical scenarios, thus proving its adequacy for strategic planning. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Numerous life cycle analysis (LCA) studies of microalgae to fuel have been released over the past 3 years in an attempt to determine the environmental sustainability of this novel concept. Despite numerous issues with these LCA studies, they have highlighted that cultivation and dewatering/drying for extraction and conversion are major energy sinks within the process. This paper provides a critical review of extraction and conversion methods discussed in literature and under commercial investigation. The basis of this review is energy consumption, with its purpose to highlight methods that deserve further attention in research and development. This review concludes with an energetic assessment of four conversion processes including pulsed electric field-assisted extraction followed by transesterification, in situ acid catalysed esterification of dry biomass, in situ hydrolysis and esterification of wet biomass and hydrothermal liquefaction. The analysis highlighted that energetically feasible methods do exist for the conversion of microalgal biomass to fuel; however, all require further research to be applied at commercial scale.Reduction of carbon emissions of machine tools is an essential key to achieve low carbon manufacturing in various manufacturing system environments. To achieve this, the first step is to devise methods to understand and characterize the carbon emissions of machine tools. A carbon efficiency approach is presented to quantitatively characterize the life-cycle carbon emissions of machine tools, in which carbon efficiency is defined as the ratio of capacity or service value provided by machine tool to the corresponding carbon emissions. The life-cycle carbon emissions include two categories, fixed emissions and varied emissions which closely relate the throughput and operation time of machine tools. The dynamic characteristics of varied emissions are analyzed with the carbon efficiency functions of production rate, material remove volume, and economic return accordingly. The case study shows that light weight design and remanufacturing can reduce fixed emissions, and varied emissions can be reduced by improving energy efficiency and making the best matching of equipments and production tasks. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compares the ecological footprints with the biodiversity footprints of products that result from land use and carbon dioxide emissions. The biodiversity footprints were quantified using mean species abundance statistics, whereas the ecological footprint refers to the impacts on bioproductivity. We used a data set of 1340 product systems subdivided into 13 product groups, which included various types of energy generation and material production. We found that the importance of direct land use vs. carbon dioxide emissions is different for biodiversity footprints compared to ecological footprints. This difference is particularly relevant if the environmental impact of bio-based products (dominated by direct land use) is compared with the environmental impact of fossil-based products (dominated by CO2 emissions). Our results also show that the relative importance of different drivers can change over time within the biodiversity footprint and that the relative importance of climate change significantly increased for longer time horizons. As the interpretation of the biodiversity footprint can differ from the ecological footprint, the inclusion of impacts on biodiversity should be considered in the footprint calculation of products. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emergency medical services, or 'ambulance services', are a vehicle-intense component of the health sector that could contribute to that sector's emissions reduction efforts. This analysis uses data from an inventory of ambulance service Scope 1 (arising from direct energy consumption) and Scope 2 (arising from purchased energy consumption) emissions, along with publicly available expenditure data and emissions multipliers derived from economy-wide input-output tables, to estimate the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of Australian ambulance services. Total emissions are estimated at between 216,369 and 546,688 t CO(2)e annually, and represent between 1.8% and 4.4% of total Australian health sector emissions. Approximately 20% of ambulance service emissions arise from direct consumption of vehicle fuels (diesel and petrol) and aircraft fuels, with 22% arising from electricity consumption, and 58% arising from Scope 3 (e.g., supply chain: waste disposal) processes. Incorporating alternative fuels and higher efficiency vehicles into Australian ambulance services' vehicle fleets could reduce their direct greenhouse emissions, but broader efforts targeting reduced electricity consumption, greener electricity generation, and environmentally friendly purchasing practices will be required to substantially reduce their total carbon footprint. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Diesel is produced conventionally by distilling crude oil which also results in lower value heavy distillates. Recently, complex refineries have higher value-added diesel from these heavy distillates. However, this requires additional energy. Hence, it is interesting to evaluate what effect the economic value addition has on the use of non-renewable resources and greenhouse gas emissions. This study was conducted to compare the gate-to-gate energy related impacts i.e. Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Abiotic resource Depletion Potential (ADP) between straight run diesel (S-HSD), produced by a simple refinery and cracked diesel (C-HSD), produced by a complex. The results showed that the C-HSD required more energy than the S-HSD because of the energy used by the additional processes. 1 L of the S-HSD generated 0.048 kg CO2 eq while that of the C-HSD generated 0.372 kg CO2 eq. In contrast, the C-HSD has a lower ADP than the S-HSD proving that the production of diesel from the heavy distillate indeed helps conserve natural resources. 1 L of the S-HSD generated 0.022 kg Sb eq. while that of the C-HSD generated 0.017 kg Sb eq. Producing the C-HSD helps conserve natural resources but has higher GWP than the S-HSD. However, there are possibilities to reduce GHG emissions from the C-HSD production by energy efficiency improvement. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Normalization and weighting steps used in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) are often ignored as the weighting factors currently available are seen as being uncertain, subjective and unreliable. This article aims to contribute to the development of a new approach towards weighting, exploring the application of the concept of a planetary safe operating space for human welfare. Based on this approach, the boundaries included in this study relate to: climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, nitrogen cycle, phosphorus cycle, stratospheric ozone depletion, global freshwater use and change in land use. The weighting factors are then applied to a case study comparing environmental impacts of organic, conventional and integrated farming systems with alternative land uses. An integrated farming system that uses a part of the land for natural forest was found to have the lowest total impact score. Conventional farming systems with Miscanthus and managed forest had the highest total impact scores. The main source of uncertainty in the results arose from the wide range of assessments for the safe boundary of the biodiversity loss impact category. As the weighting factors proposed in this paper are not based on the common LCA impact categories, more work is needed to adjust the weighting factors to be suitable for use in LCA studies. More research is also needed for further defining the safe planetary boundaries. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The technical and environmental performance of a solar water heater (SWH) is examined using the method of life cycle assessment (LCA). The present LCA study quantifies the environmental benefits of the installation of a SWH with electricity as auxiliary for domestic use in the city of Thessaloniki. Solar thermal heating produces no emissions during operation but some small levels of emissions are produced during the manufacture and installation of components and systems. This work examines the manufacturing stages of the SWH and records resource consumption and waste streams to the environment. The system boundary includes the production of raw materials such as steel, glass, copper, aluminium, glass fibber and polyurethane insulators, the manufacturing of the various parts of the SWH such as the solar collector and the heat storage tank, and finally the assembly process. The functional unit chosen is 1 MW of produced hot water. The environmental impacts taken into consideration in the study, are the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, heavy metals, carcinogens, winter smog and summer smog. The system can provide 1702 kWh year(-1) and the solar contribution is 58.5%. The financial characteristics of the system investigated give life cycle savings equal to 4280.0 (sic) and pay-back time equal to 5 years. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The short life span of textiles is a major sustainability issue in the current industrial system. However, the manufacturing of a more durable textile product requires the introduction of additional processes and/or the use of different materials and processes. The aim of this study was to analyse the respective influences of manufacturing and lifetime on the environmental impact of the product. For this purpose, the life cycles of 8 bed-sheets representing various features, easy-care treatment, raw material, quality, were analysed. Life cycle assessment was applied to assess the potential environmental impacts and resources used throughout the product's life cycle, accounting for different manufacturing, use and discarding decisions. This study showed how manufacturing conditions influence the environmental assessment of a textile such as a bed-sheet. It was demonstrated that assigning a specific lifetime to the corresponding manufacturing processes is essential because the manufacturing conditions determine the textile product quality. Two different disposal decisions were also considered to further comprehend the effects of consumer behaviour. Depending on the consumer decisional process, the LCIA results and the underlying analysis varied greatly. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In evaluating the impacts of products and processes, life cycle assessment has taken a prominent role. Missing data, however, continue to affect the completeness and accuracy of such environmental assessment tools. Data are missing for many reasons, for specific processes, at random in existing inventories or worse, nonexistent. This article proposes a statistical approach to address the lack of data in life cycle inventories and applies it to hydroelectric power plants. Among large power production technologies, hydroelectricity varies considerably in scale and from one site to another. The procedure relies on relationships between the technical properties of a system or process, in this case hydropower plants, and the embodied material and energy flows in construction, operation and eventually dismantling. With highly flexible estimators known as kriging, predicting the value of material and energy flows becomes more accurate. From relatively small sample sizes, kriging allows better estimation without averaging out any of the observed data. Similarly, parameter estimation and model validation can be performed through cross validation which assumes very little on the data itself. Calculations of mean absolute errors for various forms of kriging and regression show that the former estimates the values of material and energy flows more accurately than the latter, more so in cases of incomplete data. Accounting for several technical characteristics as well as joint estimation of covariate material and energy flows provide different ways to further reduce the errors and improve the completeness of inventories where data are missing. The specificity of hydroelectric power makes existing inventory data largely unrepresentative and kriging offers new possibilities to increase the reliability of estimated, representative data. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study evaluates the environmental impacts associated with the production of eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus Labill.) and maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.) wood in Portugal. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used from cradle-to-gate. Three forest management scenarios, representative of different forest management intensities and logging equipment, were simulated for each species. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the influence of adopting different values for the wood productivity. The results obtained for each impact category show a relatively wide range of variation when different management scenarios and wood productivities are taken into account. The impacts, except for those in the category photochemical oxidant formation, are much smaller in the less intensive scenario (40-88%). The impacts of using chainsaws and adapted farm tractors in logging operations instead of harvesters and forwarders do not significantly differ (less than 11%), except for the impact category photochemical oxidant formation for which there are significant differences. For the same type of management scenario, the impacts of eucalypt wood production are larger than those estimated for maritime pine wood. The logging stage, as well as fertilization, especially with nitrogen-containing fertilizers, plays a major role in all the impact categories. More accurate impacts could be quantified using the methodology adopted in this study when the provenance of the wood and, consequently, the forest operation type and frequency, and associated consumption of fuels, lubricants and fertilizers, are known. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Design of sustainable building envelopes requires the analysis of environmental performances in every stage of their life cycle. As a matter of fact, the production phase of building materials and components can significantly contribute to the total energy consumption and environmental loads of buildings. However, facade systems such as passive solar systems, ventilated walls and double skins, are usually not designed considering aspects related to their life cycle. Furthermore, there are still few studies concerning the optimization and the combined effect of different design features of complex facades on environmental and energy performances. This paper introduces an integrated approach for the optimization of energy and environmental performances of complex building envelopes that combines life cycle assessment, energy simulation and optimization analysis with factorial plan technique. The environmental performance was calculated in terms of energy demand and CO2 emissions in the production phase and operational phase. The methodology was applied to an exemplary case study with solar wall systems. The results showed that solar walls have high environmental impact both in the production and operational phases. Results of the optimization analysis demonstrated that it is possible to reduce the CO2 emissions and cumulative energy demand of solar walls for both the production and use phases up to -55% in comparison with a traditional design. This methodology may be generally applied to the sustainability analysis, design and optimization of efficient facade systems. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper is the first of a two part study which quantifies the economic and greenhouse performance of conventional, hybrid and fully electric passenger vehicles operating in Australian driving conditions. This first study focuses on the total cost of vehicle ownership. Two vehicle sizes are considered, Class-E and Class-B, which bracket the large majority of passenger vehicles on Australian roads. Simulation models of baseline production, conventional vehicles are first developed. These models are then systematically altered to obtain the fuel and/or electricity consumption of equivalent mild hybrid, parallel hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles. The total operating cost of each vehicle is then calculated, and the vehicle production costs are estimated by decomposing the vehicles into their major constituent parts. This enables the total cost of vehicle ownership to be estimated, taking particular account of variations in fuel, electricity and battery prices. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.MIT Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group recently conducted their third annual sustainability survey of executives and managers worldwide. The survey results indicate that an increasing number of managers and companies are taking sustainable business practices seriously. According to the survey data, 70% of companies that have placed sustainability on their management agenda have done so in the past six years, and 20% have done so just in the past two years. Two-thirds of respondents said that sustainability was critically important to being competitive in today's marketplace, up from 55% in the 2010 survey. And despite ongoing economic uncertainty, many companies are increasing their commitments to sustainability initiatives. In fact, 31% of respondents said their companies are profiting from sustainable business practices. Some of the interest can be explained by increasing pressure, internally and externally. Among the external factors are stakeholder groups including investors and also regulations, climate change, resource constraints and consumer demand. Internal demands for brand integrity, employee engagement and increased efficiencies play a part as well. But the recent increase in the business focus on sustainability may also be because we are nearing a "tipping point" at which a critical mass of companies is taking sustainability seriously. Survey and interview data identified companies that are profiting from sustainability, which the authors termed "Harvesters." Harvesters are 50% more likely to have a CEO with a strong commitment to sustainability, and nearly two and a half times as likely to have a chief sustainability officer. They are also more likely to be involved in external collaborations. Starbucks, for example, brought in representatives from its entire supply chain, government officials and an MIT professor in order to develop a detailed assessment of and life-cycle analysis for take-out coffee cups. Reprint 53213. For ordering information, see page 8.Triacylglycerols (TAGs) from microalgae have the potential to be used for biodiesel, but several technical and economic hurdles have to be overcome. A major challenge is efficient extraction of intracellular TAGs from algae. Here we investigate the use of enzymes to deconstruct algal cell walls/membranes. We describe a rapid and simple assay that can assess the efficacy of different enzyme treatments on TAG-containing algae. By this means crude papain and bromelain were found to be effective in releasing TAGs from the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, most likely because of their cysteine protease activity. Pre-treating algal biomass with crude papain enabled complete extraction of TAGs using heptane/isopropyl alcohol. Heptane as a single solvent was also effective, although complete recovery of TAG was not obtained. Economic implications of these findings are discussed, with the aim to reduce the complexity of, and energy needed in, TAG extraction. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainability analysts and environmental decision makers often overcome the difficulty of interpreting comprehensive environmental profiles by aggregating the results using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods. However, the wide variety of methodological approaches to weighting and aggregation introduces subjectivity and often uncertainty. It is important to select an approach that is consistent with the decision maker's information needs, but scant practical guidance is available to environmental managers on how to do this. In this paper, we aim to clarify the theoretical implications of an analyst's choice of MCDA method. By systematically examining the methodological decisions that must be made by the analyst at each stage of the assessment process, we aim to improve analysts' understanding of the relationship between MCDA theory and practice, and enable them to apply methods that are consistent with a decision maker's needs in any given problem context (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pulp and paper industry is facing challenges such as resource scarcity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The objective of this research is to investigate whether the use of new coatings (micro or nano TiO2) and different pulp types could bring savings in wood, energy, GHG emissions and other environmental impacts in comparison with conventional printing and writing paper. We studied three types of pulp, namely i) unbleached virgin kraft pulp, ii) recovered fiber, and iii) high yield virgin chemithermo-mechanical pulp (CTMP). A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted from cradle to grave. Applying attributional modeling, we found that wood savings amount to 60% for the nanoparticle coated recovered fiber paper and 35% for the micro TiO2 coated CTMP paper. According to the ReCiPe single score impact assessment method, the new product configurations allow the reduction of the environmental impacts by 10-35% compared to conventional kraft paper. Applying consequential modeling, we found larger energy and GHG emission savings compared to attributional modeling because the saved wood is used for producing energy, thereby replacing fossil fuels. The nanoparticle coated recovered fiber paper offered savings of non-renewable energy use (NREU) by 100% (13 GJ/ton paper) and GHG emission reduction by 75% (0.6 ton CO2 eq./ton paper). Micro TiO2 coated CTMP paper offered NREU savings by 25% (3 GJ/ton paper) and savings of GHG emissions by 10% (0.1 ton CO2 eq./ton paper). The taking into account of all environmental impacts with the ReCiPe single score method leads to comparable results as that of attributional modeling. We conclude that the nanoparticle coated recovered fiber paper offered the highest savings and lowest environmental impacts. However, human toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts of the nanoparticles were not included in this analysis and need further research. If this leads to the conclusion that the toxicity impacts of the nanoparticles are serious, then the CTMP paper with micro TiO2 coating is the preferred option. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.UV irradiation technology as a membrane bioreactor (MBR) post-treatment was investigated and assessed. Both UV low pressure (LP) and medium pressure (MP) lamps were examined. The technology was installed in a pilot plant treating hospital wastewater to provide the study with adequate field data. The effect of the UV irradiation was enhanced with varying dosages of H2O2 to establish an advanced oxidation process (AOP).The efficiency of the pharmaceutical removal process was assessed by examining 14 micropollutants (antibiotics, analgesics, anticonvulsants, beta-blockers, cytostatics and X-ray contrast media) which are typically released by hospitals and detected with liquid chromatography coupled tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). While the MBR treatment generally showed only a low degradation capacity for persistent pharmaceuticals, much better degradation was obtained by applying UV irradiation and H2O2 as AOP. The "conventional" cost-benefit analysis of the different technology options taking into account both electrical energy consumption and pharmaceutical removal efficiency, revealed clearly better performance of low pressure UV lamps as AOP. However, a holistic comparison between the different scenarios was carried out by evaluating their environmental impacts using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Decisive advantages were highlighted to include this approach in the decision making process. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Two processes are compared by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine which one causes less environmental impact for the treatment of saline mining wastewater: Eutectic Freeze Crystallisation (EFC) or Evaporative Crystallisation (EC). EC is a well established technology whereas EFC is a new promising technology that has the potential to compete with EC but so far has not been built at industrial scale. As the processes yield by-product water in different states, system expansion was used to effect a fair comparison. The study considers three different geographical areas: South Africa, France and Europe, in order to identify the effect the source of energy has on the comparison. The energy efficiency of the chilling technology is studied parametrically. The LCA results show that for the modelled 4 wt.% sodium sulphate solution, the EFC process is strongly preferred to EC regardless of the country energy mix, requiring 6-7 times less energy resources, but also that process energy integration and chiller energy efficiency can further reduce its environmental impacts significantly. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cork oak grows endemically in a narrow region bordering the western Mediterranean, and especially in the Iberian Peninsula. The importance of cork agro-forestry systems lies in the fact that a natural and renewable raw material - cork - can be extracted sustainably without endangering the tree or affecting biodiversity. This paper describes an environmental analysis of the extraction of raw cork in cork oak forests in Catalonia, using data from five representative local forest exploitations. The evaluation was carried out using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, and all the forestry management required to obtain a tonne of raw cork was included. The aim of the study was to evaluate the environmental impacts - in terms of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, and so on - caused by cork extraction and determine the carbon dioxide balance of these forestry systems, with a tree lifespan of about 200 years. During the life cycle extraction of cork in Catalonia, 0.2 kg of CO2 eq. was emitted per kg of raw cork extracted. Moreover, cork cannot be extracted without the tree, which will be fixing carbon dioxide throughout its technological useful life (200 years), despite the fact that the bark is removed periodically: every 13-14 years. If the emission from extraction and the carbon contained in the material is discounted, the carbon dioxide balance indicates that 18 kg of CO2 are fixed per kg of raw cork extracted. Therefore, cork is a natural, renewable and local material that can replace other non-renewable materials, at local level, to reduce the environmental impacts of products, and particularly to reduce their carbon footprint. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban water infrastructure expansion requires careful long-term planning to reduce the risk from climate change during periods of both economic boom and recession. As part of the adaptation management strategies, capacity expansion in concert with other management alternatives responding to the population dynamics, ecological conservation, and water management policies should be systematically examined to balance the water supply and demand temporally and spatially with different scales. To mitigate the climate change impact, this practical implementation often requires a multiobjective decision analysis that introduces economic efficiencies and carbon-footprint matrices simultaneously. The optimal expansion strategies for a typical water infrastructure system in South Florida demonstrate the essence of the new philosophy. Within our case study, the multiobjective modeling framework uniquely features an integrated evaluation of transboundary surface and groundwater resources and quantitatively assesses the interdependencies among drinking water supply, wastewater reuse, and irrigation water permit transfer as the management options expand throughout varying dimensions. With the aid of a multistage planning methodology over the partitioned time horizon, such a systems analysis has resulted in a full-scale screening and sequencing of multiple competing objectives across a suite of management strategies. These strategies that prioritize 20 options provide a possible expansion schedule over the next 20 years that improve water infrastructure resilience and at low life-cycle costs. The proposed method is transformative to other applications of similar water infrastructure systems elsewhere in the world. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work addresses the optimization of ammonia-water absorption cycles for cooling and refrigeration applications with economic and environmental concerns. Our approach combines the capabilities of process simulation, multi-objective optimization (MOO), cost analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA). The optimization task is posed in mathematical terms as a multi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear program (moMINLP) that seeks to minimize the total annualized cost and environmental impact of the cycle. This moMINLP is solved by an outer-approximation strategy that iterates between primal nonlinear programming (NLP) subproblems with fixed binaries and a tailored mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model. The capabilities of our approach are illustrated through its application to an ammonia-water absorption cycle used in cooling and refrigeration applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CaO/CaCO3 looping has been evaluated as a potential alternative to MEA for post-combustion CO2 capture from natural gas fired combined cycles (NGCC). CaO/CaCO3 looping has the advantage that there are no emissions of potentially toxic chemical residues and by-products to the environment. A steady-state heat and mass balance model was set up and solved using model parameters from the literature. Post-combustion capture with CaO/CaCO3 looping requires heat supply at high temperature in the calciner and is provided through internal combustion of natural gas with oxygen. Process simulations of six different configurations for the entire NGCC with post-combustion capture resulted in net thermal efficiency in the range 45.6-48.1%, given the process assumptions made and a CO2 capture rate in the range of 90.3-91.3%. These figures should be compared to 49.5% for the NGCC reference case with MEA-based capture. The resulting purity of captured CO2 is lower for CaO/CaCO3 looping due to presence of excess oxygen and inert nitrogen and argon. Increased CO2 purity can, however, be obtained through higher O-2 purity, however at the cost of higher air separation unit energy penalty. It is believed that further process integration and optimisation may enable further increase of the process efficiency for CO2 capture with CaO/CaCO3 looping. Moreover, another benchmarking approach of interest would be to perform a comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA) study to benchmark the environmental impact of CaO/CaCO3 looping with that of MEA scrubbing. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water consumption has become a serious concern in renewable fuels pro duction. This paper proposes a framework to address sustainable transport systems design where both environmental (i.e. carbon and water footprints) and economic performances are taken into account along the bioethanol supply chain. A multi-objective Mixed Integer Linear Programming modeling framework supporting strategic design and planning decisions for multi-period and multi-echelon upstream ethanol supply chains is developed. Hybrid biofuel production networks, where both corn grain and stover are used as suitable feedstocks, are optimized according to several features, involving technology selection and by-products end-use option. A case study is presented referring to the emerging Italian biofuels market. Results show the effectiveness of mathematical-programming-based tools to optimal design of biofuels supply chains, assessing the pros and cons of alternative configurations and, thus, allowing investors to drive planning decisions. (C) 2012 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe high energy and petroleum based fuels demand of the world require use of alternative fuels from materials available within each country. Therefore biofuels may be an alternative to mineral diesel. A local pilot production of sunflower oil was implemented in order to test the possibility to reduce fossil fuels consumption on a local scale. Vegetable oils can be directly obtained from oilseed plants and can be used as energy sources in internal combustion engines. Environmental Impact Indicators were provided by Material Flow Accounting, Embodied Energy Analysis and Emergy Accounting. All three approaches reveal that the agricultural phase is the critical step in the whole production line from the point of view of environmental impact. The renewability calculated for the sunflower oil is 33.6%. A comparative Life Cycle Assessment analysis for the sunflower oil production line from conventional farming with organic farming showed environmental advantages. Furthermore use of vegetable oils instead of diesel oil as energy sources in internal combustion engines reduces carbon dioxide emissions of 59%. This study represents an opportunity for farms to reduce dependence on petroleum and to explore energy production systems exploiting renewable energy. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study updates the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for soybean biodiesel with revised system boundaries and the inclusion of indirect land use change using the most current set of agricultural data. The updated results showed that life cycle GHG emission from biodiesel use was reduced by 81.2% compared to 2005 baseline diesel. When the impacts of lime application and soil N2O emissions were excluded for more direct comparison with prior results published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the reduction was 85.4%. This is a significant improvement over the 78.5% GHG reduction reported in the NREL study. Agricultural lime accounted for 50.6% of GHG from all agricultural inputs. Soil N2O accounted for 18.0% of total agricultural emissions. The improvement in overall GHG reduction was primarily due to lower agricultural energy usage and improved soybean crushing facilities. This study found that soybean meal and oil price data from the past ten years had a significant positive correlation (R-2 = 0.73); hence, it is argued that soybean meal and oil are both responsible for indirect land use change from increased soybean demand It is concluded that when there is a strong price correlation among co-products, system boundary expansion without a proper co-product allocation for indirect land use change produces erroneous results. When the emissions associated with predicted indirect land use change were allocated and incorporated using U.S. EPA model data, the GHG reduction for biodiesel was 76.4% lower than 2005 baseline diesel.Red clover-grass leys incorporating three clover (Trifolium pratense L.) varieties and two grass species, tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb) and timothy (Phleum pratense L.), were sown in 2003 and grown for three harvest years (2004-2006). The crops were fertilised either once with organic fertiliser (cow manure applied in the sowing year) or yearly with mineral fertiliser. The yields of the harvested bomasses were measured and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions estimated by life cycle analysis (LCA) yearly for both fertilisation types. At the end of the experiment, the carry-over effect of the red clover-grass leys was studied with spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Mineral fertilisation resulted in higher yields, but also about 2-3 times higher GHG emissions per unit clover-grass biomass than organic fertilisation. Grasses were favoured by mineral fertilisation, while the proportion of clover was higher and decreased less with time with organic fertilisation. Clover leys sown without grasses yielded least and produced the highest emissions per unit biomass. Tall fescue sown with clover produced more consistent yields than timothy, especially during drought stress and when the ley aged. Organic fertilisation appears the most sustainable way to produce field biomass for energy, at least when legumes are sown in the ley. After three years of clover-grass production, the biomass yield of spring wheat sown without fertiliser was about 4 t ha(-1), which could augment production of biomass per parcel, and would decrease the amount of GHG emissions from bioenergy production whether fertilised with organic or mineral fertilisers. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) and fossil fuel benefits of black liquor recovery are analyzed. These benefits are due to the production of energy that can be used in the pulping process or sold, and the recovery of the pulping chemicals that would otherwise need to be produced from other resources. The fossil GHG emissions and non-renewable energy consumption of using black liquor in the kraft recovery system are approximately 90% lower than those for a comparable fossil fuel-based system. Across all scenarios, the systems relying on black liquor solids achieve a median reduction of approximately 140 kg CO2 eq./GJ of energy produced, compared to the systems relying on fossil fuels to provide the same energy and pulping chemical production functions. The benefits attributable to the recovery of pulping chemicals vary from 44% to 75% of the total benefit. Applied to the total production of kraft pulp in the U.S., the avoided emissions are equivalent to the total Scopes 1 and 2 emissions from the entire U.S. forest products industry. These results do not depend on the accounting method for biogenic carbon (because biogenic CO2 emissions are the same for the systems compared) and the results are valid across a range of assumptions about the displaced fossil fuel, the GHG-intensity of the electricity grid, the fossil fuels used in the lime kiln, and the level of cogeneration at pulp and paper mills. The benefits occur without affecting the amount of wood harvested or the amount of chemical pulp produced. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.From the viewpoint of primary energy diversification and CO2 reduction, interests of using biomass fuel for transportation fuels are rising. Some kinds of FAME (Fatty Acid Methyl Esters), which are obtained from oil fats like vegetable oil using transesterification reaction with methanol, are getting popular for bio-diesel recently. As FAME has unsaturated carbon-carbon bonds which come from feed materials, its performance such as storage stability is concerned. And there are other points of concern, namely, effects of impurities in FAME on car components. In this current situation, technologies to produce high quality fuels from renewable sources, especially from vegetable oils, using petroleum refinery processes should be promising. In our study of the hydrotreatment of palm oil, what we called "Bio hydro-fined diesel (BHD)," it is possible to obtain from vegetable oil hydrocarbons nearly equal to conventional diesel fuel. BHD consists of alkyl chains derived from fatty acids in vegetable oil. BHD has higher oxidation stability than that of FAME. Evaluation of exhaust gases in engine tests on conventional diesel mixed with 10 % BHD showed same THC (total hydrocarbons), CO, and PM (particulate matter) emission as with base diesel alone. LCA (life cycle assessment) evaluation of BHD, petroleum diesel oil, and FAME produced from palm, although Wheel-to-Tank-CO2 of hydrogenated and FAME is higher than that of diesel, Well-to-Wheel-CO2 is lower due to the application of the biomass zero count rule. On the other hand, Well-to-Tank energy efficiency was same as FAME.A renewable biofuel economy is projected as a pathway to decrease dependence on fossil fuels as well as to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Ethanol produced on large-scale from lignocellulosic materials is considered the automotive fuel with the highest potential. In this paper, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study was developed to evaluate the environmental implications of the production of ethanol from a fast-growing short rotation crop (SRC): eucalyptus as well as its use in a flexi-fuel vehicle (FFV). The aim of the analysis was to assess the environmental performance of three ethanol based formulations: E10. E85 and E100, in comparison with conventional gasoline. The standard framework of LCA from International Standards Organization was followed and the system boundaries included the cultivation of the eucalyptus biomass, the processing to ethanol conversion, the blending with gasoline (when required) and the final use of fuels. The environmental results show reductions in all impact categories under assessment when shifting to ethanol based fuels, excluding photochemical oxidant formation, eutrophication as well as terrestrial and marine ecotoxicity which were considerably influenced by upstream activities related to ethanol manufacture. The LCA study remarked those stages where the researchers and technicians need to work to improve the environmental performance. Special attention must be paid on ethanol production related activities, such as on-site energy generation and distillation, as well as forest activities oriented to the biomass production. The use of forest machinery with higher efficiency levels, reduction of fertilizers dose and the control of diffuse emissions from the conversion plant would improve the environmental profile. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A big amount of final energy in Europe is used in buildings (about 50%). Thermo insulating investments in the building sector can have a great impacton the improvement of the energetic efficiency of buildings and the reduction of the use of final energy in this sector. In the paper there were presented properly modified indicators for the economic assessment of the investments which is based on the thermal insulation of external walls of the building, such as: net present value, profitability indicator and payback period. For the ecological assessment the following indicators were introduced: ecological net present value, ecological indicator of profitability and ecological payback period. LCA technique was used in ecological indicators. For different variants of external walls, sources of heat and thermo insulating materials, the assessment of investments due to economic and ecological indicators was conducted. Ecological payback periods were obtained within 0-6 years. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper presents an experimental and analytic study on multi-storey residential buildings without thermal insulation that were constructed before the introduction of energy saving standards (Italian Law 373/1976). Several activities were carried out to identify the optimal retrofit in terms of comfort, energy consumption and environmental impact: typological analysis of 70 buildings in the province of Macerata (Central Italy) and energy analysis of representative case studies; monitoring of a selected case study during summer and winter; thermal simulation of the building in dynamic conditions with EnergyPlus software and calibration of the virtual model by comparison with experimental results: parametric analyses to predict the effect of various retrofit solutions on comfort and energy consumption; environmental impact on the different solutions. It was possible to identify the optimal retrofit solutions for the external vertical and horizontal envelopes. The study showed that the most effective strategy is the insulation of the external vertical wall. The introduction of an external ventilated coating was found to be the optimal solution in a temperate climate. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GRG) emissions are an important primary criteria for environmental evaluation. As a project evaluation criterion, this study developed a framework that could estimate GHG emissions in asphalt pavement construction based on the limited information available in the feasibility study phase. A thorough literature review and in-depth interviews with domain experts in the field of road engineering were conducted to identify the input variables for this framework. By considering the characteristics of the input variables, such as material type, geometric shape of the structure, and earthwork quantities, an artificial neural network and a parametric calculation were used to develop the framework for estimating GHG emissions. When applied to real-life asphalt pavement projects in the Republic of Korea, the framework produced an average estimation error of 11.2%, which was considered sufficiently accurate for the planning phase. The proposed framework is expected to help decision makers easily evaluate the GHG emission potential of asphalt pavement projects in their preliminary phase such that project viability and priority can be determined in a more holistic manner. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000549. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.The controversial and highly emotional discussion about biofuels in recent years has shown that greenhouse gas(2) (GHG) emissions can only be evaluated in an acceptable way by carrying out a full life cycle assessment (LCA) taking the overall life cycle including all necessary pre-chains into consideration. Against this background, the goal of this paper is it to analyse the overall life cycle of a hydrogen production and provision. A state of the art hydrogen refuelling station in Hamburg/Germany opened in February 2012 is therefore taken into consideration. Here at least 50% hydrogen from renewable sources of energy is produced on-site by water electrolysis based on surplus electricity from wind (mainly offshore wind parks) and water. The remaining other 50% of hydrogen to be sold by this station mainly to hydrogen-fuelled buses is provided by trucks from a large-scale production plant where hydrogen is produced from methane or glycerol as a by-product of the biodiesel production. These two pathways are compared within the following explanations with hydrogen production from biomass and from coal. The results show that - with the goal of reducing GHG emissions on a life cycle perspective - hydrogen production based on a water electrolysis fed by electricity from the German electricity mix should be avoided. Steam methane reforming is more promising in terms of GHG reduction but it is still based on a finite fossil fuel. For a climatic sound provision of hydrogen as a fuel electricity from renewable sources of energy like wind or biomass should be used. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar has been presented as a key technology for avoiding dangerous climate change. Pyrolysis converts part of the biomass feedstock into a gaseous fraction, which can be used for energy production. The remaining fraction is char, which is highly stable and resistant to biodegradation. When char is added to soil it increases carbon storage, reduces emissions and improves soil quality. Agricultural residues such as straw, stover and hulls are seen as the most accessible raw material. These residues could also be used as insulation in passive energy housing. Straw bale construction is a relatively simple technology, which has been applied for decades. It can store the carbon of the straw material into walls structure and in the process provides energy efficient housing. The climate benefits from improved energy efficiency depend on local conditions and energy production forms. In this study life cycle assessment was used to compare the climate impacts of biochar production and straw bale construction. On a life cycle perspective, straw bale construction results in higher net carbon storage than biochar production (3.3 t CO(2)eq vs. 0.9 t CO(2)eq/t of straw). However the result was found to be highly dependent on the assumptions on the overall energy efficiency of the replaced building stock. (C) 2012 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ocean Afforestation, more precisely Ocean Macroalgal Afforestation (OMA), has the potential to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations through expanding natural populations of macroalgae, which absorb carbon dioxide, then are harvested to produce biomethane and biocarbon dioxide via anaerobic digestion. The plant nutrients remaining after digestion are recycled to expand the algal forest and increase fish populations. A mass balance has been calculated from known data and applied to produce a life cycle assessment and economic analysis. This analysis shows the potential of Ocean Afforestation to produce 12 billion tons per year of biomethane while storing 19 billion tons of CO2 per year directly from biogas production, plus up to 34 billion tons per year from carbon capture of the biomethane combustion exhaust. These rates are based on macro-algae forests covering 9% of the world's ocean surface, which could produce sufficient biomethane to replace all of today's needs in fossil fuel energy, while removing 53 billion tons of CO2 per year from the atmosphere, restoring pre-industrial levels. This amount of biomass could also increase sustainable fish production to potentially provide 200 kg/yr/person for 10 billion people. Additional benefits are reduction in ocean acidification and increased ocean primary productivity and biodiversity. (C) 2012 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper introduces a holistic approach to the study of sustainable development of global product chains. We first present a number of perspectives on this topic from disciplines such as economic geography, management science, sociology and environmental sciences. Each of these approaches brings in a specific focus: the consequences of geographical dispersion of economic activities, measurement of ecological and social impact, managing sustainability in supply chains, and power asymmetry among economic actors. Until now, these disciplinary research lines have remained unconnected. We argue that ecological economics provides a promising background for a more holistic conceptualization. To this end, we formulate five basic questions that serve to advance the study of sustainability throughout the product chain by connecting the foci of the identified scientific disciplines. The aim of advancing a holistic perspective has guided the selection of papers for this special subsection, which are introduced throughout the text. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over the past several years, labeling schemes that focus on a wide range of environmental and social metrics have proliferated. Although little empirical evidence has been generated yet with respect to carbon footprint labels, much can be learned from our experience with similar product labels. We first review the theory and evidence on the role of product labeling in affecting consumer and firm behavior. Next, we consider the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations, concluding that international, multistakeholder organizations have a critical part to play in setting protocols and standards. We argue that it is important to consider the entire life cycle of a product being labeled and develop an international standard for measurement and reporting. Finally, we examine the potential impact of carbon product labeling, discussing methodological and trade challenges and proposing a framework for choosing products best suited for labeling. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainable water resources management represents a key development direction which includes several challenges to be tackled, such as: development and implementation of strategic and integrated activities for water resources management processes according to the principles of the European Water Framework Directive, solving water availability and pollution problems, ensuring a sustainable pathway for development perspectives, involvement of stakeholders in decision-making processes. This paper addresses in an integrated approach a series of complex issues leading to major problems for the sustainable management of the water use cycle. This study is based on the general research framework given by the WATUSER research project implemented by a consortium formed by two technical universities and two regional water operators in Romania. The main objective of this project is to develop and implement an integrated system of innovative technologies and management instruments for reducing environmental impacts and associated human health risks caused by water quality aspects in the entire water use cycle: water abstraction, treatment, distribution, use (human consumption, industry, agriculture etc.), wastewater collection, wastewater treatment and discharge/reuse. This study presents the major challenges for sustainable management at the level of the water use cycle in Romania, as well as a coherent, integrated evaluation framework for the use of different assessment instruments (environmental impact and risk assessment, human health risk assessment, grey water footprint, and life cycle assessment). These instruments can facilitate the development of a reference scenario and a base for further analysis of the water use cycle in two Romanian regions (Iasi and Timisoara) by taking into consideration the technical developments of the systems, the environmental impacts and associated risks as well as human health risks reduction.Energy improvement measures can destroy the historical and architectural values of existing buildings. From a broader environmental perspective, extensive energy efficiency measures may even lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions from demolition, waste production and transportation of new materials. The complexity of the consequences of energy-saving measures on existing buildings calls for more holistic methods in discussing solutions. This paper presents an integrated analysis method developed by three masters' students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The method examined different short- and long-term impacts from various energy efficiency measures on a model building by combining life cycle assessment, energy calculations and a self-developed heritage value assessment system. By combining the results from the different analyses in an integrated decision-making tool, it was possible to discuss optimal solutions for energy improvement, taking both environmental and heritage aspects into consideration.This paper reviews the thermal performance of the existing UK housing stock, the main fabric efficiency incentive schemes and the barriers to obtaining deep energy and CO2 savings throughout the stock. The UK faces a major challenge to improve the thermal performance of its existing housing stock. Millions of dwellings possess 'hard-to-treat' solid walls and have glazing which is not cost effective to improve. A range of fabric efficiency incentive schemes exist, but many do not target the full range of private and social housing. From now on, the Green Deal will be the UK's key energy efficiency policy. However, the scheme is forecasted to have low consumer appeal and low incentives for investors. Moreover, calculated Green Deal loan repayments will be reliant upon estimated energy savings, yet it is claimed that retrofit measures may only be half as effective as anticipated due to a lack of monitoring, poor quality installation and the increased use of heating following refurbishment. Looking to Germany, there has been success through the Passivhaus standard, but the UK currently lacks appropriate skills and cost effective components to replicate this approach. In addition, the embodied energy in retrofit products and materials threatens to counter operational savings. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main aim of this work is to define an environmental tax on products based on their carbon footprint. We examine the relevance of life cycle analysis (LCA) and environmentally extended input-output analysis (EIO) as methodological tools for identifying the emission intensities on which the tax is based. The price effects of the tax and the policy implications of considering non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHG) are also analyzed. The results from the case study on pulp production show that the environmental tax rate based on LCA (1.8%) is higher than both EIO approaches (0.8 and 1.4% for product and industry, respectively), but they are of the same order of magnitude. Although LCA is more product specific and provides a more detailed analysis, we recommend EIO as a more relevant approach to applying an economy-wide environmental tax. If an environmental tax were applied to non-CO2 GHG instead to CO2 alone, the tax would greatly affects sectors such as agriculture, mining of coal, extraction of peat, and food. Therefore, it is worthwhile for policy-makers to pay attention to the implications of considering either a CO2 tax or a global GHG emissions tax in order to make their policy measures effective and meaningful. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption of three methods used to produce animal feed from concentrated rice-washing water (CRW) and disposing of the rice-washing water through wastewater treatment. Four scenarios were compared using LCA: (i) producing concentrated liquid feed by centrifugation (CC) of CRW with wastewater treatment and discharge of the supernatant, (ii) producing concentrated liquid feed by heating evaporation (HC) of CRW, (iii) producing dehydrated feed by dehydration (DH) of CRW, and (iv) wastewater treatment and discharge of nonconcentrated rice-washing water (WT). The functional unit (FU) was defined as 1 metric ton of rice washed for cooking or processing. Our results suggested that the energy consumptions of CC, HC, DH, and WT were 108, 322, 739, and 242 MJ per FU, respectively, and the amounts of GHG emissions from CC, HC, DH, and WT were 64, 15.8, 45.5, and 22.5 kg of CO2 equivalents per FU, respectively. When the produced feed prepared from CRW was assumed to be transported 200 km to farms, CC and HC still emitted smaller GHGs than the other scenarios, and CC consumed the smallest amount of energy among the scenarios. The present study indicates that liquid feed production from CRW by centrifugation has a remarkably reduced environmental impact compared with the wastewater treatment and discharge of rice-washing water.The increasing attention to sustainability is pushing the construction sector to build more sustainable buildings. In this scenario, several sustainable development indicators have been proposed. The worldwide diffusion of sustainability rating systems and that of their structures are considered as proxy variables for the evaluation of sustainable constructions. Available rating systems span from energy consumption evaluation systems to life cycle analysis and total quality assessment systems. In these last systems, a multi-dimensional approach is proposed, as several building ratings are evaluated separately before being considered together. The description of assessment results from a sample of 490 buildings provides data to discuss construction characteristics that, currently, aim at being defined as sustainable. The paper shows that building energy performance is considered the most important criterion in sustainability rating systems, and the least achieved one in sustainability assessments. In contrast, other performance ratings of the building, such as water efficiency or indoor air quality, are achieved with a high rate of success in sustainability assessments. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Life cycle energy and environmental performances of nine different biomass/coal co-firing pathways to power generation were compared. Agricultural residue (AR), forest residue (FR), and whole trees (WT) as feedstock were analyzed for direct (DC) and parallel co-firing (PC) in various forms (e.g., chip, bale and pellet). Biomass co-firing rate lies in the range of 7.53-20.45% (energy basis; rest of the energy comes from coal) for the co-firing pathways, depending on type of feedstock and densification. Net energy ratios (NER) for FR-, WT-, and AR-based co-firing pathways were 0.39-0.42, 0.39-0.41, and 0.37-0.38, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 957-1004, 967-1014, and 1065-1083 kg CO2eq/MWh, acid rain precursor (ARP) emissions were 5.16-5.39, 5.18-5.41, and 5.77-5.93 kg SO2eq/MWh, and ground level ozone precursor (GOP) emissions were 1.79-1.89, 1.82-1.93, and 1.88-1.91 kg (NOx + VOC)/MWh, respectively. Biomass/coal co-firing life cycle results evaluated in this study are relevant for any jurisdiction around the world. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Crop protection in general and apple crop protection in particular often rely on pesticides, although several alternative pest management measures are available. In this context European agricultural policy requires the implementation of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) by 2014. Within IPM, more than one strategy can be practiced but selecting the most sustainable strategy is difficult because it requires simultaneous assessment of multiple environmental and economic aspects or attributes. Here, we introduce the SustainOS methodology for sustainability assessment of orchard systems, and we evaluate its usefulness in a case study involving four crop protection strategies in apple orchards of five European regions. SustainOS is an iterative, multi-attribute approach for defining and rating the sustainability of crop protection strategies in comparative studies. It consists of a transparent system-description tool including context, target, and crop protection parameters. The parameters are used as input data for life cycle assessment, environmental risk assessment, and full-cost calculations. The various results from these quantitative assessments are used to generate a multi-attribute rating with respect to ecological and economic sustainability. We demonstrate how the quantitative results can be translated into rating classes. By applying the SustainOS methodology, we show that the ecological sustainability for all five regions can potentially be improved by implementing alternative crop protection measures currently available. We also report that, by increasing yield, yield stability, and fruit quality, implementation of IPM can improve the economic situation of apple growers. Because of its transparency, SustainOS facilitated the collaborative development and comparison of crop protection strategies for sustainable orchard systems by an international network of agronomists, economists, and environmental scientists. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture is a significant contributor to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) levels, which is expected to result in sea level rise and increased frequency of extreme weather events and is of increasing global concern. Tomatoes are an important agricultural commodity in Florida, accounting for 40% of the fresh market production in the United States. Quantification of GHG emissions from typical tomato production in Florida could improve understanding of the impact of different GHG emissions sources and identification of areas for potential GHG emissions reductions. A practical methodology was implemented to calculate a representative GHG emissions estimate using production inputs and practices used by the Florida tomato industry. Experts and grower surveys were used to characterize typical Florida tomato production practices. Existing methodologies were used to convert material use and farm operations into GHG emissions estimates. Results indicated that, depending on irrigation system type and water source, the overall average estimates of GHG emissions associated with a growing season ranged from 16,183 kg CO2-eq ha(-1) (0.19 kg CO2-eq kg fruit(-1)) to 22,426 kg CO2-eq ha(-1) (0.27 kg CO2-eq kg fruit(-1)). Irrigation and nitrogen (N) fertilizer accounted for the most emissions, with irrigation accounting for between 2.8% and 26.6% of average GHG emissions and N fertilizer accounting for between 17.7% and 22.8%. It was concluded that increased efficiency in irrigation and N use, and improved methods for polyethylene mulch use and disposal, were the best areas for GHG emissions reductions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analyses the use of liquid, solid and gaseous biomass for power generation in Germany with respect to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), a significant policy instrument for promoting electricity generation based on renewable energy sources. The aim is the identification of bioenergy conversion pathways that have a low environmental impact and are cost-effective. To achieve this objective several research steps were undertaken, including a life-cycle analysis (LCA), economic analysis and the determination of the CO2 abatement costs. Besides, the authors show and discuss how a simplification of the environmental assessment by considering only the impact category greenhouse gases or the application of different calculation methodologies (i.e. allocation rules between electricity and heat produced) can affect the results. Overall the results show that the use of solid (wood) and gaseous biomass pathways causes both the lowest environmental impacts and electricity production costs when used for electricity generation. The choice of the modelling and calculation methodology may significantly influence the outcome (i.e. application of an exergetic allocation increases the environmental burden related to electricity generation). The lowest CO2-abatement costs were determined for the biodegradable waste pathway. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) is reported of a fluidized bed steam plant utilized in a textile factory in Torbali, Izmir, Turkey. Soma lignite is consumed as primary fuel, which has a comparatively high sulfur content. The LCA steps are coal mining, coal transportation, coal cleaning, plant operation, limestone use for desulfurization, and landfill of ash and calcium sulfate. Production and decommissioning for mining and landfilling equipment are considered in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent as well as energy consumption. The assessment is conducted for a lifetime of 30 years of operation. It is found that the main source of carbon dioxide emission is the operation of the steam plant and that the main materials that have a major impact on energy use are steel and concrete. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the theoretical investigation of CDM opportunity in a township at Jaipur, India. The purpose of study is to identify and analyze the various opportunities viz., installation of solar water heater, energy efficient lighting, energy efficient air conditioners, and energy efficient submersible water pumps in desert coolers and thus achieve a considerable (65.7 %) reduction in GHG emissions. Out of the various opportunities considered, the retrofitting with solar water heater can be recommended for CDM. Though, the retrofitting with energy efficient lighting, energy efficient air conditioners and energy efficient submersible water pumps in desert coolers claimed CO2 emission reduction of 104.84, 25.92, and 36.94 tons per annum, respectively, but the only opportunity which got through CDM was retrofitting with solar water heater claiming 115.70 tCO(2) (100 %) emission reductions per annum which could result into net earnings of 115.70 CERs. The simple and discounted payback period for all four project activities are also calculated with and without CDM and tax benefits.The revision of the ISO LCA (life cycle assessment) standards in October 2006 brought some changes of the critical review process compared to the older series ISO 14040-43 (1997, 1998, 2000a, b). Furthermore, the importance of LCA has grown rapidly in recent years, but this growth was not accompanied by a corresponding increase of knowledge about the voluntary and obligatory review processes. It is the intention of this paper to analyse the relevant standards and to present some personal experiences in conducting critical reviews. A peer review for LCA studies was first proposed in the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) guidelines "A Code of Practice" (1993). The ISO standard 14040 (1997) took up this proposition and described three types of "Critical review" which are optional in general, but mandatory "for LCA studies used to make a comparative assertion that is disclosed to the public". This strong prescription was reinforced in the revised standards ISO 14040 and 14044 (2006a, b) and even stricter, unambiguous formulations were added to the text. In addition, the minimum number of experts in a "review by interested parties" is now three (including the chair). Large panels with more than four experts are rare, but do occur occasionally. Out of personal experience, I strongly support the interactive (accompanying) mode of conducting the critical review process (ISO also allows the "a posteriori" mode). I also suggest the removal of some inconsistencies during the next update of the standards. No major changes are recommended, however, since ISO 14040 + 14044 has become the reference standard for several other international standards based on the life cycle concept.Spatial analyses in life cycle assessments are hardly ever conducted. The combination of geoinformation systems and life cycle assessments (LCA) databases is a way to realise such complex calculations. By the example of energetic utilisation of biomass via conditioned biogas a geoinformation systems-based calculation tool is presented which combines geodata on biomass potentials, infrastructure, land use, cost and technology databases with analysis tools for the planning of biogas plants to identify the most efficient plant locations, to calculate balances of emissions, biomass streams and costs. The calculations include the impact categories greenhouse gases, acidification, and eutrophication and were tested for the Lower Rhine region and the Altmark region in Germany. The results of the greenhouse gas (GHG) balances are presented. By using only nationwide available datasets, the calculation tool can be used in other regions as well. Balances of individual sites, regional balances and their temporal development can be calculated in geoinformation systems (GIS) using LCA methods. The composition of the substrates varies according to site and catchment area and lead to large variations in plant configurations and the resulting GHG balances and cost structures. GIS tools do not only allow the assessment of individual plants, but also the determination of the GHG reduction potential, the biogas potential as well as the necessary investment costs for entire regions. Thus, the exploitation of regional biogas potentials in a way that is sustainable and climate-friendly becomes simple.This article evaluates the parameters that influence the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of biogas production from maize and the conversion of biogas into electricity. The environmental impacts of biogas vary according to regional farming procedures and, therefore, the soil, climate conditions, crop yield, and cultivation management. This study focuses on these regional parameters and the existing infrastructure, including the number of installed biogas plants and their share of used heat. To assess the regional impact, the LCAs of maize cultivation, on the one hand, and the production and use of biogas, on the other, were performed for three different areas. These areas were the administrative districts of Celle, Hildesheim, and Goettingen; all located in the south of Lower Saxony, Germany. The areas differed in geographic location conditions, crop yield, and the number of installed biogas plants. The necessary data for modeling the cultivation of maize were derived from the specific regional and local parameters of each area. The most important parameters were the soil characteristics and the climate conditions for cultivating maize. The share of used heat from combined heat and power unit (CHP) was another relevant factor for biogas production and use. Our results demonstrate significant differences among the investigated areas. The smallest environmental impact of all the considered categories occurs in Goettingen and the largest in Celle. The net greenhouse gas emissions vary from 0.179 kg CO2 eq./kWh(el) in Celle to 0.058 kg CO2 eq./kWh(el) in Goettingen. This result is due to the maize cultivation system and the different credits for using heat from the CHP. Variances in energy crop cultivation result from different nitrogen and irrigation demands. In addition, despite higher applications of nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation, the maize yield is lower in Celle. The impact category of total fossil energy shows similar results to that of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The results range from -0.274 to 0.175 kWh/kWh(el). The results of acidification and eutrophication vary from 1.62 in Goettingen to 1.94 g SO2 eq./kWh(el) in Celle and respectively 0.330 to 0.397 g PO (4) (3-) eq./kWh(el). These differences are primarily caused by maize cultivation, especially irrigation. Cultivating maize and using waste heat from the CHP were identified as the most influential parameters for the GHG emissions and total fossil energy demand. Regarding acidification and eutrophication, the most relevant factors are the application of digester output and the emissions from the CHP. Our results show the need to consider regional parameters in the LCA of bioenergies, particularly biogas production and use, especially if the LCA studies are used for generalized evaluations such as statements on the climate protection potential of biogas.In order to assess the global and local environmental impacts of different penetration rates of electric vehicles (EVs) within a region, we developed a life cycle approach based on a detailed traffic simulation assessing local emissions for individual roads with a high time resolution. The aim was to estimate the reduction potential of local emissions such as particulate matter within a region through a substitution of conventional with electric vehicles. The chosen approach assessing local emissions includes a detailed traffic simulation of a vehicle fleet composed of individual vehicles with a daily schedule. The driving pattern is modeled based on a survey of driving patterns in Germany. Incorporation of traffic density for each road and emissions of electric and conventional vehicles permits conclusions on the reduction potential for each street. Moreover, a feasible reduction potential for a particular region can be assessed. A case study for Aachen, Germany is presented within this paper. For the classification of the local emissions with the usual life cycle assessment approach, a comparison of EV, PHEV, and conventional vehicles has been conducted for Germany providing the results for impact categories according to CML 2001. Based on simulation results, an estimation of the reduction potential for Aachen for different penetration rates of electric vehicles including particulate matter (PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), and nitrogen oxygen (NOx) is carried out. Electric vehicles possess the highest reduction potential for CO and NOx. Assuming 50 % of the total vehicle fleet in 2010 substituted by electric vehicles, local emissions of CO reduce by 46.6 %, for NOx by 38.8 %, and for PM10 by 22.4 %. Due to fluctuations in driving patterns throughout a day, the results are highly time dependent. However, improvements in combustion engine technologies results in an increased reduction potential for conventional vehicles. The direct comparison between the vehicle types showed that the benefit of electric vehicles depends on the considered impact category. Electric vehicles are able to reduce local emissions within a region. Moreover, this approach focusing on the use phase of vehicles within a regional assessment and the resulting local emissions as well as the detailed analysis of the driving behavior allows a distinguished assessment of the reduction potential of electric vehicles. Additionally, an assessment of policy measures such as drive restrictions for conventional vehicles can be simulated on the base of this approach.In the last years, the use of biomass for energy purposes has been seen as a promising option to reduce the use of nonrenewable energy sources and the emissions of fossil carbon. However, LCA studies have shown that the energetic use of biomass also causes impacts on climate change and, furthermore, that different environmental issues arise, such as land use and agricultural emissions. While biomass is renewable, it is not an unlimited resource. Its use, to whatever purpose, must therefore be well studied to promote the most efficient option with the least environmental impacts. The 47th LCA Discussion Forum gathered several national and international speakers who provided a broad and qualified view on the topic. Several aspects of energetic biomass use from a range of projects financed by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) were presented in this Discussion Forum. The first session focused on important aspects of the agricultural biogas production like the use of high energy crops or catch crops as well as the influence of plant size on the environmental performance of biogas. In the second session, other possibilities of biomass treatment like direct combustion, composting, and incineration with municipal waste were presented. Topic of the first afternoon session was the update and harmonization of biomass inventories and the resulting new assessment of biofuels. The short presentations investigated some further aspects of the LCA of bioenergy like the assessment of spatial variation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from bioenergy production in a country, the importance of indirect land use change emissions on the overall results, the assessment of alternative technologies to direct spreading of digestate or the updates of the car operation datasets in ecoinvent. One main outcome of this Discussion Forum is that bioenergy is not environmentally friendly per se. In many cases, energetic use of biomass allows a reduction of GHG and fossil energy use. However, there is often a tradeoff with other environmental impacts linked to agricultural production like eutrophication or ecotoxicity. Methodological challenges still exist, like the assessment of direct and indirect land use change emissions and their attribution to the bioenergy production, or the influence of heavy metal flows on the bioenergy assessment. Another challenge is the implementation of a life cycle approach in certification or legislation schemes, as shown by the example of the Renewable Energy Directive of the European Union.A new collection model was designed and tested in Catalonia (Spain) to foster the separate collection and recycling of electrical and electronic toys, with the participation of selected primary and secondary schools, as well as waste collection points and municipalities. This project approach is very original and important because small household WEEE has low rates of collection (16-21% WEEE within the EU or 5-7% WEEE in Spain) and no research on new approaches to enhance the collection of small WEEE is found in the literature. The project was successful in achieving enhanced toys collection and recycling rates, which went up from the national Spanish average of 0.5% toys before the project to 1.9 and 6% toys during the two project years, respectively. The environmental benefits of the campaign were calculated through a life-cycle approach, accounting for the avoided impact afforded by the reuse of the toys and the recycling of the valuable materials contained therein (such as metals, batteries and circuit boards) and subtracting the additional environmental burdens associated with the establishment of the collection campaign.Diminishing petroleum reserves and oscillations of the global petroleum market, together with the influence on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated the needs to explore renewable feedstocks and to seek novel sustainable production systems. Process synthesis, the core of process systems engineering, can be predicted to be the powerful tool to construct an environmental-friendly, cost-effective sustainable energy system. Following the brief descriptions of the main methodologies for process synthesis, the present article reviews current activities on the optimal synthesis of biorenewables conversion processes, polygeneration processes, as well as carbon capture processes. Set in the context of exist achievements and future energy and environment requirements, we further elucidate the potential research vistas on optimal synthesis of novel energy systems, specifically, (a) novel biorenewable conversion process; (b) innovative materials-based carbon capture process; (c) solar/wind driven energy conversion system; (d) integrated biorenewable conversion process for the production of chemicals. Finally, challenges about the above aspects are concisely discussed. (c) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2012In life cycle assessment (LCA), the same characterization factors are conventionally applied irrespective of when the emissions occur (the same importance is given to emissions in the past, present, and future). When the assessment is constrained by fixed timeframes, the appropriateness of this paradigm is questioned and the temporal distribution of emissions becomes of relevance. One typical example is the accounting for biogenic CO2 emissions and removals. This article proposes a methodology for assessing the climate impact of time-distributed CO2 fluxes using probability distributions. Three selected wood applications, such as fuel, nonstructural panels, and housing construction materials are assessed. In all the cases, CO2 sequestration in growing trees is modeled with an appropriate forest growth function, whereas CO2 emissions from wood oxidation are modeled with different probability distributions, such as the delta function, the uniform distribution, the exponential distribution, and the chi-square distribution. The combination of these CO2 fluxes with the global carbon cycle provides the respective changes caused in CO2 atmospheric concentration and hence in the radiative forcing. The latter is then used as basis for climate impact metrics. Results demonstrate the utility of using emission and removal functions rather than single pulses, which generally overestimate the climate impact of CO2 emissions, especially in presence of short time horizons. Characterization factors for biogenic CO2 are provided for selected combinations of biomass species, rotation periods, and probability distributions. The time discrepancy between biogenic CO2 emissions and capture through regrowth results in a certain climate impact, even for a system that is carbon neutral over time. For the oxidation rate of wooden products, the use of a chi-square distribution appears the most reliable and appropriate option under a methodological perspective. The feasibility of its adoption in LCA and emission accounting from harvested wood products deserves further scientific considerations.The net CO2 exchange of forests was investigated to study net atmospheric impact of forest bioenergy production (BP) and utilization in Finnish boreal conditions. Net CO2 exchange was simulated with a life cycle assessment tool over a 90-year period and over the whole Finland based on National Forest Inventory data. The difference in the net exchanges between the traditional timber production (TP) and BP regime was considered the net atmospheric impact of forest bioenergy utilization. According to the results, forests became net sources of CO2 after about 20 years of simulation, and the net exchange was higher in the BP regime than in the TP regime until the middle of the simulation period. From 2040 onwards, the net exchange started to decrease in both regimes and became higher in the TP regime, excluding the last decade of the simulation. The shift of forests to becoming a CO2 source reflected the decrease in CO2 sequestration due to the increasing share of recently harvested and seedling stands that are acting as sources of CO2, and an increase of emissions from degradation of wood products. When expressed in terms of radiative forcing, the net atmospheric impact was on average 19% less for bioenergy compared with that for coal energy over the whole simulation period. The results show the importance of time dependence when considering dynamic forest ecosystems in BP and climate change mitigation. Furthermore, the results emphasize the dualistic role and possibilities of forest management in controlling the build and release of carbon into and from the stocks and in controlling the rate of the build speed, i.e. growth. This information is needed in identifying the capability and possibilities of ecosystems to produce biomass for energy, alongside other products and ecosystem services (e.g. pulp wood and timber), and simultaneously to mitigate climate change.Decrease of fossil fuel consumption in the energy sector is an important step towards more sustainable energy production. Environmental impacts related to potential future energy systems in Denmark with high shares of wind and biomass energy were evaluated using life-cycle assessment (LCA). Based on the reference year 2008, energy scenarios for 2030 and 2050 were assessed. For 2050 three alternatives for supply of transport fuels were considered: (1) fossil fuels, (2) rapeseed based biodiesel, and (3) Fischer-Tropsch based biodiesel. Overall, the results showed that greenhouse gas emissions per PJ energy supplied could be significantly reduced (from 68 to 17 Gg CO2-eq/PJ) by increased use of wind and residual biomass resources as well as by electrifying the transport sector. Energy crops for production of biofuels and the use of these biofuels for heavy terrestrial transportation were responsible for most environmental impacts in the 2050 scenarios, in particular upstream impacts from land use changes (LUCs), fertilizer use and NOx emissions from the transport sector were critical. Land occupation (including LUC effects) caused by energy crop production increased to a range of 600-2100 x 10(6) m(2)/PJ depending on the amounts and types of energy crops introduced. Use of fossil diesel in the transport sector appeared to be environmentally preferable over biodiesel for acidification, aquatic eutrophication and land occupation. For global warming, biodiesel production via Fischer-Tropsch was comparable with fossil diesel. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to review the environmental profiles of petrochemical PET, (partially) bio-based PET, recycled PET, and recycled (partially) bio-based PET, and compare them with other bio-based materials, namely PLA (polylactic acid, a bio-based polyester) and man-made cellulose fibers (cellulose fiber produced from wood pulp, i.e. Viscose, Modal and Tencel). Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on polymers, fibers and bottles made from these materials are reviewed. Only non-renewable energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are considered. The scope is cradle to grave excluding the use phase. The results show that both recycled and bio-based materials offer important environmental benefits over single-use petrochemical PET. Among the four PET product systems studied, recycled (partially) bio-based PET has the lowest impacts, followed by recycled PET, (partially) bio-based PET, and petrochemical PET. PLA and man-made cellulose fibers produced in an integrated plant have lower impacts than both petrochemical PET and bio-based PET. The impacts of recycled products are strongly influenced by the choice of the allocation method applied to open-loop recycling. (C) 2012 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons LtdWarm asphalt mixtures have been used worldwide aiming at saving energy and reducing emissions throughout the production process, without decreasing the in-service performance. This has been achieved with wax additives, chemical additives and foaming techniques. Benefits and drawbacks are mentioned in the literature for each process. This paper is a review of the main aspects involved in WMA technology, including constituent materials, mix design and mechanical performance issues, as well as technological specificities. Some discussion associated to life-cycle analysis is also considered. In the view of the literature review, it can be stated that WMA is a very interesting technology, able to contribute to achieve environmental objectives along with acceptable performance. WMA processes themselves require some additional complexity that must be considered by the players involved. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a comparative study on the use of three after-treatment technologies: i) EGR + DPF, ii) SCR + Urea and iii) 3-way catalyst when implemented in urban buses, to determinate the energy requirements, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), direct Land Use Change (dLUC), abiotic depletion of fossil energy by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The process of production, conditioning and transporting of the fuels used by the buses (diesel, biodiesel (B100), a blended biodiesel at 20% (B20) and natural gas) were also analyzed (Well-to-Tank analysis) along with the environmental impact due to its combustion in the bus (Tank-to-Wheel analysis). The environmental impact of the manufacturing, maintenance and recycling process of the urban buses and exhaust after-treatment systems has also been evaluated. Main results shows that life Cycle of SCR + Urea technology reduces environmental impact to a greater extent than its global Life Cycle increases it when gasoil is used resulting in a final balance more efficient than the other options, the same behavior is observed with the use of B20 and B100 but only when 0% dLUC is assumed since if the percentage of dLUC increases the effectiveness of the SCR + Urea technology in the reduction of environmental impact tend to decrease. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental and resource impacts of wooden single-family residences designed to meet the conventional Norwegian Building Code from 2010 (TEK10) and the Norwegian passive house standard NS 3700 are compared using life cycle assessment. Four different heating systems are evaluated for the two building designs: (1) electric (resistance heating), (2) electric and wood, (3) electric and a solar heat collector and (4) electric and an air-water heat pump system. The goal of the research is to evaluate the different ways of lowering the total environmental burden of a building's life cycle, considering the two building standards, and evaluating the impacts due to implementation of renewable heating systems in comparison to standard Norwegian systems largely based on electricity. The life cycle results show that the wood-framed single-family residence built according to the passive house standard provides a consistent and clear reduction of cumulative energy demand of 24-38% in comparison to the conventional building standard TEK10 with electric panel heating. In combination with efficient heating systems, a passive house building envelope with a heat pump system provides the largest savings, an improvement of almost 40% compared to a conventional house with electric heating. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of the cleanest design compared to the standard alternative is almost 30%. Solar heated water also provides substantial environmental gains for the passive house. On the other hand, a standard building envelope with a heat-pump system reduces impacts to a level comparable to that of a passive house building with only electric heating. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An increase in the number of complaints arising from annoying human-induced vibrations in new floor structures has been observed over recent years. The main reasons for this are improvements in design methods that have permitted more slender structural designs and an increase in the use of open plan layouts. The incorporation of active vibration control (AVC) into the design of these new structures has the potential to enable them to satisfy vibration serviceability limits. However, a number of factors are presently limiting the uptake of this idea by industry. This paper provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of AVC for human-induced vibrations in floor structures. The current vibration design guides are examined for potential solutions to the current lack of guidance for structural engineers to incorporate AVC in a new structure. A range of active control laws are also discussed and the suitability of these for the mitigation of human-induced vibrations in floors is considered in detail. Further, this work investigates the potential for an environmental and economic assessment into the overall impact of incorporating AVC so early on in the building life cycle. This review provides the basis for future research in this area so that the benefits of AVC may be fully realised. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main objective of this paper is to present the Direct Emissions Estimation Model (DEEM), a model for the estimation of CO2 and N2O emissions from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). This model is consistent with non-specific but widely used models such as AS/AD and ASM #1 and presents the benefits of simplicity and application over a common WWTP simulation platform, BioWin (R), making it suitable for Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprint studies. Its application in a Spanish WWTP indicates direct N2O emissions to be 8 times larger than those associated with electricity use and thus relevant for LCA. CO2 emissions can be of similar importance to electricity-associated ones provided that 20% of them are of non-biogenic origin. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Growing interest in environmental quality has provided a strong incentive to examine how farming practices affect agricultural products' carbon footprints (CF), an environmental quality indicator. This study determined (i) the CF of spring wheat (Triticurn aestivum L.) grown in different cropping systems over 25 years, and (ii) the effect of soil organic carbon (SOC) changes over years on wheat CF. Wheat was grown in four cropping systems: (a) fallow-wheat (FW), (b) fallow-wheat-wheat (FWW), (c) fallow-wheat-wheat-wheat-wheat-wheat (FWWWWW), and (d) continuous wheat (ContW), in replicated field plots in Saskatchewan, Canada. Wheat CF was calculated at a system level with measured variables coupled with modeling approaches. Over the 25-year period, the soil under the ContW system gained organic C of 1340 kg CO2 eq ha(-1) annually, or 38%. 55%, and 127% more than those gained in the FWWWWW, FWW, and FW systems, respectively. The SOC gain more than offset the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions occurred during wheat production, leading to negative emission values at -742 kg CO2 eq ha(-1) annually for ContW, and -459, -404, and -191 kg CO2 eq ha(-1) for FWWWWW, FWW, and FW systems, respectively. Wheat in the ContW system produced the highest grain yield and gained highest SOC over the years, leading to the smallest (more negative) CF value at -0.441 kg CO2 eq kg(-1) of grain, significantly lower than the CF values from the three other systems (-0.102 to -0.116 kg CO2 eq kg(-1) of grain). Without considering the SOC gain in the calculation, wheat CF averaged 0.343 kg CO2 eq kg(-1) of grain and which did not differ among cropping systems. Wheat is the largest agricultural commodity in Saskatchewan, and the way the crop is produced has significant impacts on environmental quality, reflected by its carbon footprint. Cropping systems with decreased fallow frequency was shown to significantly enhance soil carbon gains over the years, increase annualized crop yields, and effectively lower the carbon footprint of this important commodity. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reciclying interventions of the social habitat are characterized by being situated in specially sensitive environments because of their degree of urban obsolescence as well as for their condition of inhabitated spaces. This requires an interdisciplinary methodology from which the process can be handled from its different approaches, linking the work of specialized technitians in every field with that of the competent administrations, the owning company (in the case of social dwelling to rent) and the inhabitants. Our research is based in the analysis of different working methodologies as applied in a series of case studies situated in France. In every case we observe the implications in the three aspects of the habitat's life cycle: that of the elements that integrate it; that of the architecture that lies beneath it; and that of the people that live in it. Results approaches us to a general definition of the steps to develop the project, according to different intervention degrees, understanding the architectural project as a partial path of a more complex transformation process handled as a whole. Our conclusions reveal how empowering those recycling activators is a feasible way to provide dwellings and their environment with the necessary tools to make them be able to auto-regenerate and thus enlarge their life cycle.Sustainability assessments of buildings using the life cycle approach have become more and more common. This includes the assessment of the environmental performance of buildings. However, the influence of the construction products used for the fabric, the finishing, and the technical building equipment of buildings has hardly been described in literature. For this reason, we evaluated the influence of the technical building equipment and its impact on the environment for different residential buildings. Five residential buildings were evaluated by applying the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) (ISO14040) expressed using quantitative assessment categories according to prEN15978. Results show that the optimization of energy performance has already reached a high level in Austria, so that the overall potential for possible improvements is quite low. Especially in low-energy and passive-house-standard residential buildings, the limits for energy optimization in the use phase have mostly been achieved. In contrast to this, the integrated LCA (iLCA) findings attribute a high optimization potential to the construction products used for the technical building equipment as well as to the building fabric and finishing. Additionally, the passive house shows the lowest contribution of the technical building equipment on the overall LCA results. The iLCA findings suggest that it is recommended to include the technical building equipment for future assessments of the environmental performance of buildings. It is also suggested to use a broad number of environmental indicators for building LCA.We review the literature on sustainable supply chains during the last decade; 2000-2010. We analyze the literature from different perspectives. We then provide frameworks for sustainable supply chain management and performance measures. We also provide a case study to illustrate the experience of a utility supply chain in setting performance indicators. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Different firms have implemented environmental programmes (such as design to recycle, life cycle analysis or environmental certification) and social practices (such as programmes aimed to improve employees' working conditions or projects to support the external community). This study aims to analyse the impact of these programmes on each dimension of the triple bottom line (environmental, social and economic performance). It extends the extant literature by (1) considering environmental and social initiatives in the same study, (2) analysing their impact on the three pillars of the triple bottom line, (3) comparing the impact of internal and external programmes, and (4) analysing sustainable operational projects at the plant level. The data used were obtained from the fifth (2009) round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) which includes responses from manufacturing plants within the assembly industry in 19 countries. Our findings suggest that internal environmental programmes have a positive impact on the three components of the triple bottom line, whereas internal social initiatives have a positive impact on only two components: Social and environmental performance. It seems that firms still need to achieve positive financial gains from these social programmes. Finally, regarding the external or supply chain initiatives, our results show that supply chain assessment has no impact on the triple bottom line, unlike supply chain collaboration which contributes to improve all three elements. Two important managerial contributions can be derived from this study: (1) Managers have to be aware of the possible negative effects (on the short term) of social practices on manufacturing costs, and (2) they need to implement collaborative practices with their supply chain partners, as assessment alone has been found not to have any impact on the triple bottom line. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The waste crisis in Campania has inspired a vast amount of studies. Nevertheless, very little research has been done to explain the figures of waste generation and disposal in the region. The analyses carried out so far according to the indicators used by official statistics - i.e. Waste Generated, Waste Generated per capita and Separate Collection - fail to represent this hot spot case. This paper attempts to bridge this gap. Adopting the rationale of a new accounting system, the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM), two waste indicators are proposed to complement the conventional ones: the Metabolic Rate of Waste and the Density of Waste. Then a multi-scale analysis of the Density of Waste Disposed (DWD) tests its suitability to characterise Campania's waste patterns. The data cover the period from 1999 to 2007. The results show that the DWD complements available indicators and further helps to explain the biophysical pressure and ecological unsustainability of the waste management in the region. The multi-scale analysis shows that regional data hide a relevant territorial diversity, emergent in the provincial analysis and even more so in the municipal one. These results have implications for governance and for the debate about mono-scale versus multi-scale solutions to waste management problems. Finally, the analysis allows some analytical generalisations on the suitability of the DWD to detect situations of potential waste crisis in other study-contexts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study focuses on the following problem: by increasing the mechanical strength of concrete, we increase the environmental impact per cubic meter of concrete produced by increasing the cement content. We could, however, decrease the amount of concrete needed to build a given structural element. To know whether the improvement in concrete strength will produce a significant difference on the structure scale, this study evaluates the environmental consequences of using high performance concrete instead of ordinary concrete for a bridge. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, based on international standards of series ISO 14040, is used to compare these solutions. Uncertainties due to data collection are taken into account. The results show that choosing a high performance concrete for bridge construction is, on average, more environmentally friendly than the traditional concrete bridge construction. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable production of pork requires farms that are economically viable, ecologically sound and socially acceptable, both now and in the future. Promising mitigation options to improve the integrated sustainability of a pig farm can be deduced from variation in their economic, environmental and societal performance. This study explores the variation in sustainability performance among 27 specialized fattening pig farms in the Dutch Farm Accountancy Data Network. Moreover, the combined sustainability performance is quantified, in order to identify the characteristics of best performing farms. To quantify the economic performance we used the net farm income (NFI) and labor productivity. With a life cycle assessment (LCA) the environmental performance was quantified for land occupation (LO), non-renewable energy use (NREU), global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EP) and acidification potential (AP). To quantify the societal performance the usage of antibiotics and the pig mortality rate were used. The average NFI was -(sic)3.1 per 100 kg slaughtered weight (SW), produced with a labor productivity of 0.4 h per 100 kg SW. To produce 100 kg of SW, a total LO and NREU were needed of respectively 1121 m(2) and 2802 MJ. GWP was 546 kg CO2-eq per 100 kg SW, of which 31% CO2, 7% from CH4, and 62% from N2O. Total EP was 61.4 kg NO3- -eq/100 kg SW, of which 53% from leaching of nitrate and 23% from phosphate. Total AP was 5.3 kg SO2-eq per 100 kg SW, of which 79% NH3, 11% from NOx and 10% from SO2. The use of antibiotics per 100 kg SW averaged 18.9 daily dosages per animal year. The number of deceased pigs per 100 kg SW averaged 0.03. There is a high variation in economic, environmental and societal performance among fattening pig farms. Farm characteristics related to scale positively affect economic and environmental performance. A low feed intake and a feeding ration with a high share of wet by-products positively affect the environmental performance. To identify explanatory farm characteristics from FADN for societal performance, more suitable indicators are needed. Best performing farms, which outperform on economic, environmental and societal performance do exist and are on average larger and are feeding a higher proportion of byproducts. To understand the characteristics of an integrative sustainable fattening pig farm, more insight is needed in the entrepreneurial characteristics and the drivers to manage and perform in a more profitable, environmental friendly and societally acceptable way. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The essence of sustainable development (SD) is to deliver social and economic development without compromising environmental quality. Material Flow Analysis or Substance Flow Analysis (M/SFA) is a well-established method to assess the sustainability of socioeconomic development and environmental change, particularly from the perspective of improving material/substance flow efficiency. A material/substance flow chart or accounting table makes SD assessment results comprehensive, comparable and verifiable by (1) providing systematic information and indicators for SD assessment, (2) identifying critical pathways, links and key substances in the anthroposphere, and (3) allowing the dynamic interaction between material flow and social, economic and/or environmental processes to be analyzed. However, the role of M/SFA in SD assessment could be expanded by strengthening simultaneous analysis of various features of material/substance flows, integrating M/SFA with other assessment methods, improving sustainability indicators, and further developing standardized methods for material classification, data acquisition and processing, and measuring indirect flows and unused flows. It is anticipated that future improvements in monitoring material/substance flows in the anthroposphere will provide more systematic information, allowing M/SFA to play an even greater role in SD assessment. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.After ingestion, pharmaceuticals are excreted unchanged or metabolized. They subsequently arrive in conventional wastewater treatment plants and are then released into the environment, often without undergoing any degradation. Conventional treatment plants can be upgraded with post treatment, alternatively the removal of pharmaceuticals could be achieved directly at point sources. In the European project PILLS, several solutions for decentralized treatment of pharmaceuticals at hospitals were investigated at both pilot plant and full scale, and were then compared to conventional and upgraded centralized treatment plants using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Within the scope of the study, pharmaceuticals were found to have a comparatively minor environmental impact. As a consequence, an additional post treatment does not provide significant benefits. In the comparison of post treatment technologies, ozonation and activated carbon performed better than UV. These results suffer however from high uncertainties due to the assessment models of the toxicity of pharmaceuticals in LCA. Our results should therefore be interpreted with caution. LCA is a holistic approach and does not cover effects or issues on a local level, which may be highly relevant. We should therefore apply the precautionary ALARA principle (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) and not conclude that the effect of pharmaceuticals is negligible in the environment. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A framework for technology assessment for wastewater treatment is proposed in this work. A case study of technology selection for high rise buildings in urban centres of India is used for evaluation and to test this framework. The multiple-attribute decision-making technique is used for ranking the alternatives. The three most commonly used wastewater treatment technologies viz., activated sludge process (ASP), sequencing batch reactors (SBR) and membrane bio-reactor (MBR) are evaluated. Seven criteria having indicators derived from life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) and criteria accounting for resource constraints, robustness of the system and sustainability are used for the evaluations. The technology assessment framework used in this work will help identify appropriate wastewater treatment technologies for various decision-making situations encountered while managing wastewaters. Importantly, this study validates the theory that it is the decision situation which decides the appropriateness of the technology and not the technology itself. Hence, the definition of appropriate technology given by Murphy et al. [4] is more convincing for water and sanitation technologies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a method for assessing environmental performance in industrial operations. The method was applied to three logistical operations in an industrial supply chain performed by a single operator: road transportation, warehousing, and urban transportation. Environmental performance was treated as a complex object and was structured according to the following five criteria: atmospheric emissions, liquid effluents, solid waste, natural and energy resources, and managerial and legal regulations. The first four criteria address a direct impact on the environment, whereas the last is a necessary condition for the first four to have a satisfactory performance. Six experts in environmental management prioritized the criteria and defined sets of indicators for the field appraisal. The indicators were expected to be correlated for the same criteria. The validity of the indicators was assessed through questionnaires answered by six managers of the operation. Finally, three overall indices corresponding to the environmental performance of the three logistical operations were calculated for the operations and were found to be 73.58, 79.21, and 76.28% (higher is better). These indicate good results because the maximum performance is expected to be 100%. This environmental performance assessment can aid in reformulating the environmental strategies embedded in the operational strategy of the company.Building materials as principal components of building constructions and entire buildings play an important role in overall impact on the environment. In this paper, the environmental assessment of building materials in selected building in the Slovak Republic using life cycle assessment data is presented. Environmental parameters, such as the amount of primary energy, global warming potential and acidification potential together with weight of used materials were evaluated. For selected constructions, the alternation of materials basis was performed to minimize the negative effect of building materials. As a result of optimization a 13.5% reduction of primary energy intensity, 3.7% reduction of global warming potential and 4.2% of acidification potential were achieved for the whole building by the change of building materials.Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be an invaluable tool for the structured environmental impact assessment of bioenergy product systems. However, the methodology's static temporal and spatial scope combined with its restriction to emission-based metrics in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) inhibits its effectiveness at assessing climate change impacts that stem from dynamic land surface-atmosphere interactions inherent to all biomass-based product systems. In this paper, we focus on two dynamic issues related to anthropogenic land use that can significantly influence the climate impacts of bioenergy systems: i) temporary changes to the terrestrial carbon cycle; and ii) temporary changes in land surface albedo-and illustrate how they can be integrated within the LCA framework. In the context of active land use management for bioenergy, we discuss these dynamics and their relevancy and outline the methodological steps that would be required to derive case-specific biogenic CO2 and albedo change characterization factors for inclusion in LCIA. We demonstrate our concepts and metrics with application to a case study of transportation biofuel sourced from managed boreal forest biomass in northern Europe. We derive GWP indices for three land management cases of varying site productivities to illustrate the importance and need to consider case- or region-specific characterization factors for bioenergy product systems. Uncertainties and limitations of the proposed metrics are discussed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Modification and loss of forests due to natural and anthropogenic disturbance contribute an estimated 20% of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide. Although forest carbon pool modeling rarely suggests a 'carbon neutral' flux profile, the life cycle assessment community and associated product carbon footprint protocols have struggled to account for the GHG emissions associated with forestry, specifically, and land use generally. Principally, this is due to underdeveloped linkages between life cycle inventory (LCI) modeling for wood and forest carbon modeling for a full range of forest types and harvest practices, as well as a lack of transparency in globalized forest supply chains. In this paper, through a comparative study of U.S. and Chinese coated freesheet paper, we develop the initial foundations for a methodology that rescales IPCC methods from the national to the product level, with reference to the approaches in three international product carbon footprint protocols. Due to differences in geographic origin of the wood fiber, the results for two scenarios are highly divergent. This suggests that both wood LCI models and the protocols need further development to capture the range of spatial and temporal dimensions for supply chains (and the associated land use change and modification) for specific product systems. The paper concludes by outlining opportunities to measure and reduce uncertainty in accounting for net emissions of biogenic carbon from forestland, where timber is harvested for consumer products. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The aim of the study was to establish a methodology for life cycle assessment (LCA) studies that are investigating reused materials or products/buildings that incorporate design for deconstruction within them, thus facilitating future reuse. This methodology was then used as the basis for a tool that has been developed - Sakura,(1) to demonstrate the case for design for deconstruction within specific building design projects. A literature review of work relating to material reuse and recycling was undertaken, from this it has been suggested that the most appropriate way to deal with reused materials is to share the environmental impacts of them between the number of predicted lives. The LCA method for Sakura, boundaries and functional units are also outlined. The methodology was applied to a representative building, in a simplified LCA study; different ways of representing the output are discussed, with a comparative graph decided as the best option to represent the benefits of design for deconstruction. The methodology and graphical representation have been used within the LCA tool Sakura. Sakura has been developed to demonstrate the benefits of design for deconstruction within specific building design projects. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The management of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the product level is a key issue for many companies. The scientific community has produced numerous references which help in determining the impact that products have on climate change, but none of these models contain detailed rules that can help organizations with the monitoring and management of single-product GHG emissions over time. Based on an analysis of the published ISO standards for GHG emissions this article offers a model with which the management and monitoring of emissions over time at the level of the individual product can be facilitated. Results show that by integrating the main ISO standards for GHG emissions, the model supports the establishment of enterprises and the management of emissions related to products throughout their life cycle. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, environmental impacts caused by the production of "animal-mixed" and "vegetarian" feeds were investigated via life cycle assessment using the ReCiPe assessment method and covering fourteen impact categories: 1) climate change, 2) ozone depletion, 3) human toxicity, 4) photochemical oxidant formation, 5) particulate matter formation, 6) terrestrial acidification, 7) freshwater eutrophication, 8) marine eutrophication, 9) terrestrial ecotoxicity, 10) agricultural land occupation, 11) natural land transformation, 12) water depletion, 13) metal depletion, and 14) fossil depletion. The scope of this work encompassed production of feed ingredients, overseas transportation of the feed ingredients, and the feed production process at mills. The results of this study showed that the main impact factor for the feeds was the production of energy-rich and protein-rich ingredients (more than 60%). The impact from overseas transportation was significant (more than 15%) in the categories of ozone depletion and photochemical oxidant formation. The impact from the production process at the feed mills was relatively small in all categories. The major causes contributing to the large impact of the energy-rich and protein-rich ingredients came from the maize drying process and the planting of crops used as ingredients, i.e., land provision via deforestation and the release of nutrients and metal from fertilizers, as well as chemicals from pesticides. The energy used in the maize drying process alone contributed more than half of the total impact of the feeds in the fossil depletion category. As a result, the vegetarian feeds, having a relatively high crop ratio, exhibited higher impacts than the animal-mixed feeds. Five options to improve environmental performance of the feeds were proposed, and significant impact reductions were demonstrated. The best option depends on the impact category of interest because the reduction of the impact in one category might lead to the increase of the impact in another category. If all options were applied to the supply chain of the feeds produced in Thailand in 2011, the potential reduction of climate change would be equal to the emissions from the production of 0.92 million tons of low-alloy steel, and the potential reduction of fossil depletion would be equal to the fuel used for the production of 3.6 million tons of low-alloy steel. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper advocates that a paradigm shift is required in order to improve the performance of the next generation Design for Environment (DfE) tools. Four output mechanisms were identified during the analysis of 22 DfE tools. Further analysis of these mechanisms revealed that the output was focused in one of two ways. In the majority of tools, strategies are prioritised to initiate the output mechanisms, resulting in guidance that is strategy focused and of limited use to the designer. The alternative is to focus on the product under development to initiate the output mechanism. This has the potential to deliver output and guidance that is directly relevant to the product. This paper identifies and discusses the types of guidance provided by DIE tools. The performance of each tool at assisting the user towards a better understanding of environmental issues and improving their ability to generate viable solutions is fully discussed. In summary, this paper explains the background to the study, outlining the research method, and discusses the importance of the findings relative to the future design of DfE tools. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of the work presented was to provide a paint production company with a tool for strategic decisions in product development that could combine environmental and economic indicators with REACH information. The tool was to be in a form that would provide visual representation of several factors that are important for the company's product development, in a form that could be incorporated into current product development processes. The paper describes the indicators used, shows visual results from the trial of the strategy matrix tool, and outlines and discusses potential limitations. The offshore coatings products analysed were within the VOC (volatile organic compounds) concentration proposed by the European Directive limiting the VOC content in products (Okopol, 2009). The products that have the lowest VOC concentrations score the highest (worst) on Total REACH Score. The trial has led to the tool being incorporated at specific "gates" (or milestones) in the company's product development process. The paper shows that close collaborative effort yielded a practically useful tool for strategic decision-making. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article discusses the state of the practice, strength, and weakness of life cycle assessments (LCA) for achieving sustainability goals in the aluminum industry. Notable features of the reviewed LCAs include a limited geographical and life cycle scope and differentiated system boundaries, a common practice to use industry-wide inventory data, a polarized debate on allocation of aluminum recycling, and a predominant focus on energy and greenhouse gas emissions environmental metrics. Not surprisingly, the various studies have produced significantly different results, e.g., the greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram primary aluminum production range from 5.92 to 41.10 kg CO2-equivalent and the "break-even point" (the point when the fuel economy benefits of the lighter aluminum vehicle offset added emissions from the production stage) of vehicles lightweighting ranges from 50,000 to 250,000 km. These variations relate not only to real world differences (e.g., temporal and geographical characteristics), but also partly to data uncertainties and methodological choices. Particularly, the recyclability, long lifetime, and environmental benefits in the use phase of aluminum pose great challenges for LCA methodology, especially for the allocation of recycling. The identified uncertainties and deficiencies can serve as an important base for further improvement of subsequent LCA applications in the aluminum industry. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cellulose nanowhiskers refer to elongated, single crystalline, rod-like particles that have at least 1 nm-size dimension. Vegetal fibers are an important source of cellulose for the extraction of nanowhiskers that can be used to reinforce the mechanical properties of different polymers. The present study contributes to the environmental performance of cellulose nanowhiskers production processes at their development stage. Thus, particular environmental aspects and related impacts of two cellulose nanowhiskers product systems are evaluated: nanowhiskers extracted from unripe coconut fibers (EUC system) and from white cotton fibers (EC system). The product systems encompassed fiber, electricity, and chemical production processes. All aspects were measured considering the production of 1 g of nanowhiskers. Life cycle inventory analysis was performed while considering the following environmental aspects: energy, water and emissions present in liquid effluents (chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), total nitrogen, nitrate, total phosphorus, phenols, furfural, and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF)). Life cycle impact was also assessed for climate change, water depletion, eutrophication, and human toxicity impact categories. The comparison between the EUC and EC systems showed that nanowhiskers produced in the EC system required less energy and water, emitted less pollutants, and contributed less to climate change, human toxicity, and eutrophication than those produced in the EUC system. Further research to improve the environmental. performance of these systems - before scaling up the results from the laboratory to industry - shall focus on improving yield efficiency, reducing energy and water use during the extraction of nanowhiskers, and recovering substances from effluents possessing market value. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Costa Rica is the largest exporter of fresh pineapple to US and European markets and production area has tripled since 2002 with associated economic benefits and environmental concerns. A detailed life cycle assessment of fresh pineapple from the farm to retail shelf in the US was performed to characterize the range of environmental performance and identify important sources of environmental impact and opportunities for improvement. Participating producers representing three major production regions and a range of field conditions and management practices provided data to support the assessment. Impacts estimated included energy demand, carbon footprint, stress-weighted water footprint, soil erosion, emergy, human and ecosystem toxicity, and others from TRACI with models customized for Costa Rican conditions. Using the functional unit of 1 serving of fruit for comparative purposes, pineapple likely has a higher energy demand and carbon footprint than common tree fruits such as apples and oranges because it is more input intensive but causes less water stress because of ideal climatic conditions in Costa Rica. The farming stage was the most important source of impacts and thus provides the most opportunities for improvements; packaging was significant due to the packing material, and refrigeration is the primarily contributor to impact during distribution, although it is a small contribution to overall impact. Selecting flat terrain, maximizing the yield:input ratio, packing in reusable cartons without crowns, and using energy-efficient refrigeration can provide significant reduction of measureable impacts, but these need to be considered alongside other impacts such as worker health and site-specific ecological and human risks that are not typically part of LCA. This approach and selected impact indicators provide a model for characterizing environmental performance of other fruits, especially in the humid tropics. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Generation of near CO2 free energy (electricity and heat) in existing large co-generation technologies can be achieved by partial substitution of fossil fuels with biomass commonly regarded as CO2-neutral fuel. Co-firing of biomass with fossil fuels aims at reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and non-renewable fuel resources depletion. Life cycle analysis was carried out for hard coal and two biomass sorts of different origin (willow chips and residual wood chips) requiring a diverse approach for their upstream inventory of non-renewable energy resources depletion and GHG emission. These fuels are co-combusted in a combined heat and power plant (CHP plant) for generation of electricity and heat. As in the case of cogeneration process, it was necessary to allocate the harmful effects between both energy carriers. Allocation of the burdens basing on the principle of the avoided process has been proposed. The empirical correlations concerning the electricity consumption of boiler auxiliaries' and boiler energy efficiency along with the increasing share of biomass in the fuel blend were applied in the calculations. The functional unit chosen to compare the results was 1 TJ of heat. Sensitivity analysis was carried out to bring the final conclusions and recommendations. Both environmental burdens (non-renewable resources depletion and the greenhouse effect) are dependant on the share of biomass in the combusted blend. It was proved, that the partial substitution of coal with biomass (in the considered range of 0-20% on the thermal basis) leads to the decrease of the total life-cycle non-renewable energy resources depletion and cumulative GHG emissions for generation and supply of 1 MJ of heat (functional unit) and 1 MWh of electricity generated during multifunctional process of combined heat and power generation. Residual biomass shows its advantages over dedicated energy crops (on the example of willow biomass). Additionally, it has been proved, that the share of operational component dominates in the total system burdens concerning the regarded life cycle. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A classical LCA methodology is here applied to green roofs including in this analysis also the whole life cycle of the substrate, that represented a lack of previous LCA studies on green roofs. This inclusion will allow a complete and proper application of the LCA methodology to achieve an environmental accounting of the "green roof" performance. We have here chosen to approach the problem by analysing a specific substrate, that is used within an actual extensive green roof. Afterwards, we have applied the LCA methodology to the whole actual extensive green roof whose substrate under analysis is part of. In this manner, we achieved an environmental accounting of the "green roof" performance. In this study the contribution of production, maintenance and end of life to the whole environmental burden of extensive green roofs has been illustrated as well. Furthermore, in the present work we have speculated about the required level of data for allowing a complete LCA analysis of a green roof. Particularly, we have focused here our attention on the role of fertilizers used for the green roof maintenance and on the disposal of substrate, which seem to play a significant role in the whole LCA balance. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are useful tools to analyze a product's "carbon footprint" (e.g., the net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions expressed as standardized carbon dioxide equivalents per unit of product) considering all phases of the production chain. For beef, an LCA would include the GHG emissions from feed production, from the enteric fermentation of the cattle, from the cattle's waste, and from processing and transportation. Identifying the scope and scale of the LCA is critical and key to preventing inappropriate applications of the analysis (e.g., applying a global LCA for beef to the regional or national scale). Ideally, a LCA can integrate the complex biogeochemical processes responsible for GHG emissions and the disparate animal and agricultural management techniques used be different phases of the beef production chain (e.g., feedlot vs. cow-calf) and different production systems (e.g., conventional vs. organic). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fisheries management needs to broaden its perspective to achieve sustainable resource use. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ISO standardized method to evaluate the environmental impacts of products using a broad and systematic approach. In this study, the outcome of a management regime promoting species-selective trawling in Swedish Nephrops trawl fisheries was studied using LCA methodology by quantifying the impacts per kilogram of landing using two different fishing methods. Demersal trawling has previously been found to be both energy intensive and destructive in terms of seafloor impact and discards. It is demonstrated that species-selective trawling fulfils management objectives, although with tradeoffs in terms of fuel consumption and associated GHG emissions. To prioritize between impacts, one must be aware of and quantify these potential tradeoffs. LCA could be an important tool for defining sustainable seafood production as it can visualize a broad range of impacts and facilitate integrated, transparent decision making in the seafood industry. It is also concluded that, with current LCA methodology, use of total discarded mass could increasingly be distinguished from potential impact by applying two new concepts: primary production requirements and threatened species affected. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we address the design of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure with economic and environmental concerns. Given a set of available technologies to capture, sequestrate, and transport CO2, the problem consists of determining the optimal planning of the CCS infrastructure capable of satisfying a predefined CO2 reduction target The planning task is formulated as a multiobjective mixed integer linear programming (moMILP) problem, which simultaneously accounts for the minimization of cost and environmental impact The environmental impact is measured through all contributions made by operation and installation of the CCS infrastructure. The emissions considered in the environmental impact analysis are quantified according to the principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), specifically the Eco-indicator 99 method. The multiobjective optimization problem was solved by using the e-constraint method. The capability of the proposed modeling framework is illustrated and applied to a real case study based on Korea, for which valuable insights are obtained.Eco-efficiency and sustainable development are the key environmental topics and goals for today's society that we should strive for in all activities, including contaminated soil management (CSM). However, particularly at the regional level, CSM is studied to a lesser extent from this perspective and practical means to monitor and assess sustainability or eco-efficiency are not widely available. This study aims to fill this gap by developing indicators to measure and monitor the development of regional eco-efficiency of CSM. The indicators can be used to support decision-making at the regional level since many CSM decisions, such as prioritisation of sites and the number of soil treatment and storing facilities, are made regionally. To start with, we surveyed the methods available for determining eco-efficiency and suitable indicators to monitor and measure the development of CSM regionally. We used life cycle analysis (LCA) and material flow analysis (MFA) to identify factors that the environmental indicators should cover, and also involved economic indicators. We ended up with a selection of 28 indicators, which can be classed into three different categories: background indicators, environmental indicators and economic indicators. We further demonstrated the use of the indicators by applying data from three different regions in Finland, and evaluated their suitability. On the basis of the results we recommended 15 indicators for continuous follow-up and decision-making purposes. Even though these indicators are suitable for monitoring and measuring the eco-efficiency of CSM at the regional level, unfortunately we found several data gaps related to the actual remediation projects which impede their use in practice. The data collection practices therefore need to be regionally developed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wastewater samples from the secondary clarifier of two treatment plants were spiked in the microgramto-tens-of-microgram per liter range With diuron (herbicide), ibuprofen and diclofenac (anti-inflammatory drugs), sulfamethoxazole and erythromycin (antibiotics), bezafibrate and gemfibrozil (lipid regulators), atenolol (beta-blocker), carbamazepine (anti-epileptic), hydrochlorothiazide (diuretic), caffeine (stimulant) and N-acetyl-4-amino-antipiryne, a metabolite of the antipyretic drug dypirone. They were subsequently ozonated in continuous flow using 1.2 L lab-scale bubble columns. The concentration of all spiking compounds was monitored in the outlet stream. The effects of varying ozone input, expressed as energy per unit volume, and water flow rate, and of using single or double column were studied in relation to the efficiency of ozone usage and the ratio of pollutant depletion. The ozone dosage required to treat both wastewaters with pollutant depletion of >90% was in the 55-8.5 mg/L range with ozone efficiencies greater than 80% depending on the type of wastewater and the operating conditions. This represented 100-200 mol of ozone transferred per mole of pollutant removed. Direct and indirect environmental impacts of ozonation were assessed according to Life Cycle Assessment, a technique that helped identify the most effective treatments in terms of potential toxicity reduction, as well as of toxicity reduction per unit mass of greenhouse-gas emissions, which were used as an indicator of environmental efficiency. A trade-off between environmental effectiveness (toxicity reduction) and greenhouse-gas emissions was observed since maximizing toxicity removal led to higher greenhouse-gas emissions, due to the latter's relatively high ozone requirements. Also, there is an environmental trade-off between effectiveness and efficiency. Our results indicate that an efficient use of ozone was not compatible with a full pollutant removal. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In temperate conifer forests of the Western USA, there is active debate whether fuels reduction treatments and bioenergy production result in decreased carbon emissions and increased carbon sequestration compared to a no-action alternative. To address this debate over net carbon stocks, we performed a carbon life-cycle analysis on data from a fuels reduction treatment in a temperate, dry conifer forest in the northern Sierra Nevada of California, USA. The analysis tracks the net ecosystem carbon balance over 50 years for two scenarios (1) fuels reduction treatment combined with bioenergy production, and (2) a baseline scenario of no action. The study includes above and belowground carbon stocks, removals from harvesting, emissions from harvesting and transporting the removed biomass, and disturbance by wildfire. We evaluate a range of fire rotations, from an historic short rotation to a modern long rotation. In this study, when the fire rotation is 31 years or less, fuels treatment and bioenergy result in a net increase in carbon stocks after 50 years compared to a baseline of no action. When fire rotations exceed 31 years the carbon balance shifts and the baseline scenario holds more carbon after 50 years than the fuels treatment. Over the 50-year period, future wildfire is the greatest source of emissions unless fire rotations are greater than 200 years, when emissions from the combustion of biomass for energy are greater. Emissions from mechanical treatments and transportation of the woody biomass are each less than 1% of total emissions. The results of this case study suggest that there is no single answer to whether fuels reduction treatments with bioenergy production create net carbon benefit. Managers will need to evaluate fuels treatments on a case-by-case or regional basis to determine net carbon outcomes. The life cycle approach presented here is a useful methodology for such determinations. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The strategic relevance of waste prevention has considerably increased worldwide during recent years, such that the current European legislation requires the preparation of national waste prevention programmes in which reduction objectives and measures are identified. In such a context, it is possible to recognise how, in order to correctly evaluate the environmental consequences of a prevention activity, a life cycle perspective should be employed. This allows us to go beyond the simple reduction of the generated waste which, alone, does not automatically imply achieving better overall environmental performance, especially when this reduction is not pursued through the simple reduction of consumption. In this study, the energetic and environmental performance of two waste prevention activities considered particularly meaningful for the Italian context were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The two activities were the utilisation of public network water (two scenarios) and of refillable bottled water (two scenarios) for drinking purposes, instead of one-way bottled water (three scenarios). The energy demand and specific potential impacts of the four waste prevention scenarios and of the three baseline scenarios were compared with the aim of evaluating whether, and under what conditions, the analysed prevention activities are actually associated with overall energetic and environmental benefits. In typical conditions, the use of public network water directly from the tap results in the best scenario, while if water is withdrawn from public fountains, its further transportation by private car can involve significant impacts. The use of refillable PET bottled water seems the preferable scenario for packaged water consumption, if refillable bottles are transported to local distributors along the same (or a lower) distance as one-way bottles to retailers. The use of refillable glass bottled water is preferable to one-way bottled water only if a distance beneath 150 km separates bottling plants from local distributors and retailers (except for eutrophication indicator which is always slightly worse). To reduce waste generation and to achieve meaningful potential savings of natural resources, energy and greenhouse gas emissions, a reduction in one-way bottled water consumption in Italy is recommended in favour of the use of public network water and of the establishment of short distance-PET bottles based refilling systems. The development of closed loop recycling of one-way PET bottles, and especially the reduction of the distance along which one-way bottled water is transported, are also important. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of different types of polypropylene nonwoven shopping bags, made out of two different manufacturing technologies - conventional sewing method and a thermal joining method, later is a patented technology of the industry, where the study was made, was assessed from cradle to gate stage using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. For this study, three different products A, B and C made out of conventional sewing method and thermal joining method were selected. This study was performed based on the comprehensive Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of two different manufacturing sequences, obtained from a detailed in-field study in a nonwoven PP bag manufacturing industry. The environmental impacts were quantified by means of the Eco-indicator'99 method, a damage oriented method to assess Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) by using one of the leading commercial LCA softwares, SIMAPRO 7.2. The single score values calculated by the Eco-indicator 99 method were considered as a directive to compare the environmental impact made by these bags, manufactured by two different technologies and a detailed explanation of results is provided in this paper. From the results of Life Cycle Impact Assessment in Eco-indicator'99 method, the conventional sewing process technology seems to be better compared to the thermal technology employed. A detailed explanation of the results of the environmental performance of these bags and also the hot-spots in both of the production technologies are discussed to a greater extent in this article.We report on life cycle assessment (LCA) of the economics, global warming potential and water (both for desalination and water use in operation) for a distributed concentrating solar combined heat and power (DCS-CHP) system. Detailed simulation of system performance across 1020 sites in the US combined with a sensible cost allocation scheme informs this LCA. We forecast a levelized cost of $0.25 kWh(-1) electricity and $0.03 kWh(-1) thermal, for a system with a life cycle global warming potential of similar to 80 gCO(2)eq kWh(-1) of electricity and similar to 10 gCO(2)eq kWh(-1) thermal, sited in Oakland, California. On the basis of the economics shown for air cooling, and the fact that any combined heat and power system reduces the need for cooling while at the same time boosting the overall solar efficiency of the system, DCS-CHP compares favorably to other electric power generation systems in terms of minimization of water use in the maintenance and operation of the plant. The outlook for water desalination coupled with distributed concentrating solar combined heat and power is less favorable. At a projected cost of $1.40 m(-3), water desalination with DCS-CHP would be economical and practical only in areas where water is very scarce or moderately expensive, primarily available through the informal sector, and where contaminated or salt water is easily available as feed-water. It is also interesting to note that $0.40-$1.90 m(-3) is the range of water prices in the developed world, so DCS-CHP desalination systems could also be an economical solution there under some conditions.The work tackles the development of a procedure to evaluate the energetic efficiency in linear infrastructures from a constructive point of view. This procedure allows to calculate the balance of energy along the different phases of life cycle analysis in infrastructure, such as construction, operation - maintenance and deconstruction, both in general and independent terms. Being the target the quantification of energy in the infrastructure, the procedure allows the efficient management of its energy consumption and other environmental impacts, throughout the selection of alternatives and the mitigation or compensation of the balance between its different phases. This paper describes the developed methodology in the procedure, tested by means of a practical example case study, where the embodied energy of one of the functional units in which the motorway is divided (a straight two-way highway stretch) is quantified in Jules. The individual amount of different phases is also quantified to establish a balance between them too.It has become increasingly important for manufacturers to implement sustainability into tool and process design. Existing models that evaluate the sustainability of abrasive processes focus mostly on case studies of selected energy and resource streams and rarely contain holistic process models. This study uses basic principles of axiomatic design to fundamentally describe grinding technology in a way that can be used for life cycle assessment. The functional requirements of the machining process are linked to process, tool, and coolant design parameters based upon common process understanding. However, these connections leave space for future quantitative and qualitative formulae. Sustainability metrics are then connected to the axiomatic process model. This work represents a first effort in developing this type of model. Finally, the model is used to qualitatively evaluate the impact of grit size on process sustainability showing that the method is feasible to identify strategies to increase sustainability in grinding. (C) 2012 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is estimated that the industrial sector is responsible for 29% of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions. Recent efforts have sought to reduce the carbon footprint of manufacturing activities. Research suggests that a key to further reducing industrial-based greenhouse gas emissions is to more accurately characterize the carbon footprint of manufacturing processes. Life cycle assessment is a powerful tool that can be utilized to characterize the life cycle environmental impacts of a process. Current life cycle inventory databases that are used in life cycle assessments only have limited coverage on manufacturing operations. This article develops a parameterized process model for computer numerical control grinding, which enables the calculation of life cycle inventory data in a relatively rapid fashion and has some substantial characteristics, such as transparency, engineering quality, and the ability to reflect changes when new information is secured. Surface grinding of cobalt-chromium alloy knee implants is used as a case study to demonstrate the approach.With increasing sustainable development consciousness, sustainable design plays an important role, not only in the design phase, but also in the manufacturing process. Existing design methods, including life cycle design and environmental design, have not fully considered sustainability requirements. A modular design methodology is proposed for achieving sustainable design as well as fulfilling functional requirements. Factors related to function and sustainability of a product, such as material, manufacturability, component life, and so on, are defined as modular drivers. A design structure matrix, with great advantages on analyzing the correlation between product system elements, is employed to establish a correlation matrix between components. A kernel-based fuzzy c-means algorithm is used to integrate components of a product into different modules based on their correlation distance. Meanwhile, a genetic algorithm is employed to determine the optimal clustering number on account of its efficiency in coming up with the global solutions. In addition, an assessment model for product sustainability is established considering economic, social, and environmental factors. Finally, a reduction gear is used as a case study example to show the effectiveness of the proposed sustainability-oriented modular design method.Manufacturing firms are under many financial and competitive pressures that focus attention on the performance of their manufacturing processes. In this article the opportunities for improving the environmental impact of products within the constraints of existing manufacturing infrastructure are examined. Approaches that support sustainability in two aspects are proposed; first, the provision of products to the users in ways which extend the product life; and second, manufacturing approaches that reduce resource usage. This article outlines three different sustainable development strategies for different product types and describes the cost implications for manufacturers across the life cycle. The performance measures affected by these strategies are examined, drawing on product development case studies from a number of high technology sectors to highlight the different approaches taken. The results are intended to aid manufacturers during the earliest stages of business planning to consider alternative product development approaches that are more sustainable.Incentive programs and tax rebates are commonly offered to offset the high initial costs of small-scale renewable energy systems (RES) and foster their implementation. However, the economic costs of RES grid integration must be fully known in order to determine whether such subsidies are justified. The objective of this paper is to assess the economic value of RES, including their environmental benefits, using hourly generation information in conjunction with hourly wholesale price data. Reaching the paper's objective will provide a better estimate of the bias that could result from neglecting 1) the time pattern of the hourly wholesale price, 2) the impacts of carbon taxes on the hourly wholesale price and 3) the value of the marginal hourly GHG emissions. Selected RES include two types of grid-connected photovoltaic panels (3 kWp mono- and poly-crystalline) and three types of micro-wind turbines (1, 10 and 30 kW) modeled for different climatic conditions in the province of Quebec (Canada). The cost of electricity is based on the technical performance of these RES using a life cycle costing methodology. The economic value of RES electricity is estimated using the hourly wholesale electricity price in Northeastern American markets in 2006-2008. Results show that distributed generation (DG) has no economic benefits using the selected RES, even with a US$100/tonne of CO2-equivalent carbon tax. This finding remains the same when the value of the avoided GHG emissions is fully internalized, except for one scenario (micro-wind 30 kW). Our results are key to understanding the extent to which subsidies for distributed RES can be economically sustainable when the latter are integrated into regional networks driven by centralized electricity production. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This review on Sustainability covers selected journal articles and conferences papers published in 2011 and is divided into the following sections(1): Sustainable water and wastewater utilities Sustainable water resources management Industrial and corporate approaches towards sustainability Stormwater and green infrastructure Sustainability in wastewater treatment Life cycle assessment (LCA) applications Sustainability and energy in wastewater industry, climate change, and water reuse Sustainability rating system The stormwater and green infrastructure (GI) described the current development in four categories: (1) new studies of GI and low impact development (LID) system performance; (2) GI/LID planning assessments; (3) macro-scale hydrologic and hydraulic modeling of GI/LID systems; and (4) social implications of GI/LID systems. The sustainability in wastewater treatment reviewed wastewater as a resource, wastewater treatment, and wastewater treatment plant carbon and energy footprint.Agricultural wastes have become an increasing concern in recent years, as they may cause significant environmental problems; however, they may also be used for several beneficial purposes, as feed stock for energy production, and for chemical recovery and chemical or dye adsorption. This review is divided into the following four sections: agricultural waste characterization, waste reuse and recycling, waste treatment, and waste management and minimization.Driven by considerations of sustainability, it has become increasingly difficult over the past 15-20 years - at least intellectually - to separate out the water infrastructure and water metabolism of cities from their intimately inter-related nutrient and energy metabolisms. Much of the focus of this difficulty settles on the wastewater component of the city's water infrastructure and its associated fluxes of nutrients (N, P, C, and so on). Indeed, notwithstanding the massive volumes of these materials flowing into and out of the city, the notion of an urban nutrient infrastructure is conspicuous by its absence. Likewise, we do not tend to discuss, or conduct research into, "soilshed" agencies, or soilshed management, or Integrated Nutrient Resources Management (as opposed to its most familiar companion, Integrated Water Resources Management, or IWRM). The paper summarizes some of the benefits (and challenges) deriving from adopting this broader, multi-sectoral "systems" perspective on addressing water-nutrient-energy systems in city-watershed settings. Such a perspective resonates with the growing interest in broader policy circles in what is called the "water-food-energy security nexus". The benefits and challenges of our Multi-sectoral Systems Analysis (MSA) are illustrated through computational results from two primary case studies: Atlanta, Georgia, USA; and London, UK. Since our work is part of the International Network on Cities as Forces for Good in the Environment (CFG; see http://www.cfgnet.org), in which other case studies are currently being initiated - for example, on Kathmandu, Nepal - we close by reflecting upon these issues of water-nutrient-energy systems in three urban settings with quite different styles and speeds of development.Life cycle assessment (LCA) data quality issues were investigated by using case studies on products from starch polyvinyl alcohol based biopolymers and petrochemical alternatives. The time horizon chosen for the characterization models was shown to be an important sensitive parameter for the environmental profiles of all the polymers. In the global warming potential and the toxicity potential categories the comparison between biopolymers and petrochemical counterparts altered as the time horizon extended from 20 years to infinite time. These case studies demonstrated that the use of a single time horizon provide only one perspective on the LCA outcomes which could introduce an inadvertent bias into LCA outcomes especially in toxicity impact categories and thus dynamic LCA characterization models with varying time horizons are recommended as a measure of the robustness for LCAs especially comparative assessments. This study also presents an approach to integrate statistical methods into LCA models for analyzing uncertainty in industrial and computer-simulated datasets. We calibrated probabilities for the LCA outcomes for biopolymer products arising from uncertainty in the inventory and from data variation characteristics this has enabled assigning confidence to the LCIA outcomes in specific impact categories for the biopolymer vs. petrochemical polymer comparisons undertaken. Uncertainty combined with the sensitivity analysis carried out in this study has led to a transparent increase in confidence in the LCA findings. We conclude that LCAs lacking explicit interpretation of the degree of uncertainty and sensitivities are of limited value as robust evidence for decision making or comparative assertions. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It is an important task of people connected with the textiles and clothing sector to work on the feasible ways to trim down the carbon footprint in each phase of a textile product's life cycle. One of the possible ways to decipher the reduction of carbon footprint of textiles and clothing sector is to recycle the textile process waste and also to recycle at the end-of-life of textile products and these aspects are exemplified in this paper in detail. Detailed investigation of the possibilities, barriers, challenges to recycle textile waste materials are discussed in this paper with relevant case studies. For recycling of process waste, an example was modelled by recycling the process waste and the carbon footprint results were demonstrated with the aid of 7.3 version of SIMAPRO LCA (Life cycle assessment) software. From the results of this case study, it was understood that recycling of process waste would contribute to the direct reduction of carbon footprint. For the second case of recycling at the end-of-life, there are many barriers and challenges to the textile products to be recycled, which are discussed in detail. For this case, two hypothetical situations were defined and the carbon footprint results of them were modeled and demonstrated with the aid of 7.3 version of SIMAPRO software to illustrate the benefits of recycling to reduce the carbon footprint. Designers need to conisder, "Ecological Design" in design phase to address most of the difficulties faced by recycling of textile products at the end-of-life, which will of certain help to reduce the carbon footprint of the textile products.A methodology for assessing the environmental impact of products and services is the life cycle analysis (LCA); which is a versatile tool to define the inclusion process and the scope of the production system, for different scenarios and selective comparison of environmental burdens. For the LCA developed in this work, the S I thermochemical cycle coupled to a high temperature gas nuclear reactor was selected. The defined system function is the production of hydrogen using nuclear energy and the functional unit is 1 kg of hydrogen at the plant gate. The product system was defined by the following steps: (i) extraction and manufacturing of raw materials (upstream flows), (ii) external energy supplied to the system, (iii) nuclear power plant, and (iv) hydrogen production plant. Particular attention was placed to those processes where there was limited information from literature about inventory data, like the TRISO fuel manufacture, and the production of iodine from caliches, which is supplied to the thermochemical process for hydrogen generation. The environmental impact assessment focuses on the emissions of greenhouse gases as comparative parameter related to global warming. The results showed low emissions when electric power was supplied from nuclear energy. When the electric power supply was changed to a mix of fossil fuels, the emissions were significantly higher. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of biomass-based hydrogen production is performed for a period from biomass production to the use of the produced hydrogen in Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell vehicles. The system considered is divided into three subsections as pre-treatment of biomass, hydrogen production plant and usage of hydrogen produced. Two different gasification systems, a Downdraft Gasifier (DG) and a Circulating Fluidized Bed Gasifier (CFBG), are considered and analyzed for hydrogen production using actual data taken from the literature. Fossil energy consumption rate and Green House Gas Emissions (GHG) are defined and indicated first. Next, the LCA results of DG and CFBG systems are compared for 1 MJ/s hydrogen production to compare with each other as well as with other hydrogen production systems. While the fossil energy consumption rate and emissions are calculated as 0.088 MJ/s and 6.27 CO2 eqv. g/s in the DG system, they are 0.175 MJ/s and 17.13 CO2 eqv. g/s in the CFBG system, respectively. The Coefficient of Hydrogen Production Performance (CHPP) (newly defined as a ratio of energy content of hydrogen produced from the system to the total energy content of fossil fuels used) of the CFBG and DG systems are then determined to be 5.71 and 11.36, respectively. Thus, the effects of some parameters, such as energy efficiency, ratio of cost of hydrogen, on natural gas and capital investments efficiency are investigated. Finally, the costs of GHG emissions reduction are calculated to be 0.0172 and 0.24 $/g for the DG and CFBG systems, respectively. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changes in energy subsidies for Indian agriculture and the introduction of a carbon tax in Australia have the potential to impact on energy use practices in groundwater-irrigated agriculture in both countries. A general framework for the accounting of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and life cycle energy consumption from groundwater-irrigated agriculture was developed using life cycle and supply chain analyses to examine the contributing aspects of groundwater irrigation to total associated greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. The framework then formed the basis of a greenhouse gas emission and energy accounting model that was simulated for the groundwater- dependent agricultural areas of the Musi catchment in India and the south-east region of South Australia. The region in South Australia was found to be emitting around twice the greenhouse gas of the Indian region per unit volume of water delivered, while emissions associated with operating electricity powered water pumps contributed more than 99.8% of modelled emissions in the south-east of South Australia and over 99.1% of emissions in the Musi catchment. Diesel powered water pump irrigation systems emitted the least total amount of greenhouse gas emissions per unit volume of water supplied, compared to grid electricity and diesel generator powered submersible water pump options. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The objective of this study was to quantify the environmental and economic impact of withdrawing growth-enhancing technologies (GET) from the U. S. beef production system. A deterministic model based on the metabolism and nutrient requirements of the beef population was used to quantify resource inputs and waste outputs per 454 x 106 kg of beef. Two production systems were compared: one using GET (steroid implants, in-feed ionophores, in-feed hormones, and beta-adrenergic agonists) where approved by FDA at current adoption rates and the other without GET use. Both systems were modeled using characteristic management practices, population dynamics, and production data from U.S. beef systems. The economic impact and global trade and carbon implications of GET withdrawal were calculated based on feed savings. Withdrawing GET from U.S. beef production reduced productivity (growth rate and slaughter weight) and increased the population size required to produce 454 x 10(6) kg beef by 385 x 10(3) animals. Feedstuff and land use were increased by 2,830 x 10(3) t and 265 x 10(3) ha, respectively, by GET withdrawal, with 20,139 x 10(6) more liters of water being required to maintain beef production. Manure output increased by 1,799 x 10(3) t as a result of GET withdrawal, with an increase in carbon emissions of 714,515 t/454 x 10(6) kg beef. The projected increased costs of U.S. beef produced without GET resulted in the effective implementation of an 8.2% tax on beef production, leading to reduced global trade and competitiveness. To compensate for the increase in U.S. beef prices and maintain beef supply, it would be necessary to increase beef production in other global regions, with a projected increase in carbon emissions from deforestation, particularly in Brazil. Withdrawing GET from U.S. beef production would reduce both the economic and environmental sustainability of the industry.Aging urban infrastructure is a common phenomenon in industrialized countries. The urban water supply pipeline network in the city of Oslo is an example. Even as it faces increasing operational, maintenance, and management challenges, it needs to better its environmental performance by reducing, for instance, the associated greenhouse gas emissions. In this article the authors examine the environmental life cycle performance of Oslo's water supply pipelines by analyzing annual resource consumption and emissions as well as life cycle assessment (LCA) impact potentials over a period of 16 years, taking into account the production/manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, and retirement of pipelines. It is seen that the water supply pipeline network of Oslo has already reached a state of saturation on a per capita basis, that is, it is not expanding any more relative to the population it serves, and the stock is now rapidly aging. This article is part of a total urban water cycle system analysis for Oslo, and analyzes more specifically the environmental impacts from the material flows in the water distribution network, examining six environmental impact categories using the SimaPro (version 7.1.8) software, Ecoinvent database, and the CML 2001 (version 2.04) methodology. The long-term management of stocks calls for a strong focus on cost optimization, energy efficiency, and environmental friendliness. Global warming and abiotic depletion emerge as the major impact categories from the water pipeline system, and the largest contribution is from the production and installation phases and the medium-size pipelines in the network.When mining is included in life cycle assessment (LCA), the solving of multifunctionality can be necessary in the inventory phase, as many mines produce multiple metals. Although the methodology of LCA is standardized, the methodology for solving this multifunctionality by allocation has remained controversial. In this article, we review the problems of allocation in the context of mining and introduce a new allocation method applicable to metal mining. The new normalized mass-based (NMB) allocation method is a derivative of a mass-based (MB) allocation method. In the new method, the masses of mined metals are normalized with predefined reference values to enable better description of the physical and economic causalities of the mining system. The NMB allocation method is compared to the MB and value-based (VB) allocation methods in case studies. The results indicate that the most suitable methods for allocation in metal mining are NMB allocation and VB allocation (when based on average prices). The ability to reflect changes in production and the economic value of metals without the need for additional price data make the NMB allocation method a reasonable option for allocation in environmental studies related to metal mining.Municipal residual waste (RW) produced in the Venice area undergoes mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) in the Fusina plant to produce refuse-derived fuel (RDF) that is then co-combusted in a nearby coal-fired power station. Being the first significant project for RDF co-firing in power plants in Italy, a number of different testing phases were performed starting in 2003, aimed at evaluating differences between so-called blank operation (i.e., with only coal feeding) and RDF co-firing at different feeding rates. The analysis of data gathered during the industrial experimentation shows a savings of 0.7 tonnes (t) of coal per each tonne of co-fired RDF; stack concentrations of some pollutants (hydrochloric acid [HCl], ammonia [NH3], carbon monoxide [CO], chromium [Cr], and lead [Pb]) appear slightly higher during co-combustion compared with blank operation, whereas concentrations of dust, sulfur oxides (SOx), and some metals (manganese [Mn], nickel [Ni], vanadium [V]) are lower. To assess the overall environmental performance of this practice, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study was then performed, where different strategies of energy recovery from RW were compared: production of RDF and its co-combustion in the Fusina power plant, RW combustion without any pretreatment in a mass-burn waste-to-energy (WTE) plant, and production of RDF and its combustion in a dedicated WTE plant. The LCA results show that co-combustion of RDF performs better than the other strategies for all impact categories evaluated. The only exception is when the WTE plant operates in combined heat and power mode, with very high overall conversion efficiencies.Fuel economy has been an effective indicator of vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for conventional gasoline-powered vehicles due to the strong relationship between fuel economy and vehicle life cycle emissions. However, fuel economy is not as accurate an indicator of vehicle GHG emissions for plug-in hybrid (PHEVs) and pure battery electric vehicles (EVs). Current vehicle labeling efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation have been focused on providing energy and environmental information to consumers based on U.S. national average data. This article explores the effects of variations in regional grids and regional daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on the total vehicle life cycle energy and GHG emissions of electrified vehicles and compare these results with information reported on the label and on the EPA's fuel economy Web site. The model results suggest that only 25% of the life cycle emissions from a representative PHEV are reflected on current vehicle labeling. The results show great variation in total vehicle life cycle emissions due to regional grid differences, including an approximately 100 gram per mile life cycle GHG emissions difference between the lowest and highest electric grid regions and up to a 100% difference between the state-specific emission values within the same electric grid regions. Unexpectedly, for two regional grids the life cycle GHG emissions were higher in electric mode than in gasoline mode. We recommend that labels include stronger language on their deficiencies and provide ranges for GHG emissions from vehicle charging in regional electricity grids to better inform consumers.In life cycle assessment (LCA) of paper products, it is common to either assume that the carbon impacts of forestry are neutral (i.e. no net emissions) or to credit harvested wood products as a carbon store. When comparing virgin and recycled materials, this means that forest carbon flows are either shown as nil or a net sequestration credit. However, harvested wood products typically account for less than half of the carbon stored in a forest, with additional stores in below ground biomass, deadwood, litter and soils. Each of these stores may be affected by changes in demand for virgin pulp and paper. In this study the countries likely to provide pulp displaced by moving to recyclate, or used when switching from recyclate were identified for both the UK and China (the largest export market for UK-derived recyclate). Changes in forest carbon stores in each country were then assessed and attributed to the extraction of a unit of timber in each country where demand for pulp and paper was identified as a driver for change. The analysis shows that when switching from virgin to recycled content within the UK and China, no additional biogenic CO2 emissions are avoided with the exception of Canadian pulp, where the data suggests that forests are being degraded, with associated carbon losses. When switching from recycled to virgin content, net biogenic CO2 emissions are seen from most relevant countries. In the example of newsprint, this is equivalent to 2-23 tonnes CO2 per tonne of newsprint. The exceptions to this are Chile and Russia, where demand for virgin fibre does not appear to be associated with deforestation. Despite limitations, the research highlights that biogenic carbon is a significant issue which may dominate the outcome of LCAs assessing the climate change impact of switching between virgin and recycled pulp. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The main aim of this study was to evaluate the costs and environmental impacts induced by a fixed model of MSW kerbside separate collection system for communities up to 10,000 inhabitants, in order to evaluate the convenience for the smaller municipalities to unite and form more economically and environmentally sound systems. This topic is important not only due to the large number of small municipalities (e.g. in Italy 72% of the municipalities has less than 5000 inhabitants) but also to the fact that separate collection systems are typically designed to take into account only the technical and economic aspects, which is a practice but not acceptable in the light of the sustainable development paradigm. In economic terms, between 1000 and 4000 inhabitants, the annual per capita cost for vehicles and personnel decreased, with a maximum at approximately 180 (sic)/inhabitants/year; while, from 5000 up to 10,000 inhabitants, the annual per capita cost was practically constant and equal to about 80 (sic)/inhabitants/year. For the municipalities of less than 5000 inhabitants, from an economic point of view the aggregation is always advantageous. The environmental impacts were calculated by means of the Life Cycle Assessment tool SimaPro 7.1, while the economic-environmental convenience was evaluated by combining in a simple multicriteria analysis, the annual total per capita cost ((sic)/inhabitants/year) and the annual total per capita environmental impact (kEco-indicator point/inhabitants/year), giving the same importance to each criteria. The analysis was performed by means of the Paired Comparison Technique using the Simple Additive Weighting method. The economic and environmental convenience of the aggregation diminishes with the size of the municipalities: for less than 4000 inhabitants, the aggregation was almost always advantageous (91.7%); while, for more than or equal to 5000 inhabitants, the aggregation was convenient only in 33.3% of the cases. On the whole, out of 45 cases examined, for the municipalities from 1000 to 9000 inhabitants, the aggregation was both economically and environmentally convenient in 60.0% of the cases. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rotary kiln incinerators and cement kilns are two energy intensive processes, requiring high temperatures that can be obtained by the combustion of fossil fuel. In both processes, fossil fuel is often substituted by high or medium calorific waste to avoid resource depletion and to save costs. Two types of industrial calorific waste streams are considered: automotive shredder residue (ASR) and meat and bone meal (MBM). These waste streams are of current high interest: ASR must be diverted from landfill, while MBM can no longer be used for cattle feeding. The environmental impact of the incineration of these waste streams is assessed and compared for both a rotary kiln and a cement kiln. For this purpose, data from an extensive emission inventory is applied for assessing the environmental impact using two different modeling approaches: one focusing on the impact of the relevant flows to and from the process and its subsystems, the other describing the change of environmental impact in response to these physical flows. Both ways of assessing emphasize different aspects of the considered processes. Attention is paid to assumptions in the methodology that can influence the outcome and conclusions of the assessment. It is concluded that for the incineration of calorific wastes, rotary kilns are generally preferred. Nevertheless, cement kilns show opportunities in improving their environmental impact when substituting their currently used fuels by more clean calorific waste streams, if this improvement is not at the expense of the actual environmental impact. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Along with the rapid increase in both production and use of TV sets in China, there is an increasing awareness of the environmental impacts related to the accelerating mass production, electricity use, and waste management of these sets. This paper aims to describe the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental performance of Chinese TV sets. An assessment of the TV set device (focusing on the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitor) was carried out using a detailed modular LCA based on the international standards of the ISO 14040 series. The LCA was constructed using SimaPro software version 7.2 and expressed with the Eco-indicator' 99 life cycle impact assessment method. For a sensitivity analysis of the overall LCA results, the CML method was used in order to estimate the influence of the choice of the assessment method on the results. Life cycle inventory information was compiled by Ecoinvent 2.2 databases, combined with literature and field investigations on the current Chinese situation. The established LCA study shows that the use stage of such devices has the highest environmental impact, followed by the manufacturing stage. In the manufacturing stage, the CRT and the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) are those components contributing the most environmental impacts. During the use phase, the environmental impacts are due entirely to the methods of electricity generation used to run them, since no other aspects were taken into account for this phase. The final processing step-the end-of-life stage can lead to a clear environmental benefit when the TV sets are processed through the formal dismantling enterprises in China. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to develop an effective recycling system for obsolete Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), which would enable both the leaching of indium (In) and the recovery of a pure glass fraction for recycling, an effective liberation or size-reduction method would be an important pre-treatment step. Therefore, in this study, two different types of liberation methods: (1) conventional grinding, and (2) electrical disintegration have been tested and evaluated in the context of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In other words, the above-mentioned methods were compared in order to find out the one that ensures the highest leaching capacity for indium, as well as the lowest environmental burden. One of the main findings of this study was that the electrical disintegration was the most effective liberation method, since it fully liberated the iridium containing-layer, ensuring a leaching capacity of 968.5 mg-In/kg-LCD. In turn, the estimate for the environmental burden was approximately five times smaller when compared with the conventional grinding. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electricity production causes unintended impacts. Their exclusion by the market leads to suboptimal resource allocations. Monetizing and internalizing of external costs, though challenging and debatable, leads to a better allocation of economic resources and welfare. In this paper, a life-cycle analysis (LCA) on the production of electricity from conventional coal based electricity generation system has been performed in order to examine the environmental impacts of coal based electricity generating systems in the twin-city of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar in western India. By using dose-response functions, we make an attempt to estimate the damages to human health, crops, and building materials resulting from the operation of coal power plants and its associated mines. Further, we use geographic information system to account for spatially dependent data. Finally, monetary values have been assigned to estimate the damage to human health, crops and building materials. This study reveals that the health as well as on non-health impacts of air pollution resulting from coal based electricity generation may not be ignored both in absolute as well as economic value terms. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electricity has played a critical role in supporting industrial development and economic growth in Taiwan. In this study, input-output analysis is combined with life cycle assessment to evaluate the total environmental impacts (including direct and indirect) of the electricity sector in Taiwan. The results indicate that the environmental impacts of Taiwan's electricity sector increased from 2001 to 2006, and 85% of these are focused on eight related sectors. In addition, "human health" suffers from the most significant environmental impact, followed by "resources", "climate change" and "ecosystem quality". Although direct environmental impacts are significant, especially with regard to climate change, indirect environmental impacts are gradually increasing. Because the electricity sector is linked to many other sectors, there would be an underestimation of CO2 emissions and other environmental impacts if the indirect effects from the related sectors were omitted from the calculations. These indirect impacts mainly come from the "non-metallic minerals", "petroleum refining products" and "other metals" sectors, and the technology used in these three sectors needs to improve and become more environmentally-friendly. Other suggestions to promote the sustainable development of Taiwan's electricity sector include upgrading energy efficiency, implementing stricter effluent regulatory standards, maximizing energy security with a higher proportion of renewable energy sources, phasing out old fossil fuel plant facilities, seeking international cooperation for CCS technology, and promoting energy-saving by providing economic incentives. This study is of value to the government and relevant industries that are working to identify the total environmental impacts of their energy policies, and to plan mitigation strategies and policy implementations to reduce CO2 emissions and control pollution.Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is being evaluated as a bioenergy crop for the northern Great Plains. Field measurements of CO2, CH4, and N2O flux are needed to estimate the net greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of this biofeedstock. The study objective was to determine effects of recommended Nitrogen (N) fertilization (67 kg ha(-1) of N applied) and unfertilized switchgrass on growing season soil-atmosphere CO2, CH4, and N2O flux using static chamber methodology. Mean hourly CO2 flux was greatest during periods of active switchgrass growth and was similar between N fertilizer treatments (P = 0.09). Mean hourly N2O flux was consistently greater under N fertilization than without N throughout the growing season. Overall, N fertilization of switchgrass affected cumulative growing-season N2O flux (27.6 kg ha(-1) +/- 4.0 kg ha(-1) vs. 86.3 kg ha(-1) +/- 14.3 kg ha(-1) as CO2 equivalents (CO(2)eq) for 0 kg ha(-1) and 67 kg ha(-1) of N applied, respectively; P < 0.01), but not cumulative CO2 or CH4 flux (P = 0.08 and 0.51, respectively). Aboveground biomass production was greater with N application (6.8 Mg ha(-1) +/- 0.5 Mg ha(-1) dry matter) than without N (3.2 Mg ha(-1) +/- 0.5 Mg ha(-1)) (P < 0.05). Net greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI; kg GHG flux kg(-1) harvest yield as CO(2)eq) for switchgrass production was similar between N treatments (0.71 vs. 0.44 for 0 kg ha(-1) and 67 kg ha(-1) of N applied, respectively; P = 0.18). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Dewatering of the green algae Neochloris oleoabundans by flocculation was investigated for chitosan biopolymer, ferric sulfate, and alum. Chitosan was found to be most effective flocculant, with an optimum dose of 100 mg/L algae broth. Zeta potential measurements suggest the mechanism involves both adsorption and charge neutralization processes. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare the chitosan method to other flocculation methods as well as centrifugation and filtration/chamber press processes. LCA showed that among these techniques, flocculation by chitosan is the least energy intensive and had the lowest impacts across all other categories of environmental impacts. The results are discussed in the overall context of biofuel production from algal biomass. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the sector of municipal solid waste management the debate on the performances of conventional and novel thermo-chemical technologies is still relevant. When a plant must be constructed, decision makers often select a technology prior to analyzing the local environmental impact of the available options, as this type of study is generally developed when the design of the plant has been carried out. Additionally, in the literature there is a lack of comparative analyses of the contributions to local air pollution from different technologies. The present study offers a multi-step approach, based on pollutant emission factors and atmospheric dilution coefficients, for a local comparative analysis. With this approach it is possible to check if some assumptions related to the advantages of the novel thermochemical technologies, in terms of local direct impact on air quality, can be applied to municipal solid waste treatment. The selected processes concern combustion, gasification and pyrolysis, alone or in combination. The pollutants considered are both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic. A case study is presented concerning the location of a plant in an alpine region and its contribution to the local air pollution. Results show that differences among technologies are less than expected. Performances of each technology are discussed in details. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CO2 capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is a promising technology wherein CO2 is captured and stored in solid form for further utilization instead of being released into the atmosphere in high concentrations. Under this framework, a new process called accelerated carbonation has been widely researched and developed. In this process, alkaline materials are reacted with high-purity CO2 in the presence of moisture to accelerate the reaction to a timescale of a few minutes or hours. The feedstock for accelerated carbonation includes natural silicate-minerals (e. g., wollastonite, serpentine, and olivine) and industrial residues (e. g., steelmaking slag, municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) ash, and air pollution control (APC) residues). This research article focuses on carbonation technologies that use industrial alkaline wastes, such as steelmaking slags and metalworking wastewater. The carbonation of alkaline solid waste has been shown to be an effective way to capture CO2 and to eliminate the contents of Ca(OH)(2) in solid residues, thus improving the durability of concrete blended with the carbonated residues. However, the operating conditions must be further studied for both the economic viability of the technology and the optimal conditions for CO2 reaction.The shift towards a biobased economy will probably trigger the application of bioenergy by-products to the soil as either amendments or fertilizers. However, limited research has been done to determine how this will influence C and N dynamics and soil functioning. The aim of this work was to investigate the effects of different bioenergy by-products on C and N mineralisation, nutrient availability and microbial content and activity of amended soil and compare them to other more commonly used organic amendments. Two agricultural soils were amended (0.5% w/w) with four different bioenergy by-products (anaerobic digestate, rapeseed meal, bioethanol residue, biochar) and three other commonly used organic amendments (sewage sludge and two composts) and incubated at 20 degrees C in the laboratory for 30 days. During incubation, soil CO2 and N2O evolution were measured every 4 h by an automatic chromatographic system. After 2, 7 and 30 days of incubation, soil samples were analysed for K2SO4-extractable C, N, NO3-, NH4+ and P, microbial biomass C and three enzymatic activities (beta-glucosidase, alkaline phosphatase and leucine aminopeptidase). Soil amendment led to a general increase in soil respiration, available N and P and microbial content and activity, but with remarkably different dynamics and values. Particularly, rapeseed meal and the bioethanol by-product led to N2O emissions and the greatest increases in soil respiration, N availability and enzymatic activity compared with the other amendments. The exception was represented by biochar that did not cause any significant variation with respect to the control, but promoted C accumulation. According to their impact on soil biochemical properties, the materials can be ranked as follows: rapeseed meal, bioethanol residue > anaerobic digestate, sewage sludge > composts > biochar. For each measured parameter, soil properties did not affect the response pattern found for the different treatments, but modified the magnitude of the response. In particular, soil respiration and enzymatic activity were higher in the slightly acidic soil, while greater values of available P were found in the alkaline soil. This study clearly indicates that the impact on GHG emissions and soil functioning of bioenergy byproducts needs to be taken into account for a correct life cycle assessment of the bioenergy chain. Moreover, when properly managed, they may represent an effective alternative to usual amendments to improve the quality and nutrient balance of amended soils. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Pyrolysis of biomass followed by hydroprocessing may provide infrastructure-compatible transportation fuels. In this work, a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the production of gasoline and diesel from forest residues via fast pyrolysis and hydroprocessing, from production of the feedstock to end use of the fuel in a vehicle, is performed. The fast pyrolysis and subsequent hydrotreating and hydrocracking processes are based on a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory design report. Stages other than biofuels conversion, including forest residue production and harvesting, preprocessing, feedstock transportation, fuel distribution, and vehicle operation, are based on previous work. Probability distribution functions are assumed for parameters involved in the pyrolysis process for Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis. This LCA for the production of gasoline and diesel via pyrolysis and upgrading assumes grid electricity is used and supplemental natural gas is supplied to the hydrogen plant. Gasoline and diesel produced via pyrolysis are estimated to have greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of CO2 equivalent of 117 g km(-1) and 98 g km(-1), respectively, and net energy value (NEV) of 1.09 MJ km(-1) and 0.92 MJ km(-1), respectively. All values from the uncertainty analysis have lower GHG emissions and higher NEV than conventional gasoline in 2005. Grid electricity and natural gas used account for 81% of the net GHG emissions in the base case. An evaluation of a case with biomass-derived electricity shows significant improvement in GHG emissions. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The building industry is facing a huge challenge as the industry sector carries much responsibility of the anthropogenic climate change: activities associated with housing alone account for as much as 30% of global annual energy demand. This demand derives not only from the physical characteristics of the buildings, but from the actions of the users, both end-users and professional managers. Even the best designed low-energy buildings will not perform is planned, if they are not operated properly. This study focuses on the role of professional managers in the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) performance of existing urban and suburban housing. Several different types of housing companies with different housing managers are studied by both quantitative (input-output based hybrid life cycle analysis to estimate building performance) and qualitative I:interviews to determine manager awareness and attitudes) means. It can be inferred from the study that housing managers through their attitudes and practices have a significant impact on the energy performance of buildings. Notwithstanding, managers feel as though they do not either have the responsibility or the power to make energy conservation a priority. Financial (long payback time) and even social (occupant discomfort) arguments are used to justify the lack of action. While housing managers readily hold the data, and have the professional skills for effective energy management, managers appear not to have an ethical motive for practicing energy-efficiency. In other words, managers have the potential to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of housing companies, but the potential is currently not fully exploited. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A well-to-wheels life cycle analysis on total energy consumptions and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions for alternative fuels and accompanying vehicle technologies has been carried out for the base year 2010 and projected to 2020 based on data gathered and estimates developed for China. The fuels considered include gasoline, diesel, natural gas, liquid fuels from coal conversion, methanol, bio-ethanol and biodiesel, electricity and hydrogen. Use of liquid fuels including methanol and Fischer-Tropsch derived from coal will significantly increase GM emissions relative to use of conventional gasoline. Use of starch-based bio-ethanol will incur a substantial carbon disbenefit because of the present highly inefficient agricultural practice and plant processing in China. Electrification of vehicles via hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) and battery electric vehicle technologies offers a progressively improved prospect for the reduction of energy consumption and GHG emission. However, the long-term carbon emission reduction is assured only when the needed electricity is generated by zero- or low-carbon sources, which means that carbon capture and storage is a necessity for fossil-based feedstocks. A PHEV that runs on zero- or low-carbon electricity and cellulosic ethanol may be one of the most attractive fuel-vehicle options in a carbon-constrained world. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tourism is an economic activity that results in a wide range of environmental impacts. The contribution of tourism to human-induced climate change is an increasingly important issue. However, the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from tourism products have never been thoroughly discussed. This study uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to explore energy use and CO2 emissions of island tourism and then compare the environmental loads of different tourism subsectors. This study uses three Taiwanese islands (Penghu, Kinmen, and Green islands) as examples to examine the LCA approach, and it calculates and compares the energy usage and CO2 emissions of the transportation, accommodation, and recreation activity sectors. Results show that each tourist consumes 502, 447, and 118 MJ of energy per day on Penghu, Kinmen, and Green islands, respectively. Each tourist also generates 34.0, 27.9, and 7.1 kg of CO2 emissions on Penghu, Kinmen, and Green islands, respectively. Each Penghu tourist per day consumes 4.25 times as much energy as each Green tourist, and each Penghu tourist generates 4.7 times the CO2 emissions as each Green tourist. In summary, the transportation sector generates the largest energy (4967%) and the largest proportion of CO2 emissions (5872.4%); the airplane sector is the primary contributor. Finally, this study discuses the advantages and limitations of the LCA approach. (c) 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2011Thermal electricity generation is a major consumer of freshwater for cooling, fuel extraction and air emissions controls, but the life cycle water impacts of different fossil fuel cycles are not well understood. Much of the existing literature relies on decades-old estimates for water intensity, particularly regarding water consumed for fuel extraction. This work uses contemporary data from specific resource basins and power plants in Texas to evaluate water intensity at three major stages of coal and natural gas fuel cycles: fuel extraction, power plant cooling and power plant emissions controls. In particular, the water intensity of fuel extraction is quantified for Texas lignite, conventional natural gas and 11 unconventional natural gas basins in Texas, including major second-order impacts associated with multi-stage hydraulic fracturing. Despite the rise of this water-intensive natural gas extraction method, natural gas extraction appears to consume less freshwater than coal per unit of energy extracted in Texas because of the high water intensity of Texas lignite extraction. This work uses new resource basin and power plant level water intensity data to estimate the potential effects of coal to natural gas fuel switching in Texas' power sector, a shift under consideration due to potential environmental benefits and very low natural gas prices. Replacing Texas' coal-fired power plants with natural gas combined cycle plants (NGCCs) would reduce annual freshwater consumption in the state by an estimated 53 billion gallons per year, or 60% of Texas coal power's water footprint, largely due to the higher efficiency of NGCCs.We evaluate the comparative productivity of maize and sugarcane biofuel feedstocks as a function of latitude. Solar radiation for photosynthesis varies by latitude and contributes to differential productivity of tropical and temperate zones. We calculate comparative productivity in two ways-the amount of net sugar energy produced per unit area, and the amount produced per unit of net primary productivity (NPP). NPP measures the accumulation of energy in an ecosystem and can be used as a proxy for the capacity of an ecosystem to support biodiversity and a broader array of ecosystem services. On average sugarcane produces three times more energy per unit area than does maize. The comparative productivity advantage of sugarcane decreases with increases in latitude. Latitudes closer to the equator have higher NPP, so there is a greater trade-off between biofuel production and ecosystem productivity in the equatorial zones. The comparative productivity of sugarcane relative to maize is reduced when comparing biofuel energy per unit of NPP. Sugarcane is still twice as productive on average compared to maize in the amount of biofuel energy produced per unit of NPP. Regions near the equator have lower biofuel energy per unit NPP, making them less attractive for biofuels production.Globally, bioethanol is the largest volume biofuel used in the transportation sector, with corn-based ethanol production occurring mostly in the US and sugarcane-based ethanol production occurring mostly in Brazil. Advances in technology and the resulting improved productivity in corn and sugarcane farming and ethanol conversion, together with biofuel policies, have contributed to the significant expansion of ethanol production in the past 20 years. These improvements have increased the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of using bioethanol as opposed to using petroleum gasoline. This article presents results from our most recently updated simulations of energy use and GHG emissions that result from using bioethanol made from several feedstocks. The results were generated with the GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation) model. In particular, based on a consistent and systematic model platform, we estimate life-cycle energy consumption and GHG emissions from using ethanol produced from five feedstocks: corn, sugarcane, corn stover, switchgrass and miscanthus. We quantitatively address the impacts of a few critical factors that affect life-cycle GHG emissions from bioethanol. Even when the highly debated land use change GHG emissions are included, changing from corn to sugarcane and then to cellulosic biomass helps to significantly increase the reductions in energy use and GHG emissions from using bioethanol. Relative to petroleum gasoline, ethanol from corn, sugarcane, corn stover, switchgrass and miscanthus can reduce life-cycle GHG emissions by 19-48%, 40-62%, 90-103%, 77-97% and 101-115%, respectively. Similar trends have been found with regard to fossil energy benefits for the five bioethanol pathways.Biofuels as renewable resources are one of the options to meet the challenges of fossil fuel resource depletion and atmospheric pollution. Several studies have focused on the technical, economic, and environmental footprint of biofuels, particularly bioethanol production. However, there has been little effort to incorporate the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) hazards in an inclusive sustainability assessment of bioethanol production alternatives. This study focuses on these sustainability aspects for bioethanol production by employing the EHS and the inherent safety index (ISI) methods. The multicriteria assessment also includes the cumulative energy demand as a widely used lifecycle impact assessment indicator. Sugarcane, corn, and corn stover are considered as biomass resources, and the typical process conditions are used for the base case evaluation. Sensitivity analysis is used to investigate the impact of process conditions, composition of feed, and method settings on the final outcome. The results indicate that both the ISI and the EHS methods present similar overall rankings with sugarcane-derived and corn stover-derived processes as the most and the least hazardous, respectively. However, dissimilarities occur in the evaluation of the process sections, highlighting different hazardous aspects. Finally, including the lifecycle impact assessment in a bicriteria assessment indicates the sugarcane-derived process as clearly superior followed by the corn-derived and the corn stover-derived processes.The intake fraction (iF) is the fraction of an emitted mass of chemical that is ultimately taken in by an entire population, and it is used as an indicator of human health potential impacts related to environmental chemical persistence and bioaccumulation in the food chain. In chemical screening applications, the iF can be predicted using multimedia and multipathway fate and exposure models. One of the sources of iF uncertainty is the natural seasonal variability of the input parameters used in the models, i.e., the physicochemical properties of the pollutant and the landscape and exposure parameters. The objective of this article is to determine the relevance of including seasonal differentiation when assessing iFs in life cycle assessment. This was done by calculating and comparing seasonal iFs with each other and with iFs at 25 degrees?C, for both Canadian and global contexts. Two Canadian seasonal models based on the IMPACT 2002 predictive tool, and 2 models for the global context based on the USEtox consensus model were developed to calculate summer and winter iFs. Emissions into air and water and a set of 35 representative organic chemicals were considered. Partition coefficients for seasonal conditions were calculated using an integration of the van't Hoff equation. First-order degradation rate constants were calculated assuming that the rate constant doubles with each 10 degrees?C increase in temperature. For Canadian air emissions, results indicated that iFs for winter emissions could be up to 1 to 2 orders of magnitude higher than summer iFs or iFs calculated at 25 degrees?C. For Canadian water emissions, results showed that iFs for both summer and winter conditions were, in general, closer to each other with outliers within 1 order of magnitude to iFs calculated at 25 degrees?C. Results also indicated that seasonal variability was of lesser importance when assessing iFs within a global context. Because the ranking between chemicals was maintained, it can be concluded that seasonal variability is not relevant within a comparative context. However, this difference might be significant when comparing the magnitude of human toxicity impacts versus other impact categories contributing to human health damages. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2012; 8: 749759. (c) 2012 SETACThis study analyzes how advances in clean energy production technology have facilitated related economic development and intensified competition between clean energy sources and fossil fuels. A forecasting model, the Taiwan general equilibrium model-Clean Energy (TAIGEM-CE), is adopted to elucidate the role of wind, solar, tidal current, geothermal, algal biodiesel, biohydrogen, hydrogen fuel cell, biodiesel and bioethanol. Baseline results indicate that biohydrogen, hydrogen fuel cell, biofuels and wind perform satisfactorily when external support is unavailable. Additionally, strong governmental investment in clean energies significantly contributes to development of biodiesel, wind, biohydrogen and hydrogen fuel cell sectors. Results of this study provide feasible means of allocating resources to achieve a smooth transition to a clean energy economy, in which biohydrogen and fuel cell will play a prominent role. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents an overview of footprints as defined indicators that can be used to measure sustainability. An overview of the definitions and units of measurement associated with environmental, social, and economic footprints is important because the definitions of footprints vary and are often expressed unclearly. Composite footprints combining two or more individual footprints are also assessed. These combinations produce multi-objective optimisation problems. Several tools for footprint(s)' evaluation are presented, including some of the numerous carbon footprint calculators, available calculators for other footprints, some ecological footprints-based, graph-based, and mathematical programming tools. A comprehensive overview is offered of footprint-based sustainability assessment. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Large quantities of low grade heat (LGH) are generated within many process industries, and the recovery of LGH is a potentially significant means of improving process efficiency, but it is often difficult to find an appropriate internal heat load. One alternative is to use appropriate technologies to convert the low grade heat to electricity for use onsite. This paper describes the environmental and techno-economic evaluation of a case study examining the potential application of an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) to generate electricity from LGH from the stacks of a coke oven used in steel production. 21 MW of LGH was available for recovery at the plant and resource accounting and life-cycle analysis methods were used to evaluate the environmental and economic benefits of the operation of an ORC. The results showed that between 1 and 3% of the CO2 emitted directly through the production of coke would be offset by installation of an ORC, with life-cycle environmental impacts, (including different coal production processes) of coke production reduced by less than 1%, although this was sufficient to offset over 10,000 t CO2 annually. However, the amount of electricity generated was sufficient to replace all currently imported electricity and economic analysis indicated a relatively attractive discounted pay-back period of between 3 and 6 years, suggesting this may be a commercially viable option, which could present a relatively cost effective method of achieving greenhouse gas savings in the process industries. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article reviews the scope of the discipline of industrial ecology and, in the context of an urgent requirement for substantial and rapid change in the face of global sustainability challenges, argues that the discipline could embrace a more proactive, interventionist stance in the form of renewable eco-industrial development. Existing eco-industrialism is presented as flawed, with many cases premised on the use of nonrenewable resources. Renewable eco-industrial development, while still nascent, has the potential both to resolve some sustainability challenges and to offer a new area of endeavor for industrial ecology, albeit one with its own unique difficulties, such as conflict with food production. Renewable eco-industrial development is further argued to bring industrial ecology into a more socially critical stance as it concerns the future allocation of scarce resources.Publicly Available Specification 2050-2011 (PAS 2050), the Green House Gas Product Protocol (GHGPP) standard and forthcoming guideline 14067 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have helped to propel carbon footprinting from a subdiscipline of life cycle assessment (LCA) to the mainstream. However, application of carbon footprinting to large portfolios of many distinct products and services is immensely resource intensive. Even if achieved, it often fails to inform company-wide carbon reduction strategies because footprint data are disjointed or don't cover the whole portfolio. We introduce a novel approach to generate standard-compliant product carbon footprints (CFs) for companies with large portfolios at a fraction of previously required time and expertise. The approach was developed and validated on an LCA dataset covering 1,137 individual products from a global packaged consumer goods company. Three novel techniques work in concert in a single approach that enables practitioners to calculate thousands of footprints virtually simultaneously: (i) a uniform data structure enables footprinting all products and services by looping the same algorithm; (ii) concurrent uncertainty analysis guides practitioners to gradually improve the accuracy of only those data that materially impact the results; and (iii) a predictive model generates estimated emission factors (EFs) for materials, thereby eliminating the manual mapping of a product or service's inventory to EF databases. These autogenerated EFs enable non-LCA experts to calculate approximate CFs and alleviate resource constraints for companies embarking on large-scale product carbon footprinting. We discuss implementation roadmaps for companies, including further road-testing required to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach for other product portfolios, limitations, and future improvements of the fast footprinting methodology.This article describes an approach developed to estimate the environmental external costs of the Belgian building sector. Several existing methods and related data sets for determining the monetary value of environmental impacts were reviewed and compared in light of their relevance to an impact assessment of the construction sector. This study concludes that the methods available consider different impacts and differ substantially in monetary values for identical impacts. A harmonized and transparent method is recommended to improve the feasibility and acceptance of internalizing external costs; agreement on the impacts to be assessed and their external costs based on current insights is important. Here, a new method is proposed for a life cycle impact assessment-based valuation of environmental external costs for application to the Belgian building sector. To enable a comprehensive assessment, it became clear that solely considering key pollutants is insufficient. Although this article focuses on the development and not on the implementation of the method proposed, implementation revealed that the life cycle environmental external cost of new buildings (meeting current insulation standards or better) is relatively small compared to the life cycle financial cost.In this article, a life cycle assessment approach is used to carry out a preliminary assessment of the environmental and energy performance of a specific chemical recycling and recovery system that supplies a variety of petrochemical blendstocks through the sequential pyrolysis and catalytic reforming of plastic wastes. Characterization results are presented for a selection of seven impact categories: abiotic depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation and cumulative non-renewable energy demand. From a combined environmental and energy perspective, the results suggest the suitability of this system for plastic waste valorization. However, improvement actions aimed at reducing the thermal energy demand and mitigating direct emissions to the air should be undertaken. Furthermore, the environmental profiles of the proposed petrochemical blendstocks are compared with those of conventional energy products. A comparison among this chemical recycling and recovery system and two conventional management practices (municipal incineration and landfilling) is also addressed. The results show that the considered system could entail relevant environmental and energy benefits when compared to conventional energy systems and waste management strategies.A production of a sorbent material from papermill sludge positively effects the environment instead of landfilling it and replacing an expanded polypropylene absorbent with papermill sludge sorbent for oil spill sanitations. The life cycle's assessment study shows a reduction of carbon footprint for more than 14 times and reduction of water consumption for 372 kg, based on the production of sorbent material for cleaning 1,000 kg of oil spill. A conversion of the papermill sludge into sorbent material prolongs paper products' life cycle for additional two cycles. A controlled incineration converts the used sorbent into inert meta-kaolin product which can be further used as hydrophilic sorbent material. In this way the papermill sludge's life cycle is efficiently closed.By means of two exemplarily regarded buildings (one family house and one apartment building) with masonry construction, the present article depicts, that future requirements, which will result from national and European legislation, can be realised with constructions of calcium silicate without any technical difficulties. In this context, exterior walls with separated functional layers, which were developed by the German calcium silicate industry turn to be particularly forwardlooking, due to the fact, that a further enhancement of the thermal insulation of such constructions can easily be realised by increasing the thickness of the insulating material. The results of a life-cycle assessment show that higher energy standards of buildings lead to reduced ecological impacts (for example emission of green house gas like CO2) along the whole life cycle of the building compared to lower energy standards due to the high resource efficiency of calcium silicate constructions. In an economical point of view, higher building-energy standards than moderate passive house standard like nearly zero energy standard are not profitable at present if current price levels for building products and energy are considered. This does not result from calcium silicate wall constructions but particular from elaborated building technologies, especially for the generation of energy from renewable resources.Institutional buildings contain different types of functional spaces which require different types of heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. In addition, institutional buildings should be designed to maintain an optimal indoor comfort condition with minimal energy consumption and minimal negative environmental impact. Recently there has been a significant interest in implementing desiccant cooling technologies within institutional buildings. Solar desiccant cooling systems are reliable in performance, environmentally friendly and capable of improving indoor air quality at a lower cost. In this study, a solar desiccant cooling system for an institutional building in subtropical Queensland (Australia) is assessed using TRNSYS 16 software. This system has been designed and installed at the Rockhampton campus of Central Queensland University. The system's technical performance, economic analysis, energy savings, and avoided gas emission are quantified in reference to a conventional HVAC system under the influence of Rockhampton's typical meteorological year. The technical and economic parameters that are used to assess the system's viability are: coefficient of performance (COP), solar fraction, life cycle analysis, payback period, present worth factor and the avoided gas emission. Results showed that, the installed cooling system at Central Queensland University which consists of 10 m(2) of solar collectors and a 0.400 m(3) of hot water storage tank, achieved a 0.7 COP and 22% of solar fraction during the cooling season. These values can be boosted to 1.2 COP and 69% respectively if 20 m(2) of evacuated tube collector's area and 1.5 m(3) of solar hot water storage volume are installed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a decision support tool that can be used to assess the environmental performance of an integrated waste management system or to identify the system with the best performance through a comparative analysis of different scenarios. The results of the analysis depend primarily on how the scenarios to be compared are defined, that is on which waste fractions are assumed to be sent to certain treatments/destinations and in what amounts. This paper reviews LCAs of integrated waste management systems with the aim of exploring how the scenarios to be compared are defined in the preliminary phase of an LCA. This critical review highlighted that various criteria, more or less subjective, are generally used for the definition of scenarios. Furthermore, the number of scenarios identified and compared is generally limited; this may entail that only the best option among a limited set of possibilities can be selected, instead of identifying the best of all possible combinations. As a result, the advisability of identifying an integrated life cycle-based methodological approach that allows finding the most environmentally sound scenario among all of those that are theoretically possible is stressed.In this research article the sustainability of different practices to collect the metal fraction of household waste in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland is examined. The study is carried out by calculating and comparing the greenhouse gas reduction potential of optional practices for collecting the metal fraction of household waste in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. In order to locate the greenhouse gas reduction potential of the separate collection of the metallic fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW) collected from residential sources, a comparative carbon footprint analysis using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on six different waste management scenarios is carried out. The modeled system consisted of a waste collection system, transportation, and different waste management alternatives, including on-site separation, separation at the waste management facility as well as metallurgical recovery of separated scrap. The results show that, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, separate collection and recycling of the metallic fraction of solid MSW at residential properties is the preferable option compared to a scenario with no source sorting and incineration of everything. According to this research scenario where the metal fraction of solid household waste was not source-separated or collected separately have clearly higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to all the other scenarios with separate collection for metals. In addition, metal recycling by regional collection points has considerably lower greenhouse gas emission potential than metal recycling by collection directly from residential properties.Purpose: The objective of this study is to discuss the implications of product loss rates in terms of the environmental performance of bottled wine. Wine loss refers to loss occurring when the consumer does not consume the wine contained in the bottle and disposes of it because of taste alteration, which is caused by inadequate product protection rendering the wine unpalatable to a knowledgeable consumer. The decision of whether or not to drink the wine in such cases is guided by subjective consumer taste perception and wine quality expectation (drinking the bottle or disposing of the wine down the drain and replacing it with a new bottle). This study aims to illustrate the importance of accurately defining system boundaries related to wine packaging systems. Methods: The environmental impacts resulting from wine loss rates as related to two types of wine bottle closures-natural cork stoppers and screw caps-have been estimated based on literature review data and compared to the impact of the respective closure system. The system studied relates to the functional unit "a 750 mL bottle of drinkable wine" and includes bottled wine, bottle and closure production, wine production, wine loss and wine poured down the drain. Results: The range of wine alteration rates due to corked wine is estimated to be 2-5% based on interviews with wine experts. Consumer behavior was assessed through a sensitivity study on replacement rates. When the increase in loss rate with the cork stopper is higher than 1.2% (corresponding to 3.5% corked wine multiplied by a consumer replacement rate of 35%), the influence of losses on the impact results is higher than that of the closure material itself. The different closures and associated wine losses represent less than 5% of the total life cycle impact of bottled wine.The environmental impacts of waste incineration with auxiliary coal were investigated using the life-cycle-based software, EASEWASTE, based on the municipal solid waste (MSW) management system in Shuozhou City. In the current system, MSW is collected, transported, and incinerated with 250 kg of coal per ton of waste. Based on observed environmental impacts of incineration, fossil CO2 and heavy metals were primary contributors to global warming and ecotoxicity in soil, respectively. Compared with incinerators using excess coal, incineration with adequate coal presents significant benefits in mitigating global warming, whereas incineration with a mass of coal can avoid more impacts to acidification, photochemical ozone and nutrient enrichment because of increased electricity substitution and reduced emission from coal power plants. The "Emission standard of air pollutants for thermal power plants (GB13223-2011)" implemented in 2012 introduced stricter policies on controlling SO2 and NOx emissions from coal power plants. Thus, increased use of auxiliary coal during incineration yields fewer avoided impacts on acidification and nutrient enrichment. When two-thirds of ash is source-separated and landfilled, the incineration of rest-waste presents better results on global warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment, and even ecotoxicity in soil. This process is considered a promising solution for MSW management in Shuozhou City. Weighted normalized environmental impacts were assessed based on Chinese political reduction targets. Results indicate that heavy metal and acidic gas emissions should be given more attention in waste incineration. This study provides scientific support for the management of MSW systems dominated by incineration with auxiliary coal in China. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work addresses the optimal design of heat exchanger networks (HENs) considering economic and environmental concerns. The design task is posed in mathematical terms as a multi-objective mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem, in which life cycle assessment (LCA) principles are used to quantify the environmental impact. One of the advantages of our approach is that it accounts for the simultaneous minimization of several environmental metrics, as opposed to other models that focus on minimizing a single aggregated indicator. A rigorous dimensionality reduction method based on a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation is applied to aid the post-optimal analysis of the trade-off solutions. The capabilities of our approach are tested through two examples. We clearly illustrate how the use of a single overall aggregated environmental metric is inadequate in the design of HENs, since it may leave some solutions that are appealing for decision-makers out of the analysis. Our method is aimed at facilitating decision-making at the early stages of the design of HENs. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study evaluated the life-cycle costs and environmental impacts of fuels used in Ghanaian households for cooking. The analysis covered all the common cooking energy sources, namely, firewood, charcoal, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas, electricity and even biogas, whose use is not as widespread as the others. In addition to the usual costing methods, the Environmental Product Strategies approach (EPS) of Steen and co-workers, which is based on the concept of 'willingness-to-pay' for the restoration of degraded systems, is used to monetise the emissions from the cookstoves. The results indicate that firewood, one of the popular woodfuels in Ghana and other developing countries, with an annual environmental damage cost of US$36,497 per household, is more than one order of magnitude less desirable than charcoal, the nearest fuel on the same scale, at US$3120. This method of representing the results of environmental analysis is complementary to the usual gravimetric life-cycle assessment (LCA) representation, and brings home clearly to decision-makers, especially non-LCA practitioners, the significance of environmental analysis results in terms that are familiar to all. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A process integrating the extraction and transesterification of lipid from jatropha kernel powder for the production of biodiesel with methanol assisted by hexane is reported in this paper. The effects of catalyst amount, reaction time, reaction temperature, and siphon tube height on the yield and characteristics of biodiesel were investigated. It was found that hexane played the role of both co-solvent and co-extractant, which enhanced the efficiency of lipid extraction and the formation of a single phase containing methanol and lipid, facilitating mass transfer. Therefore, the reaction system had liquid-flow-solid-catalyzed character. The flow velocity of extraction liquor was controlled to fit for the rate of transesterification via controlling the reaction conditions. The products containing 80.2% fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) were obtained and its high heating value was 37.43 MJ/kg. In this process, the residue of kernel powder, catalyst and products were simultaneously separated. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A rigorous mathematical approach is developed for optimization of sustainable single-effect water/Lithium Bromide (LiBr) absorption cooling cycles. The multi-objective formulation accounts for minimization of the chiller area as well as the environmental impact associated with the operation of the absorption cycle. The environmental impact is quantified based on the global warming potential and the Eco-indicator 99, both of which follow principles of life cycle assessment. The design task is formulated as a bi-criterion non-linear programming problem, the solution of which is defined by a set of Pareto points that represent the optimal compromise between the total area of the chiller and global warming potential. These Pareto sets are obtained via the epsilon constraint method. A set of design alternatives are provided for the absorption cycles rather than a single design; the best design can be chosen from this set based on the major constraints and benefits in a given application. The proposed approach is illustrated design of a typical absorption cooling cycle. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the most discussed topics worldwide is climate change, upon which livestock production is known to have a great environmental impact. There are different methods to measure these environmental impacts, some of which are mentioned in this review. It especially focuses on the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), because it is widely used, of high relevance and good quality. This review highlights a sample of the few published European LCA studies on pork production. These assessments result in an average global warming potential of 3.6 kg CO2- eq per kg pork, ranging from 2.6 to 6.3 kg CO2- eq per kg pork. Additionally, it illustrates the main limitations of the methodology itself (e.g. data intensiveness, different allocation techniques) and its application in pork production (e.g. limited data availability, use of multiple functional units, varying system boundaries). The missing comparability of various studies arising from a vague standard still represents the main problem in LCA. Therefore, a new standardisation and the development of a more exhaustive database would generate a future trend. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.From the perspective of life cycle assessment (LCA), the development, construction, and operation of all kinds of new energy power generation technologies release greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This sparks concerns about the low carbon nature of the new energy power generation technologies. Based on national and international literature review, this paper estimates and compares the GHG emission factors of traditional thermal power generation and new energy power generation technologies in China with the LCA approach. The GHG mitigation potential of new energy power generation technologies as substitution for traditional thermal power generation in China was evaluated, according to the objectives of new energy power generation of the national development planning. The results show that the GHG emission factors of new energy power generation are much lower than that of traditional thermal power generation even with LCA accounting, and the GHG mitigation potential of new energy substitution is huge.At present, most synthetic organic materials are produced from fossil carbon feedstock that is regenerated over time scales of millions of years. Biobased alternatives can be rapidly renewed in cradle-to-cradle cycles (1-10 years). Such materials extend landfill life and decrease undesirable impacts due to material persistence. This work develops a LCA for synthesis of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) from methane with subsequent biodegradation of PHB back to biogas (40-70% methane, 30-60% carbon dioxide). The parameters for this cradle-to-cradle cycle for PHB production are developed and used as the basis for a cradle-to-gate LCA. PHB production from biogas methane is shown to be preferable to its production from cultivated feedstock due to the energy and land required for the feedstock cultivation and fermentation. For the PHB-methane cycle, the major challenges are PHB recovery and demands for energy. Some or all of the energy requirements can be satisfied using renewable energy, such as a portion of the collected biogas methane. Oxidation of 18-26% of the methane in a biogas stream can meet the energy demands for aeration and agitation, and recovery of PHB synthesized from the remaining 74-82%. Effective coupling of waste-to-energy conceivably enable PHB production without imported carbon and energy. technologiesRegulations monitoring SO2, NO mercury, and other metal emissions in the U.S. will likely result in coal plant retirement in the near-term. Life cycle assessment studies have previously estimated the environmental benefits of displacing coal with natural gas for electricity generation, by comparing systems that consist of individual natural gas and coal power plants. However, such system comparisons may not be appropriate to analyze impacts of coal plant retirement in existing power fleets. To meet this limitation, simplified economic dispatch models for PJM, MISO, and ERCOT regions are developed in this study to examine changes in regional power plant dispatch that occur when coal power plants are retired. These models estimate the order in which existing power plants are dispatched to meet electricity demand based on short-run marginal costs, with cheaper plants being dispatched first. Five scenarios of coal plant retirement are considered: retiring top CO2 emitters, top NOx emitters, top SO2 emitters, small and inefficient plants, and old and inefficient plants. Changes in fuel use, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions (including uncertainty), and SO2 and NOx emissions are estimated. Life cycle GHG emissions were found to decrease by less than 4% in almost all scenarios modeled. In addition, changes in marginal damage costs due to SO2, and NOx, emissions are estimated using the county level marginal damage costs reported in the Air Pollution Emissions Experiments and Policy (APEEP) model, which are a proxy for measuring regional impacts of SO2 and NOx emissions. Results suggest that location specific parameters should be considered within environmental policy frameworks targeting coal plant retirement, to account for regional variability in the benefits of reducing the impact of SO2 and NOx emissions.Crop and technology choices in agriculture, which largely define the impact of agricultural production on the environment, should be considered in agricultural development planning. A life cycle assessment of the dominant crops produced in a Peruvian coastal valley was realized, in order to establish regionalized life cycle inventories for Peruvian products and to provide the basis for a regional evaluation of the impacts of eutrophication, acidification, human toxicity, and biodiversity loss due to water use. Five scenarios for the year 2020 characterized by different crop combinations and irrigation systems were considered as development options. The results of the regional assessment showed that a business-as-usual scenario, extrapolating current trends of crop cultivation, would lead to an increase in nitrate leaching with eutrophying effects. On the other hand, scenarios of increased application of drip irrigation and of mandarin area expansion would lead to a decrease in nitrate leaching. In all scenarios the human toxicity potential would decrease slightly, while an increase in irrigation water use would benefit the biodiversity of a nearby groundwater-fed wetland. Comparisons with results from other studies confirmed the importance of regionalized life cycle inventories. The results can be used as decision support for local farmers and authorities.Copper is one of the main constituents of the components in power transformers and its presence both in liquid (mineral oil) and in solid (Kraft paper) insulators can lead to enhanced dielectric losses and to the subsequent deterioration of their insulating properties. Recently the latter have been correlated to plant failures which in turn may have severe impact on the environment. This paper describes the direct analysis of copper in insulating mineral oil by ICP-OES and how it was first optimized compared to the official American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) D7151 method. Detection and quantification limits of 8.8 mu g kg(-1) and 29.3 mu g kg(-1) were obtained. Secondly, copper determination was improved by coupling a microwave assisted dissolution procedure of the mineral oil which avoided the problems, in the real samples, due to the presence of solid species of copper which cannot be nebulized following traditional methods described in literature. Sixteen mineral insulating oils sampled from transformers in service were analyzed before and after dissolution. In order to evaluate copper speciation, size fractionation was performed by filtration on PTFE filters (0.45, 1 and 5 mu m). This test was performed on all the oil samples. Finally, because of the key role of the solid insulator in failed transformers, the Authors applied the developed method to study the copper deposition tendency onto the insulating Kraft paper tapes exerted by two unused oils (a corrosive and a non-corrosive one) under defined ageing conditions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The integrated study of energy and urban systems has recently become a critical component of sustainability research and policy. Increasing urbanization of human societies combined with intense energy demands of modern economies have driven a recognition that sustainable practices require a systems approach to both the study and application of sustainability principles. Urban metabolism has emerged as a leading methodology for quantifying energy consumption and use patterns in urban environments. Though typically applied as a method of accounting for total energy and materials inputs and outputs into cities, its interdisciplinary history and methods allow urban metabolism to be expanded in ways that will allow more comprehensive and integrated assessment of the patterns and processes of urban energy systems. In this article, we review the concept of urban metabolism-including its two typical approaches: mass balance and "emergy" methods-and offer a means to expand urban metabolism into a platform that incorporates socioeconomic analysis, policy analysis, and additional quantitative methodologies (such as life cycle assessment). This expanded urban metabolism framework is more comprehensive analytically and builds upon the documented capacity of traditional urban metabolism to account for total energy and materials flows of cities to provide an integrated platform for analysis of both energy patterns and the causal processes that govern energy in contemporary cities. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Oysters represent a substantial fraction of the world's overall intensive aquaculture production. In Brazil, oyster aquaculture is still in the deployment phase but has the potential for growth and, likewise other aquaculture products, generate environmental impacts over their life cycle. Special attention should be devoted to the disposal or processing of the oyster shells, whose high calcium carbonate content (80-95%) gives them the potential for use as raw material for several other products. The objective of this study was to conduct a cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of 1 kg of oysters produced in southern Brazil, incorporating the recycling of the oyster shells on the LCA. Two scenarios were considered. The first scenario (termed scenario A) assumed that the oyster shells were deposited in a landfill, whereas the second scenario (scenario B) assumed that the shells were processed to make them available as raw material as a source of CaCO3. We used Eco-indicator 99 H/A to perform the impact assessment. Scenario A had an overall impact of 93.71 mPt, whereas scenario B had an overall impact of 58.97 mPt. The latter scenario had lower environmental impacts, however they were depended strongly on the distance between the source of the shells (restaurant) and the shell-processing facility. This distance must not be greater than 323 km to yield overall environmental benefits. Moreover, it is hypothesized that the environmental benefits would be even higher than predicted because there is no evidence that all post-consumer shell residues would receive proper waste management, as assumed for scenario A (landfill). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To understand the long-term energy and climate implications of different implementation strategies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the US coal-fired electricity fleet, we integrate three analytical elements: scenario projection of energy supply systems, temporally explicit life cycle modeling, and time-dependent calculation of radiative forcing. Assuming continued large-scale use of coal for electricity generation, we find that aggressive implementation of CCS could reduce cumulative greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, CH4, and N2O) from the US coal-fired power fleet through 2100 by 37-58%. Cumulative radiative forcing through 2100 would be reduced by only 24-46%, due to the front-loaded time profile of the emissions and the long atmospheric residence time of CO2. The efficiency of energy conversion and carbon capture technologies strongly affects the amount of primary energy used but has little effect on greenhouse gas emissions or radiative forcing. Delaying implementation of CCS deployment significantly increases long-term radiative forcing. This study highlights the time-dynamic nature of potential climate benefits and energy costs of different CCS deployment pathways and identifies opportunities and constraints of successful CCS implementation.With growing calls for changes in the field of risk assessment, improved systematic approaches for addressing environmental issues with greater transparency and stakeholder engagement are needed to ensure sustainable trade-offs. Here we describe the comprehensive environmental assessment (CEA) approach as a holistic way to manage complex information and to structure input from diverse stakeholder perspectives to support environmental decision-making for the near- and long-term. We further note how CEA builds upon and incorporates other available tools and approaches, describe its current application at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and point out how it could be extended in evaluating a major issue such as the sustainability of biofuels.While source separation of waste packaging materials for recycling is well established in several metropolitan areas, the collection of food waste from the households is less widespread because of its more difficult implementation. Source segregation of food waste in densely populated areas is raising new interest, as the availability of biogas following its anaerobic digestion (AD) paves the road to a number of possibilities, from electric energy production to its upgrading to biomethane and subsequent feeding in to the natural gas network or in vehicles as a fuel. The study addresses this waste management option by analysing a real metropolitan situation where food waste currently ends up mixed with the residual waste in a waste-to-energy plant (WTE). We assume to establish a new collection scheme for household food waste, followed by its treatment in a new AD and post-composting facility. A comparative life cycle assessment was carried out, where possible synergies between the existing WTE plant and the new one were evaluated. All new scenarios based on AD attained similar or better results compared with the reference scenario for almost all of the impact indicators. The most robust indication is related to global warming potential, with a potential improvement of up to 37%. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to assess the effect of the variation of the most relevant parameters. Results have proven to be very sensible to the hypothesis on the type of substituted electric energy. All the other examined sensitivities resulted in variations well below 10%.Jatropha curcas has been widely considered as a potential feedstock for production of biodiesel in several tropical countries. Globally biodiesel is gaining importance because of its environmental advantages. This paper deals with the energy consumption for the biodiesel production from J. curcas. Two plantation models of Jatropha, perennial and annual harvesting and their energy benefits are considered. In perennial plantation, the biodiesel yield is more than the annual harvesting. On the other hand, overall energy output from the annual harvesting system is almost twice than that of perennial system. The energy benefits of Jatropha cultivation on two different types of soil (poor and normal soils) were evaluated with and without irrigation. The energy balance is also calculated on the basis of rainfall and different water level depth. The study estimated the net energy balance and net energy ratio for both the models and found that the energy values were high for both the systems. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4754156]Biomass represents both the dominant source of feedstock for biotechnological processes and the renewable foreseeable sustainable source of organic fuels, chemicals, and other materials. In particular, woody biomass is one of the most efficient sources for renewable energy on a large scale. Converting biomass to fuels, pulp and paper, chemicals, power, and/or feed is essential to be analyzed in terms of economic viability, as well as environmental friendliness. The benefits of using biomass as feedstock for bioenergy may include: the reduction of the use of non-renewable fuels, less dependence on foreign fuels, stabilization of income in rural areas, and reduced carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Taking into account the current data in the literature and some Romanian practices, an analysis was developed considering woody biomass use. The paper discusses some stages of the biomass life cycle: extraction of forestry biomass transport biomass valorization. The way-the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was further applied to assess the environmental impacts associated with the production of electricity and biofuels, starting from resource extraction until the end-of-life, is addressed. LCA has been discussed in relation to the estimation of biomass distribution on the land together with an evaluation of different chains, including harvesting, biomass transport, and final utilization through combustion and biorefining. System boundaries address cradle-to-gate, gate-to-gate and cradle-to-grave approaches. The results of the analysis based on LCA allowed for the identification of some environmental indicators that make sustainability criteria measurable, and also the assessment of the potential for sustainable valorization of biomass, together with benefits and drawbacks from the economic, environmental and managerial points of view. The most relevant indicator analyzed was the climate change potential, in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It was found that woody biomass can often be associated with positive environmental impacts, since CO2 emissions have biogenic character.The purpose of this LCA study is to analyze the evolution of environmental impact of management system of MSW Iasi between 2011 - 2038, by comparison of some evolutionary scenarios that take into account the increase in waste collected and used by recycling and composting and some alternative scenarios for waste treatment by switching from landfilling to energy recovery by incineration. The functional unit of the study is a tone of waste for comparisons of units, or total MSW generated in the year of scenario and processed in the waste management system. The system begins with the collection of MSW in the housing areas of the city and includes transport of waste, different methods for their treatment (landfilling, recycling, composting and incineration). System boundaries are finished when the waste is finally disposed whether by landfilling or incineration. Life cycles of secondary products are not considered in this system. LCIA (Life Cycle Inventory Analysis) data for this study were collected from Waste Management Strategy in Iasi (Iasi County Council, 2009), Master plan of waste management in the county of Iasi (Romair Consulting LTD, 2006).Environmentally sound technologies are a key to reduce resource use and environmental impact. The paper reviews the state of knowledge of an analysis tool, life cycle assessment (LCA), by addressing three issues: 1) methodological foundations of LCA, 2) lifecycle inventory modeling, and 3) environmental performance indicators for wood supply systems. The study results in the following findings: 1) LCA is still not widely used and accepted in the forest operations engineering. 2) Only a few studies are based on state-of-the-art life cycle inventory analysis. 3) The boundaries of the studied systems are often too narrow, limiting comparability with standard LCA studies. 4) Most forest-related studies are based on direct process energy input only and are neglecting environmental burdens of upstream processes. 5) "Truncated LCAs", neglecting embodied burdens of road infrastructure and forest machines always result in an underestimation of environmental impacts or an overestimation of environmental performance, respectively. There is a need for LCA capacity building in the forest operations community, on the basis of which forest-related LCA studies should become more comprehensive and comparable with studies of the core LCA community.Herein is reported development and testing of a life cycle analysis (LCA) procedure for assessing the environmental impact of induction motors. The operating conditions of a given industrial application are defined by the mechanical power required, operating hours and service life of the three-phase induction motor involved. Based on manufacturer's data mainly, different three-phase induction motors for various sets of operating conditions, including oversizing, have been selected. To quantify the environmental impact of each motor, the Methodology for the Ecodesign of Energy Using Products (MEEUP) was applied, according to the quantity of each of the motor's main constituent materials used in the production phase, and to the two operating variables that directly influence the LCA results: output power and efficiency. The procedure was applied to different three-phase induction motors representing two efficiency categories (IE1 and IE2) and considering different oversizing possibilities. The total environmental impact of each motor was determined based on the production, service life and end-of-life phases. The best motor option was identified for different operating conditions. Given the potential for energy savings in electric motors, LCA-based environmental impact assessment should be performed when different motors are being evaluated for a given industrial application.Purpose The critically discussed effects on biodiversity due to the intensive cultivation of energy crops are largely lacking in the LCAs of biofuels due to basic methodological deficits. This was the starting point to develop a new methodology for impact assessment on biodiversity. The central research question to be clarified was: how can the spatial references, which are necessary for the assessment of biodiversity, be included in the usually spatially unspecific LCA. Methods Prevalent methods for both LCA and environmental planning were investigated with regard to interfaces and integration capabilities as well as differences. Drawing on this analysis a theoretical and methodological approach was developed which integrates the spatially specific procedure of environmental planning into the product-specific approach of the LCA. The available geo-data and statistical data base for the assessment was examined for Germany and the method adapted to the data situation in Germany. Results and discussion The resulting methodological approach is explained and tested. It is compatible with LCA principles and leads to product-specific quantitative results. The method can be applied on a higher geographic level (Germany) but, nevertheless, makes reference to spatial characteristics of biodiversity on different scales. This is achieved by combining area specific data about biodiversity with statistical data about pressure factors on the regional level. The procedure is demonstrated by the example of bio-ethanol from wheat. An overall view of the various indicators yields a "Biodiversity profile" for the considered fuel and a specific bio-fuel target. This approach leads the way for an integration of spatial knowledge about biodiversity into the spatially non-specific LCA.Worldwide concern on the negative effect of climate change towards human and environment has synergized the development of CO2 capture technologies. Currently, culturing of microalgae for CO2 bio-fixation has gained a huge momentum due to their high photosynthetic rate that allows bio-fixation of CO2 more efficient than terrestrial plants. In addition, lipid from microalgae biomass can be converted to biodiesel; a renewable fuel that emits less CO2 compared to fossil-diesel when combusted. However, several recent life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have revealed that enormous energy input is required to cultivate microalgae and also for the harvesting and drying processes. The energy required (in the form of electricity) is normally generated from burning coal or natural gas that emits substantial amount of CO2 to the atmosphere and this could entirely eliminate all the positive effect of culturing microalgae for CO2 bio-fixation and biofuel production. Thus, in this review, critical assessment and comparative study of CO2 bio-fixation rate by microalgae and CO2 emission rate during cultivation and processing of microalgae biodiesel were carried out. In addition, the prospects and limitations of using flue gas to culture microalgae and several possible strategies to enhance CO2 utilization by microalgae will also be discussed extensively. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Spanish turbot aquaculture sector holds a top position in the international market. This activity is mainly developed along the Galician coast (NW Spain). This article evaluates the environmental performance of Galician turbot aquaculture according to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Previously, on account of the expected relevance of feed for aquaculture, marine aquafeed production was assessed from an LCA perspective. Environmental characterization results for marine feed production led to identify aquafeed formulation as the focus for improvement actions. Furthermore, the environmental profile of feed for continental aquaculture was estimated and compared to that of marine aquafeed. The LCA of marine aquafeed was then implemented into the case study of Galician turbot aquaculture. Electricity use in hatching facilities arose as the main hot spot, ahead of aquafeed and diesel use in ongrowing plants. LCA proved to he a useful tool to provide chain transparency and accountability throughout these case studies.Background: Climate change is a significant global health threat requiring concerted action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This study provides the first systematic attempt to quantify the carbon emissions of a national dental service. Methods: Carbon accounting combined a top-down approach using input-output analysis for indirect emissions (procurement) and a process analysis (bottom-up) approach for direct emissions (building energy, travel, waste and water). Energy and water consumption were based on meter readings, waste-related emissions from collection contracts and travel from staff and patient questionnaires. Dental companies were approached for carbon footprint data on their products. Results: The carbon footprint for the service was 1798.9 tonnes CO(2)eq per annum. Travel was the greatest source (45.1%) followed by procurement (35.9%) and building energy (18.3%). Perhaps counter-intuitively older clinics had lower footprints than newer clinics as they are less energy intensive. Extrapolating the data suggests that Scotland's NHS dental service annually generates 0.16 mega tonne (Mt) CO(2)eq (4%) of the total Scottish NHS carbon footprint. Conclusions: The lack of comprehensive data reduces the ability to effectively manage emissions. Consideration needs to be given to the impact of patient travel, staff travel and new clinic construction on the carbon footprint. Medical suppliers are encouraged to provide life cycle analysis (LCA) for dental products. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Royal Society for Public Health. All rights reserved.This paper presents a study of the economic and environmental balances for Electric Vehicles (EVs) versus Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (ICEV). The analyses were based on the Well-to-Wheel (WTW) methodology, a specific type of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). WTW balances were carried out taking into account different scenarios for the primary energy supply and different vehicle technologies. The primary energy supply includes non-renewable sources (fossil fuels and nuclear) and Renewable Energy Source (RES). Vehicle technologies include Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV). The generation scenarios considered in the study include the present European Union (EU) average mix and a planned increasing contribution from RESs. For the BEV, several real world driving cycle scenarios were investigated, using a custom built data acquisition system, in order to characterize the main factors that contribute to the overall energy consumption, associated cost and emissions. In terms of environmental impact, for the average EU electricity mix, BEVs have less than a half of the emissions than an ICEV. However, the ownership costs during its life cycle (about 10 y) are similar to an equivalent ICEV, despite the lower operational costs for BEVs. The likely battery price reduction, leading to a lower investment cost, will gradually tip the balance in favour of EVs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although the life cycle environmental impacts of biofuels have been recently reported, studies that focus on specific regions and use real fleet data for the use phase are still lacking. In Pennsylvania, the Penn Security Fuels Initiative required 2% biodiesel (B2), effective on January 1, 2010, with higher blending levels required in the future if production thresholds are met. This study quantifies the environmental impacts of biodiesel blends to meet increasing regional biodiesel demand. A process life cycle model was developed using data collected from collaboration with Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. For PennDOT, both in-state and out-of-state production scenarios were analyzed to estimate the possible environmental impacts of biodiesel blends. The results show that fertilizer usage in the agricultural phase, soy oil extraction and refining, feedstock and fuel transportation, and fuel combustion in the use phase are main contributors to biodiesel's life cycle environmental impacts for all blends. Comparing biodiesels with ultra low sulfur diesel, significant environmental tradeoffs exist between global warming potential and eutrophication. For Pennsylvania, an in-state farming and processing preference has the lowest environmental impacts for B5. However, the limited area of farmlands in Pennsylvania may not satisfy the state's biodiesel needs with higher blending levels. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Successfully developing and manufacturing industrial products requires considering the economic- and environmental-factors that span multiple spatial- and temporal-scales. Here, we propose an integrated approach combining an energy-economic model with a life-cycle assessment to analyze the impacts of energy policies on the dynamic changes in the various environmental impacts of a product system. We employ the Market Allocation (MARKAL) framework to foresee the changes in several economic- and technological-parameters over specific periods for different energy policies. Furthermore, we create a dynamic life-cycle inventory database to assess the changes in the future life-cycle environmental impact of a current product/process system. Our proposed method may guide industry to proactively prepare for the possible effects of different energy policies on their current product/process system's environmental profile so that they can make strategic decisions on modifications to, and investments in their production processes thereby to enhance their environmental- and economic-performance while meeting the various emission-abatement targets. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims at reviewing the life cycle assessment (LCA) literature on second generation bioethanol based on lignocellulosic biomass and at identifying issues to be resolved for good LCA practice. Reviews are carried out on respective LCA studies published over the last six years. We use the classification of lignocellulosic biomass to define system boundaries, so that the comparison among LCA results can be thoroughly assessed based on identified system components. A basis for attributing environmental burden for different biomass feedstocks is also suggested. Despite the non-homogeneous systems, we conclude that second generation bioethanol performs better than fossil fuel at least for the two most studied impact categories, net energy output and global warming. For the latter category, carbon sequestration at the biomass generation stage can even consistently offset the GHG emissions from all parts of the life cycle chains at high ethanol percentage ( >= 85%). The aspect of biogenic carbon and agrochemical input for energy crops and biomass residues, and the effect of removal of the latter from soil have not been treated consistently. In contrast, the exclusion of upstream chain of biomass waste feedstocks is observed in practice. The bioethanol conversion process is mostly based on simultaneous saccharification and co-fermentation, characterized by high yield and low energy input. In this regard, the LCA results tend to under estimate the real impacts of the current technology. The choice of allocation methods strongly influences the final results, particularly when economic value is used as a reference. Substitution of avoided burden seems to be the most popular allocation method in practice, followed by partition based on mass, energy, and economic values. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An advanced exergoenvironmental analysis combines an advanced exergetic analysis with a life cycle assessment. This allows the environmental impacts of an energy conversion system to be split into avoidable/unavoidable and endogenous/exogenous parts, revealing improvement potential and component interactions. This paper presents the application of an advanced exergoenvironmental analysis to a combined-cycle power plant based on results obtained by a life cycle assessment and a conventional exergoenvironmental analysis. The results are discussed, while possible improvements for reducing the environmental impacts are noted. Due to its dominant role with respect to exergy destruction, the combustion chamber causes most of the environmental impact within the plant, 68% of which is found to be unavoidable. Evaluating the overall structure, we find that for the majority of the components, most of the environmental impact is unavoidable, a fact that limits the potential for improvement of the plant considerably. We also find that most of the environmental impact of the plant is endogenous, i.e., component interactions are of lower significance. In total, the plant can potentially be improved by enhancing the performance of the combustion chamber, the expander, the compressor and the low-pressure steam turbine. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial Symbiosis entails the transformation of linear industrial processes into closed loop systems: matter and energy flows that were wastes become resources for other processes (by-products), resulting in a reduction of both natural resources consumption and waste production. Thermoeconomics has two key advantages as analysis method for Industrial Symbiosis: it provides a systemic and rigorous framework and, due to the use of exergy for flow quantification, streams of different nature are measured in the same unit. The goal of the paper is to analyze in depth the process of exergy cost formation of flows within a system, which change when it is integrated with other systems, by using two complimentary approaches. First, a strategy based on irreversibility of the different components and effects of waste internalization already developed is applied for the first time to an example of Industrial Symbiosis. Second, a new method tracing the origin of the different resources consumed by the system is developed. This approach is very interesting for Industrial Symbiosis examples, characterized by a diversity of resources. A system composed of a coal-fired power plant, a cement kiln and a gas-fired boiler operating in isolated and integrated fashion is analyzed by using both presented approaches. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of exergetic and environmental analysis of a typical pulverized coal power plant located in Brazil. The goal was to quantify both the exergy destruction and the environmental impact associated with a thermal power plant. The problem boundary consists of the entire coal delivery route, including mining and beneficiation, transport, pre-burning processes and the power plant. The used data were obtained mainly from field measurements taken in all system processes, from mining to the power plant. The study focused only on the operation period. Previous works have shown that the construction and decommissioning periods contribute less than 1% of the environmental impact. The exergetic analysis was based on the second law of thermodynamics while the environmental analysis was based on life cycle assessment (LCA) using SimaPro 7.2, focussing on the climate change and acidification impact categories. The CO2-eq emission was 1300 kg per MWh. The highest degree of environmental impact occurred during the combustion process. The exergetic and environmental analysis provides a tool to evaluate irreversibilities and the environmental impact, identifying the most significant stages and equipment of the entire power generation process. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A thermoeconomic analysis has been applied to the annual operation of a micro-cogeneration installation in a tertiary sector building combining the capabilities of dynamic simulation with the thermoeconomic analysis. The SenerTec's DACHS micro-cogeneration unit is considered integrated in a heating and domestic hot water installation, meeting the electric and thermal loads of a residential building. A six minute-based exergy analysis has been implemented in the TRNSYS v.16 thermal simulation software, while the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) has been developed to determine the cumulative exergy consumption of the different components of the plant. The thermoeconomic analysis of the micro-CHP installation is performed for its annual operation which includes the analysis of the entire system, considering the costs and exergy content of both flows and components. The relationship between the annual contribution to the costs of the components and the energy consumption has resulted equal to 34.2%. A combined production cost value has been defined and has been compared with the micro-CHP unit and the conventional production system, being 34.6 and 45.42 c(sic)/kWh(ex) respectively, underlying the opportunity that micro-CHP units provide in residential installations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The thermochemical production of hydrogen from lignocellulosic biomass is systematically analyzed by developing thermo-environomic models combining thermodynamics with economic analysis, process integration techniques and optimization strategies for the conceptual process design. H-2 is produced by biomass gasification and subsequent gas treatment, followed by H-2 purification via CO2 removal. It is shown how the overall efficiency is improved by considering process integration and computing the optimal integration of combined heat and power production. In the conversion process, electricity can be generated in steam and gas turbine cycles using the combustion of the off-gases and recovering available process heat. Additional electricity can be produced by burning part of the H-2-rich intermediate or of the purified H-2 product. The trade-off between H-2 and electricity co-production and H-2 or,electricity only generation is assessed with regard to energy, economic and environmental considerations. Based on multi-objective optimization, the most promising options for the polygeneration of hydrogen, power and heat are identified with regard to different process configurations. The best compromise between efficiency, H-2 and/or electricity production cost and CO2 capture is identified. Biomass based H-2 and electricity reveal to be a competitive alternative in a future sustainable energy system. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the significant growth in the number of published life-cycle assessments of biofuels, important aspects have not captured sufficient attention, namely soil carbon emissions from land use change (LUC) and uncertainty analysis. The main goal of this article is to evaluate the implications of different LUC scenarios and uncertainty in the life-cycle energy renewability efficiency and GHG (greenhouse gases) intensity of wheat-based bioethanol replacing gasoline. A comprehensive assessment of different LUC scenarios (grassland or cropland converted to wheat cultivation) and agricultural practices is conducted, which results in different carbon stock change values. The types of uncertainty addressed include parameter uncertainty (propagated into LC (life-cycle) results using Monte-Carlo simulation) and uncertainty concerning how bioethanol co-product credits are accounted for. Results show that GHG emissions have considerably higher uncertainty than energy efficiency values, mainly due to soil carbon emissions from direct LUC and N2O release from cultivated soil. Moreover, LUC dominates the GHG intensity of bioethanol. Very different GHG emissions are calculated depending on the LUC scenario considered. Conversion of full- or low-tillage croplands to wheat cultivation results in bioethanol GHG emissions lower than gasoline emissions, whereas conversion of grassland does not contribute to bioethanol GHG savings over gasoline in the short- to mid-term. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study uses a hybrid Life Cycle Assessment approach to evaluate the environmental impacts of large-scale deployment of Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) in coal and natural gas based electricity generation, based on IEA scenarios. For the Baseline scenario, all impact categories would increase 2-3-fold in 2050 from 2005 levels. Green House Gas (GHG) emissions are found to decrease by similar to 40% in ACTmap scenario and by similar to 75% in more CCS-intensive BLUEmap scenario. These climate mitigation scenarios also show significantly reduced impacts of acidification, particulate matter formation and human toxicity, suggesting the existence of co-benefits. For eutrophication, all scenarios indicate substantial increases, but the increases are largest in the Baseline scenario. For photochemical oxidant formation, only the mitigation scenarios manage to stabilize this impact from fossil fuel based power production. This study does not assess the impact of alternative power generation or energy efficiency technology that replaces part of the fossil fuel power in the mitigation scenarios. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) for the cogeneration of electricity and district heating is expected to be important in the future. The criteria to be accounted for in the energy conversion system design are the economic profitability, the thermodynamic efficiency in the usage of the resource, and the generated life-cycle environmental impacts, which are as well a key point for the public acceptance of geothermal energy. This paper presents a systematic methodology for the optimal design and configuration of geothermal systems considering environomic criteria. Process design and process integration techniques are used in combination with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and multi-objective optimization techniques, using a multi-period strategy to account for the seasonal variations in the district heating demand. It is illustrated by an application to the future EGS construction for cogeneration in the context of Switzerland. Different conversion cycles are considered: single and double-flash systems, organic Rankine cycles (ORC), and Kalina cycles. The optimal configuration is determined at each construction depth for the EGS from 3000 down to 10,000 m and at each district heating network installed capacity from 0 to 60 MWth. Results show that in the shallowest range of depths (3500-6000 m), the optimal configurations for all considered performance indicators are EGS between 5500 and 6000 m with a Kalina cycle for cogeneration, and a district heating network with an installed capacity between 20 and 35 MWth. In the deepest range (7500-9500 m), when compared with the single electricity production, the cogeneration of district heating is less favorable from an economic and exergetic perspective (11% and 17% of relative penalty, respectively, for a district heating network with an installed capacity of 60 MWth) but more favorable in terms of environmental performance (37% of relative improvement for avoided CO2 emissions). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper discusses the effectiveness of a woody biomass utilization system that would result in increased net energy production through wood pellet production, along with energy recovery processes as they relate to household energy demand. The direct environmental load of the system, including wood pellet production and utilization processes, was evaluated. Furthermore, the indirect load, including the economic impact of converting the existing fossil-fuel-based energy system into a woody biomass-based system, on the entire society was also evaluated. Gifu Prefecture in japan was selected for a case study, which included a comparative evaluation of the environmental load and costs both with and without coordination with the wood pellet production process and the waste-to-energy of municipal solid waste process, using the life cycle assessment methodology. If the release of greenhouse gases from the combustion of wood pellets is included in calculations, then burning wood pellets results in unfavorable environmental consequences. However, when the reduced indirect environmental load due to the utilization of wood pellets versus petroleum is included in calculations, then favorable environmental consequences result, with a net reduction of greenhouse gases emissions by 14,060 ton-CO2eq. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was conducted out to estimate the environmental impact of three coal-based electricity generation scenarios commonly used or encouraged in China, namely, sub-critical technology (300 MW), supercritical technology (600 MW), and ultra-supercritical technology (1000 MW). Compared with other scenarios, the ultra-supercritical technology accounted for significantly environmental benefits in most categories, except in the natural land occupation category because of the landfill disposal of coal ash. Optimizing net coal consumption efficiency, reusing coal ash as building material, increasing desulfurization and denitrization system efficiency, and decreasing the road transport distance from coal buyer to supplier are key factors in reducing the overall environmental impact of electricity generation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential role of bioenergy in the future energy mix and the performance of bioenergy conversion and use is a controversial issue. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the key tool to assess the performance and impacts of bioenergy systems and services. As a fairly complex and costly tool, LCAs are rarely applied on small-scale rural settings, which at the same time make up for the largest share of global bioenergy demand. This study proposes an analytical model for rural energy service pathways (RESPs), which supports a simplified and manageable small-scale bioenergy planning by comparing energy and cost efficiencies as well as by pre-assessing possible livelihood impacts of rural energy service pathways for lighting, cooking and mechanical power. The model has been applied on a case study on the Indonesian island Sumbawa that uses the oil bearing scrub Jatropha curcas L to provide rural energy services. Results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses are combined to evaluate different energy service pathways. Results show strong differences for the investigated service pathways. Cooking with plant oil or biogas cannot compete with firewood from the energy and cost analysis while the negative health impact of particulate matter support liquid and gaseous fuels as long as no low-emission wood stoves are available. Lighting with plant oil or biogas is not supported by both the quantitative and qualitative analyses. The provision of mechanical power shows the greatest potential if the technical service pathways can be further optimised and the institutional challenges can be solved. (C) 2012 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Large-scale (6000?cm2) dye solar cell modules were developed using a meander and integrated series connection design in combination with a glass frit-sealing technique. The manufacturing process, as developed at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) for glass frit-sealed dye solar cell modules, is based entirely on screen printing and does not require the interconnection of sub-modules. With the same technique and appropriate quality control, a good reproducibility on smaller-scaled modules (10?x?10?cm2) is already achieved and a solar efficiency of 7.1% on the active area has been reached, resulting in 5.3% efficiency on total aperture area. The scope of the recent work is to prove that the manufacturing concept is up-scalable to attractive areas for the building-integrated photovoltaic market. For the size of 60?x?100?cm2 to be reached, it was necessary to transfer each process step into an industrial environment. Additionally, a half-automated station for coloring and electrolyte filling made out of standard parts was constructed, which forms the basis for the final processing steps. Additional functions (processes and quality control) to ensure the long-term stability are integrated into the station. First operating module prototypes have been manufactured with this equipment. Different processing steps and the electrical characterization of these first 60?x?100?cm2 prototypes are presented along with an overview of the advantages of this module concept in terms of cost effective up-scaling and transfer to industrial production. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The transition to a sustainable energy system now seems to be inevitable. The role of renewable energy sources in this mutation will be crucial. Amongst these, photovoltaic electricity has recently grown due to strong national policy support. Indeed, it appears as a good solution to substitute conventional fossil fuel, especially in the AsiaPacific region where reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a real challenge. This paper aims to review public support for photovoltaic energy by focusing on the policies of three emblematic developed countries of the AsiaPacific region: Australia, Japan and Korea. The efficiency of these different policies is assessed by comparing their estimated total costs. These costs can have different origins: market incentives, demonstration programs and subsidies for research and development (R&D). The public investment was compared with installed capacities in order to evaluate the efficiency of the energy strategy. The point made by this study is that a well-planned policy limiting unwanted side effects should be preferred. Even if expensive in the short term, innovative technologies are beneficial in the longer term, and thus R&D subsidies should be maintained. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.If the current energy policy priorities are retained, there may be no need to focus additionally on carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the power plant sector of Germany. This applies even in the case of ambitious climate protection targets, according to the results of the presented integrated assessment study. These cover a variety of aspects: Firstly, the technology is not expected to become available on a large scale in Germany before 2025. Secondly, if renewable energies and combined heat and power are expanded further and energy productivity is enhanced, there is likely to be only a limited demand for CCS power plants, as a scenario analysis of CCS deployment in Germany shows. Thirdly, cost analysis using the learning curve approach shows that the electricity generation costs of renewable electricity approach those of CCS power plants. This leads to the consequence that, from 2020, several renewable technologies may well be in a position to offer electricity at a cheaper rate than CCS power plants. In addition, a review of new life cycle assessments for CO2 separation in the power plant sector indicates that the greenhouse gas emissions from 1 kW h of electricity generated by first-generation CCS power plants could only be reduced by 68% to 87% (95% in individual cases). Finally, a cautious, conservative estimate of the effective German CO2 storage capacity of approximately 5 billion tonnes of CO2 is calculated, including a fluctuation range yielding values between 4 and 15 billion tonnes of CO2. Therefore, the total CO2 emissions caused by large point sources in Germany could be stored for 12 years (basic value) or for 8 or 33 years (sensitivity values). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Photovoltaic system is a technology for the production of electricity from renewable sources that is rapidly expanding thanks to its capability to reduce the energy consumption from traditional sources and to decrease the air pollution. During the operational phase, there are no emissions and the only input is represented by solar power. However, it should be noted that, considering the entire life cycle of a plant, photovoltaic systems, like any other means of electricity production, give rise to emissions, that focus especially in the manufacturing stage and installation of components. The present work aims at evaluating the environmental impact, and therefore the actual sustainability of this technology, examining a ground-mounted 1778.48 kW(p) photovoltaic plant, realized by TerniEnergia S.p.A. and located in Marsciano (Perugia, Italy). The analysis is conducted using the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which allows to consider all stages of the life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to the plant's disposal ("from a cradle to grave perspective"). In particular, the study takes into account the soil preparation, the installation of fence and electrical substations of low and medium voltage, the mounting of support structures, also with reference to hot dip galvanizing process, the production of modules, their installation, the wiring apparatus and the network connection. The transport of all components to the installation site is considered for each stage that is examined. The end of life scenario of the plant is also evaluated. The possibility to collect many detailed information in the construction site, during the building phase, adds value to the study. The analysis is carried out according to UNI EN ISO 14040 and UNI EN ISO 14044, which regulate the LCA procedure. The LCA modelling was performed using SimaPro software application and using Eco Indicator 99 methodology. The results of the analysis allows to calculate some important parameters like EPBT (Energy Pay-Back Time), EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested), CO2 emissions and GWP100 (Global Warming Potential). Finally, the environmental impact of photovoltaic plant is compared to that of some traditional energy production systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing interest in energy production from biomass requires a better understanding of potential local production and environmental impacts. This information is needed by local producers, biomass industry, and other stakeholders, and for larger scale analyses. This study models biomass production decisions at the field level using a case example of a biomass gasification facility constructed at the University of Minnesota-Morris (UMM). This institutional-scale application has an anticipated feedstock demand of about 8,000 Mg year(-1). The model includes spatial impacts due to sub-field variation in soil characteristics and transportation costs. Results show that the amount of biomass producers could profitably supply within a 32.2-km radius of UMM increases as plant-gate biomass price increases from $59 to $84 Mg-1, with 588,000 Mg annual biomass supply at $84 Mg-1. Results also show that the most profitable tillage and crop rotation practices shift in response to increasing biomass price with producers shifting from a corn-soybean rotation toward continuous corn. While biomass harvest is conducive to increased soil erosion rates and reduced soil organic carbon levels, changes in crop production practices are shown to at least partially offset these impacts. Transportation costs tend to concentrate and intensify biomass production near the biomass facility, which also tends to concentrate environmental impacts near the facility.The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of forest management on the total biomass production (t ha(-1)a(-1)) and CO2 emissions (kg CO2 MWh(-1)) from use of energy biomass of Norway spruce and Scots pine grown on a medium fertile site. In this context, the growth of both species was simulated using an ecosystem model (SIMA) under different management regimes, including various thinning and fertilization treatments over rotation lengths from 40 to 120 years in different pre-commercial stand densities. A Life Cycle Analysis/Emission calculation tool was employed to assess the CO2 emissions per unit of energy from the use of biomass in energy production. Furthermore, the overall balance between the CO2 uptake and emission (carbon balance) was studied, and the carbon neutrality (CN) factor was calculated to assess environmental effects of the use of biomass in energy production; i.e., how much CO2 would be emitted per unit of energy when considering direct and indirect emissions from forest ecosystem and energy production. In general, the total annual biomass production for both species was highest when management with fertilization and high pre-commercial stand density (4000-6000 trees ha(-1)) was used. In the case of Norway spruce, the highest annual biomass production was obtained with a rotation length of 80-100 years, while for Scots pine a rotation length of 40-60 years gave the highest annual production. In general, the CO2 emissions decreased along with an increasing rotation length. The reduction was especially large if the rotation length was increased from 40 years to 60 years. Scots pine produced remarkably smaller net CO2 emissions per year (on average 29%) than Norway spruce over all different densities and rotation lengths. The value of the CN factor was highest if a rotation of 100 years was used for Norway spruce stands and a rotation of 120 years for Scots pine. The CO2 emission per energy unit was substantially less than that from the use of coal, which was used as reference to assess environmental effects of the use of biomass in energy production. The use of higher density of pre-commercial stand than that currently recommended in the Finnish forestry, together with timely thinning and fertilization, could increase the total biomass production, but also simultaneously decrease the net CO2 emissions from the use of energy wood.A recent life cycle assessment (LCA) reported that biodiesel production in supercritical alcohols (SCA) produces a higher environmental load than the homogeneous catalytic process because an enormous amount of energy is required to recover excess alcohol. However, the excess alcohol could be dramatically reduced by increasing the operating temperature to 400 degrees C; although the product would have to be considered as an alternative biofuel instead of biodiesel. A comparative LCA of the biodiesel production in two SCA at 300 degrees C (C-SCA) and novel biofuel production in the same two SCA at 400 degrees C (N-SCA) is presented. It was clear that the N-SCA process produces a dramatically reduced environmental load over that of the C-SCA process due to a lower amount of excess alcohol being used. The N-SCA process could be improved in terms of its environmental impact by changing from fossil fuel to biomass-based fuels for the steam generation. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental profiles and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for bioethanol production from waste papers and to compare them with the alternative waste management options of recycling or incineration with energy recovery. Bioethanol production scenarios both with and without pre-treatments were conducted. It was found that an oxidative lime pretreatment reduced GHG emissions and overall environmental burdens for a newspaper-to-bioethanol process whereas a dilute acid pre-treatment raised GHG emissions and overall environmental impacts loran office paper-to-bioethanol process. In the comparison of bioethanol production systems with alternative management of waste papers by different technologies, it was found that the environmental profiles of each system vary significantly and this variation affects the outcomes of the specific comparisons made. Overall, a number of configurations of bioethanol production from waste papers offer environmentally favourable or neutral profiles when compared with recycling or incineration. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One challenge for the environmental assessment of agricultural systems is to progress from estimating whether one farming system has fewer impacts than another to estimating whether or not it can be considered environmentally sustainable. To this end, we developed reference values (RVs) of farm emissions or energy use per hectare that defined hypothetical sustainability thresholds in each of three impact categories: climate change, water-quality degradation and non-renewable energy use. We applied one RV per category to the potential impacts (estimated by life-cycle assessment) of 45 French dairy farms to identify farms below RVs in each impact category and then evaluated their management and production characteristics. Seventeen of the 45 farms lie below at least one of the three RVs. Groups of farms below RVs had a higher percentage of organic farms, larger mean usable agricultural area, longer mean pasture residence time and lower mean inputs of concentrate feed and nitrogen than those above the same RVs. In consequence, the groups below RVs also tended to have lower mean milk production per cow and per hectare. All milk production systems can move toward environmental sustainability even though, according to production mode and intensity, some potential impacts are easier to reduce than others. Most farms were unable to attain the lowest RVs, suggesting that policy-makers may need to consider less ambitious RVs for existing agricultural systems. Otherwise, the distance between normative RVs and indicator values of dairy farms suggest that production and consumption of agricultural products will need to change if sustainability goals do not.The paper summarises the main results obtained from two extensive applications of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to the integrated municipal solid waste management systems of Torino and Cuneo Districts in northern Italy. Scenarios with substantial differences in terms of amount of waste, percentage of separate collection and options for the disposal of residual waste are used to discuss the credibility and acceptability of the LCA results, which are adversely affected by the large influence of methodological assumptions and the local socio-economic constraints. The use of site-specific data on full scale waste treatment facilities and the adoption of a participatory approach for the definition of the most sensible LCA assumptions are used to assist local public administrators and stakeholders showing them that LCA can be operational to waste management at local scale. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study assesses the environmental impacts from production of 1 kg barley, oat and spring wheat, in central southeast Norway by means of life cycle assessment. The results were given for twelve impact categories, selected based on relevance to the system. These categories are climate change, fossil depletion, freshwater ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, marine eutrophication, ozone depletion, particulate matter formation, photochemical oxidant formation, terrestrial acidification and terrestrial ecotoxicity. The assessment covers processes from cradle to farm gate, including all farm activities related to grain cultivation, as well as the production and acquisition of machinery, equipments and buildings, diesel and oil, fertilizer, lime, seeds and pesticides. In order to reveal the importance of system boundaries, factors that are included in this study and often excluded in other studies, such as machinery manufacturing, buildings, pesticide production and use, humus mineralization and NOR loss from use of mineral fertilizer were systematically individually omitted. The sensitivity of the LCA results to several selected parameters governing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change (CC) was evaluated by varying the parameters 50% of the default value. The assessment gave a CC impact of 0.79, 0.77 and 0.74 kg CO2-eq for production of 1 kg barley, oat and spring wheat, respectively. The choice of system boundaries were found to have great impact on the results, and CC impact was reduced by more than 40% when factors that are not commonly reported in literature were excluded. This clearly demonstrates the need of comprehensive documentation of system boundaries in order to perform meaningful comparisons of environmental impact caused by grain production under different conditions. The sensitivity analysis revealed that most of the impact categories were not particularly sensitive to the parameters selected. A 50% change in the emission factor for N2O emissions from N inputs had highest effect on CC with 11-13%. The highest overall impacts were found for the fraction of mineral fertilizer volatilized as NH3 and NOx, with 32-53% change in photochemical oxidant and particular matter formation, and terrestrial acidification impact categories. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study aimed at the identification of favourable land use options for semi-natural grassland management and preservation. Economic assessments of energy recovery by the integrated generation of solid fuel and biogas from biomass (IFBB) in comparison with dry fermentation (OF) and hay combustion systems (HC), beef cattle production (BC) and non-refining landscape preservation measures, such as mulching (MU) and composting (CO), were carried out in this study. Energy recovery systems made profitable use of semi-natural grasslands with the highest economic returns attained by IFBB-AO (Return On Investment, ROI: 22.75%) and HC (ROI: 22.00%) systems, followed by the IFBB-SA (ROI: 7.71%) and the DF system (ROI: 6.22%). Animal husbandry (BC) and non-refining management systems (MU, CO) were not profitable considering the current framework conditions. Input parameters critical for profitability were modified in order to identify influences of changing framework conditions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study builds a holistic, transparent life cycle assessment model of a variety of aqueous mineral carbonation processes using a hybrid process model and economic input-output life cycle assessment approach (hybrid EIO-LCA). The model allows for the evaluation of the tradeoffs between different reaction enhancement processes while considering the larger lifecycle impacts on energy use and material consumption. A preliminary systematic investigation of the tradeoffs inherent in mineral carbonation processes is conducted to provide guidance for the optimization of the life-cycle energy efficiency of various proposed mineral carbonation processes. The life-cycle assessment of aqueous mineral carbonation suggests that a variety of alkalinity sources and process configurations are capable of net CO2 reductions. The total CO2 storage potential for the alkalinity sources considered in the U. S. ranges from 1.8% to 23.7% of U. S. CO2 emissions, depending on the assumed availability of natural alkalinity sources and efficiency of the mineral carbonation processes.In Europe post-consumer beverage carton packages are treated in three ways: dumped in a landfill, incinerated for energy recovery, and recycled. In recent years new technologies for beverage carton recycling have been developed and tested. At the same time in Europe the collection of second-hand raw materials is becoming more efficient. In order to facilitate and justify the decision-making process, different possibilities of poly-aluminium handling were analysed. For this reason, the objective of this study was to compare carbon footprints in the whole life cycle of selected technologies and to provide decision-making with data for beverage carton recycling. The paper is based on some of the results of the project 'Sustainable Production through Innovations in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SPIN)'. The SPIN project is providing small- and medium-sized enterprises with a whole set of instruments that put entrepreneurs in a position to innovate their production processes and products leading to improved business and public benefits.Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) and palm tree (Elaeis guianeensis) are crops with high biofuel yields, 7.6 m(3) ha (1) y(-)1 of ethanol and 4 Mg ha(-1) y(-1) of oil, respectively. The joint production of these crops enhances the sustainability of ethanol. The objective of this work was comparing a traditional sugarcane ethanol production system (TSES) with a joint production system (JSEB), in which ethanol and biodiesel are produced at the same biorefinery but only ethanol is traded. The comparison is based on ISO 14.040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006, and appropriate indicators. Production systems in Cerrado (typical savannah), Cerradao (woody savannah) and pastureland ecosystems were considered. Energy and carbon balances, and land use change impacts were evaluated. The joint system includes 100% substitution of biodiesel for diesel, which is all consumed in different cropping stages. Data were collected by direct field observation methods, and questionnaires applied to Brazilian facilities. Three sugarcane mills situated in Sao Paulo State and one palm oil refinery located in Para State were surveyed. The information was supplemented by secondary sources. Results demonstrated that fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions decreased, whereas energy efficiency increased when JSEB was compared to TSES. In comparison with TSES, the energy balance of JSEB was 1.7 greater. In addition, JSEB released 23% fewer GHG emissions than TSES. The ecosystem carbon payback time for Cerrado, Cerradao, and Degraded Grassland of JSEB was respectively 4, 7.7 and -7.6 years. These are typical land use types of the Brazilian Cerrado region for which JSEB was conceived. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) models indicate that crop-based biofuels generate greenhouse gas savings, compared with fossil fuels. We argue that they do so only because they ignore the emissions of CO2 from vehicles burning the biofuels without determining if the biomass is additional, and because they underestimate the ultimate emissions of N2O from nitrogen fertiliser use. Taking proper account of these factors would result in very different findings. It would be far better to derive biofuels from biomass, from waste feedstocks or high-yielding bioenergy crops with low nitrogen demand, grown on currently unproductive land.While the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to lubricants can be considered fully operational for general purposes outside the lubricants industry, where Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs) of mineral and synthetic base oils can be used interchangeably and where additives can be excluded, this is not the case for research and development purposes within the industry. Previous LCAs of base oils are not sufficiently detailed and comprehensive for R&D purposes, and there are no LCAs of lube additives and fully formulated lubricants. The aim of this paper is to integrate and expand previous LCAs of base oils and to investigate on the contribution of lube additives to the environmental impacts of a fully formulated lubricant. This study considers three base oils (mineral, poly-alpha-olefins (PAO) and hydrocracked) and a set of lubricating additives typically used in fully formulated engine oil. The LCA model is based on both industry and literature data. Trends in the lubricants industry towards more sophisticated base oils correspond to remarkably higher environmental impacts per kilogram of product but lead to reduced impacts per kilometre. The contribution of additives to the life cycle impacts of commercial lube oil was found to be remarkably high for some impact categories (nearly 35 % for global warming). As base oil is concerned, this study made the point on data availability and provided a contribution in order to integrate and expand previous LCAs of mineral base oil and PAO. On the side of additives, the main conclusion is that in modern lubricants, the contribution of additives in terms of environmental impact can be remarkably high and, therefore, they should not be excluded.The aim of this research was to determine the optimum way of recovering energy from the biodegradable fractions of municipal waste. A part-life cycle study was carried out on the following wastes: paper, food waste, garden waste, wood, non-recyclable mixed municipal waste and refuse-derived fuel. The energy recovery processes considered were incineration, gasification, combustion in dedicated plant, anaerobic digestion and combustion in a cement kiln. The life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out using WRATE, an LCA tool designed specifically for waste management studies. Additional information on waste composition, waste collection and the performance of the energy recovery processes was obtained from a number of UK-based sources. The results take account of the energy displaced by the waste to energy processes and also the benefits obtained by the associated recycling of digestates, metals and aggregates as appropriate. For all the waste types considered the maximum benefits in terms of climate change and non-renewable resource depletion would be achieved by using the waste in a cement kiln as a substitute fuel for coal. When considering the impacts in terms of human toxicity, aquatic ecotoxicity, acidification and eutrophication, direct combustion with energy recovery was the best option. The results were found to be highly sensitive to the efficiency of the energy recovery process and the conventional fuel displaced by the recovered energy. This study has demonstrated that LCA can be used to determine the benefits and burdens associated with recovering energy from municipal waste fractions. However, the findings were restricted by the lack of reliable data on the performance of waste gasification and anaerobic digestion systems and on the burdens arising from collecting the wastes. It is recommended that further work is carried out to address these data gaps.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is a well-established analytical method to quantify environmental impacts, which has been mainly applied to products. However, recent literature would suggest that it has also the potential as an analysis and design tool for processes, and stresses that one of the biggest challenges of this decade in the field of process systems engineering (PSE) is the development of tools for environmental considerations. This article attempts to give an overview of the integration of LCA methodology in the context of industrial ecology, and focuses on the use of this methodology for environmental considerations concerning process design and optimization. The review identifies that LCA is often used as a multi-objective optimization of processes: practitioners use LCA to obtain the inventory and inject the results into the optimization model. It also shows that most of the LCA studies undertaken on process analysis consider the unit processes as black boxes and build the inventory analysis on fixed operating conditions. The article highlights the interest to better assimilate PSE tools with LCA methodology, in order to produce a more detailed analysis. This will allow optimizing the influence of process operating conditions on environmental impacts and including detailed environmental results into process industry.The common practice of summing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and applying global warming potentials (GWPs) to calculate CO2 equivalents misrepresents the global warming effects of emissions that occur over a product or system's life cycle at a particular time in the future. The two primary purposes of this work are to develop an approach to correct for this distortion that can (1) be feasibly implemented by life cycle assessment and carbon footprint practitioners and (2) results in units of CO2 equivalent. Units of CO2 equilavent allow for easy integration in current reporting and policy frameworks. CO2 equivalency is typically calculated using GWPs from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. GWPs are calculated by dividing a GHG's global warming effect, as measured by cumulative radiative forcing, over a prescribed time horizon by the global warming effect of CO2 over that same time horizon. Current methods distort the actual effect of GHG emissions at a particular time in the future by summing emissions released at different times and applying GWPs; modeling them as if they occur at the beginning of the analytical time horizon. The method proposed here develops time-adjusted warming potentials (TAWPs), which use the reference gas CO2, and a reference time of zero. Thus, application of TAWPs results in units of CO2 equivalent today. A GWP for a given GHG only requires that a practitioner select an analytical time horizon. The TAWP, however, contains an additional independent variable; the year in which an emission occurs. Thus, for each GHG and each analytical time horizon, TAWPs require a simple software tool (TAWPv1.0) or an equation to estimate their value. Application of 100-year TAWPs to a commercial building's life cycle emissions showed a 30 % reduction in CO2 equivalent compared to typical practice using 100-year GWPs. As the analytical time horizon is extended the effect of emissions timing is less pronounced. For example, at a 500-year analytical time horizon the difference is only 5 %. TAWPs are one of many alternatives to traditional accounting methods, and are envisioned to be used as one of multiple characterizations in carbon accounting or life cycle impact assessment methods to assist in interpretation of a study's outcome.This study aims to analyze and quantify the environmental impacts associated with the production of testliner paper using 100 % recovered paper as fiber raw material, by applying the life cycle assessment principles. A simulation of advanced sorting technology was done to prepare and use batches of raw materials with different levels of contaminants. Comparative studies of environmental impact assessment were focused on the quality of recovered paper, which is decisively influenced by the efficiency of the sorting process. The particularity of the study is that so far it is the only one that analyzes the environmental impact generated by recovered paper quality. To analyze the environmental impacts in the scenarios, life cycle assessment methodology was considered. Potential environmental impacts were assessed by using the CML 2009, Dec.07 method developed by the Centre for Environmental Science from the University of Leiden. In this study, acidification potential, abiotic resources depletion potential, eutrophication potential, global warming potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, and human toxicity potential were the impact categories analyzed. Considering that the system boundaries refer only to the paper mill that was obtained, all unitary processes involved in the manufacturing of product system influence in varying proportions the impact categories chosen for evaluation. A higher concentration of contaminants leads to a higher amount of energy and water used, and thus, a significant amount of waste and emissions generated. Simulations performed have highlighted the importance of sorting technology that influences the quality of raw material that will be used. Utilization of recovered paper batches with a low quality contributes to an increased environmental impact associated with the testliner paper manufacturing stage. A low quality of recovered paper will influence energy consumption in different modules of the system (recycled fiber pulp preparation, paper machine, and wastewater treatment), the volume of waste generated, and consequently the emissions released both in air and water.The increasing concern for adverse effects of climate change has spurred the search for alternatives for conventional energy sources. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has increasingly been used to assess the potential of these alternatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The popularity of LCA in the policy context puts its methodological issues into another perspective. This paper discusses how bio-electricity directives deal with the issue of allocation and shows its repercussions in the policy field. Multifunctionality has been a well-known problem since the early development of LCA and several methods have been suggested to deal with multifunctional processes. This paper starts with a discussion of the most common allocation methods. This discussion is followed by a description of bio-energy policy directives. The description shows the increasing importance of LCA in the policy context as well as the lack of consensus in the application of allocation methods. Methodological differences between bio-energy directives possibly lead to different assessments of bio-energy chains. To assess the differences due to methodological choices in bio-energy directives, this paper applies three different allocation methods to the same bio-electricity generation system. The differences in outcomes indicate the importance of solving the allocation issue for policy decision making. The case study focuses on bio-electricity from rapeseed oil. To assess the influence of the choice of allocation in a policy directive, three allocation methods are applied: economic partitioning (on the basis of proceeds), physical partitioning (on the basis of energy content), and substitution (under two scenarios). The outcomes show that the climate change score is assessed quite differently; ranging from 0.293 kg to 0.604 kg CO2 eq/kWh. It is argued that this uncertainty hampers the optimal use of LCA in the policy context. The aim of policy LCAs is different from the aim of LCAs for analysis. Therefore, it is argued that LCAs in the policy context will benefit from a new guideline based on robustness. The case study confirms that the choice of allocation method in policy directives has large influence on the outcomes of an LCA. With the growing popularity of LCA in policy directives, this paper recommends a new guideline for policy LCAs. The high priority of robustness in the policy context makes it an ideal starting point of this guideline. An accompanying dialog between practitioners and commissioners should further strengthen the use of LCA in policy directives.The main goal of the paper is to carry out the first implementation of sustainability assessment of the assembly step of photovoltaic (PV) modules production by Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) and the development of the Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard (LCSD), in order to compare LCSA results of different PV modules. The applicability and practicability of the LCSD is reported thanks to a case study. The results show that LCSA can be considered a valuable tool to support decision-making processes that involve different stakeholders with different knowledge and background. The sustainability performance of the production step of Italian and German polycrystalline silicon modules is assessed using the LCSD. The LCSD is an application oriented to the presentation of an LCSA study. LCSA comprises life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing and social LCA (S-LCA). The primary data collected for the German module are related to two different years, and this led to the evaluation of three different scenarios: a German 2008 module, a German 2009 module, and an Italian 2008 module. According to the LCA results based on Ecoindicator 99, the German module for example has lower values of land use [1.77 potential disappeared fractions (PDF) m(2)/year] and acidification (3.61 PDF m(2)/year) than the Italian one (land use 1.99 PDF m(2)/year, acidification 3.83 PDF m(2)/year). However, the German module has higher global warming potential [4.5E-05 disability-adjusted life years (DALY)] than the Italian one [3.00E-05 DALY]. The economic costs of the German module are lower than the Italian one, e.g. the cost of electricity per FU for the German module is 0.12 a,not sign/m(2) compared to the Italian 0.85 a,not sign/m(2). The S-LCA results show significant differences between German module 2008 and 2009 that represent respectively the best and the worst overall social performances of the three considered scenarios compared by LCSD. The aggregate LCSD results show that the German module 2008 has the best overall sustainability performance and a score of 665 points out of 1,000 (and a colour scale of light green). The Italian module 2008 has the worst overall sustainability performance with a score of 404 points, while the German module 2009 is in the middle with 524 points. The LCSA and LCSD methodologies represent an applicable framework as a tool for supporting decision-making processes which consider sustainable production and consumption. However, there are still challenges for a meaningful application, particularly the questions of the selection of social LCA indicators and how to weigh sets for the LCSD.This paper presents a time-series Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to examine the historical environmental impacts associated with copper mining and smelting in Australia from 1940 to 2008. It uses cradle-to-gate LCA models to estimate impacts from the five largest Australian copper mines, incorporating changes in ore grade and differences in technologies and regional energy sources. Using copper as an example of the different life-cycle impacts of metals, this study demonstrates the influence of both temporal and spatial factors. For mine/smelters, results show that the carbon footprint of copper produced at all sites over the time period investigated ranges from 2.5 to 8.5 kg CO2-eq./kg Cu and the difference between different locations in any given year can be up to 6 kg CO2-eq./kg Cu. The estimated impact potentials derived from the LCA models for Australia's largest mine/smelter at Olympic Dam are then compared to impacts reported by mine operators for global warming potential and acidification. The results of the LCA analysis indicate the importance of considering time-varying parameters and highlight an opportunity to use LCA models more broadly for assessing future technology and energy options in the mineral sector. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are presented today as a chance for the environment, further research is needed to understand the extent of their impacts. Essentially, little research has been done on the environmental impacts of ICT infrastructures. Their assessment thus still faces some methodological problems which are dealt with in this paper, notably in the case of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). We provide a method to analyse WSN in an environmental perspective, which clarifies two important issues: the definition of the system lifecycle and the synergic behaviour of its elements. This method is applied to a concrete case, results are generated and eco-design alternatives are presented and evaluated. The results show the importance of adopting a system-level perspective while performing environmental assessment of ICE. It helps determine the most influential system parameters, bringing broader understanding and eco-design perspectives. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water accounting and environmental impact assessment across the product's life cycle is gaining prominence. This paper presents two case studies of applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Water Footprint (WF) approaches to tea and margarine. The WF, excluding grey water, of a carton of 50 g tea is 294 L green water and 10 L blue water, and that of a 500 g tub of margarine is 553 L green water, 109 L blue water. The inventory results in the LCA studies (blue water) are 13 L for tea and 114 L for margarine. In the impact assessment phase of WF, Coonoor in Southern India appears as a potential hotspot for tea production, although the water consumed in energy to boil the kettle and by the consumer are also significant. For margarine the main potential hotspot is irrigated sunflower around Zaporizhia in Ukraine. The impact assessment results of LCA for tea causes the water in the consumer use phase to be down-weighted and stresses the contribution from Coonoor due to the higher water scarcity of this region. Similarly the LCA impact assessment of margarine causes the palm oil contribution to be down-weighted due to the low water scarcity of Medan in Indonesia. From these case studies we identify similarities, differences and synergies at both the water accounting and impact assessment levels for both approaches with the purpose of improving and advancing the water resource assessment process. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this research was to examine the energy consumption and CO2 emission of potato production in three different farm size sin Esfahan province of Iran. For this purpose, data were collected from 300 farmers by a face to face questionnaire. The results revealed total energy consumption and GHG emission of 47 GJ ha(-1) and 992.88 kg CO2eq ha(-1), respectively. The most significant energy consumer was chemical fertilizers (49%), especially nitrogen (40%) and followed by seed with share of 24%. The energy use efficiency, specific energy and energy productivity were determined to be 1.71, 2.12 MJ kg(-1) and 0.47 kg MJ(-1). The different cultivated area levels analysis revealed that, large farms used the least amount of energy input significantly. It was found that the contribution of indirect energy was higher than that of direct energy and also the proportion of non-renewable energy was more than renewable resources. The results of econometric model estimation revealed that the impact of seed, water for irrigation, diesel fuel and chemical fertilizer energy inputs were significantly positive on potato yield. The sensitivity analysis illustrated that the marginal physical productivity (MPP) value of chemical fertilizer, diesel fuel and seed energy were -1.78 and -1.63 and 1.54, respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is recognized as a powerful method to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product. However, its use in product development processes remains marginal. While authors have advanced different technical solutions to facilitate or accelerate the conduct of an LCA, current methods are generally still not adapted to designers, who often lack the time and expertise to make use of LCA results in their day-to-day activities. This paper addresses the issue by proposing a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) methodology that can be used to develop suitable Decision-Support Systems (DSS). These systems would enhance the use of LCA results in early design phases. The development of such a tool in a particular case study illustrates how its development is aligned with the current designer expectations and constraints. The case study is built on the results of a previous LCA of a known strategic product and includes a library with existing newly characterized materials and components, making it possible to evaluate several design alternatives from an environmental and cost perspective, using LCA as a predictive tool rather than a retrospective one. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comparative environmental impact study of the three-, four- and five-step copper chlorine (Cu-Cl) thermochemical water splitting cycles is undertaken through life cycle assessment (LCA). This analytical tool is used to identify and quantify environmentally critical phases during the life cycle of a system or a product and/or to evaluate and decrease the overall environmental impact of the system or product. The LCA results for the hydrogen production processes indicate that the four-step Cu-Cl cycle has lower environmental impacts than the three- and five-step Cu-Cl cycles due to its lower thermal energy requirement. The global warming, acidification and eutrophication potentials of the system using the four-step Cu-Cl cycle are 0.56 kg CO2-eq, 0.00284 kg SO2-eq and 0.000232 kg Phosphate-eq. respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guideline methodology, which are the principal greenhouse gas (GHG) quantification methods, were evaluated in this study using a dairy farm GHG model. The model was applied to estimate GHG emissions from two contrasting dairy systems: a seasonal calving pasture-based dairy farm and a total confinement dairy system. Data used to quantify emissions from these systems originated from a research study carried out over a 1-year period in Ireland. The genetic merit of cows modelled was similar for both systems. Total mixed ration was fed in the Confinement system, whereas grazed grass was mainly fed in the grass-based system. GHG emissions from these systems were quantified per unit of product and area. The results of both methods showed that the dairy system that emitted the lowest GHG emissions per unit area did not necessarily emit the lowest GHG emissions possible for a given level of product. Consequently, a recommendation from this study is that GHG emissions be evaluated per unit of product given the growing affluent human population and increasing demand for dairy products. The IPCC and LCA methods ranked dairy systems' GHG emissions differently. For instance, the IPCC method quantified that the Confinement system reduced GHG emissions per unit of product by 8% compared with the grass-based system, but the LCA approach calculated that the Confinement system increased emissions by 16% when off-farm emissions associated with primary dairy production were included. Thus, GHG emissions should be quantified using approaches that quantify the total GHG emissions associated with the production system, so as to determine whether the dairy system was causing emissions displacement. The IPCC and LCA methods were also used in this study to simulate, through a dairy farm GHG model, what effect management changes within both production systems have on GHG emissions. The findings suggest that single changes have a small mitigating effect on GHG emissions (<5%), except for strategies used to control emissions from manure storage in the Confinement system (14% to 24%). However, when several management strategies were combined, GHG emissions per unit of product could be reduced significantly (15% to 30%). The LCA method was identified as the preferred approach to assess the effect of management changes on GHG emissions, but the analysis indicated that further standardisation of the approach is needed given the sensitivity of the approach to allocation decisions regarding milk and meat.In this study, we evaluated three different management scenarios in relation to their ability to maximize the carbon balance. The study was carried out within a context of managed even-aged sessile oak stands, and the management scenarios were contrasted in terms of stem density and rotation length. A system of models designed to represent the whole forest-wood product chain was used to assess the carbon balance of each scenario. The boundaries of this system were extended as far as possible to prevent any carbon leaks. Dead organic matter and disposed harvested wood products (HWPs) were taken into account in the assessment. The scenarios were compared in terms of their average stock in the forest and the HWP carbon pools, as well as some additional fluxes. These included: (i) substitution for fossil fuel; (ii) carbon emissions due to HWP processing; (iii) the accumulation of non-degradable carbon in the landfill; and (iv) methane emissions resulting from anaerobic decomposition of disposed HWPs. Results showed that the HWP carbon pools were about 10 times smaller than the forest carbon pools. The substitution for fossil fuel constituted the largest positive flux, whereas methane emissions in absence of methane recovery facilities accounted for 40% of the negative fluxes. The burning of wood products for energy was preferable to HWP disposal at the landfill site. As long as the risk of extreme climate events remains marginal, management scenarios that maintain higher stem densities over longer rotation lengths appeared to be favorable to carbon sequestration. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.When developing sustainable building fabric technologies, it is essential that the energy use and CO2 burden arising from manufacture does not outweigh the respective in-use savings. This study investigates this paradigm by carrying out a streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) of silica aerogel. This unique, nanoporous translucent insulation material has the lowest thermal conductivity of any solid, retaining up to four times as much heat as conventional insulation, whilst being highly transparent to light and solar radiation. Monolithic silica aerogel has been cited as the 'holy grail' of future glazing technology. Alternatively, translucent granular aerogel is now being produced on a commercial scale. In each case, many solvents are used in production, often accompanied by intensive drying processes, which may consume large amounts of energy and CO2. To date, there has been no peer-reviewed LCA of this material conducted to the ISO 14000 standard. Primary data for this 'cradle-to-factory gate' LCA is collected for silica aerogel made by low and high temperature supercritical drying. In both cases, the mass of raw materials and electricity usage for each process is monitored to determine the total energy use and CO2 burden. Findings are compared against the predicted operational savings arising from retrofitting translucent silica aerogel to a single glazed window to upgrade its thermal performance. Results should be treated as a conservative estimate as the aerogel is produced in a laboratory, which has not been developed for mass manufacture or refined to reduce its environmental impact. Furthermore, the samples are small and assumptions to upscale the manufacturing volume occur without major changes to production steps or equipment used. Despite this, parity between the CO2 burden and CO2 savings is achieved in less than 2 years, indicating that silica aerogel can provide a measurable environmental benefit. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mass culture of microalgae is a potential alternative to cultivation of terrestrial crops for bioenergy production. However, microalgae require nitrogen fertiliser in quantities much higher than plants, and this has important consequences for the energy balance of these systems. The effect of nitrogen fertiliser supplied to microalgal bubble-column photobioreactor cultures was investigated using different nitrogen sources (nitrate, urea, ammonium) and culture conditions (air, 12% CO2). In 20 L cultivations, maximum biomass productivity for Chlorella vulgaris cultivated using nitrate and urea was 0.046 and 0.053 g L-1 day(-1), respectively. Maximum biomass productivity for Dunaliella tertiolecta cultivated using nitrate, urea and ammonium was 0.033, 0.038 and 0.038 g L-1 day(-1), respectively. In intensive bubble-column photobioreactors using 12% CO2, maximum productivity reached 0.60 and 0.83 g L-1 day(-1) for C. vulgaris and D. tertiolecta, respectively. Recycling of nitrogen within the photobioreactor system via algal exudation of nitrogenous compounds and bacterial activity was identified as a potentially important process. The energetic penalty incurred by supply of artificial nitrogen fertilisers, phosphorus, power and CO2 to microalgal photobioreactors was investigated, although analysis of all energy burdens from biomass production to usable energy carriers was not conducted. After subtraction of the power, nitrogen and phosphorus energy burdens, maximum net energy ratios for C. vulgaris and D. tertiolecta cultivated in bubble columns were 1.82 and 2.10. Assuming CO2 was also required from a manufactured source, the net energy ratio decreased to 0.09 and 0.11 for C. vulgaris and D. tertiolecta, so that biomass production in this scenario was unsustainable. Although supply of nitrogen is unlikely to be the most energetically costly factor in sparged photobioreactor designs, it is still a very significant penalty. There is a need to optimise both cultivation strategies and recycling of nitrogen in order to improve performance. Data are supported by measurements including biochemical properties (lipid, protein, heating value) and bacterial number by epifluorescence microscopy.Excess greenhouse gas emissions and the concomitant effect on global warming have become significant environmental, social and economic threats. In this context, the development of renewable, carbon-neutral and economically feasible biofuels is a driving force for innovation worldwide. A lot of effort has been put into developing biodiesel from microalgae. However, there are still a number of technological, market and policy barriers that are serious obstacles to the economic feasibility and competitiveness of such biofuels. Conversely, there are also a number of business opportunities if the production of such alternative biofuel becomes part of a larger integrated system following the Biorefinery strategy. In this case, other biofuels and chemical products of high added value are produced, contributing to an overall enhancement of the economic viability of the whole integrated system. Additionally, dual purpose microalgae-bacteria-based systems for treating wastewater and production of biofuels and chemical products significantly contribute to a substantial saving in the overall cost of microalgae biomass production. These types of systems could help to improve the competitiveness of biodiesel production from microalgae, according to some recent Life Cycle Analysis studies. Furthermore, they do not compete for fresh water resources for agricultural purposes and add value to treating the wastewater itself. This work reviews the most recent and relevant information about these types of dual purpose systems. Several aspects related to the treatment of municipal and animal wastewater with simultaneous recovery of microalgae with potential for biodiesel production are discussed. The use of pre-treated waste or anaerobic effluents from digested waste as nutrient additives for weak wastewater is reviewed. Isolation and screening of microalgae/cyanobacteria or their consortia from various wastewater streams, and studies related to population dynamics in mixed cultures, are highlighted as very relevant fields of research. The species selection may depend on various factors, such as the biomass and lipid productivity of each strain. the characteristics of the wastewater, the original habitat of the strain and the climatic conditions in the treatment plant, among others. Some alternative technologies aimed at harvesting biomass at a low cost, such as cell immobilization, biofilm formation, flocculation and bio-flocculation, are also reviewed. Finally, a Biorefinery design is presented that integrates the treatment of municipal wastewater with the recovery of oleaginous microalgae, together with the use of seawater supplemented with anaerobically digested piggery waste for cultivating Arthrospira (Spirulina) and producing biogas, biodiesel, hydrogen and other high added value products. Such strategies offer new opportunities for the cost-effective and competitive production of biofuels along with valuable non-fuel products. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The objective of this project was to quantify and compare the environmental impacts associated with alternative designs for a typical North American mid-rise office building. Two scenarios were considered; a traditional cast-in-place, reinforced concrete frame and a laminated timber hybrid design, which utilized engineered wood products (cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam). The boundary of the quantitative analysis was cradle-to-construction site gate and encompassed the structural support system and the building enclosure. Floor plans, elevations, material quantities, and structural loads associated with a five-storey concrete-framed building design were obtained from issued-for-construction drawings. A functionally equivalent, laminated timber hybrid design was conceived, based on Canadian Building Code requirements. Design values for locally produced CLT panels were established from in-house material testing. Primary data collected from a pilot-scale manufacturing facility was used to develop the life cycle inventory for CLT, whereas secondary sources were referenced for other construction materials. The TRACI characterization methodology was employed to translate inventory flows into impact indicators. The results indicated that the laminated timber building design offered a lower environmental impact in 10 of 11 assessment categories. The cradle-to-gate process energy was found to be nearly identical in both design scenarios (3.5 GJ/m2), whereas the cumulative embodied energy (feedstock plus process) of construction materials was estimated to be 8.2 and 4.6 GJ/m2 for the timber and concrete designs, respectively; which indicated an increased availability of readily accessible potential energy stored within the building materials of the timber alternative.In the context of achieving the targets of the energy economy, Poland's demand for bioenergy is stimulated by several factors, including the biomass potential of agricultural cultivation. The objective of this article is to indicate perspectives for the sustainable production of energy crops in Poland through the production of total biomass as the main renewable source of energy utilized in the countries of Europe and supported by Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 23, 2009 on the Promotion of the Use of Energy from Renewable Sources, currently in force. The most important reasons for promoting the production of plant biomass for energy purposes is the desire to work against climate change and reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses. This article indicates the significant role of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in biofuels and their production. Note is also taken of agro-climatic and soil conditions for the production of biomass in Poland as well as the economic aspects using the Agricultural Production Space Valuation Ratio (APSVR).Chemical conversions have been a cornerstone of industrial revolution and societal progress. Continuing this progress in a resource constrained world poses a critical challenge which demands the development of innovative chemical processes to meet our energy and material needs in a sustainable way. This challenge forms the basis for this article. We report a method for quick preliminary assessment of chemical processes at the laboratory stage. The proposed method enables a review of chemical processes within a broader sustainability context. It is inspired by green chemistry principles, techno-economic analysis and some elements of environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA). This method evaluates a proposed chemical process against comparable existing processes using a multi-criteria approach that integrates various economic and environmental indicators. An effort has been made to incorporate quantitative and qualitative information about the processes while making the method transparent and easy to implement based on information available at an early stage in process development. The idea is to provide a data-based assessment tool for chemists and engineers to develop sustainable chemistry. This paper describes the method in detail and examines plausibility of the results. A biobased process for the production of but-1,3-diene has been analyzed using this method. This biobased process is compared with a conventional process for the production of but-1,3-diene from petroleum sources. The effects of uncertainty in the underlying model parameters and assumptions are also analyzed, along with the effect of system boundary selection on the assessment outcome. Analysis and testing of the method shows that it can be used as a valuable tool for sustainable process development.Manufacturing process planning serves as a pivotal link between design and manufacturing. Process planning decisions play a critical role in determining the cost and environmental impacts associated with manufacturing. Past efforts to address environmental issues during process planning are briefly reviewed and potential approaches that can achieve reduced environmental impacts are then discussed. A proposed method is presented for environmentally conscious process planning. The method begins with an existing process plan, and then identifies impactful process steps, and associated design features, in terms of manufacturing cost and environmental impact. Alternative processes that can achieve these features are then considered to generate alternative process plans. These alternatives are then evaluated in terms of economic and environmental performance. The results of these evaluations are then used to generate a set of process plans that are non-dominated with respect to manufacturing cost and environmental impact objectives to produce a Pareto frontier. The proposed method is demonstrated using the manufacturing of a prosthetic hip shell as a case study.In this study, a new approach to design an autonomous hybrid wind-photovoltaic (PV)-batteries system is presented in order to assist the designers to take into consideration both the economic and ecological aspects. Primary embodied energy (EE) has been introduced as a new criterion for hybrid systems, designing with the objective to minimise loss of power supply probability (LPSP). For a location, meteorological and load data have been collected and assessed. Then, modelling and primary energy analysis have been achieved for all components of the hybrid system. Finally, an optimal configuration has been carried out using a dynamic model and applying two different algorithms with single and multi-objective optimisation. The methodology has been performed successfully for the sizing of a wind-PV-batteries system to supply at least 95% of the yearly total electric demand of a residential house. The simulation results show that the optimal configuration meets the desired system reliability requirements (LPSP <5%) with the lowest EE. A life cycle cost analysis has been established at the end of the study to demonstrate the importance of economic considerations.While life cycle assessment (LCA) has standardized methods for assessing emission impacts, some comparable methods for the accounting or impact assessment of resource use exist, but are not as mature or standardized. This study contributes to the existing research by offering a comprehensive comparison of the similarities and differences of different resource indicators, in particular those based on thermodynamics, and testing them in a case study on titania (titanium dioxide pigment) produced in Panzhihua city, southwest China. The system boundary for resource indicators is defined using a thermodynamic hierarchy at four levels, and the case data for titania also follow that hierarchy. Seven resource indicators are applied. Four are thermodynamics-based-cumulative energy demand (CED), solar energy demand (SED), cumulative exergy demand (CExD), and cumulative exergy extraction from the natural environment (CEENE)-and three have different backgrounds: abiotic resource depletion potential, environmental priority strategies, and eco-indicator 99. Inventory data for the foreground system has been collected through on-site interviews and visits. Background inventory data are from the database ecoinvent v2.2. Characterizations factors are based on the CML-IA database covering all major methods. Computations are with the CMLCA software. The scores of resource indicators of the chloride route for titania system are lower than that of the sulfate route by 10-35 %, except in terms of SED. Within the four thermodynamic indicators for resources, CED, CExD, and CEENE have similar scores, while their scores are five orders of magnitude lower than the SED score. Atmospheric resources do not contribute to the SED or CEEND score. Land resources account for a negligible percentage to the SED score and a small percentage to the CEENE score. Non-renewable resources have a dominant contribution to all seven resource indicators. The global production of titania would account for 0.12 and 0.14 % of the total anthropogenic non-renewable resource demand in terms of energy and exergy, respectively. First, we demonstrate the feasibility of thermodynamic resource indicators. We recommend CEENE as the most appropriate one within the four thermodynamic resource indicators for accounting and characterizing resource use. Regarding the case study on the titania produced in China, all the resource indicators except SED show that the sulfate route demands more resource use than the chloride route.Until recently, life cycle assessments (LCAs) have only addressed the direct greenhouse gas emissions along a process chain, but ignored the CO2 emissions of land-use. However, for agricultural products, these emissions can be substantial. Here, we present a new methodology for including the implications of land occupation for CO2 emissions to realistically reflect the consequences of consumers' decisions. In principle, one can distinguish five different approaches of addressing the CO2 consequences of land occupation: (1) assuming constant land cover, (2) land-use change related to additional production of the product under consideration, (3) historic land-use change, assuming historical relations between existing area and area expansion (4) land-use change related to less production of the product under consideration ("missed potential carbon sink" of land occupation), and (5) an approach of integrating land conversion emissions and delayed uptake due to land occupation. Approach (4) is presented in this paper, using LCA data on land occupation, and carbon dynamics from the IMAGE model. Typically, if less production occurs, agricultural land will be abandoned, leading to a carbon sink when vegetation is regrowing. This carbon sink, which does not occur if the product would still be consumed, is thus attributed to the product as "missed potential carbon sink", to reflect the CO2 implications of land occupations. We analyze the missed potential carbon sink by relating land occupation data from LCA studies to the potential carbon sink as calculated by an Integrated Global Assessment Model and its process-based, spatially explicit carbon cycle model. Thereby, we account for regional differences, heterogeneity in land-use, and different time horizons. Example calculations for several livestock products show that the CO2 consequences of land occupation can be in the same order of magnitude as the other process related greenhouse gas emissions of the LCA, and depend largely on the production system. The highest CO2 implications of land occupation are calculated for beef and lamb, with beef production in Brazil having a missed potential carbon sink more than twice as high as the other GHG emissions. Given the significant contribution of land occupation to the total GHG balance of agricultural products, they need to be included in life cycle assessments in a realistic way. The new methodology presented here reflects the consequences of producing or not producing a certain commodity, and thereby it is suited to inform consumers fully about the consequences of their choices.The spatial dependency of pesticide emissions to air, surface water and groundwater is illustrated and quantified using PestLCI 2.0, an updated and expanded version of PestLCI 1.0. PestLCI is a model capable of estimating pesticide emissions to air, surface water and groundwater for use in life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling of field applications. After calculating the primary distribution of pesticides between crop and soil, specific modules calculate the pesticide's fate, thus determining the pesticide emission pattern for the application. PestLCI 2.0 was developed to overcome the limitations of the first model version, replacement of fate calculation equations and introducing new modules for macropore flow and effects of tillage. The accompanying pesticide database was expanded, the meteorological and soil databases were extended to include a range of European climatic zones and soil profiles. Environmental emissions calculated by PestLCI 2.0 were compared to results from the risk assessment models SWASH (surface water emissions), FOCUSPEARL (groundwater via matrix leaching) and MACRO (groundwater including macropore flow, only one scenario available) to partially validate the updated model. A case study was carried out to demonstrate the spatial variation of pesticide emission patterns due to dependency on meteorological and soil conditions. Compared to PestLCI 1.0, PestLCI 2.0 calculated lower emissions to surface water and higher emissions to groundwater. Both changes were expected due to new pesticide fate calculation approaches and the inclusion of macropore flow. Differences between the SWASH and FOCUSPEARL and PestLCI 2.0 emission estimates were generally lower than 2 orders of magnitude, with PestLCI generally calculating lower emissions. This is attributed to the LCA approach to quantify average cases, contrasting with the worst-case risk assessment approach inherent to risk assessment. Compared to MACRO, the PestLCI 2.0 estimates for emissions to groundwater were higher, suggesting that PestLCI 2.0 estimates of fractions leached to groundwater may be slightly conservative as a consequence of the chosen macropore modelling approach. The case study showed that the distribution of pesticide emissions between environmental compartments strongly depends on local climate and soil characteristics. PestLCI 2.0 is partly validated in this paper. Judging from the validation data and case study, PestLCI 2.0 is a pesticide emission model in acceptable accordance with both state-of-the-art pesticide risk assessment models. The case study underlines that the common pesticide emission estimation practice in LCI may lead to misestimating the toxicity impacts of pesticide use in LCA.A literature review is undertaken to understand how well existing studies of the environmental impacts of hybrid and electric vehicles (EV) address the full life cycle of these technologies. Results of studies are synthesized to compare the global warming potential (GWP) of different EV and internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) options. Other impacts are compared; however, data availability limits the extent to which this could be accomplished. We define what should be included in a complete, state-of-the-art environmental assessment of hybrid and electric vehicles considering components and life cycle stages, emission categories, impact categories, and resource use and compare the content of 51 environmental assessments of hybrid and electric vehicles to our definition. Impact assessment results associated with full life cycle inventories (LCI) are compared for GWP as well as emissions of other pollutants. GWP results by life cycle stage and key parameters are extracted and used to perform a meta-analysis quantifying the impacts of vehicle options. Few studies provide a full LCI for EVs together with assessment of multiple impacts. Research has focused on well to wheel studies comparing fossil fuel and electricity use as the use phase has been seen to dominate the life cycle of vehicles. Only very recently have studies begun to better address production impacts. Apart from batteries, very few studies provide transparent LCIs of other key EV drivetrain components. Estimates of EV energy use in the literature span a wide range, 0.10-0.24 kWh/km. Similarly, battery and vehicle lifetime plays an important role in results, yet lifetime assumptions range between 150,000-300,000 km. CO2 and GWP are the most frequently reported results. Compiled results suggest the GWP of EVs powered by coal electricity falls between small and large conventional vehicles while EVs powered by natural gas or low-carbon energy sources perform better than the most efficient ICEVs. EV results in regions dependant on coal electricity demonstrated a trend toward increased SO (x) emissions compared to fuel use by ICEVs. Moving forward research should focus on providing consensus around a transparent inventory for production of electric vehicles, appropriate electricity grid mix assumptions, the implications of EV adoption on the existing grid, and means of comparing vehicle on the basis of common driving and charging patterns. Although EVs appear to demonstrate decreases in GWP compared to conventional ICEVs, high efficiency ICEVs and grid-independent hybrid electric vehicles perform better than EVs using coal-fired electricity.This paper describes a pavement life cycle assessment (LCA) model developed to evaluate energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from pavement rehabilitation strategies. The LCA model analyzes the energy and GHG emissions associated with material production, construction and pavement use, which includes the effects of pavement rolling resistance on vehicle operation. The model was used to evaluate a set of case studies of pavement rehabilitation for both asphalt and concrete surfaces with different rolling resistances and traffic levels. The primary goal of the case studies is to evaluate the effect of rolling resistance on the life cycle performance of pavements, not to compare asphalt and concrete pavements. Energy and GHG emission savings from pavement rehabilitation are compared with an alternative where no rehabilitation occurs, only routine maintenance of damaged pavement. The results of the case studies show that for highway sections with high traffic volumes the energy and GHG savings accrued during the use phase due to reduced rolling resistance can be significantly larger than the energy use and GHG emissions from material production and construction, with the extent of the benefit dependent on constructed smoothness. These savings can be larger than those from other strategies to reduce highway transportation energy use and emissions, such as projected improvements in vehicle fuel economy. For low traffic volume highways, the smoothness obtained by the contractor and materials used have a more significant effect on the performance of the rehabilitation, and may result in a net increase in energy use and GHG emissions if low traffic volumes and poor construction quality occur together. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to assess the feasibility of application of municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) bottom ash as a supplementary cementitious material for the preparation of blended cement. The water demand for normal consistency, setting time, strength and hydration characteristics of MSWI bottom ash-cement compound matrices were investigated. The results show that the MSWI bottom ash has some cementitious activity, but the reactivity is relatively lower than Portland cement and its addition to cement may lead to retardation of cement hydration. The incorporation content of MSWI bottom ash in blended cements was controlled below 30%, which resulted in blended cement of strength class 32.5 according to GB 175-2007 (Chinese National Standard). It is also evident that heavy metal concentrations in leachates of the blended cements with MSWI bottom ash are far lower than recommended in the GB5085.3-2007. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We used life cycle assessment to compare alternative technologies for the disposal of sewage sludge and food waste with the aim of identifying the preferred methods for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, recovering phosphorus (P), and minimizing risks to public health. We examined two systems: (i) traditional incineration of food waste and separate treatment of sewage sludge, and (ii) a proposed new system in which domestic food waste is mixed with sewage sludge in an anaerobic digestion tank at a sewage treatment plant. We examined variations to each of these systems as alternative technologies for the processing of sludge: low-temperature incineration, high-temperature incineration, composting, production of cement feedstock, low-temperature carbonization, dry granulation, and pyrolysis gasification. We also evaluated the effect of different P recovery technologies: the calcium hydroxyapatite (HAP) method, the magnesium ammonium phosphate (MAP) method, alkaline extraction, and partial-reduction melting. A functional unit of 100,000 people receiving disposal services was used as the basis for life cycle assessment calculations. We found that for each of the technologies compared, the combined sludge and food waste digestion system was superior to separate treatment and disposal. Among the various technology configurations of the combined system, two were judged to be superior to the others with respect to both GHG emissions and P recovery: (i) the pyrolysis gasification of sludge with the MAP method and alkaline extraction from ash for P recovery (Y-5); and (ii) composting of sludge and the MAP method for P recovery (Y-1). When a detailed consideration of health risks was added to the analysis, configuration Y-5 was identified as the best option to target for technology renewal because of its superior disability adjusted life year (DALY) to that of configuration Y-1, which caused greater heavy metal emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aquaculture production has doubled every decade for the past fifty years, representing the fastest growing food sector. This increase reflects the expansion of production areas, increased know-how in husbandry and advances in production technologies, but most importantly it entails increased use of production-inputs that lead to exploitation of natural resources and hence raising concern on environmental distress. In addition, it suggests a similar range of production-outputs apart from the actual target products that are hardly quantified but often are recognized for causing impacts on the environment as well as potential risks for human health. Although several quantitative multi-impact assessment tools have been explored to evaluate environmental impacts of industrial activities, applications in aquaculture have only recently been carried out. However, impact assessment tools applied so far do not reflect the full range of aquaculture activities, and hence incorporate limitations that impair their use in aquaculture environmental assessment. Therefore, the development of tailored environmental assessment tool incorporating impacts distinctive to aquaculture is necessary. By reviewing recent methodologies used in aquaculture, their limitations are identified and future research needs are highlighted. Although large strides have been made in reaching standardized methods for environmental assessment tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA), their use in policy formulation and decision making requires relentless effort to develop the tools using fundamental problems known to aquaculture. As a prerequisite, the most significant impacts of aquaculture are identified but need to be characterized and integrated in aquacultural assessment tool. Furthermore, social aspects of sustainability should be considered; and linkage of operational efficiency with environmental performance can support in optimizing the allocation of resources while minimizing impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to conduct a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a typical nongrazing dairy production system in Eastern Canada. Additionally, as dairying generates both milk and meat, this study assessed several methods of allocating emissions between these coproducts. An LCA was carried out for a simulated farm based on a typical nongrazing dairy production system in Quebec. The LCA was conducted over 6 yr, the typical lifespan of dairy cows in this province. The assessment considered 65 female Holstein calves, of which 60 heifers survived to first calving at 27 mo of age. These animals were subsequently retained for an average of 2.75 lactations. Progeny were also included in the analysis, with bulls and heifers in excess of replacement requirements finished as grain-fed veal (270 kg) at 6.5 mo of age. All cattle were housed indoors and fed forages and grains produced on the same farm. Pre-farm gate GHG emissions and removals were quantified using Holos, a whole-farm software model developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and based on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change Tier 2 and 3 methodologies with modifications for Canadian conditions. The LCA yielded a GHG intensity of 0.92 kg of CO2 Eq/kg of fat- and protein-corrected milk yield. Methane (CH4) accounted for 56% of total emissions, with 86% originating from enteric fermentation. Nitrous oxide accounted for 40% of total GHG emissions. Lactating cows contributed 64% of total GHG emissions, whereas calves under 12 mo contributed 10% and veal calves only 3%. Allocation of GHG emissions between meat and milk were assessed as (1) 100% allocation to milk, (2) economics, (3) dairy versus veal animals, and (4) International Dairy Federation equation using feed energy demand for meat and milk production. Comparing emissions from dairy versus veal calves resulted in 97% of the emissions allocated to milk. The lowest allocation of emissions to milk (78%) was associated with the International Dairy Federation equation. This LCA showed that greatest reductions in GHG emissions would be achieved by applying mitigation strategies to reduce enteric CH4 from the lactating cow, with minimal reductions being achievable in young stock. Choice of coproduct allocation method can also significantly affect the relative allocation of GHG emissions to milk and meat.Solid waste disposal in Sri Lanka has been assessed using environmental, economic, and social indicators, based on a life cycle approach. The existing situation of open dumping in Sri Lanka was compared with that of a sanitary landfill with gas recovery, since the latter is anticipated to constitute an initial step towards sustainable development. The results revealed the extent to which sanitary landfills with gas recovery systems could contribute to reducing environmental impacts such as global warming potential, acidification potential, and eutrophication potential. Assessment of life cycle cost and damage to human health also showed results in favour of sanitary landfills with gas recovery system. The results obtained quantify the sustainability benefits of the proposed option for solid waste management, and can be useful for justifying policy measures that encourage the replacement of open dumping with sanitary landfills.A new benign index (BI) parameter is developed and applied to assess the overall "greenness" of chemical reactions and synthesis plans. Previously described radial pentagon green metrics based solely on material efficiency are extended to include BI which takes into account the following potentials for environmental harm: acidification-basification (ABP), ozone depletion (ODP), global warming (GWP), smog formation (SFP), inhalation toxicity (INHTP), ingestion toxicity (INGTP), inhalation carcinogenicity (INHCP), ingestion carcinogenicity (INGCP), bioconcentration (BCP), abiotic resource depletion (ARDP), cancer potency (CPP), persistence (PER), and endocrine disruption (EDP). As with other material efficiency metrics, the benign index is defined as a fraction between 0 and 1 so that it may be added as another radial axis to produce an overall radial hexagon diagram that can be used to evaluate the "green" merits of any given chemical reaction. The utility of the method is demonstrated for industrial chemical reactions producing diphenyl carbonate (DPC) and phenyl isocyanate (PI) using both phosgene-based and nonphosgene-based chemistries, and for synthesis plans for the industrial production of aniline, phenol, and aspirin. A critical discussion is presented on the limitations of the method with respect to proper decision making in route selection, particularly the availability and reliability of key parameters, and the importance of obtaining experimental data for key parameters rather than relying solely on computational methods.A detailed cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment (LCA) of an in situ thermal treatment remedy for a chlorinated-solvent-contaminated site was performed using process LCA. The major materials and activities necessary to install, operate, monitor, and deconstruct the remedy were included in the analysis. The analysis was based on an actual site remedy design and implementation to determine the potential environmental impacts, pinpoint major contributors to impacts, and identify opportunities for improvements during future implementation. The Electro-ThermalDynamic Stripping Process (ET-DSPTM) in situ thermal technology coupled with a dual-phase extraction and treatment system was evaluated for the remediation of 4,400 yd(3) of tetrachloroethene-and trichloroethene-impacted soil, groundwater, and bedrock. The analysis was based on an actual site with an estimated source mass of 2,200 lbs of chlorinated solvents. The remedy was separated into four stages: remedy installation, remedy operation, monitoring, and remedy deconstruction. Environmental impacts were assessed using Sima Pro software, the ecoinvent database, and the ReCiPe midpoint and endpoint methods. The operation stage of the remedy dominated the environmental impacts across all categories due to the large amount of electricity required by the thermal treatment technology. Alternate sources of electricity could significantly reduce the environmental impacts of the remedy across all impact categories. Other large impacts were observed in the installation stage resulting from the large amount of diesel fuel, steel, activated carbon, and asphalt materials required to implement the technology. These impacts suggest where opportunities for footprint reductions can be found through best management practices such as increased materials reuse, increased recycled-content materials use, and clean fuels and emission control technologies. Smaller impacts were observed in the monitoring and deconstruction stages. Normalized results show the largest environmental burdens to fossil depletion, human toxicity, particulate matter formation, and climate-change categories resulting from activities associated with mining of fossil fuels for use in electricity production. In situ thermal treatment can reliably remediate contaminated source areas with contaminants located in low-permeability zones, providing complete destruction of contaminants in a short amount of time, quick return of the site to productive use, and minimized quantities of hazardous materials stored in landfills for future generations to remediate. However, this remediation strategy can also result in significant emissions over a short period of time. It is difficult to quantify the overall value of short-term cleanups with intense treatment emissions against longer-term cleanups with lower treatment emissions because of the environmental, social, and economic trade-offs that need to be considered and understood. LCA is a robust, quantitative tool to help inform stakeholder discussions related to the remedy selection process, trade-off considerations, and environmental footprint-reduction opportunities, and to complement a broader toolbox for the evaluation of sustainable remediation strategies. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Bioenergy from lignocellulosic biomass offers the potential to provide a significant source of clean, low carbon and secure energy. In recent years, a number of studies have been carried out to assess the environmental performance of lignocellulosic ethanol fuel. However, the complexity of biofuel systems generates significantly different results due to the differences in input data, methodologies applied, and local geographical conditions. Moreover, much attention has been placed on assessing climate change potential and energy consumption. This study draws on 53 published life cycle assessment of the lignocellulosic ethanol. More than half of the articles reviewed focus on assessing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission or fossil energy consumption or combination of both. All studies but two reviewed conclude that there is a reduction of GHG emission when using lignocellulosic ethanol in comparison to fossil fuel reference system. However, different studies have reported different sources contributing to GHG emission: some reports majority of GHG emissions come from biomass cultivation stage; others argue significant GHG emissions from ethanol conversion process. All articles suggest a reduction of fossil consumption in all cases of ethanol fuel. Contrary results for the impact of acidification and eutrophication potential from lignocellulosic ethanol are also observed-some reports less impact in comparison to conventional gasoline whiles others report significant increase of acidification and eutrophication potential by ethanol production. Studies also show water consumption varies significantly depending on biomass types, irrigation requirement, and regional irrigation practices; with different findings on whether agricultural practices or ethanol conversion being the main sources for water consumption. Contrary findings on emissions contributing to ecotocixity and human health have also been reported with some being favourable while others not. Results from the literature also suggest strong dependency of LCA results on system boundary, functional unit, data quality and allocation methods chosen. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy is consumed at every stage of the cycle of water supply, treatment, use and disposal. The intensity of energy consumption (kW h/m(3)) depends upon the specific technologies applied at each stage of the water cycle. For some technologies, the intensity may be relatively low, whereas the intensity of other technologies is substantially greater. This report surveys the available literature on energy intensity for water use in the municipal and agricultural sectors and separates the process into several stages. Water supply, water treatment, residential end use, wastewater treatment, and agriculture end use are considered. Representative values of the energy consumed per unit water are given for a broad range of processes. Water extraction and pumping from ground and surface sources is considered. The energy intensity of treatment required for different types of water source is found to vary widely between the extremes of relatively fresh surface waters, which use energy mainly in pumping, and seawater, which requires desalination. Energy usage for different methods of irrigation including pressurized as well as surface irrigation is studied. The energy intensity of residential end use is very high relative to other parts of the water supply cycle. Processes such as heating water, washing clothes and dishes, and cooking are briefly studied within the water end-use stage. Hot water usage is responsible for making end use the most energy intensive stage of the water cycle. Hot water use in different buildings is briefly reviewed. Wastewater treated with various processes is considered, and the energy intensity is found to be highest when advanced wastewater treatment methods are applied. Energy consumption in the agricultural sector, which is principally related to irrigation pumping, is generally of lower energy intensity than for the municipal treatment or end use. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production of electricity from renewable sources plays a strategic role in the future of energy because it helps to effectively manage climate change through an energy generation portfolio with lower emissions of greenhouse gases. Photovoltaic solar energy is safe and sustainable and is characterised by a growing trend with a cumulative installed capacity that has reached a total of 40 GW in 2010. In this paper, investigations are presented using multiple calculations: Energy Payback Time (EPBT), Greenhouse Gas per kilowatt hour (GHG/kWh), Energy Return on Investment (EROI), Greenhouse Gas Payback Time (GPBT) and Greenhouse Gas Return on Investment (GROI). These metrics make it possible to define the energy and environmental performances for a building-integrated photovoltaic system located in Italy. The module efficiency, the embodied energy and the annual solar irradiance are variables that play a strong role in this analysis. The key parameters include the type of solar cells (e.g., mono-crystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride) and the location where the system is installed (Milan, Rome and Palermo). The results determine whether solar energy has a viable strategic role in the global energy market. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Phosphorus is an important nutrient in plant cultivation. Global reserves of phosphate rock worth mining are limited. Reuse of phosphorus in wastewater is therefore important. This LCA study assessed the environmental impact of four ways to supply Swedish agriculture with phosphorus fertiliser of acceptable quality as regards cadmium content: mineral fertiliser; certified sewage sludge; struvite (MgNH4PO4 center dot 6H(2)O) precipitated from wastewater; and phosphorus recovered from sludge incineration. These were examined with respect to impacts on global warming, eutrophication, energy demand and cadmium flows to farmland. The functional unit chosen was 11 kg P (25.2 kg P2O5) to agricultural land, which was the average phosphorus output (removal with harvest) per hectare from Swedish farmland in 2007. Using sewage sludge directly on farmland was the most efficient option in terms of energy and emissions of greenhouse gases, but also added most cadmium to the soil. Phosphorus recovery from incinerated sludge was the most energy demanding option and gave most emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite great concerns about cadmium in Swedish fertilisers and sludge, it was found that almost no regular analyses for cadmium are made on imported food by the authorities, although food imports are constantly increasing. Total imports of cadmium with food are therefore unknown. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Dish-Stirling technology for power generation (Stirling engine driven by renewable energy, such as solar) is a promising development in electricity generation. The efficiency value, approximately 30% of normal direct solar radiation converted to electricity (Romero, 2010), is the highest among other solar energy generation systems. In the comparison against other solar energy exploitation alternatives, the environmental evaluation of the dish-Stirling technology must be taken into account. The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative environmental assessment of a dish-Stirling technology with respect to a similar photovoltaic facility. The Life Cycle Assessment procedure has been applied, and the results have been analysed in terms of CO2-equivalent emissions as well as using two impact evaluation methods: Eco-indicator 99 and CML2. The results show that the level of environmental impacts is similar for both technologies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One emerging tool to measure the social-related impacts in supply chains is Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), a derivative of the well-established environmental LCA technique. LCA has recently started to gain popularity among large corporations and initiatives, such as The Sustainability Consortium or the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. Both have made the technique a cornerstone of their applied-research program. The Social Hotspots Database (SHDB) is an overarching, global database that eases the data collection burden in S-LCA studies. Proposed "hotspots" are production activities or unit processes (also defined as country-specific sectors) in the supply chain that may be at risk for social issues to be present. The SHDB enables efficient application of S-LCA by allowing users to prioritize production activities for which site-specific data collection is most desirable. Data for three criteria are used to inform prioritization: (1) labor intensity in worker hours per unit process and (2) risk for, or opportunity to affect, relevant social themes or sub-categories related to Human Rights, Labor Rights and Decent Work, Governance and Access to Community Services (3) gravity of a social issue. The Worker Hours Model was developed using a global input/output economic model and wage rate data. Nearly 200 reputable sources of statistical data have been used to develop 20 Social Theme Tables by country and sector. This paper presents an overview of the SHDB development and features, as well as results from a pilot study conducted on strawberry yogurt. This study, one of seven Social Scoping Assessments mandated by The Sustainability Consortium, identifies the potential social hotspots existing in the supply chain of strawberry yogurt. With this knowledge, companies that manufacture or sell yogurt can refine their data collection efforts in order to put their social responsibility performance in perspective and effectively set up programs and initiatives to improve the social conditions of production along their product supply chain.Globally, seafood is an important protein source because it is a nutritious food source produced with relative efficiency compared to other proteins. Because of problems related to overfishing and deleterious environmental impacts, over the last decade, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have increased their focus on seafood sustainability while businesses have incorporated this issue into their corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Sustainability is a concept that can be addressed in terms of scale of issues considered (narrow vs. broad) as well as the scope of how they are measured (undemanding or demanding). Currently, the message of seafood sustainability is becoming complicated in that the journey toward sustainability is being referred to as having achieved a state of sustainability. In addition, companies making a "sustainable" declaration are often at different points in the "scale/scope" arena. As a result, buyers, retailers and consumers have difficulty differentiating between these products. Furthermore, they often assume that a "sustainable" product has no further need for improvement, when in fact this is rarely the case. This change in reference from a continual process (a journey) to a static point (it is sustainable) limits further advances in seafood sustainability and the drive for continual improvement. Herein, the "Law of the Minimum", growth toward an end goal will occur until one factor becomes limiting, is adopted as an analogy for sustainability. By refocusing the sustainability discussion on a progressive series of challenges to be met, the discussion will return to the journey as the central point. Doing so will help refresh the dialogue around seafood, and to create new opportunities for improvement.Sustainability is a critically important goal for human activity and development. Sustainability in the area of engineering is of great importance to any plans for overall sustainability given 1) the pervasiveness of engineering activities in societies, 2) their importance in economic development and living standards, and 3) the significant impacts that engineering processes and systems have had, and continue to have, on the environment. Many factors that need to be considered and appropriately addressed in moving towards engineering sustainability are examined in this article. These include appropriate selection of resources bearing in mind sustainability criteria, the use of sustainable engineering processes, enhancement of the efficiency of engineering processes and resource use, and a holistic adoption of environmental stewardship in engineering activities. In addition, other key sustainability measures are addressed, such as economics, equity, land use, lifestyle, sociopolitical factors and population. Conclusions are provided related both to pathways for engineering sustainability and to the broader ultimate objective of sustainability.The serious environmental degradation of our planet in the past century and the limitation of supplies of conventional fuels have led humanity to search for new energy forms. The housing sector has a big environmental impact and it makes a good candidate for changes to be implemented in order to make steps towards a sustainable society. This study deals with the exergy analysis and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of solar systems for space heating, cooling and hot domestic water production. These systems will be applied to a residence in the wide Thessaloniki area, in Northern Greece. The analysis is based on the given energy needs of an average house. Furthermore, a photovoltaic system (PV) will be used for electricity production. Besides Solar energy, the existing geothermal field will be utilized via heat pumps. The system is designed to exploit solar and geothermal energy and an exergy analysis of the different elements of the system is performed so that improvements can be achieved in its efficiency and its cost be reduced. It has been shown that the exergy efficiency of the solar systems and the geothermal system are relatively low. Since almost all of the environmental impacts of the renewable energies are connected to the manufacturing of the devises for their utilization, the environmental impacts will be analyzed only at the manufacturing stage. The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) will be used. It has been shown that the use of solar cooling has the highest environmental impact. This analysis applies for all regions since the energy needs could be adjusted and the solar radiation of that region taken into consideration. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the present work is to estimate the carbon footprint of the Greek electricity sector and the associated damages. This is being realized by quantifying the external cost related with the climate change airborne emissions (i.e. carbon dioxide) generated during all stages of the power plants life cycle in Greece. For this purpose, the paper applies the EcoSenseLE tool, together with the basic principles of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The examined external cost has been calculated for seven types of power plants. Results show that hydro and wind power plants have an excellent performance; close to them is the performance of PV and biomass-fired power plants. The performance of natural gas-fired power plants is good, while the performance of oil-fired power plants is, as it is expected poor. Lignite clearly has the worst performance, which affects the average external cost of the sector, since it is the dominant energy source in electricity production in Greece. Regarding the life cycle stages, for thermal systems, the climate change external cost is primarily made of CO2 emitted at the power plant, while in hydro, wind and PV systems, it is totally associated with the plant construction stage. Moreover, the paper includes also issues regarding the evolution of the examined footprint within the next years, considering the various Greek national policies and measures that have been announced and started to be realized; the cost/benefit analysis (CBA) of these policies and measures based on this footprint; and the investigation if this CBA is being affected by the CO2 abatement cost associated with the various external cost estimation approaches. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to its environmental impact, pig slurry management is of great importance in the Region of Murcia, Spain, where pig production is considerable. The current slurry management system consists in its direct use in agricultural land, yet this entails an important associated problem, i.e., the limits of nitrogen imposed by legislation (<170 kg N ha(-1) yr(-1)). The use of constructed wetlands affords another possibility, achieving a reduction of physicochemical parameters of up to 80%. This paper presents the comparison of both the alternatives by means of life cycle assessment, and reports a major impact in the categories of acidification and eutrophication potential. However, the abiotic depletion potential could be minimized by avoiding the application of fertilizers and irrigation water. For the category of global warming potential, the wetland building displayed a negative role as compared to direct use. After normalization of the data, the main environmental problem for both management alternatives proved to be eutrophication, followed by acidification and global warming potential. The use of the great amounts of pig slurry produced in the Region of Murcia generates a problem of eutrophication in the Valle del Guadalentin, the Campo de Cartagena and the Mar Menor lagoon. For the purposes of normalizing, a database is needed to take all the inputs and outputs into account, in order to establish more realistic scenarios for the use and management of pig slurries in different geographical areas. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The focus of European emissions legislation for light goods vehicles centres on tank-to-wheel (TTW) operation, despite the importance of the well-to-tank (WTT) impacts of supplying transport fuels. This work presents defensible calculations of best estimate and best-in-class WTT pathways to supply conventional and non-conventional fuels. These estimates are weighted by the availability of resources. The best estimate pathway is the peak of the distribution of WTT estimates obtained from the literature. The best-in-class pathway has the lowest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of fuel delivered and represents the state-of-the-art. These fuel pathways are paired with energy conversion (vehicle) technologies and compared with equivalent well-to-wheel (WTW) targets for 2015 and 2020. Of the 103 best estimate fuel-vehicle combinations, 42 meet the 2015 emissions legislation. By 2020, only 17 combinations meet the more strict emissions limit. Petrol production will require net negative GHG emissions, even if blended with bioethanol, to meet the equivalent WTW 2020 target. For the three main combustion energy-conversion technologies, a median efficiency improvement of 29% is required when paired with the best estimate fuel pathways. However, using best-in-class pathways indicates that all of the energy conversion technologies can meet the revised 2015 target, but some still fail to meet the 2020 target. Improvements in TTW technologies alone will not meet the legislative targets, and many fuel-vehicle combinations cannot deliver an overall reduction in GHG emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industry practitioners and policy makers are under increasing pressure to continuously reduce the negative environmental impact of their supply chains. An original equipment manufacturer that is concerned with minimizing the environmental impact of its activities should choose its suppliers based on the trade-off between costs and respective emissions. This decision requires the manufacturer to coordinate closely with its suppliers in order to achieve the required level of emissions. In this paper, we develop a mixed integer program for the carbon-sensitive supply chain that minimizes emissions throughout the supply chain by taking into consideration green procurement also known as environmental sourcing. A sample case study is presented with a life cycle assessment of three scenarios based on different carbon emissions costs. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.An environmental impact assessment model for secondary batteries under uncertainty is proposed, which is a combination of the life cycle assessment (LCA), Eco-indicator 99 system and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). The LCA can describe the environmental impact mechanism of secondary batteries, whereas the cycle performance was simulated through MCS. The composite LCA-MCS model was then carried out to estimate the environmental impact of two kinds of experimental batteries. Under this kind of standard assessment system, a comparison between different batteries could be accomplished. The following results were found: (1) among the two selected batteries, the environmental impact of the Li-ion battery is lower than the nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) battery, especially with regards to resource consumption and (2) the lithium ion (Li-ion) battery is less sensitive to cycle uncertainty, its environmental impact fluctuations are small when compared with the selected Ni-MH battery and it is more environmentally friendly. The assessment methodology and model proposed in this paper can also be used for any other secondary batteries and they can be helpful in the development of environmentally friendly secondary batteries. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Many consumers prefer softened water due to convenience issues such as avoidance of removing limescale deposits from household appliances and surfaces, and to reduce consumption of cleaning agents and laundry detergents leading to lower household expenses. Even though central softening of drinking water entailed an increased use of energy, sand and chemicals at the waterworks, the distributed and softened drinking water supported a decrease in consumption of energy and chemical agents in the households along with a prolonged service life of household appliances which heat water. This study used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental impacts of central softening of drinking water considering both the negative effects at the waterworks and the positive effects imposed by the changed water quality in the households. The LCA modeling considered central softening of drinking water from the initial hardness of the region of study (Copenhagen, Denmark) which is 362 mg/La s CaCO3 to a final hardness as CaCO3 of 254 (a softening depth of 108) mg/L or 145 (a softening depth of 217) mg/L Our study showed that the consumer preference can be met together with reducing the impact on the environment and the resource consumption. Environmental impacts decreased by up to 3 mPET (milli Personal Equivalent Targeted) and the break-even point from where central softening becomes environmentally beneficial was reached at a softening depth of only 22 mg/L as CaCO3. Both energy-related and chemically related environmental impacts were reduced as well as the consumption of resources. Based on scarcity criteria, nickel was identified as the most problematic non-renewable resource in the system, and savings of up to 8 mPR (milli Person Reserve) were found. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To build a life cycle assessment (LCA) database of Japanese products embracing their global supply chains in a manner requiring lower time and labor burdens, this study estimates the intensity of embodied global environmental burden for commodities produced in Japan. The intensity of embodied global environmental burden is a measure of the environmental burden generated globally by unit production of the commodity and can be used as life cycle inventory data in LCA. The calculation employs an input-output LCA method with a global link input-output model that defines a global system boundary grounded in a simplified multiregional input-output framework. As results, the intensities of embodied global environmental burden for 406 Japanese commodities are determined in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse-gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and their summation), and air-pollutant emissions (nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide). The uncertainties in the intensities of embodied global environmental burden attributable to the simplified structure of the global link input output model are quantified using Monte Carlo simulation. In addition, by analyzing the structure of the embodied global greenhouse-gas intensities we characterize Japanese commodities in the context of LCA embracing global supply chains.This article presents the concept, calculation method, and first results of the "Raw Material Consumption" (RMC) economy-wide material flow indicator for the European Union (EU). The RMC measures the final domestic consumption of products in terms of raw material equivalents (RME), i.e. raw materials used in the complete production chain of consumed products. We employed the hybrid input-output life cycle assessment method to calculate RMC. We first developed a highly disaggregated environmentally extended mixed unit input output table and then applied life cycle inventory data for imported products without appropriate representation of production within the domestic economy. Lastly, we treated capital formation as intermediate consumption. Our results show that services, often considered as a solution for dematerialization, account for a significant part of EU raw material consumption, which emphasizes the need to focus on the full production chains and dematerialization of services. Comparison of the EU's RMC with its domestic extraction shows that the EU is nearly self-sufficient in biomass and nonmetallic minerals but extremely dependent on direct and indirect imports of fossil energy carriers and metal ores. This implies an export of environmental burden related to extraction and primary processing of these materials to the rest of the world. Our results demonstrate that internalizing capital formation has significant influence on the calculated RMC.The cost of desalinated water is likely one of the most relevant indicators to characterize and compare desalination with other technical options to supply water for urban, industrial and agricultural purposes, not to mention the social and environmental aspects associated with each option. A first step toward selecting the most appropriate solution to water shortage is to disclose fully and accurately desalination costs associated with each alternative to both government bodies and general public. This is known in economic terms as the full cost. In principle, costs associated with the production of desalinated water are easy to assess. However, it is difficult to compare costs from different facilities in practical terms due to lack of detailed data as well as the lack of a common method for cost estimation. This study aims to present a clear and easy methodology for estimating seawater desalination costs. As a case study, this methodology was applied to seven large-size desalination plants located in the Segura River Basin (Spain). (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In a typical palm oil processing plant, which is also known as palm oil mill, various types of palm based biomasses (e.g., empty fruit bunch (EFB), palm press fibre (PPF), palm kernel cake (PKC), palm kernel shell (PKS), sludge cake, etc.) are generated from the processing of fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) to produce crude palm oil (CPO) as the main product. At the initial stage, these biomasses are considered as low-value by products or waste. However, due to the maturity of palm biomass processing technologies and new initiatives given by Malaysian government, many of the palm oil mills have started to further process those biomasses into higher value products, such as biofuels, biochemicals, and bio-based food. This paper presents a novel application of the concept of systematic optimisation approach to retrofit a palm oil mill into a sustainable palm oil-based integrated biorefinery. In this work, the retrofit of an existing palm oil processing plant is analysed based on economic performance and the total potential environmental impact of the entire plant. In this context, the challenge lies in maximising the former whilst minimising the latter simultaneously. In the light of addressing this concern, fuzzy optimisation approach is adapted into this work to synthesise a sustainable palm oil-based integrated biorefinery which fulfils the two important objectives. Pareto optimum analysis is also performed to this new retrofit design case in order to determine the optimum pathway with the consideration of both objective functions. Sensitivity analysis is also conducted in this work to determine the effects of cost and price fluctuations on the economic performance. A palm oil mill case study is presented to collectively illustrate the proposed approach. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In Japan, a revised Food Recycling Law went into effect in 2007 to promote a "recycling loop" that requires food industries to purchase farm products that are grown using food waste-derived compost/animal feed. To realize and expand food recycling, it is necessary to evaluate how the recycling facilities work in the recycling loop. The purpose of this study is to assess the environmental and economic efficiency of the food recycling facilities that are involved in the recycling loop, which are also known as looped facilities. The global warming potential and running cost of five looped facilities were evaluated by LCA (life cycle assessment) and LCC (life cycle cost) approaches: machine integrated compost, windrow compost, liquid feed, dry feed, and bio-gasification. The LCA results showed low total GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of - 126 and - 49 kg-CO2/t-waste, respectively, for dry feed and bio-gasification facilities, due to a high substitution effect. The LCC study showed a low running cost for composting facilities of - 15,648 and - 18,955 yen/t-waste, respectively, due to high revenue from the food waste collection. It was found that the mandatory reporting of food waste emitters to the government increased collection fees: however, the collection fee in animal feed facilities was relatively low because food waste was collected at a low price or nutritious food waste was purchased to produce quality feed. In the characterisation survey of various treatment methods, the composting facilities showed a relatively low environmental impact and a high economic efficiency. Animal feed facilities had a wide distribution of the total GHG emissions, depending on both the energy usage during the drying process and the substitution effect, which were related to the water content of the food waste and the number of recycled products. In comparison with incineration, the majority of the food recycling facilities showed low GHG emissions and economic effectiveness. This paper also reported on the effects of recycling loops by comparing looped and non-looped animal feed facilities, and confirmed that the looped facilities were economically effective, due to an increased amount of food waste collection. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We have developed a new series of environmentally extended multi-region input-output (MRIO) tables with applications in carbon, water, and ecological footprinting, and Life-Cycle Assessment, as well as trend and key driver analyses. Such applications have recently been at the forefront of global policy debates, such as about assigning responsibility for emissions embodied in internationally traded products. The new time series was constructed using advanced parallelized supercomputing resources, and significantly advances the previous state of art because of four innovations. First, it is available as a continuous 20-year time series of MRIO tables. Second, it distinguishes 187 individual countries comprising more than 15,000 industry sectors, and hence offers unsurpassed detail. Third, it provides information just 1-3 years delayed therefore significantly improving timeliness. Fourth, it presents MRIO elements with accompanying standard deviations in order to allow users to understand the reliability of data. These advances will lead to material improvements in the capability of applications that rely on input-output tables. The timeliness of information means that analyses are more relevant to current policy questions. The continuity of the time series enables the robust identification of key trends and drivers of global environmental change. The high country and sector detail drastically improves the resolution of Life-Cycle Assessments. Finally, the availability of information on uncertainty allows policy-makers to quantitatively judge the level of confidence that can be placed in the results of analyses.The U.S. construction industry accounts for approximately 4% of the gross domestic product. Although quantifying and analyzing the cumulative ecological resource consumption of the construction industry is of great importance, it has not been studied sufficiently. This paper aims to account for the total ecological resource consumption of the construction industry, including its supply chains. This analysis is achieved by using an ecologically based life-cycle assessment model. The impacts on the ecosystem were calculated on the basis of the economic data in terms of cumulative mass, energy, industrial exergy, and ecological exergy. U.S. construction sectors are holistically evaluated by using various sustainability metrics, such as resource intensity, efficiency ratio, and loading ratio. Total ecological exergy values were generally found to be larger for the sectors with higher economic output values. Heavy construction industry sectors, including construction and maintenance of highways, bridges, or pipelines, were generally found to use fewer renewable resources and to have higher emission intensity. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000509. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.BACKGROUND: In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) Member States passed a World Health Assembly resolution that identified the following five priority areas for research and pilot projects on climate change and human health: health vulnerability, health protection, health impacts of mitigation and adaptation policies, decision-support and other tools, and costs of health protection from climate change. OBJECTIVES: To assess the extent to which recently published research corresponds to these priorities, we undertook a scoping review of original research on climate change and human health. Scoping reviews address topics that are too broad for a systematic review and commonly aim to identify research gaps in existing literature. We also assessed recent publication trends for climate change and health research. METHODS: We searched for original quantitative research published from 2008 onward. We included disease burden studies that were specific to climate change and health and included intervention studies that focused on climate change and measured health outcomes. We used MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science databases and extracted data on research priority areas, geographic regions, health fields, and equity (systematic differences between advantaged and disadvantaged social groups). DISCUSSION: We identified 40 eligible studies. Compared with other health topics, the number of climate change publications has grown rapidly, with a larger proportion of reviews or editorials. Recent original research addressed four of the five priority areas identified by the WHO Member States, but we found no eligible studies of health adaptation interventions, and most of the studies focused on high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Climate change and health is a rapidly growing area of research, but quantitative studies remain rare. Among recently published studies, we found gaps in adaptation research and a deficit of studies in most developing regions. Funders and researchers should monitor and respond to research gaps to help ensure that the needs of policymalcers are met.Concrete Innovation Potential: From Atoms to Green Infrastructure The sustainable development of concrete opens new possibilities for concrete engineers. This contribution aims at identifying the innovation potential of concrete for a sustainable development. It is shown that breakthroughs in Materials Science of concrete release new degrees of freedom for design and construction of concrete infrastructure that can contribute to reducing the material's ecological footprint. Integrated in a Life-Cycle Analysis of concrete structures, which considers both the embodied energy and the use phase, acomprehensive picture is obtained how molecular and nanometric modifications can contribute to a sustainable development of concrete. Given the more than 20 million tons of concrete produced annually, it is readily understood that new intellectual challenges are opening for concrete engineers to design buildings not only for function and safety but as well for ecological soundness.This paper presents a MCO (multi-criteria optimisation) of regional biomass supply chains for the conversion of biomass to energy through the simultaneous maximisation of economic performance and minimisation of the environmental and social FPs (footprints). The energy supply-chain model contains agricultural, pre-processing, processing, and distribution layers. An integrated model, previously developed by the authors, for regional biomass energy network optimisation is used as a basis, and now extended for simultaneous assessment of the supply-chain performance based on LCA (Life cycle assessment). Several total FPs are introduced for "cradle" to "grave" evaluation, which, besides direct, comprises also indirect effects caused by products' substitutions. In the MCO approach, the annual profit is maximised against each FP generating different sets of Pareto optimal solutions, one for each FP. With this approach the aggregation of different environmental and/or social pressures is thus avoided. The results indicate that total FPs enable the obtaining of more realistic solutions, than in those cases when only direct FPs are considered. More profitable and less environmentally harmful solutions can be gained with significant reduction in total carbon and total energy FPs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents for the first time correlations for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from small hydropower schemes in India. In this paper an attempt has been made to develop life cycle GHG emissions correlations for three different types of small hydropower schemes (run-of river, canal based and dam-toe) in India. It has been found out that GHG emissions depend on the head and capacity of the small hydropower project. The results obtained from correlations show good agreement with the estimated results using EIO-LCA (Economic Input-Output-Life Cycle Assessment) technique. These correlations may be useful for the development of new small hydropower (SHP) schemes, as they can be used to predict life cycle GHG emissions based on capacity, head and type of SHP schemes. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building life cycles contribute substantially to the emission of greenhouse gases and energy consumption; this is especially true for the operation or use stage of the building. This work on a commercial building in Singapore extends the traditional system boundary drawn for a whole-building life cycle assessment to include the management of wastes produced during building operations. It was found that waste management produces much more emissions than the operation stage. This reinforced the notion that waste recycling should be further promoted in buildings, possibly through building level technological innovations and design modifications. An integrated policy framework was proposed to explore ways by which building level strategies can work with other strategies to holistically address the issues of waste reduction, sorting, collection and recycling. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Small-scale bio-energy projects have been launched in rural areas of China and are considered as alternatives to fossil-fuel energy. However, energetic and environmental evaluation of these projects has rarely been carried out, though it is necessary for their long-term development. A village-level biomass gasification project provides an example. A hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) of its total nonrenewable energy (NE) cost and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is presented in this paper. The results show that the total energy cost for one joule of biomass gas output from the project is 2.93 J, of which 0.89 J is from nonrenewable energy, and the related GHG emission cost is 1.17 x 10(-4) g CO2-eq over its designed life cycle of 20 years. To provide equivalent effective calorific value for cooking work, the utilization of one joule of biomass gas will lead to more life cycle NE cost by 0.07 J and more GHG emissions by 8.92 x 10(-5) g CO2-eq compared to natural gas taking into consideration of the difference in combustion efficiency and calorific value. The small-scale bio-energy project has fallen into dilemma, i.e., struggling for survival, and for a more successful future development of village-level gasification projects, much effort is needed to tide over the plight of its development, such as high cost and low efficiency caused by decentralized construction, technical shortcomings and low utilization rate of by-products.Coal is an abundant energy resource, consumed in the United States chiefly by the power generation sector. Due to potential energy security benefits, it has also been considered as an alternate source for gasoline and diesel production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have previously estimated the greenhouse gas emissions associated with coal combustion as well as upstream activities such as mining and transport, to compare its environmental impact with other fuels. Until recent years, LCA studies predominantly ignored the uncertainty and variability inherent in life cycle assessment. More recent work has estimated the uncertainty in the life cycle inventories of fossil fuels, but the use of these uncertainty ranges to model system-wide impacts has been limited. As shown by previous studies, uncertainty often affects the conclusions of comparative life cycle assessments, especially when differences in average environmental impacts between two competing fuels/products are small. This study builds upon an existing deterministic life cycle framework for coal and develops uncertainty estimates of associated greenhouse gas emissions, with the objective of supporting more robust decision-making in comparative energy systems analyses involving coal. Greenhouse gas emissions from fuel use and methane releases at coal mines, fuel use for coal transport and combustion of coal, based on publicly available data are included in the life cycle framework. Mean life cycle GHG emissions from coal are estimated to be 96 g CO(2)e/MJ, while the 90% confidence interval ranged between 89 and 106 g CO(2)e/MJ. Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from Fischer-Tropsch (FT) coal-based gasoline are stochastically compared to emissions from petroleum-based gasoline. In the base case modeled, emissions from coal-based FT gasoline were found to be higher than emissions from petroleum-based gasoline with a probability of 80%, while they are lower with a probability of 20%. Results suggest that incorporating uncertainty in life cycle estimates is important, especially if these estimates are to be used within policy frameworks.The goal of this paper is to emphasize and present briefly the nanotechnology science and its potential impact on the automotive industry in order to improve the production of recent models with an optimization of the safety performance and a reduction in the environmental impacts. Nanomaterials can be applied in car bodies as light weight constructions without compromising the stiffness and crashwortiness, which means less material and less fuel consumption. This paper outlines the progress of nanotechnology applications into the safety features of more recent vehicle models and fuel efficiency, but also emphasis the importance of sustainable development on the application of these technologies and life cycle analysis of the considered materials, in order to meet the society trends and customers demands to improve ecology, safety and comfort.Various approaches to solvent recovery have been studied for the manufacturing process of celecoxib, the active ingredient in Celebrex(A (R)). A design case study has been performed by Rowan University with Pfizer through a green engineering partnership program. The manufacturing operation at one of their plants was evaluated and several green engineering alternatives for the purification and recovery of isopropanol (IPA) from waste streams proposed. This separation is complex due to the multiple waste streams generated, with varying compositions of IPA, ethanol, methanol, water, and dissolved solids. Overall goals were waste minimization and IPA recovery and purification. A conceptual study of distillation, extraction, reactive distillation, adsorption, and membrane-based processes was performed. Through use of computer simulation and literature/design methodologies, traditional methods were shown to be unable to obtain high IPA purities with the available equipment. Several green design approaches were evaluated using distillation combined with either molecular sieve adsorption or membrane pervaporation. These process schemes appear to have the most promise to effectively recover and purify IPA. The case study describes equipment and processing issues, and estimates environmental impacts from a life cycle analysis.Hydrogen and electric vehicle technologies are being considered as possible solutions to mitigate environmental burdens and fossil fuel dependency. Life cycle analysis (LCA) of energy use and emissions has been used with alternative vehicle technologies to assess the Well-to-Wheel (WTW) fuel cycle or the Cradle-to-Grave (CTG) cycle of a vehicle's materials. Fuel infrastructures, however, have thus far been neglected. This study presents an approach to evaluate energy use and CO2 emissions associated with the construction, maintenance and decommissioning of energy supply infrastructures using the Portuguese transportation system as a case study. Five light-duty vehicle technologies are considered: conventional gasoline and diesel (ICE), pure electric (EV), fuel cell hybrid (FCHEV) and fuel cell plug-in hybrid (FC-PHEV). With regard to hydrogen supply, two pathways are analysed: centralised steam methane reforming (SMR) and on-site electrolysis conversion. Fast, normal and home options are considered for electric chargers. We conclude that energy supply infrastructures for FC vehicles are the most intensive with 0.03-0.53 MJ(eq)/MJ emitting 0.7-27.3 g CO2eq/MJ of final fuel. While fossil fuel infrastructures may be considered negligible (presenting values below 2.5%), alternative technologies are not negligible when their overall LCA contribution is considered. EV and FCHEV using electrolysis report the highest infrastructure impact from emissions with approximately 8.4% and 8.3%, respectively. Overall contributions including uncertainty do not go beyond 12%. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Enriched Methane is a gas mixture consisting of methane and a certain amount of hydrogen (10-30%vol) that finds out several applications such as fuel of Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs). To produce EM, a steam reforming reactor whose heat duty is supplied by a molten-salt stream heated up by a concentrating solar power (CSP) plant can be used, in order to generate the hydrogen steam by solar energy. In fact, molten salts at temperatures up to 550 C can allow to reach the necessary thermal level inside the reactor to promote steam reforming reaction. The combination of technologies such as EM steam reformer, concentrating solar power (CSP) systems and molten-salt heat carriers, allows a partial decarbonation of the fossil fuel, thanks to the production of hydrogen, together with the possibility to carry solar energy in the current natural gas grid. The aim of this work is to present a Life Cycle Assessment of a novel hybrid plant for the production of EM from a solar steam reforming reactor. The performance, of this innovative architecture have been evaluated from an environmental point of view by the use of a LCA software (SimaPro7) and compared with the ones of traditional plants (reformer and cracker for the hydrogen production). The results highlight the lower environmental footprint of this innovative plant compared to the environmental impact of the two traditional plant considered in this work. The fossil energy duty of the MS-CSP-SR plant is about 50% less than that required from the conventional cracker and reformer production plants. The conventional plants are also characterized by a Global Warming Potential of about 75% higher than that of the MS-CSP-SR plant. Copyright (c) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study is based on the three types of residential buildings with framework structures in Beijing: concrete framework construction (CFC), light-gauge steel framework construction (SFC), and wood framework construction (WFC). The analysis of the environmental load across the life cycle of the three types of buildings is conducted using life cycle assessment (LCA) according to the protocols of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040/44. The functional unit is the three material building designs, which possess the same function and design plan, and are built in concrete, light-gauge steel, and light frame wood, inclusive of their respective envelope materials. Throughout the investigation, the calculations of the environmental load data of materials, energy consumption, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are comprehensively assessed and compared. The study shows that over the life cycle, the energy consumption of CFC is almost the same as that of SFC, and each of them is approximately 30% higher than that of WFC. Building use, steel material production, cement production, gypsum board production, and material transport are the main construction activities related to the energy consumption; the net CO2 emission of CFC is 44% higher than that of SFC and 49% higher than that of WFC. The main source of CO2 emission is the use of electricity; its contributions to the net CO2 emissions of WFC, SFC, and CFC are 67%, 64%, and 44%, respectively. The net CO2 emissions in the transport category cannot be ignored, with proportions amounting to 8%, 12%, and 11% for WFC, SFC, and CFC, respectively.This study analyzes the potential environmental impacts and socioeconomic benefits of installing a pilot plant for biodiesel production from used cooking oil (UCO) collected from hotels, restaurants, and bars in the Copacabana district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Currently much of this oil is used to produce soaps or simply disposed of directly into the sewage system, contributing to the eutrophication of bodies of water. An analysis is made of the production of biodiesel by the alkaline transesterification of UCO with ethanol using a sodium hydroxide catalyst. In order to analyze the environmental impacts, the ten stages of the life cycle of biodiesel made from UCO are assessed. The environmental impact of producing 1 metric ton of biodiesel is evaluated on the basis of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. In order to assess the economic feasibility of the pilot plant, a cash flow deterministic method was employed to evaluate the investment required. The social performance of the project was assessed using Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators. The environmental analysis showed that ethanol production and fuel combustion are the stages that had the highest environmental impact. The findings of the economic analysis showed that it would be feasible for the Rio de Janeiro city council to implement a pilot plant in the Copacabana district of the city. The results of the social performance analysis indicated that the project would have a positive impact on local job and income generation.This study reports the conversion of Jatropha curcas oil to biodiesel catalyzed by sulphated zirconia loaded on an alumina catalyst using response surface methodology (RSM). Specifically, it studies the effect of interaction between process variables on the yield of biodiesel. Jatropha is found to be survived in different locations in South-East Asia. Jatropha oil is favoured to palm oil for its cold filter plugging the point (CFPP) values, making it a better option for use in cold climates. The increasing industrialization and modernization of the world have to a steep rise for the demand of petroleum products. Economic development in developing countries has led to huge increase in the energy demand. The crude oil demand of the country is met by imparting about 80%. Thus, the energy security has become a key issue for the nation as a whole. Petroleum-based fuels are limited. This article is an attempt to present the prevailing fossil-fuel scenario with respect to petroleum diesel, fuel properties of biodiesel of biodiesel resources for biodiesel production, processes for its production, purification, etc. At last, a discussion of stability of biodiesel is described here. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The pollution caused by fuel combustion either for mechanical or electrical energy generation purposes is nowadays one of the most important environmental issues. It has been proven that combustion emissions, particularly those from cars and trucks, are linked with severe damages to the environment and human health. Along with the environmental problems, is necessary to consider that fossil resources are declining and their exploitation is getting more and more expensive. Bioenergy represent a sustainable solution for energy generation. Bioenergy is renewable energy made from plant-derived organic matter, collectively termed "biomass". Biomass-based energy sources are potentially carbon dioxide neutral and recycle the same carbon atoms. Life cycle assessments are reported to evaluate the net environmental impacts of biofuels. The term biofuel refers to liquid or gaseous fuels for the internal combustion engines that are predominantly produced from biomass. Biofuel policy might capitalize on the production of biofuels supporting rural economic development and sustainable agriculture. Amongst biofuels pure plant oil (PPO) has been investigated. This paper sets out to review the state of the art for PPO use as fuel in diesel engines, based on a wide literature review. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Efforts to divert organics away from landfills are viewed by many as an important measure to significantly reduce the climate change impacts of municipal solid waste management. However, the actual greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of organics diversion from landfills have yet to be thoroughly evaluated and whether such a diversion provides significant environmental benefits in terms of GHG impacts must be answered. This study, using California-specific information, aimed to analyse the GHG impacts of organics diversion through a life-cycle assessment (LCA). This LCA considered all aspects of organics management including transportation, materials handling, GHG emissions, landfill gas capture/utilization, energy impacts, and carbon sequestration. The LCA study evaluated overall GHG impacts of landfilling, and alternative management options such as composting and anaerobic digestion for diverted organic waste. The LCA analysis resulted in net GHG reductions of 0.093, 0.048, 0.065 and 0.073 tonnes carbon equivalent per tonne organic waste for landfilling, windrow composting, aerated static pile composting, and anaerobic digestion, respectively. This study confirms that all three options for organics management result in net reductions of GHG emissions, but it also shows that organics landfilling, when well-managed, generates greater GHG reductions. The LCA provides scientific insight with regards to the environmental impacts of organics management options, which should be considered in decision and policy-making. The study also highlights the importance of how site and case-specific conditions influence project outcomes when considering organic waste management options.Within the challenge of greenhouse gas reduction, hydrogen is regarded as a promising decarbonized energy vector. The hydrogen production by natural gas reforming and lignocellulosic biomass gasification are systematically analyzed by developing thermoeconomic models. Taking into account thermodynamic, economic and environmental factors, process options with CO2 mitigation are compared and optimized by combining flowsheeting with process integration, economic analysis and life cycle assessment in a multi-objective optimization framework. The systems performance is improved by introducing process integration maximizing the heat recovery and valorizing the waste heat. Energy efficiencies up to 80% and production costs of 12.5-42 $/GJ(H2) are computed for natural gas H-2 processes compared to 60% and 29-61 $/GJ(H2), for biomass processes. Compared to processes without CO2 mitigation, the CO2 avoidance costs are in the range of 14-306 $/t(CO2.avoided). The study shows that the thermo-chemical H-2 production has to be analyzed as a polygeneration unit producing hydrogen, captured CO2, heat and electricity. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rating of environmental aspects plays a central role in the ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS) and EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme because it is the basis for the identification of an organization's environmental targets. The existing methods for the assessment of environmental aspects are grouped into three categories: risk assessment-based (RA-based), life cycle assessment (LCA)-based, and criterion-based methods. The first category accurately determines abnormal, or accidental aspects, as well as the probabilistic causality of aspect-pathway-receptor-impact relationships, but when evaluating environmental impact, it cannot provide a sound theoretical basis. The second category provides a theoretical foundation for the assessment of environmental impact, due to LCA, but cannot adequately represent the probabilistic aspect-pathway-receptor-impact relationship. The third category puts emphasis on the significance criteria, but the scoring methods are too simple. To combine the benefits of these three categories of research, this study proposes an integrated framework, combining RA-, LCA-, and criterion-based methods. The integrated framework incorporates LCA techniques for the identification of the causal linkage for aspect-pathway-receptor-impact, uses fuzzy logic to assess aspects, considers fuzzy conditions, in likelihood assessment, and employs a new multi-criteria decision analysis method-multi-criteria and multi-connection comprehensive assessment (MMCA)-to estimate significant aspects in EMS. The proposed model is verified, using a real case study-a waste-recycling factory. The results show that this method successfully prioritizes the environmental aspects. Compared with criterion-based methods, the case study demonstrates that the proposed method provides a more solid theoretical basis. This study integrates RA, LCA, and MMCA, to assess environmental aspects. The method identifies the probabilistic causality of aspect-pathway-receptor-impact relationships, enhances the theoretical foundations, and strengthens decision-making.Protected crops have expanded significantly in the Mediterranean area over the last few decades as a successful means to provide abundant and high-quality produce. Although resources are generally used efficiently, greenhouse areas cause major environmental impacts. The aim of this work was to study, from an environmental point of view, the improvement capacity of greenhouse areas in the Mediterranean region and to assess several alternative agricultural practices to decrease their contribution to the environmental impacts in this system. The methodology used was life cycle assessment (LCA) based on a tomato crop grown in a multi-tunnel greenhouse in Almeria, on the southeast coast of Spain. The functional unit chosen was 1 ton of loose classic tomatoes. Five midpoint impact categories and one energy flow indicator were selected for their relevance. The agricultural practice alternatives evaluated were reduction of volume of substrate and fertilizers, extension of substrate and greenhouse life span and increase in renewable energy for electricity production. The results indicated that the main contributors to impact categories in the tomato production were structure, auxiliary equipment and fertilizers. Structure accounted for between 30 and 48 % of the contributions, depending on the impact category. The principal burdens in the auxiliary equipment stage were substrate and consumption of electricity. Fertilizers environmental impacts were due to emissions during their manufacture and application to the crop. In a best-case option, taking into account the best alternatives, contributions to the impact categories were reduced by between 17 and 30 %. The LCA methodology proved to be a useful tool to evaluate the environmental damage of this agricultural activity. The importance of including farm infrastructure in the assessment was demonstrated as it was a major contributor. The risk of eutrophication could be reduced by adjustment of the fertilizers-water balance and implementation of a closed-loop irrigation system. Future technological improvements should be developed to increase yields and thereby directly reduce the environmental burdens per unit produce. The present study served to assess the environmental impacts of a tomato crop in a multi-tunnel greenhouse on the coast of Almeria. The assessment was used to evaluate alternatives for improvement of cleaner production in greenhouse areas. Further research should focus on assuring the feasibility of the suggested options.The purpose of this paper is to supply an open method for weighting different environmental impacts, open to basically different evaluation approaches and open to easy revisions. From the partial, diverse and conflicting weighing methods available, a most consistent and flexible meta-method is constructed, allowing for a transparent discussion on weighting. The methods incorporated are as general as possible, each single one being as pure as possible. We surveyed encompassing operational methods for evaluation, applicable in LCA and in larger systems like countries. They differ in terms of modelling, as to midpoint or as to endpoint; as to evaluation set-up, in terms of collective preferences or individual preferences; and as to being either revealed or stated. The first is midpoint modelling with collectively stated preferences, with operational weighting schemes from Dutch and US government applications. Second is the LCA-type endpoint approach using individual stated preferences, with public examples from Japan and the Netherlands. The third is the integrated modelling approach by economists. All methods are internally inconsistent, as in terms of treatment of place and time, and they are incomplete, lacking environmental interventions and effect routes. We repaired only incompleteness, by methods transfer. Finally, we combined the three groups of methods into a meta-weighting method, aligned to the ILCD Handbook requirements for impact assessment. Application to time series data on EU-27 consumption shows how the EU developed in terms of overall environmental decoupling. The disparate methods available all can be improved substantially. For now, a user adjustable meta-method is the best option, allowing for public discussion. A flexible regularly updated spreadsheet is supplied with the article.Product category rules (PCRs) provide category-specific guidance for estimating and reporting product life cycle environmental impacts, typically in the form of environmental product declarations and product carbon footprints. Lack of global harmonization between PCRs or sector guidance documents has led to the development of duplicate PCRs for the same products. Differences in the general requirements (e.g., product category definition, reporting format) and LCA methodology (e.g., system boundaries, inventory analysis, allocation rules, etc.) diminish the comparability of product claims. A comparison template was developed to compare PCRs from different global program operators. The goal was to identify the differences between duplicate PCRs from a broad selection of product categories and propose a path toward alignment. We looked at five different product categories: milk/dairy (two PCRs), horticultural products (three PCRs), wood-particleboard (two PCRs), and laundry detergents (four PCRs). Disparity between PCRs ranged from broad differences in scope, system boundaries, and impacts addressed (e.g., multi-impact vs. carbon footprint only) to specific differences of technical elements. The differences primarily reflected the different purposes of the PCR (e.g., label/report), the different standards they were based on (e.g., ISO 14025/PAS 2050), the use of different product categorization systems, or simply the result of being developed independently. Differing degrees of specificity and terminology between PCRs allowed for varied interpretation-at times making direct comparison difficult. For many of the differences between PCRs, however, there was no clear rationale why they could not be consistent in the future. These results were used to outline a general guidance document for global alignment of PCRs which recommends (1) alignment of PCRs for different purposes, (2) provision of guidance for the adoption of aspects of other PCRs, and (3) provision of greater specificity on content. The overall recommendations also suggest collaboration among program operators to facilitate alignment on issues that evolve from independent development.Consequential LCA (CLCA) is becoming widely used in the scientific community as a modelling technique which describes the consequences of a decision. However, despite the increasing number of case studies published, a proper systematization of the approach has not yet been achieved. This paper investigates the methodological implications of CLCA and the extent to which the applications are in line with the theoretical dictates. Moreover, the predictive and explorative nature of CLCA is discussed, highlighting the role of scenario modelling in further structuring the methodology. An extensive literature review was performed, involving around 60 articles published over a period of approximately 18 years, and addressing both methodological issues and applications. The information was elaborated according to two main aspects: what for (questions and modes of LCA) and what (methodological implications of CLCA), with focus on the nature of modelling and on the identification of the affected processes. The analysis points out that since the modelling principles of attributional LCA (ALCA) and CLCA are the same, what distinguishes the two modes of LCA is the choice of the processes to be included in the system (i.e. in CLCA, those that are affected by the market dynamics). However, the identification of those processes is often done inconsistently, using different arguments, which leads to different results. We suggest the use of scenario modelling as a way to support CLCA in providing a scientifically sound basis to model specific product-related futures with respect to technology development, market shift, and other variables. The CLCA is a sophisticated modelling technique that provides a way to assess the environmental consequences of an action/decision by including market mechanisms into the analysis. There is still room for improvements of the method and for further research, especially in relation to the following aspects: clarifying when and which market information is important and necessary; understanding the role of scenario modelling within CLCA; and developing a procedure to support the framing of questions to better link questions to models. Moreover, we suggest that the logic of mechanisms could be the reading guide for overcoming the dispute between ALCA and CLCA. Going further, this logic could also be extended, considering CLCA as an approach-rather than as a modelling principle with defined rules-to deepen LCA, providing the conceptual basis for including more mechanisms than just the market ones.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has largely focused on characterizing the impact of outdoor emissions. However, the intake fraction (iF) of indoor air emissions could be more important. The present paper aims to determine the long-term intake fractions of indoor emissions, including multiple indoor removal pathways such as sorption on indoor surfaces, and to compare it to the outdoor intake fraction. The developed model accounts for the different removal pathways in buildings, including air exchange, degradation in the gas phase, degradation on surfaces, and finally partitioning between air, walls, and furniture assuming a kinetically limited material transfer between gas phase and a near-surface film. The indoor intake fraction is presented as a function of the adsorption and degradation rate on surfaces. The intake fraction of volatile substances is only affected by the ventilation rate, with a constant intake fraction of 1 x 10(-2). For ozone-sensitive substances, indoor gas phase reactions can significantly reduce the intake fraction. Semi-volatile substances are affected by the adsorption and degradation on room surfaces. For highly adsorbing substances, the decrease in intake fraction is limited to a minimum value of 2.5 x 10(-4) by the mass transfer rate between air and room surfaces for a typical office or residence room in developed countries with temperate climate. Indoor intake fraction is compared to outdoor intake fraction calculated using the Impact 2002 multimedia model. Typical calculated indoor intake fraction values are in a significantly higher range (2.5 x 10(-4) to 1 x 10(-2)) than inhalation outdoor values (1 x 10(-9) to 1 x 10(-6)). This paper opens new possibilities to assess the health impact of indoor and outdoor air emissions in a consistent way, including surface sorption-a major removal pathway for semi-volatile compounds. By combining the newly calculated intake fractions with effect factors and with indoor and outdoor emissions per functional unit, it becomes possible to consistently account for indoor exposure in methods such as LCA.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is increasingly acknowledged as a potent global warming abatement option. It is demonstrated that whilst the global warming potential (GWP) decreases, the other environmental impact category potentials often increase in a life cycle perspective. Despite this, only a few studies clearly address this trade-off or use weighting to compare the positive and negative effects of CCS. The present life cycle assessment (LCA) study focuses, therefore, on presenting several environmental indicators and on weighting the inventory results in order to ascertain which of the analysed systems is to be preferred. The case studied is a projected gas power plant at Tjeldbergodden (Norway), where it is proposed to include post-combustion CCS. Four main scenarios have been analysed, one without and three with CCS. The principal variation between the CCS scenarios is that the steam required for amine regeneration is produced in three different ways: in a separate gas fuelled steam boiler; in a separate biomass fuelled steam boiler; and delivered from the low-pressure steam turbine in the power plant. Design information and technical specifications have been available. The study has used LCA methodology based on the ISO standard 14044, SimaPro 7.3.2.4 software and the Ecoinvent 2.0 database. The functional unit is 1 TWh electricity delivered to the grid. The following environmental impact categories have been included: GWP, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) and cumulative energy demand (CED). Three weighting methods have been used to ascertain the robustness of the weighting results: ReCiPe, EPS 2000 and IMPACT 2002+. The characterisation results show that the CCS scenarios have reduced impacts only in the case of GWP. The weighting demonstrates that in the ReCiPe model, climate change is strongly in focus, whilst in EPS 2000, human health and depletion of reserves are dominant. Climate change is also an important factor in IMPACT 2002+, together with effects on human health (respiratory inorganics). The process integration scenario has, however, the best result for all three weighting models. This contrasts with the results from the impact analysis where four of the five analysed impact categories rated the CCS-3 scenario as worse than the reference scenario. One possible option for improving the biofuel boiler scenario is to capture the CO2 from the combustion of biomass in the external steam boiler. This would not, in all probability, affect the acidification, eutrophication, POCP and CED to any significant degree, but the GWP, and hence the ReCiPe and the IMPACT 2002+, weighting results could be expected to improve. The weighting exercise has identified toxicity as a concern with regard to the biofuel boiler scenarios (CCS-2) and human health issues as having importance for the CCS-3 scenario. It would seem that process integration is a better CCS option than that of CCS providing steam from a separate steam boiler (without CCS), even where this boiler is biomass-fuelled. Any future analysis should focus both on the process integration scenario and the biofuel boiler scenario with CCS of biological CO2.The production of bioethanol from various waste papers (newspaper, office paper, magazine and cardboard) was evaluated from an environmental standpoint. 'Cradle-to-grave' (or 'well-to-wheel') analyses were performed using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach with the aims of identifying the key drivers of environmental impact in the bioethanol supply chains and of comparing the environmental footprints of various bioethanol supply chains with those of conventional petrol. Base cases (bioethanol production from various waste papers) and two state-of-the-art cases including pretreatment of office paper by dilute acid (DA) and of newspaper by an oxidative lime (OL) process were constructed using laboratory data, expert consultations, literature values, and simulation in AspenPlus (TM) software. Contribution analysis showed enzyme production needed for hydrolysis of the papers to be the main contributor to the environmental profiles for bioethanol in the base cases. The production of process heat and hydrochloric acid respectively were the main contributors to the bioethanol environmental profiles for office paper-to-bioethanol with DA pre-treatment and newspaper-to-bioethanol with OL pre-treatment. Overall, bioethanol produced from newspaper, magazine paper and cardboard was found to have a lower environmental impact than the conventional transport fuel petrol. However, this conclusion is significantly affected by the system boundaries used for the analysis. When an expanded system boundary is applied to consider virgin and recycled paper production as the potential consequential effects within the bioethanol and petrol systems respectively, office paper-derived bioethanol systems emerge as the most environmentally favourable over petrol.To effectively reduce CO2, CO2 mitigation technologies should be employed tactically. This paper focuses on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the most promising CO2 reduction technology and investigates how to establish CCS strategy suitably. We confirm a major part of the optimal strategy for CCS infrastructure planning through a literature review according to mathematical optimization criteria associated with facility location models. In particular, the feasibility of large scale CCS infrastructure is evaluated through economic, environmental, and technical assessment. The current state-of-the-art optimization techniques for CCS infrastructure planning are also addressed while taking numerous factors into account. Finally, a list of issues for future research is highlighted.This paper presents a review undertaken to understand the concept of 'future-proofing' the energy performance of buildings. The long lifecycles of the building stock, the impacts of climate change and the requirements for low carbon development underline the need for long-term thinking from the early design stages. 'Future-proofing' is an emerging research agenda with currently no widely accepted definition amongst scholars and building professionals. In this paper, it refers to design processes that accommodate explicitly full lifecycle perspectives and energy trends and drivers by at least 2050, when selecting energy efficient measures and low carbon technologies. A knowledge map is introduced, which explores the key axes (or attributes) for achieving a 'future-proofed' energy design: namely, coverage of sustainability issues, lifecycle thinking, and accommodating risks and uncertainties that affect the energy consumption. It is concluded that further research is needed so that established building energy assessment methods are refined to better incorporate future-proofing. The study follows an interdisciplinary approach and is targeted at design teams with aspirations to achieve resilient and flexible low-energy buildings over the long-term. (C). 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concern about environmental impact of business activities has spurred an interest in designing environmentally conscious supply chains. This paper proposes a multi-objective fuzzy mathematical programming model for designing an environmental supply chain under inherent uncertainty of input data in such problem. The proposed model is able to consider the minimization of multiple environmental impacts beside the traditional cost minimization objective to make a fair balance between them. A life cycle assessment-based (LCA-based) method is applied to assess and quantify the environmental impact of different options for supply chain network configuration. Also, to solve the proposed multi-objective fuzzy optimization model, an interactive fuzzy solution approach is developed. A real industrial case is used to demonstrate the significance and applicability of the developed fuzzy optimization model as well as the usefulness of the proposed solution approach. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Probiotics are a live microbial feed supplement that beneficially affects the host animal. As aquaculture is one of the main areas where probiotics can be applied, the environmental suitability of using probiotics in hatching and nursing facilities for turbot farming was evaluated through the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. This LCA study showed that the potential environmental impacts associated with probiotic production are generally offset by the impact reductions linked to lower consumption levels and reduced waste and emission generation rates within the hatching and nursing subsystem. Thus, the use of probiotics is recommended in order to enhance the performance of turbot aquaculture systems provided that operational and economic advantages are attained.Bioplastics made with renewable resources are now ready for full commercial exploitation. Starch-based plastics are an important class of bioplastics used to make biodegradable products. Biodegradability can contribute to alleviating the waste problem of our current society. In this paper, three case studies based on the use of starch-based plastics are shown. Biodegradable products can both reduce the amount of waste produced and increase material recycling and landfill diversion. The products analysed and the main effects of shifting towards biodegradable plastics are examined next. By using biodegradable mulch film, waste passes from 400 up to approximate to 0 kg per mulched hectare. By using biodegradable catering items, the average recycling (including organic recycling) rate increases from approximate to 0 up to 50% whereas landfill diversion increases by 36% on average across EU-27. By shifting towards biodegradable carrier bags, a substantial reduction of contaminants present in bio-waste and screened off by composting plants results in an almost fivefold increase of bio-waste quality. The possibility of shifting from heterogeneous waste (non-biodegradable plastics + bio-waste) into homogeneous waste (biodegradable plastics + bio-waste) makes the use of bioplastics particularly beneficial for the waste management ecoprofile as shown by previous life cycle assessment studies available in literature. (c) 2012 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Commercial production of renewable energy feedstocks from microalgae will require reliable and scalable growth systems. Two and one half years of biomass and lipid productivity data were obtained with an industrial-scale outdoor photobioreactor operated in Fort Collins, Colorado (USA). The annualized volumetric growth rates for Nannochloropsis oculata (CCMP 525) and Nannochloropsis salina (CCMP 1776) were 0.16 g L-1 d(-1) (peak = 0.37 g L-1 d(-1)) and 0.15 g L-1 d(-1) (peak = 0.37 g L-1 d(-1)) respectively. The collective average lipid production was 10.7 m(3) ha(-1) yr(-1) with a peak value of 36.3 m(3) ha(-1) yr(-1). Results from this study are unique based on publication of biomass and corresponding lipid content combined with demonstration of energy savings realized through analysis of gas delivery requirements, water recycling from successive harvests with no effect on productivity, and culture stability through serial batch lineage data and chemotaxonomic analysis of fatty acid contents. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents for the first time the results of a full life cycle assessment (LCA)(1) study for the three most common types of house in the UK: detached, semi-detached and terraced. All life cycle stages are considered, including house construction, use and demolition after 50 years. The results indicate that the use stage has the largest contribution to most environmental impacts. For example, the global warming potential (GWP)(2) over the 50-year lifetime of the detached house is 455 t of CO2 eq.; 374 t CO2 eq. of the semi-detached: and 309 t CO2 eq. of the terraced house. Around 90% of the GWP is from the use, 9% from construction (embodied carbon) and 1% from the end-of-life waste management. A similar trend is noticed for all other impacts. Recycling the building materials at the end of life leads to an overall reduction of the impacts. For instance, the GWP reduces by 3% for the detached and semi-detached houses (to 441 t of CO2 eq. and 363 t CO2 eq., respectively) and by 2% (to 302 t CO2 eq.) for the terraced house. The main environmental benefit is from reusing the bricks and recycling the aggregates. At the housing sector level, the total GWP is 132 million tonnes of CO2 eq. per year with the semi-detached houses contributing 40%, terraced 37% and detached houses 27%. Over the 50-year lifetime, the total GWP from the sector is nearly 6.6 billion tonnes of CO2 eq. The results also highlight the importance of decisions made in the design and construction stages as they determine the impacts of the house in the use and end-of-life stages. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper discusses incentives for sustainable development, especially those areas relating to the harmful use of fossil-based resources. Based on systems analyses of the global energy system, drastic measures are proposed in order to regain the lost balance between the supply of resources and the burdening of the environment. The role of process system engineering within global systems engineering is discussed in order to implement these measures in the most efficient manner. The advantages and weaknesses of different sustainability measurements are also discussed - footprints, LCA indexes, and eco-cost, in relation to multi-objective optimization synthesis. A general mathematical programming formulation on a new concept of eco-profit is presented, in order to obtain fundamentally new sustainable solutions.In an effort to reduce its environmental impact, the desalination industry constantly seeks more sustainable operational and maintenance practices. Based on the increasing number of large desalination plants using membrane technology, the resulting number of old reverse osmosis (RO) modules to be discarded is expected to become a critical challenge. Although the fate of old RO membranes has rarely been considered in the past, a wide range of opportunities can be considered for the potential reuse and recycling of the old modules. Reuse options include direct application of the old membranes within lower throughput systems (i.e. brackish water treatment) and chemical conversion into porous, ultrafiltration-like filters. Other options include, direct recycling of the various module components, and energy recovery through incineration. In addition to the remaining technical issues related to the feasibility of these proposed options, strategic and policy challenges will need to be addressed. However, the concept of product stewardship, already implemented in many parts of the world for electronic wastes and packaging, can provide guidelines for future policies for RO disposal. Finally, the framework for a life cycle assessment of the various disposal options is discussed which may provide guidance for the future implementation of these strategies. (C) 2012 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.Built environment carbon reduction strategies materialize predominantly in city-level greenhouse gas (GHG) management, where new residential development appears as one of the key instruments. However, city-level assessments are often incapable of producing data at a community or neighborhood level and thus they may heavily underestimate the emissions from new construction. This paper explores the implications of low-energy residential construction as an instrument of climate change mitigation in the built environment and demonstrates why city-level approaches easily fail to identify the significance of the emissions from construction. We employ a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to demonstrate that, when the temporal allocation of emissions from the construction and use phases is taken into account, construction phase emissions come to have a central role in finding effective GHG mitigation strategies-even when the emissions from all consumption activities during the use phase are included in the assessment. In fact, their role would seem to be so central that new residential construction cannot be utilized as an instrument of city carbon management, even over a relatively long period. While we analyze a case study from Finland, the analysis intends to highlight the situation throughout the globe.Under the Kyoto Protocol many countries have targets to reduce carbon emissions and increase renewable energy production. In order to do this effectively the impact and efficacy of differing schemes must be determined. One option for producing electricity is through the use of a tidal barrage. The largest potential barrage scheme considered in the UK is the Cardiff-Weston barrage scheme in the Severn estuary. The scheme would be a single, renewable installation and is predicted to constitute 4% of the UK electricity supply. Therefore a carbon and energy assessment was completed on the Cardiff-Weston Severn barrage scheme. The assessment shows that the energy and carbon intensity of the Severn barrage is small in comparison to the National Grid mix and that, given reasonable assumptions, the Severn barrage can contribute to meeting the UK carbon reduction target. Importantly, the operation stage was identified as both the most energy and carbon intense by a large margin. This is a notable finding as preceding studies have tended to dismiss the consequences of the barrage operation as minimal or nil. Whilst these findings are for the Cardiff-Weston barrage, the implications will be similar for tidal barrages in other sites in the UK and globally. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Design decisions made in early R&D of a new technology ultimately determine its future environmental performance. Owing to the awareness of environmental impacts of technologies during their life cycle, the optimization of their design seems fundamental to develop more sustainable technologies. Using the example of a microstructured reactor for gas to liquid fuel conversion in early R&D, the Modular Server-Client-Server methodology for combining technical optimization with parametric Life Cycle Impact Assessment was used to analyze different design and manufacturing options. Two structuring fabrication techniques for metal foils were compared for several microreactor designs with respect to their ecological impact. Furthermore, improvable and non-improvable technical parameters regarding environmental impact, the impact of each fabrication step and within one fabrication step were analyzed. In conclusion, our analyses provide helpful information allowing for environmentally optimized design considerations in early R&D of a microreactor.Medicinal plant extracts are widely used as active ingredients in cosmetics. Plant material can come from a variety of sources, including commercial production horticulture and wild harvest in developing countries. Sustainably produced plant material does not threaten biodiversity, release pollution, compete with the food supply, or exploit local people. International treaties like the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity and CITES (Washington Convention) and regulations like Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) have been established to guide sustainable sourcing and production of plant material. Non-profit organizations like the Round Table Sustainable Palm Oil have been organized to create sustainability standards. Once a reliable and sustainable supply chain has been established, cosmetic companies must be aware of regulations set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and international regulatory agencies that guide the marketing of cosmetics with medicinal plant ingredients. Efficacy claims should be supported with evidence and cannot state that the product treats medical conditions. In the end, responsibly sourced medicinal plants can bring economic benefit to producers, processors, and marketers.The agri-food sector, and specifically agricultural production, is a major contributor to climate change. In order to manage the impact on the climate, a better understanding of the variability of global warming potential in agriculture is needed. This study assesses the variability in global warming potential of 27 crops using the modular extrapolation of agricultural life cycle assessment (MEXALCA) method, a modular, geographical extrapolation method for crop life cycle assessment. The global warming potential results, excluding land use change, were validated with crop data from the ecoinvent database and from the literature. The production weighted worldwide mean values of global warming potential for the 27 crops varied in a wide range (factor of 20 in impact per ha; factor of 100 in impact per kg). The global warming potential values per kg of fresh mass were lowest for sugar crops (<0.05 kg CO2-eq kg(-1)), followed by root crops (<0.15 kg CO2-eq kg(-1)), vegetables and fruits (<0.35 kg CO2-eq kg(-1)), and oil palm. Cereals (except rice), pulses, rapeseed and soybean had medium values (<0.6 kg CO2-eq kg(-1)). Highest values were found for treenuts, other oil crops (linseed, cotton, peanuts), and rice (1.2-2.4 kg CO2-eq kg(-1)). The global warming potential per kg fresh mass was negatively correlated with the mean yield of the different crops, but not in the case of the same crop produced in different countries. The farming intensity in different countries, the yields and the selection of producing countries were important contributory factors in determining the variability of global warming potential. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We use the input-output tables in constant prices extended with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for examining the development of China, a country undergoing rapid growth. We undertake this empirical analysis in terms of a new and therefore rarely applied methodology: instead of average coefficients characterizing the average (old) technology operating throughout a particular reporting year, we calculate marginal coefficientsin monetary and CO2 termsthat capture the additional (new) technology installed after that year. Marginal coefficients are increasingly recommended in the literature for applications such as consequential life cycle assessment, where they are supposed to lead to more realistic results, especially in prospective analyses. Our work provides a first, broad overview about the magnitude and distribution of these coefficients across recent years in China's rapidly growing economy for which marginal coefficients could be expected to differ greatly from average coefficients. We find that (1) marginal coefficients can differ substantially from average coefficients, thus lending support to the need expressed in the literature for coining consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) and similar prospective assessment in marginal rather than average terms; (2) marginal CO2 emissions coefficients differ more from their average counterparts than marginal monetary coefficients, showing that for China, within-sector technological solutions to emissions abatement have played a more important role than the reorganization of supply structures; and (3) there exists considerable scatter and variation of marginal coefficients across years, which to a certain extent precludes the identification of clear temporal and sectoral trends.Maintaining the supply of pasture based meat products such as lamb is likely to be challenged by warmer and drier future climatic conditions across southern Australia, whilst also minimising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of future climate scenarios on the balance between productivity and GHG emissions from sheep grazing systems. This study simulated sheep grazing systems at four sites that represented a range of climatic zones, soil and pasture types in southern Australia. This study used a biophysical and mechanistic whole farm system model (Sustainable Grazing Systems Pasture Model) to simulate the interactions between climate, soil properties, pasture species and a grazing animal on a daily time-step. Historical climate data were obtained from the years 1961 to 2000 (baseline climate) and for three future climate scenarios in the years 2030 and 2070 (with low and medium rates of warming), which were created using projected changes in the baseline climate; representing progressively warmer conditions. A dryland (i.e. rainfed) perennial pasture, characteristic of the region, was modelled at each site. Rules with regard to grazing management and supplementary feeding remained consistent in all simulations so comparison could be made. All sites lambed during the winter, with lambs removed from the system when weaned at 120 days of age. Simulated estimates of pasture intake, supplementary feed and lamb live weight at weaning were used to evaluate productivity. The annual net GHG emissions produced by the grazing system were estimated and expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq.) emissions per hectare and per kg of lamb live weight at weaning. Stocking rates imposed at each site reflected the long-term carrying capacity of the grazing systems during the baseline years, which ranged from 11 to 15 sheep/ha across locations. This study showed that sites where the projections for declining rainfall were highest in future climate scenarios and simulated with C3 temperate pasture species, predicted lower pasture intakes and lamb live weights at weaning in future climates. At sites where future predicted rainfall declines were lower, pasture intakes and the live weight of lamb produced at weaning were maintained. The CO2-eq. emissions/ha (ranging from 4.1 to 5.6 t CO2-eq./ha) and per unit product (ranging from 11.0 to 21.7 kg CO2-eq./kg lamb live weight) across sites studied and across climate scenarios can potentially be minimised by maintaining a productive pasture base and lamb production. With warming, a site with a C4-based pasture system became significantly more productive and with a lower GHG emissions intensity, whereas some grazing systems may need to the future. Within grazing systems, the N2O emissions by denitrification may become more significant as a result of warming. This study highlighted that the productivity and emissions changes of a grazing system in future climates are heavily dependent on the predicted climate, pasture species and the type of soil. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present study aimed to evaluate and compare the carbon footprint associated with canned tuna meat with a focus on packaging systems used to provide one single-serve meal. The manufacturing process of retort pouches and cups produced 60% and 70% less greenhouse gas emissions, respectively, than that of metal cans. However, the overall carbon footprint of canned tuna in retort cups was 10% and 22% less than when packaged in metal cans and retort pouches, respectively. Packaging and its associated processing constituted significant fractions of the product's carbon footprint, ranging from 20% to 40%. Hotspots in the life cycle assessment of canned tuna are packaging production and disposal and product sterilization. The improvement of retort operation in terms of capacity and energy utilization and the efficiency of post-consumption packaging material recovery are the key factors responsible for the reduction of a product's carbon footprint. These issues present a challenge to both the food industry and the local authorities. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.During the most recent decades increased interest in fuel from biomass in the United States and worldwide has emerged each time petroleum derived gasoline registered well publicized spikes in price. The willingness of the U.S. government to face the issues of more heavily high-priced foreign oil and climate change has led to more investment on plant-derived sustainable biofuel sources. Biomass derived from corn has become one of the primary feedstocks for bioethanol production for the past several years in the U.S. However, the argument of whether to use food as biofuel has led to a search for alternative non-food sources. Consequently, industrial research efforts have become more focused on low-cost large-scale processes for lignocellulosic feedstocks originating mainly from agricultural and forest residues along with herbaceous materials and municipal wastes. Although cellulosic-derived biofuel is a promising technology, there are some obstacles that interfere with bioconversion processes reaching optimal performance associated with minimal capital investment. This review summarizes current approaches on lignocellulosic-derived biofuel bioconversion and provides an overview on the major steps involved in cellulosic-based bioethanol processes and potential issues challenging these operations. Possible solutions and recoveries that could improve bioprocessing are also addressed. This includes the development of genetically engineered strains and emerging pretreatment technologies that might be more efficient and economically feasible. Future prospects toward achieving better biofuel operational performance via systems approaches such as risk and life cycle assessment modeling are also discussed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioconversion of renewable lignocellulosic biomass to biofuel and value added products are globally gaining significant prominence. Market forces demonstrate a drive towards products benign to natural environment increasing the importance of renewable materials. The development of second generation bioethanol from lignocellulosic biomass serves many advantages from both energy and environmental point of views. Biomass an inexpensive feedstock considered sustainable and renewable, is an option with the potential to replace a wide diversity of fossil based products within the energy sector; heat, power, fuels, materials and chemicals. Lignocellulose is a major structural component of woody and non-woody plants and consists of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The effective utilization of all the three components would play a significant role in the economic viability of cellulosic ethanol. Biomass conversion process involves five major steps, choice of suitable biomass, effective pretreatment, production of saccharolytic enzymes-cellulases and hemicellulases, fermentation of hexoses and pentoses and downstream processing. Within the context of production of fuels from biomass, pretreatment has come to denote processes by which cellulosic biomass is made amenable to the action of hydrolytic enzymes. The limited effectiveness of current enzymatic process on lignocellulose is thought to be due to the relative difficulties in pretreating the feedstocks. The present review is a comprehensive state of the art describing the advancement in recent pretreaments, metabolic engineering approaches with special emphasis on the latest developments in consolidated biomass processing, current global scenario of bioethanol pilot plants and biorefinery concept for the production of biofuels and bioproducts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a lack of comprehensive information in the retrievable literature on pilot scale process and energy data using promising process technologies and commercially scalable and available capital equipment for lignocellulosic biomass biorefining. This study conducted a comprehensive review of the energy efficiency of selected sugar platform biorefinery process concepts for biofuel production from lignocelluloses. The process data from approximately a dozen studies that represent state-of-the-art in cellulosic biofuel production concepts, along with literature energy input data for agriculture operations, were analyzed to provide estimates of net energy production. It was found that proper allocation of energy input for fertilizer and pesticides to lignocellulosic biomass and major agriculture or forestry products, such as corn and lumber in corn farming and lumber plantations, respectively, were critical. The significant discrepancies in literature data suggest studies are needed to determine energy inputs for fuel in farming and farm machinery. Increasing solids loading in pretreatment to at least 25% is critical to reducing energy input in a biorefinery. Post thermo-chemical pretreatment size reduction approach should be adopted for energy efficient woody biomass processing. When appropriate pretreatment technologies are used, woody biomass can be processed as efficiently as herbaceous biomass and agricultural residues. Net energy output for cellulosic ethanol was estimated to range approximately from -500-2000 MJ/ton biomass (HHV base): indicating that the energy input/output ratio is approximately 1:1 for cellulosic ethanol. However, net energy can reach approximately 4000-7000 MJ/ton of biomass when energy from lignin is included. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The present work compares the environmental impact of three different thermal energy storage (TES) systems for solar power plants. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for these systems is developed: sensible heat storage both in solid (high temperature concrete) and liquid (molten salts) thermal storage media, and latent heat storage which uses phase change material (PCM). The aim of this paper is to analyze if the energy savings related to the stored energy of the different systems are enough to balance the environmental impact produced during the manufacturing and operation phase of each storage system. Some hypothetical scenarios are studied using LCA methodology to point out the differences between each TES system. The system based on solid media, due to his simplicity, shows the lowest environmental impact per kWh stored of all three systems compared. In addition, the liquid media (molten salts) shows the highest impact per kWh stored because it needs more material and complex equipment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings consume a vast amount of energy during the life cycle stages of construction, use and demolition. Total life cycle energy use in a building consists of two components: embodied and operational energy. Embodied energy is expended in the processes of building material production, on-site delivery, construction, maintenance, renovation and final demolition. Operational energy is consumed in operating the buildings. Studies have revealed the growing significance of embodied energy inherent in buildings and have demonstrated its relationship to carbon emissions. Current interpretations of embodied energy are quite unclear and vary greatly, and embodied energy databases suffer from the problems of variation and incomparability. Parameters differ and cause significant variation in reported embodied energy figures. Studies either followed the international Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) standards or did not mention compliance with any standard. Literature states that the current LCA standards fail to provide complete guidance and do not address some important issues. It also recommends developing a set of standards to streamline the embodied energy calculation process. This paper discusses parameters causing problems in embodied energy data and identifies unresolved issues in current LCA standards. We also recommend an approach to derive guidelines that could be developed into a globally accepted protocol. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many studies that apply life cycle assessment methodology avoid a strict differentiation between attributional (aLCA) and consequential (cLCA) life cycle assessment. The main distinction that can be made is that an aLCA approach describes a state of average production systems of an economic system while in contrast the consequential approach describes changes (induced by political decisions) in production systems within the economic system. The task of this study was to analyze a biogas system from an environmental point of view and thereby to work out the methodological differences of aLCA and cLCA approaches. The Life cycle inventory quantity primary energy demand (PED) as well as the impact categories global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication (EP), acidification (AP) and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) were analyzed. The aLCA approach was split into three scenarios, a physical, an economic and a core product focused one (with focus on the main product) to show the impact of by-product handling. The cLCA approach was split into a local scenario using on-site data and a general scenario using higher aggregated data to show the effects of substitution caused by the introduction of a new technology. The results of the two approaches were compared with the environmental impact of the current average and marginal German electricity mix. Global warming potential per functional unit varied between 3.8 g and 12.5 g of CO2 equivalent in the biogas scenarios. Compared to the average and marginal German electricity mix savings in PED, GWP and partly in AP and POCP can be achieved. However, high variations in the proportion to the reference electricity system, the total quantity results as well as the contribution of single processes to the total result were found. This makes it indispensable to distinguish accurately between the aLCA and the cLCA approach. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is often claimed that the cheapest energy is the one you do not need to produce. Nevertheless, this claim could somehow be unsubstantiated. In this article, the authors try to shed some light on this issue by using the concept of energy return on investment (EROI) as a yardstick. This choice brings semantic issues because in this paper the EROI is used in a different context than that of energy production. Indeed, while watts and negawatts share the same physical unit, they are not the same object, which brings some ambiguities in the interpretation of EROI. These are cleared by a refined definition of EROI and an adapted nomenclature. This review studies the research in the energy efficiency of building operation, which is one of the most investigated topics in energy efficiency. This study focuses on the impact of insulation and high efficiency windows as means to exemplify the concepts that are introduced. These results were normalized for climate, life time of the building, and construction material. In many cases, energy efficiency measures imply a very high EROI. Nevertheless, in some circumstances, this is not the case and it might be more profitable to produce the required energy than to try to save it.This paper examines the relevance of incorporating comprehensive life-cycle environmental data into the design and management of pedestrian pavements to minimize the impact on the built environment. The overall primary energy demand and global warming potential of concrete, asphalt and granite sidewalks are assessed. A design with a long functional lifetime reduces its overall primary energy demand and global warming potential due to lower maintenance and repair requirements. However, long-lived construction solutions do not ensure a lower life-cycle primary energy demand and global warming potential than for shorter-lived designs; these values depend on the environmental suitability of the materials chosen for paving. Asphalt sidewalks reduce long-term global warming potential under exposure conditions where the functional lifetime of the pavements is less than 15 years. In places where it is known that a concrete sidewalk can have a life of at least 40 years, a concrete sidewalk is the best for minimizing both long-term primary energy demand and global warming potential. Granite sidewalks are the largest energy consumers and greenhouse gas contributors. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study presents the results of an integrated assessment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the power plant sector in Germany, with special emphasis on the competition with renewable energy technologies. Assessment dimensions comprise technical, economic and environmental aspects, long-term scenario analysis, the role of stakeholders and public acceptance and regulatory issues. The results lead to the overall conclusion that there might not necessarily be a need to focus additionally on CCS in the power plant sector. Even in case of ambitious climate protection targets, current energy policy priorities (expansion of renewable energies and combined heat and power plants as well as enhanced energy productivity) result in a limited demand for CCS. In case that the large energy saving potential aimed for can only partly be implemented, the rising gap in CO2 reduction could only be closed by setting up a CCS-maximum strategy. In this case, up to 22% (41 GW) of the totally installed load in 2050 could be based on CCS. Assuming a more realistic scenario variant applying CCS to only 20 GW or lower would not be sufficient to reach the envisaged climate targets in the electricity sector. Furthermore, the growing public opposition against CO2 storage projects appears as a key barrier, supplemented by major uncertainties concerning the estimation of storage potentials, the long-term cost development as well as the environmental burdens which abound when applying a life-cycle approach. However, recently, alternative applications are being increasingly considered-that is the capture of CO2 at industrial point sources and biomass based energy production (electricity, heat and fuels) where assessment studies for exploring the potentials, limits and requirements for commercial use are missing so far. Globally, CCS at power plants might be an important climate protection technology: coal-consuming countries such as China and India are increasingly moving centre stage into the debate. Here, similar investigations on the development and the integration of both, CCS and renewable energies, into the individual energy system structures of such countries would be reasonable.In this study we investigate how indicators for energy use are applied in a set of life cycle assessment (LCA) and energy analysis case studies of biofuels. We found five inherently different types of indicators to describe energy use: (1) fossil energy, (2) secondary energy, (3) cumulative energy demand, (4) net energy balance, and (5) total extracted energy. It was also found that the examined reports and articles, the choice of energy use indicator was seldom motivated or discussed in relation to other energy use indicators. In order to investigate the differences between these indicators, they were applied to a case. The life cycle energy use of palm oil methyl ester was calculated and reported using these five different indicators for energy use, giving considerably different output results. This is in itself not unexpected, but indicates the importance of clearly identifying, describing and motivating the choice of energy use indicator. The indicators can all be useful in specific situations, depending on the goal and scope of the individual study, but the choice of indicators need to be better reported and motivated than what is generally done today. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lime production is characterized by large emissions of CO2 and by other environmental impacts. In Cuba this industry operates with outdated technology, resulting in low energy and material efficiency and in high environmental impacts. In order to improve the environmental performance of the lime industry in Cuba it is necessary to have an overview of the environmental impacts associated with the production process. This paper quantifies the environmental impacts of lime production in Cuba by means of LCA methodology in a cradle-to-gate evaluation. It also aims at establishing a benchmark for improvement by comparing the environmental impact of this industry in Cuba with a plant in an industrialized country. For the inventory evaluation the process of lime production was divided in five production stages. When necessary, the data was completed with literature sources. For the impact assessment the impacts in the following categories were considered: energy consumption, global warming, human toxicity, photoxidant formation and acidification. Results show that the calcination stage and the consumption of fuel, electricity and limestone are the main contributors to environmental impact of the production process. The economic assessment shows possibilities to improve the environmental performance while achieving cost reductions in the production process. The larger improvements in the environmental performance and cost saving can be achieved by improving the energy efficiency of the calcination stage. This can partially be accomplished with moderate investments. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of consumer products is a major concern for many companies. In this work, an attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was performed to identify the Best Practicable Environmental Option of three lighting columns made in alternative materials. These are a glass fibre reinforced polymer composite, and two traditional materials, steel and aluminium. Analysis of an alternative composite lighting column with the same matrix, but reinforced with natural fibres (jute) was also performed. The results showed that the lighting column made of steel has the worst overall environmental profile, although steel production is less energy intensive. The composite lighting column is environmentally preferable due to its extended lifespan and lack of maintenance. The production of the raw material is responsible for most of the impacts in all three cases. The glass fibre production is the main contributor for the overall environmental burden of the composite column. In this case, the results also show that there are environmental advantages in replacing glass fibre for jute fibre. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cost has traditionally been considered the most important factor in the decision-making process. Recently, along with the consistent interest in environmental problems, environmental impact has also become a key factor. Accordingly, there is a need to develop a method that simultaneously reflects the cost and environmental impact in the decision-making process. This study proposed an integrated model for assessing the cost and CO2 emission (IMACC) at the same time. IMACC is a model that assesses the cost and CO2 emission of the various structural-design alternatives proposed in the structural-design process. To develop the IMACC, a standard on assessing the cost and CO2 emission generated in the construction stage was proposed, along with the CO2 emission factors in the structural materials, based on such materials' strengths. Moreover, using the economic and environmental scores that signify the cost and CO2 emission reduction ratios, respectively, a method of selecting the best design alternative was proposed. To verify the applicability of IMACC, practical application was carried out. Structural designs were assessed, each of which used 21, 24, 27, and 30 MPa ready-mix concrete (RMC). The use of IMACC makes it easy to verify what the best design is. Results show the one that used 27 MPa RMC was the best design. Therefore, the proposed IMACC can be used as a tool for supporting the decision-making process in selecting the best design alternative. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microwave-assisted chemistry is becoming very attractive in all areas of synthetic chemistry; it is fast, easy to operate, efficient in terms of energy consumption and environmentally friendly. However, a quantitative assessment of this chemical procedure with respect to other widely used chemical routes is lacking. Focusing in the preparation of iron oxide nanoparticles of comparable sizes, we have analyzed the performance of microwave-assisted synthesized nanoparticles compared to those obtained by the widespread thermal decomposition process of metal complexes. On the basis of a multidisciplinary experimental approach, we have unveiled that microwave-synthesized nanoparticles exhibit a surface reactivity significantly smaller than their thermal decomposition counterparts. We ascribe such dissimilarities to the different configurations of crystallographic faceting planes resulting from the particularities of both synthesis routes. We also show that the microwave route allows a direct stabilization of the particles in organic or aqueous media by using either steric or electrostatic stabilizers. A simplified life cycle analysis, as a preliminary framework toward nanoparticles eco-design, shows also a cost-effective positive balance for the microwave synthesis. Our results are of relevance for a broad range of applications including health, information storage, environmental remediation, sensors, or catalysis.Liquid animal manure and its management contributes to environmental problems such as, global warming, acidification, and eutrophication. To address these environmental issues and their related costs manure processing technologies were developed. The objective here was to assess the environmental consequences of a new manure processing technology that separates manure into a solid and liquid fraction and de-waters the liquid fraction by means of reverse osmosis. This results in a liquid mineral concentrate used as mineral nitrogen and potassium fertilizer and a solid fraction used for bio-energy production or as phosphorus fertilizer. Five environmental impact categories were quantified using life cycle assessment: climate change (CC), terrestrial acidification (TA), marine eutrophication (ME), particulate matter formation (PMF), and fossil fuel depletion (FFD). For pig as well as dairy cattle manure, we compared a scenario with the processing method and a scenario with additional anaerobic digestion of the solid fraction to a reference situation applying only liquid manure. Comparisons were based on a functional unit of 1 ton liquid manure. System boundaries were set from the manure storage under the animal house to the field application of all end products. Scenarios with only manure processing increased the environmental impact for most impact categories compared to the reference: ME did not change, whereas, TA and PMF increased up to 44% as a result of NH3 and NOx emissions from processing and storage of solid fraction. Including digestion reduced CC by 117% for pig manure and 104% for dairy cattle manure, mainly because of substituted electricity and avoided N2O emission from storage of solid fraction. FFD decreased by 59% for pig manure and increased 19% for dairy cattle manure. TA and PMF remained higher compared to the reference. Sensitivity analysis showed that CH4 emission from manure storage, NH3 emission from processing, and the replaced nitrogen fertilizer by the mineral concentrate were important parameters affecting final results. It was concluded that processing fattening pig and dairy cattle manure to produce mineral fertilizer increased overall environmental consequences in terms of CC (except for dairy cattle manure), TA. PMF, and FFD compared to current agricultural practice. Adding the production of bio-energy reduced CC and FFD. Only when NH3 emission from processing was low and bio-energy was produced, overall equal or better environmental performance was obtained for TA and PMF. It was emphasized that real time measurements should be done to enhance the environmental assessment of manure processing technologies. Results of this study present the full environmental consequences of manure processing and key parameters affecting the environmental impact of manure management. Outcomes can be used for decision making and further tackling of environmental problems related to manure management. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this contribution is to perform the sustainable mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) synthesis of biogas processes based on life cycle assessment (LCA). An aggregated model previously developed by authors for the efficient optimisation of biogas processes has been upgraded with LCA, using the novel concept of eco-profit. Eco-profit is defined as the difference between burdening (eco-cost) and unburdening (eco-benefit) the environment, where eco-cost and eco-benefit calculations are based on LCA. The advantage of eco-profit is that it is expressed as a monetary value. Therefore. eco-profit and economic profit can be merged together and the preferred solutions are those with maximal total profit. The single-and multi-objective optimisations were performed on a model of the biogas production processes. Within the former, economic, eco- and total profit were maximised separately and, within the latter, maximisation of economic profit vs. eco-profit was introduced. All the results obtained from single- and multi-criteria optimisation show that biogas production is a sustainable alternative that provides an important eco-profit. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmentally conscious construction has become a subject of research during the last decades. Even though construction literature involves plenty of studies that emphasize the importance of environmental impact during the construction phase, most of the previous studies failed to combine environmental analysis with other project performance criteria in construction. To achieve environmentally conscious construction and successfully manage a complex construction environment, multiple project objectives and their relationships need to be considered. In this study, the authors propose a framework on the basis of the concept of control accounts to determine optimal construction operations when project time, cost, and environment impact (TCEI) are considered as project objectives during project planning. The framework also supports decision-making by using sensitivity analysis. Life cycle assessment is applied to the evaluation of environmental impact in terms of global warming potential (GWP). The nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II, or NSGA-II, is selected for implementation in MATLAB to determine optimal construction operations. A case study is used to illustrate the application of the framework. It is shown by the case study that the application of the genetic algorithm to search problems, such as the case study, is promising in terms of determining optimal solutions, but computation speed can be an issue, if it involves a large set of data. In addition, data collection and processing is a major challenge, especially the processing of environmental impact data. Tools are needed to facilitate data collection and processing. Currently, the proposed framework includes a critical path method, on the basis of fixed logical relationships among activities, to determine the duration of a project. The effect of resource and other constraints on such logical relationships, and potentially the duration of a project, is not addressed in this study. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000098. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Sustainable mobility policy for long-distance transportation services should consider emerging automobiles and aircraft as well as infrastructure and supply chain life-cycle effects in the assessment of new high-speed rail systems. Using the California corridor, future automobiles, high-speed rail and aircraft long-distance travel are evaluated, considering emerging fuel-efficient vehicles, new train designs and the possibility that the region will meet renewable electricity goals. An attributional per passenger-kilometer-traveled life-cycle inventory is first developed including vehicle, infrastructure and energy production components. A consequential life-cycle impact assessment is then established to evaluate existing infrastructure expansion against the construction of a new high-speed rail system. The results show that when using the life-cycle assessment framework, greenhouse gas footprints increase significantly and human health and environmental damage potentials may be dominated by indirect and supply chain components. The environmental payback is most sensitive to the number of automobile trips shifted to high-speed rail, and for greenhouse gases is likely to occur in 20-30 years. A high-speed rail system that is deployed with state-of-the-art trains, electricity that has met renewable goals, and in a configuration that endorses high ridership will provide significant environmental benefits over existing modes. Opportunities exist for reducing the long-distance transportation footprint by incentivizing large automobile trip shifts, meeting clean electricity goals and reducing material production effects.Life cycle analysis methods were employed to model the greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy consumption associated with geothermal power production when supercritical carbon dioxide. scCO(2) is used instead of saline geofluids to recover heat from below ground. Since a significant amount of scCO(2) is sequestered below ground in the process, a constant supply is required. We therefore combined the scCO(2) geothermal power plant with an upstream coal power plant that captured a portion of its CO2 emissions, compressed it to scCO(2), and transported the scCO(2) by pipeline to the geothermal power plant. Emissions and energy consumption from all operations spanning coal mining and plant construction through power production were considered, including increases in coal use to meet steam demand for the carbon capture. The results indicated that the electricity produced by the geothermal plant more than balanced the increase in energy use resulting from carbon capture at the coal power plant. The effective heat rate ( BTU coal per total kW h of electricity generated, coal plus geothermal) was comparable to that of traditional coal, but the ratio of life cycle emissions from the combined system to that of traditional coal was 15% when 90% carbon capture efficiency was assumed and when leakage from the surface was neglected. Contributions from surface leakage were estimated with a simple model for several hypothetical surface leakage rates.Projections of increased domestic natural gas supply and low prices have encouraged increased natural gas utilization in the United States electricity sector. Natural gas can offset coal, likely decreasing overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other air emissions such as SO2 and NOX. Previous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies using limited system boundaries have attempted to quantify the benefit of offsetting coal use. However, these studies do not consider that relative regional fuel prices may contribute most to the choice of coal over natural gas. External incentives such as low natural gas prices compared to coal are required if natural gas is to displace coal. In this study, simplified economic dispatch models are used to determine how natural gas utilization will increase in the short-term in response to changes in natural gas prices in three US grid regions-ERCOT, MISO and PJM. The results indicate that the change in air emissions is lower than suggested by LCAs, since LCAs generally do not include the complexity of regional electricity grids. For instance, this study estimates that life cycle GHG emissions may, at best, decrease by 7-15% due to low natural gas prices, compared to almost 50% reductions estimated by previous LCAs.Several carbon footprinting methodologies and standards have been drafted for release in 2011 and 2012 that apply life-cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products and services. These share similar approaches but have different focus and/or levels of detail depending on their intended audience. For example the Greenhouse Gas Protocols is sponsoring an ICT-specific supplement for use by expert practitioners to support commercial requirements. LCA for ICT products and services is just one of a suite of worldwide activities across all industry sectors government and civil society to address climate change caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere.The increasingly poor quality of South Africa's natural water sources requires industries and power stations to treat raw water extensively prior to industrial use in, for example, boilers. Two different raw water desalination technologies, an existing ion exchange plant and a proposed reverse osmosis intervention, are compared by life cycle assessment for the production of 1 Ml of boiler feed water, in the context of the Secunda industrial complex situated in Mpumalanga, South Africa. The proposed reverse osmosis option would perform 22% worse for global warming potential, which relates to the use of coal-derived electricity, but would reduce burdens of the ion exchange option on human toxicity and freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity due to the use of an aluminium sulphate coagulant. Significantly, the assessment predicts the reverse osmosis option to effect a 78% overall reduction in storage of problematic salts, from 599 kg/Ml to 133 kg/Ml. Notwithstanding the fact that the power generated within the complex and used by the RO process is associated with a high salts burden (mine water is desalinated at the power station), it was found that the reverse osmosis intervention would incur a lower salts footprint than the IX/S technology and would not shift salts burdens.Algae are a promising source of industrial biomass for the future. In order to assess if aquacultured seaweed (macroalgae) could be considered an environmentally friendly source of biomass for bioenergy, life cycle assessments were performed for European countries, comparing methane as a biofuel from the anaerobic digestion (A) of whole seaweeds, (B) of alginate extraction residues, and (C) natural gas as a fossil fuel reference. These results clarify that the sources of electricity and energy used to heat the anaerobic digesters have an important impact. Recycling of materials and use of greenhouses at the nursery stage also allow environmental improvements for system (A). Ecodesign can make algal biomethane competitive in several categories compared to natural gas: a decrease of 21.9% and 54.2% in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 58.6% and 68.7% in fossil depletion for systems (A) and (B), respectively, decrease in ozone depletion, and last but not least, improvement in the marine eutrophication index for system (A). For system (B), benefits are more arguable and dependent on the allocation. To conclude, seaweed could become competitive with terrestrial feedstock for biofuel production in the near future. (C) 2012 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdMolybdenum sulfide nanoparticles have been successfully obtained, for lubricant applications, by means of a wet chemical synthesis in an aqueous solution employing ammonium molybdate, citric acid and ammonium sulfide as the reactants. Some molybdenum-citrate complexes were formed and they reacted with the ammonium sulfide to form MoS2 nanoparticles. Mo:citrate molar ratio was identified as being the most relevant of the synthesis parameters that affected the phase and morphology of the final products. The optimized nanoparticles were softly agglomerated and amorphous, with a mean size of the primary particles of about 50 nm. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted since an early process design phase to analyze the environmental performance of nano-manufacturing. This supplied necessary background Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data for a better understanding of the direct and indirect environmental gains that MoS2 nanoparticles will transfer to the final product, i.e. the fully formulated oil and its subsequent end-use. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The life cycle of a product is generally characterized by the main following stages: raw materials acquisition, manufacturing, processing and formulation, distribution and transportation, use, re-use, maintenance, recycle and waste management. As regards the process, the following stages are usually distinguished: raw materials acquisition, process manufacture, use and dismantling at the end of the lifetime. Considering the life cycle concept in a risk analysis approach requires the adjustment of the classic risk analysis methodology. In order to build up this new methodology called LCRA (Life Cycle Risk Assessment), we relied on the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology, which allows the assessment of the potential environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a system. Once these adjustments made, this new methodology LCRA is explained and applied to two energy pathways (or life cycles): hydrogen (produced from the biomass) and gasoline pathways. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The study assesses the environmental sustainability of palm biodiesel production systems in Thailand by focusing on their energy efficiency and environmental impact potentials. The Net Energy Balance (NEB) and Renewability indicate energy gain for palm biodiesel and its co-products as compared to fossil energy inputs. In addition, life cycle assessment also reveals lower values of environmental impact potentials of biodiesel as compared to conventional diesel. For example, palm biodiesel can provide greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction of around 46-73% as compared to diesel. Nitrogen-fertilizer production and application in the plantation and the air emissions from the ponds treating palm oil mill effluent (POME) are found to be the major environmental aspects. However, the energy and environmental performances depend on various factors such as the management efficiency of empty fruit bunches (EFB) and POME and the possible land-use change in the future. Recommendations are made for improving environmental performance of palm biodiesel and for securing the long-term availability of crude palm oil supply with a view towards sustainable palm biodiesel production. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When planning for a new urban settlement, industrial ecology tools like scenario building and life cycle assessment can be used to assess the environmental quality of different infrastructure solutions. In Trondheim, a new greenfield settlement with carbon-neutral ambitions is being planned and five different scenarios for the waste management system of the new settlement have been compared. The results show small differences among the scenarios, however, some benefits from increased source separation of paper and metal could be found. The settlement should connect to the existing waste management system of the city, and not resort to decentralised waste treatment or recovery methods. However, as this is an urban development project with ambitious goals for lifestyle changes, effort should be put into research and initiatives for proactive waste prevention and reuse issues. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) is reported of a nuclear-based copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) hydrogen production cycle, including estimates of fossil fuel energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Calculations revealed that the process requires 474 kJ of fossil fuel energy per MJ of hydrogen, which is less than for other hydrogen production processes. Moreover, GHG emissions are estimated to be 27 gCO(2)e per MJ of hydrogen, which is only slightly higher than the corresponding value for wind-based hydrogen production. A sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the performance of the system could be further improved at higher yields of hydrogen. Although the system significantly out-performed fossil-based gasoline and hydrogen production pathways, the integrated nuclear and thermochemical cycle still requires significant research and development before commercialization is possible. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today producers are becoming more responsible for their products, not only because of legal requirements but also to gain a competitive edge, as consumers are increasingly considering the broader impacts of their purchases. As a result, companies are beginning to address the ecological impacts of products and manufacturing processes in addition to the economic considerations. The environmental impact of products can be reduced during manufacturing, e.g. by greener processes, greener process chain, or leveraging manufacturing. This paper reviews actual research on greening products and production at the University of California, Berkeley and lays the foundation for future research directions. The present research includes approaches to enhance Life Cycle Assessment Methods, understand the life cycle of different products, improve manufacturing processes and revise supply chain decisions. Leveraging manufacturing implies higher environmental burden in the production phase can be offset with much larger eco-efficiency in the product use phase. The described approaches present ongoing work and will support sustainable production practices.Due to the rising awareness of environmental protection, environmental impact of a product becomes an important design criterion. However, most companies do not have sufficient tools to evaluate the environmental impact of their designs. In this paper, a system to evaluate the carbon emission and cost of product designs is developed to help company determine which design to adopt. For a given design, the assembly structure, assembly sequence, and the supply chain configuration are optimized to minimize the carbon emission. An evolution based genetic algorithm is developed to search the assembly structure and sequence. A dynamic programming based algorithm is developed to optimize the supply chain configuration. To estimate the carbon emission, from cradle to gate life cycle assessment approach is adopted. A real world computer chair examples are used to illustrate the system.Design stages have been widely recognized as a key phase in a product's life cycle in implementing sustainability. Since the late 1990s, various sustainable design methods and techniques have been developed in response to the requirements of sustainable product development. Understanding what types of sustainable methods have been applied in which design phases is advantageous for determining future research directions. The main purpose of this study is to systematically review past studies on sustainable product design. These studies are categorized into different types according to a two-dimensional framework. The ideas and limitations of representative approaches in each category are discussed. The results show important findings and implications.The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires 15.2 billion gallons of domestic alternative fuels per year by 2012, of which 2 billion gallons must be from advanced biofuel and emit 50% less life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than petroleum-based transportation fuels. Microalgal biodiesel, one type of advanced biofuel, has the qualities and potential to meet the RFS's requirement. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of four microalgal biodiesel production conditions was investigated using a process LCA model with Monte Carlo simulation to assess global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication, ozone depletion and ecotoxicity potentials. The four conditions represent minimum and maximum production efficiencies and different sources of carbon dioxide and nutrient resources, i.e. synthetic and waste resources. The GWP results of the four CO2 microalgal biodiesel production conditions showed that none of the assumed production conditions meet the RFS's GHG requirement. The GWP results are sensitive to energy consumption in harvesting process. Other impacts such as eutrophication, ozone depletion and ecotoxicity potentials, are sensitive to percent lipid content of microalgae, service lifetime of PBRs and quantity of hexane in extraction process, respectively. Net energy ratio and other emissions should be included in future RFS for a more sustainable fuel. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels could become increasingly important for agriculture; however there is growing concern regarding the possible environmental drawbacks due to the risks of increased inputs during crop cultivation. These risks need to be evaluated in order to assess the best management practices. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out: (i) to evaluate the environmental impacts of three cropping systems characterized by different external input levels (low Si, medium S2 and high S3) applied to sunflower and maize, both in rotation with wheat, in a Mediterranean region; (ii) to estimate the environmental benefits of the optimization of cropping systems for energy management. Output-input ratio, net energy balance, global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EP) and acidification potential (AP) were used as LCA impact categories. Data from cropping systems (external input and crop yields) were collected from a long-term experiment carried out in the coastal plain of Tuscany; data regarding fertilizers, machinery and pesticide production were taken from literature. The results obtained showed Si with the highest output-input ratios and the lowest impact for the selected impact categories. The other cropping systems S2 and S3 showed limited differences between them for all the impact categories evaluated. Fertilizer use and application, irrigation and machinery use caused most of the environmental impacts and energy consumption. The allocation procedure, showing residues as co-products, had a strong influence on the overall efficiency of agricultural systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Compromise designs that can be achieved to a certain extent in process flow-sheet optimization not only by multicriteria but also by single-criterion optimization are described. A well-balanced compromise between the profitability, operational, and environmental efficiencies can be achieved using a suitable economic criterion. From the financial point of view, the net present value (NPV) is the correct criterion for selection from among mutually exclusive solutions and, hence, for evaluating different designs in process optimization. Other criteria are also often used in engineering practice. It is shown that optimal designs obtained using different economic objectives vary not only in their investment and other financial indicators, but also in operational efficiencies and environmental indicators. Operationally more efficient and environmentally less harmful solutions can be obtained at lower profitability, by increasing the invested funds. The net present value generates the best compromise between these objectives, as illustrated by three flow-sheet synthesis problems. (C) 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2012In this article, we analyze how environmental aspects can be derived from life cycle management instruments for procurement decisions of low-value products. For our analysis, we chose the case of operating room textiles. The review includes the life cycle management instruments: life cycle assessment, environmental labels, and management systems applied within the textile industry. We do so in order to identify the most important environmental decision criteria based on which the procurer of low-value products can decide for the most environmentally friendly option. We conducted a systematic literature search in the relevant literature databases. We critically evaluate the identified life cycle assessment studies for sound methodology, verifiability, completeness, and actuality. Based on this review, we analyze and compare the results of the three most comprehensive studies in more detail and derive the most important environmental aspects of operating room textiles. In a second step, we extend the operational perspective via the strategic perspective, namely environmental management systems and further existing life cycle instruments such as eco-labels. We then synthesize the gathered information into a decision vector. Finally, we discuss how the gathered data can be further exploited and give suggestions for a more sophisticated assessment. The review of the existing life cycle assessments on operating room textiles showed that procurers should not base their decisions exclusively on existing life cycle assessments. In addition to problems such as methodological weakness, incompleteness, outdated data, and poor verifiability, the information provided is far too complex to prepare procurement decisions regarding low-value products. Furthermore, the results for the textiles assessed in the existing life cycle assessments are not necessarily transferrable to the textiles considered by the procurer because of restrictive assumptions. Therefore, it is necessary to downscale the available information and synthesize it in an applicable decision support tool. Our decision vector consists of the key environmental aspects water, CO2, energy, and waste and is completed by environmental management systems, eco-labels, and the countries of origin that matters for environmental and social aspects as well. The decision vector supports procurers when considering environmental aspects in procurement decisions and provides a mechanism for balancing the information between overcomplexity and oversimplification. Therefore, it should be the basis for future development of an eco-label for operating room textiles.A strategic product development tool combining REACH and environmental and financial factors was previously developed for a coatings company. This paper presents results from refining this tool for an office furniture company, using life cycle assessment (LCA)-based environmental information, addressing the research questions: aEuro cent Is it possible to combine information from REACH with the LCA approach to provide useful information for a furniture producer in their environmental product development process? aEuro cent Does the approach developed for substances in mixtures need to be adapted for articles? aEuro cent Is there a correlation between energy consumption and the environmental impacts analysed? aEuro cent Will product designers get the same information independent of the environmental impact category used? - Will the strategy tool indicate the same ranking of products for all environmental impacts? - Does REACH information indicate the same set of priorities as those arising from LCA environmental data alone? (Do they agree, or is there a conflict?) aEuro cent Will strategic decisions differ if different environmental indicators are in focus? The strategy tool's purpose is to analyse company product portfolios, identifying products that need redevelopment or redesign because of issues concerning hazardous substances, or environmental performance. The LCA data used is cradle-to-gate data from type III environmental declarations for 11 seating solutions. REACH Complexity, health hazard and environmental class indicators (based on risk phrases) are combined with financial data and LCA-based indicators. Correlations between energy consumption and environmental impact factors for these specific furniture products are investigated. Establishing any such correlations serves to simplify subsequent analysis in the product development process, by effectively reducing the number of indicators that need to be taken into consideration. Correlations between energy consumption and the environmental impacts global warming, acidification, eutrophication and heavy metals are presented. Strategy tool figures are shown for energy consumption, ozone depletion potential and photochemical oxidation potential. The results for office chairs and conference/visitor chairs are presented separately, as the two types of chairs fulfil different functions. The correlation between energy consumption and certain environmental impact indicators affords a simplification of the product development process, since energy consumption can be used as a reasonable proxy for these indicators in this specific case. The results support acknowledged principles of Ecodesign. Energy and materials minimization improves environmental performance-higher recycled material content and proportion of renewable energy resources are also beneficial. Designers have to consider multiple aspects in parallel and the strategy tool is useful for this purpose; the furniture producer has gained useful product development insight. The tool is applicable for strategic choice of products for development or redesign that can be useful across many business sectors.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies allow understanding all relevant processes and environmental impacts involved in the life cycle of products. However, in order to fully assess their sustainability, these studies should be complemented by economic (LCC) and societal analyses. In this context, the present work aims at assessing all costs (internal and external) and the environmental performance associated to the full life cycle of specific engineering products. These products are lighting columns for roadway illumination made with three different materials: a glass fibre reinforced polymer composite, steel and aluminium. The LCA/LCC integrated methodology used was based in a "cradle-to-grave" assessment which considers the raw materials production, manufacture, on-site installation, use and maintenance, dismantlement and end-of-life (EoL) of the lighting columns. The fossil fuels environmental impact category was selected as the key environmental impact indicator to perform the integrated environmental and cost analysis. The potential total costs obtained for the full life cycle of the lighting columns demonstrated that the one made in steel performs globally worse than those made in composite or aluminium. Although the three systems present very similar internal costs, the steel column has higher external costs in the use phase that contribute for its higher total cost. This column has very high costs associated to safety features, since it constitutes a significant risk to the life of individuals. The raw material and column production stages are the main contributors for the total internal life cycle costs. The EoL treatment is a revenue source in all systems because it generates energy (in the case of the composite incineration) or materials (in the case of metal recycling). The composite and aluminium lighting columns present similar "cradle-to-grave" life cycle total cost. However, until the dismantlement phase, the aluminium column presents the highest environmental impact, whereas in the EoL treatment phase this scenario is reversed. The "cradle-to-grave" life cycle potential total cost and the environmental impact (fossil fuels) indicator of the steel lighting column are higher than those of the other columns. Even though the uncertainties in the LCC are larger if external costs are included, their consideration when modelling the economic performance of engineering products increases the probability of developing a more sustainable solution from a societal perspective.Parameterization refers to the practice of presenting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data using raw data and formulas instead of computed numbers in unit process datasets within databases. This paper reviews parameterization methods in the European Reference Life Cycle Data System (ELCD), ecoinvent v3, and the US Department of Agriculture's Digital Commons with the intent of providing a basis for continued methodological and coding advances. Parameterized data are reviewed and categorized with respect to the type (raw data and formulas) and what is being represented (e.g., consumption and emission rates and factors, physical or thermodynamic properties, process efficiencies, etc.). Parameterization of engineering relationships and uncertainty distributions using Smirnov transforms (a.k.a. inverse transform sampling), and ensuring uncertain individual fractions (e.g., market shares) sum to the total value of interest are presented. Seventeen categories of parameters (raw data and formulas) are identified. Thirteen ELCD unit process datasets use 975 parameters in 12 categories, with 124 as raw data points and 851 as formulas, and emission factors as the most common category of parameter. Five additional parameter categories are identified in the Digital Commons for the presentation and analysis of data with uncertainty information, through 146 parameters, of which 53 represent raw data and 93 are formulas with most being uncertainty parameters, percentages, and consumption parameters. Parameterization is a powerful way to ensure transparency, usability, and transferability of LCI data. Its use is expected to increase in frequency, the categories of parameters used, and the types of computational methods employed.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is being used increasingly in decision support situations. In actual cases, the sources of uncertainty are easily hidden in the complexity. Methods for taking uncertainty into account are recommended by LCA guidelines, but actual application remains rare. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the sources of uncertainty in a practical simple selection case wherein a customer makes a decision between beer and wine in a restaurant, considering the selected criteria and the given information. The uncertainty in LCA results is connected to the broader scope of decision analysis. Life cycle inventories were collected for beer and wine production from existing literature. The functional unit was chosen to be one serving of alcohol: beer or wine. For illustrative purposes, only the global warming potential indicator was included in the LCA through carbon footprint (CF). Probabilistic uncertainty analysis was applied to the CF system using Monte Carlo simulation. Water footprint was also roughly considered. In addition, three non-environmental indicators were included in the decision: weight control, price, and taste. The comparison between the two products was constructed as a multiple-criteria decision analytical problem. The results indicated that beer had, on average, a higher CF value than wine did. However, the difference was not significant, and within the uncertainty range, also the opposite conclusion was possible. The ratio of wine to beer CF was dominated by the uncertainty in the N2O emissions of wine production. When all of the decision criteria were included, the level of uncertainty prevented robust overall conclusions about preference for beer or wine. However, depending on the utility differences assigned to subjective indicators, there existed also cases wherein decisions could be made at a 10 % risk level regardless of high overall uncertainty. In many cases, the uncertainties of LCA are dwarfed by the overall uncertainty of the decision situation. However, as shown by our example, in many cases, reasonable decisions can be made in spite of high uncertainties. The uncertainties of single LCA indicators should be considered in relation to the decision-making problem, which depends on the uncertainty of LCA indicators but also significantly on the weighting of the indicators and the related uncertainty. Successful decision making depends on both the magnitude of uncertainty and the differences in expected utility value between alternatives. More attention should be paid to uncertainty analysis considering the weighting factors.Promoting the economic and environmental performance of Swiss farms is a major objective of Swiss agricultural policy. In the present paper, we investigate the relationship between the economic and global environmental performance of the Swiss dairy farms in the alpine area. The analysis relies on a sample of 56 dairy farms from the Farm Accountancy Data Network, for which highly precise and comprehensive Life Cycle Assessments have been carried out. The work income per family work unit is used as indicator of the economic performance of a farm. The so-called global environmental performance of a farm is, for its part, measured by means of an eco-efficiency indicator for each environmental impact considered (demand for non-renewable energy resources, eutrophication potential, aquatic ecotoxicity potential, human toxicity potential and land use) and of an aggregate eco-efficiency indicator assessed using a Data Envelopment Analysis-based approach. The relationship between economic and global environmental performance is assessed by means of non-parametric Spearman's rank correlation analysis. The results of the analysis reveal the existence of a positive relationship between economic and global environmental performance. This positive relationship exists for all environmental issues considered and thus also for the aggregate eco-efficiency indicator. Its strength, however, substantially varies from one issue to another. This study provides the evidence that there is no trade-off between economic and global environmental farm performance. When they improve their economic performance, farms also tend to improve their global environmental performance and vice versa. This finding is of central relevance for policy-makers as it should contribute to improving the acceptance among farmers of the environmental objectives of Swiss agricultural policy in terms of an increase in environmental resource use productivity. In this sense this work provides valuable insights into the sustainable performance of the Swiss dairy sector in the alpine area.Mixtures of organic chemicals are a part of virtually all life cycles, but LCI data exist for only relatively few chemicals. Thus, estimation methods are required. However, these are often either very time-consuming or deliver results of low quality. This article compares existing and new methods in two scenarios and recommends a tiered approach of different methods for an efficient estimation of the production impacts of chemical mixtures. Four approaches to estimate impacts of a large number of chemicals are compared in this article: extrapolation from existing data, substitution with generic datasets on chemicals, molecular structure-based models (MSMs, in this case the Finechem tool), and using process-based estimation methods. Two scenarios were analyzed as case studies: soft PVC plastic and a tobacco flavor, a mixture of 20 chemicals. Process models have the potential to deliver the best estimations, as existing information on production processes can be integrated. However, their estimation quality suffers when such data are not available and they are time-consuming to apply, which is problematic when estimating large numbers of chemicals. Extrapolation from known to unknown components and use of generic datasets are generally not recommended. In both case studies, these two approaches significantly underestimated the impacts of the chemicals compared to the process models. MSMs were generally able to estimate impacts on the same level as the more complex process models. A tiered approach using MSMs to determine the relevance of individual components in mixtures and applying process models to the most relevant components offered a simpler and faster estimation process while delivering results on the level of most process models. The application of the tiered combination of MSMs and process models allows LCA practitioners a relatively fast and simple estimation of the LCIA results of chemicals, even for mixtures with a large number of components. Such mixtures previously presented a problem, as the application of process models for all components was very time-consuming, while the existing, simple approaches were shown to be inadequate in this study. We recommend the tiered approach as a significant improvement over previous approaches for estimating LCA results of chemical mixtures.Several life cycle assessments (LCAs) of wind energy published in recent years are reviewed to identify methodological differences and underlying assumptions. A full comparative analysis of 12 studies were undertaken (ten peer-reviewed papers, one conference paper, and one industry report) regarding six fundamental factors (methods used, energy use accounting, quantification of energy production, energy performance and primary energy, natural resources, and recycling). Each factor is discussed in detail to highlight strengths and shortcomings of various approaches. Several potential issues are found concerning the way LCA methods are used for assessing energy performance and environmental impact of wind energy, as well as dealing with natural resource use and depletion. The potential to evaluate natural resource use and depletion impacts from wind energy appears to be poorly exploited or elaborated on in the reviewed studies. Estimations of energy performance and environmental impacts are critically analyzed and found to differ significantly. A continued discussion and development of LCA methodology for wind energy and other energy resources are encouraged. Efforts should be made to standardize methods and calculations. Inconsistent use of terminology and concepts among the analyzed studies are found and should be remedied. Different methods are generally used and the results are presented in diverse ways, making it difficult to compare studies with each other, but also with other renewable energy sources.Source-separated collection of food waste has been reported to reduce the amount of household waste in several cities including Kyoto, Japan. Food waste can be reduced by various activities including preventing edible food loss, draining moisture, and home composting. These activities have different potentials for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. Therefore, we conducted a life-cycle inventory analysis of household waste management scenarios for Kyoto with a special emphasis on food waste reduction activities. The primary functional unit of our study was "annual management of household combustible waste in Kyoto, Japan." Although some life-cycle assessment scenarios included food waste reduction measures, all of the scenarios had an identical secondary functional unit, "annual food ingestion (mass and composition) by the residents of Kyoto, Japan." We analyzed a typical incineration scenario (Inc) and two anaerobic digestion (dry thermophilic facilities) scenarios involving either source-separated collection (SepBio) or nonseparated collection followed by mechanical sorting (MecBio). We assumed that the biogas from anaerobic digestion was used for power generation. In addition, to evaluate the effects of waste reduction combined with separate collection, three food waste reduction cases were considered in the SepBio scenario: (1) preventing loss of edible food (PrevLoss); (2) draining moisture contents (ReducDrain); and (3) home composting (ReducHcom). In these three cases, we assumed that the household waste was reduced by 5%. The GHG emissions from the Inc, MecBio, and SepBio scenarios were 123.3, 119.5, and 118.6 Gg CO2-eq/year, respectively. Compared with the SepBio scenario without food waste reduction, the PrevLoss and ReducDrain cases reduced the GHG emissions by 17.1 and 0.5 Gg CO2-eq/year. In contrast, the ReducHcom case increased the GHG emissions by 2.1 Gg CO2-eq/year. This is because the biogas power production decreased due to the reduction in food waste, while the electricity consumption increased in response to home composting. Sensitivity analyses revealed that a reduction of only 1% of the household waste by food loss prevention has the same GHG reduction effect as a 31-point increase (from 50% to 81%) in the food waste separation rate. We found that prevention of food losses enhanced by separate collection led to a significant reduction in GHG emissions. These findings will be useful in future studies designed to develop strategies for further reductions in GHG emissions.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be utilized to holistically evaluate novel trends in the construction industry and the associated environmental impacts. Green labels are awarded by several organizations based on single or multiple attributes. The use of multi-criteria labels is a good start to the labeling process as opposed to single criteria labels that ignore a majority of impacts from products. Life cycle thinking, in theory, has the potential to improve the environmental impacts of labeling systems. However, LCA databases currently are lacking in detailed information about products or sometimes provide conflicting information. This study compares generic and green-labeled carpets, paints, and linoleum flooring using the Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) LCA database. The results from these comparisons are not intuitive and are contradictory in several impact categories with respect to the greenness of the product. Other data sources such as environmental product declarations and ecoinvent are also compared with the BEES data to compare the results and display the disparity in the databases. This study shows that partial LCAs focused on the production and transportation phase help in identifying improvements in the product itself and improving the manufacturing process but the results are uncertain and dependent upon the source or database. Inconsistencies in the data and missing categories add to the ambiguity in LCA results. While life cycle thinking in concept can improve the green labeling systems available, LCA data is lacking. Therefore, LCA data and tools need to improve to support and enable market trends.Aggregated data quality indicator (ADQI) method has been used to estimate probability distributions of the input data in a life cycle assessment (LCA) to compensate for insufficient data in a statistical analysis. In a traditional ADQI, a multicriteria evaluation process, the impacts of various quality indicators under investigation are often equally weighted or unweighted despite the fact that some of them may weight more than the others on contributing to the overall data uncertainty. An unweighted ADQI (UWADQI) approach, though simple, may lead to incorrect conclusions. This paper aims to develop a weighted ADQI to overcome the deficiency of the unweighted ADQI to make it more reliable for LCA uncertainty analysis. To improve the UWADQI approach, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is introduced in this research for estimating weighting factors in the ADQI aggregation process. An AHP's pairwise comparison function is used to determine the weighting of each data quality indicator. Three common building materials of concrete, steel, and glass were chosen to validate the presented method. Using the published results from the statistical method as the benchmarks, it was found that the proposed AHP-weighted ADQI (AWADQI) method lead to better estimated probabilistic values of embodied energy intensity than the traditional UWADQI approach for the three building materials. In conclusion, using AHP to incorporate weighing factors into an ADQI process can improve the uncertainty estimate of embodied energy of building materials, and consequently, the method can improve the reliability of a building LCA.Before the advent of large databases, practitioners often lacked data for calculating life cycle inventories, but the actual computation was a straightforward task. Now that databases represent supply chains including feedback loops and several thousand unit processes and emissions, more formalized calculation methods are necessary. Two methods are widely used: sequential method and matrix inversion. They both exhibit different advantages and drawbacks. The present paper proposes a hybrid algorithm combining the advantages of both methods while minimizing their inconveniences. Sequential algorithm requires a form of cutoff criteria, as the supply chains are of infinite length in the presence of feedback loops. The proposed implementation allows the detailing of individual paths until their upstream contribution falls below a user-defined disaggregation criteria, while also allowing the total impact scores of all paths to be stored and considered. The output is then structured to facilitate consultation and re-aggregation, enhancing the work of practitioners in the interpretation phase of LCA. The algorithm is a variation on structural path analysis and accumulative structural path analysis. It is computationally efficient and uses a reporting threshold criterion based on multiple impact categories. Although the algorithm leads to a more voluminous inventory than matrix inversion, it produces detailed, useful information on the particular instances of processes responsible for the impacts. An average laptop can compute the results within seconds. This algorithm has the potential to improve the interpretation phase of LCA. More specifically, selective replacement of values (characterization factors, input from technosphere, or emission intensities) in parts of the process tree can be applied without affecting the rest of the system. LCA software would benefit from the inclusion of the algorithm presented in this paper. It produces additional information on the structure of the supply chain and the impacts of its constituents, which would be available for a more in-depth interpretation by practitioners. Its potential for understanding the propagation of uncertainty and acceleration of Monte Carlo assessment should also be investigated.The goal of this paper is to describe the life cycle inventory (LCI) approach of pig iron produced by Mittal's Steel Poland Blast Furnace (MSPBF) in Krakow, Poland. The present LCI is representative for the reference year 2005 by application of PN-EN ISO 14040: 2009 (PN-EN ISO 2009). The system boundaries were labeled as gate-to-gate (covering a full chain process of pig iron production). The background input and output data from the blast furnace (BF) process have been inventoried as follows: sinter, several types of pellets, ore (from Brazil or Venezuela), limestone, coke, and from 2005 coal powder, pig iron, blast furnace gas, blast furnace slug, consumption of energy and fuels, including: pulverized coal, natural gas, blast furnace gas and coke oven gas, and emission of air pollutants. LCI energy generation was developed mainly on the basis of following sources: site specific measured or calculated data, study carried out by Mittal Steel Poland (MSP) Environmental Impact Report, study carried out by the Faculty of Mining Surveying and Environmental Engineering of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, literature information, and expert consultations. The functional unit is represented by 1,504,088 Mg of pig iron, produced BF process. Time coverage is 2005. Operating parameters as well as air emissions associated with the BF process were presented. The production data (pig iron) was given. The emissions of SO2, NO2, CO, CO2, aliphatic hydrocarbons, dust, heavy metals (Cr, Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, and Mn), and waste are the most important outcomes of the pig iron process. With regard to 1,504,088 Mg of pig iron produced by MSP, the consumption of coke, pulverized coal, sinters, pellets, and natural gas were 808,509, 16,921, 1,669,023, and 914,080 Mg, respectively. Other material consumption, industrial water, was 1,401,419 m(3)/year. The LCI study is the first tentative study to express pig iron production in Poland in terms of LCA/LCI for the pig iron in steel industry. The results may help steel industry government make decisions in policy making. Presentation of the study in this paper is suitable for the other industries. The LCI offers environmental information consisting on the list of environmental loads. The impact assessment phase aims the results from the inventory analysis more understandable and life cycle impact assessment will be direction for future research. Another issue to discuss is integration of LCA and risk assessment for industrial processed.In LCA, the intrinsic dependence of productions to human labour (HL) activities is usually neglected, without providing any clear arguments. HL is not considered to be related to and affected by, changes to the functional unit, although this is evidently not the case. This research aims at investigating the relationship between HL and LCA and at developing an operational framework to assess the life cycle environmental impact of HL in LCA. System boundaries and functional unit (euro/working-hour) of HL were defined. Statistical datasets of household expenditures (HEs) allowed differentiating among human consumption behaviours and the definition of three HL types, based on different work skills: HL-1 (qualified worker), HL-2 (technician), and HL-3 (manual worker). The HEs framework of Luxembourg was used because of data availability and was then extended to other EU-27 countries. A comparative LCIA of the HLs types was carried out using an environmentally extended input-output model (EU-27). Afterwards, ten agri-food and industrial LCAs case studies were modified for hybrid LCAs, adding HL input to LCIs and using the ReCiPe midpoint method for LCIA. The LCIA comparison of HLs shows that HL-1 generates environmental impacts that are always greater than HL-2 and HL-3, e.g. 1 h of HL-1, which involves workers with the highest consumption of goods and services, does generate 0.52 kg CO2-eq, whereas HL-2 and HL-3 generate 0.46 and 0.41 kg CO2-eq, respectively. The impact of average HL is higher in EU countries with the highest HEs budgets, e.g. the average HL impact in Luxembourg is 28% to 79% higher than the corresponding HL impact in other EU-27 countries. Within the case studies, the HL significantly contributes to the total impact for several categories (e.g. fossil and ozone depletion up to 16% and 20%, respectively). Despite these important results, some limitations due to data and models used are investigated to suggest further methodological improvements. The integration of HL inputs to product LCIs can improve accuracy of the entire life cycle analysis, since no product would exist without direct and/or indirect HL. This leads considering humans at the same level of technological/economic activities that cause environmental damage, with humans being perceived as leading actors and explicitly responsible for the impacts. What remains an open question is how to account for non-physical information, such as knowledge/education/culture, which distinguish humans from machinery and are essential items for our future sustainable development.The goal of the study was to determine the preferred composition of the floor on grade in residential buildings in the Belgian context from a life cycle environmental and financial perspective. In addition to the life cycle costs, the required investments were evaluated to take into account budget restrictions. The analysis of current available materials and techniques allows both the designer and building owner to extend their decision criteria from mainly investment cost to life cycle aspects as well. In this study, the potential environmental impact was assessed by considering the environmental external cost of the floors. Several existing methods were combined to enable a full assessment, taking the ExternE methodology (willingness to pay) as the main base. The ecoinvent database was used to gather the inventory data but was adapted to increase the representativeness for Belgium. The financial evaluation included both the investment and life cycle aspects. The latter was analysed through the sum of the present values of all costs occurring during the life span of the floor. The necessary assumptions (e.g. transport, end-of-life treatment, cleaning, life span, economic parameters) and the adaptations to the ecoinvent data are transparently reported. The methodological steps (e.g. monetary valuation, transmission losses, equivalent degree days, Pareto optimisation) are elaborated in detail. This allows the results, which are graphically presented, to be correctly interpreted. The contribution of the life cycle stages and the optimisation potential of the considered impacts are discussed. The environmental external cost based on the willingness to pay to reduce environmental impacts proved to be relatively low, representing about 9 % of the financial cost. The cost reduction of current common practice was estimated to be about 20 and 60 % from a financial and environmental perspective, respectively. The insulation level and the floor covering were identified as the most important optimisation parameters. Internalisation of environmental external costs might be an important step to achieve more sustainable solutions. However, it is recommended to consider financial and environmental external costs separately too because both contain important information for the decision maker. Because it is hard (if not impossible) to increase the insulation level of the floor on grade later on in the life cycle of the building, a high insulation value should be a priority during construction. The floor covering can more easily be adapted and is thus considered a secondary priority.In the recently published 'Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products', it is stated that the ultimate objective of developing the social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is to promote improvements of social conditions for the stakeholders in the life cycle. This article addresses how the SLCA should be developed so that its use promotes these improvements. Hypotheses of how the use of SLCA can promote improvement of social conditions in the life cycle are formulated, after which theories and empirical findings from relevant fields of research are used to address the validity of these hypotheses. Three in some cases potentially overlapping SLCA approaches are presented, assumed to create a beneficial effect in the life cycle in different ways. However, empirical and theoretical findings show that the beneficial effects proposed to arise from the use of each of these three approaches may all be problematic. Some of these problems may be mitigated through methodological modifications. Given the significant problems in relation to creating an effect through the use of the SLCAs, and given the significant practical problems in applying the SLCAs, it is questioned whether the development of SLCA is a fruitful approach for improving social conditions in the product life cycle.In recent years, life cycle assessment (LCA), a methodology for assessment of environmental impacts of products and services, has become increasingly important. This methodology is applied by decision makers in industry and policy, product developers, environmental managers, and other non-LCA specialists working on environmental issues in a wide variety of sectors. Especially for chemical engineers and scientists, it is essential to have an understanding of the LCA-methodology when developing new products. Performing an LCA is time intensive and the choices and assumptions made during system modeling, especially with respect to the system boundaries, the processes to include, the used technology, and geography are often decisive for the result of an LCA study. The outcomes of an LCA have to be analyzed in a critical way, especially if they are used for business decisions and policy making. Different scenarios have to be studied.. Two examples are presented where LCA-software (SimaPro5) is used. The first one is a simple analysis of a coffee machine to obtain information on the environmental impact of the processes. The second one investigates different scenarios for waste treatment of paper and cardboard.Water and energy crisis are two problems that need to attend in the next decay. Lack of adequate fresh water throughout the world special in regions with scarcity of water will affect the social manner. This paper discusses on the life cycle assessment for retrofitting the photocatalytic technology as an alternative waste water treatment. The effect and kinetic of UV and solar irradiation on photocatalytic dynamic reactor using TiO2-P25 (Degussa) were investigated for removal of rhodamine B (RhB) dye chosen as organic pollutant. The degradation kinetic of RhB is discussed in terms of Longmire model. The results showed that UV irradiation was more efficient than solar irradiation to degrade the RhB dye. The effect of temperature on performance of photo reactor was monitored in 15, 25 and 50 degrees C. The photocatalytic reactor degraded the RhB in warm conditions better than the cool conditions.Soil quality is recognised as being a key parameter of sustainable agricultural management. Existing methods of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) do not include any soil quality indicators other than soil organic matter content. This paper rectifies this omission by presenting Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment for Soil Quality (SALCA-SQ), a LCIA conform method, to assess effects of agricultural management practices on soil quality. SALCA-SQ characterises all major types of impacts of land management practices on the quality of arable soils by means of nine indicators covering soil physical, chemical and biological aspects: rooting depth of soil, macropore volume, aggregate stability, organic carbon content, heavy metal content, organic pollutants, earthworm biomass, microbial biomass and microbial activity. Since these indicators are not measured directly, the impacts of agricultural management activities are assessed via impact class modelling to determine the most probable changes in soil quality indicators as a result of on-farm agricultural practices. To illustrate the application and results of SALCA-SQ, treatment effects of a long-term field trial on soil quality were assessed and compared against measured field data. The data generated by SALCA-SQ revealed the important influence of fertiliser regime on soil quality. Field measurements generally confirmed SALCA-SQ assessments, but small differences between measured data in different treatments could not be predicted. Case studies on theoretical scenarios covering a broad spectrum of site conditions and management practices demonstrated the potential of SALCA-SQ to assess the effects of the major impact classes on the nine soil quality indicators, thus giving a refined picture of the potential effects of a farming system on soil quality. In principle, these results support the assumption that SALCA-SQ has the potential to assess effects of agricultural management practices on soil quality, but validity in a strict scientific sense remains to be substantiated. In addition, SALCA-SQ can be used by agricultural advisory services and farmers to analyse agricultural management effects on soil quality and move soil management in a more sustainable direction.This work developed environmental indicators from the economic and agricultural database of Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). Two environmental impacts, climate change and non-renewable energy use, were estimated from the database according to the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The large variability observed seems to be linked to production orientation and geographic location. Livestock production was strongly correlated with the impact of climate change, particularly cattle production, due to its high emissions of enteric methane. Farms specialized in cereals and cash crops showed high non-renewable energy use, linked with intensive use of mineral fertilizers. Some mixed farm holdings, whether livestock-oriented or crop-and livestock-oriented, had impacts similar to those of the specialized farming system which each of them resembled most. Impacts varied according to geographic location in France. For farms specialized in cereals or dairy production, direct greenhouse gas emissions and indirect energy consumption predominated. Impacts for specialized dairy farms varied greatly per unit of agricultural area ( hectares) but less per 1,000 euros of revenue. In contrast, impact variability for specialized cereal farms was lower per hectare but considerably greater per 1,000 euros. Continuing the study will be useful for improving methods and results of these farming systems. It will also be interesting to consider more detailed methods to understand mixed crop-livestock farms, as these systems are widespread.Sludge treatment reed beds (STRBs) performance has become a popular solution to dewater and stabilize surplus sludge from wastewater treatment systems because of the low investment, operational and maintenance costs of the systems. The environmental impact associated with this technology has, however, to be assessed in order to evaluate the appropriateness of the technology. The goal of this study is to determine the carbon footprint of STRBs. To this end, a Life Cycle Assessment was performed using methane and nitrous oxide emissions quantified in two full-scale STRBs located in Northern and Southern Europe (Denmark and Spain). Methane emissions ranged between 1000 and 3700 mg CH4/m(2) d, while nitrous oxides ranged between 200 and 750 mg N2O/m(2) d. Thus, greenhouse gas emissions correspond to 0.09 and 0.25 kg CO2eq/m(2) d for the Danish and Spanish system, respectively. The treatment of 1 ton of sludge (wet weigh) in the Spanish system corresponds to 2.1 kg CO2eq, while in the Danish system it corresponds to 1.0 kg CO2eq. The contribution of greenhouse gas emissions in the carbon footprint is insignificant in comparison with raw materials and energy consumption. However, the results put forward the relevance of STRB design in the environmental impact of the technology. Thus, the excavation of basins or the use of recycled concrete are recommended to guarantee a low carbon footprint of this technology. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Soils are an essential resource in both managed and natural systems, and maintaining soil quality is critical to the development of sustainable development of human activities, in particular agriculture. The assessment of impacts of human activities on soil quality needs a universal practical approach that can be incorporated in global environmental assessments. But so far, no synthetic indicators have been proposed that would combine the main soil characteristics in a simple formula valid for all types of soils and climates. The existence of numerous interrelated soil characteristics and their complex interactions with agricultural practices has postponed development of a universal soil-quality impact indicator in environmental assessment, especially in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is an internationally normalized method widely used to evaluate potential impacts of products. The inability to represent impacts on soil quality remains one of the unresolved problems in LCA because of soil's spatial and temporal variability and the complex interactions between soil properties. It is crucial to consider soil quality in the environmental assessment of products, especially those with a majority of their life cycle in biological processes (such as agriculture and forestry). After presenting a general overview of the soil quality concept, we review the existing LCA approaches that consider soil quality in their inventory and impact-assessment phases, and outline the challenges to refining soil quality impacts in LCA. These challenges include estimation of complex soil quality impacts that depend on fluctuating soil characteristics, consideration of both on-site and off-site agricultural soils, and aggregation of impacts both spatially and temporally. The inventory items describing soil quality can be soil properties, functions or processes (e.g., erosion, compaction). Their quantification implies that they be (1) relevant for calculating impacts on soil quality, (2) related to one or more functional units, (3) as accurate as possible and (4) calculated with available data at a global scale. Inventory items based on processes fulfill these four needs and can be considered as midpoint indicators in LCA. Furthermore, indicators based on processes allow an incremental improvement of the method through the inclusion of new impacts. Efforts first must focus on developing robust impact indicators for individual soil processes before attempting to aggregate them into a single indicator. Nonetheless, several aggregation approaches are presented. The appropriate level of complexity and comprehensiveness for assessing impacts on soil quality should result from a compromise between oversimplified and overcomplicated descriptions of the multiple functions and properties of soils. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While buildings are often credited as accounting for some 40% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the construction phase is typically assumed to account for only around one tenth of the overall emissions. However, the relative importance of construction phase emissions is quickly increasing as the energy efficiency of buildings increases. In addition, the significance of construction may actually be much higher when the temporal perspective of the emissions is taken into account. The construction phase carbon spike, i. e. high GHG emissions in a short time associated with the beginning of the building's life cycle, may be high enough to question whether new construction, no matter how energy efficient the buildings are, can contribute to reaching the greenhouse gas mitigation goals of the near future. Furthermore, the construction of energy efficient buildings causes more GHG emissions than the construction of conventional buildings. On the other hand, renovating the current building stock together with making energy efficiency improvements might lead to a smaller construction phase carbon spike and still to the same reduced energy consumption in the use phase as the new energy efficient buildings. The study uses a new residential development project in Northern Europe to assess the overall life cycle GHG emissions of a new residential area and to evaluate the influence of including the temporal allocation of the life cycle GHG emissions in the assessment. In the study, buildings with different energy efficiency levels are compared with a similar hypothetical area of buildings of the average existing building stock, as well as with a renovation of an area with average buildings from the 1960s. The GHG emissions are modeled with a hybrid life cycle assessment. The study suggests that the carbon payback time of constructing new residential areas is several decades long even when using very energy efficient buildings compared to utilizing the current building stock. Thus, while increasing the overall energy efficiency is important in the long term, the construction of new energy efficient buildings cannot be used as a means to achieve the short term and medium term climate change mitigation goals as cities and governments often suggest. Furthermore, given the magnitude of the carbon spike from construction and its implications, the climate change mitigation strategies should set reduction targets for the construction phase emissions alongside the ones for the use phase, which currently receives almost all of the attention from policy-makers.This article evaluates the environmental performance of a biofuel production system based on the fast pyrolysis of short-rotation poplar biomass using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The system includes a circulating fluidized bed reactor followed by bio-oil upgrading through hydrotreating and hydrocracking to produce gasoline and diesel. The investigated system was selected on the basis of an overview of available technologies for the production and upgrading of fast pyrolysis bio-oil. Inventory data for the whole system were collected and used in order to carry out the life cycle impact assessment. Seven impact categories were evaluated: cumulative energy demand, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, land competition, acidification and eutrophication. Feedstock pre-treatment, pyrolysis and steam reforming for the production of the hydrogen required for hydroprocessing were identified as the subsystems with the highest contributions to the potential impacts. Within these subsystems, natural gas production, electricity generation and direct emissions to air were the main contributors. Special attention should also be paid to the production of the lignocellulosic biomass feedstock, especially to the associated land occupation and fertilizer requirements. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 1 methodologies commonly underpin project-scale carbon accounting for changes in land use and management and are used in frameworks for Life Cycle Assessment and carbon footprinting of food and energy crops. These methodologies were intended for use at large spatial scales. This can introduce error in predictions at finer spatial scales. There is an urgent need for development and implementation of higher tier methodologies that can be applied at fine spatial scales (e.g. farm/project/plantation) for food and bioenergy crop greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting to facilitate decision making in the land-based sectors. Higher tier methods have been defined by IPCC and must be well evaluated and operate across a range of domains (e.g. climate region, soil type, crop type, topography), and must account for land use transitions and management changes being implemented. Furthermore, the data required to calibrate and drive the models used at higher tiers need to be available and applicable at fine spatial resolution, covering the meteorological, soil, cropping system and management domains, with quantified uncertainties. Testing the reliability of the models will require data either from sites with repeated measurements or from chronosequences. We review current global capability for estimating changes in soil carbon at fine spatial scales and present a vision for a framework capable of quantifying land use change and management impacts on soil carbon, which could be used for addressing issues such as bioenergy and biofuel sustainability, food security, forest protection, and direct/indirect impacts of land use change. The aim of this framework is to provide a globally accepted standard of carbon measurement and modelling appropriate for GHG accounting that could be applied at project to national scales (allowing outputs to be scaled up to a country level), to address the impacts of land use and land management change on soil carbon.The contribution of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), a perennial C4 grass, in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was reviewed under three main areas; the impact on carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and methane emissions (CH4), whilst also taking into account the effects of land conversion to switchgrass. Switchgrass is able to enhance biomass accumulation in a wide range of environmental conditions, which is the premise for considerable carbon assimilation and storage in the belowground organs. The progress in some areas of crop husbandry (e.g., tillage and fertilization) has fostered benefits for carbon storage, while restraining GHG emissions. As root biomass is the main indicator of soil carbon sequestration, switchgrass's dense and deep rooting is a relevant advantage, although uncertainty still exists about the crop's belowground biomass accumulation. In agreement with this, most LCA studies addressing CO2 emissions report significant benefits from switchgrass cultivation and processing. Beside CO2, switchgrass performed better than most other biomass crops also in terms of N2O emission. In the case of CH4 emission, it may be argued that switchgrass should act as a moderate sink, i.e., contributing to mitigate CH4 atmospheric concentration, but a substantial lack of information indicates the need for specific research on the topic. Land conversion to switchgrass is the latest issue which needs to be addressed in LCA studies: not surprisingly, the net CO2 abatement appears remarkable if switchgrass is grown in former arable lands, although it is slightly negative to positive if switchgrass replaces permanent grassland. In conclusion, switchgrass could significantly contribute to mitigate GHG emissions, although areas of uncertainty still exist in the assessment of soil carbon storage, N2O and CH4 emissions, and the effects of converting lands to switchgrass. Further improvements must, therefore, be achieved to strengthen the crop's remarkable sustainability.Recently, the increased cost of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions has attracted the interest of many scientists to study the energy use in agricultural systems. Energy analysis in white asparagus farms is useful to decide best management strategies. The objectives of this study were to evaluate a) the energy flow among conventional, integrated and organic farming systems and b) the effect of farming system to greenhouse gas emissions. Eleven farms (three conventional, five integrated, three organic) at nine locations in Greece were selected during 2007-2008. Multidimensional data analyses were used to detect a) clusters of farming systems and b) associations between field operations and production coefficients variables. Three clusters of farming systems and four groups of variables were revealed. Nonparametric tests concerning external variables (outputs, energy efficiency, spear production, CO2, CH4, and N2O) showed that the three clusters of farming systems were not statistically different relative to output and energy efficiency variables but spear productions and gas emissions were lower for the organic farming cluster. The results showed that organic farming could reduce inputs and gas emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this research natural fibre (biomaterial) pocket spring mattresses are shown to emit marginally less greenhouse gasses (GHG) than foam (petrochemical) pocket spring mattresses. However, when end of life scenarios are considered, the results suggest much larger GHG emission reductions for natural fibre than foam mattresses. Refurbishing natural fibre mattresses and reusing the springs, coupled with recycling the waste components, can reduce GHG emissions by 90% compared to sending the mattresses to landfill. Incinerating mattresses via combined heat and power plants for electricity production and converting the waste textiles to ethanol are also shown to reduce GHG emissions, though to a lesser extent than refurbishment and recycling. Mattresses are normally disposed of via landfill however designing for reuse and recycling, coupled with supportive policy and legislation, may encourage more natural fibre mattresses and recycling. Such changes could save between 210 and 2092 thousand tCO(2)-eq in the European Union annually. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the impetus of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle thinking (LCT) in waste management policy is increasing, decision makers may face conflicting advice on the potential environmental impacts of competing end-of-life treatment options. This paper discusses the problem posed by the Waste Framework Directive, 2008/98/EC, where LCT is required to justify the departure of waste streams from the waste hierarchy. This paper places LCA of waste management systems in the context of applying 'normal' science to 'post-normal' problems. The current application of La in waste policy is reviewed in order to determine the epistemic basis to such applications. Furthermore, several cases are reviewed where controversy has surrounded the a priori purpose of applying LCT; the justification of a clear-cut solution to environmental problems. We show how the excess of objectivity, the social construction of knowledge and the playing out of actors' games may limit the ability of LCT to offer an authoritative justification for the derogation of waste streams from the waste hierarchy. However, one of the major benefits of LCT lies in its ability to change actors problem perception. Hence, the application of LCT may be better suited to both the identification of areas of environmental impact and the positioning of waste management solutions further up the waste policy agenda. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A commonly agreed methodology for weighting the relative importance of different environmental impacts in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is lacking, although it is becoming a typical phase in LCA. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) provides an avenue to develop weighting tools applicable in LCA. The purpose of this paper is to describe a process of assessing environmental impacts of two alternative raw materials and to present the problems related to it. A panel which includes experts in measuring the environmental impacts of biomass production was requested to identify and weight impact categories to assess environmental impacts of biomass production. The panelists identified new environmental impacts (such as biodiversity) not included to the standard LCA. The highest weights were given by the panelists to climate change, natural land use change and biodiversity. The environmental impacts were analyzed for four case biomass production chains producing biodiesel and pulp in Finland. In case chains, the raw material for biodiesel is Asian palm oil or Finnish rapeseed oil, while the raw material for pulp is South American eucalyptus or Finnish birch. The calculations of the LCA impacts were limited to the impact categories for which inventory data were available. In calculations, different types of normalization procedures were tested to receive information on their effects on the LCA results. According to the results, in some cases normalization have considerable impact on the magnitude of the results. In general, the results imply that biomass imported from developing countries has less environmental impacts compared to the local forest and field biomass produced in Finland. However, due to the several sources of uncertainties included in the results, they are only to be used for illustrative purposes. In the future, applying the MCDA in LCA may deepen the applicability of the analyses, if valid and reliable data is available. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While it is generally agreed that successful strategies to address the health and environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials (NM) should consider the well-established frameworks for conducting life-cycle assessment (LCA) and risk assessment (RA), scientific research, and specific guidance on how to practically apply these methods are still very much under development. This paper evaluates how research efforts have applied LCA and RA together for NM, particularly reflecting on previous experiences with applying these methods to chemicals. Through a literature review and a separate analysis of research focused on applying LCA and RA together for NM, it appears that current research efforts have taken into account some key "lessons learned'' from previous experience with chemicals while many key challenges remain for practically applying these methods to NM. We identified two main approaches for using these methods together for NM: "LC-based RA'' (traditional RA applied in a life-cycle perspective) and "RA-complemented LCA'' (conventional LCA supplemented by RA in specific life-cycle steps). Hence, the latter is the only identified approach which genuinely combines LC- and RA-based methods for NM-risk research efforts to date as the former is rather a continuation of normal RA according to standard assessment procedures (e.g., REACH). Both these approaches along with recommendations for using LCA and RA together for NM are similar to those made previously for chemicals, and thus, there does not appear to be much progress made specific for NM. We have identified one issue in particular that may be specific for NM when applying LCA and RA at this time: the need to establish proper dose metrics within both methods.Although a significant fraction of the global soil-atmosphere exchange of greenhouse gases (GHGs) occurs in semi-arid zones little is known about the magnitude of fluxes in grazed steppe ecosystems and the interference with grazing intensity. In order to assess GHG burdens and to identify options of climate-optimized livestock farming, GHG emissions of sheep grazing in Inner Mongolia steppe were analyzed. Carbon sequestration and field-fluxes of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) were measured at a range of steppe sites differing in grazing intensity and management, i.e. ungrazed (UG), ungrazed with hay cutting (HC), lightly grazed (LG), moderately grazed (MG), and heavily grazed (HG). In addition, GHG emissions from enteric fermentation, manure management, and farming inputs (i.e. fossil fuels) were quantified for LG, MG, and HG. Monte Carlo simulation was used to estimate uncertainty. Sheep grazing changed the net GHG balance of the steppe from a significant sink at UG (-1476 +/- A 2481 kg CO2eq ha(-1) year(-1)) to a significant source at MG (2350 +/- A 1723 kg CO2eq ha(-1) year(-1)) and HG (3115 +/- A 2327 kg CO2eq ha(-1) year(-1)). In a similar way, the GHG intensity increased from 8.6 +/- A 79.2 kg CO2eq kg(-1) liveweight gain at LG up to 62.2 +/- A 45.8 and 62.6 +/- A 46.7 kg CO2eq kg(-1) liveweight gain at MG and HG, respectively. GHG balances were predominantly determined by CO2 from changes in topsoil organic carbon. In grazing systems, CH4 from enteric fermentation was the second most important component. The results suggest that sheep grazing under the current management changes this steppe ecosystem from a sink to a source of GHGs and that grazing exclusion holds large potential to restore soil organic carbon stocks and thus to sequester atmospheric CO2. The balance between grazing intensity and grazing exclusion predominantly determines GHG balances of grass-based sheep farming in this region. Therefore, a high proportion of ungrazed land is most important for reducing GHG balances of sheep farms. This can be either achieved by high grazing intensity on the remaining grazed land or by confined hay feeding of sheep.This work addresses the use of absorption cycles combined with solar energy for reducing the green house gas (GHG) emissions in the cooling sector. The problem of satisfying a given cooling demand at minimum cost and environmental impact is formulated as a bi-criterion non-linear optimization problem that seeks to minimize the total cost of the cooling application and its contribution to global warming. The latter metric, which is assessed following the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA), accounts for the impact caused during the construction and operation of the system. The concept of Pareto optimality is employed to discuss different alternatives for reducing the contribution to global warming that differ in their economic and environmental performance. We also analyze the effect of taxes on CO2 on the economic and environmental performance of the system. The capabilities of the proposed approach are illustrated through a case study that addresses the design of a solar assisted ammonia-water single effect absorption cooling system with 100 kW of cooling capacity considering Barcelona weather conditions. We show that reducing the contribution to global warming considering the current energy prices and taxes on carbon dioxide emissions is technically viable but economically not appealing. We also discuss the conditions under which reducing the CO2 emissions could become economically attractive. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental implications of the whole supply-chain of products, both goods and services, their use, and waste management, i.e., their entire life cycle from "cradle to grave" have to be considered to achieve more sustainable production and consumption patterns. Progress toward environmental sustainability requires enhancing the methodologies for quantitative, integrated environmental assessment and promoting the use of these methodologies in different domains. In the context of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of products, in recent years, several methodologies have been developed for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). The Joint Research Center of the European Commission (EC-JRC) led a "science to decision support" process which resulted in the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, providing guidelines to the decision and application of methods for LCIA. The Handbook is the result of a comprehensive process of evaluation and selection of existing methods based on a set of scientific and stakeholder acceptance criteria and involving review and consultation by experts, advisory groups and the public. In this study, we report the main features of the ILCD LCIA recommendation development highlighting relevant issues emerged from this "from science to decision support" process in terms of research needs and challenges for LCIA. Comprehensiveness of the assessment, as well as acceptability and applicability of the scientific developments by the stakeholders, are key elements for the design of new methods and to guarantee the mainstreaming of the sustainability concept.As the effects of global warming have become more evident, ambitious short-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have been set in recent years. Many cities worldwide have adopted an active approach to climate change mitigation, but policy makers are not always knowledgeable of the true effects of their planned mitigation action. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of different mitigation strategies in achieving low-carbon urban communities. The assessment is conducted via means of consumption based hybrid life-cycle assessment, which allows the reduction potential to be analyzed from the perspective of an individual resident of the urban community. The assessed actions represent strategies that are both adopted by the case cities and possible to implement with current best practices in Finland. The four assessed actions comprise: (1) dense urban structure with less private driving; (2) the use of energy production based on renewable sources; (3) new low-energy residential construction; and (4) improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings. The findings show that the effectiveness depends greatly on the type of city, although in absolute terms the most significant reduction potential lies with lowering the fossil fuel dependence of the local energy production.In this study, environmental impacts of industrial waste disposal of used lubricating oils and sulphur wastes scenarios have been investigated and modeled. The life-cycle assessment methodology was selected among the environmental impact assessment methods. In this method environmental issues and burdens were quantitated in order to facilitate the comparison. In this regard, options with the least adverse impacts were suggested. Functional unit of the study has also been defined as amount of used lubricating oils and sulphur wastes in terms of kilograms based on capacity of transitional barrel. Accordingly, the system boundaries were selected for life cycle of the wastes produced in sulphur unit of Tehran Oil Refinery. Since the main disposal method applied in Tehran Oil Refinery was transference to the municipal landfill, two incineration and landfilling scenarios were modeled for used lubricating oils and sulphur wastes by means of Simapro-7.1 software. Then, the outputs of these scenarios were compared in terms of the least environmental impacts by EDIP 2003 and Ecoindicator 99 methods. Finally, incineration scenarios were recommended as the most efficient ones.A life cycle assessment model is built to estimate the environmental implications of pavements using material, distribution, construction, congestion, usage, and end of life modules. A case study of three overlay systems, Portland cement concrete overlay, hot mixture asphalt overlay, and crack, seat, and overlay, is presented. The case leads to the following conclusions. It is reasonable to expect less environmental burdens from the Portland cement concrete and crack, seat, and overlay options as opposed to hot mixture asphalt while although the results have a high degree uncertainties. The material, congestion, and particularly usage modules contribute most to energy consumption and air pollutant. Traffic related energy consumption and greenhouse gases are sensitive to traffic growth and fuel economy improvement. Uncertainties exist in the usage module, especially for the pavement structure effect. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this investigation, three different methods for the harvesting of spruce under otherwise identical conditions were analysed with respect to their greenhouse gas emissions per unit of output: a partially mechanised method using motor saws and draft horses, a more highly mechanised method using motor saws and a forestry tractor and a fully mechanised method with a harvester and forwarder. All the sub-steps from the harvesting of the fallen trees to the transportation to the road were included in the investigated greenhouse gas audit, which followed the rules of a streamlined life cycle assessment. The lowest greenhouse gas emissions were produced by the partially mechanised method (305.7 kg CO(2)e ha(-1)), followed by the more highly mechanised method (510.5 kg CO(2)e ha(-1)) and by the fully mechanised method (554.3 kg CO(2)e ha(-1)). The greatest proportion of the greenhouse gas audit within each method was taken up by the fuel, lubricant and hydraulic oil utilisation. In the horse audit, transportation to and from the site of operation caused the greatest effect (60%). With these results, it could be confirmed that horses when used for logging could be assessed as being more positive with respect to their climate friendliness than large-scale machines despite their lower harvesting capacity per hectare of spruce. However, as this study did not take all environmental impacts into consideration, this relatively better environmental audit for draft horses could be changed when other environmental impacts (e.g. land use) are also included. This possibility should be investigated in further investigations.For European homes without access to the natural gas grid, the main fuels-of-choice for heating are heating oil and LPG. How do the carbon footprints of these compare? Existing literature does not clearly answer this, so the current study was undertaken to fill this gap. Footprints were estimated in seven countries that are representative of the EU and constitute two-thirds of the EU-27 population: Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland and the UK. Novelties of the assessment were: systems were defined using the EcoBoiler model; well-to-tank data were updated according to most-recent research; and combustion emission factors were used that were derived from a survey conducted for this study. The key finding is that new residential heating systems fuelled by LPG are 20% lower carbon and 15% lower overall-environmental-impact than those fuelled by heating oil. An unexpected finding was that an LPG system's environmental impact is about the same as that of a bio heating oil system fuelled by 100% rapeseed methyl ester. Europe's predominant biofuel. Moreover, a 20/80 blend (by energy content) with conventional heating oil, a bio-heating-oil system generates a footprint about 15% higher than an LPG system's. The final finding is that fuel switching can pay off in carbon terms. If a new LPG heating system replaces an ageing oil-fired one for the final five years of its service life, the carbon footprint of the system's final five years is reduced by more than 50%. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The rapid development of the electronic industry has led to a growing hazardous waste management and disposal problem related to the management of cathode ray tube (CRT) waste. This study aimed to compare the feasibility of using CRT recycled glass: non-treated funnel glass (n-TFG, crushed without treatment) and treated funnel glass (TFG, crushed and treated with acid nitric to remove lead on the glass surface) as fine aggregates in cement mortar. Fresh and hardened properties of the cement mortars, including their x-ray radiation shielding and potential lead leaching were investigated. The mortar prepared with crushed beverage glass (CBG, lead-free) was also evaluated for comparison purposes. The experimental results show that the use of glass cullets, irrespective of glass type, improved the fluidity and drying shrinkage but reduced the strength. About 60% enhancement in x-ray radiation shielding property was achieved with the use of 100% CRT glass in the cement mortar owing to the increase of mortar density due to the presence of lead in the CRT glass. Furthermore, lead leaching (based on TCLP test) from the mortar samples prepared with the TFG complied with the regulatory limits. The results have demonstrated that the CRT glass (an original hazardous material) can be treated, processed, and re-utilized for making cement mortars. The mechanical performance of the cement mortar is comparable to that made with beverage glass. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental profile of gold production with regards to embodied energy, greenhouse gas emissions, embodied water and solid waste burden has been assessed using life cycle assessment methodology. Both refractory and non-refractory ores were considered, with cyanidation extraction followed by carbon in pulp (CIP) recovery assumed for non-refractory ore processing. Flotation and pressure oxidation were included prior to cyanidation for processing refractory ores. For a base case ore grade of 3.5 g Au/t ore, the life cycle-based environmental footprint of gold production was estimated to be approximately 200,000 GJ/t Au, 18,000 t CO(2)e/t Au, 260,000 t water/t Au and 1,270,000 t waste solids/t Au for non-refractory ore. The embodied energy and greenhouse gas footprints were approximately 50% higher with refractory ore due to the additional material and energy inputs and gold and silver losses associated with the additional processing steps required with this ore. The solid waste burden was based on an assumed strip ratio of 3 t waste rock/t ore, but this ratio varies considerably between mines, significantly influencing the estimated value of this impact. The environmental footprint of gold production (per tonne of gold produced) was shown to be several orders of magnitude greater than that for a number of other metals, largely due to the low grades of ore used for the production of gold compared to other metals. The mining and comminution stages made the greatest contribution to the greenhouse gas footprint of gold production, with electricity being the major factor, and being responsible for just over half of the greenhouse gas footprint. This result emphasises the need to focus on these stages in any endeavours to reduce the embodied energy and greenhouse gas footprints of gold production. However, the significance of the contribution of the mining and comminution stages to the environmental footprint also means that falling gold ore grades will have a major impact on the environmental profile, and this issue is examined in the paper. Some technological developments in gold ore processing that have the potential to reduce the environmental footprint of gold production are also discussed. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lean production is a multi-dimensional approach composed of management activities, just-in-time, cellular manufacturing, supplier management, work teams, and quality systems, hence implementing lean production is time consuming and costly. Organizations must be able to measure the success possibility of implementing lean production before embarking on it. In this paper, artificial neural network model has been designed and trained using analytical hierarchy process named A(2) which results in measuring the success of lean production implementation in an automobile company by determining the level of leanness. This approach leads to fewer calculations, faster and more accurate decision-making, less complexity, and the ability to analyze a lot of scenarios with only one or few judgments of decision makers while the effect of the subjective opinion of one single decision maker will be avoided. This proposed method is compared with the adaptive analytical hierarchy process approach which is suggested by Lin et al. in 2008 and is named A(3). The implementation results show that these two methods are significantly valid for measuring the success of lean manufacturing by determining the level of leanness. Comparison of the two methods shows that although A3 has benefits, it also suffers from limitations, which can be avoided by the A(2) model, A2 also improves the time and cost needed for implementing in comparison. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of carbon fibre reinforced plastics is steadily increasing in the aerospace industry as rising fuel costs and concerns over the environment push airframe manufacturers to improve aircraft efficiency. The high costs associated with manufacturing carbon fibre reinforced components in autoclaves have prompted interest in alternative out-of-autoclave processing methods. In this study a combined cost modelling and life-cycle assessment approach is applied to selected out-of-autoclave production scenarios. Out-of-autoclave specific "prepregs" and resin infused fabrics are cured in thermal and microwave ovens of comparable volume and assessed against a benchmark autoclave scenario. Results showed that materials, in particular carbon fibres, contributed most significantly to component cost and environmental impacts. Resin infusion processes were effective at reducing costs, as reinforcement fabrics and resin were less expensive. Due to the small contribution of energy to total cost, reductions in energy use did not lead to significant savings, although they did improve the environmental performance of the manufacturing process. Out-of-autoclave specific prepregs did not perform as well due to their higher costs, longer associated cycle times and the need for lengthy de-bulking operations. Microwave oven curing offered little in terms of cost reduction and environmental improvement as investment costs were comparable to those of an autoclave, and energy consumption was relatively high compared with traditional thermal oven use. Opportunities for improvement exist if investment costs can be reduced and additional work carried out to promote more efficient transfer of energy. Improvement of the carbon fibre production process would be the most effective approach for reducing impacts and costs from carbon fibre components. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two energy production systems using short rotation coppice (SRC) willow chips were evaluated: bioethanol production via enzyme-catalyzed hydrolysis and electricity production following a biomass integrated gasification combined cycle scheme. The most relevant input and output flows of each renewable energy system were identified and quantified throughout the life cycle from the SRC willow plantation to the bioenergy plant gate. Both bioenergy systems were found to be feasible from an energy perspective. Moreover, they entailed environmental benefits when compared to conventional energy practices. However, improvements relating to not only willow biomass production but also bioenergy conversion-related activities should be considered. In this respect, the process steps that provided the highest environmental impacts have been highlighted. Furthermore, well-to-wheels environmental characterization results were estimated and compared for the bioethanol and bioelectricity scenarios. In this sense, the identification of the most appropriate processing route for willow chips was found to be highly dependent on the impact category under assessment. In particular, global warming and energy parameters led to opposite conclusions. While the bioethanol scenario arose as the potentially best choice from an energy perspective, the bioelectricity scenario seems to be a more suitable alternative when global warming is the decisive factor. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cellulosic biomass can be directly converted to hydrocarbon transportation fuels through the use of hydropyrolysis or integrated hydropyrolysis plus hydroconversion (IH2). Hydropyrolysis performed in a fast fluidized bed under 14-35 bar of hydrogen pressure with an effective deoxygenation catalyst directly produces a fungible hydrocarbon product with less than 1 total acid number which can either be directly fed to a refinery or polished in an integrated hydroconversion reactor to produce gasoline and diesel with less than 1% oxygen. Experimental data from a 0.45 kg/h semi-continuous IH2 pilot plant is presented. Economics and life cycle analysis data will be presented later in this series, and will show that by employing IH2 technology, biomass can be converted to gasoline and diesel fuels at delivered costs of less and in some cases significantly less than $1.80/gallon with greater than 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Larger (2.08 kg/h) long-term continuous pilot-scale testing of the IH2 process will commence in the near future. As a biomass-to-fuels conversion technology, IH2 has the potential to substantially reduce US dependence on foreign oil, thereby reducing the price of transportation fuels and significantly lowering worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. (C) 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 31: 191-199, 2012Wind energy plays an increasingly important role in the world's electricity market with rapid growth projected in the future. In order to evaluate the potential for wind energy to mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing CO2 intensity of the energy sector, this study developed a new direct and simple method for estimating CO2 emissions per kWh produced during the life cycle of four representative wind power plants (three in developed countries and one in China). The life cycle analysis focuses on the wind power plant as the basic functional object instead of a single wind turbine. Our results show that present-day wind power plants have a lifetime emission intensity of 5.0-8.2 g CO2/kWh electricity, a range significantly lower than estimates in previous studies. Our estimate suggests that wind is currently the most desirable renewable energy in terms of minimizing CO2 emissions per kWh of produced electricity. The production phase contributes the most to overall CO2 emissions, while recycling after decommission could reduce emissions by nearly half, representing an advantage of wind when compared with other energy generation technologies such as nuclear. Compared with offshore wind plants, onshore plants have lower CO2 emissions per kWh electricity and require less transmission infrastructure. Analysis of a case in China indicates that a large amount of CO2 emissions could be saved in the transport phase in large countries by using shorter alternative routes of transportation. As the world's fastest growing market for wind power, China could potentially save 780 Mtons of CO2 emissions annually by 2030 with its revised wind development target. However, there is still ample room for even more rapid development of wind energy in China, accompanied by significant opportunities for reducing overall CO2 emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impacts of energy and water demand and greenhouse gas emissions from three residential water-using appliances were analyzed using life cycle assessment (LCA) based approach in collaboration of economic input-output model. This study especially focused on indirect consumption and environmental impacts from end-use/demand phase of each appliance. Water-related activities such as water supply, water heating and wastewater treatment were included in the analysis. The results showed that environmental impacts from end-use/demand phase are most significant for the water system, particularly for the energy demand for water heating (73% for clothes washer and 93% for showerheads). Reducing water/hot water consumption during the end-use/demand phase is expected to improve the overall water-related energy burden and water use sustainability. In the analysis of optimal lifespan for appliances, the estimated values (8-21 years) using energy consumption balance approach were found to be lower than that using other methods (10-25 years). This implies that earlier replacement with efficiency models is encouraged to minimize the environmental impacts of the product. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climatic impacts of energy-peat extraction are of increasing concern due to EU emissions trading requirements. A new excavation-drier peat extraction method has been developed to reduce the climatic impact and increase the efficiency of peat extraction. To quantify and compare the soil GHG fluxes of the excavation drier and the traditional milling methods, as well as the areas from which the energy peat is planned to be extracted in the future (extraction reserve area types), soil CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes were measured during 2006-2007 at three sites in Finland. Within each site, fluxes were measured from drained extraction reserve areas, extraction fields and stockpiles of both methods and additionally from the biomass driers of the excavation-drier method. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), described at a principal level in ISO Standards 14040:2006 and 14044:2006, was used to assess the long-term (100 years) climatic impact from peatland utilisation with respect to land use and energy production chains where utilisation of coal was replaced with peat. Coal was used as a reference since in many cases peat and coal can replace each other in same power plants. According to this study, the peat extraction method used was of lesser significance than the extraction reserve area type in regards to the climatic impact. However, the excavation-drier method seems to cause a slightly reduced climatic impact as compared with the prevailing milling method.Desalination becomes in many parts of the world and also in Europe a promising option to combat water stress in water scarce regions. However, also the question of sustainability and environmental impacts of this technology is in focus of numerous studies and discussions. Especially, the focus is set on high energy demand and disposal of generated brine. In this study, the conventional desalination technology in Europe reverse osmosis (RO) has been compared to the newly developed membrane based technology Memstill (R) by means of life cycle assessment (LCA). The objective is to define clearly conditions when the environmental impacts are lowest. The results reveal not only the strong dependency of the energy supply and demand but also the potential to reduce the environmental impacts while combining with alternative renewable energy supply. The reverse osmosis can be combined with renewable energies and Memstill (R) with cogeneration or waste heat. The global warming potential can even be reduced by 98% when RO is combined with wind energy instead of using the electricity grid mix of Spain. Memstill (R) is especially favourable to RO for feed water with higher salt content due to its almost salt concentration independent energy demand. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainable development is a multidimensional concept that usually implies a simultaneous concretization of contradictory aspects. Multi-criteria decision approaches are often used for the management of conflicting perspectives. In life cycle approaches, uncertainties are unavoidable and a decision making approach dealing with life-cycle based criteria cannot disregard the uncertainties associated with the evaluation of criteria. It is the purpose of this paper to introduce a decision-making approach, based on PROMETHEE and AHP, to address both of these important issues. Moreover, the proposed approach aims to address two other types of uncertainties, inherent to the use of PROMETHEE and AHP, which arise from the selection of the generalized criterion functions and the selection of preference values, respectively. The proposed approach enhances the robustness of the decision-making approach and enables decisions to be made on a more reliable base. The approach is applied to a case study: the comparative assessment of alternatives bridges taking into account environmental, economical and social criteria evaluated over the complete life-cycle of the bridges. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This review provides a detailed account of the key contributions within the energy communities with specific emphasis on thermochemically based hybrid energy systems for liquid transportation fuels. Specifically, the advances in the indirect liquefaction of coal to liquid (CTL), natural gas to liquid (GTL), biomass to liquid (BTL), coal and natural gas to liquid (CGTL), coal and biomass to liquid (CBTL), natural gas and biomass to liquid (BGTL), and coal, biomass, and natural gas to liquid (CBGTL) are presented. This review is the first work that provides a comprehensive description of the contributions for the single-feedstock energy systems and the hybrid feedstock energy systems, for single stand-alone processes and energy supply chain networks. The focus is on contributions in (a) conceptual design, (b) process simulation, (c) economic analysis, (d) heat integration, (e) power integration, (f) water integration, (g) process synthesis, (h) life cycle analysis, (i) sensitivity analysis, (j) uncertainty issues, and (k) supply chain. A classification of the contributions based on the products, as well as different research groups is also provided. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The expansion of land used for crop production causes variable direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, and other economic, social and environmental effects. We analyse the use of life cycle analysis (LCA) for estimating the carbon intensity of biofuel production from indirect land-use change (ILUC). Two approaches are critiqued: direct, attributional life cycle analysis and consequential life cycle analysis (CLCA). A proposed hybrid 'combined model' of the two approaches for ILUC analysis relies on first defining the system boundary of the resulting full LCA. Choices are then made as to the modelling methodology (economic equilibrium or cause-effect), data inputs, land area analysis, carbon stock accounting and uncertainty analysis to be included. We conclude that CLCA is applicable for estimating the historic emissions from ILUC, although improvements to the hybrid approach proposed, coupled with regular updating, are required, and uncertainly values must be adequately represented; however, the scope and the depth of the expansion of the system boundaries required for CLCA remain controversial. In addition, robust prediction, monitoring and accounting frameworks for the dynamic and highly uncertain nature of future crop yields and the effectiveness of policies to reduce deforestation and encourage afforestation remain elusive. Finally, establishing compatible and comparable accounting frameworks for ILUC between the USA, the European Union, South East Asia, Africa, Brazil and other major biofuel trading blocs is urgently needed if substantial distortions between these markets, which would reduce its application in policy outcomes, are to be avoided.The life cycle of ethanol produced from wheat straw is evaluated to determine if environmentally preferable and economically viable ethanol can be produced in Ontario, Canada. The net energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and production costs are estimated. The estimated net energy consumption, GHG emission and production costs are found to be 15.0 MJ/L, 0.91 kg CO2 e/L and 1.14 $/L, respectively. The net energy consumption, GHG emission and production cost are found to be dependent on ethanol yield, feedstock cost, processing plant capacity and assumptions. The result confirmed that environmental benefit can be gained with present technologies when straw is considered to be carbon neutral, otherwise environmental and economic viability remains doubtful at present, even if highly optimistic assumptions are made for the cost calculation, especially in the case of enzyme. Extended national or international support may enable the prevailing hurdle in this sector to be overcome, and enlarges lignocellulosic ethanol industries in Ontario, Canada.In the context of global energy shortages and climate change, developing biogas plants with links to agricultural system has become an important strategy for cleaner rural energy and renewable agriculture. In this study, a life-cycle energy and environmental assessment was performed for a biogas-digestate utilization system in China. The results suggest that biogas utilization (heating, illumination, and fuel) and comprehensive digestate reuse are of equal importance in the total energy production of the system, and they also play an important role in systemic greenhouse gas mitigation. Improvement can be achieved in both energy production and emissions mitigation when the ratio of the current three biogas utilization pathways is adjusted. Regarding digestate reuse, a tradeoff between energy and environmental performance can be obtained by focusing on the substitution for top-dressing, base fertilizers, and the application to seed soaking. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings emit much greenhouse gases as large amounts of resources and energy are consumed during their life cycle. CO2 emissions from residential buildings in the Republic of Korea ("Korea" hereinafter) are expected to consistently increase. According to the statistical data, apartment buildings occupy a high portion (86.4%) of residential buildings, and it is expected to maintain a certain level every year due to residential building construction policy of the Korean government. So, apartment buildings are a very important subject of study. This study aims to quantify CO2 emissions emitted by six different size apartment units due to major construction materials consumed in construction. The result shows that CO2 emission of the various construction materials of an apartment unit was estimated to be 569.5 kg-CO2/m(2) on average. The apartment with the area of 84.9 m(2) for a common apartment type in Korea has about 11.8 TOE embodied energy and 45.1 ton-CO2 emission. The CO2 emissions from steel and concrete were 424.2-584.2 kg-CO2/m(2) for apartment units, occupying more than 82% of the total CO2 emissions. The results are valuable for the sustainable design of apartment complexes and are used as technical measures for the CO2 reduction strategy of the building sector. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The utilization of agricultural biomass for anaerobic digestion is increasing in Germany since the first version of the Renewable Energies Sources Act (EEG) in 2000. Main products of this conversion process are biogas and digestate, whereby the biogas is mainly used for generation of heat and electricity in combined heat and power plants (CHP). This study investigated the potential environmental impact of anaerobic digestion processes with different agricultural substrates by the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. It focuses on liquid manure and energy crops as feedstock on the one hand and a comparison of four virtual model plants on the other hand. Besides global warming potential (GWP), the impact categories eutrophication potential (EP) and acidification potential (AP) are presented in this work. The results show that greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced with anaerobic digestion of liquid manure as well as energy crops, particularly when digestate storage tanks are gas-tight. When energy crops are fermented together with liquid manure, the biggest credit for the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions was given for the generation of electricity. The results differ from those of GWP when looking at the AP and the EP. These impact categories show similar results with a reduction of emissions for liquid manure in mono-digestion but increasing emissions for digestion of energy crops together with 035% liquid manure.System-level research has resulted in significant advancements in horticultural crop production. Contributions of individual components to production efficiency, cost, and environmental impact have been a focus of such research. Public awareness of the environmental impact of products and services is increasing. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool to study horticultural crop production systems and horticultural services and their individual components on environmental impacts such as the carbon footprint, stated as global warming potential. This manuscript introduces LCA and describes how this tool can be used to generate information important to the industry and consuming public.This study determines economic impact of payments for carbon sequestered in wood products and avoided carbon emissions due to use of forest biomass for electricity generation instead of fossil fuels on the profitability of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) landowners in the US South. Penalties for carbon emitted at the time of undertaking various silvicultural activities and exponential decay of wood products were also considered. We used life-cycle assessment to evaluate carbon emissions from various silvicultural activities. We modified the traditional Faustmann forest rotation model to incorporate identified carbon payments and penalties. Slash pine (Pinus elliottii) was selected as a representative species. We found that the overall global warming impact (GWI) for managing a hectare of intensively managed slash pine plantation was 6539 kg carbon dioxide equivalent. The maximum land expectation value (LEV) for the scenario when all carbon payments and penalties along with payments for timber products were considered was $1299/ha using a 20 year rotation age. This value is about 71% higher than the LEV when only payments for timber products were taken into account ($760/ha using a 21 year rotation age). Our results clearly indicate that emerging carbon markets could greatly benefit southern NIPF landowners. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study investigated different concepts for natural-gas-fired power plants with the CO2 capture, and compared them based on the net plant efficiency and emission of CO2. The cycles were based on a six oxy-fuel, one post-combustion and two pre-combustion capture concept. This paper presented the results of an environmental evaluation performed by the application of the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) method using SimaPro model to compare an Advanced Zero Emission Power Plant (AZEP) concept with a conventional combined cycle power plant from 50MW to 400MW. The LCA study was built upon the calculation and the comparison of several impacts (emissions of CO2, CO, NOx, and SOx, consumption of water and primary energy) and several impact categories (climate change, acid rain, ozone depletion and Ecotoxicity). The work was developed entirely using the Eco-indicator99 of the LCA method. The results showed that for all studied impacts, the AZEP power plants have fewer impacts. However, compared to the conventional combined cycle power plants, the total primary energy consumption in the AZEP concept is bigger due to the lower electric efficiency.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a sustainability measurement tool that identifies the environmental impacts of a product. The uniqueness of the LCA lies in its methodology, which aggregates all environmental burdens throughout the product's life cycle, providing many variables for optimisation of the product (or process). Having occupied a major market share, the environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing and disposal of polyolefins are quite high. The main theme of this paper is to review the reported LCA studies on polyethylenes and polypropylenes including recycled plastics, biobased materials, which are competing with polyolefins, and polyolefin composites. The widely claimed green product 'recycled plastic' is analysed in detail from an LCA perspective, and key points, which determine its sustainability, are discussed. The environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing of polyolefins and their bioalternatives are highlighted. The few published studies of polyolefin composites on different applications are also discussed.As research on the reduction in the life cycle carbon dioxide (LCCO2) emissions of buildings has become increasingly important, the development of technologies that can quantitatively assess the LCCO2 emissions of a building at the level of the construction materials is essential. In addition, concrete of various compositions, such as high-performance concrete mixed with fly ash and blast furnace slag and eco-concrete, has become readily available and thus, a quantitative evaluation of CO2 basic units for these new materials is needed. However, basic units for various types of concrete are not provided by the National Life Cycle Inventory Database (LCI DB) in Korea. Therefore, thorough research on these materials has become an important priority. In this study, a method to assess LCCO2 emissions using the compressive strength of concrete is proposed. Specifically, the compressive strengths of various mixes of concrete that are employed at construction sites in Korea were utilized to evaluate CO2 emissions. Comparisons according to the characteristics of each mixture were also made. Approximately 560 concrete mix designs used at construction sites were first classified according to the compressive strength, admixture, and season. The concrete CO2 emissions assessment process was carried out for the concrete raw materials production stage, the concrete raw materials transportation stage, and the concrete production stage; quantitative assessment methods are proposed for the CO2 emissions at each stage. Based on the proposed assessment methods, an evaluation of the concrete CO2 emissions was conducted and the obtained values were analyzed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Life Cycle Assessment tool is used in the construction industry to assess the environmental impact and the resources that are used throughout the life span of a construction project, which consists of the raw material acquisition, production, design phase, construction phase, operation phase and the demolition and dismantling phase. The global community is taking immediate action to reduce the CO2 and green house gases (GHG) that are being produced due to global warming. The Kyoto protocol agreement has set binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community to reduce their GHG emissions by an average of 5%, back to 1990 levels, within the years of 2008-2012. The global community is making many efforts to reduce CO2 and green house gases (GHG). The building construction industry is responsible for approximately 40% of the carbon dioxide emissions. There are currently more than four super tall, more than 100 story, high rise building construction projects in metropolitan Seoul, and this ranks Korea in the top four countries worldwide for the number of high rise buildings. Reducing the amount of structural steel in these high rise buildings by using an optimum structural design would reduce CO2 and green house gas (GHG) emissions. This aim of this study was to analyze the lateral load resisting structural systems in a high rise steel building in order to select the optimum structural system under the equivalent allowable lateral drift. The environmental impact was assessed using the LCA tool, and the results are discussed along with possible recommendations that may improve the current LCA tools. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The integration of environmental concerns into the product design process is not trivial when dealing with complex industrial systems. Actually, environmental assessment methodologies like Life Cycle Assessments reach, in this case, methodological and organisational limits. More generally, the complexity inherent in the design process may put off eco-design initiatives from a lack of organisational management, methods and tools. In this article, we propose a project management methodology to facilitate the integration of eco-design into the design process of complex industrial systems. This methodology is based on continuous improvement and a Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) process. It is then structured around precise team definition, precise milestones, deliverables and phases. A first stage ensures a reliable environmental assessment of the full system and the identification of environmental improvement projects. A second stage allows the independent execution of the most promising improvement projects. A first application is proposed on the Alstom Grid AC/DC (alternative current/direct current) conversion substations for the aluminium industry. A Life Cycle Assessment has been performed with limited resources and has provided rich findings and promising perspectives. It shows in particular that the best environmental configuration of such a complex industrial system depends on external parameters like the implantation site.In this century, biofuels will play an important role as fossil fuel alternatives. However, the long-term sustainability of large-scale biomass-based energy production chains is largely unknown. The current study evaluates the effect of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient recovery on net energy ratio (NER) and land use, comparing a prospective industrial-scale microalgae production system with established maize agriculture. The functional unit was the delivery of 1.0 TWh of electrical energy using biomethane firing. Nutrient recovery was modeled by embedding anaerobic digestion (AD) as downstream processing step in the biomass production chains. The main finding was that maize-based biomethane electricity provision outperforms a prospective microalgae system in terms of NER, estimated at 4.9 and 3.2, respectively, when utilizing cogenerated heat. In the absence of external fossil fuel input, the renewable maize- and microalgae-based systems would require surface areas of 6.2 X 10(4) and 3.9 X 10(4) ha, respectively. Sustainability of microalgae-based biofuel production is not set by areal productivity or microalgal lipid content but rather by nutrient recovery, which is an important finding that requires prioritization in microalgae research.Fast pyrolysis and upgrading is a promising thermochemical pathway that produces pyrolysis oil that can be upgraded via hydroprocessing into hydrocarbon-based transportation fuels (drop-in biofuels). The internal rate of return (IRR) of a fast pyrolysis and upgrading facility is a function of feedstock cost and projected revenues. We calculate the IRR of a fast pyrolysis and upgrading facility under six different policy scenarios: (1) a baseline scenario in which the facility receives no government support; (2) a scenario in which cap-and-trade (H. R. 2454) is enacted with both carbon price and offsets; (3) a scenario in which the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) is modified to include drop-in biofuels; (4) a scenario in which the VEETC is replaced with a variable VEETC; (5) the revised Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2); and (6) the Cellulosic Biofuel Producer Tax Credit (CBPTC). Combinations of these policy scenarios are also analyzed. We find that the policies responsible for increasing the value of pyrolysis products increase facility IRR the most, whereas policies minimizing facility tax burden have an only marginal effect on IRR. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EY.1943-7897.0000061. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Hospitals are striving to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Targeting supply chain points and replacing disposable with reusable items are among recommendations to achieve this. Annually, US hospitals use 35 million disposable (DSC) or reusable sharps containers (RSC) generating GHG in their manufacture, use, and disposal. Using a life cycle assessment we assessed the global warming potential (GWP) of both systems at a large US hospital which replaced DSC with RSC. GHG emissions (CO2, CH4, N2O) were calculated in metric tons of CO2 equivalents (MTCO2eq). Primary energy input data was used wherever possible and region-specific conversions used to calculate the GWP of each activity. Unit process GHGs were collated into manufacture, transport, washing, and treatment and disposal. The DSC were not recycled nor had recycled content. Chemotherapy DSC were used in both systems. Emission totals were workload-normalized per 100 occupied beds-yr and rate ratio analyzed using Fisher's test with P <= 0.05 and 95% confidence level. With RSC, the hospital reduced its annual GWP by 127 MTCO(2)eq (-83.5%) and diverted 30.9 tons of plastic and 5.0 tons of cardboard from landfill. Using RSC reduced the number of containers manufactured from 34,396 DSC annually to 1844 RSC in year one only. The study indicates sharps containment GWP in US hospitals totals 100,000 MTCO(2)eq and if RSC were used nationally the figure could fall by 64,000 MTCO(2)eq which, whilst only a fraction of total hospital GWP, is a positive, sustainable step.Sustainable urban materials management is significant for environmental sustainability. This study identifies key economic sectors for sustainable urban materials management using urban physical input-output (PIOT) table and hierarchical cluster analysis method to mitigate urban air pollutants (comprising CO2, SO2 and NOx) and examines uncertainties. Suzhou city in China is taken as an example. Key economic sectors in Suzhou considering direct amount are production and supply of electric and heat power, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals, services, other manufacturing, textile, nonmetallic mineral products and chemistry, while key economic sectors considering accumulative amount are agriculture, construction, production and supply of electric and heat power, services and smelting and pressing of ferrous metals. Uncertainties for sustainable urban materials management are consistent with the development stage of the economy. Thus, when constructing urban PIOT for a particular city based on monetary input-output table (MIOT) of another city or province, the development stage of the city or province whose MIOT is used should be similar to that of the particular city. If not, lower and upper limits for the development stage should be set to investigate uncertainties. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) is a power generation technology in which the solid feedstock is partially oxidized with oxygen and steam to produce syngas. In a conventional IGCC design without carbon capture, the syngas is purified for dust and hydrogen sulphide removal and then it is sent to a CCGT (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine) for power generation. CCS (Carbon capture and storage) technologies are expected to play a significant role in the coming decades for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions. IGCC is one of the power generation technologies having the highest potential to capture CO2 with low penalties in term of plant energy efficiency, capital and operational costs. This paper investigates the most important techno-economic and environmental indicators (e.g. power output, ancillary consumption, energy efficiency, CW consumption, normalised mass and energy balances and plant construction materials, capital and O&M (operational & maintenance) costs, specific CO2 emissions, cost of electricity, CO2 removal and avoidance costs etc.) for IGCC with CCS. Coal-based IGCC cases produce around 400-450 MW net electricity with 90% carbon capture rate. Similar IGCC plants without CCS were presented as references. Future IGCC developments for energy vectors poly-generation were also presented. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recycled water provides a viable opportunity to supplement water supplies as well as alleviate environmental loads. To further expand current schemes and explore new recycled water end uses, this study reviews several environmental assessment tools, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) in terms of their types, characteristics and weaknesses in evaluating the sustainability of recycled water schemes. Due to the limitations in individual models, the integrated approaches are recommended in most cases, of which the outputs could be further combined with additional economic and social assessments in multi-criteria decision making framework. The study also proposes several management strategies in improving the environmental scores. The discussion and suggestions could help decision makers in making a sound judgement as well as recognising the challenges and tasks in the future. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainability assessment tools are critical in the process of achieving sustainable development. Eco-efficiency has emerged as a practical concept that combines environmental and economic performance indicators to measure the sustainability performance of different product alternatives. In this paper, an analytical tool that can be used to assess the eco-efficiency of construction materials is developed. This tool evaluates the eco-efficiency of construction materials by using data envelopment analysis, a linear programming-based mathematical approach. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle cost (LCC) are utilized to derive the eco-efficiency ratios, and data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to rank material alternatives. Developed mathematical models are assessed by selecting the most eco-efficient exterior wall finish for a building. Percent improvement analysis was carried out to investigate target environmental effect categories that need more reduction to reach 100% eco-efficiency. Through this study, the goal is to show that DEA-based eco-efficiency assessment model could be used to evaluate alternative construction materials and offer vital guidance for decision makers during material selection. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000484. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.A healthy debate on the treatment of metals recycling in the life cycle assessment (LCA) community has persisted for more than a decade. While no clear consensus across stakeholder groups has emerged, the metals industry has endorsed a set of recycling facts that support a single approach, end-of-life recycling, for evaluating the environmental benefits of metals recycling. In this article we draw from research conducted in several disciplines and find that three key tenets of the metals industry capture the theoretical potential of metals recycling from a metallurgical standpoint rather than reflecting observed behavior. We then discuss the implications of these conclusions on environmental emissions from metals production and recycling. Evidence is provided that, contrary to the position of the metals industry, metals are not necessarily recycled at high rates, are recycled only a small number of times before final disposal, and are sometimes limited in recycling potential by the economics of contaminant removal. The analysis concludes that metal recycled from old scrap largely serves as an imperfect substitute for primary metal. As a result, large-scale displacement of primary production and its associated environmental emissions is currently limited to a few specific instances.This article examines methods for analyzing allocation in life cycle assessment (LCA); it focuses on comparisons of economic allocation with other feasible alternatives. The International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) guideline 14044 indicates that economic allocation should only be used as a last resort, when other methods are not suitable. However, the LCA literature reports several examples of the use of economic allocation. This is due partly to its simplicity and partly to its ability to illustrate the properties of complex systems. Sometimes a price summarizes complex attributes of product or service quality that cannot be easily measured by physical criteria. On the other hand, economic allocation does have limitations arising, for example, from the variability of prices and the low correlation between prices and physical flows. This article presents the state of the debate on the topic and some hypothetical examples for illustration. A general conclusion is that it is not possible to determine one best allocation method. The allocation procedure has to be selected on a case-by-case basis and no single approach is suitable for every situation. Despite its limitations, economic allocation has certain qualities that make it flexible and potentially suitable for different contexts. In some situations, economic allocation should not be the last methodological resort. The option of economic allocation should be considered, for example, whenever the prices of coproducts and coservices differ widely.Data (un)availability and uncertainty are recurring problems in life cycle assessment, and particularly inventory analysis. Advances in life cycle inventory have focused on the propagation and management of uncertainty, but this article addresses the question of how to account for unavailable data and corresponding uncertainty. Large and complicated systems often lack complete data due to confidential practices or the efforts required in the data collection process. Electricity production with multiple processes generating a single product is a classic example. Instead of the conventional process-based models to estimate missing data, the approach developed in this article divides systems based on functionally equivalent objects. Each one of these objects is then described in terms of characteristic variables, such as power capacity. Kriging, a flexible statistical estimator, allows for the estimation of unknown material and energy flows based on the objects characteristic variables. Both univariate and multivariate kriging are tested and compared to regression analysis. It is found that kriging performs better than linear regression, according to the mean absolute error criterion. Multivariate kriging provides an even more accurate joint estimation method to bridge data gaps scattered across inventories and when observable values of material and energy flows differ from one object to the next. Parameters of the underlying models are interpreted in terms of data uncertainty.An end-point life cycle impact assessment is used to evaluate the damages of electricity generation from fossil fuel-based power plants with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology. Pulverized coal (PC), integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), and natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants are assessed for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, pipeline transport, and storage in a geological formation. Results show that the CCS systems reduce the climate change-related damages but increase the damages from toxicity, acidification, eutrophication, and resource consumption. Based on the currently available damage calculation methods, it is concluded that the benefit of reducing damage from climate change is larger than the increases in other damage categories, such as health effects from particulates or toxic chemicals. CCS significantly reduces the overall environmental damage, with a net reduction of 60% to 70% in human health damage and 65% to 75% in ecosystem damage. Most of the damage is due to fuel production and combustion processes. The energy and infrastructure demands of CCS cause increases in the depletion of natural resources by 33% for PC, 19% for IGCC, and 18% for NGCC power plants, mostly due to increased fossil fuel consumption.A potential strategy for tackling the negative environmental impact of conventional plastics is to produce them from renewable resources. However, such a strategy needs to be assessed quantitatively, by life cycle assessment (LCA) for example. This screening LCA is intended to identify key aspects that influence the environmental impact of sugarcane low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and compare these results against fossil-based LDPE. The study showed that the major contributors to the environmental impact of sugarcane LDPE are ethanol production, polymerization, and long-distance sea transport. The comparison between sugarcane- and oil-based plastics showed that the sugarcane alternative consumes more total energy, although the major share is renewable. Moreover, for their potential impacts on acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical ozone creation, no significant difference between the two materials exists. However, with regard to global warming potential (GWP), the contribution of land use change (LUC) is decisive. Although the range of LUC emissions is uncertain, in the worst case they more than double the GWP of sugarcane LDPE and make it comparable to that of fossil-based LDPE. LUC emissions can thus be significant for sugarcane LDPE, although there is need for a consistent LUC assessment method. In addition, to investigate the influence of methodological choices, this study performed attributional and consequential assessments in parallel. No major differences in key contributors were found for these two assessment perspectives.Using algae to simultaneously treat wastewater and produce energy products has potential environmental and economic benefits. This study evaluates the life cycle energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, eutrophication potential, and cost impacts of incorporating an algal turf scrubber (ATS) into a treatment process for dairy wastewater. A life cycle inventory and cost model was developed to simulate an ATS treatment system where harvested algae would be used to generate biogas for process heat and electricity generation. Modeling results show that using an ATS significantly reduces eutrophication impacts by reducing chemical oxygen demand, nitrogen, and phosphorus in the wastewater. With low water recirculation rates through the ATS and high algae productivity, inclusion of the ATS results in net energy displacement and a reduction of GHG emissions compared to a system with no ATS. However, if high water recirculation rates are used or if algae biosolids from the digester are dried, the system results in a net increase in energy consumption and GHG emissions. The life cycle treatment cost was estimated to be $1.42 USD per cubic meter of treated wastewater. At this cost, using an ATS would only be cost effective for dairies if they received monetary credits for improved water quality on the order of $3.83 per kilogram of nitrogen and $9.57 per kilogram of phosphorus through, for example, nutrient trading programs.Commercial construction operations are heavy users of nonroad equipment and diesel engines. These engines are large contributors of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other engine-based pollutants and consume large quantities of diesel fuel. This paper presents a case study to identify construction activities that cause the most emissions and fuel use on a construction project and to determine when and where these occur. The paper links emissions and fuel use of construction activities with a project schedule to establish a temporal relationship. RSMeans was used to obtain equipment productivity. Equipment emission rates and fuel use rates were obtained from the EPA's NONROAD Model. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of changes in scheduling, equipment size, and EPA engine tier on emissions and fuel use. Site construction activities proved to be the heaviest polluters and caused a significant spike in emissions early in the project. Further study is recommended to validate the trends found and to determine the broader effects of this study. However, the methodology presented can be used by construction professionals to estimate fuel use and emissions for various infrastructure building projects. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000071. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Using the mathematical formalism of the Brazilian Proposal to the IPCC, we analyse eight power technologies with regard to their past and potential future contributions to global warming. Taking into account detailed bottom-up technology characteristics we define the mitigation potential of each technology in terms of avoided temperature increase by comparing a "coal-only" reference scenario and an alternative low-carbon scenario. Future mitigation potentials are mainly determined by the magnitude of installed capacity and the temporal deployment profile. A general conclusion is that early technology deployment matters, at least within a period of 50-100 years. Our results conclusively show that avoided temperature increase is a better proxy for comparing technologies with regard to their impact on climate change, and that numerous short-term comparisons based on annual or even cumulative emissions may be misleading. Thus, our results support and extend the policy relevance of the Brazilian Proposal in the sense that not only comparisons between countries, but also comparisons between technologies could be undertaken on the basis of avoided temperature increase rather than on the basis of annual emissions as is practiced today.In the present paper the environmental impact of biocomposites and bio-sandwich materials production are evaluated, using simplified Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) following the procedure recommended in the ISO 14044 standard. The materials are dimensioned and evaluated by comparing with reference materials, glass mat reinforced unsatured polyester and glass mat/unsatured polyester/balsa sandwich. The results indicate that bio-sandwich materials are very attractive in terms environmental impact. However further improvements in biocomposite and bio-sandwich mechanical strength are necessary if they are to be used in transport application compared to glass/polyester and glass/polyester/balsa sandwich.Uncertainty information is essential for the proper use of life cycle assessment and environmental assessments in decision making. To investigate the uncertainties of biodiesel and determine the level of confidence in the assertion that biodiesel is more environmentally friendly than diesel, an explicit analytical approach based on the Taylor series expansion for lognormal distribution was applied in the present study. A biodiesel case study demonstrates the probability that biodiesel has a lower global warming and non-renewable energy score than diesel, that is 92.3% and 93.1%, respectively. The results indicate the level of confidence in the assertion that biodiesel is more environmentally friendly than diesel based on the global warming and non-renewable energy scores. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This contribution provides an overview of carbon (CFs) and nitrogen footprints (NFs) concerning their measures and impacts on the ecosystem and human health. The adversarial relationship between them is illustrated by the three biomass energy production applications, which substitute fossil energy production applications: (i) domestic wood combustion where different fossil energy sources (natural gas, coal, and fuel oil) are supplemented, (ii) bioethanol production from corn grain via the dry-grind process, where petrol is supplemented, and (iii) rape methyl ester production from rape seed oil via catalytic trans-esterification, where diesel is supplemented. The life cycle assessment is applied to assess the CFs and NFs resulting from different energy production applications from 'cradle-to-grave' span. The results highlighted that all biomass-derived energy generations have lower CFs and higher NFs whilst, on the other hand, fossil energies have higher CFs and lower NFs.The majority of current sugarcane mills in Brazil are annexed plants, producing both ethanol and sugar; the other plants are dedicated only to ethanol production (autonomous distilleries). This study focuses on the technical, environmental, and economic impacts of these first generation sugarcane processing facilities in Brazil using an innovative framework, the so called Virtual Sugarcane Biorefinery. Results showed that optimization technologies presents potential for reducing environmental impacts and improve economic results in comparison to base scenarios for both annexed and autonomous plants. It was also observed that annexed plants that diverted more sugarcane juice for sugar production were more profitable, considering the average prices for the past 10 years in Brazil. In addition, results indicate that scenarios considering more flexibility in annexed plant are more profitable than the conventional annexed one (diverting 50% of the sugarcane juice to sugar and 50% to ethanol production) if increases in prices were to occur. This study shows quantitatively the benefits of optimization techniques and allows understanding the real benefits of the sugarcane plant flexibility in the Brazilian context.Bioethanol produced from lignocellulosic resources is a promising candidate for the replacement of fossil fuels. In this study, we aim to determine the perspectives to produce lignocellulosic ethanol in Austria. Technical, environmental and economic aspects are being considered. Thirteen biotechnological production concepts using the raw materials straw and softwood were established and simulated with the steady state flowsheeting software IPSEpro. Bioethanol production cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for each system were calculated based on mass and energy balances obtained from process simulation. The emission of GHGs along the entire bioethanol process chain ("from well to wheel") are compared to two reference systems producing the same amounts of by-products. In all concepts, process heat and considerable amounts of the by-products electricity, heat, pellets, C5 molasses, or biomethane could be obtained from residual biomass. Compared to a reference system driven by fossil energy, GHG emissions can be reduced by up to 76%. The production cost of ethanol was found to between 0.66 a,not sign and 0.94 a,not sign per liter of gasoline equivalent. The type and amount of by-product influence technical, economic, and environmental performance significantly. Converting all straw and softwood available in Austria to ethanol would result in an annual production of 340 kt.Climate change and energy security concerns have driven the development of policies that encourage bioenergy production. Meeting EU targets for the consumption of transport fuels from bioenergy by 2020 will require a large increase in the production of bioenergy feedstock. Initially an increase in 'first generation' biofuels was observed, however 'food competition' concerns have generated interest in second generation biofuels (SGBs). These SGBs can be produced from co-products (e.g. cereal straw) or energy crops (e.g. miscanthus), with the former largely negating food competition concerns. In order to assess the sustainability of feedstock supply for SGBs, the financial, environmental and energy costs and benefits of the farm system must be quantified. Previous research has captured financial costs and benefits through linear programming (LP) approaches, whilst environmental and energy metrics have been largely been undertaken within life cycle analysis (LCA) frameworks. Assessing aspects of the financial, environmental and energy sustainability of supplying co-product second generation biofuel (CPSGB) feedstocks at the farm level requires a framework that permits the trade-offs between these objectives to be quantified and understood. The development of a modelling framework for Managing Energy and Emissions Trade-Offs in Agriculture (MEETA Model) that combines bio-economic process modelling and LCA is presented together with input data parameters obtained from literature and industry sources. The MEETA model quantifies arable farm inputs and outputs in terms of financial, energy and emissions results. The model explicitly captures fertiliser: crop-yield relationships, plus the incorporation of straw or removal for sale, with associated nutrient impacts of incorporation/removal on the following crop in the rotation. Key results of crop-mix, machinery use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per kg of crop product and energy use per hectare are in line with previous research and industry survey findings. Results show that the gross margin - energy trade-off is 36 pound GJ(-1), representing the gross margin forgone by maximising net farm energy cf maximising farm gross margin. The gross margin-GHG emission trade-off is 0.15 pound kg(-1) CO2 eq, representing the gross margin forgone per kg of CO2 eq reduced whim GHG emissions are minimised cf maximising farm gross margin. The energy-GHG emission trade-off is 0.03 GJ kg(-1) CO2 eq quantifying the reduction in net energy from the farm system per kg of CO2 eq reduced when minimising GHG emissions cf maximising net farm energy. When both farm gross margin and net farm energy are maximised all the cereal straw is baled for sale. Sensitivity analysis of the model in relation to different prices of cereal straw shows that it becomes financially optimal to incorporate wheat straw at price of 11 pound t(-1) for this co-product. Local market conditions for straw and farmer attitudes towards incorporation or sale of straw will impact on the straw price at which farmers will supply this potential bioenergy feedstock and represent important areas for future research. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A 'carbon footprint' is a measure of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with an activity, group of activities or a product. The increasing interest in 'carbon foot printing' comes as a result of growing public awareness of global warming. The environmental impact of food consumption is of major concern, and efforts can be made to include greater environmental responsibility throughout the whole food chain, from cultivation, processing, transport and through to final cooking technique. A carbon footprint analysis can evaluate any of the life stages in the food production similar to a Life Cycle Assessment. The global community now recognises the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change. Calculating a carbon footprint can be a valuable first step towards making quantifiable emissions reductions. A wider system boundary incorporating the entire life cycle from its production, distribution, consumption and disposal is a more holistic way to determine the carbon intensity of food. This paper presents an overview on carbon foot print of foods highlighting the carbon hotspots in the life cycle of food.Economic activities often result in external costs which are not included in the current pricing system. Due to these external costs, the standard market mechanism fails to maximize social welfare. Therefore, it is necessary to provide decision makers with proper indicators which enable them to make decisions which reflect proper consideration of the total costs of economic activities and amelioration of social welfare. In recent years recognition and responsibility for the external costs and their internalization have become an important policy issue. The external costs of electricity generation are mainly caused by the acidifying substances, airborne particles and greenhouse gas emissions. Impacts of these pollutants on the environment and society should not be overlooked. A quantification of these impacts in monetary terms has become the core of many research projects and their results provide relevant indicators for policy. In this article, we build upon the current ExternE method in order to quantify the external costs of electricity generation and transform the results into the external costs of electricity consumption. In our case study of 21 European countries we show that the currently used indicator of the external costs of electricity generation is not appropriate for communicating and monitoring the external costs of electricity due to the international trade in electricity. As an alternative we propose and quantify the external costs of electricity consumption, which deals with the effect of international trade in electricity. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For warm-blooded species, the hazardous dose of a chemical (HD50) is an upcoming and important characteristic in the assessment of toxic chemicals. Generally, experimental information is available for a limited number of warm-blooded species only, which causes statistical uncertainty. Furthermore, when small datasets contain an unrepresentative sample of species, they can cause systematic uncertainty in chemicals' hazardous doses. The number of species can be enlarged with interspecies correlation estimation (ICE) models, but these are uncertain themselves. The goal of this study is to quantify the possible gain in reliability of the HD50 values for warm-blooded wildlife species after enlargement of the sample size with ICE predictions. For 1137 chemicals, we compared systematic uncertainty and statistical uncertainty between HD50 values based on experimental data (HD50(Ex)) and on datasets combining experimental data and ICE predictions (HD50(Co)). HD50(Ex) values ranged between 1.0 x 10(-1) and 9.5 x 10(3) mg kg(wwt)(-1), and HD50(Co) values between 1.1 x 10(0) and 6.1 x 10(3) mg kg(wwt)(-1). For over 97 percent of the chemicals, HD50(Ex) values exceeded HD50(Co) values, with a systematic uncertainty (i.e. the ratio of HD50(Ex)/HD50(Co)) of typically 3.5. The limited availability of experimental toxicity data, predominantly for mammals, resulted in a systematic underestimation of the wildlife toxicity of a chemical. Statistical uncertainty factors (i.e. the ratio of the 95th/5th percentile) quantified the statistical uncertainty in the HD50 values. The statistical uncertainty factors ranged between 1.0 x 10(0) and 2.5 x 10(22) for the experimental dataset, and between 4.8 x 10(0) and 1.1 x 10(2) for the combined dataset. For all sample sizes, median statistical uncertainty factors were the largest for combined datasets. However, combining experimental toxicity data with ICE predictions makes it possible to reduce the upper limit of the range for statistical uncertainty factors. We conclude that, by combining experimental data with ICE model predictions, the validity of the HD50 value can be improved and high statistical uncertainty can be reduced, particularly in cases of limited toxicity data, i.e. data for mammals only or a sample size of n <= 4. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper aims to compare the energy efficiency and CO2 emissions of four different range extender engine solutions deployed in the same baseline series hybrid vehicle, under a combination of driving scenarios aiming to be representative of typical driving instead of standard cycles. Baseline vehicle is roughly based on Chevy VOLT/Opel Ampera. The baseline internal combustion engine is replaced by an over-expanded cycle engine, Wankel engine and microturbine, with respective generator and exhaust after treatment. Weight savings are compensated by introducing additional battery modules, maintaining the original baseline vehicle curb weight. Vehicle Specific Power (VSP) is used for driving cycle analysis and as explanatory variable for energy consumption and CO2 emissions variations. Upstream fuel energy and CO2 emissions of gasoline/diesel and electricity are regarded. Average VSP correlates with variation of the percentage of engine off, potential regenerative braking energy and eco/boost operation. Positive wheel energy correlates with energy consumption and electric autonomy adequately. The vehicle with the lightest engine (Wankel) and largest battery shows to be the most efficient in urban driving (when the engine does not have to work), while the vehicle with the highest efficient engine (over-expanded) and with dual eco/boost setting is the most efficient during the charge sustaining operation and in annual combined use. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies are being developed with the focus of capturing and storing CO2 in huge quantities, new methods for the chemical exploitation of carbon dioxide (CCU) are being developed in parallel. The intensified chemical or physical utilization of CO2 is targeted at generating value from a limited part of the CO2 stream and developing better and more efficient chemical processes with reduced CO2 footprint. Here, we compare the status of the three main lines of CCS technologies with respect to efficiency, energy consumption, and technical feasibility as well as the implications of CCS on the efficiency and structure of the energy supply chain.The entire life cycle of biodiesel produced by microalgal biomasses was evaluated using the method of life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify and quantify the fossil energy requirements and environmental impact loading of the system. The life cycle considers microalgae cultivation, harvesting, drying, oil extraction, anaerobic digestion, oil transportation, esterification, biodiesel transportation and biodiesel combustion. The investigation results show that the fossil energy requirement for the biodiesel production is 0.74 MJ/MJ biodiesel, indicating that 1 MJ of biodiesel requires an input of 0.74 MJ of fossil energy. Accordingly, biodiesel production is feasible as an energy producing process. The environmental impact loading of microalgal biodiesel is 3.69 PET2010 (Person Equivalents, Targeted, in 2010) and the GWP is 0.16 kg CO2-eq/MJ biodiesel. The effects of photochemical ozone formation were greatest among all calculated categorization impacts. The fossil energy requirement and GWP in this operation were found to be particularly sensitive to oil content, drying rate and esterification rate. Overall, the results presented herein indicate that the cultivation of microalgae has the potential to produce an environmentally sustainable feedstock for the production of biodiesel. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.At the end of 2010, China's contribution to global CO2 emissions reached 25.1%. Estimates show that power generation accounts for 37.2% of the Chinese CO2 emissions. Even though there is an increasing number of studies using life cycle analysis (LCA) to examine energy consumption and CO2 emissions required by different types of power generation technologies, there are very few studies focusing on China. Furthermore, the nexus between water consumption and energy production has largely been ignored. In this paper, we adopt input-output based hybrid life cycle analysis to evaluate water consumption and CO2 emissions of wind power in China. Our results show that China's wind energy consumes 0.64 l/kWh of water and produces 69.9 g/kWh of CO2 emission. Given that the Chinese government aims to increase the wind power generation capacity to 200 GW by 2020, wind power could contribute a 23% reduction in carbon intensity and could save 800 million m(3) of water which could be sufficient enough for use by 11.2 million households. Thus, given the often postulated water crisis, China's energy policy would reap double benefits through progressive energy policies when increasing the share of wind power as part of overall efforts to diversify its electricity generation technologies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy engineering is facing new challenges in educating experts in sustainable energy. The aim of this paper is to characterise expertise related to sustainability in higher education. Future challenges and required skills are explored through recent studies, which have listed key competencies that engineers need in their working life. Sustainability and expertise are discussed on the basis of literature and energy curricula are explored on universities' internet pages.Global warming represents one of the most critical internationally perceived environmental issues. The growing, and increasingly global, wine sector is one of the industries which is under increasing pressure to adopt approaches for environmental assessment and reporting of product-related greenhouse gas emissions. The International Organization for Vine and Wine has recently recognized the need to develop a standard and objective methodology and a related tool for calculating carbon footprint (CF). This study applied this tool to a wine previously analyzed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The objective was to test the tool as regards both its potential and possible limitations, and thus to assess its suitability as a standard tool. Despite the tool's user-friendliness, a number of limitations were noted including the lack of accurate baseline data, a partial system boundary and the impossibility of dealing with the multi-functionality issue. When the CF and LCA results are compared in absolute terms, large discrepancies become obvious due to a number of different assumptions, as well as the modeling framework adopted. Nonetheless, in relative terms the results seem to be quite consistent. However, a critical limitation of the CF methodology was its focus on a single issue, which can lead to burden shifting. In conclusion, the study confirmed the need for both further improvement and adaptation to additional contexts and further studies to validate the use of this tool in different companies.As the consumption of electricity increases, air pollutants from power generation increase. In metro-politans such as Hong Kong and other Asian cities, the surge of electricity consumption has been phenomenal over the past decades. This paper presents a historical review about electricity consumption, population, and change in economic structure in Hong Kong. It is hypothesized that the growth of electricity consumption and change in gross domestic product can be modeled by 4-parameter logistic functions. The accuracy of the functions was assessed by Pearson's correlation coefficient, mean absolute percent error, and root mean squared percent error. The paper also applies the life cycle approach to determine carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions for the electricity consumption of Hong Kong. Monte Carlo simulations were applied to determine the confidence intervals of pollutant emissions. The implications of importing more nuclear power are discussed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the main instruments for the implementation of an Integral Policy of Products, and it is also an operating instrument of Life Cycle Thinking: LCA is an objective methodology of assessment and quantification of the energetic and environmental loads and of the potential impacts associated with a product/process/activity throughout the entire lifecycle, from the acquisition of raw materials up to disposal. The results of an LCA analysis applied to a solar concentrating type Dish-Stirling for micro-CHP are presented in this work. An estimate of the environmental impacts of the concentration system, in comparison with impacts of a PV system located on a sloped roof with a retrofit system and of the Italian energy mix, is also performed by the Eco-indicator 99, and EPD 2007 methods.A greenhouse gas emissions analysis (carbon footprint) was conducted for cultivation, harvesting, and production of common dairy feeds used for the production of dairy milk in the USA. The goal was to determine the carbon footprint (grams CO2 equivalents (gCO(2)e)/kg of dry feed) in the USA on a regional basis, identify key inputs, and make recommendations for emissions reduction. Commonly used dairy feeds in the USA, such as soybeans, alfalfa, corn, and others, were identified based on a recent literature review and information from dairy farm surveys. The following input data for the cultivation and harvesting of dairy feeds were collected for five US regions: crop production data, energy input, soil amendments, and crop protection chemicals. Life cycle inventory input data were mainly collected from the US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistical Service on a state-by-state basis as well as from state extension services forage crop budget estimates. In addition to consulting other life cycle assessment studies and published articles and reports, this cradle-to-farm gate carbon footprint analysis was conducted using the Ecoinvent (TM) unit processes in SimaPro version 7.1A (c) (PR, Consultants 2009). The final carbon footprint results (gCO(2)e/kg of dry dairy feed) varied regionally depending on a number of factors such as lime and fertilizer application rates. The average national US carbon footprint results of the main feeds were: corn grain (390), corn silage (200), dried distillers grains with solubles (910 dry mill, 670 wet mill), oats (850), soybeans (390), soybean meal (410), winter wheat (430), alfalfa hay (170), and forage mix (160). The southeast dairy region generally showed a relatively high level of carbon footprint for most feeds, and this is attributable to the higher application rates of both synthetic fertilizers and lime. The highest contributor to carbon footprint for most regions (apart from soybeans and soybean meal) was due to the application of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer. Efficient transfer of knowledge to farmers with regards to fertilizer best management practices such as precision application of farm nutrients may contribute significantly to reducing regional crop carbon footprints.Due to their production intensity, different foods of animal or plant origin play a crucial role in the assessment of the environmental impacts of human nutrition and diets. Based on a representative nutrition survey in Germany from the year 2006, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to quantify nutrition-related emissions of animal and plant-based foods (excluding beverages), with a special focus on the socio-demographic factor gender. For the study, representative data sets concerning German food production and consumption were used. These were complemented by the Danish LCA Food database and other LCA data to analyse the impact of food imports. As regards environmental impact assessment, global warming potential (GWP) was assessed, which included emissions from direct land use change and land use (dLUC, LU), along with three inventory indicators (ammonia emissions, land use, blue water use). The following food groups were analysed from cradle-to-store and their impacts were evaluated and compared with each other: animal-based foods (meat products, milk products, egg products and fish products), plant-based foods (grain products, vegetables, fruits, potato products, margarine/oils, sugar/sweets). The reference year in the study is the year 2006. For all indicators, the results show strong variation between the genders. Even if the physiologically different consumption patterns among men and women are adjusted on a weight basis, men show a higher impact in terms of GWP (CO2 eq. +25%), ammonia emissions (+30%) and land use (+24%). In contrast, women demonstrate a higher water demand (+11%). These differences are primarily caused by a higher share of meat and meat products in the usual diet of men (+28%) as well as of fruit and vegetables in the diet of women (+40%). If men were to shift qualitatively to the usual diet of women, then 14.8 Mt CO2 eq. and 60.1 kt ammonia emissions could be saved annually. Within the system boundaries of our study, this would translate into a reduction of 12% of CO2 eq. and 14% of ammonia emissions. With regard to land use, this equals an area of 15,613 km(2) year(-1) (-11%), whereas the total blue water demand would be increased by 94 Mm(3) year(-1) (+7%). Limitations within this study are caused by the system boundaries cradle-to-store and are also due to the restricted set of environmental indicators which were analysed. Nonetheless, our results for GWP and land use are in keeping with previous studies. The results concerning ammonia and blue water use are limited when compared with other study results. The study shows that within one society distinct diet profiles with markedly different environmental impacts are already established. Taking cultural and physiological considerations among the genders into account, these differences could be seen as offering potential opportunities to strengthen sustainable diet profiles. Further research should also consider health impact assessments to ensure that alterations in diet profiles due to environmental constraints do not lead to disadvantageous public health effects. Particular attention should be paid here to potentially undernourished subgroups (such as the elderly, sick people, pregnant women).Sidewalks are important built areas for promoting environmental sustainability in cities since they support walking as a zero emission form of transportation contributing to protect the environment and the health of individuals. However, sidewalk management is typically focused on assessing their suitability for users without applying any environmental criteria on the infrastructure design. The paper aims to quantify the environmental impact that sidewalks can contribute to the urban space if no environmental criteria are applied in sidewalk design. This study focuses on the environmental assessment of a very common sidewalk system found in cities to support pedestrian and light motorized traffic for over 45 years. The constructive solution consists of granite slabs (top layer) fixed on a mortar layer (3-cm thick) that is settled on a base of concrete (15-cm thick). The life cycle methodology was employed to conduct the environmental assessment of the system. The results are compared with the environmental outcomes of a sidewalk system that has the same function but is paved with concrete slabs to identify the environmentally optimal sidewalk design. The impact assessment method was CML Baseline 2001, and the inventory data were compiled from manufacturers associations, local authorities, and literature review. Construction materials have the highest environmental impact (48-87%) in the sidewalk life cycle, where the granite top layer is the first contributor, although the amount of granite in the sidewalk system represents the 30% of the total weight of the construction materials used. A granite sidewalk has from 25% to 140% higher impact than a concrete one. The energy required to produce slabs is the key factor that characterizes the environmental impact of granite. Electricity and diesel consumption in stone cutting and moving represent over the 70% of the environmental burden of granite. The transportation of granite slabs is also relevant to the environmental impact. The use of imported granite could account for up to 76-177% of the total environmental impact of the sidewalk life cycle. Although granite is a natural material, using granite slabs as flooring material is not an environmentally suitable alternative over using concrete ones for paving sidewalks. The results have shown that if no environmental criteria are applied during sidewalk design and management, urban planners may be unconsciously contributing to an important environmental burden on the built environment. The ecodesign is a strategic opportunity to promote environmentally suitable urban infrastructures that contribute to promote urban sustainability in cities. Energy efficiency techniques, water management and well-considered transportation management should be developed and implemented in the granite industry to minimize the environmental impact of using it for paving. Additionally, further research is needed to quantify the environmental performance of other construction materials used in sidewalk construction in order to identify the best environmental alternatives and design improvements by optimizing the use of materials to the sidewalks functions.The aim of this study is to use life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the relative environmental performance of the treatment using with a common method such as activated carbon adsorption. This comparison will evaluate potential environmental impacts of the two processes. This work compiles life cycle inventory data for a biological process that may be useful for other emergent biotechnological processes in water and waste management. LCA was performed to evaluate the use of a new technology for the removal of a model metal-complex dye, Grey Lanaset G, from textile wastewater by means of the fungus . This biological treatment was compared with a conventional coal-based activated carbon adsorption treatment to determine which alternative is preferable from an environmental point of view. The study is based on experimental research that has tested the novel process at the pilot scale. The analysis of the biological system ranges from the production of the electricity and ingredients required for the growth of the fungus and ends with the composting of the residual biomass from the process. The analysis of the activated carbon system includes the production of the adsorbent material and the electricity needed for the treatment and regeneration of the spent activated carbon. Seven indicators that measure the environmental performance of these technologies are included in the LCA. The indicators used are climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, terrestial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, metal depletion and fossil depletion. The results show that the energy use throughout the biological process, mainly for sterilisation and aeration, accounts for the major environmental impacts with the inoculum sterilisation being the most critical determinant. Nevertheless, the biological treatment has lower impacts than the physicochemical system in six of these indicators when steam is generated directly on site. A low-grade carbon source as an alternative to glucose might contribute to reduce the eutrophication impact of this process. The LCA shows that the biological treatment process using the fungus to remove Grey Lanaset G offers important environmental advantages in comparison with the traditional activated carbon adsorption method. This study also provides environmental data and an indication of the potential impacts of characteristic processes that may be of interest for other applications in the field of biological waste treatment and wastewater treatment involving white-rot fungi.Energy generation by fossil fuel contributes to carbon emission to the atmosphere which is a major threat to global environment. Measuring energy consumption in building, accounting related carbon emission and selecting low embodied energy (EE) material by performing life-cycle analysis gives a clear idea about EE of the building and highlights mitigation potential. The review presented in the paper identifies the role of buildings in global carbon emission and solutions to reduce it with appropriate low EE material. This review helps in developing an insight for building's role in carbon emission and ways to develop carbon minus buildings.The reductive biotransformation of alpha-, beta-, gamma, and delta-hexachlorocyclohexane isomers was investigated using five alternative electron donors (i.e., glucose plus rnethanol, glucose only, methanol only, acetate, and ethanol) in a batch assay of an HCH-dechlorinating anaerobic culture. In addition, a life cycle assessment was conducted using the IMPACT2002+ method to evaluate the environmental effects of HCH bioremediation with the aforementioned electron donors. Results showed that the electron donors methanol plus glucose, ethanol, glucose, and methanol can significantly enhance the biotransformation of each HCH isomer. However, the amended electron donors and the byproduct of the anoxic/anaerobic systems may negatively affect the environment (e.g., respiratory inorganic, land occupation, global warming, and non-renewable energy categories). These effects are attributed to the electron donor production processes. To avoid secondary pollutants, a linear relationship between the upper bound electron donor applications and HCH concentration was observed from an environmental perspective. Results indicated that the methanol scenario was the most suitable option for the current research. (C) 2012, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved.Worldwide demand to set reliable environmental criteria for food and feed products has brought Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies to agribusiness. This paper describes the results of a search for scientific literature and government documents regarding the application of LCA to agricultural products worldwide, as a way to capture state-of-the-art technology in the field and to identify the trends and drivers for labeling and certification requirements in international markets. Considering the status of Brazilian agriculture, it would be necessary to adapt the LCA tools to the peculiarities of this country's environmental and technological context, regarding the ability to follow current trends in the application of LCA as a tool for analysis of the environmental impact. In Brazil, any effort to develop specific methodologies for both Life Cycle Inventory and Life Cycle Impact Assessment is urgently needed for the country to remain among the leaders of food and feed exporters and would be appreciated by consumers worldwide. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental variables are increasingly being used in decision-making. An important way to generate environmental information involves Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), methodology that measures the environmental impacts of a product throughout its life cycle. Parallel to this, Wackernagel and Rees developed a methodology to assess the environmental sustainability of regions, the Ecological Footprint (EF) method. Recently, this methodology has also been applied to product evaluations. It is believed that there are differences in the interpretation of the results when using the EF method compared to LCA methods. Therefore, the objective of this work was to compare the different interpretation that can be obtained from CML 2001 and EF, using a case study of four scenarios of broiler feed production in Brazil. The inventory was collected with secondary data, and the main difference among the four scenarios was the origin of the maize and soybeans used (the center-west and south regions of Brazil). As a result, the worst scenario (with maize and soybeans from the center-west) and the best scenario (with maize and soybeans from the south) were the same for both methods, although the second and the third rankings were different. Additionally, we observed that different hotspots were identified. CML (modified) and EF were similar from a broad point of view, but higher differences emerged between them when a deeper analysis was considered. We conclude that the use of EF is not suitable for the agricultural sector, since misleading decisions can be taken as a result of neglecting some important environmental impacts (e.g.: eutrophication and acidification) for this economic sector. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of protected crops was carried out. In particular, energy and environmental performances of peppers, melons, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini in different typologies of greenhouses (tunnel and pavilion) were assessed. The study aimed at assessing the ecoprofile of each product and the share of each life-cycle step on the total environmental impacts. The related process flow chart, the relevant mass and energy flows and the key environmental issues were identified for each product. Collection of primary data was conducted by means of a detailed questionnaire distributed to a producer company in southern Italy. The analysis was developed according to the LCA standards of the ISO 14040 series. The results showed that for all the examined vegetables the packaging step and the greenhouse structures have a relevant share in the environmental impact distribution. Further tunnel and pavilion greenhouses are characterized by comparable ecoprofiles and both of them are characterized by lower energy consumptions than greenhouses in the North of Europe, due to the non-use of auxiliary heating systems in the former. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The olive oil industry is a significant productive sector in the European Union; indeed, three quarters of world production is concentrated in Europe. After Spain, Italy is the second largest olive oil producing country (27% and 20% of European and world production respectively) and Sicily is the third most important olive oil producing region in Italy (8% of Italian production) after Puglia and Calabria which account for almost 70% of national production. In Sicily, the province of Messina occupies sixth place in regional production and production is characterized by eight predominant cultivars (with different nutritional, organoleptic and productivity characteristics) and a variety of different practices and techniques for the agricultural production of olives and for their processing into olive oil. Depending on these differences, the production of olive oil is associated with several adverse effects on the environment, both in the agricultural and olive oil production phases. The aim of this paper is to provide useful information for taking strategic decisions aimed at the improvement and optimization of the local olive oil production chain in the province of Messina. To this purpose the LCA methodology has been used to determine the potential environmental impacts of activities connected to olive oil production in the province, in order to identify the processes which give rise to the most significant environmental problems and to design a more efficient and environmentally friendly local olive oil chain. Data on the various agricultural and industrial methods used in the province were obtained through the development of a questionnaire, then distributed to a sample of companies of the local association of oil producers (APOM). The study is part of the Eco-Management for Food - EMAF - Project (PRIN 2008 No. 2008TXFBYT - http://ww2.unime.it/emaf) co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two most critical factors to address in environmental system analysis of future milk production are 1) the link between milk and beef production, and 2) the competition for land, possibly leading to land use change (LUC) with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and loss of biodiversity as important implications. Different methodological approaches concerning these factors, in studies on environmental impacts of dairy production, sometimes lead to contradictory results. Increasing milk yield per cow is often one of the solutions discussed in order to reduce GHG emissions from milk production. However, when also accounting for other systems affected (e.g. beef production) it is not certain that an increase in milk yield per cow leads to a reduction in total GHG emissions per kg milk. In the present study the correlation between carbon footprint (CF) of milk and the amount of milk delivered per cow is investigated for 23 dairy farms (both organic and conventional) in Sweden. Use of a fixed allocation factor of 90% (based on economic value) indicates a reduction in CF with increased milk yield, while no correlation can be noted when system expansion is applied. The average CF for two groups of farms, organic and high yielding conventional, is also calculated. When conducting system expansion the CF is somewhat lower for the organic farms (which have a lower milk yield per cow, but more meat per kg milk), but when a 90% allocation factor is used, the CF is somewhat higher for the organic farms compared to the high yielding conventional farms. In analysis of future strategies for milk production, it is suggested that system expansion should be applied, in order to also account for environmental impacts from affected systems. Thus, scenarios for milk and meat production should be analysed in an integrated approach in order to reduce total emissions from the livestock sector. How to account for emissions from LUC is highly debated and there is no current shared consensus. Different LUC methods result in significantly different results. In this study, four different LUC methods are applied, using data for organic milk production and high yielding conventional milk production systems in Sweden. Depending on which LUC method was applied, the organic system showed about 50% higher or 40% lower CF compared to the conventional high yielding system. Thus, when reporting CF numbers, it is important to report LUC-factors separately and clearly explain the underlying assumptions, since the method of accounting for LUC can drastically change the results. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to model land use configuration for a sustainable dairy sector in Brittany. France, using results from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Multiple-Goal Linear Programming (MGLP). To generate future land-use configurations that met environmental targets, the approach required (1) defining a set of current and alternative land-use types, (2) defining a set of characteristics of these land-use types, (3) quantifying these characteristics for all land-use types, (4) calculating the regional sum of each indicator for current land-use types to establish the baseline scenario, and (5) defining scenarios consisting of a set of goals to meet (maximize milk production or farm profit) and environmental constraints not to violate (per-ha limits on nitrate leaching, non-renewable energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions). Existing dairy farms were classified into 5 groups (from organic to intensive) according to their mode of production, quantity of milk production, and fodder-crop and grass area. Alternative land uses, namely 100%-grass-based dairy systems or forest, were characterized to explore the potential effects of replacing current dairy farmland with them. The MGLP model was unable to find a combination of current land-use types that could meet the three environmental constraints while using all of the land available. With alternative land-use types allowed, however, the model maximized milk production while meeting environmental constraints by allocating 55-60, 21-44, and 1-19% of the area to grass-based dairy systems, intensive farms, and forest, respectively, which decreased regional milk production by 8-30%. The trade-offs shown in MGLP results predict consequences of applying environmental constraints on agricultural production, revealing challenges that agricultural policies may face. The major benefits of coupling MGLP and LCA results include (1) taking into account social and economic indicators while considering environmental concerns, (2) quantification of potential environmental impacts to optimize agricultural production from an LCA perspective, (3) consideration of a variety of complementary production modes in a region, and (4) generation of scenarios that can be discussed with stakeholders as support information for environmentally-conscious decision making regarding land use. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In sub-Saharan Africa, fish constitutes the main source of animal protein for human consumption. Producing fish in ponds fertilized by manure could help to diversify family-scale agricultural production in this region. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) could improve understanding of the contribution of fish-pond systems to regional sustainable development. The study analyzed four farms that integrated fish farming with other agricultural production, and in which fish ponds were fertilized either by pig manure and/or crop by-products, in two regions of the western highlands of Cameroon (5-7 degrees N, 9-11 degrees E), Alou and Fokoue. LCA was conducted using the CML2001 characterization method, adapted to aquaculture production, with one tonne of fresh fish at the farm gate as the functional unit and background data from the ecoinvent (R) database. Dynamics of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) were evaluated using a nutrient mass-balance modeling approach, which showed that low quantities of N and P were assimilated by the fish in these systems. Eutrophication impact was higher for these Cameroonian farms than that of other aquaculture systems in the literature, mainly due to the pig manure and wheat bran used to supply nutrients. Water and nutrient management will need to be improved to increase efficiency of these fish farms. Published by Elsevier Ltd.With the aim of reducing the environmental impacts of poultry feed, a database of the impacts of feed components destined for formulation was constructed using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. We used linear programming to create least cost feed formulas for fast-growing broiler (FGB), slow-growing broiler (SGB, i.e. quality label), laying hen and for three contrasting feed-cost situations (January 2006, December 2007 and March 2009). We focused on Eutrophication Potential (EP, a regional impact) and Climate Change (CC, a global impact) which were constraints to formulate low-impact poultry feed. The effects of using these constraints on feed cost and the use of feed components were investigated for a feed production plant in Bretagne (western France). Environmental impacts of poultry feed increased with the energy and protein content of the formula and were affected by the relative costs of feed components. FGB formulas had the highest impacts, followed by formulas for SGB and laying hens. The search for a minimum level of EP and CC of the formula decreased its impacts by 1-8% and by 1-12% respectively, and increased its cost by 2-8%, depending on the type of feed and the feed-cost situation. Impact reduction was obtained by partial substitution of soybean meal and cereals by rapeseed meal, grain legumes and co-products (wheat bran, gluten). Furthermore, 70% of the potential reduction of the EP and CC impacts could be obtained at a modest (0.5-4%) increase in the cost of the formulas. Some other ways to reduce feed impacts were explored, such as taking into account the geographic origin of maize crops and adopting a modified regulatory constraint for SGB formulas. It is important to continue this study by taking into account the whole life cycle of poultry production. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities and urban regions are undertaking efforts to quantify greenhouse (GHG) emissions from their jurisdictional boundaries. Although inventorying methodologies are beginning to standardize for GHG sources, carbon sequestration is generally not quantified. This article describes the methodology and quantification of gross urban carbon sinks. Sinks are categorized into direct and embodied sinks. Direct sinks generally incorporate natural process, such as humification in soils and photosynthetic biomass growth (in urban trees, perennial crops, and regional forests). Embodied sinks include activities associated with consumptive behavior that result in the import and/or storage of carbon, such as landfilling of waste, concrete construction, and utilization of durable wood products. Using methodologies based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2006 guidelines (for direct sinks) and peer-reviewed literature (for embodied sinks), carbon sequestration for 2005 is calculated for the Greater Toronto Area. Direct sinks are found to be 317 kilotons of carbon (kt C), and are dominated by regional forest biomass. Embodied sinks are calculated to be 234 kt C based on one year's consumption, though a complete life cycle accounting of emissions would likely transform this sum from a carbon sink to a source. There is considerable uncertainty associated with the methodologies used, which could be addressed with city-specific stock-change measurements. Further options for enhancing carbon sink capacity within urban environments are explored, such as urban biomass growth and carbon capture and storage.This commentary is prompted by Thomas Wiedmann's Defining (Urban) Producer and Consumer Sinks published in this issue. In his article, Wiedmann presents a new framework for categorizing carbon sinks by borrowing practices from carbon emissions accounting and, essentially, proposing a carbon sink footprint model for urban inventories. While this is a valuable new concept, we argue that it is difficult to apply accurately given current knowledge and practices in urban life cycle assessment. Instead, a direct versus embodied classification based on where the sequestration service exists, not where the sink is located, is more useful from the perspective of municipal control and influence over creating and managing carbon sinks. This is ultimately important for the development of urban climate change mitigation measures.Several authors have highlighted the potential risks of nanoparticles (NPs). Still, little is known about the magnitude of emissions of NPs from society. Here, the method of explorative particle flow analysis (PFA), a modification of the more well-known substance flow analysis (SFA), is suggested. In explorative PFA, particle number instead of mass is used as flow and stock metric and explorative scenarios are used to account for potential technology diffusion and, consequently, potentially higher emissions. The method has been applied in a case study of the use phase of titanium dioxide (TiO2) NPs in paint, sunscreen and self-cleaning cement. The results indicate that the current largest emissions of TiO2 NPs originate from the use of sunscreen. One scenario implies that, in the future, the largest flows and stocks of TiO2 NPs could be related to self-cleaning cement. Gaps in current knowledge are identified and suggestions for future research are given.Engineering achievements have improved the quality of human life, provided creature comforts, and expanded the human domain to unprecedented levels. When enjoying all these achievements, human beings are coming to realize that the more invasion of the nature, the more environmental problems. Under the context of sustainable development, it is certain that effective Engineering Management calls for an ecological concept. The basic claim of this paper is that Engineering Management should be based on Ecological Engineering, which is an essential requirement of effective Engineering Management. At the same time, Ecological Engineering shall serve as the base of Engineering Management, which is commanded by the characteristics of Ecological Engineering. To date, there are only scattered studies focused on Engineering Management using the ecological concept. Moreover, there is no systematic concept of Ecological Engineering based Engineering Management (EMEE). In this paper, a thorough review of EMEE is presented. Our goals are to clarify this concept, promote this promising thought, summarize past research, and identify issues for future research to create impacts on the practice of Engineering Management. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental profile of a set of wood furniture was carried out to define the best design criteria for its eco-design. A baby cot convertible into a bed, a study desk and a bedside table were the objects of study. Two quantitative and qualitative environmental approaches were combined in order to propose improvement alternatives: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Design for Environment (DfE). In the first case Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to identify the hot spots in the product system. As a next step, LCA information was used in eco-briefing to determine several improvement alternatives. A wood products company located in Catalonia (NE Spain) was assessed in detail, dividing the process into three stages: assembly, finishing and packaging. Ten impact categories were considered in the LCA study: abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidant formation. Two processes can be considered the key environmental factors: the production of the wooden boards and electricity, with contributions of 45-68% and 14-33% respectively depending on the impact categories. Subsequently, several improvement alternatives were proposed in the eco-design process (DfE) to achieve reductions in a short-medium period of time in the environmental impact. These eco-design strategies could reduce the environmental profile of the setup by 14%. The correct methodological adaptation of the concept of eco-briefing, as a tool for communication among environmental technicians and designers, the simplification of the analytical tool used and the LCA, could facilitate the environmental analysis of a product. The results obtained provide information that can help the furniture sector to improve their environmental performance. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper provides a review and analysis of the challenges that nuclear power must overcome in order to be considered sustainable. The results make it clear that not only do innovative technical solutions need to be generated for the fundamental inherent environmental burdens of nuclear energy technology, but the nuclear industry must also address difficult issues of equity both in the present and for future generations. The results show that if the concept of just sustainability is applied to the nuclear energy sector a global large-scale sustainable nuclear energy system to replace fossil fuel combustion requires the following: (i) a radical improvement in greenhouse gas emissions intensity by improved technology and efficiency through the entire life cycle to prevent energy cannibalism during rapid growth; (ii) the elimination of nuclear insecurity to reduce the risks associated with nuclear power so that the free market can indemnify it without substantial public nuclear energy insurance subsidies; (iii) the elimination of radioactive waste at the end of life and minimization of environmental impact during mining and operations; and (iv) the nuclear industry must regain public trust or face obsolescence as a swarm of renewable energy technologies quickly improve both technical and economic performance.Urban planning for a renewable energy future requires the collaboration of different disciplines both in research and practice. In the present article, the planning of a renewable energy future is approached from a designer's perspective. A framework for analysis of the planning questions at hand is first proposed. The framework considers two levels of inquiry: the technical environmental aspect, and its wider embedding in sustainable development. Furthermore, life cycle analysis and exergy studies are discussed for their application potential in design. An altered trias energetica as proposed in earlier publications appears to remain a robust concept for low exergy, renewable energy based urban design. When considering sustainable development, environmental assessments shall be completed by an inquiry of the socio-cultural, economical, juridical, aesthetical and ethical aspects characterizing the planning or decision process. The article then presents a number of practical design principles that can help envisioning a built environment that can be sustained on the basis of renewable energy sources. In accordance with the altered trias energetica concept, elements of passive urban energy design, exergetic optimization of energy provision systems and the sourcing of renewable energy are identified, and their respective potentials assessed.This study is an experimental determination of the energy return on investment (EROI) for algal biocrude production at a research facility at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). During the period of this assessment, algae were grown at several cultivation scales and processed using centrifugation for harvesting, electromechanical cell lysing, and a microporous hollow fiber membrane contactor for lipid separation. The separated algal lipids represent a biocrude product that could be refined into fuel and the post-extraction biomass could be converted to methane. To determine the EROI, a second-order analysis was conducted, which includes direct and indirect energy flows, but does not include energy expenses associated with capital investments. The EROI for the production process evaluated here was significantly less than 1, however, the majority of the energy consumption resulted from non-optimized growth conditions. While the experimental results do not represent an expected typical case EROI for algal fuels, the approach and end-to-end experimental determination of the different inputs and outputs provides a useful outline of the important parameters to consider in such an analysis. The Experimental Case results are the first known experimental energy balance for an integrated algal biocrude production facility, and as such, are expected to be helpful for setting research and development priorities. In addition to the Experimental Case (based on direct measurements), three analytical cases were considered in this work: (1) a Reduced (Inputs) Case, (2) a Highly Productive Case, and (3) a Literature Model. The Reduced (Inputs) Case and the Highly Productive Case speculate the energy use for a similar system in an improved, commercial-scale production setting. The Literature Model is populated with relevant data that have previously been reported in the literature. For the Experimental Case, Reduced Case, Highly Productive Case, and Literature Model, the estimated second-order EROI was 9.2 x 10(-4), 0.074, 0.22, and 0.35, respectively. These results were dominated by growth inputs (96%, 89%, 87%, and 61% of the total energy requirement, respectively). Furthermore, the EROI was adjusted using quality factors that were calculated according to the price of each input, yielding a quality-adjusted EROI that parallels a partial financial return on investment analysis. For the Experimental Case, the Reduced Case, and the Highly Productive Case, the quality-adjusted EROI was 9.2 x 10(-5), 0.013, and 0.36, respectively.This study estimates global warming impact (GWI) of E85 fuel needed to run a small passenger car for its average lifetime, i.e., 241,402 km (150,000 miles). The ethanol needed for the production of E85 fuel was derived from an intensively managed slash pine (Pinus elliottii) plantation in the southern USA. We assumed that only pulpwood and harvesting residues obtained at the time of harvesting were used for ethanol production. A suitable system boundary was defined and a detailed life-cycle assessment was undertaken to determine GWI of all the steps present within the system boundary. Results indicate that the overall GWI of the E85 fuel was about 76% less than an equivalent amount of gasoline needed to run a small passenger car for its average lifetime. Within the system boundary, the GWI of the ethanol production stage was highest followed by the stage of E85 fuel consumption in a small passenger car. A need exists to evaluate impacts of utilizing forest biomass for E85 fuel production on forest ecology and traditional forest biomass-based industries.The main purpose of this article is to propose specific discard indexes for their development in fisheries life cycle assessment (LCA). The objective of these is to characterize and standardize discards in worldwide fisheries. The global discard index (GDI) is intended to be an easily understood index whose use is extendible to any fishery in the world. It is presented as a dynamic index that aims to characterize and standardize discard rates between fisheries by direct comparison with the global discard rates reported periodically by FAO. Furthermore, a simplified approach excluding characterization is presented for scenarios in which the data quality linked to discards is poor. Two additional indicators, survival rate of discards and slipping, are proposed to improve the reporting and quantification of biomass waste by fishing vessels. GDI implementation, together with two other fishery-specific impact categories, showed remarkable differences in the environmental impacts of several fishing fleets when compared with the obtained results for conventional impact categories. Results for the conventional categories were strongly influenced by the energy use in the fishery, while results obtained for fishery-specific categories presented variable trends due to the dependence on a wider range of factors. GDI inclusion favored direct comparison with worldwide average discard rates on a time scale basis, from a wet weight or a net primary productivity perspective, depending on the selected approach. Proposed indicators achieved the important objective of integrating discard data as a fishery-specific impact in fishery LCAs, increasing the benefits of implementing LCA in fisheries assessment. Specific advantages of these indicators include assessing changes in capture and landing composition, evaluating the selectivity of the fishing gears, and monitoring the behavior of fisheries in a normalized context respect to other fisheries. GDI was identified as an adequate methodological improvement for regular use in fisheries LCA. Future developments GDI include its harmonization for inclusion in damage assessment.This study assesses the impacts of three different disinfection processes of sewage effluent, namely the electron beam (E-beam), ultraviolet (UV), and ozone systems, on the environment by using life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA employed was the comparative LCA which consists of three parts according to life cycle stages. Electricity consumption was the reference flow that can yield 99% disinfection efficiency for microorganisms present in a 1 x 10(5) m(3) day(-1) sewage treatment plant effluent over 20 years. The comparison of the LCA results indicated that the environmental impact of the UV disinfection system was the lowest, followed by the E-beam and ozone disinfection systems. The key issues of the E-beam, UV, and ozone disinfection systems are electricity consumption and SF6 usage, electricity consumption and UV lamp, and electricity consumption and liquid oxygen feeding system, respectively. Electricity consumption is the key input parameter that determines the LCA results.Sustainable manufacturing is practiced globally as a comprehensive strategy for improving the sustainability performance of the manufacturing industry. While sustainability is characterized into such three dimensions as economic, environmental, and social, currently, there is no quantitative method yet to measure the so-called "sustainability" in the manufacturing industry. The objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive and effective quantitative method to measure the overall sustainability performance of manufacturing companies. In this paper, an integrated methodology is presented for the development of composite sustainability indicators based on principal component analysis (PCA). In developing this integrated approach, both industry and academia surveys are conducted to identify what sustainability indicators are favored by the sustainable manufacturing community. A unique index is then generated to measure the overall sustainability performance of industrial practices. The methodology can be used for benchmarking the overall sustainability performance of various manufacturing companies. A case study is conducted on a total of 11 global electronic manufacturing companies. The overall sustainability performance of these companies are measured, benchmarked, and ranked. The results showed that PCA is an effective approach for constructing composite sustainability indicators across environmental, economic, and social dimensions. From this research, it is found that industry and academia have different views on the sustainability measurement, evidenced by different weights put on the same indicator in industry and academia. The case study demonstrated that the methodology presented in this paper is an effective tool for comprehensive measurement of sustainability performance of manufacturing companies. Strengths and weaknesses of each company can be identified. Then, the recommended improvements can be suggested based on the study of each of the individual indicators.In an effort to develop a whole building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is transforming new bottom-up Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) data into a hybrid database in which the strengths of both bottom-up and top-down approaches can be combined. The objective of this paper is to describe the framework and the process under which the hybrid BEES database is being built, with an emphasis on its accounting structure. This paper can support other efforts to build hybrid Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases. The BEES hybridization utilizes the most detailed supply and use tables (SUTs)-known as item-level data-focusing particularly on the construction sectors. First, the partial SUTs at the item level are constructed and connected to standard SUTs that describe the rest of the economy, which is then followed by balancing and "redefinition." Second, item-level environmental data are compiled and then also balanced and redefined, which completes the compilation of the bi-resolution SUTs with environmental data. Third, the bi-resolution SUTs are integrated with the BEES data that have been converted into matrix form. Because the completely rolled out BEES technology matrix involves a significant number of products, the integration prioritizes the product groups that are potentially the most significant contributors to the LCIA results for buildings. This step-by-step procedure will enable the creation of a hybridized BEES database, combining the strengths of both the bottom-up, process-based data and the top-down, input-output data with enhanced resolution. The benefit of hybridization at the database level-as opposed to at the individual LCA study level-is that whole-building LCA users can adopt the hybrid BEES approach, with its benefit of a more complete system definition, without the training or effort that would be required to construct a hybrid system from scratch. In addition, reformulation of new BEES data into a matrix structure better facilitates the parametric LCA application that is central to NIST's vision to develop a tool for assessing the sustainability performance of energy technologies and systems in an integrated building design context. There are currently a number of initiatives being organized to implement a hybrid approach at the LCI database level. In laying out the methodological framework for efficiently transforming an existing LCI database into a hybrid database, this paper can support future development of hybrid LCI databases.Pulp and paper manufacturing constitutes one of the largest industry segments in term of water and energy usage and total discharges to the environment. More than many other industries, however, this industry plays a key role in sustainable development because its most important raw material, wood fiber, is renewable Dias and Houtman (Environ Prog 23(4):347-357, 2004). Actually, even if the communication is dominated by electronic media, paper-based communication has a role to play due to its unique practical and aesthetic qualities. This research aims to assess the environmental impact of advertising folders produced with different papers and distributed by a system of Italian consumers' cooperatives in order to indicate the possible options of improvement and to assess the CO2 (eq) emitted during the entire life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed from cradle-to-grave considering paper production, transport from paper mill to printing site, printing, distribution, and disposal. Data for the study were directly collected from specific companies and completed on the basis of literature information. The analysis was conducted using the SimaPro 7.1.5 software and IMPACT 2002+ method to assess all its environmental impact and damage categories. LCA analysis indicates that the higher environmental impact is mainly due to paper production and printing processes. The main operations which generate the major impact in the paper production stage are related to the direct or indirect fossil energy use, the production of additives for bleaching operations, and the collection and selection of waste paper. Printing causes relevant impacts for the electricity and ink production and for the aluminum plates used in the offset printing. Moreover, the use of paper with low quantity of additives and small amount of primary fibers causes a reduction of the environmental load of 13.94 %. The major global warming potential value was found for advertising folders made with little amount of mechanical pulp which slightly contributes to the absorption of CO2. The analysis pointed out the relevance of the paper production phase and of the printing step within the advertising folders life cycle and allowed to detect the other critical stages of the life cycle. Paper composition greatly affects the environmental impact of the advertising folders' life cycle.Carbon footprint of field crops can be lowered through improved cropping practices. The objective of this study was to determine the carbon footprint of spring barley ( L.) in relation to various preceding oilseed crops that were fertilized at various rates of inorganic N the previous years. System boundary was from cradle-to-farm gate. Canola-quality mustard ( L.), canola ( L.), sunflower ( L.), and flax ( L.) were grown under the N fertilizer rates of 10, 30, 70, 90, 110, 150, and 200 kg N ha(-1) the previous year, and spring barley was grown on the field of standing oilseed stubble the following year. The study was conducted at six environmental sites; they were at Indian Head in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and at Swift Current in 2004, 2005 and 2006, Saskatchewan, Canada. On average, barley grown at humid Indian Head emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) of 1,003 kg CO(2)eq ha(-1), or 53% greater than that at the drier Swift Current site. Production and delivery of fertilizer N to farm gate accounted for 26% of the total GHG emissions, followed by direct and indirect emissions of 28% due to the application of N fertilizers to barley crop. Emissions due to N fertilization were 26.6 times the emission from the use of phosphorous, 5.2 times the emission from pesticides, and 4.2 times the emission from various farming operations. Decomposition of crop residues contributed emissions of 173 kg CO(2)eq ha(-1), or 19% of the total emission. Indian Head-produced barley had significantly greater grain yield, resulting in about 11% lower carbon footprint than Swift Current-produced barley (0.28 vs. 0.32 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) of grain). Emissions in the barley production was a linear function of the rate of fertilizer N applied to the previous oilseed crops due to increased emissions from crop residue decomposition coupled with higher residual soil mineral N. The key to lower the carbon footprint of barley is to increase grain yield, make a wise choice of crop types, reduce N inputs to crops grown in the previous and current growing seasons, and improved N use efficiency.The location of a phosphorus emission can strongly affect its expected fate in freshwater. To date, in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), fate factors for phosphorus emissions have been derived for continents or large countries and had limited spatial resolution. These fate factors do not account sufficiently for local variations and are not applicable globally. In this paper, fate factors for freshwater eutrophication are derived for phosphorus emissions to freshwater on a global scale with a half-degree resolution. For this purpose, a new global fate model for phosphorus has been developed on a half-degree resolution. The removal processes taken into account are grid-specific advection, phosphorus retention and water use. Aggregated fate factors based on archetypes and on administrative units are presented. The derived fate factors represent the persistence of phosphorus in the freshwater environment. The typical fate factor of phosphorus emissions to freshwater is 10 days and can vary more than 2 orders of magnitude among the grid cells (the 5th and 95th percentile are 0.8 and 310 days, respectively). Advection is the dominant removal process of phosphorus in freshwater (67.5%), followed by retention (27.6%) and water use (4.9%). The results demonstrate inclusion of information on the location of phosphorus emissions to freshwater can improve the comparative power of the fate factor implementation in LCAs. The fate factors enable consistent assessment and comparison of freshwater eutrophication impacts at different locations across the globe.The human health and environmental issues related to food, feed, and bio-based systems, range widely from greenhouse gas emissions and energy use to land use, water availability, soil quality, water quality and quantity, biodiversity losses, and chemical exposure. Threats that stem from other issues, including food quality and food security, the development of genetically modified organisms, desertification, pesticide exposure, antibiotic-resistant strains of microorganisms, growth hormone residues in food, etc., are of concern. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology provides the organizing framework to holistically evaluate the environmental impacts of products and production systems, whether it's to make a durable, disposable or edible good. The use of LCA in environmental management and sustainability has grown rapidly in recent years as demonstrated by the increasing number of published papers on LCA methodology and case studies, which totaled over 4,500 by 2010. Recognizing the need to focus on the impacts of the agri-food industry, this special issue was developed by selecting sixteen papers from the 85 presented at the Bari LCA Food 2010 conference, and publishing them with eight papers submitted as part of the normal flow to the journal of Cleaner Production on food-related subjects. The papers in this special issue include case studies from LCAs on relevant dimensions of production of a wide array of types of food, discussions on methodological issues, especially water and land use, the application of product certification schemes, and food preservation. The editors of this special issue acknowledge that progress has been made in strengthening the LCA tools but challenge all LCA practitioners and researchers to push the envelope on LCA methodology and encourage them to develop tools that dynamically address the diverse, rapidly evolving issues related to agricultural products that are not currently addressed. It is hoped the challenges that are outlined in this Special Issue will stimulate many to make progress on improving the food LCA tools prior to the next food LCA conference in this series, which will be held in Saint-Malo. France, on 2-4 October 2012. For more information, visit: https://colloque.inra.fr/lcafood2012. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this study we analyzed the environmental and economic profile of current agricultural practices for greenhouse crops, in cold and warm climates in Europe, using four scenarios as reference systems: tomato crop in a plastic greenhouse in Spain, and in glasshouses in Hungary and the Netherlands, and rose crop in a glasshouse in the Netherlands. This study is in the context of the EUPHOROS project "Efficient Use of Inputs in Protected Horticulture". The aim of EUPHOROS project is to improve horticultural production systems in Europe by developing cleaner production alternatives from both an environmental and economic point of view. The methodologies selected for the study were Life Cycle Assessment for the environmental analysis and cost-benefit analysis for the economic assessment. Dutch reference systems used a combined heat and power (CHP) system for the production of thermal energy and electricity. Two approaches were used to study the multifunctionality of CHP: system expansion and energy allocation. The main environmental burdens in the four scenarios were energy consumption, greenhouse structure and fertilizers. Environmental impacts due to energy consumption can be reduced by using co-generation or geothermal water in glasshouses. The structure contribution can be decreased with the improvement of recycled materials and design. Adjustment of fertilizer doses and closed irrigation systems are recommended in Spain and Hungary. The best economic perspectives to reduce inputs are energy savings in glasshouses and reduction of fertilizers in Spain and Hungary. The study shows the importance of including economic and environmental aspects in sustainability studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The social demand for environmentally friendly agricultural production requires technologies that help preserve the environment under sustainable criteria whilst providing high-quality products that guarantee food safety. This study evaluates the environmental damages attributed to different alternatives for screenhouse as well as open-field cropping systems for green beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) during their life cycle by applying the life cycle analysis (LCA) in an inland area of the province of Granada, Spain, during two spring autumn crop cycles (2008 and 2009). The aim of this evaluation was to select and improve the cultivation techniques, equipment, and structures by trying to minimize their impact on the surroundings and natural resources. The green bean cropping systems analysed were: a screenhouse (S), a screenhouse equipped with a misting system (SM), and a control (open-field, OF). The stages considered in the LCA study were the infrastructure and the crop cycle. The OF treatment showed the greatest environmental impact in most categories due to its lower yields. Under our experimental conditions, the misting system was justified (from the environmental standpoint) providing the yields were higher than those obtained without the misting (S). All the treatments in 2009 produced a greater impact than in 2008 due to climatic conditions that sharply reduced production. The LCA study has shown the importance of reaching a minimum yield to justify the environmental impact of different treatments. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Italian olive-growing sector has to face both the growing competition on the international olive oil market and the shift of the common agricultural policy (CAP) from market and price policies towards direct aids decoupled from production. In addition the olive growers, as other farmers, have to comply with stricter obligations to manage their farms in sustainable ways (cross compliance). In this scenario the sector needs new competitive strategies to address these new challenges. In this paper we assess if innovative olive-growing models, like the high trees density orchards, are able to reduce production costs without worsening environmental sustainability. Indeed the intensive olive systems produce higher yields within a few years of planting and allow a higher level of mechanization (pruning and harvesting) but they could generate higher environmental impacts. In this study we perform an environmental and economic assessment of two olive-growing systems: the "High Density" (HDO) and the "Super High Density" (SHDO). The analysis integrates the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) methods by using a common database. The environmental analysis carried out through LCA has shown a better performance of the HDO system for all the impact categories, due to a lower use of energy and chemical inputs and to higher olive yields. Also from an economic point of view the HDO could be considered more convenient than the SHDO: in fact, despite the lower operating costs of the latter due to the complete mechanization of pruning and harvesting operations, these costs are counterbalanced by higher initial investment costs that the company has to face which are three times those of the HDO system. The total result is that the Net Present Value is better for the HDO for each olive price level. This result is mainly driven by lower plantation costs, longer production cycle, higher production of olives and higher efficiency in the use of inputs which characterize the HDO model. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) assessment of 1 kJ of strawberries, button mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus), and romaine/cos lettuces (Lactuca sativa) transported to retail outlets in Western Australia (WA) was examined and compared. The study included pre-farm, on-farm, and post-farm emissions. The pre-farm stage included GHG emissions from agricultural machinery and chemical production, and transport of raw materials (spawn, peat, and compost) in mushrooms. The on-farm stage included GHG emissions from agricultural machinery operation, chemical use, water for irrigation, waste generated, as well as electricity and energy consumption. The post-farm stage included transport of produce to Distribution Center (DC), storage in DC, and transport to retail outlets. The 'hotspots' or the stages that emit the highest GHG were determined for strawberries, button mushrooms and romaine/cos lettuces. The results have shown that the life cycle GHG emissions of strawberries and lettuces were higher than mushrooms due to intensive agricultural machinery operations during the on-farm stage. Mushrooms, however have significantly higher GHG emissions during pre-farm stage due to transport of peat, spawn, and compost. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Earlier applications of the life cycle assessment (LCA) to organic agriculture concern comparisons with conventional agriculture under the assumption that year-to-year variations of agricultural production are negligible. Although the comparisons based on averages are important, it is necessary to investigate the variability in environmental impacts during the conversion period, because the performance of organic farming in the conversion process from conventional farming is unstable. In this study, time-series data obtained from a five-year on-farm trial were applied to an LCA of three rice production systems in Japan: organic, environmentally friendly, and conventional. Four impact categories global warming, acidification, eutrophication, and non-renewable energy were used for the assessment. The results showed that only the environmental impacts associated with organic farming fluctuated widely over the years across all impact categories, and these fluctuations diminished over time. The environmental impacts of organic rice production were higher than those of the other two modes of rice production in four categories covered in the study on average. However, they decreased to the same level as that of conventional farming in the last stage of the conversion phase. The cause of higher variability in the impacts of organic farming at the initial phase was associated mainly with the instability of the organic rice yield. The results indicate that understanding the trends in inter-temporal variability is important for successful conversion to organic farming. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The livestock industry and meat consumption have been variously associated with the problem of global water scarcity. This paper warns against generalizations on the basis that meat production systems are diverse both in farm practice and geography. Using a recently developed life cycle assessment-based methodology that takes into account local water stress where operations occur, the normalized water footprint of lamb cuts produced in south-west Victoria, Australia, and transported to the western USA for retailing and consumption was 44 L H(2)Oe (equivalent) per kg. This case study result, which is likely to be typical of many low input, non-irrigated grazing systems, and which is in the range of other cereal products grown in Australia, demonstrates that the production and consumption of meat does not necessarily impose a heavy burden on freshwater resource availability. The variability between meat production systems must be taken into consideration in any discussion about the role of meat in a sustainable global food system. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most agricultural products are produced on farms where there is a mix of activities, resulting in a range of co-products. This raises the issue of how best to model these complex production systems for Life Cycle Assessment, especially where there are benefits imparted by one activity in the mixed farming system to another. On the mixed farm studied, there were significant two-way reference flows (representing 288 t CO2-e/year or 10% of the total farm emissions) between activities producing distinct products (wool, meat, grain) and these were modelled using system expansion. Cropping and sheep activities were modelled as separate sub-processes in the farming system, with unique inputs and outputs identified for each. Co-production from the sheep activity was modelling using allocation, comparing biophysical and economic relationships. Using an economic allocation resulted in different estimates of global warming impact for sheep co-products, with figures varying by 7-52%. When compared to biophysical allocation, economic allocation shifted the environmental burden to the higher value co-products and away from the high resource use products. Using economic allocation, for every kilogram of wool produced there was an estimated 28.7 kg of CO2-e emitted. Amongst the live animal products, the stud rams had the highest estimated carbon footprint (719 kg CO2-e/ram). Amongst the crops, estimates of emissions for the cereal grains averaged 202 kg CO2-e/tonne grain, canola 222 kg CO2-e/tonne and lupins 510 kg CO2-e/tonne, when modelled to include the benefits of the mixed farming system. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An LCA study on the production of an Italian brand of high quality milk (bottled in 1 l Tetra Top (R)) was carried out in compliance with the Product Category Rules for milk of the International EPD (R) System. The results were compared with the registered environmental product declaration (EPD) of another brand of milk. The most relevant source of differences between the two studies is the choice of different system models, mainly due to lack of detailed instructions in PCR, especially for: fertilizers field emissions and choice of the models for their estimation; inclusion of the complementary fodder production; waste management. The results of this analysis were used to participate in the open consultation of the PCR revised version and to highlight the importance of including more detailed instructions. After the publication of the updated version of the PCR, the LCA study was revised for the part of the inventory concerning methane emissions from cattle and emissions due to manure management and spreading. The impact assessment results show that raw milk production at farms is the most critical life cycle phase, mainly because of CH4 from enteric fermentation, CO2 from diesel consumption, and N2O and NH3 airborne emissions as well as NO3- waterborne emissions coming from manure management and fertilizers use. Therefore, reductions of the environmental impacts can be mainly obtained at farms, with, for example, the selection of a diet for reducing enteric emissions, the introduction of energy recovery from anaerobic digestion of manure, the optimisation of the use of fertilizers adopting precision farming techniques. The results are within the literature range of values, though not fully comparable because of the existing differences in assumptions and modelling choices. Recommendations for improving the comparability of LCA in the food sectors are outlined. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of the project on which this paper is based was to develop a food-related communication tool for sustainable education in the upper levels of Finnish elementary schools. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of a range of lunches was conducted with reference to two impact categories, climate change and eutrophication potential. This paper presents results of the LCA studies. As the principal requirement of food is that it is nutritious, environmental impacts were assessed for complete lunches, which represented home-made portions, ready-to-eat portions and school lunches. Home-made and ready-to-eat lunches followed the lunch plate model, in which half of the plate consists of vegetables, one quarter of protein and one quarter of a starch source. The portion is completed with bread, a fat spread and milk. In addition, the total energy content of the lunches and the amount of energy from fat, protein and carbohydrate was set according to nutritional recommendations. School lunches were based on actual food consumption in one school. Comparisons between mixed, vegetarian and vegan home-made lunches were carried out as well as between home-made and ready-to-eat lunches. School lunches were investigated separately because of different portion sizes. In general, mixed home-made lunches resulted in 2-5 times more potential impact than vegetarian and vegan lunches. In addition to protein source, the choice of salad also made a substantial difference, especially regarding impact on climate. In contrast, the choice of starch was without major implications. Ready-to-eat lunches caused less potential impact than the equivalent home-made lunches more because of raw material choices than energy consumption. School lunches resulted in the least impact. The lunch plate approach is regarded as representing a good foundation for consideration of both the nutritional and the environmental aspects of food choices. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the recent past, several initiatives have been launched to reveal the carbon footprint of consumer products or provide other life cycle based environmental information. The presentation of environmental product information (EPI) may contribute to better informed purchase decisions. It would help to direct the attention of companies to more eco-efficient products and production processes. Yet several key aspects still need clarification. The strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and the limits of environmental information about products have been investigated in a feasibility study in detail. This article discusses the main challenges facing the provision of meaningful information to direct consumer decisions. As a first step, we evaluate different methodological approaches towards calculating environmental information about products based on life cycle thinking. This shows that a carbon footprint might be insufficient for full environmental information and thus the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) is recommended for this purpose. The level of decision-making addressed by the approach must be considered. It describes which type of decisions is assisted. Here we recommend starting with higher levels of decision-making, i.e. calculating average impacts of product groups and addressing the general differences between these groups. Consumers would thus see the relevance of different buying decisions and could e.g. compare the environmental impacts of travelling with these of food consumption. After that, the approach may be refined and analyses carried out of individual products within a product group. The consideration of the use and end-of-life phases of products is a special issue to be defined within an EM. These phases may be very important, depending on the type of product. However, the use phase often exhibits major variability, as it is influenced by disparate products and consumer behaviour. Furthermore, the use and final disposal of a product can only partly be influenced by the producer. We think that it is not feasible to systematically include the full life cycle in an EPI. Therefore we recommend that the environmental information should be shown for the product as it is bought in the shop (life cycle from cradle to shop). Thus, the system boundary of the environmental LCA coincides with the system boundary of the price of the product purchased. The impacts of the full life cycle could be shown additionally and separately if they are relevant for the total impact. Consequently it is necessary to show the environmental impacts relative to a functional unit. For the assessment of environmental impacts in Switzerland we suggest using the Swiss ecological scarcity method. The communication of the respective LCA results in a simplified form is another issue to consider. For simplifying communication, the environmental impacts of a product should be related to overall an environmental goal, similar to normalisation. The so-called "eco-time" use can then be applied as an understandable unit in business to consumer communication. There are several obstacles to putting life cycle based environmental information for products into practice. It is questionable whether one particular approach towards environmental product information can serve all kinds of purposes, starting from supporting comparative assertions of different brands of a product offered in a supermarket to comparing different consumption patterns of households. The approach proposed here should help to focus the attention of consumers first on the most important aspects for sustainable consumption. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of some traditional and novel food preservation technologies have been evaluated through LCA methodology in order to provide environmental criteria when selecting preservation methods for foods, as a way to develop more efficient and sustainable food products throughout its whole life cycle. Four thermal and non-thermal techniques (autoclave pasteurization, microwaves, high hydrostatic pressure and modified atmosphere packaging) were selected according to their suitability for the inactivation of the dish case study and a comparative cradle-to-grave LCA was performed following ReCiPe methodology for impact assessment. Emerging techniques showed reduced environmental impacts in terms of energy demand and CO2 emissions in relation to conventional pasteurization. Additionally, lower water requirements were observed for non-thermal technologies (MAP, HPP) in comparison to equivalent thermal processes. Modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) was found to be the most sustainable option when a shelf life period below 30 days is required. The most significant impact sources of the life cycle from every technology were analyzed and several potential improvements were identified, based on a technical and environmental point of view. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study introduces life cycle assessment as a tool to analyze one aspect of sustainability in healthcare: the birth of a baby. The process life cycle assessment case study presented evaluates two common procedures in a hospital, a cesarean section and a vaginal birth. This case study was conducted at Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which delivers over 10,000 infants per year. The results show that heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), waste disposal, and the production of the disposable custom packs comprise a large percentage of the environmental impacts. Applying the life cycle assessment tool to medical procedures allows hospital decision makers to target and guide efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of healthcare procedures. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.From 1991 to 2009, U.S. production of ethanol increased 10-fold, largely due to government programs motivated by climate change, energy security, and economic development goals. As low-level ethanol gasoline blends have not consistently outperformed ethanol-free gasoline in vehicle performance or tailpipe emissions, national-level economic and environmental goals could be accomplished more efficiently by concentrating consumption of gasoline containing 10% ethanol (i.e., E10) near producers to minimize freight activity. As the domestic transportation of ethanol increased 10-fold in metric ton-kilometers (t-km) from 2000 to 2009, the portion of t-km potentially justified by the E10 blend wall increased from less than 40% to 80%. However, we estimate 10 billion t-km took place annually from 2004 to 2009 for reasons other than the blend wall. This "unnecessary" transportation resulted in more than $240 million in freight costs, 90 million L of diesel consumption, 300,000 metric tons of CO2-e emissions, and 440 g of human intake of PM2.5. By 2009, the marginal savings from enabling Iowa to surpass E10 would have exceeded 2.5 g CO2-e/MJ and $0.12/gallon of ethanol, as the next-closest customer was 1600 km away. The use of a national network model enables estimation of marginal transportation impacts from subnational policies, and benefits from policies encouraging concentrated consumption of renewable fuels.Current estimation schemes as decision support tools for the selection of wastewater treatment alternatives focus primarily on the treatment efficiency, effluent quality, and environmental consequences for receiving water bodies. However, these schemes generally do not quantify the potential to convert pollutants in wastewater to recoverable resources. This study proposes a refined evaluation scheme for choices of wastewater treatment processes that quantifies not only adverse environmental effects but also bioenergy and nutrient recovery indices. An original means of data processing was established and clear estimate indicators were consequently obtained to allow a smooth overall estimation. An array of wastewater treatment alternatives that meet three effluent limits were used as case studies to demonstrate how the present scheme works, simultaneously, to identify optimum choices. It is concluded in the overall estimation that the lower sustainability of wastewater treatment contributed by increasingly stringent discharge demands was offset and mitigated by the resource-recovery scenarios involved, and the scenario of recovering nutrients via excess-sludge composting was of more benefit. Thus, before tightening wastewater discharge requirements, one should bear in mind the situation of multiple sustainability by setting a goal to achieve not only the greatest reduction in environmental burden but also the maximum resource-recovery benefits.We use life cycle assessment methodology to compare three disposal options for unused pharmaceuticals: (i) incineration after take-back to a pharmacy, (ii) wastewater treatment after toilet disposal, and (iii) landfilling or incineration after trash disposal. For each option, emissions of active pharmaceutical ingredients to the environment (API emissions) are estimated along with nine other types of emissions to air and water (non-API emissions). Under a scenario with 50% take-back to a pharmacy and 50% trash disposal, current API emissions are expected to be reduced by 93%. This is within 6% of a 100% trash disposal scenario, which achieves an 88% reduction. The 50% take-back scenario achieves a modest reduction in API emissions over a 100% trash scenario while increasing most non-API emissions by over 300%. If the 50% of unused pharmaceuticals not taken-back are toileted instead of trashed, all emissions increase relative to 100% trash disposal. Evidence suggests that 50% participation in take-back programs could be an upper bound. As a result, we recommend trash disposal for unused pharmaceuticals. A 100% trash disposal program would have similar API emissions to a take-back program with 50% participation, while also having significantly lower non-API emissions, lower financial costs, higher convenience, and higher compliance rates.The use of engineered nanomaterials offers advantages as well as disadvantages from a sustainability perspective. It is important to identify such points as early as possible in order to be able to build on existing strengths, while counteracting disadvantages. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a suitable method to assess the environmental performance of a product or process. But so far studies applying LCA to the area of nanotechnology have been scarce. One reason might be that the LCA framework has a whole list of issues that need further precision in order to be applicable to nanotechnologies: system boundaries and a functional unit have to be chosen in a way that allows one to do a comparison of equal functionalities; adequate and comprehensive life cycle inventory data for engineered nanomaterials are the key on the level of inventory analysis; and the impact assessment step requires a clear definition of the degree of detail on the level of nanoparticle emissions. The LCA studies existing thus far in the area of nanotechnology have barely begun to cover all these aspects. Thus, in order to improve the current situation, the authors propose to go ahead in each of the LCA stages as far as scientific advances allow. For the inventory modelling this means e.g. that comprehensive, transparently documented and quality ensured data of the most important engineered nanomaterials should be collected and made available in a widely-accepted format. Concerning nanoparticle emissions, as many parameters as possible have to be collected pertaining to the production, use, and the disposal phase of these engineered nanomaterials. Furthermore, on the level of impact assessment, relevant physical characteristics have to be identified for a toxicity assessment of nanoparticles and a consensus has to be found for a limited but sufficient number of independent parameters influencing toxicity to be collected. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In earlier work, we compared the amount of newly fixed nitrogen (N, as synthetic fertilizer and biologically fixed N) entering agricultural systems globally to the total emission of nitrous oxide (N2O). We obtained an N2O emission factor (EF) of 3-5%, and applied it to biofuel production. For 'first-generation' biofuels, e.g. biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), that require N fertilizer, N2O from biofuel production could cause (depending on N uptake efficiency) as much or more global warming as that avoided by replacement of fossil fuel by the biofuel. Our subsequent calculations in a follow-up paper, using published life cycle analysis (LCA) models, led to broadly similar conclusions. The N2O EF applies to agricultural crops in general, not just to biofuel crops, and has made possible a top-down estimate of global emissions from agriculture. Independent modelling by another group using bottom-up IPCC inventory methodology has shown good agreement at the global scale with our top-down estimate. Work by Davidson showed that the rate of accumulation of N2O in the atmosphere in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was greater than that predicted from agricultural inputs limited to fertilizer N and biologically fixed N (Davidson, E. A. 2009 Nat. Geosci. 2, 659-662.). However, by also including soil organic N mineralized following land-use change and NOx deposited from the atmosphere in our estimates of the reactive N entering the agricultural cycle, we have now obtained a good fit between the observed atmospheric N2O concentrations from 1860 to 2000 and those calculated on the basis of a 4 per cent EF for the reactive N.Biochar has the potential to make a major contribution to the mitigation of climate change, and enhancement of plant production. However, in order for biochar to fulfill this promise, the industry and regulating bodies must take steps to manage potential environmental threats and address negative perceptions. The potential threats to the sustainability of biochar systems, at each stage of the biochar life cycle, were reviewed. We propose that a sustainability framework for biochar could be adapted from existing frameworks developed for bioenergy. Sustainable land use policies, combined with effective regulation of biochar production facilities and incentives for efficient utilization of energy, and improved knowledge of biochar impacts on ecosystem health and productivity could provide a strong framework for the development of a robust sustainable biochar industry. Sustainability certification could be introduced to provide confidence to consumers that sustainable practices have been employed along the production chain, particularly where biochar is traded internationally.Effective energy storage and management is needed to manage intermittent renewable energy systems. Several jurisdictions around the world are planning to reduce or close their coal power plants to allow for renewable energy expansion, such as Ontario, Canada. Hydrogen storage, which is a promising energy storage option, is capable of meeting energy requirements that will arise from the shutdown of coal plants. In this paper, both economic and environmental feasibility of a hydrogen system linked with wind and hydroelectric plants in Ontario will be investigated. The Princefarm wind power plant and Beck1 hydro plant with production capacities of 189 MW and 490 MW, respectively, are analyzed in a case study for comparison purposes. The environmental analysis demonstrates the advantageous role of hydrogen storage and energy conversion. The overall system life-cycle yields 31.02 g CO2 eq per 1 kW h power output of the system when hydrogen energy storage is adopted. The payback periods of the systems linked with the Princefarm and Beck1 are also analyzed and found to be about 17 years. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The provision of a secure, continuous energy supply is becoming an issue for all sectors of society and the food processing industry as a major energy user must address these issues. This paper identifies anaerobic digestion as an opportunity to go some way to achieving energy security in a sustainable manner. However, a number of energy management and waste reduction concepts must also be brought into play if the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability are to be balanced. The reporting of such activity will help to promote the green credentials of the industry. Cleaner production, supply chain and life cycle assessment approaches all have a part to play as tools supporting a new vision for integrated energy and waste management. Our reliance on high-energy processing, such as canning and freezing/chill storage, might also need re-assessment together with processing based on hurdle technology. Finally, the concepts of energy and power management for a distributed energy generation system must be brought into the food processing industry. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper investigates a techno-economic analysis on small and medium scales: 50 kilo tonnes per annum (ktpa) and 100 ktpa combustion plants with steam turbine technology utilising solid recovered fuel (SRF). Energy and efficiency calculations for the technical assessment are performed. The economic viability of the two processes is investigated through a discounted cash flow analysis. The levelised cost is used to calculate the cost of production of one unit of electricity. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of the 100 ktpa scale SRF plant is performed, where the foundations of LCA calculations reside in energy calculations carried out for the technical analysis. Life cycle inventories were developed using inventory analysis and impact assessment. The results of the LCA are compared with those from equivalent scale coal, natural gas and electricity-mix plants. The LCA is also compared with a landfill reference system. Both scales are economically and technically viable. The SRF plant has a lower global warming potential emission (E-GWP) compared with the coal, natural gas and electricity-mix plants and the reference landfill system. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Research investigating the potential of producing biofuels from algae has been enjoying a recent revival due to heightened oil prices, uncertain fossil fuel sources and legislative targets aimed at reducing our contribution to climate change. If the concept is to become a reality however, many obstacles need to be overcome. Recent studies have suggested that open ponds provide the most sustainable means of cultivation infrastructure due to their low energy inputs compared to more energy intensive photobioreactors. Most studies have focused on strains of algae which are capable of yielding high oil concentrations combined with high productivity. Yet it is very difficult to cultivate such strains in open ponds as a result of microbial competition and limited radiation-use efficiency. To improve viability, the use of wastewater has been considered by many researchers as a potential source of nutrients with the added benefit of tertiary water treatment however productivity rates are affected and optimal conditions can be difficult to maintain year round. This paper investigates the process streams which are likely to provide the most viable methods of energy recovery from cultivating and processing algal biomass. The key findings are the importance of a flexible approach which depends upon location of the cultivation ponds and the industry targeted. Additionally this study recommends moving towards technologies producing higher energy recoveries such as pyrolysis or anaerobic digestion as opposed to other studies which focused upon biodiesel production.This paper reports on a life-cycle analysis (LCA) of Taiwan's agriculture and forestry, crude petroleum, coal and natural gas extraction and electricity generation sectors, revealing for the first time Taiwan's CO2 and CH4 emissions inventories and matching Taiwan's input-output sectors. Integrated hybrid input-output life cycle analysis is used to disaggregate the electricity generation sector into nuclear, hydro, gas, oil and coal, and cogeneration. Results show that the fossil-fuel-related electricity sub-sectors have higher CO2 emissions intensity than the remaining sectors in the economy and that the paddy rice sector is Taiwan's most CH4-intensive sector, making rice cultivation an important source of CH4 emissions. This work is vital to sound policy decisions concerning power generation, coal, and agriculture and forestry at the national level.Electric vehicles have recently been gaining increasing worldwide interest as a promising potential long-term solution to sustainable personal mobility; in particular, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) offer zero tailpipe emissions. However, their true ability to contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions can only be properly assessed by comparing a life cycle assessment of their GHG emissions with a similar assessment for conventional internal combustion vehicles (ICVs). This paper presents an analysis for vehicles typically expected to be introduced in 2015 in two example markets (the UK and California), taking into account the impact of three important factors: Like-for-like vehicle comparison and effect of real-world driving conditions. Accounting for the GHG emissions associated with meeting the additional electricity demand for charging the batteries. GHG emissions associated with vehicle manufacture, disposal, etc. This work demonstrates that all of these factors are important and emphasises that it is therefore crucial to clearly define the context when presenting conclusions about the relative GHG performance of BEVs and ICVs - such relative performance depends on a wide range of factors, including the marginal regional grid GHG intensity, vehicle size, driving pattern, loading, etc. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this study is to evaluate the life cycle performance of two alternative pathways to biofuels in the shipping industry: the 'diesel route' and the 'gas route'. The diesel route comprises of a shift from heavy fuel oil to marine gas oil and then a gradual shift to biodiesel, whereas the gas route comprises of a shift to liquefied natural gas and then a gradual shift to liquefied biogas. The two routes are assessed in a case study for the ferry traffic between the Swedish mainland and the island Gotland. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the environmental performance with the functional unit chosen to be one year of ro-pax ferry service, including both passenger and goods transportation. The gas route is indicated to have better overall environmental performance than the diesel route. Furthermore, use of biofuels is illustrated as one possible measure to decrease the global warming impact from shipping, but to the expense of greater environmental impact for some other impact categories. As an example, the global warming potential (GWP(100)) was shown to decrease with the use of biofuels in this study, while the eutrophication potential and the primary energy use increased. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the last decade the environmental performance of climate effective carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) considering also other environmental effects has become focus of several studies. With various technological CCS options under development, the field of possible technical solutions is hardly covered yet. This paper identifies technologies whose environmental effects have been analysed from a life cycle perspective. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has proved to be a helpful tool to investigate the environmental consequences associated with the introduction of CCS. Even though, big differences in underlying assumptions of existing studies make comparison difficult, some general effects can be described. In general the intended reduction in GWP by introducing CO2 capture (up to - 85% hard coal oxyfuel, - 95% lignite oxyfuel, - 80% natural gas post-combustion) is combined with an increase of other environmental effects, regardless of capture technology, time horizon or fuel considered. Performing the normalisation step shows that acidification and human toxicity potential have to be watched as well. Additionally, three parameter sets have been identified, which have a significant impact on the effects: (a) development of plant efficiencies and energy penalties; (b) capture efficiency; (c) fuel origin and composition. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is considered to yield either generic or regionally/technologically specific data on products, this method's implementation can reveal a certain variability due to the nature of the local industrial process as well as to heterogeneous site characteristics in the case of natural aggregate production. Energy consumption and the release of atmospheric emissions from aggregate production processes have been investigated in this study at three quarry sites, which encompass two types of rock (and include explosives). This paper describes the methodology adopted for the specific local production investigation and offers results for the three quarry sites using seven indicators derived from the LCA framework. Site characteristics and differences have been assessed in terms of plant equipment and off-road vehicles, and a detailed description is provided of the grading conducted onsite. It is found that fine grading consumes more energy for production, given the fact this type of grading is recycled inside the plant. This assessment has been performed for 1 ton of aggregate produced during 1 year and with distinction in grading category. Results indicate that the discrepancy in local energy consumption due to site differences lies within an interval between -9.5% and +13.7%, while the interval for impacts is situated at -24.5% to +27.5% whereas for global warming potential the range is from -15.4% to +12.9% as a maximum. Explosives are assumed to contribute less than 1% to the total impacts. Both the electrical energy and fossil fuel consumption ratios are displayed. The upstream processes specific to electricity production significantly contribute to human toxicity potential and ecotoxic potential indicators, as for other indicators and also diesel production (all indicators) the contribution is in proportion close to site results ones. However, this study indicates that an environmental load decrease may be investigated with respect to quarry processes as well as equipment age and use. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article reports on the carbon footprint of production processes of polypropylene nonwoven shopping bags made out of two different manufacturing technologies (Products A and B, made by the conventional sewing and thermal joining methods) assessed from their cradle to the gate stage using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. This study was performed based on the comprehensive Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of two different manufacturing sequences obtained from a detailed in-field study of the nonwoven PP bag manufacturing industry. The environmental impacts were quantified by means of the IPCC 2007 GWP V 1.1. method in SIMAPRO 7.2. The carbon footprint expressed in terms of the global warming potential (kg CO2 values for 20 and 100 years), calculated by IPCC 2007 methods, was considered as a directive to compare the environmental impact of these bags, manufactured by the two different technologies, and a detailed explanation of the results is provided in this paper From the results of carbon footprint modelling, product A, made by conventional sewing technology, was found to be better than product B. made by thermal technology A detailed explanation of the results of the environmental performance of these bags as well as the hot-spots in both production technologies are discussed to a greater extent in this article.This study presents an analysis of the global environmental impacts of a three-phase machine operating in continuous service. The industrial production of electric motors requires raw materials, the suitable industrial tools for mass production and a transportation system able to bring each motor to its right place. During the use phase, the motor losses correspond to extra energy consumption and the corresponding environmental impacts for a given local electricity production system. End-of-life scenario corresponds also to extra pollution. During each phase, greenhouse gas and other pollutants specific to the manufacture of electrical machine are emitted. Therefore the improvement of the global quality of electrical machines needs a comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact. This study applies the life cycle assessment (LCA) procedure to the AC machines. The authors evaluate the environmental impacts for a standard 10 kW machine for all the phases of its life cycle (construction, use, end-of-life), and also propose several improvements, which are analysed.This study aims to propose an assessment model for environmental economics that will provide useful information for decision-making on the implementation of pro-environmental and economical construction projects. To meet this objective, this study suggests a procedure for estimating the environmental cost of construction projects. The model combines environmental load assessment and environmental value assessment. The environmental cost of pollutants generated from a construction project was estimated utilizing Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), a value assessment method borrowed from economic science. A case analysis was subsequently conducted to verify the applicability of the proposed model to actual construction projects. The devised model is expected to provide a useful methodology that will scientifically support the planning and management of sustainable construction not only in terms of the environmental aspect but also of the economical aspect.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) assesses the role of bioenergy as a solution to meeting energy demand in a climate-constrained world. Based on integrated assessment models, the SRREN states that deployed bioenergy will contribute the greatest proportion of primary energy among renewable energies and result in greenhouse-gas emission reductions. The report also acknowledges insights from life-cycle assessments, which characterize biofuels as a potential source of significant greenhouse-gas emissions and environmental harm. The SRREN made considerable progress in bringing together contrasting views on indirect land-use change from inductive bottom-up studies, such as life-cycle analysis, and deductive top-down assessments. However, a reconciliation of these contrasting views is still missing. Tackling this challenge is a fundamental prerequisite for future bioenergy assessment.Available results about energy and GreenHouse Gases (GHG) balances of biofuels from Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) or life-cycle based studies present large discrepancies and thus, may lead to contradictory policy-making measures. This work reviewed seven important European LCA studies in a sensitivity analysis approach in order to get a better understanding of the roots of such a debate for three major biofuels in European production: rape methyl ester and ethanol from wheat and sugar beet. Global trends and variability of energy and GHG balances were depicted and completed with a sensitivity analysis carried out for each methodological and data parameter, which allowed making recommendations on the carrying out of LCA in a policy-making or a biofuels comparison context. Methodological choices, and especially allocation rule, appeared as key elements for results variation with influences on balances up to 149%; system expansion approach was identified as the most relevant rule since it integrates the market potential and the environmental interest of by-products promotion, which was pointed out as a crucial point for biofuels sustainability. The influence of local specificity for cultivation data was evaluated up to 167%, which puts too large geographical coverage in question. Modelling uncertainties due to N2O emissions from soils showed influences from 17 to 46%, which represents a crucial challenge for research and for LCA results accuracy. Approximations evaluation pointed out the need to integrate agricultural machinery into the assessment. Finally, land-use issue revealed its dramatic importance for LCA results and the need to define explicit scenarios for land-use alternatives. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used in quantifying the environmental impacts of materials, processes, products, or systems across their entire lifespan from creation to disposal. To evaluate the environmental impact of advancing technology, Life Cycle Assessment with Technological Advances over Time (LCA-TAT) incorporates technology improvements within the traditional LCA framework. In this paper, the LCA-TAT is applied to quantify the environmental impacts of ethanol production using cellulosic biomass as a feedstock through the simultaneous saccharification and co-fermentation (SSCF) process as it improves over time. The data for the SSCF process are taken from the Aspen Plus (R) simulation developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). The Environmental Fate and Risk Assessment Tool (EFRAT) is used to calculate the fugitive emissions and SimaPro 7.1 software is used to quantify the environmental impacts of processes. The impact indicators of the processes are calculated using the Eco-indicator 95 method; impact categories analyzed include ozone layer depletion, heavy metals, carcinogens, summer smog, winter smog, pesticides, greenhouse effect, acidification, and eutrophication. Based on the LCA-TAT results, it is found that removal of the continuous ion exchange step within the pretreatment area increases the environmental impact of the process. The main contributor to the increase in the environmental impact of the process is the heavy metal indicator. In addition, a sensitivity analysis is performed to identify major inputs and outputs that affect environmental impacts of the overall process. Based on this analysis it is observed that an increase in waste production and acid use have the greatest effect on the environmental impacts of the SSCF process. Comparing economic analysis with projected technological advances performed by NREL, the improvement in environmental impact was not matched by a concomitant improvement in economic performance. In order to implement technologies which are environmentally sustainable, it is critical to perform LCA for future technological advances. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely recognized, multicriteria and standardized tool for environmental assessment of products and processes. As an independent evaluation method, emergy assessment has shown to be a promising and relatively novel tool. The technique has gained wide recognition in the past decade but still faces methodological difficulties which prevent it from being accepted by a broader stakeholder community. This review aims to elucidate the fundamental requirements to possibly improve the Emergy evaluation by using LCA. Despite its capability to compare the amount of resources embodied in production systems, Emergy suffers from its vague accounting procedures and lacks accuracy, reproducibility, and completeness. An improvement of Emergy evaluations can be achieved via (1) technical implementation of Emergy algebra in the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI); (2) selection of consistent Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) as characterization factors for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA); and (3) expansion of the LCI system boundaries to include supporting systems usually considered by Emergy but excluded in LCA (e.g., ecosystem services and human labor). Whereas Emergy rules must be adapted to life-cycle structures, LCA should enlarge its inventory to give Emergy a broader computational framework. The matrix inversion principle used for LCAs is also proposed as an alternative to consistently account for a large number of resource UEVs.Wind energy is a fast-growing and promising renewable energy source. The investment costs of wind turbines have decreased over the years, making wind energy economically competitive to conventionally produced electricity. Size scaling in the form of a power law, experience curves and progress rates are used to estimate the cost development of ever-larger turbines. In life cycle assessment, scaling and progress rates are seldom applied to estimate the environmental impacts of wind energy. This study quantifies whether the trend toward larger turbines affects the environmental profile of the generated electricity. Previously published life cycle inventories were combined with an engineering-based scaling approach as well as European wind power statistics. The results showed that the larger the turbine is, the greener the electricity becomes. This effect was caused by pure size effects of the turbine (micro level) as well as learning and experience with the technology over time (macro level). The environmental progress rate was 86%, indicating that for every cumulative production doubling, the global warming potential per kWh was reduced by 14%. The parameters, hub height and rotor diameter were identified as Environmental Key Performance Indicators that can be used to estimate the environmental impacts for a generic turbine.Concern has been voiced in recent years regarding the environmental implications of the Antarctic krill fishery. Attention has focused primarily on ecological concerns, whereas other environmental aspects, including potentially globally problematic emissions and material and energy demands, have not been examined in detail. Here we apply life cycle assessment to measure the contributions of krill meal, oil, and omega-3 capsules to global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, energy use, and biotic resource use. Supply chains of one krill fishing and processing company, Aker BioMarine of Norway, were assessed. Impacts of krill products were found to be driven primarily by the combustion of fossil fuels onboard the fishing vessel and a transport/resupply vessel. Approximately 190 L of fuel are burned per tonne of raw krill landed, markedly higher than fuel inputs to reduction fisheries targeting other species. In contrast, the biotic resource use associated with extracting krill is relatively low compared to that of other reduction fisheries. Results of this study provide insight into the broader environmental implications of the krill fishery, comparisons between products derived from krill and other species targeted for reduction, opportunities for improving the fishery's performance, and a baseline against which to measure future performance.Global water use is dominated by agriculture and has considerable influence on people's livelihood and ecosystems, especially in semiarid and arid regions. Methods to address the impacts of water withdrawal and consumption on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems within life cycle assessment are still sparse and very generic. Regionalized characterization factors (CFs) for a groundwater-fed wetland at the arid coast of Peru are developed for groundwater and surface water withdrawal and consumption in order to address the spatial dependency of water use related impacts. Several agricultural scenarios for 2020 were developed in a workshop with local stakeholders and used for calculating total biodiversity impacts. In contrast to assumptions used in top-down approaches (e.g., Pfister et al. Environ. Sci Technol. 2009, 43, 4098), irrigation with surface water leads in this specific region to benefits for the groundwater-fed wetland, due to additional groundwater recharge from surplus irrigation water. However, irrigation with groundwater leads to ecological damage to the wetland. The CFs derived from the different scenarios are similar and can thus be used as general CFs for this region, helping local decision-makers to plan future agricultural development, including irrigation technologies, crop choices, and protection of the wetland.Passenger transport affects climate through various mechanisms involving both long-lived and short-lived climate forcers. Because diesel cars generally emit less CO2 than gasoline cars, CO2 emission taxes for vehicle registrations and fuels enhance the consumer preference for diesel cars over gasoline cars. However, with the non-CO2 components, which have been changed and will be changed under the previous and upcoming vehicle emission standards, what does the shift from gasoline to diesel cars mean for the climate mitigation? By using a simple climate model, we demonstrate that, under the earlier emissions standards (EURO 3 and 4), a diesel car causes a larger warming up to a decade after the emissions than a similar gasoline car due to the higher emissions of black carbon and NOx (enhancing the O-3 production). Beyond a decade, the warming caused by a diesel car becomes, however, weaker because of the lower CO2 emissions. As the latter emissions standards (EURO 5 and 6) are phased in, the short-term warming due to a diesel car becomes smaller primarily due to the lower black carbon emissions. Thus, although results are subject to restrictive assumptions and uncertainties, the switch from gasoline to diesel cars encouraged by CO2 taxes does not contradict with the climate mitigation focusing on long-term consequences.The goal of this study was to use life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to assess the environmental impacts of industrial and institutional cleaning products that are compliant with the Green Seal Standard for Cleaning Products for Industrial and Institutional Use, GS-37, and conventional products (non-GS-37-compliant) products. The scope of the study was "cradle-to-grave," to encompass the energy and material resources required for the production of raw material and packaging components to use and final disposal of the cleaning product. The generic functional unit for this study was annual cleaning of 100,000 ft(2) of office space. The ReCiPe 2008 Midpoint (hierarchist perspective) impact assessment methodology was used including the following impact categories: climate change, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, human toxicity, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity, agricultural land occupation, natural land transformation, water depletion, and fossil depletion. General-purpose, glass, and restroom cleaning products were included in the study. Model products of GS-37-compliant, conventional concentrate, and conventional ready-to-use versions of each cleaning product were evaluated in the study. The conventional ready-to-use industrial and institutional cleaning product had the highest environmental impact in all product types and for the most impact categories analyzed. The GS-37-compliant products were lower than the conventional products in most impact categories studied. Furthermore, normalization of the results showed that the impact categories of marine ecotoxicity, human toxicity, and freshwater ecotoxicity were dominant, and the conventional products led these impact categories. The packaging and distribution stages were dominant for the conventional products, whereas the product formula (i.e., chemicals used in the product) contributed significantly to overall impacts for GS-37-compliant products. This is because the GS-37 standard addresses packaging and distribution, but could potentially further address the formula considerations. The comparative life cycle assessment performed in this study showed that the Green Seal Standard for Cleaning Products for Industrial and Institutional Use, GS-37, identifies products with notably lower environmental impact compared to typical alternatives in the market. This reduced impact was a result of the requirements in the Green Seal standard that addressed the leading sources of the impacts (namely packaging, transportation) and is not included in any other standard or recognition program in North America.The aim of this study was to perform a well-to-pump life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the overall net energy balance and environmental impact of bioethanol production using Tall Fescue grass straw as feedstock. The energy requirements and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were compared to those of gasoline to explore the potential of bioethanol as sustainable fuel. The functional unit used in the study was 10,000 MJ of energy. The data for grass seed production were collected from the farmers in Oregon and published reports. The compositions of straw, pretreatment, and hydrolysis yields were obtained from laboratory experiments. Process models were developed for ethanol production using different pretreatment technologies in SuperPro Designer to calculate the process energy, raw materials, utility use, and emissions related. The Greenhouse Gases Regulated Emissions and Energy use in Transportation model and other literature studies were used to obtain additional data. Systematic boundary identification was performed using relative mass, energy, and economic value method using a 5% cutoff value. Ethanol yields from grass straw were estimated 256.62, 255.8, 255.3, and 230.2 L/dry metric ton of biomass using dilute acid, dilute alkali, hot water, and steam explosion pretreatments, respectively. Fossil energy required to produce one functional unit was in the range of -1507 to 3940 MJ for different ethanol production techniques. GHG emissions from ethanol LCA models were in the range of -131 to -555.4 kg CO2 eq. per 10,000 MJ of ethanol. Fossil energy use and GHG emissions during ethanol production were found to be lowest for steam explosion pretreatment among all pretreatment processes evaluated. Change in coproduct allocation from economic to mass basis during agricultural production resulted in 62.4% and 133.1% increase in fossil energy use and GHG emissions respectively. Technologies used for ethanol production process had major impact on total fossil energy use and GHG emissions. N2O emissions from the nitrogen fertilizers were major contributor (77%) of total GHG emissions produced during agricultural activities. There was 57.43-112.67% reduction in fossil energy use to produce 10,000 MJ of ethanol compared to gasoline; however, about 0.35 ha of land is also required to produce this energy.In the Indonesian transportation sector, gasoline is the most consumed fuel; in 2008 it accounted for 60% of the total fuel consumption in transportation. Increasing concern regarding environmental issues, particularly urban air quality, makes the utilization of gasoline in transport a crucial aspect to be analyzed. However, besides tailpipe emissions, there are many upstream processes when producing gasoline which need to be evaluated in terms of impacts to the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a tool for the assessment of resource consumption and associated impacts generated from utilization of gasoline in the transportation sector including crude oil extraction, oil refining and the use of gasoline in car. The impact categories considered are global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), abiotic resource depletion potential (ADP), human toxicity potential (HTP), and ecotoxicity potential (ETP). The results show that for global warming, gasoline combustion during end use contributes 93% of the total. The second largest contributor to GWP is oil refining (5%) followed by crude oil extraction (2%). In AP, combustion plays a significant role too with a contribution of 84%, followed by refining with 13% and crude oil extraction with 2%. The most significant process contributing to EP is once again gasoline combustion (95%) and the second contributor is the refining stage (4%), while transport contributes only 1%. For abiotic resource depletion on the other hand, almost 100% of the impact is from crude oil extraction. For HTP, the refining stage plays a very significant role to the life cycle of gasoline contributing 99.6%, whereas for ETP it is refining (62%) and extraction (38%). Using gasoline as transport fuel indicates that gasoline combustion is predominantly responsible for GWP, AP and EP whilst ADP is dominated by crude oil extraction stage and refinery is mainly responsible for human toxicity and ecotoxicity potential, The result of this study can be used as an overview for gasoline production and to compare with other transportation fuel options in Indonesia.This study provides a detailed, process-based life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory of an ornamental tree production system for urban forestry. The success of large-scale tree planting initiatives for climate protection depends on projects being net sinks for CO2 over their entire life cycle. However, previous assessments of urban tree planting initiatives have not accounted for the inputs required for tree production in nurseries, which include greenhouse systems, irrigation, and fertilization. A GHG inventory of nursery operations for tree production is a necessary step to assess the life cycle benefits or drawbacks of large-scale tree planting activities. Using surveys, interviews, and life cycle inventory databases, we developed a process-based life cycle inventory of GHG emissions for a large nursery operation in California, USA. The inventory demonstrated that 4.6 kg of CO2-equivalent is emitted per #5 (nominally a 5-gallon) tree, a common tree size produced by nurseries. Energy use contributed 44% of all CO2-equivalent emissions, of which electricity and propane constituted 78%. Electricity use is dominated by irrigation demands, and propane is used primarily for greenhouse heating. Material inputs constituted the next largest contributor at 36% of emissions; plastic containers contributed just over half of these emissions. Transport emissions accounted for 16% of total nursery GHG emissions. Shipping bamboo stakes from China (43%) and diesel fuel consumed by nursery delivery trucks (33%) were the largest transport emission sources. GHG emissions from the tree production life stage are 20% to 50% of mean annual CO2 storage rates based on urban tree inventories for three California cities. While considering nursery production alone is insufficient for drawing conclusions about the net climate change benefits of tree planting initiatives, the results demonstrate that nursery production emissions are modest compared with CO2 storage rates during tree life. Identifying key sources of emissions in the nursery tree production system can help operators reduce emissions by targeting so-called hot-spots. In particular, switching to renewable energy sources, capitalizing on energy and water efficiency opportunities, container light-weighting, and sourcing bamboo stakes from producers closer to the point of use are potential avenues for reduced emissions.This study analyzes the interrelated components in the production of a 5-cm caliper, field-grown, spade-dug Acer rubrum 'October Glory' tree in terms of their contributions to the carbon footprint, global warming potential (GWP), of this balled and burlapped product during production and its complete life cycle. The carbon footprint, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, associated with input materials and equipment use to produce this tree was expressed as global warming potential (GWP) in kilograms of CO2 equivalence (CO(2)e). A model system was defined encompassing production from rooting cuttings to finished product, the subsequent transport and transplanting in the landscape and the use and end-of-life phases. The model system was defined through nursery manager and arborist interviews and published production recommendations and good agricultural practices. Including carbon sequestration during 1 year of liner production and 4 years of field production (0.366 and 12.1 kg CO(2)e, respectively), the cutting-to-landscape GWP of the tree was calculated to be 8.213 kg CO(2)e. Contributions to a tree's carbon footprint from input materials (2.85 kg CO(2)e), fuel or electricity consumption during production (10.342 kg CO(2)e), transport to the customer at a distance of 386 km (4.040 kg CO2e) and transport 32 km and transplanting into a landscape site (3.333 kg CO(2)e) were calculated. Fuel and electricity consumption from cutting-to-landscape (17.715 kg CO(2)e/tree) contributed 86% of the product GWP, before accounting for carbon sequestration during production. The weighted positive impact of sequestered carbon over a 60-year useful life in the landscape would exceed 901 kg CO(2)e, less the 92.9 kg CO(2)e required for removal and disposal. An LCA analyzing input components in field production of a shade tree will allow nursery managers to make informed decisions about the various operational elements. Individual variables that contributed most to model sensitivity included CO2 sequestration during production and the use phase. Other important factors in the model included transport distance for the final product, fertilization, and equipment use for such activities as harvesting. The substantial weighted impact of carbon sequestration of the tree during the use phase would greatly outweigh carbon investment in its production, transport, transplanting, and disposal.The goal of this paper is to describe the life cycle inventory (LCI) approach to steel produced by ArcelorMittal's Basic Oxygen Furnace (AMBOF) in Krakw, Poland. The present LCI is representative for the reference year 2005 by application of PN-EN ISO 14040:2009 (PN-EN ISO 2009). The system boundaries were labeled as gate-to-gate (covering a full chain process of steel production). The background input and output data from the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steelmaking process has been inventoried as follows: pig iron, scrap, slag forming materials (CaO), ferroalloys, Al, carbon and graphite carburizer (material for carburization of steel), isolating powder, consumption of energy and fuels including natural gas, blast furnace gas and coke oven gas, electric energy, steam, air, oxygen, industrial water and heat, emission of air pollutants, waste, internal transport and land use. LCI steelmaking process was developed mainly on the basis of the following sources: site-specific measured or calculated data, study carried out by the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakw, AMP Environmental Impact Report, study carried out by the Faculty of Mining Surveying and Environmental Engineering of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakw, literature information and expert consultations. The functional unit (FU) is represented by 1,677,987 Mg of steel, produced by BOF steelmaking process. Time coverage is 2005. Operating parameters as well as air emissions associated with the BOF steelmaking process were presented. The production data (steel) was given. The emissions of SO2, NO2, CO, CH4, CO2, dust, heavy metals (Cr, Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni and Mn) and waste (slag and gas cleaning sludge) are the most important outcomes of the steel process. With regard to 1,677,987 Mg of steel produced by AMBOF, the consumption of natural gas, blast furnace gas and coke oven gas amounted to 10,671,997, 755,094 and 13,222,537.6 m(3)/year, respectively. Electric energy, steam, air, oxygen and heat input amounts were in the order of 45,003,611.3 kWh, 21,646.03 Mg, 107,592,526 m(3), 90,611,298 m(3) and 16,779.87 GJ, respectively. Direct emissions in air of SO2, NO2, dust, Cr, Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, Mn, CO and CH4 from three converters (Nos. 1-3) were on the order of 28.966, 71.331, 752.05, 0.025, 0.024, 0.0216, 0.0156, 0.0163, 1.5694, 540.449 and 0.364 Mg, respectively. Total CO2 emission was 138,374 Mg. The amounts of slag and gas cleaning sludge were 276,709.64 and 16,749 Mg, respectively. The LCI study resulted in the development of a database with a vast inventory of data regarding steelmaking process in AMBOF referring to the year 2005. The output of the AMBOF LCI study is a set of gate-to-gate LCI data for steel production in BOF technology. This is the first tentative study to express steel production in Poland in terms of LCA/LCI in the steelmaking industry. The FU chosen for the present study is 1,677,987 Mg of steel produced in a classical BOF. The quality of data input in this LCI study is very good. The rules were used in accordance with ISO Standard for LCA. The methodological approach and boundaries that were made are transparent and fully documented. The purpose of this study is to help AMP authorities solve environmental and technical aspects as well as to train steel industry people in the field of life cycle assessment. In addition, this study can be extended to other processes involved in steelmaking route (via sintering plant/hot rolling plant). Moreover, these results move the LCI study on the steelmaking process one step forward. The LCI offers environmental information consisting of the list of environmental loads. The impact assessment phase aims to present more understandable results from the inventory analysis, and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) will be the direction for future research. Another issue to discuss is the integration of LCA with risk assessment for industrial processes.Several damages have been associated with the exposure of human beings to noise. These include auditory effects, i.e., hearing impairment, but also non-auditory physiological ones such as hypertension and ischemic heart disease, or psychological ones such as annoyance, depression, sleep disturbance, limited performance of cognitive tasks or inadequate cognitive development. Noise can also interfere with intended activities, both in daytime and nighttime. ISO 14'040 also indicated the necessity of introducing noise, together with other less developed impact categories, in a complete LCA study, possibly changing the results of many LCA studies already available. The attempts available in the literature focused on the integration of transportation noise in LCA. Although being considered the most frequent source of intrusive impact, transportation noise is not the only type of noise that can have a malign impact on public health. Several other sources of noise such as industrial or occupational need to be taken into account to have a complete consideration of noise into LCA. Major life cycle inventories (LCI) typically do not contain data on noise emissions yet and characterisation factors are not yet clearly defined. The aim of the present paper is to briefly review what is already available in the field and propose a new framework for the consideration of human health impacts of any type of noise that could be of interest in the LCA practice, providing indications for the introduction of noise in LCI and analysing what data is already available and, in the form of a research agenda, what other resources would be needed to reach a complete coverage of the problem. The literature production related to the impacts of noise on human health has been analysed, with considerations of impacts caused by transportation noise as well as occupational and industrial noise. The analysis of the specialist medical literature allowed for a better understanding of how to deal with the epidemiological findings from an LCA perspective and identify areas still missing dose-response relations. A short review of the state-of-science in the field of noise and LCA is presented with an expansion to other contributions in the field subsequent to the comprehensive work by Althaus et al. (2009a; 2009b). Focusing on the analogy between toxicological analysis of pollutants and noise impact evaluation, an alternative approach is suggested, which is oriented to the consideration of any type of noise in LCA and not solely of transportation noise. A multi-step framework is presented as a method for the inclusion of noise impacts on human health in LCA. A theoretical structural framework for the inclusion of noise impacts in LCA is provided as a basis for future modelling expansions in the field. Rather than evaluating traffic/transportation noise, the method focuses on the consideration of the noise level and its impact on human health, regardless of the source producing the noise in an analogous manner as considered in the fields of toxicology and common noise evaluation practices combined. The resulting framework will constitute the basis for the development of a more detailed mathematical model for the inclusion of noise in LCA. The toxicological background and the experience of the analysis of the release of chemicals in LCA seem to provide sufficient ground for the inclusion of noise in LCA: taken into account the physical differences and the uniqueness of noise as an impact, the procedure applied to the release of chemicals during a product life cycle is key for a valuable inclusion of noise in the LCA logic. It is fundamental for the development of research in the field of LCA and noise to consider any type of noise. Further studies are needed to contribute to the inclusion of noise sources and noise impacts in LCA. In this paper, a structure is proposed that will be expanded and adapted in the future and which forms the basic framework for the successive modelling phase.Weighting is one of the steps involved in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). This enables us to integrate various environmental impacts and facilitates the interpretation of environmental information. Many different weighting methodologies have already been proposed, and the results of many case studies with a single index have been published. However, a number of problems still remain. Weighting factors should be based on the preferences of society as a whole so that the life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioner can successfully apply them to every product and service. However, most existing studies do not really measure national averages but only the average of the responses obtained from the people actually sampled. Measuring the degree of uncertainty in LCIA factors is, therefore, one of the most important issues in current LCIA research, and some advanced LCIA methods have tried to deal with the problem of uncertainty. However, few weighting methods take into account the variability between each individual's environmental thoughts. LIME2, the updated version of life cycle impact assessment method based on endpoint modeling (LIME), has been developed as part of the second LCA national project of Japan. One of the aims of LIME2 is to develop new weighting factors which fulfill the following requirements: (1) to accurately represent the environmental attitudes of the Japanese public, (2) to measure the variability between each individual's environmental thoughts and reflect them in the choice of suitable weighting factors. This study adopted the technique of conjoint analysis, which is currently the most advanced methodology available in the field of environmental economics. Using a random sampling process, 1,000 individual responses were collected. Every response was based on an interview survey designed to minimize bias. We used a random parameter logit model to estimate the preferences of society. Statistical values based on this model can be considered to reflect the variability between each individual's environmental thoughts. The calculated results can then be used to develop integration factors in LIME2, enabling us to express LCIA results as a single index, such as external cost. The calculated values were significant statistically at the 1% level (all p values for the safeguard subject coefficients were less than 0.0001), with the exception of "social assets." Based on the calculated results, two types of weighting factor, an economic valuation and a dimensionless index, were obtained. A relative comparison of importance among these four categories indicates that "biodiversity" receives the highest level of recognition, followed by "human health" and "primary production," while the weight of "social assets" rate lower than the other safeguard subjects, in comparison. Using the calculated results produced by the RPL model, the probability density of the variables for individual preferences could then be derived and displayed. The coefficients of variance for the estimated weighting factors were relatively small (in the range from 0.1 to 0.3). Accurate weighting factors representing the environmental attitudes of the Japanese public are needed in order to conduct general-purpose LCA for Japanese products. Random, unbiased sampling throughout Japan and an interview survey carried out on 1,000 respondents enabled us to address and solve the problems found with past weighting methodologies. We confirmed that the results of comparisons carried out among safeguard subjects were statistically significant, and showed that the contents of the questionnaires were well understood by the respondents. This study succeeded in visualizing the variability between each individual's environmental thoughts in order to improve the transparency of the weighting factors-expressing the difference in individual preferences within a certain range. This data can be used to develop integration factors with statistical values which can then be applied to uncertainty analysis in future LCA case studies.For compliance with the ISO standard 14044, comparative life cycle assessments are required to address data quality for time-related coverage, geographic coverage, technology coverage, precision, completeness, representativeness, consistency, reproducibility, sources of the data and uncertainty of the information. As the community of practitioners and data developers grows, the purpose of this commentary is to initiate discussion of current issues and opportunities for improvement in data quality analysis. Commonly applied data quality analysis methods are described as ranging from the collection of only qualitative information to the assignment of numeric scores. Common interpretations of data quality information are described as ranging from comparison in raw form to contribution and sensitivity analysis results, combination into an aggregate/multiaspect score, or use to infer data uncertainty. Method strengths and issues are described. The strengths of current data quality analysis methods lie in the consideration of the data quality aspects specified by the ISO standards and in the differentiation of low and high data quality. Weaknesses, however, lie in unrepeatable scoring criteria, aggregation of data quality information in a way that is difficult to interpret or misinterpreted and the use of data quality information in the estimation of uncertainty with no basis for accuracy. It is found that among commonly applied methods there exists a need for improved repeatability and interpretability. When combined with emerging efforts to provide reliable uncertainty data to support the use of data quality information with contribution and sensitivity analysis results and efforts that have improved consideration of completeness, the future of data quality analysis promises substantial contribution to the field.Introduction Waste management is a key component in society's strategy to mitigate the adverse effects of its economic activities. Through its comprehensive system approach, life cycle assessment (LCA) is frequently put forward as a powerful tool for the assessment of waste management activities. However, many methodological challenges regarding the environmental assessment of waste treatment systems still remain, and consensus is still far from being reached in areas like the definition of (temporal) system boundaries, life cycle inventory generation, selection and use of environmental indicators, and interpretation and communication of the LCA results. Summary of the topics presented in DF-46 The 46th Swiss Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment (DF-46) consisted of three sessions. The first session tried to address policy making and implications for sustainable waste management of consumer products, e.g., information and communication technology, and food packaging. The second session focused on recent methodological developments in LCA for end-of-life treatment (EoL) activities and waste management assessment. The third session was dedicated to E-waste treatment and scarce metal recovery processes. DF-46 closed with short presentations on decision support in the areas of coprocessing, food waste, and after-treatment technologies for municipal waste incineration residues. Conclusions The main conclusions drawn from DF-46 are: (a) the option of waste prevention, despite its prominent position in the so-called waste hierarchy, is rarely considered in LCAs on waste and EoL management, (b) although a general problem in many other applications of LCA, the differences in scope definitions and time perspectives, the use of proxies or data of poor quality, allocation, or system expansion procedures, and weighting in the impact assessment are prominent issues in LCAs of waste and EoL management and thus have to be minimized and inventory data must be as transparent as possible, (c) life cycle inventory formats have to be adapted to be able to account for new materials, such as nanoparticles and scarce metals in LCA, (d) the selection of environmental indicators requires clear guidance on their appropriate use and open communication. The selection of a set of complementary indicators is of particular importance in order to avoid that the adverse effects on the environment are merely shifted between impact categories, and (e) useful LCA tools for the environmental assessment of waste management options are currently developed to meet the evolving demands and expectations for support in decision making related to waste and EoL management today and in the future. The presentations from DF-46 are available for download (www.lcaforum.ch).This paper illustrates the consensus achieved by the members of the European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production Round Table Working Group 1 in their second scientific workshop held in the European Commission's Joint Research Centre site in Ispra, Italy on July 5-7, 2011. This workshop came after having run a detailed analysis, of data gaps and of methodologies, for the environmental assessment of food and drink products. In particular, the aim of this workshop was to reach consensus amongst key stakeholders on those approaches found diverging across methodologies and on which the forthcoming protocol for the ENVIronmental assessment of FOOds and Drinks (ENVIFOOD Protocol) is expected to provide guidance to the sector. Almost 30 round table members joined the workshop. Most of them were representatives from business associations associated with the food and drink supply chain and their member companies, EU member state governments, government-supported initiatives on environmental labelling schemes, NGOs and The Sustainability Consortium. Several European Commission staff members also participated in the workshop. A pool of selected senior scientists on food LCA, data and environmental impact assessment methods were also invited to join the workshop. Even if not eligible to take part in the round table decision-making process on the workshop outcomes, some of these invited scientists joined the workshop and actively contributed to the discussion by providing participants with their arguments. A pre-analysis of key existing guidelines and the guiding principles for voluntary environmental assessment and communication agreed by the food round table members provided the basis for the workshop. Besides two plenary sessions (i.e. one to introduce the topics at the beginning of the workshop and one in the end to draw conclusions), the workshop had three ad hoc breakout sessions to discuss those approaches where consensus is missing across environmental assessment methodologies. Bearing in mind the twofold purpose of the ENVIFOOD Protocol (i.e. providing guidance for assessments instrumental to both communication and environmental improvement), some approaches for assessment were agreed in the workshop. For instance, in the context of those assessments instrumental to business-to-consumer (B2C) communication, the functional unit shall be equal to 100 g or ml. In addition, the functional unit can also be expressed either per recommended serving or per portion. When it comes to those assessments for business-to-business communication, reference flows shall be preferred to functional units as reference units of analysis. These and many other approaches on calculation rules, data quality and impact assessment were agreed by the round table members. These will be likely integrated into the ENVIFOOD Protocol. Despite the workshop was relatively successful in terms of consensus achieved, some issues still remained. Round table members are continuing the discussion inside the working group 1 drafting group to address those issues where no consensus was reached (e.g. system boundary for assessments instrumental to B2C communication) or where a more in-depth background analysis was needed (e.g. accounting for land use change, allocation for recycling). A public consultation will be run in 2012 to ensure that the coming ENVIFOOD Protocol is both scientifically sound and practical to implement.The development of renewable energy technologies is a critical tool for reducing climate change and the reliance on fossil fuels. However, renewable energy technologies cannot be considered totally clean because they require energy consumption and have environmental impacts that cannot be neglected during their life cycle. In this paper, the life cycle assessment methodology was applied to assess resource use and other environmental burdens related to the entire life-cycle steps of a solar cooling plant. The investigated system works with an absorption chiller assisted by a solar plant. Two back-up configurations (hot back-up and cold back-up) were examined in two localities: Palermo (southern Italy) and Zurich (Switzerland). The benefits in terms of primary energy savings and greenhouse gases emission reduction were demonstrated by comparing the use of this innovative plant in substitution of a conventional one. Energy and CO2eq emission payback times and the energy return ratio of the system were calculated. For all the analysed configurations they ranged from 4 to 6 years. A sensitivity analysis related to the calculation of the energy payback time was carried out to assess the influence of various system performance parameters on the payback index. The analysis stressed the following: - LCA of renewable energy technologies has to include a detailed analysis of the use phase to assess the benefits that arise from the energy produced by the system during its useful life and to obtain reliable and high-quality LCA results. - The use phase is responsible of about 70-90% of the energetic and environmental impacts of the plant life cycle. - The innovative plant has a lower environmental impact than the conventional plant. - The advantages of renewable energy technologies strongly depend on the climate of the installation site. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.BACKGROUND: For most items used in operating rooms, it is unclear whether reusable items are environmentally and financially advantageous in comparison with single-use variants. We examined the life cycles of reusable and single-use central venous catheter kits used to aid the insertion of single-use, central venous catheters in operating rooms. We did not examine the actual disposable catheter sets themselves. We assessed the entire financial and environmental costs for the kits, including the influence of the energy source used for sterilization. METHODS: For the reusable central venous catheter kit, we performed a "time-in-motion" study to determine the labor costs and measured the energy and water consumption for cleaning and sterilization at Western Health, Melbourne, Australia. For the majority of the inputs for the single-use kit, we relied upon industry and inventory-sourced databases. We modeled the life cycles of the reusable and single-use central venous catheter kits with Monte Carlo analysis. RESULTS: Inclusive of labor, the reusable central venous catheter insertion kits cost $6.35 Australian ($A) (95% confidence interval [CI], $A5.89 to $A6.86), and the single-use kits cost $A8.65. For the reusable kit, CO2 emissions were 1211 g (95% CI, 1099 to 1323 g) and for the single-use kit 407 g (95% CI, 379 to 442 g). Water use was 27.7 L (95% CI, 27.0 to 28.6 l) for the reusable kit and 2.5 L (95% CI, 2.1 to 2.9 l) for the single-use kit. For the reusable kit, sterilization had the greatest environmental cost, and for the single-use kit, the manufacture of plastic and metal components had the largest environmental costs. Different sources of electricity to make the reusable kits patient-ready again affected the CO2 emissions: electricity from hospital gas cogeneration resulted in 436 g CO2 (95% CI, 410 to 473 g CO2), from the United States electricity grid 764 g CO2 (95% CI, 509 to 1174 g CO2), and from the European electricity grid 572 g (95% CI, 470 to 713 g CO2). CONCLUSIONS: Inclusive of labor, the reusable central venous catheter insertion kits were less expensive than were the single-use kits. For our hospital, which uses brown coal-sourced electricity, the environmental costs of the reusable kit were considerably greater than those of the single-use kit. Efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of reusable items should be directed towards decreasing the water and energy consumed in cleaning and sterilization. The source of hospital electricity significantly alters the relative environmental effects of reusable items. (Anesth Analg 2012;114:1073-80)BACKGROUND: Anesthesiologists must consider the entire life cycle of drugs in order to include environmental impacts into clinical decisions. In the present study we used life cycle assessment to examine the climate change impacts of 5 anesthetic drugs: sevoflurane, desflurane, isoflurane, nitrous oxide, and propofol. METHODS: A full cradle-to-grave approach was used, encompassing resource extraction, drug manufacturing, transport to health care facilities, drug delivery to the patient, and disposal or emission to the environment. At each stage of the life cycle, energy, material inputs, and emissions were considered, as well as use-specific impacts of each drug. The 4 inhalation anesthetics are greenhouse gases (GHGs), and so life cycle GHG emissions include waste anesthetic gases vented to the atmosphere and emissions (largely carbon dioxide) that arise from other life cycle stages. RESULTS: Desflurane accounts for the largest life cycle GHG impact among the anesthetic drugs considered here: 15 times that of isoflurane and 20 times that of sevoflurane on a per MAC-hour basis when administered in an O-2/air admixture. GHG emissions increase significantly for all drugs when administered in an N2O/O-2 admixture. For all of the inhalation anesthetics, GHG impacts are dominated by uncontrolled emissions of waste anesthetic gases. GHG impacts of propofol are comparatively quite small, nearly 4 orders of magnitude lower than those of desflurane or nitrous oxide. Unlike the inhaled drugs, the GHG impacts of propofol primarily stem from the electricity required for the syringe pump and not from drug production or direct release to the environment. DISCUSSION: Our results reiterate previous published data on the GHG effects of these inhaled drugs, while providing a life cycle context. There are several practical environmental impact mitigation strategies. Desflurane and nitrous oxide should be restricted to cases where they may reduce morbidity and mortality over alternative drugs. Clinicians should avoid unnecessarily high fresh gas flow rates for all inhaled drugs. There are waste anesthetic gas capturing systems, and even in advance of reprocessed gas applications, strong consideration should be given to their use. From our results it appears likely that techniques other than inhalation anesthetics, such as total IV anesthesia, neuraxial, or peripheral nerve blocks, would be least harmful to the environment. (Anesth Analg 2012;114:1086-90)This paper studies allocation of fuel costs and CO2-emissions to heat and power in a CHP plant producing heat to an integrated pulp and paper mill and electricity to the liberalized electricity markets (or to the mill by the market price). The CHP plant and the mill are considered to be two separate economical units and both the mill and the CHP plant perspectives are discussed. Fuel costs and CO2-emissions are allocated using the energy, exergy and market based methods. The CHP plant purchases black liquor and bark from the mill. It also purchases oil from the markets to cover the whole fuel demand of the plant. The results indicate that the marked based method can be recommended as a "neutral" cost allocation method, because with that, the energy producer is not collecting extra margins from selling steam. This means that heat pricing is cost based. The results also indicate that depending on the emission factor and efficiency of alternative energy production form, the marked based method or the exergy method allocate the lowest CO2-emissions to heat. Therefore, the use of market based method for allocating costs and CO2 emissions can be recommended in order to use one single approach in both. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Union Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC (RED) has adopted climate change assessment as one of the environmental criteria used to evaluate the level of sustainability by indicating the impact values for every phase of the biofuel chain. This paper shows the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cultivation of sunflower for biodiesel production in Tuscany, Italy. In the five case studies, the GHG emissions of sunflower cultivation exceed the default value (18 g [CO(2)eq] MJ(-1)) indicated by the RED. This is mainly due to diesel consumption and emissions from nitrogen fertilisers that are on average 180% and 255% higher than the reference values, respectively. GHG emissions allocation among sunflower biodiesel and co-products was made according to energy content principle. Only the biodiesel from sunflower cultivated in the two most efficient farms achieved a GHG saving with respect to conventional diesel (36%) that made it possible to fulfil the RFD's requirements. From these results, it seems that the observance of such requirements on GHG emissions for sunflower biodiesel cultivation phase in Tuscany will not be easy to satisfy without a significant revision of local farm practices, aimed primarily at reducing the use of nitrogen fertilisers and diesel consumption. In fact, the GHG emissions reported in the RED for sunflower cultivation were calculated using excessively low farm inputs compared with the typical amounts for sunflower cultivation practices in Tuscany. (C) 2012 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Four systems for household food waste collection are compared in relation the environmental impact categories eutrophication potential, acidification potential, global warming potential as well as energy use. Also, a hotspot analysis is performed in order to suggest improvements in each of the compared collection systems. Separate collection of household food waste in paper bags (with and without drying prior to collection) with use of kitchen grinders and with use of vacuum system in kitchen sinks were compared. In all cases, food waste was used for anaerobic digestion with energy and nutrient recovery in all cases. Compared systems all resulted in net avoidance of assessed environmental impact categories: eutrophication potential (-0.1 to -2.4 kg NO(3)(-)eq/ton food waste), acidification potential (-0.4 to -1.0 kg SO(2)(-)eq/ton food waste), global warming potential (-790 to 960 kg CO(2)(-)eq/ton food waste) and primary energy use (-1.7 to -3.6 GJ/ton food waste). Collection with vacuum system results in the largest net avoidence of primary energy use, while disposal of food waste in paper bags for decentralized drying before collection result in a larger net avoidence of global warming, eutrophication and acidification. However, both these systems not have been taken into use in large scale systems yet and further investigations are needed in order to confirm the outcomes from the comparison. Ranking of scenarios differ largely if considering only emissions in the foreground system, indicating the importance of taking also downstream emissions into consideration when comparing different collection systems. The hot spot identification shows that losses of organic matter in mechanical pretreatment as well as tank connected food waste disposal systems and energy in drying and vacuum systems reply to the largest impact on the results in each system respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) focused on biochar and bioenergy generation was performed for three thermal treatment configurations (slow pyrolysis, fast pyrolysis and gasification). Ten UK biodegradable wastes or residues were considered as feedstocks in this study. Carbon (equivalent) abatement (CA) and electricity production indicators were calculated. Slow pyrolysis systems offer the best performance in terms of CA, with net results varying from 0.07 to 1.25 tonnes of CO2 eq. t(-1) of feedstock treated. On the other hand, gasification achieves the best electricity generation outputs, with results varying around 0.9 MWhe t(-1) of feedstock. Moreover, selection of a common waste treatment practice as the reference scenario in an LCA has to be undertaken carefully as this will have a key influence upon the CA performance of pyrolysis or gasification biochar systems (P/GBS). Results suggest that P/GBS could produce important environmental benefits in terms of CA, but several potential pollution issues arising from contaminants in the biochar have to be addressed before biochar and bioenergy production from biodegradable waste can become common practice. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article aims to generate the environmental profile of Singapore's Semakau landfill by comparing three different operational options associated with the life cycle stages of landfilling activities, against a 'business as usual' scenario. Before life cycle assessment or LCA is used to quantify the potential impacts from landfilling activities, an attempt to incorporate localized and empirical information into the amounts of ash and MSW sent to the landfill was made. A linear regression representation of the relationship between the mass of waste disposed and the mass of incineration ash generated was modeled from waste statistics between years 2004 and 2009. Next, the mass of individual MSW components was projected from 2010 to 2030. The LCA results highlighted that in a 'business as usual' scenario the normalized total impacts of global warming, acidification and human toxicity increased by about 2% annually from 2011 to 2030. By replacing the 8000-tonne barge with a 10000-tonne coastal bulk carrier or freighter (in scenario 2) a grand total reduction of 48% of both global warming potential and acidification can be realized by year 2030. Scenario 3 explored the importance of having a Waste Water Treatment Plant in place to reduce human toxicity levels - however, the overall long-term benefits were not as significant as scenario 2. It is shown in scenario 4 that the option of increased recycling championed over all other three scenarios in the long run, resulting in a total 58% reduction in year 2030 for the total normalized results. A separate comparison of scenarios 1-4 is also carried out for energy utilization and land use in terms of volume of waste occupied. Along with the predicted reductions in environmental burdens, an additional bonus is found in the expanded lifespan of Semakau landfill from year 2032 (base case) to year 2039. Model limitations and suggestions for improvements were also discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As part of the EU Life + NOVEDI project, a new eco-efficient recycling route has been implemented to maximise resources and energy recovery from post-consumer waste glass, through integrated waste management and industrial production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to identify engineering solutions to sustainability during the development of green building products. The new process and the related LCA are framed within a meaningful case of industrial symbiosis, where multiple waste streams are utilised in a multi-output industrial process. The input is a mix of rejected waste glass from conventional container glass recycling and waste special glass such as monitor glass, bulbs and glass fibres. The green building product is a recycled foam glass (RFG) to be used in high efficiency thermally insulating and lightweight concrete. The environmental gains have been contrasted against induced impacts and improvements have been proposed. Recovered co-products, such as glass fragments/powders, plastics and metals, correspond to environmental gains that are higher than those related to landfill avoidance, whereas the latter is cancelled due to increased transportation distances. In accordance to an eco-efficiency principle, it has been highlighted that recourse to highly energy intensive recycling should be limited to waste that cannot be closed-loop recycled. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a consequence of most building's design lifespan, changing weather conditions driven by climate change, are likely to influence energy demands for heating and cooling, thereby altering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to operation of these systems. A methodology is presented that allows estimation of building lifecycle GHG emissions (both embodied and operational) at the early design stage, accounting for the changing weather conditions produced by climate models (specifically the probabilistic projections provided by the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) Weather Generator). Annual heating and cooling demands are estimated from projected future temperatures using a model 'calibrated' to building performance through dynamic thermal modelling of a selection of example years. A worked example assessing lifecycle GHG emissions of a UK mixed-use development is presented. This shows annual GHG emissions clue to space cooling could increase by between 26 and 70% from 2020 to 2080 depending on the future emissions scenario applied. Over the same period, emissions due to heating may decrease by between 12 and 42%, giving an overall net increase in GHG emissions from these systems. Improvements to building cooling systems and reduction to heat gains, particularly lighting, are recommended to reduce risk of increasing GHG emissions over time. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The design of autonomous systems for the rural electrification is a complex task due to the diversity of variables involved in such processes. The absence of programs and methods that carry out this task in a clear and precise manner constitutes a barrier to the dissemination of these systems, although some tools have been developed that present other possible limitations. The exclusion of the environmental dimension in the design and evaluation process of hybrid systems means that the true benefits are not evaluated in terms of quality and quantity. In an attempt to overcome such deficiencies, this work presents a new method of design; approached from the multi-objective optimization of systems. The multi-objective optimization by means of enumerative search implemented by the Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable program is used to generate a set of solutions optimized economically by the value of the net present cost (NPC). The analysis of greenhouse gas emissions (in tCO2-eq.) in the life cycle of each one of the system components is carried out and a set of solutions with the values of the two objective functions is generated, namely NPC and NAESLC (net avoided emissions in the system life cycle). The method is applied to a case study in a Cuban rural community. The compromise solution obtained by means of the proposed algorithm includes a wind turbine (WT) of 25.4 and 8?kW of photovoltaic panels, while that of the HOGA includes a WT of 76 and 21?kW of photovoltaic panels. Both commitment solutions consider hydrogen storage instead of storage in batteries, as a better option for the energy storage. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A steel mill is a large logistical hub, with raw materials and energy as input and steel plus some other materials as output. The vocabulary to designate the latter is fuzzy and changing, and it depends on who speaks about them: co-products, byproducts, residues, waste, emissions, pollutants, discharge, etc., are used in different contexts. This profusion of names echoes the conceptual hurdles that block the way when numbers have to be attributed to the co-products, related to either environmental footprints or economic values, especially if both are mixed. The paper focuses on the example of blast furnace slag, which is sold to the cement industry in large quantities as a substitute to clinker. The practice is a lively example of an industrial ecology synergy between two economic sectors: both sectors, collectively, decrease their environmental footprints in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, resource depletion, etc., in an unambiguous way. Many issues arise, however, when exact figures have to be worked out to allocate a footprint to each partner in the synergy. Life cycle assessment seems like a good candidate to do that job, but from a practical standpoint, the method can be implemented in so many versions and flavours that the answers end up in a series of very different figures, which confuse rather than clarify the issue. What is argued here is that these difficulties are due to the fact that the underlying problems are not yet solved, and that it is naive to ask a technology like life cycle assessment to solve issues related to the allocation of the cost of the climate change externality to commodity materials like cement and steel. Unsolved problems are due to the uncertainties related to this process. Until these issues are cleared, it is proposed either to focus mainly on the synergistic benefits of the cooperation between the two sectors or to accept different estimates of the footprint of the co-products in the two sectors. This example is a typical case in point related to what we have called the collision between the ecosphere and the anthroposphere.The new renewable fuels standard (RFS 2) aims to distinguish corn-ethanol that achieves a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared with gasoline. Field data from Kim et al. (2009) and from our own study suggest that geographic variability in the GHG emissions arising from corn production casts considerable doubt on the approach used in the RFS 2 to measure compliance with the 20% target. If regulators wish to require compliance of fuels with specific GHG emission reduction thresholds, then data from growing biomass should be disaggregated to a level that captures the level of variability in grain corn production and the application of life cycle assessment to biofuels should be modified to capture this variability.Biofuels from agricultural sources are an important part of California's strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil. Land conversion for agricultural and urban uses has already imperiled many animal species in the state. This study investigated the potential impacts on wildlife of shifts in agricultural activity to increase biomass production for transportation fuels. We applied knowledge of the suitability of California's agricultural landscapes for wildlife species to evaluate wildlife effects associated with plausible scenarios of expanded production of three potential biofuel crops (sugar beets, bermudagrass, and canola). We also generated alternative, spatially explicit scenarios that minimized loss of habitat for the same level of biofuel production. We explored trade-offs to compare the marginal changes per unit of energy for transportation costs, wildlife, land and water-use, and total energy produced, and found that all five factors were influenced by crop choice. Sugar beet scenarios require the least land area: 3.5 times less land per liter of gasoline equivalent than bermudagrass and five times less than canola. Canola scenarios had the largest impacts on wildlife but the greatest reduction in water use. Bermudagrass scenarios resulted in a slight overall improvement for wildlife over the current situation. Relatively minor redistribution of lands converted to biofuel crops could produce the same energy yield with much less impact on wildlife and very small increases in transportation costs. This framework provides a means to systematically evaluate potential wildlife impacts of alternative production scenarios and could be a useful complement to other frameworks that assess impacts on ecosystem services and greenhouse gas emissions.It is often difficult to compare publications assessing the sustainability of algal biomass as a feedstock for biofuels, due to differences in data aggregation, life cycle boundaries, technical and life cycle assumptions, environmental metrics considered, and use of experimental, modeled or assumed data. Input data for the algae cultivation stage was collected from published studies, focusing on microalgae production in open-air raceway ponds. Input data was normalized to a consistent functional unit, 1 kg of dry algal biomass. Environmental impacts were applied consistently to the different study inputs in order to eliminate this source of variation between the studies. Greenhouse gas emissions, fossil energy demand, and consumptive freshwater use were tabulated for the algal feedstock growth stage for open pond systems, and results were categorized (energy use, macronutrient fertilizers, and everything else) to compare the different studies in general terms. Environmental impacts for the cultivation of algal biomass in the considered reports varied by over two orders of magnitude. To illustrate impacts of variability in the cultivation stage on the ultimate environmental footprint of microalgae biofuels, algal oil harvesting, extraction and conversion to Green Jet Fuel was examined using the Renewable Jet Fuel process developed by Honeywell's UOP. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.BACKGROUND: Growing awareness of the negative impacts from the practice of health care on the environment and public health calls for the routine inclusion of life cycle criteria into the decision-making process of device selection. Here we present a life cycle assessment of 2 laryngeal mask airways (LMAs), a one-time-use disposable Unique (TM) LMA and a 40-time-use reusable Classic (TM) LMA. METHODS: In life cycle assessment, the basis of comparison is called the "functional unit." For this report, the functional unit of the disposable and reusable LMAs was taken to be maintenance of airway patency by 40 disposable LMAs or 40 uses of 1 reusable LMA. This was a cradle-to-grave study that included inputs and outputs for the manufacture, transport, use, and waste phases of the LMAs. The environmental impacts of the 2 LMAs were estimated using SimaPro life cycle assessment software and the Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability impact assessment method. Sensitivity and simple life cycle cost analyses were conducted to aid in interpretation of the results. RESULTS: The reusable LMA was found to have a more favorable environmental profile than the disposable LMA as used at Yale New Haven Hospital. The most important sources of impacts for the disposable LMA were the production of polymers, packaging, and waste management, whereas for the reusable LMA, washing and sterilization dominated for most impact categories. DISCUSSION: The differences in environmental impacts between these devices strongly favor reusable devices. These benefits must be weighed against concerns regarding transmission of infection. Health care facilities can decrease their environmental impacts by using reusable LMAs, to a lesser extent by selecting disposable LMA models that are not made of certain plastics, and by ordering in bulk from local distributors. Certain practices would further reduce the environmental impacts of reusable LMAs, such as increasing the number of devices autoclaved in a single cycle to 10 (-25% GHG emissions) and improving the energy efficiency of the autoclaving machines by 10% (-8% GHG emissions). For both environmental and cost considerations, management and operating procedures should be put in place to ensure that reusable LMAs are not discarded prematurely. (Anesth Analg 2012;114:1067-72)The residential sector is recognized as a major energy consumer and thus a significant contributor to climate change. Rather than focus only on current energy consumption and the associated emissions, there is a need to broaden sustainability research to include full life cycle contributions and impacts. This paper looks at houses from the perspective of the ecological footprint (EF), a well-known sustainability indicator. Exemplifying single-detached houses of the early 20th century, the century-old REEP House (downtown Kitchener, Canada), together with its high performance energy retrofits, is examined in detail. This research combines material, energy and carbon emission studies. Its scope covers the life cycle of the house, including the direct and indirect consumption of material and energy, and concomitant carbon emissions during its stages of material extraction, transportation, construction, operation, and demolition. It is revealed that the REEP House had a typical impact on the environment when it was built, and, even though the renovations to improve energy efficiency by 80% introduce additional embodied environmental impacts, they are environmentally sound activities because the environmental payback period is less than 2 years. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy poverty is a global threat to sustainable development and improved livelihoods hence the availability of clean, affordable, reliable and sustainable energy is a central issue to Kenya's national development objectives. Biogas technology in Kenya has been earmarked as one of the main drivers towards the elimination of energy poverty in majority of rural households and to this end different biogas digester models are actively promoted. Consequently, assessing the sustainability of the biogas systems in Kenya is one of the topical issues driving the discussion on biogas development. Hence developing an assessment technique capable of reliably screening the different alternatives and highlighting the sustainability hot spots is of critical essence in decision making for all biogas stake holders in the country. This paper comparatively analyses the common biogas production systems in Kenya by linking the biogas energy with infrastructures of production. A multi criteria perspective is employed for the analysis focusing on technical, economic and environmental sustainability dimensions. The evaluation in the work follows the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) methodology based on the ISO 14040 and 14044 environmental management principles. It is observed that the tubular and the fixed dome digesters with respective cumulative multi criteria sustainability scores of 70% and 57% are the most sustainable with respect to animal manure as the predominant feedstock. The multi criteria sustainability assessment approach as presented in this study can constitute a vital tool for interventions in the biogas energy sector. The biogas multi-criteria sustainability assessment approach as presented in this work might be a very vital tool for biogas policy formulation in Kenya and a wide range of developing countries. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.If energy crops are to replace fossil fuels as source for heat, power or vehicle fuel, their whole production chain must have higher energy output than input. Industrial hemp has high biomass and energy yields. The study evaluated and compared net energy yields (NEY) and energy output-to-input ratios (R-O/I) for production of heat, power and vehicle fuel from industrial hemp. Four scenarios for hemp biomass were compared; (I) combined heat and power (CHP) from spring-harvested baled hemp, (II) heat from spring-harvested briquetted hemp, and (III) CHP and (IV) vehicle fuel from autumn-harvested chopped and ensiled hemp processed to biogas in an anaerobic digestion process. The results were compared with those of other energy crops. Calculations were based on conditions in the agricultural area along the Swedish west and south coast. There was little difference in total energy input up to storage, but large differences in the individual steps involved. Further processing to final energy product differed greatly. Total energy ratio was best for combustion scenarios (I) and (II) (R-O/I of 6.8 and 5.1, respectively). The biogas scenarios (III) and (IV) both had low R-O/I (2.7 and 2.6, repectively). They suffer from higher energy inputs and lower conversion efficiencies but give high quality products, i.e. electricity and vehicle fuel. The main competitors for hemp are maize and sugar beets for biogas production and the perennial crops willow, reed canary grass and miscanthus for solid biofuel production. Hemp is an above-average energy crop with a large potential for yield improvements. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the viability of Brassica napus as an energy crop cultivated for producing biodiesel in southern Europe. The proposed methodology assessment combines physical variables such as grain production and agroclimate conditions with environmental analysis (LCA) in order to determine the Mediterranean agroclimates areas that could be cultivated for non-food purposes. The results obtained in a local production and distribution scenario (25 km) demonstrate that the biodiesel systems analysed have a better energy balance than diesel. Biodiesel obtained a net energy benefit of 16.25 MJ kg (1) of biodiesel or 35.10 MJ kg(-1) of biodiesel when the avoided impacts from coproducts (glycerine and rapemeal) are considered in comparison with conventional diesel. In terms of environmental performance, the biodiesel system also has less impact compared with diesel in three categories Abiotic Depletion (AD), Photochemical Oxidation (PO) and Global Warming Potential (GWP). The estimated impact reduction in the GWP category when is compared with diesel reached a minimum of 1.76 kg CO2 eq. per kg of biodiesel when emissions of the use phase are included. The paper also demonstrates that agroclimates called "e", "b" and "d" that ensure grain productions higher than 2000 kg ha (-1) the biodiesel commercialization from B. napus energy crop is suitable in environmental terms for an energy local and regional production and distribution strategy. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study compares energy production from semi-natural grasslands by the integrated generation of solid fuel and biogas from biomass (IFBB) through mechanical separation of the biomass with the dry fermentation (DF) and hay combustion system (HC). In addition, traditional use for beef cattle production and non-refining systems of landscape conservation, i.e. mulching and composting, are considered. Highest conversion efficiency (45-54% of the gross yield), net savings of fossil fuels (44-54 GJ ha(-1)) and net savings of greenhouse gases (2.9-3.7 t CO2-eq ha(-1)) are obtained by HC and IFBB. Potentials of DF are limited due to low digestibility of the mature biomass. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Culturing of microalgae as an alternative feedstock for biofuel production has received a lot of attention in recent years due to their fast growth rate and ability to accumulate high quantity of lipid and carbohydrate inside their cells for biodiesel and bioethanol production, respectively. In addition, this superior feedstock offers several environmental benefits, such as effective land utilization, CO2 sequestration, self-purification if coupled with wastewater treatment and does not trigger food versus fuel feud. Despite having all these 'theoretical' advantages, review on problems and issues related to energy balance in microalgae biofuel are not clearly addressed until now. Base on the maturity of current technology, the true potential of microalgae biofuel towards energy security and its feasibility for commercialization are still questionable. Thus, this review is aimed to depict the practical problems that are facing the microalgae biofuel industry, covering upstream to downstream activities by accessing the latest research reports and critical data analysis. Apart from that, several interlink solutions to the problems will be suggested with the purpose to bring current microalgae biofuel research into a new dimension and consequently, to revolutionize the entire microalgae biofuel industry towards long-term sustainability. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Total life cycle environmental impact assessment of Finnish beer was updated and analysed for changes over a six-year period, from 2002 to 2008, in order to identify the main factors behind the ecological evolution of the chain. This information is potentially useful for planning future improvements in the brewing industry. Environmental impacts were assessed based on life cycle analysis (LCA), and total environmental impact was assessed by weighting impact of different impact categories. The impact categories included in and analysed for the total environmental impact were: primary energy consumption, climate change, acidification, formation of tropospheric ozone, and aquatic eutrophication. The data were regenerated from up-to-date site-specific production figures for the input-output models of the key processes of the chain. The results showed that total environmental impact (Eco-Benchmark value) was reduced by 7 %. Many trade-offs contribute to this general trend, both for various categories of environmental impacts and for different activity-sectors of the chain. Total environmental impact decreased for fertilizer and lime production, malting and starch barley production on farms, malting and brewing, as well as for the transportation of intermediate products. Together these activity sectors brought about a 12 % reduction in the total environmental impact. The biggest reduction was for brewing. Total environmental impact increased for beer logistics, sales and consumption, and for barley starch production. Together the contribution of these sectors was +5 %. According to the results of the analysis, evolution in the brewing chain has been favourable from the environmental point of view.Within the recent debate about the needs for improving Ecological Footprint (EF) method, Kitzes and colleagues highlighted the necessity of standardised and detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies to support the calculation of specific impacts accounted in EF. As EF has been identified as a useful method for the evaluation of sustainability of tourism activities, this article presents a comparative study about sustainability evaluation of tourism activities, including LCA of a holiday and a hotel structure. The methodology for a joint use of the two methods was expected to provide more robust and detailed sustainability assessment as LCA is more comprehensive in terms of coverage of impact categories but disregard the carrying capacity of the system/limit of resource assessed by EF. The methodology was applied to two case studies in Northern Italy. The case studies showed that there is a correlation between the results of the two assessments, due to the relevance of energy and fossil fuel consumption as main drivers of impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recognized as an indispensable player in the future electricity supply mix of China, photovoltaic (PV) power has experienced a fast expansion in recent years. Owing to the higher cost compared with traditional coal-fired power, financial subsidy is crucial for the development of PV power. Although a series of policies have been implemented to subsidize PV power, strong and steady policies to stimulate China's PV power installation is still in need. One important reason for the lack of such policies is that whether the benefits associated with PV power cover the cost of subsidy is unclear. In this paper, we carry out a detailed study to quantify the co-benefit from the replacement of traditional coal-fired power by the large-scale photovoltaic power (LS-PV) comprised of polycrystalline cells in China. Our life cycle analysis (LCA) shows that the estimated co-benefit of polycrystalline LS-PV is 0.167 yuan/kWh, and the year of grid parity will come about 4 years earlier in China if the co-benefit is internalized. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hydrogen is an important energy carrier which could play a very significant role in the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases. The route by which hydrogen is produced is the determining factor for its environmental performance. Hydrogen can be produced through methane reforming or through the electrolysis of water with the use of electricity or it can be produced directly by gasification from biomass. Renewable energy sources (RES) could be the feedstock for the two methods previously mentioned. The objective of this work is the comparison of hydrogen (H-2) production processes using various renewable energy sources. This comparison is based on the exergy efficiency of each process. The renewable energy sources that have been used are: wind power, solar energy, hydroelectric power, and biomass. The solar energy systems that are used are photovoltaic and thermal. The biomass systems are divided into two categories: (a) electricity production through biomass combustion, (b) biomass gasification for the direct production of hydrogen. When in any of the processes electricity is produced, this electricity is used for the electrolysis process of water to produce hydrogen (and oxygen). Because hydrogen is transported in a liquid form, the liquefaction process is also taken into consideration in this work. The liquefaction process is very energy intensive and as a consequence it requires a lot of exergy. It has been found that the hydrogen production process with the highest exergy efficiency is the electrolysis using electricity from hydro power. This efficiency is 5.6%. The process with the lowest exergy efficiency is the one with electrolysis driven by electricity from solar energy photovoltaics. The efficiency of this process is 1.0%.As an emerging carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technology, separating CO2 from industrial gases with ionic liquids is increasingly attracting remarkable interests. In this paper, the research progress on CO2 capture with ionic liquids is reviewed with particular attention on the viewpoint of potential industrial applications. We investigate and compare the CO2 capture capacities of pure ionic liquids, including conventional and task-specific ionic liquids, and ionic liquid-based mixtures. The mechanisms of chemisorption and physisorption are explained with experimental characteristics and molecular simulation, which show more and more important roles for screening suitable ionic liquids from tremendous candidates. Considering the scaling up of novel units for ionic liquid-based fluids, the studies on the transport properties and hydrodynamics of ionic liquid fluids are presented. The process design and assessment of ionic liquid processes are discussed, including the research progress on thermodynamic properties and prediction models. Besides giving an overview of research for each issue above, we also provide discussions for future work to try to identify the gap between the current work and the demand by real industrial applications. Finally, we present some perspectives of ionic liquid-based novel technologies, and the challenges which will be faced while developing industrially available technologies.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an internationally recognised and standardised (International Standards Organisation 1997) approach for assessing the environmental impacts of consumption and production. LCA is seen as the only method for evaluating and comparing alternatives, based on the environmental performance over the life of the alternative: that is, from material extraction through to use and disposal. This note aims to provide an overview of how LCA is being applied in the building area, and to give practical guidance on using LCA and other life cycle approaches. It has been updated to include a discussion on the latest trends, data quality, data availability and tools for the built environment. This note was originally published in November 2002 and titled GEN 51. Its authors were Tim Grant and Dominique Hes. It was based on the Greening the Building Life Cycle project of 2000-2001, funded by Environment Australia. The current note was revised and updated in May 2012 by Dominique Hes, with input from Tim Grant.With the abatement potential of end-of-pipe technologies for road transport becoming increasingly marginal, and with greater emissions reductions still needed in order to reduce pollution, alternative strategies involving behavioural change and choices between fossil fuelled or low carbon vehicles becomes more important. The environmental requirements include local air quality objectives, meeting national emissions ceilings to limit transboundary effects, and to aspire to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper we use the BRUTAL sub-model of the UK integrated Assessment Model (UKIAM) to investigate a selection of alternative strategies including downsizing of cars, switching from petrol to diesel, and the introduction of electric, bio-fuelled or hydrogen vehicles into the fleet, relative to a business-as-usual projection for 2020. Projected impacts upon air quality limit values, national emissions ceilings and CO2 emissions are assessed in relation to local, national and international objectives. We discuss related life-cycle impacts, implications for infrastructure, and potential impacts upon emissions from other sectors in order to highlight the full potential implications of the different strategies within the context of changes resulting from other policy developments at different scales. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets are driving an acceleration in the use of bioenergy resources. The environmental impact of national and regional development plans must be assessed in compliance with the EU Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive (2001/42/EC). Here, we quantify the environmental impact of an Irish Government bioenergy plan to replace 30% of peat used in three peat-burning power stations, located within the midlands region, with biomass. Four plan alternatives for supplying biomass to the power plant were considered in this study: (1) importation of palm kernel shell from south-east Asia, (2) importation of olive cake pellets from Spain and (3) growing either willow or (4) Miscanthus in the vicinity of the power stations. The impact of each alternative on each of the environmental receptors proposed in the SEA Directive was first quantified before the data were normalized on either an Irish, regional or global scale. Positive environmental impacts were very small compared to the negative environmental impacts for each of the plan alternatives considered. Comparison of normalized indicator values confirmed that the adverse environmental consequences of each plan alternative are concentrated at the location where the biomass is produced. The analysis showed that the adverse environmental consequences of biomass importation are substantially greater than those associated with the use of willow and Miscanthus grown on former grassland. The use of olive cake pellets had a greater adverse environmental effect compared to the use of peat whereas replacement of peat with either willow or Miscanthus feedstocks led to a substantial reduction in environmental pressure. The proposed assessment framework combines the scope of SEA with the quantitative benefits of life cycle assessment and can be used to evaluate the environmental consequences of bioenergy plans.Miscanthus has been identified as one of the most promising perennial grasses for renewable energy generation in Europe and the United States [Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 9 (2004) 433]. However, the decision to use Miscanthus depends to a considerable degree on its economic and environmental performance [Soil Use and Management 24 (2008) 235; Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 13 (2009) 1230]. This article assessed the spatial distribution of the economic and greenhouse gas (GHG) costs of producing and supplying Miscanthus in the UK. The average farm-gate production cost of Miscanthus in the UK is estimated to be 40 pound per oven-dried tonne ( pound odt-1), and the average GHG emissions from the production of Miscanthus are 1.72 kg carbon equivalent per oven-dried tonnes per year (kg CE odt-1 yr-1). The production cost of Miscanthus varies from 35 to 55 pound odt-1 with the lowest production costs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the highest costs in Scotland. Sensitivity analysis shows that yield of Miscanthus is the most influential factor in its production cost, with precipitation the most crucial input in determining yield. GHG emissions from the production of Miscanthus range from 1.24 to 2.11 kg CE odt-1 yr-1. To maximize the GHG benefit, Miscanthus should be established preferentially on croplands, though other considerations obviously arise concerning suitability and value of the land for food production.Although a significant number of environmental protection measures concerning industrial products and processes have emerged over the past few years, similar measures have only started to appear in road construction and related practices. There is a need for understanding what a "sustainable pavement" would entail in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. Since environmental impact assessment of major projects is becoming mandatory in many countries, various research projects attempt to evaluate the environmental impact of different pavement materials, technologies, or processes over the road life cycle. To support these efforts, there is a need to measure and describe different aspects of sustainability related to road pavements. In particular, keeping road pavements at high service levels through a preventive maintenance approach during the pavement service life has been proven to provide significant improvement of their performance and reduce their deterioration rate. This paper describes an innovative methodology to evaluate the environmental impact of preventive maintenance activities. It relates these activities to performance and cost during the service life of the pavement through a multi-attribute "life cycle cost, performance, and environmental analysis". Emissions and energy saved adopting several preventive maintenance strategies were computed, relating them to cost and performance. Equipment and materials usually involved in road maintenance practices were also analyzed in order to assess specific fuel consumption and energy spent. An ad hoc index was ultimately created, adopting a script file to evaluate the best strategy through the multi-attribute approach. Results show how eco-effective it can be to improve pavement management practices on roads by implementing energy efficient treatments and strategies. Furthermore, eco-saving factors could represent a new and innovative feature to be added in the sustainability assessment process for pavements to evaluate different alternatives and assist authorities choosing between different investment solutions as a part of a decision support system.Densification, a process used to manufacture pellets in order to increase biomass bulk density, plays a crucial role in the economics of biomass utilization. The Canadian Prairies produce large quantities of agricultural residues each year, in particular wheat straw. This study performs life cycle assessment of wheat straw pellets by evaluating environmental effects of the entire pellet production system comprising feedstock production (on-farm wheat straw production), harvesting, baling, transportation, and the industrial processing involving drying, grinding, pelletizing, and packing in the densification plant. The effects of each process on the environmental performance of wheat straw pellets were investigated. This study was conducted using LCA software and incorporating the Ecoinvent database supplemented with literature data for the Canadian Prairies. Wheat straw pellets manufactured from the densification plant are evaluated with respect to their use of resources and energy consumption. Environmental emissions associated with the agricultural processing and manufacturing systems are quantified. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to compare allocation methods and investigate the environmental impact of pelletizing and drying processes. The functional unit is defined as 1 kg wheat straw pellet. The study quantified the environmental impact of producing wheat straw pellets in terms of global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion, abiotic depletion, human toxicity, photochemical oxidation, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Drying, pelletizing, and fertilizer are the main contributors to global warming, acidification, abiotic depletion, human toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, and most of the other environmental impacts. Wheat seed has more impact on eutrophication. Transportation has an impact on ozone layer depletion, while grinding has an effect on freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity. The environmental impact of materials and energy fluxes on producing wheat straw pellet in the Canadian Prairies is assessed. The effect of each processing step on the entire manufacturing process is described. Overall, drying and pelletizing processes contribute the most environmental burdens except eutrophication and terrestrial ecotoxicity which are dominated by agricultural fertilizer/seed utilization and harvesting. In order to mitigate the environmental impact of wheat straw pellet production, minimizing energy consumption and machinery burdens from the drying and pelletizing processes are the main intervention points for wheat straw densification. Fertilizer production and utilization are key variables in strategies to lower eutrophication and terrestrial ecotoxicity.The main goal of this paper was to analyse the environmental profile of a structural component of a wooden house: a ventilated wooden wall, by combining two environmental methodologies: one quantitative, the life cycle assessment (LCA) and another qualitative, the design for the environment (DfE). The LCA study covers the whole life cycle of the ventilated wall manufacture as well as its distribution, installation and maintenance. To carry out this analysis, a Galician wood company was assessed in detail, dividing the process into four stages: the assembling stage, the packing stage, the distribution to clients as well as the final installation and maintenance of the wooden wall. Ten impact categories have been assessed in detail in the LCA study: abiotic depletion (AD), acidification (AC), eutrophication (EP), global warming (GW), ozone layer depletion (OD), human toxicity (HT), fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity (FE), marine aquatic ecotoxicity (ME), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE) and photochemical oxidant formation (PO). According to the environmental results, the assembling stage was the most important contributor to the environmental profile with contributions from 57% to 87%, followed by the production of the electricity required. The detailed analysis of the assembling stage identified the most important environmental hot spots: the production of boards used in the structure [oriented strand board and medium density fibreboard (MDF)] as well as the transportation of the cedar sheets from Brazil. Concerning the results of the DfE, a selection of different eco-design strategies was proposed from technological, economic and social points of view by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and companyA ' s workers. The eco-design strategy considered the following improvement actions: (i) the substitution of the MDF in the wall structure; (ii) the use of German red pine sheets; (iii) the installation of solar panels in the facilities; (iv) the use of Euro 5 transport vehicles, (v) the use of biodiesel for transport; (vi) the definition of a maintenance protocol for the wooden materials; and (vii) the definition of a protocol for the separation of materials before disposal. The results obtained in this work allow predicting the influence of the selection and origin of the raw materials used on the environmental burdens associated with the process. Future work will focus on the manufacturing of a prototype of an eco-designed ventilated wooden wall.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to quantify environmental impacts and improvement options for the full life cycle of one 750 ml bottle of wine produced and consumed in Nova Scotia, Canada. Results indicate that viticulture and consumer transport contribute the greatest portion of wine's total impacts. Within the vineyard, nutrient management offers the greatest potential for improvement. Modeled scenarios indicate that high-yielding organic viticulture could marginally improve most measured impacts, but the provision of lighter bottles could yield even greater benefits. Scenarios in which transport modes and distances to market were varied provide strong evidence that the mode by which wine is transported is equally important to the distance that it travels. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment and Design for the Environment are combined in this study to identify and improve the environmental performance of a wooden modular playground. This study covers the whole life cycle of the production process of the playground and its final distribution to the users from a cradle-to-gate perspective. This wooden product was chosen since it is a very representative urban element of the wooden sector in public spaces. To do the assessment, a Galician wood company was analysed in detail. Ten impact categories have been assessed: Abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidant formation. According to the environmental results, the assembling stage is the most important contributor to the environmental profile with contributions higher than 60% to all categories. Both lacquering and energy stages are relevant in terms of ecotoxicity impact categories. In addition, the environmental hot spots were identified in the life cycle: the production of wood based materials (with large contribution to ecotoxicity categories) due to the boards, the production of metals (important contributions to acidification, human toxicity and oxidants formation) and the transport related activities (with remarkable contributions to abiotic depletion, eutrophication and global warming) mainly due to the wooden materials. Concerning the results from the eco-design, the proposed strategies were evaluated/selected from a technological, economic and social point of view by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and company workers, showing that the strategies with higher viability were: redesign product to reduction of materials used, substitution of aluminum by stainless steel, combination of maritime and road transport for wooden materials, minimisation of the amount of components in the structure and installation area, definition of a protocol for disassembling and use of the product and packaging and, multifunctional and multiuser design. Important reductions (up to 11%) in the environmental profile (normalised index) can be achieved with these alternatives. The results obtained in this work allow predicting the importance of the selection of raw materials on the environmental burdens associated. Future work will focus on the manufacture of a prototype eco-designed wooden modular playground. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An important percentage of European wine appellations base their production on a broad number of vine-growers that annually sell their grapes to the wineries under the specific Denomination of Origin. Hence, the use of average values for the environmental evaluation of this type of multiple datasets can create large standard deviations that may impede an adequate interpretation of the results. Combined implementation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), known as LCA + DEA methodology, has proven to be a suitable tool for assessing multiple input/output data in several agri-food systems, such as aquaculture, farming or fisheries. In the current study, a total of 40 vine-growing exploitations belonging to the Was Baixas appellation (NW Spain) were analyzed following LCA + DEA methodology in order to determine the level of operational efficiency of each producer. Furthermore, potential reductions in the consumption levels of the material inputs were benchmarked, while calculating the environmental gains linked to these reduction targets, thus verifying eco-efficiency criteria. Results led to average reduction levels of up to 30% per material input, which translated into environmental gains that ranged from 28% to 39% depending on the selected impact category. Additionally, a super-efficiency analysis led to identify the best performing units, which were used as a source of reference values for environmental impacts. Finally, potential economic savings of 0.14 (sic) per functional unit (i.e., 1.1 kg of grapes for the production of a common 750 ml bottle of wine) were estimated on the basis of efficient vine-growing practices. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The importance of evaluating the environmental performance of emerging carbon nanotube (CNT) products from a life cycle perspective is emphasized in this work. Design, development and deployment of CNT products offer many potential benefits to society, but not without negative impacts on public health and the environment. Cradle-to-grave life cycle assessments (LCAs) of CNT products should be performed to ensure that the negative impacts of these products do not transcend the benefits offered by them. Although the application of LCA to CNT products is still emerging, the review conducted by the authors of existing studies suggests that the manufacturing stage in a CNT product life cycle can dominate the environmental impacts, largely as a result of the energy-intensive processes involved in the production of both the CNTs themselves as well as subsequent consumer products. Furthermore this work highlights several key challenges currently encountered with the application of LCA to CNT products, including a lack of data availability and uncertainties associated with estimation of certain impact characterization factors (due to qualitative nature of CNTs). Finally, improving the environmental performance of CNT products using LCA will involve a collaborative effort early in the design process between technology developers and LCA practitioners. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes a comparative analysis of public transport alternatives in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. An LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) inventory analysis of fuel chains was undertaken using the midi urban bus and a similar type of trolleybus. The inventory analysis of fuel chains followed the guidelines provided by the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards. The ReCiPe Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodology was used to quantify weighted damage originating from five alternative fuel chains. The compressed biogas fuel chain had the lowest weighted damage value, namely 45.7 mPt/km, whereas weighted damage values of the fuel chains based on electricity generation for trolleybuses were 60.6 mPt/km (for natural gas) and 78.9 mPt/km (for heavy fuel oil). The diesel and compressed natural gas fuel chains exhibited considerably higher damage values of 114.2 mPt/km and 132.6 mPt/km, respectively. The comparative life cycle assessment of fuel chains suggested that biogas-powered buses and electric trolleybuses can be considered as the best alternatives to use when modernizing the public transport fleet in Kaunas. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A series of Galician (NW Spain) wines, such as Rio Baixas and Ribeiro have acquired international renown in the past few years. In this particular study, viticulture, vinification and bottling and packaging in a winery of the Ribeiro appellation were studied from a life cycle assessment perspective, with the main objective of identifying the largest environmental impacts for four different years of production (2007-2010). The selected functional unit was a 750 mL bottle of Ribeiro white wine, packaged for distribution. Inventory data was gathered mainly through direct communication using questionnaires. Results showed considerable annual variability in environmental performance, stressing the importance of including timeline analysis in the wine sector. Therefore, environmental scaling was proposed for the assessed wine based on the individual environmental impacts for each harvest year. Furthermore, the main hot spots identified were compost and pesticide production and emissions, in the agricultural phase and bottle production and electricity consumption, in the subsequent stages of wine production, in most of the selected impact categories. Suggested improvement opportunities included shifts in the compost transportation policy, recovery of natural resources for vineyard infrastructure, the introduction of new packaging formats in the bottling process and the use of pesticides with lower toxicity potential. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Four complete beef-production systems consisting each of two stages were compared. The systems were formed by combining two diets for the cow-calf herd with finishing heifers stage - St (Standard) and O3 (maximising omega-3 fatty acids (FAs) using wrapped grass silage) - with four diets for the bull-fattening herd stage - SM (silage maize starch), SML (silage maize starch plus linseed, rich in omega-3 FAs), FC (fibre-based concentrate), and SCL (starch-based concentrate plus linseed): St-SM, St-FC and O3-SCL Life Cycle Assessments applied to these systems (from cradle to farm gate for a one-year period) estimated that their environmental impacts, per kg of carcass mass, ranged from 27.0 to 27.9 kg CO2 equivalents (eq), 64.8-73.4 MJ, 94-98 g PO43- eq. 168-173 g SO2 eq, 47-48 m(2)year for climate change (CC, not including effect of land use and land-use change, LULUC), cumulative energy demand (CED), eutrophication potential, acidification potential and land occupation, respectively. Consideration of LULUC decreased CC from 8 to 10%. Minor impact differences between these systems were observed, except for CED of St-FC, mainly because more energy was needed to dehydrate beet pulp and lucerne. CC of O3-SCL was 3% lower than CC of St-SM. Most of the environmental impacts of beef-production systems originated from the cow-calf herd with finishing heifers (73-97%), which indicates that research on the reduction of environmental impacts of this type of beef-production system should focus on this herd. For the cow-calf herd with finishing heifers, comparison of several allocation methods revealed that allocation method strongly affected the impacts per kg of carcass mass of the breeding bull and finished cull cows and, to a much lesser extent, those of fattened bulls and finished heifers. Consideration of both products (several animal types) and the ecosystem services supplied by these systems seems a promising perspective. This concept needs to be discussed and developed as an approach to consider the multi-functionality of farming systems. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.This article provides an overview of the impact of oilseed rape on the environment for water, air, soil, and biodiversity. It also questions the concepts and methods used for this evaluation. Oilseed rape has specific characteristics, which may be positive negative or mixed according to the different indicators used for the environmental assessment. But these effects do not allow us to judge the sustainability of the crop itself, because environmental impacts generally result from processes operating at spatial scales (landscape, watershed) and time scales (cropping systems) larger than the field and the crop cycle. This analysis shows that methods designed for the assessment of a single crop or product, like the life cycle analysis, are of poor interest for such topics.Presented manuscript investigates the current sustainability research within the automotive industry, through a comprehensive review of the different studies in vehicles' life cycle, disposal and end of life analyses, and the different sustainability metrics and models used to quantify the environmental impact. The sustainability research in this study targets the measures and studies at the three basic elemental levels involved; environmental, economic, and societal. The presented review categorizes the literature into four main research areas; the life cycle assessment approach, the end-of-life perspective, the design for X, and the light-weight engineering and material selection studies. Also, the text attempts to draw the link between these research themes and expose any inter-relationships, and discuss the physics behind some of the sustainability models presented to analyze the automobile sustainability. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to increasing pressure for energy saving and emission reduction, Chinese apartment developers have initiated sustainable design practices. This paper develops a conceptual model which proposes that cooperation with construction stakeholders and customers is a mediator, necessary for apartment developers to realize environmental, economic and even competitive performance improvement through sustainable design practices. The paper examines the current practice situations of sustainable design, cooperation with construction stakeholders and customers as well as related performance improvement among Chinese apartment developers based on 92 questionnaires conducted by the authors. The mediation effects are further analysed through hierarchical regression analysis. Statistical results indicate that sustainable design should be further promoted by the Chinese governments and implemented by Chinese apartment developers. Policy implications are discussed to provide detailed suggestions on improving the cooperation with Chinese apartment developers and their construction stakeholders/customers. Such cooperation can help apartment developers to improve environmental, competitive and economic performance through sustainable design practices. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.This article evaluates the life cycle assessment (LCA) of three biogas upgrading technologies. An in-depth study and evaluation was conducted on high pressure water scrubbing (HPWS), as well as alkaline with regeneration (AwR) and bottom ash upgrading (BABIU), which additionally offer carbon storage. AwR and BABIU are two novel technologies that utilize waste from municipal solid waste incinerators - namely bottom ash (BA) and air pollution control residues (APC) - and are able to store CO2 from biogas through accelerated carbonation processes. These are compared to high pressure water scrubbing (HPWS) which is a widely used technology in Europe. The AwR uses an alkaline solution to remove I he CO2 and then the solution - rich in carbonate and bicarbonate ions - is regenerated through carbonation of APC. The BABIU process directly exposes the gas to the BA to remove and immediately store the CO2, again by carbonation. It was determined that the AwR process had an 84% higher impact in all LCA categories largely due to the energy intensive production of the alkaline reactants. The BABIU process had the lowest impact in most categories even when compared to five other CO2 capture technologies on the market. AwR and BABIU have a particularly low impact in the global warming potential category as a result of the immediate storage of the CO2. For AwR, it was determined that using NaOH instead of KOH improves its environmental performance by 34%. For the BABIU process the use of renewable energies would improve its impact since accounts for 55% of the impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recycling of materials from municipal solid waste is commonly considered to be superior to any other waste treatment alternative. For the material fractions with a significant energy content this might not be the case if the treatment alternative is a waste-to-energy plant with high energy recovery rates. The environmental impacts from recycling and from incineration of six material fractions in household waste have been compared through life cycle assessment assuming high-performance technologies for material recycling as well as for waste incineration. The results showed that there are environmental benefits when recycling paper, glass, steel and aluminium instead of incinerating it. For cardboard and plastic the results were more unclear, depending on the level of energy recovery at the incineration plant, the system boundaries chosen and which impact category was in focus. Further, the environmental impact potentials from collection, pre-treatment and transport was compared to the environmental benefit from recycling and this showed that with the right means of transport, recyclables can in most cases be transported long distances. However, the results also showed that recycling of some of the material fractions can only contribute marginally in improving the overall waste management system taking into consideration their limited content in average Danish household waste. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study evaluates the environmental performance and discounted costs of the incineration and landfilling of municipal solid waste that is ready for the final disposal while accounting for existing waste diversion initiatives, using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Parameters such as changing waste generation quantities, diversion rates and waste composition were also considered. Two scenarios were assessed in this study on how to treat the waste that remains after diversion. The first scenario is the status quo, where the entire residual waste was landfilled whereas in the second scenario approximately 50% of the residual waste was incinerated while the remainder is landfilled. Electricity was produced in each scenario. Data from the City of Toronto was used to undertake this study. Results showed that the waste diversion initiatives were more effective in reducing the organic portion of the waste, in turn, reducing the net electricity production of the landfill while increasing the net electricity production of the incinerator. Therefore, the scenario that incorporated incineration performed better environmentally and contributed overall to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions because of the displacement of power plant emissions; however, at a noticeably higher cost. Although landfilling proves to be the better financial option, it is for the shorter term. The landfill option would require the need of a replacement landfill much sooner. The financial and environmental effects of this expenditure have yet to be considered. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the past decades, the cost-effectiveness principle or a cost benefit analysis has typically been employed as an assessment tool for the expansion of drinking water utilities. With changing public awareness of the inherent linkages between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, the addition of this new consideration in the assessment regime has altered the landscape of the traditional evaluation matrix. This paper presents a comparative evaluation based on a suite of carbon footprint and cost data associated with 20 expansion alternatives for a systematic priority analysis of a drinking water infrastructure system in South Florida. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was carried out using IMPACT2002+ to estimate the environmental impacts of caprolactam production in China. The technology highly contributed to the potential impacts of carcinogens, respiratory inorganic matters, global warming, and non-renewable energy. The technology played a limited role in the categories of non-carcinogens and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Specifically, the emissions from the steam, electricity, benzene, sodium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide, ammonia, and sulfuric acid production processes involved played important roles, whereas the potential impact generated from other elements was quite small. Caprolactam recovery from nylon filament yarn, the use of natural gas-based energy generation system, and increasing the efficiency of nitrogen oxide and ammonia emission control systems are the key factors for reducing the overall potential environmental impact of caprolactam production in China. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to create an easier way of calculating carbon footprints of products by focusing on the connection characteristics between components. They are defined as connection units. Thus the product can be considered as the organic combination of connection units. In order to reduce the product's carbon footprint and reuse the carbon footprint data and knowledge, a novel method of identification of connection units with high GHG emissions is proposed. Through life cycle analysis, a product life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions flow is studied to find the factors related to the product's carbon footprint from the aspect of product structure. By analyzing the parts' connection characteristics, the GHG emissions of connection units are calculated by the proposed recursive distribution approach of connection units' carbon footprint based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. Finally, an example of a thin film transistor LCD module for a TV validates the feasibility of the method proposed in the paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Innovative strategies are needed to deal with the waste we produce today to prevent it from causing problems for future generations. As waste management issues gain public awareness, concern has risen about the appropriateness of various disposal methods. The objective of this work is the environmental assessment of different municipal solid waste treatment strategies for the city of Thessaloniki, within the methodological frameworks of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the Integrated Solid Waste Management strategy, taking into account social, environmental and economic effects. The waste management methods in this study include: landfill of all waste fractions, recycling of paper, and anaerobic digestion of food waste in a biological treatment plant. The waste fractions considered are the total amount of food, paper and plastic waste produced in Thessaloniki during the period of one year. Environmental impacts are decreased when the solid waste management methods include some kind of recovery from waste. The results of this work indicate that paper recycling and anaerobic digestion of food waste is preferable compared to landfilling. It is also shown that landfilling of food waste utilizing the biocells method is more attractive than anaerobic digestion in a separate plant; nevertheless, energy recovery is about 45% lower. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The mining/quarrying industry is a sector of industry where there are very few Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools, and where the role of LCA has been poorly investigated. A key issue is the integration of three inter-dependent life cycles: Project, Asset and Product. Given the unique features of mining LCAs, this Note from the Field presents a common methodology implemented within the Sustainable Aggregates Resource Management (SARMa) Project (www.sarrnaproject.eu) in order to boost adoption of LCA in the aggregate industry in South Eastern Europe. The proposed methodology emphasises the importance of resource efficiency and recycling in the context of a Sustainable Supply Mix of aggregates for the construction industry. Through its adoption, aggregate producers, recyclers, and governmental planners would gain confidence with LCA tools and conduct consistent and meaningful life cycle analyses of natural and recycled aggregates. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The "positive energy building" concept combines energy saving and electricity production using renewable resources, aiming a positive primary energy balance on a yearly basis. Compared to other concepts of high energy performance buildings, it is very ambitious on an energy point of view, but more materials and components are used, this is why the environmental relevance of this concept has to be questioned. In order to contribute to answer this question, a life cycle assessment (LCA), including the fabrication of components, construction, operation, maintenance, dismantling and waste treatment, has been used to evaluate the environmental impacts of two high energy performance buildings: a renovated multi-family social housing building and two passive attached houses. Both buildings are located in North of France. For the purpose of this study, renewable energy production has been assumed to achieve nearly positive energy balances. For these buildings, four different heating solutions have been studied: an electric heat pump, a wood pellet condensing boiler, a wood pellet micro-cogeneration unit, and district heating. Modeling and simulation have been performed using the building thermal simulation tool COMFIE, to evaluate the heating load and thermal comfort level, and the LCA tool EQUER to evaluate twelve impact indicators. The results show the level of performance as well as the influence of the choice of the heating system on the environmental impacts considered in this assessment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper deals with the development of a tool used for the life cycle assessment of residential buildings located in three different European towns: Brussels (Belgium), Coimbra (Portugal) and Lulea (Sweden). The basic tool focuses on the structure and the materials of the buildings and permits the evaluation of the Embodied energy, Embodied carbon and yearly energy consumption. For that purpose, a different set of original data is taken into account for each location, in which the monthly temperatures, energy mix, heating and cooling systems are defined. The energy consumption, being for heating space or water, for cooling or for lighting is transformed into CO2 emissions to deduce the Operational carbon as well. The influence of the energy mix can therefore be assessed in the basic tool. As a matter of fact, the heating and cooling systems habitually used in the three countries are also of great importance. The District Heating system, is, for instance, incorporated in the basic tool. The presence of solar water heater or photovoltaic panels is also strongly influencing the operational carbon. After a short literature review on building LCA and the description of the basic tool, the software Pleiades + Comfie combined with Equer is used to achieve the complete LCA for one building using two different load bearing frames. The results of the calculations for Brussels climate are verified against these software results. The dependence of the results to parameters such as climate, energy mix and habits is then discussed in the companion paper. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents the comparative results of the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of one residential building with two constructive systems in Brussels and one steel frame house located in three different European towns: Brussels (Belgium), Coimbra (Portugal) and Lulea (Sweden). In a recent study, a modular building was studied in Coimbra and Lulea. It was shown that in terms of CO2 emissions, the Use Stage was the most harmful stage during the building life-cycle for Coimbra climate. Contrarily, in Lulea, it was the Product Stage, despite energy consumption being higher than Coimbra, due to the way electricity and heat are generated. In the present study, two structural systems are first compared for the Belgian house: steel frame and traditional masonry. A different life-cycle scenario is taken into account for the steel frame house for the three different locations, in which the monthly temperatures, energy mix, heating and cooling systems are defined. The LCA is carried out using the basic tool described in the companion paper. It is worth recalling that the results obtained with the basic tool were verified against Pleiades + Comfie and Equer software, enabling to carry out a complete LCA, for Brussels. Our results confirm that for all the three climates, the Use Stage (Operational energy) is the most harmful period during the building life-cycle and that the energy mix of the country strongly influences the equivalent CO2 emissions related to the Use Stage (Operational carbon) and may entirely reverse the conclusions about the life-cycle carbon footprint of the building. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the environmental effects of low power PV lighting products, which are increasingly used in rural areas in South East Asia, by means of a life cycle analysis (LCA). The main goals of the project are to determine (1) the environmental impacts, (2) which parts are contributing to environmental impacts that occur, and (3) the accuracy of an LCA of these PV products. The study is based on an entrepreneurial case in Cambodia. Three PV lighting products with a nominal power of 0.7 Wp, 4.5 Wp and 40 Wp respectively, have been compared with three alternatives for lighting services. The LCA was executed with Simapro software using the Ecoinvent 2.1 database and applying the ReCiPe 2008 method for the impact assessment. An important conclusion of the study is that solar PV lighting products have less environmental impact than conventional lighting solutions, such as lighting services from kerosene lamps and compact fluorescent lamps powered by car batteries. The environmental profile of small size PV lighting products can be improved by approximately 50% by recycling of the batteries. From an evaluation of the accuracy of an LCA of PV lighting products, it can be concluded that impacts of these PV lighting products are lower or comparable to those of lighting by compact fluorescent lights powered by electricity from the grid in the South East Asian context. As such, they offer an environmentally beneficial lighting service for off-grid households. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Various methods of solid waste treatment are available. However, due to heterogeneity characteristic of solid waste, determined the best means to manage solid waste in environmental view of point is not straightforward. In this case, solid waste management scenarios and an environmental analysis tool are required. This study compared various energetic valorization options with each other using the simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. These scenarios were landfilling without energy recovery as a representative of existing solid waste management, landfilling with energy recovery, combination of incineration and anaerobic digestion, combination of gasification and anaerobic digestion, direct incineration, and direct gasification. A case study area in a typical KARTAMANTUL (acronym of three cities: Yogyakarta, Sleman, Bantul) intercity region in province of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. One ton of solid waste treated was defined as the functional unit of the systems studied. The Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis was done by including field and laboratory survey to characterize solid waste in area study and using emission factors which were adopted from literature to estimate environmental burdens for each scenario. Inventory's result was classified into impact categories, i.e. global warming, acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical oxidant formation. The indicators of categories were quantified by using the equivalence factors of relevant emissions to determine the environmental performance of each scenario. The study shown that in most of the impact categories (except acidification), a scenario with direct gasification indicated the best environmental profile. A sensitivity analysis was also conducted to examine change in outcomes for a variety of organic biowaste inputs, but had no significant effect on the overall result. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two commercial and representative plantations of poplar located in the Po Valley (Italy) under very short rotation (VSRC) and short rotation (SRC) regimes dedicated to biomass production for energy purposes have been analysed to identify their environmental effects and to define the best option for a biomass production system. The standard framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was followed in this study and detailed inventories for both regimes were provided. The environmental profile was analysed in terms of abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidants formation, human toxicity and ecotoxicity. In addition, an energy analysis was performed using the cumulative energy demand method. Differences were identified in terms of biomass yield, fertilizers requirement as well as intensive agricultural activities and, according to the results, SRC presents the best environmental profile in seven of the eleven environmental impacts assessed. The key processes in both regimes were: nutrient application and agricultural activities such as mechanical weed control, harvesting and biomass collection due to the energy consumption and derived emissions. Improvement alternatives were proposed based on these results and two sensitivity analyses were carried out based on the use of only cattle manure as nutrient input under a VSRC regime and on the increment of biomass yield in the future (2020 and 2030 seasons) due to better clones but under an SRC regime. As a general conclusion, in a short period of time, poplar plantations dedicated to energy purposes should be driven towards SRC regimes instead of VSRC. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is well understood that measurements of ecological footprint and many other ecological indicators are associated with varying degrees of uncertainty, yet imprecision in ecological footprint results is rarely assessed or communicated. We calculated the marine portion of the ecological footprint of products derived from five reduction fisheries: Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens), Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), Gulf menhaden (Brevoortia patron us), blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou) and Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba). Monte Carlo analysis was used to measure the imprecision in marine footprint measurements resulting from multiple sources of uncertainty and natural variability in input parameters, and to determine the degree to which imprecision affects our ability to draw meaningful conclusions when comparing products sourced from different fisheries on the basis of ecological footprint. Gulf menhaden and Antarctic krill were found to have the smallest marine footprints, while blue whiting was found to have the largest. Results show that there is much uncertainty associated with marine footprint calculations and that the most significant drivers of this imprecision are uncertainty and natural variability regarding measurements of trophic level and trophic interactions. Marine footprint is highly correlated with trophic level, and clear differences can be seen when comparing species of very different trophic levels. However, comparisons of products derived from species' with similar trophic levels are less likely to provide conclusive results. The choice of mass, protein or energy content as the basis of comparison was also considered and was found to influence the results, particularly when comparing species with similar trophic levels. While it is likely that imprecision of marine footprint measurements of fishery-derived products will remain high, technological improvements and a better understanding of marine ecosystem dynamics may make future studies more precise. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecological footprint calculation methodology is generally well defined on a national scale. It is also proposed by several authors as a corporate sustainability metric, yet for this scale, there is no consensus method. The aim of this paper is to identify the consequences of such methodological liberties within the ecological footprint estimation and its use as a decision aid tool on the scale of a public organization. The method was developed and validated for the Vanoise National Park which undertook to reduce its ecological footprint by 10% between 2009 and 2007. The methodological liberties inherent to ecological footprint analysis on an organization scale generate methodological choices that may influence the results in terms of environmental impact hierarchy and priority of actions. Therefore, such analysis requires transparency in the methodological choices behind the calculation and the involvement of the end-users in these choices. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The design of more sustainable bioethanol supply chains (SCs) has recently emerged as an active area of research. Most of the approaches presented so far have somehow a limited scope, as they focus on minimizing the emitted greenhouse gases as unique criterion, neglecting the damage caused in other impact categories. In this work, we address the multiobjective design of bioethanol SCs considering several life cycle assessment impacts. To overcome the numerical difficulties of dealing with several objective functions, we investigate the application of a rigorous mixed-integer linear programming-based dimensionality reduction method that minimizes the error of omitting objectives. The usefulness of this approach is tested through its application to the design of a bioethanol/sugar SC in Argentina, in which five environmental objectives are simultaneously optimized along with the net present value. The proposed method makes it possible to reduce the number of environmental indicators, thereby facilitating the calculation and analysis of the Pareto solutions.The thermochemical research platform at the National Bioenergy Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is primarily focused on conversion of biomass to transportation fuels using non-biological techniques. Research is conducted in three general areas relating to fuels synthesis via thermochemical conversion by gasification: (1) Biomass gasification fundamentals: chemistry and mechanisms of tar formation (2) Catalytic tar reforming and syngas cleaning (3) Syngas conversion to mixed alcohols In addition, the platform supports activities in both technoeconomic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) of thermochemical conversion processes. Results from the TEA and LCA are used to inform and guide laboratory research for alternative biomass-to-fuels strategies. Detailed process models are developed using the best available material and energy balance information and unit operations models created at NREL and elsewhere. These models are used to identify cost drivers which then form the basis for research programs aimed at reducing costs and improving process efficiency while maintaining sustainability and an overall net reduction in greenhouse gases. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Both centralized and decentralized wastewater systems have distinct engineering, financial and societal benefits. This paper presents a framework for analyzing the environmental effects of decentralized wastewater systems and an evaluation of the environmental impacts associated with two currently operating systems in California, one centralized and one decentralized. A comparison of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and criteria air pollutants from the systems shows that the scale economies of the centralized plant help lower the environmental burden to less than a fifth of that of the decentralized utility for the same volume treated. The energy and emission burdens of the decentralized plant are reduced when accounting for high-yield wastewater reuse if it supplants an energy-intensive water supply like a desalination one. The centralized facility also reduces greenhouse gases by flaring methane generated during the treatment process, while methane is directly emitted from the decentralized system. The results are compelling enough to indicate that the life-cycle environmental impacts of decentralized designs should be carefully evaluated as part of the design process.A life cycle approach was adopted for energy, green house gas (GHG) emissions and renewability assessment for production of 1 ton of Jatropha biodiesel. Allocation and displacement approaches were applied for life cycle inventory, process energy and process GHG emission attribution to co-products. The results of process energy and GHG emission analyses revealed that the amount of process energy consumption and GHG emission in the individual stages of the life cycle assessment (LCA) were a strong function of co-product handling and irrigation. The GHG emission reduction with respect to petroleum diesel for generating 1 GJ energy varied from 40% to 107% and NER values from 1.4 to 8.0 depending upon the methodology used for energy and emission distribution between product and co-products as well as irrigation applied. However, GHG emission reduction values of 54 and 40 and NER (net energy ratio) values of 1.7 and 1.4 for irrigated and rain-fed scenarios, respectively indicate the eco-friendly nature and renewability of biodiesel even in the worst scenario where total life cycle inventory (LCI), process energy and GHG emission were allocated to biodiesel only. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Torrefaction is being widely investigated for improving the quality of wood and agricultural residues for gasification and combustion applications. Torrefaction is thought to increase the energy density of biomass and decrease the energy required for grinding as well as reducing the moisture content of the material. However, torrefaction is endothermic and in addition involves loss of mass and therefore energy is removed from the biomass. Therefore, a balance has to be achieved between the advantages and disadvantages of torrefaction. In this paper, several systems were modelled including torrefaction - gasification and torrefaction - combustion in both on-site and off-site scenarios. The aim was to determine the optimum temperature at which torrefaction should be carried out if greenhouse gas emissions are to be minimized. It was found that all the systems investigated gave lower greenhouse gas emissions when torrefaction was used compared to an identical reference system where no torrefaction was used. The ideal torrefaction temperature was determined to be 280 and 300 degrees C for hardwood and softwood respectively when the latent heat of the syngas was used to heat the torrefaction process. When the torrefaction volatiles were used to provide the heat for torrefaction, then the optimum temperature dropped to 240 and 260 degrees C for hardwood and softwood respectively. Torrefaction was found to have little impact in reducing transportation greenhouse gas emissions.This article compares life cycle assessment studies performed on imaging equipment for the consumer market in order to identify common practices, limitations, areas for improvement, and opportunities for standardization. The analysis suggests that comparisons across studies are significantly hampered by variability in scope, transparency, data sources, and assumptions; it identifies sources of discrepancy and variability. Of particular concern to printing devices was the definition of a functional unit, which can vary significantly depending on the capabilities and use patterns of a printer. Standardization of the functional unit and related assumptions has a high potential to increase quantitative comparability across studies. At the same time, standardizing the functional unit by paper usage excludes the possibility of comparison to alternative communication media.In reviewing life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of utility-scale concentrating solar power (CSP) systems, this analysis focuses on reducing variability and clarifying the central tendency of published estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through a meta-analytical process called harmonization. From 125 references reviewed, 10 produced 36 independent GHG emissions estimates passing screens for quality and relevance: 19 for parabolic trough (trough) technology and 17 for power tower (tower) technology. The interquartile range (IQR) of published estimates for troughs and towers were 83 and 20 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively; median estimates were 26 and 38 g CO2-eq/kWh for trough and tower, respectively. Two levels of harmonization were applied. Light harmonization reduced variability in published estimates by using consistent values for key parameters pertaining to plant design and performance. The IQR and median were reduced by 87% and 17%, respectively, for troughs. For towers, the IQR and median decreased by 33% and 38%, respectively. Next, five trough LCAs reporting detailed life cycle inventories were identified. The variability and central tendency of their estimates are reduced by 91% and 81%, respectively, after light harmonization. By harmonizing these five estimates to consistent values for global warming intensities of materials and expanding system boundaries to consistently include electricity and auxiliary natural gas combustion, variability is reduced by an additional 32% while central tendency increases by 8%. These harmonized values provide useful starting points for policy makers in evaluating life cycle GHG emissions from CSP projects without the requirement to conduct a full LCA for each new project.A systematic review and harmonization of life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of utility-scale wind power systems was performed to determine the causes of and, where possible, reduce variability in estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Screening of approximately 240 LCAs of onshore and offshore systems yielded 72 references meeting minimum thresholds for quality, transparency, and relevance. Of those, 49 references provided 126 estimates of life cycle GHG emissions. Published estimates ranged from 1.7 to 81 grams CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), with median and interquartile range (IQR) both at 12 g CO2-eq/kWh. After adjusting the published estimates to use consistent gross system boundaries and values for several important system parameters, the total range was reduced by 47% to 3.0 to 45 g CO2-eq/kWh and the IQR was reduced by 14% to 10 g CO2-eq/kWh, while the median remained relatively constant (11 g CO2-eq/kWh). Harmonization of capacity factor resulted in the largest reduction in variability in life cycle GHG emission estimates. This study concludes that the large number of previously published life cycle GHG emission estimates of wind power systems and their tight distribution suggest that new process-based LCAs of similar wind turbine technologies are unlikely to differ greatly. However, additional consequential LCAs would enhance the understanding of true life cycle GHG emissions of wind power (e.g., changes to other generators operations when wind electricity is added to the grid), although even those are unlikely to fundamentally change the comparison of wind to other electricity generation sources.Published scientific literature contains many studies estimating life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of residential and utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PVs). Despite the volume of published work, variability in results hinders generalized conclusions. Most variance between studies can be attributed to differences in methods and assumptions. To clarify the published results for use in decision making and other analyses, we conduct a meta-analysis of existing studies, harmonizing key performance characteristics to produce more comparable and consistently derived results. Screening 397 life cycle assessments (LCAs) relevant to PVs yielded 13 studies on crystalline silicon (c-Si) that met minimum standards of quality, transparency, and relevance. Prior to harmonization, the median of 42 estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from those 13 LCAs was 57 grams carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), with an interquartile range (IQR) of 44 to 73. After harmonizing key performance characteristics (irradiation of 1,700 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year (kWh/m2/yr); system lifetime of 30 years; module efficiency of 13.2% or 14.0%, depending on module type; and a performance ratio of 0.75 or 0.80, depending on installation, the median estimate decreased to 45 and the IQR tightened to 39 to 49. The median estimate and variability were reduced compared to published estimates mainly because of higher average assumptions for irradiation and system lifetime. For the sample of studies evaluated, harmonization effectively reduced variability, providing a clearer synopsis of the life cycle GHG emissions from c-Si PVs. The literature used in this harmonization neither covers all possible c-Si installations nor represents the distribution of deployed or manufactured c-Si PVs.A full life cycle assessment (LCA) is usually a time, energy, and data-intensive process requiring sophisticated methodology. Our meta-analysis of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of wind electricity highlights several key, sensitive parameters to provide a better understanding of the variability in LCA results, and then proposes a methodology to establish a simplified, streamlined approach based on regressions built on these key parameters. Wind electricity's environmental performance can be linked to three essential components: technological (e.g., manufacturing), geographical (e.g., wind speed), and LCA methodology (e.g., product lifetime). A regression has been derived based on detailed LCA results from a representative sample of 17 industrial wind turbines manufactured and recently installed in Europe on average land configurations. Simple GHG performance (i.e., emissions) curves depending on average on-site wind speed and wind turbine lifetime are proposed. Whatever the system power, considering the full range of possible wind speeds in Europe (4 to 9 meters per second [m/s]) and a lifetime of 10 to 30 years, emissions vary from 8.7 to 76.7 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh) when the wind speed is less than 6.5 m/s, and from 4.5 to 22.2 g CO2-eq/kWh when the wind speed is 6.5 m/s or greater. This second situation with a turbine lifetime of 20 years is assumed to be most realistic based on economic criteria. This research presents simplified models as an alternative to detailed LCA. The methodology has been applied as a first trial to wind electricity and could be applied to other energy pathways.Meta-analyses of life cycle assessments (LCAs) have become increasingly important in the context of renewable energy technologies and the decisions and policies that influence their adoption. However, a lack of transparency in reporting modeling assumptions, data, and results precludes normalizing across incommensurate system boundaries or key assumptions. This normalization step is critical for conducting valid meta-analyses. Thus it is necessary to establish clear methods for assessing transparency and to develop conventions for LCA reporting that promote future comparisons. While concerns over transparency in LCA have long been discussed in the literature, the methods proposed to address these concerns have not focused on the transparency and reporting characteristics required for performing meta-analyses. In this study we identify guidelines for assessing reporting transparency that anticipate the needs of meta-analyses of LCA applied to renewable energy technologies. These guidelines were developed after an attempt to perform a meta-analysis on wind turbine LCAs of 1 megawatt and larger, with the goal of determining how life cycle performance, as measured by global warming intensity, might trend with turbine size. The objective was to normalize system boundaries and environmental conditions, and reinterpret global warming potential with new impact assessment methods. Previous wind LCAs were reviewed and assessed for reporting transparency. Only a small subset of studies proved to be sufficiently transparent for the normalization of system boundaries and modeling assumptions required for meta-analyses.In the last decade, numerous life cycle assessments (LCAs) on environmental impacts of electricity generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been conducted. This meta-analysis comprises 15 LCAs of the three CCS technologies (postcombustion, oxyfuel, precombustion) with a focus on greenhouse gas reduction for different regions (Europe, United States, Japan, global), different fuels (hard coal, lignite, natural gas), and different time horizons (between the present and 2050). It presents a condensed overview of methodological variations, findings, and conclusions gathered from these LCAs. All LCAs show the expected reduction in global warming potential but an increase in many other impact categories, regardless of capture technology, time horizon, or fuel considered. Three parameter sets have been identified that have a significant impact on the results: (1) power plant efficiency and energy penalty of the capture process, (2) carbon dioxide capture efficiency and purity, and (3) fuel origin and composition. This meta-analysis proves that LCA is a helpful tool to investigate the variety of environmental consequences associated with CCS. However, there are differences in the underlying assumptions of the LCAs as well as methodological shortcomings that yield heterogeneity of results. Without a better understanding of the technology, it is not possible to give a comprehensive picture. There also remains a wide field of subjects and technologies that have not yet been covered.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of desktop personal computers (PCs) are analyzed to assess the environmental impact of PCs and to explain inconsistencies and disagreements across existing studies. Impacts, characterized in this work in terms of primary energy demand and global warming potential, are decomposed into inventory components and impact per component in order to expose such inconsistencies. Additional information from related studies, especially regarding use-phase energy consumption, helps interpret the LCA results. The weight of evidence strongly suggests that for primary energy demand and contribution to climate change, the use phase is the dominant life cycle phase; manufacturing impacts are smaller but substantial, and impacts due to product transportation and end-of-life activities are much smaller. Each of the few LCA studies that report manufacturing impacts as being greater than use-phase impacts make unrealistically low assumptions regarding use-phase energy consumption. Estimates of manufacturing impacts, especially those related to printed circuit boards and integrated circuits, are highly uncertain and variable; such estimates are very difficult to evaluate, and more systematic research is needed to reduce these uncertainties. The type of computer analyzed, such as low-power light desktop or high-power workstation, may dominate the total impact; future studies should therefore base their estimates on a large sample to smooth out this variation, or explicitly restrict the analysis to a specific type of computer.A systematic review and harmonization of life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of nuclear electricity generation technologies was performed to determine causes of and, where possible, reduce variability in estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to clarify the state of knowledge and inform decision making. LCA literature indicates that life cycle GHG emissions from nuclear power are a fraction of traditional fossil sources, but the conditions and assumptions under which nuclear power are deployed can have a significant impact on the magnitude of life cycle GHG emissions relative to renewable technologies. Screening 274 references yielded 27 that reported 99 independent estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from light water reactors (LWRs). The published median, interquartile range (IQR), and range for the pool of LWR life cycle GHG emission estimates were 13, 23, and 220 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively. After harmonizing methods to use consistent gross system boundaries and values for several important system parameters, the same statistics were 12, 17, and 110 g CO2-eq/kWh, respectively. Harmonization (especially of performance characteristics) clarifies the estimation of central tendency and variability. To explain the remaining variability, several additional, highly influential consequential factors were examined using other methods. These factors included the primary source energy mix, uranium ore grade, and the selected LCA method. For example, a scenario analysis of future global nuclear development examined the effects of a decreasing global uranium market-average ore grade on life cycle GHG emissions. Depending on conditions, median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050.Concerns over climate change and the security of industrial feedstock supplies have been opening a growing market for biobased materials. This development, however, also presents a challenge to scientists, policy makers, and industry because the production of biobased materials requires land and is typically associated with adverse environmental effects. This article addresses the environmental impacts of biobased materials in a meta-analysis of 44 life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. The reviewed literature suggests that one metric ton (t) of biobased materials saves, relative to conventional materials, 55 +/- 34 gigajoules of primary energy and 3 +/- 1 t carbon dioxide equivalents of greenhouse gases. However, biobased materials may increase eutrophication by 5 +/- 7 kilograms (kg) phosphate equivalents/t and stratospheric ozone depletion by 1.9 +/- 1.8 kg nitrous oxide equivalents/t. Our findings are inconclusive with regard to acidification (savings of 2 +/- 20 kg sulfur dioxide equivalents/t) and photochemical ozone formation (savings of 0.3 +/- 2.4 kg ethene equivalents/t). The variability in the results of life cycle assessment studies highlights the difficulties in drawing general conclusions. Still, common to most biobased materials are impacts caused by the application of fertilizers and pesticides during industrial biomass cultivation. Additional land use impacts, such as the potential loss of biodiversity, soil carbon depletion, soil erosion, deforestation, as well as greenhouse gas emissions from indirect land use change are not quantified in this review. Clearly these impacts should be considered when evaluating the environmental performance of biobased materials.This systematic review and harmonization of life cycle assessments (LCAs) of utility-scale coal-fired electricity generation systems focuses on reducing variability and clarifying central tendencies in estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Screening 270 references for quality LCA methods, transparency, and completeness yielded 53 that reported 164 estimates of life cycle GHG emissions. These estimates for subcritical pulverized, integrated gasification combined cycle, fluidized bed, and supercritical pulverized coal combustion technologies vary from 675 to 1,689 grams CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh) (interquartile range [IQR]= 8901,130 g CO2-eq/kWh; median = 1,001) leading to confusion over reasonable estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from coal-fired electricity generation. By adjusting published estimates to common gross system boundaries and consistent values for key operational input parameters (most importantly, combustion carbon dioxide emission factor [CEF]), the meta-analytical process called harmonization clarifies the existing literature in ways useful for decision makers and analysts by significantly reducing the variability of estimates (-53% in IQR magnitude) while maintaining a nearly constant central tendency (-2.2% in median). Life cycle GHG emissions of a specific power plant depend on many factors and can differ from the generic estimates generated by the harmonization approach, but the tightness of distribution of harmonized estimates across several key coal combustion technologies implies, for some purposes, first-order estimates of life cycle GHG emissions could be based on knowledge of the technology type, coal mine emissions, thermal efficiency, and CEF alone without requiring full LCAs. Areas where new research is necessary to ensure accuracy are also discussed.Rapid growth in life cycle assessment (LCA) methodological developments has generated a large body of work that may appear to lack direction. In this article we developed and applied a structured approach, inspired by the meta-analysis concept, to examine literature and identify research thrusts on how to further develop LCA. The procedure consists of four steps: (1) definition of the research question; (2) carrying out a literature review concerning more than 280 articles, selected from about 2,000 articles according to predefined criteria, which resulted in the identification of some 60 main methodological topics; (3) research gap analysis, in which the methodological topics identified in the previous step were compared with the research priorities identified through a users needs survey; and (4) interpretation of results, in which the results of both the previous steps were evaluated and organized into coherent research thrusts. Overall the analysis delivered two main research thrusts: one devoted to increase the practicability of LCA, the other to increase model fidelity. The former is aimed at making knowledge available in an easily usable way, while the latter focuses on better describing the complexity of the systems analyzed and those interrelations that are really meaningful. Specific research topics were identified for each thrust, which suggests that sophistication and practicability can and should coexist in the same method.Systematic review, including meta-analysis, is increasingly utilized in life cycle assessment (LCA). There are currently no widely recognized guidelines for designing, conducting, or reporting systematic reviews in LCA. Other disciplines such as medicine, ecology, and software engineering have both recognized the utility of systematic reviews and created standardized protocols for conducting and reporting systematic reviews. Based largely on the 2009 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, which updated the preferred format for reporting of such reviews in biomedical research, we provide an introduction to the topic and a checklist to guide the reporting of future LCA reviews in a standardized format. The standardized technique for assessing and reporting reviews of LCA (STARR-LCA) is a starting point for improving the utility of systematic reviews in LCA.Most of the hydro-economic models used for assessing the environmental impact of agricultural policies are deterministic and can only reflect uncertainties through analyses of scenarios. In this article, we propose a methodology to assess uncertainty using Monte Carlo simulations. Taking three different global change scenarios, we vary economic parameters liable to influence the future of agriculture within each scenario. The simulations are based on farming models developed for two French regions (Midi-Pyrenees and Alsace), using linear programming (LP). These are used to simulate the impacts of a "business as usual", "liberal" and "interventionist" scenario, on water abstraction for irrigation (Neste basin) and on nitrate leaching into groundwater (Alsace). The simulations all predict a drop in farm income in both regions, with a stronger effect in the liberal scenario. Water consumed in the Neste basin increases a little (+0.3 to +3.7% in the interventionist scenario). A slight decrease of agricultural nitrate leaching is observed in Alsace, with nearly no difference between the averages for the three scenarios. Considering all Monte Carlo simulations the nitrate leaching should decrease between -28% and -43%, so uncertainty is not very important from the water planning and management point of view. However, the uncertainty on incomes is greater. A comparison between the Monte Carlo results and those from the deterministic approach demonstrates the value of taking uncertainties into account in foresight modelling exercises: and suggest that Monte Carlo associated to LP is a partial response to classical criticism addressed towards basic LP. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly used for comparing environmental impacts of contrasting farming systems. However, the interpretation of agricultural LCA studies may be flawed when the alternative land use options are not properly taken into account. This study compared energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balances and biodiversity impacts of different farming systems by using LCA accompanied by an assessment of alternative land uses. Farm area and food product output were set equal across all of the farm models, and any land remaining available after the food crop production requirement had been met was assumed to be used for other purposes. Three different management options for that land area were compared: Miscanthus energy crop production, managed forest and natural forest. The results illustrate the significance of taking into account the alternative land use options and suggest that integrated farming systems have potential to improve the energy and GHG balances and biodiversity compared to both organic and conventional systems. Sensitivity analysis shows that the models are most sensitive for crop and biogas yields and for the nitrous oxide emission factors. This paper provides an approach that can be further developed for identifying land management systems that optimize food production and environmental benefits. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study assesses global warming impact (GWI) of Not-From-Concentrate (NFC) orange juice produced in the state of Florida. The selected functional unit (FU) is a NFC orange juice carton available in a standard packing of 1.893 L (64 fluid oz) at a local food store. A life-cycle assessment approach was adopted and greenhouse gas emissions of all the steps present in the entire supply chain starting from orange production to storage of orange juice at a local food store were estimated. We considered two scenarios of orange fruit production i.e., with and without resetting of orange trees. The overall GWI for with and without resetting production scenarios was estimated to be 1.6 and 1.8 kg carbon dioxide equivalent/FU, respectively. The GWI of NFC orange juice produced under the scenario of with resetting was less as compared to the production scenario of without resetting due to 21% more orange fruit production per unit of land area. We found that the GWI of orange production was highest in the production chain, followed by NFC orange juice production at a citrus processing plant for both the scenarios. We also found that the use of fertilizers for orange production contributes significantly towards total GWI of the NFC orange juice. It is expected that results of this study will help in reducing GWI of the Florida's orange juice and thus, facilitate the state of Florida in achieving desired environmental goals. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Exergetic life cycle assessment (ExLCA) is applied with life cycle assessment (LCA) to a hydrogen production process. This comparative environmental study examines a nuclear-based hydrogen production via thermochemical water splitting using a copper chlorine cycle. LCA, which is an analytical tool to identify, quantify and decrease the overall environmental impact of a system or a product, is extended to ExLCA. Exergy efficiencies and air pollution emissions are evaluated for all process steps, including the uranium processing, nuclear and hydrogen production plants. LCA results are presented in four categories: acidification potential, eutrophication potential, global warming potential and ozone depletion potential. A parametric study is performed for various plant lifetimes. The ExLCA results indicate that the greatest irreversibility is caused by uranium processing. The primary contributor of the life cycle irreversibility of the nuclear-based hydrogen production process is fuel (uranium) processing, for which the exergy efficiency is 26.7% and the exergy destruction is 2916.3 MJ. The lowest global warming potential per megajoule exergy of hydrogen is 5.65 g CO2-eq achieved a plant capacity of 125,000 kg H-2/day. The corresponding value for a plant capacity of 62,500 kg H-2/day is 5.75 g CO2-eq. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present paper analyzed the environmental assessment of short rotation willow plantations in Sweden based on the standard framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) from the International Standards Organisation. The analysis is focused on two alternative management regimes for willow plantations dedicated to biomass production for energy purposes. The data used included the averages of a large sample of commercial plantations. One of the scenarios is carried out under nitrogen based fertilized conditions and the other under non-fertilized management with total biomass yields (dry weight) of 140 t/ha and 86 t/ha over a 21 and 22-year life time respectively. The environmental profile was analyzed in terms of the potentials for abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity. In addition, an energy analysis was performed using the cumulative energy demand method (CEO). The application of nitrogen based fertilizers allows an increase in the biomass yield per ha of up to 40% although the contributions to almost all impact categories, particularly the eutrophication potential and toxicity potential impact categories are also considerably higher. Conversely, due to the higher biomass yields achieved with fertilization of these willow plantations, that regime presents a better overall environmental profile in terms of energy yield and global warming potential. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We assessed the short-term effects of converting pastureland to hybrid poplar and willow bioenergy plantations on soil greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes and nitrogen (N) leaching in northern Michigan, USA. We used static chambers to measure soil carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) efflux, and tension lysimeters to measure nitrate (NO3-) leaching, in newly-established poplar and willow plantation plots, and in reference pasture plots. Emissions of N2O increased markedly following cultivation with cumulative direct N2O emissions of 0.3, 4.6 and 5.9 Mg ha(-1) of CO2 equivalents (CO(2)eq) in the reference, willow and poplar plots, respectively. Similarly, land conversion resulted in large increases of NO3 leaching with losses of 2.6, 38.8 and 53.9 kg ha(-1) of N from the reference, willow and poplar plots, respectively. Soil CO2 fluxes were significantly affected by land-use conversion; soils from willow and poplar plots emitted 29-42% less CO2 relative to the reference plots. Greater root respiration in the pastureland likely explained the greater soil CO2 efflux in these plots. Estimates of the net GHG emissions due to land-use conversion were strongly influenced by assumptions regarding the root contribution (RC) to total soil CO2 efflux. Assuming an RC = 50%, we estimate that pastureland conversion at this site incurred GHG debts of 7.4 and 11.6 Mg ha(-1) y(-1) as CO(2)eq for willow and poplar, respectively, during the establishment year. These results demonstrate the need to include soil disturbance impacts on the N cycle in future life cycle assessment of these bioenergy crops. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examines the renewable energy production of crops used for phytoremediation. Our analysis is based on a case study in the Campine region (Belgium and The Netherlands), where agricultural soils are diffusely contaminated with cadmium, lead, and zinc, with an enhanced risk for uptake of these metals in crops and leaching to the groundwater. However, the area has such a large extent (700 km(2)) that conventional remediation is not applicable. Cultivation of crops for energy purposes on such land offers the opportunity to come up with an approach that efficiently uses contaminated agricultural land and that can be beneficial for both farmer and society. Performing a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), we examined the energy and CO2 abatement potential of willow (Salix spp.), silage maize (Zea mays L.), and rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) originating from contaminated land. Taking into account the marginal impact of the metals in the biomass on the energy conversion efficiency and on the potential use of the biomass and its rest products after conversion, digestion of silage maize with combustion of the contaminated digestate shows the best energetic and CO2 abating perspectives. The replacement of cokes based electricity by willow is more efficient in CO2 abatement than willow used in a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit, despite lower net energy production in the former option. Willow reaches the same energy production and same CO2 abatement per hectare per year as silage maize when its biomass yield is respectively 13 and 8.7 Mg dm ha (1) y (1). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Phytoremediation could be a sustainable remediation alternative for conventional remediation technologies. However, its implementation on a commercial scale remains disappointing. To emphasize its sustainability, this paper examines whether and how the potential economic benefit of CO2 abatement for different crops used for phytoremediation or sustainable land management purposes could promote phytotechnologies. Our analysis is based on a case study in the Campine region, where agricultural soils are contaminated with mainly cadmium. We use Life Cycle Analysis to show for the most relevant crops (willow (Salix spp), energy maize (Zea mays), and rapeseed (Brassica napus)), that phytoremediation, used for renewable energy production, could abate CO2. Converting this in economic numbers through the Marginal Abatement Cost of CO2 ((sic) 20 ton(-1)) we can integrate this in the economic analysis to compare phytoremediation crops among each other, and phytoremediation with conventional technologies. The external benefit of CO2 abatement when using phytoremediation crops for land management ranges between (sic) 55 and (sic) 501 per hectare. The purpose of these calculations is not to calculate a subsidy for phytoremediation. There is no reason why one would prefer phytoremediation crops for renewable energy production over "normal" biomass. Moreover, subsidies for renewable energy already exist. Therefore, we should not integrate these numbers in the economic analysis again. However, these numbers could contribute to making explicit the competitive advantage of phytoremediation compared to conventional remediation technologies, but also add to a more sustainably funded decision on which crop should be grown on contaminated land. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study applies life cycle assessment to a potential production pathway for polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), from the cellulosic fraction of organic residuals from material recovery facilities that otherwise are disposed of in a landfill. The cradle-to-gate production of PHB from this proposed pathway results in primary energy consumption and emissions of approximately 55-76 MJ/kg and 3.4-5.0 kg carbon dioxide-equivalent/kg, respectively. By comparison, producing PHB from a dedicated agricultural feedstock such as corn is estimated to require approximately twice the energy and greenhouse gas emissions as PHB from material recovery facility residuals. The study also considers an expanded modeling system boundary that assesses the consequences of diverting the organic fraction of material recovery facility residuals from landfills for biopolymer production. This diversion leads to reduced fugitive emissions of landfill gas but also reduced power generation from landfills that combust landfill gas. Including the changes to landfill gas generation leads to greater variability in carbon-intensity estimates for PHB: from as low as -1.7, to as high as 6.3 kg carbon dioxide-equivalent/kg PHB. Key contributors to this variability include the selection of an analytical time horizon for landfill gas generation, assumptions about landfill gas collection and combustion, and disposal options for PHB material. The expanded system boundary highlights current gaps in life cycle assessment methodology: in particular, the lack of clear conventions on analytical time horizon selection for processes with long-term consequences, such as landfill gas generation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There are basically two commonly used methods to calculate a water footprint; volumetric and impact assessment. The aim of this study is to evaluate these alternative water footprint methodologies using a New Zealand-based tissue paper supply chain. It was found that for the reference flow of one kilogram of tissue paper the volumetric water footprint was 1284 kg and the impact assessment footprint was 0.4 kg (as ecosystem water-equivalents). The results indicate that whilst the water associated with tissue paper production in New Zealand is large, the impact of this water use is minimal. Both methods are limited by a lack of data. The volumetric method requires clearer delimitations and the impact assessment method used cannot claim to fully quantify the impacts of the water use using the current indicators and criteria. Therefore it is recommended that a single, more inclusive water footprint methodology that uses more sophisticated indicators of water stress be developed.Substance flow analysis (SFA) is a frequently used industrial ecology technique for studying societal metal flows, but it is limited in its ability to inform us about future developments in metal flow patterns and how we can affect them. Equation-based simulation modeling techniques, such as dynamic SFA and system dynamics, can usefully complement static SFA studies in this respect, but they are also restricted in several ways. The objective of this article is to demonstrate the ability of agent-based modeling to overcome these limitations and its usefulness as a tool for studying societal metal flow systems. The body of the article summarizes the parallel implementation of two models-an agent-based model and a system dynamics model-both addressing the following research question: What conditions foster the development of a closed-loop flow network for metals in mobile phones? The results from in silico experimentation with these models highlight three important differences between agent-based modeling (ABM) and equation-based modeling (EBM) techniques. An analysis of how these differences affected the insights that could be extracted from the constructed models points to several key advantages of ABM in the study of metal flow systems. In particular, this analysis suggests that a key advantage of the ABM technique is its flexibility to enable the representation of societal metal flow systems in a more native manner. This added flexibility endows modelers with enhanced leverage to identify options for steering metal flows and opens new opportunities for using the metaphor of an ecosystem to understand metal flow systems more fully.This study presents the carbon footprint of a paperback book for which the cover and inside papers were produced in the United States and printed in Canada. The choice of paper mills for both cover and page papers was based on criteria such as percentage of recycled content in the pulp mix, transport distances (pulp mill to paper mill, paper mill to print), and technologies. The cradle-to-gate assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions follows recognized guidelines for carbon footprint assessment. The results show that the production of 400,000 books, mainly distributed in North America, would generate 1,084 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq), or 2.71 kilograms (kg) CO2-eq per book. The impact of using deinked market pulp (DMP) is shown here to be detrimental, accounting for 54% of total GHG emissions and being 32% higher than reference virgin Kraft pulp. This supports findings that DMP mill GHG emissions strongly correlate with the carbon intensity of the power grid supplying the pulp mill and that virgin Kraft mills that reuse wood residue and black liquor to produce heat and electricity can achieve lower GHG emissions per tonne of pulp produced. Although contrary to common thinking, this is consistent with the Paper Task Force 2002 conclusion for office paper (the closest paper grade to writing paper or fine paper) (EDF 2002a). To get a cradle-to-grave perspective, three different end-of-life (EOL) scenarios were analyzed, all of which included a harvested wood product (HWP) carbon storage benefit for 25 years. The GHG offset concept within the context of the book editor's carbon-neutral paper claims is also discussed.This article presents a tool and data for calculation of the carbon footprint of rendering operations in North America, quantifying Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) greenhouse gas emissions. Scope 3 (life cycle) emissions are not included. According to the sample data, in one year an average-size rendering plant in North America processes 100,000 tonnes (t) of meat by-products, fallen animals, and restaurant grease and produces 40,000 t of marketable fats and proteins. A plant of this size emits directly about 20,000 t of carbon dioxide (CO2), mostly by burning fuels to operate cookers that destroy pathogens, drive off moisture, and separate the fat and protein. Another 4,000 t of CO2 is emitted by utility companies to provide electricity for the rendering process. These direct and indirect emissions are equivalent to about 30% of the CO2 that would be released if all of the carbon in the rendered raw material were decomposed into CO2.There is a strong need for methods within life cycle assessment (LCA) that enable the inclusion of all complex aspects related to land use and land use change (LULUC). This article presents a case study of the use of one hectare (ha) of forest managed for the production of wood for bioenergy production. Both permanent and temporary changes in above-ground biomass are assessed together with the impact on biodiversity caused by LULUC as a result of forestry activities. The impact is measured as a product of time and area requirements, as well as by changes in carbon pools and impacts on biodiversity as a consequence of different management options. To elaborate the usefulness of the method as well as its dependency on assumptions, a range of scenarios are introduced in the study. The results show that the impact on climate change from LULUC dominates the results, compared to the impact from forestry operations. This clearly demonstrates the need to include LULUC in an LCA of forestry products. For impacts both on climate change and biodiversity, the results show large variability based on what assumptions are made; and impacts can be either positive or negative. Consequently, a mere measure of land used does not provide any meaning in LCA, as it is not possible to know whether this contributes a positive or negative impact.In this study we discuss impact categories and indicators to incorporate local ecological impacts into life cycle assessment (LCA) for aquaculture. We focus on the production stages of salmon farmingfreshwater hatcheries used to produce smolts and marine grow-out sites using open netpens. Specifically, we propose two impact categories: impacts of nutrient release and impacts on biodiversity. Proposed indicators for impacts of nutrient release are (1) the area altered by farm waste, (2) changes in nutrient concentration in the water column, (3) the percent of carrying capacity reached, (4) the percent of total anthropogenic nutrient release, and (5) release of wastes into freshwater. Proposed indicators for impacts on biodiversity are (1) the number of escaped salmon, (2) the number of reported disease outbreaks, (3) parasite abundance on farms, and (4) the percent reduction in wild salmon survival. For each proposed indicator, an example of how the indicator could be estimated is given and the strengths and weaknesses of that indicator are discussed. We propose that including local environmental impacts as well as global-scale ones in LCA allows us to better identify potential trade-offs, where actions that are beneficial at one scale are harmful at another, and synchronicities, where actions have desirable or undesirable effects at both spatial scales. We also discuss the potential applicability of meta-analytic statistical techniques to LCA.The human health impact of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials manufactured by the pultrusion industry is not fully understood. In particular, it is unclear whether the human health impact of toxic chemicals present in low concentrations in fire retardant pultruded FRP materials is disproportionately high. This impact may be an important criterion when making boundary selection decisions in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of these materials. The North American pultrusion industry was surveyed to determine resin mix concentration levels and workplace inhalation toxicity exposure levels. LCAs were then conducted on three building panel resin mixes to determine whether the human health impact of toxic chemicals used in the mixes was low enough to exclude the chemicals from the life cycle inventory (LCI) boundary. The first resin mix represented a typical pultruded product, the second mix removed toxic chemicals present in small concentrations, and the third mix replaced toxic chemicals present in small concentrations with a nontoxic chemical. Results showed that toxicity levels fell below exposure limits and no significant difference in human health impact existed among the LCAs. The research concludes that human health impact is a useful criterion when defining an LCI boundary. Toxic chemicals present in small concentrations in pultruded FRP materials may be excluded from the LCI boundary, as their human health impacts are low. Because these levels are marginal in North American pultrusion factories, no changes in resin mixes are recommended for the pultrusion industry.Zinc oxide (ZnO) polycrystalline ceramics are the focal point of lightning arrester technology. These semiconductor materials are able to switch rapidly from high to low impedance while handling large amounts of electrical energy. Since the early 1970s, considerable efforts have been made to improve the specific energy absorption capacity and device reliability of such components. This document describes a case study carried out on the life cycle impacts of three different designs of electroceramics made of ZnO. Results show that the best design involves decreasing the diameter while maintaining the thickness of the compound. Of the production, transport, use, and end-of-life phases, the use phase is found to contribute by far the most to environmental impacts, with leakage currents in the 10-6 ampere range. The next-largest impacts come in the transport and production stages. Sensitivity analysis shows that impacts associated with the production stage originate from ZnO production and are related to the by-products (heavy metals) of zinc metallurgy.On page 526 of this article, equations (4), (5), and (7) should be corrected as follows. Equation (4) should read:Everyone has heard the slogan "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle"-but does observing this hierarchy really minimize negative impacts? With respect to reduction, it seems clear that using less of something decreases the impact. Similarly, reuse of a material or product should decrease the impact of each use, as long as the resources needed to restore the item to usable condition each time are not too large. For recycling, the picture varies by material and often involves tradeoffs among impacts. Life-cycle analysis aims to comprehensively compare all of the impacts of various disposition options. This article summarizes the pros and cons of recycling materials used in paper, drink containers, and the complex batteries for electric vehicles from the perspective of life-cycle analysis.Industry is increasingly aware that sustainability combines environmental, societal, and economic considerations in product development and that this linkage, while driving improved performance, can pose both a business opportunity and a challenge. On one hand, innovations make good business sense by bringing new products to supply a growing market demand for sustainable goods. On the other hand, new regulatory standards demand cleaner, less-toxic products, which can be difficult to develop economically, and require an agreed-upon infrastructure to demonstrate compliance, which can also be difficult and expensive. In this article, we discuss how measurements, standards, and data, being developed and deployed worldwide by national metrology institutes (NMIs) and standards-developing organizations (SDOs), are helping industry enable the sustainable use of materials. Examples include bio-based polymers, lightweight automobiles, fly-ash-based concrete, and lead-free solders. Measurements, standards, and data also support energy efficiency and renewable energy and ease industry compliance with new and emerging regulations, including those that demand less-toxic components.Materials play a major role in defining the sustainability performance of automobiles throughout their materials-production, manufacturing, use, and end-of-life stages. Materials production and manufacturing raise many sustainability issues, including resource scarcity and materials sourcing, energy and carbon intensity, and materials efficiency in parts fabrication. In the use stage, materials properties such as density and strength directly affect materials-mass requirements, which influence two dominant sustainability parameters for vehicles: fuel economy and service life. For conventional vehicles, the operation segment of the use stage accounts for about 85% of the total life-cycle energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions. Consequently, powertrain technologies and efficiencies as well as fuel-cycle processes control these impacts. Future trends in vehicle electrification will shift the magnitude and distribution of life-cycle impacts and the effectiveness of materials strategies for improving sustainability, such as lightweighting. In many cases, the materials-production stage could become a greater determinant in life-cycle impacts. With current vehicle end-of-life management infrastructure, 85% of materials are recyclable, but recovery of plastics and segregation of metal alloys represent opportunities for improvement. Life-cycle assessment and cost analysis provide the most comprehensive methods for evaluating the sustainability of materials strategies. Using a life-cycle framework, this article highlights the current and future materials challenges and opportunities driving vehicle sustainability performance.This article summarizes the energy savings and environmental impacts of using traditional and bio-based fiber-reinforced polymer composites in place of conventional metal-based structures in a range of applications. In addition to reviewing technical achievements in improving material properties, we quantify the environmental impacts of the materials over the complete product life cycle, from material production through use and end of life, using life-cycle assessment (LCA).Physical infrastructure, including buildings, roads, pipelines, bridges, power lines, communications networks, canals, and waterways, make up a substantial fraction of worldwide material usage and flows. Consequently, the overall mass of materials and the associated environmental impacts must be addressed to achieve sustainable development of infrastructure. This article surveys the magnitude of material use for infrastructure, including trends in the use per person, environmental impacts of the production and use of infrastructure materials, variations in the longevity of physical infrastructure, and changes in the recycling of infrastructure materials.Over the past 12 years, photovoltaics enjoyed an average growth of similar to 45% per year that was affected only marginally by the recent global financial crisis. Industrial roadmaps and analysts' forecasts share visions of solar power becoming a major contributor to national and global electricity grids, with several terawatts of cumulative deployment by 2050 or earlier. For photovoltaics technology to become a major sustainable player in a competitive power-generation market, it must provide abundant, affordable electricity, with environmental impacts dramatically lower than those from conventional power generation. This article summarizes the prospects in each of three basic aspects of sustainability, namely, system costs, environmental impacts, and resource availability, all of which are examined in the context of prospective life-cycle assessment. Indeed, these three aspects are closely related: Increasing the efficiency of material recovery by recycling spent modules will become increasingly important in resolving cost, resource, and environmental constraints on large-scale sustainable growth.Sustainable housing is receiving increasing attention by policy makers, architects, consumers and scholars. This study aims at enhancing our knowledge on the environmental impact of sustainable houses by performing a Life Cycle Assessment on a single case study. The case study is performed on a single low-energy building containing 19 flats using the Eco-indicator'99 method. The results indicate that the choice of insulating materials has a significant impact on the eco-score of the design. The materials' production turns out to be by far the most influential, which bears the consequence that architects and consumers should focus on choosing the best materials in terms of eco-score instead of focusing on an environmental-friendly design. Waste recycling (if possible) has a lower eco-score compared to waste disposal (dumping or burning). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A life-cycle (LC) model has been implemented for a Portuguese single-family house. The first goal is to characterize the main LC processes (material production and transport, heating, cooling, maintenance) assessing seven alternative exterior walls for the same house to identify environmentally preferable solutions. The second goal is to compare the results of three life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods - CED (cumulative energy demand), for primary energy accounting; CML 2001 (Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University) and EI'99 (Eco-indicator'99), for multiple environmental impacts - to determine the extent to which the results of a life-cycle assessment are influenced by the method applied. The results show that the most significant LC process depends on the operational pattern assumed. Regarding the assessment of the exterior wall alternatives, the results indicate the wood-wall is the preferable solution. Non-renewable CED shows results similar to abiotic depletion (CML 2001) and resources (EI'99) categories, as well as some correlation with climate change/global warming potential (GWP), acidification and eutrophication. However, no correlation was found with the remaining impact categories. Comparing CML 2001 and EI'99 categories, GWP, ozone layer depletion, abiotic depletion, acidification, and eutrophication present robust results that permit a straightforward comparison between the two LCIA methods. Nevertheless, CML results present slightly higher impacts for the use phase, while EI'99 for material production. In addition, the two LCIA methods can present inconsistent results between similar categories (different ranking of alternatives), which ultimately can influence the choice among solutions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We project the well-to-wheels (WTW) and tank-to-wheels (TTW) fossil-energy use, petroleum use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the road-transport sector in China up to year 2050 and evaluate the effects of various potential policy options with the fuel economy and environmental impacts (FEEI) model (http://www.feeimodel.org/). The policies evaluated include (1) vehicle fuel-consumption improvements, (2) dieselization, (3) vehicle electrification, and (4) fuel diversification, with plausible policy scenarios. Under the business-as-usual scenario, road transport in China would create 410-520 million metric tons (MMT) of oil-equivalent of TTW oil demand (three to four times the current level), 28-36 billion GJ of WTW energy demand, and 1900-2300 MMT of CO2-equivalent of WTW GHG emissions by 2050. The policies (in the same order as above) are projected to reduce the TTW oil demand by 35%, 10%, 29%, and 44%, and reduce WTW GHG emissions by 34%, 5%, 12%, and 13%, respectively, by 2050. This evaluation reveals that the fuel-consumption improvement policy could achieve greater benefit in reducing oil use, fossil-energy use, and GHG emissions. Implications of each policy option are discussed and the uncertainties associated with the policy scenarios are analyzed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the current focus on sustainability, it is necessary to evaluate concrete's environmental impact properly, especially when developing new 'green' concrete types. Therefore, we investigated the available literature on every step in the LCA of concrete. The adopted functional unit for which the environmental impact is calculated, influences the outcome significantly. When comparing different concrete compositions, this unit should incorporate differences in strength, durability and service life. Hence, a cradle-to-grave or modified cradle-to-gate approach is advised as system boundary. When using industrial by-products as cement replacing material in 'green' concrete, an economical allocation of impacts is recommended. Inventory data on energy use, CO2, PM10, SOx and NOx emissions were collected and assigned to the impact categories of the problem oriented CML 2002 and the damage oriented Eco-indicator 99 impact method. Compared to Portland cement, the impact of blast-furnace slag and fly ash is about an order of a magnitude lower. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study describes a detailed characterization of the oil obtained by co-pyrolysis of Tarfaya oil shale (Morocco) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) and by pyrolysis of oil shale and HOPE individually. The oil (obtained under the most suitable conditions, temperature of 500-525 degrees C and heating rate of 10 degrees C/min) was characterised by elemental analysis, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-1 NMR) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). In addition, column chromatography was used group composition of oil was determined. Gas chromatography was achieved on n-hexane fractions. Adding HOPE to the oil shale results in increased oil yields, which indicates synergetic effect between the oil shale and HDPE. The addition of HOPE to oil shale improved fuel properties of shale oil leading to a decrease in the oxygen content of shale oil. The results show that the oil obtained by co-pyrolysis has similar properties with commercial gasoline. HOPE acts as a hydrogenation medium for the oil shale product as revealed by FTIR results. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A cement manufacturing company located in Catalonia (Spain) has upgraded its cement production plant. The new cement production line (L6) has replaced the former lines (L3, L4 and L5) which have been operating for 30 years. The new line production L6 has been designed and constructed taking into account the best available techniques (BAT) for the cement industry. The significant improvements achieved with the new plant are related to the energy efficiency of the new kiln system which represents less amount of fossil fuel and to less emission to the atmosphere per kg of clinker produced. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been used for the quantification and evaluation of the environmental impacts of the new production line (L6) considering the designed goals proposed and those achieved at first trimester of 2011 compared to the former production lines. To reduce uncertainty this manuscript presents a cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment of both scenarios. Analysis using SimaPro 7.2 software shows that new production line (L6) provides a significant reduction of the environmental impact for global warming (5%), acidification (15%), eutrophication (17%) and cumulative exergy demand (13%). The damage assessment also confirmed that new production line (L6) reported a significant reduction impact for the human health (11%), ecosystem quality (11%) and resources (14%) damage compared to the former lines. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The industrial usage of plant biomass, paper pulp manufacture, is increasing every day. In Malaysia, Rubber wood is the dominant raw material and the Soda-anthraquinone and total chlorine free bleaching processes lead the procedure of rubber wood paper pulp production. This paper aims to identify the structural modification in the pulp depending on the applied procedure. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry and HPLC have been applied to analyze rubberwood chip, soda-AQ and TCF pulp. The relationship between spectral characteristics and sample composition has been established, as well as the variation in the structural behavior after pulping and bleaching has been observed. FTIR spectra clearly show that after TCF the structure of the wood components is partially modified or removed. Along with FTIR data, the HPLC results confirmed the absence of chemically hazardous p-Hydroxybenzoic acid in the pulp samples, which finally results in the contamination of the river water streams. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Traditionally, life cycle assessment (LCA) does not estimate a key property: surface albedo. Here an enhancement of the LCA methodology has been proposed through the development and employment of a time-dependent climatological model for including the effect of surface albedo on climate. The theoretical findings derived by the time-dependent model have been applied to the case study of a black and a white roof evaluated in the time-frames of 50 and 100 years focusing on the impact on global warming potential. The comparative life cycle impact assessment of the two roofs shows that the high surface albedo plays a crucial role in offsetting radiative forcings. In the 50-year time horizon, surface albedo is responsible for a decrease in CO(2)eq of 110-184 kg and 131-217 kg in 100 years. Furthermore, the white roof compared to the black roof, due to the high albedo, decreases the annual energy use of about 3.6-4.5 kWh/m(2). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent a key vector to introduce and diffuse eco-innovation in the market, because of their relevance to both the environment and the European gross domestic product. As they are often focused on continuous and incremental innovation of their products, the optimization of product eco-innovation paths can be considered a central aspect of their business. All phases of this process (awareness building and training, analysis, product (re)design and communication/certification) need to be supported to overcome the existing barriers, which mainly consist of lack of experience inside SMEs and cost of information, data, and tools. Information and Communication Technologies can play a role to lower some of the barriers, but currently the numerous services and tools available cover only specific aspects of the whole process, and are often too complex for their direct use by SMEs. The multilingual web-based platform Ecosmes.net here presented aims to integrate user-friendly and free-of-charge services and tools to support all phases of the product eco-innovation process in SMEs. The approach behind mainly consists in developing tailored, simplified tools, and in carrying out "homogeneous product group" studies, as a basis for the production of pre-elaborated information and data to be used with the tools developed. Experience gained in 5 years of applications has confirmed that Ecosmes.net can facilitate the start-up of the product eco-innovation process, but has also shown that not all the potentialities have been fully exploited. Moreover, as the eco-innovation market is not developed enough to allow economic management of these kinds of online services, a public initiative is advocated to face this challenge and support a continuous upgrading. Modes and opportunities are proposed and discussed in the conclusion.The environmental conscious manufacturing and climate change made automotive manufacturing organisations to recognise sustainability as a vital concept for survival in the global competitive scenario. Many components of automobiles are manufactured using plastics which play imperative role in ensuring sustainability. This research article deals with the application of Life Cycle Assessment on instrument panel of an electric car which is made of ABS (Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene). The case study has been conducted in an Indian instrument panel manufacturing plant. First, a life cycle model of ABS sheet which is particularly used in instrument panel manufacturing was built, and the environmental impact assessment of the instrument panel was done using Eco-indicator and CML methodologies. In life cycle perspective, the environmental hot spots have been found out. Later the results have been interpreted based on environmental impact assessment factors. The relative comparison of impact factors at different stages in the life cycle enables the generation of improvement options. The sustainability index of instrument panel before and after implementing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been computed. The results are statistically validated, and the managerial implications have been derived.Considerable research is currently being devoted to seeking alternative fuels to comply with transportation needs while reducing the environmental impact of this sector. Within the transport activity sector, on road vehicles and agricultural machinery require around 2 Mtoe energy in France. The anaerobic digestion of farm waste could roughly cover these needs. This paper aims to study the environmental and energy interest of this short power supply path. An ideal biogas production system has been built up from the average characteristics of current rural biogas plants in France. Pollutant emissions, energy demands and production are assessed for various scenarios in order to produce methane for dual fuel engines. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the environmental impact of dual fuel agricultural machines, compared to diesel engines. The energy balance is always in disfavour of biogas fuel, whereas LCA energy indicators indicate a benefit for biogas production. This gap is related to the way in which the input of biomass energy is handled: in conventional biofuel LCA, this energy is not taken into account. A carbon balance is then presented to discuss the impact of biogas on climate change. Dual fuel engines were found to be interesting for their small impact. We also show, however, how the biogenic carbon assumption and the choice of allocation for the avoided methane emissions of anaerobic digestion are crucial in quantifying CO2 savings. Other environmental issues of biogas fuel were examined. Results indicate that are management and green electricity are the key points for a sustainable biogas fuel. It is concluded that biofuel environmental damage is reduced if energy needs during biofuel production are covered by the production process itself. As agricultural equipment is used during the biofuel production process, this implies that a high substitution rate should be used for this equipment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article addresses the optimal design and planning of cellulosic ethanol supply chains under economic, environmental, and social objectives. The economic objective is measured by the total annualized cost, the environmental objective is measured by the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, and the social objective is measured by the number of accrued local jobs. A multiobjective mixed-integer linear programming (mo-MILP) model is developed that accounts for major characteristics of cellulosic ethanol supply chains, including supply seasonality and geographical diversity, biomass degradation, feedstock density, diverse conversion pathways and byproducts, infrastructure compatibility, demand distribution, regional economy, and government incentives. Aspen Plus models for biorefineries with different feedstocks and conversion pathways are built to provide detailed techno-economic and emission analysis results for the mo-MILP model, which simultaneously predicts the optimal network design, facility location, technology selection, capital investment, production planning, inventory control, and logistics management decisions. The mo-MILP problem is solved with an e-constraint method; and the resulting Pareto-optimal curves reveal the tradeoff between the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of the sustainable biofuel supply chains. The proposed approach is illustrated through two case studies for the state of Illinois. (C) 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2012Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted for seven experimental cubicles located in Puigverd de Lleida (Spain). The objective of this experimental set-up is to test different constructive solutions in order to point out the most sustainable solution with lower energy demand during the operational phase. Therefore, different building, insulation and Phase Change Materials (PCMs) have been tested under controlled temperature conditions to examine the thermal performance of the whole system. Although some of these materials are able to reduce the energy demand and consequently the environmental impact during the operational phase, they still have high embodied energy that can cause high environmental impact during the manufacturing phase. Therefore the LCA study in this paper focuses on assessing the impact of the embodied energy needed during the manufacturing and disposal phase by highlighting and comparing the effect of using different building materials, insulating materials, and phase change materials. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A novel solar building cooling heating and power (BCHP) system driven by solar energy and natural gas is proposed in this paper. The performance of the presented system is greatly dependent upon the operation strategy. The primary energy consumption (PEC) and pollutant emissions of the solar BCHP system in following the electricity loads (FEL) and following the thermal loads (FTL) operation strategies are estimated based on life cycle assessment (LCA). Furthermore, three most important energy-related environment problems and human health issues, global warming, acid precipitation and respiratory effects, are considered to assess the environmental impacts of the system. In order to evaluate the comprehensive benefits achieved by the solar BCHP system in different operation modes, grey relation theory is employed to integrate the energetic benefits with environmental performances. Finally, a numerical case of the solar BCHP system for a commercial office building in Beijing, China is applied to compare the integrated performance in the FEL operation strategy with that of the FTL operation strategy. The results indicate that the energy saving and pollutant emissions reduction potentials of the FTL operation mode are the better than that of the FEL mode. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) and an energy balance analysis of marine microalgal biomass production were conducted to determine the environmental impacts and the critical points of production for large scale planning. The artificial lighting and temperature conditions of an indoor bubble column photobioreactor (bcPBR) were compared to the natural conditions of an equivalent outdoor system. Marine microalgae, belonging to the dinoflagellate and raphidophyte groups, were cultured and the results were compared with published LCA data obtained from green microalgae (commonly freshwater algae). Among the species tested, Alexandrium minutum was chosen as the target marine microalgae for biomass production under outdoor conditions, although there were no substantial differences between any of the marine microalgae studied. Under indoor culture conditions, the total energy input for A. minutum was 923 MJ kg (1) vs. 139 MJ kg (1) for outdoor conditions. Therefore, a greater than 85% reduction in energy requirements was achieved using natural environmental conditions, demonstrating the feasibility of outdoor culture as an alternative method of bioenergy production from marine microalgae. The growth stage was identified as the principal source of energy consumption for all microalgae tested, due to the electricity requirements of the equipment, followed by the construction material of the bcPBR. The global warming category (GWP) was 6 times lower in outdoor than in indoor conditions. Although the energy balance was negative under both conditions, this study concludes with suggestions for improvements in the outdoor system that would allow up-scaling of this biomass production technology for outdoor conditions in the Mediterranean. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) study was carried out to evaluate the environmental implications of the production and use of ethanol from three fast-growing wood crops: eucalyptus, black locust and poplar in flexi-fuel vehicles. The production of a blend rich in ethanol: E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline by volume) was assessed and the results compared with those of conventional gasoline (CG) in an equivalent car. The following environmental categories were evaluated: fossil fuels use (FF), global warming potential over 100 years (GWP(100)), photochemical oxidant creation potential (POCP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP). The use of ethanol derived from black locust was found to be the option with the lowest impact in most categories with reductions of 97%, 42%, 41% and 76% for GWP(100), AP, EP and FF respectively in comparison with CG.44 Concerning the production stage of ethanol (excluding the stages of blending and use), black locust has the lowest environmental impacts due to the low levels of agricultural inputs during its cultivation. The poplar scenario has higher impacts in AP and EP due to the emission of diffuse substances from fertilizer application and the eucalyptus scenario in GWP(100), POCP and FF due to the use and requirements of heavy machinery during harvesting. The use of the LCA methodology has helped to identify the key areas in the life cycle of ethanol. Special attention should be paid to ethanol production related activities and forest activities oriented to the feedstock production. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance study was performed on the production of the bioplastic polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF) starting from corn based fructose. The goal of the study was to analyze and to translate experimental data on the catalytic dehydration of fructose to a simulation model, using the ASPEN Plus modeling software. The mass and energy balances of the simulation model results were then used as inputs for a process chain analysis (by application of the life cycle assessment methodology, LCA) and compared to its petrochemical counterpart polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The production of PEF can be divided into three main units: the production of fructose from corn starch; the conversion of fructose into Furanics and subsequent recovery and upgrading; and the oxidation to the monomer 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) and polymerization with ethylene glycol (EG) into PEF. The ASPEN Plus simulation model describes the conversion of fructose into Furanics, subsequent recovery and upgrading and a CHP unit. The production of fructose from corn starch and the oxidation and polymerization into PEF were based on the literature. In total, six model cases were analyzed, using different sets of underlying experimental data; four cases based on crystalline fructose and two cases on high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Fructose can be converted into Furanics at efficiencies between 38% and 47%. The production of PEF can reduce the NREU approximately 40% to 50% while GHG emissions can be reduced approximately 45% to 55%, compared to PET for the system cradle to grave. These reductions are higher than for other biobased plastics, such as polylactic acid (PLA) or polyethylene (PE). With an annual market size of approximately 15 million metric tonnes (Mt) of PET bottles produced worldwide, the complete bottle substitution of PEF for PET would allow us to save between 440 and 520 PJ of non-renewable energy use (NREU) and to reduce GHG emissions by 20 to 35 Mt of CO2 equivalents. If also substantial substitution takes place in the PET fibres and film industry, the savings increase accordingly. The GHG emissions could be further reduced by a switch to lignocellulosic feedstocks, such as straw, but this requires additional research.Integration of thermoeconomics and Life Cycle Analysis was carried out within the framework of an Environmental Management Information System. This combined approach identified where environmental loads were generated and tracked environmental loads throughout the system, allowing for a more precise understanding of operational activities. A trigeneration system was modeled, providing electricity, heat, and cooling to a building. The trigeneration system consists of a cogeneration module, auxiliary boiler, absorption chiller and electrical chiller. The trigeneration system model is flexible, as it allows electricity from/to the electric grid to be purchased/sold, and part of the cogenerated heat to be wasted. Umberto software is specifically designed to analyze the distribution of material and energy resources throughout a productive system. The software is based on Petri networks, double-entry bookkeeping and cost accounting, allowing the setup of complex systems and also a combined material, energy and inventory calculation. An assistant was built to include the tracking of emissions through the application of algebra and rules similar to those used in thermoeconomic analysis. It is possible to evaluate the environmental impact in terms of the consumption of natural resources and generation of emissions in the system, from the input of natural resources to the output of the final products. Network parameters were used to calculate the emissions associated with the operation of the system. The issue of allocating environmental loads was introduced and two scenarios for each operational mode were compared: the trigeneration system vs. a conventional energy supply system in which electricity was produced in a representative coal power plant. In this case the trigeneration system operated with significant reduction of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In current life cycle impact assessment, the focus of ecotoxicity is on cold-blooded species. We developed a method to calculate characterization factors (CFs) for the impact assessment of chemical emissions on warm-blooded predators in freshwater food chains. The method was applied to 329 organic chemicals. The CF for these predators was defined as a multiplication of the fate factor (FF), exposure factor (XF), bioaccumulation factor (BF), and effect factor (EF). Fate factors and XFs were calculated with the model USES-LCA 2.0. Bioaccumulation factors were calculated with the model OMEGA, for chemical uptake via freshwater, food, and air. Effect factors were calculated based on experimental, median lethal doses (LD50). The concentration buildup (CB) of the chemicals (i.e., FF, XF, and BF over the 3 routes of exposure) showed a range of 7 to 9 orders of magnitude, depending on the emission compartment. Effect factors displayed a range of 7 orders of magnitude. Characterization factors ranged 9 orders of magnitude. After emissions to freshwater, the relative contribution of the uptake routes to CB were 1% (90% confidence interval [CI]: 0%-2%) for uptake from air, 43% (11%-50%) for uptake from water, and 56% (50%-87%) for uptake from food. After an emission to agricultural soil, the contribution was 11% (0%-80%) for uptake from air, 39% (5%-50%) for uptake from water, and 50% (11%-83%) for uptake from food. Uptake from air was mainly relevant for emissions to air (on average 42%, 90% CI: 5%-98%). Characterization factors for cold-blooded species were typically 4 orders of magnitude higher than CFs for warm-blooded predators. The correlation between both types of CFs was low, which means that a high relative impact on cold-blooded species does not necessarily indicate a high relative impact on warm-blooded predators. Depending on the weighing method to be considered, the inclusion of impacts on warm-blooded predators can change the relative ranking of toxic chemicals in a life cycle assessment. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2012; 8: 372-378. (C) 2011 SETACThis study explores the complex and interacting physical mechanisms that lead to building energy use implications of green roof design decisions. The EnergyPlus building energy simulation program, complete with an integrated green roof simulation module, was used to analyze the effects of roof surface design on building energy consumption. Simulations were conducted for both black and white membrane control roofs and nine variations of green roofs. The investigation included a total of eight buildings - new office and new multi-family lodging buildings, each in four cities representing diverse climatic conditions: Houston, Texas; New York City, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; and Portland, Oregon. Building energy performance of green roofs was generally found to improve with increasing soil depth and vegetative density. Heating (natural gas) energy savings were greatest for the lodging buildings in the colder climates. Cooling energy (electricity) savings varied for the different building types and cities. In all cases, a baseline green roof resulted in a heating energy cost savings compared to the conventional black membrane roof. In six of the eight buildings, the white roof resulted in lower annual energy cost than the baseline green roof. However, a high vegetative cover green roof was found to outperform the white roof in six of the eight buildings.Champagne cork stoppers are a product made basically from cork, a natural and renewable resource extracted from cork oak forests in western Mediterranean regions. Each stopper is made up of an agglomerated cork body and two natural cork discs. In 2009, 60% of the world's champagne cork stoppers were produced in Catalonia, due to the importance of cava, champagne and other sparkling wines in neighbouring areas. The aim of this research was to provide environmental reference data on champagne cork stoppers production, and identify the industrial stages and operations that made the greatest impact. This research was carried out using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, and five of the most representative producers were analysed. The system considered all the processes involved in production after the forest management stage and one million champagne cork stoppers were taken as a functional unit (FU). Results showed that 53,886 kg of CO2 eq. were emitted to produce the FU. It was observed that the champagne cork stopper manufacture stage represented between 57 and 67% of the environmental impact, depending on the category. Specifically, between 25 and 47% of the environmental impacts associated with this stage were caused by the body agglomeration operation, and between 21 and 29% were caused by the gluing of discs. On the other hand, some of the production stages such as the transport of raw cork and intermediate products, cork slab preparation or end of life stages represented a very small part of the total environmental impact of the product, less than 2%. Furthermore, it was observed that a champagne cork stopper produced by the most impacting company presented a higher impact, between 10 and 27% above the sector average, depending on the impact category; while the least impacting company presented between 12 and 32% less impact. These differences indicate that some companies can improve their production by adopting technology and production practices that some of their competitors have already put in place. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Corporate leaders and employees have been increasingly recognising their role in contributing to sustainability. In this context, different voluntary tools, approaches, and initiatives have been developed by and for corporations to engage with sustainability. However, there has been a lack of clarity in explaining how the initiatives address the different elements of the company system (operations and processes, management and strategy, organisational systems, procurement and marketing, and assessment and communication), how they contribute to sustainability's dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and time), how they are linked, or combined to help leaders better embed sustainability into their company's system. The paper provides an analysis of sixteen of the most widely used initiatives (e.g. life cycle assessment, eco-design, cleaner production, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability reporting). Each initiative was analysed on how it contributes or addresses the four dimensions of sustainability, and the company system. It was found that each initiative has advantages with respect to scope and focus for the sustainability dimensions and the company system's elements, but it has certain disadvantages when it comes to dealing with the complexity and broadness of sustainability. The paper discusses how relying on one initiative can result in a limited and narrow contribution to sustainability and curtail coverage of the company's system. The results indicate that the least addressed elements of the company system have been organisational systems and procurement and marketing. A new framework, the Corporate Integration of Voluntary Initiatives for Sustainability (CIVIS), is proposed with two purposes: (1) to help company leaders better understand how to improve their company's contribution to sustainability, and (2) to foster a holistic approach through the combination of company initiatives that would help to embed sustainability into a company's system with the least effort and maximum results. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this project is to obtain quantitative data on the metabolic flows (energy consumption, not only by the establishment but also in the transportation of workers and customers, and packaging use) and their resulting environmental impacts of a standard shopping basket purchase in five city center municipal markets and a hypermarket in a suburban retail park in the province of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). The main results show that a standard shopping basket purchased in a retail park requires 20 times more energy than one purchased in a municipal market (11.1 kWh and 0.57 kWh, respectively). Customer transportation represents 83.2% of energy consumption in a retail park, while the greatest impacts in a municipal market stem from the establishment itself (49.5%) and worker transportation (40.4%). Secondly, the packaging use inventory is higher in a hypermarket (253 g) than in a municipal market (102 g). However, the overall environmental impact associated with a standard shopping basket is 10 times higher on average in a hypermarket than in a municipal market, and the carbon footprints of the hypermarket and the municipal market are 3.8 and 0.4 kg of CO2 eq., respectively. According to the sensitivity analysis, current policies for reducing the amount of plastic bag packaging have little repercussion in a retail park because its relative weight in terms of total packaging use is only 7%. Nevertheless, they have notable effects in municipal markets where plastic bags represent 25% of the packaging use. Finally, if customers selected the least packaged products available in hypermarkets, each shopping basket could reduce up to 47.2% of its used packaging weight and between 15.4 and 59.0% of its associated environmental impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of hemp fibers as reinforcement in composite materials has increased in recent years as a response to the increasing demand for developing biodegradable, sustainable, and recyclable materials. Hemp fibers are found in the stem of the plant which makes them strong and stiff, a primary requirement for the reinforcement of composite materials. The mechanical properties of hemp fibers are comparable to those of glass fibers. However their biggest disadvantage is the variability in their properties. Composites made of hemp fibers with thermoplastic, thermoset, and biodegradable matrices have exhibited good mechanical properties. A number of hemp fiber surface treatments, used to improve the fiber/matrix interfacial bonding, have resulted in considerable improvements in the composites' mechanical properties.The goal of this work is to research the state-of-the-art in process optimization techniques and tools based on LCA, focused in the process engineering field. A collection of methods, approaches, applications, specific software packages, and insights regarding experiences and progress made in applying the LCA methodology coupled to optimization frameworks is provided, and general trends are identified. The "cradle-to-gate" concept to define the system boundaries is the most used approach in practice, instead of the "cradle-to-grave" approach. Normally, the relationship between inventory data and impact category indicators is linearly expressed by the characterization factors; then, synergic effects of the contaminants are neglected. Among the LCIA methods, the eco-indicator 99, which is based on the endpoint category and the panel method, is the most used in practice. A single environmental impact function, resulting from the aggregation of environmental impacts, is formulated as the environmental objective in most analyzed cases. SimaPro is the most used software for LCA applications in literature analyzed. The multi-objective optimization is the most used approach for dealing with this kind of problems, where the epsilon-constraint method for generating the Pareto set is the most applied technique. However, a renewed interest in formulating a single economic objective function in optimization frameworks can be observed, favored by the development of life cycle cost software and progress made in assessing costs of environmental externalities. Finally, a trend to deal with multi-period scenarios into integrated LCA-optimization frameworks can be distinguished providing more accurate results upon data availability. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Accumulation of nitrate in soil increases the risk of nitrate leaching and hence ground water nitrate pollution. The impact of maize intercropping with ryegrass and alfalfa on environment in farming systems has been little studied in China. Using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, we analyzed the effects of different cropping systems (sole maize (CK), maize + ryegrass (CRT), and maize + alfalfa (CAT)) on the environment. The comprehensive index of environmental impacts varied in the order, sole maiz>maize + ryegrass>maize + alfalfa, with corresponding values of 0.1421, 0.1353 and 0.1299, respectively. The results showed that intercropping maize with alfalfa and ryegrass could reduce the adverse effects of over-application of nitrogen fertilizer on the environment. The study further demonstrated that the LCA method may be a convenient and effective approach for analyzing the environmental impact of fertilizer management in agricultural fields.Recent years have seen increasing interest in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions accounting, also known as carbon footprinting, due to drivers such as transportation fuels policy and climate-related eco-labels, sometimes called carbon labels. However, it remains unclear whether applications of greenhouse gas accounting, such as carbon labels, are supportable given the level of precision that is possible with current methodology and data. The goal of this work is to further the understanding of quantitative uncertainty assessment in carbon footprinting through a case study of a rackmount electronic server. Production phase uncertainty was found to be moderate (+/-15%), though with a high likelihood of being significantly underestimated given the limitations in available data for assessing uncertainty associated with temporal variability and technological specificity. Individual components or subassemblies showed varying levels of uncertainty due to differences in parameter uncertainty (i.e., agreement between data sets) and variability between production or use regions. The use phase displayed a considerably higher uncertainty (+/-50%) than production due to uncertainty in the useful lifetime of the server, variability in electricity mixes in different market regions, and use profile uncertainty. Overall model uncertainty was found to be +/-35% for the whole life cycle, a substantial amount given that the method is already being used to set policy and make comparative environmental product declarations. Future work should continue to combine the increasing volume of available data to ensure consistency and maximize the credibility of the methods of life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprinting. However, for some energy-using products it may make more sense to increase focus on energy efficiency and use phase emissions reductions rather than attempting to quantify and reduce the uncertainty of the relatively small production phase.Modular construction practices are used in many countries as an alternative to conventional on-site construction for residential homes. While modular home construction has certain advantages in terms of material and time efficiency, it requires a different infrastructure than conventional home construction, and the overall environmental trade-offs between the two methods have been unclear. This study uses life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impacts of constructing a typical residential home using the two methods, based on data from several modular construction companies and conventional homebuilders. The study includes impacts from material production and transport, off-site and on-site energy use, worker transport, and waste management. For all categories considered, the average impacts of building the home are less for modular construction than for conventional construction, although these averages obscure significant variation among the individual projects and companies.Currently, significant academic and industrial activity is focused on sourcing feed stocks from non-food biomass crops for the sustainable production of energy, power and chemical products. Crops identified as suitable for Northern Europe include Miscanthus, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) and short rotation coppice willow and poplar (Salix and Populus spp.). All of these crops provide biomass that is amenable for conversion by thermochemical processes i.e. those based on heat and pressure. There are concerns that for some processes the conversion efficiency of biomass is poor compared with coal and oil due to comparatively low energy density, high moisture content, and poor storage and handling properties. Many of these parameters can be improved by pre-processing feed stock materials prior to their conversion. We examine the energy crop species that are suitable for Northern Europe; discuss the processes of combustion, gasification and pyrolysis, and explore how differences in chemical composition influence conversion efficiency. Finally, we review biomass upgrading (pelletisation, torrefaction and treatment with sub-critical (hydrothermal upgrading) and with supercritical water). (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper compares, from a sustainability perspective, the environmental impact of a masonry arris vault with respect to a reticulated reinforced concrete slab, using techniques based on the Life Cycle Assessment to quantify the energy used in the manufacturing process of materials and in the construction of the structure. It has been detected that the vault consumes 75% less energy in the construction process, it emits 69% less CO2 into the atmosphere, it has an average manufacturing cost for short spans similar to a conventional slab, but much lower when large spans have to be covered, and it generates 171% less packaging waste from works, but it needs a larger and more skilled labor force. This paper shows that the vaulted building fully meets the current sustainability requirements and that this construction technique can coexist with the technology characterizing today's society, resulting in a product with high economic, functional and energy performances.The development of the new 2011 Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) Pavement Asset Design and Management Guide (PADMG) began in September 2009. The project is a pooled fund study being sponsored by over twenty Canadian public agencies including all ten provincial Canadian Departments of Transportation, several major Canadian cities, several industry associations and the federal government. The effort is being lead by a Canadian consortium team composed of consultants and academics from across Canada. The consortium team is composed of a diverse group of practitioners who have experience across Canada in the various areas of expertise pertinent to this guide. The new 2011 PADMG will be an up-to-date, practical consolidation of Canadian pavement design and management practice for practicing engineers, managers and technicians. It will also be a valuable resource for college and university courses both in Canada and elsewhere. The guide will highlight key industry issues such as sustainability, climate change, and new innovations. The paper first provides a summary of findings from a stakeholder survey to determine current state-of-the-practice in Canada. Information collected in this survey covers the major practices areas in pavement design and management. There will be 15 chapters in the new guide ranging from discussions on the principles of asset management, to data requirements, sustainability, maintenance, materials, low and high volume road design and life cycle analysis of pavement designs. The draft 2011 PADMG has been submitted and the project will be completed by September 2011In order to estimate the total exposure to the lead emissions from a municipal waste combustion plant in Denmark, the indirect pathway via ingestion of lead deposited on soil has to be quantified. Multi-media fate models developed for both Risk Assessment (RA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used for this purpose, but present high uncertainties in the assessment of metal's fate. More sophisticated and metal-specific geochemical models exist, that could lower the uncertainties by e.g. accounting for metal speciation, but they require a large amount of data and are unpractical to combine broadly with other fate and dispersion models. In this study, a Simplified Fate & Speciation Model (SFSM) is presented, that is based on the parsimony principle: "as simple as possible, as complex as needed", and that can be used for indirect human exposure assessment in different context like RA and regionalized LCA. SFSM couples traditional multi-media mass balances with empirical speciation models in a tool that has a simple theoretical framework and that is not data-intensive. The model calculates total concentration, dissolved concentration, and free ion activity of Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn in different soil layers, after accounting for metal deposition and dispersion. The model is tested for these five metals by using data from peer reviewed literature. Results show good accordance between measured and calculated values (factor of 3). The model is used to predict the human exposure via soil to lead initially emitted into air by the waste combustion plant and both the lead cumulative exposure and intake fraction are calculated. (C) 2012 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.Camelina sativa (L) is a promising crop for biodiesel production that avoids many of the potential pitfalls of traditional biofuel crops, such as land use change (LUC) and food versus fuel. In this study the environmental viability of camelina biodiesel was assessed using life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology. The LCA was conducted using the spreadsheet model dubbed KABAM. KABAM found that camelina grown as a niche filling crop (in rotation with wheat or as a double crop) reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil fuel use by 40-60% when compared to petroleum diesel. Furthermore, by avoiding LUC emissions, camelina biodiesel emits fewer GHGs than traditional soybean and canola biodiesel. Finally, a sensitivity analysis concluded that in order to maintain and increase the environmental viability of camelina and other niche filling biofuel crops, researchers and policy makers should focus their efforts on achieving satisfactory yields (1000-2000 kg/ha) while reducing nitrogen fertilizer inputs. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The climate impact of new cars in Sweden 2009 has been evaluated by the Swedish Transport Administration. Their report takes into account reduction factors to attribute the positive impact of renewable fuels on CO2 emissions. The Swedish Transport Administration recommends the public to buy cars that can run on biofuels. Besides acknowledging prevailing uncertainties for many of the input parameters to the index of new cars' climate impact, reduction factors are based on calculations from point estimates of input parameters. A probabilistic re-assessment of the index is presented to find out the importance of these uncertainties and to assess whether the point estimated recommendation might be misguiding. Probabilistic reduction factors for CO2 emissions were derived with the same deterministic model proposed by the Swedish Transport Administration, were Bayesian probability distributions or intervals assigned by expert judgements were used to describe uncertainty in the model input parameters. The use of biofuels most likely reduces CO2 emissions. Probabilistic modelling indicated a CO2 reduction for E85 as a fuel of 30% (95% credibility interval = 10-52%) in the same order as the 20% given by the Swedish Transport Administration. The best estimate of 28% decrease for gas cars (95% credibility interval = 3-44%) and is lower than the originally proposed reduction of 42%, but still within a similar range. The difference is due to the large extent of optimistic values used in the assessment by the Swedish Transport Administration. The CO2 emissions from the production of the biofuel had most influence on the model results. We conclude that the recommendation of the Swedish Transport Administration to consumers is still valid after probabilistic recalculation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Functional and ecological properties combined with consumer behaviour are the key aspects influencing the implications for the environment of a product. The concept of combining these properties in a single platform is demonstrated by considering the shopping bags used for grocery purposes as an example. An eco-functional assessment combined with the life cycle assessment study was conducted to assess the influence of functional, ecological properties and consumer behaviour on carbon footprint, ecological footprint and eco-damage throughout the life cycle of various shopping bags. Four Research questions expressed as hypotheses were formulated to identify the contribution of each phase in the life cycle to the final life cycle impact of the shopping bags. Carbon footprint, ecological footprint and eco-damage assessments were made to quantify the life cycle impacts of each phase of the various shopping bags with the aid of SIMAPRO version 7.3 of LCA software. The LCA results revealed that each phase of life cycle impacted the final result and the reusable bags outscored single use bags in all three territories. Nonwoven bags made out of polypropylene followed by polyester and woven cotton bags caused fewer life cycle impacts. Also the life cycle impacts of shopping bags used by an average Indian were found to be less compared to those for Chinese and Hong Kong residents. Even a small contribution from the consumer's side, to reuse a bag one more time, would make a great difference in terms of mitigating environmental impact.Food production and consumption is known to have significant environmental impacts. In the present work, the life cycle assessment methodology is used for the environmental assessment of an assortment of 34 fruits and vegetables of a large Swiss retailer, with the aim of providing environmental decision-support to the retailer and establishing life cycle inventories (LCI) also applicable to other case studies. The LCI includes, among others, seedling production, farm machinery use, fuels for the heating of greenhouses, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, storage and transport to and within Switzerland. The results show that the largest reduction of environmental impacts can be achieved by consuming seasonal fruits and vegetables, followed by reduction of transport by airplane. Sourcing fruits and vegetables locally is only a good strategy to reduce the carbon footprint if no greenhouse heating with fossil fuels is involved. The impact of water consumption depends on the location of agricultural production. For some crops a trade-off between the carbon footprint and the induced water stress is observed. The results were used by the retailer to support the purchasing decisions and improve the supply chain management.The purpose of this study was to determine the comparative environmental impacts of coupled seawater desalination and water reclamation using a novel hybrid system that consist of an osmotically driven membrane process and established membrane desalination technologies. A comparative life cycle assessment methodology was used to differentiate between a novel hybrid process consisting of forward osmosis (FO) operated in osmotic dilution (ODN) mode and seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO), and two other processes: a stand alone conventional SWRO desalination system, and a combined SWRO and dual barrier impaired water purification system consisting of nanofiltration followed by reverse osmosis. Each process was evaluated using ten baseline impact categories. It was demonstrated that from a life cycle perspective two hurdles exist to further development of the ODN-SWRO process: module design of FO membranes and cleaning intensity of the FO membranes. System optimization analysis revealed that doubling FO membrane packing density, tripling FO membrane permeability, and optimizing system operation, all of which are technically feasible at the time of this publication, could reduce the environmental impact of the hybrid ODN-SWRO process compared to SWRO by more than 25%; yet, novel hybrid nanofiltration-RO treatment of seawater and wastewater can achieve almost similar levels of environmental impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Based on available data in the literature the recovery of aluminium, copper, gold, iron, nickel, palladium and silver from high-grade WEEE was modeled by LCA. The pre-treatment of WEEE included manual sorting, shredding, magnetic sorting, Eddy-current sorting, air classification and optical sorting. The modeled metallurgical treatment facility included a Kaldo plant, a converter aisle, an anode refinery and a precious metal refinery. The metallurgic treatment showed significant environmental savings when credited the environmental load from avoided production of the same amount of metals by mining and refining of ore. The resource recovery per tonne of high-grade WEEE ranged from 2 g of palladium to 386 kg of iron. Quantified in terms of person-equivalents the recovery of palladium, gold, silver, nickel and copper constituted the major environmental benefit of the recovery of metals from WEEE. These benefits are most likely underestimated in the model, since we did not find adequate data to include all the burdens from mining and refining of ore; burdens that are avoided when metals are recovered from WEEE. The processes connected to the pre-treatment of WEEE were found to have little environmental effect compared to the metallurgical treatment. However only 12-26% of silver, gold and palladium are recovered during pre-treatment, which suggest that the reduction of the apparent losses of precious metals as palladium, gold and silver during pre-treatment of WEEE is of environmental importance. Our results support in a quantitative manner that metal recovery from WEEE should be quantified with respect to the individual metals recovered and not as a bulk metal recovery rate. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The term Anthropocene, which is used by many scientists to refer to the current era, reflects various environmental issues caused by anthropogenic activities. The energy flows and conversions in the anthroposphere and the anthropogenic impacts on the ecosphere, as two major aspects of the physical part of industrial ecology, are both subject to the laws of thermodynamics. After an introduction to human-environment systems and industrial ecology in the Anthropocene, this review focuses on the role and applications of thermodynamic analysis in industrial ecology based on a thermodynamic definition of human-environment systems at four levels, i.e., the ecosphere (A), the anthroposphere (B), the supply chain (C), and the foreground system (D). It argues that process engineering thermodynamics (at level D) and ecological energetics (at level A) are the most mature applications, and the primary benefit added by thermodynamic analysis to industrial ecology lies in the physical validation and quantitative formulation of thermodynamics. The review also indicates the challenges of using thermodynamic analysis to understand the physical complexity of industrial ecology and to guide sustainability decision-making call for a joint effort by thermodynamic analysis and ecosystems ecology and for more insights from social sciences. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is an important social goal to mitigate climate change. A common mitigation paradigm is to consider strategy "wedges" that can be applied to different activities to achieve desired GHG reductions. In this policy analysis piece, we consider a wide range of possible strategies to reduce light-duty vehicle GHG emissions, including fuel and vehicle options, low carbon and renewable power, travel demand management and land use changes. We conclude that no one strategy will be sufficient to meet GHG emissions reduction goals to avoid climate change. However, many of these changes have positive combinatorial effects, so the best strategy is to pursue combinations of transportation GHG reduction strategies to meet reduction goals. Agencies need to broaden their agendas to incorporate such combination in their planning.In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) methods are used to develop life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) data to estimate the global warming potential (GWP) and energy intensity (El) of cheese and dry whey manufacturing in Wisconsin using a farm gate to plant gate approach. All of the environmental burdens and benefits are assigned to the product (cheese) and none are assigned to the land-spread waste stream (whey) for a single-output system typical of small cheese plants in Wisconsin. For a multifunction system, in which both cheese and food-grade whey are produced, the following methods are applied to handle co-product multifunctionality: subdivision, allocation ratios, and a method that combines both subdivision and allocation ratios. Total solids, nutritional content, and economic value are considered as the allocation ratios. Each of these fixed allocation ratios is applied to the entire process and to individual processes unique to each product. The differences in the GWP and El for cheese and dry whey are highly influenced by the choice of method. The El of cheese ranges from 7.1 to 19 MJ kg(-1) cheese, and the GWP of cheese ranges from 0.46 to 1.3 kg CO2-eq kg(-1) cheese. The main source of these differences is the shift of environmental burdens from cheese to the dry whey co-product resulting from different allocation strategies. The method that combines subdivision and allocation is presented as the preferred and most accurate method to deal with the multifunctionality of cheese and whey manufacturing. Sensitivity analysis shows that GWP and El are most affected by variations in milk pasteurization, whey evaporation, whey drying, and whey pasteurization. This study demonstrates the importance of the allocation method on LCA analysis and suggests methods to more accurately assess the environmental burdens when more than one product is produced at a dairy plant.The current work analyses the potential usage of vegetal fibers environmentally sound based materials. The paper approaches the main applications of vegetal fiber sustainable integration into products. The origin of vegetal fibers and the degree of processing affect their chemical composition and furthermore its performance in future application. Some aspects on the structure and chemical composition of vegetal fibers are presented. The usage of vegetal fibers for manufacturing on paper and fiber containing composites is considered. Paper is the most important fiber based material and non woods as sustainable virgin fiber sources are discussed. Besides papermaking, vegetal fibers are potentially usable as reinforcements in cement and gypsum fiber composites. Some considerations regarding manufacturing processes and factors affecting mechanical properties of composites are presented. Other usages of vegetal fiber involve the manufacturing of polymer matrix composites. The chemical ways to improve interfacial linking between vegetal fibers and polymeric matrix are shortly underlined. Aspects regarding the environmental impact and life cycle assessment of the vegetal fiber based materials were taken into consideration.Many life cycle assessment studies have evaluated and compared the environmental performance of various technologies for recycling plastic containers and packaging in Japan and other countries. However, no studies have evaluated the combination of recycling technologies in consideration of the resin composition in terms of the quantity of each recycled product so as to maximize their environmental potential. In this study, 27 scenarios of recycling schemes for household waste plastic containers and packaging are developed through integrating a conventional recycling scheme with additional recycling schemes. The conventional recycling scheme involves municipal curbside collection and either the material recycling or feedstock recycling of waste plastics. The additional recycling schemes are feedstock recycling in steel works of the residue from conventional material recycling processes, and corporate voluntary collection and independent material recycling of specific types of plastic trays. Life cycle assessment based on the modeling of recycling processes considering the resin composition in terms of the quantity of each recycled product is applied to evaluate and compare these scenarios from the viewpoints of fossil resource consumption and CO2 emission. The results show that the environmental loads are reduced in all scenarios including the additional recycling schemes compared with the conventional recycling scheme. However, the independent plastic tray recycling scheme exhibits lower additional environmental savings when the residue recycling scheme is integrated with the conventional material recycling scheme. This is because both additional recycling schemes aim to utilize polystyrene and polyethylene terephthalate, which would otherwise be incinerated as residue from material recycling processes. The evaluation of the environmental loads of plastic recycling with consideration of the resin composition in terms of the quantity of each recycled product makes it possible to investigate recycling schemes that integrate different technologies to maximize their environmental potential.Purpose To construct future visions of how innovative technologies should be used in the envisioned sustainable society while being aware of system-wide environmental impacts, consequential life cycle assessment (c-LCA) is useful. To systematically evaluate the technologies being aware of uncertainties in the choice of technologies made in the future, in this article, we propose a novel graphical representation for theoretical range of impacts that contain results from c-LCA studies. This approach allows analyses of the consequences of technology introduction without conducting a detailed modeling of consequences. Methods We stand on an assumption that the future environmental impacts reduced by a new technology depends on (1) how much the efficiency of the technology is improved, (2) how much of the less efficient technology is directly and indirectly replaced by the new technology, and (3) how much product is needed in the envisioned future. The difficulty in c-LCA is that (2) and (3) are uncertain from various socioeconomic reasons that are often difficult to predict. By organizing the results from product life cycle assessments in a systematic way, the proposed methodology allows exhibiting the range of consequential changes in environmental impact associated with a technology innovation, taking into account those uncertainties on a plain coordinated by the amount of product needed in the future and environmental impact on the horizontal and vertical axes, respectively. Results Part 1 describes the methodological framework in detail, whereas Part 2 elaborates on the applications of the methodology. By taking transportation technologies assuming various energy sources in Taiwan, the choices of technologies and the evaluation of technology improvements serve as the case studies to demonstrate the application of the methodological framework. Conclusions By using the proposed method to organize the assumptions in c-LCA, discussions on different choices of technologies are made more systematic. In this way, stakeholders can focus on visions of future society, which lead to different choices of technologies.Purpose As capture fishery production has reached its limits and global demand for aquatic products is still increasing, aquaculture has become the world's fastest growing animal production sector. In attempts to evaluate the environmental consequences of this rapid expansion, life cycle assessment (LCA) has become a frequently used method. The present review of current peer-reviewed literature focusing on LCA of aquaculture systems is intended to clarify the methodological choices made, identify possible data gaps, and provide recommendations for future development within this field of research. The results of this review will also serve as a start-up activity of the EU FP7 SEAT (Sustaining Ethical Aquaculture Trade) project, which aims to perform several LCA studies on aquaculture systems in Asia over the next few years. Methods From a full analysis of methodology in LCA, six phases were identified to differ the most amongst ten peer-reviewed articles and two PhD theses (functional unit, system boundaries, data and data quality, allocation, impact assessment methods, interpretation methods). Each phase is discussed with regards to differences amongst the studies, current LCA literature followed by recommendations where appropriate. The conclusions and recommendations section reflects on aquaculture-specific scenarios as well as on some more general issues in LCA. Results Aquaculture LCAs often require large system boundaries, including fisheries, agriculture, and livestock production systems from around the globe. The reviewed studies offered limited coverage of production in developing countries, low-intensity farming practices, and non-finfish species, although most farmed aquatic products originate from a wide range of farming practices in Asia. Apart from different choices of functional unit, system boundaries and impact assessment methods, the studies also differed in their choice of allocation factors and data sourcing. Interpretation of results also differed amongst the studies, and a number of methodological choices were identified influencing the outcomes. Conclusions and recommendations Efforts should be made to increase transparency to allow the results to be reproduced, and to construct aquaculture related database(s). More extensive data reporting, including environmental flows, within the greater field of LCA could be achieved, without compromising the focus of studies, by providing supporting information to articles and/ or reporting only ID numbers from background databases. More research is needed into aquaculture in Asia based on the latest progress made by the LCA community.Purpose The purpose of this research was to develop a nonrenewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions ecoprofile of thermoplastic protein derived from blood meal (Novatein thermoplastic protein; NTP). This was intended for comparison with other bioplastics as well as identification of hot spots in its cradle-to-gate production. In Part 1 of this study, the effect of allocation on the blood meal used as a raw material was discussed. The objective of Part 2 was to assess the ecoprofile of the thermoplastic conversion process and to compare the cradle-to-gate portion of the polymer's life cycle to other bioplastics. Methods Inventory was collected to aggregate nonrenewable primary energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Data were collected from a variety of sources including published papers, reports to government agencies, engineering models and information from a single blood meal production facility. Several assumptions regarding the thermoplastic conversion process were evaluated by way of a sensitivity analysis. Results The allocation procedure chosen for the impacts of farming and meat processing had the greatest effect on results. Excluding farming and meat processing, blood drying had the greatest contribution to nonrenewable energy use and GHGs, followed by the petrochemical plasticizer used. Other assumptions, such as scarcity of water or inclusion of pigments, although significant when considered for blood meal conversion to NTP alone, were found not to be significant when production of blood meal was included in the analysis. Qualitative differences were observed between NTP and other bioplastics. For example, the profiles of some other bio-based polymers were dominated by fermentation and polymer recovery processes. In the case of NTP, it is the production of the raw material used that is most significant, and thermoplastic modification has a relatively low contribution to GHGs and nonrenewable energy use. Conclusions For a truly attributional scenario, production of any ruminant animal products does have an associated GHG. Deriving this for blood meal on a mass-based allocation seems to indicate that NTP is less favorable than other cradle-to-gate bioplastic production systems from a global warming perspective. On the other hand, the motivation for developing the material in the first place was to make use of an existing waste product. If it is assumed that the magnitude of blood meal production is independent of fertilizer or plastics demand and, instead, reflects demand for major products such as meat, further development of NTP is justified.Purpose A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate the environmental impacts of the remediation of industrial soils contaminated by polychlorobiphenyl (PCB). Two new bioremediation treatment options were compared with the usual incineration process. In this attributional LCA, only secondary impacts were considered. The contaminated soil used for the experiments contained 200 mg of PCB per kilogram. Methods Three off-site treatment scenarios were studied: 1) bioremediation with mechanical aeration, 2) bioremediation with electric aeration and 3) incineration with natural gas. Bioremediation processes were designed from lab-scale, scale-up and pilot experiments. The incineration technique was inspired by a French plant. A semi-quantitative uncertainty analysis was performed on the data. Environmental impacts were evaluated with the CML 2001 method using the SimaPro software. Results and discussion In most compared categories, the bioremediation processes are favorable. Of the bioremediation options, the lowest environmental footprint was observed for electric aeration. The uncertainty analysis supported the results that compared incineration and bioremediation but decreased the difference between the options of aeration. The distance of transportation was one of the most sensitive parameters, especially for bioremediation. At equal distances between the polluted sites and the treatment plant, bioremediation had fewer impacts than incineration in eight out of 13 categories. Conclusions The use of natural gas for the incineration process generated the most impacts. Irrespective of the aeration option, bioremediation was better than incineration. The time of treatment should be taken into account. More precise and detailed data are required for the incineration scenario. More parameters of biological treatments should be measured. LCA results should be completed using ecological and health risk assessment and an acceptability evaluation.Purpose Many life cycle assessment (LCA) studies do not adequately address the actual lifetime of buildings and building products, but rather assume a typical value. The goal of this study was to determine the impact of lifetime on residential building LCA results. Including accurate lifetime data into LCA allows a better understanding of a product's environmental impact that would ultimately enhance the accuracy of LCA results. Methods This study focuses on refining the US residential building lifetime, as well as lifetime of interior renovation products that are commonly used as interior finishes in homes, to improve LCA results. Residential building lifetime data that presents existing trends in the USA was analyzed as part of the study. Existing product life cycle inventory data were synthesized to form statistical distributions that were used instead of deterministic values. Product elementary flows were used to calculate life cycle impacts of a residential model that was based on median US residential home size. Results were compared to existing residential building LCA literature to determine the impact of using updated, statistical lifetime data. A Monte Carlo analysis was performed for uncertainty analysis. Sensitivity analysis results were used to identify hotspots within the LCA results. Results and discussion Statistical analysis of US residential building lifetime data indicate that average building lifetime is 61 years and has a linearly increasing trend. Interior renovation energy consumption of the residential model that was developed by using average US conditions was found to have a mean of 220 GJ over the life cycle of the model. Ratio of interior renovation energy consumption to pre-use energy consumption, which includes embodied energy of materials, construction activities, and associated transportation was calculated to have a mean of 34% for regular homes and 22% for lowenergy homes. Ratio of interior renovation to life cycle energy consumption of residential buildings was calculated to have a mean of 3.9% for regular homes and 7.6% for low-energy homes. Conclusions Choosing an arbitrary lifetime for buildings and interior finishes, or excluding interior renovation impacts introduces a noteworthy amount of error into residential building LCA, especially as the relative importance of materials use increases due to growing number of lowenergy buildings that have lower-use phase impacts.Purpose The purpose of this paper is to enhance the mathematical and physical understanding of practitioners of uncertainty analysis of life cycle inventory (LCI), on the application of possibility theory. The main questions dealt with are (1) clear definition of the terms-"necessity possibility," " probability," " belief-plausibility," and of their mutual relationships; (2) what justifies the substitution of classical probability for possibility; (3) mutual comparison of, and transformations in both senses between probability and possibility uncertainty measures; (4) how to construct meaningful input possibility measures from available probabilistic/ statistic information; and (5) comparative analysis of the solutions of the problem of data uncertainty propagation in LCI, afforded, respectively, by probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation and possibilistic fuzzy interval arithmetic. Methods The questions above are addressed from the rigorous mathematical formulations of the theories of probability and statistics, of possibility, and of random sets and belief/ plausibility functions, although directed to LCI uncertainty analysis practitioners. On this respect, the paper allows two different levels of reading: a basic level (main text) and a deeper level (Electronic supplementary material). Particular tools used are (a) various transformations between possibility and probability distributions, in both senses, for the continuous case, proposed by Dubois et al. (e. g., Reliable Comp 10: 273-297, 2004); (b) Monte Carlo simulation for either independent or dependent input random variables; (c) fuzzy interval arithmetic; and (d) Heijungs and Suh's (2002) matrix formulation of LCI problems. Results and discussion The links among uncertainty measures, uncertain variables, and uncertainty analysis are cleared up. It is recalled how a probability measure can be constructed and attached to an input variable, and its probability distribution and unknown " correct value" be related, in a physically meaningful way. It is justified that, usually, a dual necessity-possibility measure has much less uncertainty information than a comparable probability measure. Although the specialists are not unanimous, it is opined that the theoretical framework developed by Dubois et al. (e. g., Reliable Comp 10: 273-297, 2004) is the most convenient one to use in uncertainty analysis, to compare and mutually transform probability and possibility data. This is exemplified in (a) the transformation of the very common triangular possibility and normal standard probability distributions; (b) the general construction of possibility measures from different probability data previously available; and, above all, (c) the comparison of the output information of possibilistic and probabilistic uncertainty analyses of an LCI problem proposed by Tan (Int J Life Cycle Assess 13: 585-592, 2008). The general problem of data uncertainty propagation through deterministic models (e. g., of LCI) is tackled with (1) classical probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation (for either independent or dependent input random variables); (2) possibilistic fuzzy interval arithmetic; and (3) hybrid methods (only mentioned). Conclusions (1) The practical conditions in which an analysis of uncertainty should switch from a probability to a possibility basis are still ill-defined, but that seems to be the case when the input information is based on states of large ignorance. (2) A dual necessity-possibility uncertainty measure can be viewed both as an imprecise probability measure that substitutes a definite probability for an interval, and as a belief-plausibility measure. (3) A possibility distribution can be mathematically and physically interpreted as a random set of nested prediction/ confidence intervals for the " correct value" of the variable, with confidence levels ranging from 0 to 1. (4) There exist mathematically and physically sound rules to compare/ transform probability and possibility uncertainty information under different applicable paradigms (e. g., based on the reliability of the input information). (5) Sometimes, Geer and Klir's (Int J Gen Syst 20: 143-176, 1992) confidence index has a physically counterintuitive behavior in uncertainty analysis. (6) The probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation can be used also for dependent random input variables, only requiring more exigent input information (conditional probability distributions) than in the case of independency. (7) The possibilistic fuzzy interval arithmetic uncertainty analysis, although computationally cheap, generates output information quite poor-a good point estimate but a set of (roughly) confidence intervals with very large amplitudes for the " correct value" of each output variable. Recommendations (1) In probability uncertainty analysis, pay attention to the relation between the " correct value" of a random variable and the parameters of its probability distribution (e. g., mean or mode). (2) Do not precipitate in changing from probabilistic to possibilistic uncertainty analysis: it may be theoretically unjustified and much output uncertainty information is lost. (3) Respect the wellestablished applicable rules in going from probability to possibility uncertainty information, or vice versa. (4) Be attentive to possible counterintuitive physical meaning of Geer and Klir's (Int J Gen Syst 20: 143-176, 1992) confidence index in possibilistic uncertainty analysis.Purpose Service life of building products has an important influence on life cycle assessment (LCA) results of buildings. The goal of this study was to propose a systematic approach to estimate service life of building products by including both technical and social factors. Methods A hybrid service life prediction method, combining the statistical approach described in American Society for Testing and Materials standard G166 with the Factor Method adopted by International Organization for Standardization standard 15686, was proposed. In their current forms, the two methods are not suitable to provide reliable lifetime estimates for the wide variety of products that are used in buildings. Statistical analysis was preferred over a deterministic approach. Regression analysis was used to define Weibull distribution parameters for each product. These distributions were then used to calculate the mean estimated service life of products with an 80% confidence interval. Using actual lifetime observed from practice instead of design lifetime for reference service life was preferred. This enables the use of a smaller range of coefficients for each factor affecting service life, which decreases subjectivity and increases reliability of results. Results and discussion Example median service life estimates were demonstrated for common residential interior finishes that are replaced more frequently, and therefore require more maintenance planning and potentially have significant environmental impacts. Probability of renovation distributions was also presented for interior finishes. The proposed method inherently includes social factors in the dataset used to define lifetime distributions, which could be as important as durability for some building product categories. Another advantage is that choosing reference service life based on real-life conditions decreases the range of coefficients necessary for modifying factors in comparison to when design lifetime is used, thus decreasing the subjectivity of results due to variations in assigned values by different users. Conclusions The Factor Method is the most promising method available to estimate service life of products. Unless additional data points were gathered for investigated products, the presented lifetime distribution results can be directly applied to LCA studies. The proposed hybrid method can also be applied to other products that are studied within the Factor Method. Products whose lifetimes are influenced by social factors are prime candidates to apply this method.Due to the progressive deplection of fossil energetic sources and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, new research are focusing in biofuels development mainly these feedstocks which are not competitive with animal or human feeding. In this work, carob pod is suggested as a new feedstock for bioethanol production. A tecno-economic study and life cycle assessment of the production process have been done.Understanding environmental impacts of nanomaterials necessitates analyzing the life cycle profile. The initial emphasis of nanomaterial life cycle studies has been on the environmental and health effects of nanoproducts during the production and usage stages. Analyzing the end-of-life (eol) stage of nanomaterials is also critical because significant impacts or benefits for the environment may arise at that particular stage. In this article, the Woodrow Wilson Center's Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) Consumer Products Inventory (CPI) model was used, which contains a relatively large and complete nanoproduct list (1,014) as of 2010. The consumer products have wide range of applications, such as clothing, sports goods, personal care products, medicine, as well as contributing to faster cars and planes, more powerful computers and satellites, better micro and nanochips, and long-lasting batteries. In order to understand the eol cycle concept, we allocated 1,014 nanoproducts into the nine end-of-life categories (e. g., recyclability, ingestion, absorption by skin/public sewer, public sewer, burning/landfill, landfill, air release, air release/public sewer, and other) based on probable final destinations of the nanoproducts. This article highlights the results of this preliminary assessment of end-of-life stage of nanoproducts. The largest potential eol fate was found to be recyclability, however little literature appears to have evolved around nanoproduct recycling. At lower frequency is dermal and ingestion human uptake and then landfill. Release to water and air are much lower potential eol fates for current nanoproducts. In addition, an analysis of nano-product categories with the largest number of products listed indicated that clothes, followed by dermal-related products and then sports equipment were the most represented in the PEN CPI (http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer/browse/categories/ 2010).Nowadays life cycle tools namely; Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and Life Cycle Optimization (LCO) are being used to assess new vehicular structures from sustainability and design for the environment perspectives. This manuscript implements a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based design approach to assess the performance of vehicular Body-In-White's (BIW) through its complete life cycle. The proposed LCA model will aid in the early design stages (i.e. conceptual design stage) serving as an eco-design decision-making support tool. This study provides a complete life cycle assessment covering the extraction and the processing of virgin materials, the manufacturing, the use and maintenance stage, the end-of-life stage, in addition to the fuel extraction and production stages. Traditional LCA studies do not usually consider the latter stages which accounts for a significant portion of the energy consumed and the generated CO2 emissions. This study results show that the material selection for vehicular applications is a sensitive process not only to the vehicle lifetime (as expressed in traveled miles), but also to the environmental burdens from the extraction stage and recyclability efforts. Additionally, the proposed study shows the effect of the different materials choices on the vehicle structure functionality. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many advanced vehicle technologies, including electric vehicles (EVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs), are gaining attention throughout the World due to their capability to improve fuel efficiencies and emissions. When evaluating the operational successes of these new fuel-efficient vehicles, it is essential to consider energy usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout the entire lifetimes of the vehicles, which are comprised of two independent cycles: a fuel cycle and a vehicle cycle. This paper intends to contribute to the assessment of the environmental impacts from the alternative technologies throughout the lifetimes of various advanced vehicles through objective comparisons. The methodology was applied to six commercial vehicles that are available in the U.S. and that have similar dimensions and performances. We also investigated the shifts in energy consumption and emissions through the use of electricity and drivers' behavior regarding the frequencies of battery recharging for EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). This study thus gives insight into the impacts of the electricity grid on the total energy cycle of a vehicle lifetime. In addition, the total ownership costs of the selected vehicles were examined, including considerations of the fluctuating gasoline prices. The cost analysis provides a resource for drivers to identify optimal choices for their driving circumstances.In this paper, a multi-purpose hybrid desiccant integrated vapor-compression air-conditioning system of a small capacity is experimentally investigated. The system, referred as hybrid desiccant-assisted air conditioner (HDAC), is designed to meet the cooling load of spaces having large latent heat portions and at the same time to extract water from atmospheric air. The system is mainly consisted of a liquid-desiccant dehumidification unit integrated with a vapor-compression system (VCS). The dehumidification unit uses lithium chloride (LiCl) solution as the working material. The effect of different parameters, such as desiccant solution flow rate, process airflow rate, evaporator and condenser temperatures, strong solution concentration and regeneration temperature on the performance of the system, is studied. This system has a water recovery rate of 6.7?l/h?TR (1.91?l/h?kW) of pure water at typical north Egyptian climate (2030 degrees C dry bulb and 3545% relative humidity). The HDAC system has a COP as high as 3.8 (an improvement of about 68% over the conventional VCS). The system offers a total cooling capacity of about 1.75?TR (6.15?kW) using a 0.75?TR (2.6?kW) VCS unit. Finally, the proposed system is found to have a payback time of about 10 months without any considerable extra capital cost compared with the known split air-conditioning system. The results emphasize the potential benefits of the HDAC system. Copyright (c) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of proposed Canadian climate change mitigation policies (discounting and carbon pricing) on cost, energy use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the single-objective design/expansion optimization of the Amherstview water distribution system in Amherstview, Ontario, Canada. The single-objective optimization problem is solved with the elitist genetic algorithm (EGA). The optimization approach is used in a parametric analysis to examine the impact of discounting and carbon pricing on GHG reductions for cement-mortar ductile iron and polyvinyl chloride pipe materials. Preliminary results indicate that the discount rate and carbon prices investigated had no significant influence on energy use and GHG mass in the Amherstview system and did not meet the emission-reduction targets set by the Canadian government. This result was attributed to a number of factors, including adequately installed hydraulic capacity in the Amherstview system, the use of a time-declining GHG emission intensity factor, and the scope of the expansion problem. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000158. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic systems approach that aims to assess the environmental impacts (potential pollutants and resource use) of the production of goods and services. The aim of this study was to develop an LCA model to compare contrasting milk production systems, a seasonal pasture-based dairy farm and a confinement dairy farm. The environmental impacts considered were global warming, eutrophication, acidification, land use and non-renewable energy use. The LCA estimated on-farm, off-farm (pollutants and resources associated with the production and supply of purchased farm inputs) and total (on-farm and off-farm) environmental impacts. Environmental impacts were quantified per unit of milk and per unit area. The study only considered two research farms, because high quality data were unavailable for a large number of farms. Thus, this was not a representative LCA comparison. The genetic merit of cows modelled was similar for each system. A total mixed ration was fed in the confinement system and grazed grass was mainly fed in the grass-based system. Research data were used to confirm simulated dry matter intake (DMI) and predicted enteric CH4 output from simulated DMI. The study found that when expressed per unit of milk and per on-farm area, all total environmental impacts were greater for the confinement system compared to the grass-based system. Per total farm area (on-farm and off-farm area), all environmental impacts except global warming were lower for the grass-based system. The greater environmental impact of the confinement dairy system was due to the greater use of concentrate feed and the longer manure storage period. Scenario modelling demonstrated that there is potential to decrease the environmental impact of dairy systems, particularly the confinement system, by reducing the use of concentrate ingredients with a high environmental impact and by storing manure in solid systems. Scenario modelling also showed that assumptions regarding the carbon cycle should be clearly outlined when assessing milk production systems and that standardisation of LCA allocation procedures is required. This LCA study is one of the few to directly compare the environmental impact of a grass-based and a confinement dairy system. However direct comparisons are needed, using an LCA methodology such as described in this paper, and using data from a greater number of farms so that each system is better represented thereby ensuring a robust comparison of the two systems on a regional or national basis. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents detailed product-based net emissions of main livestock products (meat, milk and eggs) at national level for the whole EU-27 according to a cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment, including emissions from land use and land use change (LULUC). Calculations were done with the CAPRI model and the covered gases are CH4, N2O and CO2. Total GHG fluxes of European livestock production amount to 623-852 Mt CO2-equiv., 182-238 Mt CO2-equiv. (28-29%) are from beef production, 184-240 Mt CO2-equiv. (28-30%) from cow milk production and 153-226 Mt CO2-equiv. (25-27%) from pork production. According to IPCC classifications, 38-52% of total net emissions are created in the agricultural sector, 17-24% in the energy and industrial sectors. 12-16% Mt CO2-equiv. are related to land use (CO2 fluxes from cultivation of organic soils and reduced carbon sequestration compared to natural grassland) and 9-33% to land use change, mainly due to feed imports. The results suggest that for effective reduction of GHG emissions from livestock production, fluxes occurring outside the agricultural sector need to be taken into account. Reduction targets should address both the production side as defined by IPCC sectors and the consumption side. An LCA assessment as presented here could be a basis for such efforts. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are expected to cause global warming which results in extreme weather changes that could affect crop yields and productivity, food supplies and food prices. It is also expected that climate change will have an impact on animal metabolism and health, reproduction and productivity. On the other hand, the expected increased demand of animal origin products in the coming years will increase the reared animal numbers and consequently GHG emissions. This paper outlines the main GHGs emitted from livestock which are CO2, CH4 and N2O, coming from respiration, enteric fermentation and manure management respectively, with CH4 and N2O having the highest global warming potential. Ruminant livestock has the highest contribution to these GHG emissions with small ruminants share being 12.25% of the total GHG emissions from livestock's enteric and manure CH4, and manure N2O in CO2 equivalent, producing 9.45 kg CO2 equivalent per kg body weight with the respective values for cattle, pigs and poultry being 5.45, 3.97 and 3.25. Since the production systems significantly affect the GHG emissions, the grazing, livestock crop complex, and intensive ones account for 30.5%, 67.29% and 5.51% for total CH4 emission (from enteric fermentation and manure management) and 24.32%, 68.11% and 7.57% for N2O respectively. Taking into account the positive and negative impacts of small ruminant livestock production systems to the environmental aspects in general, it is recommended that a number of potentially effective measures should be taken and the appropriate mitigation technologies should be applied in order to reduce effectively and essentially the GHG emissions to the atmosphere, with no adverse effects on intensification and increased productivity of small ruminants production systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle concept was applied to analyse and assess some municipal solid waste (MSW) management scenarios in terms of environmental impacts, particularised for Iasi city, Romania, where approximately 380 kg/cap/yr of waste are generated. Currently, the management processes include temporary storage, collection, transport and landfilling, but separate collection, sorting, recycling and composting of solid waste, which should be addressed according to the National Strategy and European policy for waste. Four different scenarios were elaborated as alternatives to the existing waste management system in Iasi, which include both previously applied and current waste management alternatives, as well as some advanced practices. The effectiveness of the scenarios was evaluated in terms of environmental impacts based on Life Cycle Analysis, supported by GaBi software. Some environmental impact categories (acidification, eutrophication, global warming, human toxicity, and photochemical ozone generation potentials, carcinogenic substances, heavy metals, winter smog, photochemical ozone formation) were estimated based on several impact assessment methods associated to GaBi software (CML 2001, CML 96, EDIP 2003, E195). The study emphasises the importance of system boundaries for the life cycle impact assessment process and consequently for the optimal waste management alternative.In this paper, the greenhouse gas and energy balances of the production and use for space heating of substitute natural gas from biomass (bio-SNG) for space heat are analysed. These balances are compared to the use of natural gas and solid biomass as wood chips to provide the same service. The reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions (CO2-eq.) - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - and of the fossil primary energy use is investigated in a life cycle assessment (LCA). This assessment was performed for nine systems for bio-SNG; three types of gasification technologies (O-2-blown entrained flow, O-2-blown circulating fluidised bed and air-steam indirect gasification) with three different types of feedstock (forest residues, miscanthus and short rotation forestry). The greenhouse gas analysis shows that forest residues using the air-steam indirect gasification technology result in the lowest greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2-eq. 32 kg MWh (1) of heat output). This combination results in 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions when compared to natural gas and a 29% reduction of greenhouse gases if the forest residues were converted to wood chips and combusted. The gasification technologies O-2-blown entrained flow and O-2-blown circulating fluidised bed gasification have higher greenhouse gas emissions that range between in CO2-eq. 41 to 75 kg MWh (1) of heat output depending on the feedstock. When comparing feedstocks in the bio-SNG systems, miscanthus had the highest greenhouse gas emissions bio-SNG systems producing in CO2-eq. 57-75 kg MWh (1) of heat output. Energy analysis shows that the total primary energy use is higher for bio-SNG systems (1.59-2.13 MWh MWh (1) of heat output) than for the reference systems (in 1.37-1.51 MWh MWh (1) of heat output). However, with bio-SNG the fossil primary energy consumption is reduced compared to natural gas. For example, fossil primary energy use is reduced by 92% when air-steam indirect gasification technology and forest residues is compared to natural gas. There is no significant difference of the fossil primary energy consumption between the use of solid biomass (0.13-0.15 MWh MWh (1) of heat output) and the bio-SNG systems (0.12-0.18 MWh MWh (1) of heat output). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle impacts were assessed for an integrated microalgal biodiesel production system that facilitates energy- and nutrient-recovery through anaerobic digestion, and utilizes glycerol generated within the facility for additional heterotrophic biodiesel production. Results show that when external fossil energy inputs are lowered through process integration, the energy demand, global warming potential (GWP), and process water demand decrease significantly and become less sensitive to algal lipid content. When substitution allocation is used to assign additional credit for avoidance of fossil energy use (through utilization of recycled nutrients and biogas), GWP and water demand can, in fact, increase with increase in lipid content. Relative to stand-alone algal biofuel facilities, energy demand can be lowered by 3-14 GJ per ton of biodiesel through process integration. GWP of biodiesel from the integrated system can be lowered by up to 71% compared to petroleum fuel. Evaporative water loss was the primary water demand driver. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, an alternative means for nitrogen fixation that may consume less energy and release less greenhouse gases than the Haber-Bosch process is explored. A life-cycle assessment was conducted on a process to: culture the cyanobacterium, Anabaena sp. ATCC 33047, in open ponds; harvest the biomass and exopolysaccharides and convert these to biogas; strip and convert the ammonia from the biogas residue to ammonium sulfate; dry the ammonium sulfate solution to ammonium sulfate crystals and transport the finished product. The results suggest that substantial reductions in non-renewable energy use and greenhouse gas emissions may be realized. The study opens the possibility that Haber-Bosch ammonia may be replaced with ammonia from a biomass process which simultaneously generates renewable energy. The process is intrinsically safer than the Haber-Bosch process. However, there are trade-offs in terms of land use and possibly, water. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study performed an assessment on the beneficial of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) application on waste treatment system in a local palm oil industry in Malaysia. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to assess the environmental impacts of the greenhouse gas (G'HG) reduction from the CDM application. Calculations on the emission reduction used the methodology based on AM002 (Avoided Wastewater and On-site Energy Use Emissions in the Industrial Sector) Version 4 published by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). The results from the studies showed that the introduction of CDM in the palm oil mill through conversion of the captured biogas from palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment into power generation were able to reduce approximate 0.12 tonnes CO2 equivalent concentration (tCO(2)e) emission and 30 kW.hr power generation per 1 tonne of fresh fruit bunch processed. Thus, the application of CDM methodology on palm oil mill wastewater treatment was able to reduce up to 1/4 of the overall environment impact generated in palm oil mill.In the field of Naval Engineering, the use of life-cycle analyses associated with the concept of aging and time-dependent reliability has recently gained momentum. In this regard, the U.S. Office of Naval Research supports a project at Lehigh University focused on the development of an integrated life-cycle framework for ship reliability assessment, redundancy estimation, damage detection, and optimum inspection planning. This paper presents some of the results obtained at Lehigh University within this project, with emphasis on structural health monitoring and life-cycle analysis under uncertainty.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission analysis was performed for current and proposed organic waste management practices in the City of Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America (USA). Aiming for the long-term goal of zero waste, the City of Madison has been looking into an opportunity to divert its organic waste from its landfill. Previous studies suggested that organic waste diversion could result in a GHG emission reduction; Alternative treatment of organic waste would reduce GHG emissions through avoidance of landfill methane emission, nutrient replacement, and energy recovery when anaerobic digestion technologies are employed. However, organic waste diversion requires modification of collection practices and additions to the collection fleet. This would increase the GHG emissions and there is a need to balance emission reductions and the additional costs associated with a new organic waste diversion program. Collection practices are also important for the success of such a project, as it accounts for 83% of current operational cost for managing organic waste. The GHG emissions were quantified using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The current practice of composting of yard waste and direct disposal of other fractions of organic waste into the landfill were estimated to emit 224 kg CO2-eq./ton of GHG. In contrast with the current practice, four alternatives were assessed in this study: windrow composting, high-solids anaerobic digestion, co-digestion at a large scale industrial waste anaerobic digester facility, and co-digestion at the local wastewater treatment plant. The results show that the co-digestion of source-separated organic waste would achieve the highest GHG emission reduction among the alternatives considered. The results were as follows: 81.5 kg CO(2)(-)eq./ton for windrow composting; -46.0 kg CO2-eq./ton for a high solids anaerobic digester; -156 kg CO2-eq./ton for co-digestion with industrial waste; and -189 kg CO2-eq./ton for co-digestion with sewage sludge. Co-digestion was favored as it shows the highest GHG emission reduction capacity while saving capital cost by almost half. However, the results of the GHG emission analysis were also affected by several factors external to the technologies chosen, including public participation, collection efficiency of organic waste, and types of waste collected. Based on the findings of this work, the party in charge of the organic waste diversion project should seek opportunities to partner with regional anaerobic digestion projects and local utilities, while continuing with its community outreach efforts. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Italian drinking water supply structure includes two main systems: tap water and bottled water. Thanks to the first, drinking water is available almost all around domestic territory while bottled water represents one of the ways to make water available where and/or when there is no tap water. Due to the changing eating habits and lifestyles bottled water has become a large consumption beverage provoking a growth rate of the drinking water industry. The objective of this study is the analysis of the key environmental issues related to the Italian drinking water supply systems and of practical solutions for improving the sustainability of the both systems. The results obtained highlight that bottled water is less environmentally friendly than tap water because it requires much higher material (130-154 kg/m(3)) and energy (1000-4900 MJ/m(3)) inputs than tap water (respectively equal to 0.5-1.3 kg/m(3) and 2-3 MJ/m(3)) and generates more waste (130-155 kg/m(3) of bottled water versus 0.3-0.7 kg/m(3) of tap one). Among the different possible opportunities, to improve the sustainability of bottled water the authors present different options mainly related to the recycling of post-consumption bottles and the organization of logistics. With regard to tap water the main points of criticism are water losses and energy costs. Quantitative evaluations of the given alternatives make this analysis a concrete example of how it is possible (and necessary) for industrial sectors to implement environmental management to settle company development and environmental sustainability. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Using recycled plastics can significantly reduce the environmental impacts by avoiding exploration, mining and transportation of natural gas and oil. Adding fibrous reinforcement is a potential way to increase the recycling rate and also to locate high value applications to recycled plastics. The environmental impact assessment has been carried out using life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The glass fibres and flax fibres were chosen as fibrous reinforcement. The resource depletion potential and global warming potential were evaluated for glass fibre and flax fibre filled recycled plastics and compared with their respective virgin alternatives. The properties of the recycled and virgin composites were estimated from the literatures and semi-empirical models. The resource depletion and global warming were compared at equivalent stiffness's. The results indicate that reinforcing recycled plastics can significantly reduce the resource consumption and global warming in civil and infrastructural applications. However, the composites made from virgin plastics remain a greener and sustainable alternative in the automotive applications. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is a rapidly growing literature on the environmental performance of waste-to-energy technologies, including the use of waste incineration with heat recovery as integrated part of urban district heating systems. This study highlights findings from some of the recent literature, and carries out a case study for 24 years of operation of a district heating system in Trondheim, Norway. This is a system with heat recovery (not co-generation) from mass-burn incineration of residual (source-sorted) municipal waste, as well as a significant heat input from other energy sources for back-up and peak load demand supply. The use of such additional fuels is common for district heating systems in cold climate, as the solid waste base load is clearly insufficient during cold winter periods. Hence, this study goes beyond a conventional waste-to-energy analysis, addressing the overall combined system of waste treatment and heat supply in an urban area. LCA principles are used to determine direct and indirect emissions of CO2-eq and NOx from main elements in the combined system. These emissions are compared to a hypothetic scenario with the most likely alternative waste treatment and heat supply technologies during the study period, i.e. since 1986. The paper demonstrates the performance difference of these two cases, clarifies which elements of the combined system are the important ones, and discusses the role of other energy sources than waste. Furthermore, the importance of choices of electricity (El-mix) is demonstrated, comparing average Norwegian, Nordic and European El-mix. Finally, the potential influence of changed calorific value of residual waste is analysed, which is likely to be important in future due to changing policies for source-sorting of municipal waste. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Waste recycling for paper production is an important component of waste management. This study constructs a physical input-output life-cycle assessment (PIO-LCA) model. The PIO-LCA model is used to investigate environmental impacts of four categories of waste recycling in China's paper industry: crop straws, bagasse, textile wastes and scrap paper. Crop straw recycling and wood utilization for paper production have small total intensity of environmental impacts. Moreover, environmental impacts reduction of crop straw recycling and wood utilization benefits the most from technology development. Thus, using crop straws and wood (including wood wastes) for paper production should be promoted. Technology development has small effects on environmental impacts reduction of bagasse recycling, textile waste recycling and scrap paper recycling. In addition, bagasse recycling and textile waste recycling have big total intensity of environmental impacts. Thus, the development of bagasse recycling and textile waste recycling should be properly limited. Other pathways for reusing bagasse and textile wastes should be explored and evaluated. Moreover, imports of scrap paper should be encouraged to reduce large indirect impacts of scrap paper recycling on domestic environment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper addresses the energy and environmental implications of sequestrating CO2 from a coal power plant using magnesium silicate rock. An accounting type life cycle assessment (LCA) of the mineralization method under development at Abo Akademi University (AAU), Finland, is presented and the results are compared with the process developed at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), formerly Albany Research Council (ARC) in the US. The AAU process is a multi-staged route where CO2 is sequestered via a process that first produces magnesium hydroxide. Mg(OH)(2) from Mg silicate. The Mg(OH)(2) produced is later reacted with CO2 in a high temperature gas/solid pressurized fluidized bed (FB) reactor, forming pure, stable and environmentally benign MgCO3 product. This study addresses the following important issues; (a) the material and energy requirements of sequestering 1 ton of CO2 (t-CO2) in mineral silicate, (b) the overall environmental burdens associated with CO2 sequestration using serpentinite mineral, (c) the priorities and opportunities for reduction of energy requirements and environmental impacts associated with mineralizing CO2, and (d) comparison of LCA results of the AAU mineralization process route with that of the mineralization process developed by NETL. Exergy calculations show that with heat recovery mineralizing 1 t-CO2 using the AAU process requires 3.6 GJ/t-CO2 while that of the NETL needs 3.4 GJ/t-CO2. Applying results of exergy analysis in the life cycle inventory (LCI) models of the AAU and the NETL processes leads to 517 kg CO(2)e and 683 kg CO(2)e of greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2 equivalents) respectively, for every ton of CO2 mineralized in serpentinite. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A process for hemicelluloses fractionation and purification from wheat straw and bran has been investigated and technical considerations (yields, purity) have been coupled to environmental characterizations (water consumption, carbon dioxide emissions) in order to develop an environment-friendly process. Extraction by twin-screw extrusion gave a yield in arabinoxylans equal to 8.5% (weight of (arabinose + xylose) in the extract after fractionation/dry weight of the destarched bran). The extraction of 86 kg of straw and bran (with a ratio 6.2:1) with 5.8 kg of NaOH in pellet form resulted in the production of a complex extract containing 1.0 kg of arabinoxylan polymer, which required concentration and purification steps. Evaporation (EV) followed by ethanol precipitation (P) and freeze-drying (FD), gave a yield in hemicellulosic powder of 36.5% (dry weight of powder/dry weight of extract after liquid/solid separation) with a total sugar content equal to 48.4% but also used a large amount of ethanol. The other studied purification process was based on a combination of ultrafiltration (UF), anion exchange chromatography (CHR) and spray-drying (SD). It gave a yield in hemicellulosic powders of 24.6% and a total sugar content equal to 28.7%. The technical performances of the second process appear to be less attractive but with a lower energetic and ethanol consumption. Thus secondly the environmental impacts (water consumption and CO2 emission) of the ultrafiltration step were quantified. Life Cycle Assessment data (Ecoinvent) were used to convert materials used for the infrastructure and energy consumed during functioning into carbon dioxide emissions and water consumptions. Results have shown that environmental impacts due to the operating conditions are higher than those relative to raw material involved in the installation. The study showed that this kind of approach allows the determination of optimum conditions for the ultrafiltration step. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The decomposition of vegetable and microalgal oils was herein analysed as a process of high interest for the production of both hydrogen and carbon, which potentially entails the advantage of attaining a negative CO2 balance through carbon fixation. The feasibility of a series of oil decarbonization systems was evaluated by means of energy and CO2 balances, which comprised not only the direct decarbonization process itself but also the cultivation and oil extraction stages. Three potential scenarios were assessed, embracing different options to meet the energy requirements of the systems. For each scenario, a wide range of case studies were evaluated, involving the use of rapeseed, sunflower, soybean, jatropha, Botryococcus braunii and Chlorella vulgaris oils as raw materials. Favourable energy and CO2 balances were found for a variety of crops in different scenarios. In particular, jatropha oil from high seed yield crops and rapeseed oil from high seed yield and high oil content crops were identified as the most promising biomass feedstocks for oil decarbonization since they led to net hydrogen production as well as to negative balances of CO2 emissions, therefore showing a carbon fixation effect. When compared to vegetable/microalgal oil transesterification to produce biodiesel, oil decomposition proved to be a more suitable alternative from a combined energy and environmental approach.This article deals with an evaluation of some environmental impacts of a normal workday. The aim is to compare the environmental load associated to different standard meals provided by a canteen, and a series of transport options from home to the workplace, adopting the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. LCA is a holistic methodology that evaluates the environmental burdens associated to industrial productions or anthropic activities, over the whole life cycle of a product. The environmental load associated to a service is characterized by a number of impact indicators internationally accepted, such as gross energy requirement, global warming potential (GWP), ozone layer depletion and others. The present paper shows the environmental impacts, calculated with the environmental product declaration and the cumulative energy demand methods, associated to some typical food courses and means of transportation. The present analysis considers as subject a generic worker who lives and works in a European urban area. The results highlight how often environmental impacts coming from the lunch, in particular when the menus contain meat, are higher than the ones attributable to the transport. Taking into account the GWP as example, this study assesses how the contribution for producing a single beef steak (120 g) is equivalent to drive a car for ca. 30 km.Currently there are several methodologies available for estimating the carbon footprint of products. In this study a comparison has been made between the outcomes and the implications of three different methodologies applied to office paper: (1) the ISO 14040/14044 standards limited to the analysis of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the corresponding impact category global warming; (2) the PAS 2050; and (3) the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) framework. The carbon footprint of office paper from cradle-to-costumer is 4.64, 4.74 and 4.29 g CO(2)eq per A4 sheet according to, respectively, the ISO 14040/14044 standards, the PAS 2050 and the CEPI framework. The ISO 14040/14044 standard methodology allows the quantification of 98% of the total GHG emissions with the smallest effort in data collection. The major hot spots are the stages of eucalypt pulp and office paper production and chemical and fuel production for all methodologies. General methodologies such as those analysed in this study are not enough for the comparison of products. More specific rules, such as Product Category Rules, that limit the degree of freedom in the choice of the functional unit, system boundary, allocation rules, data quality, between others, should be developed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article attempts to answer the question: What will most likely happen in terms of emitted greenhouse gases if the use of poultry fat for making biodiesel used in transportation is increased? Through a well-to-wheel assessment, several different possible scenarios are assessed, showing that under average conditions, the use of poultry fat biodiesel instead of diesel leads to a slight reduction (6%) in greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis shows that poultry fat is already used for different purposes and using poultry fat for biodiesel will therefore remove the poultry fat from its original use. This implies that even though the use of biodiesel is assumed to displace petrochemical diesel, the 'original user' of the poultry fat will have to find a substitute, whose production leads to a greenhouse gas emissions comparable to what is saved through driving on poultry fat biodiesel rather than petrochemical diesel. Given that it is the production of the substitute for the poultry fat which mainly eliminates the benefit from using poultry fat for biodiesel, it is argued that whenever assessing the greenhouse gas emissions from biodiesel made from by-products (such as rendered animal fats, used cooking oil, etc.) it is very important to include the oil's alternative use in the assessment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) was developed to identify the unit processes in the life-cycle of biogas production and utilization offering the greatest opportunities for emission to air reduction, hence potential for environmental improvement. The systems investigated included single feedstock digestion and multiple feedstock co-digestion, small (<500 kW(el)) and large-scale (>= 500 kW(el)) biogas plants, and selected biogas utilization pathways and digestate management options. Analysis was performed in accordance with ISO 14040 and 14044 standards, using SimaPro 7.2 software and Ecoinvent (R) v2.1 database. The analysis is based on published data considering primarily conditions for Germany. Results indicated significant variation of emission levels for all unit processes related to biogas production and utilization. Emissions from the feedstock supply logistics were highly influenced by the origin of feedstock used. For example, the fossil fuel related carbon dioxide (CO2,fossil) emissions associated with feedstock supply were over 50 times higher for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) compared to cattle manure. The higher value for MSW was associated with the requisite collection, transport and pretreatment, whereas only transportation was required for cattle manure. Emissions from unit processes in biogas plant operation and biogas utilization depended on combined efficiency of energy generation (electricity and thermal), potential substitution of fossil fuels with biogas and utilization of the heat by-product of electricity generation. For example, the results indicated that upgrading of biogas to biomethane, with almost 100% conversion efficiency, caused 6 times less non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) emissions if plant heating was supplied from coupled small-scale CHP unit as opposed to heating with natural gas. Harnessing of the residual biogas from digestate storage areas was estimated to reduce methane emission by a factor up to 14. Overall, this study provides basic data required for identification and mitigation of emission 'hot-spots' in biogas production and utilization, including the evaluation of environmental and public health impacts of biogas technology options by attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) constitutes one of the most crucial health and environmental problems facing authorities in the Arabian Gulf. Recent literature on current solid waste management (SWM) in Qatar has been reviewed in this paper, and a focused study has been carried out to provide a review on the total amount of municipal solid waste generated, stored, collected, disposed as well as the constituents of the waste. The analysis showed that Qatar produced around 2,000,000 tons of solid municipal waste annually, corresponding to a daily generation rate per capita of about 2.5 kg. About 60% of MSW is organic material and about 300 kg is composed daily. Landfill and composting is considered the most appropriate waste disposal techniques in Qatar. Um-Al-Afai landfill has nearly 80% of MSW. Because of the increased migration in Qatar, there is a sharp rise in the volume and also in the variety of solid waste. It is important to alleviate societal concerns over the increased rate of resource consumption and waste production; thus, policy makers have encouraged recycling and reuse strategies to reduce the demand for raw materials and to decrease the quantity of waste going to landfill. An example of the benefit of mechanical recycling of plastics compared to land filling and composting was conducted by GaBi 4 life cycle analysis tool which showed the benefits to the global warming and human toxicity. Recycling is the favored solution for plastic waste management, because it has a lower environmental impact on the defined impact categories, from Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Human Toxicity Potentials (HTP) indicators.Ethylene regulates multiple developmental processes during a plant life cycle, but the effect of ethylene on the upregulation of senescence-, stress-, and post-harvest-related genes in forage grasses is poorly understood. In this work, we used quantitative PCR to determine whether ethylene application affected the expression of selected cell-wall degradation related genes that are typically upregulated post-harvest. The expression levels of beta-d-glucan exohydrolase isoenzyme, alpha glucosidase, and arabinoxylan arabinofuranohydrolase isoenzyme, all putative cell wall degrading enzymes, were quantified at six points in the life cycle of the model grass species Darnel ryegrass (Lolium temulentum L.). We also quantified the expression of ACC oxidase and ACC synthase in response to ethylene application to determine if endogenous upregulation of ethylene biosynthesis occurred. Grass developmental stage had a significant impact on gene expression response to ethylene-treatment, indicating that discrete life cycle stages present different ethylene-responsive windows for treatment. Under our experimental conditions, ACC oxidase and ACC synthase expression were downregulated in response to ethylene-treatment, suggesting that exogenous ethylene served an auto-inhibitory role. Transcripts corresponding to the three cell wall degradation related genes increased significantly in response to ethylene treatment, suggesting that ethylene may have future utility in the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a life cycle analysis of ethylene-induced genes in forage grasses.The ecodesign of a product implies that different potential environmental problems of diverse nature must be considered, apart from the general design criteria (i.e., technical, functional, ergonomic, aesthetic or economical). In this sense, an ecodesign tool integrating the criteria provided by three environmental evaluation methodologies, namely Ecological Footprint (EF), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA), has been constructed on the basis of fuzzy logic reasoning and features. This idea enabled the decision making at process and product level taking into account the values of the different indicators at a time. The relative importance of each of them has been established through the definition of membership functions as inputs to the fuzzy inference reasoning procedure in the case of a specific product. As a result, a Fuzzy EcoDesign Index (FEcoDI) was obtained. A well known case study was used to test the tool. Different packaging materials for a beverage bottle were considered to identify the most environmentally friendly option. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper characterizes the effects of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) source on the rheological properties of virgin asphalt binders blended with 15% and 30% recovered binders. The recovered binders were extracted from three local RAP sources namely; the North-South Expressway (NSE), Damansara-Puchong Expressway (DPE) and Public Works Department (PWD) roads. The results showed that RAP source significantly influence the binder rheological properties at each aging state and test temperature. Environmental impacts were analyzed by estimating fuel requirements and Greenhouse Gas emissions in an asphalt mixing plant which was found to depend on RAP source and RAP content. Three scenarios were suggested to select the optimum RAP source and RAP content based on fuel requirement, emissions, and environmental condition. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, Life Cycle Assessment is applied to estimate potential implications of waste composition evolution in end-of-life treatments. The aim is to understand the environmental effects of treating Automotive Shredder Residue (ASR), which is the residual waste after shredding End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs), when its composition will change as it is expected to happen in the coming years. Thus, for modeling it, two features have been mainly considered: (i) an increase in light material content such as polymers and nonferrous metals (especially aluminum) in new vehicle production, and (ii) an improved polymer separation and recycling by reducing the different kinds of plastics used in cars, according to an ecodesign-oriented strategy. Landfill, incineration, mechanical recycling, and chemical recycling scenarios have been considered as possible waste treatments for LCA analysis, and the expectations regarding the potential benefits from the recycling of aluminum and polyolefins from ELVs, for the Italian situation, have been discussed. Results confirm that innovative but still small-scale recycling plants, modeling mechanical and chemical recycling options, achieve the lowest impacts today due to the combination of material and energy recovery, with a consequent decrease in the residual amount of waste disposed of in landfill. As seen in these estimates, in terms of impact reducing benefits related to nonrenewable energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, ASR waste may represent an important input for secondary material production in the coming years. Also, a sustainable design of future vehicles, characterized by a reduction in the number of different materials employed and a growth of nonferrous metal use, will lead to greater economic and technical advantages for the mechanical separation activities followed by recycling processes. Lastly, the outcomes point to the need to consider both a LCA and ecodesign approaches for decision makers in waste management strategies, in order to properly handle factors which may affect future development or help organize a suitable exploitation of different treatment practices. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although Italy is one of the most important exporters of furniture in Europe, it is also a great importer of foreign timber. We decided to focus our study on Walnut tree (Juglans regia L) as it can be considered one of the most important species for high quality timber production in Italy. Our goal is to examine the production of high quality timber deriving from a dedicated walnut tree plantation with the intent of evaluating the environmental impact from the LCA prospective (ISO 14040). The functional unit adopted here was 1 m(3) of dry solid under bark wood (u = 12%). Tillage and N-based fertilisers had the heaviest environmental impact, respectively through diesel consumption and a high NH3 volatilization rate. The emissions produced by urea may be reduced by switching to other N-fertilisers with a lower NH3 volatilization rate, or by choosing biofuels that can also represent an alternative to traditional diesel. Plant protection systems against animals such as metallic fences represent an unexpected hot spot because of the steel production and galvanizing processes related to them. Biodegradable protection systems might be adopted instead of metallic fences, even though this choice depends on the size of the animals. When considering the lack of data in industrial tree plantations literature with regard to the production of high quality wood, the present LCA study can be considered a useful tool in providing a deeper understanding of the key environmental impact issues related to high quality timber production. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The necessity of considering the environment as an additional design factor arises due to increasing environmental conscience worldwide and stricter requirements to reduce the environmental impact of energy systems. Designing such systems very often involves conflicting objectives as eco-friendly technologies are usually more expensive. This paper considers simultaneously economic and environmental criteria in the synthesis of a trigeneration system to be installed in a hospital. Synthesis includes optimal configuration (commercially available equipment) and optimal operation throughout the year. The multiobjective optimization accounts for minimization of total annual cost and CO(2) emissions released in the atmosphere, as well as the Eco-indicator 99 (El-99) in order to broaden environmental considerations in the impact assessment. A Pareto frontier, set of solutions representing optimal trade-offs between the economic and environmental objectives, is obtained from the solution of a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model. Two bicriteria problems were solved using the MILP model: (1) annual cost ((sic)/yr) versus CO(2) emissions (kg CO(2)/yr) and (2) annual cost ((sic)/yr) versus El-99 Single Score (points/yr). The Pareto solutions consist of optimal configurations that adapt their operational strategy during a specific range in the Pareto frontier. Solutions are compared and it is observed that some configurations are more stable along the Pareto frontier, and that significant reductions in economic cost can be attained if the environmental impact is partially compromised. After the judgment of the solutions obtained and the trade-offs involved, one ultimate configuration is selected, which presents a flexible range of adaptability in the economic/CO(2) and economic/El-99 optimizations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study uses a site-specific life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental profile and energy and water demand of potential production options for rapeseed biodiesel in Chile. The first step is the analysis of the biodiesel supply chain in a standard scenario, associated with the most likely production conditions. The second step is the evaluation of the following alternative scenarios related to a production strategy involving low-impact or renewable resources: (1) Addition of livestock manure as organic fertilizer, (2) Use of degraded grassland, (3) Biodiesel transport by rail, and (4) Use of forest residues for industrial steam. The results show that the biodiesel in the standard scenario has less environmental impacts than fossil diesel in 4 of the 13 indicators evaluated. The rapeseed production is the stage with the highest contribution to impacts. The scenario 1 presents the best environmental profile. The scenario 2 reduces the greenhouse gas emissions of biodiesel. The scenarios 3 and 4 moderately improve the profile of the biofuel. The four situations could be implemented in the short term, but should be backed up by economic and social studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment of domestic heat pumps in the UK in comparison with gas boilers. The study considers air (ASHP), ground (GSHP) and water (WSHP) source heat pumps. The results show that heat pumps have higher environmental impacts than gas boilers due to the use of electricity. On average, the impacts for the ASHP are 82% higher than from the boiler and 73% for the GSHP and WSHP. The exception to this are the global warming, fossil resource depletion and summer smog impacts which are lower for the pumps than the boilers. For example, up to 36% of CO2 eq. can be saved with the WSHP and 6% with the ASHP in comparison with the boiler. Among the heat pumps considered, ASHP have the highest impacts due to lower efficiencies and higher material requirements for the system. The GSHP and WSHP have comparable impacts, with the latter being marginally better. The life cycle impacts of heat pumps may improve if the UK electricity mix is sufficiently decarbonised; however, they will still remain higher than for the gas boiler. Overall, their potential to contribute to the UK climate change targets is limited. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.On a $/kW basis, wind turbine prices in the U.S. have declined by nearly one-third on average since 2008, after having previously doubled over the period from 2002 through 2008. These two substantial and opposing trends over the past decade - and particularly the earlier price doubling - run counter to the smooth, gradually declining cost trajectories predicted by standard learning curve theory. Taking a bottom-up approach, we examine seven possible drivers of wind turbine prices in the U.S., with the goal of estimating the degree to which each contributed to the doubling in turbine prices from 2002 through 2008, as well as the subsequent decline in prices through 2010. In aggregate, these seven drivers - which include changes in labor costs, warranty provisions, manufacturer profitability, turbine scaling, raw materials prices, energy prices, and foreign exchange rates - explain from 70% to 90% (depending on the year) of empirically observed wind turbine price movements in the U.S. through 2010. Turbine scaling is found to have been the largest single contributor to the price doubling through 2008, although the incremental cost of scaling has been justified by greater energy capture, resulting in a lower cost of wind generation. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Energy consumption is a widely used measure of the environmental impact of buildings. Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of both the operational and embodied energy attributable to buildings over their lifetime. The method of assessing lifetime building energy is known as Life Cycle Energy Analysis (LCEA). LCEA is an easily-conducted form of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and one which is particularly relevant to the building industry. This note briefly explains some of the theoretical issues associated with LCEA and then uses a case study to demonstrate its use in evaluating alternative design strategies for a residential building.This paper presents and discusses the possibility of using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology as a support instrument in water resources management. Traditionally, water is considered in LCA studies as a transport media for other impact generators and not as an impact category itself (i.e. damaged environmental component). In this context, this study introduces and discusses the possibility of implementing two new impact categories in the life cycle impact assessment phase (LCIA) of LCA to account for the impacts of water consumption and discharge of wastewater flows to subsequent or downstream water uses. These two new indicators, named consumptive water use and degradative water use are implemented into the widely used Eco-Indicator 99 (EI99) LCIA methodology in the resources impact class and are tested in a LCA case study from a wine making industry. This research approaches the wine life cycle, since its production contributes to a variety of environmental impacts due to the high demand of water and energy. The LCIA was performed using the classic Eco-Indicator 99 methodology and the updated methodology using the two new impact categories. The results have shown that the production phase in the wine life cycle generated the highest impacts, although the impact profiles are different for the two methodologies. Also, by using the classic EI99 methodology it is difficult to identify, quantify and analyze the water related impacts, while the proposed new methodology allows for an in-depth analysis of water related impacts, in terms of water consumption and wastewater discharges.Assessing the environmental performance of hydrogen infrastructures is essential for determining their practical viability. Previous optimization approaches for hydrogen networks have focused on optimizing a single environmental metric in conjunction with the economic performance. This approach is inadequate as it may leave relevant environmental criteria out of the analysis. We propose herein a novel framework for optimizing hydrogen supply chains (SC) according to several environmental indicators. Our method comprises two steps. In step one, we formulate a multi-objective mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that accounts for the simultaneous minimization of the most relevant life cycle assessment (LCA) impacts. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is next employed in the post-optimal analysis of the MILP in order to facilitate the interpretation and analysis of its solution space. We demonstrate the capabilities of this approach through its application to the design of the future (potential) hydrogen SC in Spain. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose Inclusion of land use-related environmental aspects into LCA methodology has been under active development in recent years. Although many indicators have been developed and proposed for different aspects of land use (climate change, biodiversity, resource depletion and soil quality), many of indicators have, as yet, not been tested and compared in LCA applications. The aim of this study is to test the different LCIA indicators in practice in a case study of beer production. Materials and methods Nine different indicators were selected to represent three different impact endpoints of land use: resource depletion, soil quality and biodiversity. The beer production system included all life cycle stages from barley cultivation and the production of energy and raw materials to the serving of beer at restaurant. Several optional system expansions were studied to estimate the possible impacts of substituting feed protein (soybean, rapeseed and silage) with mash coproduct from brewing. A comparison with wine production was also made for illustrative purposes. Results and discussion The majority of the land use impacts occurred in the cultivation phase, but significant impacts were also found far down the supply chain. The system expansions influenced the overall results markedly, especially for land transformation, soil organic carbon (SOC) and several of the biodiversity indicators. Most of the land use indicators led to results that were consistent with each other. In the inventory and impact assessment phase, challenges were faced in obtaining reliable data. Additionally, the lack of reliable, regional characterization factors limits the usability of the land use indicators and the reliability of the LCIA results, especially of the SOC indicator. None of the studied indicators fulfills all the criteria for an effective ecological indicator, but most have many positive features. Conclusions All tested land use indicators were applicable in LCIA. Some indicators were found to be highly sensitive to assumptions on land transformation, which sets high requirements for LCI data quality. Scarcity of land use LCI data sources limits validation and cross-comparison. Interpretation of indicator results is complicated due to the limited understanding of the environmental impact pathways of land use. Recommendations None of the tested indicators describes the full range of environmental impacts caused by land use. We recommend presenting land occupation and transformation LCI results, the ecological footprint and at least one of the biodiversity indicators. Regarding soil quality, the lack of reliable regional data currently limits application of the proposed methods. The criteria of effective ecological indicators should be reflected in further work in indicator development. Development of regionalized characterization factors is of key importance to include land use in LCA.Purpose This study's aim was to understand the effect of mine characteristics on cradle-to-gate life cycle impacts of surface coal mining in the USA. Five bituminous coal strip mines were used as case studies. The study assessed the life cycle water use, land use, energy use, abiotic resource depletion, and climate change impacts. Methods The study employed the general principles of the ISO 14040-49 series LCA standards, modifying them where necessary. The functional unit was defined as " one tonne of processed coal at the mine gate." The relative mass-energy-economic value method, with some modification, was used to scope the product system. Data were obtained from environmental impact statements, coal mining permit applications, government reports, and published literature. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) included classification and characterization but no normalization, grouping, or weighting, to avoid ambiguity. In this work, mid-point characterization models were preferred over damage-oriented (end-point) characterization models because of their high levels of uncertainties. The LCIA also included sensitivity analysis. Results and discussion For the studied mines, life cycle potential water use impact is 178 l/tonne of processed coal at the mine gate. The potential land use, energy use, abiotic resource depletion, and climate change impacts range from 3 to 10 m(2) year/tonne, 97 to 181 MJ/tonne, 7.8 to 9.4 kg Sb-eq./tonne, and 38 to 92 kg CO2-eq./tonne, respectively. Land use impacts depend mainly on land for coal extraction activities and the climatic conditions of a region, which affects the vegetation recovery rate, following reclamation. Economies of scale significantly influence land use, energy use, abiotic resource depletion, and climate change impacts. Geology, which determines stripping ratio, coal quality, and coalbed methane, affects land use, climate change, and energy use impacts, particularly energy for overburden removal, reclamation, and beneficiation. Conclusions The data show that large-scale mining operations have lower life cycle impacts due to economies of scale, which results in lower energy use. Also, land use impacts, measured by land occupation, are affected by geologic conditions. This study provides insight into sources of variability in life cycle impacts of coal mining. The authors recommend timely reclamation to minimize land occupation impacts, as well as adoption of large-scale production, where appropriate, for efficient use of land occupied by mine facilities.Purpose The need for a systematic evaluation of the human and environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) has been widely recognized, and a growing body of literature is available endorsing life cycle assessment (LCA) as a valid tool for the same. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how the nano-specific environmental assessments are being done within the existing framework of life cycle inventory and impact assessment and whether these frameworks are valid and/ or whether they can be modified for nano-evaluations. Method In order to do that, we reviewed the state-of-the-art literature on environmental impacts of nanomaterials and life cycle assessment studies on ENMs and nanoproducts. We evaluated the major characteristics and mechanisms under which nanomaterials affect the environment and whether these characteristics and mechanisms can be adequately addressed with current life cycle inventories and impact assessment practices. We also discuss whether the current data and knowledge accumulated around fate, transport, and toxicity of nanomaterials can be used to perform an interim evaluation while more data are being generated. Observations and recommendations We found that while there is plenty of literature available promoting LCA as a viable tool for ENMs and nanoproducts, there are only a handful of studies where at least some parts of life cycle were evaluated for nanoproducts or nanomaterial. None of the LCA studies on ENMs or nanoproducts that we came across assessed nano-specific fate, transport, and toxicity effects as part of their evaluation citing the lack of data as the primary reason. However, our literature review indicates that nano-LCA studies need not omit the assessment of nanomaterials' human health and environmental impact due to incomplete data. There is some evidence that scalability may exist in certain types of nanomaterial, and traditional characterization can be applied even below 100 nm up to the scalability breakdown limits. For the size range where the scalability cannot be established, it may be more appropriate to explore empirical relationships, though possibly crude, between nanomaterial properties and their impact on human health and environment. Empirical relationships thus derived can serve as valid input for assessment until specific data points for nanomaterial fate, transport, and toxicity become available. Finally, where there is no quantitative data available, qualitative inferences may be drawn based on the known information of the nanomaterial and its potential release pathways.This paper describes the setting up and first call results of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) established by the European Union (Council regulation No 521/2008 of 30 May 2008 setting up the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, Official Journal of the European Union, 2008; L153:1-20). Funding for low carbon energy research on hydrogen and fuel cells in Europe has been gradually increasing since 1990 but has gained significant visibility with the establishment of the Joint Undertaking which is an innovative industry-led scheme, covering the full innovation cycle, from research to market entry. Significant projects led by industry are now running and hydrogen energy has great practical potential in five application areas; transport and refuelling infrastructure; hydrogen production and storage; stationary power production and combined heat and power; early markets; and cross-cutting areas such as codes and standards, regulation, life-cycle assessment, training.A coupled life cycle costing and life cycle assessment was carried out to estimate the economic and environmental impact of silicon-aluminum alloy production. The results showed that the aluminum alloy made from secondary aluminum accounted for 70%-95% of the environmental benefits in most categories, except in the land occupation and economic categories, compared with the aluminum alloy made from primary aluminum. These findings could be attributed to the decrease in energy and raw material consumption (i.e., electricity, sodium hydroxide, petroleum coke, and charcoal consumption) and the relatively high cost of secondary aluminum scrap. Optimizing raw material and electricity consumption efficiency, decreasing the transport distance from raw material (e.g., bauxite and old aluminum scrap) buyers to suppliers, and changing the end-life treatment of red mud from landfill to road building material production are key factors in reducing the overall environmental and economic impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy security concerns and the need for mitigation of environmental impacts associated with energy generation from fossil fuels (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions), has accelerated the deployment of renewable fuels such as biogas. The objective of this study was to conduct an attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of multiple biogas production and utilization pathways in order to identify areas where further mitigation of potential environmental impacts could be realized to enhance environmental sustainability of biogas deployment. The LCA of pre-defined small (<500 kW(el)) and large-scale (>= 500 kW(el)) biogas systems was conducted in accordance with the ISO 14040 standards, using SimaPro 7.2 computer software. The functional unit was the anaerobic digestion of 1 tonne of feedstock mixture to produce biogas with the digestate as process end product with multiple utilization options. The analyses quantified the impacts of feedstock type (both single feedstock and co-digestion), biogas utilization pathways, and the digestate processing and handling unit processes. Analyses also considered the replacement of fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer with equivalent energy value of the biogas and nutrient content of the digestate, respectively. The recorded variations in life-cycle impact categories for the scenarios compared indicated the importance of judicious selection of biogas pathways for environmental impact mitigation. The LCA and life-cycle energy analyses for single feedstock scenarios considered indicated that straw and corn silage as most efficient feedstocks for biogas. For example, straw mixture improved the environmental performance by almost 830% compared to the base scenario of cattle manure feedstock. This was mainly ascribed to the higher energy density, which exceeded the primary energy inputs for feedstock supply logistics. In order to minimize the environmental damage associated with feedstock type in all impact categories considered, and simultaneously maintain a positive energy balance, the analyses suggest that co-digestion of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) with agricultural and food industry residues are most appropriate for both small and large-scale biogas plants; co-digestion of waste and residues accounted for just 1% of the estimated impacts on agricultural land occupation, compared to the co-digestion of predominantly energy crop feedstock, and also reduced the climate change impacts by up to 30%. The results also indicated for the small-scale plants, the most promising pathway for sustainable biogas utilization would be in tri-generation; compared to electricity only generation in Combined Heat and Power (CHP), tri-generation could reduce the overall environmental impact by almost 200%. For the scenarios that included purification and upgrading biogas to biomethane for gas grid injection (arguably the most promising technology that could support rapid utilization expansion), it was noted that only the scenario with coupled small-scale CHP unit covering internal heat demands was capable of reducing the overall impact on fossil fuel depletion, compared to electricity generation alone. This was explained by the higher potential for fossil fuel substitution with biomethane, due to higher conversion efficiency (ca. 100%). It was also found that, the recovery of residual biogas from digestate storage reduced the environmental impacts of digestate management process by ca. tenfold, due to combined reduction of the potential biogas leakage to the atmosphere and subsequent use of the extra yield for energy generation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Whether the environmental benefits of emerging technologies are outweighed by the environmental impacts of producing and using scarce technology metals remains an open question. We present a three-level approach to assess how increasing environmental impacts on the resource provision level affect the overall impacts on the product level and on the service level, at an early stage of technology implementation. The approach is described based on a case example: we evaluate the environmental impacts of different supply options for lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) - required for the production of Li-ion batteries - and their influence on the environmental impacts associated with an electric vehicle (EV). We applied the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and considered the production of Li2CO3 from three different deposit types: natural brines (currently dominant), ores (less common) and seawater (hypothetical future option). For each of the three supply options, we established an inventory dataset for both favorable and unfavorable processing conditions. The inventory datasets were combined with those used in a recently published LCA, which compared the environmental impacts of an EV with those of an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). The results of this study indicate that the environmental impacts of Li2CO3 production as a percentage of the total transportation impacts caused by an EV are currently negligible. Only if seawater was used under unfavorable processing conditions, these impacts could outweigh the environmental benefits of EV over an ICEV: however, the uncertainty is high due to the limited data availability regarding future lithium production processes. The break-even point for the environmental impacts of 1 km driven with an EV and with an ICEV would be reached only if the impacts per kilogram of Li2CO3 were increased by about two orders of magnitude (more than 200 times higher for the impact assessment method Cumulative Energy Demand, about 450 times higher for Global Warming Potential and about 100 times higher for ecoindicator 99). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The "most economically advantageous tender," as defined in the EU's public procurement directives, allows public purchasers to combine environmental aspects, price and other award criteria in decision making. The directives do not, however, determine how the environmental criteria should be built. Indeed, there could be different means to assess the "greenness" of competing tenders, and these various measurements of environmental impacts may lead to different assessments of the most economically advantageous tender. In this article, the determination of environmental award criteria is examined through a case study on a purchase of a goods transportation service, where the most economically advantageous tender is calculated by life cycle assessment and the environmental cost calculation method suggested by the EU, and compared to the results gained by the purchaser's equation. Also the contribution of the weighting for the "green" purchasing decision is discussed.Clean biofuel production is an effective way to mitigate global climate change and energy crisis(1). Progress has been made in reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and nitrogen fertilizer consumption through biofuel production(2-4). Here we advocate an alternative approach that efficiently produces cellulosic biofuel and greatly reduces GHG emissions using waste nitrogen through wastewater treatment with constructed wetlands in China. Our combined experimental and literature data demonstrate that the net life-cycle energy output of constructed wetlands is higher than that of corn, soybean, switchgrass, low-input high-diversity grassland and algae systems. Energy output from existing constructed wetlands is similar to 237% of the input for biofuel production and can be enhanced through optimizing the nitrogen supply, hydrologic flow patterns and plant species selection. Assuming that all waste nitrogen in China(5) could be used by constructed wetlands, biofuel production can account for 6.7% of national gasoline consumption. We also find that constructed wetlands have a greater GHG reduction than the existing biofuel production systems in a full life-cycle analysis. This alternative approach is worth pursuing because of its great potential for straightforward operation, its economic competitiveness and many ecological benefits.Environmental impacts of the introduction of electricity generation from biomass are investigated on the basis of data from plants operated in Austria. Different conversion technologies (anaerobic digestion, combustion, gasification) are considered and environmental impacts are analyzed according to ISO 14040 for Life Cycle Assessment. For the impact assessment the CML 2001 base line approach covering 11 impact categories is used. The paper presents the calculation of the avoided environmental burdens from replacing the conventional provision of functions by the additional functions of the biomass system. These additional functions are the provision of heat, nutrients and waste disposal. The conventional provision of heat and the disposal of manure and organic residues show the highest influence on total results. After the consideration of avoided burdens emission-savings are calculated in the impact categories GWP, ADP, ODP, AP and EP, while emissions remain in the impact categories POCP, LUC, HTP, TAETP, FAETP and MAETP for most of the plant types. In comparison with the UCTE-electricity-production-mix total emissions are lower for almost all plant types and impact categories. A ranking of the total results based on the unweighed aggregation of all impact category results is lead by anaerobic digestion of mainly organic residues followed by gasification of wood chips, the anaerobic digestion in small plants and combustion of wood chips. These results show that it is essential to consider both direct and indirect environmental impacts.The purpose of this study is to quantify comparable environmental impacts within a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) perspective, for buildings in which the first (Materials) and last (End of Life) life cycle stages are adjusted to several waste/material management options. Unlike most LCAs, the approach is "top-down" rather than "bottom-up", which usually involves large amounts of data and the use of specific software applications. This approach is considered appropriate for a limited but expedient LCA designed to compare the environmental impacts of different life cycle options. Present results, based on real buildings measurements and demolition contractor activities, show that shallow, superficial, selective demolition may not result in reduced environmental impacts. Calculations actually show an increase (generally less than 5%) in most impact categories for the Materials and End of Life stages because of extra transportation needs. However, core material separation in demolition operations and its recycling and/or reuse does bring environmental benefits. A reduction of around 77% has been estimated in the climate change impact category, 57% in acidification potential and 81% in the summer smog impact (for the life cycle stages referred). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A low temperature desalination process capable of producing 100 L/d freshwater was designed to utilize solar energy harvested from flat plate solar collectors. Since solar insolation is intermittent, a thermal energy storage system was incorporated to run the desalination process round the clock. The requirements for solar collector area as well as thermal energy storage volume were estimated based on the variations in solar insolation. Results from this theoretical study confirm that thermal energy storage is a useful component of the system for conserving thermal energy to meet the energy demand when direct solar energy resource is not available. Thermodynamic advantages of the low temperature desalination using thermal energy storage, as well as energy and environmental emissions payback period of the system powered by flat plate solar collectors are presented. It has been determined that a solar collector area of 18 m(2) with a thermal energy storage volume of 3 m(3) is adequate to produce 100 L/d of freshwater round the clock considering fluctuations in the weather conditions. An economic analysis on the desalination system with thermal energy storage is also presented. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study investigates the breakdown of primary energy use and global warming potential (GWP) in a single-storey retail building located in Toronto, Canada, with a 50 year lifespan. Five different types of buildings are examined to investigate the impact associated with the choice of building materials. Over a 50 year lifespan, the operating energy and operating GWP of the five buildings only differs by 3% and 4% respectively. The total embodied energy and embodied GWP differs by as much as 44% and 35% respectively. The roof alone accounts for around 50% of the total embodied energy and GWP in these buildings, which is far greater than the contribution from any other individual building component. However, operating effects in these buildings account for around 90% of the total effects and far outweigh any differences in embodied effects between the buildings. Therefore, the total energy and total GWP of these buildings only differs at most by 6% and 7% respectively over a 50 year lifespan. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recognizing the contributions of ecosystem services and the lack of their comprehensive accounting in life cycle assessment (LCA), an in-depth analysis of their contribution in the life cycle of cellulosic ethanol derived from five different feedstocks was conducted, with gasoline and corn ethanol as reference fuels. The relative use intensity of natural resources encompassing land and ecosystem goods and services by cellulosic ethanol was estimated using the Eco-LCA framework. Despite being resource intensive compared to gasoline, cellulosic ethanol offers the possibility of a reduction in crude oil consumption by as much as 96%. Soil erosion and land area requirements can be sources of concern for cellulosic ethanol derived directly from managed agriculture. The analysis of two broad types of thermodynamic metrics, namely: various types of physical return on investment and a renewability index, which indicate competitiveness and sustainability of cellulosic ethanol, respectively, show that only ethanol from waste resources combines a favorable thermodynamic return on investment with a higher renewability index. However, the production potential of ethanol from waste resources is limited. This finding conveys a possible dilemma of biofuels: combining high renewability, high thermodynamic return on investment, and large production capacity may remain elusive. A plot of renewability versus energy return on investment is suggested as one of the options for providing guidance on future biofuel selection.E-bikes in China are the single largest adoption of alternative fuel vehicles in history, with more than 100 million e-bikes purchased in the past decade and vehicle ownership about 2X larger for e-bikes as for conventional cars; e-car sales, too, are rapidly growing. We compare emissions (CO2, PM2.5, NOx, HC) and environmental health impacts (primary PM2.5) from the use of conventional vehicles (CVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) in 34 major cities in China. CO2 emissions (g km(-1)) vary and are an order of magnitude greater for e-cars (135-274) and CVs (150-180) than for e-bikes (14-27). PM2.5 emission factors generally are lower for CVs (gasoline or diesel) than comparable EVs. However, intake fraction is often greater for CVs than for EVs because combustion emissions are generally closer to population centers for CVs (tailpipe emissions) than for EVs (power plant emissions). For most cities, the net result is that primary PM2.5 environmental health impacts per passenger-km are greater for e-cars than for gasoline cars (3.6x on average), lower than for diesel cars (2.5X on average), and equal to diesel buses. In contrast, e-bikes yield lower environmental health impacts per passenger-km than the three CVs investigated: gasoline cars (2x), diesel cars (10X), and diesel buses (5x). Our findings highlight the importance of considering exposures, and especially the proximity of emissions to people, when evaluating environmental health impacts for EVs.In this study, we compare three desalination based alternatives for water supply in off-grid areas, and assess their environmental footprint. The three options are: (a) a solar still, (b) a photo-voltaic (PV) powered reverse osmosis (RO) unit, and (c) water delivery by truck from a central RO plant. By use of life-cycle analysis (LCA), a comprehensive environmental modeling of the three systems is carried out. The basic systems, components and processes are modeled, and then varied, in order to offer a deeper insight into the robustness of the model. Our findings indicate that energy generation and materials usage are critical parameters when the considered alternative options are compared. Of the three options. PV-RO is found to have the least environmental impact. The usefulness of this study is that it provides policy-makers insights into renewable energy desalination for clean water production and, thus, it promotes the deployment of low-carbon desalination technologies. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As is well known in biology, organisms adapt and evolve in response to their surrounding environments, a phenomenon similarly found in product development. Among the factors that may influence product changes include functional improvements, consumer habits, and the emergence of new technologies. Humans must develop products that impact the environment minimally to ensure sustainable living. This work presents a forecasting novel model to acquire innovative ideas more easily to design eco products, followed by evaluation of whether the new design is more effective than currently available ones in the concept design stage. The innovative approach to solving design problems is based on TRIZ evolution patterns, in which the index system of case-based reasoning connects the innovative idea to cases located in a database to accelerate the process. Finally, simple life cycle assessment is introduced to determine whether if the solution is better for the environment than the currently available ones. A novel eco-innovation concept for a cell phone is also presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Short diffusion paths and high specific interfacial areas in microstructured devices can increase mass transfer rates and thus accelerate multiphase reactions. This effect can be intensified by the application of ultrasound. Herein, we report on the design and testing of a novel versatile setup for a continuous ultrasound-supported multiphase process in microstructured devices on a preparative scale. The ultrasonic energy is introduced indirectly into the microstructured device through pressurized water as transfer medium. First, we monitored the influence of ultrasound on the slug flow of a liquid/liquid two-phase system in a channel with a high-speed camera. To quantify the influence of ultrasound, the hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate was utilized as a model reaction. Microstructured devices with varying channel diameter, shape, and material were applied with and without ultrasonication at flow rates in the mL?min-1 range. The continuous procedures were then compared and evaluated by performing a simplified life cycle assessment.The simple transfer of established chemical production processes from batch to flow chemistry does not automatically result in more sustainable ones. Detailed process understanding and the motivation to scrutinize known process conditions are necessary factors for success. Although the focus is usually only on intensifying transport phenomena to operate under intrinsic kinetics, there is also a large intensification potential in chemistry under harsh conditions and in the specific design of flow processes. Such an understanding and proposed processes are required at an early stage of process design because decisions on the best-suited tools and parameters required to convert green engineering concepts into practicetypically with little chance of substantial changes laterare made during this period. Herein, we present a holistic and interdisciplinary process design approach that combines the concept of novel process windows with process modeling, simulation, and simplified cost and lifecycle assessment for the deliberate development of a cost-competitive and environmentally sustainable alternative to an existing production process for epoxidized soybean oil.Multi-objective optimization (MOO) has recently attracted an increasing interest in environmental engineering. One major limitation of the existing solution methods for MOO is that their computational burden tends to grow rapidly in size with the number of environmental objectives. In this paper, we study the use of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify redundant environmental metrics in MOO that can be omitted without disturbing the main features of the problem, thereby reducing the associated complexity. We show that, besides its numerical usefulness, the use of PCA coupled with MOO provides valuable insights on the relationships between environmental indicators of concern for decision-makers. The capabilities of the proposed approach are illustrated through its application to the design of environmentally conscious chemical supply chains (SCs). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable management of contaminated sediments requires careful prioritization of available resources and focuses on efforts to optimize decisions that consider environmental, economic, and societal aspects simultaneously. This may be achieved by combining different analytical approaches such as risk analysis (RA), life cycle analysis (LCA), multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA), and economic valuation methods. We propose the use of stochastic MCDA based on outranking algorithms to implement integrative sustainability strategies for sediment management. In this paper we use the method to select the best sediment management alternatives for the dibenzo-p-dioxin and -furan (PCDD/F) contaminated Grenland fjord in Norway. In the analysis, the benefits of health risk reductions and socio-economic benefits from removing seafood health advisories are evaluated against the detriments of remedial costs and life cycle environmental impacts. A value-plural based weighing of criteria is compared to criteria weights mimicking traditional cost-effectiveness (CEA) and cost-benefit (CBA) analyses. Capping highly contaminated areas in the inner or outer fjord is identified as the most preferable remediation alternative under all criteria schemes and the results are confirmed by a probabilistic sensitivity analysis. The proposed methodology can serve as a flexible framework for future decision support and can be a step toward more sustainable decision making for contaminated sediment management. It may be applicable to the broader field of ecosystem restoration for trade-off analysis between ecosystem services and restoration costs.Advances in the estimation of population parameters using encounter data from marked individuals have made it possible to include estimates of the probability of recruitment in population projection models. However, the projected growth rate of the population, and the sensitivity of projected growth to changes in recruitment, can vary significantly depending upon both the structural form of the model and how recruitment is parameterized. We show that the common practices of (1) collapsing some age classes into a single, terminal 'aggregated' age-class, and (2) parameterizing recruitment using the proportion of recruited individuals (breeders) in a given age-class may confound analysis of age-based (Leslie) matrix projection models in some instances, relative to state-based projection models where recruited and pre-recruited individuals are treated as separate states. Failing to account for these differences can lead to misinterpretation of the relative role of recruitment in the dynamics of an age-structured population. We show that such problems can be avoided, either by structural changes to the terminal aggregated age-class in age-based models, or by using using a state-based model instead. Since all the metrics of general interest from a classical age-based matrix models are readily derived from a state-based model equivalent, this suggests there may be little reason to use the classical age-based approach in situations where recruitment is a parameter of interest.When regulating GHG emissions at the country or product level, it is critical to determine the GHG emissions from electricity consumption. In this study, we calculated production-based and consumption-based CO2 emission intensities of electricity for the OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries during 1990-2008. We examined the impact of annual development, allocation procedure in combined heat and power production, and electricity trade on CO2 emissions. The studied factors significantly, yet highly variably, influenced the results for many countries. The consumption-based CO2 emission intensity of electricity differed significantly from the production-based intensity for some European OECD countries such as Switzerland, Norway, Slovakia, and Austria. As the use of the production-based method in assessing, verifying, and monitoring the GHG performance of specific products can be highly misleading, the use of consumption-based methods are preferable. The absolute value of CO2 emissions embodied in electricity net imports accounted for more than 5% of the overall national CO2 emissions in at least some of the years studied for 13 European countries. The electricity trade and the related GHG emission leakage may increase in the future if effective emission reduction and regulation measures are not more widely implemented. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electric drive vehicle technologies are being considered as possible solutions to mitigate environmental problems and fossil fuels dependence. Several studies have used life cycle analysis technique, to assess energy use and CO2 emissions, addressing fuels Well-to-Wheel life cycle or vehicle's materials Cradle-to-Grave. However, none has considered the required infrastructures for fuel supply. This study presents a methodology to evaluate energy use and CO2 emissions from construction, maintenance and decommissioning of support infrastructures for electricity and fossil fuel supply of vehicles applied to Portugal case study. Using Global Warming Potential and Cumulative Energy Demand, three light-duty vehicle technologies were considered: Gasoline, Diesel and Electric. For fossil fuels, the extraction well, platform, refinery and refuelling stations were considered. For the Electric Vehicle, the Portuguese 2010 electric mix, grid and the foreseen charging point's network were studied. Obtained values were 0.6-1.5 gCO(2eq)/km and 0.03-0.07 MJ(eq)/km for gasoline, 0.6-1.6 gCO(2eq)/km and 0.02-0.06 MJ(eq)/km for diesel, 3.7-8.5 gCO(2eq)/km and 0.06-0.17 MJ(eq)/km for EV. Monte Carlo technique was used for uncertainty analysis. We concluded that EV supply infrastructures are more carbon and energetic intensive. Contribution in overall vehicle LCA does not exceed 8%. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development demands contributions across all economic sectors. Thus, the infrastructure field, in this case road infrastructure, also has to contribute its part by generating road materials and road construction with lower environmental impacts. This paper analyzes the environmental potentials hidden in road materials used in Swiss road pavements. For several materials used in road construction, cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessments (LCA) were performed, taking into account all environmental impacts from raw material extraction to the finished product at the production plant. Environmental improvement potentials were analyzed for the production of asphalt mixtures, concrete mixtures, and subbase mixtures, using eight different environmental impact indicators. The results show differences in the environmental impact between best case and current status production setup of up to 54% for asphalt mixtures, 38% for concrete mixtures, and 93% for subbase mixtures. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0000375. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.A life cycle assessment (LCA) model was developed to analyze the environmental impacts per head of swine for typical feed rations of Northern Great Plains (NGP) US grow-finish swine production. The all-inclusive 'field to gate' approach incorporated steps ranging from corn and soybean production to shipping the market weight pig to a slaughtering facility. Feed production scenarios included: (1) a standard feed diet of 72% corn and 28% soymeal using 100% synthetic fertilizer; (2) standard feed diet using 40% manure as fertilizer; (3) modified feed diet using dry distillers gains with solubles (DDGS), with 100% DDGS allocation towards ethanol production; and (4) modified feed diet with 50% DDGS allocation towards ethanol production. For the standard NGP feed diet, enteric emissions and feed production were the two largest contributors towards climate change impacts, while feed production further resulted in significant contributions towards human health damage (44.6%), ecosystem diversity (67.4%), and resource availability (75.0%). DDGS incorporation assuming 100% allocation reduced corn and soymeal inputs considerably, resulting in overall decrease in impacts associated with climate change (-2.7%), terrestrial acidification (-7.1%), and both marine (-14.6%) and freshwater eutrophication (-22.7%); however terrestrial ecotoxicity increased (+22.9%) due to natural gas drying. 50% DDGS allocation increased all impact categories, with the greatest change found for terrestrial ecotoxicity (48.4%). The study results highlight the significant LCA impact contributions associated with feed during grow-finish swine production, and the benefits associated with DDGS incorporation; however, LCA benefits were realized only if 100% DDGS allocation was applied towards ethanol production. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the solar water heating systems for the U.S. typical residential buildings, from the energetic, economic and environmental perspectives, and includes two different types of solar collectors (i.e. flat-plate and evacuated-tube solar collectors), two types of auxiliary systems (i.e. natural gas and electricity), and three different locations (i.e. Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago). The performance of solar water heating systems is also compared with conventional systems that use either natural gas or electricity. The results showed that the flat-plate solar water heating systems using natural gas auxiliary heater has the best performance among all the types and at all locations. The energetic and environmental payback periods for solar water heating systems are less than half of a year, and the life cycle cost payback for solar water heating systems vary from 4 to 13 years for different cities and different configurations when using the conventional electrical water heating system in each city as the benchmark. For a representative case, i.e. flat-plate solar water heating system with natural gas auxiliary heater in Atlanta, sensitivity analysis shows that the daily hot water use has the most significant effects on energetic, environmental and economic performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) is reported for five methods of hydrogen production, namely steam reforming of natural gas, coal gasification, water electrolysis via wind and solar electrolysis, and thermochemical water splitting with a Cu-Cl cycle. Carbon dioxide equivalent emissions and energy equivalents of each method are quantified and compared. A case study is presented for a hydrogen fueling station in Toronto, Canada, and nearby hydrogen resources close to the fueling station. In terms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, thermochemical water splitting with the Cu-Cl cycle is found to be advantageous over the other methods, followed by wind and solar electrolysis. In terms of hydrogen production capacities, natural gas steam reforming, coal gasification and thermochemical water splitting with the Cu-Cl cycle methods are found to be advantageous over the renewable energy methods. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work examines the economic and environmental performance of seawater desalination plants that integrate reverse osmosis, Rankine cycles and solar collectors. The design of these facilities is formulated as a multi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear programming model (MINLP) that considers the simultaneous minimization of cost and environmental impact given a certain water demand to be fulfilled. The environmental performance is quantified in terms of contribution to global warming, which is holistically determined following life cycle assessment (LCA) principles. A case study that considers weather data of Tarragona (Spain) is used as benchmark to illustrate the capabilities of the approach presented. Using our rigorous modeling and optimization approach, we show that coupling seawater desalination with solar collectors can lead to significant environmental savings at a small increment in cost. Our systematic tool is aimed at guiding decision-makers towards the adoption of more sustainable technological alternatives for seawater desalination. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Researchers and society devote increasing interest to environmental impact assessments. The study here discusses and questions current assessment models by relating them to inter-organizational network analyses, and demonstrates that single entities as the basis for environmental impact assessments may not be in the best interests of society. Three case studies focusing on logistical solutions illustrate environmental effects on a single-entity and a network level. The paper concludes that considering environmental impacts on a single-entity level disregards indirect effects, which in turn has consequences for the environment. The paper points to the importance of identifying the appropriate level for analysis of environmental impacts since the single entity as the basis for assessments may undermine environmentally friendly intentions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The ability to correctly identify the greenest of several syntheses is a particularly useful asset for young chemists in the growing green economy. The famous univariate metrics atom economy and environmental factor provide insufficient information to allow for a proper selection of a green process. Multivariate metrics, such as those used in life-cycle assessment (LCA) to determine environmental impact, are much more informative. A team exercise was developed, based upon nine LCA environmental impact metrics, where students are tasked with selecting the greenest synthesis from a set of literature procedures. Students select the greenest synthesis by quantifying the environmental impact of all the materials involved in each synthesis rather than solely the quantity of generic waste produced, as occurs with univariate metrics.The construction industry is one of the greatest sources of pollution because of the high level of energy consumption during its life cycle. In addition to using energy while constructing a building, several systems also use power while the building is operating, especially the air-conditioning system. Energy consumption for this system is related, among other issues, to external air temperature and the required internal temperature of the building. The facades are elements which present the highest level of ambient heat transfer from the outside to the inside of tall buildings. Thus, the type of facade has an influence on energy consumption during the building life cycle and, consequently, contributes to buildings' CO2 emissions, because these emissions are directly connected to energy consumption. Therefore, the aim is to help develop a methodology for evaluating CO2 emissions generated during the life cycle of office building facades. The results, based on the parameters used in this study, show that facades using structural glazing and uncolored glass emit the most CO2 throughout their life cycle, followed by brick facades covered with compound aluminum panels or ACM (Aluminum Composite Material), facades using structural glazing and reflective glass and brick facades with plaster coating. On the other hand, the typology of facade that emits less CO2 is brickwork and mortar because its thermal barrier is better than structural glazing facade and materials used to produce this facade are better than brickwork and ACM. Finally, an uncertainty analysis was conducted to verify the accuracy of the results attained. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper describes a new tool to assess the medium- and long-term economic and environmental impacts of large-scale policies. The approach - macro life cycle assessment (M-LCA) - is based on life cycle assessment methodology and includes additional elements to model economic externalities and the temporal evolution of background parameters. The general equilibrium model GTAP was therefore used to simulate the economic consequences of policies in a dynamic framework representing the temporal evolution of macroeconomic and technological parameters. Environmental impacts, expressed via four indicators (human health, ecosystems, global warming and natural resources), are computed according to policy life cycle and its indirect economic consequences. In order to illustrate the approach, two 2005-2025 European Union (EU) energy policies were compared using M-LCA. The first policy, the bioenergy policy, aims to significantly increase energy generation from biomass and reduce EU energy demand for coal. The second policy, the baseline policy, is a business as usual policy where year 2000 energy policies are extended to 2025. Results show that, compared to the baseline policy, the bioenergy policy generates fewer impacts on three of the four environmental indicators (human health, global warming and natural resources) at the world and EU scales, though the results may differ significantly at a regional level. The results also highlight the key contribution of economic growth to the total environmental impacts computed for the 2005-2025 period. A comparison of the results with a more conventional consequential LCA approach illustrates the benefits of M-LCA when modeling the indirect environmental impacts of large-scale policies. The sensitivity and uncertainty analysis indicates that the method is quite robust. However, its robustness must still be evaluated based on the sensitivity and uncertainty of additional parameters, including the evolution of economic growth. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodegradable waste quantities in Lithuania and their potential for the co-treatment in renewable energy and organic fertilizer production were investigated. Two scenarios were formulated to study the differences of the amounts of obtainable energy and fertilizers between different ways of utilization. In the first scenario, only digestion was used, and in the second scenario, materials other than straw were digested, and straw and the solid fraction of sewage sludge digestate were combusted. As a result, the amounts of heat and electricity, as well as the fertilizer amounts in the counties were obtained for both scenarios. Based on this study, the share of renewable energy in Lithuania could be doubled by the co-treatment of different biodegradable materials.Environmental burdens of four different full-scale facilities treating source-separated organic fraction of Municipal Solid Wastes (OFMSW) have been experimentally evaluated. The studied facilities include different composting technologies and also anaerobic digestion plus composting. Home composting, as an alternative to OFMSW management, was also included in the study. Energy (electricity and diesel), water consumption and emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC), ammonia, methane and nitrous oxide have been measured for each process. Energy consumption ranged between 235 and 870 MJ Mg OFMSW-1 while the emissions of the different contaminants considered per Mg OFMSW were in the range of 0.36-8.9 kg VOC, 0.23-8.63 kg NH3, 0.34-4.37 kg CH4 and 0.035-0.251 kg N2O, respectively. Environmental burdens of each facility are also analyzed from the point of view of process efficiency (i. e. organic matter stabilization degree achieved, calculated as the reduction of the Dynamic Respiration Index (DRI) of the waste treated). This study is performed through two new indices: Respiration Index Efficiency (RIE), which includes the reduction in the DRI achieved by the treatment process and Quality and Respiration Index Efficiency (QRIE), which also includes the quality of the end product. Finally, a Life Cycle Assessment is performed using the Respiration Index Efficiency (RIE) as the novel functional unit instead of the classical LCA approach based on the total mass treated.To construct future visions of how innovative technologies should be used in the envisioned sustainable society while being aware of system-wide environmental impacts, consequential life cycle assessment (c-LCA) is useful. To systematically evaluate the technologies being aware of uncertainties in choice of technologies made in the future, in this article, we propose a novel graphical representation for theoretical range of impacts that contain results from c-LCA studies. This approach allows analyses of the consequences of the technology introduction without conducting detailed modeling of consequences. We stand on an assumption that the future environmental impacts reduced by a new technology depends on (1) how much the efficiency of the technology is improved, (2) how much of less-efficient technology is directly and indirectly replaced by the new technology, and (3) how much product is needed in the envisioned future. The difficulty in c-LCA is that items 2 and 3 are uncertain from various socioeconomic reasons that are often difficult to predict. By organizing the results from product LCAs in a systematic way, the proposed methodology allows exhibiting the range of consequential changes in environmental impact associated with a technology innovation, taking into account of those uncertainties on a plain coordinated by the amount of product needed in the future and environmental impact on horizontal and vertical axes, respectively. Part 1 describes the methodological framework in detail, whereas part 2 elaborates on the applications of the methodology. By taking transportation technologies assuming various energy sources in Taiwan, choices of technologies and evaluation of technology improvements serve as the case studies to demonstrate the application of the methodological framework. By using the proposed method to organize the assumptions in c-LCA, discussions on different choices of technologies are made more systematic. In this way, stakeholders can focus on visions of the future society, which lead to different choices of technologies.The life cycle assessment of silicon wafer processing for microelectronic chips and solar cells aims to provide current and comprehensive data. In view of the very fast market developments, for solar cell fabrication the influence of technology and capacity variations on the overall environmental impact was also investigated and the data were compared with the widely used ecoinvent data. Existing material flow models for silicon wafer processing for microelectronic chips and solar cells used for engineering and planning formed a starting point for this analysis. The models represent an average of widely used processes and associated process equipment. The resulting input/output tables formed the data basis for the life cycle assessment. This is a cradle-to-gate investigation, consisting of primary gate-to-gate data for wafer processing. The upstream processes of the necessary inputs were supplemented with data from ecoinvent v2.0. Subsequent manufacturing steps, utilization, and waste disposal of the final products were not included. The software used for creating the inventory and impact assessment was Umberto version 5.5. The Impact 2002+ method was applied for impact assessment. For both semiconductor and solar cell fabrication, energy consumption and upstream chemicals production are most relevant for the overall potential environmental impact when only the gate-to-gate processes are considered. The upstream process for wafer production is dominant in solar cell fabrication, but exerts little influence on semiconductor fabrication. In the case of semiconductor fabrication, a comparison with the present ecoinvent dataset "wafer, fabricated, for integrated circuit, at plant" shows large differences. In the case of silicon solar cells, the results of this study and the ecoinvent data are very similar and the impact of different fabrication processes appears to be minor.The aim of this study was to investigate the factors that influence the sustainability of disposable baby diapers (nappies) using life cycle assessments (LCAs). Size 4 PampersA (R) Cruisers (North American name) and ActiveFit (European name) from 2007 are compared to new versions made in 2010 to determine if the design and materials changes intended to improve performance also lead to reductions in the most relevant environmental indicators. Cradle-to-grave LCAs, consistent with ISO 14040/14044 Standards, are conducted. The functional unit is "the number of diapers needed to collect excreta over a child's diapering lifetime." Input data come from P&G, suppliers, trade association reports, Franklin and ecoinvent databases, and Google. SimaPro 7 is used to model the LCA. Several life cycle impact assessments (LCIA) methods, sensitivity analyses, normalization to annual consumption, and Monte Carlo analysis are used to produce and check results. The consumption normalization identified that the diaper's "environmental footprint" should include the IMPACT2002+ indicators: nonrenewable energy, global warming potential (GWP), respiratory effects from inorganics, total solid waste, and cumulative energy demand (CED). Other indicators are insignificant. Contribution analysis shows that the sourcing and production of diaper materials contribute most to the environmental indicators evaluated, accounting for similar to 84% of all non-renewable energy uses and similar to 64% of global warming potential. Diaper disposal is a small contributor (1-12%) to potential environmental impacts. Reductions observed for the 2010 US product are: CED-8%, solid waste-12%, non-renewable energy-1%, GWP(500)-4%, and respiratory inorganics-6%. For the European product, reductions are: CED-11%, solid waste-8%, non-renewable energy-3%, GWP(500)-5%, and respiratory inorganics-14%. The new PampersA (R) diapers sold in the USA and Europe have a reduced environmental footprint versus the previous versions (2007). Significant reductions are achieved in non-renewable energy use and global warming potential, as well as other environmental indicators by optimizing the diaper design and the materials. Although some of the results are single digit reductions, Monte Carlo analysis indicates that there is a high probability that the differences are real. The use of multiple LCIA methods to compare products is helpful to confirm consistency of results. Normalizing the LCIA scores to annual consumption also helps prioritize which environmental indicators can be impactful and affected by changing a product.Outdoor lighting is facing major changes due to the EU legislation on ecodesign of energy-related products, such as the ban of high-pressure mercury (HPM) lamps widely used in outdoor lighting. This article presents life cycle costs (LCC) of three examples of replacing HPM lamps in street lighting in Finland. The purpose of the article is to assess how the development of light-emitting diode (LED) technology affects LCCs and how the division of LCCs differentiates in the cases. Two of the cases change from HPM lamps to high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps. In the third one, HPM lamps are replaced by LED luminaires. LED technology predictions of price and luminous efficacy are included in different scenarios. The calculations consider investment and operating costs and residual value. Each replacement reduces the energy costs approximately by half compared to the original HPM lamp luminaires. Energy costs dominate the LCCs of the HPS lamp installations while investment cost is the dominating one in LED luminaire case. The changes from HPM to HPS technology have payback times lower than 9 years, while changing to LED luminaires is not economic. However, the electricity price is low in this case. The payback times of LED installations can be as low as 6 years if the luminaires are installed in 2015 and an average electricity price is used. The LCCs of real-life case studies cannot be directly compared, since their luminous properties vary. There is a need for a method for including luminous properties in LCC calculations.Water use in the livestock sector has featured in the debate about sustainable food systems. Most evidence has come from virtual water calculations which lack impact assessment and adequate consideration of the heterogeneity in livestock production. This study sought new evidence, using a recently developed life cycle impact assessment method for water use to assess six geographically defined beef cattle production systems in New South Wales, Australia, a major production region. The livestock production systems were diverse in farm practice (grass and feedlot finishing), product (yearling to heavy steers), environment (high-rainfall coastal to semi-arid inland) and local water stress. Life cycle inventories were developed from representative farm enterprise budgets. The farm water use inventories sought to describe the impact of the production system on catchment water resources and included irrigation water use as well as the reduction in flows due to the operation of stock dams. The normalised life cycle impact category results for water use, referred to as the water footprint, ranged from 3.3 to 221 L H(2)Oe kg(-1) live weight at farm gate. Due to variation in local water stress, the impact category results were not correlated with the inventory results. The substantial variability in water footprint between systems indicates that generalisations about livestock and livestock products should be avoided. However, many low input, predominantly non-irrigated, pasture-based livestock production systems have little impact on freshwater resources from consumptive water use, and the livestock have a water footprint similar to many broad-acre cereals. Globally, the majority of beef cattle are raised in non-irrigated mixed farming and grazing systems. Therefore, the general assertion that meat production is a driver of water scarcity is not supported.Chain efficiency is currently a key issue for evaluating the sustainability of products and processes. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate how the overall efficiency process improvement carried out in the upstream manufacturing chain of LPB (Liquid Packaging Board) has affected the environmental profile over the last 10 years. The method employs a life cycle methodology in a cradle-to-gate approach as the material can be used for obtaining beverage containers for different purposes. The scope of this study includes data from forest to rolls of finished cartons. Due to a current slightly larger boundary and more detailed data collection, the following improvements (at the minimum) over the last decade can be observed: a) energy consumption has been reduced by 38% reaching the value of 36,700 MJ/t LPB paperboard; b) water consumption has been reduced by 30% reaching a level of 45.85 m(3)/t LPB paperboard; c) wood consumption has been reduced by 40%, mainly as a result of the introduction of high yield CTMP (chemithermomechanical pulp) along with the increased overall efficiency of the production process and d) land use has been reduced by 69% due to increased forest productivity along with greater efficiency in the use of wood. Significant reductions have also been found related to environmental impacts such as global warming (49% less), photochemical ozone creation (14 times less), acidification (10 times less), eutrophication (8 times less) and human toxicity (6 times less). The results have clearly shown how important it is to invest in new technologies and more efficient processes to achieve better sustainable levels. This historical perspective is also a benefit from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology that allows these types of comparisons and also shows the importance of using new inventories for environmental decisions.The purpose of this paper is to characterize the environmental impacts of equipment used in power transmission and distribution. This study is divided in two parts, each addressing different main components of the electrical grid system. This part is concerned with the impacts of transformers and substation equipment while in part 1 a similar analysis is presented for power lines and cables. The method used here is process-based life cycle assessment. Ecoinvent v 2.2 is used as a background dataset, and the results are obtained with the impact assessment method ReCiPe Midpoint Hierarchist perspective (v1.0). The average European power mix is used to model the electrical energy required to compensate power losses in the electrical equipment. Assuming a European power mix, results for transformers indicate that power losses are by far the most dominant process for almost all impact categories evaluated here, contributing at least 96% to climate change impacts. An exception is the category of metal depletion, for which production of raw materials is the most relevant process. Within infrastructure-related impacts, the production of raw materials is the most important process. Recycling shows benefits for most impact categories. For some substation equipment using sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), climate change impacts due to SF6 leakages surpass impacts due to losses. The results suggest that improvements in component efficiency-reduction of power losses and reduction of SF6 gas leakages in gas-insulated equipment-would significantly contribute to decreases in overall component impacts.Cadmium telluride photovoltaics (CdTe PV) have grown considerably in the last few years and are now a mainstream energy technology. Concern has been voiced regarding the potential impact caused by the dispersal of the Cd contained in the modules after they are decommissioned. This study presents a new comprehensive analysis of the end-of-life of CdTe PV and reports on the associated Cd emissions to air and water. Three end-of-life scenarios were considered for CdTe PV. In the first one, 100% of the modules are collected and sent to recycling; in the other two, 85% of the modules are recycled, and the rest are assumed to be either treated as normal municipal solid waste or pre-selected and sent to landfills. All input and output data for module decommissioning and recycling were based on the information directly provided by the world-leading CdTe PV manufacturer (First Solar). The inventory modelling was performed with the GaBi life cycle analysis software package in conjunction with the Ecoinvent v.2 database. In all scenarios, end-of-life Cd emissions from CdTe PV were found to be relatively low, for instance when compared to those from NiCd batteries, when expressed per kilogram of Cd content. The on-going growth of CdTe PV is unlikely to produce a worrisome increase in the overall Cd emissions to the environment; principally thanks to the expected stringent control of the related Cd-containing waste flows.The purpose of this paper is to take steps towards a life cycle assessment that is able to account for changes over time in resource flows and environmental impacts. The majority of life cycle inventory (LCI) studies assume that computation parameters are constants or fixed functions of time. This assumption limits the opportunities to account for temporal effects because it precludes consideration of the dynamics of the product system. System dynamics methods are used in a consequential, fleet-based LCI that accounts for some aspects of the dynamics of the wider system. The LCI model compares the life-cycle energy consumption of car body-in-whites (BIWs) in Australia made from steel and aluminium. It incorporates two dynamic processes: the flow of BIWs into and out of the fleet, and the recycling of aluminium from end-of-life BIWs back into new BIW production. The dynamical model computes both product-based and fleet-based estimates. The product-based computations suggest that an aluminium BIW consumes less energy than a steel BIW over a single life cycle. The fleet-based computations suggest that the energy benefits of aluminium BIWs do not begin to emerge for some time. The substitution of aluminium for steel is a low-leverage intervention that changes the values of a few parameters of the system. The system has a delayed, damped response to this intervention because the large stock of BIWs is a source of high inertia, and the long useful life leads to a slow decay of steel BIWs out of the fleet. The recycling of aluminium back into BIW production is a moderate-leverage intervention that initially strengthens a reinforcing feedback loop, driving a rapid accumulation of energy benefits. Dominance then shifts to a balancing loop, slowing the accumulation of energy benefits. Both interventions result in a measureable reduction in life-cycle energy consumption, but only temporarily divert the underlying growth trend. The results suggest that product-based LCIs overestimate the short-term energy benefits of aluminium by not accounting for the time required for the stock of preexisting steel components to decay out of the fleet, and underestimate the long-term energy benefits of aluminium components by not accounting for changes in the availability of recycled aluminium. The results also suggest that interventions such as lightweighting and other efficiency measures alone can slow the growth of energy consumption, but are probably inadequate to achieve sustainable energy consumption levels if the fleet is large.A renewable thermoplastic called Novatein Thermoplastic Protein (NTP) has been developed from blood meal-a low-value by-product of the meat processing industry. The aim of this research was to develop a non-renewable energy and greenhouse gas emission eco-profile for cradle to gate production of NTP. Environmental impacts of supplying blood meal as a raw material were investigated using different allocation methods for farming and blood meal production. These included mass, economic, treating low-value by-products as waste and system expansion by substitution. In part 2, the entire system will be analysed on a cradle to gate basis and include the production of thermoplastic (NTP). A theoretical NTP production facility was analysed for non-renewable primary energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Data for feedstocks and process steps were obtained from published papers, government agency reports and engineering models. Mass and economic allocation models treating low-value by-products as waste and substitution were applied, and a sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate the impact of different methods of allocation on environmental impact. Non-renewable energy use in blood meal production varied between 5 (substitution) and 38 MJ (simple mass allocation) per kg of NTP. Greenhouse gas emissions varied between 0.4 (substitution), or even less if the biogenic carbon content is considered a credit, and 14 kg (mass allocation) CO(2)e per kg NTP. It was concluded that both mass allocation and a waste assumption should be considered for the cradle to gate system. Mass allocation is common in other attributional studies and allows for a more transparent comparison. The most appropriate treatment of allocation in an attributional profile was to consider blood as a waste with regard to farming and meat processing, but include blood drying. This takes into account the motivations for farming and meat processing, but also recognises that there are other treatment options for blood that do not produce blood meal used in manufacturing NTP. This would allow NTP to be compared to other bioplastics as well as identifying hot spots in its cradle to gate production. It was also anticipated that results may be adapted in future cradle to grave assessments as product systems are developed.Environmental footprints of wood pellets produced in British Columbia (BC) of Canada are to be estimated based on industry surveys and published emission factor data. The streamlined life cycle analysis starts from raw material acquisition and ends at port Rotterdam in Europe for exported pellets or North Vancouver port for domestically used pellets. The raw materials used for pellet production are dry and wet sawmill residues, and allocations are based on dry mass. The pellet production data are based on three pellets mills in western Canada. For every tonne of BC pellets exported, 295 kg CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases is released. The human health, ecosystem quality, and climate change impacts of the exported pellets can be reduced by 61%, 66%, and 53%, respectively, if the pellets stay in BC for local applications. Harvesting is the second highest impacting process, following marine transportation. The total amount of primary energy consumed for 1 tonne of exported pellets is 6,372 MJ, and approximately 35% of it is attributed to marine transportation. Exported pellets have 16.4% of nonrenewable energy content and an energy penalty of 33% with energy penalty defined as the amount of primary energy consumed to produce and deliver one unit of process energy using the higher heating value. For domestically used pellets, the energy penalty is 21% and the nonrenewable energy content is 8.59%. Marine transportation is the main contributor for all impact categories. Improving the energy efficiency of the harvesting and pellet plant operations is also a way to effectively reduce these wood pellet's environmental footprints.The aim of this study is to develop and analyse a life cycle inventory of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) management systems based on primary data collected directly from Spanish enterprises involved in the life cycle of this type of waste material. Special emphasis is placed on assessing the environmental profile of inert waste sorting and treatment (IWST) facilities. Taking the management of 1 t of C&DW as the functional unit, this study describes the boundaries of the C&DW management system and the scope of the research, which includes all stages from the temporary storage of waste in containers to its recovery or disposal on landfills. Primary data were collected directly from some Spanish enterprises involved in the life cycle of C&DW management: two firms that manufacture containers and bags, two companies responsible for the temporary storage of waste and transporting it, five firms devoted to sorting and treating the waste and two enterprises that operate inert landfills. Special attention was given to the IWST facilities, whose inventory data were related to four phases: pre-treatment and the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. Finally, indicators were obtained for different impact categories. The environmental profiles of IWST facilities for mixed C&DW show that the greatest environmental impacts are produced in primary and tertiary sectors. From the life cycle analysis of C&DW management, it can be seen that transport, sorting and disposal make a net contribution to the environmental impact. Savings are due to the recycling of plastics, metals, aggregates and wood for all the impact assessment categories, except global warming in the case of wood and cardboard. Impact of IWST can be reduced by selective collection at source, since it avoids the separation of light fractions at plants. Life cycle assessment of C&DW shows that transportation stage plays a decisive role and recycling is not always beneficial.This report presents two case studies, one for both the screening approach and the in-depth approach, demonstrating the application of the life cycle assessment-oriented methodology for systematic inventory analysis of the machine tool use phase of manufacturing unit processes, which has been developed in the framework of the CO2PE! collaborative research programme (CO2PE! 2011) and is described in part 1 of this paper (Kellens et al. 2011). The screening approach, which provides a first insight into the unit process and results in a set of approximate LCI data, relies on representative industrial data and engineering calculations for energy use and material loss. This approach is illustrated by means of a case study of a drilling process. The in-depth approach, which leads to more accurate LCI data as well as the identification of potential for environmental improvements of the manufacturing unit processes, is subdivided into four modules, including a time study, a power consumption study, a consumables study and an emissions study, in which all relevant process in- and outputs are measured and analysed in detail. The procedure of this approach, together with the proposed CO2PE! template, is illustrated by means of a case study of a laser cutting process. The CO2PE! methodology aims to provide high-quality LCI data for the machine tool use phase of manufacturing unit processes, to be used in life cycle inventory databases and libraries, as well as to identify potential for environmental improvement based on the in-depth analysis of individual manufacturing unit processes. Two case studies illustrate the applicability of the methodology.Recent literature has highlighted a renewed debate amongst the scientific community about the relevance of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions to future ozone layer management. This raises the question as to whether the life cycle assessment (LCA) community should also consider incorporating N2O into its ozone depletion models. This discussion summarises a preliminary investigation into the justification for doing so. Literature on the atmospheric science of ozone depletion and N2O was reviewed, in particular recent proposals for an ozone depletion potential (ODP) factor that can be applied to anthropogenic N2O emissions. To identify their potential significance to life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results, these ODP values were applied to both a wastewater management case study and global emissions inventories. The literature review was also used to highlight certain issues that need further consideration if N2O is to be incorporated into LCIA models. Atmospheric modelling has shown that continued anthropogenic N2O emissions could substantially affect ozone layer recovery. Furthermore, N2O now represents one of the biggest remaining opportunities for emissions abatement. The two steady state ODP factors for N2O available in the literature are in close agreement, with one of the models used showing reasonable calibration to accepted ODP values for other substances. Analysis of the wastewater case study showed that the incorporation of these interim ODP values for N2O could have a substantial impact on LCIA results interpretation. This finding should be equally relevant for other case studies where N2O emissions play a prominent role. The inclusion of N2O into marginal-impact LCIA ozone depletion models would seem justified, given the relevance of N2O emissions to a number of planning debates in which LCA currently has a prominent role. If this is not pursued, then the use of LCIA to support decision-making could mask, rather than reveal, an issue that may be environmentally relevant. Published ODP values for N2O could be used as an interim measure. However, they are dependent on assumptions that may not be the most relevant choice for application to LCA studies. Further investigation is therefore required on how best to specify a range of ODP values for N2O that can support robust sensitivity analysis in LCIA. Fortunately, the state of atmospheric modelling science would seem sufficiently mature to be able to inform this process. LCA-specific methodological challenges (e.g. choice of time frames, spatial implications) will also need to be addressed.Studies on the contribution of milk production to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are rare (FAO 2010) and often based on crude data which do not appropriately reflect the heterogeneity of farming systems. This article estimates GHG emissions from milk production in different dairy regions of the world based on a harmonised farm data and assesses the contribution of milk production to global GHG emissions. The methodology comprises three elements: (1) the International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN) concept of typical farms and the related globally standardised dairy model farms representing 45 dairy regions in 38 countries; (2) a partial life cycle assessment model for estimating GHG emissions of the typical dairy farms; and (3) standard regression analysis to estimate GHG emissions from milk production in countries for which no typical farms are available in the IFCN database. Across the 117 typical farms in the 38 countries analysed, the average emission rate is 1.50 kg CO2 equivalents (CO2-eq.)/kg milk. The contribution of milk production to the global anthropogenic emissions is estimated at 1.3 Gt CO2-eq./year, accounting for 2.65% of total global anthropogenic emissions (49 Gt; IPCC, Synthesis Report for Policy Maker, Valencia, Spain, 2007). We emphasise that our estimates of the contribution of milk production to global GHG emissions are subject to uncertainty. Part of the uncertainty stems from the choice of the appropriate methods for estimating emissions at the level of the individual animal.A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted for the manufacture, use and disposal of polypropylene tree shelters, which are used to protect young seedlings in the first few years of growth. The LCA was conducted using Simapro software, the Ecoinvent database and ReCiPe assessment methodology. Detailed information on materials, manufacturing, packaging and distribution of shelters was obtained from Tubex Ltd. in South Wales, UK. Various scenarios based on different forest establishment methods, with or without tree shelters were derived and analysed using data from published literature and independent sources. The scenarios included commercial forestry in northern temperate conditions, amenity forest establishment in temperate conditions, and forest establishment in semi-arid conditions. For commercial forestry, a reduction in required seedling production and planting as well as additional time-averaged wood production led to significant benefits with tree shelters, both compared to unprotected and fenced cases. For the amenity forest scenarios, tree shelter use had a net environmental impact, while for semi-arid forestry, the benefits of reduction in water use outweighed shelter production impacts. The current practice of in-situ degradation was compared to collection and disposal and it was found that in-situ degradation was slightly preferable in terms of overall environmental impact. Use of biopolymer-based shelters would improve the environmental performance slightly. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was conducted using IMPACT2002+ to estimate the environmental impact of producing printing and writing paper, which is entirely made with wastepaper. To confirm and add credibility to the study, uncertainty analysis was conducted using Taylor series expansion. Printing and writing paper produced from wood pulp was assessed for comparison. Compared with the wood pulp contained scenario, printing and writing paper made from wastepaper represented environmental benefit on non-carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, global warming, and non-renewable energy categories. In both scenarios, the technologies significantly contribute to the potential impacts of non-carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, global warming, and non-renewable energy. The influence of the technologies on the way other categories affect the environment was negligible. Improved efficiency in electricity consumption, decreased transport distance from raw material buyers to suppliers, and change in the end-life treatment of solid waste from landfill to incineration are the key factors in reducing the overall environmental impact. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fossil energy consumption (FEC) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensities of major alternative vehicle fuels (AVFs) in China are calculated and compared with conventional fuels by means of full life-cycle analysis. Currently most of the AVFs have not relatively obvious GHG emission reduction when compared to the gasoline pathway: (1) coal-based AVF has higher intensities in terms of both the FEC and GHG emissions; (2) electricity from the average Chinese grid has the GHG emission intensity similar to that of gasoline pathway although relatively lower FEC intensity; and (3) first generation technology bio-fuel has relatively lower GHG emission intensity and substantially lower FEC intensity. It is forecasted that by 2020 when still comparing to the gasoline pathway: (1) coal-based AVF will still have FEC and GHG emission intensities that are 1.5-1.8 and 1.8-2.5 time those of gasoline pathway, and the application of carbon capture and storage technology can reduce the GHG emission intensity of coal-based AVF; (2) electricity will have significantly lower GHG intensity; and (3) second generation technology bio-fuel will have near zero FEC and GHG intensities. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The effluents of wastewater treatment plants in small sized communities of less than 2000 population equivalent (PE), which are discharged into sensitive receiving water environments, must receive appropriate treatment according to the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. Appropriate treatment depends on the quality objectives of the receiving waters as well as the relevant provisions of the member states. In this study, wastewater treatment options, such as vegetated land treatment (VLT), constructed wetlands (CW), and activated sludge treatment (AST), by which effluents are discharged to sensitive and less sensitive areas are evaluated by the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. For this purpose, data related to energy usage, land requirement, raw material consumption, and released emissions from the life phases were collected with an inventory study and the environmental impacts were assessed by using SimaPro 7.1 LCA software. The results obtained from the assessments were compared with each other, which indicated that for small-scale communities VLT and CW are the most environmentally friendly wastewater treatment option.Energy analysis in peach orchards is useful to decide best management strategies. The objectives of this study were to evaluate (a) the energy flow among conventional, integrated and organic farming systems and (b) the effect of farming system to greenhouse gas-emissions. Sixteen farms (four conventional, nine integrated, three organic) at six locations in northern Greece were selected randomly during the years 2008 and 2009. Multidimensional data analyses were used to detect (a) clusters of farming systems and (b) associations between farming systems and production coefficients variables. Three groups of farming systems and three groups of variables were revealed. Farming systems in the same group respond more or less similarly to the production coefficients variables. Non-parametric tests concerning external variables (outputs, energy efficiency, fruit production, CO2, CH4 and N2O) showed that the variables in organic farming cluster were at average significantly lower. Similarities and/or dissimilarities among farming systems, can probably be related to farm topography, production coefficients and local farming practices. The results showed that organic farming could reduce inputs and gas-emissions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Being responsible for 38% of total carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, the building industry is in need of a tool to assess and reduce its impact on environment and human health. This article presents a prototype software for 3D analysis of life cycle assessment (LCA) of the whole process of construction. By considering the whole life cycle, this approach avoids shifting environmental problems from one phase to another The accuracy of LCA substantially depends on the quality and availability of data from all phases of a building. To better manage and communicate data, presented prototype adopts industry foundation classes-based building information modeling, which also allows users to work with a 3D model of the building and analyze its environmental impact interactively.Fuel cells already provide heat and power to people's homes with lower direct CO2 emissions and fuel consumption than traditional methods. However, their whole life cycle, including manufacture and disposal, must be considered to verify that these environmental impacts are actually reduced and not merely shifted elsewhere. The total carbon footprint and energy payback times have been widely reported for other emerging microgeneration technologies, but have not previously been calculated for fuel cell systems. This paper presents a life cycle assessment comparing solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) based domestic CHP with the current embedded technologies in the UK. An inventory is given for the construction of a 1 kW stack and then its operation is simulated in detail using measured energy demands from hundreds of UK houses. Producing a 1 kW planar SOFC micro-CHP system was estimated to require 12-17 GJ of energy input and emit 700-950 kg of CO2, although these impacts triple when including the production of replacement stacks needed over the 10 year system life. The carbon intensity of electricity generation from an SOFC was estimated to be 325-375 g/kWh, and is primarily determined by the operating efficiency as manufacturing only adds 10% to this. By displacing electricity generation in less efficient centralised power stations, operating an SOFC in UK homes would reclaim the energy and carbon from its manufacture in under 2 years; however, payback may not be possible if only high efficiency CCGT units are displaced. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building is one of the main factors of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from building is urgent for environmental protection and sustainable development. The objective of this study is to develop a life cycle assessment (LCA) model for an office building in China to assess its energy consumption and CO2 emission, determine the whole life cycle phases, and the significant environmental aspects that contribute most to the impact. A process-based LCA has been used to identify and quantify the energy consumption and CO2 emission of the office building. The LCA is conducted in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency, The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and the International Organization for Standardization standards for life cycle assessments. The entire life cycle including building materials production, construction, operation, and demolition of the building is studied. A service life of 50 years is assumed and the major construction materials such as concrete, cement, brick, steel, timber, glass, and plastic are selected for the building. The results show that building operation uses the largest share of energy and contributes most to CO2 emission. The cooling and heating system in building operation strongly influence the energy consumption and CO2 emission of the building. In addition, the large quantity use of concrete and steel in materials production, and the treatment of end-of-life building materials are also the important aspects impacting the environmental performance of the building. Based on the results of the study, some environmental improvements aiming at reducing energy consumption and CO2 emission throughout the life cycle of the building are provided. This study provides an LCA of the energy consumption and CO2 emission of a typical office building in China. It determines the whole life cycle phases that contribute most to the impact and defines the significant environmental aspects of the building. This study also shows the importance of using a life cycle perspective when evaluating energy consumption and CO2 emission of building and also lays the groundwork for LCA studying of other office buildings in China.Glutamic acid is an important constituent of waste streams from biofuels production. It is an interesting starting material for the synthesis of biobased chemicals, thereby decreasing the dependency on fossil fuels. The objective of this paper was to compare the environmental impact of four biobased chemicals from glutamic acid with their petrochemical equivalents, i.e. N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), N-vinylpyrrolidone (NVP), acrylonitrile (ACN), and succinonitrile (SCN). A consequential life cycle assessment was performed, wherein glutamic acid was obtained from sugarbeet vinasse. The removed glutamic acid was substituted with cane molasses and ureum. The comparison between the four biobased and petrochemical products showed that for NMP and NVP the biobased version had less impact on the environment, while for ACN and SCN the petrochemical version had less impact on the environment. For the latter two an optimized scenario was computed, which showed that the process for SCN can be improved to a level at which it can compete with the petrochemical process. For biobased ACN large improvements are required to make it competitive with its petrochemical equivalent. The results of this LCA and the research preceding it also show that glutamic acid can be a building block for a variety of molecules that are currently produced from petrochemical resources. Currently, most methods to produce biobased products are biotechnological processes based on sugar, but this paper demonstrates that the use of amino acids from low-value byproducts can certainly be a method as well.Reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) like CO2 is one of the predominant concerns for ensuring sustainable future living conditions on Earth. However, current trends in globalization of production processes, just-in-time manufacturing, and increased numbers of parcel shipments due to a growing trend towards online shopping threaten to further increase GHG emissions. An analysis of GHG emissions is complex to perform since it has to include data from multiple sources and processes. The standard way to obtain an overview of the general emission impact is to perform a life cycle assessment (LCA), which is detailed in the first part of this paper. The same trend leads to an increasingly important contribution of logistics processes in the life cycle analysis of GHG emissions. Thus, the reduction of emissions in logistics is a major challenge for logistics research. Reductions are possible using a combination of IT-based and conventional methods on macroscopic as well as microscopic optimizations. However, the resulting economical impact must be considered when applying these optimizations. This article gives an overview of possible optimization approaches, augmented by a description of case studies, based on previous research projects. double right arrow double right arrow double right arrow Zusammenfassung Die Reduktion von Treibhausgasen wie CO2 ist eine der dominierenden Aufgaben, um dauerhaft die Bedingungen fur Leben auf der Erde sicherzustellen. Im Widerspruch dazu konnen die gegenwartigen Tendenzen in der Globalisierung der Produktionsprozesse, die just-in-time Fertigung und eine wachsende Anzahl von Paketsendungen aufgrund einer Zunahme der Online-Kaufe zu einer weiteren Steigerung von Treibhausgas-Emissionen fuhren. Eine Analyse der Treibhausgas-Emissionen ist komplex, da diese Daten aus verschiedensten Quellen und Prozessen berucksichtigen muss. Die Standard-Methode, um einen Uberblick uber die Emissionsauswirkungen zu erhalten, ist die LCA-Methode (LCA= life cycle assessment), die im ersten Teil dieses Artikels beschrieben wird. Die beschriebenen Tendenzen fuhren insbesondere auch dazu, dass der Anteil an Emissionen, der durch Logistikprozesse verursacht wird, zunehmen wird. Daher ist speziell die Reduktion von Emissionen in diesem Bereich eine gro beta e Herausforderung fur die Logistikforschung. Reduktionen werden hier durch eine Kombination verschiedener IT-basierter und traditioneller Ansatze ermoglicht, die auf verschiedenen Ebenen Anwendung finden. Im Fall von Logistikprozessen ist es jedoch wichtig, dass die okonomischen Auswirkungen der jeweiligen Ma beta nahmen in der Planung mit berucksichtigt werden. Daher befasst sich der zweite Teil dieses Artikels mit einem Uberblick uber Optimierungsmoglichkeiten im Logistikbereich, erganzt durch eine Beschreibung von Fallstudien, die in Forschungsprojekten erarbeitet wurden.In view of recent studies of the historical development and current status of industrial symbiosis (IS), life cycle assessment (LCA) is proposed as a general framework for quantifying the environmental performance of by-product exchange. Recent guidelines for LCA (International Reference Life Cycle Data System [ILCD] guidelines) are applied to answer the main research questions in the IS literature reviewed. A typology of five main research questions is proposed: (1) analysis, (2) improvement, and (3) expansion of existing systems; (4) design of new eco-industrial parks, and (5) restructuring of circular economies. The LCA guidelines were found useful in framing the question and choosing an appropriate reference case for comparison. The selection of a correct reference case reduces the risk of overestimating the benefits of by-product exchange. In the analysis of existing systems, environmentally extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) can be used to streamline the analysis and provide an industry average baseline for comparison. However, when large-scale changes are applied to the system, more sophisticated tools are necessary for assessment of the consequences, from market analysis to general equilibrium modeling and future scenario work. Such a rigorous application of systems analysis was not found in the current IS literature, but would benefit the field substantially, especially when the environmental impact of large-scale economic changes is analyzed.Cities play an important role in the global carbon cycle. They produce a large proportion of CO2 emissions, but they also sequester and store carbon in urban forests and green space. However, sequestration by urban green space is difficult to quantify and also involves emissions. The carbon footprint analysis is an established method for systematically quantifying carbon sinks and sources throughout the lifetime of goods and services. We applied this method to an urban green space project in Leipzig, Germany. To the best of our knowledge it is the first application in this field. We simulated carbon sequestration by growing trees and contrasted it with all related carbon sources, from construction and maintenance over the lifetime of 50 years. In addition, we explored alternative design and maintenance scenarios. Total net sequestration was predicted to be between 137 and 162 MgCO2 ha(-1). Park-like design and maintenance is less effective than forest-like design and maintenance. Much uncertainty is linked to tree growth and tree mortality. Increasing annual tree mortality from 0.5 to 4% reduces sequestration by over 70%. In conclusion, urban green space can act as a carbon sink and the design and maintenance have a strong influence on the carbon footprint. The carbon footprint analysis is a valuable tool for estimating the long-term environmental performance of urban green space projects. Compared to emissions from people, the overall potential for carbon mitigation is limited, even in cities such as Leipzig with widely available space for new urban green space. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper reviews water electrolysis technologies for hydrogen production and also surveys the state of the art of water electrolysis integration with renewable energies. First, attention is paid to the thermodynamic and electrochemical processes to better understand how electrolysis cells work and how they can be combined to build big electrolysis modules. The electrolysis process and the characteristics, advantages, drawbacks, and challenges of the three main existing electrolysis technologies, namely alkaline, polymer electrolyte membrane, and solid oxide electrolyte, are then discussed. Current manufacturers and the main features of commercially available electrolyzers are extensively reviewed. Finally, the possible configurations allowing the integration of water electrolysis units with renewable energy sources in both autonomous and grid-connected systems are presented and some relevant demonstration projects are commented.In this study, we identify and characterize known and new environmental consequences associated with CO2 capture from power plants, transport by pipeline and storage in geological formations. We have reviewed (analogous) environmental impact assessment procedures and scientific literature on carbon capture and storage (CCS) options. Analogues include the construction of new power plants, transport of natural gas by pipelines, underground natural gas storage (UGS), natural gas production and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects. It is investigated whether crucial knowledge on environmental impacts is lacking that may postpone the implementation of CCS projects. This review shows that the capture of CO2 from power plants results in a change in the environmental profile of the power plant. This change encompasses both increase and reduction of key atmospheric emissions, being: NOx, SO2, NH3, particulate matter, Hg. HF and HCl. The largest trade-offs are found for the emission of NOx and NH3 when equipping power plants with post-combustion capture. Synergy is expected for SO2 emissions, which are low for all power plants with CO2 capture. An increase in water consumption ranging between 32% and 93% and an increase in waste and by-product creation with tens of kilotonnes annually is expected for a large-scale power plant (1 GW(e)), but exact flows and composition are uncertain. The cross-media effects of CO2 capture are found to be uncertain and to a large extent not quantified. For the assessment of the safety of CO2 transport by pipeline at high pressure an important knowledge gap is the absence of validated release and dispersion models for CO2 releases. We also highlight factors that result in some (not major) uncertainties when estimating the failure rates for CO2 pipelines. Furthermore, uniform CO2 exposure thresholds, detailed dose response models and specific CO2 pipeline regulation are absent. Most gaps in environmental information regarding the CCS chain are identified and characterized for the risk assessment of the underground, non-engineered, part of the storage activity. This uncertainty is considered to be larger for aquifers than for hydrocarbon reservoirs. Failure rates are found to be heavily based on expert opinions and the dose response models for ecosystems or target species are not yet developed. Integration and validation of various sub-models describing fate and transport of CO2 in various compartments of the geosphere is at an infant stage. In conclusion, it is not possible to execute a quantitative risk assessment for the non-engineered part of the storage activity with high confidence. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the context of the new approaches regarding the environment within the economy, the goal of growing the economic performance must be joined by the goal of growing the ecological performance. The aim of this article is to present a method which evaluates the environmental impact at a product level, namely the Life Cycle Assessment method, or the LCA method, as well as to underline the advantages that companies would obtain through its implementation. By using Life Cycle Assessment, companies can reduce the environmental impact of products in their entire life cycle, preserve their resources and ecosystems, optimize the recycle methods or identify the most efficient ways of pollution prevention through the identification of major environmental impact areas of a product or process.Indium is a scarce and expensive material that has been identified as a bottleneck for future organic electronics deployment in large scale. Indium is the main constituent of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), which is the most successful transparent electrode in organic photovoltaics (OPV) so far. A new process, termed Hiflex, allows for manufacture of flexible OPV modules where the ITO electrode has been replaced by a sputtered Al/Cr electrode in an inverted device architecture with front illumination. This work presents a life cycle assessment of the Hiflex process, in order to compare the environmental impact of avoiding ITO as electrode. The new ITO-free process reduces some of the processing steps, leading to important reductions of the energy input during OPV module manufacturing in comparison to ITO-based modules. The environmental analysis reveals an Energy Pay-Back time (EPBT) of 10 years due to the high-energy consumption of Al/Cr roll-to-roll sputtering and to the relatively low efficiency of the Hiflex OPV modules (approximate to 1%). An optimization of the active area fraction could easily reduce the EPBT to approximate to 5 years. A further enhancement of the efficiency to 5% would give rise to a promising EPBT of only 1 year. Our work highlights that vacuum processing steps should be avoided. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of Indium-Tin Oxide (ITO) as a transparent conductor in organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices has been shown to present a bottleneck for the technology due to the use of the rare metal Indium and also the energy intensive manufacturing processes required and subsequent high economic cost. This study discusses some of the alternative materials, which are being considered for use as transparent conductors in OPV modules. A life cycle and cost analysis of a number of the most promising ITO-free transparent conductors, namely: high conductivity PEDOT:PSS; a silver grid embedded in PEDOT:PSS; silver nanowires; single walled carbon nanotubes are completed in this study. The results show that there is great potential for reducing both the energy pay-back time and the cost of OPV modules by replacing ITO with an alternative transparent conductor. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An investigation is reported on the importance of integrating sustainability with manufacturing and design, along with other objectives such as function, competitiveness, profitability and productivity. The need of utilizing appropriate tools like design for environment, life cycle assessment and other environmentally sound practices that are cognizant of the entire life cycle of a process or product is highlighted. It is likely that sustainability and environmental stewardship will be increasingly important considerations in manufacturing and design in the future and are likely to influence the main priorities for advancing manufacturing operations and technologies. Designers and manufacturing decision makers who adopt a sustainability focus and establish a sustainability culture within companies are more likely to be successful in enhancing design and manufacturing. It is concluded that more extensive research and collaboration is needed to improve understanding of sustainability in manufacturing and design, and to enhance technology transfer and applications of sustainability.Glass curtain wall (Cw) systems have been inevitable elements of commercial buildings for over a century. The systems mainly consist of mullion materials and glazing units that are selected and designed to achieve the desired structural, thermal and daylighting performances as well as to meet cost and aesthetic concerns. The health and environmental life cycle impacts of CW systems, however, are not usually considered in design. The main objective of this paper is to study how change of mullion materials would affect the health and environmental impacts associated with a typical CW system over its life cycle. The mullion materials studied for the purpose of this paper include extruded aluminum, carbon steel and glulam timber. Also, the health and environmental impact categories of interest include global warming, acidification, eutrophication and human toxicity. To achieve the objective, a process-based cradle-to-gate attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was applied. Results indicate that CW system with glulam timber mullions causes the least and CW system with extruded aluminum mullions causes the most damage to the environment and human health over their life cycle. A CW system with carbon steel mullions falls in-between. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental analyses of energy systems usually lack a comprehensive perspective that takes into account their life cycle and a set of relevant impact categories. The present study tries to fulfil this need in the field of biofuel production from free fatty acid-rich wastes, therefore providing a life cycle assessment of four biodiesel production systems including esterification-transesterification of waste vegetable oils (used cooking oil) and animal fats (beef tallow, poultry fat), and in situ transesterification of sewage sludges. Reference inventory data for these systems were gathered from a literature review. Thereafter, environmental characterization values were computed for a selection of impact categories: global warming, acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, and cumulative non-renewable energy demand. A comparison among the environmental profiles of these second generation biodiesel alternatives and those of first generation rapeseed and soybean biodiesel fuels and conventional low-sulphur diesel was also performed through a well-to-wheels analysis. Thus, biodiesel from waste vegetable oils potentially entailed the most favourable environmental performance. Nevertheless, actions aimed at minimizing thermal and electric energy demands are encouraged as they would lead to relevant environmental improvements. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Membrane bioreactors are one of the most outstanding and updating technologies applied for the wastewater treatment. Different configurations and combinations of technologies are possible for this purpose. However, not only the treatment capacity has to be proved, but also the environmental performance of the different alternatives has to be evaluated under a holistic approach. Only by doing so. the selected technology will be feasible from technological and environmental perspectives. In this study, the Life Cycle Assessment was applied for the evaluation of four membrane bioreactor configurations of increasing complexity. The main contributors to the environmental impacts evaluated were identical for all the alternatives; that is, electricity use plays an important role in all the impact categories and agricultural application of sewage sludge has also a relevant contribution on toxicity-related categories and acidification potential. The comparison among the different configurations reveals an inverse relationship between the environmental costs associated to the treatment and the complexity of the treatment process. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The technologies and practices that have enabled the recent boom in shale gas production have also brought attention to the environmental impacts of its use. It has been g debated whether the fugitive methane emissions during natural gas production and transmission outweigh the lower carbon dioxide emissions during combustion when compared to coal and petroleum. Using the current state of knowledge of methane emissions from shale gas, conventional natural gas, coal, and petroleum, we estimated up-to-date life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, we developed distribution functions for key parameters in each pathway to examine uncertainty and identify data gaps such as methane emissions from shale gas well completions and conventional natural gas liquid unloadings that need to be further addressed. Our base case results show that shale gas life-cycle emissions are 6% lower than conventional natural gas, 23% lower than gasoline, and 33% lower than coal. However, the range in values for shale and conventional gas overlap, so there is a statistical uncertainty whether shale gas emissions are indeed lower than conventional gas. Moreover, this life-cycle analysis, among other work in this area, provides insight on critical stages that the natural gas industry and government agencies can work together on to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas.A new electronic software distribution (ESD) life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology and model structure were constructed to calculate energy Consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In order to counteract the use of high level, top-down modeling efforts, and to increase result accuracy, a focus upon device details and data routes was taken. In order to compare ESD to a relevant physical distribution alternative, physical. model boundaries and variables were described. The methodology was compiled from the analysis and operational data of a major online store which provides ESD and physical distribution options. The ESD method included the calculation of power consumption of data center server and networking devices. An in-depth method to calculate server efficiency and utilization was also included to account for virtualization and server efficiency features. Internet transfer power consumption was analyzed taking into account the number of data hops and networking devices used. The power consumed by online browsing and downloading was also factored into the model. The embedded CO(2)e of server and networking devices was proportioned to each ESD process. Three U.K-based ESD scenarios were analyzed using the model which revealed potential CO(2)e savings of 83% when ESD was used over physical distribution. Results also highlighted the importance of server efficiency and utilization methods.We describe a new methodology for performing regionalized life cycle assessment and systematically choosing the spatial scale of regionalized impact assessment methods. We extend standard matrix-based calculations to include matrices that describe the mapping from inventory to impact assessment spatial supports. Uncertainty in inventory spatial data is modeled using a discrete spatial distribution function, which in a case study is derived from empirical data. The minimization of global spatial autocorrelation is used to choose the optimal spatial scale of impact assessment methods. We demonstrate these techniques on electricity production in the United States, using regionalized impact assessment methods for air emissions and freshwater consumption. Case study results show important differences between site-generic and regionalized calculations, and provide specific guidance for future improvements of inventory data sets and impact assessment methods.Multimedia and site-specific risk assessments (RA) of major sources releasing arsenic (As) were converted into sector-based risk coefficients, which were integrated with the Input Output Table (IO) to analyze the association between sector activities and health risks. The developed IO-RA framework is a valuable tool for unfolding the risk chain linking the receptors, exposure pathways, emission sources, and production and consumption activities associated with various industrial sectors. The enlarged decision space along the chain can then be considered in planning risk management strategies. This case study estimates that air emissions of As result in 1.54 carcinogenic cases. Export is the primary driving force and accounts for approximately 48% of the final demand that leads to population risks of As. The ranking of the contribution of the five sectors in terms of total population risks is as follows: electricity supply (1.06E+00), steelmaking (2.2 X 10(-1)), cement kilns (1.50 X 10(-1)), semiconductor manufacturing (6.34 x 10(-2)) and incinerators (4.31 x 10(-2)). The electricity supply, steelmaking industry, and cement kilns are the major sectors, not only because their emissions directly cause risk but also because they have a stronger influence on the risk generated by other sectors.Because of interest in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation fuels production, a number of recent life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have calculated GHG emissions from oil sands extraction, upgrading, and refining pathways. The results from these studies vary considerably. This paper review; factors affecting energy consumption and GHG emissions from oil sands extraction. It then uses publicly available data to analyze the assumptions made in the LCA models to better understand the causes of variability in emissions estimates. It is found that the variation in oil sands GHG estimates is due to a variety of causes. In approximate order of importance, these are scope of modeling and choice of projects analyzed (e.g., specific projects vs industry averages); differences in assumed energy intensities of extraction and upgrading; differences in the fuel mix assumptions; treatment of secondary noncombustion emissions sources, such as venting, flaring, and fugitive emissions; and treatment of ecological emissions sources, such as land-use change-associated emissions. The GHGenius model is recommended as the LCA model that is most congruent with reported industry average data. GHGenius also has the most comprehensive system boundaries. Last, remaining uncertainties and future research needs are discussed.Regional supplies of biomass are currently being evaluated as feedstocks in energy applications to meet renewable portfolio (RPS) and low carbon fuel standards. We investigate the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and associated abatement costs resulting from using densified switchgrass for thermal and electrical energy. In contrast to the large and positive abatement costs for using biomass in electricity generation ($149/Mg CO(2)e) due to the low cost of coal and high feedstock and power plant operation costs, abatement costs for replacing fuel oil with biomass in thermal applications are large and negative (-$52 to -$92/Mg CO(2)e), resulting in cost savings. Replacing fuel oil with biomass in thermal applications results in least cost reductions compared to replacing coal in electricity generation, an alternative that has gained attention due to RPS legislation and the centralized production model most often considered in U.S. policy. Our estimates indicate a more than doubling of liquid fuel displacement when switchgrass is substituted for fuel oil as opposed to gasoline, suggesting that, in certain U.S. locations, such as the northeast, densified biomass would help to significantly decarbonize energy supply with regionally sourced feedstock, while also reducing imported oil. On the basis of supply projections from the recently released Billion Ton Report, there will be enough sustainably harvested biomass available in the northeast by 2022 to offset the entirety of heating oil demand in the same region. This will save NE consumers between $2.3 and $3.9 billion annually. Diverting the same resource to electricity generation would cost the region $7.7 billion per year. While there is great need for finding low carbon substitutes for coal power and liquid transportation fuels in the U.S., we argue that in certain regions it makes cost- (and GHG mitigation-) effective sense to phase out liquid heating fuels with locally produced biomass first.With increasing focus on the environmental impacts of alternative land uses and materials, there is a growing need to produce accurate and verifiable life cycle inventories for forestry. A cradle-to-gate inventory was produced for wood from softwood plantations and hardwood native forests across Australia, covering all operations involved in forest establishment, management and harvesting and including transportation of logs and chips to processing facilities. The inventory was primarily based on data provided by forest growers, managers and contractors across seven case study regions. The SimaPro model was used to combine the different operations, and to account for upstream processes associated with the production of fuel and materials used. Forest products included high- and low-grade sawlogs, pulplogs, woodchips and other logs. Inputs were expressed in terms of m(3) product and were allocated to products on an economic basis. Key inputs for wood from softwood plantations included land (0.06 ha m(-3)), water (0.12 ML m(-3)), diesel (172 MJ m(-3)) and fertiliser (0.3 kg N m(-3), 0.2 kg P m(-3), 0.06 kg K m(-3)). Key inputs for wood from native forests included land (0.28 ha m(-3)), water (0.38 ML m-3) and diesel (355 MJ m(-3)). The largest contributors to total energy use were log haulage (46% for softwood and 45% for hardwood) and harvesting and chipping (29% for softwood and 44% for hardwood). However, the total amount of energy used in the forestry production process (293 MJ m(-3) for plantation softwood and 527 MJ m(-3) for native hardwood) was very small relative to the net energy content of the logs harvested, representing just 4% of that in an average plantation softwood log and 6% of that in an average native hardwood log. Thus, forest products have low embodied energy and have strong potential for greenhouse gas mitigation when used for bioenergy. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bioprocesses have been typically optimized according to their economic performances. In this work we present a novel framework for their optimal design that allows for the simultaneous consideration of economic and environmental concerns. Our approach relies on the combined use of simulation packages, multiobjective optimization (MOO), life cycle assessment (LCA), and principal component analysis (PCA). The capabilities of the proposed methodology are illustrated through its application to the production of the amino acid L-lysine.The production of drinking water from fresh surface water involves several processes, energy consumption and chemical dosing, all having global environmental impacts. These should be considered in the choice of water treatment processes. The objective of the present study was to conduct a comparative life cycle assessment of two water treatment plants: one enhanced conventional plant and one nanofiltration plant. One existing nanofiltration plant was chosen and investigated in great detail, including its operation and construction phases. This plant is located in the northern part of the Province of Quebec and has been in operation for over 10 years. A virtual conventional plant was designed for comparative purposes. The comparative life cycle assessment was performed using SimaPro software for inventory and impact assessment phases. The study revealed very different impacts for the two plants, drawing attention to the importance of the choice of water treatment chemicals and energy source. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Animal byproducts (ABP) are unavoidable byproduct of meat production that are categorized under EU legislation into category 1, 2, and 3 materials, which are normally treated by rendering. Rendering is a thermal process that produces rendered fat and protein. Heat is provided from the combustion of natural gas and self-produced rendered fat. The main objectives of the study were (i) to assess energy intensity in the UK rendering industry, and (ii) to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of mammalian rendered products using life cycle assessment. Thermal energy requirements were 2646 and 1357 kJ/kg, whereas electricity requirements were 260 and 375 kJ/kg for category 1 and 3 ABP respectively. Fossil CO2 emissions were -0.77 and 0.15 kg CO(2)e/kg category 1 and 3 mammalian rendered fat respectively and 0.15 kg CO(2)e/kg processed animal protein. These were low relative to vegetable products such as palm oil and soya bean meal because (i) ABP were considered wastes that do not incur the environmental burden of their production, and (ii) the rendering process produces biofuels that can be used to generate energy that can be used to offset the use of fossil fuels in other systems.The construction industry is under considerable legislative pressure to reduce its CO2 emissions. The current focus is on operational CO2 emissions, but as these are compulsorily reduced, the embodied CO2 of structural components, overwhelmingly attributable to the material from which they are manufactured, will become of greater interest. Choice of structural materials for minimal embodied CO2 is currently based either on subjective narrative arguments, or values of embodied CO2 per unit volume or mass. Here we show that such arguments are invalid. We found that structural design parameters (dimensions, section choice, and load capacity) for fundamental structural components (simple beams and columns) are at least as important as material choice with regard to their effect on embodied CO2 per unit load capacity per unit dimension, which can vary over several decades within and between material choices. This result demonstrates that relying on apparently objective analyses based on embodied CO2 per unit volume or mass will not lead to minimum carbon solutions; a formal definition of the correct functional unit for embodied CO2 must be used. In short, there is no such thing as a green structural material.The optimal use of forest energy wood, industrial wood residues, waste wood, agricultural residues, animal manure, biowaste, and sewage sludge in 2010 and 2030 was assessed for Europe. An energy system model was developed comprising 13 principal fossil technologies for the production of heat, electricity, and transport and 173 bioenergy conversion routes. The net environmental benefits of substituting fossil energy with bioenergy were calculated for all approximately 1500 combinations based on life cycle assessment (LCA) results. An optimization model determines the best use of biomass for different environmental indicators within the quantified EU-27 context of biomass availability and fossil energy utilization. Key factors determining the optimal use of biomass are the conversion efficiencies of bioenergy technologies and the kind and quantity of fossil energy technologies that can be substituted. Provided that heat can be used efficiently, optimizations for different environmental indicators almost always indicate that woody biomass is best used for combined heat and power generation, if coal, oil, or fuel oil based technologies can be substituted. The benefits of its conversion to SNG or ethanol are significantly lower. For non-woody biomass electricity generation, transportation, and heating yield almost comparable benefits as long as high conversion efficiencies and optimal substitutions are assured. The shares of fossil heat, electricity, and transportation that could be replaced with bioenergy are also provided.Within the work lines in sustainable energy field of the EnergyLab Technology Centre (Vigo, Spain), associated with the technologies that are under investigation by this centre, it is developed a study about the Life Cycle Analysis (hereinafter, LCA) over a geothermal heatpump (hereafter, GSHP) installation in a nursery school in the province of Pontevedra (Galicia, Spain), and its comparison with the fuel boiler system prior to GHP. Thus, with the use of computer tools and following specific rules about the calculation of LCA, assessing the environmental impact of each system, and perform the appropriate comparison in order to quantify the savings emissions and the improvement in sustainability related to the replacement of diesel boiler system by the GSHP system.Reducing dependence on fossil fuels and mitigation of GHG emissions is a main focus in the energy strategy of many Countries. In the case of Demark, for instance, the long-term target of the energy policy is to reach 100% renewable energy system. This can be achieved by drastic reduction of the energy demand, optimization of production/distribution and substitution of fossil fuels with biomasses. However, a large increase in biomass consumption will finally induce conversion of arable and currently cultivated land into fields dedicated to energy crops production determining significant environmental consequences related to land use changes. In this study the global warming potential impact associated with six alternative bioenergy systems based on willow and Miscanthus was assessed by means of life-cycle assessment. The results showed that bioenergy production may generate higher global warming impacts than the reference fossil fuel system, when the impacts from indirect land use changes are accounted for. In a life-cycle perspective, only highly-efficient co-firing with fossil fuel achieved a (modest) GHG emission reduction.Agricultural production of liquid biofuels can have positive effects. It can decrease dependence on fossil fuels and increase farmers' incomes. Agricultural production of mixed perennial biofuel crops may increase pollinator and avian richness. Most types of agricultural crop-based liquid biofuel production, however, have a negative effect on natural ecosystems and biodiversity. Comparisons of fossil fuels and liquid biofuels regarding their life cycle emissions of pollutants which are (eco)toxic or contribute to oxidizing smog, acidification or nutrification give mixed results. Fossil fuels often do better than biofuels as to emissions of acidifying and nutrifying substances, but often worse regarding ecotoxicity. A rapid increase in biofuel production can increase malnutrition due to its upward effect on food prices. Liquid biofuel lifecycles are linked to greater water consumption than their fossil fuel counterparts. Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of liquid agricultural biofuels are currently often larger than those of their fossil fuel counterparts, when effects of land use on carbon stocks are included. An exception in this respect is current Brazilian sugarcane ethanol. When soil quality is to be maintained, there seems to be little scope to convert lignocellulosic harvest residues into liquid biofuels. Agricultural biofuels are much poorer converters of solar energy into usable energy than photovoltaic cells.The enormous expansion of solar energy brings new technologies and new types of photovoltaics pannels (PV pannels). The developer can actually choose between different materials of PV pannels with different properties. Ecological aspects belong between one of the most important properties of these solar systems. The aim of this paper is to describes the life cycle assessment (LCA) of photovoltaic (PV) power plants using eco invent indicators. Several types of PV power plants were studied in climatic conditions of the Czech Republic. LCA is an internationally defined technique (ISO 14 040 series) for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product over its whole life cycle. A full LCA is particularly useful if you need to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product or system with a high level of accuracy. LCA is a time-consuming, because of the need to collect detailed inventory data. Data from LCA can be futher used in diagnostics of failures in these systems.The energy sector is nowadays a subject of great concern of all European Member States. European policies aimed at reduction of CO2 emissions and increase share of renewable energy sources. Environmental impact became more important and energy mix of the member states has to be qualified to this task. Renewable energy sources (RES) are environmentally friendly and they help to decrease energy dependency. The problem of the renewable energy sources is that they are not able in a short time replace all conventional (nuclear and thermal) power plants. Many critics of the renewable energy sources argument that RES are environmentally friendly only during the operation phase but their construction phase cannot be consider in the same way. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is the assessment of environmental impact of a given product or service throughout its lifespan. It can be consider as a tool for analyzing the environmental burden of products at all stages of their life cycle - construction, operation and dismantling. Therefore it could be good tools to consider the environmental impact of the energy produced from the renewable sources. The main problem of the analysis is the quantum of inputs which are necessary for the LCA. The paper deals with an LCA methodology applied to energy systems. It consider materials and manufacturing, assembly and installation, operations and maintenance, decommissioning and disposal for different types of the power plants.A general introduction to the main environmental and socio-economic aspects associated with concentrating solar power (CSP) systems is presented. The chapter then analyses the state of the art in the methods available to quantify the main environmental impacts of CSP systems. The results of life cycle assessments (LCA) and environmental externalities assessments of CSP systems are provided. The chapter then describes the main socio-economic impacts that can arise from the implementation of a CSP system and provides results obtained using the input-output method that show increased demand for goods and services and employment.A broad technology comparison of carbothermal magnesium production with present technologies has not been previously presented. In this paper a comparative analysis of CSlRO's MagSonic (TM) process is made with the electrolytic and Pidgeon processes. The comparison covers energy intensity (GJ/tonne Mg), labor intensity (person-hours/tonne Mg), capital intensity (USD/tonne annual Mg installed capacity), and Global Warming Potential (GWP, tonnes CO2-equivalent/tonne Mg). Carbothermal technology is advantageous on all measures except capital intensity (where it is roughly twice the capital cost of a similarly-sized Pidgeon plant). Carbothermal and electrolytic production can have comparatively low environmental impacts, with typical emissions one-sixth those of the Pidgeon process. Despite recent progress, the Pidgeon process depends upon abundant energy and labor combined with few environmental constraints. Pressure is expected to increase on environmental constraints and labor and energy costs over the coming decade. Carbothermal reduction technology appears to be competitive for future production.Accurate estimate of the energy consumption during a building's operating life time is important for a reliable building life cycle assessment (LCA). In current building LCA practices, operational building energy consumption (BEC) is often projected through a deterministic linear-average model within a predetermined uniform service life. Though simple, this model often leads to large variances from the actual consumption's. Actual BEC is affected by many underlying dynamic determinants (i. e. building condition, ambient weather),and fluctuates year to year. Proper considerations of these determinants are necessary to provide more realistic BEC projections. A stochastic operational BEC projection model was proposed to recognize and incorporate the dynamic determinants (i. e. the deterioration of building envelope and the variation in ambient temperature) with Markov chain ( MC) model: (1) the considered determinants (i. e. the building envelope properties and the ambient temperature) were separately modeled by MC; ( 2) the building service life was predicted based on building deterioration curve considering the influencing factors; (3) the variation of BEC which was actually a joint state of the distinct building envelope condition and the differing ambient temperature state, was modeled as Markov process; ( 4) the life cycle BEG was computed by aggregating the individual annual BEC within the predicted service life. A case study was provided to demonstrate the application of the proposed model. Validation showed the proposed approach result is closer to the real data than that of the traditional approach.Construction industry contributes to about 40% of world's energy Consumption and is related to 1/3rd of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout its life cycle. Most of the current research on sustainability has been focusing on the life-cycle analysis, building operational phase or on the embodied energy of the building materials, and few research has been carried out on the carbon emissions during construction phase. However, for construction contractors, the construction process is the phase that they can have consistent control. The emission during construction may be small compared to the overall life cycle of a building but has the potential of large impacts at an aggregate level. This research paper evaluates the carbon emissions during construction for the Tyree Energy Building in the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. The carbon emissions of the Tyree building is compared with the published case studies in the literature and its efficiency on carbon emission is evaluated and suggestions are given for reducing carbon emissions during the construction phase.For designers it is difficult to pin-point the design characteristics that could be changed to reduce the environmental impact of their products. This paper describes a method for determining the design characteristics that have a significant relationship with environmental impact that arises at product end-of-life In this method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Linear Regression Analysis (LRA) are combined. LCA is used to quantify the environmental impact of products from the extraction of their raw materials to their disposal. LRA is used to determine the design characteristics that have the most significant relationship with environmental impact. Combining LCA and LRA gives the designer the ability to (1) establish a relationship between design characteristics and their environmental impact, (2) determine the most significant design characteristics that influence environmental impact, and (3) validate design changes with their influence on product environmental impact. In the case study described here, the design characteristic, Volume, is shown to have significant relationship with the end-of-life environmental impact of cellular phones. This trend is consistent with the results of the one-phase end-of-life disposition assessments that evaluated disassembled cellular. phones. With the results of this method, designers can focus their sustainable design efforts on modifying and improving the design characteristics that have the strongest relationship with environmental impact.This paper presents a method for comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of two distinctively different systems based on industrial heavy-duty off-road equipment. The study demonstrates how to compare the environmental impact performance of two different machines when they perform the same types of operations, but have different levels of operational productivity. Considering the entire life cycle of a machine from material extraction to end-of-life treatment, the two machines are analyzed and compared in terms of their life cycle impact score. To make a fair comparison between the two machines, the impact generated by the same amount of production is used as the basis for comparison. The results of the study can quantify the relative life cycle impact across different machine architectures for design and market support purposes.Environmentally conscious design is focused on reducing the environmental impact of engineered systems, but common practice in life cycle analysis overlooks the relationship between a product's usage-context and its environmental performance. Existing studies rarely consider operational variability or the correlation between performance, design, and usage variables. Probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) provide the capability of not only evaluating uncertainty and variability of product use, but also correlating the results with the product's features and usage context. This discussion explores the use of PGMs as a tool for evaluating operational variability in products and including the results in life cycle inventories. The tool is illustrated for environmentally conscious product design through an example study of an electric kettle.With the increased concern over the impact that product and processes have on the environment several tools for environmental impact assessment have been developed. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is perhaps the most broadly known and used. The use of LCA is common in industry and there is a growing interest to improve the approach since several unresolved problems have been identified with its use. One important issue to resolve is the proper definition of the functional unit. The stated primary goal of the functional unit in LCA is to ensure comparability of LCA results; however, when reviewing the literature, LCA practitioners remark that comparing LCA studies is a very difficult task. The attributed reasons for this problem are the lack of standardized assumptions and practices, including the definition of the functional unit. Even though several unresolved problems present in LCA have had solutions proposed, a clear and actionable solution to the specific problem of functional unit definition is still not available. This paper will introduce system engineering and functional analysis concepts to the goal and scope definition phase of LCA in order to provide a framework for system definition, system boundary definition, and reference flows identification. System engineering principles and functional analysis have been extensively used to aid the design process, yet these approaches have not been effectively applied to the LCA domain. The benefits associated with the proposed framework include improved comparability of LCAs, dynamic updating of LCAs, and the integration of LCA into early stage product development.With a constantly increasing population and coupled demand for manufactured goods, sustainability considerations are becoming more important in product design. Society is tasked with ensuring our continued existence, while maintaining the quality of life of future generations. Innovation has been touted as a means to sustainability, and innovations in materials, manufacturing, and product design can lead to a reduction of global environmental impacts and help to realize the goals of a sustainable society. This research aims to identify whether products that have been identified as "innovative" by popular media sources have lower environmental impacts than "common" products of the same functionality. Six innovative products were compared to eight corresponding common products using life cycle assessment techniques to determine which are predicted to have lower environmental impacts. From this analysis, it was determined that four of the six innovative products may have higher environmental impacts than their common competitors. These research findings reveal a possible inverse relationship between environmental impacts and innovation for a few classes of common consumer goods.Exergy-based analyses are useful means for the evaluation and improvement of energy conversion systems. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is coupled with an exergetic analysis in an exergoenvironmental analysis. An advanced exergoenvironmental analysis quantifies the environmental impacts estimated in the LCA into avoidable/unavoidable parts and into endogenous/exogenous parts, depending on their source. This analysis reveals the potential for improvement of plant components/processes and the component interactions within a system. In this paper, the environmental performance of an advanced zero emission plant (AZEP) with CO2 capture is evaluated based on an advanced exergoenvironmental analysis. The plant uses oxy-fuel technology and incorporates an oxygen-separating mixed conducting membrane (MCM). To evaluate the operation of the system, a similar plant (reference plant) without CO, capture is used. It has been found that the improvement potential of the AZEP concept is restricted by the relatively low avoidable environmental impact of exergy destruction of several plant components. Moreover, the endogenous environmental impacts are for the majority of the components significant, while the exogenous values are, generally, kept at low levels. Nevertheless, a closer inspection reveals that there are strong interactions among the components of the MCM reactor and the components constituting the CO2 compression unit. Such results are valuable, when the improvement of the environmental performance of the plant is targeted and they can only be obtained through advanced exergy-based methods.In a simulation study two combinations of air-to-water heat pumps with either solar thermal collectors or photovoltaics have been scrutinized. Other heating systems have been included in the comparison. All system components applied are field proven and available on the market. Although all heat generators were sized to cover space heating and domestic hot water demand, the focus lays on domestic hot water preparation. As required by local regulations, all systems cover 50 % of the final energy demand from solar insolation. The results show that both air-to-water heat pump combinations are nearly equivalent regarding economic feasibility and environmental impact. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this article, a R&D project is described involving a prototype solar assisted heat pump (HP) designed for domestic hot water preparation for single family dwellings. This project, developed within the framework of Task 44 of the IEA Solar and Cooling Programme, uses solar energy on the HP evaporator side to maximize the performance level of the system. In cases where solar energy is not enough, the HP under investigation has been designed to extract energy from the heating circuit of the building. This study involves both test bench measurements and dynamic simulations of the solar assisted heat pump system. The overall objectives of the project are summarised as follows: Development of solar thermal technology Improvement of HP performance for DHW production Reduction of non-renewable energy consumption Reduction of environmental impacts This article presents an overview of the project and its current status. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) allows for the consideration of energy consumption and environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life, from the cradle to the grave. Starting from the results obtained in the IEA SHC Task 38 framework for the LCA of small solar assisted heat driven chillers, the application of such methodology has been extended to systems with a conventional compression chiller assisted by a photovoltaic plant. This study aims to provide a more comprehensive investigation through a comparison of these two families of solar assisted cooling systems (with solar thermal or PV), which is an important topic for studies concerning the research of effective and environmentally friendly systems that exploit solar radiation for cooling and heating purposes. In hot climates, the systems with the PV grid connected plant performed best. Anyway, a comparison of this system with the other systems is not meaningful because the strength of the solar thermal H/C system is the ability to reduce the dependence from the electric grid and to avoid peaks, overloads and power quality variations. Thus, two more configurations were investigated to further define the PV assisted systems, which minimise their interaction with the grid through the use of electricity storages. These systems performed worse than the PV grid connected systems and the solar thermal assisted systems in nearly all the analysed cases. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Considerable progress has been made in the assessment, management and maintenance of existing earthworks and in the selection of methods of construction of new earthworks. Techniques involving multi-criteria analysis, carbon-footprinting and life cycle assessment of competing schemes provide transparent methodologies for use in environmental impact assessment. This review paper provides examples of use of the various techniques, and in particular concentrates on areas of innovation including: reuse of excavated tunnel spoil methods of ground treatment to minimise earthwork impact (e.g. in-situ soil strengthening, green walls etc). combining performance-based design, under environmental load cases such as earthquake and flood, with carbon footprint and cost analysesSustainability has become a ubiquitous term in almost every field, especially in engineering design and manufacturing. Recently, an increased awareness of environmental problems and resource depletion has led to an emphasis on environmentally friendly practices. This is especially true in the manufacturing industry where energy consumption and the amount of waste generated can be high. This requires proactive tools to be developed to carefully analyze the cause-effect of current manufacturing practices and to investigate alternative practices. One such approach to sustainable manufacturing is the combined use of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to analyze the utilization and processing of manufacturing resources in a factory setting. On an economic aspect such method can significantly reduce the financial and environmental costs by evaluating the system performance before its construction or use. This project considers what-if scenarios in a simplified golf ball factory, using as close to real-world data as possible, to demonstrate DES and LCA ability to facilitate decision-making and optimize the manufacturing process. Plastic injection molding, an energy-intensive step in the golf ball manufacturing process, is the focus of the DES model. AutoMod, a 3-D modeling software, was used to build the DES model and AutoStat was used to run the trials and analyze the data. By varying the input parameters such as type and number of injection molding machines and material used, the simulation model can output data indicating the most productive and energy efficient methods. On a more detailed level, the simulations can provide valuable information on bottlenecks or imbalances in the system. Correcting these can allow the factory to be both "greener" and more cost-effective.Successful design for the environment (DfE) requires the designer to understand the life cycle impact of design decisions. However, estimating life cycle implications of design choices using traditional process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) is typically too time- and resource-intensive to be practical as part of the design process. We examine the use of economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) as a tool to support sustainable design by helping the designer to quickly determine which aspects of the product dominate its lifetime emissions. Compared to traditional process-based LCA, EIO-LCA produces estimates at a more aggregated level using data on economic transactions and emissions from each sector of the economy. However, EIO-LCA computes full supply chain emissions associated with output from a particular sector in seconds, and for many products these aggregate-level data are sufficient to determine which aspects of the product dominate and to guide sustainable design efforts. We explore two product design examples where a quick scoping exercise with EIO-LCA identifies clear areas of focus for design improvement and innovation.Sustainable manufacturing (SM) concerns the manufacture of products with regard to environmental, social, and economic impacts over the entire life cycle. With a primary focus on environmental concerns, life cycle assessment (LCA) can support SM practices. The life cycle inventory (LCI) is a key phase of LCA, and this paper considers the integration of manufacturing unit processes (MUPs) into system-level LCIs, which requires consideration of process flow diagrams at different levels of abstraction. Furthermore, uncertainty quantification is an important component of LCA interpretation, and this paper proposes a method to synthesize LCIs from the process-level to the system-level that consistently quantifies uncertainty in the inventories. The method can incorporate MUP data derived from measurements and/or modeling and simulation. Further development towards a complete methodology is discussed.Many Americans have a variety of small kitchen appliances. Among this collection a blender is typically present. The diversity of the blender selection is great and can range from economical to industrial quality. However, the average American is not in need of an industrial blender and leans more towards the economical approach. In addition, depending on the individual, a blender can go months unused Therefore, environmental effects of a blender are mainly due to material extraction, manufacturing, distributing, and disposal. To the best of the author's knowledge, there are no formal life cycle analysis (LCA) studies of a blender published in the literature. This paper describes a LCA of two economical blenders from the same manufacturer. This allows for a direct comparison between the LCAs to determine how the design changes and materials used contribute to environmental effects.The objective of this paper is to determine and compare the environmental impacts of two toasters: standard(1) and eco-friendly(2). The most rapidly growing sector for the e-waste world comes from Electronic household products. More than 2 million tons of electronic products are disposed off as solid waste to landfills in the US alone. The demand for energy supplies has been rapidly increasing in the past decade. Strict legislative measures should be enforced to protect the environment by making industries collect back the manufactured products at the End-of-Life (EOL) from the users and recycle the products. If these necessary steps are not taken, then these e-wastes will impose serious threat to society and the environment. In order to re-design environmentally friendly products and facilitate sustainable take-back planning, current products need to be evaluated for their environmental impacts. One of the widely used methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of a product is called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a cradle to grave approach for assessing the environmental impacts of a product. The cradle to grave approach includes raw material phase, manufacturing and assembly phase, use phase, recovery phase and disposal phase. The system boundary for LCA presented in this paper includes material phase, manufacturing phase, use-phase and disposal phase. The functional unit for the LCA is entire life of the toaster which is one year based on manufacturer's warranty which also includes the rate of usage. The environmental impacts from the two toasters as presented in this paper include eutrophication, acidification, energy-use and global warming. The use phase energy impact is experimentally determined.Sustainability is gaining national and global prominence as a key external constraint in engineering design. Courses in solar energy and wind energy have been common offerings, but due to their power production focus, do not address sustainability in the broader context of design. The question becomes, are undergraduate mechanical engineering programs evolving to introduce design for sustainability concepts, such as life cycle assessment, the triple bottom line, and carbon balance, in the broader context of mechanical engineering design? A review of mechanical engineering programs at well recognized universities indicates that most course offerings with definable sustainable design content remain focused on sustainable energy production. In addition, most of these courses are primarily graduate level offerings, indicating a substantial population of recent graduate engineers with limited knowledge of the scope of design for sustainability. Isolated efforts to broaden awareness of sustainability concepts were also identified and will be reported. These programs may serve as models for integration of sustainability into the general mechanical design education.Nowadays, almost every family has one electric rice cooker, thus making electric rice cooker one of the most popular household appliance in our society. If the product is not designed ecologically and is used heavily, then the product may lead to large ecological impact to our environment. To assess a product's environmental impacts, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is utilized. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, for one such technology (electric rice cooker), no complete LCA studies have existed by far. Therefore, the question about the electric rice cooker's environmental performance is still open. This paper presents an LCA study for the complete life cycle of an electric rice cooker with the power 500Watts as the functional unit. In order to conduct LCA study, the whole life cycle of electric rice cooker was divided into four primary phases: raw materials acquisition, product manufacturing, product utilization and final disposal. To facilitate the data collection and LCA implementation, the whole life cycle system was classified as two subsystems background system and foreground system. Based on the proposed method, primary data and environmental impact calculation was aided by Simapro7.2 software. In the light of the Ecoindicator-99 methodology, eleven impact categories (Carcinogens, Resp. organics, Resp. inorganics, Climate change, Radiation, Ozone layer, Ecotoxicity, Acidification, Land use, Minerals, Fossil fuels) were used for the classification and characterization of the life cycle impact assessment. In this paper, the LCA study was found as a very helpful tool to define ecodesign measures for this product. Several measures are suggested to the manufacturers to implement the ecodesign in the future: 1) Use recyclable plastics in the minor parts and hidden components, such as switcher, handle etc.; 2) Reduce the number of different materials in packaging; 3) Avoid incompatible plastics during recycling; 4) Minimize the volume of the heat plate on the premise of meeting the rated heating power.Wind turbines have seen increasing use over the past decades as an alternative mode of energy production. One specific use of vertical axis wind turbines is for the powering of rural telecommunication towers. In this research a cradle-to-gate life cycle analysis is used to compare three different designs for a stackable, capped, Savonius-style vertical axis wind turbine blade capable of producing from one to three kilowatts. The analysis compares the energy consumed and carbon dioxide emissions from material production and manufacturing of two different aluminum blade designs and a polypropylene design each having the same energy generation capacity. Primary and secondary aluminum materials were included in the analysis. Life cycle inventories from two software programs were used and compared with values gleaned from published literature. The results of the analysis revealed that the least energy and carbon dioxide impact came from using a recycled aluminum design while the most was from manufacturing using primary aluminum.The eco-design of complex industrial systems becomes a major issue for the concerned companies. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in particular is more adapted to "classical" products such as consumer goods. Performing LCA of such systems requires some thoughts to ensure significant results, for example concerning data granularity and quality. This article proposes a Life Cycle Assessment of an Alstom Grid AC/DC conversion substation for the aluminium industry. This LCA integrates first answers to the previous limitations. Very interesting results permit to orient the eco-design strategy of the company. Moreover they lead to imagine original ways to configure the system. Thus a first and simple parametric LCA model is proposed: four different electrical sources are used to analyze the sensitivity of the design factors to the environmental impacts of the substation. Based on design of experiments, a more advanced model of such a tool would permit to identify the best configuration in terms of environmental performance, costs and reliability.Growing concerns for the environment should make every designer more carefully consider product design for the life cycle (DFLC). Although modularity is recognized for its potential to incorporate life cycle considerations into product architecture design, most modular design methods in the literature concentrate on generating highly-modular product architectures but lack the capability for assessing life cycle consequences of these modules in a supply chain. This paper proposes a methodology to find a robust modular architecture with minimal life cycle costs and environmental impacts at the design configuration stage. The objective of the proposed methodology is not to maximize modularity, but to adopt life cycle costing and life cycle assessment of a product in a closed-loop supply chain to identify the most beneficial modular structure. Further, capacity influence of the existing processing facilities in the supply chain on life cycle costs and environmental impacts is evaluated and discussed in this paper.Product designers are seeking effective ways to meet customer requirements, government policies, and internal business drivers for sustainability. Sustainable products encompass attributes including recyclable and renewable materials use, low energy consumption, cost competitiveness, and consideration of safety and health concerns. Beyond product attributes, however, sustainable products are cognizant of a broader life cycle perspective, which necessitates consideration of manufacturing and supply chain issues during design. Current life cycle assessment tools are often deficient in assisting design for manufacturing efforts due to coarseness of available process data or even a lack of representative process models. In addition, such tools consider only the environmental impacts and do not account for broader sustainability measures. Research with a titanium component manufacturer is addressing these deficiencies. A unit process modeling-based method is described to assist in strategic decision making to balance cradle-to-gate economic, environmental, and social attributes. A set of metrics is defined and used as a basis for comparison of design alternatives. The method is demonstrated for analysis of titanium component alternatives resulting from design for manufacturing activities. It is shown that this method can assist engineers in developing more sustainable products.Bamboo is a natural resource widely distributed in Southeast Asia, including Japan. It has drawn attention as a sustainable and environmentally safe material because it is renewable and has a quick growth rate. Bamboo fiber also has high specific strength and stiffness. A self-bonding fiberboard using high-quality bamboo fiber extracted with a machining center has been fabricated by hot press forming. Therefore, a sustainable manufacturing system that focuses on bamboo is proposed. This paper describes the environmental burdens of this system, which are evaluated quantitatively using life cycle assessment (LCA).The Function Impact Method (FIM) is a semi-quantitative eco-design methodology that is targeted specifically towards the early stages of the design process. The FIM allows a designer to predict the environmental impacts associated with a new functional embodiment by extrapolating knowledge from Life cycle assessment (LCA) of similar existing designs. LCA however, is associated with substantial sources of uncertainty. Furthermore, the FIM uses a subjective weighting scheme for representing function-structure affinities. In the authors' previous work, a Monte-Carlo variation analysis was used to estimate sensitivity of the input data and select the preferred redesign strategy. This paper proposes a method to formalize the input uncertainties in the FIM by modeling the uncertainties present in the results of the LCA's and the involved function-structure affinities using Info-gap decision theory. The desirability of redesigning a particular function based on the magnitude of its function-connectivity and eco-impact is estimated, and a decision making methodology based on robust satisficing is discussed This method is applied for making robust redesign decisions with regards to re-designing a pneumatic impact wrench for sustainability.The aim of this paper is to propose a framework to guide engineers' use of LCA tools to optimize three important stages of a product's life cycle. The three phases are product concept design, manufacturing process and products end of life recycle. A mountain bike has been used as an example to demonstrate how engineers are guided by the proposed framework. The proposed framework does not only lead industry in a sustainable design direction but also guide them to embed sustainable thinking into every stage of a product life cycle based on their existing resources. Some design tools and techniques have been incorporated with life cycle assessment tools to achieve the sustainable optimization of the products.This paper presents a research effort that is underway to integrate product, manufacturing process, and supply chain models to optimize product design variants in terms of costs and environmental impacts. Integrated sustainable design and manufacturing requires multidisciplinary knowledge from various industrial domains to design and manufacture environmentally-responsible products. Sustainable design should consider life cycle costs and environmental impacts, including those related to materials and energy requirements during the manufacturing, use, and end-of-life phases of a product's life. This paper discusses important technological requirements in product architecture and integrated optimization to realize integrated sustainable design and manufacturing. Finally, this paper introduces a scalable design environment, called the Sustainable Product Development Col laboratory, which can convey sustainability principles in the context of product architectural design, manufacturing, assembly, and supply chain decisions to designers. Potential benefits of this platform are also discussed.To begin to identify the environmental impacts of coated cutting tools, lathe cutting inserts were coated with a thin film of diamond. To assess the environmental impacts of the coating process on the life cycle analysis (LCA) of a cutting tool, all chemical processes, including pre- and post- deposition processes and energy expenditures were monitored and recorded for entry into SimaPro LCA software. For the conditions evaluated, the primary deposition process was found to have a carbon footprint of 6.6 equivalent kilograms of carbon dioxide, and the etching process was found to be responsible for 96.8 equivalent grams of carbon dioxide.Tourism products are the core elements of the tourism industry. In the context of developing low-carbon tourism economy, the production and consumption of tourism products is encouraged. However, the complex composition and the diversity of carbon emission of tourism products determine that it is difficult to take a single carbon emission standard for the production of tourism products. In this paper, the author attempts to apply Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a benchmark survey tool to the evaluation of the production and consumption of low-carbon tourism products. At the end of the paper, several improvement measures to reduce carbon emissions on the basis of assessment results are proposed to promote the sustainable development of the Chinese tourism industry.This chapter discusses the needs, challenges, and benefits of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in the environmental evaluation of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs). The chapter provides a detailed description of the LCA approach and describes the unique challenges surrounding the LCA of nanotechnology, specifically PNCs. The benefits of LCA and an overview of the major studies on the LCA of nanotechnology are also presented. Case studies on the LCA of carbon nanofiber (CNF)-reinforced polymer nanocomposites are presented along with a general discussion about the LCA of specific nanoproducts. The role of predictive approaches in the evaluation of emerging nanoproducts is also discussed.The agricultural sector contributes significantly to global carbon emissions from diverse sources such as product and machinery manufacturing, transport of materials and direct and indirect soil greenhouse gas emissions. In this article, we use farm survey data from the Jiangsu Province, China, combined with published estimates of emissions for individual farm operations in a whole life cycle analysis to quantify the relative contribution of a range of farming operations and determine the carbon footprint of different canopy vegetables (tomato, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, water spinach and amaranth). Over 30 vegetable farms of different vegetable crops at very different scale were randomly selected and surveyed by questionnaire visits to farmers who manage or operate the vegetable farms. For carbon footprint calculations, emission factors from the literature were used as default values for the vegetable production except for the factor of N fertilizer, which causes, in particular, high emissions in its manufacturing. Statistical analysis was done with ANOVA using software EXCEL 2003 and JMP. The results show that the estimated mean carbon footprint in kg CE ha(-1) for different greenhouse vegetables is 1645.2 +/- 99.9 for tomato, 1287.0 +/- 582.5 for Chinese cabbage, 1272.9 +/- 642.6 for cucumber, 1058.3 +/- 835.5 for water spinach, and 1546.0 +/- 865.7 for amaranth respectively. Following a similar trend, the estimated mean carbon footprint in kg CE per ton of product is 45.9 +/- 26.4 for tomato, 135.4 +/- 74.9 for Chinese cabbage, 43.4 +/- 37.3 for cucumber, 13.9 +/- 11.3 for water spinach and 105.2 +/- 68.1 for amaranth respectively. Of the total carbon footprint, 78% on average resulted from fertilizer use (59% allocated to inorganic nitrogen fertilizer). Thus, proper management of nutrients and rational fertilization for vegetable production may offer great opportunity both for enhancing economical efficiency and for mitigating climate change in vegetable production.While video conferencing is often viewed as a greener alternative to physically travelling for face-to-face meetings, it has its own energy and carbon dioxide costs. In this paper we present the first analysis of the total cost of videoconferencing, including network plus videoconferencing equipment operating costs, and lifecycle assessment (LCA) of equipment costs, and compare these costs to the total cost of transport for face-to-face meetings. While the costs of these meeting forms depend on many factors such as distance travelled, meeting duration, and the technologies used, we find that videoconferencing takes at most 7% of the energy/carbon of a face-to-face meeting. We analyze the sensitivity of the costs to various factors and consider trends in energy and carbon usage to predict how the comparison might change in the future.In many horticultural areas, the pest management in bio-physically limited and technically constrained production systems is reduced to a chemical control strategy. The environmental impact and fate of pesticides and fertilizers is becoming a matter of growing concern among research organizations and governmental institutions in countries such as Colombia. The objective of the present work was to estimate the environmental impact caused by the pesticides used in greenhouse tomatoes. Primary information was collected through structured interviews with a representative set of local growers. For each grower amount of pesticide products used as well as the pesticide management schemes were investigated. Through a life cycle assessment approach the environmental impact of pesticides manufacture, transport and field use was estimated. An adapted version of the PestLCI and USES-LCA models were used to estimate the environmental fate of pesticides for each individual production unit. The USES-LCA model considered the field use stage with the topsoil layer and the air as the affected environmental compartments. Afterwards, the impact was scaled-up to the regional level by modelling the spatially variability observed for the surveyed pesticide data. In order to determine if the environmental impact caused by pesticides is evenly distributed or exhibited any spatial pattern a point pattern analysis was carried out. Results indicated a higher impact at the manufacture stage for most of the categories analysed. A high variability on the environmental impact was observed at the regional scale due to the different products and schemes applied by individual growers in the region.Nowadays policy makers focus more and more on climate change, energy use and other environmental threats. This urges the implementation of corresponding strategies into the management of production systems like greenhouse horticulture. In order to produce more sustainable one must know which strategies implicate a high environmental burden and respective costs. A life cycle assessment (LCA) allows such a quantification of the environmental performance of a product regarding the comprising production subprocesses. Due to a high energy demand in Flanders' glass greenhouse tomato production, this LCA assessed and compared the environmental impact of three applied heating systems: a traditional gas boiler, oil boiler and cogeneration (also combined heat and power, CHP) system. The inventory of inputs and impacts (outputs) were expressed in terms of 1 ton of produced tomatoes. Results show to what extent the different systems contribute relatively to sustainable management concerning emissions and cumulative energy demand. In most impact categories the comparative LCA indicated a preference for the cogeneration system, but this only due to a social credit of avoided electricity production by power stations. However, regarding ozone depletion and photochemical oxidation, the gas boiler generated a lower impact, even though differences with the former are small. The oil boiler system has an overall unfavorable impact as the incineration of oil has a higher pollution potential compared to natural gas. Furthermore the CO2 in the flue gasses cannot be recovered, making it necessary to produce additionally liquid carbon dioxide, creating an even higher burden on the environment.Environmental management is one of the industry cornerstones of sustainable development. In order to understand fully the environmental aspects associated with the raw material acquisition, production, use, and end-of-life operations of aluminium products, the Aluminium Industry has developed an approach based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology. Within this framework, the Primary Aluminium Industry has established a global Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data set. Inventory flows include inputs of raw materials, energy and water, emissions to air and water, and solid waste. This paper presents the latest LCI data update by the International Aluminium Institute for the year 2010, based on a survey of aluminium plants globally, including bauxite mining, alumina refining, anode production, electrolysis and casting. This update also includes some performance tracking based on the last LCI data collection in 2005, reflecting progress in efficiency and technology, as well as changes in the geographical location of the industry [2010 data pending].Building owners, designers and constructors are seeing a rapid increase in the number of sustainably designed high performance buildings. These buildings provide numerous benefits to the owners and occupants to include improved indoor air quality, energy efficiency, and environmental site standards; and ultimately enhance productivity for the building occupants. As the demand increases for higher building energy efficiency and environmental standards, application of a set of process models will support consistency and optimization during the design process. Systems engineering process models have proven effective in taking an integrated and comprehensive view of a system while allowing for clear stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, life cycle analysis, technology insertion, validation and verification. This paper overlays systems engineering on the sustainable design process by providing a framework for application of the Waterfall, Vee, and Spiral process models to high performance buildings. Each process model is mapped to the sustainable design process and is evaluated for its applicability to projects and building types. Adaptations of the models are provided as Green Building Process Models.This study shows how to measure CO2 emissions caused by railways during its life span from construction to disposal. It is now a common global concern that CO2 reduction is vital for conserving the global environment. Amidst this growing awareness, rail transport has attracted significant attention as an environmentally-friendly transportation mode due to its low emission of CO2 gas. But in many studies the amount of CO2 is calculated only during operation and doesn't include emissions during the phase of construction of related infrastructure and rolling stocks. Rail transport can not be a truly environmentally-friendly transportation mode if it isn't proven to emit less gases compared with other modes during a modes whole life cycle. In this paper, we introduce the method to calculate CO2 emission from the construction of infrastructure with the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the result of a case study.A key paradigm shift resulting from the intersection of the information technology (IT) and utility sectors is the availability of real-time data regarding energy use across different industries. Historically, ascertaining the energy costs across the value chain of a given product or service was a laborious and expensive task, requiring many months of data collection; several proxies or approximations for cases where measured data might not be cost-effectively available; and even then, the resulting energy footprint could have significant uncertainty based on time-of-measurement, geographic diversity of manufacturing sites, etc. As dynamic energy pricing begins to take hold and environmental externalities begin to be priced into existing cost structures, the ability to optimize a given value chain for minimal energy use becomes increasingly attractive. In this paper, we discuss an approach for leveraging dynamically available data alongside historical n-tier supply chain models to avail the ability for such optimization. The approach is illustrated for the case study of a computer manufacturer, where we find that metering electricity use at a small subset of sites can allow for a reasonable estimate of the total energy use across the supply chain.In the last twenty years, the exploitation of non-renewable resources and the effects of their applications on environment and human health were considered central topics in political and scientific debate on European and worldwide scale. This kind of resources have been used in different sectors, as energy systems, technological research, but also in private/public buildings and production of consumer goods, involving significantly domestic and ordinary life of every human being. Studies about the effect of this exploitation carried out discouraging results, in terms of climate changes and energy sustenance; this determined a progressive approach process to a new concept of development, able to couple the qualitative standard of modern life with the respect of planet and its inhabitants. Starting from this reflection, scientific community moved towards research on alternative resources and developed a new way to conceive planning process and technical innovations, in order to exploit renewable energies and recycled materials, promote energy savings and reduce environmental pollution. In this context the present paper aims at evaluating benefits relating to different solutions of thermal insulation in building envelope. In fact a high grade of insulation ensures better comfort conditions in inner spaces, reducing energy consumptions due to heating and cooling conditioning. The paper presents the results of a detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the reflective foil ISOLIVING, conceived and produced by an Italian company. The Life Cycle Assessment methodology allows to consider all stages of the life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to the product's disposal, in an optics "from cradle to grave". In particular, the study takes into account the production phase of the reflective foil ISOLIVING, the installation phase, the transport of all components to the production site and also the end of life scenario of the material. The possibility to collect many detailed information about the production phase adds value to the study. The analysis is carried out according to UNI EN ISO 14040 and UNI EN ISO 14044, which regulate the LCA procedure. The LCA modeling was performed using SimaPro software application. The results of the analysis allow to make an important comparison concerning the environmental performances, between the reflective foil ISOLIVING and other types of insulating materials.An LCA tool first reported on at the ASME ES conference in 2007 has been expanded and improved as follows: More than 400 production vehicles from all over the world are now in the data base Conventional and renewable liquid and gas fuels are included Electric vehicles (EVs) and plug in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are included along with hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and conventional internal combustion engine vehicles The tool is now web-based The LCA tool includes both fuel and vehicle life cycle coefficients in its data base. To illustrate the LCA ranking of vehicles using electricity (EVs, PHEVs, and HEVs) vs. conventional vehicles this paper will report on greenhouse gas emissions, total life cycle energy use along with NO., SO x and mercury emissions. It will be shown, for example, that EVs are not the cleanest solution contrary to claims of various commentators in the popular press and of EV enthusiasts who do not take the entire life cycle into account.In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in sustainable development that could be regarded both as new constraint and opportunity to achieve a competitive advantage. Several tools like the implementation of an Environmental Management system, the adoption of Life Cycle assessment and Eco-Labelling may be used in order to enhance companies' competitiveness. In this context, policy makers are challenged to design effective policies and organizations for exploiting the opportunities that increasing environmental awareness provides. In order to make this task easier a holistic and systemic approach based on modeling may be used, so that users understand both structure and dynamics of complex systems in which they are in.This paper shows the results of the LiMaS project (www.limas-eup.eu), co-funded by EACI in the CIP Eco-innovation programme. The project has defined a methodological approach to draw a global picture of the environmental performance of products & organisations, taking advantage of the data synergies between different environmental topics (e.g. Life Cycle Assessment, legal requirements, Eco-labelling, etc.). This methodology has been implemented in some desktop tools (i.e. EXCEL applications and a simplified LCA software tool), and after testing, integrated in the beta-version of a web-based software tool (offered free-of-charge for being used by SMEs). During the project, the tools have been tested in five companies and more than 550 users have obtained access to the tools (after registration in the project website). The tools enable "technical staff", not necessarily "environmental experts", to better know the environmental performance of their products and decide where to locate their efforts on sustainable design.The media sector is becoming increasingly digital and newspapers are most commonly published online as well as on paper. For printed newspaper, paper production is the main reason for environmental impacts according to several studies performed, but for online newspapers the environmental impacts are not as well studied. The current study looked into key factors influencing the potential climate change impact of online newspapers using life cycle assessment. The main contributors to the climate change potential of the Finnish online newspaper studied were: in the case of using a computer, manufacturing of the device followed by electronic distribution, and in the case of using a tablet device, electronic distribution followed by manufacturing of the device. Geographical location, lifetime and total active use of the electronic devices are important factors when assessing the environmental impacts and so is the type of device used for accessing and reading the online newspaper.The electronics sector is one of the fastest developing industry branches. Rapidly changing product systems and components are a challenge for producers and designers to create ecodesign suitable electronic products. Therefore a fast and flexible tool is needed to accomplish ecodesign on products and processes with reasonable effort. Due to the fact that ecodesign should reflect life cycle thinking (a consideration of only one stage of the life cycle might lead to a shifting of burdens), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a proper tool to fulfil these requirements. Since the European ecodesign directives (EuP/ErP) are extended to more and more applications including electronic components, electronic enterprises will be faced with an increasing demand to provide their customers information concerning the environmental profiles of their products. Bigger sized companies already implemented ecodesign procedures into the product development. However, most of the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) cannot afford the required resources. Therefore, the ecodesign tool "EDEP" has been developed to support SMEs during the development process. Based on the method of LCA and by using generic modules, high quality results are generated in reasonable time and with reasonable personal resources without losing the required transparency and depth of detail for the identification of ecodesign measures.The French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) has initiated a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study to quantify the potential environmental impacts of electronic mail, the transmission of a 1 Mb document being the functional unit. The system boundaries comprise the manufacturing, the use and the end-of-life of all the equipment necessary to fulfill the service studied (computers, servers, routers.). The results show that the manufacturing of the computers of end-users and the use phase of datacenter equipment are the major contributors to the overall impact. The impacts of the manufacturing phase mainly come from the production of printed wiring boards while most potential environmental impacts of the use phase arise from electricity consumption of datacenter equipment used for data storage. The relative contribution of each phase varies significantly between professional and domestic users because of a more intensive use of equipment in a working environment.Use of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for information and communications technology (ICT) equipment, networks, services and organizations is growing in importance. The complexity of conducting LCA for ICT has led to several initiatives (e.g. by ITU-T and ETSI) to develop standardized methodologies. LCA is an important methodological platform for understanding environmental impact of various product systems and is found to provide a good basis for prioritization of a company's environmental work. However, results of an LCA are always model-based representations of the real environmental impact, and the absolute impact of a certain equipment, network, service or organization is beyond reach. LCA results are only valid under the assumptions of the study and are still associated with substantial uncertainty, which needs to be considered to the extent needed to understand the study results. This paper demonstrates that by examples related to uncertainty and variability of scenarios and data.In comparative life cycle assessment (LCA), one of the most important steps is a definition of functional unit and subsequently setting system boundaries. When comparing multifunctional electronic devices, this step is more complicated than in many other cases. We perform an illustrative LCA comparison of a smartphone and a basket of dedicated devices. On the case study we illustrate different approaches towards defining system boundaries based on different user profiles and discuss how these decisions affect the results. We present results for climate change and freshwater ecotoxicity impact categories. The results show the importance of the size of system boundaries, particularly when including network and internet infrastructure. User profile plays a key role here.In this study, by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, we had a comparison study of paper billing and payment (PBP) with electronic billing and payment (EBP) in the U.S. Through the use of life cycle approaches in the PBP system, we considered all inputs and outputs from production and operation servers (data center), bill distribution, and computer payments. In the PBP system, production of paper and envelops, production and print of bills, bill distribution (ingoing and outgoing from consumers), payment, and waste were considered. Finally, comparison results between PBP and EBP system in terms of environmental impacts are compared in two systems.The sensing floor is a smart textile application that supports Ambient Assisted Living as it introduces smart functions unobtrusively in the user's daily living environment. The technology is based on textile sensor areas and microelectronic modules, which are integrated invisibly in the textile underlay of carpets or laminates. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out to support environmentally conscious decision-making in the course of product development. The results suggest that the system's electricity consumption during its use phase is the most relevant environmental aspect and that a 2.5 mm thick polyester fleece has the highest environmental burden of the materials in the product. The paper also reports about experiences with conducting a LCA in the context of the SME that develops and manufactures the sensing floor system.The benefits of e-waste recycling in The Netherlands was studied for the year 2009 using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Avoided greenhouse gas emissions from material recovery of all collected e-waste and the destruction of (H)CFC containing coolants from cooling and freezing appliances were calculated using the IPCC 2007 method. In 2009, about 73,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents were avoided due to material recovery out of e-waste. The removal and destruction of (H)CFCs from Cooling and Freezing appliances led to the avoidance of greenhouse gases of approximately 530,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents. The monitoring which started after completion of the study show that the avoided greenhouse gases from material recycling increased from 73,000 tonnes in 2009 to 89 000 tonnes in 2010 and 104 000 tonnes in 2011 due to the fact that more e-waste was collected and investments have been made by the recycling companies to retrieve more material. The phase out of (H)CFC's from cooling and freezing appliances led to a decrease from 520,000 tonnes in 2009 to 400,000 tonnes in 2010 but increased to 500,000 tonnes in 2011. The investments done by recyclers to retrieve more (H)CFC's out of CF may be an explanation for this increase.This paper describes the development of specifications for a tool that aims at assessing the environmental impact of electrical and electronic products. The emergence of new constraints, including European environmental regulations and the implementation of new requirements for environmental communication resulted in the appearance of new needs regarding the quantification of the environmental impact of an Electrical and Electronic product. Three development axes were identified: The first one was to improve the software user-friendly aspect. The second axis was to propose a database that is adapted to Electrical and Electronic product issues. The last aspect consisted in providing a highly accessible tool where the concept of collaborative work is the main goal; given that virtually, different actors are involved at each step of the product life cycle.A number of recent publications point to the important role of eco-design approaches in risk mitigation for critical materials supply. The core of eco-design is life cycle thinking - usually as some form of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach together with a set of generic guidelines such as checklists, etc. There has however been little appraisal of the extent to which eco-design offers opportunities in the context of critical material supply risks. It is this gap that this paper will tackle. Through research with 30 companies in The Netherlands, a small number see the phenomena of critical materials as an opportunity to seek competitive advantage via new product designs. There is also evidence that those companies see opportunities via an eco- design based approach but there are some issues that need to be addressed before such eco- design approaches could be more successful and used widely.Interest in the environmental impact from the sector of information and communication technology (ICT) is growing. A significant part of ICTs are digital media services. In order to reduce their negative environmental impacts, the design of such systems needs to take sustainability goals into account. One important tool which can support green system design is life cycle assessment (LCA) which is a well-established methodology in other sectors of the economy. However, a variety of properties distinguish digital media systems from traditional product systems. We review those differences and challenges to the application of LCAs to green system design of digital media products and present a case study of green system design from a large online newspaper.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is considered as the most advanced tool for improving the environmental performance of products. There are however barriers that reduce its implementation, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), such as data intensity, costs, and expertise required to run the LCA studies. The European project "LCA to go" develops sectoral methods and tools for bio-based plastics, industrial machinery, electronics (including printed circuit boards, semiconductors and passive components), renewable energy, sensors and smart textiles. These sectors have been chosen, as the manufacturers show a high interest in making clear the environmental benefits of their products to customers and in prioritizing so they can reduce their environmental impacts. The project has to bridge the language gap between the environmental terminology used in LCAs and the engineering language of product developers. The overall goal of the project is to develop LCA webtools customized for SMEs.According to the ISO14020 standard eco-labeling of products is intended to guide consumers towards the more environmentally friendly segment of products available on the market. To investigate if this is successful for laptop computers, a life cycle assessment (LCA) model of a generic, up to date laptop was created. The constraints imposed by two different eco-labels for laptops were implemented in the LCA model; the eco-labels used for this purpose were EPEAT (based in the US) and TCO (based in Sweden). The analysis of the eco-labels criteria revealed that the labels impose few changes on the design of the laptop as describe in the LCA model and that their influence on the life cycle impact was minimal. The labels do promote energy efficiency, but the marked demand for long battery life is a push so strong that the average lap top on the market well fulfills these criteria. It was notable that the lap top power efficiency together with short product life, resulted in that the use phase environmental impacts was less compared to the production phase environmental impacts (partly opposed to some earlier studies, where the electricity consumption during use was a more important driver). To promote better environmental performance the energy efficiency could be improved further; but useful life of lap tops is an increasingly important issue to be addressed. Criteria for eco-labels must be continuously updated to actually guide toward a more environmentally friendly market segment for fast developing products like electronics.Less than 50% of consumers in North America are concerned about climate change. This is one of the conclusions drawn by a recent survey conducted by Nielsen Holdings N.V. Since consumers are less concerned, many companies in the United States and Canada have tended to pay less attention to international environmental initiatives as they evolved. It is hardly a surprising fact then that more and more North American manufacturers only discover the new requirements for environmental labelling of their export products after having lost a bid to a European or Asian competitor. Two major types of environmental labelling initiatives are currently expanding: Product environmental declaration, or PED, is a standardized document that describes the environmental impacts of a product such as the raw material depletion, water footprint, water toxicity, carbon footprint, ozone layer depletion as well as other relevant environmental information such as the recycling potential or the energy consumption of the product. The impact categories are based on a life cycle assessment (LCA). PED's are primarily intended for use in business-to-business communication. The environmental labelling of consumer products is also based on a life cycle assessment. These labels are intended to provide consumers with reliable environmental information in order to decide their consumption patterns.The current methods of life cycle assessment mainly focus on the impacts evaluation of existing products and detailed design of products, and there is a lack of direct guidance to the green design process. In this paper, a new life cycle design method based on green features is proposed for mechanical and electrical products. Firstly, the concept of green feature is proposed to describe information of green design. Then, through exploration of the mapping relationship between traditional design information and green feature, the information expression model which is easy to extract green features is established. Lastly, the LCA idea is introduced to design process and is combined with green feature, thus the green features in traditional design are identified, selected, classified and aggregated and the green feature-based modeling can be realized. The feedback of rapid life cycle assessment results can be conducted real time and green design is embedded into traditional design, which can improve environmental attributes of mechanical and electrical products. Finally, a case is used to illustrate the application of green feature.With the rapid growth in information and communication technology (ICT), there is increase in awareness of the environmental impacts related to the accelerating mass production, electricity use, and waste management of waste computers. India as become a emerging as hub for ICT as a consumer and supplier of e-products and market of computers has grown at an unprecedented pace in recent decade. This paper aims to describe the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental performance of Computers in Indian scenario. A desktop personal computer system has been selected to carry out the study. The waste management hierarchy is evaluated using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).Increasing fuel costs and a stronger focus on both energy efficiency and environmental competitiveness have created a large interest world-wide for using lightweight materials in shipbuilding. One of the major emerging global challenges affecting shipping is environmental protection and sustainability, with the challenge of climate change due to carbon emission. Due to economic and environmental advantages over other transportation modes, the reliance on shipping is expected to rise. Introduction of new technology, changes to ship and engine design and improvements in operating procedures will ensure a much slower rate of CO2 emissions. By manufacturing ship structures using composites, the engine power can be reduced and the fuel consumption can be decreased. The different materials of construction of ship hulls will affect several cost elements during the production, operation and maintenance and decommissioning of ships. Furthermore, the material selection has an impact on the energy consumption within all stages of the ships life cycle. Life cycle analysis of an NMHS and an MHS is done in this paper. Carbon emissions in the different parts of the lifecycle is studied and compared.This study is an experimental determination of the energy return on investment (EROI) for algal biocrude production at a research facility at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). During the period of this assessment, algae were grown at several cultivation scales and processed using centrifugation for harvesting, electromechanical cell lysing, and lipid separation in an enhanced coalescence membrane. The separated algal lipids represent a biocrude product that could be refined into fuel. To determine the EROI, a second order analysis was conducted, which includes direct and indirect energy flows, but does not consider capital energy expenses. At the time that the data in this study was collected, the research program was focused on improving biomass and lipid productivity. As a result, some higher efficiency processing steps were replaced by lower efficiency ones to permit other experiments. Although the production process evaluated here was energy negative, the majority of the energy consumption resulted from non-optimized growth conditions. Therefore, the experimental results do not represent an expected typical case EROI for algal fuels, but rather outline the important parameters to consider in such an analysis. The results are the first known experimental energy balance for an integrated algal biocrude production facility. A Reduced Case is presented that speculates the energy use for a similar system in commercial-scale production. In addition, an analytical model that is populated with data that have been reported in the literature is presented. For the experiments, the Reduced Case, and Literature Model, the estimated EROI was 1.3 x 10(-3), 0.13, and 0.57, respectively (refining energy requirements are not included in the experimental or Reduced Case EROI value). These results were dominated by growth inputs (96.59%, 94.15%, and 76.32% of the total energy requirement, respectively). For the experiments and Literature Model, lipid separation was the most energy intensive processing step (2.47% and 10.06%, respectively), followed by harvesting, refining, and then electromechanical cell lysing.Sustainability goals for buildings are highly acclaimed as public and private sector's contributions to environmental responsibility, resource efficiency, occupant comfort and wellbeing. All too often a building's performance does not meet design expectations, particularly a new building's energy savings projection that overstates achievable performance. Across the high-performing building industry, these unrealistic energy performance goals have come from, among other things, inadequate modeling and benchmarking practices, unreliable monitoring and equipment controls systems, and significant changes in space usage and tenant improvements. There is still lack of commitment to include operations staff in goal setting and provide adequate budgets for periodic benchmarking, commissioning, and tuning of buildings' mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. This paper provides the analytical, performance & prescriptive measures for life cycle assessment of energy efficiency projects which can help in making adaptive changes to buildings systems to suit changing uses, or other internal and external factors that directly or indirectly affect performance.A biophysical understanding of the MSW-to-energy facility located at the Sao Joao landfill in Sao Paulo is performed using emergy synthesis. The implementation of a plan for environmental compensation in fulfillment of State's requirements was also assessed. Emergy based indices are calculated to assess the environmental pressure and sustainability status of the biogas project. The study was conducted by combining the study of emergy indicators and the net emergy yield ratio to determine long-term sustainability and measure global environmental stress. The Emergy investment to the use of biogas is relatively low and profitable. The implementation of the project for environmental compensation does not change the Emergy investment significantly, but the energy recovery is high. The conclusions justify the effort invested in developing MSW-to-energy plants and are applicable for policy makers in a highly sensitive sector to achieve sustainability goals - recovery of energy.Purpose - To examine the cost-effectiveness of UK government policy with respect to the mitigation of carbon emissions from the transport sector. Methodology/approach - Existing policy as set out by the Department for Transport in Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future is examined. This document elaborates a Low Carbon Transport Strategy intended to achieve annual emissions savings of 17.7 MtCO(2) by 2020. A wide range of policy areas where further action could be taken to reduce carbon emissions are examined and their cost-effectiveness considered. Findings - Measures that influence behaviour including smarter choices, eco-driving across modes, freight best practice and modest price increases are highly cost-effective. More cost-effective routes to saving 17.7 MtCO(2) are identified, as are further cost-effective savings. Originality/value - It appears that government targets could be delivered and indeed exceeded at lower cost than the Low Carbon Transport Strategy. However, policy development is influenced by a wide range of factors which help to explain why cost-effective measures are not always fully exploited.This paper presents the methodology and distribution network model used for the assessment of alternative distribution network design strategies in terms of the cost and benefits involved. In contrast to network specific design approach, a statistical distribution network design model has been adopted in this work. The investigation into the viability of three voltage levels design (132/11/0.4kV) when compared to conventional four voltage levels design (132/33/11/0.4kV) for a typical rural case have been carried out. The technical impact and economic implications of both design options have been quantitatively evaluated and quantified.The incitements from society for life-cycle assessment (LCA) and credible ecolables are ever-increasing and often important for successful marketing of products. Robust assessment methods are important for comparable, useful and trustworthy LCAs and ecolables. In order to improve the metrics of a product's ecolable, is it important to fully understand its production system. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) models are able to provide more detailed information than traditional LCA approaches. Therefore, methods used to combining LCA in DES have been developed during the last decade. The combined approaches have matured and the experiences grown. This article compares six previous cases and aims to summarize and discuss their experiences to aid future development. The results show where it is specifically important to make good decisions throughout the modeling methodology, for example goal and scope definition, trustworthy input data for sensitive parts, and communicable impact categories.Degradation of environment is currently at huge risk because of factors related to population growth, resource consumption, industrial activity, etc. This situation is causing serious environmental problems which called for new building developments to bridge the gap between this need for reduction of environmental impacts and ever increasing requirements on living. The developments were generally directed at the reduction of the energy consumption during occupation. But this increase of savings in operational energy is reflected on higher embodied energy and associated emissions from material production. The case study is focused around some issues of environmental performance pertaining to embodied energy, embodied emissions CO2-eq. and SO2-eq. from building structures. The optimization of material compositions of structures with passive energy standard are aimed at using materials from biomass in order to create green design. The plant materials serve as a long-term carbon store and use solar energy for production of raw material. The designed passive house from optimized compositions of alternatives achieves low embodied energy (2357.374 MJ per useful area), high negative balance of embodied CO2-eq. (-356.764 kg CO2-eq. per useful area) within construction phase of LCA. One of possible ways of reduction of carbon footprint of building is introduced in the paper.An evaluation of the environmental performance of clinker production using sewage sludge as alternative fuel has been conducted. To this end, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to estimate the main environmental impacts in four different scenarios considering conventional combustion with petroleum coke, the replacement of fossil fuel by sewage sludge and the variation of the moisture in the alternative fuel. The Recipe method, as midpoint and endpoint approach, has been used to calculate life cycle impact category indicators. Results have been classified into the main impact categories in each case, e. g. global warming, acidification or eutrophication. To obtain more real conclusions avoiding problems associated with subsequent scale factors, this research analyses the environmental performance of sludges as alternative fuel from the industrial point of view. The results show significant technical and environmental improvements in cement manufacturing when sludge is introduced although chemical composition of the studied sewage sludge as well as the moisture level affect notably to the final impacts.Building industry belongs to one of the most polluting industries. Therefore, the minimization of energy requirements of buildings, as well as the reduction of emissions produced within the buildings life cycle has become a point of interest of many engineers, designers, architects or researchers. Every process in construction sector requires large amounts of energy, which mostly originate from fossil fuels, emits substantial amounts of CO2 or SO2 and produces waste or pollution. Existence of buildings is thus responsible for more than one third of green house gasses produced, as well as for consumption of about the same share of energy. The selection of building materials used for construction of building is usually performed on the basis of technical and economical parameters. However, a question of environmental performance is increasingly taken into consideration with the principal aim of reaching sustainability, but is still not sufficient. As a matter of wide range of various parameters with different importance it is sometimes difficult to select the best-suited construction. In this paper a selection of building materials to construct external walls with technical, as well as environmental criteria in mind using multi criteria selection is presented. 5 compositions of external walls made of aerated concrete blocks with thickness of 300 mm and 375 mm were included into evaluation. In 4 structures the thermal insulation material (2 types of mineral insulation or 2 types of polystyrene) was added. Multi criteria analysis was performed on the basis of assessors' preference as well as on the basis of their considerable importance. Evaluation included technical parameters, such as thickness of wall, weight of used material, quantity of layers; thermal-physical parameters (calculated U-value, surface temperature) and environmental parameters, which were calculated on the basis of available materials' database. Environmental assessment was focused on 3 parameters: embodied energy of materials expressed by amount of Primary Energy Intensity, amount of CO2 emissions as Global Warming Potential and quantity of acidification gasses as Acidification Potential. Calculated values of environmental indicators were in range from 554.56 MJ/m(2) to 689.25 MJ/m(2) in the case of Primary Energy Intensity. Amount of calculated CO2 emissions (Global Warming Potential) ranged from 49.26 kg CO(2)eq/m(2) to 58.88 kg CO(2)eq/m(2) and values of Acidification Potential were calculated in range from 0.1296 kg SO(2)eq/m(2) to 0.2063 kg SO(2)eq/m(2). Environmental performance was compared with conventional evaluation and the optimal construction from the evaluated external walls was chosen.The greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, acidification and climate changes in general are well known environmental problems of nowadays. One of the most significant polluters of the environment at all is the building industry. The industry affects the environment in many ways. The construction process and building materials production not only consume the most energy and create huge amount of CO2 emissions, they also create a lot of waste, use non-energy related resources, and are responsible for the overall pollution. Extraction of raw materials to production of building materials, transportations, as well as build-up, operation or demolition of buildings requires massive amounts of energy and it results in huge amounts of greenhouse gasses or acidifying emissions, participates in depletion of ozone layer, eutrophication processes or photochemical ozone creation. The building materials environmental evaluation and its proper selection based on the environmental point of view is one of the significant ways to pollution reduction and energy consumption minimization. This paper is aimed at the environmental assessment of selected building constructions of office building in Slovak republic and the alternation of building materials in order to reduce the environmental impact of the construction. The selected building has four storeys and a basement. The roof construction of the office building was chosen for the environmental evaluation. Three environmental parameters were taken into the consideration: amount of the greenhouses gases related to the building materials (Global Warming Potential - GWP), amount of the acidification gases (Acidification Potential AP) and energy consumption regarding the material producing (Primary Energy Intensity - PEI). Data of the particular materials originated from the Austrian LCA database and included the loading of environment within the raw materials extraction, transportation, and material production up to material distribution. Based on this data the values for the whole construction were calculated using MS Excel tool by Createrra. The calculated values of GWP for the original roof construction reached 1,599,340.84 kg CO(2)eq, the acidification potential AP was 407.48 kg SO(2)eq and the primary energy PEI was calculated up to 544,593.23 MJ.This work compares the environmental impacts and economic performances of different technologies for rice husk-fuelled Combined Heat and Power (CHP) generation, in Thailand. A modified integrated model for efficient biomass and bioenergy network optimisation was used based on a previous work by Cucek et al. (2012). This model accounts for the evaluation of environmental footprints and economic performance within the framework of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Rice husk is considered to be one of the main sources of biomass waste in Thailand. More recently, the Thai government has promoted the use of biomass for energy purposes as a substitute for fossil fuel consumption, and to reduce the environmental impacts caused by using fossil fuels. Consequently, rice husk is being widely used for electricity generation on a commercial scale. This contribution assesses the environmental and economic profiles of different technologies for rice husk-fuelled CHP by employing a wider spectrum of technological options, including combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis systems. The indicators analysed are the key environmental footprints associated with biomass and fossil energy sources: carbon, nitrogen, and water footprints, and are supplemented by the costs. The results show that the best option from amongst the analysed options is pyrolysis, and the use of oil as a substitute for coal in the conventional coal power plants. The aggregated single measurement of sustainability regarding different technological options, the Sustainable Environmental Performance Indicator - SEPI (De Benedetto and Klemes, 2009), was calculated, having the advantage that the subjective weighting of environmental footprints is unrequired. The results obtained from this work can be exploited by decision makers for selecting appropriate systems in terms of environmental and economic performances.In a previous research developed by authors, it was published a methodology for estimating the energy content of the residual fraction refused by the Zaragoza's mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plant located in Zaragoza, Spain. The present study is based on a developed environmental evaluation method, that uses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, with the aim to evaluate the environmental implications, in terms of net CO2 emissions equivalent, of the valorisation of this residual fraction, taking into account the CO2-equivalent (eq.) emissions produced by the collection system, including transport stages, the MBT plant and the CO2-eq. emissions avoided by the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) recovery (energy and material) method used. As a case study, the MSW management system in the ecocity Valdespartera, which is attended by the Zaragoza's MBT plant, has been studied, taking into account a stationary vacuum waste collection and transport system for approximately 10,000 homes. Based on the application of the developed methodology to the case study, the environmental implications of the valorisation of the residual fraction refused by this MBT plant, which collects residual household waste from 62 municipalities in four regions of Aragon - Zaragoza, Ribera Baja del Ebro, Campo de Carinena, and Campo de Belchite, are evaluated. Results allow detecting significant technical and environmental findings that could be used for promoting essential changes in the upstream of the MBT plant. Also, these results are relevant to help municipal decision makers in order to develop energy and material recovery, and disposal programs.In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) technique based on ISO 14040 series was performed to evaluate biodiesel production from freshwater microalgae Scenedesmus armatus in terms of energy efficiency (Net Energy Ratio or NER) and environmental impact (Global Warming Potential or GWP). The system boundary covered the entire life cycle of microalgae-based biodiesel, which was divided into four distinct steps: cultivation, harvesting, oil extraction, and transesterification. Based on a functional unit of 1 MJ biodiesel, NER was found to be 0.34 and 0.19 for mass allocation and energy allocation, respectively. This energy deficit (NER< 1) for both allocation methods was due to the high energy input required to culture microalgae. However, CO2 uptake in biomass agriculture leads to better performance in global warming potential (GWP) when compared to conventional diesel and biodiesel produced from rapeseed and soybean. This is a result of the cultivation process in which microalgae can fix up to 25 % of net greenhouse gas emissions (kg CO2 equivalent). Sensitivity analysis showed that increasing in biomass concentration can improve not only net energy ratio (NER) but also global warming potential (GWP).The accuracy and the comprehensiveness of any pavement life-cycle assessment are limited by the ability of the supporting science to quantify the environmental impact. Pavement vehicle interaction represents a significant knowledge gap that has important implications for many pavement life-cycle assessment studies. In the current study, the authors assumed that a mechanistic model that linked pavement structure and properties to fuel consumption could contribute to closing the uncertainty gap of pavement vehicle interaction in life-cycle assessment of pavements. The simplest mechanistic pavement model, a Bernoulli Euler beam on a viscoelastic foundation subjected to a moving load, was considered. Wave propagation properties derived from falling weight deflectometer time history data of FHWA's Long-Term Pavement Performance program were used to calibrate top-layer and substrate moduli for various asphalt and concrete systems. The model was validated against recorded deflection data. The mechanistic response was used to determine gradient force and rolling resistance to link deflection to vehicle fuel consumption. A comparison with independent field data provided realistic order-of-magnitude estimates of fuel consumption related to pavement vehicle interaction as predicted by the model.The University of Burgos started the Building Engineer Degree from the 2010-2011 academic year as an adaptation of the Technical Architecture studies according to Bologna System. In the Technical Architecture degree were taught several aspects related to the sustainability, but this knowledge was spread on several subjects of the former degree of Technical Architecture. We renewed the subjects of the Technical Architecture studies by adapting to the new Grade. One of the goals was to introduce sustainability criteria in this academic qualification, so we created a new subject, Sustainable Construction. As a novelty the programs of this subject includes such important topics as: Life Cycle Assessment, Sustainability Assessment Tools, sustainability criteria... The sustainability field is constantly evolving. So the professors consider very convenient the contribution of knowledge by a research group that is working directly in this field within the Higher Polytechnic School. The research group in Building Engineering already had experience in research on sustainability issues such as the use of industrial by-products in the design of useful materials for construction, as the use of recycled polyurethane foam, slag and recycled aggregate in mortars and concretes. These lines of research have produced several publications in international refereed journals, numerous papers at international conferences and the development of a number of patents. Thus all these new skills have helped to structure the subject's curriculum of Sustainable Construction, so new graduates from the University of Burgos have a special sensitivity when applying sustainable criteria in the field of building, and have acquired a practical knowledge from the research carried out and their possible applications in the construction sector.Non-renewable resources management is one of the key issues of sustainable development. Therefore it is important to implement methods for assessing of the materials and fuels use in industrial processes. In this paper evaluation of fossil fuels consumption in blast furnace technology based on different life cycle impact assessment methods was presented. In order to evaluate the consumption of resources was used four life cycle impacts assessment methods: Ecoindicator 99, Cumulative Energy Demand, Cumulative Exergy Demand and ReCiPe. Different scenarios of using waste plastics as alternative fuels to reduce consumption of fossil fuels was presented. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis was carried out in accordance with standard EN ISO 14040: 2006, by four phase: goal and scope definition of LCA, inventory analysis LCI (Life Cycle Inventory), impact assessment LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment) and interpretation. In order to perform LCA analysis was used SimaPro 7.3 software.This second edition adds new insights into the field of biodegradable and renewable plastics. It describes novel approaches in products as well as processes that have been developed over the past seven years since this book was first published. Following the trend of the industry, more emphasis has been placed upon plastics from renewable resources. As the biodegradable plastics industry establishes itself, questions of Standards and Regulations that govern biodegradable polymers become more essential and are addressed in the first two chapters. The biodegradable industry is not only focused on producing plastics that undergo degradation, but considers the responsible use of energy as well as the end-of-life disposability as paramount. Use of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to address this aspect of the industry has become a norm for all new product and process developments. The various chapters have been organized in the order such that they describe tools and regulations that address biodegradability, advances in natural polymers and plastics from alternative feedstock, synthetic polymers and updates on synthetic procedures. The twenty chapters presented in this book have been written by world's leading scientists in their respective fields.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized method for analysing the environmental impacts of materials, products and services. LCA analyses the impacts of products from cradle to grave taking into account life cycle stages beginning with raw materials extraction, manufacturing, use and end of life stage with transport and distribution stages occurring in between many of these steps. LCA has been used extensively in the area of packaging and product design and there are substantial numbers of LCA applied to degradable polymers. These are in two forms life cycle inventories of specific polymers that are available for product developers and decision makers to use in life cycle studies, and comparative LCA studies usually of conventional and degradable polymers. The results from these studies show some established trends such as lower use of fossil resources for the biologically derived polymers but higher land use and water use. Greenhouse emissions production impacts are often lower for biopolymers, however the impacts of degradable polymers at landfill are highly dependent on the technology and assumptions around landfill performance. Life cycle assessment has already played an essential role in the understanding and consideration of degradable polymers. The use of comparative studies of degradable polymers need to be explicit regarding the assumptions at end of life and in the future need to expand to take better account of land and water impacts.Environmental protection is considered one of the hottest issues. Following the implementation of three directives of European Union, including: Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE), Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS), and Energy Using products (EuP), practitioners are expected to take responsive actions to stay in the market and remain competitive. Taiwanese notebook companies, as major manufacturers in the world, are advised to integrated green concepts into the process of new product development to alleviate the burden to the earth. The paper aims to explore the role of collaboration capability in the process of ENPD (Environmental New Product Development). Members of product development teams from different companies in notebook industry were interviewed. Documentary analysis, in-depth interview, and content analysis were used to collect and analyze data. The results indicated that practitioners do pay more and more attention to the idea of ENPD; however, the authors also found that the concepts of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and EMS (Environmental Management System) are still in their early stages that need to be integrated in formal business processes. Supplier management and green procurement are main approaches utilized by companies investigated in the current study. It is also noticed that OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) companies adopt different approaches to become environmental friendly.The traffic engineering environment impact assessment generally considered the influence on environment of traffic engineering operation stage only, relatively ignored the influence on environment of traffic engineering construction stage and demolition stage. This paper gives comprehensive analysis on the influence on environment of traffic engineering at the view of the whole life cycle of traffic engineering. That is considering the influence on environment of materiel production stage, processing stage, engineering construction stage and demolition stage. The traffic engineering environment impact assessment index is established by considering a low carbon economy connotation and with the use of total life cycle analysis method, and the evaluation index of each specific quantitative index is given. With the development of human society, energy are exploited and used by human with excessive and uncontrolled, which not only led to a situation of energy shortage, but also cause a series of serious environmental issues, for example, the ozone depletion caused by excessive greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse effect and so on. These environental issues are not only seriously affecting the living environment of human, but also hindered the continued development of the global economy, and its severity is as great as exceeding the tolerance. To this end, the world has lead to a low carbon economy boom to rescue the difficulties. Nowadays, low-carbon economy has become the focus of public concern. Low-carbon economy is a development model with low power consumption, low pollution, and low-emission characteristics. It is the new rules of world development which for the purpose of the organic combination of the response to climate change, energy security, and the promotion of sustainable economic and social development [1]. Transportation is one of industries with higher energy consumption and carbon emissions; it is undeniable that it obstructs the implementation of low-carbon economy to a large extent. Moreover, traffic engineering construction also hindered the implementation of low-carbon economy.It is very important to study environmental friendly materials and its patterns for the development in the world. The concept of environment friendly materials was described and the significance of environment friendly materials comes from four aspects, and different kinds of application and research of environment friendly materials were introduced.Steel pipe applications are more widely used, but there are no comparative analysises about the environmental impact and energy consum of steel pipe and its production processes. This article investigated the environmental implications of three typical steel pipe production processes based on energy materials and life cycle assessment perspective. We modeled scenarios, calculated energy consumed and six aspects which classified as GWP, ODP, AP, EP, POCP and DUST. The rank of energy consumed in descending order is C-Pipe> H-Pipe> W-Pipe. Welded steel pipe is the best energy-friendly material in term of energy consumption. The rank of impact potential according to normalized results in descending order is GWP>AP>DUST>EP>POCP>ODP. The rank of impact potential according to weight factor in descending order is AP>DUST>GWP>ODP>EP>POCP. Acid Potential is the most significant factor. The weight factor of AP is almost twice as much as that of GWP. In environmental terms, the environmental depletion index of welded pipe production process is lowest with minimal environmental impact and the cold drawn pipe production process the highest with largest environmental impact. Welded steel pipe is the best environment-friendly material in term of environmental impact. Utilization of green energy and waste heat can effectively reduce the environmental implications for both hot rolling pipe and cold drawn pipe production processes.Biofuels, like any emerging technology, have the potential to cause ethical dilemmas by exposing the colliding values of multiple stakeholders. Policy is an instrument used to buffer these collisions. In the case of biofuels, policy must seek to balance the postulated positive and negative environmental and socioeconomic effects of biofuels expansion and the associated development of new feedstocks. At best, this is a precarious endeavor. The biofuels community faces extreme ethical scrutiny to account for not only the direct effects of widespread adoption but the indirect effects as well. For example, biofuels used in the U.S. and E.U. must account for not only their own carbon footprint, but any emissions associated with market-mediated land-use change in other countries. This type of accounting requires development of new analytical methodologies and improved data coverage. In large part, the interactions between stakeholders surrounding these controversies will determine what role biofuels play in a range of issues including: (1) our future energy portfolio; (2) the strategies adopted to mitigate climate change; (3) changes in agriculture including the types of feedstocks used and how these feedstocks are grown; and (4) how to best manage the increasing demands of humans on resources and the environment. The acceptance of biofuel feedstocks as "renewable" or "sustainable" epitomizes the myriad ethical issues accompanying biofuel expansion. In this chapter, several biofuel feedstocks and the criteria by which different stakeholders judge them is examined to illustrate some of the alignments and conflicts in stakeholder values and how they affect feedstock choices, especially in the nascent cellulosic ethanol industry.The assessment of economic and environmental areas is becoming a crucial factor in the process of optimizing and improving the quality of services in industries, and is now commonly recognized as indispensable to a modern system of government. Thus the need for corporate assessment tools that go beyond the usual analysis of budget documents to become a primary business. Along with measures of economic and environmental soundness of the company, there are other assessments, purely qualitative, relative, for example, to the organizational-managerial structure of the enterprise and the skills of the management. The aim of this work is to analyse these aspects. Through the multi criterion decision-making approach and the application of the Life Cycle Assessment approach, we have developed a model for the assessment and quantification of these elements for the organizational-management of a "typical" bearing industry.The environmental impact of manufacturing an yttrium-doped strontium titanate (SYT) anode-supported planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system has been examined. Key components of an SOFC system including anode substrate, PEN (Positive electrode-Electrolyte-Negative electrode) structure, interconnects, and balance of plant (BoP) have been evaluated in terms of energy consumption and key air emissions using the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach.Published data from Australian and international sources are used to compile inputs and outputs for the combined system of fuel extraction and processing and electricity generation, for the cases of conventional natural gas, coal seam gas, and black coal fuels. A new method is being developed to assess the consequences of resource scarcity using mid-point impact indicators derived from established life cycle assessment methodology. When one particular resource such as natural gas is substituted by another resource such as coal, then the difference between the indicators corresponds to the environmental impact associated with this substitution. In this study, these differences are compared for the substitution of conventional gas with either black coal or coal seam gas to generate electricity. The results indicate lower cradle to gate impacts in global warming, acidification, particulates and solid waste generation as well as water consumption when substituting natural gas with coal seam gas. Conversely, substitution of conventional gas with black coal will result in overall higher impacts in these categories. However, coal seam gas involves greater withdrawal of underground water than in the case of the other fuels; this water requires treatment, involving production of a potentially damaging saline effluent. Potential risks may also exist arising from the large number of on-shore coal seam gas wells required per megajoule of fuel. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the International Energy FoundationThe use of renewable energy system (RES) is increasing rapidly. However, it is still difficult to measure the environmental impact of renewable energy system. This study aims to develop a general environmental indicator which is able to reflect all the aspects of environmental impacts of a RES. The life cycle assessment (LCA) and fuzzy logic is used to develop an environmental indicator to assess all the environmental impacts. The five important environmental indicators are selected based on LCA standard: Abiotic Depletion Potential, Land Use, Climate Change, Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential and Acidification Potential. Fuzzy inference system is used to convert the original values of these indicators into fuzzy data and aggregate them into the general indicator. The computed fuzzy value of the general indicator is then defuzzified into a crisp number as the final indicator value of environmental impacts. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the International Energy FoundationThis work presents a multi-objective optimization model based on a mathematical programming formulation for the optimal planning of distributed biomass conversion systems. The model considers the optimal selection of feedstocks, processing technologies and products while considering a time horizon. The multi-objective optimization problem simultaneously considers the profit maximization, the environmental impact minimization, as well as the maximization of the social impact benefit through the generation of jobs in rural areas. The economic objective function takes into account the availability of bioresources, processing limits and demand of products, as well as the cost of feedstocks, products and processing routes. The environmental impact is measured through the eco-indicator-99 based on the life cycle analysis methodology. The social impact is measured through the number of jobs generated. This formulation considers the variation of parameters over time. For instance, time-based profiles for raw-material availability and product demand are considered. Although the economic and environmental objectives may contradict each other with an influence on the social impact, by means of the proposed methodology is possible to obtain a set of Pareto curves that identify the set of optimal solutions for each objective. Each Pareto curve shows the compromise between the objectives and enables a better decision about the processing of biomass. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study for planning the production of a biorefinery system in Mexico, where several scenarios that compensate the economic, social and environmental objectives are identified.This paper analyzes the environment impact of methanol production from both product life cycle and process life cycle. Four indicators, global warming, acidification, photochemical oxidant formation and human toxicity, are used for assessment. According to the analysis, the periods that have significant impacts on environmental performance are explored. Several suggestions are provided at the end.This contribution proposes the integration besides direct effects of systems on the environment, also indirect effects caused by system's substitution. The direct effects of systems on the environment represent direct burden of the systems. The indirect effects are set of impacts causing indirect unburden or benefit on the environment. This approach is applied within two Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based concepts - relative sustainability index (RSI) and eco-profit (EP). Within RSI different sustainability indicators are composed using certain weights. EP is defined as a difference between unburdening (eco-benefit - EB) and burdening (eco-cost - EC) the environment. EP and economic profit (P) can be merged together and the preferred solutions are those with maximal total profit (TP). Both concepts are illustrated on the biogas production from different raw materials under different anaerobic conditions. The results indicate that considering total effects enable the obtaining of more realistic solutions, than in those cases when only direct effects are considered.We specified modeling requirements for biomass-derived production. An integrated modeling on interdisciplinary analysis across agriculture and engineering can become a key mechanism for enabling the clarification and fulfillment of the potential of biomass for sustainability. A modeling case study on sugarcane-derived ethanol production shows proposed integrated model can be used in the analysis of the environmental impacts associated with different conditions in agricultural and industrial process systems such as sugarcane cultivar and agricultural operation.We present a systematic approach of information modeling towards more systematic consideration of environmental, health and safety aspects during process design. Unified modeling language (UML) and type zero method of integrated definition (IDEF0) are applied for analyzing and defining required information in the comprehensive process evaluation. The proposed model visualizes the procedures of multiple assessments on various aspects of process system with data acquisition in process design and operation. Collaborated information modeling by UML and IDEF0 enables the discussion of integrated software system supporting process assessment within process development.The aim of a new site solution concept (i-Site) has been to optimize energy costs, speed of deployment, and site equipment such as number of PV modules. The present study provides the first example of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) quantifying the future environmental benefit of i-Site for support of a radio base station in South African Vodafone network. This study will moreover show the business value of LCA by comparing the total cost of operation (TCO) with and without the knowledge from the LCA study. After carrying out the LCA it could be confirmed that the environmental loadings and potential environmental impacts should decrease when changing from traditional Site (t-Site) to i-Site. Especially avoidance of diesel combustion and the electricity efficient air cooling solution for i-Site (loop thermosyphone and DC Fan) and are behind these positives. The payback times for energy and CO2 are reasonable. Error analyses were performed and the robustness of the results was confirmed. The effect on the financial payback time results of added CO2 costs beyond increased diesel/electricity costs is a 2% reduction. For current means of transportation and mains electricity it will not be enough to focus on cost reductions in order to reduce CO2 emissions. Still overall the life cycle eco-efficiency is around 4 times higher for the i-Site.The design of more sustainable bioethanol supply chains (SCs) has recently emerged as an active area of research. Most of the approaches presented so far focus on minimizing the emitted greenhouse gases (GHG) as unique criterion, neglecting the damage caused in other impact categories. In this work, we address the multi-objective design of integrated sugar/bioethanol SCs considering several life cycle assessment (LCA) impacts. To overcome the numerical difficulties of dealing with several objective functions, we apply a rigorous MILP-based dimensionality reduction method that minimizes the error of omitting objectives.The integration of environmental impacts in the conceptual design of energy systems can be achieved by combining Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with process integration techniques. The use and the disaggregation of life cycle inventory (LCI) databases allows for extending the systematic generation of resources to services conversion chains and for including the environmental impacts in the process design procedure. This paper presents how to systematically generate the superstructure of the energy conversion system, how to solve the urban energy system design using a multi-period multi-objective optimization and how the environmental objectives can be integrated in the process design procedure.In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is used to evaluate the best scenarios for the treatment of polymer materials and the production of petrochemicals and energy in the Greater London area. Different scenarios were examined and mathematical programming models were used to find an optimum solution which maximizes environmental benefits whilst minimizing costs (the objective function chosen in this study). The superstructure of the problem studied includes a dry materials recovery facility (MRF), an incinerator unit (IU) with combined heat and power (CHP) recovery, a low temperature pyrolysis reactor (LTP) and a hydrogenation (hydrocracking) unit. The objective function was set to include capital and operational and maintenance costs. Other costs such as transport, landfilling fees, transfer station costs and taxes, were also included. The main objective of the study was to identify the best recovery option against the traditional incineration process. Production of valuable petrochemicals and refinery products (i.e. syncrude, naphtha, heavy fraction (waxes), C-3, C-4, etc.) can be yielded when processing the plastic in a thermo-chemical reactor, hence increasing the overall process profitability. Revenues from packaging recovery notes, levy exemption and renewable obligation certificates were all included in the economic model. The benefit of producing combined heat and power was also investigated. The environmental impact of the different process options was evaluated in terms of emissions of CO2 and other pollutants (e.g. NOx, PM10, CO, THC, SO2, etc).The design of supply chains has been mainly focused on economic indicators. However, as social and environmental concerns grow in society it has become clear that such aspects also need to be accounted when designing supply chains. Thus investment towards logistics structures that consider both economic and environmental performance is nowadays an important research topic. This paper address such topic and studies the design and planning of multi-product supply chain networks (SCN), while accounting simultaneously with economic and environmental aspects. The latter are modeled through the use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). On the LCA two methodologies are studied, the Eco-Indicator 99 and the Environmental Priority Strategies (EPS). The optimization of the SCN is performed through a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation. The model is constructed based on the Resource-Task-Network (RTN) where the applicability of the Eco-indicator 99 and the EPS methodologies are considered. The results obtained are analyzed using different objective functions (economic, environmental and mixed).In this work, we analyze the effect of incorporating the CO2 emission trading on the optimal design of chemical supply chain (SC) networks considering simultaneously their economic and environmental performance. We present multi-scenario mixed-integer stochastic linear programming (MILP) model with the unique feature of accounting for the effects of CO2 emissions right cost uncertainty on the economical performance of the network. The uncertain parameter is modeled by a set of scenarios with given probability of occurrence. The environmental performance is quantified following life cycle assessment (LCA) principles, which are explicitly incorporated in the model formulation through standard algebraic equations. The capabilities of the approach presented are illustrated through a case study.Traditionally, process simulation models and other design tools allow engineers to design, simulate, and optimize chemical processes. However, there is still a critical need to incorporate environmentally-conscious engineering into the systematic design of these processes. This paper presents a three-stage approach for eco-efficient process design and evaluation, coupling process flowsheeting and utility tool with a life cycle assessment module that generalizes and automates the evaluation of the environmental criteria. The well-known HDA process illustrates the proposed methodology. The development of the framework serves as a guideline for determination of sustainable metrics for eco-efficient process design.We developed an integrated model from sugarcane cultivation to ethanol fermentation. Using developed models, an assessment case study was performed for producing sugar and ethanol from two sugarcane cultivars. This case study demonstrates that an appropriate cultivar selection considering the conditions of cultivation area enables the increase of ethanol production with the same amount of sugar production. We concluded that cultivation and engineering processes should be optimized in an integrated manner. The development of computer-aided process engineering tools for agricultural process enables the clarification and fulfillment of the potential of biomass for sustainability.This work addresses the optimal design of heat exchanger networks (HEN) considering economic and environmental concerns. The design task is posed in mathematical terms as a multi-objective mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem, in which life cycle assessment (LCA) principles are used to quantify the environmental impact. One of the advantages of our approach is that it accounts for the simultaneous minimization of several environmental metrics, as opposed to other models that focus on minimizing a single aggregated indicator. To avoid the difficulties associated with the presence of several environmental objectives in the multi-objective model, we investigate the use of a rigorous mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) dimensionality reduction method. The capabilities of our approach are tested through two examples. We clearly illustrate how the use of a single overall aggregated environmental metric is inadequate in the design of HEN, since it may leave some solutions that are appealing for decision-makers out of the analysis. Our method allows identifying in a systematic manner key LCA metrics that preserve the problem structure. This technique aids decision-making at the early stages of the design of HEN.This work introduces a systematic method for the economic and environmental analysis and design of new technologies applied to the 3rd generation (from microalgae) biodiesel production process. The evaluation method is based on the integrated use of process simulation techniques with economic and environmental models. The approach is applied to a new technology introduced by some of the authors, where the glycerol produced in the transesterification is used as carbon source for microalgae growth. Firstly, a state of the art biodiesel production plant in the process simulator it is modelled and the economical and environmental performance is computed. Then, the new technology is introduced and its performance are compared. The method presented is very useful for decision-makers in order to evaluate the inclusion of new technologies to improve the chemical process operation and topological designs.Warranty is a powerful marketing instrument for the manufacturer and a good protection for both the manufacturer and the customer, but it always involves additional costs to the manufacturer. This paper deals with the warranty forecasting by estimating the future warranty returns in order to anticipate associated costs. The warranty prediction model is based on a Weibull analysis and a Monte Carlo simulation. Data gathered through the accelerated life-cycle analysis of 20 light bulb units of the new type were used as an input for the Weibull analysis to obtain the parameters needed for the simulation. MATLAB simulation algorithm was developed especially for this purpose. Warranty analysis was done for three variants of fully renewing combination free replacement and pro-rata policy and for several combinations of warranty period and free replacement period lengths. The results showed the relation between the parameters that define the policy and associated cost to the manufacturer. Presented simulation algorithm proved to be a fast and reliable tool for warranty cost analysis.This paper will present preliminary results of the EU-funded FP7 integrated project TARGET. The main aim of the project is to develop a novel technology-enhanced learning platform that provides learners with a responsive environment that addresses the rapid, personalized competence development and the sharing of experiences associated with introducing sustainability into a manufacturing enterprise. The main objectives of the paper are to deduce specialized sustainability-related competences for managers and to convert them into a virtual game scenario. Besides the research approach of deriving the competences, critical incidents in the game will be presented. The findings and potential application will be demonstrated in a case based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).Waste and by-product materials have great potential for use as additives to conventional materials that are used to make modern earth buildings, or even as a partial or total replacement for natural soils. The chapter gives an overview of potential materials, their variety, potential, benefits, disadvantages and characteristics. Special attention is paid to the issues of leaching, age-dependent strength and the use of fine-grained by-products as pozzolanic or self-cementing binders in place of conventional cement. An introduction to long-term evaluation and ultimate recycling of these materials is also provided.Second generation biodiesel could contribute to significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from transport because the biofeedstock used for their production is considered to be carbon neutral. This chapter examines the life cycle sustainability of second generation biodiesel derived from different feedstocks and produced in different production systems, including integrated biorefineries. The environmental sustainability aspects considered include water use, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and loss of biodiversity. The socio-economic impacts are also reviewed, including feedstock and capital costs, value added through production of by-products as well as the social acceptability of biofuels. The future viability of biodiesel is also discussed.Urban metabolism (UM) is an accounting of inputs into urban systems, the work that gets done and the waste that results from the urban system using those inputs. To date, accounting has been limited to energy, materials, water, nutrients and waste that enter and leave a city at the city scale. This chapter suggests that for UM to be of use in sustainability, UM needs to be downscaled to the census block (for socio-demographic understanding of the users of energy), by sector (to understand how the economy uses energy) and to include life cycle analysis of economic key sectors.This chapter introduces the field of industrial ecology, including an exploration of its main tool, life cycle analysis (LCA), and discusses how it relates to metropolitan sustainability. The chapter first goes through a brief history of the development of LCA, then runs through some examples of its application to urban sustainability measurement. It also briefly touches on other tools such as materials flow analysis and concludes with an applied example of LCA and a discussion of its benefits and drawbacks.Urban populations are growing in arid regions where precipitation is very low, which severely constrains water supply, as well as temperate parts of the USA, where early populations began without those same constraints but who faced other challenges pertaining to wastewater treatment. This chapter discusses some of the major challenges facing sustainable water supply and distribution within water infrastructure systems resulting from increased population demand, aging infrastructure, diminishing pristine resources, and pollution and other environmental risks. The chapter identifies a set of technologies projected to be used to decentralize water treatment and supply through a variety of means, including agricultural best management practices, source reuse, desalination and green infrastructure. This chapter discusses the importance and use of systems analysis methods to guide an improved understanding and design of water resources in urban environments and future water management research directions that aim to combine energy recovery from the movement or treatment of water.Increasing global change pressures require urban water managers to improve the overall sustainability of their urban water systems. This paper illustrates such an improvement process based on SWITCH demonstration cities Accra, Alexandria and Tel Aviv. A multi-stakeholder platform (Learning Alliance) consisting of a cross-disciplinary team of academic experts and practitioners in these cities went through a process of strategic planning and sustainability assessment. Case studies using total water cycle modelling, quantitative microbial risk assessment and life cycle analysis are described and evaluated to test the hypothesis: 'Design and management of the urban water system based on an analysis and optimisation of the entire urban water system (infrastructure and human organisations, water supply, sanitation, stormwater etc.) will lead to more sustainable solutions than optimisation of separate elements of the system'. It was concluded that the applied assessment tools are instrumental in widening the boundaries of the system, in including all elements of sustainability and as such they may help planners and decision makers to put investments in the right place to generate maximum benefits.The agriculture is one of the most productive activities tied to the environment and it has been often difficult to understand its economical, social and environmental pressure. In the last years the prospective has changed: the primary objective of agriculture is not only to produce food but, also, to manage the land in a sustainable way. This research studied a tomato crop grown adopting different practices and evaluated possible combinations able to reduce environmental burdens of tomato cultivation. The field work has been developed between March and September 2009 using a factorial combination of four transplant data, four commercial varieties and two agronomic treatments (mulched and not mulched). The tool used to appraise the environmental impact was the software SimaPro 7.2.3 that uses LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology; in this way it was possible to analyze the whole production cycle, from the seed to the harvested fruits. The impacts were based on evaluating a 1 kg of healthy ripe product; the evaluation methods used were Eco-indicator 99 H/A and Ecological Scarcity (2006). The results showed differences between mulched and not mulched treatment, the first had superior production, and so a positive impact on environmental parameters. One variety (NPT) was, on average of combinations, the most productive, probably because it was the best adaptable to the different conditions in the field; this variety had also a lower environmental impact as it uses the same resources obtaining higher yields. No differences were found among transplant periods for all the LCA categories.In this work cradle to grave life cycle assessment of printed electronics resources have been presented. An attempt has been made to investigate and evaluate the life cycle assessment and environmental impacts of printed electronics resources such as polymer substrate-printed RFID antenna. Life cycle inventory analysis for these resources has been carried out to quantify total systems' inputs and outputs that are relevant to the environmental impacts especially emissions to air, fresh water, industrial soil and sea water. The results show that printed electronics materials are considerably more environment friendly than materials needed for PCB electronics. We have obtained the mass of emissions in each life cycle stages which verify that technology wise printed antenna causes less harmful and hazardous impacts to the environment. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICCTSD 2011The growing demand for sustainable business practices, life-cycle analysis and environmental product disclosure will impact e-reader manufacturers, digital media companies and purveyors of print media. Sadly, print has allowed itself to be commonly seen as an environmentally destructive medium, despite the fact that much of print media is based on comparatively benign and renewable materials. This is particularly ironic in that print has incredible potential to be a far more sustainable medium than it is today. and to become the means for printing flexible polymer digital electronics as well. With environmental concerns playing a large role in all kinds of manufacturing industries, the concept of sustainability remains elusive. There are many common steps a print factory can take to reduce the impact that carbon foot print have on environment. It is only with truly holistic approach towards environmental protection we can effectively reduce CO2 emissions and bring down carbon foot print. While CO2 is created in manufacturing of the printing press and of printed products, there are other significant emissions involved in a print production. Process waste includes energy, printing substrates, ink, dampening solution, blanket and wash up solvents, anti-set off powder need special attention. This study helps to find out solutions to make print industry green, rather a new concept "CO2 NEUTRALISED PRINT" under the mantra "Think economically - print ecologically". (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Symbiosis Institute of International Business (SIIB)The aim of this study is to support decision makers and stakeholders in the management of air quality in an industrial area located in a valley in southern Italy, where neither air quality nor meteorological parameters are routinely monitored. The first phase focused on the inventory of emissions through monitored data at stacks, permissions to emit from local authorities, and life cycle assessment inventories. Then, the air quality modelling system RAMS-CALMET-CALPUFF was used to simulate local meteorology and atmospheric dispersion of pollutants emitted from the industrial sites and the highway. Preliminary results have provided practical recommendations to equip the area with monitors for both meteorological parameters and concentrations of NOx and PM10, since industrial and vehicle (from both highway and local roads) emissions, added to domestic sources, may potentially infringe air quality standards.Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) technologies allow significant lowering of the production and pavement temperature of conventional Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) thus reducing the energy demand and greenhouse gas emission in the atmosphere. In order to provide the necessary information on environmental and economical potential of WMA in each specific case these benefits have to be acknowledged in quantitative analysis with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool. The calculation model, presented in the paper, was developed according to EN ISO 14040 as inventory of energy flow for asphalt production, which is the first phase in developing LCA tool. The calculation involves all the main areas that can be influenced by choosing WMA instead of HMA, including production, paving and compaction of asphalt, mining and/or manufacturing of all component materials and transportation. The amount of used energy and the energy sources were defined for each of the processes allowing to express the results in terms of total energy demand distribution by the energy source or by unit process, which is significant in further calculation of carbon footprint. The case study results present the comparison of asphalt energy consumption for seven different modules. Transportation distances and the construction design were defined as typical for a paving site in Latvia. The results showed 7% to 18% energy gain for the WMA in comparison with the reference HMA and indicated that the asphalt production and paving process depend almost entirely on non-renewable energy sources and changes between different modules in this case mostly affect the use of natural gas. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena 2012This study focuses on the comparison between two similar hydraulic excavators: (i) a traditional excavator and (ii) a Global Positioning System (GPS) instrumented excavator. Both the machines were monitored for the work they performed. This included the moving of large masses of earth as well as finishing tasks of profile refinement (with a constrained accuracy of +/- 10 cm). The comparison included the efficiency of machines and attained accuracy as well as their environmental impact with regards to emissions into the atmosphere. The environmental impact calculations were conducted by means of the ECORCE application, a numerical tool for Life Cycle Assessment of road developed at the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (Ifsttar). The monitoring highlighted the fact that GPS-instrumented excavator fully conformed to the accuracy requirements for earth moving. The use of the GPS technology resulted in 1/3 and 2/3 reductions of fuel consumption and finishing working time, respectively. This also contributed to lower both the potential environmental impacts (i.e. global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication index, photochemical ozone and eco-toxicity potential indicated) and the related costs. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or poor review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of he Transport Research Arena 2012It is of imminent urgency to optimize the lifetime of asphalt binders from the remaining available crude sources. This paper presents a recently developed model in which the self-healing capacity of bitumen is based on fundamental chemo-mechanical parameters. The implications of the enhanced bitumen healing rates are investigated by utilizing a newly developed Open Life Cycle Assessment framework. From the case study it was concluded that using bitumen with self-healing capacity can lead to a significant reduction in Greenhouse Gas emission and energy usage. Additionally, the importance of knowing the fuels and emission of bitumen modifiers on the highway sustainability was demonstrated. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena 2012Although roads are preponderant in terms of extension and usage, airports and air transport entail a prominent part of emissions and energy consumption worldwide. There is a need for improving airport pavements construction and maintenance practices in order to limit greenhouse gasses and set environmental standards towards the development of more "sustainable airports." Since environmental impact assessment of major projects is becoming mandatory in many countries, various researches are attempting to evaluate environmental impacts of different pavement materials, technologies or processes over the airport service life. There is a need to measure and describe different aspects of airport pavements sustainability to support these efforts. This paper analyzes emissions saved in reusing and valorizing existing in situ soils through a cement stabilization for improving the bearing capacity of the runway cleared and graded area and/or constructing new sub-base pavement layers. The analysis evaluates emissions due to equipment and materials comparing them with the supplying of large amounts of aggregates from nearby quarries to build granular layers. A case study of a major Italian airport is finally provided. Results show the eco-efficiency of improving pavement management practices adopting energy efficient treatments on airports. Furthermore, eco-saving factors could represent a new and innovative feature to be added in process of evaluating different strategies and investments in an Airport Pavement Management System. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena 2012This paper investigates environmental impacts of wood structure, reinforced concrete (RC) structure and steel structure in Taiwan in terms of embodied energy consumption and embodied CO2 emissions. The methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to the analysis in building materials both from 'cradle to gate' perspectives and from 'cradle to cradle' perspectives. The results first show that wood structure with the resource from the USA has the least environmental impacts. In addition, as far as material recovery phase is concerned, the substitution effect of wood structure instead of RC and steel structure has an obvious increase as the recovery rate reaches more than 60%. To summarise, wood structure is beneficial for our environment not only in the construction phase but also in the material recovery phase.This paper introduces the concept of ecological environment material, its relationship with the society and its classification as well as application of several kinds of typical ecological environment materials. It points out that ecological environment material is one of the latest trends in development of material science and analyzes the current research trend of ecological environment material and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of materials.Life cycle analysis method was used to establish an inventory of a winter wheat production system that employed the Soil Testing and Formulated Fertilization Program in Linqing county, China, after which the net resource conservation and emission reduction benefits were calculated, evaluated and compared to the winter wheat production system in a conventional fertilization area. The results revealed a great reduction in resource consumption and emissions of the winter wheat production system in the program demonstration area. From 2006 to 2010, the life cycle reduction potentials of eutrophication, and acidification potential per ton of winter wheat accounted for 12.09-30.31% and 1.40-4.52% of the relevant environmental impact potential per capita worldwide in 2000, respectively. The Program significantly decreased the environmental burdens of the winter wheat production system, and farmer's fertilization behavior tended to become rational.This paper established the theoretical framework of life cycle assessment for the section of fiber preparation with end-based evaluation method, and the technology and equipment of the section of fiber preparation were considered as main research object. By using the theoretical system, an environmental impact model of the section of fiber preparation can be built, and then the parameter of main technology and key equipment can be optimized. to improve the evaluation system for wood-based panel production and thus guiding business investment, process improvement and equipment modification. Further more, it can be used to guide investment or upgrade technology and equipment.Purpose - Over the last decade, multiple initiatives have been undertaken to learn how to capture the carbon footprint of a supply chain at a product level. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the process of standardization to secure consistency of product carbon footprinting (PCF) and to outline how the current developments in PCF support the need for a standardized method to measure and report environmental performance in supply chains. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is based on a literature review and a review of international standards for PCF which brings knowledge of PCF to the existing literature of green supply chain management. Findings - The multiple initiatives for standardization each improve the understanding of standardized methods of conducting PCF. At the same time, however, important differences exist between the standards in terms of the modelling framework to be used when conducting a PCF, and a paradox exists concerning methods for securing future standardization of PCF. Research limitations/implications - Standards for evaluating emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in supply chains are evaluated without consideration of other environmental impacts. In addition, the research only compares international standards, thereby excluding national initiatives. Practical implications - Standardization efforts can be expected to shape the future practice of measuring emission of GHGs in companies and supply chains which provides a framework for reducing impacts. Originality/value - Papers that outline the standardization process for PCF have been examined, but this paper adds value by categorizing the field, outlining the latest standards, and by being the first paper to compare standards for PCF on selected criteria and identify gaps.Energy consumption and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) of major Alternative vehicle fuels (AVFs) in Thailand are estimated and compared with conventional fuels by means of full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The tool utilized here is the Well-to-Wheels (WtW) module of own model covering the entire lifecycle including: raw materials cultivation (or feedstock collection); fuel production; transportation and distribution; and application in automobile engines (ICE and hybrid engine), compared with conventional petroleum-based gasoline and diesel pathways. The model is based on Thailand's national conditions with Tsinghua-CA3EM model. Part of this model structure has been adjusted to Thailand specific situations. Therefore, a majority of the parameters have been modified with local Thailand data. Results showed that the all alternative vehicle fuels can reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions compared to conventional fuels. Hybrid ICE engine to reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions when compared to the ICE engine. Biofuels-ICE engine, especially bioethanol from molasses, had the highest reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions. LPG- Hybrid ICE engine had the highest reduce energy consumption.Based on the input-output life cycle assessment method, the embodied energy consumption, air and water emissions of China's international trade in 2007 were estimated. The results showed that the embodied energy consumption of China's international trade in 2007 is up to 229.04 Mt, accounting for 8.62% of total energy consumption. The embodied Chemical Oxygen Demand, Ammonia Nitrogen, Sulfur Dioxide and Dust emissions caused by net exports accounted for 9.85%, 9.11%, 6.71% and 0.78% of the overall emissions in China, respectively. China's export promoted energy consumptions and pollutant emissions significantly. Therefore, China should adjust its export strategy and structure to reverse the adverse effects on energy and environment caused by exportation.Thermal energy storage is the main way to ensure solar power plant to generate electric in the form of stable and continuous. In this paper, a structure optimization model for large-scale, commercialization solar thermal energy storage system is proposed according to life cycle analysis. Based on the analysis of thermal energy storage medium, thermal energy storage tanks, insulation, bottom bearing structure, pump energy and land use, the optimization of thermal energy storage system is realized. Finally, the structure optimization design for 50MW solar power plant is implemented and storage tank's geometric parameters are calculated. This research can provide technological support for large-scale application of solar thermal generation.Combined with practical operation of a biomass direct-fired power pant in South China, the whole life cycle of the process, including biomass growing, transportation, pretreatment, combustion power generation and power plant manufacturing are analyzed by means of LCA. The energy consumption and the impact on environment in each stage are also collected and calculated. The results show that 2182.32 MJ fossil energy is consumed to generate 10(4) kWh power. The total loading of the impact on environment is 13.45 PET2000 and the mainly impact on environment is soot and ashes. Compared with coal-fired power, biomass direct-fired power plant can reduce 5282.87 kg CO2 emissions during the process of generating 10(4) kWh power, which plays a positive part in mitigating greenhouse gases.Life cycle analysis provides global research methods for the assessment of life cycle performance. In this research, a WTW (well to wheel) model was introduced to study and compare the energy efficiency and CO2 emissions from diesel bus, CNG bus and electric bus. The results show that the WTW total energy efficiency of diesel bus is 1790MJ/100km. The energy efficiency of CNG bus is 6% lower than that of diesel bus, while the energy efficiency of electric bus is 36% higher than that of diesel bus. Both CNG bus and electric bus show good potential of oil replacement with oil consumption decrease of 98% and 90%. As more than 80% of China's electricity is produced by coal, electric bus has equal effect as CNG bus on CO2 reduction. Compared to diesel bus, CO2 emissions from new energy bus are reduced by 14%.Supporting sustainability with software is often summed up in the expression Green IT and directly relates to the reduction of CO2 emissions and energy used by IT. The amount of CO2 used in the IT industry covers 2% of the overall CO2 emissions. Green by IT describes the influence of appropriate software to the remaining 98% of the industry. We estimate that the effect of our sustainability related software on our customers CO2 footprint could be 10.000 times higher than our own. The so called triple bottom line defines sustainability as covering economic, ecological, and social aspects and the dependencies between. Based on this definition of sustainability, software could not only focus on green house gas reduction. Other topics like: consumers protection, sustainable supply, reduction of emission (air, water, waste), recycling, human recourse management and intelligent energy usage must be as well focus areas supported by software. At last software industry should not only focus on delivering tools for life cycle assessment (LCA), we should use it and provide a LCA for our software self. The industrial question is how to increase short and long term profitability by holistically managing economic, social and environmental risks and opportunities supported by software.This study compares a life cycle assessment (LCA) of pork production in the Western Cape with pork production in Flanders. The objectives of this study were to map and quantify the environmental impacts of producing pork in the Western Cape and exporting it to Antwerp in Flanders with the environmental impacts of producing pork in Flanders and delivering it to the same location. The impact categories included are (i) global warming potential (GWP), (ii) eutrophication potential, (iii) acidification potential, and (iv) energy use. By pointing out weak points in the different environmental impact categories, suggestions are made to lower the environmental burdens of pork production. Four main activities of the pork production chain were covered by the LCA, namely: (i) the feed provision activity, which includes the production of raw materials and feed, (ii) the pig farming activity, (iii) the slaughter house activity and (iv) the slurry (treatment) activity. An additional (v) pork shipping activity was added in the case of the Western Cape pork chain. A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment was carried out, with a functional unit (FU) of one kg of Western Cape or Flemish pork (carcass weight) delivered to the distribution centre in Antwerp. Flemish GWP, eutrophication potential, acidification potential and energy use are 56%, 65%, 62% and 59% respectively of the Western Cape equivalents. The exporting of pork accounts for less than 8% of environmental impacts in all impact categories. Potential exists in the Western Cape to compete on an environmental par when impacts are measured in terms of a per-area unit. It is therefore recommended that for future comparative South African-European LCA studies of pork or other intensive livestock or poultry production chains, an FU of one kg meat as well as an area unit be used when measuring total eutrophication and acidification impacts.This exploratory study evaluated the environmental impacts associated with Bleached Eucalyptus Kraft Pulp supplied from a eucalyptus plantation in South China by applying the life-cycle analysis approach. The system boundary was defined by a "cradle-to-gate" perspective including the forest subsystem and the pulp mill subsystem. Key processes were investigated and site-specific data were collected during 2009 and 2010 through field trips to a leading plantation operator and a representative pulp mill in China. Umberto 5.5 software was used to conduct a life-cycle inventory, which compiled all the inputs and outputs of the examined system. Hot-spot processes with high environmental burdens were identified with regard to selected impact categories of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, nonrenewable resources depletion, and human toxicity. According to the findings of this study, the forest subsystem showed significant contributions to the total environmental burdens in almost all impact categories, mainly due to the application of fertilizers in eucalyptus plantation management. The study discovered that while the pulp mill subsystem was the primary contributor to global warming impacts, the upstream processes of raw materials and energy production accounted for more than half of the impacts of acidification, human toxicity, and resources depletion. Therefore, eucalyptus plantation management and the supply of raw materials and energy in pulp mills in China are concluded to be concerns for future development. These findings may help the Chinese forest industry and pulp industry achieve better environmental performance toward sustainable development.This paper describes a system for environmental and economic analyses of products. System is developed for life cycle analysis of existing products and products in development. Paper also presents some examples of the EcoCAD system application in the automotive industry. Finally, analysis results are shown and adequate conclusions are given.Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) could be commonly detected in water bodies around many cities in China recently, which mainly comes from the industrial production and utilization in the fabric processing, metal plating, semiconductor manufacturing and fire-fighting foam. China is currently one of the few countries with increasing PFOS production and usage, so the treatment and safe disposal of PFOS pollutants is critical to effectively protect human health from those toxic chemicals. Life cycle assessment (LCA) by Simapro 7.2 was carried out in this paper to study the environmental impacts concerned with the treatment of PFOS in supercritical water, and proven process for the decomposition of PFOS pollutants with high concentration. This study focuses on not only the main environmental factors from emissions of toxic pollutants, but also the influence from technical characteristics of the iron-induced supercritical water technology including energy and substances consumption during treatment processes. The results of LCA were supposed to be provided for the environmental officials and factory managers as a theoretical basis for the PFOS technology selection and management. (C) 2012 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for Asia and the Pacific and National Center of Solid Waste Management, Ministry of Environmental Protection of China.With the development of the science, technology and economy, electronic products became the important necessary products in daily life. Due to the large usage of electronic products, generation of the e-waste became more and more. The e-waste treatment was generally as a troublesome task. The life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used to analyze the treatment technology of cathode ray tube (CRT) display. The results show that the environmental impact of incineration of CRT display has the greatest impacts, with comparison to the manual-based dismantling and mechanical recycling. The impact of Carcinogens is the major contributor, which cause a direct impact on human health. The result suggests that the CRT display should be separately treated and not be mixed with municipal solid waste which is treated by incineration. (C) 2012 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for Asia and the Pacific and National Center of Solid Waste Management, Ministry of Environmental Protection of China.In the United Kingdom, carbon emissions associated with business activities have shifted from matters of policy to sources of legal responsibilities under the Climate Change Act of 2008.A flexible and easy-to-use technique is needed so that businesses can assess their carbon emissions in response to regulations on the environmental impact of construction activities. The aim of this study was to develop a methodology that could offer businesses a carbon life-cycle assessment tool to identify emissions hot spots across the value chain and inform a carbon-reduction hierarchy. The approach employed was based on methodology described in the publicly available specification (PAS2050) protocol. The objective was to identify locations where the largest production of emissions occurred and provide for the biggest potential reduction within routine highway maintenance processes. The methodology framework allows businesses to make informed decisions in carbon terms through the identification and prioritization of areas of potential reduction of emissions.The rural household biogas program in China has been regarded as an effective approach to address energy shortage issues and to reduce carbon emission in rural areas. After more than fifty years of development, it has neither succeeded in rural energy substitution nor achieved other social and environmental goals, although available studies have shown otherwise. The reason behind this disparity largely lies in inaccurate adoption of the operational cycle, i.e., the fact that the actual operational time of the biogas digester was often overestimated. Presented In this paper, an EIO-LCA model using the Chinese Economic Input-Output table of 2007 was built to estimate carbon-dioxide (CO2) emission during the life cycle of a typical 8 m(3) household biogas digester and their sources with regard to economic sectors. The life cycle of a biogas digester can be divided into three stages: construction (including pond building and pen, toilet and stove alterations), operation (including maintenance and biogas combustion) and disposal. The results show that the net CO2 emission of a biogas digester is 1558.91 kg after one year of operation, which corresponds to an actual CO2 emission of 2878.30 kg (of which direct and indirect emissions are 1558.90 and 1319.40 kg, respectively) and an emission reduction by fuel substitution and fertilizer conservation of 1078.59 and 240.80 kg, respectively. Therefore, the model indicates that a biogas digester should be run for at least 2.77 years to have a net CO2 emission reduction benefit. The model also indicates that comprehensive utilization of biogas and its byproducts is very important for carbon emission in rural areas. Most of the indirect emissions were derived from construction materials, accounting for 88.18%. Moreover, the smelting and pressing of ferrous metals in the 43-step production chain of construction materials accounted for 22.48% of the indirect emissions. This gives us a novel perspective to develop emission reduction policies. Taken together, the results obtained in this study provide substantial information for policy-making on biogas promotion and management as well as renewable energy development in rural China. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of School of Environment, Beijing Normal University.Fuzzy logic has also been applied to life cycle assessment (LCA) mainly to assess uncertain values or to use on individuals' judgments as input data in LCA studies. This paper presents an environmental performance measurement using an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) in an LCA model for comparing alternative transportation fuels. The most promising fuels include compressed natural gas (CNG) and biodiesel. The potential environmental benefits of these alternative fuels can be measured using LCA methodology. The methodology allows quantitative information on the material and energy flows to be integrated with qualitative information reflecting such aspects as the social acceptability of different types of environmental damage. The proposed ANFIS model is used to represent uncertainties in the data so that the model can predict both the magnitude of the environmental impacts of the alternative fuels and the corresponding desirable levels of these estimates. Results of a case study show biodiesel to be superior to both CNG and diesel in terms of overall environmental impact.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can contribute to the deep CO2 cuts which are necessary to achieve climate change targets. There is, however, a strong public debate whether CCS should be implemented. In this article we give an overview of the arguments for and against based on the opinion of Dutch stakeholders. CCS is an umbrella term for a wide range of different configurations of separate technologies. Some arguments are applicable in general for all CCS chains; some are only valid for a particular configuration. In this paper we will discuss these arguments in the context of the background of different CCS configurations. The argument that CCS costs a lot of extra energy, for instance, is valid for the power sector, not for gas treatment. A good understanding of the CCS debate and the arguments used may help with developing a better energy policy and may give direction to future research and technology development. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The impact of the use of particular materials on the environment and society can be assessed in a number of ways, including through the impact on natural resources, contribution to environmental burden and effects on the quality of human life. In this context, indicators such as embodied energy, exergy, TMR (total material requirement), ecological footprint, social indicators (such as effects on human health) and LCA based on these indicators, are available. We apply the concept of energy networks [1] (quoted in Appendix O), to explore the differences in energy network impact due to processes for the production of various materials, each time with an equivalent end-use in mind. The inventory analysis part of LCA has been carried out on materials, as well as some work on impact assessment (LCIA) for resource use, pollution severity and health impact. The indicators proposed here aid the assessment of the energy system impact, particularly with regards to opportunity costs to society, impact on equity in society and the administrative burden on society due to the current energy networks. The indicators are: embodied energy, the maximum process temperature, the annual use energy, and network reliance. Three case studies are employed to explore the usefulness of the indicators, including a beverage container, a house window frame and a beverage bottle transport crate. These case studies show that for a particular end use, different materials can have wide differences in the proportion of energy sourced from energy networks (a factor of 95 observed in one case). The indicators also offer a quicker indication than life cycle assessment and allow deduction of impacts on a wider social system. The indicators have the potential to change material development and process design trends towards processes which are less burdensome on energy networks.The carbon footprint is allocated today to CO2 emission sources, and thus to industries with smokestacks, machines with tailpipes or countries burning coal and oil; emission factors are also calculated, i.e. emissions per unit of production, of use, per capita or per unit of GDP. This is, however, not the only way to allocate emissions in a value chain and this could also be done at the source (cradle) of the carbon that will later end up being oxidized. Comparing countries with this new metrics points to fossil fuel producers as the major "cradle producers" of CO2, thus giving a fairly different geopolitical view of the "polluting" world. Beyond issues of responsibilities, related to the polluter pays principle, this new method can help exhibit solutions for mitigating emissions that usually are not imagined or discussed, and examples thereof are given.A deterministic spreadsheet model developed in an earlier Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) project that calculates cost, fuel, and chemical outputs of forest management and harvesting activities was modified to include logic for systems used to recover forest residue. Two illustrative biomass recovery systems with variations were modeled. A system to recover residues after whole-tree harvesting operations was applied to a representative forest stand in the Inland West. Whole-tree chipping in an early thinning was applied to a representative forest stand in the Southeast United States. Emission factors and life-cycle outputs were developed for the systems through the SimaPro v7.3 model using one if its environmental impact methodologies called TRACI2. Most environmental outputs, including global warming potential, had a direct relationship to fuel consumption of the recovery systems. These outputs were subsequently used as inputs to life-cycle analysis in biofuel conversion facilities. Fuel consumption for recovery of residues from the log landing was 8.10, 12.0, and 16.0 liters per bone dry metric ton (BDmT) at haul distances of 48, 97, and 145 km, respectively. Corresponding fuel consumption for whole-tree chipping and hauling at these distances was 10.5, 16.0, and 21.5 liters/BDmT. Shuttling ground residue from the landing for reload and a subsequent long haul of 145 km increased fuel consumption 32 percent over the residue recovery base case. Shuttling loose residue for centralized processing with a long haul distance of 145 km increases fuel consumption by 86 percent over recovery directly from the landing.The heightened interest in biofuels addresses the national objectives of reducing carbon emissions as well as reducing dependence on foreign fossil fuels. Using life-cycle analysis to evaluate alternative uses of wood including both products and fuels reveals a hierarchy of carbon and energy impacts characterized by their efficiency in reducing carbon emissions and/or in displacing fossil energy imports. Life-cycle comparisons are developed for biofuel feedstocks (mill and forest residuals, thinnings, and short rotation woody crops) with bioprocessing (pyrolysis, gasification, and fermentation) to produce liquid fuels and for using the feedstock for pellets and heat for drying solid wood products, all of which displace fossil fuels and fossil fuel-intensive products. Fossil carbon emissions from lignocellulosic biofuels are substantially lower than emissions from conventional gasoline. While using wood to displace fossil fuel-intensive materials (such as for steel floor joists) is much more effective in reducing carbon emissions than using biofuels to directly displace fossil fuels, displacing transportation fuels with ethanol provides the opportunity to also reduce dependence on imported energy. The complex nature of wood uses and how wood fuels and products interact in their environments, as well as the methods needed to understand these impacts and summarize the relative benefits of different alternatives, are discussed herein. Policies designed to increase biofuel use by subsidies or mandates may increase prices enough to divert biomass feedstock away from producing products, such as for composite panels, resulting in increased emissions from fossil fuel-intensive substitutes. Policies that fail to consider life-cycle implications are discussed, identifying their unintended consequences.We conducted a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of ethanol production via bioconversion of willow biomass crop feedstock. Willow crop data were used to assess feedstock production impacts. The bioconversion process was modeled with an Aspen simulation that predicts an overall conversion yield of 310 liters of ethanol per tonne of feedstock (74 gal per US short ton). Vehicle combustion impacts were assessed using Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) models. We compared the impacts of bioconversion-produced ethanol with those of gasoline on an equivalent energy basis. We found that the life-cycle global warming potential of ethanol was slightly negative. Carbon emissions from ethanol production and use were balanced by carbon absorption in the growing willow feedstock and the displacement of fossil fuel-produced electricity with renewable electricity produced in the bioconversion process. The fossil fuel input required for producing 1 MJ of energy from ethanol was 141 percent less than that from gasoline. More water was needed to produce 1 MJ of ethanol fuel than 1 MJ of gasoline. The life-cycle water use for ethanol was 169 percent greater than for gasoline. The largest contributors to water use were the conversion process itself and the production of chemicals and materials used in the process, such as enzymes and sulfuric acid.The goal of this study was to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil energy requirements from the production and use (cradle-to-grave) of bioethanol produced from the indirect gasification thermochemical conversion of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) residues. Additional impact categories (acidification and eutrophication) were also analyzed. Of the life-cycle stages, the thermochemical fuel production and biomass growth stages resulted in the greatest environmental impact for the bioethanol product life cycle. The GHG emissions from fuel transportation and process chemicals used in the thermochemical conversion process were minor (less than 1 percent of conversion emissions). The net GHG emissions over the bioethanol life cycle, cradle-to-grave, was 74 percent less than gasoline of an equal energy content, meeting the 60 percent minimum reduction requirement of the Renewable Fuels Standard to qualify as an advanced (second generation) biofuel. Also, bioethanol had a 72 percent lower acidification impact and a 59 percent lower eutrophication impact relative to gasoline. The fossil fuel usage for bioethanol was 96 percent less than gasoline, mainly because crude oil is used as the primary feedstock for gasoline production. The total GHG emissions for the bioethanol life cycle analyzed in this study were determined to be similar to the comparable scenario from the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy. Use in Transportation model. A sensitivity analysis determined that mass allocation of forest establishment burdens to the residues was not significant for GHG emissions but had significant effects on the acidification and eutrophication impact categories.As part of the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials' Phase I life-cycle assessments of biofuels, life-cycle inventory burdens from the production of bio-oil were developed and compared with measures for residual fuel oil. Bio-oil feedstock was produced using whole southern pine (Pinus taeda) trees, chipped, and converted into bio-oil by fast pyrolysis. Input parameters and mass and energy balances were derived with Aspen. Mass and energy balances were input to SimaPro to determine the environmental performance of bio-oil compared with residual fuel oil as a heating fuel. Equivalent functional units of 1 MJ were used for demonstrating environmental preference in impact categories, such as fossil fuel use and global warming potential. Results showed near carbon neutrality of the bio-oil. Substituting bio-oil for residual fuel oil, based on the relative carbon emissions of the two fuels, estimated a reduction in CO2 emissions by 0.075 kg CO2 per MJ of fuel combustion or a 70 percent reduction in emission over residual fuel oil. The bio-oil production life-cycle stage consumed 92 percent of the total cradle-to-grave energy requirements, while feedstock collection, preparation, and transportation consumed 4 percent each. This model provides a framework to better understand the major factors affecting greenhouse gas emissions related to bio-oil production and conversion to boiler fuel during fast pyrolysis.Energy saving and emission reduction (ESER) has caught attention around the world due to the severe environmental challenges. An Evaluation System to assess the consumption and emission of a product during its life cycle is proposed in this paper. The system integrates with the enterprise information systems by adding the consumption and emission data into BOM(bill of material). Based on ESER database, the whole system takes product life cycle as the main line and improves the accuracy of evaluation on ESER. Besides, design and optimization of green manufacturing can also be accomplished by using this system. The protype and framework of designed ESER system is described in this paper.This paper presents the overview of the currently practiced new housing constructions in Ontario based on a survey to local homebuilders in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), which was conducted as part of the proposed methodology to determine the suitability of the potential optimal upgrades considered for the analysis. Also presented in this paper is the economic feasibility study of the identified optimal upgrades from the survey for the selected cities in Ontario with varying climatic conditions. Based on the results of the survey, it was concluded that the participant builders have already implemented or considered for implementation some of the advanced technologies into their current building practices to achieve the energy performance level that exceeded the minimum requirements as specified by the existing Ontario Building Code (OBC). Furthermore, the results of the economic feasibility study showed that, based on the life cycle analysis of 30 years, the combination of optimal upgrades comprised of increasing the thermal resistance of the building envelope components, and installations of the most energy-efficient heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system could achieve up to 31% reduction in both the estimated total annual energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in comparison to the same building configuration, but built in accordance with the OBC, and without the implementation of the identified optimal upgrades. Furthermore, with the installation of a residential photovoltaic (PV) system combined with these upgrades, the estimated total profit of up to $89,035 could be achieved through Ontario's micro Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program, allowing a homeowner to pay for the installation of additional upgrade(s) to further improve the energy efficiency level of a home, ultimately reaching the net zero energy status.This paper aims to give an insight into the importance of green ICT course in the curriculum of Master and PhD level studies. An attempt has been made to demonstrate its necessity, implementation issues and strategic plans to execute this course. General structural plans along with details of the course content are discussed in this paper. The course aims to provide a unified view of sustainable embedded system technologies, practices of using efficiently computers and telecommunication equipments, environmental assessment strategies and life cycle management of electronic components as well as end-products. The objective of this new course is to give knowledge and foresight toward assessment of environmental impacts. This course will also be capable of imparting knowledge of sustainable design approach in life cycle of the materials, manufacturing processes, use/reuse and recycling of the electronic equipments and components. The course has been proposed of 5 ECTS credit units inclusive of extensive theoretical lectures and lab exercises using suitable environmental assessment software tools.A life cycle assessment (LCA) is carried out to compare nanoclay-reinforced polymer wire coatings with conventional ones. While the conventional wire coatings contain standard halogen free retardants, in reinforced coatings, montmorillonite (nanoclay) is incorporated into electric cable linings as a rheological agent for an increased resistance to fire. In addition, a reduced load of standard halogen free retardants is obtained. The synergistic effect of the montmorillonite on traditional flame retardant additives (by the formation of a three-dimensional char network) can lead to a revolution in wire production. The application of nanoclays contributes also to anti-dripping effect and flexibility increase [1]. Some producers have already started commercializing wire with nanotechnology-based coating; in the short term the use of nanoclay in wire coating production will probably reach a significant market share replacing traditional formulations. The main aim of this study is to compare the environmental impacts along the life cycle of a traditional wire coating (mineral flame retardants like ATH or MDH in a polymer matrix) with the nanoclay-reinforced wire coating, where the montmorillonite replaces a low percentage of the mineral flame retardant. The system boundaries of the study include the following unit processes: nanoclay production, thermoplastic material and mineral flame retardants production, cable coating manufacturing by extrusion and different end of life scenarios (recycling, incineration and landfill disposal). Whereas nanoreinforced composites have shown and increased fire retardance, the addition of nanomaterials seems to have no significant relevance in the environmental assessment. However, the lack of nano-specific characterization factors for nanomaterials and emission rates associated to the different life cycle stages - mainly in the extrusion and use phase, where accidental combustions can take place-still remains a challenge for realistic life cycle assessment modelling.New materials on nano scale have the potential to overcome existing technical barriers and are one of the most promising key technologies to enable the decoupling of economic growth and resource consumption. Developing these innovative materials for industrial applications means facing a complex quality profile, which includes among others technical, economic, and ecological aspects. So far the two latter aspects are not sufficiently included in technology development, especially from a life cycle point of view. Supercapacitors are considered a promising option for electric energy storage in hybrid and full electric cars. In comparison with presently used lithium based electro chemical storage systems supercapacitors possess a high specific power, but a relatively low specific energy. Therefore, the goal of ongoing research is to develop a new generation of supercapacitors with high specific power and high specific energy. To reach this goal particularly nano materials are developed and tested on cell level. In the presented study the ecological implications (regarding known environmental effects) of carbon based nano materials are analysed using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Major attention is paid to efficiency gains of nano particle production due to scaling up of such processes from laboratory to industrial production scales. Furthermore, a developed approach will be displayed, how to assess the environmental impact of nano materials on an automotive system level over the whole life cycle.Internationally, a growing health, safety and environmental awareness of the public can be observed. In this context, significant efforts are underway to develop advanced technologies to reduce the use of non-renewable fossil fuels, in order to reduce emissions and human exposure. Also, in the road industry, the search for new sustainable solutions is eminent. The introduction of asphalt mixtures that can be produced at lower temperatures is an important development in this direction. Lower temperature means in general that lower than 140 degrees C. In this article, developments with the so-called half-warm foamed bitumen mixtures produced at temperatures below 100 degrees C and even as low as 90 degrees C are discussed. Mixtures used in binder and base layers are considered. The role of life-cycle assessment as used in the Netherlands is described for half-warm foamed bitumen mixtures. The performance properties according to the CE marking are also discussed at the same time. Finally, the workability of these mixtures is studied, showing how compaction of this type of mixtures can be managed. In all cases, a reference hot base course mixture is used for comparison.To develop and build low-carbon building, it is the most powerful measure to push building industry develop scientifically, it is the necessary way to improve people living level, it is an irresistible trend to save the earth. From the perspective of whole life cycle, this paper discusses the main point and measures to construct and develop the low-carbon building during its whole course of planning, layout and design, build and construction, and operation period, thus we can control and reduce the building carbon footprint, and form the healthy recycle sustainable development model. (C) 2011 Published B.V. Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of National University of Singapore.Dynamics of flutter is an important consideration in the design of aircraft structures. Flutter is an unstable self-excitation of the structure due to an undesirable coupling of structural elasticity and aerodynamics. Flutter is very difficult to predict and its occurrence can lead to catastrophic structural failure. The dynamics of flutter are affected by several factors including nonlinearities in structural stiffness, damping, and free-play in control surfaces. The free-play nonlinearity in control surfaces mechanisms is similar to the backlash in gears. Such nonlinearity introduces persistent limit cycle oscillations (LCO's) and significantly affects the onset of flutter. The impact of free-play on the flutter speed and frequency is not fully understood and is an active area of research. Historically, very conservative estimates have been used for the allowable free-play. The current military specification limit for free-play is based on the wind tunnel tests performed in 1950's at the Wright Air Development Center (WADC). The key contribution of this paper lies in gaining deeper understanding of free-play dynamics to enable more accurate modeling of free-play and predict its impact on flutter speed and frequency. The proposed modeling methodology is validated via close agreement of the simulation with WADC test data. Energy-based novel approach is presented for life cycle assessment and to predict flutter instability.With the rapid growth of vehicle population and electronic control components used in automotives in China, the energy consumption and environmental emissions of automotive electronic control components in 2007 are calculated by adopting the EIO-LCA model. The calculation results indicate that automotive electronic control components consume 20306000 tons of standard coal equivalent (SCE), which is a large consumption of energy, and make a lot of toxic environmental emissions. However, in China, after the automotives are scrapped, the automotive electronic components are either discarded carelessly or smashed into pieces along with the vehicles for material recycling. This unreasonable treatment of these components can result in great damage to the environment and resource wastage. Therefore, in this study, the automotive electronic control components recycling strategy and a technology roadmap in accordance with China's actual conditions are provided for energy conservation and toxic environmental emissions reduction.Business feasibility of oil production using the green alga Botryococcus braunii has been studied for a conceptually designed, 19-hectare (ha) semi-open pond type oil producing plant. B. braunii is known to produce triterpenic hydrocarbons, such as C34H58, with high purity. The construction cost was estimated to be 200M(sic) (2.35M$) and the operation cost was 200M(sic) (2.35M$), or 10.5 M(sic)/ha.year (= 124,000$/ha.year). The plant achieved a net energy gain in operation with an energy consumption ratio (ECR) of 2.80. Based on the total sales of the hydrocarbon oil produced and the operation cost balance considerations, the breakeven point oil price was 107 (sic)/L. By utilizing corporate financial analyses methods, the capital value of the oil producing company was estimated. The analysis methods described in the present study can also be applied to other oil production companies that use microalgae. We found that the initially invested capital increases approximately three times through successive business years when the oil price is 130 (sic)/L. In conclusion, several considerations introduced in the present study suggest that the algal oil production business will become strongly competitive in the fuel market by mid-twenty-first century. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of International Organizing Committee for AOAIS-1The indirect land use change (ILUC) effect of biofuels has called into question the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation benefit of biofuels compared with that of fossil fuels. This article reviews the various economic modeling approaches being used to assess the ILUC effect and discusses the key factors that influence estimates of its magnitude. We find that there is considerable variability in the magnitude of ILUC associated with a biofuel pathway across studies and within a study, depending on underlying model parameters. These estimates are sensitive to the scale of biofuel production, the mix of policies and biofuels considered, variations in the parametric assumptions that govern price transmission through international trade, and the ease of changes in land use at the intensive and extensive margins. We discuss the challenges in implementing policies to address ILUC.Meeting the targets set out by the EU's End of Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive is a challenge currently facing the automotive industry. In order to meet the requirements of this legislation, vehicles must be designed, manufactured and assembled giving consideration to their disposal. The reuse, recycling and recovery of ELV materials each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and are complicated by the wide range of metals, polymers and composites currently used in the manufacture of vehicles. Another option is the design of multifunctional components to reduce the number of end of life materials that need to be dealt with. Tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) are available to evaluate the sustainability of a vehicle across the whole life cycle.Ceramic bricks are one of the most widely used materials in both commercial and residential buildings. Ceramic bricks play a relevant role in the Brazilian economy. The basic input material for this industry is red clay. As environmental problems increase, the need for environment-friendly building design increases. To achieve this, architects and engineers need reliable data on the environmental impacts of various building materials, including ceramic bricks. In this paper a comparative Life Cycle Assessment between two ceramic brick production units in Santa Catarina State, Brazil, has been carried in a comparative approach. Key impact categories, including fossil fuel use, global warming, ozone depletion, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity were assessed. The analysis has shown a particular relevance of the respiratory effects in both systems and the critical point has been found in the fuel used in the furnace for firing the bricks which are responsible, during the firing process, for the relevant CO2 emissions.Whereas much attention has been paid to the environmental aspects of the life cycle of fuel cell fuel production, emphasis is placed on fuel cell hardware and materials recovery, including component reuse, remanufacturing, materials recycling and energy recovery for fuel cell maintenance and retirement processes. Fuel cell hardware recycling is described and issues related to the recycling infrastructure and the compatibility of fuel cell hardware and materials are discussed. The role of materials selection and recovery in the fuel cell life cycle is described. Future trends for fuel cells centered on voluntary and mandatory recovery and the movement of life cycle considerations from computational research laboratories to design complete the discussion.Because of the need to address challenges of global climate change, a project-based framework was developed and implemented for life-cycle assessment (LCA) that could be used to estimate the carbon footprint for typical construction work items in highway reconstruction and rehabilitation projects. The proposed framework considers the life-cycle emissions of products and processes involved in the raw material acquisition and manufacturing phase as well as the pavement construction phase. The framework also accounts for emissions from vehicular use and maintenance operations during the service life of the pavement. The framework introduces methods based on LCA to develop inventories of project emissions for highway construction, rehabilitation, and maintenance projects as well as to analyze inventories for the calculation of project-level construction metrics for estimating emissions. Fourteen highway construction and rehabilitation projects in Michigan were used to implement the method and validate the approach. In addition, the project emissions estimator (PE-2), a web-based tool that can be used to estimate and benchmark the carbon dioxide footprint of highway construction projects, is introduced. Results further the understanding of LCA methods for pavements while providing an emission estimation tool that can be used by decision makers to monitor and assess project emissions.Recent budget and fiscal constraints make optimal fleet management more imperative than ever for transit agencies. Fleet data have consistently shown that bus operations and maintenance (O&M) costs per mile increase as buses age. From a purely economic perspective, there is a cost trade-off between the lower O&M costs of newer fleets and their higher initial capital costs. This trade-off has a significant impact on the optimal timing of purchase and replacement decisions. Realistic cost data and an optimization modeling framework were used to analyze the impact of purchase timing decisions on fleet costs per mile. The results indicate that (a) increases in diesel prices do not affect total bus fleet costs as much as increases in maintenance costs, (b) increases in maintenance costs and utilization per year reduce the optimal replacement age, (c) increases in utilization and fuel economy have a similar impact in terms of total fleet costs, and (d) bus purchase-price changes have a significant impact on the optimal replacement age. Given uncertain and hard-to-forecast market variables, a thorough sensitivity analysis is presented to ascertain the key variables that affect bus transit replacement timing.This paper aims to demonstrate the relevance of membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology for the reduction of the environmental footprint of wastewater treatment in terms of removal of microbial and organic trace pollutants with increased reliability of operation. The application of a holistic approach using failure mode analysis, life cycle analysis (LCA), water quality fingerprints and environmental impacts underlines the lower environmental footprint of MBRs compared with conventional activated sludge. Several elements of this empirical approach can be included to upgrade the existing LCA tools in order to include the reduction of eco-toxicity, better human health protection and water reuse.The majority of large-scale solar farms have so far been constructed in the Southwest of the United States due to the intense insolation there. However, the high cost of electricity and the desire to increase the portion of renewables in the electric supply have generated interest in developing large-area plants in other areas. The environmental impact of building such large-scale solar farms in the northern United States has not yet been evaluated; we do so in this paper. This work discusses the life-cycle environmental impact from constructing and operating a 37-MWp solar-photovoltaic power-plant on the forested campus of Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. We use the results from our assessments of its life-cycle emissions of greenhouse gases are then compared with those generated by similar plants in other regions to assess the net impacts of photovoltaics' life cycles in areas where trees are removed to accommodate the power plant.The choice between different options for the remediation of a contaminated site traditionally relies on economical, technical and regulatory criteria without consideration of the environmental impact of the soil remediation process itself. In the present study, the environmental impact assessment of two potential soil remediation techniques (excavation and off-site cleaning and in situ steam extraction) was performed using two life cycle assessment (LCA)-based evaluation tools, namely the REC (risk reduction, environmental merit and cost) method and the ReCiPe method. The comparison and evaluation of the different tools used to estimate the environmental impact of Brownfield remediation was based on a case study which consisted of the remediation of a former oil and fat processing plant. For the environmental impact assessment, both the REC and ReCiPe methods result in a single score for the environmental impact of the soil remediation process and allow the same conclusion to be drawn: excavation and off-site cleaning has a more pronounced environmental impact than in situ soil remediation by means of steam extraction. The ReCiPe method takes into account more impact categories, but is also more complex to work with and needs more input data. Within the routine evaluation of soil remediation alternatives, a detailed LCA evaluation will often be too time consuming and costly and the estimation of the environmental impact with the REC method will in most cases be sufficient. The case study worked out in this paper wants to provide a basis for a more sounded selection of soil remediation technologies based on a more detailed assessment of the secondary impact of soil remediation.In this study, an energy, exergy and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis of a Flat-Plate (FP) collector, a Photovoltaic (PV) system and a Photovoltaic-Thermal (PV-T) collector is carried out for better evaluation. It is observed that instantaneous energy, daily energy and exergy efficiency of the FP collector, the PV system and the PV/T collector vary between 53-61%, 19-30%, 23-37% and 56-74%, 11-15%, 21-34% and 2-7%, 6-22% and 8-16%, respectively. The energy and CO2 payback time of these solar collectors varies between 2, 12, 3.8 and 1.6, 3.6 and 1.8 years, respectively. Thermodynamic and LCA analysis show that a considerable amount of electrical and thermal energy is generated by the PV-T collector and the sustainability of the system is improved. Hence, the PV system has features better for the PV-T collector, especially when both electricity and heat are required for domestic applications.Bioethanol and bioelectricity are two main energy conversion processes for straw utilization. Considering the three stages to power a vehicle, namely, energy conversion, distribution, and utilization, a lifecycle comparative analysis was conducted on the two processes according to their energy efficiencies and environmental impacts in China, e. g., CO2 and NOx emissions and water consumption. In the base scenario, the net energy output of bioethanol was 1.95 km/kg dry biomass, which was 29.4% of that produced by the bioelectricity process. Comparing the environmental impacts of 1 kg dry biomass, the water consumption and CO2 and NOx emissions of bioelectricity were 21.3%, 14.9%, and 53 times higher than those of the bioethanol process, respectively. Using the 1-km vehicle drive as the function unit, water consumption and CO2 emission of bioelectricity were 53.5% and 58.9% lower than those of bioethanol, respectively, but NOx emission was about 15 times higher than that of bioethanol. With the possible technology innovation for each process, differences in their energy efficiencies and environmental impacts are expected to be reduced. However, bioelectricity is still more advantageous in most respects except NOx emission. Conclusions are that straw-based E85 substitution of fossil-dependent fuel should be further expected, especially considering the high water intensity of bioethanol processing and nationwide water scarcity in China. In addition, bioelectric technology improvements in energy conversion efficiency and de-nitrification efficiency should be given priority. Likewise, technology innovation in work performance and construction of supporting service systems for electric vehicles should be prioritized.The purpose of this study is to assess the energy savings and emission reductions of the present rural biogas system in China. The life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used to analyze a "pig-biogas-fish" system in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, China. The nonrenewable energy cost and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the system, including the pigsty, the biogas digester, and the fishpond, are taken into account. The border definition is standardized because of the utilization of the database in this paper. The results indicate that the nonrenewable energy consumption intensity of the "pig-biogas-fish" system is 0.60 MJ/MJ and the equivalent CO2 emission intensity is 0.05 kg CO2-eq/MJ. Compared with the conventional animal husbandry system, the "pig-biogas-fish" system shows high renewability and GHG reduction benefit, which indicates that the system is a scientific and environmentally friendly chain combining energy and ecology.Using the method of lifecycle assessment (LCA) and building information model (BIM), this paper compares quantitatively the embodied carbon levels of three typical residential buildings: a five-storied townhouse, a fourteen-storied medium high-rise and a thirty-storied high-rise. This study consequently finds out that, in a specific period (i.e. from cradle to site), the medium high-rise emits the least embodied carbon and therefore is preferable in this respect.Demand is increasing for the manufacturing and machining of small mechanical parts. We focus on using a multi-functional desktop-sized machine tool to meet such demands because power consumption is decreased when they are machined. However, few reports have focused on heat treatment among manufacturing processes, we investigate the laser heat treatment of small parts as a highly efficient and eco-friendly method and propose in-situ heat treatment on a desktop-sized machine tool using a low-power diode laser beam. We quenched a small thin steel plate with a 30 W diode laser source. Our proposed method makes it feasible to quench a small thin steel plate and effectively reduces the power consumption of in-situ heat treatment by a desktop-sized machine tool.Due to the rapid development of Internet, new forms of Internet based services appear. whose desktop clients are similar to traditional instant messaging software (IMS). In addition, because the IMS's frequent updates and encryption of communication protocols. the traditional way of detecting IMS is not suitable anymore. So we promote a model combined with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), to complete the performance assessment and detection of new forms of IMS and traditional ones, which based on advanced packet capture and analysis using Distribute Computing. The experimental results show that the performance of this method is effective and efficient. The most significant contribution of the AHP&LCA model in IMS is its flexibility which suits various needs. This paper provides a new thought of detecting of IMS.The level of man-made CO2 emissions worldwide climbed to a new record of 30 billion tons in 2010. In 2011, at the COP17 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, high-ranking representatives from around the world met again to discuss solutions. For the building sector, numerous energy-efficiency market changes and benchmarking resolutions, like the mandatory E.U. "nearly Net-Zero-Energy-Building (NET-ZEB's) 2018 and 2020 regulations" for all new public and privately owned buildings are now set up to help minimizing carbon emissions and reverse the negative impact.(1) In the United States, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) adopted the 2030 Challenge as a voluntary program, where participating buildings aim to achieve a 90% fossil fuel reduction by 2025, and carbon-neutrality by 2030.(2) To accomplish these energy goals, designers must strive to best design and utilize the resources available on a site. However, are these goals of achieving carbon-neutral buildings possible? How can NET-ZEB's become the curricular standard and practical routine in education and the profession? To date, the basic curricular design process components with integrated project delivery metrics for a robust 3-D/4-D-net-zero regulatory design framework are either incomplete or missing, However, formally-based curriculums have begun to weave carbon-neutral design tools into their pedagogy. This research paper critically compares how these new criteria for digital 3-D-building information modeling (BIM), and "Integrated Project Delivery" are mandating a better integration of collaborative carbon-neutral designs into the curriculum and practice of the profession. The majority of those in architectural academia have been using generative computation primarily for pure, aesthetic form-finding, without applying zero-carbon-energy-driven global performance metrics and CO2e reduction strategies to reiterate derived carbon-neutral designs. The advantage of 3-D-parametric design is that it links variables, dimensions, and materials to geometry in a way that when an input or simulation value changes, the 3-D/4-D model automatically updates all life-cycle scenarios and components simultaneously.The aim of the paper is to address the EU policy for achieving low carbon economy by assessing energy technologies in electricity sector based on costs and impact on climate change and to indicate the most competitive electricity generation technologies taking into EU policy targets in GHG emission reduction, utilization of renewable and energy efficiency improvements. The main tasks of the paper are: to develop the multi criteria framework for comparative assessment of energy technologies by applying MCDM methods for the electricity generation technologies assessment. The interval TOPSIS method is employed in order to tackle the uncertain criteria. The assessment framework allows the comparison of electricity generation technologies in terms of their GHG emission reduction and economic impacts and facilitates decision making process in energy sector seeking to implement EU energy policies. The main indicators selected for technologies assessment are: private costs and life cycle GHG emissions. The ranking of energy technologies based on private costs and GHG emissions allowed prioritizing these technologies thus mitigating GHG emissions at the lowest costs.As well as satisfying the major packaging functions (protection, containment, convenience and communication), food and beverage packaging is now also being pushed towards being environmentally friendly by the supply chain, consumers and society. A search for sustainable packaging should not, however, just be confined to the environmental impact of the package itself but also needs to be harmonized with its protective function, and therefore an holistic approach needs to be taken. Effectiveness, efficiency, protection and safety should all be provided by a proper combination of packaging material, package design and food supply logistics.While historically life cycle assessments (LCAs) of food and beverage packaging have focused upon comparative assessment of different packaging material formats and configurations, there is an increasing awareness that the LCA impact of the 'content' i.e., the food or beverage, has a greater impact on the overall product packaging system than the packaging materials. The growing interest among multinational brandowner companies and retailers to implement sustainable packaging strategies and systems is also driving a refinement in evaluation tools, metrics and indicators. This new direction will see the development of the need for organisations to implement action-oriented decision making using life cycle thinking to improve the design of the product packaging system.This chapter reviews alternatives to conventional synthetic food packaging materials. It discusses the environmental impact of synthetic plastic packaging. It then goes on to review biobased food packaging materials such as starch-based PHB and PLA polymers as well as PHAs and PVA. It outlines production methods for these materials together with hybrid blends and composites. The example of recycled lignocellulosic fiber is used as a case study. The chapter concludes by looking at ways of assessing the biodegradability of renewable packaging materials and life cycle assessment.The ecological footprint (EF) was proposed as a tool to measure progress towards the future goal of increasing the University 'Dunarea de Jos' Galati (UDJG) sustainability. Four meals, two traditional (MC1, MC2) and two Eco (EC1, EC2) were composed and subsequently analysed under EFE protocol. The 6 main ingredients used in menus structure were analysed using the LCA assessment protocol and the results depending on origin and transportation system, in terms of distance and thermal status were reported. Vegetables and milk of local origin have the lower EF value and the ratio proposed in the optimised Eco-menus must be increased in order to generate a significant reducing of total menu EF. The farm origin from canteen proximity for all menu ingredients determined a reducing of total menu EF with 6.83% reported at the UE origin and 3.97% reported at the national items origin. The EC1 (50% reducing of the meat content in compare with traditional menus) were found as the most equilibrate menu in terms of nutritional balance, costs and environment impact. The overall EF could be improved at 0.7554 g ha per capita by simple using of local sources for the analysed items and regular replacement once in a week of beef commodities with poultry or local farm fish products.Agriculture and within it, industrialised viticulture of our century, developed on intensively chemicalised and mechanised technologies has lead to problems that can affect a supreme value criteria and namely, human health, through environment and food depreciation. The paper presents a possibility to justify managerial decisions within agricultural holdings in order to sustainable develop them, based on the life cycle assessment of the products. This management technique targets the impact of the agricultural activities on the environment, on the manufacturing stages of the agricultural products, also highlighting their economic and social effects. The paper refers to the importance of life cycle assessment and the used methodology illustrated in a case study regarding wine grapes grown at the Tarnavelor vineyard in Romania through conventional and green technology. The analysis based on the life cycle assessment specific for the 2 technologies underlines the superiority of the green technology in comparison to the conventional one, from ecologic, economic and social perspectives.The database and framework of CO2 emission evaluation of residential buildings in Zhejiang province based on life cycle assessment (LCA) are set to quantify CO2 emission of residential buildings. A typical case of residential buildings in Hangzhou was analyzed to evaluate CO2 emission in each phase of building life cycle. This research not only provides a method that can calculate CO2 emission of residential buildings, but also provides an effective suggestion to choose appropriate energy saving and CO2 reduction strategy.Responsible for 6% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) production, agricultural land use has significant potential to reduce these emissions and capture additional carbon in the soil. Many different activities have been proposed for such mitigation, but assessments of the biophysical potential have been limited and have not provided direct comparison among the many options. We present an in-depth review of the scientific literature, with a side-by-side comparison of net biophysical GHG mitigation potential for 42 different agricultural land management activities in the United States, many of which are likely applicable in other regions. Twenty of these activities are likely to be beneficial for GHG mitigation and have sufficient research to support this conclusion. Limited research leads to uncertainty for 15 other activities that may have positive mitigation potential, and the remaining activities have small or negative GHG mitigation potential or life-cycle GHG concerns. While we have sufficient information to move forward in implementing a number of activities, there are some high-priority research needs that will help clarify problematic uncertainties.Nowadays, rapidly growing mobile machines such as tablet PC and smart phone equipped with touch screen panel using a sturdy material for products surface protection. Therefore, surge of chemical strengthening glass was increased. Through large areas of chemical strengthening glass, the surface scratch will cause a major failure. Most of these failures will be discarded because it is difficult to reuse. Thus, discarded chemical strengthening glass is expected to increase as with the demand. Accordingly, the importance of environmental pollution, waste landfill has been proposed. Recently, touch screen of chemical strengthened glass all-in-one type was commercialized. Therefore reuse is possible, due to surface of discarded chemical strengthening glass is washed and wipe off the electrode. In this study, we carried out the MLCA(Material Life Cycle Assessment; MLCA) on a chemical strengthening glass by landfill scenario, reuse scenario and identified the key issues.Recently, touch screen is one of the most popular pieces of electrical and electronic equipment in our society, such as laptops, cellular phones, and digital cameras. Indium tin oxide (ITO) is mainly used to make transparent conductive coatings for touch and flat screen. Therefore, there is an increasing demand accordingly. Although accounted for 1% of the touch screen, indium is rare metals. Consequently, it is important to Recycling ITO for National Strategies about Resource Conservation, and reduce Environmental burden. The case which disuses ITO like landfill or incineration, it cloud be harmful to the human health in the long-term. This study intended to identify the environmental aspects with the ITO recycling. The potential environmental impacts were evaluated by using Material Life Cycle assessment method (MLCA). As the result of this study, MLCA would provide more information for environmental issues of ITO. So that it is possible to improve the environmental issues by the monitoring that could be useful and effective for ITO. The study includes two scenarios, the basic scenario is recycling of ITO (10, 20 and 30%) and the other scenario is landfill of ITO.Microstructured reactors with a layer of heterogeneous catalyst deposited on their walls are widely recognized for their potential applications in the chemical industry. However, what is the most preferable way to handle these catalytic reactors once they are deactivated? Is it better to dispose of the reactors together with the catalytic layer or is it more preferable to remove the catalytic coating and recycle the microstructured substrate? We attempted to answer these questions in the current study by experimental investigations as well as by consideration of environmental concerns and cost evaluation to get a holistic basis for decision making.Facing the tense situation of the world's energy, it is particularly important to develop and utilize environmentally friendly, renewable energy grass specially prepared for cellulosic ethanol production. Therefore, the establishment of a whole process of energy grass life cycle assessment model of production of cellulosic ethanol is necessary. This paper gives an inventory analysis of the life cycle of the process that uses energy grass to produce cellulosic ethanol, according to the theory of life cycle; and then uses BP neural network to assess environmental impact of this process. Research results show that the BP neural network meets the requirements of this environmental impact assessment, atmospheric pollutants and water pollutants of energy grass of cellulosic ethanol production process have reached the level of standard.LCA is the embodiment and technicalization of sustainable development, is tolerance and technical support of sustainable development. Meanwhile, LCA is the important mean and scientific method of ecological environment design, clean production audit, environmental material development too. Firstly, this thesis expatiates on the proposition background and basic intension of LCA. Secondly, the thesis summarizes domestic and foreign research actuality of LCA on this basis. Foreign LCA theoretical research has achieved great success, but still there are places not perfect either, which reflect in technological detail mainly. Because of short developing time, domestic accumulation of LCI is still far from enough. Finally, the thesis summarizes: LCA is not only applied to technological sciences and natural science, but also is applied extensively to social science, economic science, management science and international relationship etc; The implementation of LCA not only depends on LCA standard, but also depends on the implementer's exact understanding of method and target and one's own experience and technological background, and there is much limitation mainly in practical application.The wide usages of masonry materials in construction are always accompanied by great consumptions of energy and resource during their life cycle, so it is necessary to evaluate the EI of masonry materials objectively. This paper uses BEPAS, an LCA-based quantitative EI assessment system developed based on our previous studies, to assess the life cycle EI of three kinds of common used masonry materials: autoclaved flyash brick, sintered clay brick and aerated concrete block. Starting with establishing the environmental profiles at the producing, constructing and demolishing phases of these three materials respectively, the environmental impacts are categorized into three safeguard subjects: ecosystem damage, resources depletion and health damage. Then, based on WTP (willingness-to-pay) method and the updated monetization weighting factors, one integrated EI value per functional unit (10m(3)) of masonry partition wall is obtained. Finally, a comparative study is conducted on the EI values to analyze and compare the life cycle environmental performance of the three materials, resulting that autoclaved flyash brick is the most environmental friendly in a sharp contrast to sintered clay brick. Results also indicate that reusing more wastes, as well as reducing weight and increasing the volume of unit block are the most effective measures to improve the environmental performance for masonry materials.Carbon footprint is a quantitative method to assess greenhouse gasses has gained worldwide attention especially as climate change has become an increasing area of concern. The production process of molded bra cup consumes lots of materials, electricity, steam etc. which have caused large amount of Greenhouse Gas emission. This paper introduces a concept of carbon footprint for moulded bra cup, as well as proposes the frame model according to the specific production process based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Finally, we analyzed the carbon footprint of the energy obtained in the production molding process, which contributes to further research on the molded bra cup.Biofuels can be alternative energy sources which simultaneously reduce dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the US, over 50 billion liters of ethanol produced in 2010 is mandated to increase to 136 billion liters by 2022. Globally, approximately 33.3 million ha (Mha) of land under production of biofuels in 2008 may increase to as much as 82 Mha by 2020. Whereas data on the energy efficiency and GHG balances for biofuels are available, information on agronomic and ecological consequences of large-scale production of bioenergy crops is sparse. Thus, this paper describes the potential effects that bioenergy production may have on ecosystems. Conversion of land to biofuel crops may have significant impacts on ecosystem services such soil and water quality. GHG emissions, wildlife habitat, net primary productivity, and biological control, and plant diversity at both the landscape and the regional levels. Production of exotic species for feedstock may increase the risk of escape from agriculture and invasion into natural ecosystems. Several feedstocks, while suitable on the basis of energy and GHG assessments, may have negative ecosystem impacts (i.e., increased N export in the Gulf of Mexico). Bioenergy feedstock may compete with food crops for land, water, and nutrient resources, resulting in higher prices for food as well as potential increases in malnutrition and food insecurity. Biofuels can be a sustainable and renewable source of energy, but assessments must include ecological impacts, economic costs, and energetic efficiencies.Municipal solid waste (MSW) reflects the culture that produces it and affects the health of the people and the environment surrounding it. Globally, people are discarding growing quantities of waste, and its composition is more complex than ever before, as plastic and electronic consumer products diffuse. Concurrently, the world is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate. These trends pose a challenge to cities, which are charged with managing waste in a socially and environmentally acceptable manner. Effective waste management strategies depend on local waste characteristics, which vary with cultural, climatic, and socioeconomic variables, and institutional capacity. Globally, waste governance is becoming regionalized and formalized. In industrialized nations, where citizens produce far more waste than do other citizens, waste tends to be managed formally at a municipal or regional scale. In less-industrialized nations, where citizens produce less waste, which is mostly biogenic, a combination of formal and informal actors manages waste. Many waste management policies, technologies, and behaviors provide a variety of environmental benefits, including climate change mitigation. Key waste management challenges include integrating the informal waste sector in developing cities, reducing consumption in industrialized cities, increasing and standardizing the collection and analysis of solid waste data, and effectively managing increasingly complex waste while protecting people and the environment.While sheet-and-tube absorber is generally recommended for flat-plate photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collector design because of the simplicity and promising performance, the use of rectangular-channel absorber is also tested to be a good alternative. Before a new energy technology, like PV/T, is fully implemented, its environmental superiority over the competing options should be assessed, for instance, by evaluating its consumption levels throughout its production and service life. Although there have been a plenty of environmental life-cycle assessments on the domestic solar hot water systems and PV systems, the related works on hybrid solar PV/T systems have been very few. So far there is no reported work on the assessment of PV/T collector with channel-type absorber design. This paper reports an evaluation of the energy payback time and the greenhouse gas payback time of free-standing and building-integrated PV/T systems in Hong Kong. This is based on two case studies of PV/T collectors with modular channel-type aluminium absorbers. The results confirm the long-term environmental benefits of PV/T applications.Life-cycle thinking significantly affects the assessment of the environmental performance of a system. In this study, the life-cycle assessment of a multi-Si photovoltaic (PV) module was conducted in order to examine the environmental burden throughout its life cycle and benchmark it with the environmental burden of the identical conventional energy produced with the energy mix of Greece and supplied by the national energy network grid. The results indicated that aluminium, solar glass and the energy consumed during PV assembly significantly affected the environmental performance of the PV module. Non-renewable energy utilisation, global warming and respiratory inorganic emissions were the major impact categories affected by the life cycle of the module examined. Significant questions were raised regarding the distance of the PV installation site from manufacturers and maintenance personnel. Still, the utilisation of the system examined was more efficient than the application of conventional energy sources in terms of environmental performance.The continuing development of service sector drew the attention of environmentalists and researchers who pointed out the significant amounts of materials and energy consumed, mainly through material flow analysis studies. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) for a typical university office was performed. In order for the assessment to be carried out, an inventory was created including the basic inputs and outputs for the system examined. The inventory included commonly used equipment and devices of a typical office and an estimation of the energy consumption for a specific time period. Results indicated the processes, materials and life cycle stages that highly affected global warming potential (GWP) in terms of kg CO2 equivalent. In that aspect an initial analysis was carried out regarding actions for "greening" the service sector whereas the potential of expanding the boundaries of this study was further discussed.Five scenarios for organic household waste treatment from the municipality of Trondheim were studied. Combustion and anaerobic digestion of the waste in three potential locations were considered. The results show a negligible climate benefit from biogas production in these scenarios, although the benefit is much more pronounced in other environmental impact categories such as photochemical oxidation (smog production) and fossil resource depletion. A sensitivity analysis demonstrates a strong dependence on assumed values for lower heating value (LHV) of the organic waste, methane yield in the anaerobic digestion process, and fuel efficiency of the buses. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Centre for Renewable Energy.In this work we display the importance of supply chain management through the use of Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis (EEIOA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Results show that for most sectors a majority of the energy/environmental loads are located in the upstream supply chain, both nationally and abroad. Using the tools outlined could therefore help to address important areas to focus the work and guide policies for future energy and emissions reductions. Actions can be at an international policy level, using taxes or other measures to counteract pollution havens, or they could include specific requirements of the products purchased, environmental labeling, or requirements relating to certifications of businesses were products and services are purchased from. The focus of this paper is the public sector, more specifically; the municipalities, where - despite the importance of upstream emissions is identified with a fraction of 90-95 percent - still most focus is on the 5-10 % of the footprint relating to use of heating oil and fuel for transportation. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Centre for Renewable Energy.Until recently, the automotive industry was solely relying on one energy resource: oil. However, because of several environmental, political and economical issues, new alternatives are now emerging, such as electric vehicles (EVs). The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of an EV are linked with the manufacturing of the car and the electricity production during the use phase. In this article, we study the GHG emissions linked with EVs using photovoltaic (PV) and wind electricity associated with a Renault EV. GHG emissions are compared with EVs using average electricity from various European countries and from conventional thermal vehicles. The results show that using wind electricity always allows decreasing GHG emissions while PV impact is dependent on the country studied. Nonetheless, when using PV electricity, GHG emissions are always lower than conventional thermal vehicles. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Centre for Renewable Energy.This paper discusses the significant percentage increase of environmental impact generated in the manufacturing phase as a result of changes in the key material selection during the product design process. The findings in this paper are important for product designers. They need to pay extra attention when choosing plastics or metals when assessing design alternatives that can reduce the environmental impact. Four products were analysed in this case study namely water pump, hot pot, plastic kettle and stainless steel kettle. The environmental impacts of these four products are assessed by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the CML approach from Institute of Environmental Sciences is adopted as the Life Cycle Impact Assessment method.Reducing the adverse impacts to environment is a more and more important subject in electrolytic manganese industry. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been a hot tool to measure the type and size of environmental impact. This paper firstly applied LCA on two different processes of producing electrolytic manganese. One process is the resourceful utilization system of high sulfur coal and low grade pyrolusite (the novel process for short)in which high sulfur coal is burned to generate power and emission SO2, then the SO2 is absorbed as reducing agent to leach the pyrolusite with 30% MnO2 grade. The other process is prevalent interiorly, called traditional process where the power is supplied by standard coal combustion, and sulfur acid leaches the manganese ore with 18% Mn grade. Life cycle software converts the original data to nine different kinds of indexes that are able to indicate types and sizes of environmental impacts. Results show that: among nine environmental impacts, the proportion of abiotic depletion potential (ADP) is biggest in both processes, but the value of the novel process is 23.25% smaller pointing the process saves more resource. All the values of other important impacts including GWP, Waste Solids, AP and RI of the novel process are less than those in traditional process. Especially, the value of acidification (AP) in novel process was -2.10x10(-8) < 0, which means the novel process could control the acidification. In addition, through the composite index, using high sulfur coal in the novel process hasn't bring any more serious impact than using standard coal. Therefore, LCA has provided rational evidence to prove that resourceful utilization system of high sulfur coal and low grade pyrolusite is more efficient and environmentally friendly and pointed which environmental impacts and life cycle links need improving. This paper could provide a reference for further environmental impact assessment of electrolytic manganese industry and an objective basis for decision-making.Government agencies face demands for more use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in making decisions on the health and environmental dimensions of nano-enabled products. This paper is a preliminary assessment of the current utilization of life cycle approaches in the U. S. regulatory system. It notes the absence of legal authority for LCA in most U. S. environmental and health laws, and observes how long embedded statutory authority may preclude use of LCA where it most needed.This paper presents a life-cycle (LC) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions assessment of biodiesel produced in Portugal, based on soybean cultivated in Latin-America. The implications of different cultivation systems and land use change (LUC) scenarios are assessed. Multifunctionality in the soybean biodiesel chain is also addressed, based on a sensitivity analysis to allocation approaches. The results show the importance of LUC on biodiesel GHG emissions but significant differences in the GHG balance have been observed for the alternative LUC and cultivation systems assessed. Degraded grassland should be preferably used for soybean cultivation. No-(reduced-) tillage systems have lower GHG emissions than the corresponding tillage systems. Multifunctionality is also an important issue since results are very sensitive to the approach adopted to treat co-products.Electric vehicles are been proposed as a more sustainable option for transportation; however, the life-cycle environmental and economic performance of electric vehicles (EVs) relatively to conventional internal combustion vehicles (ICE) is controversial. This paper presents an integrated energy, GHG and cost life-cycle analysis of electric vehicles for Portugal. A life-cycle model and inventory has been implemented for 2 EV technologies: 100% electric battery (BEV) and plug-in (PHEV40 and PHEV20) vehicles, which have been compared with conventional ICE vehicles (gasoline and diesel), for two types of vehicles (subcompact and compact). Primary energy requirements, GHG emissions and costs per km have been calculated and compared for the various technologies and scenarios. Life-cycle costs have been calculated using the equivalent annual cost method, assuming two alternative interest rates (5% and 10%) and two prices for electricity. The results show that, for energy and GHG emissions, the most important life-cycle phase is vehicle operation; however, for life-cycle economic costs it is the acquisition price of vehicles. Concerning climate change, it has been found that the evolution of the Portuguese electricity generation mix is critical in the identification of the vehicle technology with lower impacts.When it comes to looking at energy efficiency and the concept of sustainability in computing, the focus has invariably been on data centers and mobile infrastructures like cell towers, as these have been considered the power intensive within the computing sector. However, some recent studies show that energy consumed globally by mobile devices is increasingly a large fraction that must be improved. With increased emphasis on utilizing cloud computing through mobile devices, the study and analysis of the complete end-to-end scenario from mobile devices to end-servers is needed that includes a life cycle assessment of networked data centers that provide cloud services. This paper conducts a preliminary investigation into the energy benefits of offloading tasks from mobile end devices to powerful remote servers.We proposed a methodology based on life cycle assessment streamlining techniques to estimate the carbon footprint (CF) of a meal. The methodology was applied to estimate the meal CF of twenty-four people on a 4-days Galapagos Island tour using over three hundred existing Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) results in the food industry. In spite of the abundance of food LCA studies, there were very little food CF studies on food produced in South America or Ecuador. By combining established and novel life cycle assessment streamlining techniques, we demonstrated how to (a) calculate the uncertainty associated with the use of surrogate CF data, (b) carry out a preliminary carbon footprint calculation using surrogate data to identify a subset of components that contributes the greatest CFs to the product, which we called the set of interest (SOI) and, (c) greatly reduce the uncertainty in the CF results using only exact CFs for the SOI in addition to the surrogate CFs of the other food items. In general, this methodology can systematically cut down the time and resources that are needed to collect all the emission data in the production of food in a meal, but to focus on only a small handful of food items that impact the total CF, provided that the surrogate CF database is large enough to include the true CF.A life-cycle optimization model is presented that minimizes the life-cycle costs of meeting the energy demand of a service building by means of a combination of cogeneration, solar and conventional energy systems. The model output provides optimal operation levels and investment planning as well as the corresponding life-cycle environmental impacts for different operational strategies. The life-cycle impact assessment results of the optimized operation of each cogeneration technology combined with other sources are discussed. Cogeneration systems and their combination with solar systems are capable of providing environmental benefits across all the impact assessment categories except eutrophication.Despite being a heavily regulated industry and one in which patient safety and well-being trumps many other concerns, healthcare's environmental impacts can be improved. Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental impacts associated with cesarean section and vaginal births at a US hospital, this study identifies aspects of birthing procedures upon which hospitals should focus to maximize efforts related to sustainability. This case study hospital, which delivers about 10,000 babies a year, emits about 227,000kg of CO2 equivalents annually from birth procedures alone. Results show that for both cesarean section and vaginal births, impacts related to the production and disposal of single-use items, as well as the impacts related to the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning contribute the most to the impact categories analyzed.The paper presents an eco-design methodology, dedicated to semi-conductor components manufacturers. This method aims to increase the designers' environmental consciousness and drive them systematically to explore innovative opportunities that can positively impact the environment during the early stages of design phase. The method relies on an original LCA-based tool for the environmental analysis of integrated circuits. It is developed in collaboration with a pilot team so as to help them develop and integrate their own eco-design approach. It allows the designers to acquire basic environmental knowledge and know-how during the analysis phase while ensuring high environmental performances of the microchips. The tool is organized into three main axes: characterizing design decisions in terms of impacts; controlling the evolution of new generations compared to older ones; and finding leverages for improvement. The environmental evaluation of a technology under development was initially assessed but as it is a preliminary work, the results were not directly used to design or re-design this technology. This pilot experiment gave encouraging results and validated the method capable of arousing the designers' interest on the environmental impact of their activity. The interpretation of the results allowed the design team to establish trends and directions for improvement for the future technologies they will design.Within the UK bridge engineering sector, fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) decks have been increasingly used in deck replacement applications. However, study on its environmental performance is limited. This paper examines the environmental credentials of this relatively new decking system by way of a case study comparing its life cycle environmental performance in carbon terms with that of conventional concrete decks. In order for the findings to be more general and informative, the bridge is assumed to carry an 'average' volume of traffic across the highway network where it is most likely to be present. Based on the results, areas for improvement are identified in order for this decking system to be more environmentally competitive. Uncertainties and limitations of the results are also discussed.With the development of resource economizing social, green building is being paid more attention at present, and also offers wider development space for water conservation technology. Water conservation evaluation is accordingly becoming an important part in green building study. A green residential area in Xi'an, which including a series of water conservation project such as water saving instrument, reclaimed usage of domestic greywater and rainwater, landscape water protection and so on, is selected as a study case. With evaluating its water conservation of incremental cost, rainwater utilization and comprehensive benefit, the paper aims at consulting on the investment decision in green building's water conservation technology to reduce the environmental impact on the earth due to water consumption and wastewater discharge.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become an international recognized method to estimate the environmental impacts of a building during its life. A building's environmental impacts can be divided into two parts impacts in the service stage and impacts in other stages of its life cycle. Other stages comprise material acquisition stage, constructing stage and final disposal stage. In life cycle except service stage, the LCA analysis was made on a timber structure teaching building using Athena software Eco-calculator. Then the teaching building is assumed to be redesigned adopting the structure of RC-frame and steel frame respectively. And the LCA analysis was made on the two assumed buildings too. By comparing the results, the conclusion can be drawn that timber buildings have lower environmental impact indexes compared with that of RC-frame and about the same with that of steel structure. The aboard usage of the timber structure instead of RC-frame structure can result in good environment performance. In service stage, if a sensible thermal insulation scheme is also considered, a great amount of energy will be saved, and the environmental impact of a building can be made minimum.In order to estimate the carbon footprint of bridge during whole life cycle, a quantitative model is established in this paper. The life cycle is divided into five phases as design, manufacturing, construction, operation & maintenance and demolishing. According to energy and resource consumption, the carbon footprint of different source, such as material, transportation, construction, facility etc, is accounted according to the criterion of mass and cost. The carbon intensity index is proposed considering the feature of bridge engineering and economic cost. A multi-level assessment method is developed based on modified analytic hierarchy process and comprehensive variable weight analysis. As a case study, south lake bridge in Wuhan is analyzed, the assessment results indicate that the carbon intensity of this bridge is between small and moderate, and the carbon footprint is mainly concentrated in the phases of manufacturing and construction. The carbon footprint model and carbon intensity index assessment method which combine environmental impact together with economic cost, are of high applicability in real bridge project, and could be used as a reference for bridge management section to assess the life cycle environmental impact.The end of life tyres (ELT) management generates CO2-eq emissions due to the involved processes. Therefore. this research has been conducted with the aim of quantifying the environmental performance of an ELT management system, in terms of CO2-eq emissions, which includes the recycling operation through the ELT treatment plant, the transport system and the secondary raw material derived from ELT processing; apart from other different ELT recovery methods. To this end, the environmental performance method based on life cycle assessment and complemented with the Clarke and Wright's saving algorithm has been developed in order to evaluate and optimise the location of the ELT treatment plants. To validate the proposed method, the Autonomous Community of Aragon in Spain is shown as a case study. Different ELT management scenarios have been analysed for the Aragon's ELT treatment plant and the optimisation of transportation of the baseline scenario is carried out by means of the Clarke and Wright algorithm. By applying the proposed methodology it has been identified that the current location of the Aragonese treatment plant has benefits in net CO2-eq emissions for the different radii studied with a maximum of 200 km. On the other hand, The Clarke and Wright method has been applied in order to obtain the transportation optimisation of the total travelled distance from the 42 collection/sorting centres to the treatment plant. As a result, the travelled distance can be reduced about 15%.Concrete is by far the most widely used building material in the world. The cement industry, which supplies the binder for concrete, is one of the larger industrial sources of CO2 emissions. This is due more to the extensive use of cement and concrete and less to the energy required to produce the cement and concrete. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has issued technology roadmaps for reducing CO2 emissions in different sectors, including the cement industry, through the year 2050. This paper will explain how CO2 is emitted during the cement manufacturing process, the traditional levers to reduce CO2 emissions and what else will need to be done to comply with the IEA roadmap. It will be seen that the traditional levers of energy efficiency, alternate fuels, and clinker substitution will only take the industry about half way to the 2050 targets. T his paper points out why the industry should collaborate on the following: Develop and promote a common approach to carbon footprint analysis; Actively promote the overall carbon efficiency of concrete; Push for a common understanding and accounting for traditional levers; Support the IEA roadmap and their sectorial approach, and; Further promote and educate others on life cycle analysis. The cement industry's story is one of tremendous success in overall carbon footprint management that needs to be told in the proper perspective.Assessing the economic and environmental life cycle impacts of long-lasting construction projects presents numerous methodological challenges. Three advances over established methods are presented for the life cycle evaluation of construction projects. First, future uncertainty during the project life or study period is explicitly accounted for. This involves moving from a deterministic approach requiring precise data to a probabilistic approach where uncertain variables are defined by ranges. The outcome of life cycle evaluation is then given by probability distributions, generated by Monte Carlo simulation. Second, flexible strategies are considered that allow for adaptation to changing conditions during the project life. Flexible strategies (also modelled by Monte Carlo simulation) incorporate specified 'life cycle options' which are exercised if it is advantageous to do so, otherwise they remain unexercised. Third, cost-based life cycle costing (LCC) and environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) are linked in a single LCC+A evaluation tool. There are still differences between cost and environmental evaluation, but the use of a shared framework enables the two aspects to be compared systematically. The two-dimensional 'ecoportfolio' diagram presents one way of analysing results. The innovations are demonstrated in a case study that assesses both economic and environmental impacts while accounting for future uncertainties.A new certification system for buildings called Bewertungssystem Nachhaltiges Bauen/Deutsches Gutesiegel fur Nachhaltiges Bauen (BNB/DGNB) was developed in Germany with the aim of evaluating the sustainable quality level of buildings. This rating system incorporates basic economic benchmarks (life cycle costs - LCC) and environmental inputs and outputs (life cycle assessment - LCA) caused by the construction, use and end-of-life phases of buildings in different use categories. The BNB adaptation process is explained and benchmarks for the use category 'residential buildings' are presented. A first test application is presented to demonstrate the use of BNB benchmarks.Governments, environmental groups and industry associations are reducing greenhouse gas emissions to insure environmental sustainability. Manufacturing plays an important role in economic development but is a main cause of global warming since production requires energy consumption. The supply chain leadership coalition has requested all members to publish their carbon emission data and to reduce emissions. In addition, the International Standard Organization (ISO) has legislated and published ISO14064 as an industrial guideline to control global greenhouse gas emissions. The British Standards Institution developed PAS2050 as the world's first government regulation to control a product's carbon footprint. Providing carbon labelling on products increases product appeals and sales revenues, but also increases manufacturing costs. This research aims to minimise a product's carbon footprint, while controlling its manufacturing cost during collaborative green product design and production planning. An economic input-output life cycle assessment approach is used to evaluate the carbon emissions of new products. The life cycle assessment identifies problematic carbon emissions within the supply chain. Based on the input and output data, the research applies system dynamics modelling to simulate and identify green product redesigns with cost-effective carbon footprints during manufacturing. The purpose of this research is to derive optimal means to reduce the carbon footprint for green product development and production. Finally, the paper uses the case of an electronic image projector to demonstrate the application of the methodology.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to select municipal waste management scenarios for the city of Wroclaw, assuming the time horizon of the year 2020. The results of LCA have clearly shown that among the analyzed scenarios the most advantageous is the one combining increased recycling with thermal treatment (incineration) of residual mixed waste, because this option provides the highest energy recovery. The scenario with anaerobic stabilization of the biofraction during mechanical-biological treatment of the waste is a more advantageous option than the one with aerobic stabilization, owing to the potential for energy recovery from biogas. Biogas is entirely considered as a renewable energy source (RES), while only 42% of energy from waste incineration is regarded as RES. The refuse-derived fuel (RDF) fraction sorted out during mechanical-biological treatment of the waste can be used in a cement kiln as a substitute of hard coal for the generation of heat energy, but far more friendly for the environment would be the use of RDF in the co-combustion technology applied in power and heat generating plants. The least advantageous among the analyzed scenarios of waste management was found to be the current scenario where direct landfilling is the preferred disposal option. Rational waste management contributes largely to the reduction in global, economic-activity-related emissions of wastes to the environment in general, and to the atmosphere in particular.Owing to the steep rise in demand for petroleum fuel and the depletion of the petroleum reserves, there is an intensive search for alternative fuels in the world. Non-edible oils with low viscosity can be a good alternative sustainable fuel for compression ignition engines. Transesterification of oils is a process which brings viscosity into a range equivalent to that of diesel fuel. In this study, three non-edible oils, namely, jatropha, karanja and neem oils are transesterified and these transesterified oils (biodiesels) have been tested in a four-stroke compression engine. Test results obtained have been analysed and compared for engine performance evaluation with respect to diesel fuel. This study indicates that methyl esters of jatropha, karanja and neem oils can be a good substitute for diesel fuel in compression ignition engine without any engine modification. Brake specific fuel consumption and brake specific energy consumption are slightly higher compared to diesel fuel for all operating ranges of the engine. Small variation in the exhaust gas temperature and thermal efficiency are observed while the engine is run on four different fuels.The annual rise in population growth coupled with the flourishing tourism industry in Mauritius has lead to a considerable increase in the amount of solid waste generated. In parallel, the disposal of non-biodegradable wastes, especially plastic packaging and plastic bottles, has also shown a steady rise. Improper disposal of used polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles constitutes an eyesore to the environmental landscape and is a threat to the flourishing tourism industry. It is of utmost importance, therefore, to determine a suitable disposal method for used PET bottles which is not only environmentally efficient but is also cost effective. This study investigated the environmental impacts and the cost effectiveness of four selected disposal alternatives for used PET bottles in Mauritius. The four disposal routes investigated were: 100% landfilling; 75% incineration with energy recovery and 25% landfilling; 40% flake production (partial recycling) and 60% landfilling; and 75% flake production and 25% landfilling. Environmental impacts of the disposal alternatives were determined using ISO standardized life cycle assessment (LCA) and with the support of SimaPro 7.1 software. Cost effectiveness was determined using life cycle costing (LCC). Collected data were entered into a constructed Excel-based model to calculate the different cost categories, Net present values, damage costs and payback periods. LCA and LCC results indicated that 75% flake production and 25% landfilling was the most environmentally efficient and cost-effective disposal route for used PET bottles in Mauritius.Recently, the idea of sustainable development has become more and more important. In the previous report, we focus on downsizing industrial goods and discuss the environmental load of industrial goods. As a result, by downsizing machine tools we verified that the environmental load of mother machines in making copies of themselves could be reduced. On the other hand, we verified that the environmental load of use of the machine itself increased relatively. Thus, in desktop machine tools, we verified that reducing the environmental load of use of the machine itself would increasingly become an issue in the future. In this paper, we discuss methods of using desktop machine tools from the aspect of power consumption. As a result, we verified that in cutting along the linear-axis and rotational-axis, we have to consider back clearance after cutting.Liquid biofuels are widely recognized alternatives to fossil fuel not only to combat the global warming potential, but also to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels to facilitate economic development. The production and use of lignocellulosic liquid biofuel have been emphasized because it is highly reproducible and does not compete with food. This study summarizes the LCA studies on lignocellulosic ethanol produced from various biomass resources focusing on energy balance, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and other impact categories, and the production cost to discuss their potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Numerous efforts have been made to evaluate the life cycle of lignocellulosic ethanol with LCA methodologies and deals with feedstock, energy paths, conversion technologies, allocation methods, utilization of by-products etc. to determine the environmental impacts as well as the production cost. The environmental benefits are reported in most of the studies except for few examples. A wide variation was observed in the reported production cost of ethanol, which is dependent on the feedstock, conversion technologies, allocation methods and plant sizes. Onsite enzymes production/purchase appeared to be the main hotspot, demands a vigorous study to improve their productivity and reduce costs. Another promising alternative for compensating production costs seem to be the generation of valuable coproducts and integration of ethanol production processes (ethanol and energy). Reviewed literature indicates that despite the environmental benefits of ethanol produced from lignocellulosic biomass, its economic viability remains doubtful at present, even if highly optimistic assumptions are made for the cost calculation, especially in the case of enzyme. Hence, the biotechnological revolution is must for the sustainability of bioethanol, especially in the field of enzymes and microorganisms. Moreover, the adaptation of innovative technologies and renewable energy policy may help limit costs, but careful consideration of land use changes and soil quality is required to avoid any loss of productivity.The sustainability of manufacturing processes lies in industrial planning and productive activity. Industrial plants are characterized by the management of resource (inputs and outputs), processing and conversion processes, which usually are organized in a linear system. Good planning will optimize the manufacturing and promoting the quality of the industrial system. Cradle to Cradle is a new paradigm for engineering and sustainable manufacturing that integrates projects (industrial parks, manufacturing plants, systems and products) in a framework consistent with the environment, adapted to the society and technology and economically viable. To carry it out, we implement this paradigm in the MGE2 (Genomic Model of Eco-innovation and Eco-design), as a methodology for designing and developing products and manufacturing systems with an approach from the cradle to cradle.In the context of energy security, rural development and climate change, India actively promotes the cultivation of Jatropha curcas, a biodiesel feedstock which has been identified as suitable for achieving the Indian target of 20% biofuel blending by 2017. In this paper, we present results concerning the range of environmental impacts of different Jatropha curcas cultivation systems. Moreover, nine agronomic trials in Andhra Pradesh are analysed, in which the yield was measured as a function of different inputs such as water, fertilizer, pesticides, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Further, the environmental impact of the whole Jatropha curcas biodiesel value chain is benchmarked with fossil diesel, following the ISO 14040/44 life cycle assessment procedure. Overall, this study shows that the use of Jatropha curcas biodiesel generally reduces the global warming potential and the nonrenewable energy demand as compared to fossil diesel. On the other hand, the environmental impacts on acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, and water depletion all showed increases. Key for reducing the environmental impact of Jatropha curcas biodiesel is the resource efficiency during crop cultivation (especially mineral fertilizer application) and the optimal site selection of the Jatropha curcas plantations.The use of steel within the construction sector has enabled the delivery of larger-volume and more complex-shaped structures, while life cycle assessment (LCA) has been introduced as a pro-active design tool to ensure their sustainability. As LCA efficiency greatly depends on the life cycle inventory (LCI) data used, it is the purpose of the current research to present detailed structural steel LCI data and thus increase environmental benefits deriving from the effective use of LCA within construction. Hot-rolled structural steel members were chosen as the research starting point and the necessary information was provided by the leading structural steel manufacturer in Greece. Results include a list of environmental inputs and outputs, which can be used within relevant LCA studies and environmental impact assessment. Critical issues hindering the use of LCA were identified, along with the most environmentally damaging production stages and environmental categories mainly burdened. A new methodology for assessment results comparison was also applied.This chapter is devoted to the conceptual foundations of industrial ecology, an interdisciplinary field that draws parallels between the natural world of organisms, their use of energy and resources and the interactions between them and the world of enterprises that also interact, use energy and resources and differ from natural entities in peculiar ways. The subject of biogeochemical cycles, underpinning the ideas of industrial ecology is introduced alongside three major analytical methods which can be used to study the environmental effects of economic interactions: those of life cycle analysis, material flows analysis and environmentally extended input-output analysis. A series of diagrams illustrates the global distribution of material flows of a particular kind or the differences between industrial and ecological systems.This chapter is devoted to sustainable waste management. It summarises sonic recent work exploring the development of a multi-criteria optimisation tool for achieving sustainable solutions for municipal solid waste management systems (MSWMS). Aiming to provide a new methodological background for regional solid waste management modelling it takes into account spatial and temporal patterns of waste generation and processing, environmental as well as economic impacts of the system's development with a particular emphasis on public health and biodiversity. Three different approaches to the spatial-temporal analysis of the MSWMS are used together, namely a life cycle inventory analysis, which helps to identify emission patterns within the MSWMS, a multi-criteria optimisation approach, which helps to find compromise solutions among environmentally and economically preferred options, and a geographic information systems approach, which provides a tool for identifying waste management facilities, transportation environmental and social impacts; it also gives an analysis of environmental impacts on valuable ecosystems. A Russian methodology for calculating environmental damage was used to weight the importance of different sub-territories covered by the system as well as simplifying the analysis of emissions from waste treatment plants. The approach provides a new perspective for the analysis of municipal solid waste management systems on the regional scale. The principal novelty of the proposed complex MSW strategic management model is an integration of the different types of data: geographical, environmental and economic, using relational database technology. Simulations using the dataset for Gloucestershire illustrate the performance of a simplified version of the model. Simulations were undertaken to explore the potential effects on the waste management infrastructure of introducing the EU Landfill Directive. The chapter shows how methodological synthesis and a systems perspective give useful support to the decision-maker regarding potential development paths and trade-offs between the economic and environmental performance of a proposed waste management system.Environmental acceptability of greenhouse production with respect to intensification is a controversial question. The environmental impact decreases with the use of impacting inputs while it increases with the intensification of the system. Choosing the right equilibrium between the necessary limitation of the inputs on one side and the necessary intensification of the system on the other side is an important question, giving contradictory results, often depending on the considered impact. In this study we focus on human and environmental toxicity and, based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of heated and non heated greenhouse tomato production in France, we have considered all the potential toxicity impacts of this production. As the spatial scale of the toxicological assessment used within LCA does not make allowance for the confined character of greenhouses, where toxic exposure is very local, we have completed this approach by an occupational indicator study, developed for evaluating the exposure of operators and workers to the active substances in plant protection products. Preliminary results of these studies show that considering LCA approach, the toxicological impact of pesticide application appears much lower than the use of heating (for heated production). Examining what happens inside the greenhouse, the occupational indicator study shows that both operators and re-entry workers have a risk index greater than 1 for a large percentage of the active ingredients used, the exposure being much larger for re-entry worker's in tunnel than in multispan greenhouse. Scenario study shows that a simple protection policy was sufficient to lower the risk index of a factor 10.Fossil fuel-based carbon is widely used in iron and steelmaking in a number of forms, and the replacement of these materials with renewable carbon derived from biomass is seen as offering the greatest potential to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of steel production. Life cycle assessment methodology has been used to estimate the greenhouse gas footprint of charcoal production from biomass, as well as the potential reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the use of charcoal from biomass in the integrated, mini-mill/EAF and direct smelting steelmaking routes. The results indicated that the use of charcoal in the integrated steelmaking route in likely applications and substitution rates has the potential to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of steel by 0.69-1.21 t CO(2)e/t steel (or 31-57%) without any charcoal production by-product (bio-oil and electricity) credits, and by 0.91-1.61 t CO(2)e/t steel (42-74%) with these by-product credits included. The corresponding reductions for the mini-mill/EAF and direct smelting routes were 0.028-0.056 t CO(2)e/t steel (5.5-11%) and 0.34-1.70 t CO(2)e/t steel (16-80%) without by-product credits, and 0.037-0.075 t CO(2)e/t steel (7.3-14.7%) and 0.45-2.25 t CO(2)e/t steel (21-106%) with by-product credits respectively. However, the magnitude of the by-product credits depends on the by-product yields in the charcoal retort, which in turn are dependent on a number of factors, in particular, the nature of the pyrolysis process (fast or slow) and the biomass feed composition. Estimates of the potential plantation areas available to grow the biomass required to produce charcoal for steelmaking purposes in a sustainable manner, together with estimates of sources of biomass residues suggest that it is possible that an appreciable amount of the world's steel production can utilise charcoal in place of coal or coke over the coming decades. However, transportation is expected to be a significant issue affecting the cost of charcoal delivered to steel plants in all biomass source scenarios. Other issues such as technical aspects of charcoal use in steelmaking and economics will also play a significant role in the uptake of charcoal from biomass as a source of renewable carbon for iron and steelmaking.To ensure a sustainable food supply for the growing population, the challenge is to find agricultural systems that can meet production requirements within environmental constraints and demands. This study compares the impacts of winter wheat production on energy use, land use and 100?years Global Warming Potential (GWP100) under different arable farming systems and farming practices. Life cycle assessment was used to simulate the impacts of organic, conventional and integrated farming (IF) systems along the production chain from input production up to the farm gate. The IF system models were designed to combine the best practices from organic and conventional systems to reduce negative environmental impacts without significant yield reductions. An integrated system that used food waste digestate as a fertiliser, and utilised pesticides and no-tillage had the lowest energy use and GWP per functional unit of 1000?kg wheat output. When the impacts of some specific practices for reducing energy use and GWP were compared, the highest energy use reductions were achieved by replacing synthetic nitrogen fertilisers with anaerobically treated food waste or nitrogen fixing crops, increasing yields through crop breeding and using no-tillage instead of ploughing. The highest GWP reductions were achieved by using nitrification inhibitors, replacing synthetic nitrogen fertilisers and increasing yields. The major contributors to the uncertainty range of energy use were associated with machinery fuel use and the assumed crop yields. For GWP results, the main source of uncertainty related to the N2O emissions. In conclusion, farming systems that combine the best practices from organic and conventional systems have potential to reduce negative environmental impacts while maintaining yield levels.Upgrading of bio-oils obtained from rape seed meal and wheat spent grains was carried out by a Thermo-t process similar to vis-breaking at 350, 400 and 410 degrees C at pressure ranging from 10 to 40 bars of nitrogen. About 35-40% of the energy contained in the virgin biomasses was converted into bio-crudes with 3-7 wt% oxygen. The effect of temperature on yield and quality of the bio-crudes from the Thermo-t process was studied. Overall, the process generates two different upgraded products, a liquid called bio-crude and a solid namely bio-coke. The experimental data show an effective upgrading of pyrolytic oils leading to the formation of 10-20 wt% of bio-crude with oxygen contents below 10 wt% and volatiles distribution close to conventional crude oil. The energy needed by the overall processes is estimated to be about 17% of the feedstock energy content and this value is comparable to a crude oil refinery where the energy need is about 15%. An important chemical transformation of bio-crude functionality from mostly aromatic pyrolytic bio-oil to a mainly aliphatic bio-crude has been assessed, representing a low cost solution for the high oxygen content of bio-oils. Furthermore, the addition of water was evaluated in order to enhance the deoxygenation of pyrolytic bio-oil in comparison to work done on upgrading crude-oil heavy vacuum residues.Given the growing importance of organic food production, there is a pressing need to understand the relative environmental impacts of organic and conventional farming methods. This study applies standards-based life cycle assessment to compare the cradle-to-farm gate greenhouse gas emissions of 12 crop products grown in California using both organic and conventional methods. In addition to analyzing steady-state scenarios in which the soil organic carbon stocks are at equilibrium, this study models a hypothetical scenario of converting each conventional farming system to a corresponding organic system and examines the impact of soil carbon sequestration during the transition. The results show that steady-state organic production has higher emissions per kilogram than conventional production in seven out of the 12 cases (10.6% higher overall, excluding one outlier). Transitional organic production performs better, generating lower emissions than conventional production in seven cases (17.7% lower overall) and 22.3% lower emissions than steady-state organic. The results demonstrate that converting additional cropland to organic production may offer significant GHG reduction opportunities over the next few decades by way of increasing the soil organic carbon stocks during the transition. Nonorganic systems could also improve their environmental performance by adopting management practices to increase soil organic carbon stocks.An active disassembly (AD) shape memory polymer nanocomposite (SMPN) fastener that is released by application of a thermal and magnetic field has been developed. Provided is key data on the behavior of the fastener at specific temperature ranges and magnetic field strengths for exhibiting proper levels for disassembly. Furthermore, a comparison of this fastener to a previous shape memory polymer (SMP) fastener shows differences in the thermal shape memory ability of the SMP fastener and the thermal-magnetic ability of the SMPN fastener. The SMPN fastener is an option for disassembly and exhibits added control parameters to single trigger AD fasteners. (C) 2012 CIRP.The self-vibratory drilling (SVD) is an innovative technology that allows increasing the productivity, without coolant. The aim of this paper is to prove that the environmental impacts of SVD are significantly less than those of traditional drilling (TD) and to quantify them. The study is based on a life cycle analysis of both processes. The major contributor to the environmental impacts in TD is the coolant. The new major contributors in SVD are the twist drills. A model that links the lifespan of the twist drills and the environmental impacts of SVD has been developed to support decisions for R&D. (C) 2012 CIRP.Purpose - The purpose of this study is to compare the life cycle environmental impacts of the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering and Applied Sciences' current printed annual report to a version distributed via the internet. Design/methodology/approach - Life cycle environmental impacts of both versions of the report are modeled using the online environmental input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) tool. Most monetary model inputs were obtained from the University of Cincinnati and the others were estimated. Results are presented for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy use, water use, and human and ecosystem health impacts. Alternative scenarios reflecting different reader behaviors were evaluated. Findings - The electronic report reduces economic costs and all categories of environmental impacts so long as the recipients do not print the report at home. Impacts of the printed report were higher than the electronic report due to impacts associated with paper production and disposal and to a lesser extent differences in the impacts of mail versus electronic distribution. The environmental preferability of the options is heavily influenced by the number of users who choose to print the electronic report at home; if more than 10 percent print at home, it offsets the benefits of the e-report. Research limitations/implications - Using the EIO-LCA tool limited the accuracy of the results by using average US data for a specific supply chain. It was limited by assumptions about reader behavior with the e-report. Practical implications - This case study demonstrates how a screening level life cycle assessment (LCA) might be used by a university administrator to make decisions supported by quantitative environmental information. Originality/value - The screening level LCA-based approach can provide grounding for environmental decision making within a reasonable time period and cost while maintaining sufficient accuracy for guiding purchasing or product decisions.A wide range of bioenergy crops has been proposed as c that can serve as renewable and ecologically sound substitutes to fossil fuels. In the United States, corn grain (Zea mays) ethanol is the primary biofuel, with over 49 billion liters produced in 2010. Along with the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 mandate, concerns about competition for food, land availability, nutrient and water requirements, energy balances, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have prompted researchers to investigate other potential feedstocks. These include second-generation lignocellulosic feedstock and third-generation biodiesel from microalgae and cyanobacteria. However, each feedstock option has associated benefits and consequences for its use. One technique used to evaluate the energy efficiency of bioenergy production systems is the life-cycle assessment (LCA), where system inputs and outputs are computed in terms of either C or energy equivalents to assess the net gains in energy or C offsets. This article collates and synthesizes information about feedstock production options. Results show a wide range of calculated energy and GHG balances, even for the same feedstock species. Discrepancies in LCA and uncertainty thus make direct comparisons difficult and prevent a consensus in determining feedstock suitability. Recommendations must be based upon LCA model assumptions, crop species, cultivation methods, management practices, and energy conversion choices. Currently lignocellulosic feedstock, while a better alternative than corn grain, is not a long-term viable energy source. New feedstocks and technologies are necessary if bioenergy is to be C-neutral and efficient in energy production and land use. Although C fluxes are considered in LCA, one important ecosystem C stock that has previously been left out of many LCA models is changes to soil organic carbon (SOC). Future research, developments, and priorities are discussed for options to produce low C fuel sources and stabilize the climate.This paper evaluated the life cycle analysis (LCA) of electricity derived from rice husk combustion in the Malaysia rice mills. Due to environment and security constraint cause by fossil fuel, biomass like rice husk becomes an attractive solution to look at. However, the environment profile of the electricity production from rice husk must be assessed to ensure it environment safety. The unit processes that make up the system are the paddy production, transportation to the rice mill, rice mill processing and combustion of rice husk to generate electricity. This study used functional unit as, 1.5MWh of electricity generating at the energy plant. The result show transportation contributes more to climate change compare to other process. Then, the characterized data from rice husk-derived electricity is compared with coal and natural gas derived electricity. The results indicate the performance of rice husk derived-electricity is better in the aspect of environment impact parameters. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 2nd International Conference on Advances in Energy Engineering (ICAEE).This article presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generated by the European pressurized reactor (EPR), a Generation III (Gen III) nuclear reactor concept. The focus of the LCA is on the potential locations in Switzerland and France in the year 2030. Environmental burdens from the EPR are also compared to those from current pressurized water reactor (PWR) technology in Switzerland. The entire fuel cycle is analysed and includes improved modelling of natural uranium mining. The indicators employed in the impact assessment characterize a broad range of burdens to the environment and human health at both the global and the regional/local level and includes an analysis on the basis of external costs. The LCA shows a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by around just 7 per cent for the EPR in Switzerland in 2030 compared to the current PWR cycle emitting just above 5 g CO2-eq/kWh. Due to differences in cooling strategies, which cause slightly different output capacities, the French EPR is expected to achieve marginally better reductions of almost 16 per cent. The processing of natural uranium to yellowcake was shown to be the stage in the nuclear fuel cycle having the highest burdens and potential impacts across a majority of indicators, accounting for between 25 per cent and 60 per cent of burdens and potential impacts. External costs of normal operation are shown to be around just 2 per cent of estimated internal (production) costs and similar to those of hydro and offshore wind. The potential impacts due to nuclear-related accidents were not considered.This work concerns the production of electricity from renewable sources produced from biomass (wood waste) in cogeneration plants. Two facilities are compared: a 2 MW electricity power plant and a 10 MW one. They are also compared to electricity production in a diesel engine cogeneration. The objective is to compare the environmental impact of various power plants, using two different fuels and/or of different power. A detailed LCA methodology is therefore presented. The results - in favor of the 2 MW wood plant but sensitive to assumptions - are then discussed. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of The TerraGreen Society.In this paper, we describe an approach to rank a set of terrorism-related countermeasures. The proposed methodology is particularly useful when the set of countermeasures have to be evaluated against different combinations of terrorist attack methods and targets. We refer to this approach as the Risk Informed Decision Framework (RIDF), which integrates three independent methodologies Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Risk Analysis (RA) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). As we demonstrate through a terrorism case study, RIDF is not data intensive and it uses a breadth of decision criteria. The criteria are flexible and the required data is available from pre-existing studies or high level qualitative judgments. Given these characteristics, the RIDF approach is responsive to some guidelines from the National Research Council (NRC) regarding countermeasure evaluation. We utilize a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) terrorist threat, as described in the National Planning Scenarios (NPS) and countermeasures which were based on the Target Capabilities List (TCL) as an example.A comprehensive benchmark analysis has been performed on five electrically controlled state-of-the-art transmittance modulation devices including their production routes, from 'cradle-to-gate'. The benchmarks have been modeled employing the GaBi life cycle assessment software tool, which successfully yielded the most important environmental problem areas for the product life cycles of electrochromic and electrotropic light-modulating devices. In terms of the energy demand of processing, all-solid-state technology was found to be less favorable than wet-chemical electrodeposition processes; however, the effect is interestingly overcompensated for by the resource depletion resulting from higher layer thicknesses in the latter case. As opposed to the mineral-glass based benchmarks, a plastic-film based system was particularly favorable, implying that the substrate is a factor with a strong environmental impact in transmittance modulation devices. Eventually, very high impacts were found for tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) and iridium oxide, i.e. a common transparent conductor and anodic electrochromic material, respectively. The results obtained support important current trends such as in-line manufacturing of electrochromic devices, the quest for ITO replacement materials, and, in general, the replacement of energy-and resource-intensive processes (sputter deposition of heavy metal oxides) by less demanding methods.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become an increasingly common approach across different industries, including agriculture, for environmental impact assessment. A single-issue LCA focusing on greenhouse gas emissions was conducted to determine the emissions profile and total carbon footprint of wheat produced in the Central Zone (East) of New South Wales. Greenhouse gas emissions (in carbon dioxide equivalents; CO2-e) from all stages of the production process, both pre-farm and on-farm, were included. Total emissions were found to be 200 kg CO2-e per t of wheat at the farm gate, based on a 3.5 t/ha grain yield. The relative contribution of greenhouse gas emissions from different components of the production system was determined, with most emissions (37%) coming from pre-farm production and transport of fertiliser (30%) and lime (7%) and from the nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted from the nitrogenous fertiliser applied to the crop (26%). Other important emissions included the CO2 emissions from the use of fertiliser and lime (15%) and the production, transport and use of diesel (16%). The relative importance of other minor emissions is also discussed. For a higher yielding crop (5.0 t/ha), total emissions were found to be 150 kg CO2-e per t of wheat. This paper considers the effect of different management scenarios on the emissions profile and the effect of adopting a N2O emissions factor, which is based on current New South Wales field research, rather than the current Australian National Greenhouse Accounts National Inventory Report default value. This LCA provides a template from which comparative farming systems LCA can be developed and provides data for the Australian Life Cycle Inventory.The implementation of sustainable methodologies can contribute for the implementation of more ecological manufacturing practices. It is essential to develop systems and processes aiming at product reuse and recycling. A computational tool, based on eco-design principles, was developed supporting more sustainable decisions for the conceptual design phase of a project. This tool allows designers to investigate the best product life-cycle solutions, as well to integrate the product's physical data with the CAD model. This work presents the life cycle assessment of a product through the developed system, including its dismantle, the 3D digitalization using a reverse engineering technology and the analysis of the redesigned model.Nowadays companies have to be environmentally conscious because of the governmental policies on environmental issues, consumer preferences and insufficient resources. Therefore, the multicriteria evaluation of manufacturers according to environmentally consciousness may give important outputs for the government, companies and consumers. This study presents a framework for multicriteria evaluation of manufacturers. Initially the criteria for being an environmentally conscious manufacturer are determined and their importance ranking is maintained by using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP). Subsequently, the most important criteria are chosen and set as input variables for a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) to get output values representing environmentally consciousness scores of manufacturers. The proposed multicriteria evaluation method is experimented with an numerical illustration The results of the numerical illustration implies that, the most important criteria for being an environmentally conscious manufacturer are; life cycle analysis, design for environment, environmentally conscious process planning, recycling and reducing the waste ate the source.All forms of cropping influence the environment, and bioenergy cropping is no exception. The main potential environmental benefit is the net reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the substitution of fossil fuels, while the main potential harm is increased pressure on land use, which can lead to competition for food production, loss of forests and the release of large amounts of carbon from soils and vegetation. The major approaches to environmental risk evaluation are experiments, environmental risk assessment, life cycle analysis, ecosystem services and post-market monitoring; while none are ideal, all these have a potential role in evaluating bioenergy cropping. Major environmental impacts vary greatly between crops, countries and management regimes. Bioenergy cropping has the most positive environmental impact when the crops are productive, have low water and nutrient requirements and can be grown on low-grade and abandoned agricultural land in arrangements that promote biodiversity. Such cropping may be able to supply around 8% of the global energy demand: bioenergy cropping should be seen as one element in a wider strategy for efficient use of land, energy, food and water.The production of sustainable bioenergy is a challenging task in the promotion of biofuels for replacing the fossil based fuels to get cleaner environment and also to reduce the dependency on other countries and uncertainty of fuel price. One biofuels might be very attractive for heat production and not so attractive for electricity and transport purposes. The commercial-scale production of biofuels requires careful consideration of several issues that can be broadly categorized as: selecting biomass, cultivation technology, growth inputs (nutrients, water, etc.) and biofuel conversion technology. The life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used effectively in assessing various biofuels for their sustainability and can help to policy makers to choose the best biofuels for specific purpose. Allocation method is very important in assessing the sustainability of biofuels as different allocation methods responded differently. The present chapter is an effort to highlight the key issues to consider in conducting an LCA for biofuels.Climate change presents a range of challenges for animal agriculture in Australia. Livestock production will be affected by changes in temperature and water availability through impacts on pasture and forage crop quantity and quality, feed-grain production and price, and disease and pest distributions. This paper provides an overview of these impacts and the broader effects on landscape functionality, with a focus on recent research on effects of increasing temperature, changing rainfall patterns, and increased climate variability on animal health, growth, and reproduction, including through heat stress, and potential adaptation strategies. The rate of adoption of adaptation strategies by livestock producers will depend on perceptions of the uncertainty in projected climate and regional-scale impacts and associated risk. However, management changes adopted by farmers in parts of Australia during recent extended drought and associated heatwaves, trends consistent with long-term predicted climate patterns, provide some insights into the capacity for practical adaptation strategies. Animal production systems will also be significantly affected by climate change policy and national targets to address greenhouse gas emissions, since livestock are estimated to contribute similar to 10% of Australia's total emissions and 8-11% of global emissions, with additional farm emissions associated with activities such as feed production. More than two-thirds of emissions are attributed to ruminant animals. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities facing livestock industries in Australia in adapting to and mitigating climate change. It examines the research needed to better define practical options to reduce the emissions intensity of livestock products, enhance adaptation opportunities, and support the continued contribution of animal agriculture to Australia's economy, environment, and regional communities.Governments, organisations and individuals have recognised the need to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To identify where savings can be made, and to monitor progress in reducing emissions, we need methodologies to quantify GHG emissions and sequestration. Through the Australian Government's Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) landholders may generate credits for reducing emissions and/or sequestering carbon (C). National GHG inventories for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and accounting under the Kyoto Protocol use a sectoral approach. For example, fuel use in agriculture is reported in the transport component of the energy sector; energy use in producing herbicide and fertiliser is included in the manufacturing section of the energy sector; sequestration in farm forestry is reported in the land use, land-use change and forestry sector, while emissions reported in the agriculture sector includemethane (CH4) from ruminant livestock, nitrous oxide (N2O) from soils, and non-carbon dioxide (CO2) GHG from stubble and savannah burning. In contrast, project-level accounting for CFI includes land-use change, forestry and agricultural sector emissions, and significant direct inputs such as diesel and electricity. AC footprint calculation uses a life cycle approach, including all the emissions associated with an organisation, activity or product. The C footprint of a food product includes the upstream emissions from manufacturing fertiliser and other inputs, fuel use in farming operations, transport, processing and packaging, distribution to consumers, electricity use in refrigeration and food preparation, and waste disposal. Methods used to estimate emissions range from simple empirical emissions factors, to complex process-based models. Methods developed for inventory and emissions trading must balance the need for sufficient accuracy to give confidence to the market, with practical aspects such as ease and expense of data collection. Requirements for frequent on-ground monitoring and third party verification of soil C or livestock CH4 estimates, for example, may incur costs that would negate the financial benefit of credits earned, and could also generate additional GHG emissions. Research is required to develop practical on-farm measures of CH4 and N2O, and methods to quantify C in environmental plantings, agricultural soils and rangeland ecosystems, to improve models for estimation and prediction of GHG emissions, and enable baseline assessment. There is a need for whole-farm level estimation tools that accommodate regional and management differences in emissions and sequestration to support landholders in managing net emissions from their farming enterprises. These on-farm 'bottom-up' accounting tools must align with the 'top-down' national account. To facilitate assessment of C footprints for food and fibre products, Australia also needs a comprehensive life cycle inventory database. This paper reviews current methods and approaches used for quantifying GHG emissions for the land-based sectors in the context of emissions reporting, emissions trading and C footprinting, and proposes possible improvements. We emphasise that cost-effective yet credible GHG estimation methods are needed to encourage participation in voluntary offset schemes such as the CFI, and thereby achieve maximum mitigation in the land-based sector.In recent years, the rapid development of the Chinese tourism industry has brought huge economic benefits, and caused negative impacts on ecological environment. Tourism products, as the core elements of the Chinese tourism industry, have to be audited for the purpose of sustainable development. In other words, environmental audit of tourism products is essential for sustainable Chinese tourism development. This paper probes the method of environmental audits by utilizing the concept of life cycle assessment and proposes environmental audit strategies.This environmental impact assessment of the current situation of Dutch tomato production in a Venlo greenhouse in a temperate climate was developed as part of the EUPHOROS project. The project aims to develop a more sustainable greenhouse system with a reduction of external inputs yet with high productivity and an efficient use of resources. The environmental impact analysis was based on using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology as defined by the ISO 14040. The crop production system was structured in several stages and processes to facilitate the study and interpretation of results. The stages considered were structure, auxiliary equipment, climate control system, fertilizers, pesticides and waste. The main results and issues to be improved are described and presented in this paper. The use of a cogeneration system (CHP) and the consequent production of electricity create a methodological question on how to handle allocation between products. This paper shows two different methods for dealing with co-production: considering electricity as an avoided product and energy allocation at CHP. Depending on the approach considered values can range between 12 to 31 MJ/kg of tomato or 0.78 to 2.0 kg CO2 eq/kg of tomato for instance. Climate control system had a high energy demand with major contributions to all the impact categories (81.1 to 96.1% of the total) and the rockwool substrate accounted for 57.0 to 81.7% of the auxiliary equipment contribution. More effort should be made to recycle rockwool and reduce the high energy demand associated with the expansion of the mineral in the manufacturing processes. The structure was a major burden due to the high amount of steel and glass. Energy environmental impacts could be reduced, because of the avoided electricity production by the power plant, by using a combined heat and power plant to meet greenhouse electricity demands, resulting in a surplus which could be delivered to the public grid. Further research should also be oriented to developing efficient technologies to improve the intensive use of materials and energy.The objective of this study was to identify the main bottlenecks of tomato production in a multispan tunnel greenhouse in a Mediterranean climate. This study was carried out as part of the EUPHOROS project, which aims to develop sustainable greenhouse production systems with a reduction of external inputs yet with high productivity. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was the methodology used to evaluate the environmental impacts of the production system. The system boundary was defined from raw materials extraction to farm gate, including materials waste disposal. The production system was modelled considering the following stages: structure, auxiliary equipment, climate control system, fertilizers, pesticides and waste. Results from the environmental assessment indicate that the burdens are the structure, auxiliary equipment and fertilizers. The structure was a major burden due to the large amount of steel in the frame. The high contribution of the auxiliary equipment was due to the substrate (perlite) manufacture and electricity consumption by the irrigation system. Fertilizers use had major environmental impacts as a result of both manufacturing processes and emissions because of their use. The main recommendations are oriented to reducing these impacts. Extension of greenhouse life span and increase in productivity could directly mitigate burdens per unit of produce, and recycling used substrate and reducing substrate volume per plant are both proposed. Since this soilless system was an open system, an efficient balance of both fertilizers and water is suggested.Twenty-four life cycle assessment studies which estimated the carbon footprint of milk production in countries with modern dairy farming were examined. It proved difficult to compare the studies because of the strong discrepancies between them. The aim of this review was to examine the characteristics of LCA studies on milk production in order to understand how the variability of results can be explained. The main reason is the different methodologies adopted. However, other variables were considered: production system, stocking rate, milk productivity, mitigation strategies. Life Cycle Assessment is a promising tool for benchmarking carbon footprint among different countries or production systems. This approach could also be used as a mitigation indicator in the enforcement of political decision. Two major factors are needed for a practical application: i) a widely accepted methodology and ii) direct measurements of greenhouse gases in specific contests.The main objective of this work is to assess the environmental impact and investment feasibility analysis of rainwater harvesting systems for a low-cost house located in Florianopolis, southern Brazil, by using the concepts of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The environmental and investment feasibility analysis was performed for two scenarios, i.e., a scenario in which there is only a potable water system supplied by the water utility, and another scenario in which the potable water system is complemented by rainwater. Three types of rainwater storage tanks were analysed: plastic reinforced with glass fibre, high density polyethylene and reinforced concrete. Results indicate that plastic tanks reinforced with glass fibre are environmentally more feasible, while concrete tanks are economically more feasible. This study showed the importance of analysing environmental and economic aspects before implementing a system with rainwater utilization; thus better choices regarding the materials used in the systems, aiming at sustainability in buildings, can be made.Used polyethylene terephthalate bottles (PET) dumped indiscriminately onto bare lands and water bodies constitute an eyesore. This problem is viewed as a serious impediment to the flourishing tourism industry in Mauritius. Currently, over 100 million PET bottles are generated annually and the only fully operational disposal route is through the sole sanitary landfill. There is no formal segregation of waste and therefore used PET bottles are disposed of commingled with domestic waste. Despite a satisfactory waste collection system, a considerable amount of used PET bottles unfortunately end up in water bodies and on bare lands. An appreciable amount of PET bottles is now being collected separately for flake production prior to export to South Africa. This paper investigated the environmental impact of five waste management scenarios (100% landfill; 100% incineration with energy recovery; 50% incineration and 50% landfill; 34% flake production and 66% landfill; 100% flake production) for used PET bottles in Mauritius. Comparison of the five scenarios was based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology described in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. SimaPro 7.1 software was used to analyse the data. Comparison of the five scenarios showed that the highest environmental impacts occurred when 100% of used PET bottles were sent to the landfill. The comparison also indicated that there were least impacts on the environment when all used PET bottles were incinerated with energy recovery.Ecological payback time was calculated for demolishing an existing commercial building with average energy performance and replacing it with an energy-efficient, prefabricated building. A life-cycle assessment was performed for a 5,000 ft(2) commercial building designed by Project Frog and prefabricated in San Francisco, California, and compared to the impacts of annual energy consumption and continued status quo operation of a comparable average commercial building. Scenarios were run both with and without rooftop solar panels intended to make the prefabricated building net zero energy. The analysis considers the materials and manufacturing, transportation, annual energy use of the new building, and disposal of the existing building, compared to continued annual energy use of the existing building. The carbon payback of a new building with no solar against operation of an existing commercial building was found to be roughly eleven years, and a building with enough rooftop solar to be net zero energy was roughly 6.5 years. The full EcoIndicator99 environmental impact payback for a new efficient building with no solar was found to be twenty years, and a solar net-zero building was roughly eleven years against operation of an existing commercial building.Structural health monitoring methodologies devised over the past two decades have increasing shown improved robustness in capability to identify the onset of structural damage and locate the source of the damage. However, the pathway to prognostication and life-cycle assessment through structural health monitoring remains stalled by a lack of success in the diagnostic step of experimentally quantifying the severity of damage in suitable, engineering quantities. Of the methods devised, strain energy approaches have demonstrated not only strength in identifying and localizing structural damage but also uniquely provide a theoretical basis for quantifying damage through measurement of relative stiffness loss in individual members. Conventional applications of strain energy methods use distributed accelerometers, often being single-axis and oriented in the same direction. The limited degrees-of-freedom measured limits the modal parameter extraction to a reduced subset and yields only partial reconstruction of the strain energy in the system. Furthermore, it has been shown experimentally and proven analytically that improvement in strain energy methods through increased spatial density of the sampling array is constrained by the effect of measurement noise on the accuracy of the numerical computations. In this paper, alternative sensor topologies are explored for improving the reconstruction of strain energy estimates. An experimental component of the research includes strain energy estimates for a fixed-free beam heavily instrumented with accelerometers. Prescribed damage is incrementally applied to the beam to permit a basis for comparison amongst the sensor topologies in addressing the damage diagnostics problem with specific emphasis on quantification of severity through stiffness loss.This paper introduces a comprehensive building asset management system with a unique formulation in which all functions from inspection, to deterioration modelling, and life cycle analysis, track the dynamics of building deficiencies. The system also incorporates an integrated life cycle analysis that determines both the optimum repair-types and the optimum repair-timings for a large network of buildings with hundreds of components. To handle the large-scale optimisation involved, a two-phase optimisation procedure has been introduced and its powerful performance validated on various size networks. The paper provides a description of the proposed asset management system and discusses its implementation in a user-friendly prototype that suits a large school board in North America. The proposed asset management system is innovative and helps organisations with large building assets improve the overall condition of their inventory with highest return on the limited repair budget.Life cycle assessment (LCA) allows evaluating the potential environmental impacts of a product or a service in relation to its function and over its life cycle. In past LCAs applied to wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), the system function definition has received little attention despite its great importance. This has led to some limitations in LCA results interpretation. A new methodology to perform LCA on WWTPs is proposed to avoid those limitations. It is based on net environmental benefit (NEB) evaluation and requires assessing the potential impact of releasing wastewater without and with treatment besides assessing the impact of the WWTP's life cycle. The NEB allows showing the environmental trade-offs between avoided impact due to wastewater treatment and induced impact by the WWTP's life cycle. NEB is compared with a standard LCA through the case study of a small municipal WWTP consisting of facultative aerated lagoons. The NEB and standard LCA show similar results for impact categories solely related to the WWTP's life cycle but differ in categories where wastewater treatment environmental benefit is accounted for as NEB considers influent wastewater quality whereas standard LCA does not.The sustainability of manufacturing processes lies in industrial planning and productive activity. Industrial plants are characterized by the management of resource (inputs and outputs), processing and conversion processes, which usually are organized in a linear system. Good planning will optimize the manufacturing and promoting the quality of the industrial system. Cradle to Cradle is a new paradigm for engineering and sustainable manufacturing that integrates projects (industrial parks, manufacturing plants, systems and products) in a framework consistent with the environment, adapted to the society and technology and economically viable. To carry it out, we implement this paradigm in the MGE2 (Genomic Model of Eco-innovation and Eco-design), as a methodology for designing and developing products and manufacturing systems with an approach from the cradle to cradle.China's road transport sector is expected to be a major factor affecting national and global oil availability and prices, and is a major contributor to China's greenhouse gas emission increase and urban air pollution. Reasons for bioethanol and biodiesel to be considered as promising alternatives to conventional transportation fuels in China include energy security and environmental concerns. The present article analyzes the current status and future potential of bioethanol and biodiesel development in China, as well as the energy demand and emissions for different feedstock options from a life cycle perspective.Pyrolysis(1) biochar systems (PBS) could assist in meeting the Scottish Government's target of a 42% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 relative to 1990. Drawing on literature review of land use and biomass availability in Scotland at present and in the future, and using established life cycle assessment models, we find that biochar could contribute between 0.4 and 2 MtCO(2) equivalent (e) abatement per year in Scotland now (2009), increasing to between 1.4 and 4.2 MtCO(2)e/yr by 2030 and to between 1.5 and 4.8 MtCO(2)e/yr by 2050. The practicalities of such biochar deployment are explored further through spatial analysis. Through multi-criteria decision analysis, various factors are weighed up and traded-off against one another to show optimum locations for pyrolysis biochar facilities. The factors considered include proximity to sources (feedstock for biochar production), sinks (for biochar application), and proximity to transport infrastructure etc. Preliminary results show that most of the potentially suitable sites are around the central belt extending into Fife.Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is an important environmental challenge and subject in urban planning. For sustainable MSWM strategies, the critical management factors to be considered include not only economic efficiency of MSW treatment but also life-cycle assessment of the environmental impact. This paper employed linear programming technique to establish optimal MSWM strategies considering economic efficiency and the air pollutant emissions during the life cycle of a MSWM system, and investigated the correlations between the economical optimization and pollutant emissions. A case study based on real-world MSW operating parameters in Taichung City is also presented. The results showed that the costs, benefits, streams of MSW, and throughputs of incinerators and landfills will be affected if pollution emission reductions are implemented in the MSWM strategies. In addition, the quantity of particulate matter is the best pollutant indicator for the MSWM system performance of emission reduction. In particular, this model will assist the decision maker in drawing up a friendly MSWM strategy for Taichung City in Taiwan. Implications: Recently, life-cycle assessments of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) strategies have been given more considerations. However, what seems to be lacking is the consideration of economic factors and environmental impacts simultaneously. This work analyzed real-world data to establish optimal MSWM strategies considering economic efficiency and the air pollutant emissions during the life cycle of the MSWM system. The results indicated that the consideration of environmental impacts will affect the costs, benefits, streams of MSW, and throughputs of incinerators and landfills. This work is relevant to public discussion and may establish useful guidelines for the MSWM policies.This paper introduces a sustainability assessment tool for facade cladding. This tool bases its evaluation on the economic and environmental properties of the materials. Normally, in the project process and later construction it will be difficult to assume the price and time of doing a life-cycle assessment (LCA) for each material and building system. Because of this, and until the environmental product declarations (EPD) are more used, this tool will give quick and easily enough arguments to select, according to its sustainability, the ideal facade cladding.Climate change and global warming issues have thrown new challenges for the economic development. Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) are on the global agenda with regard to the climate change. This trend has led to renewed strategies in many sectors. The paper shifts the perspective of life-cycle assessment (LCA) in terms of the CO2 emission from the conventional entire product life cycle emphasis to the manufacturing processes. Based on hybrid analysis an approach to the emission calculation in manufacturing phase is developed. This approach helps the industry companies identify the emission reduction potentials in manufacturing, by focusing on the resource and energy flows and the emission intensities in manufacturing processes, therefore contributes to the LCA.Under the rapid growth of world's economy and population, the demand for water and energy has been increasing accordingly. Moreover, water and energy are interrelated and form a reinforcing feedback loop. Energy is used not only onsite of water supply systems, but also indirectly for producing materials used in the water systems. As a result, it is important to understand and evaluate the energy embodiment of water supply for sustainable water and energy management. This study uses the Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment software to estimate and compare the embodied energy of one China water supply system (System A) and one US water supply system (System B). It has been found that System B in the US has comparable direct operational energy consumption with System A in China; however, System B consumes much more indirect energy and constructional energy than System A. Possible reasons for the higher indirect energy use in System B might be more administrative and engineering (maintenance and repairing) services involved, lower transportation efficiency, more self water usage within the system and higher labor rates. To satisfy the water demand for the large population, China's water supply systems have to reduce direct energy consumption during the operation phase by conducting energy budget and adopting energy efficient technologies.Sustainability is a very general term and the question arises how to specify it within daily laboratory work. In this regard, appropriate metrics could support a socially acceptable, ecological and economic product development. The application of metrics for sustainability should be strengthened in education, because they do not belong to standard considerations in synthesis design so far. This article describes educational material (online resource) designated to students and chemists who are willing to quantify the benefits of green chemistry in the lab and to search for an optimization potential. As an example, bromination reactions are compared by considering mass balance, raw material costs and qualitative aspects such as, e. g., toxicology and combustibility. While keeping in mind the three dimensions of sustainability - economy, environment and social affairs - the idea of the concept of sustainable chemistry, i.e., green chemistry, takes shape in daily laboratory work.Researchers around the world are developing sustainable plant-based liquid transportation fuels (biofuels) to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Algae are attractive because they promise large yields per acre compared to grasses, grains and trees, and because they produce oils that might be converted to diesel and gasoline equivalents. It takes considerable energy to produce algal biofuels with current technology; thus, the potential benefits of algal biofuels compared to petroleum fuels must be quantified. To this end, we identified key parameters for algal biofuel production using GREET, a tool for the life-cycle analysis of energy use and emissions in transportation systems. The baseline scenario produced 55 400 g CO2 equivalent per million BTU of biodiesel compared to 101 000 g for low-sulfur petroleum diesel. The analysis considered the potential for greenhouse gas emissions from anaerobic digestion processes commonly used in algal biofuel models. The work also studied alternative scenarios, e. g., catalytic hydrothermal gasification, that may reduce these emissions. The analysis of the nitrogen recovery step from lipid-extracted algae (residues) highlighted the importance of considering the fate of the unrecovered nitrogen fraction, especially that which produces N2O, a potent greenhouse gas with global warming potential 298 times that of CO2.Sustainability today is a ubiquitous word; in its relatively brief life, the concept has taken many shapes, so that today the word is frequently used, sometimes overused, and many times misused. Proposing good indicators to measure sustainability is a challenging task; the most common methodologies for evaluating the sustainability of processes and products do so by comparing various designs and selecting the best option, according to predefined criteria. The methodology herein proposed uses a sustainability scale that is based on an absolute reference, and is normalized for sustainability indicators applicable to biorefineries. The resulting framework consists of 5 indicator categories, and a total of 14 metrics; this tool can be used to evaluate the sustainability of biorefinery designs, and also for ex-post evaluations of performance. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdMicroalgae are now the focus of intensive research because of their potential as a renewable feedstock for biofuel production. This review briefly examines the effect of reactor design, nutrient, and light regimens on microalgae productivity and macromolecular composition. Downstream processing including common biofuel production as well as life cycle assessment and technoeconomical aspects are discussed. Even though algal biofuels are more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels, economical feasibility is a challenging issue. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe research presented in this paper compares the direct emissions and fuel consumption savings of five different strategies for greener roads. Specifically, savings from an incident management strategy using an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) application, traffic cameras, is compared to savings from strategies focused on the construction phase including; using regionally provided materials, reducing fossil fuel use, reusing pavement, and using warm-mix asphalt. The comparison used lifecycle assessment to evaluate a 10-mile segment of a key urban interstate in South Carolina. The results revealed that within the first year of operations, implementing the selected ITS strategy would provide a fuel savings that is over 3 times greater than the combined savings that could be realized by implementing all 4 construction-phase strategies together. For an 8-year repaving schedule, the ITS strategy provides fuel savings over 30 times larger than all the construction phase strategies combined, and reduces carbon-dioxide emissions over 5 times more than any one of the construction-phase strategies. The article highlights ITS's effectiveness as a sustainability tool by comparing emissions and fuel use reductions to sustainable construction strategies. These results suggest that policies and rating systems for more sustainable roads should weigh ITS strategies considerably more than individual construction-phase strategies. The results also highlight the need for transportation policy to evaluate the benefits of all potential sustainable strategies to encourage implementation of the most effective ones.To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ports around the world are considering using electric cargo handling equipment. To assess the benefits of the strategy, this study provides a comparative life-cycle assessment between diesel and electric yard tractors in a case study of the Port of Los Angeles. Results indicate a significant reduction in life-cycle emissions as the port shifts to electric vehicles and as the port's electricity supplier increases its use of renewable energy sources (e. g., wind and solar). The results also demonstrate that even with aggressive electrification strategies, the port's legislated reduction targets are not achievable by the year 2030.A study is presented about the influence of infill masonry panels on the life-cycle expected performance functions of multi-story reinforced concrete frames exposed to severe seismic hazard conditions. Quantitative information is presented about present values of expected performance functions of a group of five-story systems located at a firm ground site. The group includes a bare frame system, designed in accordance with the applicable seismic design regulations, and a number of systems obtained by inserting several reinforced or unreinforced masonry wall panels, introduced with the aim of improving the expected seismic performance of the original system.Bionolle was first commercially manufactured by Showa Highpolymer and is now well known as a pioneer of green plastic materials. Bionolle is an aliphatic polyester and has similar processability as conventional resins like polyethylene. Bionolle is one of the most suitable materials for processing into films, which have been utilized for agricultural purposes, shopping bags, compost bags, and so on. Showa Highpolymer has succeeded in producing a compound of Bionolle and starch that is not only similar to homogeneous Bionolle in its principal properties, but is also an environmentally friendly material. The latest achievements on this issue are reported, along with life cycle analysis (LCA) results.This study identifies the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, which can be achieved by optimizing the use of residues in the life cycle of palm oil derived biodiesel. This is done through compilation of data on existing and prospective treatment technologies as well as practical experiments on methane potentials from empty fruit bunches. Methane capture from the anaerobic digestion of palm oil mill effluent was found to result in the highest GHG reductions. Among the solid residues, energy extraction from shells was found to constitute the biggest GHG savings per ton of residue, whereas energy extraction from empty fruit bunches was found to be the most significant in the biodiesel production life cycle. All the studied waste treatment technologies performed significantly better than the conventional practices and with dedicated efforts of optimized use in the palm oil industry, the production of palm oil derived biodiesel can be almost carbon neutral. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is little research literature on the conversion of lignocellulosic rich waste streams to ethanol, and even fewer have investigated both the technical aspects and environmental impacts together. This study assessed technical and environmental challenges of converting three lignocellulosic waste streams to ethanol: municipal solid waste (MSW), low grade mixed waste paper (MWP), and organic yard waste (YW). Experimental results showed high conversion yields for all three streams using suitable conversion methods. Environmental impacts are highly dependent on conversion technology, and process conditions used. Life cycle assessment results showed that both chemicals production and waste collection are important factors to be included within a waste-to-ethanol study. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A meta-analysis of several published life cycle assessments of algae-to-energy systems was developed to better understand the environmental implications of deploying this technology at large scales. Taken together, results from these six studies seemed largely inconclusive because of differences in modeling assumptions and system boundaries. To overcome this, the models were normalized using a generic pathway for cultivating algae in open ponds, converting it into biodiesel, and processing the nonlipid fraction using anaerobic digestion. Meta-analysis results suggest that algae-based biodiesel would result in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions on par with terrestrial alternatives such as corn ethanol and soy biodiesel. Net energy ratio and normalized greenhouse gas emissions were 1.4 MJ produced/MJ consumed and 0.19 kg CO2-equivalent/km traveled, respectively. A scenario analysis underscores the extent to which breakthroughs in key technologies are needed before algae-derived fuels become an attractive alternative to conventional biofuels. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper is part of LCA studies performed in the frame of FP7 project "Recovered Paper Sorting by Innovative Technologies SORT IT". It analysis the results obtained by Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of the reference case for recycled packaging paper manufacturing (current sorting technology), which will constitute a comparison base for new sorting technology developed in SORT IT project. The main stages considered in the life cycle were: recovered paper (RP) transport from collection center to paper mill, RP processing and recycling in paper production, wastewater and solid waste treatment. Special attention has been paid to detailed definition of the parameters that have a relevant impact on the whole assessment such as system boundaries, functional unit, quality standards for input data in term of time, geographic area, etc. Subsequently a life cycle inventory analysis was made. In the impact assessment stage, CML 2001 Dec. 07 baseline impact assessment factors developed by the Centre for Environmental Science were used and the adjusted data were entered into the GaBi 4.4 LCA software and modeled into environmental inputs and outputs. The classification and characterization of essential elements in LCIA were applied to the inventory data in order to assess their potential impact on the environment. The contribution to various impacts categories was analyzed and, the characterized results were normalized. The results revealed that in recycled packaging paper manufacturing cycle the most important unitary processes that affect the environmental impact are the consumption of energy (electricity mainly) resources, natural gas used in steam generation, RP transport stage and packaging paper manufacturing unitary process (represented by recovered paper processing, paper machine, boiler and rejects/sludge treatment). All unitary processes were found to be significant sources of air and water emissions that affect the environmental impact.Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is increasingly seen as a way for society to enjoy the benefits of fossil fuel energy sources while avoiding the climate disruption associated with fossil CO2 emissions. A decision to deploy CCS technology at scale should be based on robust information on its overall costs and benefits. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a framework for holistic assessment of the energy and environmental footprint of a system, and can provide crucial information to policy-makers, scientists, and engineers as they develop and deploy CCS systems. We identify seven key issues that should be considered to ensure that conclusions and recommendations from CCS LCA are robust: energy penalty, functional units, scale-up challenges, non-climate environmental impacts, uncertainty management, policy-making needs, and market effects. Several recent life-cycle studies have focused on detailed assessments of individual CCS technologies and applications. While such studies provide important data and information on technology performance, such case-specific data are inadequate to fully inform the decision making process. LCA should aim to describe the system-wide environmental implications of CCS deployment at scale, rather than a narrow analysis of technological performance of individual power plants. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The optimal design of an energy-intensive process involves a compromise between costs and greenhouse gas emissions, complicated by the interaction between optimal process emissions and supply chain emissions. We propose a method that combines generic abatement cost estimates and the results of existing (LCA) life cycle assessment studies, so that supply chain emissions are properly handled during optimization. This method is illustrated for a (NGCC) natural gas combined cycle power plant model with the following design and procurement options: procurement of natural gas from low-emissions producers, fuel substitution with (SNG) synthetic natural gas from wood, and variable-rate CO2 capture and sequestration from both the NGCC and SNG plants. Using multi-objective optimization, we show two Pareto-optimal sets with and without the proposed LCA method. The latter can then be shown to misestimate CO2 abatement costs by a few percent, penalizing alternate fuels and energy-efficient process configurations and leading to sub-optimal design decisions with potential net losses of the order of $1/MWh. Thus, the proposed LCA method can enhance the economic analysis of emissions abatement technologies and emissions legislation in general. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New processes under development for producing hydrogen have been assessed using a life cycle methodology and compared to conventional ones. The aim of this paper is to determine the main obstacles to be beaten or the critical aspects to be addressed to ensure the feasibility of these processes. Water photosplitting, solar two-step thermochemical cycles and automaintained methane decomposition with different lay-outs were studied. They have been compared to methane steam reforming with CCS and electrolysis with different electricity sources. The results show the good behaviour of the automaintained methane decomposition. This process is one of the best options when the greenhouse effect emissions are evaluated. Nevertheless, the consumption of a great amount of a non-renewable resource, i.e., natural gas, as reagent can be negative. The two-step thermochemical cycles based on NiFe2O4 is also an interesting option, but its behaviour depends largely on the infrastructure materials employed on the installations. The most promising option is photosplitting with CdS as catalysts. This process shows the best performance. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Project firms currently have little incentive to incorporate environmental considerations into infrastructure development or management decisions beyond those that are either regulated or subject to public perception. This lack of incentive exists in part owing to the absence of: (1) a clear understanding of the connections between project ecological affects and how these damage firm/project assets; and (2) the ability to include the project ecological effects in operational decisions. In response, the concept of ecosystem service monetization is applied as a novel approach to capitalize on the relationship between industry and the natural environment. We present a framework for ecosystem service valuation that consists of four parts: (1) life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify project ecosystem emissions; (2) fundamental biophysics and biochemistry to characterize the component processes of ecosystem services; (3) functional substitutability to assign a monetary value to such services; and (4) representation of ecosystem services value within international financial accounting norms. As a demonstration, the framework is applied to a project-level decision between alternative designs for a surface parking lot at Disney's new theme park in Shanghai, China. We conclude that the framework is able to inform project-level decisions, eventually leading to more sustainable management and development. Suggestions also are provided for future research to solidify the foundation, assess the robustness of the approach, and broaden the applicability of the framework. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000093. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.Sustainability has become a major concern in the field of civil infrastructures in recent years. Developing road construction projects with lower ecological impacts over a project's entire life cycle can help in making road infrastructure contribute to sustainable development. This study focuses on the ecological potentials in the production of road materials used in Swiss road pavements. The environmental assessment was performed using a cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach in which all processes from the raw material extraction to the finished product were considered. The comparison of the results of the best-case asphalt pavement and the standard asphalt pavement for Swiss highway construction shows ecological potentials of up to 55%. Use of the best-case concrete pavement lowers the environmental impact by up to 53% in comparison to the worst-case concrete pavement for Swiss highways. Concerning composite pavements, the best-case variant offers an ecological potential 38% higher than the standard pavement. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000077. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.The accumulation of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is considered a major contributor to climate change. Consequently, it is essential to control the emissions generated by human activities to protect the environment for future generations. Many countries have set their own emission control targets to achieve by the middle of the century. In this context, it is important to quantify emissions from human activity and consider alternatives in order to reduce these emissions. This paper demonstrates a model for estimating life-cycle emissions resulting from an underground potable water-line project that could be used as a managerial decision support tool. The life cycle of the water pipeline is divided into different phases for the analysis. Different methods are used to estimate the emissions in each phase of the life cycle. The results indicate the life-cycle emissions from a demonstration 152.4-m (500-ft), 200-mm (8-in.)-diameter water pipeline at a representative 1.22-m (4-ft) depth range between 1,463.23 t and 1,524.98 t depending on the pipe material chosen. Four different pipe materials have been considered as alternatives in this research. The results indicate that molecular-oriented PVC (PVC-O) provides the best environmental savings compared to PVC, high-density polyethylene pipe (HDPE), and ductile iron in the demonstration of the potable water project. DOI: 10.10611(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000069. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.The concept of sustainability involves the integration of economic, environmental, and social aspects and this also applies in the field of wastewater treatment. Economic feasibility studies are a key tool for selecting the most appropriate option from a set of technological proposals. Moreover, these studies are needed to assess the viability of transferring new technologies from pilot-scale to full-scale. In traditional economic feasibility studies, the benefits that have no market price, such as environmental benefits, are not considered and are therefore underestimated. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new methodology to assess the economic viability of wastewater treatment technologies that considers internal and external impacts. The estimation of the costs is based on the use of cost functions. To quantify the environmental benefits from wastewater treatment, the distance function methodology is proposed to estimate the shadow price of each pollutant removed in the wastewater treatment. The application of this methodological approach by decision makers enables the calculation of the true costs and benefits associated with each alternative technology. The proposed methodology is presented as a useful tool to support decision making.The wastewater recycling is proving to be an absolute necessity for dealing with ever growing needs of the precious liquid (water), so several recycling techniques are used and it is very difficult for the decision-makers to choose between those who has the least influential environmental impacts on the environment. The environmental performance of the various water recycling technologies are compared on the basis of the associated potential environmental impacts by using the life cycle analysis, which allows us more the comparison and the selection of appropriate technologies and to identify opportunities for improvement of environmental performance of the water recycling process. For the identification of the environmental impacts we used the Simapro-6 software life cycle assessment (LCA). Software provides you with a professional tool to collect analyze and monitor the environmental performance of products and services. We analyze complex life cycles in a systematic and transparent way, following the ISO 14040 series recommendations. The results of life cycle assessment are discussed in detail in the present paper and the potential domains of improvement are identified. The relevance of the life cycle assessment use in the framework of the treatment of wastewater is discussed and the limits of this method in this field are listed.Resource depletion, climate change and environmental pollution are priority topics in international environmental policy. The use of renewable resources for energy production is an interesting alternative to fossil fuels. Lignocellulosic biomass as a feedstock to produce ethanol may replace petrol as a transport fuel. A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment was conducted on ethanol produced from hemp hurds (a by-product from dedicated fibre crops) in an enzymatic hydrolysis process that converts lignocellulosic biomass into ethanol. The environmental performance of two ethanol fuel blends, E10 and E85, in a flexi fuel vehicle was analyzed and compared. The environmental impact was determined by selecting two different allocation approaches (mass and economic allocation). A sensitivity analysis was conducted and four scenarios were evaluated, involving different allocation coefficients, taking into account market prices for agricultural products and the production volume of each product. The results show that ethanol-based fuels can offer improved environmental performance in impact categories such as global warming, as well as a decrease in energy resources based on fossil fuels. However, the use of petrol is the best option in terms of other impact categories, such as photochemical oxidants formation, acidification and eutrophication. The choice of allocation approach significantly affects the environmental performance and influences the question which fuel (E10 or E85) has smaller environmental impacts. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Crop-derived first-generation biofuels are controversial because of their competition with food supplies and the uncertainty regarding their environmental performance. However, they are currently being used in practical applications, particularly because the second and third generation biofuels are not likely to replace them for another few years. In this study, we performed a life cycle assessment of 5 energy crops for bioethanol production in Japan to evaluate the improvements in breeding and cultivation practices. In addition, to determine the possibilities of first-generation biofuels, we analysed the contribution of different components to the crop cultivation system and the potential for improvements by constructing a regionalised database. The results showed that the introduction of yield increases are expected to significantly reduce the values for almost all evaluated environmental impact categories, together with disease-resistant varieties, direct seeding, reduced operations and the increased ratooning of sugarcane, primarily by reducing the input of materials per yield. Moreover, the results demonstrated the significance of combining multiple improvements in breeding and cultivation practices. We observed different relationships among the values between the crops under different impact categories, indicating the importance of a comprehensive assessment. A comparison between petrol and bioethanol showed unfavourable outcomes for bioethanol production and use on the environment, suggesting that further improvements are needed to ensure the potential of bioethanol production in Japan. These improvements will be accomplished by focusing on improvements in the environmental performance of particular factors such as reducing compost-derived ammonia discharge and decreasing nitrogen input through adequate fertilising. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents laboratory results of biological production of hydrogen by photo-autrotophic cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. Additional hydrogen production from residual Cyanobacteria fermentation was achieved by Enterobacter aerogenes bacteria. The authors evaluated the yield of H-2 production, the energy consumption and CO2 emissions and the technological bottlenecks and possible improvements of the whole energy and CO2 emission chain. The authors did not attempt to extrapolate the results to an industrial scale, but to highlight the processes that need further optimization. The experiments showed that the production of hydrogen from cyanobacteria Anabaena sp. is technically viable. The hydrogen yield for this case was 0.0114 kgH(2)/kg(biomass) which had a rough energy consumption of 1538 MJ/MJH(2) and produced 114640 gCO(2)/MJH(2). The use of phototrophic residual cyanobacteria as a substrate in a dark-fermentation process increased the hydrogen yield by 8.1% but consumed 12.0% more of energy and produced 12.1% more of CO2 showing that although the process increased the overall efficiency of hydrogen production it was not a viable energy and CO2 emission solution. To make cyanobacteria-based biofuel production energy and environmentally relevant, efforts should be made to improve the hydrogen yield to values which are more competitive with glucose yields (0.1 kgH(2)/kg(biomass)). This could be achieved through the use of electricity with at least 80% of renewables and eliminating the unessential processes (e.g. pre-concentration centrifugation). Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main objective of this work is to utilize the existing geothermal potential of the Greek island of Nisyros located in the southeastern part of the Aegean Sea for desalination of seawater. The technology most applicable for the exploitation of geothermal purposes is the multiple effect distillation process (MED). The exploitation of the geothermal hot water sources located in the island combined with an effective desalination technology can eliminate energy consumption from hydrocarbons, minimize the environmental impact and reduce dramatically the cost of fresh water. The determination of the overall environmental impact of the desalination plan by means of a Life Cycle Analysis, and the evaluation of the measure's economical feasibility by means of Cost-Benefit Analysis and Life Cycle Cost methods will be shown. Exergy Analysis of the process will determine its thermodynamic efficiency. This work is to determine and demonstrate the feasibility of a geothermal-driven power-desalination plant to provide high quality of water in sufficient quantity at affordable costs, while protecting the fragile island environment.Life cycle assessment and marginal prevention costs (eco-costs method) for an acrylonitrile plant were carried out estimating the environmental impact and the eco-costs, due to the increment in the production capacity. This study compares the old plant's operative performance (old design) at 50,000 ton/year where the by-products were incinerated, with the current operation at 60,000 ton/year where those by-products in the waste stream will be treated to take advantage of its substance content, to generate profitable products. In addition, the effect of a wastewater flow rate with cyanide was evaluated on the biological wastewater treatment process. The redesign showed a high reduction percentage in eleven of eighteen midpoint impact categories. The reduction of 36% in the global impacts in the redesign was obtained when these ones were calculated based on the impacts of the year of 2005. The CO2 emissions equivalents (CO(2)eq) had a reduction of 46% (from 6.55 to 3.50 kg CO(2)eq/kg of acrylonitrile). The total of marginal prevention costs (eco-costs) are 1.28 USD/kg for acrylonitrile old design and the 0.735 USD/kg for acrylonitrile redesign, i.e. 42.5% lower than the old design. This means that 94.5% are costs for pollution and the use of energy and 5.4% by depletions of material resources. This study proved that the redesign is environmentally most favorable and economically affordable method. Eco-costs method should be incorporated as part of the financial indicators of a project, but with the respective adaptation to the environmental and economic conditions of a region. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of the manufacturing stage of the product life cycle are resource consumption and waste emissions. The development of an appropriate assessment method for evaluating the environmental performance of a manufacturing process, or an entire process plan, is one of the keys to realize a successful sustainable manufacturing strategy. This paper describes a new method for the environmental evaluation of a manufacturing process plan, where actual values for various environmental measures for the different operations in the plan are used to form an impact matrix. If desired, scores for each process, each environmental measure, and for the entire plan may be obtained by applying weights obtained from the analytical hierarchy process. The method has been encoded in software (Manufacturing Environmental Performance Evaluation), which provides insights into how manufacturing decisions affect the environment. A case study is used to illustrate how the assessment method may be applied and to demonstrate its applicability.Warm-mix asphalt (WMA) has received considerable attention in the past few years as a potential solution for the reduction of energy consumption and emissions during production and construction of asphalt mixtures. However, many concerns and questions are still unanswered regarding its environmental benefits. Although several studies have been conducted to quantify the atmospheric emissions of WMA pavements, the direct and indirect role of ecological resource consumption was generally excluded in these studies. In this study, a thermodynamic based hybrid life cycle assessment model was developed to evaluate the environmental impacts of different types of WMA pavements and compare it to that of a conventional hot mix asphalt (HMA) one. The impacts on the ecosystem were calculated in terms of cumulative mass, energy, industrial exergy, and ecological exergy. Monte Carlo simulation was also conducted to analyze the variability of critical input parameters. The results of this study showed that although the mixing phase is important, it should not be the only phase to evaluate the decreased amount of atmospheric emissions of WMA pavements. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.During the past 2 years, high-speed rail (HSR) has become a popular concept in the United States partially because of its perceived environmental benefits. Many states are competing for HSR funding after the federal government made HSR a domestic priority. Of course, the allocation of funding is subject to many constraints. Among them, one of the necessary considerations should be the environmental efficiency of each HSR line. Using the proposed lines in California (CAHSR) and Florida (FLHSR) as examples, this article details a method that can be used to assess the life-cycle energy usage and carbon emission efficiency for new HSR lines. Ridership is forecasted based on data from existing HSR lines, and energy and emissions are analysed with the Economic Input-Output-Life-Cycle Analysis tool. Calculation shows that the construction of CAHSR is more environmentally efficient primarily due to its higher ridership predictions.The potential of solar water heating systems to reduce domestic energy use is frequently acknowledged. However there are two factors that are rarely discussed when studying this technology. Firstly the real performance of the installed systems in operation, and secondly a life cycle perspective of its energy use. These two issues are reviewed in this paper, and a field study in Ireland is also presented. In the review, some studies show that measured real performance of domestic solar water heating systems can be lower than expectations. Concerning their life cycle energy performance, existing studies show that the initial energy investment for the systems (their embodied energy) is a small portion of the energy savings over their lifetime with calculation paybacks generally lower than 2 years. On the field study carried in Ireland, representative of a maritime north European climate, the 'energy payback' based on the expected energy savings is between 1.2 and 3.5 years, values comparable to previous studies considering the less favourable climate and installation characteristics. However the measured energy savings generally worsened the life cycle energy performance of this technology and thus increased the energy payback period. The study concludes that while there is a real potential for life cycle energy savings through domestic solar water heating installations, devising mechanisms to ensure proper design, installation and operation of systems is essential for this technology. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We fabricated multi-layered hydrogels on titanium alloy (Ti) surfaces by applying alternating layers of a water-soluble phospholipid polymer (PMBV) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). This was accomplished by a layer-by-layer (LbL) process that is based on the formation of reversible covalent bonds between the boronic acid subunits in the PMBV and the hydroxyl groups in the PVA. When placed in an aqueous medium, PMBV acquires a polymeric aggregate structure with hydrophobic domains that can effectively solubilize hydrophobic molecules such as the anticancer drug paclitaxel (PTX) used in this study. The PTX-containing PMBV layer acted as a reservoir in the multi-layered hydrogels. To obtain diverse release profiles, the PTX was loaded in either the top layer (top-type) or the bottom layer (bottom-type) of the hydrogels; additional layers of PMBV and PVA, without PTX, functioned as a diffusion-barrier. In cell culture experiments, top-type hydrogels demonstrated excessive suppression of human epidermal carcinoma A431 cell proliferation over 5 days due to the initial high concentration of released PTX. However, bottom-type hydrogels were able to maintain a constant cell number profile. The release of PTX from multi-layered hydrogels was governed by both diffusion through the diffusion-barrier and dissociation of the hydrogel through an exchange reaction of phenylboronic acid subunits with the low-molecular weight D-glucose in the cell culture medium. In the cell culture experiments, the cell cycle was arrested in S and G2/M phases, as expected following PTX-mediated growth inhibition; control hydrogels did not demonstrate any appreciable cell cycle arrest. We concluded that cell proliferation could be controlled by the concentration of PTX released from the multi-layered hydrogels prepared through the LbL process. This system when used to solubilize bioactive agents at an appropriate layer within the hydrogel has potential for localized and surface-mediated delivery of bioactive molecules from biomedical devices. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Indium is an important metal whose production is increasing dramatically due to new uses in the rapidly growing electronics, photovoltaic, and LED industries. Little is known about the natural or industrial cycling of indium, and toxicological data are incomplete. This review presents the existing state of knowledge of indium's natural and industrial fluxes, chemical behavior, toxicity, and analytical methods by which it is measured. Additionally, the authors present evidence of industrial influence on environmental indium concentrations, and seek to define future research needs that may allow a thorough investigation of the environmental behavior of indium and allow informed decisions about its use, handling, and disposal.Energy-efficient retrofitting of existing building is a huge contribution to the sustainability of the society since building energy consumption takes more than one fourth of total energy consumption. The application of external shading system could block out unwanted radiant heat gain, thus reduces the cooling load of the air-conditioning system. During the assessment of energy-efficient retrofitting projects, apart from annual saving figures and economic payback time, energy and CO2 emission payback periods should also be taken as indispensable references. In this paper, a methodology is described for analyzing the energy and CO2 emission payback periods of external overhang shading in a university campus in Hong Kong. Result shows that due to requirements of structural strength under typhoon situation, although introducing overhang shading system could reduce almost half of the cooling load in the related area, the energy and CO2 emission payback periods of the project are still unrealistically long. This case study presents an example of multi-disciplinary approach being not only important to the energy-efficient retrofitting but also necessary for policy making in different climatic and geographic regions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The perennial political and social upheavals in major oil-producing regions, the increasing energy demand from emerging economies, the global economic crisis and even environmental disasters, like the recent major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, all contribute to price fluctuations and escalations. Usually price instability affects the least-developed countries with the most fragile economies, like Ghana, the most. This paper gives a brief overview of the Ghanaian energy situation, describes the liquid biofuel production processes and examines the possibility of replacing some of the fossil fuels consumed annually, with locally produced renewable biofuels. Various scenarios for substituting different portions of petrol and diesel with biofuels derived from cassava and palm oil are examined. Based on 2009 crop production and fuel consumption data, replacement of 5% of both petrol and diesel with biofuels would require 1.96% and 17.3% of the cassava and palm oil produced in that year, respectively; while replacement of 10% of both fossil fuels would need 3.91% and 34.6% of the corresponding biofuels. Thus while petrol replacement could be initiated with little difficulty, regarding raw material availability, biodiesel would require enhanced palm oil production and/or oil supplement from other sources, including, potentially, jatropha. An implementation strategy is proposed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is explored as an analytical tool in strategic environmental assessment (SEA), illustrated by case where a previously developed SEA process was applied to municipal energy planning in Sweden. The process integrated decision-making tools for scenario planning, public participation and environmental assessment. This article describes the use of LCA for environmental assessment in this context, with focus on methodology and practical experiences. While LCA provides a systematic framework for the environmental assessment and a wider systems perspective than what is required in SEA, LCA cannot address all aspects of environmental impact required, and therefore needs to be complemented by other tools. The integration of LCA with tools for public participation and scenario planning posed certain methodological challenges, but provided an innovative approach to designing the scope of the environmental assessment and defining and assessing alternatives. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Herein is reported an application of life cycle analysis (LCA), using the Methodology for the Ecodesign of Energy Using Products (MEEUP), in order to assess the influence of some design parameters in the environmental impact of three-phase induction motors. A motor design procedure to minimize the total environmental impact, based on data obtained from commercial motors, is presented. This procedure is specially intended for the low power range due to the greater potential for energy savings in motors having an output power of 0.75 to 4 kW. A procedure has been developed, based on previously acquired data, to determine the parameters required for application of the MEEUP methodology. These comprise the quantity of each of the motor's main constituent materials used in the production phase, and the two operating variables that directly influence the LCA results: output power and efficiency. The procedure was applied to two 1.5 kW induction motors of different efficiency (according to standard IEC60034-2-1). The calculation results were compared satisfactorily with the laboratory test results. The total environmental impact of the two real motors and of the proposed motor was determined in the production, service life, and end-of-life phases. Given the potential for energy savings in electric motors, LCA-based environmental impact assessment should be incorporated into motor design.The purpose of this study is to provide life cycle inventory data and results for components of electrical grids to the larger community of life cycle assessment practitioners. This article is the first in a series of two, each focusing on different components of power grids. In part 1, the objects under scope are power lines and cables. Systems for overhead, underground, and subsea transmission are modeled here, including HVDC systems used in long-distance transmission. We use process-based life cycle assessment based on information provided by companies and in reports, Ecoinvent v2.2 as a background dataset and ReCiPe Midpoint Hierarchist perspective v1.0 as the impact assessment method. The average European power mix is used to model the electrical energy required to compensate power losses in the equipment. Under the assumption of European power mix, power losses are the dominant process for impacts of lines and cables in all impact categories, contributing with up to 99% to climate change impacts. An exception is the category of metal depletion, for which the production of metal parts is the most relevant process. After power losses, processes generating the most impacts for overhead lines are the production of metals for masts and conductors; production of foundations comes third. Recycling of metal parts shows benefits in all impact categories. For cables, infrastructure impacts are dominated by cable production, and recycling of cable materials does not always compensate for the other impacts generated at the end of life.Though the development of biofuel has attracted numerous studies for quantifying potential water demand applying life cycle thinking, the impacts of biofuel water consumption still remain unknown. In this study, we aimed to quantify ecological impact associated with corn-based bioethanol water consumption in Minnesota in responding to different refinery expansion scenarios by applying a life cycle impact assessment method. This ecological damage assessment method for quantifying water consumption impacts was proposed by Pfister et al. in 2009 (Environ Sci Technol 43: 4098-4104, 2009) using an impact characterization factor integrating terrestrial net primary production and precipitation. In this study, we derived the spatially explicit eco-damage characterization factors for 81 watersheds in Minnesota and compiled location-specific water consumption data for all current and planned bioethanol production facilities and feedstock production. The ecological damage caused by bioethanol production (Delta EQ(EtOH) in m(2)a <...yr) was then calculated on both watershed and refinery-plant levels. Additional refinery expansion scenarios were established for testing the effectiveness in changing Delta EQ(EtOH). The results show that ecological impact Delta EQ(EtOH) varied by more than a factor of 3 between watersheds. Minnesota consumed 40 billion liters of water to produce 2.3 billion liters of ethanol as of 2007 (17 L water per liter of ethanol). The geographical distribution of Delta EQ(EtOH) was shown to be uneven with a cluster of high-impact regions around the center of the state. The planned refinery expansion is expected to increase the state's corn ethanol production capacity by 75% and Delta EQ(EtOH) by 65%. However, strategically locating the planned expansion in the low-impact areas is expected to minimize the increases in Delta EQ(EtOH) down to 19% from 65%. The scenario analysis shows that strategically sourcing corn from low-impact regions can result in significantly less water use impact compared to a baseline scenario. The results indicate that employing the water consumption impact assessment can provide additional insights in policy making. The environmental impacts related to the change of plant infrastructure and agricultural practices associated with the development of the renewable energy industry should be considered as well for identifying the most sustainable alternatives.This paper discusses issues associated with the research question: What are the similarities and differences between the REACH and life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches, and how can synergies between these two approaches be exploited to achieve environmental improvements in a holistic perspective? The Innochem project (Hanssen 2010) has been the vehicle for examining two different approaches for product improvement: REACH and LCA. Product LCAs and REACH assessments were performed on several products from each of the two main company participants, i.e. Jotun and HG. These companies are downstream users, according to the REACH definition: Jotun producing mixtures and HG manufacturing articles. Knowledge of the REACH and LCA aspects associated with these two types of products existed in the project team and was used in the project period (2006-2011) to compare the two approaches. This paper presents similarities and differences between REACH and LCA approaches as related to reducing impacts on the environment. As an illustrative example, the REACH registration dossier is compared to USEtox data for benzene. Combining aspects of LCA with REACH can give companies a competitive edge and benefit society. The greater availability of toxicity data that will result from REACH can strenghten LCA toxicity assessments and methods. The functional life cycle approach and potential synergies from LCA are important when implementing REACH in companies in order to avoid suboptimal solutions and exploit the potential for achieving innovative improvements. Many companies will use both approaches, which may lead to results pointing in the same direction, or contradictory results. Using both approaches and exploiting concurrence and synergies between them will ensure that decision makers are aware of potential conflicts during the product development process and can thus be able to seek solutions that will avoid these conflicts of interest.Best agricultural practices can be adopted to increase crop productivity and lower carbon footprint of grain products. The aims of this study were to provide a quantitative estimate of the carbon footprint of selected oilseed crops grown on the semiarid northern Great Plains and to determine the effects of N fertilization and environments on the carbon footprint. Five oilseed crops, Brassica napus canola, Brassica rapa canola, Brassica juncea canola, B. juncea mustard, and Sinapis alba mustard, were grown under the N rates of 0, 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250 kg N ha(-1) at eight environsites (location x year combinations) in Saskatchewan, Canada. Straw and root decomposition and various production inputs were used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints. Emissions from the production, transportation, storage, and delivery of N fertilizer to farm gates accounted for 42% of the total greenhouse gas emissions, and the direct and indirect emission from the application of N fertilizer in oilseed production added another 31% to the total emission. Emissions from N fertilization were nine times the emission from the use of pesticides and 11 times that of farming operations. Straw and root decomposition emitted 120 kg CO(2)eq ha(-1), contributing 10% to the total emission. Carbon footprint increased slightly as N rates increased from 0 to 50 kg N ha(-1), but as N rates increased from 50 to 250 kg N ha(-1), carbon footprint increased substantially for all five oilseed crops evaluated. Oilseeds grown at the humid Melfort site emitted 1,355 kg CO(2)eq ha(-1), 30% greater than emissions at the drier sites of Scott and Swift Current. Oilseeds grown at Melfort had their carbon footprint of 0.52 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) of oilseed, 45% greater than that at Scott (0.45 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) of oilseed), and 25% greater than that at Swift Current (0.45 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) of oilseed). Carbon footprint of oilseeds was a function of the rate of N fertilizer, and the intensity of the functionality varied between environments. Key to lower carbon footprint in oilseeds is to improve N management practices.This report proposes a life-cycle analysis (LCA)-oriented methodology for systematic inventory analysis of the use phase of manufacturing unit processes providing unit process datasets to be used in life-cycle inventory (LCI) databases and libraries. The methodology has been developed in the framework of the CO2PE! collaborative research programme (CO2PE! 2011a) and comprises two approaches with different levels of detail, respectively referred to as the screening approach and the in-depth approach. The screening approach relies on representative, publicly available data and engineering calculations for energy use, material loss, and identification of variables for improvement, while the in-depth approach is subdivided into four modules, including a time study, a power consumption study, a consumables study and an emissions study, in which all relevant process in- and outputs are measured and analysed in detail. The screening approach provides the first insight in the unit process and results in a set of approximate LCI data, which also serve to guide the more detailed and complete in-depth approach leading to more accurate LCI data as well as the identification of potential for energy and resource efficiency improvements of the manufacturing unit process. To ensure optimal reproducibility and applicability, documentation guidelines for data and metadata are included in both approaches. Guidance on definition of functional unit and reference flow as well as on determination of system boundaries specifies the generic goal and scope definition requirements according to ISO 14040 (2006) and ISO 14044 (2006). The proposed methodology aims at ensuring solid foundations for the provision of high-quality LCI data for the use phase of manufacturing unit processes. Envisaged usage encompasses the provision of high-quality data for LCA studies of products using these unit process datasets for the manufacturing processes, as well as the in-depth analysis of individual manufacturing unit processes. In addition, the accruing availability of data for a range of similar machines (same process, different suppliers and machine capacities) will allow the establishment of parametric emission and resource use estimation models for a more streamlined LCA of products including reliable manufacturing process data. Both approaches have already provided useful results in some initial case studies (Kellens et al. 2009; Duflou et al. (Int J Sustain Manufacturing 2:80-98, 2010); Santos et al. (J Clean Prod 19:356-364, 2011); UPLCI 2011; Kellens et al. 2011a) and the use will be illustrated by two case studies in Part 2 of this paper (Kellens et al. 2011b).In general, pentachloroaniline (PCA) biodechlorination is specific to the conditions of a system; such conditions include the type and concentration of electron donors and oxidizing agents as well as nutrient availability, pH, and temperature. In the bioremediation of contaminated sediments and soil, most researchers have focused on the ability of various electron donors to remove target compounds. However, the amended electron donors and the byproduct of the anoxic/anaerobic systems may cause more environmental impact. Therefore, methods for consistently evaluating the environmental effects of such electron donors and byproducts are highly needed. Accordingly, life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to estimate the environmental effect of PCA biodechlorination under acidogenic/methanogenic conditions through laboratory-scale experiments. Four scenarios, intended to assess the influence of electron donors on the environment and develop laboratory experimental research, were compared. In these scenarios, four compounds were used: acetate, lactate, methanol, and glucose + methanol. The LCA was carried out using IMPACT2002+ to estimate the environmental impact of PCA biodechlorination under acidogenic/methanogenic conditions. To add credibility to the study, sensitivity analysis was also conducted. In all scenarios, the technologies significantly contributed to respiratory inorganics, global warming, as well as increased the adverse impact of nonrenewable energy on the environment. Specifically, the emissions from the electron donor production processes played an important role in the scenarios. PCA dechlorination and methanogenic processes substantially contributed to the aquatic/terrestrial ecotoxicity and global warming, respectively. Optimizing the concentration of amended electron donors and increasing the population size of dechlorinating microorganisms are highly important in reducing the environmental burden by PCA bioremediation. Results showed that the methanol scenario was the most suitable option determined in this research. In addition, results indicate amended electron donors can cause fewer environmental impacts in carcinogens and noncarcinogens categories. By contrast, the amended electron donors can significantly increase environmental impacts in respiratory inorganics, global warming, and nonrenewable energy categories. Increasing the population size of dechlorinating microorganisms and optimizing the concentration of amended electron donors are highly recommended to reduce adverse environmental impacts.Life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners in Singapore currently rely on foreign life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies when conducting studies, despite the fact that foreign methodologies may not be relevant, adaptable and sensitive to Singapore's circumstances. As a result, work has been undertaken to develop the Singapore IMPact ASSessment (SIMPASS) methodology by adapting and modifying existing LCIA methodologies to suit the Singaporean context. It is envisioned that the use of SIMPASS will improve the accuracy of LCA studies conducted for industries operating in Singapore. The development is initiated by a compendious review of the available LCIA methodologies, in order to familiarise state-of-the-art developments and best available practice for LCIA in the world. Subsequently, five key design considerations are discussed. Firstly, six impact categories (climate change, acidification, eutrophication, fossil fuel depletion, water use and land use) are identified and prioritised for detailed analysis in this project, in view of their relevance and criticality to Singapore. Subsequently, user issues and the type of LCIA approach are considered. Following which, four areas of protection (namely Human Health, Natural Environment, Natural Resources and Man-made Environment) are selected for consideration in the SIMPASS methodology. With the development approach in mind, extensive research is conducted in the six selected impact categories to construct the characterisation framework for SIMPASS. The characterisation framework is strongly based on current best practices in LCIA characterisation, while the characterisation models are chosen based on their extent of comprehensiveness, scientific sophistication, as well as specificity to Singapore. SIMPASS proposes an attractive and feasible LCIA methodology that is highly specific to Singapore. Feasible recommendations are drawn to further develop and operationalise the characterisation framework.As liquid crystal display (LCD) flat-screen televisions increase in popularity, their potential contribution to global warming has received wide attention. This study presents global warming impacts resulting from the life cycle assessment (LCA) of LCD flat-screen televisions for key global warming contributors from the "cradle-to-gate" and use stages of the product's life cycle. The emissions from nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential (GWP) 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2), are not monitored in the Kyoto Protocol. Emissions in the cradle-to-gate and use stages were modeled in this study according to their GWP (kg CO2 equivalent), focusing and analyzing the most significant source of NF3 emissions. NF3 is used during the manufacturing process of LCDs to clean the vacuum chambers. In this study, a system diagram of the cradle-to-gate stage and use stage of a 40-in. LCD television was proposed using the software package GabiA (R), particularly investigating NF3 to determine its possible effects on global warming based on a typical LCA. The energy inputs in the use stage of the LCD flat-screen television resulted in major global warming impacts, while the contribution of GWP resulting from NF3 was trivial. However, as energy efficiency continuously improves over time, the GWP resulting from NF3 may become significant. Findings in this study allow industry to focus on those critical stages of the production life cycle that most directly affect global warming while permitting government agencies to enact proper regulations to help decrease CO2 equivalent emissions. The preliminary assessment of our LCA also offers manufacturers the ability to determine the largest sources of greenhouse gases and their connection in the life cycle analysis of a product. This extension may help guide legislation and industrial management in the future. For further decision making, an in-depth sensitivity analysis may be needed to strengthen the results.In the present study, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to evaluate the energy consumption and environmental burdens associated with the production of protected crops in an agricultural district in the Mediterranean region. In this study, LCA was used as a 'support tool', to address local policies for sustainable production and consumption patterns, and to create a 'knowledge base' for environmental assessment of an extended agricultural production area. The proposed approach combines organisation-specific tools, such as Environmental Management Systems and Environmental Product Declarations, with the environmental management of the district. Questionnaires were distributed to producers to determine the life cycle of different protected crops (tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peppers, melons and zucchinis), and obtain information on greenhouse usage (e.g. tunnel vs. pavilion). Ecoprofiles of products in the district were also estimated, to identify supply chain elements with the highest impact in terms of global energy requirements, greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication, water consumption and waste production. These results of this study enable selection of the 'best practices' and ecodesign solutions, to reduce the environmental impact of these products. Finally, sensitivity analysis of key LCA issues was performed, to assess the variability associated with different parameters: vegetable production; water usage; fertiliser and pesticide usage; shared greenhouse use; substitution of plastics coverings; and waste recycling. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to apply the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, from cradle to gate, to quantify the environmental burdens per 1,000 kg of expected edible carcass weight in the 3 main broiler production systems in the United Kingdom: 1) standard indoor, 2) free range, and 3) organic, and to identify the main components of these burdens. The LCA method evaluates production systems logically to account for all inputs and outputs that cross a specified system boundary, and it relates these to the useful outputs. The analysis was based on an approach that applied a structural model for the UK broiler industry and mechanistic submodels for animal performance, crop production, and major nutrient flows. Simplified baseline feeds representative of those used by the UK broiler industry were used. Typical UK figures for performance and mortality of birds and farm energy and material use were applied. Monte Carlo simulations were used to quantify the uncertainties in the outputs. The length of the production cycle was longer for free-range and organic systems compared with that of the standard indoor system, and as a result, the feed consumption and manure production per bird were higher in the free-range and organic systems. These differences had a major effect on the differences in environmental burdens between the systems. Feed production, processing, and transport resulted in greater overall environmental impacts than any other components of broiler production; for example, 65 to 81% of the primary energy use and 71 to 72% of the global warming potential of the system were due to these burdens. Farm gas and oil use had the second highest impact in primary energy use (12-25%) followed by farm electricity use. The direct use of gas, oil, and electricity were generally lower in free-range and organic systems compared with their use in the standard indoor system. Manure was the main component of acidification potential and also had a relatively high eutrophication potential. The LCA method allows for comparisons between systems and for the identification of hotspots of environmental impacts that could be subject to mitigation.Remanufacturing, long perceived as an environmentally friendly initiative, is supported by a number of governments. Yet, the assumption that remanufacturing is desirable to society has never been systematically investigated. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness and eco-efficiency of remanufacturing in the personal computer and mobile phone industries. We investigate whether remanufacturing substantially reduces the environmental impact, as measured by cumulative energy demand (CED), generated over the life cycles (LCs) of these products, and the size of any reduction. We also examine the relative eco-efficiency of remanufacturing compared with virgin manufacturing for these two products, where eco-efficiency includes both willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the products as well as the energy consumed in producing the products. Our main findings are the following. One, remanufacturing is an effective way to reduce the total energy consumed during the LCs of personal computers and mobile phones, with one notable exception, when the life spans of remanufactured products are substantially shorter than the life spans of their new counterparts. Two, a remanufactured personal computer or mobile phone is not always more eco-efficient than a corresponding new product. Three, the WTP for remanufactured personal computers and mobile phones, and consequently, their eco-efficiencies, are a function of the prices of the correspondent new products at launch and years elapsed between launch and remanufacturing. Four, remanufactured units are sold at a discount relative to the price of new personal computers and mobile phones. Five, on the whole, the market for remanufactured mobile phones is more eco-efficient than the market for new mobile phones. Six, the market for remanufactured computers is more eco-efficient than the market for new computers. Lastly, because the group of remanufactured products is heterogeneous, not all remanufactured units are more eco-efficient than the average new computer and mobile phone. We conclude with a discussion of the impact of our findings on European WEEE and WEEE-like legislation.The paper presents a life-cycle assessment of costs and greenhouse gas emissions for transit buses deploying a hybrid input-output model to compare ultra-low sulfur diesel to hybrid diesel-electric, compressed natural gas, and hydrogen fuel-cell. We estimate the costs of emissions reductions from alternative fuel vehicles over the life cycle and examine the sensitivity of the results to changes in fuel prices, passenger demand, and to technological characteristics influencing performance and emissions. We find that the alternative fuel buses reduce operating costs and emissions, but increase life-cycle costs. The infrastructure requirement to deploy and operate alternative fuel buses is critical in the comparison of life-cycle emissions. Additionally, efficient bus choice is sensitive to passenger demand, but only moderately sensitive to technological characteristics, and that the relative efficiency of compressed natural gas buses is more sensitive to changes in fuel prices than that of the other bus types. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An ecologically-based hybrid life cycle assessment model is used to evaluate the resource consumption and atmospheric emissions of continuously reinforced concrete and a hot-mix asphalt pavements. The cumulative mass and ecological resource consumption values are lower for continuously reinforced concrete, but the median values of cumulative energy and industrial energy consumption were lower for hot-mix asphalt. In addition, the use of reclaimed asphalt pavement results in a higher sensitivity for the ecological resource consumption of hot-mix asphalt compared to that of fly ash when use on the natural capital utilization of continuously reinforced concrete pavement. The cumulative and industrial exergy consumption values are significantly reduced with increases in reclaimed asphalt pavement and fly ash, and the use of low fuel transportation modes. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The results of the influence of fresh grass, hay and silage of reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) on the efficiency of anaerobic digestion are presented in the paper. The environmental assessment of biogas production technology has been analysed in terms of life cycle assessment methodology as well. Energetic evaluation has been performed including direct and indirect energy inputs of all technological operations from soil preparation to anaerobic digestion. The schemes of anaerobic digestion for three types of grass treatment technologies have been designed. It is determined that emissions of direct energy input during the digestion grass silos and fresh grass - 0.049 and 0.041 kgCO(2) per kg of biomass were the highest. The highest gas leakage was found to be in the dried grass digestion case - 0.0241 kgCO(2) per kg of biomass. The ratio of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions was the highest for the dried grass digestion to biogas - 4.55 kgCO(2) per kg of biomass. The results of the analysis of the total energy input for plant biomass anaerobic digestion and energy potential of biomass shows that the energy conversion efficiency of biogas production is the highest at the dried grass (6.8) technology, and the lowest at fresh grass - 5.5. These results suggest that anaerobic digestion to biogas is an energy efficient and environment friendly way of biomass utilization and renewable energy creation.Dimethyl ether is one of the sustainable energy sources because it is clean and easy to handle. DME can be produced from various materials such as coal, natural gas (NG), and biomass. Actually, NG-based DME plant is in operation in Korea. Many studies have also investigated NG-based processes and reactor design needed for use of dimethyl ether. Unlike the previous studies, this study focuses on DME production system using coal as a raw material. Coal is drawing attention as the upcoming energy source due to the depletion of oil in Korea. Whereas Korea depends entirely on imports for crude oil, coal can be supplied by domestic production. To decide coal as a raw material, we need to assess the competitiveness of coal. A life cycle assessment of coal-based DME production system was performed to evaluate environmental impact and energy consumption. The assessment of coal-based DME production system with respect to the environment and energy use is essential for sustainable DME production in Korea. The aim of this study was to analyze the amount of CO2 emission and energy consumption of coal-based DME production. The life cycle of DME production includes the mining of coal, pretreatment of the mined coal, transportation to the DME production plant, and DME conversion. Related data and the assumptions pertinent to South Korea are introduced and adopted as a case study.Environmentally friendly building materials and constructions are intended to reduce energy and material flows during the entire building life cycle. The evaluation is focused on the assessment of consumption and depletion of material resources, especially non-renewable resources, to minimize the life-cycle impact of materials on the environment and enhance the indoor environmental quality by concentrating on the evaluation of energy flows through the building constructions. Energy effective houses increase efficiency of sources utilization (energy, water and materials) and they are designed in order to decrease effect on human health and environment during their life-cycle by means of better location, design, constructions, operation, maintenance and reconstruction. The factor of performance is their main contribution what means lower energy consumption and lower operating costs too. The energy effective houses don't present the new definition of projection but it is more improving of attested processes and adaptation to new requests. These buildings have certain specifications in the sphere of the thermal-technical demands - on external walls, roofs, ceilings above unheated space, ground floor, windows, doors - in comparison with common development. Constructions that divide spaces with different indoor air temperatures must meet a lot of building-constructional and building-physical conditions. Constructions that divide spaces with different indoor air temperatures must meet a lot of building-constructional and building-physical conditions. These conditions will be solved by design of consumer model. The aim of this paper is design of consumer model and environmental assessment of used building materials focused on life cycle analysis.We present a partial look into a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment of PepsiCo USA's beverage packaging. The study complies with voluntary international standards and was peer-reviewed. We looked at cradle-to-material and cradle-to-grave analysis, across eight impact categories, for various packaging materials and formats. The significant environmental benefits of using recycled PET are highlighted. Additionally highlighted are the benefits of lightweighting containers.Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) is one phase within the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology used to determine the environmental impact of a product system. Life Cycle Inventory can be a decision making tool for government officials, industries or society to evaluate a product's environmental impact. This study used Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) to provide a simple methodology to compare the end-of-life results for the product systems of three shipping containers for baby carrots. The study compared the product packaging by including the raw material, manufacturing, filling, and distribution phases of the product systems. The three product systems consist of one corrugated display-ready corrugated container (DRC), one reduced corrugated DRC container, and one reusable plastic container (RPC). All three packaging systems are compared with two end-of-life scenarios in terms of landfill, incineration, and recycling. Overall, the results of this study show the significant difference in green house impact and total energy consumption between Reusable Plastic Containers and the two DRC containers.Post-Consumer materials have different environmental impacts when comparing recycling, incineration, and landfill. This study uses Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI), which is one phase within the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to determine the environmental impact of a product system. Life Cycle Inventory can be a decision making tool for government officials, industries or society to evaluate a product's environmental impact. This study used Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) to provide a simple methodology to compare two end-of-life scenarios for the product systems of three shipping containers for table grapes. The three product systems include corrugated fiberboard Display-Ready Corrugated Containers (DRC), plastic corrugated (DRC), and polyethylene (PE) injection molded containers (DRC). The results of this study indicate how the environmental impact of the materials, processes and transportation phases can vary from product system.In this paper PCM is added to three types of stabilized rammed. Mechanical and thermal characterization is carried out. To do so, the compressive strength is optimized and the final compositions obtained are used to formulate the materials which will be thermally characterized. The optimization process is done with a design of experiments (DoE) and a variance analysis (ANOVA). Finally, LCA is used to evaluate the environmental impact during the manufacturing phase, due to the addition of stabilizers and PCM in the rammed earth. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The basic problem of eco-materials is how to judge whether a kind of material is environmentally friendly or not, which is usually evaluated by life cycle assessment. Although some international organizations, such as ISO, SETAC, etc., have given detailed specification on life cycle assessment, life cycle assessment is still in developing and it is still filled with dispute in some important environmental problems, for example, the depletion of mineral resources. Recently, for a purpose to get more objective results of products' environment performance, a new assessment model exergy-based model of life cycle assessment combined the traditional life cycle assessment model and some important thermodynamic concepts (emergy, exergy) is emerging. The basic research method for thermodynamics is to study the interaction between system and environment. If considering materials' life cycle as a system, the research on materials' environmental performance could be changed to the research on the interaction between the system of materials' life cycle and natural environment. Introducing thermodynamic theory into life cycle assessment system not only give life cycle assessment theoretical basis but also import new ideas to some detailed problems in LCA like the depletion of mineral resources. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a quantitative analysis of resources consumption, energy consumption and pollutants emissions caused by the production of primary aluminum and recycled aluminum in China in year of 2008 were carried out. Compared to the status of the year 2003, the energy consumption of primary aluminum production had reduced by 16%. Global Warming Potential (GWP) also had a sharp reduce. These related to the advanced production technology of the alumina suitable for bauxite in China, phasing out of old plants some using Soderberg technology and the reduction of energy consumption of generating electricity. At the production of recycled aluminum, we can find that the energy consumption of recycled aluminum covering transportation, pretreating and remelting of scrap accounts for less than 5% of the primary aluminum production, and the environmental load is lower than the primary aluminum. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.At Rowan University, we have developed a module to introduce first year engineering students to life cycle assessment (LCA) through the comparison of the environmental impact of the combustion of two diesel fuels: petroleum diesel and biodiesel from waste vegetable oil (WVO). The purpose of this LCA module was to incorporate life cycle thinking into the engineering design process, to apply the four main steps of LCA (definition and scope, inventory analysis, impact assessment and improvement assessment), and to recognize modifications that would improve the environmental impact of the biodiesel combustion. Students compared the emissions generated in the combustion of laboratory-made biodiesel from waste vegetable oil and conventional diesel from petroleum by analyzing the exhaust gases from a generator. A fuel combustion life cycle inventory was developed using student data from the laboratory experiment, and life cycle analysis was then conducted using SimaPro (R). The biodiesel fuel had been previously produced in the laboratory by the students and the production life cycle environmental impacts had been calculated as well. The assessment of learning outcomes indicates a significant increase in conceptual understanding of life cycle assessment in every category, and an average gain of over 60% in overall knowledge of life cycle assessment.Numerous professional organizations call for engineering graduates to appreciate the importance of sustainable development and its relationship to sustainable engineering. Methods for integrating sustainable engineering into existing courses and curricula are needed in order for students to develop these skills. In this study, students in an introductory science and engineering course were introduced to the concepts of sustainable development and sustainable engineering through assigned reading, class lectures, and group activities. Comparison of the results of a survey administered before and after these activities suggests that they led to increased familiarity with basic concepts of sustainable engineering such as life cycle assessment, as well as an increased in the value placed by students on sustainability and environmental issues.This paper describes a newly developed undergraduate educational module on the Thermodynamic Analysis of Petroleum and Bio-based Fuels in Internal Combustion Engines, created as part of an AIChE Grand Energy Challenge Award. The module is designed to introduce undergraduate Chemical Engineering students to the topic of liquid transportation fuels generated from renewable and petroleum based resources from a thermodynamics prospective. Furthermore, the module introduces students to the typical types of internal combustion engines and the thermodynamic principles behind them; provides an overview of the most common petroleum and biobased liquid transportation fuels; and introduces the concept of life cycle assessment as it applies to liquid transportation fuels.This paper discusses the component obsolescence problem and presents a mathematic model for life cycle analysis of long life cycle embedded system maintenance. This model can estimate minimized management costs for different system architecture. Matlab is used to generate a graph and Lingo is used for linear programming. A simple CAN controller system case study is shown to apply this model. A minimized management cost and an optimized management time schedule are given as the result. The responses from the experiments of the model meet our expectation. Although the model has lots of simplifications and limitations, it can give management strategy guidance to the designers who suffer from component obsolescence problems.Advanced biofuels are attracting intense interest from government, industry and researchers as potential substitutes for petroleum gasoline and diesel transportation fuels. Microalgae's advantages as a biofuel feedstock are due particularly to their rapid growth rates and high lipid content. Several life cycle analysis (LCA) studies have been conducted on the production of biodiesel, however less attention has been paid to algae-derived green diesel (renewable diesel II), a promising alternative fuel product. Renewable diesel's advocates suggest that it has superior energy density, shelf stability and can function as a drop-in replacement for petroleum diesel due to their similar chemical composition and fuel properties. Fewer studies have attempted to quantify the sustainability of algae-derived renewable diesel, though renewable diesel options are examined in the current GREET model. This study conducts a well-to-pump LCA focusing on this Renewable Diesel II (RD2) upgrade pathway and comparing it with the corresponding pathway from algal biomass to biodiesel. Particular attention is paid to primary energy use and fossil energy ratio (FER), greenhouse gas emissions, and an initial investigation of thermodynamic metrics. While hydrotreating is less than half as energy intensive a fuel upgrade process as transesterification, the overall life-cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are found to be nearly equal for renewable diesel and biodiesel. The complete biofuel production process is only found to be net energy positive for scenarios with reduced burdens from both CO2 sourcing and biomass drying.A framework was developed for integrating indoor environmental quality (IEQ) into life cycle assessment (LCA). The framework was explored using a university building as a case study. Results showed that including IEQ aspects in whole-building LCA revealed internal impacts at least as high or higher than external impacts. For human health respiratory effects, building-specific indoor impacts from the case study were 50% higher than general impacts in conventional LCA. Tradeoffs and synergies with traditional LCA impact categories appear to result mainly from differences in energy consumption relating to different IEQ parameters such as ventilation and filtration.This paper outlines the application of a special Environmental Management Information System (EMIS) that combines discrete event simulation (DES) and life cycle analysis (LCA) in addition to material flow analysis as an integrated part of the simulation software. The motivation behind the combination of these different techniques is to close the gap between identifying only parts of the life cycle, namely production processes, when simulating such processes, while at the same time focusing more sharply on LCA allowing for the resolution of results by DES and the detailed view of what is or might be happening in the production phase of the cycle. This view focuses not only on economic optimization but also on material flow analysis with a possible integration of social criteria opening the door to sustainable production in reality in the future. The paper will highlight important development phases as well as current applications of the software.From usual point of view, electrical machine is designed and chosen in order to minimum initial investment for given characteristics. Eco-design is a new approach for motors design, it introduces additional environmental dimension to traditional choices method. It uses a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools. This work highlights the LCA approach applied to AC machines. Then the global environmental costs of the machine are evaluated considering its total life cycle and according to normalised impact criteria. Finally, the implication of LCA approach to the choice of a standard electrical machine is realised in order to minimise the global environmental costs.In production processes used materials and final products must be assessed to discover whether they complete the expected technical objectives, contribute to the expected economic performance and whether environmental expectations and requirements have been met. It is essential to find suitable attitudes to improve the used materials and final products characteristics, especially by means of system-controlled processes. Economic performance have typically been dealt with by means of well-known and sophisticated financial and marketing analysis methods, while technology and engineering methods are used for technical aspects assessment. On the other hand environmental requirements have often been neglected if not completely missing. There exist several generic attitudes to support assessment methods involving the connected economic and environmental criteria. Many companies in metallurgy introduce environmental management systems and environmental accounting in consideration of potential savings and avoiding material wastage. But effective environmental management system should bring more information, especially about all relevant and important environmental aspects of company's production processes. The contribution deals with the assessment of environmental aspects of metallurgical materials production and their impact on environment. The main objective is to determine optimized ways of selection and evaluation of sustainability aspects for company materials and products to reinforce company competitiveness, environmental performance and sustainability. The opportunity to save costs and the effort to prevent rare materials wastage seems to be a strong motivation for the improvement of company's environmental performance; therefore the improvement of the corporate assessment processes is an inevitable step on the way to environmentally responsible company.Biofuels competitiveness in the world market is not only measured by economics variables, but also by environmental ones, because their use should contribute to reducing greenhouse gases and climate change. To demonstrate the environmental sustainability of a product is possible by means of the applications of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. In this paper LCA is applied to a biodiesel production process from African palm using lignocellulosic ethanol as a reactive in the transesterification reaction which is obtained from residues with high contents of cellulose resulting from the oil extraction stage. The LCA was evaluated along the biodiesel production chain starting with the land adaption stage, oil extraction, ethanol production from residual lignocellulosic biomass, transesterification of palm oil and ending with the distribution and use of the biofuel. The LCA was developed using SIMAPRO 7.1 software and database ECOINVENT with which the ambiental profile of the system was elaborated evaluating different impact categories such as climate change (CCI), acidification (AI), eutrophication (EI), photochemical smog formation (POI), respiratory effects (REI) and non-renewable energy (NRE), among others. With the quantification of the input and output flows in the different phases of the life cycle made possible to determine the most relevant emissions as well as the consumption energy associated in each one of the stages. According to the environmental profiles obtained, the stage of distribution and use of the B10 blend has the greatest influence in the output impact categories and the input impact category. As a result the application of LCA proposed in this work gives a powerful tool for sustainability analysis of biodiesel production.Various column structures and configurations, which include conventional and thermally coupled columns, were evaluated to obtain fuel grade ethanol. Energy conservation through heat integration and vapor recompression was taken into account to derive the optimal flowsheet. Three entrainers, ethylene glycol (EG), propylene glycol (PG) and glycerin (GL), were considered as feasible candidates for extractive distillation. To obtain optimal flowsheets, a procedure that combines rigorous simulation and a Mix Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem formulation was used. A superstructure-based approach was adopted to enumerate all candidate structures and formulate the problem as MILP. Three criteria, total annual cost, global warming and human toxicity, were minimized simultaneously by the procedure combining a min-max weighted sum and an adaptive algorithm. By applying the proposed method to an example problem, it is verified that Pareto-optimal solutions in concave regions with a better distribution along the Pareto front were obtained with fewer iterations. The results showed that the Pareto front was largely dominated by extractive distillation when PG was used as entrainer and heat integration. By increasing the weight of environmental factors, vapor recompression and thermally coupled columns derived more attractive alternatives.The University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has been certified Campus of International Excellence by the Spanish Ministry of Education. Euskampus project displays priority specialization areas, based on three axes: Sustainable Ecosystems and Environmental Technologies, Innovative Processes and Novel Materials, and Healthy Ageing and Quality of Life. Our research group, BIOMAT-BIOdegradable and Renewable MATerials, works in the development of green materials for packaging. The objective of our research is to improve materials properties, mainly the ones related to food packaging purposes, in order to prepare useful materials which could contribute to reduce the environmental problems related to waste management produced by the food industry. Taking the above into consideration, the research carried out by BIOMAT could be related with the three axes defined in Euskampus Excellence Project. Firstly, our research intends to introduce more friendly materials from the environmental point of view in relation with the use of raw materials obtained from renewable resources, mainly derived from biomass, like proteins and polysaccharides. Furthermore, these materials are compostable, so they can be used to produce compost from the materials prepared in our labs when they are discarded after use. Moreover, we assess Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of the products prepared in our labs in order to compare the environmental impact of our product s and the ones based on commodity polymers from petroleum-derived sources. Secondly, control and prediction of materials properties will be important tasks to carry out in the research projects in which the group takes part in order to advance in the field of food packaging. For that, we are involved in the optimization of samples composition and preparation methods. In the first case, we only use natural polymers, accepted as food ingredients, in order to prepare useful materials for food industry. Regarding preparation methods, there are two processes that can be carried out in order to obtain materials for food packaging: wet and dry processes. Our research group is working in the optimization of conditions for dry processes in order to be able to use techniques available in the plastic industry, which is of great importance to obtain economically viable products. Thirdly, consumers are more likely to purchase products that are ecofriendly packaged. Moreover, the rise in the average age of the population and in the number of single person households in developed markets is influencing new products. Consumers are looking for products that are easy to use, healthy, and have good price/quality ratio. Although these trends are global, they impact on the packaging market, which is an essential component of modern living, so our research aims to produce green materials which help to progress in more sustainable development.Building sustainable management is a complex problem which needs adequate and suitable assessment tools and methods, efficient enough, to address issues of incommensurability and complexity regarding environmental policies and legislation. Within the frame of this article, assessment methods have been described, are compared with each other and evaluated in the background of the standards provided by the International Organization for Standardization. The certification schemes examined include Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, Deutche Gesellschaft fur Nachhaltiges Bauen, Green Star, High Environmental Quality, Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency and GBTool assessment methods as well as the draft EU Ecolabel for office buildings. Emphasis have been placed on information referring to objectives, methodology, criteria involved in the evaluation procedure, environmental topics evaluated, life cycle analysis phases covered, costs and applications' results within the tools' structure for new building schemes. Finally, the impact of green certification schemes on the construction market, mainly as a tool of energy management, has also been examined in relation to the absence of mandatory international standardization in sustainable building management.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has recently gained widespread support as a way of estimating the environmental and societal impact over the lifetime of a ship. The output will normally be a set of indicators, but there is an increasing demand for including other indicators related to safety and economics. An integrated analysis demands that all indicators are weighted with respect to their relative importance in a multi-criteria decision process. However, comparison will not be efficient without a common denominator. In order to facilitate integration of ecodesign (design process to environmentally optimize the design) with risk based design (ship design optimized with regards to safety and accidental costs), this paper proposes a way of monetizing the various indicators related to the environmental footprint, the social external impact and safety. Hence, an integrated model for assessing the safety and environmental performance of a ship in monetary terms is presented in this paper.An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) auditing was carried out at a sanitary landfill in Kuala Langat, Selangor, Malaysia. It was conducted to assess the environmental and health impact of the landfill. The study also includes anenvironmental risk index and life cycle analysis (LCA) approach to evaluate the facility. The auditing arrives with a conclusion that this facility might pose a hazard to the environment and health if no adequate control measures are taken consistently. Environmental auditing and LCA simulation could become an essential tool in the monitoring of urban planning and development. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Milk yield per cow has continuously increased in many countries over the last few decades. In addition to potential economic advantages, this is often considered an important strategy to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per kg of milk produced. However, it should be considered that milk and beef production systems are closely interlinked, as fattening of surplus calves from dairy farming and culled dairy cows play an important role in beef production in many countries. The main objective of this study was to quantify the effect of increasing milk yield per cow on GHG emissions and on other side effects. Two scenarios were modelled: constant milk production at the farm level and decreasing beef production (as co-product; Scenario 1); and both milk and beef production kept constant by compensating the decline in beef production with beef from suckler cow production (Scenario 2). Model calculations considered two types of production unit (PU): dairy cow PU and suckler cow PU. A dairy cow PU comprises not only milk output from the dairy cow, but also beef output from culled cows and the fattening system for surplus calves. The modelled dairy cow PU differed in milk yield per cow per year (6000, 8000 and 10 000 kg) and breed. Scenario 1 resulted in lower GHG emissions with increasing milk yield per cow. However, when milk and beef outputs were kept constant (Scenario 2), GHG emissions remained approximately constant with increasing milk yield from 6000 to 8000 kg/cow per year, whereas further increases in milk yield (10 000 kg milk/cow per year) resulted in slightly higher (8%) total GHG emissions. Within Scenario 2, two different allocation methods to handle co-products (surplus calves and beef from culled cows) from dairy cow production were evaluated. Results showed that using the 'economic allocation method', GHG emissions per kg milk decreased with increasing milk yield per cow per year, from 1.06 kg CO2 equivalents (CO2eq) to 0.89 kg CO2eq for the 6000 and 10 000 kg yielding dairy cow, respectively. However, emissions per kg of beef increased from 10.75 kg CO2eq to 16.24 kg CO2eq due to the inclusion of suckler cows. This study shows that the environmental impact (GHG emissions) of increasing milk yield per cow in dairy farming differs, depending upon the considered system boundaries, handling and value of co-products and the assumed ratio of milk to beef demand to be satisfied.In this study, assessment of quantitative environmental impacts was performed for the cleaning process for PCB by using a LCA method, which is regarded as a useful tool for analyzing diverse environmental impacts at a local, regional, and global aspect. According to three geological aspects, environmental impacts were categorized into ten types. For these impact categories, characterization was carried out for evaluating environmental burdens of the cleaning process under consideration. Then, normalization was done in order to obtain a better understanding of the relative size among impact categories.The basic directions of the ecological sustainability of the sheet fed offset printing are in the area of the application of the renewable and recycled raw materials for the production of the printing materials, in the decrease of the energy consumption, the usage of the energy from the renewable sources and in the production without waste; or if the waste was formed that it could be used in the same production or in another one. The analysis of the life cycle assessment offset printed matter has shown all the importance of the recycled paper usage in relation to the usage of the paper made from the virgin fibres and with it the possible influence on the quality of the environment. The main object of these investigations is the contribution to the explanation of the mechanism of the deinking flotation of prints made with the ink based on mineral oils and prints with greater share of the renewable raw material. Some prints were exposed to moist heat ageing before recycling. The brightness of handsheet, number and area of specks and chromatic coefficient in relation to the ink formulation and the conditions of the moist heat ageing of prints are discussed.Aquaculture is currently the fastest growing animal food production sector and will soon supply more than half of the world's seafood for human consumption. Continued growth in aquaculture production is likely to come from intensification of fish, shellfish, and algae production. Intensification is often accompanied by a range of resource and environmental problems. We review several potential solutions to these problems, including novel culture systems, alternative feed strategies, and species choices. We examine the problems addressed; the stage of adoption; and the benefits, costs, and constraints of each solution. Policies that provide incentives for innovation and environmental improvement are also explored. We end the review by identifying easily adoptable solutions and promising technologies worth further investment.The aim of the present study is to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with an intensive land based rearing system of sea bass (Dicenrrarchus labrax). Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was applied in order to compare two growing facility systems: a traditional raceway (TR) and a cascade raceway (CR). The main goal was to settle reference levels to assess environmental performances and to identify hot spots and possible improvements. The analysis was carried out following the CML2 (2000) impact method using Simapro 7.2 software. The contribution analysis showed that the diet process contributed to the majority of the impacts. The sea bass rearing stage was the main contributor of eutrophication (more than 58% in TR and 52% in CR). The analysis revealed that the major part of the energy consumption was due to rearing phase through water pumping and oxygen injection and production, with 175,000 MJ/tonne and 280,000 MJ/tonne, for TR and CR, respectively. For all the studied impacts, the assessment revealed that CR presented more environmental burden than TR. The major differences between the two farming systems lay in Global Warming Potential GWP and energy use EU. Feed efficiency seems to have a dominant influence on the level of impacts involving diet process. Undoubtedly, the shown difference in the environmental load is the direct result of the relative ability of fish reared in TR to better convert their diet into biomass with a feed conversion ratio of 1.7, compared to 2.1 in CR. There are many options for improving the environmental performance of these aquaculture systems. The most important measure is to increase the feed efficiency through improvements in rearing modes, the diet composition and the optimisation of feeding practices. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become an important tool for evaluating the environmental sustainability of proposed algae-to-energy systems. The rapidly evolving body of literature on this topic demonstrates several important lessons, which can be leveraged to evaluate the likely economic sustainability of future algae-derived energy sources. A review of previously published algae LCAs is presented alongside preliminary economic information for three different kinds of algae cultivation systems (open ponds, photobioreactors and algal turf scrubbers), to demonstrate the relevance of algae LCA lessons learned and also contextualize the discussion of LCA-based life cycle costing (LCC) as it pertains to algae. Particularly important LCC themes arising from examination of current algae LCAs include: the critical role of co-products, the need for enhanced uncertainty characterization and the possible benefits of a meta-ana-lysis approach to standardizing LCA and LCC evaluation of algae-to-energy systems.Background: The aviation industry is facing increasing pressure to reduce its GHG emissions. A potential low-emission alternative to conventional kerosene (Jet A-1), produced by fossil fuel resources, is bioderived synthetic paraffinic kerosene. This article assesses various production scenarios of bioderived synthetic paraffinic kerosene from Jatropha curcas L., considering the overall GHG emissions of its life cycle. Results and discussion: When compared with GHG emissions from fossil Jet A-1, some of the investigated scenarios have the potential to reduce the GHG emissions by more than 35%. The main impacts come from the jatropha cultivation and the production of hydrogen for the conversion process. Conclusion: If these production steps were optimized, the GHG emissions could potentially fall below 50% of the fossil Jet A-1 level.Background: Waste management, energy resource development and sustainability are all subject matters of global interest that have led to the development of low-carbon alternative fuels, such as bioethanol from biological wastes. The purpose of this study was to determine the economic and environmental performance of using municipal solid waste (MSW) for bioethanol production within the UK. Results: Life cycle analysis and economic evaluation techniques were used to determine the GHG emissions and economic performance of a prospective MSW plant operating to recover recyclables and produce ethanol from the remaining biological component. It was determined that an MSW plant producing 26 million l of ethanol per year and recovering a total of 49,000 tonnes per year of glass metals and plastics would have an internal rate of return of 27% and net GHG emissions savings of 137%. Conclusion: The process was shown to be a favorable option for treating MSW in the UK, provided appropriate tipping fees and government subsidies are in place.Algae have contributed greatly to the creation of the Earth's environment and the development of human civilization. Currently, microalgae are considered to be among the most promising sources for biofuel. Most microalgae accumulate triacylglycerols; however, fatty acid methyl esters produced from triacylglycerols by transesterification have critical end-use issues. Hydrocarbons produced by Botryococcus and Aurantiochytrium are the most suitable algal oils for replacing existing transportation fuels and are highly compatible with existing petroleum infrastructure. Over the years, many technologies have been investigated for achieving sustainable biofuel production using oleaginous microalgae; however, existing techniques of algal fuel production are suitable mainly for small-scale procedures or for the recovery or removal of high-value products. This situation strongly influences life cycle assessment studies for algal fuel production, and published life cycle assessments show different and discrepant results - reliable data on inputs and outputs from industrial-scale experiments are needed for solving these problems. The estimated cost of algal fuel production is still high compared with that of fossil crude oils. The integration of water treatment and algal biomass production, in a coupled hybrid production system comprising of phototrophic and heterotrophic algae, has tremendous potential for improving the economy of future algal fuels.This paper aims to present the energy balance of biodiesel production from palm oil in the Amazon. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is made for the three phases of the production of biodiesel from palm: agriculture, oil production and biodiesel production. For each phase is considered the energy inputs and materials, and energy production of the product and co-products. The analyzed data on agricultural production and oil were collected in two Amazon companies DENTAUA and AGROPALMA. Regarding biodiesel production data concerning the amount of oil, ethanol, biodiesel, glycerol were obtained from the transesterification reaction considering 98% yield. The results show the energetic costs at each stage of biodiesel production. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Arch bridges made of natural stone masonry nowadays rank among the oldest, structures still in service in the road and railroad infrastructure. Some of them with ages of more than 100 years, represent a historically very valuable building fabric. In Austria's railroad network alone there are around 1,000 arch bridges still in operation. In whole Europe the estimated number of masonry railroad bridges amounts to 70,000. Nowadays increasingly more attention is paid to the maintenance and rehabilitation of existing arch bridges than on their reconstruction, as a result of financial reasons as well as monument conservation aspects. Since those bridges usually have been projected for very different loads, assessments concerning the current bearing capacity and the future utilization are required. A recalculation with conventional calculation methods is often insufficient as results can considerably deviate from the actual load capacity due to various influencing factors. The challenge therefore is to find and verify more accurate methods to determine the actual condition of such arch bridges. A point of interest is the combination of finite element modeling strategies of masonry with inspection and monitoring strategies of existing structures. Inspections enable the detection of "damage", whereby damage is defined as changes in material as well as geometric properties of a structure. The applications of monitoring systems allow a continuous observation of a system over time. In case of long term observations, the output of this process is a periodically updated information regarding the ability of the structure to perform its tasks. Within the proposed contribution a generally valid methodology for the performance and lifetime assessment of masonry arch bridges based on nonlinear finite element analysis and monitoring data will be presented. Further two different approaches for the assessment of extreme values and probability of failure will be discussed. The two approaches will be applied to a railroad arch bridge located in Austria.A general approach to nonlinear analysis of concrete bridges under corrosion is presented. This approach is based on the formulation of a three-dimensional reinforced concrete beam finite element which accounts for both mechanical and geometrical nonlinearity. The formulation considers uniform and localized (pitting) corrosion and damage modeling includes the reduction of cross-sectional area of corroded bars, the reduction of ductility of reinforcing steel, the deterioration of concrete strength, and the spalling of concrete cover. The beam finite element is validated with reference to the results of experimental tests carried out on beams with corroded reinforcement. The three-dimensional structural analysis of a reinforced concrete arch bridge under different damage scenarios shows the effectiveness and application potentialities of the proposed formulation for life-cycle assessment and design of concrete bridges exposed to corrosion.Throughout their lifetime civil engineering structures are subjected to progressive deterioration, as a result of processes such as aging, as well as to natural hazards (e. g., earthquakes). Progressive degradation mechanisms are slow processes that accumulate damage in time while extreme events such as earthquakes lead to significant damage accumulation at specific points along the service life. In this paper a detailed framework is presented to assess the damage accumulation in structures by calculating the probability of exceedance of different energy dissipation levels under repeated seismic shaking. The proposed framework is applied to a case study single column integral box girder bridge in California, under both scenarios of pristine and aging bridge conditions. Results reveal that damage accretion due to multiple shocks leads to increased probabilities for exceeding different energy levels. Furthermore, the ill effects of aging and deterioration also lead to higher energy dissipation even for single shock events.Corrosion and fatigue are important issues which affect the structural performance of steel bridges. This is particularly important for bridges and viaduct, for their key role in infrastructural nets. As the management of bridges net requires the prediction of the remaining life for all partially deteriorated structures, the development of assessment models for time-varying changes in structural performance due to the coupled problem of corrosion and fatigue is relevant and need to be investigated. In this paper, the accumulated load cycles causing cracking or even failure is analyzed together with different scenarios of corrosion propagation. The analysis is performed for the fatigue limit state function of shear in a detailed riveted connection. Prediction of the remaining fatigue life is illustrated on a typical example of existing bridge girders. Variations in the remaining life are evaluated as a function of time, covering the whole life-time of the bridge.The lifetime structural robustness of concrete bridge piers under environmental damage is investigated in deterministic and probabilistic terms. Criteria and methods for the definition of lifetime performance indicators and the quantitative evaluation of structural robustness are presented. The effects of damage on the structural performance are evaluated by using a methodology for life-cycle assessment of concrete structures in aggressive environments. The proposed approach is applied to a reinforced concrete bridge pier with box cross-section. The results highlight the important role of the environmental exposure and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed measures in comparing the robustness associated to different exposure scenarios.Within the approach to a holistic assessment of steel and composite bridges as described by Maier et al 2011 (these proceedings), the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to assess and to develop reference values for a set of representative bridges, which reflect market relevant options in current steel construction. The ecological criteria assessed within the LCA analyses have been chosen in accordance with current standardization and LCA practice: The indicators addressing the ecological quality are Global Warming Potential, Ozone Depletion Potential, Acidification Potential, Eutrophication Potential and Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential. The system boundaries are set in line with E DIN EN15978, a European standard recently developed for the sustainability assessment of constructions. Sample data provided in form of LCA results of the reference bridges will serve as a starting point for the development of benchmark and rating values, and will play an important part in the holistic sustainability assessment system for bridges presented by Maier et al 2011 (these proceedings).Highway bridges are important assets in every infrastructure network. The cost of construction and operation of highway bridges are key issues for bridge engineers. However, the design of bridges requires more than compiling with safety requirements according to safety standards and economic constraints. The construction, operation and ultimately the way the bridge is demolished have a significant impact on the environment, in the surrounding population and in the users of the bridge. The multidimensional perspective of sustainability requires the combination of current design criteria with other important aspects such as society and environment, usually considering a life cycle approach. The aim of this paper is to present the framework for integrated life cycle analysis of bridges, which is being developed within the scope of the European Research Project SBRI. Furthermore, in this paper the developed approach is applied to a case study in order to enhance the importance of using life cycle approaches for the analysis of bridges.In the past, bridge design usually concentrated on structural aspects. The cultural significance of a bridge as well as the interaction with the surrounding environment were frequently neglected. Within the scope of a growing demand for a holistic assessment of building activities, many evaluation criteria going beyond the pure manufacturing cost come to the fore. They are, however, not completely developed for infrastructure buildings. While methods like life-cycle costing and life-cycle assessment are already applied for infrastructures, especially in the field of social assessment a lot of inaccuracies, assessment problems and methodological difficulties exist. This article summarizes different existing assessment approaches and tries to classify them. Furthermore, a method to quantify the impacts on users and the public by calculating the macroeconomic damage is proposed. Current developments of international standardization are incorporated in the considerations.The rebar embedded in the concrete will be corroded by the aggressive agent from environment. Recently, several convictive experiments for natural corrosion and accelerated corrosion indicated this type of damage seriously reduced structural performance. In this paper, based on Finite Element Method (FEM), firstly the general methods for analyzing structural performance and diffusion of aggressive agent were developed and verified. Secondly, inconsistent diffusion, indicating the diffusion process in over one type of medium, was studied. As the classification of diffusion cracks, major crack and micro crack, were defined, Interactive Durability Analysis (IDA) was carried out based on the combination of structural analysis program and 3D diffusion program. In the end, a simply supported beam was studied for researching on the time evolution of diffusion and effective section of rebar.ETSI project is a Nordic co-operation project, which aim was to create appropriate tools of information related to a bridge and its life cycle for designers, constructors and bridge owners. The main objective of ETSI was to develop programs to estimate bridge life cycle costs (LCC), life cycle assessment (LCA) as well as bridge aesthetics and cultural values. ETSI project divided into three stages. In the stage I (2006-2007) was made a study about different aspects of life cycle analysis. In the stage II (2007-2009) was developed the tools for life cycle analysis (WebLCC and BridgeLCA) as well as simple method for evaluating aesthetic and cultural values. The main focus of the ETSI stage III (2010-2012) was to continue developing the programs further, updated the used emission values in LCA with current Nordic values and gather a Nordic database of service life assessment of structural parts of bridges. The new Excel-based programs for LCA and LCC calculations was developed as well as program to estimate aesthetics and cultural values of bridge and bridge environments.A dynamic analysis of future energy and carbon flows (2000-2050) is performed on the aggregated residential building stock in Norway. The basis for the analysis is a dynamic material flow analysis of floor areas and the main building materials. By adding energy intensity assumptions for space heating, water heating, domestic electrical appliances and embodied energy in construction materials, the future corresponding delivered energy demand is calculated. This forms the basis for life cycle estimation of the future direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The predicted demand for delivered energy in 2025 will increase by 24.0% and 12.5% above those for 2000 and 2010, respectively, and then remain stable towards 2050. Energy savings per unit of floor area are counterbalanced by growth in the building stock. The very high influence of energy technology assumptions within the electricity generation market is demonstrated, along with the large differences between using attributional and consequential life cycle assessment principles in the calculation of future emissions. Future electricity demand met by marginal power generation technologies in the European market will yield substantially higher GHG emissions. The simulations demonstrate the policy, strategy, and practical challenges in achieving significant long-term energy and GHG emission reductions from the residential building stock in a country with a rapidly growing population.This paper examines how polycarboxylate ether (PCE) polymers based products influence the environmental footprint of concrete at different stages of the production process. The effects of PCE polymers on concrete mix design and cement grinding are analysed. In order to compare different options regarding their environmental footprint, life cycle assessment techniques are used to assess the impacts associated with the use of PCE polymers.This tutorial review presents an overview of the main metrics that have been used to test and compare the 'greenness' of processes and products, primarily in the pharmaceutical industry. The green metrics cover areas of resources, materials, processing, cleaning, life cycle assessment, renewability, amongst others. Application examples of these metrics are also presented to illustrate key points and concepts.This paper aims to provide a systematic overview of the state of the art in energy and resource efficiency increasing methods and techniques in the domain of discrete part manufacturing, with attention for the effectiveness of the available options. For this purpose a structured approach, distinguishing different system scale levels, is applied: starting from a unit process focus, respectively the multi-machine, factory, multi-facility and supply chain levels are covered. Determined by the research contributions reported in literature, the de facto focus of the paper is mainly on energy related aspects of manufacturing. Significant opportunities for systematic efficiency improving measures are identified and summarized in this area. (C) 2012 CIRP.This article evaluates the production of biodiesel or FAEE (fatty acid ethyl esters) from vegetable oil by enzymatic catalysis with ethanol as reagent and in the presence of hexane as co-solvent. A three-factor design of experiments was performed to evaluate the influence of the following three variables on the reaction performance (or the ethyl esters content): reaction time (24, 36, and 48 h), co-solvent percentage (10, 20 and 30 %, v/v), and oil/alcohol molar ratio (1:4, 1:6, 1:8), at fixed reaction temperature (35 degrees C) and fixed mass of Lipozyme TL IM (enzyme/oil mass ratio of 1.6 wt%). Results show that the best operating conditions to perform the reaction are: oil/alcohol molar ratio of 1:4, 10 % (v/v) of hexane co-solvent, and 48 h of reaction time. Although most of the biodiesel quality parameters evaluated are out of the NP EN14214:2009 standard limits, for the above mentioned conditions it is possible to obtain a lower viscosity biodiesel, with lower density, lower CFPP (cold filter plugging point), and with a lower alkaline metals (Na+ and K+) content.This article describes an Excel based tool specifically designed to perform the life cycle assessment (LCA) and the sustainability evaluation of pharmaceutical products and /or processes. In the current state of development the tool deals with the case study of the production of a lyophilized product for intravenous injection, with an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) produced by fermentation using genetically modified organisms. A gate-to-gate (GTG) analysis is done, considering the API production, the final product formulation, its storage and distribution, and the auxiliary operations involved. These steps are included in the aforementioned tool, and a set of sustainability indicators is proposed to make a quantitative sustainability assessment of this pharmaceutical product and process, based on the relevant impacts identified on its life cycle. Despite the limitations, the LCA and the sustainability assessment tool presented here can be easily modified to other types of pharmaceutical processes, given that good descriptions of them are available.This work evaluates the use of spent coffee grounds (SCG) for biodiesel production. The SCG were characterized for their moisture content (12.1 wt%), total carbon (TC) and total nitrogen (TN) (52.2 and 2.1 wt% respectively), cellulose and total lignin contents (33.6 wt% and 13.8 wt% respectively), carbon/nitrogen mass ratio (C/N = 24.8) and higher heating value (HHV, of 19.3 MJ/kg). For extracting the oil from the SCG, several solvents were tested at different contact times: hexane, ethanol, isopropanol, heptane and a mixture of hexane/isopropanol in the proportions of 50:50; 60:40; 70:30 and 80:20 (vol/vol). Results revealed an oil content ranging from 6.3 to 28.3 wt%, depending on the extraction conditions. For example, using hexane/isopropanol (50:50, vol/vol) a 21.5 wt% of oil recovery was obtained after 3 h of contact time, while using isopropanol a 21.0 wt% of oil recovery was obtained in 6.8 h, but at higher operating cost, considering the energy and solvent consumption. Regarding the oil characterization the following parameters can be highlighted: HHV of 36.4 MJ/kg, iodine value of 54.4 (g I-2)4100 g oil), water content of 2004 ppm and acid value of 118.4 (mg KOH)/(g oil). Finally, the possibility of using the recovered coffee oil for biodiesel production was evaluated. In this regard it was performed the oil esterification in three consecutive steps (using 1% of H2SO4 and 40 % of methanol for 2 h of reaction time at 60 degrees C and 500 rpm) followed by one transesterification step (1 % of NaOH and 40 % of methanol during a 2 h reaction time at 60 degrees C and 500 rpm). The resulting biodiesel was characterized for its acid value, density, viscosity at 40 degrees C, iodine value and esters content (65.7 to 72.9 %), of which only the iodine value of 26 and 58.4 (g I-2)4100 g biodiesel) was within the NP EN14214:2009 standard limits. The reaction yield varied between 58.8 and 62.2 wt%. Results suggest the need for a further process optimization in order to obtain a biodiesel complying with this standard quality requirements.Based on life cycle assessment, the paper assessed the CO2 avoided cost and cost of electricity (COE) of the power generation technologies, including coal-fired power plant with CO2 capture and storage (CCS), wind power, solar PV, and biomass-fired power plant. The results show that COE, CO2 avoided cost of 800MW USCPC+CCS is competitive comparing with renewable energy power. COE of USCPC+CCS is almost same with that of wind power, and much lower than that of biomass and solar PV. CO2 avoided cost of USCPC with CCS is a little higher than that of wind power, and much lower than that of biomass and solar PV.Within agricultural life cycle assessments (LCA) several different approaches are used to attribute environmental load between the by-products of a production system. Such split-up of environmental burden is called allocation. Currently several different allocation approaches are used. This leads to a broad range of uncertainty in LCA results [3-6]. ISO 14040 and 14044 give guidance on how to deal with allocation situations, but they offer a hierarchy of choices rather than a particular method [7-9]. The users of different by-products usually do not know each other and their individual LCAs are not aligned to each other. Different allocation approaches might be used. This might lead to situation where errors might occur in attributing of the environmental burden. Specific requirements for an agricultural allocation method were defined and used to test different allocation approaches. The Cereal Unit was identified as a promising denominator for an agricultural allocation procedure. Its calculation is mainly based on nutritive properties for animal feeding. It can be applied to all agricultural products. A new allocation approach, based on the Cereal Unit, is suggested for agricultural LCAs. This approach could help to solve agricultural allocation problems and might lead to more robust LCA results for services and products originated from agricultural raw materials.Municipal solid waste (MSW) is the abridgment of the waste generated from domestic, commercial, and construction activities by natural persons that is collected and treated by municipalities. Exponential growth of population and urbanization, and the development of social economy, coupled with the improvement of living standard, have resulted in an increase in the amount of MSW generation throughout the world. On average the developed countries typically generate 521.95-759.2 kg per person per year (kpc) and 109.5-525.6 kpc typically by developing countries. Recent estimates suggest that the MSW generation globally exceeds 2 billion tons per year, which is a potential threat to environmental dilapidation. Therefore, MSW management (MSWM) seems to be one of the key topics for environmental protection in present days and also in the future. The authors have illustrated MSW generation and composition analysis and have provided a comprehensive review of MSWM in different countries throughout the world based on the available literatures. Some of the important aspects of waste management, such as composting, landfilling, and incineration, are illustrated.Digital soil assessment is crucial for DSM to be useful. Assessment can be driven by stakeholders, or by soil scientists themselves. Stakeholder-driven assessments are largely motivated by global issues such as food, water and energy security; climate change mitigation and provision of environmental-services. Each of these motivations requires an appropriate set of soil properties, quality assessment methods and tools. Soil-science-led assessment based on multiple soil properties has a long history, beginning with land evaluation and recently expanding to include assessment of Soil Quality and Soil Protection. Soil scientists can also provide valuable contributions to assessments driven by wider groups of stakeholders and include Environmental Life Cycle Analysis and Soil as Natural Capital. The relative utility and value of stakeholder assessments versus soil-science-led assessment requires evaluation. The potential to greatly expand the use of DSM products in the construction of assessments with a wide range of motivations and goals has considerable implications for the further development of digital soil mapping. In general, more emphasis is needed on both the current and potential future contributions of DSM to various assessments, which should be done with expedition.The Euro 4 standard sets a pollutant emissions limit respect to NOx and particulate matter emissions that have forced to automobile manufacturers and, specifically, to engine manufacturers, at make studies about the engine performance and exhaust aftertreatment technology that have resulted in systems radically different. Specifically systems presented have been two, on one side, engines that reduce the temperature inside combustion chamber, by exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) for NOx reduction and incorporate a particulate filter in the exhaust and, on the other side, engines operating at high temperatures to reduce particulate matter, and incorporate a selective catalytic system (SCR) for NOx reduction using urea. This paper presents a comparative study about using both systems in an urban bus, to determinate the best behavior against the energy requirement and greenhouse gas emissions (GEI) by means a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). Furthermore; the study includes a comparative analysis of different fuels: diesel, biodiesel (B100) and a: blended biodiesel at 20% (B20) (Well to Tank analysis) and the environmental impact due to the use of these fuels in the bus (Tank to Wheel analysis). For this purpose, data on fuel consumption and pallutant emissions were acquired by tests in real driving cycle, using a measurement equipment on board the bus. Also has been evaluated the environmental impact of the manufacturing and recycling process of the urban bus tested, as well as, of the exhaust after treatment systems (where the production and recycling of precious metals that are used as a catalysts, has been considered). The data on energy requirement and GEI emissions of different process that are involved in the LCA stages of an urban bus, have been obtained from industry, scientific publication and data bases as GaBi 4 and GEMIS. Among the most relevant results of this comparative analysis has found that the LCA of the SCR+Urea technology has an energy consumption and GEI emissions higher than the LCA of the EGR+DPF technology, mainly due to AdBlue production and supply (formed from deionized water and urea), that this technology requires for its continuing treatment of the exhaust gases. However, the bus that includes this technology generates, in use, lower environmental impact.The aim of work was life cycle assessment (LCA) of simple inorganic PAPR (partially acidulated phosphate rock) type fertilizer. PAPR type fertilizers are specified as products of partial dissolution of grinded phosphate rock with usage of sulfuric or phosphoric acid, containing as a main components monocalcium phosphate, tricalcium phosphate and calcium sulfate. LCA was made by using the model of PAPR type fertilizer production process produced under the laboratory conditions. Model was based on the research provided for assessment of product physical properties, phosphorus content expressed as a P2O5 soluble in mineral acids and water, mass balance and emissions from the process. Results, supplemented with reference data were used as a input data for GaBi 4 software which constitutes the computer support to perform LCA.Ecolabled products have shown a competitive advantage to other products. Regulatory changes and market pressure creates an increased need for environmental impact assessments. The dominating method for environmental impact assessments - life cycle assessment (LCA) lacks support to properly analyze the dynamic aspects of business operations and production processes. This Paper proposes to use discrete event simulation to support more extensive and detailed environmental assessments on selected parts of the production process, keeping simplicity for parts of less importance and interest.Bioenergy is one of the most dynamic and rapidly changing sectors of the global energy economy. The use of food crops for conversion to biofuel has been criticized for several reasons, among which its competition with the global food chain. Instead, lignocellulosic substrates are claimed to provide a bioenergy alternative without competing with food demand. This is particularly true when dealing with residues or waste. In this paper, we explored the environmental performance and sustainability of a bioenergy production system that integrates wastewater treatment, willow farming, and a Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP) located in Enkoping (Sweden). Several methodologies for environmental assessment are integrated in this study within a life cycle perspective to investigate material and energy requirements as well as emissions and related impacts of the whole bioenergy production chain. Results show that full integration of different subsystems of a productive network is a desirable option for bioenergy production, within a zero emission oriented production pattern. The investigated wood biomass powered CHP plant was able to co-generate heat and electricity with high production efficiency and much better environmental performance and sustainability than fossil fuel based power plants. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A biorefinery is an integrated pattern of farming and conversion activities capable to provide bioenergy and biomaterials as alternative to fossil-based refineries, increasing jobs and income in rural areas. Considering the need to avoid competition with food production in arable land, non-food cropping on marginal land is being explored worldwide focusing on lignocellulosic crops ("second-generation" substrates). The viability of bioenergy and biochemicals from non-food crops in marginal land of Southern Italy was explored, using Brassica carinata as a test crop. An LCA-consistent, integrated evaluation method, named SUMMA (Sustainability multi-scale multi-method Approach) was applied for joint assessment of material, embodied energy, environmental support (emergy) and economic flows and performance. Two hypotheses were tested: (a) cropping for bioenergy (biodiesel + heat): (b) bioenergy and biomaterials within a biorefinery framework. In addition to biodiesel production from seeds, the first hypothesis assumes the conversion of residues (cake meal and straw) into heat for local industrial use, while the second one is based on a lignocellulose-to-chemicals biorefinery. Cropping for bioenergy provides a small net energy yield with no economic return. Instead, converting lignocellulosic residues to high added value biochemicals definitely improves the process performance from both energetic and economic points of view. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The promising energetic and environmental benefits of building cooling heating and power (BCHP) system are greatly dependent upon its design and operation strategy. In this paper, the energy and emission flows and different operation strategies of a BCHP system driven by gas engine are analyzed. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is employed to assess and compare the whole life energy saving potentials and pollutant emission reductions of BCHP system with the traditional energy system. Furthermore, energy consumption and three pollutant-related impacts, global warming, acid precipitation and respiratory effects, are selected as objective functions to optimize the gas engine capacity of BCHP system in different operation strategies. A numerical case of BCHP system for a commercial office building in Beijing, China is applied to obtain the optimum BCHP alternative in terms of the comprehensive energy and environment performance. The uncertainty of different evaluation criteria weights is also analyzed to show their influences on the optimal design and operation strategy. The results show that a reasonably sized BCHP system with an electric load-following strategy has the best performance under a wide interval of criteria weights, when the energetic and environmental benefits of producing excess electricity for nearby users are not considered. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Present solid waste management system in Dhaka city is reviewed, and the constraints and shortfalls are discussed. Solid wastes are categorized as recyclable and nonrecyclable. A limited portion of the organic solid wastes is composted and the major share is open dumped. Recently, a scientifically engineered landfill has been constructed by Dhaka City Corporation. Recent efforts on modeling of solid waste management systems are critically reviewed and a system dynamics model of solid waste management is presented to simulate population, solid waste generation and composite index, electricity generation from the incineration of solid waste, engineer landfill and fertilizers from composting. Environmental performance for open dumping, scientific landfills, incineration and composting of solid wastes using life cycle assessment model is also evaluated. Simulated results show that solid waste generation, collection capacity and electricity generation potential from the incineration of the solid waste increase with time. Population, uncleared waste, untreated waste and composite index are projected to increase with time for Dhaka city. Simulated results also show that increasing the budget for collection capacity alone does not improve environmental quality. This model can be used as a computer laboratory for solid waste management policy analysis.Scalability is a requirement before any new energy source can be expected to house a possible solution to the challenge that mankind's increasing energy demand presents. No renewable energy source is as abundant as the Sun and yet efficient and low-cost conversion of solar energy still has not been developed. We approach the challenge by firstly taking a technology that efficiently addresses the need for daily production of 1 GW(p) on a global level, which does not employ elements with critically low abundance and has a low thermal budget. We then applied life cycle assessment methodologies to direct research and developed such technology in the form of a polymer solar cell that presents a significant improvement in energy payback time (EPBT) and found that very short energy payback times on the order of one day are possible, thus potentially presenting a solution to the current energy gap of > 14 TW by year 2050.Energy analysis, environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) and economic appraisals have been utilised to study the performance of a domestic building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system on a 'whole systems' basis. Energy analysis determined that the system paid back its embodied energy in just 4.5 years. LCA revealed that the embodied impacts were offset by the electricity generated to provide a net environmental benefit in most categories. Only carcinogens, ecotoxicity and minerals had a small net lifetime burden. A financial analysis was undertaken from the householder's perspective, alongside cost-benefit analysis from a societal perspective. The results of both indicated that the systems are unlikely to pay back their investment over the 25 year lifetime. However, the UK is in an important period (2010/11) of policy transition with a move away from the 'technology subsidies' of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP) and towards a 'market development policy' of feed-in tariffs. Representing the next stage on an innovation S-curve this is expected to facilitate rapid PV uptake, as experienced in countries such as Germany, Denmark, and Spain. The results of the present study clearly demonstrate the importance of the new government support scheme to the future uptake of BIPV. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Most life-cycle studies have found that a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can be achievable by replacing petroleum-based plastics with bioplastics made from renewable feedstock, but these analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the corn diverted to bioplastics. By excluding emissions from land use change, most previous accountings were one-sided because they counted the carbon benefits of using land for bioplastics but not the carbon costs, the carbon storage, and sequestration sacrificed by diverting land from its existing uses. The accounting for the land use change emissions can limit the attractiveness of bioplastics for the displacement of petroleum-based plastics, at least from an environmental point of view. The use of agricultural by-products as bioplastic feedstock is a valid solution to the problem. Alternatively, recycling of bioplastic wastes could contribute to reducing the land use change emissions. From this point of view, it is clear that the incineration or the landfilling of the bioplastic products are not a valid alternative for a real solution of the problem.New concerns about biodiversity, ecosystem services and human health triggered several new regulations increasing the need for sound ecotoxicological risk assessment. The PEER network aims to share its view on the research issues that this challenges. PEER scientists call for an improved biologically relevant exposure assessment. They promote comprehensive effect assessment at several biological levels. Biological traits should be used for Environmental risk assessment (ERA) as promising tools to better understand relationships between structure and functioning of ecosystems. The use of modern high throughput methods could also enhance the amount of data for a better risk assessment. Improved models coping with multiple stressors or biological levels are necessary to answer for a more scientifically based risk assessment. Those methods must be embedded within life cycle analysis or economical models for efficient regulations. Joint research programmes involving humanities with ecological sciences should be developed for a sound risk management. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Decisions made in the early design stages critically determine a building's life-cycle costs and environmental impacts. Life-cycle costing (LCC) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) methods exist to analyze the economic and environmental impacts of building design alternatives; however, designers rarely use these methods because of the time and effort required for implementation. This paper presents an automated optimization method that employs a multi-objective genetic algorithm to analyze trade-offs between life-cycle cost and carbon footprint for a predefined range of building design alternatives. The design of the envelope and mechanical system for a seven-story commercial building in Atlanta, Georgia is used as a case study to compare the proposed method with conventional industry practice. Results show that the method identified design solutions that offered significant reductions in the building's life-cycle cost and carbon footprint while requiring fewer man hours than conventional approaches.Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) has recently emerged to address environmental and social concerns in product and service operations. Existing research has investigated sustainability issues at isolated stages of the supply chains. This paper aims to address Triple Bottom Line sustainability in a coherent manner. The paper proposes an integrated sustainability analysis (ISA) approach which seamlessly integrates Life Cycle Assessment into Multi-Criteria Decision Making process. Application of the integrated approach to an industrial case demonstrates that the proposed approach can provide concerted scientific backup to efficiently and effectively support holistic decision making in SSCM. The ISA approach has the potential to enable true integration of environmental management and social responsibility with supply chain management.This chapter describes the current situation of the chemical manufacturing industry and looks to the future demands on the sector such as: for sustainability, the advent of new bio-based feedstocks for improved energy management and the implications of these demands on the sector. These implications include definitions of sustainability criteria for the chemical manufacturing industry and the need for transparent reporting following the Triple Bottom Line approach. The important role of chemical (or more generally, process) engineers in delivering bio-based sustainable solutions is emphasised, but this also suggests that a new way of thinking about the discipline is required. Indeed, there are arguments that the demand for a sustainable chemical manufacturing sector could bring about the next paradigm shift in the discipline with concomitant education implications.Maintaining biodiversity of species-rich grasslands is strongly dependent on adapted management particularly in terms of harvest date. Traditional use of such grasslands as forage is declining at a European scale, as it is often not cost-effective due to low nutritional value. Thus, alternative options to use the annually accumulating biomass from semi-natural grasslands are needed. Against the background of the increasing importance of renewable energies, energy recovery from high-diversity grassland is considered as an option to combine landscape conservation and energy production in a profitable way. The present paper shows a comparative assessment of different options of grassland-use for energy recovery. Highest efficiency of energy conversion is obtained by the hay combustion system. The integrated generation of solid fuel and biogas from biomass leads to somewhat smaller net energy yields, whereas it offers an improved energy carrier to be used in combustion systems and is more independent of weather conditions due to the silage-based procedure. Whole-crop digestion by the dry fermentation system only obtains small net energy yields because of the low digestibility of the highly lignified biomass and a lack of potential waste-heat consumers in rural areas.Both positive and negative externalities are associated with grassland management, and huge differences in productivity and environmental impact prevail between species-rich extensive grasslands and input-intensive, frequently defoliated grass monocultures. Potentials for improving the eco-efficiency of grassland-based production systems through decisions regarding management intensity, nutrient management, grazing and forage conservation, and the use of temporary versus permanent grasslands are discussed at the plot and the farm scales. To do so, we carried out life cycle assessment studies and reviewed studies related to plant and animal diversity. Extensification is positive for farmland biodiversity but does not always imply an improvement of the product-related environmental performances with regard to air, soil and water or resource use. Besides management intensity, nutrient management emerges as the main lever to improve the environmental performances of grassland-based production. In contrast, forage conservation and the type of conservation procedure appear to be of minor importance, except for the effect on biodiversity. Compared to barn feeding, grazing showed strengths as well as weaknesses that varied by the scale at which the systems were compared. The effect of cultivating grass-clover temporary grasslands was mainly driven by the related modification in fertilization requirement.The product carbon footprint (PCF) of milk was calculated for two contrasting, well-managed dairy farms of Northern Germany: a low-input, pasture-based system (PS) and a high-input, confinement-based system (CS). The PCF milk of each farm was quantified by combining a life-cycle-assessment method with field-level measurements. Results presented here are preliminary calculations considering only the currently available dataset of 2010 (2011 is still in progress). Milk produced in the PS had lower PCF than milk from the CS. Excluding the effect of land use on soil C sequestration resulted in PCFs of 0.88 vs. 0.97 kg CO2eq kg(-1) ECM for the PS and CS, respectively. However, inclusion of C-balances linked to forage production, pasturing, and land-use change significantly improved and worsened the PCF of PS and CS, respectively, i.e. 0.49 vs. 1.15 kg CO2eq kg(-1) ECM.Hydroxyl soybean oils, also called soy polyols, are biobased chemicals designed to replace petroleum-based polyols mainly for polyurethane (PU) applications. Soy polyols are obtained by acid-catalyzed ring opening of expoxidized soybean oils or other epoxidized plant oils by nucleophilic S(N)2 attack of methanol. Recyclable heterogeneous catalysts are preferred for the ring-opening reactions over non-recyclable homogeneous catalysts because they minimize environmental impact. The drawbacks of current solid catalysts such as SAC 13 and Amberlite 15 are low production yield and high energy consumption. Here, we demonstrate a greener synthetic pathway of soy polyols with low energy consumption and excellent atom economy and environment (E) factor by using novel sulfamic acid-functionalized iron (iron/iron oxide core shell) nanoparticles (NPs) as a heterogeneous catalyst. The excellent selectivity of the reaction with the recyclable NPs was confirmed by (1)H NMR, (1)H-(1)H COSY NMR, and ESI-MS comparable to non-recyclable H(2)SO(4). The synthetic route with the NPs resulted in higher product yield (almost 100%) as H2SO4 at room temperature for 30 min over the SAC 13 (83% yield at 60 degrees C for 60 min) and Amberlite 15 (87% yield at 60 degrees C for 100 min). Life cycle assessment (LCA) revealed that the NP synthetic technology for soy polyol production is superior or equal to the competing routes (H2SO4, SAC 13, and Amberlite 15 methods) with respect to 9 environmental impacts (acidification potential, ozone depletion potential, smog formation potential, global warming potential, human toxicity by ingestion, human toxicity by inhalation, persistence, bioaccumulation, and abiotic resource depletion potential).Due to high energy efficiency and zero emissions, some believe fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) could revolutionize the automobile industry by replacing internal combustion engine technology, and could be boosted and boomed in China first. However, hydrogen infrastructure is one of the major barriers. Because different H2 pathways have very different energy and emissions effects, the well-to-wheels analyses are necessary for adequately evaluating fuel/vehicle systems. The pathways used to supply H2 for FCVs must be carefully examined by their WTW energy use, GHGs emissions, total criteria pollutions emissions, and urban criteria pollutions emissions. Ten hydrogen pathways in Shanghai have been simulated. The results include well-to-wheels energy use, GHGs emissions, total criteria pollutions and urban criteria pollutions. A fuel-cycle model developed at Argonne National Laboratory - called the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model - was used to evaluate well-to-wheels energy and emissions impacts of hydrogen pathways in this study. Because GREET model has no coal and naphtha-based hydrogen pathways, four hydrogen pathways (No. 5-8) computer program were added to GREET in the research. To analyze uncertain impacts, commercial software, Crystal BallTM, is used to conduct Monte Carlo simulations. Instead of the point estimates, the results of this study were probability distributions. Through the research, the following conclusions can be achieved: (1) All the pathways have significant reduction in WTW petroleum use, except two H2 pathways from naphtha, which achieve about 20% reduction in WTW petroleum. (2) All the pathways have significant reduction in WTW urban criteria pollutions emissions, except two H2 pathways from coal, which offer significant increase in WTW urban SOx emissions. (3) The NG-based H2 pathways have best WTW energy efficiencies, and the electrolysis H2 pathways have worst WTW energy efficiencies. The WTW energy efficiencies of H2 pathways from naphtha and coal are between NG-based pathways and electrolysis pathways. The pathways from naphtha have higher energy efficiencies than the pathways from coal. Only four pathways (G NG C, G NG R, G N C, and L NG C) offer WTW energy benefits, and the other six pathways consume more WTW energy than baseline-conventional gasoline vehicles. (4) Changes in WTW GHGs emissions have nearly identical results with changes in WTW energy use. (5) For WTW total criteria pollutions emissions, all pathways can achieve significant reduction in WTW total VOCs and CO. the other criteria pollutions emissions-NOx, PM10, and SOx, have certainly reduction in NG and crude oil-based H2 pathways, but have significant increase in electrolysis and coal-based pathways.The aim of this paper is to discuss potentials of biofuels to contribute to environmentally sustainable energy supplies based on the Sustainable Process Index (SPI), an alternative calculation method for ecological footprints. The paper focuses on energy demand for transport. Comparing biofuels with fossil fuels it can be seen that "conventional" first generation biofuels reduce the overall ecological pressure about 30% compared to fossil fuel. If second generation biofuels are used footprint reductions of factors 13 to 16 compared to fossil fuel can be achieved depending on the production methods and the scale of the plant. On the other hand, production limits occur due to overall environmental capacity limits and resource constraints. If we look into technological options for transport, the long term development seems to be electricity based. Yet, we still lack sufficient sustainable electricity production besides wind and biomass. Therefore, we suggest that biofuels may be an advantageous option in a transition period from fossil based to electricity based transport systems, where minor effort is needed to retrofit vehicles until new electricity based technologies for transport means and the corresponding electricity production are available.This work aims to study the production of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) from a transgenic corn oil, through transesterification using supported enzymes as catalyst (Lipozyme TL IM from Novozymes) and ethanol as reagent. First, the corn oil was characterized for its acid value (0.26 mg KOH/g oil), iodine number (127 g iodine/100 g oil), kinematic viscosity at 40 degrees C (36.27 mm(2)/s), density at 20 degrees C (919 kg/m(3)) and water content (749 mg/kg). Second, the best operating conditions to perform the transesterification reaction were determined, by testing the following experimental conditions: oil/alcohol molar ratio (1:3, 1:6 and 1:9), catalyst/oil mass ratio (2.3, 2.8 and 3.3 wt%), reaction time (8 and 12 h) and reaction temperature (35 and 45 degrees C). Results showed that although some of the quality parameters analyzed were out of the EN 14214:2009 standard limits (namely the kinematic viscosity, water content, acid value and group I metals) the best operating conditions for a good biodiesel quality (with 69.2 wt% of FAEE content) and the highest reaction yield (98.95 wt%) are an oil/alcohol molar ratio of 1: 6, a catalyst/oil mass ratio of 2.8 wt%, a reaction time of 12 h and a reaction temperature of 35 degrees C.Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and their relationship with organizational performance. More specifically, this research explores the effect of GSCM efforts and other organizational factors on firm performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that serve as suppliers to large customer firms in the electronics industry. Design/methodology/approach - This study developed a research model relating GSCM practice and business performance through three organizational variables (employee satisfaction, operational efficiency, and relational efficiency) as moderators. Statistical analyses were based on the data collected, through survey questionnaires, from 223 SMEs in the electronics industry in Korea. Reliability, validity, and goodness-of-fit of the research model were tested by the widely accepted statistical tools. To test the hypotheses relating GSCM practice implementation and business performance, structural equation modeling was used. Findings - The most anticipated finding of the study was a direct link between GSCM practice implementation and business performance. However, no statistical significance was found. Instead, significant indirect relationships were found between GSCM practice implementation and business performance through mediating variables of operational efficiency and relational efficiency. This result indicates that business performance will be improved when GSCM enhances operational efficiency and operational efficiency. Research limitations/implications - Research on GSCM is still at the early stage. Further refinement of the questionnaire is needed. Generalizability of the findings is also limited because of data collected from electronics firms in Korean. This study shed several important insights. The findings of this study are generally consistent with prior studies in other parts of the world. SMEs in the Korean electronics industry believe that GSCM practices help generate new opportunities to attract clients in addition to complying with the buyer firms' demand. It was also found that implementation of GSCM practices help improve operational and relational efficiencies of supplier firms. Originality/value - Few empirical studies have been done in GSCM based on the conceptual footing of resource dependence theory. Also, this study was conducted from the supplier's perspective in examining the weaknesses of SME suppliers. Thus, the authors emphasize the importance of support from large buying firms for improving SME suppliers' green management capabilities.In this study, Life-Cycle Assessment methodology is applied to cements production in "Cementos Cienfuegos SA" company with the objective of quantifying environmental impact in cement production, identifying potential improvement efforts and selecting the most feasible. According to the analysis, the main negative impact is clinker production. For this reason, improvement measures are aimed to reduce it use and replace it with pozzolana. Experiments are carried out to check characteristics of new cements and techniques of economic analysis are used to evaluate proposals. For environmental assessment with life-cycle outlook, "Ecospeed" method is used, which is supported by SimaPro software. Results demonstrate that pozzolanas addition to cement decreases the use of clinker, hence, reducing the environmental impact of its production.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method used to quantify the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service across its whole life cycle. One of the problems occurring when the system at hand involves processes delivering more than one valuable output is the apportionment of resource consumption and environmental burdens in the correct proportion amongst the products. The mathematical formulation of the problem is represented by the solution of an over-determined system of linear equations. The paper describes the application of an iterative algorithm for the implementation of least square regression to solve this over-determined system directly in its rectangular form. The applied algorithm dynamically passes from an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) problem to the regression problems known as Total Least Squares (TLS) and Data Least Squares (DLS). The obtained results suggest further investigations. In particular, the so called constrained least squares method is identified as an interesting development of the methodology.Green practices and the life cycle approach are increasingly being adopted in the public procurement of road construction works. One example is the Finnish pilot project ' Improvement of Highway 9' carried out by the Finnish Road Administration in 2004, which aimed at using a life cycle assessment (LCA) in formulating the environmental award criteria in the tender competition. Although public purchasers are being encouraged to apply more LCA-based environmental criteria in their procurement, the extent to which the EU legislation on public procurement complies with this aim is not straightforward. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the LCA-based environmental award criteria used in the ' Highway 9' pilot project from the viewpoint of the basic principles and subsequent legislation on public procurement in the EU, focusing on the relationship between transport distance as an award criterion and the public procurement legislation. This study is carried out as an analysis of the legal aspects of the LCA-based environmental award criteria that were used in this specific case. The compliance of the environmental award criteria with the EU's legal framework of public procurement is assessed by analyzing to what extent the criteria fulfil the requirements based on the procurement directives and Treaty principles, also called a ' test of general principles'. The transport distance of materials is an inherent part of the scientific method LCA, but, due to the legal framework, it is not obvious that the offers can be evaluated in relation to the environmental burdens of transport without potentially discriminating against some bidders. Nevertheless, this paper looks for conditions and justifications to use the criterion of ' transport distance' and, more generally, the ' environmental impacts of transportation' as award criteria in the procurement of construction works within the EU. The ' Highway 9' pilot serves as a progressive example of taking green criteria, especially the environmental impacts of transportation, into account in the award criteria for road construction contracts.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present greenhouse gas study results for biofuels produced with partial qualified utilisation of pulp wood or forest residues when integrated into kraft pulp mill systems. The impact of considering biogenic carbon on the results is also presented. Design/methodology/approach - The material and energy balances of the integrated ethanol production were simulated for the study with a mill-wide simulation model. Data for the simulation were obtained from prehydrolysis and cooking experiments. The life cycle model for greenhouse gas calculation was created based on the simulation results. In this paper, the change of forest carbon stock caused by residue removal from forest soil and carbon delay of forest growth after stand felling were also taken into consideration, to discuss the true greenhouse gas emissions of forest biomass utilisation. Findings - The emission reduction levels achieved with these ethanol fuels derived from forest biomass ranged from 80 to 90 per cent when biogenic carbon emissions were neglected. Originality/value - The findings indicate that in both cases a significant percentage of the side flows containing energy can be utilised to produce excess electricity when the ethanol plant is integrated into the pulp mill. The findings also indicate that the carbon storage impact of forest biomasses affects significantly the emission values of both studied fuels and overturns the emission savings of prehydrolysed chip based ethanol.Nowadays, more attention is being paid to sustainability in construction. Over the years, the concrete research community has developed a wide range of potential 'green' concretes. To reduce cement related CO2 emissions, a considerable part of the traditional binder can be replaced with industrial by-products. However, as a result of the current focus on comparative durability assessment based on accelerated tests, sufficient knowledge on the actual service life and sustainability of these materials is still lacking. In this paper, we combined both approaches for concrete exposed to chlorides. Different mixes were subjected to a rapid chloride migration test. With the results obtained, probabilistic service life prediction was done. This service life together with the material's strength was used as input for life cycle assessment of an axially loaded column. Results show that the environmental impact of fly ash and slag concrete is less than half the impact of traditional concrete.This article presents some results of the environmental and organisational aspects that were obtained from a preliminary analysis of the process of manufacturing upholstered furniture at the furniture cluster in the State of Alagoas, Brazil. The method is based on the concepts of pollution prevention and cleaner production that are associated to the concept of product life cycle design. Data were collected through interviews with employees and from direct observation in the company selected for the study case. The results indicate the need for further studies to identify possible modifications in the product and/or in the processes of development of the upholstered furniture produced by the cluster. The partial conclusions suggest the need for the future application of life cycle assessment in one of the upholstered pieces of furniture to broaden the scope of analysis and improve the efficiency of production through cleaner environmental practices. The original character of the study is associated with the dissemination and incentive of the application of life cycle assessment in micro and small businesses in the Furniture Cluster in the town of Arapiraca in the State of Alagoas, in the Northeast of Brazil.This paper presents a biophysical understanding of the MSW-to-energy facility located at the Sao Joao landfill in Sao Paulo using Emergy synthesis. Accounting for the material inputs and the biogas accumulation Emergy-based indices are calculated to evaluate the environmental load and sustainability level of the concerned biogas project. The study was conducted by combining the analysis of transformities, Emergy indicators and the net Emergy yield ratio to establish long-term sustainability and measure global environmental stress. The implementation of a project for environmental compensation in fulfilment of state's requirements was also assessed. The findings reveal that the Emergy investment to the use of biogas is quite low and, therefore, advantageous. Transformities show that the global productivity of the MSW-to-energy plants can compete with traditional plants. The conclusions justify the effort invested in developing MSW-to-energy plants and are relevant for policy makers in a highly sensitive sector to accomplish sustainability goals.To protect the environment, EU promulgated EUP directive which is more serious and complex than WEEE and RoHS directive. To help dishwasher manufacturers to follow the EUP directive well in China, the environmental impact of the dishwasher in the whole life cycle is systematically assessed based on CML method, and the environmental impact caused by detergent is not included. The impact on the environment caused by dishwasher is interpreted from resource consumption, pollutant emission and environmental impact. Finally, the work system of dishwasher is analysed, and the improvements measures are introduced.EcoDesign is not easily fitting in the Innovation process, mostly owing to the dedicated time and resources required for learning and applying the EcoDesign-related knowledge when fast decision-making is occurring in early stages of product development and as there is only a low level of information on the new product to be made. In this paper, we propose a way to integrate EcoDesign in the early steps of the innovation process, while taking into account available processes and tools. A pre-assessment-based approach is brought using product typology, flow study and internal Functional Analysis (FA). We illustrate our proposition with an example on a new heating appliance design. Using this case study, we show how the innovation requirements could be met and how standard tools can be employed along the product development phases (Idea Management, Feasibility Assessment and Time To Market).Municipal solid waste in developing nations like India is an area of major concern. The concerns associated with waste management are not only public health and safety but also for sustainable development. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be applied to assess the environmental sustainability of waste management systems. In the present study, global warming potential of various municipal waste management options was evaluated using LCA. The model was applied for a case study of Delhi (India). From the results of the study, it was found that the scenario of maximum diversion from sanitary landfill results in least impact to global warming.Oleaginous plants such as Jatropha Curcas Linnaeus (JCL), not intended for human consumption but used for biodiesel production, could contribute to beneficial outcomes. This plant grows on poor land (arid and marginal land) and is drought resistant. Jatropha Curcas is native to South America and widely grown in South and Central America, Africa, and Asia (Achten et al., 2007; Kumar et al., 2011). Some areas in Tunisia may be suitable for JCL, although not for food production. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the energy performance and potential of Jatropha Curcas for biodiesel production in Tunisia. The evaluation will be completed through the elaboration of an energy balance using life cycle assessment (LCA), which will facilitate the decision making process. Therefore, the cultivation of JCL production in Tunisia will be an experiment with uncertain results. The energy assessment reveals a negative energy return (EE = 0.42). Because of high investment costs and low yield per hectare, Jatropha is not a sound economic choice.At present, many urban areas in Mediterranean climates are coping with water scarcity, facing a growing water demand and a limited conventional water supply. Urban design and planning has so far largely neglected the benefits of rainwater harvesting (RWH) in the context of a sustainable management of this resource. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the most environmentally friendly strategy for rainwater utilization in Mediterranean urban environments of different densities. The RWH systems modeled integrate the necessary infrastructures for harvesting and using rainwater in newly constructed residential areas. Eight scenarios were defined in terms of diffuse (D) and compact (C) urban models and the tank locations ((1) underground tank, (2) below-roof tank, (3) distributed-over-roof tank, and (4) block tank). The structural and hydraulic sizing of the catchment, storage, and distribution subsystems was taken into account using an average Mediterranean rainfall, the area of the harvesting surfaces, and a constant water demand for laundry. The quantification of environmental impacts was performed through a life cycle assessment, using CML 2001 Baseline method. The necessary materials and processes were considered in each scenario according to the lifecycle stages (i.e., materials, construction, transportation, use, and deconstruction) and subsystems. The environmental characterization indicated that the best scenario in both urban models is the distributed-over-roof tank (D3, C3), which provided a reduction in impacts compared to the worst scenario of up to 73% in diffuse models and even higher in compact ones, 92% in the most dramatic case. The lower impacts are related to the better distribution of tank weight on the building, reducing the reinforcement requirements, and enabling energy savings. The storage subsystem and the materials stage contributed most significantly to the impacts in both urban models. In the compact density model, the underground-tank scenario (C1) presented the largest impacts in most categories due to its higher energy consumption. Additionally, more favorable environmental results were observed in compact densities than in diffuse ones for the Global Warming Potential category along with higher water efficiencies. The implementation of one particular RWH scenario over another is not irrelevant in drought-stress environments. Selecting the most favorable scenario in the development of newly constructed residential areas provides significant savings in CO2 emissions in comparison with retrofit strategies. Therefore, urban planning should consider the design of RWH infrastructures using environmental criteria in addition to economic, social, and technological factors, adjusting the design to the potential uses for which the rainwater is intended. Additional research is needed to quantify the energy savings associated with the insulation caused by using the tank distributed over the roof. The integration of the economic and social aspects of these infrastructures in the analysis, from a life cycle approach, is necessary for targeting the planning and design of more sustainable cities in an integrated way.This paper discusses the integration of a fuzzy approach with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate design alternatives' environmental performance during the new product development (NPD) process. A fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (fuzzy AHP) is used with a fuzzy extension of the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (fuzzy TOPSIS) to prioritize design options. A case study is described to illustrate the use of the proposed method.Increase in environmental concerns together with legislations are forcing industries to take a fresh look at the impact of their supply chain operations on the environment. This paper introduces a mixed-integer linear programming based framework for sustainable supply chain design that considers life cycle assessment (LCA) principles in addition to the traditional material balance constraints at each node in the supply chain. Indeed, the framework distinguishes between solid and liquid wastes, as well as gaseous emissions due to various production processes and transportation systems. The framework is used to evaluate the tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives under various cost and operating strategies in the aluminum industry. The results suggest that current legislation and Emission Trading Schemes (ETS) must be strengthened and harmonized at the global level in order to drive a meaningful environmental strategy. Moreover, the model demonstrates that efficient carbon management strategies will help decision makers to achieve sustainability objectives in a cost-effective manner. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It cannot be denied that environmental consciousness is becoming important. Ironically, legislation is probably the most satisfactory driver for pushing manufacturers to take environmental concerns into design considerations. In fact, the European Union introduced a new law (directive 2005/32/EC) for regulating the environmental consequences of all energy-using products (EuPs) in August 2007, the scope of which covers all products that rely on energy sources in any form for operation. Design alternatives are required in the product development stage so that environmental concerns can be considered as a decision parameter. In complying with the directive, life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to draw conclusions and to compare the performance of alternatives. In this connection, a case study is carried out to assess the environmental impact of a personal electronic product through LCA, subject to the scope of the stated directive. The objectives of this paper are threefold: (i) to report the case in relation to the directive; (ii) to summarise the results of the LCA accordingly; and (iii) to suggest a new conceptual design and to compare the LCA of this new design with the original design.Two types of sign substrate material used for road signs and road safety markers, one constructed of reclaimed e-waste plastic and the other of the most commonly used aluminium, are compared in the context of life cycle assessment methodology. This paper also compares the different types of tools available, and determines a suitable tool for use in calculating the carbon footprint (CF) of the two types of sign substrate material. An estimate for the CF of each type of sign substrate material is calculated as the carbon dioxide equivalent. After calculating the CF of each type of sign substrate, a sensitivity analysis is conducted. The ultimate aim of the analysis was to indicate which parameters of the substrate manufacturing system have the strongest influence on the CF results in order to find ways for lowering the environmental impact such as climate change potential. The main finding of this study is that blank signs constructed of reclaimed e-waste plastic materials are more attractive in climate change potential than those made of aluminium. Also, this paper documents a quantity assessment method for the climate change potential of using sign substrate material constructed of reclaimed ewaste plastic in roadside applications instead of conventional aluminium.High energy consumption is one of the major factors that contributes to global warming. Connected to this, a directive has been approved by the European Union for establishing a legal framework to govern eco-design of energy-using products. This technical note reveals life cycle analysis of two electrical products, which rely on the same rechargeable battery system (i.e. the same energy source) for operations, with respect to the requirements of the aforementioned directive. Results concur with the argument that energy consumption of this sort of product plays a dominant role in terms of a variety of environmental impacts (like emission to air). Based on the results of this study, eco-design alternatives can be derived accordingly so that energy consumption and the existing solution can be benchmarked, as required by the directive.LCA has been extensively used in the last few years and a large number of studies have been published in the literature. These studies show a great variability in results of comparable systems. It somehow leads policy-makers to consider the LCA approach as an inconclusive method. Some attempts have been developed to assess LCA results variability; however, they remain mostly qualitative. In this paper, a method based on Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) is presented in order to understand the origin of results variability. A general variance decomposition based on the Sobol indices is applied to quantify the influence of input parameters on the environmental answer. A preliminary study is done by using this GSA on a large set of integrated photovoltaic systems greenhouse gas (GHG) performances. We identify that the irradiation parameter has the largest influence on those GHG performances. The other parameters such as lifetime or performance ratio have been identified as having a smaller but significant influence on the GHG results variability. The GHG performances range from 24 to 230 g CO2eq/kWh with 75% of the performance ranging from 23.8 to 93.5g CO2eq/kWh.The building specific LCA differs from other LCA by the uncertainty of the long observation period. The framework of an integrated analysis (life cycle costing, life cycle impact assessment, energy calculation and health risk assessment) allows a cross validation and a link to measured data (costs, energy consumption, user satisfaction). In the same framework consistent benchmarks (reference-, limit- and target-values) can be established as a basis for sustainability assessment. The "solution space" of different benchmarks can be compared to an "uncertainty space". First results of this approach are presented and the influence of the reference study period is discussed.Any construction product and material undergoing contact with water during its life cycle can release chemical compounds potentially hazardous for the human health and environment. The environmental behaviour of construction products and buildings in real exposure conditions is still a research subject, methodologies and tools are currently under development in the EU. At the moment, emissions from construction products during their use stage are misevaluated, the impact being either underestimated, or overestimated. The present paper proposes a methodology for a sound consideration of the emissions from construction products by leaching during their use stage. The proposed solution for the evaluation of local impacts in the LCA framework is to assess the emissions towards the identified target compartments (LCI), i.e. soil and water, and to use the common LCIA methods to estimate the associated impacts. The evaluation of the pollutant release is based on the experimental and modelling methodology developed in the field of material leaching, i.e. by studying and modelling the solubilisation and transport of target substances. This option is in line with both the LCA methodology (e.g. the work of CEN/TC 350) and the work in leaching field (e.g. CEN/TC 351), has a general applicability and could feed general databases (e.g. Ecoinvent). A case example of a cement based product is given to illustrate our proposal.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology that enables to characterize the environmental impacts of a product system all along the supply chain. As many Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) elementary flows have a potential impact on the environment and human health, they all need to be taken into account in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods. However, the publicly available LCI flows currently range from a reduced list of substances in some industry data e.g. Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) to more than a thousand in generic LCA databases. In this paper, the relevance of a French simplified LCI database using building products industry data is addressed. Results from a case study covering 113 building materials for three Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) indicators show that the simplification is not always relevant at the scale of a complete LCI database. Large uncertainties were found in the final results especially for LCIA indicators that require a high number of LCI flows. Nevertheless, the simplification seems to be relevant for around 95% of the building materials in the case of the Global Warming Potential (GWP) indicator. The findings of this study will contribute to improve the level of details of the LCI provided by the French building industry according to the chosen impact assessment methods.Research and standardization works are in progress and building environmental performance methods are more and more based on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. In this new holistic and multicriteria framework using not only energy-based indicators, construction stakeholders need reference values to compare from an environmental point of view a new project from the current average, good or best practice. This paper presents the results of a French pilot project, called HQE performance, concerning the LCA of 74 low energy buildings. Reference values are presented for the non renewable primary energy use, the global warming potential, the water consumption and the generated inert waste indicators through a statistical analysis. It was found that the mean embodied impacts are 44 kWh of non-renewable primary energy and 11.4 kg eq-CO2 per m(2) per year. The dispersion of values for the non-renewable primary energy ranges from 35 to 60 kWh/m(2)/year and the global warming potential indicator ranges from 9 to 15 kg eq-CO2 per m(2) per year. These values related to the impacts of building materials, products and equipment can now lead to the determination of reference values for the French context.Several Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools for buildings have been developed over the past few years. Recent reviews show that most of the tools use between 8 and 16 Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) based indicators. This high number of indicators is often seen as a problematic issue for decision makers. In this paper, we propose a statistical methodology to solve the problem of identifying a simplified but relevant set of environmental indicators. It is based on a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) applied on a French LCI/LCIA database of building materials and products. Results show that only 4 dimensions can be sufficient to explain 86 % of the variance (also called inertia) for an original set of 13 indicators. Rotation techniques such as varimax proved to be quite powerful to extract relevant environmental components. In a subsequent building case study, the weightings of the functional units of the different materials and products also confirm the conclusions drawn at the database scale.To achieve a sustainable management of resources, political and economic decision makers need indicators to quantify their technical choice in relation with resource consumption. In this study, an indicator that reflects power demand next to energy demand of system like buildings is developed. This new power indicator is applied to residential houses. It can highlight the dependence to high power energy sources that exists at the different steps of the life cycle of a building. This dependence is presented as a better indicator of sustainability than a traditional energy account as it reflects the ability for the system to rely on flow energies rather than on stock energies.The definition of the functional unit (or functional equivalent) is one of the most sensitive aspects of a LCA when the purpose is the comparison of alternatives. The results of comparative LCA evaluations of products and technical solutions can change significantly in relation to the different functional equivalent setted with reference to various performances in use. In this paper, it is stressed the importance that the comparisons (and the functional equivalent) should be based on the specific needs of the project and on the performances to be achieved at the level of building. The functional equivalent is a critical aspect also in the LCA comparison of buildings. The need of normalization of the results of LCA of buildings is often obtained by referring at a reference unit (as the surface or the volume of the building). The paper investigates different possible assumption of reference unit that can drastically change the results of LCA.Eco-design aims at improving the production process of a single product and eco-design practitioners often consider environmental performances of a product as a part of its initial functionalities. Only the use of LCA can quantify environmental performances. Because of its comparative nature, using LCA for eco-design requires comparing a new solution to an existing one. In the construction sector, materials are often considered as an eco-design variant. The use of a construction material is undeniably linked to its intrinsic properties but the link between these properties and its functions is not always obvious because several physical scales are nested (materials, in construction elements, in constructed objects). Using LCA in that frame means to compare various materials on the basis of identical fulfilled functions. The purpose of this article is to suggest a generic approach for using LCA to eco-design materials for construction. This approach takes into account the multi-functionality of materials, the "nested scales" of products, and the lack of knowledge at the early stages of design. The proposed approach might be the most convenient accompanying approach that should occur all along the design process from the material to the constructed object.Quebec's Department of Transportation (MTQ) adopted a network level approach to identify roads in its network where rigid and flexible pavements offer the greatest benefits. The decision-making process that led to the Departmental Policy on Pavement Selection Type included a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA), a life cycle assessment (LCA) and a multicriteria analysis. The LCCA and the LCA were conducted for concrete and asphalt pavements designed for 16 typical road specifications (transit or local road, number of lanes, passenger and heavy load traffic). LCA results were integrated into a multicriteria analysis, the conclusions of which were paired with the LCCA results to identify parts of the road system where pavement types are the best investment. The first part of this paper is dedicated to LCA parameters and results. The way LCA conclusions were integrated into the decision-making process is then described. Finally, the main challenges faced and lessons learned through this experience are discussed.Conventional LCA is not especially well suited for evaluating the environmental impacts of public infrastructure networks. Heterogeneous asset types and competing public policy goals hinder scope and functional unit identification. Both LCA and life cycle costing (LCC) consider assets individually and, for analysis of networks, assume that costs and impacts scale linearly. As maintenance budgets have declined in terms of purchasing power, and transportation infrastructure has gotten older, planners and engineers have begun to focus more on LCC minimization. Without appropriate and integrated LCA tools, intensive LCC could shift burdens to non-monetized externalities like greenhouse gas emissions. This work describes a general multi-objective optimization framework to identify a set of network-wide asset-specific investment plans non-dominated with respect to public user cost, public agency cost, and environmental impact. The framework is applied for the case of planning long-term pavement maintenance optimization by a department of transportation. To shrink the solution space, Pareto fronts (PFs) were computed for each pavement segment. Selecting a network wide solution based on individual PFs produces a good solution but an integrated network wide optimization produces superior results.The prefabricated reinforced concrete panel construction method was spreading throughout Europe during the reconstruction wave following the World War II in order to decrease the general housing shortage. Nowadays approximately 13.5% of the Hungarian people live in these high-rise buildings, therefore their refurbishment is inevitable. The problem this building stock presents is that the operational energy use is extremely high, due to design, constructional and structural errors. During the research a methodology was developed for the analysis of the refurbishment possibilities of prefabricated concrete buildings in order to reduce the impact on the environment. The method is based on Life Cycle Assessment and in case of an existing building more scenarios proposed for the refurbishment are to be compared, providing a decision support tool for the architectural design process by identifying the largest environmental impacts and optimizing the design. The methodology is demonstrated on a case study: the 10-storey high apartment building including 360 flats was built in 1968 according to the original Soviet technology, and it was one of the first prefabricated concrete buildings in Hungary. The paper deals with the question 'What makes an existing high-rise reinforced concrete building sustainable throughout its remaining life-span?'Building design is multi criteria. In view of the increasing environmental burdens related to the development of our modern societies, buildings environmental impacts have to be considered, at early design stage. Energy consumptions linked to existing buildings use are responsible for significant environmental impacts. Moreover, the existing stock replacement rate is inferior to 1% annually, in most of developed countries. Consequently, stock retrofit represents a major lever to reach commitments on climate change and non renewable energy consumptions mitigation. Yet, the identification of optimal sustainable retrofit programs, including actions planning, is still a difficult task for professionals. The present paper is a contribution to decision support through optimal energy retrofit programs identification. A multi criteria genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to optimize retrofit programs, on both their content and planning. The retrofit measures address building envelopes and equipments replacement. For each of these, various options are considered. The objective functions considered target environmental impacts, financial indicators and occupants' well-being. Solutions performances are evaluated through life cycle assessment and life cycle cost models, using dynamic thermal simulation for heating load and thermal comfort evaluation. These methods contribute to decision support through the identification of Pareto non dominated retrofit programs, on a multi criteria basis, over life cycle.Given the need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to the production of electricity, countries worldwide are trying to develop and implement different energy saving strategies and technologies to mitigate global warming. A core part of achieving this is the development and implementation of renewable energy technologies such as wind. This has resulted in the development and innovation of wind turbines with output ranges of 10-15MW likely to be deployed by 2020. This increased output has a knock on effect on the growth of rotor diameters and tower heights requiring the wind turbine system to be assessed from an economic, environmental and structural performance viewpoint. This has led to the proposal of using concrete as an alternative to the current preference of steel for wind turbine towers due to a number of limiting issues. Thus, the main focus of this paper is to investigate and compare the life cycle emissions (LCE) of GHG of concrete relative to steel as a tower solution in order to identify a solution for both onshore and offshore facilities. The main findings indicated that the LCE for a wind turbine with a concrete tower range between 4-9% lower than its equivalent steel solution over a 40 year life cycle.Current transport systems are not likely to be sustainable, since energy resources may be less accessible, facing a rapidly growing demand and because of environmental constrains. In this context a great interest arose for sharing environmental assessment practices between infrastructures owners and researchers. For this present work a partnership between RFF and Ifsttar was decided to study environmental effects and energy consumption for railways life cycle. It paves the way to a full life cycle analysis (LCA) for environmental burdens of railway infrastructures and aims at identifying the best design practices at the project level related to environmental criteria. This LCA takes into account earthwork, railway structure and the operation phase, i.e., the analysis performed is based on the estimation of energy consumptions due to construction, maintenance and on the traffic. Results of this work could enhance practices for environment preservation for the plan of building 4000 kilometres of new high-speed railways, decided in the French National Transport infrastructure scheme. Applying LCA to the project phase is a rather new approach. It requires defming a global functional unit as a basic hypothesis of any study, different from the previous studies. Then, the lifecycle subsystems are successively investigated (construction, maintenance and use) to determine the best way for project Functional Unit definition and further assessment method application.As far as sustainable development is concerned, important issues are related to the adequate integration of a tunnel in a given infrastructure project. Construction of tunnels is liable to have significant economic and environmental impacts. However, in a certain extent, both these kinds of impacts can be offset by the protection of the surface and by the global optimisation of the infrastructure design itself. When the construction of a tunnel is taken for granted in the infrastructure project, the issue of technical choices arises. Although tunnel infrastructures are usually strongly constrained by both economic and geological considerations, it could be of great interest to evaluate the environmental impacts of several technical solutions. Moreover, environmental impacts can be limited when considering the entire life cycle: i.e. construction, operation and "end-of-life" phases. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been applied first to "materials" of civil engineering in order to compare the environmental potential impacts of technical solutions regarding excavation, support and lining. These impacts are also compared to the power consumption of equipment during the service-life. Such information could be of great interest for tunnels owners. However, they should be obtained by using objective tools and must gain wide acceptance among the profession.In the frame of the joint R&D project Orthoplus, an experimental program has been carried out to assess the influence of topping layers, either made of bituminous concrete (BC) or ultra high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC), on the behaviour of orthotropic decks and their fatigue resistance. This project aims at improving the design rules for orthotropic deck and developing a UHPFRC-based innovative solution to improve the durability of orthotropic decks. The fatigue strength of the orthotropic decks and the durability of overlays are parameters influencing the environmental performance of the considered bridge deck solutions over their life cycle. To assess the sensitivity of the design on environmental balance, the following two types of topping layers, bituminous concrete and UHPFRC, were compared through life cycle assessment methodology, carried out on a structure involving orthotropic decks: the Millau viaduct. Even if the Millau viaduct is rather an exceptional structure, the broad literature encountered gave us access to a lot of data concerning dimensions, materials origin, construction techniques. The present paper details the environmental performance of the Millau viaduct orthotropic steel bridge decks topped with bituminous concrete or alternatively UHPFRC.This paper reports the result of a study on environmental impact of road construction techniques with bitumen emulsion. This review was limited to overall indicators (GreenHouse Gas emissions, energy and natural resources consumption). Road materials with bitumen emulsion are compared with conventional techniques as Hot Mixes Asphalts. Then, three cases of road maintenance are shown (lightly or highly deformed reshaping, and structural maintenance). Several maintenance solutions are proposed that are deemed to be equivalent. Those solutions combine binder and wearing courses as necessary to compare the hot mix asphalts and cold materials with bitumen emulsion in cases of realistic use. These calculations validate favorable a priori considerations to the cold techniques, and quantify the environmental benefits regarding conventional hot mix asphalts.The use of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) by construction companies is a sound approach yet with multiple issues. A variety of methodologies, indicators and databases exist all over the world. Companies must therefore make choices and assumptions in order to adapt LCA to their operational requirements, to different geographical contexts, and above all to users and customers, while keeping a consistent and reliable methodological approach. The appropriation of LCA by construction companies requires adapted and optimized tools, even capable of incorporating business aspects. LCA will help the construction industry to evolve if its language is recognized by that industry. Communication and internal training are also key factors in the success of the approach. Soletanche Bachy developed an LCA tool named PRISM in 2010. International, easy to use and understandable by all, PRISM can provide project environmental analysis at tender stage or during the works, and allows comparison of design alternatives.In this study, a comparison based on LCA of the environmental performance of several scenarios with a different insulation performance of the building envelope, taking into account the insulation materials and the natural gas consumption for heating. The calculations are performed for an average multi-family dwelling in the Netherlands. Insulation materials in windows, doors, roof and basement floor were taken into account. Several scenarios with different R-values of the building envelope were considered. When the R-value of the building envelope of the apartment building is increased, the impact scores of natural gas consumption decreases, but the impact scores for the insulation materials increases. When these two parts are combined, the total impact scores decrease until the R-value reaches about 4-7. Then a further increase of the R-value of the building envelope leads to an increase of the impact scores of several impact categories such as eutrophication, human toxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity, while the impact scores for the other impact categories does not decrease significantly.Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) hold promise to designers, specifiers and policy makers looking to reduce the environmental impact of building materials and products. The U.S. government is not developing a national EPD program. Integrating life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and data to create meaningful EPDs is complex. The lack of centralized leadership coupled with the technical and policy complexity has lead to both industry confusion about and innovative approaches towards the development and use of EPDs. Leadership from industry, academia and environmental non-profits coupled with policy from State and Federal governments is shaping U.S. development. This paper outlines the current state of U.S. practice regarding EPDs in the building industry and is followed by an analysis of drivers motivating the development of building industry specific EPDs. The authors provide some observations about the opportunities and challenges to developing harmonized and rigorous EPDs within both U.S. and global context.By 2020 the building regulations in Europe will be tightened to evolve to nearly-zero energy buildings. This prospect holds a great challenge for architects and construction engineers. Many studies still focus on the energy consumption of a building. However with the European Union setting this target, the reduction of the energy use will not be an aim but a necessity. To further reduce the environmental impact of a building we should obtain a better knowledge of the importance of material related processes. The internationally known Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used as an integral method to obtain this goal. After adapting a reference care home to the low energy house standard we made step-by-step adaptation;to its materials. This resulted in a reduction of the impact with 21%. Increasing the life span of certain building components (and materials) by opting for non-destructive dismantling and reuse gained 28% compared to the low energy building. This study shows that, after the energy reduction is obtained, also the choice of materials, made during the design phase, has a significant influence on the environmental impact of a building. The importance of this early phase should not be neglected.The built environment uses significant amounts of natural resources and energy in the world economy. After achieving the energy efficiency of the building use/operational phase, the next focus of improvement is the production phase of a building life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a scientific framework to evaluate environmental impacts considering the entire life cycle. This paper presents a typical residential building construction case study in India and demonstrates the application of LCA for calculating environmental impacts resulting from the production and the construction phases. The life cycle assessment software tool 'SimaPro 7.3' is used. It is found that the building walls (external and internal masonry work) is the most significant building component. The other significant building components are 'foundation', 'roof slab/beam' and 'plinth beam'. Among the building materials used, 'brick', 'steel' and 'concrete' are found to be important in terms of impacts. Evaluation of alternate materials for the building walls indicates that there is significant potential to reduce the environmental impacts.The strategic choice of building materials and components during the design process is especially important for improving the environmental performance of buildings. The life cycle assessment (LCA) of buildings and their components appears in this context as an alternative for the assessment of building production process as a whole, as well as its components in isolation. In order to contribute to the life cycle assessment database of building components, the objective of this paper is the development of a comparative Life Cycle Assessment study of structural masonry of concrete and clay blocks. The LCA methodology proposed by the norms ISO 14040 [1] and ISO 14044 [2] was used through the application script proposed by the ILCD Handbook [3]. Finally, the analysis of the results required the individual observation of each of the impact categories, since each one of the alternatives showed major contributions for different categories.As government agencies and green building professionals set out on the road toward zero environmental impacts from their buildings, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is playing an important role as a method to evaluate and quantify these impacts. LCA has historically been applied to examine individual products, materials or systems. Now, in accordance with a new national standard being developed under the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) process, open-source guidelines are being provided to measure, compare and track the environmental impacts of entire building facilities during their lifetime. These quantified results can be summarized in the form of an Environmental Building Declaration (EBD), which addresses the full spectrum of environmental impacts associated with all aspects of a building's life and use including site and location, building design and construction, operations and maintenance, occupancy and building use, transportation, and end-of-life. EBD results can be used by building designers and operators to measure and improve environmental performance over time, to choose from among building material options, and to measure success under LEED and other international green building rating systems. A pilot study, which examined the impacts of a newly constructed California state building, is summarized.Steel is a crucial input to construction, and its supply chain is responsible for considerable CO2 emissions and primary energy consumption. However, the production processes of steel mills vary, depending on the technology and the primary energy source used. Such differences affect the emission factor and the embodied energy content of steel used in construction activities. This work evaluates the effect of steel made in Brazil on CO2 and primary energy intensities. Results show that emissions and energy consumption due to steel consumption significantly contribute to the environmental burden of construction activities. Accordingly, in Brazil the use of steel production technologies that are based on electricity consumption favors the mitigation of CO2 emissions and primary energy reduction. Among the steel production technologies employed in Brazil the CO2 emission factor of a specific company is 37% lower than the Brazilian average industry. In terms of embodied energy, the specific energy values are 87% smaller than values of the Brazilian average industry. The choice of appropriate steel reinforcing bar supplier is fundamental to mitigate CO2 emissions of the Brazilian construction sector.With the current political focus on resource efficiency, the proper consideration of recycling aspects in LCA is becoming increasingly important. In this respect, two contrasting approaches are generally used: the recycled content approach [100:0] and the end of life recycling approach [0:100]. This allocation issue for recycling has been already largely discussed in numerous papers demonstrating the impossibility to make a fully objective and justified choice. Similarly, while ISO standards and ILCD handbook recommend using the end-of-life recycling approach, at least for metal products, the French Standard NFP01-010 applies a cut-off rule at the end-of-life stage which leads to the recycled content approach. During the development of the EN15804 standard, which defines the core rules for the product category of construction products, it was initially proposed to use this cut-off rule at the end-of-life stage. However, in order to reach consensus and bring EN15804 more into line with ISO standards, a complementary independent module reporting environmental aspects of the net flow of secondary materials and secondary fuels leaving the product system have been added. Whilst this module quantifies the net benefits of the end of life recycling of metal products, it also provides a unique opportunity for acknowledging the "design for recycling" concept, and for selecting environmentally sound end-of-life scenarios and strategies for building products.In civil engineering, the production of materials is responsible for significant environmental burdens on air and water emissions and resources consumption. However, these materials are produced with very specific process and the commonly used databases do not provide data to accurately evaluate all the diversity of civil engineering's materials. Therefore the development of a sector-oriented environmental database for civil engineering products is needed. The present paper is a contribution to the development of data for reinforcing bars, representative of the French market. The paper focuses on the methodology followed to build the environmental data (cradle to construction field gate) from Ecoinvent database and specific data collected from material producers and production plants. The values obtained from the modelling are compared to the original environmental data of Ecoinvent and to the WorldSteel Association data for reinforcing steel, available in the ELCD database (European Life Cycle Data). The results highlight the fact that the environmental impacts of reinforcing steel used in France are lower than those published in global European database for all impacts except terrestrial ecotoxicity. Furthermore, variations on transport distances between the steel production plant and the construction site do not significantly change the results.This paper focuses on a methodology to determine generic environmental data for building materials for a national context. It describes the different existing data types (generic, specific) that can now be used in practice and focuses on their quality according to CEN/TR 15941 [1]. The paper describes a case study, which shows the importance of meta data during the selection of appropriate generic datasets. The meta data comparison of glass wool dataset from Swiss database Ecoinvent and an averaged Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) based on 80 EPDs from the French database INIES, which could possibly stand for the generic data, is explained. Then, environmental indicators of 4 different datasets of glass wool were analyzed to find out which one is the most appropriate and best applicable as generic data for the French context. The results showed that the French average EPD for glass wool can very well replace the generic Ecoinvent data mainly because of its appropriate geographical, temporal and technological representativeness. Furthermore it reflects the actual realistic situation of glass wool production in France, in comparison with Ecoinvent data, which is calculated for the Swiss context. However, some meta data commonly used to described the generic datasets are currently missing as the information are kept confidential in the EPDs.Environmental data of products are essential for sustainability management in construction. Amazon lumber production involves selective logging, sawing and transportation, all impacting the carbon balance. This research aims to quantify CO2 emissions of Amazon lumber products from non-managed forests. The Amazon rainforest is composed of many species of trees, but just 3 to 9 trees per hectare or 4.8% to 8.6% of the total biomass are commercially attractive. In accessing these sparsely scattered commercial logs up to 33% of the aboveground forest biomass is destroyed. Converting logs into lumber averages 41% and wood residues are usually burned or left to decay, adding to the release of carbon. The residues produced by selective logging and sawing are 5.5 to 9.6 times superior to lumber mass. The use of energy in lumber production reduces the carbon incorporated in wood from 5% to 19%. Total CO2 emissions are composed of logging residues (79.5%); sawing residues (18.4%) and energy (1.9%). A range in emissions of 6.4tCO(2)/m(3) to 11.3tCO(2)/m(3) for lumber production was found. Total residues generated vary between 5.5 t/t to 9.6 t/t or 9.5 tCO(2)/t to 16.5 tCO(2)/t of commercial lumber. This data can integrate a construction material database to support consumer and professional decisions on Amazon wood applications.In March 2011, Eurobitume published a new version of the life cycle inventory (LCI) [1] of bitumen first published in 1999 [2]. The intended use is to feed LCI studies where paving grade bitumens are used. Consequently, the environmental impacts resulting from such emissions have not been assessed. Following the product standard EN 12591 [3], the LCI of paving bitumen with penetration grade from 20 to 220 1/10 mm is carried out. Then, LCIs for polymer modified bitumen with 3.5% polymer and bitumen emulsion with 65% bitumen are assessed. The bitumen LCI is a cradle to gate study. It covers crude oil extraction, shipping, refining and storage steps. Regarding refining step, the study focus on straight-run distillation route but three other refining routes are assessed: semi-blowing, de-asphalting and vis-breaking. The LCI has been updated using the most recent and most representative data collected by industry and coming from the Ecoinvent database [11]. The methodology has been reviewed to be consistent with ISO 14040 and 14044 [4] life cycle assessment standards published in 2006. In addition, the LCI follows the 2000 ISO Technical Report 14049 [4] recommendations regarding allocation at refining level which is based on relative value. In addition, a sensibility analysis is carried out regarding allocation procedure and LCIs including infrastructure impact are provided. As part of these standards, the report has been peer reviewed by an independent LCI expert. A complete Ecoinvent-enable inventory is available as an electronic excel file online.A life cycle simulation tool has been developed to model urban settlements including various buildings, streets, green and other public spaces, and networks (drinking water, waste water, district heating...). This tool, developed in an object oriented approach, associates dynamic thermal simulation and building LCA, complemented with modules for open spaces and networks. A set of environmental indicators is evaluated, e.g. resource depletion, energy and water consumption, global warming, waste generation, toxicity. Several alternatives can be compared using graphs, constituting an urban design aid. This communication presents a case study in order to illustrate a possible application of this tool. Several urban morphologies are compared: apartment buildings, single family houses, and Plus energy houses similar to the "solar city" in Freiburg. Each alternative is defined according to the same functional unit: providing dwelling for one inhabitant during 80 years, in the Greater Paris Area context and climatic conditions. The results are presented and perspectives are proposed to refine the model and complement it.A dynamic LCA model has been developed to account for the seasonal, weekly and hourly variation of the electricity production mix. The objective is to evaluate more precisely the environmental impacts of electricity consumption and production in buildings, which is useful to compare e.g. plus energy buildings with standard alternatives. The French electricity grid manager (RTE) provides hourly production values for nuclear, hydro-electricity, gas+coal and fuel thermal plants, and other types'. Based upon these data, the model evaluates the production mix in terms of an average temperature in France (due to a high electricity use for heating), and several periodic functions corresponding to variation frequencies identified by a Fourier analysis. In a second step, specific production mixes are derived for different uses: heating, cooling, domestic hot water, domestic appliances and office appliances. This method is applied to a case study, showing the discrepancy between such a dynamic model and the standard LCA practice corresponding to the use of a yearly average production mix. The model requiring hourly energy consumption data, the EQUER LCA tool, being linked to dynamic thermal simulation, has been used. Perspectives are proposed to improve the model and reduce uncertainty.This paper presents initial results of an ongoing project to monitor energy consumption and indoor environmental quality in a green university building, and to include the measured data in a dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA) of the building. DLCA can be defined as an approach to life cycle assessment (LCA) that explicitly incorporates dynamic process modelling in the context of temporal and spatial variations in the surrounding industrial and environmental systems. DLCA has been suggested to be important for buildings due to their long lifetimes, during which they may undergo significant operational changes. An important part of the dynamic process modeling component is the measurement of actual data to validate or refine predictive models. A static LCA of the building was completed, including construction materials and a whole-building energy model. An initial DLCA was conducted incorporating estimates of future industrial and environmental factors, exemplified by energy mixes and emissions factors from energy production. Partial data from the building's operations were compared to energy model predictions and then incorporated into the DLCA model. Results showed substantial differences between impacts due to estimated actual energy consumption and energy model results, suggesting that that monitoring of buildings' actual performance over time is crucial to the accuracy of building LCA.Static life cycle assessment does not fully describe the carbon footprint of construction wood because of carbon changes in the forest and product pools over time. This study developed a dynamic greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory approach using US Forest Service and life-cycle data to estimate GHG emissions on construction wood for two different end-of-life scenarios. Biogenic and fossil GHG emissions sources included a growing forest, logging slash, softwood lumber manufacturing, residue decay and combustion, and product in the landfill. The two scenarios focused on 1) disposing of old wood and logging forests for new construction wood and 2) reusing the old construction wood instead of making new and landfilling the old wood. GHG emissions covered a 100-year time-period and were allocated to 1.0 m(3) of softwood lumber produced for two different forests and harvesting rates. Reusing old construction wood had lower GHG emissions initially. However, using new wood would eventually have lower GHG emissions because logged forests regrow and absorb carbon faster and for a longer time than unlogged forests. The paper shows the critical time delay in forest carbon re-accumulating from logging forests may be problematic in mitigating climate change in the short-term but unlikely in the long-term.According to the Life Cycle Assessment in Building and Construction: State-of-the-Art Report (2003), the dismantling and demolition stage of the building life cycle is only sometimes included in the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) when doing Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). The reason that it is less inventoried in a traditional LCA maybe because this stage is expected to have a negligible environmental impact comparing to other stages in the life cycle of the buildings. When doing a life cycle sustainability assessment considering not only environmental but also economic and social impacts, the impacts of the labor-intensive dismantling and demolition stage may not be possible to disregard anymore, due to the related process costs, health and safety of workers and the influence on the quality of the demolition materials, determining their suitability for high grade recycling. Currently, LCIs of dismantling and demolition processes are rare and reflect only the impacts to the environment and do not include data on economic and social impacts. The present study gives case specific environmental, economic and social LCI data for two demolition processes.From European Directive 2008/98/EC, it is clear that secondary cementitious materials such as fly ash (FA) and silica fume (SF) can no longer be seen as mere waste products. Indeed, a certain environmental impact needs to be allocated to them when performing a life cycle assessment (LCA). This paper presents the results of a probabilistic LCA of concrete with various FA contents (15%, 40%, 50%). To evaluate the influence of strength differences between concrete mixes, a centric loaded concrete column was chosen as functional unit in a cradle-to-gate LCA. To obtain a higher early strength compared to the mix with 50% FA, 10% SF was added to the concrete mix with 40% FA. Partial environmental burdens were assigned to FA and SF using mass and economic allocation. When comparing 1 m(3) of each concrete mix with the reference without FA or SF, the global warming potentials (GWPs) of the mixes with 15%, 40% and 50% FA increase above the reference when applying mass (GWP + 24.5%, + 40.4%, + 95.7%) instead of economic allocation (GWP - 1.9%, - 23.9%, - 11.8% when compared to the reference). LCA scores for concrete columns show a substantial benefit of the 10% FA addition due to the strength increase: GWP + 39.4% in case of economic allocation.After twenty years of development of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for roads, there remain questions surrounding the best data and methodology to use. Eurobitume's latest life cycle inventory (April 2011) uses two methods of allocating environmental impacts among petroleum co-products products. The UK publically available specification, PAS 2050 (developed from ISO 14040/44) for assessment of greenhouse gases of consumer products is finding wide use in the UK but uses a different approach. Similar allocation decisions must be made when using blast furnace slag as an aggregate. The asPECT carbon footprint calculator uses zero allocation at the factory gate for 'waste' co-products such as slags. While the adoption of a standard methodology for road LCA will assist in transparency and decision making, the impact of the chosen approach on the results has not been explored. In support of LCA method development in roads, a case study of a 'typical' UK road is presented, in which the allocation approaches outlined above are tested, and the results are checked for sensitivity to these parameters. Results show impact categories are significantly affected by allocation assumptions of both BFS and bitumen.The most efficient way to reduce the environmental impact of cement production is to replace Portland cement with alternative cementitious materials. However, a recent European directive no longer considers these products as waste but as by-products. Therefore, the impact of their production has to be considered. Within this new framework, we develop an evaluation method of their environmental impacts. Preexisting methods are first presented. A new allocation method is then proposed, based on the fact that both cement and the alternative materials, are produced by energy-intensive industries (cement iron and coal) which are all subjected to the European Union greenhouse gas emissions trading system (EU ETS). Our allocation coefficient is calculated so that the economic gains and losses are the same for all of the industries involved in these exchanges, and provides the overall environmental benefit of the exchanges. The discussion shows that whilst this method has much in common with other allocation methods it is more accurate as it allocates the environmental costs fairly over the industries involved, and more robust because of its constant value. Lastly, the technical term of the proposed equation could be employed to calculate the most environmental uses by-products could be put to.Among the various materials used in the construction sector, consumption of organic materials have a large influence on energy accounting due to their inherent energy content, known as feedstock energy. Current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) standards require that this quantity be reported in the inventory table as consumed energy. The fact that feedstock energy is considered alongside energy stocks and losses may be intuitively necessary, but there are unresolved concepts related to this issue that need further exploration. This paper aims at re-exploring the way that feedstock energy is handled in LCAs and proposes a new framework. A review of various kinds of energies and their underlying notions is presented and exposes the reasons for ambiguous meanings in the LCA method in order to evaluate the feedstock problem. This analysis shows that resource consumption indicators, inventory flows, and efficiency concepts are all confounded in the same primary energy concept. Furthermore, whereas energy stocks are currently accounted, the consequential combustion emissions are never considered. From these various observations, a new frame is proposed, individually considering energy resource depletion indicators, energy flows, and energy efficiency, as well as accounting for emission stocks using the so-called stock inventory table.The development of the bioenergy sector has led to an increasing interest in energy crops. Short rotation coppices (SRC) are forestry management systems in which fast-growing tree species are produced under intensive cultivation practices to obtain high wood chips yields. In Italy, most SRC plantations consist of poplar biomass-clones. SRC plantations can be carried out with different management systems with diverse cutting times; consequently, the cultivation system can be crucial for attaining high yields depending on: i) short and ii) medium cutting frequency. Nowadays, the larger part of Italian SRC is based on 2-year cutting short rotation forestry (SRF) but the best quality of wood chips is linked to 5-year plantation medium rotation forestry (MRF). This work compares an SRF and an MRF poplar plantation located in the Po Valley in northern Italy. In particular, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to evaluate their energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. The LCA software SimaPro 7.10 was used to create the LCA model and to assure an accurate impact assessment calculation. The analysis shows several differences between MRF and SRF in terms of fertiliser requirements and intensive agricultural activities. Results highlight that MRF produces a more sustainable wood chip production than SRF according to energy and environmental concerns. Furthermore, hot spots were identified in both SRF and MRF due to the high energy consumption and the related emissions. These hot spots were: i) mineral fertilisation; ii) mechanical weed-control; iii) harvesting and biomass transport.In the 1990s, attention was focused on saving energy and water with the aim of reducing production costs. Since the turn of this century, problems relating to the management of greenhouse gases have gradually assumed greater importance. Research has highlighted the problems that may arise regarding energy consumption in an Italian dairy chain. Using life-cycle assessment methods, the main steps along the production chain have been identified: breeding, dairy, and food store (FS). Our analysis shows that the different issues involved are often not easily reconcilable. Energy data need to undergo a careful and specific normalization process when dealing with specific data on different parameters (kWh/t(milk), kWh/t(milk) processed, kWh/m(store)(2)). This study examined a variety of production cases (2 farms, 2 dairies, and 2 FSs) located in Lombardy, northern Italy, and electric and thermal energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions were evaluated. A total of 2.8 kgCO(2)/kg(cheese) carbon dioxide emissions relating to the production process were recorded (39% breeding, 40% dairy, 1% FS). Further studies are needed in order to provide consumers with more precise and correct information (carbon labeling or green label). This may become an important element in consumer choice.Most previous optimization analyses for both short-term and long-term planning for solid waste management (SWM) overlooked global warming potential (GWP) impacts. This study integrates GWP and cost benefit criteria to carry out optimal planning of a typical SWM system - the borough of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The GaBi (R) software package was used to estimate the possible greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout the scenario-based design process. Five managerial scenarios were organized with and without the inclusion of GWP concern within such an optimization analysis for SWM. With the aid of LINGO (R) software package, the optimization models were solved sequentially to allocate different waste streams subject to the market demand and possible carbon regulation to maximize net benefit and minimize GWP, simultaneously or independently. The planning scenario with respect to a carbon-regulated environment particularly minimizes the large environmental gap in traditional cost-benefit analyses for SWM. Major finding in this study clearly indicates that simply using traditional cost-effectiveness principle or cost-benefit analysis with no GWP concern cannot compete with alternatives with GWP concerns especially in a carbon-regulated environment. The analysis eventually led to the prioritization of the Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) option before disposing of waste streams at the landfill site. Such a systems engineering approach is transferable to other SWM systems for a better planning, design, and operation in the future. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within this work, life cycle assessment modeling is used to determine top design priorities and quantitatively inform sustainable design decision-making for a prefabricated modular building. A case-study life-cycle assessment was performed for a 5,000 ft(2) prefabricated commercial building constructed in San Francisco, California, and scenario analysis was run examining the life cycle environmental impacts of various energy and material design substitutions, and a structural design change. Results show that even for a highly energy-efficient modular building, the top design priority is still minimizing operational energy impacts, since this strongly dominates the building life cycle's environmental impacts. However, as an energy-efficient building approaches net zero energy, manufacturing-phase impacts are dominant, and a new set of design priorities emerges. Transportation and end-of-life disposal impacts were of low to negligible importance in both cases.The construction industry has considerable environmental impacts through the process of manufacturing building materials and building construction. Many environmental labelling programs have been introduced to the construction industry to measure the environmental impacts, including building up the environmental profiles for building materials. Although absolute measurements of the environmental impacts can be obtained by these labelling programs through detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies, relative measurements should not be overlooked to indicate the gap between the current and the "leanest" performance. The term "lean" is often used to describe a process with less wastes, materials, human effort, time, etc. The lean concept originates from the Toyota Production System and has been applied in the automobile industry for decades. This paper therefore aims to investigate the applicability of a relative measurement of the environmental impacts for building materials by introducing the concept of "lean score". The research aim is narrowed down by choosing the carbon labelling program and the precast concrete products as research objectives. The results indicate that a "lean" benchmark can be built to offer relative measurements of carbon emissions for precast concrete products. The lean score obtained from the benchmarking process provides the improving potential that can help the construction industry move towards sustainability. The results are also useful for regulatory bodies to establish national standards to measure the environmental impacts for building materials.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the environmental impact assessment of power energy projects in Latvia. Every industrial activity and procedure influences the environment and climate change: each to a lesser or greater extent. In Latvia, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure has been carried out for more than ten years, and during these years numerous impact assessments have been conducted. The main purpose of the EIA is to assess the possible impacts of the implementation of an intended activity, or planning document, on the environment and to consequently develop proposals for the prevention or minimization of negative effects. In turn, the project shall avert violation of the requirements specified in the regulatory enactments. Currently, particular global attention, including in Latvia, is being paid to two aspects of the energy crisis energy dependency and climate change. The global experience has proven that with an increase in the consumption of energy, a deficiency of energy resources occurs. In this situation, public officials have increased the import of energy resources, rather than encourage a reduction of consumption. Consequently, the state becomes more dependent on imported energy resources. At the same time, scientists are researching alternative energy resources, and the development of new technology. Latvia is a country with limited resources. The development of the national economy is unthinkable without an increase in the production sector. In turn, the development of the production sector is connected with the intensification of production capacity and the resulting consequences to the environment. Design/methodology/approach - The paper takes the form of a literature review and a case study. Findings - The power industry in Latvia has acquired a stable position in the national economy. It is necessary to elaborate the common approach of EIA power projects. During the process of impact assessment, principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) should be implemented, which enhance the quality and efficiency of the EIA. The use of LCA principles in the process of the EIA will allow the assessment of the designed activities and environmental impact of proposed alternatives to have greater objectivity. Originality/value - The work concludes with suggestions on how to include the principles of LCA in the EIA procedure. This is to improve the impact assessment of energy projects.Environmental regulations are nowadays effective. Thus, it seems necessary to find surface coatings with justified environmental behaviour, implementing life cycle assessment of the processes. This paper aims to replace electrolytic hard chromium plating by dry coatings, carried out by thermal spraying, laser cladding and an innovative technology which combines APS and simultaneous laser remelting. The better ecological level of coatings is demonstrated by the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. In order to improve some well-known drawbacks of thermal spraying, laser remelting was combined to thermal spraying. Whereas hard chromium plating is affected by its characteristic microcrack structure, and APS by surface fatigue, laser coatings show an adhesive wear mechanism corresponding to a wear by oxidation in case of laser remelting. If the corrosion kinetics are comparable according to the selected process, mechanisms change. In case of as-sprayed sample, porosity lets the electrolyte reach the substrate, while the in situ remelted sample substrate is not reached. Concerning hard chromium replacement, laser in situ remelted NiCrBSi could be a good solution.Commercialization of carbon nanotube field emission displays (CNT-FEDs) is highly encouraged because of their conceptually proven features that offer multiple benefits to consumers. However, considering they are nanomaterial-enabled (CNT) products, large-scale deployment of CNT-FEDs must be approached cautiously because of their potential to adversely impact human health. To better understand of the holistic human health and environmental impacts related to CNT-enabled products, life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to evaluate the environmental performance of a CNT-FED. In this study, we report and discuss the results obtained from a screening level, cradle-to-grave LCA of a conceptual 15-inch CNT-FED which is assumed to be produced, used for its effective life and disposed of without recycling in the US. Results show the manufacturing stage dominates the life cycle impacts. However, the environmental performance of a CNT-FED is still much better than cathode ray tube (CRTs) and liquid crystal displays (LCDs).The largest percentage of MSW in Malaysia is contributed by the state of Selangor, with a 3,923 tons generated daily. Therefore, the aim of this study is to consider the current condition of the open dumps and sanitary landfills in Selangor from an environmental point of view. Moreover, the local authorities of Malaysia prefer to use landfills that have no liners, biogas capture, and many others as a method of getting rid of collected waste. In Malaysia, this is the first time life cycle assessment (LCA) is being used. In this study, LCA is used to weigh up different treatment scenarios and SimaPro7 (2006) software with CML 2 base line 2000 v2.04 methodology applied to model the three scenarios. Research has shown that all scenarios have a high amount of different potential impacts. Further analysis illustrated that S3 (100% sanitary landfill) is more preferable than the others because of its low contribution on eutrophication, global warming and photochemical oxidation impacts. Results also confirmed that landfilling, which is the current waste disposal method for the country, is not a preferable method environmentally. Further studies should involve other decision-making tools and a wide range of scenarios that consider the economic and social effects of solid waste management methods to introduce environmentally and economically preferable methods to the Malaysian authorities.The aim of this study was to apply a life cycle assessment (LCA) method, from cradle to gate, to quantify the environmental burdens per 1,000 kg of eggs produced in the 4 major hen-egg production systems in the United Kingdom: 1) cage, 2) barn, 3) free range, and 4) organic. The analysis was based on an approach that applied a structural model for the industry and mechanistic submodels for animal performance, crop production, and nutrient flows. Baseline feeds representative of those used by the UK egg production industry were used. Typical figures from the UK egg production industry, feed intake, mortality of birds, farm energy, and material use in different systems were applied. Monte Carlo simulations were used to quantify the uncertainties in the outputs and allow for comparisons between the systems. The number of birds required to produce 1,000 kg of eggs was highest in the organic and lowest in the cage system; similarly, the amount of feed consumed per bird was highest in the organic and lowest in the cage system. These general differences in productivity largely affected the differences in the environmental impacts between the systems. Feed production, processing, and transport caused greater impacts compared with those from any other component of production; that is, 54 to 75% of the primary energy use and 64 to 72% of the global warming potential of the systems. Electricity (used mainly for ventilation, automatic feeding, and lighting) had the second greatest impact in primary energy use (16-38%). Gas and oil (used mainly for heating in pullet rearing and incineration of dead layer birds) used 7 to 14% of the total primary energy. Manure had the greatest impact on the acidification and eutrophication potentials of the systems because of ammonia emissions that contributed to both of these potentials and nitrate leaching that only affected eutrophication potential. The LCA method allows for comparisons between systems and for the identification of hotspots of environmental impacts that could be subject to mitigation.In the year 2010 more than 24 Mt and 5 Mt of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) were generated in Spain and Portugal. Landfilling, incineration and recycling are the most common treatments. In 2010, in the Iberian Peninsula between 58-6 2 % of the MSW generated was sent to the landfill, 9-19 % was incinerated and the rest was recycled and composting (EUROSTAT, 2010). Despite landfilling is still the most common practice, waste treatment by means of an incineration process has increased. The main advantages of this type of waste treatment are the reduction of mass and volume of residues and the energy recovery. Nevertheless, incineration had gained a bad reputation owing to the environmental impact, in particular, due to the emissions of acid gases, dioxins and furans (PCDD/F) and greenhouse gases. To assess the environmental advantages and disadvantages as well as the potential environmental impacts of waste incineration a life cycle perspective is required. Within this framework is the development of FENIX-Giving Packaging a New Life, a 3-year European LIFE+ funded project. This work is just the first step within this project where a database and a model based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impacts of waste incineration in Spain and Portugal will be developed. Particularly, the aim of this paper is to review the different technologies applied to MSW solid waste incineration and to carry out both the diagnosis of the current situation at the incineration plants in Spain and Portugal and to collect data to develop the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI).The greenhouse effect and sufficient global food supply are two of the most urgent problems of mankind. Biochar produced by pyrolysis processes can fix carbon long-term and might increase yields when applied to agricultural soils. To assess environmental impacts associated with processes and products along their life cycle, the ISO 14040 has been established. Based on this approach, the mitigation of global warming by applying slow pyrolysis processes has been assessed. Pyrolysis converts biomass under absence of oxygen into three different fractions - solids, liquids and a gaseous phase. Various utilization paths are possible for the products; they can for instance substitute other (fossil) fuels in energy generation units, or the solid product can save as soil enhancer. Within a project funded by the European Union's INTERREG-programme, four different cases of using products from slow pyrolysis have been compared regarding their global warming mitigation potential. The life cycle assessment carried,out has shown that co-firing of the produced char in power plants can be a suitable way to make the energy sector less carbon intensive. But in the long term and in order to even reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the application of Biochar in the agricultural sector is a most promising alternative. However, there is still a lot of research needed to better understand the effects of Biochar in different types of soil with respect to e.g. nutrient and water management and, thus, its impacts on plant growth, fertilizer and irrigation demand.This paper lies within the integration of an eco-design method adapted to the Innovation structure at a car manufacturer. The environmental constraints in the automotive industry are more and more important (European emission standards for exhaust emissions, European directive on end-of life vehicles ...). Eco-design is a new manner to design products related to the concept of sustainable development, which combines economy and ecology and put the environmental criterion alongside the classical criterions of design. The goal of this study is to identify the specifications of a strategy for integrating the dimension "Environment". This strategy is applied in the innovation process thanks to eco-design tools which are the learning vectors for an organization, and therefore support a learning process. This process is structured with the interactions between the management of firm, the environment department, and the design team. Therefore we first make a synthesis of the different classifications of eco-design tools and use two categories: diagnosis and improvement. Second, as our goal is the integration in the Innovation structure and within a design process, we analyze some design process models and highlight the RID (Research, Innovation structure, Development) concept. Third, the main practices of several car makers are synthetized and a focus on three of them (Volvo, Ford, and Volkswagen) is made; we link their strategies with the concept of RID. Finally in the fourth part, we propose a model of a strategy for integrating eco-design practices based on the three examples and supported by a learning process.Energy consumption during the use phase often contributes significantly to the overall energy demand and to the environmental impacts of an elect(on)ic product's lifecycle. Therefore, regulations, standards, and customers tend to demand that the electronic industry supplies products with lesser consumption. However, manufacturers lack of systematic methods and tools to integrate energy consumption into their design projects from the early design phases. This paper presents the Synergico method which is meant to be incorporated in the current design practices of manufacturing companies, therefore helping design more energetically efficient electr(on)ic products without compromising the other design criteria (ergonomics, performances, usage value, quality, cost, delay, etc.). This method is based on three tools to use from the earliest design phases. Firstly, an In-Use Energy consumption indicator providing an assessment of the energy consumption during the use phase during each design phase. Thanks to the consideration of several use scenarios, it calculates values of the product's energy consumption for each product sub-assembly, and each operating mode, thus monitoring the consumption and compliance of a product with design objectives. Secondly, a Guideline-based tool adapted to electronic products. These guidelines can easily be filtered to consider only the most relevant ones according to the context (design phase, expert concerned, scope of the guideline, etc.). Thirdly, a Lifecycle Check tool to verify that no pollution trade-offs, between life cycle phases, would hinder the design of an energy efficient product with good overall environmental performances. A case study illustrates the use and integration of the Synergico method and the way it coordinates the tools.Solar absorption cooling and heating (SACH) systems currently still stay at development and demonstration stage due to the nature of the complex system. It is critical for practitioners and engineers to have a correct and complete performance analyses and evaluation for SACH systems with respects of energy, economics, and environment. Optimization is necessarily involved to find the optimal system design by considering these three aspects. However, many assumptions made in the optimization are sensitive to the energy, economic, and environmental variations, and thus the optimization results will be affected. Therefore, the sensitivity and uncertainty analysis is important and necessary to make optimization robust. This paper uses a case study to explore the influence of the uncertainties on the SACH system optimization results. The case is a SACH system for a medium size office building in Atlanta. The one parameter at a time (OAT) sensitivity analysis method was applied firstly to determine the most sensitive inputs. Monte Carlo statistical method was utilized to generate the data sets for uncertainty analysis. The optimization problem under uncertainty was then formulated and solved. Due to the uncertainty associated with system inputs, the optimization solutions were found with certain types of the distributions. In addition, the scenario analysis on electricity price does not show large sensitivity to the objectives.This paper presents a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) case study aiming at assisting Chinese Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to identify the environmental improvement opportunities. A typical refrigerator SME located in suburb of Shanghai is visited for data collection. Besides, related project reports, academic papers, and LCA software and databases are referred for necessary data. Environment inventory of manufacturing a typical Chinese household refrigerator model is calculated and analyzed. Results show that ABS components are the major contributors to energy consumption; production of rubber (for gaskets), MDI (for insulation) and packaging materials are the most water polluting processes, while phosphatizing treatment of compartment plates and door panels generates most of the waste water with phenol; the majority of CO2 (eq.) and SO2 (eq.) is emitted during ABS component and steel sheet production while the use of F-containing coolant causes most of the CFC-11(eq.) emission, which is the major cause of ozone depletion. The opportunities of environmental improvements are then assessed by sensitivity and economical analysis. It is suggested that for refrigerator manufacturing SMEs, reduction in ABS use and eco-optimized packaging solutions are the most cost-effective measures for environmental improvements. Also, there are improvement potentials in material and energy utility management of SMEs. However, considering their limited management capability and access to resources and information, SMEs needs support from the public sector in entrepreneurship and environmental education, technological and financial help and regulatory protection for sustainable development.Advances in high performance sensing and signal processing technology enable the development of failure prognosis tools for wind turbines to detect, diagnose, and predict the system-wide effects of failure events. Although prognostics can provide valuable information for proactive actions in preventing system failures, the benefits have not been fully utilized for the operation and maintenance decision making of wind turbines. This paper presents a generic failure prognosis informed decision making tool for wind farm operation and maintenance while considering the predictive failure information of individual turbine and its uncertainty. In the presented approach, the probabilistic damage growth model is used to characterize individual wind turbine performance degradation and failure prognostics, whereas the economic loss measured by monetary values and environmental performance measured by unified carbon credits are considered in the decision making process. Based on the customized wind farm information inputs, the developed decision making methodology can be used to identify optimum and robust strategies for wind farm operation and maintenance in order to maximize the economic and environmental benefits concurrently. The efficacy of proposed prognosis informed maintenance strategy is compared with the condition based maintenance strategy and demonstrated with the case study.The synthetic fuel industry is poised to experience large scale growth and profoundly affect current aviation fuel infrastructure. New candidate technologies, such as Camelina oil-derived synthetic fuel have been demonstrated to not only provide satisfactory quasi drop-in characteristics for conventional fuels, but in life cycle analysis studies have also been shown to potentially offer positive improvements relative to conventional feedstocks with respect to economic, environmental, and land use considerations. As part of a multi-year study at the Royal Military College of Canada to evaluate combustion related parameters of fuel additives and alternative fuels for gas turbine applications, a Camelina-derived synthetic fuel blend was assessed to determine potential combustion related benefits a S compared to conventional and other synthetic blends. The Combustion Chamber Sector Rig (CCSR) which houses a Rolls Royce T-56-A-15 combustion section, was utilized for the evaluation of emissions and deposits. Following combustion testing, several combustion system components, including the combustion chamber, fuel nozzle and igniter plug were analyzed for relative levels of deposit build-up. As with other Fischer Tropsch derived synthetic fuels, there were positive benefits found with Camelina blends in terms of emissions performance and deposit production tendencies.Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) is an important crop nutrient for plants and its use is increasing day by day with increase in population. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important tool in the evaluation of the environmental performance of the product/ system throughout the life cycle. In this paper, LCA has been used to evaluate the performance of the Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) fertilizer production. The system investigated includes DAP production process. The quantification of environmental emissions, material and energy usage are quantified and environmental effects are assessed. The impact categories most affected by the DAP production, are respiratory inorganics and terrestrial acid/nitrification. Interpretations have been made and recommendations are given for operational improvements in DAP productionAlthough wind technology produces no emissions during operation, there is an environmental impact associated with the wind turbine during the entire life cycle of the plant, from production to dismantling. A life cycle assessment is carried out to quantify the environmental impact of two existing wind turbines, a 1.8 MW-gearless turbine and a 2.0 MW turbine with gearbox. Both technologies will be compared by means of material usage, carbon dioxide emissions and energy payback time based on the cumulative energy requirements for a 20 year life period. For a quantitative analysis of the material and energy balances over the entire life cycle, the simulation software GEMIS (R) (Global Emission Model of Integrated System) is used. The results show, as expected, that the largest energy requirement contribution is derived mainly from the manufacturing phase, representing 84.4% of the total life cycle, and particularly from the tower construction which accounts for 55% of the total turbine production. The average energy payback time for both turbines is found to be 7 months and the emissions 9 gCO(2)/kWh. Different scenarios regarding operation performance, recycling of materials and different manufacturing countries such as Germany. Denmark and China are analysed and the energy payback time and carbon dioxide values obtained. Finally, the wind energy plant is compared with other renewable and non-renewable sources of energy to conclude that wind energy is among the cleanest sources of energy available nowadays. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cork is a natural and renewable material extracted mainly in the Western Mediterranean area. Apart from natural cork stoppers and discs, the most important product of the cork sector is cork granulate, because it represents a solution for the large quantities of waste generated during natural cork industry production and during forestry activities. Cork granulates have not yet been studied from an environmental perspective, although this ecomaterial could substitute other non-renewable and more harmful materials, such as petroleum derivates. This study presents an environmental analysis of the production of cork granulates, following the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. All the operations after forest management were analysed, from the extraction of the resources to the use of these intermediate products. Research also sought to identify the operations that contribute most to potential environmental impact during production. Inventory data was collected from three representative local producers that all use standard technology. Regarding environmental burdens, trituration and classification-sieving were the operations which contribute most to the environmental impact of granulate production; together representing between 90% and 97% of the environmental burdens for the studied categories. It was also stated that 35% of the initial raw material that enters the system became dust during production. Cork dust is a potential material that can be used as a fuel to substitute other non-renewable sources of energy such as diesel oil or electricity. However, it was observed that the use of this waste as an energy source was still at an incipient point of implantation. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Lifetime engineering is the concretisation of an innovative idea for solving the dilemma existing between an infrastructure as a long-term product and the short-term approach to its design, management and maintenance planning. Although lifetime engineering was originally developed for buildings and bridges, its principles can be readily utilised for roads. Sustainable road construction needs the assessment of Life Cycle Costs (LCC) of the structures, the encouragement of data collection for benchmarks, as well as public procurement and contract award incorporating LCC. The use of lifetime-oriented road management has become world-widely more and more widespread. Highest possible recycling rate in road construction is strived for. Several lifetime engineering elements (life cycle costing, pavement performance models, user cost calculation, internalisation of external road effects, evaluation of the actual effect of road maintenance to pavement performance etc.) are already available in Hungarian road management. Two of them (life cycle analysis and performance models) are also introduced. Life cycle analysis includes agency and road user costs, besides transformation functions for the calculation of performance parameters to performance indices. Road user costs cover vehicle operation costs, time delay costs and user costs during condition improving interventions. 5% discount rate is applied. Pavement performance models are developed on the results of yearly trial section monitoring. The 20-year long data series allows to create models in 14 road section classes for unevenness, rut depth, bearing capacity, macro and micro texture, as well as surface defects. The models have been developed as a function of traffic passed and of pavement age.The article proposes the manner of determining ecological benefits, which result from thermo insulation of the external walls of the building. In order to assign environment load the technique of life cycle assessment LCA was used, including the division into three damage categories: human health, ecosystem quality and raw materials. The production of thermo insulating materials causes the increase of the environment load, but in the thermal phase of the building usage the negative impact on the environment is reduced due to the reduction of energy demand necessary to heat. A few dozen of thermo insulation variants were examined, depending on the kind of wall, heat source and thermo insulating material. For all cases the analyzed investment turned out to be cost effective in terms of ecological aspects. In each damage category the reduction of the environment load was obtained. The ecological payback period was obtained within 0-5 years.As the major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, cities have been under tremendous pressure of energy conservation and emission reduction for decades. Community is the main unit of urban housing, public facilities, transportation, and other properties of city's land use. The construction of low-carbon community is an important pathway to realize carbon emission mitigation in the context of rapid urbanization. Therefore, an efficient carbon accounting framework should be proposed for CO2 emissions mitigation at a subcity level. Based on life-cycle analysis (LCA), a three-tier accounting framework for the carbon emissions of the community is put forward, including emissions from direct fossil fuel combustion, purchased energy (electricity, heat, and water), and supply chain emissions embodied in the consumption of goods. By compiling a detailed CO2 emission inventory, the magnitude of carbon emissions and the mitigation potential in a typical high-quality community in Beijing are quantified within the accounting framework proposed. Results show that emissions from supply chain emissions embodied in the consumption of goods cannot be ignored. Specific suggestions are also provided for the urban decision makers to achieve the optimal resource allocation and further promotion of low-carbon communities.Along with increasing concerns on environmental protection and global warming mitigation, new industrial organization modes such as "Ecoindustrial Park" and "Low Carbon Industrial Park" are emerging. Since ecoindustrial parks and low carbon industrial parks may offer multifaceted benefits to the users, it naturally follows that the sustainability assessment of the industrial parks ought to adopt a multicriteria methodology. In this paper, a multicriteria sustainable evaluation framework is proposed in combination with the life cycle analysis and applied to a low carbon and high end industrial park (LCHE) in Beijing, China. Results show that the LCHE industrial park can contribute to both energy-saving and greenhouse gas emission mitigations compared with other industrial parks. In terms of economic performance, although the economic profits are considerable, the investment per constructed area is relatively high. The results of sustainable analysis of the LCHE industrial park can thus shed light on future upgrading of industrial parks.Purpose - The paper shows how sustainable value chain analysis (SVCA) can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify misalignment between resource allocation and consumer preferences, using a case study of the Oxford Landing wine chain, from South Australia to the UK. Design/methodology/approach - The study incorporates a combination of value chain analysis (VCA) and life cycle analysis (LCA) in a single methodology to determine which activities, at each stage in the supply chain, create value (in the eyes of consumers) and the contribution of these activities to greenhouse gas emissions. Findings - The case study demonstrates the value of comparing the consumer value associated with a particular activity with the emissions associated with that activity, as this draws the attention of managers, at each stage of the supply chain, to the potential trade-offs that exist and the danger of focusing on either one (adding value or reducing emissions) in isolation. Research limitations/implications - The main limitation of the research methodology is that the study focuses on a single product (Oxford Landing) and a single chain to a single country (UK). Thus, it is difficult to generalise from the results of this single case study to the (South Australian) wine industry in general, without further information from other wineries and consumer perceptions of their brands in different parts of the world. Practical implications - The case study highlights the importance of taking a holistic view when considering the sustainability of a product, process or chain trade-offs between environmental benefits and consumer perceptions of value can have significant commercial implications. It also illustrates the potential for SVCA to be used as a guide for the allocation of research and development expenditure (public and private) in pursuit of sustainable competitive advantage. Originality/value - The study is the first to combine LCA with VCA in a context that allows researchers, practitioners and policymakers to identify areas for improvement, in what they do and how they do it.Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine what the most significant aspects of environmental sustainability in the forest biorefinery sector are and what kind of criteria should be applied to an evaluation of environmental sustainability in the forest biorefinery context. Design/methodology/approach - The topic is approached by themed interviews in Scandinavia and North America with 23 representatives from the forest and bioproducts sectors. The interviews were examined using the thematic analysis method. Findings - The study indicates that environmental sustainability may be an important driver for the forest biorefinery business. From the perspective of environmental sustainability, harvesting feedstock will be the most challenging part of the value chain to manage. Raw material availability and its sustainability, life-cycle perspective and beneficial products were the most important criteria in the environmental sustainability assessment of forest biorefinery value chain companies. Practical implications - A sector-specific guideline was formulated for the most important criteria to be included in an environmental sustainability assessment of forest biorefinery value chain companies. The criteria comprise the first step of a more elaborate evaluation framework, which can provide more accurate information about the sustainability performance of biorefinery value chain companies. The criteria can encourage companies to analyze environmental sustainability challenges holistically, increase a company's transparency for its stakeholders and offer information to investors about the environmental status of the company. Originality/value - The novelty of the study lies in the sector-specific, holistic environmental sustainability evaluation in the emerging forest biorefineries.Purpose - The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a specific example of life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to legislative measures that have far-reaching implications for economic operators. This paper aims to analyze LCA limitations for biofuels based on RED from an environmental accounting perspective. Design/methodology/approach - LCA limitations are identified on the basis of a literature review and illustrated in the specific context of RED. The limitations encountered within the study were classified into two categories: lack of data, and lack of standards. From this perspective, the LCA-based problems and their implication and possible improvements in the RED context are discussed. Findings - The study identifies that the absence of an environmental accounting that could provide periodic enterprise-specific information is a significant cause of limitations of LCA as a decision-supporting tool within RED. In turn, environmental accounting approaches address a number of initiatives that are not systematically linked with LCA research. The paper recommends that RED should provide rules to address enterprise-specific data in addition to other methodological approaches to overcome problems already discussed in the extant literature. This would enable RED to provide economic incentives more effectively and promote the application of environmental accounting systems in companies with higher quality data for LCA applications. Originality/value - This paper explains how LCA applications could be improved by the introduction of environmental accounting systems and how RED could be more effective by considering environmental accounting.Population growth and increased concentration of economic activities in urban areas pose significant challenges for sustainable development of urban regions. Our ability to make correct choices about future development will depend upon our understanding of the impact of these choices on the future quality of life of the urban inhabitants. Land use, construction material use and construction practices are among the most critical drivers of sustainability, given that where and how we choose to build will affect a range of environmental attributes including energy use, water use, air quality, waste handling, and public health, among others. The challenge is the quantification and visualization of the interdependent future consequences in the regional/urban landscape by independent decisions at the urban area. This requires a meta -model framework that integrates the outcomes resulting from growth and spatial distribution of economic and social activities. A framework that integrates land use, construction practices, transportation and air quality were given as an example.This chapter describes and demonstrates the role that thermodynamics can play in assessing the sustainability of technological activities and in improving their design. Since thermodynamics governs the behavior of all systems, it can play a crucial role in understanding fundamental physical limits of technologies and for quantifying the contribution of resources. The concept of exergy captures the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Since exergy is the common currency that flows and gets transformed in industrial and ecological systems, it allows the joint analysis of industrial and ecological systems. This insight permits accounting of the role of ecosystem goods and services in supporting human activities. Since ecosystems are critical to sustainability, accounting for their role must be a part of all methods aimed toward the analysis and design of sustainable systems. Thermodynamics provides a scientifically rigorous approach for meeting this challenge. In addition, exergy analysis of industrial processes and life cycles helps in identifying areas of maximum resource inefficiency and opportunities for improvement. This approach complements the insight obtained from assessing the impact of emissions. Case studies based on the life cycle of biofuels and nanomanufacturing are used to demonstrate the important role that thermodynamics can play in sustainability engineering.Utilizing the Life Cycle Analysis of a tomato as a case study, produce surveys in East Anglia, and household surveys of 183 urban agriculture (UA) practicing households, this chapter explores the ability of UA, in an international food market, to decrease food related greenhouse gas emissions. This study concludes that through UA participation, a decrease in an individual's tomato consumption emissions from 52.4 kg CO(2)e/yr to 11.2 kg CO(2)e/yr is achievable (equivalent of 2 classic tomatoes/person/week). UA participation, either in the form of growing tomatoes in an allotment, or relying on a semi-commercial or commercial UA shop/market stall, reduces yearly tomato consumption emissions by 44% (from a nonUA, low emission diet) and by 78% (from a supermarket diet). This chapter contributes to UK fresh produce greenhouse gas reduction. First, a direct emission comparison is drawn between UA homegrown tomatoes and purchased commodities, taking into account all identified production burdens and seasonal fluctuations. Next, utilising household survey consumption data of UA practitioners, current tomato production emissions can be calculated for an average UA-participating individual. Finally, a tomato procurement model can be derived for a UK food market with UA inclusion showing the lowest emissions by commodity and average from various procurement locations including commercial, semicommercial, and allotment forms of UA.Biodiesel is often considered to improve energy security and reduce the impact of fuel on climate change. However there are concerns about the impact of biodiesel when its life cycle is considered. The potential impact of using biodiesel rather than conventional diesel was investigated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) of rapeseed biodiesel. Biodiesel leads to reduced fossil fuel use and is likely to reduce the impact of transport on climate change. However it was found that the impact of biodiesel towards other categories, i.e. land use and respiratory inorganics, was greater than petroleum diesel. Therefore biodiesel production should be carefully managed to mitigate its impact on the environment.In the experimental station of the Thunen-Institute of Organic Farming the dairy breeds Black Holstein (BH) and Red Holstein double usage (DU) are kept in separate herds under identical conditions. By means of a material flow FARM-Model, designed with the life cycle assessment (LCA) and material flow software Umberto, an assessment from cradle to farm gate of standard environmental impact categories was undertaken. As the model reflects real farming conditions the effects of changes in animal husbandry such as varying milk yield and herd structure can be assessed. But also the effects of changes in the crop yields or even crop failures can be shown in respect to their product related environmental impact. Therefore it is possible to express the environmental impact of a product as a range of the variable farming conditions and practices. For the three assessed years product related climate impacts vary as much as 11% which is more than the difference between the two breeds. Under identical management milk from BH, the breed which has the higher milk production potential, showed a preferable environmental performance in all studied impact categories.Consumer goods manufacturers aiming to reduce the environmental impact associated with their products commonly pursue incremental change strategies, but more radical approaches may be required if we are to address the challenges of sustainable consumption. One strategy to realize step change reductions is to prepare a portfolio of innovations providing different levels of impact reduction in exchange for different levels of organizational resource commitment. In this research a tool is developed to support this strategy, starting with the assumption that through brainstorming or other eco-innovation approaches, a long-list of candidate innovations has been created. The tool assesses the potential greenhouse gas benefit of an innovative option against the difficulty of its implementation. A simple greenhouse gas benefit assessment method based on streamlined LCA was used to analyze impact reduction potential, and a novel measure of implementation difficulty was developed. The predictions of implementation difficulty were compared against expert opinion, and showed similar results indicating the measure can be used sensibly to predict implementation difficulty. The assessment of the environmental gain versus implementation difficulty is visualized in a matrix, showing the trade-offs of several options. The tool is deliberately simple - with scalar measures of CO(2) emissions benefits and implementation difficulty - so tool users must remain aware of other potential environmental burdens besides greenhouse gases (e.g. water, waste). In addition, although relative life cycle emissions benefits of an option may be low, the absolute impact of an option can be high and there may be other co-benefits, which could justify higher levels of implementation difficulty. Different types of consumer products (e.g. household, personal care, foods) have been evaluated using the tool. Initial trials of the tool within Unilever demonstrate that the tool facilitates rapid evaluation of low-carbon innovations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An environmental assessment of the management of organic household waste (OHW) was performed from a life cycle perspective by means of the waste-life cycle assessment (LCA) model EASEWASTE. The focus was on home composting of OHW in Denmark and six different home composting units (with different input and different mixing frequencies) were modelled. In addition, incineration and landfilling was modelled as alternatives to home composting. The most important processes contributing to the environmental impact of home composting were identified as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (load) and the avoided emissions in relation to the substitution of fertiliser and peat when compost was used in hobby gardening (saving). The replacement of fertiliser and peat was also identified as one of the most sensible parameters, which could potentially have a significant environmental benefit. Many of the impact categories (especially human toxicity via water (HTw) and soil (HTs)) were affected by the heavy metal contents of the incoming OHW. The concentrations of heavy metals in the compost were below the threshold values for compost used on land and were thus not considered to constitute a problem. The GHG emissions were, on the other hand, dependent on the management of the composting units. The frequently mixed composting units had the highest GHG emissions. The environmental profiles of the home composting scenarios were in the order of -2 to 16 milli person equivalents (mPE) Mg(-1) wet waste (ww) for the non-toxic categories and -0.9 to 28 mPE Mg(-1) ww for the toxic categories. Home composting performed better than or as good as incineration and landfilling in several of the potential impact categories. One exception was the global warming (GW) category, in which incineration performed better due to the substitution of heat and electricity based on fossil fuels. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Decrease of fossil fuel dependence and resource saving has become increasingly important in recent years. From this perspective, higher recycling rates for valuable materials (e.g. metals) as well as energy recovery from waste streams could play a significant role substituting for virgin material production and saving fossil resources. This is especially important with respect to residual waste (i.e. the remains after source-separation and separate collection) which in Denmark is typically incinerated. In this paper, a life-cycle assessment and energy balance of a pilot-scale waste refinery for the enzymatic treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW) is presented. The refinery produced a liquid (liquefied organic materials and paper) and a solid fraction (non-degradable materials) from the initial waste. A number of scenarios for the energy utilization of the two outputs were assessed. Co-combustion in existing power plants and utilization of the liquid fraction for biogas production were concluded to be the most favourable options with respect to their environmental impacts (particularly global warming) and energy performance. The optimization of the energy and environmental performance of the waste refinery was mainly associated with the opportunity to decrease energy and enzyme consumption. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The persistent organic pollutants (POPs) waste take the main place in the group of organic industrial waste and the residues of the POPs waste generated in the processes of the chemical industry. There are green chemistry methods and some other treatment approaches for decreasing the quantity of the organic industrial waste, but currently thermic treatment processes are the most popular alternatives. This paper summarises thermic utilisation processes with a comparison between the different technologies, stressing factors affecting their applicability and operational suitability. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can play an important role in such research. With the application of LCA for the Waste-to-Energy (WtE) technologies, their economic and environmental efficiency can be determined. Their advantages and disadvantages are examined in such a multi-component matrix. The LCA software GaBi 5 Professional is the basis for life-cycle impact assessment. The research can set up prognoses and models with LCA analyses and the conscious application of scientific methods, which can offer a prognosis for untested situations. While examining the above viewpoints, it worked out a new mathematical method which, in addition to the LCA, takes time and probability into consideration with the combination of a programming language, and which may mark a new direction for solutions and decision making in waste management. Despite the fact that chemical industry and environmental protection are closely interlocked, there is fairly poor national and international professional literature available about the two connected professions.This study investigates the cumulative energy demand (CED) of different systems for the management of urban wastewater, following the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment. In a hypothetical case study for an urban area (5,000 inhabitants), all relevant processes for wastewater collection and treatment and the construction of infrastructure are described in a substance flow model. The conventional system requires 1,250 MJ/(pe(star)a), with the operation contributing 45%, the infrastructure 7%, and the system expansion (production of mineral fertilizer and electricity) 48% to the total CED. The separation systems have a CED of 930-1,182 MJ/(pe(star)a) depending on their configuration. Results of the impact assessment show that recovering energy from the organic matter of toilet wastewater and household biowaste in a digestion process can decrease the cumulative energy demand by 13-26%. Energetic benefits of mineral fertilizer substitution are relatively small compared to the energy recovered from organic matter. Decisive parameters for the energy analysis are the amount of biowaste which is co-digested with toilet wastewater and the energy demand of the vacuum plant.This paper studies the trend in the consumption of energy and chemicals and the associated environmental impacts, for water treatment plants (WTPs) in Oslo, over the years between 2000 and 2009. The Norwegian Drinking Water Regulations stipulate that supplied water should comply with over 50 quality criteria. Abiding by the regulations and improving the water quality has its costs - economically and environmentally. Quality improvement entails, inter alia, the consumption of more chemicals, both in terms of quantity and variety, and a rise in energy consumption. In order to determine the environmental impacts of the consumption of chemicals and energy, an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out. It was observed that the impacts of chemicals have increased dramatically after 2007, courtesy of a process upgrading at one of the WTPs. Except in the years 2004 and 2007, the impacts attributable to chemicals consumption have exceeded those due to energy consumption. Global warming is the key impact in both cases, though in the case of energy consumption, abiotic depletion and acidification are also significant.Hydrogen as an energy carrier becomes more important in a future sustainable energy economy. One regenerative hydrogen production path is photobiological production by green algae "Chlamydomonas reinhardtii". This organism is proven to produce small amounts of hydrogen under certain conditions only using sunlight and water [1]. To get into competition to other production technologies a new organism, called "Design Cell", should overcome the handicaps of green algae leading to an improved organism. For cultivation of the microorganisms a photobioreactor system was developed in a laboratory scale. To collect first technical data a system analysis based on the methods of life cycle assessment was conducted to classify the current status of photobiological hydrogen, to identify potentials and to uncover weaknesses. The results were compared with other ways of hydrogen production. To develop the process to large scale applications, hydrogen production rates under sunlight illumination are estimated and a large scale reactor was designed. The assessment showed that the actual hydrogen production rates have to be increased at least by a factor of 100 to get into competition to other technologies. Scale up and sunlight illumination tests showed a lot of optimization potential, but also system limitations for large scale applications. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell AssociationDue to the emerging importance of sustainable use of natural resources, and policies requiring actions towards sustainable development, there is a demand for methodologies and tools that are able to address these new challenges. In this paper, an approach to assess sustainability impacts of alternative production chains of the forest sector is presented. The approach, which is designed for both public and private decision-makers, describes the forest sector as a set of processes by which forest resources are used to (1) produce biomass which is routed through different value-adding production chains and converted to products and (2) provide other ecosystem services. It is suggested that each production process included in a production chain will be characterised by a set of indicators covering environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainable development. The approach is demonstrated by a numerical example, in which the indicator values are determined based on the volume of wood material flowing through the processes. Sustainability impacts of policy scenarios or technological changes result from changing from one production chain to another; the impacts accumulate along the production chains. Combined cost-benefit and multi-criteria analyses are proposed to evaluate overall impacts and to compare alternative chains.Sustainability impact assessment (SIA) is a prospective, integrated assessment approach for potential impacts of policy actions. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) can be used to facilitate a multi-indicator evaluation in this framework in order to foster rational and transparent decision-making processes for SIA. Based on the outputs of the EFORWOOD project, this paper presents an exploratory MCA to a regional forest-wood chain (FWC) in Baden-Wurttemberg. This assessment is based on a set of sustainability indicators at process level for a baseline year 2005, reference futures 'A1' and 'B2' following the definition of the IPCC and a bio-energy scenario implanted into the reference future 'A1'. The indicator values were calculated by the process tool ToSIA. It is demonstrated how time steps for parts of the regional FWC (forest management, harvest and transport to the mill gate) can be evaluated, as well as the outcomes of different scenarios for a time period. For this purpose, a novel software tool, ToSIA-MCA, is used to calculate relative sustainability impact rating (SIR) based on a PROMETHEE II algorithm. Further, we performed uncertainty analysis to test the stability of ranking results in the absence of real preference information with regard to uncertainty in indicator data. By comparing different indicator weighting patterns, the sensitivity of SIR calculation was further tested. The exploratory MCA outcomes are critically evaluated against the background of assumptions, and data used in the regional case, and an outlook is given on the importance to gain stronger stakeholder involvement in real-life applications.The aim of this paper is the application of Life Cycle Assessment to the operation of the MBT facility of Ano Liossia in the region of Attica in Greece. The region of Attica is home to almost half the population of Greece and the management of its waste is a major issue. In order to explicitly analyze the operation of the MBT plant, five scenarios were generated. Actual operation data of the MBT plant for the year 2008 were provided by the region of Attica and the LCA modeling was performed via the SimaPro 5.1 software while impact assessment was performed utilizing the Eco-indicator'99 method. The results of our analysis indicate that even the current operation of the MBT plant is preferable to landfilling. Among the scenarios of MBT operation, the one with complete utilization of the MBT outputs, i.e. compost. RDF, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, is the one that generates the most environmental gains. Our analysis indicates that the exploitation of RDF via incineration is the key factor towards improving the environmental performance of the MBT plant. Our findings provide a quantitative understanding of the MBT plant. Interpretation of results showed that proper operation of the modern waste management systems can lead to substantial reduction of environmental impacts and savings of resources. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integrated Weed Management in arable crops relies on the combination of various measures for preventing, avoiding and suppressing weeds, with the aim of reducing the reliance on herbicides and their environmental impacts. As IWM requires potentially deep changes in the cropping systems, modifying e.g. the crop sequence, the strategies for soil tillage and eventually introducing mechanical weeding, it is important to perform comprehensive evaluations of IWM-based cropping system prototypes. In this study, a Life Cycle Assessment method was used to compute several environmental impacts for four variants of IWM-based cropping system tested over a pluri-annual experiment, and compared with a standard reference. When expressed per unit of cultivated area, most environmental indicators were improved in IWM-based systems, including the energy input, greenhouse gas emission, eutrophication and acidification, and ecotoxicity and human toxicity. In-field fuel consumption was a rather minor contribution to the overall energy demand and to global warming. The ranking of the tested cropping systems was different when the indicators were expressed per unit of harvested agricultural goods or per unit of farmer's income. With these two functional units, the differences among systems tended to be weaker, and some indicators of environmental impacts were higher in IWM-based systems. Indicators focusing on biodiversity and soil quality displayed few differences among systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The energy fuels used for in the Greek transport sector are made up of gasoline consumed by automobiles, diesel oil consumed by taxis, trucks, maritime transport and railroads, and jet fuel used in the aircrafts. All these fuels are hydrocarbons that emit great amounts of CO(2) which has a major impact in the global warming phenomenon. The issues relating to climate change, the soaring energy prices, and the uncertainty of future oil supplies, have created a strong interest in alternative transportation fuels. During the past decade biofuels in the form of blended gasoline and biodiesel have begun to find place in energy economy. The Greek car market shows a remarkably low rate in the penetration of biodiesel compared to the average European Union market. This work compares the environmental impacts of the use of gasoline, diesel and biodiesel in Greece using as a tool for the comparison the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The environmental impacts taken into consideration include: organic respiratory effects, inorganic respiratory effects, fossil fuels, acidification - eutrophication, greenhouse effect, ecotoxicity and carginogenic effects. From the environmental point of view, biodiesel appears attractive since its use results in significant reductions of GHG emissions in comparison to gasoline and diesel. It also has lower well-to-wheel emissions of methane. However, the use of biodiesel as transportation fuel increases emissions of PM10, nitrous oxide, nitrogen oxides (NO(x)) as well as nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous; the latter are the main agents for eutrophication. This study can be considered as an opportunity for further research and evaluate the available options for a sustainable transportation system planning in Greece. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Remarkable research has been carried out in the past decade in the field of biofuels in general and, more specifically, in the feasibility of their production. A number of studies have been published that focus on the viability of the investments on biodiesel production plants from a technical-economic perspective. The common characteristic of these studies is that they refer to medium to large-scale production plants. The principal aim of this study is to investigate the viability of a small-scale biodiesel production plant investment in Greece determining the factors and figures that rule the economics of such a plant. Having in mind that a small-scale plant offers greater opportunities for rural development and decentralization as well as that rural development is a focal point in the Greek economy, the financial performance of a small-scale biodiesel plant in Crete Island is analysed in the present work. It is believed that the results obtained may prove very useful in determining the technical and financial characteristics and parameters of similar production facilities. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The proper estimation of the energy content of the residual fraction from mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plants is essential for planning and promoting different methods to decrease its environmental impact, to lower the consumption of energy resources, and to reduce economic costs. Currently, in many countries, the residual fraction from these plants is disposed of in a landfill with few recovery actions. This paper proposes a methodology for estimating the energy content of the aforementioned fraction. To validate it, the methodology is applied to a MBT plant in Zaragoza that collects residual household waste from municipal solid waste (MSW) from 62 municipalities in four regions of Aragon - Zaragoza, Ribera Baja del Ebro, Campo de Carifiena, and Campo de Belchite. From the methodology, an energy potential of 17929.24 kJ/kg of the residual fraction from this MBT plant is estimated, which is equivalent to 100.18 ktoe per year. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper investigates the environmental aspects of a steam methane reformer technology and highlights the potential for improving the reformer through a conventional and an advanced exergoenvironmental analysis. An exergoenvironmental analysis is a complex analysis based on a combination of an exergetic analysis and a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This analysis is conducted at the component level and identifies options for reducing the overall environmental impact. To evaluate the thermodynamic performance and environmental effectiveness of the reformer and to estimate its realistic potential for improvement, it is necessary to know (a) the avoidable part of the exergy destruction (irreversibilities) within the component, and (b) the avoidable environmental impact associated with it. Improvement efforts should be then focused only on these avoidable parts. The avoidable environmental impacts associated with both exergy destruction and component-related environmental impact are calculated in the advanced exergoenvironmental analysis. As a result, some suggestions for improving the design of the reformer are made. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to establish a procedure for handling co-products in life cycle assessment (LCA) of a typical sugar cane system. The procedure is essential for environmental assessment of ethanol from molasses, a co-product of sugar which has long been used mainly for feed. We compare system expansion and two allocation procedures for estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of molasses ethanol. As seen from our results, system expansion yields the highest estimate among the three. However, no matter which procedure is used, a significant reduction of emissions from the fuel stage in the abatement scenario, which assumes implementation of substituting bioenergy for fossil-based energy to reduce GHG emissions, combined with a negligible level of emissions from the use stage, keeps the estimate of ethanol life cycle GHG emissions below that of gasoline. Pointing out that indirect land use change (ILUC) is a consequence of diverting molasses from feed to fuel, system expansion is the most adequate method when the purpose of the LCA is to support decision makers in weighing the options and consequences. As shown in the sensitivity analysis, an addition of carbon emissions from ILUC worsens the GHG balance of ethanol, with deforestation being a worst-case scenario where the fuel is no longer a net carbon saver but carbon emitter. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an integrated life cycle framework developed by combining life cycle modelling with building energy efficiency simulation software. A framework comprising of four life cycle stages was developed. This was applied to eight residential heritage buildings in Victoria, Australia. Buildings with different envelopes, structural framework, construction, age and climatic locations were evaluated and their attendant potential life cycle primary energy consumption and life cycle environmental emissions/impacts were assessed. The study also investigated different intervention strategies and recommends strategies that facilitate the highest reduction in life cycle primary energy consumption. The research found that overall, lower life cycle primary energy consumption does not necessarily lead to lower carbon emissions as carbon reduction depend on a combination of primary energy consumption, magnitude of heating and cooling, fuel mix profile and efficiency of the conventional grid. While the common perception is that old buildings often perform badly in terms of energy conservation, the relatively higher rating for some buildings found in this study shows that this is not always the case. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mauritania, one of the most dependent fish trade nations in the world, has an important octopus fishery within its EEZ. Fishing treaties between the EU and this Sub-Saharan nation have permitted 24 Spanish cephalopod trawling vessels to target this species for its export as a frozen product, mainly to Spain, Italy and Japan. This article presents Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology in order to assess and compare the environmental impacts related to the capture, processing and exportation of packed frozen octopus from this fishery to the main importing nations. Environmental results show that frozen common octopus presented a remarkable dominance of the fishing vessel activities, due to the high energy intensity of the fishery and to the fact that these activities include harvesting, processing and preliminary packaging. Post-harvesting activities presented low relative contributions in all impact categories, minimizing the food mile effect of exporting to Japan, thanks to the slow transportation through marine freight of frozen octopus. The results for fishery-specific indicators showed regular trends for trawling fleets, with high discard and seafloor impact rates. Therefore, improvement actions focused on the minimization of energy use and fishery-specific impacts and the shift to less ozone layer damaging cooling agents are the main targets in order to improve the sustainability of this product, as long as the slow freighting characteristics of the imported product are maintained. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compares three configurations of wind turbines to produce a nameplate power of 100 kW applying LCA methodology over a lifetime of 25 years. Alternatives under study are: installing twenty Endurance (EN) 5 kW, or five Jacobs (JA) 20 kW, or one Northern Power (NP) 100 kW turbines in the Halkirk region of Alberta, Canada. The comparison has been done taking life cycle energy, environment and economic aspects into consideration. Each parameter has been quantified corresponding to a functional unit (FU) of 1 kWh. Life cycle energy requirement for NP is found to be 133.3 kJ/kWh, which is about 69% and 41% less than EN and JA respectively. Global warming impact from NP is found to be 17.8 gCO(2eq)/kWh, which is around 58% and 29% less respective to EN and JA. The acidification (SO(2eq)/kWh) and ground level ozone [(VOC + NOx)/kWh] impacts from NP are also found significantly less compared to EN and JA configuration. The difference in relative environmental impacts from configurations is found to be less while performing uncertainty analysis, but does not alter the ranking of configurations. At 10% internal rate of return (IRR), electricity price for NP is 0.21$/kWh, whereas EN and JA prices are 65% and 16% higher respectively. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The concept of urban metabolism, referring to the exchange processes that produce the urban environment, has inspired new ways of thinking about how cities can be made sustainable and has also raised criticisms about the specific social and economic arrangements in which some forms of flow are prioritized or marginalized within the city. This article explores how the concept of urban metabolism travels across disciplines, using a comparative analysis of different approaches to urban metabolism within industrial ecology, urban ecology, ecological economics, political economy and political ecology. The analysis reveals six main themes emerging within interdisciplinary boundaries in relation to urban metabolism, and how this concept enables new understandings of (1) the city as an ecosystem, (2) material and energy flows within the city, (3) economic-material relations within the city, (4) economic drivers of rural-urban relationships, (5) the reproduction of urban inequality, and (6) attempts at resignifying the city through new visions of socioecological relationships. The article suggests potential areas for cross-disciplinary synergies around the concept of urban metabolism and opens up avenues for industrial ecology to engage with the politics and the governance of urban development by examining the city and its metabolism.Urban metabolism is an important technique for understanding the relationship between cities and the wider environment. Such analyses are typically performed at the scale of the whole city using annual average data, a feature that is driven largely by restrictions in data availability. However, in order to assess the resource implications of policy interventions and to design and operate efficient urban infrastructures such as energy systems, greater spatial and temporal resolutions are required in the underlying resource demand data. As this information is rarely available, we propose that these demand profiles might be simulated using activity-based modeling. This is a microsimulation approach that calculates the activity schedules of individuals within the city and then converts this information into resource demands. The method is demonstrated by simulating electricity and natural gas demands in London and by examining how these nontransport energy demands might change in response to a shift in commuting patterns, for example, in response to a congestion charge or similar policy. The article concludes by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, as well as highlighting future research directions. Key challenges include the simulation of in-home activities, assessing the transferability of the complex data sets and models supporting such analyses, and determining which aspects of urban metabolism would benefit most from this technique.With the rise of interest in urban sustainability, the question of nature is front and center. This review suggests bridging between three distinct research paths concerned with urban areas and nature: urban ecosystem services, urban metabolism and urban political ecology to forge new thinking to transition from the sanitary city of the twentieth century to the sustainable city of the twenty-first. Cities are anthropogenic creations, sourcing their materials from nearby and far-off places, transforming those materials into products, goods and the physical infrastructure of cities. Tracking that flow of nature into the built environment, and the other flows such as water, needs to be accounted for as part of nature in the city. Cities - having entirely transformed the place they are located through building - have a unique nature, a nature planted by people, and made up of plants and animals that are often different than what had existed in the first place. The services of this new assemblage of species in the city, need to be studied critically. But ultimately, cities are the product of human volition, driven by economics, culture, politics and history. Understanding those drivers - the political ecology of place - provides an interpretive framework for reconsidering the nature of cities and its place in moving from a modernist sanitary city to a gray/green sustainable city. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Cities are embedded within larger-scale engineered infrastructures (e. g., electric power, water supply, and transportation networks) that convey natural resources over large distances for use by people in cities. The sustainability of city systems therefore depends upon complex, cross-scale interactions between the natural system, the transboundary engineered infrastructures, and the multiple social actors and institutions that govern these infrastructures. These elements, we argue, are best studied in an integrated manner using a novel social-ecological-infrastructural systems (SEIS) framework. In the biophysical subsystem, the SEIS framework integrates urban metabolism with life cycle assessment to articulate transboundary infrastructure supply chain water, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission footprints of cities. These infrastructure footprints make visible multiple resources (water, energy, materials) used directly or indirectly (embodied) to support human activities in cities. They inform cross-scale and cross-infrastructure sector strategies for mitigating environmental pollution, public health risks and supply chain risks posed to cities. In the social subsystem, multiple theories drawn from the social sciences explore interactions between three actor categories-individual resource users, infrastructure designers and operators, and policy actors-who interact with each other and with infrastructures to shape cities toward sustainability outcomes. Linking of the two subsystems occurs by integrating concepts, theories, laws, and models across environmental sciences/climatology, infrastructure engineering, industrial ecology, architecture, urban planning, behavioral sciences, public health, and public affairs. Such integration identifies high-impact leverage points in the urban SEIS. An interdisciplinary SEIS-based curriculum on sustainable cities is described and evaluated for its efficacy in promoting systems thinking and interdisciplinary vocabulary development, both of which are measures of effective frameworks.Now that more than half of the world's population lives in cities, improving urban resource cycles is crucial for sustainable urban development. Currently cities are highly dependent on external supplies of water, energy, nutrients, and other materials, while local possibilities of self-production of such resources are generally overlooked. This article describes a novel method, the urban harvest approach (UHA), its rationale, and the steps toward sustainable urban resource planning. The UHA is based on the urban metabolism concept. Herein, a city is regarded to have multiple potentials in the form of untapped primary and secondary (already used) resources that can be utilized. The UHA works on the principle that urban systems and their direct peri-urban surroundings can become self-sufficient by applying three strategies: minimizing demand, minimizing outputs, and multisourcing. An elaboration of the UHA for the resource "water" at the building scale is also presented in this article. A freestanding house in the Netherlands and a similar house in Australia were studied, with a focus on indoor consumption. Results showed a 40% demand reduction when water-saving technologies were implemented. In both cases, after demand minimization, local resources were sufficient to cover the demand by recycling grey water and harvesting rainwater. These findings confirm that a multimeasure implementation according to the three different strategies is needed to achieve sustainable urban water systems. The UHA helps to structure large influences of urban context on water and other resource cycles as an aid to urban planners and water managers in designing sustainable urban areas.For informed decision making about the current state and near future of any city, it is important to consider the long-term resource use trajectory and legacy of its past. Such information is not always readily available. Urban metabolism analysis for any given time period can be challenging due to the lack of metropolitan-or city-level data, and reconstructing a time series of urban energy or material flows is seldom attempted. For the case of Melbourne, Australia, we demonstrate how time series operational energy demand and supply data can be reconstructed from original sources. Primary energy consumption is calculated based on direct and upstream energy use in common with "scope 2" standards for emissions reporting. This extends the usual treatment of energy in urban metabolism studies by (1) providing time series data and (2) attributing upstream primary energy consumption to sectors based on their direct secondary energy usage. Results indicate that the transport, commercial, manufacturing, and residential sectors have contributed most to the doubling of Melbourne's energy consumption over four decades. We discuss recent urban development history and its relation to energy consumption and briefly examine potential scenarios of and responses to future change.The potential offered by non-conventional water resources (rainwater) associated with high or low urban density in new housing in different rainfall zones (8002300?mm) was studied. Ten cities in Colombia with over 250?000 inhabitants were used as a case study. The potential of substitution of tap water by rainwater according to population groups with different socioeconomic status was estimated. This study reveals the favourable conditions for rainwater harvesting in the Colombian context, and enables the linking of supply and demand issues related to local climatic and environmental sustainability in order to integrate the use of rainwater into urban housing projects. For the current consumption scenario (greater than 160?Lcd), rainwater becomes a potential replacement for mains water in urban areas with rainfall of above 1553?L/m2/year.A Multi-sectoral Systems Analysis (MSA) model has been constructed for exploring and managing cross-sectoral impacts (both synergies and antagonisms) resulting from technology and policy interventions in the design and stewardship of city infrastructures. This MSA is based on Substance Flow Analysis. It accounts for the flows of water, nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon, and energy into, around, and out of the water, energy, food, waste-handling, and forestry sectors of city-watershed systems. Applications of the MSA to two case studies of the Metropolitan Atlanta Area in Georgia, USA, and the Greater London Area, UK, are compared. The impacts and financial benefits are assessed for four candidate technological innovations in the water sector: urine-separating toilets; pyrolysis of sewage sludge; combined food-waste and wastewater conveyance/treatment; and production of algae-based biofuels from sewage. System-wide environmental sustainability is gauged on four accounts, of attaining progressively more ambitious targets of resource savings/recovery in respect of water, energy, and nutrients (both nitrogen-and phosphorus-based). The paper closes by demonstrating how the MSA can provide assistance in framing questions of a more financial and social nature, i.e., those of 'Who reaps the rewards?' and 'Who bears the costs?' of the various prospective technological changes and (possibly) breakthroughs.The energy and material flows of a city are often described as urban metabolism (UM), which is put forward as a way to link a city's ecology and economy. UM draws parallels to the biology of individual organisms, yet the analogy is misapplied. In striving to be interdisciplinary, UM makes this organismic comparison rather than identifying the city as an ecosystem, thereby ignoring developments in ecological theory. Using inappropriate rhetoric misdirects researchers, which influences scientific investigation-from problem statements to interpretations. UM is valuable in quantifying the city's use of natural resources but does not achieve a comprehensive, integrated analysis of the urban ecosystem. To realize an interdisciplinary, perhaps transdisciplinary, understanding of urban ecology, researchers need to emphasize the essential tenets of material flows analysis, view the city as an ecosystem, and use language that properly reflects current knowledge, theory, and conceptual frameworks in the foundational disciplines.Cities can be modelled as giant organisms, with their own metabolic processes, and can therefore be studied using the same tools used for biological metabolic systems. The complicated distribution of compartments within these systems and the functional relationships among them define the system's network structure. Taking Beijing as an example, we divided the city's internal system into metabolic compartments, then used ecological network analysis to calculate a comprehensive utility matrix for the flows between compartments within Beijing's metabolic system from 1998 to 2007 and to identify the corresponding functional relationships among the system's compartments. Our results show how ecological network analysis, utility analysis, and relationship analysis can be used to discover the implied ecological relationships within a metabolic system, thereby providing insights into the system's internal metabolic processes. Such analyses provide scientific support for urban ecological management. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban sustainability assessment should integrate urban metabolism and life-cycle impact assessment to develop an integrated multi-scale framework for evaluating resource depletion and damages to human health and environmental quality. A streamlined framework can be developed by employing emerging neighborhood-scale data, improving resource depletion and damage to human health and environmental quality characterizations, including socio-demographic characteristics, and integrating methods for making decisions with uncertainty. Foundational elements and an analytical path exist to integrate urban metabolism and lifecycle impact assessment in a streamlined manner. Urban sustainability practitioners must eventually develop new methods for integrating social, institutional, and cultural forces instead of focusing on physical systems.The integrated study of energy and urban systems has recently become a critical component of sustainability research and policy. Increasing urbanization of human societies combined with intense energy demands of modern economies have driven a recognition that sustainable practices require a systems approach to both the study and application of sustainability principles. Urban metabolism has emerged as a leading methodology for quantifying energy consumption and use patterns in urban environments. Though typically applied as a method of accounting for total energy and materials inputs and outputs into cities, its interdisciplinary history and methods allow urban metabolism to be expanded in ways that will allow more comprehensive and integrated assessment of the patterns and processes of urban energy systems. In this article, we review the concept of urban metabolism-including its two typical approaches: mass balance and "emergy" methods-and offer a means to expand urban metabolism into a platform that incorporates socioeconomic analysis, policy analysis, and additional quantitative methodologies (such as life cycle assessment). This expanded urban metabolism framework is more comprehensive analytically and builds upon the documented capacity of traditional urban metabolism to account for total energy and materials flows of cities to provide an integrated platform for analysis of both energy patterns and the causal processes that govern energy in contemporary cities. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article is an intellectual history of two enduring binariessociety-nature and city-countrysideand their co-identification, told through evolving uses of the concept of urban metabolism. After recounting the emergence of the modern society-nature opposition in the separation of town and country under early industrial capitalism, I interpret three ecologiessuccessive periods of urban metabolism research spanning three disciplines within the social sciences. The first is the human ecology of the Chicago School, which treated the city as an ecosystem in analogy to external, natural ecosystems. The second is industrial ecology: materials-flow analyses of cities that conceptualize external nature as the source of urban metabolism's raw materials and the destination for its social wastes. The third is urban political ecology, a reconceptualization of the city as a product of diverse socio-natural flows. By analyzing these three traditions in succession, I demonstrate both the efficacy and the limits to Catton and Dunlap's distinction between a human exemptionalist paradigm and a new ecological paradigm in sociology.With accelerating global changes, cities have to cope with growing pressures, especially for resource supply. Cities may be considered as resources reservoirs and producers of secondary resources. This paper introduces the concept of urban harvesting as a management tool to change inefficient linear urban resource usage and waste production into sustainable urban metabolism. The Urban Harvest concept includes urban metabolism and closing urban cycles by harvesting urban resources. The purpose of this study was to quantify the potentials to harvest water and energy at different scales. We investigated potentials for the Netherlands. Results show that at national scale, potentials can cover up to 100% of electricity demand, 55% of heat demand and 52% of tap water demand. At neighborhood level, similar percentages were found for energy. Only 43% of water demand was achieved, due to fact that treatment measures were not considered. These results indicate the large potential of cities as providers of their own resources. Therefore urban resources management is a key element of future city design towards more resilient cities. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper, results are reported of a technology assessment of the use and integration of decentralized energy systems and storage devices in an urban renewal area. First the general context of a different approach based on 'rethinking' and the incorporation of ongoing integration of coming economical and environmental interests on infrastructure, in relation to the sustainable urban development and regeneration from the perspective of the tripod people, technology and design is elaborated. However, this is at different scales, starting mainly from the perspective of the urban dynamics. This approach includes a renewed look at the 'urban metabolism' and the role of environmental technology, urban ecology and environment behavior focus. Second, the potential benefits of strategic and balanced introduction and use of decentralized devices and electric vehicles (EVs), and attached generation based on renewables are investigated in more detail in the case study of the 'Merwe-Vierhaven' area (MW4) in the Rotterdam city port in the Netherlands. In order to optimize the energy balance of this urban renewal area, it is found to be impossible to do this by tuning the energy consumption. It is more effective to change the energy mix and related infrastructures. However, the problem in existing urban areas is that often these areas are restricted to a few energy sources due to lack of available space for integration. Besides this, energy consumption in most cases is relatively concentrated in (existing) urban areas. This limits the potential of sustainable urban regeneration based on decentralized systems, because there is no balanced choice regarding the energy mix based on renewables and system optimization. Possible solutions to obtain a balanced energy profile can come from either the choice to not provide all energy locally, or by adding different types of storage devices to the systems. The use of energy balance based on renewables as a guiding principle, as elaborated in the MW4 case study, is a new approach in the field. It may enhance existing communities, and in some cases result in both the saving and demolition of parts of neighborhoods, which were not foreseen, while at the same time direct introduction of flexible appliances within the energy system for (temporary) storage. It is concluded that the best achievable energy balance in the MW4 area consists of an elaboration in which a smart grid is able to shift the load of flexible devices and charge EVs via smart charging while energy generation is based upon the renewables biomass, wind, tides and the sun. The introduction of new sustainable technologies makes a protected environment for development evident. As for system configuration, the choices arise mainly from technical and social optimisation. In fact, the social, or user-related criteria will be decisive for enduring sustainability.Sustainable urban materials management is significant for environmental sustainability. This study identifies key economic sectors for sustainable urban materials management using urban physical input-output (PIOT) table and hierarchical cluster analysis method to mitigate urban air pollutants (comprising CO2, SO2 and NOx) and examines uncertainties. Suzhou city in China is taken as an example. Key economic sectors in Suzhou considering direct amount are production and supply of electric and heat power, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals, services, other manufacturing, textile, nonmetallic mineral products and chemistry, while key economic sectors considering accumulative amount are agriculture, construction, production and supply of electric and heat power, services and smelting and pressing of ferrous metals. Uncertainties for sustainable urban materials management are consistent with the development stage of the economy. Thus, when constructing urban PIOT for a particular city based on monetary input-output table (MIOT) of another city or province, the development stage of the city or province whose MIOT is used should be similar to that of the particular city. If not, lower and upper limits for the development stage should be set to investigate uncertainties. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article, we investigate the changing role of the Danube river in relation to urban resource use, transport and land use for the case of nineteenth and early twentieth century Vienna. Vienna makes a good case study due to its geographical position as a continental city and its dynamic development of population numbers and transport infrastructure in the nineteenth century. We trace the amount of energy used in the city and identify a shift from a biomass-based energy supply to the large-scale use of coal. Along with this shift went a change in the Danube's role as transport route: while until the 1870s, the Danube was the most important freight transport route, river transport lost importance after the great Danube regulation in 1875, and the railway took over. The river was the most important route for providing fuel wood well into the nineteenth century: Vienna drew wood from remote areas situated upstream along the Danube to the West of the city. Only after the railway connection to Northern coal deposits in the 1850s could Vienna's energy base shift to coal. Finally, we investigate how land use in the city was affected by resource consumption and the river regulation. Wood use around the city was subject to legislative protection and was only little affected by Vienna's resource demand. On the other hand, the Danube river regulation heavily impacted urban land use by supplying new areas suitable for settlement expansion.Throughout its long history from the fifth century B.C. until today, the city of Athens managed to satisfy a gradually increasing urban demand for water supply with reserves obtained by the diversion of freshwater. At first, the water was displaced from the adjacent territories and with time from more distant basins, extending the water imprint of the city on its hinterland. This article traces the history of the development of successive water supply infrastructures, which has resulted in the current situation where Athens controls a significant amount of the water reserves of two (in a total of fourteen) Greek River Basin Districts (Attica and Western Sterea Ellada). With the exception of a short period of drought (1989-1993), no serious effort has ever been made by the decision makers to slow down the increase of urban per capita consumption in the city. The water imprint of Athens is also linked to the disposal of wastewater in the coastal waters of the Saronic Gulf, since wastewater treatment has been established from 1985 onwards. New lines of thinking are suggested for meeting the needs of the still-growing city of Athens without further increasing its water imprint.Today's climate and environmental problems represent an increasing challenge for cities, especially for those that are experiencing a rapid urban expansion and population growth. It is proposed that current climate and environmental conditions are better understood from a metabolic assessment of inflows and outflows of energy and material. This type of evaluation has been carried out for different cities and for diverse metabolic aspects, but it has been mostly absent in Latin America. This article starts with a general presentation of the current state and challenges for Latin American cities. It then introduces the main aspects of urban metabolism analysis and offers an initial comprehensive comparative estimate of inflows and outflows of Latin American megacities: Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Some of the main characteristics of climate change plans are then discussed and a brief comparative analysis between mitigation actions and existing metabolic dynamics is presented. The paper concludes with some considerations and suggestions for the urban future and the plausible forthcoming challenges and opportunities.Climate change, population growth and increased consumption, coupled with urbanization, are all placing increased pressure on water management. This global challenge can often best be addressed at the local level, e.g. in cities by optimizing the role of civil society. Although there are approaches for assessing the sustainability of countries and cities, there is no dedicated framework for the assessment of the sustainability of urban water management. We have therefore compiled a comprehensive list of indicators (the city blueprint) for this. The city blueprint is proposed as a first step towards gaining a better understanding and addressing the challenges of integrated urban water management (IUWM). City blueprints will enable the IUWM of cities to be compared, and stimulate the exchange of success stories (good practices) between cities to address the enormous IUWM challenges which lie ahead. The city blueprint provides a quick scan and baseline assessment. It comprises elements from a variety of methodologies, such as water footprint, urban metabolism and ecosystem services. The indicators have been subdivided into eight broad categories, i.e. (1) water security following the water footprint approach developed by Hoekstra and Chapagain (2007), (2) water quality, which includes surface water and groundwater, (3) drinking water, (4) sanitation, (5) infrastructure, (6) climate robustness, (7) biodiversity and attractiveness and (8) governance. Experience using city blueprints for the cities of Rotterdam, Maastricht and Venlo (in the Netherlands) have been included as practical examples. It was concluded that simplicity (ease of calculation and data availability), transparency and ease of communication makes the blueprint a valuable tool for policy makers, decision makers and resource managers as a first step in the process of understanding, envisioning, developing and implementing measures to transform the water management of cities. The best results are obtained when all the stakeholders are involved and connected right from the start.Cities are considered major contributors to global warming, where carbon emissions are highly embedded in the overall urban metabolism. To examine urban metabolic processes and emission trajectories we developed a carbon flux model based on Network Environ Analysis (NEA). The mutual interactions and control situation within the urban ecosystem of Vienna were examined, and the system-level properties of the city's carbon metabolism were assessed. Regulatory strategies to minimize carbon emissions were identified through the tracking of the possible pathways that affect these emission trajectories. Our findings suggest that indirect flows have a strong bearing on the mutual and control relationships between urban sectors. The metabolism of a city is considered self-mutualistic and sustainable only when the local and distal environments are embraced. Energy production and construction were found to be two factors with a major impact on carbon emissions, and whose regulation is only effective via ad-hoc pathways. In comparison with the original life-cycle tracking, the application of NEA was better at revealing details from a mechanistic aspect, which is crucial for informed sustainable urban management.The Future Cities Laboratory is a trans-disciplinary research center focused on sustainability in the global frame. It started as a think-tank composed of nine individual urban research modules that converged towards a common goal: to understand the city as a complex system and to identify methods to design, produce, manage, maintain, and inhabit the city in order to increase its sustainable performance. The Future Cities Laboratory is based in both Singapore and Zurich and works on the building technology scale (small), the urban design scale (medium), and the territorial planning scale (large). It has adopted the idea of urban metabolism as a conceptual framework and focuses on the consequences of resource allocation, distribution, and deployment over time. It has adapted the principle of stocks and flows and specifically explores those of energy; materials, water, people, capital, and information. A simulation platform stores, combines, visualizes and communicates the findings to stakeholders. Three assistant professors in architecture and construction, urban design, and territorial planning have built up groups in Singapore. While a majority of the research projects focus on Singapore and the surrounding area, more than 100 researchers are investigating 22 cities, mainly in a broad belt around the north and south of the equator where the most intense urban population growth is predicted to occur.Urban metabolism (UM) is an accounting of inputs into urban systems, the work that gets done and the waste that results from the urban system using those inputs. To date, accounting has been limited to energy, materials, water, nutrients and waste that enter and leave a city at the city scale. This chapter suggests that for UM to be of use in sustainability, UM needs to be downscaled to the census block (for socio-demographic understanding of the users of energy), by sector (to understand how the economy uses energy) and to include life cycle analysis of economic key sectors.This chapter provides an overview of the diverse and significant links between urban water and energy use. It is motivated by the rapidly increasing energy use in Australian urban water systems with resultant cost and environmental impacts. The chapter identifies opportunities for urban water management in Australia to contribute far more substantially to the reduction of water-related energy use. In particular, this includes energy use for water heating and cooling for residential, industrial, commercial and other purposes. In 2001, water-related energy use in California comprised 19 and 32% of total electrical and natural gas use respectively. Australia is likely to be of similar magnitude. Despite the significance, the connections are poorly understood and largely ignored. This is possibly because many of the influences are indirect, difficult to measure, change regularly and are outside the typical boundary of urban water responsibilities. Additionally, there is a current lack of an overall analytical structure within which to consider, let alone manage, the interconnections. The chapter broadly describes how the water-energy nexus connects to other sustainability issues together with the concept of urban metabolism which is perceived as critical to providing a structure for analysis. Finally, the chapter reflects on future profiles and implications in a future constrained by water and energy simultaneously.The developments of several current and future ecocities have been comparatively assessed as to their environmental benefits of preservation or restoration of the ecological and hydrological (water reuse) functionality of their surface water bodies and social benefits such as carbon emissions reduction, recreation, and resource recovery. These evaluation categories are, in addition to economic assessment, the key components of the Triple Bottom Line assessment of sustainability. They are based on the urban metabolism concept. The assessed urban water developments include downtown San Antonio (TX, USA), Treasure Island in San Francisco and Sonoma Mountain Village (CA, USA); Hammarby Sjostad (Sweden); Tianjin, Qingdao and Dongtan (China); and Masdar (UAE). Because of their frugality with respect to energy and water requirements, the 'new cities' can be built in 'hostile' environments such as arid areas with poor soils or decontaminated brownfields. The analysis revealed some problems with the lack of macroscale measures, models, and indices for some key components of the triple bottom line assessment that should be investigated and solved by research such as what is the limit of recycle to prevent accumulation of some harmful pollutants within the system, what are the thresholds, and what is the best distributed/hybrid configuration of the water/stormwater/used water management in the Cities of the Future, considering general and local aspects.With the increasing metabolic throughput, the city as a giant organism causes resource consumption and environmental pollution, which become a bottleneck for urban ecological systems to develop healthily. Using Beijing as an example, we adopt the material flow method to account for resource consumption and waste emissions during the urban metabolic process. Combined with a monetary input-output table (MIOT) for Beijing in 2002, we compile a physical input-output table (PIOT) and build an ecological network model of the urban metabolic system including 45 nodes and 1761 network paths. Using flow analysis and utility analysis methods of ecological network, we can study the complex relationships and hierarchical structure to reveal the crux that results in the disorder of the urban metabolic process; thus, it can provide a scientific basis for healthy development of urban ecological systems. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of School of Environment, Beijing Normal University.Carbon fluxes scenario within urban areas plays an important role in the global carbon cycle, which is critical for the adjustment of urban development activities influencing our living environment. Adapting network environ theory, a generic metabolic model is developed in this study for carbon metabolism in urban areas, in which compartmental utility analysis and system performance assessment are featured. Taking carbon dynamic of Hong Kong as a case study, the metabolic flows within urban carbon balance are illustrated though two analogous input/output networks. Based on this, the compartmental mutual relationships between different urban sectors are addressed and the overall properties of the city's carbon metabolism are aggregately evaluated. Our findings showed that each metabolic component has its specific mutual relations with other components connected, playing a unique role within the ecological system. As to Hong Kong's case, specifically, the metabolic system is considered self-mutual and stable when incorporating its interactions with its supporting environment. In light of these insights, potential extensions and applications of the network-based metabolic model in future are discussed. The recommendation is that the tracking of interactive relationships and pathways from network environ perspective be incorporated into present urban metabolism study for a more comprehensive sustainable urban design. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of School of Environment, Beijing Normal University.The natural features and patterns of "Eight water Chang'an" is one of important symbols of the Tang Dynasty Culture,This paper discusses from the urban planning level the necessity of constructing the "Chang'an eight water" and its basic principles and methods, explores ways and means to achieve the objective from two levels of the long-term planning strategy and the gradual implementation. The paper propose in the course of restoration "Chang'an eight water" urban landscape basal, an overall planning must be developed from the perspective of urban water environment to change the linear metabolic pattern, and to construct the urban water system recirculating network. With the existing situation of urban water environment, trying to solve on-site problems of urban rain, sewage purification from the self-circulation. Considering the integrated relations among urban water catchment, water storage, water diversion projects and making them penetration with each other, from the point to surface progressively recovering the city "metabolic function" as a basic ecological node to improve the urban living environment.Cities worldwide are challenged by a number of urban water issues associated with climate change, population growth and the associated water scarcity, wastewater flows and stormwater run-off. To address these problems decentralised solutions are increasingly being considered by water authorities, and integrated urban water management (IUWM) has emerged as a potential solution to most of these urban water challenges, and as the key to providing solutions incorporating decentralised concepts at a city wide scale. To incorporate decentralised options, there is a need to understand their performance and their impact on a city's total water cycle under alternative water and land management options. This includes changes to flow, nutrient and sediment regimes, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and the impacts on rivers, aquifers and estuaries. Application of the IUWM approach to large cities demands revisiting the fundamental role of water system design in sustainable city development. This paper uses the extended urban metabolism model (EUMM) to expand a logical definition for the aims of IUWM, and discusses the role of decentralised systems in IUWM and how IUWM principles can be incorporated into urban water planning.The l(1) minimization problem (Lasso) is a basic and critical problem in sparse representation and its applications. Among the solutions, Homotopy is an efficient and effective algorithm. In this paper, we propose a novel kernel algorithm based on Homotopy (KHomotopy) to solve the Lasso problem in kernel space. Then we integrate it in the well known Sparse Representation based Classification (SRC) framework. The proposed method is applied to the object classification problem, and compared with other kernel SRC methods and kernel SVM. Experiments on the CalTech101 and the Flower17 databases show that KHomotopy has the best overall performance in accuracy and speed, which outperforms both linear SRC and KSVM, and is better than or comparable to two existing kernel SRC algorithms.Investigating impacts of urban solid waste recycling on urban metabolism contributes to sustainable urban solid waste management and urban sustainability. Using a physical input-output model and scenario analysis, urban metabolism of Suzhou in 2015 is predicted and impacts of four categories of solid waste recycling on urban metabolism are illustrated: scrap tire recycling, food waste recycling, fly ash recycling and sludge recycling. Sludge recycling has positive effects on reducing all material flows. Thus, sludge recycling for biogas is regarded as an accepted method. Moreover, technical levels of scrap tire recycling and food waste recycling should be improved to produce positive effects on reducing more material flows. Fly ash recycling for cement production has negative effects on reducing all material flows except solid wastes. Thus, other fly ash utilization methods should be exploited. In addition, the utilization and treatment of secondary wastes from food waste recycling and sludge recycling should be concerned. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urbanization is a demographic, economic, and land transformation process. Building construction and operation are integral aspects of urban land use change and contribute to material and energy resources consumption and the resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in urban areas. In this paper, we ask two questions regarding the urbanization process: 1) Do the land, material, and energy use efficiencies associated with the construction and operation of buildings increase over time? 2) Do the gains in resource use efficiencies offset the increases in resource demands due to the magnitude of urbanization? To answer these questions, we use a systematic approach similar to a material flow analysis and apply it to the Pearl River Delta, a rapidly urbanizing region in China. We use a combination of satellite data and official statistics to evaluate changes in urban population density and building density from 1988 to 2008. Both density measures decrease from 1988 to 2003; after 2003, building density increases while population density continues to decline. We also track the indirect impacts of urban land expansion on material and energy demands and associated CO2 emissions using concrete and heating/cooling as proxies for building construction and operation, respectively. Throughout the study period, structural changes and efficiency gains decrease the demand per unit floor area for both building materials and energy. However, the efficiency gains are outstripped by the magnitude of urban expansion, therefore leading to an increase in the demand for resources and CO2 emissions per capita. Our results show that focusing only on gains in efficiency for individual buildings without considering the scale of urban expansion results in underestimate of the cumulative energy, material, and greenhouse gas emissions impacts of urbanization. We emphasize the distinction between the rates versus the accumulations of these impacts over spatial and temporal scales. We discuss the relevance of the Environmental Kuznets approaches to tackling environmental impacts that are cumulative in nature and may lead to irreversible changes in the environment. We conclude that tracking the energy, materials, and emissions impacts of urbanization requires a multi-scale approach that ranges from the individual building to the urban region. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

 Naturalised, but not yet invasive plants, pose a nascent threat to biodiversity. As climate regimes continue to change, it is likely that a new suite of invaders will emerge from the established pool of naturalised plants. Pre-emptive management of locations that may be most suitable for a large number of potentially invasive plants will help to target monitoring, and is vital for effective control. We used species distribution models (SDM) and invasion-hotspot analysis to determine where in Australia suitable habitat may occur for 292 naturalised plants. SDMs were built in MaxEnt using both climate and soil variables for current baseline conditions. Modelled relationships were projected onto two Representative Concentration Pathways for future climates (RCP 4.5 and 8.5), based on seven global climate models, for two time periods (2035, 2065). Model outputs for each of the 292 species were then aggregated into single 'hotspot' maps at two scales: continental, and for each of Australia's 37 ecoregions. Across Australia, areas in the south-east and south-west corners of the continent were identified as potential hotspots for naturalised plants under current and future climates. These regions provided suitable habitat for 288 and 239 species respectively under baseline climates. The areal extent of the continental hotspot was projected to decrease by 8.8% under climates for 2035, and by a further 5.2% by 2065. A similar pattern of hotspot contraction under future climates was seen for the majority of ecoregions examined. However, two ecoregions - Tasmanian temperate forests and Australian Alps montane grasslands - showed increases in the areal extent of hotspots of >45% under climate scenarios for 2065. The alpine ecoregion also had an increase in the number of naturalised plant species with abiotically suitable habitat under future climate scenarios, indicating that this area may be particularly vulnerable to future incursions by naturalised plants.In Central China, the obvious climate change has happened along with global warming. Based on the observational analysis, the climate change has significant effects, both positive and negative, in every field within the study area, and with the harmful effects far more prevalent. Under the scenario A1B, it is reported that temperature, precipitation, days of heat waves and extreme precipitation intensity will increase at respective rates of 0.38 degrees C per decade, 12.6 mm per decade, 6.4 d and 47 mm per decade in the 21st century. It is widely believed that these climate changes in the future will result in some apparent impacts on agro-ecosystems, water resources, wetland ecosystem, forest ecosystem, human health, energy sectors and other sensitive fields in Central China. Due to the limited scientific knowledge and researches, there are still some shortages in the climate change assessment methodologies and many uncertainties in the climate prediction results. Therefore, it is urgent and essential to increase the studies of the regional climate change adaptation, extend the research fields, and enhance the studies in the extreme weather and climate events to reduce the uncertainties of the climate change assessments.This study investigates the modulation of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) on the predictability of interannual early summer south China rainfall (SCR) using high-quality station rainfall data. Of particular interest is the difference in impact between negative and positive phases of the PDO on the predictability of interannual early summer SCR. A clear difference in the correlation between the interannual early summer SCR and the preceding sea surface temperature (SST) over the Pacific Ocean appears in negative and positive phases of the PDO. In the negative PDO phase, the correlation between interannual early summer SCR and SST is dominated by a pattern with significant negative correlations in the subtropical western North Pacific and southeast Pacific and significant positive correlations in the tropical central Pacific. However, in the positive PDO phase, significant positive correlations are observed in the tropical eastern Pacific. It is found that, for each PDO phase, the preceding SST anomalies in some regions in the Pacific may act as predictors of the interannual early summer SCR. As such, a two-regime regression model for the relationship between interannual early summer SCR and preceding SST anomalies is established based on the negative and positive PDO phases using respective multiple linear regression models. Results suggest that the interannual early SCR is more predictable in PDO positive phase than in negative phase. It offers a support for the argument that a segmented statistical forecasting approach associated with the decadal modulation effect of the coupled ocean atmospheric mode should be adopted to forecast the early summer SCR.Long-term advanced very-high-resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data with a resolution of 0.04 degrees provided clearer views of sea surface temperature (SST) warming and variation associated with ENSO in the Taiwan Strait (TS) during wintertime (1981-2013). Over the 33 year period, the spatial average of winter SST warming in the TS reached to 3 degrees C. From 1981-2001, the SST exhibited an increasing trend, with the fastest warming taking place from 1991-2001 after which it seemed to pause. From 2002-2012, the SST showed a cooling trend (-0.08 degrees C/yr). Spatial variation of the warming was distinct, with the highest values concentrated in the winter fronts region, formed by the cold China Coastal Current (CCC) and the warm Kuroshio Branch (KB), indicating northwestward movements of the winter fronts. Influence of ENSO events on winter SST was significant, with higher SST in the CCC region in El Nino years. Temporal SST EOF results in modes 1 and 2 show a long-term warming trend and interannual variations, respectively. Consequently, the combined impacts of global ocean warming and climate variability in future will result in increasing the uncertain of SST variability in the TS.The Himalayas are presently holding the largest ice masses outside the polar regions and thus (temporarily) store important freshwater resources. In contrast to the contemplation of glaciers, the role of runoff from snow cover has received comparably little attention in the past, although (i) its contribution is thought to be at least equally or even more important than that of ice melt in many Himalayan catchments and (ii) climate change is expected to have widespread and significant consequences on snowmelt runoff. Here, we show that change assessment of snowmelt runoff and its timing is not as straightforward as often postulated, mainly as larger partial pressure of H2O, CO2, CH4, and other greenhouse gases might increase net long-wave input for snowmelt quite significantly in a future atmosphere. In addition, changes in the short-wave energy balance such as the pollution of the snow cover through black carbon or the sensible or latent heat contribution to snowmelt are likely to alter future snowmelt and runoff characteristics as well. For the assessment of snow cover extent and depletion, but also for its monitoring over the extremely large areas of the Himalayas, remote sensing has been used in the past and is likely to become even more important in the future. However, for the calibration and validation of remotely-sensed data, and even-more so in light of possible changes in snow-cover energy balance, we strongly call for more in-situ measurements across the Himalayas, in particular for daily data on new snow and snow cover water equivalent, or the respective energy balance components. Moreover, data should be made accessible to the scientific community, so that the latter can more accurately estimate climate change impacts on Himalayan snow cover and possible consequences thereof on runoff. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents research into four key stakeholders in flood risk management in Australia: local councils, the insurance industry, the State Emergency Service (SES), and local residents; examining the perception of their own roles and responsibilities, and those of the other stakeholders. Key informant interviews were conducted in four locations-Brisbane and Emerald, in Queensland, Dora Creek, in New South Wales, and Benalla, in Victoria. We find that understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder varied considerably between research participants. Insurance representatives felt their concerns about increasing flood risk costs were unheeded until the 2010-2011 floods made them the "canary in the coal mine". Councils felt they had limited options for reducing flood risk. SES representatives felt they were too relied upon for event response, with requests for assistance outstripping their capacity to assist, and many residents were uncertain how to prepare for flood, relying on emergency agencies and the local council to protect them. Key lessons for flood risk management in Australia are (a) an urgent need for all stakeholders to better understand each others' roles and responsibilities; and (b) residents must take greater responsibility for their own personal protection. Only then can the vision of shared responsibility presented by the 2009 National Strategy for Disaster Resilience be achieved.Climate change seems likely that will greatly affect natural protected areas and other vulnerable areas such as Mediterranean. Thus Aiguamolls de l'Emporda can be regarded as a key case study to assess current knowledge and perceptions of the potential climate change effects on the coastal population and economies in the Spanish Mediterranean region. This study finds out that it is essential to gather and integrate local traditional knowledge with scientific knowledge in order to develop successful responses to climate change. Furthermore, it supports the position that vulnerability analysis must be participatory and must include social, cultural, environmental, economic and political dimensions, like it was the case in this research. According to the quantitative and qualitative data gathered, major climate change effects such as increase in air temperature over the past few decades, a decrease in precipitation but increase in its intensity, the increase in the severity of droughts, and the decrease in biodiversity and ecosystem services are the most pressing climate change effects and serious threats to the observed area. In addition to this, the location of the coastal municipalities (their exposure) also makes them directly vulnerable to coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion and sea level rise. Stakeholders also found that climate change adaptation is needed and this finding may suggest that even if cost of adaptation is high, further losses to the economy and ecosystems might be even higher. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It can be argued that there is presently a disparity between the theory of coastal climate change adaptation and the large-scale or mass implementation with respect to adaptation to sea level rise. From a theoretical perspective, rising sea levels will effectively move the coastline landward and hence the most seaward parts of the built environment, which often feature the highest physical asset value and intensity-and hence economic density, will become inundated more often and therefore perhaps need to be relocated landward under the guidance of planned retreat policies. By contrast, evidence of active large-scale planned retreat policies being developed and implemented is sparse, and often being rejected in favour of coastal protection strategies. It is argued here that this lack of uptake of coastal retreat strategies is partially a result of a phenomena coined here as 'asset anchoring' where major community infrastructure acts to anchor seaside communities in place and inhibit the implementation of coastal retreat strategies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article reflects upon the use of participatory 3-dimensional mapping (P3DM) for facilitating the collaboration of different castes in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). Unequal power relationships amongst upper and lower castes has indeed been identified has a major driver of people's vulnerability to natural hazards, including the negative effects of climate change, in Nepal and elsewhere in South Asia. However, this does not prevent the members of all these castes, including the lowest untouchables, to display significant capacities in facing these natural hazards and changes in climate patterns. It is therefore similarly important to harness those capacities and address the unequal power relationships underpinning vulnerability. Achieving these goals requires fostering dialogue amongst upper and lower castes as well as with other stakeholders of DRR and CCA, e.g. scientists, NGOs, government agencies, which often tend to work with a single caste because it is easier. P3DM provides a platform for such a dialogue as it makes the knowledge of every caste tangible and credible to others. This proves essential in both assessing and planning for reducing the risk of disasters and adapting to climate change. This article particularly documents activities conducted in a small village of the Terai plain of Nepal frequently affected by flooding. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An increasing number of studies have compared climate change adaptation policies within and between different countries. In this paper we show that these comparative studies suffer from what is known as the "dependent variable problem' - the indistinctness of the phenomenon that is being measured, and disagreement on its scope and boundaries. This problem has been signaled in other scientific fields where it proved to hamper meaningful comparisons and policy evaluations, transnational learning, and policy transfer. This paper aims to raise consciousness of the dependent variable problem in comparative studies on climate change adaptation policy by exploring its origins and proposes ways to deal with it. Three main sources of the problem are discussed: (1) conceptual indistinctness of adaptation policy and the heterogeneity and lack of consistency of what is being compared between cases. (2) Inadequate research designs to compare cases. (3) Unclear indicators and explanatory variables to compare across cases. We propose a way to operationalize the concept of adaptation policy, provide a narrower description of the research designs for policy change or outcomes analysis, and finally discuss possible measurements concepts. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Effective climate policy will consist of mitigation and adaptation implemented simultaneously in a policy portfolio to reduce the risks of climate change. Previous studies of the tradeoffs between mitigation and adaptation have implicitly framed the problem deterministically, choosing the optimal paths for all time. Because climate change is a long-term problem with significant uncertainties and opportunities to learn and revise, critical tradeoffs between mitigation and adaptation in the near-term have not been considered. We propose a new framework for considering the portfolio of mitigation and adaptation that explicitly treats the problem as a multi-stage decision under uncertainty. In this context, there are additional benefits to near-term investments if they reduce uncertainty and lead to improved future decisions. Two particular features are fundamental to understanding the relevant tradeoffs between mitigation and adaptation: (1) strategy dynamics over time in reducing climate damages, and (2) strategy dynamics under uncertainty and potential for learning. Our framework strengthens the argument for disaggregating adaption as has been proposed by others. We present three stylized classes of adaptation investment types as a conceptual framework: short-lived "flow" spending, committed "stock" investment, and lower capacity "option" stock with the capability of future upgrading. In the context of sequential decision under uncertainty, these subtypes of adaptation have important tradeoffs among them and with mitigation. We argue that given the large policy uncertainty that we face currently, explicitly considering adaptation "option" investments is a valuable component of a near-term policy response that can balance between the flexible flow and committed stock approaches, as it allows for the delay of costly stock investments while at the same time allowing for lower-cost risk management of future damages. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper reviews historical and existing drought and water policy in Australia in order to gain a sense of the strengths and weaknesses in enabling effective adaptation to climate change. In particular, (a) the social, economic, and environmental costs and benefits of water trading and (b) the limitations of using 'market-based' instruments (MBIs), like water trading, for adapting to drought and water security related climate change impacts are investigated. It was found that water trading has potential as a climate change adaptation strategy with many benefits experienced in previous and current versions of water trading. However, there are also limitations and those negatively impacted by water trading are hit hard. These social impacts of water trading have not been thoroughly investigated and are not well understood. Significant uncertainty also exists around the impacts of water trading on the environment (e.g. changed hydrological regimes, underestimation of sustainable environmental flows etc.). Proper quantification of these impacts is needed, however, it is a complex task given Australia's large hydroclimatic variability and the current lack of understanding as to how to optimise water needs of the environment, humans, agriculture and other industries. It appears that 'cap and trade' quantity-based MBIs such as water trading will eventually do what they are designed to do (i.e. reallocate a resource to 'high value' users). However, given that the low value' users in this case are agriculture and town/urban water supply (not including drinking water) and the 'high value' users are mining, manufacturing, and electricity production (i.e. high greenhouse gas emissions), do we really want the water trading MBI to achieve its objective? And, what would the social and environmental ramifications of such a shift in water use within Australia be? These questions, along with the limitations and potential implications of using water trading (and MBIs in general) as a climate change adaptation tool, must be carefully considered if past Australian drought and water policy failures are not to be repeated. (C) 2013 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate variability has been evident on the Mongolian plateau in recent decades. Livelihood adaptation to climate variability is important for local sustainable development. This paper applies an analytical framework focused on adaptation, institutions, and livelihoods to study climate adaptation in the Mongolian grasslands. A household survey was designed and implemented in each of three broad vegetation types in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. The analytical results show that livelihood adaptation strategies of herders vary greatly across the border between Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China. Local institutions played important roles in shaping and facilitating livelihood adaptation strategies of herders. Mobility and communal pooling were the two key categories of adaptation strategies in Mongolia, and they were shaped and facilitated by local communal institutions. Storage, livelihood diversification, and market exchange were the three key categories of adaptation strategies in Inner Mongolia, and they were mainly shaped and facilitated by local government and market institutions. Local institutions enhanced but also at times undermined adaptive capacity of herder communities in the two countries, but in different ways. Sedentary grazing has increased livelihood vulnerability of herders to climate variability and change. With grazing sedentarization, the purchase and storage of forage has become an important strategy of herders to adapt to the highly variable climate. The multilevel statistical models of forage purchasing behaviors show that the strategies of livestock management, household financial capital, environmental (i.e., precipitation and vegetation growth) variability, and the status of pasture degradation were the major determinants of this adaptation strategy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers how farmers perceive and respond to climate change policy risks, and suggests that understanding these risk responses is as important as understanding responses to biophysical climate change impacts. Based on a survey of 162 farmers in California, we test three hypotheses regarding climate policy risk: (1) that perceived climate change risks will have a direct impact on farmer's responses to climate policy risks, (2) that previous climate change experiences will influence farmer's climate change perceptions and climate policy risk responses, and (3) that past experiences with environmental policies will more strongly affect a farmer's climate change beliefs, risks, and climate policy risk responses. Using a structural equation model we find support for all three hypotheses and furthermore show that farmers' negative past policy experiences do not make them less likely to respond to climate policy risks through participation in a government incentive program. We discuss how future research and climate policies can be structured to garner greater agricultural participation. This work highlights that understanding climate policy risk responses and other social, economic and policy perspectives is a vital component of understanding climate change beliefs, risks and behaviors and should be more thoroughly considered in future work. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As adaptation has come to the forefront in climate change discourse, research, and policy, it is crucial to consider the effects of how we interpret the concept. This paper draws attention to the need for interpretations that foster policies and institutions with the breadth and flexibility to recognize and support a wide range of locally relevant adaptation strategies. Social scientists have argued that, in practice, the standard definition of adaptation tends to prioritize economic over other values and technical over social responses, draw attention away from underlying causes of vulnerability and from the broader context in which adaptive responses take place, and exclude discussions of inequality, justice, and transformation. In this paper, we discuss an alternate understanding of adaptation, which we label "living with climate change," that emerged from an ethnographic study of how rural residents of the U.S. Southwest understand, respond to, and plan for weather and climate in their daily lives, and we consider how it might inform efforts to develop a more comprehensive definition. The discussion brings into focus several underlying features of this lay conception of adaptation, which are crucial for understanding how adaptation actually unfolds on the ground: an ontology based on nature society mutuality; an epistemology based on situated knowledge; practice based on performatively adjusting human activities to a dynamic biophysical and social environment; and a placed-based system of values. We suggest that these features help point the way toward a more comprehensive understanding of climate change adaptation, and one more fully informed by the understanding that we are living in the Anthropocene. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Climate change further exacerbates the enormous existing burden of undernutrition. It affects food and nutrition security and undermines current efforts to reduce hunger and promote nutrition. Undernutrition in turn undermines climate resilience and the coping strategies of vulnerable populations. Objectives: The objectives of this paper are to identify and undertake a cross-sectoral analysis of the impacts of climate change on nutrition security and the existing mechanisms, strategies, and policies to address them. Methods: A cross-sectoral analysis of the impacts of climate change on nutrition security and the mechanisms and policies to address them was guided by an analytical framework focused on the three 'underlying causes' of undernutrition: 1) household food access, 2) maternal and child care and feeding practices, 3) environmental health and health access. The analytical framework includes the interactions of the three underlying causes of undernutrition with climate change,vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation. Results: Within broad efforts on climate change mitigation and adaptation and climate-resilient development, a combination of nutrition-sensitive adaptation and mitigation measures, climate-resilient and nutrition-sensitive agricultural development, social protection, improved maternal and child care and health, nutrition-sensitive risk reduction and management, community development measures, nutrition-smart investments, increased policy coherence, and institutional and cross-sectoral collaboration are proposed as a means to address the impacts of climate change to food and nutrition security. This paper proposes policy directions to address nutrition in the climate change agenda and recommendations for consideration by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Conclusions: Nutrition and health stakeholders need to be engaged in key climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives, including science-based assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and policies and actions formulated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Improved multi-sectoral coordination and political will is required to integrate nutrition-sensitive actions into climate-resilient sustainable development efforts in the UNFCCC work and in the post 2015 development agenda. Placing human rights at the center of strategies to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change and international solidarity is essential to advance sustainable development and to create a climate for nutrition security.This paper synthesizes key themes relating to effective coastal governance at the local government scale. The themes are expanded in each of the six papers that comprise the special issue and represent discussion points raised at the Australian Coastal Councils Conference held in 2012. The themes explored in this special issue include: (i) Developing a climate change adaptation road map for a community based organisation; (ii) Spanning the boundaries between technical climate science and coastal communities; (iii) An integrated participatory approach to coastal governance; (iv) Planning responses to climate risks and adaptation in regional coastal areas; (v) The use of science to guide coastal and estuarine management actions; and (vi) A council's approach to manage a vulnerable coast. Reflections from practitioners highlighted the complex and difficult nature of working in partnerships to communicate and act on climate change impacts. Furthermore, the legal complexities and costs associated with development in coastal areas are creating additional challenges at the local scale. The authors conclude that national leadership is required to deal with these significant challenges facing coastal communities. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The coastal zone of Australia is likely to experience significant impacts as a result of climate change in the course of this century, even if the efforts expected from the international community to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations eventuate. Importantly, without future reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases, impacts will increase. The impacts of climate change may include a heightening of weather event intensity and sea level rise, which in combination could have far reaching effects for coastal recreation, beach safety service provision and surf life saving facilities and services. In this respect, the potential impacts of climate change represent a significant challenge for Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA). Recognising the importance of this issue, SLSA undertook to develop a plan for adaptive action. This paper presents the outcomes of the resultant Climate Change Adaptation Road Map for SLSA. The Road Map represents an important for step for SLSA in their adaptive journey. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Conventional systems of government have not been very successful in resolving coastal management problems. This lack of progress is partially attributable to inadequate representation in governance processes of the variety of knowledges present on the coast. In particular there has been a struggle to engage effectively with climate science and its implications. There has also been a broader failure to capture the complexity of voices, interests, values, and discourses of coastal users. We argue here that coastal governance challenges are not likely to be resolved by singular solutions; rather, interaction and collaboration will generate improvements. We suggest that a co-requisite for progress in coastal management is the development of institutions and processes that enable different knowledges to have a bearing on governance processes. This paper examines a selection of the many opportunities available to broaden and enhance the use of knowledge in decision-making for the coast. A description is provided of emerging elements of coastal governance from an Australian perspective, together with new types of institutions, processes, tools and techniques that may help to achieve an improved coastal knowledge-governance interaction. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examines the state of local practice in planning for climate change adaptation in coastal Australia, in the context of rapidly evolving policy frameworks, using grounded theory to examine the process communities follow as they undertake adaptation planning. Australia's coastal cities and towns, with over 85 per cent of the nation's population, are at the frontline of physical risks associated with sea level rise and changed weather patterns; exacerbated by ongoing concentration of public and private assets in potentially vulnerable locations. This is particularly so for coastal councils beyond the major capital cities, where settlement patterns and lifestyle oriented economies based on tourism and leisure focus on the coastal strip, and local government resources are highly constrained. To assess progress in climate change adaptation planning, this study involved local government professionals, experts and elected officials through a survey and focus groups (n = 49) held between February and July 2011. The audit indicates some areas are well underway towards holistic adaptation strategies but, others have neither engaged, nor anticipate, adaptation planning activities; of the strategies that have commenced, few are yet completed; and, despite ongoing development pressure, few councils have yet changed their planning controls for climate risk. Of those areas that have commenced adaptation planning, most strategies and commitments will require additional resourcing and external expertise to implement; while others face community skepticism and "pushback" which may undermine future progress. The results reveal a ladder of adaptation action, whereby communities tend to have to accomplish early steps before they move on to more complex, expensive, or political policies. We connect this ladder to community perceptions of what is supported in state and national frameworks and legislation. Communities in the future may be able to use this ladder to suggest where to start their processes, and directions to undertake as they accomplish their first tasks. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concern over future food security in southern Africa has led to various studies that assess the impact of climate change on crops in the region. The results vary according to applied methods and tools. This study reviewed and consolidated results from 19 recent studies which quantitatively project the impact of climate change on crops for the 21st century in southern Africa. Results were assessed according to crop modelling techniques, which included process-based, statistical and economic (Ricardian) modelling. Studies were assessed for their reporting and recommendations concerning adaptation and CO2 fertilisation. Results suggest that the aggregate impact of climate change on crops in southern Africa will be negative. Maize yields are projected to decline on average by 18%. The collective impact of climate change on all crop yields shows a median decline of -11% and -14% respectively under process-based and statistical methodologies. Median impacts show declining crop yields through the 21st century. No significant change in the near future, -18% for the mid century and -30% for late century. GCM driven Ricardian projections are highly variable. However, uniform climate scenarios project a median revenue decline. Notwithstanding the challenges of such a review; lack of data, bias towards reported methods and tools, uncertainty, scale etc., results indicate that climate change may impact southern African crops in important ways thereby making adaptation essential. Adaptation and CO2 fertilisation could potentially moderate the negative impacts of climate change. This implies a need for studies into future adaptation that consider CO2 fertilisation. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A lower trophic ecosystem model, which was originally developed for describing the variability in plankton distribution in the western North Pacific, is applied to the global ocean. A realistic time series of dynamically self-consistent circulation fields obtained by a 4-dimensional variational ocean data assimilation experiment is used for the environmental fields in the ecosystem model. An optimization of the bio-ecological parameter values in 40 provinces by a Green's function approach enables the ecosystem model to represent the observed variabilities of nutrients and surface chlorophyll concentration with a relatively small number (11) of compartments. In addition, artificial trends of the ecosystem variables due to model errors are generally suppressed by the optimization. The obtained parameter values and ecosystem fields are generally consistent with observations in terms of assimilated and non-assimilated metrics. The integrated lower-trophic ecosystem and physical fields in the global ocean offer important information on the mechanisms (such as El Ninos) responsible for the seasonal-interannual variability in the lower trophic ecosystem. Our results demonstrate that, with adequate parameter sets capable of modifying indirectly the model and significance of each pathway to reflect the characteristics of local species, a simple ecosystem model can be applied in quantitative analyses to enhance our understanding of the influence of climate variations on the ocean ecosystem. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agroforestry is considered a subsistence system that balances the urgent need for food and income of small scale farmers with restoration and conservation of ecosystem services, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Vi Agroforestry Program aims to implement agroforestry as a means to alleviate poverty and increase resilience among the poorest smallholders. After seven years, the Vi Agroforestry Project in the Mara Region of Tanzania had an inter-village variation in the proportion of households with tangible surviving agroforestry trees ranging from 10%-90%. Using a multiple methods approach, this variation was analysed in relation to changes and differences among administrative districts and project zones regarding perceived barriers to agroforestry adoption, project interventions, governance and the chronology of the process. In districts and zones where collaboration among the project staff, government counterparts and other stakeholders had been established at multiple levels, more agroforestry trees survived and a larger proportion of households practiced agroforestry. The established collaboration made it possible to discover and consider opportunities and barriers to agroforestry development such as diverse stakeholder interests and perceptions. As a result, potential conflicts could be avoided and socially robust solutions developed, adapted and integrated into the local subsistence systems.Levels and seasonal patterns of parasite challenge to livestock are likely to be affected by climate change, through direct effects on life cycle stages outside the definitive host and through alterations in management that affect exposure and susceptibility. Net effects and options for adapting to them will depend very strongly on details of the system under consideration. This short paper is not a comprehensive review of climate change effects on parasites, but rather seeks to identify key areas in which detail is important and arguably under-recognized in supporting farmer adaptation. I argue that useful predictions should take fuller account of system-specific properties that influence disease emergence, and not just the effects of climatic variables on parasite biology. At the same time, excessive complexity is ill-suited to useful farm-level decision support. Dealing effectively with the devil of detail' in this area will depend on finding the right balance, and will determine our success in applying science to climate change adaptation by farmers.In this article, we present methodology and results of a vulnerability assessment of the energy system of the metropolitan region Bremen-Oldenburg in Northwest Germany. This work is part of the regional climate adaptation project nordwest2050 aiming at innovative solutions toward a climate-proof and resilient region. Methodologically, we extended the established vulnerability assessment based on climate change impacts by a structural analysis, highlighting general weaknesses of the metropolitan energy system. Our findings indicate that the structural vulnerabilities of the energy system around Bremen-Oldenburg pose a greater threat to maintaining the system's services than climate change itself. Climate-change-based vulnerabilities, however, aggravate many of the structural vulnerabilities and therefore demand attention in their own right. The structural vulnerabilities mainly originate from political and regulatory uncertainties, turbulent market conditions, conflicts along the supply chains, and the current dynamics in the energy sector induced by increased climate mitigation efforts. One of our main conclusions is thus that the metropolitan energy system's capabilities to handle turbulence, perturbations, and surprises must be improved. This will also help in reducing the climate-change vulnerabilities, because such a system is better equipped when facing currently hard-to-predict changes in climate parameters. The results of the assessment described here will be used as the starting point to find options for innovations toward a climate-proof and resilient energy system for the region in the course of the remaining project.Within most democracies there is an assumption that greater public participation and engagement in policy processes results in more effective policy measures. These assumed benefits include better framed and more robust policies and a more informed, articulate and engaged citizenry. Similar assumptions exist also in planning for climate adaptation where more public participation and engagement are seen as vital components of any adaptation strategy and policy development process. This article explores these assumptions and considers whether there is any evidence that the success of planning for unavoidable climate change is related to the extent of public participation. Using an evaluation framework based on three aspects of participation we critically review a set of climate adaptation policy instruments developed within each of the three levels of government in Australia but with a specific focus on the region of South East Queensland.One challenge of climate change adaptation is to design watershed-based stormwater management plans that meet current total maximum daily load targets and also take into consideration anticipated changes in future precipitation patterns. We present a multi-scale, multiobjective framework for generating a diverse family of stormwater best management practice (BMP) plans for entire watersheds. Each of these alternative BMP configurations are non-dominated by any other identified solution with respect to cost of the implementation of the management plan and sediment loading predicted at the outflow of the watershed; those solutions are then pruned with respect to dominance in sensitivity to predicted changes in precipitation patterns. We first use GIS data to automatically precompute a set of cost-optimal BMP configurations for each subwatershed, over its entire range of possible treatment levels. We then formulate each solution as a real-valued vector of treatment levels for the subwatersheds and employ a staged multiobjective optimization approach using differential evolution to generate sets of non-dominated solutions. Finally, selected solutions are mapped back to the corresponding preoptimized BMP configurations for each subwatershed. The integrated method is demonstrated on the Bartlett Brook mixed-used impaired watershed in South Burlington, VT, and patterns in BMP configurations along the non-dominated front are investigated. Watershed managers and other stakeholders could use this approach to assess the relative trade-offs of alternative stormwater BMP configurations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examines the role played by social capital in the migration of rural households from drought-stricken areas of southern Saskatchewan to the Aspen Parkland during the 1930s. During a period of extremely difficult economic and environmental conditions rural households relied heavily on social networks, and the capital generated within them, to identify and select potential migration destinations, and to integrate into a destination region very different in agro-ecological terms than the source areas. By combining archival and secondary data and findings from in-depth interviews with migration participants, an enhanced understanding was obtained of the relationship between social capital, migration, and adaptation processes during Depression-era droughts. This case study, and the insights derived from it, is a useful historical analogue from which to improve our understanding of future adaptation and migration responses to anthropogenic climate change under similar socio-economic and geographical conditions.Responses to climate change in transboundary river basins are believed to depend on national and sub-national capacities as well as the ability of co-riparian nations to communicate, coordinate, and cooperate across their international boundaries. We develop the first framework for assessing transboundary adaptive capacity. The framework considers six dimensions of transboundary river basins that influence planning and implementation of adaptation measures and represents those dimensions using twelve measurable indicators. These indicators are used to assess transboundary adaptive capacity of 42 basins in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Sahel. We then conduct a cluster analysis of those basins to delineate a typology that includes six categories of basins: High Capacity, Mediated Cooperation, Good Neighbour, Dependent Instability, Self-Sufficient, and Low Capacity. We find large variation in adaptive capacity across the study area; basins in Western Europe generally have higher capacities to address the potential hazards of climate change. Our basin typology points to how climate change adaptation policy interventions would be best targeted across the different categories of basins.This study investigates the long-term variability of the Kuroshio path south of Japan. Sensitivity experiments using a data-assimilative model suggest that the duration of the large meander (LM) strongly depends on the Kuroshio transport; specifically, low transport leads to a long duration of the LM. Actually, we find a good correlation between the duration of the past LMs and the Sverdrup transport estimated by a wind-driven linear baroclinic vorticity model. Then we explore favorable conditions for the LM and find a close relationship between the Kuroshio Extension (KE) state and the LM. That is, a precondition for the LM that the Kuroshio path on the Izu Ridge is fixed at a deep channel located around 34A degrees N is achieved during a stable KE state. In addition, westward propagating signals with negative anomalies in the Kuroshio region and high sea-surface height (SSH) state east of Taiwan are key for generation of a small meander southeast of Kyushu that triggers a subsequent LM. The signals related to the above conditions change the upstream Kuroshio transport and velocity, which are consistent with features indicated by the former observational studies. Using reanalysis data, we construct long-time series of indices for the three conditions, which explain well the past LMs. The indices suggest that long-term non-LM states around 1970 and in the 1990s were attributed to a low-SSH state east of Taiwan and an unstable KE state, respectively.The world is experiencing more frequent, deadly and costly disasters. Disasters are increasingly uncertain and complex due to rapid environmental and socio-economic changes occurring at multiple scales. Understanding the causes and impacts of disasters requires comprehensive, systematic and multi-disciplinary analysis. This paper introduces recent multidisciplinary work on resilience, disaster risk reduction (DRR), climate change adaptation (CCA) and adaptive governance and then proposes a new and innovative framework for adaptive and integrated disaster resilience (AIDR). AIDR is defined as the ability of nations and communities to build resilience in an integrated manner and strengthen mechanisms to build system adaptiveness. AIDR provides the ability to face complexities and uncertainties by designing institutional processes that function across sectors and scales, to engage multiple stakeholders and to promote social learning. Based on the review of existing academic and non-academic literature, we identify seven pathways to achieve AIDR. These pathways are a conceptual tool to support scholars, policy makers and practitioners to better integrate existing DRR strategies with CCA and more general development concerns. They describe institutional strategies that are aimed at dealing with complexities and uncertainties by integrating DRR, CCA and development; strengthening polycentric governance; fostering collaborations; improving knowledge and information; enabling institutional learning; self-organisation and networking; and provision of disaster risk finance and insurance. We also examine the implications of these pathways for Indonesia, one of the most vulnerable countries to natural hazards and climate change impacts. Our findings suggest that there is an urgent need to commit more resources to and strengthen multi-stakeholder collaboration at the local level. We also argue for placing the community at the centre of an integrated and adaptive approach to DRR and CCA.Decision-making for the purpose of adaptation to climate change typically involves multiple stakeholders, regions and sectors as well as multiple objectives related to the use of resources and perceived benefits. Standard cost-benefit analysis can be argued to take into account easily monetised effects only. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) embedded in participatory processes can therefore play an important role in defining the decision context and exploring stakeholders' preferences. In this paper, a case study on flood protection of the Kokemaki river running through the city of Pori in West Finland was conducted. The study was realised as a MCDA workshop involving the key stakeholders of the region. The analysis produced a robust ranking of the considered flood protection alternatives. According to the stakeholders, the approach was useful as an exploratory way of gaining a deeper and shared understanding of the flood protection. It was shown that MCDA is well suited for decision-making in adaptation to climate change-enhanced extreme events.To examine the factors that support adaptation within a regional and sectoral context, this article explores five climate-sensitive sectors in North and South Carolina (Forestry, Government Administration, Tourism, Water Management, and Wildlife Management) and the role of partnerships, collaborations, and networks in facilitating climate adaptation and related activities. Drawing from 117 online questionnaires and interviews with sector leaders across the Carolinas, the article highlights several key functions of networks in regard to supporting adaptation-intra-sector information sharing; monitoring, data collection, and research; and education and outreach. Furthermore, the analysis examines how climate networks in the region have facilitated the development of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital while also noting factors that have constrained the growth and success of both intra- and cross-sector collaboration. Although no formal, or discrete, state or regional cross-sector climate change network exists in the Carolinas, climate adaptations and capacity-building efforts have been supported by ad hoc and decentralized networks, emerging collegial partnerships within and across sectors, and collaborative efforts to pool expertise and resources. The role of different forms of social capital within these networks is discussed in the context of a contentious political environment where support for activities designed to address climate change is limited. These findings enhance our understanding of the social factors and relational processes that shape and influence capacity to adapt to climate change.Ecosystem engineers play fundamental ecological roles by modifying habitats in ways that affect a multitude of other species and by creating refugia with novel microclimates. We hypothesize that burrow-creating organisms may facilitate climate change adaptation by providing refugia from extreme and fluctuating temperatures found aboveground. We support this hypothesis by showing that large burrow-dwelling tortoises, Gopherus polyphemus, likely depend upon burrows for thermoregulation. By exploiting the varied thermal conditions within burrows, tortoises avoided lethal temperatures and extreme fluctuations in body temperature, maintained moderate and stable body temperatures on hot days, and maintained relatively warm temperatures overnight. Climate change is predicted to increase maximum air temperatures throughout the geographic range of this species, with impacts most severe in Florida, US, where the range of future conditions could be above that of current maxima. This implies that environmental temperatures will be above lethal thermal limits more often, highlighting the importance of refugia from extreme conditions. Large burrowing animals (e.g. aardvarks, pocket gophers, rabbits, seabirds, tortoises, wombats) are widely distributed globally and could provide similar thermal refugia for countless commensal taxa. Burrows and the animals that create them are in urgent need of conservation, which will help ensure the widespread availability of refugia that offer protection from extreme temperatures under climate change.Understanding the processes of individual adaptation to the consequences of climate change and of the public reaction to adaptation strategies defined in policy is a challenging field of research. We address this issue using the case of the Northern Hesse region located in the centre of Germany by developing a spatially explicit, multi-agent simulation model. Agents are grouped according to their social stratification by lifestyle and initialised by large scale, spatially explicit socio-empirical data. One important adaptation requirement will be volunteering activities that provide local neighbourhood support to supplement public health care during heat waves. We present modelling results on this topic and demonstrate how simulations may support the formation of health policies. As a result, we identify (areas with) populations with low potential for self-organised neighbourhood assistance and those with potentially efficient neighbourhood support. Furthermore, we investigate two different intervention scenarios that aim to mobilise passive subpopulations. The results of the presented scenario assessment may be used to inform policy makers and stakeholders on possible targets of information campaigns and will provide insights into the interplay of barriers and incentives regarding the individual actions regarding adaption to climate change and their trajectories.A number of international donors have in recent years shown great interest in implementing community-based projects related to adaptation to climate change climate- in the Pacific. This interest has seen a flurry of activity in Pacific communities to develop and implement on-ground activities in the hope of enhancing adaptive capacity. This article draws on the results of a questionnaire completed by 31 agencies that have implemented climate-change adaptation projects in various communities throughout the Pacific region. The impetus for this research is to better understand the types of projects that have been implemented, and assess their levels of success in safeguarding communities in the face of climate change. While there has been limited overall progress made across the region to address climate change impacts at the community level, four broad-brush lessons that relate to the process of project development and implementation are drawn from this research. These lessons include the need to: provide locally and culturally appropriate community awareness and education; integrate local environmental knowledge throughout the project cycle; ensure that community ownership is involved in all project stages; and enhance sustainable livelihood resources more broadly.Flood risk has increased in France in the last 20 years and is projected to increase further in the future due to climate change and increase in exposure. Since 1982, France has had a natural disasters insurance system (CatNat') in place that covers flood damage. This insurance system has been combined with what are called Risk Prevention Plans' (PPRs) in order to stimulate the undertaking of flood risk mitigation measures by communities and households. However, these schemes do not provide optimal incentives for flood damage reduction. This is confirmed by the results from a survey about flood preparedness of 885 households who live in flood-prone areas in France, which are presented in this paper. Moreover, this study provides suggestions for improvement, which are assessed on their potential economic, social and political implications. Among these suggestions are increasing the effectiveness of PPRs and increasing the incentives to apply and implement PPRs; improving the monitoring of the implementation of damage mitigation measures; and the possibility to differentiate premiums and deductibles according to flood risk.In working with and researching in communities that have suffered the impacts of disasters or displacement over the last 40 years, I am convinced of the need to link theory to practice in applied anthropology. The trying circumstances faced by people in disasters and displacement, as well as the enormous variation that these millions of people in their diverse contexts represent, test the resilience of real communities, the fundamental constructions we have developed about community, and the theories and methods employed to assist them in recovery. In my work, I have found that it is both appropriate and necessary that theoretical and policy oriented projects be closely linked. If policies and projects related to disasters and displacement are not based on a solid understanding of human behavior in general and cultural behavior specifically, their success in terms of how they respond to human needs is jeopardized. By the same token, policy and practice can form the testing ground for theory. In other words, if policy or practice fail to produce beneficial outcomes, it is not the fault of the people, but in effect, signals us that we need to improve our theory and methods in addressing the losses and needs of affected people. In broader terms, then, my goals have always been to bring theory and practice together to better inform applied anthropological practice in disasters and displacement. The 20th century saw enormous numbers of people and their communities damaged, destroyed, or uprooted by conflict, environmental upheaval, natural and technological disasters, and infrastructural development projects. Forces ranging from intensified disasters, ethnic nationalism, global climate change, and globalized forms of development promise more of the same for the century we are just beginning. This paper traces the development of applied anthropological theory and method in meeting the challenges posed by such forces in the 21st century.Coastal vulnerability assessments to climate change impacts have been conducted in the past. However, few if any account for the highly variable risk associated with tidal stage in macro-tidal environments. The purpose of this research was to develop a geomatics tool which interactively determines the biophysical vulnerability of a macro-tidal estuary in the Bay of Fundy to varying levels of storm surge and tide state. A conceptual framework was designed to illustrate the relative interrelationships between exposure conditions (surge height, tidal stage), biophysical state (freeboard, exposure, width of foreshore, intertidal slope, observed erodibility, shore protection) and morphological resilience condition. This conceptual framework was then used to develop a dynamic, custom Python programming script within ArcGIS 9.3 to calculate coastal vulnerability for user determined combinations of surge height and tide state. The analysis was conducted for four coastlines, backshore, upper foreshore, middle foreshore and lower foreshore, to reflect varying biophysical states with varying tide levels. The results of the tool were compared with known areas of concern (high erosion, dyke overtopping), as determined by historical records, local expert knowledge and GIS analysis of aerial photography. The number of known locations of concern is lower than that of the results produced by the tool. This is most likely due to the results being analyzed at extreme water levels, greater than higher high water large tide. However, this estimation of vulnerability may limit negative impacts of climate change by highlighting vulnerable areas prior to an event, allowing coastal managers and planners to install measures to reduce the vulnerability and enhance the adaptive capacity of local communities.This paper presents a tailor-made scenario approach for climate change adaptation planning, which emphasises involvement of stakeholders in the development of socioeconomic scenarios and relates to the planning situation and interest of the planning entity. The method was developed and tested in case studies in three different sectors in Sweden (the health sector, the tourism sector and water resource management). The result of the case studies is that the tailor-made scenario approach facilitated the engagement of the local planning body in climate change adaptation and helped them to analyse consequences and possible solutions in a structured way. However, the scenarios that emerged mainly focused on socioeconomic drivers on which the planning body had a large impact or drivers that can be influenced through cooperation with other actors at the local or regional level. While this result underlines the need for local stakeholder involvement in scenario processes, it also indicates a local bias that could be remedied by a stronger representation of national and global perspectives in the scenario development process. Finally, we discuss how a "bottom-up" approach could be combined with a "consistency" approach, which points towards a possible way forward to a hybrid methodology that is compatible with the scenario framework currently being developed in connection to the fifth assessment report of the IPCC.Forest mortality related to climate change is an increasingly common global phenomenon. We provide a case study of the U.S. Southwest to investigate the interactions among forest restoration treatments that alter stand density, tree growth and drought resistance in trees of different size classes. Using cores taken from five positions in large trees (coarse roots, breast height, base of live crown, midcrown branch and treetop) and breast height in small trees, we investigated how radial growth response to thinning and precipitation availability varied in 72 ponderosa pines Pinus ponderosa Dougl. in northern Arizona. Ten years after thinning, growth of small trees did not respond significantly to thinning, whereas growth of large trees increased following moderate and heaving thinning, and this response was similar across within-tree core sample positions. The intensity of thinning treatment did not significantly affect dry-year growth in small trees. In large trees, dry-year growth after thinning was maintained at pre-thinning levels in moderate and heavy thinning treatments but decreased in the light thinning and control treatments. Synthesis and applications. Our findings indicate that more aggressive thinning treatments used for forest restoration stimulate growth throughout large residual trees from coarse roots to branches and also improve drought resistance, providing a greater resilience to future climate-related stress. These responses to treatment are more pronounced in large trees than small trees. Forest thinning is therefore recommended in systems that are likely to experience increased temperature and decreased precipitation as a result of climate change.A rainfall estimation method was developed based on the statistical relationships between cloud-top temperature and rainfall rates acquired by both the 10.8-m channel of the Multi-Functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) series and the Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) C-band radar, respectively. The method focused on cumulonimbus (Cb) clouds and was developed in the period of June-September 2010 and 2011 over the landmass of Japan and its surrounding area. Total precipitable water vapor (PWV) and atmospheric vertical instability were considered to represent the atmospheric environmental conditions during the development of statistical models. Validations were performed by comparing the estimated values with the observed rainfall derived from the AMeDAS rain gauge network and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B42 rainfall estimation product. The results demonstrated that the models that considered the combination of total PWV and atmospheric vertical instability were relatively more sensitive to heavy rainfall than were the models that considered no atmospheric environmental conditions. The use of such combined information indicated a reasonable improvement, especially in terms of the correlation between estimated and observed rainfall. Intercomparison results with the TRMM 3B42 confirmed that MTSAT-based rainfall estimations made by considering atmospheric environmental conditions were more accurate for estimating rainfall generated by Cb cloud.The protection of human health is among the original justifications for urban planning, but it is underexamined as one of the myriad benefits of planning for climate change. A conceptual content analysis of the spatial development strategy and climate action plans of London, United Kingdom, was performed to reveal how health was portrayed in climate change adaptation goals and actions. In London's spatial development and climate action plans, there was a total of 300 instances of the keyword health' with weighted percentages of coverage in the documents ranging from 0.19% to 0.45%. The conclusions from this analysis are that stated threats to health are truly localized, policies that address health acknowledge both adaptation and mitigation, and health inequalities and creating an environment supportive of health are the most salient cross-cutting issues.Policies for assessing the effects of climate change risk and uncertainty on urban water provision are analysed with reference to Australia. The emphasis is on analytical insights derived from use of low-order real option and stochastic dynamic programming models. Attention is also paid to insurance and portfolio approaches and to issues raised by uncertainty, gross ignorance and catastrophic risks.In response to observed and projected changes in climate, efforts to promote climate change adaptation to key stakeholder groups have been rapidly increasing. To help us understand the perceptions of resource managers in the Great Lakes region, we conducted a Web-based survey. We asked respondents to define climate change adaptation and to provide examples of both feasible and current adaptation actions. Responses from 441 individuals indicate that many did not have a clear, proactive concept of climate change adaptation. Only 74% provided a definition, and, of those, only 43% described adaptation as a proactive process. Nearly one third (30%) gave purely reactive descriptions, and 27% failed to convey the concept of intentionally responding to climate change impacts; half of these described climate change mitigation or evolutionary adaptation. Examples of feasible actions covered a range of current conservation practices and some adaptation-specific ideas (e.g., research on potential species' range shifts, managed relocation of species), along with such actions as updates to infrastructure. In comparison to feasible actions, actions identified as under way were biased toward early stages in adaptation, such as science and planning, increasing awareness, and capacity building. We suggest that targeted outreach can help catalyze movement from early-stage actions toward implementation of change: collaborative work with stakeholders to refine and customize the concept of adaptation and develop visions of successful adaptation is vital to the long-term conservation of the Great Lakes ecosystem.Adaptation options that address short-term climate variability are likely to lead to short-term benefits and will help to deal with future changes in climate in smallholder cropping systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In this study we combined field experimentation and long-term rainfall analyses in Makoni and Hwedza districts in eastern Zimbabwe to evaluate cropping adaptation options to climate variability. Analyses of long-term rainfall data closely supports farmers' perceptions that the mean annual total rainfall has not changed, but the pattern of rainfall within-season has changed: the number of rainfall days has decreased, and the frequency of dry spells has increased at the critical flowering stage of maize. On-farm experiments were conducted over two cropping seasons, 2009/10 and 2010/11 to assess the effects of planting date, fertilization and cultivar on maize production. Three maize cultivars were sown in each of the early, normal and late planting windows defined by farmers. Each of the nine cultivar-planting date combinations received N, P. K and manure combinations at either zero, low or high fertilization rates. Overall, there were no significant differences in maize development or grain yield among cultivars. Maize grain yield was increased by increasing the amount of nutrients applied. Average yield was 2.5 t ha(-1) for the low rate and 5.0 t ha(-1) for the high rate on early planted cultivars on relatively fertile soils in Makoni in 2009/10 season. Yields on poorer soils in Hwedza were small, averaging 1.5 t ha(-1) for the low rate and 2.5 t ha(-1) for the high rate. Maize grain yields for the early and normal planted cultivars were similar for each fertilization rate, suggesting there is a wide planting window for successful establishment of crops in response to increased rainfall variability. Yield reduction of >50% was observed when planting was delayed by 4 weeks (late planting) regardless of the amount of fertilizer applied. Soil nutrient management had an overriding effect on crop production, suggesting that although the quality of within-season rainfall is decreasing, nutrient management is the priority option for adaptation in rain-fed smallholder cropping systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forest management practices in European temperate and Mediterranean regions have frequently exploited coppicing and pollarding two silvicultural techniques that promote vegetative regeneration. These practices were historically very common with trees being cut at ground level or above the level of browsing to produce shoots, which were harvested for a variety of uses. Many habitats created from such traditional management are now recognized as areas of high conservation value, being rich in biodiversity. Yet their persistence has been under threat after these practices suffered a decline in the nineteenth century. The focus of this review is to synthesize information on coppicing and pollarding from the ecosystem to the molecular level and to highlight characteristics that may help or hinder climate adaptation. Understanding the benefits and hazards of exploiting vegetative regeneration is the first step in assessing whether promoting this means of reproduction could be exploited for conservation by increasing forest persistence in unfavourable future climate conditions. Practical management recommendations are given and suggestions are made for future research.This paper presents a first assessment of the global effects of climate-induced sea-level rise on the erosion of sandy beaches, and its consequent impacts in the form of land loss and forced migration of people. We consider direct erosion on open sandy coasts and indirect erosion near selected tidal inlets and estuaries, using six global mean sea-level scenarios (in the range of 0.2-0.8 m) and six SRES socio-economic development scenarios for the 21st century. Impacts are assessed both without and with adaptation in the form of shore and beach nourishment, based on cost-benefit analysis that includes the benefits of maintaining sandy beaches for tourism. Without nourishment, global land loss would amount to about 6000-17,000 km(2) during the 21st century, leading to 1.6-5.3 million people being forced to migrate and migration costs of US$ 300-1000 billion (not discounted). Optimal beach and shore nourishment would cost about US$ 65-220 billion (not discounted) during the 21st century and would reduce land loss by 8-14%, forced migration by 56-68% and the cost of forced migration by 77-84% (not discounted). The global share of erodible coast that is nourished increases from about 4% in 2000 to 18-33% in 2100, with beach nourishment being 3-4 times more frequent than shore nourishment, reflecting the importance of tourism benefits. In absolute terms, with or without nourishment, large counties with long shorelines appear to have the largest costs, but in relative terms, small island states appear most impacted by erosion. Considerable uncertainty remains due to the limited availability of basic coastal geomorphological data and models on a global scale. Future work should also further explore the effects of beach tourism, including considering sub-national distributions of beach tourists. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The consequences of wildfires are felt in susceptible communities around the globe on an annual basis. Climate change predictions in places like the south-east of Australia and western United States suggest that wildfires may become more frequent and more intense with global climate change. Compounding this issue is progressive urban development at the pen-urban fringe (wildland-urban interface), where continued infrastructure development and demographic changes are likely to expose more people and property to this potentially disastrous natural hazard. Preparing well in advance of the wildfire season is seen as a fundamental behaviour that can both reduce community wildfire vulnerability and increase hazard resilience - it is an important element of adaptive capacity that allows people to coexist with the hazardous environment in which they live. We use household interviews and surveys to build and test a substantive model that illustrates how social cohesion influences the decision to prepare for wildfire. We demonstrate that social cohesion, particularly community characteristics like 'sense of community' and 'collective problem solving', are community-based resources that support both the adoption of mechanical preparations, and the development of cognitive abilities and capacities that reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience to wildfire. We use the results of this work to highlight opportunities to transfer techniques and approaches from natural hazards research to climate change adaptation research to explore how the impacts attributed to the social components of social-ecological systems can be mitigated more effectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on community engagement, and particularly the inclusion of women, in water management as a response to climate change. Addressing water-related problems is central to climate change adaptation, and civil society, marginalized populations and women, in particular, must be involved. This is for both moral and pragmatic reasons: not only are the marginalized the first and worst affected by extreme weather events, but they also possess local ecological, social and political knowledge which can inform and contribute significantly to climate change adaptation strategies. Because of their social roles and position worldwide, women are greatly affected by water scarcity and flooding, and tend to be gravely impacted by poor water management, yet they face great difficulties in participating effectively in governance bodies. Sustainable long-term management of water resources in the face of climate change requires the participation of women, who possess knowledge of effective social technologies for coping with and adapting to climate change. Community-based environmental education is therefore required in order to expand the equitable involvement of women in water-related climate change adaptation activities and policy development. Environmental non-governmental organizations worldwide, working on shoestring budgets at the local level, are developing a range of methods to organize, raise consciousness and confidence, and help local activists create successful climate defense programs. This paper discusses South North initiatives and models for community-based environmental and climate change education which are using the democratic opening provided by watershed-based governance structures to broaden grassroots participation, especially of women, in political processes. We outline the activities and results of two international projects: the Sister Watersheds project, with Brazilian and Canadian partners (2002-2008); and a Climate Change Adaptation in Africa project with partners in Canada, Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa (2010-2012). (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate change may impact waterborne and foodborne infectious disease, but to what extent is uncertain. Estimating climate-change-associated relative infection risks from exposure to viruses, bacteria, or parasites in water or food is critical for guiding adaptation measures. We present a computational tool for strategic decision making that describes the behavior of pathogens using location-specific input data under current and projected climate conditions. Pathogen-pathway combinations are available for exposure to norovirus, Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, and noncholera Vibrio species via drinking water, bathing water, oysters, or chicken fillets. Infection risk outcomes generated by the tool under current climate conditions correspond with those published in the literature. The tool demonstrates that increasing temperatures lead to increasing risks for infection with Campylobacter from consuming raw/undercooked chicken fillet and for Vibrio from water exposure. Increasing frequencies of drought generally lead to an elevated infection risk of exposure to persistent pathogens such as norovirus and Cryptosporidium, but decreasing risk of exposure to rapidly inactivating pathogens, like Campylobacter. The opposite is the case with increasing annual precipitation; an upsurge of heavy rainfall events leads to more peaks in infection risks in all cases. The interdisciplinary tool presented here can be used to guide climate change adaptation strategies focused on infectious diseases.The bioclimatic situation in cities will be a major issue for future planning authorities. Especially cities characterized by dense urban structures and high rates of impervious surface coverage will have to deal with this issue, since thermal stress is most likely to increase in intensity and frequency due to climate change (Bernhofer, 2009; Harlan et al., 2012; Hayhoe et al., 2010). Thus, it is essential to obtain profound knowledge and appropriate data regarding the thermal characteristics of settlement areas, on the basis of which the bioclimatic situation is assessed. This study presents a methodology for identifying sensitive settlement areas with regard to the bioclimatic situation in the city of Dresden, and introduces the Settlement Heat Sensitivity Index (SHSI) as a measure for thermal sensitivity. The methodology described takes into account the thermal characteristics of urban structures as well as demographic parameters, and is adaptable to certain age cohorts which are of special interest for urban planning, due to their potentially increased susceptibility to health risks related to thermal stress. As a result, sensitivity maps are produced, displaying the bioclimatic variability within the city of Dresden. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of ecosystem goods and services is increasingly used to describe how biodiversity and ecosystems are linked to human well-being and that it should be placed at the core of sustainable urban development. Predictions of a tremendous future increase of urbanization in Africa necessitate an investigation into the research on ecosystem goods and services in the urban green infrastructure of Africa. Ecosystem goods and services (ES) are described as the benefits humans derive directly or indirectly from ecosystem functions and are classified as supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural services. A literature study focusing on journal papers was conducted. Additionally a case study based on two masters studies was further refined. ES studies in African cities are biased towards South Africa and include assessments and economic valuations in which several different methods were used to determine direct consumptive and non-consumptive and indirect use values. Emphasis was placed on the multifunctional nature of ES. The main objectives of these studies were to sensitize policy makers, planners and the general public about the importance of biodiversity and ES. Ecosystem-based adaptation is discussed as the most appropriate approach in terms of applying knowledge about ES and their values in African cities as many residents still rely on ES from natural areas, but the major ecological, economic and political challenges are acknowledged. A case study focusing on domestic gardens (private green spaces) have indicated that the demand and supply of certain ES differ along a socio-economic gradient due to poor service delivery and smaller plots in the poorer areas mainly due to the legacy of separate development of the past. Where provisioning services are mainly outsourced in cities, it was found that plant species useful as food, medicine, etc. were more frequent in the gardens of poorer residents than in those of more affluent areas. The tendency to pay more for residential properties close to public open spaces, as in Europe, could not be statistically proven in the more affluent areas of a South African city, although the property values in proximity of public open spaces in some of the areas studied were lower than further away.Probabilistic estimates for coastal storm erosion volumes are increasingly being sought by contemporary risk based coastal zone management frameworks. Such estimates can be obtained via probabilistic models that incorporate a structural function element which calculates storm erosion (i.e. storm erosion model). Intuitively, the more sophisticated the storm erosion model embedded in the probabilistic model, the more accurate and robust the probabilistic storm erosion volumes should be, albeit at significant additional computational cost. This study assesses the relative performance of three storm erosion models with varying levels of complexity when embedded within Callaghan et al.'s (2008a) probabilistic framework for estimating storm erosion. The storm models tested are: the analytical Kriebel and Dean (1993) model, the more complex semi-empirical SBEACH model and the highly complex and process-based XBEACH model. The probabilistic model is applied at data rich Narrabeen beach, Australia. Kriebel and Dean (1993) and SBEACH are used 'on-line' in the probabilistic simulations, while XBEACH is used with an innovative off-line tabulation approach to facilitate reasonable computational times. SBEACH is calibrated for a mid-range erosion event while XBEACH is validated for the same single erosion event as well as for all measured storm erosion volumes during the 30 year study period. The Kriebel and Dean (1993) model is used with recommended parameter settings and therefore does not require calibration. When both SBEACH and XBEACH are calibrated against the single erosion event, SBEACH provides the most accurate and robust probabilistic estimates of storm erosion. However, when XBEACH is calibrated using the entire erosion volume data series, the results improve significantly raising the accuracy and robustness of the probabilistic estimates of storm erosion volumes obtained with XBEACH to be on par with those obtained with SBEACH. However, only XBEACH predicts storm erosion volumes with the physically more plausible behaviour of a downward concave tail shape when plotted as cross-shore beach-erosion volume on a vertical linear axis against return period on a horizontal logarithmic axis. The simulation time (on a standard single processor) when using the simple Kriebel and Dean (1993) model is about 1 day, whereas for SBEACH (on-line) and XBEACH (tabulation), the simulation time is about 1000 h. However, the physically more plausible and the more accurate and robust results that can be obtained with SBEACH or XBEACH justifies the additional computational cost. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Variability in soil moisture on a steep slope near a ridge in a forested mountain range, Shikoku, Japan, was studied observationally and numerically. Vertically integrated soil moisture, from a depth of -60 cm to the surface, W, was introduced as a key indicator, and its seasonal variation was analysed on a daily basis from August 2011 to August 2012. The "bucket with a bottom hole" (BBH) model of Teshima et al. (2006) was improved to consider the forest environment in simulating the variation in W. A "big-leaf" model was incorporated into the modified BBH model to estimate transpiration and interception by trees. The simulated soil moisture agreed reasonably with observed values on a daily to inter-seasonal timescale.Understanding public perceptions of climate change risks is a prerequisite for effective climate communication and adaptation. Many studies of climate risk perceptions have either analyzed a general operationalization of climate change risk or employed a case-study approach of specific adaptive processes. This study takes a different approach, examining attitudes toward 17 specific, climate-related coastal risks and cognitive, affective, and risk-specific predictors of risk perception. A survey of 558 undergraduates revealed that risks to the physical environment were a greater concern than economic or biological risks. Perceptions of greater physical environment risks were significantly associated with having more pro-environmental attitudes, being female, and being more Democratic-leaning. Perceptions of greater economic risks were significantly associated with having more negative environmental attitudes, being female, and being more Republican-leaning. Perceptions of greater biological risks were significantly associated with more positive environmental attitudes. The findings suggest that focusing on physical environment risks maybe more salient to this audience than communications about general climate change adaptation. The results demonstrate that climate change beliefs and risk perceptions are multifactorial and complex and are shaped by individuals' attitudes and basic beliefs. Climate risk communications need to apply this knowledge to better target cognitive and affective processes of specific audiences, rather than providing simple characterizations of risks. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Sea of Japan side of Central Japan is one of the heaviest snowfall areas in the world. We investigate near-future snow cover changes on the Sea of Japan side using a regional climate model. We perform the pseudo global warming (PGW) downscaling based on the five global climate models (GCMs). The changes in snow cover strongly depend on the elevation; decrease in the ratios of snow cover is larger in the lower elevations. The decrease ratios of the maximum accumulated snowfall in the short term, such as 1 day, are smaller than those in the long term, such as 1 week. We conduct the PGW experiments focusing on specific periods when a 2 K warming at 850 hPa is projected by the individual GCMs (PGW-2K85). The PGW-2K85 experiments show different changes in precipitation, resulting in snow cover changes in spite of similar warming conditions. Simplified sensitivity experiments that assume homogenous warming of the atmosphere (2 K) and the sea surface show that the altitude dependency of snow cover changes is similar to that in the PGW-2K85 experiments, while the uncertainty of changes in the sea surface temperature influences the snow cover changes both in the lower and higher elevations. The decrease in snowfall is, however, underestimated in the simplified sensitivity experiments as compared with the PGW experiments. Most GCMs project an increase in dry static stability and some GCMs project an anticyclonic anomaly over Central Japan, indicating the inhibition of precipitation, including snowfall, in the PGW experiments.Micropollutant monitoring in stormwater discharges is challenging because of the diversity of sources and thus large number of pollutants found in stormwater. This is further complicated by the dynamics in runoff flows and the large number of discharge points. Most passive samplers are nonideal for sampling such systems because they sample in a time-integrative manner. This paper reports test of a flow-through passive sampler, deployed in stormwater runoff at the outlet of a residential industrial catchment. Momentum from the water velocity during runoff events created flow through the sampler resulting in velocity dependent sampling. This approach enables the integrative sampling of stormwater runoff during periods of weeks to months while weighting actual runoff events higher than no flow periods. Results were comparable to results from volume-proportional samples and results obtained from using a dynamic stormwater quality model (DSQM). The paper illustrates how velocity-dependent flow-through passive sampling may revolutionize the way stormwater discharges are monitored. It also opens the possibility to monitor a larger range of discharge sites over longer time periods instead of focusing on single sites and single events, and it shows how this may be combined with DSQMs to interpret results and estimate loads over extended time periods.A major challenge facing conservation experts is how to adapt biodiversity planning and practice to the impacts of climate change. To date, most commonly advocated adaptation actions mirror conventional approaches (e.g. protected areas) despite decades of concern regarding their efficacy and widespread discussion of less conventional, interventionist actions. This survey of 160 experts (scientists and practitioners with specialized knowledge of the implications of climate change for biodiversity conservation) seeks to explain this deep incongruity. Specifically, we quantify current preferences for a diverse set of adaptation actions, and examine the choice logics that underpin them. We find near unanimous agreement in principle with the need for extensive active management and restoration interventions given climate change. However, when interventionist actions are provided as options alongside conventional actions, experts overwhelming prefer the latter. Four hypotheses, developed by linking the conservation adaptation literature with that of preference formation and risk and decision making, explore enduring preferences for conventional actions. They are (1) judged most ecologically effective, least risky and best understood; (2) linked with pro-ecological worldviews, marked by positive affective feelings, and an aversion to the hubris of managing nature; (3) a function of trust in biodiversity governance; and/or (4) driven by demographic factors such as gender. Overall, we find that experts prefer conventional over unconventional actions because they are viewed as relatively more effective and less risky from an ecological point of view, and because they are linked with positive affect ratings, and worldviews that are strongly pro-ecological. We discuss the roles of value-based and affective cues in shaping policy outcomes for adaptation specifically, and sustainable resource management more broadly. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Maintaining a balance between ATP synthesis and heat generation is crucial for adapting to changes in climate. Variation in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which encodes 13 subunits of the respiratory chain complexes, may contribute to climate adaptation by regulating thermogenesis and the use of bioenergy. However, studies looking for a relationship between mtDNA haplogroups and climate have obtained mixed results, leaving unresolved the role of mtDNA in climate adaptation. Since mtDNA content can regulate human bioenergy processes and is known to influence many physiological traits and diseases, it is possible that mtDNA content contributes to climate adaptation in human populations. Here, we analyze the distribution of mtDNA content among 27 Chinese ethnic populations residing across China and find a significant association between mtDNA content and climate, with northern populations having significantly higher mtDNA content than southern populations. Functional studies have shown that high mtDNA content correlates with an increase in the expression of energy metabolism enzymes, which may accelerate thermogenesis. This suggests that the significantly higher mtDNA content observed in northern populations may confer a selective advantage in adapting to colder northern climatesCharacteristics of atmospheric blocking in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) are explored in atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) simulations with the Community Atmosphere Model, version 3, with a particular focus on the Australia-New Zealand sector. Preferred locations of blocking in SH observations and the associated seasonal cycle are well represented in the AGCM simulations, but the observed magnitude of blocking is underestimated throughout the year, particularly in late winter and spring. This is related to overly zonal flow due to an enhanced meridional pressure gradient in the model, which results in a decreased amplitude of the longwave trough/ridge pattern. A range of AGCM sensitivity experiments explores the effect on SH blocking of tropical heating, midlatitude sea surface temperatures, and land-sea temperature gradients created over the Australian continent during austral winter. The combined effects of tropical heating and extratropical temperature gradients are further explored in a configuration that is favorable for blocking in the Australia-New Zealand sector with warm SST anomalies to the north of Australia, cold to the southwest of Australia, warm to the southeast, and cool Australian land temperatures. The blocking-favorable configuration indicates a significant strengthening of the subtropical jet and a reduction in midlatitude flow, which results from changes in the thermal wind. While these overall changes in mean climate, predominantly forced by the tropical heating, enhance blocking activity, the magnitude of atmospheric blocking compared to observations is still underestimated. The blocking-unfavorable configuration with surface forcing anomalies of opposite sign results in a weakening subtropical jet, enhanced midlatitude flow, and significantly reduced blocking.This study shows that the morphological characteristics of upper-tropospheric extratropical eddies are closely related to the background flow in the Northern Hemisphere winter. Enclosed surfaces of 300-hPa relative vorticity are identified by using the neighbor enclosed area tracking algorithm, and the periphery of these surfaces are approximated by ellipses. Eddies are classified into five categories according to the approximate ellipse. Eddies having an oblateness of less than 0.6 are classified as near circle, or are otherwise classified as northeast-southwest (NE-SW), northwest-southeast (NW-SE), north-south, or west-east, according to the direction of the major axis. In the wintertime climatology, NE-SW-oriented cyclones are collocated with the jet stream, while NW-SE-oriented cyclones mostly reside north of the jet. In interannual variability, moreover, the frequency of NE-SW cyclones is slightly correlated with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) index, while the frequency of NW-SE cyclones is highly anticorrelated with the AO index. This is consistent with positive feedback between horizontally slanted eddies and background flow, as has been shown in many previous studies.Members of the Culex sitiens subgroup of mosquitoes are important arbovirus vectors in the Australasian region. However, some species in this group, particularly Cx.annulirostris and Cx.palpalis, are difficult to distinguish based on morphological characters alone. We evaluated the reliability of morphological characters commonly used in taxonomic keys against a PCR-based diagnostic tool that examined the ribosomal ITS1 gene region. Although reliable morphological characters allow identification, molecular identification remains the most accurate means for distinguishing Cx. annulirostris and Cx. palpalis.Climate change is postulated to influence marine resources worldwide with consequent ramifications for the management of commercially important fisheries. There is a need to understand the likely impacts of climate change affecting the biology of fisheries at each of the different levels: (a) individual (reproductive potential, larval settlement, spatial distribution); (b) population (carrying capacity, productivity, spatial distribution); (c) multi-species (replacement of one fishery by another) and (d) ecosystem (dependent predator species, shifts in community composition). When addressing these problems it is important to integrate information across a range of dimensions pertaining to the resource and stakeholders, using a combination of biological, economic and social research elements. This is necessary for a better understanding of the likely changes to catches and in turn the possible socio-economic implications. We assessed the impact and likelihood of a range of plausible climate impacts on a number of lobster life history parameters, using the Torres Strait tropical rock lobster Panulirus ornatus as a case study. The hypothesised high risk effects of climate change were implemented through modifications to the lobster stock assessment model. Projected catches and an input output model of the Australian economy were used to determine the flow-on effects of climate-change impacts affecting this lobster fishery. We highlight the potential of this combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches as a pragmatic first step to exploring climate-change impacts on a fishery and summarise implications for management. Our results suggest that there may be positive as well as negative consequences. Our integrated methodology is a step towards linking the interrelation between different variables and fishery productivity, and quantifying the resultant socio-economic effects to fishers, their communities and national economies. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper explores some of the perverse effects of climate change adaptation policies and financing in the Republic of Kiribati, a low-lying island nation in the Central Pacific. I examine how encounters between financiers and government officials might produce vulnerability to climate change. I draw throughout from field research conducted in Kiribati, an archetypical 'vulnerable-to-climate-change' place, and a preeminent site for experimentation in climate change adaptation. By discussing several instances where Government of Kiribati elites are required to enact vulnerability in order to secure climate change adaptation financing, I demonstrate that such encounters are performative. This research contributes to theories of performativity in showing that the matrix conditioning and compelling such performative enactments of vulnerability is socionatural, consisting of a collective of climate change impacts, adaptation-finance technocrats, and many others. Thus, I demonstrate that vulnerability is not a latent condition, but, rather, an emergent effect of an assemblage of facts, expert actors, and objects.Climate change adaptation demands a successful science-policy interface that can enhance the translation of climate scenarios to adaptation policies. However, experience shows it is difficult to implement this interface in practice, particularly at the regional/local scale. This paper considers the communities of practice theory in a new way, by examining two model cases to highlight areas of potential opportunities and contentions with the theory, and to understand how a successful science-policy interface in climate change adaptation projects could be envisioned as a community of practice. The assumption is that the social contexts in which these projects often exist could be established by the concepts of communities of practice', which defines activities in a social and historical context that gives structure to the engagement of participants. We compiled cases from open-ended survey and interactive research experience and observation, and inductively reflected on these vis-a-vis communities of practice. The model cases revealed challenges as well as potential opportunities for communities of practice, in that they exist within a middle space (social context) that could facilitate personal and professional relationship, promote formal and informal interactions, and are needed to negotiate different expertise and narrow apparent boundaries. We conclude that vigorous and dynamic communities of practice promise to nurture the social context in which participants in adaptation projects are potentially engaged, and thus provide a provisional support to the science-policy interface. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The role of sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in modulating the terrestrial precipitation in winter around Japan was investigated using a regional atmospheric model. Large amount of snowfall occurs as the westerly winter monsoon carries abundant moisture from the Japan Sea. An experiment with realistic SST gives improved representation of terrestrial precipitation distribution compared to the reanalysis. The standard deviation of interannual variation of precipitation in the experiment was approximately 20% larger over the Kuroshio extension than that in the experiment with climatology SST, suggesting that the SST variability enhances the oceanic precipitation variability. For the role of Japan Sea, the terrestrial precipitation over the Japan Sea side (JSS) region in northern Japan was sensitive to the offshore SST anomaly through affecting moisture flux toward Japan. Since the offshore SST was clearly warmer in the 2000s relative to the 1980s, the effect of the long-term SST variation on the terrestrial precipitation trend was examined. The experiment with realistic SST simulated the observed trend in terrestrial precipitation in the JSS region. In contrast, the precipitation trend was significantly reduced in the experiment with climatology SST. Therefore, the long-term SST trend is an important factor for the precipitation trend in the region of Japan and the adjacent oceans where SST has significant trends. Precipitation in southern Japan facing the Pacific Ocean indicated increasing trend even without the SST trend. This suggests that the long-term variations in extratropical cyclones are also an important factor for precipitation trends around the Kuroshio extension.We investigated the impact of the sea surface temperature (SST) over the Sea of Japan on precipitation and snowfall on the Sea of Japan side of Honshu, Japan, using precipitation and snowfall data from Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) stations, records of sea level pressure from meteorological stations, wind fields from the Japanese 25-year reanalysis (JRA25) dataset, and multiple SST datasets. We examined the data on various timescales from daily to monthly because SST over the Sea of Japan also varies on timescales shorter than a month. The results showed that the impact of SST over the Sea of Japan on precipitation on the Sea of Japan side was strongly timescale-dependent. On the shorter intraseasonal timescales of several days to a few weeks, SST had a clear impact on precipitation, while the impact was indistinct when the 15-day and monthly averaged precipitation and SST values were used. On the other hand, cold surges over the Sea of Japan primarily accounted for the amount of precipitation on the Sea of Japan side. The timing and strength of cold surges controlled precipitation on all timescales. We clearly found the impact of cold surges on SST on 15-day mean values, compared with the pentad mean values. To understand detailed impacts of SST on precipitation, including air-sea interaction processes over the Sea of Japan, synoptic and shorter intraseasonal timescales should be examined in addition to seasonal or interannual timescales.It is generally accepted that building external wall design affects its ability to protect occupants from weather extremes, such as heatwaves. However, there is no established methodology to assess this ability in assisting building designers to identify the most resilient design. This study aims at developing an analytical tool to examine wall heatwave vulnerability using dynamic thermal modelling and multicriteria analysis. Optimum wall design for Melbourne was identified among eight selected residential walls based on various criteria, i.e. maximum air temperature (MAT), maximum air temperature difference (MATD), thermal discomfort proportion (TOP), statistical maximum air temperature (SMAT), and averaged night-time temperature (ANT). Using these criteria wall designs were ranked and ranking deviations among the criteria were analysed. Results showed that uninsulated brick veneer wall is the most vulnerable design, experiencing a maximum daytime room temperature of 31 degrees C and proportion in discomfort of 31.5% during heatwaves. While insulated cavity brick wall is found to be the most resilient design in most cases. The results indicate that using insulated cavity brick wall in Melbourne would significantly reduce summer overheating and thermal discomfort in non-air conditioned buildings in daytime period. It was found that no one criterion should be used for evaluating both daytime and night-time wall performance as ranking would be different between daytime and night-time periods. The decision procedure for design of a residential wall system may need to be reconsidered using the multi-criteria analysis, particularly under global warming. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Previous analyses of the debate on the assisted colonization of species (AC) omit a critical assessment of the rhetorical dimension of the AC debate. To address this gap, we ask: what kinds of arguments are deployed as mean of persuasion and what are the implications of the rhetorical dimension of the AC debate for decision-making on AC? Our methods consist of textual network analysis, which allowed us to generate maps of the arguments in the debate on AC and analyze these maps using standard network analytical measures. The argument maps of the AC debate emphasize different and multi-faceted value judgments. Some of these are couched in technical terms and thus are implicitly evaluative: what is an appropriate level of risk for focal species and recipient communities, how much knowledge/ignorance is sufficient to warrant action or inaction, and what species or ecosystem services are most valuable and should be prioritized in conservation science and management? Other types of arguments, however, are more explicitly evaluative: socio-economic calculations, defending or criticizing conventional principles of conservation policy, and ethical norms and values. While some of the technical aspects of the debate maybe resolved by more research, the controversy over AC is unlikely to be resolved by science alone, because the issue is thoroughly enmeshed in rhetoric about who should have control over AC governance. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is one of the greatest threats to coastal zones. Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) considers the interaction between socioeconomic activities and environmental requirements to natural resources use in those coastal zones. It must now include measures to climate change adaptation, particularly directed to the most vulnerable areas such as estuaries, thus constituting a key component of spatial planning. This study aims to: (i) evaluate the integration of the concern of climate change adaptation in the Portuguese National Strategy for ICZM (PNSICZM), while a important spatial planning instrument at national level; and (ii) realize how this integration influences the management of the potential impacts of climate change at local level, in a temperate estuary, namely the Minho River Estuary (MRE) (located in NW-Portugal coastal zone). We verified that the PNSICZM integrates, both directly and indirectly, the concern of climate change adaptation. The PNSICZM highlights the need of climate change issue be integrated in coastal management and delivers a set of measures contributing to the effort of climate change adaptation and its guidelines must be included in the Spatial Planning Instruments (SPI) at regional and local level. In this context, the SPI covering the MRE must be adjusted to the PNSICZM guidelines in order to promote a planned adaptation of this estuary and of its adjacent coastal zone to the potential impacts of climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reliable estimates of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are essential for setting effective climate policy at both the sector and national level. Current IPCC Guidelines for calculating nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from sewage management are both highly uncertain and incomplete; a major methodological gap relates to the calculation of indirect N2O emissions from sewage disposed to marine environments. Here we apply a novel approach to estimate past and future global sewage-nitrogen emissions to coastal oceans and the potential marine N2O emissions linked to this nitrogen source. Then, by estimating the future cost associated with this largely uncharacterized emission source, we demonstrate the industry significance of developing a methodology for estimating N2O emissions from marine receiving environments. The capacity to accurately estimate, monitor and report GHG emissions has important consequences for informing future policy decisions regarding both mitigation and adaptation. A robust N2O emissions estimation methodology for sewage-nitrogen disposed to coastal oceans will allow the international water sector to more accurately and comprehensively inventory its N2O emissions. This will in turn allow for proper accounting of related future emissions liabilities while also enabling the sector to capitalize on any future economic returns linked to this source-providing much-needed capital to support the sector's future infrastructure and climate change adaptation challenges. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to identify key cross-scale challenges to planned adaptation within the context of local government in Australia, and suggest enabling actions to overcome such challenges. Many of the impacts of climate change and variability have or will be experienced at the local level. Local governments are embedded in a larger governance context that has the potential to limit the effectiveness of planned adaptation initiatives on the ground. This study argues that research on constraints and barriers to adaptation must place greater attention to understanding the broader multi-governance system and cross-scale constraints that shape adaptation at the local government scale. The study identified seven key enabling actions for overcoming cross-scale challenges faced by local governments in Australia when undertaking climate change adaptation planning and implementation. A central conclusion of this study is that a cooperative and collaborative approach is needed where joint recognition of the scale of the issue and its inherent cross-scale complexities are realised. Many of the barriers or constraints to adaptation planning are interlinked, requiring a whole government approach to adaptation planning. The research suggests a stronger role at the state and national level is required for adaptation to be facilitated and supported at the local level.Historically the voices of young people have been excluded from research and debates about how to respond to environmental degradation and climate change. To include the perspectives of young people in the climate change and adaptation debate, we conducted a Photovoice and draw-and-write project with 29 school students in Ethiopia, through which students were given a platform to explore their social representations of the environment. Thematic analysis of our findings suggested that young people have a deep appreciation of the moral, health-related and economic importance of the environment, a commitment to preserving it and a sense of responsibility and agency in relation to contributing to this preservation. Students saw environmental degradation as reversible, through a combination of commitment by themselves, local government and the global community. We conclude by discussing ways our findings might best be taken up in school-level programmes to strengthen youths' existing social networks for the consolidation of green' identities, action and activism.Law is a powerful influence on people and place. Law both creates and is created by the relationship between people and place, although it rarely acknowledges this. Law frequently operates as if space does not matter. Law and legal processes, therefore, deserve greater attention from geographers. Legal geography is an emerging field of inquiry that facilitates much-needed attention to the interrelationships among the environment, people and social institutions, including formal laws but also informal rules, norms and lore. Legal geographers seek to make the invisible visible: to bring the law into the frame of geography, and space and place into focus for the law. Both critical and applied in approach, legal geography offers descriptive, analytical and normative insight into economics, justice, property, power, geopolitics, governance and scale. As such it can enrich most areas of geographic inquiry as well as contribute to current policy debates about the regulation of space and place. Legal geography is a way for enlarged appreciations of relationality, materiality, multiscalarity and agency to be used to interrogate and reform the law. This introduction to a special themed paper' section of Geographical Research provides a window on legal geography scholarship, including its history, contribution and ambition. The papers in the collection explore issues grounded in the legal geographies paradigm, variously analysing matters empirically detailed while engaging in broader, theoretical debates and using both Australian and international case studies.The impacts of climate change pose many threats to our current way of life. However, the current mitigation agenda has not yet produced the carbon emission reductions needed implying that some level of adaptation will be required. For buildings this is likely to mean either drastic changes to architecture, occupant behaviour or the increased use of artificial cooling to maintain thermal comfort in the future. The capital cost of sustainable buildings is often perceived to be higher than for conventional buildings and there is little incentive to employ sustainable building adaptations over air-conditioning type solutions, making future reductions in carbon emissions unlikely. In this paper we investigate contributing factors to worker productivity in an attempt to justify the perceived cost of sustainable adaptations. Then as a proof of concept we estimate the potential savings that could be achieved by applying two simple adaptations to an office building to produce a more comfortable environment. It is hoped that this consideration of loss of productivity and its causes will aid not only in the choice of useful adaptation decisions, but also a consideration of payback periods will help persuade building commissioners of their value and overcome the perceptions about sustainable buildings. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As part of the 2014 US National Climate Assessment, over 60 subject-matter experts from government agencies, academia, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector assessed the current and projected impacts of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Here, we introduce and provide context for the papers included in this Special Issue, drawing upon the key findings from separate assessments of biodiversity, ecosystem structure and function, ecosystem services, climate-change impacts in the context of other stressors, and societal responses to change (ie climate adaptation). We also explain the assessment process and show how the current state of knowledge can be used to identify risks and guide future research and management initiatives.Ecosystems around the world are already threatened by land-use and land-cover change, extraction of natural resources, biological disturbances, and pollution. These environmental stressors have been the primary source of ecosystem degradation to date, and climate change is now exacerbating some of their effects. Ecosystems already under stress are likely to have more rapid and acute reactions to climate change; it is therefore useful to understand how multiple stresses will interact, especially as the magnitude of climate change increases. Understanding these interactions could be critically important in the design of climate adaptation strategies, especially because actions taken by other sectors (eg energy, agriculture, transportation) to address climate change may create new ecosystem stresses.The emerging field of climate-change adaptation has experienced a dramatic increase in attention as the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystems have become more evident. Preparing for and addressing these changes are now prominent themes in conservation and natural resource policy and practice. Adaptation increasingly is viewed as a way of managing change, rather than just maintaining existing conditions. There is also increasing recognition of the need not only to adjust management strategies in light of climate shifts, but to reassess and, as needed, modify underlying conservation goals. Major advances in the development of climate-adaptation principles, strategies, and planning processes have occurred over the past few years, although implementation of adaptation plans continues to lag. With ecosystems expected to undergo continuing climate-mediated changes for years to come, adaptation can best be thought of as an ongoing process, rather than as a fixed endpoint.Social-protection programmes like the Productive Safety-Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia can play a positive role in promoting livelihoods and enhancing risk management. This article uses propensity score matching to estimate its effect on income diversification. The results suggest that receiving transfers from the PSNP, on average, did not increase farm or non-farm income but significantly increases natural-resource extraction (one component of off-farm income). While these results should be treated with caution, they suggest that the PSNP may not be helping smallholders diversify income sources in a positive manner for climate adaptation. The article concludes by arguing for the promotion of positive forms of income diversification and the further investigation of the PSNP's influence on autonomous adaptation strategies.Bangladesh is generally considered to be one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with flooding, droughts and cyclones being the most common annual disaster events. This article provides an overview of existing social-protection programmes and government policies in the context of long-term adaptation to climate change related to sudden onset disasters, and evaluates their effectiveness in addressing related vulnerabilities and promoting food security in climate-vulnerable regions in the country.There has been relatively little thinking about the political context of climate-adaptation policy in sub-Saharan Africa, what this means for the quality of governance, and the capacity to plan and deliver what are often quite complex policies and programmes. This is all the more surprising given the quantity and depth of what is already known about politics and governance in Africa. This article asks what can be learned from this body of knowledge and experience that is relevant for climate-adaptation policy.In response to the challenge of climate change developing-country governments are evolving adaptation and mitigation programmes for which they are seeking international financing. This article presents the findings of a review of national action programmes and other interventions to assess their likely societal impacts with an emphasis on land-use change, future land acquisitions, population displacement and resettlement. It considers the policy and development challenges involuntary resettlement in particular will pose, and assesses the robustness of current governance arrangements to manage them and cautions that at present the financing arrangements do not prioritise the legal protection of affected populations.The present study explores how fresh water content and sea surface height in the Beaufort Sea might be modified under warming-induced conditions due to climate change. We performed simulations from 1970 to 2069 with a coupled ice-ocean model (CIOM) implemented for the Arctic Ocean. The surface fields to drive CIOM were provided by the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM), in turn driven by the third-generation Canadian global climate model (CGCM3) outputs following the A1B climate change scenario. The simulated sea ice concentration in the entire Arctic and the fresh water content in the Beaufort Sea are shown to have consistent patterns to those seen in observations and reanalysis data. In terms of the possible future climate, the CIOM simulations suggest an 11% decrease per decade in ice volume, with the Arctic Ocean becoming largely ice free in the summers by about similar to 2069. Moreover, due to increases in melting of sea ice and Ekman transport, there is an increasing trend in fresh water content (FWC) and sea surface height (SSH) in the Beaufort Sea. The increase is about 2 m for FWC and 6 cm for SSH from 1979 to 2069. Finally, the simulations also suggest that maximum increases in the FWC and SSH occur near the center of the Beaufort Gyre, where the maximum FWC and SSH are located. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Performance of a regional climate model (RCM), WRF, for downscaling East Asian summer season climate is investigated based on 11-summer integrations associated with different climate conditions with reanalysis data as the lateral boundary conditions. It is found that while the RCM is essentially unable to improve large-scale circulation patterns in the upper troposphere for most years, it is able to simulate better lower-level meridional moisture transport in the East Asian summer monsoon. For precipitation downscaling, the RCM produces more realistic magnitude of the interannual variation in most areas of East Asia than that in the reanalysis. Furthermore, the RCM significantly improves the spatial pattern of summer rainfall over dry inland areas and mountainous areas, such as Mongolia and the Tibetan Plateau. Meanwhile, it reduces the wet bias over southeast China. Over Mongolia, however, the performance of precipitation downscaling strongly depends on the year: the WRF is skillful for normal and wet years, but not for dry years, which suggests that land surface processes play an important role in downscaling ability. Over the dry area of North China, the WRF shows the worst performance. Additional sensitivity experiments testing land effects in downscaling suggest the initial soil moisture condition and representation of land surface processes with different schemes are sources of uncertainty for precipitation downscaling. Correction of initial soil moisture using the climatology dataset from GSWP-2 is a useful approach to robustly reducing wet bias in inland areas as well as to improve spatial distribution of precipitation. Despite the improvement on RCM downscaling, regional analyses reveal that accurate simulation of precipitation over East China, where the precipitation pattern is strongly influenced by the activity of the Meiyu/Baiu rainfall band, is difficult. Since the location of the rainfall band is closely associated with both lower-level meridional moisture transport and upper-level circulation structures, it is necessary to have realistic upper-air circulation patterns in the RCM as well as lower-level moisture transport in order to improve the circulation-associated convective rainfall band in East Asia.In this paper we argue that rationalist 'predict then act' approaches to disaster risk management (DRM) policy promote unrealistic public expectations of DRM provisions, the avoidance of decision making by political elites, an over-reliance on technical expertise and engineering solutions to reducing exposure to natural events, and a reactive approach to DRM overall. We propose an alternative incrementalist approach that focuses on managing uncertainties rather than reducing them and building resilience not simply through the reduction of hazard exposure, but also through the ongoing reduction of community vulnerability, the explicit consideration of normative priorities, and more effective community engagement in climate risk debates. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change may affect forest management not only through predicted ecological impacts on forests, but also by reframing perspectives on land use issues, and thus changing forest policies. In this paper, forest policy making in the light of climate change is analyzed in two German Laender, Bavaria and North Rhine Westphalia, drawing on the Multiple Streams Framework. Empirically, document analysis and expert interviews substantiate this analysis. The formation of climate change related forest policy occurred differently in both Laender. In Bavaria, several factors triggered a successful integration of climate change adaptation measures related to forests into one program, the "Bavarian Climate Programme 2020". These factors were, for instance, an early problematization of climate change by forest science, a 'condensation' of the problem into particular areas of high need for action, the possibility to rely on already available (in parts, implemented), well-proven, and applicable forest policy measures, and the coordinated and entrepreneurial activities of the forest sector as a whole. In North Rhine Westphalia, the political framework conditions for a formation of climate change related forest policy were less favorable, and, hence, no broader forest policy on the issue occurred. Recent political changes, however, may allow for new prospects. We conclude that the extent to which the issue of climate change is integrated into forest policy depends on the overall framing of climate policy and the opportunities for the forest sector to substantiate the necessity of such a link. The preparedness and activities of the latter are then needed in order to utilize possible policy windows and to receive resources for forest climate policy measures. Forest science plays an important role by influencing the agenda, indicating challenges and providing scientific criteria to determine and rationalize specific measures. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Southwestern Australia has already undergone significant climatic warming and drying and water temperatures are increasing particularly in small streams where riparian vegetation has been cleared. The ability to predict how freshwater fauna may respond to these changes requires understanding of their thermal tolerances. A review of relevant literature and laboratory testing of four aquatic species from southwestern Australia were used to compare upper thermal tolerance (UTT) among key taxonomic groups. UTT for selected species determined by LT50 tests were similar to that of species tested elsewhere. Mean UTT, based on relevant literature and LT50 experiments, ranged from 22.3A degrees C for Ephemeroptera to 43.4A degrees C for Coleoptera. Mean UTT for both Coleoptera and Odonata (41.9A degrees C) were significantly higher than those for all the other groups (22.3-31.5A degrees C) with the exception of Planaria. The mean UTT value of 22.3A degrees C for Ephemeroptera was significantly lower than for Decapoda (29.6A degrees C), Trichoptera (30.1A degrees C) and Mollusca (31.5A degrees C). For three insect orders tested, eurytherms had significantly higher UTT values than stenotherms. The variation in UTT among taxa suggests that additional thermal shifts, caused by riparian disturbance and/or climate change, are likely to create novel assemblages due to the replacement of temperature-sensitive taxa by more tolerant taxa. This has implications for the sustainability of regionally important endemic cool water species.We analyze the impact of different adaptation strategies on crop net revenues in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. We estimate a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of climate change adaptation and crop net revenues and implement a counterfactual analysis. Households data are combined with spatial climate data. We find that adaptation to climate change based upon a portfolio of strategies significantly increases farm net revenues. Changing crop varieties has a positive and significant impact on net revenues when coupled with water conservation strategies or soil conservation strategies, but not when implemented in isolation.This paper examines the effects of wildlife tourism-based payments for ecosystem services (PES) on poverty, wealth inequality and the livelihoods of herders in the Maasai Mara Ecosystem in south-western Kenya. It uses the case of Olare Orok Conservancy PES programme in which pastoral landowners have agreed to voluntary resettlement and exclusion of livestock grazing from their sub-divided lands. These lands are set aside for wildlife tourism, in return for direct monetary payments by a coalition of five commercial tourism operators. Results show that, on the positive side, PES is the most equitable income source that promotes income diversification and buffers households from the livestock income declines during periods of severe drought, such as in 2008-2009. Without accounting for the opportunity costs, the magnitude of the PES cash transfer to households is, on average, sufficient to close the poverty gap. The co-benefits of PES implementation include the creation of employment opportunities in the conservancy and provision of social services. There is however a need to mitigate the negative effects of PES, including the widening inequality in income between PES and non-PES households and the leakages resulting from the displacement of settlements and livestock to currently un-subdivided pastoral commons.High population growth rates and poverty are likely to elevate the vulnerability of many coastal communities in the Pacific region to climate change. Alternative livelihood strategies which can generate income and simultaneously conserve fish stocks and their habitats are a priority. This paper investigates the feasibility of 'sport fishing' (recreational catch and release angling for particular species of predatory game fish) as such a strategy. The limited research of sport fisheries in developing countries is augmented with a review of community-based ecotourism, integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) and common property management literature to propose design principles. Five prerequisite principles for the success of sport fishery enterprises are suggested. First, adequate local capacity must be available to manage a tourism business and facilities, supported by cross-scale co-management amongst stakeholders. Second, appropriate governance arrangements must be in place to ensure the equitable dispersal of benefits to all members of the local community, and conflict resolution. Third, resource-ownership boundaries and rights must be clearly delineated before the enterprise begins in order to minimise the potential for future conflict. Fourth, social, biodiversity and ecosystem service co-benefits should result from the enterprise. These should include improvements in income, health, education, food security, the status of the target and non-target species and their habitat and non-fishery ecosystem services. Fifth, monitoring and evaluation of these principles is required within an adaptive co-management framework which takes a social-ecological systems approach and includes all stakeholders in social learning and power-sharing. Through this, broader impacts of the enterprise may emerge which go beyond the standard assessment of ecotourism and ICDP success in financial or biodiversity terms. These principles now need to be tested by researching the experiences of case studies of sport fishing enterprises in the Pacific. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An adjoint of a regional chemical transport model is used to calculate location-specific temperature influences (climate penalties) on two policy-relevant ozone metrics: concentrations in polluted regions (>65 ppb) and short-term mortality in Canada and the U. S. Temperature influences through changes in chemical reaction rates, atmospheric moisture content, and biogenic emissions exhibit significant spatial variability. In particular, high-NOx, polluted regions are prominently distinguished by substantial climate penalties (up to 6.2 ppb/K in major urban areas) as a result of large temperature influences through increased biogenic emissions and nonnegative water vapor sensitivities. Temperature influences on ozone mortality, when integrated across the domain, result in 369 excess deaths/K in Canada and the U. S. over a summer season-an impact comparable to a 5% change in anthropogenic NOx emissions. As such, we suggest that NOx control can be also regarded as a climate change adaptation strategy with regard to ozone air quality.A set of 85 heirloom apple cultivars aimed for long-term preservation in two germplasm collections in Sweden and Finland was evaluated with 8 SSR primer pairs to evaluate genetic diversity and genetic relatedness. An additional set of 16 European cultivars was included for comparison. The eight SSR primer pairs amplified 9 loci and 105 alleles. Genetic analyses performed by MDS indicated some differentiation between Swedish and Finnish cultivars, with European cultivars intermixed with the Swedish. The existence of three groups was, however, indicated by a Bayesian model-based clustering. One of the groups was clearly dominated by Swedish cultivars and another by Finnish. The third group included almost equal proportions of representatives from all three areas. The obtained results confirmed the genetic distinctness of Finnish apple cultivars, which can be explained by climate adaptation and admixture with a Russian gene pool. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Backwash procedures for deep bed filters were evaluated and compared by means of a new integrated approach based on productivity. For this, different backwash procedures were experimentally evaluated by using a pilot plant for direct filtration. A standard backwash mode as applied in practice served as a reference and effluent turbidity was used as the criterion for filter run termination. The backwash water volumes needed, duration of the filter-to-waste period, time out of operation, total volume discharged and filter run-time were determined and used to calculate average filtration velocity and average productivity. Results for filter run-times, filter backwash volumes, and filter-to-waste volumes showed considerable differences between the backwash procedures. Thus, backwash procedures with additional clear flushing phases were characterised by an increased need for backwash water. However, this additional water consumption could not be compensated by savings during filter ripening. Compared to the reference backwash procedure, filter run-times were longer for both single-media and dual-media filters when air scour and air/water flush were optimised with respect to flow rates and the proportion of air and water. This means that drinking water production time is longer and less water is needed for filter bed cleaning. Also, backwashing with additional clear flushing phases resulted in longer filter run-times before turbidity breakthrough. However, regarding the productivity of the filtration process, it was shown that it was almost the same for all of the backwash procedures investigated in this study. Due to this unexpected finding, the relationships between filter bed cleaning, filter ripening and filtration performance were considered and important conclusions and new approaches for process optimisation and resource savings were derived. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many countries have developed, or are in the process of developing, climate change adaptation policy statements, including for health. What knowledge do these policy statements value? How are rural community and Indigenous knowledges included? What are the implications of the answers to these questions for effective adaptation policy for health, particularly for rural communities? These potentially influential government policy statements have not yet been collectively analysed for the ways they reproduce particular discourses in the operation of their meaning-making for health adaptation. This international study investigates and maps health adaptation policy via a discourse analysis of an exhaustive set of twenty-one national adaptation policy documents from twelve Annex 1 countries in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The study uses the techniques of critical discourse analysis to reveal that the national policy texts operate within an ordered universe of discourses that most values climate science and epidemiology and least values local community knowledge, needs and adaptive assets. This is true even for the discourse that emphasises particular forms of translational knowledge and methods for health services development critical to adaptation in these communities. In this respect, national adaptation policy, including for health, does not appear consistent with the prescriptions of global policy frameworks provided by the UN and WHO which emphasise local knowledges. The study's findings are explored with reference to critiques of scientism and Foucault's metaphor of the panopticon to suggest how national policy has worked as a mechanism for the appropriation, governance and regulation of rural communities, limiting its effectiveness. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bees are key pollinators in almost all terrestrial ecosystems and can have major roles in agricultural production. Records of bees in the Southwest Pacific indicate a very low diversity, with the Fijian bee fauna one of the least diverse, despite an otherwise rich biota. Megachilid bees represent a large proportion of the bee fauna for almost all island groups in the Southwest Pacific and, because they are wood- and stem-nesting, their wide distribution is likely to have been influenced by rafting and anthropogenic maritime trade. Our study is the first to apply molecular techniques to the study of megachilid bees in this region and indicates between four and five recent introductions to Fiji, likely from Southeast Asia. The study also provides the first record of Heriades (Michenerella) in the Southwest Pacific and the first record of the subgenus Megachile (Callomegachile) in Fiji. These results indicate that a large proportion of the Fijian bee fauna is likely to have been introduced only very recently and, therefore, has had only a very recent role in Fijian ecosystems, despite their current abundance. This has very wide implications for understanding Fijian plant-pollinator relationships. We argue that there is a strong need to understand ancient plant-pollinator relationships that may have evolved in Fiji before the mid late Pleistocene and Holocene and whether these could be disrupted by recent bee introductions.A number of studies exist on the relationship between climatic factors and malaria prevalence. However, due to scarcity of data, most of the studies are based on biophysical experiments and do not control for socioeconomic covariates. This research, which uses data on Ghana, contributes to the thin literature that addresses this limitation. We found that humidity and rainfall predict malaria prevalence. Furthermore, our results suggest that malaria prevalence increases with rainfall, the proportion of middle income households, and the proportion of households with no formal education. The corresponding elasticity coefficients are 0.67, 0.12 and 0.66, respectively. Significant differences in the prevalence rate have also been observed across regions.This paper demonstrates how biophysical and socio-economic assessments of adaptation options can be integrated to test the effectiveness of options and anticipate social risks and potential barriers to adoption. We present the approach by combining a model analysis with a multiple-criteria evaluation of 12 adaptation options by graziers from the Australian rangelands. Our results show that strategies to manage stocking rates and pasture spelling are likely to be effective in improving climate resilience in the rangelands and are easy-to-implement, short-term solutions. Improving land condition is found to have the greatest potential long-term benefits, but was not considered by the graziers to be feasible or effective due to perceived difficulties of implementation. Areas of concordance identified in the assessments may be used to engage with stakeholders and build a foundation for incorporating climate change considerations into management and policy. The approach also highlights discordant views within the assessments that may result from differing management objectives, adaptive capacity and climate-risk perception. These factors are potential impediments to adaptation. The integrated assessment approach enables adaptation strategies and policy recommendations to be developed that have greater relevance to individual stakeholders, and supports capacity building to facilitate the most effective adaptation actions. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Flood insurance plays an important role in climate adaptation by recovering insured losses in the event of catastrophic flooding. Voluntary adoption of flood insurance has been seen as a function of risk perception that is shaped by social norms. This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between these factors. It is based on a household survey conducted in the eastern cities of Australia and involving a total of 501 randomly selected residents. Results of a path analysis show that the likelihood of having flood insurance cover was associated with perceived social norms, but not perceived flood risk. In addition, perceived norms and risk were statistically related to each other. It is concluded that social norms played a mediating role between insuring decision and risk perception. Risk perception might influence the insuring decision indirectly through shaping perception of social norms. This implies that adaptive behaviour is not necessarily a function of risk perception, but an outcome of its impacts upon the ways in which the individuals situate themselves in their social circles or the society. There is a feedback process in which individual perceptions of risk manifest as both a cause and effect, shaping and being shaped by the socio-cultural context. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There has been a decrease in grazing mobility in the Mongolian grasslands over the past decades. Sedentary grazing with substantial external inputs has increased the cost of livestock production. As a result, the livelihoods of herders have become more vulnerable to climate variability and change. Sedentary grazing is the formal institutional arrangement in Inner Mongolia, China. However, this may not be an efficient institutional arrangement for climate change adaptation. Self-organized local institutions for climate change adaptation have emerged and are under development in the study area. In this study, we did exploratory analyses of multiple local institutions for climate change adaptation in the Mongolian grasslands, using an agent-based modeling approach. Empirical studies from literature and our field work show that sedentary grazing, pasture rental markets, and reciprocal pasture-use groups are three popular institutional arrangements in the study area. First, we modeled the social-ecological performance (i.e., livelihood benefits to herders and grassland quality) of these institutions and their combinations under different climate conditions. Second, we did exploratory analyses of multiple social mechanisms for facilitating and maintaining cooperative use of pastures among herders. The modeling results show that in certain value-ranges of some model parameters with assumed values, reciprocal pasture-use groups had better performance than pasture rental markets; and the comparative advantage of cooperative use of pastures over sedentary grazing without cooperation becomes more evident with the increase in drought probability. Agent diversity and social norms were effective for facilitating the development of reciprocal pasture-use groups. Kin selection and punishments on free-riders were useful for maintaining cooperation among herders. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reflects on the progress made in climate change adaptation in the city of Durban since the launch of the Municipal Climate Protection Programme in 2004. This includes the initial difficulties in getting the attention of key sectors within municipal government, and how this was addressed and also served by the more detailed understanding of the range of adaptation options and their cost-benefits. There is also a better understanding of the potentials and constraints on community-based adaptation and the opposition from some landowners to measures to protect and enhance ecosystem services. The paper ends with lessons learnt that contradict some common assumptions - for instance, what approaches best build support for climate change adaptation within local governments, what measures work and from where lessons can be drawn. It also describes the perhaps unexpected linkages between local action and international influence and highlights the need for international climate change negotiations to recognize the key roles of urban governments in developing locally rooted adaptation and resilience.The city of Dar es Salaam, with a population of more than four million, has no climate change adaptation plan. It also has a very large development deficit and lacks adequate provision for infrastructure and services such as piped water, sewers, drains and solid waste collection. Addressing this deficit (and building the institutional and financial capacity to do so) is also important for building resilience to climate change impacts. Eighty per cent of the city's population lives in informal settlements, but there is little effective land use management and a number of these settlements are on sites that flood regularly. Climate change impacts include sea level rise, rising temperatures and increased occurrence of extreme weather, including rainstorms and droughts, all of which present challenges to city and municipal governments that are struggling to reduce the development deficit. This paper discusses the measures being taken to address this deficit and where and how these measures can be accompanied by improved disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.As climate change impacts are felt within growing numbers of cities in low- and middle-income countries, there is growing interest in the adaptation plans and programmes put forward by city authorities. Yet cities face considerable constraints on this front. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of these constraints by analyzing the case of Rosario, in Argentina. The city has a strong coherent governance system, with a commitment to decentralization, transparency, accountability and participation. Its long tradition of urban planning has evolved to include a broad vision of urban challenges and responses, a commitment to environmental sustainability and a strategic plan that has involved multiple stakeholders. This paper describes the many measures implemented in Rosario over the last 18 years, which provide a solid foundation for more systematically addressing adaptation. It also describes the significant challenges faced by the city's administration, especially around funding, data and the challenge of responding to pressing and competing interests.This paper considers how resilience thinking and, in particular, its emphasis on learning has been applied in 10 cities in Vietnam, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Applying a shared learning approach in the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) has helped to create or strengthen networks, build appreciation for complexity and uncertainty among stakeholders, provide a space for deliberating concepts such as vulnerability and resilience, and build knowledge and capacities for stakeholders to engage and represent their own interests. Shared learning approaches face considerable challenges navigating politicized urban environments, in which the nature and value of existing systems - and therefore the value of building resilience - are contested. This article suggests that deliberate, strategic intervention by facilitators may contribute to more transformative change on behalf of equitable, socially just outcomes - and thus cautions against seeing urban climate vulnerability as a technical challenge, or shared learning as a toolkit for building resilience.This article analyses the current flood risk management practices in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), China. In the next four decades, 120 million people are expected to live in the region, which currently covers 11 major cities, and includes the coastal megacities formed by Hong Kong and Shenzhen. These populous low-lying coastal cities experience emerging flood risk from (i) intense precipitation, (ii) storm surges, (iii) global sea level rise and (iv) rapid urbanization in the flood-prone areas. These have major economic, social and ecological impacts and have made it imperative to adopt a sustainable flood risk management strategy to mitigate these risks. This research uses the case study in Tai O and Shenzhen River sites from Hong Kong and Shenzhen where in-depth discussions were held with various stakeholders to overview and understand current constraints to realizing sustainable flood risk management (SFRM). The outcome shows the authorities have realized the importance of SFRM and climate change adaptation strategies. They seek further improvement in managing flood risk and preparing for unpredictable climatic regimes in both megacities, and by extension comparable urbanizing coastal cities in the PRD and East Asia. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Objectives To examine the effect of extreme temperatures on emergency department admissions (EDAs) for childhood asthma. Methods An ecological design was used in this study. A Poisson linear regression model combined with a distributed lag non-linear model was used to quantify the effect of temperature on EDAs for asthma among children aged 0-14 years in Brisbane, Australia, during January 2003-December 2009, while controlling for air pollution, relative humidity, day of the week, season and long-term trends. The model residuals were checked to identify whether there was an added effect due to heat waves or cold spells. Results There were 13 324 EDAs for childhood asthma during the study period. Both hot and cold temperatures were associated with increases in EDAs for childhood asthma, and their effects both appeared to be acute. An added effect of heat waves on EDAs for childhood asthma was observed, but no added effect of cold spells was found. Male children and children aged 0-4 years were most vulnerable to heat effects, while children aged 10-14 years were most vulnerable to cold effects. Conclusions Both hot and cold temperatures seemed to affect EDAs for childhood asthma. As climate change continues, children aged 0-4 years are at particular risk for asthma.The international carbon market provides a unique opportunity to increase ecosystem services and biodiversity through the revegetation of agricultural landscapes. Although the primary motivation for revegetation is to increase carbon sequestration, revegetated areas can provide additional financial, social, and environmental cobenefits that provide different levels of private and public net benefit. Conversely, carbon farming, if it is not implemented carefully, can create disbenefits, such as increased land clearing, monoculture plantations replacing diverse remnants, and unintended impacts across national borders. Economic models of carbon revegetation show that policies aimed at maximizing carbon sequestration alone will not necessarily lead to high uptake or maximize cobenefits. Careful consideration of policy incentives that encourage carbon plantings to deliver both public and private cobenefits is required, and solutions will need to balance both objectives in order to incentivize the sustainable, long-term management of carbon plantings across the landscape.The formation of berms and their transformation into beach ridges in a micro-tidal environment is coupled to wave run-up and overtopping during extreme sea levels. A straight-forward comparison between extreme sea levels due to storm-surges and active berm levels is impossible in the semi-enclosed bays along the Baltic Sea. Quite often, the maximum water levels do not coincide with the maximum intensity of the wave driven processes because of seiches in the Baltic. In this paper, we look into the joined distribution of extreme water levels and high-energetic wave conditions at Feddet, a sandy prograding spit on the south-eastern Baltic shores of Zealand, Denmark. The modern, sandy beach at this location consists of a beachface with a shallow incipient berm, a mature berm, and a dune-covered beach ridge. It borders a beach-ridge plain to the west, where more than 20 N-S oriented beach ridges and swales are present. Measured water-level data from 1991 to 2012 and topographical observations, carried out during fair weather period and during a storm event, provided the basis for a conceptual model exhibiting berm formation and transformation into the local beach-ridge system. The character of extreme sea level events is identified using thirty-three well described extreme events throughout a period of 15 years. Analysis of the meteorological conditions during these events revealed that berm formation only occurred during 20% of all extreme events when onshore winds, high-energy wave action and elevated water coincided. These berm-forming events had a mean return period of once every three years. The average age between successive beach ridges on the beach-ridge plain was about 180 years, which means that the transformation of a berm into a single beach ridge is the result of a large number of storm episodes with high-energy waves and extreme water levels. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background and AimsClimate is a key consideration for winegrowers, so information regarding projected climate change and the relative global impacts are of great interest. Methods and ResultsThis climate analogue approach compares and contrasts future to current climate among the regions. Warming was projected for all regions, with greater warming in Northern Hemisphere continental regions and less for Southern Hemisphere and coastal regions. Projections of annual precipitation varied, with the median result from the range of models indicating a wetter climate for higher latitude regions, such as New Zealand, Mosel Valley and North Oregon, and the Chinese region in this study, while Southern European, Australian and South African winegrowing regions had a projected drier climate. The median model result for winter precipitation indicated a projected decrease for sites in Chile, Greece, Australia and Spain, with other European and American sites experiencing a slight increase in winter precipitation. Shandong, China, was the only region in this study projected to experience increased summer precipitation. ConclusionFuture temperature and precipitation projections were made for 23 winegrowing regions worldwide and compared using a climate analogue approach. Significance of the StudyAn estimated future temperature and precipitation climatology centred on 2030 and 2070 for 23 winegrowing regions worldwide is made using results from 23 global climate models. Using these climatologies, along with consideration of length of the planning horizon, legal limitations and inter-regional climate variability, climate analogues can be described. For future planning, winegrape cultivars better suited to the projected climate may then be selected from the range currently growing in identified analogue regions. Alternatively, climatically optimum sites can be identified for growing particular cultivars in future conditions.The private sector is increasingly being engaged in climate finance and climate-related activities. Private sector opportunities for engagement in climate change adaptation are less clear than for mitigation, particularly in developing countries. This article first conceptualizes private sector engagement in adaptation by exploring (1) different roles of the private sector in adaptation in developing countries and (2) the way governments can create an enabling environment to increase private sector engagement. Second, it analyses how 47 least developed countries (LDCs) envisage the role of the private sector in their National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs). This article argues that private sector engagement in adaptation is often inevitable and potentially significant. Yet, the results show that it receives little attention in NAPAs. This may have three explanations: (1) an intentional approach of LDCs to avoid a distraction from the necessity to scale up public funding; (2) a lack of awareness of the potential of the private sector; and (3) the NAPA formulation guidelines focus on the public sector in the context of public financing, potentially causing path dependency. Developed countries' historic responsibility for emissions obliges them to upscale public climate finance. At the same time, however, LDCs should further explore private sector engagement in adaptation.With reference to agrarian environments in southern India, this article argues that insights from political ecology provide an important way to move forward on debates on human security and climate change adaptation. While current human security perspectives helpfully situate the pursuit of climate change adaption within questions of social justice, they have been less forthcoming in providing suitable analytical tools to conceptualize the relationship between power, inequality and vulnerability. To address this gap, insights from political ecology are used to specify the relational dynamics of vulnerability, i.e. the ways in which marginalized peoples are adversely incorporated into political, social and economic relationships that produce their vulnerability while simultaneously creating relative security for others. This perspective is elaborated with examples from Andhra Pradesh, India, where differential control over key productive assets including land, water, labour and credit is key to the hierarchical displacement of security/insecurity across the agrarian population. By foregrounding the relational dynamics of vulnerability, this article provides analytical tools that offer a fuller account of the possibilities and limits to public policy aimed at sustainable climate change adaptation.Based on recognized gaps in adaptation research the article begins by identifying the need to empirically investigate the governance of adaptation'. Drawing on Kooiman's interactive governance framework, the study examines through collaborative methodology how adaptation agency and the space for adaptation is constructed and restricted in the case of an Indigenous reindeer herding community in Sweden. Findings demonstrate that climate change and variability is currently a matter of concern. The greatest problem, however, is the diminishing space for adaptation due to accumulated pressure of predation and competing land-uses in combination with herders' lack of direct and indirect power to influence the actors and institutional factors currently limiting adaptation options. This study carries relevance not only for reindeer herding communities in Sweden, but also for the general adaptation literature in demonstrating that limits and barriers to adaptation can be essentially political; requiring the making of hard choices and hence active governmental intervention. It also shows that marginalized groups, even in contexts where adaptive capacity is considered high, are likely to remain highly vulnerable with restricted adaptation opportunities unless deliberate structural and institutional transformation are initiated.In this study, long-term visibility data for the Pacific Ocean side of Hokkaido Island, northeast Japan, are investigated to clarify the relationship between interannual variation in summer fog frequency (FF) and large-scale circulation patterns. At Kushiro, a significant FF decrease is found during 1931-2010 even without the influence of the observatory's relocation after 2000. In particular, since the late 1970s, a linear declining trend has accelerated, as evidenced by an increased number of years with very low FF in July and August. To clarify the climatological factor causing the summer FF declining trend at Kushiro, atmospheric vertical conditions in the planetary boundary layer and large-scale circulation are examined during 1989-2009 and 1958-2002, respectively, using available datasets. Composite analyses that are based on radiosonde observations reveal that the shallow fog layer is covered with a strong inversion layer during fog days whereas the inversion layer is absent during nonfog days. Composite circulation anomalies for the low-FF years at Kushiro show an intensified Okhotsk high (OH) pressure feature and southward shrinking of the North Pacific high (NPH) in July, in addition to the eastward displacement or shrinking of the NPH in August. These anomalous synoptic circulation patterns cause weakening in the southerly-southeasterly wind, which reduces sea-fog advection toward Kushiro and prevents the formation of stable stratification over the sea-fog layer. The authors suggest that the interannual variation in summer FF with the recent accelerated decline at Kushiro is primarily controlled by changes in the synoptic circulation associated with the OH and NPH development.Tropical cyclone (TC) tracking is essential for calculating TC statistics from gridded datasets. A new method for TC tracking is presented here using neighbor enclosed area tracking (NEAT), which is based on the temporal overlap of enclosed areas above a vorticity threshold and differs from the widely used neighbor point tracking (NPT) method. The parameters of cyclone intensity, vertical-shear, and warm-core criteria were intensively tuned for NEAT and NPT. When these criteria were optimized for the typhoon tracks observed in the western North Pacific based on the Japanese 25-yr Reanalysis Project (JRA-25)/Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) Climate Data Assimilation System (JCDAS) dataset, the NEAT and NPT algorithms captured approximately 85% of typhoons with little qualitative distortion in the spatial distribution and temporal variability of the TC track density. The grid system dependency of the algorithms was tested by applying NEAT and NPT to a high-resolution general circulation model output. The method presented here can also provide realistic statistics on the TC size, the extratropical transition timing, and the meridional heat transport.Knowledge of climate change vulnerability and impacts is a prerequisite for formulating locally relevant climate change adaptation policies. A participatory approach has been used in this study to determine climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation aspects for the Kangsabati River basin, India. The study approach involved engaging with stakeholders representing state (sub-national), district and community levels, through an interactive brainstorming method, to understand stakeholder perceptions regarding (a) local characteristics which influence vulnerability, (b) climate change impacts and (c) relevant adaptation options. The study reveals that vulnerability varies across upstream, midstream and downstream sections of the river basin. Suggested adaptation options, in this predominantly agricultural basin, are found to be applicable across spatial scales. Stakeholder perceptions, regarding vulnerability and impacts, vary with the level of interaction, academic background and type of experience. Interaction confirms the notion that stakeholders have inherent knowledge regarding adaptation, reveals their preferences and ability to think unconventionally. We discuss limitations of the approach while demonstrating its ability to deliver locally relevant and acceptable adaptation options, which could facilitate implementation. We conclude that engaging stakeholders at multiple levels was highly effective in assessing locally relevant aspects of climate change vulnerability, impacts and applicable adaptation options in the Kangsabati River basin. Based on this assessment, a sub-basin scale is recommended for evaluating these aspects, especially for water resources and agricultural systems, through multi-level stakeholder input.With 80 % of world trade carried by sea, seaports provide crucial linkages in global supply-chains and are essential for the ability of all countries to access global markets. Seaports are likely to be affected directly and indirectly by climatic changes, with broader implications for international trade and development. Due to their coastal location, seaports are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events associated with increasing sea levels and tropical storm activity, as illustrated by hurricane "Sandy". In view of their strategic role as part of the globalized trading system, adapting ports in different parts of the world to the impacts of climate change is of considerable importance. Reflecting the views of a diverse group of stakeholders with expertise in climate science, engineering, economics, policy, and port management, this essay highlights the climate change challenge for ports and suggests a way forward through the adoption of some initial measures. These include both "soft" and "hard" adaptations that may be spearheaded by individual port entities, but will require collaboration and support from a broad range of public and private sector stakeholders and from society at large. In particular, the essay highlights a need to shift to more holistic planning, investment and operation.Social networks play an important role in environmental governance regimes, and they are a key to the adaptive capacity of systems that deal with complex, contextual and multi-faceted issues. Urban water systems are typical examples of complex systems facing many pressures, such as increased population, water quality deterioration, and climate change. This paper explores social networks of the key stakeholders engaged in urban water management, in Makassar City, Indonesia, in the context of exploring ways to improve management of an increasingly complex urban water system. Three social networks were explored; those constituted by formal and informal interactions and networks perceived by stakeholders to be "ideal". Formal networks were identified through an examination of the legislative instruments and government agencies' documents relating to water provision in Makassar, while the informal and "ideal" networks were investigated in collaboration with the stakeholders. The research found that the informal social network was more extensive than were the formally required networks, and the investigation of informal networks created a potentially more robust and adaptive water management system than would have occurred through inclusion of formal institutional arrangements. We suggest that in examination of the adaptive capacity of an urban water system, one also considers the informal arrangements and linkages, as this additional information about the system is necessary to enhance our understanding of potential adaptation of water management and improved urban water systems.Climate change is impacting water resources in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Drought is becoming more severe and water scarcer. Thus, action on adaptation to climate impacts is urgently needed. We assess the potential for wastewater reuse as an adaptation measure to cope with water scarcity in Can Tho City, within the heart of the Mekong Delta. We show that wastewater effluent can be used to irrigate at least to 22,719 ha of paddy rice (16% of the rice-cultivated area in the city) at 3 crops per year. The fertilizing properties of the water would eliminate part of the demand for synthetic fertilizers, providing a maximum of 22% of the nitrogen (N) and 14% of the phosphorus (P) requirement for the winter-spring crop. On a yearly basis, recovery of wastewater could reduce the discharge of N by 15-27% and the discharge of P by 8-17%. Such a program would contribute to a decrease in the level of pollution in the local rivers and canal systems, while also reducing the need for expensive tertiary treatment (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A method for measuring the two-dimensional distribution of wind velocity vectors near a surface exposed to solar radiation, by tracking brightness temperature images instead of particle images, is proposed. It is based on time-sequential thermography with the algorithm used for particle image velocimetry. This thermal image velocimetry (TIV) was tested on a full-scale building wall covered by polystyrene boards attached side-by-side over a vertically elongated area measuring 22.2 m by 2.73 m. A thermal infrared camera was installed 8 m from the test wall to capture the wall-surface temperature at 30 Hz frequency. A sonic anemometer was also installed 35 mm from the surface used for validation of the TIV. The advection velocity estimated from thermal infrared imagery had a linear relationship with the wind velocity measured by the sonic anemometer, irrespective of the wind speed and direction. This linear slope was multiplied by the advection velocity of the thermal infrared image to rescale it to the wind velocity, and the term 'TIV velocity' was then used. A histogram and power spectra of the TIV velocity showed quantitatively good agreement with the velocity measured by the sonic anemometer, except for the high-frequency region of the spectra, where the TIV velocity was overestimated compared with that of the sonic anemometer. The method was also tested on ground covered by artificial turf to demonstrate its application to a horizontal plane with a wider area, extending for more than 80 m by 60 m.Federally-recognized tribes must adapt to many ecological challenges arising from climate change, from the effects of glacier retreat on the habitats of culturally significant species to how sea leave rise forces human communities to relocate. The governmental and social institutions supporting tribes in adapting to climate change are often constrained by political obstructions, raising concerns about justice. Beyond typical uses of justice, which call attention to violations of formal rights or to considerations about the degree to which some populations may have caused anthropogenic climate change, a justice framework should guide how leaders, scientists and professionals of all heritages and who work with or for federally-recognized tribes understand what actions are morally essential for supporting tribes' adaptation efforts. This paper motivates a shift to a forward-looking framework of justice. The framework situates justice within the systems of responsibilities that matter to tribes and many others, which range from webs of inter-species relationships to government-to-government partnerships. Justice is achieved when these systems of responsibilities operate in ways that support the continued flourishing of tribal communities.Traditional knowledge is increasingly recognized as valuable for adaptation to climate change, bringing scientists and indigenous peoples together to collaborate and exchange knowledge. These partnerships can benefit both researchers and indigenous peoples through mutual learning and mutual knowledge generation. Despite these benefits, most descriptions focus on the social contexts of exchange. The implications of the multiple cultural, legal, risk-benefit and governance contexts of knowledge exchange have been less recognized. The failure to consider these contexts of knowledge exchange can result in the promotion of benefits while failing to adequately address adverse consequences. The purpose of this article is to promote awareness of these issues to encourage their wider incorporation into research, policy, measures to implement free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and the development of equitable adaptation partnerships between indigenous peoples and researchers.Aim Species distribution models (SDMs) generally use correlative relationships between the species location and the associated environment to project the species potential distribution under climate change. While projecting a future suitable climatic space is relatively simple using SDMs, predicting a species ability to occupy that space relies on understanding dispersal capacity; a lack of knowledge about species-specific dispersal ability, varying geographical contexts and technical constraints of simple SDMs has limited the consideration of dispersal in most studies. We review the current treatment of dispersal in SDM studies addressing the effects of climate change and explore how incorporating partial-dispersal' scenarios could lead to more realistic projections of species distributions into the future. Location Global. Methods We consider the implications for projected distributions of incorporating full- and no-dispersal scenarios in SDMs and identify a range of methods and their associated information needs for implementing partial-dispersal scenarios. Results While simplistic and easy to implement, full- and no-dispersal scenarios are only realistic in a few situations. Although implementing partial-dispersal scenarios may require information that is lacking for many species, we argue that even relatively simple partial-dispersal models, with fairly basic knowledge needs, improve projections of altered distributions under climate change. More complex models, using more sophisticated modelling approaches, have been tested in a few cases and provide robust projections. Main Conclusions While climate change SDM outputs have proved useful, we highlight that careful selection of dispersal scenarios, relevant to the particular questions being addressed, is necessary for appropriate interpretation of the model outputs when projecting into novel environments (e.g. future climates). A number of methods have been developed for incorporating partial-dispersal scenarios in SDMs; however, the data and computation requirements currently limit their application to large numbers of species, highlighting the need for other techniques and generic user-friendly modelling platforms.Local government represents a key opportunity for implementing local adaptation to the impacts of climate change. The need for adaptation is most urgent in developing countries, yet most research has focused on the barriers to climate change mainstreaming in municipalities of the global North. This paper presents the results of a study that investigated barriers to action on climate change adaptation in eight municipalities in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Forty-seven municipal actors (officials and councillors) were interviewed regarding the experience of their municipality with climate impacts and adaptive actions (focussing on ecosystem-based adaptation), as well as their knowledge and belief on climate change and adaptation issues. Results show that multiple barriers affect the ability of municipalities to mainstream adaptation issues, from individual-level barriers (such as a lack of understanding of climate change and adaptation options) to regulatory/institutional barriers (such as the problems posed by party politics) to socio-cultural barriers (such as a lack of interest within municipal constituencies for climate change issues). These numerous barriers are not significantly different to those encountered so far in municipalities of the developed world, suggesting that across the globe there are common problems that national and provincial governments need to address in order to mainstream climate change adaptation at the local level (such as changing planning and other laws by which local governments operate in order to recognise climate change impacts). Our research draws attention to a couple of under-researched issues, that of the effects of party politics and councillor qualifications on local government operation and performance, and suggests that much further research should address these topics in both developed and developing countries. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper critically reviews the effects of the global food and financial crises on developing countries, with specific focus on Africa. While assessments of the intertwined effects of the crises have often focused on short-term transitory causal factors, this paper takes the view that the causes of the food crises in Africa are long term and fundamentally structural. Policy measures to address the food crises therefore should focus on resolving the long-term structural impediments to accelerated agricultural growth. The paper argues that market fundamentalist policy prescriptions have failed in Africa and are at the root of the high poverty and food insecurity being experienced by African countries. Externally imposed policy prescriptions of one size fits all are inimical to the growth of African agriculture, and to self-reliance in food production, given the increasing unreliability of global markets for accessing food. Africa needs to take bold steps to accelerate food production using home-based policies that are better aligned with its state of economic growth and development, as well as level of poverty. Policy recommendations to accelerate food production include greater investments to raise the productivity of staple food crops; 'growth enhancement support' (GES) to unlock poverty traps by combining public farm support for farmers with risk sharing instruments that will unlock financing for farmers and agribusinesses, and speed up the process of commercialization of smallholder agriculture; policies to promote expanded use of fertilisers; seed policies to expand the use of improved seeds and the growth of the private sector seed industry; leveraging commercial bank financing into agriculture through risk-sharing instruments; focusing investments within the breadbasket areas of African countries, where the rate of returns on investments will be high; policies to improve climate change adaptation; and a greater strategic role for the state in correcting for market failures, making investments in public goods, supporting farmers, and guiding the market systems to accelerate food production.We reviewed literature describing the potential for freshwater anthropogenic waterbodies to act as refuges from disturbance. We identified research related to the refuge potential of a wide range of waterbodies, using waterbody names as keywords along with 'artificial' and 'freshwater'. Potential freshwater anthropogenic refuges were more often standing than running waters. Agricultural ponds, rural and urban drainage ditches and transport canals were the most diverse for all aquatic taxa, whereas irrigation infrastructure was least diverse. Comparatively little is known about the refuge role of fire dams, urban artificial ponds, golf course lakes, disused industrial ponds and retaining walls. Local-scale attributes associated with high biodiversity were: presence of macrophytes (for animals), absence of fish (for amphibians, invertebrates), natural bed materials and hydroperiod (all biota). Landscape variables associated with high biodiversity were proximity to and connectivity with other waterbodies and to natural terrestrial vegetation. Moderate levels of management intervention were also associated with higher biodiversity. Many knowledge gaps about the function of anthropogenic refuges within landscapes exist and require further research. One of the most important limitations to the provision of refuges for freshwater biodiversity by anthropogenic waterbodies is the lack of recognition of their actual or potential biodiversity value. Anthropogenic waterbodies need to be recognised for their potential to support biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation for freshwater species, while being managed to prevent the spread of invasive species. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changes in climatic conditions and increases in weather variability affect human health directly and indirectly, including through agricultural changes and urban warming. Adaptation to climate change is receiving increasing attention, given, now, the inevitability of further climate change and its diverse impacts. However, with increased international funding for adaptation comes challenges such as ensuring supportive national policy environments for developing and implementing effective adaptation activities. Adaptation at community and population levels is underpinned by governance processes, such as the nature by which decisions are taken and implemented by government, community and private organizations. Thus an understanding of the policy context is necessary to identify the factors that enable or inhibit adaptation policy and programmes. This article examines to what degree there exist enabling factors to support the development of adaptation policy and activities, with relevance to the health sector. Results of a policy analysis are presented, which used stakeholder participation to investigate the context in which adaptation decisions were made within organizations across different sectors in Cambodia. Five factors were identified as critical components of the governance environment: (1) policy development processes; (2) the existence of a political recognition of climate change and (3-5) the organizational barriers relating to coordination, funding and lack of information. Without achieving a supportive policy environment, future adaptation actions are likely to have limited effect.Cities are increasingly aware of the need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to changes in weather patterns leading to the production of urban climate change plans. The few existing systematic studies of these plans have focused on either adaptation or mitigation issues, and are typically based on surveys completed by city officials rather than analysis of documented evidence. To gain insight into the status of adaptation and mitigation action across the UK, climate change documents from 30 urban areas (representing similar to 28 % of the UK's population) were analysed. An Urban Climate Change Preparedness Score, which could be applied to other urban areas outside the UK, has been devised for comparative analysis. This analysis characterizes progress against (i) Assessment, (ii) Planning, (iii) Action, and (iv) Monitoring, for both adaptation and mitigation. The Preparedness Score allows a quantitative comparison of climate change strategies across the urban areas analysed. This methodology can be transferred to other countries and makes an international comparison of urban areas and their climate change adaptation and mitigation plans possible. We found that all areas acknowledge climate change being a threat and that adaptation and mitigation planning and action is required. However, two urban areas did not have official adaptation or mitigation plans. Typically, mitigation activities across all cities were more advanced than adaptation plans. Emissions reduction targets ranged from 10 %-80 % with differing baselines, timeframes and scopes, for defining and meeting these targets. Similar variability was observed across adaptation plans. Several reasons for these differences are considered, but particularly notable is that a combination of incentives and regulation seem to stimulate more comprehensive strategies and action in many urban areas.There is a growing, although still far from comprehensive, literature within China on the impacts of climate change in urban areas; also an evolving policy framework at national level to address these concerns and an increased interest in climate change adaptation from many local governments. This paper summarizes the urban risks and vulnerabilities highlighted by the literature, and reviews central and local government responses. It then assesses policy response, including how this considers vulnerability and future risks, formulates an adaptation strategy, engages stakeholders and assesses adaptive capacity. This shows how the Chinese system limits the influence on climate change adaptation of residents and small businesses, and of social scientists. The reasons for this include the tendency to use climate change as an economic growth engine (and GDP growth remains the most important factor for assessing local government officials' performance), little provision for participation in policy-making, and weak post-implementation evaluation once a policy has been scaled up at national level. These have affected the quality of evidence-based policy-making and make it difficult to draw lessons from unsuccessful practice.There is increasing empirical evidence that the climate in Nepal is changing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, with substantial impacts on the long-established ways of life of the local people. The development of responsive actions, or climate change adaptation, hinges on understanding how people make sense of changes in their local climate and how they interpret associated risks and opportunities. Based on a qualitative case study with 30 tourism stakeholder participants in the Annapurna Region of Lower Mustang, Nepal, this research explored people's understanding of climate change and their perceptions of different levels of impact. The range of perceived impacts is discussed against the background of multiple livelihoods and diverse cultural interpretations. Participants, while not always scientifically 'accurate' in their assessments, displayed a high level of engagement with, and understanding of their local environment and climate. The results of this study provide further testimony to the value of local knowledge on relevant climate parameters and impacts, and the role it could play in enhancing the usefulness of macro-level climate projections, as well as local-level climate change adaptation initiatives. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We conducted a multicity time-series study using monitoring data to assess seasonal patterns of short-term ozone-mortality association among elderly aged 65 years and over in Japan. Daily exposure to ambient ozone was computed using hourly measurements of photochemical oxidants available at multiple monitoring stations in each city. Effects of ozone on daily all-cause non-accidental, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality were estimated using distributed lag linear models, controlling for confounding by temporal, day of the week, temperature, and flu epidemics. City-level effect estimates were combined using inverse variance meta-analysis. In spring and autumn, a 10-ppbv increase of daily maximum 8-h average ozone concentration in the previous 3 days was associated with 0.69 % (95 % confidence interval (CI): 0.27-1.10), 1.07 % (0.34-1.82), and 1.77 % (0.78-2.77) increases in daily all-cause, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality, respectively. Forward displacement of respiratory mortality was large during the cold season despite lower ozone concentration. Results were generally independent of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide. Findings suggest significant mortality effects of short-term ozone exposure among the elderly during the moderate season. Those with underlying respiratory diseases were susceptible, even during winter.There is considerable tension or even a contradiction between the claim of long-term organizational decision-making, planning and steering of ecosystems and the lack of knowledge and experience about future ecosystem development a tension that becomes tangible in the case of climate change adaptation. In our case study we focus on problem-solving performances related to a) the organizational response of state-owned forest companies confronted with heterogenedus expectations and interests from their dynamic environments (an external perspective) and b) long-term decision-making under uncertainty on the regional and local level (an internal perspective). First, we presume that practical decision-making concerning climate change adaptation measures (e.g. tree species selection) is far from rational. Based on Karl Weick's sensemaking concept (Weick, 1995), forest companies are rather understood as interpretation systems that scan, interpret, and learn while acting in mutual dependencies with their environment. Second, along with DiMaggio and Powell (1983), we assume that these organizations absorb uncertainty by adopting solutions (e.g. working tools such as risk maps) from other forest administrations and companies, whose response, when faced with the same problem, is considered as legitimate within the forestry community (institutional isomorphism). Based on qualitative (32 expert interviews with senior administrators) and quantitative (national online survey among district foresters) data, we argue that - instead of being considered a hurdle for long-term planning - the acceptance of indispensable uncertainty leads to an understanding of planning as a creative process, enabling a variety of solutions. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We combine large observed data sets and dynamically downscaled climate data to explore historic and future (2050-2069) stream temperature changes over the topographically diverse Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (elevation range=824-4017m). We link future stream temperatures with fish growth models to investigate how changing thermal regimes could influence the future distribution and persistence of native Yellowstone cutthroat trout (YCT) and competing invasive species. We find that stream temperatures during the recent decade (2000-2009) surpass the anomalously warm period of the 1930s. Climate simulations indicate air temperatures will warm by 1 degrees C to >3 degrees C over the Greater Yellowstone by mid-21st century, resulting in concomitant increases in 2050-2069 peak stream temperatures and protracted periods of warming from May to September (MJJAS). Projected changes in thermal regimes during the MJJAS growing season modify the trajectories of daily growth rates at all elevations with pronounced growth during early and late summer. For high-elevation populations, we find considerable increases in fish body mass attributable both to warming of cold-water temperatures and to extended growing seasons. During peak July to August warming, mid-21st century temperatures will cause periods of increased thermal stress, rendering some low-elevation streams less suitable for YCT. The majority (80%) of sites currently inhabited by YCT, however, display minimal loss (<10%) or positive changes in total body mass by midcentury; we attribute this response to the fact that many low-elevation populations of YCT have already been extirpated by historical changes in land use and invasions of non-native species. Our results further suggest that benefits to YCT populations due to warmer stream temperatures at currently cold sites could be offset by the interspecific effects of corresponding growth of sympatric, non-native species, underscoring the importance of developing climate adaptation strategies that reduce limiting factors such as non-native species and habitat degradation.Australia's vulnerability to climate variability and change has been highlighted by the recent drought (i.e. the Big Dry or Millennium Drought), and also recent flooding across much of eastern Australia during 2011 and 2012. There is also the possibility that the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts may increase due to anthropogenic climate change, stressing the need for robust drought adaptation strategies. This study investigates the socio-economic impacts of drought, past and present drought adaptation measures, and the future adaptation strategies required to deal with projected impacts of climate change. The qualitative analysis presented records the actual experiences of drought and other climatic extremes and helps advance knowledge of how best to respond and adapt to such conditions, and how this might vary between different locations, sectors and communities. It was found that more effort is needed to address the changing environment and climate, by shifting from notions of 'drought-as-crisis' towards acknowledging the variable availability of water and that multi-year droughts should not be unexpected, and may even become more frequent. Action should also be taken to revalue the farming enterprise as critical to our environmental, economic and cultural well-being and there was also strong consensus that the value of water should be recognised in a more meaningful way (i.e. not just in economic terms). Finally, across the diverse stakeholders involved in the research, one point was consistently reiterated: that 'it's not just drought'. Exacerbating the issues of climate impacts on water security and supply is the complexity of the agriculture industry, global economics (in particular global markets and the recent/ongoing global financial crisis), and demographic changes (decreasing and ageing populations) which are currently occurring across most rural communities. The social and economic issues facing rural communities are not just a product of drought or climate change - to understand them as such would underestimate the extent of the problems and inhibit the ability to coordinate the holistic, cross-agency approach needed for successful climate change adaptation in rural communities. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Europe is investing considerably in renewable energies for a sustainable future, with both Iberian countries (Portugal and Spain) promoting significantly new hydropower, wind, and solar plants. The climate variability in this area is highly controlled by just a few large-scale teleconnection modes. However, the relationship between these modes and the renewable climate-dependent energy resources has not yet been established in detail. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on the interannual variability of the main and primary renewable energy resources in Iberia. This is achieved through a holistic assessment that is based on a 10-km-resolution climate simulation spanning the period 1959-2007 that provides physically consistent data of the various magnitudes involved. A monthly analysis for the extended winter (October-March) months shows that negative NAO phases enhance wind speeds (10%-15%) and, thereby, wind power (estimated around 30% at typical wind-turbine altitudes) and hydropower resources (with changes in precipitation exceeding 100% and implying prolonged responses in reservoir storage and release throughout the year), while diminishing the solar potential (10%-20%). Opposite signals were also sporadically identified, being well explained when taking into account the orography and the prevailing wind direction during both NAO phases. An additional analysis using real wind, hydropower, and solar power generation data further confirms the strong signature of the NAO.Record breaking heat waves have been recorded in Adelaide, Australia in recent years and climate change would likely increase the frequency, duration and severity of heat waves. This paper describes the governance and institutional arrangements during the development of an adaptation strategy (herein referred to as heat-health policy) for heat waves in Adelaide, Australia. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted between June and August 2011 among 18 stakeholders who were involved in the participatory process during the development of the heat-health policy. Informed consent was obtained and interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and the data analysed using framework analysis. Interview data were supplemented by data gathered through a review of documents associated with the process. The results found that the process of developing the heat-health policy was initiated by the state government and comprised of stakeholders from both the state and non-state sectors. There was a high level of leadership and political commitment demonstrated during the process, given that the different players wanted a policy to be in place before any future heat wave. A Steering Committee was established that provided coordination and oversight in addition to the Emergency Management Act within the state which provided the legislative framework during the heat-health policy development process. Although the decision-making authority was controlled by a controlled by a public institution, to a larger extent, there was collaborative decision-making by virtue of the context in which the heat-health policy was developed. An assurance mechanism established during the process was among the factors that ensured accountability during the participatory process. Overall, the development of the heat-health policy in Adelaide was largely successful, attributed to the extent of political commitment from the state government and the sound institutional and legislative framework that facilitated the process. Good governance and institutional arrangements provide the enabling environment, the structures, systems and resources that would facilitate the development of adaptation strategies such as heat-health policies.Introduction: Heat waves have significant impacts on mortality and morbidity. However, little is known regarding effects on pre-admission health outcomes such as ambulance attendances, particularly in subtropical regions. Problem: This study investigated both main temperature effects and the added effects of heat waves on ambulance attendances in Brisbane, a subtropical city in Australia. Methods: Daily data relating to 783,935 ambulance attendances, along with data on meteorological variables and air pollutants, were collected for the period 2000-2007. Ambient temperature (main) effects were assessed using a distributed lag nonlinear approach that accounted for delayed effects of temperature, while added heat wave effects were incorporated separately using a local heat wave definition. Effect estimates were obtained for total, cardiovascular and respiratory attendances, and different age groups. Results: Main effects of temperature were found for total attendances, which increased by 50.6% (95% CI, 32.3%-71.4%) for a 9.5 degrees C increase above a reference temperature of 29 degrees C. An added heat wave effect on total attendances was observed (18.8%; 95% CI, 6.5%-32.5%). Significant effects were found for both respiratory and cardiovascular attendances, particularly for those aged 65 and above. Conclusion: Ambulance attendances can be significantly impacted by sustained periods of high temperatures, and are a valid source of early detection of the effects of extreme temperatures on the population. The planning of ambulance services may need to be adapted as a consequence of increasing numbers of heat waves in the future. Ambulance attendance data also should be utilized in the development of heat warning systems and climate change adaptation strategies.Climate change and its impacts form a new major challenge for spatial planning, as planning still shall guarantee a sustainable development in the face of complexity and uncertainty. The presented scenario planning process in the urban region of Rostock, Germany aims at adaptation to the impacts of climate change and herby realizes intensive stakeholder participation. Scenarios are elaborated on the basis of the analysis of key factors for the future spatial development stemming from different thematic fields such as society, ecology, economics and policy and on the basis of the analysis of potential climate change impacts. These scenarios combine impacts of different severity with different potential developments of the key factors to a range of differentiated pictures of the potential future of the urban region. The scenarios allow spatial planners to consider a range of potential futures as well as interrelationships among the key factors and between the key factors and the climate change impacts. As such, they offer the possibility to cope with the main challenges of climate change, complexity and uncertainty and to integrate these challenges into a stakeholder dialogue. This was evaluated to be an innovative and sense making method, which is until now hardly implemented into current planning practice. The scenarios serve as basis for the formulation of concrete adaptation strategies and measures. Moreover, the initiated stakeholder dialogue can later facilitate the practical implementation of developed measures.Tree cover has declined markedly since European settlement in the agricultural areas of Australia due to land clearing and natural and stress-induced senescence of remnant trees combined with widespread regeneration failure. These decreases in tree cover have seldom been quantified on a landscape scale, but are important in understanding losses in carbon storage and biodiversity across large areas of the continent. We used historical aerial photography and satellite imagery to study changes in tree canopy cover in the southern Tasmanian Midlands, one of the oldest agricultural regions in Australia. Tree cover at 1,000 random sites was assessed from imagery captured on four occasions between 1947 and 2010. Tree cover was stable between 1947 and the 1970s, but decreased from 33 % in the 1970s to 21 % in 2010. The decrease appeared driven by transition from some cover to no cover, rather than from more cover to less cover, because sites with tree cover in 2010 showed little net change during the study period. Statistical modelling showed soils derived from igneous rocks lost more cover than did the less fertile sedimentary soils, and contrary to the expectations, if drought was the cause of cover loss, sun-exposed north-facing sites did not lose more cover than south-facing ones. We argue that these temporal and spatial patterns of tree cover change are consistent with tree clearing rather than loss of remnant isolated trees due to drought-induced dieback.Considerable barriers can emerge in developing and implementing climate change adaptation strategies. Understanding the nature of barriers to adaptation is important so as to find strategic ways of dealing with them. However, our current understanding is limited and highly fragmented across the academic community. This paper aims to bring some conceptual convergence in these debates by applying a systematic review method to assess the current state of knowledge on barriers to adaptation in the peer-reviewed literature. The review results show that: (1) Barriers to adaptation have hardly been defined in the literature and no clear indicators exist so as to identify and assess them systematically. (2) An impressive number of barriers have been reported, but the list of possible barriers is seemingly endless. (3) The most frequently reported barriers relate to the institutional and social dimensions of adaptation. (4) Barriers are identified as configurations of climate and non-climate factors and conditions that emerge from the actor, the governance system, or the system of concern. (5) Barriers are mainly studied in developed countries with a strong focus on water-related domains. (6) The majority of studies on barriers use small-n inductive case approaches while comparative studies across different contexts are limited. (7) Although interventions to overcome barriers are recommended by most studies, empirical studies on interventions are scarce. We present further conceptual clarification and a more precise definition of barriers to adaptation. We conclude that future research should go beyond asking the questions 'if' and 'which' barriers to adaptation exist and begin asking 'how' and 'why' barriers emerge.Tourism in small island developing states and territories in the South Pacific is crucial to the development of these countries yet highly vulnerable to climate change. Drawing on political science theories, this study critically analyses the policy environment of Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu for the tourism sector's adaptation to climate change. Three aspects of the policy environment were analysed, namely stakeholder commitment, resource availability and capacity, and presence of enabling mechanisms or processes. We find that Samoa provides the most conducive policy environment among the three for climate change adaptation. The difference can be attributed to political instability and lack of institutional coordination in Fiji; and in Vanuatu, industry players showing little concern for climate change and lack of policy implementation. Stakeholders should take ownership of the climate change issues, and governments better manage the funding from aid agencies and establish policy mechanisms that facilitate adaptation.Research on how heat impacts human health has increased as climate change threatens to raise temperatures to new extremes. Excessive heat exposure increases death rates, as well as rates of nonfatal, adverse health outcomes. This study used the negative binomial regression model to examine the relationship between daily maximum temperature, heat index, and heat-related emergency calls in Phoenix, Arizona and Chicago, Illinois, from 2003 to 2006. Using model results, we estimated call volumes in a warmer climate, with temperature increase from 1 to 5.5 degrees C. We found that: (1) heat-stress calls increase sharply when the temperature exceeds about 35 degrees C in Chicago and in 45 degrees C Phoenix; (2) warmer climate could seriously threaten human health and existing emergency response system in Chicago more than in Phoenix. Policies to reduce heat impacts in Phoenix should focus on reducing prolonged heat exposure, while Chicago should build a strong early-warning system for extreme heat events and provide sufficient resources and infrastructure to mitigate heat stress during those events. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The parasite Lernanthropus latis (Copepoda: Lernanthropidae) is a major threat to the sustained mariculture of barramundi, Lates calcarifer (Perciformes: Latidae). We investigated the effect of water temperature and salinity on egg hatching success of L. latis and describe the life cycle for the first time. Wild and sea-caged L. calcarifer examined in tropical north Australia exhibited similar parasite prevalence (range: 80-100%) and mean parasite intensity (range: 3-6), whereas land-based maricultured fish were not infected. Hatching success and time to first and last hatch was determined for a range of water temperature (22, 30, 32 and 34 degrees C) and salinity (0, 11, 22, 35 and 40 parts per thousand) combinations representing current and predicted climate conditions. There was a significant interaction between water temperature and salinity on the hatching success of L. latis nauplii. Eggs hatched in all temperature treatments, with the greatest hatching success at 30 degrees C and 32 degrees C (98 and 92% success, respectively) in 35 parts per thousand. Hatching did not occur at 0 parts per thousand and was severely reduced at 11 parts per thousand (1.6% success). Hatching began within 6 h at all water temperatures with >95% of eggs hatched within 30 h at 30, 32 and 34 degrees C and within 60 h at 22 degrees C. Adult parasites differed from the original description by the presence of the parabasal flagellum, small setae on the legs and caudal rami and minor incongruences regarding morphological measurements. The life cycle of L. latis includes three free living stages and five parasitic stages. Although L. latis exhibits broad environmental tolerance, freshwater can be used as an effective management strategy to break the life cycle in aquaculture. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.The benefits of climate adaptation policy are sometimes underestimated because its nonuse values perceived by people indirectly affected are usually ignored. Using data from a representative sample of Beijing's urban population, it is shown that people living at a distance perceive nonuse values of climate change adaptation measures aimed at improving the environmental conditions in the Tarim River Basin in Northwest China. Using the contingent valuation method the monetized benefit of a particular set of climate adaptation measures experienced by a Beijing household is approximated. It is concluded that not only the preferences of local people, but also of people living in other parts of China should be considered when deciding if a climate adaptation policy is worthwhile implementing from a social welfare point of view.The Rio Las Piedras basin in the Biosphere Reserve Cinturon Andino (Colombia) serves as a laboratory for initiatives directed towards sustainable agricultural techniques adapted to climate change conditions. Building on an improved social capital, the strategies applied aim at the improvement of the livelihood of the rural population and at the conservation of biodiversity and other ecosystem services. The present paper identifies the indicators of climate change experienced by the local population and tries to evaluate the success of the strategies applied in order to assess the applicability of such strategies to other mountain areas. The results indicate that the strategies applied are largely successful in ensuring the agricultural production and the ecosystem services also under changing climatic conditions. However, further improvement of the livelihood and social security are impeded by limited financial resources.Traditional flood design methods are increasingly supplemented by risk-oriented methods based on comprehensive risk analysis. This analysis requires: (1) the estimation of flood hazard that represents intensity of a flood, (2) estimation of vulnerability, e.g. percentage of damage to total property as a function of flood depth and duration, and (3) the consequences of flooding, e.g. loss of life and damage to property. In this study, flood hazard maps of the Balu-Tongikhal River system within the eastern part of Dhaka City are prepared using geoprocessing tools and a hydrodynamic model. The raster-based vulnerability maps and expected damage maps of several return period floods are then produced. In comparison with the classical inundation maps, these damage maps generate more information about the flooding events. Consequently, the produced maps are useful in evaluating policy alternatives and minimising property loss because of floods in the study area.Geological studies of past and present sea level rely on valid and robust features marking sea level in geological sections. Present sea-level markers around the upper shoreface to beachface transition are detected in a beach-ridge plain formed in a microtidal regime. These sea-level markers identify specific relative sea levels at the time of formation. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data collected across the youngest part of the beach-ridge system of Feddet, Denmark are compared with independent coastal morphological and sedimentological data of the active strand plain and interpreted in relation to sea-level data. The data show consistency between dip values of the present beachface and upper shoreface compared with dip values of interpreted beachface and upper shoreface GPR reflections. A clear change in dip value is observed between beachface and upper shoreface deposits in both data sets. Within few centimetres, this break point coincides with actual sea level and is interpreted to correspond to downlap points observed in the GPR reflection data. Furthermore, our observations may indicate that downlap points of deposits, formed under both relatively high and low water levels, are preserved and may be identified in GPR reflection data. Downlap points identified in GPR data across microtidal beach-ridge systems from other localities can also constitute markers of palaeo-sea level at the time of deposition. Records of these sea-level markers can be used to reconstruct the local relative sea-level history during the Holocene.Recent climatic trends and climate model projections indicate that climate change will modify rangeland ecosystem functions and the services and livelihoods that they provision. Recent history has demonstrated that climatic variability has a strong influence on both ecological and social components of rangeland systems and that these systems possess substantial capacity to adapt to climatic variability. Specific objectives of this synthesis are to: 1) evaluate options to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and future climate change; 2) survey actions that individuals, enterprises, and social organizations can use to adapt to climate change; and 3) assess options for system transformation when adaptation is no longer sufficient to contend with climate change. Mitigation for carbon sequestration does not appear economically viable, given the small and highly variable carbon dioxide fluxes of rangeland ecosystems and the high transaction costs that would be incurred. In contrast, adaptation strategies are numerous and provide a means to manage risks associated with climate change. Adaptation strategies are diverse, including altered risk perception by individuals, greater flexibility of production enterprises, and modifications to social organizations that emphasize climatic variability, rather than consistency. Many adaptations represent "no regrets" actions because their implementation can be justified without emphasis on pending climate change. Adaptations specific to livestock production systems can include flexible herd management, alternative livestock breeds or species, innovative pest management, modified enterprise structures, and geographic relocation. Social-ecological systems in which adaptation is insufficient to counter the adverse consequences of climate change might undergo transformative change to produce alternative ecosystem services, production enterprises, and livelihoods. The rangeland profession is in a pivotal position to provide leadership on this global challenge because it represents the intersection of management and scientific knowledge, includes diverse stakeholders who derive their livelihoods from rangelands, and interacts with organizations responsible for rangeland stewardship.The concept of vulnerability is increasingly used in the fields of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, as well as socioeconomic studies. This paper reviews research inputs into the concept of vulnerability and highlights the challenges of resolving its spatial and temporal variability with building resilience and adaptation. We hypothesise that a clear understanding of scale is key to integrating these related issues, by differentiating three dimensions of scale when analysing relationships between the observed and the intrinsic scale of a given phenomenon, namely space, time and dimensional level. The paper analyses 20 vulnerability assessment approaches, ranging from the global down to the local scale, and positions them with regard to their integration of the spatial component. We then develop a vulnerability cube as a framework to position existing approaches and to map them in a three-dimensional space. The three axes represent space, time and dimension and provide a structure for the different notions of scales and ultimately for a spatial analysis workflow. The vulnerability cube framework helps us to position different vulnerability assessments and to identify overlaps, differences and specific characteristics. Additionally, this three-dimensional conceptualisation allows the identification and discussion of appropriate scaling issues.Climate change is a threat to biodiversity, and adaptation measures should be considered in biodiversity conservation planning. Protected areas (PA) are expected to be impacted by climate change and improving their connectivity with biological corridors (BC) has been proposed as a potential adaptation measure, although assessing its effectiveness remains a challenge. In Mesoamerica, efforts to preserve the biodiversity have led to the creation of a regional network of PA and, more recently, BC. This study evaluates the role of BC for facilitating plant dispersal between PA under climate change in Mesoamerica. A spatially explicit dynamic model (cellular automaton) was developed to simulate species dispersal under different climate and conservation policy scenarios. Plant functional types (PFT) were defined based on a range of dispersal rates and vegetation types to represent the diversity of species in the region. The impacts of climate change on PA and the role of BC for dispersal were assessed spatially. Results show that most impacted PA are those with low altitudinal range in hot, dry, or high latitude areas. PA with low altitudinal range in high cool areas benefit the most from corridors. The most important corridors cover larger areas and have high altitude gradients. Only the fastest PFT can keep up with the expected change in climate and benefit from corridors for dispersal. We conclude that the spatial assessment of the vulnerability of PA and the role of corridors in facilitating dispersal can help conservation planning under a changing climate.Temperature mortality analyses are challenging in rural and remote communities with small populations, but this information is needed for climate change and emergency planning. The geographic health areas of British Columbia, Canada were aggregated into four ecoregions delineated by microclimatic conditions. Time series models were used to estimate the effect of maximum apparent temperature on daily non-traumatic mortality. The population of the coldest ecoregion was most sensitive to hot weather, while the population of the hottest ecoregion was least sensitive. The effects were consistently strongest in decedents aged less than 75 years. A province-wide total of 815 deaths was attributed to hot weather over the 25-year study period, with 735 deaths in the most populous ecoregion. The framework described could be adapted to other climatically variable regions with urban, rural, and remote populations. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Decision support to develop viable climate change adaptation strategies for agriculture and regional land use management encompasses a wide range of options and issues. Up to now, only a few suitable tools and methods have existed for farmers and regional stakeholders that support the process of decision-making in this field. The interactive model-based spatial information and decision support system LandCaRe DSS attempts to close the existing methodical gap. This system supports interactive spatial scenario simulations, multi-ensemble and multi-model simulations at the regional scale, as well as the complex impact assessment of potential land use adaptation strategies at the local scale. The system is connected to a local geo-database and via the Internet to a climate data server. LandCaRe DSS uses a multitude of scale-specific ecological impact models, which are linked in various ways. At the local scale (farm scale), biophysical models are directly coupled with a farm economy calculator. New or alternative simulation models can easily be added, thanks to the innovative architecture and design of the DSS. Scenario simulations can be conducted with a reasonable amount of effort. The interactive LandCaRe DSS prototype also offers a variety of data analysis and visualisation tools, a help system for users and a farmer information system for climate adaptation in agriculture. This paper presents the theoretical background, the conceptual framework, and the structure and methodology behind LandCaRe DSS. Scenario studies at the regional and local scale for the two Eastern German regions of Uckermark (dry lowlands, 2600 km(2)) and Weisseritz (humid mountain area, 400 km(2)) were conducted in close cooperation with stakeholders to test the functionality of the DSS prototype. The system is gradually being transformed into a web version (http://www.landcare-dss.de) to ensure the broadest possible distribution of LandCaRe DSS to the public. The system will be continuously developed, updated and used in different research projects and as a learning and knowledge-sharing tool for students. The main objective of LandCaRe DSS is to provide information on the complex long-term impacts of climate change and on potential management options for adaptation by answering "what-if" type questions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is one of the significant concerns in land and resource management, creating an urgent need to build social-ecological capacity to address widespread and uncertain environmental changes. Given the diversity and complexity of ecological responses to climate change "ecosystem management" approaches are needed to provide solutions for meeting both ecological and human needs, while reducing anthropogenic warming and climate-related impacts on society. For instance, ecosystem management can contribute to a reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions through improved land-use and reduced deforestation at a regional scale. Further, conserving and restoring naturally-functioning ecosystems, which is often one of the goals of ecosystem management can significantly contribute to buffering ecological responses to climate extremes such as droughts and wildfires. Moreover, ecosystem management helps build capacity for learning and adaptation at multiple scales. As a result, societies will be better prepared to respond to surprises and uncertainties associated with climate change. In this regard, it is imperative to reframe climate change issues based on the ecosystem approach. Although climate change and ecosystem management plans have largely developed independently, it is now essential for all stakeholders to work together to achieve multiple goals. The ecosystem-based approaches can enable flexible and effective responses to the uncertainties associated with climate change. Reframing ecosystem management helps to face an urgent need for reconsideration and improvement of social-ecological resilience in order to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The population structure and history of the cryptic malaria vector species, Anopheles punctulatus (Doenitz), was investigated throughout Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands with the aim of detailing genetic subdivisions and the potential for movement through this biogeographically complex region. We obtained larval collections from over 80 sites and utilised a diverse array of molecular markers that evolve through different processes. Individuals were initially identified to species and genotyped using the ribosomal DNA second internal transcribed spacer. DNA sequencing of a single copy nuclear ribosomal protein S9 and the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I loci were then investigated and 12 nuclear microsatellite markers were developed and analysed. Our data revealed three genetically distinct populations - one in Papua New Guinea, the second on Buka Island (Bougainville Province, Papua New Guinea), and the third on Guadalcanal Island (Solomon Islands). Genetic differentiation within Papua New Guinea was much lower than that found in studies of other closely related species in the region. The data does suggest that A. punctulatus has undergone a population bottleneck followed by a recent population and range expansion in Papua New Guinea. Humans and regional economic growth may be facilitating this population expansion, as A. punctulatus is able to rapidly occupy human modified landscapes and traverse unsealed Toads. We therefore anticipate extensive movement of this species through New Guinea - particularly into the highlands, with. a potential increase in malaria frequency in a warming climate - as well as relatively unrestricted gene flow of advantageous alleles that may confound vector control efforts. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work examines the contributions of different synoptic types to rainfall variability and trends in southeast Australia, with a focus on the drought of 1996-2009. Rainfall in the Mallee region is used to characterize the southeast region. The reduction in rainfall in the Mallee region during the drought is about two-thirds composed of a reduction in rainfall from cutoff lows and about one-third due to a reduction in rainfall from frontal systems. The reduction in frontal rain is mostly due to a reduction in rain per frontal system, which is associated with a reduction of baroclinicity in the southeast and south of Australia. The reduction of cutoff rainfall is mostly due to a reduction in number of the most intense cutoff systems. The frequency of cutoff systems matches changes in blocking activity in the Tasman Sea region. Blocking has undergone a weak decline in the Tasman region over the period of the drought. Analysis of synoptic system contributions to the drought indicates that causal explanations of the drought should account for variation in cutoff systems and blocking.Firms and industries will have a central role in supporting societal adaptation to the physical impacts of climate change, especially in more directly affected sectors such as agriculture, forestry, construction, or transportation. However, the business and management field has repeatedly been criticized for its lack of engagement with climate change as a pressing issue, and adaptation to the physical impacts of climate change in particular. Our review of adaptation studies in the business and management field suggests that most firm and industry adaptation studies focus on how firms adjust to changing business conditions because of the emergence of new competitors, new products, and markets or because of changed political, economic, and legal conditions; they largely exclude firm adjustments to the changing dynamics of the natural environment. Studies on firm and industry adaptation to climate impacts specifically are beginning to emerge, but they are sparse. There is still little cross-disciplinary work integrating findings from the natural sciences into business thinking. We also find few considerations of the implications and consequences of climate change for firms and industries to date. This article provides an overview over the existing literature on firm adaptation to climate change, outlines research gaps, and suggests pathways for future research. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Governance of Australia's Murray-Darling Basin (the Basin) is frequently lauded as an example to other river managers globally. Freshwater environments in the Basin are particularly vulnerable to water scarcity and change. In this paper, governmental responses are assessed to draw global lessons on climate change adaptation for rivers. A range of climate change adaptation measures for freshwater ecosystem conservation in the Basin are outlined namely: higher, long-term allocations of water to the environment; reviewing water allocation on a cyclical basis; allocating an equal or greater share of available water to the environment in dry years; and environmental works and measures to use less water to conserve wetlands. Examples of poor translation of science into policy that do not adequately consider the risks, costs, and benefits of adaptation interventions are explored. Adaptation policy in the Basin illustrates the risks of heavy reliance on infrastructure, of the high costs of trade-offs between environmental measures versus socio-economic and political concerns, and of dependence on too few measures. Lessons include the need for rigorous evaluation of risks, costs, and benefits to minimize perverse outcomes, and for adequate incentives and penalties for implementation of adaptation policies across governance scales. It is concluded that rather than a focus on only a few interventions, such as environmental flows, better adaptation practice requires deployment of a suite of different but complementary measures that spreads risk and maximizes resilience to climate variability and change. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Great Britain's main line railway network is known to experience various temperature-related impacts, e.g. track buckling and overhead power line sag at high ambient temperatures. Climate change could alter the frequency of occurrence of these impacts. We have therefore investigated the climate change impact on various temperature-related issues, identified during workshops with rail industry specialists, using a perturbed physics ensemble (PPE) of the Met Office's regional climate model (RCM), HadRM3. We have developed novel approaches to combine RCM data with railway industry knowledge, typically by identifying key meteorological thresholds of interest and analysing exceedance of these out to the 2040s. We performed a statistical analysis of the projected changes for each issue, via bootstrapping of the unperturbed PPE member. Although neither the PPE nor the bootstrapping analysis samples the full range of uncertainty in the projections, they nonetheless provide complementary perspectives on the suitability of the projections for use in decision-making. Our main findings include projected increases in the summertime occurrence of temperature conditions associated with (i) track buckling, (ii) overhead power line sag, (iii) exposure of outdoor workers to heat stress, and (iv) heat-related delays to track maintenance; and (v) projected decreases in the wintertime occurrence of temperatures conditions associated with freight train failure owing to brake problems. For (i), the statistical significance varied with track condition and location; for (ii) and (iii), with location; and for (iv) and (v), projected changes were significant across Great Britain. As well as assessing the changes in climate-related hazard, information about the vulnerability of the network to past temperature-related incidents has been summarised. Combining the hazard and vulnerability elements will eventually support a climate risk assessment for the industry.Endangered species conservation planning needs to consider the effects of future climate change. Species distribution models are commonly used to predict future shifts in habitat suitability. We evaluated the effects of climate change on the highly endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) using a variety of modeling approaches, and assessing model outputs from the perspective of three spatial habitat management strategies: status quo, expansion and relocation. We show that alternative assumptions about the ecological niche of mountain gorillas can have a very large effect on model predictions. ` Standard' correlative models using 18 climatic predictor variables suggested that by 2090 there would be no suitable habitat left for the mountain gorilla in its existing parks, whereas a `limiting-factor' model, that uses a proxy of primary productivity, suggested that climate suitability would not change much. Species distribution models based on fewer predictor variables, on alternative assumptions about niche conservatism (including or excluding the other subspecies Gorilla beringii graueri), and a model based on gorilla behavior, had intermediate predictions. These alternative models show strong variation, and, in contrast to the standard approach with 18 variables, suggest that mountain gorilla habitat in the parks may remain suitable, that protected areas could be expanded into lower (warmer) areas, and that there might be climactically suitable habitat in other places where new populations could possibly be established. Differences among model predictions point to avenues for model improvement and further research. Similarities among model predictions point to possible areas for climate change adaptation management. For species with narrow distributions, such as the mountain gorilla, modeling the impact of climate change should be based on careful evaluation of their biology, particularly of the factors that currently appear to limit their distribution, and should avoid the naive application of standard correlative methods with many predictor variables.While climate change will expose regions to similar impacts, the extent of those impacts and effective response at the local level will be determined not only by the location's sensitivity and vulnerability but also by local groups and individuals' capacity, including their institutional links, social networks and motivation to action. In parallel, scientific information and research plays a critical role in informing climate change adaptation by providing both an improved understanding of the actual climate risks and response alternatives. The paper focuses on two local-scale intervention research projects undertaken in urbanised coastal areas in Brazil and in Australia concentrated on improving the dialogue between 'those who make science' and 'those who use science to make decisions' in order to make climate science more useful, and creating purposeful collective action, respectively. A conceptual model is devised to investigate how intervention research could aid adaptive capacity by generating new knowledge and facilitating change towards climate change adaptation at the local level. Drawing on the findings, a framework is proposed to advance the role of intervention research in policy development for enhancing adaptive capacity. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Few studies have quantitatively projected changes in demography in response to climate change, yet doing so can provide important insights into the processes that may lead to population declines and changes in species distributions. Using a long-term mark-recapture data set, we examined the influence of multiple direct and indirect effects of weather on adult and juvenile survival for a population of Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia) in California. We found evidence for a positive, direct effect of winter temperature on adult survival, and a positive, indirect effect of prior rainy season precipitation on juvenile survival, which was consistent with an effect of precipitation on food availability during the breeding season. We used these relationships, and climate projections of significantly warmer and slightly drier winter weather by the year 2100, to project a significant increase in mean adult survival (12-17%) and a slight decrease in mean juvenile survival (4-6%) under the B1 and A2 climate change scenarios. Together with results from previous studies on seasonal fecundity and postfledging survival in this population, we integrated these results in a population model and projected increases in the population growth rate under both climate change scenarios. Our results underscore the importance of considering multiple, direct, and indirect effects of weather throughout the annual cycle, as well as differences in the responses of each life stage to climate change. Projecting demographic responses to climate change can identify not only how populations will be affected by climate change but also indicate the demographic process(es) and specific mechanisms that may be responsible. This information can, in turn, inform climate change adaptation plans, help prioritize future research, and identify where limited conservation resources will be most effectively and efficiently spent.The article discusses an instance of knowledge that failed to circulate the application of urban climatology in town planning. This field of applied science was systematized in German-speaking universities and cities and remains most firmly established in North-Central Europe. In the decades after the second world war successive commissions and study groups of the World Meteorological Organization, the International Federation of Housing and Planning, the Confederation Internationale du Batiment and the International Society for Biometeorology sought to spread awareness of climatological factors among planners and architects worldwide. The article examines the organizations and individuals involved in this campaign, describes their meetings, publications and outreach, and assesses the disappointing impact. The legacy of this failure is considered in the context of present-day interest in planning for carbon mitigation and climate-change adaptation.Rainfall over northern Australia (NA) in austral summer is the largest water source of Australia. Previous studies have suggested a strong zonal-dipole trend pattern in austral summer rainfall since 1950, with rainfall increasing in northwest Australia (NWA) but decreasing in northeast Australia (NEA). The dynamics of rainfall increase in NWA was linked to sea surface temperature (SST) in the south Indian Ocean and the rainfall decrease in NEA was associated with SST in the northeast Indian Ocean.This study reports that, in contrast to a zonal-dipole trend pattern, a dominant wetting pattern over NA has recently been observed in the post-1979 satellite era. The recent NA rainfall increase also manifests as the first leading mode of summer rainfall variability over the Australian continent. Further investigation reveals that SST in the tropical western Pacific (TWP) has replaced the SST in the south and northeast Indian Ocean as the controlling factor responsible for the recent NA rainfall increase. Direct thermal forcing by increasing TWP SST gives rise to an anomalous Gill-type cyclone centered around NA, leading to anomalously high rainfall. As such, the increasing SST in the TWP induces over 50% of the observed rainfall wetting trend over NA. The increased rainfall in turn induces land surface cooling in NA. This mechanism can be confirmed with results obtained from sensitivity experiments of a numerical spectral atmospheric general circulation model. Thus, increasing SST in the TWP has contributed much of the recent summer rainfall increase and consequently the surface cooling over NA.The dynamic coastline of Soc Trang Province in the Mekong Delta of Viet Nam is in most parts protected from erosion, storms and flooding by a narrow belt of mangroves. However, the unsustainable use of natural resources and development in the coastal zone is threatening the protection function of this forest belt. This situation is exacerbated by the impacts of climate change, particularly by the increased intensity and frequency of storms, floods and by rising sea levels. Based on analysis of past experience of mangrove planting and historical changes in mangrove cover, an integrated and site-specific approach to adaptation to climate change has been put in place, which comprises mangrove planting and rehabilitation with emphasis on resilience to climate change, and participatory involvement of local communities in effective mangrove management and protection through co-management. To address uncertainties associated with the impacts of climate change, testing of new mangrove planting techniques has started. This includes mimicking successful natural regeneration for small-scale planting in sites with high wave energy and transformation of existing even-aged plantations into more diverse forests-both in terms of structure and species composition. The pre-requisite for mangrove rehabilitation in erosion sites has successfully been put in place: breakwaters made from bamboo have reduced erosion and stimulated sedimentation. The design and construction of the wave-breaking structures, which was based on a numerical model which simulates hydrodynamics and shoreline development, ensures that downdrift erosion can be avoided as far as possible. A comprehensive monitoring program has been established and initial results provide evidence for the effectiveness of the bamboo breakwaters. Early experience shows that co-management is an effective way of maintaining and enhancing the protection function of the mangrove forest belt and at the same time providing livelihood for local communities. Payment for ecosystem services contributes to sustainability of co-management as well as livelihood improvement.The cost of upgrading and raising coastal defences is an important consideration in societal response to sea-level rise. Currently available unit cost estimates have a limited empirical basis. This article presents new information on the unit costs of adapting coastal defences for three specific case studies in low-lying delta regions: The Netherlands, New Orleans, and Vietnam. Typical measures include dikes, flood walls, storm surge barriers, and nourishment. These unit cost estimates are significantly higher than earlier estimates that are still the main source of costs for global vulnerability assessments. Factors affecting these unit costs include local economic factors (material and labour costs), design choices related to the alignment of the system, and the types of measures for implementation of the system in an urban or rural environment. On the basis of an example for a Dutch sea dike, it is shown that the material quantities and associated costs are expected to rise linearly, in the case of depth-limited wave breaking, for the range of sea-level rise rates that are expected in the coming century. However, other factors, such as increasing costs for implementation of wider coastal defences in an urban environment and future changes in material and labour costs, could contribute to a nonlinear increase of the costs. Further collection and analysis of project information for coastal defence projects in other regions is recommended to strengthen the empirical basis of the cost estimates that are used for regional and global assessments.Heading time is a major determinant of the adaptation of wheat to different environments, and is critical in minimizing risks of frost, heat, and drought on reproductive development. Given that major developmental genes are known in wheat, a process-based model, APSIM, was modified to incorporate gene effects into estimation of heading time, while minimizing degradation in the predictive capability of the model. Model parameters describing environment responses were replaced with functions of the number of winter and photoperiod (PPD)-sensitive alleles at the three VRN1 loci and the Ppd-D1 locus, respectively. Two years of vernalization and PPD trials of 210 lines (spring wheats) at a single location were used to estimate the effects of the VRN1 and Ppd-D1 alleles, with validation against 190 trials (similar to 4400 observations) across the Australian wheatbelt. Compared with spring genotypes, winter genotypes for Vrn-A1 (i.e. with two winter alleles) had a delay of 76.8 degree days (Cd) in time to heading, which was double the effect of the Vrn-B1 or Vrn-D1 winter genotypes. Of the three VRN1 loci, winter alleles at Vrn-B1 had the strongest interaction with PPD, delaying heading time by 99.0 Cd under long days. The gene-based model had root mean square error of 3.2 and 4.3 d for calibration and validation datasets, respectively. Virtual genotypes were created to examine heading time in comparison with frost and heat events and showed that new longer-season varieties could be heading later (with potential increased yield) when sown early in season. This gene-based model allows breeders to consider how to target gene combinations to current and future production environments using parameters determined from a small set of phenotyping treatments.Adapting to climate change has become a pressing and urgent issue given the alarming rapidity with which climate changes is taking place. Agriculture is strongly conditioned by climatic factors, but subsistence agriculture is particularly vulnerable because smallholders do not have adequate financial resources to adapt to climate change. Agrobiodiversity provides one option for smallholders to adapt to climate change. Landraces developed in the western region of Santa Catarina State, Brazil, are part of a deliberate strategy by smallholders to achieve a state of food sovereignty and independence from commercial sources of hybrid seed. The ability of smallholders to collectively conserve climate-adapted landraces indicates the depth of local knowledge and capability within local communities that can be drawn on to meet the future challenges of climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An ocean general circulation model (OGCM) is used to identify a Southern Ocean southeast Pacific intrinsic mode of low frequency variability. Using CORE data a comprehensive suite of experiments were carried out to elucidate excitation and amplification responses of this intrinsic mode to low frequency forcing (ENSO, SAM) and stochastic forcing due to high frequency winds. Subsurface anomalies were found to teleconnect the Pacific and Atlantic regions of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) thermocline. The Pacific region of the ACC is characterised by intrinsic baroclinic disturbances that respond to both SAM and ENSO, while the Atlantic sector of the ACC is sensitive to higher frequency winds that act to amplify thermocline anomalies propagating downstream from the Pacific. Non-stationary cluster analysis was used to identify the system's dynamical regimes and characterise meta-stability, persistence and transitions between the respective states. This analysis reveals significant trends, indicating fundamental changes to the meta-stability of the ocean dynamics in response to changes in atmospheric forcing. Intrinsic variability in sea-ice concentration was found to be coupled to thermocline processes. Sea-ice variability localised in the Atlantic was most closely associated with high frequency weather forcing. The SAM was associated with a circumpolar sea-ice response whereas ENSO was found to be a major driver of sea-ice variability only in the Pacific. This simulation study identifies plausible mechanisms that determine the predictability of the Southern Ocean climate on multi-decadal timescales. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.pine-oak forests of San Juan Nuevo, Michoacan are dominated by Pinus pseudostrobus, P. devoniana and P. leiophylla. The patterns of genetic variation of these species are poorly known, particularly those of P leiophylla, limiting the creation of guidelines for the movement of seeds and seedlings for reforestation and climate change adaptation. Species were collected in four or five provenances along an altitudinal transect (1,650 to 2,500 m) for the establishment of a nursery trial, with the aim of quantifying the genetic variation among and within species. Plant height (three and five months) was significantly different (P < 0.0001) among species. Significant differences among provenances for P. devoniana (P < 0.0001) and P. leiophylla (P = 0.0352) were observed. The species P. devoniana showed a pronounced growth pattern associated with altitude of origin, where the fastest growing plants came from a lower elevation. The populations of P leiophylla were different only at three months of age, with no statistically significant altitudinal pattern. No significant differences were found among populations of R pseudostrobus.In Africa, hydro-meteorological disasters (HMDs) have hit with increasing frequency and magnitude in recent years, with detrimental impacts on local livelihoods. African countries display a patchwork of national policies and institutional frameworks to address these rising HMDs. This paper examines the heterogeneity that exists within Africa's institutional arrangements for climate-related disaster risk management, and introduces a three-partite policy classification that ranks each country as one of three disaster management policy types: the 'Unprepared Firefighters (whose response to disasters is late, delayed and ineffective), the 'Prepared Firefighters' (for the most part effective disaster responders) and the 'Disaster Averters' (who experienced a paradigm shift and moved focus away from the hazard itself towards a reduction of the underlying risk factors that cause disasters). Through extensive data mining, interviews and qualitative country assessments, we map where African countries lie on this spectrum of effective climate-related disaster risk management. We find that African countries lay at different levels on the spectrum of effective disaster risk management. Across Africa, countries display differential progress in achieving the Hyogo Framework for Action goals and great variation and heterogeneity exists from country to country, one that calls for a concomitant heterogeneity in aid programs and initiatives meant to support comprehensive disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation (DRR-CCA) in Africa. In closing, this paper suggests ways to support African countries' efforts towards effective disaster risk management and planning, It offers a qualitative method to continually assess developing countries' progress in achieving the Hyogo Framework for Action goals, one that straddles top-down country self reporting and bottom-up civil society assessment. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Digitalization of climate data preserves historical observations and provides the basis for understanding and assessing climate variability, predicting extreme climate events and designing adaptation and mitigation strategies. Small-scale, cost-effective digitalization projects could inform climate adaptation policy and bring about significant impact on the livelihood of local community, which are especially promising for application in developing countries. This paper presents the data digitalization project conducted in Mozambique as a case study, and concludes that data digitalization should be promoted and replicated widely in developing countries. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.VThis review employs academic and policy literature to gage the relative importance and concerns associated with the main challenges facing the management of transboundary river basins: increasing pressures; management and policy that has not kept pace with a broadened set of actors; the influence of climate change; and the politics of reconciling political borders and basin boundaries. The persistence of the supply-side management philosophy within current political economies is also reviewed, along with infrastructure and institutional responses to the challenges (e. g., IWRM, dams, treaties). An analytical frame developed from the review is applied to three basins where there has been successful, considerable, or no effort at transboundary basin management: the Rhine, the Nile, and the Euphrates. International politics and national self-interest are found to be the key challenge facing international basins, though each of the challenges is interconnected and should be considered in combination. If transboundary basin management is to confront the challenges successfully, it should develop along two paths: away from a supply-side management paradigm toward adaptive management, and away from sovereignty and unilateralism to multilateralism. While infrastructure built under a paradigm of reducing uncertainty is found to reduce the adaptation options set, adaptive management that can make the most of the increasingly diverse governance and confront the supply-management philosophy is seen as best-suited to meet future challenges. The disabling effect of sovereignty and international politics may best be addressed by confronting resistance of the promotion of 'shared sovereignty' and fair water-sharing. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Adaptation to temperate environments is common in the grass subfamily Pooideae, suggesting an ancestral origin of cold climate adaptation. Here, we investigated substitution rates of genes involved in low-temperature-induced (LTI) stress responses to test the hypothesis that adaptive molecular evolution of LTI pathway genes was important for Pooideae evolution. Substitution rates and signatures of positive selection were analyzed using 4330 gene trees including three warm climate-adapted species (maize (Zea mays), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), and rice (Oryza sativa)) and five temperate Pooideae species (Brachypodium distachyon, wheat (Triticum aestivum), barley (Hordeum vulgare), Lolium perenne and Festuca pratensis). Nonsynonymous substitution rate differences between Pooideae and warm habitat-adapted species were elevated in LTI trees compared with all trees. Furthermore, signatures of positive selection were significantly stronger in LTI trees after the rice and Pooideae split but before the Brachypodium divergence (P < 0.05). Genome-wide heterogeneity in substitution rates was also observed, reflecting divergent genome evolution processes within these grasses. Our results provide evidence for a link between adaptation to cold habitats and adaptive evolution of LTI stress responses in early Pooideae evolution and shed light on a poorly understood chapter in the evolutionary history of some of the world's most important temperate crops.Although bees form a key pollinator suite for flowering plants, very few studies have examined the evolutionary radiation of non-domesticated bees over human time-scales. This is surprising given the importance of bees for crop pollination and the effect of humans in transforming ecosystems via agriculture. In the Pacific, where the bee fauna appears depauperate, their importance as pollinators is not clear, particularly in Fiji where species diversity is even lower than neighbouring archipelagos. Here we explore the radiation of halictine bees in Fiji using phylogenetic analyses of mtDNA COI sequence data. Our analyses indicate the existence of several 'deep' clades whose divergences are close to the crown node, along with a highly derived 'broom' clade showing very high haplotype diversity, and mostly limited to low-lying agricultural regions. This derived clade is very abundant, whereas the more basal clades were relatively rare. Although nearly all haplotype diversity in Fijian Hornalictus comprises synonymous substitutions, a small number of amino acid changes are associated with the major clades, including the hyper-diverse clade. Analyses of haplotype lineage accumulation show a steep increase in selectively neutral COI haplotypes corresponding to the emergence of this 'broom' clade. We explore three possible scenarios for this dramatic increase: (i) a key change in adaptedness to the environment, (ii) a large-scale extinction event, or (iii) a dramatic increase in suitable habitats leading to rapid population expansion. Using estimated mutation rates of mitochondrial DNA in other invertebrates, we argue that Homalictus first colonised the Fijian archipelago in the middle-late Pleistocene, and the rapid accumulation of haplotypes in the hyper-diverse clade occurred in the Holocene, but prior to recorded human presence in the Fijian region. Our results indicate that bees have not been important pollinators of Fijian ecosystems until very recent times. Post-Pleistocene climate change and anthropogenic effects on Fijian ecosystems are likely to have greatly transformed pollinator suites from the conditions when those ecosystems were first being assembled. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.International policy is placing increasing emphasis on adaptation to climate change, including the allocation of new funds to assist adaptation efforts. Climate change adaptation funding may be most effective where it meets integrated goals, but global geographic priorities based on multiple development and ecological criteria are not well characterized. Here we show that human and natural adaptation needs related to maintaining agricultural productivity and ecosystem integrity intersect in ten major areas globally, providing a coherent set of international priorities for adaptation funding. An additional seven regional areas are identified as worthy of additional study. The priority areas are locations where changes in crop suitability affecting impoverished farmers intersect with changes in ranges of restricted-range species. Agreement among multiple climate models and emissions scenarios suggests that these priorities are robust. Adaptation funding directed to these areas could simultaneously address multiple international policy goals, including poverty reduction, protecting agricultural production and safeguarding ecosystem services.Within the context of a changing climate, scientists are called to engage directly with agricultural stakeholders for the coproduction of relevant information that will support decision making and adaptation. However, values, beliefs, identities, goals, and social networks shape perceptions and actions about climate change. Engagement processes that ignore the socio-cultural context within which stakeholders are embedded may fail to guide adaptive responses. To facilitate dialog around these issues, the Southeast Climate Consortium and the Florida Climate Institute formed a climate learning network consisting of row crop farmers, agricultural extension specialists, researchers, and climate scientists working in the Southeast US. Regional in scope, the learning network engages researchers and practitioners from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida as partners in adaptation science. This paper describes the ongoing interactions, dialog, and experiential learning among the network's diverse participants. We illustrate how participatory tools have been used in a series of workshops to create interactive spaces for knowledge coproduction. For example, historical timelines, climate scenarios, and technology exchanges stimulated discussions about climate-related risk management. We present findings from the workshops related to participants' perspectives on climate change and adaptation. Finally, we discuss lessons learned that may be applicable to other groups involved in climate education, communication, and stakeholder engagement. We suggest that the thoughtful design of stakeholder engagement processes can become a powerful social tool for improving decision support and strengthening adaptive capacity within rural communities.Under a changing climate, devising strategies to help stakeholders adapt to alterations to ecosystems and their services is of utmost importance. In western North America, diminished snowpack and river flows are causing relatively gradual, homogeneous (system-wide) changes in ecosystems and services. In addition, increased climate variability is also accelerating the incidence of abrupt and patchy disturbances such as fires, floods and droughts. This paper posits that two key variables often considered in landscape ecology-the rate of change and the degree of patchiness of change-can aid in developing climate change adaptation strategies. We use two examples from the "borderland'' region of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. In pinon-juniper woodland die-offs that occurred in the southwestern United States during the 2000s, ecosystem services suddenly crashed in some parts of the system while remaining unaffected in other locations. The precise timing and location of die-offs was uncertain. On the other hand, slower, homogeneous change, such as the expected declines in water supply to the Colorado River delta, will likely impact the entire ecosystem, with ecosystem services everywhere in the delta subject to alteration, and all users likely exposed. The rapidity and spatial heterogeneity of faster, patchy climate change exemplified by tree die-off suggests that decision-makers and local stakeholders would be wise to operate under a Rawlsian "veil of ignorance,'' and implement adaptation strategies that allow ecosystem service users to equitably share the risk of sudden loss of ecosystem services before actual ecosystem changes occur. On the other hand, in the case of slower, homogeneous, system-wide impacts to ecosystem services as exemplified by the Colorado River delta, adaptation strategies can be implemented after the changes begin, but will require a fundamental rethinking of how ecosystems and services are used and valued. In sum, understanding how the rate of change and degree of patchiness of change will constrain adaptive options is a critical consideration in preparing for climate change.In this study, a regional climate model (WRF-ARW; the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting model) having a resolution of 4.5 lcm was used to examine the sensitivity of precipitation on the Japan Sea side of Japan to the sea surface temperature (SST) in the Japan Sea during winter. We performed a control simulation (CTL) driven by reanalysis and observational SST datasets. Three sensitivity experiments in which SSTs over the entire domain were 1K, 2K, and 1K different from the CTL SST were conducted to examine the sensitivity of precipitation to SST. The calculated precipitation on the Japan Sea side increased by 6-12% IC of SST warming. Concurrent with the precipitation changes, latent heat flux over the Japan Sea increased by 11-14% IC of SST warming. Because the changes in surface relative humidity were very small, the increase can be explained by the Clausius Clapeyron equation. The deviation from the 7% increase in latent heat flux calculated from this equation can be quantitatively explained by the development of the planetary boundary layer over the Japan Sea, which was related to an increase in sensible heat flux due to the SST warming. This result also implies that the 1 K uncertainty in simulated and projected SST over the Japan Sea among multiple atmosphere ocean global climate models corresponds to an approximately 10% uncertainty in precipitation on the Japan Sea side of Japan.Plants show flexible acclimation of leaf photosynthesis to temperature that depends both on their prevailing growth environment and the climate where they originated. This acclimation has been shown to involve changes in the temperature responses of the apparent maximum rate of Rubisco carboxylation (V-cmax) and apparent maximum rate of electron transport (J(max)), as well as changes in the ratio of these parameters. We asked whether such changes in photosynthetic biochemistry attributable to climate of origin are similar in nature and magnitude to those attributable to growth environment. To address this question, we measured temperature responses of photosynthesis and chlorophyll fluorescence on six Eucalyptus species from diverse geographical and climatic regions growing in a common garden. Measurements were made in three seasons, allowing us to compare interspecific differences with seasonal changes. We found significant interspecific differences in apparent V-cmax and J(max) standardized to 25 degrees C, but there were no significant differences in the temperature responses of these parameters among species. Comparing data across seasons, we found significant seasonal changes in apparent V-cmax25, but not in J(max25), causing a change in their ratio (J/V ratio). However, there were no seasonal changes in the temperature response of either parameter. We concluded that the growth environment had a much larger effect on temperature response than climate of origin among this set of species. Mean daytime temperature increased by 15 degrees C from winter to summer, whereas we estimated that the seasonal change in J/V ratio would cause a change in the optimum temperature (T-opt) for gross photosynthesis of 3.6 degrees C. Use of a general relationship to describe photosynthetic temperature acclimation resulted in a strong underestimation of the T-opt for photosynthesis for these species. Our results indicated that variation in photosynthetic temperature responses cannot be captured in one simple relationship with growth temperature. Further comparative research on species groups will be needed to develop a basis for modelling these interspecific differences in plant temperature acclimation.In water-limited environments, water is the main limiting factor of crop production, especially in rainfed crops such as durum winter wheat (Triticum durum Desf). Consequently, also in climatic change projections, it is essential both to recognise characteristics in breeding programs that can lead to drought tolerance and to reduce the time needed to observe variations of these traits on crop yield. Moreover, changing in management strategies could improve crop adaptation to climate change, not considered in this approach. Crop growth models can assist breeding research in identifying these traits. The CropSyst model was parameterized for durum wheat cultivated in Southern Italy: crop characteristics were analyzed, development (grain filling duration and phenologic response to water stress), canopy expansion (specific leaf area, leaf duration and ratio between leaf and stem) and water uptake (root length). Model sensitivity was evaluated varying one parameter at a time and changing the value by +/-5, +/-10 and +/-20% of calibrated values. Wheat was simulated with past real daily climatic data (55 years, from 1952 to 2006) and future daily climatic data predicted with an HADCM3 global climatic model (100 years, from 2000 to 2100) where an average air temperature increase of +2 degrees C is expected as well as a CO2 concentration of 550 ppm (IPCC, A2 scenario). Leaf area duration and specific leaf area proved to be the parameters with the greatest impacts on wheat yield, with changing in wheat yield from -20 to16% and from -38 to 35% respectively as consequence to variation for these parameters oscillating between 20 and 20%. The ratio between the leaf and the stem biomass accumulation was inversely and linearly related to grain yield. Lengthening or shortening the grain filling duration did not seem to provide benefits in term of grain yield. The "non-response" in term of grain yield to water stress highlights that the wheat crop was optimized yet in Mediterranean environment in order to maintain production stability in drought conditions which could accelerate different crop phenological stages. The variation of maximum root depth (from 0.8 to 1.2 m) did not result in any significant variation in grain yield. The changes of crop morphology could also enhance climate change adaptation.Background: The range of the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus is expanding globally, raising the threat of emerging and re-emerging arbovirus transmission risks including dengue and chikungunya. Its detection in Papua New Guinea's (PNG) southern Fly River coastal region in 1988 and 1992 placed it 150 km from mainland Australia. However, it was not until 12 years later that it appeared on the Torres Strait Islands. We hypothesized that the extant PNG population expanded into the Torres Straits as an indirect effect of drought-proofing the southern Fly River coastal villages in response to El Nino-driven climate variability in the region (via the rollout of rainwater tanks and water storage containers). Methodology/Principal Findings: Examination of the mosquito's mitochondrial DNA cytochrome oxidase I (COI) sequences and 13 novel nuclear microsatellites revealed evidence of substantial intermixing between PNG's southern Fly region and Torres Strait Island populations essentially compromising any island eradication attempts due to potential of reintroduction. However, two genetically distinct populations were identified in this region comprising the historically extant PNG populations and the exotic introduced population. Both COI sequence data and microsatellites showed the introduced population to have genetic affinities to populations from Timor Leste and Jakarta in the Indonesian region. Conclusions/Significance: The Ae. albopictus invasion into the Australian region was not a range expansion out of PNG as suspected, but founded by other, genetically distinct population(s), with strong genetic affinities to populations sampled from the Indonesian region. We now suspect that the introduction of Ae. albopictus into the Australian region was driven by widespread illegal fishing activity originating from the Indonesian region during this period. Human sea traffic is apparently shuttling this mosquito between islands in the Torres Strait and the southern PNG mainland and this extensive movement may well compromise Ae. albopictus eradication attempts in this region.Indicators of natural disaster resilience are factors that impact the ability to cope with and adapt to a natural disaster and climate change events. They can either contribute to or detract from resilience. Existing research has emphasized the importance of quantifying resilience in order to estimate baseline resilience and measure progress toward resilience enhancement. Previous attempts at quantification of resilience have not incorporated place-specific indicators or differential weighting of indicators for prioritization of resilience enhancement actions. Previous research efforts have also not incorporated spatial and temporal contexts when attempting to quantify resilience indicators. This research demonstrates the importance for quantifying resilience place-specific indicators, differential weighting of indicators, and the spatial and temporal contexts of indicators for resilience estimation and quantification through a case study of Sarasota County, Florida. This case study was conducted in four phases: preliminary interviews, plan review, focus group, and spatial analysis. Preliminary interviews were intended to contribute to development of research goals. The plan review process served to identify Sarasota County's planning priorities to determine possible indicators of resilience unique to Sarasota County as well as existing and planned county hazard mitigation strategies. The focus group was concerned with identifying resilience indicators through a workshop with officials from Sarasota County. The spatial analysis portion used findings from all three previous phases to demonstrate spatial patterns of resilience. This research demonstrates that although national resilience quantification metrics are useful, local scale resilience estimates appear more useful if community hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation is the primary goal. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper examines an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant as the pressures of a warming planet, changing climate and changing ecosystems ramp up. The broad context for the paper is the intragenerational, intergenerational, and interspecies equity implications of changing the climate and the value orientations of adapting to such change. In addition, the need to stabilize the planetary climate by urgent mitigation of change factors is a foundational ethical assumption. In order to avoid further animal and plant extinctions, or at the very least, their increased vulnerability to becoming rare and endangered; the systematic assisted colonization of "at risk" species is being seriously considered by scientists and managers of biodiversity. The more practical aspects of assisted colonization have been covered in the conservation biology literature; however, the ethical implications of such actions have not been extensively examined. Our discussion of the value issues, using a novel case study approach, will rectify the limited ethical analysis of the issue of assisted colonization of species in the face of climate change pressures. Beyond sustainability ethics, both animal and environmental ethical approaches will be used and intrinsic versus instrumental value orientations in the literature shall form the basis of our discussion. After the application of all the ethical approaches to the case studies, we conclude that without mitigation and the prospect of a future stable climate, assisted colonization will be involved in an inherently unethical process and a "move and lose it" outcome. With mitigation, there is wide-ranging ethical support for assisted colonization.Globally, sea-level rise is expected to impact on many coastal regions and settlements. While mitigation of global greenhouse gas emissions remains an important task, adaptation is now seen as a critical component of the policy equation. Local government is a key player in adaptation planning and managing risk through their mandated role in land use planning and development control. Yet, managing the predicted impacts of climate change is proving to be a complex and difficult task for planners and policy makers. This paper reports on a case of local government deliberation on possible planning responses to address future sea-level rise impacts in New South Wales, Australia. Using structured, expert opinion of planners and other technical experts engaged in a collaborative network in the Sydney region, we explore the feasibility of implementing planning and policy measures at the local and regional scales to respond to inundation risk as a result of sea-level rise and storm surge events. Our research shows how local governments employ specific scale-oriented strategies to engage private and public actors at different scales to manage legal, financial, and technical risks in coastal adaptation.The actual conditions of mesoscale summer high temperatures (HTs) recorded in the Osaka-Kyoto urban area of Japan were investigated using an observation network. The daytime temperatures observed on 10 HT events in this area were the highest in the southern area of Kyoto [area with no Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) observation sites]. To quantitatively evaluate the formation mechanisms of HT events, a heat budget analysis on an atmospheric column was conducted using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The results showed that over the HT area the daytime column temperature increased as a result of sensible-heat diffusion generated from the urban surface at the contribution rate of 54% and as a result of the sensible-heat advection and diffusion supplied from the sides and at the top of the column at the rate of 46% of all sensible heat supplied. To clarify previously unreported effects of synoptic-scale winds under typical summer pressure patterns on the HT events, a sensitivity experiment with no surface heat fluxes, backward trajectory analysis, and Euler forward tracer analysis was performed. These analyses yielded the following findings: 1) sensible heat at the synoptic scale and/or mesoscale was transported from the tropics by circulation patterns along the edge of the Pacific high as well as from tropical cyclones that were present in the vicinity of Japan and 2) airflow over the Kii Mountains also contributes to the HT events.This paper presents a discussion on assessing the potential impacts of climate change on the atmospheric corrosion rates of exposed steel structures. The effects on atmospheric corrosion due to changes in the environmental temperature, carbon dioxide, relative humidity, wind, rainfall and pollution are considered. The limitations and complexities of these assessments are discussed. To demonstrate the use and limitations of this science to evaluate effects related to climate change, a model developed in Australia to predict corrosion is combined with climate change models to project the change in the corrosion rates of steel components and protective zinc coatings in constructions. The method is applied to constructions located along the coastal areas of two Australian cities: Melbourne and Brisbane. These assessments are made using the A1FI scenario, the highest emission scenario defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, applied to nine general circulation models. The projected changes in corrosion rates were found to be an increase of similar to 14% for both zinc and steel in Brisbane and a decrease of similar to 14% for steel and 9% for zinc in Melbourne. It was also found that the uncertainties associated with the climate change models were small compared to those involved in modelling corrosion for engineering purposes.Understanding vulnerability to the impacts of global environmental change and identifying adaptation measures to cope with these impacts require localized investigations that can help find actual and exact answers to the questions about who and what are vulnerable, to what are they vulnerable, how vulnerable are they, what are the causes of their vulnerability, and what responses can lessen their vulnerability. People living in forests are highly dependent on forest goods and services, and are vulnerable to forest changes both socially and economically. In the Congo basin, climate change effects on forest ecosystems are predicted to amplify the existing pressure on food security urging expansion of current agricultural lands at the expense of forest, biodiversity loss and socioeconomic stresses. The paper aimed at exploring vulnerability and adaptation needs to climate change of local communities in the humid forest zone of Cameroon. Field work was conducted in two forest communities in Leki, and in Yokadouma in the Center and Eastern Regions of Cameroon respectively. The assessment was done using a series of approaches including a preparatory phase, fieldwork proper, and validation of the results. Results show that: (a) the adverse effects of climate conditions to which these communities are exposed are already being felt and exerting considerable stress on most of their livelihoods resources; (b) drought, changing seasons, erratic rain patterns, heavy rainfall and strong winds are among the main climate-related disturbances perceived by populations in the project sites; (c) important social, ecological and economic processes over the past decades seemed to have shaped current vulnerability in the sites; (d) Some coping and adaptive strategies used so far are outdated; and specific adaptation needs are identified and suggestions for facilitating their long-term implementations provided.Knowledge of vulnerability provides the foundation for developing actions that minimize impacts and supports system views that are particularly desirable. We modified a well-established model to assess and describe the vulnerability of the two major industries dependent on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to extreme weather events. The modification entailed distinguishing between the properties that determine exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity for both the ecological and the social components of a natural resource system. We surveyed 145 commercial fishers and 62 tourism operators following a severe tropical cyclone and a major flooding event that extensively affected the region in 2011. Exposure of these industries included direct risk to life and infrastructure and indirect risk from loss of important ecosystem services. Our study found that many commercial fishers and marine-based tourism operators were sensitive to changes in the GBR's condition and limited in their adaptive capacity. However, those with smaller businesses, higher levels of occupational identity, place attachment, formal networks, and strategic approaches also had higher levels of adaptive capacity. These results suggest that resource users with higher sensitivity to change are not necessarily the most vulnerable; sensitivity may be offset by adaptive capacity. That is, while exposure and sensitivity determine the potential impact of a climate-induced change, adaptive capacity may be a major influence on the impacts that eventuate. We empirically show that adaptive capacity is an obvious focus for climate adaptation planning.This study conducted large-eddy simulations (LES) of fully developed turbulent flow within and above explicitly resolved buildings in Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan. The more than 100 LES results, each covering a 1,000 1,000 m area with 2-m resolution, provide a database of the horizontally-averaged turbulent statistics and surface drag corresponding to various urban morphologies. The vertical profiles of horizontally-averaged wind velocity mostly follow a logarithmic law even for districts with high-rise buildings, allowing estimates of aerodynamic parameters such as displacement height and roughness length using the von Karman constant 0.4. As an alternative derivation of the aerodynamic parameters, a regression of roughness length and variable Karman constant was also attempted, using a displacement height physically determined as the central height of drag action. Although both the regression methods worked, the former gives larger (smaller) values of displacement height (roughness length) by 20-25 % than the latter. The LES database clearly illustrates the essential difference in bulk flow properties between real urban surfaces and simplified arrays. The vertical profiles of horizontally-averaged momentum flux were influenced by the maximum building height and the standard deviation of building height, as well as conventional geometric parameters such as the average building height, frontal area index, and plane area index. On the basis of these investigations, a new aerodynamic parametrization of roughness length and displacement height in terms of the five geometric parameters described above was empirically proposed. The new parametrizations work well for both real urban morphologies and simplified model geometries.The U.S. road network is one of the nation's most important capital assets and is vital to the functioning of the U.S. economy. Maintaining this asset involves approximately $134 billion of government funds annually from Federal, State, and local agencies. Climate change may represent a risk or an opportunity to this network, as changes in climate stress will affect the resources necessary for both road maintenance and construction projects. This paper develops an approach for estimating climate-related changes in road maintenance and construction costs such that the current level of service provided by roads is maintained over time. We estimate these costs under a baseline scenario in which annual mean global temperature increases by 1.5 degrees C in 2050 relative to the historical average and a mitigation scenario under which this increase in mean temperature is limited to 1.0 degrees C. Depending on the nature of the changes in climate that occur in a given area, our analysis suggests that climate change may lead to a reduction in road maintenance and/or construction costs or an increase in costs. Overall, however, our analysis shows that climate change, if unchecked, will increase the annual costs of keeping paved and unpaved roads in service by $785 million in present value terms by 2050. When not discounted, this figure increases to $2.8 billion. Policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to reduce these costs by approximately $280 million in present value terms and by $885 million when not discounted. These costs vary substantially by region and time period, information that should be important for transportation planners at the national, state, and local levels. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper undertakes an in-depth analysis of six least developed countries (LDCs) in South and Southeast Asia to assess the extent of mainstreaming climate change adaptation into national development plans by reviewing their National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs), national development plans, and Strategic Programs for Climate Resilience (SPCRs) (where available). The paper proposes two perspectives to analyze the level of mainstreaming and five factors that may affect such a level. The results show that there is a significant difference in the success of their mainstreaming efforts: mainstreaming is relatively advanced in Bangladesh, limited in Lao People's Democratic Republic, the Maldives, and Nepal, and still minimal in Bhutan and Cambodia. Among the factors, the study finds that the inter-ministerial coordination supported by the highest levels of government is most relevant to the success of mainstreaming, which is measured by the integration of climate adaptation consideration into development priorities and a country's own initiatives, particularly those involving budget allocation. Recognition of the need for mainstreaming and monitoring and evaluation also affect the success of mainstreaming efforts in LDCs. Another important factor is to make adaptation plans compatible with national development plans in terms of their time horizon, and SPCRs effectively facilitate this process. As all countries still require external support for advancing mainstreaming, the role of development partners is instrumental. The paper points to issues that need to be incorporated in the relevant NAPAs including updating to facilitate mainstreaming.The projected impact of climate change on agro-ecological systems is considered widespread and significant, particularly across the global tropics. As in many other countries, adaptation to climate change is likely to be an important challenge for Colombian agricultural systems. In a recent study, a national-level assessment of the likely future impacts of climate change on agriculture was performed (Ramirez-Villegas et al. Clim Chang 115:611-628, 2012, RV2012). The study diagnosed key challenges directly affecting major crops and regions within the Colombian agricultural system and suggested a number of actions thought to facilitate adaptation, while refraining from proposing specific strategies at local scales. Further insights on the study were published by Feola (2013) (F2013), who stressed the need for transformative adaptation processes to reduce vulnerability particularly of resource-limited farmers, and the benefits of a predominantly stakeholder-led approach to adaptation. We clarify that the recommendations outlined in RV2012 were not intended as a recipe for multi-scale adaptation, but rather a set of actions that are required to diagnose and develop adaptation actions particularly at governmental levels in coordination with national and international adaptation initiatives. Such adaptation actions ought to be, ideally, a product of inclusive sub-sectorial assessments, which can take different forms. We argue that Colombian agriculture as a whole would benefit from a better outlining of adaptation needs across temporal scales in sub-sectorial assessments that take into account both RV2012 and F2013 orientations to adaptation. We conclude with two case studies of research on climate change impacts and adaptation developed in Colombia that serve as examples of realistic, productive sectorial and sub-national assessments.Effective national and regional policy guidance on climate change adaptation relies on robust scientific evidence. This two-part series of papers develops and implements a novel scenario-neutral framework enabling an assessment of the vulnerability of flood flows in British catchments to climatic change, to underpin the development of guidance for the flood management community. In this first part, the sensitivity of the 20-year return period flood peak (RP20) to changes in precipitation (P), temperature (T) and potential evapotranspiration (PE) is systematically assessed for 154 catchments. A sensitivity domain of 4,200 scenarios is applied combining 525 and 8 sets of P and T/PE mean monthly changes, respectively, with seasonality incorporated using a single-phase harmonic function. Using the change factor method, the percentage change in RP20 associated with each scenario of the sensitivity domain is calculated, giving flood response surfaces for each catchment. Using a clustering procedure on the response surfaces, the 154 catchments are divided into nine groups: flood sensitivity types. These sensitivity types show that some catchments are (very) sensitive to changes in P but others buffer the response, while the location of catchments of the same type does not show any strong geographical pattern. These results reflect the range of hydrological processes found in Britain, and demonstrate the potential importance of catchment properties (physical and climatic) in the propagation of change in climate to change in floods, and so in characterising the sensitivity types (covered in the companion paper).Effective and efficient segmentation of vegetation from digital plant images is an actively studied topic in crop phenotyping. Many of the formerly proposed methods showed good performance in the extraction under controlled light conditions but it is still hard to properly extract only vegetation from RGB images taken under natural light condition where the images can contain shadowed and lighted parts with specularly reflected parts of plants. In this paper, we propose a robust method to extract vegetation from the plant images taken under natural light conditions using wheat images. The method is based on a machine learning process, decision tree and image noise reduction filters. We adopted the CART algorithm to create a decision tree in the training process and examined its performance using test images, comparing it with the performances of other methods such as ExG, ExG-ExR and Modified ExG which are widely used recently. The results showed that the accuracy of the vegetation extraction by the proposed method was significantly better than that of the other methods particularly for the images which include strongly shadowed and specularly reflected parts. The proposed method also has an advantage that the same model can be applied to different images without requiring a threshold adjustment for each image. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Multilevel governance is regarded as a promising approach to deal with the multidimensional nature of climate change adaptation. However, the policy context in which it is implemented is very often complex and fragmented, characterised by interacting climate and non-climate strategies. An understanding of multilevel decision-making and governance is particularly important, if desired adaptation outcomes are to be achieved. This paper examines how climate change adaptation takes place in a complex multilevel system of governance, in the context of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region. It examines over one hundred adaptation strategies at federal, state, regional and local levels in terms of type, manifestation, purposefulness, drivers and triggers, and geographic and temporal scope. Interactions between strategies are investigated both at the same level of governance and across governance levels. This study demonstrates that multilevel approach is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition in responding to complex multiscale and multisector issues, such as climate change adaptation. Short-term adaptation measures; a predominant incremental, sectoral, top-down approach to adaptation; and the lack of a framework for managing interactions are major threats to effective climate adaptation in the GBR region. Coping with such threats will require long-term transformative action, establishing enabling conditions to support local adaptation, and, most important, creating and maintaining strategic interactions among adaptation strategies. Coordinating and integrating climate and non-climate strategies across jurisdictions and policy sectors are the most significant and challenging tasks for multilevel governance in the GBR region and elsewhere. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The seasonal variation of land-atmosphere coupling strength has been examined using an extended series of atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) simulations. In the Western Sahel of Africa, strong coupling strength for precipitation is found in April and May, just prior to and at the beginning of the monsoon season. At this time, heat and water fluxes from the surface are strongly controlled by land conditions, and the unstable conditions in the lower level of the troposphere, as induced by local land state, allow the surface fluxes to influence the variability of convective precipitationand thus the timing of monsoon onset.Recent studies are focusing on the distribution of water mass because the mixture region of water mass is highly related to the rich fishing grounds [Yasuda I., Watanabe Y., Fish. Oceanogr. 3(3): 172-181, 1994]. Due to the large data size and time-varying property, efficient exploration and visualization of the ocean data is always extremely challenging. To extract the dynamic behaviors of the water mass and its mixture from a large-scale simulated ocean dataset, we developed an efficient visualization system by applying our volume compression method and our volume rendering method. This system allows us to investigate the time-varying distributions of ocean physical properties, additionally from the user's perspective and requirements. In the experiments, we show the generality and expressiveness by applying our system for single-and multi-property visualizations to find some significant ocean water mass. Consequently, we could obtain a clear visualization result to show the dynamic behaviors of the mixture of water mass for simulation data regarding a location in the northwestern Pacific near Japan.The expansion of roads, and the subsequent changes to the surrounding landscape not only lead to landscape fragmentation but also have been shown to be a key driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. Local declines of species abundance as well as changes in animal behaviour have drawn attention to wider ecosystem effects including altered species composition and a degradation of ecosystem functioning. However, methods for measuring and quantifying the distribution and environmental impacts of roads are not yet fully developed. We present a new technique for assessing the potential impacts of roads on biodiversity using a spatial road disturbance index (SPROADI). The index is calculated from three sub-indices: traffic intensity as a measure of traffic volume per time and space; vicinity impact, which is the assessment of edge effect of roads on adjacent habitats (the road-effect zone); and fragmentation grade, which provides an indication of the degree to which the landscape is intersected by roads. SPROADI was then tested using data from the Federal State of Brandenburg in north-eastern Germany. A sensitivity analysis was carried out on the results to assess the robustness of the index. The findings revealed expected patterns of high road disturbance in urban and peri-urban landscapes surrounding Berlin. Less obvious were the high levels of road density and impacts in forest plantations across the southern region of Brandenburg, and low levels of road disturbance in agricultural crop lands of the north-western region. Results were variable for areas under some form of protection. The only national park displayed substantially lower SPROADI values in contrast to the surrounding non-protected areas whilst other protected area categories, which were landscape conservation areas and nature parks, revealed SPROADI values that were equally high as those for non-protected areas. The results of this study demonstrate the strengths and potential applications of SPROADI as a quantitative means for identifying low-traffic areas in the context of conservation and sustainable transport planning.Ecosystem service degradation, exacerbated by climate change, requires flexible and effective communication within governance systems to foster actions that reverse current trends and can cope with changing conditions. Key organizations bridge information to a variety of actors across administrative scales and policy areas in complex governance networks concerned with ecosystem services. In this paper, we use quantitative analysis of information flows, perceived influence and competence within a multi-actors' governance network to identify key information bridging organizations (BrO) for an example involving soil regulation services in a watershed in Costa Rica. Here, heavy soil erosion (due to intense cultivation on steep slopes, and increasing frequency of extreme precipitation events) affects both farmers (by loss of fertile topsoil) and hydroelectric generation (by rapid siltation of reservoirs downstream). To gauge the information-bridging capacities of organizations we use the network parameter betweenness centrality, and we created two new parameters to measure the extent of cross-scale and cross-policy area exchange of information of the organizations. The regional agricultural extension office is identified, among others, as a crucial BrO in keeping with other studies of agricultural systems. The results also show that network analysis provides an empirical basis for understanding information flows and, influence in governance networks, in order to identify key organizations. In this manner, we can diagnose potential bottlenecks, when these organizations lack the resources to achieve their mandates and need support to strengthen their efforts in information provision and influence in governance for ecosystem services. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This work assesses spatial and temporal changes in rainfall in southern Australia over the period 1990-2009. Rainfall is assessed by season and according to the synoptic system generating the rainfall. Rainfall decreases over the period across much of the southwest, with the most significant decrease occurring around 2000. These changes are associated with frontal and cutoff systems. Frontal systems dominate the timing and changes of rainfall in western Tasmania. In the southeast, the timing and magnitude of rainfall changes are more closely associated with cutoff systems and show consistent decreases in the early 1990s. The largest reductions in rainfall in the southeast are in the Alpine region and are due to cutoffs and fronts and exhibit seasonal and spatial variations consistent with the climatologies of these systems.This study explores the potential effectiveness of metropolitan land cover change as a climate change adaptation strategy for managing rising temperatures in a large and rapidly warming metropolitan region of the United States. Through the integration of a mesoscale meteorological model with estimated land cover data for the Atlanta, Georgia region in 2010, this study quantifies the influence of extensive land cover change at the periphery of a large metropolitan region on temperature within the city center. The first study to directly model a metropolitan scale heat transfer mechanism, we find both enhanced tree canopy and impervious cover hi the suburban zones of the Atlanta region to produce statistically significant cooling and warming effects in the urban core. Based on these findings, we conclude that urban heat island management both within and beyond the central developed core of large cities may provide an effective climate change adaptation strategy for large metropolitan regions.During the last 100 years the Ethiopian upper Blue Nile Basin (BNB) has undergone major changes in land use, and is now potentially facing changes in climate. Rainfall over BNB supplies over two-thirds of the water to the Nile and supports a large local population living mainly on subsistence agriculture. Regional food security is sensitive to both the amount and timing of rain and is already an important political challenge that will be further complicated if scenarios of climate change are realized. In this study a simple spatial model of the timing and duration of summer rains (Kiremt) and dry season (Bega), and annual rain over the upper BNB was established from observed data between 1952 and 2004. The model was used to explore potential impacts of climate change on these rains, using a down-scaled ECHAM5/MP1-OM scenario between 2050 and 2100. Over the observed period the amount, onset and duration of Kiremt rains and rain-free Bega days have exhibited a consistent spatial pattern. The spatially averaged annual rainfall was 1490 mm of which 93% was Kiremt rain. The average Kiremt rain and number of rainy days was higher in the southwest (322 days) and decreased towards the north (136 days). Under the 2050-2100 scenario, the annual mean rainfall is predicted to increase by 6% and maintain the same spatial pattern as in the past. A larger change in annual rainfall is expected in the southwest (ca. +130 mm) with a gradually smaller change towards the north (ca. +70 mm). Results highlight the need to account for the characteristic spatiotemporal zonation when planning water management and climate adaptation within the upper BNB. The presented simple spatial resolved models of the presence of Kiremt and annual total rainfall could be used as a baseline for such long-term planning.The Alex Fraser Research Forest is 10,000 ha of provincial land managed for research and teaching by the University of British Columbia in central British Columbia. Experience shows us that weather is already a driving influence in forest management as extreme-weather events cause substantial damage. Biotic and abiotic disturbances create significant uncertainty for managers, and present a significant risk of loss to the growing stock. Forecasts of climate change indicate increasing average temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns. These forecasts also suggest more extreme-weather events. Changing weather patterns mean changing interactions between forests and disturbance agents, likely resulting in unprecedented levels of damage. Research forest managers have developed an approach to managing this uncertainty and risk through forest management planning. If climate change will lead to more extreme weather, it is expected that adapting to climate change will equate to managing risk. A retrospective examination of the response to the mountain pine beetle outbreak (1991-2005) has enabled us to document our approach to managing the risk of damage and loss. Forest management planning provides a framework to establish priorities, set objectives and devise strategies to maintain the values that are important on research forests as they adapt to climate change. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change poses known and unknown risks for coastal communities and also challenges for university faculty and local government staff who communicate about cli- mate sciences. Conceived as a way to move beyond traditional models of science communication, this project involved public and private decision makers in specific at-risk communities in Oregon (U.S. Pacific coast) and Maine (Atlantic coast). Both state projects sought to move behavior toward decisive action that results in coastal communities that are more resilient to climate variability at all scales. To promote engagement between project staffs and publics, a dialogic model of communication was advanced, beginning with interviews and focus groups that in turn shaped further engagement through workshops and targeted video products. This means of communication led to a deeper understanding of participants' knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, values, and barriers to action related to climate change and its effects. Coinciding with this, project participant evaluations in both Oregon and Maine indicate that the workshops and videos were successful at informing them on this complex issue; and in both states, project participation led to action outcomes. We believe that applied elsewhere our multifaceted and adaptive approach will garner similar results, provided sufficient dedicated staffing and attention to methods.Mesoscale processes that cause tremendous amounts of precipitation around the Meghalaya Plateau, northeast India, were investigated using a regional atmospheric model, with a particular focus on the possible role of an intraseasonal oscillation (ISO) and the diurnal cycle. A numerical experiment was conducted using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) to simulate a prominent submonthly-scale ISO event observed during June-July 2004. A WRF experiment successfully simulated the timing and magnitude of precipitation during the first active period and subsequent inactive period of the ISO, despite large biases in the second active period. The WRF experiment revealed that the magnitude of prevailing southwesterly winds in the lower troposphere differs significantly between active and inactive periods; strong southwesterly flow transports abundant moisture to the southern slope of the Meghalaya Plateau during the active period, which triggers forced lifting and brings orographic precipitation. However, low-level wind during the inactive period is too weak to overcome the vertical stratification barrier; hence, it is unable to reach the condensation level. The WRF experiment suggested that the diurnal cycle of precipitation is enhanced during the active period, exhibiting an evening to early morning maximum, as observed by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The experiment also indicated a prominent nocturnal low-level jet (LLJ) appearing at 900 hPa. The direction of the LLJ varies clockwise with time, which accelerates the preexisting southwesterly flow during 1800-0600 LT. The diurnal variation of the LLJ is responsible for the evening to early morning maximum of precipitation, thus contributing to the precipitation variability in the ISO.Observed difference in diurnal cycle of precipitation over the eastern Indian Ocean between positive and negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) phases was investigated using a regional model. During the negative IOD phase, prominent precipitation peak was over the land during evening in both observation and model, while precipitation often appeared over the ocean during early morning. In the positive IOD phase, precipitation peak was shifted to the northern area where sea surface temperature was warm. The amount of precipitation in the southern area during the negative phase was more than three times larger than that in the positive phase.The last decade has seen a rapid proliferation of climate change adaptation research resulting in a broad theoretical and conceptual understanding of adaptation. However, significant gaps still exist in applying these theoretical frameworks and tools in policy and practice. There is also little agreement on which methods and frameworks are truly robust, while many developing countries lack access to key literature and data. Several issues are especially relevant for early career researchers and practitioners. These include working in an area of science that crosses disciplinary boundaries, improving the quality of and capacity to undertake adaptation research, and equity and ethics. We elaborate on these themes based on our experiences as early career adaptation researchers working in developed and developing countries. We also identify several support mechanisms required to enable early career researchers to advance their engagement with the climate change adaptation agenda.This article presents the design and testing of a model-assisted participatory process for the formulation of a local adaptation plan to climate change. The pilot study focused on small-scale and commercial agriculture, water supply, housing, wildlife, livestock and biodiversity in the Thukela River basin, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The methodology was based on stakeholders identifying and ranking the severity of climate-related challenges, and downscaled stakeholder-identified information provided by modellers, with the aim of addressing possible changes of exposure in the future. The methodology enables the integration of model-based information with experience and visions based on local realities. It includes stakeholders' own assessments of their vulnerability to prevailing climate variability and the severity, if specified, of climate-related problems that may occur more often in the future. The methodology made it possible to identify the main issues to focus on in the adaptation plan, including barriers to adaptation. We make recommendations for how to design a model-assisted participatory process, emphasizing the need for transparency, to recognize the interests of the stakeholders, good advance planning, local relevance, involvement of local champions, and adaptation of Information material to each group's previous experience and understanding.In the context of scaled-up funding for climate change adaptation, it is more important than ever to guarantee value for money of adaptation interventions. Robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) ensures that the prospective benefits of interventions are being realized and it helps to improve the design of future projects and programmes. This paper is the first empirical assessment of M&E frameworks used by development cooperation agencies for projects and programmes with adaptation-specific or adaptation-related components. It analyses documents for 106 projects across 6 bilateral development agencies. The analysis finds that Result Based Management, the Logical Framework Approach and the accompanying logframe are the most common M&E approaches used for adaptation. In applying these approaches, the long-term perspective of most adaptation initiatives means that it is particularly important to clearly differentiate between outcomes, outputs and activities. In addition, M&E frameworks for adaptation should combine qualitative, quantitative and binary indicators. Baselines for these indicators should be specified to improve understanding of progress. Significant challenges remain in relation to dealing with shifting baselines, attribution and time lags between interventions and outcomes.Globally, groundwater use is intensifying to meet demands for irrigation, urban supply, industrialization, and, in some instances, electrical power generation. In response to hydroclimatic variability, surface water is being substituted with groundwater, which must be viewed as a strategic resource for climate adaptation. In this sense, the supply of electricity for pumping is an adaptation policy tool. Additionally, planning for climate-change mitigation must consider CO2 emissions resulting from pumping. This paper examines the influence of electricity supply and pricing on groundwater irrigation and resulting emissions, with specific reference to Mexico-a climate-water-energy 'perfect storm'. Night-time power supply at tariffs below the already-subsidized rates for agricultural groundwater use has caused Mexican farmers to increase pumping, reversing important water and electricity conservation gains achieved. Indiscriminate groundwater pumping, including for virtual water exports of agricultural produce, threatens the long-term sustainability of aquifers, non-agricultural water uses, and stream-aquifer interactions that sustain riparian ecosystems. Emissions resulting from agricultural groundwater pumping in Mexico are estimated to be 3.6% of total national emissions and are equivalent to emissions from transporting the same agricultural produce to market. The paper concludes with an assessment of energy, water, and climate trends coupled with policy futures to address these challenges.Biotechnology uses substances, materials or extracts derived from living cells, employing 22 million Europeans in a (sic)1.5Tn endeavour, being the premier global economic growth opportunity this century. Significant advances have been made in red biotechnology using pharmaceutically and medically relevant applications, green biotechnology developing agricultural and environmental tools and white biotechnology serving industrial scale uses, frequently as process feedstocks. Red biotechnology has delivered dramatic improvements in controlling human disease, from antibiotics to overcome bacterial infections to anti-HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals such as azidothymidine (AZT), anti-malarial compounds and novel vaccines saving millions of lives. Green biotechnology has dramatically increased food production through Agrobacterium and biolistic genetic modifications for the development of 'Golden Rice', pathogen resistant crops expressing crystal toxin genes, drought resistance and cold tolerance to extend growth range. The burgeoning area of white biotechnology has delivered bio-plastics, low temperature enzyme detergents and a host of feedstock materials for industrial processes such as modified starches, without which our everyday lives would be much more complex. Biotechnological applications can bridge these categories, by modifying energy crops properties, or analysing circulating nucleic acid elements, bringing benefits for all, through increased food production, supporting climate change adaptation and the low carbon economy, or novel diagnostics impacting on personalized medicine and genetic disease. Cross-cutting technologies such as PCR, novel sequencing tools, bioinformatics, transcriptomics and epigenetics are in the vanguard of biotechnological progress leading to an ever-increasing breadth of applications. Biotechnology will deliver solutions to unimagined problems, providing food security, health and well-being to mankind for centuries to come.Although plants have moved across the landscape in response to changing climate for millennia, projections of contemporary climate change suggest that forest tree species and populations will need to migrate faster than their natural ability. Therefore, climate change adaptation strategies, such as assisted migration, have gained attention since 2007. Effective implementation of assisted migration can only occur if target transfer guidelines are developed because our current seed transfer guidelines, established to guide the movement of plant materials, lack inherent spatial and temporal dynamics associated with climate change. This limitation restrains reforestation practitioners from making decisions about assisted migration. Lack of operating procedures, uncertainties about future climate conditions, risks associated with moving plants outside their current ranges, and existing policies have hampered formal actions in forest management and conservation. We review the current thinking on assisted migration of forest tree species and provide information that could facilitate implementation.As consumptive extractions and water scarcity pressures brought about by climate change increase in many world river basins, so do the risks to water-dependent ecological assets. In response, public or not for profit environmental water holders (EWHs) have been established in many areas and bestowed with endowments of water and mandates to manage water for ecological outcomes. Water scarcity has also increasingly spawned water trade arrangements in many river basins, and in many instances, EWHs are now operating in water markets. A number of EWHs, especially in Australia, begin with an endowment of permanent water entitlements purchased from irrigators. Such water entitlements typically have relatively constant interannual supply profiles that often do not match ecological water demand involving flood pulses and periods of drying. This article develops a hydrologic-economic simulation model of the Murrumbidgee catchment within the Murray-Darling Basin to assess the scope of possibilities to improve environmental outcomes through EWH trading on an annual water lease market. We find that there are some modest opportunities for EWHs to improve environmental outcomes through water trade. The best opportunities occur in periods of drought and for ecological outcomes that benefit from moderately large floods. We also assess the extent to which EWH trading in annual water leases may create pecuniary externalities via bidding up or down the water lease prices faced by irrigators. Environmental water trading is found to have relatively small impacts on water market price outcomes. Overall our results suggest that the benefits of developing EWH trading may well justify the costs.Effective climate change adaptation in mining communities is reliant on action by both local authorities and mining operations. This article reports the findings of two surveys conducted in late 2010, with Australian mining companies and local government authorities respectively, investigating their perceptions and activities related to climate change adaptation. The research identified the main types of weather and climate-related impacts experienced in the past and expected under future climate conditions for the two groups. There were significantly differing levels of concern about weather and climate-related impacts between the two types of organisations. Mining company respondents reported lower levels of severity of impact from both past and (expected) future weather events, as well as lower levels of belief in climate change and of adaptation activities to prepare for it. Interestingly, mining companies generally reported less concern about future impacts than those experienced in the past, suggesting discounting of risks due to climate change scepticism. The article reports on a range of factors relevant to adaptation in mining communities, including perceived barriers, collaboration and further information needs. The research findings are discussed in the context of other recent research on climate change adaptation by Australian organisations and studies of mining industry adaptation in other countries.In Ethiopia, climate change and associated risks are expected to have serious consequences for agriculture and food security. This in turn will seriously impact on the welfare of the people, particularly the rural farmers whose main livelihood depends on rain-fed agriculture. The level of impacts will mainly depend on the awareness and the level of adaptation in response to the changing climate. It is thus important to understand the role of the different factors that influence farmers' adaptation to ensure the development of appropriate policy measures and the design of successful development projects. This study examines farmers' perception of change in climatic attributes and the factors that influence farmers' choice of adaptation measures to climate change and variability. The estimated results from the climate change adaptation models indicate that level of education, age and wealth of the head of the household; access to credit and agricultural services; information on climate, and temperature all influence farmers' choices of adaptation. Moreover, lack of information on adaptation measures and lack of finance are seen as the main factors inhibiting adaptation to climate change. These conclusions were obtained with a Multinomial logit model, employing the results from a survey of 400 smallholder farmers in three districts in Tigray, northern Ethiopian.The coupled processes of climate change and urbanization pose challenges for water resource management in cities worldwide. Comparing the vulnerabilities of water systems in Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon, this paper examines (1) exposures to these stressors, (2) sensitivities to the associated impacts, and (3) adaptive capacities for responding to realized or anticipated impacts. Based on a case study and survey-based approach, common points of vulnerability include: rising exposures to drier, warmer summers, and suburban growth; increasing sensitivities based on demand hardening; and limited capacities due to institutional and pro-growth pressures. Yet each region also exhibits unique vulnerabilities. Comparatively, Portland shows: amplified exposures to seasonal climatic extremes, heightened sensitivity based on less diversified municipal water sources and policies that favor more trees and other irrigated vegetation, and diminished adaptive capacities because of limited attention to demand management and climate planning for water resources. Phoenix exhibits elevated exposure from rapid growth, heightened sensitivities due to high water demands and widespread increases in residential and commercial uses, and limited adaptive capacities due to weak land use planning and "smart growth" strategies. Unique points of vulnerability suggest pathways for adapting to urban-environmental change, whether through water management or land planning. Greater coordination between the land and water sectors would substantially reduce vulnerabilities in the study regions and beyond.We introduce a catastrophic risk model that captures the cumulative impact of climate change on future expected losses from hurricane risk. The annual growth rates of expected losses due to change in climate patterns (or "climate change factor") are estimated based upon historical storm activities in the Atlantic Basin and catastrophe modelling. The percentiles of the climate change factor are then used to measure expected hurricane losses in the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia. We also undertake benefit-cost analyses on four adaptation measures for homes in St. Lucia and determine when those are cost-effective for different time horizons and discount rates with and without climate change. Adaptation makes an enormous difference and can offset additional losses even with a high climate change factor by making houses much more resilient. Enforcing these protection measures will be critical.Beaches are frequently subjected to erosion and accretion that are influenced by coastal development interventions and natural variations due to storms and changes in river flow. Climate change may also exacerbate beach erosion and accretion. Natural scientists are concerned with the sustainability of species dependent on the beach ecosystem. Policymakers are pre-occupied with the economic sustainability of coastal communities should species decline and prolonged beach loss occur. The aim of this paper is to explore the linkage between science and policy by reporting the findings of a study of coastal change impacts on leatherback turtle nesting and analysing the socio-economic and adaptation implications of these changes for coastal communities. Grande Riviere, Trinidad, was used as a case study. Primary fieldwork investigated unsustainable coastal management practices. A questionnaire was administered to examine livelihoods, including ecotourism based on leatherback turtle nesting, and knowledge and awareness of climate change. One key finding of the study was that the community's livelihoods were natural resources dependent, and that natural beach dynamics and unsustainable coastal management practices posed major threats to natural resource and economic sustainability. Another key finding was that, despite these impacts, community knowledge and awareness of climate change in general was low, and there was a perception of state responsibility for climate change adaptation. The research findings have global applicability for coastal communities at risk of exposure and that are highly vulnerable to natural resources damage arising from anthropogenic stress and potential climate change. These communities require policy reforms to strengthen current coastal management practices and adaptation responses aimed at ensuring long-term sustainability.The potential effects of climatic changes on natural risks are widely discussed. But the formulation of strategies for adapting risk management practice to climate changes requires knowledge of the related risks for people and economic values. The main goals of this work were (1) the development of a method for analysing and comparing risks induced by different natural hazard types, (2) highlighting the most relevant natural hazard processes and related damages, (3) the development of an information system for the monitoring of the temporal development of natural hazard risk and (4) the visualisation of the resulting information for the wider public. A comparative exposure analysis provides the basis for pointing out the hot spots of natural hazard risks in the province of Carinthia, Austria. An analysis of flood risks in all municipalities provides the basis for setting the priorities in the planning of flood protection measures. The methods form the basis for a monitoring system that periodically observes the temporal development of natural hazard risks. This makes it possible firstly to identify situations in which natural hazard risks are rising and secondly to differentiate between the most relevant factors responsible for the increasing risks. The factors that most influence the natural risks could be made evident and eventual climate signals could be pointed out. Only with this information can the discussion about potential increases in natural risks due to climate change be separated from other influencing factors and be made at an objective level.Social Network Theory is suggested as a theoretical frame within the context of adaptation to climate change. Two elements of the theory that prove useful are that network brokers bridge networks and diffuse novel information that helps lead to group innovation. Novel information is needed for adaptation to climate change. Network data from a Bangladeshi community exemplify how a rural network functions during non-climate variable and climate variable times; which actors comprise the network and that brokers inside and outside the network diffuse information for possible adaptation. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Green roofs are an innovative solution for urban stormwater management. This paper examines governance arrangements for green roofs as a no-regrets' climate adaptation measure in five cities. We analysed who governs green roofs, why and with what outcome. Our results show that hierarchical and market arrangements co-exist in the various stages of the policy process. Cities with a higher prevalence of hierarchical arrangements have substantially higher implementation rates for green roofs. Although private sector involvement is crucial for raising efficiencies, a significant level of public responsibility taken by local governments appears to be salient for unleashing the potential of green roofs.Refugia have been suggested as priority sites for conservation under climate change because of their ability to facilitate survival of biota under adverse conditions. Here, we review the likely role of refugial habitats in conserving freshwater biota in arid Australian aquatic systems where the major long-term climatic influence has been aridification. We introduce a conceptual model that characterizes evolutionary refugia and ecological refuges based on our review of the attributes of aquatic habitats and freshwater taxa (fishes and aquatic invertebrates) in arid Australia. We also identify methods of recognizing likely future refugia and approaches to assessing the vulnerability of arid-adapted freshwater biota to a warming and drying climate. Evolutionary refugia in arid areas are characterized as permanent, groundwater-dependent habitats (subterranean aquifers and springs) supporting vicariant relicts and short-range endemics. Ecological refuges can vary across space and time, depending on the dispersal abilities of aquatic taxa and the geographical proximity and hydrological connectivity of aquatic habitats. The most important are the perennial waterbodies (both groundwater and surface water fed) that support obligate aquatic organisms. These species will persist where suitable habitats are available and dispersal pathways are maintained. For very mobile species (invertebrates with an aerial dispersal phase) evolutionary refugia may also act as ecological refuges. Evolutionary refugia are likely future refugia because their water source (groundwater) is decoupled from local precipitation. However, their biota is extremely vulnerable to changes in local conditions because population extinction risks cannot be abated by the dispersal of individuals from other sites. Conservation planning must incorporate a high level of protection for aquifers that support refugial sites. Ecological refuges are vulnerable to changes in regional climate because they have little thermal or hydrological buffering. Accordingly, conservation planning must focus on maintaining meta-population processes, especially through dynamic connectivity between aquatic habitats at a landscape scale.Modeling stomatal behavior is critical in research on land-atmosphere interactions and climate change. The most common model uses an existing relationship between photosynthesis and stomatal conductance. However, its parameters have been determined using infrequent and leaf-scale gas-exchange measurements and may not be representative of the whole canopy in time and space. In this study, we used a top-down approach based on a double-source canopy model and eddy flux measurements throughout the growing season. Using this approach, we quantified the canopy-scale relationship between gross photosynthesis and stomatal conductance for 3years and their relationships with leaf nitrogen content throughout each growing season above a paddy rice canopy in Japan. The canopy-averaged stomatal conductance (gsc) increased with increasing gross photosynthesis per unit green leaf area (Ag), as was the case with leaf-scale measurements, and 41-90% of its variation was explained by variations in Ag adjusted to account for the leaf-to-air vapor-pressure deficit and CO2 concentration using the Leuning model. The slope (m) in this model (gsc versus the adjusted Ag) was almost constant within a 15-day period, but changed seasonally. The m values determined using an ensemble dataset for two mid-growing-season 15-day periods were 30.8 (SE=0.5), 29.9 (SE=0.7), and 29.9 (SE=0.6) in 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively; the overall mid-season value was 30.3 and did not greatly differ among the 3years. However, m appeared to be higher during the early and late growing seasons. The ontogenic changes in leaf nitrogen content strongly affected Ag and thus gsc. In addition, we have discussed the agronomic impacts of the interactions between leaf nitrogen content and gsc. Despite limitations in the observations and modeling, our canopy-scale results emphasize the importance of continuous, season-long estimates of stomatal model parameters for crops using top-down approaches.Severe impacts on biodiversity are predicted to arise from climate change. These impacts may not be adequately addressed by conventional approaches to conservation. As a result, additional management actions are now being considered. However, there is currently limited guidance to help decision makers choose which set of actions (and in what order) is most appropriate for species that are considered to be vulnerable. Here, we provide a decision framework for the full complement of actions aimed at conserving species under climate change from ongoing conservation in existing refugia through various forms of mobility enhancement to ex situ conservation outside the natural environment. We explicitly recognize that allocation of conservation resources toward particular actions may be governed by factors such as the likelihood of success, cost and likely co-benefits to non-target species in addition to perceived vulnerability of individual species. As such, we use expert judgment of probable tradeoffs in resource allocation to inform the sequential evaluation of proposed management interventions.The International Waters Science Project Lakes Working Group reviewed 58 Global Environment Facility (GEF) projects that addressed serious environmental and human development issues in transboundary lakes. The lessons learned from the review of these projects were integrated with the intention to contribute to the design and success of future projects. Issues that will continue to impact lake ecosystems and their management include changing agricultural practices, resource extraction, emerging contaminants, energy policies, and water allocation. Future lakes projects addressing these issues must also consider the potential confounding effects of changing land use and climate on watershed processes, water quality, food web structure and biodiversity. Current and future scientific challenges include developing strategies for climate adaptation, improving the capacity to detect change and enhancing the application of an ecosystem approach within lakes management. Failure to consider the unique physical and biological features and processes in lakes can be a barrier to effective remediation. The spatial and temporal variability in lakes and their often slow response to remedial actions need to be considered in the design of monitoring programs. Factors that improved the success of GEF transboundary projects included early and strong communication, engagement of stakeholders, rigorous peer review and international science teams linked to local capacity building and policy development. The application of both natural and socio-economic science based assessment, and adaptive management were essential for full project implementation and led to optimization of water resources allocation while sustaining ecosystems on which social and economic systems depend. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.OBJECTIVE: We examined the distribution of heat risk-related land cover (HRRLC) characteristics across racial/ethnic groups and degrees of residential segregation. METHODS: Block group-level tree canopy and impervious surface estimates were derived from the 2001 National Land Cover Dataset for densely populated urban areas of the United States and Puerto Rico, and linked to demographic characteristics from the 2000 Census. Racial/ethnic groups in a given block group were considered to live in HRRLC if at least half their population experienced the absence of tree canopy and at least half of the ground was covered by impervious surface (roofs, driveways, sidewalks, roads). Residential segregation was characterized for metropolitan areas in the United States and Puerto Rico using the multigroup dissimilarity index. RESULTS: After adjustment for ecoregion and precipitation, holding segregation level constant, non-Hispanic blacks were 52% more likely (95% CI: 37%, 69%), non-Hispanic Asians 32% more likely (95% CI: 18%, 47%), and Hispanics 21% more likely (95% CI: 8%, 35%) to live in HRRLC conditions compared with non-Hispanic whites. Within each racial/ethnic group, HRRLC conditions increased with increasing degrees of metropolitan area-level segregation. Further adjustment for home ownership and poverty did not substantially alter these results, but adjustment for population density and metropolitan area population attenuated the segregation effects, suggesting a mediating or confounding role. CONCLUSIONS: Land cover was associated with segregation within each racial/ethnic group, which may be explained partly by the concentration of racial/ethnic minorities into densely populated neighborhoods within larger, more segregated cities. In anticipation of greater frequency and duration of extreme heat events, climate change adaptation strategies, such as planting trees in urban areas, should explicitly incorporate an environmental justice framework that addresses racial/ethnic disparities in HRRLC.Analysis of the risks of sea-level rise favours conventionally measured metrics such as the area of land that may be subsumed, the numbers of properties at risk, and the capital values of assets at risk. Despite this, it is clear that there exist many less material but no less important values at risk from sea-level rise. This paper re-theorises these multifarious social values at risk from sea-level rise, by explaining their diverse nature, and grounding them in the everyday practices of people living in coastal places. It is informed by a review and analysis of research on social values from within the fields of social impact assessment, human geography, psychology, decision analysis, and climate change adaptation. From this we propose that it is the 'lived values' of coastal places that are most at risk from sea-level rise. We then offer a framework that groups these lived values into five types: those that are physiological in nature, and those that relate to issues of security, belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. This framework of lived values at risk from sea-level rise can guide empirical research investigating the social impacts of sea-level rise, as well as the impacts of actions to adapt to sea-level rise. It also offers a basis for identifying the distribution of related social outcomes across populations exposed to sea-level rise or sea-level rise policies. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Climate change poses challenges for decision makers across society, not just in preparing for the climate of the future but even when planning for the climate of the present day. When making climate sensitive decisions, policy makers and adaptation planners would benefit from information on local scales and for user-specific quantiles (e. g. the hottest/coldest 5% of days) and thresholds (e. g. days above 28 degrees C), not just mean changes. Here, we translate observations of weather into observations of climate change, providing maps of the changing shape of climatic temperature distributions across Europe since 1950. The provision of such information from observations is valuable to support decisions designed to be robust in today's climate, while also providing data against which climate forecasting methods can be judged and interpreted. The general statement that the hottest summer days are warming faster than the coolest is made decision relevant by exposing how the regions of greatest warming are quantile and threshold dependent. In a band from Northern France to Denmark, where the response is greatest, the hottest days in the temperature distribution have seen changes of at least 2 degrees C, over four times the global mean change over the same period. In winter the coldest nights are warming fastest, particularly in Scandinavia.This article contributes to the growing scholarship on local development practitioners by re-examining conceptualizations of practitioners as 'brokers' strategically translating between 'travelling' (development institution) rationalities and 'placed' (recipient area) rationalities in relation to the development 'interface'. It argues that local development practitioners, as a result of unconscious dispositions linked to a growing 'development legacy', habitually employ a simultaneity of rationalities. Based on fieldwork in northern Ghana conducted in the context of changing development discourse, policy and practice spurred by new challenges deriving from climate change anxiety, the study shows how local practitioners often make local activities fit into travelling development rationalities as a matter of habit, rather than as a conscious strategy. They may therefore cease to 'translate' between different rationalities. This is shown to have important implications for theory, research and practice concerning disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in which such translation is often expected.Benefits humans rely on from the ocean - marine ecosystem services - are increasingly vulnerable under future climate. This paper reviews how three valued services have, and will continue to, shift under climate change: (1) capture fisheries, (2) food from aquaculture, and (3) protection from coastal hazards such as storms and sea-level rise. Climate adaptation planning is just beginning for fisheries, aquaculture production, and risk mitigation for coastal erosion and inundation. A few examples are highlighted, showing the promise of considering multiple ecosystem services in developing approaches to adapt to sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and rising sea temperatures. Ecosystem-based adaptation in fisheries and along coastlines and changes in aquaculture practices can improve resilience of species and habitats to future environmental challenges. Opportunities to use market incentives - such as compensation for services or nutrient trading schemes - are relatively untested in marine systems. Relocation of communities in response to rising sea levels illustrates the urgent need to manage human activities and investments in ecosystems to provide a sustainable flow of benefits in the face of future climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate adaptation and flood risk assessments(1,2) have incorporated sea-level rise (SLR) projections developed using semi-empirical methods(3-5) (SEMs) and expert-informed mass-balance scenarios(2,6). These techniques, which do not explicitly model ice dynamics, generate upper bounds on twenty-first century SLR that are up to three times higher than Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates(7). However, the physical basis underlying these projections, and their likelihood of occurrence, remain unclear(8-10). Here, we develop mass-balance projections for the Antarctic ice sheet within a Bayesian probabilistic framework(10), integrating numerical model output(11) and updating projections with an observational synthesis(12). Without abrupt, sustained, changes in ice discharge (collapse), we project a 95th percentile mass loss equivalent to similar to 13 cm SLR by 2100, lower than previous upper-bound projections. Substantially higher mass loss requires regional collapse, invoking dynamics that are likely to be inconsistent with the underlying assumptions of SEMs. In this probabilistic framework, the pronounced sensitivity of upper-bound SLR projections to the poorly known likelihood of collapse is lessened with constraints on the persistence and magnitude of subsequent discharge. More realistic, fully probabilistic, estimates of the ice-sheet contribution to SLR may thus be obtained by assimilating additional observations and numerical models(11,13).Climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels, including species-level reductions in range size and abundance, especially amongst endemic species(1-6). However, little is known about how mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions could reduce biodiversity impacts, particularly amongst common and widespread species. Our global analysis of future climatic range change of common and widespread species shows that without mitigation, 57 +/- 6% of plants and 34 +/- 7% of animals are likely to lose >= 50% of their present climatic range by the 2080s. With mitigation, however, losses are reduced by 60% if emissions peak in 2016 or 40% if emissions peak in 2030. Thus, our analyses indicate that without mitigation, large range contractions can be expected even amongst common and widespread species, amounting to a substantial global reduction in biodiversity and ecosystem services by the end of this century. Prompt and stringent mitigation, on the other hand, could substantially reduce range losses and buy up to four decades for climate change adaptation.This paper looks into an aspect of adaptation, namely the role of the circular migration as climate change adaptation. It focuses on two of the Pacific region's recently well - known seasonal labor schemes, Namely Australia's Seasonal Workers Program (SWP) and New Zealand's recognized Seasonal Employer Scheme (RSE), and asks if beyond the current goals the schemes May be reconceptualsed as adaptation programs responsive not only towards developmental and economic Concerns but the wider (and interconnected With the first two) climate change challenges. According to MacDermott and Opeskin, labor mobility schemes, for the sending country focus on the "development perspective" such as (a) Employment Opportunities, (b) Regular benefits of Remittances and (c) skills enhancement, while receiving countries country can meet the challenges posed by labor shortages in seasonal industries where "a reliable workforce is lacking".Forest restoration is expected to play a pivotal role in reducing extinctions driven by deforestation and climate change over the next century. However, spatial and temporal patterns of restoration (both passive and active) are likely to be highly variable depending on degree of land use change as well as levels of forest and soil degradation and residual vegetation. Uncertainties regarding the spatial and temporal reinstatement of forest on degraded land make it difficult to determine where future investment in active restoration should be targeted. We used satellite data to quantify change in the extent and foliage projection cover (FPC) of woody vegetation returning to land previously cleared of subtropical rainforest in eastern Australia. We show a modest recovery of woody vegetation but document high variability in this trend between local areas, expanding by over 5% in some situations but declining by up to 2% in others over the last decade (1999-2009 period). This was accompanied by minor change in average FPC (-0.2 to 4.2%). Overall, decadal expansion in woody vegetation was most apparent in local areas with intermediate levels of existing forest reestablishment and was most likely to occur on steep terrain near existing vegetation. These results provide a valuable first evaluation of where restoration is occurring and the likely time frame required to meet conservation objectives under a business as usual scenario. This knowledge enables returns from current investment to be quantified and can be used to better allocate funds for restoration in the future.The issue of urban heat islands, UHIs, is rarely tackled in French environmental legislation and hardly ever touched in existing town planning documents. Reflection on the introduction of vegetation and water into cities is notably lacking in regularity and uniformity and local authorities may have to resort to tools from a variety of sources when working on adapting to climate change. Choices are strongly influenced by the structure of the area concerned and the characteristics of local governance. To encourage authorities and developers to take UHIs into account and integrate the creation of oases of freshness into urban planning, we try to identify the most appropriate level of operational scale, and put forward some propositions to structure the interactions between incitative documents that stimulates awareness and encourage reflection, and statutory tools that can express what is at stake in terms of actual obligations. This multidisciplinary work combines competence in urban climatology and in environment and town planning law. It takes stock of current knowledge on the subject of heat islands in French cities, analyses existing tools and suggest new paths of action to integrate the issues of adapting towns and climate in French town planning. Intentionally limited to the example of France and the technique of introducing oases of freshness (vegetation and water), the article considers several aspects of urban management. The examples given here are based on the tools set up in France but the thinking may be transposable to other legal systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities are becoming the locus of climate change policy and planning, both for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. These actions involve a number of trade-offs, including densification of the urban structure, concerns over social equity and the proper use of green infrastructure for adaptation. Many of these impacts are difficult to quantify and their interdependencies are often challenging to comprehend and communicate. There are a number of outstanding gaps in knowledge both in research and in practice in relation to how decisions are made between adaptation and mitigation strategies and what kinds of negative and positive synergies can be identified between them. This paper explores how social games can help people to communicate the trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation measures in an urban environment and examines the possibilities of using social gaming as a research method. Data was collected from Denmark, Finland and the US through organized gaming sessions. The conclusion of the study is that social games, although methodologically challenging, are a promising method to communicate complex planning problems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The process by which issues, decisions, or events acquire different meanings from different perspectives has been studied as framing. In policy debates about climate change adaptation, framing the adaptation issue is a challenge with potentially far-reaching implications for the shape and success of adaptation projects. From the available literature on how the meaning of climate change adaptation is constructed and debated, three key dimensions of frame differences were identified: (1) the tension between adaptation and mitigation as two contrasting but interrelated perspectives on climate change; (2) the contrast between framing climate change adaptation as a tame technical problem, and framing climate change as a wicked problem of governance; and (3) the framing of climate change adaptation as a security issue, contrasting state security frames with human security frames. It is argued that the study of how climate change adaptation gets framed could be enriched by connecting these dimensions more closely with the following themes in framing research: (1) how decision-making biases that to framing issues as structured technical problems; (2) the process of scale framing by which issues are situated at a particular scale level; and (3) the challenge of dealing with the variety of frames in adaptation processes. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:321-330. doi: 10.1002/wcc.227 Conflict of interest: The author has declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.Unsaturated groundwater flows are mathematically represented by the Richards equation. Hitherto, in Hydrology, solutions of this equation mainly serve as an alimentation of the source term for the surface runoff modelling. Therefore, the complete resolution of the 3D model looks surplus to requirements and the infiltration is dealt either thanks to 1D vertical modelling of the Richards equation or through derivate models (like e.g. the Green-Ampt infiltration model or the Horton law), thus ignoring eventual horizontal transfers. Nowadays, the request for more detailed information is real, and the physics of groundwater unsaturated flow needs to be represented more reliably. This information could be furnished by the resolution of the complete 3D model, but, although numerically mastered and well documented, it is very costly for large scale - both in time and space real applications (climate change adaptation of watersheds). The authors propose an original solution decoupling the 3D equations into 1D vertical equations and a 2D depth-integrated horizontal equation. The aim is to consider independent vertical columns of infiltration coupled with lateral transfer of mass through the boundary conditions. On this basis, they postulate that the mass transfers in the three dimensions are correctly represented. This way problematic like the supply of the aquifers, the re-emergence of groundwater to surface water or especially the capability of memorization of past rainy events...could be reliably depicted. The two coupled models are solved on a unique numerical frame. A cell-centred Finite Volume method is used to solve the parabolic partial differential equations. The spatial derivatives are approximate by a second order central difference scheme, while the time splitting follows an implicit backward Euler scheme coupled with Picard iteration. The method has been tested and its reliability assessed on different theoretical two-dimensional cross-sectional test cases representing infiltration phenomena. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We examine sea-state-dependent wind work on the oceanic general circulation, using a wave hindcast dataset, QuikSCAT winds, and geostrophic and total ocean surface currents from (1) AVISO and (2) ECCO2 model products. For wind work on surface geostrophic currents estimated from AVISO or ECCO2, sea-state-dependent wind stress increases an average of 24% (0.17TW) or 23% (0.15TW), compared with estimates that exclude sea state effects. For wind work on the total surface currents, the sea-state-dependent wind stress increases the wind work by about 24% (0.4TW). In terms of spatial distribution, the increase in wind power input occurs mainly in high-wind tropical regions and the mid-latitude storm track regions, like the Antarctic Circumpolar Current region, where the relatively rough ocean surface is characterized by young waves and high winds. By comparison, in some regions with relatively low winds and mature ocean waves, there is a slight reduction in estimated wind power input.We study climate uncertainty and how managers' beliefs about climate change develop and influence their decisions. We develop an approach for updating knowledge and beliefs based on the observation of forest and climate variables and illustrate its application for the adaptive management of an even-aged Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst) forest in the Black Forest, Germany. We simulated forest development under a range of climate change scenarios and forest management alternatives. Our analysis used Bayesian updating and Dempster's rule of combination to simulate how observations of climate and forest variables may influence a decision maker's beliefs about climate development and thereby management decisions. While forest managers may be inclined to rely on observed forest variables to infer climate change and impacts, we found that observation of climate state, e.g. temperature or precipitation is superior for updating beliefs and supporting decision-making. However, with little conflict among information sources, the strongest evidence would be offered by a combination of at least two informative variables, e.g., temperature and precipitation. The success of adaptive forest management depends on when managers switch to forward-looking management schemes. Thus, robust climate adaptation policies may depend crucially on a better understanding of what factors influence managers' belief in climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The physically based agro-hydrological Soil, Water, Atmosphere and Plant (SWAP) model was applied in Andalucia (southern Spain) to simulate the water balance components in an irrigated citrus orchard. Direct measurements of soil water status using a frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) probe were used to calibrate the soil hydraulic functions using PEST, a parameter estimation package, and for crop coefficient (K-c) estimation. Model calibration and evaluation were carried out in 2008 using data from a citrus orchard considered representative of the typical agricultural practices in Andalucia. The SWAP model outputs agreed well with corresponding measured values in simulating soil water dynamics in-field. The model can be used in support of developing appropriate irrigation strategies for sustainable water management. An illustrative application using SWAP to assess the impacts of climate change on citrus production suggested increases in irrigation requirement of +6% to +16% for selected emissions scenarios for the 2050s and 2080s.In this paper we report on the development of a new homogeneous dataset for Pacific Island station temperatures, and the variability and change that these data show. We have worked closely with meteorological services in the Pacific and East Timor to collate and rehabilitate historical climate records, incorporating homogeneity assessment and adjustment where appropriate to produce reliable analyses of temperature trends. Overall, these homogeneity adjustments create no systematic bias compared to the raw data since the early 1960s, but improve both spatial and temporal consistency at the individual station level for both variability and trends. The updated homogeneous records indicate that mean temperatures have increased at all available Pacific island stations over 1961-2010, with rates ranging from +0.04 to +0.33 degrees C/decade, across the network as a whole. The strongest warming trends are found in Papua New Guinea and French Polynesia, while none of the homogeneous station records show cooling over the past 70, 50 or 30 years. Trends in maximum and minimum temperatures are very similar to those of mean temperature at most stations, apart from in Fiji, Tonga and Niue where there is a tendency for greater warming for maximum temperatures. The amount of warming in the wet and dry seasons is also similar at most stations, although stations in Fiji, Tonga and Niue display more warming during the wet season. A simple regional mean of Pacific island series shows a trend of +0.16 degrees C/decade over 1961-2010 and indicates that 2010 was the warmest year on record averaged across the stations available at time of analysis. This regional mean station series compares well with a regional mean series extracted from a global gridded dataset for the last 50 years. Overall, the warming in Pacific Island temperature records over the past half-century is consistent with that expected from human-induced global warming and is large relative to natural interannual variability associated with factors such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.The impact of optimizing the air-sea exchange coefficients and the initial state is examined for a tropical cyclone (TC) with the aim of improving an operational mesoscale four-dimensional variational data assimilation system. In our optimization approach for TC Chaba that approached the Ryukyu Islands in October 2010, the drag coefficient values are adjusted so that they saturate at extreme conditions, while the first guess increases with increasing wind speed. In addition, the latent heat exchange coefficient values are adjusted so that they significantly increase under extreme conditions relative to the first guess. Consequently, the term of the cost function, which represents the discrepancy between the model results and the observational data, decreases by 4.1-22.4% relative to the existing system after some spin-up cycles. The intensity and location of the TC are brought close to those of the corresponding best track produced at the Japan Meteorological Agency. Our optimization approach has the potential to improve the forecast skill.Monthly mean temperatures for April and August have been strongly and negatively correlated from 1998 to 2011 in northern Japan. When monthly mean temperatures in April were either significantly below or significantly above normal, the temperatures in the following August had the opposite anomalies. We attribute this seasonal behavior of temperatures to a displacement of the core of upper-level westerly winds. When monthly mean temperature was higher than normal in August, the subtropical jet stream had been strengthened in April and a continental polar air mass affected northern Japan in April. In August of that year, if a jet located north of Japan moved further north, Japan was covered by a maritime tropical air mass, and a maritime polar air mass rarely affected summer weather in northern Japan. In the opposite case, when temperatures were cool in August and warm in April, we inferred that the jet had been weak and the continental polar air mass did not move south and affect northern Japan in April; thus, in August the jet shifted southward and the maritime polar air mass could affect summer weather. An empirical orthogonal function analysis of the 200-hPa height field revealed that two principal component modes were associated with the anomalous temperatures in these two months. On the basis of these results, we identify these modes as the cause of upper level westerly wind variations on the northern hemispheric scale. Based on a singular value decomposition analysis of the 200-hPa height field and the sea surface temperature, the year 1998 marked one of the several pronounced climatic shifts of the last century.The importance of the interactions between global environmental and socioeconomic changes in shaping vulnerability and exposure to hazards is now increasingly recognised. However, relatively little attention has been focused on the ways in which these interactions help to shape planning and policy in response to both processes. This paper examines how the intersections between the twin crises of economic recession and climate change are influencing hazards mitigation policy and climate change adaptation planning in three of Ireland's coastal cities. The cities of Dublin, Cork, and Galway are important case studies for this analysis due to the magnitude of socioeconomic and environmental changes they have witnessed in recent years. The paper begins by using the double-exposure framework to analyse how the interactions between global environmental and socioeconomic change have produced the contextual environment within which decision making and policy formation take place. This is followed by the presentation and analysis of the results of semistructured interviews with local decision makers and stakeholders. These illustrate that the interactions between environmental change and economic crisis have created the material and ideological conditions in which a neoliberal growth centred discourse of economic development dominates all areas of decision making and- policy. This has important implications for environmental policy and planning in cities, promoting a vision of a modern competitive city in which technological solutions are the preferred means of addressing flood risks. These decisions in turn reshape the exposures and vulnerabilities of local communities.In recent decades, Iranian vernacular architecture has defined the local architectural identity by demonstrating distinctive characteristics. Defining such a critical role for vernacular studies has led to different approaches in the design of the contemporary architecture of Iran. The first approach of integrating vernacular and contemporary designs has focused on local people, their needs, local construction, and building materials. The revival of vernacular architectural design and building elements has been at the forefront of this approach in Iran. However, recent use in Iran has concentrated on the symbolic/abstract reuse of vernacular building forms. Vernacular architecture is known to merely provide for the functional requirements of buildings, and not for aesthetic purposes. Conversely, in the second approach, vernacular building elements are considered to be symbols of local identity. This paper will argue that although the symbolic reuse of vernacular features may not uphold the functional expectations of the vernacular form, this reuse is useful in reviving architectural identity. In addition, underscoring such a different role for vernacular building features in contemporary architecture might help to expand the realm of vernacular studies. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the conversion of vernacular architecture in Iran by focusing on the instance of wind-catchers. Wind-catchers typically were used in residential buildings and are considered potent symbols of climate adaptation. In contemporary architecture, however, a form of wind-catcher has been used as a symbol for local architectural identity. Through this transformation, the essential nature of the wind-catcher has found new life in the contemporary architecture of Iran.Adaptation to climate change is being planned and implemented across the developing world. As billions of development aid dollars are being mobilised around this new theme there are risks that adaptation efforts of the development sector will result in familiar problems. In this paper we draw upon postdevelopment perspectives that critically consider development aid and the role of the development sector to scrutinise emerging approaches to adaptation. We suggest that a postdevelopment approach to adaptation contributes a much-needed analysis of the agendas that are shaping adaptation discourses and helps us to see nascent possibilities for adaptation that are already unfolding in diverse localities. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paradox motivating this article is why California has acted globally by enacting a comprehensive mitigation policy to reduce the emissions of Greenhouse gases, a true public good since the benefits will be shared across the planet, but has not mustered the will to act locally through the adoption of an equally comprehensive adaptation policy for the state to protect its own public and private assets and interests. We attempt to explain the paradox by identifying what it is that differentiates climate change adaptation from mitigation, both substantively and politically. The paradox notwithstanding, we identify several imaginable adaptation policies and strategies that would be commensurate with individual and collective self-interested behavior.As reflected in the ecosystem approach, conservation strategies for the natural environment are responding to society's needs and the changing climate. Ecosystem assessments, particularly the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, have reviewed the benefits that society gains from the natural environment, but they under-represent and undervalue the contribution of geodiversity. Geodiversity underpins and delivers many vital ecosystem services, informs their management and is an important element of natural capital. This includes the application of knowledge of physical processes and evidence from Quaternary archives of recent environmental change to help future-proof ecosystems and their services. Key principles include working with natural processes, based on understanding their spatial and temporal dynamics, and adopting where possible soft engineering practices to enable multiple benefits for nature and society. The ecosystem approach and the need for climate change adaptation require more integrated approaches to geodiversity, biodiversity and landscape conservation and management to enable a more sustainable future. Engaging with these issues will also demonstrate the wider relevance today of geodiversity and geoconservation. Contributing successfully in these critical areas requires closer partnership working, both across the geoscience and geoconservation communities, and with other sectors of nature conservation, policy makers, planners and communities, as well as other disciplines. Geoscience has an essential contribution to make in addressing knowledge gaps recognised in ecosystem assessment and in implementing robust solutions to broader environmental, economic and social issues. (C) 2013 The Geologists' Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increase in the number and severity of weather extremes (including excessive heat) potentially associated with climate change has highlighted the needs for research into risk assessment and risk reduction measures. Extreme heat events, the focus of this paper, have been consistently reported as the leading cause of weather-related mortality in the United States in recent years. In order to fully understand impact potentials and analyze risk in its individual components both the spatially and temporally varying patterns of heat and the multidimensional characteristics of vulnerability have to be considered. In this paper we present a composite index aggregating these factors to assess heat related risk for the U.S. National Capital Region in 2010. The study reveals how risk patterns are in part driven by the geographic variations of vulnerability, generally showing a clear difference between high-risk urban areas and wide areas of low risk in the suburban and rural environments. This pattern is particularly evident for the core center of the study area around the District of Columbia, which is largely characterized by high index values despite not having experienced the peak of the heat stress as compared to other regions in the metropolitan area. The article aims to set a framework for local-level heat stress risk assessment that can provide valuable input and decision support for climate adaptation planning as well as emergency managers aiming at risk reduction and optimization of resource distribution. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change and variability affect not only the field stages and yields of crops, but also what happens to them after harvest. There has been little discussion of the impacts of climate change on postharvest agriculture, and still less on these impacts in developing countries. Many studies have focused on potential crop yield and pre-harvest implications of different climatic projections, but have omitted an analysis of the need and ability to then protect this increasingly valuable harvest as a vital aspect of food security. Postharvest systems will be affected by changes in temperature, rainfall, humidity, extreme events and the natural and human responses to climate change and variability. This study describes typical grain postharvest systems in east and southern Africa and discusses the likely impacts of different climate change trends on postharvest activities, assets and human well-being outcomes. Adaptation opportunities for creating more climate resilient postharvest agricultural systems and associated livelihoods are identified. Many of these adaptation opportunities are already known and understood by postharvest service providers, highlighting the significant challenge of getting postharvest knowledge into use at a larger scale. A discussion is presented on the factors influencing attempts to strengthen the adaptive capacity of postharvest systems, such as its invisibility, its omission from training curricula, innovation system challenges, the policy bias towards pre-harvest agricultural spending, limited understanding of gender and diversity aspects of postharvest roles, and the dominance of maize in the food system. The study recognises the crucial role of postharvest agriculture in helping communities adapt and cope with change.This study presents an analysis of the wind-wave climate on the south-east Australian continental margin and its potential changes under the effects of projected climate change. The wind-wave climate is modelled for three 20 year time-slices (1981-2000, 2031-2051, and 2081-2100) using a dynamical wave modelling approach in which the WaveWatch III spectral wave model, with a nested domain SWAN model, is the region of interest. Surface wind forcing is obtained from an ensemble of three global climate model runs (CSIRO Mk3.5, GFDLcm2.0, and GFDLcm2.1) dynamically downscaled using CSIRO's Cubic conformal atmospheric model (CCAM), under two greenhouse gas emission scenarios (a high emission SRES A2 and low emission SRES B1 scenario). A third level of uncertainty associated with adjusting climate model derived winds for climate and variability bias is found to be the largest source of uncertainty among the limited range of sources considered in the twenty-eight 20 year wave model simulations undertaken herein. The ensemble of wave model runs for the 2081-2100 time-slice project a robust decrease in mean significant wave height along the south-east Australian coast relative to present (1981-2000) conditions. The magnitude of projected change in mean annual significant wave height is less than 0.2 m, with larger values in the north of the region of interest, and is associated with a projected decrease in storm wave energy in the region. An anticlockwise rotation in mean wave direction of approximately 5 degrees is also projected over the same period. Copyright (c) 2012 Royal Meteorological SocietyThis paper focuses on Australian water reform in a climate change context over the period between mid-2006 and end 2011, with a particular focus on the Murray Darling Basin (MDB). In Australia, during this period, the potential impacts from climate change became more central to the policy debate, and the implementation of what can be said to be a large-scale climate change adaptation programme commenced. The paper outlines the policy framework adopted by the government of the day and then draws out some of the key issues for water management against this background, and the attendant increased uncertainty.This paper presents an example of how expected climate change effects have been factored into hydrological planning for the Ebro River basin in Spain. Between now and 2030, a 5% reduction in the basin's water resources is foreseen, along with a drop in the hydrographs' snow component and an increase in dry periods. This article explores the several measures to help reduce the basin's vulnerability to climate change as considered in the technical component of the Ebro Basin Hydrological Plan 2010-2015. These adaptation tools include wastewater treatment, control of water intakes, water reuse, agro-environmental measures, modernization of irrigated areas, improvement of urban water supplies, removal of contaminated sediments, improvement of regulation infrastructure to ensure water supply and control inundations, optimization of hydroelectric exploitation, and improvement of drought and flood management.Vulnerability assessment is increasingly recognised as a starting point to identify climate adaptation needs and improve adaptive capacity. However, vulnerability assessments are challenging because of the complexity of multifaceted biophysical, human and institutional factors, interacting at different scales and levels within socio-ecological systems. Using a participatory approach across levels and genders, this paper explores the vulnerability of livestock- and forest-based livelihoods to climate variability and change in Lake Faguibine, northern Mali, where drastic ecological, political and social changes have occurred. Our results show that the distribution of vulnerabilities within livelihoods and groups shifted when the ecosystem evolved from a lake to a forest. New vulnerability drivers have emerged, related to resources availability, access and power relations. In addition, political interests and psychological barriers hinder the local transition to an equitable and sustainable use of forest ecosystem services. Divergent perceptions, social identities, interests and power explained why different actors-governmental and non-governmental, men and women, local, sub-national and national-differed in their vulnerability assessments. This is exemplified in the way actors at different levels and of different gender analysed the effects of herders' mobility and in the way women analysed men's migration. This case study confirms the need for participatory and gender-sensitive vulnerability assessments across different scales and levels that consider the interaction between socio-ecological systems and the dynamics and distribution of vulnerability across different social sub-systems.West and East Africa experience high variability of rainfall that is expected to increase with climate change. This results in fluctuations in water availability for food production and other socioeconomic activities. Water harvesting and storage can mitigate the adverse effects of rainfall variability. But past studies have shown that when investments in water storage are not guided by environmental health considerations, the increased availability of open water surface may increase the transmission of water-related diseases. This is demonstrated for schistosomiasis associated with small reservoirs in Burkina Faso, and for malaria in Ethiopia around large dams, small dams, and water harvesting ponds. The concern is that the rush to develop water harvesting and storage for climate change adaptation may increase the risk for already vulnerable people, in some cases more than canceling out the benefits of greater water availability. Taking health issues into account in a participatory approach to planning, design, and management of rainwater harvesting and water storage, as well as considering the full range of water storage options would enable better opportunities for enhancing resilience against climate change in vulnerable populations in sub-Saharan Africa.Systemic understanding of marine and coastal environment needs data integration following a respective concept e.g. multi-dimensional and functional mapping. A number of new activities will improve data supply for coasts and seas. This data needs to be integrated and combined with socio-economic drivers and resulting pressures. Resulting knowledge base should be able to inform effectively ecosystem-based management actions, such as integrated coastal zone management, maritime spatial planning, extension of Natura 2000 areas or climate change adaptation in coastal regions and maritime sectors. Assessment that aims to inform such processes will require rethinking of priorities for spatial data collection and analysis, in particular building on data sharing and standardization, improved spatial data integration, promoting interoperability of relevant information systems and possibility of assimilating different data types in to models. Different aspects of spatial data should be addressed in coherent implementation of spatial data infrastructure.The exposure to sea-level rise (SLR) risks emerges as a challenging issue in the broader debate about the possible consequences of global environmental change for at least four reasons: the potentially serious impacts, the very high uncertainty regarding future projections of SLR and their effects on the environmental and socio-economic system, the multiple scales involved, and the need to take effective management decisions in terms of climate change adaptation. Unfortunately, mechanistic models generally demonstrated a limited ability to characterise in appropriate detail how complex coastal systems and their constituent parts may respond to climate change drivers and to possible adaptation initiatives. The research reported here develops an innovative methodological framework, which integrates different research areas participatory and probabilistic modelling, and decision analysis - within a coordinated process aimed at decision support. The effectiveness of alternative adaptation measures in a lagoon in north-east Italy is assessed by means of Bayesian Decision Network (BDN) models, developed upon judgments elicited from selected experts. A concept map of the system was first developed in a group brainstorming context and was later evolved into BDN models, thus providing a simplified quantitative structure. Conditional probabilities, quantifying the causal links between the direct and indirect consequences of SLR on the area of study, are elicited from the experts. The proposed methodological framework allows the integrated assessment of factors and processes belonging to different domains of knowledge. Moreover, it activates an informed and transparent participatory process involving disciplinary experts and policy makers, where the main risk factors are considered together with the expected effects of the adaptation options, with effective treatment and communication of the uncertainty pervading the SLR issue. Finally, the framework shows potentials for being further developed and applied to consider new evidences and/or different adaptation strategies, and it results sufficiently flexible to be adopted and effectively reused in other similar case studies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A sequential approach to combining two established modeling techniques (systems thinking and Bayesian Belief Networks; BBNs) was developed and applied to climate change adaptation research within the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQ-CARI). Six participatory workshops involving 66 stakeholders based within SEQ produced six system conceptualizations and 22 alpha-level BBNs. The outcomes of the initial systems modeling exercise successfully allowed the selection of critical determinants of key response variables for in depth analysis within more homogeneous, sector-based groups of participants. Using two cases, this article focuses on the processes and methodological issues relating to the use of the BBN modeling technique when the data are based on expert opinion. The study expected to find both generic and specific determinants of adaptive capacity based on the perceptions of the stakeholders involved. While generic determinants were found (e.g. funding and awareness levels), sensitivity analysis identified the importance of pragmatic, context-based determinants, which also had methodological implications. The article raises questions about the most appropriate scale at which the methodology applied can be used to identify useful generic determinants of adaptive capacity when, at the scale used, the most useful determinants were sector-specific. Comparisons between individual BBN conditional probabilities identified diverging and converging beliefs, and that the sensitivity of response variables to direct descendant nodes was not always perceived consistently. It was often the accompanying narrative that provided important contextual information that explained observed differences, highlighting the benefits of using critical narrative with modeling tools. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article we propose an innovative approach to support a participatory modelling process for the exploratory assessment of vulnerability within the broad context of climate change adaptation. The approach provides a simplified dynamic vulnerability model developed within a conceptual model adopted - but very rarely made operational - by many international organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the European Union. We propose a procedure in which disciplinary experts and local actors interact for the identification of the most relevant issues with reference to a specific vulnerability problem. Local actors (e.g. representatives of public administrations, business, NGOs) identify the most relevant issues related to the various dimensions of vulnerability, to be considered as input variables to contextualise the generalised model in the study case. Quantitative indicators are provided by disciplinary experts to describe past and future trends of variables, and their trajectories are combined to explore possible future vulnerability trends and scenarios. A non additive aggregation operator is proposed to allow experts and actors to pro vide their preferences through ad hoc questionnaires, thus overcoming the oversimplifications of most of the current vulnerability indices, which are usually either additive (fully compensatory) or multiplicative (non compensatory), and providing transparent and robust management of subjectivity and analysis of the deriving variability and uncertainty in model outputs. Input data for the demonstration of the model derive from the European Project Brahmatwinn, with reference to the Assam State in India. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A hybrid (face-to-face and online) professional development (PD) course focused on energy science for middle and high school teachers (N = 47) was conducted using the teaching science as inquiry (TSI) framework. Data from the PD indicates that online opportunities enhanced participation and that the TSI structure improved teachers' inquiry implementation. Teachers found the TSI modes of inquiry easily accessible and effectively implemented them (modes correspond to the inquiry mechanisms of investigation, such as product evaluation, authoritative, inductive, deductive, and descriptive). On the other hand, the TSI phase structure (i.e. learning cycle) was most helpful for teachers novice to inquiry teaching, suggesting that modification of the PD is needed to promote more in-depth use of the phases in the TSI framework. In terms of content, teacher interest in energy science was high, which resulted in implementation of energy science activities across a range of disciplines. However, teachers' confidence in teaching energy science through inquiry was low compared to similar TSI PD courses on other subjects (mean perceived pedagogical content knowledge = 8.96 +/- A 2.07 SD for energy compared to 15.45 +/- A 1.83, 16.44 +/- A 1.81 and 15.63 +/- A 1.69, for elementary astronomy, high school aquatic science, and college aquatic science, respectively). These data support current findings on the complexities of teaching and understanding energy science content and suggest the need for additional teacher PD opportunities in energy science in order to provide opportunities for teachers to increase both their content knowledge and their confidence in teaching energy science.An interdisciplinary study was conducted in the Kailash Sacred Landscape region in north-western Nepal, to explore opportunities for, and barriers to, sustainable tourism as an adaptation strategy, not only for reducing community vulnerability to climate change but also as a poverty-alleviation measure. Whilst the primary focus was on interactions between tourism and climate change, the study revealed a highly complex system, with many social, economic, environmental, and institutional drivers involved. In order to bring some clarity and consistency in the exploration of these complex interactions in context, elements of the policy sciences, primarily problem orientation, were utilised. The exploratory nature of the study, including its objectives and intended use, meant that goal clarification and analyses of trends were based on limited available information. Despite these shortcomings, the study was able to elucidate and clarify on important factors to consider in consultation with relevant participants. Diversification of livelihood options as well as preserving local culture were found to be highly valued-both by the local communities that were consulted as well as for those advocating for a tourism experience that is unique to this region. Harmonising these valued outcomes could be achieved by incorporating and legitimising local traditional knowledge. Insights into further collaboration on the issue of valued outcomes would strengthen and support the knowledge base for an appraisal of possible development pathways.Coastal northern Australia is largely owned and occupied by Aboriginal people who are strongly connected to their traditional country. We assess the views of Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land on the impacts of climate change and their possible precautionary responses to both sea level rise and a potential increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones in coastal communities. All respondents had heard about climate change, and 48 % had already seen environmental changes, particularly sea level rise, which they attributed to climate change. Fifty-eight percent of respondents would consider relocating in the future for safety reasons, although most respondents perceived living close to the sea as highly important for their future well-being, emphasising their strong connection to their traditional sea country. Many of those willing to relocate would consider moving inland, either temporarily or permanently, provided that community facilities could also be moved. Other respondents who said they would be unlikely to relocate in the future because of climate change impacts, and would prefer to adapt in situ with government support (e.g. building more shelters for severe cyclones, building sea walls and better roads for quick evacuation if necessary). We recommend that the diversity of adaptation preferences among Aboriginal people should be accommodated in policy to minimise social impacts of climate change and to take advantage of potential opportunities that could arise from moving.The livelihood strategies of indigenous communities in the Congo Basin are inseparable from the forests, following their use of forest ecosystem goods and services (FEGS). Climate change is expected to exert impacts on the forest and its ability to provide FEGS. Thus, human livelihoods that depend on these FEGS are intricately vulnerable to climate impacts. Using the livelihood strategies of the two main forest indigenous groups; the Bantus and Pygmies, of the high forest zone of southern Cameroon; this paper examines the nature and pattern of their vulnerability to different climate risks as well as highlights how place of settlement in the forest contributes to the vulnerability of people in forest systems. Forests provide different capitals as FEGS and make direct and indirect contributions to livelihoods which are exploited differently by the two indigenous groups. The results show that vulnerability of forest communities is structured by lifestyle, culture and the livelihood strategies employed which are largely shaped by the place of settlement in the forest. The Pygmies living within the forests are engaged in nomadic gathering and foraging of non-timber forest resources. The Bantus prefer forest margins and are mostly preoccupied with sedentary farming, using the forest as additional livelihood opportunity. The contrasting lifestyles have implications on their vulnerability and adaptation to climate impacts which need to be taken into considerations in planning and implementation of national climate change adaptation strategies.The vulnerability of smallholder farmers to climate change and variability is increasingly rising. As agriculture is the only source of income for most of them, agricultural adaptation with respect to climate change is vital for their sustenance and to ensure food security. In order to develop appropriate strategies and institutional responses, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the farmers' perception of climate change, actual adaptations at farm-level and what factors drive and constrain their decision to adapt. Thus, this study investigates the farm-level adaptation to climate change based on the case of a farming community in Sri Lanka. The findings revealed that farmers' perceived the ongoing climate change based on their experiences. Majority of them adopted measures to address climate change and variability. These adaptation measures can be categorised into five groups, such as crop management, land management, irrigation management, income diversification, and rituals. The results showed that management of non-climatic factors was an important strategy to enhance farmers' adaptation, particularly in a resource-constrained smallholder farming context. The results of regression analysis indicated that human cognition was an important determinant of climate change adaptation. Social networks were also found to significantly influence adaptation. The study also revealed that social barriers, such as cognitive and normative factors, are equally important as other economic barriers to adaptation. While formulating and implementing the adaptation strategies, this study underscored the importance of understanding socio-economic, cognitive and normative aspects of the local communities.Technical assessments of vulnerability and/or risk are increasingly being undertaken to assess the impacts of climate change. Underlying this is the belief that they will bring clarity to questions regarding the scale of institutional investments required, plausible adaptation policies and measures, and the timing of their implementation. Despite the perceived importance of technical assessments in 'evidence-based' decision environments, assessments cannot be undertaken independent of values and politics, nor are they capable of eliminating the uncertainty that clouds decision-making on climate adaptation As such, assessments can trigger as many questions as they answer, leaving practitioners and stakeholders to question their value. This paper explores the value of vulnerability/risk assessments in climate change adaptation planning processes as a catalyst for learning in four case studies in Southeastern Australia. Data were collected using qualitative interviews with stakeholders involved in the assessments and analysed using a social learning framework. This analysis revealed that detailed and tangible strategies or actions often do not emerge directly from technical assessments. However, it also revealed that the assessments became important platforms for social learning. In providing these platforms, assessments present opportunities to question initial assumptions, explore multiple framings of an issue, generate new information, and galvanise support for collective actions. This study highlights the need for more explicit recognition and understanding of the important role social learning plays in climate change vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning more broadly.Social capital is a central requirement for a successful climate change adaptation, especially in Cambodia where formal institutions are still poorly developed. Collective action and not-for-profit bonding are important for climate change adaptation; however, these are not easily developed. This study examined the local institutions vital for the livelihoods of citizens who live in flood-prone Krapum Chhouk commune in rural Cambodia. Through observations and in-depth interviews with the local community, it investigated social capital in terms of the dynamics of relationships, relations of trust, and social norms and practices. This study found that most networks were profit-oriented. Traditional practices such as community assistance for either agricultural works or social welfare have been diluted, and relations of trust were an issue in some villages. The connections between local institutions were found to be lacking; cross-membership across institutions was limited. Overall, many indications of weakness were found in community institutions, which may have negative implications on addressing climate change.Global climate change is a threat to ecosystems that are rich in biodiversity and endemism, such as the World Heritage-listed subtropical rainforests of central eastern Australia. Possible effects of climate change on the biota of tropical rainforests have been studied, but subtropical rainforests have received less attention. We analysed published data for an assemblage of 38 subtropical rainforest vertebrate species in four taxonomic groups to evaluate their relative vulnerability to climate change. Focusing on endemic and/or threatened species, we considered two aspects of vulnerability: (i) resistance, defined by indicators of rarity (geographical range, habitat specificity and local abundance); and (ii) resilience, defined by indicators of a species potential to recover (reproductive output, dispersal potential and climatic niche). Our analysis indicated that frogs are most vulnerable to climate change, followed by reptiles, birds, then mammals. Many species in our assemblage are regionally endemic montane rainforest specialists with high vulnerability. Monitoring of taxa in regenerating rainforest showed that many species with high resilience traits also persisted in disturbed habitat, suggesting that they have capacity to recolonize habitats after disturbance, that is climate change-induced events. These results will allow us to prioritize adaptation strategies for species most at risk. We conclude that to safeguard the most vulnerable amphibian, reptile and bird species against climate change, climatically stable habitats (cool refugia) that are currently without protection status need to be identified, restored and incorporated in the current reserve system. Our study provides evidence that montane subtropical rainforest deserves highest protection status as habitat for vulnerable taxa.Experimental studies assessing climatic effects on ecological communities have typically applied static warming treatments. Although these studies have been informative, they have usually failed to incorporate either current or predicted future, patterns of variability. Future climates are likely to include extreme events which have greater impacts on ecological systems than changes in means alone. Here, we review the studies which have used experiments to assess impacts of temperature on marine, freshwater and terrestrial communities, and classify them into a set of generations' based on how they incorporate variability. The majority of studies have failed to incorporate extreme events. In terrestrial ecosystems in particular, experimental treatments have reduced temperature variability, when most climate models predict increased variability. Marine studies have tended to not concentrate on changes in variability, likely in part because the thermal mass of oceans will moderate variation. In freshwaters, climate change experiments have a much shorter history than in the other ecosystems, and have tended to take a relatively simple approach. We propose a new generation' of climate change experiments using down-scaled climate models which incorporate predicted changes in climatic variability, and describe a process for generating data which can be applied as experimental climate change treatments.Indigenous peoples offer alternative knowledge about climate variability and change based on their own locally developed knowledges and practices of resource use. In this article we discuss the role of traditional ecological knowledge in monitoring and adapting to changing environmental conditions. Our case study documents a project to record the seasonal knowledge of the Miriwoong people in northern Australia. The study demonstrates how indigenous groups' accumulate detailed baseline information about their environment to guide their resource use and management, and develop worldviews and cultural values associated with this knowledge. We highlight how traditional ecological knowledge plays a critical role in mediating indigenous individuals and communities' understandings of environmental changes in the East Kimberley region of north-west Australia, and how these beliefs may influence future decision-making about how to go about adapting to climate change at a local level. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Heat waves are considered a health risk and they are likely to increase in frequency, intensity and duration as a consequence of climate change. The effects of heat waves on human health could be reduced if individuals recognise the risks and adopt healthy behaviours during a heat wave. The purpose of this study was to determine the predictors of risk perception using a heat wave scenario and identify the constructs of the health belief model that could predict adaptive behaviours during a heat wave. A cross-sectional study was conducted during the summer of 2012 among a sample of persons aged between 30 to 69 years in Adelaide. Participants' perceptions were assessed using the health belief model as a conceptual frame. Their knowledge about heat waves and adaptive behaviours during heat waves was also assessed. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the predictors of risk perception to a heat wave scenario and adaptive behaviours during a heat wave. Of the 267 participants, about half (50.9%) had a high risk perception to heat waves while 82.8% had good adaptive behaviours during a heat wave. Multivariate models found that age was a significant predictor of risk perception. In addition, participants who were married (OR = 0.21; 95% CI, 0.07-0.62), who earned a gross annual household income of >=$ 60,000 (OR = 0.41; 95% CI, 0.17-0.94) and without a fan (OR = 0.29; 95% CI, 0.11-0.79) were less likely to have a high risk perception to heat waves. Those who were living with others (OR = 2.87; 95% CI, 1.19-6.90) were more likely to have a high risk perception to heat waves. On the other hand, participants with a high perceived benefit (OR = 2.14; 95% CI, 1.00-4.58), a high "cues to action" (OR = 3.71; 95% CI, 1.63-8.43), who had additional training or education after high school (OR = 2.65; 95% CI, 1.25-5.58) and who earned a gross annual household income of >=$ 60,000 (OR = 2.66; 95% CI, 1.07-6.56) were more likely to have good adaptive behaviours during a heat wave. The health belief model could be useful to guide the design and implementation of interventions to promote adaptive behaviours during heat waves.Changing climate and weather patterns are predicted to have severe negative impacts on food production, food security and natural resources in the immediate and coming years. Climate change alters the development of cocoa pods, insect pests and pathogens which translate into lower crop yields and impact farm income. This study examined the climate change adaptation strategies of farmers on cocoa production practices. A multi-stage random sampling procedure was used to select 60 cocoa farmers from three out of eight Local Government Areas (LGAs) producing cocoa in Kwara State. Interview schedule was used in data collection and analyzed with descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The results reveal that 60.7% of the farmers were male. Majority (59.9%) of the farmers were between middle and old age with farming experience of 21-30 years and farm size of mainly between 0.4-2.7 hectares. Most farmers (85%) observed an extension beyond the normal dry months of November to February. This situation could have some implications on cocoa production. The main climate change strategies adopted by farmers include praying for rain (86.7%), use of improved varieties, (81.7%), climate prediction (76.7%), changes in cropping pattern and agro-forestry (75% each), control of soil erosion (73.3%) and fertilizer application (60%). Inadequate irrigation, 41.7% and crop diversification, 36.7%; constituted minor strategies. The cocoa production practices still adopted were weeding, 98.3%; seedling planting, 96.7%; insect pest and diseases control, 95%; bush clearing, 93.3%; fermentation and drying, 91.7%; tree felling, 88.4%; pruning, 85% and burning before planting, 70%. However, Pearson product moment correlation coefficient (PPMC) showed that a significant relationship existed between age of cocoa farm (0.016) and cocoa production practices at P< 0.05. Cocoa farmers' climate change strategies (0.121) were not statistically related with cocoa production practices at P< 0.05. Most of the strategies and practices currently used by farmers should be improved upon to ensure appropriate agronomic practices and adaptation to changes in climate.The paper deals with the development of a general as well as integrative and holistic framework to systematize and assess vulnerability, risk and adaptation. The framework is a thinking tool meant as a heuristic that outlines key factors and different dimensions that need to be addressed when assessing vulnerability in the context of natural hazards and climate change. The approach underlines that the key factors of such a common framework are related to the exposure of a society or system to a hazard or stressor, the susceptibility of the system or community exposed, and its resilience and adaptive capacity. Additionally, it underlines the necessity to consider key factors and multiple thematic dimensions when assessing vulnerability in the context of natural and socio-natural hazards. In this regard, it shows key linkages between the different concepts used within the disaster risk management (DRM) and climate change adaptation (CCA) research. Further, it helps to illustrate the strong relationships between different concepts used in DRM and CCA. The framework is also a tool for communicating complexity and stresses the need for societal change in order to reduce risk and to promote adaptation. With regard to this, the policy relevance of the framework and first results of its application are outlined. Overall, the framework presented enhances the discussion on how to frame and link vulnerability, disaster risk, risk management and adaptation concepts.Pacific Island countries have an extraordinary dependence on fisheries and aquaculture. Maintaining the benefits from the sector is a difficult task, now made more complex by climate change. Here we report how changes to the atmosphere-ocean are likely to affect the food webs, habitats and stocks underpinning fisheries and aquaculture across the region. We found winners and losers-tuna are expected to be more abundant in the east and freshwater aquaculture and fisheries are likely to be more productive. Conversely, coral reef fisheries could decrease by 20% by 2050 and coastal aquaculture may be less efficient. We demonstrate how the economic and social implications can be addressed within the sector-tuna and freshwater aquaculture can help support growing populations as coral reefs, coastal fisheries and mariculture decline.Climate change is an imminent challenge for many alpine tourism destinations. While the effects of changing climatic patterns are well documented with respect to the physical geographical sphere, research into the effects of climate change upon the regional socio-economic systems in the Alps is still rare. What is almost entirely missing is conceptual work identifying possible path-ways towards the implementation of adaptation measures with respect to climate change (see as one notable exception the contribution by Richard et al. 2010 in the last issue of the RGA). It is in this context that the paper at hand whishes to make a contribution by showing where the main barriers towards the successful implementation of adaptation measures lay. Theoretically, the paper builds upon distinct psychological and sociological concepts related to the actor-structure duality as suggested by structuration theory, while the Alps serve as the geographical frame of reasoning for the conceptual debate brought forward within the paper.Coping strategies including smoke screens are used against nuisance bites of Simulium damnosum Theobald (Diptera:Simuliidae) in onchocerciasis endemic communities. To find more effective alternatives, the efficacy of commercially available N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide (DEET) products with active concentrations of 9.5, 13, 25, 50 and 98.1100% and NO MAS,' (active component: para-menthane-3,8-diol and lemon grass oil) were tested at Bui-Agblekame, Ghana. A Latin square study design was implemented using eight groups of two vector collectors each, who used repellents (treatment), mineral oil or nothing each day until the end of the study. Flies were caught and their numbers each hour recorded using the standard methods for onchocerciasis transmission studies. T-tests were used to compare the mean duration of protection and a one-way analysis of variance controlling for catchers and repellents was performed. Tukey's test was used to compare protection by repellents and mineral oil. The highest percentage protection was 80.8% by NO MAS and the least 42.5% by the 13% DEET product. The period of absolute protection was 5 h by NO MAS and 1 h by 50% DEET product. No significant increase in protection was offered beyond 25% active DEET products and no significance was observed in terms of catcher x repellent effect (F = 1.731, d.f. = 48, P = 0.209).This study investigates future changes in summertime precipitation amounts over the Japanese islands and their relations to the topographical heights by analyzing data from 20km resolution regional climate model downscalings of MIROC3.2(hires) 20C3M and Special Report on Emission Scenarios A1B scenario data for the periods of 1981-2000 and 2081-2100. Results of the analyses indicate that future increases in June-July-August mean daily precipitation amounts are noticeable in the west and south sides (windward sides) of the mountainous regions, especially in western Japan where heavy rainfall is frequently observed in the recent climate. The large precipitation increases are likely to occur not only in high altitude areas but also at low altitudes where many urban areas are located. In such areas, the occurrence frequencies of precipitation amounts greater than 100mmd(-1) would also increase under the future climate scenario (A1B). One of the main causes of these precipitation changes appears to be the intensification of southwesterly moist air flows in the lower troposphere, which is likely to be associated with future increases in the north-south atmospheric pressure gradient, especially at latitudes south of 35 degrees N. The intensified southwesterly moist air flows that impinge on the western and southern slopes of the mountains can generate stronger upslope flows and well-developed clouds, leading to increased precipitation. In contrast, future precipitation changes in the lee sides of the mountainous regions would be comparatively small. These results indicate that future precipitation changes strongly depend on the topography and prevailing wind direction.Sustainable forest management (SFM) requires the balancing of diverse values and conflicting management objectives. Climate change adds a further degree of uncertainty to this complex issue. In this study we analysed a Strategic Forest Management Plan (SFMP) from the southwest Yukon, Canada. The SFMP was developed to enable the salvage harvesting of beetle-killed white spruce stands and encourage fuel-abatement treatments to reduce fire risk to local communities. It did not, however, provide a long-term strategy to achieve SFM in the region. In this study, the SFMP served as the basis to develop and evaluate alternative forest management strategies in the context of climate change. Working group discussions with local stakeholders enabled the structuring of a ratings table that helped practitioners and experts to characterize five alternative strategies stemming from the SFMP, based on its main goals and objectives. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AMP) was then used to balance competing values and objectives and test the alternatives against each other. The strategy 'Manage for multiple values and use' had the highest AHP-score when compared to the four other alternatives (timber, wildlife, fire risk reduction and carbon), which were narrower in scope. It may represent the best balance for the ecological and socio-economic values listed in the SFMP. Although the multiple values (MV) alternative is closest to the current SFMP in terms of scope, this study highlights that there are viable alternatives such as 'manage for wildlife' that achieved similar scores to the MV approach. The current SFMP has great potential to serve as a basis and starting point for a continuous and adaptive planning process for forest managenient Exploring the different/alternative strategic directions will help to better address uncertain futures, thereby leading to more sustainable approaches. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.California has a forty-year history of successful coastal zone management. The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the California Coastal Commission, and the State Coastal Conservancy have protected and made accessible hundreds of miles of shoreline. While each agency has played a critical role, this article focuses on the Coastal Commission. Implementing the California Coastal Act, the Coastal Commission has partnered with local government, other agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the public to concentrate new development in already developed areas, and much of the rural coastal zone looks as it did in 1972. The Commission has protected and expanded public shoreline access through its regulatory actions. Using strong ecological science the Commission has protected a wide variety of sensitive habitats and wetlands. And under the authority of the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Commission has reviewed thousands of federal projects to assure that they are consistent with the Coastal Act. Challenges continue, though, including population growth, sea-level rise, and inadequate funding to update local coastal land use plans to address new issues, such as climate change adaptation. New investment is needed at the national, state, and local level to continue the success of the California program.Smallholder tree plantations are seen as promising routes to alleviating poverty and increasing forest area among the countries in Southeast Asia. However, implementation has been disappointing, which led scientists at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) to consider a scenario exercise as a way to mitigate the risk of unwanted outcomes. The study had a characteristic that it shares with many other studies: close interaction of larger-scale processes and trends (global markets, national policy) with smaller-scale systems (regional and local policy, farmer livelihoods). The authors therefore felt than an explicitly multi-scale approach was called for. To keep close to the well-known practice, we made a modest extension to a conventional scenario logic approach, and introduced a nested, and multi-scale scenario logic. While modest, we believe that the modification is useful, and the method could be used in other studies, in particular climate adaptation studies. We applied the method during two scenario workshops held to explore the use of smallholder tree plantations in efforts to improve rural livelihoods: each workshop considered two different localities. While the scenario frameworks resulting from the workshops were similar between the localities, we believe that the nested scenario framework served to structure the process and revealed meaningful contextual differences. From these experiences, we discuss and critique the method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Asian countries with large populations concentrated in coastal cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as sea level rise. This, in turn, can adversely affect water resources as a result of flooding, coastal erosion, water scarcity etc. Singapore has been hailed for its progressive water policies and practices, which were developed to overcome its natural resource disadvantage (limited resource base) and to achieve self-sufficiency. Certainly, Singapore's geopolitical situation may have provided an atmosphere conducive to the development of progressive policies; however, it is worth exploring how Singapore is preparing for climate change adaptation, as this may allow other cities/countries to learn from Singapore's experience. The paper evaluates the contribution of Singapore's water policies and practices to climate change adaptation, and examines whether they can support the development of adaptation strategies in the water sector for other similarly situated cities in vulnerable countries. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentAn experimental case study approach using backcasting methodology with the involvement of stakeholders was applied to develop visions of two ideally climatea-dapted Swedish municipalities 20-30 years ahead in time. The five visions created were examined as regards measures that decision makers at other levels in society need to take in order to make local adaptation possible. Dependencies on other levels in society are strong regarding supply of water and treatment of sewage, energy supply and cooling, the built environment and care for the elderly, showing the strong integration of organisations at various levels in Swedish society. Barriers to adaptation relate not only to how global companies, government agencies and regional authorities act, but also to the degree of privatisation in municipalities, where poor skills in public procurement pose a barrier to adaptation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change can result in a slow disappearance of forests dominated by less drought-tolerant native European beech (Fagus sylvatica) and oak species (Quercus spp.) and further area expansion of more drought-tolerant non-native black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) against those species in Hungary. We assumed that the shift in plant species composition was modified by selective ungulate browsing. Thus, we investigated which woody species are selected by browsing game. We have collected data on the species composition of the understory and the browsing impact on it in five different Hungarian even-aged forests between 2003 and 2005. Based on these investigations the non-native Robinia pseudoacacia living under more favourable climatic conditions was generally preferred (Jacobs' selectivity index: D = 0.04 +/- A 0.77), while the native Fagus sylvatica and Quercus spp. (Q. petraea, Q. robur), both more vulnerable to increasing aridity, were avoided (D = -0.37 +/- A 0.11; -0.79 +/- A 0.56; -0.9 +/- A 0.16; respectively) among target tree species. However, economically less or not relevant species, e.g. elderberry (Sambucus spp.), blackberry (Rubus spp.) or common dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) were the most preferred species (D = 0.01 +/- A 0.71; -0.12 +/- A 0.58; -0.2 +/- A 0.78, respectively). Our results imply that biodiversity conservation, i.e. maintaining or establishing a multi-species understory layer, can be a good solution to reduce the additional negative game impact on native target tree species suffering from drought. Due to preference for Robinia pseudoacacia selective browsing can decelerate the penetration of this species into native forest habitats. We have to consider the herbivorous pressure of ungulates and their feeding preferences in planning our future multifunctional forests in the light of climate change impacts.This paper explores the potential contribution of critical urban theory to the intellectual and political debates surrounding climate change. While it is possible to identify an emerging strand of critical enquiry concerning the role of cities in facilitating climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, this paper argues that the full implications of critical urban theory to climate change studies have yet to be realised. In this paper, critical urban theory is understood as an approach ( or set of approaches) to the city that recognises the contingent form of urban politics and policy, while asserting that, far from being an inevitable and politically neutral process, urbanisation is an expression of intersecting regimes of social power. This paper utilises critical urban theory as a basis for analysing emerging urban climate adaptation strategies. The analysis presented here asserts that contemporary adaptation policies are being framed by neoliberal practices of market-oriented governance, enhanced privatisation and urban environmental entrepreneurialism. This paper exposes some of the key contradictions that are inherent within neoliberalised urban climate change adaptation strategies and suggests how it might be possible to develop more progressive adaptation regimes.There is increasing pressure from policymakers for ecologists to generate more detailed attribution' analyses aimed at quantitatively estimating relative contributions of different driving forces, including anthropogenic climate change (ACC), to observed biological changes. Here, we argue that this approach is not productive for ecological studies. Global meta-analyses of diverse species, regions and ecosystems have already given us very high confidence' [sensu Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] that ACC has impacted wild species in a general sense. Further, for well-studied species or systems, synthesis of experiments and models with long-term observations has given us similarly high confidence that they have been impacted by regional climate change (regardless of its cause). However, the role of greenhouse gases in driving these impacts has not been estimated quantitatively. Should this be an ecological research priority? We argue that development of quantitative ecological models for this purpose faces several impediments, particularly the existence of strong, non-additive interactions among different external factors. However, even with current understanding of impacts of global warming, there are myriad climate change adaptation options already developed in the literature that could be, and in fact are being, implemented now.The understanding of public perception to climate change is an essential factor in the development of adaptation policies. In the Mediterranean, agriculture, as the largest consumer of freshwater, has the highest potential to suffer adverse impacts of climate change. Future water availability predictions, conflicting interests among stakeholders and an increasing social concern about the environment further aggravate the situation. Therefore studying public support for adaptation policies can play a key role in successfully adapting the sector. The study site, approximately 36,000 hectares of rice fields in Seville (Spain), exemplifies an area in the Mediterranean where water needs to be carefully reallocated in view of the limitations anticipated by climate change scenarios; in particular where conflicts will arise between water for agriculture and water for 'natural' ecosystems. This paper proposes an ex-ante evaluation of the societal support for adaptation policies. A survey of 117 respondents was conducted and a Logit model utilized to analyze which predictors positively or negatively affect people's support for adaptation policies. Results suggest that the main barriers to support these policies were economic losses and low climate change concern whereas the primary motivation factor was environmental commitment. Additionally, the main socio-demographic determinants were gender, age, education and family structure. In order to improve societal support for climate change adaptation policies, implementing educational and awareness raising initiatives will be the main challenges for policy makers to overcome. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A model study on the impact of climate change on snow cover and runoff has been conducted for the Swiss Canton of Graubunden. The model Alpine3D has been forced with the data from 35 Automatic Weather Stations in order to investigate snow and runoff dynamics for the current climate. The data set has then been modified to reflect climate change as predicted for the 2021-2050 and 2070-2095 periods from an ensemble of regional climate models. The predicted changes in snow cover will be moderate for 2021-2050 and become drastic in the second half of the century. Towards the end of the century the snow cover changes will roughly be equivalent to an elevation shift of 800 m. Seasonal snow water equivalents will decrease by one to two thirds and snow seasons will be shortened by five to nine weeks in 2095. Small, higher elevation catchments will show more winter runoff, earlier spring melt peaks and reduced summer runoff. Where glacierized areas exist, the transitional increase in glacier melt will initially offset losses from snow melt. Larger catchments, which reach lower elevations will show much smaller changes since they are already dominated by summer precipitation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation to the impacts of climate change is a dynamic process that is shaped by institutional, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts. Efforts to adapt to changing climate may occur on many scales and may be undertaken by a variety of stakeholders and do not occur in institutional vacuum. As globalization has increased the exchange of knowledge across space, a greater number of institutions have become involved in adaptation measures encompassing multiple scales. In order to gain insight into how adaptation might unfold into the future, we investigate the interactions between institutions operating at multiple levels in the innovation of new technologies on demand. From a broad sample of cases, we identify four distinct types of adaptation measures and select one corresponding case representing each type to assess the roles of institutions (and other stakeholders) in innovation. We further identify and discuss two findings that cut across all adaptation measures: (1) the need for widespread participation, flexibility, and integration of stakeholders for quick and effective response, and (2) the need to transfer leadership and responsibility from institutionally led adaptation measures to community based measures so that adaptation is sustained into the future. Together, these findings suggest that the types of adaptation measures implemented primarily from the top down may not promote local resilience in the long term; likewise, those measures implemented from the bottom up require some level of collaboration from the top to maximize their effectiveness. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We investigate the direct relationship between detailed urban land cover classes, derived from fine resolution QuickBird satellite data, and land surface temperatures (Celsius), generated from ASTER imagery, over Phoenix, Arizona. Using daytime and nighttime temperatures in both winter and summer and all observation points (n = 11,025), we develop linear, non-linear and multiple regression models to explore the relationship. Conventional wisdom suggests that all urban features result in increased temperatures. Rather, our results show that a mass of buildings is not necessarily or holistically responsible for extreme heat in desert cities. It is the construction of other impervious dark surfaces (i.e., asphalt roads) associated with buildings that result in extreme heat. Moreover, our results suggest that buildings, especially commercial buildings with high albedo roofs, actually reduce temperatures. The addition of trees and shrubs, as opposed to grass, around buildings can further mitigate extreme heat by providing more cooling during the summer and increasing nighttime temperatures in the winter. In conclusion, the compositional design of and avoidance of dark impervious materials in desert cities help mitigate extreme temperatures. It is important to note, however, that design choices that reduce extreme heat must be made within the broader context of tradeoffs and unintended consequences to ensure the sustainability of these cities.For the last five years, climate change has been increasingly perceived as a challenge for regional development. Compared to other nations, Germany is relatively 'safe', but the German regions are prone to different impacts of climate change; some of them might be positive but most will be negative in the long run. Strategic concepts are therefore needed to reduce the negative impacts and use the potential positive effects. Due to enforced research funding, several German regions are currently developing adaptation strategies within transdisciplinary research projects. Based on a comparative case study analysis of three of these projects, this paper looks for the benefits of resilience thinking in the context of climate change adaptation. The analysis shows that the case study regions try to increase their resilience to climate change by strengthening the properties of (1) resistance, (2) recovery and (3) creativity. But the discussion also reveals that only parts, certain sectors or subjects, of the region can increase their distinct resilience. Regional stakeholder networks as established within the case study regions can make a significant contribution to linking different sectors and levels of action. Therefore, this approach seems to be applicable for integrating the need for adaptation within the whole region. It is believed that the regionalized communication of potential climate change impacts raises awareness for climate change adaptation, helps to develop appropriate adaptation measures and encourages action. Hence, different approaches can indeed lead to more resilient structures. But the resilient society at regional level remains utopia.This paper explores the advantages of applying the concept of social-ecological resilience (SER) and the related thinking in transdisciplinary research. The theoretical reflections are exemplified by transdisciplinary research experiences using the concept of SER as a bridging concept in the field of climate-change adaptation instead of developing a new and very context-specific conceptual bridge. The findings are based on ontological reflections concerning the complex and hybrid phenomenon of climate change and the need for transdisciplinary research as well as on reflections on the performed interdisciplinary research and the exploratory transdisciplinary research approach with practitioners from the German administration. The experiences so far have shown that it was more focused on the general ideas of social-ecological resilience thinking instead of using the concept of SER as an analytical tool. We conclude that the use of a common conceptual framework in general and of social-ecological resilience thinking in particular offers tangible advantages in transdisciplinary research dealing with climate change and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. In our case, social-ecological resilience thinking helped-after translation into practical terms-to open the field for further consideration from the very beginning as well as to open the space for common creative work; to define the problem; and to choose the relevant variables to look at.An analysis procedure is developed to explore the robustness and overall productivity of reservoir management under plausible assumptions about climate fluctuation and change. Results are presented based on a stylized version of a multi-use reservoir management model adapted from Angat Dam, Philippines. Analysis focuses on October-March, during which climatological inflow declines as the dry season arrives, and reservoir management becomes critical and challenging. Inflow is assumed to be impacted by climate fluctuations representing interannual variation (white noise), decadal to multidecadal variability (MDV, here represented by a stochastic autoregressive process) and global change (GC), here represented by a systematic linear trend in seasonal inflow total over the simulation period of 2008-2047. Stochastic (Monte Carlo) simulations are undertaken to explore reservoir performance. In this way, reservoir reliability and risk of extreme persistent water deficit are assessed in the presence of different combinations and magnitudes of GC and MDV. The effectiveness of dynamic management is then explored as a possible climate change adaptation practice, focusing on reservoir performance in the presence of a 20 % downward inflow trend. In these dynamic management experiments, the October-March water allocation each year is adjusted based on seasonal forecasts and updated climate normals. The results illustrate how, in the near-term, MDV can be as significant as GC in impact for this kind of climate-related problem. The results also illustrate how dynamic management can mitigate the impacts. Overall, this type of analysis can deliver guidance on the expected benefits and risks of different management strategies and climate scenarios.Adaptation is already a necessary response to climate change for northern communities. The City of Prince George, in British Columbia, Canada, has been adjusting to impacts for years and there is a high level of local awareness of climate change. The purpose of this study was to collaborate with City staff and other organizations to undertake action-oriented research with the goal of creating a local adaptation strategy. Steps taken toward this goal included: producing downscaled climate scenarios; facilitating a workshop with local practitioners to prioritize impacts; gathering public feedback regarding impacts; and triangulating sources of information to determine community adaptation priorities. Changes to forests and increased flooding are the top local adaptation priorities, and impacts related to transportation, severe weather and water supply are high priorities. Other impacts, such as health effects and agricultural changes, are also important but did not rank highly using a risk framework focused on negative physical effects. Local impacts, actions the City is undertaking to address them and suggestions for implementing adaptation measures are summarized. The process of creating an adaptation strategy has proven highly valuable in Prince George and has precipitated further engagement and action. Due to the low profile of adaptation and limited resources in many communities, researchers and practitioners must capitalize on opportunities to incorporate adaptation into existing plans and processes. Lessons from the Prince George experience can be applied to other communities as they strive to effectively adapt to climate change.This paper discusses the possibility for a privately managed hydro-power system to adapt to a projected increase in water flow in their central-Qu,bec watersheds by adding power generation potential. Runoffs simulated by a lumped rainfall-runoff model were fed into a stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) routine to generate reservoir operating rules. These rules were optimized for maximum power generation under maximal and minimal reservoir level constraints. With these optimized rules, a power generation simulator was used to predict the amount of generated hydropower. The same steps, excluding calibration, were performed on 60 climate projections (from 23 general circulation models and 3 greenhouse gas emission scenarios) for future horizons 2036-2065 and 2071-2100. Reservoir operation rules were optimized for every climate change projection for the 3 power plants in the system. From these simulations, it was possible to determine hydropower numbers for both horizons. The same steps were performed under a modified system in which an additional turbine was added to each power plant. Results show that both the non-structural (optimizing reservoir rules) and structural (adding turbines) adaptation measures allow for increased power production, but that adapting operating rules is sufficient to reap the most of the benefits of increased water availability.Climate change is likely to cause deleterious hydrological and ecological impacts in many of the world's major river basins. Using the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, as a case study, we present an adaptation framework which addresses the hydrological impacts of climate change at three spatial scales: the high-conservation value asset, the water management unit and the entire basin. At each scale, the appropriate scientific, policy and operational tools differ, though should be applied in concert. At the scale of the asset, hydrodynamic modelling has improved the capacity of site managers to anticipate the effects of management interventions. These models have also contributed to improve hydrological modelling of the water management unit. When combined with ecosystem response models, hydrological models can compare ecological outcomes over a range of timescales, leading to improvements in the representation of environmental requirements in water sharing plans. At the scale of the basin, the Australian government has used a legislative mechanism to set overarching ecological and diversion objectives. In addition, the purchase of water-use entitlements has created a flexible mechanism to use the water market as a climate-change adaptation mechanism, responding to the changing water availability and conservation priorities that emerge over the coming decades.This paper summarises key issues from papers included in a special issue about the impacts of climate change on Australian wetlands. The papers covered: the assessment of wetlands under climate change, adaptation and engineering responses to climate change, and restoring wetlands under a changing climate. The key issues from these papers were used to indicate areas where the Ramsar Convention could develop guidance as part of its' Handbooks for the Wise Use of Wetlands. These included: (i) assessing changes in the distribution of species and whether these constitute a change in the ecological character of the wetland; (ii) assessing the usefulness of models of wetland response to climate change; (iii) assessing the value in allocating water to protected sites where restoration would be contingent on reallocation of larger volumes of water; (iv) assessing the efficacy of engineering responses with the potential to deliver more water-efficient environmental outcomes for wetlands and (v) determining if the description of the ecological character of a Ramsar site at the time of listing is a suitable reference for management purposes. With these issues in mind it is recommended that further attention is directed towards determining and responding to the ecological consequences of climate change.The provision of new housing for a growing population is a challenge that many cities and regions all over the world are confronted with. The design and management of new housing development is a complex task given it needs to be socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. This paper describes a new method that helps spatially direct new housing development to minimise impact on water quality. Currently, the model accommodates for the pollutants total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and suspended sediments (TSS), but can be extended. The method is based on mathematical programming linked with multi-criteria analysis, and kinematic wave equations. It utilises GIS to underpin multiple spatial constraints on where housing development can take place, and to provide an effective means of visually analysing the impacts of land development scenarios produced by the model. We demonstrate the method using a case study for Hornsby Shire Council, New South Wales, Australia. With water quality and waterway health being a major issue in any urban development the proposed methodology has wide applications beyond the current study area. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Integrated coastal management (ICM) has been developing concomitantly with the realisation of the severity of the potential impacts of climate change. The discourse on climate change and adaptation has also included the awareness that adaptation must take place at all levels of government, particularly local government. Climate change is expected to have significant impacts on the physical, social, environmental and economic environments of coastal cities and towns, and in particular on the poor and vulnerable communities within these cities and towns. The crucial role that local government can play in climate protection and building cities' and communities' resilience to climate change is widely recognised at the global level. This paper explores the legal and policy connexion between ICM, local government and climate change in Mozambique and South Africa, two developing countries in Africa. The state of institutionalisation of coastal management at national through to local government is also examined. The authors contend that the state, character and maturity of the ICM policy domain can create an enabling environment within which local government agencies can prepare for future impacts of climate change. Conversely it can also limit, delay and hinder climate change adaptation. The paper concludes with the identification of some key success factors for assessing the effectiveness of the existing policy and legal frameworks to respond to the challenges of climate change. It also identifies some key principles to be included in future legislative reform to promote ICM, cooperative governance and greater preparedness for climate change at local government level. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In South East Australia redheaded cockchafers Adoryphorous coulonii are a pasture pest with an increasing economic impact on the dairy industry. The industry is taking a strategic and systemic approach to identifying the research needs and management responses in recognition of the dynamic complexity of the issue. We discuss the process used to help a range of farmers, industry stakeholders, and scientists to achieve a shared understanding of the cockchafer-pasture-agribusiness system. This process provided an integrative framework for the generation of hypotheses that can be used to design effective transdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary research. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Primary resource industries considering adaptation action in response to current or future climate changes need to consider the adaptive capacity of their constituent members if an industry-wide response is to occur. In particular, they need to know the extent to which the capacity to adapt exists and whether it can be enhanced. We focus on the role of climate change awareness in influencing adaptive capacity within an Australian primary industry that is already experiencing the impacts of climate change. Climate change awareness is the extent to which primary producers relate to and prioritise climate change as a driver of change. We assess climate change awareness using four fairly representative statements. Adaptive capacity is the human potential to convert existing resources into successful adaptation strategies. We assess adaptive capacity on the basis of current knowledge as comprising four essential dimensions: (1) the management of risk and uncertainty, (2) skills in planning, learning and reorganising, (3) financial and emotional flexibility, and (4) interest in adapting. A telephone survey was completed by 69 peanut producers in Queensland representing 88% of the industry and a response rate of 90%. We empirically show that primary producers that have higher climate change awareness also have a higher capacity to adapt on at least three dimensions of adaptive capacity. Our results suggest that it may be worth investing in supporting climate change awareness within primary industries if broadscale climate adaptation planning is to be successful. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing climate change effects on water resources is the first step in preparing climate change adaptation measures. However, this is often clouded by the large range of uncertainty resulting from a long chain of modeling activities. Despite progress made to improve climate models, downscaling methods, and hydrological models, uncertainties will remain. This paper proposes a framework to propagate and quantify the uncertainty from the different sources that can be applied at the full cascade but focuses on the climate-modeling component, i.e., different climate models and emissions scenarios. This framework is based on the generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) methodology, which is widely used in the hydrologic community but has not been applied as such to climate impact modeling. This paper presents a preliminary application of the proposed framework to the flow of the main Nile at Dongola. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0000656. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Climate change is expected to challenge forest management and nature conservation in forests. Besides forest species, strategies and references for management and conservation will be affected. In this paper, we qualitatively analysed whether forest conservation and management practice have already adapted to the impacts of climate change and to what extent those practices reflect the adaptation strategies dealt with in international peer-reviewed literature. To this end, we conducted thirteen in-depth interviews with forest practitioners (forest officers/forest district officers) in four regions in Germany. The interview regions were selected to represent the variation in tree species composition, forest ownership regimes and vulnerability to climate change. Although interviewees claimed to take climate change and adaptation strategies into account, in practice such strategies have as yet only occasionally been implemented. Our results suggest that strategies for adapting forest management to climate change are just in the early stages of development or supplement existing strategies relating to general risk reduction or nature-orientated forest management. The extent to which climate change adaptation strategies have influenced overall management varies. This variation and the lack of specific strategies also reflect the existing uncertainties about future changes in climate and about the capacity of forest ecosystems to adapt. We conclude that, in the face of climate change, forest management will have a major influence on future biodiversity composition of forest ecosystems. Hence, a framework for conservation in forests providing recommendations which also take into account the consequences of climate change needs to be developed.While a wide range of factors influence rural-rural and rural-urban migration in developing countries, there is significant interest in analyzing the role of agricultural distress and growing inter-regional differences in fueling such movement. This strand of research acquires importance in the context of climate change adaptation. In the Indian context, this analysis gets further complicated due to the significant presence of temporary migration. This paper analyzes how weather and its variability affects both temporary and permanent migration in India using National Sample Survey data for the year 2007-2008. The paper finds that almost all of the rural-urban migrants are permanent. Only temperature plays a role in permanent migration. In contrast, many temporary migrants are rural-rural and both temperature and rainfall explain temporary migration.Increasingly there appears to be recognition of the need to simultaneously implement adaptation and mitigation. However, the optimal combination of adaptation and mitigation is an open question. The literature on this is rather small, and is inconsistent in conclusions. Here we explore the temporal optimal investment mix between adaptation and mitigation and their relative contributions to damage reduction. We do this using a conceptual framework that integrates mitigation and adaptation considering one time flow and persistent stock adaptation. We also consider unadaptable damages and investment competition. Results suggest that stock and flow adaptation are dominant damage reduction means in the first 120 years while mitigation dominates from thereon. We also find that the adaptation/mitigation mix changes markedly toward mitigation when climate change damages per unit atmospheric CO2 concentration rises.Changes in the agriculture sector are essential to mitigate and adapt to climate change, meet growing food demands, and improve the livelihoods of poor smallholder producers. What agricultural strategies are needed to meet these challenges? To what extent are there synergies among these strategies? This paper examines these issues for smallholder producers in Kenya across several agroecological zones. Several practices emerge as triple wins, supporting climate adaptation, greenhouse gas mitigation, and profitability goals. In particular, integrated soil fertility management and improved livestock feeding are shown to provide multiple benefits across all agroecological zones examined. Triple wins of other agricultural practices are limited to specific agroecological zones. Irrigation and soil and water conservation, for example, are essential for adaptation, mitigation, and profitability in arid areas. The results suggest that agricultural investments targeted toward these triple-win strategies will have the greatest payoff in terms of increased resilience of farm and pastoralist households and global climate change mitigation. To reap the benefits of triple-win strategies will require that policymakers, researchers, and practitioners move away from isolated approaches focused on either adaptation or mitigation or rural income generation toward a more holistic assessment of joint strategies as well as their tradeoffs and synergies.Climate variability and climate change impacts on hydrological conditions prescribe the need to better understand favourable conditions for developing and mobilising adaptive capacity. This paper presents new cases to the body of evidence on adaptive capacity in the context of institutional arrangements for water management. It aims to contribute insights into the challenges of developing approaches across governance scales for dealing with climate variability and climate change impacts. The different case studies explored in this article represent an exploration of the challenges across temporal and spatial scales in relation to the adaptive capacity of water governance to hydro-climatic stresses. The studies use a suite of governance related indicators to explore adaptive capacity in relation to past extreme hydrological events. Analysis is based on qualitative open ended interviews and questionnaires. Results indicate that tensions persist in developing proactive capacity and mobilising reactive capacity at different scales of governance to different scales of change. Findings support the increasing recognition in the literature for top down and bottom up approaches to be better balanced in efforts to improve resilience to climate variability and change. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentMore than half the world's population lives in cities, and over two-thirds of the world's cities will be exposed to flooding within the next 30 years due to factors including climate change, land subsidence, sea level rise, and socio-economic development. Traditionally, flood management has concentrated on providing protection against floods using technical measures, but there is currently an international shift towards more integrated flood risk management, whereby flood risk is defined as the probability of flooding multiplied by the potential consequences. Governance plays a key role in this transition. However, relatively little has been written on how climate governance lessons are implemented on a city-scale. Several characteristics of recent climate change adaptation governance, relating to its structure, orientation, content, and timeframe, are gleaned from the research literature. Flood risk management of two cities Jakarta and Rotterdam is examined.Enhancing species resilience to changing environmental conditions is often suggested as a climate change adaptation strategy. To effectively achieve this, it is necessary first to understand the factors that determine species resilience, and their relative importance in shaping the ability of species to adjust to the complexities of environmental change. This is an extremely challenging task because it requires comprehensive information on species traits. We explored the resilience of 58 marine turtle regional management units (RMUs) to climate change, encompassing all seven species of marine turtles worldwide. We used expert opinion from the IUCN-SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group (n=33 respondents) to develop a Resilience Index, which considered qualitative characteristics of each RMU (relative population size, rookery vulnerability, and genetic diversity) and non climate-related threats (fisheries, take, coastal development, and pollution/pathogens). Our expert panel perceived rookery vulnerability (the likelihood of functional rookeries becoming extirpated) and non climate-related threats as having the greatest influence on resilience of RMUs to climate change. We identified the world's 13 least resilient marine turtle RMUs to climate change, which are distributed within all three major ocean basins and include six of the world's seven species of marine turtle. Our study provides the first look at inter- and intra-species variation in resilience to climate change and highlights the need to devise metrics that measure resilience directly. We suggest that this approach can be widely used to help prioritize future actions that increase species resilience to climate change.Alpine plants are at high risk because of climate change. Assessing the performance of alpine plant species across different altitudes is useful for predicting how they may respond to changing climate. Adaptation and plasticity of early life stages are of particular interest since seed germination and seedling establishment could be crucial life-history stages for environmental tracking and population persistence of sexually reproducing plants. To evaluate past adaptation and the potential to accommodate future climate conditions, seeds and seedlings of Erysimum capitatum were reciprocally transplanted between alpine and low-altitude sites. When grown in a common field environment, E. capitatum from alpine and lower-altitude populations differed from each other in germination, size and morphological traits. Planting altitude also influenced those traits, indicating that population differentiation and plasticity to altitudinal conditions both contributed to differences in the performance of high- vs. low-altitude plants. Seeds tended to germinate more in their native habitat than in the foreign habitat. Alpine plants survived more than low-altitude plants at high altitude, and they suffered higher mortality when they were planted in low-altitude sites. The production of multiple rosettes, a characteristic morphology of alpine E. capitatum, was negatively associated with survival at low altitude. In contrast to alpine populations, a survival advantage of low-altitude populations in low-altitude sites was not evident in this experiment. Synthesis. Because climate change is projected to cause alpine environments to become more similar to low-altitude environments, alpine Erysimum capitatum is expected to suffer reduced seedling recruitment and higher mortality as a direct response to altered environment and possibly as a result of past adaptation to high altitude. In particular, the production of multiple rosettes, an adaptive trait to the current alpine environment, would constrain plant survival should those environments come to resemble low altitude. Moreover, the limited fitness advantage of low-altitude E. capitatum in low-altitude conditions suggests that environmental tracking by low-altitude populations might have a limited role in maintaining future populations.Resilience theory has gained considerable prominence with regard to the management of social-ecological systems and more recently climate change adaptation. Yet, how resilience is precisely understood, how its institutionalisation works and how organisations can operationalise principles for achieving resilience often remains vague. Therefore, the paper explores how institutional and organisational theory can enhance the understanding on resilience. Linking organisational institutionalism to resilience theory, the paper analyses in particular how resilience thinking can diffuse and translate into organisational action, and which challenges and barriers may exist. Empirical research on formal urban climate change adaptation in Vietnam is used to explore the important role of distinctive institutional features in a given culture, region or sector for shaping this process. It is argued that such context-specific institutional framework conditions are often underemphasised, thereby, hampering the transferability as well as operationalisation and implementation of resilience propositions. Relevant aspects include epistemological, ontological and normative dimensions. Linking the case study to neoinstitutional theory, recommendations are developed for increasing the intercultural transferability of resilience thinking into organisational practices.Sea-level rise threatens coastal salt-marshes and mangrove forests around the world, and a key determinant of coastal wetland vulnerability is whether its surface elevation can keep pace with rising sea level. Globally, a large data gap exists because wetland surface and shallow subsurface processes remain unaccounted for by traditional vulnerability assessments using tide gauges. Moreover, those processes vary substantially across wetlands, so modelling platforms require relevant local data. The low-cost, simple, high-precision rod surface-elevation table-marker horizon (RSET-MH) method fills this critical data gap, can be paired with spatial data sets and modelling and is financially and technically accessible to every country with coastal wetlands. Yet, RSET deployment has been limited to a few regions and purposes. A coordinated expansion of monitoring efforts, including development of regional networks that could support data sharing and collaboration, is crucial to adequately inform coastal climate change adaptation policy at several scales.Background: Adaptation will be necessary to cope with the impacts of climate change on the health of Canadians. Civil society organizations (CSOs) have an important role in health adaptation, but it is unknown what actions they are undertaking. Objectives: To identify and examine what adaptations are being developed by CSOs to adapt to the health effects of climate change based on a systematic review of the activities of 190 organizations and 1196 reported adaptation actions. Results: There were six key findings: (1) health adaptation actions are predominantly led by environmental CSOs; (2) most actions are occurring at national and regional levels; (3) food and/or water contamination and air quality are dominant climate change stimuli for action; (4) responses predominantly reflect awareness and research activities, with limited evidence of substantive intervention; (5) consideration of vulnerable groups is limited; and (6) climate change is usually considered alongside other factors, if at all. Conclusions: The results indicate a deficit in terms of what needs to be done for health adaptation and what is being done; part of a broader adaptation deficit in Canada. Coordinated adaptation planning at federal and provincial level is needed, involving collaboration between CSOs and public health bodies. (C) 2013 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green roofs are increasingly being utilised as urban climate adaptation measures given good evidence of their passive cooling effects. Shading of conventional building surfaces, higher albedo and latent cooling from evapotranspiration mean that vegetated surfaces can be used to significantly lower surface and air temperatures in cities. The extent to which cooling properties may be affected by poor maintenance, green roof damage and the general health of the vegetation is not as well known. This study investigates the ability of an intensive green roof in Manchester, UK, to cool the air above it relative to an adjacent conventional, concrete roof. The monthly median air temperature was found to be 1.06 degrees C lower at 300 mm over the green roof. Diurnal trends were apparent, with strongest cooling of 1.58 degrees C, occurring at night when Urban Heat Islands are most common. A section of green roof was damaged by mismanagement in a drought period, which allowed an investigation into the impairment to the cooling effect when large areas of bare substrate are present. Daytime temperatures were higher over this section of the roof than over an adjacent healthy green roof, being a maximum 0.63 degrees C warmer than the bare roof on average, in the late morning. Cooling still occurred at night, albeit with a lower maximum average relative cooling of 0.78 degrees C. Implications of the spatial influence of green roof cooling are discussed along with the need to undertake careful maintenance and irrigation of the roofs for the benefits to be maintained. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to address climate/environmental change successfully and sustainably, it is vital to foster collaborative relationships between national, regional and local government institutions. Insufficient attention has been paid to relational dynamics between multiple levels of governance, and related learning networks outside formal government structures, particularly in the context of development imperatives in poor countries. This paper illustrates these issues via an exploration of relations between two contiguous, yet contrasting local authorities in South Africa and between these local authorities and higher government levels and other networks. To date, most progressive local climate change initiatives have been undertaken autonomously and often there are mismatched priorities between different government spheres regarding climate change efforts. The likely implications for the execution of environmental change adaptation actions and the benefits of effective networking are considered in this light and through deploying conceptual insights from multilevel governance, systems approaches to urban governance and other literatures.Climate change and energy saving are challenging the city and the territorial organization. Innovative spatial and urban planning methods and procedures are required, and new approaches and instruments must be elaborated and applied in order to shift from the building scale to the urban and territorial ones. In fact, while energy saving and emission control measures are usually applied to single buildings, plants and technological systems, the urban and territorial scales are not fully considered, although energy consumption and greenhouse gases reduction are connected to the urban form and density, to activities allocation, to mobility, etc., thus involving spatial and land-use planning decisions. It is therefore urgent to overcome the divide between energy and urban planning by elaborating and using new implementation tools. In general, the usual top-down, public-led actions are no longer politically and economically viable, whereas new methods based on public-private partnerships are being progressively adopted. This is a major change, which may set new objectives for planning practices in terms of urban quality, equity, and energy efficiency. This perspective requires redefinition of the usual methods for development rights assignment, and the activation of new planning procedures based on the assessment of actions in terms of performance instead of conformance to pre-defined rules. The expected results regard a more efficient land market and better performing development (or re-development) choices. The article focuses on the Italian case and analyzes the possibility of integrating energy planning with spatial planning, the effectiveness of plan implementation mechanisms, and the prospect of integrate public-led interventions with market tools. Recent innovations in the legislative framework support the inclusion of energy saving and climate change adaptation and mitigation goals in plan implementation procedures. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Climate change is likely to be one of the most important threats to public health in the coming years. Yet despite the large number of papers considering the health impact of climate change, few have considered what public health interventions may be of most value in reducing the disease burden. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of public health interventions to reduce the disease burden of high priority climate sensitive diseases. Methods and Findings: For each disease, we performed a systematic search with no restriction on date or language of publication on Medline, Web of Knowledge, Cochrane CENTRAL and SCOPUS up to December 2010 to identify systematic reviews of public health interventions. We retrieved some 3176 records of which 85 full papers were assessed and 33 included in the review. The included papers investigated the effect of public health interventions on various outcome measures. All interventions were GRADE assessed to determine the strength of evidence. In addition we developed a systematic review quality score. The interventions included environmental interventions to control vectors, chemoprophylaxis, immunization, household and community water treatment, greening cities and community advice. For most reviews, GRADE showed low quality of evidence because of poor study design and high heterogeneity. Also for some key areas such as floods, droughts and other weather extremes, there are no adequate systematic reviews of potential public health interventions. Conclusion: In conclusion, we found the evidence base to be mostly weak for environmental interventions that could have the most value in a warmer world. Nevertheless, such interventions should not be dismissed. Future research on public health interventions for climate change adaptation needs to be concerned about quality in study design and should address the gap for floods, droughts and other extreme weather events that pose a risk to health.BACKGROUND: Although many studies have shown that high temperatures are associated with an increased risk of mortality and morbidity, there has been little research on managing the process of planned adaptation to alleviate the health effects of heat events and climate change. In particular, economic evaluation of public health adaptation strategies has been largely absent from both the scientific literature and public policy discussion. OBJECTIVES: We examined how public health organizations should implement adaptation strategies and, second, how to improve the evidence base required to make an economic case for policies that will protect the public's health from heat events and climate change. DISCUSSION: Public health adaptation strategies to cope with heat events and climate change fall into two categories: reducing the heat exposure and managing the health risks. Strategies require a range of actions, including timely public health and medical advice, improvements to housing and urban planning, early warning systems, and assurance that health care and social systems are ready to act. Some of these actions are costly, and given scarce financial resources the implementation should be based on the cost-effectiveness analysis. Therefore, research is required not only on the temperature-related health costs, but also on the costs and benefits of adaptation options. The scientific community must ensure that the health co-benefits of climate change policies are recognized, understood, and quantified. CONCLUSIONS: The integration of climate change adaptation into current public health practice is needed to ensure the adaptation strategies increase future resilience. The economic evaluation of temperature-related health costs and public health adaptation strategies are particularly important for policy decisions.Climate change is projected to increase the seasonality in river flows in the great river systems of Himalaya and impose challenges to regional food production. Since climate change increases the uncertainty in local weather patterns, people's ability to maintain local agricultural production will probably depend on how flexible the local farming systems are to adjust to unpredictable changes. The objective of this paper is to investigate the flexibility of one such farming system which is located in Mustang, Nepal, Himalaya. Defining flexibility as. uncommitted potentialities for change. following Gregory Bateson, the paper identifies opportunities for change in the farming system, as well as factors that constrain flexibility. Further developing the concept of flexibility, it is suggested that flexibility may be analyzed in terms of scope, type and temporal flexibility. Although there are several underexploited resources in the studied farming system, the present situation is not regarded as one of irrational and suboptimal exploitation of resources. Instead, unexploited resources imply opportunities for change, which provide the system with flexibility to rapidly adjust agricultural production to varying and uncertain conditions of production.Detailed urban land-cover maps are essential information for sustainable planning. Land-cover maps assist planners in designing strategies for the optimisation of urban ecosystem services and climate change adaptation. In this study, the statistical software R was applied to land cover analysis for the Catania metropolitan area in Sicily, Italy. Six land cover classes were extracted from high-resolution orthophotos. Five different classification algorithms were compared. Texture and contextual layers were tested in different combinations as ancillary data. Classification accuracies of 89% were achieved for two of the tested algorithms.Climate change continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of small farmers of Nepal. Given the importance of Nepal's agriculture to the nation's economy, potential impacts of climate variability and change on national food security is a cause for concern. Notwithstanding this challenge, efforts are being made to identify the climate-change impacts on agriculture and actions that farmers and their supporting institutions can take to adapt. The repository of local agro-ecological knowledge available across Nepalese communities is worth exploring. This study, through analysis of four examples of innovative agricultural practices - referred to here as niche-based, details the responses of farmers and their supporting institutions to climatic limitations in Nepal. We identify and synthesize commonalities of the four case studies that may be integral to climate-change adaptation as: (1) the need for participation, flexibility and integration of all stakeholders in the process of innovating adaptation technologies; and (2) the potential for farmers (end-users) and their supporting institutions to take on more leadership and responsibility to sustain the effectiveness of adaptation measures.This study develops a strategy for tracing a target water mass, and applies it to analyzing the pathway of the North Pacific Intermediate Water (NPIW) from the subarctic gyre to the northwestern part of the subtropical gyre south of Japan in a simulation of an ocean general circulation model. This strategy estimates the pathway of the water mass that travels from an origin to a destination area during a specific period using a conservation property concerning tangent linear and adjoint models. In our analysis, a large fraction of the low salinity origin water mass of NPIW initially comes from the Okhotsk or Bering Sea, flows through the southeastern side of the Kuril Islands, and is advected to the Mixed Water Region (MWR) by the Oyashio current. It then enters the Kuroshio Extension (KE) at the first KE ridge, and is advected eastward by the KE current. However, it deviates southward from the KE axis around 158 degrees E over the Shatsky Rise, or around 170 degrees E on the western side of the Emperor Seamount Chain, and enters the subtropical gyre. It is finally transported westward by the recirculation flow. This pathway corresponds well to the shortcut route of NPIW from MWR to the region south of Japan inferred from analysis of the long-term freshening trend of NPIW observation. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Risks from extreme weather events are mediated through state, civil society and individual action(1,2). We propose evolving social contracts as a primary mechanism by which adaptation to climate change proceeds. We use a natural experiment of policy and social contexts of the UK and Ireland affected by the same meteorological event and resultant flooding in November 2009. We analyse data from policy documents and from household surveys of 356 residents in western Ireland and northwest England. We find significant differences between perceptions of individual responsibility for protection across the jurisdictions and between perceptions of future risk from populations directly affected by flooding events. These explain differences in stated willingness to take individual adaptive actions when state support retrenches. We therefore show that expectations for state protection are critical in mediating impacts and promoting longer-term adaptation. We argue that making social contracts explicit may smooth pathways to effective and legitimate adaptation.Understanding how individuals engage with climate change is critical for developing successful climate adaptation policies(1). Indonesia ranks among the world's top CO2 emitters(2), affirming its relevance to the global climate change policy arena, yet the dynamics of climate change engagement in Indonesia may differ from developed countries from which much research on this issue derives(3). We surveyed 6,310 households in two Indonesian regions to investigate patterns in four steps of engagement: observation, risk perception, reactive action (in response to present climate change) and proactive action (in anticipation of future climate change). We show that 89.5% of households exhibited a pattern whereby taking each of these steps in sequence implied taking all steps that precede it. Exceptions occurred in urban areas, where households were more likely to take action without having observed climate change or perceiving risks. In rural areas, households were more likely to observe climate change without taking action. These variations suggest a potentially nonlinear relationship between steps of engagement. We distinguish three types of household requiring adaptation support, and stress that Indonesian climate policy should shift emphasis from raising awareness to identifying broader institutional structures and processes to facilitate household engagement.Rapid changes in global climate are likely to alter species assemblages and environmental characteristics resulting in novel ecosystems. The ability to predict characteristics of future ecosystems is crucial for environmental planning and the development of effective climate change adaptation strategies. This paper presents an approach for envisioning novel ecosystems in future climates. Focusing on riparian ecosystems, we use qualitative process models to predict likely abiotic and biotic changes in four case study systems: tropical coastal floodplains, temperate streams, high mountain streams and urban riparian zones. We concentrate on functional groups rather than individual species and consider dispersal constraints and the capacity for genetic adaptation. Our scenarios suggest that climatic changes will reduce indigenous diversity, facilitate non-indigenous invasion (especially C4 graminoids), increase fragmentation and result in simplified and less distinctive riparian ecosystems. Compared to models based on biota-environment correlations, process models built on mechanistic understanding (like Bayesian belief networks) are more likely to remain valid under novel climatic conditions. We posit that predictions based on species' functional traits will facilitate regional comparisons and can highlight effects of climate change on ecosystem structure and function. Ecosystems that have experienced similar modification to that expected under climate change (for example, altered flow regimes of regulated rivers) can be used to help inform and evaluate predictions. By manipulating attributes of these system models (for example, magnitude of climatic changes or adaptation strategies used), implications of various scenarios can be assessed and optimal management strategies identified.To better prioritise adaptation strategies to a changing climate that are currently being developed, there is a need for quantitative regional level assessments that are systematic and comparable across multiple weather hazards. This study presents an indicator-based impact assessment framework at NUTS-2 level for the European Union that quantifies potential regional changes in weather-related hazards: heat stress in relation to human health, river flood risk, and forest fire risk. This is done by comparing the current (baseline) situation with two future time periods, 2011-2040 and 2041-2070. The indicator values for the baseline period are validated against observed impact data. For each hazard, the method integrates outcomes of a set of coherent high-resolution regional climate models from the ENSEMBLES project based on the SRES A1B emission scenario, with current and projected non-climatic drivers of risk, such as land use and socio-economic change. An index of regional adaptive capacity has been developed and compared with overall hazard impact in order to identify the potentially most vulnerable regions in Europe. The results show strongest increases in impacts for heat stress, followed by forest fire risk, while for flood risk the sign and magnitude of change vary across regions. A major difference with previous studies is that heat stress risk could increase most in central Europe, which is due to the ageing population there. An overall assessment combining the three hazards shows a clear trend towards increasing impact from climaterelated natural hazards for most parts of Europe, but hotspot regions are found in eastern and southern Europe due to their low adaptive capacities. This spatially explicit assessment can serve as a basis for discussing climate adaptation mainstreaming, and priorities for regional development in the EU. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is likely to require irrigators in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin to cope with less water, which will require ongoing farm adjustment. Possible incremental adjustment strategies include expansive and accommodating responses, such as irrigators buying land and water, increasing their irrigated area, changing crop mix and adopting efficient infrastructure. Contractive strategies include selling land and water, and decreasing their irrigated area. Using historical surveys we provide a comparison of irrigators' planned and actual strategies over the past fifteen years, thereby offering a strong foundation to support analysing future adaptation strategies. We explore influences associated with farm adjustment strategies, and in particular the role that climate change beliefs play. Farmers convinced that climate change is occurring are more likely to plan accommodating, but not expansive, strategies. The relationship between climate change belief and adopting various adaptive strategies was found to be often endogenous, especially for accommodating strategies. Such results suggest the need for irrigation farming policies to be targeted at improving irrigators' adaptability to manage water variability, and its link with farm future viability. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main objective of this paper is to develop a method to simulate long-term morphodynamics of estuaries dominated by fine sediments, which are subject to both tidal flow and meteorologically induced variations in freshwater run-off and wave conditions. The method is tested on the Vilaine Estuary located in South Brittany, France. The estuary is subject to a meso-macrotidal regime. The semi-diurnal tidal range varies from around 2.5 to 5 m at neap and spring, respectively. The freshwater input is controlled by a dam located approximately 8 km from the mouth of the estuary. Sediments are characterised as mostly fines, but more sandy areas are also found. The morphology of the estuary is highly influenced by the dam. It is very dynamic and changes in a complicated manner with the run-off from the dam, the tide and the wave forcing at the mouth of the estuary. Extensive hydrodynamic and sediment field data have been collected in the past and provide a solid scientific basis for studying the estuary. Based on a conceptual understanding of the morphodynamics, a numerical morphological model with coupled hydrodynamic, surface wave and sediment transport models is formulated. The numerical models are calibrated to reproduce sediment concentrations, tidal flat altimetry and overall sediment fluxes. Scaling factors are applied to a reference year to form quasi-realistic hydrodynamic forcing and river run-off, which allow for the simulations to be extended to other years. The simulation results are compared with observed bathymetric changes in the estuary during the period 1998-2005. The models and scaling factors are applied to predict the morphological development over a time scale of up to 10 years. The influence of the initial conditions and the sequence of external hydrodynamic forcing, with respect to the morphodynamic response of the estuary, are discussed.The Arctic region is experiencing transformation due to climate change, generating both threats and opportunities to local communities. In addition to warming, the signs of climate change are expected to materialise through an increase in the frequency and intensity of weather extremes. Climate-change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) have so far operated fairly independently, but there is an emerging need to examine their synergies due to their similarities. Tourism in the Arctic is also increasingly being encouraged by the different levels of government and seen as an important tool for economic development. The special features of Arctic tourism include a high dependency on natural resources, making it vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This article introduces a methodological framework merging elements from DRR, CCA and tourism development with a focus on community-based data-acquiring technique. Its practicality is emphasised through the focus on current and past community responses to weather anomalies and consequent adaptation measures. It additionally explores the relationship between the environment, community and tourism and aims to understand the characteristics of a community. Two case-study communities in Finnish Lapland demonstrate its relevance and contribution to CCA and to wider sustainable Arctic tourism development.This paper describes the design and application of a benefit-cost model to the city of Durban's (South Africa) climate change adaptation options. The approach addresses the inability to compile an accurate damage-cost function for economic prioritizations at the local level. It proposes that uncertainty over climate impacts and the efficacy of adaptation responses, in conjunction with the lack of economic data, high levels of economic informality and inequality make it difficult to link adaptation efforts to positive GDP impact in Durban. Instead, the research based its calculations of "benefits" on the number of people impacted and the extent of the welfare benefits imparted by the respective adaptation efforts. It also took into account the uncertainty over future events, capacity constraints, priorities of decision makers and the risk of maladaptation. The results were reported as benefit-cost ratios for 16 clusters of interventions (many of which were primarily the responsibility of one municipal department or agency) in each of four future scenarios (defined by minor or major climate change and weak or strong socio-institutional capacity). The paper presents and discusses the benefit-cost ratios and total benefits for each of the intervention clusters in each of the future scenarios. It emphasizes how these are influenced by choices of time frames. It also highlights how the most efficient interventions across all futures and time frames tend to be socio-institutional - for instance the creation of a cross-sectoral disaster management forum, sea level rise preparedness and early warning system, and creating climate change adaptation capacity within the water services unit. Ecosystem-based adaptation measures had moderate benefit-cost ratios, probably because in Durban the land that needs to be purchased for this is relatively expensive. Infrastructure-based clusters generally had the lowest benefit-cost ratios.Fire severity is thought to be an important determinant of landscape patterns of post-fire regeneration, yet there have been few studies of the effects of variation in fire severity at landscape scales on floristic diversity and composition, and none within alpine vegetation. Understanding how fire severity affects alpine vegetation is important because fire is relatively infrequent in alpine environments. Globally, alpine ecosystems are at risk from climate change, which, in addition to warming, is likely to increase the severity and frequency of fire in south-eastern Australia. Here we examine the effects of variation in fire severity on plant diversity and vegetation composition, 5years after the widespread fires of 2003. We used floristic data from two wide-spread vegetation types on the Bogong High Plains: open heathland and closed heathland. Three alternative models were tested relating variation in plant community attributes (e.g. diversity, ground cover of dominant species, amount of bare ground) to variation in fire severity. The models were (i) linear', attributes vary linearly with fire severity; (ii) intermediate disturbance', attributes are highest at intermediate fire severity and lowest at both low- and high-severity; and (iii) null', attributes are unaffected by fire severity. In both heathlands, there were few differences in floristic diversity, cover of dominant species and community composition, across the strong fire severity gradient. The null model was most supported in the vast majority of cases, with only limited support for either the linear and intermediate disturbance models. Our data indicate that in both heathlands, vegetation attributes in burnt vegetation were converging towards that of the unburnt state. We conclude that fire severity had little impact on post-fire regeneration, and that both closed and open alpine heathlands are resilient to variation in fire severity during landscape scale fires.Developing appropriate climate change adaptations to protect biodiversity requires taking into account the dynamics of agro-ecological and socio-economic change. A framework for approaching this problem was proposed, but not applied in detail, as part of a major biodiversity and climate change report prepared in Australia. This paper describes the first trial application of the method. It was applied across Vietnam as the Government is interested in identifying adaptation options and detailed data are readily available for its 65 provinces. The process involves identifying ecoregions and collating information for each region based on the current conditions and trends in biodiversity, population, income and agricultural production. Climate change scenarios are identified for each region, together with governance options. Educational needs and key adaptation actions are then identified for each region taking into account the agro-ecological and socio-economic input data. It is concluded that the framework could easily be applied in other countries and should assist the development of strategic adaptation options.Transportation has contributed to climate change and will most likely be impacted by changes in sea level, temperature, precipitation, and wind, for example. As the risk of climate change impacts become more imminent, pressure for adaptation within transportation agencies to address these impacts continues to rise. The most logical strategy is to integrate consideration of adaptation projects into the long-range transportation planning (LRTP) process. To do this, tools and experience are needed to assist transportation agencies. The Climate Change Adaptation Tool for Transportation (CCATT) is a step-by-step method to evaluate climate change scenarios and impacts, inventory at-risk existing and proposed infrastructure, and assess mitigation practices to identify supporting adaptation efforts. This paper focuses on the application of CCATT to the Mid-Atlantic region using a case study on the Wilmington Area Planning Council (WILMAPCO), the Metropolitan Planning Organization for northern Delaware. The results of the application and case study demonstrate the importance of climate change adaptation practices in long-range transportation planning. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)TE.1943-5436.0000515. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Attention toward climate adaptation has been growing among governments over the past decade. In the European Union (EU) alone, nine countries have national plans for adaptation (with more in preparation), there are some 30 sub-national plans, and every Member State has policies to address adaptation. Given the recent attention given toward this subject a question that arises is: can climate change adaptation be considered a policy field? As a unit of analysis, policy fields are widely studied in the social sciences. However, the definition of policy fields such as environmental policy or agricultural policy is taken for granted. Oddly for such a common concept, very little attention is paid to what policy fields are in and of themselves or how they can be identified. Given these shortcomings, this article first attempts to fill this gap by theoretically defining what a policy field is by identifying and assigning their characteristics and dynamics. Based upon a literature review, it shows that policy fields are three-dimensional entities comprised of substantive authority, institutional order, and substantive expertise. The second task of this article is to apply this definition to adaptation policy activity in England and determine whether adaptation can be considered a policy field there.With cities facing climate change, climate adaptation is necessary to reduce risks such as heat stress and flooding and maintain the goals of sustainable urban development. In climate change literature, the focus has been on developing a new dedicated policy domain for climate adaptation. Yet, empirical evidence shows that in practice actors are searching for solutions that not only serve climate adaptation, but integrate the adaptation objective in existing policy domains (e.g., urban planning, water management, public health). The integration of adaptation in other policy domains, also called "mainstreaming climate adaptation," can stimulate the effectiveness of policy making through combining objectives, increase efficient use of human and financial resources and ensure long-term sustainable investments. A better understanding of the process of mainstreaming is, however, lacking. The article introduces a conceptual model for mainstreaming climate adaptation to enhance our understanding of the concept as well as the barriers and opportunities that influence these integration processes and to explore strategies for overcoming barriers and creating opportunities. Two Dutch case studies-related to urban planning-are used to illustrate the value of the model. The cases demonstrate the dynamic process of mainstreaming and raise discussion of the appropriate criteria for evaluating mainstreaming in relation to the aims of climate adaptation. The paper concludes with an exploration of specific strategies to facilitate the mainstreaming of adaptation in existing and new policy domains.Mangrove forests provide important ecosystem services, including protecting coastlines from the impacts of extreme weather events, such as storm surge and erosion. Unfortunately, these same extreme weather events also degrade mangrove forests. Currently, there are no comprehensive financial mechanisms in place to ensure that mangroves are rehabilitated following storm damage. This article explores whether there is a legal basis for applying insurance to mangrove forests, to ensure that mangroves are rehabilitated to retain their protective functions. This article uses Australian insurance law as a case study, and first analyses whether the legal principles underpinning insurance can be extended to mangrove forests, and then addresses the practical difficulties involved in developing an insurance product of this type. This article concludes that mangrove insurance is technically feasible, and provides a series of recommendations for policy-makers and the insurance industry.Key limitations of integrated assessment models (IAMs) are their highly stylized and aggregated representation of climate damages and associated economic responses, as well as the omission of specific investments related to climate change adaptation. This paper proposes a framework for modeling climate impacts and adaptation that clarifies the relevant research issues and provides a template for making improvements. We identify five desirable characteristics of an ideal integrated assessment modeling platform, which we elaborate into a conceptual model that distinguishes three different classes of adaptation-related activities. Based on these elements we specify an impacts- and adaptation-centric IAM, whose optimality conditions are used to highlight the types of functional relationships necessary for realistic representations of adaptation-related decisions, the specific mechanisms by which these responses can be incorporated into IAMs, and the ways in which the inclusion of adaptation is likely to affect the simulations' results.Climatic variability and change is known to influence human migration patterns. Researchers increasingly see migration as one of a range of potential means by which populations may adapt to the future impacts of climate change. Modelling of climate change-related migration is a relatively new undertaking. This article provides a brief overview of current scholarly understanding of climate change-related migration processes, identifies recent developments and current challenges in modelling, and suggests opportunities for enhancing future modelling efforts. Given the lack of reliable global datasets on environmentally related migration, regional and sub-regional modelling of climate change effects on migration is where most developments are likely to emerge in the short-run. Such models, which can draw on a range of GIS-based and statistical approaches, at present make use of fairly general assumptions about migration behavior, and therefore best serve as gauges of potential trends and migration hotspots, and not as absolute predictors of future migrant numbers. Models will become increasingly sophisticated as scholarly understanding of underlying factors influencing migration behavior, such as risk perception, social networks, and labor market connections, is improved. Obtaining reliable data for use in such models will remain a significant challenge in coming years. International policymakers seeking to expand the predictive capacity of models are encouraged to use existing mechanisms such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to develop protocols and mechanisms for collecting and sharing reliable data on climate-related population movements.This article explores the potential for microhydro installations in Nepal to improve adaptive capacity in addition to their ability to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. After explaining its methods of data collection-namely field research and research interviews-the article explores the climate change adaptation benefits of microhydro plants being promoted under the Renewable Energy Development Project (REDP). Besides displacing fossil fuels, in particular kerosene for lighting, microhydro electrification offers an effective way of improving community assets and bolstering social resilience (thereby enhancing the adaptive capacity of communities there). Our own survey of REDP project sites reveals how microhydro units have improved community income levels, equalized gender roles, enhanced access to education and information, and reduced migration patterns. The article concludes by highlighting three key lessons-the role of extensive community mobilization, proactive capacity building for efficient electricity use, and the need for comprehensiveness-for those wishing to adapt to climate change in other rural and developing economies.Climate change is causing spatio-temporal shifts in environmental conditions, and species that are not able to track suitable environments may face increased risks of extinction. Assisted colonization, a form of translocation, has been proposed as a tool to help species survive the impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, translocations generally have a low success rate, a well-documented fact that is not considered in most of the recent literature on assisted colonization. One of the main impediments to translocation success is inadequate planning. In this review, we argue that by using well-known analytical tools such as species distribution models and population dynamics modelling we can maximize the success of assisted colonization. In particular, we present guidelines as to which questions should be investigated when planning assisted colonization and suggest methods for answering them. Finally, we also highlight further implementation and research issues that remain to be solved for assisted colonizations to be efficient climate change adaptation tools.Understanding farmers' perceptions of how rainfall fluctuates and changes is crucial in anticipating the impacts of changing climate patterns, as only when a problem is perceived will appropriate steps be taken to adapt to it. This article seeks to: (1) identify southern African farmers' perceptions of rainfall, rainfall variations, and changes; (2) examine the nature of meteorological evidence for the perceived rainfall variability and change; (3) document farmers' responses to rainfall variability; and (4) discuss why discrepancies may occur between farmers' perceptions and meteorological observations of rainfall. Semi-structured interviews were used to identify farmers' perceptions of rainfall changes in Botswana and Malawi. Resulting perceptions were examined in conjunction with meteorological data to assess perceived and actual rainfall with regards to: what was changing (onset, duration or cessation), and how it was changing (amount, frequency, intensity or inter-annual variability). Most farmers perceived that the rains used to start earlier and end later. Meteorological data provided no evidence to support farmer perceptions of rainfall starting as early as September (south Malawi) or October (Botswana); however, a high inter-annual variability in the timing of the onset was observed alongside an increasing number of dry days and declining amounts of rainfall at the onset and cessation of precipitation. While some rainfall patterns are associated with El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) fluctuations and larger-scale changes, one explanation for the differences between farmer perceptions and meteorological evidence is that rainfall changes can be easily confused with changes in farming system sensitivity. Our findings suggest that scientists, policymakers, and developers of climate adaptation projects need to be more in tune with farmers' and extension workers' understandings of how weather is changing in order to improve adaptation policy formulation and implementation.This paper provides empirical evidence of agricultural adaptation strategies being adopted in the Mid-Hills regions of Nepal in response to climate change. Farmers were interviewed across four districts and climate change observations were reported, most notably those of increased temperatures and unpredictable precipitation. Agricultural adaptation strategies adopted in response to climate change were varied, with agroforestry and organic farming being the most popular practices. Most adaptation strategies were thought to be development-facing actions to reduce vulnerability, rather than specifically addressing climate change. From this research it is evident that indigenous knowledge, financial support and increased accessibility all play a pivotal role for successful climate change adaptation in the Mid-Hills. This case study provides valuable evidence-based research of autonomous adaptation techniques in a highly climate-vulnerable location of Nepal. Recommendations are made for donors to learn from best-practice and adopt local knowledge when investing in climate change adaptation strategies to most effectively reduce the vulnerability of some of the world's poorest communities.Riparian ecosystems in the 21st century are likely to play a critical role in determining the vulnerability of natural and human systems to climate change, and in influencing the capacity of these systems to adapt. Some authors have suggested that riparian ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts due to their high levels of exposure and sensitivity to climatic stimuli, and their history of degradation. Others have highlighted the probable resilience of riparian ecosystems to climate change as a result of their evolution under high levels of climatic and environmental variability. We synthesize current knowledge of the vulnerability of riparian ecosystems to climate change by assessing the potential exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of their key components and processes, as well as ecosystem functions, goods and services, to projected global climatic changes. We review key pathways for ecological and human adaptation for the maintenance, restoration and enhancement of riparian ecosystem functions, goods and services and present emerging principles for planned adaptation. Our synthesis suggests that, in the absence of adaptation, riparian ecosystems are likely to be highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. However, given the critical role of riparian ecosystem functions in landscapes, as well as the strong links between riparian ecosystems and human well-being, considerable means, motives and opportunities for strategically planned adaptation to climate change also exist. The need for planned adaptation of and for riparian ecosystems is likely to be strengthened as the importance of many riparian ecosystem functions, goods and services will grow under a changing climate. Consequently, riparian ecosystems are likely to become adaptation 'hotspots' as the century unfolds.Many public health adaptation strategies have been identified in response to climate change. This report reviews current literature on health co-benefits and risks of these strategies to gain a better understanding of how they may affect health. A literature review was conducted electronically using English language literature from January 2000 to March 2012. Of 812 articles identified, 22 peer-reviewed articles that directly addressed health co-benefits or risks of adaptation were included in the review. The co-benefits and risks identified in the literature most commonly relate to improvements in health associated with adaptation actions that affect social capital and urban design. Health co-benefits of improvements in social capital have positive influences on mental health, independently of other determinants. Risks included reinforcing existing misconceptions regarding health. Health co-benefits of urban design strategies included reduced obesity, cardiovascular disease and improved mental health through increased physical activity, cooling spaces (e.g., shaded areas), and social connectivity. Risks included pollen allergies with increased urban green space, and adverse health effects from heat events through the use of air conditioning. Due to the current limited understanding of the full impacts of the wide range of existing climate change adaptation strategies, further research should focus on both unintended positive and negative consequences of public health adaptation.Climate changeinduced rises in sea level threaten to drastically reduce the areal extent of important salt marsh habitats for large numbers of waterfowl and waders. Furthermore, recent changes in management practice have rendered existent salt marshes unfavourable to many birds, as lack of grazing has induced an increase in high-sward communities on former good-quality marshes. Based on a high-resolution digital elevation model and two scenarios for projected rise in near-future sea levels, we employ an ArcMap allocation model to foresee the areal loss in salt marsh associated with these changes. In addition, we quantify the areal extent of inadequate salt marsh management in four EU Special Protection Areas for Birds, and demonstrate concurrent population dynamics in four species relying on managed habitats. We conclude by investigating potential compensation for climate changeinduced salt marsh losses by means of more efficient management. Our models indicate that by the end of this century 15 center dot 343 center dot 6% of existent salt marshes will be flooded due to rising sea levels, and that inadequate managed salt marsh presently makes up around 51 center dot 1% of total marshes. Thus, re-establishing extensive areas of well-managed marshes might counterbalance the loss expected from rising sea levels during the next century. In addition to positive effects on plant diversity, this will benefit energetically challenged herbivorous waterfowl such as light-bellied brent geese Branta bernicla hrota L. and increase potential recovery of wader populations with unfavourable conservation status such as black-tailed godwit Limosa limosa L., dunlin Calidris alpina L. and ruff Philomachus pugnax L. Synthesis and applications. Implementing environmentally friendly management schemes based on extensive grazing (around 1 cow per hectare) is an important initiative to counteract the accelerating climate changeinduced habitat loss in near-coastal areas across the globe, and to secure priority salt marsh habitats that support internationally important populations of breeding, wintering and staging waterfowl. However, this may only be a temporary solution that will have to be supplemented by increased reintegration with the sea and managed retreat of seawalls or near-coastal agricultural areas to effectively safeguard the future salt marsh biome.As the world's largest distributed store of fresh water, ground water plays a central part in sustaining ecosystems and enabling human adaptation to climate variability and change. The strategic importance of ground water for global water and food security will probably intensify under climate change as more frequent and intense climate extremes (droughts and floods) increase variability in precipitation, soil moisture and surface water. Here we critically review recent research assessing the impacts of climate on ground water through natural and human-induced processes as well as through groundwater-driven feedbacks on the climate system. Furthermore, we examine the possible opportunities and challenges of using and sustaining groundwater resources in climate adaptation strategies, and highlight the lack of groundwater observations, which, at present, limits our understanding of the dynamic relationship between ground water and climate.Political and media debate on the existence and causes of climate change has become increasingly factious in several western countries, often resting on claims and counter-claims about what most citizens really think. There are several well-established phenomena in psychology about how people perceive the prevalence of opinions, including the false consensus effect(1) (a tendency to overestimate how common one's 'own' opinion is) and pluralistic ignorance(2) (where most people privately reject an opinion, but assume incorrectly that most others accept it). We investigated these biases in people's opinions about the existence and causes of climate change. In two surveys conducted 12 months apart in Australia (n = 5,036; n = 5,030), respondents were asked their own opinion about the nature of climate change, and then asked to estimate levels of opinion among the general population. We demonstrate that opinions about climate change are subject to strong false consensus effects, that people grossly overestimate the numbers of people who reject the existence of climate change in the broader community, and that people with high false consensus bias are less likely to change their opinions.Climate models are seen by many to be unverifiable. However, near-term climate predictions up to 10 years into the future carried out recently with these models can be rigorously verified against observations. Near-term climate prediction is a new information tool for the climate adaptation and service communities, which often make decisions on near-term time scales, and for which the most basic information is unfortunately very scarce. The Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project set of co-ordinated climate-model experiments includes a set of near-term predictions in which several modelling groups participated and whose forecast quality we illustrate here. We show that climate forecast systems have skill in predicting the Earth's temperature at regional scales over the past 50 years and illustrate the trustworthiness of their predictions. Most of the skill can be attributed to changes in atmospheric composition, but also partly to the initialization of the predictions.In the coming decades, cities around the world will suffer impacts due to rising global temperatures. However, unlike climate change mitigation, urban adaptation to climate change remains an insignificant issue in our context. This article reviews the broader literature on climate change adaptation with a view to understanding the challenges and dimensions involved in the adaptation of cities to climate change. We identify six main challenges to adaptation. We characterize the existing adaptation strategies and provide examples of documented interventions in cities. Finally, we discuss the need to systematically evaluate and investigate the adaptation of cities to climate change.Strong scientific evidence supports the potential for serious global impacts due to climate change. While mitigation efforts are essential to slowing the threat of climate change, adaptation practices to build resilience to and protection from environmental impacts should be accelerated. This paper presents a methodology to integrate adaptation efforts into the long range transportation planning (LRTP) process, and describes a tool, Climate Change Adaptation Tool for Transportation (CCATT) to assist planners. Using a decision theoretic approach that recognizes uncertainty, climate change scenarios are evaluated based on the LRTP timeline. Since climate change impacts vary geographically, the methodology is intended to be repeatable, relevant, and regionally applicable. A case study is developed for the Mid-Atlantic region based on a Metropolitan Planning Organization in northern Delaware. The case study results reveal the effectiveness of the methodology to a real world application and the need for transportation adaptation in response to climate change.In this article, the authors address the challenge of including societal responses, society-environment interactions, discontinuity, and surprise in environmental scenario analysis. They do so through developing and testing a perspective-based simulation game for a typical Dutch river stretch. Concepts deriving from Cultural Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and Transition Theory provide the input for the game design. Players take on the role of water managers, responding to events and developments in the water-society system under specific realizations of a climate scenario. Responses include the choice for specific river management options, changing coalition perspectives, and changes in advocacy coalition membership. A pilot case study shows that the simulation game is a useful tool to explore possible future river management dynamics. It generates relevant insights in the water management strategies that may be chosen under future conditions, the possible drivers underlying future societal perspective change, and the way advocacy coalitions may interact. As such, the simulation game offers great potential for developing and assessing policy relevant climate adaptation pathways, in which water-society interaction, discontinuity, and surprise is taken explicitly into account. The main challenges for future research include reducing game complexity, better representing changes in the advocacy coalitions' strengths, and exploring more fundamental societal perspective shifts.Based on 10 years of participatory modeling experience, the authors developed a multilevel participatory modeling process that links national policy makers, local councils, and grassroots stakeholders using a combination of games and computerized simulations. The challenge was to allow the target groups to design and evaluate collective adaptations to climate change that combine new collective rules for local, regional, and national regulations. This article details and highlights the novelty of the methodological process, which allows stakeholders to codesign frameworks for their own behaviors and rules. The experiment uses games and models with soft rules and the stakeholders themselves incorporate their own perceptions both in the board and computerized games. This was shown to be an efficient way to reach assessments and proposals that are shared between local stakeholders and policy makers, and should thus help improve the design of policies to face up to climate changes.Increased resource investment in conservation is generating greater appreciation of the importance of ecological monitoring programmes to assess the effectiveness of conservation interventions in achieving their stated goals. A key component for developing such a programme is an appropriate conceptual model of ecosystem function and the effects of human activities on this. Tropical peat-swamp forests are a particularly important ecosystem for reducing carbon emissions and biodiversity conservation. This is leading to increased investment in their protection and, consequently, an increased need for effective ecological monitoring programmes and conceptual models of ecosystem function on which to base these. Here, I adapt previous conceptual models of ecosystem function developed for terrestrial forests and other wetland ecosystems, to create a habitat-specific model for tropical peat-swamp forests. This provides a tool to guide thinking in developing ecological monitoring studies in this habitat and understanding (i) ecosystem processes and function, (ii) the impact of human activities on these, and (iii) subsequent impacts on ecosystem services. This is relevant for monitoring the effectiveness of conservation interventions with varying goals in tropical peat-swamp forest, including emission reductions; and highlights considerations relevant for conservation management and ecological monitoring in other wetland habitats.Several levels of increasing complexity of transferring wave information from offshore to nearshore have been studied to quantify their influence on extreme beach erosion estimates. Beach profiles which have been monitored since 1976 were used to estimate extreme beach erosion and compared to predictions. Examination of the wave propagation assumptions revolves around two types of offshore to nearshore transfer: excluding or including wave breaking and bottom friction. A second complication is whether still water level variations (ocean tide plus storm surge) are included. The inclusion of various combinations of wave propagation processes other than shoaling and refraction in the wave transfer function changes on the extreme erosion distribution tail through lowering estimates above one year return period. This brings the predicted tails closer to the observations, but does not capture the upper limit of storm demand implied by the extensive beach profile data set Including wave breaking has a marked effect on probabilistic estimates of beach erosion. The inclusion of bottom friction is less significant. The inclusion of still water level variability in the wave transfer calculation had minimal impact on results for the case study site, where waves were transferred from offshore to water at 20 m depth. These changes were put into perspective by comparing them to changes resulting from limiting beach erosion by adjusting the statistical distributions of peak wave height and storm duration to have maximum limits. We conclude that the proposed improvements on wave transformation methods are as significant as limiting wave erosion potential and worth including. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mediterranean croplands are seasonally dry agroecosystems with low soil organic carbon (SOC) content and high risk of land degradation and desertification. The increase in SOC is of special interest in these systems, as it can help to build resilience for climate change adaptation while contributing to mitigate global warming through the sequestration of atmospheric carbon (C). We compared SOC change and C sequestration under a number of recommended management practices (RMPs) with neighboring conventional plots under Mediterranean climate (174 data sets from 79 references). The highest response in C sequestration was achieved by those practices applying largest amounts of C inputs (land treatment and organic amendments). Conservation tillage practices (no-tillage and reduced tillage) induced lower effect sizes but significantly promoted C sequestration, whereas no effect and negative net sequestration rates were observed for slurry applications and unfertilized treatments, respectively. Practices combining external organic amendments with cover crops or conservation tillage (combined management practices and organic management) showed very good performance in C sequestration. We studied separately the changes in SOC under organic management, with 80 data sets from 30 references. The results also suggest that the degree of intensification in C input rate is the main driver behind the relative C accumulation in organic treatments. Thus, highest net C sequestration rates were observed in most eco-intensive groups, such as "irrigated", "horticulture" and controlled experiments ("plot scale"). (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate and human-induced changes have created major challenges for attaining sustainable agriculture throughout the world. Water scarcity is one of the most serious challenges facing agricultural communities in the process of continued productivity. In striving to mitigate the vicissitudes presented by disasters, new paradigms that include resilience theory have been incorporated into studies of sustainability. Resilience of social-ecological systems is viewed as an important way of foreseeing and adapting to possible changes. This article explores the relationship between resilience and sustainability. Also, the types of social strategies that exist for building resilience among farmers and their households to support sustainable agriculture in the conditions of water scarcity are examined.Climate adaptation has emerged as a mainstream risk management strategy for assisting in maintaining socio-ecological systems within the boundaries of a safe operating space. Yet, there are limits to the ability of systems to adapt. Here, we introduce the concept of an. adaptation frontier., which is defined as a socio-ecological system's transitional adaptive operating space between safe and unsafe domains. A number of driving forces are responsible for determining the sustainability of systems on the frontier. These include path dependence, adaptation/development deficits, values conflicts and discounting of future loss and damage. The cumulative implications of these driving forces are highly uncertain. Nevertheless, the fact that a broad range of systems already persist at the edge of their frontiers suggests a high likelihood that some limits will eventually be exceeded. The resulting system transformation is likely to manifest as anticipatory modification of management objectives or loss and damage. These outcomes vary significantly with respect to their ethical implications. Successful navigation of the adaptation frontier will necessitate new paradigms of risk governance to elicit knowledge that encourages reflexive reevaluation of societal values that enable or constrain sustainability.We studied the relationship between assessments of water mass formation estimated by thermodynamic and kinematic methods by applying both methods to the Subtropical Mode Water (STMW) and Central Mode Water (CMW) formation regions of the North Pacific. We used long-term outputs of a high-resolution general circulation model under climatological normal year forcings to calculate the water mass transformation rate and its density derivative (the net formation rate) and to examine the roles of mixing, shortwave penetration, and mesoscale eddies. Diagnosis of the thermodynamic relationship indicated that the transformation rate associated with surface density flux largely explained the net transformation rate. The difference of these rates, the total mixing effect, was relatively small compared with previous estimates. Explicit and implicit mixing largely explained the total mixing effect. Diagnosis of the kinematic relationship indicated that the annual subduction rate could be calculated from the net transformation rate and the open boundary volume flux over the analysis region. Comparison of both methods implied that the source of subducted STMW was determined mainly by the transformation associated with surface density flux, but this conclusion was not true for CMW. The modeled effects of internal mixing and volume flux from the north (Oyashio Current) also became important in the formation of CMW. Omission of shortwave penetration led to an error in the air-sea transformation and formation rates in the STMW and CMW regions. We also found the important roles of mesoscale eddies in the transformation and formation of mode waters.The quantification of uncertainties in projections of climate impacts on river streamflow is highly important for climate adaptation purposes. In this study, we present a methodology to separate uncertainties arising from the climate model (CM), the statistical postprocessing (PP) scheme, and the hydrological model (HM). We analyzed ensemble projections of hydrological changes in the Alpine Rhine (Eastern Switzerland) for the near-term and far-term scenario periods 2024-2050 and 2073-2099 with respect to 1964-1990. For the latter scenario period, the model ensemble projects a decrease of daily mean runoff in summer (-32.2%, range [-45.5% to -8.1%]) and an increase in winter (+41.8%, range [+4.8% to +81.7%]). We applied an analysis of variance model combined with a subsampling procedure to assess the importance of different uncertainty sources. The CMs generally are the dominant source in summer and autumn, whereas, in winter and spring, the uncertainties due to the HMs and the statistical PP gain importance and even partly dominate. In addition, results show that the individual uncertainties from the three components are not additive. Rather, the associated interactions among the CM, the statistical PP scheme, and the HM account for about 5%-40% of the total ensemble uncertainty. The results indicate, in distinction to some previous studies, that none of the investigated uncertainty sources are negligible, and some of the uncertainty is not attributable to individual modeling chain components but rather depends upon interactions. Citation: Bosshard, T., M. Carambia, K. Goergen, S. Kotlarski, P. Krahe, M. Zappa, and C. Schar (2013), Quantifying uncertainty sources in an ensemble of hydrological climate-impact projections, Water Resour. Res., 49, 1523-1536, doi: 10.1029/2011WR011533.Solutions to climate change have been academically criticized for their continued economic growth, managerialism and lack of real politics. In comparison, the IPCC's socio-economic assessments of climate change have accentuated the ethical implications of their own policy recommendations. Our analysis of ten IPCC reports (19902012) shows a turn from a claimed non-political position in human-induced climate change to an outspoken ethical position in climate-induced disasters. We argue that a professionalization of climate ethics is sought through ecological reason, specifically by calls for resilience to foster adaptable subjects. This neoliberal position leans on a problematization of vulnerable subjects' resistance to social adaptation, underpinned by an aim to redirect resistance towards physical disasters to stimulate climate adaptation. Conclusively, climate ethical mastery is formed by detailed elaborations of how the vulnerable subject should not only subsume to ecological reason, but also ethically embrace physical threats and dangers as if productive of life supportive qualities. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.This paper analyzes the vicious spiral between climate change impacts, ecosystem degradation and increased risk of climate-related disasters; secondly, it defines the central role of ecosystem management in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and their multifaceted linkages; and thirdly, it assesses the challenges for enhanced ecosystem management for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Given the increasing importance of ecosystem services and management in adapting and responding to climate change impacts and associated disaster risks, the paper concludes that political commitment at the highest level is urgently needed if ecosystem management is to have the adequate weight it deserves in the post-2012 climate change agreement. It is further recommended that adequate financial, technological and knowledge resources be allocated for integrating ecosystem management in the climate change and disaster risk reduction portfolios, including within national policy-setting, capacity building, planning and practices, particularly in developing countries vulnerable to climate change impacts and increased risks of climate-related disasters.This article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in light of the UN Watercourses Convention. The IWT is, to a large extent, still relevant but must incorporate contemporary environmental standards and the social realities that are impacting water resources. Proposals for improving the IWT include the incorporation of provisions related to joint research initiatives, optimal use of available resources through mutually negotiated trade-offs, a joint climate change adaptation strategy, consideration of environmental flow needs, and joint water development and energy generation.Too little attention has been paid to the psychological factors (e.g., beliefs and perceptions) that determine the acceptability of conservation measures, despite the fact that all conservation occurs within a social context. Climate change in particular will demand adaptation strategies that may be cognitively difficult to accept. We conducted a survey online (n = 312) to examine preferences and perceived risks associated with a set of proposed adaptation strategies in a sample of the public. Preferences for proposed adaptation policies were significantly and negatively correlated with perceived risk in every case. Preferences also exhibited widespread conservatism with the greatest acceptance for measures most similar to the status quo, while environmental worldview and emotions of fear and anger appeared to influence perceived risk and acceptability. These results suggest that conservation planning should include considerations for risk perceptions, and greater support for certain conservation measures may be generated by deemphasizing their perceived novelty and emphasizing their contemporary usage. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable water systems often comprise complex combinations of traditional and new system components that mimic natural processes. These green systems aim to protect public health and safety, and restore natural and human landscapes. Green infrastructure elements such as most sustainable drainage systems trap storm water but may contaminate groundwater. There is a need to summarize recent trends in sustainable water systems management in a focused document. The aim of this special issue is therefore to disseminate and share scientific findings on novel sustainable water systems addressing recent problems and opportunities. This special issue focuses on the following key topics: climate change adaptation and vulnerability assessment of water resources systems; holistic water management; carbon credits; potable water savings; sustainable water technologies; nutrient management; holistic storm water reuse; water and wastewater infrastructure planning; ecological status of watercourses defined by the Water Framework Directive. The combined knowledge output advances the understanding of sustainable water, wastewater and storm water systems in the developed and developing world. The research highlights the need for integrated decision-support frameworks addressing the impact of climate change on local and national water resources management strategies involving all relevant stakeholders at all levels.The African continent is facing the potential of a $183.6 billion USD liability to repair and maintain roads damaged from temperature and precipitation changes directly related to predicted climate change through 2100. This cost is strictly to retain the current road inventory. This cost does not include costs associated with impacts to critically needed new roads. In many African countries, limited or non-existent funds for adaptation and mitigation are challenging these countries to identify the threats that are posed by climate change, develop adaptation approaches to the predicted changes, incorporate changes into mid-range and long-term development plans, and secure funding for the proposed and necessary adaptations. Existing studies have attempted to quantify the impact of climate change on infrastructure assets that will be affected by climate change in the coming decades. The current study extends these efforts by specifically addressing the effect of climate change on the African road infrastructure. The study identifies both total costs and opportunity costs of repairing and maintaining infrastructure due to increased stressors from climate change. Proactive and reactive costs are examined for six climate scenarios, with costs ranging, respectively, from an average of $22 million USD to $54 million USD annually per country. A regional analysis shows contrast between impacts in five areas of the continent, with impacts ranging from 22 % opportunity cost to 168 %. These costs have the potential to delay critical infrastructure development on the continent and present a challenge to policy makers balancing short-term needs with long-term planning.We investigate the impacts on the biophysical economy, employment and environment of a transition scenario to an energy-efficient, 100% renewable electricity (RE) system by 2060, based on wind, solar and biomass technologies, and an introduction of electric vehicles. We employ a CSIRO process-based model of the physical activity of Australia's economy and environmental resources, the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework. The RE systems are assumed to be manufactured in Australia to identify possible employment benefits. In comparison with the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, on a national scale, the RE scenario has much lower economy-wide net emissions, remaining below contemporary levels and becoming zero in the electricity sector by 2060. Compared with BAU, the RE scenario also has significantly lower industrial water use, somewhat higher materials use, slightly lower unemployment, lower net foreign debt (relative to a GDP proxy) and, resulting from the growth in electric vehicles, reduced oil imports. The GDP per capita growth, based on the physical stocks of capital and labour, is virtually the same in both scenarios. Hence, from the viewpoint of the biophysical economy, there are no major barriers to implementing policies to facilitate the transition to a 100% renewable electricity system for Australia. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing evidence demonstrates that unsustainable land use practices result in human-induced drought conditions, and inadequate water supplies constrain land development in growing cities. Nonetheless, organizational barriers impair coordinated land and water management. Land planning is strongly influenced by political realities and interest groups, while water management is focused on the single-minded goal of providing reliable water for future development, often set apart from other priorities. Survey results from Portland, OR, and Phoenix, AZ, show that water managers and land planners are generally aware of the physical interconnections between land and water, but there is little cross-sector involvement in the two cities. Focusing on shared concerns about outdoor water use, climate variability, and water-sensitive urban design is a fruitful first step in integrating the practices of land planning and water management for climate adaptation and sustainable resource use.This paper addresses the relevance of agricultural seed systems in terms of the production and dissemination of seed in the context of adaptation to climate change. Using nationwide household level data from Malawi, we examine the hypothesis that climatic shocks increase small-scale farmers' reliance on purchased seeds, in particular from local seed markets, an element of the informal seed sector. The results are used to discuss the role of seed systems for potentially supporting small-scale farmers' adaptation mechanisms in the face of climate change in Malawi. This study has implications for other similar sub-Saharan African contexts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hotels are one of the tourism businesses most vulnerable to climate change because of their fixed assets. Results are presented of a baseline study that explores the awareness, attitudes, and behaviours of Taiwanese tourist hotels with respect to climate change and its potential impacts as well as their overall environmental practices. Tourist hotels are defined by the Taiwanese government as hotel establishments of over 80 rooms in rural areas and 50 rooms in city areas. Although the 104 tourist hotels represent only 3.7% of the total number of hotels in Taiwan, they account for over half of international guest nights and had a combined revenue of over TWD$43 billion in 2010. Questionnaires were distributed via email to all tourist hotels in Taiwan and 45 valid returns were received, representing an effective response rate of 43.3%. The results of research illustrate the level of understanding of climate change within Taiwanese tourist hotels and identify the specific climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies that tourist hotels have initiated. Access to such baseline data provides a potentially significant contribution to evaluating the response of the Taiwanese accommodation sector to environment change as well as providing a basis for further comparative studies and benchmarking.This paper reports research into adaptation to climate change for regional tourism destinations. It explains the application of a regional tourism adaptation framework model to the Surf Coast destination, within the state of Victoria, Australia. It then examines the usefulness of the framework model in guiding a vulnerability resilience assessment of the destination and developing strategies to increase the destinations resilience, resistance and readiness. A Delphi study was conducted, using a panel of experts, to determine the major risks and opportunities for tourism in the region as well as appropriate adaptation options. Although many of the findings focused on the best way to manage the negative bio-physical impacts of climate change, such as increased bushfire risk or more frequent and intense storms, several opportunities also became apparent including the potential to reduce seasonality. Tourism destination management is already a complex area and the introduction of climate change provides yet another challenge for managers and policy-makers. Consequently, the development and use of a regional adaptation framework can play an important role in assisting destination planning and management.Dynamics and practical predictability of extratropical low-frequency variability (LFV) in Northern Hemisphere winter are examined in the framework of a two-dimensional (2D) stochastic differential equation (SDE) on the phase space spanned by two leading empirical orthogonal function modes of low-pass-filtered 500-hPa geopotential height variations. The drift vector and diffusion tensor of the 2D SDE with multiplicative noise are theoretically connected with deterministic and stochastic error growth, respectively; both are statistically estimated from a reanalysis dataset. Projected onto the 2D phase space is the practical predictability of the LFV estimated by the 10-day forecast spread based on the 1-month ensemble prediction operationally conducted by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). It is shown that the forecast spread of the LFV prediction by the JMA model for a relatively shorter prediction period when the model bias does not hamper the forecast is primarily explained by the stochastic error growth associated with the diffusion tensor and the deterministic error growth due to the Jacobian of the drift vector plays a secondary role. A non-Gaussian PDF of the LFV is also related to the norm of the diffusion tensor. Hence, the stochastic processes mostly control the dynamics and predictability of the LFV in the 2D phase space.A proper coastal management requires an accurate estimation of sea level trends locally and globally. It is claimed that the sea levels are rising following an exponential growth since the 1990s, and because of that coastal communities are facing huge challenges. Many local governments throughout Australia, including those on the coast, have responded to the various warnings about changes in climate and increases in sea levels by undertaking detailed climate change risk management exercises. These exercises, which use projections passed on by the relevant state bodies, are expensive, but still a fraction of the cost of the capital works that they recommend. Several councils have complained to an Australian Productivity Commission report on climate change adaptation they do not have the money for the capital works required. It is shown here that the exponential growth claim is not supported by any measurement of enough length and quality when properly analysed. The tide gauge results do not support the exponential growth theory. The projections by the relevant state bodies should therefore be revised by considering the measurements and not the models to compute the future sea level rises for the next 30 years following the same trend experienced over the last 30 years. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New York State (NYS) is a geographically diverse area susceptible to climate change, but trends in climate extreme indicators have not been extensively studied. Our objectives are to describe temporal and spatial trends in various extreme indicators and their sensitivity to climate change and to demonstrate geographic differences in indicator trends in NYS. We analyzed data from the US Historical Climatology Network for NYS from 1948 to 2008. We assessed trends in 15 temperature and 11 precipitation indicators using linear regression with bootstrapping in SAS and RClimDex software. The indicators showing the most substantial change per decade were frost days (-0.97 days per decade) and diurnal temperature (-0.11A degrees C). For precipitation indicators, the number of heavy precipitation days (+0.99 days), consecutive wet days (+ 0.42 days), the total wet day precipitation (+30.19 mm), and the simple daily intensity index (+0.18 mm/day) showed the most change per decade. The most representative indicators that showed significant trends for more than half of the stations were number of cool nights, diurnal temperature, and number of frost days and increase in total wet day precipitation and simple daily intensity index for precipitation. The most sensitive regions for changes in extreme indicators were the eastern and Great Lakes regions of NYS. In light of these consistent temporal trends of warming and increasing precipitation in NYS with large geographic variation, the indicators that have been identified should be further evaluated and assessed for their health impact. Geographical differences in climate trends may be of use in informing policy and resource allocation for climate change adaptation.Premise of study: Understanding the relationship between climate, adaptation, and population structure is of fundamental importance to botanists because these factors are crucial for the evolution of biodiversity and the response of species to future climate change. Panicum hallii is an emerging model system for perennial grass and bioenergy research, yet very little is known about the relationship between climate and population structure in this system. Methods: We analyzed geographic population differentiation across 39 populations of P. hallii along a longitudinal transect from the savannas of central Texas through the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. A combination of morphological and genetic (microsatellite) analysis was used to explore patterns of population structure. Key results: We found strong differentiation between high elevation western desert populations and lower elevation eastern populations of P. hallii, with a pronounced break in structure occurring in western Texas. In addition, we confirmed that there are high levels of morphological and genetic structure between previous recognized varieties (var. hallii and var. filipes) within this species. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that patterns of population structure within P. hallii may be driven by climatic variation over space. Overall, this study lays the groundwork for future studies on the genetics of local adaptation and reproductive isolation in this system.An investigation of the shear behaviour of steel-fibre-reinforced geopolymer concrete beams is presented. Shear tests were conducted on five series of 250 mm deep by 120 mm wide beams spanning 2250 mm. The beams did not contain conventional web reinforcement (stirrups), but were reinforced with end-hooked and straight steel fibres in various fibre volumetric dosages, ranging from 0 to 1.5%. The test results show that the shear strength increases significantly as the fibre content increases and that improvement in the cracking behaviour is achieved through the addition of fibres. The results of the test were compared with the fib Model Code 2010 alternative model for shear strength of steel-fibre-reinforced concrete in combination with the variable engagement model for the determination of the tensile strength of steel-fibre-reinforced concrete. A good correlation is observed for the predictive model with the test data.Climate change adaptation indicators have played a critical role in the increased understanding of potential climate change impacts. In this research, 6 climate change adaptation indicators were identified for Can Tho City in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam: (1) Rice production from wastewater during winter-spring crop; (2) % of irrigation water demand satisfied by treated wastewater; (3) % of nutrient demand satisfied by treated wastewater; (4) % remaining flow downstream of Can Tho in the Hau River; (5) environmental benefits; and (6) total investment cost for wastewater treatment. These indices were selected to assess various options/strategies for wastewater management and reuse in Can Tho City as a means to improve the City's resilience to climate change. From an environmental perspective, this study shows the benefits for Can Tho City to set up a strategy to treat and reuse wastewater from catfish farming as the priority among four assessed scenarios with different climate change impact factors. It is concluded that adaptation can be assessed by the indicators because they can define whether adaptation policies and measures are implemented and whether vulnerability is reduced through effective actions.We propose a generic framework to characterize climate change adaptation uncertainty according to three dimensions: level, source and nature. Our framework is different, and in this respect more comprehensive, than the present UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) approach and could be used to address concerns that the IPCC approach is oversimplified. We have studied the role of uncertainty in climate change adaptation planning using examples from four Danish water related sectors. The dominating sources of uncertainty differ greatly among issues; most uncertainties on impacts are epistemic (reducible) by nature but uncertainties on adaptation measures are complex, with ambiguity often being added to impact uncertainties. Strategies to deal with uncertainty in climate change adaptation should reflect the nature of the uncertainty sources and how they interact with risk level and decision making: (i) epistemic uncertainties can be reduced by gaining more knowledge; (ii) uncertainties related to ambiguity can be reduced by dialogue and knowledge sharing between the different stakeholders; and (iii) aleatory uncertainty is, by its nature, non-reducible. The uncertainty cascade includes many sources and their propagation through technical and socio-economic models may add substantially to prediction uncertainties, but they may also cancel each other. Thus, even large uncertainties may have small consequences for decision making, because multiple sources of information provide sufficient knowledge to justify action in climate change adaptation.Whilst increasing mobility leads to people regularly experiencing new climatic conditions, understanding how people actually adapt to new regimes of heat in their everyday lives is currently under researched. It is often assumed that increased demand for air conditioning will be an automatic response to heat, but widespread international variation in the current use of cooling technologies suggests a more complex situation. As one means of exploring how thermal comfort is achieved under different climatic conditions, this paper reports on the findings of a pilot study exploring adaptive practices in relation to heat with people who have recently migrated to Spain. The paper explores how thermal comfort is accomplished through adaptation in everyday activities including cooling technologies, clothing and routines and rhythms. The paper emphasises the importance of attending to how new routines emerge in the context of relocation and highlights a need for further research to understand how changing climatic conditions may serve to reconfigure the production of comfort.Climate change is a fundamental challenge for which agriculture is sensitive and vulnerable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified relevant information as key to enabling appropriate climate adaptation and mitigation action. Information specifically directed to farmers can be found, for example, in specialized farming magazines. While recent studies examine how national news media frame climate change, less-if any-studies have addressed climate framings and coverage in specializedmedia. Media framings are storylines that provide meaning by communicating how and why an issue should be seen as a problem, how it should be handled, and who is responsible for it. This paper analyses the framings and coverage of climate change in two Swedish specialized farming magazines from 2000 to 2009. It examines the extent of the climate change coverage, the content of the media items, and the dominant framings underlying their climate change coverage. The study identifies: increased coverage of climate change starting in 2007; frequent coverage of agriculture's contribution to climate change, climate change impacts on agriculture, and consequences of climate politics for agriculture; and four prominent frames: conflict, scientific certainty, economic burden, and action. The paper concludes that climate change communicators addressing farmers and agricultural extension officers should pay attention to how these frames may be interpreted by different target audiences. Research is needed on how specialized media reports on climate-related issues and how science-based climate information is understood by different groups of farmers and which other factors influence farmers' engagement in climate mitigation and adaptation.Increasing frequency, intensity and duration of severe weather events are posing major challenges to global food security and livelihoods of rural people. Agriculture has evolved through adaptation to local circumstances for thousands of years. Local experience in responding to severe weather conditions, accumulated over generations and centuries, is valuable for developing adaptation options to current climate change. This study aimed to: (i) identify tree species that reduce vulnerability of cropping systems under climate variability; and (ii) develop a method for rapidly assessing vulnerability and exploring strategies of smallholder farmers in rural areas exposed to climate variability. Participatory Rural Appraisal methods in combination with Geographical Information Systems tools and statistical analysis of meteorological data were used to evaluate local vulnerability to climate change and to investigate local adaptation measures in two selected villages in Vietnam, one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The low predictability of severe weather events makes food crops, especially grain production, insecure. This study shows that while rice and rain- fed crops suffered over 40 % yield losses in years of extreme drought or flood, tree- based systems and cattle were less affected. 13 tree species performed well under the harsh local climate conditions in home and forest gardens to provide income, food, feed and other environmental benefits. Thus, this research suggests that maintenance and enhancement of locally evolved agroforestry systems, with high resilience and multiple benefits, can contribute to climate change adaptation.This paper presents a cross-disciplinary framework for assessment of climate change adaptation to increased precipitation extremes considering pluvial flood risk as well as additional environmental services provided by some of the adaptation options. The ability of adaptation alternatives to cope with extreme rainfalls is evaluated using a quantitative flood risk approach based on urban inundation modeling and socio-economic analysis of corresponding costs and benefits. A hedonic valuation model is applied to capture the local economic gains or losses from more water bodies in green areas. The framework was applied to the northern part of the city of Aarhus, Denmark. We investigated four adaptation strategies that encompassed laissez-faire, larger sewer pipes, local infiltration units, and open drainage system in the urban green structure. We found that when taking into account environmental amenity effects, an integration of open drainage basins in urban recreational areas is likely the best adaptation strategy, followed by pipe enlargement and local infiltration strategies. All three were improvements compared to the fourth strategy of no measures taken.This study develops a framework to quantify the flood risk vulnerability in South Korea by considering climate change impacts. On the basis of the concept of exposure-sensitivity-adaptive capacity, 21 proxy variables are selected and screened, and their weights are determined for their objectivity by using the Delphi technique. The data from 16 provinces of South Korea and the weighting values of all proxy variables are fuzzified to consider uncertainty. In addition, the National Center for Atmosphere Research Community Climate System Model 3 (CCSM3) in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emission Scenario (SRES) A1B, A2, B1, A1T, A1 FI, and B2 are used for future climate data (2020s, 2050s, and 2080s). Therefore, 19 flood risk vulnerabilities of South Korea, including present conditions, are quantitatively evaluated and compared. Three Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques - Weighted Sum Method (WSM), Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Situation (TOPSIS), and fuzzy TOPSIS - are used to quantify all spatial vulnerabilities. As a result, some fuzzy TOPSIS rankings are quite different to those of WSM and TOPSIS, and the ranking patterns of the 19 climate change scenarios are also derived in a dissimilar way. In addition, if the variances of the provinces' rankings are considered, some provinces showing low values can plan their climate change adaptation strategies by taking into consideration their relatively certain rankings. In the end, the vulnerability assessment for climate change should consider not only various MCDM techniques but also the uncertainty of weighting values and proxy variable data. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Components of structural diversity of abandoned chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.)-dominated and co-dominated forests along an altitudinal gradient in the Belasitsa mountain region of Southwest Bulgaria were evaluated, including: (i) tree species composition; (ii) differentiation in diameter, height and age; (iii) tree crown defoliation and light transmission; and (iv) regeneration composition and abundance. Competition between tree species and its influence on current stand structure were analysed. Lack of management had triggered rapid structural and successional development in formerly chestnut mono-dominated forests which have now been invaded by midseral and later seral vegetation dominated by European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and sessile oak (Quercus petraea Liebl.). Distribution of sample plots according to diameter differentiation for chestnut showed positive differentiation values (dominance of chestnut with respect to other species) in 43 of a total of 46 plots sampled. Structure is much more balanced in terms of height differentiation. In the absence of management, chestnut blight has been a major stress factor and is likely an important driver of chestnut decline. The proportion of chestnut trees infected by chestnut blight disease exceeded 80% in 28 plots. Nearly one third (31%) of all sampled trees were characterized by a degree of defoliation of more than 60%. Despite the low levels of light at the forest floor, the density of the regeneration stratum was relatively high (averaging 19,300 ha(-1)). An important finding is the retained regeneration potential of chestnut (31% of all seedlings). Chestnut seedlings, however, appeared to be poorly adapted to shading and rapidly declined in density and growth while seedlings of most competitors survived longer and dominated the regeneration stratum. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Stand-level spatial pattern influences key aspects of resilience and ecosystem function such as disturbance behavior, regeneration, snow retention, and habitat quality in frequent-fire pine and mixed-conifer forests. Reference sites, from both pre-settlement era reconstructions and contemporary forests with active fire regimes, indicate that frequent-fire forests are complex mosaics of individual trees, tree clumps, and openings. There is a broad scientific consensus that restoration treatments should seek to restore this mosaic pattern in order to restore resilience and maintain ecosystem function. Yet, methods to explicitly incorporate spatial reference information into restoration treatments are not widely used. In addition, targets from reference conditions must be critically evaluated in light of climate change. We used a spatial clump identification algorithm to quantify reference patterns based on a specified inter-tree distance that defines when trees form clumps. We used climatic water balance parameters, down-scaled climate projections, and plant associations to assess our historical reference sites in the context of projected future climate and identify climate analog reference conditions. Spatial reference information was incorporated into a novel approach to prescription development, tree marking, and monitoring based on viewing stand structure and pattern in terms of individuals, clumps, and openings (ICO) in a mixed-conifer forest restoration case study. We compared the results from the ICO approach with simulations of traditional basal area and spacing-based thinning prescriptions in terms of agreement with reference conditions and functional aspects of resilience. The ICO method resulted in a distribution of tree clumps and openings within the range of reference patterns, while the basal area and spacing approaches resulted in uniform patterns inconsistent with known reference conditions. Susceptibility to insect mortality was lower in basal area and spacing prescriptions, but openings and corresponding opportunities for regeneration and in situ climate adaptation were fewer. Operationally, the method struck a balance between providing clear targets for spatial pattern directly linked to reference conditions, sufficient flexibility to achieve other restoration objectives, and implementation efficiency. The need to track pattern targets during implementation and provide immediate feedback to marking crews was a key lesson. The ICO method, especially when used in combination with climate analog reference targets, offers a practical approach to restoring spatial patterns that are likely to enhance resilience and climate adaptation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There has been a recent increase of interest within the academic literature on the justice issues posed by climate change and the human responses to its present and forecasted effects. In two parts (here and in a previous article), we review and synthesize the recent literature by asking what climate justice concerns have been identified within three related realms: (i) the characterization of climate change itself and the assignment of responsibility for that change; (ii) the differential or uneven impacts of climate change; and (iii) the actions taken to address the problems associated with climate change, including both mitigation and adaptation. Here in Part 2, we focus on the justice concerns of climate action, examining the scholarship on climate change mitigation mechanisms formulated at the international level (i.e., REDD+, CDM) and climate change adaptation projects and finance. We argue that geographers are well-positioned to conduct (and already well engaged in) research on the local climate justice paradoxes emerging from the currently uncritical focus of climate action policy on justice at the level of the national state.This article uses the need for more inspiration in people to act on climate change as a basis for exploring some thoughts on the societal and environmental challenges of climate change. It aims to provide ways of interpreting what is often presented on climate change without considering how the audience receives that information and might or might not be inspired to take action based on it. Different meanings of "change" are examined in the context of "climate change." The term "adaptation" is similarly analyzed. Based on the understanding of those terms, four notions are defined and outlined in relation to decision-making for climate change adaptation: Ignorance versus "Ignore-ance," surprise, foreseeability, and forecasting by analogy. The conclusions explore the interlinkages between society and the environment as well as how to turn lessons identified into lessons that are actually learned in order to be implemented. Achieving inspiration is not straightforward, but without it, the future will be bleak under a changing society and environment.Changes in the metastability of the Southern Hemisphere 500-hPa circulation are examined using both cluster analysis techniques and split-flow blocking indices. The cluster methodology is a purely data-driven approach for parameterization whereby a multiscale approximation to nonstationary dynamical processes is achieved through optimal sequences of locally stationary fast vector autoregressive factor (VARX) processes and some slow (or persistent) hidden process switching between them. Comparison is made with blocking indices commonly used in weather forecasting and climate analysis to identify dynamically relevant metastable regimes in the 500-hPa circulation in both reanalysis and Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) datasets. The analysis characterizes the metastable regime in both reanalysis and model datasets prior to 1978 as positive and negative phases of a hemispheric midlatitude blocking state with the southern annular mode (SAM) associated with a transition state. Post-1978, the SAM emerges as a true metastable state replacing the negative phase of the hemispheric blocking pattern. The hidden state frequency of occurrences exhibits strong trends. The blocking pattern dominates in the early 1980s, and then gradually decreases. There is a corresponding increase in the SAM frequency of occurrence. This trend is largely evident in the reanalysis summer and spring but was not evident in the AMIP dataset. Further comparison with the split-flow blocking indices reveals a superficial correspondence between the cluster hidden state frequency of occurrences and split-flow indices. Examination of composite states shows that the blocking indices capture splitting of the zonal flow whereas the cluster composites reflect coherent block formation. Differences in blocking climatologies from the respective methods are discussed.We reviewed existing and planned adaptation activities of federal, tribal, state, and local governments and the private sector in the United States (U.S.) to understand what types of adaptation activities are underway across different sectors and scales throughout the country. Primary sources of review included material officially submitted for consideration in the upcoming 2013 U.S. National Climate Assessment and supplemental peer-reviewed and grey literature. Although substantial adaptation planning is occurring in various sectors, levels of government, and the private sector, few measures have been implemented and even fewer have been evaluated. Most adaptation actions to date appear to be incremental changes, not the transformational changes that may be needed in certain cases to adapt to significant changes in climate. While there appear to be no one-size-fits-all adaptations, there are similarities in approaches across scales and sectors, including mainstreaming climate considerations into existing policies and plans, and pursuing no- and low-regrets strategies. Despite the positive momentum in recent years, barriers to implementation still impede action in all sectors and across scales. The most significant barriers include lack of funding, policy and institutional constraints, and difficulty in anticipating climate change given the current state of information on change. However, the practice of adaptation can advance through learning by doing, stakeholder engagements (including "listening sessions"), and sharing of best practices. Efforts to advance adaptation across the U.S. and globally will necessitate the reduction or elimination of barriers, the enhancement of information and best practice sharing mechanisms, and the creation of comprehensive adaptation evaluation metrics.Species are largely predicted to shift poleward as global temperatures increase, with this fingerprint of climate change being already observed across a range of taxonomic groups and, mostly temperate, geographic locations(1-5). However, the assumption of uni-directional distribution shifts does not account for complex interactions among temperature, precipitation and species-specific tolerances(6), all of which shape the direction and magnitude of changes in a species' climatic niche. We analysed 60 years of past climate change on the Australian continent, assessing the velocity of changes in temperature and precipitation, as well as changes in climatic niche space for 464 Australian birds. We show large magnitude and rapid rates of change in Australian climate over the past 60 years resulting in high-velocity and multi-directional, including equatorial, shifts in suitable climatic space for birds (ranging from 0.1 to 7.6 km yr(-1), mean 1.27 km yr(-1)). Overall, if measured only in terms of poleward distribution shifts, the fingerprint of climate change is underestimated by an average of 26% in temperate regions of the continent and by an average of 95% in tropical regions. We suggest that the velocity of movement required by Australian species to track their climatic niche may be much faster than previously thought and that the interaction between temperature and precipitation changes will result in multi-directional distribution shifts globally.We explore the use of large ensembles of climate scenarios to inform climate change adaptation in response to hydrological impacts on the freshwater environment, using a sensitive chalk river in south east England to illustrate the approach. The climateprediction.net experiment provides large ensembles of transient climate series from 1920 to 2080. We use 246 transient climate series in the CATCHMOD rainfall-run-off model to develop large ensembles of plausible river flows for the River Itchen. This transient ensemble allows the exploration of how flows may change through the twenty-first century, and demonstrates the range of possible consequences for freshwater ecosystems, based on invertebrate community impacts. Hydrological modelling of flow sequences including abstraction allows the continued effectiveness of river support from groundwater to be assessed. A new environmental impact matrix considers the response of the freshwater ecosystem in the Itchen, concentrating particularly on macro-invertebrates. Through the century increasing numbers of models fail the flow targets, with a minority of models suggesting flows that would lead to irreversible change to the invertebrate community. The large ensemble provides a richer picture of the range of possible change, allowing managers to explore a range of different responses. The approach used is illustrative, but demonstrates that large ensembles may be of great value in improving the understanding of the possible impact of climate change, provided that they can be communicated effectively to decision-makers.The frequency and severity of extreme weather events, such as floods, storm surges, droughts, bushfires and cyclones, are forcing public organizations to look at their strategies for safeguarding their infrastructure assets. The organizational challenges facing local councils worldwide in the context of climate change have not been adequately developed or understood. This article addresses this gap in knowledge with a model that identifies the organizational barriers to adapting infrastructure to climate change. Managers can use the model to also assess the vulnerability of their infrastructure to climate change.The global environment is a complex and dynamic system. Earth system modeling is needed to help understand changes in interacting subsystems, elucidate the influence of human activities, and explorepossible future changes. Integrated assessment of environment and human development is arguably the mast difficult and most important "systems" problem faced. To illustrate this approach, we present results from the integrated global system model (IGSM), which consists of coupled submodels addressing economic development, atmospheric chemistry, climate dynamics, and ecosystem processes. An uncertainty analysis implies that without mitigation policies, the global average surface temperature may rise between 3.5 degrees C and 7.4 degrees C from 1981-2000 to 2091-2100(90% confidence limits). Polar temperatures, absent policy, are projected to rise from about 6.4 degrees C to 14 degrees C (90% confidence limits). Similar analysis of four increasingly stringent climate mitigation policy cases involving stabilization of greenhouse gases at various levels indicates that the greatest effect of these policies is to lower the probability of extreme changes. The IGSM is also used to elucidate potential unintended environmental consequences of renewable energy at large scales. There are significant reasons for attention to climate adaptation in addition to climate mitigation that earth system models can help inform. These models can also be applied to evaluate whether "climate engineering" is a viable option or a dangerous diversion. We must prepare young people to address this issue: The problem of preserving a habitable planet will engage present and future generations. Scientists must improve communication if research is to inform the public and policy makers better.Background: While morbidity outcomes for major disease categories during extreme heat have received increasing research attention, there has been very limited investigation at the level of specific disease subcategories. Methodology/Principal Findings: We analyzed daily hospital admissions for cardiovascular (CVD), respiratory (RD), genitourinary (GU) and mental diseases (MD), diabetes (DIA), dehydration (DEH) and 'the effects of heat and light' (HEAT) in Sydney between 1991 and 2009. We further investigated the sensitivity to heat of subcategories within the major disease groups. We defined hot days as those with temperatures in the 95th and 99th percentiles within the study period. We applied time-stratified case-crossover analysis to compare the hospital admissions on hot days with those on non-hot days matched by day of the week. We calculated the odds ratios (OR) of admissions between the two types of days, accounting for other environmental variables (relative humidity, ozone and particulate matter) and non-environmental trends (public and school holidays). On hot days, hospital admissions increased for all major categories except GU. This increase was not shared homogeneously across all diseases within a major category: within RD, only 'other diseases of the respiratory system' (includes pleurisy or empyema) increased significantly, while admissions for asthma decreased. Within MD, hospital admissions increased only for psychoses. Admissions due to some major categories increased one to three days after a hot day (e.g., DIA, RD and CVD) and on two and three consecutive days (e.g., HEAT and RD). Conclusions/Significance: High ambient temperatures were associated with increased hospital admissions for several disease categories, with some within-category variation. Future analyses should focus on subgroups within broad disease categories to pinpoint medical conditions most affected by ambient heat.Tropical highland regions are experiencing rapid climate change. In these regions the adaptation challenge is complicated by the fact that elevation contrasts and dissected topography produce diverse climatic conditions that are often accompanied by significant ecological and agricultural diversity within a relatively small region. Such is the case for the Choke Mountain watersheds, in the Blue Nile Highlands of Ethiopia. These watersheds extend from tropical alpine environments at over 4000 m elevation to the hot and dry Blue Nile gorge that includes areas below 1000 m elevation, and contain a diversity of slope forms and soil types. This physical diversity and accompanying socio-economic contrasts demand diverse strategies for enhanced climate resilience and adaptation to climate change. To support development of locally appropriate climate resilience strategies across the Blue Nile Highlands, we present here an agroecosystem analysis of Choke Mountain, under the premise that the agroecosystem-the intersection of climatic and physiographic conditions with agricultural practices-is the most appropriate unit for defining adaptation strategies in these primarily subsistence agriculture communities. To this end, we present two approaches to agroecosystem analysis that can be applied to climate resilience studies in the Choke Mountain watersheds and, as appropriate, to other agroecologically diverse regions attempting to design climate adaptation strategies. First, a full agroecoystem analysis was implemented in collaboration with local communities. It identified six distinct agroecosystems that differ systematically in constraints and adaptation potential. This analysis was then paired with an objective landscape classification trained to identify agroecosystems based on climate and physiographic setting alone. It was found that the distribution of Choke Mountain watershed agroecosystems can, to first order, be explained as a function of prevailing climate. This suggests that the conditions that define current agroecosystems are likely to migrate under a changing climate, requiring adaptive management strategies. These agroecosystems show a remarkable degree of differentiation in terms of production orientation and socio-economic characteristics of the farming communities suggesting different options and interventions towards building resilience to climate change.Adaptive co-management is a governance approach gaining recognition. It emphasizes pluralism and communication; shared decision-making and authority; linkages within and among levels; actor autonomy; and, learning and adaptation. Adaptive co-management is just starting to be applied for climate change adaptation. In drawing upon adaptive co-management scholarship and a case in progress of application for climate change adaptation in Niagara, Canada, key considerations for the Barents Euro-Arctic Region are identified. Realistic expectations, sensitivity to context, and cultivating conditions for success are highlighted as key considerations for future efforts to implement adaptive co-management approaches in the Barents Region.Progress in formulating and implementing effective adaptation policies is often hampered by a wide variety of barriers that are well documented in the literature. Among the barriers are lack of awareness, certainty, resources and political commitment. Since these and other barriers can be overcome (e.g., by raising awareness, closing knowledge gaps, and increasing resources), numerous decision-support frameworks (mainly written guidelines) have been developed for this purpose. The present paper takes stock of both the barriers in adaptation policymaking, as documented in the literature, and the guidelines that aim to facilitate public policies on climate change adaptation. It then compares to what degree selected adaptation guidelines serve as knowledge-brokerage tools that provide guidance on how to overcome the barriers addressed in the scientific literature. The comparison shows that adaptation guidelines address barriers of adaptation policymaking neither comprehensively nor systematically. Since most adaptation guidelines focus on (subjective) experiences with good practices than on empirical research findings, we conclude that they represent a missed opportunity of scientific knowledge-brokerage in climate change adaptation.Although the effects of climate change on species distributions have received considerable attention, land-use change continues to threaten wildlife by contributing to habitat loss and degradation. We compared projected spatial impacts of climate change and housing development across a range of housing densities on California's birds to evaluate the relative potential impacts of each. We used species-distribution models in concert with current and future climate projections and spatially explicit housing-development density projections in California. We compared their potential influence on the distributions of 64 focal bird species representing six major vegetation communities. Averaged across GCMs, species responding positively to climate change were projected to gain 253,890 km 2 and species responding negatively were projected to lose 335,640 km(2). Development accounted for 32 % of the overall reductions in projected species distributions. In terms of land area, suburban and exurban development accounted for the largest portion of land-use impacts on species' distributions. Areas in which climatic suitability and housing density were both projected to increase were concentrated along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and areas of the north coast. Areas of decreasing climatic suitability and increasing housing density were largely concentrated within the Central Valley. Our analyses suggest that the cumulative effects of future housing development and climate change will be large for many bird species, and that some species projected to expand their distributions with climate change may actually lose ground to development. This suggests that a key climate change adaptation strategy will be to minimize the impacts of housing development. To do this effectively, comprehensive policies to guide land use decisions are needed at the broader scales of climate change.Background: Hot and cold temperatures have been associated with childhood asthma. However, the relationship between daily temperature variation and childhood asthma is not well understood. This study aimed to examine the relationship between diurnal temperature range (DTR) and childhood asthma. Methods: A Poisson generalized linear model combined with a distributed lag non-linear model was used to examine the relationship between DTR and emergency department admissions for childhood asthma in Brisbane, from January 1st 2003 to December 31st 2009. Results: There was a statistically significant relationship between DTR and childhood asthma. The DTR effect on childhood asthma increased above a DTR of 10 degrees C. The effect of DTR on childhood asthma was the greatest for lag 0-9 days, with a 31% (95% confidence interval: 11% - 58%) increase of emergency department admissions per 5 degrees C increment of DTR. Male children and children aged 5-9 years appeared to be more vulnerable to the DTR effect than others. Conclusions: Large DTR may trigger childhood asthma. Future measures to control and prevent childhood asthma should include taking temperature variability into account. More protective measures should be taken after a day of DTR above 10 degrees C.Solar energy is increasing essentially to fortify energy security and mitigate CO2 emission. Although solar energy utilization on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) contributes little to the energy conservation and reduction of CO2 emission at present, it plays an important environmental role throughout Asia. Based on the solar energy applications mainly centralized on the solar cooker, the solar water heater, the solar greenhouse, and the photovoltaic devices in rural household, we analyze the sensitivity of climate change on the QTP, the potential capacity of solar resource on the QTP, the effect of solar energy utilization on CO2 abatement, the growth demand of solar energy on the QTP, and the roadmap of solar energy development on the QTP. From different scales, we summarize the adaptation instruments related to solar energy exploitation. Finally, the closely linkage technology, cost, knowledge training with supporting policies related to solar energy have been emphasized in this paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is occurring and not being mitigated, motivating adaptation but adaptation strategies can have biophysical, economic, technological, and social limits. We review publicly available documents to assess how successful current and proposed adaptation strategies may be for the Australian Alps, including likely limits and potential collaborations and conflicts among stakeholders. Conservation managers, the tourism industry, and local communities have implemented or are proposing a range of adaptation strategies in the region. Some stakeholder strategies complement each other (e.g. invasive species control, fire management), while others are potential sources of conflict (water and electricity for snowmaking, year-round tourism). Economic costs and biophysical constraints are the most important limits to these adaptation strategies. These types of limits and conflicts between different stakeholders on adaptation strategies are likely to occur in other regions and demonstrate that adaptation may only provide partial and short term solutions to the challenges of climate change.Over the next 10-50 years, policy makers in the southwestern United States are faced with complex planning and policy issues associated with increasing water and energy demand as a result of warmer temperatures and reduced availability of water, compounded by continued rapid population growth and economic development. This study uses a top-down, end-to-end approach consisting of dynamical downscaling, a novel bias-correction technique, and custom-developed decision-aid tools to assess regional climate changes in the Southwest and to derive decision aids that are based on direct communication with the planners at four military installations in the region. Dynamical downscaling is performed with the Weather Research and Forecasting model driven by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction reanalysis and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology's ECHAM5 general circulation model for two time periods: current (2000s) and future (2030s). A unique two-stage bias correction is developed to adjust current and future hourly temperature and precipitation to be consistent with historical reference data. The authors' assessment of regional climate change, which is based on downscaled bias-corrected fields, points to a dryer and warmer future climate in the Southwest. The energy-usage modeling produced a statistically significant increase in natural gas consumption and a possible decrease in electricity usage in two military installations in Colorado, which is a direct consequence of decrease/increase in heating/cooling degree-days resulting from warmer temperatures in the future. In addition, the results indicate an increasing number of oppressive heat days in the future, which may impact long-term planning practices with respect to heat-stress control and heat-casualty management.The climate-policy debate has only recently turned its full attention to adaptation how to address the impacts of the climate change that we have already begun to experience and that will likely increase over time. Legal scholars have in turn begun to explore how the many different fields of law will and should respond. During this nascent period, one overarching question has gone unexamined: How will the legal system as a whole organize around climate change adaptation? Will a new, distinct field of climate adaptation law and policy emerge, or will legal institutions simply work away at the problem through unrelated, self-contained fields, as in the famous Law of the Horse? This Article is the first to examine that question comprehensively, to move beyond thinking about the law and climate change adaptation to consider the law of climate change adaptation. Part I of the Article lays out our methodological premises and approach. Using a model we call Stationarity Assessment, Part I explores how legal fields are structured and sustained based on assumptions about the variability of natural, social, and economic conditions, and how disruptions to that regime of variability can lead to the emergence of new fields of law and policy. Case studies of environmental law and environmental justice demonstrate the model's predictive power for the formation of new, distinct legal regimes. Part II applies the Stationarity Assessment model to the topic of climate change adaptation, using a case study of a hypothetical coastal region to demonstrate the potential for climate change impacts to disrupt relevant legal doctrines and institutions. We find that most fields of law appear to be capable of adapting effectively to climate change. In other words, without some active intervention, we expect the law and policy of climate change adaptation to follow the path of the Law of the Horse a collection of fields independently adapting to climate change rather than organically coalescing into a new and distinct field. Part III explores why, notwithstanding this conclusion, it may still be desirable to seek a different trajectory. Focusing on the likelihood of systemic adaptation decisions with perverse and harmful results, we identify the potential benefits offered by intervening to shape a new and distinct field of climate adaptation law and policy. Part IV then identifies the contours of such a field, exploring the distinct purposes of reducing vulnerability, ensuring resiliency, and safeguarding equity. These features provide the normative policy components for a law of climate change adaptation that would be more than just a Law of the Horse. This new field would not replace or supplant any existing field, however, as environmental law did with regard to nuisance law, and it would not be dominated by substantive doctrine. Rather, like the field of environmental justice, this new legal regime would serve as a holistic overlay across other fields to ensure more efficient, effective, and just climate adaptation solutions.Detection of tropical lows is performed in a suite of climate model simulations using objectively-determined detection thresholds that are resolution-dependent. It is found that there is some relationship between model resolution and tropical cyclone formation rate even after the resolution-dependent tropical cyclone detection threshold is applied. The relationship is investigated between model-simulated tropical cyclone formation and a climate-based tropical cyclone Genesis Potential Index (GPI). It is found that coarser-resolution models simulate the GPI better than they simulate formation of tropical cyclones directly. As a result, there appears to be little relationship from model to model between model GPI and the directly-simulated cyclone formation rate. Statistical analysis of the results shows that the main advantage of increasing model resolution is to give a considerably better pattern of cyclone formation. Finer resolution models also simulate a slightly better pattern of GPI, and for these models there is some relationship between the pattern of GPI simulated by each model and that model's pattern of simulated tropical cyclone formation.Aquaculture is replacing capture fisheries in supplying the world with dietary protein. Although disease is a major threat to aquaculture production, the underlying global epidemiological patterns are unknown. We analysed disease outbreak severity across different latitudes in a diverse range of aquaculture systems. Disease at lower latitudes progresses more rapidly and results in higher cumulative mortality, in particular at early stages of development and in shellfish. Tropical countries suffer proportionally greater losses in aquaculture during disease outbreaks and have less time to mitigate losses. Synthesis and applications. Disease can present a major problem for food production and security in equatorial regions where fish and shellfish provide a major source of dietary protein. As the incidences of some infectious diseases may increase with climate change, adaptation strategies must consider global patterns in disease vulnerability of aquaculture and develop options to minimize impacts on food production.We assess how unequal information affects the bargaining within resource allocation, a stakeholder interaction that is critical for climate adaptation within the water sector. Motivated by water allocation among unequal actors in NE Brazil, within Ceara State, we employ 'ultimatum' field experiments in which one participant lacks information. We find that, despite having veto power, the less informed are vulnerable to inequity. When all are informed, we see a typical resource split (60% initiator-40% responder) that balances an initiator's advantage with a responder's willingness to punish greed. When instead responders have only a resource forecast upon which to base decisions, the fully informed initiators get 80% of resources for conditions of resource scarcity. Thus, despite each of the stakeholder types having an unquestioned 'seat at the table', information asymmetries make bargaining outcomes more unequal. Our results are widely relevant for adaptation involving the joint use of information, and suggest that equity can rise with dissemination of scientific outputs that are integral in adaptation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Finance for developing countries to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change now tops the international climate negotiation agenda. In this article, we first assess how adaptation finance came to the top of the agenda. Second, drawing upon Amartya Sen's ( 2010) "realization-focused comparison" theory of justice, we develop a definition of adaptation finance justice based upon the texts of the 1992 UNFCCC and its subsidiary bodies. From this perspective, we assess three main points of contention between countries on both sides of the North-South divide: The Gap in raising the funds, The Wedge in their distribution, and The Dodge in how they are governed. Overall, we argue that while some ambiguity exists, the decisions of the UNFCCC provide a strong basis for a justice-oriented approach to adaptation finance. However, in practice, adaptation finance has reflected developed country interests far more than the principles of justice adopted by Parties.Across Europe, national governments have started to strategically plan adaptation to climate change. Making adaptation decisions is difficult in the light of uncertainties and the complexity of adaptation problems. Already large amounts of research results on climate impacts and adaptive measures are available, and more are produced and need to be mediated across the boundary between science and policy. Both researchers and policy-makers have started to intensify efforts to coproduce knowledge that is valuable to both communities, particularly in the context of climate change adaptation. In this paper, we present results from a study of adaptation governance and information needs, comparing eight European countries. We identify sources and means for the retrieval of information as well as gaps and problems with the knowledge provided by scientists and analyzed whether these appear to be contingent on the point in the policy-making cycle where countries are. We find that in this early phase of adaptation planning, the quality of the definition of needs, the way uncertainty is dealt with, and the quality of science-policy interaction are indeed contingent on the stage of adaptation planning, while information needs and sources are not. We conclude that a well-developed science-policy interface is of key importance for effective decision-making for adaptation.Despite wide evidence of a quickly changing world, systematic conservation planning analyses are usually static assuming that the biodiversity being preserved in sites do not change through time. Here we generated a comprehensive ensemble forecasting experiment for 444 amphibian species inhabiting the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot. Models were based on four methods for modeling ecological niches, and three future climate simulations. Combinations of these models were used to estimate species occurrences. We used species occurrences to optimize the current and future representation of amphibians with different conservation targets based on their geographic range size. We compared spatial priority outcomes (variance of site selection frequency scores) under dynamic conditions, using a bi-dimensional plot in which the relative importance of each site in achieving conservation targets was assessed both for current time and to 2050. Projections for 2050 show that species richness pattern will remain approximately constant, whereas high turnover rates are forecasted. Selection frequency of several locations varied widely, with recurrent sites located at the north and southeast of the biome. As for 2050, spatial priorities concentrate in the northern part of the biome. Thirty-three sites have high priority for conservation as they play an important role now and will still stand as priority locations in 2050. We present a conceptual model for dynamic spatial conservation prioritization that helps to identify priority sites under climate change. We also call attention to sites in which risk of investment is high, and to those that may become interesting options in the future.Many of the challenges conservation professionals face can be framed as scale mismatches. The problem of scale mismatch occurs when the planning for and implementation of conservation actions is at a scale that does not reflect the scale of the conservation problem. The challenges in conservation planning related to scale mismatch include ecosystem or ecological process transcendence of governance boundaries; limited availability of fine-resolution data; lack of operational capacity for implementation; lack of understanding of social-ecological system components; threats to ecological diversity that operate at diverse spatial and temporal scales; mismatch between funding and the long-term nature of ecological processes; rate of action implementation that does not reflect the rate of change of the ecological system; lack of appropriate indicators for monitoring activities; and occurrence of ecological change at scales smaller or larger than the scale of implementation or monitoring. Not recognizing and accounting for these challenges when planning for conservation can result in actions that do not address the multiscale nature of conservation problems and that do not achieve conservation objectives. Social networks link organizations and individuals across space and time and determine the scale of conservation actions; thus, an understanding of the social networks associated with conservation planning will help determine the potential for implementing conservation actions at the required scales. Social-network analyses can be used to explore whether these networks constrain or enable key social processes and how multiple scales of action are linked. Results of network analyses can be used to mitigate scale mismatches in assessing, planning, implementing, and monitoring conservation projects.Rice planted in southern China accounts for 94% of the total in sown acreage and 88% of the total in production, which matters a lot to Chinese food security. However, due to the prolonged conflict between water availability and rice growth in spatial/temporal distribution, rice production suffers from seasonal drought at acreage of 16%-22%, which compromises food production capacity and food security. Focusing on the spatial distribution of seasonal drought with rice and the practices to adapt to it, and based on an analysis of balanced water supply for and demand by rice at a growing season scale during 1981-2030, this paper assesses the changing seasonal drought in the process of rice production under the changing climate in the future, and identifies general rice re-cultivation options for climate change adaptation. Some conclusions can be drawn as follows. (1) Rice suggests a decline in seasonal drought, with early season rice (early rice hereafter) by 12,500 km(2), middle season rice (middle rice) by 80,000 km(2), and in particular late season rice (late rice) by 25,000 km(2), which accounts for almost 20% of its cultivated acreage. It is indicated that due to climate change, seasonal drought in major rice producing areas tends to alleviate in general, late season rice in particular. (2) Future climate change brings about a significant impact on the spatial/temporal distribution of water resources in rice producing areas in China. Based on 'pre-designed' adaptation actions for rice-re-cultivation, the rice cultivation pattern undergoes a significant alteration between 1981-2000 and 2001-2030. In eastern Guizhou and western Hunan, the pattern of single early plus single dry farming is changed into double cropping. In eastern Hunan, the pattern of dry cropping is changed into single early plus single dry farming. In northern Anhui, the pattern of dry farming cropping is changed into middle rice. All this is aimed at a potential adequate availability of water for rice production in the future. (3) Rice re-cultivation patterns developed in this paper help re-balance water demand and supply for rice growth using the spatial analysis tool to adapt rice growth to the changing water availability from spatial perspective, and come up with rice producer-friendly re-cultivation options in response to climate change.Our research is focused on developing an ecoinformatics platform to support climate change adaptation in Victoria. A multi-disciplinary, cross-organisational approach was taken in developing a platform of collaboration to support the understanding of climate change impact and the formulation of adaptation strategies. The platform comprises a number of components including: (i) a metadata discovery tool to support modelling, (ii) a workflow framework for connecting climate change models, (iii) geographical visualisation tools for communicating landscape and farm impacts, (iv) a landscape object library for storing and sharing digital objects, (v) a landscape constructor tool to support participatory decision-making, and (vi) an online collaboration space for supporting multi-disciplinary research and cross-organisational collaboration. In this paper we present the platform as it has been developed to support collaborative research and to inform stakeholders of the likely impacts of climate change in southwest Victoria, Australia. We discuss some of the drivers for research in developing the ecoinformatics platform and its components. We conclude by identifying some future research directions in better connecting researchers and communicating scientific outcomes in the context of climate change impact and adaptation. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Flood is a normal ecosystem phenomenon and a natural hydrological feature of most river systems. Climate variability may also bring about precipitation events that cause floods. However, recent floods in most areas may be anthropogenically induced and are on a spatial and temporal increase. This study assessed rainfall variability, flooding and the adaptations of slum residents to floods in Kumasi, Ghana. Rainfall data of Kumasi were collected from the Meteorological Services Department, Accra. Basic descriptive statistics of rainfall data were used to evaluate the rainfall variability. The Mann-Kendall test was used to assess rainfall trends. A survey of residents of flood-prone suburbs was conducted to assess their vulnerability and adaptations to floods. The results show that rainfall in March and November is significantly decreasing. The floods in Kumasi are not due to climate change but bad spatial development practices. Most people will pump out water and build embankments around their houses as adaptations to the floods. Flooding in Kumasi will continue to outwit local government initiatives of storm drain construction because the floods are predominantly due to development of effluent streams and less from flash floods.BACKGROUND: Most heat-related deaths occur in cities, and future trends in global climate change and urbanization may amplify this trend. Understanding how neighborhoods affect heat mortality fills an important gap between studies of individual susceptibility to heat and broadly comparative studies of temperature-mortality relationships in cities. OBJECTIVES: We estimated neighborhood effects of population characteristics and built and natural environments on deaths due to heat exposure in Maricopa County, Arizona (2000-2008). METHODS: We used 2000 U.S. Census data and remotely sensed vegetation and land surface temperature to construct indicators of neighborhood vulnerability and a geographic information system to map vulnerability and residential addresses of persons who died from heat exposure in 2,081 census block groups. Binary logistic regression and spatial analysis were used to associate deaths with neighborhoods. RESULTS: Neighborhood scores on three factors-socioeconomic vulnerability, elderly/isolation, and unvegetated area-varied widely throughout the study area. The preferred model (based on fit and parsimony) for predicting the odds of one or more deaths from heat exposure within a census block group included the first two factors and surface temperature in residential neighborhoods, holding population size constant. Spatial analysis identified clusters of neighborhoods with the highest heat vulnerability scores. A large proportion of deaths occurred among people, including homeless persons, who lived in the inner cores of the largest cities and along an industrial corridor. CONCLUSIONS: Place-based indicators of vulnerability complement analyses of person-level heat risk factors. Surface temperature might be used in Maricopa County to identify the most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods, but more attention to the socioecological complexities of climate adaptation is needed.Many studies have explored the benefits of adopting more sophisticated modelling techniques or spatial data in terms of our ability to accurately predict ecosystem responses to global change. However, we currently know little about whether the improved predictions will actually lead to better conservation outcomes once the costs of gaining improved models or data are accounted for. This severely limits our ability to make strategic decisions for adaptation to global pressures, particularly in landscapes subject to dynamic change such as the coastal zone. In such landscapes, the global phenomenon of sea level rise is a critical consideration for preserving biodiversity. Here, we address this issue in the context of making decisions about where to locate a reserve system to preserve coastal biodiversity with a limited budget. Specifically, we determined the cost-effectiveness of investing in high-resolution elevation data and process-based models for predicting wetland shifts in a coastal region of South East Queensland, Australia. We evaluated the resulting priority areas for reserve selection to quantify the cost-effectiveness of investment in better quantifying biological and physical processes. We show that, in this case, it is considerably more cost effective to use a process-based model and high-resolution elevation data, even if this requires a substantial proportion of the project budget to be expended (up to 99% in one instance). The less accurate model and data set failed to identify areas of high conservation value, reducing the cost-effectiveness of the resultant conservation plan. This suggests that when developing conservation plans in areas where sea level rise threatens biodiversity, investing in high-resolution elevation data and process-based models to predict shifts in coastal ecosystems may be highly cost effective. A future research priority is to determine how this cost-effectiveness varies among different regions across the globe.Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of natural disasters. Adaptation investments are required in order to limit the projected increase in natural disaster risks. Adaptation measures can reduce risk partially or completely eliminate risk. The literature on behavioural economics suggests that individuals rarely undertake measures that limit risk partially, while they may place a considerable value on measures that reduce risk to zero. This is studied for a case of adaptation to climate change and its effects on flood risk in the Netherlands. In particular, we examine whether households are willing to invest in elevating newly built structures when this is framed as eliminating flood risk. The results indicate that a majority of homeowners (52%) is willing to make a substantial investment of a,not sign10,000 to elevate a new house to a level that is safe to flooding. Differences between willingness to pay (WTP) for flood insurance and WTP for risk elimination through elevation indicate that individuals place a considerable value on the latter adaptation option. This study estimates that the "safety premium" which individuals place on risk elimination is approximately between a,not sign35 and a,not sign45 per month. The existence of a safety premium has important implications for the design of climate change adaptation policies. The decision to invest in elevating homes is significantly correlated with the expected negative effects of climate change, perceptions of flood risks, individual risk attitudes, and living close to a main river.Australian coastal areas have been identified as highly vulnerable to climate change, with major projected impacts including sea level rise, extreme weather events, increased erosion, and a change in coastal processes and wave patterns. Such impacts would cause coastal settlements and ecosystems to face increasingly uncertain conditions. In response to increased risk, effective coastal management at local and regional scales is needed, with governing bodies providing significant leadership. This research explores the challenges of applying effective adaptation responses to projected climate change in vulnerable coastal systems on the South Coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia. In particular, the option of planned retreat as a management response to coastal risk is critically examined, with the incorporation of learning from Byron Bay, NSW. A mixed methods approach was undertaken by integrating documentary interrogation with the analysis of interview responses from key coastal managers. It was determined that despite the increase in adaptation planning and development of management strategy options to manage sea level rise on the Fleurieu Peninsula, there is a lack of implementation of adaptation responses. In addition, planning seems to focus largely on the implications of sea level rise on infrastructure, often overlooking other risks and possible ecological impacts. Inconsistencies in governance are reflected at all levels, indicating a need for comprehensive improvements to ensure the incorporation of appropriate risk responses into planning decisions.This study examined how the terms used to describe climate change influence landholder acceptability judgements and attitudes toward climate change at the local scale. Telephone surveys were conducted with landholders from viticultural (n = 97) or cereal growing (n = 195) backgrounds in rural South Australia. A variety of descriptive and inferential statistics were used to examine the influence of human-induced climate change and winter/spring drying trend terms on adaptation responses and uncertainties surrounding climate change science. We found that the terms used to describe climate change leads to significant differences in adaptation response and levels of scepticism surrounding climate change in rural populations. For example, those respondents who accepted human induced climate change as a reality were significantly more likely to invest in technologies to sow crops earlier or increase the amount of water stored or harvested on their properties than respondents who accepted the winter/spring drying trend as a reality. The results have implications for the targeting of climate change science messages to both rural landholders and communities of practice involved in climate change adaptation planning and implementation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An important precursor to the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies is to understand the perceived capacity to implement and operationalize such strategies. Utilizing an importance performance analysis (IPA) evaluation framework, this article presents a comparative case study of federal and state land and natural resource manager perceptions of agency performance on factors influencing adaptive capacity in two U.S. regions (northern Colorado and southwestern South Dakota). Results revealed several important findings with substantial management implications. First, none of the managers ranked the adaptive capacity factors as a low priority. Second, managers held the perception that their agencies were performing either neutrally or poorly on most factors influencing adaptive capacity. Third, gap analysis revealed that significant improvements are required to facilitate optimal agency functioning when dealing with climate change-related management issues. Overall, results suggest that a host of institutional and policy-oriented (e.g., lack of clear mandate to adapt to climate change), financial and human resource (e.g., inadequate staff and financial resources), informational (e.g., inadequate research and monitoring programs) and contextual barriers (e.g., sufficient regional networks to mitigate potential transboundary impacts) currently challenge the efficient and effective integration of climate change into decision-making and management within agencies working in these regions. The IPA framework proved to be an effective tool to help managers identify and understand agency strengths, areas of concern, redundancies, and areas that warrant the use of limited funds and/or resource reallocation in order to enhance adaptive capacity and maximize management effectiveness with respect to climate change. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Invasive species pose a major threat to biodiversity which may be intensified by the effects of climate change, particularly if favourable climate conditions allow invasives to spread to new areas. This research explores the combined effects of climate change and soil drainage on the potential future distribution of Lantana camara L. (lantana) in Queensland, Australia. Lantana is an invasive woody shrub species that has a profound economic and environmental impact worldwide. CLIMEX was used to develop a process-based niche model of lantana to estimate its potential distribution under current and future climate. Two Global Climate Models (GCMs), CSIRO-Mk3.0 and MIROC-H, were used to explore the impacts of climate change. These models were run with the A1B and A2 scenarios for 2030, 2070 and 2100. Further refinements of the potential distributions were carried out through the integration of fine scale soil drainage data in a Geographic Information System (GIS). The results from both GCMs show a progressive reduction in climatic suitability for lantana in Queensland. The MIROC-H projects a larger area as remaining at risk of lantana invasion in 2100 compared to CSIRO-Mk3.0. Inclusion of soil drainage data results in a more refined distribution. Overall results show a dramatic reduction in potential distribution of lantana in Queensland in the long term (2100). However, in the short term (2030), areas such as South East Queensland and the Wet Tropics, both regions of significant ecological importance, remain at risk of invasion consistently under both GCMs and with both the climate only and climate and soil drainage models. Management of lantana in these regions will need to be prioritized to protect environmental assets of ecological significance. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The unabated continuation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the lack of an international consensus on a stringent climate change mitigation policy underscore the importance of adaptation for coping with the all but inevitable changes in the climate system. Adaptation measures in forestry have particularly long lead times. A timely implementation is thus crucial for reducing the considerable climate vulnerability of forest ecosystems. However, since future environmental conditions as well as future societal demands on forests are inherently uncertain, a core requirement for adaptation is robustness to a wide variety of possible futures. Here we explicitly address the roles of climatic and social uncertainty in forest management, and tackle the question of robustness of adaptation measures in the context of multi-objective sustainable forest management (SFM). We used the Austrian Federal Forests (AFF) as a case study, and employed a comprehensive vulnerability assessment framework based on ecosystem modeling, multi-criteria decision analysis, and practitioner participation. We explicitly considered climate uncertainty by means of three climate change scenarios, and accounted for uncertainty in future social demands by means of three societal preference scenarios regarding SFM indicators. We found that the effects of climatic and social uncertainty on the projected performance of management were in the same order of magnitude, underlining the notion that climate change adaptation requires an integrated social-ecological perspective. Furthermore, our analysis of adaptation measures revealed considerable trade-offs between reducing adverse impacts of climate change and facilitating adaptive capacity. This finding implies that prioritization between these two general aims of adaptation is necessary in management planning, which we suggest can draw on uncertainty analysis: Where the variation induced by social-ecological uncertainty renders measures aiming to reduce climate change impacts statistically insignificant (i.e., for approximately one third of the investigated management units of the AFF case study), fostering adaptive capacity is suggested as the preferred pathway for adaptation. We conclude that climate change adaptation needs to balance between anticipating expected future conditions and building the capacity to address unknowns and surprises. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents two novel web-based applications for disseminating climate change adaptation related information. (i) The MEDIATION Adaptation Platform, one of the core outputs of the European FP7 research project MEDIATION (Methodology for Effective Decision-making on Impacts and AdaptaTION), offers a set of decision trees that can be browsed graphically to navigate over adaptation challenges and available types of methods for addressing them. This framework is interlinked both with a Toolbox and a set of case study descriptions. (ii) ci:grasp-2, the successor of the BMU-funded Climate Impacts: Global and Regional Adaptation Support Platform (ci: grasp), provides access to a growing pool of global and regional information on climate stimuli and impacts, as well as on adaptation projects. The paper identifies central user tasks for both applications and presents interaction metaphors that have been chosen to support users in fulfilling these tasks.International environmental health studies of the past years have discussed the impacts of heat stress on human health. In particular, respiratory morbidity has shown significant heat effects in European cities. Metropolitan areas such as Berlin are characterised by an intra-urban spatial variability in socio-economic and bioclimatic conditions that is assumed to result in spatial differences in respiratory health risks. In essence, the elderly, children and people with chronic diseases suffer most from heat stress. A spatial epidemiological approach was chosen to map elevated risks for hospital admissions among > 64-year-olds with respiratory diseases (RD) during the summer months (June--September) from 2000 to 2009 and to link respiratory health risks to bioclimatic and socio-economic conditions in Berlin. The study aims to detect significant clusters with elevated relative risks for hospital admissions among > 64-year-olds with RD in due consideration of socio-economic conditions as a covariate for health outcomes. The findings from the purely spatial analysis show significant intra-urban disparities in the relative risks for hospital admissions among > 64-yearolds with RD. The highest relative risks within significant clusters were basically detected in the north-western and south-eastern city centre based on the study period 2000-2009 and also during the hot months of July and August in 2003 and 2006. The correlation analysis depicted significantly positive relationships between relative risks for hospital admissions among > 64-year-olds with RD and population density, socio-economic conditions and the annual mean number of days with heat loads on the basis of the period 1971-2000 and the average of the periods 1971-2000 and 2021-2050 at the zip code level in Berlin. To specifically implement health care intervention and prevention strategies into urban planning and to apply a directed practice of telemedicine for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, spatial epidemiological analyses are an important approach to identifying heat-vulnerable urban areas.Because humans spend most of their time indoors and can he negatively affected by unfavourable thermal environments, the assessment of indoor heat stress is an important issue for public health care, To characterise indoor human bioclimate ate, the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) was used, UTCI values were calculated from measurements of air temperature and air humidity in 16 rooms in Berlin during the summer months of 2011 and 2012, A constant air velocity of approximately 0,3 m/s and a metabolic heat production of 135 W/m(2) were assumed, The mean radiant temperature was set to the air temperature. Because the mean air humidity was below or slightly above 50 %, the calculated UM values were mostly lower than the air temperatures. In summer 2012, the mean UTCI values ranged from 22,2 degrees C to 27,1 degrees C, and the maximum (ITC' values ranged from 24,7 degrees C to 35,6 degrees C, Whereas only minor differences were found between rooms located within comparable buildings in different districts of Berlin, pronounced variations of the UTC1 values were detected in two adjoining buildings, with differences up to 8,6 K for the daily minimum, 9,8 K for the daily mean and 12,2 K for the daily maximum UTCI between different rooms, These variations can be explained by differences in the structures of the two buildings, floor level and aspect, The UTCI values were also used to determine the occurrence of moderate and strong heat stress, Only two rooms showed no thermal stress, while strong heat stress was detected in three rooms,This paper presents the cultural behavior to Nature of traditional housing in Vietnam Northern low land area and the discussion around the following issues: (a) Characteristic of climate in Vietnam Northern lowland area, (b) Approaches on environmental sustainability and climate adaptation through the analysis of traditional housing in Vietnam Northern lowland area and (c) Status and architectural trends of rural housing development in Northern lowland area today. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Dengue fever is a major problem in many developing countries, including Indonesia. Laboratory examination is used to diagnose dengue infection and to monitor disease progression. Hematology tests, such as platelet count, are also used for timely recognition of the development of severe dengue. In primary health care centers platelet counting is typically performed manually, which is labor intensive and requires an experienced laboratory technician. To address this challenge, we have developed an automatic platelet counter for primary health care and resource-poor settings. The technology is based on a conventional microscope equipped with a digital camera linked to a personal computer, which can capture and analyze microscope images of blood samples. To evaluate the accuracy of the technology, it was compared to platelet counts performed manual by an experienced laboratory technician. Statistical analysis shows no difference between the techniques with a kappa coefficient of 0.6. This method is judged to have great potential as a tool to help primary health centers and other facilities with limited resources to deal with the burden of dengue.Globally, dykelands (former marsh areas protected by dykes) are of strategic importance for climate change adaptation. Many were originally designed to protect agricultural land, yet now protect valuable infrastructure. The purpose of this project was to develop a comprehensive digital atlas incorporating historical plans, shore protection, coastal geomorphology and LiDAR to serve as a basis for climate change adaptation planning in the Bay of Fundy. 110 paper plans were scanned, geo-referenced and features such as current and historical dykes, aboiteaux (tide gates), armouring, ditches, creeks, property boundaries, foreshore marsh, and geodetic elevations were digitized using ArcGIS. Attributes included age of structure, material, dimensions, and ownership. Dyke elevations were surveyed using an RTK GPS, and individual sections were identified as being vulnerable to storm surge and sea level rise. Erosion rates and width of foreshore marsh were calculated per dyke segment. At present, 55% of dykes within Nova Scotia are within 0.5 m of critical elevations established in the 1960s, 2% are more than 0.5 m below critical and all are below the predicted rates of SLR by 2055. There is also a strong relationship between the placement of armouring along the dyke toe and foreshore erosion. Conversely, timely placement of armouring along the foreshore marsh decreased rates of erosion. This was most effective in areas with the largest fetch; less effective where erosion was driven by tidal currents. All data were integrated into ArcReader for use by Agriculture personnel and have been essential for cost effective climate change adaptation planning including dyke topping, hazard mitigation and education.A detailed digital elevation model (DEM) of an intertidal sand flat in the Knudedyb tidal inlet in the Danish Wadden Sea, derived from high-resolution Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) data, reveals a large elongated bedform field with complex bedform morphologies and drainage channel networks. This indicates distinct second-order sand transport pathways oblique to the main tidal transport pathways. A conceptual model for the development of the bedforms and channels is presented, which comprises hypotheses of the hydrodynamic forcing of the different second-order sand transport pathways. During flood tide, sand is transported along ESE-oriented pathways across the intertidal flat towards the inner tidal basin. During the late stages of ebb tide, sand is transported in drainage channels (WSW-oriented) from the intertidal flat towards the inlet channel. During storm events with winds from SW, wave-generated currents transport sand along a NE-oriented transport pathway from the inlet channel towards the intertidal flat.Context. Predictive modelling of the impacts of climate change has highlighted a need for on-ground monitoring of mammal communities within the Wet Tropics bioregion of Queensland to inform wildlife conservation management. Standard mammal-survey techniques are labour intensive and often incapable of detecting rare, trap-shy or otherwise elusive species, effectively rendering them invisible to researchers even when substantial resources are applied. Aims. To assess the utility of feeding remains (regurgitated pellets) from lesser sooty owls, Tyto tenebricosa multipunctata, for monitoring populations of small to medium-sized mammals within the Wet Tropics. Methods. Three female lesser sooty owls were radio-tracked to determine home-range areas. Radio-tracking and targeted systematic searches were used to locate diurnal roosts containing owl pellets from which prey species were identified. Owl-pellet data were directly compared with live-trap data within three putative owl home ranges. Additionally, analyses of a dataset spanning more than 15 years demonstrated the utility of owl-pellet data for monitoring mammal communities. Key results. Owl-pellet surveys yielded 14 mammal species (840 individuals) from 152 man-hours, compared with six mammal species (361 individuals) from 194 man-hours of live trapping. Both survey methods identified Rattus fuscipes, Melomys spp. and Antechinus spp. as the most abundant species but live-trap data were found to under-represent relative abundance of Melomys spp. and over-represent relative abundance of R. fuscipes in comparison to owl-pellet data. Conclusions. Analysis of lesser sooty owl pellets is a particularly useful method for compilation of species inventories of small to medium-sized mammals, being more effective than standard live-trapping surveys within the rainforests of the Wet Tropics. Implications. Owl-pellet analysis is well suited for monitoring mammal communities, as long as periodic data are collected from the same roost(s) and the pellets have been deposited by the same individual bird(s). Additional research relating to variability in behavioural traits between individual lesser sooty owls that have potential to confound results via sampling bias must be undertaken before owl-pellet data can be used for comparison of mammal community structure among sites, or for monitoring a site over a period spanning a change in the individual owls that are depositing pellets at that site.The objectives of this case study are to analyse the existing capacities of the tourism sector in the European Alps and to investigate opportunities for improving adaptation enacted by tourism stake-holders. Alpine tourism is expected to be among the economic sectors most affected by climate change effects. Because tourism development often requires mid- and long-term investments in infrastructure and services, early action is needed to build capacities to adapt to climate change and prevent economic losses to the regional economies. Up to now, only a few studies have considered both summer and winter tourism when evaluating the adaptive capacity and possible adaptations of the tourism sector. Two research questions are investigated: (i) what characterises the adaptive capacity of the tourism sector in the European Alps? and (ii) which adaptation activities have the potential to reduce the vulnerability of the tourism sector? By investigating these questions, the study endeavoured to characterise the adaptive capacity and identify current and potential adaptation activities for both summer and winter tourism in the European Alps. To measure the adaptive capacity of the tourism sector a semi-standardised questionnaire survey was administered to tourism stakeholders, that is, representatives of tourism organisations as well as public authorities for economic development, environmental agencies and spatial planning authorities at both the national and regional levels. The area of the study comprises all countries of the European Alps and is limited to the perimeter defined by the Alpine Convention. The results manifest a broad range of adaptation strategies and measures that are already being realised in Alpine tourism today. Concerning the currently realised adaptation strategies and the willingness to adapt in the future, the results show that adaptation activities within the tourism sector are primarily realised in an autonomous, private and local manner. In particular a broad range of corporate measures (e.g. providing snowmaking equipment) are actualised on a private basis without necessarily following a comprehensive and long-term strategy. Mostly short-and medium-term adaptation options are realised, which can be seen as no-regret or low-regret measures with benefits even without climate change. Further, the results show that, on the one hand, climate adaptation in the tourism sector is prompted by economic incentives. In general, tourism stakeholders are not motivated to take adaptive action to address climate change, but rather, strive to prepare for increasing losses in winter tourism and to improve tourism infrastructure and supply to meet future tourism demand. On the other hand, adaptation decisions are very complex and uncertain concerning their effects if they aim at long-term development and take into account a variety of social, institutional and political barriers.At the level of the EU as whole, compared with other major economic regions in the world, Europe will be less affected by climate change. This is particularly the case for the economic core of Europe, which also has, as shown in the ESPON Climate project, a high level of mitigative and adaptive capacity. If this capacity is capitalised, it will certainly enhance the competitiveness of the EU in the global market. Another important point is that the diversity of climatic regions in Europe allows for a degree of economic adjustment. For the competitiveness of the EU as a whole, this implies that a potential loss of tourism in one part of Europe may be compensated by a potential gain in another part. Furthermore, climate mitigation and energy efficiency policies are one of the four key priorities of the renewed Lisbon Strategy. This means that through the development of knowledge base and support for research and innovation, EU action on climate change can converge with the Lisbon Strategy. Nevertheless, without effective adaptation measures, such transformations may lead to increased disparities in Europe.Sericulture is an agro-based labor intensive industry which has socio-economic and environmental potentials supportive to the Philippine government's and global programs on poverty alleviation, gender and development and environmental concerns for climate change adaptation and mitigation. This paper presents the R & D management practices and strategies employed in the implementation of the CHED funded project entitled, "Silk Technology Promotion and Commercialization: CHED-DMMMSU Strategy for Employment Generation of Young Graduates as Agribusiness Entrepreneurs and in Support to RA 9242".. This also presents a bird's eye view on the project which institutionalized the CHED-SUC-Farmers Partnership Scheme at DMMMSU to develop farmers as Agribusiness Entrepreneurs using Sericulture as a Tool and in support to RA 9242 and climate change adaptation as a result of the management strategies. The project employed management strategies and best practices which resulted to the conduct of extension activities and researches which increased the concerned R & D Managers'/researchers' outputs and social responsibility in promoting livelihood generation and climate change adaptation and mitigation using sericulture as a tool and garnering international research awards and outputs relevant to attainment of institutional objectives and performance indicators for SUC leveling. In addition, such management strategies enabled the project to produce a total of 1,316 kilograms fresh cocoons valued at P184,240 and 146 kilograms raw silk valued at P365,000.00 and 2,190 meters 100% silk fabric valued at P1,533,000 from March 2009 to November, 2011 in support to climate change adaptation and mitigation. The 44,050 mulberry trees planted in the different areas has a total carbon dioxide sequestration of 173 tons per annum at a rate of 54 tons per hectare per year.This study was carried out to determine the climate adaptation and growth performance for Mediterranean buffalo F1 in China, especially in Guangxi region. 53 Mediterranean crossbred buffalo of early stage (0-12 months) were selected and the growth performance such as body weight, body length, body height, chest circumference and the abdominal circumference, as well as the physiological and biochemical parameters were measured monthly. The results showed that the rectal temperature, respiratory frequency, heart rate and blood biochemical parameters were no significant difference between Mediterranean and Mediterranean F1 (Mediterranean buffalo frozen semen crossbred with Murrah, Nili-Ravi and local buffalo) (P> 0.05). There are also no significant differenence(P> 0.05) among the rectal temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate and blood biochemical parameters and birth body weight for Mediterranean buffalo F1, Murrah and Nili buffalo which introduced into China 70 years ago. The growth rate of one month-old Murrah F1(crossbred with local buffalo) and Nili-Ravi F1(crossbred with local buffalo) were higher than Mediterranean F1 (crossbred with local buffalo), but the difference were not significant (P> 0.05). In addition, the growth rate between Mediterranean * Murrah F1 and Mediterranean* Nili-Ravi F1 during 0-12 months of age were basically the same. The body height, body length, chest circumference and abdominal circumference had the same trends for 1-12 months of Mediterranean * Murrah F1, Mediterranean* Nili-Ravi F1 and Mediterranean* Guangxi Local buffalo F1. Therefore, the Mediterranean buffalo introduced into China, were not only able to fully adapt to the South of China, especially Guangxi environmental climatic conditions, but also showed good growth performance.This article aims to establish a scientific, quantifiable and workable comprehensive evaluation index system for the tendency of intensive design of the contemporary campus. The evaluation system of intensive design is divided into four levels and related indicators, including location selection, natural climate adaptation and eco-technology, and determine weight value of each indicator by using analytic hierarchy process method. The conclusion is that the weight of the location selection is the highest, following by the eco-technology, and the natural climate adaptation is the least important. Then it clears the development direction and goals of the intensive design of campus and sums up the points of campus intensive design.The implementation of adaptation policies suffers from barriers and limits; even though adaptation is now set on the political agendas of developed and developing countries, surprisingly few examples of concrete policy realizations are found in comparative assessments. We investigate how the framings of adaptation as a policy problem can relate to tractability issues in implementation. We distinguish three framings of adaptation: climate change adaptation (CCA), climate variability adaptation (CVA), and vulnerability-centered adaptation (VCA) that imply conflicting interpretations of the collective problem to be solved and the goals to be attained through policy solutions. Through the methodology of comparative case studies, we conduct an empirical analysis of three implementation processes in India and Switzerland, and examine how adaptation framings translate into formal policy design and concrete policy realizations. We find that, regardless of the adaptive capacity of the country where implementation takes place, the CCA framing meets more tractability issues than the VCA framing. Therefore, we discuss the paradox that the innovative and additional CCA types of policies, advocated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are more likely to face a deficit in implementation according to our analysis.Cities around the world are increasingly developing plans to adapt to the consequences of climate change. These plans will have important consequences for urban populations because they are likely to reshape and reconfigure urban infrastructures, services, and decision making processes. It is critical that these adaptation plans are developed in a way that is just. Criteria was developed that can be used to assess justice in adaptation so that the processes, priorities, and impacts address the needs of the most vulnerable urban populations. Further, mechanisms are outlined that have been proposed as responsible for producing urban injustice. The justice criteria are applied to the case of adaptation planning in Delhi and the extent to which poor and informal populations are included and affected by this planning. The analysis shows that adaptation planning in Delhi does not meet the justice criteria in part because of a lack of capacity and the political economy of poverty in the city. The criteria for justice and mechanisms of injustice offer an important step toward developing a greater understanding of not only whether city-level adaptation planning is just, but also why it is or is not.Developing an approach to governing adaptation to climate change is severely hampered by the dictatorship of the present when the needs of future generations are inadequately represented in current policy making. We posit this problem as a function of the attributes of adaptation policy making, including deep uncertainty and nonstationarity, where past observations are not reliable predictors of future outcomes. Our research links organizational decision-making attributes with adaptation decision making and identifies cases in which adaptation actions cause spillovers, free riding, and distributional impacts. We develop a governing framework for adaptation that we believe will enable policy, planning, and major long-term development decisions to be made appropriately at all levels of government in the face of the deep uncertainty and nonstationarity caused by climate change. Our framework requires that approval of projects with an expected life span of 30 years or more in the built environment include minimum building standards that integrate forecasted climate change impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) intermediate scenario. The intermediate IPCC scenario must be downscaled to include local or regional temperature, water availability, sea level rise, susceptibility to forest fires, and human habitation impacts to minimize climate-change risks to the built environment. The minimum standard is systematically updated every six years to facilitate learning by formal and informal organizations. As a minimum standard, the governance framework allows jurisdictions to take stronger actions to increase their climate resilience and thus maintain system flexibility.Aquatic agricultural systems in developing countries face increasing competition from multiple stakeholders over rights to access and use natural resources, land, water, wetlands, and fisheries, essential to rural livelihoods. A key implication is the need to strengthen governance to enable equitable decision making amidst competition that spans sectors and scales, building capacities for resilience, and for transformations in institutions that perpetuate poverty. In this paper we provide a simple framework to analyze the governance context for aquatic agricultural system development focused on three dimensions: stakeholder representation, distribution of power, and mechanisms of accountability. Case studies from Cambodia, Bangladesh, Malawi/Mozambique, and Solomon Islands illustrate the application of these concepts to fisheries and aquaculture livelihoods in the broader context of intersectoral and cross-scale governance interactions. Comparing these cases, we demonstrate how assessing governance dimensions yields practical insights into opportunities for transforming the institutions that constrain resilience in local livelihoods.The long-term character of climate change and the high costs of adaptation measures, in combination with their uncertain effects, turn climate adaptation governance into a torturous process. We systematically review the literature on climate adaptation governance to analyze the scholarly understanding of these complexities. Building on governance literature about long-term and complex policy problems, we develop a conceptual matrix based on the dimensions knowledge and power to systematically study the peer-reviewed literature on climate adaptation governance. We find that about a quarter of the reviewed journal articles do not address the knowledge or power dimension of the governance of climate change adaptation, about half of the articles discuss either the knowledge or the power dimension, and another quarter discuss both knowledge and power. The articles that do address both knowledge and power (1) conceptualize the governance of climate adaptation mainly as a complex system of regulatory frameworks and technical knowledge, (2) assume that regulatory systems can be easily adapted to new knowledge, (3) pay little attention to fluid or unorganized forms of power, e. g., negotiation, and knowledge, e. g., learning, and (4) largely neglect the interplay between the two. We argue that more research on this interplay is needed, and we discuss how puzzling and powering are a promising pair of concepts to study this.The need to prepare cities for climate change adaptation requests the urban modeller community to implement sustainable adaptation strategies within their models to be tested against specific city morphologies and scenarios. Greening city roofs is part of these strategies. In this context, the GREENROOF module for TEB (town energy balance) has been developed to model the interactions between buildings and green roof systems at the scale of the city. This module, which combines the ISBA model (Interaction between Soil Biosphere and Atmosphere) and TEB, allows for one to describe an extensive green roof composed of four functional layers (vegetation - grasses or sedums; substrate; retention/drainage layers; and artificial roof layers) and to model vegetation-atmosphere fluxes of heat, water and momentum, as well as the hydrological fluxes throughout the substrate and the drainage layers, and the thermal fluxes throughout the natural and artificial layers of the green roof. TEB-GREENROOF (SURFEX v7.3) should therefore be able to represent the impact of climate forcings on the functioning of green roof vegetation and, conversely, the influence of the green roof on the local climate. An evaluation of GREENROOF is performed for a case study located in Nancy (France) which consists of an instrumented extensive green roof with sedums and substrate and drainage layers that are typical of this kind of construction. After calibration of the drainage layer hydrological characteristics, model results show good dynamics for the substrate water content and the drainage at the green roof base, with nevertheless a tendency to underestimate the water content and overestimate the drainage. This does not impact too much the green roof temperatures, which present a good agreement with observations. Nonetheless GREENROOF tends to overestimate the soil temperatures and their amplitudes, but this effect is less important in the drainage layer. These results are encouraging with regard to modelling the impact of green roofs on thermal indoor comfort and energy consumption at the scale of cities, for which GREENROOF will be running with the building energy version of TEB - TEB-BEM. Moreover, with the green roof studied for GREENROOF evaluation being a type of extensive green roof widespread in cities, the type of hydrological characteristics highlighted for the case study will be used as the standard configuration to model extensive green roof impacts at the scale of cities.Several case studies show that social factors like institutions, perceptions and social capital strongly affect social capacities to adapt to climate change. Together with economic and technological development they are important for building social capacities. However, there are almost no methodologies for the systematic assessment of social factors. After reviewing existing methodologies we identify the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) by Gupta et al. (2010), developed for assessing the adaptive capacity of institutions, as the most comprehensive and operationalised framework to assess social factors. The ACW differentiates 22 criteria to assess 6 dimensions: variety, learning capacity, room for autonomous change, leadership, availability of resources, fair governance. To include important psychological factors we extended the ACW by two dimensions: "adaptation motivation" refers to actors' motivation to realise, support and/or promote adaptation to climate; "adaptation belief" refers to actors' perceptions of realisability and effectiveness of adaptation measures. We applied the extended ACW to assess adaptive capacities of four sectors - water management, flood/coastal protection, civil protection and regional planning - in northwestern Germany. The assessments of adaptation motivation and belief provided a clear added value. The results also revealed some methodological problems in applying the ACW (e.g. overlap of dimensions), for which we propose methodological solutions.Global climate change, as a consequence of the increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration, may significantly affect both soil organic C storage and soil capacity for C sequestration. CarboSOIL is an empirical model based on regression techniques and developed as a geographical information system tool to predict soil organic carbon (SOC) contents at different depths. This model is a new component of the agro-ecological decision support system for land evaluation MicroLEIS, which assists decision-makers in facing specific agro-ecological problems, particularly in Mediterranean regions. In this study, the CarboSOIL model was used to study the effects of climate change on SOC dynamics in a Mediterranean region (Andalusia, S Spain). Different down-scaled climate models were applied based on BCCR-BCM2, CNRMCM3, and ECHAM5 and driven by SRES scenarios (A1B, A2 and B2). Output data were linked to spatial data sets (soil and land use) to quantify SOC stocks. The CarboSOIL model has proved its ability to predict the short-, medium- and long-term trends (2040s, 2070s and 2100s) of SOC dynamics and sequestration under projected future scenarios of climate change. Results have shown an overall trend towards decreasing of SOC stocks in the upper soil sections (0-25 cm and 25-50 cm) for most soil types and land uses, but predicted SOC stocks tend to increase in the deeper soil section (0-75 cm). Soil types as Arenosols, Planosols and Solonchaks and land uses as "permanent crops" and "open spaces with little or no vegetation" would be severely affected by climate change with large decreases of SOC stocks, in particular under the medium-high emission scenario A2 by 2100. The information developed in this study might support decision-making in land management and climate adaptation strategies in Mediterranean regions, and the methodology could be applied to other Mediterranean areas with available soil, land use and climate data.The participation of farmers residing in agrarian reform communities towards the use of selected IPB-bred vegetable and peanut varieties was assessed Purposive sampling of 18 pre-selected farmers was done and were trained on seed production and cultural management practices of these varieties at the Institute of Plant Breeding. After the implementation of seed production activities in their respective places, it was found that there was a dramatic increase in the amount of vegetable and peanut seeds produced in Antique, Samar, Davao del Sur and South Cotabato. The amount of seeds produced by farmer participants from Samar was highest at 96.2 %. In contrast, the farmer participants from La Union produced the lowest amount of seeds. In relation to climate change adaptation, based from survey, the farmers will be considering a few adjustments in the future implementation of farming activities like adjustments to be made in the planting calendar of these varieties by the farmer participants due to heavy rains occurring starting September every year Also, farmers will implement utilization of the legume residues for composting to produce organic fertilizers which was considered by all (100 %) farmer participants. The peanut that can fix nitrogen from the air were also considered for crop rotation by majority (83.33%) of the farmers in order to lessen the use of inorganic fertilizers causing soil acidity. Further; the farmers indicated that peanut will be utilized for sequential cropping after rice to bring back soil fertility. All farmer participants from Antique, Samar Davao del Sur and South Cotabato indicated the further adoption of the IPB-bred varieties in future production system. There was a highly significant association of the farmer participants' selected demographic variables with the amount of seeds producedClimate change, involving both natural climate variability and anthropogenic. global warming, has been a major worldwide concern, particularly with the publication of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Considering the archipelagic nature of the Philippines and its being a very minor emitter of greenhouse gases, adaptation to climate change has been the Government's national policy. The importance of expediting these climate change-related adaptation measures was highlighted by a string of geo-meteorological-related disasters, specifically triggered by landslides and floods consequent to Typhoon Parma that hit the country in 2009. We present the geologic conditions that rendered the affected areas, especially in northwestern Luzon, extremely vulnerable to the existent hazards, the meteorological-conditions-that set off the-disaster and the different initiatives that the government and local communities have taken to further prepare the people for possible future disasters. Recognition of the pertinent issues and the extant challenges points to the urgent need for mainstreaming both geo-meteorological-related disaster risk management and climate change adaptation measures in the light of changing climate conditions.The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people in seven western states and two countries and to 5.5 million irrigated acres. The river has long been over-allocated. Climate models project runoff losses of 5-20 % from the basin by mid-21st century due to human-induced climate change. Recent work has shown that decreased snow albedo from anthropogenic dust loading to the CO mountains shortens the duration of snow cover by several weeks relative to conditions prior to western expansion of the US in the mid-1800s, and advances peak runoff at Lees Ferry, Arizona, by an average of 3 weeks. Increases in evapotranspiration from earlier exposure of soils and germination of plants have been estimated to decrease annual runoff by more than 1.0 billion cubic meters, or similar to 5% of the annual average. This prior work was based on observed dust loadings during 2005-2008; however, 2009 and 2010 saw unprecedented levels of dust loading on snowpacks in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), being on the order of 5 times the 2005-2008 loading. Building on our prior work, we developed a new snow albedo decay parameterization based on observations in 2009/10 to mimic the radiative forcing of extreme dust deposition. We convolve low, moderate, and extreme dust/snow albedos with both historic climate forcing and two future climate scenarios via a delta method perturbation of historic records. Compared to moderate dust, extreme dust absorbs 2 x to 4 x the solar radiation, and shifts peak snowmelt an additional 3 weeks earlier to a total of 6 weeks earlier than pre-disturbance. The extreme dust scenario reduces annual flow volume an additional 1% (6 % compared to pre-disturbance), a smaller difference than from low to moderate dust scenarios due to melt season shifting into a season of lower evaporative demand. The sensitivity of flow timing to dust radiative forcing of snow albedo is maintained under future climate scenarios, but the sensitivity of flow volume reductions decreases with increased climate forcing. These results have implications for water management and suggest that dust abatement efforts could be an important component of any climate adaptation strategies in the UCRB.Loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate variability and climate change is currently an important topic being discussed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This study investigated loss and damage from floods and droughts among rural households living near the Limpopo, Zambezi and Save rivers in Mozambique. We used a questionnaire survey (n = 303) and qualitative research tools. The study showed that farmers in the research areas were caught between two evils. In the uplands, conditions for agriculture are extremely poor and crop yields are low; moreover, farmers face considerable risk of crop failure when drought hits. In the lowlands, close to the river, soil and water conditions are more favourable, but these areas experience frequent floods. Evidence from this study shows that farmers in the research areas are severely affected by both floods and droughts, and their capacity to cope and adapt is limited. With very little livelihood diversification and poor access to markets, crop failures translate almost directly into severe food insecurity among the population.Cold northeasterly winds, called Yamase, which cause the summertime weather of northern Japan to be unusually cool, have often damaged the rice crop in northern Japan, both historically and recently. To estimate future Yamase event occurrences, we used the new version of the MIROC5 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model and predicted the frequency of future Yamase events from the pressure difference index (pressure difference between Wakkanai and Sendai; PDWS). In a 20th-century experiment (1980-2005), the PDWS simulated by the MIROC5 model reproduced well the Yamase events in the JRA-25 reanalysis data. In a future climate experiment (2006-2100), the predicted occurrence frequency of Yamase events is low around the 2030s and from the 2080s onward, but in other periods, Yamase events are predicted to occur at about the same frequency as during the 20th-century experiment (1980-2005). Therefore, even under global warming, Yamase winds can be expected to affect agriculture in northern Japan in the 21st century.This paper presents the development process and building blocks of a first approach to a roadmap towards climate adaptation in the Meuse river basin. In order to prepare the way for a transnational roadmap, several interviews and two workshops with policy-makers and researchers were held. In these workshops a common vision was developed, and the challenges and necessary measures formulated and the desirable steps per actor were identified. This was done as part of the INTERREG project AMICE.Increasing green space, especially in densely built-up areas is considered to be a valuable climate change adaptation response in order to reduce the threat of high temperatures to human health and comfort and to controlled global greenhouse gas emissions. Practical responses to climate change, under urban conditions, in order to avoid or reduce trees and shrubs vulnerability, can be considered drought resistant planting approaches, as the addition of organic amendeds to soil. The improvement of physical-chemical soil quality is a key step for carrying out xeriscaping programs of urban green spaces in Mediterranean semiarid areas. Organic amendments, particularly compost, have been receiving a renewed attention not only in horticulture but also in the context of restoring disturbed urban soils to address environmental issues as well as to improve trees and shrubs growth. The influence of increasing rates (0, 15, 30, and 45%) of composted sewage sludge (SSC) placed in the plantation hole on both urban soil properties and growth for three native Mediterranean woody hedge species was monitored over a 2-year period after planting. The experiment was supported by a xerogardening project in an urban context under semi-arid conditions. The results indicate that the urban soil physical characteristics were positively influenced by the addition of SSC: the 45% rate showed an increase in both moisture and infiltration values, thereby increasing the volume of plant-available water in the soil. The chemical properties of the amended soils were also directly affected by the SSC rate, but the effect of the compost on organic matter, nitrogen and potassium contents decreased overtime. Our results prove that the hedge growth response to the compost treatments is also highly dependent on the rate of compost used. At the end of the trial, in Rhamnus and Myrthus plants 30% compost level guarantees the best performance; in fact, the further addition of 15% of compost led to a significant decrease in hedge and diameter values, in particular in Myrtle. This could be explained by the high pH at 45% compost, which would seem not to suit the physiology of the two species. On the other hand, in Phillyrea plants, the rate of 45% compost gives high performance equal to that of 30%; it would therefore seem that the high pH at 45% compost does not influence the nutritive elements' absorption and, as a consequence, the growth. The use of composted sludge as an amendment for sclerophyllous could be feasible and, what is more, helpful to mitigate the environmental impact of organic waste disposal. Moreover more natural vegetation can be introduced into urban parks and green spaces in semi-arid environments to encourage sustainable landscaping and xerogardening. Published by Elsevier GmbH.The effects of climatic changes, progressing urbanization and improved environmental controls on the simulated urban stormwater quality in a northern Sweden community were studied. Future scenarios accounting for those changes were developed and their effects simulated with the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). It was observed that the simulated stormwater quality was highly sensitive to the scenarios, mimicking progressing urbanization with varying catchment imperviousness and area. Thus, land use change was identified as one of the most influential factors and in some scenarios, urban growth caused changes in runoff quantity and quality exceeding those caused by a changing climate. Adaptation measures, including the reduction of directly connected impervious surfaces (DCIS) through the integration of more green spaces into the urban landscape, or disconnection of DCIS were effective in reducing runoff volume and pollutant loads. Furthermore, pollutant source control measures, including material substitution, were effective in reducing pollutant loads and significantly improving stormwater quality.International and Australian climate change adaptation research has identified conceptual frameworks, definitions and theories to support adaptation policy, planning and decision-making. However, there is more limited research on the practical experience and challenges of implementing adaptation. This article draws on the experience of 20 state, regional and local adaptation initiatives across a range of sectors, scales and locations in Australia, to identify the challenges faced by adaptation practitioners and decision-makers, and some emerging good practices. The review finds that many critical challenges to adaptation are common across the range of adaptation initiatives, and that there are significant interdependencies between these challenges. They should therefore be addressed in any significant adaptation initiative, at an early stage and as a related set of issues. The review also identifies potential national initiatives to enhance adaptation capabilities, and a number of policy issues beyond the jurisdiction of local stakeholders. These have been progressed as part of a broader agenda to support adaptation capability development within Australia, and to strengthen the linkages between adaptation practice, policy and research.Coupled General Circulation Models simulate broad-scale climate patterns and are standard tools for understanding potential changes to the climate system. Climate change projection information is required at the local scale for adaptation planning. Model skill can be limited at this scale due to model biases and uncertainties. Pacific Islands are one such example, particularly Nauru which lies at the intersection of the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), the Western Pacific Monsoon, the oceanic warm pool and the ENSO zone of influence. In light of such constraints, a qualitative climate projection approach is presented whereby projections are based on expected changes to the broad-scale climate features, drawing on a review of current literature and new research. Nauru sits in the region subject to seasonal and interannual migrations of the SPCZ. Climate models simulate an overly zonal SPCZ with Nauru lying too close to the dry cold tongue zone. This sets an erroneous base state for Nauru by locating it in a very different climate zone. The climate model changes in the SPCZ can be used to argue how the climate of Nauru would change were it and the SPCZ correctly collocated. Similar approaches are applied to the set of climate features influencing Nauru to generate modified climate projections.Anthropogenic activity has influenced global climate change since the industrial era and will continue to affect societies in the long term. Attached to this certainty, the adaptation agenda straightens its pertinence which, on the other hand, is followed by the importance of acknowledging not only its meaning but also the range of possible alternatives. Through a bibliographical review, this paper will analyse the concept of adaptation and discuss some of the most relevant suggested strategies. The goal is to contribute to diminish the gap between theory and action, being a step forward and closer to deciding on the best measures to advocate in light of climate change.Sustainable use and management of natural resources require strategic responses using non-destructive tools to provide spatial and temporal data for decision making. Experiments conducted at John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) demonstrate ground penetrating radar (GPR) can provide high-resolution images showing depth to water tables. GPR data at KSC were acquired using a MAL angstrom Rough Terrain 100 MHz Antenna. Data indicate strong correlation (R-2=0.80) between measured water table depth (shallow monitoring wells and soil auger) and GPR estimated depth. The study demonstrated the use of GPR to detect Holocene and Pleistocene depositional environments such as Anastasia Formation that consists of admixtures of sand, shell and coquinoid limestone at a depth of 20-25 ft. This corresponds well with the relatively strong reflections from 7.5 to 13 m (125-215 ns) in GPR images. Interpretations derived from radar data coupled with other non-GPR data (wells data and soil auger data) will aid in the understanding of climate change impacts due to sea level rise on the scrub vegetation composition at KSC. Climate change is believed to have a potentially significant impact potential on near coastal ground water levels and associated water table depth. Understanding the impacts of ground water levels changes will, in turn, lead to improved conceptual conservation efforts and identifications of climate change adaptation concepts related to the recovery of the Florida scrub jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens) and other endangered or threatened species which are directly dependent on a healthy near coastal scrub habitat. Transfer of this inexpensive and non-destructive technology to other areas at KSC, Florida, and to other countries, may prove useful in the development of future conservation programs.China is facing many challenges in the water sector while implementing integrated water resources management (IWRM). Another daunting task - adapting to water-related impacts of climate change, is also challenging China's water managers. These challenges have been posing threats to China's economic, social and environmental development. While separate efforts in promoting IWRM and climate change adaptation have been made, the approach of mainstreaming climate change adaptation strategy within IWRM is seldom studied. Attempting to fill the gap, this paper argues that there is great potential in synergizing them after analysing their distinctions and common points. By developing climate-proofing strategies within IWRM, mainstreaming is able to minimize adverse water-related climate change risks and maximize the benefits of policies and plans. In this study, entry points of mainstreaming climate change adaptation in the sustaining environment of IWRM and its process will be identified and analysed.The aim of the present study is to use data from relevant government agencies to understand the change in rice production and land use since 2000 in North Sumatra, Indonesia, and to examine the combination of climatic and socio-economic factors affecting the change. Interviews and focused group meetings were also held to overcome the limitation of data availability. This study finds that the consistent increase in rice productivity has been offset by the reduction in rice harvest area, resulting in almost no growth in rice production over the last decade in North Sumatra. In contrast, oil palm plantations, particularly smallholder estates, have been expanding in the province. Four factors are identified as those affecting the change in land use: (1) climate conditions, (2) economic environment, (3) rice planting index, and (4) distance from palm oil enterprise estates. At the time of substantial reduction in rice harvest area, unusual climate conditions were observed across different regencies in North Sumatra, as was the case in 2006, when Medan, the provincial capital, recorded the highest annual rainfall during the last 20 years. The responses of the farmers to the rice planting index and the proximity to palm oil enterprise estates, both of which vary across the province, are differentiated into three types: (1) land use conversion from rice production to oil palm plantation, (2) conversion to other cash crops, and (3) staying with rice production. As oil palm is more resilient to rainfall variability, land use conversion from rice to oil palm can be considered a good adaptation from the farmers perspective. The large scale of the conversions, however, may be a threat to the food security of the society as a whole. This indicates that the countermeasures face trade-offs between different social groups, as well as between adaptation actions and other development priorities.Globe temperature is one element of the heat stress index, the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, which is used to evaluate how radiation adds to thermal discomfort in the workplace. As the measurement of globe temperature is not standardized, empirical equations were introduced to estimate the globe temperature from weather factors, including air temperature, solar radiation and wind speed. As it was not known whether these equations were applicable in an urban park environment with vegetation, we observed the globe temperature using a set of instruments in three parks. The observation along with the heat balance analysis of the globe revealed that the globe temperature depended curvilinearly on solar radiation and that wind speed influenced this dependence. We compared two previously proposed empirical equations to the observed globe temperature and found both equations had systematic estimation errors. Although the errors were reduced by fitting the equations to the observed data and reevaluating their numerical constants, the equations still had shortcomings, as one did not consider wind speed and the other included a discontinuity. We therefore derived a new equation based on the heat balance equations of the globe with its numerical constants experimentally determined. This equation was able to predict the curvilinear dependence of the globe temperature on global solar radiation without any discontinuity, and it also showed the globe temperature response to wind speed.Much research into climate change impacts and adaptation has been, and continues to be, conducted. However, the well documented themes and recommendations continue to emerge with little evidence of effective climate change adaptation strategies being implemented. This is because while climate change adaptation strategies are not hard to develop, it is difficult to evaluate their effectiveness or, in some cases, even define effectiveness. Compounding this is the fact that implementing strategies that in theory, or in pilot studies, are potentially effective is complicated due to political, economic, legislative and science constraints and the difficulties associated with decision making under uncertainty. Here we focus on Australian rural communities and have found that a major barrier to implementation of effective adaptation strategies is the disconnect between the information that end-users need (or think they need) and the existing outcomes of climate change impacts and adaptation research. While previous research, and anecdotal evidence, qualitatively establishes that a 'gap' does exist, this study represents a preliminary attempt at quantifying the causes and magnitude of the disconnect: a necessary first step in addressing the challenge posed by this barrier to adaptation. The findings are relevant beyond Australia, beyond the agriculture sector, and beyond climate change science, and highlight the need for urgent work aimed at bridging the gap between scientists and decision makers (and other end-users).The change of land surface can exert significant influence on the future climate change. This study analyzed the effects of herdsmen's adaptation to climate changes on the livestock breeding, income, and land surface dynamics with a land surface parameterization scheme. The empirical analysis was first carried out on the impacts of the adaptation measures of herdsmen on their income in the context of the climate change with the positive mathematical programming (PMP) model on the basis of the household survey data in the Three-River Source Region, an ecologically fragile area in Qinghai Province, China. Then, the land surface parameterization process is analyzed based on the agent-based model (ABM), which involves the herdsmen's adaptation measures on climate change, and it also provides reference for the land surface change projection. The result shows that the climate change adaptation measures will have a positive effect on the increasingof the amount of herdsman's livestock and income as well as future land surface dynamics. Some suggestions on the land use management were finally proposed, which can provide significant reference information for the land use planning.This review discusses empirical research on social networks and the environment; it summarizes findings from representative studies and the conceptual frameworks social scientists use to examine the role of social networks. The article presents basic concepts in social network analysis, summarizes common challenges of empirical research on social networks, and outlines areas for future research. Finally, the article discusses the normative and positive meanings of social networks.The Pseudo-Global-Warming Downscaling (PGWDS) method is a simple way to downscale future climate change using the reanalysis data added by the long-term mean difference between present and future climate data projected by a general circulation model (GCM). The PGWDS method has three substantial advantages as compared to a conventional dynamical downscaling method, (1) removing GCM biases, (2) reducing the amount of required GCM output, and (3) shortening the simulation duration. We have focused on the third advantage and applied the PGWDS method to a local area in Japan in January. The future changes in monthly mean precipitation, snowfall, and surface air temperature estimated by the 10-year averages can be regarded as the future climatic changes estimated by the 30-year averages because most of the 10-year averages are within the standard error of the 30-year averages. Meanwhile, the future frequencies in the 10 years are often larger than the error range of those in the 30 years in the extreme events. Short sampling duration seems to be a primary cause. It is necessary to check the possibility of shortening the simulation duration because the estimation of future change is not appropriate in some cases.Background. Indigenous residents of Alaska's Bering Strait Region depend, both culturally and nutritionally, on ice seal and walrus harvests. Currently, climate change and resultant increases in marine industrial development threaten these species and the cultures that depend on them. Objective. To document: (a) local descriptions of the importance of marine mammal hunting; (b) traditional methods for determining if harvested marine mammals are safe to consume; and (c) marine mammal outcomes that would have adverse effects on community health, the perceived causes of these outcomes, strategies for preventing these outcomes and community adaptations to outcomes that cannot be mitigated. Design. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 82 indigenous hunters and elders from the Bering Strait region. Standard qualitative analysis was conducted on interview transcripts, which were coded for both inductive and deductive codes. Responses describing marine mammal food safety and importance are presented using inductively generated categories. Responses describing negative marine mammal outcomes are presented in a vulnerability framework, which links human health outcomes to marine conditions. Results. Project participants perceived that shipping noise and pollution, as well as marine mammal food source depletion by industrial fishing, posed the greatest threats to marine mammal hunting traditions. Proposed adaptations primarily fell into 2 categories: (a) greater tribal influence over marine policy; and (b) documentation of traditional knowledge for local use. This paper presents 1 example of documenting traditional knowledge as an adaptation strategy: traditional methods for determining if marine mammal food is safe to eat. Conclusions. Participant recommendations indicate that 1 strategy to promote rural Alaskan adaptation to climate change is to better incorporate local knowledge and values into decision-making processes. Participant interest in documenting traditional knowledge for local use also indicates that funding agencies could support climate change adaptation by awarding more grants for tribal research that advances local, rather than academic, use of traditional knowledge.There is growing recognition that public lands cannot be managed as islands; rather, land management must address the ecological, social, and temporal complexity that often spans jurisdictions and traditional planning horizons. Collaborative decision making and adaptive management (CAM) have been promoted as methods to reconcile competing societal demands and respond to complex ecosystem dynamics. We detail the experiences of land managers and stakeholders in using CAM at Las Cienegas National Conservation Area (LCNCA), a highly valued site under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The CAM process at Las Cienegas is marked by strong stakeholder engagement, with four core elements: (1) shared watershed goals with measurable resource objectives; (2) relevant and reliable scientific information; (3) mechanisms to incorporate new information into decision making; and (4) shared learning to improve both the process and management actions. The combination of stakeholder engagement and adaptive management has led to agreement on contentious issues, more innovative solutions, and more effective land management. However, the region is now experiencing rapid changes outside managers' control, including climate change, human population growth, and reduced federal budgets, with large but unpredictable impacts on natural resources. Although the CAM experience provides a strong foundation for making the difficult and contentious management decisions that such changes are likely to require, neither collaboration nor adaptive management provides a sufficient structure for addressing the externalities that drive uncontrollable and unpredictable change. As a result, LCNCA is exploring two specific modifications to CAM that may better address emerging challenges, including: (1) creating nested resource objectives to distinguish between those objectives that may be crucial to maintaining ecological resilience from those that may hinder a flexible response to climate change, and (2) incorporating scenario planning into CAM to explore how climate change may interact with other drivers and alter options for the future, to identify robust management actions, and to prioritize ecological monitoring efforts. The experiences at LCNCA demonstrate how collaboration and adaptive management can be used to improve social and environmental outcomes and, with modifications, may help address the full range of complexity and change that threatens to overwhelm even the best efforts to sustain public lands.We seek to contribute to the scholarship on operationalizing resilience concepts via a working resilience indicator framework. Although it requires further refinement, this practical framework provides a useful baseline for generating awareness and understanding of the complexity and diversity of variables that impinge on resilience. It has potential value for the evaluation, benchmarking, monitoring, and reporting of marine system resilience. The necessity for such a framework is a consequence of the levels of complexity and uncertainty associated with climate change and other global change stressors in marine social-ecological systems, and the problems involved in assessing their resilience. There is a need for: (1) methodologies that bring together knowledge from diverse sources and disciplines to investigate the complexity and uncertainty of interactions between climate, ocean, and human systems and (2) frameworks to facilitate the evaluation and monitoring of the social-ecological resilience of marine-dependent sectors. Accordingly, our main objective is to demonstrate the virtues of combining a case study methodology with complex adaptive systems approaches as a means to improve understanding of the multifaceted dynamics of marine sectors experiencing climate change. The resilience indicator framework, the main product of the methodology, is developed using four case studies across key Australian marine biodiversity and resource sectors already experiencing impacts from climate and other global changes. It comprises a set of resilience dimensions with a candidate set of abstract and concrete resilience indicators. Its design ensures an integrated approach to resilience evaluation.Purpose - Climate change is perhaps the most serious environmental threat to agriculture in Africa, because of its impact on pre- and post-harvest agricultural productivity. The purpose of this study is to provide empirical information on the challenges of cassava post-harvest adaptation to climate change. Design/methodology/approach - The study was conducted in two randomly selected states of southeast Nigeria. Data collection was done in two phases; first, there was a rapid rural appraisal and then a detailed survey using a questionnaire administered to 320 randomly selected cassava processors, 40 from each of eight randomly selected cassava farming communities. Findings - The respondents were predominantly women, who process, and grow cassava. The factors affecting their level of vulnerability were gender, household size and farm size. While women were more vulnerable than men, households with greater number of persons and/or larger farm size were less vulnerable. Women's vulnerability declined from the 25th income quantile through the 50th to the 75th while the positive effect of farm and household size increased through the same trend. Education was only positively important for the 75th income quantile. The factors constraining adaptation were scarcity of processing inputs, institutional, water and poverty constraints. Originality/value - Available literature show that most of the recent studies on climate change and agriculture have tended to concentrate on pre-harvest. Ozor et at studied barriers to climate change adaptation among farm households of southern Nigeria. Enete and Onyekuru studied empirical evidence of challenges of agricultural adaptation to climate change, also among farmers of southeast Nigeria. Enete and Amusa presented a literature survey of challenges of agricultural adaptation to climate change. This study is, not only commodity specific, but also focused on post-harvest.Prolongation of the growing season due to a warming climate could represent new opportunities for northern agriculture. Climatic and biotic constraints may, however, together with increasing risk for higher nutrient loads, challenge future crop production. The objective of this study was to speculate how a range of arable land use patterns, resulting from various policy driven choices, could be introduced into a farming system, and how they would affect the risks associated with nutrient leaching. The case study area included 720 ha of arable fields in southern Finland. Climate change scenarios were calculated using averages of 19 climate models and emission scenarios B1, A1B and A2. Four crop choice and allocation storylines were developed according to policy objectives: increased protein self-sufficiency, increased winter cover for reducing nutrient loading, diversification, and monoculture for cereal production. Grasslands and leys were not included in any of the production scenarios. Impacts of these land uses on sediment loading and nitrogen leaching were simulated using WSFS and INCA modelling. We found that while adaptation to climate change must include consideration of crop choices, there are conflicts associated with allocations and rotations for various market and policy situations. The expected increase in nutrient loading in the simulations caused by climate change was moderate. The increase can partly be compensated for by changes in farmland use, more in the shorter term than in the longer term to mid-century. To reduce suspended sediment load in the changed climate, vegetation cover in winter was important. For nitrogen leaching, adjusting the N balance at parcel level was more important than vegetation cover. In the future, adaptation at cropping system level is potentially an efficient way to manage nutrient load risks.Fog frequency at Kushiro, Hokkaido Island, Japan, during midsummer depends strongly on the advection of sea fog from the ocean onto the land, which itself depends on the behavior of the North Pacific High (NPH). This study investigates the relationship between unusually high fog frequency at Kushiro during early autumn in 2012 and the NPH extension. The total fog frequency during mid-August through mid-September in 2012 was the highest over the past 32 years. A northwestward expansion of the NPH caused anomalous southerly winds, that transported warm moist air onto the southeast coast of Hokkaido Island. This warm moist southerly flow favors the onshore advection of sea fog, as it does during midsummer. During early autumn in 2012, the warm advection also results in a large temperature difference between atmosphere and sea over the cold Oyashio current, which suggests that an increase in sea fog generation is another important factor for the high fog frequency at Kushiro.The correlation of fruits and vegetables consumption and good health is well established; however, there are many fruits that need to be studied considering the environmental conditions where they grow. Blueberry is one of the most important small fruit studied in the world; however, little is known about the blueberry cultivated in Brazil. There is an incentive to produce blueberry in the southern region of Brazil, mainly cultivars from the rabbiteye group, due to their rusticity and climate adaptation. It is common to observe papers about blueberry and the health benefits in the international journals; however, little is known about the blueberry produced in Brazil. This study had the aim of to determine the content of total phenolic, anthocyanins and antioxidant activity of blueberry cultivars from the rabbiteye group. Four blueberry cultivars were analyzed ('Climax', 'Powder Blue', 'Florida' and 'Alice Blue'). The blueberry genotypes were harvested at Embrapa Clima Temperado's field and transported to the Food Science and Technology lab to be analyzed for their total content of phenolics, anthocyanins and antioxidant activity. Total phenolic content was measured using the Folin-Ciocalteau reagent mix. Anthocyanins were measured by the pH difference method. Antioxidant activity was measured using the stable radical DPPH. Regarding the results, the cultivar 'Alice Blue' had the highest phenolic content and antioxidant activity among the analyzed cultivars. The anthocyanin content was superior in the 'Climax' cultivar. Selected blueberry genotypes had equal or greater phenolic and antioxidant activity than blueberry cultivated in North America. The level of total phenolic did not correlate with the antioxidant activity in the studied blueberry cultivars. The levels of bioactive compounds varies within the blueberry genotypes examined indicating that breeding and selection could be done to develop cultivars with improved levels of these chemical substances.Climate change impact assessments on agriculture are subject to large uncertainties, as demonstrated in the present review of recent studies for Africa. There are multiple reasons for differences in projections, including uncertainties in greenhouse gas emissions and patterns of climate change; assumptions on future management, aggregation, and spatial extent; and methodological differences. Still, all projections agree that climate change poses a significant risk to African agriculture. Most projections also see the possibility of increasing agricultural production under climate change, especially if suitable adaptation measures are assumed. Climate change is not the only projected pressure on African agriculture, which struggles to meet demand today and may need to feed an additional one billion individuals by 2050. Development strategies are urgently needed, but they will need to consider future climate change and its inherent uncertainties. Science needs to show how existing synergies between climate change adaptation and development can be exploited.Cattle production is part of people's cultures and is important for human nutrition and welfare. However, conventional cattle ranching is a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Carbon sequestration in vegetation and soils can be enhanced and GHG emissions reduced with controlled grazing, appropriate pasture species, and the use of silvopastoral systems (SPS), which combine trees and shrubs with pastures. In addition, SPS contribute to climate change adaptation thanks to the ameliorating effects of trees on air temperatures that dry out pastures, as well as improving animal well-being and productivity. Several types of SPS are commonly found in the agricultural landscapes of Latin America. Intensive SPS (ISPS), where fodder banks are combined with woody species planted at high density, produce better yields than conventional ranching thanks to higher cattle density and better weight gain by the animals. Research in Colombia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica shows that SPS have more carbon in aboveground biomass and in soils than degraded pastures. In SPS, the timber or fruit trees, either planted or from natural forest regeneration, increases carbon stocks and sequestration rates. Native tree species can be used in SPS with good results in terms of productivity, soil restoration, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. The use of SPS contributes to carbon sequestration in trees and in soils, while establishing forest plantations and conserving secondary forests increase carbon sequestration and storage at the landscape level. SPS and especially ISPS can contribute to climate change mitigation because their net GHG emissions can be negative. In Latin America, successful ISPS are being scaled up to regional levels. Incentives such as Payments for Environmental Services along with technical assistance can stimulate the adoption of SPS, thus contributing to climate change mitigation while preserving rural livelihoods.The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and National Park Service (NPS) have highlighted climate change as an agency priority and issued direction to administrative units for responding to climate change. In response, the USFS and NPS initiated the North Cascadia Adaptation Partnership (NCAP) in 2010. The goals of the NCAP were to build an inclusive partnership, increase climate change awareness, assess vulnerability, and develop science-based adaptation strategies to reduce these vulnerabilities. The NCAP expanded previous science-management partnerships on federal lands to a larger, more ecologically and geographically complex region and extended the approach to a broader range of stakeholders. The NCAP focused on two national forests and two national parks in the North Cascades Range, Washington (USA), a total land area of 2.4 million ha, making it the largest science-management partnership of its kind. The NCAP assessed climate change vulnerability for four resource sectors (hydrology and access; vegetation and ecological disturbance; wildlife; and fish) and developed adaptation options for each sector. The NCAP process has proven to be a successful approach for implementing climate change adaptation across a region and can be emulated by other land management agencies in North America and beyond.Successful adaptation to climate change requires flexible adaptation strategies which consider regional ecological, economic and social circumstances. Coastal zones are considered to be significantly vulnerable to climate change impacts. The projected impacts of climate change in the metropolitan region of Bremen-Oldenburg, Germany (a coastal area), are, for example, rising sea level, salt water intrusion, temporary groundwater scarcity in the summer and increased (heavy) rainfalls. This paper uses an existing framework, the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW), complemented by two additional dimensions: adaptation motivation and adaptation belief. The objectives were first, to assess the adaptive capacity of water governance in the study region, and second, to show how the ACW can be used as an approach and a communication tool with stakeholders to identify strengths and weaknesses. Based on this, a further objective was to discover what lessons and recommendations can be drawn that could help water experts and stakeholders in the future. The results show a high adaptive capacity and that the addition of the psychological dimensions was valuable. However, it is important to look closely at each dimension assessed by the ACW. The key recommendations are: to improve public participation; to ensure better coordination; to raise awareness; and to reduce the lack of political will to overcome adaptation barriers.In recent decades, new theories in resource management have emerged that have been specifically designed to account for the uncertainties and complexities inherent in ecosystem processes and structures. Adaptive management is one such theory and has become the dominant approach used by resource managers where degrees of scientific uncertainty are high. Adaptive management has been particularly recognized for its usefulness in addressing the impacts of climate change on wildlife species due to the high degree of complexity and scientific uncertainty climate change entails. Although adaptive management enjoys widespread support among resource managers and academics, guidance has been lacking in how to implement adaptive management plans effectively. The absence of clear statutory authority and regulatory standards has made the development, implementation and review of adaptive management plans challenging. The lack of adequate funding and personnel resources has often also greatly restricted an agency's ability to implement adaptive management plans effectively. This Note explores challenges to the use of adaptive management as a resource management approach with emphasis on challenges that have arisen in the context of managing the impacts of climate change on protected species. The recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Greater Yellowstone Coalition v. Servheen, 665 F.3d 1015 (2011) provides a backdrop for discussion. In Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Ninth Circuit rejected an adaptive management plan for removal of a population of grizzly bears from the ESA's list of threatened species where ample scientific evidence indicated that the bear was adversely affected by climate change and the effects of climate change were not adequately addressed in the plan. The case is noteworthy not only because it established that climate change impacts must be addressed in adaptive management plans where adaptive management is the selected management approach, but also because it highlights difficulties agencies and courts have in developing, implementing and reviewing adaptive management plans where statutory authority, regulatory standards and funding for the plans are lacking. The Note then considers the possible role of the National Fish Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy (FWP Strategy) recently developed under the direction of the Council for Environmental Quality and authorized by Executive Order. The FWP Strategy strongly endorses the development and implementation of adaptive management plans for U.S. species affected by climate change. While the FWP Strategy is still in its early stages of development and adaptive management plans devised under its guidance have yet to be tested, the Strategy appears to address several of the problems that have plagued agencies in obtaining judicial approval of adaptive management plans. On its face, the FWP Strategy stands to benefit the many species of fish, wildlife and plants in the United States whose survival is threatened by climate change, and may ultimately provide a viable solution for resolving current management issues involving these species that were raised in Greater Yellowstone Coalition.The 2001 Forest Service Road less Area Conservation Rule (Road less Rule) prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on approximately one-third of National Forest System lands. In 2011, the Tenth Circuit upheld the Roadless Rule in Wyoming v. USDA after a decade of litigation. Subsequently, in October 2012, the Supreme Court refused to take up challenges to the Tenth Circuit's ruling. Given the Forest Service's new focus on managing for climate change and the importance of Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) protected by the Roadless Rule, this Note examines whether management for climate change adaptation and mitigation is feasible, necessary, and defensible in IRAs. As background, Parts I and II describe the history and terms of the Roadless Rule and the projected effects of climate change on forest ecosystems. This Note explains the benefits of purely passive management of IRAs in light of climate change effects and discusses arguments against active management in IRAs, but because the Rule explicitly allows some level of active management in IRAs, Part III summarizes the relevant scientific literature on climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies that may be extended to IRAs. Part IV examines the Rule's language, the case law, and the Forest Service's statutory framework to analyze the extent to which the Agency may implement active management in IRAs, including strategies that do not adhere to historical conditions. This Note concludes that: 1) if the Agency seeks to actively manage IRAs, it needs a comprehensive set of criteria for prioritizing roadless areas for climate change mitigation and adaptation treatments, and 2) the Agency may benefit from modifying the Rule's language if it deems that management outside of the historical range of variability is necessary.The threat of climate change is a great challenge to sustainable land management (USDA-NRCS, 2010a). Several publications have reported that over the last few decades, rainfall intensities have increased in many parts of the world, including in the United States. Without good, productive soils and the ecosystem services provided by them, the survival of our species will be in jeopardy. The future changes in climate that will drive erosion processes will significantly impact soil erosion rates, with higherA new atmospheric humidity variable called the modified relative humidity (MRH) is proposed based on properties of the Johnson's S-B distribution function. The frequency distribution of MRH can be roughly approximated by the normal distribution, while other variables such as relative humidity and the water vapor mixing ration cannot. This characteristic suggests that MRH is convenient for statistical variable controls sucha as data assimilation and climatological grid data controls. Super-saturation and negative water vapor states induced by positive and negative humidity increments are avoided by using MRH. Three types of MRH, Types-I, -II and -III, were examined. Type-III, with three fixed parameters, was the best function for approximating to the normal distribution. However, Types-I and -II, each with two fixed parameters, were beneficial for stable statistical humidity variable estimations.Since coastal communities are already subjected to the impacts of climate change, adaptation has become a necessity. This article presents competencies demonstrated by Canadian municipal employees during an adaptation process to sea level rise. To adapt, the participants demonstrated the following competencies: problem solving (highlighting components of the problem and identifying constraints), futures thinking, risk prediction, vulnerability analysis, local knowledge, planning, and communication. However, some competencies that could be potentially useful in adaptation were used less frequently by participants: developing solutions, knowledge of adaptation, math skills, hope, and self-efficacy.Introduction: If climate change is the 21st Century's biggest public health threat, research faces the major challenge of providing adequate evidence for vulnerable communities to adapt to the health effects of climate change. Available information about best practice in climate adaptation suggests it is inclusive of socio-economic disadvantage and local community factors such as access to health services. Since 1995, at least 19 164 papers have been published on climate change in the health sciences and social sciences. This body of literature has not yet been systematically examined for how well it serves rural communities. Methods: The ultimate aim of the study was to contribute to better understandings about what climate adaptation research has been done and is needed for rural communities. The two research questions were: 'What kinds of content define climate change research in disciplines that could potentially contribute to adaptation for health?' and 'How is content about rural and Aboriginal communities and best practice in adaptation related to this content?' A quantitative content analysis was performed using 'computational linguistics' Leximancer software. The analysis included 19 164 health and social sciences abstracts, batched by years, from 1 January 1995 to 31 July 2012. The relative frequency and co-occurrence of 52 concepts in these abstracts were mapped, as well as associations with positive or negative sentiment for selected concepts. Results: 'Rural' and 'Aboriginal' concepts tend to be relatively infrequent (3% and 5% overall likelihood of occurrence, respectively) and are more associated with socio-economic concepts in the social sciences than the health sciences. Multiple concepts in the health sciences literature are typically connected with 'disease' and ultimately 'science' storylines, with a 38% likelihood of paired co-occurrence of 'health' and 'disease' concepts alone. The social sciences appear more focused on the local and particular issues of community in climate change than the health sciences. 'Rural' and 'Aboriginal' concepts have increased by 1% across both discipline areas, since 2011 for the 'rural' concept and since 2004 for the 'Aboriginal' concept. 'Health' concepts in the health sciences and 'economic' concepts in the social sciences, as well as 'urban' concepts, are referred to more positively than either the 'rural' or 'Aboriginal' concepts. Conclusions: While care needs to be taken in interpreting the results of this study too negatively for rural and Aboriginal communities, they suggest that a disease focus dominates climate and health research typically unconnected to wider socio-economic and human system factors. This finding needs to be considered in light of the accumulating evidence of the importance of such contextual systemic factors in understanding climate and health effects and responses. The study adds some support to the view that a key priority is bringing the learnings of applied community-based researchers, from those in rural health to those in the social sciences, to climate research. There is a need to build confidence, including in the rural health sector which has arguably been slow to participate in programs of climate change research, that community-based research could make a difference to rural health in a climate-changing world.This study determines variations in ice extent of Nevado Illimani, Bolivia (16 degrees 38'S, 67 degrees 44'W), from 1963 to 2009. The results are compared with net accumulation rate variations obtained from a local ice core. We then propose an interpretation of the recent environmental history (last 46 years) of the region based on a study of remotely sensed and ice-core data. From 1963 to 2009, Nevado Illimani lost a total ice area of 9.49 +/- 1.09 km(2), a 35% reduction. Area variations generally followed variations in net accumulation rates during this period. Despite the current glacier area reduction trend, the Nevado Illimani glaciers will not completely disappear in the next few decades.Purpose - Africa is a focus area for international climate change adaptation finance. Subsistence farmers are crucial for Africa's adaption. But it is unclear how those that qualify to receive adaptation finance actually perceive climate change, even though perceptions are reflected in adaptive behaviour. This paper aims to show how perceptions of climate-related hazards drive adaptation and provide recommendations for the climate change finance community to support subsistence farmer adaptation. Design/methodology/approach - A total of 227 households in rural Ghana and Botswana were surveyed and their answers statistically analysed. Findings - The respondents' perception of climate-related hazards is analogous to existing environmental degradation. In the complex environment in which farmers operate, high vulnerability and climate dependency do not necessarily result in autonomous adaptation. Experience, means and perceived successfulness are more important factors, but these hardly relate to individual adaptive measures. Practical implications - Recommendations for adaptation finance institutions: build on existing development plans and policies on climate-related environmental problems; adaptation is more than a collection of adaptive measures, so financing adaptation is more than financing adaptive measures; extremely vulnerable people do not necessarily adapt autonomously, indicating that ex post adaptation remains important too. Originality/value - This study shows that highly vulnerable subsistence farmers do not automatically adapt and that adaptation is more than implementing adaptive measures. The outcomes are linked to the adaptation finance institutions.China's grassland has been undergoing rapid changes in the recent past owing to increased climate variability and a shift in grassland management strategy driven by a series of ecological restoration projects. This study investigated the spatio-temporal dynamics of Inner Mongolia grassland, the main grassland region in China and part of the Eurasia Steppe, to detect the interactive nature of climate, ecosystems and society. Land-use and landscape patterns for the period from 1985 to 2009 were analysed based on TM- and MODIS-derived land-use data. Net Primary Productivity (NPP) estimated by using the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach model was used to assess the growth status of grassland. Furthermore, the factors related to the dynamics of grassland were analysed from the perspectives of two driving factors, climate change and human activities. The results indicated that higher temperatures and lower precipitation may generally have contributed to grassland desertification, particularly in arid regions. During the period from 1985 to 2000, a higher human population and an increase in livestock numbers were the major driving forces responsible for the consistent decrease in NPP and a relatively fragmented landscape. From 2000 to 2009, the implementation of effective ecological restoration projects has arrested the grassland deterioration in some ecologically fragile regions. However, a rapid growth of livestock numbers has sparked new degradation onnon-degraded or lightly degraded grassland, which was initially neglected by these projects. In spite of some achievement in grassland restoration, China should take further steps to develop sustainable management practices for climate adaptation and economic development to bring lasting benefits.Both in academic literature and political practice, resilience is becoming a central evaluative concept for assessing climate adaptation policies. This makes sense because society's main challenge in an altering the environment is to adapt to the inevitable changes. However, applying the concept of resilience to devise adaptation strategies reveals that social-ecological resilience acquires different meanings depending on the social context. There is no straightforward application of resilience. In this contribution, it will be argued that giving meaning to the concept of resilience in adaptation strategies requires making normative choices. These choices concern whether there is a public interest in adaptation, the distribution of private and public responsibilities, and striking a balance between individual rights and general interests. Because these normative choices can be questioned and revised, it is important that they are made explicit to enable a democratic debate on the direction that adaptation strategies should take. Simply referring to the concept of resilience in an adaptation strategy does not suffice, but occludes this discussion. Through formulating and applying a condensed scheme of politico-theoretical approaches that underpin diverging adaptation approaches, this contribution reveals the various underlying normative assumptions and explicates the relevant political choices. Three Dutch adaptation strategies serve as empirical examples. They illustrate the importance of the societal context in giving meaning to resilience in the development of adaptation strategies.Australia has seen a deep division in opinion in search of a carbon pricing mechanism. While concepts of carbon taxation and emission trading have comparable public support, climate scepticism is influencing the debates in political and public spheres in downplaying the need for carbon pricing. Public deliberation is a possible engagement option to address the conflict inherent in climate policy preferences. This research explores the way that a deliberative forum involving twenty-four Australians promoted effective communication between participants through which conflict between policy preferences became more tangible. While the forum did not eliminate disagreement in preferences in the choice of carbon pricing mechanisms, participants reached consensus on fundamental principles such as the need for trusted sources of information, trusted governance procedures, and transparent accountability by appropriate institutions. Shared political expectations encouraged dialogue and cooperation in discussions by enhancing reciprocal understanding. Two sceptical participants who originally had strong opinions different from the rest of the group managed to find common ground. Public deliberative forums that are conducive to reciprocal communication are able to provide a mechanism for joint problem-solving processes that are less adversarial and more responsive to the range of people's preferences.The absence of clear signals from the Norwegian state concerning climate change adaptation provides an opportunity to investigate why some municipalities have addressed adaptation to climate change while others have not. Although difficulties associated with implementing adaptation to climate change are well documented, less is known about those individuals who take the lead. On the basis of in-depth interviews and interaction with eight Norwegian municipalities that have begun working with climate adaptation, we examine how climate adaptation has been added to the local agenda. We find that adaptation planning has progressed more in those municipalities where officials are engaged and actively seeking external expertise and support. We conclude that, without a clearer national adaptation policy and greater resource allocation and legislation, adaptation to climate change within Norwegian municipalities is unlikely to progress further.Vulnerability to climate change of the Moldavian part of the Dniester river was assessed as the function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of its basin's natural and socioeconomic systems. As a spatial "scale" of the assessment, Moldova's administrative-territorial units (ATUs) were selected. The exposure assessment was based on the climatic analysis of baseline (1971-2000) temperature and precipitation and projections of their changes in 2021-2050, separately for cold and warm periods. The sensitivity assessment included physiographical and socioeconomic characteristics, described by a set of specific indicators. The adaptive capacity was expressed by general economic and agricultural indicators, taking into consideration the medical provision and housing conditions. Through a ranking approach, the relative vulnerability of each ATU was calculated by summing its sensitivity and adaptive capacity ranks; the latter were obtained as combinations of their primary indicator ranks, arranged in an increasing and decreasing order, respectively. Due to lack of sound knowledge on these components' importance in overall assessment of vulnerability, their weights were taken as conventionally equal. Mapping of vulnerability revealed that ATUs neighboring to municipalities are the most vulnerable and need special attention in climate change adaptation. The basin's "hotspots" were discussed with public participation.Purpose The paper is an excerpt from a bigger study with an overall aim of examining the extent to which climate change adaptation has been integrated in the ETA studies undertaken in Kenya since the process inception in 2000. The purpose was to establish whether adequate attention is given to the issue of climate change mitigation as major challenge in the world during the 21st century. Design/methodology/approach - The research design is based on qualitative research involving a review of ETA reports approved by the national environmental authority and also based on key informant consultations with licensed ETA experts in the country. Thereafter, the findings were analyzed through standard statistical procedures. Findings - The findings showed that climate change integration in all the reviewed ETA reports was mainly restricted to mere consideration of historical climate change information in the project areas and totally weak in terms of climate change prediction scenarios and their likely impacts on the proposed development projects. However, consultations with most ETA practitioners indicated that integration of climate change adaptive capabilities into the ETA process was a relevant issue but admitted that the implementation modalities were unclear. Originality/value - The study is the first in evaluating the level of integration for climate change in ETA studies in Kenya and the findings will inform ETA implementation in the country. It also forms a good basis for comparative studies with ETA studies in other countries of the world.Purpose - This paper aims at assessing the vulnerability of local communities in the Congo basin forests of Cameroon; to help them identify their specific needs for adaptation, and to facilitate knowledge sharing with the aim of enhancing adaptive capacity. Design/methodology/approach - Using participatory-action research approach, research was carried out in two project sites in Nkol-evodo and in Yokadouma in the Center and South-East Regions of Cameroon, respectively. The authors shared participatory-research (PAR) steps and processes to assist other researchers and local stakeholders to jointly assess, monitor and adapt to climatic and other changes. Findings - This study shows that the adverse effects of climate conditions to which study communities are exposed are already being felt and exerting considerable stress on most of the important activities to their livelihoods such as agriculture and exploitation of national resources. PAR tools and processes led to participatory diagnosis, conceptualizing of change, participatory identification, prioritization and implementation of specific strategies for climate change adaptation in the study sites. However, further studies are needed to investigate the effectiveness of these strategies. Practical implications - The PAR experiences show that stakeholders' involvement throughout the project needs to be considered by researchers who wish to enhance the adaptive capacity of the communities they work with. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the description of the process for enhancing adaptive capacity of forest living communities. Findings in this research may provide a crucial foundation for community-based adaptation measures and complement broader-scale scientific research with local precision.Purpose - This community based initiative seeks to increase communities' adaptive capacity through the development of resilient farming practices and improved natural resource management in the face of climate change. Integrating the basic aspects on climate information, the project toolkit had two main objectives; firstly it increases community awareness about climate change risks to farmers and natural resource users, and secondly it aims to build momentum at community levels for innovative adaptation tools as applicable to their environments. These toolkits are applicable to the rural communities, pen-urban and communities across Namibia. Design/methodology/approach - Participatory rural appraisal methods were used to solicit inputs from the local people during the toolkits development process. Resource mapping, root analysis of climate impacts, and gender mainstreaming were key to this project. A total of 30 community consultations were held in 12 constituencies in all the regions. About 200 people per region were consulted. Their selection was based on their day-to-day engagement with community members these included community activists, farmers, local NGOs as well as governmental civil servants and resource users. Findings - The main outcomes of the project were the compilation of the climate change toolkits, as well as outreach materials such as a video for training of trainers events on climate change adaptation, posters, and radio talks in the different regions. The toolkits are in the process of being implemented, and there are positive reports from the regions where they have been distributed. Originality/value - This paper is a synopsis of the experiences from Namibia's climate change adaptation toolkits and offers insights relevant to many other African countries, and how these can be improved to make climate change adaptation work especially in the rural areas.The forest species cultivation with rapid growth in Brazil has increased, mainly due to the diverse use of its wood and climate adaptation. The cultivation with minimum tillage in the forest sector stands out a way to increase productivity, combined with the maintenance of biodiversity and soil conservation. This study was conducted at the experimental area of State Foundation for Agricultural Research - Research Center for Forestry in Santa Maria - RS, with aimed to evaluate the effect of the soil tillage methods on soil physical properties and on initial development of Eucalyptus grand's, in a sandy loam Typic Hapludalf. Four soil management practices were compared: no-tillage; chisel tillage; chisel tillage plus harrowing and; rotary tillage (rotary tiller), installed in a randomized block design with three replications. The soil under no-tillage conditioned lower initial growth of eucalyptus due higher soil penetration resistance and bulk density, when compared with treatments with mobilization. The root distribution analysis in soil, despite being a qualitative method, was effective in demonstrating the effect of soil tillage for the Eucalyptus grand's plantation. The soil tillage with mobilization resulted in a higher initial growth of Eucalyptus grandis. The chisel tillage effects in the soil physical properties persisted after one year of soil tillage.This paper explores the relevance of various leadership concepts for climate change adaptation. After defining four main leadership challenges which are derived from the key characteristics of climate adaptation issues, a review of modern leadership theories addressing these challenges is presented. On the basis of this review we develop an integrative framework for analyzing leadership for climate change adaptation. It distinguishes between various leadership functions which together contribute to climate change adaptation: the political-administrative, adaptive, enabling, connective, and dissemination functions. Each function requires the execution of specific leadership tasks which can be performed by different types of leaders, such as positional leaders, ideational leaders, sponsors, boundary workers, policy entrepreneurs, or champions. The framework can be used to analyze or monitor the emergence and realization of specific leadership functions and to specify the need for strengthening particular functions in practices of climate adaptation.Tree branches are important as they support the canopy, which controls photosynthetic carbon gain and determines ecological interactions such as competition with neighbours. Mangrove trees are subject to high wind speeds, strong tidal flows and waves that can damage their branches. The survival and establishment of mangroves partly depend on the structural and mechanical characteristics of their branches. In addition, mangroves are exposed to soils that vary in salinity. Highly saline conditions can increase the tension in the water column, imposing mechanical stresses on the xylem vessels. Here, we investigated how mechanical strength, assessed as the modulus of elasticity (MOE) and the modulus of rupture (MOR), and density relate to the anatomical characteristics of intact mangrove branches from southeast Queensland and whether the mechanical strength of branches varies among mangrove species. Mechanical strength was positively correlated with density of mangrove intact branches. Mechanical strength (MOE) varied among species, with Avicennia marina (Forssk.) Vierh. branches having the highest mechanical strength (2079 +/- 176 MPa), and Rhizophora stylosa Griff. and Bruguiera gymnorrhiza (L.) Savigny ex Lam. and Poiret having the lowest mechanical strength (536.8 +/- 39.2 MPa in R. stylosa and 554 +/- 58.2 MPa in B. gymnorrhiza). High levels of mechanical strength were associated with reductions in xylem vessel lumen area, pith content and bark content, and positively associated with increases in fibre wall thickness. The associations between mechanical strength and anatomical characteristics in mangrove branches suggest trade-offs between mechanical strength and water supply, which are linked to tree growth and survival.Climate change is inevitable and will continue into the next century. Since the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka is one of the most vulnerable to climate change, a thorough understanding of climate transition is critical for formulating effective adaptation strategies. This article provides an overview of the status of climate change and adaptation in the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka. The review clearly indicates that climate change is taking place in Sri Lanka in terms of rainfall variability and an increase in climate extremes and warming. A number of planned and reactive adaptation responses stemming from policy and farm-level decisions are reported. These adaptation efforts were fragmented and lacked a coherent connection to the national development policies and strategies. Research efforts are needed to develop and identify adaptation approaches and practices that are feasible for smallholder farmers, particularly in the dry zone where paddy and other food crops are predominately cultivated. To achieve the envisaged growth in the agricultural sector, rigorous efforts are necessary to mainstream climate change adaptation into national development policies and ensure that they are implemented at national, regional and local levels.Climate change is presenting new and, to a large extent, unpredictable challenges to communities in Malawi and effective adaptation requires a well-coordinated organisational framework. This study looked at the success of organisations and the processes they employed for implementing policies that have implications for climate change adaptation in Malawi. This was done by assessing the linkages between different interest groups, as well as potential conflicts of interest between actors from the national to the local level. One of the major findings was that although national organisational and policy interventions seem to be well linked among various actors, community needs are mostly compromised. There is no effective communication between adaptation strategies which are proposed and the livelihood strategies in communities within the country. Local knowledge is given very little attention in formulating, communicating and implementing policies that have implications for adaptation to climate change. The study highlights inadequate human and financial resources to support climate change adaptation in Malawi. It also exposes the weak links between different stakeholders and the subsequent lack of collective commitment. Results suggest that there is a lot of talk about climate change adaptation strategies but the actual implementation needs improvement.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze how fanners are reducing vulnerability of rain-fed agriculture to drought through indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in the Atankwidi basin, north-eastern Ghana. Design/methodology/approach - This paper draws on combined qualitative and quantitative research methods and data. First, the paper draws on qualitative data generated from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions from purposively sampled farmers in the Atankwidi basin. It also draws on a survey conducted on 131 systematically and randomly sampled households in three communities of the basin, namely Yua, Pungu and Mirigu. Findings - The results show that farmers are planting multiple indigenous drought resilient crop varieties and employing different rounds of seeding and or staggering planting between multiple farms. They are also applying indigenous forms of organic manure, checking soil erosion through grass strips and stone terracing and adopting paddy farming for improving soil and water conservation towards enhancing plant adaptation to drought. The paper therefore, asserts that through conscientious effort, farmers are reducing vulnerability of rain-fed agriculture to drought through indigenous knowledge systems of drought risk management. Practical implications - The paper recommends that capacity for managing vulnerability to drought at the local level, including the Atankwidi basin, can be enhanced by incorporating as into District Development Planning (DDP) and giving priority to the strategic role of IKS in climate change adaptation planning. Originality/value - This paper fulfills a need for researching the relevance of IKS for reducing vulnerability of rain-fed agriculture to drought in particular, and enhancing adaptation to climate. change in general in the quest for promoting Endogenous Development (ED) in Africa.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand how cities at different stages of development each subject to its own challenges in adapting to climate change can manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Design/methodology/approach - Case studies are undertaken for three cities: Amman, Jakarta and Dar es Salaam, including determination of GHG emissions and analysis of climate change data (where available) for each. Findings - In Amman, the most climate-sensitive municipal service is water; Jordan is exceptionally dry, and nearly 15 per cent of all electricity consumption is by the water authority. Jakarta has already experienced extreme flooding. The climate vulnerabilities associated with sea-level rise are intensified by subsidence in parts of Jakarta. Alternating floods and droughts are climate impacts already experienced in Dar es Salaam. Droughts have impacted Tanzania's electricity infrastructure disrupting hydroelectricity production, requiring new natural gas infrastructure to maintain power, thereby increasing GHG emissions. Nonetheless, Dar es Salaam's GHG emissions at 0.56 t CO(2)e/cap are small compared to Amman and Jakarta at 3.66 and 4.92 t CO(2)e/cap., respectively. Originality/value - Synergist development strategies, addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation are suggested. In Amman an increased share of photovoltaic electricity production might be used for service provision, especially for energy needs surrounding water supply. Advanced slum upgrading in Jakarta could see relocation of the at-risk poor to safe areas with energy efficient homes connected to public transit and decentralized, community-based electricity generation. The focus in Dar es Salaam community-based waste-to-energy facilities would reduce climate change impacts and vulnerabilities while addressing energy poverty in poor communities.Given that climate change is likely to exacerbate drought in certain parts of the world, a critical issue is how appropriate context-relevant drought policy can be developed and implemented. This paper examines how China is developing policies to help local communities in the Lancang River Basin to cope with the problems of climate variability and change. The research process includes (a) content analysis of relevant policies at different levels of administration and (b) stakeholder interviews to examine how effective policies are at the local level along the Lancang River in Yunnan province. The paper concludes that China needs to provide more emphasis on (a) enhancing the adaptive capacity of institutions and individuals, (b) drought risk rather than disaster management, (c) enhancing coordination between different departments and levels of government, (d) decentralization in policymaking as local governments can make context-relevant comprehensive policies more easily and are less hierarchical in their relationships, (e) involving farmers or other stakeholders in decision making, (f) building up grass root organizations to support policy implementation to compensate for the retreat of governmental organizations from the local level and (g) adopting market mechanisms which are still in a nascent stage now.This study investigates public information as a component of the democratic process, advancing previous frameworks by considering information as a spatial product of multiple governmental and civil society organizations. The symbolic weight of information campaigns is a critical component of two democratic processes: awareness of the public's vulnerability to formal water policy change and the perception within the public that the policy space is open to their participation. This research examines the locations of water-centered public information across 31 organizations in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The patterns of disparities found in the study indicate that the neighborhoods in the eastern portion of the study region receive more information than those in Phoenix or cities to the west. There is also more information in areas with large numbers of rental homes, but less information in regions with larger Latino populations. Results support a need to evaluate new initiatives for public information with respect to the content and distribution of materials originating from multiple sources. Evaluating the patterns created by water information providers could aid more strategic coordination among groups and provide a bellwether of whether public interests are adequately considered in local water decision-making processes and the distribution of outcomes.Purpose - The aim of this paper is to present a concept where social learning is used in education. Thematically, the concept is suitable for complex, interdisciplinary, societal challenges with a high degree of uncertainty regarding future changes. It is exemplified here by the need to link disaster risk reduction (DRR) with climate change adaptation (CCA) and flood risk management (FRM). The concept answers to the variety of adopted solutions and build-up of knowledge that exist, as a consequence of far-reaching local liabilities and initiatives. The concept advocates building of platforms and procedures where managers, stakeholders, researchers, policy makers, and regular students can meet, interact and learn from local examples. Design/methodology/approach - The concept IntECR (integrated education, research and collaboration) has been tested in two courses during 2009 and 2010 around the Swedish lakes Vanern and Malaren. Seminars and field visits were arranged in ten different cities. Participants replied anonymously to a course evaluation and were questioned in groups about their perceived benefit from the concept. Findings - Informal networking, holistic perspective, shared problem identification and the positive possibility to study several examples of local management in arrangements with high degree of structural openness, were mentioned by the participants as positive outcome of the concept. Originality/value - The use of this educational concept aims to increase the adaptive capacity of societal entities through raised capacity of their individual members. The applied example is timely, relevant and a contribution to DRR and CCA.Urban development increases flood risk in cities due to local changes in hydrological and hydrometeorological conditions that increase flood hazard, as well as to urban concentrations that increase the vulnerability. The relationship between the increasing urban runoff and flooding due to increased imperviousness is better perceived than that between the cyclic impact of urban growth and the urban rainfall via microclimatic changes. The large-scale, global impacts due to climate variability and change could compound these risks. We present the case of a typical third world city - Can Tho (the biggest city in Mekong River Delta, Vietnam) - faced with multiple future challenges, namely: (i) the likely effect of climate change-driven sea level rise, (ii) an expected increase of river runoff due to climate change as estimated by the Vietnamese government, (iii) increased urban runoff driven by imperviousness, and (iv) enhancement of extreme rainfall due to urban growth-driven, microclimatic change (urban heat islands). A set of model simulations were used to construct future scenarios, combining these influences. Urban growth of the city was projected up to year 2100 based on historical growth patterns, using a land use simulation model (Dinamica EGO). A dynamic limited-area atmospheric model (WRF), coupled with a detailed land surface model with vegetation parameterization (Noah LSM), was employed in controlled numerical experiments to estimate the anticipated changes in extreme rainfall patterns due to urban heat island effect. Finally, a 1-D/2-D coupled urban-drainage/flooding model (SWMM-Brezo) was used to simulate storm-sewer surcharge and surface inundation to establish the increase in the flood hazard resulting from the changes. The results show that under the combined scenario of significant change in river level (due to climate-driven sea level rise and increase of flow in the Mekong) and "business as usual" urbanization, the flooding of Can Tho could increase significantly. The worst case may occur if a sea level rise of 100 cm and the flow from upstream happen together with high-development scenarios. The relative contribution of causes of flooding are significantly different at various locations; therefore, detailed research on adaptation are necessary for future investments to be effective.In the light of growing societal interest for climate change adaptation and mitigation, insights into the meaning of weather conditions for travel behavioursparticularly walking and cyclinghave become very important. Recently, various studies from transport, health and biometeorological disciplines have touched upon the relevance of weather for daily activities and travel, yet a review and critical assessment of the existing knowledge are lacking. Hence, the aim of this review is first to bring together these contributions and provide a systematic and comprehensive overview concerning the impact of weather conditions on daily travel activities. Second, the methodological, contextual and behavioural backgrounds of the studies will be discussed. The major conclusion is that the existing studies present an incomplete and fragmented picture of the impact of weather on travel behaviour, which makes effective planning for climate change a harsh job. In the conclusions, some lines for future research will be recommended.Considering extreme events of climate change and declining availability of appropriate quality water and/or highly productive soil resources for agriculture in dryland regions, the need to produce more food, forage and fibre will necessitate the effective utilization of marginal-quality water and soil resources. Recent research and practices have demonstrated that effective utilization of these natural resources in dry areas can improve agricultural productivity per unit area and per unit water applied. This paper focuses on the following three case studies as examples: (1) low productivity soils affected by high levels of magnesium in soil solution and on the cation exchange complex; (2) degraded sandy soils under rainfed conditions characterized by low water-holding capacity, organic matter and clay content and (3) abandoned irrigated soils with elevated levels of salts inhibiting growth of income generating crops. The results of these studies demonstrate that application of calcium-supplying phosphogypsum to high-magnesium soils, addition of clays to light textured degraded soils and phytoremediation of abandoned salt-affected soils significantly improved productivity of these soils. Furthermore, under most circumstances, these interventions were economically viable, revealing that the efficient use of marginal-quality water and soil resources has the potential to improve livelihoods amid growing populations in dry areas while reversing the natural resource degradation trend. However, considerably more investment and policy-level interventions are needed to tackle soil degradation/remediation issues across both irrigated and dryland agricultural environments if the major challenge of producing enough food, forage and fibre is to be met. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Adaptive Social Protection refers to efforts to integrate social protection (SP), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), the need for which is increasingly recognised by practitioners and academics. Relying on 124 agricultural programmes implemented in five countries in Asia, this article considers how these elements are being brought together, and explores the potential gains of these linkages. It shows that full integration is still relatively limited but that, when it occurs, it helps to shift the time horizon beyond short-term interventions aimed at supporting peoples' coping strategies and/or graduation objectives, towards longer-term interventions that can help promote transformation towards climate and disaster resilient livelihood options.Constitutional and institutional legacies were combined to create a very decentralized forest policy sector in Canada. Where coherent policy requires a national responseas is the case with adaptation to climate changethe critical challenge is to locate the relevant decentralized policy capacity and steer it toward meeting national objectives. While there is some evidence that significant policy capacity exists in provincial forest and resource management departments, climate change adaptation has led to an expansion of departmental mandates that is not being addressed by better coordination of the available policy capacity. The relevant federal agencies are not well represented in information networks and forest policy workers report lower levels of internal and external networking than workers in related policy subsectors.This article examines policy capacity in relation to climate change adaptation in the Canadian finance sector. Through a meso-level analysis focused on the level of integration of the finance policy network and a survey of policy professionals in the area regarding climate change issues, the article illustrates both challenges to operationalizing the concept of policy capacity and limitations to effective policy capacity on climate change in this policy domain. Though a central concern for governments, improvements in policy capacity require more attention to network integration and governance arrangements if governments are to effectively respond to the unique challenges posed by climate change adaptation.Noticeably absent from the tools and techniques in policy analysis are methods for understanding political contexts, including the beliefs, networks, resources, and activities of policy actors. In combination, Policy Analytical Capacity and the Advocacy Coalition Framework offer one appropriate solution. We apply both approaches to analyze the Colorado climate and energy policy subsystem using questionnaire data. In the policy subsystem, we identify a large proclimate change coalition and a smaller anticlimate change coalition. Member beliefs between rival coalitions diverge in regard to the cause, severity, and solutions needed to address climate change adaptation and mitigation issues. Both coalitions report similar levels of individual and organizational capacity to generate and analyze information and to engage in similar activities and strategies. This article contributes to the public policy literature by applying both Policy Analytical Capacity and the Advocacy Coalition Framework and by emphasizing individual, organizational, and subsystem levels in conducting a stakeholder analysis.The development of effective climate change adaptation strategies for complex, adaptive socio-ecological systems such as farming systems, requires an in-depth understanding of both the dynamic nature of the systems themselves and the changing environment in which they operate. To date, adaptation studies in the New Zealand dairy sector have been either bottom-up, qualitative social research with farmers and communities, or top-down, quantitative biophysical modelling. Each of these approaches has clear benefits as well as significant limitations. This review considers concepts and approaches that support the potential for different disciplines to complement each other in developing a more in-depth understanding of farming systems and their adaptive potential. For this purpose, a Mixed Methods Framework is presented, using examples from a pilot study of a New Zealand dairy farm to illustrate the complementarities between the two current approaches. By presenting this methodology in a specific context, the review provides the theoretical basis for a practical way to integrate quantitative and qualitative research for climate change adaptation research. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In West Africa, rural livelihoods depending on natural resources develop coping and adapting strategies to face climate variability or change and economic or political changes. The former Lake Faguibine in northern Mali has experienced drastic ecological, social, and economic changes. Forests have emerged on the former lake and have become important for local livelihoods. This paper analyses the coping and adapting strategies of forest- and livestock-based livelihoods facing ecological changes. Results from field research at different levels indicate that most local strategies are based on diversification including migration within the livestock production system or in complement to it, with differences according to gender, age, and ethnicity. Political discourses, cultural identities, and past experiences influence and shape adaptation strategies at the local level. The sustainability of the observed strategies depends on the access to natural resources and the sustainable management of these resources, which in turn depends on institutions at local and national levels. Many local strategies are reactive to external events but would need strategic support from higher levels to move from coping to adapting. Examples are the development of institutions and technical actions for natural resource management, as well as development actions supporting local strategies and sustainable investments. Researchers, practitioners and development planners will need simple methods and tools for understanding and analysing local adaptation perceptions and actions to achieve an effective support of sustainable and gender-equitable local adaptation and to avoid mismatches between strategies proposed by local and by sub national and national actors. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.I argue in this paper that transaction cost is central to the analytics of climate adaptation in the local commons. I illustrate this by bringing together insights from Coase on tradability of property rights, Ostrom on institutional design principles for long lived commons and Williamson on transaction cost and governance mechanisms. I call this the COW model on the analytics of climate adaptation, which I illustrate using grounded theory in the case of the 400-year old zangjera irrigation societies in Northern Philippines. The zangjeras are highly vulnerable to climatic risks but has successfully managed to adapt steadily overtime. I argue that their ability to adapt is a function of transaction cost which is associated with some ingenious principles of institutional design such as: (1) clear allocation and tradability of rights and obligations; (2) fairness in the allocation of risks, costs and benefits; (3) reliance on prices and incentives as adaptation mechanisms; (4) adaptive efficiency, i.e. maximization of welfare at least adaptation cost; (5) reliable enforcement mechanisms; and (6) a polycentric structure of governance. I conclude that the COW model can provide a useful foundation for the analytics of climate adaptation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To effectively plan for adaptation to climate change and its impacts, decision makers require the infrastructure and tools that will provide them with timely access to current and future climate information. For example, climate scientists and operational forecasters need to access global and regional model projections and current climate information that they can use to generate climate products and services for multi-sectorial adaptation planning. Through the UNDP African Adaption Programme (AAP), an e-infrastructure capacity has been built across Africa that will provide multi-tiered access to such information and data for informed decision making. Web accessible servers provide both computational power and access to the information at many levels: including raw and processed climate model output, real-time climate conditions and products, knowledge products (technical documents and presentation) as well as decision support tools for decision and policy makers. In this paper we present (report and discuss) the results of a two-year activity in building such an e-infrastructure under the AAP program and the extensive technical support and services programme associated with establishing capacity across Africa.Agriculture is one of the key economic sectors that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (Pearson et al., 2011). Changes in (variability of) temperature, rainfall and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will directly affect crop and livestock productivity. Although farmers may be particularly knowledgeable in dealing with climate variability, the magnitude of climate change impacts on farming might turn out to go beyond anything that farmers have previously experienced (Stokes and Howden, 2010). This means that adaptive actions are likely to be important to protect farmers' livelihoods from the impacts of unavoidable climate change. There are, however, various limits (absolute obstacles) and barriers (mutable obstacles) to climate change adaptation. The importance of understanding these barriers and limits to support a sustainable and resilient agricultural sector is increasingly acknowledged by academic researchers and government agencies (e.g., Adger et al., 2009; European Commission 2007; Stokes and Howden, 2010; US EPA, 2012). With this increased focus on limits and barriers to adaptation, has come a heightened awareness that the complex, multifaceted nature of climate change requires interdisciplinary research to improve our understanding of obstacles. Unfortunately, the success of inter-disciplinary projects is often hindered by a lack of common definition of limits and barriers to climate change adaptation. In this study, we develop a conceptual model that integrates different understandings of limits and barriers to agricultural climate change adaptation. Following Pearson et al. (2011), we based our conceptual model on the academic and grey literature as well as expert interviews. The model shows how 'adaptive capacity' and 'willingness to adopt' determine whether a farmer may take adaptive action. Factors that can present limits or barriers to adaptation include biophysical, technological, and socio-economic factors, as well as farmers' personal characteristics and the socio-cultural context in which the farmer operates. Consultations with experts from various disciplinary backgrounds informed the model development process. Several epistemological challenges were encountered during the study, with disciplinary experts defining limits and barriers to adaptation in different ways. For example, agronomists, economists and biophysical scientists explained that social barriers to adaptive capacity were related to farmers' individual business management skills. Social scientists, on the other hand, used the term social barriers also to indicate that cultural beliefs and values affect a farmers' flexibility or ability to learn new practices. Other epistemological challenges arose when discussing economic limits and barriers. While most experts agreed that adaptation should be aimed at welfare maximisation, different disciplines used variable descriptions of 'welfare'. Many scientists understand economic welfare as a concept that is solely concerned with financial (directly tangible) costs and benefits. Economists in the project, however, incorporated tangible and intangible (non-marketed) values in their definition of economic welfare. It is recommended that future interdisciplinary research between biophysical, economic and social scientists carefully discusses and defines how terms considered in the study are understood across disciplines. The integrated framework developed in the present study provides a guiding tool for such future integrated projects, to help overcome the epistemological challenges that are typically encountered in multidisciplinary research.Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) is Australia's main water safety and rescue authority whose assets and operations include 310 local surf lifesaving clubs and about 150,000 trained volunteers. Rising sea level and increased extreme events frequency pose serious threats to SLSA's assets and facilities. Therefore, this research aims to explore adaptation pathways and strengthen the capacity of SLSA to tackle these threats. However, adaptation to climate change is very complex and encompasses a range of constraints such as reliable data, information, time and uncertainty which make quantification quite difficult. To overcome these challenges, the research team has utilised an array of techniques into a cohesive approach including participatory workshops, MIC-MAC and System Dynamics (SD). Through stakeholder engagement (workshops) and structural analysis (MIC-MAC), key variables were identified and an influence dependence chart (causal relationship) was created. Then, using an SD approach, first a conceptual model was built to understand potential values of SLSAs services given sea level rise (SLR) controls, adaption options, and feedbacks within and between the climate change and SLSA operations. The SD model consists of three interactive sub-models: a) Climate change; b) SLSA Operation; and c) Community. The climate change sub-model, under a range of SLR scenarios, simulates changes in storm events frequencies which are vital to SLSA's operation and assets. Therefore, adaptation investment on all forms of accessibility would reduce the impact of extreme storm events on a club's operation. A community sub-model is used to understand the impacts of changing climate, specifically resulting extreme events, on community located around clubs.We report on the modeling and initial results from the first national-scale integrated assessment of costs and benefits of different climate adaptation policy approaches affecting built assets at statistical local area resolution. In this study we simulated damage incurred from coastal inundation hazard under three climate outlooks. At all stages, from inception to review of results, our key stakeholders were involved notably as sources of policy innovation, and as guides to the logic of policy action; enabling codification of climate adaptation responses according to stylized policy stances. These stances represented different levels of caution and different approaches to implementing three general adaptation actions: avoidance, accommodation and protection. The performance of each stance was defined by the benefit of avoided damage costs compared to the cost of climate adaptation action measured in net present value terms. Absolute measures of policy merit have been averted because of the epistemic uncertainty in the modeling of such a multi-dimensional space over a national scale, combined with considerable variance in climate inputs. Therefore, performance of policy stances, under each of the climate outlooks, is presented relative to a non-adaptive case that continues the use of current construction standards and approaches to climate adaptation. This comparison of relative merit provides new insight to inform policy-making and contributes to the development of adaptation science.Understanding the potential implications of global and regional climate change is important for decision-makers and planners to make better decisions regarding infrastructure needs and future planning. This is particularly important in cities in developing regions, which often have a history of under-investment in infrastructure and services and experience constraints in finance, resource access, limited data and capacity, whilst experiencing rapid population and economic growth. Makassar city, the capital of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, is a typical example. With a population of 1.3 million people, increasing access to clean water supply to a millennium development goal level is a key government objective. However, access to water depends on multiple factors: the city's surface water supplies which are subject to strong seasonal effects, the availability and condition of the infrastructure for water treatment and distribution, water use patterns and the resources and capacity of the city to invest and maintain their system. To aid in the assessment of water security and to build the capacity in the region, CSIRO and Hasanuddin University in conjunction with local government agencies developed a framework for water security assessment (Figure 1). The framework included climate change projections, evaluated its potential impacts on surface water hydrology and urban water security for Makassar city and then focused on the development of adaptation options. Integral to the development of the framework was the participation of stakeholders (government agencies, researchers, NGOs and academics) at all stages of the process. By integrating top-down and bottom up knowledge (scientific modelling outputs and local knowledge) the project was able to identify vulnerabilities and assess the effectiveness of planned infrastructure to climate change and urban development and to identify a range of adaptation options which can assist in increasing the future security of water supply. [GRAPHICS] .The aim of this study was to develop a new spatially-explicit analytical approach for urban flood risk assessment and generation of climate adaptation capacity metrics for vulnerability assessment of critical electricity infrastructure. Using the January 2011 flood in Queensland (Australia) with the core suburbs of Brisbane City as the study area, this study addressed the sufficiency of indicating variables and their suitability for climate risk modelling. A range of geographical variables were analysed using a) high resolution digital elevation modelling and urban morphological characterisation with 3D analysis, b) spatial analysis with fuzzy logic, c) proximity analysis, d) quadrat analysis, e) collect events analysis, f) geospatial autocorrelation techniques with global Moran's I and Anselin Local Moran's I, and g) hot spot analysis. The issue on the sufficiency of indicating variables was addressed using the topological cluster analysis of a 2-dimension self-organising neural network (SONN) structured with 100 neurons and trained by 200 epochs. Furthermore, the suitability of flood risk modelling was addressed by aggregating the indicating variables with weighted overlay and modified fuzzy gamma overlay operations using Bayesian joint conditional probability. Variable weights were assigned to address the limitations of normative (equal weights) and deductive (expert judgment) approaches. The outputs of the topological cluster analysis showed that 15 out of 22 indicating variables were found sufficient to spatially model the flood risk and climate adaptation capacity metrics. The analyses showed that 214 ha (9%) and 255 ha (11%) of the study area were very highly impacted by the January 2011 flood as indicated by the very high flood risk metrics and the very low adaptation capacity metrics, respectively. In the electricity network vulnerability assessment, a total count of 72 critical assets (zone supply substations, high voltage switching sites, and pole transformer sites) were found highly vulnerable to flood hazard. The flood damage disrupted electricity supply along 627 km and 212 km of transmission lines on the north eastern to south western and south eastern sides of the study area, respectively. The newly developed spatially-explicit analytical technique, identified in this study as the flood riskadaptation capacity index/metrics-adaptation strategies (FRACIAS) linkage model, will allow the integration of flood risk and climate adaptation assessments which have been treated separately in the past. As technical support to the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry (QFCI) recommendations, this study also provides a tool and identifies adaptation strategies to enable urban communities and the power industry to better prepare and mitigate future flood events. The tool can also be used to assess the physical vulnerability of other critical assets (e. g. water supply, sewerage, communication, stormwater, roads and rails) to flooding.Due to the changes in global climate, the intensity, frequency and magnitude of heavy rainfall events are changing and this has been documented in many recent studies. Increasing trends in extreme rainfall directly affects infrastructure, agriculture as well as public and ecosystem health. So, projection of changes in extreme rainfall events is useful for policy making associated with climate change adaptation. General Circulation Models (GCMs) are the most important tool for climate change impact studies. But due to their coarse spatial resolution and their inability to capture local rainfall processes, GCMs cannot be used directly in hydrological impact studies. To bridge this gap downscaling has often been applied to transform GCM information to a finer resolution. There are broadly two types downscaling, namely dynamic and statistical methods. The latter is inexpensive and readily implementable compared to dynamic downscaling. Among several statistical downscaling techniques, generalized linear model (GLM) based downscaling techniques incorporate the spatial-temporal structure of rainfall. Because of this, GLMs have been used in several recent studies. However, application of this technique for downscaling of extreme rainfall events is relatively new. In this study, a GLM based multi-site downscaling technique has been applied using the GLIMCLIM software package for downscaling extreme rainfall in the Onkaparinga catchment at nine rainfall stations. A GLM was fitted to the observed rainfall conditioned to several large scale atmospheric and circulation variables from NCEP reanalysis data for the calibration period 1991 to 2005. This relation was used to simulate the daily rainfall for the validation period (1981 to 1990) using NCEP reanalysis and CSIRO MK3.6 historical data and for the future period 2041 to 2060 using RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios of CSIRO MK3.6. These daily rainfall series were used to estimate extreme rainfall indices such as consecutive dry days (CDD), rainfall events greater than 10mm/day (R10) and annual maximum daily (AM) rainfall. As far our we are aware, this is the first attempt where a GLM technique has been applied for downscaling extreme rainfall events using large scale data from CMIP5 GCMs at least for the Australian climate. The study reveals that the model performed reasonably well in reproducing the CDD and AM rainfall whereas it underestimated the R10 statistics in most of the months of the year when driven by NCEP reanalysis data. Although the R10 was underestimated, the trend and variability were simulated well. Performance of the model deteriorates when driven by CSIRO MK3.6 historical data. Simulation differences between NCEP reanalysis and MK3.6 can be attributed by the bias in the large scale atmospheric and circulation variables. AM daily rainfall was reasonably downscaled for NCEP reanalysis data over the period 1981 to 2005, whereas it was overestimated most of the time at all rainfall stations in the simulation driven by MK3.6. AM rainfall magnitudes for different Average Recurrence Intervals (ARIs) when fitted to Log Pearson Type III distribution were significantly larger for the period 2041 to 2060 under both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios of MK3.6 compared to the observed data over the period 1981 to 2005. But the reduced accuracy in the simulation run using MK3.6 data may be due to bias in the large scale atmospheric and circulation variables relative to NCEP reanalysis. The study concludes that the GLM can be used to downscale extreme rainfall events. Also non-stationarity in relation to local rainfall and large scale climate variables is considered as a source of uncertainty in climate change impact studies. Most importantly adequate bias correction in the GCM data is essential before any projection is made.NARCliM (NSW/ACT Regional Climate Modelling project) is a regional climate modeling project for the Australian area. It will provide a comprehensive dynamically downscaled climate dataset for the CORDEX-AustralAsia region at 50km, and South-East Australia at a resolution of 10km. NARCliM data will be used by the NSW and ACT governments to design their climate change adaptation plans. NARCliM uses WRFv3.3 regional climate model (RCM) to perform an ensemble of simulations for the present and the projected future climate. WRF is run in three different model configurations (different combinations of physical parametrizations) that have been shown to perform well in the South-East Australia and were chosen based on performance and independence. These three RCMs are simulating three different periods: 1990-2009, 2020-2040 and 2060-2080. Four different GCMs (MIROC-medres 3.2, ECHAM5, CGCM 3.1 and CSIRO mk3.0) from CMIP3 will be used as initial and boundary conditions for the WRF simulations. These GCMs were chosen through a process that considered model performance, independence and projected future changes. Thus an ENSEMBLE of 12 simulations for each period will be obtained. Additionally to the GCM-driven simulations, 3 control run simulations driven by the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for the entire period of 1950-2009 are also performed in order to validate the RCMs performance in the area. In this talk, we will present the initial evaluation results of the long control period simulations of the project. This includes an analysis of the models ability to capture the influence of large scale oceanic modes on the regional climate.Due to its complex topography and diverse climate (e.g. monsoonal rainfall, tropical cyclones), Vietnam is expected to be greatly affected by climate change. Therefore, detailed information about possible changes is crucial for the planning of climate adaptation measures. The most recent climate projections generated by coupled global climate models (GCMs) as well as earth system models (ESMs) for the CMIP5 experiment are still too coarse to provide this information. Using the conformal-cubic atmospheric model (CCAM), a stretched-grid atmospheric model, regional climate projections with approximately 10 km horizontal resolution over Vietnam have been produced. The downscaling method involves two steps. First, a global 50 km even-grid run is conducted driven just by bias and variance corrected monthly sea surface temperatures and sea ice concentrations from six different CMIP5 GCMs/ESMs and two RCP emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). In the second step of the downscaling method, a 10 km stretched-grid version of CCAM is forced by spectrally filtered results from the 50 km global simulations. Validation of the 50 km and the 10 km simulations of the present climate will be presented. The climate projections from the GCMs, 50 km and 10 km simulations will also be discussed to show some of the impact of the downscaling method and resolution on the projections for Southeast Asia and Vietnam.As part of the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry's (DAFF's) 'Australia's Farming Futures Climate Change Research Program' (CCRP), the Queensland Government undertook a project to support the climate data requirements for nine climate adaptation studies. The project, known as Consistent Climate Scenarios (CCS), delivered climate change projections data, in consistent model-ready formats, enabling project teams to undertake climate change adaptation studies for various primary industries across Australia, in particular within the grazing, cropping and horticultural sectors. Statistical approaches were developed to transform historical climate data from the Queensland Government's SILO climate database using climate projections modelling from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). All IPCC AR4 models from the Third Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) were ranked by an Expert Panel overseeing the CCS project. Ranking was based on model performance over the Australian region using, as a guide, methods developed by Suppiah, et al. (2007) and Smith & Chandler (2010). Of 23 available models, four were omitted as underperforming, and the remaining models were used to develop the CCS projections data. Over 1 million data files were delivered to the CCRP project teams. These projections data are now available to the wider research community as an adjunct to SILO. Registered users can obtain 'CCS data' at http://longpaddock.qld.gov.au/climateprojections. Two different techniques are used to modify the daily observed climate values extracted from the SILO database (http://longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo) using trends obtained from global climate models (GCMs). The two techniques are monthly change factors (CF) derived by pattern scaling from GCMs, and quantile matching (QM). The CF technique projects trends in mean values whereas the QM technique projects both the mean and internal variability within climate sequences. The initial CF trend data were obtained from CSIRO and constituted the monthly trends interpolated to 25 km grids by OzClim (TM) (http://www.csiro.au/ozclim). This set included trends in maximum and minimum temperatures for only seven required GCMs, and did not include specific humidity for five GCMs, or solar radiation for two. Estimation techniques, using the combination of machine learning and regression techniques (Ricketts&Carter 2011) were used to estimate missing variables. The UK Met-Office has also made available maximum and minimum temperature, and specific humidity files for the HadCM3 and HadGEM1 models, which had not been available to CSIRO from the IPCC's repository at PCMDI (http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/). The QM methodology (Li, Sheffield & Wood 2010, Kokic, Jin & Crimp 2012, Kokic, Jin & Crimp 2013) was developed in conjunction with CSIRO. Two variations of QM are described in these papers, one which requires daily data from the GCM (which is only available from a very small subset of GCMs) and one which uses monthly GCM data. Data generated by the methods described may be downloaded after registration, currently at no additional cost from the web site. Users may request up to ten datasets at a time, selected from SILO's 4759 available patched point stations, projected to either 2030 or 2050, based on six SRES scenarios and two stabilization scenarios, and three different climate sensitivities. They receive projection files in a choice of two formats, plus additional data (e.g. CO2 concentrations, diagnostic plots and a comprehensive user guide). In addition to the nine CCRP projects, more than 120,000 files have been downloaded from this web site in the 2012/13 financial year to eight Australian universities and a number of state bodies and consultancies.According to the Assessment Report 4 of Working Group II of Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), there are five approaches in Climate Change Impact, Adaptation and Vulnerability (CCIAV) assessment. Notably, there has been shifting from research-driven approaches to assessments integrated toward policy-making, where decision-makers and stakeholder either participate in or drive the assessment (UNDP, 2005). Unlike the other four approaches which are more research oriented, the risk assessment approach has started to be applied in mainstreaming adaptation option into policy-making globally. Since 2008, the Government of Indonesia has explored the use of risk assessment approach for climate change adaptation planning. Several case studies have been done including the preparation of a national document namely Indonesia Climate Change Sectoral Roadmap, Climate Change Risk and Adaptation Assessment in the Province of South Sumatra, the Province of Nusa Tenggara Barat, Greater Malang, and the City of Tarakan. South Sumatra Province is one of the areas in Indonesia which tipped to be prone to the impact of climate change. In the face of climate change impact such as increased temperature, precipitation rate, and sea level, South Sumatra is very vulnerable due to its low-land areas that it may threat coastal, water, agriculture, and health sectors of the province. In terms of temperature, the analysis suggested that there was an increased trend for the last 25 years around 0.31 degrees C in Palembang City and 0.67 degrees C for the whole South Sumatra. In terms of precipitation rate in South Sumatra, the analysis showed that the climate hazard until 2030 will be dominated by climate uncertainty due to the inter-annual variability which could cause extreme precipitation. Based on projection, in the period of 2020 - 2030, the risk of extreme precipitation will actually increase compared to the period 1991 - 2000. Similarly, estimation of future sea level rise based on altimeter satellite, model, and tide gauge will be around 0.5 - 0.7 cm annually. As a result, the projection of sea level rise in 2030 will be 13.5+/-6.15 cm above the sea level in 2000. The science basis data above then is to be used for flood hazards assessment, which then overlaid with vulnerability map to produce risk map. Based on the risk map, several adaptation options to Flood are identified as follows: Canalization, polder, retention pond, and infiltration measurement for Lowland areas; Detention basin and dam construction for Midland areas; Reforestation for Highland areas. The identified adaptation option above then is mainstreamed into development plans of South Sumatra Province. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Industrial designers in Indonesia should develop new viewpoints concerning industrial products, lifestyles and consumption habits, resources and creativity in view of climate adaptation. In the field of industrial design in Indonesia, sustainability issues started to attract attention in the early 1990s, but were brought up formally only in mid-2000, as part of the curriculum in higher education at the Faculty of Arts and Design, Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB). Given the fact that the ongoing curriculum at ITB still applies concepts of the conventional industrial era, this paper aims to conduct a general analysis of a course to prepare future designers for the current issues in the subject of sustainability, emphasizing the attempts to apply the principles of sustainability within the context of Indonesia, a developing, tropical country that is vulnerable to climate change. In this article, a SWOT analysis is laid out to evaluate the delivery of the subject and the organization of the curriculum. As a closing remark, it is suggested that an effective delivery of the subject should include exercises in real, local cases. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper highlights the ways in which relations of power, specifically those of gender, shape knowledge production, resource distribution, decision-making and thus, adaptation to climate change. I utilize feminist standpoint theory and geographic conceptualizations of social reproduction to argue that policies and programs that seek to enhance adaptation to climate change must understand how gender affects differential access to resources and decision-making in the context of climate variability. Specifically, I argue that situated knowledge and social reproduction are useful conceptual tools for analyzing how women's daily activities and social locations shape what they know and how they respond to social and environmental stressors like drought. In making this argument, I present the results of fieldwork conducted in two rural communities in Mexico's semi-arid highlands to empirically explore the significance of gender in the production of knowledge, provisioning of resources, and the different ways that households adapt to climate change. This kind of critical engagement between feminist and adaptive capacity approaches opens up a conceptual space for reflection and encounters that move the debates closer toward addressing the challenges that climate change presents.Climate change is one of the most serious environmental and human threats undermining the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and it has emerged as a major challenge to development in the 21st century. Over the course of the 21st century, climate change has made significant impact on the economy, society and environment of Nigeria, but the political response to this phenomenon is 'mere rhetoric.' (Booth 2004) This paper identifies fundamental issues about climate change and some of its manifestations in Nigeria. It also examines political responses to climate change with a view to ascertaining implementation of responses to mitigate and adapt to climate change in Nigeria. Analyses of data form a multi-method approach confirm that there is a lack of cohesion between political initiatives and institutions, and a weak implementation of environmental laws, which calls for urgent action to alleviate the negative effects of climate change in the country. The paper also shows that that the political class has not exercised political will to mitigate and adapt to climate change; rather it has been mere rhetoric. The study concluded that there has been non-implementation of the environmental laws on climate change rather the political response to climate change in Nigeria has been mere rhetoric. Nigeria needs to assume greater ownership over the climate change adaptation process to ensure both its sustainability and management according to national development priorities.Previous work has established that the risk of climate related emergencies (eg. floods, droughts, bushfires, etc.) in Australia, and many other parts of the world, is non-stationary. That is, the chance of an extreme climatic event occurring is not the same from one year to the next and is in fact dependent on the state of the various ocean-atmospheric phenomena that are responsible for Australia's hydroclimatic variability. This previous work demonstrated how, on average for New South Wales, the probability of a flood occurring that is equal in magnitude to the 1-in-100 year flood is about five times greater during La Nina events compared to all other years and 12 times greater during a La Nina event that occurs during the negative phase of the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation compared to all other years. This work has recently been extended to focus specifically on urban coastal areas where it has been found that the non-stationarity of flood risk is even further enhanced when compared to the non-coastal catchments. Also investigated is whether this non-stationarity of flood risk is due to non-stationarity of antecedent conditions or non-stationarity of extreme daily and sub-daily rainfall events, with the finding being that both are important. This is contrary to recent studies that claim there is no evidence of non-stationarity in extreme daily and sub-daily rainfall across Australia. The implications of these results are significant given the large populations and infrastructure investment along the eastern seaboard and also timely given current updates to Engineers Australia's Australian Rainfall and Runoff: A Guide to Flood Estimation, the standard for flood estimation in Australia.Conflict over water allocations and the need to adapt to climate change in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin has resulted in decision makers choosing engineering interventions to use water more efficiently for wetlands conservation. We review a range of policy and infrastructure adaptation measures implemented in the Basin by governments. The water supply and demand "environmental works and measures" adopted in the Coorong and Lower Lakes region, as well as along the River Murray, are assessed and compared with the opportunity costs for ecosystem-based adaptation. The results suggest that risks of disruption to ecological processes, desiccation of wetland areas and institutional failure with infrastructure-led adaptation measures are little appreciated. Further, ecosystem-based measures to maintain a more diverse range of ecological processes that would spread risk and conserve a more diverse range of biota have not been identified or adopted by governments. We conclude that as a primary adaptation to climate change environmental works and measures may represent overly-narrow or mal-adaptation that can reduce the resilience of wetland ecosystems.Climate change impacts in the wet/dry tropics are expected to include an increase in extreme daily rainfall events, mean evaporation rates and mean temperatures. The proposed Weddell development, located 40 km south of Darwin, is forecast to have up to 10,500 residents by 2021. This increasing population coupled with projected climate change impacts will increase demand for potable water and exacerbate existing problems associated with the region's wastewater treatment infrastructure. Water sensitive urban design (WSUD) provides an effective method of improving discharge water quality, providing water storage capacity and achieving peak flow attenuation. Using the Weddell development as a point of reference this study has shown that WSUD designs implemented in sub-tropical and temperate areas are not directly transposable to the wet/dry tropics. WSUD designs need to be adapted to cope with the extended dry period characteristic of the wet/dry tropics. While WSUD elements could constitute effective adaptation measures in the wet/dry tropics, there is a definite need for long-term studies that assess the practicality of maintaining functioning WSUD elements in the region. In this contribution we discuss the key issues associated with WSUD in the Northern Territory and the outcomes of a consultation workshop with government agencies.While the range of impacts of a changing climate on farming communities has been extensively studied in Australia, little is known about how individuals and households in small rural towns adapt to the effects of long-term water insecurity. The health and wellbeing impacts of climate variability may be experienced as direct or indirect health impacts or as reduced access to health and other services as reduced economic viability affects rural towns. Identifying risk factors for vulnerability and local measures and practices that will reduce health and wellbeing impacts offers evidence for climate change adaptation policy direction at the local, state and national level. This paper discusses the results of a study that aimed to improve understanding of the vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity of rural communities at the household scale. Focus groups with town residents and key informant interviews were conducted in three rural towns in Western Victoria experiencing differing water security challenges during a period of "drought". Perceived health and wellbeing impacts and the differing ways in which residents adapted their lives to accommodate these changes were explored. The study revealed a range of physical, mental, oral health and food security impacts on health and wellbeing. There were clear gender differences in the ways that men and women identified, communicated and dealt with these impacts. Perceived water quality and cost were shown to be key determinants of acceptance of the small town reticulated water supply. The results of this study suggest that a history of conservatism, degree of community connectedness and communication, the small town ethic of self-reliance, and the openness of government to community involvement in decision making, planning and action around water supplies are important factors in determining resilience to threats to water security in small rural towns.Designers of significant works of infrastructure should consider the complexities of climate change and anticipate the potential impacts over the projected lifetime of the infrastructure. This paper addresses how engineers can comprehensively address climate change in design in a balanced manner. It provides a framework for adaptation in engineering design and includes a specific approach towards a balanced whole-of-life assessment of risk, as opposed to a do-nothing approach, or conservatively designing for worst-case scenario impacts that may not be realised for many decades.Climate change impacts challenge artificially imposed administrative boundaries and expose the need for improved collaboration across borders. However, jurisdictional boundaries represent one of the major obstacles to an integrated response to climate change impacts. Overcoming this barrier is particularly challenging in cases requiring collaboration between institutions operating under different jurisdictions. This paper focuses on the challenges to cross-border institutional arrangements and the subsequent implications for climate change adaptation in the planning sector. Drawing on empirical insights, the paper identifies the key challenges for cross-border arrangements at both local and state levels. It then uses the example provided by the Tweed River Entrance Sand Bypassing Project operative in the Gold Coast (Queensland) and Tweed (New South Wales) border region to discuss the complexity of planning for climate change adaptation across borders.Ethical food movements are growing in number throughout Australia. Amongst these diverse movements are urban agriculture initiatives, which articulate a multitude of social and environmental values. Yet, despite the long history of production and exchange of food in urban areas, planners (and others) often overlook its significance. To assist in addressing this oversight, we take the case study of Melbourne to examine the ways in which participants in urban agriculture are re-imagining urban spaces and the future of agriculture and food systems in Australia. We demonstrate that urban food advocates' politics and practices both challenge and resist the enclosure of urban spaces. This creates new frontiers that transgress social, political, ecological and economic boundaries and edges. These transgressions or counter-enclosures articulate new visions for secure and just food systems and, in so doing, offer insights to assist planners in ensuring Australian cities support socially just and environmentally responsible food systems.Assisted colonisation has received considerable attention recently, and the risks and benefits of introducing taxa to sites beyond their historical range have been vigorously debated. The debate has primarily focused on using assisted colonization to enhance the persistence of taxa that would otherwise be stranded in unsuitable habitat as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change and habitat fragmentation. However, a complementary motivation for assisted colonisation could be to relocate taxa to restore declining ecosystem processes that support biodiversity in recipient sites. We compare the benefits and risks of species introductions motivated by either goal, which we respectively term 'push' versus 'pull' strategies for introductions to preserve single species or for restoration of ecological processes. We highlight that, by focusing on push and neglecting pull options, ecologists have greatly under-estimated potential benefits and risks that may result from assisted colonisation. Assisted colonisation may receive higher priority in climate change adaptation strategies if relocated taxa perform valuable ecological functions (pull) rather than have little collateral benefit (push). Potential roles include enhancing resistance to invasion by undesired species, supporting co-dependent species, performing keystone functions, providing temporally critical resources, replacing taxa of low ecological redundancy, and avoiding time lags in the provisioning of desired functions. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation to climate change on an urban scale is important, as increases in temperature will be inevitable according to future climate scenarios. In this study, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed for the Bergpolder Zuid district in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The simulations take into account wind flow, solar radiation, heat transfer and evaporative cooling. Two validation studies are performed; one for the surface temperatures and one for the evaporative cooling model. In the final stage, three water ponds are added to the domain and a comparative study is performed. It is concluded that evaporative cooling can reduce the air temperature at pedestrian height (1.8 meter) by 0.9 degrees C to 2.0 degrees C.This paper reports on a study of the thermal performance of two-storey apartments in Adelaide, South Australia. The overall design achieved an energy rating score around 7.5 Stars in the Australia's National Home Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS); however, without air-conditioning some of the spaces were considered too warm during hot weather. Aspects of the building design and operation that contribute to poor performance are investigated. The paper points out that performing simulation to obtain an energy rating of the whole building may lead to incorrect assumptions about the building design, and argues that it is crucial to assess the performance of individual spaces at critical times in addition to performing energy rating.Previous research and practice suggest that the lack of a public constituency concerned about public risks and the traditional planning paradigm that is chronically deficient in addressing public risks are major challenges to adaptation to climate change. The core features of public risks associated with climate change are uncertainty about the effects of carbon dioxide emissions, broad distribution, and planning horizons that are decades away. In this article, we present new models that are emerging in research and planning practice that link collaborative governance with anticipatory governance. Coupling the models offers a new approach to planning that simultaneously formulates strategic guidance for current decisions to achieve future resiliency goals, and it builds supportive networks of stakeholders. We offer recommendations on how to make the transition to plans that are premised on uncertainty, flexible polices, monitoring, innovation, and feedback. We then recommend future research needed to examine the effectiveness of the planning framework we propose.Tropical coastal systems are particularly prone to periods of environmental hypoxia, which can result from organismal respiration as well as thermal stratification, and may be further exacerbated by anthropogenic disturbances. In this study, we used five genetically distinct sub-populations of Australian barramundi (Lates calcarifer) to examine the extent of intraspecific variability in hypoxia tolerance. Fish were maintained at two temperatures (26 or 36 degrees C), representing the seasonal thermal range for this species across its tropical distribution in Australia. All fish maintained a constant oxygen consumption rate (M-O2) as air saturation of the water decreased from 100% down to a critical oxygen saturation ([O-2](crit)) of 15.44 +/- 3.20 and 21.07 +/- 3.92% (means +/- SD) at 26 and 36 degrees C, respectively. Mean [O-2](crit), used as a performance measure of hypoxia tolerance, did not differ between sub-populations. No differences were found for resting M-O2 between sub-populations at 26 degrees C, but modest differences were detected between two sub-populations at 36 degrees C (3.36 +/- 0.62 and 2.83 +/- 0.27 mg O-2 kg(-1) min(-1) for Gladstone and Broome sub-populations, respectively). Resting M-O2 was lower for sub-populations at 26 degrees C (1.46 +/- 0.26 mg O-2 kg(-1) min(-1)) than at 36 degrees C (3.10 +/- 0.43 mg O-2 kg(-1) min(-1)), with a temperature coefficient (Q(10)) of 2.12 +/- 0.30. We conclude that both hypoxia tolerance and resting M-O2 are conserved across the distribution of barramundi in Australia, which reflects the capacity of this species to cope in environments with large fluctuations in both temperature and dissolved oxygen.To date, there are few regulations and policies relating to climate change in Australia. Uncertainty about the timing, structure, and potential impact of proposed legislation such as a national carbon abatement scheme, is leading to planning delays across the country. To assist with these policy uncertainties, organizations can embed themselves in multilevel governance frameworks that inform, structure, and facilitate strategic development, planning, and action. As part of these networks, organizational representatives also engage in formal and informal forums, a type of interorganizational relationship, which can include industry task forces, policy development committees, interagency groups, and specific climate change committees. Forums constitute an additional level of governance that influences decision making. The patterns of relationships within these multilevel governance frameworks are examined in this paper, with a focus on the forum level of organizational cooperation. Specifically, we investigate the type of forums operating and their role in supporting organizational responses to climate change. A series of interviews and focus groups were conducted in two study areas, the Swan Canning region of Western Australia and the Hunter / Central Coast region of New South Wales. The results indicate that organizations participate in a diverse range of forums. Further, forums appear to play a key role in the everyday business of organizations by enhancing their ability to plan and address a range of issues, including those associated with climate change. In addition the research highlights some of the barriers and drivers for the development and implementation of climate adaptation practices that emerge from forum discussions. For example, a lack of government guidance in interpreting climate change policy was described as a barrier yet access to the knowledge and expertise of participants was highlighted as a potential driver. The paper discusses how an ability to create new forums and utilize existing nonclimate related forums assists organizations in addressing climate change impacts. We contend that forums constitute a level of governance deeply embedded in organizational practice that influences both their capacity and motivation to undertake climate adaptation. Our findings suggest that research investigating the rules that govern forums and the structural properties of the networks in which they are embedded is required to further understand the role of multilevel governance in shaping organizational responses to climate change.The need to track climate change adaptation progress is being increasingly recognized but our ability to do the tracking is constrained by the complex nature of adaptation and the absence of measurable outcomes or indicators by which to judge if and how adaptation is occurring. We developed a typology of approaches by which climate change adaptation can be tracked globally at a national level. On the one hand, outcome-based approaches directly measure adaptation progress and effectiveness with reference to avoided climate change impacts. However, given that full exposure to climate change impacts will not happen for decades, alternative approaches focus on developing indicators or proxies by which adaptation can be monitored. These include systematic measures of adaptation readiness, processes undertaken to advance adaptation, policies and programs implemented to adapt, and measures of the impacts of these policies and programs on changing vulnerability. While these approaches employ various methods and data sources, and identify different components of adaptation progress to track at the national level, they all seek to characterize the current status of adaptation by which progress over time can be monitored. However, there are significant challenges to operationalizing these approaches, including an absence of systematically collected data on adaptation actions and outcomes, underlying difficulties of defining what constitutes "adaptation", and a disconnect between the timescale over which adaptation plays out and the practical need for evaluation to inform policy. Given the development of new adaptation funding streams, it is imperative that tools for monitoring progress are developed and validated for identifying trends and gaps in adaptation response.A shift is taking place within environmental governance that draws attention to modes and instruments that respond to system dynamics, uncertainty, and contested values. Adaptive comanagement is one process being advanced to make governance operational as it emphasizes collaboration among diverse actors, functions across scales and levels, and fosters learning though iterative feedback. Although extensive experience with adaptive comanagement has been gained in relation to other environmental and resource issues, its potential contribution to the governance of adaption is largely unexplored. This paper probes how adaptive comanagement might offer support to climate change adaptation and identifies gaps in knowledge requiring attention. In drawing upon existing literature and applied experiences, it is argued that adaptive comanagement may contribute to climate change adaptation by building generalized adaptive capacity as well as providing a novel institutional arrangement to generate adaptive responses. At the same time, several questions emerge about adaptive comanagement in this context. Considerations are thus discussed for adaptive comanagement scholarship and application in addressing the challenge of climate change adaptation.Efforts to develop extensive forest-based climate change vulnerability assessments have informed proposed management and policy options intended to promote improved on-the-ground policy outcomes. These assessments are derived from a rich vulnerability literature and are helpful in modeling complex ecosystem interactions, yet their policy relevance and impact has been limited. We argue this is due to structural-functional logic underpinning these assessments in which governance is treated as a procedural "black box" and policy-making as an undifferentiated and unproblematic output of a political system responding to input changes and/or system prerequisites. Like an earlier generation of systems or cybernetic thinking about political processes, the focus in these assessments on macro system-level variables and relationships fails to account for the multi-level or polycentric nature of governance and the possibility of policy processes resulting in the nonperformance of critical tasks.Despite the fact that mainstreaming of climate change into existing EU sectoral policies is a key aim, empirical knowledge of how it works in practice remains scarce. With this paper we explore the degree to which climate considerations are taken into account in the implementation of one of the most influential pieces of European water legislation, the Water Framework Directive and, more importantly, we assess possible explanations for the geographical variability in levels of mainstreaming observed. Our empirical research is based on an analysis of both EU and local policy documents, as well as more than forty in-depth interviews, and shows that, for various reasons, the degree of mainstreaming that has taken place differs widely. We conclude that timely incentives and clear guidance will be necessary to ensure progress is made by all, but that a residual fear that the adaptation agenda is open to abuse by those seeking to rationalise failures to fully implement the Water Framework Directive has put a brake on the mainstreaming agenda.For a number of years, government and academic sources have labelled adaptation to climate change an issue for risk management. These sources have recommended methods and procedures for calculating the range of risks presented by climate change. However, analysing risk is only one part of the equation; the more intractable problem lies in deciding how to respond to those risks. The article explores how the risk threshold has been set in recent policy documents and in newly emergent legislation. It analyses two case studies - neither of which can claim unequivocal success - as test cases for the leading policy recommendations. Given the twists and turns in the law and policy at work in both case studies, it is questioned whether the risk threshold was set correctly in either case and also considered are what changes need to be made, both in setting the risk threshold and in determining the appropriate legal tools for that threshold.Climate change is predicted to exacerbate and alter the frequency, severity and distribution of many natural hazards in Australia, including bushfire and coastal hazards. Land-use planning is widely recognised as a critical tool for reducing the vulnerability of settlements and infrastructure to such hazards. In Australia, legal and policy frameworks for land- use planning have been the subject of much scrutiny and reform effort in recent years to respond to potential climate change impacts. This article compares and contrasts the approach taken to these two different climate hazards, as well as the approaches taken by different State and Territory jurisdictions and local governments. The analysis focuses on: the range of spatial planning instruments available to address climate hazards; the types of instruments currently in use; and recent experiences of instrument design and implementation. Drawing on this analysis, a number of transferable lessons regarding the choice, design and implementation of spatial planning instruments are identified to inform the ongoing development of legal frameworks for climate change adaptation.Emerging trends of a changing and increasingly variable climate have introduced new livelihood challenges in rain-fed smallholder agricultural systems that predominate in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The capacity of local farming communities and their institutions to respond to the new and emerging impacts of climate change is often constrained by lack of access to information and improved technologies, as well as poor support mechanisms to promote assimilation of new knowledge. This threatens to heighten vulnerability of the majority of SSA's rural communities who are already facing severe problems of food insecurity and a declining soil resource base. In this paper we use two case studies from Wenchi district in Ghana and Makoni in Zimbabwe to communicate how participatory action research (PAR) methodology, characterised by iterative planning-action-reflection cycles, was coupled with a new concept of field-based farmer learning centres to build adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers to climate change. The study was part of a University of Zimbabwe led project supported under the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) programme to explore the state of resilience in African smallholder farming. The PAR and learning centre processes enabled communities, local leaders, and extension agents and researchers to establish the, hither to, imperceptible link between poor soil fertility and rising institutional challenges within communities. Institutional conflicts related to land tenure and sharecropping arrangements between migrant farmers and native landowners were addressed in Ghana, while local institutions supporting traditional social safety net mechanisms were revitalized in Zimbabwe. In both cases, it was apparent that farmers faced multiple stresses, at the core of which were poor and declining soil fertility and weakening local institutions. The worsening rainfall distribution and increasing cases of drought are broadening the scope for vulnerability, often driving competing claims and conflicts. PAR was successfully used as an entry point, empowering communities to self-mobilize and self-organize to co-learn and experiment with integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) technologies and other improved farming practices. They realised opportunities for achieving high crop yields and generate surpluses in good years. Strengthening local institutional capacity to revitalise community safety nets proved an essential ingredient for enhancing adaptive capacity of smallholders to climatic shocks. The PAR process was a major driver of effective partnerships among community members, extension, policy makers and researchers, but ensuing success generated a new set of social challenges that could not be addressed within the short timescale of the project. We conclude that PAR was a suitable mechanism for supporting self-organization and co-learning processes among smallholder farmers and their service providers, enabling them to use ISFM technologies and strengthen their local institutions around natural resource management. This revealed the scope for building adaptive capacity of these communities against climate change and variability. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper identifies types of coping strategies that are available during water supply shortages to households in Oke-Ogun, Nigeria; investigates the adequacy and effectiveness of coping options and identifies why different population group prefer one particular coping strategy over another. This work also investigates how household socioeconomic status influence the choice of coping strategies during water supply shortages in local communities that do not have formal water utilities. Data was collected via site visits to three local communities in the region, a household survey of 397 respondents, key-informant interviews and focus group discussions. Observed and perceived trends of climate indicate variability with impacts on drying of wells which are the main water supply sources almost immediately after the wet season. During periods of water scarcity, most households combined multiple coping strategies. Yet, 90% of the participating households indicated that available coping strategies are not adequate. Households in traditional compounds rely more on behavioural coping options while households in newer planned neighbourhoods depend on technical coping options. The choice of hard coping options depends on households' socioeconomic characteristics with income as the most influential factor. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Worldwide, millions of people experience coastal flooding each year, with devastating effects especially in rural coastal settlements in tropical developing countries. This paper investigates the vulnerability of local settlements in the Cameroon mangrove forest zone to flooding, and improves understanding of perceptions and responses to past and current coastal flooding. Six communities in the coastal mangrove forest zone of the extreme SouthWest of Cameroon were investigated. A questionnaire was administered to a total of 200 individuals supplemented by other participatory rapid appraisal tools. The ground positions of the sampled sites as well as their altitudes were recorded for subsequent geospatial analysis.Statistical analysis was performed to show trends. The coordinates of the study sites were superimposed on base topographic maps of 1965, to investigate coastal changes over a period of 43 years. Results show that: (1) changes in coastal area have occurred in the past 43 years either through inland retreat or seaward shifts and accordingly, settlements are differentially vulnerable; (2) settlement submergence, house damage, and landscape deformation are the key impacts of flooding; (3) coastal flooding promotes the deforestation of mangrove forest for fuel wood; (4) current adaptive measures include retreat of settlement, abandonment, and house design modifications; and (5) most adaptive strategies are reactive individual actions which are likely inefficient and unsustainable from a longer term perspective given their limited scope of implementation. The paper recommends external support to improve adaptive capacity in mangrove settlements, review and improvement of existing policies, and development of integrated coastal management strategy for the region. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Knowledge of non-linear and variable climate risks generated by the interaction between climate and terrestrial ecosystems at local spatial scales is important for place-based and context specific adaptation. In this study we generated 24 risk factors from 9 climate risk determinants based on the trend in present and future climate, water footprints associated with climate-ecogeographic interactions, climate-land cover relations and socio-demographic profiles. The description of aggregate climate risk was compared across community clusters, local government areas, and 3 broad zones in the wooded savannah of Nigeria. The results suggest rainfall, which is increasing at about 0.6 mm/ decade under the present climate will decline by about 4 mm/ decade under future climate. Future maximum temperature is projected to increase by about 0.02 degrees C/decade, a rate that is lower than the present 0.06 degrees C/decade. Rainfall was found to be the most important determinant of ecosystem changes and propagation of natural resource systems and the livelihoods they support. Climate risks vary spatio-temporally across zones, local government areas and community clusters with strong orientation to water (rainfall) footprint. The likelihood of the geographic shifting of risks such as loss of arable lands and human migration from moisture deficit areas to more favorable areas due to the changing water footprint is high. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As a contribution to guide policy planning, effective climate change adaptation options to enhance maize production in Ghana were examined. The Agricultural Production Systems Simulator crop model, coupled with statistical downscaled climate scenarios of 9 general circulation models (GCMs) and farmer practices, were used to device adaptation options in the near future (NF) period of 2046-2065 based on IPCC A2 emission scenario at local scale level in Wa and Wenchi agricultural areas of Ghana. Results from the single maize cropping season at Wa, in the savanna zone indicate that, a 6 week delay in sowing from 1961 to 2000 baseline date of 1st May to 15th June, was the most appropriate way to offset the negative effects of potential climate change resulting in a yield increase of 8.2%. In the forest-savanna transitional zone of Wenchi, a 4-week delay in the major season sowing date from 15th March to 15th April and no change in the minor season sowing date of 15th August resulted in a slight yield increase of 3.9%. On the other hand, a second adaptation option of using a medium heat-tolerant maize variety produced substantial gains in crop yield of 30.1% and 30.5% in savanna and forest-savanna transitional zones respectively with a longer grain-formation period under NF climate change when compared to delaying sowing dates. Effective adaptation options can thus reduce negative impacts of climate change in the NF, but require enabling policy to support its implementation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Poyang Lake is China's largest freshwater lake with a high degree of spatio-temporal variation. The lake has shrunk in size in recent years, resulting in significant hydrological, ecological and economic consequences. It remains unknown whether the shrinkage is a trend or a regime shift, which is of high importance for policymakers as it may lead to different decisions. This study constructed a four-decade record of the lake area using multi-temporal satellite images and hydrological data. The Mann-Kendall analysis revealed a decreasing trend of Poyang Lake but it was statistically insignificant. The Rodionov sequential approach disclosed an abrupt change of the lake in 2006, implying a regime shift. Basically, the lake change was a synthetic result of precipitation, evapotranspiration and outflow discharge. However, precipitation and outflow did not show any significant trend or abrupt change, and evapotranspiration had an increasing trend in addition to an abrupt change in 1998. The trigger for the recent lake declines was principally ascribed to a weakened blocking effect of the Yangtze River. The findings provide an example of hydrologic non-stationarity and are valuable for effective promotion of climate adaptation and water resource management.Successful adaptation of agriculture to ongoing climate changes would help to maintain productivity growth and thereby reduce pressure to bring new lands into agriculture. In this paper we investigate the potential co-benefits of adaptation in terms of the avoided emissions from land use change. A model of global agricultural trade and land use, called SIMPLE, is utilized to link adaptation investments, yield growth rates, land conversion rates, and land use emissions. A scenario of global adaptation to offset negative yield impacts of temperature and precipitation changes to 2050, which requires a cumulative 225 billion USD of additional investment, results in 61 Mha less conversion of cropland and 15 Gt carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) fewer emissions by 2050. Thus our estimates imply an annual mitigation co-benefit of 0 : 35 GtCO(2)e yr(-1) while spending $15 per tonne CO(2)e of avoided emissions. Uncertainty analysis is used to estimate a 5-95% confidence interval around these numbers of 0.25-0.43 Gt and $11-$22 per tonne CO(2)e. A scenario of adaptation focused only on Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, while less costly in aggregate, results in much smaller mitigation potentials and higher per tonne costs. These results indicate that although investing in the least developed areas may be most desirable for the main objectives of adaptation, it has little net effect on mitigation because production gains are offset by greater rates of land clearing in the benefited regions, which are relatively low yielding and land abundant. Adaptation investments in high yielding, land scarce regions such as Asia and North America are more effective for mitigation. To identify data needs, we conduct a sensitivity analysis using the Morris method (Morris 1991 Technometrics 33 161-74). The three most critical parameters for improving estimates of mitigation potential are (in descending order) the emissions factors for converting land to agriculture, the price elasticity of land supply with respect to land rents, and the elasticity of substitution between land and non-land inputs. For assessing the mitigation costs, the elasticity of productivity with respect to investments in research and development is also very important. Overall, this study finds that broad-based efforts to adapt agriculture to climate change have mitigation co-benefits that, even when forced to shoulder the entire expense of adaptation, are inexpensive relative to many activities whose main purpose is mitigation. These results therefore challenge the current approach of most climate financing portfolios, which support adaptation from funds completely separate from-and often much smaller than-mitigation ones.Canada is a vast country and faces different types of weather and climatic patterns. As a result, Canadian agriculture is a spatially heterogeneous industry and therefore, would face differing impacts of climate change in different regions. Depending on the region of study, although, such impacts would vary with different climate characteristics, differing enterprise combinations and the adaptation potential of producers may also have a significant role to play. In general, as average temperatures increase in northern latitudes, for many crops particularly in the northern regions of Canada (more specifically in the Prairie region); such impacts are estimated to be positive for the shorter term through higher yields. New production opportunities are expected to emerge; however, such knowledge is somewhat scarce. These positive benefits of climate change would be reduced when extreme events strike - droughts and floods are expected to become more frequent and severe. Although the impacts of one-year or back-to-back droughts have been estimated, such is not the case with the impact longer period drought might have on producers and the economic system in Canada. For livestock, due to a negative impact on forage, pastures, and feed grain production, coupled with higher temperatures, some livestock productivity is expected to suffer in some regions. However, empirical studies on this impact are lacking. Among various challenges in meeting knowledge gaps some stand out. For example, many studies have employed different methodologies with respect to assumption of level of climate change, prediction period, inclusion of CO2 fertilization effect, shift of agro-ecosystems northwards, inclusion or exclusion of extreme events, among others. This makes comparison of regional impacts difficult. Another major gap is in terms of identifying the exact nature of new opportunities that would be created by the changing climate. As Canadian agriculture depends heavily on exports of commodities, the industry would be affected not only by the impacts of climate change locally but also those elsewhere in the globe. A systematic study of identifying future markets for Canadian agricultural products is needed. In terms of adaptation, conversion of dryland agriculture to irrigation is suggested to be a common recommendation. However, due to the fact that climate change would also affect water availability as glaciers retreat (affecting water availability on the Prairies), and aquifers have lower yields, the potential for such adaptations would be low and expensive. Climate change would also require knowledge of adaptation measures that can be undertaken over the short to long term. Such knowledge is also very scarce.This study was focused on attempting to estimate the potential change in forest carbon stocks between 2010 and 2110 in South Korea, using forest cover maps and National Forest Inventory (NFI) data. Allometric functions (logistic regression models) of volume-age relationships were developed to estimate carbon stock change during the next 100 years for Pinus densiflora, P. koraiensis, P. rigida, Larix kaempferi and Quercus spp. As a result, we found that the average forest volume would increase from 126.89m(3)/ha to 246.61m(3)/ha and the average carbon stocks would increase from 50.51Mg C/ha to 99.76Mg C/ha during the next 100 years. The carbon stocks would increase by approximately 0.5Mg C/(ha.yr), a high value if other northern countries' (Canada, Russia, China, etc.) rates of increase are considered, as these are -0.10 to 0.28Mg C/(ha.yr) as determined in a previous study. This can probably be attributed to the fact that the change in carbon stocks was estimated without the consideration of mortality, thinning, and tree species' change in this study, which is may lead to somewhat overestimation of carbon sequestration. However, this study is meaningful, as the estimated carbon stocks were based on the data from NFI and forest cover maps.Background: Addressing climate change and its associated effects is a multi-dimensional and ongoing challenge. This includes recognizing that climate change will affect the health and wellbeing of all populations over short and longer terms, albeit in varied ways and intensities. That recognition has drawn attention to the need to take adaptive actions to lessen adverse impacts over the next few decades from unavoidable climate change, particularly in developing country settings. A range of sectors is responsible for appropriate adaptive policies and measures to address the health risks of climate change, including health services, water and sanitation, trade, agriculture, disaster management, and development. Objectives: To broaden the framing of governance and decision-making processes by using innovative methods and assessments to illustrate the multi-sectoral nature of health-related adaptation to climate change. This is a shift from sector-specific to multi-level systems encompassing sectors and actors, across temporal and spatial scales. Design: A review and synthesis of the current knowledge in the areas of health and climate change adaptation governance and decision-making processes. Results: A novel framework is presented that incorporates social science insights into the formulation and implementation of adaptation activities and policies to lessen the health risks posed by climate change. Conclusion: Clarification of the roles that different sectors, organizations, and individuals occupy in relation to the development of health-related adaptation strategies will facilitate the inclusion of health and wellbeing within multi-sector adaptation policies, thereby strengthening the overall set of responses to minimize the adverse health effects of climate change.Background: With a warming climate, it is important to identify sub-populations at risk of harm during extreme heat. Several international studies have reported that individuals from ethnic minorities are at increased risk of heat-related illness, for reasons that are not often discussed. Objective: The aim of this article is to investigate the underpinning reasons as to why ethnicity may be associated with susceptibility to extreme heat, and how this may be relevant to Australia's population. Design: Drawing upon literary sources, the authors provide commentary on this important, yet poorly understood area of heat research. Results: Social and economic disparities, living conditions, language barriers, and occupational exposure are among the many factors contributing to heat-susceptibility among minority ethnic groups in the United States. However, there is a knowledge gap about socio-cultural influences on vulnerability in other countries. Conclusion: More research needs to be undertaken to determine the effects of heat on tourists, migrants, and refugees who are confronted with a different climatic environment. Thorough epidemiological investigations of the association between ethnicity and heat-related health outcomes are required, and this could be assisted with better reporting of nationality data in health statistics. Climate change adaptation strategies in Australia and elsewhere need to be ethnically inclusive and cognisant of an upward trend in the proportion of the population who are migrants and refugees.This paper evaluates the impact of climate change on sediment yield in the Nam Ou basin located in northern Laos. Future climate (temperature and precipitation) from four general circulation models (GCMs) that are found to perform well in the Mekong region and a regional circulation model (PRECIS) are downscaled using a delta change approach. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is used to assess future changes in sediment flux attributable to climate change. Results indicate up to 3.0 degrees C shift in seasonal temperature and 27% (decrease) to 41% (increase) in seasonal precipitation. The largest increase in temperature is observed in the dry season while the largest change in precipitation is observed in the wet season. In general, temperature shows increasing trends but changes in precipitation are not unidirectional and vary depending on the greenhouse gas emission scenarios (GHGES), climate models, prediction period and season. The simulation results show that the changes in annual stream discharges are likely to range from a 17% decrease to 66% increase in the future, which will lead to predicted changes in annual sediment yield ranging from a 27% decrease to about 160% increase. Changes in intra-annual (monthly) discharge as well as sediment yield are even greater (-62 to 105% in discharge and -88 to 243% in sediment yield). A higher discharge and sediment flux are expected during the wet seasons, although the highest relative changes are observed during the dry months. The results indicate high uncertainties in the direction and magnitude of changes of discharge as well as sediment yields due to climate change. As the projected climate change impact on sediment varies remarkably between the different climate models, the uncertainty should be taken into account in both sediment management and climate change adaptation.A number of challenges prevent climate change adaptation activities from contributing to vulnerability reduction. Some of these relate to the nature and quality of vulnerability assessments, while others concern how well assessments link with adaptation actions. By highlighting four persistent assumptions about the role of vulnerability assessments in adaptation, this paper seeks to identify ways in which the practice of vulnerability assessment can better support progressive adaptation actions. This paper argues that, for adaptation actions identified within vulnerability assessments to be successful, there is a need for assessment to: (i) engage with marginalized perspectives; (ii) draw upon diverse knowledge domains; (iii) integrate scales of analysis with appropriate scales of action; and (iv) build political will. This requires vulnerability assessment to be considered as more than just a method for information generation on who is most vulnerable to climate change, where they are located and the underlying reasons for their vulnerability. In addition, improving the rigor and transparency of assessments and engagement with stakeholders during the assessment process can better facilitate vulnerability-focused adaptation.Climate change is a serious threat confronting the world today having huge implications on the Indian economy with more then 65% percent of the population dependent on the natural resources such as agriculture, water and forests. Large number of researches have been done nationally and internationally to cope up with its impacts in the climate sensitive region. However, there is a need for communicating climate change issues in locally relevant and culturally appropriate ways. Development Alternatives has taken several initiatives to use "Community Radios" - the rural dominant Information and communication technology (ICT) based communication medium as a powerful communication tool to play a critical role of information intermediary between the rural communities and science to address climate change concerns of the vulnerable communities of Bundelkhand.It is accepted that the earth's climate is changing in an accelerating pace, with already documented implications for human health and the environment. This literature review provides an overview of existing research findings about the effects of heat stress on the working population in relation to climate change. In the light of climate change adaptation, the purpose of the literature review was to explore recent and previous research into the impacts of heat stress on humans in an occupational setting. Heat stress in the workplace has been researched extensively in the past however, in the contemporary context of climate change, information is lacking on its extent and implications. The main factors found to exacerbate heat stress in the current and future workplace are the urban 'heat island effect', physical work, individual differences, and the developing country context where technological fixes are often not applicable. There is also a lack of information on the effects on vulnerable groups such as elderly people and pregnant women. As increasing temperatures reduce work productivity, world economic productivity could be condensed, affecting developing countries in the tropical climate zone disproportionately. Future research is needed taking an interdisciplinary approach, including social, economic, environmental and technical aspects.Heat waves are a public health concern in Australia and unprecedented heat waves have been recorded in Adelaide over recent years. The aim of this study was to examine the perception and attitudes towards heat waves in the context of climate change among a group of residents in Adelaide, an Australian city with a temperate climate. A cross-sectional study was conducted in the summer of 2012 among a sample of 267 residents. The results of the survey found that television (89.9%), radio (71.2%), newspapers (45.3%) were the main sources from which respondents received information about heat waves. The majority of the respondents (73.0%) followed news about heat waves very or somewhat closely. About 26.6% of the respondents were extremely or very concerned about the effects of heat waves on them personally. The main issues that were of personal concern for respondents during a heat wave were their personal comfort (60.7%), their garden (48.7%), and sleeping well (47.6%). Overall, respondents were more concerned about the impacts of heat waves to the society than on themselves. There was a significant association between gender (chi(2) = 21.2, df = 3, p = 0.000), gross annual household income (p = 0.03) and concern for the societal effects of heat waves. Less than half (43.2%) of the respondents believed that heat waves will extremely or very likely increase in Adelaide according to climate projections. Nearly half (49.3%) believed that the effects of heat waves were already being felt in Adelaide. These findings may inform the reframing and communication strategies for heat waves in Adelaide in the context of climate change.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to outline a unique six-step process for the inclusion of climate change adaption goals and strategies in a University Climate Change Plan. Design/methodology/approach - A mixed-method approach was used to gather data on campus climate change vulnerabilities and adaption strategies. A literature review highlighted common themes in adaption research. Meetings, surveys, and a specialized workshop with climate scenarios were created to elicit campus and community input. Findings - The majority of the peer-reviewed and grey literature surrounding climate change adaptation planning is aimed at larger levels of organization than a University campus (e.g. nations, populations, regions, and cities). An original planning process was created to identify vulnerabilities, risks and strategies. Key vulnerabilities fell into three main areas of concern: energy, transportation, and built environment. Adaptation goals, objectives and strategies were outlined for the Dalhousie University Climate Change Plan, based on risk levels associated with vulnerabilities. Research limitations/implications The adaption survey and workshop was created for this research. Small improvements were suggested for future use. The six weather scenarios presented at the workshop emphasized extreme events. Some participants felt that scenarios should be developed that feature smaller climate changes over a longer period of time. The prioritization activity used to establish risk needed to clarify the definition of risk being used. Future scenarios could include more consideration of socio-economic factors. Originality/value - Specific planning frameworks to create campus-level climate adaptation strategies are sparse. A unique planning framework and workshop was developed to identify key climate change adaption strategies for universities.Farmers' irrigation practices play a crucial role in the sustainability of crop production and water consumption, and in the way they deal with the current and future effects of climate change. In this study, a system dynamic multi-agent model adopting the soil water balance provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56 was developed to explore how farmers' decision making may affect future water needs and use with a focus on the role of climate services, i.e. forecasts and insurance. A climatic projection record representing the down-scaled A1B market scenario (a balance across all sources) of the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is used to produce future daily data about relative humidity, precipitation, temperature and wind speed. Two types of meteorological services are made available: i) a bi-weekly bulletin; and ii) seasonal forecasts. The precision of these services was altered to represent different conditions, from perfect knowledge to poor forecasts. Using the available forecasts, farming agents take adaptation decisions concerning crop allocation and irrigation management on the basis of their own risk attitudes. Farmers' attitudes are characterized by fuzzy classifications depending on age, relative income and crop profitability. Farming agents' adaptation decisions directly affect the crop and irrigation parameters, which in turn affect future water needs on a territorial level. By incorporating available and future meteorological services, the model allows the farmer's decision making-process to be explored together with the consequent future irrigation water demand for the period 2015 to 2030. The model prototype is applied to a data set of the Venice Lagoon Watershed, an area of 2038 km(2) in north-east Italy, for a preliminary test of its performance and to design future development objectives.During the last decade, the interest of the international community in the concepts of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation has been growing immensely. Even though an increasing number of scholars seem to view these concepts as two sides of the same coin (at least when not considering the potentially positive effects of climate change), in practice the two concepts have developed in parallel rather than in an integrated manner when it comes to policy, rhetoric and funding opportunities amongst international organisations and donors. This study investigates the extent of the creation of parallel structures for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The chosen methodology for the study is a comparative case study and the data are collected through focus groups and content analysis of documentary sources, as well as interviews with key informants. The results indicate that parallel structures for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation have been established in all but one of the studied countries. The qualitative interviews performed in some of the countries indicate that stakeholders in disaster risk reduction view this duplication of structures as unfortunate, inefficient and a fertile setup for conflict over resources for the implementation of similar activities. Additional research is called for in order to study the concrete effects of having these parallel structures as a foundation for advocacy for more efficient future disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.It is highly likely that hazards and extreme climatic events will occur more frequently in the future and will become more severe - increasing the vulnerability and risk of millions of poor urbanites in developing countries. Disaster resilience aims to reduce disaster losses by equipping cities to withstand, absorb, adapt to or recover from external shocks. This paper questions whether disaster resilience is likely to be taken up in spatial planning practices in South Africa, given its immediate developmental priorities and challenges. In South Africa, issues of development take precedence over issues of sustainability, environmental management and disaster reduction. This is illustrated by the priority given to 'servicing' settlements compared to the opportunities offered by 'transforming' spaces through post-apartheid spatial planning. The City of Durban's quest in adapting to climate change demonstrates hypothetically that if disaster resilience were to be presented as an issue distinct from what urban planners are already doing, then planners would see it as insignificant as compared to addressing the many developmental backlogs and challenges. If, however, it is regarded as a means to secure a city's development path whilst simultaneously addressing sustainability, then disaster resilience is more likely to be translated into spatial planning practices in South Africa.Adaptation to climate change necessitates serious adjustments to the spatial organization of our environment. However, the uncertainties, the controversial character of the climate debate, the variety of climate change consequences and the inherently complex character of climate change puts specific demands on adapting spatial planning to climate change. Due to these characteristics of climate change, climate adaptation demands "adaptive spatial planning". One of the main challenges is to balance between a robust and a flexible approach. On the one hand adaptive spatial planning tries to enable social and economic functions to flourish. On the other hand flexibility is required in finding creative combinations between the fulfillment of climate adaptation and other spatial interests. In this article we reconsider the strategic departure points for spatial planning (norms, values and principles), the interactive organization of planning processes, and the allocation of responsibilities, costs and benefits in planning processes which in our view constitute adaptive spatial planning practices in the context of climate change.The article discusses the most significant legal problems facing the makers of conservation policy in the European Union and in Germany in adapting biodiversity to climate change. In the introduction, we give an overview of the possible consequences of climate change for species and landscapes and propose a number of adaptation measures. We then analyse and discuss three issues relating to the policy instruments of European and German environmental law: I. the problems associated with protected areas in terms of justification and flexibility; 2. the need for more biotope networks, especially in agriculturally dominated landscapes; and 3. the potential and shortcomings of regional and local planning instruments.The Pacific Islands are vulnerable to climate change and increased risk of disasters not only because of their isolated and often low lying geographical setting but because of their economic status which renders them reliant on donor support. In a qualitative study exploring the adaptive capacity of Pacific Island Countries (PICs) across four countries, Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and Vanuatu, it was clear that traditional coping strategies are consistently being applied as part of response to disasters and climate changes. This paper describes five common strategies employed in PICs as understood through this research: recognition of traditional methods; faith and religious beliefs; traditional governance and leadership; family and community involvement; and agriculture and food security. While this study does not trial the efficacy of these methods, it provides an indication of what methods are being used and therefore a starting point for further research into which of these traditional strategies are beneficial. These findings also provide important impetus for Pacific Island governments to recognise traditional approaches in their disaster preparedness and response processes.Coastal storms can take a devastating toll on the public's health. Urban areas like New York City (NYC) may be particularly at risk, given their dense population, reliance on transportation, energy infrastructure that is vulnerable to flood damage, and high-rise residential housing, which may be hard-hit by power and utility outages. Climate change will exacerbate these risks in the coming decades. Sea levels are rising due to global warming, which will intensify storm surge. These projections make preparing for the health impacts of storms even more important. We conducted a broad review of the health impacts of US coastal storms to inform climate adaptation planning efforts, with a focus on outcomes relevant to NYC and urban coastal areas, and incorporated some lessons learned from recent experience with Superstorm Sandy. Based on the literature, indicators of health vulnerability were selected and mapped within NYC neighborhoods. Preparing for the broad range of anticipated effects of coastal storms and floods may help reduce the public health burden from these events.In a poor solvating solvent, acetonitrile, the coordination ability of alkali metal (Li+, Na+) and alkaline earth metal (Mg2+, Ca2+, Ba2+) ions with carboxylate and sulfonate ions has been thoroughly examined, based on the precipitation of non-charged species and the successive re-dissolution of charged species. At first, the formation of [C6H5CO2Ca](+) (the calcium benzoate cation) in acetonitrile was evidenced by ESI-MS. Tetraethylammonium 3-nitrophthalate (3-nitro-1,2-benzenedicarboxylate, L2-) of 2.0x10(-3) mol dm(-3) was precipitated completely by the addition of 2.0 x 10(-3) mol dm(-3) Ca(ClO4)(2), although the absorption spectrum of L2- was only slightly changed by 1.0 x 10(-3) mol dm(-3) Ca(ClO4)(2). In the presence of 5.0 x 10(-3) MOI dm(-3) Ca(ClO4)(2), however, the precipitates re-dissolved drastically. The successively formed species between Ca2+ and L2- were proposed to be CaL22-. CaL0, and Ca2L2+. The lithium ion also caused the precipitation of non-charged species (Li2L0) as well as the re-dissolution of charged species (tentatively assigned to be Li3L+ or Li4L2+), however, the re-dissolution with Na+ took place just hardly. We were able to observe the re-dissolution of precipitates for 4-nitrophthalate through the formation of positively charged species in the presence of excess amounts of the alkaline earth metal ions, but not of the alkali metal ions. Tetraethylammonium p-toluenesulfonate, and 1,5-, 2,6-, and 2,7-naphtalenesulfonates were also examined. The "reverse" coordination constants have been successfully evaluated for some of all the systems, e.g., K-2=3 x 10(7) (2 Mg2+ + L2- = Mg2L2+) and K-3=2 x 10(8) (3 Li+ + L2- = M3L-), where L2- =2,7-naphthalenedisulfonate. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mass Audubon recognized that climate change was significantly impacting bird species distribution and seasonality. Unsure of how and when to engage visitors to their network of wildlife sanctuaries on the topic of climate change, its educators turned to the National Network of Ocean and Climate Change Interpreters' Study Circle (NNOCCI). Through participation in NNOCCI, with its focus on strategic framing, staff increased their confidence and abilities to communicate with their visitors about climate change and its impact on the varied habitats and wildlife in Mass Audubon's care. Educators from across the state customized their climate change programming for each unique site, including the creation of new program models that empowered visitors to collaborate with site staff to take individual and community-based action related to climate change adaptation.This paper explores perceptions of ski-tourism representatives and other regional stake-holders about climate change impacts, limits to tourism development and adaptation strategies in the Australian Alps. This area faces rising temperatures, declining rain and snow falls, and shorter skiing seasons. Open-ended interviews examined the perceptions, plans and attitudes of the ski industry and those of conservation managers, local government officials and Australian researchers into tourism and/or climate change effects in the Australian Alps. All interviewees accepted climate change was a reality; several, however, questioned the worst-case scenarios. The major tourism-related adaptation strategies were snowmaking and diversifying to year-round tourism; the success of these strategies will vary according to individual resorts' snowmaking capacity and potential summer tourism revenue. Currently non-snow-based tourism revenue is worth only approximately 30% of winter revenue. Social resistance to increased water and electricity use for snowmaking emerged as an important issue. Competition for water, including the needs of ecosystems, agriculture and fire protection in this summer-fire-prone region, and fire management issues, is a key concern. Current conflicts between the ski industry and other stakeholders over climate change adaptation call for a collaborative adaptation and change policy within the Australian Alps.The degradation and loss of vital ecosystem functions and services have been an uncontested result of urbanisation. An understanding of how ecosystem services are provided along rural-urban gradients is crucial in the task of conserving and enhancing vital services in urban environments, increasing the quality of life of urban dwellers, and working towards a sustainable future. Focusing on nine ecosystem services - aesthetic, spiritual, recreation, water flow regulation, carbon sequestration, climate change adaptation, pollination, biodiversity potential, and noise attenuation - regarded as important to urban areas the authors detail the changes in the values of these services along a gradient comprising four categories of urbanisation: urban, suburban, pen-urban and rural, in Greater Manchester, UK. The data on which the discussion is based are derived from an interdisciplinary assessment tool, developed from a selection of previously used assessment methods including the Residential Environment Assessment Tool and the Green Flag Award. Based on a mixture of a field and desktop study, the new tool assigns non-economic values of 0-10 to the selected services, allowing for evaluation of quality between, as well as within, each category of ecosystem service. Trends in the results are discussed, as are drivers for the changes in values along the rural-urban gradient. It is foreseen that this new body of knowledge will allow both practitioners and academics to gain further insight into the provision of ecosystem services along a rural-urban gradient to allow them to tackle the problems associated with them and to optimise open space planning. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess sources of agricultural information used by farmers for climate change adaptation in the semi arid areas of Tanzania. Design/methodology/approach - Mixed quantitative and qualitative methods were deployed. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 100 farmers in three selected wards in Chamwino district in Tanzania. Focus groups were also used to collect qualitative data from 30 farmers in the same wards. Findings - The results showed that the major sources of information for farmers were predominantly local (neighbours and friends), followed by public extension services. Apart from radio and cell phones, advanced technologies (i.e. internet and e-mail) and printed materials were not used in the study area, despite their existence in the communities. Research limitations/implications - The study necessitates a need to conduct regular studies on preferred information source of agricultural information and knowledge, development of technologies and use multiple sources of knowledge and information (such as print and mass media) to deliver relevant information to farmers to enable them to adapt to climate change. Originality/value - The study provides a deep understanding of sources of agricultural information used by farmers in the semi arid area, which necessitates a need for demand-led and client-based information services, in order to meet the disparate farmers' needs in this regime of climate change. These findings can serve as an example for the increasing use of mixed quantitative and qualitative in information research.Empirical evidence suggests that climate change will hit women disproportionately hard. Lack of political power, small economic resources, gender-bound patterns in the division of labour, entrenched cultural patterns and possibly biological differences in heat sensitivity combine to make women and girls particularly vulnerable to extreme weather and other climate-related events. Adaptation responses will likely reduce some of these vulnerabilities. However, just as climate change is likely to impact more severely on women than men, the costs and benefits of adaptation could be unevenly distributed between the sexes. Unless adaptation measures are carefully designed from a gender perspective, they may contribute to preserving prevailing gender inequalities and reinforce women's vulnerability to climate change. Institutions and decisionmaking processes need to be remodelled so as to guarantee that gender issues are adequately targeted within adaptation. This article identifies a number of methodologies and decision tools that could be used to mainstream gender in local adaptation planning.This article argues that climate change, seen as a socially constructed anticipation of natural disasters and a future-risk that plays out in present politics, is enabling the emergence of new modes of governance in cities of the global south. The article focuses on the process by which the city of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, developed a Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Strategy. Within the context of climate change adaptation, Esmeraldas mobilised new discourses, stakeholders, and planning mechanisms to address pre-existing urban planning and development limitations. This discursively enabled the municipality's ongoing governance project by leveraging resources, creating consensus, and informing practice. Climate change adaptation thus became an important mechanism for engaging with local priorities, particularly those of the most vulnerable populations, and for bridging the gap between the formal world of policymaking and the reality of life in the city, which is more often structured by informality.Climate change is an important new challenge for local authorities. This study analyses the potential for using the Swedish mandatory process for risk and vulnerability analysis (RVA) as a vehicle to improve local climate adaptation work. An advantage with RVA is its comprehensive approach in dealing with all relevant threats and all vital functions of society. In order to test the applicability of incorporating climate adaptation into RVA, we studied practical experiences from three Swedish municipalities. In all municipalities, a pre-study to identify relevant climate-induced events was performed. In one municipality, this was followed by a more detailed analysis of the potential impacts of these events on the functions of the various administrations and companies within the local authority. Problems identified in successful integration of climate change into the municipal RVA process were lack of sufficient knowledge to identify the impacts of climate change on the level of the respective specialist or district administration and lack of resources to perform the analysis. There were also some difficulties in including a long-term perspective relevant for climate adaptation into RVA, which usually focuses on current threats. A positive outcome was that work on extreme climate events in RVA provided a traceable method to identify events with a potentially great impact on the function of local society and results that could be fed into other ongoing processes, such as spatial planning and housing plans.The institutional structure and public service delivery apparatus required to meet the future effects of climate change already exist in Norway. However, there are huge challenges in coordinating these institutions at different authority levels for climate change adaptation purposes. Based upon a broad case study, this article presents how local actors consider the multi-level coordination of different levels of government and policy sectors to function today, which are the mechanisms that are used and what are the coordination challenges that are identified. Based upon the challenges revealed, this article discusses how best can the government-level institutions be organised for better goal attainment. We argue here that the elected regional level in Norway-the counties-has a huge potential to act as a multi-level coordination actor.Coastal communities experience a wide array of environmental and social changes to which they must constantly adapt. Further, a community's perception of change and risk has significant implications for a community's willingness and ability to adapt to both current and future changes. As part of a larger study focusing on the adaptive capacity of communities on the Andaman Coast of Thailand, we used Photovoice to open a dialogue with communities about changes in the marine environment and in coastal communities. This article presents the results of two exploratory Photovoice processes and discusses prospects for using the Photovoice method for exploring social and environmental change. Changes examined included a number of broader environmental and social trends as well as ecological specifics and social particularities in each site. Participants also explored the social implications of environmental changes, the impacts of macro-scale processes on local outcomes, and emotive and active responses of individuals and communities to change. Photovoice is deemed a powerful method for: examining social, environmental, and socioe-cological change, triangulating to confirm the results of other scientific methods, revealing novel ecological interactions, and providing input into community processes focusing on natural resource management, community development, and climate change adaptation.This article examines key socio-ecological interactions identified during a climate change vulnerability assessment in the Alinytjara Wilurara natural resources management (NRM) region of South Australia. The complex local socio-ecological interactions are highlighted to guide a response to the challenge of adapting to climate change within the region. Recognising several key desert drivers which perpetuate degraded socio-ecological systems, this article recommends that a range of strategies be employed simultaneously to enhance local environmental management in association with remote indigenous communities, including: linking people and NRM more closely; tracking funding but ensuring systems can withstand periods of limited financial support; developing cross-sectoral and cross-institutional links; empowering and engaging communities; communicating effectively; and actively supporting local and traditional environmental knowledge. Unless climate change adaptation responses within the region are conceptualised and enacted within the context of complex local socio-ecological systems, NRM will not improve and social vulnerability will increase.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors determining smallholder farmers' adaptation strategies to climate change, in the semi- arid region of Nguru, Nigeria and toward sustainable management of their agricultural production and livelihood. Design/methodology/approach - Both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data were collected by use of structured questionnaires, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Based on the research plan, a total of 250 individual households were randomly selected and interviewed. Findings - The stepwise multiple linear regression model ran using SPSS revealed nine variables significantly determining the adaptation of climate change strategies. The variables found significant were: agricultural labor force, level of education of the household head, land tenure arrangements, gender of the household head, extension service availability, out- migration of labor, years of farming experience, household size and availability of farmer to farmer extension. The predicted R value of 0.87, R-2 of 0.63, and adjusted R-2 of 0.60 indicate high explanatory power of the model as a whole. Originality/value - The acceptance of the variables included in the model helps very useful policy conclusions for climate change adaptations to be drawn. All these variables, except gender and outmigration, have a positive influence on climate change adaptation strategies. The influence of agricultural labor force appeared to be strongest, indicating the very important role of this factor in adaptation and the need for promotion of less labour- intensive, but more remunerative adaptation strategies that would enable smallholder farmers to manage all of their farm plots in an effective way.Little is known about the effects of potential synergies between concurrent ocean warming and acidification on marine benthos. We investigated the effects of warming and acidification on development to the non-calcifying larval stage in the sea star Patiriella regularis, in embryos reared from fertilization in present and future (2100+) conditions. Fertilization using gametes from multiple parents, to represent populations of spawners, was resilient to both stressors, as were cleavage stage embryos. Warming increased developmental rate across all pH levels. For blastulae, there was a complex interaction between stressors, with +4 degrees C/pH 7.6 lethal to many embryos. A 4 degrees C warming increased mortality by the gastrulation stage by 13 to 25% across all pH levels. In conjunction with warming, pH 7.6 increased mortality by 25 to 27% across all temperatures. For embryos that reached the 3 d bipinnaria stage, warming reduced the percentage of normal larvae and larval size, with no effect of acidification. These results highlight the importance of considering both warming and acidification, and effects on early embryos, in assessing life history responses to ocean change. Bipinnaria reared to Day 28 to determine the effects of acidification on non-calcifying feeding larvae provided a comparison with results for calcifying echinoplutei. pH 7.6 resulted in smaller larvae and increased mortality by 30%. After 24 d, near-future ocean acidification levels (pH 7.8) also resulted in smaller larvae. The effects of acidification in reducing growth in larvae that do not calcify indicates that the stunting response of echinoderm feeding larvae to pH/pCO(2) is strongly influenced by hypercapnic changes in meta bolism and teratogenic effects. The results have implications for P. regularis in its invasive range in Australia, where this species is likely to be deleteriously affected by ocean warming.Global temperatures have risen over the last century, and are forecast to continue rising. Ectotherms may be particularly sensitive to changes in thermal regimes, and tropical ectotherms are more likely than temperate species to be influenced by changes in environmental temperature, because they may have evolved narrow thermal tolerances. Keelback snakes (Tropidonophis mairii) are tropical, oviparous reptiles. To quantify the effects of temperature on the morphology and physiology of hatchling keelbacks, clutches laid by wild-caught females were split and incubated at three temperatures, reflecting the average minimum, overall average and average maximum temperatures recorded at our study site. Upon hatching, the performance of neonates was examined at all three incubation temperatures in a randomized order over consecutive days. Hatchlings from the 'hot' treatment had slower burst swim speeds and swam fewer laps than hatchlings from the cooler incubation temperatures in all three test temperatures, indicating a low thermal optimum for incubation of this tropical species. There were no significant interactions between test temperature and incubation temperature across performance variables, suggesting phenotypic differences caused by incubation temperature did not acclimate this species to post-hatching conditions. Thus, keelback embryos appear evolutionarily adapted to development at cooler temperatures (relative to what is available in their habitat). The considerable reduction in hatchling viability and performance associated with a 3.5 A degrees C increase in incubation temperature, suggests climate change may have significant population-level effects on this species. However, the offspring of three mothers exposed to the hottest incubation temperature were apparently resilient to high temperature, suggesting that this species may respond to selection imposed by thermal regime.In the Australian policy context, there has recently been a discernible shift in the discourse used when considering responses to the impacts of current weather extremes and future climate change. Commonly used terminology, such as climate change impacts and vulnerability, is now being increasingly replaced by a preference for language with more positive connotations as represented by resilience and a focus on the 'strengthening' of local communities. However, although this contemporary shift in emphasis has largely political roots, the scientific conceptual underpinning for resilience, and its relationship with climate change action, remains contested. To contribute to this debate, the authors argue that how adaptation is framed-in this case by the notion of resilience-can have an important influence on agenda setting, on the subsequent adaptation pathways that are pursued and on eventual adaptation outcomes. Drawing from multi-disciplinary adaptation research carried out in three urban case studies in the State of Victoria, Australia ('Framing multi-level and multi-actor adaptation responses in the Victorian context', funded by the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research (2010-2012)), this article is structured according to three main discussion points. Firstly, the importance of being explicit when framing adaptation; secondly, this study reflects on how resilience is emerging as part of adaptation discourse and narratives in different scientific, research and policy-making communities; and finally, the authors reflect on the implications of resilience framing for evolving adaptation policy and practice.The aim of this study is to develop a framework by drawing on three broad perspectives on resilience, engineering, ecological and evolutionary, and to use this framework to critically examine the approach adopted by the draft London climate change adaptation strategy. The central argument of the study is that the Strategy's emergency planning-centred approach to climate adaptation veers between a standard ecological understanding of resilience and the more rigid engineering model. Its emphasis is on identifying 'exposure' and 'vulnerability' to risk from climate events and on bouncing back from the consequences of such exposures to a normal state, rather than on the dynamic process of transformation to a more desirable trajectory. The study concludes that fostering resilience involves planning for not only recovery from shocks but also cultivating preparedness, and seeking potential transformative opportunities which emerge from change.Anticipatory governance is emerging in the literature and practice as a form of decision-making which attempts to deal with climate change complexities and uncertainties. Underpinning the anticipatory governance approach to decision-making is a three-step process which includes future analysis, flexibility of strategies and monitoring and action. This paper adopts the anticipatory governance and its three-step approach as a framework to investigate two Australian local government adaptation initiatives. It discusses the challenges local governments face in taking the lead through anticipatory governance to address climate change adaptation in their planning efforts. The paper aims to contribute analytical insights into adaptation planning at the local scale through anticipatory governance.Adaptation to climate change is an imperative and an institutional challenge. This paper argues that the operationalisation of climate adaptation is a crucial element of a comprehensive response to the impacts of climate change on human settlements, including major cities and metropolitan areas. In this instance, the operationalisation of climate adaptation refers to climate adaptation becoming institutionally codified and implemented through planning policies and objectives, making it a central tenet of planning governance. This paper has three key purposes. First, it develops conceptual understandings of climate adaptation as an institutional challenge. Second, it identifies the intersection of this problem with planning and examines how planning regimes, as institutions, can better manage stress created by climate change impacts in human settlements. Third, it reports empirical findings focused on how the metro-regional planning regime in Southeast Queensland (SEQ), Australia, has institutionally responded to the challenge of operationalising climate adaptation. Drawing on key social scientific theories of institutionalism, it is argued that the success or failure of the SEQ planning regime's response to the imperative of climate adaptation is contingent on its ability to undergo institutional change. It is further argued that a capacity for institutional change is heavily conditioned by the influence of internal and external pathways and barriers to change, which facilitate or hinder change processes. The paper concludes that the SEQ metro-regional planning regime has undergone some institutional change but has not yet undergone change sufficient to fully operationalise climate adaptation as a central tenet of planning governance in the region.The Nile Basin is the main source of water in the North Eastern Region of Africa and represents one of the most critical and perhaps most important shared water basins in Africa. Runoff is generated in less than a third of the basin. On average 86 percent of the annual flow is generated in the Ethiopian highlands a region known for its high seasonal and inter-annual variability. The region is facing rising levels of water scarcity, high population growth, watershed degradation and loss of environmental services. Many past studies have demonstrated that modelling current and future changes in river runoff presents a number of challenges; the large size of the basin, the complexity of the hydrology the Nile Basin exhibits one of the most extensive system of lakes and wetlands in the world with little known hydrology, the relative scarcity of data, its geographical location and the corresponding dramatic variety of climatic conditions. On top of these hydrological challenges, the climate projections are inherently uncertain. Nevertheless decision-makers in the region need to evaluate and implement climate adaptation measures. Within trans-boundary basins like the Nile, the implementation of such measures may need to address the basin as a whole and evaluate alternatives to avoid regrettable outcomes. Therefore tools and information are required to understand climate change and adaptation impacts at the regional scale. A modelling framework to support climate adaptation on a regional scale has been developed by DHI and the UK Met Office for the project "Adapting to climate change induced water stress in the Nile River Basin". This project was launched in March 2010 as a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), sponsored by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), for assessing climate change impacts and adaptation potential for floods and droughts within the basin. The methodology exploits a novel perturbed physics ensemble of climate models recently developed at the UK Met Office. A systematic procedure was followed to identify a representative sub-set from a larger GCM ensemble based on the ability of the members to reproduce the key climatic processes in a number of regions of Africa while representing the range of outcomes of the full ensemble. These were then downscaled using a regional climate model with the resulting projections used together with a regional hydrological model, to assess the impacts of climate change on flow extremes and water scarcity. In this paper we present both the framework and initial results of climate changes on the flow characteristics in the basin.For assessing vulnerability and risk of water resources system and defining climate change adaptation policies and measures, the integrated contribution of several disciplines is required, enabling a comprehensive, but also complex, dynamic description of present state and future trends. But, the notions of vulnerability and risk and the approaches for their assessment, have found different and often contrasting solutions by various schools of thought over recent times. For example, the traditional conceptualization of vulnerability and risk by the disaster risk reduction (DRR) community is different from that of the climate change adaptation (CCA) community. But there is a need for achieving greater synergy between the two communities to advance sustainable development. Recently the IPCC has released a special report on 'Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation' (IPCC-SREX Report). With the publication of the IPCC-SREX, a substantial move from the CCA community towards the concepts and definitions consolidated in the DRR could be observed, in which vulnerability and risk are conceptualized in a way that can be used to consider both climate change adaptation and disaster risk management. In this study we provide an operational system analysis approach and a simulation tool for water scarcity risk assessment that has been developed within the broad context of climate change adaptation and disaster risk management with an aim to support decision making processes. The methodology has been applied in the Lower Brahmaputra River Basin, a region where hydrological impact of climate change is expected to be strong. In the assessment of risk, indicators - selected based on the previously developed framework by Gain et al (2012) and Giupponi et al. (2012) which were further reframed consistent with the recent release of the IPCC-SREX Report are used to describe past and future trends of model variables, and their trajectories are used to explore possible trends of risk and adaptation needs. As the notion of risk is the result of combined effect of different social and ecological variables, this can not be objectively measured by using a well-defined static or dynamic model. Instead, a subjective way for its estimate is accomplished through a non-additive aggregation operator to construct concise indexes with a weighting procedure reflecting stakeholders' preferences. The results of this study are intended to be used for contributing to planned adaptation of water resources systems, in Bangladesh and other developing countries.This article presents preliminary findings of the CATALYST project's Think Tank on best practices and capacity development needs for improving Drought Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) in the European Mediterranean (EUM) region. Where available this article illustrates these findings with examples from the Puglia region in southern Italy. Drought is considered a major natural hazard in the EUM region and will increase in intensity according to many climate-model projections. Under these conditions, it is argued that shifting from crisis management to an integrated risk management approach is crucial in order to implement effective drought management strategies. Several barriers have hampered the shift from crises to risk management. Among them, the communication gaps between scientists and practitioners has played a crucial role. The CATALYST project (http://www.catalyst-project.eu/), funded by the European Commission under Framework Programme 7, seeks to narrow the knowledge gaps in best practices in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation by means of a think tank process in which the goal is knowledge sharing on good practices in drought management among representatives of the scientific community, governmental agencies intergovernmental bodies (such as the UN) and NGOs as well as private enterprise. The EUM region is one of the four focus regions in the CATALYST project. A workshop on capacity development in drought risk management was organized in Puglia with the aim of identifying the main issues to be addressed in the EUM region and to share the knowledge concerning both good and bad practices identified within the think tank network. Monitoring and early warning were found to be crucial to increasing preparedness under uncertain conditions. Early warning systems should provide timely and effective information through designated organizations that allow individuals and institutions at risk to take action to avoid or reduce the impacts of the hazard and prepare effective responses. Conflict analysis should be carried out in order to facilitate the implementation of drought policies. Past experiences in Puglia highlighted the existence of communication barriers between monitoring and drought risk managers The outcome of the think tank discussion stressed the need for adopting holistic integrating approaches and enhanced communication on uncertainties associated with early warning by including drought in integrated water resources management. Limiting the use of resources, and particularly groundwater abstraction, is of utmost importance in Mediterranean regions as Puglia. Furthermore, what is needed is not only improved climate forecasting, restricted to the physical implications of climate scenarios, but also the reverse, in the form of backcasting, accounting for the preferences of the affected population and their anticipated behavior, thus integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches. Major improvements in drought risk management, however, are not likely to occur without investment in institutional capacity development.The present paper aims to develop an operational water balance model (based on an analysis of rainfall-runoff and basin characteristics) and schematics for each basin/subbasin of the Eastern Nile indicating the basic water balance (including diversions, losses, etc.) from best available information and providing hydrologic inputs for the Eastern Nile Planning Model. The specific objectives of the paper are: To improve understanding on the hydrology and hydrological complexity and variability with respect to spatial and temporal aspects in the whole Eastern Nile Basin (ENB); To schematize and set up an operational (calibrated and validated) water balance model for the four sub-basins of the ENB; To develop and generate exogenous scenarios (climate change, draught) and endogenous scenarios (water management, infrastructure: dam, irrigation schemes) for the planning model. To achieve these three objectives a three-step methodology has been developed. The first step is to review and analyze relevant available documents, studies and databases to understand the hydrological complexity of the ENB. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), which is a semi distributed hydrological model, has been selected to be applied in the ENB. SWAT is simple, flexible and robust enough to be applied in a large basin like the ENB. In scenario analysis, a total of 20 scenarios have been developed and simulated and compared with the long term base scenario. In these 20 scenarios eight exogenous, three endogenous and nine combined scenarios have been simulated. The exogenous scenarios include two drought scenarios (Ex01: Drought: Repeat 1979 to 1984 hydrological condition and Ex02: Drought: Repeat 1984 condition for 3 years), two climate change scenarios (Ex 03: Climate change: A2 Emission scenario with 80 percentile ensemble 18 GCM results and Ex 04: Climate change: A2 Emission scenario with 20 percentile ensemble 18 GCM results) and a combination of drought and climate change. The endogenous scenarios include dam scenario, irrigation scenario, land use change scenario and sediment management scenarios. In the dam scenario four dams (Renaissance, Beko Abo, Karadobi and Mandaya) are included in the Abay-Blue Nile sub-basin. Land use change scenario and sediment management scenarios are not included in the present study. In this paper a conceptual climate change adaptation framework has been developed to see how it could work in the future. For example, an adaptation strategy could be the establishment of water reservoirs. Renaissance dam in Ethiopia construction could increase the water flow during dry season and decrease the flow in monsoon in a way that will minimize water shortage as well as increase water accessibility throughout the year and reduce risk from flooding.China and its growing population and emerging economy are severely affected by changing climate patterns. The water management sector is traditionally of highest importance for the Chinese society and economy - and at the same time heavily struck by droughts and flooding. Infrastructure including flood protection measures usually have a long lifespan (e.g. 50 years and more) and consequently will be subject to changing risks in future. Integrated Flood Management as a process is promoting an integrated approach to water resources management, and RiskPlan is a planning tool, which allows the integrative risk management approach to be implemented easier. Furthermore, it is able to ascertain the effectiveness of protection measures and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of such measures in a systematical, visual and scientific way. RiskPlan was applied in Dujiatai detention basin, lower area of the Hanjiang basin together with CWRC flood management experts. Due to the emerging importance of including climate change considerations in water resources management, CWRC analyzed the climate change projections for 2001-2100 by developing and using a statistical hydrological model as well as projections based on different emission scenarios of the Global Climate Models (GCMs). The hydrological model showed that there is an increasing tendency of temperature and precipitation intensity at basin scale. The GCM projections indicated that the temperature in Changjiang basin is predicted to keep on increasing over the future 100 years. Precipitation in Changjiang basin will decrease before the year 2020, then intends to increase during the period of 2020-2040 and continues to increase more significantly till 2100. More attention is needed on water resources management measures especially water supply in the dry season and drought management in general for 2-3 decades in Changjiang basin. Based on a Chinese-Swiss cooperation agreement in the field of water resources management, the Swiss approach on adapting to climate change shall be introduced in the upper Changjiang basin - Jinsha river catchment. This Swiss approach will consider climate change as well as socio-economic and demographic development scenarios. Those possible developments will be included in a next application of the IT tool RiskPlan. The application of the Swiss approach will consider different sectors and hazards.A new concept of flood control called the Cascade method is proposed, in which a series of dams is constructed along a river and upstream dams are allowed to overflow from emergency spillways. Multiple small dry dams (which lack a slide gate in the spillway) are constructed in series rather than a single large dam in order to prevent flood disasters and to preserve the natural environment. Dry dams for flood control have recently been reviewed, planned, and built at some sites in Japan. The Cascade method, which permits upstream dams to overflow and requires the final downstream dam to hold, was compared with a conventional flood control method in a physical experiment under the condition that the dams have the same reservoir capacity. The results show that the Cascade method using multiple dry dams was considerably more effective than the conventional flood control method. In addition, the Cascade flood control could be a useful method for climate change adaptation, because it is implemented by simply modifying the operation of slide gates on existing storage dams constructed in series.This article contributes to the resilience problematique through the 'back door': it is interested more broadly in the epistemological and political conversions that underpin, and are implied in, the rise of resilience as a policy programme. It argues that under the umbrella of resilience, contemporary policy problematisation and recent advances in radical political theory cohere together around a similar plane of critique which is explored in an area in which this affinity is particularly prevalent and consequential: the radical political theory of new materialism and climate change adaptation policy discourses. Rather than being juxtaposed, problematisations at play in climate change as an increasingly dominant framing of international policy concerns and the radically new political ontology proposed by new materialists share central outlooks and concerns. Both radical theory and policy discourse not only problematise, but also openly reject the autonomous human subject and its political artifice as an illusion at odds with the contingent processes of reality. Based on this finding, the article sketches out some emerging trends in the logics of governing concerned with unblocking the illusion of autonomy and sovereignty, and critically intimates some of the political consequences.This special issue contributes to extant empirical scholarship assessing governmental capacity to meet significant policy challenges, in this case those related to climate change adaptation. The study includes detailed examination of five policy sectorsfinance, infrastructure, energy, forestry, and transportationin two countries, Canada and the United Statesin order to determine what kinds of governance arrangements and analytical capacities exist in this area, how they are changing (if at all), and how they interrelate with the status and evolution of climate change outcomes in each sector. The articles provide a comprehensive sampling of policy network structure and behavior, organizational mandates and resources, and actual job duties and training of policy actors across these sectors at both the federal and subnational level of government.This article examines the infrastructure policy sector's capacity to respond to climate change adaptation through an analysis of the Canadian case. It includes a three-level examination of capacity: at the macro level through a virtual policy network analysis; at the meso level through examination of the lead department's evolving mandate and resources; and at the micro level through analysis of survey data related to departmental workers policy tasks and attitudes. Four hypotheses across these three levels are set out and tested at the national and subnational levels. Together, the findings suggest that the policy capacity in the Canadian infrastructure sector will be unable to meet the demands placed upon the sector to respond to the increasing challenges of climate change adaptation.Cattle ranching intensification with generation of environmental services should employ agroecological principles. Intensive silvopastoral systems (SSPI) are a good example of natural intensification that have a special place in the contemporary world to meet the growing food demand of society. This article discusses various agro-ecological principles that must be present in sustainable cattle ranching such as intentionality, integrity, interactivity and intensiveness; it also highlights recent information on climate change adaptation of livestock and environmental services that can be offered by livestock producers (carbon sequestration, biodiversity) and the way in which various projects can combine incentives for the urgent transformation of conventional livestock into sustainable silvopastoral models that promote climate change adaptation.The need for water continues to become more acute with the changing requirements of an expanding world population. Using a logistical analysis of data from 301 respondents from households that harvest rainwater in Uganda, the relationship between dependent variables, such as water management performed as female-dominated practices, and independent variables, such as years of water harvesting, family size, tank operation and maintenance, and the presence of local associations, was investigated. The number of years of water harvesting, family size, tank operation and maintenance, and presence of local associations were statistically significantly related to adequate efficient water management The number of years of water harvesting was linked to women's participation in household chores more than to the participation of men, the way of livelihoods lived for many years. Large families were concurrent with a reduction in water shortages, partially because of the availability of active labour. The findings also reveal important information regarding water-related operations and maintenance at the household level and the presence of local associations that could contribute some of the information necessary to minimise water-related health risks. Overall, this investigation revealed important observations about the water management carried out by women with respect to underlying safe-water shortages, gender perspectives, and related challenges in Uganda that can be of great importance to developing countries. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Purpose - In this paper, the authors present the Awareness Behaviour Intervention Action (ABIA) framework, a new system developed by them to support environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB). Design/methodology/approach - Previous ERB programmes have failed to deliver lasting results; they have not appropriately understood and provided systems to address ERB (Costanzo et al., 1986). The ABIA framework has been developed in line with behavioural studies in other disciplines. A preliminary pilot study has been carried out with social housing residents in order to understand the framework's efficacy. Findings - The ABIA framework enables a better understanding of current attitudes to environmental issues and provides support for ERB alongside technological interventions employed to promote carbon reduction. Research limitations/implications - The ABIA framework could be tested on individuals and communities in a variety of socio-economic, political and cultural contexts. This will help unpack how it can impact on the behaviours of individuals and communities including stakeholders. Practical implications - This type of research and the ABIA framework developed from it are crucial if the EU is to reduce is domestic carbon footprint and if the UK is to meet its pledge to become the first country in the world in which all new homes from 2016 are to be zero carbon. Social implications - The framework encourages both individual and community engagement in solving of sustainability issues. Originality/value - There are few studies that have developed a framework which can be used in practice to support behavioural change for adaptation to sustainable living in low-or zero-carbon homes.International policy development and expected climate change impacts such as flooding, landslides, and the extinction of sensitive species have forced countries around the Baltic Sea to begin working on national climate adaptation policies. Simultaneously, the EU is building both a central and a macro-regional Baltic Sea-wide adaptation strategy to support national policy developments. However, it yet remains unclear how these EU strategies will complement each other or national policies. This article analyzes the constraints and opportunities presented by this new institutional interplay and discusses the potential of the forthcoming EU strategies to support national policy. It does so by mapping how adaptation is institutionalized in two case countries, Sweden and Finland, and is organized in the two EU approaches. The vertical institutional interplay between scales is analyzed in terms of three factors: competence, capacity, and compatibility. Results indicate institutional constraints related to: risks of policy complexity for subnational actors, an unclear relationship between the two EU approaches, an overly general approach to targeting contextualized climate change vulnerabilities, and a general lack of strategies to steer adaptation. However, there are also opportunities linked to an anticipated increased commitment to the national management of adaptation, especially related to biodiversity issues.The present study focuses on the recent update of the global ocean data assimilation system in the Meteorological Research Institute (MRI). The model domain of the system is extended to cover the Arctic Ocean with advanced physical processes incorporated (e.g., sea ice). Compared with data-free simulation, data assimilation improves reproduction of the circulation field in the Arctic Ocean, as well as temperature and salinity which are directly modified by data insertion. The system also effectively reproduces the observed sea-ice field. In addition to extending the domain, we have sophisticated statistical information in the global ocean for data assimilation, including coupled temperature-salinity empirical orthogonal function modes in a background error covariance matrix, by incorporating new observational datasets. This improves variability, especially in the salinity field in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans, even during the period before the recent increase of salinity observations. The updated system effectively reproduces the oceanic structure associated with the 1997-1998 El Nino. These results will likely contribute to more accurate seasonal predictions using a coupled atmosphere-ocean model.The tourism industry can contribute significantly to developing countries' economic development due to the increase in tourist demand that has occurred in recent decades. However, the industry is highly sensitive to the effects of climate change and destinations in developing countries, especially, should aim to ensure that their tourism operations and products are sustained through the implementation of suitable climate change adaptation strategies. The purpose of this article is to examine the existence and nature of adaptation strategies that have been adopted by tourism businesses in Maun (Botswana), in the Okavango Delta area in order to gauge their preparedness to the estimated impacts of climate change. This will be based on the tourism business operators' perceptions and knowledge about climate change. Qualitative data were collected by means of semistructured interviews and analysis of the results reveals that while tourist operators have perceived and expect negative environmental changes linked to climate, the majority of interviewees had not experienced negative impacts to their own business operations. As a result, the interviewed operators have not adopted climate change adaptation strategies. The continuation of this situation is a potential threat to the future success of nature-based tourism in Botswana, a sector of tourism that contributes the most to the industry, making it the second important economic sector in the country.Urban planning can contribute to reducing vulnerability to the impacts of climate change ( including the expected increased occurrence of extreme weather events) in metropolitan areas. However, lack of urban governance and planning focusing on the metropolitan area as a whole, and decisions that do not take into account sufficiently the occurrence of such events, can substantially increase the cost of recovery from weather-related disasters. This policy study connects climate change adaptation, urban planning and metropolitan governance issues in the Hungarian context, focusing on the June 2010 floods in the town of Fels "ozsolca, in the Miskolc metropolitan area. A review of key literature is provided on the impacts of climate change in cities and on governing climate action in metropolitan areas. Events leading up to and following the June 2010 Fels "ozsolca floods are analysed from the perspective of urban planning. Based on evaluation criteria including effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, institutional capacity, transparency, political feasibility and time, four policy options are identified for climate action-related governance and planning in metropolitan areas, in the Hungarian context. Based on the above criteria, formalized horizontal partnerships between local authorities within the metropolitan area are chosen as the most favourable and currently most feasible policy option in Hungary.A review is made of current methods for assessing future changes in urban rainfall extremes and their effects on urban drainage systems, due to anthropogenic-induced climate change. The review concludes that in spite of significant advances there are still many limitations in our understanding of how to describe precipitation patterns in a changing climate in order to design and operate urban drainage infrastructure. Climate change may well be the driver that ensures that changes in urban drainage paradigms are identified and suitable solutions implemented. Design and optimization of urban drainage infrastructure considering climate change impacts and co-optimizing these with other objectives will become ever more important to keep our cities habitable into the future.Scenario method is presented in the literature as a means for engaging heterogeneous stakeholder groups to explore climate change futures and to inform policy and planning for adaptation responses. We discuss a case study project investigating possible interactions between climate change impacts and a proposed major port expansion in Australia. The study engaged participants from the private sector, government and environmental groups, with input from college students from the local area. Semi-structured interviews and a scenario workshop were employed, creating individual space for expression of ideas, then a collaborative space for sharing these, exploring differences of perception and meaning, and developing a set of possible and plausible scenarios. Whilst the workshop resulted in consensus on key issues and proposed actions, intended to inform policy formation and planning, there was an unforeseen lack of short term follow up and of the groups working more closely together. We discuss the reasons for this through reflective critical analysis of both our own process and of contingent factors in the wider contextual environment. We conclude that the basic scenario approach is valuable, but does not itself act as a catalyst for effecting change when multiple agencies, interests and agendas and strong contingent factors are present. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.We present a new type of model for calculating morphological changes induced by the presence of breakwaters. The model combines a process based area model, used to calculate the sediment transport field in the two horizontal dimensions, with a simplified morphological updating scheme where the evolving cross-shore profile is described by a limited number of parameters. The hybrid morphological model is a strong tool for medium and long term modelling because it is cost effective while containing important features of the sediment transport description. Two versions of the model are developed in order to study the evolution of beach morphology: one suited for offshore breakwaters (1D model) and one mainly dedicated to coastal breakwaters ("1.5D" model). The version for offshore breakwaters is first presented and tested against field observations of salient evolution. The model is then applied to a model study of the principle correlations between evolving salients (spatial and temporal scales), the characteristic dimensions of the breakwater (distance to shore and along-shore length) and wave climate (wave height, normal and oblique wave incidence). The second version is applied to investigate in more detail the evolving morphology behind coastal breakwaters. It is demonstrated how the model is able to calculate the evolution of either salient or tombolo planforms, and furthermore it is shown that the results are in reasonable agreement with existing rules. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The urban heat island (UHI) effect is the phenomenon of increased surface temperatures in urban environments compared to their surroundings. It is linked to decreased vegetation cover, high proportions of artificial impervious surfaces, and high proportions of anthropogenic heat discharge. We evaluated the surface heat balance to clarify the contribution of anthropogenic heat discharges into the urban thermal environment. We used a heat balance model and satellite images (Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images acquired in 1989 and 2001), together with meteorological station data to assess the urban thermal environment in the city of Fuzhou, China. The objective of this study was to estimate the anthropogenic heat discharge in the form of sensible heat flux in complex urban environments. In order to increase the accuracy of the anthropogenic heat flux analysis, the sub-pixel fractional vegetation cover (FVC) was calculated by linear spectral unmixing. The results were then used to estimate latent heat flux in urban areas and to separate anthropogenic heat discharge from heat radiation due to insolation. Spatial and temporal distributions of anthropogenic heat flux were analysed as a function of land-cover type, percentage of impervious surface area, and FVC. The accuracy of heat fluxes was assessed using the ratios of sensible heat flux (H), latent heat flux (L), and ground heat flux (G) to net radiation (R-n), which were compared to the results from other studies. It is apparent that the contribution of anthropogenic heat is smaller in suburban areas and larger in high-density urban areas. However, seasonal disparities of anthropogenic heat discharge are small, and the variance of anthropogenic heat discharge is influenced by urban expansion, land-cover change, and increasing energy consumption. The results suggest that anthropogenic heat release probably plays a significant role in the UHI effect, and must be considered in urban climate change adaptation strategies. Remote sensing can play a role in mapping the spatial and temporal patterns of UHIs and can differentiate the anthropogenic heat from the solar radiative fluxes. The findings presented here have important implications for urban development planning.In promoting renewable energy options, the environmental problem of GHG emissions should not be replaced with other environmental problems. Large-scale renewable infrastructure projects in particular - from offshore wind farms to concentrated solar towers to hydropower installations - need to be accompanied by adequate environmental and social impact assessments. For policies, plans and programmes around renewable energy investments, strategic environmental assessments should be applied. Such assessments will increasingly need to consider the changing nature of supporting ecosystem services and the need for climate adaptation. Financing institutions should promote appropriate safeguards, supported by capacity building activities from international organizations, including IRENA, in order to unleash the full sustainable potential of renewable energy options. This paper explores the experiences of applying impact assessment tools and processes to renewable investments and highlights some of the key aspects which should be taken into consideration when pursuing a renewable energy future. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) principally due to the burning of fossil fuels is a key driver of anthropogenic climate change. Mitigation strategies include improved efficiency, using renewable energy, and capture and long-term sequestration of CO2. Most sequestration research considers CO2 injection into deep saline aquifers or depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs. Unconventional suggestions include CO2 storage in the porous volcanic lavas of uppermost oceanic crust. Here we test the feasibility of injecting CO2 into deep-sea basalts and identify sites where CO2 should be both physically and gravitationally trapped. We use global databases to estimate pressure and temperature, hence density of CO2 and seawater at the sediment-basement interface. At previously suggested sites on the Juan de Fuca Plate and in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, CO2 is gravitationally unstable. However, we identify five sediment-covered regions where CO2 is denser than seawater, each sufficient for several centuries of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.Forest conservation is an important climate change mitigation strategy. National parks in Canada's Rocky and Purcell Mountains offer a rare opportunity to evaluate the impacts of a century of conservation on forest carbon (C) stocks and fluxes. We studied forest ecosystem C dynamics of three national parks in the Rocky and Purcell Mountains of British Columbia - Yoho, Kootenay, and Glacier National Parks - over the period 1970-2008 using the CBM-CFS3 inventory-based forest C budget model. We hypothesized that parks and protected areas would contain higher forest C density and have lower CO2 uptake rates compared to their surrounding reference areas because of the exclusion of timber harvesting and resulting predominance of older, slower growing forest stands. Results for Glacier National Park relative to its reference area were consistent with our hypothesis. Forests in Kootenay National Park were substantially younger than those in its reference area despite the exclusion of harvesting because natural disturbances affected large areas within the park over the past century. Site productivity in Kootenay National Park was also generally higher in the park than in its reference area. Consequently, Kootenay National Park had both higher C density and higher CO2 uptake than its reference area. Yoho National Park forests were similar in age to reference area forests and more productive, and therefore had both higher C stocks and greater CO2 uptake. C density was higher in all 3 parks compared to their surrounding areas, and parks with younger forests than reference areas had higher CO2 uptake. The results of this study indicate that forest conservation in protected areas such as national parks can preserve existing C stocks where natural disturbances are rare. Where natural disturbances are an important part of the forest ecology, conservation may or may not contribute to climate change mitigation because of the risk of C loss in the event of wildfire or insect-caused tree mortality. Anticipated increases in natural disturbance resulting from global warming may further reduce the climate change mitigation potential of forest conservation in disturbance-prone ecosystems. We show that managing for the ecological integrity of landscapes can also have carbon mitigation co-benefits. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Deficiency of long-term data on performance of multipurpose tree plantations in degraded lands delimits the scope of realization of economic benefits from the United Nations-REDD+(Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative of climate change mitigation by making payments for reducing emissions in developing countries. This study reports survival, growth and carbon stocks over a period of 20 years of mixed-species (Albizia lebbeck, Alnus nepalensis, Boehmaria rugulosa, Celtis australis, Dalbergia sissoo, Ficus glomerata, Grewia optiva, Prunus cerasoides, Pyrus pashia and Sapium sebiferum) plantations (planting density of 110 trees ha(-1) of each species and random mixing such that neighboring individuals did not belong to the same species) established with people's participation in abandoned agricultural land (AAL) and highly degraded forest land (HDFL), in Central Himalaya, India. Trees were lopped and crops were grown at the AAL site, while grasses were cut after planting at the HDFL site. Mortality occurred during the initial 3-year-period at both sites but after 7 years only at the AAL site. After 20 years, average survival at the AAL site was 87% compared to 51% at the HDFL site, with B. rugulosa, G. optiva and F. glomerata showing higher mortality than other species at the latter site. Annual height, girth and aboveground biomass increment rates across species and sites over 20-year period varied in the range of 23-84 cm year(-1), 1.3-3.9 cm year(-1) and 1.0-8.0 kg tree(-1) year(-1), respectively. The site as well as species effects tended to diminish with age. At the age of 20 years, B. rugulosa accumulated aboveground biomass 5.7-fold, G. optiva 3.2-fold, C australis 2.3-fold, F. glomerata and P. cerasoides 1.5-1.6-fold and, A. nepalensis and D. sissoo 1.2-fold greater at the AAL site compared to the HDFL site. S. sebiferum and A. lebbeck had marginally lower biomass at the AAL site than the HDFL site, while the site effect was not significant in P. pashia. Over the 20-year period, tree-crop mixed system at the AAL site, apart from supporting better tree growth, provided larger quantities of utilizable biomass (206 Mg of food, fodder and fuelwood ha(-1)) compared to the HDFL site (14.4 Mg of palatable grasses ha(-1)). The two sites had similar total (vegetation + litter + soil) C accumulation rates (2.3-2.5 Mg C ha(-1) year(-1)). With ban on income from timber in the current policies, payments for carbon sequestration from exclusive tree planting (US $ 37 family(-1) year(-1)) would be negligible compared to the income from crops (US $ 400-900 family(-1) year(-1)) in tree-crop mixed system. There is an urgent need of policies (i) safeguarding economic interests of local people from tree planting in degraded lands and (ii) enhancing silvicultural and ecological knowledge of multipurpose tree species to optimize multiple benefits from them. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mangroves are globally important carbon stores and as such have potential for inclusion in future forest-based climate change mitigation strategies such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+). Participation in REDD+ will require developing countries to produce robust estimates of forest above-ground biomass (AGB) accompanied by an appropriate measure of uncertainty. Final estimates of AGB should account for known sources of uncertainty (measurement and predictive) particularly when estimating AGB at large spatial scales. In this study, mixed-effects models were used to account for variability in the allometric relationship of Kenyan mangroves due to species and site effects. A generic biomass equation for Kenyan mangroves was produced in addition to a set of species-site specific equations. The generic equation has potential for broad application as it can be used to predict the AGB of new trees where there is no pre-existing knowledge of the specific species-site allometric relationship: the most commonly encountered scenario in practical biomass studies. Predictions of AGB using the mixed-effects model showed good correspondence with the original observed values of AGB although displayed a poorer fit at higher AGB values, suggesting caution in extrapolation. A strong relationship was found between the observed and predicted values of AGB using an independent validation dataset from the Zambezi Delta, Mozambique (R-2 = 0.96, p = <0.001). The simulation based approach to uncertainty propagation employed in the current study produced estimates of AGB at different spatial scales (tree - landscape level) accompanied by a realistic measure of the total uncertainty. Estimates of mangrove AGB in Kenya are presented at the plot, regional and landscape level accompanied by 95% prediction intervals. The 95% prediction intervals for landscape level estimates of total AGB stocks suggest that between 5.4 and 7.2 megatonnes of AGB is currently held in Kenyan mangrove forests. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This special issue has presented some of the specific findings of the RE-Impact Project which was commissioned and funded by the EuropeAid Cooperation Office from 2007 until its conclusion in 2010. The project aimed to provide impact assessment frameworks and influence relevant policies through direct involvement in bioenergy projects and policy analysis in South Africa, Uganda, India and China. The papers summarised here have covered issues related to Jatropha curcas and forest-based bioenergy in these countries. Taking an overall look at the project findings we can identify a number of general conclusions relevant for the future of bioenergy and rural development in Africa and Asia. First, only local and context-specific sustainability assessment can identify the risk and responsibilities of the different groups and the exact impact on the environment. Second, many initiatives both in biofuels and forest-based bioenergy are marred by a lack of understanding of the life-cycle financial analysis. Third, careful consideration of local physical and social conditions and the economics of the production chain can identify real opportunities for rural development using bioenergy. The current global impasse in bioenergy policies could actually be advantageous to the development of bioenergy in developing countries. Without the pressure from America and Europe to develop bioenergy systems for climate change mitigation, countries in Africa and Asia may have the breathing room to shape bioenergy systems for their own internal energy supply in an orderly fashion. However, in order to avoid environmental and social impacts it will be necessary to articulate together elements of a number of measures including market-based certification, national policy formulation, national legislation, impact assessments, sustainability planning, land use planning, research, monitoring and evaluation taking into account country and project specific sustainability criteria. Unfortunately, many of the countries in Africa and Asia where bioenergy can play an important role still lack institutional structures able to articulate this sustainable development. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forests contribute to climate change mitigation by removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and storing it in biomass and other carbon pools. Additionally, since appropriate forest management can reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, it is important to estimate the magnitude of these services to include them into climate policy. We used a forest inventory stratified by canopy cover in the oak-pine forest of La Primavera Biosphere Reserve in Mexico (30,500 ha), to assess the potential provision of forest carbon services. Inventory results were used in combination with a Landsat image to estimate carbon stocks in arboreal biomass. Potential carbon removals were calculated from published allometric equations and models estimating tree growth rates, for enhancements in forested areas and for reforestation/afforestation. Carbon stocks estimated in arboreal biomass at the time of the inventory were 4.16 MtCO(2)eq (3.42-4.89). The potential for further carbon sequestration and enhancement could take the level of stocks up to 9.77 MtCO(2)eq (7.66-11.89, 95% confidence interval); previous fires have degraded carbon stocks below their natural potential. The results present a gradient of carbon stocks for different degradation levels and are consistent with national and international estimates and previous local research. The baseline for the estimation of reduced emissions is critical for assessing the overall contribution of forests to mitigate climate change. The local baseline of emissions might be around 1% according to historical data; however, when enhancements and reduced emissions are valuated together, a baseline of 3.7% is required to prevent the creation of perverse incentives favouring previously degraded areas; considering these figures for reduced emissions, the yearly carbon services provided by La Primavera, including enhancements, sequestration and reduced emissions, could be between 169.4 ktCO(2)eq/year (134.8-204.5) and 282.1 ktCO(2)eq/year (228.2-337.1), respectively. Over a period of 60 years, this would be equivalent to 2.4 and 4.1 times the magnitude of mean standing stocks at the time of the inventory. If incentive-based mechanisms are used to maintain and enhance forest carbon services and perverse incentives are to be avoided, a balanced mix of incentives and controls is needed.Although the public's perception that climate change is caused primarily by humans rather than nature is a key predictor of public engagement with the issue, little research has examined the way in which climate change communication can influence public perception. Drawing on attribution theory, this study found that American participants who were exposed to information about their in-group's excessive energy use were more likely to attribute climate change to uncontrollable (natural) rather than controllable (human) causes than were those who were exposed to information about an out-group's (China) excessive energy use and those in the control group. In addition, this attribution of climate change to nature was negatively associated with climate change concern for climate change and policy support for climate change mitigation. These causal relationships were reflected in the mediation path model. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rainfall is the major driver of crop growth in Mediterranean agricultural regions and its spatial and temporal distributions determine yield potential. This study uses a long term spatial archive of rainfall observations for the Eyre Peninsula (South Australia) to estimate the spatial and temporal impacts of climate change on wheat yield. The three step process involved: (1) cluster analysis and statistical comparison to spatially distinguish heterogeneous "hazardscapes" (places that represent the physical susceptibility to hazards (Khan, 2012)); (2) using historical rainfall reliabilities to estimate the probability of receiving rainfall within a range of predefined thresholds and season for each hazardscape; (3) applying 2030 and 2070 climate change projections to determine the potential future impacts on rainfall. Nine hazardscapes were spatially differentiated each having temporally different historical seasonal rainfall reliabilities. Variations over space and time mean that the impacts of climate change will be spatially explicit. Projected rainfall reductions for 2030 showed marginal impact on hazardscapes with low seasonal reliabilities, primarily in winter and spring. The 2070 projections showed that some hazardscapes were unlikely to receive past rates of rainfall thus limiting the ongoing prospects of current and perhaps the potential adoption of alternative rain-fed land uses. Reductions in rainfall for hazardscapes with higher historical rainfall reliabilities will cause negative impacts on crop development. The ability to quantify the potential spatial and temporal impacts of climate change on seasonal trends will inform land managers' climate change mitigation and adaptation pathways. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The primary motivation for the vehicle replacement schemes that were implemented in many countries was to encourage the purchase of new cars. The basic assumption of these schemes was that these acquisitions would benefit both the economy and the environment as older and less fuel-efficient cars were scrapped and replaced with more fuel-efficient models. In this article, we present a new environmental impact assessment method for assessing the effectiveness of scrappage schemes for reducing CO2 emissions taking into account the rebound effect, driving behavior for older versus new cars and entire lifecycle emissions for during the manufacturing processes of new cars. The assessment of the Japanese scrappage scheme shows that CO2 emissions would only decrease if users of the scheme retained their new gasoline passenger vehicles for at least 4.7 years. When vehicle replacements were restricted to hybrid cars, the reduction in CO2 achieved by the scheme would be 6-8.5 times higher than the emissions resulting from a scheme involving standard, gasoline passenger vehicles. Cost-benefit analysis, based on the emission reduction potential, showed that the scheme was very costly. Sensitivity analysis showed that the Japanese government failed to determine the optimum, or target, car age for scrapping old cars in the scheme. Specifically, scrapping cars aged 13 years and over did not maximize the environmental benefits of the scheme. Consequently, modifying this policy to include a reduction in new car subsidies, focused funding for fuel-efficient cars, and modifying the target car age, would increase environmental benefits. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Climate change further exacerbates the enormous existing burden of undernutrition. It affects food and nutrition security and undermines current efforts to reduce hunger and promote nutrition. Undernutrition in turn undermines climate resilience and the coping strategies of vulnerable populations. Objectives: The objectives of this paper are to identify and undertake a cross-sectoral analysis of the impacts of climate change on nutrition security and the existing mechanisms, strategies, and policies to address them. Methods: A cross-sectoral analysis of the impacts of climate change on nutrition security and the mechanisms and policies to address them was guided by an analytical framework focused on the three 'underlying causes' of undernutrition: 1) household food access, 2) maternal and child care and feeding practices, 3) environmental health and health access. The analytical framework includes the interactions of the three underlying causes of undernutrition with climate change,vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation. Results: Within broad efforts on climate change mitigation and adaptation and climate-resilient development, a combination of nutrition-sensitive adaptation and mitigation measures, climate-resilient and nutrition-sensitive agricultural development, social protection, improved maternal and child care and health, nutrition-sensitive risk reduction and management, community development measures, nutrition-smart investments, increased policy coherence, and institutional and cross-sectoral collaboration are proposed as a means to address the impacts of climate change to food and nutrition security. This paper proposes policy directions to address nutrition in the climate change agenda and recommendations for consideration by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Conclusions: Nutrition and health stakeholders need to be engaged in key climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives, including science-based assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and policies and actions formulated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Improved multi-sectoral coordination and political will is required to integrate nutrition-sensitive actions into climate-resilient sustainable development efforts in the UNFCCC work and in the post 2015 development agenda. Placing human rights at the center of strategies to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change and international solidarity is essential to advance sustainable development and to create a climate for nutrition security.Land cover changes are used to indicate various anthropogenic activities that lead to greenhouse gas GHG emissions (mainly carbon dioxide, CO2). GHG mitigation policies are in place in mega cities of developing countries, such as the city of Faisalabad in Pakistan. The relationship between CO2 sources and sinks, however, is still largely unknown. In the present study, we estimate sectoral CO2 sources using actual data from the city's energy consumption as one of the critical parameters an anthropogenic activity, while sinks are extracted from land cover/land use change analysis of quad-temporal satellite images for the time period of 1975 to 2011. The integration of multiple tools/models makes this study unique for its kind. The results illustrate that the city area expanded by six times from 1975 to 2011 while CO2 sources increased eight-fold, and are expected to rise further if not addressed in timely fashion. CO2 sinks are being exhausted heavily in a large numbers. In particular, sparse and dense vegetation has shown a significant change over a mere decade. The forecast results, estimated by econometric model, likewise show an increasing trend in the future. It is also found that use of multiple tools and techniques deliver better results in carbon mitigation tracer research. This study could help in developing climate mitigation policies at a local level that will ultimately help in reshaping national policies.Tropical hydroelectric dams are now one of the main destinations for funds under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), with 1482 dams approved for credit and 840 dams in the CDM 'pipeline' awaiting approval. Thousands of dams are being built by countries such as China, India and Brazil, irrespective of any additional subsidy based on mitigation of climate change. Carbon credit granted to projects that would occur anyway allows the countries purchasing the credit to emit greenhouse gases that are not offset. Damage to global climate is further increased by CDM accounting procedures that undercount the greenhouse gases emitted by tropical dams. Still more damage stems from the limited mitigation funds being squandered on 'nonadditional' projects such as dams. An example indicating the need to eliminate credit for hydroelectric dams is provided by the Jirau Dam, now nearing completion on the Madeira River near Brazil's border with Bolivia. The dam has severe impacts in addition to climate change. The project was approved (registered) by the CDM Executive Board on 17 May 2013.To mitigate climate change, states must make significant investments into energy and other sectors. To solve this problem, scholars emphasize the importance of leveraging private capital. If states create institutional mechanisms that promote private investment, they can reduce the fiscal cost of carbon abatement. We examine the ability of different international institutional designs to leverage private capital in the context of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Empirically, we analyze private capital investment in 3749 climate mitigation projects under the CDM, 2003-2011. Since the CDM allows both bilateral and unilateral implementation, we can compare the two modes of contracting within one context. Our model analyzes equilibrium private investment in climate mitigation. When the cost of mitigation is high, unilateral project implementation in one host country, without foreign collaboration, draws more investment than bilateral contracting, whereby foreign investors participate in the project. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Interactions of indigenous peoples with the surrounding non-indigenous society are often the main sources of social and environmental changes in indigenous lands. In the case of the Surui in Brazilian Amazonia's "arc of deforestation," these influences are leading to deforestation and logging that threaten both the forest and the sustainability of the group's productive systems. The Surui tribal leadership has initiated a proposal for an economic alternative based on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). This has become a key case in global discussions on indigenous participation in REDD. The realism of the baseline scenario that serves as a reference for determining the amount of deforestation and emissions avoided by the proposed project is critical to assuring the reality of the carbon benefits claimed. Here we examine the SIMSURUI model, its input parameters and the implications of the Surui Forest Carbon Project for indigenous participation in climate mitigation efforts.In this article, we present methodology and results of a vulnerability assessment of the energy system of the metropolitan region Bremen-Oldenburg in Northwest Germany. This work is part of the regional climate adaptation project nordwest2050 aiming at innovative solutions toward a climate-proof and resilient region. Methodologically, we extended the established vulnerability assessment based on climate change impacts by a structural analysis, highlighting general weaknesses of the metropolitan energy system. Our findings indicate that the structural vulnerabilities of the energy system around Bremen-Oldenburg pose a greater threat to maintaining the system's services than climate change itself. Climate-change-based vulnerabilities, however, aggravate many of the structural vulnerabilities and therefore demand attention in their own right. The structural vulnerabilities mainly originate from political and regulatory uncertainties, turbulent market conditions, conflicts along the supply chains, and the current dynamics in the energy sector induced by increased climate mitigation efforts. One of our main conclusions is thus that the metropolitan energy system's capabilities to handle turbulence, perturbations, and surprises must be improved. This will also help in reducing the climate-change vulnerabilities, because such a system is better equipped when facing currently hard-to-predict changes in climate parameters. The results of the assessment described here will be used as the starting point to find options for innovations toward a climate-proof and resilient energy system for the region in the course of the remaining project.Finding an environmentally safe and cost-effective method which is efficient enough to meet the regulatory standards of potable and industrial wastewater presents unique challenges. In this work, Moringa stenopetala seed powder which had particle size of 300 mu m was characterized; ash content 4.7 %, bulk density 0.531/cm(3), particle density 0.88 g/cm(3), color yellowish, and pH 4.5. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis showed the multifunctionality of the M. stenopetala seed powder. M. stenopetala seed powder was assessed for percentage chromium removal and milligrams per gram chromium uptake as a function of contact time, pH, and dose of the adsorbent and initial concentration. The maximum percent removal was 99.74 %. Sorption kinetics of chromium adsorption by M. stenopetala seed powder was predicted reliably using a pseudo-second order model. An intra-particle diffusion model revealed that the biosorption of metals proceeds through various processes. Equilibrium uptakes were evaluated using Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, and the Dubinin-Radushkevich adsorption isotherm models. Even though the correlation coefficient was not as high as the Langmuir and Freundlich models for Temkin adsorption isotherm model, the metal uptake which was predicted by the model is comparable with the experimental value. Generally, the seed powder of M. stenopetala was found to be effective in the removal of chromium from tannery wastewater.We compared the litterfall production and associated carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) fluxes for seven woody species grown in three agroforestry systems practiced on the slopes of the south eastern Rift Valley escarpment of Ethiopia. Five of the species were native (Coffea arabica L., Cordia africana Lam., Croton macrostachyus Del., Erythrina brucei Schweinf. and Millettia ferruginea (Hochst.) Bak) and two were non-native fruit tree species (Mangifera indica L. and Persea americana Mill.). Together, these species accounted 85 % or more of the crown area of each agroforestry system: the Enset system (occurring at 2,100-2,400 m asl), the Enset-Coffee system (1,900-2,200 m asl), and the Fruit-Coffee system (1,500-1,900 m asl). Enset or false banana [Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] is a staple food crop in this region of Ethiopia and coffee and fruit trees are grown as cash crops. Monthly litterfall was collected from 4 to 6 trees of each species during 2010 and dry mass, carbon and nitrogen contents determined. The annual litterfall production per unit area of crown decreased in the order: C. macrostachyus (1,014 g m(-2)), E. brucei (929), C. africana (917), P. americana (809), M. indica (807), C. arabica (446) and M. ferruginea (362). The simple linear regression equation using breast height diameter explained 95 % of the variation in the litterfall production of M. ferruginea, but only 55 % for C. africana. The annual litterfall production of the seven species combined per unit area of land was the highest for the Fruit-Coffee system (average 12,938 kg ha(-1)), followed by the Enset-Coffee system (10,187) and the Enset system (7,430). The associated annual C fluxes (kg ha(-1)) were 5,145 (Fruit-Coffee system), 3,928 (Enset-Coffee system) and 2,803 (Enset system), and corresponding N fluxes 278 (kg ha(-1)), 257 and 190. The combined litterfall production of the seven species in our study was higher than has been reported for other agroforestry systems and tropical forests.Liquid fuels will remain valued energy carriers well into any upcoming period when CO2 reductions are sought. Biofuels are the presumed replacement for the petroleum-based transportation fuels that dominate liquid fuel use. Lifecycle analysis embeds a closed-loop model of biofuel-related carbon flows, making net CO2 uptake an assumption to be refuted. However, evaluating net CO2 uptake through dynamic industrial and agriforestry supply chains at real-world commercial scales is extremely difficult. All such estimates carry a great deal of doubt and cannot be verified empirically. A different perspective follows by anchoring analysis in the certainty that end-use CO2 emissions from biofuels are essentially the same as those of the petroleum fuels they replace. A first-order model of the globally coupled bio- and fossil-fuel system reveals conditions for biofuel use to provide an atmospheric benefit. No benefit occurs in the energy sectors where biofuels are used, but rather must be found elsewhere in locations of carbon absorption or retention. The implication is that climate mitigation efforts should focus on such locations and include any mechanisms through which net uptake (an enhanced sink or verifiable offset) can be achieved by biological, chemical, geological or other means. Although biofuels can play a mitigation role when certain conditions are met, deemphasizing biofuel production in favor of terrestrial carbon management may offer more immediate and effective ways to counterbalance the CO2 emitted when using carbon-based liquid fuels of any origin. Climate policies for transportation fuels should be reconsidered accordingly.A single-layer urban canopy model Community Land Model Urban (CLMU) is evaluated over two contrasting urban environments of Toulouse (France) and Melbourne (Australia). For the latter, three measurement sites are available characterized by a varying amount of vegetation, which supports a detailed assessment of the representation of urban vegetation in CLMU. For Toulouse, observed roof, wall and road surface temperatures allow for a detailed evaluation of the anthropogenic heat parameterization. Overall, CLMU performs well in simulating the canyon and urban surface temperatures, anthropogenic heat flux and urban energy balance, with an overall better performance for the dense old city centre of Toulouse in comparison to the more vegetated sites in Melbourne. Results for the latter sites reveal that the pervious road fraction provides a reasonable approximation of vegetation in the urban canyon while the tile approach often results in an underestimation of latent heat fluxes. A detailed analysis of the radiative, turbulent and anthropogenic heat fluxes as well as surface temperatures for Toulouse point to a complex interaction between urban surfaces and canyon properties. Decoupling the roof from the urban canyon to the atmosphere aloft is shown to be important. Our findings suggest that more evaluation is necessary for contrasting urban geometries in order to obtain a better understanding of the interaction between the roof surface on the one hand and canyon air and air aloft on the other hand. The results simultaneously reveal a trade-off in errors between surface temperatures, radiative and turbulent fluxes and anthropogenic heat which again stresses the importance of the intended model application. Also, our results suggest that model complexity should, perhaps, relate to the site complexity. These results provide a robust basis for the construction of additional sensitivity experiments, tailored towards the intended application for urban climate mitigation studies.The utilization of forest residues for bioenergy in Norway is foreseen to increase due to the government call to double bioenergy output by 2020 to thirty Tera-Watt hours. This study focuses on the climate impacts of bioenergy utilization where four forest residue extraction scenarios at clear-cut are considered: i) 75 % above ground residues (branches, (25 %) foliage, tops); ii) 75 % above and below ground residues (branches, tops, (25 %) foliage, stumps, coarse and small roots); iii) extracting 100 % of all available forest residue; and iv) leaving all residues in the forest. The Yasso07 soil-carbon model was utilized to quantify the carbon flux to the atmosphere due to the forest residues that are left in the forest in each scenario. The climate impact potential for each scenario was then calculated for the carbon-flux neutral Norway Spruce (Picea abies) forest system in five regions of Norway. The biogenic carbon dioxide emissions associated to decomposition upon forest floor, procurement losses and bioenergy conversion are included in these calculations. Results suggest that if such bioenergy can directly replace a fossil source of energy, the utilization of this biomass was found to be climatically beneficial in most fossil energy replacement cases and time horizons when compared to leaving the residues in the forest. Integrated global temperature change displacement factors have been developed which have been used to estimate the magnitude of this climate change mitigation over a particular time horizon.Land use planning (LUP) is central for managing issues related to climatic variation in urban environments. However, Master Plans (MPs) usually do not include climatic aspects, and few studies have addressed climate change at the urban scale, especially in developing countries. This paper proposes a framework with ten categories for assessment of climatic variation in urban LUP. Each category comprises attributes that describe a complex of relationships in influencing local temperature variations. They are analyzed for the case of the Master Plan of Porto Alegre (MPPA), the Southernmost metropolis of Brazil. It is concluded that the MPPA is strongly grounded in climate-related land and zoning coordination, but exhibits weaknesses in building, cartographical and social aspects considered synergistically relevant for tackling problems related to urban climate variation. Furthermore, the MPPA does not contain provisions related to monitoring of local climate and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and it is ineffective for improving energy efficiency. Specific MPPA failures stemming from these weaknesses include: an increase of 21.79% in the city's urbanized area from 1986 to 2011 to accommodate a similar increase in population, with significant horizontal sprawl; average temperature rise of 0.392 degrees C from 1991-2000 to 2001-2010, with statistically significant increases in temperature found since 1931; significant vehicle traffic increases, especially since 2007. From these findings, it is possible to conclude that the MPPA does not offer answers to all the imbalances related to land use, and therefore gives insufficient support to tackle the issue of rising temperatures. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wide employment of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) technology is of great importance to the sustainable development of China thanks to its contributions to climate change mitigation. Considering the fact that coal accounts for over 65% in the primary energy consumption mix of China, commensurate infrastructure should be built up to transport CO2 to storage sinks from emission sources. The paper presents the improved ChinaCCS Decision Support System (DSS), a tool developed by the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) for optimizing CO2 transportation network given a set of sources and sinks by generating a fully integrated, cost-minimizing CCS system. The improved ChinaCCS DSS assists in determining the sources, sinks and amounts for CO2 capture and sequestration, as well as the paths and sizes of pipelines, while minimizing the net present value for sequestrating a given amount of CO2. Pipeline construction costs take into account topographic conditions such as slopes, heavily populated areas, rivers, railway, highway, etc. A case study for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region of China was demonstrated in the paper. The results highlighted the importance of systematic planning for CCS infrastructure. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land-cover change has significant impacts on regional carbon dynamics. Understanding the carbon consequences of land-cover change is necessary for decision makers to address the issues of carbon reduction and climate change mitigation. Optical remote sensing images have been widely used for detecting regional land-cover change. However, it is difficult to acquire desirable images for regions that are frequently affected by cloudy and rainy weather. In this study, we proposed an approach to deal with this problem by integrating moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat images based on the mixed-label analysis (MLA) model. We tested this model in Guangdong Province, a fast developing sub-tropical region in China, to derive the provincial land-cover data for the analysis of landcover change between 2000 and 2009 and its impacts on regional carbon dynamics. Results show that forest land decreased by 3.03%, while built-up area rapidly expanded by 73.01% from 2000 to 2009. The regional vegetation carbon sink declined by 2.6%, whereas the regional carbon emissions increased by more than 100% due to the fast urbanization and economic development. The regional vegetation carbon sink can only offset 4.1% of total carbon emissions in 2009, far below the national level (about 7.0-7.7%) at the same period. Future efforts to improve the regional carbon budget should focus more on the control of land development and the advance of energy efficiency. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy poverty alleviation has become an important political issue in the most recent years. Several initiatives and policies have been proposed to deal with poor access to modern sources of energy in many developing countries. Given the large number of people lacking basic energy services, an important question is whether providing universal access to modem energy could significantly increase energy demand and associated CO2 emissions. This paper provides one of the few formal assessments of this problem by means of a simple but robust model of current and future energy consumption. The model allows mapping energy consumption globally for different classes of energy use, quantifying current and future imbalances in the distribution of energy consumption. Our results indicate that an encompassing energy poverty eradication policy to be met by 2030 would increase global final energy consumption by about 7% (roughly 20 EJ). The same quantity of energy could be saved by reducing by 15% energy consumption of individuals with standards above current European levels. The additional energy infrastructure needed to eradicate energy poverty would produce 44-183 GtCO(2) over the 21st century and contribute at most 0.13 degrees C of additional warming. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With the current focus of policy action on climate change mitigation, it is important to investigate possible negative side effects of climate change policies on air pollutants. A 34% increase in CO2 emissions from private cars in Ireland over the period 2000-2008 prompted a change in private car taxation in 2008 to incentivise the purchase of lower CO2 emitting cars. The impact has been successful and the measure has accelerated the dieselisation of the car fleet. This however, raises an important question, namely how does the dieselisation of the car fleet affect NOx emissions? This paper combines two models to address this question, a car stock model to generate activity data (future composition and activity of Ireland's car stock) and the COPERT model to quantify the NOx emissions generated in the period 2008-2020. Previous analysis shows that the CO2 taxation policy measure is anticipated to deliver a 7% reduction in private car related CO2 emissions in 2020 compared with a baseline pre-tax scenario. The results here show that NOx emissions decrease in all scenarios, but a lesser degree of reduction is achieved due to dieselisation, with NOx emissions in the post-tax scenario 28% higher than the pre-tax scenario in 2020. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In response to observed and projected changes in climate, efforts to promote climate change adaptation to key stakeholder groups have been rapidly increasing. To help us understand the perceptions of resource managers in the Great Lakes region, we conducted a Web-based survey. We asked respondents to define climate change adaptation and to provide examples of both feasible and current adaptation actions. Responses from 441 individuals indicate that many did not have a clear, proactive concept of climate change adaptation. Only 74% provided a definition, and, of those, only 43% described adaptation as a proactive process. Nearly one third (30%) gave purely reactive descriptions, and 27% failed to convey the concept of intentionally responding to climate change impacts; half of these described climate change mitigation or evolutionary adaptation. Examples of feasible actions covered a range of current conservation practices and some adaptation-specific ideas (e.g., research on potential species' range shifts, managed relocation of species), along with such actions as updates to infrastructure. In comparison to feasible actions, actions identified as under way were biased toward early stages in adaptation, such as science and planning, increasing awareness, and capacity building. We suggest that targeted outreach can help catalyze movement from early-stage actions toward implementation of change: collaborative work with stakeholders to refine and customize the concept of adaptation and develop visions of successful adaptation is vital to the long-term conservation of the Great Lakes ecosystem.In the work, the life-cycle assessment approach is applied to the planning of waste management development in a seaside region (Piejura) using the Waste Management Planning System (WAMPS) program. In Latvia, the measures to be taken for the climate change mitigation are of utmost importance - especially as related to the WM performance, since a disposal of biodegradable waste presents the primary source of GHG emissions. To reduce the amount of such waste is therefore one of the most significant goals in the State WM plan for 2013-2020, whose adoption is the greatest challenge for municipalities. The authors analyse seven models which involve widely employed biomass processing methods, are based on experimental data and intended for minimising the direct disposal of organic mass at the solid waste landfills. The numerical results obtained evidence that the thermal or biotechnological treatment of organic waste substantially reduces the negative environmental impact of WM practices - by up to 6% as compared with the currently existing.Carbon (C) conservation and sequestration in many developing countries needs to be accompanied by socio-economic improvements. Tree crop plantations can be a potential path for coupling climate change mitigation and economic development by providing C sequestration and supplying wood and non-wood products to meet domestic and international market requirements at the same time. Financial compensation for such plantations could potentially be covered by the Clean Development Mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) Kyoto Protocol, but its suitability has also been suggested for integration into REDD + (reducing emissions from deforestation, forest degradation and enhancement of forest C stocks) currently being negotiated under the United Nations FCCC. We assess the aboveground C sequestration potential of four major plantation crops - cocoa (Theobroma cacao), oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), and orange (Citrus sinesis) - cultivated in the tropics. Measurements were conducted in Ghana and allometric equations were applied to estimate biomass. The largest C potential was found in the rubber plantations (214 tC/ha). Cocoa (65 tC/ha) and orange (76 tC/ha) plantations have a much lower C content, and oil palm (45 tC/ha) has the lowest C potential, assuming that the yield is not used as biofuel. There is considerable C sequestration potential in plantations if they are established on land with modest C content such as degraded forest or agricultural land, and not on land with old-growth forest. We also show that simple C assessment methods can give reliable results, which makes it easier for developing countries to partake in REDD + or other payment schemes.The study develops scenarios regarding the introduction of electric vehicles to the passenger vehicle fleet of Norway to reach the 2020 Norwegian greenhouse gas reduction target and a more extreme target to limit global temperature increase to two degrees. A process-based life cycle assessment approach is integrated with a temporally variable inventory model to evaluate the environmental impacts of these scenarios. We find that greenhouse gases in the reference scenario increase by 10% in 2020 in comparison to 2012; while for the more intensive improvements in conventional vehicles, this increase is reduced to 2%. For electric vehicles deployment scenarios, although the fleet share will reduce the tail-pipe greenhouse gas emissions by 8-26%, with the upper end representing the two-degree reduction target, emissions reductions over the entire life cycle are only 3-15%. Electric vehicles also reduce emissions of NOx, SO2 and particulates reducing acidification, smog formation and particulate formation impacts, however, with addition of large numbers of electric vehicles significant trade-offs in toxicity impacts are found. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Deforestation has been a major cause of climate change and other environmental problems. An accurate estimation of the volume of deforested area is needed for United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD+) policies implementation and global carbon accounting. Accurate information about three-dimensional (3-D) structure of forests is required to quantify forest carbon stock. This study demonstrates the use of different digital elevation models (DEMs) to monitor changes in height due to deforestation in Cambodia to support climate change mitigation policies of UN-REDD+. The Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission-DEM (SRTM-DEM), Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer Global DEM (ASTER-GDEM) and Panchromatic Remote sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping-Digital Surface Model (PRISM-DSM) data were calibrated using Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (ICESat-GLAS) data. The results obtained from this study clearly indicate the changes in the height of forests due to deforestation activity. The height of cutover forest generated from the PRISM-DSM and SRTM-DEM is more reliable than that from the PRISM-DSM and ASTER-GDEM data. Field data has also been used to validate the height of the cutover forests, which shows +/- 5 m uncertainties in the estimation.Carbon markets are substantial and they are expanding. There are many lessons from market experiences over the past eight years: there should be fewer free allowances, better management of market-sensitive information, and a recognition that trading systems require adjustments that have consequences for market participants and market confidence. Moreover, the emerging market architecture features separate emissions trading systems serving distinct jurisdictions and a variety of other types of policies exist alongside the carbon markets.This situation is in sharp contrast to the top-down, integrated global trading architecture envisioned 15 years ago by the designers of the Kyoto Protocol and raises a suite of new questions. In this new architecture, jurisdictions with emissions trading have to decide how, whether, and when to link with one another. Stakeholders and policymakers must confront how to measure the comparability of efforts among markets as well as relative to a variety of other policy approaches. International negotiators must in turn work out a global agreement that can accommodate and support increasingly bottom-up approaches to carbon markets and climate change mitigation.Climate mitigation activities in forests need to be quantified in terms of the long-term effects on forest carbon stocks, accumulation, and emissions. The impacts of future environmental change and bioenergy harvests on regional forest carbon storage have not been quantified. We conducted a comprehensive modeling study and life-cycle assessment of the impacts of projected changes in climate, CO2 concentration, and N deposition, and region-wide forest management policies on regional forest carbon fluxes. By 2100, if current management strategies continue, then the warming and CO2 fertilization effect in the given projections result in a 32-68% increase in net carbon uptake, overshadowing increased carbon emissions from projected increases in fire activity and other forest disturbance factors. To test the response to new harvesting strategies, repeated thinnings were applied in areas susceptible to fire to reduce mortality, and two clear-cut rotations were applied in productive forests to provide biomass for wood products and bioenergy. The management strategies examined here lead to long-term increased carbon emissions over current harvesting practices, although semiarid regions contribute little to the increase. The harvest rates were unsustainable. This comprehensive approach could serve as a foundation for regional place-based assessments of management effects on future carbon sequestration by forests in other locations.Biomass produced from energy crops, such as Miscanthus and short rotation coppice is expected to contribute to renewable energy targets, but the slower than anticipated development of the UK market implies the need for greater understanding of the factors that govern adoption. Here, we apply an agent-based model of the UK perennial energy crop market, including the contingent interaction of supply and demand, to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of energy crop adoption. Results indicate that perennial energy crop supply will be between six and nine times lower than previously published, because of time lags in adoption arising from a spatial diffusion process. The model simulates time lags of at least 20 years, which is supported empirically by the analogue of oilseed rape adoption in the UK from the 1970s. This implies the need to account for time lags arising from spatial diffusion in evaluating land-use change, climate change (mitigation or adaptation) or the adoption of novel technologies.Over the coming decades, new energy production technologies and the policies that oversee them will affect human health, the vitality of our ecosystems, and the stability of the global climate. The GLIMPSE decision model framework provides insights about the implications of technology and policy decisions on these outcomes. Using GLIMPSE, decision makers can identify alternative techno-policy futures, examining their air quality, health, and short- and long-term climate impacts. Ultimately, GLIMPSE will support the identification of cost-effective strategies for simultaneously achieving performance goals for these metrics. Here, we demonstrate the utility of GLIMPSE by analyzing several future energy scenarios under existing air quality regulations and potential CO2 emission reduction policies. We find opportunities for substantial cobenefits in setting both climate change mitigation and health-benefit based air quality improvement targets. Though current policies which prioritize public health protection increase near-term warming, establishing policies that also reduce greenhouse gas emissions may offset warming in the near-term and lead to significant reductions in long-term warming.CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) has become an integral and priority part of European energy policy over the last years. However, CCS is not a feasible climate change mitigation option yet. In order to bring the technology towards reduced costs and to make CCS an economically viable mitigation option, the European Commission created a comprehensive demonstration programme aimed to encourage development and accelerate commercial CCS deployment. The goal was to have up to 12 CCS demonstration projects by 2015. This is far away from reality today. Despite the tremendous effort, the two major European CCS funds - the European Energy Programme for Recovery and more recently the New Entrants Reserve of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme Programme (NER300) - are struggling to secure a single demonstration project to move forward. Originally intended as a CCS instrument, the NER300 first round published on November 2010 has been followed with great expectation by CCS community. However, in December 2012 the Commission announced that not one CCS project was awarded. This paper reviews the NER300 process, analyses the reasons for the programme's lack of success in securing CCS demonstration projects, and distills the lessons learnt. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the role of Australian hot water system rebate programs in shifting the existing stock of electric water heaters toward more climate friendly versions using two unique data sets from New South Wales homeowners. The first data set is based on a survey of households who recently purchased a water heater before and after the rebate programs were in place. The other is based on a set of stated preference questions asked of households soon to face a replacement decision. While the former allows us to look at recent responses, the latter enables us to forecast future demand. We find that the programs significantly increase shares of solar/heat pump systems. The programs, however, appear less effective in reducing the stock of electric heaters for households with access to natural gas. This pattern is consistent in both datasets. Results from the discrete choice experiments suggest considerable heterogeneity with respect to household preferences toward different types of water heaters and the discount rates they hold. The effective cost of reducing carbon emissions via incentives for water heater replacement is considered from the counterfactual perspective of no government incentives. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To-date, forest resource-based carbon accounting in land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto Protocol (KP), European Union (EU) and national level emission reduction schemes considers only a fraction of its potential and fails to adequately mobilize the LULUCF sector for the successful stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. Recent modifications at the 2011 COP17 meetings in Durban have partially addressed this basic problem, but leave room for improvement. The presence of an Incentive Gap (IG) continues to justify reform of the LULUCF carbon accounting framework. Frequently neglected in the climate change mitigation and adaptation literature, carbon accounting practices ultimately define the nuts and bolts of what counts and which resources (forest, forest-based or other) are favored and utilized. For Annex I countries in the Kyoto Mechanism, the Incentive Gap under forest management (FM) is significantly large: some 75% or more of potential forestry-based carbon sequestration is not effectively incentivized or mobilized for climate change mitigation and adaptation (Ellison etal. 2011a). In this paper, we expand our analysis of the Incentive Gap to incorporate the changes agreed in Durban and encompass both a wider set of countries and a larger set of omitted carbon pools. For Annex I countries, based on the first 2years of experience in the first Commitment Period (CP1) we estimate the IG in FM at approximately 88%. Though significantly reduced in CP2, the IG remains a problem. Thus our measure of missed opportunities under the Kyoto and UNFCCC framework - despite the changes in Durban - remains important. With the exception perhaps of increased energy efficiency, few sinks or sources of reduced emissions can be mobilized as effectively and efficiently as forests. Thus, we wonder at the sheer magnitude of this underutilized resource.Biofuels are considered as a climate-friendly energy alternative. However, their environmental sustainability is increasingly debated because of land competition with food production, negative carbon balances and impacts on biodiversity. Arid and semi-arid lands have been proposed as a more sustainable alternative without such impacts. In that context this paper evaluates the carbon balance of potential land conversion to Jatropha cultivation, biofuel production and use in arid and semi-arid areas. This evaluation includes the calculation of carbon debt created by these land conversions and calculation of the minimum Jatropha yield necessary to repay the respective carbon debts within 15 or 30 years. The carbon debts caused by conversion of arid and semi-arid lands to Jatropha vary largely as a function of the biomass carbon stocks of the land use types in these regions. Based on global ecosystem carbon mapping, cultivated lands and marginal areas (sparse shrubs, herbaceous and bare areas) show to have similar biomass carbon stocks (on average 4-8 t C ha(-1)) and together cover a total of 1.79 billion ha. Conversion of these lands might not cause a carbon debt, but still might have a negative impact on other sustainability dimensions (e.g. biodiversity or socio-economics). Jatropha establishment in shrubland (0.75 billion ha) would cause a carbon debt of 24-28 t C ha(-1) on average (repayable within 30 year with yield of 3.5-3.9 t seed ha(-1) yr(-1)). Land use change in the 1.15 billion ha of forested area under arid and semi-arid climates could cause a carbon debt between 70 and 118 t C ha(-1). This debt requires 8.6-13.9 t seed production ha(-1) yr(-1) for repayment within 30 years. If repayment is required within 15 years, the necessary minimum yields almost double. Considering that 5 t seed ha(-1) yr(-1) is the current maximum Jatropha yield, conversion of forests cannot be repaid within one human generation. Repayment of carbon debt from shrubland conversions in 30 years is challenging, but feasible. Repayment in 15 year is currently not attainable. Based on this analysis the paper discusses the carbon mitigation potential of biofuels in arid and semiarid environments. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.R&D is an uncertain activity with highly skewed outcomes. Nonetheless, most recent empirical studies and modeling estimates of the potential of technological change focus on the average returns to research and development (R&D) for a composite technology and contain little or no information about the distribution of returns to R&D which could be important for capturing the range of costs associated with climate change mitigation policies by individual technologies. Through an empirical study of patent citation data, this paper adds to the literature on the outcomes of energy R&D by focusing on the behavior of the most successful innovations for six energy technologies, allowing us to determine whether uncertainty or differences in technologies matter most for success. We highlight two key results. First, we compare the results from an aggregate analysis of six energy technologies to technology-by-technology results. Our results show that existing work that assumes diminishing returns but assumes one generic technology is too simplistic and misses important differences between more successful and less successful technologies. Second, we use quantile regression techniques to learn more about patents that have a high positive error term in our regressions - that is, patents that receive many more citations than predicted based on observable characteristics. We find that differences across technologies, rather than differences across quantiles within technologies, are more important. The value of successful technologies persists longer than those of less successful technologies, providing evidence that success is the Culmination of several advances building upon one another, rather than resulting from one single breakthrough. Diminishing returns to research activities appear most problematic during rapid increases of research investment, such as experienced by solar energy in the 1970s. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper REDD+ is understood as a global forest governance arrangement in the making. Through the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD) the production of REDD+ discourse in four REDD+ programmes is explored by means of 14 documents. The programme texts are regarded as influential discursive practices performed by the programme hosts who draw on existing discourses and institutional-organisational infrastructures, while simultaneously producing subjects, objects and activities with different rights, responsibilities and values. The results demonstrate a process of discursive ordering of knowledge, forest use and forest dependence where the programme hosts form a common understanding of the interrelationships between climate mitigation, adaptation, poverty reduction, and tropical deforestation. As a consequence, the programmes bias action towards transformation of forest sectors as a step towards greening economies in tropical forested developing countries. The analysis demonstrates how the programme hosts produces a narrative where they themselves become key agents facilitating change, while forest dependent local communities are classified as subjects of necessary change. The focus on local dependent communities in effect obscures more distant causes that are not associated with local livelihoods. This narrative resembles the 1980s narrative on tropical deforestation, where farmers and slash and burn practices were considered the main cause of deforestation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on Ireland's ambitious target for 2020 to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% below 2005 levels for sectors not covered by ETS (Non-ETS). Ireland is an interesting case study due to the role of agriculture (a particularly challenging sector with regard to GHG emissions reduction), that represents 29% of Ireland's GHG emissions compared with less than 10% for the EU. The analysis is carried out with the Irish TIMES model, a bottom-up energy systems modelling tool with detailed characterization of Ireland's energy system. The paper uses scenario analysis to provide pathways that demonstrate how Ireland can meet the non-ETS target at least cost. The paper considers the impacts (in terms of different technology choices and higher marginal abatement costs) arising from higher targets for the energy system to compensate for growth in agriculture activity and low mitigation potential in that sector. The results point to a need to reconsider Ireland's renewable energy focus, with a need for increased effort in renewable transport and renewable heat in particular. The results also point to significant electrification of residential heating. The results also point to a high marginal abatement cost ((sic)213/tCO(2)), which challenges the analysis carried out at EU level to establish Ireland's non-ETS target. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to restore biodiversity in the degraded forest landscape and to use forest plantations for climate change mitigation, experimental plantations of indigenous trees (including mahogany species) and important exotic trees species like Tectona grandis have been established in pure and in mixed stands in the degraded Tain Tributaries Block II Forest Reserve in the dry semi-deciduous forest zone of Ghana. This study assessed the performance of an important indigenous species, Khaya grandifoliola, in pure and in mixed stands, and compared its performance to the exotic tree species, T. grandis. The results from the study indicated that after 4 years, there was a significant difference in the diameter of K. grandifoliola (P = 0.001) between pure and mixed stands with the pure stands having an average diameter of 9.15 +/- A 0.19 cm compared with 7.81 +/- A 0.33 cm for mixed stands. Pure stands had a correspondingly higher basal area at breast height for individual trees in pure stands compared with mixed stands. K. grandifoliola also recorded average total height of 5.50 +/- A 0.13 m and merchantable height 3.63 +/- A 0.09 m in pure stands, compared to total height of 5.04 +/- A 0.24 m and merchantable height of 3.52 +/- A 0.18 m in mixed stands. However, these values were not significantly different between the stands (P > 0.05). Basal area at breast height for K. grandifoliola grown in pure stands was 5.5 +/- A 0.3 m(2)/ha at age four, which was significantly higher than the basal area of 1.1 +/- A 0.4 m(2)/ha at breast height for K. grandifoliola in mixed stands. Also total volume per hectare was higher in pure stands (17.8 +/- A 0.9 m(3)/ha) than in mixed stands (3.4 +/- A 0.6 m(3)/ha). Consequently, K. grandifoliola accumulated more carbon in pure stands (10,126 +/- A 557.2 kg/ha) than in mixed stands (1,976 +/- A 335.1 kg/ha), but the mixture of the tree species, including K. grandifoliola, accumulated more carbon (11,929 +/- A 401.3 kg/ha) than the K. grandifoliola in pure stands though not statistically different. Overall, K. grandifoliola performed better in pure stands than in mixed stands. With regards to the tolerance to pest attacks on K. grandifoliola, it was more tolerant to pests' attacks in mixed stands than in pure stands. There was no statistical difference in diameter growth between K. grandifoliola (9.15 +/- A 0.19 cm) and T. grandis (9.61 +/- A 0.26 cm) in pure stands. The values of total height, merchantable height and total volume for T. grandis were 8.22 +/- A 0.20 m, 5.38 +/- A 0.18 m and 22.5 +/- A 1.7 m(3)/ha respectively which differed significantly from 5.50 +/- A 0.13 m, 3.63 +/- A 0.09 m and 17.8 +/- A 0.9 m(3)/ha for K. grandifoliola for the same parameters (P < 0.05). However, there was no significant difference between the two species with respect to basal area per hectare (P = 0.189); K. grandifoliola grew to 5.5 +/- A 0.3 m(2)/ha and T. grandis grew to 4.8 +/- A 0.3 m(2)/ha. T. grandis in pure stands accumulated slightly more aboveground biomass than K. grandifoliola in pure stands after 4 years though not statistically different.This paper discusses the impact of air quality and climate policies on global mercury emissions in the time horizon up to 2050. Evolution of mercury emissions is based on projections of energy consumption for a scenario without any global greenhouse gas mitigation efforts, and for a 2 degrees C climate policy scenario, which assumes internationally coordinated action to mitigate climate change. The assessment takes into account current air quality legislation in each country, as well as provides estimates of maximum feasible reductions in mercury through 2050. Results indicate significant scope for co-benefits of climate policies for mercury emissions. Atmospheric releases of mercury from anthropogenic sources under the global climate mitigation regime are reduced in 2050 by 45% when compared to the case without climate measures. Around one third of world-wide co-benefits for mercury emissions by 2050 occur in China. An annual Hg-abatement of about 800 tons is estimated for the coal combustion in power sector if the current air pollution legislation and climate policies are adopted in parallel. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The uncertain, future development of emissions of short-lived trace gases and aerosols forms a key factor for future air quality and climate forcing. The Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) only explore part of this range as they all assume that worldwide ambitious air pollution control policies will be implemented. In this study, we explore how different assumptions on future air pollution policy and climate policy lead to different concentrations of air pollutants for a set of RCP-like scenarios developed using the IMAGE model. These scenarios combine low and high air pollution variants of the scenarios with radiative forcing targets in 2100 of 2.6 W m(-2) and 6.0 W m(-2). Simulations using the global atmospheric chemistry and transport model TM5 for the present-day climate show that both climate mitigation and air pollution control policies have large-scale effects on pollutant concentrations, often of similar magnitude. If no further air pollution policies would be implemented, pollution levels could be considerably higher than in the RCPs, especially in Asia. Air pollution control measures could significantly reduce the warming by tropospheric ozone and black carbon and the cooling by sulphate by 2020, and in the longer term contribute to enhanced warming by methane. These effects tend to cancel each other on a global scale. According to our estimates the effect of the worldwide implementation of air pollution control measures on the total global mean direct radiative forcing in 2050 is +0.09 W m(-2) in the 6.0 W m(-2) scenario and -0.16 W m(-2) in the 2.6 W m(-2) scenario. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The results are presented from a survey of national legislation and strategies to mitigate climate change covering almost all United Nations member states between 2007 and 2012. This data set is distinguished from the existing literature in its breadth of coverage, its focus on national policies (rather than international pledges), and on the use of objective metrics rather than normative criteria. The focus of the data is limited to national climate legislation and strategies and does not cover subnational or sectoral measures. Climate legislation and strategies are important because they can: enhance incentives for climate mitigation; provide mechanisms for mainstreaming; and provide a focal point for actors. Three broad findings emerge. First, there has been a substantial increase in climate legislation and strategies between 2007 and 2012: 67% of global GHG emissions are now under national climate legislation or strategy compared to 45% in 2007. Second, there are substantial regional effects to the patterns, with most increases in non-Annex I countries, particularly in Asia and Latin America. Third, many more countries have adopted climate strategies than have adopted climate legislation between 2007 and 2012. The article concludes with recommendations for future research.Policy relevance The increase in climate legislation and strategy is significant. This spread suggests that, at the national level, there is some movement in reshaping climate governance despite the relatively slow pace of global negotiations, although the exact implications of this spread require further research on stringency of actions and their implementation. Asia and Latin America represent the biggest improvements, while OECD countries, which start from a high base, remain relatively stagnant. Implications of regional patterns are further refined by an analysis by emissions, which shows that some areas of low levels of legislation and strategy are also areas of relatively low emissions. A broad trend toward an emphasis on strategies rather than legislation, with the significant exception of China, calls for enhanced research into the practical impact of national non-binding climate strategies versus binding legislation on countries' actual emissions over time.Forests have an important role to play in climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration and wood supply. However, the lower albedo of mature forests compared to bare land implies that focusing only on GHG accounting may lead to biased estimates of forestry's total climatic impacts. An economic model with a high degree of detail of the Norwegian forestry and forest industries is used to simulate GHG fluxes and albedo impacts for the next decades. Albedo is incorporated in a carbon tax/subsidy scheme in the Norwegian forest sector using a partial, spatial equilibrium model. While a price of EUEuro100/tCO(2)e that targets GHG fluxes only results in reduced harvests, the same price including albedo leads to harvest levels that are five times higher in the first five years, with 39% of the national productive forest land base being cleared. The results suggest that policies that only consider GHG fluxes and ignore changes in albedo will not lead to an optimal use of the forest sector for climate change mitigation.Policy relevanceBare land reflects a larger share of incoming solar energy than dense forest and thus has higher albedo. Earlier research has suggested that changes in albedo caused by management of boreal forest may be as important as carbon fluxes for the forest's overall global warming impacts. The presented analysis is the first attempt to link albedo to national-scale forest climate policies. A policy with subsidies to forest owners that generate carbon sequestration and taxes levied on carbon emissions leads to a reduced forest harvest. However, including albedo in the policy alongside carbon fluxes yields very different results, causing initial harvest levels to increase substantially. The inclusion of albedo impacts will make harvests more beneficial for climate change mitigation as compared to a carbon-only policy. Hence, it is likely that carbon policies that ignore albedo will not lead to optimal forest management for climate change mitigation.The MAPS programme, which seeks to deepen mitigation ambition in developing countries, is engaged in exploring the concepts of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) and Low Carbon Development Strategies (LCDS) from a developing country perspective. Here, climate mitigation practitioners in six developing countries were surveyed for their understanding of these concepts (anonymous, personal communications with climate mitigation practitioners in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, India, and South Africa). It is found that there is much scope for clarity and conceptual elaboration in this policy space. NAMAs are largely interpreted as mitigation activities packaged for submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) registry, but are not held to constitute the full set of mitigation activity in a developing country. New terminology may be needed to describe this broader set. A tighter interpretation of LCDS to distinguish between a strategic or coordinating policy action may be useful. Other themes arising include the way national appropriateness' is reflected in the concepts, and the role of international policy in deepening mitigation action in developing countries.We setup a stylized model with endogenous North-South technology transfer for climate change mitigation. We theoretically identify the driving factors that enhance or hinder cooperation with socially optimal binding targets on emissions and on investment in technology transfer. We find that the risk of technology transfer failure creates an obstacle to the achievement of the cooperative agreement: under cooperation, the South will have to fulfill the emissions target at high costs if technology transfer fails. Under non-cooperation without any binding targets, the North still has an intrinsic motivation to reduce emissions in the South at low costs via technology transfer; and the South does not have the pressure to fulfill an emissions target. As a result, non-cooperation shifts part of the costs of a technology transfer failure from the poor South to the rich North and can thus be preferable for the South. Two policy implications for achieving the cooperative solution are derived: first, the South should be insured against or compensated for a technology transfer failure. Second, an agreement on technology transfer should be formulated in terms of emissions reductions or low-carbon technology capacities that are to be achieved rather than in terms of monetary payments with uncertain effects on emissions. We discuss the model results in the context of empirical facts and current developments.This study provides a cost-effectiveness analysis of four water-saving irrigation techniques that are widely implemented in China to address the impacts of climate change: sprinkler irrigation, micro-irrigation, low-pressure pipe irrigation and channel lining. The aim is to thoroughly understand the economic feasibility of water-saving irrigation as an approach to coping with climate change. Based on the cost-effectiveness analysis, this study finds that water-saving irrigation is cost-effective in coping with climate change, and has benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and for sustainable economic development. For the cost-effectiveness ratio of mitigation and adaptation, only that of channel lining is negative (for mitigation is -43.02 to -73.41 US$/t, for grain yield increase -34.35 to -20.13 US$/t, and for water saving -0.020 to -0.012 US$/m(3)). Sprinkler irrigation has the highest incremental cost for mitigation (476.03-691.64 US$/t), because when sprinkler irrigation is used, there may be additional energy needs to meet water pressure requirements, which may increase greenhouse gas emissions compared to traditional irrigation. For mitigation, in districts where the pumping head for pressure is lower than the critical energy saving head, sprinkler irrigation should be avoided. Micro-irrigation has the highest incremental cost for adaptation followed by sprinkler irrigation and low-pressure pipe irrigation, but when considering the revenues from improved adaptation, all of the measures assessed are economically feasible. The results suggest that for mitigation and adaptation objectives, micro-irrigation performs best. From an economic perspective, channel lining is recommended. Therefore, a balanced development of channel lining and micro-irrigation according to different geographical conditions is recommended. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Southwestern Australia is recognised as a global biodiversity hotspot, characterised by high diversity and endemism of vascular terrestrial plants. However, the significance of its freshwater biodiversity is not well understood. This review provides an updated account of species richness in rivers in the Mediterranean region (med-region) of southwestern Australia. Taxonomic knowledge of many aquatic invertebrate groups in this region has improved significantly in the last two decades as a result of ecological surveys and government funding for taxonomic research. Of the 662 species of plants and animals surveyed, 43% were found to be endemic to the region, yet when taxonomic groups were considered separately, levels of endemism were varied. To date, few aquatic species from the med-region are listed as threatened; however, many more species would be expected to be included if assessed against appropriate criteria. Conservation efforts are focussed on climate change mitigation and managing the impacts of broad scale land clearing for agriculture. Reserve design and location of important nature reserves on the extreme south coast, limits the ability for species' movement to cooler, wetter regions. This will necessitate supporting restoration which leads to increased resilience in freshwater ecosystems to withstand the combined effects of climate change and land use.This study examines the factors that explain cross-sectional variations in per capita emissions of one of the primary greenhouse gases (GHGs), carbon dioxide (CO2), in major Asian cities. Why do individuals in Bangkok, Thailand, produce an average of 6.1 tons of carbon dioxide annually, but individuals in Shanghai emit 9.7 tons of CO2? Why do CO2 emissions per capita vary across twenty-two major Asian cities? To what extent are relevant environmental indicators associated with CO2 emissions? To answer these questions, we begin by reviewing the climate co-benefits of existing environmental indicators (waste, green space, water, public transport and energy use) and climate change. Based on a literature review, we hypothesize that cities with higher resource use and wealth will have higher CO2 per capita emissions. To test the hypotheses, we analyze the relationship between tentative co-benefits of existing environmental indicators and CO2 emissions per capita using regression analysis. We find that a city's energy inefficiency, waste generation per capita, and GDP per capita are positively associated with CO2 emissions per capita, while we control for a battery of variables such as population and industrial structure. Our findings suggest that enhancing energy efficiency and reducing waste generation are effective ways to mitigate climate change while also realizing climate co-benefits. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rapid growth of urban population in India has led to equally fast increase in the consumption of water and consequently to generation of wastewater. Presently, about 30% of the wastewater generated from major cities of India is being treated. Untreated wastewater leads to various environmental problems including pollution of air, water and land resources. This paper especially addresses the issue of methane emission from wastewater, which is a major contributor to climate change. The main aim of the paper is to document and analyse a climate change mitigation action so as to identify and disseminate innovative urban practices that can be replicated at other places. The paper presents a case study of methane recovery and power generation from Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) in Surat city of Gujarat in India. Direct benefits of projects namely, methane extraction and electricity generation are quantified based on the data on total methane production and electricity generation from the STPs. Before implementation of the project, annual baseline Carbon Dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions from each STP were between 19,000 and 27,000 tonnes. After implementation of the project, the annual emissions are in the range of 3000-5000 tonnes from each plant. Thus, a total of 80,000 tonnes of CO(2)e emission reduction per year is estimated from the four STPs in Surat. These plants are also generating 1.5 to 2.5 million kWh electricity for captive use every year. Taking a co-benefit approach, in addition to the reduction of greenhouse gas emission, associated multiple benefits of the project are also quantified. Co-benefits such as production of useful bi-products and water pollution reduction were found to be significant. Many other social benefits have also been documented; however, these could not be quantified due to non-availability of suitable data. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the near-and the long-term contribution of regional and sectoral bioenergy use in response to both regionally diverse near-term policies and longer-term global climate change mitigation policies. The use of several models provides a source of heterogeneity in terms of incorporating uncertain assumptions about future socioeconomics and technology, as well as different paradigms for how different regions and major economies of the world may respond to climate policies. The results highlight the heterogeneity and versatility of bioenergy itself, with different types of resources and applications in several energy sectors. In large part due to this versatility, the contribution of bioenergy to climate mitigation is a robust response across all models. Regional differences in bioenergy consumption, however, highlight the importance of assumptions about trade in bioenergy feedstocks and the influence of energy and climate policies. When global trade in bioenergy is possible, regional patterns of bioenergy use follow global patterns. When trade is assumed not to be feasible, regions with high bioenergy supply potential tend to consume more bioenergy than other regions. Energy and climate policies, such as renewable energy targets, can incentivize bioenergy use, but specifics of the policies will dictate the degree to which this is true. For example, renewable final energy targets, which include electric and non-electric renewable sources, increase bioenergy use in all models, while electric-only renewable targets have a mixed effect on bioenergy use across models.Energy efficiency and decarbonization are important elements of climate change mitigation. We draw on European mitigation scenarios from the EMF28 modeling exercise to decompose economy-wide and sectoral emissions into their main components. We utilize the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) to gain insights into five effects: affluence, energy intensity, carbon intensity, conversion efficiency, and structural change. Economy-wide analysis suggests that energy efficiency improvements (including end-use efficiency of production and structural change of the economy) determine emission reductions short to medium term while decarbonization becomes more important in the long term. Sectoral analysis suggests that electricity generation holds the largest potential for decarbonization. Mitigation in the transport and energy-intensive sectors is limited by technology availability, forcing output and energy inputs to decline to meet the given mitigation pathways. We conclude that energy efficiency improvements could bridge the time until carbon-free technologies mature, while their quick development remains essential.Major cost concepts used for evaluation of carbon policy are considered, including change in GDP, change in consumption, change in welfare, energy system cost, and area under marginal abatement cost (MAC) curve. The issues associated with the use of these concepts are discussed. We use the results from the models that participated in the European Energy Modeling Forum (EMF28) study to illustrate the cost concepts. There is substantial variability in the estimates of costs between the models, with some models showing substantial costs and some models reporting benefits from mitigation in some scenarios. Because impacts of a policy are evaluated as changes from a reference scenario, it is important to define a reference scenario. MAC cost measures tend to exclude existing distortions in the economy, while existing energy taxes and subsidies are substantial in many countries. We discuss that carbon prices are inadequate measures of the policy costs. We conclude that changes in macroeconomic consumption or welfare are the most appropriate measures of policy costs.Biochar is discussed as an option for climate change mitigation via C sequestration and may promote sustainable resource efficiency. Large-scale field trials and commercial business with char materials have already started. Therefore char materials have to be assessed for toxic compounds. We tested genotoxic effects of different hydrochars and biochars with the Tradescantia micronucleus test. For this purpose chromosomal aberrations in pollen cells of Tradescantia in the form of micronuclei were evaluated microscopically after defined exposition to extracts from char materials. Hydrochars from hydrothermal carbonization mostly exhibited significantly negative results. Additional germination experiments with hydrochar showed total germination inhibition at additions above five percent v/v in comparison to biochar. However, biological post-treatment of previously toxic hydrochar was successful and toxic effects were eliminated completely. Some post-treated hydrochars even showed growth stimulating effects. Our results clearly demonstrate the necessity of risk assessment with bioindicators. The chosen tests procedures can contribute to biochar and hydrochar characterization for safe application. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The threats posed by climate change call for strong action from the international community to limit carbon emissions. Before the Fukushima accident that followed the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011, both Britain and Japan were considering an ambitious expansion of nuclear power as part of their strategy to reduce carbon emissions. However, the accident may have thrown nuclear power as a publicly accep' energy technology into doubt. This study uses several nationally representative surveys from before and after the Fukushima accident to examine how it may have changed public perceptions of climate change and energy futures in Britain and Japan. The study found that already before the accident the Japanese public were less supportive of nuclear power than the British. While British attitudes have remained remarkably stable over time, the Japanese public appear to have completely lost trust in nuclear safety and regulation, and have become less acceptive of nuclear power even if it would contribute to climate change mitigation or energy security. In Japan the public are now less likely to think that any specific energy source will contribute to a reliable and secure supply of energy. The implications for energy policy are discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Scaling is widely recognized as a central issue in ecology. The associated cross-scale interactions and process transmutations make scaling (i.e. a change in spatial or temporal grain and extent) an important issue in understanding ecosystem structure and functioning. Moreover, current concepts of ecosystem stewardship, such as sustainability and resilience, are inherently scale-dependent. The importance of scale and scaling in the context of forest management is likely to further increase in the future because of the growing relevance of ecosystem services beyond timber production. As a result, a consideration of processes both below (e.g. leaf-level carbon uptake in the context of climate change mitigation) and above (e.g. managing for biodiversity conservation at the landscape scale) the traditional focus on the stand level is required in forest ecosystem management. Furthermore, climate change will affect a variety of ecosystem processes across scales, ranging from photosynthesis (tree organs) to disturbance regimes (landscape scale). Assessing potential climate change impacts on ecosystem services thus requires a multi-scale perspective. However, scaling issues have received comparatively little attention in the forest management community to date. Our objectives here are thus first, to synthesize scaling issues relevant to forest management and second, to elucidate ways of dealing with complex scaling problems by highlighting examples of how they can be addressed with ecosystem models. We have focused on three current management issues of particular importance in European forestry: (1) climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration, (2) multi-functional stand management for biodiversity and non-timber goods and services and (3) improving the resilience to natural disturbances. We conclude that taking into account the full spatiotemporal heterogeneity and dynamics of forest ecosystems in management decision-making is likely to make management more robust to increasing environmental and societal pressures. Models can aid this process through explicitly accounting for system dynamics and changing conditions, operationally addressing the complexity of cross-scale interactions and emerging properties. Our synthesis indicates that increased attention to scaling issues can help forest managers to integrate traditional management objectives with emerging concerns for ecosystem services and therefore deserves more attention in forestry.Optimum climate conditions for grapevine growth are limited geographically and may be further challenged by a changing climate. Due to the importance of the winemaking sector in Europe, the assessment of future scenarios for European viticulture is of foremost relevance. A 16-member ensemble of model transient experiments (generated by the ENSEMBLES project) under a greenhouse gas emission scenario and for two future periods (2011-2040 and 2041-2070) is used in assessing climate change projections for six viticultural zoning indices. After model data calibration/validation using an observational gridded daily dataset, changes in their ensemble means and inter-annual variability are discussed, also taking into account the model uncertainties. Over southern Europe, the projected warming combined with severe dryness in the growing season is expected to have detrimental impacts on the grapevine development and wine quality, requiring measures to cope with heat and water stress. Furthermore, the expected warming and the maintenance of moderately wet growing seasons over most of the central European winemaking regions may require a selection of new grapevine varieties, as well as an enhancement of pest/disease control. New winemaking regions may arise over northern Europe and high altitude areas, when considering climatic factors only. An enhanced inter-annual variability is also projected over most of Europe. All these future changes pose new challenges for the European winemaking sector.Due to the rapid growth of urban population and economic development in Asia recently, many cities have encountered severe challenges responding to environmental pollution at local and global levels. This Special Volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production reports on the results of several studies in cities across Asia, which were designed to investigate the potential of climate co-benefits approaches. These studies were implemented across the key urban sectors of waste management, transport and buildings as well as industry. They are complemented by two analyses of the institutional framework, barriers and opportunities for planning for co-benefits in the larger countries in the region: India and China. The fifteen articles in this Special Volume show that tangible urban co-benefits can be achieved from initiatives performed at the local level to address climate change issues. They also provide critical insights on how to catalyze co-benefits in urban development, by embedding climate change mitigation at the local level. By collating promising development activities and policies in different sectors from various Asian countries, this volume presents an overview of how local level actions can enhance developmental impacts. The final paper connects these insights with respect to the emerging green economy paradigm to consider how such policies, if properly coordinated, can create powerful synergies for addressing both local environmental quality and global carbon impacts and how to track this through the governance framework. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The unprecedented resources and energy needed to support the high growth of urbanization with the emerging issues of environmental degradation and GHG emissions is increasingly dramatic in China. A series of national and local policies have been implemented for achieving the co-benefits of reducing emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollution for China's sustainable development. In this paper, the achievement of climate change mitigation and air pollution reduction in different sectors through implementing policies is reviewed. This paper reports on the types of policy measures that have been introduced in two cases (i.e. Tiexi District of Shenyang and Baoshan District of Shanghai) to affect air quality and energy efficiency improvements, which are then collectively examined in terms of their impacts on GHG and air pollutant emissions. Recommendations are made for achieving co-benefits effectively through the integrated approach by comprehensively concentrating on the short and longterm environmental protection and energy conservation at local and national levels based on the analysis made in the paper. The limited coordination and lack of capacity in different government bodies may be the main barriers to the implementation of a co-benefits approach. Enhancing the cooperation and capacity building could overcome these obstacles. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The South African Government currently faces the dual problems of climate change mitigation and the rollout of electricity provision to rural, previously disadvantaged communities. This paper investigates the economic efficiency of the implementation of concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) technology in the Tyefu area in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, as a means of addressing these problems. Two cost-benefit analyses (CBA) are carried out in the study, namely a private CBA and a social CBA. The private CBA investigates the desirability of the CPV project from a private energy investor's perspective, whilst the social CBA investigates the desirability of the CPV project from society's perspective. The social CBA found that the project was socially viable and was, thus, an efficient allocation of government resources. The private CBA, on the other hand, found that investing in a CPV project was not financially viable for a private investor. With respect to the incentive scheme currently offered to private energy investors, it is recommended that the maximum bidding price of R2.85/kWh be increased. A sensitivity analysis of the bidding price showed that an increase of 300% is required to attract private investors into electricity generation projects.Marine vegetated habitats (seagrasses, salt-marshes, macroalgae and mangroves) occupy 0.2% of the ocean surface, but contribute 50% of carbon burial in marine sediments. Their canopies dissipate wave energy and high burial rates raise the seafloor, buffering the impacts of rising sea level and wave action that are associated with climate change. The loss of a third of the global cover of these ecosystems involves a loss of CO2 sinks and the emission of 1 Pg CO2 annually. The conservation, restoration and use of vegetated coastal habitats in eco-engineering solutions for coastal protection provide a promising strategy, delivering significant capacity for climate change mitigation and adaption.Climate change mitigation and the transition to environmentally sustainable forms of life have become central public issues, and a number of studies have investigated the role of the media in constructing and distributing representations of climate change and sustainability. Most of these studies have addressed the media at a national or international level. This article investigates the mediating of a local, municipal initiative, i.e. the so-called 'Energy Town Frederikshavn' project in northern Denmark, which has set the ambitious goal of complete transition to renewable energy consumption and CO2 neutrality within a few years. Using frame analysis, informed by discourse studies, the article analyzes how the project emerged and was established as a public phenomenon in the media coverage, including how it was made intelligible and which social actors were represented as having a say on the matter. The findings show several differences to national or international representations of climate change and sustainability, such as a prevalent profiling frame and an indication of a reversal of the so-called Giddens' paradox.In this study, we compared measured and simulated Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) values from three wide spread ecosystems in the southeast of Ireland (forest, arable and grassland), and investigated the suitability of the DNDC (the DeNitrification-DeComposition) model to estimate present and future NEE. Although, the field-DNDC version overestimated NEE at temperatures >5 degrees C, forest-DNDC under-estimated NEE at temperatures >5 degrees C. The results suggest that the field/forest DNDC models can successfully estimate changes in seasonal and annual NEE from these ecosystems. Differences in NEE were found to be primarily land cover specific. The annual NEE was similar for the grassland and arable sites, but due to the contribution of exported carbon, the soil carbon increased at the grassland site and decreased at the arable site. The NEE of the forest site was an order of magnitude larger than that of the grassland or arable ecosystems, with large amounts of carbon stored in woody biomass and the soil. The average annual NEE, GPP and Reco values over the measurement period were -904, 2379 and 1475 g C m(-2) (forest plantations), -189, 906 and 715 g C m(-2) (arable systems) and -212, 1653 and 1444 g C m(-2) (grasslands), respectively. The average RMSE values were 3.8 g C m(-2) (forest plantations), 0.12 g C m(-2) (arable systems) and 0.21 g C m(-2) (grasslands). When these models were run with climate change scenarios to 2060, predictions show that all three ecosystems will continue to operate as carbon sinks. Further, climate change may decrease the carbon sink strength in the forest plantations by up to 50%. This study supports the use of the DNDC model as a valid tool to predict the consequences of climate change on NEE from different ecosystems. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With energy security, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development as three main motives, global energy policies have evolved, now asking for higher shares of renewable energies, shale oil and gas resources in the global energy supply portfolios. Yet, concerns have recently been raised about the environmental impacts of the renewable energy development, supported by many governments around the world. For example, governmental ethanol subsidies and mandates in the U. S. are aimed to increase the biofuel supply while the water footprint of this type of energy might be 70-400 times higher than the water footprint of conventional fossil energy sources. Hydrofracking, as another example, has been recognized as a high water-intensive procedure that impacts the surface and ground water in both quality and quantity. Hence, monitoring the water footprint of the energy mix is significantly important and could have implications for energy policy development. This paper estimates the water footprint of current and projected global energy policies, based on the energy production and consumption scenarios, developed by the International Energy Outlook of the U. S. Energy Information Administration. The outcomes reveal the amount of water required for total energy production in the world will increase by 37%-66% during the next two decades, requiring extensive improvements in water use efficiency of the existing energy production technologies, especially renewables.In recent years, many firms have decided to adhere to a specific carbon norm, such as carbon neutrality or carbon labels, to show their commitment to climate change mitigation. Nevertheless, it is still unclear what it means when a firm sets a specific carbon norm. This article reviews the various kinds of carbon norms that have emerged and asks why firms would adopt a carbon norm and thus assume an additional constraint on a voluntary basis. We point out that carbon norms can fulfill a dual function: They help to position a firm strategically by creating a specific favorable image, and they deal with constraining factors as a consequence of a firm's carbon dependency and stakeholder influence. As there is still also some mistrust of corporate carbon norms, we conclude the article with lessons for managers that intend to implement carbon norms. (C) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.In recent years, the debate about climate change and the competitiveness of multinational corporations (MNCs) has increased. Decision makers in MNCs often face ambiguities on how their business competitiveness could be impacted by their actions to mitigate climate change. By combining knowledge from the field of climatology with the management literature, this study suggests that climate change mitigation can enhance an MNC's competitiveness. We test the hypotheses using longitudinal panel data on US MNCs from 2001 to 2009. We find that MNCs that implement climate change mitigation are likely to see significant increase in sales effectiveness and product leadership but no significant increase in return on equity. Further, the positive influence of mitigation on sales effectiveness and product leadership is found to be more strongly positive when the MNC's internationalization is high. Hence, mitigation efforts positively impact at least two dimensions of competitiveness-sales effectiveness and product leadership, particularly when internationalization is high. (C) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Climate change mitigation acts by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and thus curbing, or even reversing, the increase in their atmospheric concentration. This reduces the associated anthropogenic radiative forcing, and hence the size of the warming. Because of the inertia and internal variability affecting the climate system and the global carbon cycle, it is unlikely that a reduction in warming would be immediately discernible. Here we use 21st century simulations from the latest ensemble of Earth System Model experiments to investigate and quantify when mitigation becomes clearly discernible. We use one of the scenarios as a reference for a strong mitigation strategy, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 and compare its outcome with either RCP4.5 or RCP8.5, both of which are less severe mitigation pathways. We analyze global mean atmospheric CO2 , and changes in annually and seasonally averaged surface temperature at global and regional scales. For global mean surface temperature, the median detection time of mitigation is about 25-30 y after RCP2.6 emissions depart from the higher emission trajectories. This translates into detection of a mitigation signal by 2035 or 2045, depending on whether the comparison is with RCP8.5 or RCP4.5, respectively. The detection of climate benefits of emission mitigation occurs later at regional scales, with a median detection time between 30 and 45 y after emission paths separate. Requiring a 95% confidence level induces a delay of several decades, bringing detection time toward the end of the 21st century.The sustainability of irrigated croplands in Central Asia is threatened by degradation of their productive function. To quantify the extent of the cropland degradation, this paper combines object-based change detection and spectral mixture analysis for vegetation cover decline mapping in irrigated agroecosystems in Uzbekistan based on multitemporal Landsat TM images from 1998 to 2009. The results of the change detection reveal that the cadastral field parcels, characterized by vegetation cover decrease, occupied 18% (52,938 ha) of the cropland area. Spatial distribution of fields with decreased vegetation cover was mainly associated with abandoned cropland and land with inherently low-fertility soils located on the outreaches of the irrigation system and bordering natural sandy deserts. The comparison with the land degradation map based on trend analyses of 250 m MODIS NDVI time series 2000-2010 yielded an overall agreement of 93%. The proposed approach is a useful supplement to the commonly applied trend analysis for detecting land degradation in cases when plot-specific data are needed but satellite time series of high spatial resolution are not available. The derived parcel-specific, spatial information supports better informed decisions on cropland rehabilitation measures. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.Identifying strategies for reconciling human development and climate change mitigation requires an adequate understanding of how infrastructures contribute to well-being and greenhouse gas emissions. While direct emissions from infrastructure use are well-known, information about indirect emissions from their construction is highly fragmented. Here, we estimated the carbon footprint of the existing global infrastructure stock in 2008, assuming current technologies, to be 122 (-20/+15) Gt CO2. The average per-capita carbon footprint of infrastructures in industrialized countries (53 (+/- 6) t CO2) was approximately 5 times larger that that of developing countries (10 (+/- 1) t CO2). A globalization of Western infrastructure stocks using current technologies would cause approximately 350 Gt CO2 from materials production, which corresponds to about 35-60% of the remaining carbon budget available until 2050 if the average temperature increase is to be limited to 2 degrees C, and could thus compromise the 2 degrees C target. A promising but poorly explored mitigation option is to build new settlements using less emissions-intensive materials, for example by urban design; however, this strategy is constrained by a lack of bottom-up data on material stocks in infrastructures. Infrastructure development must be considered in post-Kyoto climate change agreements if developing countries are to participate on a fair basis.Understanding the factors driving innovation in energy technologies is of critical importance to mitigating climate change and addressing other energy-related global challenges. Low levels of innovation, measured in terms of energy patent filings, were noted in the 1980s and 90s as an issue of concern and were attributed to limited investment in public and private research and development (R&D). Here we build a comprehensive global database of energy patents covering the period 1970-2009, which is unique in its temporal and geographical scope. Analysis of the data reveals a recent, marked departure from historical trends. A sharp increase in rates of patenting has occurred over the last decade, particularly in renewable technologies, despite continued low levels of R&D funding. To solve the puzzle of fast innovation despite modest R&D increases, we develop a model that explains the nonlinear response observed in the empirical data of technological innovation to various types of investment. The model reveals a regular relationship between patents, R&D funding, and growing markets across technologies, and accurately predicts patenting rates at different stages of technological maturity and market development. We show quantitatively how growing markets have formed a vital complement to public R&D in driving innovative activity. These two forms of investment have each leveraged the effect of the other in driving patenting trends over long periods of time.Tropical countries like Cambodia require information about forest biomass for successful implementation of climate change mitigation mechanism related to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). This study investigated the potential of Phased Array-type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar Fine Beam Dual (PALSAR FBD) 50 m mosaic data to estimate Above Ground Biomass (AGB) in Cambodia. AGB was estimated using a bottom-up approach based on field measured biomass and backscattering (sigma(o)) properties of PALSAR data. The relationship between the PALSAR sigma(o) HV and HH/HV with field measured biomass was strong with R-2 = 0.67 and 0.56, respectively. PALSAR estimated AGB show good results in deciduous forests because of less saturation as compared to dense evergreen forests. The validation results showed a high coefficient of determination R-2 = 0.61 with RMSE = 21 Mg/ha using values up to 200 Mg/ha biomass. There were some uncertainties because of the uncertainty in the field based measurement and saturation of PALSAR data. AGB map of Cambodian forests could be useful for the implementation of forest management practices for REDD+ assessment and policies implementation at the national level.Biochar can be defined as pyrolysed (charred) biomass produced for application to soils with the aim of mitigating global climate change while improving soil functions. Sustainable biochar application to soils has been estimated to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 71-130 Pg CO2-C-e over 100 years, indicating an important potential to mitigate climate change. However, these estimates ignored changes in soil surface reflection by the application of dark-coloured biochar. Through a laboratory experiment we show a strong tendency for soil surface albedo to decrease as a power decay function with increasing biochar application rate, depending on soil moisture content, biochar application method and land use. Surface application of biochar resulted in strong reductions in soil surface albedo even at relatively low application rates. As a first assessment of the implications for climate change mitigation of these biochar-albedo relationships, we applied a first order global energy balance model to compare negative radiative forcings (from avoided CO2 emissions) with positive radiative forcings (from reduced soil surface albedos). For a global-scale biochar application equivalent to 120 t ha(-1), we obtained reductions in negative radiative forcings of 5 and 11% for croplands and 11 and 23% for grasslands, when incorporating biochar into the topsoil or applying it to the soil surface, respectively. For a lower global biochar application rate (equivalent to 10 t ha(-1)), these reductions amounted to 13 and 44% for croplands and 28 and 94% for grasslands. Thus, our findings revealed the importance of including changes in soil surface albedo in studies assessing the net climate change mitigation potential of biochar, and we discuss the urgent need for field studies and more detailed spatiotemporal modelling.In this study, we introduce information on outcome-related risk as an additional attribute in a choice model of preferences for a land-based climate change mitigation project. We provide a comprehensive comparison of different model specifications arising from different behavioural assumptions about the way that respondents process information on outcome-related risk within the choice task. We find significant differences between several specifications in terms of both model fit and WTP estimates. The behavioural assumptions made when choosing a particular model specification, and reasons that motivate them should be made explicit, and consequences of using different specifications should not be ignored.There is growing interest in investigations into soil carbon (C) sequestration, plant nutrients and biological activities in organic farming since it is regarded as a farming system that could contribute to climate mitigation and sustainable agriculture. However, most comparative studies have focused on annual crops or farming systems with crop rotations, and only a few on perennial crops without rotations, e.g. tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze). In this study, we selected five pairs of tea fields under organic and conventional farming systems in eastern China to study the effect of organic farming on soil C sequestration, plant nutrients and biological activities in tea fields. Soil organic C, total nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K) and magnesium (Mg), available nutrients, microbial biomass, N mineralization and nitrification were compared. Soil pH, organic C and total N contents were higher in organic tea fields. Soil microbial biomass C, N and P, and their ratios in organic C, total N and P, respectively, net N mineralization and nitrification rates were significantly higher in organic fields in most of the comparative pairs of fields. Concentrations of soil organic C and microbial biomass C were higher in the soils with longer periods under organic management. However, inorganic N, available P and K concentrations were generally lower in the organic fields. No significant differences were found in available calcium (Ca), Mg, sodium (Na), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) concentrations between the two farming systems. These findings suggest that organic farming could promote soil C sequestration and microbial biomass size and activities in tea fields, but more N-rich organic fertilizers, and natural P and K fertilizers, will be required for sustainable organic tea production in the long term.Existing literature indicates that theoretically, the earth's wind energy supply potential significantly exceeds global energy demand. Yet, only 2-3% of global electricity demand is currently derived from wind power despite 27% annual growth in wind generating capacity over the last 17 years. More than 95% of total current wind power capacity is installed in the developed countries plus China and India. Our analysis shows that the economic competitiveness of wind power varies at wider range across countries or locations. A climate change damage cost of US$20/tCO(2) imposed to fossil fuels would make onshore wind competitive to all fossil fuels for power generation; however, the same would not happen to offshore wind, with few exceptions, even if the damage cost is increased to US$100/tCO(2). To overcome a large number of technical, financial, institutional, market and other barriers to wind power, many countries have employed various policy instruments, including capital subsidies, tax incentives, tradable energy certificates, feed-in tariffs, grid access guarantees and mandatory standards. Besides, climate change mitigation policies, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, have played a pivotal role in promoting wind power. Despite these policies, intermittency, the main technical constraint, could remain as the major challenge to the future growth of wind power. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China is currently the world's largest single source of fossil fuel related CO2 emissions. In response to pressure from the international community, and in recognition of its role in global climate change mitigation, the Chinese government has announced a series of climate policy commitments, in both the Copenhagen Accord and its domestic 12th 5 Year Plan, to gradually reduce emissions intensity by 2020. Emissions intensity reduction commitments differ significantly from emission level reduction commitments that are commonly adopted by developed economies. In this paper, we investigate the economic implications of China's recent commitments to reduce emissions intensity, and highlight the complexities involved in modelling intensity targets under uncertainty. Using G-Cubed, an intertemporal, computable general equilibrium model of the world economy, we show that China's emissions intensity targets could be achieved with a range of low and high growth emissions level trajectories corresponding to low and high growth GDP scenarios, which lead to different welfare consequences. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper applies a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and marginal abatement cost curves (MACC) to evaluate public policies mechanisms to promote the dissemination of energy efficiency (EE) and on-site renewable energy sources (RES) technologies in Brazilian buildings sector. The objective here is to bring together the advantages of both methods in order to provide more valuable insights to policy makers. The MCA results show that in the case of more integrative policies, which considers, for instance, potential of jobs creation, the mechanisms to foster distributed RES and solar water heaters are better ranked than in MACC analysis, where only cost-effectiveness of each option is evaluated. Other key finding is that: (1) there is a significant cost effective potential that could be reached through alternative mechanisms not implemented yet in the country, such as public procurement regulation and building codes and; (2) minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) could be broader in scope and more stringent and include the use of energy in standby mode and tubular fluorescent lamps. In particular, some important appliances such as large air conditioning devices should have more aggressive MEPS. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an effective technology for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from large-scale fossil fuel use. Nonetheless, it is not yet commercially viable on a large scale, and its inclusion into countries' energy planning agendas depends on realistic assessments of its emission reduction benefits. The use of CCS leads to energy penalties resulting from direct consumption of additional energy, and results in indirect CO2 equivalent emissions outside plant boundaries, due to both energy consumption and leakages. Accounting for these emissions allows for an evaluation of the mitigation benefits of CCS. This study performs a life-cycle assessment (LCA), with and without CCS, for a coal-fired power plant located in Brazil. Findings show that when indirect emissions are taken into account, a plant which captures 90% of its CO2 will have its CO2 equivalent emissions capture potential, based on a global warming potential metric with a 100-year time horizon, reduced to 72%. The advantage of the use of carbon capture towards climate change mitigation is reduced mainly as a result of an increase in CH4 emissions, significant in the coal-mining stage, an effect which is only taken into account when a LCA is performed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Studies that examine the distributional impacts of climate change mitigation policies often neglect the influence of institutions that implement these policies. This study examines the short-term consumption-side distributional impacts of expanding low-carbon electric supply in the state of Maharashtra, India with a focus on the influence of regulatory discretion in pricing. Households' welfare impacts from economy-wide electricity price shocks are simulated against a baseline that is calibrated to actual household economic and electricity service conditions, including actual electricity budgets, block tier prices and supply rationing. Industrial price impacts are propagated to households using a Leontief input output analysis. Regulatory pricing decisions are evaluated based on social welfare metrics for economic efficiency and income inequality. The analysis reveals new linkages between climate change mitigation, electricity policy and income distribution. Low-income households can be shielded from mitigation impacts without losses in aggregate welfare to the extent that regulators can recover mitigation costs through industrial price increases. Regulators' flexibility to distribute costs across households is constrained by industrial customers migration off the grid. Reduced supply interruptions to the rural poor from the resulting demand contraction are a potential co-benefit of mitigation. Distributional impacts, therefore, depend on other electricity policies that are driven by the political economy of the sector. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analyzes the effectiveness and efficiency of the two principal United Nations (UN) climate change mitigation finance mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The realised abatement and costs of the two mechanisms in India and Brazil (using data from 28 GEF and 233 CDM project documents) are compared with theoretical marginal abatement cost curves, based on bottom-up technology studies. We find that both mechanisms have focused on negative and low-cost abatement potential but still leave substantial theoretical potential in this cost range untapped. CDM has more effectively harvested abatement potential of industrial gases and methane emissions, whereas GEF has more successfully targeted demand-side energy efficiency (EE) and transport emission reduction opportunities. CDM has excelled at capturing abatement potential in areas with a limited understanding of abatement, highlighting the shortcomings of theoretical estimates (such as Marginal Abatement Cost Curves) and the benefits of a market mechanism. In some sectors and technologies (particularly renewable energy), the two mechanisms overlapped, which suggests a need for better coordination in the future.Tropical wetland ecosystems, especially mangroves and peatlands, are carbon-rich ecosystems that should be considered to be part of climate change mitigation strategies. Globally, tropical mangroves store 20 PgC and tropical peatlands store 89 PgC. Most of these potentials reside in southeast Asia. Emission factors and activity data are among the most important components to carry out credible assessment. In this article, we explore and discuss emission factors and activity data in light of project development and national reporting using the upcoming IPCC methodologies for wetlands. Country-specific data are needed to reduce uncertainties and hence enhance the projects competitiveness. There are opportunities to improve local livelihoods through mitigation strategies in wetlands. Potential bundling with adaptation measures is also discussed.Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus improving forest-management (REDD+) is a mechanism to facilitate tropical countries' participation in climate change mitigation. In this review we focus on the current state of monitoring systems to support implementing REDD+. The main elements of current monitoring systems - Landsat satellites and traditional forest inventories - will continue to be the backbone of many forest-monitoring systems around the world, but new remote-sensing and analytical approaches are addressing monitoring problems specific to the tropics and implementing REDD+. There is increasing recognition of the utility of combining remote sensing with field data using models that integrate information from many sources, which will continue to evolve as new sensors are deployed and as the availability of field data increases.Spatial variations in ocean warming have been linked to regional changes in tropical cyclones(1), precipitation(2,3) and monsoons(4). But development of reliable regional climate projections for climate change mitigation and adaptation remains challenging(5). The presence of anthropogenic aerosols, which are highly variable in space and time, is thought to induce spatial patterns of climate response that are distinct from those of well-mixed greenhouse gases(4,6-9) Using CMIP5 climate simulations that consider aerosols and greenhouse gases separately, we show that regional responses to changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols are similar over the ocean, as reflected in similar spatial patterns of ocean temperature and precipitation. This similarity suggests that the climate response to radiative changes is relatively insensitive to the spatial distribution of these changes. Although anthropogenic aerosols are largely confined to the Northern Hemisphere, simulations that include aerosol forcing predict decreases in temperature and westerly wind speed that reach the pristine Southern Hemisphere oceans. Over land, the climate response to aerosol forcing is more localized, but larger scale spatial patterns are also evident. We suggest that the climate responses induced by greenhouse gases and aerosols share key ocean-atmosphere feedbacks, leading to a qualitative resemblance in spatial distribution.Agriculture production in developing countries must be increased to meet food demand for a growing population. Earlier literature suggests that sustainable land management could increase food production without degrading soil and water resources. Improved agronomic practices include organic fertilization, minimum soil disturbance, and incorporation of residues, terraces, water harvesting and conservation, and agroforestry. These practices can also deliver co-benefits in the form of reduced greenhouse gas emissions and enhanced carbon storage in soils and biomass. Here, we review 160 studies reporting original field data on the yield effects of sustainable land management practices sequestering soil carbon. The major points are: (1) sustainable land management generally leads to increased yields, although the magnitude and variability of results varies by specific practice and agro-climatic conditions. For instance, yield effects are in some cases negative for improved fallows, terraces, minimum tillage, and live fences. Whereas, positive yield effects are observed consistently for cover crops, organic fertilizer, mulching, and water harvesting. Yields are also generally higher in areas of low and variable rainfall. (2) Isolating the yield effects of individual practices is complicated by the adoption of combinations or "packages" of sustainable land management options. (3) Sustainable land management generally increases soil carbon sequestration. Agroforestry increases aboveground C sequestration and organic fertilization reduces CO2 emissions. (4) Rainfall distribution is a key determinant of the mitigation effects of adopting specific sustainable land management practices. Mitigation effects of adopting sustainable land management are higher in higher rainfall areas, with the exception of water management.Reduction of energy use in buildings is an important measure to achieve climate change mitigation. It is essential to minimize heat losses when designing and building energy efficient buildings. For an energy-efficient building in a cold climate, a large part of the space heating demand is caused by transmission losses through the building envelope. Therefore, calculations of these must be carried out in a correct way to ensure a properly sized heating system and a good indoor climate. There is today a risk of misunderstanding and inconsistent use of methodology when transmission heat transfer is calculated. To investigate the state of knowledge among Swedish consultants a survey was conducted regarding thermal bridges and calculations of transmission heat transfer. Furthermore, the impact of thermal bridges was studied by comparative calculations for a case study building with different building systems and different amounts of insulation. The study shows that the relevant standards and the building code in Sweden are interpreted in many different ways regarding calculation of transmission heat transfer and energy performance. There is a lack of understanding regarding the impact of different measuring methods on thermal bridges. When more insulation is used the relative impact of thermal bridges increases. It is therefore not suitable to use a single predefined percentage factor, increasing the transmission heat transfer through building elements, to account for the effect of thermal bridges. If values for normalized thermal bridges are to be used, they need to be differentiated by building system and different amounts of insulation (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate mitigation policies are trying to regulate activities that produce changes of the concentration of the atmospheric carbon. One of those activities is the production of electricity used in buildings; and one of major consumer of electricity in buildings is the air conditioning system, but sometimes a cooling or heating system is essential. In recent years, there are researchers trying to improve those systems; but some authors suggest that is better to use new technologies instead of increase the efficient of the technologies that exist today. In this sense, a new simple technology called earth-to-air heat exchanger (EAHX) uses the ground to heating or cooling buildings. In the present work, it is thought that a fuzzy logic controller can be applied to an EAHX to reduce even more the electrical energy consumption, therefore a simulation was carried out, where a thermodynamic model of an EAHX was obtained and used together with a simulation of a fuzzy logic controller, then it was compared with an simulation of an On-Off controller. The results show that power consumption can be reduced with the fuzzy controller, thus increasing the efficiency of the process, the sustainability of the planet and reducing environmental problems of the society. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mankind is actually facing serious issues due to the overexploitation of fossil fuels, biomass, soils, nitrogen, and phosphorus. It is claimed that biochar addition to soil improves C sequestration to prevent CO2 from atmospheric cycling. Biochar addition should also increase soil fertility in a similar way as anthropogenic dark earths of Central Amazonia. Previous studies have shown that biochar stimulates plant growth and increase fertilizer efficiency, especially when biochar is combined with organic fertilizers such as compost. However, little is known about optimum addition amounts and mixture ratios of biochar and compost. Indeed most experiments to mimic Terra preta de Indio focused on biochar alone or biochar in combination with mineral fertilizers. Therefore, we studied optimum biochar and compost amounts and mixture ratios with respect to plant response and soil fertility. We tested the effect of total amount from 0 to 200 Mg/ha, and biochar proportion from 0 % to 50 % biochar, of 18 different compost mixtures on growth of oat (Avena sativa L.) and soil properties in a fully randomized greenhouse study with sandy and loamy soil substrates. We sampled soil substrates before and after plant growth and analyzed plant growth and yield, total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), mineralized nitrogen (Nmin), soil reaction (pH), and electrical conductivity (EC) applying standard procedures. Results show that biomass production was increased with rising biochar and compost amounts. Oat plant height and seed weight was improved only with rising biochar amounts, but not with compost amounts. This could be explained by increase of total organic C and total N but not by plant-available ammonium and nitrate. The positive influence of composted biochar on plant growth and soil properties suggests that composting is a good way to overcome biochar's inherent nutrient deficiency, making it a suitable technique helping to refine farm-scale nutrient cycles.Assessments of the benefits of climate change mitigation-and thus of the appropriate stringency of greenhouse gas emissions abatement-depend upon ethical, legal, and political economic considerations. Global climate change mitigation is often represented as a repeated prisoners' dilemma in which the net benefits of sustained global cooperation exceed the net benefits of uncooperative unilateral action for any given actor. Global cooperation can be motivated either by circumspection-a decision to account for the damages one's own actions inflict upon others-or by the expectation of reciprocity from others. If the marginal global benefits of abatement are approximately constant in total abatement, the domestically optimal price approaches the global cooperative optimum linearly with increasing circumspection and reciprocity. Approximately constant marginal benefits are expected if climate damages are quadratic in temperature and if the airborne fraction of carbon emissions is constant. If, on the other hand, damages increase with temperature faster than quadratically or carbon sinks weaken significantly with increasing CO2 concentrations, marginal benefits will decline with abatement. In this case, the approach to the global optimum is concave and less than full circumspection and/or reciprocity can lead to optimal domestic abatement close to the global optimum.The paper describes the results of a survey carried out with leading EU experts on the future costs of batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles and the uncertainty surrounding them. Battery costs are one of the main components in the overall costs of EVs and improvements could be brought about by increased investments in research, development and demonstration (RD&D). Experts' judgements are collected to shed light on the inherently uncertain relationship between RD&D efforts and the consequent technical progress in batteries. The analysis of the experts data results in a number of important policy recommendations to guide future RD&D choices and target commitments both for the EU and its member states. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CO2 mitigation strategies in industrial parks are a significant component of the Chinese climate change mitigation policy, and industrial symbiosis can provide specific CO2 mitigation opportunity. Technology is important to support symbiosis, but few studies in China have focused on this topic at the industrial park level. This research presented a case study in a national iron and steel industrial park in China. Focus was given onto carbon mitigation through industrial symbiosis technology using substance flow analysis (SFA). Three typical iron and steel industry technologies, including coke dry quenching (CDQ), combined cycle power plant (CCPP), and CO2 capture by slag carbonization (CCSC) were evaluated with SFA. Technology assessment was further conducted in terms of carbon mitigation potential and unit reduction cost. Compared with the Business as usual (BAU) scenario, application with CDQ, CCPP, and CCSC reduced the net carbon emissions by 56.18, 134.43, and 222.89 kg CO2 per ton crude steel inside the industrial parks, respectively, including both direct and indirect emissions. Economic assessment revealed that the unit costs for the three technologies were also high, thereby necessitating national financial support. Finally, relevant policy suggestions and future concerns were proposed and discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar may contribute to climate change mitigation at negative cost by sequestering photosynthetically fixed carbon in soil while increasing crop yields. The magnitude of biochar's potential in this regard will depend on crop yield benefits, which have not been well-characterized across different soils and biochars. Using data from 84 studies, we employ meta-analytical, missing data, and semiparametric statistical methods to explain heterogeneity in crop yield responses across different soils, biochars, and agricultural management factors, and then estimate potential changes in yield across different soil environments globally. We find that soil cation exchange capacity and organic carbon were strong predictors of yield response, with low cation exchange and low carbon associated with positive response. We also find that yield response increases over time since initial application, compared to non-biochar controls. High reported soil clay content and low soil pH were weaker predictors of higher yield response. No biochar parameters in our dataset-biochar pH, percentage carbon content, or temperature of pyrolysis-were significant predictors of yield impacts. Projecting our fitted model onto a global soil database, we find the largest potential increases in areas with highly weathered soils, such as those characterizing much of the humid tropics. Richer soils characterizing much of the world's important agricultural areas appear to be less likely to benefit from biochar.Deserts belong to the least productive terrestrial ecosystems, but along rivers, they may exhibit a high productivity. In central Asia, Populus euphratica Oliv. is the dominant tree species of the riparian Tugai vegetation. In terms of climate change mitigation, Tugai restoration may be traded for on the international carbon market. However, detailed knowledge of Tugai productivity is lacking. Within this study, we modelled the productivity of P. euphratica based on tree-ring data (r(2) 0.73, P 0.001) and applied the derived model to estimate the stand productivity of this species within the Kabakly nature reserve on the Amu River, Turkmenistan. Productivity estimates ranged from 0.3 to 3.0 t ha(1) year(1) and expressed the same magnitude as the data mentioned previously in the literature. Forest productivity appeared to be negatively correlated with distance from the river, which was consistent with Quickbird remote sensing data. Quickbird net differenced vegetation index (NDVI) was strongly correlated with Landsat NDVI (r 0.91, P 0.001), indicating the general potential to upscale net primary productivity estimates for P. euphratica. Tree ring series expressed no synchrony, for which possible explanations are discussed. Under ideal conditions P. euphratica sequesters CO2 and thus may be considered a suitable tree species for carbon trade mechanisms and climate change mitigation.In a context of neo-liberal environmental governance, imperatives for global climate change mitigation are motivating a new round of policy initiatives and projects aimed at carbon forestry: conserving and enhancing forest carbon stocks, and trading these values in emerging carbon markets. In this context modelling and measurement, always significant in framing and justifying forest policy initiatives, are of renewed importance, with a growing array of protocols focused on counting and accounting for forest carbon as a commodity. This article draws on perspectives from science and technology studies and environmental discourse analysis to explore how these modelling and measurement processes are being co-constructed with forest carbon policies and political economies, and applied in project design in local settings. Document analysis and key informant interviews are used to track and illustrate these processes in a pair of case studies of forest carbon projects in Sierra Leone and Ghana. These are chosen to highlight different project types - focused respectively on forest reserve and farm-forestry - in settings with multi-layered histories of people-forest relations, landscape change and prior project intervention. The analysis shows how longer established framings and assessments of deforestation are being reinvoked and re-worked amidst current carbon concerns. We demonstrate that measurement processes are not just technical but social and political, carrying and thus cementing particular views of landscape and social relations that in turn make likely particular kinds of intervention pathway, with fortress style conservation or plantations becoming the dominant approach. In the process, other possibilities including alternative pathways that might treat and value carbon as part of complex, lived-in landscapes, or respond more adaptively to less equilibrial people-forest relations, are occluded. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aim: To investigate the characteristics, relationships and trends in the phenology of four winegrape varieties and associated temperature relationships in the Lisbon wine region (LWR), between 1990 and 2011. Methods and results : Budburst, flowering and veraison dates of red (Castelao and Aragonez, syn. Tempranillo) and white (Chasselas and Fernao Pires) varieties were taken from an experimental vineyard in the LWR. Harvest dates were determined based on a similar maturity level for all varieties. From these data, varietal characteristics, temporal trends as well as relationships between phenology and temperature were assessed through stepwise multivariate linear regressions. Flowering was the most sensitive to temperature in the preceding months (March-April). Differences/similarities between the phenological timing of the different varieties are presented. With few exceptions, no trends were found in phenophases over the 1990-2011 period, whereas several significant negative slopes were displayed for phenological intervals, suggesting a role for accumulated thermal effects in phenological timing. Strong correlations were observed between phenophases, especially between flowering and veraison. Conclusion : The study highlights the key role played by temperature on phenology, particularly during springtime. Furthermore, an increase in temperature during that period will cause an advance in the timing of the following phenological events. Given the significant trends found, phenological shifts may occur in the long term, emphasizing the need to assess varietal characteristics and responses to regional climate.Within the framework of climate change mitigation by sequestrating recalcitrant carbon in soil, biochar is considered as a promising soil amendment. Testing any such soil additives is vitally important, as they should not cause abiotic stress for plants due to chemical constituents they may contain. Thus, germination tests with spring barley (Hordeum vulgare) were conducted to assess phytotoxic effects of biochar, hydrochar and process-water from hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) as soil amendments. Additionally, single-component tests with substances found in process-waters were carried out with cress (Lepidium sativum). While biochars generally had no effect on germination, hydrochars and process-waters significantly inhibited germination. The dissolved organic carbon content predicted the germination-inhibiting effects observed. Three compounds resulted in partial (guaiacol) or total (levulinic acid and glycolic acid) inhibition of cress seed germination, and three others (acetic acid, glycolaldehyde dimer and catechol) had a negative impact on growth. Phytotoxic substances in chars appeared to be mostly water soluble and volatile. Pre-treatments of hydrochars and process-waters (i.e. storage and washing) were able to reduce germination inhibition. While phytotoxic substances that are generated during HTC stay in the products, biochars from kiln carbonization of the same feedstocks had no negative effects on germination, likely because volatiles evaporate during the conversion. Our study highlights the importance of comprehensively testing carbonized products for their compatibility with agricultural and horticultural systems.Backcasting is not a new concept for scientists dealing with carbon mitigation or climate change mitigation issues around the world, but could be an innovative idea for public, local, and national policy planners as they are so far only familiar with forecast scenarios for different issues and sectors. Defining a roadmap to achieving low carbon targets and explaining these targets in quantitative form as much as possible is known as backcasting. Plenty of computer-based quantitative models and tools are used to outline low carbon society scenarios in the Asia-Pacific region and implementations of such models are underway. This paper spotlights these quantitative models and tools which are used to achieve backcasting benchmarks. These models are critically reviewed for their functioning and real possibilities on ground levels and suggestions have been made to improve practical implementation in developing Asia. The study found that all these models are highly acceptable and applicable in Asian countries but actual applications are rare, with Japan as the leading country in implementing such applications, followed by Malaysia. Estimation of CO2 sinks, open availability, and energy service demands (built-in option) are major weaknesses of the models. We also concluded that these computer-based quantitative models are helpful for almost all of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region facing such issues as data limitation, fewer resources, and lack of government participation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Claims about the environmental benefits of charring biomass and applying the resulting "biochar'' to soil are impressive. If true, they could influence land management worldwide. Alleged benefits include increased crop yields, soil fertility, and water-holding capacity; the most widely discussed idea is that applying biochar to soil will mitigate climate change. This claim rests on the assumption that biochar persists for hundreds or thousands of years, thus storing carbon that would otherwise decompose. We conducted a systematic review to quantify research effort directed toward ten aspects of biochar and closely evaluated the literature concerning biochar's stability. Findings: We identified 311 peer-reviewed research articles published through 2011. We found very few field studies that addressed biochar's influence on several ecosystem processes: one on soil nutrient loss, one on soil contaminants, six concerning non-CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes (some of which fail to support claims that biochar decreases non-CO2 GHG fluxes), and 16-19 on plants and soil properties. Of 74 studies related to biochar stability, transport or fate in soil, only seven estimated biochar decomposition rates in situ, with mean residence times ranging from 8 to almost 4,000 years. Conclusions: Our review shows there are not enough data to draw conclusions about how biochar production and application affect whole-system GHG budgets. Wide-ranging estimates of a key variable, biochar stability in situ, likely result from diverse environmental conditions, feedstocks, and study designs. There are even fewer data about the extent to which biochar stimulates decomposition of soil organic matter or affects non-CO2 GHG emissions. Identifying conditions where biochar amendments yield favorable GHG budgets requires a systematic field research program. Finally, evaluating biochar's suitability as a climate mitigation strategy requires comparing its effects with alternative uses of biomass and considering GHG budgets over both long and short time scales.The timing, magnitude, and regional distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) changes are uncertain when factoring in climate change and agricultural management practices. The goal of this study is to analyze the implications of changes in climate and agricultural management for Chinese soil carbon sequestration over the next 40 years. We used the Agro-C model to simulate climate and agricultural management scenarios to investigate the combined impacts of climate change and management on future SOC stocks in China's croplands. The model was run for croplands on mineral soils in China, which make up a total of 130 M ha of cropland. The model used climate data (years 2011-2050) from the FGOALS and PRECIS climate models based on four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emissions scenarios. Three equidistant agricultural management scenarios were used. SO was a current scenario, and S2 was an optimal scenario. Under the S2 scenario, crop yields increased annually by 1%, the proportion of crop residue retained in the field reached 90% by 2050, and the area of no-tillage increased to 50% of the cultivated area by 2050. The S1 scenario applied half of the increased rates in crop yields, residue retention and no-tillage area values that were used in the S2 scenario. Across all croplands in China, the results suggest that SOC will increase under all combinations of climate and management and that the effect of climate change is much smaller than the effect of changes in agricultural management. Most croplands in China show a significant increase in SOC stocks, while very few zones (mainly in northeastern China) show a decrease. Rice paddy soils under the intensive farming management scenario show higher rates of carbon sequestration than dry-land soils. The maximum carbon sequestration potential of the croplands of China is estimated to be 2.39 Pg C under S2. Annual increases in SOC stocks could offset a maximum of 2.9% of the CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion in 2009. These results suggest that China's croplands, especially rice paddies, may play an important role in C sequestration and future climate change mitigation. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The ability of hydropower to contribute to climate change mitigation is sometimes questioned, citing emissions of methane and carbon dioxide resulting from the degradation of biogenic carbon in hydropower reservoirs. These emissions are, however, not always addressed in life cycle assessment, leading to a bias in technology comparisons, and often misunderstood. The objective of this paper is to review and analyze the generation of greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs for the purpose of technology assessment, relating established emission measurements to power generation. A literature review, data, collection, and statistical analysis of methane and CO2 emissions are conducted. In a sample of 82 measurements, methane emissions per kWh hydropower generated are log-normally distributed, ranging from micrograms to 10s of kg. A multivariate regression analysis shows that the reservoir area per kWh electricity is the most important explanatory variable. Methane emissions flux per reservoir area are correlated with the natural net primary production of the area, the age of the power plant, and the inclusion of bubbling emissions in the measurement. Even together, these factors fail to explain most of the variation in the methane flux. The global average emissions from hydropower are estimated to be 85 gCO(2)/kWh and 3 gCH(4)/kWh, with a multiplicative uncertainty factor of 2. GHG emissions from hydropower can be largely avoided by ceasing to build hydropower plants with high land use per unit of electricity generated.Given the current trend in global emissions, the latest round of climate change negotiations at the Durban meeting of December 2011 (for the adoption of a comprehensive global treaty on climate change mitigation as soon as possible-and no later than 2015-and to come into force in 2020) has hardly shown the results one would have hoped for. Even for the most optimistic, it remains unclear whether one can expect a successful negotiating outcome by 2015. There are inherent difficulties associated with climate change negotiations, ranging from which countries should bear most responsibility for a given emission reduction target to the assessment of a globally efficient time path for pricing harmful greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). These difficulties become even more complex and challenging under the pervasive uncertainty of climate science and the uncertainty about the feedback loop between climate change damages and economic growth. During the past decades, the environmental economics literature has provided important insights regarding the design of environmental fiscal policies and treaties but there is a host of issues that remain relatively unexplored. For instance, we know little about the cooperative solution for carbon and trade policies when climate change affects the productive possibilities of countries. In this context, it is also not obvious whether observed policies could be improved upon in such a way that all countries gain in welfare. It remains also unclear what the carbon extraction path should be in the absence of a comprehensive treaty (such as, for example, if environmental policy is unilaterally chosen subject to an agreed 'ceiling' in global temperature). Though carbon pricing instruments like carbon taxes, cap-and-trade and hybrids have been well studied, not much is known about their properties in the presence of 'offset' schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism. More work is also required to understand the strategic implications of the uncertainty surrounding climate change and how this affects, for example, the choice of climate change strategy ('precautionary' or 'wait and see'), how uncertainty impacts the propensity of countries to sign a climate treaty, and the extent to which the possibility of a climate catastrophe fosters or hinders cooperation. Understanding political economy issues is also vital in tackling climate change because efficient climate policies stand little chance of being successfully negotiated and implemented if they do not receive the support of the electorate. The papers in the special issue of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management are precisely devoted to this broad research agenda.(C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Recent climatic trends and climate model projections indicate that climate change will modify rangeland ecosystem functions and the services and livelihoods that they provision. Recent history has demonstrated that climatic variability has a strong influence on both ecological and social components of rangeland systems and that these systems possess substantial capacity to adapt to climatic variability. Specific objectives of this synthesis are to: 1) evaluate options to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and future climate change; 2) survey actions that individuals, enterprises, and social organizations can use to adapt to climate change; and 3) assess options for system transformation when adaptation is no longer sufficient to contend with climate change. Mitigation for carbon sequestration does not appear economically viable, given the small and highly variable carbon dioxide fluxes of rangeland ecosystems and the high transaction costs that would be incurred. In contrast, adaptation strategies are numerous and provide a means to manage risks associated with climate change. Adaptation strategies are diverse, including altered risk perception by individuals, greater flexibility of production enterprises, and modifications to social organizations that emphasize climatic variability, rather than consistency. Many adaptations represent "no regrets" actions because their implementation can be justified without emphasis on pending climate change. Adaptations specific to livestock production systems can include flexible herd management, alternative livestock breeds or species, innovative pest management, modified enterprise structures, and geographic relocation. Social-ecological systems in which adaptation is insufficient to counter the adverse consequences of climate change might undergo transformative change to produce alternative ecosystem services, production enterprises, and livelihoods. The rangeland profession is in a pivotal position to provide leadership on this global challenge because it represents the intersection of management and scientific knowledge, includes diverse stakeholders who derive their livelihoods from rangelands, and interacts with organizations responsible for rangeland stewardship.Patterns of national climate policy performance and their implications for the geopolitics of climate change are examined. An overview of levels of emissions performance across countries is first provided. Substantial changes in emissions trends over time are documented, notably with GHG emissions trajectories, which are shaped less and less by the developed/developing country divide. Various patterns of policy convergence and divergence in the types of policies states implement are then surveyed. Four broad types of explanation that may account for these trends are then explored: (1) variation in the institutional form of country-level governance regimes, (2) patterns of dependence on fossil fuel energy, (3) broad systemic differences among states (specifically in their population densities, carbon intensity, and per capita incomes, and (4) variations in the traditions of economic intervention by states. The article contributes to the growing body of work on comparative climate policy, and provides a first attempt at exploring the comparative politics of instrument choice. The analysis challenges the continued importance of a North-South divide for the future of climate policy, thus reinforcing a sense of the new geopolitics' of climate change. Some of the implications of the analysis for debates about the form of future international agreement on mitigation policy are also explored. Policy relevance The article contributes to the understanding of the variety of institutional conditions under which policy makers develop policy and thus the constraints and opportunities for the design of international agreements under these conditions.Improving energy efficiency in dwellings is generally seen as the low-hanging fruit of climate change mitigation. In particular decreased heat loss through better insulation is suggested as one of the most cost-effective means to achieve the ambitious national and international goals of climate gas reduction. However, the literature shows that a profitable technological solution is not sufficient to reach the energy goals. Aspects such as a lack of information, unobserved costs, and heterogeneity among users can compromise the success of technical innovation. Still, there are successful concepts that drive the technological development in the construction sector. The Passive House is an example for such innovations that manage to bridge the energy efficiency gap. This paper addresses the Passive House concept and standard as a success story of technological innovation. With Bruno Latour's Science in Action (1987) as a starting point, we describe the conditions under which the standard was created, the role of the network built around the Passive House Institute, and the consequences of exporting the standard. We identify success factors that have supported the diffusion of the Passive House standard and concept and discuss its possible development in the current situation which is characterized by its wide-spread adoption. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For the post-Kyoto period, Turkey strongly emphasizes the establishment of national emission trading system by 2015 and its integration with the EU ETS along its accession process to the EU. In this paper, we study the mechanisms of adjustment and economic welfare consequences of various ETS regimes that Turkey considers to apply by 2020, i.e. regional ETS and international trading within the EU ETS. We conduct our analysis under the current EU 20-20-20 emission target, 20%, and also under its revised version, 30%. We find that Turkey has economic gains from linking with the EU ETS under the 20% cap, in comparison to the domestic ETSs. Despite the EU's welfare loss under linkage in comparison to the case where Turkey has domestic abatement efforts, it still prefers linking as it increases economic well being compared to the case where Turkey does not abate. Under 30% cutback, Turkey has critical output loss under linkage due to high abatement burden on the EU, while the EU is better off as it passes some of its abatement burden to Turkey. Therefore, emission quotas and their allocation across the ETS and non ETS sectors become highly critical in distributing the overall economic gains from bilateral trading. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are significant differences in the methods employed by various organizations to estimate the cost of carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems for fossil fuel power plants. Such differences often are not apparent in publicly reported CCS cost estimates, and thus contribute to misunderstanding, confusion, and mis-representation of CCS cost information, especially among audiences not familiar with the details of CCS costing. Given the international importance of CCS as an option for climate change mitigation, efforts to harmonize methods of estimating CCS costs and improving the communication of cost assumptions and results are especially urgent and timely. Based on an analysis of current deficiencies, this paper recommends a common costing methodology plus guidelines for CCS cost reporting to improve the clarity and consistency of cost estimates for greenhouse gas mitigation measures. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The ratio of warming to cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide has been shown to be approximately independent of time and emissions scenarios and directly relates emissions to temperature. It is therefore a potentially important tool for climate mitigation policy. The transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions (TCRE), defined as the ratio of global-mean warming to cumulative emissions at CO2 doubling in a 1% yr(-1) CO2 increase experiment, ranges from 0.8 to 2.4 K EgC(-1) in 15 models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5)-a somewhat broader range than that found in a previous generation of carbon-climate models. Using newly available simulations and a new observational temperature dataset to 2010, TCRE is estimated from observations by dividing an observationally constrained estimate of CO2-attributable warming by an estimate of cumulative carbon emissions to date, yielding an observationally constrained 5%-95% range of 0.7-2.0 K EgC(-1).Although protected areas in Africa contain possibly the highest repositories of carbon and thus can play a role in mitigating the effects of climate change through carbon sequestration, they are threatened due to increasing levels of deforestation and forest degradation (DFD). However, little information is available on the on-site causes of DFD in these areas. This paper estimates the levels of DFD and identifies the drivers in the Ankasa Conservation Area (ACA) in Ghana as a case study. A survey was used to identify both direct and underlying factors that promote the DFD. The extent of deforestation was estimated using satellite images. The survey data were analyzed using rankings and ordinal logistic regression techniques, while digital image classification and change detection were used to analyze land cover changes. The results show that DFD occurred at a higher rate in the periphery of the ACA compared to the core-protected and the farthest areas. Agricultural and wood harvesting activities were the main direct causes of DFD. Poverty and large in-migrations of people for cocoa farming were important underlying economic and population growth factors. To address these problems and enable ACA to contribute more to biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, the community resource management institutions should be fully adopted and strengthened and priority given to livelihood improvement and ecosystem services provision in the periphery of the ACA. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is one of the significant concerns in land and resource management, creating an urgent need to build social-ecological capacity to address widespread and uncertain environmental changes. Given the diversity and complexity of ecological responses to climate change "ecosystem management" approaches are needed to provide solutions for meeting both ecological and human needs, while reducing anthropogenic warming and climate-related impacts on society. For instance, ecosystem management can contribute to a reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions through improved land-use and reduced deforestation at a regional scale. Further, conserving and restoring naturally-functioning ecosystems, which is often one of the goals of ecosystem management can significantly contribute to buffering ecological responses to climate extremes such as droughts and wildfires. Moreover, ecosystem management helps build capacity for learning and adaptation at multiple scales. As a result, societies will be better prepared to respond to surprises and uncertainties associated with climate change. In this regard, it is imperative to reframe climate change issues based on the ecosystem approach. Although climate change and ecosystem management plans have largely developed independently, it is now essential for all stakeholders to work together to achieve multiple goals. The ecosystem-based approaches can enable flexible and effective responses to the uncertainties associated with climate change. Reframing ecosystem management helps to face an urgent need for reconsideration and improvement of social-ecological resilience in order to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.DayCent is a biogeochemical model of intermediate complexity widely used to simulate greenhouse gases (GHG), soil organic carbon and nutrients in crop, grassland, forest and savannah ecosystems. Although this model has been applied to a wide range of ecosystems, it is still typically parameterized through a traditional "trial and error" approach and has not been calibrated using statistical inverse modelling (i.e. algorithmic parameter estimation). The aim of this study is to establish and demonstrate a procedure for calibration of DayCent to improve estimation of GHG emissions. We coupled DayCent with the parameter estimation (PEST) software for inverse modelling. The PEST software can be used for calibration through regularized inversion as well as model sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. The DayCent model was analysed and calibrated using N2O flux data collected over 2 years at the Iowa State University Agronomy and Agricultural Engineering Research Farms, Boone, IA. Crop year 2003 data were used for model calibration and 2004 data were used for validation. The optimization of DayCent model parameters using PEST significantly reduced model residuals relative to the default DayCent parameter values. Parameter estimation improved the model performance by reducing the sum of weighted squared residual difference between measured and modelled outputs by up to 67 %. For the calibration period, simulation with the default model parameter values underestimated mean daily N2O flux by 98 %. After parameter estimation, the model underestimated the mean daily fluxes by 35 %. During the validation period, the calibrated model reduced sum of weighted squared residuals by 20 % relative to the default simulation. Sensitivity analysis performed provides important insights into the model structure providing guidance for model improvement.Recent research exposing environmental and social externalities of biofuels has undermined the earlier national consensus that they would provide climate mitigation and rural development benefits, but support for ethanol remains strong in Iowa. The objective of this paper is to understand how stakeholder groups in Iowa have framed the benefits and risks associated with ethanol's impact on the local economy and environment. Our case study draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants from agricultural organizations, environmental organizations, and government departments in the state. We find that in Iowa, widespread support for ethanol production exists among government, energy, and farm groups, and that they frame ethanol production as economically beneficial to rural communities and agriculture, while minimizing the possibility of associated environmental risks. Although participants from environmental organizations in Iowa express apprehension about the environmental impacts of expanded corn ethanol production, their unease is muted in relation to economic benefits and in relation to other environmental issues, and few have publicly voiced their concerns. To understand these findings, we draw from the environmental sociology literature that examines the role of powerful natural resource interests in framing the importance of resource extraction and commodity production to community identity and economy and in delegitimizing and naturalizing associated environmental issues and problems. We argue that powerful natural resource interests in Iowa both naturalize environmental problems related to ethanol production and engage in diversionary reframing to emphasize the economic benefits while minimizing or rejecting the potential environmental risks.The accident in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011 has reactivated the discussion on how to meet ambitious climate mitigation objectives as some European countries reconsider the contribution of nuclear power in their energy mix. This study evaluates the impact of nuclear power reduction in Europe on the electricity mix under carbon emission reduction scenarios while considering the availability of carbon capture and storage technological options (CCS). The potential cost of carbon reduction is also addressed using the bottom-up optimization model TIAM-FR. The results suggest that CCS technologies constitute an interesting option in a case of stringent climate targets and limited nuclear electricity. However, the unavailability of CCS technologies induces a significant increase in carbon marginal cost and energy system cost to achieve the climate policy. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With climate change, an increasingly important focus of scientific and policy discourse, the Russian government has aimed to position the country as one of the leaders of the global process for addressing climate change. This article reviews a breadth of literature to analyze the politico-economic situation in Russia with regard to international climate change negotiations, related domestic policies, societal attitudes, and climatic change impacts on Russia's territory. The analysis demonstrates how Russia has a pivotal role in influencing the future direction of international climate change mitigation and adaptation. Not only is Russia predisposed geographically to the impacts of climate change, but also it is a major emitter of greenhouse gases and a global supplier of fossil fuels, and remains a major force in international politics. This unique confluence of circumstances leaves Russia with a challenging dilemma. It can choose to acquiesce to short-term political and economic considerations, adopt weak mitigation measures, and face potentially significant impacts. Or it can apply its considerable attributes and powers to initiate an epoch of international action to secure a low-carbon climate-resilient future. Although the former will see Russia subsumed into the international malaise on climate change, the latter may both quench the nation's thirst for greatness' and fill the void of international leadership. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The past five years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of media and scientific publications on the topic of climate engineering, or geoengineering, and some scientists are increasingly calling for more research on climate engineering as a possible supplement to climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. In this context, understanding the current state of climate engineering research can help inform policy discussions and guide future research directions. Bibliometric analysisthe quantitative analysis of publicationsis particularly applicable to fields with large bodies of literature that are difficult to summarize by traditional review methods. The multidisciplinary nature of the published literature on climate engineering makes it an ideal candidate for bibliometric analysis. Publications on climate engineering are found to be relatively recent (more than half of all articles during 1988-2011 were published since 2008), include a higher than average percentage of nonresearch articles (30% compared with 8-15% in related scientific disciplines), and be predominately produced by countries located in the Northern Hemisphere and speaking English. The majority of this literature focuses on land-based methods of carbon sequestration, ocean iron fertilization, and solar radiation management and is produced with little collaboration among research groups. This study provides a summary of existing publications on climate engineering, a perspective on the scientific underpinnings of the global dialogue on climate engineering, and a baseline for quantitatively monitoring the development of climate engineering research in the future. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This essay proposes an innovative institutional strategy for global climate protection, quite distinct from but ultimately complementary to the UNFCCC climate treaty negotiations. Our "building block" strategy relies on a variety of smaller-scale transnational cooperative arrangements, involving not only states, but also subnational jurisdictions, firms, and civil society organizations, to undertake activities whose primary goal is not climate mitigation but which will achieve greenhouse gas reductions as a byproduct. This strategy avoids the problems inherent in developing an enforceable, comprehensive treaty regime by mobilizing other incentives-including economic self-interest, energy security, cleaner air, and furtherance of international development- to motivate a range of actors to cooperate on actions that will also produce climate benefits. The strategy uses three specific models of regime formation (club, linkage, and dominant actor models) which emerge from economics, international relations, and organizational behavior, to develop a variety of transnational regimes that are generally self-enforcing and sustainable, avoiding the free rider and compliance problems endemic in collective action to provide public goods. These regimes will contribute to global climate action not only by achieving emissions reductions in the short term, but also by creating global webs of cooperation and trust, and by linking the building block regimes to the UNFCCC system through greenhouse gas monitoring and reporting systems. We argue that the building blocks regimes would thereby help secure eventual agreement on a comprehensive climate treaty.Soil amendments can increase net primary productivity (NPP) and soil carbon (C) sequestration in grasslands, but the net greenhouse gas fluxes of amendments such as manure, compost, and inorganic fertilizers remain unclear. To evaluate opportunities for climate change mitigation through soil amendment applications, we designed a field-scale model that quantifies greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, CH4, and N2O) from the production, application, and ecosystem response of soil amendments. Using this model, we developed a set of case studies for grazed annual grasslands in California. Sensitivity tests were performed to explore the impacts of model variables and management options. We conducted Monte Carlo simulations to provide estimates of the potential error associated with variables where literature data were sparse or spanned wide ranges. In the base case scenario, application of manure slurries led to net emissions of 14 Mg CO(2)e ha(-1) over a 3-year period. Inorganic N fertilizer resulted in lower greenhouse gas emissions than the manure (3 Mg CO(2)e ha(-1)), assuming equal rates of N addition and NPP response. In contrast, composted manure and plant waste led to large offsets that exceeded emissions, saving 23 Mg CO(2)e ha(-1) over 3 years. The diversion of both feedstock materials from traditional high-emission waste management practices was the largest source of the offsets; secondary benefits were also achieved, including increased plant productivity, soil C sequestration, and reduced need for commercial feeds. The greenhouse gas saving rates suggest that compost amendments could result in significant offsets to greenhouse gas emissions, amounting to over 28 MMg CO(2)e when scaled to 5% of California rangelands. We found that the model was highly sensitive to manure and landfill management factors and less dependent on C sequestration, NPP, and soil greenhouse gas effluxes. The Monte Carlo analyses indicated that compost application to grasslands is likely to lead to net greenhouse gas offsets across a broad range of potential environmental and management conditions. We conclude that applications of composted organic matter to grasslands can contribute to climate change mitigation while sustaining productive lands and reducing waste loads.Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration in croplands plays a critical role in climate change mitigation and food security, whereas the stability and saturation of the sequestered SOC have not been well understood yet, particularly in rice (Oryza sativa L.) fields. The objective of this study was to determine the long-term effect of inorganic fertilization alone or combined with organic amendments on SOC stability in a double rice cropping system, and to characterize the saturation behavior of the total SOC and its fractions in the paddy soil. Soils were collected from a long-term field experiment in subtropical China where different fertilization regimes have been carried out for 31 years. The total SOC pool was separated into four fractions, characteristic of different turnover rates through chemical fractionation. Annual organic carbon (C) inputs were also estimated by determining the C content in crop residues and organic amendments. Relative to the initial level, long-term double rice cropping without any fertilizer application significantly increased SOC concentration, suggesting that double rice cropping facilitates the storage and accumulation of SOC. The partial substitution of inorganic fertilizers with organic amendments significantly increased total SOC concentration compared to the unfertilized control. Total SOC increased significantly with greater C inputs and did not show any saturation behavior. Increased SOC was primarily stored in the labile fraction with input from organic amendments. However, other less labile SOC fractions showed no further increase with greater C inputs exhibiting C saturation. While the paddy soil holds a high potential for SOC sequestration, stable C fractions saturate with increasing C inputs, and thus, additional C inputs mainly accumulate in labile soil C pools.Quantitative simulations of the global-scale benefits of climate change mitigation are presented, using a harmonised, self-consistent approach based on a single set of climate change scenarios. The approach draws on a synthesis of output from both physically-based and economics-based models, and incorporates uncertainty analyses. Previous studies have projected global and regional climate change and its impacts over the 21st century but have generally focused on analysis of business-as-usual scenarios, with no explicit mitigation policy included. This study finds that both the economics-based and physically-based models indicate that early, stringent mitigation would avoid a large proportion of the impacts of climate change projected for the 2080s. However, it also shows that not all the impacts can now be avoided, so that adaptation would also therefore be needed to avoid some of the potential damage. Delay in mitigation substantially reduces the percentage of impacts that can be avoided, providing strong new quantitative evidence for the need for stringent and prompt global mitigation action on greenhouse gas emissions, combined with effective adaptation, if large, widespread climate change impacts are to be avoided. Energy technology models suggest that such stringent and prompt mitigation action is technologically feasible, although the estimated costs vary depending on the specific modelling approach and assumptions.Sophisticated modeling techniques can help policy makers examine technology interventions aimed at addressing climate change mitigation and other environmental issues. Since adoption of a new technology is not only based on technical properties, policy makers must also consider human behavior. This paper presents a model for simulating heating system adoption processes from an end-user perspective. A literature review was carried out to identify potential decision-making variables and their relationships. An empirical survey was then conducted to test the variables and their interconnections as well as to derive model parameters. The empirically grounded agent-based model is able to reproduce the general patterns of heating system diffusion observable in Norway. The results suggest that increased adoption of wood-pellet heating is dependent on improved functional reliability and the improvement of fuel stability. Price volatility of both wood-pellets and electricity are important variables. Spatial results indicate that wood-pellet adopters are those closeby wood-pellet suppliers. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate scientists face a serious public image problem because the next round of climate models they are working on are destined to produce a wider rather than a smaller range of uncertainty. To the public and policymakers, it will look as if the scientific understanding of climate change is becoming less rather than more clear, particularly as there will be a deliberate attempt by lobbyists and parts of the media to portray the science in this way. There is a need to communicate the fundamental strengths and weaknesses of climate modelling as an essential tool to allow us to understand the consequences of our actions and to develop appropriate policy. We need to demonstrate that with greater knowledge comes greater uncertainty but also greater transparency and confidence in our knowledge. New communications strategies that do not solely rely on the weight of evidence' argument but instead aim to win hearts and minds are required. New policy approaches combining win-win solutions are required if issues of climate change mitigation and adaptation are to be tackled.An agreement on climate change mitigation hinges on large-scale international cooperation. Rational agents are supposed to consider the cost and benefits of cooperation, which then determine their negotiation positions. Behavioral economics provides experimental evidence that decision-making in negotiation-like situations is influenced by systematic cognitive biases and social interaction. In this paper, we examine the impact of bounded rationality and social preferences on bargaining in international climate negotiations and illustrate how particular deviations from full rationality affect the incentives to cooperate. Of special interest are fairness preferences for burden-sharing rules and behavioral responses to different framings of climate change and policy, as well as implications of these for communication about climate change. The analysis will further address different levels of representation, including individual citizens, politicians, experts, and (professional) negotiators. The consequences of the most prominent nonstandard preferences and biases for negotiating a climate treaty are assessed, and specific strategies to foster cooperation are suggested.The effects of land-use changes on climate are assessed using specified-concentration simulations complementary to the representative concentration pathway 2.6 (RCP2.6) and RCP8.5 scenarios performed for phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). This analysis focuses on differences in climate and land-atmosphere fluxes between the ensemble averages of simulations with and without land-use changes by the end of the twenty-first century. Even though common land-use scenarios are used, the areas of crops and pastures are specific for each Earth system model (ESM). This is due to different interpretations of land-use classes. The analysis reveals that fossil fuel forcing dominates land-use forcing. In addition, the effects of land-use changes are globally not significant, whereas they are significant for regions with land-use changes exceeding 10%. For these regions, three out of six participating models-the Second Generation Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2); Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model, version 2 (Earth System) (HadGEM2-ES); and Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate, Earth System Model (MIROC-ESM)-reveal statistically significant changes in mean annual surface air temperature. In addition, changes in land surface albedo, available energy, and latent heat fluxes are small but significant for most ESMs in regions affected by land-use changes. These climatic effects are relatively small, as land-use changes in the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios are small in magnitude and mainly limited to tropical and subtropical regions. The relative importance of the climatic effects of land-use changes is higher for the RCP2.6 scenario, which considers an expansion of biofuel croplands as a climate mitigation option. The underlying similarity among all models is the loss in global land carbon storage due to land-use changes.Potential conflicts exist between biodiversity conservation and climate-change mitigation as trade-offs in multiple-use land management. This study aims to evaluate public preferences for biodiversity conservation and climate-change mitigation policy considering respondents' uncertainty on their choice. We conducted a choice experiment using land-use scenarios in the rural Kushiro watershed in northern Japan. The results showed that the public strongly wish to avoid the extinction of endangered species in preference to climate-change mitigation in the form of carbon sequestration by increasing the area of managed forest. Knowledge of the site and the respondents' awareness of the personal benefits associated with supporting and regulating services had a positive effect on their preference for conservation plans. Thus, decision-makers should be careful about how they provide ecological information for informed choices concerning ecosystem services tradeoffs. Suggesting targets with explicit indicators will affect public preferences, as well as the willingness of the public to pay for such measures. Furthermore, the elicited-choice probabilities approach is useful for revealing the distribution of relative preferences for incomplete scenarios, thus verifying the effectiveness of indicators introduced in the experiment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The SunZia Southwest Transmission Project is a high-voltage transmission line under development in southern New Mexico and Arizona. The project was created to allow the expansion of the renewable energy production economy, and is also part of larger efforts at climate change mitigation. It has the support of federal and state governments, and has been fast-tracked by the Obama Administration. However, in spite of its potential to increase the availability of clean energy, conflicts between local environmental groups and government agencies over siting difficulties have impeded its development. Efforts to streamline the permitting process have been largely unsuccessful, as they often focus on centralizing authority at the expense of local input, and result in increased opposition from citizen groups and local governments who feel their needs and concerns are being ignored. This article examines the current permitting process, potential methods of centralization to increase efficiency, and the procedural protections that will be necessary to ensure that this efficiency does not reduce local input. Easing the development of renewable energy is both necessary to protect the climate, and a concept that lends itself to broad support from environmental groups, government agencies, and the business sector. This article proposes that this potential for support should be encouraged and conflict minimized by ensuring adequate opportunities for meaningful citizen input that can help SunZia and similar projects be embraced rather than rejected by their local communities.In July 2012, the Australian government instituted the Clean Energy Legislative Package. This policy, commonly known as the carbon policy or carbon tax, holds industries responsible for emissions they release through a carbon price. Because this will have an indirect effect on consumer costs, the policy also includes a compensation package for households indirectly impacted. This study, building upon past work in distributive justice, examines the determinants of the policy's acceptance and support. We proposed perceived fairness and effectiveness of the policy, and endorsement of free-market ideology, would directly predict policy acceptance. We tested this through an on-line survey of Australian citizens and found that policy acceptance was predicted by perceived fairness and effectiveness. More Australians found the policy acceptable (43 %) than unacceptable (36 %), and many found it neither acceptable nor unacceptable (21 %). In contrast, when asked about support, more Australians tended not to support the policy (53 %) than support it (47 %). Support was predicted by main effects for perceived fairness, effectiveness, free-market ideology, and the interaction between free-market ideology and effectiveness. We conclude by considering some of the implications of our results for the implementation of policies addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation, for theories of social justice and attitudinal ambivalence, and for the continuing integration of research between economics and psychology. Furthermore, we argue for the distinction between policy support and acceptance and discourage the interchangeable use of these terms.Nitrous oxide (N2O) emission from denitrification in agricultural soils often increases with N fertilizer and soil nitrate (NO3) concentrations. Overwintering cover crops in cereal rotations can decrease soil NO3 concentrations and may decrease N2O emissions. However, mineralizable C availability can be a more important control on N2O emission than NO3 concentration in fertilized soils, and cover crop residue provides mineralizable C input. We measured the effect of a winter rye (Secale cereale L.) cover crop on soil N2O emissions from a maize (Zea mays L.) cropping system treated with banded N fertilizer at three rates (0, 135, and 225 kg N ha(-1)) in Iowa. In addition, we conducted laboratory incubations to determine if potential N2O emissions were limited by mineralizable C or NO3 at these N rates. The rye cover crop decreased soil NO3 concentrations at all N rates. Although the cover crop decreased N2O emissions when no N fertilizer was applied, it increased N2O emissions at an N rate near the economic optimum. In laboratory incubations, N2O emissions from soils from fertilizer bands did not increase with added NO3, but did increase with added glucose. These results show that mineralizable C availability can control N2O emissions, indicating that C from cover crop residue increased N2O emissions from fertilizer band soils in the field. Mineralizable C availability should be considered in future evaluations of cover crop effects on N2O emissions, especially as cover crops are evaluated as a strategy to mitigate agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.Land-use changes and land cover strongly influence carbon stock and distribution within ecosystems. Changing the land-use from natural forest to other land-uses has been more rapid in the past few decades than at any time in Iran's history. In this study, we investigated the effects of changing the land-use from natural forest to other land-uses on carbon stocks in northern Iran. We selected five sites for this study: (I) a natural forest, (II) an agricultural field and (III) plantations of three different species (Alnus subcordata. L, Acer velutinum.Boiss and Cupressus sempervirens). We examined the effects of land-use changes on: (I) soil carbon stock (0-50 cm depth), (II) biomass and carbon content of grassy vegetation and litter and (III) above- and below-ground biomass C in trees. Soil C stock was higher under A. velutinum and C. sempervirens whereas it was lower under A. subcordata and agricultural sites. Biomass and C content of grassy vegetation were significantly higher at A. velutinum and C. sempervirens plantations. However, litter biomass and C content were significantly higher at the natural forest site. Natural forest had the highest amount of C content in above- and below-ground biomass. Total ecosystem C stocks declined following land-use changes.The objective of this study was to examine the influence of stand age class (I:<20 years old; II: 21-40 years old; III: 41-60 years old) on BEF and stem density and to develop allometric equations for the three stand age classes in order to estimate the biomass of pitch pine (Pinus rigida Mill.) plantations in South Korea. BEFs (g g(-1)) were observed to decrease in the three stand age classes with 1.983 for stand I, 1.201 for stand II and 1.131 for stand III. Results showed that there was a significant statistical difference in BEFs (p < 0.05) among the stand age classes. The stem densities (g cm(-3)) of the three stands were 0.430, 0.451 and 0.481, respectively, and there was no significant statistical difference (p > 0.05) among stand age classes. Both model 1 (DBH as predictor variable) and model 2 (DBH and total height as predictor variables) showed good results based on the model evaluation criteria (R-2, RMSE and FI). The stem wood had the highest biomass distribution percentage of the three age classes with 52%, 67% and 69% determined for classes I, II and III, respectively. Stand age-dependent BEFs and allometric equations will help forest managers to accurately estimate the biomass and carbon stocks of the different pitch pine plantations in South Korea, which is essential in climate change mitigation.Renewable electricity expansion highlights the need for a review of energy storage options. Wind power growth, in particular, is likely to require the support of dedicated fast-start reserve capacity. Moreover, in New Zealand, non-pumped hydroelectricity-based storage has only limited potential to meet seasonal variations of hydro inflows. This constraint has contributed to several 'dry-year' events over the last decade. This case study surveys New Zealand electricity sector experts as to the feasibility of meeting reserve capacity needs while reducing carbon emissions through the introduction of pumped hydro and utility-scale batteries by 2025. Most respondents project peak power demand to continue to increase, resulting in new-build centralised (similar to 150 MW) thermal reserve power sources. Pumped hydro is seen by most as prohibitively costly, but is almost universally viewed as technically capable of providing renewables support and peak power adequacy. Utility-scale batteries are seen as least cost-effective, with very high storage costs per kWh and most likely only to be used in NZ for very high-value applications where there is a strong technical advantage, such as the six-second instantaneous reserve. A price of carbon of around NZ$100/tCO(2)-e, however, was seen as making these technologies much more competitive, and climate change mitigation was seen as a strong driver of these storage options. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing emission of transport-related pollutants has become a key issue in relation to climate change mitigation and the improvement of air quality in China's cities. This article aims to examine the effects of changes in the built environment on transportation by examining the case of Beijing. Looking at household survey data, the analysis found that individual workers' commuting behavior (concerning travel destination, mode choice and travel time) is significantly related to some aspects of the built environment when socioeconomic and demographic characteristics are taken into account. There are obvious differences in the effects of the built environment on commuting across income groups, occupations and industries.Emissions reductions focused on anthropogenic climate-forcing agents with relatively short atmospheric lifetimes, such as methane (CH4) and black carbon, have been suggested as a strategy to reduce the rate of climate change over the next several decades. We find that reductions of methane and black carbon would likely have only a modest impact on near-term global climate warming. Even with maximally feasible reductions phased in from 2015 to 2035, global mean temperatures in 2050 would be reduced by 0.16 degrees C, with a range of 0.04-0.35 degrees C because of uncertainties in carbonaceous aerosol emissions and aerosol forcing per unit of emissions. The high end of this range is only possible if total historical aerosol forcing is relatively small. More realistic emission reductions would likely provide an even smaller climate benefit. We find that the climate benefit from reductions in short-lived forcing agents are smaller than previously estimated. These near-term climate benefits of targeted reductions in short-lived forcers are not substantially different in magnitude from the benefits from a comprehensive climate policy.Effective climate mitigation requires international cooperation, and these global efforts need broad public support to be sustainable over the long run. We provide estimates of public support for different types of climate agreements in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Using data from a large-scale experimental survey, we explore how three key dimensions of global climate cooperation-costs and distribution, participation, and enforcement-affect individuals' willingness to support these international efforts. We find that design features have significant effects on public support. Specifically, our results indicate that support is higher for global climate agreements that involve lower costs, distribute costs according to prominent fairness principles, encompass more countries, and include a small sanction if a country fails to meet its emissions reduction targets. In contrast to well-documented baseline differences in public support for climate mitigation efforts, opinion responds similarly to changes in climate policy design in all four countries. We also find that the effects of institutional design features can bring about decisive changes in the level of public support for a global climate agreement. Moreover, the results appear consistent with the view that the sensitivity of public support to design features reflects underlying norms of reciprocity and individuals' beliefs about the potential effectiveness of specific agreements.As members of a democratic society, individuals face complex decisions about whether to support climate change mitigation, vaccinations, genetically modified food, nanotechnology, geoengineering, and so on. To inform people's decisions and public debate, scientific experts at government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and other organizations aim to provide understandable and scientifically accurate communication materials. Such communications aim to improve people's understanding of the decision-relevant issues, and if needed, promote behavior change. Unfortunately, existing communications sometimes fail when scientific experts lack information about what people need to know to make more informed decisions or what wording people use to describe relevant concepts. We provide an introduction for scientific experts about how to use mental models research with intended audience members to inform their communication efforts. Specifically, we describe how to conduct interviews to characterize people's decision-relevant beliefs or mental models of the topic under consideration, identify gaps and misconceptions in their knowledge, and reveal their preferred wording. We also describe methods for designing follow-up surveys with larger samples to examine the prevalence of beliefs as well as the relationships of beliefs with behaviors. Finally, we discuss how findings from these interviews and surveys can be used to design communications that effectively address gaps and misconceptions in people's mental models in wording that they understand. We present applications to different scientific domains, showing that this approach leads to communications that improve recipients' understanding and ability to make informed decisions.This paper examines the health implications of global PM reduction accompanying greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the 180 national economies of the global macroeconomy. A human health effects module based on empirical data on GHG emissions, PM emissions, background PM concentrations, source apportionment and human health risk coefficients is used to estimate reductions in morbidity and mortality from PM exposures globally as co-reduction of GHG reductions. These results are compared against the "fuzzy bright line" that often underlies regulatory decisions for environmental toxics, and demonstrate that the risk reduction through PM reduction would usually be considered justified in traditional risk-based decisions for environmental toxics. It is shown that this risk reduction can be on the order of more than 4 x 10(-3) excess lifetime mortality risk, with global annual cost savings of slightly more than $10B, when uniform GHG reduction measures across all sectors of the economy form the basis for climate policy ($2.2B if only Annex I nations reduce). Consideration of co-reduction of PM-10 within a climate policy framework harmonized with other environmental policies can therefore be an effective driver of climate policy. An error analysis comparing results of the current model against those of significantly more spatially resolved models at city and national scales indicates errors caused by the low spatial resolution of the global model used here may be on the order of a factor of 2. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar power represents a vast resource which could, in principle, meet the world's needs for clean power generation. Recent growth in the use of photovoltaic (PV) technology has demonstrated the potential of solar power to deliver on a large scale. Whilst the dominant PV technology is based on crystalline silicon, a wide variety of alternative PV materials and device concepts have been explored in an attempt to decrease the cost of the photovoltaic electricity. This article explores the potential for such emerging technologies to deliver cost reductions, scalability of manufacture, rapid carbon mitigation and new science in order to accelerate the uptake of solar power technologies.The 2009 Copenhagen Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC epitomizes the stalling of international negotiations on climate change mitigation and adaptation. In the grim days of climate change governance, the literature tends to neglect ethical arguments on the responsibility of polluting states. Rather, it turns to a desperate quest for `whatever works'. This article addresses the development of a discipline round an emerging regime. It reviews in particular the principled approaches of climate governance, doctrinal analyses on mitigation, the shift from `enforcement' to `facilitation' and to `liability', the fragmented governance of adaptation in the human rights, development and migration regimes, and innovative scholarship on the transnational regime complex concerning climate change.Action on mitigating climate change seems to be grinding to a halt within the global political arena. Major emitters seem unwilling to accept binding emissions reductions targets as their economies have stagnated. The talks at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in 2009 were meant to represent a watershed moment for global cooperation on climate change(1) but produced little more than a symbolic accord(2). Fast forward another three years and the outcomes of the Doha negotiations(3-5) deferred the key decisions on climate change mitigation to 2015, as the Durban Platform did before(6). Is this neglect justified? Here we use the PAGE09 integrated assessment model(7) to estimate the mean social cost of CO2 for a wide range of economic growth scenarios. The social cost of CO2 measures the net present value of the extra damage caused by the emission of one more tonne of CO2 today. The results show that in a world with sustained lower economic growth the mean social cost of CO2 increases because the climate impacts occur in a relatively poor world, suggesting that, if anything, mitigating climate change should be a higher priority for policymakers in a low-growth world.Although a potentially useful climate change mitigation tool, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) efforts in the United States remain mired in demonstration and development. Prior studies suggest numerous reasons for this stagnation. This article empirically assesses those claims. Using an anonymous opinion survey completed by 229 CCS experts, we identified four primary barriers to CCS commercialization: (1) cost and cost recovery, (2) lack of a price signal or financial incentive, (3) long-term liability risks, and (4) lack of a comprehensive regulatory regime. These results give empirical weight to previous studies suggesting that CCS cost (and cost recovery) and liability risks are primary barriers to the technology. However, the need for comprehensive rather than piecemeal CCS regulation represents an emerging concern not previously singled out in the literature. Our results clearly show that the CCS community sees fragmented regulation as one of the most significant barriers to CCS deployment. Specifically, industry is united in its preference for a federal regulatory floor that is subject to state-level administration and sensitive to local conditions. Likewise, CCS experts share broad confidence in the technology's readiness, despite continued calls for commercial-scale demonstration projects before CCS is widely deployed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study investigates the partial correlations between the share of new renewable electricity in a country and income, energy security and climate change mitigation. For the purpose of this paper, new renewables refer to the electricity generating technologies that have not yet reached grid-parity (e.g. wind, solar). The author proposes a measure of energy security depending on the role of inputs (coal and natural gas) in electricity generation as well as a rneasure of a country's potential to mitigate climate change based on the quantity of fossil-based electricity generated per capita. Findings from 2007, 2008 and 2009 data on 107 middle and high-income economies show that rich countries relying on coal imports to generate their power, are also those with the highest shares of electric power from new renewables. (C) 2013 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Residential buildings account for about one-third of the final energy demand in Norway. Many cost-effective measures for reducing heat losses in buildings are known, and their implementation may make the building sector one of the largest contributors to climate change mitigation. To determine the sectoral emission reduction potential, we model a complete transformation of the dwelling stock by 2050 by applying both renovation and reconstruction with different energy standards. We propose a new dynamic stock model with an optimization routine to identify and prioritize buildings with the highest energy saving potential. We combine material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to extend the sectoral boundary beyond direct household emissions. Despite an expected population growth of almost 50% between 2000 and 2050, sectoral carbon emissions in that period may drop between 30% and 40% for scenarios where the stock is completely transformed by either reconstruction or renovation to the passive house standard. Due to its lower upstream impact, renovation leads to a lower sectoral carbon footprint than reconstruction. Full transformation, however, is not sufficient to achieve an emissions reduction of 50% or more, as required on average to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, because hot water generation, appliances, and lighting will dominate the sectoral footprint once the stock has been transformed. A first estimate of the additional impact of realistic energy efficiency and lifestyle changes in the nonheating part of the sector reveals a maximal total reduction potential of about 75%.Development of a quantitative understanding of soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics is vital for management of soil to sequester carbon (C) and maintain fertility, thereby contributing to food security and climate change mitigation. There are well-established process-based models that can be used to simulate SOC stock evolution; however, there are few plant residue C input values and those that exist represent a limited range of environments. This limitation in a fundamental model component (i.e., C input) constrains the reliability of current SOC stock simulations. This study aimed to estimate crop-specific and environment-specific plant-derived soil C input values for agricultural sites in France based on data from 700 sites selected from a recently established French soil monitoring network (the RMQS database). Measured SOC stock values from this large scale soil database were used to constrain an inverse RothC modelling approach to derive estimated C input values consistent with the stocks. This approach allowed us to estimate significant crop-specific C input values (P < 0.05) for 14 out of 17 crop types in the range from 1.84 +/- 0.69 t C ha(-1) year(-1) (silage corn) to 5.15 +/- 0.12 t C ha(-1) year(-1) (grassland/pasture). Furthermore, the incorporation of climate variables improved the predictions. C input of 4 crop types could be predicted as a function of temperature and 8 as a function of precipitation. This study offered an approach to meet the urgent need for crop-specific and environment-specific C input values in order to improve the reliability of SOC stock prediction.Climate change will affect the energy system in a number of ways, one of which is through changes in demands for heating and cooling in buildings. Understanding the potential effect of climate change on heating and cooling demands requires taking into account not only the manner in which the building sector might evolve over time, but also important uncertainty about the nature of climate change itself. In this study, we explore the uncertainty in climate change impacts on heating and cooling requirement by constructing estimates of heating and cooling degree days (HDD/CDDs) for both reference (no-policy) and 550 ppmv CO2 concentration pathways built from three different Global Climate Models (GCMs) output and three scenarios of gridded population distribution. The implications that changing climate and population distribution might have for building energy consumption in the U.S. and China are then explored by using the results of HDD/CDDs as inputs to a detailed, building energy model, nested in the long-term global integrated assessment framework, Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). The results across the modeled changes in climate and population distributions indicate that unabated climate change would cause building sector's final energy consumption to decrease modestly (6 % decrease or less depending on climate models) in both the U.S. and China by the end of the century as decreased heating consumption more than offsets increased cooling using primarily electricity. However, global climate change virtually has negligible effect on total CO2 emissions in the buildings sector in both countries. The results also indicate more substantial implications for the fuel mix with increases in electricity and decreases in other fuels, which may be consistent with climate mitigation goals. The variation in results across all scenarios due to variation of population distribution is smaller than variation due to the use of different climate models.Biomethane from energy crops is a renewable energy carrier and therefore it potentially contributes to climate change mitigation. However, significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from cultivation and processing must be considered. Among those, the production and use of nitrogen fertilizers, the resulting nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, the methane emissions from digestate storage and the energy consumption of the biogas plant are crucial factors. In the present paper an integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) of GHG emissions from biomethane production is carried out, taking into account own measurements and experience data from a modern biogas plant located in Umbria, Italy. The study is also focused on the electricity consumption of the biogas plant, assessing the specific absorption power of each machinery. The analysis is based on the methodology defined by the European Union Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC (RED). The main result is that the biomethane chain exceeds the minimum value of GHG saving (35%) mainly due to the open storage of digestate. However by varying the system, using heat and electricity from a biogas CHP plant and covering digestate storage tank, a reduction of 68.9% could be obtained. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The National Emission Ceilings Directive regulating European Union (EU) Member State emissions of acidifying and eutrophying pollutants as well as ozone precursors was adopted in 2001. Its interim environmental objectives, to be achieved in 2010, consist of a reduction of the exceedance of critical loads for acidification and eutrophication and of critical levels of ground-level ozone relative to 1990. Objectives for acidification and ground-level ozone were to be met in every single receptor grid cell in the European Union. For eutrophication, however, the target was to be met only for the EU area as a whole. Since 2001, reported emissions for 1990 and 2010 as well as knowledge and methodologies and for computing atmospheric dispersion and critical loads and levels have changed. In this paper, it is shown that acidification and eutrophication objectives are largely met when assessing them with the knowledge of 2001. However, with 2012 knowledge the interim objectives for acidification and eutrophication are not met in most of the EU. The objectives for ground-level ozone are met in most EU Member States with both 2001 and present (2012) knowledge, with the exception of the objective for forests, which was still not met in most Member States in 2010. Therefore, it seems prudent that science is employed also in the implementation phase of policy agreements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A key policy challenge in Indian megacities is to curb high concentrations of PM2.5 and mitigate associated adverse health impacts. Using the Greenhouse Gases and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model we carry out an integrated analysis of the air quality regulations across different sectors for the city of Delhi. Our findings show that PM2.5 concentrations for Delhi will not reach the recommended national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) even by 2030 under the current policies scenario. Adopting advanced control technologies reduces PM2.5 concentrations by about 60% and all-cause mortality by half in 2030. Climate change mitigation policies significantly reduce greenhouse gases, but have a modest impact on reducing PM2.5 concentrations. Stringent policies to control the net flow of air pollution from trans-boundary sources will play a crucial role in reducing pollution levels in Delhi city. Achieving NAAQS requires a stringent policy portfolio that combines advanced control technologies with a switch to cleaner fuels and the control of trans-boundary pollution. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Natural disasters related to hydro-meteorological events have increased during the last few decades, both in frequency and severity. Mexico is heavily exposed to climate change, but has also suffered in the past from climate variability (Blumel, 2009). The new risks oblige the government to develop mitigation processes, while the affected people are implementing strategies of adaptation and resilience-building, mostly at the family and community level. This includes forced migration due to climate change into the slums of megacities or illegal immigration to the United States. The arid, semi-arid and subhumid condition of 49.2 per cent of the territory of Mexico is seriously affected by climate change. In addition, poverty and the lack of jobs have created complex livelihood situations, in which young people leave rural areas, partly due to socio-economic pull factors. In this paper, we address the functional relationships between climate patterns and migration processes in Mexico, highlighting the linkages between the origin of migrants, their economic activity and their vulnerability to extreme events and we discuss long-term climate patterns. Agriculture still uses 78 per cent of the available water in Mexico. In the drylands the competition for water use requires an integrated policy to deal with the new threats from climate change, including mitigation from the top down and adaptation processes from the bottom up to reduce the social vulnerability of the rural population in the highly affected drylands of the central and northern parts of Mexico. The new policy for administering water resources, which promotes the efficient use of an increasingly scarce and polluted resource, still suffers from a lack of participation by the affected rural population. In this paper, we propose an integrated management system from the watershed onwards, involving socio-economic, political, cultural and hydrological variables, to deal with the rising scarcity of water, and the uncertainty and complexity of climate change.Assessment of social impacts of products and services has gained increasing interest in society. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool developed to estimate the impacts of products and services from cradle to grave. Traditionally LCA has focused on environmental impacts, but recently approaches for social life cycle assessment (SLCA) have also been developed. Most of them fairly address social performances of business, but the aim of this paper is to analyse the possibilities and development needs in the complementary approach, which is the evaluation of social impacts in LCA. We review the field in general and take a closer look at the empirical case of biodiesel production, which is a timely topic globally in view of the climate change mitigation objectives. The analysis is carried out at three levels - company, regional, and state level. Despite active development in the field of SLCA, we conclude that in many cases it is not yet possible to carry out a comprehensive SLCA. Finally, we outline lines of research that would further improve the methodological and empirical basis of SLCA at various levels of decision-making. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To develop public policies that respond to climate change demands examination of multiple physical and social variables. In the context of coastal zone management, these range from addressing prevailing environmental conditions, to accommodating the socio-economic needs of local communities and acknowledging the attitudes, norms and environmental behaviours of individuals. This paper focuses on these social aspects and develops an explanatory framework to model the effectiveness of coastal management policies based on the role of social capital. Although some studies have emphasised the positive influence of social capital on natural resources management, so far little research has been undertaken linking social capital as a multi-dimensional characteristic with the level of public receptiveness to policies seeking to mitigate risk at the coast. This paper analyzes the influence of three social capital elements on public responsiveness: social trust, institutional trust and social networks. The paper postulates that higher levels of social and institutional trust result in more positive community perceptions of proposed policies for coastal management. Similar reactions are expected in communities where dense social networks lead to higher levels of environmental awareness. The paper then identifies potential new areas of research that might address the current lack of consideration of non-economic social costs and benefits on public acceptability of coastal management policies. A principal claim made here is that higher levels of policy acceptability are generally evident in coastal communities with strong social capital, as such communities tend to perceive low social costs and high benefits arising from policy intervention. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current carbon accounting methodologies often assume interactions between above-ground and below-ground carbon, without considering effects of land management. We used data from two long-term coffee agroforestry experiments in Costa Rica and Nicaragua to assess the effect on total soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks of (i) organic versus conventional management, (ii) higher versus moderate agronomic inputs, (iii) tree shade types. During the first nine years of coffee establishment total 0-40 cm depth SOC stocks decreased by 12.4% in Costa Rica and 0.13% in Nicaragua. Change in SOC differed consistently amongst soil layers: at 0-10 cm SOC stocks increased by 2.14 and 1.26 Mg C ha(-1) in Costa Rica and Nicaragua respectively; however much greater reduction occurred at 20-40 cm (9.65 and 2.85 Mg C ha(-1) respectively). Organic management caused a greater increase in 0-10 cm SOC but did not influence its reduction at depth. Effects of shade type were smaller, though heavily pruned legume shade trees produced a greater increase in 0-10 cm SOC than unpruned timber trees. No significant differences in SOC stocks were found between shaded and unshaded systems at any depth and SOC was poorly correlated with above-ground biomass stocks highlighting poor validity of "expansion factors" currently used to estimate SOC. SOC stock changes were significantly negatively correlated with initial SOC stock per plot, providing evidence that during establishment of these woody-plant-dominated agricultural systems SOC stocks tend to converge towards a new equilibrium as a function of the change in the quantity and distribution of organic inputs. Therefore it cannot be assumed that tree-based agricultural systems necessarily lead to increases in soil C stocks. While high inputs of organic fertiliser/tree pruning mulch increased surface-layer SOC stocks, this did not affect stocks in deeper soil, where decreases generally exceeded any gains in surface soil. Therefore site- and system-specific sampling is essential to draw meaningful conclusions for climate change mitigation strategies. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper examines tree crop farming and alley farming practices in Africa and the impact of such practices on carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. Using a meta-analysis approach, estimates of soil carbon and organic matter accumulated due to tree crop farming and alley farming were standardized due to different units of reporting for soil carbon. A review of the scientific literature on soil carbon sequestration in Africa was carried out to assess the greenhouse gas mitigation potential of different water management activities using on-line scholarly and scientific databases as well as more general search engines such as Google. The review covered 90 study estimates across African countries. The results show that the mean carbon sequestrations through tree crop farming and alley farming are 1,359 and 1,458 kg C ha(-1) yr(-1), respectively. It is therefore important that these practices be scaled-out to more farmers due to the benign effect on the environment.This paper examines water management practices used in Africa such as rain water harvesting, slope/barriers and terracing and the impact of such practices on carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. Using a meta-analysis approach estimates of soil carbon and organic matter accumulated due to rain water harvesting, slope/barriers and terracing were standardized due to different units of reporting soil carbon. A review of the scientific literature on soil carbon sequestration in Africa was carried out to assess the greenhouse gas mitigation potential of different water management activities using on-line scholarly and scientific databases as well as more general search engines such as Google. The review covered 56 study estimates across African countries. The results show that the mean carbon through rain water harvesting was 839 kg C ha(-1) yr(-1). This practice is particularly important to framers in the semi-arid and arid region where there are few days of rains but rain-fed agriculture is practiced. The practices of cross slope barriers and terracing sequester additional carbon at the mean rate of 1193 and 421 kg C ha(-1) y(-1), respectively. It is therefore important that these practices be scaled-out to more farmers due to the benign effect on the environment.Past research on identifying potentially negative impacts of forest management activities has primarily focused on traditional forest operations. The increased use of forest biomass for energy in recent years, spurred predominantly by policy incentives for the reduction of fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, and by efforts from the forestry sector to diversify products and increase value from the forests, has again brought much attention to this issue. The implications of such practices continue to be controversially debated; predominantly the adverse impacts on soil productivity and biodiversity, and the climate change mitigation potential of forest bioenergy. Current decision making processes require comprehensive, differentiated assessments of the known and unknown factors and risk levels of potentially adverse environmental effects. This paper provides such an analysis and differentiates between the feedstock of harvesting residues, roundwood, and salvage wood. It concludes that the risks related to biomass for energy outtake are feedstock specific and vary in terms of scientific certainty. Short-term soil productivity risks are higher for residue removal. There is however little field evidence of negative long-term impacts of biomass removal on productivity in the scale predicted by modeling. Risks regarding an alteration of biodiversity are relatively equally distributed across the feedstocks. The risk of limited or absent short-term carbon benefits is highest for roundwood, but negligible for residues and salvage wood. Salvage operation impacts on soil productivity and biodiversity are a key knowledge gap. Future research should also focus on deriving regionally specific, quantitative thresholds for sustainable biomass removal. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As forecasted by the International Energy Agency Energy Technology Perspectives baseline scenario, the largest increment in LDV (light-duty vehicles) stock, travel demand and transport sector energy consumption will take place in the developing world. In the developing countries where the import of used vehicles is allowed, a considerable portion of the LDV stock increment will be realized with used vehicles. In this paper, the analytical framework for assessment of climate change mitigation potential of transport sector in developing countries is adapted in order to incorporate the expected vehicle fleet increase with used vehicles. The evaluation of appropriate mitigation strategies is performed using the GHG Costing Model (GACMO), which compares each mitigation option with the BAU (business-as-usual) option and determines its environmental effectiveness (t CO2 reduced) and economic effectiveness (US$/t CO2 reduced). The adapted analytical framework is applied on the case of transport sector of Macedonia, evaluating appropriate options inline with five mitigation strategies: improvement of vehicle fleet, introduction of low carbon fuels, improvement of travel behaviour, advancement of vehicle equipment and improvement of driver behaviour. The resulting marginal cost curve for the year 2020 indicates a total achievable reduction of 22% with respect to BAU GHG transport sector emissions, with bulk of it at relatively high specific costs of around 90 US$/t CO2. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Feeding 9-10billion people by 2050 and preventing dangerous climate change are two of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Both challenges must be met while reducing the impact of land management on ecosystem services that deliver vital goods and services, and support human health and well-being. Few studies to date have considered the interactions between these challenges. In this study we briefly outline the challenges, review the supply- and demand-side climate mitigation potential available in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use AFOLU sector and options for delivering food security. We briefly outline some of the synergies and trade-offs afforded by mitigation practices, before presenting an assessment of the mitigation potential possible in the AFOLU sector under possible future scenarios in which demand-side measures codeliver to aid food security. We conclude that while supply-side mitigation measures, such as changes in land management, might either enhance or negatively impact food security, demand-side mitigation measures, such as reduced waste or demand for livestock products, should benefit both food security and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. Demand-side measures offer a greater potential (1.5-15.6Gt CO2-eq. yr(-1)) in meeting both challenges than do supply-side measures (1.5-4.3Gt CO2-eq. yr(-1) at carbon prices between 20 and 100US$ tCO(2)-eq. yr(-1)), but given the enormity of challenges, all options need to be considered. Supply-side measures should be implemented immediately, focussing on those that allow the production of more agricultural product per unit of input. For demand-side measures, given the difficulties in their implementation and lag in their effectiveness, policy should be introduced quickly, and should aim to codeliver to other policy agenda, such as improving environmental quality or improving dietary health. These problems facing humanity in the 21st Century are extremely challenging, and policy that addresses multiple objectives is required now more than ever.Land use/cover classification is a key research field in remote sensing and land change science as thematic maps derived from remotely sensed data have become the basis for analyzing many socio-ecological issues. However, land use/cover classification remains a difficult task and it is especially challenging in heterogeneous tropical landscapes where nonetheless such maps are of great importance. The present study aims at establishing an efficient classification approach to accurately map all broad land use/cover classes in a large, heterogeneous tropical area, as a basis for further studies (e.g., land use/cover change, deforestation and forest degradation). Specifically, we first compare the performance of parametric (maximum likelihood), non-parametric (k-nearest neighbor and four different support vector machines - SVM), and hybrid (unsupervised-supervised) classifiers, using hard and soft (fuzzy) accuracy assessments. We then assess, using the maximum likelihood algorithm, what textural indices from the gray-level co-occurrence matrix lead to greater classification improvements at the spatial resolution of Landsat imagery (30 m), and rank them accordingly. Finally, we use the textural index that provides the most accurate classification results to evaluate whether its usefulness varies significantly with the classifier used. We classified imagery corresponding to dry and wet seasons and found that SVM classifiers outperformed all the rest. We also found that the use of some textural indices, but particularly homogeneity and entropy, can significantly improve classifications. We focused on the use of the homogeneity index, which has so far been neglected in land use/cover classification efforts, and found that this index along with reflectance bands significantly increased the overall accuracy of all the classifiers, but particularly of SVM. We observed that improvements in producer's and user's accuracies through the inclusion of homogeneity were different depending on land use/cover classes. Early-growth/degraded forests, pastures, grasslands and savanna were the classes most improved, especially with the SVM radial basis function and SVM sigmoid classifiers, though with both classifiers all land use/cover classes were mapped with producer's and user's accuracies of similar to 90%. Our classification approach seems very well suited to accurately map land use/cover of heterogeneous landscapes, thus having great potential to contribute to climate change mitigation schemes, conservation initiatives, and the design of management plans and rural development policies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines how the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) would affect U.S. agriculture with special reference to water resources. The bill's cap and trade provisions for greenhouse gases would significantly raise fertilizer, irrigation pumping, and other energy-related costs. By 2030, it would reduce U.S. irrigation water use by >11 percent and fertilizer use by >18 percent with positive implications for water conservation and quality. Carbon offset provisions create financial incentives for farmers to sequester carbon by planting trees on cropland, reducing agricultural production and raising prices. Because sequestration potential differs by region, most of the estimated 51 million acres of converted cropland would be in the Corn Belt and Mississippi Delta. Afforestation would reduce Delta water use further, but increase water use in other regions compared to cap and trade alone. Compared to a no-policy baseline, irrigation water use declines 10 percent nationally, but increases in the Southern Plains. H.R. 2454 may have significant water conservation effects in some regions, but increase competition for water in others. By reducing fertilizer use and dramatically altering land use patterns in parts of the Mississippi Basin, it may also provide unexpected water quality benefits. Unintended water use and quality consequences of climate policies merit further research.This paper provides an analysis of co-benefits for traditional air pollutants made possible through global climate policies using the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model in the time horizon up to 2050. The impact analysis is based on projections of energy consumption provided by the Prospective Outlook for the Long term Energy System (POLES) model for a scenario without any global greenhouse gas mitigation efforts, and for a 2A degrees C climate policy scenario which assumes internationally coordinated action to mitigate climate change. Outcomes of the analysis are reported globally and for key world regions: the European Union (EU), China, India and the United States. The assessment takes into account current air pollution control legislation in each country. Expenditures on air pollution control under the global climate mitigation regime are reduced in 2050 by 250 billion a,not sign when compared to the case without climate measures. Around one third of financial co-benefits estimated world-wide in this study by 2050 occur in China, while an annual cost saving of 35 billion (Euros) a,not sign is estimated for the EU if the current air pollution legislation and climate policies are adopted in parallel. Health impacts of air pollution are quantified in terms of loss of life expectancy related to the exposure from anthropogenic emissions of fine particles, as well as in terms of premature mortality due to ground-level ozone. For example in China, current ambient concentrations of particulate matter are responsible for about 40 months-losses in the average life expectancy. In 2050, the climate strategies reduce this indicator by 50 %. Decrease of ozone concentrations estimated for the climate scenario might save nearly 20,000 cases of premature death per year. Similarly significant are reductions of impacts on ecosystems due to acidification and eutrophication.The climate impact from a long-distance trip can easily vary by a factor of 10 per passenger depending on mode choice, vehicle efficiency, and occupancy. In this paper we compare the specific climate impact of long-distance car travel with coach, train, or air trips. We account for both, CO2 emissions and short-lived climate forcers. This particularly affects the ranking of aircrafts climate impact relative to other modes. We calculate the specific impact for the Global Warming Potential and the Global Temperature Change Potential, considering time horizons between 20 and 100 years, and compare with results accounting only for CO2 emissions. The cars fuel efficiency and occupancy are central whether the impact from a trip is as high as from air travel or as low as from train travel. These results can be used for carbon-offsetting schemes, mode choice and transportation planning for climate mitigation.Mitigation plans to combat climate change depend on the combined implementation of many abatement options, but the options interact. Published anthropogenic emissions inventories are disaggregated by gas, sector, country, or final energy form. This allows the assessment of novel energy supply options, but is insufficient for understanding how options for efficiency and demand reduction interact. A consistent framework for understanding the drivers of emissions is therefore developed, with a set of seven complete inventories reflecting all technical options for mitigation connected through lossless allocation matrices. The required data set is compiled and calculated from a wide range of industry, government, and academic reports The framework is used to create a global Sankey diagram to relate human demand for services to anthropogenic emissions. The application of this framework is demonstrated through a prediction of per capita emissions based on service demand in different countries, and through an example showing how the "technical potentials" of a set of separate mitigation options should be combined.Reducing atmospheric CO2 using a combination of air capture and offshore geological storage can address technical and policy concerns with climate mitigation. Because CO2 mixes rapidly in the atmosphere, air capture could operate anywhere and in principle reduce CO2 to preindustrial levels. We investigate the Kerguelen plateau in the Indian Ocean, which offers steady wind resources, vast subseafloor storage capacities, and minimal risk of economic damages or human inconvenience and harm. The efficiency of humidity swing driven air capture under humid and windy conditions is tested in the laboratory. Powered by wind, we estimate similar to 75 Mt CO2/yr could be collected using air capture and sequestered below seafloor or partially used for synfuel. Our analysis suggests that Kerguelen offers a remote and environmentally secure location for CO2 sequestration using renewable energy. Regional sequestering a large fraction of 21st century emissions.Characterization of the anticipated performance of energy technologies to inform policy decisions increasingly relies on expert elicitation. Knowledge about how elicitation design factors impact the probabilistic estimates emerging from these studies is, however, scarce. We focus on nuclear power, a large-scale low-carbon power option, for which future cost estimates are important for the design of energy policies and climate change mitigation efforts. We use data from three elicitations in the USA and in Europe and assess the role of government research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) investments on expected nuclear costs in 2030. We show that controlling for expert, technology, and design characteristics increases experts' implied public RD&D elasticity of expected costs by 25%. Public sector and industry experts' cost expectations are 14% and 32% higher, respectively than academics. US experts are more optimistic than their EU counterparts, with median expected costs 22% lower. On average, a doubling of public RD&D is expected to result in an 8% cost reduction, but the uncertainty is large. The difference between the 90th and 10th percentile estimates is on average 58% of the experts' median estimates. Public RD&D investments do not affect uncertainty ranges, but US experts are less confident about costs than Europeans.Integrated assessment models suggest that the large-scale deployment of bioenergy could contribute to ambitious climate change mitigation efforts. However, such a shift would intensify the global competition for land, with possible consequences for 1.5 billion smallholder livelihoods that these models do not consider. Maintaining and enhancing robust livelihoods upon bioenergy deployment is an equally important sustainability goal that warrants greater attention. The social implications of biofuel production are complex, varied and place-specific, difficult to model, operationalize and quantify. However, a rapidly developing body of social science literature is advancing the understanding of these interactions. In this letter we link human geography research on the interaction between biofuel crops and livelihoods in developing countries to integrated assessments on biofuels. We review case-study research focused on first-generation biofuel crops to demonstrate that food, income, land and other assets such as health are key livelihood dimensions that can be impacted by such crops and we highlight how place-specific and global dynamics influence both aggregate and distributional outcomes across these livelihood dimensions. We argue that place-specific production models and land tenure regimes mediate livelihood outcomes, which are also in turn affected by global and regional markets and their resulting equilibrium dynamics. The place-specific perspective suggests that distributional consequences are a crucial complement to aggregate outcomes; this has not been given enough weight in comprehensive assessments to date. By narrowing the gap between place-specific case studies and global models, our discussion offers a route towards integrating livelihood and equity considerations into scenarios of future bioenergy deployment, thus contributing to a key challenge in sustainability sciences.Mitigation of the potential impacts of climate change is one of the leading policy concerns of the 21st century. However, there continues to be heated debate about the nature, the content and, most importantly, the impact of the policy actions needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions. One contributing factor is the lack of systematic evidence on the impact of mitigation policy on the welfare of the poor in developing countries. In this letter we consider two alternative policy scenarios, one in which only the Annex I countries take action, and the second in which the first policy is accompanied by a forest carbon sequestration policy in the non-Annex regions. Using an economic climate policy analysis framework, we assess the poverty impacts of the above policy scenarios on seven socio-economic groups in 14 developing countries. We find that the Annex-I-only policy is poverty friendly, since it enhances the competitiveness of non-Annex countries-particularly in agricultural production. However, once forest carbon sequestration incentives in the non-Annex regions are added to the policy package, the overall effect is to raise poverty in the majority of our sample countries. The reason for this outcome is that the dominant impacts of this policy are to raise returns to land, reduce agricultural output and raise food prices. Since poor households rely primarily on their own labor for income, and generally own little land, and since they also spend a large share of their income on food, they are generally hurt on both the earning and the spending fronts. This result is troubling, since forest carbon sequestration-particularly through avoided deforestation-is a promising, low cost option for climate change mitigation.While the international community aims to limit global warming to below 2 degrees C to prevent dangerous climate change, little progress has been made towards a global climate agreement to implement the emissions reductions required to reach this target. We use an integrated energy-economy-climate modeling system to examine how a further delay of cooperative action and technology availability affect climate mitigation challenges. With comprehensive emissions reductions starting after 2015 and full technology availability we estimate that maximum 21st century warming may still be limited below 2 degrees C with a likely probability and at moderate economic impacts. Achievable temperature targets rise by up to similar to 0.4 degrees C if the implementation of comprehensive climate policies is delayed by another 15 years, chiefly because of transitional economic impacts. If carbon capture and storage (CCS) is unavailable, the lower limit of achievable targets rises by up to similar to 0.3 degrees C. Our results show that progress in international climate negotiations within this decade is imperative to keep the 2 degrees C target within reach.Globally, groundwater use is intensifying to meet demands for irrigation, urban supply, industrialization, and, in some instances, electrical power generation. In response to hydroclimatic variability, surface water is being substituted with groundwater, which must be viewed as a strategic resource for climate adaptation. In this sense, the supply of electricity for pumping is an adaptation policy tool. Additionally, planning for climate-change mitigation must consider CO2 emissions resulting from pumping. This paper examines the influence of electricity supply and pricing on groundwater irrigation and resulting emissions, with specific reference to Mexico-a climate-water-energy 'perfect storm'. Night-time power supply at tariffs below the already-subsidized rates for agricultural groundwater use has caused Mexican farmers to increase pumping, reversing important water and electricity conservation gains achieved. Indiscriminate groundwater pumping, including for virtual water exports of agricultural produce, threatens the long-term sustainability of aquifers, non-agricultural water uses, and stream-aquifer interactions that sustain riparian ecosystems. Emissions resulting from agricultural groundwater pumping in Mexico are estimated to be 3.6% of total national emissions and are equivalent to emissions from transporting the same agricultural produce to market. The paper concludes with an assessment of energy, water, and climate trends coupled with policy futures to address these challenges.Global climate change increases heat loads in urban areas causing health and productivity risks for millions of people. Inhabitants in tropical and subtropical urban areas are at especial risk due to high population density, already high temperatures, and temperature increases due to climate change. Air conditioning is growing rapidly, especially in South and South-East Asia due to income growth and the need to protect from high heat exposures. Studies have linked increased total hourly electricity use to outdoor temperatures and humidity; modeled future predictions when facing additional heat due to climate change, related air conditioning with increased street level heat and estimated future air conditioning use in major urban areas. However, global and localized studies linking climate variables with air conditioning alone are lacking. More research and detailed data is needed looking at the effects of increasing air conditioning use, electricity consumption, climate change and interactions with the urban heat island effect. Climate change mitigation, for example using renewable energy sources, particularly photovoltaic electricity generation, to power air conditioning, and other sustainable methods to reduce heat exposure are needed to make future urban areas more climate resilient.In response to growing concerns about global warming and climate change, numerous energy scenario or computable general equilibrium models have been developed worldwide to provide alerts, mitigation, adaptation, financial and sustainability policy options. However, rigorous evidence-based economic measurement and analysis of the trade-off between CO2 emissions and economic growth for credible climate change policies are still limited globally. To improve analysis, debate and policies in this field with Thailand as a special case-study, the paper develops a new "top down" endogenous growth-CO2 emission multi-equation model with an endogenous Kuznets environmental curve to provide robust empirical findings on the trade-off, its implications for climate change mitigation policy and credible national responses. The findings importantly satisfy the Friedman (1953), Kydland (2006) simplicity and realism criterion. Recommended policies are also critically discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Introduction. The cultivation of high-value fruit species is a profitable agricultural activity in many tropical countries; however, intensive fruit cultivation may depend on high amounts of external inputs. The objective of our study was to quantify and compare the resource use during the cultivation of eight tropical fruit species (Rubus glaucus, Solanum quitoense, Passiflora edulis, Cyphomandra betacea, Physalis peruviana, Ananas comosus, Persea americana and Mangifera indica) commonly cultivated in Colombia. It further aimed to identify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the selected production systems and to highlight the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. Materials and methods. The analysis was based on data from agricultural databases and applied a life-cycle assessment with energy use and GHG emissions as impact categories. Furthermore, economic indicators were taken into account with the aim of integrating the environmental and economic goals of production systems. Results and discussion. Among the eight fruit species studied, mango (Mangifera indica) was found to have the lowest and tree tomato (Cyphomandra betacea) the highest emission profile. The variability in resource use among growers of the same species was high, indicating the need to improve management abilities at the farm level. Mineral fertilizer production was the highest contributor to GHG emissions. GHG- and energy-efficient management alternatives would have a high potential to reduce the carbon footprint of fruit cultivation.REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) has been suggested as a climate change mitigation strategy that is based on the philosophy to reward countries for reducing their deforestation and forest degradation by financial benefits via the generation of carbon credits. While the potential of REDD has been widely discussed, minor attention has been drawn to the implication of uncertainties and costs associated with the estimation of carbon stock changes. To raise awareness of these issues, we conducted a simulation study for a set of countries that show high to low deforestation rates, which demonstrates that the potential to generate benefits from REDD depends highly on the magnitude of the total error while assessment costs and the price of carbon credits play a minor role. For countries with low deforestation rates REDD is obviously not an option for generating benefits as they would need to implement monitoring systems that are able to estimate carbon stock changes with a total error well below 1 %. Total errors feasible under operational monitoring systems are only sufficient to gain revenues from REDD-regimes under high deforestation rates.This paper assesses three key energy sustainability objectives: energy security improvement, climate change mitigation, and the reduction of air pollution and its human health impacts. We explain how the common practice of narrowly focusing on singular issues ignores potentially enormous synergies, highlighting the need for a paradigm shift toward more holistic policy approaches. Our analysis of a large ensemble of alternate energy-climate futures, developed using MESSAGE, an integrated assessment model, shows that stringent climate change policy offers a strategic entry point along the path to energy sustainability in several dimensions. Concerted decarbonization efforts can lead to improved air quality, thereby reducing energy-related health impacts worldwide: upwards of 2-32 million fewer disability-adjusted life years in 2030, depending on the aggressiveness of the air pollution policies foreseen in the baseline. At the same time, low-carbon technologies and energy-efficiency improvements can help to further the energy security goals of individual countries and regions by promoting a more dependable, resilient, and diversified energy portfolio. The cost savings of these climate policy synergies are potentially enormous: $100-600 billion annually by 2030 in reduced pollution control and energy security expenditures (0.1-0.7 % of GDP). Novel aspects of this paper include an explicit quantification of the health-related co-benefits of present and future air pollution control policies; an analysis of how future constraints on regional trade could influence energy security; a detailed assessment of energy expenditures showing where financing needs to flow in order to achieve the multiple energy sustainability objectives; and a quantification of the relationships between different fulfillment levels for energy security and air pollution goals and the probability of reaching the 2 degrees C climate target.Afforestation is usually thought as a good approach to mitigate impacts of warming over a region. This study presents an argument that afforestation may have bigger impacts than originally thought by previous studies. The study investigates the impacts of afforestation on future climate and extreme events in Nigeria, using a regional climate model (RegCM3), forced with global climate model simulations. The impacts of seven afforestation options on the near future (2031-2050, under A1B scenario) climate and the extreme events are investigated. RegCM3 replicates essential features in the present-day (1981-2000) climate and the associated extreme events, and adequately simulates the seasonal variations over the ecological zones in the country. However, the model simulates the seasonal climate better over the northern ecological zones than over the southern ecological zones. The simulated spatial distribution of the extreme events agrees well with the observation, though the magnitude of the simulated events is smaller than the observed. The study shows that afforestation in Nigeria could have both positive and negative future impacts on the climate change and extreme events in the country. While afforestation reduces the projected global warming and enhances rainfall over the afforested area (and over coastal zones), it enhances the warming and reduces the rainfall over the north-eastern part of the country. In addition, the afforestation induces more frequent occurrence of extreme rainfall events (flooding) over the coastal region and more frequent occurrence of heat waves and droughts over the semi-arid region. The positive and negative impacts of the afforestation are not limited to Nigeria; they extend to the neighboring countries. While afforestation lowers the warming and enhances rainfall over Benin Republic, it increases the warming and lowers the rainfall over Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The result of the study has important implication for the ongoing climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in Nigeria.With the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Agreements reached in Cancun, Mexico, in December 2010, the future role of international GHG offsets in climate action has become particularly uncertain. One of the more vexing questions is: how offsets will be accounted for in reporting and reviewing progress toward meeting countries' emission-reduction pledges under the Cancun Agreements. This article quantifies the implications of double-counting international offsets by constructing and applying a model to analyse how potential offset supply and demand balances may evolve, based on specific assumptions about accounting rules, offset mechanisms, and country pledges for the year 2020. It is found that extensive use of international offsets, if counted both by the supplying (developing) and buying (developed) country, could effectively reduce the ambition of current pledges by up to 1.6 billion tonnes CO(2)e in 2020, suggesting that the current pledges could well fall even further short of the abatement needed to stay on a path consistent with limiting warming to 2 degrees C or 1.5 degrees C. If offsets do not represent additional reductions, then the dilution of pledges could be even greater. Possible remedies are described to address the risks of offset double-counting. Policy relevance This article finds that international GHG offsets could play a significant role in meeting developed-country pledges in 2020 - providing abatement to these countries exceeding 1GtCO(2)e. Yet significant decisions remain that will substantially determine whether offsets will contribute productively to meeting a global mandate to reduce emissions on a pathway consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C or 2 degrees C. The prospect of double-counting is a loophole that could weaken the lower end of pledges by as much as 1.1GtCO(2)e, and on the higher end of pledges by as much as 1.6GtCO(2)e, significantly diluting the ambition of the Cancun Agreements. Coupled to this is the possibility of considerable non-additional credits, which could lead to the further weakening of pledges. Upcoming negotiations under the UNFCCC process will provide the opportunity to address these concerns directly.A time series study was conducted to ascertain the effect of barometric pressure on the variability of CH4 and CO2 concentrations in a closed landfill site. An in situ data of methane/carbon dioxide concentrations and environmental parameters were collected by means of an in-borehole gas monitor, the GasClam (Ion Science, UK). Linear regression analysis was used to determine the strength of the correlation between ground-gas concentrations and barometric pressure. The result shows CH4 and CO2 concentrations to be variable with weak negative correlations of 0.2691 and 0.2773, respectively, with barometric pressure over the entire monitoring period. Although the R (2) was slightly improved by considering their concentration over single periods of rising and falling pressure, single periods of rising pressure and single periods of falling pressure, their correlations remained insignificant at 95 % confidence level. The result revealed that atmospheric pressure-the acclaimed major control on the variability of ground-gas concentration-is not always so. A case was made for the determination of other possible controls such as changes in temperature, soil permeability, landfill water depth, season, and geology of the borehole and also how much of control each factor would have on the variability/migration of CH4 and CO2 concentrations from the studied landfill.The overall aim of this work was to assess the effects of stump and root extraction on the long-term carbon sequestration and average carbon storage in the integrated production of energy biomass and stemwood (pulpwood and sawlogs) under different thinning options (unthinned, current thinning and 30% increased thinning thresholds from current thresholds). The growth and development of Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst.) stands on a fertile site (Oxalis-myrtillus) in central Finland (Joensuu region: 6239?N, 2937?E) was simulated for two consecutive rotation periods (80+80years/160years). Stemwood and energy biomass production, carbon sequestration, and average storage and emission dynamics related to the entire production process of biomass were assessed. The assessment was done by employing a life cycle assessment tool, which combines simulation outputs from an ecosystem model and the related technosystem emissions. It was found that stump and root harvesting constituted 21-36% of the total biomass production (energy biomass and stemwood) depending on the thinning regimes and rotation period. No considerable effect was found in stemwood production when stump and root extraction was compared to the regime in which stumps and roots were left at the site. Stump and root extraction did not affect carbon sequestration on the following rotation and, in fact, an increase in forest growth was found for the unthinned and 30% increased thresholds compared to the first rotation. The results also showed that if current thinning threshold is increased, win-win situations are possible, especially when climate change mitigation is the main concern. The substitution of coal with energy biomass is possible without reducing carbon storage in the forest ecosystem. The utilization of energy biomass, including stumps and roots, instead of coal could reduce up to 33% of emissions over two rotation periods depending on the thinning regimes. Even if stumps and roots were excluded, a maximum of 19% carbon emissions could be reduced by using only logging residues.With a focus on the interaction between long-term climate targets and personal transport we review the electrification of light duty vehicles (LDVs) within a model that utilizes a learning-by-researching structure. By modeling the demand of vehicles, the use of fuels and emissions implied, the model solves for the optimum RD&D investments that decrease the cost of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles. A range of technology and climate policy scenarios provide long term projections of vehicle use that highlight the potential synergies between innovation in the transportation sector and the energy sector. We find that even when the capital cost of electric drive vehicles (EDVs) remains higher than that of. traditional combustion engine alternatives, EDVs are likely to play a key role in the decarbonisation implied by stringent climate policy. Limited innovation in batteries results in notable increases in policy costs consistent with a two degree climate policy target. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate science suggests that, to have a high probability of limiting global warming to an average temperature increase of 2 degrees C, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 and be reduced to close to zero by 2040. However, the current trend is heading towards at least 4 degrees C by 2100 and little effective action is being taken. This paper commences the process of developing contingency plans for a scenario in which a sudden major global climate impact galvanises governments to implement emergency climate mitigation targets and programs. Climate activists assert that rapid mitigation is feasible, invoking the scale and scope of wartime mobilisation strategies. This paper draws upon historical accounts of social, technological and economic restructurings in several countries during World War 2 in order to investigate potential applications of wartime experience to radical, rigorous and rapid climate mitigation strategies. We focus on the energy sector, the biggest single contributor to global climate change, in developed and rapidly developing countries. We find that, while wartime experience suggests some potential strategies for rapid climate mitigation in the areas of finance and labour, it also has severe limitations, resulting from its lack of democratic processes. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In agricultural production systems with shade trees, such as coffee, the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from production intensification can be compensated for, or even outweighed, by the increase in carbon sequestration into above-ground and below-ground tree biomass. We use data from a long-term coffee agroforestry experiment in Costa Rica to evaluate the trade-offs between intensification, profitability and net greenhouse gas emissions through two scenarios. First, by assessing the GHG emissions associated with conversion from shaded to more profitable full-sun (un-shaded) systems, we calculate the break-even carbon price which would need to be paid to offset the opportunity cost of not converting. The price per tCO(2)e of emissions reduction required to compensate for the coffee production revenue foregone varies widely from 9.3 to 196.3 US$ amongst different shaded systems. Second, as an alternative to intensification, production area can be extended onto currently forested land. We estimate this land-use change required to compensate for the shortfall in profitability from retaining lower intensity coffee production systems. For four of the five shade types tested, this land-use change causes additional GHG emissions >5 tCO(2)e ha(-1) yr(-1) resulting in net emissions >8 tCO(2)e ha(-1) yr(-1) for the whole system. We conclude that instead, by intensifying production, mechanisms similar to REDD that are based on reducing emissions through avoided land-use change (REAL) could play a major role in increasing the climate change mitigation success of agroforestry systems at the same time as aiding REDD through reducing pressure for further forest conversion to agriculture. (c) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soil amendment of biochar produced via pyrolysis of waste biomass had been proposed as a potential countermeasure to mitigate climate change in agriculture. An overall accounting of net greenhouse gas balance (NGHGB) and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) was conducted of a whole rice-winter wheat rotation year of 2010-2011 in a paddy soil under biochar soil amendment at different rates from Southeast China. Fluxes of soil carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) were measured using a static chamber method, and the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (NEE) was estimated by the difference between net primary production (NPP) and soil CO2 emissions (RH) for both rice and winter wheat growing seasons. While no change observed in RH, NPP of both rice and winter wheat was similar between the treatments except for an increase under BSA at lot ha(-1) over the control. However, seasonal total N2O emission was significantly and greatly decreased by 45.1% and 39.5% of rice growing season, and by 37.6% and 41.2% of winter wheat growing season under BSA treatment of 20 t ha(-1) and 40 t ha(-1) respectively over the control. Whereas, a 30.6% increase in seasonal total CH4 emission was observed only under BSA of 20 t ha(-1) of the rice growing season. However, BSA both at 20 t ha(-1) and 40 t ha(-1) exerted a great reduction in both NGHGB and GHGI of wheat cropping season but of the rice season. As an overall effect, a net reduction in GHGI by 10-20% with BSA was significant across all the biochar treatments. And this reduction could be accounted mainly by the consistent decrease in N2O emission across rice and wheat growing cycles with insignificant changes in soil respiration and CH4 flux during rice season. Whereas there could be variable changes in crop yield and net ecosystem GHGs balance with biochar rates and with crop cycles, biochar soil amendment (BSA) could have a great potential to reach a low carbon intensity production with sustaining crop productivity of a whole rice and wheat rotation system in rice-based agriculture of China. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change and global warming have worldwide adverse consequences. Biochar production and its use in agriculture can play a key role in climate change mitigation and help improve the quality and management of waste materials coming from agriculture and forestry. Biochar is a carbonaceous material obtained from thermal decomposition of residual biomass at relatively low temperature and under oxygen limited conditions (pyrolysis). Biochar is currently a subject of active research worldwide because it can constitute a viable option for sustainable agriculture due to its potential as a long-term sink for carbon in soil and benefits for crops. However, to date, the results of research studies on biochar effects on crop production show great variability, depending on the biochar type and experimental conditions. Therefore, it is important to identify the beneficial aspects of biochar addition to soil on crop yield in order to promote the adoption of this practice in agriculture. In this study, the effects of two types of biochar from agricultural wastes typical of Southern Spain: wheat straw and olive tree pruning, combined with different mineral fertilization levels on the growth and yield of wheat (Triticum durum L. cv. Vitron) were evaluated. Durum wheat was pot-grown for 2 months in a growth chamber on a soil collected from an agricultural field near Crdoba, Southern Spain. Soil properties and plant growth variables were studied in order to assess the agronomic efficiency of biochar. Our results show that biochar addition to a nutrient-poor, slightly acidic loamy sand soil had little effect on wheat yield in the absence of mineral fertilization. However, at the highest mineral fertilizer rate, addition of biochar led to about 20-30 % increase in grain yield compared with the use of the mineral fertilizer alone. Both biochars acted as a source of available P, which led to beneficial effects on crop production. In contrast, the addition of biochar resulted in decreases in available N and Mn. A maximum reduction in plant nutrient concentration of 25 and 80 % compared to nonbiochar-treated soils for N and Mn, respectively, was detected. This fact was related to the own nature of biochar: low available nitrogen content, high adsorption capacity, and low mineralization rate for N; and alkaline pH and high carbonate content for Mn. Our results indicate that biochar-based soil management strategies can enhance wheat production with the environmental benefits of global warming mitigation. This can contribute positively to the viability and benefits of agricultural production systems. However, the nutrient-biochar interactions should receive special attention due to the great variability in the properties of biochar-type materials.The temporal imbalance between the release and sequestration of forest carbon has raised a fundamental concern about the climate mitigation potential of forest biomass for energy. The potential carbon debt caused by harvest and the resulting time spans needed to reach pre-harvest carbon levels (payback) or those of a reference case (parity) have become important parameters for climate and bioenergy policy developments. The present range of analyses however varies in assumptions, regional scopes, and conclusions. Comparing these modeling efforts, we reveal that they apply different principle modeling frameworks while results are largely affected by the same parameters. The size of the carbon debt is mostly determined by the type and amount of biomass harvested and whether land-use change emissions need to be accounted for. Payback times are mainly determined by plant growth rates, i.e. the forest biome, tree species, site productivity and management. Parity times are primarily influenced by the choice and construction of the reference scenario and fossil carbon displacement efficiencies. Using small residual biomass (harvesting/processing), deadwood from highly insect-infected sites, or new plantations on highly productive or marginal land offers (almost) immediate net carbon benefits. Their eventual climate mitigation potential however is determined by the effectiveness of the fossil fuel displacement. We deem it therefore unsuitable to define political guidance by feedstock alone. Current global wood pellet production is predominantly residue based. Production increases based on low-grade stemwood are expected in regions with a downturn in the local wood product sector, highlighting the importance of accounting for regional forest carbon trends. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThere is an unavoidable degree of uncertainty associated with future climate projections, and even more unpredictability about the potential impact of different climate scenarios on the ecology and distribution of organisms. Conservationists face a major public communications challenge to both raise awareness and mobilise support for conservation and climate change mitigation/adaptation policies while realistically representing complex and uncertain scientific information. Here, we illustrate the interplay of these competing communication goals through a review of the representations of the golden toad in the print media and peer-reviewed literature (in English and Spanish). Since its disappearance in 1989 the toad has become an important conservation flagship species that has been frequently portrayed as the first verified extinction attributable to global warming. Moreover, there was an increase in the certainty of published news items regarding the toad and its demise, especially in the late 1990s. The uncertainty surrounding the toad's disappearance (apparent in the primary research literature) was poorly represented in the popular press. The transformation of the toad into an iconic species for climate change advocacy may reflect a perceived need to supply tangible evidence of biodiversity consequences arising from climate change and highlights the challenges facing conservation scientists in communicating scientific concerns and uncertainty via the media.This paper reviews research on the ecosystem services or multifunctionality of paddy rice cultivation in Japan, focusing on biodiversity as a basis for ecosystem services, with the aim of describing the current status and impact of the subject and exploring options for sustainable practices. Ecosystem services provided by paddy fields include; groundwater recharge, production of non-rice foods, flood control, soil erosion and landslide prevention, climate-change mitigation, water purification, culture and landscape, and support of ecosystems and biodiversity. Among these services, the value of services that regulate ecosystem functions was estimated to be US$ 72.8 billion in Japan. More than 5000 species have been recorded in paddy fields and the surrounding environment. Because paddy fields are artificially disturbed by water level management, plowing, and harvest, most species move between paddy fields and the surrounding environment. The linkage between paddy fields and the associated environment plays an important role in biodiversity. Two changes that have affected the ecosystem of paddy fields are modernization and abandonment of farming. Satoyama, a traditional socio-ecological production landscape, which provided a functional linkage between paddy fields and the associated environment has lost its functions. Biodiversity-conscious rice farming has been promoted by collaborations among farmers, consumers and governments. Biodiversity certification programs are successful examples Of biodiversity-conscious framing. In these programs incentives include direct payments and/or premium prices paid by consumers, as well as farmers willingness to improve the safety of food and environment. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change has a dual implication on the built environment: on one hand human settlements and buildings are vulnerable to the effects of changing climate and on the other hand the building sector has a significant climate change mitigation potential. The relevant sustainable development and building policies as well as the building design, construction and maintenance strategies should jointly respond both to adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. What should city developers focus on in order to plan a sustainable and safe city in a changing climate? This paper provides answers to this question, presenting a bottom-up methodology based on a generalized building typology of the residential building stock in order to estimate the mitigation potential and vulnerability of the residential sector. During the research, a case study has been implemented in Hungary to assess the structural impacts and vulnerability on the roof, particularly with respect to the wind load and to estimate the potential decrease of CO2 emission through refurbishment. Through the case study the paper highlights the most problematic areas of the city both from vulnerability and mitigation point of view where the attention of the city developers should be turned. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study estimated the effects of energy-efficiency building codesIECC 2003 and IECC 2006-in residential energy consumption, using the American Community Survey 2007. This study detected violations of the assumption of independence of observation, corrected them by applying a hierarchical estimation technique, and measured the state's heterogeneity. We found that households can save about 1.8 % of electricity, 1.3 % of natural gas, and 2.8 % of heating oil with the application of these energy efficiency codes, with corresponding reductions in the emissions of the global warming gas, CO2 of about 7.54 million metric tons per year if all homes apply these codes. For the pressing requirements of energy security and the limiting the emissions of CO2 for climate change mitigation, these energy efficiency codes can be an effective environmental policy measure for residential sector.A functional measuring, monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system is essential to assess the additionality and impact on forest carbon in REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) projects. This study assesses the MRV capacity and readiness of project developers at 20 REDD+ projects in Brazil, Peru, Cameroon, Tanzania, Indonesia and Vietnam, using a questionnaire survey and field visits. Nineteen performance criteria with 76 indicators were formulated in three categories, and capacity was measured with respect to each category. Of the 20 projects, 11 were found to have very high or high overall MRV capacity and readiness. At the regional level, capacity and readiness tended to be highest in the projects in Brazil and Peru and somewhat lower in Cameroon, Tanzania, Indonesia and Vietnam. Although the MRV capacities of half the projects are high, there are capacity deficiencies in other projects that are a source of concern. These are not only due to limitations in technical expertise, but can also be attributed to the slowness of international REDD+ policy formulation and the unclear path of development of the forest carbon market. Based on the study results, priorities for MRV development and increased investment in readiness are proposed.Deforestation and forest degradation remain high worldwide, and one of the dominant underlying causes for this forest loss is illegal logging. Numerous international policies have been developed aimed at addressing these issues. This article studies two of these regimes, the European Union's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) action plan and its Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with Ghana, and the climate mitigation policy of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). The interactions between these two international policies at the national level, namely in Ghana, are analyzed. The research shows numerous current and anticipated interactions between the two regimes. Most of these interactions potentially have a positive influence, but much depends on the future implementation of both regimes. The article makes recommendations on how to manage the interactions in order to improve the synergies and enhance effectiveness, including institutionalizing information sharing and learning, jurisdictional delimitation, and improving collaboration. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Despite increased awareness of the urgency to respond to climate change and to promote sustainable development, there are few powerful initiatives that are decisively shifting urban development in a sustainable, resilient and low-carbon direction. This Special Volume of the journal of Cleaner Production explores sustainable urban transformation focusing on structural transformation processes - multi-dimensional and radical change - that can effectively direct urban development towards ambitious sustainability goals. The 20 articles are based on 35 cases and over 130 surveyed examples of urban initiatives on sustainability in many countries. While cities in Europe dominate, there are also examples from North America, South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The combined articles in this Special Volume contribute to knowledge and understanding on sustainable urban transformation across a range of areas, including governance and planning, innovation and competitiveness, lifestyle and consumption, resource management and climate mitigation and adaptation, transport and accessibility, buildings, and the spatial environment and public space. Overall, this Special Volume documents and analyses real-life action in cities and communities around the world to respond to sustainability challenges and it provides critical insights into how to catalyse, intensify and accelerate sustainable urban transformation globally. A main finding of the articles is that governance and planning are the key leverage points for transformative change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels, including species-level reductions in range size and abundance, especially amongst endemic species(1-6). However, little is known about how mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions could reduce biodiversity impacts, particularly amongst common and widespread species. Our global analysis of future climatic range change of common and widespread species shows that without mitigation, 57 +/- 6% of plants and 34 +/- 7% of animals are likely to lose >= 50% of their present climatic range by the 2080s. With mitigation, however, losses are reduced by 60% if emissions peak in 2016 or 40% if emissions peak in 2030. Thus, our analyses indicate that without mitigation, large range contractions can be expected even amongst common and widespread species, amounting to a substantial global reduction in biodiversity and ecosystem services by the end of this century. Prompt and stringent mitigation, on the other hand, could substantially reduce range losses and buy up to four decades for climate change adaptation.This article reviews recent studies on the politics of climate change in China. We explain the evolution of policy-making and implementation processes and mechanisms over the past two decades, and discuss how they have eventuated in contemporary trends and challenges. Within the unitary hierarchy of the Chinese political system, the central government is responsible for making major policies, and subnational and local governments are responsible for the implementation. The policy-making process is characterized by a consensus building at the center, in contrast to the open public and partisan debate in Western democracies. Climate policy implementation has been based on a so-called target responsibility system', which disaggregates targets amongst all levels of local governments and related enterprises. While this system has proven effective in achieving the national targets set by the central government, the high costs associated with it have been a source of concern. The key challenge in making and implementing climate policy is to balance economic growth and environmental protection. This challenge is of critical importance in central-local political interactions. Clean energy development has been proposed as a win-win' solution to help balance economic development and climate change mitigation, and to satisfy both central and local government prerogatives, but the sustainability of such a model is questioned when the global and domestic economy experience difficulties. The central government is trying to translate its consensus in climate change and green development into priorities for local governments through policy pilots and market instruments; the real results will soon be seen. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:301-313. doi: 10.1002/wcc.221 Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.Over the next few decades, severe cuts in emissions from energy will be required to meet global climate-change mitigation goals. These emission reductions imply a major shift toward low-carbon energy technologies, and the economic cost and technical feasibility of mitigation are therefore highly dependent upon the future performance of energy technologies. However, existing models do not readily translate into quantitative targets against which we can judge the dynamic performance of technologies. Here, we present a simple, new model for evaluating energy-supply technologies and their improvement trajectories against climate-change mitigation goals. We define a target for technology performance in terms of the carbon intensity of energy, consistent with emission reduction goals, and show how the target depends upon energy demand levels. Because the cost of energy determines the level of adoption, we then compare supply technologies to one another and to this target based on their position on a cost and carbon trade-off curve and how the position changes over time. Applying the model to U.S. electricity, we show that the target for carbon intensity will approach zero by midcentury for commonly cited emission reduction goals, even under a high demand-side efficiency scenario. For Chinese electricity, the carbon intensity target is relaxed and less certain because of lesser emission reductions and greater variability in energy demand projections. Examining a century-long database on changes in the cost-carbon space, we find that the magnitude of changes in cost and carbon intensity that are required to meet future performance targets is not unprecedented, providing some evidence that these targets are within engineering reach. The cost and carbon trade-off curve can be used to evaluate the dynamic performance of existing and new technologies against climate-change mitigation goals.The farm level is the most appropriate scale for evaluating options for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because the farm represents the unit at which management decisions in livestock production are made. To date, a number of whole farm modelling approaches have been developed to quantify GHG emissions and explore climate change mitigation strategies for livestock systems. This paper analyses the limitations and strengths of the different existing approaches for modelling GHG mitigation by considering basic model structures, approaches for simulating GHG emissions from various farm components and the sensitivity of GHG outputs and mitigation measures to different approaches. Potential challenges for linking existing models with the simulation of impacts and adaptation measures under climate change are explored along with a brief discussion of the effects on other ecosystem services.We explore the standard expected utility model and alternatives to it. We then examine the behavioral and neurological evidence for hyperbolic discounting. We discuss evidence related to the neurological and behavioral evolution of discounting in non-human animals and in humans. We explore new findings about the importance of sociality in human behavior and the implications for truly social time preference. Finally, we discuss the implications of the neurological evidence on discounting for social environmental valuation, in particular the implications for very long-run decisions such as those involved in climate change mitigation and biodiversity preservation. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines the potential of cardamom for poverty alleviation and sustainable rural development under conditions of increased resource scarcity in the uplands of northern Laos. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative fieldwork in Luang Namtha province, the supply chain of cardamom is identified and the socio-economic opportunities for collectors and growers are examined. Rising demand in neighbouring countries, particularly China, provide sound income opportunities for all actors in the cardamom supply chain. Growing improved varieties has become a boon for farmers endowed with relatively large land areas with suitable agro-ecological conditions. However, land-poor and landless collectors of wild cardamom are facing increasing difficulties due to overharvesting, lower prices offered by middlemen, and the rapid conversion of remaining forests into monoculture plantations, especially rubber, which has reduced the natural habitat of cardamom and other non-timber forest products. The major policy implication is that protecting the remaining natural and secondary forests-for instance through making use of evolving international support mechanisms for community-based forest protection, including REDD-plus-will not only be of benefit for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, but would also enhance the livelihoods of the poorest groups in the uplands of northern Laos.Forests are important contributors to the global carbon cycle and mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration and the supply of wood that substitutes for fossil fuels and greenhouse gas (GHG)-intensive building materials. However, current climate policies only partially credit forest carbon sequestration and bioenergy policies are handled independently of forestry. Using Norway as a case study, we analyze two sets of simulated carbon tax/subsidy policies, one crediting forest carbon sequestration while maintaining predetermined harvest levels and utilization of wood, and another targeting GHG fluxes in the entire forest industrial sector allowing harvest levels and wood markets to change in response to the policy. Results indicate that GHG emission reduction potentials differ substantially between the two policies, being several times higher for the latter than the former policy at a given carbon price. This suggests that (i) previous research efforts in Europe have not captured the full mitigation potential as they have not included adaptations in the harvest level and the wood market and (ii) climate policies should target GHG fluxes in the entire sector to utilize its potential contribution for mitigating climate change.Anthropogenic deforestation in tropical countries is responsible for a significant part of global carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. To plan efficient climate change mitigation programs (such as REDD+, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), reliable forecasts of deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions are necessary. Although population density has been recognized as a key factor in tropical deforestation, current methods of prediction do not allow the population explosion that is occurring in many tropical developing countries to be taken into account. Here, we propose an innovative approach using novel computational and statistical tools, including R/GRASS scripts and the new phcfM R package, to model the intensity and location of deforestation including the effect of population density. We used the model to forecast anthropogenic deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions in five large study areas in the humid and spiny-dry forests of Madagascar. Using our approach, we were able to demonstrate that the current rapid population growth in Madagascar (+3.39% per year) will significantly increase the intensity of deforestation by 2030 (up to +1.17% per year in densely populated areas). We estimated the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the loss of aboveground biomass to be of 2.24 and 0.26 tons per hectare and per year in the humid and spiny-dry forest, respectively. Our models showed better predictive ability than previous deforestation models (the figure of merit ranged from 10 to 23). We recommend this approach to reduce the uncertainty associated with deforestation forecasts. We also underline the risk of an increase in the speed of deforestation in the short term in tropical developing countries undergoing rapid population expansion.Agriculture is both vulnerable to climate change impacts and a significant source of greenhouse gases. Increasing agriculture's resilience and reducing its contribution to climate change are societal priorities. Survey data collected from Iowa farmers are analyzed to answer the related research questions: (1) do farmers support adaptation and mitigation actions, and (2) do beliefs and concerns about climate change influence those attitudes. Results indicate that farmers who were concerned about the impacts of climate change on agriculture and attributed it to human activities had more positive attitudes toward both adaptive and mitigative management strategies. Farmers who believed that climate change is not a problem because human ingenuity will enable adaptations and who did not believe climate change is occurring or believed it is a natural phenomenon-a substantial percentage of farmers-tended not to support mitigation.Transportation contributes to a significant and rising share of global energy use and GHG emissions. Therefore modeling future travel demand, its fuel use, and resulting CO2 emission is highly relevant for climate change mitigation. In this study we compare the baseline projections for global service demand (passenger-kilometers, ton-kilometers), fuel use, and CO2 emissions of five different global transport models using harmonized input assumptions on income and population. For four models we also evaluate the impact of a carbon tax. All models project a steep increase in service demand over the century. Technology change is important for limiting energy consumption and CO2 emissions, the study also shows that in order to stabilise or even decrease emissions radical changes would be required. While all models project liquid fossil fuels dominating up to 2050, they differ regarding the use of alternative fuels (natural gas, hydrogen, biofuels, and electricity), because of different fuel price projections. The carbon tax of 200 USD/tCO(2) in 2050 stabilizes or reverses global emission growth in all models. Besides common findings many differences in the model assumptions and projections indicate room for further understanding long-term trends and uncertainty in future transport systems.Proposed climate mitigation measures do not account for direct biophysical climate impacts of land-use change (LUC), nor do the stabilization targets modeled for phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) representative concentration pathways (RCPs). To examine the significance of such effects on global and regional patterns of climate change, a baseline and an alternative scenario of future anthropogenic activity are simulated within the Integrated Earth System Model, which couples the Global Change Assessment Model, Global Land-Use Model, and Community Earth System Model. The alternative scenario has high biofuel utilization and approximately 50% less global forest cover than the baseline, standard RCP4.5 scenario. Both scenarios stabilize radiative forcing from atmospheric constituents at 4.5 W m(-2) by 2100. Thus, differences between their climate predictions quantify the biophysical effects of LUC. Offline radiative transfer and land model simulations are also utilized to identify forcing and feedback mechanisms driving the coupled response. Boreal deforestation is found to strongly influence climate because of increased albedo coupled with a regional-scale water vapor feedback. Globally, the alternative scenario yields a twenty-first-century warming trend that is 0.5 degrees C cooler than baseline, driven by a 1 W m(-2) mean decrease in radiative forcing that is distributed unevenly around the globe. Some regions are cooler in the alternative scenario than in 2005. These results demonstrate that neither climate change nor actual radiative forcing is uniquely related to atmospheric forcing targets such as those found in the RCPs but rather depend on particulars of the socioeconomic pathways followed to meet each target.Local governments in the United States have been hotbeds of climate change activity. Recently, states have sought to incorporate these primarily voluntary actions into broader climate change mitigation programs. Using the example of California, a national leader in U.S. climate policy, this article examines the scope for effectiveness of local climate action and assesses factors related to adoption of local climate policies. The analysis draws on two original surveys of city and county governments, designed to learn about adoption of comprehensive policy tools (emission inventories and climate action plans) and programs in specific areas (energy, water, land use, transportation). Adoption rates are fairly high and growing; by mid 2010 roughly 70% of all jurisdictions were already engaged or planning to engage in comprehensive climate actions, up from roughly 50% in 2008. The adoption of specific programs varies with the degree of local government authority in different sectors, and is generally higher for programs targeting municipal facilities and operations than those targeting residents and businesses. Population size, household income, and strong support from local leaders and the public are all associated with higher rates of adoption, particularly for comprehensive actions. Partisan attitudes are more important for comprehensive actions than for programs in specific areas such as energy efficiency and renewable energy, mirroring the findings of state and national public opinion surveys, which find broader support for actions like clean energy than for explicit climate change-oriented actions. Qualitative analysis reveals additional keys to success, including partnering with other local governments and private organizations and leveraging cost savings and other potential co-benefits of action. As states move to incorporate local actions into broader plans, mandates will also play an increasing role in setting a floor for local efforts. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this research we sought to understand how actors in urban transportation adopt climate change considerations into their work, including the techniques they use to address it, such as planning, design, analysis and advocacy in project planning and implementation. Through interviews with transportation practitioners at the World Bank, working in Latin America, we found that efforts to include climate change mitigation in the urban transportation policy agenda encountered major challenges such as lack of support for interventions that slow motorisation. In response, these transportation practitioners used relationships, expertise, advocacy and analysis to modify their practices to climate change concerns.This article reviews the pros and cons of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate change mitigation regime and the polycentric initiatives that have arisen in response to phlegmatic progress in international climate change mitigation efforts. It concludes that the combined efficacy of the UNFCCC regime and these polycentric initiatives embody necessary but insufficient efforts to avert the perils associated with amplified climate change scenarios. The author concludes by proposing that a bilateral agreement between the USA and China that focuses on exploiting national commercial synergies represents a promising strategy through which to encourage enhanced commitment by these two key nations to greenhouse gas reduction. Regardless of whether or not a US-China partnership materialises, the notion of bilateral agreements between developed and developing nations-such as Japan and Brazil, or India and the EU block of nations-and of the ensuing competition among these national pairings could be a missing element to more effective climate change mitigation efforts.Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are the premier analytical platform for assessing the economic impacts of climate change mitigation. But these models tend to treat physical capital as "malleable", capable of reallocation among sectors over the time-period for which equilibrium is solved. Because the extent to which capital adjustment costs might dampen reallocation is not well understood, there is concern that CGE assessments understate the true costs of greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policies. This paper uses a multi-region, multi-sector CGE model to investigate cap-and-trade schemes, such as the European Union Emission Trading System which cover a subset of the economy, elucidating the effects of capital malleability on GHG abatement, the potential for emission leakage from abating to non-abating sectors, and the impacts on welfare. To simplify the complex interactions being simulated within the CGE model, that analysis is complemented with an analytical model. A partial climate policy results in negative internal carbon leakage, with emissions declining not only in capped sectors but also in non-regulated ones. This result is stronger when capital is intersectorally mobile. Interestingly, in partial climate policy settings capital malleability can amplify or attenuate welfare losses depending on the attributes of the economy.Trends in increasing urbanization, paired with a lack of ambitious action on larger scales, uniquely position cities to resume leadership roles in climate mitigation. While many cities have adopted ambitious long-term emission reduction goals, few have articulated how to reach them. This paper presents one of the first long-term scenarios of deep greenhouse gas abatement for a major U.S. city. Using a detailed, bottom-up scenario analysis, we investigate how Seattle might achieve its recently stated goal of carbon neutrality by the year 2050. The analysis demonstrates that a series of ambitious strategies could achieve per capita GHG reductions of 34% in 2020, and 91% in 2050 in Seattle's "core" emissions from the buildings, transportation, and waste sectors. We examine the pros and cons of options to get to, or beyond, net zero emissions in these sectors. We also discuss methodological innovations for community-scale emissions accounting frameworks, including a "core" emissions focus that excludes industrial activity and a consumption perspective that expands the emissions footprint and scope of policy solutions. As in Seattle, other communities may find the mitigation strategies and analytical approaches presented here are useful for crafting policies to achieve deep GHG-reduction goals. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The UN Framework Convention of Climate Change 15th Conference of the Parties Copenhagen Accord has been followed up by national pledges of greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the year 2020 without specifying measures to enforce actions. As a consequence, the capacity of parties to fulfil their obligations is of basic interest. This article outlines the effects of full compliance with pledges on greenhouse gas emissions, economic growth, and trade. The study is based on the global computable general equilibrium model global responses to anthropogenic changes in the environment (GRACE) distinguishing between fossil and non-fossil energy use. Global emissions from fossil fuels in 2020 turn out to be 15 % lower than in a business as usual scenario and 3 % below the global emissions from fossil fuels in 2005. China and India increase their emissions to 1 % and 5 % above business as usual levels in 2020. India and Russia increase their net export of steel corresponding to around 30 and 45 % of their production levels in 2020. In spite of some leakage of energy intensive production also to China, we find that structural change remains the dominant factor behind the rapid reduction of CO2 emission intensity in China towards 2020.Biochar addition to agricultural soils can improve soil fertility, with the added bonus of climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. Conservation farming (CF) is precision farming, often combining minimum tillage, crop rotation and residue retention. In the present farmer-led field trials carried out in Zambia, the use of a low dosage biochar combined with CF minimum tillage was tested as a way to increase crop yields. Using CF minimum tillage allows the biochar to be applied to the area where most of the plant roots are present and mirrors the fertilizer application in CF practices. The CF practice used comprised manually hoe-dug planting 10-L sized basins, where 10%-12% of the land was tilled. Pilot trials were performed with maize cob biochar and wood biochar on five soils with variable physical/chemical characteristics. At a dosage as low as 4 tons/ha, both biochars had a strong positive effect on maize yields in the coarse white aeolian sand of Kaoma, West-Zambia, with yields of 444% +/- 114% (p = 0.06) and 352% +/- 139% (p = 0.1) of the fertilized reference plots for maize and wood biochar, respectively. Thus for sandy acidic soils, CF and biochar amendment can be a promising combination for increasing harvest yield. Moderate but non-significant effects on yields were observed for maize and wood biochar in a red sandy clay loam ultisol east of Lusaka, central Zambia (University of Zambia, UNZA, site) with growth of 142% +/- 42% (p > 0.2) and 131% +/- 62% (p > 0.2) of fertilized reference plots, respectively. For three other soils (acidic and neutral clay loams and silty clay with variable cation exchange capacity, CEC), no significant effects on maize yields were observed (p > 0.2). In laboratory trials, 5% of the two biochars were added to the soil samples in order to study the effect of the biochar on physical and chemical soil characteristics. The large increase in crop yield in Kaoma soil was tentatively explained by a combination of an increased base saturation (from <50% to 60%-100%) and cation exchange capacity (CEC; from 2-3 to 5-9 cmol/kg) and increased plant-available water (from 17% to 21%) as well as water vapor uptake (70 mg/g on maize cob biochar at 50% relative humidity).Does the association between household characteristics and household CO2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy, transport and indirect emissions? This question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others. So far, this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household CO2 emissions. Using a representative UK expenditure survey, this paper compares how household characteristics like income, household size, education, gender, worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions. We find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains. In particular, whilst all types of emissions rise with income, low income, workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains, suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions. This demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is great potential for soil carbon sequestration to contribute to climate change mitigation. However, there are a number of difficulties in measuring and verifying soil carbon sequestration for market-based policies for soil carbon sequestration. In particular, measurement costs and other transaction costs will ultimately determine the practicality of any policy. The relationship between soil carbon spatial heterogeneity, measurement precision and measurement costs is central to the design of contracts for soil carbon sequestration. Importantly, these factors determine the practicality of policy alternatives and the efficiency of alternative contract designs. The details of contract design change the incentives faced by landholders as well as the allocation of risk between sellers and buyers. For example, some contract designs link payments to alternative land management practices whereas others link payments to directly measured outcomes. Research in soil science provides the knowledge necessary to link land use and management to sequestration and the measurement approaches required to verify sequestration. Careful consideration of these factors in market design is needed to determine whether potential benefits outweigh the costs of implementing any policy intended to promote soil carbon sequestration.With ever growing urgency, climate change mitigation is fast becoming a priority for China. A successful policy of implementing and expanding sustainable development and the use of renewable energy is therefore vital. As well as long-term and near-term targets for installed capacity of renewable energy, in its 12th five-year plan, China has created strict and ambitious carbon intensity targets for each province. This study proposes an inter-provincial clean development mechanism to assist in meeting these targets. This mechanism will create potential co-benefits of assisting in sustainable development in lesser developed provinces, increasing local air quality and supporting the growth of China's renewable energy sector. This paper also highlights the potential that this inter-provincial clean development mechanism has in accelerating the growth of the domestic solar photovoltaics (PV) sector, for which the market in China is still in its infancy. (C) 2013. Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Advancing land degradation in the irrigated areas of Central Asia hinders sustainable development of this predominantly agricultural region. To support decisions on mitigating cropland degradation, this study combines linear trend analysis and spatial logistic regression modeling to expose a land degradation trend in the Khorezm region, Uzbekistan, and to analyze the causes. Time series of the 250-m MODIS NDVI, summed over the growing seasons of 2000-2010, were used to derive areas with an apparent negative vegetation trend; this was interpreted as an indicator of land degradation. About one third (161,000 ha) of the region's area experienced negative trends of different magnitude. The vegetation decline was particularly evident on the low-fertility lands bordering on the natural sandy desert, suggesting that these areas should be prioritized in mitigation planning. The results of logistic modeling indicate that the spatial pattern of the observed trend is mainly associated with the level of the groundwater table (odds = 330 %), land-use intensity (odds = 103 %), low soil quality (odds = 49 %), slope (odds = 29 %), and salinity of the groundwater (odds = 26 %). Areas, threatened by land degradation, were mapped by fitting the estimated model parameters to available data. The elaborated approach, combining remote-sensing and GIS, can form the basis for developing a common tool for monitoring land degradation trends in irrigated croplands of Central Asia.The advent of initiatives to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks (REDD+) in developing countries has raised much concern regarding impacts on local communities. To inform this debate, we analyze the initial outcomes of those REDD+ projects that systematically report on their socio-economic dimensions. To categorize and compare projects, we develop a participation and benefits framework that considers REDD+'s effects on local populations' opportunities (jobs, income), security (of tenure and ecosystem services), and empowerment (participation in land use and development decisions). We find material benefits, in terms of jobs and income, to be, thus far, modest. On the other hand, we find that many projects are helping populations gain tenure rights. A majority of projects are obtaining local populations' free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). However, for those projects interacting with multiple populations, extent of participation and effects on forest access are often uneven. Our participation and benefits framework can be a useful tool for identifying the multi-faceted socio-economic impacts of REDD+, which are realized under different timescales. The framework and initial trends reported here can be used to build hypotheses for future REDD+ impact evaluations and contribute to evolving theories of incentive-based environmental policy.There are several ways of promoting women's economic participation while also counteracting climate change. One approach in the field of climate mitigation is the promotion of renewable energies that help avoid greenhouse gas emissions. The potential of rural women as agents of change for climate mitigation and adaptation remains untapped: Their extensive theoretical and practical knowledge of the environment and resource conservation is not given due consideration. In terms of economic participation, they are not paid for the environmental services that they already provide (example, reforestation). The potential contribution of rural women to climate mitigation by being part of the economic cycle is not sufficiently exploited. The economic empowerment of women through climate mitigation and adaptation fosters economic growth and socioeconomic development, reduces poverty, keeps environmental problems in check, and increases the potential for adaptation, which is to the benefit of both women and men. Enhancing the economic empowerment of women is a catalyst for development, which helps boost a country's economic growth, promotes the socioeconomic development not only of women, but of the entire population, and helps reduce poverty. It is observed that less attention is paid to the potential that lies in the combination of climate mitigation/adaptation and the economic empowerment of rural women. Yet mitigation or adaptation activities offer opportunities to advance the economic empowerment of women. In particular, this applies to work that is already being undertaken by women or activities in which women could assume a leading role. In developing countries, for instance, women frequently play a major role in the reforestation and afforestation of cleared land and in forest conservation, yet they have hardly ever benefited from these environmental services. The paper addresses the economic empowerment of rural women through climate change mitigation and adaptation. The study recommends that measures to promote the economic participation of women can be integrated into climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives. In order for rural women to play an economic role, an institutional, legal and political framework is required that enables and/or makes it easier for rural women to hold their own in the market. Concrete, promising project measures at the local level should therefore be combined with advisory services at the political level related to climate change and the economic empowerment of women, with a view to initiating structural reform.Depletion of ecosystem carbon stocks is a significant source of atmospheric CO2 and reducing land-based emissions and maintaining land carbon stocks contributes to climate change mitigation. We summarize current understanding about human perturbation of the global carbon cycle, examine three scientific issues and consider implications for the interpretation of international climate change policy decisions, concluding that considering carbon storage on land as a means to 'offset' CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels (an idea with wide currency) is scientifically flawed. The capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to store carbon is finite and the current sequestration potential primarily reflects depletion due to past land use. Avoiding emissions from land carbon stocks and refilling depleted stocks reduces atmospheric CO2 concentration, but the maximum amount of this reduction is equivalent to only a small fraction of potential fossil fuel emissions.Adequate demand for, and recognition of, forest carbon services is critical to success of market mechanisms for forestry-based conservation and climate change mitigation. National and voluntary carbon-offsetting schemes are emerging as alternatives to international compliance markets. We developed a choice experiment to explore determinants of local forest carbon-offset valuation. A total of 963 citizens from Guadalajara in Mexico were asked to consider a purchase of voluntary offsets from the neighbouring Biosphere Reserve of La Primavera and from two alternative more distant locations: La Michilia in the state of Durango and El Cielo in Tamaulipas. Surveys were applied in market stall sessions and online using two different sampling methods: the snowball technique and via a market research company. The local La Primavera site attracted higher participation and valuation than the more distant sites. However, groups particularly interested in climate change mitigation or cost may accept cost-efficient options in the distant sites. Mean implicit carbon prices obtained ranged from $6.79 to $15.67/tCO(2eq) depending on the surveying methodology and profile of respondents. Survey application mode can significantly affect outcome of the experiment. Values from the market stall sessions were higher than those from the snowball and market research samples obtained online; this may be linked to greater cooperation associated with personal interaction and collective action. In agreement with the literature, we found that valuation of forest carbon offsets is associated with cognitive, ethical, behavioural, geographical and economic factors.Monitoring productivity in coastal wetlands is important due to their high carbon sequestration rates and potential role in climate change mitigation. We tested agricultural- and forest-based methods for estimating the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (f APAR), a key parameter for modelling gross primary productivity (GPP), in a restored, managed wetland with a dense litter layer of non-photosynthetic vegetation, and we compared the difference in canopy light transmission between a tidally influenced wetland and the managed wetland. The presence of litter reduced correlations between spectral vegetation indices and f APAR. In the managed wetland, a two-band vegetation index incorporating simulated World View-2 or Hyperion green and near-infrared bands, collected with a field spectroradiometer, significantly correlated with f APAR only when measured above the litter layer, not at the ground where measurements typically occur. Measures of GPP in these systems are difficult to capture via remote sensing, and require an investment of sampling effort, practical methods for measuring green leaf area and accounting for background effects of litter and water.Background and Purpose: The concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been increasing over the last hundred years in relation to the Fourth IPCC assessment report that highlighted human activities as a direct influence on climate changes. Since Croatia and Finland signed the Kyoto Protocol, they are both committed to fulfil international obligations of lowering GHG's emissions, enhancing the storage, as well as protecting and enhancing the current pools where the forestry sector has a prominent role. These obligations created a need for a review on carbon storage potentials for both countries with the aim of setting further scientific and management guidelines as the basic purpose of this research. Materials and Methods: Data collection was conducted within the scope of the Sort Term Scientific Mission (STSM) in the period from May 2 - July 22, 2009 in the Finnish Forest Research Institute in Joensuu. The research encompassed an overview of literature, personal contacts with scientists and experts from both countries (research institutes, ministries, the EFI branch office in Joensuu) and a field inspection which altogether provided an insight into the applied silvicultural and utilization activities. A significant data source were official documents and published project results on the carbon storage potential. Results and Discussion: Mitigation activities within the framework of the LULUCF project reduced the total emissions for 33.4 millions tons of CO2 equivalents in Finland in 2006 (this data has varied from 18 to 33.4 millions tons CO2 equivalents in the last fifteen years) while for Croatia the availability of such data is limited. Finland has some former agricultural land which may be afforested but not in the substantial share, while in Croatia such areas amount to around 1 million ha. According to the climate change scenario for Finland (FINADAPT), predicting the largest climate changes, the total forest growth nationwide is estimated to increase by 44% which will have positive impact on the forest carbon storage in the future. In Croatia there is no such kind of research. There is about 12.6 % of all forest land in Finland under protected forests (strictly protected areas about 3.6 %) in which enhancement of carbon storage potential may be enhanced. About 21% of the forests in Croatia (513 155 ha) are forests in some degradation stage in addition to about 500 ha of forests where management is prevented because of the land mines. These areas present a potential for carbon storage enhancement. Forest fires pose a great threat to carbon pools especially in the Croatian karst areas where the total of 251 901 ha of the Croatian land area burned in the period 1992-2007, which in average amounts to 15 744 ha annually. Nevertheless, Finland and Croatia do not undertake any significant current deforestation activities. Conclusions: Even though Croatia and Finland have the same goals, they also show significant differences in relation to the already finished, current and planned scientific activities, legislation, implementation, natural conditions and constrains of CO2 sequestration and storage. It is estimated that a significant potential in Finland lies in the reduction of CO2 emissions through substitution effects, protection of stored carbon pools in forest ecosystems, avoiding the changes in land use, etc. Croatia, on the other hand, has a significant potential through afforestation activities on uncovered forest and abandoned agricultural lands. Further research on the categorisation of land, appropriate species and provenances selection is necessary. The effects of individual measures on emission reduction and carbon balance by forests are small on the national, as well as on the European scale, but if combined together the overall effects present a great potential to fulfill international obligations in both countries.Considering the projected population growth in the twenty-first century, some studies have indicated that global warming may have negative impacts on the risk of hunger. These conclusions were derived based on assumptions related to social and technological scenarios that involve substantial and influential uncertainties. In this paper, focusing on agrotechnology and food access disparity, we analyzed food availability and risk of hunger under the combined scenarios of food demands and agroproductivity with and without climate change by 2100 for the B2 scenario in the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The results of this study suggest that (1) future food demand can be satisfied globally under all assumed combined scenarios, and (2) a reduction of food access disparity and increased progress in productivity are just as important as climate change mitigation for reducing the risk of hunger.Changing food consumption patterns and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been a matter of scientific debate for decades. The agricultural sector is one of the major GHG emitters and thus holds a large potential for climate change mitigation through optimal management and dietary changes. We assess this potential, project emissions, and investigate dietary patterns and their changes globally on a per country basis between 1961 and 2007. Sixteen representative and spatially differentiated patterns with a per capita calorie intake ranging from 1,870 to >3,400 kcal/day were derived. Detailed analyses show that low calorie diets are decreasing worldwide, while in parallel diet composition is changing as well: a discernable shift towards more balanced diets in developing countries can be observed and steps towards more meat rich diets as a typical characteristics in developed countries. Low calorie diets which are mainly observable in developing countries show a similar emission burden than moderate and high calorie diets. This can be explained by a less efficient calorie production per unit of GHG emissions in developing countries. Very high calorie diets are common in the developed world and exhibit high total per capita emissions of 3.7-6.1 kg CO2eq./day due to high carbon intensity and high intake of animal products. In case of an unbridled demographic growth and changing dietary patterns the projected emissions from agriculture will approach 20 Gt CO2eq./yr by 2050.In this article we have studied a scheme of partitioning the global carbon budget using an equity principle. In contrast to earlier approaches, this article carefully distinguishes between the two quantities - 'entitlements to carbon space' and 'physically available carbon space'. A positive feature of the carbon budgets approach to allocation of mitigation burdens discussed here is that a single framework for mitigation can be applied to all countries. The method offers a concrete operationalization of the principle of achieving the climate goals 'on the basis of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities'.In this study, the land use change in a large basin of Calabria region (southern Italy) subjected to extensive reforestation at the end of the '50 has been carefully reconstructed and compared with the current situation. The runoff capacity of the basin was estimated using data available for the temporal periods before and after the reforestation interventions. The results show that the surface of the basin interested by former reforestation activities did not affect the runoff, probably due to a trade-off between the effects of reforestation and a concurrent increase in urbanized and degraded areas. Indeed, the hydrological response is linked to structural complexity of reforested areas, currently at an early stage of development that can be further promoted through forest management activities.Ecological models have predicted shifts in forest biomes, yet there have been very few studies that have looked at the implications on carbon stocks due to these shifts. Carbon is closely correlated to biomass and constitutes an important characteristic of the forest ecosystem. It has implications for conservation and land use practices, especially for climate change mitigation strategies currently under discussion, such as the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). This study couples the Holdridge Life Zone (HLZ) classification with the ECHAM5 model, to evaluate the impacts of climate change using the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2, A1B and B1 for the Central American region. We utilize methodologies which combine biophysical variables with model output to assess the impacts on carbon stocks for two time periods, 2000 and 2100. Results show that overall the tropical category of the HLZ classification gains area as a consequence of one type of HLZ shifting to another forest type. In many cases the shifts lead to some categories of HLZ being lost in their entirety. Elevation-associated life zones are particularly vulnerable to future climatic changes. A strong point of our approach is that differences between disaggregate regional and aggregate country levels can be compared. We suggest that a critical focus of conservation and management efforts should be concentrated on where vulnerable biomes are at most risk, i.e., biomes that shift and/or reduce fall under the vulnerable category.Shale gas proponents argue this unconventional fossil fuel offers a "bridge" towards a cleaner energy system by offsetting higher-carbon fuels such as coal. The technical feasibility of reconciling shale gas development with climate action remains contested. However, we here argue that governance challenges are both more pressing and more profound. Reconciling shale gas and climate action requires institutions capable of responding effectively to uncertainty; intervening to mandate emissions reductions and internalize costs to industry; and managing the energy system strategically towards a lower carbon future. Such policy measures prove challenging, particularly in jurisdictions that stand to benefit economically from unconventional fuels. We illustrate this dilemma through a case study of shale gas development in British Columbia, Canada, a global leader on climate policy that is nonetheless struggling to manage gas development for mitigation. The BC case is indicative of the constraints jurisdictions face both to reconcile gas development and climate action, and to manage the industry adequately to achieve social licence and minimize resistance. More broadly, the case attests to the magnitude of change required to transform our energy systems to mitigate climate change.Greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories underpinning the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Kyoto Protocol report each country's net annual emissions, that is GHG flows. Yet the UNFCCC's goal is defined as a stock (atmospheric GHG concentration). Flow inventories are apt for the fossil fuel sector where flows are effectively one way, stock changes are almost entirely anthropogenic, and stocks are stable in the absence of human perturbation. For the land sector, flow-based GHG inventories obscure fundamental differences between ecosystems: in their carbon stock stability, restoration capacity, and density. This paper presents a national carbon accounting framework that is comprehensive and includes stocks as well as flows for reservoirs, lands and activities continuously over time. It complements current flow-based inventories under the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol. The framework differentiates reservoirs by their role in the global carbon cycle, distinguishing between geocarbon (carbon in the geosphere), biocarbon (carbon in the biosphere) and anthropogenic carbon (stockpiles, products and waste). A reservoir ranking system is proposed based on longevity, reversibility of carbon loss, and carbon density. This framework will support policy makers and researchers grappling with mitigation strategies and competing demands on agricultural land and natural ecosystems. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article challenges some of the assumptions underpinning the UN programme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD +) in developing countries. Firstly, it argues that the costeffectiveness of REDD+ may have been exaggerated as current estimates ignore some cost categories as well as the evolution of drivers. Whilst REDD+ remains a low-hanging fruit' for climate mitigation, if all costs were included estimates would be at the high end of the currently accepted range. Secondly, the article highlights that REDD+ will be affected by a large funding gap at least until the entry into force of a new climate protocol in 2020. This gap is due as much to the poor status of public finances in donor countries as to the languishing state of carbon markets, and it calls for a revision of the assumptions regarding the design of the programme. Finally, it is advocated that, in order to contribute to the development of the programme, economic research on REDD+ should consider different policy options, assessing their efficiency and identifying measures that increase their cost-effectiveness. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Pricing greenhouse gas emissions is a burgeoning and possibly lucrative financial means for climate change mitigation. Emissions pricing is being used to fund emissions-abatement technologies and to modify land management to improve carbon sequestration and retention. Here we discuss the principal land-management options under existing and realistic future emissions-price legislation in Australia, and examine them with respect to their anticipated direct and indirect effects on biodiversity. The main ways in which emissions price-driven changes to land management can affect biodiversity are through policies and practices for (1) environmental plantings for carbon sequestration, (2) native regrowth, (3) fire management, (4) forestry, (5) agricultural practices (including cropping and grazing), and (6) feral animal control. While most land-management options available to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions offer clear advantages to increase the viability of native biodiversity, we describe several caveats regarding potentially negative outcomes, and outline components that need to be considered if biodiversity is also to benefit from the new carbon economy. Carbon plantings will only have real biodiversity value if they comprise appropriate native tree species and provide suitable habitats and resources for valued fauna. Such plantings also risk severely altering local hydrology and reducing water availability. Management of regrowth post-agricultural abandonment requires setting appropriate baselines and allowing for thinning in certain circumstances, and improvements to forestry rotation lengths would likely increase carbon-retention capacity and biodiversity value. Prescribed burning to reduce the frequency of high-intensity wildfires in northern Australia is being used as a tool to increase carbon retention. Fire management in southern Australia is not readily amenable for maximising carbon storage potential, but will become increasingly important for biodiversity conservation as the climate warms. Carbon price-based modifications to agriculture that would benefit biodiversity include reductions in tillage frequency and livestock densities, reductions in fertiliser use, and retention and regeneration of native shrubs; however, anticipated shifts to exotic perennial grass species such as buffel grass and kikuyu could have net negative implications for native biodiversity. Finally, it is unlikely that major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions arising from feral animal control are possible, even though reduced densities of feral herbivores will benefit Australian biodiversity greatly. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global warming due to the continuous rise in CO2 emissions has been documented in the last few decades. This work is a first effort to estimate the net carbon incorporation in citrus plantations cultivated under typical land use. The approach involves a biomass-based study of carbon accumulation and a complementary analysis of the associated CO2 fluxes. The total C content allocated to trees aged 2-14 years was determined through the direct and destructive harvesting of all tree organs. A stable pattern of biomass production in tree components was observed in plants 12 years old and older and was responsible for the sequestration of more than 50 kg C tree(-1). Annual C fixation in fruit and new vegetative flushes accounted for up to approximately 75% of the total amount sequestered per year, whereas the contribution of the old, permanent organs (branches', trunk, and tap-coarse roots) was minor (approximately 25%). Further experiments were conducted on adult 12-year-old trees to confirm the data and determine the particular contribution of CO2 fluxes from tree organs and soil to the final values. Data revealed that leaves were responsible for a total net C fixation of 15.4 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) (higher than 55% of the total C fixed). The complementary, regular monitoring of fruit respiration rates showed that fruit respiration played only a minor role, responsible for the emission of 2.3 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). Minimum losses were also found when soil respiration rates were investigated, accounting for a total annual C loss of 2.7 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). Taken together, these results indicate that our plantation was responsible for a net C fixation of close to 10 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). Assimilatory processes in leaves accounted for the highest proportion of C allocated to the tree, while losses due to leaf and fruit respiration were of minor importance. Under typical culture conditions (drip irrigation and absence of ground cover), soil respiration rates accounted for a low level of C loss to the atmosphere. Because citrus is the second largest fruit crop cultivated in the EU, such data are very relevant to the mitigation of climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (cdm) has been envisaged as a powerful tool for reconciling the global South's environment and development problematic. By allowing Southern states to produce and sell carbon credits into the Kyoto Protocol's compliance market, many predicted a growing North-South transfer of carbon finance, technology and profit. Confronted by deep crisis in global carbon markets, however, the cdm, rather than spurring development, is furnishing the conditions for rising debt and insecurity since project costs must be financed upfront, with the expectation that future project revenue will subsequently fulfil these obligations. This paper analyses the dialectic entanglements between the cdm's ex post and market-dependent financing structure, the carbon market crisis and uneven development, based on the contention that cdm-related debt reveals the deeply unequal power relations that underpin contemporary approaches to climate change mitigation, whereby the North's ecological debt is displaced, both materially and financially, onto Southern actors.The end of the age of cheap oil and global warming are causing worldwide concerns about energy security and climate change mitigation. Recognizing that the continuous growth paradigm will not change at short to medium time periods, alternative energy sources to fossil fuels are being sought, in which a promising source seems to be that obtained from vegetal biomass. Specifically in Brazil, there are Conventional Ethanol Plants (CEP) using sugarcane, but due to the energy versus food debate and an increasing demand for ethanol, cellulosic ethanol produced by Biorefineries seems to be a viable option. The question is whether the Biorefinery is more sustainable than CEP. This work aims to assess the energetic-environmental performance of a Biorefinery scenario in Brazil, comparing its results against CEP and another alternative small-scale system. For this, a multi-criteria approach was considered through the following methodologies: Embodied Energy Analysis, Ecological Rucksack, Emergy Accounting and Gas Emission Inventory. Results show that Biorefinery scenario has better rating than CEP for the most indicators when the functional unit is mass of ethanol produced, but when dealing with overall system performance, the Biorefinery performance worse. Neither the Biorefinery nor CEP was superior for all indicators, showing the existence of a trade-off. On the other hand, the small-scale system suggests being the best alternative if the aim is to get higher energetic-environmental performance. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores the potential contribution of critical urban theory to the intellectual and political debates surrounding climate change. While it is possible to identify an emerging strand of critical enquiry concerning the role of cities in facilitating climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, this paper argues that the full implications of critical urban theory to climate change studies have yet to be realised. In this paper, critical urban theory is understood as an approach ( or set of approaches) to the city that recognises the contingent form of urban politics and policy, while asserting that, far from being an inevitable and politically neutral process, urbanisation is an expression of intersecting regimes of social power. This paper utilises critical urban theory as a basis for analysing emerging urban climate adaptation strategies. The analysis presented here asserts that contemporary adaptation policies are being framed by neoliberal practices of market-oriented governance, enhanced privatisation and urban environmental entrepreneurialism. This paper exposes some of the key contradictions that are inherent within neoliberalised urban climate change adaptation strategies and suggests how it might be possible to develop more progressive adaptation regimes.Burning biomass for energy emits CO2 that was earlier sequestered from the atmosphere and will be sequestered again if the bioenergy system is managed sustainably. There may be a significant temporal imbalance, however, between the carbon emissions and carbon sequestration of such bioenergy systems: also referred to as the carbon debt'. The carbon debt issue has resulted in a debate on the role of bioenergy in preventing unwanted climate change. This paper will argue that, while it is important to consider the temporal imbalances in carbon flows from bioenergy systems, at least three additional aspects will need to be considered in determining whether bioenergy has a useful role to play in mitigating climate change: (i) the relevance of a delay in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings for bioenergy's potential to mitigate climate change; (ii) whether climate change mitigation is actually likely to be possible without large-scale bioenergy; and (iii) what the (asymmetrical) risks are associated with including or excluding bioenergy in society's portfolio to mitigate climate change. The answers to these questions suggest that bioenergy has an important role to play in mitigating climate change provided that the biomass is produced and harvested in a sustainable manner and significant GHG-emission savings are achieved by 2100. In contrast, the use of bioenergy systems with longer delays in achieving their GHG-emission savings could negatively affect society's ambitions to mitigate climate change. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdMitigation measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may have adverse effects on urban air quality and human exposure to harmful pollutants. The use of bioethanol fuelled vehicles is increasing worldwide and may create new undesired pollution effects. Different measurement campaigns were performed in a pilot study to contribute to the understanding of the consequences associated with the use of bioethanol blended fuel (E95) on a series of pollutants. Ambient screening measurements of NO2, O-3, acetic acid, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde were performed at different urban locations, exposed and not exposed to the circulation of bioethanol buses. In addition, volatile organic compounds were measured at the exhaust pipe of a bioethanol fuelled bus, both under idling conditions (carbonyls; DNPH cartridge) and under on-road driving conditions applying online monitoring (PTR-TOF). Higher ambient acetaldehyde values were measured at locations exposed to bioethanol fuelled buses than at locations not exposed, and very high acetaldehyde and acetic acid values were measured from the exhaust pipe during driving conditions (acetaldehyde >150 ppm; acetic acid approximate to 20-30 ppm) and modelled at close distance to the bioethanol bus. Human exposure to high concentration of acetaldehyde is expected, and it may involve a significantly increased chance in developing cancer. The high concentration of acetic acid will involve odour annoyance and significant material degradation or corrosion. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The overall goal of the UNFCCC is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. In policy practice, this goal is mainly operationalized through three types of mitigation targets: emission, atmospheric concentration and temperature targets. The typical function of climate mitigation goals is to regulate action towards goal achievement. This is done in several ways. Mitigation goals help the structuring of the greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement action, over time and between agents; they constitute a standard against which GHG abatement can be assessed and evaluated; they motivate climate conscious behavior; and discourage defection from cooperative abatement regimes. Although the three targets clearly relate to one another, there could be differences in how well they fulfill these functions. In this article, the effectiveness of emission, concentration and temperature targets in guiding and motivating action towards the UNFCCC's overall aim is analyzed using a framework for rational goal evaluation developed by Edvardsson and Hansson (2005) as an analytical tool. It is argued that to regulate action effectively, mitigation goals should ideally satisfy four criteria: precision, evaluability, attainability and motivity. Only then can the target fulfill its typical function, i.e., to guide' and motivate action in a way that facilitates goal achievement. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper illustrates the main results of an expert elicitation survey on advanced (second and third generation) biofuel technologies. The survey focuses on eliciting probabilistic information on the future costs of advanced biofuels and on the potential role of Research, Development and Demonstration (RD&D) efforts in reducing these costs and in supporting the deployment of biofuels in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries. Fifteen leading experts from different EU member states provide insights on the future potential of advanced biofuel technologies both in terms of costs and diffusion. This information results in a number of policy recommendations with respect to public RD&D strategies and is an important contribution to the integrated assessment modelling community. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.India's power sector has a significant impact on the country's development and climate change mitigation efforts. Optimization of energy planning is therefore, key to achieving the overall planning goals. The hierarchical multi-objective policy optimization is a policy-centric multi-level bottom-up iterative approach, designed from a developing country perspective, utilizing the optimality principle of dynamic programming. It is applied to the Indian power sector by grouping the strategies into three portfolios, namely, power generation mix, demand side efficiency group and supply side efficiency group. Each portfolio is optimized taking into account the objectives of cost minimization and comprehensive risk and barrier reduction. The portfolios are further combined and optimized at a higher level with respect to higher level objectives, namely, economic growth, energy equity, energy security and climate sustainability. This paper focuses on the second level optimization utilizing data envelopment analysis (DEA). Both the deterministic and stochastic variations have been analysed and the results compared in respect of unrestricted as well as restricted weight models. The analysis shows that weight-restricted stochastic DEA model is most appropriate for efficiency optimization of power sector strategies. The methodology can be effectively used for energy planning in developing countries. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article article examines to what extent and how the EU ETS has influenced the climate strategies of two Nordic pulp and paper companies: Swedish SCA and Norwegian Norske Skog. Rising electricity prices are perceived to be the greatest effect of the scheme. The EU ETS has served to reinforce commitments to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions in both companies studied. Procedures like monitoring of CO2 emissions and accounting for CO2 prices have become more significant since the introduction of the EU ETS, but the scheme has not triggered a search for innovative, low-carbon solutions. Due to differences in market factors and production factors, SCA has been more active than Norske Skog in investing in and implementing CO2-lean actions. Future studies of climate-mitigation activities, strategies and innovations in the pulp and paper industry should involve more in-depth investigation of the interactions between such factors and the EU ETS. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Swedish forest growth can be increased through intensive forestry practices, enabling an increased use of forest biomass for climate-change mitigation. However, the diffusion of such practices depends on the forest owners' adoption of them. We study Swedish private forest owners' perceptions and intentions with respect to increasing forest growth by adopting exotic tree species. The results of a mail-in questionnaire survey show that although a majority of forest owners desire increasing forest growth, most owners have only a basic understanding of exotic tree species and a smaller proportion is interested in adopting them. The intention to adopt exotics seems to depend on the perceived performance of the species with respect to the economic aspects of forest management rather than on environmental or recreational concerns. Whereas a knowledge gap among the private forest owners regarding how to increase forest growth is implied, forest owners with higher self-rated knowledge of forestry and exotics have stronger intentions to adopt such species.This article compares the political strategies used by conservative governments in Australia (John Howard) and Canada (Stephen Harper) to manage public impressions of climate change and climate change policy. These cases are significant in part because both governments acted against the weight of domestic public opinion. While many studies of political resistance to climate change mitigation focus on the role of denial, skepticism, and counter-claims, our comparison finds a significant role for what we call "affirmation techniques," namely the rhetorical acceptance of the consensus position on climate change followed by concerted attempts to control precisely what acceptance means. We draw on recent theoretical work on anti-reflexivity and the sociology of ignorance to explain the political effectiveness of these strategies.Forest cover monitoring plays an important role in the implementation of climate change mitigation policies such as Kyoto protocol and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). In this study, we have monitored land cover using the PALSAR (Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) full polarimetric data based on incoherent target decomposition. Supervised classification technique has been applied on CloudePottier decomposition, FreemanDurden three component, and Yamaguchi four component decomposition for accurate mapping of different types of land cover classes. Based on confusion matrix derived from the predicted and defined pixels, the evergreen and sparsely deciduous forests have shown high producer's accuracy by FreemanDurden three component and Yamaguchi four component classifications. The overall accuracy of Maximum Likelihood Classification by Yamaguchi four component is 94.1% with 0.93 kappa coefficient as compared to the 90.3% with 0.88 kappa coefficient by FreemanDurden three component and 89.7% with 0.88 kappa coefficient by CloudePottier decomposition. High accuracy of classification in a forested area using full polarimetric PALSAR data may have been because of high penetration of L-band SAR. The content of this study could be useful for the forest cover mapping during cloudy days needed for proper implementation of REDD policies in Cambodia.Limiting climate change to 2 A degrees C with a high probability requires reducing cumulative emissions to about 1600 GtCO(2) over the 2000-2100 period. This requires unprecedented rates of decarbonization even in the short-run. The availability of the option of net negative emissions, such as bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) or reforestation/afforestation, allows to delay some of these emission reductions. In the paper, we assess the demand and potential for negative emissions in particular from BECCS. Both stylized calculations and model runs show that without the possibility of negative emissions, pathways meeting the 2 A degrees C target with high probability need almost immediate emission reductions or simply become infeasible. The potential for negative emissions is uncertain. We show that negative emissions from BECCS are probably limited to around 0 to 10 GtCO(2)/year in 2050 and 0 to 20 GtCO(2)/year in 2100. Estimates on the potential of afforestation options are in the order of 0-4 GtCO(2)/year. Given the importance and the uncertainty concerning BECCS, we stress the importance of near-term assessments of its availability as today's decisions has important consequences for climate change mitigation in the long run.The ability to directly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere allows the decoupling of emissions and emissions control in space and time. We ask the question whether this unique feature of carbon dioxide removal technologies fundamentally alters the dynamics of climate mitigation pathways. The analysis is performed in the coupled energy-economy-climate model ReMIND using the bioenergy with CCS route as an application of CDR technology. BECCS is arguably the least cost CDR option if biomass availability is not a strongly limiting factor. We compare mitigation pathways with and without BECCS to explore the impact of CDR technologies on the mitigation portfolio. Effects are most pronounced for stringent climate policies where BECCS is a key technology for the effectiveness of carbon pricing policies. The decoupling of emissions and emissions control allows prolonging the use of fossil fuels in sectors that are difficult to decarbonize, particularly in the transport sector. It also balances the distribution of mitigation costs across future generations. CDR is not a silver bullet technology. The largest part of emissions reductions continues to be provided by direct mitigation measures at the emissions source. The value of CDR lies in its flexibility to alleviate the most costly constraints on mitigating emissions.This paper provides a novel assessment of the role of direct air capture of CO2 from ambient air (DAC) on the feasibility of achieving stringent climate stabilization. We use the WITCH energy-economy-climate model to investigate the long term prospects of DAC, implementing a technological specification based on recent estimates by the American Physical Society (APS 2011). Assuming global cooperation on a stringent climate policy we find that: (1) DAC is deployed only late in century, after other low carbon options, though at a very significant scale; (2) DAC has an impact on the marginal and total abatement costs (reducing them) and on the timing of mitigation (postponing it); (3) DAC also allows for a prolonged use of oil, with a positive welfare impact for energy exporting countries. Finally, we assess the role of DAC in a less than ideal climate policy by exploring its potential for engaging energy exporting countries in climate mitigation activities by means of a "clean oil" market in which oil exporters can sell oil decarbonized via DAC.Terrestrial biological atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (BCDR) through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECS), afforestation/reforestation, and forest and soil management is a family of proposed climate change mitigation strategies. Very high sequestration potentials for these strategies have been reported, but there has been no systematic analysis of the potential ecological limits to and environmental impacts of implementation at the scale relevant to climate change mitigation. In this analysis, we identified site-specific aspects of land, water, nutrients, and habitat that will affect local project-scale carbon sequestration and ecological impacts. Using this framework, we estimated global-scale land and resource requirements for BCDR, implemented at a rate of 1 Pg C y(-1). We estimate that removing 1 Pg C y(-1) via tropical afforestation would require at least 7 x 10(6) ha y(-1) of land, 0.09 Tg y(-1) of nitrogen, and 0.2 Tg y(-1) of phosphorous, and would increase evapotranspiration from those lands by almost 50 %. Switchgrass BECS would require at least 2 x 10(8) ha of land (20 times U.S. area currently under bioethanol production) and 20 Tg y(-1) of nitrogen (20 % of global fertilizer nitrogen production), consuming 4 x 10(12) m(3) y(-1) of water. While BCDR promises some direct (climate) and ancillary (restoration, habitat protection) benefits, Pg C-scale implementation may be constrained by ecological factors, and may compromise the ultimate goals of climate change mitigation.The question of whether or not biofuels help mitigate climate change has attracted much debate in the literature. Using a global computable general equilibrium model that explicitly represents land-use change impacts due to the expansion of biofuels, our study attempts to shed some light on this question. Our study shows that if biofuel mandates and targets currently announced by more than 40 countries around the world are implemented by 2020 using crop feedstocks and if both forests and pasture lands are used to meet the new land demands for biofuel expansion, this would cause net release of GHG emissions to the atmosphere until 2043 as the GHG emissions released through land-use change exceeds the reduction of emissions due to replacement of gasoline and diesel. On the other hand, if the use of forest lands is avoided by channeling only pasture lands to meet the demand for new lands, the net release of GHG emissions would cease by 2021, a year after the full implementation of the mandates and targets.The expansion of biofuel production can lead to an array of negative environmental impacts. Therefore, the European Union (EU) has recently imposed sustainability criteria on biofuel production in the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). In this article, we analyse the effectiveness of the sustainability criteria for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. We first use a global agriculture and forestry model to investigate environmental effects of the EU member states National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs) without sustainability criteria. We conclude that these targets would drive losses of 2.2Mha of highly biodiverse areas and generate 95MtCO 2 eq of additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, in a second step, we demonstrate that the EU biofuel demand could be satisfied sustainably' according to RED despite its negative environmental effects. This is because the majority of global crop production is produced sustainably' in the sense of RED and can provide more than 10 times the total European biofuel demand in 2020 if reallocated from sectors without sustainability criteria. This finding points to a potential policy failure of applying sustainability regulation to a single sector in a single region. To be effective this policy needs to be more complete in targeting a wider scope of agricultural commodities and more comprehensive in its membership of countries.Earth faces an urgent need for climate change mitigation, and carbon storage is discussed as an option. Approaches for assessing the benefit of temporary carbon storage in relation to carbon footprinting exist, but many are based on a 100-year accounting period, disregarding impacts after this time. The aim of this paper is to assess the consequences of using such approaches that disregard the long timescale on which complete removal of atmospheric CO2 occurs. Based on these findings, an assessment is made on what are relevant timescales to consider when including the value of temporary carbon storage in carbon footprinting. Implications of using a 100-year accounting period is evaluated via a literature review study of the global carbon cycle, as well as by analysing the crediting approaches that are exemplified by the PAS 2050 scheme for crediting temporary carbon storage. The global carbon cycle shows timescales of thousands of years for the transport of carbon from the atmosphere to pools beyond the near-surface layers of the Earth, from where it will not readily be re-emitted as a response to change in near-surface conditions. Compared to such timescales, the use of the 100-year accounting period appears hard to justify. We illustrate how the use of the 100-year accounting period can cause long-term global warming impacts to be hidden by short-term storage solutions that may not offer real long-term climate change mitigation. Obtaining long-term climatic benefits is considered to require storage of carbon for at least thousand years. However, it has been proposed that there may exist tipping points for the atmospheric CO2 concentration beyond which irreversible climate changes occur. To reduce the risk of passing such tipping points, fast mitigation of the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration is required and in this perspective, shorter storage times may still provide climatic benefits. Both short- and long-term perspectives should be considered when crediting temporary carbon storage, addressing both acute effects on the climate and the long-term climate change. It is however essential to distinguish between short- and long-term mitigation potential by treating them separately and avoid that short-term mitigation is used to counterbalance long-term climate change impacts from burning of fossil fuels.There are significant concerns about the longer term impact of climate change and climate variability on water availability in Australia. Modern irrigation technologies are seen as a way to manage climate change impacts and improve water security. However, while modern irrigation technologies may save volumes of water, it is likely that they will result in increased on-farm energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, suggesting potential conflicts in terms of mitigation and adaptation policies. Five irrigation technology transformation scenarios-three historical and two adoption-were developed to evaluate industry-wide tradeoffs between water savings, energy consumption (and GHG emissions), and economic returns associated with irrigation technology transformations under current Australian Government water resource policies. Three of the five scenarios tested showed tradeoffs between water savings and GHG emissions, with water savings through conversion of irrigation systems increasing both energy consumption and GHG emissions. For example, 120 GL/year of water savings achieved through drip irrigation adoption for cotton cropping would increase energy consumption by 889 TJ/year and GHG emissions by 250,000 t CO(2)e/year. A carbon price of $20/t CO(2)e would result in additional costs nationally of about $5 m/year. However, this study also indicated that significant benefit in terms of water savings and GHG reduction can be achieved when replacing older inefficient and energy-intensive systems, such as hand shift and roll-line sprinkler systems, especially when these are replaced with drip irrigation systems. We suggest priority should be given to replacing such systems while implementing the on-farm infrastructure investment policy. The findings of the study support the use of an integrated approach to avoid possible conflicts in designing national climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, both of which are being developed in Australia. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aim Because of the low albedo of forests and other biophysical factors, most scenario-based climate modelling studies indicate that removal of temperate forest will promote cooling, indicating that temperate forests are a source of heat relative to other classes of land cover. Our objective was to test the hypothesis that US temperate forests reduce surface temperatures. Location The continental United States. Methods Ordinary least squares regression was used to develop relationships between forest extent and surface temperature. Forest extent was derived from the 900m2 2001 National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2001) and surface temperature data were from the MODIS 1 km2 8-day composite (MYD11A2). Forestsurface temperature relationships were developed for winter, spring, summer, autumn and annually using 5 years of MODIS land surface temperature data (200711) across six spatial scales (1, 4, 9, 16, 25 and 36 km2). Regression models controlled for the effects of elevation, aspect and latitude (by constraining the regressions within a 1 degrees range). Results We did not find any significant positive slopes in regressions of average annual surface temperatures versus the proportion of forest, indicating that forests are not a source of heat relative to other types of land cover. We found that surface temperatures declined as the proportion of forest increased for spring, summer, autumn and annually. The forestsurface temperature relationship was also scale dependent in that spatially extensive forests produced cooler surface temperatures than forests that were dominant only locally. Main conclusions Our results are not consistent with most scenario-based climate modelling studies. Because of their warming potential, the value of temperate afforestation as a potential climate change mitigation strategy is unclear. Our results indicate that temperate afforestation is a climate change mitigation strategy that should be implemented to promote spatially extensive forests.Quantifying soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics at a high spatial and temporal resolution in response to different agricultural management practices and environmental conditions can help identify practices that both sequester carbon in the soil and sustain agricultural productivity. Using an agricultural systems model (the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator), we conducted a high spatial resolution and long-term (122years) simulation study to identify the key management practices and environmental variables influencing SOC dynamics in a continuous wheat cropping system in Australia's 96million ha cereal-growing regions. Agricultural practices included five nitrogen application rates (0200kgNha1 in 50kgNha1 increments), five residue removal rates (0100% in 25% increments), and five residue incorporation rates (0100% in 25% increments). We found that the change in SOC during the 122-year simulation was influenced by the management practices of residue removal (linearly negative) and fertilization (nonlinearly positive) and the environmental variables of initial SOC content (linearly negative) and temperature (nonlinearly negative). The effects of fertilization were strongest at rates up to 50kgNha1, and the effects of temperature were strongest where mean annual temperatures exceeded 19 degrees C. Reducing residue removal and increasing fertilization increased SOC in most areas except Queensland where high rates of SOC decomposition caused by high temperature and soil moisture negated these benefits. Management practices were particularly effective in increasing SOC in south-west Western Australia an area with low initial SOC. The results can help target agricultural management practices for increasing SOC in the context of local environmental conditions, enabling farmers to contribute to climate change mitigation and sustaining agricultural production.Policy initiatives in India, such as the Social Forestry Program and later the Joint Forest Management, were introduced for their co-benefits, including forest protection, employment opportunities, and added income for communities living in and around the forests. The evolution of these forest policies is critically reviewed. It is argued that India is perfectly positioned to benefit from climate change mitigation efforts, due to a rich, albeit chequered, history in forest management. National forestry policies are examined to assess how they can complement international climate change mitigation instruments, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the more recent Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD or REDD+ with conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks) and aid national sustainable development objectives. There is a need to heed the experiences from India's evolving forest policies, particularly those concerning land tenure and resource rights, which lack specificity within international mechanisms. The active engagement of rural communities must be integral to any programmes that make any claim to development and to environmental integrity as a whole. Policy relevance India's forestry programmes are examined for their effectiveness in informing international initiatives such as the CDM and REDD+. Forestry policies in India can evolve to complement international climate mitigation tools. By examining current and historical forest legislation, and their subsequent impacts, it is shown how communities can sustain their system of forest management and retain/obtain rights to land and resources under the CDM and REDD+. Looking for such synergies within existing national policies to implement newer international initiatives can greatly facilitate and increase the momentum of global environmental change.Changes in the agriculture sector are essential to mitigate and adapt to climate change, meet growing food demands, and improve the livelihoods of poor smallholder producers. What agricultural strategies are needed to meet these challenges? To what extent are there synergies among these strategies? This paper examines these issues for smallholder producers in Kenya across several agroecological zones. Several practices emerge as triple wins, supporting climate adaptation, greenhouse gas mitigation, and profitability goals. In particular, integrated soil fertility management and improved livestock feeding are shown to provide multiple benefits across all agroecological zones examined. Triple wins of other agricultural practices are limited to specific agroecological zones. Irrigation and soil and water conservation, for example, are essential for adaptation, mitigation, and profitability in arid areas. The results suggest that agricultural investments targeted toward these triple-win strategies will have the greatest payoff in terms of increased resilience of farm and pastoralist households and global climate change mitigation. To reap the benefits of triple-win strategies will require that policymakers, researchers, and practitioners move away from isolated approaches focused on either adaptation or mitigation or rural income generation toward a more holistic assessment of joint strategies as well as their tradeoffs and synergies.A carbon sequestration strategy has recently been proposed in which a forest is actively managed, and a fraction of the wood is selectively harvested and stored to prevent decomposition. The forest serves as a 'carbon scrubber' or 'carbon remover' that provides continuous sequestration (negative emissions). Earlier estimates of the theoretical potential of wood harvest and storage (WHS) based on coarse wood production rates were 10 +/- 5 GtC y(-1). Starting from this physical limit, here we apply a number of practical constraints: (1) land not available due to agriculture; (2) forest set aside as protected areas, assuming 50 % in the tropics and 20 % in temperate and boreal forests; (3) forests difficult to access due to steep terrain; (4) wood use for other purposes such as timber and paper. This 'top-down' approach yields a WHS potential 2.8 GtC y(-1). Alternatively, a 'bottom-up' approach, assuming more efficient wood use without increasing harvest, finds 0.1-0.5 GtC y(-1) available for carbon sequestration. We suggest a range of 1-3 GtC y(-1) carbon sequestration potential if major effort is made to expand managed forests and/or to increase harvest intensity. The implementation of such a scheme at our estimated lower value of 1 GtC y(-1) would imply a doubling of the current world wood harvest rate. This can be achieved by harvesting wood at a moderate harvesting intensity of 1.2 tC ha(-1) y(-1), over a forest area of 8 Mkm(2) (800 Mha). To achieve the higher value of 3 GtC y(-1), forests need to be managed this way on half of the world's forested land, or on a smaller area but with higher harvest intensity. We recommend WHS be considered part of the portfolio of climate mitigation and adaptation options that needs further research.In the frame of the European project titled "Zero Waste" (1G-MED08-533), a tool has been developed called CO2ZW for estimating the GHG emissions for the management of MSW at the municipal, regional or national levels with small amounts of input data. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the CO2ZW tool allows us to inventory and monitor GHG emissions from MSW following the IPCC guidelines for national inventories and the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA). The CO2ZW tool includes the key stages and parameters for calculating GHG emissions and includes several advantages regarding the implementation of the default values of the Mediterranean European countries, an improvement in accessibility (online free access) and two approaches for calculating GHG emissions from landfills. The results of this paper show that for countries with medium and high rates of deposition, implementation of the European policies limiting waste in landfills can contribute to mitigate climate change in a remarkable way. With the CO2ZW tool, it is possible to evaluate waste management choices depending on waste management infrastructures and waste policies, along with the quantification of GHG emissions from MSW management, which is essential to guide waste policy options and climate change solutions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nuclear energy has the potential to be a vital component toward a clean energy strategy - but future energy systems may or may not include nuclear power. This study explores a range of future nuclear pathways consistent with different levels of energy demand, and explicitly assesses the implications of a potential global nuclear energy phase-out. In our scenarios the mitigation of climate change is one of the main factors driving a much needed transformation of the global energy system. A range of climate change mitigation scenarios is outlined and compared to a business-as-usual case. The scenarios are characteristic of different approaches to climate mitigation, including alternative combinations of supply and demand-side changes. Our analysis indicates that under a comprehensive and global mitigation effort, the stabilization of GHG concentrations at low levels (450 ppm CO2) would be technically achievable even at high energy demand and with a nuclear phase-out. We identify that significant investments in energy efficiency improvements and demand reduction offer the most flexibility in energy supply options and may or may not include nuclear power. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents an updated overview of recent literature on the role of nuclear power in mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) and particulate matter (PM) emissions from electricity generation. Emission intensities are strongly dependent on the country of operation and type of technology used in each category of power production options, but robust observations can be made with regards to the average emission intensity of each main alternative. The majority of emissions from nuclear energy is associated with parts of its overall life cycle other than the operation of nuclear power plants. Technological progress in especially uranium enrichment has recently yielded energy intensity reductions that have significantly lowered the GHG footprint of nuclear power, which at present amounts to 5-17 gCO(2) eq/kWh. As a result, average GHG emissions are today around two orders of magnitude lower for nuclear energy than for conventional coal-based power production. This article also addresses the feasibility of potential deployment scenarios for nuclear power and their implications in terms of global GHG emissions mitigation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Economic evaluation of climate policy traditionally treats uncertainty by appealing to expected utility theory. Yet our knowledge of the impacts of climate policy may not be of sufficient quality to be described by unique probabilistic beliefs. In such circumstances, it has been argued that the axioms of expected utility theory may not be the correct standard of rationality. By contrast, several axiomatic frameworks have recently been proposed that account for ambiguous knowledge. In this paper, we apply static and dynamic versions of a smooth ambiguity model to climate mitigation policy. We obtain a general result on the comparative statics of optimal abatement and ambiguity aversion, and then extend our analysis to a more realistic, dynamic setting, where we introduce scientific ambiguity into the well-known DICE model of the climate-economy system. For policy-relevant exogenous mitigation policies, we show that the value of emissions abatement increases as ambiguity aversion increases, and that this 'ambiguity premium' can in some plausible cases be very large. In these cases the effect of ambiguity aversion on welfare is comparable to that of other much studied welfare parameters. Thus ambiguity aversion may be an important neglected aspect of climate change economics, and seems likely to provide another argument for strong abatement policy.Mixed-tree plantations can be a good silvicultural alternative to large-scale monoculture coniferous plantations for climate change mitigation, which is facilitated by the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. To evaluate the impacts of tree species compositions on the carbon storage capacity of plantation ecosystems, we measured the above and belowground biomass, as well as the carbon content, in three 27-year old forest plantations of monoculture Castanopsis hystrix (CH stand), monoculture Pinus massoniana (PM stand), and mixed C. hystrix and P. massoniana (mixed CH/PM stand) stands. We developed an allometric equation to estimate tree carbon storage. The carbon storage levels of understory, litter, and soil components were also estimated. Results show that biomass is positively correlated with carbon storage. The ecosystem carbon storage of the mixed CH/PM stand (327.03 Mg ha(-1)) was higher than those of the CH (314.59 Mg ha(-1)) and PM (293.60 Mg ha(-1)) stands. The majority of carbon storage was found in the soil pool (84.73%, 63.54%, and 75.80% in the CH, PM and mixed CH/PM stands, respectively). Almost 40% of soil carbon at a depth of 0-60 cm was stored in the upper 20 cm of the soil pool. Except for the vegetation layer, each layer of the CH and mixed CH/PM stands consisted of a higher amount of carbon than did the layers of the PM stand. These findings suggest that mixed CH/PM plantation stands or valuable indigenous CH plantation stands more substantially improve carbon storage in litter, soil, and ecosystems than do monoculture PM plantation stands. The results also imply that developing valuable indigenous tree species is a good silvicultural option for enhancing carbon sequestration and valuable timber cultivation in subtropical China. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biochar is produced from the pyrolysis of organic materials, and when buried in soil can act as a long term soil carbon (C) store. Evidence suggests that biochar can also increase crop yields, reduce nutrient leaching and increase biological nitrogen fixation in leguminous plants. However, the potential for increasing biological N-2 fixation in agroecosystems is poorly understood, with inconsistent reports of root nodulation following biochar application. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of biochar application rate and time since application on nodulation and nitrogenase activity in nodules of clover grown in a temperate agricultural soil. We used replicated field plots with three biochar application rates (0, 25 and 50 t ha(-1)). Three years after biochar amendment, the plots were further split and fresh biochar added at two different rates (25 and 50 t ha(-1)) resulting in double-loaded reapplications of 25 + 25 and 50 + 50 t ha(-1). Three years after biochar application, there was no significant difference in the total number of root nodules between biochar-amended and unamended soil, regardless of the application rate. However, despite clover root nodules being of a similar number and size the level of nitrogenase activity of individual nodules in biochar-amended soil was significantly higher than in unamended soil. Reapplication of biochar resulted in decreased nodulation, although the rate of nitrogenase activity per nodule remained unaffected. In the short term, biochar influences root nodule number and localised N-2 fixation per nodule; however, total nitrogenase activity for the whole root system remained unaffected by the application rate of biochar or time since its application. These results emphasise the importance of long-term field studies, with a variety of applications rates for determining the influence of biochar applications on N-2-fixing organisms and in providing data that can meaningfully inform agronomic management decisions and climate change mitigation strategies.A fast and accurate measurement of soil carbon is needed in current scientific issues. Today there are many sensors suitable for these purposes, but choosing the appropriate sensor depends on the spatial scale at which the studies are conducted. There are few detailed studies that validate these types of measures allowing their immediate use. Here it is validated the quick use of a sensor in execution at Pantelleria, chosen for size, use and variability of the parameter measured, to give an operational tool for carbon stocks studies. The DRIFT sensor used here has been validated in the first 60 cm of the soil of the whole island, and it has shown predictivity higher than 90%.Remote sensing offers unique perspectives to study the relationship between urban systems and climate change because it provides spatially explicit and synoptic views of the landscape that are available at multiple grains, extents, and over time. While remote sensing has made significant advances in the study of urban areas, especially urban heat island and urban land change, there are myriad unanswered science and policy questions to which remote sensing science could contribute. Here we identify several key opportunities for remote sensing science to increase our understanding of the relationships between urban systems and climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.'Greening' economic growth discourses are increasingly replacing the catchword of 'sustainable development' within national and international policy circles. The core of the argument is that the growth of modern economies may be sustained or even augmented, while policy intervention simultaneously ensures sustained environmental stewardship and improved social outcomes. But how well are these claims scientifically grounded or supported by economic theory, evidence, and applied modeling? We address this question with reference to the economic modeling of climate mitigation policies. We argue that orthodox economic equilibrium and optimization thinking offers, in effect, little support to and insufficiently meaningful interpretations of green growth claims. There are several exciting strands of new economic thinking that are emerging, offering a more robust and empirically validated understanding of the potential for green growth paths. Nonoptimizing simulation models are arguably in a better position to capture socioeconomic system dynamics and the role of macroeconomic policies for sustainability governance. An important caveat, nevertheless, is that when judged against the evidence, greening growth remains to some extent an oxymoron as to date there has been little evidence of substantial decoupling of GDP from carbon-intensive energy use on a wide scale. Moreover, although the rhetoric on 'greening the economy' actively supports the need for policy intervention, the macroeconomic reasoning behind this, remains ambiguous. We finally suggest that, although focusing on the dichotomy between growth and the environment is clearly important, the quality of growth and beyond growth dimensions are at least as important for delivering improved macroeconomic governance for sustainability. (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Bioenergy projects can lead to direct and indirect land use change (LUC), which can substantially affect greenhouse gas balances with both beneficial and adverse outcomes for bioenergy's contribution to climate change mitigation. The causes behind LUC are multiple, complex, interlinked, and change over time. This makes quantification uncertain and sensitive to many factors that can develop in different directions-including land use productivity, trade patterns, prices and elasticities, and use of by-products associated with biofuels production. Quantifications reported so far vary substantially and do not support the ranking of bioenergy options with regard to LUC and associated emissions. There are however several options for mitigating these emissions, which can be implemented despite the uncertainties. Long-rotation forest management is associated with carbon emissions and sequestration that are not in temporal balance with each other and this leads to mitigation trade-offs between biomass extraction for energy use and the alternative to leave the biomass in the forest. Bioenergy's contribution to climate change mitigation needs to reflect a balance between near-term targets and the long-term objective to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees C (Copenhagen Accord). Although emissions from LUC can be significant in some circumstances, the reality of such emissions is not sufficient reason to exclude bioenergy from the list of worthwhile technologies for climate changemitigation. Policy measures to minimize the negative impacts of LUC should be based on a holistic perspective recognizing the multiple drivers and effects of LUC. (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The need for climate change mitigation has led to a recent upsurge in policies aimed to deliver re-afforestation across the globe, but with mixed successes observed depending upon the levels of private land ownership and ability of governments to engage land managers. This paper evaluates a new government-led scheme in Wales, which is intended to increase woodland cover from 14% to 20% by 2030 to offset the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. As the scheme is primarily intended to promote woodland creation on farms, the analysis of the paper focusses upon the question of how to incentivise farmers, and the reasons why difficulties have been experienced engaging land owners in the scheme. Whilst a number of recommendations are made from this policy evaluation, the paper also demonstrates that key lessons have not been applied from existing literature on farmers' behaviour and environmental scheme uptake, and that policy makers are not integrating practice across departmental divisions. As such, the paper suggests that the new focus on carbon sequestration has acted as a distraction to the development of a more robust governance strategy that builds on previous successes and failures in agri-environment policy. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Irrigated croplands in Central Asia are highly prone to land degradation due to their environmentally fragile physical settings and intensive agricultural practices. This study: (i) assesses the state of croplands in irrigated areas in northern Uzbekistan, based on the time series of MODIS-NDVI imagery; (ii) analyzes relationships between the identified trend of cropland degradation and soil quality, terrain characteristics, population density, and land use; and (iii) synthesizes the results which form the basis for recommendations on spatial targeting of land rehabilitation measures. The NDVI-based cropland degradation assessment revealed a significant decline of cropland productivity across 23% (94,835 ha) of the arable area in the study region between 2000 and 2010. We conclude that the degraded cropland identified within areas of high population density and with better quality soils, can be prioritized for rehabilitation measures. For degraded croplands located in sparsely populated areas with poorer quality soils, other alternatives (such as leaving cropland fallow) may be more effective depending on the severity of degradation and economic viability of rehabilitation options.Climate change mitigation will require rapid adoption of low-carbon energy resources. The integration of large-scale wind energy in the United States (US) will require controllable assets to balance the variability of wind energy production. Previous work has identified hydropower as an advantageous asset, due to its flexibility and low-carbon emissions production. While many dams currently provide energy and environmental services in the US and globally, we find that multi-use hydropower facilities would face significant policy conflicts if asked to store and release water to accommodate wind integration. Specifically, we develop a model simulating hydroelectric operational decisions when the electric facility is able to provide wind integration services through a mechanism that we term 'flex reserves'. We use Kerr Dam in North Carolina as a case study, simulating operations under two alternative reservoir policies, one reflecting current policies and the other regulating flow levels to promote downstream ecosystem conservation. Even under perfect information and significant pricing incentives, Kerr Dam faces operational conflicts when providing any substantial levels of flex reserves while also maintaining releases consistent with other river management requirements. These operational conflicts are severely exacerbated during periods of drought. Increase of payments for flex reserves does not resolve these operational and policy conflicts.Climate change mitigation in the materials sector faces a twin challenge: satisfying rapidly rising global demand for materials while significantly curbing greenhouse-gas emissions(1,2). Process efficiency improvement and recycling can contribute to reducing emissions per material output; however, long-term material demand and scrap availability for recycling depend fundamentally on the dynamics of societies' stocks of products in use(3-6), an issue that has been largely neglected in climate science. Here, we show that aluminium in-use stock patterns set essential boundary conditions for future emission pathways, which has significant implications for mitigation priority setting. If developing countries follow industrialized countries in their aluminium stock patterns, a 50% emission reduction by 2050 below 2000 levels cannot be reached even under very optimistic recycling and technology assumptions. The target can be reached only if future global per-capita aluminium stocks saturate at a level much lower than that in present major industrialized countries. As long as global in-use stocks are growing rapidly, radical new technologies in primary production (for example, inert anode and carbon capture and storage) have the greatest impact in emission reduction; however, their window of opportunity is closing once the stocks begin to saturate and the largest reduction potential shifts to post-consumer scrap recycling.This study reviews the potential use of biochar as soil amendment in afforestation, reforestation, agroforestry, fruit tree orchards, and bio-energy plantations. Implementing this practice could sequester large amounts of carbon (C) over the long-term, potentially offsetting anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, and mitigating climate change. On a global scale, this practice could sequester between 2 and 109.2Pg biochar-C in 1.75 billion ha of degraded and deforested lands and agroforestry systems. An additional considerable amount could be sequestered in the soil of fruit tree orchards and bio-energy plantations. The anticipated improvement in the quality of the biochar-amended soils is expected to enhance resilience to these land uses, increasing their adaptation capacity to climate change. Yet, specific questions still need to be addressed, for example, the impact of biochar on the availability of nitrogen and potassium for plants in acidic soils and under humid conditions, as well as the impact of biochar on soil and trees in alkaline soils and under Mediterranean or drier conditions. Also, a full assessment of health hazards and environmental risks related to the production of biochar and its application in soil is required. Other questions relate to the environmental and economic costs of biochar application. Therefore, life cycle assessments and economic calculations should be conducted on a site-specific basis and include the practices of feedstock collection, transportation, processing, and spreading. International actions should regulate biochar practice as an eligible means for funding under the C finance mechanism. Specifically, payments should be provided to landowners for accomplishing ecosystem services.The land-use change and forestry sector can be a cost-effective contributor to climate mitigation in at least three ways: providing carbon offsets through carbon sequestration in biomass and soils, reducing emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases, and producing biofuels that replace fossil fuels. The presence of carbon markets should help encourage these activities: however, most carbon trades to date have occurred in the energy sector. A major obstacle to carbon trades from land-use systems is the presence of high transaction costs of converting a carbon offset into a tradable commodity, so the prevailing market carbon prices may not provide enough incentive for adoption. This paper presents a model of the exchange of carbon offsets between a project developer and a group of landholders. The model is solved to derive project feasibility frontiers that show the minimum number of contracts necessary to make a project feasible at any given carbon price. The model is applied to two case studies (smallholder agroforestry in Indonesia and partial reforestation of family farms in Australia) under two types of contract (purchase of carbon flows and rental of carbon stocks). The paper concludes by identifying possible strategies to reduce transaction costs while maintaining project integrity. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations increasing and binding agreements to reduce anthropogenic emissions wanting, interest in geoengineering as a climate remediation option to be used in tandem with climate change mitigation is growing. Solar radiation management (SRM), due to its relatively low financial cost and the potential for near-term reduction in average global temperature, is gaining particular attention despite the risks of its use, both identified and unanticipated. This paper considers the structure-the participants, positions, actions, outcomes, information, and positive and negative payoffs of-U.S. weather modification research and governance developed between 1947 and 1980, offering a case study that may be useful in thinking through how to move forward with SRM development and governance should a decision be made to contemplate augmenting mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering.Besides costs and benefits, fairness aspects tend to influence negotiating parties' willingness to join an international agreement on climate change mitigation. Fairness is largely considered to improve the prospects of success of international negotiations and hence measures raising fairness perception might in turn help to bring about effective cooperative international climate change mitigation. We consider the influences present international support of climate policy in developing countries exerts on fairness perception and how this again might affect international negotiations. In doing so we distinguish between fairness perception that is based on historical experiences and perception that is based on conjectures about opponents' intentions. By identifying beneficial components of current support schemes lessons can be learnt for designing new schemes like the Green Climate Fund.In multi-gas climate policies such as the Kyoto Protocol one has to decide how to compare the emissions of different greenhouse gases. The choice of metric could have significant implications for mitigation priorities considered under the prospective negotiations for climate mitigation agreements. Several metrics have been proposed for this task with the Global Warming Potential (GWP) being the most common. However, these metrics have not been systematically compared to each other in the context of the 2 A degrees C climate stabilization target. Based on a single unified modeling framework, we demonstrate that metric values span a wide range, depending on the metric structure and the treatment of the time dimension. Our finding confirms the basic salient point that metrics designed to represent different aspects of the climate and socio-economic system behave differently. Our result also reflects a complex interface between science and policy surrounding metrics. Thus, it is important to select or design a metric suitable for climate stabilization based on an interaction among practitioners, policymakers, and scientists.A February 2012 survey of almost 5,000 farmers across a region of the U.S. that produces more than half of the nation's corn and soybean revealed that 66 % of farmers believed climate change is occurring (8 % mostly anthropogenic, 33 % equally human and natural, 25 % mostly natural), while 31 % were uncertain and 3.5 % did not believe that climate change is occurring. Results of initial analyses indicate that farmers' beliefs about climate change and its causes vary considerably, and the relationships between those beliefs, concern about the potential impacts of climate change, and attitudes toward adaptive and mitigative action differ in systematic ways. Farmers who believed that climate change is occurring and attributable to human activity were significantly more likely to express concern about impacts and support adaptive and mitigative action. On the other hand, farmers who attributed climate change to natural causes, were uncertain about whether it is occurring, or did not believe that it is occurring were less concerned, less supportive of adaptation, and much less likely to support government and individual mitigative action. Results suggest that outreach with farmers should account for these covariances in belief, concerns, and attitudes toward adaptation and mitigation.The effects of black carbon (BC) aerosol on climate warming have been the study focus in the recent decade, and the reduction of BC is now expected to have significant near-term climate change mitigation. Large uncertainties of BC optical properties, however, still exist and seriously restrict the ability to quantify BC's climate effects. In this study, advanced instrumentation (a three-wavelength photoacoustic soot spectrometer (PASS-3) and a single particle soot photometer (SP2)) were used to measure black carbon aerosol and analyze Its optical properties in a mega-city in South China, Shenzhen, during the summer of 2011. The results indicated that the average BC mass concentration was 4.0 +/- 3.1 mu g m(-3) during the campaign, accounting for similar to 11% of the total PM2.5 mass concentration. The PM2.5 light absorption at 405, 532 and 781 nm was 37.1 +/- 28.1, 25.4 +/- 19.0 and 17.6 +/- 12.9 Mm(-1), respectively. The average absorption Angstrom exponent of PM2.5 in visual spectrum (AAE(405-785 nm)) was 1.1 +/- 0.1 during the campaign, indicating that the light absorbing carbon mainly came from vehicular emissions, with little contributions from biomass burning emissions. The mass absorption efficiency (MAE) of BC at 532 nm ranged from 5.0 to 8.5 m(2) g(-1) during the campaign, with an average of 6.5 +/- 0.5 m(2) g(-1), and showed an obvious diurnal pattern with high values in the daytime. The average percentage of internally mixed BC was 24.3 +/- 7.9% during the campaign, showing significant positive correlation relationship with the MAE of BC. More quantitative data analysis indicated that the internally mixed BC would amplify MAE by about 7% during the campaign, which stands in accordance with the new finding of a very recent Science magazine paper (Cappa et al., 2012) that the BC absorption enhancement due to internal mixing in the real atmosphere is relatively low, in apparent contrast to theoretical model predictions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities are the major contributors to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They account for about 75% of global energy consumption and up to 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. With the ongoing rapid increase in urban population, expansion of middle class in urban centers in developing countries, and availability of cheaper vehicles such as Tata Nano and Bajaj RE60 in India, the demand for energy and associated emissions from cities are expected to grow rapidly. Though cities are in a better position to mitigate climate change, it does not necessary mean that there is a willingness on their part to capitalize on these mitigation opportunities. Climate change mitigation is not the priority for them because they face a number of competing priorities including local economic growth and development and service delivery. This paper suggests a range of policy tools that can help cities achieve both local priorities as well as reduce emissions, including GHGs. The suggested policies will be effective when used synergistically. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motorised travel are hypothesised to be associated with individual, household, spatial and other environmental factors. Little robust evidence exists on who contributes most (and least) to travel CO2 and, in particular, the factors influencing commuting, business, shopping and social travel CO2. This paper examines whether and how demographic, socio-economic and other personal and environmental characteristics are associated with land-based passenger transport and associated CO2 emissions. Primary data were collected from 3474 adults using a newly developed survey instrument in the iConnect study in the UK. The participants reported their past-week travel activity and vehicle characteristics from which CO2 emissions were derived using an adapted travel emissions profiling method. Multivariable linear and logistic regression analyses were used to examine what characteristics predicted higher CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions from motorised travel were distributed highly unequally, with the top fifth of participants producing more than two fifth of emissions. Car travel dominated overall CO2 emissions, making up 90% of the total. The strongest independent predictors of CO2 emissions were owning at least one car, being in full-time employment and having a home-work distance of more than 10 km. Income, education and tenure were also strong univariable predictors of CO2 emissions, but seemed to be further back on the causal pathway than having a car. Male gender, late-middle age, living in a rural area and having access to a bicycle also showed significant but weaker associations with emissions production. The findings may help inform the development of climate change mitigation policies for the transport sector. Targeting individuals and households with high car ownership, focussing on providing viable alternatives to commuting by car, and supporting planning and other policies that reduce commuting distances may provide an equitable and efficient approach to meeting carbon mitigation targets. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.International agreements have led to an increase of national climate policies. The selection and analysis of policy instruments are mainly oriented at their technical effectiveness and financial feasibility while social sustainability plays a minor role. As a consequence, the impact of climate policies on individuals' life situation is largely unknown even though the design of these policies suggests effects on national and international patterns of income inequality. Focusing on the residential sector, this paper investigates how national climate policy strategies affect the relationship between income and utility costs of households within nation states. It is argued that the effect of climate policy on income inequality depends on the specific design of these policies. Market-based solutions of energy efficient housing insulation, for example, focus more on effectiveness and less on social justice. In contrast, financial benefits from regulatory climate policies like eco-taxes on fuel can be configured as an instrument for income-redistribution. This paper sets a link between environmental politics and social justice research in a multi-level approach focusing on inequalities in housing utility costs among socio-economic groups. The analysis is based on EU SILC data which is combined with climate policy instruments in the field of housing. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Great Tohoku- Earthquake and the following nuclear meltdown in Fukushima called the world's attention to Japans' energy and climate policy. Japan is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouses gases in the world and is still facing problems of reaching its Kyoto target by domestic reductions. Emissions trading has been used in Japanese climate policy since 2005. However, major emission reductions have not been achieved and a functioning market does not exist. Hence, using an advanced Public Choice approach, we ask for the political reasons for the failure of ambitious carbon markets in Japan and how the earthquake has influenced the political chances of emissions trading. Also, we evaluate Public Choice's arguments and environmental policy making. We show that in Japan, even after some positive promising developments, chances for an ambitious carbon market are still very low. We also show that a Public Choice that takes exogenous conditions into account delivers important insights into climate policy decision making.In the coming decades, cities around the world will suffer impacts due to rising global temperatures. However, unlike climate change mitigation, urban adaptation to climate change remains an insignificant issue in our context. This article reviews the broader literature on climate change adaptation with a view to understanding the challenges and dimensions involved in the adaptation of cities to climate change. We identify six main challenges to adaptation. We characterize the existing adaptation strategies and provide examples of documented interventions in cities. Finally, we discuss the need to systematically evaluate and investigate the adaptation of cities to climate change.Energy production from anaerobic digestion of organic waste and dedicated digestable biomass is a promising climate change mitigation option. Over the last ten years anaerobic digestion has become established in many European countries. The plants have been developed for renewable energy generation, but also to control the emission of odors from zootechnical farms and to stabilize biomass before its agronomic use. In Italy the subsidies available for power generation from biomass have given rise to renewed interest in biogas, creating new opportunities for the agricultural and livestock sectors. Despite of this, in Southern Italy the manure is highly dispersed over a large number of small-size cattle farms, while power generation facilities are affected by scale economies and the aggregation of input biomass is a major logistic, managing, economic and environmental drawback towards the diffusion of such technologies. In this paper, an investment decision methodology for the assessment of optimal size and feedstock mix of biogas power plants fed by cattle manure and energy crops is presented. The methodology is applied to one of the most promising basins of Puglia region, in Southern Italy, represented by the Municipalities of the Local Action Group "Terra dei Trulli e del Barsento", Province of Bari. The main factors influencing the profitability of these investments are assessed, with biogas power plant size ranging between 50 kW and 1 MW, and on the basis of the recently introduced feed-in tariff scheme for such plants (D.M. 6 July 2012). The results show that a high manure recovery rate, the reuse of biogas slurry and the cogeneration options are major key factor for the profitability of the investments. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The literature on pedagogical methods in international affairs includes a number of international politics simulations. We present the material for an in-class simulation exercise on international climate negotiations that attempts to help students understand the importance of theory as well as the substantive issues surrounding climate policy. Simulations have been proposed as a means of providing an engaging classroom experience and a more diverse learning experience. The exercises presented here focus on developing student research skills, analyzing data to present a realistic policy position and understanding the process of institutional regime formation. At the end of the simulation, students are asked to relate their own negotiation experiences back to the theoretical material discussed during the semester. An assessment was conducted of student expectations prior to the simulation exercise and compared with post-simulation experiences. Students reported the greatest positive difference between their expected learning outcome and actual experience with the simulation in terms of learning information about specific country assignments, overall enjoyment of the activity, and understanding the material covered in the course. The greatest negative difference between expectations and experience were reported for understanding international negotiations more generally and current international events. The article outlines the full content for an in-class simulation and its' implementation as well as results from an evaluation of its use. The simulation provides students with a better understanding of the complexity of international negotiations over climate policy while outlining key theoretical concepts in international relations and comparative public policy.One of the most relevant measures for climate change mitigation is the conservation and regeneration of forests in our countries. The amount of stored carbon in the forest biomass becomes a relevant variable for public policy. The present article analyses the association of some dasometric variables, easily obtained, with tree biomass with the purpose of indirectly estimating it, given that direct measurement of tree biomass is a complex and very expensive task. The general objective of this study was to analyze the pattern shown by dasometric variables, easily obtained, with tree biomass to estimate it by using data from two tropical forests in Costa Rica, with the purpose of analyzing its potential general application in tropical forests in the entire country. The bibliographic review helped to identify four possible models which estimate biomass in tropical forests. 907 trees were used with diameter at breast height (dbh) greater than 10 cm in two tropical forests in Costa Rica (Corcovado National Park at the SW of the country, and Fila Carbon at the SE part, Caribbean slope), generating a biomass estimate as precise as possible. Dasometric variables (wood density, total height and dbh) were used to analyze their relationship with biomass with the objective of finding a model that could predict it. The final model uses, as independent variables, dbh and density. Dbh has a high correlation with tree total height, which is very difficult to obtain in the field, therefore it was not used. The variable density is very important as it varies between trees having the same structure but of different species. To estimate the model, a segmented regression technique was used as well as weighted mean squares to solve for heteroscedasticity. The final model met all statistical assumptions for a linear model according to the residual and parametric analysis. The determination coefficient resulted in 0,992. As a conclusion, the study proposes a methodological approach to estimate forest biomass, which is very useful to support decision-making on carbon storage in tropical forests. Biomass determination in the field in future plots is going to help the calibration of this approach to estimate biomass stored in tropical forests.This paper aims to analyze the various policy options for addressing greenhouse gas emissions from international maritime shipping, with an emphasis on the use of economic instruments. The economic incentives provided for the industry are categorized and examined with regard to their effectiveness for climate protection purposes. An analysis of the potential use of market-based mechanisms for the shipping sector follows alongside with the review and evaluation of the various proposals for a Maritime Emissions Trading Scheme that are submitted to the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organization and are currently under consideration. The importance of the adoption of a maritime global cap-and-trade scheme for climate change mitigation is particularly emphasized. Within this context, it is also considered whether the possible introduction of economic incentive measures on a broader (regional or global) level may cause problems of implementation and how these obstacles can be overcome.Over the last 5 years, the U.S. Congress has voted on several pieces of legislation intended to sharply reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. Given that climate change is a world public bad, standard economic logic would predict that the United States would free ride and wait for other nations to reduce their emissions. Within the Congress, there are clear patterns to who votes in favor of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. This paper presents a political economy analysis of the determinants of pro-green votes on such legislation. Conservatives consistently vote against such legislation. Controlling for a representative's ideology, representatives from richer districts and districts with a lower per-capita carbon dioxide footprint are more likely to vote in favor of climate change mitigation legislation. Representatives from districts where industrial emissions represent a larger share of greenhouse gas emissions are more likely to vote no.Biomass from the forest sector can be an important source of renewable energy and can contribute to climate change mitigation and bioenergy development. However, the removal of biomass from forests has significant impacts on the forest ecosystem. For instance, it modifies soil litter which is particularly important to preserve soil characteristics and to sustain a diversity of organisms. Our aim is to analyze alternatives of sustainable forest management and compare how they perform in terms of carbon savings in order to assess the role of the sector in a regional emission reduction plan. The analysis is performed applying CO2FIX, a well-known carbon accounting model to the forests of the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. The behavior of the most important forest macro-categories is investigated under common management alternatives: no harvest activities, maintenance of a constant stock, different rotation lengths, and maximization of harvested biomass. We evaluate their impact at landscape level on the regional carbon budget, thus estimating the maximum potential contribution from the forest sector. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Globally, wetlands provide the largest terrestrial carbon (C) store, and restoration of degraded wetlands provides a potentially important mechanism for climate change mitigation. We examined the potential for restored saltmarshes to sequester carbon, and found that they can provide a modest, but sustained, sink for atmospheric CO2. Rates of C and nutrient cycling were measured and compared between a natural saltmarsh (high- and low-shore locations), claimed arable land on former high-shore saltmarsh and a managed realignment restoration site (high- and low-shore) in transition from agricultural land to saltmarsh 15 years after realignment, at Tollesbury, Essex, UK. We measured pools and turnover of C and nitrogen (N) in soil and vegetation at each site using a range of methods, including gas flux measurement and isotopic labelling. The natural high-shore site had the highest soil organic matter concentrations, topsoil C stock and below-ground biomass, whereas the agricultural site had the highest total extractable N concentration and lowest soil C/N ratio. Ecosystem respiration rates were similar across all three high-shore sites, but much higher in both low-shore sites, which receive regular inputs of organic matter and nutrients from the estuary. Total evolution of C-14-isotopically labelled substrate as CO2 was highest at the agricultural site, suggesting that low observed respiration rates here were due to low substrate supply (following a recent harvest) rather than to inherently low microbial activity. The results suggest that, after 15 years, the managed realignment site is not fully equivalent to the natural saltmarsh in terms of biological and chemical function. While above ground biomass, extractable N and substrate mineralisation rates in the high-shore site were all quite similar to the natural site, less dynamic ecosystem properties including soil C stock, C/N ratio and below-ground biomass all remained more similar to the agricultural site. These results suggest that reversion to natural biogeochemical functioning will occur following restoration, but is likely to be slow; we estimate that it will take approximately 100 years for the restored site to accumulate the amount of C currently stored in the natural site, at a rate of 0.92 t C ha(-1) yr(-1). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mediterranean croplands are seasonally dry agroecosystems with low soil organic carbon (SOC) content and high risk of land degradation and desertification. The increase in SOC is of special interest in these systems, as it can help to build resilience for climate change adaptation while contributing to mitigate global warming through the sequestration of atmospheric carbon (C). We compared SOC change and C sequestration under a number of recommended management practices (RMPs) with neighboring conventional plots under Mediterranean climate (174 data sets from 79 references). The highest response in C sequestration was achieved by those practices applying largest amounts of C inputs (land treatment and organic amendments). Conservation tillage practices (no-tillage and reduced tillage) induced lower effect sizes but significantly promoted C sequestration, whereas no effect and negative net sequestration rates were observed for slurry applications and unfertilized treatments, respectively. Practices combining external organic amendments with cover crops or conservation tillage (combined management practices and organic management) showed very good performance in C sequestration. We studied separately the changes in SOC under organic management, with 80 data sets from 30 references. The results also suggest that the degree of intensification in C input rate is the main driver behind the relative C accumulation in organic treatments. Thus, highest net C sequestration rates were observed in most eco-intensive groups, such as "irrigated", "horticulture" and controlled experiments ("plot scale"). (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.China has argued that developed countries should take the lead in international climate change mitigation, while developing countries should be allowed to realize their economic development and implement voluntary measures. This position may seem purely political. However, this article shows that Chinese science also contributes to constructing the perspectives of development, equity, and responsibility. Chinese climate models, emission graphs, and graphs of future emissions are presented to show that these scientific inscriptions contain and coproduce these values in conjunction with political inscriptions. The findings demonstrate that scientific inscriptions are essential to stabilize the Chinese climate network, and that political practice cannot separate scientific facts from political contestation over climate and development.Whereas climate change mitigation involving payments to forest landowners for accumulating carbon on their land may increase carbon stored in forests, it will also affect timber supply and prices. This study estimated the effect on US timber and primary forest product markets of hypothetical timber set-aside scenarios where US forest landowners would be paid to forego timber harvests for 100 years to increase carbon storage on US timberland. The scenarios featured payments to landowners of $0 (business-as-usual (BAU)), $10, and $15 per each additional metric ton (t) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) sequestered on the set-aside timberlands, with maximum annual expenditures of $3 billion. For the set-aside scenarios, reduction in timberland available for harvest resulted in increased timber prices and changes in US domestic production, consumption, net export, and timber market welfare. Economic analyses indicated that the scenario with more area set aside and the largest carbon mitigation benefit (lower carbon price, $10/t CO(2)e) would result in the largest decrease in market welfare, suggesting that climate change mitigation policies and programs would need to consider such impacts when evaluating the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation strategies in the forest sector.Forestry-based carbon sequestration projects demand a comprehensive quantification of the different climate change mitigation effects. In our study, we modeled a life cycle of managed pure stands consisting of the four main tree species in Bavaria (spruce, pine, beech and oak). For spruce and beech, an unmanaged stand was additionally integrated in order to analyze the differences in climate change mitigation effects compared to the managed stands. We developed a climate change mitigation model, where stand development and silvicultural treatments including harvested timber volumes were conducted using the tree growth model Silva 2.3. The harvested wood products (HWP), including their substitution effects were calculated with a subsequent model. For unmanaged beech forests, we compiled measured data from the literature, and Bavarian strict forest reserves for validating our model results. The results for the managed stands reveal that spruce provides the highest total climate change mitigation effects. After a simulation period of 180 years, one hectare leads to a mean mitigation benefit of 13.5 Mg CO2 ha(-1) year(-1). In comparison, results for pine, beech and oak reveal lesser benefits with 10.1 Mg CO2 ha(-1) year(-1), 9.1 Mg CO2 ha(-1) year(-1) and 7.2 Mg CO2 ha(-1) year(-1), respectively. However, these results assume current growing conditions. Considering climate change, it is very likely that spruce will not be suitable in several regions of Bavaria in the future. Furthermore, excessive disturbances could affect spruce more drastically than the other tree species. In that case, the order could change and beech could exceed spruce. Thus the results cannot be seen as a general recommendation to establish spruce stands in order to achieve optimal climate change mitigation benefits. Nevertheless, results for spruce illustrate that high increment and especially wood use in long-lived products is crucial for high climate change mitigation effects. Mitigation effects in unmanaged spruce and beech stands do not differ in the first decades from their managed counterparts, but are below them in the long term with a total climate change mitigation benefit of 8.0 Mg CO2 ha(-1) year(-1) and 7.2 Mg CO2 ha(-1) year(-1), respectively. These differences are mainly caused by the missing substitution effects in the unmanaged stands. However, the precise dimensions of substitution effects still remain uncertain and the lack of data should be reduced via additional life cycle assessments for more products and product classes. However, neglecting substitution effects in climate change mitigation models leads to severe underestimations of the mitigation effects in managed forests.Globally, electricity generation accounts for a large and potentially growing water demand, and as such is an important component to assessments of global and regional water scarcity. However, the current suite-as well as potential future suite-of thermoelectric generation technologies has a very wide range of water demand intensities, spanning two orders of magnitude. As such, the evolution of the generation mix is important for the future water demands of the sector. This study uses GCAM, an integrated assessment model, to analyze the global electric sector's water demands in three futures of climate change mitigation policy and two technology strategies. We find that despite five- to seven-fold expansion of the electric sector as a whole from 2005 to 2095, global electric sector water withdrawals remain relatively stable, due to the retirement of existing power plants with water-intensive once-through flow cooling systems. In the scenarios examined here, climate policies lead to the large-scale deployment of advanced, low-emissions technologies such as carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), concentrating solar power, and engineered geothermal systems. In particular, we find that the large-scale deployment of CCS technologies does not increase long-term water consumption from hydrocarbon-fueled power generation as compared with a no-policy scenario without CCS. Moreover, in sensitivity scenarios where low-emissions electricity technologies are required to use dry cooling systems, we find that the consequent additional costs and efficiency reductions do not limit the utility of these technologies in achieving cost-effective whole-system emissions mitigation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) targets, implemented to achieve climate change mitigation, affect the level of agricultural production in the EU and in the rest of the world. This article presents an impact assessment of increased biomass supply under different sustainability constraints on land use and resulting total GHG emissions at global and EU level. We apply GLOBIOM, a global partial equilibrium model integrating the agricultural, livestock, bioenergy and forestry sectors based on geographically explicit modeling of supply under prescribed demand. According to the model, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture and land-use change (LUC) are anticipated to rise significantly up to 2030 due to various drivers (among others: GDP and population, diet shifts, and also bioenergy demand) despite basic sustainability criteria implemented by the RED (Reference scenario). Applying additional criteria, mainly protecting biodiversity outside the EU, overall GHG emissions can be reduced by 5% in 2030 compared to the Reference. Deforestation area decreases in this scenario slightly due to exclusion of high biodiversity forests but also due to increasing demand for energy wood that makes forests more valuable. If, however, in addition, deforestation is prevented through effective land-use policies, global GHG emissions can be reduced by 20% (compared to the Reference scenario). We conclude that sustainability criteria applied to biofuel production and imports only, do not mitigate potential negative impacts on total GHG emissions effectively. Unsustainable biomass production in sectors not covered by the bioenergy criteria can be best avoided by targeting deforestation and biodiversity loss directly. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons,LtdThis article argues that a central challenge for energy governance is how to manage a complex 'energy trilemma' involving the sometimes competing demands of energy security, climate change mitigation and (particularly in developing countries) energy poverty. It suggests that tensions between the horns of the trilemma, in large part, explain Indonesia's current, profoundly suboptimal, energy policy. While these tensions are not inherently incapable of resolution, such resolution would require good governance at both state and global levels. The possibilities for and obstacles confronting such governance are explored and provisional solutions canvassed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing the value of climate change mitigation requires an analysis framework that can account for society's attitude toward the risk of uncertain outcomes, especially those with low probability and high cost. For largely historical and computational reasons, this issue has not been adequately addressed by previous climate policy analyses. Using a novel stochastic version of a tractable global climate model, we demonstrate the importance of this shortcoming by showing how low probability, high cost outcomes interact strongly with risk attitudes to shape the results of quantitative analysis. Our results indicate that the relatively high levels of risk aversion implied by global investment behavior suggest that the large downside risk of economic catastrophe should weigh more heavily in policy consideration than the risk of over-mitigation. Further, this qualitative conclusion is robust to the particular specification of uncertainties concerning climate sensitivity and resultant economic damages. This conclusion is at odds with previous analyses that either assume low levels of risk aversion or employ numerical methods that underestimate disaster probabilities and therefore imply that the risk of over-mitigation should be of primary concern. This divergence suggests that more attention should be paid to the specification of risk attitudes and risk exposure in climate policy analysis. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While it is now widely accepted by scientists and governments that human activity contributes to climate change, there is a lack of understanding whether this realisation is now gaining greater attraction with the general public than it had 5 or 10 years ago. Additional gaps in knowledge relate to the link between awareness and action, which could be hypothesised to have become stronger in light of evidence being produced of some projected climate changes occurring already. This article examines climate change awareness and the link with travel-related decision-making by adopting an under-utilised origin perspective in Wellington, New Zealand. The findings, generated by a household mail survey, indicate that the majority of the respondents are aware of tourism's contribution to climate change and think that it is likely that their lives in New Zealand will be negatively affected by climate change. However, when examining the respondents' recent holiday decision-making, it is evident that for the overwhelming majority, climate change awareness does not appear to influence travel-related decisions. This article concludes by discussing demand-focused measures aimed at reducing the GHG emissions generated by tourism.Climate change has become a hot topic for research, but the response of national governments has been relatively cool, particularly in their support for effective mitigation measures to combat the problem. A review of the scientific literature (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]. (2007). Summary for policy makers. In S. Solomon, M. Qin, Z. Manning, M. Chen, K. Marquia, M. Averyt, M. Tignor, & H. Miller (Eds.), Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group 1 to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York: Cambridge University Press) paints a generally grim view of where the Earth is heading for by the end of the century if effective mitigation strategies are not implemented in the next few years. Mitigation measures of the type required to prevent major environmental damage in the future can only be effective if a global political approach based on agreed levels of climate change gas reduction is implemented. For its part the tourism industry is caught in a trap, unable to adopt meaningful mitigation strategies because of reluctance by consumers to bear the cost of changes that will be required but having to meet the cost of climate change mitigation and adaption strategies when they are introduced in the future. This article proposes a four stage problem definition and response framework with associated models that can be used by the industry to plan for and adapt to climate change both prior to and after the introduction of legislation and policies to combat climate change at the national and international levels.The funding of global public goods, such as climate mitigation, presents a complex strategic problem. Potential recipients demand side payments for implementing projects that furnish global public goods, and donors can cooperate to provide the funding. We offer a game-theoretic analysis of this problem. In our model, a recipient demands project funding. Donors can form a multilateral program to jointly fund the project. If no program is formed, bilateral funding remains a possibility. We find that donors rely on multilateralism if their preferences are relatively symmetric and domestic political constraints on funding are lax. In this case, the recipient secures large rents from project implementation. Thus, even donors with strong interests in global public good provision have incentives to oppose institutional arrangements that promote multilateral funding. These incentives have played an important role in multilateral negotiations on climate finance, especially in Cancun (2010) and Durban (2011).There has been lively debate, especially in Finland and Sweden, on the climate impacts of peat fuel. Previous studies of peat fuel's life-cycle climate impacts were controversial in their interpretation. The aim of this paper is conclusive examination of the issues of LCA methodology, derived from critical review of previous studies and recalculation based on the latest knowledge of greenhouse gas balances related to peat fuel's utilisation and the radiative forcing impacts of greenhouse gases. The most recent findings on emissions and the gas fluxes between soil, vegetation and atmosphere were used in calculation of the life-cycle climate impacts of the various peat fuel utilisation chains by means of LCA methodology. In the main, the calculation methods and rules were the same as in the previous studies, with the aim being to distinguish the impact of peat fuel's utilisation from that of the natural or semi-natural situation. A dynamic method was employed for assessing changes in radiative forcing. The results of alternative peat fuel utilisation chains were compared to the corresponding result for coal. There are many steps in peat fuel LCA, where different assumptions lead to different outcomes. Determining the functional unit, reference situations and system boundaries, as well as the emission calculation methods, is important from this point of view. Determination of the initial reference situation emerged as one of the critical points in the calculations. Time scale can strongly affect the final outcomes in a study where effects of long-term land-use change are considered. Each peatland area is unique. The higher the greenhouse gas emissions in the initial reference situation, the greater is the climate impact of the area and the more suitable the area is for peat extraction. The study showed that more greenhouse gas flux measurements are needed, for better assessment of the climate impacts of different potential peat extraction sites. Climate change mitigation requires quick actions, and uncertainties related to emissions are higher for longer time spans. Therefore, it can be concluded that a perspective spanning more than 100 years is inappropriate in peat fuel's life-cycle climate impact assessments.The last decade saw increased efforts by the tourism sector globally to understand and manage its energy requirements and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In recognition of the substantial amounts of energy consumed by the accommodation industry coupled with low levels of energy efficiency, this study explores current practices and opportunities for the New Zealand accommodation sector. An energy survey of 242 accommodation providers and analyses of 15 detailed energy audits are used to identify operators' perceptions on energy use, implementation of energy savings measures, savings potentials and implementation costs. The results identify that there is a substantial gap between the positive perceptions held by operators and levels of implementation. Despite substantial theoretical knowledge on barriers to energy efficiency and conservation, there still seems to be a need to address the apparent gap through enabling policy frameworks and partnerships that go beyond the individual business. Good understanding and recognition of energy as a substantial cost factor in themselves seem to be insufficient motivators for action and will not lead to the necessary cuts in GHG emissions as demanded by global climate change mitigation goals.The 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the consequent accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, have had consequences far beyond Japan itself. Reactions to the accident in three major economies Japan, the UK, and Germany, all of whom were committed to relatively ambitious climate change targets prior to the accident are examined. In Japan and Germany, the accident precipitated a major change of policy direction. In the UK, debate has been muted and there has been essentially no change in energy or climate change policies. The status of the energy and climate change policies in each country prior to the accident is assessed, the responses to the accident are described, and the possible impacts on their positions in the international climate negotiations are analysed. Finally, the three countries' responses are compared and some differences between them observed. Some reasons for their different policy responses are suggested and some themes, common across all countries, are identified Policy relevance The attraction of nuclear power has rested on the promise of low-cost electricity, low-carbon energy supply, and enhanced energy independence. The Fukushima accident, which followed the Japanese tsunami of March 2011, has prompted a critical re-appraisal of nuclear power. The responses to Fukushima are assessed for the UK, Germany, and Japan. Before the accident, all three countries considered nuclear as playing a significant part in climate mitigation strategies. Although the UK Government has continued to support nuclear new build following a prompt review of safety arrangements, Japan and Germany have decided to phase out nuclear power, albeit according to different timescales. The factors that explain the different decisions are examined, including patterns of energy demand and supply, the wider political context, institutional arrangements, and public attitudes to risk. The implications for the international climate negotiations are also assessed.Climate change is a fundamental challenge for which agriculture is sensitive and vulnerable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified relevant information as key to enabling appropriate climate adaptation and mitigation action. Information specifically directed to farmers can be found, for example, in specialized farming magazines. While recent studies examine how national news media frame climate change, less-if any-studies have addressed climate framings and coverage in specializedmedia. Media framings are storylines that provide meaning by communicating how and why an issue should be seen as a problem, how it should be handled, and who is responsible for it. This paper analyses the framings and coverage of climate change in two Swedish specialized farming magazines from 2000 to 2009. It examines the extent of the climate change coverage, the content of the media items, and the dominant framings underlying their climate change coverage. The study identifies: increased coverage of climate change starting in 2007; frequent coverage of agriculture's contribution to climate change, climate change impacts on agriculture, and consequences of climate politics for agriculture; and four prominent frames: conflict, scientific certainty, economic burden, and action. The paper concludes that climate change communicators addressing farmers and agricultural extension officers should pay attention to how these frames may be interpreted by different target audiences. Research is needed on how specialized media reports on climate-related issues and how science-based climate information is understood by different groups of farmers and which other factors influence farmers' engagement in climate mitigation and adaptation.Wine production is largely governed by atmospheric conditions, such as air temperature and precipitation, together with soil management and viticultural/enological practices. Therefore, anthropogenic climate change is likely to have important impacts on the winemaking sector worldwide. An important winemaking region is the Portuguese Douro Valley, which is known by its world-famous Port Wine. The identification of robust relationships between atmospheric factors and wine parameters is of great relevance for the region. A multivariate linear regression analysis of a long wine production series (1932-2010) reveals that high rainfall and cool temperatures during budburst, shoot and inflorescence development (February-March) and warm temperatures during flowering and berry development (May) are generally favourable to high production. The probabilities of occurrence of three production categories (low, normal and high) are also modelled using multinomial logistic regression. Results show that both statistical models are valuable tools for predicting the production in a given year with a lead time of 3-4 months prior to harvest. These statistical models are applied to an ensemble of 16 regional climate model experiments following the SRES A1B scenario to estimate possible future changes. Wine production is projected to increase by about 10 % by the end of the 21st century, while the occurrence of high production years is expected to increase from 25 % to over 60 %. Nevertheless, further model development will be needed to include other aspects that may shape production in the future. In particular, the rising heat stress and/or changes in ripening conditions could limit the projected production increase in future decades.There has been a recent increase of interest within the academic literature on the justice issues posed by climate change and the human responses to its present and forecasted effects. In two parts (here and in a previous article), we review and synthesize the recent literature by asking what climate justice concerns have been identified within three related realms: (i) the characterization of climate change itself and the assignment of responsibility for that change; (ii) the differential or uneven impacts of climate change; and (iii) the actions taken to address the problems associated with climate change, including both mitigation and adaptation. Here in Part 2, we focus on the justice concerns of climate action, examining the scholarship on climate change mitigation mechanisms formulated at the international level (i.e., REDD+, CDM) and climate change adaptation projects and finance. We argue that geographers are well-positioned to conduct (and already well engaged in) research on the local climate justice paradoxes emerging from the currently uncritical focus of climate action policy on justice at the level of the national state.Investments in renewable energy and climate change mitigation go beyond the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Secondary benefits include technology transfer, reduction in emissions of other pollutants, and job creation, often called green jobs. It is known that job creation reflects on social, economic, environmental and territorial aspects. Therefore, it can be an indicator of social performance of energy projects. Wind power has experienced an explosive growth over the past few years, and projects contracted between 2009 and 2011 will increase Brazilian installed capacity by 450% in 2016. This article evaluates the potential consequences of this rapid growth on job creation in Brazil. Jobs were quantified in manufacturing, installation and operation stages, observing national manufacture of major components. Estimated wind power growth will generate 90,000 jobs from 2012 till 2016. Over 74% of the jobs are created in the construction and operation stages, which have high level of local employment, bringing social and economic benefits to the installation sites.Given the importance of the agricultural frontier as an engine of deforestation, this paper focuses on how colonists (from the Spanish word for "colonists" that is used to describe migrants to the agricultural frontier), who are important and largely overlooked stakeholders, perceive the new climate mitigation mechanism known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD+). We aimed (1) to document colonists' land use, perceptions, needs, and aspirations and (2) to understand if and how they could be taken into account under REDD+ policies. The study, including multiple data collection techniques (e.g., focus group, interviews, and participatory activities), was conducted in eastern Panama. Three areas that were adjacent to the Province of Darien border were chosen because of their similar forested landscapes and varying accessibility to a main road. Our results suggest that land use preferences, culture, forest scarcity and dependency, inequalities (e.g., land use, amount of forest, and land area), and lack of technical capacities are key elements to be considered when developing a REDD+ strategy with colonist communities. We propose that halting deforestation without both considering local communities' perceptions and giving effective alternatives could seriously undermine livelihoods. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose: This paper aims at indicating the potential of agricultural measures in sequestering carbon as an option for climate change mitigation. The related value for society is estimated. Principle results: Agricultural practices like agroforestry, introducing hedges, low and no tillage and cover crops have an important potential to increase carbon sequestration. The total technical potential in the EU-27 is estimated to be 1566 million tonnes CO2-equivalent per year. This corresponds to 37% of all CO2-equivalent emissions in the EU in 2007. The introduction of agroforestry is the measure with the highest potential, i.e. 90% of the total potential of the measures studied. Taking account only of the value for climate change mitigation, the introduction of agroforestry is estimated to have a value of 282 euro/ha in 2012 that will gradually increase to 1007 euro/ha in 2030. Major conclusions: This implies that there is a huge potential which represents an important value for society in general and for the agricultural sector in specific. At the European level, only in the last few years policy makers have recognized the important benefits of agroforestry. In their rural development programmes some European countries now support farmers to introduce agroforestry. But still the current level of support is only a small fraction of the societal value of agroforestry. If this value would be fully recognized by internalizing the positive externality, we expect that agroforestry will be introduced to a very large extent in the next decades, in Europe and the rest of the world, and this will importantly change the rural landscapes. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CO2 sequestration may be an avenue to mitigate climate change. CO2 sequestration by mineral carbonation can be achieved by the reaction of CO2 with alkaline silicates. Here, we evaluate how alkaline silicate mineral-based CO2 sequestration can be achieved using environmental biotechnological processes. Several biotechnological processes rely on the sequence of (i) an acid-producing reaction such as nitrification and anaerobic fermentation and (ii) an alkalinity-producing reaction such as denitrification and methanogenesis. Whereas the acid-producing reaction can be used to enhance the dissolution of, for example, alkaline calcium silicates, the subsequent alkalinity-producing step can precipitate CaCO3. We quantitatively evaluate the potential of these processes for CO2 sequestration and propose that optimization of these processes could contribute to climate change mitigation strategies.Forecasting technological progress is of great interest to engineers, policy makers, and private investors. Several models have been proposed for predicting technological improvement, but how well do these models perform? An early hypothesis made by Theodore Wright in 1936 is that cost decreases as a power law of cumulative production. An alternative hypothesis is Moore's law, which can be generalized to say that technologies improve exponentially with time. Other alternatives were proposed by Goddard, Sinclair et al., and Nordhaus. These hypotheses have not previously been rigorously tested. Using a new database on the cost and production of 62 different technologies, which is the most expansive of its kind, we test the ability of six different postulated laws to predict future costs. Our approach involves hindcasting and developing a statistical model to rank the performance of the postulated laws. Wright's law produces the best forecasts, but Moore's law is not far behind. We discover a previously unobserved regularity that production tends to increase exponentially. A combination of an exponential decrease in cost and an exponential increase in production would make Moore's law and Wright's law indistinguishable, as originally pointed out by Sahal. We show for the first time that these regularities are observed in data to such a degree that the performance of these two laws is nearly the same. Our results show that technological progress is forecastable, with the square root of the logarithmic error growing linearly with the forecasting horizon at a typical rate of 2.5% per year. These results have implications for theories of technological change, and assessments of candidate technologies and policies for climate change mitigation.The global environment is a complex and dynamic system. Earth system modeling is needed to help understand changes in interacting subsystems, elucidate the influence of human activities, and explorepossible future changes. Integrated assessment of environment and human development is arguably the mast difficult and most important "systems" problem faced. To illustrate this approach, we present results from the integrated global system model (IGSM), which consists of coupled submodels addressing economic development, atmospheric chemistry, climate dynamics, and ecosystem processes. An uncertainty analysis implies that without mitigation policies, the global average surface temperature may rise between 3.5 degrees C and 7.4 degrees C from 1981-2000 to 2091-2100(90% confidence limits). Polar temperatures, absent policy, are projected to rise from about 6.4 degrees C to 14 degrees C (90% confidence limits). Similar analysis of four increasingly stringent climate mitigation policy cases involving stabilization of greenhouse gases at various levels indicates that the greatest effect of these policies is to lower the probability of extreme changes. The IGSM is also used to elucidate potential unintended environmental consequences of renewable energy at large scales. There are significant reasons for attention to climate adaptation in addition to climate mitigation that earth system models can help inform. These models can also be applied to evaluate whether "climate engineering" is a viable option or a dangerous diversion. We must prepare young people to address this issue: The problem of preserving a habitable planet will engage present and future generations. Scientists must improve communication if research is to inform the public and policy makers better.Biochar amendment to soil is a potential technology for carbon storage and climate change mitigation. It may, in addition, be a valuable soil fertility enhancer for agricultural purposes in sandy and/or weathered soils. A life cycle assessment including ecological, health and resource impacts has been conducted for field sites in Zambia to evaluate the overall impacts of biochar for agricultural use. The life cycle impacts from conservation farming using cultivation growth basins and precision fertilization with and without biochar addition were in the present study compared to conventional agricultural methods. Three different biochar production methods were evaluated: traditional earth-mound kilns, improved retort kilns, and micro top-lit updraft (TLUD) gasifier stoves. The results confirm that the use of biochar in conservation farming is beneficial for climate change mitigation purposes. However, when including health impacts from particle emissions originating from biochar production, conservation farming plus biochar from earth-mound kilns generally results in a larger negative effect over the whole life cycle than conservation farming without biochar addition. The use of cleaner technologies such as retort kilns or TLUDs can overcome this problem, mainly because fewer particles and less volatile organic compounds, methane and carbon monoxide are emitted. These results emphasize the need for a holistic view on biochar use in agricultural systems. Of special importance is the biochar production technique which has to be evaluated from both environmental/climate, health and social perspectives.Uncertainty and risk-aversion are notably absent in the modeling of farmers' adoption of climate change mitigation practices in developing countries even though most of the agricultural mitigation practices also have effects on yield variability. The objective of this paper is to explore the implications for climate change mitigation projects of modeling farmers as risk neutral while in actuality they behave as risk-averse agents. Results indicate that when risk averse farmers are modeled as risk-neutral agents, the size of the incentives needed to induce participation to a carbon sequestration program is miscalculated with serious implications either for the success for projects that aim at compensating for climate change mitigation services or for the economic efficiency of such projects. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industrialization and urbanization in the developing world have boosted steel demand during the recent two decades. Reliable estimates on how much steel is required for high economic development are necessary to better understand the future challenges for employment, resource management, capacity planning, and climate change mitigation within the steel sector. During their use phase, steel-containing products provide service to people, and the size of the in-use stock of steel can serve as an indicator of the total service level. We apply dynamic material flow analysis to estimate in-use stocks of steel in about 200 countries and identify patterns of how stocks evolve over time. Three different models of the steel cycle are applied and a full uncertainty analysis is conducted to obtain reliable stock estimates for the period 1700-2008. Per capita in-use stocks in countries with a long industrial history, e.g., the U.S, the UK, or Germany, are between 11 and 16 tons, and stock accumulation is slowing down or has come to a halt. Stocks in countries that industrialized rather recently, such as South Korea or Portugal, are between 6 and 10 tons per capita and grow fast. In several countries, per capita in-use stocks of steel have saturated or are close to saturation. We identify the range of saturation to be 13 +/- 2 tons for the total per capita stock, which includes 10 +/- 2 tons for construction, 1.3 +/- 0.5 tons for machinery, 1.5 +/- 0.7 tons for transportation, and 0.6 +/- 0.2 tons for appliances and containers. The time series for the stocks and the saturation levels can be used to estimate future steel production and scrap supply. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Understanding the nature and cause of spatial and temporal variation in forest carbon is critical for implementation of climate mitigation strategies such as REDD. Such knowledge is lacking and hard to acquire in resource poor regions such as West Africa's Upper Guinea where benefits of such schemes for forest conservation could have great impact. We undertook a systematic and representative survey of an entire Upper Guinea forest - Gola Forest in southeast Sierra Leone - by measuring over 600 plots (0.125 ha) in order to quantify the level of spatial variation in C that might exist within a discrete forest type and relate this to historic and contemporary impacts on the forest. We modelled current C stocks and compared these with values calculated from historic surveys. Mean C content in above ground biomass was c. 160 Mg ha(-1). The southern part of the forest which was subject to heavier logging in the 1980s had a lower C content (121-144 Mg ha(-1)) compared to the less disturbed central areas (186 Mg ha(-1)). Volumes of extracted timber and distance to settlements around the forest explained 42% of the variation in C content. Elevation, slope and other metrics of human impact such as distance to roads did not explain significant additional variation. A survey from the 1950s recorded much higher carbon content than currently found in the south of the forest. This accords with evidence that commercial logging in this area was destructively high. However, old surveys from the late 1960s/early 1970s in less disturbed areas recorded lower carbon content than present. Most of the past surveys were in areas that had not yet been commercially logged so the accumulation in biomass in the last 40 years implies recovery from a much older disturbance event, or a change in environmental conditions promoting growth. As a typical Upper Guinean forest, our results from Gola demonstrate the long term impacts of disturbance events on carbon stocks and how these can vary greatly at small scales, highlighting the need for representative and regionally relevant empirical data to inform REDD type initiatives. Nonetheless these forests remain important for carbon sequestration and storage in the region despite this history and the parts of the forest with no recorded logging activity that increased in carbon in recent decades with levels now akin to undisturbed plots reported from elsewhere in the region demonstrate the sequestration potential these forests provide once adequately protected. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Copenhagen Accord established political consensus on the 2 C limit (in global temperature increase) and for deep cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions levels to achieve this goal. The European Union has set ambitious GHG targets for the year 2050 (80-95% below 1990 levels), with each Member State developing strategies to contribute to these targets. This paper focuses on mitigation targets for one Member State, Ireland, an interesting case study due to the growth in GHG emissions (24% increase between 1990 and 2005) and the high share of emissions from agriculture (30% of total GHG emissions). We use the Irish TIMES energy systems modelling tool to build a number of scenarios delivering an 80% emissions reduction target by 2050, including accounting for the limited options for agriculture GHG abatement by increasing the emissions reduction target for the energy system. We then compare the scenario results in terms of changes in energy technology, the role of energy efficiency and renewable energy. We also quantify the economic impacts of the mitigation scenarios in terms of marginal CO2 abatement costs and energy system costs. The paper also sheds light on the impacts of short term targets and policies on long term mitigation pathways. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Kyoto Protocol adopted three flexible market-based mechanisms (Emissions Trading; Joint Implementation; Clean Development Mechanism) to meet emission reduction targets in a cost-effective manner. Of these, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the only mechanism that links developed and developing countries. China has been a dominant player in CDM markets with >50.86% of the world's 4768 CDM projects. This study surveyed key CDM stakeholders from which the identification and ranking of the 10 most important factors that determine the selection of CDM investors in China. The most important factors were "reputation of company" and "experience in CDM project in China" whilst "personal friendship or relationship" was the least influential. European countries (mainly UK, The Netherlands, Sweden and Germany) are the major investors and have both strong reputations in the CDM arena in addition to having assisted China in capacity development activities for CDM in early 2000. An understanding of these selection factors that potential CDM hosts use in their joint venture decisions should benefit CDM investors. This knowledge should also provide the policy and strategic level framework for future potential CDM hosts in other developing countries. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecuadorian paramo grasslands have become the focus of Payment for Ecosystem Services programs that have promoted land-use changes such as afforestation and reduction of burning, grazing of cattle or sheep, and agricultural expansion. However, limited information exists on the relationships between land use in paramos and the production of ecosystem services, including the direction and magnitude of changes in carbon storage. In an evaluation of eight sites representing incentivized land uses, we found significant differences in both soil carbon and aboveground carbon. The results support previous findings on the effects of pine plantations and suggest that limiting burning may be effective at enhancing carbon storage. They also indicate that, in highly productive grasslands such as the paramo, both belowground and aboveground C storage can be high, even when compared to some types of afforestation, providing support for greater attention to the role of grassland conservation in climate mitigation strategies.Drawing upon previously published results, we evaluate the offshore potential for storing CO2 within marine sediments located inside the US Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). We then model the cost for transporting and injecting CO2 into these strata, including into deep-marine (>3000m water depth) strata that we refer to as being self-sealing' because pressure and temperature regimes would form an overlying gravitational seal. Finally, we compare the integrated transport and injection cost estimates for self-sealing and non-self-sealing offshore storage against the same integrated cost estimates for onshore storage in 15 deep-saline sandstone aquifers located throughout the continental USA. The comparison is presented in the form of marginal abatement cost curves, which show that ocean storage is likely to be two or more times as expensive as onshore storage: 500 million tonnes of annual CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants in the USA is available for <$5/tonne in onshore DSAs, < $10/tonne in non-self-sealing offshore strata, and <$15/tonne in self-sealing offshore strata, with the cost differential between onshore and offshore storage increasing further up the supply curve. The higher total offshore costs are due to a combination of increases in transport and storage costs, with transport costs dominating total costs with increasing distance from shore. This suggests that CO2 capture system operators would have to pay substantially more for offshore geologic storage over onshore options. The cost difference may be mitigated by certain advantages of offshore storage, which could include easier access to property rights, simplified regulation, and possibly lower monitoring, measurement, and verification (MMV) requirements. (c) 2012 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis study aimed to evaluate energy and carbon equivalences (CE) associated with palm oil milling and to evaluate sustainability alternatives for energy consumption. Appropriate ways to reduce carbon emissions were also evaluated. A field survey was carried out to quantify the input and output of energy and materials following the conceptual framework of a carbon-balanced model (CBM), which exclude other non-CO2 greenhouse gases. Survey results indicate that the electrical energy consumption for daily mill start-up averaged 18.7 +/- 5.4 kWh/ton Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFBs). This energy is equivalent to 114.4 +/- 33.2 kWh/ton Crude Palm Oil (CPO) which was found to be offset by that generated in the mills using palm fiber as a solid fuel. Currently, organic residues contained in the wastewater are anaerobically converted to methane. The methane is used as fuel to generate electricity and sold to an outside grid network at a generation rate of 8.1 +/- 2.1 kWh/ton FFB. Based on the CBM approach, carbon emissions observed from the use of fossil energy in palm oil milling were very small; however, total carbon emission from oil palm plantation and palm oil milling were found to be 12.3 kg CE/ton FFB, resulting in the net carbon reduction in CPO production of 2.8 kg CE/ton FFB or 53.7 kg CE/ha-y. Overall, the sum of C-reduction was found 1.2 times greater than that of C-emission. This figure can be increased up to 5.5, if all biomass by-products are used as fuel to generate electricity only. The full potential for carbon reduction from palm oil milling is estimated at 0.94 kW of electric power for every hectare of plantation. This equates to a quantity of 68 kg CE reduced per ton of FFB. Thus, utilization of palm oil biomass can have a significantly high potential as a resource to be used for climate change mitigation by reducing carbon emissions. The findings of this work can be used as a template for policy makers to use in assessing and planning their energy programs. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article describes a study employing a risk-assessment methodology for evaluating uncertain future climatic conditions. To understand the implications of uncertainty on risk and to provide a near-term rationale for policy interventions, the study estimated the impacts from responses to climate change on U.S. state- and national-level economic activity. The study used results of the climate-model CMIP3 dataset developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report to 1) estimate a proxy for representing climate uncertainty over the next 40 years, 2) map the simulated weather from the climate models hydrologically to the county level to determine the physical consequences on economic activity at the state level, and 3) perform a detailed, economy-wide, 70-industry analysis of economic impacts among the interdependent lower-48 states for the years 2010 through 2050. The analysis determined the interacting industry-level effects, employment impacts at the state level, interstate population migration, consequences to personal income, and ramifications for the U.S. trade balance. When compared to a baseline economic forecast, the calculations produced an average risk of damage of $1 trillion to the U.S. economy from climate change over the next 40 years, with losses in employment equivalent to nearly 7 million full-time jobs. Added uncertainty would increase the estimated risk.Afforestation has the potential to offset the increased emission of atmospheric carbon dioxide and has therefore been proposed as a strategy to mitigate climate change. Here we review the opportunities for carbon (C) offsets through open lichen woodland afforestation in the boreal forest of eastern Canada as a case study, while considering the reversal risks (low productivity, fires, insect outbreaks, changes in land use and the effects of future climate on growth potential as well as on the disturbances regime). Our results suggest that : (1) relatively low growth rate may act as a limiting factor in afforestation projects in which the time available to increase C is driven by natural disturbances; (2) with ongoing climate change, a global increase in natural disturbance rates, mainly fire and spruce budworm outbreaks, may offset any increases in net primary production at the landscape level; (3) the reduction of the albedo versus increase in biomass may negatively affect the net climate forcing; (4) the impermanence of C stock linked to the reversal risks makes this scenario not necessarily cost attractive. More research, notably on the link between fire risk and site productivity, is needed before afforestation can be incorporated into forest management planning to assist climate change mitigation efforts. Therefore, we suggest that conceivable mitigation strategies in the boreal forest will likely have to be directed activities that can reduce emissions and can increase C sinks while minimizing the reversal impacts. Implementation of policies to reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG) in the boreal forest should consider the biophysical interactions, the different spatial and temporal scales of their benefits, the costs (investment and benefits) and how all these factors are influenced by the site history.This article presents a novel approach to assessing consumer based greenhouse gas emissions on national and municipal levels. In addition to emission assessment, the method provides a way of calculating the cost-effectiveness of alternative climate mitigation methods. Our approach converts National Greenhouse Gas Inventories into input-output matrices, enabling us to assess both production and consumption related climate mitigation efforts at the same time. We illustrate our approach by means of a case study of Finland, giving examples of both national and municipal level allocation. We find that the current emission inventories do not give a comprehensive account of greenhouse gas emissions as they lack the consumer view on emissions. Rather, the current inventories lead to problem shifting particularly in service focused municipalities and nations. With simultaneous assessment of production and consumption related emissions, decision makers can better prioritize cost-effective actions against climate change. We conclude the article with policy recommendations for future greenhouse gas inventories. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Being important GHG emitters on the one hand and potent soil carbon sinks on the other, agricultural systems are now the focus of much research on climate change mitigation. Organic farming is an intentional, internationally regulated and legally enforced form of low-input farming, and is seen as an important factor in the search for climate-friendly and sustainable agriculture. Because past experience has taught us to deal thoughtfully with any promises of mitigation, some key aspects of soil-related GHG mitigation potentials in low-input farming are scrutinized in this article. It is shown that clear mechanistic evidence of low-input farming as a measure to reduce field-related GHG emissions, particularly via soil carbon sequestration, is missing. More detailed research investigations are needed before claims for carbon credits from low-input farming can be scientifically supported.Technology transfer plays a key role in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we characterize the factors that promote or hinder the international diffusion of climate-friendly technologies using detailed patent data from 96 countries for the period 1995-2007. The data provide strong evidence that lax Intellectual Property regimes have a strong and negative impact on the international diffusion of patented knowledge. Restrictions on international trade and foreign direct investment also hinder the diffusion of climate-friendly technologies. Surprisingly, local technological capabilities tend to discourage transfers. While broad indicators of technology capabilities are expected to facilitate transfers, this latter result stems from our technology-specific definition of local capabilities, which makes it possible to capture a substitution effect between local and foreign inventions.Cities are key sites where climate change is being addressed. Previous research has largely overlooked the multiplicity of climate change responses emerging outside formal contexts of decision-making and led by actors other than municipal governments. Moreover, existing research has largely focused on case studies of climate change mitigation in developed economies. The objective of this paper is to uncover the heterogeneous mix of actors, settings, governance arrangements and technologies involved in the governance of climate change in cities in different parts of the world. The paper focuses on urban climate change governance as a process of experimentation. Climate change experiments are presented here as interventions to try out new ideas and methods in the context of future uncertainties. They serve to understand how interventions work in practice, in new contexts where they are thought of as innovative. To study experimentation, the paper presents evidence from the analysis of a database of 627 urban climate change experiments in a sample of 100 global cities. The analysis suggests that, since 2005, experimentation is a feature of urban responses to climate change across different world regions and multiple sectors. Although experimentation does not appear to be related to particular kinds of urban economic and social conditions, some of its core features are visible. For example, experimentation tends to focus on energy. Also, both social and technical forms of experimentation are visible, but technical experimentation is more common in urban infrastructure systems. While municipal governments have a critical role in climate change experimentation; they often act alongside other actors and in a variety of forms of partnership. These findings point at experimentation as a key tool to open up new political spaces for governing climate change in the city. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This exploratory mixed-methods study uses in-depth interviews to investigate the values, motivations, and routes to engagement of UK citizens who have adopted lower-carbon lifestyles. Social justice, community, frugality, and personal integrity were common themes that emerged from the transcripts. Concern about the environment' per se is not the primary motivation for most interviewees' action. Typically, they are more concerned about the plight of poorer people who will suffer from climate change. Although biospheric values are important to the participants, they tended to score altruistic values significantly higher on a survey instrument. Thus, it may not be necessary to promote biospheric values to encourage lower-carbon lifestyles. Participants' narratives of how they became engaged with climate action reveal links to human rights issues and groups as much as environmental organisations and positive experiences in nature. Some interviewees offered very broad (positive) visions of what 'a low-carbon lifestyle' means to them. This, and the fact that 'climate change' is not necessarily seen as interesting even by these highly engaged people, reveals a need for climate change mitigation campaigns to promote a holistic view of a lower-carbon future, rather than simply offering a 'to do' list to 'combat climate change'. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the article is to develop technique for climate change mitigation policies assessment based on priorities Of sustainable energy development. There is a close relationship between energy policies and tools aiming at sustainable energy development targets, i.e. promotion of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures and climate change mitigation tools. Therefore ranking of climate change mitigation tools based on their impact sustainable energy development targets is necessary seeking to ensure harmonization of policies and their synergy effect. The main tasks of the article are: (i) to define EU sustainable energy development targets, (ii) to analyze EU energy and climate change mitigation policies and their interactions, (iii) to propose a multi-criteria framework for climate change mitigation policies assessment and ranking, and (iv) to apply multi-criteria decision making methodology for climate change mitigation policies ranking in Lithuania. The main findings of paper are related with proposed technique for climate change mitigation policies assessment and application of this technique for ranking of climate change mitigation policies in Lithuania. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioeconomy plans include a biobased industries sector in which some oil-derived plastics and chemicals are replaced by new or equivalent products derived, at least partially, from biomass. Some of these biobased products are here today, but to fulfil their societal potential, greater attention is required to promote awareness, and to improve their market share while making valuable contributions to climate change mitigation.The unabated continuation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the lack of an international consensus on a stringent climate change mitigation policy underscore the importance of adaptation for coping with the all but inevitable changes in the climate system. Adaptation measures in forestry have particularly long lead times. A timely implementation is thus crucial for reducing the considerable climate vulnerability of forest ecosystems. However, since future environmental conditions as well as future societal demands on forests are inherently uncertain, a core requirement for adaptation is robustness to a wide variety of possible futures. Here we explicitly address the roles of climatic and social uncertainty in forest management, and tackle the question of robustness of adaptation measures in the context of multi-objective sustainable forest management (SFM). We used the Austrian Federal Forests (AFF) as a case study, and employed a comprehensive vulnerability assessment framework based on ecosystem modeling, multi-criteria decision analysis, and practitioner participation. We explicitly considered climate uncertainty by means of three climate change scenarios, and accounted for uncertainty in future social demands by means of three societal preference scenarios regarding SFM indicators. We found that the effects of climatic and social uncertainty on the projected performance of management were in the same order of magnitude, underlining the notion that climate change adaptation requires an integrated social-ecological perspective. Furthermore, our analysis of adaptation measures revealed considerable trade-offs between reducing adverse impacts of climate change and facilitating adaptive capacity. This finding implies that prioritization between these two general aims of adaptation is necessary in management planning, which we suggest can draw on uncertainty analysis: Where the variation induced by social-ecological uncertainty renders measures aiming to reduce climate change impacts statistically insignificant (i.e., for approximately one third of the investigated management units of the AFF case study), fostering adaptive capacity is suggested as the preferred pathway for adaptation. We conclude that climate change adaptation needs to balance between anticipating expected future conditions and building the capacity to address unknowns and surprises. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For more than a decade, the target of keeping global warming below 2 degrees C has been a key focus of the international climate debate(1). In response, the scientific community has published a number of scenario studies that estimate the costs of achieving such a target(2-5). Producing these estimates remains a challenge, particularly because of relatively well known, but poorly quantified, uncertainties, and owing to limited integration of scientific knowledge across disciplines(6). The integrated assessment community, on the one hand, has extensively assessed the influence of technological and socio-economic uncertainties on low-carbon scenarios and associated costs(2-4,7). The climate modelling community, on the other hand, has spent years improving its understanding of the geophysical response of the Earth system to emissions of greenhouse gases(8-12). This geophysical response remains a key uncertainty in the cost of mitigation scenarios but has been integrated with assessments of other uncertainties in only a rudimentary manner, that is, for equilibrium conditions(6,13). Here we bridge this gap between the two research communities by generating distributions of the costs associated with limiting transient global temperature increase to below specific values, taking into account uncertainties in four factors: geophysical, technological, social and political. Wefind that political choices that delay mitigation have the largest effect on the cost-risk distribution, followed by geophysical uncertainties, social factors influencing future energy demand and, lastly, technological uncertainties surrounding the availability of greenhouse gas mitigation options. Our information on temperature risk and mitigation costs provides crucial information for policy-making, because it clarifies the relative importance of mitigation costs, energy demand and the timing of global action in reducing the risk of exceeding a global temperature increase of 2 degrees C, or other limits such as 3 degrees C or 1.5 degrees C, across a wide range of scenarios.Over the course of this coming century, global electricity use is expected to grow at least five fold and if stringent greenhouse gas emissions controls are in place the growth could be more than seven fold from current levels. Given that the electric power sector represents the second largest industrial use of water and given growing concerns about the nature and extent of future water scarcity driven by population growth and a changing climate, significant concern has been expressed about the electricity sector's use of water going forward. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that an often overlooked but absolutely critical issue that needs to be taken into account in discussions about the sustainability of the electric sector's water use going forward is the tremendous turn over in electricity capital stock that will occur over the course of this century; i.e., in the scenarios examined here more than 80% of global electricity production in the year 2050 is from facilities that have not yet been built. The authors show that because of the large scale changes in the global electricity system, the water withdrawal intensity of electricity production is likely to drop precipitously with the result being relatively constant water withdrawals over the course of the century even in the face of the large growth in electricity usage. The ability to cost effectively reduce the water intensity of power plants with carbon dioxide capture and storage systems in particular is key to constraining overall global water use. (C) 2013 Battelle Memorial Institute and Evan G. R. Davies. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The Triassic Bunter Sandstone Formation of the Southern North Sea is believed to have significant potential to store CO2 for climate change mitigation [1]. It has fair to good reservoir properties and a seal is provided by the mudstones of the Triassic Haisborough Group. It has been folded into domes and periclines (henceforth Bunter domes) by the post depositional late Triassic to Tertiary movement of the underlying evaporites of the Zechstein Group. These domes have been identified as targets for CO2 storage as they are very large and at least some of them have the ability to retain buoyant fluids, demonstrated by the presence of gas fields in some domes [2], [3], [4], [5] (though the majority of the formation is saline water-bearing). However, faults have been identified within the Haisborough Group cap rock directly above a number of the Bunter domes. The faults are thought to have formed as result of extensional stresses exerted during dome formation. They may have an impact on storage site security, as they could act as migration pathways for CO2 out of the storage site and therefore limit the number of Bunter domes that could be utilised for storage of CO2. This study considers the occurrence of faults in the cap rock above the Bunter domes and the potential impact on static capacity estimates. (C) 2013 Natural Environment Research Council. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Whether there is sufficient geologic CO2 storage capacity to allow CCS to play a significant role in mitigating climate change has been the subject of debate since the 1990s, This paper presents a meta-analysis of a large body of recently published literature to derive updated estimates of the global deep geologic storage resource as well as the potential demand for this geologic CO2 storage resource over the course of this century. This analysis reveals that, for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation scenarios that have end-of-century atmospheric CO2 concentrations of between 350 ppmv and 725 ppmv, the average demand for deep geologic CO2 storage over the course of this century is between 410 GtCO(2) and 1,670 GtCO(2). The literature summarized here suggests that -- depending on the stringency of criteria applied to calculate storage capacity global geologic CO2 storage capacity could be: 35,300 GICO(2) of "theoretical" capacity: 13,500 GICO(2) of "effective" capacity; 3,900 GlCO(2), of "practical" capacity: and 290 GtCO(2) of "matched" capacity for the few regions where this narrow definition of capacity has been calculated. The cumulative demand for geologic CO2 storage is likely quite small compared to global estimates of the deep geologic CO2 storage capacity; and therefore, a "lack" of deep geologic CO2 storage capacity is unlikely to be an impediment for the commercial adoption of CCS technologies in this century. (c) 2013 Battelle Memorial institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd.BIGCCS Centre is an international research centre for CCS as a climate mitigation measure supporting large scale deployment of CO2 capture, transport and storage by developing new knowledge, fostering breakthrough technology and promoting innovation and value creation at all steps along the CO2 chain. The Centre is managed by SINTEF Energy Research and involves 22 partners from industry and academia This paper presents the BIGCCS Centre, the results so far and how in-depth fundamental research contributes to enhancing innovation in the CCS chain. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive assessment of several alternative scenarios from the perspective of sustainable development and climate change by using a highly consistent integrated assessment model. This analysis is based on our research under the Alternative Pathways toward Sustainable Development and Climate stabilization (ALPS) project, the goal of which is to provide alternative plausible future scenarios through quantification of multiple aspects of society. On the basis of estimated pathways regarding socio-economic conditions and climate change, a range of sustainable development indicators are evaluated under various climate stabilization levels. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.Asian countries are facing energy security issues while at the same time trying to address CO2 mitigation. This paper analyzes the relationships between energy security and CO2 mitigation using an energy systems model, DNE21+. The results reveal that the United States and Western Europe can reduce their CO2 emissions while maintaining the level of energy security. In contrast, Asian countries are confronting a trade-off between energy security and CO2 mitigation. With global CO2 constraint, Asian countries are concentrating their energy supplies on gas imports because of smaller gas reserves and a lower capacity of carbon storage, weakening their energy security. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.Technology diffusion barriers exist widely in several global warming mitigation technologies. Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is expected as a cost effective technology for ambitious CO2 emission reduction. However, large barriers will exist when private sectors invest in CCS in the real world. in this study, a global energy systems model, which the authors refer to as DNE21+, is used to analyse this issue. Our evaluation indicates that technology diffusion barriers have a significant impact on the diffusion of CCS technology. Bottom-up type policy approach for removing the technology diffusion barriers and improvements in the liability for very long term CO2 storage and public acceptance will be important to achieve the widespread use of CCS. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.While California has been at the forefront in adopting an aggressive climate change mitigation policy, it has taken a more measured and tentative approach toward creating an enabling policy and a regulatory framework for carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CC-US) technologies to contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. In 2005, Governor's Executive Order S-3-05 required that California reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. In 2006, State Assembly Bill 32 codified the 2020 goal into law. In 2006, the California Legislature required two California agencies, the California Energy Commission and the Department of Conservation, to produce a report recommending how the state could facilitate commercial adoption of geologic sequestration from industrial sources. In 2010, three state agencies, the Energy Commission, Public Utilities Commission, and Air Resources Board, convened the California Carbon Capture and Storage Review Panel to make recommendations on specific policy, institutional, and regulatory changes necessary for California to enable commercial-scale carbon capture and geologic storage projects. Since 2006, several legislative bills have been introduced to establish regulatory authority, liability, and address pore space ownership issues, but none have made it into law. To meet the state's aggressive targets, especially the 2050 goal, will nevertheless require widespread adoption of CCUS technologies, according to studies by the California Council on Science and Technology. California contributes 7.5% of the total GHG emissions in the USA, or 1.8% of global GHG emissions. Over half of this currently is from point sources, but that proportion will increase as the state pursues electrification of the transportation sector. Trajectories of future GHG emissions growth suggest mitigation technologies must be implemented at rates on the order of 10-20 million tonnes of GHGs removed per year. The cap-and-trade system recently adopted in California to address the GHG reduction mandates of Assembly Bill 32 would seem to encourage pursuit CCUS technology projects by industrial emitters, hut uncertainties preclude developing viable business cases. Uncertainty includes a lack of data on the costs of capture and storage and the lack of cap-and-trade accounting protocols for CCUS technologies. Although these protocols are scheduled to be developed, they will lag the initialization of cap-and-trade in 2012. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Crop productivity closely depends on the rate of leaf area development. The larger the leaf area is, the more photosynthetically active radiation is absorbed by plant, and the more dry-matter is accumulated Water plays a key role to these processes. Since the climatic tendencies reveal future water scarcity in the Balkans, increasing irrigation water efficiency should be the main issue for the irrigated agriculture. The goal of the paper is to estimate the impact of different water supply on the rate of canola leaf area development and on the productivity of photosynthesis. Data of a field experiment with three varieties of was processed The experiment was conducted in Sofia region, Bulgaria, on chromic luvisols. Three levels of soil moisturizing were applied - full irrigation (80 % of FC maintained), 50 % deficit irrigation and rain-fed conditions. Leaf area, biomass and dry matter were estimated five times during the spring vegetation period. The rate of leaf area index (LAI), photosynthetic potential, and net photosynthetic productivity (NPP) was calculated The results show considerable impact of irrigation on those indicators, as well as on the final seed and oil yield This investigation caters for the interests of Bulgarian canola production in the terms of the current EU strategy for climate change mitigation and energy assurance.Building sector plays an important role in climate impacts mitigation, as it is responsible for 40% of global energy use and global GHG emissions. Climate change has a dual implication on the built environment: on one hand human settlements and buildings are vulnerable to the effects of changing climate and on the other hand the building sector has a significant climate change mitigation potential. Although nowadays the trends are positive, the share of newly built low-energy buildings is very low, the near-zero-energy building market is in its early phase. Simultaneously the optimizing technologies in the building design are strongly highlighted. The presence of the energy and environment efficient buildings and the stringent building energy regulations of the EU need more accurate building design. The constant design parameters will come to foreground and their role will be appreciated. The relevant sustainable development and building policies, as well as the building design, construction and maintenance should jointly respond both to adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. This paper focuses the relevance of the main constant design parameter: How to take into account the increasing outdoor temperature in the building energy design.33 projects and/or farms in Germany with 82 parcels comprising different cropping systems (e.g. biomass crops, extensive cultures, mixed crops, protein crops) have been analysed in 2012 with regard to their suitability as Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) under the EU's reformed Common Agricultural Policy. The ecological suitability has been assessed on the basis of seven criteria (diversity of sown species, diversity of wild species, cropping structure, significance for pollinators, significance for farmland birds and game, soil and water synergy effects, climate mitigation impact). Several crops showed a high ecological suitability, and the key criteria have been identified: no application of pesticides and fertilisers, no soil cultivation and no harvest between 15th April and 1st August, and no ploughing before 30th November. A wise implementation of Ecological Focus Areas can deliver high conservation benefits, while even bearing interesting economic perspectives for farmers.Power generation is one of the industrial sectors with major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. For climate change mitigation, a special attention is given to the reduction of CO2 emissions by applying capture and storage techniques in which CO2 is captured and then stored in suitable safe geologic locations. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are expected to play a significant role in the coming decades for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and to ensure a sustainable development of power generation and other energy-intensive industrial sectors (e. g. cement, metallurgy, petro-chemical etc.). This paper evaluates super-critical coal-based power plants with and without carbon capture. The analysis is geared toward quantification of main plant performance indicators such as: fuel consumption, gross and net energy efficiency, ancillary energy consumption, carbon capture rate, specific CO2 emissions, capital costs, specific capital investments and operational costs etc. For CCS configurations, two post-combustion CO2 capture options were considered. The first option is based gas-liquid absorption using a chemical solvent (methyl-diethanol-amine - MDEA etc.). The second option is based on calcium looping cycle, in which the carbonation/calcination sequence of CaO/CaCO3 system is used for carbon capture. The power plant case studies investigated in the paper produces around 950 - 1,100 MW net power with at least 90 % carbon capture rate. The mathematical modelling and simulation of the whole power generation schemes will produce the input data for quantitative techno-economic and environmental evaluations of power plants with carbon capture (similar power plant concept without CCS was used as reference for comparison). Mass and energy integration tools were used to assess the integration aspects of evaluated carbon capture options in the whole power plant design, to optimise the overall energy efficiency and to evaluate the main sources of energy penalty for CCS designs.Application of environmental policies to prevent climate change, mitigation of climate change, the progressive reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases under commitments, encourage reducing energy consumption by using technologies that are efficient and support production of cheap and clean energy sources should be a priority for contemporary society. This paper seeks to determine the characteristics of seasonal variation in wind regime, atmospheric pressure, temperature and air density and energy analysing the data captured and converted for the period 2000-2005, for a site in Dobrogea. The evaluation of wind potential will be done taking into account the physical and geographical features of the site chosen. To achieve its purpose, wind distribution analysis is performed in 3 models namely the Johnson SB, Rayleigh and Weibull. Depending on the values obtained will be chosen the type of wind mini-turbine to provide the necessary power for a single-family house. It will determine the seasonal wind power captive, cut power of the chosen turbine and cut energy wind turbine in a year clerkship placement height of the turbine rotor. The novelty of this approach can be linked to the concept of small generating equipment installed locally known as Distributed Generation, which helps to meet part of its energy needs locally. Distributed Generation would lead to a reduction in transmission and distribution infrastructure, and reduce network losses. These systems are modular and can be installed quickly, small distributed generating system may expand to keep pace with increasing energy needs. Distributed systems provide local control and ownership of energy resources, encouraging economic development at community level.At the level of the EU as whole, compared with other major economic regions in the world, Europe will be less affected by climate change. This is particularly the case for the economic core of Europe, which also has, as shown in the ESPON Climate project, a high level of mitigative and adaptive capacity. If this capacity is capitalised, it will certainly enhance the competitiveness of the EU in the global market. Another important point is that the diversity of climatic regions in Europe allows for a degree of economic adjustment. For the competitiveness of the EU as a whole, this implies that a potential loss of tourism in one part of Europe may be compensated by a potential gain in another part. Furthermore, climate mitigation and energy efficiency policies are one of the four key priorities of the renewed Lisbon Strategy. This means that through the development of knowledge base and support for research and innovation, EU action on climate change can converge with the Lisbon Strategy. Nevertheless, without effective adaptation measures, such transformations may lead to increased disparities in Europe.New Zealand's 1.72 million hectares of planted forests constitute a productive ecosystem mainly recognised for the provision of wood and fibre. This ecosystem is increasingly being recognised for providing other services such as recreation, climate change mitigation, habitat provision, improved water quality, bioenergy, erosion control, and flood mitigation. This chapter describes several ecosystem services provided by planted forests and reports some of the estimated economic values for these services. Findings from this study suggest that the estimated economic values for emerging services, such as recreation and biodiversity, remain very limited and in many cases out of date. More studies using state-of-the-art methods of economic valuation that account for both time and space are required.The development of smart grid is essential to achieve goals for energy security, economic development and climate change mitigation, and is treated as emphasis of national strategy in major countries. In this paper, we described the concept of smart grid first, then analyzed the worldwide progress in strategic planning, R&D and deployment of smart grid. Combining with Chinese situation, the future smart grid R&D will focus on: intelligent power electronics equipments, intelligent sensing technologies, renewable integration technologies, energy storage technologies and distributed energy technologies.Although there are several studies on the effects of climate mitigation and adaptation, knowledge on the implication of mitigation strategies is rather scarce. This study aims to contribute to the literature by presenting an initial assessment of the relationship between mitigation and adaptation to derive a rudimentary optimal policy mix framework. The result of the one-period model show that adaptation and mitigation are substitutes in the sense that if the cost of adaptation falls, the optimal response is to do more adaptation but less mitigation. However, in the two-period model, there are both trade-offs and synergies between adaptation and mitigation. For less developed, agricultural economies, it is hypothesized that it will be optimal to invest more in proactive adaptation relative to mitigation activities and reactive adaptation. Moreover, the difference in scope and scale of the impacts of mitigation and adaptation activities implies that individual agricultural players will under-provide mitigation activities relative to what is socially optimal. The ability to adapt is also constrained by technological knowledge and income availability, which is especially true for smallholder agricultural players in less developed countries. These warrant third-party intervention to provide incentives to adopt optimal levels of mitigation and adaptation activities. A multi-level approach to addressing climate change is more appropriate due to its global, national and local aspects.Regional greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories support the development and monitoring of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies as well as policies for municipalities and cities. However, information and scientific expertise on climate change impacts are complex and a consensual and consistent methodology on formation of regional GHG inventories is still missing. Available methodologies and calculation tools mostly fail to balance scientific adequacy and usability from a pragmatic perspective. Within the project Regional Carbon Footprint (RCF), software that allows data management (i.e. for bottom up data) in order to calculate regional greenhouse gas inventories and to report about regional carbon footprints has been developed. Efforts needed for data collection turned out to be the main bottleneck for application from a practitioner's point of view. The RCF approach overcomes these shortcomings by closing this gap with the use of top down data taken from statistics.In this paper I intend to focus on the individuals' choices with the aim of establishing those micro-level factors which significantly increase the likelihood of financial support for climate change mitigation in the case of Romania. The analysis builds on the databases of the 2008 and 2009 Special Eurobarometers on Europeans' attitudes towards climate change. The dependent variable is the willingness to pay for climate friendly energy (i.e. for energy produced from sources which generate less greenhouse emissions), used firstly in the form of a binary variable (yes vs. no) and subsequently in such a way as to indicate the degree of financial support (if yes, how much respondents are willing to pay). Results suggest that in both 2008 and 2009, appreciatively one third of the Romanian respondents declared willingness to pay for climate friendly energy which is significantly below the European average. Moreover, Romania provides one of the highest percentages of indecisive respondents. Statistical models underscore the fact that in-principle willingness to pay is determined by climate-change attitudes, education and age, while income plays only a marginal role. On the other hand, the proclivity to invest higher amounts of money in clean energy is dramatically dependent on the respondents' income and illustrates the relevance of the economic model in explaining the willingness to pay.The efficiency of potential climate change mitigation is predicated on future costs and benefits and thus heavily influenced by the discount scheme. Dual discounting involves discounting carbon and monetary values differently; stand level modeling efforts show that it improves the profitability of afforestation projects. However, these stand level results may not hold across other age classes and stocking levels. Using a partial, spatial equilibrium model of the Norwegian forest sector, we analyze the impacts of a dual discounting scheme on climate change mitigation efforts. Dual discounting results in less mitigation efforts in the first decades but substantially higher long-term mitigation efforts. (C) 2013 Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umea. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.In the latest years, the attention toward the use of pyrogenic carbon as a climate mitigation strategy has increasingly grown. Biochar (BC) contains substantial amount (60-90%) of pyrogenic carbon, which is a recalcitrant material and it is hardly decomposed by biotic and abiotic oxidation. The carbon mitigation potential of biochar is associated to the fact that carbon is not easily released back into the atmosphere, even after very long incubation time in the soil. Several studies have been addressing the understanding of the fate of pyrogenic carbon in the soil in a quantitative way, but only a few actually considered materials that were produced in the past and they were not fully able to estimate the fraction of carbon that was oxidized on centennial time scales. In this paper, an old deposits of biochar in soils of the Eastern Alps (Trentino, Val di Pejo) was dated at 1859 by means of a dendroanthracological approach. Carbon decomposition in those soils was then investigated to calculate the fraction of carbon that was lost over 155 years. Part of this study is focused on the morphological and physical characterization of several fragments of biochar, using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Such study enabled the identification of specific morphological features of tracheids in the old biochar, which were tentatively associated to a differential oxidation of the structures that were created during carbonization from lignin and cellulose.We present a comprehensive, interdisciplinary project which demonstrates that large-scale plantations of Jatropha curcas - if established in hot, dry coastal areas around the world - could capture 17-25 t of carbon dioxide per hectare per year from the atmosphere (over a 20 yr period). Based on recent farming results it is confirmed that the Jatropha curcas plant is well adapted to harsh environments and is capable of growing alone or in combination with other tree and shrub species with minimal irrigation in hot deserts where rain occurs only sporadically. Our investigations indicate that there is sufficient unused and marginal land for the widespread cultivation of Jatropha curcas to have a significant impact on atmospheric CO2 levels at least for several decades. In a system in which desalinated seawater is used for irrigation and for delivery of mineral nutrients, the sequestration costs were estimated to range from 42-63 EUR per tonne CO2. This result makes carbon farming a technology that is competitive with carbon capture and storage (CCS). In addition, high-resolution simulations using an advanced land-surface-atmosphere model indicate that a 10 000 km(2) plantation could produce a reduction in mean surface temperature and an onset or increase in rain and dew fall at a regional level. In such areas, plant growth and CO2 storage could continue until permanent woodland or forest had been established. In other areas, salinization of the soil may limit plant growth to 2-3 decades whereupon irrigation could be ceased and the captured carbon stored as woody biomass.Globally increasing temperatures are likely to have impacts on terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems that are difficult to manage. Quantifying impacts worldwide and systematically as a function of global warming is fundamental to substantiating the discussion on climate mitigation targets and adaptation planning. Here we present a macro-scale analysis of climate change impacts on terrestrial ecosystems based on newly developed sets of climate scenarios featuring a step-wise sampling of global mean temperature increase between 1.5 and 5K by 2100. These are processed by a biogeochemical model (LPJmL) to derive an aggregated metric of simultaneous biogeochemical and structural shifts in land surface properties which we interpret as a proxy for the risk of shifts and possibly disruptions in ecosystems. Our results show a substantial risk of climate change to transform terrestrial ecosystems profoundly. Nearly no area of the world is free from such risk, unless strong mitigation limits global warming to around 2 degrees above preindustrial level. Even then, our simulations for most climate models agree that up to one-fifth of the land surface may experience at least moderate ecosystem change, primarily at high latitudes and high altitudes. If countries fulfil their current emissions reduction pledges, resulting in roughly 3.5 K of warming, this area expands to cover half the land surface, including the majority of tropical forests and savannas and the boreal zone. Due to differences in regional patterns of climate change, the area potentially at risk of major ecosystem change considering all climate models is up to 2.5 times as large as for a single model.According to USA National Climatic Data Center (SOCCR [1]), the buildings sector of North America was responsible for annual carbon dioxide emissions of 671 million tons of carbon in 2003, which is 37% of total North American carbon dioxide emissions and 10% of global emissions. Other countries have similar proportions of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Best practices and intelligent systems utilization is a key factor in productively executing climate change mitigation in built environment. The main purpose of this paper is present the Decision Support System of Built Environment for Climate Change Mitigation which the authors of this paper have developed.The end of the 19th century witnessed an increase in mean global temperature, with rising sea levels, due to discernible human influence on the global climate, causing untoward effects on lives and properties. The study determined the knowledge, attitude and practice towards climate change among the residents of Ifo LGA, Ogun State, South West, Nigeria. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was done among 410 residents in Ifo L. G. A, using an interviewer - administered questionnaire. Almost six out of ten (57.6%) respondents had poor knowledge on climate change, 48% had positive attitude, while more than two thirds (69.8%) had poor practices concerning the mitigation of climate change. The study revealed inadequate knowledge and practices towards climate change mitigation among the residents, while their attitude was fairly positive. However, respondents demonstrated willingness to reduce carbon emissions. Educational campaigns, aimed at improving climate change knowledge, its effects on lives and properties, need to be instituted in this community. Such campaigns together with approaches at fostering institution-community partnerships, will translate into positive attitude and actions towards mitigating the impact of climate change.In 0.8 m(2) microplots, a very poor sandy soil that contained only traces of organic matter was enriched with bentonite (BNT) at rates of 0, 3, 6, and 12 kg/m(2). For 30 years the microplots were planted with different crops and regularly enriched with mineral and organic fertilizers. For the next eight years the microplots were left barren. The soils with BNT added contained significantly higher amounts of organic carbon (OC) and total nitrogen than the control soil (CS). Furthermore, in comparison to CS, organic matter in the soil with 12 kg/m(2) of BNT contained significantly more humins. Such durable stabilization of OC by BNT can be important for processes of carbon sequestration in soil.Microplots (0.8 m(2)) were filled with a subsoil of a very poor, acidic sandy soil. This soil was enriched with bentonite (BNT) at rates of 0, 3, 6, and 12 kg/m(2). For 30 years the microplots were planted with different crops and regularly enriched with mineral and organic fertilizers. For the next eight years the microplots were left barren. After that time, the soils with added BNT had higher pH and content of available Mg than the control soil (CS) in the whole studied 5-80 cm soil profile. The soil with the highest dose of added BNT contained more total Ca, Mg, Zn, and Mn, as well as available P and K in 5-30 cm layer than the other soils. Furthermore, in comparison to CS, the soil with 12 kg/m(2) of BNT had higher cation exchange capacity (CEC).In the EU, buildings consume 40% of the energy and produce 36% of the CO2 emissions. This study focuses on increasing the efficiency of energy use in buildings by exploiting phase change materials as energy storage systems. In particular, we focus on the practical application of phase change materials to buildings and their incorporation in building materials. We propose that the most effective implementation will be achieved by incorporating the phase change materials in to the building blocks used to construct the building envelope.Heat treatment processes, bulk or surface treatment, are energy intensive. Energy cost in the heat treating industry is approximated at about 20% of total production cost for parts that need heat treatment. Heat Treating Equipment and Hardware Materials; Energy and Environment; Processes and Heat-Treated Materials Technology have been identified as three important factors for energy cost reduction. Electricity, Light Fuel Oil, LPG, and CNG are the main sources of energy applied in the Thai heat treatment industry. Continuous increases in global energy costs and heightened awareness in climate change mitigation has given rise to efforts for energy conservation in the industry. Appropriate energy conservation methodology and the application of renewable energy will be crucial factors for the future competitiveness of the heat treatment industry in Thailand.Aim of study: There is a lack of empirical research that deals with sustainable forest management in Mediterranean regions, among the most vulnerable ecosystems. The main purpose of this work is to define the strategic criteria and objectives for sustainable forest management and aggregate the preferences of stakeholders in a Mediterranean region, using AHP and Goal Programming. Area of study: Valencian Community (Spain). Material and Methods: Firstly, we identified forest stakeholders and structured a decision hierarchy. Then a workshop was carried out to test and validate the proposed criteria and objectives, as well as a survey to determine social preferences. Secondly, another survey was conducted amongst experts to prioritize action plans. Main results: Stakeholders' preferences gave the greatest importance to the environmental criteria (hydrological regulation and erosion, climate change mitigation and biodiversity) with an average weight of 40%. Social criteria (employment, recreational activities and landscape) had a weight of 38% and 22% the economic criteria case (wood, hunting and fishing, livestock, renewable energies, rural tourism and mining). The results showed that new products and services such as tourism, renewable energies, landscape, hydrological regulation and erosion control, biodiversity or climate change mitigation are very relevant objectives. We also prioritized action plans comparing them with the distribution of the administration budget. Research highlights: The environmental and social criteria are much more important than the economic ones in the regional planning of the Mediterranean forest, regardless of the method used to aggregate the social preferences and if the forest is public or private.Geoengineering, a set of unconventional, untested, and risky proposals for responding to climate change, has attracted growing attention in the wake of our collective failure so far to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Geoengineering research and deployment remain highly controversial, however, not only because of the risks involved, but also because of concern that geoengineering might undermine climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. The latter concern, often described as a moral hazard, has been questioned by some but not carefully explored. This Article examines the critical question of whether geoengineering presents a moral hazard by drawing on empirical studies of moral hazard and risk compensation and on the psychology literature of heuristics and cultural cognition. The Article finds it likely that geoengineering efforts will undermine mainstream strategies to combat climate change and suggests potential measures for ameliorating this moral hazard.This study provides an analysis of the impact of global climate policies on mercury emissions using the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model in the time horizon up to 2050. The time evolution of mercury emissions is based on projections of energy consumption provided by the Prospective Outlook for the Long term Energy System (POLES) model for a scenario without any global greenhouse gas mitigation efforts, and for a 2 degrees C climate policy scenario, which assumes internationally coordinated action to mitigate climate change. Outcomes of the analysis are reported globally and for key world regions: EU-27, China, India and the US. The assessment takes into account current air pollution control legislation in each country. Scenario calculations for mercury emissions indicate significant scope for co-benefits made possible through climate policies. Atmospheric releases of mercury from anthropogenic sources under the global climate mitigation regime are reduced in 2050 by 45% when compared to the case without climate measures. Around one third of co-benefits for mercury emissions estimated world-wide in this study by 2050 are allocated to China. An annual Hg-abatement of about 800 tons is estimated for the coal combustion in power sector if the current air pollution legislation and climate policies are adopted in parallel.This article examines renewable energy (RE) technologies in a multiple-objective framework of sustainable development. We begin by locating RE in a portfolio of options available for climate change mitigation. Observing current trends in technologies, deployment levels, and costs, we discuss the future deployment levels envisioned in mitigation scenarios. We focus on biomass, given its importance in climate mitigation scenarios and because of the ongoing debates about its role in sustainability objectives. We also examine trends and successes in RE support policies. We conclude by linking the multiple objectives of sustainability to multiple policy instruments, emphasizing the need to closely consider the interaction between different policy instruments incentivizing sustainable development.Detecting and responding to climate change are two interrelated aspects of an important activity that Bert Bolin strongly promoted: the communication between scientists, the public and policy makers. The demonstration of a statistically significant anthropogenic contribution to the observed global warming greatly increased the public acceptance of the reality of climate change However, the separation between human-induced climate change and natural climate variability on the regional scales of greatest relevance for human living conditions remains a more difficult task. This applies to the prediction of both the anthropogenic signal and the natural variability noise. Climate mitigation and adaptation policies must therefore necessarily be designed as the response to uncertain risks. Unfortunately, the political response to climate change has stagnated in recent years through the preoccupation with the global financial crisis. Climate scientists can help overcome the current climate policy impasse through the creation of a new generation of simple, actor-based, system-dynamic models that demonstrate the close connection between the stabilisation of the global financial system and effective climate policies. Examples are given of alternative stabilisation policies that can lead either to major recessions and unemployment or to stable economic growth supported by an accelerated decarbonisation of the economy.Lifestyle changes can contribute to climate change mitigation. Social and technical changes are however intimately related, and consumption entangled with technology. Design researchers have proposed several strategies for facilitating more sustainable consumption patterns through design. However, many actors and structures influence both technology development and how consumption patterns evolve. Understanding the preconditions for design-led contribution requires looking beyond the designer-product-user triad. To frame further investigation into the role of design in transformation of consumption, theoretical concepts from the social sciences are introduced. Laundering is taken as an example to examine the dynamics at play and how to theoretically cope with them.This study evaluated the potential effectiveness of future carbon reserve scenarios, where U.S. forest landowners would hypothetically be paid to sequester carbon on their timberland and forego timber harvests for 100 years. Scenarios featured direct payments to landowners of $0 (baseline), $5, $10, or $15 per metric ton of additional forest carbon sequestered on the set aside lands, with maximum annual expenditures of $3 billion. Results indicated that from 1513 to 6837 Tg (Teragrams) of additional carbon (as carbon dioxide equivalent, CO(2)e) would be sequestered on U.S. timberlands relative to the baseline case over the next 50 years (30-137 Tg CO(2)e annually). These projected amounts of sequestered carbon on timberlands take into account projected increases in timber removal and forest carbon losses on other timberlands (carbon leakage effects). Net effectiveness of carbon reserve scenarios in terms of overall net gain in timberland carbon stocks from 2010 to 2060 ranged from 0.29 tCO(2)e net carbon increase for a payment of $5/tCO(2)e to the landowner (71% leakage), to 0.15 tCO(2)e net carbon increase for a payment of $15/tCO(2)e to the landowner (85% leakage). A policy or program to buy carbon credits from landowners would need to discount additions to the carbon reserve by the estimated amount of leakage. In the scenarios evaluated, the timber set-asides reduced timberland area available for harvest up to 35% and available timber inventory up to 55%, relative to the baseline scenario over the next 50 years, resulting in projected changes in timber prices, harvest levels, and forest product revenues for the forest products sector. (C) 2013 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.Cattle production is part of people's cultures and is important for human nutrition and welfare. However, conventional cattle ranching is a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Carbon sequestration in vegetation and soils can be enhanced and GHG emissions reduced with controlled grazing, appropriate pasture species, and the use of silvopastoral systems (SPS), which combine trees and shrubs with pastures. In addition, SPS contribute to climate change adaptation thanks to the ameliorating effects of trees on air temperatures that dry out pastures, as well as improving animal well-being and productivity. Several types of SPS are commonly found in the agricultural landscapes of Latin America. Intensive SPS (ISPS), where fodder banks are combined with woody species planted at high density, produce better yields than conventional ranching thanks to higher cattle density and better weight gain by the animals. Research in Colombia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica shows that SPS have more carbon in aboveground biomass and in soils than degraded pastures. In SPS, the timber or fruit trees, either planted or from natural forest regeneration, increases carbon stocks and sequestration rates. Native tree species can be used in SPS with good results in terms of productivity, soil restoration, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. The use of SPS contributes to carbon sequestration in trees and in soils, while establishing forest plantations and conserving secondary forests increase carbon sequestration and storage at the landscape level. SPS and especially ISPS can contribute to climate change mitigation because their net GHG emissions can be negative. In Latin America, successful ISPS are being scaled up to regional levels. Incentives such as Payments for Environmental Services along with technical assistance can stimulate the adoption of SPS, thus contributing to climate change mitigation while preserving rural livelihoods.Environmentally and socially responsible leisure activity has become a key issue in tourism development. Service providers are keen to promote their environmental sustainability credentials and people are starting to pay for carbon offsets and "green" certified facilities. However, compared to doing business as usual, greener operations often imply large capital investments and higher operating costs. There are numerous studies on the importance of environmentally sustainable tourism, on tourists who indicate that environmental sustainability is important to them and on the positive impacts that it may have on development. This paper aims to make a contribution to the literature on whether people are willing to pay for greener products and services, by extending the scope to the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town, South Africa in 2011 where a survey was conducted. The focus was on the characteristics of the runners who were willing to pay for a sustainable event and the results show that there were differences between the willingness to pay of different groupings of runners. Participants who were older and those who were self-employed were more likely to be greener. Education levels do not seem to matter, but feeling responsible for climate change does.The 2001 Forest Service Road less Area Conservation Rule (Road less Rule) prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on approximately one-third of National Forest System lands. In 2011, the Tenth Circuit upheld the Roadless Rule in Wyoming v. USDA after a decade of litigation. Subsequently, in October 2012, the Supreme Court refused to take up challenges to the Tenth Circuit's ruling. Given the Forest Service's new focus on managing for climate change and the importance of Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) protected by the Roadless Rule, this Note examines whether management for climate change adaptation and mitigation is feasible, necessary, and defensible in IRAs. As background, Parts I and II describe the history and terms of the Roadless Rule and the projected effects of climate change on forest ecosystems. This Note explains the benefits of purely passive management of IRAs in light of climate change effects and discusses arguments against active management in IRAs, but because the Rule explicitly allows some level of active management in IRAs, Part III summarizes the relevant scientific literature on climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies that may be extended to IRAs. Part IV examines the Rule's language, the case law, and the Forest Service's statutory framework to analyze the extent to which the Agency may implement active management in IRAs, including strategies that do not adhere to historical conditions. This Note concludes that: 1) if the Agency seeks to actively manage IRAs, it needs a comprehensive set of criteria for prioritizing roadless areas for climate change mitigation and adaptation treatments, and 2) the Agency may benefit from modifying the Rule's language if it deems that management outside of the historical range of variability is necessary.Water distribution systems (WDSs) contribute to undesirable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are generated through their component fabrication, construction, operation and disposal processes. The concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere is strongly associated with global warming and climate change. In order to meet the consequent challenge of limiting GHG emissions, the problem of WDS redesign is formulated here as a multi-objective optimisation problem. The three objectives are as follows: (1) minimisation of total redesign cost, (2) maximisation of the WDS resilience, and (3) minimisation of GHG emissions. The resilience index serves as a measure of the WDS's intrinsic capability to ensure continuity of supply to users after sudden failure conditions, whilst the GHG emissions serve as a measure of environmental performance and climate change mitigation. The output from the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA2) optimisation process is a Pareto front containing optimal solutions traded-off in terms of the three objectives analysed. This methodology was applied on the New York Tunnels and the Anytown Network problems. The results obtained demonstrate that the redesign approach leads to cost-effective and resilient solutions that can also mitigate climate change compared with the single-objective (least cost) and other multi-objective redesigns over the long-term planning horizon.Russia is not only rich in natural gas, oil, coal and uranium. It also holds a considerable renewable energy resource base. The Federal Electricity Law mandates the federal Government to stimulate the development of renewable energy sources. However, so far, the Government has failed to create a functioning regulatory framework that would ensure the financial viability of these investments. This article examines the role that regional authorities could play in developing clean energy in the Russian Federation. Building further upon the environmental federalism literature, this article analyses the regulatory barriers to regional feed-in tariffs in Russia and, based on the US experience, proposes legal solutions to overcome these barriers. Russia-because of its role as a fossil fuel superpower, its weak track record on climate change mitigation, together with high political centralisation of power-is a unique case for an analysis of the role of regions as innovators of sustainable development.With this paper we provide a comparative study of local climate mitigation from both China and Japan, in the context of pessimistic international regimes to achieve significant results on climate mitigation. We compare the political systems, institutional arrangements, and local actors in local climate mitigation through a policy cycle analysis. We find that climate initiatives in the two countries have inherited the political characteristics of traditional environmental management within a centralized administrative system; moreover, these initiatives also reflect the emergence of local governance. Owing to similar political cultures but differing roles of local governments, both countries are making progress with respect to the agenda-setting and policy formation stages, but are facing greater obstacles regarding implementation and evaluation. The monocentric local governance in China results in an easy but irrational planning process, while the powerless local agents in Japan cannot hardly promote bolder campaigns for energy industries. Current administrative systems created by decades of local environmental problem solving are no longer adaptive enough to facilitate the bottom-up emergence of local mitigating activities. Local governments and administration systems should be adaptive regarding capacity building and institutional innovation to improve local governance on climate mitigation.Drought is a cumulative event, often difficult to define and involving wide-reaching consequences for agriculture, ecosystems, water availability, and society. Understanding how the occurrence of drought may change in the future and which sources of uncertainty are dominant can inform appropriate decisions to guide drought impacts assessments. Our study considers both climate model uncertainty associated with future climate projections, and future emissions of greenhouse gases (future scenario uncertainty). Four drought indices (the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI), Soil Moisture Anomaly (SMA), the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the Standardised Runoff Index (SRI)) are calculated for the A1B and RCP2.6 future emissions scenarios using monthly model output from a 57-member perturbed parameter ensemble of climate simulations of the HadCM3C Earth System model, for the baseline period 1961-1990, and the period 2070-2099 ("the 2080s"). We consider where there are statistically significant increases or decreases in the proportion of time spent in drought in the 2080s compared to the baseline. Despite the large range of uncertainty in drought projections for many regions, projections for some regions have a clear signal, with uncertainty associated with the magnitude of change rather than direction. For instance, a significant increase in time spent in drought is generally projected for the Amazon, Central America and South Africa whilst projections for northern India consistently show significant decreases in time spent in drought. Whilst the patterns of changes in future drought were similar between scenarios, climate mitigation, represented by the RCP2.6 scenario, tended to reduce future changes in drought. In general, climate mitigation reduced the area over which there was a significant increase in drought but had little impact on the area over which there was a significant decrease in time spent in drought.The emissions of human-made greenhouse gases may trigger transition from the pre-industrial climate to the greenhouse steady state, which was for the last time abandoned 49 million years ago. The study provides an energy balance climate model with temperature-dependent parameters, which illustrates the tetra-stable bifurcation structure of the climate system. Bifurcation structures can evolve in time leading to climate variability and only strong changes may trigger climate transitions between steady states. The potential tipping point triggering irreversible climate transition to the greenhouse steady state is estimated as 291.7 K (577 ppmv CO2). Event-tipping is revealed as the mechanism of this unwanted climate transition. The newly attained greenhouse steady state would be self-sustained mainly due to permanent biomass methane fermentation. Therefore, the minimisation of methane release from biomass methane fermentation, permafrost melting, and clathrates decomposition is suggested as the important climate change mitigation strategy.The purpose of this paper is to calculate the value of stochastic carbon sequestration in climate change mitigation when also carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and abatement costs are stochastic. The replacement cost method is used where the value of carbon sink is calculated as associated cost savings from replacement of more expensive mitigation options for achieving a given emission target. Minimum costs with and without carbon sinks are derived with a safety-first approach in a chance constrained programming framework which also accounts for variability in control costs. The theoretical results show that for high enough risk discount, carbon sink is not included in a cost effective mitigation program even when the carbon sink cost is zero. The empirical application to the EU independent commitment of 20% reduction in carbon dioxides shows large variation in carbon sink value depending on risk discount. Under no uncertainty, the value can correspond to 0.33% of total GDP in EU, but it declines due to the uncertainty associated with forest carbon sink and is zero for high probability levels in achieving the target. Thus, whether or not to recommend the-inclusion of carbon sink in the EU climate policy depends on the uncertainty of carbon sinks in relation to other sources and on the importance of reaching stipulated emission reduction targets. (C) 2013 Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umea. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.The aim of the paper is to assess energy technologies in road transport sector based on costs and impact on climate change and to indicate the most competitive transport technologies taking into account international post-Kyoto climate change mitigation policies into account. The main tasks of the paper are: to develop the multi criteria framework for comparative assessment of energy technologies in road transport and to apply MCDM methods for the transport technologies assessment. The interval TOPSIS method is employed in order to tackle the uncertain criteria. The assessment framework allows comparing road transport technologies in terms of their environmental and economic impacts and facilitates decision making process in transport sector. The main indicators selected for technologies assessment are: private costs and life cycle GHG emissions. The ranking of road transport technologies based on private costs and GHG emissions allowed prioritizingthese technologies thus mitigating GHG emissions at the lowest costs. However the extent, capacity, and quality of road infrastructure affects the overall level of transportation activity, which in turn affects how much energy is consumed by vehicles and the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted. The paper presents the impact of transportation infrastructure on GHG emissions from road vehicles and policy implications of performed assessment.Purpose The paper is an excerpt from a bigger study with an overall aim of examining the extent to which climate change adaptation has been integrated in the ETA studies undertaken in Kenya since the process inception in 2000. The purpose was to establish whether adequate attention is given to the issue of climate change mitigation as major challenge in the world during the 21st century. Design/methodology/approach - The research design is based on qualitative research involving a review of ETA reports approved by the national environmental authority and also based on key informant consultations with licensed ETA experts in the country. Thereafter, the findings were analyzed through standard statistical procedures. Findings - The findings showed that climate change integration in all the reviewed ETA reports was mainly restricted to mere consideration of historical climate change information in the project areas and totally weak in terms of climate change prediction scenarios and their likely impacts on the proposed development projects. However, consultations with most ETA practitioners indicated that integration of climate change adaptive capabilities into the ETA process was a relevant issue but admitted that the implementation modalities were unclear. Originality/value - The study is the first in evaluating the level of integration for climate change in ETA studies in Kenya and the findings will inform ETA implementation in the country. It also forms a good basis for comparative studies with ETA studies in other countries of the world.1. Carbon storage in vegetation and soil underpins climate regulation through carbon sequestration. Because plant species differ in their ability to capture, store and release carbon, the collective functional characteristics of plant communities (functional diversity) should be a major driver of carbon accumulation in terrestrial ecosystems. 2. Three major components of plant functional diversity could be put forward as drivers of carbon storage in ecosystems: the most abundant functional trait values, the variety of functional trait values and the abundance of particular species that could have additional effects not incorporated in the first two components. 3. We tested for associations between these components and carbon storage across 16 sites in the Chaco forest of Argentina under the same climate and on highly similar parental material. The sites differed in their plant functional diversity caused by different long-term land-use regimes. 4. We measured six plant functional traits in 27 species and weighted them by the species abundance at each site to calculate the community-weighted mean (CWM) and the functional divergence (FDvar) of each single trait and of multiple traits (FDiv). We also measured plant and soil carbon storage. Using a stepwise multiple regression analysis, we assessed which of the functional diversity components best explained carbon storage. 5. Both CWM and FDvar of plant height and wood-specific gravity, but no leaf traits, were retained as predictors of carbon storage in multiple models. Relationships of FDvar of stem traits and FDiv with carbon storage were all negative. The abundance of five species improved the predictive power of some of the carbon storage models. 6. Synthesis. All three major components of plant functional diversity contributed to explain carbon storage. What matters the most to carbon storage in these ecosystems is the relative abundance of plants with tall, and to a lesser extent dense, stems with a narrow range of variation around these values. No consistent link was found between carbon storage and the leaf traits usually associated with plant resource use strategy. The negative association of trait divergence with carbon storage provided no evidence in support to niche complementarity promoting carbon storage in these forest ecosystems.Discussion and analysis on international climate policy often focuses on the rather abstract level of total national and regional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At some point, however, emission reductions need to be translated to consumption level. In this article, we evaluate the implications of the strictest IPCC representative concentration pathway for key consumption categories (food, travel, shelter, goods, services). We use IPAT style identities to account for possible growth in global consumption levels and indicate the required change in GHG emission intensity for each category (i.e. GHG emission per calorie, person kilometer, square meter, kilogram, US dollar). The proposed concept provides guidance for product developers, consumers and policymakers. To reach the 2 degrees C climate target (2.1 tCO(2)-eq. per capita in 2050), the GHG emission intensity of consumption has to be reduced by a factor of 5 in 2050. The climate targets on consumption level allow discussion of the feasibility of this climate target at product and consumption level. In most consumption categories products in line with this climate target are available. For animal food and air travel, reaching the GHG intensity targets with product modifications alone will be challenging and therefore structural changes in consumption patterns might be needed. The concept opens up possibilities for further research on potential solutions on the consumption and product level to global climate mitigation.The present and future concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide depends on both anthropogenic and natural sources and sinks of carbon. Most proposed climate mitigation strategies rely on a progressive transition to carbon-efficient technologies to reduce industrial emissions, substantially supported by policies to maintain or enhance the terrestrial carbon stock in forests and other ecosystems. This strategy may be challenged if terrestrial sequestration capacity is affected by future climate feedbacks, but how and to what extent is little understood. Here, we show that climate mitigation strategies are highly sensitive to future natural disturbance rates (e.g. fires, hurricanes, droughts), because of the potential effect of disturbances on the terrestrial carbon balance. Generally, altered disturbance rates affect the pace of societal and technological transitions required to achieve the mitigation target, with substantial consequences on the energy sector and the global economy. An understanding of the future dynamics and consequences of natural disturbances on terrestrial carbon balance is thus essential for developing robust climate mitigation strategies and policies.Landscape scale quantification enables farmers to pool resources and expertise. However, the problem remains of how to quantify these gains. This article considers current greenhouse gas (GHG) quantification methods that can be used in a landscape scale analysis in terms of relevance to areas dominated by smallholders in developing countries. In landscape scale carbon accounting frameworks, measurements are an essential element. Sampling strategies need careful design to account for all pools/fluxes and to ensure judicious use of resources. Models can be used to scale-up measurements and fill data gaps. In recent years a number of accessible models and calculators have been developed which can be used at the landscape scale in developing country areas. Some are based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) method and others on dynamic ecosystem models. They have been developed for a range of different purposes and therefore vary in terms of accuracy and usability. Landscape scale assessments of GHGs require a combination of ground sampling, use of data from census, remote sensing (RS) or other sources and modelling. Fitting of all of these aspects together needs to be performed carefully to minimize uncertainties and maximize the use of scarce resources. This is especially true in heterogeneous landscapes dominated by smallholders in developing countries.Current methods for assessing soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks are generally not well suited for understanding variations in SOC stocks in landscapes. This is due to the tedious and time-consuming nature of the sampling methods most commonly used to collect bulk density cores, which limits repeatability across large areas, particularly where information is needed on the spatial dynamics of SOC stocks at scales relevant to management and for spatially explicit targeting of climate change mitigation options. In the current study, approaches were explored for (i) field-based estimates of SOC stocks and (ii) mapping of SOC stocks at moderate to high resolution on the basis of data from four widely contrasting ecosystems in East Africa. Estimated SOC stocks for 0-30 cm depth varied both within and between sites, with site averages ranging from 2 to 8 kg m(-2). The differences in SOC stocks were determined in part by rainfall, but more importantly by sand content. Results also indicate that managing soil erosion is a key strategy for reducing SOC loss and hence in mitigation of climate change in these landscapes. Further, maps were developed on the basis of satellite image reflectance data with multiple R-squared values of 0.65 for the independent validation data set, showing variations in SOC stocks across these landscapes. These maps allow for spatially explicit targeting of potential climate change mitigation efforts through soil carbon sequestration, which is one option for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Further, the maps can be used to monitor the impacts of such mitigation efforts over time.Background: The observational evidence of the impacts of climate conditions on human health is accumulating. A variety of direct, indirect, and systemically mediated health effects have been identified. Excessive daily heat exposures create direct effects, such as heat stroke (and possibly death), reduce work productivity, and interfere with daily household activities. Extreme weather events, including storms, floods, and droughts, create direct injury risks and follow-on outbreaks of infectious diseases, lack of nutrition, and mental stress. Climate change will increase these direct health effects. Indirect effects include malnutrition and under-nutrition due to failing local agriculture, spread of vector-borne diseases and other infectious diseases, and mental health and other problems caused by forced migration from affected homes and workplaces. Examples of systemically mediated impacts on population health include famine, conflicts, and the consequences of large-scale adverse economic effects due to reduced human and environmental productivity. This article highlights links between climate change and non-communicable health problems, a major concern for global health beyond 2015. Discussion: Detailed regional analysis of climate conditions clearly shows increasing temperatures in many parts of the world. Climate modelling indicates that by the year 2100 the global average temperature may have increased by 3-4 degrees C unless fundamental reductions in current global trends for greenhouse gas emissions are achieved. Given other unforeseeable environmental, social, demographic, and geopolitical changes that may occur in a plus-4-degree world, that scenario may comprise a largely uninhabitable world for millions of people and great social and military tensions. Conclusion: It is imperative that we identify actions and strategies that are effective in reducing these increasingly likely threats to health and well-being. The fundamental preventive strategy is, of course, climate change mitigation by significantly reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, especially long-acting carbon dioxide (CO2), and by increasing the uptake of CO2 at the earth's surface. This involves urgent shifts in energy production from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, energy conservation in building design and urban planning, and reduced waste of energy for transport, building heating/cooling, and agriculture. It would also involve shifts in agricultural production and food systems to reduce energy and water use particularly in meat production. There is also potential for prevention via mitigation, adaptation, or resilience building actions, but for the large populations in tropical countries, mitigation of climate change is required to achieve health protection solutions that will last.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand how cities at different stages of development each subject to its own challenges in adapting to climate change can manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Design/methodology/approach - Case studies are undertaken for three cities: Amman, Jakarta and Dar es Salaam, including determination of GHG emissions and analysis of climate change data (where available) for each. Findings - In Amman, the most climate-sensitive municipal service is water; Jordan is exceptionally dry, and nearly 15 per cent of all electricity consumption is by the water authority. Jakarta has already experienced extreme flooding. The climate vulnerabilities associated with sea-level rise are intensified by subsidence in parts of Jakarta. Alternating floods and droughts are climate impacts already experienced in Dar es Salaam. Droughts have impacted Tanzania's electricity infrastructure disrupting hydroelectricity production, requiring new natural gas infrastructure to maintain power, thereby increasing GHG emissions. Nonetheless, Dar es Salaam's GHG emissions at 0.56 t CO(2)e/cap are small compared to Amman and Jakarta at 3.66 and 4.92 t CO(2)e/cap., respectively. Originality/value - Synergist development strategies, addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation are suggested. In Amman an increased share of photovoltaic electricity production might be used for service provision, especially for energy needs surrounding water supply. Advanced slum upgrading in Jakarta could see relocation of the at-risk poor to safe areas with energy efficient homes connected to public transit and decentralized, community-based electricity generation. The focus in Dar es Salaam community-based waste-to-energy facilities would reduce climate change impacts and vulnerabilities while addressing energy poverty in poor communities.It is widely recognised that defining trade-offs between greenhouse gas emissions using 'emission equivalence' based on global warming potentials (GWPs) referenced to carbon dioxide produces anomalous results when applied to methane. The short atmospheric lifetime of methane, compared to the timescales of CO2 uptake, leads to the greenhouse warming depending strongly on the temporal pattern of emission substitution. We argue that a more appropriate way to consider the relationship between the warming effects of methane and carbon dioxide is to define a 'mixed metric' that compares ongoing methane emissions (or reductions) to one-off emissions (or reductions) of carbon dioxide. Quantifying this approach, we propose that a one-off sequestration of 1 t of carbon would offset an ongoing methane emission in the range 0.90-1.05 kg CH4 per year. We present an example of how our approach would apply to rangeland cattle production, and consider the broader context of mitigation of climate change, noting the reverse trade-off would raise significant challenges in managing the risk of non-compliance. Our analysis is consistent with other approaches to addressing the criticisms of GWP-based emission equivalence, but provides a simpler and more robust approach while still achieving close equivalence of climate mitigation outcomes ranging over decadal to multi-century timescales. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article explores the space for public participation during the consenting process for a nationally significant wind energy or carbon capture and storage infrastructure project. Legal obligations to provide opportunities for public involvement in these processes can be found in national, EU and international law. However, an examination of strategic planning policy suggests that in practice, very little will be up for discussion at this stage. This is consistent with a certain mistrust of the public in high-level policy discourse on the technological change thought necessary for climate change mitigation. Legally entrenched rights to participate, coupled with limited opportunities to influence, create the danger that participation becomes a simple bureaucratic hurdle, frustrating for all concerned.Soil analyses were conducted on home lawns across diverse ecoregions of the U.S. to determine the soil organic carbon (SOC) sink capacity of turfgrass soils. Establishment of lawns sequestered SOC over time. Due to variations in ecoregions, sequestration rates varied among sites from 0.9 Mg carbon (C) ha(-1) year(-1) to 5.4 Mg C ha(-1) year(-1). Potential SOC sink capacity also varied among sites ranging from 20.8 +/- 1.0-96.3 +/- 6.0 Mg C ha(-1). Average sequestration rate and sink capacity for all sites sampled were 2.8 +/- 0.3 Mg C ha(-1) year(-1) and 45.8 +/- 3.5 Mg C ha(-1), respectively. Additionally, the hidden carbon costs (HCC) due to lawn mowing (189.7 kg Ce (carbon equivalent) ha(-1) year(-1)) and fertilizer use (63.6 kg Ce ha(-1) year(-1)) for all sites totaled 254.3 kg Ce ha(-1) year(-1). Considering home lawn SOC sink capacity and HCC, mean home lawn sequestration was completely negated 184 years post establishment. The potential SOC sink capacity of home lawns in the U. S. was estimated at 496.3 Tg C, with HCC of between 2,504.1 Gg Ce year(-1) under low management regimes and 7551.4 Gg Ce year(-1) under high management. This leads to a carbon-positive system for between 66 and 199 years in U.S. home lawns. More efficient and reduction of C-intensive maintenance practices could increase the overall sequestration longevity of home lawns and improve their climate change mitigation potential.Under the European Union Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection, the European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) identified a decline in soil organic carbon and soil losses by erosion as priorities for the collection of policy relevant soil data at European scale. Moreover, the estimation of soil organic carbon content is of crucial importance for soil protection and for climate change mitigation strategies. Soil organic carbon is one of the attributes of the recently developed LUCAS soil database. The request for data on soil organic carbon and other soil attributes arose from an on-going debate about efforts to establish harmonized datasets for all EU countries with data on soil threats in order to support modeling activities and display variations in these soil conditions across Europe. In 2009, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre conducted the LUCAS soil survey, sampling ca. 20,000 points across 23 EU member states. This article describes the results obtained from analyzing the soil organic carbon data in the LUCAS soil database. The collected data were compared with the modeled European topsoil organic carbon content data developed at the JRC. The best fitted comparison was performed at NUTS2 level and showed underestimation of modeled data in southern Europe and overestimation in the new central eastern member states. There is a good correlation in certain regions for countries such as the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Italy, Ireland, and France. Here we assess the feasibility of producing comparable estimates of the soil organic carbon content at NUTS2 regional level for the European Union (EU27) and draw a comparison with existing modeled data. In addition to the data analysis, we suggest how the modeled data can be improved in future updates with better calibration of the model. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With the objective of quantifying turbulent heat fluxes in areas with various types of urban land use to improve living and environmental conditions through better urban planning, comparative energy balance measurements using the eddy-covariance (EC) technique were conducted in Oberhausen (Germany) between 15 August 2010 and 15 April 2011. The results of this paper show that the sensible heat flux (Q(H)) is 20% higher and that the latent heat flux (Q(E)) is 90% lower at an urban site (URB) compared to a suburban site (SUB). Green spaces in cities counteract the growing thermal stresses on city dwellers and therefore represent a possible urban climate mitigation measure. This positive effect may be reduced or lost entirely during long periods of drought. The Bowen ratio (Q(H)/Q(E)) increased from 0.65 to 2.8 with decreasing soil moisture at the SUB, and the monthly average Q(E) value decreased from 94 W m(-2) (August 2010, heavy precipitation) to only 47 W m(-2) (March 2011, dry period), providing impressive evidence of this relationship. Considering the aspects of urban climate, the creation of urban green spaces can only be effective if an optimum water supply is provided. Furthermore, additional planning recommendations are given for urban planners within cities located at mid-latitudes, as derived from the measured results. Copyright (C) 2012 Royal Meteorological SocietyForestry is at the centre-stage of global climate change negotiations as it is a low cost carbon mitigation option. Forests have the potential to be a source as well as sink for carbon emissions. The main aim of this paper is to provide a useful snapshot of the carbon value of India's forests, and give a glimpse of the potential of India's forests to offset both India's and the world's carbon emissions. This paper also highlights the initiatives taken by India towards the implementation of REDD+ and the status of REDD+ in a few other countries.This paper addresses the economic dimensions of climate change mitigation by afforestation in the UK and the necessity of reconciling sustainable development with carbon sequestration forest policy initiatives. Present value costs per tonne of carbon sequestration through the creation of new forests are estimated, and results of a static comparative analysis, aiming to show the influence of key variables on the costs, are presented and discussed. The paper provides empirical evidence of the cost effectiveness of the establishment of forest plantations for climate change mitigation in different locations in the UK, identifying also the importance of placing forestry for carbon sequestration in the general context of rural land use, where significant policy reforms can be anticipated. The evidence from this research suggests that the choice of location for forestry development, and of appropriate species and management regimes to be applied, are important factors in determining economic costs. Afforestation with relatively fast growing tree species (e.g. Sitka spruce) on low grade agricultural land (e.g. currently used for sheep grazing) may be a cost effective option. The general conclusion is that there is a case for forestry in the UK to contribute to climate mitigation, that woodlands expansion is likely competitive with other means of removing carbon from the atmosphere, and that in certain cases and locations, afforestation projects may provide relatively low cost options for carbon sequestration. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study uses an experimental social survey in two large Japanese cities to explore citizens' attitudes toward international voluntary carbon offsetting that encourages low carbon development in developing countries. In particular, the study focuses on whether the offsetting is a contribution to meet national target of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction under the Kyoto Protocol or reduction beyond the national target, using Kyoto credits generated from climate change mitigation projects in developing countries. The study finds that around 40% of the survey respondents chose real carbon offsetting over a gift certificate as compensation for their participation in the survey, around half of whom chose carbon offsetting contribution to the world. However, most of the current Japanese carbon offsetting providers utilise only the carbon offsetting contribution to the Japanese government. Thus, Japanese citizens have significant untapped potential for undertaking more carbon offsetting to meet targets other than national targets. However, the results also show that there is a general lack of understanding regarding the mechanism of carbon offsetting. Carbon offsetting providers in Japan and other countries that may have national self-imposed targets and allowing the usage of international carbon offsetting should therefore be considered, so as to provide individuals with the options of either contributing to their government to help it meet its national target or contributing to the world to help reduce GHG emissions beyond the national targets. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar, a solid product of biomass pyrolysis, is a promising concept for climate change mitigation and adaptation, as it can sequester atmospheric CO2 while improving quality of soil where it is stored. However, for this potential to be realised, it is necessary for biochar to have high environmental stability, i.e., resist various decomposition processes over long time. The main objective of this work has been to relate biochar production conditions to the yield, and properties of biochar, particularly its long-term stability. We used our lab-scale pyrolysis facilities to produce biochar at three temperatures between 350 degrees C and 550 degrees C, from selected feedstock (pine, mixed larch and spruce chips, softwood pellets). We measured the yield of biochar and then used an accelerated ageing assay to obtain information on the stability of biochar. Such information is very important for the assessment of the climate change mitigation potential of biochar, as it has not yet been clearly defined what proportion of biochar actually remains "permanently" sequestered and how much is released back to the atmosphere in the short to medium term. The results of this work showed that despite increase in the stability of biochar with increasing pyrolysis temperature, the yield of stable biochar fraction is nearly independent of the temperature. These findings are essential for the optimisation of pyrolysis conditions for production of biochar with selected properties, as well as for modelling biochar systems and their climate change mitigation potential as compared to other uses of biomass, such as bioenergy, biofuels and/or chemicals. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study assesses the remote sensing challenges experienced by the project developers for operational monitoring of REDD+ (Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation) projects. The study was carried out at a sample of 20 REDD+ projects in Brazil, Peru, Cameroon, Tanzania, Indonesia and Vietnam using a questionnaire survey and regional workshops on MRV (Monitoring, Reporting and Verification). The assessment showed that eleven project developers (55%) showed high or very high remote sensing and GIS capacity, seven (35%) were ranked medium, and two (10%) were ranked low. At the regional level, capacity tended to be highest in the projects in Brazil and Peru and somewhat lower in Cameroon, Tanzania, Indonesia and Vietnam. The study calls for an increased investment and capacity building to meet the various remote sensing challenges in REDD+ projects.Climate change mitigation and adaptation responses in agricultural areas will be a balance between strategies such as the allocation of land to different land uses and changes to current land management. Identification of the spatial variability of production is fundamental to both strategies if efficient area-based decisions are to be made which minimise on-farm economic losses and food security and sustainability issues. Also critical to these strategies is that the information created must be at a resolution high enough to enable on-farm decisions and at extents large enough to guide targeted governmental policy. This paper aims to address these needs by developing a method for mapping spatial variation in yield at a high resolution across the cropping areas in South Australia. We developed regression models between satellite-derived Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and yield measured through precision agriculture technologies across three years and compared their predictions with regional yield statistics. Observations and predictions of district average grain yields ranged from 0.5 to 3.3 t/ha during the study period. The best model efficiency criterion (Nash-Sutcliffe) was 65% in 2005. Our results demonstrate that empirical relationships between high resolution spatial datasets are spatially representative. That is, a model based on the yield-NDVI relationship developed in a very small area can be used to accurately predict regional yield.Wetlands play a number of roles in the water environment, principally water purification, flood control, and groundwater replenishment. In addition to these benefits, United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and Ramsar Convention defined wetlands to be of biosphere significance and societal importance in the areas of shoreline stabilisation, storm protection, cultural values, recreation and tourism, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Wetlands are also considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal life. The function of most natural wetland systems is not to treat wastewater, however, their high potential for the filtering and the treatment of pollutants has been recognized by environmental scientists who specialize in the area of wastewater treatment. In the past wetlands used to be in place naturally and used to provide ecological benefits to the mankind and environment. Through recognizing their immense benefits, human being started to construct artificial wetlands. Recently, constructed wetlands are recommended as one of the salient features of water sensitive urban design, which play an important role in water management and ecologically sustainable development. These constructed artificial wetland systems are highly controlled environments that intend to mimic the occurrences of soil, flora, and microorganisms in natural wetlands to help in treating wastewater effluent. Artificial wetlands provide the ability to experiment with flow regimes, micro-biotic composition, and flora in order to produce the most efficient treatment process. Constructed wetlands are increasingly being designed and used to treat wastewaters. Majority of constructed wetlands are designed based on steady-state releases of pollutants loading. However, in some cases (i.e. aquaculture ponds) pollutant loadings are not steady-state, rather are intermittent. Pollutants transport analysis based on steady-state release (inflow) will be quite different from an analysis based on intermittent loading/inflow. In the past several studies were conducted on pollutants transport and degradation through wetlands using steady-state inflow of pollutants. In this paper, a simple numerical model is proposed and developed based on conservation of mass principle for the pollutants and transport through a wetland, considering a series of tanks. Tank-in-series approach assumes that the wetland is comprised of several interconnected tanks, each of which can be modeled as a continuous flow stirred tank reactor. As for pollutants, in this study organic matters are considered. Same numerical model can be used for different organic matters, considering different values of degradation rate. Using first-order kinetic equations of pollutants transport and degradation and applying Euler's method of difference equations a numerical model was developed. Developed numerical model can simulate pollutant transport and degradations for steadystate, continuous and/or irregular/intermittent pollutant loadings. Numerical model results were verified with earlier developed analytical solutions for intermittent pollutant loadings, which were applied for aquaculture ponds in Texas (USA). Numerical model results are close to the results derived from analytical solutions for the same condition. Reasons of some primary discrepancies are discussed. Developed numerical model was used to present different scenario using different flow rates, pond volumes and different masses of intermittent pollutants. It is found that all of these parameters have significant impact on outflow pollutants' concentrations.Climate change mitigation and the EU2020 strategy foster energy efficiency in Europe's future manufacturing landscape. These challenges make high demands to SMEs as well to MNCs. The paper gives insight to an approach on Eco-factories based on the EU-funded FP7 project EMC2. Eco-factories will enable the quantum leap in integrating environmental issues in brownfield and greenfield factory planning and factory operation. The paper focuses on the identification, structuring and definition of requirements for Eco-factory simulation approaches. Requirements for developing a simulation environment for integrating energy and material flows for detailed analysis but also wide user spectrum is presented. The paper shows that demands are twofold requesting integrated, modular and detailed simulation solutions as well as emphasize on user-friendliness and low complexity.In order to estimate biogeophysical effects of historical land cover change on climate during last three centuries, a set of experiments with a climate system model of intermediate complexity (MPM-2) is performed. In response to historical deforestation, the model simulates a decrease in annual mean global temperature in the range of 0.07-0.14 degrees C based on different grassland albedos. The effect of land cover changes is most pronounced in the middle northern latitudes with maximum cooling reaching approximately 0.6 degrees C during northern summer. The cooling reaches 0.57 degrees C during northern spring owing to the large effects of land surface albedo. These results suggest that land cover forcing is important for study on historical climate change and that more research is necessary in the assessment of land management options for climate change mitigation.To quantify changes in air pollution over Europe at the 2050 horizon, we designed a comprehensive modelling system that captures the external factors considered to be most relevant, and that relies on up-to-date and consistent sets of air pollution and climate policy scenarios. Global and regional climate as well as global chemistry simulations are based on the recent representative concentration pathways (RCP) produced for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) whereas regional air quality modelling is based on the updated emissions scenarios produced in the framework of the Global Energy Assessment. We explored two diverse scenarios: a reference scenario where climate policies are absent and a mitigation scenario which limits global temperature rise to within 2 degrees C by the end of this century. This first assessment of projected air quality and climate at the regional scale based on CMIP5 (5th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate simulations is in line with the existing literature using CMIP3. The discrepancy between air quality simulations obtained with a climate model or with meteorological reanalyses is pointed out. Sensitivity simulations show that the main factor driving future air quality projections is air pollutant emissions, rather than climate change or intercontinental transport of pollution. Whereas the well documented "climate penalty" that weights upon ozone (increase of ozone pollution with global warming) over Europe is confirmed, other features appear less robust compared to the literature, such as the impact of climate on PM2.5. The quantitative disentangling of external factors shows that, while several published studies focused on the climate penalty bearing upon ozone, the contribution of the global ozone burden is somewhat overlooked in the literature.Worldwide, over 1.3 billion people lack access to energy. Lack of electricity undermines the provision of basic social services, including education and health, and impedes development of income generating opportunities. Renewable energy technologies provide a viable option to rural electrification and are increasingly recognized for their contribution to rural development, energy security, and climate change mitigation. International non-governmental organizations (NGOs), working in partnerships with local actors, play an important role in the diffusion of renewable energy technologies in developing countries. Based on the exploratory case study of the international NGO Practical Action, this chapter explores the nature and effectiveness of development partnerships for the provision of sustainable energy services in remote off-grid rural communities in Cajamarca, Peru. It emphasizes the importance of building effective partnerships with communities and local government; facilitating community participation and ownership; building capacities for sustainable provision of energy services; and providing affordable and appropriate technological solutions that meet people's needs.While some countries have achieved considerable development, many others still lack access to the goods and services considered standard in the modern society. As CO2 emissions and development are often correlated, this paper employs the theoretical background of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and the learning curves toolkit to analyze how carbon intensities have changed as countries move towards higher development (and cumulative wealth) levels. The EKC concept is then tested with the methodology of learning curves for the period between 1971 and 2010, so as to capture a dynamic picture of emissions trends and development. Results of both analyses reveal that empirical data fails to provide direct evidence of an EKC for emissions and development. The data does show, however, an interesting pattern in the dispersion of emissions levels for countries within the same HDI categories. While data does not show that countries grow more polluting during intermediary development stages, it does provide evidence that countries become more heterogeneous in their emission intensities as they develop, later re-converging to lower emission intensities at higher HDI levels. Learning rates also indicate heterogeneity among developing countries and relative convergence among developed countries. Given the heterogeneity of development paths among countries, the experiences of those which are managing to develop at low carbon intensities can prove valuable examples for ongoing efforts in climate change mitigation, especially in the developing world.Cities engage in greenhouse gas mitigation efforts because of some combination of desires to achieve local co-benefits, respond to the preferences and pressures of influential political actors, and contribute to the public good by minimizing climate change. The relative importance of each motivation is hypothesized to affect the composition and comprehensiveness of subsequent climate initiatives. In some cities, initiatives appear to be ad hoc collections of tangentially related actions, whereas in others they are the result of a strategic planning process. This article uses survey-based data collected from U. S. cities that are explicitly involved in climate change-mitigation efforts and empirically examines two related questions: (1) What are the primary objectives and considerations that motivated these cities to engage in climate-change mitigation? (2) How do these considerations shape the relevant planning activities they undertake? Cities consistently point to cost savings as the primary rationale behind their initial decision to engage. When controlling for other relevant characteristics, however, a stronger direct concern about global climate change, as opposed to achieving financial savings or other co-benefits, is shown to be associated with the implementation of a more comprehensive climate-planning process.In an era when sustainability and climate change mitigation are paramount, it is important that built environment professionals make robust and transparent decisions regarding future development. A new approach is outlined and tested for assessing sustainability for built infrastructure using a quadrant model and 3D spatial coordinates. The chosen method involves a case study of a high performance green building in Australia that was constructed in 2008. The investigation demonstrates that the model is practical and produces an appropriate outcome, which is then compared with seven other generic types of built infrastructure. The inclusion of development scale or influence in the model is an important feature that can lead to differences in ranking preference. The findings support embedding essential environmental considerations objectively into decision-making processes via the use of an economic ratio (return on investment to energy usage), a social ratio (functional performance to loss of habitat) and a measure of sustainability risk as x, y and z coordinates respectively, plotted in 3D space.We used a coupled climate-chemistry model to quantify the impacts of aerosols on snow cover north of 30 degrees N both for the present-day and for the middle of the 21st century. Black carbon (BC) deposition over continents induces a reduction in the mean number of days with snow at the surface (MNDWS) that ranges from 0 to 10 days over large areas of Eurasia and Northern America for the present-day relative to the pre-industrial period. This is mainly due to BC deposition during the spring, a period of the year when the remaining of snow accumulated during the winter is exposed to both strong solar radiation and a large amount of aerosol deposition induced themselves by a high level of transport of particles from polluted areas. North of 30 degrees N, this deposition flux represents 222 Gg BC month(-1) on average from April to June in our simulation. A large reduction in BC emissions is expected in the future in all of the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios. In particular, considering the RCP8.5 in our simulation leads to a decrease in the spring BC deposition down to 110 Gg month-1 in the 2050s. However, despite the reduction of the aerosol impact on snow, the MNDWS is strongly reduced by 2050, with a decrease ranging from 10 to 100 days from present-day values over large parts of the Northern Hemisphere. This reduction is essentially due to temperature increase, which is quite strong in the RCP8.5 scenario in the absence of climate mitigation policies. Moreover, the projected sea-ice retreat in the next decades will open new routes for shipping in the Arctic. However, a large increase in shipping emissions in the Arctic by the mid-21st century does not lead to significant changes of BC deposition over snow-covered areas in our simulation. Therefore, the MNDWS is clearly not affected through snow darkening effects associated with these Arctic ship emissions. In an experiment without nudging toward atmospheric reanalyses, we simulated however some changes of the MNDWS considering such aerosol ship emissions. These changes are generally not statistically significant in boreal continents, except in Quebec and in the West Siberian plains, where they range between -5 and -10 days. They are induced both by radiative forcings of the aerosols when they are in the snow and in the atmosphere, and by all the atmospheric feedbacks. These experiments do not take into account the feedbacks induced by the interactions between ocean and atmosphere as they were conducted with prescribed sea surface temperatures. Climate change by the mid-21st century could also cause biomass burning activity (forest fires) to become more intense and occur earlier in the season. In an idealised scenario in which forest fires are 50% stronger and occur 2 weeks earlier and later than at present, we simulated an increase in spring BC deposition of 21 Gg BC month(-1) over continents located north of 30 degrees N. This BC deposition does not impact directly the snow cover through snow darkening effects. However, in an experiment considering all the aerosol forcings and atmospheric feedbacks, except those induced by the ocean-atmosphere interactions, enhanced fire activity induces a significant decrease of the MNDWS reaching a dozen of days in Quebec and in Eastern Siberia.Crop yield growth is a key parameter in determining the future of agriculture-whether it can simultaneously meet our traditional demands and new demand derived from renewable energy production and climate change mitigation. At the same time, there is concern that crop yield growth has slowed down with changes in societal investment patterns and climate or environmental change. In this paper we investigate crop yield growth in the US for the past 70 years and develop the best possible estimates of likely future growth rates for 8 key crops, including corn, soybean, wheat, etc. We find that all crops investigated except for soybean have experienced slowdowns during the period of late 1960s to early 1980s. The reductions in crop yield growth rates are significant-most of the post-break growth rates are found to be lower than the pre-break growth rates by 50% or more. Furthermore, a linear growth model and an exponential growth model fit the post-break data equally well for corn and some other crops. This result suggests that long-term policy assessments would benefit from the inclusion of an optimistic scenario using the estimated exponential growth rates and a more pessimistic scenario in which the linear crop yield growth rates are used.Background: Developing medium-to long-term energy scenarios is a key to achieve goals of energy security and greenhouse gas emission reduction through the implementation of effective public policies. Methods: Despite the availability of many tools and methods that focus on energy planning from an engineering perspective, only a few approaches have the methodological capabilities to build energy scenarios and quantify their impacts across social and environment indicators in a dynamic and flexible way. To fill this gap, we have created a System Dynamics model customized for the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil to simulate possible trajectories of energy demand and supply. Results: Two scenarios were developed: a business-as-usual case (BAU), with no major changes in the energy profile of the state; the other is an alternative scenario, where the reduction of carbon intensity (RIC) is a key goal. To summarize the results, the scenario RIC has lower greenhouse gas emissions and greater energy generation and employment, but has a total cumulative cost higher than BAU as the final indicators estimated. Conclusions: We can see important opportunities to contribute to global climate change mitigation while fostering a low-carbon energy sector and a green economy in the state. By investing in the renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, technological improvements, and the targets analyzed in this study, Minas Gerais State could reduce political and financial risks originating from the reliance on fossil fuels while generating more income in the energy sector and the state economy as a whole and reducing medium- and longer-term costs.Background: This paper aims to create insights into people's technology preferences in striving to achieve a low-carbon electricity generation system. The investigation seeks to analyze informed rather than mere opinion-based public preferences towards electricity technologies and portfolios against the background of climate mitigation options. In order to compare Germany with its strong renewable energy focus with a more fossil fuel-and nuclear-oriented country, the study presented replicates a research carried out in the USA in order to deliver data enabling such comparison. A special focus is on assessing attitudes and opinions towards carbon capture and storage as a low-carbon technology option. Methods: A mixed-method focus group approach has been elaborated and applied for 15 focus groups including a total of 130 participants nationwide. The approach first starts off with a traditional focus group design, i.e., discussion rounds with 8 to 10 participants led by a facilitator in order to collect qualitative data. This traditional focus group approach is extended by a quantitative survey design where participants had to fill out several closed-question questionnaires before and during the discussion rounds. Results: Main quantitative results presented in this article consist of an electricity technology ranking and an electricity portfolio ranking. The results show considerable differences between US and German participants. While nuclear energy and the carbon capture and storage technology option are high ranking in the USA, German participants clearly favor renewable energies. Conclusions: The comparison made clear that the stated preferences show a country bias, revealing a unique profile of technology and portfolio preferences in the USA and Germany. The policies that lie ahead of society need to find approval by stakeholders and the public at large, and therefore need to integrate acceptance profiles into communication and information activities.Wetlands are important elements of the natural environment that interact and serve the society in different ways. They provide many services that contribute to the welfare of society. Some communities, particularly those living in the vicinity of wetlands, are highly dependent on these services because they provide a variety of uses such as food production (fishing and hunting), water purification and detoxification of waste, climate regulation, climate change mitigation and cultural services. Also, the surrounding population is directly affected when the use of these ecosystems is inadequate. This article aims to analyze the multitemporal changes of the land cover in four wetlands of the Department of Valle del Cauca (El Tiber, Colindres, Sandrana and El Estero). This process is performed through the evaluation of aerial photographs at different periods of time and the application of Geographical Information Systems-GIS-This methodology allowed to quantify and analyze in a more comprehensive and detailed manner the changes these ecosystems have gone through. Undoubtedly, this document becomes an important input for decisions on protection and preservation, an action required to protect the wetlands of the indiscriminate advance of agricultural business in the Department of Valle del Cauca.Successful adaptation of agriculture to ongoing climate changes would help to maintain productivity growth and thereby reduce pressure to bring new lands into agriculture. In this paper we investigate the potential co-benefits of adaptation in terms of the avoided emissions from land use change. A model of global agricultural trade and land use, called SIMPLE, is utilized to link adaptation investments, yield growth rates, land conversion rates, and land use emissions. A scenario of global adaptation to offset negative yield impacts of temperature and precipitation changes to 2050, which requires a cumulative 225 billion USD of additional investment, results in 61 Mha less conversion of cropland and 15 Gt carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) fewer emissions by 2050. Thus our estimates imply an annual mitigation co-benefit of 0 : 35 GtCO(2)e yr(-1) while spending $15 per tonne CO(2)e of avoided emissions. Uncertainty analysis is used to estimate a 5-95% confidence interval around these numbers of 0.25-0.43 Gt and $11-$22 per tonne CO(2)e. A scenario of adaptation focused only on Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, while less costly in aggregate, results in much smaller mitigation potentials and higher per tonne costs. These results indicate that although investing in the least developed areas may be most desirable for the main objectives of adaptation, it has little net effect on mitigation because production gains are offset by greater rates of land clearing in the benefited regions, which are relatively low yielding and land abundant. Adaptation investments in high yielding, land scarce regions such as Asia and North America are more effective for mitigation. To identify data needs, we conduct a sensitivity analysis using the Morris method (Morris 1991 Technometrics 33 161-74). The three most critical parameters for improving estimates of mitigation potential are (in descending order) the emissions factors for converting land to agriculture, the price elasticity of land supply with respect to land rents, and the elasticity of substitution between land and non-land inputs. For assessing the mitigation costs, the elasticity of productivity with respect to investments in research and development is also very important. Overall, this study finds that broad-based efforts to adapt agriculture to climate change have mitigation co-benefits that, even when forced to shoulder the entire expense of adaptation, are inexpensive relative to many activities whose main purpose is mitigation. These results therefore challenge the current approach of most climate financing portfolios, which support adaptation from funds completely separate from-and often much smaller than-mitigation ones.Quantitative assessment of Canada's boreal forest mitigation potential is not yet possible, though the range of mitigation activities is known, requirements for sound analyses of options are increasingly understood, and there is emerging recognition that biogeophysical effects need greater attention. Use of a systems perspective highlights trade-offs between activities aimed at increasing carbon storage in the ecosystem, increasing carbon storage in harvested wood products (HWPs), or increasing the substitution benefits of using wood in place of fossil fuels or more emissions-intensive products. A systems perspective also suggests that erroneous conclusions about mitigation potential could result if analyses assume that HWP carbon is emitted at harvest, or bioenergy is carbon neutral. The greatest short-run boreal mitigation benefit generally would be achieved by avoiding greenhouse gas emissions; but over the longer run, there could be significant potential in activities that increase carbon removals. Mitigation activities could maximize landscape carbon uptake or maximize landscape carbon density, but not both simultaneously. The difference between the two is the rate at which HWPs are produced to meet society's demands, and mitigation activities could seek to delay or reduce HWP emissions and increase substitution benefits. Use of forest biomass for bioenergy could also contribute though the point in time at which this produces a net mitigation benefit relative to a fossil fuel alternative will be situation-specific. Key knowledge gaps exist in understanding boreal mitigation strategies that are robust to climate change and how mitigation could be integrated with adaptation to climate change.Air quality and climate are often treated as separate science and policy areas. Air quality encompasses the here-and-now of pollutant emissions, atmospheric transformations and their direct effect on human and ecosystem health. Climate change deals with the drivers leading to a warmer world and the consequences of that. These two science and policy issues are inexorably linked via common pollutants, such as ozone (methane) and black carbon. This short review looks at the new scientific evidence around so-called "short-lived climate forcers" and the growing realisation that a way to meet short-term climate change targets may be through the control of "air quality" pollutants. None of the options discussed here can replace reduction of long-lived greenhouse gases, such as CO2, which is required for any long-term climate change mitigation strategy. An overview is given of the underlying science, remaining uncertainties, and some of the synergies and trade-offs for addressing air quality and climate in the science and policy context.This research concentrates on the governance aspects of sustainability, and more particularly how local governments can work as nodes in a wider system of governance. The question at the center of the study is: how do cities address climate change mitigation and how do their actions relate to other levels of governance? The study takes a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach based on a multi-level theoretical framework to address the issue. The study concentrates on a small number of cases and the material used is found in official documents and semi-structured interviews with key individuals in the local governments. The results of the study show that the cities investigated do take action to mitigate climate change; however, their actions are heavily dependent on other levels of governance, i.e. regional or national, or other actors. This dependence, nonetheless, seems to be reciprocal. Thus, cities can constitute nodes or hubs in the governance of climate change mitigation, working simultaneously as actors of implementation and channelizing local knowledge and input.The rapid growth of Casuarina equisetifolia, a popular tree species for shelterbelt plantation, attracts the world climate change practitioners for its potential for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the coastal zones. Storage of carbon in the rapidly grown biomass of this species creates special interest in the arena of climate change mitigation practices. To understand the public perceptions of the effect of the casuarina shelterbelt and carbon storage potential in the Bangladesh coast, a socio- biological study was conducted in the Parki beach area, where Casuarina equisetifolia is the major tree species. This study was conducted by a questionnaire survey to find out the observation of coastal people and to assess environmental, economic and social impacts of the casuarina shelterbelt. The study found that the shelterbelt reduced wind speed, increased the size of sand dunes, improved the aesthetic value, increased the protection facilities against cyclones, and enhanced the attractiveness of the beach for tourism. Although casuarina trees have inhibited the native species as undergrowth, the shelterbelt has increased the supply of fuel-wood for local people. The aboveground biomass density in the shelterbelt was found to be 162.58 perpendicular to 4.52 t ha(-1) with a mean annual increment of 8.56 perpendicular to 0.24 t ha(-1) yr(-1), while the aboveground carbon density was found to be 73.16 +/- 2.04 t ha(-1) with a mean annual increment of 3.85 +/- 0.11 t ha(-1) yr(-1). The study is expected to contribute to the field of climate change mitigation and adaptation in Bangladesh.This paper briefly illustrates a method to represent national energy systems and the geographical details of CCS infrastructures in the same technical-economic model. In the MARKAL-TIMES modeling framework a model of Morocco, Portugal and Spain with both spatial and temporal details has been implemented. As a function of assumptions on the development to 2050 of mitigation levels, economic growth and CO2 capture-transport storage characteristics, dozens of scenarios were prepared with the TIMES-COMET model. A few results on optimal levels of CCS contribution to mitigation compared to other energy system options are presented. The results also indicate the least cost lay out of the main capture, transport and storage infrastructures. It is concluded that the availability of CCS after 2020 will reduce the cost of mitigation in the Iberian Peninsula as soon as the EU GHG emissions reduction targets become more stringent than decided so far. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Tropical Asia has experienced dramatic cropland expansion and agricultural intensification to meet the increasing food demand and is likely to undergo further rapid development in the near future. Much concern has been raised about how cropland expansion and associated management practices (nitrogen fertilizer use, irrigation, etc.) have affected the terrestrial carbon cycle in this region. In this study, we used a process-based ecosystem model, the Dynamic Land Ecosystem Model (DLEM), to assess the magnitude, spatial and temporal patterns of terrestrial carbon fluxes and pools in Tropical Asia as resulted from cropland expansion and land management practices during 1901-2005. The results indicated that cropland expansion had resulted in a release of 19.12 +/- 3.06 Pg C (0.18 +/- 0.029 Pg C/yr) into the atmosphere in Tropical Asia over the study period. Of this amount, approximately 22% (4.18 +/- 0.66 Pg C) was released from South Asia and 78% (14.94 +/- 2.40 Pg C) from Southeast Asia. Larger land area was converted to cropland while less carbon was emitted from South Asia than from Southeast Asia, where forest biomass and soil carbon were significantly higher. Changes in vegetation, soil organic matter, and litter pools caused emissions of 15.58, 2.25, and 1.71 Pg C, respectively, from the entire region. Significant decreases in vegetation carbon occurred across most regions of Southeast Asia due to continuous cropland expansion and shrink of natural forests. When considering land management practices, however, less carbon was released into the atmosphere, especially in South Asia where land management practices contributed to an approximately 10% reduction in carbon emission. This implies that optimizing land management practices could greatly reduce the carbon emissions caused by cropland expansion and might be one of important climate mitigation options in Tropical Asia. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The sea water plays fundamental role in the climate regulation cycle. Sea water environment issues transcend national boundaries and concerted actions are necessary to ensure effective protection. Regional-level climate change impact assessment on the 10-mile Black Sea zone in front of the Bulgarian coast is based on research in 2009. Overall view of sea surface temperature (SST) throughout the Black Sea and SST in the global context and highlights are produced, as well. Study was performed in front of Cape Galata at 1, 3, and 10 miles offshore. Bulgarian coastal zone in front of Cape Galata is under a process of warming throughout the surface-bottom layer. Considering that Bulgarian Black Sea is under influence of the Danube's stream, coastal zone in front of Cape Galata is under a process of increase in salinity throughout the surfawce-bottom layer. As expected outcomes of these processes, animals, plants, and bacteria will migrate to new areas with favourable climate conditions. Certain species will be able to invade areas that they did not previously inhabit. Ecosystems will continue to be disturbed by climate change. Changes in the climate conditions can affect the health and function of the ecosystems and the survival of entire species. A number of human activities are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and changing the balance of the climate system. Greenhouse gases can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years or for thousands of years before being removed by natural processes and their warming influence is projected to persist into the next century, therefore scientific, technological and policy measures against global warming is much needed. Climate change mitigation has to include reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and enhancing the sinks that remove them from the atmosphere, whereas adaptation refers to actions performed at local or regional scale to moderate negative effects of climate change. Climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies for the Black Sea region are needed. Humans may be able to mitigate climate change or lessen its severity. Strategies have to involve shifting from carbon to renewable energy sources, building new infrastructure for alternative energy sources, innovative research and basic change in the way humans use energy.This research develops a new framework to be used as a tool for analysing and designing walkable communities. The literature review recognises the work of other researchers combining their findings with the theory of activity nodes and considers how a framework may be used on a more global basis. The methodology develops a set of criteria through the analysis of noted successful case studies and this is then tested against an area with very low walking rates in Brisbane, Australia. Results of the study suggest that as well as the accepted criteria of connectivity, accessibility, safety, security, and path quality further criteria in the form or planning hierarchy, activity nodes and climate mitigation could be added to allow the framework to cover a broader context. Of particular note is the development of the nodal approach, which allows simple and effective analysis of existing conditions, and may also prove effective as a tool for planning and design of walkable communities.Readiness for the climate change mitigation scheme; Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation is a multi-disciplinary process. Linking the science, technical training, institutional support and wellbeing of populations, under conditions of information uncertainty can be challenging. Since 2010, the World Resources Institute and partners have been implementing a project in the Republic of Congo, Central Africa. To facilitate ownership a 'dismembered' approach, focusing on the science, technical training, stakeholder participation and institutional support was adopted. Dismemberment is differentiating actors into higher institutions of learning, government agencies and civil society organizations, improving understanding by a diversified range of beneficiaries. Diversifying actors ensures knowledge and information are processed at different levels of interest. Uncertainties are appraised, tolerated and accommodated even by competing actors confronted by different types of decision-making prerogatives. Open and iterative assessment of Readiness realities by the project; the science, policy and wellbeing, is encouraging a critical outlook to information incompleteness. This can facilitate trade-offs in resource management decisions and choices. Our deductions are that, Readiness for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation at national level is a coordinated process. It comprises methodological, wellbeing; decision-making and land use considerations. Readiness is therefore, essentially about, building resilient human-ecological systems, under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Donors can therefore; positively influence a national Readiness process by targeting support to critical components of the process to enhance their function. Readiness experts on the other hand can help ensure donor effectiveness by robustly researching these critical components and actors thereby facilitating targeted support.Purpose - This article is based on the REACCESS research project, sponsored by the European Commission, with the objectives of evaluating the technical, economic, and environmental aspects of present and future energy corridors between the European countries (EU27) and their main energy suppliers. GCC countries have an important role to play given their role in EU energy supply and in greenhouse gas emissions. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - A single energy model was built by hard-linking the TIMES integrated assessment model (TIAM-World), the Pan European TIMES model (PET), and the RECOR model (REaccess CORridors), including more than 1,000 possible energy corridors supplying the European countries. Another major methodology advance was to create a hybrid objective function, combining the usual cost objective and a metric representing the supply risk incurred by EU27. The risk component was constructed via a novel approach that aggregates the elemental risk parameters of each corridor using a Min-Max function. Four contrasted scenarios were assessed, based on security and climate objectives. Findings - Among the many results, it appears that a large reduction of the supply risk may be achieved at a very modest increase of the total energy system cost for EU27. Cross-effects of climate mitigation and security objectives are also observed. Due to the diversification requirement, the contribution of GCC countries to EU energy imports increases under risk scenario. Sensitivity analyses show that the European energy system seems unable to reduce the market shares of fossil fuels import from MENA countries, including GCC countries, much below the reference case, proving the strong dependency of EU27 energy system from these countries. However, total fossil fuels imports, as well as total energy consumed, are decreased under the risk adverse scenarios. Originality/value - Methodological developments, as described above, result in an advanced tool to assess how to increase the "energy system security", by reducing the concentration of supply countries, diversifying import sources but also reducing the energy dependence at the end-use side.Storage of CO2 as hydrates in sub-seabed sediments has been indicated as an alternative solution for the geological storage of CO2, suitable for offshore areas where large ocean depths and low temperatures exist at short distance from the shore. This paper presents the works conducted to identify the CO2 hydrates stability zone, i.e., the areas where CO2 hydrates may form and remain stable, in the deep offshore of Portugal. The methodology involved building maps of geothermal gradient, seabed temperature, detailed bathymetry and conversion to hydrostatic pressure, and maps of sediment thickness. These data were integrated in a GIS environment and a Fortran code was implemented to compute the thickness of the hydrate stability zone, based on the pressure and the temperature conditions in the sub-seabed sediments. Preferential areas, where further studies should be conducted, are delineated.Drought poses one of the most important environmental constraints to plant survival and productivity and by implication-food insecurity in the tropics. Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) has the potential of fertilizing the soil thereby improving agricultural production and ensure green environmental and ecosystem stability. Despite the ability of the plant to improve soil fertility and promote greening environment, it has not attracted adequate awareness as a soil improvement plant. This paper highlights the information on the plant in order to intensify awareness for its widespread adoption to achieve the much desired sustainable resource use for greening our economy and environmental management. The successful widespread adoption of the plant will translate to effective drought, desertification and sustainable climate change mitigation approach in Nigeria.Cities are critical battlefronts in the struggle to mitigate climate change crisis. Urban planning is widely recognized as an important policy and technology tool for the low-carbon development of cities. However, the methods of integrating low-carbon concept into the existing planning system and practices have yet to be studied. More cases are still needed to examine the existing wisdom. By taking the Chinese city of Xiamen as a case study, this study attempts to show a city's efforts to make itself "a low-carbon city in China" in the field of urban planning, to sketch out the general governance framework that make those efforts work, and meanwhile to analyse the problems existing in the process, in the hope of providing some references for those who are concerned about low-carbon city development.The legal and political interrelations between national and EU energy policy competencies and the actual policies are multifaceted. In order to understand those interrelations properly one has to analyse both the formal competencies of the EU as enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty and the actual EU policies with their direct and indirect impact on the choice of energy sources. The Treaty grants the EU competence as regards (a) the functioning of the energy market; (b) security of energy supply in the Union; (c) promotion of energy efficiency and energy saving and the development of new and renewable forms of energy; and (d) promotion of the interconnection of energy networks. However, Member States remain in control of choosing between different energy sources and the general structure of their energy supply. Any decision affecting this national competence must be adopted by a unanimous vote of the European Council. EU renewable energy support policy needs to develop within the framework of these mixed and multifaceted competences. Our overall argument is that easy fixes do not work. Considering the different national preferences regarding the energy mix, it is premature to ask for a full-fledged EU energy competence leading to a harmonised support system for renewables. Besides which, the emerging climate and renewables policies could also be a driver for deepened energy integration-rather as a bottom-up than a top-down process. In that sense a framework for 2030 with clear goals for climate mitigation, renewables shares and efficiency are of pivotal importance for the transition towards a low carbon economy by 2050.Energy-economy-climate models are used extensively in the policy debate to address issues on energy planning and climate mitigation scenarios. We present an overview of types of models commonly used in policy processes, and we analyze some of the main mechanisms in these models. For example, parameterization of aspects such as technology diffusion and intangible and transaction costs may have great importance for the results and the dynamics of the model. We also find that model comparison papers tend to offer little qualitative insight into the effect of different model approaches and mechanisms. Finally, an extensive sensitivity analysis and a skilled modeling team are of key importance for the usefulness of these kinds of models as policy input.Energy efficiency is one of the most effective and affordable policy mechanisms to address climate change, stimulate economic growth and improve energy security. Energy efficiency laws are a low-cost approach to climate change mitigation and a 'no regrets' measure. The development of energy efficiency laws and domestic sustainable energy policy has been positively influenced by principles of international environmental law. But international and regional treaties fail to establish uniform energy efficiency obligations and are drafted in non-binding hortatory language. Australian energy production - the case study of this article - is primarily based on emissions-intensive fossil fuels. Considerable potential exists to employ proven energy efficiency technologies to reduce energy demand. Success will require constructive federal-state cooperation and coordination, including harmonisation and implementation of legislation. Sectoral improvements can be achieved in high-emissions industry, appliance performance standards and labelling and buildings. Although still in its infancy, Australian energy efficiency regulation has delivered preliminary economic and environmental benefits. Lessons can be learnt from the European and US experiences on how to remove barriers to adoption and unlock the enormous greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction potential of energy efficiency.In this study, we develop a sampling-based simulation approach for estimating regional agricultural supply of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission abatements by land-based biological carbon sequestration. We explicitly consider producer behaviour in a market setting that would pay for carbon sequestration depending on current land use and management, target practice to be adopted and spatial location. We construct a behaviour model in the benefit-cost framework to characterise producer decision in relation to preferences and production attributes. We combine the Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique and choice modelling in a Bayesian setting to develop an empirical procedure that may be calibrated by observed producer behaviour and agricultural census data and that can simulate regional agricultural carbon sequestration by sampling individual preferences and production attributes. An empirical application of our approach depicts potential agricultural supply of GHG abatements by carbon sequestration in a production region in the USA. This approach is flexible to be applied to different regions with minimum information requirement while accounting for spatial heterogeneity of both preferences and production.Purpose - This study aims to identify the key factors that influence the successful implementation of clean energy interventions in low-income urban communities in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach - The study took the form of three phases: an explorative, primary data-gathering process through semi-structured interviews where secondary data were made available by respondents in the form of official project reports; data analysis of the primary qualitative, explorative, semi-structured interview data and the secondary documentary data obtained with consent; and identifying and describing the key factors which influence the implementation of clean energy interventions in low income-urban communities. Findings - The results indicated that although many important factors were identified throughout this research, the ultimate success of the implementation of clean energy interventions in these communities lies not only in the clean energy interventions themselves, but rather hinges on nine key factors: project planning and development; community participation; community employment; political buy-in; communication and engagement; beneficiary criteria; installation and maintenance; project management; and technology and suppliers. Originality/value - The findings from this study provide useful insights to all stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of clean energy interventions in low-income urban communities.The aim of this study was to evaluate texture of winter wheat bread. Winter wheat was cultivated in ecological (ES) and integrated (IS) farming system with two levels of fertilizing. Farming systems were established at research base Dolna Malanta in western Slovakia on a Haplic Luvisol. The experimental field altitude is 178 m, average annual precipitations 586 mm, average year temperature 10.4 degrees C. Subplots were fertilized (F) and unfertilized (N) variants. The F variant in ES was based on 40 t of manure, the IS also recieved 40 t of manure plus synthetic fertilizers. The effect of farming systems and two levels of fertilization on qualitative parameters of winter wheat was observed in the year 2009 and 2010. Farming system had no statistically significant effect on the bread crumb texture. Weather conditions, forecrop and fertilizing had significant influence on bread crumb texture. Year had the significant effect on every texture parameter, better values was reached in 2010. Forecrop had significant effect on crumb firmness and stiffness. After alfalfa as forecrop was found the best bread texture, the worst after forecrop pea. Fertilizing positively affected all texture parameters of bread.State intervention has been identified as a critical success factor in attempts to tackle climate change. However, in recent tourism studies of climate change policy analysis has been overlooked. This paper critically examines the efficacy of mitigation policy as it relates to the tourism sector in the UK. Specifically, it investigates the extent to which accommodation providers in South West England have responded to recent policy interventions and instruments, and the prospects for their contributing to the state's commitments on climate change. The paper argues for a more nuanced view of policy analysis in tourism studies of climate change. While evaluation of policy is important, efficacy is a more urgent consideration. Among tourism businesses there has been a weak response to recent mitigation policy. The prospects of accommodation providers delivering a strong contribution to the state's climate change targets is doubtful. State policy is too ambitious and it does not acknowledge the particularities and dynamics of businesses in the tourism sector. Future policy should focus on issues of practical facilitation and making the business case for change more clearly.Forest ecosystems, especially protected forest areas play a key role in climate change mitigation. With the declaring Koprulu Canyon as a National Park (NP) since 1973, this region has likely become an important carbon (C) sink. To quantify this potential, understand its implication to the national C budget, comprehend the forest dynamics and evaluate these issues in future park planning, we estimated the changes in forest biomass C storage between 1965 and 2008. Based on the two periods of forest inventory, we used Biomass Expansion Factors (BEFs) to estimate the forest biomass C pool. The quantitative evidences presented here showed that there were drastic changes in C stock in above and below ground forest ecosystem increased nearly by 46% from one period to the other due mainly to the increase of growing stock and quality of forest ecosystem structure. Koprulu Canyon NP has accumulated 3.21 Tg C increasing from 3.56 Tg C in 1965 to 1.98 in 2008, at a rate of 0.28 Gg C yr(-1) ha(-1) between two periods. These certain C stock changes are also reflection of forest dynamics resulting in compatible with temporal changes with a net increase of 530.0 ha (1.84%) of forested areas or stands. On the other hand, such rate of increase in C was not influenced negatively by total number of patches increased from 238 to 672 almost tripled, and the mean patch size of the land cover/land use classes dropped markedly from 1615.0 ha to 425.3 ha. in the same period. In conclusion, landscape dynamics and effects of land use/land cover changes on the amount of C storage are necessary for national park planning.A protected area (PA) tends to be designated in an area where tracts of primary forest remain, often with poor accessibility due to terrain features and yet with some exposure to threats. Typically, a PA is at the start of a 'forest transition' gradient. The establishment of a PA influences the whole gradient. We analyzed the temporal patterns of land-use change inside and outside four PAs, with one located in each of Laos, Indonesia, Madagascar and Cameroon. In Laos, in the Viengkham landscape, the rates of conversion of natural forest increased after the designation of the PA and were higher than the spatial baseline predicted. In the three other landscapes, the policies associated with the implementation of PAs increased the conversion rate immediately outside the boundary of the PAs. In Indonesia, in the Bungo landscape, forms of land-use associated with multifunctional agroforestry activities involving rubber trees land-use became the target for conversion to oil palm and monoculture rubber tree crops when the rules on the protection of the remaining natural forest were tightened. We tested a new metric for the degree of integration of forest in multifunctional landscapes which recognizes the surrounding matrix, both as surrogate habitat and as a corridor for tree species. Two important findings were: (i) a 'leakage' zone of influence of at least 10 km around a PA needs to be included for quantification of the deforestation and degradation changes that may be due to forest protection inside the PA and (ii) agroforest and other mixed tree cover can maintain or increase the degree of integration of forest in the multifunctional landscape for biodiversity maintenance and conservation, while providing a source of livelihood for the local people. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of the EX-Ante Carbon-balance Tool (EX-ACT) application on two rural development projects in Brazil. The analysis provides an estimate of project impact on GHG emissions and C sequestration indicating net mitigation potential: results show that the Santa Catarina Rural Competitiveness Project has the potential to mitigate 12.2 Mt CO(2)e and the Rio de Janeiro Sustainable Rural Development Project 0.85 Mt CO(2)e. Both projects are successful at promoting activities aimed at reducing rural poverty and also contribute to climate change mitigation, demonstrating the potential importance of sustainable agriculture (improved cropland and grassland management, expansion of agro-forestry systems and protection of forested areas) in delivering environmental services. EX-ACT has also been used as a tool to guide project developers in refining components and activities to increase project environmental benefits. Cost-benefit analysis shows that while both projects generate environmental benefits associated with climate change mitigation, the Santa Catarina Rural Competitiveness Project has significantly higher potential due to the size of the project area and the nature of activities, thus a higher likelihood of potential co-financing from climate finance sources. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study adopted an open-ended exploratory approach to elicit the perspectives of a selection of six Climate Challenge Fund projects. This central idea is that communities' perspective on attempted carbon reduction initiative in their areas has use in other contexts and could enable better design of such interventions in future. The main finding was that emphasising local benefits was conducive to their achieving local involvement in the project. The results of this research should be tested in other contexts. Three broad implications for the design of community carbon reduction initiatives are raised in assuming these outcomes are correct. First, the community hosting such initiatives should be perceived to hold a degree of power over the project. Second, central authorities should not be overly prohibitive about the motivations of those participating in such projects. Finally, the use of nonenvironmental messaging has value in shifting people to more pro-environmental behaviours.Purpose - Sustainable drainage ( SUDS) techniques seek to address problems associated with excess water quantity, poor water quality, and attempt to improve environmental quality. SUDS have also been proposed as suitable for adapting to and mitigating climate change. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the contribution of SUDS to carbon mitigation for a local planning authority. Design/methodology/approach - Carbon sequestration rates of SUDS techniques were obtained from published literature. A Geographical Information System was used to identify potential sites for future SUDS implementation across the area covered by a local planning authority, Coventry, UK. The carbon mitigation potential of different SUDS techniques was estimated, taking account of land cover and land use limitations on new build and retrofit implementation. Findings - Vegetated SUDS in new developments and retrofit green roofs provided the greatest potential for carbon storage in this urban setting. Research limitations/implications - This study undertook a rapid assessment of the carbon mitigation that SUDS offers in an urbanised environment. The impact of factors such as greenhouse gas emissions from SUDS devices, management regimes and embedded carbon in engineered structures was not taken into account. The mitigation potential of associated shading and insulation by vegetated SUDS was not evaluated. Practical implications - Retrofit of, for example, green roofs should be prioritised to take advantage of SUDS for climate change mitigation. The relatively low level of carbon stored over a 15-year analysis period compared to the scale of forecast emissions revealed the extent of carbon mitigation challenges facing Coventry. Originality/value - This study provides a methodology to evaluate the carbon mitigation potential of SUDS in an urban setting. Current UK legislative and regulatory emphasis focuses on new build. However, retrofit approaches appear to offer greater potential for carbon sequestration.Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a climate change mitigation technology which has had a rather chequered history in British policy making and in the British public sphere. This article deals with the neglected topic of representations of CCS in the British media and their possible impact on public perceptions and public policy. Public perception of CCS is shaped in part by the media which provide tools for making sense of complex technological and political issues such as CCS. This article compares articles on CCS in two UK newspapers, one national ("The Times") and one regional ("The Aberdeen Press and Journal") in 2011, a year during which some of the last battles over CCS demonstration projects were fought. It applies frame and metaphor analysis to a corpus of 150 articles. Findings reveal that during 2011 CCS coverage moved through a cycle of hype and disillusionment, with both newspapers reaching a trough of disappointment at the end of 2011. It will be difficult to reignite interest in CCS in this context, both in terms of media and public attention, and in terms of policy and investment. Regional confidence in national CCS policy in particular will be difficult to recover.Rewetting of drained industrial peatlands may reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and promote recolonisation by peat forming plant species. We investigated carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) dynamics over a three-year period in a rewetted industrial peatland in Ireland. Sample plots were established in bare peat, Juncus effusus-Sphagnum cuspidatum, Sphagnum cuspidatum and Eriophorum angustifolium dominated microsites. The relationships between fluxes and environmental variables were examined and regression models were used to provide an estimate of the annual GHG balance for each microsite. All the vegetated microsites were carbon sinks for the duration of the study. Highest uptake occurred in the Eriophorum microsite (146-583 g C m(-2) yr(-1)), followed by Juncus-Sphagnum (35-204 g C m(-2) yr(-1)) and Sphagnum (5-140 g C m(-2) yr(-1)). The bare peat microsite was a source of 37-82 g C m(-2) yr(-1). No N2O fluxes were detected. Strong inter-annual variation was observed in all microsites, driven by variation in precipitation and subsequent changes in the position of the water table. In terms of Global Warming Potential (GWP), the microsites had either a cooling effect (Eriophorum), a close to neutral effect (Juncus-Sphagnum, Sphagnum) or a warming effect (bare peat) on the climate.With the existing commitments to climate change mitigation, global warming is likely to exceed 2 degrees C and to trigger irreversible and harmful threshold effects. The difference between the reductions necessary to keep the 2 degrees C limit and those reductions countries have currently committed to is called the 'emissions gap'. I argue that capable states not only have a moral duty to make voluntary contributions to bridge that gap, but that complying states ought to make up for the failures of some other states to comply with this duty. While defecting or doing less than one's fair share can be a good move in certain circumstances, it would be morally wrong in this situation. In order to bridge the emissions gap, willing states ought to take up the slack left by others. The paper will reject the unfairness-objection, namely that it is wrong to require agents to take on additional costs to discharge duties that are not primarily theirs. Sometimes what is morally right is simply unfair.The annual extent of the seasonal hypoxic zone that forms in the northern Gulf of Mexico, which is currently the largest in the western Atlantic Ocean, has been documented since the mid-1980s. A 2007 USEPA science reassessment concluded that nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) loads discharged from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB) are the primary cause of the Northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone. The primary MARB source regions of nutrients exported to the Gulf of Mexico have been documented to be the 492,000 km2 Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) and the 525,770 km2 Ohio Tennessee River Basin (OTRB). Agricultural nonpoint source pollution is the main source of N and P discharged to the UMRB and ORTB stream systems, primarily via fertilizer and/or livestock manure applied to cropland or pasture, although urban areas and point sources are also important nutrient sources. To address these issues, we are constructing an integrated modelling system that will: (1) estimate nutrient loads from the UMRB and ORTB regions for different scenarios, (2) route the estimated nutrient loads for each scenario to the Gulf of Mexico, and (3) estimate the resultant size of the seasonal hypoxic zone using a hypoxic zone regression model. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) water quality model is being used to simulate the land management schemes in the URMB and ORTB and resultant nutrient loads to the Gulf of Mexico. This SWAT application incorporates a greatly refined subwatershed structure relative to previous SWAT applications for the study regions. The placement of alternative cropping systems and/or management practices on specific landscapes within SWAT for the two regions will be performed primarily via an interface with an evolutionary algorithm (EA) and corresponding cost data for each management system. The hypoxic zone size is estimated as a function of nutrient fluxes discharged from the Mississippi River and other relevant data. An overview of the entire system is presented here, including descriptions of each major component and core land use, soil, climate, topographic and other data inputs required for both SWAT models. Initial calibration and validation results for the study region will be described in the companion Part 2 study.Agricultural nonpoint source pollution is the main source of Nitrogen and Phosphorus in the intensely row-cropped Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) and Ohio-Tennessee River Basin (OTRB) stream systems, and is considered the primary cause of the Northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Thus, this region mostly located in the Midwestern USA, provides a natural location for research on how intensive agriculture for food, feed and biofuel production can coexist with a healthy environment. The use of a process-based hydrologic and water quality model is considered indispensable to address this objective at such a large spatial scale. An integrated modeling system has been constructed with the hydrologic Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model (see Part 1 paper describing overall modeling system), capable of estimating river basin responses to alternative cropping and/or management strategies. To facilitate the identification of optimum locations for a cost-effective river basin management, this SWAT large-scale application incorporates a greatly refined subwatershed structure based on the 12-digit hydrologic units (subwatersheds), while the land phase of the hydrologic and nutrient cycles are calculated at thousands of Hydrologic Response Units, which represent unique combinations of land, soil and topographical features. However, given the very large scale and the need to ensure the reliability of flow and pollutant load predictions at various locations within such hydrologic systems, a model's calibration becomes a time-demanding and challenging task. The purpose of the current article is to demonstrate a semi-automatic calibration approach for large-scale and spatially detailed modeling studies, with the use of the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting algorithm (SUFI-2) and the SWAT-CUP interface developed exclusively for SWAT hydrologic projects. The calibration framework provides estimates of the uncertainty of predictions at various locations and can be finalized within a reasonable timeframe with a powerful personal computer (PC). This study presents the whole calibration approach providing guidance on similar efforts at the regional scale.We review in some detail research into experimental spray methods for the production of salt nanoparticles from seawater, which would be needed for the implementation of Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB), a possible climate change mitigation method. We describe first an electrospray method employing Taylor cones spraying seawater, which fortuitously has the right conductivity to produce salt particles in the desired size range (40-100 nm equiv. sphere diameter). A second method involves spraying supercritical salt solutions to get particles in the same size range, as the absence of surface tension yields sprays that are extremely fine. Finally, we describe briefly our ongoing efforts to use effervescent sprays at very high pressure to obtain the desired particle size distribution (PSD).Grid-parity is a very important milestone for further photovoltaic (PV) diffusion. A grid-parity model is presented, which is based on levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) coupled with the experience curve approach. Relevant assumptions for the model are given, and its key driving forces are discussed in detail. Results of the analysis are shown for more than 150 countries and a total of 305 market segments all over the world, representing 98.0% of world population and 99.7% of global gross domestic product. High PV industry growth rates enable a fast reduction of LCOE. Depletion of fossil fuel resources and climate change mitigation forces societies to internalize these effects and pave the way for sustainable energy technologies. First grid-parity events occur right now. The 2010s are characterized by ongoing grid-parity events throughout the most regions in the world, reaching an addressable market of about 75-90% of total global electricity market. In consequence, new political frameworks for maximizing social benefits will be required. In parallel, PV industry tackle its next milestone, fuel-parity. In conclusion, PV is on the pathway to become a highly competitive energy technology. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The city of Cuiaba, capital of Mato Grosso, has a rigorous climate almost all year round, and its urban structure resulting from uncontrolled and unplanned growth aggravates this situation. Nowadays, much of the population believes that the only solution to reducing thermal discomfort of the city is the air-conditioning indoors, while outdoor environmental comfort is in the background, almost nonexistent, since the green areas are gradually removed and the soil proofed "for growth" of the city. There are few green areas aimed at leisure in Cuiaba. In this scenario, the hiking trail from the Federal University of Mato Grosso appears as a demonstration that the built and natural spaces can be reconciled harmoniously amid the densely urbanized areas. In this walking track can be found people from different neighborhoods in Cuiaba / MT as well as university students, and the times of highest use are early in the morning (06h to 08h) and late afternoon (17h to 19h), more often on weekends. The objective of this research is the characterization of the site regarding land use, vegetation and climate, and then perform analysis on the impact of these characteristics on the thermal comfort of the users. For this study points were marked every 100 meters, totaling 22 points of data collection, the route of more use by users, where data were collected on temperature, humidity and surface temperatures. The schedule of collection was set to 07h and 17h (local time with the greatest number of people). The route begins at Avenida Fernando Correa da Costa to the football field at the Federal University of Mato Grosso returning to the starting point, completing a journey of about two kilometers. These studies see developing in the summer period (late 2011 and early 2012) and autumn, and the data collected during November, December and March. The results of this research will analyze the influence of vegetation on local climate mitigation as well as the comfort provided to users.Emerging technologies are not simply pursued out of economic interests, but also on the basis of assumptions about the societies and publics that technologies will serve. This paper compares how carbon dioxide capture and storage - a technology for sustainable energy generation - has been supported in the United States and European Union over the last decade. Distinct land ownership laws and market structures have helped legitimate different groups of actors as stakeholders in the technology, and CO2 has been redefined in relation to different policy narratives and legal ontologies in the two sites. Climate change mitigation might appear to depend on international cooperation founded on a shared epistemic basis. However, this article suggests that mitigation options should not simply be assessed as functions of technical qualities, but also be understood in relation to how political actors articulate and pursue the societal implications of technological futures.Purpose This chapter considers the application of climate mitigation policies to the aviation sector with reference to the inclusion of aviation in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Assessments of the possible economic impacts of including aviation in the EU ETS are reviewed and an impact analysis using the macroeconometric E3ME model is conducted. Originality The aviation sector is a significant and rapidly increasing source of GHG emissions. Because international policy measures have not been agreed, the EU has incorporated aviation in the EU ETS. It is therefore important to consider the possible economic effects of the ETS on the aviation industry and the wider economy. Methodology/approach The paper describes the approach used by the EU to include aviation in the EU ETS. Assessments of economic impacts have been made, but have often been limited in their approach. The paper complements the existing literature by including an economic analysis using the E3ME macroeconometric model of the EU that covers 41 industrial sectors including aviation. Findings Microeconomic and macroeconomic assessments show the economic impacts of including the aviation sector in the EU ETS are small. The negative impacts, if any, on EU GDP and the air transport sector's economic output are less than 0.1% and 1% respectively. Distortions in competition, both between countries and industrial sectors, are therefore likely to be small. Implications In the long term (beyond 2020), including aviation in the EU can be seen as a positive move. If and when aviation is fully included in the EU ETS, and when the cost impacts of GHG emissions through permit prices are made evident, it is anticipated that airlines will start monitoring and reducing their GHG emissions by investing in new, less carbon intensive technologies.The aim of this paper is to analyse the emergence of urban planning for climate change in Turkey, with particular reference to climate change mitigation, and to assess the prospects of a gradual transition to low carbon urbanisation. The paper first establishes an analytical perspective, in terms of normative models of low carbon urban development and the specificities of Turkish urbanisation processes. This perspective informs the analysis of the evolution of policies to reduce carbon emissions from cities which led to adoption of the first Turkish National Climate Change Action Plan in July 2011. The paper then argues that a move towards low carbon urbanisation is contingent on integrating national energy and climate change policies with evolving national policies for urban development and regeneration. The paper concludes that recent national policy innovations are an important first step and that continuing international support will sustain the momentum, but that significant progress towards low carbon urbanisation in Turkey will depend on the effectiveness of continuing efforts to improve the regulation of urban development. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Understanding the interactions between organic pollutants and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is critical for fate assessment of both CNTs and organic pollutants. In this study, the chromatographic approach was introduced based on CNTs as stationary phase for the evaluation of such interactions. The pristine multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were packed into columns of high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the retention factors (k') were determined to characterize the adsorption affinity of organic compounds onto MWCNTs. Nine compounds were tested. The results showed that their ln k' values followed the order: benzene < toluene < phenol < chlorobenzene < bromobenzene < aniline < sulfamethoxazole < sulfadiazine approximate to sulfadimidine. The linear solvation energy relationship (LSER) theory was adopted to correlate ln k' with the molecular solvatochromic parameters. We found that ln k' of the studied compounds correlate positively with molecular polarizability (E) significantly, suggesting that the pi-/n-electrons-dependent polarizable interactions play a major role for the adsorption. Moreover, the thermodynamic parameters calculated from van't Hoff equations revealed that the interactions between the compounds and MWCNTs were spontaneous and exothermic processes. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a systematic methodology for sustainable process systems design, combining the principles of industrial ecology, process design and process integration, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and multi-objective optimization (MOO). The superstructure considers an extended decision perimeter and embeds models based either on flowsheeting software or average market technologies, for which energy and material flows are extracted from the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) database. Therefore, the overall supply chain can be synthesized within a given action system and the systematic recyclings identified. The methodology can be used to design eco-industrial parks or urban systems, to identify the best conversion pathways of resources or waste, or to fix the optimal value of environmental taxes. It is illustrated by an application to the environomic design of an urban energy system. This case study considers multiple energy services to be supplied and waste to be treated, with their seasonal variations, indigenous and imported resources, as well as different candidate conversion technologies. Results demonstrate that integrating an environmental objective in the design procedure leads to consider different system configurations than if only economic aspects are considered. The problematic of the optimal value of a CO2 tax is as well addressed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Internet leads to material and energy consumption as well as various environmental impacts on both the regional and global scale. Yet, assessments of the Internet's energy consumption and resulting greenhouse gas emissions are still rare, and assessments of material flows and further environmental impacts are virtually non-existent. This article investigates material flows, the direct energy consumption during the use phase, as well as environmental impacts linked to the service, Internet in Switzerland. In our model, the service, Internet in Switzerland, is divided into various Internet participant categories. All devices used to access or provide Internet services are merged in a limited number of equipment families and, as such, included in an inventory of the existing infrastructure (stock). Based on this inventory, a material flow analysis (MFA) is performed, which includes the current stock as well as flows resulting from growth and disposal. The direct energy consumption for the operation of the infrastructure is quantified. Environmental impacts are calculated with a life cycle assessment approach, using the ecoinvent database and the software, SimaPro, applying four different methods. The MFA results in a 2009 stock of 98,100tonnes. Approximately 4,130gigawatt hours per year, or 7% of the total Swiss electricity consumption, were used in 2009 to operate the Swiss infrastructure. The environmental impacts caused during the production and use phases vary significantly depending on the assessment method chosen. The disposal phase had mainly positive impacts as a result of material recovery.In January 2003, the European Union (EU) issued a directive on e-waste (waste from electrical and electronic equipment; WEEE) to deal with increasing quantities and the included hazardous components. The WEEE Directive is based on the principle of extended producer responsibility, which shifts the responsibility for end of life of products away from municipalities toward producers. This led some researchers to state that, in theory, the costs of waste treatment are passed on to consumers in terms of higher prices. This work addresses two fundamental questions: (1) Did the introduction of the WEEE Directive increase consumer prices of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE)? and (2) how much is this price increase? We carry out, for the first time in the literature, a quantitative research on price variation of the vast majority of EEE sold in the EU after the introduction of producers' financial responsibility. The panel data include 972 price level indices, namely, six categories of EEE for 27 member states for sixyears. The main result is that the average variation of the prices for each category of EEE investigated actually increased and the variation was between 0.71% and 3.88%, depending on the specific category of EEE. The average increase of 2.19% is in line with the previous studies that estimated the impact of the WEEE Directive up to a 3% increase of the product price. The t-test performed on the data shows a good statistical significance, which strengthens the relevance of the results. Finally, future directions for research are included.Taiwan is attempting to implement the concept of a green economy through a Low Carbon Growth Plan (LCGP). However, the existing decision support tools for this measure have three key limitations: ignorance regarding the open economy; a lack of life cycle thinking; and limited categories of environmental impact. This study integrates environmentally extended, multi-region input-output analysis and hybrid life cycle assessment to quantify the potential environmental impact of the industrial activities and energy structure in Taiwan in 2020. Two novel indicators, environmental debts and loans, are also applied to identify the geographical shifting effects and tie environmental responsibility to the discussion. The results of this study reveal that under the existing LCGP, relative decoupling will be attained, but no significant environmental cobenefits other than those affecting climate change can be gained. Moreover, the current emission pledges cannot be fulfilled. The presence of increased environmental debt ratios reveals the geographical shifting effect of the LCGP. The main driver of the expansion of the environmental footprint can be attributed to the export of electronic components and products, which are not included in the agenda of policy discussions. As a result, three crucial policies are suggested to modify the existing LCGP: the implementation of a higher energy efficiency improvement target; rethinking the constraints on the electronics industry; and the development of a mechanism to include environmental issues in free trade agreement negotiations. With these changes, the realization of the current emission pledge and a green economy could be possible.In this article, we present methodology and results of a vulnerability assessment of the energy system of the metropolitan region Bremen-Oldenburg in Northwest Germany. This work is part of the regional climate adaptation project nordwest2050 aiming at innovative solutions toward a climate-proof and resilient region. Methodologically, we extended the established vulnerability assessment based on climate change impacts by a structural analysis, highlighting general weaknesses of the metropolitan energy system. Our findings indicate that the structural vulnerabilities of the energy system around Bremen-Oldenburg pose a greater threat to maintaining the system's services than climate change itself. Climate-change-based vulnerabilities, however, aggravate many of the structural vulnerabilities and therefore demand attention in their own right. The structural vulnerabilities mainly originate from political and regulatory uncertainties, turbulent market conditions, conflicts along the supply chains, and the current dynamics in the energy sector induced by increased climate mitigation efforts. One of our main conclusions is thus that the metropolitan energy system's capabilities to handle turbulence, perturbations, and surprises must be improved. This will also help in reducing the climate-change vulnerabilities, because such a system is better equipped when facing currently hard-to-predict changes in climate parameters. The results of the assessment described here will be used as the starting point to find options for innovations toward a climate-proof and resilient energy system for the region in the course of the remaining project.Concrete pavements are a vital part of the transportation infrastructure, comprising nearly 25% of the interstate network in the United States. With transportation authorities and industry organizations increasingly seeking out methods to reduce their carbon footprint, there is a need to identify and quantitatively evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction opportunities that exist in the concrete pavement life cycle. A select few of these opportunities are explored in this article in order to represent possible reduction approaches and their associated cost-effectiveness: reducing embodied emissions by increasing fly ash content and by avoiding overdesign; increasing albedo by using white aggregates; increasing carbonation by temporarily stockpiling recycled concrete aggregates; and reducing vehicle fuel consumption by adding an extra rehabilitation. These reduction strategies are evaluated for interstate, arterial, collector, and local road designs under urban and rural scenarios. The results indicate that significant GHG emission reductions are possible, with over half of the scenarios resulting in 10% reductions, compared to unimproved baseline designs. Given the right conditions, each scenario has the potential to reduce GHG emissions at costs comparable to the current price of carbon.Using waste copper slag (CS) as a replacement for sand in concrete mixture is becoming popular in Singapore and around the world. What are the consequences of this material substitution? Will this result in lower environmental impact? This work used attributional and consequential life cycle assessments to evaluate the net results of replacing sand with CS. Impacts were assessed with respect to embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions (global warming potential; GWP). It was found that embodied energy and GWP of using a combination of 0.13kilograms (kg) of CS and 0.9kg of sand are higher than those of 1kg of sand. If CS replaces sand and the leftover sand replaces crushed rock sand, the net embodied energy and GWP may also increase. Landfilling the waste CS is similar to recycling it as a building material, in terms of embodied energy incurred and GWPs. Finally, four lessons from these findings were used to suggest a few integrated sustainable resource management policies for the building material and shipping industries.This research reports on a multivariate analysis that examined the relationship between direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and socioeconomic and well-being variables for 1,920 respondents living in Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, Canada, using results from the Halifax Space-Time Activity Research Project. The unique data set allows us to estimate direct GHG emissions with an unprecedented level of specificity based on household energy use survey data and geographic positioning system-verified personal travel data. Of the variables analyzed, household size, income, community zone, age, and marital status are all statistically significant predictors of direct GHG emissions. Birthplace, ethnicity, educational attainment, perceptions of health, life satisfaction, job satisfaction, happiness, volunteering, or community belonging did not seem to matter. In addition, we examined whether those reporting energy-efficient behaviors had lower GHG emissions. No significant differences were discovered among the groups analyzed, supporting a growing body of research indicating a disconnect between environmental attitudes and behaviors and environmental impact. Among the predictor variables, those reporting to be married, young, low income, and living in households with more people have correspondingly lower direct GHG emissions than other categories in respective groupings. Our finding that respondents with lifestyles that generate higher GHG emissions did not report to be healthier, happier, or more connected to their communities suggest that individuals can experience similar degrees of well-being regardless of the amount of GHG emissions associated with his or her respective lifestyle.Concentrations of pollutants vary in wastes from different sources. However, existing waste input-output (WIO) models do not take these differing concentrations into account. This article proposes a new category of model, which we are calling a waste input-output model at the substance level (WIOS model). The WIOS model considers variations in waste composition. These variations potentially affect the life cycle inventory of the waste treatment stage. The proposed model is expected to produce more accurate results than existing WIO models that do not consider variations in the composition of wastes. In addition, the proposed model provides a method to trace substances undergoing waste treatment. In this article, use of the WIOS model is illustrated by simulating the overall environmental loads of total organic carbon from wastewater treatment at a facility in Germany. The results show that variations in the composition of wastes entering treatment significantly affect the modeled estimates of total environmental loads caused by wastewater treatment. In addition, the results of the proposed model are different from results given by existing hybrid input-output WIO models that do not consider variations in the composition of wastewater as it undergoes treatment.The present article examines flows and stocks of Stockholm Convention regulated pollutants, commercial penta- and octabrominated diphenyl ether (cPentaBDE, cOctaBDE), on a city level. The goals are to (1) identify sources, pathways, and sinks of these compounds in the city of Vienna, (2) determine the fractions that reach final sinks, and (3) develop recommendations for waste management to ensure their minimum recycling and maximum transfer to appropriate final sinks. By means of substance flow analysis (SFA) and scenario analysis, it was found that the key flows of cPentaBDE stem from construction materials. Therefore, end-of-life (EOL) plastic materials used for construction must be separated and properly treated, for example, in a state-of-the-art municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerator. In the case of cOctaBDE, the main flows are waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and, possibly, vehicles. Most EOL vehicles are exported from Vienna and pose a continental, rather than a local, problem. According to the modeling, approximately 73% of cOctaBDE reached the final sink MSW incinerator, and 17% returned back to consumption by recycling. Secondary plastics, made from WEEE, may thus contain significant amounts of cOctaBDE; however, uncertainties are high. According to uncertainty analysis, the major cause is the lack of reliable values regarding cOctaBDE concentrations in European WEEE categories 3 and 4, including cathode ray tube monitors for computers and televisions. We recommend establishing a new, goal-oriented data set by additional analyses of waste constituents and plastic recycling samples, as well as establishing reliable mass balances of polybrominated diphenyl ethers' flows and stocks by means of SFA.Carbon recycling, in which organic waste is recycled into chemical feedstock for material production, may provide benefits in resource efficiency and a more cyclical economybut may also create trade-offs in increased impacts elsewhere. We investigate the system-wide environmental burdens and cost associated with carbon recycling routes capable of converting municipal solid waste (MSW) by gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis into ethylene. Results are compared to business-as-usual (BAU) cases in which ethylene is derived from fossil resources and waste is either landfilled with methane and energy recovery (BAU#1) or incinerated (BAU#2) with energy recovery. Monte Carlo and sensitivity analysis is used to assess uncertainties of the results. Results indicate that carbon recycling may lead to a reduction in cumulative energy demand (CED), total material requirement (TMR), and acidification, when compared to BAU#1. Global warming potential is found to be similar or slightly lower than BAU#1 and BAU#2. In comparison to BAU#2, carbon recycling results in higher CED, TMR, acidification, and smog potential, mainly as a result of larger (fossil-based) energy offsets from energy recovery. However, if a renewable power mix (envisioned for the future) is assumed to be offset, BAU#2 impacts may be similar or higher than carbon recycling routes. Production cost per kilogram (kg) MSW-derived ethylene range between US$1.85 and US$2.06 (Jan 2011 US$). This compares to US$1.17 per kg for fossil-based ethylene. Waste-derived ethylene breaks even with its fossil-based counterpart at a tipping fee of roughly US$42 per metric ton of waste feedstock.Recycling rates of aluminum are defined in different (sometimes inconsistent) ways and poorly quantified. To address this situation, the definitions and calculation methods of four groups of indicators are specified for the United States: (1) indicators used to measure recycling efficiencies of old aluminum scrap at the end-of-life (EOL) stage, including EOL collection rate (CR), EOL processing rate, EOL recycling rate, and EOL domestic recycling rate; (2) indicators used to compare generation or use of new with old scrap, including new to old scrap ratio, new scrap ratio (NSR), and old scrap ratio; (3) indicators used to compare production or use of primary aluminum with secondary aluminum, including four recycling input rates (RIRs); and (4) indicators used to track the sinks of aluminum metal in the U.S. anthroposphere. I find that the central estimate of EOL CR varies between 38% and 65% in the United States from 1980 to 2009 and shares a relatively similar historical trend with the primary aluminum price. The RIR is shown to be significantly reduced if excluding secondary aluminum produced from new scrap resulting from the relatively high NSR. In 2003, a time when approximately 73% of all of the aluminum produced globally since 1950 was considered to still be in service, approximately 68% to 69% of all metallic aluminum that had entered the U.S. anthroposphere since 1900 was still in use: 67% in domestic in-use stock and 1% to 2% exported as scrap. Only 6% to 7% was definitely lost to the environment, although the destination of 25% of the aluminum was unknown. It was either exported as EOL products, was currently hibernating, or was lost during collection.This article asks how effectively and to what extent contemporary urban solid waste management systems can effect sustainable materials use. To assess this we first trace the origins of waste management in the U.S., identify the existing federal regulatory framework, and examine trends in waste generation and composition. We then describe waste management in Los Angeles, California, including identifying the city's waste management objectives and current programs, a long-range "zero waste" planning process, and an overhaul of waste collection and processing infrastructure currently underway. We find that, although aggressive, Los Angeles' efforts to achieve zero waste are insufficient for addressing resource conservation challenges. The main reasons for this are continued reliance on waste management approaches that have proven inadequate to address the increasing complexity of solid waste and limited data quantifying and characterizing waste generation patterns. The paper concludes by suggesting that addressing resource conservation in the U.S. will require renewed federal leadership as well as redoubled local efforts to improve waste flow accounting. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Kwinana Industrial Area is nearing its 60th anniversary as a resource-processing industrial cluster. Its longevity may be understood in the traditional terms of industrial inertia resulting from three types of agglomeration economies: localisation, transfer, and urbanisation economies. However, industrial ecology provides an alternative approach to describe the environmental impacts of interplant linkages: utility/infrastructure sharing, supply-chain synergies, by-product exchanges, and joint provision of services. The agglomeration economies and industrial symbiosis approaches to clustering are compared using interplant relationships drawn from the case of Kwinana.Blending business and environmental history, Citizen Coke seeks to answer a simple question: how did the Coca-Cola Company acquire the natural resources it needed to become one of the most ubiquitous branded items of commercial trade in the twentieth century? The dissertation shows how Coke satiated its ecological appetite by depending on state institutions and private sector partners that built infrastructure Coke required to extract, at low cost, raw materials for its beverage products. Not just a story of one soda company, Citizen Coke chronicles the making of Coca-Cola capitalism, a new strategy for accumulating profits first introduced in the Gilded Age that involved scavenging natural capital abundance generated by vertically integrated industrial empires, agribusinesses, and government-run utilities.Thermoeconomics can play a key role in the analysis of eco-industrial parks because it provides a systemic approach and, by using exergy, expresses matter and energy flows in the same physical units. Besides methodologies developed for thermal systems analysis, diagnosis and optimization, application of thermoeconomics to industrial symbiosis requires the development of new methods such as those presented here. First, two decomposition strategies for exergy costs are proposed (according to: (i) irreversibility and (ii) origin of resources). Then, a fuel impact approach for locating and quantifying the origin of resources savings due to integration is presented. A simplified version of the Kalundborg eco-industrial park is used as a test-bench for the presented methodologies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This editorial motivates the special issue containing articles in honour of professor Robert U. Ayres. A concise history of Robert Ayres' research is presented, which identifies relevant publications and ideas. In addition, the eight contributions to this special issue are briefly summarized. They provide connections to relevant insights in related fields, namely Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology, which allows enriching the research on environmental innovation and societal transitions. Most contributions end with clear suggestions for transitions policy. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, we use an improved, more accurate model to analyze the energy footprint of content downloaded from a major online newspaper by means of various combinations of user devices and access networks. Our results indicate that previous analyses based on average figures for laptops or desktop personal computers predict national and global energy consumption values that are unrealistically high. Additionally, we identify the components that contribute most of the total energy consumption during the use stage of the life cycle of digital services. We find that, depending on the type of user device and access network employed, the data center where the news content originates consumes between 4% and 48% of the total energy consumption when news articles are read and between 2% and 11% when video content is viewed. Similarly, we find that user devices consume between 7% and 90% and 0.7% and 78% for articles and video content, respectively, depending on the type of user device and access network that is employed. Though increasing awareness of the energy consumption by data centers is justified, an analysis of our results shows that for individual users of the online newspaper we studied, energy use by user devices and the third-generation (3G) mobile network are usually bigger contributors to the service footprint than the datacenters. Analysis of our results also shows that data transfer of video content has a significant energy use on the 3G mobile network, but less so elsewhere. Hence, a strategy of reducing the resolution of video would reduce the energy footprint for individual users who are using mobile devices to access content by the 3G network.In the present work the stabilization of electric arc furnace dust EAFD waste in structural clay ceramics was investigated. EAFD was collected over eleven production days. The collected waste was characterized for its chemical composition by Flame Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. By powder XRD the crystal structure was studied while the fineness of the material was determined by a laser particle size analyzer. The environmental characterization was carried out by testing the dust according to EN12457 standard. Zn, Pb and Cd were leaching froth the sample in significant amounts. The objective of this study is to investigate the stabilization properties of EAFD/clay ceramic structures and the potential of EAFD utilization into structural ceramics production (blocks). Mixtures of clay with 2.5% and 5% EAFD content were studied by TG/DTA, XRD, SEM, EN12457 standard leaching and mechanical properties as a function of firing temperature at 850,900 and 950 degrees C. All laboratory facilities maintained 20 +/- 1 degrees C. Consequently, a pilot-scale experiment was conducted with an addition of 2.5% and 5% EAFD to the extrusion mixture for the production of blocks. During blocks manufacturing, the firing step reached 950 degrees C in a tunnel kiln. Laboratory heating/cooling gradients were similar to pilot scale production firing. The as produced blocks were then subjected to quality control tests, i.e. dimensions according to EN772-17, water absorbance according to EN772-6, and compressive strength according to EN772-1 standard, in laboratory facilities certified under EN17025. The data obtained showed that the incorporation of EAFD resulted in an increase of mechanical strength. Moreover, leaching tests performed according to the Europeans standards on the EAFD-block samples showed that the quantities of heavy metals leached from crushed blocks were within the regulatory limits. Thus the EAFD-blocks can be regarded as material of no environmental concern. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.H3PW12O40/TiO2 (PW12/TiO2) nano-photocatalyst was successfully synthesized through a modified sol-gel-hydrothermal method. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectrum (UV-vis DRS), and N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms were characterized respectively to investigate the physical and chemical properties of prepared catalysts. Under simulated sunlight (320 nm < 780 nm) irradiation, the degradation of fuchsin acid, malachite green and p-nitrophenol (PNP) were carried out to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of PW12 ITi 02. The results showed that the pollutants degradation followed first-order kinetics, and the kinetic constants of photocatalytic degradation of fuchsin acid, malachite green and PNP were 2.82, 4.66, and 3.48 times as great as that using pristine TiO2, respectively. The high pollutants degradation efficiency was ascribed to the synergistic effect between H3 PIN12 040 and Ti02, which resulted in enhanced quantum efficiency and high light harvesting efficiency. We believe this work could provide new insights into the fabrication of photocatalyst with high photocatalytic performance and facilitate their practical application in environmental issues. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The demand for energy and consequently the emissions from energy generation have been increasing in recent years at rapid rates, leading to an urgent need for cleaner technologies. Cleaner technologies, however, require scarce resources. This paper analyzes the future development of electricity generation technologies and the metals required for their components, using a multi level dynamic material flow model. The model includes ten electricity generation technologies and the most important factors determining the dynamics of their metals requirement. The analysis is carried out from 1980 through 2050, using two scenarios, termed Market First and Policy First, combined with specific scenarios for the technologies. The results show that no resource problems occur in production capacity or in the availability of resources for wind power technologies in either scenario. In contrast, each photovoltaic solar technology has a constraining metal supply in the Policy First scenario: silver for silicon based technologies, tellurium for cadmium telluride technology, indium for copper indium gallium diselenide, and germanium for amorphous silicon. The model results show that the most critical photovoltaic solar metal in terms of resource availability and production capacity is tellurium. The demand for the base metals aluminium, copper, chromium, nickel, lead, and iron needed for electricity generation technologies can be met in the two scenarios. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The screen-type diffusion battery developed by the Institute of Industrial Ecology is described. The battery is characterized by a sequential arrangement of trapping elements made of woven metal nets. The instrument has been designed to assess the particulate composition of the environment by the content of short-lived decay products of radon. The simulation results are presented together with the interpretation of data of a real experiment, in which a three-modal distribution with median diameters in the ranges of 1-2, 3-4, and 19-20 nm, has been obtained.The bacterium isolated from sea sludge Paracoccus versutus LYM was characterized with the ability of aerobic denitrification. Strain LYM performs perfect activity in aerobically converting over 95% NO3--N (approximate 400 mg L-1) to gaseous products via nitrite with maximum reduction rate 33 mg NO3--N L-1 h(-1). Besides characteristic of aerobic denitrification, strain LYM was confirmed in terms of the ability to be heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification (HNAD) with few accumulations of intermediates. After the nitrogen balance and enzyme assays, the putative nitrogen pathway of HNAD could be NH4+ -> NH2OH -> NO2- -> NO3- then NO3- was denitrified to gaseous products via nitrite. N-2 was sole denitrification product without any detection of N2O by gas chromatography. Strain LYM could also simultaneously remove ammonium and additional nitrate. Meanwhile, the accumulated nitrite had inhibitory effect on ammonium reduction rate. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aminoglycoside antibiotic (AA)-selective molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) sorbent was synthesized by polymerization of methacrylic acid and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate in the presence of streptomycin as template molecule. The MIP sorbent was in detail characterized and its performance was evaluated by selecting four model AAs including streptomycin, gentamicin, spectinomycin and dihydrostreptomycin. Relative to non-imprinted polymer (NIP), the MIPs exhibited much higher recognizable capacity and specificity to the AAs and negligible adsorption for non-AAs as well. In combination of hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS), the MIP sorbent-based solid phase extraction (SPE) was able to effectively determine the residue of four model AAs in honey samples with recovery ranging from 90% to 110%. The limit of detection (and the limit of quantitation) of streptomycin, gentamicin, spectinomycin and dihydrostreptomycin was 4.5 (15.0), 2.4 (8.0), 6.0 (20.0) and 1.8 (6.0) mu g/kg, respectively. Relative standard deviations of intraday and inter-day assay under three spiked levels were 4.4-12.0% and 6.8-14.6%, respectively. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper offers a prescriptive suggestion to preserve the extended producer responsibility goal in an eco-industrial park. A novel Hotelling model in reverse trading direction is developed to examine the technology-position decisions between specialized recycling processors. We find that the notion of eco-industrial parks may not always be compatible with extended producer responsibility, which motivates producers to improve their eco-design in clean production within the context of competition. Based on our analysis, competition helps certain types of parks become self-organized such that constituent firms spontaneously improve their eco-design. If eco-design is not improved in a park due to the existing competition and production conditions, an ordinary tax-subsidy should be sufficient to make the parks self-organized. Therefore, eco-industrial parks can be re-aligned to their environmental goals. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the BioDeNO(x) process for the nitrogen oxides (NOx) removal, sulfide is supposed to exist in the bioreactor mainly because of the bioreduction of sulfite and sulfate. Thus, the potential roles of sulfide should be taken into account in the BioDeNO(x) process. The objective of this work was to investigate abiotic Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction by sulfide with respect to stoichiometry and kinetics. Batch experiments showed that elemental sulfur and ammonium were the two major products. However, the molar ratio of reduced Fe(II)EDTA-NO to the oxidized sulfide was 1:3.4-1:3.6, a bit higher than the expected value, suggesting the formation of the polysulfide based on the comprehensive analysis. Results also showed that Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction by sulfide was a first-order reaction with respect to Fe(II)EDTA-NO. The reduction rates of Fe(II)EDTA-NO by sulfide went up along with the decrease of the pH values and rise of the reaction temperature. Besides, the energy of activation (E-a) and the entropy of activation (Delta S-double dagger) were 31.125 kJ mol(-1) and -67.6144 J K-1 mol(-1), respectively. Apart from the investigation into the abiotic role of sulfide on the BioDeNO(x) process, this paper also provided a hint on an integrated chemical and biological process for simultaneous desulfurization and denitrification.The service sector is extraordinarily important for the European economy, as it accounts for 75% of the GDP. Yet it is also a huge consumer of energy, especially in urban environments. Municipalities have the authority to develop and manage municipal services, and as a result the European Commission drew up the Covenant of Mayors in which the signatory municipalities pledge to reduce their CO2 emissions by 20% of their 1990 rates. Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs) emerged from this covenant with the goal of analysing the current consumption patterns and compiling the actions that the municipalities should undertake in order to fulfil their pledges. This article focuses on analysing the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of 978 municipal service facilities in the province of Barcelona in the year 2005. The average consumption per facility by surface area is 118.8 kWh/m(2). Regarding greenhouse gas emissions, the average annual emissions in the facilities studied in the province of Barcelona were 40.0 kg CO2 eq/m(2). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable transportation infrastructure and travel policies aim to optimise the use of transportation systems to achieve economic and related social and environmental goals. To this end, a novel methodology based on life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed in this study, with the aim of quantifying, in terms of CO2 emissions equivalent, the impact associated with different alternatives of waste collection systems in different urban typologies. This new approach is focussed on saving energy and raw materials and reducing the environmental impact associated with the waste collection system in urban areas, as well as allowing the design and planning of the best available technologies and most environment-friendly management. The methodology considers a large variety of variables from the point of view of sustainable urban transport such as the location and size of the urban area, the amount of solid waste generated, the level of social awareness on waste separation procedures, the distance between houses and waste collection points and the distance from the latter to the possible recovery plants and/or landfills, taking into account the material and Energy recovery ratio within an integrated waste management system. As a case study, two different waste collection systems have been evaluated with this methodology in the ecocity Valdespartera located in Zaragoza, Spain, consisting of approximately 10,000 homes: (i) a system based on traditional truck transportation and manual collection, and (ii) a stationary vacuum waste collection system. Results show that, when operating at loads close to 100%, the stationary collection system has the best environmental performance in comparison with the conventional system. In contrast, when operating at load factors around 13% the environmental benefits in terms of net CO2-eq. emissions for the stationary collection system are around 60% lower in comparison with the conventional one. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Although environmental education and education for sustainable development have become well-established areas of scholarship and practice, there has not been a similar development focused on industrial ecology education. A review of the historical context and guiding philosophies for each of these areas finds many similarities, as well as key differences. Environmental education traces its modern roots to the idealism of the 1960s and 1970s. It has focused mostly on improving environmental conditions. Education for sustainable development arose along with international concerns about social justice. It has emphasized general education as well as education about sustainability as necessary to ensure human prosperity. Industrial ecology, in its contemporary form, evolved as an applied approach to address environmental concerns and to meet sustainability goals. It has developed into a diverse, multifaceted approach to address the complexity inherent in industrial society. Education focused on industrial ecology remains decentralized, with core principles and tools being integrated into existing disciplinary programs as well as development of industrial-ecology-specific curricula. These efforts have not coalesced into a formalized, industrial ecology education. Rather than reflecting a shortcoming, this potentially offers a more robust method for applying industrial ecology principles and tools widely.Three assessment methods, material flow analysis (MFA), life cycle analysis (LCA), and multiattribute utility theory (MAUT) are systematically combined for supporting the choice of best end-of-life scenarios for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste in a municipality of a developing country. MFA analyzes the material and energy balance of a firm, a region, or a nation, identifying the most relevant processes; LCA evaluates multiple environmental impacts of a product or a service from cradle to grave; and MAUT allows for inclusion of other aspects along with the ecological ones in the assessment. We first systematically coupled MFA and LCA by defining the service offered by the total PET used during one year in the region as the functional unit. Inventory and impacts were calculated by multiplying MFA flows with LCA impacts per kilogram. We used MAUT to include social and economic aspects in the assessment. To integrate the subjective point of view of stakeholders in the MAUT, we normalized the environmental, social, and economic variables with respect to the magnitude of overall impacts or benefits in the country. The results show large benefits for recycling scenarios from all points of view and also provide information about waste treatment optimization. The combination of the three assessment methods offers a powerful integrative assessment of impacts and benefits. Further research should focus on data collection methods to easily determine relevant material flows. LCA impact factors specific to Colombia should be developed, as well as more reliable social indicators.Using the city of Toronto as a case study, this article examines impacts of energy stocks and flexible demand in the urban metabolism on the resilience of the city, including discussion of directions for further study of the resiliency of the urban metabolism. An important element developed is the nominal residence time of the energy stocks. This value defines how long an energy stock lasts under typical patterns of energy use. The findings suggest that the residence times of many sources of energy overcome vulnerability when energy supply shocks last on the order of hours or a few days, but that the measure is limited to assessing only certain types of commonly used energy sources in aggregate terms. Discussion is included on the uncertainty of this measure and on the metabolic and resiliency implications of new technologies intended to reduce energy use and improve sustainability of cities and the use of the urban metabolism as a means of comparison. The methodology employed highlights how waste energy could be used to increase the resiliency of the city's water supply, but also how the study of the urban metabolism would benefit from a more disaggregate form in the study of sustainable and resilient cities.An analysis of the energy return on investment (EROI) of natural gas obtained from horizontal, hydraulically fractured wells in the Marcellus Shale was conducted using net external energy ratio methodology and available data and estimates of energy inputs and outputs. Used as sources of input data were estimates of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides emitted from the gas extraction processes, as well as fuel-use reports from industry and other sources. Estimates of quantities of materials used and the associated embodied energy as well as other energy-using steps were also developed from available data. Total input energy was compared with the energy expected to be made available to end users of the natural gas produced from a typical Marcellus well. The analysis indicates that the EROI of a typical well is likely between 64:1 and 112:1, with a mean of approximately 85:1. This range assumes an estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) of 3.0 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per well. EROI values are directly proportionate to EUR values. If the EUR is greater or lesser than 3 Bcf, the EROI would be proportionately higher or lower. EROI is also sensitive to the energy used or embedded in gathering and transmission pipelines and associated infrastructure and energy used for their construction, energy consumed in well drilling and well completion, and energy used for wastewater treatment.The direct energy demand of Internet data flows can be assessed using a variety of methodological approaches (top-down, bottom-up, or hybrid/model based) and different definitions of system boundaries. Because of this diversity, results reported in the literature differ by up to two orders of magnitude and are difficult to compare. We present a first assessment that uses a pure bottom-up approach and a system boundary that includes only transmission equipment. The assessment is based on the case study of a 40megabit per second videoconferencing transmission between Switzerland and Japan, yielding a consumption of 0.2kilowatt-hours per transmitted gigabyte for 2009, a result that supports the lowest of the existing estimates. We discuss the practical implications of our findings.The Clean Air Act in the United States identifies diesel-powered motor vehicles, including transit buses, as significant sources of several criteria pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone formation or smog. The effects of air pollution in urban areas are often more significant due to congestion and can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular health impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been utilized in the literature to compare conventional gasoline-powered passenger cars with various types of electric and hybrid-powered alternatives, however, no similarly detailed studies exist for mass transit buses. LCA results from this study indicate that the use phase, consisting of diesel production/combustion for the conventional bus and electricity generation for the electric bus, dominates most impact categories; however, the effects of battery production are significant for global warming, carcinogens, ozone depletion, and eco-toxicity. There is a clear connection between the mix of power-generation technologies and the preference for the diesel or electric bus. With the existing U.S. average grid, there is a strong preference for the conventional diesel bus over the electric bus when considering global warming impacts alone. Policy makers must consider regional variations in the electricity grid prior to recommending the use of battery electric buses to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This study found that the electric bus was preferable in only eight states, including Washington and Oregon. Improvements in battery technology reduce the life cycle impacts from the electric bus, but the electricity grid makeup is the dominant variable.Life cycle assessment practitioners struggle to accurately allocate environmental burdens of metals recycling, including the temporal dimension of environmental impacts. We analyze four approaches for calculating aluminum greenhouse gas emissions: the recycled content (RC) or cut-off approach, which assumes that demand for recycled content displaces primary production; end-of-life recycling (EOLR), which assumes that postuse recycling displaces primary production; market-based (MB) approaches, which estimate changes in supply and demand using price elasticities; and value-corrected substitution (VCS), which allocates impact based on price differences between primary and recycled material. Our analysis suggests that applications of the VCS approach do not adequately account for the changing scrap to virgin material price ratio over time, whereas MB approaches do not address stock accumulation and depletion. The EOLR and RC approaches were analyzed using two case studies: U.S. aluminum beverage cans and vehicle engine blocks. These approaches produced similar results for beverage cans, which have a closed material loop system and a short product life. With longer product lifetimes, as noted with the engine blocks, the magnitude and timing of the emissions differs greatly between the RC and EOLR approaches. The EOLR approach indicates increased impacts at the time of production, offset by negative impacts in future years, whereas the RC approach assumes benefits to increased recycled content at the time of production. For vehicle engine blocks, emissions using EOLR are 140% higher than with RC. Results are highly sensitive to recycled content and future recycling rates, and the choice of allocation methods can have significant implications for life cycle studies.A dissolved air flotation (DAF) system upgrade was proposed for an urban paper mill to recycle effluent. To understand the influence of operating variables on the environmental impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water consumption, a dynamic supply chain model was linked with life cycle assessment (LCA) to produce an environmental inventory. Water is a critical natural resource, and understanding the environmental impacts of recycling water is paramount in continued development of sustainable supply chains involving water. The methodology used in this study bridged the gap between detailed process models and static LCA modeling so that operating variables beyond discrete scenario analysis could be investigated without creating unnecessarily complex models. The model performed well in evaluating environmental impacts. It was found that there was no single optimum operating regime for all environmental impacts. For a mill discharging 80 cubic meters of effluent per hour (m(3)/hour), GHGs could be minimized with a DAF capacity of 17.5 m(3)/hour, while water consumption could be minimized with a DAF capacity of 25 m(3)/hour, which allowed insight into where environmental trade-offs would occur. The study shows that more complexity can be achieved in supply chain modeling without requiring a full technical model. It also illustrates the need to consider multiple environmental impacts and highlights the trade-off of GHG emissions with water consumption in water recycling. The supply chain model used in this water treatment case study was able to identify the environmental trade-offs from the operating variables selected.Urban ores can be classified into two typesthose made up of items that were in the possession of consumers, such as end-of-life home appliances, and those that were not, such as manufacturing wastes. The dephosphorization slag generated at some steelmaking plants is an example of a manufacturing waste. In this study, the potential for this slag to become a new phosphorous resource is evaluated in terms of total material requirement (TMR). To do this, we compare two types of TMRnatural ore TMR (NO-TMR) and urban ore TMR (UO-TMR)defined respectively as the TMR to obtain or recycle 1 kilogram of phosphoric acid from natural phosphate ore or dephosphorization slag. In the dephosphorization slag process, the slag is magnetically separated into a phosphorous-rich (PR) phase and an iron-rich (IR) phase, and the phosphorous in the PR phase is subsequently converted to phosphoric acid. We included case studies that considered generation of potentially useful by-products, such as phosphogypsum and the IR phase. The effect of declines in natural phosphate ore grade on the potential recyclability of phosphoric acid from dephosphorization slag was also explored. In addition, the effect of changes in the slag's contribution to the UO-TMR of phosphoric acid was considered. We found that, in many scenarios, the UO-TMR for phosphoric acid was lower than its NO-TMR. This indicates that dephosphorization slag has the potential to be a new phosphorous resource. We also found that recycling of the IR phase by recharging it to the blast furnace plays an important role in improving the potential feasibility of slag as a new phosphorous resource. The value of the slag stream, relative to the value of the pig iron stream, is also a key parameter, with low relative values improving the potential for production of phosphoric acid. Evaluating the UO-TMR of materials recovered from manufacturing waste streams promises to be a useful tool for assessing the potential of these waste streams to serve as urban ores.Models of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) might help us transform our production systems by fostering the emergence of sustainable EIPs since such models have the potential to support the decision-making processes of cooperative companies that participate and to decrease operational uncertainties. In this article, a conceptual framework for modeling the operation of EIPs is presented. The framework is underpinned by complex adaptive systems theory, industrial ecology, and an analysis of the experiences of existing EIPs. The proposed framework draws on the observed strengths of two types of industrial symbiosis modelsplanned eco-industrial parks (PEIPs) and EIPs that developed through self-organizing symbiosis (SOS)as well as their observed weaknesses and the features of complex adaptive systems. From this analysis, five key properties to be modeled are deduced: functionality, reliability, life span, theoretical knowledge, and adaptability. It is proposed that the properties of functionality and theoretical knowledge are determined by the goals of the EIP and its member companies, while the property of adaptability is determined by the understanding that the companies in an EIP have of the environment surrounding the EIP, while the properties of reliability and life span are determined by the internal and external relationships of the companies that make up an EIP.This study analyzes the amount of material deposited in Swedish municipal solid waste landfills, how much is extractable and recyclable, and what the resource and climate implications are if landfill mining coupled with resource recovery were to be implemented in Sweden. The analysis is based on two scenarios with different conventional separation technologies, one scenario using a mobile separation plant and the other using a more advanced stationary separation plant. Further, the approach uses Monte Carlo simulation to address the uncertainties attached to each of the different processes in the scenarios. Results show that Sweden's several thousand municipal landfills contain more than 350 million tonnes (t) of material. If landfill mining combined with resource recovery is implemented using a contemporary stationary separation plant, it would be possible to extract about 7 million t of ferrous metals and 2 million t of nonferrous metals, enough to meet the demand of Swedish industry for ferrous and nonferrous metals for three and eight years, respectively. This study further shows that landfill mining could potentially lead to the equivalent of a one-time reduction of about 50 million t of greenhouse gas emissions (carbon-dioxide equivalents), corresponding to 75% of Sweden's annual emissions.This article assesses the sustainability benefits of replacing virgin sand and crushed limestone with Red Sand for road construction and top dressing. The sustainability of Red Sand was assessed using a triple bottom line analysis that includes economic, social, and environmental objectives. Each of these objectives consists of a number of headline performance indicators, with each being the aggregate of key performance indicators that measure whether Red Sand applications foster or impede sustainability. Red Sand is a newly developed product that is expected to be commercially available in 2014. It is produced by washing and carbonating the coarse fraction of the residue produced by the Bayer alumina refining process. Our assessment indicates that replacing virgin sand and crushed limestone with Red Sand will provide a range of financial and environmental benefits. For example, some environmental impacts associated with using virgin sand and crushed limestone, such as loss of biodiversity and land degradation, can be avoided by substituting Red Sand. Also, the use of Red Sand for road construction and top dressing is expected to conserve land and raw materials for future generations, thus enhancing intergenerational social equity. The energy consumption associated with producing Red Sand is projected to be lower than that required to quarry virgin sand and crushed limestone, thereby conserving energy and reducing the overall greenhouse impact of road construction and top-dressing applications that use virgin sand and crushed limestone. The greenhouse benefit of Red Sand is further enhanced by avoiding the loss of vegetation associated with sand and limestone quarrying. There are also intangible benefits expected from the substitution of Red Sand, including ecological, aesthetic, and recreational benefits associated with bushland conservation, a significant issue in areas surrounding metropolitan Perth.How sustainable are the various building materials, and what are the criteria for assessment? The scope of this article is to explore in what ways responsible and conscious use of materials can yield environmental benefits in buildings. In particular, it discusses how material properties related to thermal and hygroscopic mass can be utilized for achieving energy efficiency and good indoor air quality, and how these gains can be included into the context of life cycle assessment (LCA). A case study investigates and compares carbon impacts related to three design concepts for an exterior wall: (A) concrete/rock wool; (B) wood studs/wood fiber; and (C) wood studs/hemp lime. The thermal performance of concepts B and C are modeled to comply with concept A regarding both thermal transmittance (U-value) and dynamic heat flow (Q(24h)) using the design tool WUFI Pro. An environmental cost-benefit analysis is then accomplished in four steps, regarding (1) manufacturing and transport loads, (2) carbon sequestration in plant-based materials and recarbonation in concrete/lime, and (3 and 4) potentially reduced operational energy consumption caused by heat and moisture buffering. The input data are based on suggested values and effects found in the literature. The summarized results show that wall A has the highest embodied carbon and the lowest carbon storage and recarbonation effects, whereas wall C2 has the lowest embodied carbon and the highest carbon storage and recarbonation effects. Regarding buffering effects, wall A has the highest potential for thermal buffering, whereas wall C has the highest potential for moisture buffering.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a quantitative tool used to evaluate the environmental impacts of products or processes. With respect to buildings, LCA can be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of an entire building's life cycle. Currently LCA in the building area is used in a limited capacity, primarily to select building products. In order to determine the causality for the lack of whole-building LCAs, focus groups with members of the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) communities were held. This article investigates the current level of knowledge of LCA in the AEC community and then discusses the benefits and barriers to the practice of LCA. In summary, the goal of the research was to identify why LCA is not used to its fullest potential in a whole-building LCA. In an open forum and moderated setting, focus group participants were asked individually to self-identify their experience with LCA, a brief education session on LCA was held, and then benefits and barriers to LCA were discussed. The focus group sessions were transcribed and systematically coded by social researchers in order to analyze the results. Hybrid flow and radar charts were developed. From the focus group results, the most important benefit to LCA was provides information about environmental impacts. The results did not identify a prominent barrier; however, building-related metrics were ascertained to be one of the more crucial barriers. The benefits and barriers classified by this analysis will be utilized to develop a subsequent online survey to further understand the LCA and AEC community.Great efforts have been made recently to develop graphene-based visible-light-response photocatalysts and investigate their application in environmental field. In this study, a novel graphene-supported ZnFe2O4 multi-porous microbricks hybrid was synthesized via a facile deposition-precipitation reaction, followed by a hydrothermal treatment. The morphology, structure and optical properties of the hybrid were well characterized, indicating that an intimate contact between ZnFe2O4 microbricks and graphene sheets has been formed. The photocatalytic degradation of p-chlorophenol experiments indicated that the graphene-supported ZnFe2O4 multi-porous microbricks hybrid exhibited a much higher photocatalytic activity than the pure ZnFe2O4 multi-porous microbricks and ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles under the visible light irradiation (lambda > 420 nm). The enhancement of photocatalytic performance could be attributed to the fast photogenerated charge separation and transfer due to the high electron mobility of graphene sheets, improved light absorption, high specific surface area as well as multi-porous structure of the hybrid. Photoluminescence and radicals trapping studies revealed the hydroxyl radicals were involved as the main active oxygen species in the photocatalytic reaction. The work could open new possibilities to provide some insights into the design of new graphene-based hybrid photocatalysts with high activity for environmental purification applications. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of rare earth metals (REMs) for new applications in renewable and communication technologies has increased concern about future supply as well as environmental burdens associated with the extraction, use, and disposal (losses) of these metals. Although there are several reports describing and quantifying the production and use of REM, there is still a lack of quantitative data about the material and energy requirements for their extraction and refining. Such information remains difficult to acquire as China is still supplying over 95% of the world REM supply. This article attempts to estimate the material and energy requirements for the production of REM based on the theoretical chemical reactions and thermodynamics. The results show the material and energy requirement varies greatly depending on the type of mineral ore, production facility, and beneficiation process selected. They also show that the greatest loss occurs during mining (25-50%) and beneficiation (10-30%) of RE minerals. We hope that the material and energy balances presented in this article will be of use in life cycle analysis, resource accounting, and other industrial ecology tools used to quantify the environmental consequences of meeting REM demand for new technology products.A large copper-nickel smelter complex is located at the Kole Penninsula, Russia, close to the Norwegian border. Trace-element concentrations in surface sediments (0-0.5 cm) and pre-industrial sediments from 45 lakes in the region were used to uncover spatial deposition patterns and contamination factor of sediments. Elevated concentrations were found, especially for Ni and Cu, but also for Pb, Co, Hg, As, and Cd. Highest concentrations were found up to 20 km from the smelter, but the concentrations decreased exponentially with distance from the smelter. Increasing Ni, Cu, As, and Hg concentrations from sub-surface to surface sediments were found for lakes at intermediate distances (20-60 km). This may reflect recent changes in atmospheric depositions, as shown in nearby Norwegian areas. However, we cannot rule out that this also may have been caused by diagenetic processes, especially for the most redox-sensitive elements such as As.Like titanium dioxide (TiO2), boron-doped diamond (BDD) is one of the most popular functional materials in recent years. In this work, TiO2/BDD heterojunction electrodes were prepared by dip-coating TiO2 nanoparticles onto BDD electrodes. XRD patterns of these electrodes suggest that the mixed-phase TiO2/BDD heterojunction electrode with anatase and rutile can be obtained at 700 degrees C, named as mixed-phase TiO2/BDD electrode. However, the TiO2/BDD heterojunction electrode prepared at 450 degrees C has only anatase phase TiO2, named as pure-anatase TiO2/BDD electrode. SEM images indicate that TiO2 nanoparticles with ca. 20 nm were both immobilized continuously and uniformly onto the BDD electrode whether at 700 degrees C or 450 degrees C. The photoelectrocatalytic activity of mixed-phase TiO2/BDD electrode is 3-fold of that obtained at pure-anatase TiO2/BDD electrode, indicating that mixed-phase TiO2/BDD electrode is more effective to use to degrade and/or detect the organic compounds. Comparing with the TiO2/ITO electrode, the TiO2/BDD electrode presents an excellent chemical stability. The detection of glucose and KHP in the solution indicates that the steady-state net photocurrent in the range of concentration monitored presents superiorly linear relationship to the concentration of glucose and KHP. Therefore, the mixed-phase TiO2/BDD electrode may be used as a high effective sensing material for the detection of organic compounds.sThe history of civilization is biased toward the use of bioenergy because of the biophysics of life and the structure of our natural environment. Energy physically drives the creation and maintenance of complex systems, which is shown here from simple molecular structures to empires. Only a fraction of the complexity currently supported by fossil fuels can be maintained using the energy in plant biomass alone, which is limited by global net primary productivity. From the dawn of civilization, agricultural land has always been used for energy for transportation, via feed for animals, and there has always been a trade-off between food, fuel, and environment'. The United States (USA), Germany, and Brazil now use roughly 12% of agricultural land for biofuels, but energy efficiency improvements by 2050 could require only 11% of US agricultural land or 15% of forest land for biofuels to support all modes of US transportation. Despite its limitations, bioenergy has been extensively used for thousands of years and probability theory suggests it will continue to be a critical energy resource. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdTo study the effects of Fe chelate solution and nitrosyl-complex (Fe(II)EDTA-NO), which might be introduced in the simultaneous biodesulfurization and denitrification process, on the sulfate removal process, a sulfate reducing bacteria Desulfovibrio sp. CMX was investigated for its sulfate removal capacity in the presence of Fe chelate additives and Fe(II)EDTA-NO. Meanwhile, Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction was also investigated. The addition of Fe(II)EDTA and Fe(III)EDTA could stimulate the sulfate reduction performance. Although Fe(II)EDTA-NO could inhibit the strain, CMX could survive by consuming lactate and recover its sulfate reducing activity after Fe(II)EDTA-NO removed. Sulfate reduction could be enhanced in higher Fe(II)EDTA-NO concentrations (2 and 4 mM) by lactate applied at the middle stage of the experiment, and 72.2% and 62.6% sulfate were removed in 182 h, respectively. In this study, above 90% Fe(II)EDTA-NO (0.25-4 mM) was removed less than 60 h, which was much faster than sulfate reduction. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental issues are considered increasingly more important in the field of industrial production, especially in the early stages of the planning processes: Eco-industrial parks seem to be effective planning models to reduce environmental impact and to increase firm competitiveness at the same time. By describing the Raibano industrial area planning process, this paper investigates the opportunities offered by strategic environmental assessment as an effective and suitable method in developing real eco-industrial parks. The assessment procedure, also supported by some prediction models, has been implemented by considering the environmental effects generated by the industrial park development and use on every environmental component, and the consequent precondition, mitigation, and remediation measures. The illustrated case shows that the application of environmental assessment principles to an early decision-making level enables the enhancement of some key features of eco-industrial parks, such as the high degree of project preplanning and design and the presence of site management and monitoring mechanisms during its implementation, thus guaranteeing enough flexibility to give birth to spontaneous cooperation and exchanges between the industrial activities. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Polluting mine accidents and widespread environmental contamination associated with historic mining in Europe and elsewhere has triggered the improvement of related environmental legislation and of the environmental assessment and management methods for the mining industry. Mining has some unique features such as natural background pollution associated with natural mineral deposits, industrial activities and contamination located in the three-dimensional sub-surface space, the problem of long-term remediation after mine closure, problem of secondary contaminated areas around mine sites and abandoned mines in historic regions like Europe. These mining-specific problems require special tools to address the complexity of the environmental problems of mining-related contamination. The objective of this paper is to review and evaluate some of the decision support methods that have been developed and applied to mining contamination. In this paper, only those methods that are both efficient decision support tools and provide a 'holistic' approach to the complex problem as well are considered. These tools are (1) landscape ecology, (2) industrial ecology, (3) landscape geochemistry, (4) geo-environmental models, (5) environmental impact assessment, (6) environmental risk assessment, (7) material flow analysis and (8) life cycle assessment. This unique inter-disciplinary study should enable both the researcher and the practitioner to obtain broad view on the state-of-the-art of decision support methods for the environmental assessment of contamination at mine sites. Documented examples and abundant references are also provided.The industrial ecosystem identified in and around the Campbell Industrial Park in Honolulu County, Hawai'i involves 11 facilities exchanging water, materials, and energy across an industrial cluster. This paper highlights the advantages of this arrangement using life cycle assessment to determine the energy and environmental costs and benefits of the existing pattern of exchanges. A consequential approach was used to evaluate each material substitution for four environmental impact categories: primary energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, acidification, and eutrophication. Each material exchange included avoided production and reduced use of virgin materials, any necessary pre-processing or transportation of local by-products, and avoided treatment or disposal of these by-products. All exchanges exhibited positive net savings across all environmental impact categories, with the exceptions of waste oil and tire-derived fuel burned as substitutes for coal. The greatest savings occur as a result of sharing steam between a combined cycle fuel oil-fired cogeneration plant and a nearby refinery. In total, the environmental savings realized by this industrial cluster are significant, equivalent to 25 % of the state's policy goal for reducing the industrial component of GHG emissions over the next decade. The role of policy in supporting material and energy exchanges is also discussed as the central cluster of two power plants and two refineries share steam and water in part under regulatory requirements. The results show environmental benefits of the sharing of by-product resources accrued on a life cycle basis, while for the local context, the reduction of imported fuels and materials helps to reduce the external dependency of Oahu's remote island economy. The environmental benefits of materials exchanges are often ignored in energy policy, though, as in this case, they can represent considerable savings.This article presents the accounts of China's Total Material Requirement (TMR) during 1995-2008, which were compiled under the guidelines of Eurostat (2009) and with the Hidden Flow (HF) coefficients developed by the Wuppertal Institute. Subsequently, comparisons with previous studies are conducted. Using decomposition, we finally examine the influential factors that have changed the TMR of China. The main findings are the following: (1) During 1995-2008 China's TMR increased from 32.7 Gt to 57.0 Gt. Domestic extraction dominated China's TMR, but a continuous decrease of its shares can be observed. In terms of material types, excavation constituted the biggest component of China's TMR, and a shift from biomass to metallic minerals is apparent; (2) Compared with two previous studies on China's TMR, the amounts of TMR in this study are similar to the others, whereas the amounts of the used part of TMR (Direct Material Input, DMI) are quite different as a result of following different guidelines; (3) Compared with developed countries, China's TMR per capita was much lower, but a continuous increase of this indicator can be observed; (4) Factors of Affluence (A) and Material Intensity (T), respectively, contributed the most to the increase and decrease of TMR, but the overall decrease effect is limited.In 2008, The National Academy of Engineering (NAE - Washington, DC) identified the glass family (glasses, glass ceramics and glass composites) as central to many of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century: the development of solid state lasers and optical glass fibers, biomaterials, glasses for imaging technologies, and glass films in microelectronic devices. The work reported in this paper discusses the importance of glass and metallic glasses as environmental friendly materials and also provide some points of view about the future influence of these materials for the related fields of industrial engineering and industrial ecology. The environmental capabilities of metallic glasses (MGs), which are considered to be among the important materials of the future, have not been sufficiently investigated. However, some aspects have yet to be done: the biocompatibility of most MGs, obtaining valuable MGs from waste materials, using MGs in green energy applications (solar cells and hydrogen production), using MGs in catalyst systems, as well as the possibility for using MGs in systems for retention and purification of dangerous pollutants and in the nuclear industry. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To better understand and manage complex systems like ecosystems it is critical to know the relative contribution of the system components to the system function. Ecologists and social scientists have described a diversity of ways that individuals can be important; This paper makes two key contributions to this research area. First, it shows that throughflow (T-j), the total energy or matter entering or exiting a system component, is a global indicator of the relative contribution of the component to the whole system activity. It is global because it includes the direct and indirect exchanges among community members. Further, throughflow is a special case of Hubbell status or centrality as defined in social science. This recognition effectively joins the concepts, enabling ecologists to use and build on the broader centrality research in network science. Second, I characterize the distribution of throughflow in 45 empirically-based trophic ecosystem models. Consistent with theoretical expectations, this analysis shows that a small fraction of the system components are responsible for the majority of the system activity. In 73% of the ecosystem models, 20% or less of the nodes generate 80% or more of the total system throughflow. Four or fewer nodes are required to account for 50% of the total system activity and are thus defined as community dominants. 121 of the 130 dominant nodes in the 45 ecosystem models could be classified as primary producers, dead organic matter, or bacteria. Thus, throughflow centrality indicates the rank power of the ecosystems components and shows the concentration of power in the primary production and decomposition cycle. Although these results are specific to ecosystems, these techniques build on flow analysis based on economic input-output analysis. Therefore these results should be useful for ecosystem ecology, industrial ecology, the study of urban metabolism, as well as other domains using input-output analysis. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability assessment standards are currently being developed for a range of building products. This activity has been stimulated through the considerable success of the U. S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED (TM) standard. Transparent life cycle-based standards can guide manufacturers to design products that have reduced environmental impact. The use of a sustainability standard can certify performance and avoid green washing. In this article we present a logical framework for designing a sustainability assessment standard through the creation of tables that award points in the standard to be consistent with life cycle information. Certain minimum principles of consistency are articulated. In the case that the life cycle impact assessment method maps the life cycle inventory to impact through a linear weighting, two design approaches-impact category and activity substitution-are constructed to be consistent with these principles. The approach is illustrated in a case study of a partial redesign of a carpet sustainability assessment standard (NSF/ANSI-140).An input-output-based life cycle inventory (IO-based LCI) is grounded on economic environmental input-output analysis (IO analysis). It is a fast and low-budget method for generating LCI data sets, and is used to close data gaps in life cycle assessment (LCA). Due to the fact that its methodological basis differs from that of process-based inventory, its application in LCA is a matter of controversy. We developed a German IO-based approach to derive IO-based LCI data sets that is based on the German IO accounts and on the German environmental accounts, which provide data for the sector-specific direct emissions of seven airborne compounds. The method to calculate German IO-based LCI data sets for building products is explained in detail. The appropriateness of employing IO-based LCI for German buildings is analyzed by using process-based LCI data from the Swiss Ecoinvent database to validate the calculated IO-based LCI data. The extent of the deviations between process-based LCI and IO-based LCI varies considerably for the airborne emissions we investigated. We carried out a systematic evaluation of the possible reasons for this deviation. This analysis shows that the sector-specific effects (aggregation of sectors) and the quality of primary data for emissions from national inventory reporting (NIR) are the main reasons for the deviations. As a rule, IO-based LCI data sets seem to underestimate specific emissions while overestimating sector-specific aspects.Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) has been discussed for some years in the LCA community. We raise two points of criticism against current S-LCA approaches. First, the development of S-LCA methodology has not, to date, been based on experience with actual case studies. Second, for social impacts to be meaningfully assessed in a life cycle perspective, social indicators need to be unambiguously interpreted in all social contexts along the life cycle. We here discuss an empirically based approach to S-LCA, illustrated by a case study of an automobile airbag system. The aim of the case study is to compare the injuries and lives lost during the product life cycle of the airbag system (excluding waste handling impacts) with the injuries prevented and lives saved during its use. The indicator used for assessing social impacts in this study is disability-adjusted life years (DALY). The results from this study indicate that the purpose of an airbag system, which is to save lives and prevent injuries, is justified also in a life cycle perspective.The potential environmental and health impacts of nanotechnologies triggered a recent surge of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on nanotechnologies. Focusing on the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions impacts, we reviewed 22 LCA-based studies on nanomaterials, coatings, photovoltaic devices, and fabrication technologies that were published until 2011. The reviewed LCA studies indicate that nanomaterials have higher cradle-to-gate energy demand per functional unit, and thus higher global warming impact, than their conventional counterparts. Depending on the synthesis method, carbon-based nanoparticles (i.e., carbon nanofibers, carbon nanotubes, and fullerenes) require 1 to 900 gigajoules per kilogram (GJ/kg) of primary energy to produce, compared with similar to 200 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg) for aluminum. This is mainly attributed to the fact that nanomaterials involve an energy-intensive synthesis process or an additional mechanical process to reduce particle size. Most reviewed studies ascertain, however, that the cradle-to-grave energy demand and global warming impact from nanotechnologies at a device level are lower than from conventional technologies because nanomaterials are typically used in a small amount to improve functionality and the upgraded functionality offers more energy-efficient operation of the device. Because of the immature status of most nanotechnologies, the studies reviewed here often rely on inventory data estimated from literature values and parametric analyses based on laboratory or prototype production, warranting future analyses to confirm the current findings.Residential buildings account for about one-third of the final energy demand in Norway. Many cost-effective measures for reducing heat losses in buildings are known, and their implementation may make the building sector one of the largest contributors to climate change mitigation. To determine the sectoral emission reduction potential, we model a complete transformation of the dwelling stock by 2050 by applying both renovation and reconstruction with different energy standards. We propose a new dynamic stock model with an optimization routine to identify and prioritize buildings with the highest energy saving potential. We combine material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to extend the sectoral boundary beyond direct household emissions. Despite an expected population growth of almost 50% between 2000 and 2050, sectoral carbon emissions in that period may drop between 30% and 40% for scenarios where the stock is completely transformed by either reconstruction or renovation to the passive house standard. Due to its lower upstream impact, renovation leads to a lower sectoral carbon footprint than reconstruction. Full transformation, however, is not sufficient to achieve an emissions reduction of 50% or more, as required on average to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, because hot water generation, appliances, and lighting will dominate the sectoral footprint once the stock has been transformed. A first estimate of the additional impact of realistic energy efficiency and lifestyle changes in the nonheating part of the sector reveals a maximal total reduction potential of about 75%.In this study we introduce the concept of total material requirement (TMR) to quantify the quality of materials from end-of-life buildings. The TMRs for the recycling of materials (urban ore TMR [UO-TMR]) from four types of Japanese buildings (Japanese traditional wooden structure [JTWS], wooden frame with walls structure [WFS], reinforced-concrete structure [RCS], and steel-based structure [SS]) have been estimated and the trade-off between the increase in function of recycled materials such as steel made from scrap and the additional inputs of energy and materials required to create the increase in function were evaluated. Steel made from scrap, aluminum made from scrap, and road material are assumed to be recycled from steel products, aluminum products, and aggregate and cement concrete in the buildings, respectively. Case study analyses were carried out to determine the effect of recycling only aboveground materials compared to recycling both aboveground and subsurface materials. Also, the effect of varying the recycling rate of wooden demolition debris is determined. The UO-TMRs of steel made from scrap range from 4.7 kilograms per kilogram (kg/kg) to 18.2 kg/kg. Urban tailings (unrecycled components) account for the greatest proportion of the UO-TMR of steel made from scrap, and the next largest contributor is the recycling process. In the case of aluminum made from scrap, the UO-TMRs range from 22 to 196 kg/kg, with the contribution of urban tailings generally dominant, and the second largest contributor being on-site demolition and shredding. The UO-TMRs of recycled road material range from 1.04 to 1.16 kg/kg and are similar for different recycling cases and types of buildings.Modern human activities greatly disturb substance flows in nature and senselessly discard massive amounts of precious resources to natural waste reservoirs; phosphorus (P) is a good example of this. In this article, substance flow analysis is employed to quantify and explore the temporal evolution of China's P consumption in main metabolic nodes from 1984 to 2008, and then the environmental implications for P flows into both surface waters and natural soil are investigated. Results show that the metabolic nodes of human life and animal husbandry have demanded increasingly more P inputs, while disseminating more and more P wastes, with the waste recycling ratios of these processes dropping, respectively, from 65.9% and 66.1% in 1984 to 50.7% and 40.6% by 2008. These change traits were closely related to national polices including the Household Contract Responsibility System and the Shopping Basket Program, as well as the policy vacuum existing between China's agricultural and environmental administration departments. To achieve high crop yield, increasingly more inorganic P fertilizers have been utilized in China, but their use efficiency has decreased by 46.3%. From 2003 to 2008, the total P load into surface waters was stabilized at about 900.0 kilotons (kt), while the total P load into natural soil increased by more than 3.8 times to 3,131.3 kt P in 2008. City life and the intensive breeding of crops are identified as the main targets for further pollution control and nutrient recycling in China. Some suggestions for achieving environmentally sound practices and resource sustainability in China are proposed at the end of this article.The biophysical features of the Argentinean economy are examined using a social metabolism approach. A material flow analysis (MFA) for this economy was conducted for the period 1970-2009. Results show that Argentina follows a resource-intensive and export-oriented development model with a persistent physical trade deficit. Also, Argentina's terms of trade (the average weight in tonnes of imports that can be purchased through the sale of 1 tonne of exports) show a declining trend in the period of study. Argentina's economy shows a pattern typical of countries whose economies are based primarily on exports. Comparisons between Argentina's metabolic profile and the metabolic profile of other countries in Latin America and of Australia and Spain show that the Argentinean economy presents the same pattern as other Latin American exporting economies, and its terms of trade are opposite to those of industrialized economies.Many existing methods for sustainable technical product design focus on environmental efficiency while lacking a framework for a holistic, sustainable design approach that includes combined social, technical, economic, and environmental aspects in the whole product life cycle, and that provides guidance on a technical product development level. This research proposes a framework for sustainable technical product design in the case of skis. We developed a ski under the Grown brand, benchmarked according to social, environmental, economic, and technical targets, following an initial sustainability assessment, and delivered the first environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) and the first social life cycle assessment (SLCA) of skis. The framework applies a virtual development process as a combination of ELCA to calculate the environmental footprint as carbon equivalents of all materials and processes and a technical computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) simulation and virtual optimization using parameter studies for the nearly prototype-free development of the benchmarked skis. The feedback loops between life cycle assessment (LCA) and virtual simulation led to the elimination of highly energy intensive materials, to the pioneering use of basalt fibers in skis, to the optimization of the use of natural materials using protective coatings from natural resins, and to the optimization of the production process. From an environmental perspective, a minimum 32% reduction in carbon equivalent emissions of materials in relation to other comparably performing skis has been achieved, as well as a pioneering step forward toward transparent communication of the environmental performance by the individual, comparable, and first published ski carbon footprint per volume unit.To assess the persistence and fate of volatile organic compounds in the troposphere, the rate constants for the reaction with ozone (k(O3)) are needed. As k(O3) values are only available for hundreds of compounds, and experimental determination of k(O3) is costly and time-consuming, it is of importance to develop predictive models on k(O3). In this study, a total of 379 log k(O3) values at different temperatures were used to develop and validate a model for the prediction of k(O3), based on quantum chemical descriptors, Dragon descriptors and structural fragments. Molecular descriptors were screened by stepwise multiple linear regression, and the model was constructed by partial least-squares regression. The cross validation coefficient Q(CUM)(2) of the model is 0.836, and the external validation coefficient Q(ext)(2) is 0.811, indicating that the model has high robustness and good predictive performance. The most significant descriptor explaining log k(O3) is the BELm2 descriptor with connectivity information weighted atomic masses. k(O3) increases with increasing BELm2, and decreases with increasing ionization potential. The applicability domain of the proposed model was visualized by the Williams plot. The developed model can be used to predict k(O3) at different temperatures for a wide range of organic chemicals, including alkenes, cycloalkenes, haloalkenes, alkynes, oxygen-containing compounds, nitrogen-containing compounds (except primary amines) and aromatic compounds. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Inventory data and characterization factors in life cycle assessment (LCA) contain considerable uncertainty. The most common method of parameter uncertainty propagation to the impact scores is Monte Carlo simulation, which remains a resource-intensive option-probably one of the reasons why uncertainty assessment is not a regular step in LCA. An analytical approach based on Taylor series expansion constitutes an effective means to overcome the drawbacks of the Monte Carlo method. This project aimed to test the approach on a real case study, and the resulting analytical uncertainty was compared with Monte Carlo results. The sensitivity and contribution of input parameters to output uncertainty were also analytically calculated. This article outlines an uncertainty analysis of the comparison between two case study scenarios. We conclude that the analytical method provides a good approximation of the output uncertainty. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis reveals that the uncertainty of the most sensitive input parameters was not initially considered in the case study. The uncertainty analysis of the comparison of two scenarios is a useful means of highlighting the effects of correlation on uncertainty calculation. This article shows the importance of the analytical method in uncertainty calculation, which could lead to a more complete uncertainty analysis in LCA practice.A survey of the tourism industry on the island of Hawaii (the Big Island) in the state of Hawaii in the United States was conducted to collect baseline information on major resources (energy, food, and water consumption) and waste generation from five tourism sectors: accommodations, food and beverages (restaurants), golf courses, tourism services (tours), and rental cars. The questionnaire was developed and 50 establishments from the target sectors participated in this survey. Resource consumption and waste generation were calculated by the number of establishments, employees, and visitors. Using these factors and island-wide statistics (the number of establishments, job counts, and visitors), this study estimated the current status of island-wide water, food, and energy consumption and waste generation by these five sectors of the tourism industry. The estimate shows that the tourism sectors surveyed for this study account for 21.7% of the island's total energy consumption, 44.7% of the island-wide water consumption, and 10.7% of the island-wide waste generation. Using a per guest emission factor (such as per employee, guest room, and seat) provided in this study, the owners and managers of tourism establishments can calculate a baseline for each resource input and output. This is essential information to improve the industry's efficiency and result in economic savings.We examine decoupling conditions of domestic extraction of materials, energy use, and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from gross domestic product (GDP) for two BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries (i.e., China and Russia) and two Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (Japan and the United States) during 2000-2007, using a pair of decoupling indicators for resource use (D-r) and waste emissions (D-e) and the decoupling chart, which can distinguish between absolute decoupling, relative decoupling, and non-decoupling. We find that (1) during 2000-2007, decoupling between environmental indicators and GDP was higher in the two OECD countries as compared with the two BRIC countries. The key reason is that these countries were in different development stages with different economic growth rates. (2) Changes in environmental policies can significantly influence the degree of decoupling in a country. (3) China, Japan, and the United States were more successful in decoupling SO2 emissions from GDP than in decoupling material and energy use from GDP. The main reason is that, unlike resource use, waste emissions (e. g., SO2 emissions) can be reduced by effective end-of-pipe treatment. (4) The decoupling indicator is different from the changing rate of resource use and waste emissions. If two countries have different GDP growth rates, even though they may have similar values using the decoupling indicator, they may show different rates of change for resource use and waste emissions.In this work, CuFe2O4 nanoparticles were synthesized by a chemical co-precipitation route. The Ag/CuFe2O4 catalyst was prepared based on the CuFe2O4 nanoparticles by the incipient wetness impregnation strategy, which showed excellent photoelectric property and catalytic activity. The structural properties of these samples were systematically investigated by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electronic microscopy (TEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) techniques. The photo-induced charge separation in the samples was demonstrated by surface photovoltage (SPV) measurement. The photocatalytic degradation of 4-CP by the Ag/CuFe2O4 and CuFe2O4 samples were comparatively studied under xenon lamp irradiation. The results indicate that the Ag/CuFe2O4 sample exhibited the higher efficiency for the degradation of 4-CP. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of the Eco-Industrial Estate (EIE) was introduced in Thailand in the year 2000. However, various factors have impeded such development. This study reviewed and discussed the development of ElEs in Thailand, and examined E1E strategies. The results of surveys of the surrounding communities at the Northern Region Industrial Estate (NRIE) revealed many challenges, especially in building effective stakeholder collaborations. Representatives of industry and government agencies were introduced to, and discussed, the Community-Based Eco-Industrial Estate (CBEIE) framework at the dedicated eco-forum. The aim of the CBEIE framework is to gain stakeholders' willingness to contribute to EIE development and to encourage the exchange of knowledge, as well as to build trust among stakeholders and to identify mutual benefits for the respective parties. The adoption of an iterative review process and mandatory scheduling of activities and initiatives would enable issues in the environment community industry realm to be addressed. Furthermore, the outcomes of the discussion at the eco-forum would feed into the master plan and contribute to the strategic development of ElEs in the NRIE. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Strategies for sustainably using biofuels must be thoroughly assessed at several levels. First, the use of biofuels must comply with sustainable development's main dimensions. Second, the use of biofuels must comply with sustainable transport's main dimensions. Third, gains from using biofuels strategies must compare favorably to gains from other sustainable transport strategies, such as altering transport patterns and reducing transport volume. Fourth, the gains must compare favorably to gains from improving conventional fossil-fuel-based advanced vehicles. Fifth, the gains must compare favorably to gains from using other alternative fuels. Sixth, the gains from using one generation of biofuels (e.g., first generation) must compare favorably to gains from using others (e. g., second through fourth generations). Performing scientifically sound and fair comparisons demands reliable theoretical perspectives and a well-established methodological basis. Industrial ecology theory and life cycle assessment methodology, respectively, are well-suited for these tasks.Background Source-separated food waste is increasingly being treated by means of hygienisation followed by anaerobic digestion. The fibrous digester residue (digestate) is a potential mushroom substrate, while heat from the biogas can provide steam for the cultivation process. Using bag experiments the present study explored digestate as a full substitute for chicken manure conventionally used in mushroom composts. Results After mixing, a rapid temperature development in the compost was stimulated by a small amount of chicken manure, as aerobic microbial seeding. Mechanical elimination of lumps was essential for full mycelial colonisation. Three straw digestate composts had Agaricus bisporus mushroom yields above 370gkg-1 substrate. The optimal compost water content was 600gkg-1 at inoculation, and high digestate content (up to 500gkg-1 by dry weight) did not affect yield for this species. High yields of A. subrufescens (200gkg-1) were related to drier composts of lower digestate content (more straw) and lower pH values at inoculation. Conclusion Digestate successfully substituted chicken manure in straw composts without affecting mushroom yields for both species. There were no clear differences between straw digestate and control composts in terms of mushroom dry matter, size, nitrogen or ash content. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical IndustryQuestions related to the design, study, and development of aspiration shelters at a localizing site where a conveyor belt is loaded with granular material in enterprises in different branches of industry (ore-mining, construction, metallurgical, coal, etc.) are considered. An improved design of a shelter with lesser overall dimensions by comparison with existing shelters is proposed as a result of an analysis of different designs of shelters. A computational experiment is conducted to obtain a qualitative estimate of the most efficient relationships between the structural elements of a shelter, the results of which serve as prerequisites for a subsequent industrial experiment.Statistics-based experimental design with response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize the operating conditions in decolorization of Orange II by horseradish peroxidase (HRP) in the presence of H2O2. Four critical factors (i.e., HRP concentration, H2O2 concentration, pH, and reaction time) were used for the optimization of enzymatic decolorization using RSM. The optimized conditions of the enzymatic degradation of Orange II were as follows: HRP concentration, 0.80 U/mL; H2O2 concentration, 0.70 mM; pH, 9.0; reaction time, 40 min. The maximal decolorization efficiency of 95.83% was achieved at the optimized conditions. The analysis of UVvis spectra and electrospray ionizationtime of flightmass spectrometry indicated that both decomposition and coupling reaction occurred in the enzymatic decolorization. (c) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 32: 294-301, 2013Many businesses today are striving to improve their environmental sustainability for a variety of reasons, ranging from consumer demand for "greener" products to potential cost-savings. For many business decision-makers who lack formal environmental training, the process of identifying facets of their organization that can be improved is unclear and challenging. Inspired by the fields of biomimicry, industrial ecology and organizational ecology, this paper draws on the inherent capacity to endure (CTE) of the natural world and recognizes that ecosystem function can be used as a technical advisor to guide business sustainability. We identified major attributes of ecosystems that both contribute to their CTE and can be easily translated into applications for the business world. Each of these attributes (fitness, functional redundancy, keystone species, waste and efficiency) and their applications are discussed at length. While further work is needed to evaluate their effectiveness and appropriateness for individual firms, we hope they can serve as a starting point for businesses seeking to improve their environmental sustainability.The sustainable utilisation of natural resources requires a new focus on optimal material cycles and material efficiency. Recycling and sustainable industrial development through improved process design are therefore key in this context. In this study, we assessed the potential barriers within the Finnish legal framework regarding the development of novel residue-based industrial symbiosis products. A review is also made of the UK based Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and Finnish MOTIVA initiatives both of which aim at promoting sustainable and efficient use of materials focussing on the examination of End of Waste (EoW) approaches and quality protocols that guide residue recovery. The research approach was based on both legal review and analysis of relevant policy instruments. The research material includes interviews of actors in both operations and environmental management in various process industry companies in Finland. An industrial symbiosis case study is presented based on previous research and close collaboration between the metals and forest products process industry. The main research question is "does EU policy and the legal framework at the national level create barriers to the development of innovative residue based symbiosis products despite the fact that achievement of the stated goals of 'recycling society' and 'sustainable industry' require sustainable use of natural resources and high level of material efficiency such as enhanced waste utilisation and prevention?" The results suggest that an innovative approach to environmental permitting and a comprehensive approach to recycling, encompassing new quality and environmental compliance criteria for certain recycled materials, should receive more focus in future decision-making. Material and energy efficiency, as well as life-cycle and systems thinking are all found to be essential elements of this new approach to inter-industrial residues streams. We find that the institutional status of one of our case study products in particular (a fertiliser product, based on multiple residue stream derived raw materials), should be clarified. This paper focuses on Finnish domestic framework issues. It is continuation of the article Watkins et al. (2013) Overcoming institutional barriers in the development of novel process industry residue based novel symbiosis products - case study at the EU level. However, it can be read as an individual research paper. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The nitrate- and Fe(III)-reducing bacterium Paracoccus versutus LYM was characterized in terms of its ability to perform Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction coupled with Fe(II)EDTA oxidation (NO-dependent Fe(II)EDTA oxidation, NDFO). It experienced a single anaerobic FeEDTA redox cycling through NDFO and dissimilatory Fe(III)EDTA reduction in FeEDTA culture. The increase in the Fe(II)EDTA concentration contributed to the ascending Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction rate. The amount of glucose controlled the rate and extent of Fe(II) oxidation during NDFO. Without glucose addition, Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction rate was at a rather slow rate even in presence of relatively sufficient Fe(II)EDTA. Unlike aqueous Fe2+ and solid-phase Fe(II), Fe(II)EDTA could prevent cells from encrustations. These findings suggested the occurrence of NDFO preferred being beneficial via a mixotrophic physiology in the presence of an organic cosubstrate to being out of consideration for metabolic strategy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A striking increase of the depth of giant petroleum discoveries in the past 15 years coincides with a shift to discoveries in subsalt plays that require more challenging exploration and drilling. Technological advances have facilitated these changes, but technological advances alone could not have induced these changes in petroleum exploration on a planet in which shallow and less challenging targets remained in abundance like that of previous decades. Instead, the trends toward greater discovery depths and more challenging plays suggest that most of the conventional petroleum accumulations of the kind that fueled the global economic system of the 1900s have already been found.This article presents a framework to evaluate emerging systems in life cycle assessment (LCA). Current LCA methods are effective for established systems; however, lack of data often inhibits robust analysis of future products or processes that may benefit the most from life cycle information. In many cases the life cycle inventory (LCI) of a system can change depending on its development pathway. Modeling emerging systems allows insights into probable trends and a greater understanding of the effect of future scenarios on LCA results. The proposed framework uses Bayesian probabilities to model technology adoption. The method presents a unique approach to modeling system evolution and can be used independently or within the context of an agent-based model (ABM). LCA can be made more robust and dynamic by using this framework to couple scenario modeling with life cycle data, analyzing the effect of decision-making patterns over time. Potential uses include examining the changing urban metabolism of growing cities, understanding the development of renewable energy technologies, identifying transformations in material flows over space and time, and forecasting industrial networks for developing products. A switchgrass-to-energy case demonstrates the approach.The iron and steel industry represents an important case for industrial ecology due to its ability to accept waste-derived inputs and due to the generation of useful by-products. With the objective of supporting environmentally conscious decisions regarding resource use and waste management, a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool for ironmaking was developed. The tool combines mass flow-based process models with an LCA database to assess the use of alternative resources in ironmaking, considering various process configurations. The article contains a description of the tool and a case study illustrating two areas of application. In the first part of the case study, an inventory analysis focused on the effects of feedstock recycling of waste plastics in ironmaking on heavy metal distribution is presented. It is demonstrated how uncertainties in input heavy metal concentrations and mass transfer can be incorporated into the model to predict the heavy metal loads in the process outputs. In the second part, the substitution of coke with a range of alternative reducing agents are assessed with regard to impact on climate change and fossil resource depletion. It was found that the use of sustainably sourced charcoal and waste-derived reducing agents is beneficial both with respect to the impact on climate change and fossil resource depletion at the respective calculated coke replacement ratio, whereas the results for heavy oil, coke oven gas, and raw tar indicate that trade-offs between impact categories occur. The results also highlight the importance of considering the avoided impacts of alternative treatments for waste-derived resources.A normalization step is widely exercised in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in order to better understand the relative significance of impact category results. In the normalization stage, normalization references (NRs) are the characterized results of a reference system, typically a national or regional economy. Normalization is widely practiced in LCA-based decision support and policy analysis (e.g., LCA cases in municipal solid waste treatment technologies, renewable energy technologies, and environmentally preferable purchasing programs, etc.). The compilation of NRs demands significant effort and time as well as an intimate knowledge of data availability and quality. Consequently only one set of published NRs is available for the United States, and has been adopted by various studies. In this study, the completeness of the previous NRs was evaluated and significant data gaps were identified. One of the reasons for the significant data gaps was that the toxic release inventory (TRI) data significantly underestimate the potential impact of toxic releases for some sectors. Also the previous NRs did not consider the soil emissions and nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) runoffs to water and chemical emissions to soils. Filling in these data gaps increased the magnitude of NRs for human health cancer, human health noncancer, ecotoxicity, and eutrophication significantly. Such significant changes can alter or even reverse the outcome of an LCA study. We applied the previous and updated NRs to conventional gasoline and corn ethanol LCAs. The results demonstrate that NRs play a decisive role in the interpretation of LCA results that use a normalization step.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of various end-of-life management options for construction and demolition (C&D) debris was conducted using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Municipal Solid Waste Decision Support Tool. A comparative LCA evaluated seven different management scenarios using the annual production of C&D debris in New Hampshire as the functional unit. Each scenario encompassed C&D debris transport, processing, separation, and recycling, as well as varying end-of-life management options for the C&D debris (e.g., combustion to generate electricity versus landfilling for the wood debris stream and recycling versus landfilling for the nonwood debris stream) and different bases for the electricity generation offsets (e.g., the northeastern U.S. power grid versus coal-fired power generation). A sensitivity analysis was also conducted by varying the energy content of the C&D wood debris and by examining the impact of basing the energy offsets on electricity generated from various fossil fuels. The results include impacts for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, criteria air pollutants, ancillary solid waste production, and organic and inorganic constituents in water emissions. Scenarios with nonwood C&D debris recycling coupled with combustion of C&D wood debris to generate electricity had lower impacts than other scenarios. The nonwood C&D debris recycling scenarios where C&D wood debris was landfilled resulted in less overall impact than the scenarios where all C&D debris was landfilled. The lowest impact scenario included nonwood C&D debris recycling with local combustion of the C&D wood debris to generate electricity, providing a net gain in energy production of more than 7 trillion British thermal units (BTU) per year and a 130,000 tons per year reduction in GHG emissions. The sensitivity analysis revealed that for energy consumption, the model is sensitive to the energy content of the C&D wood debris but insensitive to the basis for the energy offset, and the opposite is true for GHG emissions.China has the highest carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the world. In China, logistics accounts for a significant portion of the total energy use and CO2 emissions in business-to-customer (B2C) retailing. This study focuses on the environmental impacts of B2C delivery in China, focusing on the book retail industry. Mathematical models are proposed based on the practical operations of the e-commerce networked delivery (END) system and the sustainable networked delivery (SND) system. The energy consumption and CO2 emissions per book are then determined and compared for the two systems. Furthermore, we contrast the findings with those of similar studies conducted for other countries and provide explanations for the differences. The results show that (1) in general, in China, the SND system is better than the END system in terms of environmental impacts; (2) the END system in China generates fewer environmental impacts than those in the United States and the United Kingdom, while the SND system in China has greater environmental impacts than that in the United States; and (3) the wide use of vehicles such as electric bicycles that have low energy consumption rates contributes to the reduction of environmental impacts per book in both the END and SND systems in China. The limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also discussed.It is vital to find reasons for differences in the results of environmental input-output (EIO), physical input-output (PIO), and hybrid input-output (HIO) models for industrial and environmental policy analysis. Using EIO, PIO, and HIO models, China's industrial metabolism is calculated. Four reasons were found to account for differences in the results of analysis using EIO, PIO, and HIO models: the manner in which they deal with residential consumption, service sectors, and waste recycling, and the assumption of unique sector prices. The HIO model, which treats residential consumption as sectors of the intermediate delivery matrix, is preferred to the EIO and PIO models for analyzing industrial and environmental policies. Moreover, waste recycling in five sectorsagriculture; the manufacture of paper, printing, and articles for culture, education, and sports activities; the manufacture of nonmetallic mineral products; smelting and pressing of metals; and constructionshould be comprehensively considered when using the HIO model to study problems related to these five sectors. Improvements in the EIO, PIO, and HIO models and future work are also discussed.Resource productivity enhancement stands at the center of tackling issues on environmental pollution and resource scarcity. Identifying influential socioeconomic factors should be the first step in establishing and improving resource management policy. This study compares and analyzes data from multiple countries to construct a resource productivity simulation model. The socioeconomic factors and their characteristic patterns are discussed in detail. The results demonstrate that the major factors influencing resource productivity include income level, population density, economic structure, energy structure, and raw material trade. Among these factors, the three most important are income level, population density, and economic structure. The influencing patterns can be summarized as follows: (1) Resource productivity increases with increasing income levels. (2) Countries with high population density are inclined to demonstrate high resource productivity. (3) The economic structure shows a biphase influence on resource productivity, that is, during industrialization, decreased agricultural activity and increased industrial activity lead to higher resource productivity. On the other hand, after industrialization, decreasing industrial activity and an expanding service sector become the major impetus of resource productivity enhancement. (4) Raw material export demonstrates a negative effect on resource productivity. Countries that depend heavily on raw material export show a unique resource productivity evolution pattern. For these countries, relatively high resource productivity in low income phases and relatively low resource productivity in high income phases show only small increases in resource efficiency and economic growth. Finally, insights from the study are transformed into suggestions for sustainable resource management and resource productivity enhancement.Phosphorus (P) is a key factor in aquatic eutrophication, and P contamination has become a common issue worldwide. Many developing countries, including China, have made great efforts in the anti-P contamination battle. In this article we mainly discuss the P flow in Wuwei, a typical county in China with insufficient wastewater treatment, using the method of static substance flow analysis. We show that characterizing P metabolic pathways and flows at the county level can provide useful information about P pollution. Through complex calculations, we found that Wuwei County released 3,552 metric tons (t) of P into the local aquatic environment in 2008 and that its P load (3.35 kilograms P per capita per year [kg P/cap/yr] or 19.43 kilograms P per hectare per year [kg-P/ha/yr]) was greater than both the adjoining counties' and Chaohu City's average levels combined. The agricultural subsystem discharged the largest quantity of P (2,572 t) and had a relatively low production conversion efficiency (32%) and P waste recycling rate (36%). The rural residential and small-scale livestock breeding systems also accounted for substantial portions of P discharge. Anti-P contamination efforts should consequently focus on those three subsystems. Based on the results of this case study, we also discuss the feasibility of potential efforts to reduce P contamination.This study analyzes toxic chemical substance management in three U.S. manufacturing sectors from 1991 to 2008. Decomposition analysis applying the logarithmic mean Divisia index is used to analyze changes in toxic chemical substance emissions by the following five factors: cleaner production, end-of-pipe treatment, transfer for further management, mixing of intermediate materials, and production scale. Based on our results, the chemical manufacturing sector reduced toxic chemical substance emissions mainly via end-of-pipe treatment. In the meantime, transfer for further management contributed to the reduction of toxic chemical substance emissions in the metal fabrication industry. This occurred because the environmental business market expanded in the 1990s, and the infrastructure for the recycling of metal and other wastes became more efficient. Cleaner production is the main contributor to toxic chemical reduction in the electrical product industry. This implies that the electrical product industry is successful in developing a more environmentally friendly product design and production process.The focus of urban water system metabolism studies has, by and large, been restricted to what comes under the domain of the urban water utilities: water treatment and supply, and wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal. The material and energy flows both necessitated and facilitated by the supply of treated water to householdsthe water demand subsystemare by no means negligible. This article studies the key flows into households associated with water consumption and the environmental impacts related to the same for India as a whole. Electricity consumption in washing machines and water heaters contributes the most to almost all the 13 environmental impact categories considered. This is easily explained by the fossil fuel heaviness of the Indian mix (>60%). Soaps contribute the most to terrestrial eco-toxicity and malodorous air. In India, on a national scale, all the environmental impact categories deserve attention. The absolute consumption of electricity, soaps, and detergents, and the demand for home appliances will increase in the years to come.Spindle-shaped microstructure of alpha-Fe2O3 was successfully synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method. The alpha-Fe2O3/graphene oxide (GO) composites was prepared using a modified Hummers' strategy. The properties of the samples were systematically investigated by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectrophotometer, transmission electron microscope, atomic force microscope, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy (Raman) techniques. GO nanosheets act as supporting materials for anchoring the alpha-Fe2O3 particles. The average crystallite sizes of the alpha-Fe2O3 and alpha-Fe2O3/GO samples are ca. 27 and 24 nm, respectively. The possible growth of alpha-Fe2O3 onto GO layers led to a higher absorbance capacity for visible light by alpha-Fe2O3/GO than alpha-Fe2O3 composite. The photocatalytic degradation of toluene over the alpha-Fe2O3 and alpha-Fe2O3/GO samples under xenon-lamp irradiation was comparatively studied by in situ FTIR technique. The results indicate that the alpha-Fe2O3/GO sample synthesized exhibited a higher capacity for the degradation of toluene. The composite of alpha-Fe2O3/GO could be promisingly applied in photo-driven air purification.An important and practical pattern of industrial symbiosis is rapidly developing: eco-industrial parks. In this study, we used social network analysis to study the network connectedness (i.e., the proportion of the theoretical number of connections that had been achieved) and related attributes of these hybrid ecological and industrial symbiotic systems. This approach provided insights into details of the network's interior and analyzed the overall degree of connectedness and the relationships among the nodes within the network. We then characterized the structural attributes of the network and subnetwork nodes at two levels (core and periphery), thereby providing insights into the operational problems within each eco-industrial park. We chose ten typical ecoindustrial parks in China and around the world and compared the degree of network connectedness of these systems that resulted from exchanges of products, byproducts, and wastes. By analyzing the density and nodal degree, we determined the relative power and status of the nodes in these networks, as well as other structural attributes such as the core-periphery structure and the degree of sub-network connectedness. The results reveal the operational problems created by the structure of the industrial networks and provide a basis for improving the degree of completeness, thereby increasing their potential for sustainable development and enriching the methods available for the study of industrial symbiosis.In this work, the intermolecular dihydrogen and hydrogen bonding interactions in electronically excited states of a 2-pyridone (2PY)-borane-trimethylamine (BTMA) cluster have been theoretically studied using time-dependent density functional theory method. Our computational results show that the S-1 state of 2PY-BTMA cluster is a locally excited state, in which only 2PY moiety is electronically excited. The theoretical infrared (IR) spectra of the 2PY-BTMA cluster demonstrate that the N-H stretching vibrational mode is slightly blue-shifted upon the electronic excitation. Moreover, the computed IR spectrum of the 2PY-BTMA cluster exhibits no carbonyl character due to the extension of the C=O bond length in the S-1 state. However, the N-H bond is shortened slightly upon photoexcitation. At the same time, the H center dot center dot center dot H and H center dot center dot center dot O distances are obviously lengthened in the S-1 sate by comparison with those in ground state. In addition, the electron density of the carbonyl oxygen is diminished due to the electronic excitation. Consequently, the proton acceptor ability of carbonyl oxygen is decreased in the electronic excited state. As a result, it is demonstrated that the intermolecular dihydrogen and hydrogen bonds are significantly weakened in the electronically excited state.Agroecology and industrial ecology can be viewed as complementary means for reducing the environmental footprint of animal farming systems: agroecology mainly by stimulating natural processes to reduce inputs, and industrial ecology by closing system loops, thereby reducing demand for raw materials, lowering pollution and saving on waste treatment. Surprisingly, animal farming systems have so far been ignored in most agroecological thinking. On the basis of a study by Altieri, who identified the key ecological processes to be optimized, we propose five principles for the design of sustainable animal production systems: (i) adopting management practices aiming to improve animal health, (ii) decreasing the inputs needed for production, (iii) decreasing pollution by optimizing the metabolic functioning of farming systems, (iv) enhancing diversity within animal production systems to strengthen their resilience and (v) preserving biological diversity in agroecosystems by adapting management practices. We then discuss how these different principles combine to generate environmental, social and economic performance in six animal production systems (ruminants, pigs, rabbits and aquaculture) covering a long gradient of intensification. The two principles concerning economy of inputs and reduction of pollution emerged in nearly all the case studies, a finding that can be explained by the economic and regulatory constraints affecting animal production. Integrated management of animal health was seldom mobilized, as alternatives to chemical drugs have only recently been investigated, and the results are not yet transferable to farming practices. A number of ecological functions and ecosystem services (recycling of nutrients, forage yield, pollination, resistance to weed invasion, etc.) are closely linked to biodiversity, and their persistence depends largely on maintaining biological diversity in agroecosystems. We conclude that the development of such ecology-based alternatives for animal production implies changes in the positions adopted by technicians and extension services, researchers and policymakers. Animal production systems should not only be considered holistically, but also in the diversity of their local and regional conditions. The ability of farmers to make their own decisions on the basis of the close monitoring of system performance is most important to ensure system sustainability.Consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) has emerged as a tool for estimating environmental impacts of changes in product systems that go beyond physical relationships accounted for in attributional LCA (ALCA). This study builds on recent efforts to use more complex economic models for policy-based CLCA. A partial market equilibrium (PME) model, called the U.S. Forest Products Module (USFPM), is combined with LCA to analyze an energy demand scenario in which wood use increases 400 million cubic meters in the United States for ethanol production. Several types of indirect economic and environmental impacts are identified and estimated using USFPM-LCA. A key finding is that if wood use for biofuels increases to high levels and mill residue is used for biofuels and replaced by natural gas for heat and power in forest products mills, then the increased greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas could offset reductions obtained by substituting biofuels for gasoline. Such high levels of biofuel demand, however, appear to have relatively low environmental impacts across related forest product sectors.The supply chains found in modern manufacturing are often complex and long. The resulting opacity poses a significant barrier to the measurement and minimization of energy consumption and therefore to the implementation of sustainable manufacturing. The current article investigates whether the adoption of additive manufacturing (AM) technology can be used to reach transparency in terms of energy and financial inputs to manufacturing operations. AM refers to the use of a group of electricity-driven technologies capable of combining materials to manufacture geometrically complex products in a single digitally controlled process step, entirely without molds, dies, or other tooling. The single-step nature affords full measurability with respect to process energy inputs and production costs. However, the parallel character of AM (allowing the contemporaneous production of multiple parts) poses previously unconsidered problems in the estimation of manufacturing resource consumption. This research discusses the implementation of a tool for the estimation of process energy flows and costs occurring in the AM technology variant direct metal laser sintering. It is demonstrated that accurate predictions can be made for the production of a basket of sample parts. Further, it is shown that, unlike conventional processes, the quantity and variety of parts demanded and the resulting ability to fully utilize the available machine capacity have an impact on process efficiency. It is also demonstrated that cost minimization in additive manufacturing may lead to the minimization of process energy consumption, thereby motivating sustainability improvements.The concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the urban air of Dalian, China was monitored from November 2009 to October 2010 with an active high-volume sampler and a semipermeable membrane device (SPMD) passive sampler. The samples were analyzed for the sixteen US EPA priority monitoring PAHs using GC/MS. The concentrations of Sigma PAHs in particle and gas phases ranged from 3.290.6ng m(3) and 40.8155ng m(3), respectively. The PAHs of 34 rings covered 89.2% of the total concentrations (gas phase + particle phase). Furthermore, the gas-particle partitioning phenomena and the results measured from the field versus those predicted by the Junge-Pankow adsorption model, octanol-air partitioning coefficient (K-OA) based absorption model, the absorption into the organic matter plus the adsorption to the soot carbon model using the soot-air partitioning coefficients (K-SA) were discussed in this article. The dominant contributors of PAHs in the gas phase of active samples and SPMD passive samples were similar. The SPMD mainly sequestrated gas phase PAHs. The linear correlation coefficients between C-SPMD and Cair-gas were 0.7316 and 0.7403; C-SPMD and Cair-total were 0.7397 and 0.7409 at Dalian Jiaotong University sampling site and Dalian Meteorological Observatory sampling site, respectively. The quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) of the sampling rate of SPMD for PAHs was studied, which can be predicted by the corecore repulsion energy and the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital of PAH molecules.The mechanism of selective catalytic reduction of NO by propene (C3H6-SCR) over, the Cu/Ti0.7Zr0.3O2 catalyst was studied by in situ Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Especially, the formation and transformation of cyanide (-CN species) during the reaction was discussed. According to FTIR results, the excellent performance of the Cu/Ti0.7Zr0.3O2 catalyst in C3H6-SCR was attributed to the coexistence of two parallel pathways to produce N-2 by the isocyanate (-NCO species) and -CN species intermediates. Besides the hydrolysis of the -NCO species, the reaction between the -CN species and nitrates and/or NO2 was also a crucial pathway for the NO reduction. On the basis of the DFT calculations on the energy of possible intermediates and transition states at the B3LYP/6-311 G (d, p) level of theory, the reaction channel of -CN species in the SCR reaction was identified and the role of -CN species as a crucial intermediate to generate N-2 was also confirmed from the thermodynamics view. In combination of the FTIR and DFT results, a modified mechanism with two parallel pathways to produce N-2 by the reaction of -NCO and -CN species over the Cu/Ti0.7Zr0.3O2 catalyst was proposed.A series of flower-like hydrotalcite-based CuNiAl mixed oxides with high surface area were synthesized by urea hydrolysis approach, and employed for SO2 abatement. These catalysts were investigated in detail by means of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS), nitrogen adsorption, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis DRS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and H-2 temperature-programmed reduction (H-2-TPR). The results demonstrated that the introduction of copper into NiAlO catalyst could allow substitution of Cu2+ into the NiO lattice to form Cu-Ni solid solutions and induce the appearance of Cu-O pairs. The synergistic effects between Cu and Ni species easily promoted the reduction of the CuNiAlO catalysts and produced more lattice oxygen and then contributed the increasing of catalytic activity for SO2 abatement. Therefore, the CuNiAlO catalysts showed higher catalytic ability than the pristine NiAlO catalyst toward SO2 removal. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work presents an analysis of the different modes of the Turkish transportation sector along the guidelines of the Extended Exergy Accounting (EEA) method. The results refer to year 2006 because that was the most complete and sufficiently disaggregated database available. The evaluation of the transportation sector leads to the calculation of its extended exergetic efficiency (EEA(eff)) and requires the inclusion of all commercial and private transportation services (passengers and goods) as well as of all services directly related to transportation (post, cargo, pipeline transport, etc.). The environmental remediation costs (EEEnv) of sectoral solid waste and gas emissions (direct and indirect) are obtained in accordance with the original calculation procedure, without recurring to the conversion of monetary into exergetic costs. The resulting EEAeff of the sector is 0.36, which is rather low (in the EE sense), because of the sector's largely unsustainable structure: fossil-fuelled road transportation widely prevails, which not only destroys a very high percentage of the incoming exergy, but is also affected by quite large CO2-equivalent emissions that demand for a high EEEnv. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that requires manufacturers to finance the costs of recycling or safely disposing of products consumers no longer want. This article describes the evolution of EPR policies in the United States, focusing on the role of states as policy actors. For their part, federal lawmakers have not embraced EPR policies except to remove some barriers to state-level initiatives. In the two-decade period from 1991 to 2011, U.S. states enacted more than 70 EPR laws. In addition, manufacturers have implemented voluntary programs to collect and recycle products, but those efforts have proven largely ineffective in capturing significant quantities of waste products. With the help of new coalitions of diverse interest groups, recently states have renewed efforts to establish effective EPR programs, enacting 40 laws in the period 20082011. Several state initiatives suggest a more promising future for EPR.Under the European Union (EU) Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment (WEEE) Directive, producers are responsible for financing the recycling of their products at end of life. A key intention of such extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation is to provide economic incentives for producers to develop products that are easier to treat and recycle at end of life. Recent research has shown, however, that the implementation of EPR for WEEE has so far failed in this respect. Current WEEE systems calculate their prices according to simple mass-based allocation of costs to producers, based on broad collection categories containing a mixture of different product types and brands. This article outlines two alternative approaches, which instead calculate charges for products sold by producers by classifying them according to their eventual end-of-life treatment requirements and cost. Worked examples indicate that these methods provide both effective and efficient frameworks for financing WEEE, potentially delivering financial incentives to producers substantial enough to affect their potential profitability and, as a likely consequence, the decisions relating to the design of their products. In particular they fulfill three important criteria required by the WEEE Directive: they can financially reward improved design, allocate costs of historic waste proportionately (on the basis of tonnes of new products sold), and provide sufficient financial guarantees against future waste costs and liabilities. They are also relatively practical for implementation because they are based solely on cost allocation and financing. Further research and investigation would be worthwhile to test and verify this approach using real-world data and under various scenarios.Regulatory measures that hold producers accountable for their products at end of life are increasingly common. Some of these measures aim at generating incentives for producers to design products that will be easier and cheaper to recover at the postconsumer stage. However, the allocation of recovery costs to individual producers, which can facilitate realization of the goals of these policies, is hindered by the practical barrier of identification and/or sorting of the products in the waste stream. Technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID) can be used for brand or model recognition in order to overcome this obstacle. This article assesses the read rate of RFID technology (i.e., the number of successful retrievals of RFID tag data [reads] in a given sample of tagged products) and the potential role of RFID tags in the management of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) at current levels of technical development. We present the results of RFID trials conducted at a civic amenity site in the city of Limerick, Ireland. The experiment was performed for fixed distances up to 2 meters on different material substrates. In the case of white goods (i.e., large household appliances), a 100% read rate was achieved using an RFID handheld reader. High read rates were also achieved for mixed WEEE. For a handheld scan of a steel cage containing mixed WEEE, read rates varied from 50% to 73% depending on the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) metal mount tag employed and the relative positioning of the tags within the cage. These results confirm that from a technical standpoint, RFID can achieve much greater brand or model identification than has been considered feasible up to now, and thus has a role to play in creating a system that allocates recovery costs to individual producers.Business-to-business (B2B) electronics account for a significant volume of the electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) put on the market. Very little B2B waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is reported as collected in the European Union (EU) in compliance with the WEEE Directive, which uses the policy principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR) to ensure that WEEE is managed correctly. This presents a barrier to parties looking for access to the waste. Company practice dictates the channels into which B2B WEEE flows following primary use. This article presents a study that engaged with company actors directly to get a better understanding of business information technology (IT) EEE asset management. Data were collected to determine the barriers current practice could present to the collection of B2B IT EEE at end of life and the implications of these for the development of policies and strategies for EPR. A questionnaire was developed and data were gathered from organizations in three EU countriesthe United Kingdom, Germany, and Francestratified by size. Some notable findings were that there are several routes by which end-of-life B2B WEEE can flow. The recycling and refurbishment of B2B IT units at end of use was shown to be commonplace, but it is likely that these units enter streams where they are not reported. The actors disposing of their units did not have information on the management or disposition of these streams. It is concluded that to achieve the goals of EPR for B2B IT WEEE, the networks and the operational practices of these streams need to be better understood when developing strategies and policies.Lax legislation and increasing demand for electronics are driving relentless growth in electronic waste (e-waste) in the developing world. To reduce the damage caused by e-waste and recover value from end-of-life (EoL) electronics, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have created, over the past decades, programs to divert e-waste from landfills to recycling and reuse. Although the subject of intense debate, little is known about such initiatives in terms of levels of participation by OEMs or the extent to which they have succeeded in reducing e-waste in developing economies. To broaden our understanding of these issues, we investigate take-back initiatives in the thriving market of personal computers (i.e., desktop and laptop computers) in Brazil. Using a multimethod approach (electronic archival data collection and semistructured interviews with manufacturers), we find evidence that large multinational manufacturers are at the forefront of take-back programs. However, these initiatives in many ways lag behind those implemented in the United States, a more developed market as far as product take-back is concerned. We find the main reasons for the low levels of participation by OEMs in take-back programs to be high collection costs, low residual values, and lax, unclear, and conflicting legislation. Moreover, we propose new avenues of research, in light of our scant knowledge of country-specific, company-specific, and product-specific determinants that moderate participation.This article analyzes the policy choices and programmatic elements of extended producer responsibility (EPR) as implemented in the United States and Canada. The article traces the historical development of EPR in each country and defines common features of EPR in each nation. The U.S. states and the Canadian provinces have assumed the primary role, rather than the federal governments, for enacting producer responsibility requirements in their respective countries. However, the paths taken demonstrate several fundamental differences, including the prevalence of individual versus collective responsibility and the financing mechanisms implemented for EPR. Given the deepening experience with EPR and the breadth of its application to a widening array of products in the United States, the Canadian model for EPR is starting to receive more examination from policy makers in the United States, indicating that the policy and programmatic differences between the two nations may eventually be narrowing. The comparative policy analysis is illustrated through the lens of EPR regulatory efforts for waste electronics, with particular profiles of the programs in the State of Minnesota and Province of Ontario. Both approaches broadly reflect many of the policy considerations and governance and programmatic themes that dominate EPR programs in each country. Finally, the article offers recommendations for collaborative work between the United States and Canada to explore consistency between programs and other complementary strategies to support producer responsibility activities.The goal of this article is to contribute to the understanding of how the multiple, and sometimes conflicting, stakeholder perspectives and prevailing conditions (economic, geographic, etc.) in the implementation locality shape extended producer responsibility (EPR) on the ground. We provide an in-depth examination of the implementation dimension of EPR in a specific case study by examining concrete activities at the operational front of the collection and recycling system, and probing the varying stakeholder preferences that have driven a specific system to its status quo. To this end, we conduct a detailed case study of the Washington State EPR implementation for electronic waste. We provide an overview of various stakeholder perspectives and their implications for the attainment of EPR policy objectives in practice. These findings shed light on the intrinsic complexity of EPR implementation. We conclude with recommendations on how to achieve effective and efficient EPR implementation, including improving design incentives, incorporating reuse and refurbishing, expanding product scope, managing downstream material flows, and promoting operational efficiency via fair cost allocation design.Extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations are now in effect in 27 European Union member states and are applicable to up to 100 million tonnes of waste packaging, batteries, automobiles, and electrical and electronic products annually. This article investigates the implementation of EPR through a case study of European Recycling Platform (ERP) UK Ltd., the UK arm of one of the largest producer responsibility organizations (PROs) in Europe, recycling more than 1.5 million tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment to date. Previous research is extremely limited on the detailed operations of PROs. This case is presented as an example illustrating typical operational challenges PROs face in implementing EPR, such as how PROs gain an understanding of the waste management infrastructure and legislation in each country, collect sufficient volumes of waste using cost-effective arrangements, and maintain uninterrupted collection, treatment, and recycling services. The case study provides new insights and context on the practical implementation of EPR regulations relevant for both policy makers and researchers.To evaluate whether replacing an existing product with a new, more energy-efficient product is environmentally preferable, we used an assessment approach based on life cycle assessment. With this approach, consumers can assess various replacement products, including products of different sizes or environmental performance in addition to consideration of various conditions of product use. The approach utilizes a diagram in which replacement conditions of products are compared with iso-environmental-load lines to determine the appropriateness of replacement. The approach also allows the assessment of energy and resource consumption and environmental impacts not only during the use stage, but also at other product stages. Iso-environmental-load lines to assess delayed replacement were also examined and derived. We then applied the approach in a case study of energy consumption by replacing three types of electric home appliances in Japan: TVs, air conditioners, and refrigerators. The results of assessment showed that replacing refrigerators after 810 years of use was preferable even if the replacement product was larger. The appropriateness of replacing TVs and air conditioners based on energy consumption depended on the replacement product and on the duration of daily use, and in several cases, delayed replacement was preferable. Replacement of air conditioners after 810 years of use was not preferable if the consumer already owned the most energy-efficient product at the time of the purchase. The necessity of accounting for a variety of available replacement products was confirmed.Technology transition can have significant implications on the evolution of environmental impact potential of disposed electronics over time. Considering technology transition, we quantify the temporal behavior of ecological and human health impact potential from select heavy metals in electronic waste (e-waste). The case study analyzes product substitution effects in two electronic cohorts from the U.S. market: (1) computers (laptops substituting for desktops) and (2) televisions (flat-panel liquid crystal displays [LCDs] and plasma displays substituting for cathode-ray tubes [CRTs]). Quantities of end-of-life (EoL) units to year 2030 are forecasted by the unique combination of dynamic material flow analysis, logistic trend analysis, and product lifespan calibration methods. Metal content from EoL units are assessed via a pathway and effect model using USETox characterization factors to determine the toxicity potential attributed to heavy metal releases into different media (e.g., air, water, and soil) as an indicator of environmental burden. Results show high impact materials such as lead, nickel, and zinc cause changes in human health toxicity potential and copper causes changes in ecological toxicity potential. Effects of dematerialization, such as reduced metal content in laptops over desktops, provide some positive benefits in toxicity potential per product. However, from a market perspective, emerging e-waste quantities created by increasing per capita penetration rates of electronics and increasing population will offset gains in environmental performance at the product level. The resulting analysis provides guidance on the timing expected for emerging EoL units and an indication of high impact potential materials requiring pollution prevention as product substitution occurs.In this study the flows of chemical risk information for paint as a consumer product were investigated from a product chain perspective. The main method of research involved semi-structured interviews with Swedish manufacturers of paint and chemicals. In addition, retailers and consumers were interviewed. The flows of chemical risk information between actors within (e.g., manufacturers, retailers, and consumers) and outside (e.g., industry associations and regulators) the paint product chain are described. Because the European chemical legislation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of CHemicals) plays a large role in the management of chemical risk information at companies, some consequences of REACH on actors in the paint product chain are described. Examples of such consequences are that importing of chemicals from nonEuropean Union (EU) countries may be discouraged and that some low-volume chemicals may no longer be produced. However, manufacturers do not yet see these consequences as impediments to innovation. The results of this work show that chemical risk information is most comprehensive during the manufacturing steps of the product chain. This is due not only to tradition and industry initiatives, but also to REACH and other legislation. The results also illustrate the need for evaluation of how chemical risk information is used in different contexts and the importance of directing the right information at the right target group. Following legislative development, more specialized information is required in the safety data sheet (SDS), and because of this many manufacturers find it necessary to create simplified safety sheets that make the most pertinent safety and hazard information easily accessible to individuals that handle the chemicals in their factories. The study found that in creating the simplified safety sheets, the content and use of chemical risk information is evaluated and adjusted for presentation to this particular target group. It is evident that the Swedish Paint and Printing Ink Makers Association plays an important role in the interpretation of legal requirements and even in agreements for providing information that exceeds legal requirements.The cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept has emerged as an alternative to the more established eco-efficiency concept based on life cycle assessment (LCA). The two concepts differ fundamentally in that eco-efficiency aims to reduce the negative environmental footprint of human activities while C2C attempts to increase the positive footprint. This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each concept and suggests how they may learn from each other. The eco-efficiency concept involves no long-term vision or strategy, the links between resource consumption and waste emissions are not well related to the sustainability state, and increases in eco-efficiency may lead to increases in consumption levels and hence overall impact. The C2C concept's disregard for energy efficiency means that many current C2C products will likely not perform well in an LCA. Inherent drawbacks are restrictions on the development of new materials posed by the ambition of continuous loop recycling, the perception that human interactions with nature can benefit all parts of all ecosystems, and the hinted compatibility with continued economic growth. Practitioners of eco-efficiency can benefit from the visions of C2C to avoid a narrow-minded focus on the eco-efficiency of products that are inherently unsustainable. Moreover, resource efficiency and positive environmental effects could be included more strongly in LCA. Practitioners of C2C on the other hand should recognize the value of LCA in addressing trade-offs between resource conservation and energy use. Also, when designing a healthy emission it should be recognized that it will often have an adverse effect on parts of the exposed ecosystem.Systems integration (the combination of previously independent systems) is one of the solutions proposed by industrial ecology scholars to tackle environmental problems. Systems integration has not yet been analysed as an innovation process, which could bring additional insights to its challenges and barriers. This paper is a first attempt to fill this gap. Using a conceptual model based on actor-network theory and insights from structuration theory, we analyse the case of developing sewage gas for transport in Stockholm. Results show that the process was very dynamic and that the network grew in such a way that it became risky for actors not to join it. Moreover, pre-existing socio-technical rules had to be re-negotiated during the process. The process through which types of pre-existing rules were modified was unique for each pre-existing network that was involved. Besides, in one instance systems integration required the development of a bridging network allowing interaction between initially independent networks for sewage and private transport. Finally, results also show that systems integration requires a "superstructure" i.e. an organisation that can coordinate activities and take important risks to see to it that systems integration gets realised. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extended producer responsibility (EPR), which assigns significant responsibility to producers to take back their end-of-life products to create incentives for redesign of products with lower life cycle environmental impacts, has come to a crossroad facing a trade-off between the original innovation-oriented regime design and the cost-efficiency challenges in practice. This is particularly true in its implementation in non-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries as they are trying to transplant the "best practices" from OECD countries, for there is increasing skepticism as to whether EPR is suitable for developing countries at all. As an important producer of electronic products and destination of electronic waste (e-waste) flows in the world, China has been expected to play a vital role in the evolution of global governance based on the idea of EPR, either to create new ways for producers to perform their end-of-life strategies, or to reshape the mode of production and consumption with its fast-growing market. However, the establishment of EPR in China has been long and full of difficulties. This article reviews the status and trends in the establishment of an EPR system for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) management in China. We use the framework of a multilevel perspective of transition theory in our analysis to characterize the complex interactions among various agents in the evolution of the Chinese system from initial innovation-oriented design to the current efficiency-oriented version. An ongoing research framework for evaluation of the EPR program in China is outlined as the research agenda in coming years.Material efficiency-using less of a material to make a product or supply a service-is gaining attention as a means for accomplishing important environmental goals. The ultimate goal of material efficiency is not to use less physical material but to reduce the impacts associated with its use. This article examines the concept and definition of material efficiency and argues that for it to be an effective strategy it must confront the challenges of operating in a multi-material world, providing guidance when materials are used together and when they compete. A series of conceptions of material efficiency are described, starting with mass-based formulations and expanding to consider multiple resources in the supply chain of a single material, and then to multiple resources in the supply chains of multiple materials used together, and further to multiple environmental impacts. The conception of material efficiency is further broadened by considering material choice, exploring the technical and economic effects both of using less material and of materials competition. Finally, this entire materials-based techno-economic system is considered with respect to the impact of complex policies and political forces. The overall goal here is to show how the concept of material efficiency when faced with more expansive-and yet directly relevant-definitional boundaries is forced to confront analytical challenges that are both familiar and difficult in life cycle assessment and product-based approaches.'Cluster thinking' is coined in this article as a mindset and as an approach to tackle sustainability on an industrial park level. At present, single chemical plants are still focusing too much on individual technological advancements for becoming more sustainable, while, if situated in a cluster, chemical plants require foremost a holistic collaborative approach and the optimal use of existing technology on a cluster level, to become sustainable and to maintain being sustainable. Single plants working together to implement joint solutions, technological as well as non-technological, truly leads to a sustainable chemical industry.Photolysis of some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on soil surfaces may play an important role in the fate of PAHs in the environment. Photolysis of PAHs on soil surfaces under UV irradiation was investigated. The effects of oxygen, irradiation intensity and soil moisture on the degradation of the three PAHs were observed. The results showed that oxygen, soil moisture and irradiation intensity enhanced the photolysis of the three PAHs on soil surfaces. The degradation of the three PAHs on soil surfaces is related to their absorption spectra and the oxidation-half-wave potential. The photolysis of PAHs on soil surfaces in the presence of oxygen followed pseudo first-order kinetics. The photolysis half-lives ranged from 37.87 days for benzo[a]pyrene to 58.73 days for phenanthrene. The results indicate that photolysis is a successful way to remediate PAHs-contaminated soils.Service industries continue to be to be a driving force economically, both within the US and globally, yet their environmental impacts still tend to be overlooked. This article presents a hybrid life cycle assessment case study to assess and quantify the life cycle impacts of an engineering service firm. The data for the hybrid LCA of the firm's activities and operations was collected for one fiscal year, from January 2009 to December 2009. Data collection methods include an energy audit, personnel survey, and assessment of waste management practices. The results of the case study show that the impacts of employee travel and transportation as well as the building premises are the major contributors to the environmental impact of a service industry (40% and 24% of GWP, respectively) and should be the areas targeted for improvements to reduce life-cycle impacts of similar service firms. The study also reveals that in order to make specific targeted reductions to a firm's life-cycle impacts, more in depth evaluation of certain activities, such as workstation energy consumption, can be essential to identifying unnecessary wastes of resources. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Deliberative environmental policy links the formal institutional setting within which environmental policy takes place and the informal ways of thinking and doing by those whose daily work the policy influences. Despite an extensive theoretically oriented literature on policy deliberation, little methodological advice exists relating deliberation to the two domains it aims to link, i.e., the formal and informal institutions. In this paper, we develop a methodology for environmental policy deliberation that is grounded in institutional theory and theories explaining the cognitive practices of individuals in action situations. The methodology has three stages. First, we outline the problem setting on the basis of the stakeholders' mental model analysis. Second, more specific research problems and proposed solutions are formulated collaboratively with researchers from different fields. Third, the hypotheses are tested and challenged in a workshop with the interviewed stakeholders and re-formulated into final institutional recommendations. We illustrate the success of the procedure with a case study on a regional industrial complex located in the Bothnian Arc of northern Finland. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the present work we present a simple approach for coupling tungsten oxide with carbon nanowalls. The two-dimensional carbon nanowalls with open boundaries were grown using plasma enhanced hot filament chemical vapor deposition, and the subsequent tungsten oxide growth was performed in the same equipment by direct heating of a tungsten filament. The tungsten oxide coating is found to have uniform morphology with a crystalline structure of monoclinic tungsten trioxide. Surface photoelectric voltage measurements show that this product has photoresponse properties. The method of synthesis described here provides an operable route to the production of two-dimensional tungsten oxide nanocomposites. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Results are provided for a study of detachment with impact action for dust deposited in an electric corona discharge field on electric filter electrode plates. It is established that a significant factor determining the level of acceleration required for dust detachment from electrodes is the weight of dust accumulated on electrodes before shaking. With an increase in dust weight on electrodes, the level of acceleration required may be reduced. It is shown that consideration of the mutual distribution of captured dust before shaking and the level of acceleration over an electric filter electrode surface makes it possible to reduce the amount of impact action. The applicability of the method proposed for evaluating the level of acceleration on electric filter electrode plates by means of a magnet is demonstrated. This is sufficient for analyzing the accuracy and reliability of results obtained. In order to increase the life of electric filter electrode structures, it is recommended to perform impact action in an area of least dust accumulation, and also to calculate the minimum impact action and time of application taking account of the optimum amount of dust before shaking and distribution of this amount with time over an electrode.In rapidly growing urban areas of developing countries, infrastructure has not been able to cope with population growth. Informal water businesses fulfill unmet water supply needs, yet little is understood about this sector. This paper presents data gathered from quantitative interviews with informal water business operators (n = 260) in Kisumu, Kenya, collected during the dry season. Sales volume, location, resource use, and cost were analyzed by using material flow accounting and spatial analysis tools. Estimates show that over 76% of the city's water is consumed by less than 10% of the population who have water piped into their dwellings. The remainder of the population relies on a combination of water sources, including water purchased directly from kiosks (1.5 million m(3) per day) and delivered by hand-drawn water-carts (0.75 million m(3) per day). Energy audits were performed to compare energy use among various water sources in the city. Water delivery by truck is the highest per cubic meter energy demand (35 MJ/m(3)), while the city's tap water has the highest energy use overall (21,000 MJ/day). We group kiosks by neighborhood and compare sales volume and cost with neighborhood-level population data. Contrary to popular belief, we do not find evidence of price gouging; the lowest prices are charged in the highest-demand low-income area. We also see that the informal sector is sensitive to demand, as the number of private boreholes that serve as community water collection points are much larger where demand is greatest. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article presents the case of a company in the State of Rio de Janeiro that produces plastic lumber from waste generated in other businesses. Aims to present the form of insertion of this company in the production chains of the others, now provide ingredients for plastic lumber. The extension of the life cycle of plastics and natural fibers, which would otherwise constitute waste, reducing the need for extraction and consumption of natural wood, as well as consequences of the use of, for example, deforestation and possible improper combustion, avoided by the use of plastic lumber, suggest that, based on the logic of closed-loop material on the concept of industrial Ecology, can develop sustainable production processes in industrial ecosystem investigated.This is the second part of a two-part paper that integrates economic and industrial ecology methods to estimate the indirect rebound effect from residential energy efficiency investments. We apply the model developed in part one to simulate the indirect rebound, given an estimate of the direct rebound, using a 2002 environmentally-extended input-output model and the 2004 Consumer Expenditure Survey (in 2002$) for the U.S. We find an indirect rebound of 5-15% in primary energy and CO(2)e emissions, assuming a 10% direct rebound, depending on the fuel saved with efficiency and household income. The indirect rebound can be as high as 30-40% in NOx or SO2 emissions for efficiency in natural gas services. The substitution effect modeled in part one is small in most cases, and we discuss appropriate applications for proportional or income elasticity spending assumptions. Large indirect rebound effects occur as the U.S. electric grid becomes less-carbon intensive, in households with large transportation demands, or as energy prices increase. Even in extreme cases, there is limited evidence for backfire, or a rebound effect greater than 100%. Enacting pollution taxes or auctioned permits that internalize the externalities of energy use would ensure that rebound effects unambiguously increase consumers' welfare. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This is the first part of a two-part paper providing an analytical model of the indirect rebound effect, given a direct rebound estimate, that integrates consumer demand theory with the embodied energy of household spending from environmentally-extended input-output analysis. The second part applies the model developed in part one to simulate the direct and indirect rebound for the average U.S. household in terms of primary energy, CO(2)e, NOx, and SO2 emissions and for energy efficiency investments in electricity, natural gas, or gasoline services. Part one provides a critical review of the largely independent economic and industrial ecology literatures on the indirect rebound. By studying the two-goods case and the n-goods case, we demonstrate that the indirect rebound is bounded by the consumer budget constraint, and inversely related to the direct rebound. We also compare the common proportional spending and income elasticity spending assumptions with our model of cross-price elasticities including both substitution and income effects for the indirect rebound. By assuming zero incremental capital costs and the same embodied energy as conventional technologies for efficient appliances, we model an upper bound of the indirect rebound. Future work should also consider the increase in consumer welfare possible through the rebound effect. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper considers recycling as an economic activity, locating it in debates about economization, marketization and performativity. It argues that recycling is a reflexive intervention in economic activity which extends the boundaries of markets, by internalizing objects formerly externalized as wastes and by attending to the temporal properties of materials. It differentiates between activities based on manufacturing recycled products and the activities of materials recovery linked to commodity markets in secondary materials. By taking the in vivo economic experiment resulting from the UK's Ship Recycling Strategy as its empirical focus, the paper demonstrates how recycling connects to wider debates about experimentation and the constitution of markets, and shows the importance of assaying and assay devices as market devices to the economization of recycling. It further shows that, in materials recovery, measurement is estimation and things are hard to pacify. This makes recycling difficult to stabilize as an economic activity. The consequences are considerable: notably, the possibility of economic failure can threaten to contaminate stabilized (or cold') forms of politics. The importance of contracts as a means to securing politicized markets in secondary materials recovery is indicated.Resource and energy efficiency are key strategies for production and recycling networks. They can contribute to more sustainable industrial production and can help cope with challenges such as competition, rising resource and energy prices, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and scarce and expensive landfill space. In pursuit of these objectives, further enhancements of single processes are often technologically sophisticated and expensive due to past achievements that have brought the processes closer to technical optima. Nevertheless, the potential for network-wide advancements may exist. Methods are required to identify and assess the potential for promising resource and energy efficiency measures from technical, economic, and ecological perspectives. This article presents an approach for a material flow-based techno-economic as well as ecological analysis and assessment of resource efficiency measures in production and recycling networks. Based on thermodynamic process models of different production and recycling processes, a material and energy flow model of interlinked production and recycling processes on the level of chemical compounds is developed. The model can be used to improve network-wide resource efficiency by analyzing and assessing measures in scenario and sensitivity analyses. A necessary condition for overcoming technical and economic barriers for implementing such measures can be fulfilled by identifying strategies that appear technologically feasible and economically and ecologically favorable. An exemplary application to a production and recycling network of the German steel and zinc industry is presented. From a methodological point of view, the approach shows one way of introducing thermodynamics and further technological aspects into industrial planning and assessment.Many authors have agreed on the interest of considering environmental concerns in the early stages of product development. However, most eco-design tools are based on life cycle assessment principles and require a model to give information about the product's environmental performance. This modeling can have negative effects on team performance and on the potential for innovation, not to mention on the project's duration. Additionally, the model requires information that is not available in the early design stages. This article analyzes the potential of inferring conclusions about the life cycle stages with the highest impact by using similar products. From a database of previous products, environmental profile estimations are carried out, that is, the assessments of the contribution of each life cycle stage to the total impact and the variability of this measure. It is then possible to discardor ensure consideration oflife cycle stages. Furthermore, the level of the conclusions is assessed on a five-point scale. The proposed approach is applied to four case studies with different levels of abstraction and the relevance of the conclusions is assessed. The article resolves the problems regarding potential for estimating the distribution of the environmental impacts along the life cycle.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a promising tool in the pursuit of sustainable mining. However, the accounting methodologies used in LCA for abiotic resource depletion still have some shortcomings and need to be improved. In this article a new thermodynamic approach is presented for the evaluation of the depletion of nonfuel minerals. The method is based on quantifying the exergy costs required to replace the extracted minerals with current available technologies, from a completely degraded state in what we term Thanatia to the conditions currently found in nature. Thanatia is an estimated reference model of a commercial end of the planet, where all resources have been extracted and dispersed, and all fossil fuels have been burned. Mineral deposits constitute an exergy bonus that nature gives us for free by providing minerals in a concentrated state and not dispersed in the crust. The exergy replacement costs provide a measure of the bonus lost through extraction. This approach allows performing an LCA by including a new stage in the analysis: namely the grave to cradle path. The methodology is explained through the case study of nickel depletion.This article presents a methodology for identifying critical links in global resource supply chains by tracking resources from their extraction in one region of the world economy through their embodiment in intermediate products in the same and other regions to eventual embodiment in final goods. We build on previous work that applied an absorbing Markov chain (AMC) to results obtained using an input-output (IO) model of a single region to define a resource-specific network within that economy. In the absence of model calculations, the AMC can also be applied to standard IO data for a past year. This article first generalizes the analytic framework from a single region to the important case of the global resource-specific network. This network typically includes cycling of embodied resources between sectors not only within each economy, but also among regions, as subsequent rounds of intermediate products are traded. Next, we refine that analysis to exhibit a crucial subnetwork, the resource end-use network, which only tracks the portion of the resource that ends up embodied in a specific final product in a given region. Finally, we develop techniques to distinguish key branches of these networks and provide detailed insights about the structure of global resource dependence. A numerical example is applied to results of scenario analysis using an IO model of the world economy. Two alternative scenarios are compared. In each scenario, embodied resources are carried over specific branches of a global network in three regions using three resources to produce four goods.This work identifies shortcomings in water footprinting and discusses whether the water footprint should be a volumetric or impact-oriented index. A key challenge is the current definition of water consumption according to which evaporated water is regarded as lost for the originating watershed per se. Continental evaporation recycling rates of up to 100% within short time and length scales show that this definition is not generally valid. Also, the inclusion of land use effects on the hydrological balance is questionable, as land transformation often leads to higher water availability due to locally increased runoff. Unless potentially negative consequences, such as flooding or waterlogging, and adverse effects on the global water cycle are considered, water credits from land transformation seem unjustified. Most impact assessment methods use ratios of annual withdrawal or consumption to renewability rates to denote local water scarcity. As these ratios are influenced by two metricswithdrawal and availabilityarid regions can be regarded as uncritical if only small fractions of the limited renewable supplies are used. Besides neglecting sensitivities to additional water uses, such indicators consider neither ground nor surface water stocks, which can buffer water shortages temporally. Authors favoring volumetric indicators claim that global freshwater appropriation is more important than local impacts, easier to determine, and less error prone than putting complex ecological interaction into mathematical models. As shown in an example, volumetric water footprints can be misleading without additional interpretation because numerically smaller footprints can cause higher impacts.The environmental impact of the water consumption of four typical crop rotations grown in Spain, including energy crops, was analyzed and compared against Spanish agricultural and natural reference situations. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used for the assessment of the potential environmental impact of blue water (withdrawal from water bodies) and green water (uptake of soil moisture) consumption. The latter has so far been disregarded in LCA. To account for green water, two approaches have been applied: the first accounts for the difference in green water demand of the crops and a reference situation. The second is a green water scarcity index, which measures the fraction of the soil-water plant consumption to the available green water. Our results show that, if the aim is to minimize the environmental impacts of water consumption, the energy crop rotations assessed in this study were most suitable in basins in the northeast of Spain. In contrast, the energy crops grown in basins in the southeast of Spain were associated with the greatest environmental impacts. Further research into the integration of quantitative green water assessment in LCA is crucial in studies of systems with a high dependence on green water resources.The use of glass cullet (crushed recycled glass containers) as aggregate in construction projects and landfills has increased rapidly even though the use of cullet as feedstock in new glass container and fiberglass production is energetically more sound. The effect of increased use of cullet as aggregate has not yet been thoroughly assessed. The objectives of this study were to model and quantify glass container flows across New Jersey and the associated life cycle energy consumption, and then compare life cycle energy consumption for two different recycling scenarios and three different end-use/disposal scenarios. The results of a material flow analysis showed that in 2008 only about 11% of the glass containers consumed in New Jersey were used as glass container or fiberglass feedstock, while five times more were used as construction aggregate. However, a lower system energy requirement can be achieved by increased use of cullet as container feedstock compared to construction aggregate, even when the cullet is transported 1,600 miles to a glass container manufacturer. Based on the uncertainty analysis, there is about an 80% probability for the scenario with increased use as container feedstock to have a lower system energy requirement when compared with all other scenarios. To achieve increased use of cullet as glass container feedstock in New Jersey, the quality of the cullet must be improved.A model is presented for calculating the environmental burdens of the part manufacturing and vehicle assembly (VMA) stage of the vehicle life cycle. The model is based on a process-level approach, accounting for all significant materials by their transformation processes (aluminum castings, polyethylene blow molding; etc.) and plant operation activities (painting; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning [HVAC], etc.) germane to VMA. Using quantitative results for these material/transformation process pairings, a percent-by-weight material/transformation distribution (MTD) function was developed that permits the model to be applied to a range of vehicles, both conventional and advanced (e.g., hybrid electric, light weight, aluminum intensive). Upon consolidation of all inputs, the model reduces to two terms: one proportional to vehicle mass and a plant overhead per vehicle term. When the model is applied to a materially well-characterized conventional vehicle, reliable estimates of cumulative energy consumption (34 gigajoules/vehicle) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (2 tonnes/vehicle) with coefficients of variation are computed for the VMA life cycle stage. Due to the more comprehensive coverage of manufacturing operations, our energy estimates are on the higher end of previously published values. Nonetheless, they are still somewhat underestimated due to a lack of data on overhead operations in part manufacturing facilities and transportation of parts and materials between suppliers and vehicle manufacturing operations. For advanced vehicles, the material/transformation process distribution developed above needs some adjusting for different materials and components. Overall, energy use and CO2 emissions from the VMA stage are about 3.5% to 4.5% of total life cycle values for vehicles.BACKGROUND: In the BioDeNOX technology for NOX removal from flue gas, bioreduction of Fe(II)EDTA-NO and Fe(III)EDTA are core processes. In this study, a newly isolated strain, Paracoccus denitrificans, was used to reduce Fe(II)EDTA-NO with glucose and Fe(II)EDTA as donor electrons. To better understand the change law of Fe(II)EDTA, the process of Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction by P. denitrificans with glucose and Fe(II)EDTA as electron donors was investigated, and the factors that might affect Fe(II)EDTA concentration were studied. RESULTS: For the bioreduction process of Fe(II)EDTA-NO, P. denitrificans could use glucose and Fe(II)EDTA as electron donors. At different stages, primary electron donors were different, thereby affecting the concentration of Fe(II)EDTA in the system. It was also proved that this strain not only reduced Fe(III)EDTA with glucose as the electron donor but also secreted several substances that reacted with Fe(III)EDTA, resulting in increased Fe(II)EDTA concentration in the solution. CONCLUSIONS: This work has shown that P. denitrificans can reduce Fe(II)EDTA-NO and Fe(III)EDTA simultaneously to regenerate NOX absorption solution. (c) 2012 Society of Chemical IndustryThe choice and timing of microorganisms added to soils for bioremediation is affected by the dominant bioavailable contaminants in the soil. However, changes to the concentration of bioavailable PAHs in soil are not clear, especially when several PAHs coexist. This study investigated the effects of PAH concentration and chemical properties on desorption in meadow brown soil after a 1-year aging period, which could reflect changes of PAH bioavailability during bioremediation. Based on the percentage of different molecular weights in a field investigation, high-level contaminated soil (HCS) and low-level contaminated soil (LCS) were prepared by adding phenanthrene (PHE), pyrene (PYR) and benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) to uncontaminated meadow brown soil. The concentrations of HCS and LCS were 250 mg kg(-1) (PHE, PYR, and BaP: 100, 100, and 50 mg kg(-1)) and 50 mg kg(-1) (PHE, PYR, and BaP: 20, 20, and 10 mg kg(-1)) respectively. The soils were aged for 1 year, after which desorption was induced by means of a XAD-2 adsorption technique over a 96-h period. The range of the rapidly desorbing fraction (F (rap)) for PHE, PYR, and BaP in HCS and LCS was from 1.9 to 27.8 %. In HCS, desorption of PYR was most difficult, and the rate constant of very slow desorption (K (vs)) of PYR was 8 orders of magnitude lower than that of BaP, which had similar very slow desorbing fractions (49.8 and 50.5 %, respectively). However, in LCS, desorption of PYR was the easiest; the K-vs of PYR was 8-10 orders of magnitude higher than those of PHE and BaP. In HCS, the time scale for release of 50 % of the PAHs was ranked as BaP > PYR > PHE, while in LCS this was BaP > PHE > PYR. The combined effect of PAH concentrations and properties should be taken into account during desorption. The desorption of PAH did not always decrease with increasing molecular weight, and the desorption of four-ring PAHs might be special. These results are useful for screening biodegrading microbes and determining when they should be added to soils based on the dominant contaminants present during different periods, thus improving the efficiency of soil bioremediation.The development of novel symbiosis products based on primary industrial residues in accordance with the systemic approaches of Industrial Ecology (IE) and Industrial Symbiosis (IS) has significant potential to increase the environmental performance of process industry, including more material and energy efficient processes and with lower environmental impacts. What is more, functionally innovative symbiosis products have the potential to promote residue utilisation and recovery and to prevent or reduce waste generation in line with the EU level 'recycling society' concept. However, successful product development requires an enabling institutionally aligned environmental approach that includes appropriate market incentives and regulatory instruments. This paper aims to identify the possible institutional barriers in the EU legal framework that have to be addressed to promote the development of such primary residue based process industry symbiosis products, with thorough consideration of full product life-cycles. Recommendations for overcoming these barriers and on the design of new approaches that support industrial symbiosis and contribute to progress towards sustainable societies are also outlined. These include enhanced focus on creating an enabling institutional environment for industrial innovations and the promotion of material efficiency through incentives policies and regulations, as well as soft law guidance on novel uses of materials and closure of resource cycles. Making a wider system more sustainable on an eco-efficiency basis also calls the definition of system boundaries into question. Applying a systemic approach, such as that offered by both IE and IS, which cover sustainability and recycling to achieve more resource efficient systems, appears to offer a way forward. We argue that the development of process industry residue based products can be significantly promoted and advanced by co-operative and joint design of appropriate incentives, policies and regulations. A major question is whether the REACH Regulation would apply to residue, based symbiosis products if their creation makes them no longer legally classified as waste under end-of-waste legislation. We use a synthetic symbiosis product group concept based on the utilisation of steel, paper and pulp process industry primary residues as a case study to assess the development potential of such products against legal requirements and policy objectives. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To evaluate the gas-particle partitioning behavior of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the urban air of Dalian, China, both gas phase and particle phase ambient air were monitored with active high-volume sampler from November 2009 to October 2010. The average total concentration of 16 US EPA priority monitoring PAHs (particle + gas) (?PAHs) was 112ng m-3 and the most abundant PAH was Phenanthrene. ?PAHs and the gas-particle partitioning coefficients (K p) of PAHs displayed seasonal variation in the order of winter > autumn > spring > summer. ?PAHs was much higher during the heating period than non heating period. ?PAHs in gas phase were all higher than those in particle phase in the four seasons. The PAHs sources identification was attempted using diagnostic ratios. The relationship between the concentration of PAHs in the air and meteorology parameters were analyzed using SPSS packages. The concentrations of PAHs in the air decreased with the increase of ambient temperature, and increased with the increase of atmospheric pressure. The gas-particle distribution was examined through several different approaches such as the relationship of logK p with the ambient temperature, with the logarithm of the sub-cooled vapor pressure (logP L 0), and the octanol-air partitioning coefficient (logK oa) of PAHs. The slopes obtained from regressing logK p vs. logP L 0 was -0.687-0.821 in heating periods, which was in the range between -0.6 and -1, indicating the partitioning of PAHs to particle phase in the urban air of Dalian was absorption as well as for adsorption mechanism. However, the average slope value was -0.502 in the non heating periods, which was shallower than -0.60, indicating that the absorption mechanisms contributed more to the partitioning process. The exposure risk of PAHs was evaluated with four methods, the results of which indicated that the quality of the urban air of Dalian was better.There is growing interest in understanding how storage or delayed emission of carbon in products based on bioresources might mitigate climate change, and how such activities could be credited. In this research we extend the recently introduced approach that integrates biogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes with the global carbon cycle (using biogenic global warming potential [GWPbio]) to consider the storage period of harvested biomass in the anthroposphere, with subsequent oxidation. We then examine how this affects the climate impact from a bioenergy resource. This approach is compared to several recent methods designed to address the same problem. Using both a 100- and a 500-year fixed time horizon we calculate the GWPbio factor for every combination of rotational and anthropogenic storage periods between 0 and 100 years. The resulting GWPbio factors range from 0.99 (1-year rotation and 100-year storage) to +0.44 (100-year rotation and 0-year storage). The approach proposed in this study includes the interface between biomass growth and emissions and the global carbon cycle, whereas other methods do not model this. These results and the characterization factors produced can determine the climate change benefits or impacts associated with the storage of biomass in the anthroposphere, and the subsequent release of biogenic CO2 with the radiative forcing integrated in a fixed time window.Electric vehicles (EVs) coupled with low-carbon electricity sources offer the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to tailpipe emissions from personal transportation. In considering these benefits, it is important to address concerns of problem-shifting. In addition, while many studies have focused on the use phase in comparing transportation options, vehicle production is also significant when comparing conventional and EVs. We develop and provide a transparent life cycle inventory of conventional and electric vehicles and apply our inventory to assess conventional and EVs over a range of impact categories. We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km. However, EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain. Results are sensitive to assumptions regarding electricity source, use phase energy consumption, vehicle lifetime, and battery replacement schedules. Because production impacts are more significant for EVs than conventional vehicles, assuming a vehicle lifetime of 200,000 km exaggerates the GWP benefits of EVs to 27% to 29% relative to gasoline vehicles or 17% to 20% relative to diesel. An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle. Improving the environmental profile of EVs requires engagement around reducing vehicle production supply chain impacts and promoting clean electricity sources in decision making regarding electricity infrastructure.Greenhouse gas emissions caused by food production are receiving increased attention worldwide. A problem with many studies is that they only consider one product; methodological differences also make it difficult to compare results across studies. Using a consistent methodology to ensure comparability, we quantified the carbon footprint of more than 20 Norwegian seafood products, including fresh and frozen, processed and unprocessed cod, haddock, saithe, herring, mackerel, farmed salmon, and farmed blue mussels. The previous finding that fuel use in fishing and feed production in aquaculture are key inputs was confirmed. Additional key aspects identified were refrigerants used on fishing vessels, product yield, and by-product use. Results also include that product form (fresh or frozen) only matters when freezing makes slower transportation possible. Processing before export was favorable due to the greater potential to use by-products and the reduced need for transportation. The most efficient seafood product was herring shipped frozen in bulk to Moscow at 0.7 kilograms CO2 equivalents per kilogram (kg CO2-eq/kg) edible product. At the other end we found fresh gutted salmon airfreighted to Tokyo at 14 kg CO2-eq/kg edible product. This wide range points to major differences between seafood products and room for considerable improvement within supply chains and in product choices. In fisheries, we found considerable variability between fishing methods used to land the same species, which indicates the importance of fisheries management favoring the most resource-efficient ways of fishing. Both production and consumption patterns matter, and a range of improvements could benefit the carbon performance of Norwegian seafood products.A growing tendency in policy making and carbon footprint estimation gives value to temporary carbon storage in biomass products or to delayed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some life cycle-based methods, such as the British publicly available specification (PAS) 2050 or the recently published European Commission's International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, address this issue. This article shows the importance of consistent consideration of biogenic carbon and timing of GHG emissions in life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint analysis. We use a fictitious case study assessing the life cycle of a wooden chair for four end-of-life scenarios to compare different approaches: traditional LCA with and without consideration of biogenic carbon, the PAS 2050 and ILCD Handbook methods, and a dynamic LCA approach. Reliable results require accounting for the timing of every GHG emission, including biogenic carbon flows, as soon as a benefit is given for temporarily storing carbon or delaying GHG emissions. The conclusions of a comparative LCA can change depending on the time horizon chosen for the analysis. The dynamic LCA approach allows for a consistent assessment of the impact, through time, of all GHG emissions (positive) and sequestration (negative). The dynamic LCA is also a valuable approach for decision makers who have to understand the sensitivity of the conclusions to the chosen time horizon.The selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO by C3H6 has been studied over a series of calcined hydrotalcite, which were prepared by four different methods to obtain various Lewis acid sites. The catalysts have been investigated by X-ray powder diffractometer, N-2 adsorption, Temperature-programmed desorption of NH3 (NH3-TPD), pyridine adsorption FTIR (Py-FTIR), Temperature-programmed desorption of NO + O-2 (NO + O-2-TPD) and in situ FIR techniques. The Lewis acid sites could be changed with the transformation of the crystalline structure from the mixed oxides of MgO and Al2O3 to spinel phase. It is demonstrated that Lewis acid sites play an important role in determining the catalytic performance of SCR by C3H6 over calcined hydrotalcite catalysts. Various nitrate species as the key intermediate species for SCR could form at Lewis acid sites during the process of the reaction under lean-burn condition. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Metal-biopolymer complexes has recently gained significant attention as an effective adsorbent used for the removal of Cr(VI) from water. Unfortunately, despite increasing research efforts in the field of removal efficiency, whether this kind of complex can reduce Cr(VI) to less-toxic Cr(III) and what are the mechanisms of detoxification processes are still unknown. In this study, despite the highly adsorption efficiency (maximum adsorption capacity of 173.1 mg/g in 10 min), the significant improvement of Cr(VI) reduction by chitosan-Fe(III) complex compared with normal crosslinked chitoan has been demonstrated. In addition, the structure of chitosan-Fe(III) complex and its functional groups concerned with Cr(VI) detoxification have been characterized by the powerful spectroscopic techniques X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The XPS spectra indicated that the primary alcoholic function on C-6 served as an electron donor during Cr(VI) reduction and was oxidized to a carbonyl group. The X-ray adsorption near edge spectra (XANES) of the Cr(VI)-treated chitosan-Fe(III) complex revealed the similar geometrical arrangement of Cr species as that in Cr(III)bound chitosan-Fe(III). Overall, a possible process and mechanism for highly efficient detoxification of Cr(VI) by chitosan-Fe(III) complex has been elucidate. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The rapid development of industrial ecology parks is indicative of one practical pattern of theories and methods in industrial ecology. They severely affect the development of the modem society. In this paper, through adopting the social network analysis method, we could go into the interior of symbiosis networks and construct a cascading model on symbiosis networks of industrial ecology parks by using complex theory. tinder the model, we then provide some evaluation indicators to evaluate nodes' power and status and analyze quantitatively the vulnerability against cascading failures in symbiosis networks according to a new framework. All these analyses and results could support the study of eco-industrial parks in methods and technology and help us to promote the construction of symbiosis networks of industrial ecology parks, especially improve the reliability and robustness. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.When sustainability issues are discussed, the scientific focus is usually on companies. However, value creation, industrial ecology, life-cycle management and the proactive corporate behaviour exceed corporate limits, extending the environmental responsibility of companies between each other and through their relationship with community organizations. It is not surprising therefore that there is an increasing attention on the analysis of supply chain strategies and their sustainable nature both in theoretical research and practice. The goal of this article is to analyze the principles of sustainability in the supply chain strategy. The authors attempt to show the characteristics of sustainable corporate and business strategies and to review the supply chain strategy concepts and its basic types. Finally the loan relationship between sustainable business strategies and supply chain strategies will be explored with the help of a case study about the architectural company Skanska SA.The increasing demand for environmentally friendly quality products and the actual various standards that define the agricultural sector call for a restructuring of the greenhouse horticulture production sector. Nowadays, imported from industrial ecology, the concept of "clustering" has begun to be considered in agriculture. Therefore, Food-Parks and AgroParks are now familiar names in agriculture. This approach is certainly applicable and of great interest to Spain, where protected cultivation infrastructures are in the process of improvement and transformation. In this context it is of key importance the improvement of overall Agropark greenhouse natural ventilation. So, the aim of this preliminary study is to highlight the effect of the separation distances between greenhouses in an Agropark on wind driven ventilation efficacy. The basic multispan greenhouse was 96x6 m(2) (12 spans of 8x6 m(2) - lengthxheight). Wind induced ventilation was operated by means of double ridge vents, so double ridge, windward and leeward ventilation configurations were studied. The basic Agropark configuration was 4 greenhouses in a row. Various separation distances referred to greenhouse height (H) - 1/2H, H, 2H, 5H and 10H - were simulated with a general purpose computational fluid analysis software (ANSYS Fluent). A RANS approach was considered because, for design purposes, just the mean physics involved in the ventilation process, and not their dynamics, are needed. Wind driven ventilation efficacy was defined as mean air velocity inside each greenhouse. Finally, the results showed consistency and illustrated that double ridge vent is the best configuration closely followed by windward ventilation one. First greenhouse always ventilates the best and the ventilation efficacy of subsequent greenhouses tends to this best value with increasing distance between greenhouses. Leeward ventilation generally had a worse behavior except for the closest separation distance of 1/2H.Industrial Ecology is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems, which is also described by the Industrial Symbiosis term. Hence, the global industrial economy can be modeled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities which are entered in the economy chain to meet the needs of humanity The main target of industrial symbiosis is the quantification of the material flows, the certification and validation of the industrial processes that guide to the formulation of a modern fair society structure and function. However, in order to foster the application of industrial symbiosis concept a decision support tool was developed for the estimation of the caused environmental impacts and for the formulation of the appropriate conditions for providing social and economic services. The decisional context is expressed by the DPSIR analysis in four sections regarding the industrial area management and in parallel in the three sustainability aspects: i. Environmental, ii. Social and iii. Economical. In order to validate the results of the developed methodological procedure, a Hellenic industrial area, named Sindos, was selected as a representative example for its application.This paper analyzes the reorganization and reformation of the Japanese petro-related industry and industrial complex. Japanese petro-related companies have struggled to compete with foreign competitors enjoying overwhelming economy of scale and promoted business integration beyond firm's boundary for regaining competitiveness. The industry and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry jointly initiated a national project to address this issue by facilitating technology development for achieving highly efficient industry complex both economically and ecologically. By applying stag hunt game approach, we discuss the condition for successful coordination project and describe how subsidizing and business environment affect the coordination effort, which previous industrial ecology research fails to investigate.The prevailing approach to the environmental management of industrial activities is industrial symbiosis. It is defined as a relationship between two or more firms that exchange their waste (materials - energy - water), as feedstock for the production process. The companies that have such a relationship form an Industrial Ecosystem. Industrial Ecosystems are divided into two categories: Eco-Industrial Parks and Eco-Industrial Networks. However, research conducted in recent years shows that the recycling of certain waste products through multilevel Eco-Industrial Networks has potential physical, spatial, economic and environmental conditions and limits that restrict its potential applications. This paper explores these limits on the environmental level. The paper concludes that industrial symbiosis does indeed have environmental limits that restrict its potential applications. Specifically, as shown by this case study of an Aluminium Eco-Industrial Network, there may exist a marginal Network Level (environmental limit) beyond which it is environmentally preferable to avoid recycling of some waste types, to simply their use as fuels, or to dispose them directly to the natural environment as-is, rather than to attempt to recover useful materials from them.In this chapter, we consider exergy as the confluence of energy, environment, and sustainable development. The basis for this treatment is the interdisciplinary character of exergy and its relation to each of these disciplines. There has only recently been an increasing number of works on the linkage between the exergy and the environment. Many suggest that mitigating the environmental impact of energy resource utilization and achieving increased resource-utilization efficiency are best addressed by considering exergy. The relations between exergy and both energy and the environment makes it clear that exergy is directly related to sustainable development. So, this chapter also presents a unified exergy-based structure that provides useful insights and direction to those involved in exergy, environment, and sustainable development for appropriately analyzing and addressing each of these areas using exergy.In this chapter, the integration of exergy analysis with industrial ecology, and the application of such a combined method, is described. Industrial ecology is an approach to designing industrial systems that promotes environmental improvement by seeking a reasonable balance between industrial profit and environmental stewardship and thereby can contribute to sustainable development. As exergy analysis pinpoints significant process and device exergy losses, or nonrecoverable losses of fuel exergy, it can help makes industrial technologies more ecologically benign and efficient when integrated with industrial ecology. Illustrations are discussed for combined cycle power plants, hydrogen production, and crude oil distillation.The use of CdTe quantum dots (QDs) as fluorescent probes for detection of copper(1) in seawater was evaluated, and the relationship between the size of CdTe QDs and fluorescent response in seawater was investigated. The fluorescence intensity of CdTe QDs was quenched linearly as the concentration of copper(II) increased, and the quenching efficiency increased as the size of the CdTe QDs decreased. The smaller CdTe QDs (emission peak at 518 nm, average diameter of similar to 2.1 urn) achieved a detection limit of copper(1) of 0.48 mu g L-1 under optimal experimental conditions. No significant influence was found for pH in the range from 7.0 to 9.0 in seawater. In contrast, the emission maxima of the CdTe QDs exhibited a slight red shift and the intensity of fluorescence decreased significantly as salinity was increased. Based on the performance of CdTe QDs in this study, small CdTe QDs display enormous potential for detection of copper(II) in seawater.The establishment of eco-industrial parks can not only reduce the costs of waste disposal and the purchase of raw materials, but also has a positive impact on both economy and environment. By setting Shanghai as an example, a model of the eco-industrial park was described and the design plan and operating procedures of the park were provided in this paper. Then the benefits of this park were discussed. It may bring about some practicable approaches for the development of China's eco-industrial parks through a specific analysis as well as the presentation of an operating model.The goal of this research was to provide an improved understanding of the existence of photosensitive structure in humic acids (HAs) that are extracted from Changbai Mountain soils. Molecular imprinting technique was used to separate phthalocyanine-like substances from HAs with the mechanisms of electrostatic interactions and intermolecular hydrogen bond. Copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) was used as template molecule and the fraction bound by CuPc-imprinted polymers (MIP) named F (bind) presented higher spectroscopic activity than that of effluent fraction named F (eff). The fluorescence intensity of F(bind) at emission wavelength of 462 nm was 5.5 times as high as that of F(eff) at 458 nm, and the UV-vis absorbance at 254 nm of F(bind) had been increased to 2.5 times as compared with F(eff). The results of this work show the key role of humic substances with special structures in the light or photo involved process.As a new type of persistent organic pollutant, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) has raised great concern in recent years due to its ubiquitous distribution in the general environment and its long elimination half-life in humans. PFOS has toxic and carcinogenic effects in animals and humans, but the effects of PFOS on apoptosis are still not clear. The present study aimed to determine the mode of cell death and its mechanism in splenocytes and thymocytes from adult male C57BL/6 mice administered 0, 1, 5, or 10 mg PFOS/kg/day by gavage daily for 7 days. The results showed that more apoptotic cells were present in PFOS-treated mice than in control mice. PFOS induced production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), dissipation of mitochondria membrane potential, and apoptosis of splenocytes and thymocytes. Moreover, activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione reductase were increased, whereas activities of glutathione-S-transferase and glutathione peroxidase were decreased, in splenocytes. Glutathione contents were reduced as well. Differential expressions of proteins such as p53, Bax, caspase-3, and caspase-9 were significantly up-regulated in PFOS-exposed hosts, whereas Bcl-2 expression was significantly down-regulated. One possible mechanism for the findings here was that PFOS could overwhelm homeostasis of anti-oxidative systems, boost ROS generation, impact on mitochondria, and affect protein expression of apoptotic regulators, the latter of which resulted in initiation of the apoptosis program. Results from this study may provide a new insight into the potential adverse effects of PFOS exposure on humans, at the cellular level.Porous and rod-shaped nanostructures of ZnAl2O4 were successfully synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method. The Ag-doped ZnAl2O4 catalyst, based on porous ZnAl2O4, was prepared by the incipient wetness impregnation strategy and showed an excellent photoelectric property and catalytic activity. The structural properties of the samples were systematically investigated by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Electron spin resonance (ESR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) techniques. The photocatalytic degradation of toluene by the Ag-doped ZnAl2O4, ZnAl2O4 and P25 TiO2 samples was comparatively studied under UV lamp irradiation. The results indicate that the Ag-doped ZnAl2O4 sample synthesized at pH = 6 exhibited a higher capacity for the degradation of toluene. No obvious deactivation of the Ag-doped ZnAl2O4 nanorods was observed during the prolonged operation of 6 h. The Ag-doped ZnAl2O4 nanorods could be potentially applied in environmental purification in the near future.The current project is aimed at analyzing the possibilities of the Reverse Logistics as a new market niche in industry through the creation of a standard industrial estate that clusters several activities related to the industrial waste appreciation and that can be benefited from the economies of scale, from the synergies obtained between the companies settled there and the collaboration of public authorities. The results obtained show that the initiative also represents a business opportunity for the promoters, when there is a serious crisis in the sector, especially in Spain.The goals of an ecological industrial park are to reduce waste and pollution and to share resource efficiently. Thus, the concept of this model encourages development of synergy and leverage of resource networks. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no other general model for designing and optimizing exchange material/energy flows inside an industrial park. The purpose of this work is to propose an advanced dynamic multiobjective model which is capable of maximizing the total quantity of exchange flows and the total economic benefit of a targeted industrial park. Simulations have been performed by using NIMBUS (Nondifferentiable Interactive Multiobjective Bundle-based optimization System) method. This model can assure a win-win situation for industries and environment.Background: This paper gives insight into whether biofuels for road transport can play an important role in a Swedish county in the year 2030, and contributes to knowledge on how to perform similar studies. Methodology: A resource-focused assessment, including feedstock from the waste sector, agricultural sector, forestry sector and aquatic environments, partially considering technological and economic constraints. Results: Two scenarios were used indicating that biofuels could cover almost 30 and 50%, respectively, of total energy demand for road transport. Conclusion: Without compromising food security, this study suggests that it is possible to significantly increase biofuel production, and to do this as an integrated part of existing society, thereby also contributing to positive societal synergies.Green Virtual Enterprise Breeding Environments and their Reverse-Green Virtual Enterprises, as dynamic reverse supply networks, represent a promising paradigm to face the reverse logistics and end-of-life manufacturing challenges towards closed-loop industrial processes, closed-loop supply networks and sustainable industrial development models. This paper explores different collaborative product recovery business opportunities and strategies for capturing current missed value at the end-of-lifecycle with new activities, relationships and network configurations, put forward based on the disciplines of Industrial Ecology, Collaborative Networks and Lifecycle Management.Purpose - This article was developed to provide a viewpoint for the 10th Annual EABIS Colloquium on Strategic Innovation for Sustainability held at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland on 3-4 July 2012. Design/methodology/approach - The authors present a framework of three practices that must be applied to an ever-increasing degree along the spectrum of strategic innovation for sustainability. Findings - To reap the benefits of innovation for sustainability, businesses need to adapt the type of innovation they aim for to their particular context. Three practices are crucial to the innovation process i.e. an integrated approach, multiple partnerships and visionary leadership from the top. These practices address two of the main challenges companies face in innovating for sustainability, namely actively engaging with the wider dynamic context in which they operate, and spanning boundaries they are not used to crossing. Practical implications - By analysing the specific context in which a business operates, it is possible to form a better idea of where on the spectrum a particular company may focus its efforts in order to have the greatest chances of success. Social implications - The analyses in this paper contribute to the debate and practical realisation of sustainable development. Originality/value - While many studies distinguish between continuous versus discontinuous change as the two ends on a spectrum, the authors extend the spectrum to include three major points from incremental to radical to game-changing systemic innovation for sustainability. The three critical practices must be applied to an ever-increasing degree along the spectrum.The development of mass tourism has posed threats and created problems that have affected destinations and local communities in virtually every corner of the world. To overcome the problems of mass tourism, many governments, businesses, communities, and tourism organizations have turned to alternative types of tourism development. One such alternative is 'special interest tourism'. While this has become a centre of attention for the tourism industry, in academic and professional literature, there is still much that is not known or is not widely known. The present paper underlines the necessity of internationally monitoring the ecological state of our planet,developed societies have to assume, based on their material and intelligence resources, the main part of the obligations of developing countries, which are forced to channel their efforts towards other priorities in order to respond to their most stringent necessities. Their support might help all the states to wisely advance and we refer here to both industrialization process and environment protection. On the one hand, an unpolluted environment is vital for tourism sector within the EU; the community politics for environmental protection is relevant for tourism and make reference to water quality, reduction of air pollution or improvement of urban environment quality. Post-crisis challenge for Romania is the organization and development of its natural and cultural resources in a range of tourism products with a wide appeal to the public, and transforming these attractions in a flow of tourists and benefits for the country. This requires an integrated product development and strategic marketing approach, and more attention to the environmental problems and sustainable development of tourism and environment. This study uses a framework developed from the industrial ecology literature to assess the impacts of the tourism industry on the environment. The greening of tourism, which involves efficiency improvements in energy, water, and waste systems, is expected to reinforce the employment potential of the sector with increased local hiring and sourcing and significant opportunities in tourism oriented toward local culture and the natural environment. Green tourism embraces all aspects of sustainable tourism, based on four basic principles(1) (UNWTO): environmental, social, economic and climate (i.e. the "quadruple bottom line" of sustainable tourism). Green tourism minimizes the environmental impact of tourism and maximizes its adaptation to climate change. However, educational efforts geared towards industry sectors seem most effective when cost savings and the marketing benefits of "being green" (2)are emphasized in this article.This study aims to analyze the practices of a pelletizing iron ore industry with respect to adoption of pollution prevention measures, suggested by applying the concepts of Cleaner Production and Material Flow Analysis. The technical procedure adopted was the case study, the data collection was done through direct observation, with field research and literature review. The main results were obtained from analysis of company reports available to the public, but require a more detailed quantification of data. The study concludes that the identification of environmental opportunities is possible through the proposed implementation of Cleaner Production program, which provides better results when combined with the precepts of the industrial ecology tool, the Material Flow Analysis.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the approach for low-carbon-oriented industrial planning in China. After a review of theoretical basis for industrial planning, theory of industrial ecology was selected as the theoretical framework for further analysis and practice. The approach for low-carbon-oriented industrial planning could be divided into four steps. Finally, the low-carbon-oriented industrial planning framework was applied in Tongshan City, Anhui Province, China. Under the guidance of the planning, local industrial structure can be upgraded and transformed into a low-carbon one. The coordinated economic development with society, population and resource can be reached significantly.The concentration of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the urban air of Dalian, China was monitored from November 2009 to October 2010 with active high-volume sampler and semipermeable membrane device (SPMD) passive sampler. The concentration of PCBs (particle + gas) (Sigma PCBs) ranged from 18.6 to 91.0 pg/m(3), with an average of 50.9 pg/m(3), and the most abundant dioxin-like PCB (DL-PCBs) was PCB 118. The WHO-TEQ values of DL-PCBs were 3.6-22.1 fg/m(3), with an average of 8.5 fg/m(3), and PCB 126 was the maximum contributor to Sigma TEQ. There was a much larger amount of PCBs in the gas phase than in the particulate phase. The dominant PCB components were lower and middle molecular weight PCBs. With increasing chlorination level, the concentration of the PCB congeners in the air decreased. The gas-particulate partitioning of PCBs was different for the four seasons. The gas-particulate partitioning coefficients (logK(p)) vs. subcooled liquid vapor pressures (logP(L)(0)) of PCBs had reasonable correlations for different sampling sites and seasons. The absorption mechanism contributed more to the gas-particulate partitioning process than adsorption. Correlation analysis of meteorological parameters with the concentration of PCBs was conducted using SPSS packages. The ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure were important factors influencing the concentration of PCBs in the air. The distribution pattern of the congeners of PCBs and the dominant contributors to DL-PCBs and TEQ in active samples and SPMDs passive samples were similar. SPMD mainly sequestrated gas phase PCBs.TiO2 nanotube arrays were decorated with Ag/Ag3PO4 nanoparticles through a sequential chemical bath deposition and followed by partial reduction of Ag+ ions in the Ag3PO4 nanoparticles to Ag-0 under UV irradiation. The structure and optical properties of the Ag/Ag3PO4/TiO2 nanotube electrode were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and electrochemical techniques. The photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) activity of the composite electrode was evaluated by the decomposition of 2-chlorophenol under visible light irradiation (lambda > 420 nm). Clusters of Ag/Ag3PO4 nanoparticles were successfully formed on the surface of the TiO2 nanotubes (NTs) causing no damage to the ordered structure of the nanotubes. The PL intensity of Ag/Ag3PO4/TiO2 NTs was much lower than that of TiO2 nanotubes. The p-type Ag3PO4 and Ag nanoparticles deposited on the TiO2 NTs could promote the transfer of photo-generated electrons, which inhibited the recombination of electrons and holes effectively, leading to a significant increase in the photocurrent density. Moreover, the Ag/Ag3PO4/TiO2 heterostructure photoelectrodes showed much higher PEC activity than the pure TiO2 NTs for the degradation of 2-CP aqueous solution under visible light irradiation. The enhanced PEC activity could be attributed to the visible-light photocatalytic activity of Ag3PO4 and the heterostructure between Ag3PO4 and TiO2. The electron spin resonance (ESR) spin-trap study further demonstrated that (OH)-O-center dot could be generated on the Ag/Ag3PO4/TiO2 NTs under visible light irradiation.In this paper we use ecology metrics to analyze closed loop manufacturing networks, specifically eco-industrial parks. Eco-industrial parks (EIP) have become a popular manifestation of sustainable initiatives around the world. EIP examples and proposals have met with varying success. We create here three groupings of industrial networks based on the values of cyclicity, a metric used by ecologists to classify the presence and strength of the structural cycling of materials and energy in a system. Ecological food web structures are naturally evolved closed-loop systems and as such exhibit relatively high cyclicity values. Comparing average biological values for cyclicity, among other metrics, to average values for industrial systems we may begin to reach conclusions on the success of the biological inspiration of these structures. The industrial networks have been grouped into industrial systems with cyclicity values of zero, industrial systems with very high cyclicity values which have not moved beyond the proposal stage, and cyclicity values for those industrial networks which have been successful. The results of these comparisons give insight into what structural properties eco-industrial parks should possibly focus on to better imitate the efficient and sustainable cycling representative of biological networks.The marine chemical industry is a chemical industry based on coastal advantage. The Chinese government attaches great importance to the marine industry and made it the focal point of China economy in the 12th five-year plan. Water is an important material for the marine chemical industry, but wastewater discharge could undermine the sustainable development of the marine chemical industry. Industrial ecology provides insights for industry to realize a harmonious development with the environment. This paper examined the case of water utilization practice based on industrial ecology of the Hai Hua Group (HHG) in China. The utilization of three kinds of water, i.e., underground brine, seawater and freshwater is characteristic of the industrial ecology implementation of the HHG. In this paper, the water utilization practice of the HHG was described. The relationships among the three kinds of water, the driving force of water utilization, and the challenges of water utilization in the HHG were discussed. We conclude that implementing industrial ecology is a promising choice for the water utilization of marine chemical industry. It could also achieve the coordinated development between sea farming and the marine chemical industry. For non-renewable resource driven regional industrial ecosystems, such as the Hai Hua industrial ecosystem (HHIE) in this paper, seeking a substitute approach is essential for the stable and sustainable development of the whole industrial ecosystem. We also conclude that an industrial ecosystem's operation is driven by the integration of many factors, such as government, market, policy, culture and technique in this paper. This requires us to examine an industrial ecosystem's operation from a wider perspective, which is helpful to comprehensively and systematically understand the impetus of an industrial ecosystem. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Throughout the world, all the green building material assessment systems mainly mark their focus on the performance of the building material. Since the trend of pursuing a more sustainable and healthy building environment is so vivid, and the methodology and its application of Greenhouse Gas inventory are getting mature, there shall be a more comprehensive mean to assess the building material in both performance and environmental impact. This research attempts to integrate the existing Green Building Material (GBM) assessment system in Taiwan with the mechanism of product carbon footprint inventory. By means of reviewing the four categories of GBM system, which are ecologic GBM, low-emission healthy GBM, high-performance GBM and recycling GBM, and also probing into the product life cycle and industrial ecology of building materials in Taiwan, this research comes out with a master plan for upgrading Taiwan's GBM assessment system. Using the concept of eco-efficiency model and chart analysis, this research interprets the new assessment method in the form of a mathematics fraction, which the molecular is the benefit to users (performance and quality factors of building materials) and the denominator is the load to the environment (factor of material's life-cycle-based carbon emission.) The emphasis of this research is to find an executable method for evaluating the environmental impact of building materials on the base of Taiwan's original GBM system. The methodology could also be implemented to GBM system of other countries.The APEA project (industrial areas with high ecological standards of quality and innovative services for businesses) introduced in Italy by the Bassanini decree, represents a great opportunity to combine environmental protection, land use planning and company competitiveness. This new approach to territory planning, at a low environmental impact, promotes the APEA (Ecologically Equipped Productive Areas) as a tool to improve the quality of performance of production areas at various levels: in the planning, in the design and management, but also as a tool to implement within these areas the environmental guidelines of the European Union in terms of improved competitiveness through development innovation.Nowadays, industrial symbiosis is a key concept of industrial ecology, which studies material and energy exchange flows in the local industrial systems to reduce the costs, e. g., the wastes treatment cost, and to reduce the pollution, e. g., greenhouse gas emissions. An industrial park is a set of manufacturing businesses producing different products and by-products located at the same place (city, region, etc.). As the concept of this model encourages the development of synergy and leverage of resource networks, to the advantage of all of the enterprises present in an industrial park, a general mathematical model has been proposed. The aims of this general model are: to maximize total quantity of exchanges flows, to maximize total economic benefice of an industrial park, and to reduce relative environmental pollution, industrial waste treatment cost and delivery cost. This model can assure a win-win situation for industries and environment. There are rigorous mathematical models for specific ecological industrial parks [1]. To the best of our knowledge, there is no currently other general mathematical model for designing and optimizing an ecological industrial park. In addition, there is no currently complete ecological industrial park in France. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to document the integration of sustainability into the accounting curriculum. Compared to many disciplines in the social and administrative sciences, the greening of the curriculum in accounting is a recent phenomenon. Nevertheless, there has been a remarkable growth in both the content and the coverage of sustainability topics integrated into the accounting curriculum. Design/methodology/approach - The approach to the paper is multidisciplinary. It has combined organizational sociology and ecological anthropology approaches in the integration of sustainability into the accounting curriculum. In accounting, there is an increasing emphasis on the application of social science perspectives, particularly sociology and anthropology in curriculum development and pedagogical issues. This paper demonstrates that the influence of these two disciplines in accounting education is substantial. Findings - Sustainability in accounting has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, sustainability has integrated social and environmental dimensions into accounting education and research. Sustainability reporting contains information on the economic, social, and environmental activities of business organizations. In practice, sustainability has influenced the accounting standardsetting organizations in developing guidelines on how to integrate sustainability into corporate reports so that the information can be verified and certified by public accounting and regulatory organizations. Originality/value - The paper is among the first to demonstrate the importance of organizational sociology and ecological anthropology for the integration of sustainability into the accounting curriculum. Both sociology and anthropology have been in the forefront of the study of ecology and natural resources management and conservation in sustainability development. The paper approaches have important implications for sustainability education and framework in accounting theory and research.Instability is a severe barrier to the successful development and evolution of industrial symbiosis systems. In this paper, a novel approach for stability analysis of industrial symbiosis systems is proposed. Two parameters (symbiosis profit and symbiosis cost) are defined on the basis of profit consideration. With the introduction of asymmetric distribution coefficient as a quantitative index, the distribution of symbiosis cost and symbiosis profit can be analyzed. An illustrative example demonstrates that the approach can be used to assess the stability of a hypothetical coal-based symbiosis system under different states. Specifically, the impact of changes in the system structure and external environment on the stability of the coal-based symbiosis system is investigated. The results confirm the practical applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a novel approach using discounted cash flow (DCF) and multi-attribute global inference of quality (MAGIQ) methods to evaluate the economic, environmental, and social performances of eco-industrial park (EIP) pilot projects. As a test case, we evaluated South Korean EIP pilot projects that primarily focus on the development of industrial symbiosis networks in existing industrial complexes. The results demonstrated that networks with high initial investment or higher value-added products tend to have high economic performance. Additionally, several projects involving energy networks have resulted in high positive environmental performance through greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. Waste acid/alkali solution recycling projects also showed remarkable social outcomes on account of the variety of networks formed and active participation from enterprises. The present approach incorporating the DCF and MAGIQ methods provides a simple and promising decision-making tool for quantitative performance evaluation of EIP pilot projects. Furthermore, valuable lessons from the evaluation considering economic, environmental, and social performances will provide the basis for future EIP establishment. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The industrial revolution and the exploitation of fossil fuels fostered profound changes on transportation systems and infrastructure enabling unprecedented urban growth. Urban regions, which now host the majority of the world's population, resemble a linear metabolism: importing most of their raw materials, food, and energy, and using these resources in an inefficient manner resulting in waste outflows. Regarding energy flows, cities are highly depending on fossil fuels and the rate at which fossil fuels are consumed is faster than their generation rate. Therefore, a shift is needed toward more sustainable energy sources. We propose a sustainable urban energy planning approach, based on the thermodynamic principle, exergy. This approach integrates multi-functionality, interaction between urban functions, and harvesting of local renewable and residual resources Urban Harvest Approach. Synergies between urban functions are crucial to reach productive and sustainable urban regions. Resource exchange among different urban functions offers possibilities toward productive urban regions aiming for closed cycle resources management, e.g. integrating industrial ecosystems in urban ecosystems. Our method consists of six steps: (i) land-use inventory; (ii) energy demand inventory; (iii) local renewable/residual energy potential analysis; (iv) clusters of spatial functions exploration; (v) energetic linkages analysis; (vi) network patterns exploration. We tested the method at neighborhood scale, Kerkrade-West, The Netherlands. Results showed that linking spatial clusters is crucial toward circular urban metabolism. Spatial design should promote mixed land-use. The case showed that spatial planning based on urban energy harvesting is a useful method to translate generic goals to local spatial interventions. Urban energy harvesting can contribute to increased productivity, resulting in increased sustainability of urban areas, e.g. social, environmental benefits. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Environmental impact assessment will soon become a compulsory phase in future potable water production projects, in algeria, especially, when alternative treatment processes such sedimentation, coagulation sand filtration and Desinfection are considered. An impact assessment tool is therefore developed for the environmental evaluation of potable water production. in our study The evaluation method used is the life cycle assessment (LCA) for the determination and evaluation of potential impact of a drink water station, near algiers (SEAL-Boudouaou(a)). LCA requires both the identification and quantification of materials and energy used in all stages of the product's life, when the inventory information is acquired, it will then be interpreted into the form of potential impact "eco-indicators 99" towards study areas covered by LCA, using the simapro6 soft ware for water treatment process is necessary to discover the weaknesses in the water treatment process in order for it to be further improved ensuring quality life. The main source shown that for the studied water treatment process, the highest environmental burdens are coagulant preparation (30% for all impacts), mineral resource and ozone layer depletion the repartition of the impacts among the different processes varies in comparison with the other impacts. Mineral resources are mainly consumed during alumine sulfate solution preparation; Ozone layer depletion originates mostly from tetrachloromethane emissions during alumine sulfate production. It should also be noted that, despite the small doses needed, ozone and active Carbone treatment generate significant impacts with a contribution of 10% for most of the impacts. Moreover impacts of energy are used in producing pumps (20-25 GHC) for plant operation and the unitary processes (coagulation, sand filtration decantation) and the most important impacts are localized in the same equipment (40-75 GHC) and we can conclude that: Pre-treatment, pumping and EDR (EDR: 0.-6 0 kg CO2 eq. /produced m(3)) are the process-units with higher environmental impacts. Energy consumption is the main source of impacts on climate change. Chemicals consumption (e. g. coagulants, oxidants) are the principle cause of impacts on the ozone layer depletion. Conventional plants: pre-treatment has high GHG emissions due to chemicals consumption.While the ecological impact of anthropogenically introduced exotic species is considered a major threat for biodiversity and ecosystems functioning, it is generally not accounted for in the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of products. In this article, we propose a framework that includes exotic species introduction in an LCA context. We derived characterization factors for exotic fish species introduction related to the transport of goods across the Rhine-Main-Danube canal. These characterization factors are expressed as the potentially disappeared fraction (PDF) of native freshwater fish species in the rivers Rhine and Danube integrated over space and time per amount of goods transported (PDF.m(3).yr.kg(-1)). Furthermore, we quantified the relative importance of exotic fish species introduction compared to other anthropogenic stressors in the freshwater environment (i.e., eutrophication, ecotoxicity, greenhouse gases, and water consumption) for transport of goods through the Rhine-Main-Danube waterway. We found that the introduction of exotic fish species contributed to 70-85% of the total freshwater ecosystem impact, depending on the distance that goods were transported. Our analysis showed that it is relevant and feasible to include the introduction of exotic species in an LCA framework. The proposed framework can be further extended by including the impacts of other exotic species groups, types of water bodies and pathways for introduction.Lightweighting is a key strategy used to improve vehicle fuel economy. Replacing conventional materials (e.g., steel) with lighter alternatives (e.g., aluminum, magnesium, and composites) decreases energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during vehicle use, but often increases energy consumption and GHG emissions during materials and vehicle production. Assessing the life-cycle benefits of mass reduction requires a quantitative description of the mass-induced fuel consumption during vehicle use. A new physics-based method for estimating mass-induced fuel consumption (MIF) is proposed. We illustrate the utility of this method by using publicly available data to calculate MIF values in the range of 0.2-0.5 L/(100 km 100 kg) based on 106 records of fuel economy tests by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 2013 model year vehicles. Lightweighting is shown to have the most benefit when applied to vehicles with high fuel consumption and high power. Use of the physics-based model presented here would place future life cycle assessment studies of vehicle lightweighting on a firmer scientific foundation.Ecologically based life cycle assessment (Eco-LCA) is an appealing approach for the evaluation of resources utilization and environmental impacts of the process industries from an ecological scale. However, the aggregated metrics of Eco-LCA suffer from some drawbacks: the environmental impact metric has limited applicability; the resource utilization metric ignores indirect consumption; the renewability metric fails to address the quantitative. distinction of resources availability; the productivity metric seems self-contradictory. In this paper, the existing Eco-LCA metrics are revised and extended for sustainability assessment of the energy and chemical processes. A new Eco-LCA metrics system is proposed, including four independent dimensions: environmental impact, resource utilization, resource availability, and economic effectiveness. An illustrative example of comparing assessment between a gas boiler and a solar boiler process provides insight into the features of the proposed approach.Despite concerns of sanitation provision, water scarcity, climate change, and resource depletion, limited research has been conducted to assess the environmental impact of wastewater treatment and resource recovery strategies to improve access to sanitation and resource utilization in developing world settings. Accordingly, the goal of this study is to evaluate the potential benefits of mitigating the environmental impact of two small community-managed wastewater treatment systems in rural Bolivia using resource recovery (i.e., water reuse and energy recovery). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to estimate the embodied energy, carbon footprint, and eutrophication potential of these systems under existing and resource recovery conditions. Two distinct technologies are analyzed: (1) an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor (UASB) followed by two maturation ponds in series (UASB-Pond system) and (2) a facultative pond followed by two maturation ponds in series (3-Pond system). For the existing systems, bathroom and collection infrastructure had a higher energy intensity than the treatment processes, whereas direct methane emissions from treatment were the primary contributors to the carbon footprint. Taking advantage of reclaimed water was found to greatly reduce the eutrophication potential for both systems, in which the reduction increases proportionally to the percentage of water that is reclaimed. Energy recovery from the UASB-Pond system provided a 19% reduction in embodied energy and a 57% reduction in carbon footprint. Combining water reuse and energy recovery for the UASB-Pond system reduced the eutrophication potential, embodied energy and carbon footprint simultaneously. This highlights the benefits of integrated resource recovery. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, the practice of environmental impact assessment (EIA) has created significant awareness on the role of environmentally sound projects in sustainable development. In view of the recent studies on the effects of climate change, the Philippine government has given high priority to the construction of flood control structures to alleviate the destructive effects of unmitigated floods, especially in highly urbanized areas like Metro Manila. EIA thus, should be carefully and effectively carried out to maximize or optimize the potential benefits that can be derived from structural flood mitigation measures (SFMMs). A utility-based environmental assessment approach may significantly aid flood managers and decision-makers in planning for effective and environmentally sound SFMM projects. This study proposes a utility-based assessment approach using the rapid impact assessment matrix (RIAM) technique, coupled with the evidential reasoning approach, to rationally and systematically evaluate the ecological and socio-economic impacts of 4 planned SFMM projects (i.e. 2 river channel improvements and 2 new open channels) in Metro Manila. Results show that the overall environmental effects of each of the planned SFMM projects are positive, which indicate that the utility of the positive impacts would generally outweigh the negative impacts. The results also imply that the planned river channel improvements will yield higher environmental benefits over the planned open channels. This study was able to present a clear and rational approach in the examination of overall environmental effects of SFMMs, which provides valuable insights that can be used by decision-makers and policy makers to improve the EIA practice and evaluation of projects in the Philippines. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Steam turbines have many applications in various industrial sectors and by common experience blade failures are the main origin of operational breakdowns in these machines, causing great economic loss in turbo machinery industry. The turbines are designed to work in stable conditions of operation. Nevertheless, failure in blades has been present after a short time period of work. These failures commonly attributed to resonance stress of the blades at different stages to certain excitation frequencies. Artificial neural network (ANN) approach was developed to predict the useful life (UL) of the blades. The configuration 6-3-1 (6 inputs, 3 hidden and 1 output neurons) presented an excellent agreement (R-2 = 0.9912 and RMSE = 0.00022) between experimental and simulated useful life value considering the hyperbolic tangent sigmoid and linear transfer function in the hidden layer and output layer. In the following study, the sensitivity analysis was carried out, and showed, also that all studied input variables (resonance stress, frequency ratio, dynamic stress, damping, fatigue strength, mean stress) have strong effect on blades steam turbines in terms of useful life. However, the resonance stress is the most influential parameter with relative importance of 35.5%, followed by frequency ratio. The results showed that neural network modeling could effectively predict and simulate the behavior of life cycles assessment in blades of steam turbines. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to the growing threat of climate change, we are challenged to find improved assessment practises to recognize solutions for sustainable urban development. The focus of the study is on the life cycle design of a district energy system for a new residential development in Finland. This study analyses LCC (life cycle costs) and carbon emissions (LCA (life cycle assessment)), i.e., the "viability" of different energy systems through a methodological life cycle framework. By combining LCC and LCA, a LCM (life cycle management) perspective is portrayed to support decision-making on a long-term basis. The comparable energy design options analysed are (1) district heating (reference design), (2) district heating with building integrated photovoltaic panels, (3) ground source heat pump, and (4) ground source heat pump with building-integrated photovoltaic panels. The results show that the design option with the highest initial investment (4) is in fact the most viable from a life cycle perspective. This study further strengthens the connection between cost savings and carbon emissions reduction in a life cycle context. Thus, by implementing LCC and LCA analysis in an early design phase, justified economic and environmental design decisions can be identified to develop more sustainable urban areas. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a need for higher education to cultivate deep knowledge and skills in the ever-evolving area of sustainability. This paper explores one strategy for teaching Product Design Engineering students Design for Environment. A critical aspect is the connection between an industry partner, MicroHeat Technologies, who have developed water and energy efficient point of use water heating technology, and undergraduate students from Swinburne University with competencies in both design and engineering. This paper documents how students can explore Design for Environment strategies in a project based learning environment, verifying and quantifying environmental gains throughout the design process from concept to detailed design proposal. Engineering methods such as whole systems design and life cycle assessment were used to better equip these student designers with the tools to quantify the benefits of proposed designs in relation to sustainability. The student group was introduced to the MicroHeat technology, which has the capacity to be at the forefront of Design for Environment, the authenticity of which was used to enhance student engagement levels. The project successes were demonstrated by exceeding the industry partner expectations in terms of the breadth and high resolution of outcomes, detail for manufacture and usability. The student work revealed how higher education tied to industry innovation could prepare students to contribute to curtailing the ecological crisis when based in industry, in this case by integrating credible technology options with effective Design for Environment methodology into the design process and outcomes. These results strengthen the case for educators in sustainability to explore industry-based partnerships for cross-disciplinary student projects, with the course now running for a fourth successive year. In consultation with students and the industry partner, Swinburne staff members continue to refine the curriculum, to improve outcomes both from a project and pedagogical perspective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Completely autotrophic nitrogen removal (ANR) is based on the combination of partial nitritation (PN) and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox). It is a promising alternative for the subsequent treatment of biogas digester supernatants in livestock manure processing and nitrogen surplus scenarios. However, as no full-scale experiences in the treatment of manure digestates by ANR have been published to date, future field studies addressing treatment of this kind of effluent would be of great interest. Some topics to be considered in these studies would be coupling anaerobic digestion and ANR, analysis of the factors that affect the process, comparing reactor configurations, microbial ecology, gas emissions, and achieving robust performance. This paper provides an overview of published studies on ANR. Specific issues related to the applicability of the process for treating manure digestates are discussed. The energy requirements of ANR are compared with those of other technological alternatives aimed at recovering nitrogen from digester supernatants. The results of the assessment were shown to depend on the composition of the supernatant. In this regard, the PN-anammox process was shown to be more competitive than other alternatives particularly at concentrations of up to 2 kg NH4+-N m(-3) (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Understanding the processes and mechanisms of carbon acquisition and accumulation in microalgae is fundamental to enhance the cellular capabilities aimed to environmental and industrial applications. The "omics" approaches have greatly contributed to expanding the knowledge on these carbon-related cellular responses, reporting large data sets on microalgae transcriptome, proteome and metabolome. This review emphasizes the advances made on Chlamydomonas exploration; however, some knowledge acquired from studying this model organism, may be extrapolated to close algae species. The large data sets available for this organism revealed the identity of a vast range of genes and proteins which are integrating carbon-related mechanisms. Nevertheless, these data sets have also highlighted the need for integrative analysis in order to fully explore the information enclosed. Here, some of the main results from "omics" approaches which may contribute to the understanding of carbon acquisition and accumulation in Chlamydomonas were reviewed and possible applications were discussed. Biological significance A number of important publications in the field of "omics" technologies have been published reporting studies of the model green microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and related to microalgal biomass production. However, there are only few attempts to integrate these data. Publications showing the results from "omics" approaches, such as transcriptome, metabolome and proteome, focused in the study of mechanisms of carbon acquisition and accumulation in microalgae were reviewed. This review contributes to highlight the knowledge recently generated on such "omics" studies and it discusses how these results may be important for the advance of applied sciences, such as microalgae biotechnology. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a systematic methodology for sustainable process systems design, combining the principles of industrial ecology, process design and process integration, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and multi-objective optimization (MOO). The superstructure considers an extended decision perimeter and embeds models based either on flowsheeting software or average market technologies, for which energy and material flows are extracted from the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) database. Therefore, the overall supply chain can be synthesized within a given action system and the systematic recyclings identified. The methodology can be used to design eco-industrial parks or urban systems, to identify the best conversion pathways of resources or waste, or to fix the optimal value of environmental taxes. It is illustrated by an application to the environomic design of an urban energy system. This case study considers multiple energy services to be supplied and waste to be treated, with their seasonal variations, indigenous and imported resources, as well as different candidate conversion technologies. Results demonstrate that integrating an environmental objective in the design procedure leads to consider different system configurations than if only economic aspects are considered. The problematic of the optimal value of a CO2 tax is as well addressed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool to assess the environmental sustainability of a product; it quantifies the environmental impact of a product's life cycle. In conventional LCAs, the boundaries of a product's life cycle are limited to the human/industrial system, the technosphere. Ecosystems, which provide resources to and take up emissions from the technosphere, are not included in those boundaries. However, similar to the technosphere, ecosystems also have an impact on their (surrounding) environment through their resource usage (e.g., nutrients) and emissions (e.g., CH4). We therefore propose a LCA framework to assess the impact of integrated Techno-Ecological Systems (TES), comprising relevant ecosystems and the technosphere. In our framework, ecosystems are accounted for in the same manner as technosphere compartments. Also, the remediating effect of uptake of pollutants, an ecosystem service, is considered. A case study was performed on a TES of sawn timber production encompassing wood growth in an intensively managed forest ecosystem and further industrial processing. Results show that the managed forest accounted for almost all resource usage and biodiversity loss through land occupation but also for a remediating effect on human health, mostly via capture of airborne fine particles. These findings illustrate the potential relevance of including ecosystems in the product's life cycle of a LCA, though further research is needed to better quantify the environmental impact of TES.Waste-cooking-oil biodiesel has a great potential to be widely used as an alternative, renewable fuel for diesel engines in the near future. The aim of this investigation was to experimentally study the effect of using different blends of waste-cooking-oil biodiesel and diesel fuel on the diesel-engine performance, combustion characteristics, and emissions. It was found that increasing the percentage of biodiesel in the fuel blend from 0 to 50% decreased engine torque and thermal efficiency by 9 and 11%, respectively, for an engine speed of 1500 rpm. On the other hand, the engine fuel consumption increased by 17%. In addition, the CO and HC emissions decreased by 31 and 40%, respectively, whereas CO2 and NOx emissions increased by 17 and 40%, respectively. It was also found that the ignition delay period decreased and the total combustion duration increased with increasing percentage of biodiesel in the fuel blend.A case study on a gate-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) starting from the delivery of germinated seeds to the production of oil palm seedling in an oil palm nursery was carried out. The oil palm nursery, located in Selangor and licensed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) was selected for this study. One oil palm seedling was the defined functional unit. The environmental impact from activities in the nursery were determined from the input and output into and from the processing steps in the nursery. The LCA study was conducted in accordance with the procedural framework ISO 14040 - 14044 series of the International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO). The purpose of the study was to obtain a life cycle inventory (LCI) of input and output associated with the production of one oil palm seedling and to provide a comprehensive picture of the environmental impact associated with production of one oil palm seedling in the nursery, by applying the LCA methodology. Inventory data collection consists of the input of raw materials and energy such as polybags, fertilisers, pesticides, diesel, pipes and petrol for transportation and irrigation. Real time measurement of gas and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the pump for irrigation in the nursery was also carried out. The results show that the LCA methodology is suitable for assessing the environmental impact associated with oil palm seedling production.Increasing electricity supply in Sub-Saharan Africa is a prerequisite to enable economic development and reduce poverty. Renewable sources such as wood-fueled power plants are being promoted for social, environmental and economic reasons. We analyzed an economic model of a vertically integrated system of short-rotation woody crops (SRWC) plantations coupled with a combined heat and power (CHP) plant under Sub-Saharan African conditions. We analyzed a 5 MW (electric) base-case scenario under Ugandan conditions with a 2870 ha Eucalyptus grandis plantation and a productivity of 12 t ha(-1) y(-1) (oven dry basis) under a 5-year rotation. Plant construction and maintenance constituted 27% and 41% of total costs, respectively. Plantation productivity, carbon credit sales as well as land, fuel, labor & transport costs played an economic minor role. Highly influential variables included plant efficiency & construction costs, plantation design (spacing and rotation length) and harvest technologies. We conclude that growing 12-24 t ha-1 y-1 at a five year rotation can produce IRR's of 16 and 19% over 30-years, respectively. Reducing rotation length significantly reduced short-term financial risk related to frontloaded costs and relatively late revenues from electricity sales. Long-term feed-in tariffs and availability of a heat market played a significant economic role. The base-case scenario's 30-year IRR dropped from 16% to 9% when a heat market was absent. Results suggest a leveling-off of economies-of-scale effects above 20 MW (electric) installations. Implementation-related research needs for pilot activities should focus on SRWC productivity and energy life cycle analysis. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The sustainability of the utilization of wood biomass for energy and other purposes has been widely assessed in different studies. Especially discrete methods from the family of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), such as Outranking methods, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) are often applied. AHP is considered one of the most promising options to be used in sustainability assessments, because it is comprehensible to apply and it incorporates the preferences of decision-makers in an advanced manner. In this study, we present a theoretical multi-dimensional framework based on a modified version of AHP for assessing sustainability and apply it in a case of wood-based bioenergy production in eastern Finland. The framework includes four dimensions of sustainability and life cycle phases from the acquisition of raw material to manufacturing the final product. The production systems used in the empirical sustainability assessments are a local heat production plant, a combined heat and power production plant, and a wood pellet processing plant. Local sustainability experts identified indicators relevant at the regional scale. The impact assessment data were obtained from literature, by interviewing the managers of the bioenergy plants, and from a postal survey administered to local people. The local heat provider received the highest sustainability index; however, there were no considerable differences between the sustainability indexes. None of the bioenergy production systems can be considered the most sustainable regardless of the assumptions employed in the framework. The framework provided the basis for a quantitative, interdisciplinary approach to assess sustainability. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Different economic and environmental theories and approaches have been used to date to evaluate effectiveness of biofuels policies, efficiency of biofuels production or sustainability of different biofuels technologies. The most commonly known approaches include, e.g., Life Cycle Analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, contingent valuation, GIS-based models, and market and price related analysis. This paper is focused on a multi-objective decision analysis that, although well established in economic and environmental evaluation theory, has not been widely used yet to assess biofuels production or policies. The paper presents a fuzzy set theory based multi-objective framework for evaluating conventional and advanced biofuels feedstocks in the US; considering uncertainties of decision-making processes. It incorporates fuzzy set theory, expert elicitation and the PROMETHEE approach to determine the sustainability potential of the feedstocks in terms of multiple economic, environmental and social policy objectives. The study shows algae and switchgrass to be the most sustainable feedstocks, while corn that is currently the most important feedstock for ethanol production in the US, has the lowest sustainability potential among the analyzed feedstocks. The study presents an example of a participatory approach and recommends. its application for designing policy measures in an interactive process with policymakers. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Effective water management and governance at all geographical levels can only be designed based on good quality information and thorough understanding of it. The accounting for water resources from virtual water (VW) and water footprint (WF) perspectives can generate information about water uses in production processes and flows of VW associated with the trade of commodities. There have been a large number of studies on VW and WF since the advent of the two concepts. The recent literature has seen an increase in explicit elaboration of local, regional and national water uses in the context of global economic and water systems. More sophisticated and systematic approaches, such as input-output (IO) models and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools, have been employed to facilitate the analysis of complex interconnections of water uses across system boundaries and environmental impacts incurred. However, limitations and shortcomings remain in the current VW and WF studies with regard to policy relevance, data accuracy, methodological approaches and conceptual consistency. Further efforts are required from the scientific community to tackle these problems in order to enhance the usefulness of the concepts and the data generated for water resources management and governance at all geographical levels which are intrinsically connected through VW trade.The life cycle of ethanol derived from sawdust by enzymatic hydrolysis process is evaluated to determine if environmentally preferable and economically viable ethanol can be produced. Two scenarios are considered to estimate net energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and production costs. The estimated net energy consumption, GHG emission and production costs are 12.29-13.37 MJ/L, 0.75-0.92 kg CO2 e/L and about $0.98-$1.04/L, respectively depending on the scenarios of this study. The result confirmed that environmental benefit can be gained with present technologies; however, economic viability remains doubtful unless Feed-in Tariff (FIT) is considered. The production cost of ethanol reduces to $0.5/L, if FiT is considered to be $0.025/MJ. This study indicates that the implementation of FIT program for ethanol industry not only helps Ontario mitigate GHG emissions, but may also attract more investment and create rural employment opportunities. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An environmental assessment and a cost analysis were conducted for mobility options using electricity, hydrogen, ethanol, Fischer-Tropsch diesel and methane derived from wood. Therefore, the overall life cycle with regard to greenhouse gas emissions; acidifying emissions and fossil energy demand as well as costs is analysed. The investigation is carried out for mobility options in 2010 and gives an outlook to the year 2030. Results show that methane utilization in the car is beneficial with regard to environmental impacts (e.g. 58.5 g CO2-eq./km) and costs (23.1 (sic)-ct./km) in 2010, especially in comparison to hydrogen usage (132.4 g CO2-eq./km and 63.9 (sic)-ct./km). The electric vehicle construction has high environmental impacts and costs compared to conventional vehicles today, but with technical improvements and further market penetration, battery electric vehicles can reach the level of concepts with combustion engines in future applications (e.g. cost decrease from 38.7 to 23.4 (sic)-ct./km). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Algae and jatropha, two types of promising and unconventional biomass, are investigated in this study for large-scale production of biodiesel. The aim is to evaluate the potential advantages and the magnitude of closeness of life cycle balances between these two biodiesel pathways compared to fossil diesel, by taking into account possible uncertainties. The geographical location of this study is India with a prospect of utilizing available wastelands in southern regions. The results indicate that the environmental performance of algal biodiesel is comparable to that of jatropha biodiesel. Both show significant GHG emission and fossil energy depletion reductions which are in the range of 36-40 and 10-25% respectively compared to fossil diesel in the studied geographic context. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The availability of about 18 million hectares of grassland in Para State, Brazil, and the possibility of increasing the livestock density display a good perspective for the oil palm expansion in pasture land. A life cycle assessment is performed for a prospective palm-based biorefinery to view two regional and one global environmental impact and the consequences of the land-use change in terms of GHG emissions. Oil palm cultivation in an area of similar to 110,000 hectares of land can annually produce similar to 39,000 tons of bioethanol, similar to 340,000 tons of biodiesel, similar to 268 GW h net electricity and other co-products. The life cycle GHG emissions reduction for biodiesel and bioethanol as compared to fossil diesel and gasoline would be 76.9-79.3% and 83.7-88.6%. The advantage of grassland rehabilitation by oil palm plantation is the removal of similar to 188 t CO2/ha from the atmosphere during the plant lifetime. The entire inflows and outflows for the conversion processes are schemed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Well-to-wake (WTWa) analysis of bio-based aviation fuels, including hydroprocessed renewable jet (HRJ) from various oil seeds, Fischer-Tropsch jet (FTJ) from corn-stover and co-feeding of coal and corn-stover, and pyrolysis jet from corn stover, is conducted and compared with petroleum jet. WTWa GHG emission reductions relative to petroleum jet can be 41-63% for HRJ, 68-76% for pyrolysis jet and 89% for FTJ from corn stover. The HRJ production stage dominates WTWa GHG emissions from HRJ pathways. The differences in GHG emissions from HRJ production stage among considered feedstocks are much smaller than those from fertilizer use and N2O emissions related to feedstock collection stage. Sensitivity analyses on FTJ production from coal and corn-stover are also conducted, showing the importance of biomass share in the feedstock, carbon capture and sequestration options, and overall efficiency. For both HRJ and FTJ, co-product handling methods have significant impacts on WTWa results. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study assesses the implications of the bioethanol policy mandate in Thailand of producing 9 M litre ethanol per day by 2021 on water use and water deprivation. The results reveal that water footprint (WF) of bioethanol varies between 1396 and 3105 L water/L ethanol. Cassava ethanol has the highest WF followed by molasses and sugarcane ethanol, respectively. However, in terms of fresh water (especially irrigation water) consumption, molasses ethanol is highest with 699-1220 L/L ethanol. To satisfy the government plan of bioethanol production in 2021, around 1625 million m(3) of irrigation water/year will be additionally required, accounting for about 3% of the current active water storage of Thailand. Two important watersheds in the northeastern region of Thailand are found to be potentially facing serious water stress if water resources are not properly managed. Measures to reduce water footprint of bioethanol are recommended. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this work was to study the assessment of the life cycle of hydrogen production from biomass for transportation purposes concerning greenhouse gas emissions, emissions with an acidification potential and the fossil energy demand. As feedstocks woody biomass from forestry or short rotation coppice, herbaceous biomass (i.e., straw), energy crops (mainly maize and grain), bio-waste and organic by-products (e.g., glycerol) were considered and their potential in Germany assessed. The results showed that hydrogen produced from woody biomass emitted the least emissions due to the low emissions caused by the provision of the biomass. Regarding the cumulative fossil energy demand biomass from short rotation coppice showed the lowest values. The highest biomass potential for hydrogen production could be identified for woody biomass from forests as well as from short rotation coppice. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Petroleum fuels are predominantly transported domestically by pipelines, whereas biofuels are almost exclusively transported by rail, barge, and truck. As biofuel production increases, new pipelines may become economically attractive. Location-specific variables impacting pipeline viability include construction costs, availability and costs of alternative transportation modes, electricity prices and emissions (if priced), throughput, and subsurface temperature. When transporting alcohol or diesel-like fuels, pipelines have a lower direct energy intensity than rail, barge, and trucks if fluid velocity is under 1 m/s for 4-inch diameter pipelines and 2 m/s for 8-inch or larger pipelines. Across multiple hypothetical state-specific scenarios, profit-maximizing design velocities range from 1.2 to 1.9 m/s. In costs and GHG emissions, optimized pipelines outperform trucks in each state and rail and barge in most states, if projected throughput exceeds four billion liters/year. If emissions are priced, optimum design diameters typically increase to reduce pumping energy demands, increasing the cost-effectiveness of pipeline projects. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study was to evaluate the anticipated environmental benefits from integrating a dairy farm and a greenhouse; the integration is based on anaerobic digestion of manures to produce biogas energy, biogenic CO2, and digested slurry. A full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted on six modeled cases applicable in British Columbia, to evaluate non-renewable energy consumption, climate change, acidification, eutrophication, respiratory effects and human toxicity. Compared to conventional practice, an integrated system has the potential to nearly halve eutrophication and respiratory effects caused by inorganic emissions and to reduce non-renewable energy consumption, climate change, and acidification by 65-90%, while respiratory effects caused by organic emissions become negative as co-products substitute for other materials. Co-digestion of other livestock manures, greenhouse plant waste, or food and food processing waste with dairy manure can further improve the performance of the integrated system. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of the present study is to assess different alternatives for a wastewater treatment plant module with capacity to remove nutrients biologically, taking into account present Argentine regulations for effluent discharge. A computational modeling tool (GPS-X) was employed to simulate the behavior of the different alternatives, and Life Cycle Assessment was applied to quantify the environmental impact. A 2000 m(3)/d municipal wastewater flow was used to carry out the simulations, the annual flow was utilized as functional units and the main topics analyzed were energy efficiency, land use, eutrophication reduction and biosolid reuse. Biogas and biosolid generation was evaluated as a good opportunity to generate a cleaner process. This study highlights the fact that nutrient removal processes significantly improve the quality of effluent and biosolids and reduces energy consumption. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the actions proposed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in South Africa (SA) is to install carbon capture and storage (CCS) at new energy-producing plants. This paper aims to evaluate the costs and GHG emissions of implementing CCS at a coal-fired integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant, at a coal fired ultra-supercritical (USC) power plant, at a synthetic fuel coal-to-liquid (CTL) plant and at a gas-to-liquid (GTL) plant for SA. The approach for comparing of these CCS applications is based on a combination of a techno-economic analysis with a life-cycle assessment. As expected, the generating costs in plants with CCS are higher than without CCS for all case studies. GHG-abatement costs in 2040 are shown to be the lowest for the IGCC power plant at 173 ZAR(07)/t CO2eq, followed by the USC power plant at 227 ZAR(07)/t CO2eq. These costs are considerably higher for the CTL and GTL plants. The results show that from an economic perspective, CCS might be an attractive option for CO2 mitigation in SA especially for the electricity sector. However, a prerequisite for the implementation of CCS is that the technology reaches commercial scale for the investigated options and is socially accepted. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, life cycle analysis has been carried out to evaluate overall performance of given rated stand-alone solar photovoltaic (SAPV) in terms of basic energy matrices, life cycle cost analysis, and earned carbon credit. Further, the experimentally calculated actual on-field life cycle performance results of existing outdoor SAPV system (i.e. almost 20 years old) have been represented with respect to the potential (max.) performance of same SAPV system estimated under same environmental conditions of solar intensity, ambient temperature, PV operating temperature as obtained during actual on-field performance evaluation. This new approach of overall performance evaluation by considering the on-field SAPV system installation as new (i.e. with potential/max. performance) and old (i.e. with actual performance) under same environmental conditions provides an inclusive comparative life cycle assessment of on-field PV system. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to improve the basis for the comparison of energy products. The paper will discuss important methodological issues with regard to various energy indicators and it will, by means of a few selected energy indicators, show examples of results for hydropower, wind power and electricity from biomass, gas and coal. Lastly it will suggest methods to achieve results which are more consistent when comparing electricity production technologies. In general, methodological issues can affect the results of life cycle assessments. In this paper, the authors have focused on the effect of system boundaries for energy indicators and found that the internal ranking of cases within one electricity generation technology is dependent on the indicator used. These variations do not, however, alter the general ranking of the major technologies studied. The authors suggest that future assessments should focus on a smaller set of indicators: the Cumulative Energy Demand (CED), which is the most "universal" indicator, Energy Payback Ratio (EPR) for assessment of upstream activities, and a suggested "Cumulative Fossil Energy Demand" (CFED) for resource depletion assessments. There is also a need for stricter standardisation and increased transparency in the assessment of energy products. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An ever-increasing body of research explores the effectiveness of Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) in achieving energy savings in households. To date, however, the overall life cycle impact of the HEMS itself has not been taken into account. Thus, no assessment has been made whether the amount of energy saved (e(saved)) outweighs the energy needed for production, use and disposal (e(invested)). Therefore, an eco-cost and a Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) method were used to analyze three distinct types of HEMS. Based on the literature, six scenarios were developed in order to find the break-even point, where e(invested) = e(saved). The results show that the overall impact is dependent on the type of HEMS, and that if the duration of use is short and the achieved savings are small, the benefits do not always outweigh the environmental costs. Care should be taken not to develop HEMS with unnecessarily elaborate parts or functionalities and that their own electricity consumption is minimized. The paper concludes by discussing the implication for polices concerning the implementation of smart meters and HEMS and their design. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concentrated solar power (CSP) is unique among intermittent renewable energy options because for the past four years, utility-scale plants have been using an energy storage technology that could allow a CSP plant to operate as a baseload renewable energy generator in the future. No study to-date has directly compared the environmental implications of this technology with more conventional CSP backup energy options. This study compares the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption, and direct, onsite land use associated with one MW h of electricity production from CSP plants with wet and dry cooling and with three energy backup systems: (1) minimal backup (MB), (2) molten salt thermal energy storage (TES), and (3) a natural gas-fired heat transfer fluid heater (NG). Plants with NG had 4-9 times more life cycle GHG emissions than plants with TES. Plants with TES generally had twice as many life cycle GHG emissions as the MB plants. Dry cooling reduced life cycle water consumption by 71-78% compared to wet cooling. Plahts with larger backup capacities had greater life cycle water consumption than plants with smaller backup capacities, and plants with NG had lower direct, onsite life cycle land use than plants with MB or TES. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions embodied in 66 different food categories together with self-reported dietary information are used to show how consumer choices surrounding food might lead to reductions in food-related GHG emissions. The current UK-average diet is found to embody 8.8 kg CO(2)e person(-1) day(-1). This figure includes both food eaten and food wasted (post-purchase). By far the largest potential reduction in GHG emissions is achieved by eliminating meat from the diet (35% reduction), followed by changing from carbon-intensive lamb and beef to less carbon-intensive pork and chicken (18% reduction). Cutting out all avoidable waste delivers an emissions saving of 12%. Not eating foods grown in hot-houses or air-freighted to the UK offers a 5% reduction in emissions. We show how combinations of consumer actions can easily lead to reductions of 25% in food related GHG emissions. If such changes were adopted by the entire UK population this would be equivalent to a 71% reduction in the exhaust pipe emissions of CO2 from the entire UK passenger car fleet (which totalled 71 Mt CO(2)e year(-1) in 2009). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study proposes models for projecting reductions in CO2 emissions of 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% compared to business as usual (BAU), using a carbon allowance allocation policy and both unimodal and intermodal modes of transportation. The results show that for 10% to 80% decreases in free carbon allowance, the intermodal ratio increased from 1.01% to 53.44%, which led to decreases in carbon emissions and demand ranging from 10.41% to 48.19% and 8.45% to 7.57%, respectively. When free carbon allowances are decreased, the demand for intermodal systems increases accordingly. These results suggest that a carbon allowance allocation policy could mitigate transportation carbon emissions with a relatively small negative impact on economic activity. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Widespread use of alternative hybrid powertrains currently appears inevitable and many opportunities for substantial progress remain. The necessity for environmentally friendly vehicles, in conjunction with increasing concerns regarding U. S. dependency on foreign oil and climate change, has led to significant investment in enhancing the propulsion portfolio with new technologies. Recently, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have attracted considerable attention due to their potential to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector. PHEVs are especially appealing for short daily commutes with excessive stop-and-go driving. However, the high costs associated with their components, and in particular, with their energy storage systems have been significant barriers to extensive market penetration of PHEVs. In the research reported here, we investigated the implications of motor/generator and battery size on fuel economy and GHG emissions in a medium duty PHEV. An optimization framework is proposed and applied to two different parallel powertrain configurations, pretransmission and post transmission, to derive the Pareto frontier with respect to motor/generator and battery size. The optimization and modeling approach adopted here facilitates better understanding of the potential benefits from proper selection of motor/ generator and battery size on fuel economy and GHG emissions. This understanding can help us identify the appropriate sizing of these components and thus reducing the PHEV cost. Addressing optimal sizing of PHEV components could aim at an extensive market penetration of PHEVs.The primary motivation for the vehicle replacement schemes that were implemented in many countries was to encourage the purchase of new cars. The basic assumption of these schemes was that these acquisitions would benefit both the economy and the environment as older and less fuel-efficient cars were scrapped and replaced with more fuel-efficient models. In this article, we present a new environmental impact assessment method for assessing the effectiveness of scrappage schemes for reducing CO2 emissions taking into account the rebound effect, driving behavior for older versus new cars and entire lifecycle emissions for during the manufacturing processes of new cars. The assessment of the Japanese scrappage scheme shows that CO2 emissions would only decrease if users of the scheme retained their new gasoline passenger vehicles for at least 4.7 years. When vehicle replacements were restricted to hybrid cars, the reduction in CO2 achieved by the scheme would be 6-8.5 times higher than the emissions resulting from a scheme involving standard, gasoline passenger vehicles. Cost-benefit analysis, based on the emission reduction potential, showed that the scheme was very costly. Sensitivity analysis showed that the Japanese government failed to determine the optimum, or target, car age for scrapping old cars in the scheme. Specifically, scrapping cars aged 13 years and over did not maximize the environmental benefits of the scheme. Consequently, modifying this policy to include a reduction in new car subsidies, focused funding for fuel-efficient cars, and modifying the target car age, would increase environmental benefits. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To meet greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the transportation sector, the United States is expected to expand infrastructure for producing and distributing lignocellulosic biofuels over the next decade. To compare the life-cycle GHG footprint of biofuels to the petroleum baseline, emissions associated with feedstock and fuel handling, storage, and transportation must be included. U.S.-specific life-cycle GHG emission factors were developed for each major distribution chain activity by applying a hybrid life-cycle assessment methodology to the construction, manufacturing, operation and maintenance of each component. A projection was then made for the fleet of infrastructure components necessary to distribute 21billion gal. (79.5billion L) of ethanol derived entirely from Miscanthus grass for comparison to the baseline petroleum system. Owing to geographic, physical, and chemical properties of biomass and alcohols, the distribution system for Miscanthus-based ethanol is more capital- and energy-intensive than petroleum per unit of fuel energy delivered and was estimated to be over five times more GHG-intensive than petroleum (i.e.,1718 versus 3.2gCO2-e/MJ of consumed fuel, ignoring feedstock production and conversion). Lower life-cycle emissions could be attained by employing more efficient and durable equipment and vehicles; reducing material losses; minimizing feedstock delivery, biofuel delivery, and consumer refueling errand distances; and producing more energy-dense biofuels than ethanol. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.The performance of structures and infrastructure under natural hazards can have a significant impact on the sustainability of the system, often characterized in terms of environmental, economic, or social indicators of performance. This paper commences with a brief review of the relation of natural hazard performance to sustainability and an assessment of bridge infrastructure sustainability with an emphasis on environmental indicators. A framework for life cycle sustainability analysis (LCS-A) is then posed that elucidates the role of natural hazard risks when evaluating sustainable bridge performance using risk-based indicators of environmental sustainability, including embodied energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Its application provides insight on the sustainability of mitigating damage from natural hazards through retrofitting deficient structures, considering uncertainty in the hazard occurrence, structural performance, and repair or reconstruction actions that affect energy expenditure and emissions. A case study is presented to evaluate indicators of environmental sustainability for individual bridges and for a regional portfolio of bridges susceptible to aging and seismic hazards. The results show the significant impact that retrofit can have on reducing the expected value of emissions and embodied energy from lifetime hazard exposure. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.The Renewable Fuel Standard 2 (RFS2) program under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 set a life-cycle emission reduction threshold to only greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; this type of single-dimensional threshold could lead to the unintended trading of one environmental problem for another. Many of the environmental impacts resulting over the life cycle of oil-crop biodiesel fuels manifest in the agricultural phase of production in the form of water quality degradation. This study investigated the extent to which different biofuels meet the RFS GHG requirement, and presents alternative strategies for minimizing unintended consequences. In addition to life-cycle global warming potential (GWP), the eutrophication potential (EP) and photochemical smog formation potential (PSP) from microalgal diesel were compared to the impacts resulting from petroleum-based diesel, soybean diesel and canola diesel. The results showed tradeoffs between GWP and eutrophication potential when microalgal diesel was compared to soybean diesel. Future RFS criteria should include EP and PSP metrics, however establishing thresholds like the GHG management approach may not be appropriate for these other impacts. Two possible strategies to setting life-cycle eutrophication standards are to establish a threshold based on first generation biofuels, as opposed to petro-fuels or to set maximum levels of EP loads for major watersheds or coastal areas. To decrease PSP, together with existing standards for tailpipe emissions, future RFSs should include the well-to-pump emissions from biofuels and petroleum fuels accounting for temporal and spatial variations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae are considered as potential sources for biodiesel production due to the higher growth rate than terrestrial plants. However, the large-scale application of algal biodiesel would be limited by the downstream cost of lipid extraction and the availability of water, CO2 and nutrients. A possible solution is to integrate algae cultivation with existing biogas plant, where algae can be cultivated using the discharges of CO2 and digestate as nutrient input, and then the attained biomass can be converted directly to biomethane by existing infrastructures. This integrated system is investigated and evaluated in this study. Algae are cultivated in a photobioreactor in a greenhouse, and two cultivation options (greenhouse with and without heating) are included. Life cycle assessment of the system was conducted, showing that algal biomethane production without greenhouse heating would have a net energy ratio of 1.54, which is slightly lower than that (1.78) of biomethane from ley crop. However, land requirement of the latter is approximately 68 times that of the former, because the area productivity of algae could reach at about 400 t/ha (dry basis) in half a year, while the annual productivity of ley crop is only about 5.8 t/ha. For the case of Vaxtkraft biogas plant in Vasteras, Sweden, the integrated system has the potential to increase the annual biomethane output by 9.4%. This new process is very simple, which might have potential for scale-up and commercial application of algal bioenergy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Thailand is one of the leading countries in rice production and export; an abundance of rice straw, therefore, is left in the field nowadays and is commonly burnt to facilitate quick planting of the next crop. The study assesses the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of using rice straw for bio-DME production in Thailand. The analysis is divided into two scenarios of rice straw bio-DME utilization i.e. used as automotive fuel for diesel engines and used as LPG supplement for household application. The results reveal that that utilization of rice straw for bio-DME in the two scenarios could help reduce GHG emissions by around 14-70% and 2-66%, respectively as compared to the diesel fuel and LPG substituted. In case rice straw is considered as a by-product of rice cultivation, the cultivation of rice straw will be the major source of GHG emission contributing around 50% of the total GHG emissions of rice straw bio-DME production. Several factors that can affect the GHG performance of rice straw bio-DME production are discussed along with measures to enhance GHG performance of rice straw bio-DME production and utilization. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study aims at assessing environmental and energy compatibility of different solutions of thermal insulation in building envelope. In fact a good insulation results in a reduction of heating/cooling energy consumptions; on the other hand construction materials undergo production, transformation and transport processes, whose energy and resources consumptions may lead to a significant decrease of the environmental benefits. The paper presents a detailed carbon footprint of a product (CFP, defined as the sum of greenhouse gas emissions and removals of a product system, expressed in CO2 equivalents), which is a reflective foil conceived and produced by an Italian company. CFP can be seen as a Life Cycle Assessment with climate change as the single impact category; it does not assess other potential social, economic and environmental impacts arising from the provision of products. The analysis considers all stages of the life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to the product's disposal, i.e. "from cradle to grave"; it was carried out according to UNI EN ISO 14040 and 14044, and LCA modelling was performed using SimaPro software tool. On the basis of obtained results, different measures have been proposed in order to reduce emissions in the life cycle and neutralize residual carbon footprint. The results allowed to make an important comparison concerning the environmental performance of the reflective foil in comparison with other types of insulating materials. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ruminants contribute considerably to the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. Genetic improvements have a large potential through permanente and cumulative reductions in emissions. Currently, indirect selection through correlated traits considered in broad breeding goals is the best option for reducing emissions. Breeding goal traits are weighed by their respective economic value (EV). The emission of GHG may be included in the bio-economic model, and the costs of GHG emissions may be estimated and included in the calculation of economic values using a shadow price. In this study emission costs were included in the calculations of economic values for two breed group under three production conditions; (1) semi-intensive (2) completely roughage based (RB) and (3) minimum use of concentrates (MC). Three harvested roughage qualities (early, medium and late cut) were included in the two latter situations, giving a total of 14 situations. EV were estimated for seven functional traits: herd life of cow (HL), age at first calving (AFC), calving interval, stillbirth (S), twinning rate (T), calving difficulty, limb and claw disorders, and for seven production traits: birth weight, carcass weight, carcass conformation, carcass fatness, growth rate from birth to 200 days (weaning), growth rate from 200 to 365 days and growth rate from 365 days to slaughter. Including GHG emissions into calculation of economic values (EV) decreased the relative economic importance of the functional traits HL, AFC, S and T, while increasing the importance of the production traits. However, the overall effect of including GHG emission was small and little reranking between the traits was observed. A sensitivity analysis for increased shadow price showed small effects on the EV. The results suggest that the economic values are robust towards the inclusion of GHG emission costs into the profit equation and also towards increased shadow price. Thus, broad breeding goals for beef cattle including both production and functional traits do not need to be changed considerably to take the emission of GHG into account. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to assess environmental impact, economic viability, and social acceptability of 3 beef production systems with differing levels of efficiency. A deterministic model of U.S. beef production was used to predict the number of animals required to produce 1 x 10(9) kg HCW beef. Three production treatments were compared, 1 representing average U.S. production (control), 1 with a 15% increase in ADG, and 1 with a 15% increase in finishing weight (FW). For each treatment, various socioeconomic scenarios were compared to account for uncertainty in producer and consumer behavior. Environmental impact metrics included feed consumption, land use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe), and N and P excretion. Feed cost, animal purchase cost, animal sales revenue, and income over costs (IOVC) were used as metrics of economic viability. Willingness to pay (WTP) was used to identify improvements or reductions in social acceptability. When ADG improved, feedstuff consumption, land use, and water use decreased by 6.4%, 3.2%, and 12.3%, respectively, compared with the control. Carbon footprint decreased 11.7% and N and P excretion were reduced by 4% and 13.8%, respectively. When FW improved, decreases were seen in feedstuff consumption (12.1%), water use (9.2%). and land use (15.5%); total GHGe decreased 14.7%; and N and P excretion decreased by 10.1% and 17.2%, compared with the control. Changes in IOVC were dependent on socioeconomic scenario. When the ADG scenario was compared with the control, changes in sector profitability ranged from 51 to 117% (cowcalf), -38 to 157% (stocker), and 37 to 134% (feedlot). When improved FW was compared, changes in cowcalf profit ranged from 67% to 143%, stocker profit ranged from -41% to 155% and feedlot profit ranged from 37% to 136%. When WTP was based on marketing beef being more efficiently produced, WTP improved by 10%; thus, social acceptability increased. When marketing was based on production efficiency and consumer knowledge of growth-enhancing technology use, WTP decreased by 12%-leading to a decrease in social acceptability. Results demonstrated that improved efficiency also improved environmental impact, but impacts on economic viability and social acceptability are highly dependent on consumer and producer behavioral responses to efficiency improvements.Among sustainable and renewable energies, biofuels appear to be the most promising and attractive, and related research has been expanding along with an exceptional growth of scientific knowledge. Based on the Science Citation Index Expanded from the Web of Science, a bibliometric evaluation of research output was carried out to map research activities and tendencies of the global biofuel field. The results indicate that annual output of scientific articles rocketed during the past decade (2003-2012). The United States of America (USA) is leading biofuels research and collaborated mainly with other productive countries (China, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and South Korea). In general, international collaborative publications resulted in more citations than single country publications. Institutional collaborations became increasingly prevalent over time and the 15 most productive institutions of USA tended to collaborate more with each other. Most research publications on biofuels appeared in the journals Biomass and Bioenergy and Bioresource Technology. Furthermore, biofuels research was based on combinations of multi-subject categories including "Energy and fuels", "Biotechnology and applied microbiology", "Chemical engineering", "Environmental sciences" and "Agricultural engineering". The keyword analysis confirmed the production of biodiesel from microalgae as the mainstream of recent biofuels research. Biorefinery was the most common technology for conversions of biological feedstock and life cycle assessment was the most popular tool of decision support to evaluate the sustainability of biofuel development. Published by Elsevier Ltd.A UK-based environmental sustainability study on bioethanol production from wheat straw was conducted using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Five pathways with leading pretreatment technologies (dilute acid, steam explosion with and without catalyst, liquid hot water, and wet oxidation) were modelled using process simulation software AspenPlus (TM), and their advantages and disadvantages were evaluated from an environmental perspective. In a contribution analysis of the environmental profiles for the near-term prospective scenarios, results indicated that the enzyme is a main contributor in all pathways. In addition to enzyme production, acid catalyst and base for its subsequent neutralisation also cause significant environmental burdens for dilute acid and steam explosion with catalyst pathways. By comparing the five wheat straw production pathways with petrol, it was suggested that those using pretreatment with steam explosion, liquid hot water and wet oxidation can be environmentally favourable over petrol. However, a sensitivity analysis conducted by expanding the ethanol system boundary to include the consequential effects of removing wheat straw from the field, suggested an increase in the overall environmental burdens of ethanol life cycles but certain wheat straw ethanol pathway (i.e. with steam explosion pretreatment) still remain environmentally favourable over petrol. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to assess the environmental impact of a submerged anaerobic MBR (SAnMBR) system in the treatment of urban wastewater at different temperatures: ambient temperature (20 and 33 degrees C), and a controlled temperature (33 degrees C). To this end, an overall energy balance (OEB) and life cycle assessment (LCA), both based on real process data, were carried out. Four factors were considered in this study; (1) energy consumption during wastewater treatment; (2) energy recovered from biogas capture; (3) potential recovery of nutrients from the final effluent; and (4) sludge disposal. The OEB and LCA showed SAnMBR to be a promising technology for treating urban wastewater at ambient temperature (OEB = 0.19 kW h m(-3)). LCA results reinforce the importance of maximising the recovery of nutrients (environmental impact in eutrophication can be reduced up to 45%) and dissolved methane (positive environmental impact can be obtained) from SAnMBR effluent. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Production of propionic acid by fermentation of glycerol as a renewable resource has been suggested as a means for developing an environmentally-friendly route for this commodity chemical. However, in order to quantify the environmental benefits, life cycle assessment of the production, including raw materials, fermentation, upstream and downstream processing is required. The economic viability of the process also needs to be analysed to make sure that any environmental savings can be realised. In this study an environmental and economic assessment from cradle-to-gate has been conducted. The study highlights the need for a highly efficient bioprocess in terms of product titre (more than 100 g/L and productivity more than 2 g/(L-h)) in order to be sustainable. The importance of the raw materials and energy production for operating the process to minimize emissions of greenhouse gases is also shown. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A check on environmental sustainability of microreaction technology is given based on a new process idea as a study case, which is the direct synthesis of adipic acid (ADA) in a continuous flow process using a milli-packed bed reactor with micro-sized fluid interstices. Main aim is to determine impactful process parameters and to have a holistic idea of the environmental profile for this new process by means of life cycle assessment. Second main aim is to benchmark the flow process against conventional technology to produce ADA which takes place in two steps. Whereas the conventional process for ADA synthesis occurs in two steps from oxidation of cyclohexane by air followed by nitration oxidation, the direct route is from cyclohexene and uses hydrogen peroxide as oxidant. This results in higher ADA yield and simplified process with one step less. Drawbacks of the direct synthesis are long reaction time and increased safety issues, which can be overcome by using microreactors. The reaction rate is increased by the largely improved mass transfer and the use of higher temperature. Life cycle assessment (LCA) shows that for a number of impact categories the direct process is greener; yet there are also categories for which the conventional route is more environmentally sustainable. The results, analyzed from cradle to factory gate, shed some light on the truth and comprehensiveness of the statement frequently found in the literature, that H2O2 is a green oxidant because of atom economy and non-toxicity of water produced (Noyori et al., 2003; Grigoropoulo et al., 2003; Usui and Sato, 2003; Podgorsek et al., 2009; Edwards et al., 2005; Tse et al., 2005) [1-6]. Further, cooling energy plays also an important role for the environmental profile. In this way, fast decisions and recommendations for process variants in the newly designed route can be given and lead to a more focused research plan which is exemplified at the end of the paper. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper we expand the work of Brandt and Dale (2011) on ERRs (energy return ratios) such as EROI (energy return on investment). This paper describes a "bottom-up" mathematical formulation which uses matrix-based computations adapted from the LCA (life cycle assessment) literature. The framework allows multiple energy pathways and flexible inclusion of non-energy sectors. This framework is then used to define a variety of ERRs that measure the amount of energy supplied by an energy extraction and processing pathway compared to the amount of energy consumed in producing the energy. ERRs that were previously defined in the literature are cast in our framework for calculation and comparison. For illustration, our framework is applied to include oil production and processing and generation of electricity from PV (photovoltaic) systems. Results show that ERR values will decline as system boundaries expand to include more processes. NERs (net energy return ratios) tend to be lower than GERs (gross energy return ratios). External energy return ratios (such as net external energy return, or NEER (net external energy ratio)) tend to be higher than their equivalent total energy return ratios. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this article is to prioritize the factors and alternatives relating to the reference conditions for the biodiesel production chain for the Brazilian Program for Biodiesel Use and Production. Multicriteria mapping of stakeholders' preferences was used to structure 20 interviews with specialists from Brazil representing three key areas (academy, industry, and regulatory bodies). The methodology started with a review of the literature on the sustainability of the biodiesel production chain based on market data, a review of 138 scientific articles indexed in the CAPES Web of Science database, which were searched using biodiesel and sustainability as keywords, and an analysis of the sustainability criteria used in related legislation and voluntary sustainability initiatives. Next, the reference conditions for the sustainability of the biodiesel production chain were structured, starting with the links and then the factors and their respective impacts and prioritizations given by the stakeholders. The results obtained from all the respondents indicate that the six most critical parameters are: improving the productive capacity of the land, non deforestation, production inputs, land access, engine problems, and land use for food production, which jointly accounted for 55.5% of the total priorities. (c) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 32: 1262-1270, 2013The Internet leads to material and energy consumption as well as various environmental impacts on both the regional and global scale. Yet, assessments of the Internet's energy consumption and resulting greenhouse gas emissions are still rare, and assessments of material flows and further environmental impacts are virtually non-existent. This article investigates material flows, the direct energy consumption during the use phase, as well as environmental impacts linked to the service, Internet in Switzerland. In our model, the service, Internet in Switzerland, is divided into various Internet participant categories. All devices used to access or provide Internet services are merged in a limited number of equipment families and, as such, included in an inventory of the existing infrastructure (stock). Based on this inventory, a material flow analysis (MFA) is performed, which includes the current stock as well as flows resulting from growth and disposal. The direct energy consumption for the operation of the infrastructure is quantified. Environmental impacts are calculated with a life cycle assessment approach, using the ecoinvent database and the software, SimaPro, applying four different methods. The MFA results in a 2009 stock of 98,100tonnes. Approximately 4,130gigawatt hours per year, or 7% of the total Swiss electricity consumption, were used in 2009 to operate the Swiss infrastructure. The environmental impacts caused during the production and use phases vary significantly depending on the assessment method chosen. The disposal phase had mainly positive impacts as a result of material recovery.Taiwan is attempting to implement the concept of a green economy through a Low Carbon Growth Plan (LCGP). However, the existing decision support tools for this measure have three key limitations: ignorance regarding the open economy; a lack of life cycle thinking; and limited categories of environmental impact. This study integrates environmentally extended, multi-region input-output analysis and hybrid life cycle assessment to quantify the potential environmental impact of the industrial activities and energy structure in Taiwan in 2020. Two novel indicators, environmental debts and loans, are also applied to identify the geographical shifting effects and tie environmental responsibility to the discussion. The results of this study reveal that under the existing LCGP, relative decoupling will be attained, but no significant environmental cobenefits other than those affecting climate change can be gained. Moreover, the current emission pledges cannot be fulfilled. The presence of increased environmental debt ratios reveals the geographical shifting effect of the LCGP. The main driver of the expansion of the environmental footprint can be attributed to the export of electronic components and products, which are not included in the agenda of policy discussions. As a result, three crucial policies are suggested to modify the existing LCGP: the implementation of a higher energy efficiency improvement target; rethinking the constraints on the electronics industry; and the development of a mechanism to include environmental issues in free trade agreement negotiations. With these changes, the realization of the current emission pledge and a green economy could be possible.Concrete pavements are a vital part of the transportation infrastructure, comprising nearly 25% of the interstate network in the United States. With transportation authorities and industry organizations increasingly seeking out methods to reduce their carbon footprint, there is a need to identify and quantitatively evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction opportunities that exist in the concrete pavement life cycle. A select few of these opportunities are explored in this article in order to represent possible reduction approaches and their associated cost-effectiveness: reducing embodied emissions by increasing fly ash content and by avoiding overdesign; increasing albedo by using white aggregates; increasing carbonation by temporarily stockpiling recycled concrete aggregates; and reducing vehicle fuel consumption by adding an extra rehabilitation. These reduction strategies are evaluated for interstate, arterial, collector, and local road designs under urban and rural scenarios. The results indicate that significant GHG emission reductions are possible, with over half of the scenarios resulting in 10% reductions, compared to unimproved baseline designs. Given the right conditions, each scenario has the potential to reduce GHG emissions at costs comparable to the current price of carbon.Using waste copper slag (CS) as a replacement for sand in concrete mixture is becoming popular in Singapore and around the world. What are the consequences of this material substitution? Will this result in lower environmental impact? This work used attributional and consequential life cycle assessments to evaluate the net results of replacing sand with CS. Impacts were assessed with respect to embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions (global warming potential; GWP). It was found that embodied energy and GWP of using a combination of 0.13kilograms (kg) of CS and 0.9kg of sand are higher than those of 1kg of sand. If CS replaces sand and the leftover sand replaces crushed rock sand, the net embodied energy and GWP may also increase. Landfilling the waste CS is similar to recycling it as a building material, in terms of embodied energy incurred and GWPs. Finally, four lessons from these findings were used to suggest a few integrated sustainable resource management policies for the building material and shipping industries.Concentrations of pollutants vary in wastes from different sources. However, existing waste input-output (WIO) models do not take these differing concentrations into account. This article proposes a new category of model, which we are calling a waste input-output model at the substance level (WIOS model). The WIOS model considers variations in waste composition. These variations potentially affect the life cycle inventory of the waste treatment stage. The proposed model is expected to produce more accurate results than existing WIO models that do not consider variations in the composition of wastes. In addition, the proposed model provides a method to trace substances undergoing waste treatment. In this article, use of the WIOS model is illustrated by simulating the overall environmental loads of total organic carbon from wastewater treatment at a facility in Germany. The results show that variations in the composition of wastes entering treatment significantly affect the modeled estimates of total environmental loads caused by wastewater treatment. In addition, the results of the proposed model are different from results given by existing hybrid input-output WIO models that do not consider variations in the composition of wastewater as it undergoes treatment.Carbon recycling, in which organic waste is recycled into chemical feedstock for material production, may provide benefits in resource efficiency and a more cyclical economybut may also create trade-offs in increased impacts elsewhere. We investigate the system-wide environmental burdens and cost associated with carbon recycling routes capable of converting municipal solid waste (MSW) by gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis into ethylene. Results are compared to business-as-usual (BAU) cases in which ethylene is derived from fossil resources and waste is either landfilled with methane and energy recovery (BAU#1) or incinerated (BAU#2) with energy recovery. Monte Carlo and sensitivity analysis is used to assess uncertainties of the results. Results indicate that carbon recycling may lead to a reduction in cumulative energy demand (CED), total material requirement (TMR), and acidification, when compared to BAU#1. Global warming potential is found to be similar or slightly lower than BAU#1 and BAU#2. In comparison to BAU#2, carbon recycling results in higher CED, TMR, acidification, and smog potential, mainly as a result of larger (fossil-based) energy offsets from energy recovery. However, if a renewable power mix (envisioned for the future) is assumed to be offset, BAU#2 impacts may be similar or higher than carbon recycling routes. Production cost per kilogram (kg) MSW-derived ethylene range between US$1.85 and US$2.06 (Jan 2011 US$). This compares to US$1.17 per kg for fossil-based ethylene. Waste-derived ethylene breaks even with its fossil-based counterpart at a tipping fee of roughly US$42 per metric ton of waste feedstock.This article asks how effectively and to what extent contemporary urban solid waste management systems can effect sustainable materials use. To assess this we first trace the origins of waste management in the U.S., identify the existing federal regulatory framework, and examine trends in waste generation and composition. We then describe waste management in Los Angeles, California, including identifying the city's waste management objectives and current programs, a long-range "zero waste" planning process, and an overhaul of waste collection and processing infrastructure currently underway. We find that, although aggressive, Los Angeles' efforts to achieve zero waste are insufficient for addressing resource conservation challenges. The main reasons for this are continued reliance on waste management approaches that have proven inadequate to address the increasing complexity of solid waste and limited data quantifying and characterizing waste generation patterns. The paper concludes by suggesting that addressing resource conservation in the U.S. will require renewed federal leadership as well as redoubled local efforts to improve waste flow accounting. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal and management is one of the most significant challenges faced by urban communities around the world. Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) over the years has utilized many sophisticated technologies and smart strategies. Municipalities worldwide have pursued numerous initiatives to reduce the environmental burden of the MSW treatment strategies. One of the most beneficial MSWM strategies is the thermal treatment or energy recovery to obtain cleaner renewable energy from waste. Among many waste-to-energy strategies, refuse-derived fuel (RDF) is a solid recovered fuel that can be used as a substitute for conventional fossil fuel. The scope of this study is to investigate the feasibility of RDF production with MSW generated in Metro Vancouver, for co-processing in two cement kilns in the region. This study investigates environmental impacts and benefits and economic costs and profits of RDF production. In addition, RDF utilization as an alternative fuel in cement kilns has been assessed. Cement manufacturing has been selected as one of the most environmentally challenged industries and as a potential destination for RDF to replace a portion of conventional fossil fuels with less energy-intensive fuel. A comprehensive environmental assessment is conducted using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. In addition, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) has been carried out to study the economic factors. This research confirmed that RDF production and use in cement kilns can be environmentally and economically viable solution for Metro Vancouver. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage is one of the methods of CO2 emission reduction. In this method, storage in the oil reservoir has been paid more attention for its benefit from enhancing oil recovery (EOR) while reducing greenhouse gases emission. More energy and less CO2 emission can be obtained by injecting CO2 into the oil reservoir. Therefore, in order to widen the benefit, local government should establish several incentive policies based on the benefit brought by CO2-EOR to motivate this behavior. In this study, we aim to give an exact evaluation method to measure the social benefit brought by CO2-EOR. A calculation example was given to demonstrate how to use this method. The example showed that a,not sign12 per ton produced oil can be gained by CO2-EOR. Therefore, government should sponsor a,not sign12 for per ton produced oil to incentivize the implementation of CO2-EOR.This article presents the results of the research project financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (N N309 078138) and coordinated by the Wood Technology Institute in Poznan. A key point of this project was LCA study performed for four detached single-family dwellings with a particular emphasis on the use stage. The life-cycle assessment involved various types of activity made within a hundred years of use and related to: operation (energy and water consumption), replacements and repairs, renovations and maintenance, land occupation, waste transport and waste management. Two of the four analyzed buildings met passive house standards and their energy demands in the use stage were several times lower than those of their conventional counterparts. The aim of the studies was to demonstrate whether lower nominal energy consumption is sufficient to get the best results of the environmental impact of passive buildings, or whether a type of energy used to cover the demand also plays an important role. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Solar Photovoltaic (PV) technologies are gaining influence as a potential supplemental electricity source in Thailand. This study assesses the environmental and economic benefits of two types of photovoltaic technologies - single-crystalline and amorphous silicon thin-film systems. The advantages of building-integrated PV are also analyzed. The assessment considers embodied energy, CO2 payback, and economic investment. Solar PV currently provides less than 1% of Thailand's electricity; however the government aims to generate 25% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2021. Different policy scenarios affecting life cycle performance, including manufacturing processes and geographic differences are explored. The results indicate that solar electricity can serve as a promising, untapped renewable energy source for Thailand to pursue in its efforts to wean away from imported natural gas and other fossil fuel energy sources. Amorphous silicon thin-film panels yield a greater net environmental benefit than single-crystalline technologies. Even if panels are made in a high electricity emissions country, like China, PV reduces GHG emissions. A sustainable grid-connected photovoltaic system would combine appropriate solar photovoltaic technologies. An economic comparison is included to contextualize the findings. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides an invaluable tool for policymakers to evaluate such opportunities. (C) 2013 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.We present a comparative life cycle assessment of pavements considering measurement uncertainty and the data-quality uncertainty. We account for the uncertainty due to the prediction of roughness over pavement lifetime and propagate the consequence into the overall footprint. The uncertainty propagation is conducted using a Monte Carlo simulation. Making use of a comparison indicator, the difference in the environmental impacts of two alternative designs is statistically characterized taking into account the correlation in the input parameters. The contribution of different phases and their associated uncertainty characterized and compared for two pavements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle thinking is a good approach to be used for environmental decision-support, although the complexity of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies sometimes prevents their wide use. The purpose of this paper is to show how LCA methodology can be simplified to be more useful for certain applications. In order to improve waste management in Catalonia (Spain), a Cumulative Energy Demand indicator (LCA-based) has been used to obtain four mathematical models to help the government in the decision of preventing or allowing a specific waste from going out of the borders. The conceptual equations and all the subsequent developments and assumptions made to obtain the simplified models are presented. One of the four models is discussed in detail, presenting the final simplified equation to be subsequently used by the government in decision making. The resulting model has been found to be scientifically robust, simple to implement and, above all, fulfilling its purpose: the limitation of waste transport out of Catalonia unless the waste recovery operations are significantly better and justify this transport. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Models which fully evaluate the life cycle energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of national housing stocks are not reported in literature. Capturing a holistic view of energy and emissions of the residential sector is an important process that can lead to a more effective policy making. This paper presents a methodology which evaluates the life cycle energy and GHG emissions of retrofitting housing stocks considering all life cycle stages and incorporating, to the greatest extent possible, all upstream inputs. To achieve this, we developed a hybrid model of the existing Irish housing stock, comprising a process-based approach supplemented by input - output LCA for installation of materials and fit-outs and maintenance of appliances. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a commonly accepted technique for evaluating cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of a product. Using an assumed 50-year life span in all cases, representative archetypes were used to estimate the performance along retrofitting, operation, maintenance and disassembly phases of the three selected house retrofit scenarios: BaseCase (no intervention), Current Standards (retrofitting to meet current building regulations) and Passive House (retrofitting to meet Passive House Standards). Results show that detached houses displayed the highest range of life cycle energy and exhibited the greatest absolute and percentage reductions compared to other house types, as life cycle energy ranges from 386 - 614 kWh/m(2) yr, 225 - 261 kWh/m(2) yr and 126 - 137 kWh/m(2) yr for all house scenarios, respectively. Using these results an assessment is provided for policy makers on a holistic view of the life cycle performance of existing dwellings. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main goal of the present work is to study the energetic and the economic potential of the deployment of Domestic Solar Water Heating systems (DSWHs) instead of using electric/gas/town gas water heaters. A case study related to Tunisian scenario was performed according to a typical Tunisian households composed of 4-5 persons. In this scenario we evaluated the performance and the life cycle perspective of the two most popular DSWHs over the recent years (i.e. DSWH with flat-plate solar collector, FPC, and DSWHs with evacuated-tube solar collector, ETC). The dynamic behavior of DSWHs according to Tunisian data weather was achieved by means of TRNSYS simulation. The Results showed that the FPC and ETC provide about 8118 and 12032 kW h/year of thermal energy. The economic potential of DSWHs in saving electricity and reducing carbon dioxide emissions was also investigated. Results showed that the annual savings in electrical energy relatively to the FPC and ETC are about 1316 and 1459 kW h/year, with a payback period of around 8 and 10 years, respectively. Based on gas/town gas water heater, the FPC and ETC save about 306 m(3) and 410 m(3) of gas/town gas with a payback period about 6 and 7.5 years, respectively. We found that the life cycle savings by installing the solar system instead of buying electricity to satisfy hot water need's are about $3969 (FPC) and $4400 (ETC). We establish also that the use of the DSWHs instead of installing gas/town gas water heaters save about $1518 (FPC) and $2035 (ETC). From an environmental point of view the annual GHG emission per house is reduced by 27800 tCO(2). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Actually, one of the most relevant debates, among both citizens that government, is related to energy and environmental issue. The development of renewable energy usage is due to several factors such as the political strategic decisions and geographical situation. Indeed the high development of renewable energies requires challenges from a supply chain point of view. In this paper, a thorough survey of the extant literature on the topic of supply chain (SC) and renewable energy (RE) has been conducted. English papers published on international peer-reviewed journals from 2003 to 2013 have been considered. Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) resolves the duality between environmental, economic and social aspects. Sustainable manufacturing practices play an essential role in promoting renewable energy development and commercialization; this will require significant changes to the industry's traditional Supply Chain Management and business model. The aim of the paper is investigate literature insights useful to increase the performance and overcome barriers to the RE supply chain development. Like many typical supply chains, also supply chain related to RE includes elements such as: physical, information, and financial flows. The present research is useful to individualize characteristics of a RE supply chain. Moreover, the research is useful improve the performance of RE supply chain in some aspects like: better control supply chain costs to make renewable energy more affordable; manage supply chain to address weakened demand in the near term, and increase flexibility to handle anticipated rapid growth in the next 3-5 years; In so doing the present research has practical implications that make the results interesting for decision maker about optimal design of a system operating from one renewable energy sources. Moreover, the results are interesting for researchers since are individualized many sectors where it is necessary to proceed with additional research investigations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper an Integrated Municipal Solid Waste scenario model (IMSW-SM) with a potential practical application in the waste management sector is analyzed. The model takes into account quantification and characterization of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) streams from different sources, selective collection (SC), advanced mechanical sorting, material recovery-and advanced thermal treatment. The paper provides a unique chain of advanced waste pretreatment stages of fully commingled waste streams, leading to an original set of suggestions and future contributions to a sustainable IMSWS, taking into account real data and EU principles. The selection of the input data was made on MSW management real case studies from two European regions. Four scenarios were developed varying mainly SC strategies and thermal treatment options. The results offer useful directions for decision makers in order to calibrate modern strategies in different realities. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solid waste management (SWM) is an integral component of civil infrastructure and the global economy, and is a growing concern due to increases in population, urbanization, and economic development. In 2011, 1.3 billion metric tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) were generated, and this is expected to grow to 2.2 billion metric tons by 2025. In the U.S., MSW systems processed approximately 250 million tons of waste and produced 118 Tg of CO(2)e emissions, which represents over 8% of non-energy related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and 2% of total net GHG emissions. While previous research has applied environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to SWM using formal search techniques, existing models are either not readily generalizable and scalable, or optimize only a single time period and do not consider changes likely to affect SWM over time, such as new policy and technology innovation. This paper presents the first life cycle-based framework to optimize over multiple time stages the collection and treatment of all waste materials from curb to final disposal by minimizing cost or environmental impacts while considering user-defined emissions and waste diversion constraints. In addition, the framework is designed to be responsive to future changes in energy and GHG prices. This framework considers the use of existing SWM infrastructure as well as the deployment and utilization of new infrastructure. Several scenarios, considering cost, diversion, and GHG emissions, are analyzed in a 3-stage test system. The results show the utility of the multi-stage framework and the insights that can be gained from using such a framework. The framework was also used to solve a larger SWM system; the results show that the framework solves in reasonable time using typical hardware and readily available mathematical programming solvers. The framework is intended to inform SWM by considering costs, environmental impacts, and policy constraints. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the recent development of the RepRap, an open-source self-replicating rapid prototyper, low-cost three-dimensional (3D) printing is now a technically viable form of distributed manufacturing of polymer-based products. However, the aggregate environmental benefits of distributed manufacturing are not clear due to scale reductions and the potential for increases in embodied energy. To quantify the environmental impact of distributed manufacturing using 3D printers, a life cycle analysis was performed on three plastic products. The embodied energy and emissions from conventional large-scale production in low-labor cost countries and shipping are compared to experimental measurements on a RepRap with and without solar photovoltaic (PV) power fabricating products with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA). The results indicate that the cumulative energy demand of manufacturing polymer products can be reduced by 41-64% (55-74% with PV) and concomitant emission reductions using distributed manufacturing with existing low-cost open-source 3D printers when using <25% fill PIA. Less pronounced positive environmental results are observed with ABS, which demands higher temperatures for the print bed and extruder. Overall, the results indicate that distributed manufacturing using open-source 3D printers has the potential to have a lower environmental impact than conventional manufacturing for a variety of products.In this study, an environmental assessment on a soil washing process for the remediation of a Pb-contaminated shooting range site was conducted, using a green and sustainable remediation tool, i.e., SiteWise ver. 2, based on data relating specifically to the actual remediation project. The entire soil washing process was classified into four major stages, consisting of soil excavation (stage I), physical separation (stage II), acid-based (0.2 N HCl) chemical extraction (stage III), and wastewater treatment (stage IV). Environmental footprints, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy consumption, water consumption, and critical air pollutant productions such as PM10, NO (x) , and SO (x) , were calculated, and the relative contribution of each stage was analyzed in the environmental assessment. In stage I, the relative contribution of the PM10 emissions was 55.3 % because the soil excavation emitted the fine particles. In stage II, the relative contribution of NO (x) and SO (x) emissions was 42.5 and 52.5 %, respectively, which resulted from electricity consumption for the operation of the separator. Stage III was the main contributing factor to 63.1 % of the GHG emissions, 67.5 % of total energy used, and 37.4 % of water consumptions. The relatively high contribution of stage III comes from use of consumable chemicals such as HCl and water-based extraction processes. In stage IV, the relative contributions of GHG emissions, total energy used, and NO (x) and SO (x) emissions were 23.2, 19.4, 19.5, and 25.3 %, respectively, which were caused by chemical and electricity demands for system operation. In conclusion, consumable chemicals such as HCl and NaOH, electric energy consumption for system operation, and equipment use for soil excavation were determined to be the major sources of environmental pollution to occur during the soil washing process. Especially, the acid-based chemical extraction process should be avoided in order to improve the sustainability of soil washing processes.The Australian minerals processing and extractive metallurgy industries are responsible for about 20% of Australia's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This article reviews the potential applications of concentrated solar thermal (CST) energy in the Australian minerals processing industry to reduce this impact. Integrating CST energy into these industries would reduce their reliance upon conventional fossil fuels and reduce GHG emissions. As CST technologies become more widely deployed and cheaper, and as fuel prices rise, CST energy will progressively become more competitive with conventional energy sources. Some of the applications identified in this article are expected to become commercially competitive provided the costs for pollution abatement and GHG mitigation are internalized. The areas of potential for CST integration identified in this study can be classed as either medium/low-temperature or high-temperature applications. The most promising medium/low-grade applications are electricity generation and low grade heating of liquids. Electricity generation with CST energy-also known as concentrated solar power-has the greatest potential to reduce GHG emissions out of all the potential applications identified because of the 24/7 dispatchability when integrated with thermal storage. High-temperature applications identified include the thermal decomposition of alumina and the calcination of limestone to lime in solar kilns, as well as the production of syngas from natural gas and carbonaceous materials for various metallurgical processes including nickel and direct reduced iron production. Hybridization and integration with thermal storage could enable CST to sustain these energy-intensive metallurgical processes continuously. High-temperature applications are the focus of this paper.An overview of the current status of CdTe solar cells and modules with respect to life cycle management of raw materials is provided. Actively managing raw materials throughout the product life cycle can help to manage cost and conserve resources for large-scale PV deployment Among the various materials management strategies, a primary factor influencing the material intensity of PV systems is module conversion efficiency. CdTe record solar cell and module efficiency has recently increased to 19.6% and 16.1%, respectively. Future projections include improving CdTe solar cell efficiency to 22% as well as achieving an average CdTe production line module efficiency of 17% by 2017. Material and energy usage across life cycle stages (module manufacturing, balance of systems, collection and recycling) have been documented in life cycle inventories. An example of life cycle materials management is water management, where specific strategies include minimizing electricity use in PV module manufacturing, improving PV module efficiency, deploying tracking systems, developing a water balance for PV manufacturing facilities, minimizing grading during construction, using dry brush cleaning methods during operation, and recycling end-of-life systems. Due to low life cycle water usage, solar PV provides a potential path forward for addressing the energy-water nexus with solar desalination as an example application, such as the CdTe PV Greenough River Solar Farm in Western Australia. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To guarantee sustainable and dynamic waste management, the dynamic waste management approach (DWM) suggests an evolutionary new approach that maintains a constant flow towards the most favourable waste treatment processes (facilities) within a system. To that end, DWM is based on the law of conservation of energy, which allows the balancing of a network, while considering the constraints of incoming (h(1)) and outgoing (h(2)) loads, as well as the distribution network (H) characteristics. The developed approach lies on the identification of the prioritization index (PI) for waste generators (analogy to h(1)), a global allocation index for each of the treatment processes (analogy to h(2)) and the linear index load loss (H) associated with waste transport. To demonstrate the scope of DWM, we outline this approach, and then present an example of its application. The case study shows that the variable monthly waste from the three considered sources is dynamically distributed in priority to the more favourable processes. Moreover, the reserve (stock) helps temporarily store waste in order to ease the global load of the network and favour a constant feeding of the treatment processes. The DWM approach serves as a decision-making tool by evaluating new waste treatment processes, as well as their location and new means of transport for waste.Over the past decades, the cost-effectiveness principle or a cost benefit analysis has typically been employed as an assessment tool for the expansion of drinking water utilities. With changing public awareness of the inherent linkages between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, the addition of this new consideration in the assessment regime has altered the landscape of the traditional evaluation matrix. This paper presents a comparative evaluation based on a suite of carbon footprint and cost data associated with 20 expansion alternatives for a systematic priority analysis of a drinking water infrastructure system in South Florida. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is significant interest in reducing urban growth impacts yet little information exists to comprehensively estimate the energy and air quality tradeoffs. An integrated transportation and land-use life-cycle assessment framework is developed to quantify the long-term impacts from residential infill, using the Phoenix light rail system as a case study. The results show that (1) significant reductions in life-cycle energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, respiratory, and smog impacts are possible; (2) building construction, vehicle manufacturing, and energy feedstock effects are significant; and (3) marginal benefits from reduced automobile use and potential household behavior changes exceed marginal costs from new rail service.In this study, a comprehensive model developed to estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from urban area with low impact development (LID) and its integrated management practices (IMPs). The model was applied to the actual urban area in Asan Tangjeong district (ATD) as a case study. A rainwater tank (1200 ton) among various LID IMPs generated the highest amount of GHG emissions (3.77 x 10(5) kgCO(2)eq) and led to the utmost reducing effect (1.49 x 10(3) kgCO(2)eq/year). In the urban area with LID IMPs, annually 1.95 x 10(4) kgCO(2)eq of avoided GHG emissions were generated by a reducing effect (e.g., tap water substitution and vegetation CO2 absorption) for a payback period of 162 years. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to quantitatively evaluate the significance of the factors on the overall GHG emissions in ATD, and suggested to plant alternative vegetation on LID IMPs.Certifications such as the Passive House aim to reduce the final space heating energy demand of residential buildings. The latter are responsible for a significant share of final energy consumption in Europe of which nearly 70% is associated with space conditioning, notably heating. The improvement of the energy efficiency of residential buildings, in terms of space heating, can therefore reduce their total energy demand. However, most certifications totally overlook other energy requirements associated with residential buildings. Studies on passive houses do not take into consideration the embodied energy required to manufacture the building materials, especially the large amount of insulation required to achieve high operational efficiencies. At an urban scale, most passive houses are single family detached houses located in low density suburbs with a high car usage, resulting in considerable transport related energy demand. This paper analyses the total life cycle energy demand of a typical Belgian passive house, comprising embodied, operational and transport energy. It relies on a comprehensive technique developed by Stephan et al. [1] and conducts a parametric analysis as well as a comparison to alternative building types. Results show that current building energy efficiency certifications might not ensure a lower energy demand and can, paradoxically result in an increased energy consumption because of their limited scope. More comprehensive system boundaries should be used to make sure that net energy savings do occur. The embodied energy of passive houses can represent up to 77% of the total embodied and operational energy over 100 years. Also passive houses can have nearly the same energy consumption as a standard new house with the same geometry, location and number of occupants. A retrofitted apartment in the city has an energy consumption 15.2% lower than the best passive house scenario. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon and environmental footprints associated with the global production of biofuels have been computed from a baseline of 2007-2009 out until 2019. Estimates of future global biofuel production were adopted from OECD-FAO and related projections. In order to determine the footprints associated with these (essentially 'first generation') biofuel resources, the overall environmental footprint was disaggregated into bioproductive land, built land, carbon, embodied energy, materials and waste, transport, and water components. The global carbon footprint of biofuels was estimated to be 0.248 billion (bn) global hectares (gha) in 2010; arising to 0.449 bn gha by 2019. The total environmental footprint for the global production of biofuels was estimated to be 0.720 billion gha for 2010; rising to 1.242 bn gha by 2019. Bioproductive land use proved to give rise to the highest element of the footprint, with the 'carbon footprint' as the next highest, followed by the water footprint, and then the transport component. The waste, built land, and embodied energy components contributed an insignificant amount to the total environmental footprint. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from animal manure management are of great concern in China. However, there are still great uncertainties about China's GHG inventory due to the GHG emission factors partly used default values from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines. The purpose of this study was to use a case study in Beijing to determine the regional GHG emission factors based on the combination of swine manure composting and land application of the compost with both on-site examination and a life cycle assessment (LCA). The results showed that the total GHG emission factor was 240 kgCO(2)eq tDS(-1) (dry solids), including the direct GHG emission factor of 115 kgCO(2)eq tDS (-1) for swine manure composting and 48 kgCO(2)eq tDS-1 for land application of the compost. Among the total GHG emissions of 5.06 kgCH(4) tDS(-1) and 0.13 kgN(2)O tDS(-1), the swine manure composting contributed approximately 89% to CH4 emissions while land application accounted for 92% of N2O emission. Meanwhile, the GHG emission profile from the full process in Beijing in 2015 and 2020 was predicted by the scenario analysis. The composting and land application is a cost-effective way for animal manure management in China considering GHG emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment of four rice straw utilization systems including; (I) direct combustion for electricity, (2) biochemical conversion to bio-ethanol and biogas, (3) thermo-chemical conversion to bio-DME, and (4) incorporation into the soil as fertilizer have been conducted to compare their environmental performances. The results showed that per ton of dry rice straw, the bio-ethanol pathway resulted in the highest environmental sustainability with regards to reductions in global warming and resource depletion potentials. Rice straw bio-DME was preferable vis-a-vis reduction in acidification potential. Rice straw electricity and fertilizer also brought about several environmental benefits. The key environmental benefit of rice straw utilization came from avoiding the deleterious effects from burning straw in situ in the field. Recommendations for enhancing environmental sustainability of rice straw utilization for fuels and fertilizer are provided. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental sustainability of microalgae production for aquaculture purposes was analyzed using exergy analysis (EA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). A production process (pilot 2012, 240 m(2)) was assessed and compared with two upscaling scenarios (pilot 2013, 1320 m(2) and first production scale 2015, 2,5 ha). The EA at process level revealed that drying and cultivation had the lowest efficiencies. The LCA showed an improvement in resource efficiency after upscaling: 55.5 MJ(ex,CEENE)/MJ(ex) DW biomass was extracted from nature in 2012, which was reduced to 21.6 and 2.46 MJ(ex,CEENE)/MJ(ex) DW in the hypothetical 2013 and 2015 scenarios, respectively. Upscaling caused the carbon footprint to decline by factor 20 (0.09 kg CO2,eq/MJ(ex) DW in 2015). In the upscaling scenarios, microalgae production for aquaculture purposes appeared to be more sustainable in resource use than a reference fish feed (7.70 MJ(ex,CEENE) and 0.05 kg CO2,eq per MJ(ex) DW). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lately the construction industry has become more interested in designing and constructing environmentally friendly buildings (e.g. sustainable buildings) that can provide both high performance and monetary savings. In general, sustainability integrates the following three related components: (1) environmental, (2) economic, (3) social well-being. Incorporating these components at the conceptual stage is achieved by using sustainable design, through which designers must identify associated materials and systems based on any selected certification (rating) system. The use of building information modelling (BIM) concepts helps engineers design digital models that allow owners to visualize the building before the physical implementation takes place. To apply BIM concepts, designers use tools to create 3D models of buildings where the design materials and systems are selected from the built-in database of these tools. Designers will not be able to quantify the environmental impacts of these materials to support the decisions needed to design sustainable buildings due to the following reasons: (1) a lack of information about the sustainable materials that are stored in the database, (2) a lack of interoperability between the design and analysis tools that enable full life cycle assessments (LCAs) of buildings. This paper presents a methodology that integrates BIM and LCA tools with a database for designing sustainable building projects. The methodology describes the development and implementation of a model that incorporates a database in which information about sustainable materials is stored and linked to a BIM (3D) module along with an LCA module and a certification and cost module. The goal of this model is to simplify the process of creating sustainable designs and to evaluate the environmental impacts (EI) of newly designed buildings at the conceptual stage of their life. An actual building project is presented in order to illustrate the usefulness and capabilities of the developed model.The importance of the refurbishment market in the construction industry has grown considerably in recent decades, especially in developed countries, where it sometimes represents nearly 50% of the market. At the same time, sustainability has become an imperative target for development, and therefore sustainable principles will have to be an integral part of refurbishment projects in the near future. However, financial resources are very limited and the ability of decision-support tools to embrace all these aspects needs urgent assessment. The aim of this paper is to review what has been done in terms of refurbishment decision support tools, from a user's perspective. Thus, it first reviews the objectives and criteria of each tool to help users (architects, engineers and owners) to select the most suitable method for each particular situation. Their approaches and applicability are also discussed and classified on a simple scale to help users to choose the best algorithm from those tools whose objectives and criteria might meet their expectations. A complementary review is reported on what has been started in Portugal. Finally, the paper considers the likely options in terms of the main needs and areas of future research. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Thermoeconomics can play a key role in the analysis of eco-industrial parks because it provides a systemic approach and, by using exergy, expresses matter and energy flows in the same physical units. Besides methodologies developed for thermal systems analysis, diagnosis and optimization, application of thermoeconomics to industrial symbiosis requires the development of new methods such as those presented here. First, two decomposition strategies for exergy costs are proposed (according to: (i) irreversibility and (ii) origin of resources). Then, a fuel impact approach for locating and quantifying the origin of resources savings due to integration is presented. A simplified version of the Kalundborg eco-industrial park is used as a test-bench for the presented methodologies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study a Building Information Model (BIM) tool is developed to simultaneously estimate embodied and operational carbon over a 60 year life span for a typical four bedroom detached house. Using the tool, four different construction scenarios are evaluated, representing a range of current construction methods used in present day UK house building. The results show that cradle-to-gate embodied carbon represents 20-26% of the total 60 year carbon emissions, with operational carbon representing 74-80% of total emissions. Construction scenarios that reduce operational carbon by improving the thermal envelope led to a 1-13% increase in embodied carbon but a 4-5% decrease in operational carbon compared to the basecase construction method. Approaches to reduce embodied carbon in new-build housing are also studied and a 24% reduction is demonstrated through building fabric changes. The study recommends that a universally robust methodology for measuring embodied carbon will enable design decisions to be taken to reduce whole life carbon emissions through improved choice of materials. Due to material changes impacting on the thermal characteristics of a dwelling, and to an extent the structural characteristics, an integrated BIM tool will be essential in quickly establishing whole life carbon impacts during the design stage. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the benefits of introducing electricity powered vehicles (EV) in one island of the Azores archipelago in Portugal, the island of Flores. A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for the road transportation sector including EV was performed and the EV impacts in the electricity grid were evaluated. Two scenarios considering the introduction of EV were considered (Scenarios 2 and 3 with a shift in the car stock in 2050 of 30% and 70% to EV) and compared to the baseline scenario (Scenario 1 with no EV penetration). The results show that, if no alternative solutions are adopted, the road transportation sector LCA energy consumption will increase 58% in 2050, compared to 2009. In the most attractive scenario studied regarding EV integration in Flores, the LCA energy consumption in 2050 decreases by 34% and CO2 emissions by 39%, when comparing with Scenario 1. Moreover, the island's electricity network is ready for EV arrival, at least until 2020. Thereafter, a smart charging scheme should be implemented to manage the vehicles' energy demand according to the network technical limitations and the presence of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) should be reinforced, to decrease the island's dependency on fossil fuels and, consequently, CO2 emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper examined the case study of the Saudi electricity sector and provided projections for energy use and respective carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for the period 2010-2025 with and without cleaner energy technologies. Based on two sets of 20 life cycle assessment studies for carbon capture and storage and solar photovoltaic technologies, CO2 emission reduction rates were used for projecting future CO2 emissions. Results showed enormous savings in CO2 emissions, for the most likely case, year 2025 reported savings that range from 136 up to 235 MtCO(2). Including low growth and high growth cases, these savings could range from 115 up to 468 MtCO(2) presenting such an unrivalled opportunity for Saudi Arabia. These projections were developed as a way of translating the inherent advantages that cleaner energy technologies could provide for CO2 emissions savings. It is hoped that the results of this paper would inform energy policymaking in Saudi Arabia. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Increasing demand for renewable alternative fuels, such as ethanol, is driven by decreasing availability of fossil resources and increasing attention to climate change. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the tool used to evaluate environmental impacts, such as energy intensity (EI) and global warming potential (GWP), from ethanol production, but the application of this tool varies greatly. The goals of this study were to enumerate the life cycle EI, net energy value (NEV), and GWP of corn grain ethanol production in Wisconsin, to explore ethanol production scenarios which differ at the treatment of the whole stillage (WS) coproduct, and to evaluate the various solutions to the multifunctionality problem which arises in LCA. In Scenario 1, all suggested solutions to the multifunctionality problem are considered by transforming WS into the animal feed dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS). Scenario 2 avoids allocation using an integrated system which recycles the WS with an anaerobic biodigester and a combined heat and power (CHP) plant to provide electricity and steam to the ethanol refinery and returns the residue to the land as fertilizer. Based on the Scenario 1 analysis, we recommend the use of the subdivision (SD) solution to the multifunctionality problem because it enables clear comparisons between different ethanol production systems, it distinguishes between the environmental impacts from ethanol production and coproduct processing and it reduces the number of assumptions in the LCA calculations. From the comparison of both scenarios, we find that recycling the WS into electricity, heat, and fertilizer is the most environmentally beneficial coproduct use because it results in a 54% lower EI and a 67% lower GWP than the processing of WS into DDGS.Life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology was used to perform a quantitative, comparative analysis and rating of the construction and operation of a wind energy plant. For this case study, the Glacier Hills Wind Park (90 1.8-MW turbines in south-central Wisconsin) was evaluated. Significant environmental and economic benefits are often advertised with the installation of new wind energy facilities, although independent and comprehensive LCA and sustainable energy science are typically not implemented. Hence, a quantitative demonstration with LCA methodology of the life cycle emissions and environmental impact, from construction through operations, can greatly assist in highlighting significant areas of energy consumption and emissions during manufacturing, transportation, and construction of a wind farm. Results portray the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption/generation over the life cycle of the wind park. Transportation of large components from overseas led to the consumption of considerable quantities of fossil fuel, responsible for up to 22 % of the total greenhouse gas emissions due to transportation. The energy payback ratio (25.5), energy payback time (12.3 months) and the total grams of equivalent CO2(eq) per kWh of energy (16.9) produced were calculated over the life time of this onshore wind farm.Cleaner production and sustainability are of crucial importance in the field of manufacturing processes where great amounts of energy and materials are being consumed. Nowadays, additive manufacturing technologies such as direct additive laser manufacturing allow us to manufacture functional products with high added value. Insofar as environmental considerations become an important issue in our society, as well as legislation regarding environment become prominent (Normalization ISO 14 044), the environmental impact of those processes have to be evaluated in order to make easier its acceptance in the industrial world. Some studies have been conducted on electric consumption of machine tools (standby consumption, in process consumption, etc.) but only a few studies take into account the whole existing environmental flows (material, fluids, electricity). This paper presents a new methodology where all flows consumed (material, fluids, electricity) are considered in the environmental impact assessment. This method coupled a global view required in a sustainable approach and an accurate evaluation of flow consumption in the machine. The methodology developed is based on a predictive model of flow consumption defined from the manufacturing path and CAD model of the part which will be produce. In order to get an accurate model of the process, each feature of the machine is modeled. The goal of this work is to integrate this model into the design loop for additive manufacturing parts.The members of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf have typically addressed water scarcity problems by building energy-intensive desalination plants. Few efforts have addressed water scarcity through metering, pricing, and other efficiency measures to reduce demand. This paper examines how decreased leakage in the water distribution system and decreased residential water use in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, could decrease air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions from desalination plants. We developed a probabilistic model to predict the effects of water use reductions on pollutant emissions from Abu Dhabi's major independent water and power plants, which use a combination of multi-stage flash distillation and multi-effect distillation to produce fresh water from seawater drawn from the Arabian Gulf. We examine three categories of scenarios for reducing water use: increasing the price signal to residential users, instituting demand management programs among residential users, and reducing water loss in the distribution system. Our analysis suggests that water conservation price incentives could reduce air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions by 1% to 5%, depending on assumptions about how households respond to the incentives. Demand-side management programs curbing per capita water use to levels typical of the Singapore or the UK would curb emissions by 10% or 11%, respectively. Reducing water loss during distribution from the current high level of 35% to 15% (similar to loss rates in other developed nations) could cut emissions by more than 3%. Overall, our analysis suggests that high per capita water use contributes to ambient air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in Abu Dhabi.This study is aimed to evaluate and compare environmental impacts of various food waste management systems: anaerobic digestion, co-digestion with sewage sludge, and volume reduction using a garbage dryer followed by incineration from generation to final disposal. An environmental credit using life cycle assessment was employed to compare by-products. The entire disposal process, namely discharge, collection, transportation, treatment, and final disposal, was included in the system boundary. The functional unit was 1 tonne of food waste from households for each treatment option. Global warming potential of the category indicator was selected to assess the environmental impact of food waste disposal options. The net global warming potential (environmental credit) of the options (wet based) was 33 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) for anaerobic digestion and -315 kg of CO2-eq for incineration by renewable energy production as electricity, thermal energy, and primary materials avoided. We found that dryer-incineration option was an available alternative for food waste recycling in a metropolitan area in Korea.Oil dependency and global warming have stimulated R&D activities on the utilization of secondary biofuels. This article investigates the suitability of coconut shell-derived producer gas ( a secondary gaseous biofuel) as a substitute for coal gas from an environmental perspective using life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Thermochemical gasification in an air-fluidized bed with steam injection is the gaseous fuel production process. LCA is carried out with respect to Indian conditions based on primary and modified Ecoinvent 2.0 data using IMPACT 2002+ environmental impact assessment methodology. The study indicates that coconut shell-derived producer gas life cycle is capable of saving 18.3% of emissions causing global warming potential, 64.1% of emissions causing ozone depletion potential, and 71.5% of nonrenewable energy consumption. The analysis of energy and exergy consumptions of the two life cycles reveal that the renewable fraction in the total energy demand is 62.9% for producer gas life cycle, while it is only 2.8% for coal gas life cycle. Allocation of the by-product, coconut palm residues, is the major responsible factor for this reduction in environmental burden. Based on the existing fertilization practice and the utilization of electricity from the Indian electric grid, substantial green house gas (GHG) emission savings cannot be achieved for producer gas life cycle over coal gas life cycle. However, the green electricity-aided catalytic gasification of coconut shell produced by organic farming can result in 43.4% reduction in GHG emissions, meeting European Union renewable energy directive.In this study, we use an improved, more accurate model to analyze the energy footprint of content downloaded from a major online newspaper by means of various combinations of user devices and access networks. Our results indicate that previous analyses based on average figures for laptops or desktop personal computers predict national and global energy consumption values that are unrealistically high. Additionally, we identify the components that contribute most of the total energy consumption during the use stage of the life cycle of digital services. We find that, depending on the type of user device and access network employed, the data center where the news content originates consumes between 4% and 48% of the total energy consumption when news articles are read and between 2% and 11% when video content is viewed. Similarly, we find that user devices consume between 7% and 90% and 0.7% and 78% for articles and video content, respectively, depending on the type of user device and access network that is employed. Though increasing awareness of the energy consumption by data centers is justified, an analysis of our results shows that for individual users of the online newspaper we studied, energy use by user devices and the third-generation (3G) mobile network are usually bigger contributors to the service footprint than the datacenters. Analysis of our results also shows that data transfer of video content has a significant energy use on the 3G mobile network, but less so elsewhere. Hence, a strategy of reducing the resolution of video would reduce the energy footprint for individual users who are using mobile devices to access content by the 3G network.In the work, the life-cycle assessment approach is applied to the planning of waste management development in a seaside region (Piejura) using the Waste Management Planning System (WAMPS) program. In Latvia, the measures to be taken for the climate change mitigation are of utmost importance - especially as related to the WM performance, since a disposal of biodegradable waste presents the primary source of GHG emissions. To reduce the amount of such waste is therefore one of the most significant goals in the State WM plan for 2013-2020, whose adoption is the greatest challenge for municipalities. The authors analyse seven models which involve widely employed biomass processing methods, are based on experimental data and intended for minimising the direct disposal of organic mass at the solid waste landfills. The numerical results obtained evidence that the thermal or biotechnological treatment of organic waste substantially reduces the negative environmental impact of WM practices - by up to 6% as compared with the currently existing.The goal of this study is to present computer applications in eco-efficiency assessment in Logistics based on Umberto for Eco-efficiency software. The study defines the major components of eco-efficiency analysis like: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Material Flow Analysis (MFA). According to ISO 14045: 2012 ecoeffi ciency assessment is a quantitative management tool which enables the study of life-cycle environmental impacts of a product system along with its product system value for a stakeholder. Within eco-effi ciency assessment, environmental impacts are evaluated using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The eco-effi ciency methodology is proposed with using Umberto for Eco-effi ciency software. Therefore, this article presents the results of Life Cycle Assessment according to methods used in Umberto software on the case study of valuation of the different logistic possibilities. The results of this study can be used as the fi rst step in performing a full cradle-to-grave eco-efficiency that includes all phases of the logistics system.Agriculture has a large impact on the environment and retailers increasingly stimulate their suppliers to reduce the environmental impact of agricultural production. The environmental impact resulting from producing a commodity can be measured with a life cycle analysis (LCA) but performing an LCA is costly and time-consuming. In the first paper of this series a practical and general method to identify hotspot areas in crop production on a global scale was developed. The method was implemented for potatoes. The objective of the work reported here was to evaluate the tool and to identify improvement opportunities for each of seven indicators: yield, erosion risk, nitrogen surplus, depletion of water reserves, biocide use, carbon footprint, and impact on biodiversity. The tool produces realistic outputs that can be used to target improvement efforts and thus improves the use efficiency of limited resources. The tool can be expanded to produce similar results for other crops; methods to improve the resolution of the tool are discussed.The world is currently confronted with the challenge of preventing environmental degradation and resource depletion. To compare the environmental performance of two railway bridge designs, an Excel-based model was developed with implementing a simplified quantitative life-cycle assessment. The model covers the entire life cycle of the bridge, from raw material extraction to construction materials recycling and disposal. Various assumptions are made for selecting the relevant emissions and environmental impacts. A streamlined approach is applied to compare the environmental burden throughout the life cycle of the Banafjal Railway Bridge. The bridge is a simply supported composite structure carrying one railway track. Two track alternatives are investigated: ballasted track and fixed track. The results show that the environmental impacts of the fixed track alternative are lower than those of the ballasted track alternative. From a sustainable development perspective, it appears that fixed track has a significant advantage as the overall environmental impact is reduced by up to 77%. The raw material phase is found to be decisive in the life cycle of both alternatives. The frequency of track replacement is identified as a key environmental parameter, because the extra environmental burden of traffic delay during bridge closure nearly overwhelmed the other life-cycle stages.Since the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) launched its "green remediation" program and EU member states began to reassess their national regulations for environmental remediation in order to reach a Europe-wide consensus on policy and standards, the need and interest for sustainable remediation of contaminants frombrownfields has grown considerably. Concomitantly, the ability to calculate and assess the suitability as well as the environmental footprints and associated risks of a growing number of remediation techniques has become a priority. The authors quantitatively evaluate the differences between various remediation techniques, and for this purpose, a number of ex situ and in situ remediation techniques are adapted to model 21 remediation scenarios for two contaminated sites in the Gothenburg region of Sweden: the Bohus Varv site on the Go "ta a " lv river bank and the Hexion site in Mo "lndal. A wide range of quantitative results for these models are presented, compared, and analyzed. Based on the results from both projects, it is concluded that: (1) remediation techniques requiring long distance residual transportation have significant footprints, except the transportation of contaminated residuals by train due to Swedish energy production conditions; (2) residual transportation by ship results in much higher SOx, NOx, and particle releases compared to the other alternatives; and (3) residual transporation by truck results in high accident risks. Finally, activities powered by electricity result in a reduced footprint compared to activities powered by fossil fuels, considering Swedish energy production conditions. The authors conducted a cross-benefit analysis of SiteWiseTM applications which recognizes its potential as a tool for presenting life cycle assessment analyses with appropriate system boundary definitions and an easy inventory analysis process. Results from this tool provide valuable support to decision makers aiming at more sustainable remediation. (C) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Electricity generation is a key contributor to global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), NOx and SO2 and their related environmental impact. A critical review of 167 case studies involving the life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generation based on hard coal, lignite, natural gas, oil, nuclear, biomass, hydroelectric, solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind was carried out to identify ranges of emission data for GHG, NOx and SO2 related to individual technologies. It was shown that GHG emissions could not be used as a single indicator to represent the environmental performance of a system or technology. Emission data were evaluated with respect to three life cycle phases (fuel provision, plant operation, and infrastructure). Direct emissions from plant operation represented the majority of the life cycle emissions for fossil fuel technologies, whereas fuel provision represented the largest contribution for biomass technologies (71% for GHG, 54% for NOx and 61% for SO2) and nuclear power (60% for GHG, 82% for NOx and 92% for SO2); infrastructures provided the highest impact for renewables. These data indicated that all three phases should be included for completeness and to avoid problem shifting. The most critical methodological aspects in relation to LCA studies were identified as follows: definition of the functional unit, the LCA method employed (e.g., IOA, PCA and hybrid), the emission allocation principle and/or system boundary expansion. The most important technological aspects were identified as follows: the energy recovery efficiency and the flue gas cleaning system for fossil fuel technologies; the electricity mix used during both the manufacturing and the construction phases for nuclear and renewable technologies; and the type, quality and origin of feedstock, as well as the amount and type of co-products, for biomass-based systems. This review demonstrates that the variability of existing LCA results for electricity generation can give rise to conflicting decisions regarding the environmental consequences of implementing new technologies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Wuppertal Institute developed, in the early 1990s, an input-oriented lifecycle-wide resource accounting method, the "Material Input per Service-Unit" concept (MIPS), today also referred to as "Material Footprint". The official handbook applicable to products, services, and processes describes a MS Excel-based sequential approach for calculating MIPS. Today's computing power, available to every researcher, and access to software and databases dedicated to lifecycle analysis make calculating MIPS using matrix inversion possible. This also opens up possibilities for enhancing MIPS-models programmatically: parameterizing the foreground and background systems, batch modeling for producing time series, and computational algorithms enhancing interpretation. The article provides (1) an overview of the methods and tools used for calculating MIPS from its origins to today, and (2) demonstrates some of the programmatically enhanced capabilities offered to MIPS-practitioners.Food system sustainability is a major issue of concern for policy makers. Feeding an increasing world population without compromising the endowment of natural resources or worsening the environmental crisis is, indeed, a major challenge. The need to boost sustainable and productive farming systems and enhance resource efficiency has been acknowledged by European Union policy in its 2020 Strategy. This study assesses the impact of some Italian foodstuffs and agricultural products in terms of material requirement, using the Material Input Per Service unit (MIPS) indicator. The conventional, organic and post-organic agricultural practice called Ma-Pi polyculture is investigated. Results show that, in spite of higher yields obtained by conventional agriculture, material efficiency of organic crops and foodstuffs is generally higher. Moreover, a drastic enhancement of material efficiency is achievable using agronomic practices that minimize the employment of external inputs. As a tool for evaluating the environmental sustainability of agricultural products, MIPS allows focusing on a priority policy area, i.e., resource efficiency, which could be easily employed for driving agricultural systems towards a sustainable intensification. Data quality and availability of Material Input (MI) factors remains, however, a constraining issue for the applicability of the indicator.Current methods of life cycle assessment (LCA) include input-output (IO) models and process-based LCA. These methods either require excessive effort and time to reach a conclusion (process LCA) or do not adequately model how a change in a product's design will affect the environmental footprint (IO LCA). A variation of process-based LCA developed specifically for aircraft is presented in this study. A tool implementing this LCA, "qUWick," is rapid and easily applicable to multi-disciplinary design optimization of aircraft. Models developed for the material production, manufacturing, usage, and end-of-life of an aircraft are examined. Outputs of qUWick are discussed for future air vehicles. When compared to process LCAs with similar boundaries, qUWick gives similar results, however qUWick models several stages of an aircraft's life cycle more accurately than other aircraft process-based LCAs. Comparison to IO LCAs suggests an underestimation of supply chain as well as maintenance impacts and points towards areas of future improvements for the qUWick LCA tool.Energy payback time and carbon footprint of commercial roof-top photovoltaic systems are calculated based on new 2011 manufacturers' data; and on 2013 equipment manufacturers' estimates of "micromorph" silicon photovoltaic modules. The energy payback times and carbon footprints are 1.96,1.24,139, 0.92, 0.68, and 1.02 years and 38.1, 27.2, 34.8, 22.8, 15.8, and 21.4 g CO2-eq/kWh for monocrystalline silicon, multicrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, "micromorph" silicon, cadmium telluride and GIGS roof-top photovoltaic systems, respectively, assuming a poly-silicon production with hydropower; ingot-, wafer-, solar cell and module production with UCTE electricity; an irradiation on an optimized-angle of 1700 kWh/(m(2) x year); excluding installation, operation and maintenance and end-of-life phase. Shifting production of poly-silicon, ingots, wafers, cells and modules to China results in similar energy payback times but increases the carbon footprint by a factor 1.3-2.1, depending on the electricity intensity of manufacturing. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Effluent requirements have frequently been established that are more stringent than those traditionally considered possible using biological secondary treatment. We evaluated aeration energy and CO2 emissions using an inorganic polymer coagulant of polysilicato-iron (PSI) as a pre-treatment alternative to an aluminium coagulant. Use of the PSI coagulant for CO2 reduction was evaluated in terms of the effects on the quality of the treated water and overall cost effectiveness using a simplified life-cycle assessment ( LCA) technique for a wastewater treatment system in an urban catchment. The water quality improvement effects of the wastewater treatment were evaluated by calculating the flux change according to the water quality characteristics in an urban catchment using a catchment simulator. The system evaluated, in an integrated manner, the quality of the treated water and the CO2 emissions from a wastewater treatment system. The effects of wastewater treatment management measures were assessed by evaluating their CO2 emissions and cost, in addition to the water quality improvement. A flocculating agent was used at a concentration close to the water quality standard, and a major effect was seen in terms of reduced aeration energy costs and CO2 emissions. Model calculations of the cost of using flocculating agents, such as polyaluminium chloride (PAC), PSI, ferric chloride, and a polymer coagulant, indicated that the most economical agent was PSI with a polymer. For a cost burden of about 200 million JPY per year, including the cost of the flocculant and of sludge disposal, the CO2 emissions could be reduced by approximately 30%. Thus, a reduced energy technology was established to optimally manage catchment wastewater. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V.We demonstrate the possibilities of foodomics to emerge as a green discipline by applying the basic concepts of Green Chemistry to production of functional ingredients and development of analytical methodologies. We present possibilities to reduce the environmental impact of an analytical technique from sample preparation through separation and detection, together with different methodologies to quantify the greenness of a particular process. By no means this review tries to be exhaustive but to provide with some basic ideas about the different possibilities encountered in this field, thus making the reader be aware of how easy, or difficult, might be to make greener different aspects related to foodomics such as functional ingredients production and analytical processes. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study develops scenarios regarding the introduction of electric vehicles to the passenger vehicle fleet of Norway to reach the 2020 Norwegian greenhouse gas reduction target and a more extreme target to limit global temperature increase to two degrees. A process-based life cycle assessment approach is integrated with a temporally variable inventory model to evaluate the environmental impacts of these scenarios. We find that greenhouse gases in the reference scenario increase by 10% in 2020 in comparison to 2012; while for the more intensive improvements in conventional vehicles, this increase is reduced to 2%. For electric vehicles deployment scenarios, although the fleet share will reduce the tail-pipe greenhouse gas emissions by 8-26%, with the upper end representing the two-degree reduction target, emissions reductions over the entire life cycle are only 3-15%. Electric vehicles also reduce emissions of NOx, SO2 and particulates reducing acidification, smog formation and particulate formation impacts, however, with addition of large numbers of electric vehicles significant trade-offs in toxicity impacts are found. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Organic waste land application generates nitrogenous emissions that have impacts on acidification, eutrophication and global warming. To assess these impacts with Life Cycle Assessment, emission factors are commonly used without taking into account neither the type and performance of land application techniques nor the type of organic waste applied. This paper proposes a methodological framework to assess the nitrogenous emissions by coupling technological performances of spreader and biophysical models, focusing on sewage sludge spreading in different weather and soil conditions. The first step consists of creating several spreading scenarios by combining a cropping system and a "spreader/ sewage sludge'' couple. The second step consists of testing the technological spreader performances regarding spatial distribution, application rate and soil compaction with a spreading simulator and the COMPSOIL model. Nitrogenous emissions are then simulated with STICS and DEAC models for different application rates and soil bulk densities. Finally, the simulated nitrogen losses from the models are linked with the real amounts of sewage sludge applied and the compacted soil due to spreader performances. Our approach shows that ammonia emissions during sewage sludge spreading can be directly linked to the spreader performances whereas nitrate leaching depends more on the soil and on the weather conditions. Nitrous oxide emissions mostly depend on the spreader weight and to the soil and the weather conditions. This method paves the way to new approaches: integrating technological performances of machines into biophysical and agricultural models in order to assess environmental impacts of agricultural practices.The use of LCA in waste management is an emerging field in France and other European countries. This paper provides feedback on the methodological challenge of incorporating LCA results in decision making processes. LCA is expected to answer the demand for global and exhaustive environmental evaluation of waste management scenarios particularly well, whereas its methodological suitability for this particular field is still under discussion. One unanswered question is how to ensure "satisfactory'' incorporation of LCA results in the decision making process, i.e. between multi-criteria analysis and simplification. This paper provides evidence from a case study in which non-aggregated LCA results were fed into the decision making process at an early stage in the planning process with the involvement of the stakeholders. Interviews with different stakeholders as well as in-depth analysis of documentation on the decision making process concerned, and of the LCA, allow us to discuss how the multi-criteria character of LCA and its results fit the process despite diverging points of view. The results of the case study were interpreted in an interdisciplinary dialogue between researchers in LCA methodology and social scientists. In terms of research findings, we report that appropriation and comprehension of the non-aggregated LCA results were rather high, also by the stakeholders involved. In our case, the successful incorporation of non-aggregated multi-criteria results was not so much a problem of comprehensibility as might be expected. Instead, our case study sheds light on the complex political roles LCA can play in waste management.The increasing generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a major problem particularly for large urban areas with insufficient landfill capacities and inefficient waste management systems. Several options associated to the supply chain for implementing a MSW management system are available, however to determine the optimal solution several technical, economic, environmental and social aspects must be considered. Therefore, this paper proposes a mathematical programming model for the optimal planning of the supply chain associated to the MSW management system to maximize the economic benefit while accounting for technical and environmental issues. The optimization model simultaneously selects the processing technologies and their location, the distribution of wastes from cities as well as the distribution of products to markets. The problem was formulated as a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programing problem to maximize the profit of the supply chain and the amount of recycled wastes, where the results are showed through Pareto curves that tradeoff economic and environmental aspects. The proposed approach is applied to a case study for the west-central part of Mexico to consider the integration of MSW from several cities to yield useful products. The results show that an integrated utilization of MSW can provide economic, environmental and social benefits. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solid waste, including municipal waste and its management, is a major challenge for most cities and among the key contributors to climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced through recovery and recycling of resources from the municipal solid waste stream. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, recycling cooperatives play a crucial role in providing recycling services including collection, separation, cleaning, stocking, and sale of recyclable resources. The present research attempts to measure the greenhouse gas emission reductions achieved by the recycling cooperative Cooperpires, as well as highlight its socioeconomic benefits. Methods include participant observation, structured interviews, questionnaire application, and greenhouse gas accounting of recycling using a Clean Development Mechanism methodology. The results show that recycling cooperatives can achieve important energy savings and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and suggest there is an opportunity for Cooperpires and other similar recycling groups to participate in the carbon credit market. Based on these findings, the authors created a simple greenhouse gas accounting calculator for recyclers to estimate their emissions reductions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Incineration is the main option for residual Municipal Solid Waste treatment in France. This study compares the environmental performances of 110 French incinerators (i.e. 85% of the total number of plants currently in activity in France) in a Life Cycle Assessment perspective, considering 5 non-toxic impact categories: climate change, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification and marine eutrophication. Mean, median and lower/upper impact potentials are determined considering the incineration of 1 tonne of French residual Municipal Solid Waste. The results highlight the relatively large variability of the impact potentials as a function of the plant technical performances. In particular, the climate change impact potential of the incineration of 1 tonne of waste ranges from a benefit of 58 kg CO2-eq to a relatively large burden of 408 kg CO2-eq, with 294 kg CO2-eq as the average impact. Two main plant-specific parameters drive the impact potentials regarding the 5 non-toxic impact categories under study: the energy recovery and delivery rate and the NO process-specific emissions. The variability of the impact potentials as a function of incinerator characteristics therefore calls for the use of site-specific data when required by the LCA goal and scope definition phase, in particular when the study focuses on a specific incinerator or on a local waste management plan, and when these data are available. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a cradle-to-grave comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of new gas atomised (GA) sponge nickel catalysts and evaluates their performance against the both cast and crush (CC) sponge nickel and platinum standards currently used in commercial alkaline fuel cells (AFC). The LCA takes into account the energy used and emissions throughout the entire life cycle of sponge nickel catalysts ranging from the upstream production of materials (mainly aluminium and nickel), to the manufacturing, to the operation and finally to the recycling and disposal. Through this assessment it was found that the energy and emissions during the operational phase associated with a given catalyst considerably outweigh the primary production, manufacturing and recycling. Primary production of the nickel (and to a lesser extent dopant materials) also has a significant environmental impact but this is offset by operational energy savings over the electrode's estimated lifetime and end of life recyclability. From the results it can be concluded that higher activity spongy nickel catalysts produced by gas atomisation could have a significantly lower environmental impact than either CC nickel or platinum. Doped GA sponge nickel in particular showed comparable performance to that of the standard platinum electrode used in AFCs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The issue of energy use in iron and steel making operations has been focused by several authors. Since current operations use predominantly fossil fuel based carbon bearing inputs, energy use is related to CO2 emissions which is a Green House Gas. Abatement of CO2 emissions requires a proper CO2 accounting procedure to be established for an existing operation. Varied approaches have been used, but information on mass and energy balance for individual process steps and the plant as a whole have scarcely been correlated to emission patterns for individual process steps as well as the total plant. In the accounting procedure suggested, the first step is to establish a carbon balance encompassing input carbon, fuel gases generated and solid/liquid fuel produced. Once the quantities of by-product fuel gases are established through carbon accounting, consumption route of these gases are examined using a carbon flux diagram, to ascertain which process steps emit maximum CO2. Predictive models can be used to work out downstream fuel gas streams requirements as well as surplus generated. Use of analytical models for reduction of CO2 emissions at source can be combined with an objective of overall cost reduction objective for evolving implementation strategies without sequestration. Greater CO2 abatement can be obtained through use of carbon capture and sequestration, as applied to steel mills. An example case for sequestering the stove flue gas of a conventional blast furnace using an amine system for capture combined with slag sequestration is discussed. Use of a 'top gas recycle system' with CO2 separation using VPSA is shown to lead to greater degree of abatement. The emission allocation issues, related to Life Cycle Analysis are important for arriving at the total emission pattern. Implementing carbon abatement requires additional auxiliary technology development, such as recovery of low grade heat, for supporting energy requirements associated with CO2 separation.Biobased composites offer a potentially low environmental impact material option for the construction industries. Designing these materials to meet both performance requirements for an application and minimize environmental impacts requires the ability to refine composite constituents based on environmental impact and mechanical properties. In this research, biobased composites with varying natural fiber reinforcement in a poly(beta-hydroxybutyrate)-co-(beta-hydroxyvalerate) matrix were characterized based on material properties through experiments and environmental impact through life cycle assessments. Using experimental results, these biobased composites were found to have competitive flexural properties and thermal conductivity with certain short-chopped glass fiber reinforced plastics. Multi-criteria material selection techniques were applied to weigh desired material properties with greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel demand, and Eco-Indicator '99 score. The effects of using different reinforcing fibers in biobased composites were analyzed using the developed selection scheme as a tool for choosing constituents. The use of multi-criteria material selection provided the ability to select fiber reinforcement for biobased composites and showed when it would be more appropriate to use a novel biobased composite or a currently available engineered material. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents one of the first Italian experiences assessing the effectiveness of sustainable production and consumption strategies. The authors developed an energy and environmental extended input output model, combined with the life cycle assessment, to analyse the role of the building sector in the reduction of Italian energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In detail, the model allows to assess the energy and environmental benefits arising from the Italian tax deduction policy for energy retrofit actions of buildings. Moreover, the authors defined an original model to assess the indirect rebound effect caused by the energy retrofit actions. The outcomes of the research point out that the assessment of the benefits arising from a specific sustainable, policy, strongly depends on: - the indirect energy consumed by industry to produce goods and services needed for the policy actuation; - the indirect energy saving, owing to the implemented policy, which in the examined case study has the same order of magnitude as the direct one; - the rebound effect, often neglected in the literature, which can partially avoid the obtained benefits. The model shows wide ranges of applicability to the European context, since it uses as input economic and energy data usually available at local and/or national level for many states in Europe. It may represent a useful tool to decision-makers in the selection of policies oriented to the reduction of energy and environmental impacts caused by final consumption. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Escalating development of tourism and petroleum industries in small islands such as Lavan-Iran requires sound solid waste management. In the present investigation, three scenarios which consist of the combination of landfill, recycling, incineration and composting and their environmental impacts have been evaluated for 7514 Kg/day of waste generation in Lavan island. For this purpose, life cycle assessment was used. The environmental impact assessment was carried out by Eco-indicator 99. The impacts include health (organic substances, inorganic substances, climate change, ionizing radiation, and ozone layer depletion), ecosystem quality (ecotoxic emissions, acidification, eutrophication and double coating) and resources (extraction of minerals and the fossil fuels). Although all three scenarios have positive impacts on the environment, the third one causes the least damage. Introduced Scenario one has the most adverse effects on human health and ecosystem quality. However, introduced scenario Two has less than the others. In general, the effects of scenario three (landfilling plus recycling, incineration and composting) is less than the other two scenarios which makes it a better candidate for further investigations.Harvested rainwater systems and composting toilets are expected to be an important part of sustainable solutions in buildings. Yet, to this date, a model evaluating their economic and environmental impact has been missing. To address this need, a life cycle based model, EEAST was developed. EEAST was designed to compare the business as usual (BAU) case of using potable water for toilet flushing and irrigation to alternative scenarios of rainwater harvesting and composting toilet based technologies. In EEAST, building characteristics, occupancy, and precipitation are used to size the harvested rainwater and composting toilet systems. Then, life cycle costing and life cycle assessment methods are used to estimate cost, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission payback periods (PPs) for five alternative scenarios. The scenarios modeled include use of harvested rainwater for toilet flushing, for irrigation, or both; and use of composting toilets with or without harvested rainwater use for irrigation. A sample simulation using EEAST showed that for the office building modeled, the cost PPs were greater than energy PPs which in turn were greater than GHG emission PPs. This was primarily due to energy and emission intensive nature of the centralized water and wastewater infrastructure. The sample simulation also suggested that the composting toilets may have the best performance in all criteria. However, EEAST does not explicitly model solids management and as such may give composting toilets an unfair advantage compared to flush based toilets. EEAST results were found to be very sensitive to cost values used in the model. With the availability of EEAST, life cycle cost, energy, and GHG emissions can now be performed fairly easily by building designers and researchers. Future work is recommended to further improve EEAST and evaluate it for different types of buildings and climates so as to better understand when composting toilets and harvested rainwater systems outperform the BAU case in building design. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle assessment (LCA) environmental tool was implemented to quantify the potential environmental impacts associated with the activated carbon (AC) production process from olive-waste cakes in Tunisia. On the basis of laboratory investigations for AC preparation, a flowchart was developed and the environmental impacts were determined. The LCA functional unit chosen was the production of 1 kg of AC from by-product olive-waste cakes. The results showed that impregnation using H3PO4 presented the highest environmental impacts for the majority of the indicators tested: acidification potential (62%), eutrophication (96%), ozone depletion potential (44%), human toxicity (64%), fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity (90%) and terrestrial ecotoxicity (92%). One of the highest impacts was found to be the global warming potential (11.096 kg CO2 eq/kg AC), which was equally weighted between the steps involving impregnation, pyrolysis, and drying the washed AC. The cumulative energy demand of the AC production process from the by-product olive-waste cakes was 167.63 MJ contributed by impregnation, pyrolysis, and drying the washed AC steps. The use of phosphoric acid and electricity in the AC production were the main factors responsible for the majority of the impacts. If certain modifications are incorporated into the AC production, such as implementing synthesis gas recovery and reusing it as an energy source and recovery of phosphoric acid after AC washing, additional savings could be realized, and environmental impacts could be minimized. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Roughage production is one of the major factors contributing to environmental pollution. Therefore, whether the production of organic roughage reduces environmental loads compared with conventional production is an important issue in environmentally friendly organic milk production. Using the life cycle assessment method, we assessed the environmental performance of conventional and organic roughage production in Japan. The results of this article show that, in order to enhance environmental performance for organic roughage production in Japan, purchased organic fertilizers should be reduced because the nitrogen contained in them is responsible for environmental loads emitted by nitrogen loss.Supplying adequate human nutrition within ecosystem carrying capacities is a key element in the global environmental sustainability challenge. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used effectively to evaluate the environmental impacts of food production value chains and to identify opportunities for targeted improvement strategies. Dietary choices and resulting consumption patterns are the drivers of production, however, and a consumption-oriented life cycle perspective is useful in understanding the environmental implications of diet choices. This review identifies 32 studies that use an LCA framework to evaluate the environmental impact of diets or meals. It highlights the state of the art, emerging methodological trends and current challenges and limitations to such diet-level LCA studies. A wide range of bases for analysis and comparison (i.e., functional units) have been employed in LCAs of foods and diet; we conceptually map appropriate functional unit choices to research aims and scope and argue for a need to move in the direction of a more sophisticated and comprehensive nutritional basis in order to link nutritional health and environmental objectives. Nutritional quality indices are reviewed as potential approaches, but refinement through ongoing collaborative research between environmental and nutritional sciences is necessary. Additional research needs include development of regionally specific life cycle inventory databases for food and agriculture and expansion of the scope of assessments beyond the current focus on greenhouse gas emissions.Current economic restructuring policies have ignored unintended environmental consequences and cobenefits, the understanding of which can provide foundations for effective policy decisions for green economy transformation. Using the input-output life cycle assessment model and taking China as an example, we find that household consumption, fixed capital formation, and export are main drivers to China's environmental impacts. At the product scale, major contributors to environmental impacts vary across different types of impacts. Stimulating the development of seven strategic emerging industries will cause unintended consequences, such as increasing nonferrous metal ore usage, terrestrial acidification, photochemical oxidant formation, human toxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Limiting the surplus outputs in the construction materials industry and metallurgy industry may only help mitigate some of the environmental impacts caused by China's regulated pollutants, with little effect on reducing other impacts, such as marine eutrophication, terrestrial acidification, photochemical oxidant formation, and particulate matter formation. However, it will bring cobenefits by simultaneously reducing mineral ore usage, human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Sustainable materials management and integrated policy modeling are possible ways for policy-making to avoid unintended consequences and effectively utilize cobenefits.Climate mitigation activities in forests need to be quantified in terms of the long-term effects on forest carbon stocks, accumulation, and emissions. The impacts of future environmental change and bioenergy harvests on regional forest carbon storage have not been quantified. We conducted a comprehensive modeling study and life-cycle assessment of the impacts of projected changes in climate, CO2 concentration, and N deposition, and region-wide forest management policies on regional forest carbon fluxes. By 2100, if current management strategies continue, then the warming and CO2 fertilization effect in the given projections result in a 32-68% increase in net carbon uptake, overshadowing increased carbon emissions from projected increases in fire activity and other forest disturbance factors. To test the response to new harvesting strategies, repeated thinnings were applied in areas susceptible to fire to reduce mortality, and two clear-cut rotations were applied in productive forests to provide biomass for wood products and bioenergy. The management strategies examined here lead to long-term increased carbon emissions over current harvesting practices, although semiarid regions contribute little to the increase. The harvest rates were unsustainable. This comprehensive approach could serve as a foundation for regional place-based assessments of management effects on future carbon sequestration by forests in other locations.Analyses of global warming impacts from forest bioenergy systems are usually conducted either at a single stand level or at a landscape level, yielding findings that are sometimes interpreted as contrasting. In this paper, we investigate and reconcile the scales at which environmental impact analyses of forest bioenergy systems are undertaken. Focusing on the changes caused in atmospheric CO2 concentration of forest bioenergy systems characterized by different initial states of the forest, we show the features of the analyses at different scales and depict the connections between them. Impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentration at a single stand level are computed through impulse response functions (IRF). Results at a landscape level are elaborated through direct application of IRFs to the emission profile, so to account for the fluxes from all the stands across time and space. Impacts from fossil CO2 emissions are used as a benchmark. At a landscape level, forest bioenergy causes an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration for the first decades that is similar to the impact from fossil CO2, but then the dynamics clearly diverge because while the impact from fossil CO2 continues to rise that from bioenergy stabilizes at a certain level. These results perfectly align with those obtained at a single stand for which characterization factors have been developed. In the hypothetical case of a sudden cessation of emissions, the change caused in atmospheric CO2 concentration from biogenic CO2 emissions reverses within a couple of decades, while that caused by fossil CO2 emissions remains considerably higher for centuries. When counterfactual aspects like the additional sequestration that would have occurred in the forest if not harvested and the theoretical displacement of fossil CO2 are included in the analysis, results can widely differ, as the CO2 debt at a landscape level ranges from a few years to several centuries (depending on the underlying assumptions considered). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental profiles of mineral nitrogen fertilizers were used to evaluate the environmental disturbances related to their use in cultivation systems in Europe. Since the production of mineral fertilizers requires a large amount of energy, the present study of bioenergy systems is relevant in order to achieve crop yields less dependent on fossil fuels and to reduce the environmental impact due to fertilization. In this study, the suitability of the LCA methodology to analyze the environmental impact of sunflower cultivation systems with different forms of mineral nitrogen fertilizers urea and ammonium nitrate was investigated. Effects on climate change were estimated by the use of Ecoinvent 2.2 database default value for soil N2O emission factor (1%) and local emission data (0.8%) of mineral nitrogen applied to soils. LCA analysis showed a higher impact on environmental categories (human health and ecosystem quality) for the system in which urea was used as a nitrogen source. Use of urea fertilizer showed a higher impact on resource consumption due to fossil fuel consumption. Use of mineral nitrogen fertilizers showed a higher environmental burden than other inputs required for sunflower cultivation systems under study. Urea and ammonium nitrate showed, respectively, a 7.8% and 4.9% reduced impact of N2O as greenhouse gas by using direct field data of soil N2O emission factor compared to the default soil emission factor of 2006 IPCC Guidelines. Use of ammonium nitrate as mineral nitrogen fertilizer in sunflower cultivation would have a lower impact on environmental categories considered. Further environmental analysis of available technologies for fertilizer production might be also evaluated in order to reduce the environmental impacts of each fertilizer. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The evaluation of the environmental sustainability of a technological option requires the consideration of the complete product life cycle. By using the methodology of a classical environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), it is possible to analyze the environmental problems of the sugar industry through all stages of the full process including different options for the by-products valorization. Exergy and exergetic life cycle analysis are much more resource and product, and hence also efficiency, oriented. The Cumulative Exergy Consumption (CExC) has the advantage that different kinds of resources are quantified on one single scale, which is a unique feature in resource accounting. In this work, Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment was combined with a traditional LCA of cane sugar production process developed previously by Contreras et al. (Contreras et al., 2009), for assessing four different alternatives for by-products valorization of the cane sugar process. The CExC reports the exergy consumption of each stage of the process and the total consumption for each alternative which is important in resource consumption quantification, including renewability and hence process sustainability. Results show the advantage of combining both methods for the environmental assessment of cane sugar production. The application of this combination validates the results related with the category of resources and the contribution of the agricultural stage to the overall impact of the process. The environmental benefits of producing alcohol, biogas, animal food and fertilizers from the sugar production by-products were corroborated. The alternative IV has the lowest contribution to environmental impact in resource category and the minor value of the non-renewability index (6.59E-08). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The advice on climate-smart food consumption given by authorities and NGOs includes the recommendation to "eat seasonal foods". However, no clear definition of seasonality is given in the literature. This study investigated how the carbon footprint of yearly per capita consumption of tomatoes and carrots in Sweden was affected by seasonal consumption according to interpretations of seasonality found in communications from Swedish NGOs and authorities. The results showed that the carbon footprint of carrot and tomato consumption was strongly affected by consuming according to either a strict definition of seasonality, which excluded both production in heated greenhouses and long-distance transport, or a definition which only allowed Swedish produce. The reduction potential was approximately 60%, but the consumption pattern was also highly restrictive, with e.g. tomatoes only being consumed during three months according to the strictest definition. The reduction from eating only Swedish products was not due primarily to characteristics commonly associated with seasonal production (shorter transport or low energy demand in cultivation), but to the use of renewable fuel instead of fossil energy. The methodology chosen in this study resulted in carrots having a more distinct season than tomatoes, since the energy use for heating greenhouses (which are needed all year round in cold climates) was evenly allocated across all tomatoes harvested during one year, while the carbon footprint of carrots was assumed to increase with time due to increased energy demand for storage and storage losses. Hence, modern production techniques challenge the traditional concepts of seasonality. On an absolute scale including the whole food sector, the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from eating seasonal is limited, as emissions from vegetable production make up a minor proportion of the total emissions from food consumption. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emergy synthesis is capable of quantifying environmental resources and services, as well as economic and human services, that are used up directly or indirectly to make a product available. However, a controversial aspect of emergy synthesis is the lack of research characterizing and documenting uncertainties in the emergy evaluation process. Uncertainty can arise from analysis of numerous components and flows in a complex environmental system. The reliability of emergy synthesis results may be undermined by both the inherent uncertainty of emergy parameters and models, and by a lack of knowledge regarding the certainty of resulting outputs. This paper explores the utility of fuzzy-based methods in emergy synthesis. Applying fuzzy set theory facilitates the gradual assessment of Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) as a set of possible UEVs. In other words, uncertainty of UEVs is described with the aid of a membership function valued in the real unit interval [0, 1]. The proposed fuzzy-based emergy synthesis has been applied for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a transportation infrastructure system. A paved road, with different pavement options (i.e. asphalt and concrete), has been selected as a case study to highlight the impacts of propagation of different sources of uncertainties in the emergy evaluation process and decision making. Results indicate that fuzzy-based modeling can provide better insight for both emergy and LCA practitioners. The developed methodology provides transparency that should be an integral part of an emergy-based decision making process. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study used life cycle assessment (LCA) to clarify the feasibility and potential effects of a new type of bioenergy by evaluating the cost, energy, and environmental efficiency of biomass pyrolysis oil in the production and usage stages. An annual yield of 10,000 t of pyrolysis oil processed with the raw material of Cryptomeria residue was selected as the evaluated target. We used life cycle inventory and effect assessment to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages associated with the production of the new bioenergy. GaBi (R) 4 software and the Eco-indicator 95 system were selected for the evaluation. The resulting calculated specific cost of pyrolysis oil production was NT$11,758/m(3) pyrolysis oil (NT$1 = US$0.034 in October 2012), and pyrolysis oil with its byproduct could provide the energy of 36,019 MJ/m(3) pyrolysis oil. The output input energy ratio is approximately 13.2, indicating the high energy efficiency of pyrolysis oil. In terms of the environmental aspect, the total net carbon emission is 176.6 kg CO2/m(3) pyrolysis oil. Using pyrolysis oil and the biochar byproduct to replace fuel oil and coal can produce a reduction of approximately 2835 kg CO2/m(3) pyrolysis oil (0.079 kg CO2/MJ) of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impact indicator is 0.105 Pt, which is much lower than the fuel oil energy-equivalent. These findings suggest that pyrolysis oil produced from Cryptomeria residue yields enhanced energy and environmental efficiency. However, the production cost is higher than that of existing fossil fuels. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The demand for energy and consequently the emissions from energy generation have been increasing in recent years at rapid rates, leading to an urgent need for cleaner technologies. Cleaner technologies, however, require scarce resources. This paper analyzes the future development of electricity generation technologies and the metals required for their components, using a multi level dynamic material flow model. The model includes ten electricity generation technologies and the most important factors determining the dynamics of their metals requirement. The analysis is carried out from 1980 through 2050, using two scenarios, termed Market First and Policy First, combined with specific scenarios for the technologies. The results show that no resource problems occur in production capacity or in the availability of resources for wind power technologies in either scenario. In contrast, each photovoltaic solar technology has a constraining metal supply in the Policy First scenario: silver for silicon based technologies, tellurium for cadmium telluride technology, indium for copper indium gallium diselenide, and germanium for amorphous silicon. The model results show that the most critical photovoltaic solar metal in terms of resource availability and production capacity is tellurium. The demand for the base metals aluminium, copper, chromium, nickel, lead, and iron needed for electricity generation technologies can be met in the two scenarios. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We studied the environmental consequences of cereal choice and form of presentation of the diet given to geese reared for foie gras production. A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of the production of 1 kg of foie gras was used to examine several feeding strategies for substituting maize by sorghum: during the growing finishing and/or overfeeding period; in a complete pelleted diet or as whole grains. The data come from in-field management practices on representative French goose farms for the breeding, hatching and slaughtering stages of production, and in vivo experiments for the growing finishing and overfeeding stages. The impact categories were calculated using the CML2 baseline method. Our data showed that the effects of cereal type on the environmental impact of foie gras were dependent on feed level and stage of inclusion. Birds fed exclusively with sorghum during both the growing finishing period and the overfeeding period had lower environmental impacts than birds fed with maize, for all the potential impacts calculated (e.g. -17% for global warming potential). A diet presented in a simplified form during the growing finishing period had no effect on foie gras impacts when the cereal used was maize (difference between groups <7%), but increased them when it was sorghum (from +16% for water use to +22% eutrophication and acidification potential), due to higher bird mortality during the overfeeding period. These results suggest that changes in bird feeding practices could contribute to a more environmentally-friendly production system for foie gras if animal performance is note reduced. Hence, substitution of maize by sorghum can lessen the environmental impacts of foie gras production and thus offer a valuable alternative in response to water shortages in southern France, but its use in a simplified form hinges on prior improvement of rearing practices to limit subsequent mortality. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A reverse supply chain, as a post-consumption activity, aims at extracting value from products at the end of their life cycle. It could be comprised of reusing, refurbishing, remanufacturing, and recycling activities. In this paper, we revisit the issue of revenue sharing in reverse supply chains to formulate the decision problems of coordinating parties, manufacturer and retailer. The coordination is formed in a dynamic setting, where a feedback relationship exists between the return incentive policy of the retailer, and the revenue sharing incentive strategy of the manufacturer. To model this process, we have adopted the use of a system dynamics (SD) approach. SD is well suited for studying the behavior of complex systems over time, and where internal feedbacks and delays exist. We first identify Pareto-optimal solutions, for individual players, and from environmental perspectives of landfill diversion and carbon offset. We then focus on revenue sharing, as a widely practiced coordination scheme in reverse supply chains. It resembles a leader follower (Stackelberg) strategic decision-making game, with an equilibrium solution that yields lower performance for environmental criteria. In this context, we investigate if/how a revenue sharing mechanism can be coordinated to achieve a higher environmental performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Autotrophic microalgae represent a potential feedstock for transportation fuels, but life cycle assessment (LCA) studies based on laboratory-scale or theoretical data have shown mixed results. We attempt to bridge the gap between laboratory-scale and larger scale biodiesel production by using cultivation and harvesting data from a commercial algae producer with similar to 1000 m(2) production area (the base case), and compare that with a hypothetical scaled up facility of 101,000 m(2) (the future case). Extraction and separation data are from Solution Recovery Services, Inc. Conversion and combustion data are from the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation Model (GREET). The LCA boundaries are defined as "pond-to-wheels". Environmental impacts are quantified as NER (energy in/ energy out), global warming potential, photochemical oxidation potential, water depletion, particulate matter, and total NOx and SOx. The functional unit is 1 MJ of energy produced in a passenger car. Results for the base case and the future case show an NER of 33.4 and 1.37, respectively and GWP of 2.9 and 0.18 kg CO2-equivalent, respectively. In comparison, petroleum diesel and soy diesel show an NER of 0.18 and 0.80, respectively and GWP of 0.12 and 0.025, respectively. A critical feature in this work is the low algal productivity (3 g/m(2)/day) reported by the commercial producer, relative to the much higher productivities (20-30 g/m(2)/day) reported by other sources. Notable results include a sensitivity analysis showing that algae with an oil yield of 0.75 kg oil/kg dry biomass in the future case can bring the NER down to 0.64, more comparable with petroleum diesel and soy biodiesel. An important assumption in this work is that all processes are fully co-located and that no transport of intermediate or final products from processing stage to stage is required. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biological techniques have been considered as an interesting alternative to treat gaseous streams from industrial processes. In this work, the performance of biofilters was evaluated from an environmental point of view by using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. More specifically, the potential impacts of four biofilters packed with different organic materials: spherical clay pellets covered with compost, a mixture of coconut fibre and sludge based carbon, peat and heather and pine bark have been quantified. The impact categories considered in this work were: eutrophication, acidification, global warming, photochemical oxidation, malodorous air, human toxicity and marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecotoxicity. From an environmental point of view, the reactor packed with coconut fibre and sludge based carbon appears to be the most suitable alternative since it presented the lowest values in almost all the impact categories assessed. On the other hand, the biofilter packed with clay pellets covered with compost seems to be the most penalized bioreactor providing the highest impacts for six of the nine impact categories evaluated, mainly due to the significant pressure drop achieved in the reactor which led to a considerable increase of energy demand. The reactor packed with coconut fibre and sludge based carbon is also the most beneficial alternative after performing the normalization step. In this case, the alternatives of peat and heather and pine bark are the less favourable ones in terms of photochemical oxidation, which was attributed to the lowest efficiency of methyl isobutyl ketone removal efficiency observed in both configurations. On the other hand, the option of treating off-gases is, in general, more positive and advisable than the direct discharge to the atmosphere. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rapid development of industrial parks in China has resulted in large resource consumption and pollutant emissions, especially freshwater use and wastewater discharge. Water reuse has attracted much attention from governments because of its potential to conserve freshwater and reduce pollutant emissions. However, water reuse usually means adding advanced treatment which consumes chemicals, materials and energy. Is the water reuse beneficial for the environment from a life cycle perspective? To answer this question, we quantified the environmental impacts of reusing treated wastewater at industrial parks under different scenarios through a comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA). Four scenarios are assessed: wastewater is treated and discharged, 20% and 99% of wastewater is treated and reused as industrial process water, and treated wastewater is used for horticulture. Inventory data were mainly obtained from a facility which manages the wastewater treatment and reuse system of an industrial park in Jiangsu Province. Environmental impacts were evaluated using the CML2001 method built into the GaBi version 4.3 database. The results show the water reuse is beneficial and the reuse rate significantly affects environmental performance of the system. It is also found that using the reclaimed water for higher value applications results in larger environmental credit. Decision makers in water management should consider both water quantity and quality and associated environmental impacts for different water reuse applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents comparative life cycle assessment of nine different hybrid power generation solutions that meet the energy demand of a prototypical mobile home. In these nine solutions, photovoltaic panels and a wind turbine are used as the main energy source. Fuel cell and diesel generator are utilized as backup systems. Batteries, compressed H-2, and H-2 in metal hydrides are employed as backup energy storage. The findings of the study shows that renewable energy sources, although they are carbon-free, are not as environmentally friendly as may generally be thought. The comparative findings of this study indicate that a hybrid system with a wind turbine as a main power source and a diesel engine as backup power system is the most environmentally sound solution among the alternatives. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle emissions associated with the reduction of wastes from an adsorption process to remove palladium complexes in drug manufacture have been evaluated. The study assessed a green improvement to a process step in an active pharmaceutical ingredient synthesis where palladium catalyst is removed from a reaction mixture. The greener process uses a continuous adsorption system, composed of a more efficient adsorbent, consuming less organic solvent and rinse water, which results in less waste disposal. The newer process is also more energy and cost efficient from an operational perspective. There is a 94% reduction in the carbon footprint of the new process when compared to the current operation.The environmental outcomes of urban form changes should couple life-cycle and behavioral assessment methods to better understand urban sustainability policy outcomes. Using Phoenix, Arizona light rail as a case study, an integrated transportation and land use life-cycle assessment (ITLU-LCA) framework is developed to assess the changes to energy consumption and air emissions from transit-oriented neighborhood designs. Residential travel, commercial travel, and building energy use are included and the framework integrates household behavior change assessment to explore the environmental and economic outcomes of policies that affect infrastructure. The results show that upfront environmental and economic investments are needed (through more energy-intense building materials for high-density structures) to produce long run benefits in reduced building energy use and automobile travel. The annualized life-cycle benefits of transit-oriented developments in Phoenix can range from 1.7 to 230 Gg CO(2)e depending on the aggressiveness of residential density. Midpoint impact stressors for respiratory effects and photochemical smog formation are also assessed and can be reduced by 1.2-170 Mg PM(10)e and 41-5200 Mg O(3)e annually. These benefits will come at an additional construction cost of up to $410 million resulting in a cost of avoided CO(2)e at $16-29 and household cost savings.This study aimed to provide a framework for assessing direct soil-water consumption, also termed green water in the literature, in life cycle assessment (LCA). This was an issue that LCA had not tackled before. The approach, which is applied during the life cycle inventory phase (LCI), consists of quantifying the net change in the evapo(transpi)ration of the production system compared to the natural reference situation. Potential natural vegetation (PNV) is used as the natural reference situation. In order to apply the method, we estimated PNV evapotranspiration adapted to local biogeographic conditions, on global dry lands, where soil-water consumption impacts can be critical. Values are reported at different spatial aggregation levels: 10-arcmin global grid, ecoregions (501 units), biomes (14 units), countries (124 units), continents, and a global average, to facilitate the assessment for different spatial information detail levels available in the LCI. The method is intended to be used in rain-fed agriculture and rainwater harvesting contexts, which includes direct soil moisture uptake by plants and rainwater harvested and then reused in production systems. The paper provides the necessary LCI method and data for further development of impact assessment models and characterization factors to evaluate the environmental effects of the net change in evapo(transpOration.A study of a gas turbine combustor that considers two conventional fuels and one biofuel is presented. The kind of fuel supplied to the combustor can impact in the Turbine Inlet Temperature (TIT) provoking significant changes in the power output and efficiency. Moreover, it can cause some damage in the initial steps of the gas turbine due to the migration of the hot streak. Natural gas, Diesel and Bioethanol are considered in the combustor in order to compare the performance of the power plant. The use of biofuel in a gas turbine combustor presents some benefits; a) better behavior in the distribution of the TIT, b) slightly higher power output and c) less impact of NOx and CO2 emissions. The analysis was based in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and thermodynamics. The results indicate that it is necessary to increase the mass flow rate of bioethanol to maintain the power output of the turbine, due to a significant reduction of the TIT was observed. On the other hand, the use of bioethanol permits an important reduction of NOx emissions when they are compared with the conventional fuels (natural gas or diesel). Also, a noble benefit is obtained due to the biofuel comes from biomass-derived material, resulting in a reduction of CO2 global warming. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates GHG emissions and energy balances (i.e. net energy value (NEV), net renewable energy value (NREV) and net energy ratio (NER)) of jatropha biodiesel as an alternative fuel in Tanzania by using life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The functional unit (FU) was defined as 1 tonne (t) of combusted jatropha biodiesel. The findings of the study prove wrong the notion that biofuels are carbon neutral, thus can mitigate climate change. A net GHG equivalent emission of about 848 kg t (1) was observed. The processes which account significantly to GHG emissions are the end use of biodiesel (about 82%) followed by farming of jatropha for about 13%. Sensitivity analysis indicates that replacing diesel with biodiesel in irrigation of jatropha farms decreases the net GHG emissions by 7.7% while avoiding irrigation may reduce net GHG emissions by 12%. About 22.0 GJ of energy is consumed to produce 1 t of biodiesel. Biodiesel conversion found to be a major energy consuming process (about 64.7%) followed by jatropha farming for about 30.4% of total energy. The NEV is 19.2 GJ t(-1), indicating significant energy gain of jatropha biodiesel. The NREV is 23.1 GJ t(-1) while NER is 2.3; the two values indicate that large amount of fossil energy is used to produce biodiesel. The results of the study are meant to inform stake-holders and policy makers in the bioenergy sector. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fertilization is one of the agronomic practices that generates the highest environmental burdens in energy crops. However, this practice is essential, since its omission could entail long term processes of soil degradation, endangering the environmental sustainability of agricultural systems. In most of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of energy crops found in the scientific literature, the inputs and outputs of nutrients are not calculated and the environmental impacts of nutrient loss are ignored as well. In this paper, a methodological approach to calculate the balance of nutrients that occurs during annual crop production in the context of the Life Cycle Inventory phase of LCA is proposed and applied to two study cases of energy crops: rapeseed (Brassica napus) in Cadiz, Spain, and soybean (Glycine max) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The results show that when rational fertilization is carried out, rapeseed fertilization in Spain generates more severe environmental impacts than soybean in the Argentinean Pampas when 1 ha of crop per year is used as the functional unit. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In light of global warming consequences and the need to take drastic steps to reduce its impact by capturing the CO2 from stationary sources, environmental performance assessment of CO2 capture processes is vital for deploying existing or innovative capture technologies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used in this study to evaluate the impacts associated with CO2 capture from a natural gas combined cycle power plant, by using a scientific approach of process design and sizing of important unit operations. The environmental assessment was conducted for 90% and 80% CO2 capture efficiencies, using conventional monoethanolamine (MEA) and advanced solvent (KS-1), at various CO2 compression configurations. The results show a major reduction in greenhouse gas emission (GHG) for both capture efficiencies. For the 90% CO2 capture efficiency with conventional MEA, a reduction of 76% in GHG emission was achieved for the entire compression configuration. The 80% CO2 capture efficiency with conventional MEA, on the other hand, showed a 65% reduction in GHG emission. Using the KS-1 solvent resulted in a 78% reduction in GHG emission due to reduction in energy required for CO2 regeneration. However, the assessment shows that CO2 capture operations has led to an increase in other environmental impacts such as human toxicity potential, abiotic depletion, marine eutrophication potential, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, acidification, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidant formation potential. These impacts are mainly due to the additional energy required for the CO2 capture, infrastructures and chemical solvent used. The advantage of using the novel solvent (KS-1) is clear at 90% CO2 capture compared to the conventional MEA solvent. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of marginal lands for biofuel production has been proposed as a promising solution for meeting biofuel demands while avoiding food-feed-fuel conflicts. However, uncertainty surrounds whether marginal lands can be reliably located, as well as their inherent biofuel potential and the possible environmental impacts. We developed a quantitative approach that integrates high-resolution land cover and land productivity to classify productive croplands and nonarable marginal lands in a nine-county region in southern Michigan. The classified lands were then examined with the spatially explicit modeling framework using the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model to estimate net energy (NE) and soil organic carbon (SOC) changes associated with the cultivation of different annual and perennial production systems. Simulation results suggest that biofuel production systems underperform on marginal lands when compared to productive croplands. However, we found perennial grasses could perform better than annual crops. Hence, when growing perennial bioenergy crops on marginal lands instead of productive croplands, less additional land (about 0.09 ha per each hectare planted) would be needed to achieve the same NE than if growing annual bioenergy crops (additional 0.17 ha per hectare planted). Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus) and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) can produce 112.43 and 74.61 GJ ha(-1) yr(-1) NE, respectively, and have the potential to sequester, on average, 0.59 and 0.23 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) SOC, respectively. Notably, simulation results indicate substantial variability of the NE and SOC storage potential across the study region. Thus, although perennial energy crops are promising options for biofuel production on marginal lands, given the large spatial variability, regional-and site-specific management strategies are required for sustainable biofuel production.This paper reviews policy and research initiatives that have begun to address three major challenges to incorporate regional environmental impacts in the design and optimization of drinking water distribution systems. These challenges are to (1) develop a regulatory framework to limit the environmental impacts linked to upgrades and operation of water networks; (2) select indicators and develop models to quantify energy use, environmental impacts, and emissions for the design and operation of water distribution systems; and (3) develop decision support systems to integrate environmental sustainability objectives into the decision-making process for utilities. This paper concludes by discussing realistic steps that water utilities can take to reduce the environmental impact of their business operations. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Landfills are complex systems that could potentially contaminate the environment. This needs to be prevented by providing impermeability during the landfill design. In this aim, the related regulations should be followed and adequate materials that provide impermeability should be used. The first part of the paper presents a review of the current regulations, interpretations, and recommendations from the U.S., EU and Republic of Serbia. Knowing that the Serbian regulation should fully follow the related European Directive, some inadequate formulations and terms were observed in the analyses related to the Directive Annex I, 3.2. Request of the Regulation that deals with the bottom of the landfill leakage is formulated differently than in the Directive as well. The mentioned problems enable some design solutions that are not among the best available techniques. In the second part, the paper presents a comparative analysis of possible alternatives in impermeable layer design, both for the bottom and landfill cover. Some materials like clay, CCL, GCL might not be able to satisfy the prescribed requirements. The longest lifetime and the lowest coefficient of permeability, as well as excellent mechanical, chemical and thermal stability, show the mixture of sand, bentonite and polymers (PEBSM).Remote sensing scientists work under assumptions that should not be taken for granted and should, therefore, be challenged. These assumptions include the following: 1. Space, especially Low Earth Orbit (LEO), will always be available to governmental and commercial space entities that launch Earth remote sensing missions. 2. Space launches are benign with respect to environmental impacts. 3. Minimization of Type 1 error, which provides increased confidence in the experimental outcome, is the best way to assess the significance of environmental change. 4. Large-area remote sensing investigations, i.e. national, continental, global studies, are best done from space. 5. National space missions should trump international, cooperative space missions to ensure national control and distribution of the data products. At best, all of these points are arguable, and in some cases, they're wrong. Development of observational space systems that are compatible with sustainability principles should be a primary concern when Earth remote sensing space systems are envisioned, designed, and launched. The discussion is based on the hypothesis that reducing the environmental impacts of the data acquisition step, which is at the very beginning of the information stream leading to decision and action, will enhance coherence in the information stream and strengthen the capacity of measurement processes to meet their stated functional goal, i.e. sustainable management of Earth resources. We suggest that unconventional points of view should be adopted and when appropriate, remedial measures considered that could help to reduce the environmental footprint of space remote sensing and of Earth observation and monitoring systems in general. This article discusses these five assumptions in the context of sustainable management of Earth's resources. Taking each assumption in turn, we find the following: (1) Space debris may limit access to Low Earth Orbit over the next decades. (2) Relatively speaking, given that they're rare event, space launches may be benign, but study is merited on upper stratospheric and exospheric layers given the chemical activity associated with rocket combustion by-products. (3) Minimization of Type II error should be considered in situations where minimization of Type I error greatly hampers or precludes our ability to correct the environmental condition being studied. (4) In certain situations, airborne collects may be less expensive and more environmentally benign, and comparative studies should be done to determine which path is wisest. (5) International cooperation and data sharing will reduce instrument and launch costs and mission redundancy. Given fiscal concerns of most of the major space agencies - e.g. NASA, ESA, CNES - it seems prudent to combine resources. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The issue of searching alternatives for diesel fuel in transport sector that is one of the largest diesel fuel consuming sectors in each country has become more attractive nowadays. In this study, the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of biodiesel production from rapeseed as an alternative for diesel fuel in transport sector was assessed in terms of three main stages including agricultural crop production, transport, and industrial conversion. The results revealed that the total fossil energy input cost was calculated as 28 122.16MJ ha(-1) and the renewable energy output content (biodiesel as the final outcome) was estimated as 31 802.06MJ ha(-1). The net energy returns and the fossil energy ratio were calculated as 3679.9MJ ha(-1) and 1.13, respectively. It shows rapeseed could be a suitable energy crop for biodiesel production. CO2 emissions assessment showed that the total greenhouse gas emissions over biodiesel production life cycle were 1054.98 kg CO2 eq ha(-1) and the agricultural crop production stage ranks the first. In order to establish energy crops cultivation such as rapeseed and achieve the sustainable development, meteorological and water source availability data collected and analyzed for all the 31 provinces in Iran to generate a map of regions capable of rapeseed cultivation. The results revealed that 24 provinces among 31 provinces have a great potential for rapeseed cultivation. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.A life cycle analysis (LCA) is presented for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil energy use associated with geothermal electricity production with a special focus on operational GHG emissions from hydrothermal flash and dry steam plants. The analysis includes results for both the plant and fuel cycle components of the total life cycle. The impact of recent changes to California's GHG reporting protocol for GHG emissions are discussed by comparing emission rate metrics derived from post and pre revision data sets. These metrics are running capacity weighted average GHG emission rates (g/kWh) and emission rate cumulative distribution functions. To complete our life cycle analysis, plant cycle results were extracted from our previous work and added to fuel cycle results. The resulting life cycle fossil energy and greenhouse gas emissions values are compared among a range of fossil, nuclear, and renewable power technologies, including geothermal. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.Economic anal. and environmental life cycle assessment were performed for 3 scenarios of biogas prodn. and use in wastewater treatment plants. Economic benefits and significant redn. of environmental impact were evidenced.For some metals, downcycling appears when scrap is polluted with undesirable elements or mixed with lower quality scrap grades in a way that the material displays a change in inherent properties when recycled. The article recommends the use of different scrap class prices instead of a solitary secondary alloy price to represent the level of downcycling inflicted on aluminum over a product's life cycle. The price ratio between scrap price and primary aluminum price is shown to be stable across all available scrap classes for the years 2007-2010. While the revised approach to value-corrected substitution (VCS) puts a stronger emphasis on the creation of high-quality scrap by penalizing its pollution more than the original version, its key limitation is the correct identification of the appropriate point of substitution along the scrap value chain. If relevant sorting or pre-treatment steps are omitted, the substitution factor would be overcorrected, which is why it is crucial to establish the scrap value right before the scrap is either mixed with scraps from other product systems or right before it enters the remelting step.The interplay between nitrogen fertilization (N), yield, nitrous oxide emissions (N2O), and diesel fuel utilization associated with harvest and transport logistics of biomass crops remains poorly understood. In this research, we show that intensification (in terms of N) of bioenergy cropping to maximize yield supports not only minimized land use but also maximized logistics efficiency in terms of diesel use. This paradigm was examined within the scope of the billion-ton biofuels vision and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 using potential yields on marginal and prime agricultural land. Sixteen scenarios were investigated that considered the primary factors with agriculture bioenergy; biomass yield (11.2 and 22.4 Mgha(-1)yr(-1)), two nitrogen fertilizer application rates (50 and 100kg N ha(-1)yr(-1)), two Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGE) factors for synthetic nitrogen to nitrous oxide (1.5 and 5%), and three harvest/transportation efficiencies (50, 65, and 80%). These scenarios resulted in energy consumption between 747 and 1351 MJ Mg-1 and GHGE between 72 and 311 kg CO2 eq Mg-1. GHGE emissions are strongly related to the emission of nitrous oxide from soils due to nitrogen fertilization and could represent over 80% of the GHGE relative to biomass harvest logistics. These data imply that synthetic N supplementation to maximize yield could reduce the burden due to diesel fuel for harvest, but would rapidly become the most significant contributor to GHGE. Minimizing the impact of N fertilization will be critical for reducing the GHGE associated with biomass production.Biofuels are considered as a climate-friendly energy alternative. However, their environmental sustainability is increasingly debated because of land competition with food production, negative carbon balances and impacts on biodiversity. Arid and semi-arid lands have been proposed as a more sustainable alternative without such impacts. In that context this paper evaluates the carbon balance of potential land conversion to Jatropha cultivation, biofuel production and use in arid and semi-arid areas. This evaluation includes the calculation of carbon debt created by these land conversions and calculation of the minimum Jatropha yield necessary to repay the respective carbon debts within 15 or 30 years. The carbon debts caused by conversion of arid and semi-arid lands to Jatropha vary largely as a function of the biomass carbon stocks of the land use types in these regions. Based on global ecosystem carbon mapping, cultivated lands and marginal areas (sparse shrubs, herbaceous and bare areas) show to have similar biomass carbon stocks (on average 4-8 t C ha(-1)) and together cover a total of 1.79 billion ha. Conversion of these lands might not cause a carbon debt, but still might have a negative impact on other sustainability dimensions (e.g. biodiversity or socio-economics). Jatropha establishment in shrubland (0.75 billion ha) would cause a carbon debt of 24-28 t C ha(-1) on average (repayable within 30 year with yield of 3.5-3.9 t seed ha(-1) yr(-1)). Land use change in the 1.15 billion ha of forested area under arid and semi-arid climates could cause a carbon debt between 70 and 118 t C ha(-1). This debt requires 8.6-13.9 t seed production ha(-1) yr(-1) for repayment within 30 years. If repayment is required within 15 years, the necessary minimum yields almost double. Considering that 5 t seed ha(-1) yr(-1) is the current maximum Jatropha yield, conversion of forests cannot be repaid within one human generation. Repayment of carbon debt from shrubland conversions in 30 years is challenging, but feasible. Repayment in 15 year is currently not attainable. Based on this analysis the paper discusses the carbon mitigation potential of biofuels in arid and semiarid environments. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the recent rise of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a supply chain governance tool. Many big brand retailers and manufacturers, as well as a number of governments, see LCA as a potentially valuable means to measure, communicate and thereby improve the sustainability' of material goods. The paper's arguments are threefold. First, the appeal of LCA's quantitative and seeming holistic methods must be understood in light of certain tensions and imperatives endemic to contemporary supply chain capitalism. Second, this appeal is tentative; it is far from clear that LCA can capture the complexity of products' lives' in measures that are simultaneously practical, legible and scientifically credible. Third, current public- and private-sector sustainability initiatives involving LCA offer opportunities to explore the increasingly important roles of scientific and technical expert communities in supply chain governance.The combined use of Life Cycle Assessment and Data Envelopment Analysis (LCA + DEA methodology) facilitates the identification and quantification of the environmental consequences of operational inefficiencies when assessing multiple similar facilities. In this work, the LCA + DEA methodology was used to benchmark the operational and environmental performance of a sample of 25 wind farms located in Spain. Only four of the evaluated farms were found to be comparatively efficient. Input consumption levels that would turn inefficient wind farms into efficient facilities (i.e., target wind farms) were benchmarked. The environmental impacts linked to these target facilities were also benchmarked. Average reductions of 19-45% in the consumption of selected inputs were calculated, which resulted in average impact reductions of 18-29% for a selection of environmental impact categories. The potential economic savings associated with the target wind farms were also estimated. Finally, potential relationships between efficiency and annual power generation, location or average wind speed were discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many policies in the United States, at both the federal and state levels, encourage the adoption of renewable energy from biomass. Though largely motivated by a desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, these policies do not explicitly identify scenarios in which the use of biomass will produce the greatest benefits. We have modeled "farm-to-hopper" emissions associated with seven biomass feedstocks, under a wide variety of scenarios and production choices, to characterize the uncertainty in emissions. We demonstrate that only a handful of factors have a significant impact on life cycle emissions: choice of feedstock, geographic location, prior land use, and time dynamics. Within a given production scenario, the remaining variability in emissions is driven by uncertainty in feedstock yields and the release rate of N2O into the atmosphere from nitrogen fertilizers. With few exceptions, transport and processing choices have relatively little impact on total emissions. These results illustrate the key decisions that will determine the success of biomass programs in reducing the emissions profile of energy production, and our publicly available model provides a useful tool for identifying the most beneficial production scenarios. While model data and results are restricted to biomass production in the contiguous United States, we provide qualitative guidance for identifying favorable production scenarios that should be applicable in other regions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The global demand for food is responsible for a massive increase in the anthropogenic nitrogen input to the environment, with negative impacts on human and ecosystem health. However, despite the economic and environmental costs, the quantity of food that is wasted is substantial. This study quantifies the nitrogen loss to the environment related to food waste at consumption at the global and European scale and analyses its relative impact on the environment. We estimated that globally 2.7 Tg of nitrogen (N) are lost per year due to food waste at consumption (i.e. 9% of global food consumption), and that the virtual nitrogen (nitrogen delivered to the environment) associated with the global food waste is 6.3 TgN/yr. We performed a streamlined life cycle assessment on nitrogen emissions related to food waste in the European Union (EU27) to assess the impact on different environmental compartments. The results of this study are relevant for resource efficiency and pollution control policies related to nutrients, water, energy, climate, biodiversity and land use, as well as for scenario analysis of societal change in diet. The case of the EU27 is discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Goal of the work is to present a simplified methodology to optimize an integrated solid waste management system. The methodology performs two optimizations, namely: (i) minimization of the total cost of the MSW system and (ii) minimization of the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e) generated by the whole system. The methodology is modeled via non-linear mathematical equations, uses 32 decision variables and does not require complex LCA databases. The proposed model optimally allocates eight MSW components (paper, cardboard, plastics, metals, glass, food wastes, yard wastes and other wastes) to four MSW management technologies (incineration, composting, anaerobic digestion, and landfilling) after source separation of recyclables has taken place. The Region of East-Macedonia and Thrace in Greece was selected as a case study. Results showed that there is a trade off between cost and CO2e,emissions. Incineration and composting were favored as the principal treatment technologies, while landfilling was always the least desirable management technology under both objective functions. The recycling participation rate significantly affected all optimum scenarios. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Integrated smelter-refineries play an important role in the recovery of multiple metals from complex primary and secondary materials, and hence in closing metals cycles. Processes in these facilities are strongly interconnected, dynamic, and multifunctional, which challenges a typical representation in life cycle assessment (LCA). This is especially true when LCA is applied to calculate the environmental profile of single metals products. This study examines methodological requirements for assessing complex co-product systems using attributional LCA through a static, gate-to-gate inventory model that quantifies the environmental impacts of each of the metal products of an integrated precious metals smelter-refinery. The model is based on a large number of subprocesses and is formulated using detailed industry data, which allows quantification of the sensitivity of the results with respect to allocation rationales and the data collection period. The results within one impact category vary strongly among metals (up to four orders of magnitude for copper compared to rhodium). Moving from mass- to value-based allocation changes the result for a given metal by up to two orders of magnitude. If value-based allocation is used, the selected reference year for metals prices influences the results by up to a factor of two. Allocation rationales are critically analyzed, and it is shown that none reflect the business model or other system drivers. While the model is focused on quantifying environmental impacts of metal outputs, the actual process is economically driven to efficiently treat a continuously changing feed mix. The complexity of a smelter-refinery cannot be captured by static, attributional inventory models, which is why the choice of allocation rationale remains arbitrary. Instead, marginal, parameterized models are needed; however, such models are substantially more time and data intensive and require disclosure of more detailed, process specific data. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Integrated environmental and economic assessment studies are required to support tillage reduction decisions. In this paper, carbon sequestration and nitrous oxide emissions from winter wheat-based cropping systems were evaluated in eastern Washington, USA, using computer simulation. System boundaries were expanded to consider fertilizer production and use of machinery in a standard life cycle assessment (LCA) study. Variations in rainfall, tillage intensity and crop rotation were considered. Potential earnings from carbon credits obtained by converting to reduced and no-till management were evaluated and compared with the corresponding changes in farm budgets. No-till increased the average soil carbon sequestration by 0.5, 0.3, 0.2 Mg-C ha(-1) yr(-1) (30-year average) in high, middle and low rainfall zones, respectively. On-farm N2O emissions contributed 60-70% of the total CO2-equivalent emissions (CO2-e ha(-1) yr(-1)) in high and middle rainfall scenarios and 30-40% in low rainfall scenarios. Production of fertilizers contributed 13 +/- 3% of total emissions. Emissions from fuel consumption varied across sites due to differences in machinery use with different topography, tillage, soils and number of fallow years. Reduced tillage systems are more profitable in the moderate and high rainfall zones with 2011 crop price and input cost assumptions but they are less profitable in the drier rainfall zone. Even a more inclusive accounting with LCA that includes credits for reductions in N2O emissions, fuel usage and fertilizer production was insufficient to compensate for the lower returns. With the net market price assumption of 2.48 $ CO(2)e(-1) ha(-1) yr(-1), the CO(2)e credits for reducing tillage ranged from 0.27 to 1.63 $ CO(2)e(-1) ha(-1) yr(-1) across the region. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Corporations are facing increasing risks associated with ecosystems from both natural drivers, such as climate change, as well as institutional drivers resulting from retailers and brands, increasingly making supplier decisions based on life cycle reporting and indexing. These efforts reflect a transition from traditional firm sustainability to a more quantitative product focus, within which the importance and weight of earth resources and ecosystems is dramatically increasing. This paper provides an overview of the limitations traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and presents emerging developments to improve on LCA for resources and ecosystems. This includes LCA efforts to account for spatial relevance, indices of stress, stocks and flows and integrated valuation of services and trade-offs. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Oil sands transportation diversification is important for preventing discounted crude pricing. Current life cycle assessment (LCA) models that assess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from crude oil transportation are linearly-scale and fail to account for project specific details. This research sets out to develop a detailed LCA model to compare the energy inputs and GHG emissions of pipeline and rail transportation for oil sands products. The model is applied to several proposed oils sands transportation routes that may serve as future markets. Comparison between transportation projects suggest that energy inputs and GHG emissions show a high degree of variation. For both rail and pipeline transportation, the distance over which the product is transported has a large impact on total emissions. The regional electricity grid and pump efficiency have the largest impact on pipeline emissions, while train engine efficiency and bitumen blending ratios have the largest impact on rail transportation emissions. LCA-based GHG regulations should refine models to account for the range of product pathways and focus efforts on cost-effective emission reductions. As the climate-change impacts of new oil sands transportation projects are considered, GHG emission boundaries should be defined according to operation control. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biogas plant construction has been boosted in rural China not only due to the immediate merit from biogas production but also the succeeding benefit from by-product utilization in agro-industry, both of which are significant strategies to address energy shortage and global warming issues. However, little work has been done to evaluate the coupling of biogas projects to traditional agrosystems from a life-cycle perspective, which is most important in process and system optimization in different senses. By taking persimmon cultivation and processing with supports from a household biogas plant as a case study, this study conducts a life cycle assessment of coupling biogas production to agro-industry in terms of energy, environmental and economic performance. The results suggest that each production stage following the biogas/digestate utilization chain (biogas operation-persimmon cultivation-product processing) is beneficial across all three aspects. However, a tradeoff only exists in utilizing digestate as top-dressing and employing biogas utilization as engine fuel, while biogas application in fresh-keeping and digestate reuse as base fertilizer fails to increase either energy production or greenhouse gas mitigation. The coupled system can be hopefully optimized through increasing fermentation efficiency and joint operation of biogas digesters. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Swedish steel industry has combined traditional methods such as life cycle analysis with less traditional methods such as preference analysis in order to move towards a closed steel eco cycle. The paper describes the use of conjoint analysis to study preferences of six different stakeholder groups regarding four environmental objectives (reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, reduced use of non-renewable resources, reduced use of non-renewable energy and weight reduction in products) and to identify gaps in preferences between the stakeholder groups. Our results suggested that there was a difference in preference between the stakeholder groups: respondents that were closer to the steel industry favoured all four environmental objectives, while members of public and political decision makers preferred a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. One of the conclusions of our study is that there is a need of improved information to clients and public on the environmental benefits of product weight reduction.The world's growing population is continually increasing the demand for food. Hence, food production, especially the production of meat, is put under further pressure to tackle climate change. Two-thirds of the German meat production is covered by pork, which increases the necessity to assess the environmental impacts arising from it. Therefore, the aim of this study was to provide data for an environmental profile of latest pork production in Germany. A Life Cycle Assessment was conducted for pork production in 2010/2011. The system boundaries encompassed the production of feedstuffs, the housing of pigs, and the slaughtering and production of pork. In this context, the pig housing stage was modelled using separate data for different housing stages (i.e. farrowing, weaning and finishing). Results for the impact categories global warming potential, eutrophication and acidification are expressed per kg pork as slaughter weight. The global warming potential was estimated at 3.22 kg CO2-eq per kg pork. Eutrophication showed a value of 233 g PO4-eq, whereas acidification resulted in 57.1 g SO2-eq per kg pork. To estimate the influence of various input parameters, a sensitivity analysis was carried out for four different input parameters. They were related to water and energy use (energy use in feed production, energy use in fattening stage, type of energy used in pig housing and slaughtering, and water use) since literature values differ significantly. All of them were calculated with three different characterisation methods, namely CML 2 Baseline 2000, EDIP 2003 and IMPACT 2002+. The only input parameter tested which affected the results is energy use in the fattening stage. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study compares the performances of anaerobic digestion and hydrothermal liquefaction as by-products (defatted microalgae and glycerol) utilization strategies to offset overall life cycle energy and carbon footprints of microalgal biodiesel production in Western Australian (WA). Utilization of byproducts via anaerobic digestion or hydrothermal liquefaction enables the production of electricity and process heat, as well as the recovery of inherent nutrients. As a result, the anaerobic digestion route and hydrothermal liquefaction route substantially reduce life cycle energy inputs for producing 1 MJ biodiesel from 4.3 MJ (without byproducts utilization) to 1.3 and 0.7 MJ, yielding carbon footprints of similar to 80 and similar to 33 g CO2-eq/MJ biodiesel, respectively. The results indicate that hydrothermal liquefaction, which shows better life cycle performance and requires smaller reactor footprint than anaerobic digestion, can be another potential strategy to recover energy embedded in defatted microalgae. It is also evident that while vast coastal areas are available in WA for marine microalgae cultivation, further technological advances are required to realize a truly sustainable biodiesel production from microalgae. Sensitivity analyses suggest that key R&D areas are improvement of microalgae biological properties (e.g., growth rate and lipid content) and innovations in engineering designs (e.g., culture circulation velocity, methane yield during anaerobic digestion, and bio-oil yield during hydrothermal liquefaction).Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used widely to estimate the environmental implications of deploying algae-to-energy systems even though no full-scale facilities have yet to be built. Here, data from a pilot-scale facility using hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is used to estimate the life cycle profiles at full scale. Three scenarios (lab-, pilot-, and full-scale) were defined to understand how development in the industry could impact its life cycle burdens. HTL-derived algae fuels were found to have lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than petroleum fuels. Algae-derived gasoline had significantly lower GHG emissions than corn ethanol. Most algae-based fuels have an energy return on investment between 1 and 3, which is lower than petroleum biofuels. Sensitivity analyses reveal several areas in which improvements by algae bioenergy companies (e.g., biocrude yields, nutrient recycle) and by supporting industries (e.g., CO2 supply chains) could reduce the burdens of the industry. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae-based biodiesel has several benefits over other resources such as less land use, potential cultivation in non-fertile locations, faster growth and especially a high lipid-to-biodiesel yield. Nevertheless, the environmental and economic behavior for high scale production depends on several variables that must be addressed in the scale-up procedure. In this sense, rigorous modeling and multicriteria evaluation are performed in order to achieve optimal topology for third generation biodiesel production. Different scenarios and the most promising technologies tested at pilot scale are assessed. Besides, the sensitivity analysis allows the detection of key operating variables and assumptions that have a direct effect on the lipid content. The deviation of these variables may lead to an erroneous estimation of the scale-up performance of the technology reviewed in the microalgae-based biodiesel process. The modeling and evaluation of different scenarios of the harvesting, oil extraction and transesterification help to identify greener and cheaper alternatives. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integration of a restricted grazing regime in winter with the use of a nitrification inhibitor can potentially reduce N2O emissions from grazed pasture systems. A three year field study was conducted to compare annual N2O emission rates from a "tight nitrogen" grazed farmlet with those from a control farmlet. The control farmlet was managed under a conventional rotational all-year grazing regime, while the "tight nitrogen" farmlet was under a similar grazing regime, except during winter and early spring seasons when cows grazed for about 6 h per day. A nitrification inhibitor (dicyandiamide, DCD) was applied onto the "tight nitrogen" farmlet immediately after grazing through winter and early spring. A chamber technique was used to measure N2O emissions in several paddocks from each farmlet during three contrasting seasons each year. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) inventory methodology was used to estimate CH4 and indirect N2O emissions and the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to calculate CO2 emissions from the farm systems. The individual and combined effects of restricted grazing and DCD use on N2O emissions were also determined. During the late spring/summer and autumn periods, N2O emission rates were generally similar between the two farmlets. The use of a restricted grazing regime and DCD reduced N2O emissions from the grazed farmlet during the winter/early spring seasons by 43-55%, 64-79% and 45-60% over each of the three years, respectively. The use of restricted grazing and DCD both resulted in a similar reduction in N2O emissions, but there was no significant further reduction from the combination of these technologies. For the three study years, the annual N2O emission rate from the "tight nitrogen" farmlet was 20% lower, on average, than from the control. Total annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, however, were only 5% less in the "tight nitrogen" system. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper explains a method developed to assess environmental performance achieved by rehabilitation of residential buildings in Turkey. Several measures focussing on a reduction in the heating demand were investigated such as replacement of window and insulation of different elements of building skin. The influence of several building characteristics was moreover examined such as window to wall ratio (WWR), orientation and building age. Another important aspect which affects environmental performance is climate. In the context of this method, rehabilitations were proposed for temperate-humid climates like Istanbul. According to the assessment results, an environmental performance is obtained for all proposed rehabilitations. When proposed rehabilitations are analysed separately, the environmental performance ratios resulting from the rehabilitations of exterior walls and projected floors, roof, window system, and floors above unheated spaces reduce respectively. WWR has the highest effect on the environmental performance ratios obtained by rehabilitations. The effects of building age and orientation are in negligible amounts when compared to that of WWR. In the future, these assessments should be carried out for different climatic regions of Turkey as well. This method can be used to assess existing and new buildings in terms of environmental impacts by architects, contractors, building owners or municipal authorities. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The emergy evaluation (EmE) method is acknowledged to be a holistic approach to account for the primary (solar) energy that generates the renewable and non-renewable resource flows used up by human activities. This paper examines its application and robustness, using four water treatment plants (WTPs) as case studies. We obtained an average unit emergy value for potable water of 1.06 (+/- 0.15) E12 sej/m(3), which is in accordance with existing literature. Chemicals and electricity were the most important manmade inputs; infrastructure, when accounted for, had a significant but lesser contribution. The application of several emergy-based indicators allowed comparing the ecological performance of water production with other types of resource extraction. These indices showed that WTPs are rather blind to economic markets and they exerted a low pressure on local non-renewable resources. A critical analysis of current EmE procedure highlighted the relative low accuracy of the method compared to Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), when man-made inputs are predominant, as well as the complementary goals and scopes of the two methods. Methodological improvements in the classification and treatment of the emergy associated with man-made inputs are necessary to make EmE indicators more straightforward and robust. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Overexploitation of fish stocks causes concern not only to fisheries managers and conservation biologists, but also engages seafood consumers; more integrated product perspectives would be useful. This could be provided by life cycle assessment (LCA); however, further complements of present LCA methodology are needed to assess seafood production, one being by-catch impacts. We studied the scientific rationale behind using the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (TM) for assessment of impacts relating to fish species' vulnerability. For this purpose, the current Red List status of marine fish in Sweden was compared to the advice given in fisheries as well as key life history traits known to indicate sensitivity to high fishing pressure. Further, we quantified the amount of threatened fish (vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered) that was discarded in demersal trawl fisheries on the Swedish west coast. The results showed that not only did the national Red List of marine fish have a high consistency with advice given in fisheries and indices of vulnerability, the different fishing practices studied were also found to have vastly different amounts of threatened fish discarded per kilo landing. The suggested approach is therefore promising as a carrier of aggregated information on the extent to which seafood production interferes with conservation priorities, in particular for species lacking adequate stock assessment. To enable extensive product comparisons, it is important to increase coverage of fish species by the global IUCN Red List, and to reconsider the appropriate assessment unit (species or stocks) in order to avoid false alarms.Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a thermal conversion technique that converts food wastes and associated packaging materials to a valuable, energy-rich resource. Food waste collected from local restaurants was carbonized over time at different temperatures (225, 250 and 275 C) and solids concentrations to determine how process conditions influence carbonization product properties and composition. Experiments were also conducted to determine the influence of packaging material on food waste carbonization. Results indicate the majority of initial carbon remains integrated within the solid-phase at the solids concentrations and reaction temperatures evaluated. Initial solids concentration influences carbon distribution because of increased compound solubilization, while changes in reaction temperature imparted little change on carbon distribution. The presence of packaging materials significantly influences the energy content of the recovered solids. As the proportion of packaging materials increase, the energy content of recovered solids decreases because of the low energetic retention associated with the packaging materials. HTC results in net positive energy balances at all conditions, except at a 5% (dry wt.) solids concentration. Carbonization of food waste and associated packaging materials also results in net positive balances, but energy needs for solids post-processing are significant. Advantages associated with carbonization are not fully realized when only evaluating process energetics. A more detailed life cycle assessment is needed for a more complete comparison of processes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Financial analytical models of waste management systems have often found that recycling costs exceed direct benefits, and in order to economically justify recycling activities, externalities such as household expenses or environmental impacts must be invoked. Certain more empirically based studies have also found that recycling is more expensive than disposal. Other work, both through models and surveys, have found differently. Here we present an empirical systems model, largely drawn from a suburban Long Island municipality. The model accounts for changes in distribution of effort as recycling tonnages displace disposal tonnages, and the seven different cases examined all show that curbside collection programs that manage up to between 31% and 37% of the waste stream should result in overall system savings. These savings accrue partially because of assumed cost differences in tip fees for recyclables and disposed wastes, and also because recycling can result in a more efficient, cost-effective collection program. These results imply that increases in recycling are justifiable due to cost-savings alone, not on more difficult to measure factors that may not impact program budgets. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The global gaseous emissions produced by landfilling the Mechanically Sorted Organic Fraction (MSOF) with different weeks of Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) was evaluated for an existing waste management system. One MBT facility and a landfill with internal combustion engines fuelled by the landfill gas for electrical energy production operate in the waste management system considered. An experimental apparatus was used to simulate 0, 4, 8 and 16 weeks of aerobic stabilization and the consequent biogas potential (Nl/kg) of a large sample of MSOF withdrawn from the full-scale MBT. Stabilization achieved by the waste was evaluated by dynamic oxygen uptake and fermentation tests. Good correlation coefficients (R-2), ranging from 0.7668 to 0.9772, were found between oxygen uptake, fermentation and anaerobic test values. On the basis of the results of several anaerobic tests, the methane production rate k (year(-1)) was evaluated. k ranged from 0.436 to 0.308 year(-1) and the bio-methane potential from 37 to 12 N m(3)/tonne, respectively, for the MSOF with 0 and 16 weeks of treatment. Energy recovery from landfill gas ranged from about 11 to 90 kW h per tonne of disposed MSOF depending on the different scenario investigated. Life cycle analysis showed that the scenario with 0 weeks of pre-treatment has the highest weighted global impact even if opposite results were obtained with respect to the single impact criteria. MSOF pre-treatment periods longer than 4 weeks showed rather negligible variation in the global impact of system emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reports some of the findings of the 'GERLA' project: GEstione Rifiuti in Lombardia - Analisi del ciclo di vita (Waste management in Lombardia - Life cycle assessment). The project was devoted to support Lombardia Region in the drafting of the new waste management plan by applying a life cycle thinking perspective. The present paper mainly focuses on four Provinces in the Region, which were selected based on their peculiarities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was adopted as the methodology to assess the current performance of the integrated waste management systems, to discuss strengths and weaknesses of each of them and to design their perspective evolution as of year 2020. Results show that despite a usual business approach that is beneficial to all the provinces, the introduction of technological and management improvements to the system provides in general additional energy and environmental benefits for all four provinces. The same improvements can be easily extended to the whole Region, leading to increased environmental benefits from the waste management sector, in line with the targets set by the European Union for 2020. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the techno-economic viability of hydrogen production from underground coal gasification (UCG) in Western Canada, for the servicing of the oil sands bitumen upgrading industry. Hydrogen production for bitumen upgrading is predominantly achieved via steam methane reforming (SMR); which involves significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions along with considerable feedstock (natural gas) cost volatility. UCG is a formidable candidate for cost-competitive environmentally sustainable hydrogen production; given its negligible feedstock cost, the enormity of deep coal reserves in Western Canada and the favourable CO2 sequestration characteristics of potential UCG sites in the Western Canadian sedimentary basin (WCSB). Techno-economic models were developed for UCG and SMR with and without CCS, to estimate the cost of hydrogen production including delivery to a bitumen upgrader. In this paper, at base case conditions, a 5% internal rate of return (IRR) differential between UCG and SMR was considered so as to account for the increased investment risk associated with UCG. The cost of UCG hydrogen production without CCS is estimated to be $1.78/kg of H-2. With CCS, this increases to range of $2.11 $2.70/kg of H-2, depending on the distance of the site for CO2 sequestration from the UCG plant. The SMR hydrogen production cost without CCS is estimated to be $1.73/kg of H-2. In similar fashion to UCG, this rises to a range of $2.14 to $2.41/kg of H-2 with the consideration of CCS. Lastly, for hydrogen production without CCS, UCG has a superior cost competitiveness in comparison to SMR for an IRR differential less than 4.6%. This competitive threshold rises to 5.4% for hydrogen production with CCS. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of a Building Integrated Concentrated Photovoltaic (BICPV) scheme at the University of Lleida (Spain) is conducted. Assumptions for representing a real building are considered, and a comparison to a hypothetical conventional Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) scheme is established. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is performed using the EI99 methodology, which is considered to be the reference. In addition, the environmental impact is re-evaluated using the EPS 2000 methodology. The results show a significant extent of the environmental benefits gained using the BICPV schemes. Some differences in the components impact contribution percentages are noticed between the E199 and the EPS 2000 methodologies. Nevertheless, both methodologies coincide in the conclusion of the significant environmental impact reduction reached from replacing the conventional BIPV schemes with the BICPV ones. Recommendations for future work and system improvements are discussed as well. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A previous study on Sunshine to Petrol (S2P), a technology framework to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels from CO2 and water using a concentrated solar energy source, focused on process development as well as economic evaluation. The study herein presents results from a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to a comparative analysis of the environmental impacts of S2P-derived and petroleum-derived gasoline. Results reveal that S2P gasoline shows lower impact scores than the conventional gasoline for all evaluated impact categories. Based on the LCA results, we then analyze the environmental benefits including greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and external cost savings. We find that if S2P gasoline could be successfully introduced to satisfy the gasoline demand of a sample city, Victorville in east California, 3.6 Mt CO2-eq of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (77% of the total regional emissions) would be mitigated based on the current fleet of vehicles. The lighter impact also corresponds to 4.2 M$ annual cost savings from avoided environment damage. More generally, for each million vehicles running on S2P gasoline there would be nearly $30 M in savings and 335 M gallons of gasoline displaced, which in turn results in nearly 25.8 Mt of CO2-eq avoided. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a significant fraction of municipal solid waste, waste paper is a potential source for producing bioethanol. In the present paper, bioethanol production from various waste papers (newspaper, office paper, cardboard and magazine) using an enzyme complex (Cellic Ctec 1) was evaluated from an economic standpoint. Four bases cases without pre-treatment and two state-of-the-art cases (including dilute acid pre-treatment for office paper and oxidative lime pre-treatment for newspaper) were constructed using laboratory experimental data, literature values, expert consultations and simulation using AspenPlus (TM). Several scenarios were also carried out to assess the sensitivity of various technology parameters (i.e. solids loading in saccharification, anaerobic digestion and fermentation efficiency, and sugar yields in pretreatment). The sensitivity analysis suggested that the economic performance of bioethanol produced from waste paper could be improved significantly with an up to 25% reduction in minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) by increasing solids loading in saccharification and with a 6% reduction in MESP by enhancing fermentation efficiency. The comparison of the bioethanol selling price at pump (reference year 2009) and the petrol price showed bioethanol produced from newspaper, office paper and cardboard were economically competitive with petrol. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper reviews the available life cycle analysis (LCA) literature on organic photovoltaics (OPVs). This branch of OPV research has focused on the environmental impact of single-junction bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells using a P3HT/PC60BM active layer blend processed on semi-industrial pilot lines in ambient surroundings. The environmental impact was found to be strongly decreasing through continuous innovation of the manufacturing procedures. The current top performing cell regarding environmental performance has a cumulative energy demand of 37.58 MJp m(-2) and an energy payback time in the order of months for cells having 2% efficiency, thereby rendering OPV cells one of the best performing PV technologies from an environmental point of view. Nevertheless, we find that LCA literature is lagging behind on the main body of OPV literature due to the lack of readily available input data. Still, LCA research has led us to believe that in the quest for higher efficiencies, environmental sustainability is being disregarded on the materials' side. Hence, we advise the scientific community to take the progress made on environmental sustainability aspects of OPV preparations into account not only because standard procedures put a bigger strain on the environment, but also because these methods may not be transferrable to an industrial process. Consequently, we recommend policy makers to subsidize research that bridges the gaps between fundamental materials research, stability, and scalability given that these constraints have to be fulfilled simultaneously if OPVs are ever to be successful on the market. Additionally, environmental sustainability will have to keep on being monitored to steer future developments in the right direction.Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is expected as one of the ideal renewable energy resources which can be used in large scale in Hong Kong. This paper presents an in-depth investigation into the development potential of rooftop PV system in Hong Kong and its environmental benefits as well. The potential installation capacity of rooftop PV systems is estimated to be 5.97 GW(p), and the annual potential energy output is predicted to be 5981 GWh accordingly. The annual energy yield can account for 14.2% of the total electricity used in Hong Kong in 2011. In addition, about 3,732,000 t of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be avoided yearly by the replacement of the equivalent local electricity mix. For environmental benefits, the investigation results showed that the energy payback time (EPBT) and the GHG emission payback time (GPBT) of different types of rooftop PV systems in Hong Kong ranged from 1.9 to 3.0 and 1.4 to 2.1 years, respectively, both of which are far less than the systems' lifespan of 30 years. The energy yield ratio (EYR) ranged from 10.0 to 15.8, which indicates that the rooftop PV systems could generate at least 10 times the energy requirement during the system's lifetime. Although the current PV system installation cost is relatively high in Hong Kong, PV electricity is expected to fully compete with traditional electricity modes in the near future if appropriate subsidies are provided by the local government, carbon credits benefits are considered and installation cost can be further reduced. Thus, more proactive energy policies and aggressive development targets for PV technology should be set by the government The findings presented in this paper are expected to provide a theoretical basis for local policy makers to set reasonable renewable energy policies, development targets as well as subsidies for PV technology in Hong Kong. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When a building undergoes a retrofit project, the goal of assessing energy and environmental performances of retrofit actions is a complex matter. Building and its environment are complex systems in which all sub-systems are strongly interdependent and influence the overall efficiency performance. In the following paper, starting from a literature review of building life-cycle studies, the authors highlight that there is a strong interplay among all the phases of a building life-cycle, as each one can affect one or more of the others. In detail, starting from the results of a "cradle to grave" life cycle study of an existing Mediterranean single-family house, a set of retrofit actions voted to reduce the energy consumption during the operation is analysed. The proposed actions are addressed to improve the thermal performance of the building envelope and the energy efficiency of technical equipment. Performance assessment of these actions has been carried out not only considering the related effects on energy saving for building operation, but also taking into account other phases of the life cycles. In fact, these measures will cause an increase in the building embodied energy, which is the energy embedded in building materials, utilised in transportation and construction processes, in maintenance and demolition. Thus, a balance between the energy saving during operation and the avoided environmental benefits due to the other phases has been done. In particular, the embodied energy and the environmental impacts related to production, transportation and installation phases of the required material/components for retrofit implementation are assessed. In other terms, LCA allows to estimate the reduction of the operation energy and the increase of the embodied energy within the building life-cycle, and to understand whether the achieved energy benefits could be supported in a life cycle perspective or were overcome by the environmental burdens of the actions. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The sustainability goals for soy biodiesel are to contribute to energy security by providing a domestically sourced fuel, to maintain and enhance the natzural resource base and environmental quality, to produce an economically viable fuel, and to improve the quality of life. Sustainability is more than just greenhouse gas savings. The main aspects of sustainability of soy biodiesel are environmental, economic and social effects of production and use. The intent of this paper is to identify the major sustainability concerns associated with specific resource use and the potential environmental and social consequences of widely deployed and expanded commercial production and use of soy biodiesel and to explore the opportunities for mitigating these concerns. The ecological and socio-economic consequences of large-scale renewable energy action plans for soy biodiesel are critically considered. This paper is based on the performance and prospects of soy biodiesel production on a global basis as emerging from some 30 life-cycle analyses relative to the main production areas (USA, Brazil, Argentina and PR China). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Vineyard pruning residues are a potential resource of biomass for energy. Nevertheless the possible presence of agrochemicals in this fuel could entail negative environmental consequences during its combustion. In order to verify its sustainability for energy production, a case study was conducted: biomass from common and organic vineyards in Trento Province (Northern Italy) was collected, analyzed, and burned as comminuted fuel in a 180 MJ domestic boiler equipped with a micro electrostatic filter; wood chips and pellets produced with similar raw material (vineyard residues and spruce wood) were used as reference. Flue gases composition was monitored with particular attention to heavy metal contamination. The results, to be considered as preliminary, show that vineyard residues had higher emissions compared to the remaining fuels, including organic vineyard residues, but always within the limits prescribed in Italy. In terms of total heavy metal emissions no significant differences could be detected among the tested fuels. The electrostatic filter proved to be effective in the reduction of total fly ash emissions as well as the use of pelletized biomass. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration is a greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter; however, if GHG reductions, achieved by accounting for waste-to-energy, exceed GHG emissions, incineration can be considered as a net GHG reducer. In Japan, only 24.5% of MSW incineration plants perform energy recovery despite 80% of MSW being incinerated; therefore, there is great potential to extract more energy from MSW. In this study, the factors that should be considered to achieve net GHG reductions from incineration were analysed from a life cycle perspective. These considerations were then applied to the energy supply requirements in seven Japanese metropolises. Firstly, the carbon footprints of approximately 1500 incineration plants in Japan were calculated. Then, the incineration plants with negative carbon footprint values were classified as net GHG reducers. Next, the processes that contribute to the carbon footprint were evaluated, and two processesplastic burning and electricity savingswere found to have the greatest influence. Based on the results, the energy supply requirements were analysed and discussed for seven metropolises (Sapporo, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Takamatsu and Fukuoka) taking into account the energy demands of households. In Kobe, 16.2% of the electricity demand and 25.0% of the hot water demand could be satisfied by incineration to realise a net GHG reducer, although urban design for energy utilisation would be required.Wastewater treatment plants help to reduce negative impact on the environment by improving the quality of effluent. Different technologies are used in wastewater treatment, and one of the tasks is to find the most environmentally sound option, taking into account the use of resources and energy during construction and operation of the treatment system. The aim of the study is to assess environmental impacts from two different types of small-scale wastewater treatment systems, a constructed wetland and extended aeration activated sludge treatment system using Life Cycle Assessment method. The system boundaries include construction and operation phases. Assessment has been carried out using SimaPro software and Impact 2002+ and ReCiPe assessment methods with characterisation and normalisation stages. The results show that the main negative impact of constructed wetland is caused by the construction phase and use of lightweight expanded clay aggregate to construct the hybrid filter. Impacts from extended aeration activated sludge treatment system are mainly caused from the use of electricity and the quality of the effluent, therefore, the use phase has a larger impact on the life cycle. Since a large amount of energy is used to produce lightweight expanded clay aggregate, the impact of 1 population equivalent of constructed wetland is larger than the impact of extended aeration activated sludge treatment system. Constructed wetland dominates in human toxicity, acidification, land use, ozone layer depletion and the use of non-renewable resources categories. Extended aeration activated sludge treatment system dominates in categories associated with eutrophication and ecotoxicity.Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Social Life Cycle Analysis (SLCA) are tools acknowledged to have a role to play in the transition towards Sustainable Production and Consumption patterns (SPC). However, the role they play in this transition is seldom discussed, especially for SLCA. In addition, although the importance of taking a life cycle thinking (LCT) in the progression towards SPC seems indisputable, its added value is seldom made explicit. This article wishes to highlight the role of SLCA in the transition towards more sustainable production and consumption patterns and questions the relevance of LCT in this role. To answer this question, we first identify the applications of SLCA that correspond to actions that have to be taken in the transition towards SPC based on the SPC and SLCA literature. Then, the relevance of LCT in the context of the different applications identified previously is questioned through a qualitative discursive analysis approach. The social goal of SPC is poorly discussed, and the SLCA literature can be one source of inspiration to define what this goal could be. On the basis of the UNEP-SETAC (2009) Guidelines' SLCA ultimate goal, SPC could be a means to improve stakeholders' social conditions through the improvement of enterprises' behaviours. The intended applications of SLCA for potentially supporting the improvement of enterprises' behaviours are found to be the identification of hotspots in order to highlight areas of improvement inside the sphere of influence of the SLCA user and the guidance of purchasing and substitution choices on the basis of enterprises' behaviours. In this article, it is suggested that, for SLCA to deserve the "LCT label", it has to capture impact transfers along the products' life cycle. Otherwise, an "ability-to-act-on" perspective is the proper angle to adopt in the identification of areas of improvement inside the sphere of influence and a "cradle-to-retailer", the one to adopt when SLCA is used to guide buy/boycott. Aside from revisiting the role of LCA and SLCA in SPC and the raison d'tre of LCT, we discuss some considerations which we believe should be taken into account when developing SLCA in the context of SPC. In conclusion, this article points to the importance of framing the use of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment tools in their context of use.To contribute to the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012 by introducing a life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) and showing how it can play a crucial role in moving towards sustainable consumption and production. The publication, titled Towards a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, and published by the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative aims to show how three life cycle techniques-(environmental) LCA, S-LCA and LCC-can be combined as part of an over-arching LCSA. The method was demonstrated by evaluating the characteristics of each phase for each life cycle technique. In defining the goal and scope of an LCSA, for example, different aspects should be taken into account to establish the aim of the study as well as the functional unit, system boundaries, impact category and allocation. Then, the data to be collected for the life cycle sustainability inventory can be either in a unit process or on an organisational level. They can also be quantitative or qualitative. Life cycle sustainability impact assessment should consider the relevance of the impacts as well as the perspective of stakeholders. The interpretation should not add up the results, but rather evaluate them jointly. In order to clarify the approach, a case study is presented to evaluate three types of marble according to the proposed method. The authors have identified that while LCSA is feasible, following areas need more development: data production and acquisition, methodological development, discussion about LCSA criteria (e.g. cutoff rules), definitions and formats of communication and dissemination of LCSA results and the expansion of research and applications combining (environmental) LCA, LCC and S-LCA. The authors also indicate that it is necessary to develop more examples and cases to improve user capacity to analyse the larger picture and therefore address the three dimensions or pillars of sustainability in a systematic way. Software and database providers are called for in order to facilitate user-friendly and accessible tools to promote LCSAs. The application demonstrated that, although methodological improvements are still needed, important steps towards an overarching sustainability assessment have been accomplished. LCSA is possible and should be pursued; however, more efforts should be made to improve the technique and facilitate the studies in order to contribute to a greener economy.In the European Union project New Energy Externalities Development for Sustainability (NEEDS), power generation technologies were ranked by means of two sustainability assessment approaches. The total costs approach, adding private and external costs, and a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) were used, integrating social, economic and environmental criteria. Both approaches relied on environmental indicators based on life cycle assessment. This study aims to analyse the extent to which the development of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) can draw on these ranking methods. The approaches to rank technologies in the NEEDS project are reviewed in terms of similarities and differences in concept, quantification and scope. Identified issues are discussed and set into perspective for the development of a potential future LCSA framework. The NEEDS MCDA and total costs considerably overlap regarding issues covered, except for several social aspects. Beyond total costs being limited to private and external costs, most notable conceptual differences concern the coverage of pecuniary (i.e. price change-induced) external effects, and potential double-counting for instance of resource depletion or specific cost components. External costs take account of the specific utility changes of those affected, requiring a rather high level of spatial and temporal detail. This allows addressing intra- and inter-generational aspects. Differences between both ranking methods and current LCSA methods concern the way weighting is performed, the social aspects covered and the classification of indicators according to the three sustainability dimensions. The methods differ in the way waste, accidents or intended impacts are taken into account. An issue regarding the definition of truly comparable products has also been identified (e.g. power plants). For the development of LCSA, the study suggests that taking a consequential approach allows assessing pecuniary effects and repercussions of adaptation measures, relevant for a sustainability context, and that developing a life cycle impact assessment for life cycle costing would provide valuable information. The study concludes with raising a few questions and providing some suggestions regarding the development of a consistent framework for LCSA: whether the analyses in LCSA shall be distinguished into the three dimensions of sustainable development at the inventory or the impact level also with the aim to avoid double-counting, whether or not LCSA will address exceptional events, whether or not benefits shall be accounted for and how to deal with methodological and value choices (e.g. through sensitivity analyses).Sustainability assessment in life cycle assessment (LCA) addresses societal aspects of technologies or products to evaluate whether a technology/product helps to address important challenges faced by society or whether it causes problems to society or at least selected social groups. In this paper, we analyse how this has been, and can be addressed in the context of economic assessments. We discuss the need for systemic measures applicable in the macro-economic setting. The modelling framework of life cycle costing (LCC) is analysed as a key component of the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework. Supply chain analysis is applied to LCC in order to understand the relationships between societal concerns of value adding and the basic cost associated with a functional unit. Methods to link LCC as a foreground economic inventory to a background economy wide inventory such as an input-output table are shown. Other modelling frameworks designed to capture consequential effects in LCSA are discussed. LCC is a useful indicator in economic assessments, but it fails to capture the full dimension of economic sustainability. It has potential contradictions in system boundary to an environmental LCA, and includes normative judgements at the equivalent of the inventory level. Further, it has an inherent contradiction between user goals (minimisation of cost) and social goals (maximisation of value adding), and has no clear application in a consequential setting. LCC is focussed on the indicator of life cycle cost, to the exclusion of many relevant indicators that can be utilised in LCSA. As such, we propose the coverage of indicators in economic assessment to include the value adding to the economy by type of input, import dependency, indicators associated with the role of capital and labour, the innovation potential, linkages and the structural impact on economic sectors. If the economic dimension of LCSA is to be equivalently addressed as the other pillars, formalisation of equivalent frameworks must be undertaken. Much can be advanced from other fields that could see LCSA to take a more central role in policy formation.A widely used theory of the computational structure of life cycle assessment (LCA) has been available for more than a decade. The case of environmental life cycle cost (LCC) is still less clear: even the recent Code of Practice does not specify any formula to use. This paper does not aim to resolve all the issues at stake. But it aims to provide an explicit and transparent description of how to calculate the life cycle cost (in whatever way defined), and the value added across the life cycle. The expressions obtained can be fed into the formulas for eco-efficiency, so that an explicit and reproducible eco-efficiency indicator can be calculated. The results are useful for developing life cycle sustainability analysis, combining LCA, LCC, and social LCA.Achieving sustainability by rethinking products, services and strategies is an enormous challenge currently laid upon the economic sector, in which materials selection plays a critical role. In this context, the present work describes an environmental and economic life cycle analysis of a structural product, comparing two possible material alternatives. The product chosen is a storage tank, presently manufactured in stainless steel (SST) or in a glass fibre reinforced polymer composite (CST). The overall goal of the study is to identify environmental and economic strong and weak points related to the life cycle of the two material alternatives. The consequential win-win or trade-off situations will be identified via a life cycle assessment/life cycle costing (LCA/LCC) integrated model. The LCA/LCC integrated model used consists in applying the LCA methodology to the product system, incorporating, in parallel, its results into the LCC study, namely those of the life cycle inventory and the life cycle impact assessment. In both the SST and CST systems, the most significant life cycle phase is the raw materials production, in which the most significant environmental burdens correspond to the Fossil fuels and Respiratory inorganics categories. The LCA/LCC integrated analysis shows that the CST has globally a preferable environmental and economic profile, as its impacts are lower than those of the SST in all life cycle stages. Both the internal and external costs are lower, the former resulting mainly from the composite material being significantly less expensive than stainless steel. This therefore represents a full win-win situation. As a consequence, the study clearly indicates that using a thermoset composite material to manufacture storage tanks is environmentally and economically desirable. However, it was also evident that the environmental performance of the CST could be improved by altering its end-of-life stage. The results of the present work provide enlightening insights into the synergies between the environmental and the economic performance of a structural product made with alternative materials. Furthermore, they provide conclusive evidence to support the integration of environmental and economic life cycle analysis in the product development processes of a manufacturing company or, in some cases, even in its procurement practices.This study provides a general methodology to integrate LCA into a single- or multi-objective process design optimization context. It uses specific weightings for foreground emissions, for preventable background emissions and for unpreventable background emissions, for each impact category. It is illustrated for a natural gas combined cycle power plant with three scenarios to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions: CO2 capture and sequestration, fuel substitution with biogas or fuel substitution with synthetic gas from wood. Assuming that the opportunity to prevent emissions elsewhere is an implicit part of the process design decision space, the optimal solution cannot waste such opportunities and is shown to minimize total life cycle costs, including emission avoidance costs based on the optimal combination of prevention and compensation measures in the background system. In the case study, background emissions are inventoried from the ecoinvent database, their compensation costs are derived from the Ecocosts 2007 impact assessment method and their prevention costs are estimated from the literature. The calculated avoidance costs (weightings) then show how the background system affects the final choice of CO2 reduction scenario. In the case study, all three options partially shift environmental burdens to the background system, which can be prevented or compensated. The corresponding minimum avoidance cost is highest overall for the biogas option, thus putting it at a disadvantage. For a vast majority of ecoinvent processes, energy efficiency is important to minimize total avoidance costs because they are dominated by background CO2. Furthermore, prevention cost data gathering can be simplified in some cases, without distorting design decisions, using a CO2-only background inventory. The non-CO2 background inventory is more useful after process design, for procurement decisions. Over-investing in design modifications cannot achieve the same background impact reductions as a sensible green procurement policy. Thus, the proposed weighting methodology ensures that all types of design decisions integrate LCA without incorrectly assuming that emissions are necessarily unavoidable when in the background. Within a context of future emission taxes or tradable permits, the weightings can also anticipate the after-tax cost passed on by suppliers-a marketable benefit of LCA. Since many LCA studies are equivalent to design optimization problems, the proposed weighting methodology provides a single-score impact method relevant to decision-making as well as a straightforward approach to LCA interpretation in terms of detailing the optimal combination of applicable design modifications, prevention measures and compensation measures.This paper addresses the application and potential of LCSA in the built environment with a focus on refurbishments of residential buildings. It specifically addresses the phenomenon of interchange of building technologies efficiencies under different life time assessments from economy, ecology and social fields. An approach of optimization rather than hard target numbers is proposed as win-win-win situations are unlikely. A multidimensional Pareto optimization methodology, using LCC, LCA combined with first stages of a social assessment in a feasibility study but potentially later full SLCA, is proposed, which site-specifically visualizes the interchange between different options in building design or modification, and evaluates optimal overall concepts. LCA and LCC are used to analyze a case study from an EU project named BEEM-UP in which solutions for large-scale uptake of refurbishment strategies are developed. Social frame conditions are taken into account by identifying the driving technologies and feeding the consequences of their implementation for the residents into the tenant involvement part of the project. The calculations prove that the general assumptions leading to the methodology hold true at least for this case study. A clear Pareto-optimal curve is visible when assessing LCC and LCA. The example buildings results show certain systems to be dominating clusters on the figures while others clearly can be identified as not relevant. Several of the driving technologies however fail to be applicable because of social frame conditions, e.g., clear requests by the tenants. Based on the conclusions, the potential for including SLCA as a third dimension in the methodology and possible visualization options are discussed. The development in the field of social indicators in the building sector has to be strengthened in order to come up with a holistic picture and respectively with appropriate responses to current challenges. While some solutions identified in the LCC/LCA assessment also have good social characteristics, several others have not and solutions identified as lacking might have social advantages that are currently left out of consideration The upcoming Standards EN 15643-5 and ISO 15686-x are a promising step in this direction as is the work to create a conceptual framework for impact assessment within SLCA by the scientific community.From a management perspective, there are two main issues in the life cycle sustainability assessment framework which require further work: (1) the approaches to quicken the resource-consuming inventory and assessment process and (2) the easy-to-understand communication of the results. This study aims at contributing to these needs for quicker and cost-efficient ways to draft strategies that include the life cycle perspective and encompasses all three dimensions of sustainability in an easily communicable way. The focus of the study is on a streamlined, rapid assessment the tool proposed by Pesonen (2007) called the Sustainability SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and on the empirical testing of whether or not it is understood in the corporate world and if it leads to concrete changes in either strategic- or operative-level activities. The data for the research were empirically collected from a survey targeted to representatives of organizations having used the Sustainability SWOT within the last 5 years. The primary findings, i.e., the generated changes or improvements, were reflected in the various levels of cooperation in a network (along the value chain, in end users, in the institutional framework). The results of the analyses of both the usability of the Sustainability SWOT in business as well as the suggested assessment framework leading to any actual changes were promising. It is encouraging that the streamlined approach tailored according to the logic of business decision-makers (i.e., inclusion of the SWOT) is able to find the acceptance and understanding of that vital group. Remarkably, many changes were initiated-not only at an operative level but also at a strategic level and in the entire value chain-by carrying out an exercise such as the Sustainability SWOT. The Sustainability SWOT has proven to be usable and able to generate changes and improvements along the value chain and, in some cases, in the institutional context as well.Renewable energy production may offer advantages to human health by way of less pollution and fewer climate-change associated ill-health effects. Limited data suggests that renewable energy will also offer benefits to workers in the form of reduced occupational injury, illness and deaths. However, studies of worker safety and health in the industry are limited. The Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center (MAP ERC) Energy Summit held in April 2011 explored issues concerning worker health and safety in the renewable energy industry. The limited information on hazards of working in the renewable energy industry emphasizes the need for further research. Two basic approaches to guiding both prevention and future research should include: (1) applying lessons learned from other fields of occupational safety and health, particularly the extractive energy industry; and (2) utilizing knowledge of occupational hazards of specific materials and processes used in the renewable energy industry. Am. J. Ind. Med. 56:1359-1370, 2013. (c) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Disposable cups can be made from conventional petro-plastics, bioplastics, or paperboard (coated with petro-plastics or bioplastics). This study compared ten life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of disposable cups with the aim to evaluate the robustness of their results. The selected studies have only one impact category in common, namely climate change with global warming potential (GWP) as its category indicator. Quantitative GWP result's of the studies were closer examined. GWPs within and across each study show none of the cup materials to be consistently better than the others. Comparison of the absolute GWPs (after correction for the cup volume) also shows no consistent better or worse cup material. An evaluation of the methodological choices and the data sets used in the studies revealed their influence on the GWP. The differences in GWP can be attributed to a multitude of factors, i.e., cup material and weight, production processes, waste processes, allocation options, and data used. These factors basically represent different types of uncertainty. Sensitivity and scenario analyses provided only the influence of one factor at once. A systematic and simultaneous use of sensitivity and scenario analyses could, in a next research, result in more robust outcomes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Uncertainty accompanies our life processes and covers almost all fields of scientific studies. Two general categories of uncertainty, namely, aleatory uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty, exist in the world. While aleatory uncertainty refers to the inherent randomness in nature, derived from natural variability of the physical world (e. g., random show of a flipped coin), epistemic uncertainty origins from human's lack of knowledge of the physical world, as well as ability of measuring and modeling the physical world (e.g., computation of the distance between two cities). Different kinds of uncertainty call for different handling methods. Aggarwal, Yu, Sarma, and Zhang et al. have made good surveys on uncertain database management based on the probability theory. This paper reviews multidisciplinary uncertainty processing activities in diverse fields. Beyond the dominant probability theory and fuzzy theory, we also review information-gap theory and recently derived uncertainty theory. Practices of these uncertainty handling theories in the domains of economics, engineering, ecology, and information sciences are also described. It is our hope that this study could provide insights to the database community on how uncertainty is managed in other disciplines, and further challenge and inspire database researchers to develop more advanced data management techniques and tools to cope with a variety of uncertainty issues in the real world.Over the last decade, utilization of biomasses is highly encouraged to conserve scarce resources, reduce dependency on energy imports as well as protect the environment. Integrated biorefinery emerged as noteworthy concept to integrate several conversion technologies to have more flexibility in product generation with energy self-sustained and reduce the overall cost of the process. Integrated biorefinery is a processing facility that converts biomass feedstocks into a wide range of value added products via multiple technologies. In this work, a systematic approach for the synthesis and optimization of a sustainable integrated biorefinery which considers economic, environmental, inherent safety, and inherent occupational health performances is presented. Fuzzy optimization approach is adapted to solve four parameters simultaneously as they are often conflicting in process synthesis and optimization of an integrated biorefinery. An integrated palm oil-based biorefinery case study is solved to demonstrate the proposed approach. (c) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 4212-4227, 2013Short-rotation woody crops (SRWCs) are a promising means to enhance the EU renewable energy sources while mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, there are concerns that the GHG mitigation potential of bioelectricity may be nullified due to GHG emissions from direct land use changes (dLUCs). In order to evaluate quantitatively the GHG mitigation potential of bioelectricity from SRWC we managed an operational SRWC plantation (18.4 ha) for bioelectricity production on a former agricultural land without supplemental irrigation or fertilization. We traced back to the primary energy level all farm labor, materials, and fossil fuel inputs to the bioelectricity production. We also sampled soil carbon and monitored fluxes of GHGs between the SRWC plantation and the atmosphere. We found that bioelectricity from SRWCs was energy efficient and yielded 200-227% more energy than required to produce it over a two-year rotation. The associated land requirement was 0.9 m(2) kWh(e)(-1) for the gasification and 1.1 m(2) kWh(e)(-1) for the combustion technology. Converting agricultural land into the SRWC plantation released 2.8 +/- 0.2 t CO2e ha(-1), which represented similar to 89% of the total GHG emissions (256-272 g CO2e kWh(e)(-1)) of bioelectricity production. Despite its high share of the total GHG emissions, dLUC did not negate the GHG benefits of bioelectricity. Indeed, the GHG savings of bioelectricity relative to the EU non-renewable grid mix power ranged between 52% and 54%. SRWC on agricultural lands with low soil organic carbon stocks are encouraging prospects for sustainable production of renewable energy with significant climate benefits. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A general Mixed Integer Linear Programming modelling framework supporting strategic design and planning decisions for multi-period and multi-echelon ethanol supply chains is developed and implemented. Multiple biomass and technology options involving both first and second generation production are addressed for paving the way towards sustainable and feasible energy infrastructures. The ethanol supply chain is optimised according to a comprehensive mathematical framework where multiple decision criteria are simultaneously considered in an uncertain market scenario. In particular, the economic and environmental performances are both optimised also considering the decision makers' risk mitigation preferences. Carbon cost emissions allowances trading scheme, crop management and technology learning issues are encompassed, too. A demonstrative case study is proposed involving the potential future Italian biomass-based ethanol production. Results show the effectiveness of the modelling framework as a decision making-tool to steer decisions and investments in the long term horizon among different ethanol fuel configurations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) has been widely used in industry. In order to detect and evaluate impact damage defects within this material, a non-destructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) method of eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT) is proposed. The idea of divergence characterisation of the expansion (or contraction) rate of the object and fluid volume can be extended to the thermal pattern characterisation of ECPT. This paper enables the extraction of this value of divergence at an appropriate time period to yield several desirable properties unique to NDT&E problems. The relationship between divergence and transient thermal patterns, as well as divergence and impact energy, are provided and analysed. The positive and negative values of the divergence and their relationship between composite structures and material state are investigated. Quantitative non-destructive evaluation (QNDE) of impact damage with ECPT from divergence patterns and image areas is derived. The results of this proposed method illustrate that defect areas are highly affected by impact energies. This proposed work can be applied for impact damage detection and quantitative evaluation in CFRP, which can be further used in life-cycle assessment and condition based maintenance. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Palm oil industry generates large amount of palm-based biomass (i.e., oil palm frond, oil palm trunk, empty fruit bunches, palm kernel shell, palm mesocarp fibre, palm kernel cake, and palm oil mill effluent) through harvesting, milling and replanting processes. With the increasing volume of global palm oil production, palm-based biomass utilisation is gaining significant attention as there are plenty opportunities and potentials to convert them into value-added products (e.g. dried long fibre, palm pallet, palm briquettes, and biofuels). In order to systematically synthesise, design and analyse the palm-based biomass processing facilities, Process System Engineering (PSE) is identified as the most promising engineering discipline to resolve the abovementioned issues. This paper focuses the review of the applications of PSE in palm-based biomass processing industry. This paper first presents potential utilisation of palm-based biomass. Applications of PSE (e.g. process modelling, process simulation, process synthesis, supply chain optimisation, and life cycle assessment) in palm-based biomass processing industry are then reviewed. Finally, future prospects and challenges of PSE in this industry are given.Reduction of the environmental impact of feed products is of paramount importance for salmon farming. This article explores the potential to compare three thermodynamically based ecological indicators. The environmental impact of partial replacement of fish meal (FM) and fish oil with alternative ingredients was investigated using energy, classical exergy and eco-exergy analysis. Seven hypothetical feeds were formulated: one with high levels of FM and fish oil, four feeds based on plant ingredients, one containing krill meal, and one based on algae-derived products. Analysis included cultivation of crops and algae, fishing for fish and krill, industrial processing of these ingredients and production of complete fish feed. Because most harvested products are refined in multiple product outputs that have good value to society, two scenarios were compared. In the base case scenario, no allocation of co-products was used and all the environmental costs were ascribed to one specific co-product. Co-product allocation by mass was used in the second scenario; this is considered to be the preferred scenario because it accurately reflects the individual contributions of the co-products to the environmental impact of the feed products. For this scenario, the total energy consumption for a fish-based diet was 14,500 MJ, which was similar to a krill diet (15,600 MJ), about 15-31% higher than plant-based diets, and 9% higher than an algae diet. Substituting FM and fish oil with alternative ingredients resulted in minor changes in total classical exergy degradation (2-16% difference). The calculations based on energy only consider the energy conservation based on the First Law of Thermodynamics, whereas those based on classical exergy also takes the Second Law of Thermodynamics into account; energy that can do work is distinguished from energy that is lost as heat to the environment. The calculations based on eco-exergy consider the total loss of work energy in the environment including the work energy associated with the information embodied in the genomes of organisms. The diet based on fishery-derived ingredients was the highest total work energy consumer compared with plant-based diets (24-30% greater), the diet containing krill meal (25% greater), and the algae diet (four times higher). Thus, reducing FM and fish oil levels in fish feed can contribute significantly to more sustainable aquaculture. In particular, algae-derived products in aquafeeds could drastically decrease environmental costs in the future. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As operational impacts from buildings are reduced, embodied impacts are increasing. However, the latter are seldom calculated in the UK; when they are, they tend to be calculated after the building has been constructed, or are underestimated by considering only the initial materials stage. In 2010, the UK Government recommended that a standard methodology for calculating embodied impacts of buildings be developed for early stage design decisions. This was followed in 2011-12 by the publication of the European TC350 standards defining the 'cradle to grave' impact of buildings and products through a process Life Cycle Analysis. This paper describes a new whole life embodied carbon and energy of buildings (ECEB) tool, designed as a usable empirical-based approach for early stage design decisions for UK buildings. The tool complies where possible with the TC350 standards. Initial results for a simple masonry construction dwelling are given in terms of the percentage contribution of each life cycle stage. The main difficulty in obtaining these results is found to be the lack of data, and the paper suggests that the construction and manufacturing industries now have a responsibility to develop new data in order to support this task. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the context of rapid urbanization and new construction in rural China, residential building energy consumption has the potential to increase with the expected increase in demand. A process-based hybrid life-cycle assessment model is used to quantify the life-cycle energy use for both urban and rural residential buildings in China and determine the energy use characteristics of each life cycle phase. An input-output model for the pre-use phases is based on 2007 Chinese economic benchmark data. A process-based life-cycle assessment model for estimating the operation and demolition phases uses historical energy-intensity data. Results show that operation energy in both urban and rural residential buildings is dominant and varies from 75% to 86% of life cycle energy respectively. Gaps in living standards as well as differences in building structure and materials result in a life-cycle energy intensity of urban residential buildings that is 20% higher than that of rural residential buildings. The life-cycle energy of urban residential buildings is most sensitive to the reduction of operational energy intensity excluding heating energy which depends on both the occupants' energy-saving behavior as well as the performance of the building itself. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The implementation of ITS to increase the efficiency of saturated highways has become increasingly prevalent. It is a high level objective for many international governments and operators that highways should be managed in a way that is both sustainable i.e. environmental, social and economically sound and supportive of a Low-Carbon-Energy Future. Some clarity is therefore needed to understand how Intelligent Transport Systems perform within the constraints of that objective. The paper describes the development of performance criteria that reflect the contributions of Information Communication Technology (ICT) emissions, vehicle emissions and the embedded carbon within the physical transport infrastructure that typically comprises one type of Intelligent Transport System i.e. Active Traffic Management - a scheme that is used to reduce inter-urban congestion. The performance criteria form part of a new framework methodology 'EnvFUSION' (Environmental Fusion for ITS) outlined here. This is illustrated using a case study where environmental performance and pollution baselines (collected from independent experts, academic, governmental sources and suppliers) are processed using an attributional Lifecycle Assessment tool. The tool assesses the production and operational processes of the physical infrastructure of Active Traffic Management using inputs from the 'Ecoinvent' database. The ICT component (responsible for data links) is assessed using direct observation, whilst vehicle emissions are estimated using data from a National Atmospheric Emissions Laboratory. Analytical Hierarchy Process and Dempster-Shafer theory are used to create a prioritised performance hierarchy: the Intelligent Transport Sustainability Index, which includes weighted criteria based on stakeholder expertise. A synthesis of the individual criteria is then used to reflect the overall performance of the Active Traffic Management scheme in terms of sustainability (low-carbon-energy and socio-economic) objectives. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioenergy crops are often classified (and subsequently regulated) according to species that have been evaluated as environmentally beneficial or detrimental, but in practice, management decisions rather than species per se can determine the overall environmental impact of a bioenergy production system. Here, we review the greenhouse gas balance and management swing potential' of seven different bioenergy cropping systems in temperate and tropical regions. Prior land use, harvesting techniques, harvest timing, and fertilization are among the key management considerations that can swing the greenhouse gas balance of bioenergy from positive to negative or the reverse. Although the management swing potential is substantial for many cropping systems, there are some species (e.g., soybean) that have such low bioenergy yield potentials that the environmental impact is unlikely to be reversed by management. High-yielding bioenergy crops (e.g., corn, sugarcane, Miscanthus, and fast-growing tree species), however, can be managed for environmental benefits or losses, suggesting that the bioenergy sector would be better informed by incorporating management-based evaluations into classifications of bioenergy feedstocks.Sustainability Science (SS) is considered an emerging discipline, applicative and solution-oriented whose aim is to handle environmental, social and economic issues in light of cultural, historic and institutional perspectives. The challenges of the discipline are not only related to better identifying the problems affecting sustainability but to the actual transition towards solutions adopting an integrated, comprehensive and participatory approach. This requires the definition of a common scientific paradigm in which integration and interaction amongst sectorial disciplines is of paramount relevance. In this context, life cycle thinking (LCT) and, in particular, life cycle-based methodologies and life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) may play a crucial role. The paper illustrates the main challenges posed to sustainability assessment methodologies and related methods in terms of ontology, epistemology and methodology of SS. The aims of the analysis are twofold: (1) to identify the main features of methodologies for sustainability assessment and (2) to present key aspects for the development of robust and comprehensive sustainability assessment. The current debate on SS addressing ontological, epistemological and methodological aspects has been reviewed, leading to the proposal of a conceptual framework for SS. In addition, a meta-review of recent studies on sustainability assessment methodologies and methods, focusing those life cycle based, supports the discussion on the main challenges for a comprehensive and robust approach to sustainability assessment. Starting from the results of the meta-review, we identified specific features of sustainable development-oriented methods: firstly, highlighting key issues towards robust methods for SS and, secondly, capitalising on the findings of each review's paper. For each issue, a recommendation towards a robust sustainability assessment method is given. Existing limitations of sectorial academic inquiries and proposal for better integration and mainstreaming of SS are the key points under discussion. In the reviewed papers, LCT and its basic principles are acknowledged as relevant for sustainability assessment. Nevertheless, LCT is not considered as a reference approach in which other methods could also find a place. This aspect has to be further explored, addressing the lack of multi-disciplinary exchange and putting the mainstreaming of LCT as a priority on the agenda of both life cycle assessment and sustainability assessment experts. Crucial issues for further developing sustainability assessment methodologies and methods have been identified and can be summarised as follows: holistic and system wide approaches, shift from multi- towards trans-disciplinarity; multi-scale (temporal and geographical) perspectives; and better involvement and participation of stakeholders. Those are also the main challenges posed to LCSA in terms of progress of ontology, epistemology and methodology in line with the progress of SS. The life cycle-based methodologies should be broadened from comparing alternatives and avoiding negative impacts, to also proactively enhancing positive impacts, and towards the achievement of sustainability goals.In the context of progress of sustainability science, life cycle thinking and, in particular, life cycle sustainability assessment may play a crucial role. Environmental, economic and social implications of the whole supply chain of products, both goods and services, their use and waste management, i.e. their entire life cycle from "cradle to grave" have to be considered to achieve more sustainable production and consumption patterns. Progress toward sustainability requires enhancing the methodologies for integrated assessment and mainstreaming of life cycle thinking from product development to strategic policy support. Life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) and social LCA (sLCA) already attempt to cover sustainability pillars, notwithstanding different levels of methodological development. An increasing concern on how to deal with the complexity of sustainability has promoted the development of life cycle sustainability frameworks. As a contribution to the ongoing scientific debate after the Rio+20 conference, this paper aims to present and discuss the state of the art of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), giving recommendations for its further development in line with ontological, epistemological and methodological aspects of sustainability science. Building on the review about the state of the art of sustainability science and sustainability assessment methods presented in part I, this paper discuss LCA, LCC, sLCA and LCSA against ontological, epistemological and methodological aspects of ongoing scientific debate on sustainability. Strengths and weaknesses of existing life cycle-based methodologies and methods are presented. Besides, existing frameworks for LCSA are evaluated against the criteria defined in part I in order to highlight coherence with sustainability science progress and to support better integration and mainstreaming of sustainability concepts. LCSA represents a promising approach for developing a transparent, robust and comprehensive assessment. Nevertheless, the ongoing developments should be in line with the most advanced scientific discussion on sustainability science, attempting to bridge the gaps between the current methods and methodologies for sustainability assessment. LCSA should develop so as to be hierarchically different from LCA, LCC and sLCA. It should represent the holistic approach which integrates (and not substitutes) the reductionist approach of the single part of the analysis. This implies maintaining the balance between analytical and descriptive approaches towards a goal and solution-oriented decision support methodology.The framework of life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA) has been developed within the CALCAS project but the procedure on how an LCSA should be carried out is still far from standardized. The purpose of this article is to propose an approach to put the LCSA framework into practice. This approach is illustrated with an on-going case study on concrete recycling. In the context of an EC-FP7 project on technology innovation for concrete recycling, five operational steps to implement the LCSA framework are proposed: (1) broad system definition, (2) making scenarios, (3) defining sub-questions for individual tools, (4) application of the tools and (5) interpreting the results in an LCSA framework. Focus has been put on the goal and scope definition (steps 1-3) to illustrate how to define a doable and meaningful LCSA. Steps 4-5 are not complete in the case study and are elaborated theoretically in this paper. The experience from the case study shows that the operational steps are especially useful at the stage of defining the goal and scope. Breaking down the sustainability questions into different scales and different aspects gives the possibility to define the sub-questions suitable to be assessed by the individual analytical tools (e.g., LCA, LCC, SLCA, MFA, etc.). The C2CA-LCSA shows a practical approach to model the life cycle impacts of the broad system is to start by modelling the technological system at the micro level and then scale it up with the realistic scenario settings that are generated with the knowledge gained from the MFA studies at the meso-level and from the policy/economic studies at the macro level. The combined application of LCA, LCC and SLCA at the project level shows not all the cost items and only one social impact indicator can be modelled in the process-based LCA structure. Thus it is important to address the left out information at the interpretation step. Defining sub-questions on three different levels seems most useful to frame an LCSA study at the early stage of goal and scope definition. Although this study provides some useful steps for the operationlisation of the LCSA concept, it is clear that additional case studies are needed to move LCSA into a practical framework for the analysis of complex sustainability problems.This study deals with managing two differentiated versions of the same product by developing analytical models using Lagrangean relaxation and dynamic programming schemes. We assume market demand is price-dependent and partially substitutable between the new and remanufactured goods, and supply of the returned cores is constrainted, i.e., the remanufacturable quantity in the present period is subject to the availability of end-of-use products in the previous period. The primary objective behind analytic formulation is to investigate the pricing behavior over time under a variety of parameter settings including market property, return rate, and substitutability. Analytical and numerical results reveal that the pricing strategy depends critically on the types of markets (e.g., different phases of product lifecycle), cost-savings of remanufactured products, and the substitutable coefficient. Furthermore, we show that the proposed pricing strategy is an effective mechanism in rendering a greater profit stream during the product lifecycle. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from conventional solid waste management in developing Asian countries contribute significantly to global climate change. This paper argues that moving towards Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) offers a practical solution for mitigating these GHG emissions and for realising socio-economic as well as other environmental benefits. The study assesses the GHG emissions of an existing ISWM system in Muangklang Municipality, Thailand as compared to conventional treatment from a life cycle perspective. The integrated system which recovers nutrients, materials and energy from the waste stream, and reduces landfill disposal of organic and recyclable waste was found to have reduced GHG emissions very significantly compared to conventional landfill disposal, which is currently the most common waste treatment technology in Thailand. Among the individual technologies assessed, materials recycling was found to offer the largest reductions in GHG emissions from a life-cycle perspective. The calculations indicate that a properly designed integrated system with high but fully realistic recovery rates can drastically reduce the climate impact of waste management. Most municipalities in developing Asia are small-to-medium scale and share many characteristics with Muangklang. Therefore, the authors argue that most municipalities in the region could apply this type of low-cost locally adapted ISWM system. This would have numerous sustainability benefits, including drastically reduced GHG emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ethanol from sugarcane is mainly used as fuel for cars in Brazil. However, the chemical industry is considering ethanol also as biotic feedstock for several plastics (e.g. polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride). Both uses are able to cause less environmental impacts than their fossil references if we look to certain specific environmental impact categories such as fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, which use would be able to bring the most environmental gains to society? In order to answer this question, we performed an attributional life cycle assessment of using 1 kg of hydrous ethanol as fuel for transportation and the same amount for monomer production (ethylene), and compared them with the common practice of today in Brazil. Using ethanol to produce ethylene (instead of fossil-based ethylene) would generate environmental gains in the order of 32.0 MJ of fossil energy and 1.87 kg CO(2)eq, whereas the use of ethanol for transportation (instead of gasoline mixture, for flex-fuel cars) would generate environmental gains in the order of 27.2 MJ of fossil energy and 1.82 kg CO(2)eq. Some uncertainties were quantified, for instance we could observe that when the ethanol-to-ethylene reaction yield was lower than 96%, the fuel route had better results for GHG emission savings. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae have great potential as renewable fuel sources, but a dire need exists for high-level academic and industrial research into their growth and bioprocessing. New algae strains that efficiently use CO2 and wastes as nutrients, novel oil extraction methods, and industrial-scale designs for fuel production are imperative for long-term energy sustainability. A particular challenge to research in this field is the transition from pilot studies to industrial operations, which often exposes algae cells and their products to hostile environments, reducing yields. Hence, a need exists to integrate algae cell engineering with predictive bioprocess engineering to ensure economic and environmental feasibility and minimize the number of full-scale trials that fail. This review provides a brief overview of biofuel production from microalgal biomass. It highlights the most promising microalgae species for different types of fuel, the proper choice of photobioreactor and process parameters, product extraction techniques, and the main biofuel products. The main goal of this paper is to promote research into energetically- and environmentally-favorable technologies via the development of better algal strains and separation, extraction, and conversion methods. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An integrated evaluation of embodied energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, and economic performance of a wind power generation system in China was conducted, using a range of indicators. Energy and GHG emission costs per unit profit are proposed as goal functions for potential low-carbon, high-efficiency optimization of the wind power generation system. Results show that the energy efficiency and GHG emission per energy output of the system are 0.034 MJ/MJ and 0.002 kgCO(2)-eq/MJ, respectively. Compared with other power generation systems, wind power is more competitive in terms of both energy savings and GHG emission reduction. If wind turbine recycling in the dismantling phase is taken into consideration, 46.7% of energy will be saved, with a material recycling rate of 0.467. Scenario analyses are done to investigate economic feasibility, from the perspective of investors and government Finally, suggestions are provided to shed light on wind industry development in China. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is world-wide concern for the contribution of dairy farming to global warming. However, there is still a need to improve the quantification of the C-footprint of dairy farming systems under different production systems and locations since most of the studies (e.g. at farm-scale or using LCA) have been carried out using too simplistic and generalised approaches. A modelling approach integrating existing and new sub-models has been developed and used to simulate the C and N flows and to predict the GHG burden of milk production (from the cradle to the farm gate) from 17 commercial confinement dairy farms in the Basque Country (northern Spain). We studied the relationship between their GHG emissions, and their management and economic performance. Additionally, we explored some of the effects on the GHG results of the modelling methodology choice. The GHG burden values resulting from this study (0.84-2.07 kg.CO2-eq kg(-1) milk ECM), although variable, were within the range of values of existing studies. It was evidenced, however, that the methodology choice used for prediction had a large effect on the results. Methane from the rumen and manures, and N2O emissions from soils comprised most of the GHG emissions for milk production. Diet was the strongest factor explaining differences in GHG emissions from milk production. Moreover, the proportion of feed from the total cattle diet that could have directly been used to feed humans (e.g. cereals) was a good indicator to predict the C-footprint of milk. Not only were some other indicators, such as those in relation with farm N use efficiency, good proxies to estimate GHG emissions per ha or per kg milk ECM (C-footprint of milk) but they were also positively linked with farm economic performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this article, 35 published studies on life cycle assessment (LCA) of sewage sludge were reviewed for their methodological and technological assumptions. Overall, LCA has been providing a flexible framework to quantify environmental impacts of wastewater and sewage sludge treatment and disposal processes for multiple scales, ranging from process selection to policy evaluation. The results of LCA are, in principle, unique to the goal and scope of each study, reflecting its local conditions and comparison between different LCAs is not intended. Furthermore, the assessments are limited by the methodological development of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and the advancement of research in quantifying environmental emissions associated with wastewater and sewage sludge treatment processes. Thus, large discrepancies were found in the selection of the environmental emissions to be included and how they were estimated in the analysis. In order to reduce these choice uncertainties, consolidation of the modelling approach in the following area are recommended: quantification of fugitive gas emissions and modelling of disposal practices. Besides harmonization of the key technical assumptions, clear documentation of the modelling approach and the uncertainties associating with each assumption is encouraged so as to improve the integrity and robustness of assessment.Forest ecosystems produce the best quality and most consistent supplies of water for human use. The increase in the use of woody biomass as a feedstock for bioenergy production has raised questions about potential impacts on water quality. Best management practices (BMPs) have been developed and implemented since the early 1970s to ensure that forest harvesting can be conducted with minimum impact on water quality. Although BMPs were originally designed to minimize water quality impacts, they can be used for a variety of environmental concerns. The use of BMPs is widespread in developed countries and it varies from mandatory to voluntary. In many countries BMPs are incorporated in `Codes of Forest Practice' that guide forest managers through the complete bioenergy life cycle. The development and application of BMPs is not a static process, but one that relies on a continual cycle of application, assessment and monitoring, and refinement. Although some countries have "national standards," the complex matrix of forest ecosystems, climates, soils and topography, and harvesting systems requires ongoing assessment, monitoring, and refinement to craft BMPs to best suit local conditions. Research and development studies play a key part in the refinement and communication of improved BMPs. They are also crucial in validating the effectiveness of BMPs. This is especially important where local environmental conditions or operational standards are unique. BMPs ensure that forest bioenergy programs can be a sustainable part of forest management and renewable energy production. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This article addresses the life-cycle assessment of an energy conversion system for the coproduction of fuels and electricity from a gasification-based biosyngas feedstock via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis coupled with a combined-cycle process. Inventory data obtained mainly through process simulation are used to evaluate the environmental performance of the system in terms of abiotic depletion, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, land competition, acidification, and eutrophication. Furthermore, the cumulative non-renewable energy demand of the system is quantified and used in the calculation of the life-cycle energy balance of the system, which is found to be positive. Biosyngas generation arises as the main source of impact, with a much higher contribution than the rest of processes (production of catalysts, waste treatment, etc.). Electricity, diesel, gasoline and surplus hydrogen are the products of the system. The environmental profiles of these bioproducts are calculated and compared with those of fossil diesel, rapeseed biodiesel, soybean biodiesel, fossil gasoline, corn bioethanol, steam-methane reforming hydrogen, and the EU electrical grid. Overall, the bioproducts from the evaluated system are found to be promising alternatives to current energy products from a life-cycle environmental perspective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As demonstrated in past research, decisions regarding maintenance and rehabilitation strategies for a portfolio of bridges should be based on the analysis of both costs and benefits over their life cycle. Such decisions involve the priority and timing of expenditure. This is particularly important in the current era that is characterised by limited funding for infrastructure preservation in most countries. This article presents a probabilistic life-cycle-based investment framework to develop decisions for bridge maintenance and rehabilitation. The framework ranks different projects by priority, using the savings-to-investment ratio (SIR) as a measure of cost-effectiveness. The SIR computation includes the initial investment; annual operation, maintenance and repair/rehabilitation costs; and failure costs. These future costs are linked to probable events, such as natural hazards, vehicle and boat crashes, and user time delay. Since life-cycle analysis is sensitive to the analysis period, this article introduces the concept of infinite lifetime or perpetuity. A case study involving 37 bridges across the Seine River in the City of Paris is used to illustrate the framework application. The application considers pile protections and avoidance of traffic disturbance, and it is especially interesting because the examined bridges have a wide variation with regard to their dates of construction, material type and dimensions. Results of the study prove that this approach enables the decision maker to select the most cost-effective project, and to convey it to the public by incorporating social and political issues that represent practical considerations. In addition, the results seem to be relatively insensitive to the analysis period and the discount rate.Railway bridges currently encounter the challenges of increasing the load capacity while the environmental sustainability should be achieved. However, it has been realised that the environmental assessment of railway bridges has not been integrated into the decision-making process, the standard guideline and criterion is still missing in this field. Therefore, the implementation of life cycle assessment (LCA) method is introduced into railway bridges. This article provides a systematic bridge LCA model as a guideline to quantify the environmental burdens for the railway bridge structures. A comparison case study between two alternative designs of Banafjal Bridge is further carried out through the whole life cycle, with the consideration of several key maintenance and end-of-life scenarios. Six impact categories are investigated by using the LCA CML 2001 method and the known life cycle inventory database. Results show that the fixed-slab bridge option has a better environmental performance than the ballasted design due to the ease of maintenances. The initial material manufacture stage is responsible for the largest environmental burden, while the impacts from the construction machinery and material transportations are ignorable. Sensitivity analysis illustrates the maintenance scenario planning and steel recycling have the significant influence on the final results other than the traffic disturbances.The objective of this study was to test a more productive and sustainable system compared to the traditional approach to manage olive orchards at risk of abandonment placed on hilly and mountainous areas of semi-arid environments. The main sustainable features include the use of treated urban wastewater for drip irrigation and the exploitation of environmentally friendly techniques aimed to preserve/maintain soil quality, to increase the atmospheric carbon storage in the soil, to correctly use natural resources. The comparison between the two management systems, sustainable - SS' and conventional - CS', was carried out through an energy, economic and environmental analysis. The data used in this paper refer to averages for the period 2001-2008. Energy values were calculated by multiplying the amount of farm inputs by the related energy conversion factors. The total input energy per kg of olives was 4.43 and 2.80 MJ in the SS and CS, respectively. The economic analysis showed that the gross profit of the SS was considerably higher (6276(sic)ha(-1)) than the CS (1517(sic)ha(-1)). The environmental analysis was carried out according to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology using SimaPro7.2 software. Emissions of CO2 eq per kg of olives, in SS were 0.08 kg, while in the conventional olive orchard were equal to 0.11 kg. Under our experimental conditions, although the SS was the most energy-consuming system, its greater productivity enabled a more 'sustainable' kg of olives to be produced, at least regarding CO2 eq emissions, and it seemed to be a much more effective management model in terms of productivity and profitability. The combined use of various methodologies (LCA, energy and economic analysis) could provide critical information for policy makers and producers and help them in making strategic choices. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The island of Sicily has a long standing tradition in citrus growing. We evaluated the sustainability of orange and lemon orchards, under organic and conventional farming, using an energy, environmental and economic analysis of the whole production cycle by using a life cycle assessment approach. These orchard systems differ only in terms of a few of the inputs used and the duration of the various agricultural operations. The quantity of energy consumption in the production cycle was calculated by multiplying the quantity of inputs used by the energy conversion factors drawn from the literature. The production costs were calculated considering all internal costs, including equipment, materials, wages, and costs of working capital. The performance of the two systems (organic and conventional), was compared over a period of fifty years. The results, based on unit surface area (ha) production, prove the stronger sustainability of the organic over the conventional system, both in terms of energy consumption and environmental impact, especially for lemons. The sustainability of organic systems is mainly due to the use of environmentally friendly crop inputs (fertilizers, not use of synthetic products, etc.). In terms of production costs, the conventional management systems were more expensive, and both systems were heavily influenced by wages. In terms of kg of final product, the organic production system showed better environmental and energy performances. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the performance of seventeen control strategies in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). It tackles the importance of using site-specific factors for nutrient enrichment when decision-makers have to select best operating strategies. Therefore, the LCA evaluation is repeated for three different scenarios depending on the limitation of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), or both, when evaluating the nutrient enrichment impact in water bodies. The LCA results indicate that for treated effluent discharged into N-deficient aquatic systems (e.g. open coastal areas) the most eco-friendly strategies differ from the ones dealing with discharging into P-deficient (e.g. lakes and rivers) and N&P-deficient systems (e.g. coastal zones). More particularly, the results suggest that strategies that promote increased nutrient removal and/or energy savings present an environmental benefit for N&P and P-deficient systems. This is not the case when addressing N-deficient systems for which the use of chemicals (even for improving N removal efficiencies) is not always beneficial for the environment. A sensitivity analysis on using weighting of the impact categories is conducted to assess how value choices (policy decisions) may affect the management of WWTPs. For the scenarios with only N-limitation, the LCA-based ranking of the control strategies is sensitive to the choice of weighting factors, whereas this is not the case for N&P or P-deficient aquatic systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The application of multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) to real life decision problems suggests that avoiding the loss of information through scenario-based approaches and including expert opinions in the decision-making process are two major challenges that require more research efforts. Recently, a wastewater treatment technology selection effort has been made with a 'scenario-based' method of MADM. This paper focuses on a novel approach to incorporate expert opinions into the scenario-based decision-making process, as expert opinions play a major role in the selection of treatment technologies. The sets of criteria and the indicators that are used consist of both qualitative and quantitative criteria. The group decision-making (GDM) approach that is implemented for aggregating expert opinions is based on an analytical hierarchy process (AHP), which is the most widely used MADM method. The pairwise comparison matrices (PCMs) for qualitative criteria are formed based on expert opinions, whereas, a novel approach is proposed for generating PCMs for quantitative criteria. It has been determined that the experts largely prefer natural treatment systems because they are more sustainable in any scenario. However, PCMs based on expert opinions suggest that advanced technologies such as the sequencing batch reactor (SBR) can also be appropriate for a given decision scenario. The proposed GDM approach is a rationalized process that will be more appropriate in realistic scenarios where multiple stakeholders with local and regional societal priorities are involved in the selection of treatment technology. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a trans-disciplinary assessment of new and innovative biorefinery concepts producing high-value chemical compounds from residues from agriculture, food and forest industries. There is a significant potential of biomass residues in Sweden suitable for the extraction of various compounds, including upgrading by biocatalytic processes, in addition to current energy generation. Two examples presented are quercetin extracted from onion waste by pressurised hot water in conjunction with enzymatic hydrolysis, and betulin from birch bark extracted by liquid CO2 containing ethanol. Inherent in these two extraction processes and production routes is the ability to show good environmental performance from a life cycle perspective. Extraction of high-value compounds also provides possibilities for innovation in the current agricultural, food and forest industry potentially leading to socio-economical benefits. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts an increase of 0.2 degrees C per decade for the next two decades in global temperatures and a rise of between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees C by the year 2100. Related to the increase in world temperatures is the increase in Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) which are primarily made up of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and fluorinated gases. In 2004, the GHGs from agriculture contributed 14% of the overall global GHGs made up mainly of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. In Australia, the dominant source of CH4 and N2O emissions for the year ending June 2012 was found to be from the agricultural sector. With the recent introduction of the Clean Energy Act 2011, the agricultural sector of Australia is expected to develop appropriate GHG mitigation strategies to maintain and improve its competitiveness in the green commodity market. This paper proposes the use of Integrated Spatial Technologies (IST) framework by linking Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The IST approach also integrates and highlights the use of Cleaner Production (CP) strategies for the formulation and application of cost-effective GHG mitigation options for grain production in Western Australia (WA). In this study, the IST framework was tested using data from an existing study (the baseline study) and two mitigation options. The analysis results revealed production and use of fertiliser as the "hotspot", and for mitigation purposes was replaced with pig manure in option I, whereas option 2 emphasised crop rotation system/s. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article, the evaluation of Greenhouse gases in road construction projects is approached from a life cycle perspective. The elements which have a major contribution to emissions are identified in order to develop a strategy to control and reduce them. For this purpose, a management information system (CO2NSTRUCT) was developed, supported by a database obtained through specialized bibliography. The information in the application is organized in a manner that permits a wide variety of queries with several grades of detail in order to study the results. Four new construction projects in Spain were analyzed. The scope of the analysis and the results are contrasted with an extensive revision of the state of art. The total emissions obtained in the life cycle range from 8880 to 50 300 t CO(2)e/km, most of them related to road construction activities; the maintenance stage has a secondary role. Earthworks are the main activity involved, with 60-85% of the emissions in the construction stage, strictly related to the emissions generated by the performance of off-road machinery. Materials, land use and land-use change result significant and crucial contributions. The obtained results constitute a necessary base in order to accomplish an adequate dimensioning of emissions in the road construction sector. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing public attention has been brought to bear on the environmental impacts of municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Macau, due to the continually increasing amount of MSW being generated and the limited space and capacity of waste treatment facilities. This study evaluates the current and potential patterns of MSW management with regard to environmental impacts in Macau, using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. We also assess the baseline scenario, reflecting the existing MSW management system, as well as five other scenarios, exploring waste treatment innovations, to quantitatively predict potential environmental impact mitigation for Macau. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis is used to investigate the influence of the different assessment methods and recycling rates of valuable resources in the source separation process. The results show that the current management system of MSW in Macau can treat and dispose of the MSW well, and at the same time can generate some environmental benefits. Compared with Scenario 0 (the current MSW management system), Scenario 4 (source separation and incineration) shows the highest potential to increase the environmental benefits. Scenario 5 (integrated waste management) is also a good option, with higher benefits (85.96%) than Scenario 0. The analysis shows that, in each scenario (except Scenario 1, the past process of landfill only), the waste treatment processes, including source separation and incineration, dominate the environmental impacts; while processes such as collection and transportation, composting, and landfill, have a relatively small influence. The sensitivity analysis of recycling rate shows an approximately linear relation of inverse proportion between recycling rate and total environmental impact. Considering the limited financial resources and the current waste management practices in Macau, Scenario 4 would be the preferred choice. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment is a methodology by which manufacturers or service providers can analyze the environmental impacts and effects of their products and services. The duration of this assessment extends across the entire life cycle of products and services ("cradle-to-grave"). This process allows for product comparison and strategic decision making with regard to systemic inputs and outputs, as well as the development and incorporation of End-of-Life design strategies. A systemized framework for conducting LCAs was released by the International Organization for Standardization during the period 1997-2000, resulting in the standards ISO 14040, 14041, 14042 and 14043. Updates to these standards were completed in 2006 so that the previous standards were amalgamated into ISO 14040 and 14044. Using a full literature review, this paper seeks to examine to what degree past criticisms of the standards figured in the revision process and to outline what areas are meritorious for future revision. To date, no concerted effort has been made to both assemble a continuous history of the standard and evaluate its contributions across multiple facets of life cycle assessment. Though little technical content in the documents was changed, there were significant improvements with regard to language and clarity. In turn, this informed a broadening of the standard's capability as evidenced by the examination of the case of aluminum smelting. This was particularly evident in changes made to the definitions of the terms allocation, product system, system boundary and waste. Since 2006, many of the recommendations for the improvement of the standards seek to either increase the standards' specificity or augment the original intent of the standards. While there are a few areas for minor improvements, the overall content of the standards is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assisted by designers and contractors, dwelling owners have historically based their decisions (including the choice of building services) on investment costs. Given the increasing interest in the environmental dimension of the built environment, it is also important to include environmental impact in the decision-making process. This paper focuses on the life cycle environmental impact and financial costs of heating and ventilation alternatives for new dwellings in Belgium. Insight into the environmental impact and financial costs of correctly dimensioned configurations over the entire life cycle could enable better choices. Commonly used alternatives are considered, as well as more advanced ones. These are compared and the optima are determined, identifying the best choice within a limited budget. The analysis indicates that, in addition to energy-efficiency measures regarding the building skin, a well-designed heating and ventilation system plays an important role in reducing financial costs and environmental impact over the lifespan of a dwelling. Different heating and ventilation solutions are likely to be selected when initial and life cycle costs are juxtaposed with environmental, financial and total costs. Nevertheless, preferences based on total costs generally coincide with those based on financial costs. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment was used to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the treatment of wastewater in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Kunshan, China. CMLBaseline 2000 method was used for life cycle impact assessment using SimaPro 7.0 software. The goal of this Life Cycle Assessment study was to assess the environmental benefits and drawbacks of this WWTP in comparison with other WWTPs using different advanced treatment processes. Construction phase, operation and maintenance phase, sludge landfilling, and the transportation of chemicals to the WWTP were all taken into consideration. The LCA results of Kunshan WWTP taking renewable energy (wind power) as the energy source proposed that enhancing the effluent quality will decrease the environmental. Environmental impacts in terms of green taxes were also represented. The study revealed very different impacts for the three plants, drawing attention to the importance of the choice of the treatment process. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study was to assess the environmental impacts of the Norwegian pulp and paper industry, considering the production of pulp fibres and printing paper. The pulp fibres included in this study are thermo-mechanical pulp and kraft pulp fibres, which differ with respect to the energy consumption and chemicals used during production. The assessed paper grades were super-calendered paper and newsprint. The study was a cradle to gate approach, and corresponds to an attributional life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA was based on data collected from main pulp and paper producers in Norway. Importantly, aspects related to the increasing use of mineral fillers in the production of newsprints were assessed. The results showed that a reduction of more than 18% climate change impact (kg CO2 eq.) was achieved by increasing the fraction of fillers, in the newsprint furnish. Furthermore, the total climate change impact reduction depended on the applied energy mix. Assuming that the production of printing paper was based only on Norwegian energy mix, yielded a reduction of the climate change impact by more than 44% in 2011, compared to the production based on Scandinavian and European energy mix. Additionally, the input and output transport contributed to more than 20% impact in several cases. We thus concluded that the estimated environmental impacts were affected by; i) the furnish composition of a given paper quality, ii) the input and output transport and iii) the use of different primary grid energy sources. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cork, a natural, recyclable, non-toxic and renewable resource, which stems from the bark of a cork oak in the Mediterranean cork forest (Montado), is an excellent material for Sustainable Product Design. This article describes a project, developed for the Portuguese Cork Industry, on the sustainable innovation of cork products, using the method of "Design Interventions" for new product development, combined with the method of "Eco-efficient Value Creation". Design Intervention is a method to generate innovative products in a structured way with a team of designers, focussing on maximum customer perceived value. The method has four levels: project strategic level, concept development level, design implementation level and product diffusion level. It includes workshops, combined with work in the design studios of the individual designers. The design concepts are analysed with respect to sustainability, and the market value of the prototypes are tested. Eco-efficient value creation is LCA based method with a double objective: 1. reduce the eco-burden of a product (and/or service), and at the same time, 2. enhance the customer perceived value. In this method, the combination of customer perceived value and eco-burden of the product is optimised, aiming at a high level of eco-effectiveness. The eco-burden is determined by means of Life Cycle Assessment (according to ISO 14040/44). The customer perceived value is determined by the price of the product in the market. The project showed that this two dimensional approach, generated good results: 27 out of the 36 new designs ended up with better characteristics (lower eco-costs at a higher value) than their reference products. Products have been exhibited in several international cities, and are sold in design shops. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to evaluate the potential environmental impacts associated with two-net cage aquaculture systems of common carp (Cyprinus carpio carpio) and tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) in the Cirata reservoir, Indonesia. The studied system included fingerling production in hatcheries, fish rearing in cages, and transport of fry and feed as well as that of harvested fish to markets. The environmental impact indicators were calculated based on the annual production in 2006-2007 using the CML2 Baseline 2000 method, and expressed per tonne of fresh fish delivered to the market. The rearing performances and the environmental efficiency of the system were highly dependent on the lake water quality. Therefore the location of the cages and associated practices influenced the environmental impacts. Feed was identified as the major contributor to land occupation, primary production use, acidification, climate change, energy use and water dependence. Those impacts were mainly linked to the production of fishmeal followed by the production of crop-based feed materials and the production of electricity for feed processing. Eutrophication was mainly the consequence of the fish growing stage and linked closely to nutrient loading from cages. Better feeding practices to reduce feed conversion ratio (FCR), as well as improvement of feed composition by using less fishmeal and more local plant-based materials along with improving energy efficiency of feed production processing should be implemented to improve the environmental profiles of carp and tilapia production. The reduction of FCR from 2.1 to 1.7 could decrease eutrophication by about 22%. However, it is of first priority to reduce the number of cages in order to improve the water quality of the reservoir. The comparison of Cirata reservoir fish culture to other sources of animal protein revealed that it generated average energy use but high eutrophication level. LCA was demonstrated to be a useful tool for decision-making when targeting improved environmental sustainability of cage aquaculture. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The farm is the most influential stage of agricultural production because farming practices affect both pre-farm and on-farm environmental impacts. Since farm diversity is not usually taken into consideration, it is legitimate to question the interest of including it in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies. This work explores several approaches to modelling the farm stage when assessing the environmental impact of an agricultural supply chain in a context with variable farm performances. A LCA of a poultry supply chain was applied from cradle-to-slaughterhouse gate. The first approach is a classical one in which farm diversity is not taken into account and an average farm is constructed on the basis of weighted average farm characteristics. The second approach distinguishes four farm types identified by cluster analysis, and four LCA were performed according to these farm types. Farm types were distinguished based on their consumption of inputs and the type of ventilation of the farm buildings. Results indicate that the classical approach is sufficient to highlight problem hotspots and to identify promising mitigation measures. Reducing the transport distance of imported maize, improving feed conversion efficiency and anaerobic digestion of slaughterhouse animal wastes were identified as appropriate mitigation measures. As feed production and poultry rearing are the stages with the most impact, distinguishing farm types provides i) insight into farm functioning to better explain the variability of environmental impacts and understand how to reduce them, ii) reduce the uncertainty of results, and iii) provide appropriate recommendations for mitigation measures. Coupling a farm typology with the LCA is particularly useful when farming systems are very diverse like in Reunion Island where the climate varies considerably across the island. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the endeavour of avoiding presence of biodegradable waste in landfills and increasing recycling, mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plants have seen a significant increase in number and capacity in the last two decades. The aim of these plants is separating and stabilizing the quickly biodegradable fraction of the waste as well as recovering recyclables from mixed waste streams. In this study the environmental performance of eight MBT-based waste management scenarios in Spain was assessed by means of life cycle assessment. The focus was on the technical and environmental performance of the MBT plants. These widely differed in type of biological treatment and recovery efficiencies. The results indicated that the performance is strongly connected with energy and materials recovery efficiency. The recommendation for upgrading and/or commissioning of future plants is to optimize materials recovery through increased automation of the selection and to prioritize biogas-electricity production from the organic fraction over direct composting. The optimal strategy for refuse derived fuel (RDF) management depends upon the environmental compartment to be prioritized and the type of marginal electricity source in the system. It was estimated that, overall, up to ca. 180-190 kt CO2-eq. y(-1) may be saved by optimizing the MBT plants under assessment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Olive mill wastewaters (OMW) are rich in water-soluble polyphenolic compounds that show remarkable antioxidant properties. In this work, the recovery yield of compounds, such as hydroxytyrosol and tyrosol, as well as total phenols (TPh) from real OMW was investigated. Antioxidants were recovered by means of liquid-liquid solvent extraction. For this purpose, a laboratory-scale pilot unit was established and the effect of various organic solvents, namely ethyl acetate, diethyl ether and a mixture of chloroform/isopropyl alcohol, on process efficiency was investigated. It was found that the performance of the three extraction systems decreased in the order: ethyl acetate > chloroform/isopropanol > diethyl ether, in terms of their antioxidant recovery yield. It was estimated that treatment of 1 m(3) OMW with ethyl acetate could provide 0.247 kg hydroxytyrosol, 0.062 kg tyrosol and 3.44 kg of TPh. Furthermore, the environmental footprint of the whole liquid-liquid extraction system was estimated by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to provide the best available and most sustainable extraction technique. From an environmental perspective, it was found that ethyl acetate and diethyl ether had similar environmental impacts. Specifically, for the production of 1 g hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol or TPh, 13.3, 53.1 or 0.949 kg CO2 equivalent would be released to the atmosphere, respectively. On the other hand, the chloroform/isopropyl alcohol mixture had detrimental effects onto ecosystems, human health and fossil fuels resources. In total, ethyl acetate yields low environmental impacts and high antioxidant recovery yield and thus it can be considered as the best solution, both from the environmental and technical point of view. Three alternative scenarios to improve the recovery performance and boost the sustainability of the ethyl acetate extraction system were also investigated and their total environmental impacts were estimated. It was found that with small process modifications the environmental impacts could be reduced by 29%, thus achieving a more sustainable antioxidants recovery process. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Age is a predisposing condition for susceptibility to chronic kidney disease and progression as well as acute kidney injury that may arise due to the adverse effects of some drugs. Age-related differences in kidney biology, therefore, are a key concern in understanding drug safety and disease progression. We hypothesize that the underlying suite of genes expressed in the kidney at various life cycle stages will impact susceptibility to adverse drug reactions. Therefore, establishing changes in baseline expression data between these life stages is the first and necessary step in evaluating this hypothesis. Untreated male F344 rats were sacrificed at 2, 5, 6, 8, 15, 21, 78, and 104 weeks of age. Kidneys were collected for histology and gene expression analysis. Agilent whole-genome rat microarrays were used to query global expression profiles. An ANOVA (p<0.01) coupled with a fold-change>1.5 in relative mRNA expression, was used to identify 3,724 unique differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Principal component analyses of these DEGs revealed three major divisions in life-cycle renal gene expression. K-means cluster analysis identified several groups of genes that shared age-specific patterns of expression. Pathway analysis of these gene groups revealed age-specific gene networks and functions related to renal function and aging, including extracellular matrix turnover, immune cell response, and renal tubular injury. Large age-related changes in expression were also demonstrated for the genes that code for qualified renal injury biomarkers KIM-1, Clu, and Tff3. These results suggest specific groups of genes that may underlie age-specific susceptibilities to adverse drug reactions and disease. This analysis of the basal gene expression patterns of renal genes throughout the life cycle of the rat will improve the use of current and future renal biomarkers and inform our assessments of kidney injury and disease.Membrane processes are widely used in wastewater treatment and for removal of contaminants from drinking water. Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) can be integrated into membranes structure to enhance their performance (e g, fouling mitigation and improvement of permeate quality). However, in order to ensure a sustainable use of nanoactivated membrane, the potential environmental impacts should be evaluated in an early stage of their development. In this study, we performed a cradle to gate life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impacts due to the integration of titanium dioxide (TiO2) engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) in polyethersulfone (PES) membrane using the layer-by-layer (LbL) technology. The PES membrane manufacturing and electrostatic deposition of TiO2 ENPs on PES membrane were investigated in this case study. The results show that the LbL deposition stage of TiO2 ENPs on membrane has an insignificant effect on all selected impact categories, in comparison to PES membrane manufacturing stages investigated. The electricity use during the membrane production as well as the solvents and polymers needed for making PES membrane are the main contributions to the overall environmental impact.Background: The availability of feedstock options is a key to meeting the volumetric requirement of 136.3 billion liters of renewable fuels per year beginning in 2022, as required in the US 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. Life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of sorghum-based ethanol need to be assessed for sorghum to play a role in meeting that requirement. Results: Multiple sorghum-based ethanol production pathways show diverse well-to-wheels (WTW) energy use and GHG emissions due to differences in energy use and fertilizer use intensity associated with sorghum growth and differences in the ethanol conversion processes. All sorghum-based ethanol pathways can achieve significant fossil energy savings. Relative to GHG emissions from conventional gasoline, grain sorghum-based ethanol can reduce WTW GHG emissions by 35% or 23%, respectively, when wet or dried distillers grains with solubles (DGS) is the co-product and fossil natural gas (FNG) is consumed as the process fuel. The reduction increased to 56% or 55%, respectively, for wet or dried DGS co-production when renewable natural gas (RNG) from anaerobic digestion of animal waste is used as the process fuel. These results do not include land-use change (LUC) GHG emissions, which we take as negligible. If LUC GHG emissions for grain sorghum ethanol as estimated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are included (26 g CO(2)e/MJ), these reductions when wet DGS is co-produced decrease to 7% or 29% when FNG or RNG is used as the process fuel. Sweet sorghum-based ethanol can reduce GHG emissions by 71% or 72% without or with use of co-produced vinasse as farm fertilizer, respectively, in ethanol plants using only sugar juice to produce ethanol. If both sugar and cellulosic bagasse were used in the future for ethanol production, an ethanol plant with a combined heat and power (CHP) system that supplies all process energy can achieve a GHG emission reduction of 70% or 72%, respectively, without or with vinasse fertigation. Forage sorghum-based ethanol can achieve a 49% WTW GHG emission reduction when ethanol plants meet process energy demands with CHP. In the case of forage sorghum and an integrated sweet sorghum pathway, the use of a portion of feedstock to fuel CHP systems significantly reduces fossil fuel consumption and GHG emissions. Conclusions: This study provides new insight into life-cycle energy use and GHG emissions of multiple sorghum-based ethanol production pathways in the US. Our results show that adding sorghum feedstocks to the existing options for ethanol production could help in meeting the requirements for volumes of renewable, advanced and cellulosic bioethanol production in the US required by the EPA's Renewable Fuel Standard program.At the current state there are a lot of different types of protection works in different condition levels in Austrian Alps that have to be evaluated regularly concerning their safety and serviceability. In addition a lot of new barrier structures will be built in the near future which should be designed and dimensioned according to the current EUROCODE standards. This was the reason why an interdisciplinary working group (ON-K 256) was established at the Austrian Standards Institute (ASI), which has managed to developed new standards for the load models, design and life cycle assessment of protection works (technical standard ONR 24800 - series). This series was finished this year. The paper deals with the calculation of actions on structures resulting from debris flows and avalanches according to the ONR Series.A holistic, life cycle based evaluation approach was followed within the European collaborative project CoPIRIDE, in order to provide multi-criteria decision support for environmentally benign and cost efficient process design strategies in front of a scale-up of newly developed concepts. The approach is presented by means of three case studies, dealing on the one hand with different catalyst plate reuse options, and on the other hand with two process concepts for intensified processing of natural feedstocks by means of epoxidation and transesterification reactions. Key criteria for future sustainable production processes could be identified prior to the transfer of the experimental flow chemistry results to pilot scale processing.Free convection is the most often used method in order to reduce solar load gains on a building with double glazed facades (DGFs). However, depending on the climate factors, the thermal performance of a DGF may not be satisfactory and extra energy costs are required to obtain suitable comfort conditions inside the building. Forced ventilation systems are a feasible alternative to improve the thermal performance of a DGF in Mediterranean climates where large solar gains are a permanent condition throughout the year. In this paper the feasibility of using diverse forced ventilation methods in DGF is evaluated. In addition, an economical comparison between different mechanical ventilation systems was performed in order to demonstrate the viability of DGF forced ventilation. Moreover, an environmental study was carried out to prove the positive energetic balance on cooling loads between free and forced convection in DGF for Mediterranean climates. For this investigation, a CFD model was used to simulate the thermal conditions in a DGF for the different ventilation systems. Results obtained for heat flux, temperature and reductions in solar load gains were analyzed and applied for the economic and environmental research.Considering the advantages of steel surface hardening, when less expensive low- and medium-carbon steels can be surface hardened without the problems of distortion and cracking associated with the through hardening of thick sections, we developed some research entailing the increase in environmental performance of iron powders carburizing process using methane as carrier. Apart of studies on optimal working parameters and methods, our research addresses improvements in environmental performance of process by selecting powders suppliers, reducing raw materials and energy consumptions, considering products life cycle analysis. A comparison is also performed among the characteristics of three series of research for obtaining ecological steels for automotive industry.The effect of nutrient production on life cycle analysis (LCA) of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions for algal biofuels can be significant, yet recent algal biofuel LCAs vary significantly in their estimates for contributions from fertilizer production. Given the uncertainty in emissions associated with fertilizer manufacturing and the possibility that they play a significant role in algae LCA, this report examined nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer production in the U.S. byway of a detailed examination and analysis of published data. We found that the energy use and emissions of algae fertilizers derive from the manufacturing of just a few key reagents, namely ammonia and phosphoric acid. Under the assumption that large-scale algae growth will utilize commodity chemicals, the life cycle inventory centers on a few processes. We report relatively consistent values in the literature for these processes, suggest representative values to use in future LCA work, and discuss proper handling of fossil carbon in urea. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bench-scale tests were performed for lipid-extracted microalgae (LEA) conversion to liquid fuels via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and upgrading processes. Process simulation and economic analysis for a large-scale LEA HTL and upgrading system were developed based on the best available experimental results. The system assumed an LEA feed rate of 608 dry metric tons/day and that the feedstock was converted to a crude HTL bio-oil and further upgraded via hydrotreating and hydrocracking to produce liquid fuels, mainly alkanes. Performance and cost results demonstrated that HTL and upgrading is effective for converting LEA to liquid fuels. The liquid fuels annual yield was estimated to be 26.9 million gallon gasoline-equivalent (GGE) and the overall energy efficiency on a higher heating value (HHV) basis was estimated to be 69.5%. The variation range of the minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) was estimated to be $2.07 to $7.11/GGE by combining the effects of selected process factors. Key factors affecting the production cost were identified to be the LEA feedstock cost, final products yields, and the upgrading equipment cost. The impact of plant scale on MFSP was also investigated. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.A consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted to evaluate the trade-offs between water quality improvements and the incremental climate, resource, and economic costs of implementing green (bioretention basin, green roof, and permeable pavement) versus gray (municipal separate stormwater sewer systems, MS4) alternatives of stormwater infrastructure expansions against a baseline combined sewer system with combined sewer overflows in a typical Northeast US watershed for typical, dry, and wet years. Results show that bioretention basins can achieve water quality improvement goals (e.g., mitigating freshwater eutrophication) for the least climate and economic costs of 61 kg CO2 eq. and $98 per kg P eq. reduction, respectively. MS4 demonstrates the minimum life cycle fossil energy use of 42 kg oil eq. per kg P eq. reduction. When integrated with the expansion in stormwater infrastructure, implementation of advanced wastewater treatment processes can further reduce the impact of stormwater runoff on aquatic environment at a minimal environmental cost (77 kg CO2 eq. per kg P eq. reduction), which provides support and valuable insights for the further development of integrated management of stormwater and wastewater. The consideration of critical model parameters (i.e., precipitation intensity, land imperviousness, and infrastructure life expectancy) highlighted the importance and implications of varying local conditions and infrastructure characteristics on the costs and benefits of stormwater management. Of particular note is that the impact of MS4 on the local aquatic environment is highly dependent. on local runoff quality indicating that a combined system of green infrastructure prior to MS4 potentially provides a more cost-effective improvement to local water quality.There has been increased scrutiny of the Alberta oil sands due to their high carbon intensity (CI) relative to conventional crude oil. Relying entirely on public and peer-reviewed data sources, we examine historical trends in the CI of oil sands extraction, upgrading, and refining. Monthly data were collected and interpolated from 1970 to 2010 (inclusive) for each oil sands project. Results show a reduction in oil sands CI over time, with industry-average full-fuel cycle (well-to-wheels, WTW) CI declining from 165 gCO(2)e MJ(-1) higher heating value (HHV) of reformulated gasoline (RFG) to 105 (-12, +9) gCO(2)e MJ(-1) HHV RFG. 2010 averages by production pathways are 102 gCO(2)e MJ(-1) for Mining and 111 gCO(2)e MJ(-1) for in situ. The CI of mining-based projects has declined due to upgrader efficiency improvements and a shift away from coke to natural gas as a process fuel. In situ projects have benefitted from substantial reductions in fugitive emissions from bitumen batteries. Both mining and in situ projects have benefitted from improved refining efficiencies. However, despite these improvements, the CI of oil sands production (on a pathway-average basis) ranges from 12 to 24% higher than CI values from conventional oil production. Due to growing output, total emissions from the oil sands continue to increase despite improved efficiency: total upstream emissions were roughly 65 MtCO(2)e in 2010, or 9% of Canada's emissions.Heavy fractions resulting from mechanical treatment stages of mechanical-biological waste treatment plants are posing very specific demands with regard to further treatment (large portions of inert and high-caloric components). Based on the current Austrian legal situation such a waste stream cannot be landfilled and must be thermally treated. The aim of this research was to evaluate if an inert fraction generated from this waste stream with advanced separation technologies, two sensor-based [near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR), X-ray transmission (XRT)] and two mechanical systems (wet and dry) is able to be disposed of. The performance of the treatment options for separation was evaluated by characterizing the resulting product streams with respect to purity and yield. Complementing the technical evaluation of the processing options, an assessment of the economic and global warming effects of the change in waste stream routing was conducted. The separated inert fraction was evaluated with regard to landfilling. The remaining high-caloric product stream was evaluated with regard to thermal utilization. The results show that, in principal, the selected treatment technologies can be used to separate high-caloric from inert components. Limitations were identified with regard to the product qualities achieved, as well as to the economic expedience of the treatment options. One of the sensor-based sorting systems (X-ray) was able to produce the highest amount of disposeable heavy fraction (44.1%), while having the lowest content of organic (2.0% C-biogenic per kg waste input) components. None of the high-caloric product streams complied with the requirements for solid recovered fuels as defined in the Austrian Ordinance on Waste Incineration. The economic evaluation illustrates the highest specific treatment costs for the XRT (Euro23.15 per t), followed by the NIR-based sorting system (Euro15.67 per t), and the lowest costs for the air separation system (Euro10.79 per t). Within the ecological evaluation it can be shown that the results depend strongly on the higher heating value of the high caloric light fraction and on the content of C-biogenic of the heavy fraction. Therefore, the XRT system had the best results for the overall GWP [-14 kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO(2)eq) per t of input waste] and the NIR-based the worst (193 kg CO2 eq per t of input waste). It is concluded that three of the treatment options would be suitable under the specific conditions considered here. Of these, sensor-based sorting is preferable owing to its flexibility.The energy system in the Region of Aysen, Chile, is characterized by a strong dependence on fossil fuels, which account for up to 51% of the installed capacity. Although the implementation of waste-to-energy concepts in municipal waste management systems could support the establishment of a more fossil-independent energy system for the region, previous studies have concluded that energy recovery systems are not suitable from an economic perspective in Chile. Therefore, this work intends to evaluate these technical options from an environmental perspective, using life cycle assessment as a tool for a comparative analysis, considering Coyhaique city as a case study. Three technical alternatives were evaluated: (i) landfill gas recovery and flaring without energy recovery; (ii) landfill gas recovery and energy use; and (iii) the implementation of an anaerobic digestion system for the organic waste fraction coupled with energy recovery from the biogas produced. Mass and energy balances of the three analyzed alternatives have been modeled. The comparative LCA considered global warming potential, abiotic depletion and ozone layer depletion as impact categories, as well as required raw energy and produced energy as comparative regional-specific indicators. According to the results, the use of the recovered landfill gas as an energy source can be identified as the most environmentally appropriate solution for Coyhaique, especially when taking into consideration the global impact categories.Effectively implementing various energy and environmental policies contributes to the acceleration of energy performance, a reduction in negative environmental impacts, and increased deployment of renewable resources. The MEEMS (municipal energy and environmental management system) performs the almost inconceivable role of accomplishing prerequisite targets at the national level and, consequently, the European and World levels also. Therefore, a proper infrastructure for MEEMS needs to be effectively applied in order to implement policy initiatives. A novel organisational framework of MEEMS is proposed and is constituted upon three pillars: integration of the municipal metabolism approach, the KBS (knowledge-based system), and the MTIS (municipal technology innovation system). By properly addressing the dynamics of the MEES (municipal energy and environmental system), and the new conceptual organisation of MEEMS, a need for the inclusion of innovative elements can be defined regarding support mechanisms. Integration of the end-user approach defines the fundamental orientation of modern MEEMS. This new concept paves a pathway towards an intelligent energy and environmental system. This paper describes an implementation of the new conceptual design of MEEMS within the urban municipality energy system of Ptuj, Slovenia. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work presents the results of a thorough EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Investment) analysis for biocrude production from microalgae processes. We have investigated different alternatives to maximize the energy recoveries of each process considered, which has been modeled and simulated by Aspen PIus (TM). The estimates for feeds and recirculation of microalgae and nutrients, working conditions, systemization and equipment requirements were obtained using both literature and own experimental data. The Pinch Technology Analysis was applied to optimize the process operating conditions. It was found that the process which uses the combustion of biomass after biocrude extraction is the most favorable one in energy terms. In particular, 2 cases of this type were addressed and compared to a Base case where all energy requirements (heat and electrical) are provided from external sources: Case 1, electricity is supplied externally whereas the biomass and part of the biocrude produced are burned to meet the requirements of thermal energy, and Case 2, where the energy recovered from both biomass and part of biocrude are used to fulfill all heat and electricity duties. These cases were analyzed also when the nitrogen needed for microalgae growth is obtained from wastewaters. Favorable EROEI figures could be calculated. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the performance and feasibility of the domestic dewatered sewage sludge (DDSS) stabilised with lime as raw material for the cement industry. The stabilisation process uses a screw-based plug reactor to provide mixing conditions suitable to reduce the water content of the sludge to level of 10%a w/w by taking advantage of the exothermic reaction of the hydration of lime to form portlandite, which favours the evaporation of water. The high alkalinity provided by the added lime promotes the reduction of the organic matter content through a transformation of the complex organic structures of the biomass present in the DOSS to simple organic structures and partly to inorganic carbon in a form of the (CaCO3(s)) via a series of exothermic (neutralisation and saponification) and endothermic chemical processes (hydrolysis). The sludge stabilisation with lime process was studied at a pre-industrial scale using a pilot plant with a 6 t DDSS/h treatment capacity. The dewatered sludge and the stabilised product streams were properly characterised to quantify the mass and energy balances. Both balances were used to improve the performance of the process and to quantify the reaction enthalpy (-7914.7 +/- 172 kJ/kg DDSS) associated with the mineralisation of the organic matter, using a numerical algorithm. The influence of any biological process was discarded by taking into account the microbiological monitoring data. The low residence time in the reactor (less than 40 min) and the high alkalinity of the reaction mixture provided by the produced Ca(OH)(2)(s) did not favour substantial biological activity which also requires hydroxyl ions and water, however, CaO(s) will generate hydroxyl ions only after being hydrated. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The inclusion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions costs in energy systems investment decision-making requires the development of a framework that accounts for GHG and economic tradeoffs. This paper develops such a framework by integrating partial cost-benefit analysis with life cycle assessment to explore the question of whether bitumen should be upgraded in the Canadian province of Alberta to produce synthetic crude oil (SCO), or blended with light hydrocarbons to produce lower-quality diluted bitumen (dilbit). The net present value (NPV) of these options is calculated from the stakeholder perspectives of the oil sands industry, the Alberta public, and a climate-concerned Alberta resident. This calculation includes monetized GHG emissions costs stemming from a hypothetical economy-wide GHG price, and a sensitivity analysis explores the effects of variations in technical and economic conditions on stakeholders' preferences. We find that under most plausible sets of conditions, industry would prefer the dilution option, while the climate-concerned Alberta resident would prefer the upgrading option. In contrast, the preferences of the general Alberta public depend on the values of key variables (e.g., the SCO-dilbit price differential). Key drivers of differences among stakeholders' preferences include different perceptions of risks and responsibilities for life cycle GHG emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an effective technology for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from large-scale fossil fuel use. Nonetheless, it is not yet commercially viable on a large scale, and its inclusion into countries' energy planning agendas depends on realistic assessments of its emission reduction benefits. The use of CCS leads to energy penalties resulting from direct consumption of additional energy, and results in indirect CO2 equivalent emissions outside plant boundaries, due to both energy consumption and leakages. Accounting for these emissions allows for an evaluation of the mitigation benefits of CCS. This study performs a life-cycle assessment (LCA), with and without CCS, for a coal-fired power plant located in Brazil. Findings show that when indirect emissions are taken into account, a plant which captures 90% of its CO2 will have its CO2 equivalent emissions capture potential, based on a global warming potential metric with a 100-year time horizon, reduced to 72%. The advantage of the use of carbon capture towards climate change mitigation is reduced mainly as a result of an increase in CH4 emissions, significant in the coal-mining stage, an effect which is only taken into account when a LCA is performed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon emission embodied in trade is fundamental for allocation of responsibility between producers and consumers. This paper quantitatively analyzes embodied carbon emissions along the life cycle of electricity supply, based on network theory. A modified carbon emission flow model is established, based on life cycle assessment considering power losses. There is also a case study of China's interregional electricity supply system in 2010, focusing on two carbon emission carriers, electricity coal transportation and electricity transmission. Results show that the total carbon emission flow reached 169.355 MtCO(2)eq, i.e., 4.67% of the life cycle carbon emission. Of this, 61.1% was carried by electricity coal transportation before power generation and transmission, owing to an uneven distribution of coal resources. The eastern and southern regions are the major net sinks of carbon emission flows, representing 52.9%. and 27.8% of the total, respectively, because of their enormous energy imports. In contrast, the Sanxi region and central China are major. net sources of carbon emission flow. The proposed model may help allocate environmental responsibility among different regions, to guarantee balanced trans-regional development. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study shows how the assessment of emissions reductions from CO2 capture is critically dependent on the choice of multi-gas equivalency metric and climate impact time horizon. This has implications for time-sensitive mitigation policies, in particular when considering relative impact of short-lifetime gases. CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions from a coal-fired power plant in Brazil are used to estimate and compare the CO2-equivalent emissions based on standard practice global warming potentials GWP-100 with the less common GWP-50 and variable GWP for impact target years 2050 and 2100. Emission reductions appear lower for the variable metric, when the choice of target year is critical: 73% in 2100 and 60% in 2050. Reductions appear more favorable using a metric with a fixed time horizon, where the choice of time horizon is important: 77% for GWP-100 and 71% for GWP-50. Since CH4 emissions from mining have a larger contribution in the total emission of a plant with capture compared to one without, different perspectives on the impact of CH4 are analyzed. Use of variable GWP implies that CH4 emissions appear 39% greater in 2100 than with use of fixed GWP and 91% greater in 2050. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research article discusses the modelling and simulation results of carbon and eco-footprints of adult incontinence products. Four types of products are considered in this study: two types of diapers- commercial and new diapers and two types of pants-commercial and new type of pants. New types of diapers and pants were developed by our research team in the Institute of Textiles & Clothing of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Carbon and eco-footprints were modeled by using lPCC 2001 method (100 Years) and ecological footprint method (taken from Ecoinvent 2.0) of SIMAPRO 7.3.2 version of LCA software. Datasets from Ecoinvent database inbuilt with SIMAPRO software were used to build the life cycle scenarios. Life cycle scenarios of four types of incontinence products were built for the entire life cycle of products from cradle to grave staged. In this research study, the contribution analysis (hot-spots in the life cycle stages) of carbon and eco-footprints of each type of product under consideration are highlighted. From the modeling and simulation results, it was noticed that the new reusable pants created the lowest carbon and eco-footprints compared to its counterparts. New type of diaper created slightly higher carbon and eco-footprints compared to the commercial diaper type. From the process contribution analysis, it was found that the production and disposal of SAP, generation of electricity for polypropylene, production processes of cotton were the contributors of major impacts in the order of hierarchy. From this detailed LCA study, it was understood that if the new type of reusable pants will be used without disposable inserts, it can bring carbon and eco-footprints significantly down.This study aims to assess the removal of a set of non-polar pollutants in biologically treated wastewater using ozonation, ultraviolet (UV 254 nm low pressure mercury lamp) and visible light (Xe-arc lamp) irradiation as well as visible light photocatalysis using Ce-doped TiO2. The compounds tracked include UV filters, synthetic musks, herbicides, insecticides, antiseptics and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Raw wastewater and treated samples were analyzed using stir-bar sorptive extraction coupled with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (SBSE-CG x GC-TOF-MS). Ozone treatment could remove most pollutants with a global efficiency of over 95% for 209 mu M ozone dosage. UV irradiation reduced the total concentration of the sixteen pollutants tested by an average of 63% with high removal of the sunscreen 2-ethylhexyl trans-4-methoxycinnamate (EHMC), the synthetic musk 7-acetyl-1,1,3,4,4,6-hexamethyltetrahydronaphthalene (tonalide, AHTN) and several herbicides. Visible light Ce-TiO2 photocatalysis reached similar to 70% overall removal with particularly high efficiency for synthetic musks. In terms of power usage efficiency expressed as nmol kJ(-1), the results showed that ozonation was by far the most efficient process, ten-fold over Xe/Ce-TiO2 visible light photocatalysis, the latter being in turn considerably more efficient than UV irradiation. In all cases the efficiency decreased along the treatments due to the lower reaction rate at lower pollutant concentration. The use of photocatalysis greatly improved the efficiency of visible light irradiation. The collector area per order decreased from 9.14 +/- 5.11 m(2)m(-3) order(-1) for visible light irradiation to 0.16 +/- 0.03 m(2) m(-3) order(-1) for Ce-TiO2 photocatalysis. The toxicity of treated wastewater was assessed using the green alga Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata. Ozonation reduced the toxicity of treated wastewater, while UV irradiation and visible light photocatalysis limited by 20-25% the algal growth due to the accumulation of reaction byproducts. Three transformation products were identified and tracked along the treatments. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents the results of a literature review performed with a meta-regression analysis (MRA). It focuses on the estimates of advanced biofuel Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions determined with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The mean GHG emissions of both second (G2) and third generation (G3) biofuels and the effects of factors influencing these estimates are identified and quantified by means of specific statistical methods. 47 LCA studies are included in the database, providing 593 estimates. Each study estimate of the database is characterized by (i) technical data/characteristics, (ii) author's methodological choices and (iii) typology of the study under consideration. The database is composed of both the vector of these estimates-expressed in grams of CO2 equivalent per MJ of biofuel (g CO(2)eq/Mn and a matrix containing vectors of predictor variables which can be continuous or dummy variables. The former is the dependent variable while the latter corresponds to the explanatory variables of the meta-regression model. Parameters are estimated by means of econometrics methods. Our results clearly highlight a hierarchy between G3 and G2 biofuels: life cycle GHG emissions of G3 biofuels are statistically higher than those of Ethanol which, in turn, are higher than those of BtL. Moreover, this article finds empirical support for many of the hypotheses formulated in narrative literature surveys concerning potential factors, which may explain estimates variations. Finally, the MRA results are used to address the harmonization issue in the field of advanced biofuels GHG emissions thanks to the technique of benefits transfer using meta-regression models. The range of values hence obtained appears to be lower than the fossil fuel reference (about 83.8 in g CO(2)eq/MJ). However, only Ethanol and BtL do comply with the GHG emission reduction thresholds for biofuels defined in both the American and European directives. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comprehensive overview of potential environmental effects during the life cycle of geothermal power plants is presented using widely scattered available information from diverse literature sources. It is shown that so far only few studies provide quantitative estimates on both direct and indirect environmental consequences. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on geothermal electricity production are scarce and typically country- or site-specific with a focus on the geothermal fields in the western USA. In fact a general assessment is challenging due to the dissimilar nature and maturity of currently applied geothermal power plants, the influence of site-specific characteristics, and uncertainty in long-term productivity. Especially life cycle fugitive emissions, the thread from geological hazards, and water and land use effects are highly variable and may even change with time. Based on our survey, ranges are provided for emissions and resource uses of current worldwide geothermal power generation. We also define an approximate universal case that represents an expected average. The collected data is suitable to feed life cycle inventories, but is still incomplete. Potential emissions of critical toxic substances such as mercury, boron and arsenic and their local and regional environmental consequences are particularly inadequately addressed on the global scale. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This survey paper critically reviews the performance and prospects of soy biodiesel production on a global basis as assessed by some 30 life-cycle analyses (LCAs). The paper compares agricultural and industrial practices. Soy biodiesel is not a most sustainable product in all global circumstances. Life-cycle energy depends on specific climatic conditions, and on the agro- and processing technologies used. Alternative oilcrop cultivation practices and technologies were evaluated. Opportunities have been identified to improve the biodiesel life-cycle energy efficiency and environmental impact in relevant production areas (mainly USA, Brazil, Argentina and P.R. China) by implementing new technologies in agriculture as well as in industrial processing. The consequences of large-scale renewable energy action plans in the European Union and of biodiesel mandates in numerous countries worldwide are critically considered. The paper concludes with perspectives and recommendations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The well-known benchmark process for hydrodealkylation of toluene (HDA) to produce benzene is revisited in a multi-objective approach for identifying environmentally friendly and cost-effective operation solutions. The paper begins with the presentation of the numerical tools used in this work, i.e., a multi-objective genetic algorithm and a Multiple Choice Decision Making procedure. Then, two studies related to the energy source involved in the utility production system (UPS), either fuel oil or natural gas, of the HDA process are carried out. In each case, a multi-objective optimization problem based on the minimization of the total annual cost of the process and of five environmental burdens, that are Global Warming Potential, Acidification Potential, Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential, Human Toxicity Potential and Eutrophication Potential, is solved and the best solution is identified by use of Multiple Choice Decision Making procedures. An assessment of the respective contribution of the HDA process and the UPS towards environmental impacts on the one hand, and of the environmental impacts generated by the main equipment items of the HDA process on the other hand is then performed to compare both solutions. This "gate-to-gate" environmental study is then enlarged by implementing a "cradle-to-gate" Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), for accounting of emission inventory and extraction. The use of a natural gas turbine, less economically efficient, turns out to be a more attractive alternative to meet the societal expectations concerning environment preservation and sustainable development. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable transportation infrastructure and travel policies aim to optimise the use of transportation systems to achieve economic and related social and environmental goals. To this end, a novel methodology based on life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed in this study, with the aim of quantifying, in terms of CO2 emissions equivalent, the impact associated with different alternatives of waste collection systems in different urban typologies. This new approach is focussed on saving energy and raw materials and reducing the environmental impact associated with the waste collection system in urban areas, as well as allowing the design and planning of the best available technologies and most environment-friendly management. The methodology considers a large variety of variables from the point of view of sustainable urban transport such as the location and size of the urban area, the amount of solid waste generated, the level of social awareness on waste separation procedures, the distance between houses and waste collection points and the distance from the latter to the possible recovery plants and/or landfills, taking into account the material and Energy recovery ratio within an integrated waste management system. As a case study, two different waste collection systems have been evaluated with this methodology in the ecocity Valdespartera located in Zaragoza, Spain, consisting of approximately 10,000 homes: (i) a system based on traditional truck transportation and manual collection, and (ii) a stationary vacuum waste collection system. Results show that, when operating at loads close to 100%, the stationary collection system has the best environmental performance in comparison with the conventional system. In contrast, when operating at load factors around 13% the environmental benefits in terms of net CO2-eq. emissions for the stationary collection system are around 60% lower in comparison with the conventional one. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Product carbon footprinting has gained much attention in recent years as many national and international standards have been formulated as well as several carbon labeling schemes. Thailand has also made efforts in this direction over the past several years and is in fact the first country in the southeast Asian region to have developed national guidelines for carbon footprint calculation and labeling. During the process of conducting product carbon footprinting for pilot studies, many issues of concern were raised, some of which may be common to all countries, while others were more specific for tropical countries exporting agricultural products. Experiences are drawn from the study of several national (Publicly Available Specification 2050, Japanese and Thai national guidelines) and international (ISO14067) standards, including the application of some of these to several product carbon footprinting studies. Issues of data collection, grouping of products, co-product allocation, land-use change, product category rules, type of carbon label and consumer understanding have been discussed, with some possible solutions given to address these issues. The cost of carbon footprinting and labeling are also discussed, along with their implications on companies implementing carbon footprinting. Finally, suggestions are made for issues to be discussed at the international level with a view to harmonizing the carbon footprinting methodology, as well as to address the specific concerns of developing countries that have a large volume of agriculture-based exports.In this work, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is used to investigate the environmental impacts of two recent energy efficient streetlight technologies, Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH) and Light Emitting Diode (LED), with the aim of assessing their application in Abu Dhabi - United Arab Emirates (UAE). The cradle to grave analysis for CMH and LED streetlights includes raw material extraction, production of streetlight fixture, use and end of life scenario, all modeled using the SimaPro software package. The results show that LED lights have larger environmental impact during the production stage, but this is offset during the operational life of the lamp, due to the lower energy consumption of LEDs. For both types of lamps, the production stage has significantly less overall impact when compared to the impact during their operational life. The analysis in this paper also covers a scenario where stand-alone light fixtures are powered by photovoltaic (PV) panels, with and without battery recycling, in addition to a scenario where the energy used for operation comes from a solar power plant. In all the cases analyzed, the LED lamp has a lower overall environmental impact. Furthermore, our analysis shows that most environmental impacts come from battery production, consumption of fossil fuels for energy, and transportation of parts. (C) 2013 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper presents a snapshot of key challenges encountered by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) devoted to green production systems acting on the call to substantiate their environmental claims. It highlights the overriding barriers of SMEs to meeting the standards for conducting credible product life cycle assessment (LCA), in terms of accessibility to customised data and epistemological limitations. This is illustrated using a real-world example describing the material and process flows for a recycling company. We demonstrate that the rigour towards compiling large (and in some cases nested) data sets, involving expert know-how and adequate representation of system boundary can pose operational barriers. This is underpinned by complications of conducting green production and process-based LCA, deemed essential in ascertaining product and process sustainability. Finally, the paper discusses issues highlighted by the case study and provides useful directions for production researchers, SMEs and consultants.In the product-service system (PSS), products are carriers of functions and media of services. Currently, value creation in PSS is directly related to the capabilities of the product-service solutions provided to serve customer demands and supplier business interest over time. There is a need for an evaluation approach that can identify in what manner and to what extent products and services should best be bundled in the development of a company's value proposition. Furthermore, with an increasing focus on the sustainability profile of business operations, it is necessary to incorporate environmental impact measures with technical performance and cost measures to present a more comprehensive value assessment of product-service development. In this paper, a sustainability-oriented value assessment model is proposed as an attempt for product-service development decision support based on life cycle thinking. In this proposed approach, the fitness for extended utilisation indicators, the net present value (NPV) approach and life cycle assessment (LCA), are applied as the measures of life cycle performance, life cycle cost, and life cycle environmental impact, which are used for value assessment. A case study on a solar heating system will be presented to show how the assessment model can be used to support the evaluation and selection of different product-service development alternatives.Effects of plant-bound condensed tannin (CT)-containing sainfoin vs. CT-free alfalfa (or low-CT alfalfa-sainfoin mixture), plant stage of maturity, and their interaction on enteric methane (CH4) emissions, diet digestibility, and N excretion were studied, using 8 ruminally cannulated beef heifers in 2 sequential short-term experiments (Exp. 1 and 2). In Exp. 1, first growth legumes were harvested daily and offered fresh to heifers. Heifers were assigned to 100% sainfoin or 80% alfalfa: 20% sainfoin (as-fed basis). Responses were measured at early (late vegetative to early bud; stage 2 to 3) and late (early flower; stage 5) stage of maturity. In Exp. 2, the same legumes were harvested from second growth (late bud; stage 4) and offered to heifers as hay; 100% sainfoin or 100% alfalfa. In both experiments, heifers were fed once daily at 1 x maintenance. When fed as fresh forage (Exp. 1), sainfoin, compared with the alfalfa-sainfoin blend, had greater digestibility of OM (74.7 vs. 70.9%; P = 0.02), yet tended to have lower CP digestibility (73.2 vs. 77.1%; P = 0.059). There was no difference between fresh legumes for CH4 emissions [25.9 g/kg DMI +/- 4.02 SE; 8.5% of gross energy intake (GEI) +/- 1.26 SE; or 36.8 g/kg digested OM +/- 1.75 SE]. The fresh legumes were more digestible at early, rather than at late, maturity and, consequently, enteric CH4 (27.4 vs. 24.4 g/kg DMI; P < 0.004; 8.9 vs. 8.1% GEI; P < 0.008) was greater at early, rather than at later, growth. When fed as hay (Exp. 2), sainfoin, compared with alfalfa, had greater digestibility of OM (60.5 vs. 50.3%; P = 0.007), lower digestibility of CP (64.2 vs. 68.8%; P = 0.004), yet there was no difference between the legume hays for CH4 emissions (22.4 g/kg DMI +/- 1.29 SD and 7.1% GEI +/- 0.40 SD). However, on the basis of OM digested, CH4 emissions were lower for sainfoin than alfalfa hay (44.3 vs. 59.0 g/kg; P = 0.008). Percentage of total N excretion in urine was less for sainfoin compared with alfalfa, both for fresh legumes in Exp. 1 (74 vs. 78%; P = 0.017) or hay in Exp. 2 (64 vs. 72%; P < 0.001), and increasing maturity lowered urinary N excretion. In conclusion, feeding CT-containing sainfoin partially shifted N excretion from urine to feces, but it had little impact on enteric CH4 emissions from beef cattle fed at maintenance as compared with feeding either 80% alfalfa: 20% sainfoin (fresh forages) or 100% alfalfa (hay). Feeding fresh legumes harvested between the late vegetative to early bud stage, compared with harvested at the early flower stage, increased N excreted in urine as well as enteric CH4 emissions from beef cattle fed at maintenance.Three assessment methods, material flow analysis (MFA), life cycle analysis (LCA), and multiattribute utility theory (MAUT) are systematically combined for supporting the choice of best end-of-life scenarios for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste in a municipality of a developing country. MFA analyzes the material and energy balance of a firm, a region, or a nation, identifying the most relevant processes; LCA evaluates multiple environmental impacts of a product or a service from cradle to grave; and MAUT allows for inclusion of other aspects along with the ecological ones in the assessment. We first systematically coupled MFA and LCA by defining the service offered by the total PET used during one year in the region as the functional unit. Inventory and impacts were calculated by multiplying MFA flows with LCA impacts per kilogram. We used MAUT to include social and economic aspects in the assessment. To integrate the subjective point of view of stakeholders in the MAUT, we normalized the environmental, social, and economic variables with respect to the magnitude of overall impacts or benefits in the country. The results show large benefits for recycling scenarios from all points of view and also provide information about waste treatment optimization. The combination of the three assessment methods offers a powerful integrative assessment of impacts and benefits. Further research should focus on data collection methods to easily determine relevant material flows. LCA impact factors specific to Colombia should be developed, as well as more reliable social indicators.The Clean Air Act in the United States identifies diesel-powered motor vehicles, including transit buses, as significant sources of several criteria pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone formation or smog. The effects of air pollution in urban areas are often more significant due to congestion and can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular health impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been utilized in the literature to compare conventional gasoline-powered passenger cars with various types of electric and hybrid-powered alternatives, however, no similarly detailed studies exist for mass transit buses. LCA results from this study indicate that the use phase, consisting of diesel production/combustion for the conventional bus and electricity generation for the electric bus, dominates most impact categories; however, the effects of battery production are significant for global warming, carcinogens, ozone depletion, and eco-toxicity. There is a clear connection between the mix of power-generation technologies and the preference for the diesel or electric bus. With the existing U.S. average grid, there is a strong preference for the conventional diesel bus over the electric bus when considering global warming impacts alone. Policy makers must consider regional variations in the electricity grid prior to recommending the use of battery electric buses to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This study found that the electric bus was preferable in only eight states, including Washington and Oregon. Improvements in battery technology reduce the life cycle impacts from the electric bus, but the electricity grid makeup is the dominant variable.Life cycle assessment practitioners struggle to accurately allocate environmental burdens of metals recycling, including the temporal dimension of environmental impacts. We analyze four approaches for calculating aluminum greenhouse gas emissions: the recycled content (RC) or cut-off approach, which assumes that demand for recycled content displaces primary production; end-of-life recycling (EOLR), which assumes that postuse recycling displaces primary production; market-based (MB) approaches, which estimate changes in supply and demand using price elasticities; and value-corrected substitution (VCS), which allocates impact based on price differences between primary and recycled material. Our analysis suggests that applications of the VCS approach do not adequately account for the changing scrap to virgin material price ratio over time, whereas MB approaches do not address stock accumulation and depletion. The EOLR and RC approaches were analyzed using two case studies: U.S. aluminum beverage cans and vehicle engine blocks. These approaches produced similar results for beverage cans, which have a closed material loop system and a short product life. With longer product lifetimes, as noted with the engine blocks, the magnitude and timing of the emissions differs greatly between the RC and EOLR approaches. The EOLR approach indicates increased impacts at the time of production, offset by negative impacts in future years, whereas the RC approach assumes benefits to increased recycled content at the time of production. For vehicle engine blocks, emissions using EOLR are 140% higher than with RC. Results are highly sensitive to recycled content and future recycling rates, and the choice of allocation methods can have significant implications for life cycle studies.A dissolved air flotation (DAF) system upgrade was proposed for an urban paper mill to recycle effluent. To understand the influence of operating variables on the environmental impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water consumption, a dynamic supply chain model was linked with life cycle assessment (LCA) to produce an environmental inventory. Water is a critical natural resource, and understanding the environmental impacts of recycling water is paramount in continued development of sustainable supply chains involving water. The methodology used in this study bridged the gap between detailed process models and static LCA modeling so that operating variables beyond discrete scenario analysis could be investigated without creating unnecessarily complex models. The model performed well in evaluating environmental impacts. It was found that there was no single optimum operating regime for all environmental impacts. For a mill discharging 80 cubic meters of effluent per hour (m(3)/hour), GHGs could be minimized with a DAF capacity of 17.5 m(3)/hour, while water consumption could be minimized with a DAF capacity of 25 m(3)/hour, which allowed insight into where environmental trade-offs would occur. The study shows that more complexity can be achieved in supply chain modeling without requiring a full technical model. It also illustrates the need to consider multiple environmental impacts and highlights the trade-off of GHG emissions with water consumption in water recycling. The supply chain model used in this water treatment case study was able to identify the environmental trade-offs from the operating variables selected.How sustainable are the various building materials, and what are the criteria for assessment? The scope of this article is to explore in what ways responsible and conscious use of materials can yield environmental benefits in buildings. In particular, it discusses how material properties related to thermal and hygroscopic mass can be utilized for achieving energy efficiency and good indoor air quality, and how these gains can be included into the context of life cycle assessment (LCA). A case study investigates and compares carbon impacts related to three design concepts for an exterior wall: (A) concrete/rock wool; (B) wood studs/wood fiber; and (C) wood studs/hemp lime. The thermal performance of concepts B and C are modeled to comply with concept A regarding both thermal transmittance (U-value) and dynamic heat flow (Q(24h)) using the design tool WUFI Pro. An environmental cost-benefit analysis is then accomplished in four steps, regarding (1) manufacturing and transport loads, (2) carbon sequestration in plant-based materials and recarbonation in concrete/lime, and (3 and 4) potentially reduced operational energy consumption caused by heat and moisture buffering. The input data are based on suggested values and effects found in the literature. The summarized results show that wall A has the highest embodied carbon and the lowest carbon storage and recarbonation effects, whereas wall C2 has the lowest embodied carbon and the highest carbon storage and recarbonation effects. Regarding buffering effects, wall A has the highest potential for thermal buffering, whereas wall C has the highest potential for moisture buffering.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a quantitative tool used to evaluate the environmental impacts of products or processes. With respect to buildings, LCA can be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of an entire building's life cycle. Currently LCA in the building area is used in a limited capacity, primarily to select building products. In order to determine the causality for the lack of whole-building LCAs, focus groups with members of the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) communities were held. This article investigates the current level of knowledge of LCA in the AEC community and then discusses the benefits and barriers to the practice of LCA. In summary, the goal of the research was to identify why LCA is not used to its fullest potential in a whole-building LCA. In an open forum and moderated setting, focus group participants were asked individually to self-identify their experience with LCA, a brief education session on LCA was held, and then benefits and barriers to LCA were discussed. The focus group sessions were transcribed and systematically coded by social researchers in order to analyze the results. Hybrid flow and radar charts were developed. From the focus group results, the most important benefit to LCA was provides information about environmental impacts. The results did not identify a prominent barrier; however, building-related metrics were ascertained to be one of the more crucial barriers. The benefits and barriers classified by this analysis will be utilized to develop a subsequent online survey to further understand the LCA and AEC community.As compost use in agriculture increases, there is an urgent need to evaluate the specific environmental benefits and impacts as compared with other types of fertilizers and soil amendments. While the environmental impacts associated with compost production have been successfully assessed in previous studies, the assessment of the benefits of compost on plant and soil has been only partially included in few published works. In the present study, we reviewed the recent progresses made in the quantification of the positive effects associated to biowaste compost use on land by using life cycle assessment (LCA). A total of nine environmental benefits were identified in an extensive literature review and quantitative figures for each benefit were drawn and classified into short-, mid-, and long-term. The major findings are the following: (1) for nutrient supply and carbon sequestration, the review showed that both quantification and impact assessment could be performed, meaning that these two benefits should be regularly included in LCA studies. (2) For pest and disease suppression, soil workability, biodiversity, crop nutritional quality, and crop yield, although the benefits were proved, quantitative figures could not be provided, either because of lack of data or because the benefits were highly variable and dependent on specific local conditions. (3) The benefits on soil erosion and soil moisture could be quantitatively addressed, but suitable impact assessment methodologies were not available. (4) Weed suppression was not proved. Different research efforts are required for a full assessment of the benefits, apart from nutrient supply and carbon sequestration; additional impact categories-dealing with phosphorus resources, biodiversity, soil losses, and water depletion-may be needed for a comprehensive assessment of compost application. Several of the natural mechanisms identified and the LCA procedures discussed in the paper could be extensible to other organic fertilizers and compost from other feedstocks.In the context of current efforts to achieve a uniform standardization to determine the carbon footprint this article deals with its suitability for the assessment of ecological construction. The carbon footprint represents an LCA, which only covers the impact category global warming potential. Methods are described and used to demonstrate the ecological and macroeconomic importance of the impact category global warming potential compared to other impact categories of LCA. In addition, the impacts of a one-dimensional consideration by the carbon footprint are illustrated by an exemplary residential building. Statements are made in relation to the adequacy of the carbon footprint as a headline indicator and its reliability.Application of underbody sealants is a part of the vehicle painting process. The air of this process contains solvents, which are typically eliminated using thermal afterburner treatment. Based on life cycle considerations, the present study deals with the question whether the reduction of solvent emissions by burning of natural gas is reasonable from an environmental point of view. Based on some examples, the study demonstrates that environmental impacts are not shifted from reduced solvent emission towards increased CO2 emissions; rather, the reduction of solvent emissions is a welcome side effect when generating heat which is needed in the painting process anyway. The method of life cycle consideration is applicable on parts of the vehicle painting process.We suggest a 2D-plot representation combined with life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and life cycle cost for various energy conversion technologies. In general, life cycle assessment (LCA) not only analyzes at the use phase of a specific technology, but also covers widely related processes of before and after its use. We use life cycle GHG emissions and life cycle cost (LCC) to compare the energy conversion process for eight resources such as coal, natural gas, nuclear power, hydro power, geothermal power, wind power, solar thermal power, and solar photovoltaic (PV) power based on the reported LCA and LCC data. Among the eight sources, solar PV and nuclear power exhibit the highest and the lowest LCCs, respectively. On the other hand, coal and wind power locate the highest and the lowest life cycle GHG emissions. In addition, we used the 2D plot to show the life cycle performance of GHG emissions and LCCs simultaneously and realized a correlation that life cycle GHG emission is largely inversely proportional to the corresponding LCCs. It means that an expensive energy source with high LCC tends to have low life cycle GHG emissions, or is environmental friendly. For future study, we will measure the technological maturity of the energy sources to determine the direction of the specific technology development based on the 2D plot of LCCs versus life cycle GHG emissions.A sustainable national policy on waste electronic and electrical equipment reuse has to ensure an integrated environmental economic and social approach. In this paper, a quantitative model is developed that permits a comparative analysis of re-use and non-re-use scenarios from an environmental and economic perspective. The model demonstrates the importance of considering user consumption profiles and the changing national electricity generation portfolio in determining the best end-of-life strategy, whether it should be reuse or recycling. A case study of Ireland is used to demonstrate the model. From a social perspective, qualitative aspects of reuse, such as the job creation potential and the impact on prosperity for low income families, are also considered. Reuse of white goods, if conducted through social enterprises, will create more employment than an equivalent amount of recycling for those most vulnerable to unemployment. Any environmental and social dividends from re-use can be realized only in the context of an economically sustainable system. This would include such factors as a secure supply of suitable equipment, a competitive cost base and sufficient revenues from sales and other sources in order for the business to survive. In an attempt to examine whether a white goods re-use program could possibly operate in a competitive manner with new appliances, this study has examined examples of comparable businesses operating in the EU as well as interpreting data on consumer demand.Landfilling is the most common and cost-effective waste disposal method, and it is widely applied throughout the world. In developing countries in Asia there is currently a trend towards constructing sanitary landfills with gas recovery systems, not only as a solution to the waste problem and the associated local environmental pollution, but also to generate revenues through carbon markets and from the sale of electricity. This article presents a quantitative assessment of climate co-benefits from landfill gas (LFG) to energy projects, based on the case of Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, Thailand. Life cycle assessment was used for estimating net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, considering the whole lifespan of the landfill. The assessment found that the total GHG mitigation of the Bangkok project would be 471,763 tonnes (t) of carbon dioxide (CO2)-equivalents (eq) over its 10-year LFG recovery period. This amount is equivalent to only 12% of the methane (CH4) generated over the whole lifespan of the landfill. An alternative scenario was devised to analyse possible improvement options for GHG mitigation through LFG-to-energy recovery projects. This scenario assumes that LFG recovery would commence in the second year of landfill operation and gas extraction continues throughout the 20-year peak production period. In this scenario, GHG mitigation potential amounted to 1,639,450 tCO(2)-eq during the 20-year project period, which is equivalent to 43% of the CH4 generated throughout the life cycle. The results indicate that with careful planning, there is a high potential for improving the efficiency of existing LFG recovery projects which would enhance climate co-benefits, as well as economic benefits. However, the study also shows that even improved gas recovery systems have fairly low recovery rates and, in consequence, that emissions of GHG from such landfills sites are still considerable.Spatially explicit characterization factors (CFs) for tropospheric ozone damage on natural vegetation caused by anthropogenic NOx and NMVOC emissions are presented for 65 European regions. The CFs were defined as the area-integrated increase in the potentially affected fraction (PAF) of trees and grassland species due to a change in emission of NOx and NMVOCs. The CF consists of a Fate Factor, quantifying the relationship between the emission of precursor substances and ozone exposure, and an area-integrated Effect Factor, quantifying the relationship between ozone exposure and the damage to natural vegetation. The relationships describing the ecological effects of a pollutant were based on a lognormal relationship between the PAF and ground level ozone concentration. We found higher CFs for NOx compared to NMVOC, and these were largest in south European regions. Furthermore, we found that both the fate factor and effect factor contribute to the spatial differences found in the CFs. Our study shows that effects caused by ozone exposure from NOx emissions are larger than those of acidification caused by NOx, indicating the importance of including ozone effects to natural vegetation in life cycle assessment studies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Vietnam, most of municipal solid waste (MSW) is disposed of at open dumping and landfill sites, and the methane gas from waste is the un-ignorable source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. It is indispensable to explore the possibility for GHG mitigation in MSW management. The objective of this study was to estimate alternative waste treatment practices towards the GHG emission mitigation, energy consumption and generation, reduction of landfill volume, and various benefits for proposing the appropriate selection by scenario analyses for representative Vietnam's cities. Impacts were calculated by utilizing life cycle assessment (LCA) method. A literature review survey on the current applicability of LCA database for assessing impacts from waste sector in developing countries, especially for Vietnam, was carried out. This study assessed the contribution of alternative solid waste treatment practices. The result showed that, except investment and operation costs, incineration with energy recovery seems the suitable alternative for treating waste from representative cities of Vietnam according to reduction of GHG emission and waste burden to landfill sites and energy recovery and generation. Besides, MSW composition was identified as an important factor directly influencing to impacts as well as other products and benefits of waste treatment alternatives. Reliable data on waste composition are indispensable for assessing to choose, improve, or plan the waste treatment practices towards sustainable development.Agricultural specialists, particularly animal scientists, tend to use process-based life-cycle assessments (LCA), which describe the production system as a series of processes, to study the environmental impact of milk production based on their experimental data. Another approach called input-output (I-O) based LCA, which uses the economic transaction tables and national environmental accounts to determine the environmental impact triggered by final demand of milk production, is often less used due to data scarcity and higher uncertainty. In the current paper, process-based and I-O-based LCA models were developed to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) and acidifying emissions from pasture-based milk production in Ireland. Process-based LCA found 1338.3 kg CO2 eq and 14.4 kg SO2 eq/t energy-corrected milk (ECM), and revealed details related to the farm management. The I-O based LCA found 1003.1 kg CO2 eq and 12.7 kg SO2 eq/tonne ECM and suggested that the agriculture, forestry and fishery (AFF) sector itself was largely responsible for the environmental impact of AFF products, rather than economic interaction with other sectors. The process-based LCA was found to be suitable for developing farm-scale sustainability strategies if variation of tactics across farms is provided, while the I-O based LCA offered potential sustainability guidance at the national scale. Further work is required to incorporate foreign production into the I-Otable to account fully for imported goods and services. A detailed disaggregation within the AFF sector is also needed to gain a better understanding of the environmental sustainability of agricultural commodities. The present paper thus provides interesting results for the dairy industry, dairy researchers and LCA practitioners on further understanding of the environmental impact of milk production.In Ireland, the largest contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is agriculture. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the impact of stocking intensities of beef cattle production systems on technical and economic performance and GHG emissions. A bioeconomic model of Irish suckler beef production systems was used to generate scenarios and to evaluate their technical and economic performance. To model the impact of each scenario onGHGemissions, the output of the bioeconomic model was used as an inventory analysis in a life-cycle assessment model and various GHG emission factors were integrated with the production profile. All the estimated GHG emissions were converted to their 100-year global warming potential carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e). The scenarios modelled were bull/heifer and steer/heifer suckler beef production systems at varying stocking intensities. According to policy constraints, stocking intensities were based on the excretion of organic nitrogen (N), which varied depending on animal category. Stocking intensity was increased by increasing fertilizer N application rates. Carcass output and profitability increased with increasing stocking intensity. At a stocking intensity of 150 kg N/ha total emissions were lowest when expressed per kg of beef carcass (20.1 kg CO(2)e/kg beef) and per hectare (9.2 tCO(2)e/ha) in the bull/heifer system. Enteric fermentation was the greatest source of GHG emissions and ranged from 0.49 to 0.47 of total emissions with increasing stocking intensity for both production systems. The current study shows that increasing stocking intensity via increased fertilizer Napplication rates leads to increased profitability on beef farms with only modest increases in GHG emissions.Biomass derived from energy crops should generate the lowest possible emission into the environment in order to meet the requirements for renewables. This paper calls for the need to submit emission generated by willow crops in two harvesting rotations, most popular in Poland and worldwide, that is one-year and three-year systems, to an examination with the life cycle assessment method (LCA). The life cycle assessment of the willow crop technologies indicated that the impact of biomass production on the environment in a three-year harvesting cycle is weaker in all the categories than that of an annual harvesting cycle. The research proved that it is impossible to obtain zero emission of greenhouse gases even when the biomass production output is very extensive, mainly because of the high equivalent emission of carbon dioxide from production and use of mineral fertilizers.The Green Metallurgy Project, a LIFE+ project co-financed by the European Union Commission, has now been completed. The purpose of the Green Metallurgy Project was to establish and assess a preindustrial process capable of using nanostructured-based high-performance Mg-Zn(Y) magnesium alloys and fully recycled eco-magnesium alloys. In this work, the Consortium presents the final outcome and verification of the completed prototype construction. To compare upstream cradle-to-grave footprints when ternary nanostructured Mg-Y-Zn alloys or recycled eco-magnesium chips are produced during the process cycle using the same equipment, a life cycle analysis was completed following the ISO 14040 methodology. During tests to fine tune the prototype machinery and compare the quality of semifinished bars produced using the scaled up system, the Buhler team produced interesting and significant results. Their tests showed the ternary Mg-Y-Zn magnesium alloys to have a highest specific strength over 6000 series wrought aluminum alloys usually employed in automotive components.Life-cycle assessment is basically the assessment of a product from the cradle to the grave. Ideally, a product is recycled after its useful life is complete and the end-of-life of the first life cycle leads to the beginning of a new product system. For the end-of-life of magnesium vehicle parts, there are various possible paths to a second life cycle. When magnesium parts are dismantled or magnesium is separated after shredding, the resulting magnesium alloys can be used for secondary, noncritical applications. However, the typical case for magnesium components is that the magnesium postconsumer scrap ends up in the nonferrous metals fraction that consists primarily of aluminum, magnesium, and heavy metals. Today, aluminum is typically fed into a second life cycle as a secondary alloy, and magnesium becomes part of the aluminum cycle as an alloy addition. In this article, we evaluate the environmental effects of using magnesium in the aluminum cycle. We also assess the influence of end-of-life scenarios on the overall environmental impact of a component's life cycle. The primary focus of our analysis is the evaluation of the effects of magnesium vehicle components on greenhouse gas emissions.The use of rare earth metals (REMs) for new applications in renewable and communication technologies has increased concern about future supply as well as environmental burdens associated with the extraction, use, and disposal (losses) of these metals. Although there are several reports describing and quantifying the production and use of REM, there is still a lack of quantitative data about the material and energy requirements for their extraction and refining. Such information remains difficult to acquire as China is still supplying over 95% of the world REM supply. This article attempts to estimate the material and energy requirements for the production of REM based on the theoretical chemical reactions and thermodynamics. The results show the material and energy requirement varies greatly depending on the type of mineral ore, production facility, and beneficiation process selected. They also show that the greatest loss occurs during mining (25-50%) and beneficiation (10-30%) of RE minerals. We hope that the material and energy balances presented in this article will be of use in life cycle analysis, resource accounting, and other industrial ecology tools used to quantify the environmental consequences of meeting REM demand for new technology products.As botanicals and many medicinal plants can be processed to become a food or a health supplement, a drug or cosmetics, chemical standardization is important for their quality control. Hence, the selection of appropriate extraction technologies and analytical techniques is required to provide a solvent-free solution for the chemical standardization of botanicals and herbal preparations. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The dairy sector contributes to climate change through emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), via mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). Replacing grass silage with maize silage is a feeding strategy to reduce enteric CH4 emission. The effect of this strategy on GHG emissions can be analyzed at three different levels: animal, farm, and chain level. The level of analysis might affect results and conclusions, because the strategy affects not only enteric CH4 emissions at animal level, but also other GHG emissions at farm and chain levels. The objective of this study was to determine if the level of analysis influences conclusions about the GHG reduction potential of increasing maize silage at the expense of grass and grass silage in a dairy cow's diet. First, we used a linear programming (LP, maximizing labor income) dairy farm model to define a typical Dutch dairy farm on sandy soils without a predefined feeding strategy (i.e. reference situation). Second, we combined mechanistic modeling of enteric fermentation and life cycle assessment to quantify GHG emissions at all three levels. Third, continuing from the diet derived in the reference situation, maize silage was increased by 1 kg DM per cow per day at the expense of grass (summer), or grass silage (winter). Next, the dairy farm model was used again to determine a new optimal farm plan including the feeding strategy, and GHGs were quantified again at the three levels. Finally, we compared GHG emissions at the different levels between the reference situation and the situation including the feeding strategy. We performed this analysis for a farm with an average intensity (13,430 kg milk/ha) and for a more intensive farm (14,788 kg milk/ha). Results show that the level of analysis strongly influences results and conclusions. At animal level, the strategy reduced annual emissions by 12.8 kg CO(2)e per ton of fat-and-protein-corrected-milk (FPCM). Analysis at farm and chain level revealed first of all that the strategy is not feasible on the farm with an average intensity because this farm cannot reduce its grassland area because of compliance with the EU derogation regulation (a minimum of 70% grassland). This is reality for many Dutch dairy farms with an intensity up to the average. For the more intensive farm, that can reduce its area of grassland, annual emissions reduced by 17.8 kg CO(2)e per ton FPCM at farm level, and 20.9 kg CO(2)e per ton FPCM at chain level. Ploughing grassland into maize land, however, resulted in non-recurrent emissions of 913 kg CO(2)e per ton FPCM. At farm and chain levels, therefore, the strategy does not immediately reduce GHG emissions as opposed to what results at animal level may suggest; at chain level it takes 44 years before annual emission reduction has paid off emissions from land use change. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The statistical significance of the effects of including different protein sources in poultry diets on the environmental impacts Global Warming Potential (GWP), Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Acidification Potential (AP) of typical UK broiler meat and egg production systems was quantified using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method combined with an uncertainty analysis. The broiler and layer diets compared in the study were either standard soya-based, or alternative diets based on European-grown protein crops, including field beans, field peas, sunflower meal and whole rapeseed. Different methods for accounting for land use change (LUC) in feed crop production were applied, including (1) a weighted average of "new" and "mature" agricultural land used for soya production ("best estimate" scenario), (2) assuming no LUC in the production of soya used in these diets ("sustainable soya" scenario) and (3) including indirect LUC for all arable crop production ("top-down" scenario). Monte Carlo simulations were used to quantify uncertainties in predicted impacts and to perform statistical comparisons between the effects of different diet compositions. The results showed that when included at relatively high levels in the diets (10-30% by mass), peas, beans and rapeseed could slightly reduce the simulated mean value of GWP (up to 12%) of broiler meat and egg production. However, when uncertainties in the data were taken into account, these reductions were not statistically significant. Furthermore, the reduction in GWP strongly depended on the method of LUC accounting applied in the analysis. With the "sustainable soya" and "top-down" scenarios, only small, non-significant differences between the different diets were found. In the case of EP, only small non-significant changes could be achieved with the alternative protein sources. For AP, a significant reduction of more than 20% could be achieved if the crude protein content of the broiler diet was reduced by using peas in combination with pure amino acids. This study demonstrates the importance of a holistic approach, coupled with Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis, to evaluate the environmental impacts of livestock systems. It takes into account the environmental burdens related, for example, to feed production and transport and differences in emissions from housing and the end use of the manure. Furthermore, due to the systematic uncertainty analysis, the statistical significance of the effects of different feeding scenarios can now be evaluated. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To evaluate microalgae production in large scale open ponds under different climatologic conditions, a model-based framework is used to study the effect of light conditions, water temperature and reactor design on trends in algae productivity. Scenario analyses have been done for two algae species using measured weather data of the Netherlands and Algeria. The effects of temperature control, photo-inhibition and using monthly or yearly fixed biomass concentrations are estimated by a sensitivity analysis. The calculation-based results show that climate conditions such as solar irradiation and temperature dynamics play an important role in open raceway ponds. In moderate climate zones low and high temperatures over a season suppress growth. At high latitudes this effect is important as light levels vary much during the day and between seasons. Optimal biomass concentrations in ponds depend on location, pond depth and algae species. Pond design, location and algae species interact and productivity cannot be based solely on general or assumed efficiencies. It is essential to select algae species that have a suitable growth rate, light absorption coefficient and the ability to grow over a broad temperature range. The presented approach gives a framework to validate specific cultivation systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All All rights reserved.The development of a new stabilised rammed earth (SRE) with improved thermal properties is the main objective of this research. Three types.of SRE were doped with microencapsulated PCM and the compressive strength response was optimized with a design of experiments (DoE). The optimums were thermally analysed and were environmentally evaluated by a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The results showed an improvement of thermal properties but the impact points of LCA increase considerably due to the microencapsulated PCM. The use of macroencapsulated PCM and a proper selection of PCM are mandatory to improve the LCA results in future research. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In spite of the advanced research in automotive technology, and the improvement of fuels, the road transport sector continues to be an environmental concern, since the increase in transport demand is offsetting the effects of these technological improvements. Therefore, this poses the following question: what combination of technology and fuel is more efficient in terms of energy consumption and green house gas (GHG) emissions? To fully address this question it is necessary to carry out a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper presents a global LCA of 4 buses that run on the following fuel types and technologies: (1) Fuel Cell- Hybrid Bus, (2) Hybrid Diesel-Electric Bus (series configuration), (3) Battery Electric Bus and (4) Combustion Ignition Engine Bus. The impact categories assessed are: primary energy consumption, fossil energy and GHG emissions. Among the principal results, we can conclude that the Global LCA of buses (3) and (1) (which are the more sensitive pathways to the electricity mix variation) have for the 2008-2030 period a room for improvement of 25.62% and 28.16% in terms of efficiency of fossil energy consumption and a potential GHG emission reduction of 28.70% and 30.88% respectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The possibility of economically deriving fuel from cultivating algae biomass is an attractive addition to the range of measures to relieve the current reliance on fossil fuels. Algae biofuels avoid some of the previous drawbacks associated with crop-based biofuels as the algae do not compete with food crops. The favourable growing conditions found in many developing countries has led to a great deal of speculation about their potentials for reducing oil imports, stimulating rural economies, and even tackling hunger and poverty. By reviewing the status of this technology we suggest that the large uncertainties make it currently unsuitable as a priority for many developing countries. Using bibliometric and patent data analysis, we indicate that many developing countries lack the human capital to develop their own algae industry or adequately prepare policies to support imported technology. Also, we discuss the potential of modern biotechnology, especially genetic modification (GM) to produce new algal strains that are easier to harvest and yield more oil. Controversy surrounding the use of GM and weak biosafety regulatory system represents a significant challenge to adoption of GM technology in developing countries. A range of policy measures are also suggested to ensure that future progress in algae biofuels can contribute to sustainable development. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study uses life cycle assessment methodology to quantify the energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and water use of processed tomato products grown, processed, and consumed within the Great Lakes region of the United States, and tomato products produced in California and then shipped to the Great Lakes region for consumption. The purpose is to assess the potential for regional food systems to reduce selected environmental impacts, particularly the energy and GHG footprints, of consumer-ready, processed food products, when compared to national-scale food systems in which consumer products are shipped long distances. The study also examines the role of different types of food processing in influencing life cycle energy use, water use, and emissions. Our results indicate that California-produced conventional and organic tomato paste and canned diced tomatoes are almost equivalent in energy use and GHG emissions to regionally produced and consumed products, but use of developed water resources is significantly higher for California-grown products. California tomato production benefits from higher per hectare yields and soil amendments with lower carbon dioxide emissions. These efficiencies substantially offset the added energy use and GHG emissions associated with long-distance shipment of products to the Great Lakes region, as long as shipments are made by rail rather than by truck. Paste, the more processed and concentrated product evaluated, amplifies any environmental advantages or disadvantages accrued in the field production stage, due to its raw tomato to finished product ratio of 6:1, suggesting that comparative regional advantage can play a role in lowering life cycle environmental impacts of highly condensed foods shipped long distances. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As increasing number of nations, industries, and individuals are involved in the carbon mitigation initiative, it becomes significant to answer what amount of carbon emissions social entities are responsible for, especially from electricity service. In this paper, a carbon flow tracing method is presented to determine carbon emissions obligation from electricity consumption. The method traces energy sources of electricity consumption across the electricity network to determine the indirect carbon emissions caused. From a "generation-to-consumption" perspective, the transmission characteristic of electricity supply and locational energy mix are reflected. The method is employed to address two important issues uniformly, i.e., carbon accounting at the regional level and locational carbon intensity assessment at the user level, respectively. Test results from two examples show that the method is a preferable choice to solve the two problems. Additionally, the method may contribute to carbon reduction cooperation and end user participation in carbon mitigation.The development and use of footprint methodologies for environmental assessment are increasingly important for both the scientific and political communities. Starting from the ecological footprint, developed at the beginning of the 1990s, several other footprints were defined, e.g., carbon and water footprint. These footprintseven though based on a different meaning of footprintintegrate life cycle thinking, and focus on some challenging environmental impacts including resource consumption, CO2 emission leading to climate change, and water consumption. However, they usually neglect relevant sources of impacts, as those related to the production and use of chemicals. This article presents and discusses the need and relevance of developing a methodology for assessing the chemical footprint, coupling a life cycle-based approach with methodologies developed in other contexts, such as ERA and sustainability science. Furthermore, different concepts underpin existing footprint and this could be the case also of chemical footprint. At least 2 different approaches and steps to chemical footprint could be envisaged, applicable at the micro- as well as at the meso- and macroscale. The first step (step 1) is related to the account of chemicals use and emissions along the life cycle of a product, sector, or entire economy, to assess potential impacts on ecosystems and human health. The second step (step 2) aims at assessing to which extent actual emission of chemicals harm the ecosystems above their capability to recover (carrying capacity of the system). The latter step might contribute to the wide discussion on planetary boundaries for chemical pollution: the thresholds that should not be surpassed to guarantee a sustainable use of chemicals from an environmental safety perspective. The definition of what the planetary boundaries for chemical pollution are and how the boundaries should be identified is an on-going scientific challenge for ecotoxicology and ecology. In this article, we present a case study at the macroscale for the European Union, in which the chemical footprint according to step 1 is calculated for the year 2005. A proposal for extending this approach toward step 2 is presented and discussed, complemented by a discussion on the challenges and the use of appropriate methodologies for assessing chemical footprints to stimulate further research and discussion on the topic. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2013;9:623-632. (c) 2013 SETACIt is only recently that life cycle-based indicators have been used to evaluate products from a water use impact perspective. The applicability of some of these methods has been primarily demonstrated on agricultural materials or products, because irrigation requirements in food production can be water-intensive. In view of an increasing interest on life cycle-based water indicators from different products, we ran a study on a hand dishwashing product. A number of water assessment methods were applied with the purpose of identifying both product improvement opportunities, as well as understanding the potential for underlying database and methodological improvements. The study covered the entire life cycle of the product and focused on environmental issues related to water use, looking in-depth at inventory, midpoint, and endpoint methods. Traditional water emission driven methods, such as freshwater eutrophication, were excluded from the analysis. The use of a single formula with the same global supply chain, manufactured in 1 location was evaluated in 2 countries with different water scarcity conditions. The study shows differences ranging up to 4 orders in magnitude for indicators with similar units associated with different water use types (inventory methods) and different cause-effect chain models (midpoint and endpoint impact categories). No uncertainty information was available on the impact assessment methods, whereas uncertainty from stochastic variability was not available at the time of study. For the majority of the indicators studied, the contribution from the consumer use stage is the most important (>90%), driven by both direct water use (dishwashing process) as well as indirect water use (electricity generation to heat the water). Creating consumer awareness on how the product is used, particularly in water-scarce areas, is the largest improvement opportunity for a hand dishwashing product. However, spatial differentiation in the inventory and impact assessment model may lead to very different results for the product used under exactly the same consumer use conditions, making the communication of results a real challenge. From a practitioner's perspective, the data collection step in relation to the goal and scope of the study sets high requirements for both foreground and background data. In particular, databases covering a broad spectrum of inventory data with spatially differentiated water use information are lacking. For some impact methods, it is unknown as to whether or not characterization factors should be spatially differentiated, which creates uncertainty in their interpretation and applicability. Finally, broad application of life cycle-based water assessment will require further development of commercial life cycle assessment software. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2013;9:633-644. (c) 2013 SETACThis study targeted 9 different pork pates, produced with pork from different meat production systems (conventional, organic, and other quality certifications). Besides greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the study also included a detailed analysis of product nutrition. Results show that the GHG emissions range from 200g CO(2)e per 100g of product for conventional pork pates and 330g CO(2)e per 100g for organic pork pates. Results for organic pates are an indirect consequence of the lower productivity of swine feed ingredients. However, if the reference flow unit is nutritional indicator (e.g., calories, protein) instead of 100g of product, results can be inverted. This fact highlights the difficulty of choosing a functional unit for studies on food products. The function of a food product is to provide quality nutrition, but because there are many different nutritional indicators, life cycle assessment practitioners normally use simple comparisons between amounts. This issue together with the choice of emissions allocation method between pork parts are the main sources of uncertainty. Also, the life cycle of pork production is the main hotspot in the C footprint, accounting for more than 80% of the total emissions. Energy spent for processing and packaging, the only life cycle step that the producer controls directly, accounts for less than 10% of the impact. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2013;9:645-651. (c) 2013 SETACAs understanding of anthropogenic effects on the environment grows, interest in developing more sustainable materials, such as biobased composites, is increasing. It is commonly assumed that biobased composites have fewer environmental impacts than petroleum based materials. However, life cycle assessments that account for the potential environmental benefits of biobased feedstocks and that account for differences in material mechanical properties and long-term service life performance are not frequently conducted. In this research, the performance of biobased composites under sustained loading (creep) is used to characterize their long-term properties and ultimate service life for use in life cycle analyses. Life cycle impacts are presented using five different functional units, some incorporating mechanical properties and creep behavior to provide service-life predictions of biobased composites and petroleum based materials in a residential decking and a residential ceiling application. When compared to analyses that use functional units that do not incorporate long-term mechanical performance and service life estimates, significant differences in life cycle environmental impacts are identified.Reducing electricity consumption in Irish milk production is a topical issue for 2 reasons. First, the introduction of a dynamic electricity pricing system, with peak and off-peak prices, will be a reality for 80% of electricity consumers by 2020. The proposed pricing schedule intends to discourage energy consumption during peak periods (i.e., when electricity demand on the national grid is high) and to incentivize energy consumption during off-peak periods. If farmers, for example, carry out their evening milking during the peak period, energy costs may increase, which would affect farm profitability. Second, electricity consumption is identified in contributing to about 25% of energy use along the life cycle of pasture-based milk. The objectives of this study, therefore, were to document electricity use per kilogram of milk sold and to identify strategies that reduce its overall use while maximizing its use in off-peak periods (currently from 0000 to 0900 h). We assessed, therefore, average daily and seasonal trends in electricity consumption on 22 Irish dairy farms, through detailed auditing of electricity-consuming processes. To determine the potential of identified strategies to save energy, we also assessed total energy use of Irish milk, which is the sum of the direct (i.e., energy use on farm) and indirect energy use (i.e., energy needed to produce farm inputs). On average, a total of 31.73 MJ was required to produce 1 kg of milk solids, of which 20% was direct and 80% was indirect energy use. Electricity accounted for 60% of the direct energy use, and mainly resulted from milk cooling (31%), water heating (23%), and milking (20%). Analysis of trends in electricity consumption revealed that 62% of daily electricity was used at peak periods. Electricity use on Irish dairy farms, therefore, is substantial and centered around milk harvesting. To improve the competitiveness of milk production in a dynamic electricity pricing environment, therefore, management changes and technologies are required that decouple energy use during milking processes from peak periods.The following article is an analysis of designed processes of the life cycle of the most popular fuel for Diesel engines: diesel oil. This fuel is produced from petroleum, which is a non-renewable source of energy. Analysis was carried out with the assumptions of Life Cycle Assessment, which is a tool to test the environmental impact of the product. The life cycle of diesel was divided into five unit processes: petroleum extraction, transport of petroleum to the refinery, refining petroleum to diesel, transport of diesel to the recipient and utilization of delivered fuel by transport company. For every process the energy consumption and emission of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulphursulphur oxides was calculated, with assumption of probable data, that could occur in real processes. The analysis has shown, that the process of refining petroleum is highly pollution-intensive. Also the combustion of diesel generates a significant amount of pollutants' emission, which is why it is necessary to develop technologies that could contribute to the reduction of emission.The majority of the ecological effects of a company and its products are determined in the early stages of design. Since Axiomatic Design (AD) may be helpful in guiding early design decisions, we develop an eco-design methodology based on AD called eAD(+). We identify hundreds of factors that are relevant for eco-design from stakeholders, the literature and company websites. These are condensed into 94 ecological customer needs (eCNs). From these we identify about 20 ecological functional requirements (eFRs) that can be used at the enterprise and product/system level. We next consider how the eCNs, eFRs and ecological metrics such as life cycle assessment (LCA) can be included in AD. To avoid issues related to functional independence, which is essential in AD, we consider LCA as a selection criterion. LCA can be naturally included in the AD design matrix by appending additional rows but not additional columns. Several examples using eAD(+) are considered to demonstrate how decoupling arises in eco-design and how to include LCA. It is our hope that these steps towards a general extension of AD for eco-design will help designers seeking to improve the ecological performance of their company and the products/systems it provides.Electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) has become one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, and many countries have established e-waste treatment enterprises to solve their e-waste problems. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was undertaken to quantitatively investigate the environmental impacts of an e-waste treatment enterprise in China. The LCA is constructed by SimaPro software version 7.2 and expressed with the Eco-indicator 99 life cycle impact assessment method. For a sensitivity analysis of the overall LCA results, the so-called CML method is used in order to estimate the influence of the choice of the assessment method on the result. According to the survey data, discarded TV sets accounted for the highest proportion of e-waste treated in the enterprise in 2010. The e-waste treatment had little environmental impact, and at the same time large environmental benefits can be achieved mainly due to the recycled resources and reuse of some components. Based on the research results, it can be seen that recycled metal, especially copper, would be of more importance for environmental benefits. Relevant results and data from this study could provide decision support to enterprise managers and government sectors.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out by SimaPro 7.3 to study the environmental impact of a lab-scale batch subcritical water decomposition operation for a kilogram of Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) waste treatment in this study, a proven process for the decomposition of PFOS pollutants with high concentration. This LCA focuses on not only the main environmental factors from emissions of toxic pollutants, but also the influence from technical characteristics of the iron-induced subcritical water technology including energy and substances consumption during the subcritical water decomposition treatment process. The IMPACT 2002+ environmental model was used to evaluate the 15 midpoint and 4 end-point environmental damages. It was found that the energy consumption to sustain the high temperature (350 A degrees C) and high pressure (23 MPa) in the subcritical water process contributes 99.8 % of the damages. The total negative impact of the SCWD process for 1 kg of PFOS waste treatment to human health, ecological quality, climate change and resources amounts to 1.11 x 10(-3), 8.43 x 10(-5), 9.76 x 10(-4), 9.05 x 10(-4) Pt, respectively. And the improvement of energy efficiency and catalytic effectiveness are two important factors to reduce the environmental impact from the SCWD process for the treatment of PFOS waste.The last decades, lowering the ecological impact of buildings is receiving increased attention by researchers, policy-makers and companies. Mostly the focus is on reducing energy consumption and the use of eco-friendly materials, but the concept of life-cycle thinking is growing in importance. This paper tries to give an overview of the current situation of Life cycle assessment (LCA) in the construction industry, both of regulatory developments and academic case studies. After a short history of LCA, the focus is on LCA methodology, new standards and frameworks and an extensive selection of recent case studies. Despite some inherent limitations of LCA as an analytic tool and fundamental differences between the individual cases, still some common trends can be indicated. In standard buildings, the use phase contributes up to 90% of the total environmental burdens, mainly due to heating and/or cooling. Due to regulations, new buildings become more energy efficient, and thereby other phases of the life cycle gain in importance e.g., choice of materials, construction, end-of-life and water use. These research topics deserve more attention, together with economic issues, the improvement of data quality and implementation of probability density distributions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The possibility of limiting the global warming is strictly linked to the reduction of GHG emissions. Renewable energy both allows reducing emissions and permits to delay fossil fuel depletion. The anaerobic digestion of animal manure and energy crops is a promising way of reducing GHG emissions. In Italy agricultural biogas production was considerably increased; nowadays there are about 520 agricultural biogas plants. The increasing number of biogas plants, especially of those larger than 500 kW(e) (electrical power), involves a high consumption of energy crops, large transport distances of biomass and digestate and difficulties on thermal energy valorization. In this study the energetic (CED) and environmental (GHG emissions) profiles associated with the production of electricity derived from biogas have been identified. Three biogas plants located in Northern Italy have been analyzed. The study has been carried out considering a cradle-to-grave perspective and thus, special attention has been paid on the feedstock production and biogas production process. The influences on the results taking into account different plant sizes and feeding rate has been assessed in detail. Energy analysis was performed using the Cumulative Energy Demand method (CED). The climate change was calculated for a 100-year time frame based on GHG emissions indicated as CO2 equivalents (eq) and defined by the IPCC (2006). In comparison to the fossil reference system, the electricity production using biogas saves GHG emissions from 0.188 to 1.193 kg CO(2)eq per kWh(e). Electricity supply from biogas can also contribute to a considerable reduction of the use of fossil energy carriers (from -3.97 to 10.08 MJ(fossil), per kWh(e)). The electricity production from biogas has a big potential for energy savings and reduction of GHG emissions. Efficient utilization of the cogenerated heat can substantially improve the GHG balance of electricity production from biogas. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.User costs of a bridge are the costs incurred by the users of the bridge, which result from any construction and/or maintenance activity being performed in the bridge. Typically, these costs encompass the additional time lost due to incurred congestion, the additional costs of vehicle operation and the costs of additional accidents. Usually, such costs are not considered in the procedures leading to the formulation of strategies for bridge construction, maintenance and repair, despite their relevance in comparison with the costs incurred by the agency or owner of the bridge. Moreover, in a life-cycle perspective of a bridge, with a time span over 100 years, the quantification of user costs is affected by a large number of uncertainties. Therefore, it is the purpose of this paper to introduce a life-cycle analysis for the quantification of typical user costs, in a probabilistic approach. For this purpose, the analysis of a motorway bridge in Portugal is performed. The results of the case study demonstrate that user costs can be much more important than costs supported by the concessionaire, in a life-cycle perspective, and thus, a much higher importance should be given to these costs apart from the scientific community.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique to quantify the impacts associated with a product, service or process from cradle-to-grave perspective. Within the field of wastewater treatment (WWT) LCA was first applied in the 1990s. In the pursuit of more environmentally sustainable WWT, it is clear that LCA is a valuable tool to elucidate the broader environmental impacts of design and operation decisions. With growing interest from utilities, practitioners, and researchers in the use of LCA in WWT systems, it is important to make a review of what has been achieved and describe the challenges for the forthcoming years. This work presents a comprehensive review of 45 papers dealing with WWT and LCA. The analysis of the papers showed that within the constraints of the ISO standards, there is variability in the definition of the functional unit and the system boundaries, the selection of the impact assessment methodology and the procedure followed for interpreting the results. The need for stricter adherence to ISO methodological standards to ensure quality and transparency is made clear and emerging challenges for LCA applications in WWT are discussed, including: a paradigm shift from pollutant removal to resource recovery, the adaptation of LCA methodologies to new target compounds, the development of regional factors, the improvement of the data quality and the reduction of uncertainty. Finally, the need for better integration and communication with decision-makers is highlighted. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Eco-certification is widely considered a tool for reducing environmental impacts of aquaculture, but what are the likely environmental outcomes for the world's fastest growing animal-food production sector? This article analyzes a number of eco-certification schemes based on species choice, anticipated share of the global seafood market, size of eligible producers, and targeted environmental impacts. The potential of eco-certification to reduce the negative environmental impacts of aquaculture at scale presently appears uncertain as: (a) certification schemes currently focus on species predominantly consumed in the EU and US, with limited coverage of Asian markets; (b) the share of certified products in the market as currently projected is too low; (c) there is an inequitable and non-uniform applicability of certification across the sector; (d) mechanisms or incentives for improvement among the worst performers are lacking; and (e) there is incomplete coverage of environmental impacts, with biophysical sustainability and ecosystem perspectives generally lacking.Understanding the environmental transformation of multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) is important to their life cycle assessment and potential environmental impacts. We report that a bacterial community is capable of degrading C-14-labeled MWCNTs into (CO2)-C-14 in the presence of an external carbon source via co-metabolism. Multiple intermediate products were detected, and genotypic characterization revealed three possible microbial degraders: Burkholderia kururiensis, Delftia acidovorans, and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. This result suggests that microbe/MWCNTs interaction may impact the long-term fate of MWCNTs. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) study is conducted for open-field (OF) and greenhouse (GH) strawberry cultivation in Guilan province, Iran. The initial data including input materials and energy inputs exercised during production season was collected from 33 greenhouse holders and 77 farmers in the studied region. Data for the production of used inputs were taken from the EcoInvent (R) 2.0 database, and SimaPro software was employed to analyze primary data. Ten impact categories including Abiotic Depletion potential (AD), Acidification potential (AC), Eutrophication potential (EU), Global Warming potential for time horizon 100 years (GW), Ozone Depletion potential (OD), Human Toxicity potential (HT), Freshwater and Marine Aquatic Ecotoxicity potential (FAET and MAET), Terrestrial Ecotoxicity potential (TE), and Photochemical Oxidation potential (PhO) were selected based on CML 2 baseline 2000 V2/world, 1990/characterization method. One ton of produced strawberries was chosen as the functional unit. The evaluations of the study indicated that OF production system in all selected impact categories was more environmentally profitable than GH production system except AC and EU. Based on the results electricity, natural gas and N-based fertilizers in both production stage and application in GH strawberry production produced the most environmental burdens. Moreover, artificial neural networks (ANNs) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) were compared to model environmental indices of strawberry production on the basis of input materials. The results revealed that ANFIS models due to employing fuzzy rules are able to predict ten environmental indices with minimum error and the highest accuracy. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The energy balance of microalgal biodiesel production is rarely considered. Besides, the actual potential of microalgae as triglyceride producers is often overestimated. This work was aimed at investigating these critical aspects using the marine eustigmatophyte Nannochloropsis sp. F&M-M24, a promising oil producing strain, as model organism and the Green Wall Panel as culture system. First, the influence of air-flow rate on volumetric productivity of the microalga was evaluated. At low and medium irradiances, no significant differences in productivity occurred at the three different mixing rates tested, while at high irradiances an increase in the air-flow rate resulted in significantly higher volumetric productivities. These results allow to foresee a strategy of air-flow rate tuning in accordance to radiation, that may lead to substantial energy savings and, consequently, to more favorable energy and economic balances in the cultivation process. Second, the lipid content and fraction distribution of the biomasses produced under nutrient sufficient and nitrogen-starved conditions were analyzed and the neutral lipid fraction was fully characterized. Finally, the alga was grown in bubbled-tubes using a culture medium prepared with an industrial wastewater, to evaluate its ability to use a free of charge source of nutrients, the exploitation of which may improve biomass production economics. (c) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 32: 846-853, 2013Nowadays society compels designers to develop more sustainable products. Ecodesign directs product design towards the goal of reducing environmental impacts. Within Ecodesign, materials selection plays a major role on product cost and environmental performance throughout its life cycle. This paper proposes a comprehensive life cycle framework to support Ecodesign in material selection. Dealing with new materials and technologies in early design stages, process-based models are used to represent the whole life cycle and supply integrated data to assess material alternatives, considering cost and environmental dimensions. An integrated analysis is then proposed to support decision making by mapping the best alternative materials according to the importance given to upstream and downstream life phases and to the environmental impacts. The proposed framework is applied to compare the life cycle performance of injection moulded samples made of four commercial biodegradable polymers with different contents of Thermo Plasticized Starch and PolyLactic Acid and a common fossil based polymer, Polypropylene. Instead of labelling materials just as "green", the need to fully capture all impacts in the whole life cycle was shown. The fossil based polymer is the best economic alternative, but polymers with higher content of Thermo Plasticized Starch have a better environmental performance. However, parts geometry and EoL scenarios play a major role on the life cycle performance of candidate materials. The selection decision is then supported by mapping the alternatives. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wastewater treatment consumes large amounts of energy and materials to comply with discharge standards. At the same time, wastewater contains resources, which can be recovered for secondary uses if treated properly. Hence, the goal of this paper is to review the available resource recovery methods onsite or offsite of municipal wastewater treatment plants. These methods are categorized into three major resource recovery approaches: onsite energy generation, nutrient recycling and water reuse. Under each approach, the review provides the advantages and disadvantages, recovery potentials and current application status of each method, as well as the synthesized results of the life cycle studies for each approach. From a comprehensive literature review, it was found that, in addition to technology improvements, there is also a need to evaluate the applications of the resource recovery methods in wastewater treatment plants from a life cycle perspective. Future research should investigate the integration of the resource recovery methods to explore the combined benefits and potential tradeoffs of these methods under different scales. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The marine environment offers both economic and scientific potential which are relatively untapped from a biotechnological point of view. These environments whilst harsh are ironically fragile and dependent on a harmonious life form balance. Exploitation of natural resources by exhaustive wild harvesting has obvious negative environmental consequences. From a European industry perspective marine organisms are a largely underutilised resource. This is not due to lack of interest but due to a lack of choice the industry faces for cost competitive, sustainable and environmentally conscientious product alternatives. Knowledge of the biotechnological potential of marine organisms together with the development of sustainable systems for their cultivation, processing and utilisation are essential. In 2010, the European Commission recognised this need and funded a collaborative RTD/SME project under the Framework 7-Knowledge Based Bio-Economy (KBBE) Theme 2 Programme 'Sustainable culture of marine microorganisms, algae and/or invertebrates for high value added products'. The scope of that project entitled 'Sustainable Production of Biologically Active Molecules of Marine Based Origin' (BAMMBO) is outlined. Although the Union is a global leader in many technologies, it faces increasing competition from traditional rivals and emerging economies alike and must therefore improve its innovation performance. For this reason innovation is placed at the heart of a European Horizon 2020 Strategy wherein the challenge is to connect economic performance to eco performance. This article provides a synopsis of the research activities of the BAMMBO project as they fit within the wider scope of sustainable environmentally conscientious marine resource exploitation for high-value biomolecules.Our study evaluates life cycle energy use and GHG emissions of lignocellulosic ethanol and bioelectricity use in U.S. light-duty vehicles. The well-to-pump, pump-to-wheel, and vehicle cycle stages are modeled. All ethanol (E85) and bioelectricity pathways have similar life cycle fossil energy use (similar to 100 MJ/100 vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT)) and net GHG emissions (similar to 5 kg CO(2)eq./100 VKT), considerably lower.(65-85%) than those of reference gasoline and U.S. grid-electricity pathways. E85 use in a, hybrid vehicle and bioelectricity use in a fully electric vehicle also have similar life cycle biomass and total energy use (similar to 350 and similar to 450 MJ/100 VKT, respectively); differences in well-to-pump and pump-to-wheel efficiencies can largely offset each other. Our energy use and net GHG emissions results contrast with findings in literature, which report better performance on these metrics for bioelectricity compared to ethanol. The primary source of differences in the studies is related to our development of pathways with comparable vehicle characteristics. Ethanol or vehicle electrification can reduce petroleum use, while bioelectricity may displace nonpetroleum energy sources. Regional characteristics may create conditions under which either ethanol or bioelectricity may be the superior option; however, neither has a clear advantage in terms of GHG emissions or energy use.Adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) would affect the costs and sources of electricity and the United States efficiency requirements for conventional vehicles (CVs). We model EV adoption scenarios in each of six regions of the Eastern Interconnection, containing 70% of the United States population. We develop electricity system optimization models at the multidecade, day-ahead, and hour-ahead time scales, incorporating spatial wind energy modeling, endogenous modeling of CV efficiencies, projections for EV efficiencies, and projected CV and EV costs. We find two means to reduce total consumer expenditure (TCE): (i) controlling charge timing and (ii) unlinking the fuel economy regulations for CVs from EVs. Although EVs provide minimal direct GHG reductions, controlled charging provides load flexibility, lowering the cost of renewable electricity. Without EVs, a 33% renewable electricity standard (RES) would cost $193/vehicle-year more than the reference case (10% RES). Combining a 33% RES, EVs with controlled charging and unlinking would reduce combined electric- and vehicle-sector CO2 emissions by 27% and reduce gasoline consumption by 59% for $40/vehicle-year more than the reference case. Coordinating EV adoption with adoption of controlled charging, unlinked fuel economy regulations, and renewable electricity standards would provide low-cost reductions in emissions and fuel usage.In this paper sustainability analysis (exergy, environmental and economic) and multi-objective optimization for an aromatic plant are provided and interactions between decision variables are discussed. Environmental evaluation shows that the cancer human toxicity and global warming are the most important environmental concerns and the weight of EIs (environmental impacts) are mainly due to process wastes. The optimizations results demonstrate parameters like reactor temperature have a wide range in the optimizations while some variables, such as extraction unit variables have the same value. Utility EI reduction occurred in economic and exergy optimizations rather than environmental optimization so if the environmental concerns of the plant are due to utility consumption, exergy and economic optimizations reduce EI and there is no need for an explicit environmental optimization. While whenever the environmental concerns correspond to process waste, process optimization should be done based on EI itself. Furthermore multi-objective optimizations are carried out and the objectives trade-offs are illustrated through Pareto curves in four scenarios. In the proposed green scenario 3.8% of plant's EI decreases while annual cost rises up to 2%. In the proposed economic scenario annual cost reduces by 3.6% however plant's EI deteriorates up to 13.7%. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the last decades, the tightening of water quality regulations and the increased attention given to trace contaminants in water has been favouring the emergence of novel treatment technologies in order to upgrade or improve conventional water treatment processes. This review surveys recent studies on using combined ion exchange (IX) and pressure driven membrane processes (microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO)) in water treatment. It was shown that interest on these hybrid processes has increased substantially in the last years from both industry and academia due to need for higher efficiency, optimization and cost reduction of water treatment processes. The studies on using of hybrid IX-pressure driven membrane processes for prevention of membrane fouling, selective removal of targeted pollutants, treatment of waste waters and desalination of brackish/sea water have been critically analysed. It was shown that in some cases the combination of ion exchange resins (IXR) with MF, UF, NF and RU has a pronounced synergetic effect in creation of efficient and cost-effective technologies for water treatment. For example, RO-IXR treatment may be regarded as a standard technology for boron removal from RU permeate during seawater desalination. Hybrid IX-membrane processes also seem as promising solutions for prevention of membrane scaling/fouling, reduction of desalination costs, treatment of new types of waste waters such as produced waters from unconventional gas resources. However, further research including long-term operability, feed-specific and economical life-cycle analysis should be conducted to evaluate the feasibility of these hybrid processes for various potential applications in water treatment. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Efficient and clean vehicles are highly demanded in China due to the increasing severe energy and environmental issues. In this study, based on the current (2009) and predicted (2020) situations of China, ICEVs (internal combustion engine vehicles), EVs (electric vehicles) and FCVs (fuel cell vehicles) are assessed through a life cycle analysis in terms of energy consumption, carbon emission, PM2.5 and well-to-wheel efficiency. The results show that FCVs using hydrogen from NG (natural gas) reforming (no electrolysis of water) are suitable for the short-term energy conservation and emission reduction in China, because they are less dependent on the Chinese electricity mix dominated by coal-fired energy. EVs and FCVs using water-electrolyzed hydrogen powered by the Chinese electricity grids may cause serious energy and environmental issues, and the requirements of the electricity mix before the commercialization of these vehicles are estimated. For the vehicle price, ICEVs and EVs (with subsidies) are less expensive than FCVs in 2009, but it remains debated for 2020 with the development of technology and change of policy. This analysis is of significant importance in directing the energy, environment and transportation policy for sustainable development in China. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the life cycle environmental sustainability of micro-wind turbines in the UK in comparison with grid electricity and solar PV (photovoltaics). The results suggests that per kWh electricity generated, the majority of environmental impacts from the wind turbines are lower than from grid electricity, ranging from 26% lower terrestrial toxicity to 92% lower global warming. However, depletion of abiotic elements, fresh-water and human toxicities are 82%, 74% and 53% higher than for grid electricity, respectively. The wind turbines are more environmentally sustainable than solar PV for seven out of 11 impacts, ranging from 7.5% lower eutrophication to 85% lower ozone layer depletion. However, depletion of fossil resources, fresh-water, human and terrestrial toxicities are higher for the wind turbine than for the PV, ranging from 5% for the former to 87% for the latter. UK-wide deployment of micro-wind turbines would save between 0.6 and 1% of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions on 2009 levels. Therefore, the potential of micro-wind turbines to contribute towards UK's climate change targets is limited. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Studies concerning landfill mining have historically focused on reclamation of land space and landfill remediation. A limited number of studies, however, have evaluated landfill mining combined with resource recovery, most of them being pilot studies or projects with little emphasis on resource extraction. This implies that many uncertainties remain related to landfill mining. With a growing interest in environmental concerns around the globe, the environmental evaluation of large-scale projects has become an increasingly important issue. A common way of conducting such an evaluation is to use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, LCA by itself might not take into account all the inherent uncertainties in landfill mining. This article describes an approach for environmental evaluation of landfill mining that combines the principles of Life Cycle Assessment and Monte Carlo Simulation. In order to demonstrate its usability for planning and evaluation purposes, the approach is also applied to a hypothetical landfill mining case by presenting examples of the types of results it can produce. Results from this approach are presented as cumulative probability distributions, rather than a single result figure. By presenting results in this way, the landfill mining practitioner will get a more complete view of the processes involved and will have a better decision base. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The landfilling of municipal solid waste (MSW) may cause potential environmental impacts like global warming (GW), soil contaminations, and groundwater pollution. The degradation of MSW in anaerobic circumstances generates methane emissions, and can hence contribute the GW. As the GW is nowadays considered as one of the most serious environmental threats, the mitigation of methane emissions should obviously be aimed at on every landfill site where methane generation occurs. In this study, the treatment and utilization options for the generated LFG at case landfills which are located next to each other are examined. The yearly GHG emission balances are estimated for three different gas management scenarios. The first scenario is the combined heat and power (CHP) production with a gas engine. The second scenario is the combination of heat generation for the asphalt production process in the summer and district heat production by a water boiler in the winter. The third scenario is the LFG upgrading to biomethane. The estimation results illustrate that the LFG collection efficiency affects strongly on the magnitudes of GHG emissions. According to the results, the CHP production gives the highest GHG emission savings and is hence recommended as a gas utilization option for case landfills. Furthermore, aspects related to the case landfills' extraction are discussed. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Area-based information obtained from remote sensing and aerial photography is often used in studies on ecological footprint and sustainability, especially in calculating biocapacity. Given the importance of the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP; i.e. the scale dependency of area-based information), a comprehensive understanding of how the changes of biocapacity across scales (i.e. the resolution of data) is pivotal for regional sustainable development. Here, we present case studies on the effect of spatial scales on the biocapacity estimated for two typical river basin and watershed in Northwest China. The analysis demonstrated that the area sizes of major land covers and subsequently biocapacity showed strong signals of scale dependency, with minor land covers in the region shrinking while major land covers expanding when using large-grain (low resolution) data. The relationship between land cover sizes and their change ratio across scales was shown to follow a logarithm function. The biocapacity estimated at 10 x 10 km resolution is 10% lower than the one estimated at 1 x 1 km resolution, casting doubts on many regional and global studies which often rely on coarse scale datasets. Our results not only suggest that fine-scale biocapacity estimates can be extrapolated from coarse-scale ones according to the specific scale-dependent patterns of land covers, but also serve as a reminder that conclusions of regional and global un-sustainability derived from low-resolution datasets could be a fallacy due to the MAUP. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper introduces a generic assessment method called pluri-energy analysis. It aims to assess the types of energy used in agricultural systems and their conversion efficiencies. Four types of energy are considered: fossil energy, gross energy contained in the biomass, energy from human and animal labor and solar energy. The method was applied to compare smallholder low-input dairy-production systems, which are common in developing countries, to the high-input systems encountered in OECD countries. The pluri-energy method is useful for analyzing the functioning of agricultural systems by highlighting their modes of energy management. Since most dairy systems in South Mali (SM) are low-input systems, they are primarily based on solar and labor energy types and do not require substantial fossil-energy inputs to produce milk. Farms in Poitou-Charentes (PC) and Bretagne (BR) show intermediate values of fossil-energy use for milk production, similar to that found in the literature for typical European systems. However, fossil-energy use for milk production is higher on PC than BR farms because of a higher proportion of maize silage in the forage area; grazing pastures are more common on BR farms. Farms on Reunion Island (RI) require a relatively large amount of fossil energy to produce milk, mainly because the island context limits the amount of arable land. Consequently, milk production is based on large imports of concentrated feed with a high fossil-energy cost. The method also enables assessment of fossil-energy-use efficiency in order to increase the performance of biological processes in agricultural systems. Comparing the low-input systems represented by SM to the high-input systems represented by RI, PC and BR, an increase in solar-energy conversion, and thus land productivity, was observed due to intensification via increased fossil-energy use. Conversely, though fossil-energy use at the herd level increased milk productivity, its effect on gross-energy conversion by the herd was less evident. Partitioning the total on-farm gross energy produced among animal co-products (milk, meat and manure) highlights the major functions of SM herds, which are managed to produce organic crop fertilizers. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study develops two useful procedures in performing an environmental-impact assessment. One is the advanced life-cycle assessment (LCA) method, which effectively tracks the flow of materials and considers the recycling and demolition of a civil structure. The other is an eco-friendly decision-making procedure, which may effectively apply when determining the prototype of a civil structure. The advanced LCA method differs from traditional LCA procedure, as it classifies the input material prior to the impact assessment. Classification work is performed to establish independent life-cycle stages for each material. The processes of recycling and demolition are appropriately added to the life-cycle stages. The impact assessment is performed separately for the materials, and results are aggregated at the end of the analysis. The eco-friendly decision-making procedure enables designers to choose an economical, and environmentally friendly, alternative during the planning phase of the construction project. This procedure rationally amalgamates economical value and environmental effects into a single indicator. The life cycle cost (LCC) of a structure can be analysed by using conventional LCC tools, whereas the environmental impact is estimated by LCA. The results from LCC and LCA are then integrated by using either a CO2 conversion method or an analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The CO2 conversion method presents the result as a monetary value, whereas the AHP presents the result as a non-dimensional value. A practical example using a steel box girder bridge and a pre-stressed concrete (PSC) box-girder bridge is also given in order to aid the understanding of the presented procedure. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Multi-objective optimization (MOO) has recently emerged as a useful technique in environmental engineering. One major limitation of this approach is that its computational burden grows rapidly with the number of environmental objectives, which causes difficulties regarding the computation and visualization of the Pareto solutions. In this work we present several theoretical and algorithmic developments for grouping environmental objectives into clusters on the basis of which the multi-objective optimization can be performed, thereby facilitating the computation and analysis of the Pareto solutions. Our method is based on a novel mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that identifies in a systematic manner groups of objectives that behave similarly. We test the capabilities of our approach using several examples, in which we compare it against other well-known clustering methods. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Production of algal crude oil has been achieved in various pilot scale facilities, but whether algal fuels can be produced in sufficient quantity to meaningfully displace petroleum fuels, has been largely overlooked. Limitations to commercialization of algal fuels need to be understood and addressed for any future commercialization. This review identifies the major constraints to commercialization of transport fuels from microalgae. Algae derived fuels are expensive compared to petroleum derived fuels, but this could change. Unfortunately, improved economics of production are not sufficient for an environmentally sustainable production, or its large scale feasibility. A low-cost point supply of concentrated carbon dioxide colocated with the other essential resources is necessary for producing algal fuels. An insufficiency of concentrated carbon dioxide is actually a major impediment to any substantial production of algal fuels. Sustainability of production requires the development of an ability to almost fully recycle the phosphorous and nitrogen nutrients that are necessary for algae culture. Development of a nitrogen biofixation ability to support production of algal fuels ought to be an important long term objective. At sufficiently large scale, a limited supply of freshwater will pose a significant limitation to production even if marine algae are used. Processes for recovering energy from the algal biomass left after the extraction of oil, are required for achieving a net positive energy balance in the algal fuel oil. The near term outlook for widespread use of algal fuels appears bleak, but fuels for niche applications such as in aviation may be likely in the medium term. Genetic and metabolic engineering of microalgae to boost production of fuel oil and ease its recovery, are essential for commercialization of algal fuels. Algae will need to be genetically modified for improved photosynthetic efficiency in the long term. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.Wetlands harbor diverse species assemblages but are among the world's most threatened ecosystems. Half of their global area was lost during the last century. No approach currently exists in life cycle impact assessment that acknowledges the vulnerability and importance of wetlands globally and provides fate factors for water consumption. We use data from 1184 inland wetlands, all designated as sites of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, to develop regionalized fate factors (FF) for consumptive water use. FFs quantify the change of wetland area caused per m(3)/yr water consumed. We distinguish between surface water-fed and groundwater-fed wetlands and develop FFs for surface water and groundwater consumption. FFs vary over 8 (surface water-fed) and 6 (groundwater-fed) orders of magnitude as a function of the site characteristics, showing the importance of local conditions. Largest FFs for surface water-fed wetlands generally occur in hyper-arid zones and smallest in humid zones, highlighting the dependency on available surface water flows. FFs for groundwater-fed wetlands depend on hydrogeological conditions and vary largely with the total amount of water consumed from the aquifer. Our FFs translate water consumption into wetland area loss and thus become compatible with life cycle assessment methodologies of land use.The ability of hydropower to contribute to climate change mitigation is sometimes questioned, citing emissions of methane and carbon dioxide resulting from the degradation of biogenic carbon in hydropower reservoirs. These emissions are, however, not always addressed in life cycle assessment, leading to a bias in technology comparisons, and often misunderstood. The objective of this paper is to review and analyze the generation of greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs for the purpose of technology assessment, relating established emission measurements to power generation. A literature review, data, collection, and statistical analysis of methane and CO2 emissions are conducted. In a sample of 82 measurements, methane emissions per kWh hydropower generated are log-normally distributed, ranging from micrograms to 10s of kg. A multivariate regression analysis shows that the reservoir area per kWh electricity is the most important explanatory variable. Methane emissions flux per reservoir area are correlated with the natural net primary production of the area, the age of the power plant, and the inclusion of bubbling emissions in the measurement. Even together, these factors fail to explain most of the variation in the methane flux. The global average emissions from hydropower are estimated to be 85 gCO(2)/kWh and 3 gCH(4)/kWh, with a multiplicative uncertainty factor of 2. GHG emissions from hydropower can be largely avoided by ceasing to build hydropower plants with high land use per unit of electricity generated.This study evaluates the impact of selected potato farming and processing activities on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was used for this evaluation, and was applied to products cultivated under both conventional and organic production, and processed under technological conditions common in the Czech Republic. Farm questionnaires were supplemented with information from the scientific literature to acquire the necessary data for modelling. The SIMA Pro software and the ReCiPe Midpoint (H) method were used for simulation. The results show a lower level of emissions under organic production (0.126 kg CO(2)e per kg of potatoes, compared with 0.145 kg CO(2)e per kg of conventionally grown potatoes). However, this benefit is cancelled out by higher emissions due to the transportation of organic products over long distances.A life-cycle analysis (LCA) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy use was performed to study bio-jet fuel (BJF) production from micro-algae grown in open ponds under Chinese conditions using the Tsinghua University LCA Model (TLCAM). Attention was paid to energy recovery through biogas production and cogeneration of heat and power (CHP) from the residual biomass after oil extraction, including fugitive methane (CH4) emissions during the production of biogas and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions during the use of digestate (solid residue from anaerobic digestion) as agricultural fertilizer. Analyses were performed based on examination of process parameters, mass balance conditions, material requirement, energy consumptions and the realities of energy supply and transport in China (i.e., electricity generation and heat supply primarily based on coal, multiple transport modes). Our LCA result of the BJF pathway showed that, compared with the traditional petrochemical pathway, this new pathway will increase the overall fossil energy use and carbon emission by 39% and 70%, respectively, while decrease petroleum consumption by about 84%, based on the same units of energy service. Moreover, the energy conservation and emission reduction benefit of this new pathway may be accomplished by two sets of approaches: wider adoption of low-carbon process fuels and optimization of algae cultivation and harvest, and oil extraction processes.Separation of different domestic wastewater streams and targeted on-site treatment for resource recovery has been recognized as one of the most promising sanitation concepts to re-establish the balance in carbon, nutrient and water cycles. In this study a model was developed based on literature data to compare energy and water balance, nutrient recovery, chemical use, effluent quality and land area requirement in four different sanitation concepts: (1) centralized; (2) centralized with source-separation of urine; (3) source-separation of black water, kitchen refuse and grey water; and (4) source-separation of urine, feces, kitchen refuse and grey water. The highest primary energy consumption of 914 MJ/capita(cap)/year was attained within the centralized sanitation concept, and the lowest primary energy consumption of 437 MJ/cap/year was attained within source-separation of urine, feces, kitchen refuse and grey water. Grey water bio-flocculation and subsequent grey water sludge co-digestion decreased the primary energy consumption, but was not energetically favorable to couple with grey water effluent reuse. Source-separation of urine improved the energy balance, nutrient recovery and effluent quality, but required larger land area and higher chemical use in the centralized concept.The high demand of fuels and the problems associated with the resources depletion and environmental effects of its production have motivated the search for alternative sources. An interesting option in Spain is the cultivation of Cynara cardunculus as primary raw material of biodiesel manufacture. In this paper, the environmental feasibility of the value chain form cropping to fuel manufacture is studied for Cynara cardunculus oil (CCB) and compared to rapeseed oil (RSB) through life cycle assessment, according to the ISO Standard 14040 and using the Gabi software v4.3 as calculation tool. The functional unit selected was 1 tonne of biodiesel. The total energy consumption and the energy return on energy investment (EROEI) were calculated from energy balance. The indicators for life cycle assessment corresponding to impact categories in human health, ecosystem quality and resources depletion were estimated by means of Ecoindicator 99 method. Obtained EROEI values (calculated considering only the calorific power of the oil) indicate that the energy balance is more positive for Cynara cardunculus than for rapeseed (EROEI = 1.53 for CCB and 1.20 for RSB). Moreover, biodiesel from cardoon shows lower environmental impacts.Two green chemistry courses have been introduced into the liberal arts curriculum at Susquehanna University. Green chemistry was integrated into an existing course, Chemical Concepts, and offered as Green Chemical Concepts for nonscience majors. This course is designed to instill an appreciation for green chemistry in a large and diverse group of students. The course follows a separate interactive lecture and laboratory format, consists of an atom economy workshop, and ends with students' collaborative group presentations on "life cycle assessment of a greener product". A chemistry elective, Green Chemistry, was also developed and offered to science majors. It is important that students from various areas of science be exposed to green chemistry, as many innovative science discoveries are made today through interdisciplinary collaborative work. This course follows a unique workshop style, integrating lectures with laboratory activities, and ends with student proposal presentations on "designing a greener product or process". These courses will help students in all areas make intelligent decisions in the future and explore solutions based on green chemistry principles, which will eventually serve a greater community, thereby supporting the liberal arts mission.A strong interest has been focused from several years on the algae pathway for energy production, especially for transportation fuels called third generation biofuel or G3 biofuel, and mainly from microalgae route, considering it could be a high potential alternative strategy for renewable energy and fuel production. Algae, and especially microalgae, present significant advantages compared with land resources, such as much higher productivity and lack of competition with food applications. Nevertheless, based on current knowledge, the production of an algae biomass for energy remains a difficult target to reach, due to the numerous existing hurdles such as the energetic yield and the economic positioning, without neglecting the environmental and societal aspect. Unlike first generation (G1) and a few second generation biofuel (G2) processes, G3 biofuel processes are far from the industrialization step. In 2010, under the initiative of IFP Energies nouvelles, Airbus, Safran, EADS IW and the "Academie des Technologies", launched a French national study of the potential of the algae sector as resources for the so called G3 biofuel production. This study was called "Algogroup" and led by IFP Energies nouvelles. The objective was to obtain a shared vision of the deployment possibilities. It led to the creation of this Algogroup task force with the previous partners, adding Sofiproteol, INRA(1), IFREMER1, CEVA(1) and the Agrimip pole to combine all available knowledge and determine the responses which could be given to the existing questions. The Algogroup objective was to facilitate vision sharing between participating organisations and industrials on the technical improvements, the probabilities of success, the R&D needs and the development perspectives, while paying close attention to the obstacles which have to be alleviated to improve the positioning of the algae pathway. To reach this target, Algogroup has explored several axes, which enabled a thorough analysis of the potentials and limits of the technology: from the species selection to the harvesting (lipid extraction/recovery), including environmental and economical aspects. This paper focuses on some main aspects of the Algogroup study related to economical positioning and environmental terms, specially Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). A large share of the work was dedicated to microalgae, but since it was also considered important to examine the potential role of macroalgae, a specific analysis was conducted on this aspect. It has enabled the group to issue some recommendations such as a need for an integrated approach, need for tools to run comprehensive technico-economic assessments, including co-products valorisation. Despite the limited amount of reliable information currently available on the algofuel sectors, especially in terms of environmental balance, numerous challenges still remain to be taken up to make these sectors credible and profitable, both technically, economically and environmentally. On the economic aspect the estimated costs for future microalgae biofuels remain in a very broad range from $2/Gal to $7/Gal. There remains great potential to decrease microalgae oil production costs, but this has to be considered very carefully given the large amount of underlying assumptions. Moreover, as yet underlined, microalgae biofuels are not currently being produced at a commercial scale, thus these are only potential scenarios, which will have to be confirmed. And finally, several technologies can be used to produce microalgae oil and location possibilities are proposed. Another key point is that, in a large majority of scenarios, the economic viability of the pathway relies on the valorisation of what one usually calls co-products. Valorisation of co-products is not considered a valid option in the long-term as no market identified today could absorb the quantities associated to a new fuel market. Besides, environmental studies have demonstrated that the energetic balance was not favourable at present, based on current processes, but the variation range of the results let some space for significant improvements. The balance of greenhouse gas emissions was favourable, and there also the variation range was very wide. As regards the other environmental impact categories, however, the uncertainties are too great to draw any conclusions. Because of the heterogeneity of approaches and results for the development of the algae pathway, we must bear in mind that without reliable and robust assessments of these sectors it will not be possible to direct their technical development sustainably. Macroalgae as a resource for biofuels production are very far from being a commercial reality, but do present some advantages such, for green algae, exhibiting several similarities with current G1 and G2 feedstock, being producers of starch and unlignified cellulose. Nevertheless, they also contain other specific compounds. Red and brown macroalgae are currently the most produced species, but their composition calls for the development of new transformation processes. Although technically feasible at lab-scale, the economic viability of such processes is being endangered by the complexity of the processes involved and the numerous steps required as well as by non-technical issues such as competition with other markets like green chemistry. To have a true share of the future fuel mix, macroalgae production needs to be increase by a dozen-time fold. This increase should not be done without social acceptance or at the expenses of the environment. This issue was adressed for microalgae, but data on macroalgae are currently lacking to be able to conduct Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on this very specific environment. There are also additional problems to be taken into account, such as the lack of legislation or conflicts of usage with existing sea activities for example. Potential for high tonnage production seems real, but the challenge is to federate existing actors and new ones to build a new agro-industry. As a conclusion, no true leveraging option, leading to significant breakthroughs has really emerged as a short term solution, but wide spaces for significant improvement could be envisaged and more laboratory and pilot works have to be achieved before being able to move to a higher scale, leading to the first step toward industrial production.The aim of this work was to assess the burdens of a process in terms of environmental and health impacts, resource depletion issues, and energy demand based on the ability of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology to link the environmental impacts with the mass and energy flows. The analysis was done in terms of process and environmental performances of high pressure water scrubbing (HPWS) system applied for biogas upgrading. The application of process simulation based on the Aspen Plus (R) software has been considered as supportive for the calculation of mass and energy balances. Data processed using GaBi 4: Software showed that global warming, acidification, and human toxicity potentials were the main impact categories associated with the HPWS process. These indicators are largely related to the exhaust gas from the desorption column and the indirect emissions generated during energy consumption. The life cycle inventory study resulted in the development of a database with a vast inventory of data regarding HPWS technology. A basis for assessing potential improvements in the environmental performance of the system is provided. Future studies in this area will address the economical evaluation of the HPWS technology, so as to maximize economic efficiency and minimize environmental impacts.Before 1940, on-farm beef slaughter made up 3% to 5% of annual beef production. Currently, this statistic is below 0.5%. As part of a larger project to develop strategies to increase prosperity for small farms through sustainable livestock production, processing, and marketing, this study presents data and analyses from five small cattle production operations in the Palouse region of the northwestern U.S. Net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were calculated for each of the operations, which each produced 20 to 35 head of cattle annually. Data from the small ranches were analyzed to determine emissions in three main categories: those associated with cattle, feed production, and fuel use. Cattle emissions were calculated according to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. This method provided estimates for emissions from enteric fermentation and manure management. Feed and transportation emissions were estimated using HOLOS whole-farm modeling software and Franklin Associates' U.S. LCI data, respectively. All emissions were normalized over the mass of live weight cattle output from each ranch. The ranches had average total emissions of 13.78 +/- 2.08 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) live weight output. Feed production emissions and fuel use emissions varied more significantly according to ranch practices (having ranges of +/- 66% and +/- 4%, respectively) and were considered on a case-by-case basis. Feed production emissions were between 0.42 and 3.98 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) live weight output. Fuel use emissions were between 0.39 and 1.58 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) live weight output. Overall emissions were consistent with values for all-sized cattle operations in the literature and slightly less than emissions from production systems utilizing concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).The MAPSYN project (Microwave, Acoustic and Plasma assisted SYNtheses) aims at nitrogen-fixation reactions intensified by plasma catalysis and selective hydrogenations intensified by microwaves, possibly assisted by ultrasound. Energy efficiency is the key motif of the project and the call of the European Union behind (NMP.2012.3.0-1; highly efficient chemical syntheses using alternative energy forms). The material (catalysis) and process innovations given in the literature for the two demonstration examples (of the project) are reviewed and added by the project's own ones derived from the latest state of the art. From there still a gap to industrialization needs to be closed which needs innovation as well on the level of process control and plant operation, finally opening gates to new business models (distributed production and modular plant-numbering up instead of scale-up). Such systemic solution shall be developed under the supervision of energy and cost analysis as well as life-cycle analysis to ensure following a holistic approach. This demands for a new science management not focusing only on the key innovation, but as well as on other assisting enabling technologies needed and for the systemic vision with plant view and process control - all centered around industrial reaction equipment. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Lithuania is one of the countries that have ratified the Marpol 73/78 Convention, which foresees the tools of reduction and prevention of sea pollution by bilge water and other substances. The Directive of the European Parliament and Council 2000/59/EB is addressed to the reduction of waste onboard ships and its wash overboard. Analysis of the ships entering Klaipeda sea port has estimated that oil waste constitutes about 74% of the whole collected waste amount. Engine bilge water is specific and hazardous to the environment because it is a liquid compound of water and oil products capable of making steady emulsions. It also acquires specific properties during various technological processes. Equipment, technological processes, specificity of the control related to combustibility and flammability, as well as conformity to the requirements of the International and European Union Rights, technological process management, and documents are needed for the management of this specific waste. For this reason, separation of this oily water from the common oil-polluted waste and analysis of these streams of waste treatment are of great importance to enhance the effectiveness of environmental protection during the management process of this oily waste. Applying a system approach to the oily waste in the port, we set up a waste management system algorithm based on the life cycle. The system of port waste management is a set of technological processes, each of them performing a certain function and requiring stock, electric energy, fuel, transport, heat, technological equipment, etc. Having made the environmental assessment, a suggestion was made to convert the waste resulting from the engine bilge water treatment into energy and to use it in a technological process when closing (finishing) the life cycle. In this paper, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to identify and quantify the environmental impacts caused by the ship-generated waste management, focusing on oily waters of the port of Klaipeda. LCA methodology was used to evaluate the environmental performance of ship-generated waste management of Klaipeda port, according to international standards.Environmental damage cost (EDC) is traditionally ignored in the pavement cost evaluation. This study used a combined life cycle assessment-life cycle cost analysis (LCA-LCCA) model to optimize the pavement maintenance plans with the incorporation of EDC. The paper introduced a comprehensive LCA methodology in pavement field, estimated the marginal damage costs of various air pollutants, and developed an algorithm to link LCA model and LCCA model. A case study of three overlay systems, Portland cement concrete (PCC) overlay, hot mix asphalt (HMA) overlay, and crack, seat, and overlay (CSOL), was presented. The findings through the study include: the EDC occupies a significant portion of the overall costs; the developed LCA-LCCA model is effective in reducing both the energy consumption/greenhouse gas emission ranging from 8.2% to 12.3% and the overall costs ranging from 5.9% to 10.2% for the three overlay designs, respectively; it is reasonable to expect smaller environmental burdens and less overall costs for the PCC and CSOL options as opposed to the HMA option although comparisons of the former two are indeterminate due to the great uncertainties in the usage module. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.North-eastern Thailand is an essential production area for high-quality fragrant rice for domestic use and export. While rainfed conditions largely prevail, plans to extend irrigation are drafted. This article compares paddy rice production under irrigation and rainfed conditions. Techno-economic performances were analysed jointly with environmental impacts, based upon life cycle analysis, and energy and water use analyses. Data were collected in 2010 from 45 diverse rice cropping systems in the Lam Sieo Yai Basin, according to three systems, namely wet-season rain-fed (Rw), wet-season irrigation (Iw), and dry-season irrigation (Id) systems. Wide-ranging performances and impacts were observed, while cropping practices were relatively homogeneous. Differentiation of systems originated mostly from differences in yield, which were largely impacted by water supply. The results highlight the low performances and high impacts of Id systems. They require mostly blue water, while the two other systems rely primarily on green water. Id systems also require more energy and labour, due to increased water management needs. The productivity of most production factors was higher in Rw and Iw systems. Emissions proved relatively similar across systems, with the exception of CH4, which was markedly lower in Rw systems due to specific water and organic residue management. Id systems systematically emitted more nitrates, phosphates, and pesticides. Rw systems showed the lowest environmental impacts per ha and per kg of paddy rice produced. The average Global Warming Potential was 2.97 kg CO2-eq per kg rice in Rw systems, 4.87 in Iw systems, and 5.55 in Id systems. This article further discusses the results in view of contrasting perspectives, including societal objectives, farmer income and environmental integrity, and possible irrigation development in north-eastern Thailand.Carbon footprinting is a tool for firms to determine the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with their supply chain or with a unit of final product or service. Carbon footprinting typically aims to identify where best to invest in emission reduction efforts, and/or to determine the proportion of total emissions that an individual firm is accountable for, whether financially and/or operationally. A major and underrecognized challenge in determining the appropriate allocation stems from the high degree to which GHG emissions are the result of joint efforts by multiple firms. We introduce a simple but general model of joint production of GHG emissions in general supply chains, decomposing the total footprint into processes, each of which can be influenced by any combination of firms. We analyze two main scenarios. In the first scenario, the social planner allocates emissions to individual firms and imposes a cost on them (such as a carbon tax) in proportion to the emissions allocated. In the second scenario, a carbon leader voluntarily agrees to offset all emissions in the entire supply chain and then contracts with individual firms to recoup (part of) the costs of those offsets. In both cases, we find that, to induce the optimal effort levels, the emissions need to be overallocated, even if the carbon tax is the true social cost of carbon. This is in contrast to the usual focus in the life-cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprinting literatures on avoiding double counting. Our work aims to lay the foundation for a framework to integrate the economics-and LCA-based perspectives on supply chain carbon footprinting.After a decade of astonishing growth of wind power capacity worldwide, sustainable utilization of wind energy resources has become an issue of utmost importance. For a comprehensive assessment of the environmental sustainability of a wind power, basic emergy flow diagram and emergy indices are presented in this paper to aggregate various renewable/nonrenewable local resources and purchased economic inputs associated with a wind power system, with concrete illustration by a case study of a modern wind farm in Guangxi, China. It is revealed that the solar transformity of wind electricity is the lowest among typical electricity generation technologies. Emergy-based indices are then calculated to provide integrated information of the investigated wind farm from an ecological point of view. Comparison between the results with existing data for other renewable energy systems reflects the substantial advantages of wind power technology over solar thermal power and photovoltaic technologies in terms of sustainability and ecological cost. Nevertheless, biomass-derived fuels, especially biogas by anaerobic digestion, show a better ecological performance and environmental sustainability than wind and solar technologies. In addition, potential for improvements of Chinese wind farm are identified by optimization effort in human labor, land use and waste treatment. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Thin film solar photovoltaic (PV) technology, especially installations based on cadmium-telluride PV cells (CdTe) are expected to play a major role in future expansion of the global installed base of solar power. India's National Solar Mission (JNNSM) is an ambitious program to bootstrap the Indian solar sector. JNNSM seeks to use solar energy to supply India's growing energy needs, help reduce India's reliance on imported fossil fuels, address social issues such as the need to provide access to basic electricity to India's rural population, and jump-start an indigenous solar manufacturing industry. Using a Monte Carlo approach to simulate combinations of future technology, policy, and market scenarios, we estimate the amount of Cd and Te needed for indigenous manufacture of CdTe solar modules using JNNSM targets as a benchmark for new capacity addition. We show that complete indigenous production of CdTe cells using Te recovered from Indian copper refining process is not feasible even if JNNSM were to succeed in its objective of developing indigenous capacity for advanced PV manufacturing technology. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Steel is one of the most important materials used in modern society. The majority of the steel produced today is based on the use of virgin raw materials such as iron ore and fossil-based energy sources such as coal and oil. Recently, emphasis has been laid on the possibility to replace part of the fossil-based energy sources in ironmaking with renewable, biomass-derived reducing agents (bio-reducers). Modern thermochemical conversion processes could be utilized to produce solid, liquid and gaseous bio-reducers from biomass feedstock. This paper provides an in-depth review, first of its kind, of the possibility to replace part of the fossil-based reducing agents with bio-reducers in the blast furnace ironmaking route. In the first part of the paper, blast furnace process and the role of the reducing agents are discussed. In the second part of the paper, thermochemical biomass conversion technologies and resulting product properties are reviewed. Chemical and physical properties of the bio-reducers are compared to fossil-based reducing agents. In the third part of the paper, the implications related to bio-reducer use are evaluated in separate system levels including unit process assessment (blast furnace), process integration opportunities, biomass availability, life cycle impact and economic evaluations. The fourth part of the paper is dedicated to the discussion of the future of bio-reducers in ironmaking applications. It is concluded that bio-reducers can contribute to more environmentally sound steelmaking. The most promising bio-reducer seems to be charcoal with its high coke replacement ratio in blast furnace and straightforward integration of slow pyrolysis by-products to heat and power applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conventional life-cycle inventories (LCIs) are static models not considering any mechanism of revenue maximisation and price equilibrium under external constraints. An additional demand of a given commodity, irrespective of the amount, can always be supplied by the average supplier under fully elastic market assumption. This constitutes a recognised limitation for the application of LCA to the assessment of the environmental consequences of changes applied to complex systems, like agro-systems. In the so-called consequential LCI (C-LCI), the relationships between the activities and processes of a life-cycle are no longer seen as essentially technical connections, based on average data; instead the determining socio-economic mechanisms are considered via market information and eventually economic models (partial or computable general equilibrium). The practical implementation of C-LCI is however still obscure to many practitioners and the complementarities and overlaps between the different C-LCI modelling approaches have not been completely clarified so far. This paper aims at filling this gap. The first part of the paper provides a survey of a number of applications using different equilibrium models. Afterwards we critically review the main variables and parameters supporting the definition and implementation of the C-LCI modelling approaches. In the last part of the paper we propose a methodology to integrate economic modelling and LCA in order to perform a C-LCA of biogas production, specifically addressing the indirect land use change (ILUC) issue. Finally we describe the application of this methodology to a case study dealing with the production of biogas in Luxembourg. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance, costs, energy, and greenhouse gas emission of cementitious high-carbon fly ash (CHCFA)-stabilised recycled pavement materials (RPMs) as base course. Three test road cells were built in Minnesota. These cells have the same pavement structure except different base courses: conventional crushed aggregates, untreated RPM, and CHCFA-stabilised RPM. Results of laboratory and field tests were used in the Mechanistic-empirical pavement design guide (MEPDG) to predict the pavement performance. MEPDG performance prediction indicated that Cell 79 containing CHCFA-stabilised RPM had the longest service life in the three cells. The life-cycle analysis indicated that the usage of the CHCFA-stabilised RPM as the base of the flexible pavement can significantly reduce the life-cycle cost, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emission.Environmental sustainability considerations are slowly being integrated into governing criteria and regulations in industrial and urban development worldwide. A "cradle to grave" analysis increases understanding the implications of specific design options in the context of creating an environmentally sustainable product, however in commercial real estate the focus is generally on reducing cost, while long term operational and end-of-service considerations remain on a second plane of importance. The balance between initial costs and operational costs (environmental, economic and energetic) is directly reflected in the building energy use which, while requiring a higher initial investment, constitutes the principal driver in reducing the carbon footprint of the dwelling. But constructive measures that decrease operational energy use and thus also decrease operational greenhouse gas emissions require the use of more insulation materials. The embodied energy and GHG emissions associated with the full lifecycle of these additional materials needs to be included in the overall sustainability balance sheet of the development. This study shows that, in the particular case of the residential built environment of Dubai and the prevailing local electric power source generation mechanisms, the environmental sustainability cost of adding the insulation levels required to significantly mitigate transmission losses is small in comparison to the operational GHG emissions saved by their application. However, and in part due to typically short building lifetime and lack of comprehensive waste management strategies, the overall impact of using these materials within the full lifecycle of the Dubai built environment requires special consideration to end-of-service treatment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Our increasing demand for materials and energy has put critical roadblocks on our path towards a sustainable society. To remove these roadblocks, it is important to engage in smart research and development (R&D). We present an early-stage sustainability assessment framework that is used to analyze eight new bio-based process alternatives developed within the CatchBio research consortium in the Netherlands. This assessment relies on a multi-criteria approach, integrating the performance of chemical conversions based on five indicators into an index value. These indicators encompass economics, environmental impact, hazards and risks thereby incorporating elements of green chemistry principles, and techno-economic and life cycle assessments. The analyzed bio-based options target the production of fuels and chemicals through chemical catalysis. For each bio-based process, two R&D stages (current laboratory and expected future) are assessed against a comparable conventional process. The multi-criteria assessment in combination with the uncertainty and scenario analysis shows that the chemical production processes using biomass as feedstock can provide potential sustainability benefits over conventional alternatives. However, further development is necessary to realize the potential benefits from biomass gasification and pyrolysis processes for fuel production. This early stage assessment is intended as an input for R&D decision making to support optimal allocation and utilization of resources to further develop promising bio-based processes.Low-input cropping systems were introduced in Western Europe to reduce the environmental impacts of intensive farming, but some of their benefits are offset by lower yields. In this paper, we review studies that used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate the effects of reducing external inputs on the eco-efficiency of cropping systems, measured as the ratio of production to environmental impacts. We also review various cropping system interventions that can improve this ratio. Depending on the initial situation and the impacts considered, reducing inputs will in itself either reduce or increase environmental impacts per product unit-highly eco-efficient cropping systems require application of optimum instead of minimum quantities of external inputs. These optimum rates can be lowered by utilizing positive synergies between crops to minimise waste of nutrients and water and by utilizing locally produced organic waste; both from within the farm as well as well as from the surrounding sociotechnical environment. Eco-efficiency can also be improved by increasing yields in a sustainable matter. Strategies such as breeding, increasing diversity, no-tillage or intercropping will not be effective under all conditions. LCA provides a useful framework to identify environmentally optimum levels of inputs and trade-offs between various intensification scenarios.Wastewater treatment systems are increasingly designed for the recovery of valuable chemicals and energy in addition to waste stream disposal. Herein, the life-cycle energy production and emissions mitigation of a typical domestic wastewater treatment system were assessed, in which different combinations of biogas use and sludge processing lines for industrial or household applications were considered. The results suggested that the reuse of biogas and sludge was so important in the system's overall energy balance and environmental performance that it may offset the cost in the plant's installation and operation. Combined heat and power and household utilization were two prior options for net energy production, provided an ideal power conversion efficiency and biogas production. The joint application of household biogas use and sludge nutrient processing achieved both high net energy production and significant environmental remediation across all impact categories, representing the optimal tradeoff for domestic wastewater treatment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent material metabolism research has been conducted into urban and regional area, but relatively little research explores material metabolism relationships within urban agglomerations. Therefore, this study attempts to explore and analyze one category of material metabolism in an urban agglomeration. Furthermore, it provided a scientific basis for waste management within urban agglomerations. It did this by changing the recycling mode of material metabolism and investigated the resulting life cycle effects. The Chinese urban agglomeration of Su-Xi-Chang was taken as a case study. A mixed-unit input-output life cycle assessment model was used to analyze scrap tire management. The results show that China's energy savings and emission reduction requirements are best met by centralized recycling. However, in promoting centralized recycling, attention should be paid to improving production technologies so as to reduce negative resources and environmental impacts. This paper's analysis can be applied equally to resources management and the evaluation of other waste flows in urban agglomerations. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The end-of-life waste management of cathode ray tube (CRT) funnel glass is a concern due to the high lead content (22%) within the glass. Inappropriate and insufficient waste management methods can lead to both health and climate impacts. This paper evaluates five waste management options: hazardous waste landfill, municipal waste landfill, pyrometallurgy, closed-loop recycling, and hydrometallurgy from environmental and economic standpoints. Environmental impacts are analyzed using two life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies: CML2001 and Eco-Indicator 99. Economic feasibilities are analyzed using the technical cost modeling (TCM) method and the cost, revenue, and profits associated with each waste management option are compared. Results show that discarded CRT funnel glass transportation has a significant effect on both the LCA and TCM results. By taking into account the transportation impact, all waste management options result in greenhouse gas emissions and reduced profit. A sensitivity analysis shows that the profit of closed-loop recycling, pyrometallurgy, and hydrometallurgy options all decrease with increases in transportation distance, while the hydrometallurgy option is less sensitive to the distance than the other two options. LCA results show that closed-loop recycling corresponds to the lowest human health and global warming impacts, followed by pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. Landfill options would generate the most environmental impact. Closed-loop recycling, pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy generate more profits (110-450$/ton) than the landfill options (45$/ton). All in all, pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy are the most feasible recycling processes for implementation in the United States. Closed-loop recycling is not feasible because the CRT glass market in the U.S. has become obsolete. Overall, pyrometallurgy appears to be the most environmentally friendly and economical CRT funnel glass waste management option. However, the hydrometallurgy option represents the lowest human health impact due to minimized lead emissions. This option also has greater opportunity for process improvement and is more geographically flexible including the potential to be executed on-site, which allows this novel option the opportunity to become more competitive than the pyrometallurgy option if properly implemented. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recycling of plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) requires large scale high-performance sorting and identification technologies. The aim of this project is to evaluate the sorting performances of near infrared (NIR) devices, developed by the company PELLENC ST, for three styrenic polymers from WEEE: acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) and ABS/polycarbonate blend (ABS/PC) and to study the physico-chemical properties of recycled materials. The use of an improved near infrared technique allows high levels of efficiency and performance to be achieved. This study can be used to evaluate the substitution ratio of virgin styrenic polymers by recycled ones for life cycle assessments (LCA) of reclaimed materials. Mechanical properties and fire properties of the sorted polymers were investigated. Mechanical properties of the polymers, particularly these of HIPS, were slightly modified after sorting. However, a degradation of the polybutadiene phase was observed. Fire tests revealed the presence of flame retardants in ABS and HIPS. Hence, NIR process could be used after a first sorting of brominated plastic wastes, in order to respect the RoHS directive. This project offers industrially viable alternatives for the recovery of plastics waste and the use of secondary raw materials. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The goal of this paper is to present and evaluate the latest trends in the cargo handling equipment (CHE) industry, aimed at mitigating the environmental impact of container terminal operations and contributing to the sustainability of ports. The most common machines for handling containers are described and dealt with separately, with a focus on electric CHE, usually referred to as 'zero emission' CHE. In a separate chapter, recommendations on methodologies suitable for investigation of the environmental footprint of CHE without on-site measuring are reviewed. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology as a tool for comparison of conventional and 'zero emission' technology is emphasised with examples. The conventional diesel rubber-tired gantry (RTG) crane and utility tractor rig (UTR) are compared with an electric RTG and UTR using an LCA approach.A life cycle assessment was conducted to evaluate the environmental and economic effects of sewage sludge co-incineration in a coal-fired power plant. The general approach employed by a coal-fired power plant was also assessed as control. Sewage sludge co-incineration technology causes greater environmental burden than does coal-based energy production technology because of the additional electricity consumption and wastewater treatment required for the pretreatment of sewage sludge, direct emissions from sludge incineration, and incinerated ash disposal processes. However, sewage sludge co-incineration presents higher economic benefits because of electricity subsidies and the income generating potential of sludge. Environmental assessment results indicate that sewage sludge co-incineration is unsuitable for mitigating the increasing pressure brought on by sewage sludge pollution. Reducing the overall environmental effect of sludge co-incineration power stations necessitates increasing net coal consumption efficiency, incinerated ash reuse rate, dedust system efficiency, and sludge water content rate. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) sector has developed considerably during the past century, paving the way for maximum resource (materials and energy) recovery and minimising environmental impacts such as global warming associated with it. The current study is assessing the historical development of MSWM in the municipality of Aalborg, Denmark throughout the period of 1970 to 2010, and its implications regarding Global Warming Potential (GWPI(100)), using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Historical data regarding MSW composition, and different treatment technologies such as incineration, recycling and composting has been used in order to perform the analysis. The LCA results show a continuous improvement in environmental performance of MSWM from 1970 to 2010 mainly due to the changes in treatment options, improved efficiency of various treatment technologies and increasing focus on recycling, resulting in a shift from net emission of 618 kg CO2-eq. tonne(-1) to net saving of 670 kg CO2-eq. tonne(-1) of MSWM. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An array of feedstock is being evaluated as potential raw material for cellulosic biofuel production. Thorough assessments are required in regional landscape settings before these feedstocks can be cultivated and sustainable management practices can be implemented. On the processing side, a potential solution to the logistical challenges of large biorefineries is provided by a network of distributed processing facilities called local biomass processing depots. A large-scale cellulosic ethanol industry is likely to emerge soon in the United States. We have the opportunity to influence the sustainability of this emerging industry. The watershed-scale optimized and rearranged landscape design (WORLD) model estimates land allocations for different cellulosic feedstocks at biorefinery scale without displacing current animal nutrition requirements. This model also incorporates a network of the aforementioned depots. An integrated life cycle assessment is then conducted over the unified system of optimized feedstock production, processing, and associated transport operations to evaluate net energy yields (NEYs) and environmental impacts. A sustainability assessment was conducted in a nine-county region of Michigan for the categories of cellulosic ethanol production, soil characteristics, water quality, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Making significant changes such as introducing perennial grasses, riparian buffers and double crops in current landscapes provides the largest absolute NEYs of about 53 GJ/ha while also attaining 120% gains in soil organic carbon, 103% lower nitrogen leaching, and 68% reductions in net GHG emissions (compared to a baseline of current conventional landscapes). Interestingly, minimizing certain environmental impacts also provides greater NEYs. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe Renewable Fuel Standard (2007) set aggressive cellulosic biofuel goals that have not been realized. Corn ethanol dominates the market and penetration of cellulosic ethanol is unlikely in the near term due to economic and technical barriers. This paper uses game theory to model biomass and ethanol production decisions and calculate the incentives that would be necessary to drive the industry to obtain the cellulosic ethanol goals. After identifying the desired performance of a cellulosic ethanol supply chain, a nonlinear optimization model is developed to analyze two major scenarios that estimate conservative and optimistic technological improvements in cellulosic biomass and ethanol production. A potential carbon market is explored to determine its efficacy as an incentive mechanism. Results indicate that a carbon market would only be sufficient to incentivize a cellulosic ethanol industry under the optimistic improvement scenario with the highest switchgrass price. For all other scenarios, the carbon price needed to incentivize the industry would exceed the reasonable range and additional incentives would be needed to achieve the production goals of the Renewable Fuel Standard. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Much research has been carried out on governmental support of agri environmental measures (AEM). However, little is known about demands on and incentives from the commercial market for environmental contributions of the farmers. The factors farm structures, level of remuneration and legal framework have been thoroughly investigated. However, demands of the food industry for environmentally friendly goods(1) and their effects on farmers' decisions have not yet been analyzed. Leading companies in the food industry have observed an increasing consumer awareness and, due to higher competition, see an additional need to communicate environmental benefits which result from either organic production methods or agri-environmental measures. To address this research deficit, two case studies were carried out. The first case study is a survey aimed at the industrial food producers' demands with regards to the environmental performance of supplying farms. Concurrently, within a second survey farmers were questioned to find out what conditions are required to implement agri-environmental measures beyond cross compliance and document their environmental performance. This article presents the outcomes of the first case study. The results show that food companies have an interest in the documentation of environmental benefits of supplying farms for their marketing strategies. Provision of support by finance or contract-design is also seen as appropriate tool to promote an environmentally friendly production. In turn the food producers' demand and support for documented environmental services can have a positive influence on farmers' decisions for implementation and documentation of these services. Thus, the surveys provide essential findings for further development of documentation strategies for environmental benefits within the supply chain. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life-cycle assessment (LCA) model was developed to estimate the environmental impacts associated with four different U. S. Northern Great Plains (NPG) beef production systems. The LCA model followed a "cradle-to-gate" approach and incorporated all major unit processes, including mineral supplement production. Four distinct operation scenarios were modeled based on production strategies common to the NGP, and a variety of impacts were determined. The scenarios include a normal operation, early weaning of the calf, fast-tack backgrounding, and grassfed. Enteric emissions and manure emissions and handling were consistently the largest contributors to the LCA impacts. There was little variability between production scenarios except for the grassfed, where the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 37% higher due to a longer finishing time and lower finishing weight. However, reductions to GHG emissions (15-24%) were realized when soil organic carbon accrual was considered and may be a more realistic estimate for the NGP. Manure emissions and handing were primary contributors to potential eutrophication and acidification impacts. Mitigation strategies to reduce LCA impacts, including diet manipulation and management strategies (i.e., treatment of manure), were considered from a whole-systems perspective. Model results can be used for guidance by NGP producers, environmental practitioners, and policymakers.Research has separately existed for life-cycle costs and environmental assessment of photovoltaic systems. This study provides a framework for the identification of the optimal set of residential photovoltaic system options in terms of costs and selected air emissions by assessing the life cycle of the product from manufacturing to disposal. Analyzed air emissions include carbon, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter. The study focuses on general residential installations within the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Pareto frontiers are determined for costs and emissions, and the best options for suppliers are identified in each case, including sensitivity analysis of the installation planning horizon. Choosing multicrystalline silicon modules over thin film modules has the greatest impact on cost reduction. The electricity mix with which the modules are produced has the greatest impact on the emissions. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Many departments of transportation (DOTs) rely on pavement management systems (PMSs) to plan maintenance operations by identifying schedules that maximize overall network condition subject to cost constraints. PMSs do not typically incorporate environmental considerations, despite being ideally situated in the decision-making process to balance performance and environmental goals. This work proposes an expanded PMS framework to incorporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by utilizing a multiobjective genetic algorithm (GA) validated against past DOT interstate maintenance practices in Virginia. In practice, the DOT relies heavily on corrective maintenance, a treatment of intermediate intensity, resulting in suboptimal use of financial resources and emissions of GHG. The model suggests that alternative maintenance plans exist that yield higher network pavement performance with both lower costs and GHG emissions over the same time period. For the validation area considered, an optimized management plan could achieve the same network pavement performance with 60% of the cost and 50% of the GHG emissions. The framework, as presented, uses current DOT deterioration models and cost estimates to demonstrate the feasibility of its direct integration with existing PMSs. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.The environmental wood profile, all over its life cycle, is a subject of interest for industries within the forest sector. Douglas-fir is a wood species with multiple applications and high productivity. In Europe, France is the country with the largest area dedicated to the cultivation of this tree species. This study aims to quantify the Douglas-fir forestry environmental impacts under different management practices performed in France. This study presents detailed life cycle inventories of both intensive and extensive scenarios, including all the processes from site preparation to logging activities. The results showed that stand establishment operations, tending and logging were the main stages responsible for the environmental impacts in both scenarios. The requirement of numerous thinning steps prior to the final cutting, which require machines with large fuel consumption, also had a negative influence. The logging stage, which includes the final cutting and the corresponding forwarding and loading onto trucks, also accounted for a significant contribution to all the categories. When the environmental results were compared with other life cycle studies on pine, eucalyptus and spruce, similar trends were identified in spite of the different management practices (low or high intensive scenarios), system boundaries and forest systems intensity (frequency of activities) considered. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Emerging technologies such as information and communication-, photovoltaic- or battery technologies are expected to increase significantly the demand for scarce metals in the near future. The recently developed methods to evaluate the criticality of mineral raw materials typically provide a 'snapshot' of the criticality of a certain material at one point in time by using static indicators both for supply risk and for the impacts of supply restrictions. While allowing for insights into the mechanisms behind the criticality of raw materials, these methods cannot account for dynamic changes in products and/or activities over time. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework intended to overcome these limitations by including the dynamic interactions between different possible demand and supply configurations. The framework integrates an agent-based behaviour model, where demand emerges from individual agent decisions and interaction, into a dynamic material flow model, representing the materials' stocks and flows. Within the framework, the environmental implications of substitution decisions are evaluated by applying life-cycle assessment methodology. The approach makes a first step towards a dynamic criticality assessment and will enhance the understanding of industrial substitution decisions and environmental implications related to critical metals. We discuss the potential and limitation of such an approach in contrast to state-of-the-art methods and how it might lead to criticality assessments tailored to the specific circumstances of single industrial sectors or individual companies. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study investigates the variance of the overall greenhouse gas mitigation potential of a complete second generation stationary bio-electricity production system, generated by poplar wood chips (Populus spec.) in Germany, using Monte Carlo simulations. We computed the GHG emissions as E-B = (-0.034 +/- 0.021) kg CO2e MJ(-1) (mean +/- SD) and the mitigation factor as MFB = (0.274 +/- 0.021) kg CO2e MJ(-1) following a life cycle assessment-based approach. Additionally, avoided nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions due to land use change were considered in the assessment. The most important factor for the overall mitigation variability was the uncertainty of the organic carbon changes in the soil, followed by the variability of yields. The uncertainty of (i) direct N2O emissions from the poplar site or (ii) the reference rye site as well as (iii) the uncertainty of heat recovery percentage was of minor importance. Uncertainties in the global warming potentials of nitrous oxide and methane and in the transport distance were found to be irrelevant. The uncertainty of the GHG mitigation which was associated with this specific electricity generation by poplar wood chips gasification was significantly lower compared to the variability of another common bio-electricity system (biogas). Uncertainty implications seem to be system-specific and therefore should be analysed separately for each bioenergy pathway under consideration. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are considered as an important option for the mitigation of climate change. However, the negative impact of land-use change (LUC) on soil and vegetation carbon pools may jeopardize the potentially achievable savings of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this study the impact of GHG emissions from LUC on the overall GHG performance of 1st generation biofuels was analyzed for the European Union (EU). The scenario-based analysis was done by coupling a spatial land-use model to a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of biofuels. The biofuel demand in the scenarios was derived from figures for the transport sector of the EU-27 Member States. The calculation of GHG emissions was performed with a Geographic Information System. Finally, these results were integrated into the LCA approach of the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED). Without taking LUC into account, the average GHG emission saving compared to fossil fuel use amounts to similar to 50%. In this case the mandatory 35% emission saving target laid down in the RED would be fulfilled. If LUC is considered, this target is reached under none of the simulated biofuel scenarios. In the most realistic scenario the GHG emission savings from 1st gen. biofuel use compared to fossil fuel use range between -2% and 13%. Based on our findings, we conclude that national policy plans for biofuel use should be reconsidered and revised as in their current form they do not provide an adequate measure for the mitigation of global warming on EU-level. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Jatropha curcas L. (JCL) is believed to be the most promising tree species used to produce biodiesel in China. Due to its abundant marginal land resource and good meteorological conditions, Southwest China is the major region to develop JCL. With Southwest China being taken as the study area in this paper, multi-factor comprehensive analysis is used to identify marginal land resources suitable to JCL plantation and make suitability assessment, thus obtaining their spatial distribution, suitability degree and total amount. With life cycle analysis (LCA), the life cycle net energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction capacity of marginal land resources with different suitability degrees used to produce biodiesel are investigated. Based on the research results, the life cycle model is expanded to obtain the potentiality of total net energy production and greenhouse gas emission reduction of large-scale plantation of JCL in southwest China. The results show that the area of land resources suitable and moderately suitable for JCL plantation is 1.99 x 10(6) ha and 5.57 x 10(6) ha, respectively. If all of these land resources are put into use, the maximum net production potential of biodiesel from JCL would be 1.51 x 10(8) GJ/a, and the total greenhouse gas emission reduction capacity 1.59 x 10(7) t/a in Southwest China. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Presented in this paper is a detailed embodied energy consumption evaluation framework for building construction engineering. The building construction engineering comprises nine sub-projects, which are Structure and outside decoration engineering, Primary decoration engineering, Electrical engineering, Water supply and drainage engineering, HVAC engineering, Civil engineering, Municipal electrical engineering, Municipal water supply and drainage engineering and Gardening engineering. Our study chooses the construction engineering of a cluster of landmark commercial buildings in E-town, Beijing (Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, BDA) as a case. As far as we know, this study is the first attempt to account the embodied energy consumption for building construction engineering based on the most exhaustive first-hand project data with about 1000 input items in the Bill of Quantities (BOQ). The embodied energy consumption of construction engineering is quantified as 7.15E+14J. Structure and outside decoration engineering contributes more than half of the total embodied energy consumption, followed by Primary decoration engineering's 23% and Electrical engineering's 3%, respectively. As for the input items, the sum of the embodied energy consumption by steel, cement, lime and metal products is more than 3/4 of the total embodied energy consumption. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bananas are one of the highest selling fruits worldwide, and for several countries, bananas are an important export commodity. However, very little is known about banana's contribution to global warming. The aims of this work were to study the greenhouse gas emissions of bananas from cradle to retail and cradle to grave and to assess the potential of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions along the value chain. Carbon footprint methodology based on ISO-DIS 14067 was used to assess GHG emissions from 1 kg of bananas produced at two plantations in Costa Rica including transport by cargo ship to Norway. Several methodological issues are not clearly addressed in ISO 14067 or the LCA standards 14040 and ISO 14044 underpinning 14067. Examples are allocation, allocation in recycling, representativity and system borders. Methodological choices in this study have been made based on other standards, such as the GHG Protocol Products Standard. The results indicate that bananas had a carbon footprint (CF) on the same level as other tropical fruits and that the contribution from the primary production stage was low. However, the methodology used in this study and the other comparative studies was not necessarily identical; hence, no definitive conclusions can be drawn. Overseas transport and primary production were the main contributors to the total GHG emissions. Including the consumer stage resulted in a 34 % rise in CF, mainly due to high wastage. The main potential reductions of GHG emissions were identified at the primary production, within the overseas transport stage and at the consumer. The carbon footprint of bananas from cradle to retail was 1.37 kg CO2 per kilogram banana. GHG emissions from transport and primary production could be significantly reduced, which could theoretically give a reduction of as much as 44 % of the total cradle-to-retail CF. The methodology was important for the end result. The choice of system boundaries gives very different results depending on which life cycle stages and which unit processes are included. Allocation issues were also important, both in recycling and in other processes such as transport and storage. The main uncertainties of the CF result are connected to N2O emissions from agriculture, methane emissions from landfills, use of secondary data and variability in the primary production data. Thus, there is a need for an internationally agreed calculation method for bananas and other food products if CFs are to be used for comparative purposes.E-waste is the most rapidly growing problem throughout the world, which has serious future concerns over its management and recycling. This article proposes a simple approach for future e-waste projection which can be obtained by using life-span data of various electronic items along with incorporation of population statistics. For this purpose, 7-year sales data of electronic items were collected, which is then used to generate various mathematical equations. These mathematical relations are then modified by incorporating life-span and population data. By comparing sales data with their life-span (average) and population statistics, future e-waste can be quantified both in terms of specified area under investigation and proposed estimation area. The following equation is thus proposed: E-waste (In terms of quantity) = [m{Waste projection year-Life-span}-Initial data collection year + C] x Population of estimation area/Population of study area Where m and C can be obtained from plotting year-wise sales data over Excel sheet. Local as well as global projection of future e-waste can be possible with the help of final equation.The environmental issue is a particular concern for chainsaw oils because these fluids represent a total loss system. The aim of this study is to quantify the environmental impacts of a biobased chainsaw oil made on the farm in Wallonia (a region of Belgium) and to compare it with a model mineral chainsaw oil. With this study, the aim is also to participate in the development of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology applied to the biolubricant sector since LCAs on these products are quite limited and rarely sufficiently detailed. In this LCA, the attributional approach is applied. Seven impact categories are studied. The methods for life cycle impact assessment are IPCC, ReCiPe, CML and USEtox. The functional unit is 1 kg of base oil. Seven sensitivity analyses are performed. Results indicate that the biobased chainsaw oil made on the farm has a lower impact for the global warming potential, the abiotic depletion potential, the ozone depletion potential and the photochemical oxidation potential. On the contrary, it has larger acidification, aquatic eutrophication and aquatic ecotoxicity potential impacts. Regarding the contribution of the life cycle stages of the biobased chainsaw oil, the agricultural stage causes the highest contribution in all impact categories. For the mineral chainsaw oil, the refining stage is preponderant for all impact categories except for the global warming potential for which the end-of-life stage contributes the most. When taking additives into account, conclusions regarding the comparison between the oils are not reversed. Even if it was necessary to consume more biobased than mineral chainsaw oil, conclusions regarding the comparison of the oils would not be reversed. In the same way, a different allocation procedure for rapeseed oil and rape meal, a different rape seeds yield or different extraction yields in the refining stage of the mineral base oil do not change the results of the comparison. For the biobased chainsaw oil, the substitution of only one active substance in the agricultural stage could result in an important decrease of the freshwater ecotoxicity impact. The biobased chainsaw oil has a lower impact in four out of the seven impact categories and a higher impact in three impact categories. By providing a detailed LCA on a biobased chainsaw oil, this study contributes to the development of LCA applied to biobased lubricants.Municipal solid waste (MSW) can be handled with several traditional management strategies, including landfilling, incineration, and recycling. Ethanol production from MSW is a novel strategy that has been proposed and researched for practical use; however, MSW ethanol plants are not widely applied in practice. Thus, this study has been conducted to analyze and compare the environmental and economic performance of incineration and ethanol production as alternatives to landfilling MSW. The ISO 14040 life cycle assessment framework is employed to conduct the environmental impact assessment of three different scenarios for the two MSW management strategies based on processing 1 ton of MSW as the functional unit. The first scenario models the process of incinerating MSW and recovering energy in the form of process heat; the second scenario also includes the process of incinerating MSW but yields in the recovery of energy in the form of electricity; and the third scenario models the process of converting MSW into ethanol. The economic impacts of each scenario are then assessed by performing benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) and net present value (NPV) analyses. The results from the environmental impact assessment of each scenario reveal that scenario 2 has the highest benefits for resource availability while scenario 3 is shown to be the best alternative to avoid human health and ecosystems diversity impacts. Scenario 1 has the worst environmental performance with respect to each of these environmental endpoint indicators and has net environmental impacts. The results of the economic analysis indicate that the third scenario is the best option with respect to BCR and NPV, followed by scenarios 2 and 1, respectively. Furthermore, environmental and economic analysis results are shown to be sensitive to MSW composition. It appears municipalities should prefer MSW incineration with electricity generation or MSW-to-ethanol conversion over MSW incineration with heat recovery as an alternative to landfilling. The contradiction between the environmental impact assessment results and economic analysis results demonstrates that the decision-making process is sensitive to a broad set of variables. Decisions for a specific MSW management system are subject to facility location and size, MSW composition, energy prices, and governmental policies.The present study aims at identifying the best practice in residual municipal solid waste management using specific data from LiSge, a highly industrialized and densely populated region of Belgium. We also illustrate the importance of assumptions relative to energy through sensitivity analyses and checking uncertainties regarding the results using a Monte Carlo analysis. We consider four distinct household waste management scenarios. A life cycle assessment is made for each of them using the ReCiPe method. The first scenario is sanitary landfill, which is considered as the base case. In the second scenario, the refuse-derived fuel fraction is incinerated and a sanitary landfill is used for the remaining shredded organic and inert waste only. The third scenario consists in incinerating the whole fraction of municipal solid waste. In the fourth scenario, the biodegradable fraction is collected and the remaining waste is incinerated. The extracted biodegradable fraction is then treated in an anaerobic digestion plant. The present study shows that various scenarios have significantly different environmental impact. Compared to sanitary landfill, scenario 4 has a highly reduced environmental impact in terms of climate change and particulate matter formation. An environmental gain, equal to 10, 37, or 1.3 times the impact of scenario 1 is obtained for, respectively, human toxicity, mineral depletion, and fossil fuel depletion categories. These environmental gains are due to energetic valorization via the incineration and anaerobic digestion. Considering specific categories, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 17 % in scenario 2 and by 46 % in scenarios 3 and 4. For the particulate matter formation category, a 71 % reduction is achieved by scenario 3. The figures are slightly modified by the Monte Carlo analysis but the ranking of the scenarios is left unchanged. The present study shows that replacing a sanitary landfill by efficient incineration significantly reduces both emissions of pollutants and energy depletion, thanks to electricity recovery.Since the implementation of the European directive (EC/2001/42) on strategic environmental assessment, an ex ante evaluation has become mandatory for plans and programs. This requirement could have significant consequences for the environment. Local authorities, who are in charge of land planning issues, must therefore conduct such assessments. However, they are faced with lack of uniform methodology. The aim of this paper is thus to propose a methodological framework for the required environmental assessment stages in land planning. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been identified as a promising tool to perform environmental assessment at a meso-level (i.e., territories). Yet, the standardized LCA framework has never been used for assessing the environmental impacts of a territory as such, which can be explained by the complexity that its application would involve. Four major methodological bottlenecks have been identified in this paper, i.e., (1) functional unit definition, (2) boundary selection, (3) data collecting, and (4) the refinement of the life cycle impact assessment phase in order to provide useful indicators for land planning. For each of these challenges, recommendations have been made to adapt the analytical framework of LCA. A revised framework is proposed to perform LCA of a territory. One of the major adaptations needed concerns the goal and scope definition phase. Henceforth, the association of a territory and the studied land planning scenario, defined by its geographical boundaries and its interactions with other territories, will be designated as the reference flow in LCA. Consequently, two kinds of indicators will be determined using this approach, i.e., (1) a vector of environmental impacts generated (conventional LCA) and (2) a vector of land use functions provided by the territory for different stakeholders (e.g., provision of work, recreation, culture, etc.). This revised framework has been applied to a theoretical case study in order to highlight its utility in land planning. This work is a first step in the adaptation of the LCA framework to environmental assessment in land planning. We believe that this revised framework has the potential to provide relevant information in decision-making processes. Nonetheless, further work is still needed to broaden and deepen this approach (i.e., normalization of impacts and functions, coupled application with GIS, uncertainties, etc.).The year-round supply of fresh fruit and vegetables in Europe requires a complex logistics system. In this study, the most common European fruit and vegetable transport packaging systems, namely single-use wooden and cardboard boxes and re-useable plastic crates, are analyzed and compared considering environmental, economic, and social impacts. The environmental, economic, and social potentials of the three transport packaging systems are examined and compared from a life cycle perspective using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Life Cycle Working Environment (LCWE) methodologies. Relevant parameters influencing the results are analyzed in different scenarios, and their impacts are quantified. The underlying environmental analysis is an ISO 14040 and 14044 comparative Life Cycle Assessment that was critically reviewed by an independent expert panel. The results show that wooden boxes and plastic crates perform very similarly in the Global Warming Potential, Acidification Potential, and Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential categories; while plastic crates have a lower impact in the Eutrophication Potential and Abiotic Resource Depletion Potential categories. Cardboard boxes show the highest impacts in all assessed categories. The analysis of the life cycle costs show that the re-usable system is the most cost effective over its entire life cycle. For the production of a single crate, the plastic crates require the most human labor. The share of female employment for the cardboard boxes is the lowest. All three systems require a relatively large share of low-qualified employees. The plastic crate system shows a much lower lethal accident rate. The higher rate for the wooden and cardboard boxes arises mainly from wood logging. In addition, the sustainability consequences due to the influence of packaging in preventing food losses are discussed, and future research combining aspects both from food LCAs and transport packing/packaging LCAs is recommended. For all three systems, optimization potentials regarding their environmental life cycle performance were identified. Wooden boxes (single use) and plastic crates (re-usable) show preferable environmental performance. The calibration of the system parameters, such as end-of-life treatment, showed environmental optimization potentials in all transport packaging systems. The assessment of the economic and the social dimensions in parallel is important in order to avoid trade-offs between the three sustainability dimensions. Merging economic and social aspects into a Life Cycle Assessment is becoming more and more important, and their integration into one model ensures a consistent modeling approach for a manageable effort.With an ever increasing list of indicators available, life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners face the challenge of effectively communicating results to decision makers. Simplification of LCA is often limited to an arbitrary selection of indicators, use of single scores by using weighted values or single attribute indicators. These solutions are less attractive to decision makers, since value judgments are introduced or multi-indicator information is lost. Normalization could be a means to narrow the list of indicators by ranking indicators vs. a reference system. This paper shows three different normalization approaches that produce very different ranking of indicators. It is explained how normalization helps maintain a multi-indicator approach while keeping the most relevant indicators, allowing effective decision making. The approaches are illustrated on a hand dishwashing case study, using ReCiPe as the impact assessment method and taking the European population (year 2000) as the reference situation. Indicators are ranked using midpoint normalization factors, and compared to the ranking from endpoint normalization broken down by midpoint contribution. Endpoint normalization shows Resources as the most relevant area of protection for this case, closely followed by Human Health and Ecosystem. Broken down by their key driving midpoints, fossil depletion, climate change and, to a lesser extent, particulate matter formation and metal depletion, are most relevant. Midpoint normalization, however, indicates Freshwater Eutrophication, Natural Land Transformation and Toxicity indicators (marine and freshwater ecotoxicity and human toxicity) are most relevant. A three-step approach based on endpoint normalization is recommended to present only the most relevant indicators, allowing more effective decision making instead of communicating all LCA indicators. The selection process breaks out the normalized endpoint results into the most contributing midpoints (relevant indicators) and reports results with midpoint level units. Bias due to lack of data completeness is less of an issue in the endpoint normalization process (compared to midpoint normalization), while midpoint results are less subject to uncertainty (compared to endpoint results). Focusing on the relevant indicators and key contributing unit processes has proven to be effective for non-LCA expert decision makers to understand, use, and communicate complex LCA results.Technologies can contribute to sustainable development (e.g., improving living conditions) and at the same time cause sustainability problems (e.g., emissions). Decisions on alternative technologies should thus ideally be based on the principle to minimize the latter. Analyzing environmental, economic, and social aspects related to technologies supports decisions by identifying the "more sustainable" technology. This paper focuses on social issues. First, it discusses the applicability of the social life cycle assessment (SLCA) guidelines for a comparative technology analysis, taking the example of two case studies in developing countries. Indicating technologies as "sustainable" also means that they are indeed operated over the expected lifetime, which, in development projects, is often not guaranteed. Consequently, social aspects related to implementation conditions should be considered in an SLCA study as well. Thus, a second focus is laid on identifying appropriate indicators to address these aspects. First, the SLCA guidelines were examined with regard to applying this product-related approach to two real case studies (analysis of technologies/plants for water supply and for decentralized fuel production) for a comparative technology analysis. Suitable indicators are proposed. To address the second focus, a literature research on technology assessment and implementation in developing countries was conducted. Moreover, socioeconomic studies in the investigation areas of the case studies were consulted. Based on this, indicators addressing implementation conditions were identified from the SLCA guidelines and additional literature. The study shows social issues and indicators found in the SLCA guidelines and considered suitable for a comparative technology analysis in the case studies. However, for a sustainability assessment of technologies, especially in developing countries, further indicators are required to address technology implementation conditions. A set of additional social indicators like reported trust in institutions or fluctuation of personnel is proposed. Though these indicators were derived based on specific case studies, they can also be suggested to other technologies and are not necessarily limited to developing countries. The study pointed out that an application of the SLCA guidelines considering the whole life cycle was not (yet) feasible for the case studies considered. This is mainly due to the lack of data. Regarding technology implementation, it was examined which indicators are available in this SLCA approach and which could additionally be integrated and applied. This is relevant as a potential contribution of technologies to sustainable development can only be achieved when the technologies are successfully implemented.Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (C-LCA) is a "system modelling approach in which activities in a product system are linked so that activities are included in the product system to the extent that they are expected to change as a consequence of a change in demand". Hence, C-LCA focuses on micro-economic actions linked to macro-economic consequences, by identifying the (marginal) suppliers and technologies prone to be affected by variable scale changes in the demand of a product. Detecting the direct and indirect environmental effects due to changes in the production system is not an easy task. Hence, researchers have combined the consequential perspective with different econometric models. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess an increase in biocrops cultivation in Luxembourg using three different consequential modelling approaches to understand the benefits, drawbacks and assumptions linked to each approach as applied to the case study selected. Firstly, a partial equilibrium (PE) model is used to detect changes in land cultivation based on the farmers' revenue maximisation. Secondly, another PE model is proposed, which considers a different perspective aiming at minimising a total adaptation cost (so-called opportunity cost) to satisfy a given new demand of domestically produced biofuel. Finally, the consequential system delimitation for agricultural LCA approach, as proposed by Schmidt (Int J Life Cycle Assess 13:350-364, 2008), is applied. The two PE models present complex shifts in crop rotation land use changes (LUCs), linked to the optimisation that is performed, while the remaining approach has limited consequential impact on changes in crop patterns since the expert opinion decision tree constitutes a simplification of the ongoing LUCs. However, environmental consequences in the latter were considerably higher due to intercontinental trade assumptions recommended by the experts that were not accounted for in the economic models. Environmental variations between the different scenarios due to LUCs vary based on the different expert- or computational-based assumptions. Finally, environmental consequences as compared with the current state-of-the-art are lame due to the limited impact of the shock within the global trade market. The use of several consequential modelling approaches within the same study may help widen the interpretation of the advantages or risks of applying a specific change to a production system. In fact, different models may not only be good alternatives in terms of comparability of scenarios and assumptions, but there may also be room for complementing these within a unique framework to reduce uncertainties in an integrated way.The goal of this study is to evaluate and compare the environmental impact (with a focus on global warming potential) of five hand drying systems: hands-under (HU) dryers, high-speed hands-under (HSHU) dryers, high-speed hands-in (HSHI) dryers, cotton roll towels, and paper towels. Another objective is to incorporate uncertainty into this comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) as a means of understanding the statistical robustness of the difference between the environmental impacts of the hand drying systems. We conducted a life cycle assessment in accordance with the ISO 14040/14044 standards using data primarily from publicly available reports. As part of the study, we performed a parameter uncertainty analysis for multiple scenarios to evaluate the impact of uncertainty in input data on the relative performance of products. In addition, we conducted a probabilistic scenario analysis of key drying system parameters in order to understand the implications of changing assumptions on the outcomes of the analyses. The scope of the analyses enabled us to draw robust conclusions about the relative environmental performance of the products. We can say with a high degree of confidence that the high-speed dryers have a lower impact than paper towels and cotton roll towels. Differentiating the performance of the hand dryers requires being more specific about framing assumptions. Under certain conditions, the HSHI dryer is expected to have a lower impact than the HU and HSHU dryers. However, under other conditions, one cannot say that the HSHI dryer is clearly better than the other dryers. We cannot differentiate the performance between the HU dryer, cotton roll towels, and paper towels. This work demonstrates the importance of going beyond traditional uncertainty analyses for comparative LCAs that are used for assertions of relative product environmental impact. Indeed, we found instances where the conclusions changed as a result of using the probabilistic scenario analysis. We outline important elements that should be included in future guidance on uncertainty analyses in comparative LCAs, including conducting parameter and scenario uncertainty analyses together and then using the outcomes to guide selection of parameters and/or choices to analyze further.The aim of this work is to compare greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from producing tissue paper from virgin pulp (VP) or recycled waste paper (RWP). In doing so, the study aims to inform decision makers at both company and national levels which are the main causes of emissions and to suggest the actions required to reduce pollution. An attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed in order to estimate and compare the GHG emissions of the two processes. LCA allows us to assess how the choice of raw material for VP and RWP processes influences total GHG emissions of tissue paper production, what are the main drivers behind these emissions and how do the direct materials; energy requirements and transportation contribute to the generation of emissions. The cradle-to-gate approach is carried out. The results show that demands for both thermal energy and electricity are higher for the RWP than for the VP if only the manufacturing stages are considered. However, a different picture emerges when the analysis looks at the entire life cycle of the production. GHG from the VP are about 30 % higher than the RWP, over the life cycle emitting 568 kg CO2 eq more per kilogram of tissue paper. GHG emissions from the wood pulping alone were 559 g CO2 eq per kilogram of tissue paper, three times higher than waste paper collection and transportation. In terms of GHG emissions from cradle to gate, the recycled process less intensive than the virgin one for two reasons. First, as shown in the results the total GHG emissions from RWP are lower than those from VP due to relatively lower energy and material requirements. Second is the non-recyclability nature of tissue paper. Because the tissue paper is the last use of fibre, using RWP as an input would be preferable over using VP. The environmental profile of the tissue products both from RWP and VP can be improved if the following conditions are considered by the company. First, the company should consider implementing a cogeneration unit to simultaneously generate both useful heat and electricity. Second, it may consider changing the VP mix, in order to avoid the emissions associated with long distance transpiration effort. Third, there is the option of using sludge as fuel, which would reduce the total fossil fuel requirement.This work aims at analyzing the energy efficiency of the chemical recycling process of polylactic acid (PLA) and its sustainability from an environmental point of view. The results show that the production of lactic acid from chemical depolymerization of PLA is preferable, from an energy point of view, to the production of lactic acid by glucose fermentation. The study also shows that the environmental footprint of the analyzed process is larger than that of the PLA mechanical recycling.This paper outlines a methodology for a systematic economic environmental analysis of realistic and realisable options for recovering and utilising energy from biogas produced in sewage sludge digesters in WWTPs (wastewater treatment plants). Heat, electricity and transport fuel can be produced from biogas, consumed in-plant or even sold to external end-users. The paper initially considers global warming as the environmental impact of concern, but later also stresses on the necessity of avoiding problem shifting by factoring in other environmental impact categories as well. The methodology is subsequently applied to the Bekkelaget WWTP in Oslo (Norway). Five different options for handling biogas are considered, in addition to the status quo - the business-as-usual in year-2012, and a baseline case, where it is assumed that all biogas generated is flared completely and not utilised for energy recovery of any kind. Seven different cost scenarios - for electricity, natural gas, wood pellets, bio-methane and diesel - are constructed. This gives a total of 49 combinations, for each of which the net costs and net environmental impacts (global warming, eutrophication and acidification) are determined for the 10-year period 2012-2021. The changes (in percentages) with respect to the corresponding values for the baseline case, are recorded; suitable weighting factors are considered after interaction with experts and personnel associated with the plant, and the options are evaluated using this double-bottom-line approach (economic and environmental). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study estimated the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and net energy ratio (NER) for producing hydrogenation-derived renewable diesel (HDRD) from canola and camelina in Western Canada. Using 1 MJ of energy in the HDRD produced as the functional unit, a variety of scenarios were evaluated to account for variations in allocation methods, co-products, oilseed yield, N2O emission factor, and land use change (LUC). In producing HDRD, the farming stage and the oil conversion stage (i.e. the HDRD production stage) are the most energy and emission intensive. For canola based HDRD, the GHGs and NERs lie in the ranges of 33-94 gCO(2e)/MJ and 1.2-2.2 MJ/MJ respectively. For camelina based HDRD, the GHGs and NERs range from 30 - 82 gCO(2e)/MJ and 1.0-2.3 MJ/MJ respectively. In the base scenario (mass allocation; oilseed meal and propane fuel gas co-products; average yield; 0.76% N2O emission factor; LUC ignored), HDRD from camelina (38 gCO(2e)/MJ, 2.0 MJ/MJ) is environmentally superior to HDRD from canola (48 gCO(2e)/MJ, 1.7 MJ/MJ) due to lower agricultural inputs and higher yield for camelina. Considering all of the scenarios examined, HDRD from both crops appears to be more sustainable than fossil diesel. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To develop approaches that effectively reduce engine environmental effect of aircrafts, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms that have enabled improvements in thermodynamic efficiency of aircraft engines. In the present work, a turboprop engine used in regional aircrafts that produces 1948 shp and 640 N.m torque is examined using exergo-environmental method. The results show compressor, combustion chamber, gas generator turbine, power turbine and exhaust nozzle create 9%, 69%, 13%, 7%, 2% of total environmental impact of the engine, respectively. According to rates, the compressor and gas turbine can be considered first to improve in case of component related environmental impact. Furthermore, total component related environmental impact for the turboprop engine is found to be 2.26 mPts/s for the constructional phase and 234 mPts/s for the operation/maintenance phases. Accordingly, it is suggested that, in order to estimate environmental impact metric of aircrafts, the exergo-environmental analysis can be employed for aircraft propulsion systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Customer requirements and local legislation are forcing companies to provide green products and services. Such driving forces have resulted in the study of green supply chains (SCs), which are SCs that take into account factors that may cause positive or negative environmental impacts. However, some environmental indicators are often at odds with business goals, leading to a conflict, which, in order to optimize several goals simultaneously, is usually resolved by utilizing multicriteria decision analysis. Other modeling techniques describe systems by considering temporal aspects and causal relations. Such is the case of Petri nets, which were previously widely used to analyze performance in the context of SCs. This paper presents a method that combines the strengths of both techniques to assess the environmental and business indicators of such systems. This method adopts the exergy and the global warming potential key environmental indicators. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the application of the proposed modeling technique.This study presents the life cycle assessment of electricity generation from straw bales and pellets. Straw is the most abundant biomass residue in Europe and its use for energy purposes is promoted on the premise of high greenhouse gas savings. This assumption has delayed the study of sustainability of straw-fired systems on a broader sense and the literature on the topic is almost absent. This study uses data from specific literature and emissions inventories to model a number of straw pathways. The plant modeled is a medium-scale straw-fired power plant of 50MWth capacity. The results show that electricity from straw-fired power plants can indeed realize high greenhouse gas savings compared both with existing coal plants and with the European electricity mix. The savings are in the range 70-94%. The influence of the geographical origin of straw is analyzed by using datasets for the cultivation of wheat in five different European countries. The highest emissions are recorded for the case of straw from Spain due to the small yields, whereas cultivation processes in United Kingdom and the Netherlands show high environmental impacts due to the high level of fertilization. Other environmental impacts are evaluated, such as acidification potential, eutrophication, particulate matter emissions, and photochemical ozone formation. The bioenergy system scores worse than the current European electricity mix for all the categories. However, it is important to notice that in Spain and United Kingdom the straw system shows lower impacts compared with the local average coal electricity. Finally, the study investigates the break-even' distance at which the higher emissions from the pellets production are paid off by the saved emissions in their transport compared with the bales. The results show that no reasonable break-even distance exists for road transport, whereas advantages for pellets are evident in any configuration for transoceanic transport.The area of dedicated energy crops is expected to increase in Sweden. This will result in direct land use changes, which may affect the carbon stocks in soil and biomass, as well as yield levels and the use of inputs. Carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes of biomass are often not considered when calculating the climate impact in life cycle assessments (LCA) assuming that the CO2 released at combustion has recently been captured by the biomass in question. With the extended time lag between capture and release of CO2 inherent in many perennial bioenergy systems, the relation between carbon neutrality and climate neutrality may be questioned. In this paper, previously published methodologies and models are combined in a methodological framework that can assist LCA practitioners in interpreting the time-dependent climate impact of a bioenergy system. The treatment of carbon differs from conventional LCA practice in that no distinction is made between fossil and biogenic carbon. A time-dependent indicator is used to enable a representation of the climate impact that is not dependent on the choice of a specific characterization time horizon or time of evaluation and that does not use characterization factors, such as global warming potential and global temperature potential. The indicator used to aid in the interpretation phase of this paper is global mean surface temperature change (T-s(n)). A theoretical system producing willow for district heating was used to study land use change effects depending on previous land use and variations in the standing biomass carbon stocks. When replacing annual crops with willow this system presented a cooling contribution to T-s(n). However, the first years after establishing the willow plantation it presented a warming contribution to T-s(n). This behavior was due mainly to soil organic carbon (SOC) variation. A rapid initial increase in standing biomass counteracted the initial SOC loss.The growing complexity of current automation applications demand clear methodologies and procedures in order to assure that the system under design meets the requirements. Within the industrial automation field there are several methods, techniques, tools and standards that have captured the experience of designers through years of practice. On the other hand, the software engineering discipline offers different methodologies covering the different phases of the life cycle (analysis, design, test and maintenance). This work pretends to take advantage of both: the maturity of the software engineering discipline and the well-spread methods and standards of the industrial automation field. In particular, the proposed methodological approach uses model based engineering principles for developing automation control systems combining modeling methods of automation field. Specifically, it combines GEMMA (Guide d'A parts per thousand tude des Modes de Marches et d'Arrts), UML (Unified Modeling Language) use case diagrams and GRAFCET (GRAphe Fonctionnel de Commande, Etapes, Transitions) for assisting the designer during the analysis, design and coding phases. Using GEMMA, the states of the automated process are identified. Use case diagrams allow identifying the actors that participate in the operation modes. Finally, a set of GRAFCET templates assists in the design of use cases. Thus, the user is guided through the development phases in which the concepts used are familiar to him/her. The final step includes the automatic generation of the Program Organization Units (POUs) in PLCopen XML interface. The proposed methodology is illustrated by means of a simple but illustrative mechatronic case study.Over and above private economic benefits to individual farmers, new wheat varieties with phosphorus use efficiency (PUE) traits have the potential to make an important contribution to addressing major global environmental and food security challenges. One strategy being pursued is the development of wheat with enhanced organic anion release (mainly citrate) from the root system, which can solubilize soil-bound phosphorus (P) and increase the efficiency of P fertilizer uptake. Agricultural production system modeling, using a special purpose configuration of the APSIM modeling platform, was used to assess the potential long-term P fertilizer application savings for commercial wheat grown in three agro-ecological regions of Australia with varying conceptual levels of root citrate efflux enhancement. Life cycle assessment modeling (LCA) was subsequently used to quantify the potential environmental relevance of the PUE trait. At the lower level of trait expression (100 nmol g FW-1 h(-1)), annual P fertilizer savings ranged from 34% to 46% (5.5-12 kg P ha(-1) yr(-1)) between sites. This increased up to 68%, or 16 kg P ha(-1) yr(-1), at the higher level of expression (500 nmol g FW-1 h(-1)). These savings could represent an important reduction in dependence on P fertilizer derived from finite rock phosphate resources, as well as offering farmers a high degree of buffering against future P fertilizer price increases and price spikes should they occur. In addition, the trait could contribute to increasing food production by extending the economic frontier of cropping on high P sorption and P deficient soils, which is where the trait is most efficacious. An important environmental benefit of citrate efflux PUE wheat was the potential to reduce freshwater eutrophication: from 0.83 to 2.2 kg PO43- ha(-1) depending on level of trait expression and site. In comparison, reductions in total abiotic resource depletion and global warming potential were of less importance. Since the citrate efflux PUE trait had a positive impact across all environmental impact categories assessed, there is strong justification for its further development and deployment provided this can be shown to be technically and economically feasible and field performance can be verified. The integration of agricultural production system modeling and LCA was found to be valuable in enabling early-stage evaluation of an environmentally-oriented new cereal trait where sustainability benefits can only be assessed over a large number of cropping rotations and the genetics x environment x management fitness landscape is complex. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Manufacturing systems energy efficiency and the embodied energy of products are highly commented topics nowadays. So far, despite their interrelated nature, they have unfortunately been considered to be quite different from each other. Consequently, on one hand, product design remains as an unrecognised influence on the energy consumption of a manufacturing system, and on the other hand, manufacturing energy efficiency is unrealistically estimated in the calculation of product embodied energy. The present article integrates the existing literature on manufacturing energy consumption models and sets up a conceptual framework to assess the energy consumption of manufacturing systems from a product design perspective. This framework was implemented in a prototype software workflow, which was proven to generate interesting results for ecodesi gn and cleaner production initiatives. It helps in deriving realistic energy consumption values that can be linked to concrete product or process parameters, and therefore allows the improvement of product manufacturing energy efficiency at both design and manufacturing stages.We conduct a screening comparison using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to model two end-of-life vehicle (ELV) waste management scenarios. The first is the prevalent scrapping process, which entails shredding. The second is manual disassembly, a hypothetical scenario designed to reach the targets in the EU ELV Directive for 2015. The LCA considers three impact categories; climate change, metal depletion, and cumulative energy demand (CED), and identifies the potential lifecycle environmental and resource impacts of new ELV dismantling and recycling processes. Manual disassembly significantly reduces climate change impact and metal depletion, by recycling more polymers and copper and recovering more energy via incineration. The CED is much lower in the manual than the shredding scenario, mainly due to increased recycling and energy recovery, over half the reduction being attributable to polymer recycling and energy recovery. The manual scenario is significantly better than the shredding scenario in terms of environmental and resource impacts, recovering more copper and recycling more polymers. The current shredding scenario does not fulfil the current or future requirements of the ELV Directive. We identify a need to develop new ELV scrapping methods for better resource management and to investigate the value of "new" materials in ELVs, such as rare earth elements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increase in soybean production as a source of protein and oil is being stimulated by the growing demand for livestock feed, food and numerous other applications. Significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can result from land use change due to the expansion and cultivation of soybean. However, this is complex to assess and the results can vary widely. The main goal of this article is to investigate the life-cycle GHG balance for soybean produced in Latin America, assessing the implications of direct land use change emissions and different cultivation systems. A life-cycle model, including inventories for soybean produced in three different climate regions, was developed, addressing land use change, cultivation and transport to Europe. A comprehensive evaluation of alternative land use change scenarios (conversion of tropical forest, forest plantations, perennial crop plantations, savannah and grasslands), cultivation (tillage, reduced tillage and no-tillage) and soybean transportation systems was undertaken. The main results show the importance of land use change in soybean GHG emissions, but significant differences were observed for the alternative scenarios, namely 0.1-17.8 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) soybean. The original land choice is a critical issue in ensuring the lowest soybean GHG balance and degraded grassland should preferably be used for soybean cultivation. The highest GHG emissions were calculated for tropical moist regions when rainforest is converted into soybean plantations (tillage system). When land use change is not considered, the GHG intensity varies from 0.3 to 0.6 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) soybean. It was calculated that all tillage systems have higher GHG emissions than the corresponding no-tillage and reduced tillage systems. The results also show that N2O emissions play a major role in the GHG emissions from cultivation, although N2O emission calculations are very sensitive to the parameters and emission factors adopted. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The growing need to use biofuel raw materials that do not compete with food and feed have resulted in a growing interest in lignocellulosic materials and microalgae. However, the life cycle environmental benefits of both biofuels have been questioned. The aim of this study was to evaluate how environmental sustainability of forest-based and microalgae biodiesel can be estimated by using the life cycle assessment framework. These biofuel chains were chosen because they are contrasting systems, as the first one is based on a "natural" feedstock production system, while the second one is an entirely anthropogenic system using an artificial infrastructure and external inputs to grow microalgae. This study focuses on life cycle impact categories still under methodological development, namely resource depletion, land use and land use change, water use, soil quality impacts and biodiversity. In addition, climate impacts were quantified in order to exemplify the uncertainty of the results and the complexity of estimating the parameters. This study demonstrates the difficulty to assess the absolute range of the total environmental impacts of the two systems. The results propose that the greenhouse gas emissions of microalgae biodiesel are higher than those of forest residue-based biodiesel, but the results of the microalgae chain are very uncertain due to the early development stage of the technology, and due to assumptions made concerning the electricity mix. On the other hand, the microalgae system has other advantages such as low competition on productive land and low biodiversity impacts. The findings help to recognise the main characteristics of the two production chains, and the main remaining research issues on bioenergy assessment along with the methodological development needs of life cycle approaches. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this study is to perform a life cycle assessment (LCA) of steel production through the integrated steel production and electric arc furnace routes in Poland. The study defines the major sources of environmental impacts and proposes pollution prevention methods for the most pollutive steelmaking processes. The LCA methodology based on the ISO 14044 standard is used with SimaPro 7.3.3 software and the Ecoinvent database. The life cycle inventory shows data averaged from the existing steel plants in Poland, and the impact assessment results indicate that the production of pig iron in blast furnaces has the highest impact on greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption in the national integrated steel production route, while the iron ore sintering process, which is the largest contributor to dust and gas emissions in the national iron and steel industry, uses the most minerals and depletes the most metal. Electricity consumption has the highest impact on greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption in the national electric arc furnace route. Therefore, this article presents the results of an LCA of alternative fuel consumption in a national iron ore sinter plant. The study concludes that pollution prevention methods related to raw material substitutions in iron-making processes should be used to reduce environmental impacts in the iron and steel industry. The results of this study can be used as the first step in performing a full cradle-to-grave steel LCA that includes all phases of the steel life cycle. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Throughout the years, the forest sector (forest activities and forest industries) has received special attention concerning the quantification of its environmental performance. Douglas-fir is a softwood species with multiple industrial applications, high productivity and physiological adaptability. In Europe, Germany is the second most important country in terms of dedicated areas to the cultivation of this tree species. This study aims to assess the environmental impacts associated to Douglas-fir cultivation in Germany under representative management practices, including a detailed life cycle inventory of all the processes performed all over the life cycle of the plantation. The environmental assessment shows that the stand establishment and tending is the main responsible of the environmental impacts due to the constraints related to numerous thinning steps (thinning, roundwood forwarding and loading onto trucks for final distribution) which require the use of large machineries and fossil fuel. The logging stage, which includes the final cutting and the corresponding forwarding and loading into trucks, is the second most important stage with a remarkable contribution to all the environmental categories. Although these hot-spots have also been identified for other forest systems in the literature, the different management practices, system boundaries and intensity of forest systems (frequency of activities) will have a key role on the final environmental assessment. In relative terms, forest management activities performed all over the life cycle of Douglas-fir presents much lower environmental impact in comparison with widely assessed species such as spruce, pine or eucalyptus. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Manufacturing of nanoscale materials (nanomaterials) is a major outcome of nanotechnology. However, the potential adverse human health effects of manufactured nanomaterial exposure are not yet fully understood, and exposures in humans are mostly uncharacterized. Appropriate exposure control strategies to protect workers are still being developed and evaluated, and regulatory approaches rely largely on industry self-regulation and self-reporting. In this context of soft regulation, the authors sought to: 1) assess current company-reported environmental health and safety practices in the United States throughout the product life cycle, 2) consider their implications for the manufactured nanomaterial workforce, and 3) identify the needs of manufactured nanomaterial companies in developing nano-protective environmental health and safety practices. Analysis was based on the responses of 45U.S.-based company participants in a 2009-2010 international survey of private companies that use and/or produce nanomaterials. Companies reported practices that span all aspects of the current government-recommended hierarchical approach to manufactured nanomaterials' exposure controls. However, practices that were tailored to current manufactured nanomaterials' hazard and exposure knowledge, whether within or outside the hierarchical approach, were reported less frequently than general chemical hygiene practices. Product stewardship and waste management practicesthe influences of which are substantially downstreamwere reported less frequently than most other environmental health and safety practices. Larger companies had more workers handling nanomaterials, but smaller companies had proportionally more employees handling nanomaterials and more frequently identified impediments to implementing nano-protective practices. Company-reported environmental health and safety practices suggest more attention to environmental health and safety is necessary, especially with regard to practices that can cause external effects. Given reported impediments, smaller companies may especially benefit from more attention. However, the manufactured nanomaterial workforce within smaller companies is particularly difficult to identify and hence locate, posing challenges to developing and enforcing appropriate workplace environmental health and safety. [Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene for the following free supplemental resource: a file containing Survey of Current Health and Safety Practices in the Nanomaterial Industry and a file containing figures.]Sustainability of building construction systems depends on their material and energy consumption, and the consequent environmental impact. Thus, the evaluation of their sustainability requires a wide analysis that includes these three topics. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) used together can offer a full environmental evaluation. For this reason, in this study, five different facade constructive systems are evaluated with MFA and LCA to compare them from an environmental point of view. The constructive systems were monitored in an experimental set-up located in Mediterranean continental climate, registering energy consumptions for summer and winter periods. MFA evaluated their total material requirement and the ecological rucksack. LCA evaluated their impact on the environment. The energy parameter considered the embodied energy of the materials and the energy consumption registered in the experimental set-up. MFA results show the significant quantity of natural resource extraction required for building which leads to a considerable ecological rucksack. On the other hand, LCA results show the importance of the operational phase of the building in the overall building energy consumption, and therefore in the environmental impact. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential use of biodiesel produced from waste cooking oil (WCO) in Mexico and its CO2 emission reduction potential for the Mexican transport sector and associated costs. The results show, based on 2010 data, that the potential of biodiesel from WCO is between 7.8 PJ and 17.7 PJ that represent between 1.5% and 3.3% of petro-diesel consumption for the road transport sector and can reduce between 0.51 and 1.02 Mt of CO2, (1.0%-2.7% of CO2-associated emissions), depending on the recovery ratio of WCO from vegetable oil consumption for cooking and considering CO2 emissions for biodiesel production and methanol emissions during production and combustion in the blend. Primary energy used to produce 1 MJ of WCO-biodiesel is 0.8727 MJ, while literature reports 1.2007 MJ to produce 1 MJ of petro-diesel. Biodiesel costs are similar to petro-diesel costs if WCO is free. The paper offers suggestions for policies that promote increased recollection of WCO for biodiesel production and reduced illegal marketing of WCO, which is the main barrier to increase biodiesel production from WCO. The data used for the analysis is based on a case study of a WCO biodiesel plant that operates in Mexico City. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With recent advances in metabolic engineering, it is now technically possible to produce a wide portfolio of existing petrochemical products from biomass feedstock. In recent years, a number of modeling approaches have been developed to support the engineering and decision-making processes associated with the development and implementation of a sustainable biochemical industry. The temporal and spatial scales of modeling approaches for sustainable chemical production vary greatly, ranging from metabolic models that aid the design of fermentative microbial strains to material and monetary flow models that explore the ecological impacts of all economic activities. Research efforts that attempt to connect the models at different scales have been limited. Here, we review a number of existing modeling approaches and their applications at the scales of metabolism, bioreactor, overall process, chemical industry, economy, and ecosystem. In addition, we propose a multi-scale approach for integrating the existing models into a cohesive framework. The major benefit of this proposed framework is that the design and decision-making at each scale can be informed, guided, and constrained by simulations and predictions at every other scale. In addition, the development of this multi-scale framework would promote cohesive collaborations across multiple traditionally disconnected modeling disciplines to achieve sustainable chemical production.The growing necessity to save material and energy resources, together with an increasing concern over the environmental issues and uncertainties on the evolution of the economy, have impelled minimalist- approaches to Architecture and Engineering. This created a new necessity for reducing, to the minimum necessary expression, the used building materials and elements. When analysing the overall material inputs of a building, it is possible to conclude that the interior partition walls have the higher contribution to the material inputs, when compared to other non-load bearing construction elements. Other aspect to highlight is that a great portion of building designs are not flexible in use and therefore buildings are not suitably adjustable to the permanent updating of life-styles and variations on the composition of the households. Although there are some lightweight building technologies, in most cases the construction practice all over Europe makes use of heavyweight and static partition walls. This paper will focus the advantages of lightweight partition walls and may contribute for the development of new partition wall technologies. It presents a sustainability assessment of a new lightweight sandwich membrane building technology for indoor partitions developed within a research project. The used methodology comprises the environmental, functional and economic life-cycle analysis. In order to identify the advantages of the building technology under development, each different design approach for the conceptual technology will be compared with two reference technologies: i) the heavyweight conventional partition wall (hollow brick wall); and ii) the lightweight reference gypsum panels wall (plasterboard wall). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to examine the impact of corn- or wheat-based dried distillers' grains with solubles (CDDGS, WDDGS) on enteric methane (CH4) emissions from finishing beef cattle, and to determine if any observed reductions were a result of the fat content of CDDGS. A second objective was to compare the effect of CDDGS or WDDGS on N excretion. The experiment was designed as replicated 4 x 4 Latin square with 28-d periods using 16 ruminally fistulated crossbred heifers. The control diet contained 87% barley grain, 8% barley silage and 5% supplement (dry matter; DM basis). Treatment diets were formulated by replacing 40% DM of barley grain with CDDGS, WDDGS, or corn oil supplemented WDDGS (WDDGS+oil). For the WDDGS+oil diet 6.5% corn oil was added to WDDGS (3.4% fat DM) to achieve a similar fat level as in CDDGS (9.7% DM). All diets were fed as total mixed rations once daily ad libitum. Total collection of urine and faeces was conducted between days 18 and 21. Methane was measured between days 25 and 28 using four identical open circuit respiratory chambers. Compared with WDDGS, feeding CDDGS and WDDGS+oil reduced (P <0.05) CH4 emissions as a percentage of gross energy intake (GET) from 5.5 to 4.0 and 4.2%, respectively. Feeding CDDGS also reduced (P <0.05) CH4 emissions compared with the control (5.0% of GET), while WDDGS+oil tended (P =0.08) to elicit a similar response. Methane (% of GET) between WDDGS and the control did not differ (P =0.29). Excretion of total N was greater (P <0.001) for CDDGS, WDDGS and WDDGS+oil (220, 253, and 265 g d(-1)) compared with the control (143 g d(-1)). Although oil appears to be responsible for reducing CH4 emissions when DDGS is included in the diet, increased N excretion requires that a complete life cycle assessment be conducted to assess the full impact of DDGS on greenhouse gas emissions from finishing cattle.This article describes how life cycle assessments are performed in the ecodesign learning centre at the faculty of Engineering in Bilbao (University of the Basque Country UPV-EHU) aiming at improving already existing products. In this case, the assessed product has been a series of switchgears for primary distribution manufactured by a company specialized in electrical applications. The primary aim of this assessment was to come up with some improvement actions that can be applied to these switchgears so as to redesign and manufacture these assemblies in a more sustainable way. In addition, the ultimate purpose of this research is the introduction of the ecodesign concept in more products of the company. Throughout this study, the switchgears have been classified according to 5 categories of environmental impact: acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion and photochemical oxidation. A special emphasis has been placed on global warming, since it is considered one of greatest environmental problems at present. Using the SimaPro tool, all the components making up the switchgear for primary distribution have been analyzed one by one and separately. Thanks to this study, the first improvement action implemented in the production process of the switchgear has considerably diminished its environmental impact. Besides, most of the reasons causing the impacts have been identified. The company is now using this information as a starting point for the investigation and execution of ecodesign methodologies in the development of new products.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely known methodology for "cradle to grave" investigation of the environmental impacts of products and technological lifecycles; however, this methodology has not been yet broadly used as an eco-design tool among the practitioners of the building sector. We applied LCA on three conventional Italian buildings - a detached residential house, a multi-family and a multi-story office building. Our analysis includes all the life stages, from the production of the construction materials, to their transportation, assembling, lighting, appliances, cooling- and heating-usages during the operating phase, to the end of life of all the materials and components. We found that the operation phase has the greatest contribution to the total impact (from 77% of that of the detached house, up to 85% of the office building), whereas the impact of the construction phase ranges from about 14% (office building) to 21% (detached house). We carried further analyses to evaluate the influence of various optimizations of the buildings, e.g., more efficient envelopes and facilities, on the entire life cycle of the three buildings. In addition, we propose a methodological approach, which can contribute to the acceptance of LCA as a tool in the eco-friendly design of buildings, especially those buildings whose impact during the construction phase needs to be carefully checked, such as Nearly Zero Energy Buildings. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper proposes a method to aid in the comparison and choice of alternatives for assemblies closely related to buildings' thermal performance. The method provides an assessment of the environmental, energy and economic life cycle from cradle-to-cradle (3E-C2C) following recent European Standards for the environmental and economic assessment of construction works. Environmental performance is assessed using life cycle assessment method, energy performance corresponds to consumption of energy for heating and cooling, and the economic performance is based on the whole-life costing (WLC) method. The 3E cost-C2C approach establishes weights that allow the quantification of each aspect of the assembly's performance using the same unit. This approach uses a prevention-based environmental impact assessment method that converts the results of all impact categories into an economic unit. This allows the cost of the environmental impacts to be added to the economic and energy WLC and a 3E performance C2C to be considered, therefore preventing contradictory conclusions that can arise from the individual analysis of each aspect. 3E-C2C is useful in the selection of an external wall alternative, and corresponding insulation thickness, when comparing alternatives that are not functionally equivalent, since there is no need to change their characteristics to make them comparable. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of a detailed LCA study of a low-energy consumption building (thermal energy for heating equal to 11 kWh/m(2) year) located in Perugia, Italy, according to European ISO 14040 and 14044. The building matches the criteria of environmental sustainability and bio-architecture, complying with the "PassivHaus" standard. All life cycle phases were included in the research: acquisition and production of materials, on-site construction and use/maintenance, demolition and material disposal (100% landfilling and demolition with waste recycling). A life span of 70 years was considered. The research was therefore focused on cradle-to-grave life, based on data collected by authors, integrated with data from the literature. In particular the study was carried out to analyze: the benefits due to the use of recycled materials, a solar PV (during the utilization years) and the final demolition of the building. The LCA modeling was performed using the SimaPro software application, connected to the ecoinvent database. The results show that applying energy saving measures (highly insulated building envelope and passive-house standard, solar PV, waste recycling and recycled products in pre-production phase) could significantly decrease the impact of modern dwellings, with the consciousness that new ways of building do not always provide a positive environmental outcome. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and utilization (CCU) aims at reducing both greenhouse-gas emissions and fossil-resource depletion. Assessment of these aims requires quantitative environmental evaluation. So far, evaluation of CCU is based on ad hoc criteria such as the amount of CO2 utilized, simplified CO2 balances or CO2 storage duration. Albeit these criteria may be useful for very early stages of potential research pathways, we show that they are insufficient as basis for decisions on implementations and that they may lead to even qualitatively wrong environmental evaluation of CCU. Therefore, a holistic evaluation using life-cycle assessment (LCA) is mandatory. However, the application of LCA to CCU is subject to methodological pitfalls: (i) utilized CO2 might intuitively be considered as negative GHG emissions; (ii) since CCU usually generates products both in the capture and in the utilization process, choices exist how to allocate emissions to the individual products and (iii) CO2 storage duration is not reflected in traditional LCA. To avoid the existing pitfalls, we provide a systematic framework for LCA of CCU in which (i) the utilized CO2 is correctly considered as regular feedstock with its own production emissions; (ii) recommendations for obtaining product-specific LCA results for CCU processes are given and (iii) the CO2 storage duration is incorporated into a time-resolved global warming metric. The developed framework is illustrated by simplified LCA of CO2 capture from the atmosphere and from coal power plants, and of CO2 utilization for methanol and polymer production. Overall, the presented framework allows for the sound environmental evaluation of CCU.The entire life cycle of a municipal solid waste (MSW) oxy-fuel incineration power plant was evaluated using the method of life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify and quantify the fossil energy requirements and environmental impacts. The functional unit was 1000 kg (1 t) MSW. During the life cycle, the saving standard coal by electricity generation was more than diesel consumption, and the effect of soot and ashes was the greatest among all calculated categorization impacts. The total weighted resource consumption and total weighted environment potential of MSW oxy-fuel incineration were -0.37 mPR(90) (milli person equivalent) and -0.27 PET2010 (person equivalent), better than MSW incineration with CO2 capture via monoethanolamine (MEA) absorption. The sensitivity analysis showed that the electric power consumption of air separation unit (ASU) was the primary influencing parameter, and the influence of electric power consumption of CO2 compressor was secondary, while transport distance had small influence. Overall, MSW oxy-fuel incineration technology has certain development potential with the increment of MSW power supply efficiency and development of ASU in the future. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We compare the potential of hybrid, extended-range plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles to reduce lifetime cost and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions under various scenarios and simulated driving conditions. We find that driving conditions affect economic and environmental benefits of electrified vehicles substantially: Under the urban NYC driving cycle, hybrid and plug-in vehicles can cut life cycle emissions by 60% and reduce costs up to 20% relative to conventional vehicles (CVs). In contrast, under highway test conditions (HWFET) electrified vehicles offer marginal emissions reductions at higher costs. NYC conditions with frequent stops triple life cycle emissions and increase costs of conventional vehicles by 30%, while aggressive driving (US06) reduces the all-electric range of plug-in vehicles by up to 45% compared to milder test cycles (like HWFET). Vehicle window stickers, fuel economy standards, and life cycle studies using average lab-test vehicle efficiency estimates are therefore incomplete: (1) driver heterogeneity matters, and efforts to encourage adoption of hybrid and plug-in vehicles will have greater impact if targeted to urban drivers vs. highway drivers; and (2) electrified vehicles perform better on some drive cycles than others, so non-representative tests can bias consumer perception and regulation of alternative technologies. We discuss policy implications. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Here, we present a process based on roll-to-roll (R2R) technology which allows for very fast processing of polymer thermoelectric (TE) devices and we furthermore demonstrate a simplified but more efficient way of serially connecting these devices by means of R2R thin-film processing. The new device architecture makes it possible to use only one TE material (opposed to two materials which are employed in well-known Peltier elements), and a total of 18,000 serially connected junctions were prepared by flexoprinting of silver electrodes and by rotary screen printing of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT):polystyrene sulfonate (PSS) as the TE material. Testing of devices revealed that the new architecture clearly showed to be functioning as expected, but also pointed toward challenges for thin-film TE development which is the influence of the substrate thickness on the thermal gradient over a device and the currently low performance available. A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out in order to evaluate the sustainability of the new architecture and to estimate the requirements for development of a successful technology.Polluting mine accidents and widespread environmental contamination associated with historic mining in Europe and elsewhere has triggered the improvement of related environmental legislation and of the environmental assessment and management methods for the mining industry. Mining has some unique features such as natural background pollution associated with natural mineral deposits, industrial activities and contamination located in the three-dimensional sub-surface space, the problem of long-term remediation after mine closure, problem of secondary contaminated areas around mine sites and abandoned mines in historic regions like Europe. These mining-specific problems require special tools to address the complexity of the environmental problems of mining-related contamination. The objective of this paper is to review and evaluate some of the decision support methods that have been developed and applied to mining contamination. In this paper, only those methods that are both efficient decision support tools and provide a 'holistic' approach to the complex problem as well are considered. These tools are (1) landscape ecology, (2) industrial ecology, (3) landscape geochemistry, (4) geo-environmental models, (5) environmental impact assessment, (6) environmental risk assessment, (7) material flow analysis and (8) life cycle assessment. This unique inter-disciplinary study should enable both the researcher and the practitioner to obtain broad view on the state-of-the-art of decision support methods for the environmental assessment of contamination at mine sites. Documented examples and abundant references are also provided.In France, agriculture contributes to 19% of national GHG emissions, 10% of which are tied to cattle production. Livestock farming helps counter climate change by promoting soil carbon sequestration. National figures show that GHG emissions and soil carbon sequestration from cattle farming represent 39.5 million tonnes CO2 eq. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) shows a net carbon footprint of 0.5 - 0.8 kg CO2 eq/kg milk for dairy systems (down 15 - 25% between 1990 and 2010), and a net carbon footprint of 8.2 - 10.8 kg CO2 eq/kg liveweight for beef systems. Rationalizing evaluation systems and levers of action is a necessity, both on a global (system) and aggregated (national) scale, and further involves taking into consideration the economic balance of dairy and beef systems. Numerous levers of action have been identified for reducing the contribution of cattle farming to GHG emissions.The LanzaTech process can convert carbon monoxide-containing gases produced by industries, such as steel manufacturing, into valuable fuel products. The life-cycle analysis (LCA) of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from the LanzaTech process has been developed for a Chinese setting using the original Tsinghua China Automotive LCA model along with a customized module developed principally for the process. The LCA results demonstrate that LanzaTech gas-to-liquid (GTL) processing in China's steel manufacturing is favorable in terms of life-cycle fossil energy and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 50% compared with the conventional petroleum gasoline. The LanzaTech process, therefore, shows advantages in both energy-savings and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared with most bio-ethanol production pathways in China.Forests are a significant pool of terrestrial carbon. A key feature related to forest biomass harvesting and use is the typical time difference between carbon release into and sequestration from the atmosphere. Traditionally, the use of sustainably grown biomass has been considered as carbon neutral in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. However, various approaches to account for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sinks of forest biomass acquisition and use have also been developed and applied, resulting in different conclusions on climate impacts of forest products. The aim of this study is to summarize, clarify, and assess the suitability of these approaches for LCA. A literature review is carried out, and the results are analyzed through an assessment framework. The different approaches are reviewed through their approach to the definition of reference land-use situation, consideration of time frame and timing of carbon emissions and sequestration, substitution credits, and indicators applied to measure climate impacts. On the basis of the review, it is concluded that, to account for GHG emissions and the related climate impacts objectively, biomass carbon stored in the products and the timing of sinks and emissions should be taken into account in LCA. The reference situation for forest land use has to be defined appropriately, describing the development in the absence of the studied system. We suggest the use of some climate impact indicator that takes the timing of the emissions and sinks into consideration and enables the use of different time frames. If substitution credits are considered, they need to be transparently presented in the results. Instead of carbon stock values taken from the literature, the use of dynamic forest models is recommended.It has been claimed that in order to assess the sustainability of products, a combination of the results from a life cycle assessment (LCA), social life cycle assessment (SLCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) is needed. Despite the frequent reference to this claim in the literature, very little explicit analysis of the claim has been made. The purpose of this article is to analyse this claim. An interpretation of the goals of sustainability, as outlined in the report Our Common Future (WCED 1987), which is the basis for most literature on sustainability assessment in the LCA community, is presented and detailed to a level enabling an analysis of the relation to the impact categories at midpoint level considered in life cycle (LC) methodologies. The interpretation of the definition of sustainability as outlined in Our Common Future (WCED 1987) suggests that the assessment of a product's sustainability is about addressing the extent to which product life cycles affect poverty levels among the current generation, as well as changes in the level of natural, human and produced and social capital available for the future population. It is shown that the extent to which product life cycles affect poverty to some extent is covered by impact categories included in existing SLCA approaches. It is also found that the extent to which product life cycles affect natural capital is well covered by LCA, and human capital is covered by both LCA and SLCA but in different ways. Produced capital is not to any large extent considered in any of the LC methodologies. Furthermore, because of the present level of knowledge about what creates and destroys social capital, it is difficult to assess how it relates to the LC methodologies. It is also found that the LCC is only relevant in the context of a life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) if focusing on the monetary gains or losses for the poor. Yet, this is an aspect which is already considered in several SLCA approaches. The current consensus that LCSA can be performed through combining the results from an SLCA, LCA and LCC is only partially supported in this article: The LCSA should include both an LCA and an SLCA, which should be expanded to better cover how product life cycles affect poverty and produced capital. The LCC may be included if it has as a focus to asses income gains for the poor.This study aimed to investigate the environmental consequences (on climate change and land use) of an increase in preference for grass-based milk in France using a consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) approach. This increase in preference was assumed to be satisfied domestically, by converting maize silage-based dairy farms (MS farm) to grass-based dairy farms (G farm) while keeping on-farm usable agricultural area and total milk production of farm constant. The possible consequences of an increase in preference for grass-based milk were identified based on cause and effect relationships. The conversion from MS to G farm reduced the use of soybean meal, changed the on-farm cropping pattern and produced more animals but less wheat and no rapeseed. Effects on on-farm soil C were predicted with the RothC model and on global land use change (LUC) with models of global agricultural markets (Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) and Landbouw Economisch Instituut Trade Analysis Project (LEITAP)). System expansion using animals from a suckler beef production system was applied to estimate the impacts of milk and animal co-products from the dairy system. Land occupation and climate change impacts were estimated. The consequences of farm conversion were attributed only to the milk, as preference for grass-based milk drove the conversion process. The conversion from the MS to G farm increases land occupation and climate change impacts for the G farm, respectively, by 9 and 7 % according to GTAP and 14 and 51 % according to LEITAP. Land occupation and climate change impacts of milk produced by the G farm after conversion increased, respectively, by 82 and 13 % with GTAP and 123 and 97 % with LEITAP relative to those for the MS farm (before conversion). The production of additional wheat and rapeseed outside the G farm increased impacts of the G farm (by 29-69 % depending on impacts and model used). Results indicate that the farm conversion would probably have consequences on global LUC and that it is important to account for this in a LCA approach. Land use and land use change (LULUC) contributed to the impacts of grass-based milk, and results were highly sensitive to the LULUC model used. The many possible chain-of-event pathways that follow a change in preference for a given product yield high uncertainty in CLCA results. This study only assessed one possible way to meet the increase in preference for grass-based milk; it is necessary to perform a sensitivity analysis to investigate other possible scenarios resulting from this increase in preference.The industrial ecosystem identified in and around the Campbell Industrial Park in Honolulu County, Hawai'i involves 11 facilities exchanging water, materials, and energy across an industrial cluster. This paper highlights the advantages of this arrangement using life cycle assessment to determine the energy and environmental costs and benefits of the existing pattern of exchanges. A consequential approach was used to evaluate each material substitution for four environmental impact categories: primary energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, acidification, and eutrophication. Each material exchange included avoided production and reduced use of virgin materials, any necessary pre-processing or transportation of local by-products, and avoided treatment or disposal of these by-products. All exchanges exhibited positive net savings across all environmental impact categories, with the exceptions of waste oil and tire-derived fuel burned as substitutes for coal. The greatest savings occur as a result of sharing steam between a combined cycle fuel oil-fired cogeneration plant and a nearby refinery. In total, the environmental savings realized by this industrial cluster are significant, equivalent to 25 % of the state's policy goal for reducing the industrial component of GHG emissions over the next decade. The role of policy in supporting material and energy exchanges is also discussed as the central cluster of two power plants and two refineries share steam and water in part under regulatory requirements. The results show environmental benefits of the sharing of by-product resources accrued on a life cycle basis, while for the local context, the reduction of imported fuels and materials helps to reduce the external dependency of Oahu's remote island economy. The environmental benefits of materials exchanges are often ignored in energy policy, though, as in this case, they can represent considerable savings.Currently, carbon footprint (CF) analysis is gaining a role of primary interest within the extensive literature regarding wine sustainability issues. It envisages the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions that underpin the life-cycle of wine, from viticulture and vinification to wine bottling, distribution, consumption and waste end-of-life. This critical review pursues several methodological and conceptual issues behind wine carbon footprinting, such as calculation approaches, labeling and standardization purposes, combinations with other methods and theories, and CF trends in the wine sector. Most studies have only addressed specific methodological issues from an attributional life-cycle perspective, or have directly reported the CF profile of a given wine product. Future studies, however, will have to deal with increasingly complex market interactions linked to the entire life cycle of wine-making. A comprehensive discussion is presented concerning the benefits the CF indicator may provide both to producers and consumers and on the needs for reducing uncertainties and misinterpretations within a growing globalized wine market. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Joint implementation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has recently showed to be a suitable tool for measuring efficiency in agri-food systems. In the present study, LCA + DEA methodologies were applied for a total of 94 soybean farms in Iran to benchmark the level of operational input efficiency of each farmer. Likewise, potential reductions in the consumption levels of the physical inputs were determined, while estimating the environmental improvements linked to these reduction targets. Our results indicate that 46% of the farms studied operated efficient. The estimated Global Warming Potential (GWP) reduction for the whole sample was obtained similar to 11% according to DEA model results. Among the field operations, the contribution of irrigation to the total GWP reduction was the highest (63%) followed by fertilization (34%). The results also revealed that farms which burnt crop residue in the field generate significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than other farms. The raising of operational input efficiency and limiting of crop residue burning in the field are recommended options to ensure more environmental friendly soybean farming systems in the region. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We conducted a carbon footprint analysis to quantify the scale and distribution of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in contemporary intensive egg production and processing supply chains (up to the breaker facility gate) in the Midwestern United States. Feed production and use in pullet and layer facilities was found to contribute the largest share of supply chain emissions. Further optimization of feed use efficiencies and sourcing least-environmental cost feed inputs are therefore key leverage points for reducing the GHG intensity of regional egg products. Of particular efficacy will be reducing the fraction of animal-derived materials used as inputs to poultry feeds and/or sourcing least-GHG intensive (i.e. poultry rather than ruminant) animal-derived feed inputs. Managing supply chains for nitrogen (N) use efficiency is also a key consideration - both in terms of sourcing N-efficient crop inputs, and selection of manure management strategies to minimize N losses. Breeding for N use efficiency may also be efficacious in this respect. In contrast, contributions from egg processing and breaking stages to overall emissions were small (1% and 2% of supply chain emissions, respectively). Although making relatively minor contributions to supply chain emissions, the high degree of variability in reported energy and other (non-feed) resources used between facilities for pullet and layer production along with egg processing and breaking stages also indicates opportunities for streamlining towards more efficient industry norms. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of 12 dairy farms in Denmark, Germany and Italy was evaluated using an LCA approach and the most important parameters influencing their environmental sustainability were identified. The farms represent different production methods (organic vs. conventional), summer feeding systems (confinement vs. pasture) and annual production levels (6275-10,964 kg ECM cow(-1)). There was large variability in stocking rates (1.1-11.0 LU ha(-1)) among farms, which has a major impact on the production per unit area of farmland, on feed self-sufficiency and on farm surplus of nitrogen. The proportion of grassland on farmland used for forage production or pasture varied from 0 to 100%. The lowest global warming potential (GWP), acidification, eutrophication and non-renewable energy use were achieved by the German pasture-based system, followed by the Danish organic dairy system and the very intensive Italian farming system with very similar environmental impact values. However, a sensitivity analysis showed that when emissions relating to direct land use change of soybean production were included in the assessment, the GWP changed considerably for the conventional farms due to the inclusion of conventional soymeal in the feed concentrate. There were strong and positive correlations between the four impact categories, and overall the results indicate that improving greenhouse gas emissions would improve the general environmental sustainability of the dairy farm. The land occupation was lowest in the farms with the highest stocking rate. The organic Danish farms had the lowest impact on biodiversity loss, which in general was positively influenced by the share of grassland in the system. A high proportion of grassland also had a significant positive effect on GWP, acidification and energy use. The other feature that mainly improved the environmental impact was the feed efficiency of the dairy cows, which was negatively correlated with GWP, acidification and eutrophication. We found no relation between the environmental impact and the milk production per cow or the stocking rate at the farm. However, due to the limited number of observations (only 12 farms were assessed), the results of the correlation analyses should be handled with care. There was also large variation in the relative contributions from on- and off-farm activities among farms and for the different impact categories, showing the importance of a holistic approach and the difficulties in evaluating a farming system both in a product and area-based perspective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study was conducted to compare the environmental effect of weight reduction and different material composition of packages using life cycle analysis of a traditional bacon package (L-board bacon package) compared to a new light weighted bacon package (OLB bacon package). A sensitivity analysis of the main components for the L-board and OLB bacon package is included to confirm either the potential environmental benefits obtained by weight reduction of the traditional bacon package or changing packaging materials. The L-board bacon package is composed of polyethylene/wax coated paper/polyethylene with an overwrap pouch. The new lightweight OLB-board bacon package is composed of reverse printed oriented polypropylene/expanded polystyrene with adhesive, along with a lighter weight overwrap pouch. Environmental impacts were characterized by life cycle assessment with SimaPro software. The general principles, framework of this study, goal and scope definition of the problem, inventory analysis, and interpretation of the results were conducting according to the ISO 14040 family of standards. The new light weighted OLB-board bacon package shows lower environmental burden than the traditional bacon package in most impact indicators, except the mineral extraction indicator. Based on a sensitivity analysis, it was found that changing the material of the original bacon package reduces more the environmental burden of the final bacon package than reducing the weight of the original bacon board material. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts derived from the urban water system of the municipality of Aveiro (Portugal) were analysed in this study using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. In addition, those stages and processes with the largest environmental impacts were identified and improvement scenarios were proposed. The entire water system was considered, including the following stages: water abstraction and treatment, water distribution, sewage collection, wastewater treatment and disposal, and water administration. The results show that the stage of water abstraction and treatment was the most relevant for the majority of impact categories because most of the electricity consumption happened during this stage. For marine eutrophication and marine ecotoxicity, the stage of wastewater treatment and disposal alone carried almost the entire burden because of the release of nitrogen and phosphorus into the sea. Electricity consumption and discharge of nutrients to the sea have been identified as the largest contributors to the environmental impacts. Therefore, scenarios focused on changing these burdens were assessed in order to prioritise those actions that would bring the greatest improvements. The proposed improvement actions could be a basis for the decision-making process regarding future investments towards environmental sustainability of the urban water system. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The efficient management of biorecalcitrant agro-industrial effluents, such as olive mill wastewater (OMW), is a matter of concern along all Mediterranean countries. However, the applicability of any treatment technique is strongly related, apart from its mineralization and detoxification efficiency, to its joint environmental impacts. In this work, the life cycle assessment methodology was utilized to estimate the environmental footprint of three advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), namely UV heterogenous photocatalysis (UV/TiO2), wet air oxidation (WAO) and electrochemical oxidation (EO) over boron-doped diamond electrodes, for OMW treatment. It was observed that both EO and WAO can be competitive processes in terms of COD, TPh and color removal. EO was found to be a more environmentally friendly technique as it yields lower total environmental impacts, including CO2 emissions to atmosphere. The environmental impacts of all three AOPs show that human health is primarily affected followed by impacts onto resources depletion. All in all, it was found that the environmental sustainability of AOPs is strongly related to their energy requirements and that their total environmental impacts decline according to the following order: UV/TiO2 > WAO > EO. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, environmental effects of three medium scale (330 kW, 500 kW, 810 kW) and two large scale (2050 kW, 3020 kW) wind turbines with the hub heights of 50 m, 80 m and 100 m installed in Pinarbasi-Kayseri are compared using life cycle assessment methodology. Manufacturing and utilization of wind turbines, decommissioning and recycling steps are considered for this study. GaBi4 life cycle assessment software is utilized for analysis. Selected wind turbines are compared in terms of environmental impacts, embodied energies and energy payback times. The results show that environmental impacts are low for the turbines with high hub heights due to increase in electricity production of those turbines. Wind turbine with rated power of 2050 kW at 100 m hub height is the ideal option to install in Pinarbasi-Kayseri among the selected wind turbines with respect to the energy, environmental aspects and energy payback time. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential of first generation biofuels to mitigate climate change is still largely debated in the scientific and policy-making arenas. It is currently assessed through life cycle assessment (LCA), a method for accounting for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a given product from "cradle-to-grave", which is widely used to aid decision making on environmental issues. Although LCA is standardized, its application to biofuels leads to inconclusive results often fraught by a high variability and uncertainty. This is due to differences in quantifying the environmental impacts of feedstock production, and the difficulties encountered when considering land use changes (LUC) effects. The occurrence of LUC mechanisms is in part the consequence of policies supporting the use of biofuels in the transport sector, which implicitly increases the competition between various possible uses of land worldwide. Here, we review the methodologies recently put forward to include LUC effects in LCAs, and examples from the US, Europe and France. These cross analysis show that LCA needs to be adapted and combined to other tools such as economic modeling in order to provide a more reliable assessment of the biofuels chains.Bio-based polymers have become feasible alternatives to traditional petroleum-based plastics. However, the factors that influence the sustainability of bio-based polymers are often unclear. This paper reviews published life cycle assessments (LCAs) and commonly used LCA databases that quantify the environmental sustainability of bio-based polymers and summarizes the range of findings reported within the literature. LCA is discussed as a means for quantifying environmental impacts for a product from its cradle, or raw materials extraction, to the grave, or end of life. The results of LCAs from existing databases as well as peer-reviewed literature allow for the comparison of environmental impacts. This review compares standard database results for three bio-based polymers, polylactic acid (PLA), poly-hydroxyallcanoate (PHA), and thermoplastic starch (TPS) with five common petroleum derived polymers. The literature showed that biopolymers, coming out of a relatively new industry, exhibit similar impacts compared to petroleum-based plastics. The studies reviewed herein focused mainly on global warming potential (GWP) and fossil resource depletion while largely ignoring other environmental impacts, some of which result in environmental tradeoffs. The studies reviewed also varied greatly in the scope of their assessment. Studies that included the end of life (EOL) reported much higher GWP results than those that limited the scope to resin or granule production. Including EOL in the LCA provides more comprehensive results for biopolymers, but simultaneously introduces greater amounts of uncertainty and variability. Little life-cycle data is available on the impacts of different manners of disposal, thus it will be critical for future sustainability assessments of biopolymers to include accurate end of life impacts. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiesel is a promising fuel alternative compared to traditional diesel obtained from conventional sources such as fossil fuel. Many flowsheet alternatives exist for the production of biodiesel and therefore it is necessary to evaluate these alternatives using defined criteria and also from process intensification opportunities. This work focuses on three main aspects that have been incorporated into a systematic computer-aided framework for sustainable process design. First, the creation of a generic superstructure, which consists of all possible process alternatives based on available technology. Second, the evaluation of this superstructure for systematic screening to obtain an appropriate base case design. This is done by first reducing the search space using a sustainability analysis, which provides key indicators for process bottlenecks of different flowsheet configurations and then by further reducing the search space by using economic evaluation and life cycle assessment. Third, the determination of sustainable design with/without process intensification using a phenomena-based synthesis/design method. A detailed step by step application of the framework is highlighted through a biodiesel production case study.The research developments with renewable energy source water pumping systems (RESWPSs) are reviewed in this paper. The reported investigations are categorized into five major groups as follows: (i) solar photovoltaic water pumping systems (SPWPSs), (ii) solar thermal water pumping systems (STWPSs), (iii) wind energy water pumping systems (WEWPSs), (iv) biomass water pumping systems (BWPSs) and (v) hybrid renewable energy water pumping systems (HREWPSs). More than a hundred published articles related to RESWPSs are briefly reviewed. Additionally, the limitations with RESWPSs and further research needs are described. This paper concludes that renewable energy sources (RESs) play a vital role in reducing the consumption of conventional energy sources and its environmental impacts for water pumping applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biopolymers are generally considered an eco-friendly alternative to petrochemical polymers due to the renewable feedstock used to produce them and their biodegradability. However, the farming practices used to grow these feedstocks often carry significant environmental burdens, and the production energy can be higher than for petrochemical polymers. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are available in the literature, which make comparisons between biopolymers and various petrochemical polymers, however the results can be very disparate. This review has therefore been undertaken, focusing on three biodegradable biopolymers, poly(lactic acid) (PLA), poly(hydroxyalkanoates) (PHAs), and starch-based polymers, in an attempt to determine the environmental impact of each in comparison to petrochemical polymers. Reasons are explored for the discrepancies between these published LCAs. The majority of studies focused only on the consumption of non-renewable energy and global warming potential and often found these biopolymers to be superior to petrochemically derived polymers. In contrast, studies which considered other environmental impact categories as well as those which were regional or product specific often found that this conclusion could not be drawn. Despite some unfavorable results for these biopolymers, the immature nature of these technologies needs to be taken into account as future optimization and improvements in process efficiencies are expected. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Currently, the European economy is using nearly three times the ecological assets that are locally available. This situation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Tools are needed that can help reverse the unsustainable trend. In 2010, an EC funded One Planet Economy Network: Europe (OPEN:EU) project was launched to develop the evidence and innovative practical tools that will allow policy-makers and civil society to identify policy interventions to transform Europe into a One Planet Economy, by 2050. Building on the premise that no indicator alone is able to comprehensively monitor (progress towards) sustainability, the project has drawn on the Ecological, Carbon and Water Footprints to define a Footprint Family suite of indicators, to track human pressure on the planet. An environmentally-extended multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model has then been developed to group the Footprint Family under a common framework and combine the indicators in the family with national economic accounts and trade statistics. Although unable to monitor the full spectrum of human pressures, once grouped within the MRIO model, the Footprint Family is able to assess the appropriation of ecological assets, GHG emissions as well as freshwater consumption and pollution associated with consumption of specific products and services within a specified country. Using MRIO models within the context of Footprint analyses also enables the Footprint Family to take into account full production chains with technologies specific to country of origin. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent fertilizer-derived greenhouse gas which plays a predominant role in the life-cycle assessment of biofuels. The use of generic emissions factors to estimate its emissions in such context has been widely criticized because of its lack of accuracy, since N2O emissions are highly dependent on local soil and climate conditions, as well as crop management. This paper proposes an alternative method using an agroecosystem model (CERES-EGC) at interconnected geographical scales (from plot to regional). This method was applied to a case study comparing 1st and 2nd generation bioethanol made from sugar beet and Miscanthus feedstock, respectively, in the Picardy region (France), using a spatially-explicit approach and simple land-use options. This new method made it possible to capture the variability in direct N2O emissions in relation to pedoclimatic conditions. Biomass supply options, minimizing N2O emissions or minimizing the land area used by maximizing high yielding units, were used to select the most suitable arable fields on which to grow the feedstock. There were few differences between the two options in terms of area of land cultivated for both crops. However for sugar beet, the effect of minimizing total direct N2O emissions was more noticeable. Regional yield and N2O emission maps resulted in supply curves useful to optimize the placement of biorefinery facilities and feedstock production fields. This method should be further completed with the estimation of changes in soil carbon stocks to take into account land-use change effects and with landscape-scale simulation to consider indirect downstream emissions.Environmental assessment of municipal solid waste management is essential. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful and widely used method, which implements causal chains (impact pathways) between the studied processes and their environmental impacts. However, in waste management, the method presents some weaknesses. For example, there is no impact category related to odour, whose assessment is nevertheless essential, especially when the organic fraction of waste is concerned. Odour interferes with human welfare and comfort. Sometimes, it can become a nuisance and be described as a "socio-environmental'' impact. To integrate the impact of odour in waste management plans, it is necessary to build an odour-impact pathway. The aim of this paper is to present a first attempt to build such an impact pathway up to the so-called midpoint step (i.e. the level of discomfort to human beings). The methodology we developed is based on the cause/effect chain according to the descriptors of the Site Dependent approach. Unlike classical LCA, the classification step is more important and characterization is aimed at computing the characterization factor. The change in this classification step allows for working on the occurrence of odour impacts. To determine impact occurrence, it is necessary to integrate local conditions into odour assessment. This was done using (1) the USEtox model in which local conditions to assess odour impacts are integrated and (2) the framework of a new methodology that takes into account background concentrations. The methodology was implemented in a case study, i.e. by computing atmospheric emission of ethyl benzene during composting (2.93 x 10(-2) kg.day(-1)). The characterization factor for ethyl benzene was equal to 3.02 x 10(-3) kg eq. Benzene per kg emitted ethyl benzene. The daily emission of ethyl benzene generated an odour impact equal to 6.6 x 10(-5) kg eq. benzene. With that first odour mid-point impact, we paved the way for the construction of a whole odour pathway (going up to end-point impacts or damages). However, several limits were identified such as data availability, the model under use and the use of average daily data which is less relevant than emission peaks. We should also recall that our methodology is not intended for predicting nuisance likely to disturb populations living nearby the facility. Its first objective is to provide an indicator that fits with LCA methodology in order to help local decision-makers to differentiate waste management scenarios based on exhaustive LCA.The article summarises the main results of the Gestione Rifiuti in Lombardia: Analisi del ciclo di vita' (Waste management in Lombardia region: Life cycle assessment; GERLA) project. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been selected by Regione Lombardia as a strategic decision support tool in the drafting of its new waste management programme. The goal was to use the life cycle thinking approach to assess the current regional situation and thus to give useful strategic indications for the future waste management. The first phase of the study consisted of the LCA of the current management of municipal waste in the Lombardia region (reference year: 2009). The interpretation of such results has allowed the definition of four possible waste management scenarios for the year 2020, with the final goal being to improve the environmental performance of the regional system. The results showed that the current integrated waste management of Lombardia region is already characterised by good energy and environmental performances. However, there is still room for further improvement: actions based, on the one hand, on a further increase in recycling rates and, on the other hand, on a series of technological modifications, especially in food waste and residual waste management, can be undertaken to improve the overall system.In this paper, we develop a new approach that combines the spectral clustering method and input-output analysis to detect environmentally important supply chain clusters. The newly developed method was applied to automobile manufacturing in Japan, and major clusters with high energy intensities in the automobile supply chain were identified. This paper proposes that the car manufacturers will be able to regularly publish their life-cycle assessment reports with a focus on the indirect energy consumptions within the critical supply chains and request key auto-part manufacturers in the cluster to reduce the indirect consumptions through the relevant supply chain engagement.Missing process detail of sectors in Input-Output (I-O) tables has been pointed out as a limitation of I-O analysis in environmental-economic life cycle assessment. Aggregation of resource-intensive sectors decreases the accuracy of the results. Often, economic sectors are compiled in a more aggregated form than environmental satellite accounts, and as [Lenzen, M. (2011) Aggregation Versus Disaggregation in Input-Output Analysis of the Environment. Economic Systems Research, 23, 73-89] asserts, it is superior for environmental analysis to disaggregate the I-O table, even if only partial information exists for the disaggregation. In this paper we present a methodology to disaggregate the electricity sector of the Chinese national I-O table by using regional information and cost data for operation and maintenance of power plants. The electricity sector is disaggregated into a transmission and distribution sector as well as eight sub-sectors representing different types of technology in power plants (subcritical coal, hydro, etc.). The electricity consumption mix of each industry is determined by using regional industry presence and regional electricity power mixes. The disaggregated I-O table offers refined results for calculating emissions embodied in international exports from China, a valuable contribution for estimating national greenhouse gases emissions inventories under the consumption-based approach for countries that rely heavily on imports of goods from China.Waste-to-energy technologies are considered as one of the key waste treatment technologies due to their energy and heat recovery efficiencies from the waste. A number of research studies were accomplished to understand the potential environmental burdens from emerging waste treatment technologies such as pyrolysis-gasification (PG). The aim of this study was to examine the PG of municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment process through a life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The study also includes a comparative LCA model of PG and incineration to identify the potential environmental burdens from the existing (incineration) and emerging (PG) waste treatment technologies. This study focused on ten environmental impact categories under two different scenarios, namely: (a) LCA model of PG and (b) comparative LCA model of PG and incineration. The scenario (a) showed that PG had significant environmental burdens in the aquatic eco-toxicity and the global warming potential impact categories. The comparative scenario (b) of PG and incineration of MSW showed that PG had comparatively lower potential environmental burdens in acidification, eutrophication, and aquatic eco-toxicity. Both LCA models showed that the environmental burdens were mainly caused by the volume of the thermal gas (emissions) produced from these two technologies and the final residue to disposal. Therefore, the results indicate that the efficiency and environmental burdens of the emerging technologies are dependent on the emissions and the production of final residue to the landfill.Stone structures such as bridges, civil and worship buildings or monuments represent the largest part of the construction heritage in the world. They are indeed remarkably durable and earthquake resistant if they were correctly designed. Beside they also have very interesting environmental properties, notably in terms of life cycle analysis, so that stone has a good potential as building materials for modern architecture. The understanding of their mechanical behaviour is hence necessary to develop proper design methods for the prediction of displacements, crack opening or plastic failure in the sense of Eurocode or other modern design recommendations. The proposed article is dedicated to the study of an innovative system of reinforced stone beam in which the reinforcement is not used as a simple tie that overtakes the structure thrust but rather works with the stone together to build a system that resists vertical forces by bending. The study consists in an experimental program carried out on three beams made of dimension stones tested under four points bending. The beams are subjected to a small number of loading-unloading cycles to evidence hysteresis effects. Typical load-displacement curves are produced from data recorded by load cells, extensometers and strain gages measuring characteristic displacements, crack opening and strain in the reinforcement. Then a simple analytical model based on existing models for reinforced concrete is used to interpret the experimental results and by reverse analysis to identify some characteristics of the beams. Finally a short conclusion closes the paper on the potential of these structures for modern architecture and gives some perspectives of further investigations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of various hydrogen production processes are evaluated and compared, considering several energy sources and using life cycle analysis. The results indicate that hydrogen produced by thermochemical water decomposition cycles are more environmentally benign options compared to conventional steam reforming of natural gas. The nuclear based four-step Cu-Cl cycle has the lowest global warming potential (0.559 kg CO2-eq per kg hydrogen production), mainly because it requires the lowest quantity of energy of the considered processes. The acidification potential results show that biomass gasification has the highest impact on environment, while wind based electrolysis has the lowest. The relation is also investigated between efficiency and environmental impacts. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The presented work analyses the feasibility of biodiesel production by transesterification of vegetable oil extracted from Cynara Cardunculus. The performance assessment of a plant with a capacity of 5000 t/year biodiesel production is carried out based on its rigorous simulation in AspenHysys (R). A modular automated evaluation tool programmed in Matlab (R) retrieves the inventory of the energy and material inputs/outputs, and the environmental releases from the simulation results. The simulation performs a combined acid-catalyzed pretreatment and alkali-catalyzed transesterification based on the cardoon oil characterization and the kinetic data extracted from published experimental studies. The performance of the plant is optimized considering four potential alternatives. The Eco-indicator 99 methodology is used for the impact assessment, achieving similar results to other vegetable sources of biodiesel. With respect to the economic study, a profitability analysis yields better results than the reported in previous works for oils of other agricultural crops, identifying two critical factors: the biodiesel sale price and the plant capacity. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since biofuels are capturing a significant share in the energy consumption pattern, serious concerns have been declared regarding the impacts of biofuel production on environmental quality. One environmental aspect that has gained attention, is the significant water consumption for cultivations of biofuel crops and it is strictly related to the water scarcity encountered in many regions as a result of climate change, so alternative water sources such as wastewater can be exploited. The purpose of this paper is to study the use of wastewater as irrigation feedstock for cultivations of sunflower and castor crops and to track the effect of critical parameters on oil and biodiesel quality. Parameters such as oil yield, acid value, density and viscosity were measured and it was observed that wastewater irrigation can have a positive impact on oil's quality for biodiesel production. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land use is one of the main drivers of biocliversity loss. However, many life cycle assessment studies do not yet assess this effect because of the lack of reliable and operational methods. Here, we present an approach to modeling the impacts of regional land use on plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Our global analysis calculates the total potential damage caused by all land uses within each WWF ecoregion and allocates this total damage to different types of land use per ecoregion. We use an adapted (matrix-calibrated) species-area relationship to model the potential regional extinction of nonendemic species caused by reversible land use and land use change impacts. The potential global extinction of endemic species is used to assess irreversible, permanent impacts. Model uncertainty is assessed using Monte Carlo simulations. The impacts of land use on biodiversity varied strongly across ecoregions, showing the highest values in regions where most natural habitat had been converted in the past. The approach is thus retrospective and was able to highlight the impacts in highly disturbed regions. However, we also illustrate how it can be applied to prospective assessments using scenarios of future land use. Uncertainties, modeling choices, and validity are discussed.Nitrogen is indispensable for sustaining human activities through its role in the production of food, animal feed, and synthetic chemicals. This has encouraged significant anthropogenic mobilization of reactive nitrogen and its emissions into the environment resulting in severe disruption of the nitrogen cycle. This paper incorporates the biogeochemical cycle of nitrogen into the 2002 input-output model of the U.S. economy. Due to the complexity of this cycle, this work proposes a unique classification of nitrogen flows to facilitate understanding of the interaction between economic activities and various flows in the nitrogen cycle. The classification scheme distinguishes between the mobilization of inert nitrogen into its reactive form, use of nitrogen in various products, and nitrogen losses to the environment. The resulting inventory and model of the US economy can help quantify the direct and indirect impacts or dependence of economic sectors on the nitrogen cycle. This paper emphasizes the need for methods to manage the N cycle that focus not just on N losses, which has been the norm until now, but also include other N flows for a more comprehensive view and balanced decisions. Insight into the N profile of various sectors of the 2002 U.S. economy is presented, and the inventory can also be used for LCA or Hybrid LCA of various products. The resulting model is incorporated in the approach of Ecologically-Based LCA and available online.Passenger cars in the United States (U.S.) rely primarily on petroleum-derived fuels and contribute the majority of U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Electricity and biofuels are two promising alternatives for reducing both the carbon intensity of automotive transportation and U.S. reliance on imported oil. However, as standalone solutions, the biofuels option is limited by land availability and the electricity option is limited by market adoption rates and technical challenges. This paper explores potential GHG emissions reductions attainable in the United States through 2050 with a county-level scenario analysis that combines ambitious plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) adoption rates with scale-up of cellulosic ethanol production. With PHEVs achieving a 58% share of the passenger car fleet by 2050, phasing out most corn ethanol and limiting cellulosic ethanol feedstocks to sustainably produced crop residues and dedicated crops, we project that the United States could supply the liquid fuels needed for the automobile fleet with an average blend of 80% ethanol (by volume) and 20% gasoline. If electricity for PHEV charging could be supplied by a combination of renewables and natural-gas combined-cycle power plants, the carbon intensity of automotive transport would be 79 g CO(2)e per vehicle-kilometer traveled, a 71% reduction relative to 2013.This study is a comparative streamlined life cycle assessment (CSLCA) for two types of solid waste incineration technologies, the fluidized-bed incinerator (FBI) and the mechanical-grate incinerator (MGI), both of which are commonly used in East Asia and Europe for burning similar composition municipal solid waste. Different consumption levels of energy and/or materials within the streamlined process were thoroughly evaluated for comparison, but disposal of incineration ashes and emissions from landfills were excluded. Within this context, one tonne of municipal solid waste (MSW) was chosen as the functional unit to support our inventory items in this study. To improve the reliability of our CSLCA both Eco-indicator 99 and ReCiPe assessment methods were selected for environmental performance evaluation based on designated life cycle assessment indicators. Through the use of life cycle inventory and impact assessment tools, the environmental impacts were collectively assessed for possible damage to human health, ecosystem integrity, and resources. Finally, a generalized numeric scheme was produced for the overall assessment. The weighted values of environmental impacts associated with MGI and FBI, respectively, were 0.047 and 17.91 Pt per kg waste incinerated based on Eco-indicator 99 and, in contrast, 47.47 and 45.03 Pt per kg based on ReCiPe. Overall, the fluidized-bed incinerator is deemed environmentally benign in a relative sense based on the CSLCA in this study. Concerning human health, ecosystem integrity, and resources, the environmental impact associated with human health is the most critical for both types of incinerators. This finding is evidenced by both assessment methods of Eco-indicator 99 and ReCiPe, albeit the two methods are not compatible. Further observations also helped identify two sensitive parameters, including carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and electricity consumption across the two incineration technologies. Such a study helps identify the least burdening option for constructing municipal solid waste incinerators to meet the goal of urban sustainability. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As environmental awareness increases, industries and businesses are becoming concerned about the issues of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) enables the estimation of the potential materials and energy resources required for and the environmental emissions resulting from activities in our economy. The present study intends to quantify the energy consumption and environmental emissions in the entire life cycle of a newly manufactured diesel engine produced in a Chinese factory and to determine the stage with the largest environmental impact. Quantitative results of environmental impact indicators for each unit process in the life cycle and of a diesel engine are achieved by the LCA method using the Chinese core life cycle database. Logarithmic processing is conducted in order to normalize the result to a more tractable range. The results show that Primary Energy Demand, Global Warming Potential and Photochemical Ozone Formation Potential are three predominant impacts along with the entire life cycle of the diesel engine, which account for 50.37%, 19.47% and 17.54% of total impacts, respectively. The usage process in the engine life cycle consumes the maximum energy and brings about the largest environmental impacts, followed by raw material acquisition and components manufacturing. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Site-specific risk assessment is intended for single source analysis, and provides limited options to reduce environmental risk. The links between multiple sources and population exposure deserve better understanding. In this way, the industrial activities can be managed to protect the population from the exposure to the substances in multiple environmental media, food, and drinking water. We took the anthropogenic arsenic in Taiwan into our case study. Substance flow analysis was used to map the circulation of arsenic in Taiwan. Emissions from arsenic related industries were modeled to estimate the health risk for each region. From the life cycle perspective, we found the major inputs were the imported ores and fossil fuels. The outputs would be a great concern to future arsenic exposure, because the use of arsenic-containing products is accumulating arsenic in wastes. Under current steady-state emission, the cancer risk in each region ranged from 10(-6) to 10(-3). The regions of high risk co-exist with fired-power plants, oil refineries, or waste treatment facilities. Several risk reduction strategies were compared. More than 95% of risk could be reduced if all airborne emissions were eliminated. The proposed methodology that integrates substance flow analysis with exposure assessment and risk evaluation offers quick examination on more comprehensive risk reduction alternatives. Further dedicated risk assessment might be required to estimate the more precise risks for the areas or industries that were pre-identified as hot spots. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to increasing concerns related to emerging environmental problems as a result of industrial activities, sustainable manufacturing has become a topic of considerable interest worldwide. In this study, Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a linear programming-based mathematical optimization model, were integrated to analyze the eco-efficiency of manufacturing sectors in the United States. This integration was achieved by aggregating different environmental pressures into a single eco-efficiency score. First, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, water withdrawals, hazardous waste generation, and toxic releases of each manufacturing sector were quantified using the EIO-LCA model. Second, an input-oriented DEA multiplier model was developed. Third, eco-efficiency scores and rankings, target and performance improvement values of each environmental category were determined. Finally, the sensitivity of each environmental impact category was analyzed. Analysis results showed that five industrial sectors, such as "Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing", "Food Manufacturing", "Printing and Related Support Activities", "Ordinance and Accessories Manufacturing", and "Motor Vehicle Manufacturing" were 100% eco-efficient compared to other manufacturing sectors. On the other hand, approximately 90% of U.S. manufacturing sectors were found to be inefficient and require significant improvements in their life cycle performance. Among the environmental impact categories, energy use had the highest sensitivity on the eco-efficiency of U.S. manufacturing sectors, and therefore improved energy efficiency in industrial processes and successful policy making toward increasing the share of renewable energy utilization were highly recommended. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study employed a two-phase methodology to assess the environmental impacts from offset lithographic printing on color-box packaging. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to prioritize improvement options and the life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to assess environmental impacts quantitatively. This study quantified the total amount of energy consumption and CO2 emissions caused by the printing processes of color-box packaging and showed that the total reduction of GHG emissions of the system that omitted the laminating and varnishing process was approximately 239 kg. Moreover, incineration contributes 2905-3004 kg of CO2 to potential global warming in the case of color-box packaging. The study demonstrated the viability of the AHP for evaluating environmental impacts of printing processes, ranking them in order of pollution potential, and subsequently identifying those critical for reducing environmental pollution on the printing operation. This study also showed how the LCA approach may be used together with expert opinion to identify opportunity to alter printing processes in order to address environmental impacts and improve the environmental profile of offset lithographic printing. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are advanced to replace fossil fuels in order to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts. Yet freshwater scarcity is another growing concern and increased production of biofuels may increase this problem. In order to assess whether biofuels truly have a higher water use than do fossil fuels, a life cycle assessment study of a low input jatropha plantation in northern Mozambique was conducted. In addition to different water use indicators, the fossil energy use and global warming potential were assessed for 1 MJ of jatropha oil. The analysis compares results for jatropha oil with fossil diesel, generally showing lower global warming potential and fossil energy use for jatropha oil. However, aspects related to land use may alter the global warming potential of jatropha oil. Regarding water use, the choice of the water use indicator strongly influences the results. Specifically the indication of (1) so-called green water flows, (2) formation of so-called blue water and (3) water scarcity show crucial influences on the comparison. Depending on these specific features, jatropha oil may have higher or lower water use than fossil diesel. A number of uncertainties, such as the jatropha oil yield, are also shown to have a considerable impact on the results. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today incentives for an increased use of biofuels exist, one being the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED). In this article the environmental performance of biogas systems using industrial residues from biofuel and food industries as substrates are analysed using a life-cycle perspective. These substrates are interesting since they do not compete directly with agricultural land for food production. The environmental performance is calculated using both the method described in the ISO-standard for life cycle assessment and the method presented in the EU RED. Furthermore, two perspectives are included, one where the residues are not utilised for other purposes today and one where the residues are utilised as animal feed, here presented as systems expansion. The results show that biogas from all residues investigated leads to a reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to fossil fuels. When system expansion is applied, however, the benefit will be significantly smaller since the alternative utilisation of the substrates as animal feed is considered and included in the system. This might also lead to an indirect land-use competition since additional protein feed crops must be cultivated. Thus, all residues studied are well suited for biogas production if there is no demand for them as animal feed today. Otherwise, it is often more efficient to grow dedicated biogas crops directly. Similar to other studies of bio-based systems the results also show that emissions related to acidification and eutrophication will be higher compared to a fossil fuel based system. A conclusion is that the calculation method in RED has a limited systems perspective, which could lead to a sub optimisation of the utilisation of industrial waste from a GHG perspective depending on the current alternative utilisation of the residues. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment provides a useful means of estimating environmental impacts associated with different materials and production systems and is increasingly being used to assess net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here we report on a cradle-to-gate inventory of wood production, focussing on GHG emissions associated with wood from softwood plantations and regrowth hardwood native forests across Australia. The inventory was primarily based on data provided by forest growers, managers and contractors across seven large case study regions. Modelling was used to combine data from different operations, account for upstream processes associated with the production of fuel and materials used, and to estimate total GHG emissions associated with the production of high- and low-value sawlogs, pulplogs, woodchips and other logs. We considered only the case of managing established forests for wood production, where the C stock of these forests could be considered to be constant over the long-term. Emissions were expressed in terms of m(3) product (i.e. functional unit) and were allocated to products on an economic basis. Total GHG emissions associated with wood production, harvest and transport were 25.9 (SD 8.0) kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) M-3 for an average plantation softwood log and 70.6 (SD 1.8) kg CO2-e m(-3) for an average native hardwood log. The largest contributors to total emissions per unit wood production in softwood plantations were log haulage (37%) and harvesting (21%), whilst in native hardwood forests they were slash burning (46%) and log haulage (23%). Sensitivity analyses indicated that the amount of forest residues burnt in native hardwood forests had a relatively large influence on CO2-e emissions while wood density had a large impact on net carbon sequestration for both native hardwood and plantation softwood logs, indicating that improving estimates of these should be a priority. Estimated net carbon sequestered in an average plantation softwood log was 761 (SD 27) kg CO2-e m(-3) and in an average native hardwood log it was 902 (SD 162) kg CO2-e m(-3). Total net GHG emissions (assuming no net biogenic emissions) represented 3.3% and 73% of the estimated carbon content of an average log for plantation softwood and native hardwood, respectively. Thus, logs from sustainably managed forests delivered to downstream processing plants represent significant net stores of carbon and have potential to substitute for more GHG-intensive raw materials. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of hydrogen production via indirect gasification of poplar biomass was evaluated following a Life Cycle Assessment approach. Foreground data for the study were provided mainly from process simulation. The main subsystems and processes that contribute to the environmental impacts were identified. Thus, poplar production and direct emissions to air from the processing plant were found to be the main sources of environmental impact. Furthermore, a favourable (positive) life-cycle energy balance was estimated for the gasification-based system. The environmental profile of hydrogen from poplar gasification was compared with that calculated for hydrogen from conventional steam methane reforming according to inventory data also obtained through process simulation. Gasification-derived biohydrogen was generally found to be a promising hydrogen fuel, with reduced greenhouse gas emissions and a low non-renewable energy demand. However, its suitability depends on the evaluated impact categories. Moreover, the biomass demand should be minimized to enhance the efficiency of the system. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The subject of this paper is an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) of processes needed to construct and maintain representative Swiss asphalt, concrete, and composite pavements (including subbase layers) applicable for the Swiss national road network over a period of 75 years. The environmental indicators analyzed are the global warming potential indicator, the nonrenewable cumulative energy demand, and the Swiss ecological scarcity indicator. Processes of the use phase of the road (fuel consumption, noise, etc.) have been evaluated qualitatively based on intensive research. The study shows that the global warming potential of concrete and asphalt pavements equilibrates over the analysis period and that concrete pavements compared to asphalt and composite pavements offer advantages in regards to the nonrenewable cumulative energy demand, the ecological scarcity indicator, and life cycle costs. The qualitative evaluation of the processes of the use phase shows for example the positive qualities of concrete pavements regarding fuel consumption and permanent noise properties.Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) demonstrate great promise in a variety of electronic applications due to their unique mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. Although commercialization of CNT-enabled products is increasing, there remains a significant lack of information regarding the health effects and environmental impacts of CNTs as well as how the addition of CNTs may affect the environmental profile of products. Given these uncertainties, it is useful to consider the life cycle environmental impacts of a CNT-enabled product to discover and potentially prevent adverse effects through improved design. This study evaluates the potential application of CNT switches to current cellular phone flash memory. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to track the environmental impacts of a developmental nonvolatile bistable electromechanical CNT switch through its fabrication, expected use, and end-of-life. Results are reported for environmental impact categories including airborne inorganics, land use, and fossil fuels, with the largest contributions from gold refining processes and electricity generation. First-order predictions made for the use and end-of-life (EOL) stages indicate that the CNT switch could provide potential improvements to reduce environmental burden during use, although CNT release could occur through existing EOL processes.Waste refineries focusing on multiple outputs of material resources, energy carriers, and nutrients may potentially provide more sustainable utilization of waste resources than traditional waste technologies. This consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluated the environmental performance of a Danish waste refinery solution against state-of-the-art waste technology alternatives (incineration, mechanical biological treatment (MBT), and landfilling). In total, 252 scenarios were evaluated, including effects from source-segregation, waste composition, and energy conversion pathway efficiencies. Overall, the waste refinery provided global warming (GW) savings comparable with efficient incineration, MBT, and bioreactor landfilling technologies. The main environmental benefits from waste refining were a potential for improved phosphorus recovery (about 85%) and increased electricity production (by 15-40% compared with incineration), albeit at the potential expense of additional toxic emissions to soil. Society's need for the outputs from waste, i.e., energy products (electricity vs transport fuels) and resources (e.g., phosphorus), and the available waste composition were found decisive for the selection of future technologies. On the basis of the results, it is recommended that a narrow focus on GW aspects should be avoided as most waste technologies may allow comparable performance. Rather, other environmental aspects such as resource recovery and toxic emissions should receive attention in the future.This paper demonstrates how to achieve energy savings in the construction and operation of buildings by promoting the use of life cycle assessment techniques in the design for new buildings and for refurbishment. The paper aims to draw on the application of a specific methodology for low energy consumption, integrated planning, environmental performance evaluation of buildings, and design for sustainability and LCA techniques applied to buildings. The ENergy Saving through promotion of LIfe Cycle assessment in buildings (ENSLIC) methodology based on LCA for use in an integral planning process has been promoted to stakeholders who require a means to optimize the environmental performance of buildings. Feedback from the stakeholders has facilitated the creation of simplified LCA guidelines, a systematic approach guiding the user through the alternative options regarding software choices, their strengths and weaknesses, the databases available, the usefulness of different indicators, aggregation, definition of limits and options for simplifying the process. As a result, this paper presents the applied results of a case study where this methodology is implemented serving as an energy savings evaluation tool for decision makers, end-users, professionals involved in the different stages of construction, etc. Finally, it is demonstrated how LCA can facilitate comparisons between different buildings, showing the influence of all variables on a building's life cycle environmental impact and showing the potential for energy savings. Removing market barriers to sustainable construction is actually stricter and this is good news for promoting higher energy efficiency in buildings.A unified framework that combines process simulation and multi-objective optimization is presented to simultaneously maximize the annual profit, while minimizing environmental impact (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions) of steam power plants with fixed flowsheet structures. The proposed methodology includes the selection of suitable primary energy sources (i.e., fossil fuels, biomass, biofuels, and solar energy) for sustainable electricity generation. For solving the problem of optimal selection of energy sources, a linear model is developed and included within a highly nonlinear simulation model for the parameter optimization of steam power plants that is solved by using genetic algorithms. This approach is robust and avoids making discrete decisions. Life cycle assessment technique is used to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from different combinations of energy sources and operating conditions of the power plants. The thermodynamic properties for liquid water and steam are calculated rigorously using the IAPWS-IF 97 formulation. An example problem of an advanced regenerative-reheat steam power plant is presented to illustrate the proposed method, which provides the Pareto optimal solutions, the types and amounts of primary energy sources as well as the optimal values of the operating conditions of the plant that simultaneously maximize the profit while minimizing environmental impact.Biodiesel derived from algae is considered as a sustainable fuel, but proper downstream processing is necessary to minimize the environmental footprint of this process. Algae is grown in dilute liquid cultures, and achieving the low water contents required for extraction represents one of the greatest challenges for the production of algae derived biodiesel. An analysis of the life cycle emissions associated with harvesting, dewatering, extraction, reaction, and product purification stages for algae biodiesel were performed. This "base case" found 10,500 kg of total emissions per t of biodiesel with 96 % of those attributed to the spray dryer used for dewatering. Alternative cases were evaluated for various sequences of mechanical and thermal dewatering techniques. The best case, consisted of a disk-stack centrifuge, followed by the chamber filter press, and a heat integrated dryer. This resulted in 875 kg emissions/t of biodiesel, a 91 % reduction from the base case. Significant reductions in life cycle emissions were achieved for all mechanical dewatering alternatives compared to the base case, but further improvements using these existing technologies were limited. Additional improvements will require the development of new techniques for water removal or wet extractions.Biomass CCHP (combined cooling heating and power) systems based on biomass combustion have already demonstrated their benefits in some operating conditions. However, their environmental and energy performance might not always be better than that of conventional stand-alone generation systems. In order to assess the possible benefits, these plants are evaluated by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to provide some guidelines regarding their environmental feasibility. A thermodynamic model, which considers the integration of different sizes of cogeneration and cooling units, was developed to contribute to properly defining the life cycle inventory stage. Moreover, the model outputs were used to develop a primary energy savings ratio (PESR) analysis and compare its results with those of the LCA. The LCA results show that, whereas small plant cooling-to-heating ratios cause CCHP plants based on biomass combustion to be environmentally feasible (they imply environmental benefits compared to conventional average stand-alone generation), high plant cooling-to-heating ratios in fact cause them to be environmentally unfeasible. Results also allow us to state that the use of the PESR by itself might not be adequate to assess the steady-state performance of this type of plant because, in some circumstances, it might limit the plant's feasibility when environmental benefits could still be achieved. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper investigates the economic feasibility of rice straw co-firing at coal power plants in Malaysia and in doing so looks at the operating, capital, and logistic costs. Co-firing rice straw in an existing coal power plant is a technique that could reduce CO2 emissions and make Malaysia less dependency on coal resources. In a country such as Malaysia with abundant biomass resources, utilizing biomass residue also would help reach government targets of developing renewable energy under the country's Fuel Diversification Policy. The overall rice straw life cycle assessment presented here analyses environmental, energy and economic aspects for co-firing of rice straw at existing coal power plants in Malaysia. Analysis of GHG emissions and energy consumption throughout the entire co-firing rice straw life cycle was based on selected coal power plant capacity output. This paper also analyses the implication of rice straw use under different co-fired ratios, transportation systems and CO2 emission prices. The reduction of GHG emissions was found to be significant even at a lower co-firing ratio. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) populations that spawn in the coastal rivers of Oregon, U.S.A., formerly supported robust fisheries but are now listed as a "threatened species" under the U. S. Endangered Species Act. Climate change is an increasing concern in salmon conservation, and we assess the effects of climate change on sustainability of this population group. Four distinct habitats are important to different life-history stages of coho salmon: terrestrial forests, freshwater rivers and lakes, estuaries, and the ocean. Each of these habitats is affected by multiple aspects of climate change, resulting in a complex web of pathways influencing sustainability. We summarize regional climate change studies to predict future climate patterns affecting these habitats, identify the ecological pathways by which these patterns affect coho salmon, and review coho salmon ecology to assess the likely direction and magnitude of population response. Despite substantial uncertainties in specific effects and variations in effects among populations, the preponderance of negative effects throughout the life cycle indicates a significant climate-driven risk to future sustainability of these populations. We recommend that management policies for all four habitats focus on maximizing resilience to the effects of climate change as it interacts with other natural and anthropogenic changes.As is widely known, sustainability is an important factor in competition, increasing the added value of a company in terms of image and credibility. However, it is important that sustainability assessments are effectively addressed in a global perspective. Therefore, life cycle tools are adopted to evaluate environmental and social impacts. Among these, and of particular significance, appears the Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), which, although in its early stage of development, seems to have extremely promising methodological features. For this reason, it seemed interesting to propose a first application to the tourism sector, which could be better than other methods, studied in terms of social sustainability data. The particular characteristics of service delivery lend themselves more to the development of data related to social sustainability than other sectors. In this paper the results of a case study carried out using social accounting and business management tools are shown.Sugarcane bagasse and trash are used as fuels in cogeneration systems for bioethanol production, supplying steam and electricity, but may also be used as feedstock for second generation ethanol. The amount of surplus lignocellulosic material used as feedstock depends on the energy consumption of the production process; residues of the pretreatment and hydrolysis operations (residual cellulose, lignin and eventually biogas from pentoses biodigestion) may be used as fuels and increase the amount of lignocellulosic material available as feedstock in hydrolysis. The configuration of the cogeneration system (boiler pressure, lignocellulosic material consumption and steam production, turbines efficiencies, among others) has a significant impact on consumption of fuel and electricity output; in the integrated first and second generation, it also affects overall ethanol production. Simulations of the integrated first and second generation ethanol production processes were carried out using Aspen Plus, comparing different configurations of the cogeneration systems and pentoses use (biodigestion and fermentation). Economic analysis shows that electricity sale can benefit second generation ethanol, even in relatively small amounts. Environmental analysis shows that the integrated first and second generation process has higher environmental impacts in most of the categories evaluated than first generation. (C) 2013 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Directive 2009/28/EC established the overall target that 20% of energy consumption should be represented by renewable energy sources by 2020 in each European member state. Furthermore, the Directive sets a mandatory 10% minimum target for biofuels in the transport sector. Biofuels are potentially an important alternative to mineral diesel. We propose a pilot production line of biodiesel from sunflower on local scale in the Province of Siena (Tuscany) to research a possible reduction of fossil fuel consumption in the transport sector. This study might represent an opportunity to reduce petroleum dependence in the transport sector. Environmental Impact Indicators were provided by Material Flow Accounting, Embodied Energy Analysis and Emergy Accounting. Results showed that agricultural phase is the critical step in the production line. A comparative Life Cycle Assessment analysis for the biodiesel production line with mineral diesel production showed environmental advantages of the biofuel production, however requiring a higher land demand. Therefore, biodiesel may not the optimal solution on large scale but might be a good alternative to fossil fuel. This would depend upon the entire production cycle taking place in a limited area. This is necessary in order to fulfill the needs of local farms and small enterprises. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Plastic represents a significant fraction of the total packaging waste, and its management is an important issue that should embrace recycling techniques for material recovery. Support decisions in the area of waste management can be made using the life cycle approach, which is commonly used to identify the environmental impacts of recycling and can give information to put environmental issues into a wide perspective. This study evaluates how much an innovative recyclable package is environmentally preferable to an alternative package that is not recyclable considering that both are produced from recycling post-consumer PET bottles. Two products were chosen to perform the study. The first product is a package produced with a multilayer film and whose end-of-life scenario includes land-filling and incineration. The second product is an innovative package produced employing a mono-material whose end-of-life scenario comprises recycling, land-filling and incineration. This study explains that the utilisation of recycled materials represents the initial effort to reduce environmental burdens and shows that using recycled materials combined with specific additives that assure the recyclability of the final product leads to a better environmental performance. The package produced employing a recyclable mono-material film is more environmental advisable than the multilayer for all of the impact categories analysed. The results obtained are also tested using a sensitivity analysis and an uncertainty analysis and confirm the results of the life cycle impact assessment. The study demonstrates the pertinence of the life cycle approach to assess whether a prevention activity to reduce waste production is actually environmental sustainable and to provide decision-making support in the field of packaging waste management. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The bioethanol production from lignocellulosic materials is a socially and environmentally well-accepted option; however, its technical and economic feasibility needs to be established. In order to know if the bioethanol production from this feedstock has a potential for implementation, we developed a comparison of 16 process configurations based on four pretreatment methods and six conversion options. Indexes that relate to energy consumption, amount of bioethanol produced, water consumption, and final bioethanol composition were used to compare the processing options. Seven alternatives were selected for further analysis with the implementation of a separation process. It was found that the process based on dilute acid pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis and co-fermentation combination shows the best economic potential. On the other hand, the cellulose hydrolysis based on an enzymatic process showed the best energy efficiency, but the final economic incentive for industrial implementation depends strongly on a fairly low enzyme cost.Evalution of various facade constructions with regard to environmental impact and life cycle assessment LCA and office building case study. The paper discusses the extension of the energy performance certificate through an economic and ecological assessment. The prototypical Excel-Tool is called Energy Performance Certificate Plus. Based on an example of a reference building the different effects in the life cycle of each studied facade construction is shown. The results of the six different facade types are discussed. In an early phase of planning a building it is possible to estimate aspects of energy as well as ecological and economical influences.In situ thermal remediation technologies provide efficient and reliable cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater, but at a high cost of environmental impacts and resource depletion due to the large amounts of energy and materials consumed. This study provides a detailed investigation of four in situ thermal remediation technologies (steam enhanced extraction, thermal conduction heating, electrical resistance heating, and radio frequency heating) in order to (1) compare the life-cycle environmental impacts and resource consumption associated with each thermal technology, and (2) identify options to reduce these adverse effects. The study identifies a number of options for environmental optimization of in situ thermal remediation. In general, environmental optimization can be achieved by increasing the percentage of heating supplied in off peak electricity demand periods as this reduces the pressure on coal-based electricity and thereby reduces the environmental impacts due to electricity production by up to 10%. Furthermore, reducing the amount of concrete in the vapor cap by using a concrete sandwich construction can potentially reduce the environmental impacts due to the vapor cap by up to 75%. Moreover, a number of technology-specific improvements were identified, for instance by the substitution of stainless steel types in wells, heaters, and liners used in thermal conduction heating, thus reducing the nickel consumption by 45%. The combined effect of introducing all the suggested improvements is a 10 to 21% decrease in environmental impacts and an 8 to 20% decrease in resource depletion depending on the thermal remediation technology considered. The energy consumption was found to be the main contributor to most types of environmental impacts; this will, however, depend on the electricity production mix in the studied region. The combined improvement potential is therefore to a large extent controlled by the reduction/improvement of energy consumption.Sustainability assessment standards are currently being developed for a range of building products. This activity has been stimulated through the considerable success of the U. S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED (TM) standard. Transparent life cycle-based standards can guide manufacturers to design products that have reduced environmental impact. The use of a sustainability standard can certify performance and avoid green washing. In this article we present a logical framework for designing a sustainability assessment standard through the creation of tables that award points in the standard to be consistent with life cycle information. Certain minimum principles of consistency are articulated. In the case that the life cycle impact assessment method maps the life cycle inventory to impact through a linear weighting, two design approaches-impact category and activity substitution-are constructed to be consistent with these principles. The approach is illustrated in a case study of a partial redesign of a carpet sustainability assessment standard (NSF/ANSI-140).An input-output-based life cycle inventory (IO-based LCI) is grounded on economic environmental input-output analysis (IO analysis). It is a fast and low-budget method for generating LCI data sets, and is used to close data gaps in life cycle assessment (LCA). Due to the fact that its methodological basis differs from that of process-based inventory, its application in LCA is a matter of controversy. We developed a German IO-based approach to derive IO-based LCI data sets that is based on the German IO accounts and on the German environmental accounts, which provide data for the sector-specific direct emissions of seven airborne compounds. The method to calculate German IO-based LCI data sets for building products is explained in detail. The appropriateness of employing IO-based LCI for German buildings is analyzed by using process-based LCI data from the Swiss Ecoinvent database to validate the calculated IO-based LCI data. The extent of the deviations between process-based LCI and IO-based LCI varies considerably for the airborne emissions we investigated. We carried out a systematic evaluation of the possible reasons for this deviation. This analysis shows that the sector-specific effects (aggregation of sectors) and the quality of primary data for emissions from national inventory reporting (NIR) are the main reasons for the deviations. As a rule, IO-based LCI data sets seem to underestimate specific emissions while overestimating sector-specific aspects.Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) has been discussed for some years in the LCA community. We raise two points of criticism against current S-LCA approaches. First, the development of S-LCA methodology has not, to date, been based on experience with actual case studies. Second, for social impacts to be meaningfully assessed in a life cycle perspective, social indicators need to be unambiguously interpreted in all social contexts along the life cycle. We here discuss an empirically based approach to S-LCA, illustrated by a case study of an automobile airbag system. The aim of the case study is to compare the injuries and lives lost during the product life cycle of the airbag system (excluding waste handling impacts) with the injuries prevented and lives saved during its use. The indicator used for assessing social impacts in this study is disability-adjusted life years (DALY). The results from this study indicate that the purpose of an airbag system, which is to save lives and prevent injuries, is justified also in a life cycle perspective.The potential environmental and health impacts of nanotechnologies triggered a recent surge of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on nanotechnologies. Focusing on the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions impacts, we reviewed 22 LCA-based studies on nanomaterials, coatings, photovoltaic devices, and fabrication technologies that were published until 2011. The reviewed LCA studies indicate that nanomaterials have higher cradle-to-gate energy demand per functional unit, and thus higher global warming impact, than their conventional counterparts. Depending on the synthesis method, carbon-based nanoparticles (i.e., carbon nanofibers, carbon nanotubes, and fullerenes) require 1 to 900 gigajoules per kilogram (GJ/kg) of primary energy to produce, compared with similar to 200 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg) for aluminum. This is mainly attributed to the fact that nanomaterials involve an energy-intensive synthesis process or an additional mechanical process to reduce particle size. Most reviewed studies ascertain, however, that the cradle-to-grave energy demand and global warming impact from nanotechnologies at a device level are lower than from conventional technologies because nanomaterials are typically used in a small amount to improve functionality and the upgraded functionality offers more energy-efficient operation of the device. Because of the immature status of most nanotechnologies, the studies reviewed here often rely on inventory data estimated from literature values and parametric analyses based on laboratory or prototype production, warranting future analyses to confirm the current findings.Residential buildings account for about one-third of the final energy demand in Norway. Many cost-effective measures for reducing heat losses in buildings are known, and their implementation may make the building sector one of the largest contributors to climate change mitigation. To determine the sectoral emission reduction potential, we model a complete transformation of the dwelling stock by 2050 by applying both renovation and reconstruction with different energy standards. We propose a new dynamic stock model with an optimization routine to identify and prioritize buildings with the highest energy saving potential. We combine material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to extend the sectoral boundary beyond direct household emissions. Despite an expected population growth of almost 50% between 2000 and 2050, sectoral carbon emissions in that period may drop between 30% and 40% for scenarios where the stock is completely transformed by either reconstruction or renovation to the passive house standard. Due to its lower upstream impact, renovation leads to a lower sectoral carbon footprint than reconstruction. Full transformation, however, is not sufficient to achieve an emissions reduction of 50% or more, as required on average to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, because hot water generation, appliances, and lighting will dominate the sectoral footprint once the stock has been transformed. A first estimate of the additional impact of realistic energy efficiency and lifestyle changes in the nonheating part of the sector reveals a maximal total reduction potential of about 75%.Many existing methods for sustainable technical product design focus on environmental efficiency while lacking a framework for a holistic, sustainable design approach that includes combined social, technical, economic, and environmental aspects in the whole product life cycle, and that provides guidance on a technical product development level. This research proposes a framework for sustainable technical product design in the case of skis. We developed a ski under the Grown brand, benchmarked according to social, environmental, economic, and technical targets, following an initial sustainability assessment, and delivered the first environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) and the first social life cycle assessment (SLCA) of skis. The framework applies a virtual development process as a combination of ELCA to calculate the environmental footprint as carbon equivalents of all materials and processes and a technical computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) simulation and virtual optimization using parameter studies for the nearly prototype-free development of the benchmarked skis. The feedback loops between life cycle assessment (LCA) and virtual simulation led to the elimination of highly energy intensive materials, to the pioneering use of basalt fibers in skis, to the optimization of the use of natural materials using protective coatings from natural resins, and to the optimization of the production process. From an environmental perspective, a minimum 32% reduction in carbon equivalent emissions of materials in relation to other comparably performing skis has been achieved, as well as a pioneering step forward toward transparent communication of the environmental performance by the individual, comparable, and first published ski carbon footprint per volume unit.Abandoned peat extraction areas are continuous emitters of GHGs; hence, abandonment of peat extraction areas should immediately be followed by conversion to an appropriate after-use. Our primary aim was to clarify the atmospheric impact of reed canary grass (RCG, Phalaris arundinacea L.) cultivation on an abandoned peat extraction area and to compare it to other after-treatment alternatives. We performed a life-cycle assessment for five different after-use options for a drained organic soil withdrawn from peat extraction: (I) bare peat soil (no management), (II) non-fertilised Phalaris cultivation, (III) fertilised Phalaris cultivation, (IV) afforestation, and (V) rewetting. Our results showed that on average the non-fertilised and fertilised Phalaris alternatives had a cooling effect on the atmosphere (-10,837 and -477 kg CO2-eq ha(-1) year(-1), respectively), whereas afforestation, rewetting, and no-management alternatives contributed to global warming (9,511, 8,195, and 2,529 kg CO2-eq ha(-1) year(-1), respectively). The main components influencing the global warming potential of different after-use alternatives were site GHG emissions, carbon assimilation by plants, and emissions from combustion, while management-related emissions played a relatively minor role. The results of this study indicate that, from the perspective of atmospheric impact, the most suitable after-use option for an abandoned peat extraction area is cultivation of RCG.Field Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.) is a member of the mustard family and may be grown as a winter crop between traditional summer crops to produce renewable biomass for renewable diesel and jet fuel. This paper estimated total annual biofuel production potential of 15 million cubic metres from rotation between corn and soybeans on 16.2 million hectares in the Midwest without impact on food production. This study also investigated the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy balance of pennycress-derived Hydroprocessed Renewable Jet (HRJ) fuel and Renewable Diesel (RD). Both system expansion and allocation approaches were applied to distribute environmental impacts among products and coproducts along the life cycle of each biofuel. The life cycle GHG emissions (excluding land use change) for RD and HRJ range from 13 to 41 g MJ(-1) (CO2 eq.) and -18 to 45 g MJ(-1) (CO2 eq.), respectively, depending on how the co-products are credited. The majority of the energy required for each biofuel product is derived from renewable biomass as opposed to non renewable fossil. The fossil energy consumptions are considerably lower than the petroleum fuels. Scenario analyses were also conducted to determine response to model assumptions, including nitrogen fertilizer application rate, nitrogen content in crop residues, and sources of H-2. The results show that pennycress derived biofuels could qualify as advanced biofuels and as biomass-based diesel as defined by the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture and animal husbandry are important contributors to global emissions of greenhouse (GHG) and acidifying gases. Moreover, they contribute to water pollution and to consumption of non-renewable natural resources such as land and energy. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology allows evaluation of the environmental impact of a process from the production of inputs to the final product and to assess simultaneously several environmental impact categories among which GHG emissions, acidification, eutrophication, land use and energy use. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate, using the LCA methodology, the environmental impact of milk production in a sample of 41 intensive Italian dairy farms and to identify, among different farming strategies, those associated with the best environmental performances. The functional unit was 1 kg Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM). Farms showed characteristics of high production intensity: FPCM, expressed as tonnes per hectare, was 30.8 +/- 15.1. Total GHG emission per kg FPCM at farm gate was 1.30 +/- 0.19 kg CO2 eq. The main contributors to climate change potential were emissions from barns and manure storage (50.1%) and emissions for production and transportation of purchased feeds (21.2%). Average emission of gases causing acidification to produce 1 kg FPCM was 19.7 +/- 3.6 g of SO2 eq. Eutrophication potential was 9.01 +/- 1.78 PO43- eq: per kg FPCM on average. Farms from this study needed on average 5.97 +/- 1.32 MJ per kg FPCM from non-renewable energy sources. Energy consumption was mainly due to off-farm activities (58%) associated with purchased factors. Land use was 1.51 +/- 0.25 m(2) per kg FPCM. The farming strategy based on high conversion efficiency at animal level was identified as the most effective to mitigate the environmental impact per kg milk at farm gate, especially in terms of GHG production and non-renewable energy use per kg FPCM.The environmental burdens from combined milk and meat production in Norway have been studied. A model of three typical farms was constructed to represent the three most important regions for dairy production in Norway (central, central southeast and southwest). Processes from cradle to farm gate were covered in the assessment, including all activities on the farm, along with the production of machinery, equipment, buildings, diesel, oil, fertilizer, lime, seeds, pesticides, detergents, plastic, silage additive, medicines and related transport. The results were given for the impact categories global warming potential (GWP), fossil depletion, freshwater ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, marine eutrophication, ozone depletion, agricultural land occupation, photochemical oxidant formation, terrestrial acidification and terrestrial ecotoxicity. To document the impact and to be able to compare the findings to results from previous studies, processes often excluded in literature were individually omitted from the assessment. The consequences of using alternative literature values for selected sub-processes were calculated and the sensitivity of the results to different parameter settings was evaluated by varying the parameter values +/- 50% of the default value. GWP impacts of 1.5-1.6 kg CO2-eq per kg energy corrected milk (ECM) and 17.7-18.4 kg CO2-eq per kg carcass were calculated. By excluding production of machinery, buildings, medicines, detergents, seeds, fence and pesticides, the GWP impacts were reduced by approximately 8% per kg carcass and 9% per kg ECM. Compared to results from other studies, the GWP related to production of milk and meat was high in the present investigation. The validity of comparisons with other studies is however low due to differences in allocation and system boundaries. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The scarcity of information on polybrominated diphenyl ethers' (PBDEs) flow in landfill restricts the life cycle analysis of PBDEs. In this study, eight PBDE congeners (BDEs 28, 47, 99, 100, 153, 154, 183, and 209) in topsoil, vegetation leaves, leachate, and municipal aged refuse collected from Shanghai Laogang Municipal Landfill (SLML) were investigated. The present study revealed elevated PBDE concentrations in topsoil and proved PBDE leakage from SLML and vegetation uptake. BDE-209 was the predominant congener, and this could be due to massive usage of deca-BDE mixture in Shanghai. I PBDE pound concentrations in leachates treated by reed wetland and A(2)/O process fell in the low end of the worldwide range. I PBDE pound concentrations in aged refuse samples rose from under 50 ng/g dw in 1989 to the range of 5,150-5,718 ng/g dw in 2002. PBDE concentrations increase in aged refuse samples throughout the 1990s into the 2000s paralleled municipal solid waste output from 1991 to 2002 in Shanghai. Exponential increase in BDE-209 concentration in aged refuse suggested the increasing market demands for deca-BDE mixture after 1990 in China. Notably, the inventory of PBDEs in SLML was 28.7 MT, and the doubling time of BDE-209 in aged refuse was calculated to be 1.6 year. SLML can be considered as a source of PBDE and one main recipient of PBDE as well, receiving inputs predominantly from the PBDE-containing waste. Priority should be given to formulate regulation on PBDEs and sorting work before landfill disposal.In China, the continuously increasing amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) has resulted in an urgent need for changing the current municipal solid waste management (MSWM) system based on mixed collection. A pilot program focusing on source-separated MSW collection was thus launched (2010) in Hangzhou, China, to lessen the related environmental loads. And greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Kyoto Protocol) are singled out in particular. This paper uses life cycle assessment modeling to evaluate the potential environmental improvement with regard to GHG emissions. The pre-existing MSWM system is assessed as baseline, while the source separation scenario is compared internally. Results show that 23 % GHG emissions can be decreased by source-separated collection compared with the base scenario. In addition, the use of composting and anaerobic digestion (AD) is suggested for further optimizing the management of food waste. 260.79, 82.21, and -86.21 thousand tonnes of GHG emissions are emitted from food waste landfill, composting, and AD, respectively, proving the emission reduction potential brought by advanced food waste treatment technologies. Realizing the fact, a modified MSWM system is proposed by taking AD as food waste substitution option, with additional 44 % GHG emissions saved than current source separation scenario. Moreover, a preliminary economic assessment is implemented. It is demonstrated that both source separation scenarios have a good cost reduction potential than mixed collection, with the proposed new system the most cost-effective one.A method to quantify the climate impact of products called product carbon footprint (PCF) has been gaining popularity in recent years. However, variations of this method have resulted in several competing standards to guide the carbon calculation process. The aim of the current paper was to compare PCF results when calculated according to the different standards. The three leading PCF standards are Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050:2011, ISO.DIN 2 14067 and Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard (PARS) 2011. These standards were compared conceptually, and a case study was performed in which the PCF of a poinsettia plant produced in Germany was calculated according to all three standards. The PCF results were 0.45-0.50, 0.53-0.58 and 0.53-0.59 kg carbon dioxide equivalent according to PAS 2050:2011, ISO.DIN 2 14067 and PARS 2011, respectively. According to all standards, the life cycle stage contributing the most greenhouse gases (GHGs) was the production of the poinsettia plant, and the single process with the highest emissions was the electricity use in the production. It was found that if nonrenewable fuels were used for heating instead of wood chips, then heating would be the highest GHG contributor-accounting for over 80 % of emissions of the total PCF. A key finding was that both the production system used and the decisions taken by the person carrying out the PCF calculation result in greater differences in the PCF result than the use of different standards. Differences among the three standards could be harmonised by more specific cut-off rules and exclusion criteria with the publication of ISO.DIN 2 14067, as well as the development and use of product category rules.Life cycle assessment (LCA) of chemicals is usually developed using a process-based approach. In this paper, we develop a tiered hybrid LCA of water treatment chemicals combining the specificity of process data with the holistic nature of input-output analysis (IOA). We compare these results with process and input-output models for the most commonly used chemicals in the Australian water industry to identify the direct and indirect environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing of these materials. We have improved a previous Australian hybrid LCA model by updating the environmental indicators and expanding the number of included industry sectors of the economy. We also present an alternative way to estimate the expenditure vectors to the service sectors of the economy when financial data are not available. Process-based, input-output and hybrid results were calculated for caustic soda, sodium hypochlorite, ferric chloride, aluminium sulphate, fluorosilicic acid, calcium oxide and chlorine gas. The functional unit is the same for each chemical: the production of 1 tonne in the year 2008. We have provided results for seven impact categories: global warming potential; primary energy; water use; marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecotoxicity potentials and human toxicity potential. Results are compared with previous IOA and hybrid studies. A sensitivity analysis of the results to assumed wholesale prices is included. We also present insights regarding how hybrid modelling helps to overcome the limitations of using IO- or process-based modelling individually. The advantages of using hybrid modelling have been demonstrated for water treatment chemicals by expanding the boundaries of process-based modelling and also by reducing the sensitivity of IOA to fluctuations in prices of raw materials used for the production of these industrial commodities. The development of robust hybrid life cycle inventory databases is paramount if hybrid modelling is to become a standard practice in attributional LCA.The production of bioethanol in Argentina is based on the sugarcane plantation system, with extensive use of agricultural land, scarce use of fertilizers, pesticides, and artificial irrigation, and burning of sugarcane prior to harvesting. The objective of this paper is to develop a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the fuel ethanol from sugarcane in Tucuman (Argentina), assessing the environmental impact potentials to identify which of them cause the main impacts. Our approach innovatively combined knowledge about the main impact pathways of bioethanol production with LCA which covers the typical emission-related impact categories at the midpoint life cycle impact assessment. Real data from the Argentinean industry subsystems have been used to perform the study: S1-sugarcane production, S2-milling process, S3-sugar production, and S4-ethanol production from molasses, honey, or sugarcane juice. The results are shown in the three alternative pathways to produce bioethanol. Different impact categories are assessed, with global warming potential (GWP) having the highest impact. So, the production of 1 kg of ethanol from molasses emitted 22.5 kg CO2 (pathway 1), 19.2 kg CO2 from honey (pathway 2), and 15.0 kg CO2 from sugarcane juice (pathway 3). Several sensitivity analyses to study the variability of the GWP according to the different cases studied have been performed (changing the agricultural yield, including economic and calorific allocation in sugar production, and modifying the sugar price). Agriculture is the subsystem which shows the highest impact in almost all the categories due to fossil fuel consumption. When an economic and calorific allocation is considered to assess the environmental impact, the value is lower than when mass allocation is used because ethanol is relatively cheaper than sugars and it has higher calorific value.Waste prevention has been assigned increasing attention worldwide during recent years, and it is expected to become one of the core elements of waste management planning in the near future. In this framework, this paper presents and discusses two possible LCA approaches for the evaluation of the environmental and energetic performance of municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems which include the effects of waste prevention activities. The two approaches are conceived for the comparison of waste management scenarios including waste prevention activities with baseline scenarios without waste prevention. For both of them, the functional unit is defined and the system boundaries are described with reference to different typologies of waste prevention activities identified in an extensive review. The procedure for the calculation of the LCA impacts of scenarios is also reported and an example illustrating the processes to be included in system boundaries for a specific waste prevention activity is provided. The presented approaches lead to the same result in terms of difference between the LCA impacts of a waste prevention scenario and of a baseline one. However, because of the partially different upstream system boundaries, different values of the impacts of single scenarios are obtained and the application of the two approaches is more suitable in different situations and in analyses with different purposes. The methodological aspects that can complicate the applicability of the two approaches are discussed lastly. The environmental and energetic performance of MSW management scenarios including waste prevention activities can be evaluated with the two LCA approaches presented in this paper. They can be used for many purposes such as, among the most general, evaluating the upstream and downstream environmental consequences of implementing particular waste prevention activities in a given waste management system, complementing waste reduction indicators with LCA-based indicators and supporting with quantitative evidence the strategic and policy relevance of waste prevention.In Portugal, the management of end-of-life vehicles (ELV) is set out in targets of the European Union policy for the year 2015, including 85 % recycling, 95 % recovery, and maximum of 5 % landfilling. These goals will be attained only through more efficient technologies for waste separation and recycling of shredder residues or higher rates of dismantling components. Focusing on this last alternative, a field experiment was carried out. There is potential for additional recycling/recovery of 10 %. Three scenarios were proposed for the management of ELV wastes: (1) scenario 1 corresponds to the baseline and refers to the current management, i.e., the 10 % of ELV wastes are shredded whereby some ferrous and non-ferrous metals are recovered and the remaining fraction, called automotive shredder residues (ASR), is landfilled, (2) scenario 2 wherein the ASR fraction is incinerated with energy recovery, and (3) scenario 3 includes the additional dismantling of components for recycling and for energy recovery through solid recovered fuel, to be used as a fuel substitute in the cement industry. The environmental performance of these scenarios was quantified by using the life cycle assessment methodology. Five impact categories were assessed: abiotic resource depletion, climate change, photochemical oxidant creation, acidification, and eutrophication. Compared to the other scenarios, in scenario 1 no benefits for the impact categories of climate change and eutrophication were observed. Scenario 2 has environmental credits due to the recycling of ferrous and non-ferrous metals and benefits from energy recovery. However, this scenario has a significant impact on climate change due to emissions from thermal oxidation of polymeric materials present in the ASR fraction. A net environmental performance upgrading seems to be ensured by scenario 3, mainly due to replacing fossil fuel by solid recovered fuel. The proposed additional dismantling of ELV (scenario 3) not only brings environmental benefits but also meets the European recovery and recycling targets. The associated increase of dismantling costs can be compensated by the additional recycling material revenues as well as social benefits by a rise in employment.This study aims to investigate the social implications of palm oil biodiesel via a case study using a life cycle assessment framework. The case study was conducted in Jambi Province of Indonesia and involved several stakeholders, such as value chain actors, employees, local community members, government, and nongovernmental organization representatives related in palm oil industry. The assessment was carried out using social criteria developed by adopting the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry/United Nations Environment Programme Code of Practice, supplemented by an expert survey, and supported by literature review. Stakeholders' perspectives were evaluated by determining the gaps between expected and perceived quality of each social criterion, which are gauged using seven-point Likert scale. Twenty-four social criteria were developed and aggregated into five social impact categories: human rights, working condition, cultural heritage, social-economic repercussion, and governance. These criteria have been weighted, useful for further application in multicriteria decision analysis. The results of the stakeholders' survey reveal the critical social hotspots, which are the issues within the impact categories of working conditions and cultural heritage. In order to achieve the social equitability of palm oil biodiesel, which is an important pillar to sustainability, efforts must be put to address these social hotspots through actions in various policy level.When performing uncertainty propagation, most LCA practitioners choose to represent uncertainties by single probability distributions and to propagate them using stochastic methods. However, the selection of single probability distributions appears often arbitrary when faced with scarce information or expert judgement (epistemic uncertainty). The possibility theory has been developed over the last decades to address this problem. The objective of this study is to present a methodology that combines probability and possibility theories to represent stochastic and epistemic uncertainties in a consistent manner and apply it to LCA. A case study is used to show the uncertainty propagation performed with the proposed method and compare it to propagation performed using probability and possibility theories alone. Basic knowledge on the probability theory is first recalled, followed by a detailed description of epistemic uncertainty representation using fuzzy intervals. The propagation methods used are the Monte Carlo analysis for probability distribution and an optimisation on alpha-cuts for fuzzy intervals. The proposed method (noted as Independent Random Set, IRS) generalizes the process of random sampling to probability distributions as well as fuzzy intervals, thus making the simultaneous use of both representations possible. The results highlight the fundamental difference between the probabilistic and possibilistic representations: while the Monte Carlo analysis generates a single probability distribution, the IRS method yields a family of probability distributions bounded by an upper and a lower distribution. The distance between these two bounds is the consequence of the incomplete character of information pertaining to certain parameters. In a real situation, an excessive distance between these two bounds might motivate the decision-maker to increase the information base regarding certain critical parameters, in order to reduce the uncertainty. Such a decision could not ensue from a purely probabilistic calculation based on subjective (postulated) distributions (despite lack of information), because there is no way of distinguishing, in the variability of the calculated result, what comes from true randomness and what comes from incomplete information. The method presented offers the advantage of putting the focus on the information rather than deciding a priori of how to represent it. If the information is rich, then a purely statistical representation mode is adequate, but if the information is scarce, then it may be better conveyed by possibility distributions.The paper provides a late report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative workshop "Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA)-where we are, trends, and next steps;" it embeds this report into recent development with regard to the envisaged development of global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators and related methodologies. The document is the output of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative's workshop on "Life Cycle Impact Assessment-where we are, trends, and next steps." The presentations and discussions held during the workshop reviewed the first two phases of the Life Cycle Initiative and provided an overview of current LCIA activities being conducted by the Initiative, governments and academia, as well as corporate approaches. The outcomes of the workshop are reflected in light of the implementation of the strategy for Phase 3 of the Life Cycle Initiative. The range of views provided during the workshop indicated different user needs, with regards to, amongst other things, the required complexity of the LCIA methodology, associated costs, and the selection of LCIA categories depending on environmental priorities. The workshop's results signified a number of potential focus areas for Phase 3 of the Initiative, including capacity building efforts concerning LCIA in developing countries and emerging economies, the preparation of training materials on LCIA, the production of global guidance on LCIA, and the potential development of a broader sustainability indicators framework. These suggestions have been taken into account in the strategy for Phase 3 of the Life Cycle Initiative in two flagship projects, one on global capability development on life cycle approaches and the other on global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators. In the context of the latter project, first activities are being organized and planned. Moreover, UNEP has included the recommendations in its Rio + 20 Voluntary Commitments: UNEP and SETAC through the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative commit to facilitate improved access to good quality life cycle data and databases as well as expanded use of key environmental indicators that allows the measurement and monitoring of progress towards the environmental sustainability of selected product chains.Municipal solid waste (MSW) management in China draws particular attention as China has become the largest MSW generator in the world. The paper analyzed the growth and development of MSW research productivity in China in terms of publication output as reflected in science citation index for the period 1997-2011. The study revealed that the output of MSW research in China has rapidly increased over the 15 years in contrast with USA. Chinese authors contributed 730 publications out of which 708 were journal articles, 17 reviews, 3 editorial materials, 1 correction and 1 meeting abstract, from 421 institutions. About 13.70 % of publications were contributed by Chinese Academy of Sciences, followed by Tongji University, Shanghai (13.15) and Tsinghua University, Beijing (11.10 %). That impact factors of the top 20 journals publishing most papers were between 0.30 and 4.63. Leading 20 authors in the area of MSW research published at least 13 articles per person. The annual share of publications varied from 0.27 to 20.96 % per year. The share was highest in the year 2009 at 20.96 %. An analysis of the title-words showed that "landfill", "incineration" and "management" were recent major topics of municipal solid waste research in China. The results could help researchers understand the characteristics of research output and search hot spots of MSW field in China.Biomethane from energy crops is a renewable energy carrier and therefore it potentially contributes to climate change mitigation. However, significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from cultivation and processing must be considered. Among those, the production and use of nitrogen fertilizers, the resulting nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, the methane emissions from digestate storage and the energy consumption of the biogas plant are crucial factors. In the present paper an integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) of GHG emissions from biomethane production is carried out, taking into account own measurements and experience data from a modern biogas plant located in Umbria, Italy. The study is also focused on the electricity consumption of the biogas plant, assessing the specific absorption power of each machinery. The analysis is based on the methodology defined by the European Union Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC (RED). The main result is that the biomethane chain exceeds the minimum value of GHG saving (35%) mainly due to the open storage of digestate. However by varying the system, using heat and electricity from a biogas CHP plant and covering digestate storage tank, a reduction of 68.9% could be obtained. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Improvement of the environmental performance of processes and products is a common objective in industry, and has been receiving increased attention in recent years. The main objective of this work is to evaluate the potential environmental impact of two bedding products, a polyurethane foam mattress (PFM) and a pocket spring mattress (PSM). These two types are the most common mattresses used in Europe. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) shows that the PFM has a higher environmental impact than the PSM. For both products the main cause of environmental impact is the manufacturing process, respectively the polyurethane foam block moulding process for the PFM, and the pocket spring nucleus process for the PSM. A scenario analysis shows the possibility of reducing the environmental impact of the products' life cycle using an alternative End-of-Life scenario, resorting to incineration rather than landfill. Two strategies were also studied in order to reduce the environmental impact of the PFM: (1) reutilization of foam that was sent to the waste system management, and (2) a 20% weight reduction of the polyurethane foam. The second strategy has proven to be the most effective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessment of social impacts of products and services has gained increasing interest in society. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool developed to estimate the impacts of products and services from cradle to grave. Traditionally LCA has focused on environmental impacts, but recently approaches for social life cycle assessment (SLCA) have also been developed. Most of them fairly address social performances of business, but the aim of this paper is to analyse the possibilities and development needs in the complementary approach, which is the evaluation of social impacts in LCA. We review the field in general and take a closer look at the empirical case of biodiesel production, which is a timely topic globally in view of the climate change mitigation objectives. The analysis is carried out at three levels - company, regional, and state level. Despite active development in the field of SLCA, we conclude that in many cases it is not yet possible to carry out a comprehensive SLCA. Finally, we outline lines of research that would further improve the methodological and empirical basis of SLCA at various levels of decision-making. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The marketing strategy for traditional food products is often based around their strong connection with their production region and claims of a lower environmental impact due to being grown in the agricultural area for which they were selected. Such traditional foods often comprise ancient cultivars that are unsuitable for large-scale distribution, but generally require less agricultural inputs. However, specific environmental evaluations of ancient cultivars in comparison with commercial cultivars are very rare. This study investigated ancient apple cultivars in Piemonte (Northern Italy) as a case study of traditional food in the framework of sustainable food production. The production of three representative apple cultivars, Grigia di Torriana, Magnana and Runse from Torino and Cuneo provinces was investigated using LCA methodology. In particular, the environmental impacts of these cultivars were compared with those of the commercial cultivar Golden Delicious. The study was performed in accordance with ISO 14040 standards, using the cradle-to-gate approach and the EDIP assessment method. Three different functional units were considered: the production of I t of fruit, the growth of 1 ha of orchard, and the earning of (sic)1000 income by the grower. Considering impacts per tonne of product, Golden Delicious had the best environmental performance in most impact categories investigated. However, considering impacts per hectare and (sic)1000 income, the ancient cultivars had the best environmental performance in almost all impact categories. As the impacts of fruit production depended heavily on the functional unit chosen, it is not possible to directly recommend which cultivar should be grown to increase the environmental sustainability. However, the results obtained regarding environmental efficiency and sustainability could be included together with other parameters to make a systemic assessment of different cultivars, which could be useful for policymakers, growers and other stakeholders. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work presents the results from the environmental sustainability assessment of a wood-based particleboard manufacturing process located in Spain, using the Ecological Footprint methodology for the analysis. The consumption of material resources revealed as the major contributor to the Ecological Footprint due to the high amounts of roundwood used as particleboard component. Hence, the effect of increasing the ratio of recycled wood wastes employed for particleboard production was explored, obtaining a range for the indicator from 0.896 to 0.020 gha m(-3) particleboard, corresponding to substitution ratios from 0 to 100%. These results suggest that the effort for improving environmental sustainability should be mainly focused on material resources category, although further study is required on types and ratios of recycled material used and their influence on particleboard's quality. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an appropriate tool for forecasting the non-linear relationships across many scientific studies. In this study a back-propagation (BP) learning algorithm was chosen to predict the environmental indices of potato production in Iran. Data were collected randomly from 260 farms in Fereydonshahr city, located in Esfahan province by face to face questionnaire method. Initially, Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was developed to assess all the environmental impacts associated with potato cultivation in the studied region. The six LCA indices including global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EP), human toxicity potential (HTP), terrestrial ecotoxicity potential (TEP), oxidant formation potential (OFP) and acidification potential (AP) were selected as target outputs. Farm gate and one tone of potato produced were chosen as system boundary and functional unit. To find the best topology, several ANN models with different number of hidden layers and neurons in each layer were developed. To assess the best performance, a topology with highest coefficient of determination (R-2), lowest root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) was selected as optimum architecture. Accordingly, ANN model with 11-10-6 structure showed the best performance. RMSE for GWP, HTP, EP, OFP, AP and TEP was computed as 0.037, 0.005, 0.057, 0.032, 0.048 and 0.037, respectively. Also, MAEs for this model were calculated as 0.028, 0.001, 0.039, 0.022, 0.035 and 0.027 for GWP, HIP, EP, OFP, AP and TEP, respectively. Evaluation of the results revealed that the developed ANN model (11-10-6 architecture) appears to be appropriate tool in predicting environmental indices of potato production. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an environmental and an economic Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) for conventional and electric vehicle technologies, focusing mainly on the primary energy source and the vehicle operation phase Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. A detailed analysis of the electricity mix was performed, based on the contribution of each type of primary energy source and their variation along a year. Three mixes were considered, with different life cycle GHG intensity: one mainly based in fossil sources, a second one with a large contribution from nuclear and a third one with a significant share of renewable energy sources. The conventional vehicle technology is represented by gasoline and diesel International Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs), while the electric technology is represented by Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs). Real world tests were performed for representative compact and sub-compact EVs. The use profile of the vehicle was based on data acquired by a real time data acquisition system installed in the vehicles. The results show that a mix with a large contribution from Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) does not always translate directly into low GHG emissions for EVs due to the high variability of these sources. The driving profile under different scenarios was also analyzed, showing that an aggressive style can increase the energy consumption by 47%. The tests also showed that the use of climate control can increase the energy consumption between 24 and 60%. Compared with other technologies, EVs can be more sustainable from an environmental and economic perspective; however, three main factors are required: improvement of battery technology, an eco-driving attitude and an environmental friendly electricity mix. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to secure the energy future and protect the environment, the U.S. is looking for renewable resources to meet the increasing energy demands for its electricity sector (which accounts for approximate to 40% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2011). The overall aim of this article is to summarize the possible approaches that can be used to improve and optimize the utilization of renewables for electricity generation in the United States. First, an overview is presented about the resource potential, current usage, and technical status of electricity generation from renewables (in the United States). Second, a number of economic, operational, regulatory, sustainability, and technical challenges that are likely to be encountered are identified. Third, strategies are outlined that can be used to minimize costs, deal with the spatial nature of renewables, smooth temporal variations associated with intermittency, and achieve successful integration of electricity generated from renewable resources into the U.S. power grid. Fourth, a sustainability assessment framework for renewable resource deployment (for electricity generation in the U.S.) is discussed. The framework considers multiple criteria (including cost, environmental and social impacts), thus giving a comprehensive assessment of each renewable energy resource (for electricity generation in the United States). Fifth, the current U.S. renewable energy policy is analyzed, and rigorous recommendations are made for optimizing future U.S. renewable energy policy that can permanently induce a long-term sustainable shift towards electricity generation from renewables. Finally, directions for future research are highlighted. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examined the emissions produced during the pre-farm, farm and post-farm phases of the production cycle of raspberries and giant American whortleberries (blueberries) cultivated in one of the best-adapted areas in northern Italy. The pre-farm phase included the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of plants in the nursery and the transportation of the plants to the production farms. The farm phase involved the emissions of greenhouse gases from chemical products, the water used for irrigation, the generation of waste, and the consumption of electricity and other energy. The post-farm phase comprised the transportation of the products to the distribution centre (DC) and their storage in the DC The use phase is not included in the system, nor is transportation from the supermarket to the home of the final consumer, but the disposal of the packaging is nevertheless taken into account. Indeed, the use of traditional plastic materials during both the field phase (nursery and cultivation) and the post-harvesting phase (packaging) produced the greatest estimated impact. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nanocellulose is a nascent and promising material with many exceptional properties and a broad spectrum of potential applications. Because of the unique and functional materials that can be created using nanocellulose, pilot-scale development for commercialization has begun. Thus a thorough understanding of its environmental impact, covering the whole life cycle of nanocellulose, becomes the foundation for its long-term sustainable success. In this current study, four comparable lab scale nanocellulose fabrication routes were evaluated through a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) adopting the Eco-Indicator 99 method. The results indicated that, for the chemical-mechanical fabrication routes, the majority of the environmental impact of nanocellulose fabrication is dependent upon both the chemical modification and mechanical treatment route chosen. For sonication, the mechanical treatment overshadows that from the chemical modifications. Adapting the best practice based on unit mass production was 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO) oxidation followed by homogenization, as TEMPO oxidation resulted in a lower impact than carboxymethylation. Even though the fabrication process of nanocellulose presents a large environmental footprint markup relative to its raw material extraction process (kraft pulping), it still exhibits prominent environmental advantages over other nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes.We propose a life cycle optimization framework for the design of sustainable product systems and supply chains considering the concept of "functional unit" under economic and environmental criteria. This general modeling framework integrates the life cycle analysis methodology with multiobjective optimization and measures both the economic and environmental performances based on a standard quantity of functional unit associated with final products. The Pareto-optimal frontier returned by the multiobjective optimization problem reveals the trade-off between the economic and environmental objectives. We also present tailored optimization algorithms for efficiently solving the mixed-integer linear fractional programming problems, which result from the life cycle optimization framework. We apply the proposed life cycle optimization framework to a case study on the hydrocarbon biofuels through a spatially explicit model for the county-level supply chain in Illinois. The Pareto-optimal results show that the environmental impact of hydrocarbon biofuels ranges from 10.66 to 23.83 kg CO2 equiv per gasoline-equivalent gallon (GEG), corresponding to the unit cost ranging from $4.63 to $3.58/GEG.Although numerous policies encourage CO2 and energy consumption reduction within the UK non-domestic sector, most measures are primarily focused towards reducing operational impacts, but largely overlook embodied impacts, particularly within the construction process. On-site construction refers to the energy consumed during the installation of materials up to project practical completion and represents the largest share of construction process CO2 emissions. Contractors have a pivotal role to play in reducing CO2 and energy consumption due to their significant involvement in project procurement and on-site construction. The key challenges and opportunities are investigated for delivering on-site energy management within UK non-domestic projects from a contractor's perspective. A case study is presented of a large UK principal contractor's on-site energy management practices, based on a wide geographical sample of non-domestic projects and operatives. Shortcomings are found within the contractor's current on-site energy management procedure across the three reporting levels (director, operations and project). Findings identified the lack of data authentication as a significant challenge, whereas capturing additional project variables to facilitate future benchmarking was deemed as a key opportunity for on-site energy management enhancement.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an analytical tool that captures the overall environmental impacts of a product, process or human activity from raw material acquisition, through production and use, to waste management. This comprehensive view makes LCA unique in the suite of environmental management tools. As found in all complex assessment tools, LCA has its limitations as well as its strengths. Although the International Standardization Organization (ISO) provides a general framework for conducting an assessment, it leaves much to interpretation. This paper presents ten important often overlooked or misunderstood aspects of LCA methodology and describes what users should be aware of when setting out to conduct an LCA or when reviewing an LCA conducted by someone else.Chemical engineers assume a broad range of functions in industry, spanning the development of new process designs, the maintenance and optimization of incumbent systems, and the production of intermediate materials, end products and new technologies. The technical aptitude that enables the chemical engineer to fulfill these various roles along the value chain makes them compelling participants in the environmental assessment of the product in question. This article provides a brief overview of LCA and how chemical engineers will find it accessible, both in terms of technical exercise as well as in utility to sustainability functions. It also examines some of the issues that can arise when performing an LCA on a chemical product and proposes ways to address them and improve the LCA situation in the chemical industry.Heat pumps have rapidly gained popularity in the Nordic area, as they are marketed to provide considerable monetary savings and CO2 emission reductions. Heat pumps are installed even in buildings heated by CHP (combined heat and power production). In this paper we calculate CO2 emission factors of DH (district heating) from CHP and GSHP (ground source heat pumps) in Finland, based on hourly data at present and in various future scenarios. In LCA (life cycle assessment) analyses, usually only annual averages are used. We show that including seasonal variation can result in very different emission factors. Since during warm seasons, electricity production is significantly less carbon-intensive than in cold seasons. We find that the current emission factor of CHP DH consumption change is only 70-100 g/kWh. In the future it is 0...300 g/kWh, depending on the CO2 intensity of electricity production. The similar GSHP emission factor would develop from the present 200 g/kWh to 50...200 g/kWh. As long as electricity consumption has seasonal variation or coal condensing power is significant in the interconnected network, CHP has lower emissions than GSHP. We recommend using CLCA (consequential LCA) methodology and the inclusion of seasonal variation in heating option comparisons. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A fundamental requirement for a renewable energy generation technology is that it should produce more energy during its lifetime than is required to manufacture it. In this study we evaluate the primary energy requirements of a prospective renewable energy technology, solar-driven photoelectrochemical (PEC) production of hydrogen from water. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, we evaluate the primary energy requirements for upstream raw material preparation and fabrication under a range of assumptions of processes and materials. As the technology is at a very early stage of research and development, the analysis has considerable uncertainties. We consider and analyze three cases that we believe span a relevant range of primary energy requirements: 1550 MJ m(-2) (lower case), 2110 MJ m(-2) (medium case), and 3440 MJ m(-2) (higher case). We then use the medium case primary energy requirement to estimate the net primary energy balance (energy produced minus energy requirement) of the PEC device, which depends on device performance, e. g. longevity and solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency. We consider STH efficiency ranging from 3% to 10% and longevity ranging from 5 to 30 years to assist in setting targets for research, development and future commercialization. For example, if STH efficiency is 3%, the longevity must be at least 8 years to yield a positive net energy. A sensitivity analysis shows that the net energy varies significantly with different assumptions of STH efficiency, longevity and thermo-efficiency of fabrication. Material choices for photoelectrodes or catalysts do not have a large influence on primary energy requirements, though less abundant materials like platinum may be unsuitable for large scale-up.China has promoted the use of electric vehicles vigorously since 2009; the program is still in its pilot phase. This study investigates the development of electric vehicle use in China from the perspectives of energy consumption and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Energy consumption and GHG emissions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are examined on the level of the regional power grid in 2009 through comparison with the energy consumption and GHG emissions of conventional gasoline internal combustion engine vehicles. The life-cycle analysis module in Tsinghua-LCAM, which is based on the GREET platform, is adopted and adapted to the life-cycle analysis of automotive energy pathways in China. Moreover, medium term (2015) and long term (2020) energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions of PHEVs and BEVs are projected, in accordance with the expected development target in the Energy Efficient and Alternative Energy Vehicles Industry Development Plan (2012-2020) for China. Finally, policy recommendations are provided for the proper development of electric vehicle use in China. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In light of concerns over climate change and the need for national inventories for greenhouse gas reporting, there has been a recent increase in interest in the 'carbon foot printing' of products. A number of LCA-based carbon reporting tools have been developed in both the agricultural and renewable energy sectors, both of which follow calculation methodologies to account for GHG emissions from arable cropping. A review was performed to compare 11 existing greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting tools produced in order to calculate emissions from arable crops, either for food or bioenergy production in the UK, and a multi-criteria-analysis was performed to test their relative strengths and weaknesses. Tools designed for farm-based accounting achieved a higher 'user-friendliness' score, however bioenergy-based tools performed better in the overall level of information provided in the results, transparency and the comprehensiveness of emission sources included in the calculations. A model dataset for UK feed wheat was used to test the GHG emissions calculated by each tool. The results showed large differences, mainly due to how greenhouse gas emissions from fertiliser manufacture and application are accounted fat Overall, the Cool Farm Tool (Hillier et al., 2011) was identified as the highest ranking tool that is currently available in the public domain. The differences in the results between the tools appear to be due to the goal and scope, the system boundaries and underlying emission factor data. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable consumption in the food sector is a desirable goal which is often difficult to achieve depending as it does on the interaction of a broad-set of factors, such as market prices or consumer preferences. In the current study, a distinction has been made between pre-purchase consumer decision-making, on the one hand, and purchase and post-purchase consumer decision-making, on the other. Purchase and post-purchase decisions are those that affect their actions directly. These include vehicle selection to purchase the products, shelf-time in the household or the cooking method employed. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the environmental profile in terms of carbon footprint (CF), of a range of scenarios with varying direct environmental decisions performed by consumers. More specifically, the CF of an iconic frozen seafood product in Spain (one package of frozen fish sticks of Patagonian grenadier) was modeled for a total of 24 scenarios of fish sticks consumption. Results showed a high variance in environmental impacts depending on the scenario chosen, proving the high variability in CF that the consumption of frozen seafood can show depending on consumer choices or needs. Additionally, results showed the relative importance of the consumption stage within the entire supply chain in terms of GHG emissions. Hence, important reductions may be achieved in the diet of an individual merely by improving the behavioral traits when purchasing and consuming food products. Consequently, consumers, if given the correct environmental guidelines through awareness campaigns, can play an active and relevant role in the reduction of the environmental profile of seafood products through behavioral modifications when purchasing and consuming them. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land use in dry lands can result in a final stage where land is completely depleted or entirely degraded causing the desertification phenomenon. The first part (part 1) of this series of two articles proposed a methodology to include desertification in life cycle assessment (LCA). A set of variables to be measured in the life cycle inventory, characterization factors, and an impact assessment method for the life cycle impact assessment phase were proposed. This second part (part 2) aims at showing the application of the model proposed in part 1 on two case studies of agricultural activities. The impact model proposed is applied to plots of land devoted to agricultural activities in two countries: Argentina and Spain. In the agricultural plots of Spain (1SP to 9SP), two crops were analyzed: winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) and rapeseed (RS, Brassica napus). Two crops were considered in the Argentinean case study: rapeseed (RS, B. napus) and digit grass (Digitaria eriantha) (10AR to 17AR). A bare soil state is considered in both countries as a reference state. Both case studies consider only the agricultural stage in the inventory of a complete life cycle assessment study. Both also consider only one impact category in life cycle environmental assessment: desertification impact due to land occupation. On the basis of the obtained results, it can be inferred that cultivating 1 ha of rapeseed and 1 ha of wheat has the same impact on the analyzed plots in Spain and improves the reference state conditions in 50 % of the cases. Moreover, rapeseed grown in Mendoza produces almost the same impact as in some of the Spanish plots. Normalized areas of plots could be useful to compare results in different regions of the world to avoid the influence of the area of occupation in results. The proposed model implies a contribution of significant importance because so far there has not been an impact assessment tool for land use in dry lands within the LCA framework. The main strength of the proposed model is that it allows a simple way to quantify the desertification impact. Also, it is emphasized that the model can be adapted virtually without difficulty to the evaluation of all types of crops with different management practices in different regions in the life cycle impact assessment stage.Integrating soil quality impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA) requires a global approach to assess impacts on soil quality that can be adapted to individual soil and climate contexts. We have developed a framework for quantifying indicators of impact on soil quality, valid for all soil and climate conditions, and considering both on-site and off-site agricultural soils. Herein, we present one of the framework's impact indicators, which has not yet been quantified in detail in LCA studies: soil compaction. The method includes guidelines and tools for estimating midpoint compaction impacts in topsoil and subsoil as a loss of soil pore volume (in cubic metre per functional unit). The life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment are based on simulation modelling, using models simple enough for use by non-experts, general enough to be parameterised with available data at a global scale and already validated. Data must be as site specific and accurate as possible, but if measured data are missing, the method has a standardised framework of rules and recommendations for estimating or finding them. The main model used, COMPSOIL, predicts compaction due to agricultural traffic. Results are illustrated using a case study involving several crops in different soil and climate conditions: a representative pig feed produced in Brittany, France. Predicted compaction impacts result from the combination of site-specific soil, climate and management characteristics. The data necessary to the LCI are readily available from free soil and climate databases and research online. Results are consistent with compaction observed in the field. Within a soil type, predictions are most sensitive to initial bulk density and soil water content. The method lays the foundation for possible improvement by refining estimates of initial soil conditions or adding models that are simple and robust enough to increase the method's capacity and accuracy. The soil compaction indicator can be used in LCAs of bio-based materials and of waste management stages that consider composting. The framework includes other operational indicators (i.e. water erosion, soil organic matter change) to assess impact on soil quality. They complement other impact categories, providing increased ability to identify "impact swapping".This study of seven foods assessed whether there are modes or locations of production that require significantly fewer inputs, and hence cause less pollution, than others. For example, would increasing imports of field-grown tomatoes from the Mediterranean reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by reducing the need for production in heated greenhouses in the UK, taking account of the additional transport emissions? Is meat production in the UK less polluting than the import of red meat from the southern hemisphere? We carried out a life-cycle inventory for each commodity, which quantified flows relating to life-cycle assessment (LCA) impact categories: primary energy use, acidification, eutrophication, abiotic resource use, pesticide use, land occupation and ozone depletion. The system boundary included all production inputs up to arrival at the retail distribution centre (RDC). The allocation of production burdens for meat products was on the basis of economic value. We evaluated indicator foods from which it is possible to draw parallels for foods whose production follows a similar chain: tomatoes (greenhouse crops), strawberries (field-grown soft fruit), apples (stored for year-round supply or imported during spring and summer), potatoes (early season imports or long-stored UK produce), poultry and beef (imported from countries such as Brazil) and lamb (imported to balance domestic spring-autumn supply). Total pre-farm gate global warming potential (GWP) of potatoes and beef were less for UK production than for production in the alternative country. Up to delivery to the RDC, total GWP were less for UK potatoes, beef and apples than for production elsewhere. Production of tomatoes and strawberries in Spain, poultry in Brazil and lamb in New Zealand produced less GWP than in the UK despite emissions that took place during transport. For foods produced with only small burdens of GWP, such as apples and strawberries, the burden from transport may be a large proportion of the total. For foods with inherently large GWP per tonne, such as meat products, burdens arising from transport may only be a small proportion of the total. When considering the GWP of food production, imports from countries where productivity is greater and/or where refrigerated storage requirement is less will lead to less total GWP than axiomatic preference for local produce. However, prioritising GWP may lead to increases in other environmental burdens, in particular leading to both greater demands on and decreasing quality of water resources.The wood panel industry is one of the most important forest-based industries in Brazil. The medium density particleboard (MDP) is currently produced and consumed worldwide and represents about 50 % of the wood panel industry in Brazil. Unlike other regions, Brazilian MDP is produced from dedicated eucalyptus plantations and heavy fuel oil is an important energy source in MDP manufacture, which may result in a different environmental profile. This paper presents a life cycle assessment of MDP panel produced in Brazil and suggests improvement opportunities by assessing alternative production scenarios. The cradle-to-gate assessment of 1 m(3) of MDP produced in Brazil considered two main subsystems: forest and industrial production. Detailed inventories for Brazilian eucalyptus production and MDP industrial production were collected as a result of technical visits to Brazilian MDP producers (foreground systems) as well as literature review (mainly background systems). The potential environmental impacts of MDP were assessed in terms of seven impact categories using CML (abiotic depletion, acidification, global warming, eutrophication, and photochemical oxidation) and USEtox (ecotoxicity and human toxicity) impact assessment methods in order to identify the main hotspots. The industrial production was responsible for most of the impacts in all impact categories, except ecotoxicity (EC). The main hotspots identified were the use of heavy fuel oil (HFO) as a thermal energy source in MDP manufacture and the production of urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin used as synthetic adhesive. Glyphosate herbicide application in soil in forestry operations was the main responsible for the impacts in EC. Scenarios for HFO substitution were assessed and results showed that substituting HFO for in-mill wood residues or diesel leads to reduced environmental impacts. The identification of the main hotspots in the MDP life cycle can assist the wood panel industry to improve their environmental profile. Further research should focus on UF resin production in order to reduce its environmental impacts as well as the possibility of using alternatives resins. Other sources of wood for MDP production could also be investigated (e.g., pine wood and wood residues) to assess potential improvements.Hydrogen, H-2, is one of the most promising (bio-)fuels for our near-future as it is considered as a green energy carrier. However, its natural occurrence is extremely low. In fact, it has to be produced through various processes, from various sources, given that atomic hydrogen, H, exists combined with other light atoms, e.g. oxygen in water, carbon in methane, or both atoms in cellulose. As molecular hydrogen has to be produced, the relative greenness of the production processes merits analysis; we do this here qualitatively. The analysis is notably based on the 12 principles of green chemistry. After an overview of the main hydrogen processes, we show that the combination of renewable raw materials with biological or electrochemical methods and with renewable energies, makes hydrogen production "green". (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When evaluating remediation technologies for contaminated soil and groundwater, the beneficial effects of the remediation are mostly emphasized without consideration of the environmental impacts of the remediation activities themselves. Nevertheless, different qualitative and quantitative methods to estimate the environmental impacts of soil remediation activities are available. In the present study, three case studies were worked out, for which several remediation options were evaluated for a soil and groundwater contamination with mineral oil and benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, based on data of the soil remediation project itself or on data from pilot projects. The evaluation tools that were simultaneously used for all the case studies consisted of the 'Best Available Technique not Entailing Excessive Costs' method, a life cycle-based evaluation method and a CO2 calculator. The results highlight the most important aspects to take into account for the evaluation of the environmental footprint of soil remediation activities and provide a guidance for environmental impacts assessment within the framework of contaminated site management. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aquaculture, the cultivation of aquatic organisms for the human consumption, is one of the fastest growing animal production activities worldwide. The sustainable sourcing of aquafeeds for fish nutrition is considered one of the main priorities to reduce the environmental impact of this industry. In our study, we used consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) to model the environmental impact of trout feed manufacturing using different scenarios of fishmeal, soybean meal and rapeseed meal based protein sources for aquafeed formulations. In a cradle to factory-gate assessment of fishmeal-based standard trout feed, the impact categories acidification potential (AP), global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EP) and land competition (LC) were 8.7 kg SO2 equiv., 1797 kg of CO2 equiv., 2.0 kg of PO4 equiv. and 1065 m(2)a per tonne of aquafeed, respectively. Results indicate that fishmeal-based aquafeed has considerably higher impact on the environment as compared to plant protein based aquafeeds across all the impact categories, where impacts of a soybean meal based aquafeed for AP, EP, GWP and LC were 6.49 kg SO2 equiv., 1.72 kg of PO4 equiv., 1019.65 kg of CO2 equiv. and 806.79 m(2)a per tonne, respectively; and a rapeseed meal based aquafeed resulted 6.56 kg SO2 equiv., 1.72 kg of PO4 equiv., 1037.13 kg of CO2 equiv. and 806.96 m(2)a per tonne for AP, EP, GWP and LC, respectively. These impact results were sensitive to changes in different marginal energy uses. Moreover, comparison of the different methodological approaches between attributional and consequential approaches of LCA resulted in considerably large differences; consequently, system expansion using consequential LCA is identified as the most appropriate method to evaluate the impacts of aquafeed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to identify the processes and stages in organic waste composting that have the largest environmental impacts. The LCA included impacts associated with the collection of feedstock, production and distribution of compost, and its use as a replacement for peat for soil conditioning. The use phase of the compost product has not been included in previous LCA studies in the United States. Nine LCA impact categories were analyzed (global warming potential, ozone depletion, smog, acidification, eutrophication, carcinogens, non-carcinogens, respiratory effects, and ecotoxicity) using TRACI 2 methodology. The functional unit was defined as the collection, processing, transportation, and application of one tonne of compost that meets USEPA composting standards. The compost was produced at the Organics Material Processing and Education Center (OMPEC) at The Pennsylvania State University. The data used in the assessment was collected from seven composting windrows over thirteen consecutive months (December 2010 January 2012). Given the wide range of decomposition emission factors reported in the literature for methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ammonia (NH3), three emission scenarios were calculated: average, minimum, and maximum emission scenarios. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the compost were considered biogenic and not included in the assessment. For all scenarios, compost processing was the stage with the largest environmental impact, with decomposition emissions contributing the most to global warming potential, acidification and eutrophication impact categories under the average and maximum emissions scenarios. To account for the avoided environmental impacts of peat mining and transport, these values were subtracted from the composting life cycle. The avoided impacts from peat replacement were higher than the impacts from composting for all categories, illustrating that using compost instead of peat results in net environmental gains. This study highlights the importance of minimizing life cycle impacts associated with CH4, N2O and NH3 emissions during the decomposition process and the need for more consensus in the literature on emission values from composting processing. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cheese production has always been the standard way of preserving milk. This is the second most consumed dairy product in Spain (ca. 6.2 kg per year and person), with more than 100 different cheeses available in the market. However, only 26 types are labelled with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), a symbol of quality recognition. In this study, an environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed to identify and quantify the environmental impacts (cradle-to-grave perspective) derived from the manufacture of one of the most popular and traditional PDO Galician cheeses: San Simon da Costa cheese. The most critical steps throughout the chain were identified. As expected, milk production at the dairy farm is the main environmental hot-spot in all categories assessed, with contributions ranging from 63% to 89%. Both feed production (mainly fodder) and on-farm emissions derived from enteric fermentation and manure management were the highest contributing farming activities. Cheese making activities should also be considered, with emphasis on impacts associated with the smoking process, the heating system and wastewater treatment. The studied dairy factory has not implemented a system for whey recovery due to its small-scale production. Thus, whey waste mixed with the wastewater effluent is sent to the municipal wastewater treatment plant. Therefore, the valorisation of whey into whey powder was considered as an alternative for improvement. Using this process modification, it is possible to achieve reductions in the environmental profile of the PDO San Simon cheese of up to 15% in categories such as eutrophication. In addition, attention must be paid to the environmental loads of whey powder production arising from electricity and heating requirements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Inventory data and characterization factors in life cycle assessment (LCA) contain considerable uncertainty. The most common method of parameter uncertainty propagation to the impact scores is Monte Carlo simulation, which remains a resource-intensive option-probably one of the reasons why uncertainty assessment is not a regular step in LCA. An analytical approach based on Taylor series expansion constitutes an effective means to overcome the drawbacks of the Monte Carlo method. This project aimed to test the approach on a real case study, and the resulting analytical uncertainty was compared with Monte Carlo results. The sensitivity and contribution of input parameters to output uncertainty were also analytically calculated. This article outlines an uncertainty analysis of the comparison between two case study scenarios. We conclude that the analytical method provides a good approximation of the output uncertainty. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis reveals that the uncertainty of the most sensitive input parameters was not initially considered in the case study. The uncertainty analysis of the comparison of two scenarios is a useful means of highlighting the effects of correlation on uncertainty calculation. This article shows the importance of the analytical method in uncertainty calculation, which could lead to a more complete uncertainty analysis in LCA practice.Sustainable manufacturing requires simultaneous consideration of economic, environmental, and social implications associated with the production and delivery of goods. Fundamentally, sustainable manufacturing relies on descriptive metrics, advanced decision-making, and public policy for implementation, evaluation, and feedback. In this paper, recent research into concepts, methods, and tools for sustainable manufacturing is explored. At the manufacturing process level, engineering research has addressed issues related to planning, development, analysis, and improvement of processes. At a manufacturing systems level, engineering research has addressed challenges relating to facility operation, production planning and scheduling, and supply chain design. Though economically vital, manufacturing processes and systems have retained the negative image of being inefficient, polluting, and dangerous. Industrial and academic researchers are re-imagining manufacturing as a source of innovation to meet society's future needs by undertaking strategic activities focused on sustainable processes and systems. Despite recent developments in decision making and process-and systems-level research, many challenges and opportunities remain. Several of these challenges relevant to manufacturing process and system research, development, implementation, and education are highlighted.Recent years have seen a significant increase in the importance of environmental protection and sustainability to consumers, policy makers, and society in general. Reflecting this, most organizations are at least aware of this new agenda and wish to be seen as taking steps to improve behaviors in this regard. However, there appears to be a gap between this evolving agenda and the comparatively low level of knowledge that marketing managers actually have of the environmental impact of their own functional decisions. We suggest that this low knowledge level may be due, in part, to the marketplace focus of foundational marketing educational programs, and we attempt to show how broadening the horizons of marketing courses can help students (i.e., future managers) more deeply understand the environmental consequences of their actions. We demonstrate the use of a novel business game, based on the Life Cycle Assessment method, as the foundational cornerstone for the development of a broad understanding of the environmental impact of marketing decisions and actions for the entire life cycle of a product-from raw material extraction to ultimate disposal. The results of an empirical study show that this approach increases students' appreciation for, and understanding of, these fundamental environmental sustainability concepts.The purpose of this article is to develop an evaluation model for the selection of packaging systems in supply chains from a sustainability perspective. A theoretical evaluation model for comparing cost efficiency and the environmental impact of packaging systems in supply chains are developed from literature. The model is tested in a case study of a supply chain involving Volvo Car Corporation and Volvo Logistics Corporation, comparing the use of newly developed, one-way packaging with the sustainability of returnable packaging. The model compares the environmental and economic impacts of two packaging systems in a specific supply chain. The criteria used in the model are (i) packaging fill rate, (ii) packaging material, (iii) transport, (iv) material handling, (v) waste handling and (vi) administration. In the case study, the one-way packaging resulted in fewer economic and environmental impacts, thereby indicating the importance for companies to question their packaging systems. The model has been tested on one component in a case study. It provides a comparison of the packaging choices included using comparative, but not absolute, figures for the economic and environmental impacts. Managers can use the model to compare packaging systems for component supply and determine the most sustainable packaging from environmental and economic perspectives. The case study indicated that the returnable packaging system commonly used in the automotive industry is not always preferable in terms of sustainability. The article fulfils the need to evaluate the impact of packaging systems on supply chain sustainability in terms of economic and environmental criteria. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A LimesNet mission to Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden, is reported in this paper. The aim of the mission was to explore new ways of exploiting the untapped potential of life-cycle assessment, its application in the civil engineering and construction industries and, specifically, to debate the associated trade-off decisions for reinforced concrete structures (buildings and civil engineering). Life-cycle assessment is an important tool in sustainable design; engineers need robust life-cycle assessment data and must balance this with operational performance considerations (e.g. energy consumption, durability). Through the mission it was clear that much could be learned from the Swedish experience. The UK team noted the importance of life-cycle assessment studies which allow building performance and construction products to be benchmarked and the role of emerging European standards (e.g. product category rules for construction and the development of environmental product declarations). Valuable lessons exist for consulting engineers and materials manufacturers, and there is a need for the greater inclusion of life-cycle assessment skills in the civil engineering education curriculum.An ever-increasing amount of global research on construction waste has been conducted over the past two decades, ranging from 'soft' mapping and management, reduction tools and methodologies to 'hard' material and recycling technologies. However, the current state of research is largely dominated by endeavours to manage waste that has already been produced. Hence, there is a need for a shift from 'end-of pipe' solutions that focus on on-site waste management to a source-based approach that is aimed at 'life cycle' analysis. This research engaged a sample population from the major UK architectural and contracting firms through 24 interviews to investigate the underlying origins, causes and sources of waste across all project life cycle stages. Respondents reported that designing out waste has never been the most glamorous end of sustainable design. Moreover, the results reveal that waste generation is affected by a wide practice of not embedding waste reduction in briefing and contractual documents, no baseline setting, and lack of designers' understanding of design waste origins, causes and sources. This is hindered by limited know-how and incoherent coordination and communication between project members and impeded by time constraints and disjointed design information. Collectively, these impediments disallow the consideration, engagement and implementation of designing out waste.Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) practices in Europe have been traditionally applied to assess potential environmental impacts due to socio-economic drivers implying specific land use (viz. infrastructure, building and industrial development). However, other socioeconomic drivers related to citizen behavior, such as household consumption, may significantly contribute to the overall local impacts, but are usually neglected in SEA. Aiming at enlarging the traditional approaches adopted in SEA, the present study integrates two environmental sustainability indicators capturing different aspects of consumption patterns: ecological footprint and carbon balance. The two indicators are calculated in addition to a more traditional set of environmental indicators in order to: (i) understand if the level of consumption of the local community exceeds the limits of natural resources of the area (in a perspective of self-sustainment at the local scale); and (ii) identify the role of spatial planning choices in determining the environmental sustainability of the entire system. The two indicators are calculated and discussed in the context of the SEA of the urban master plans of four municipalities in northern Italy. The two indicators may represent a good proxy for lifestyle impacts, even if some strengths and weaknesses arose from the application to the case study.Tourism is a noticeable contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Existing estimates of tourism's carbon footprint are however incomplete as they fail to holistically assess the additional, 'indirect' carbon requirements. These arise from the non-use phases of a tourism product or service life cycle and can be further magnified by supply chain industries. Under-development of methods for carbon impact assessment in tourism is the primary reason for the omission of 'indirect' GHG emissions. This study develops a new approach for comprehensive appraisal of GHG emissions which incorporates and advances the methodological advantages of existing assessment techniques. It tests the applicability of this approach in tourism by conducting a holistic analysis of a standard holiday package to Portugal, based on the British tourism market. The new approach demonstrates the significance of the 'indirect' GHG emissions in the total carbon footprint from the holiday package, thus emphasising the necessity for more comprehensive future assessments. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To prevent serious negative effects of climate change, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions are required on global level and at large scale. One option is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which aims to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power generation and industry and store it permanently in geologic structures. For a comprehensive comparative assessment of the environmental performance of CCS technologies life cycle assessment (LCA) is required. This study provides a systematic comparison of LCA-based environmental performances of fossil and wood power plants as well as cement production in Europe for 2025 and 2050 with and without CCS. The implementation of CCS leads to life cycle GHG emission reductions of 68-92% for fossil power generation and 39-78% for cement production whilst to negative ones for wood power generation. There are trade-offs with respect to environmental and human health impacts due to direct (e.g. air emissions) and indirect (e.g. coal mining) impacts of the increase in fuel use and additional processes and materials necessary for CCS. Cement plants are suitable point sources for the implementation of CCS. Here the energy supply for the CO2 capture and compression is decisive for the environmental impacts, what indicates benefits of system integration. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper the economics of the technical possibilities presented in Part I (Arasto et al., 2013) for applying post-combustion CO2 capture at an integrated steel mill were studied. Implications of different CO2 amounts captured, solvents and process integration levels to the greenhouse gas balances and economics of operation are compared to the reference case without CCS trough several case studies using variable market prices of electricity and CO2 emission allowances. The break-even price (BEP) of CO2 emissions (e.g. CO2 emission allowances), where CCS becomes more profitable than the reference case, is about 72(sic)/t CO2 with an electricity price of 100(sic)/MWh in the most favourable studied case using a MEA solvent. For the more advanced solvents considered, the BEP level is about 64(sic)/t CO2. With higher prices of electricity, the costs for CCS increase rapidly. The costs for globally avoided emissions, based on a streamlined life-cycle analysis, are generally higher than the BEP's, depending on the fuels that are assumed to eventually compensate the decreased electricity production in the energy system. The amounts of captured CO2 corresponding to the above presented prices in the most favourable cases are typically in the range of 2-3 Mt CO2/a, which accounts for 50-75% of the site emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The road sector is coming under pressure to review current practice and the potential to reduce carbon emissions. The life cycle approach has been accepted as a robust method of measuring carbon footprint. Tools and data-sets have been developed to facilitate the measurement. Among them is the Calculator for Harmonised Assessment and Normalisation of Greenhouse-gas Emissions for Roads (CHANGER) developed by International Road Federation (IRF) and aimed to measure and benchmark the carbon footprint of road construction worldwide. This paper outlines the common methodology of road carbon footprinting, application of results in sustainable construction assessment schemes and resources available to undertake such analysis. Case studies of using CHANGER are provided for a UK trunk road widening, a public-private partnership highway construction in the United Arab Emirates and strategic highway upgrades in India. The CO2 output of these projects is compared, and an investigation is made to seek the causes of any differences. Finally, advice is provided on carbon measurement of roads and improvements of the IRF's tool.CO2 reduction from fossil-fired power plants can be achieved by carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). Among different CO2 capture technologies for power plants the oxyfuel power plant concept is a promising option. High temperature ceramic membranes for oxygen production have the potential to reduce the associated efficiency losses significantly compared to conventional air separation using cryogenic techniques. Focus of this paper is the environmental performance of membrane-based oxygen production for oxyfuel power plant technology. Included into the analysis are the production of the perovskite membrane (BSCF=Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-delta), the incorporation into a steel module, and the integration of several modules into an oxyfuel power plant. The membrane-based oxygen production is compared to the conventional cryogenic air separation in oxyfuel power plants in an ecological way. The evaluation is performed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology from "cradle to grave". The share in the overall environmental impacts of respective life cycle elements like membrane and module production but also coal supply processes as well as the operation of the oxyfuel power plant are identified. Sensitivity analyses referring to life-time, permeability and housing conditions of the membranes set benchmarks for further membrane development. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ideally, carbon information could be disclosed and reduced through the supply chain if a life cycle inventory is well conducted. However, in practice, it has been found through the observation of the past carbon footprint inventories of enterprises that owing to the limited cost and resources, most of these investigations were seldom comprehensively conducted and were not integrated with the existing internal management systems or information systems of the enterprises, but instead were conducted as a special project for target products. Also, most enterprises thought it was time-consuming to conduct these inventories (raw material suppliers, manufacturers, transporters, retailers, customers, and waste processors, numerous suppliers). The main purpose of this study is to construct a collaborative design framework to help enterprises collect and calculate products' carbon footprints in a readily and timely manner throughout the entire supply chain. In this research, a computer aided tool was used to integrate enterprises' internal systems with life cycle inventory database and to establish enterprises' GHGs bills of material system. These enterprises were provided with standard data collection forms and a search engine system based on life cycle assessment approaches. A case study on the implementation of the system is also illustrated. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We present a life cycle assessment of synthetic paraffinic kerosene produced from Jatropha curcas. The feedstock is grown in an intercropping arrangement with pasture grasses so that Jatropha is coproduced with cattle. Additional innovations are introduced including hybrid seeds, detoxification of jatropha seedcake, and cogeneration. Two fuel pathways are examined including a newly developed catalytic decarboxylation process. Sensitivities are examined including higher planting density at the expense of cattle production as well as 50% lower yields. Intercropping with pasture and detoxifying seedcake yield coproducts that are expected to relieve pressure on Brazil's forests and indirectly reduce environmental impacts of biofuel production. Other innovations also reduce impacts. Results of the baseline assessment indicate that innovations would reduce impacts relative to the fossil fuel reference scenario in most categories including 62-75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 64-82% reduction in release of ozone depleting chemicals, 33-52% reduction in smog-forming pollutants, 6-25% reduction in acidification, and 60-72% reduction in use of nonrenewable energy. System expansion, which licitly accounts for avoided deforestation, results in larger improvements. Results are robust across allocation methodologies, improve with higher planting density, and persist if yield is reduced by half.Impacts on humans and ecosystems caused by the production of materials and goods are often discussed in nowadays society and policy. The steel industry already implemented several case studies in life cycle assessment. In this connection a new method to assess the environmental profile of steel has been developed in cooperation of TU Berlin and Stahl-Zentrum, which considers the infinite recyclability of steel in a holistic manner. The project aimed on a material pool based evaluation of the material. Within the life cycle assessment model, the two main production routes for steel the blast furnace route and the electric arc furnace route are covered and equally modelled. The method has been explicitly developed in a way that allows its transfer and application to other materials, too.Increased production rates of iron and steel promote economic wealth, however they impose challenges to sustainable development due to emissions associated with iron and steelmaking and increasing use of resources. This work assesses the indicators and parameters that are important to defining the role of iron and steelmaking operations in sustainable development and reviews the major environmental challenges that need to be addressed by science and industry. Three major ironmaking technologies, the blast furnace, electric arc furnace and direct reduced iron (Midrex) are comparatively assessed in this work. The sustainability indicators used for assessment consist of economic parameters, greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater consumption, land use requirements and air pollution. These parameters are then compared to performance indicators from two other fundamental industries, those of energy generation and food production. From the iron and steelmaking technologies considered in this work, electric arc furnace steelmaking was found to have the best sustainability performance, closely followed by Midrex. The blast furnace was the lowest ranked iron and steelmaking technology, although its sustainability performance was found to be significantly above that of coal fired power stations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The replacement of copper by aluminum, which has a lower price, is becoming a developing trend in the Chinese indoor air conditioner industry. However, the significant greenhouse gas emission during aluminum production may restrict this development. Based on a life cycle assessment, we use the carbon footprint method to account for the carbon footprint attributed to copper and aluminum usage in the Chinese indoor air conditioner industry from 2000 to 2009. The results show that (1) the carbon footprint of the Chinese indoor air conditioner industry generally declined during this period mainly because of the improvement in copper and aluminum production technology; and (2) after 2004, the carbon sink forest costs of this industry became lower than the production costs mainly because of the rising copper price and the perennial stability of the aluminum price. Based on these results, we analyze the developing trend of aluminum substitution for copper and propose a cooperative control strategy to limit the carbon footprint and to guide the development of the Chinese indoor air conditioner industry. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a methodology for identifying sustainable and most appropriate BAT for a given industrial installation and sector. The methodology involves identification of environmental hot spots from an installation by using life cycle assessment (LCA) to guide the selection of candidate BAT options for targeting the hot spots. The selected BAT options are then assessed on sustainability using relevant environmental, economic, technical and social indicators. This enables benchmarking of different options and selection of the most appropriate alternative(s) for the system of interest. The application of the approach is illustrated by a case study of ceramic tiles produced in Spain. The results indicate that firing and drying are the hot spots for most sustainability impacts considered. To target these, 11 BAT options used in 13 alternative configurations of the manufacturing process have been considered and assessed on sustainability. The results suggest that the most sustainable BAT options for the ceramic tiles industry, both environmentally and economically, include heat recovery from the flue gas and its clean-up with CaCO3 and/or Ca(OH)(2). Depending on the configuration, cost savings of up to 30% and environmental improvements of over 95% can be achieved with these BAT options. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a prototype model developed for a case study linking chemical risk information with a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to product development. Standard LCA software was used to develop a tool combining LCA and Risk Phrase information for health and environmental hazards encompassed by new European chemicals directives. Real product development cases are used based on Ostfold Research's collaboration with industry - specifically a coatings company. The principal objective of the work was to investigate the degree to which hazardous risk information could be combined with elements of LCA methodology to better inform product development. The work also shows how the tool equips product developers to move beyond the limited insight provided by the pure hazardous risk information approach, to also consider health and environmental hazard aspects in a functional perspective typical of LCA. This allows the identification of differences in product development priorities resulting from the two approaches. Some results from testing the prototype tool are presented and its application in product development within the coatings company and for other companies is discussed. The work presented in this paper falls short of the aim of including the full life cycle perspective, but represents an important first step towards achieving this. The work demonstrates that some integration of hazardous risk and LCA approaches is practicable, and indicates that such integration gives rise to changes in product development priorities. Combining hazardous risk information with LCA is valuable for decision makers, including product designers. The tool presented in this paper makes it possible for decision makers to combine LCA functional unit information with hazardous risk information, enabling designers to reduce a product's hazardous risk. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Depletion of marine fish stocks has become a global problem. Aquaculture is seen by many as the best way to meet the growing demand for fish products. The question then arises whether aquaculture is a truly environmentally sustainable alternative. Every type of aquaculture is different, therefore each one merits its own case study. To date, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies have mainly examined Western culture systems, although Asia predominates the world aquaculture production by quantity. In this research, we focus on a vertically integrated Vietnamese top exporter of Pangasius food products in the Mekong Delta. Along with a tremendous expansion of this sector in recent decades, intensification coincided with an increased material and energy demand. Therefore, we focus on resource extraction (from cradle to farm gate), expressed as the Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment (CEENE). Hotspots in resource demand are identified over the life cycle stages (juvenile production, feed production and culturing to marketable-sized fish). The life cycle resource footprint includes mainly land (62%, mainly for feed production), water (31%, mainly for on-site farming of the fish) and fossil fuels (4%, mainly for energy needs throughout the feed supply chain). Main methods for reducing this resource demand should be lowering the feed and water input into the ponds and improving the efficiency of the feed supply chain. Pros and cons of closed-loop water-saving systems are discussed. The feed supply chain plays a key role in improving the resource use efficiency. Vietnamese Pangasius producers should be introduced to life cycle thinking and encouraged to pay attention to the environmental performance of their suppliers across the world. For the last goal, a new metric system to score the Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR), i.e. the CEENE FCR, is introduced here. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rare-earth elements (REEs) are becoming increasingly important in the transition to a green economy, due to their essential role in permanent magnets, lamp phosphors, catalysts, rechargeable batteries etc. With China presently producing more than 90% of the global REE output and its increasingly tight export quota, the rest of the world is confronted with a REE supply risk. Mining companies are now actively seeking new exploitable REE deposits while some old mines are being reopened. Because of the absence of economical and/or operational primary deposits on their territory, many countries will have to rely on recycling of REEs from pre-consumer scrap, industrial residues and REE-containing End-of-Life products. REE recycling is also recommended in view of the so-called "balance problem". For instance, primary mining of REE ores for neodymium generates an excess of the more abundant elements, lanthanum and cerium. Therefore, recycling of neodymium can reduce the total amount of REE ores that need to be extracted. Despite a vast, mostly lab-scale research effort on REE recycling, up to 2011 less than 1% of the REEs were actually recycled. This is mainly due to inefficient collection, technological problems and, especially, a lack of incentives. A drastic improvement in the recycling of REEs is, therefore, an absolute necessity. This can only be realized by developing efficient, fully integrated recycling routes, which can take advantage of the rich REE recycling literature. This paper provides an overview of this literature, with emphasis on three main applications: permanent magnets, nickel metal hydride batteries and lamp phosphors. The state of the art in preprocessing of End-of-Life materials containing REEs and the final REE recovery is discussed in detail. Both pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical routes for REE separation from non-REE elements in the recycled fractions are reviewed. The relevance of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for REE recycling is emphasized. The review corroborates that, in addition to mitigating the supply risk, REE recycling can reduce the environmental challenges associated with REE mining and processing. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cement industry has been always among the largest CO2 emission sources. Almost 5-7% of global CO2 emissions are caused by cement plants, while 900 kg CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere for producing one ton of cement. In this work, global strategies and potentials toward mitigation of CO2 emissions in cement plant have been discussed and the most promising approaches have been introduced. Moreover the barriers against worldwide deployment of such strategies are identified and comprehensively described. Three strategies of CO2 reduction including energy saving, carbon separation and storage as well as utilizing alternative materials in detail have been reviewed. In case of energy saving approaches, shifting to more efficient process for example from wet to dry process with calciner, shows the best results since potentially reduces up to 50% of required energy and mitigates almost 20% of CO2 emissions in the process. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is also considered as an effective way to avoid release of CO2. However economical and technical challenges still play a remarkable obstacle against implementing such processes in the cement plant. As far as alternative materials are the case, utilizing waste-derived fuel (WDF) and industrial by-products instead of conventional fuels and materials result in the significant emission mitigation. Industrial wastes which can be used as both fuel and raw material simultaneously mitigate emissions in cement plants and landfills. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental impact of urban sewage sludge use as alternative fuel or raw material in clinker production was carried out. In order to quantify in detail the overall environmental impact of both scenarios, the sewage sludge treatment process and the transport to cement facilities for both alternatives were considered. The substitution ratio of fuel (petcoke) and raw material (limestone) was fixed between 5 and 15% according to the cement production plant limitations. Both scenarios show CO2 savings when compared to the clinker production without substitution. The mid-point and end-point analysis were favourable to the fuel substitution with savings ranging from 3 to 7% compared to the raw material substitution and also to base case without substitution. The influence of the amount of sewage sludge used for both scenarios indicates that fuel substitution reduced the CO2 emissions when the amount of substitution is increased, while other mid-point and end-point categories were proportionally favourable to the fuel substitution scenario. Additionally, the influence of the substituted material characteristics showed that low heating value (fuel substitution) and CaO addition in lime stabilized sludge (raw material substitution) are critical parameters in terms of environmental impact in clinker production. The fuel substitution represents a significant environmental improvement compared to the raw material substitution scenario and clinker production without substitution. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the preliminary results of an environmental evaluation carried out by the application of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), to a new method proposed for managing the end of life of thin film photovoltaic panels that is being developed by a company leader in design and installation of photovoltaic solutions. The new method is being developed in an experimental test facility established by the company for implementing a series of mechanical and hydro mechanical treatments to thin film panels at the end of their life before the ultimate material recovery phase. The main innovation of the method consists in the elimination of the thermal treatments and the reduction of chemicals needed for recovering valuable materials, in favor of mechanical processes. The results demonstrate that the mechanical treatments used in the pre-treatment phase of the module has a positive effect in almost all the damage categories defined in the LCA and contribute significantly to the reduction of the global warming and the carbon footprint of the photovoltaic technology. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mussels can be used as fertiliser in organic farming, particularly on stockless farms, which need external nutrients but have limited access to fertiliser products. Mussels are filter feeders and accumulate nutrients bound in e.g. phytoplankton. When harvested and used onshore, their accumulated nutrients are removed from the water, thus decreasing eutrophication. This LCA study assessed the environmental impact of mussel farming on the Swedish coast of the Baltic Sea for subsequent use as agricultural fertiliser. The functional unit was related to the agronomic value of the mussels, including plant-available nitrogen, phosphorus and liming effect. Flow of cadmium to soil was also assessed. In one scenario the mussels were composted and in another they were inertly stored to avoid nitrogen losses and other emissions from storage. Use of mussels on agricultural land fulfils three functions: fertilisation, liming and a reduction in eutrophication. The results clearly showed the importance of integrated assessment of these three functions. Due to significant nitrogen losses from the composting process, the compost scenario resulted in a higher impact on acidification, global warming potential and energy use than the inert storage scenario. Alternative techniques to composting for handling mussels should thus be developed, for example direct use of the mussels as fertiliser without prior storage, or inert storage. Energy use was strongly related to production of materials for mussel cultivation, so choice and life length of materials is important when introducing mussel farming. The cadmium content of mussels is relatively high, but they often supply less cadmium to the field than the fertiliser and liming products they replace. Reducing eutrophication by cultivating mussels for fertiliser proved more energy-efficient than reducing eutrophication in wastewater treatment plants. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents an environmental analysis of the cork sector by integrating and evaluating the production of the products that are most commonly made of cork: natural cork stoppers, champagne cork stoppers, white cork granulate and black cork granulate, in order to propose environmental strategies that could contribute to minimising the potential impacts of the cork sector. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was the methodology used in order to assess the potential environmental impacts of the cork sector and its main products. Inventory was supported by 15 companies in Catalonia. Different environmental midpoint impact categories were reported and analysed according to CML 2001 method such as Abiotic Depletion (ADP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), and many other. Also, the Global Warming Potential (GWP 100 years), was assessed, and it was found that the cork sector contributed to fixing carbon dioxide and consequently can help to mitigate climate change, besides generating cork products. Specifically, 3.4 tonnes of CO2 eq. were emitted to convert a tonne of raw cork from the forest into products, while 18 tonnes of CO2 are fixed per tonne as a result of the existence of cork oak forests; the resulting balance was that 14.6 tonnes of CO2 are fixed. A sensitivity analysis was carried out of the distribution of environmental impacts between products; it was observed that allocation rules were an important point of the assessment. The use of cork, a natural, renewable and local material, can help to reduce the environmental impact of products. The use of cork stoppers contributes to reducing the carbon footprint of beverages such as wines, champagnes, beers, ciders, brandies and many other beverages. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lost or discarded fishing nets are a significant component of marine debris which has trans-boundary impacts in large marine ecosystems. Such 'ghost nets' cause the by-catch of marine fauna and require retrieval from coastlines where they wash up. Identifying the causes of discarded nets and feasible intervention points requires analysis of a complex value chain and the stakeholders within it, yet no studies have attempted this. In this paper we combine Value Chain Analysis, commonly applied to understand value-adding for a commodity, with elements of Life Cycle Assessment and social network analysis to examine the drivers, stakeholders, economic, environmental and social costs and benefits in the life of a trawl net. We use the Arafura Sea as a case study, which is shared by Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia, and is the focus of a Trans-boundary Diagnostic Assessment (TDA) within the Arafura Timor Seas Ecosystem Action program (ATSEA). We follow a trawl net through four subsystems: manufacture of webbing in South Korea, fishing and loss by an Indonesian vessel, retrieval as ghost net on the northern Australian coastline by Indigenous rangers, and disposal or re-cycling as `GhostNet Art' by Indigenous artists. Primary stakeholders along the value chain incur economic and social benefits, and economic and environmental costs. There is an anomaly in the chain between Indonesian fishermen and Indigenous rangers, artists and communities due to the lack of market linkages between these primary stakeholders. The first 'nexus of influence' where reductions in net losses and environmental costs can be achieved is through interactions between GhostNets Australia, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Australian Government, which can influence Indonesian fishery management institutions and fishing crews. The second nexus is via the international art market which by publicising GhostNet Art can raise awareness amongst fish consumers about the impacts of ghost nets, and hence influence Indonesian fishing companies. GhostNets Australia is a key bridging organisation in the network, linking stakeholders across scales and sub-systems. Feasible preventative interventions are discussed to rectify the anomaly in the value chain. The importance of GhostNets Australia and ATSEA in the evolving adaptive co-management and trans-boundary governance of fisheries is highlighted. However, the prevention of ghost nets will result in trade-offs in benefits for the livelihoods of primary stakeholders. The utility of the method for analysing marine debris in TDAs, and ATSEA in particular, is discussed. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We address the bi-criterion optimization of batch scheduling problems with economic and environmental concerns. The economic objective is expressed in terms of productivity, which is the profit rate with respect to the makespan. The environmental objective is evaluated by means of environmental impact per functional unit based on the life cycle assessment methodology. The bi-criterion optimization model is solved with the epsilon-constraint method. Each instance is formulated as a mixed-integer linear fractional program (MILFP), which is a special class of non-convex mixed-integer nonlinear programs. In order to globally optimize the resulting MILFPs effectively, we employ the tailored reformulation-linearization method and Dinkelbach's algorithm. The optimal solutions lead to a Pareto frontier that reveals the tradeoff between productivity and environmental impact per functional unit. To illustrate the application, we present two case studies on the short-term scheduling of multiproduct and multipurpose batch plants. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The interrelation between urban areas and land use options for greenhouse gas mitigation was evaluated by assessing the utility of urban residuals for soil reclamation. Long-term impacts on soil C storage for mine lands restored with urban organic residuals were quantified by sampling historic sites reclaimed both conventionally and with residuals-based amendments Use of amendments resulted in greater C storage compared to conventional practices for all sites sampled, with increases ranging from 14.2 Mg C ha(-1) in a coalmine in WA to 384 Mg C ha(-1) for a copper mine in British Columbia. Expressed as Mg C per Mg amendment, effective C increases ranged from 0.03 to 0.31 Mg C per Mg amendment Results were applied to three alternative land use scenarios to model the net GHG balance for a site restored to forest or low density development The model included construction of 39 243 m(2)-homes, typical of urban sprawl. Emissions for home and road construction and use over a 30-year period resulted in net emissions of 1269 Mg CO2. In contrast, conventional reclamation to forestland or reclamation with 100 Mg of residuals resulted in net GHG reductions of -293 and -475 Mg CO2. Construction of an equivalent number of smaller homes in an urban core coupled with restoration of 1 ha with amendments was close to carbon neutral. These results indicate that targeted use of urban residuals for forest reclamation, coupled with high-density development, can increase GHG mitigation across both sectors.The aim of this research is to assess the sustainability of a natural fiber, such as hemp (Cannabis sativa), and its use as thermal insulator for building applications. The sustainability of hemp was quantified by life cycle assessment (LCA) and particular attention was given to the amount of CO2eq of the whole process, and the indicator greenhouse gas protocol (GGP) was selected to quantify CO2eq emissions. In this study also CO2 uptake of hemp was considered. Two different allocation procedures (i.e., mass and economic) were adopted. Other indicators, such as Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) and EcoIndicator99 H were calculated. The production of 1 ha yielded 15 ton of hemp, whose global warming potential (GWP(100)) was equal to about -26.01 ton CO2eq: the amount allocated to the technical fiber (20% of the total amount of hemp biomass) was -5.52 ton CO2eq when mass allocation was used, and -5.54 ton CO2eq when economic allocation was applied. The sustainability for building applications was quantified by considering an insulation panel made by hemp fiber (85%) and polyester fiber (15%) in 1 m(2) of wall having a thermal transmittance (U) equal to 02 W/m(2)_K. The environmental performances of the hemp based panel were compared to those of a rockwool-based one.This paper presents the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results of biodiesel produced from rapeseed oil. The functional unit (FU) is defined as 3750 km of distance traveled by a truck fuelled with biodiesel. The reference flow is 1000 kg of biodiesel. The LCIA method used in the study is the ReCiPe method. At midpoint level the ReCiPe method addresses environmental issues within 18 impact categories. Most of these midpoint impact categories are further converted and aggregated into 3 endpoint categories (damage to human health, damage to ecosystem diversity, damage to mineral resource availability). The total impact of biodiesel's life cycle was estimated at 540 Pt/FU. The damage to ecosystem diversity (1.48x10(-4) species.year/FU), the damage to human health (7.48x10(-3) DALY/FU) and the damage to mineral resource availability (8.11x10(3) US$/FU) are responsible for 63, 27 and 10% of the total negative impact in the life cycle of biodiesel, respectively. The results have revealed that only 4 impact categories are responsible for most of the impacts within the specific endpoint categories. These are impacts associated with global warming (3000 kg CO2,ekv./FU), particulate matter formation (12.4 kg PM (ekv.)/FU), agricultural land occupation (6710 m(2)a/FU) and fossil fuel depletion (21168 MJ/FU). Greenhouse gases emitted in the life cycle of biodiesel (mainly N2O and CO2) are responsible for 56% of the damage caused to human health and for 16% of the damage caused to ecosystem diversity. Airborne emissions which contribute to particulate matter formation (NOx, NH3, PM and SO2) are responsible for 43% of the damage caused to human health. Agricultural land occupation is responsible for 82% of the damage caused to the ecosystem diversity. Damage to mineral resource availability is almost entirely related to the depletion of fossil energy sources. The production chain of biodiesel and the combustion of biodiesel are responsible for 69% and 31% of the total impact of biodiesel's life cycle, respectively. The negative impact of the production chain is mainly related to biodiversity loss due to agricultural land occupation (38%) and the life cycle impacts of mineral fertilizers used in the production of rapeseed (47%). The environmental impact of biodiesel can be reduced by increasing the yield of rapeseed with more efficient use of fertilizers and optimization of agro-technical processes.After the functional phase, packaging becomes waste that is recycled or disposed of in landfills. Recently, numerous packages have been developed for assessing the packaging risk on the environment. We applied GaBi 4 Education software on polymer product packaging for meat products. The objective of the first part of the paper was characterization of materials used for meat and meat products packaging in terms of mechanical and barrier properties. The results showed that the tested materials were able to keep a protective atmosphere and contribute to the quality and sustainability of the product. Air permeability was 3.60 and 26.60 ml m(-2)/24 h, and water vapor permeability was 6.90 and 9.50 ml m(-2)/24 h, respectively, for foils 1 and 2, as a result of different film composition. In the second part, based on real data, GaBi 4 Education software was applied. The obtained results showed that organic compounds emissions had the highest impact on human health and the most damaging environmental impact observed was the emission of CO2.Microalgae are currently being investigated as a feedstock for the commercial production of transportation fuels, due to their potential scalability and sustainability advantages over conventional feedstocks. The water consumption of microalgae has been postulated to be a resource barrier for large- scale production. This study presents an assessment of the water footprint (WF) of a closed photobioreactor- based biofuel production system, where microalgae cultivation is simulated with geographical and temporal resolution. The assessment focuses on the WF as modeled for four different fuel conversion pathways, and in 10 continental US locations corresponding to high productivity yields. The WF is comprehensively assessed using a hybrid approach which combines process and economic input- output lifecycle analysis method, using three metrics: blue, green and lifecycle WF. Results show that the blue WF of microalgae biofuels varies between 23 and 85 m(3) . GJ(- 1) depending on process and geographic location. The green WF shows that microalgae cultivation may reduce the required local water withdrawals. Water credits from the co- products vary with allocation methods and end uses, from credits of less than 4 m(3) . GJ- 1 up to credits of 334 m(3) . GJ(- 1). Results for the net lifecycle WF with coproduct credits vary between 80 and -291 m(3) . GJ(- 1). Discussion focuses on the sensitivity ofmicroalgae biofuel WF and highlights potential local and national strain of water resources relative to other fuels and biofuels. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) of a microalgae biomass cultivation, bio-oil extraction and pyrolysis processing regime is a useful means to gauge the likely environmental impact of this prospective new development on an industrial scale. Coupled to thermal conversion via slow pyrolysis, the prospect of biologically 'sequestering' carbon derived from microalgae biomass as biochar, added to soil, is considered. However, an intensive closed culturing photobioreactor system coupled to a pyrolysis process incurs a net increase in global warming and overall life cycle impact, notwithstanding biochar application to soil. Results indicate that up to 50% of environmental impact in certain categories stems from the upstream influence of fertiliser production. Energy used in flue gas delivery and pumping during cultivation is also considerable, suggesting that current practice in closed cultivation systems does not yet adequately trade-off biomass productivity against operating intensity. Drying of the harvested microalgae biomass for pyrolysis processing is potentially a major hurdle in terms of process viability also. Overall, utilisation of nutrients derived from waste streams, integrating renewable energy and capture of process heat for more efficient drying are essential levers for reducing the environmental impact of this proposition. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.Literature suggests that depletion of non-renewable resources is the most concerning environmental impact category in the life cycle of the polyvinyl chloride (PVC), mainly due to the fossil feedstock for ethylene. Therefore, bioethanol is considered as another source for ethylene in the PVC production chain. The objective of this review was to perform a cradle-to-gate attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of bioethanol-based PVC resin. We created two scenarios for bioethanol-based PVC (2010 and 2018), and compared them with fossil-based PVC. We used primary data from Solvay S.A. and secondary data from the literature, for the life cycle inventory. For the impact assessment, we used several midpoint indicators and the ReCiPe Endpoint H/A. At midpoint level, bioethanol-based PVC from 2010 and 2018 presented better results than fossil-based PVC for non-renewable resource use (13.8, 13.4, and 44.8 MJ(ex)/kg of PVC resin, respectively) and climate change (-0.09, -0.19, and 1.52 kg CO(2)eq/kg of PVC resin, respectively), but worse results for other environmental impact categories (e.g. ecotoxicity). At endpoint level, the two bioethanol-based PVC scenarios showed better results overall than fossil-based PVC (up to 66% lower). Within the bioethanol-based PVC scenarios, the results for 2018 were better than for 2010 (up to 43% lower for the endpoint single score results) corroborating that higher efficiency (at the crop field and bioethanol production) and reduction of burnt harvest ought to reduce environmental impacts. Even though bioethanol-based PVC had better results in comparison to fossil-based, improvements should be sought to minimize other environmental impact categories, for example, biodiversity and ecotoxicity. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdFrom the results of the attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of the bioethanol-based polyvinyl chloride (PVC), shown in the first part of this work, changing the feedstock from fossil- to bioethanol-based ethylene appears to be a way to decrease the environmental impacts of that product on climate change and non-renewable resources. Although, other environmental concerns may rise related to the effects of indirect land-use change (iLUC) caused by sugarcane expansion. Therefore, the objective of the second part of this work was to make a consequential LCA of the bioethanol-based PVC, assessing the effects of iLUC as the key side-effect of the implementation of that product in the market on 2018, at different degrees of iLUC (three scenarios were created). The life cycle inventory was collected from literature, databases, and primary data from Solvay S.A. We used midpoint and endpoint indicators for life cycle impact assessment. At the midpoint indicators, the environmental impact categories responded differently for the different degrees of iLUC, and some of them generated gains to the environment in the three scenarios, including non-renewable resource use. At endpoint level, the results showed overall environmental gains if iLUC was kept below 5.7% of the sugarcane cultivation area. The effects of iLUC are based on assumptions, and therefore subject to uncertainties, but the assessment performed in this paper was important to provide quantitative information for the stakeholders on how the environmental gains of the bioethanol-based PVC should not be nullified by iLUC impacts. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis study aims to quantify water appropriation and the potential production of algal bio-oil using freshwater and municipal wastewater effluent (MWW) as an alternative water resource. The county-level analysis focuses on open-pond algae cultivation systems located in 17 states in the southern United States. Several scenarios were developed to examine the water availability for algae bio-oil production under various water resource mixing MWW and freshwater. The results of the analysis indicate that water availability can significantly affect the selection of an algal refinery site and therefore the potential production of algal bio-oil. The production of one liter of algal bio-oil requires 1036-1666L of water at the state level, in which 3% to 91% can be displaced by MWW, depending on the biorefinery location. This water requirement corresponds to a total of 25billion liters of bio-oil produced if the spatially and temporally available MWW effluent together with 10% of total available freshwater are used. The production of algal bio-oil is only 14% of estimated production under the assumption that all of the water demand can be fulfilled without any restriction. In addition, if only the spatially and temporally available effluent is used as the sole source of water, the total bio-oil production is estimated to be 9 billion liters. This study not only quantifies the water demands of the algal bio-oil, but it also elucidates the importance of taking water sustainability into account in the development of algal bio-oil. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis article presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) on wheat gluten materials. Two objectives form the motivation for this paper. First, the study provides an assessment of the environmental impact of wheat gluten powder production. The aim of this contribution is to provide a base assessment which can feed into the evaluation of any future wheat-gluten-based product. Second, the study evaluates wheat-gluten-based packaging film and compares it with low density polyethylene (LDPE) and polylactide (PLA) packaging film over the life cycle of these products. Scenarios including extrusion and casting for film production, incineration with energy recovery, and composting for end-of-life treatments are evaluated. Such comparison offers insight in environmental benefits of wheat gluten over conventional plastic film as well as its bio-based alternative and identifies its optimal production and disposal methods. For wheat gluten production, the LCA results show that the impacts of the wheat cultivation and gluten drying phase are dominant in the majority of the 18 impact categories in the ReCiPe midpoint assessment method. The LCA results also exhibit that the scenario with wheat gluten film produced by extrusion and incinerated to recover embodied energy is favorable from environmental perspective. It offers great benefits in climate change and fossil depletion over LDPE film and in 14 impact categories over PLA film. Although wheat gluten film suffers from common problems for bio-based materials (e.g. land occupation), the overall environmental performance indicates that wheat gluten provides a promising source for bio-based polymer production. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdOver 9 million dairy cows generate an estimated 226 billion kg of wet manure annually in the USA. To help mitigate dairy greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the degradation of this organic-rich waste, manure can be processed via anaerobic digestion (AD) to methane and ultimately electricity. This potential value of AD has generated high-level dairy-industry support for broad-scale technology deployment; however, on-the-ground AD realization has been impeded by process stability/reliability concerns and poor economics. Considering these challenges but recognizing that AD represents a fundamentally sound manure-management approach, an interdisciplinary research team has completed proof-of-concept investigations on an integrated process that will concurrently improve manure management economics and reduce dairy GHG emissions. The integrated processes center on a two-stage fermentation/AD system that can generate methane quantity/quality comparable to conventional single-stage AD. Molecular level investigations confirm that the AD is highly enriched with a unique and synergistic microbial population which yielded a more resilient and stable process. Beyond AD, algae grown on nitrogen/phosphorus-rich AD supernatant in a photobioreactor yielded biomass concentrations approaching 1.0 g L-1; despite an apparent growth lag/inhibition associated with excess organic acids and ammonia, algae growth was significant. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) demonstrated that the two-stage AD configuration coupled with algae production can reduce GHG emissions by approximately 60% as compared with a traditional anaerobic lagoon. The end result is a manure-management platform that can increase US dairy viability and sustainability. Ongoing investigations are aimed at process refinement with an ultimate commercialization goal. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons,LtdThe synthetic fuel industry is poised to experience large-scale growth and profoundly affect current aviation fuel infrastructure. New candidate technologies, such as Camelina oil-derived synthetic fuel have been demonstrated to not only provide satisfactory quasi drop-in characteristics for conventional fuels, but in life cycle analysis studies have also been shown to potentially offer positive improvements relative to conventional feedstocks with respect to economic, environmental, and land use considerations. As part of a multi-year study at the Royal Military College of Canada to evaluate combustion related parameters of fuel additives and alternative fuels for gas turbine applications, a Camelina-derived synthetic fuel blend was assessed to determine potential combustion related benefits as compared to conventional and other synthetic blends. The Combustion Chamber Sector Rig (CCSR) which houses a Rolls Royce T-56-A-15 combustion section was utilized for the evaluation of emissions and deposits. Following combustion testing, several combustion system components, including the combustion chamber, fuel nozzle, and igniter plug were analyzed for relative levels of deposit build-up. As with other Fischer Tropsch derived synthetic fuels, there were positive benefits found with Camelina blends in terms of emissions performance and deposit production tendencies.Processes for prodn. of phosphate fertilizers were evaluated from ecol. point of view by life cycle assessment method. The process based on partially acidulated phosphate rocks showed a lower environmental impact than the conventional single superphosphatic process.Cities now consume resources and produce waste in amounts that are incommensurate with the populations they contain. Quantifying and benchmarking the environmental impacts of cities is essential if urbanization of the world's growing population is to occur sustainably. Urban metabolism (UM) is a promising assessment form in that it provides the annual sum material and energy inputs, and the resultant emissions of the emergent infrastructural needs of a city's sociotechnical subsystems. By fusing UM and life cycle assessment (UM-LCA) this study advances the ability to quantify environmental impacts of cities by modeling pressures embedded in the flows upstream (entering) and downstream (leaving) of the actual urban systems studied, and by introducing an advanced suite of indicators. Applied to five global cities, the developed UM-LCA model provided enhanced quantification of mass and energy flows through cities over earlier UM methods. The hybrid model approach also enabled the dominant sources of a city's different environmental footprints to be identified, making UM-LCA a novel and potentially powerful tool for policy makers in developing and monitoring urban development policies. Combining outputs with socioeconomic data hinted at how these forces influenced the footprints of the case cities, with wealthier ones more associated with personal consumption related impacts and poorer ones more affected by local burdens from archaic infrastructure.One purpose of wind turbines is to provide pollution-free electric power at a reasonable price in an environmentally sound way. In this focus issue the latest research on the environmental impact of wind farms is presented. Offshore wind farms affect the marine fauna in both positive and negative ways. For example, some farms are safe havens for porpoises while other farms show fewer harbor porpoises even after ten years. Atmospheric computer experiments are carried out to investigate the possible impact and resource of future massive installations of wind turbines. The following questions are treated. What is the global capacity for energy production by the wind? Will the added turbulence and reduced wind speeds generated by massive wind farms cool or heat the surface? Can wind farms affect precipitation? It is also shown through life-cycle analysis how wind energy can reduce the atmospheric emission of eight air pollutants. Finally, noise generation and its impact on humans are studied.A set of four buildings, consisting of different types of construction, is being analysed in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The aim of this study is to address one essential challenge in LCAs of buildings, namely the presentation of the LCA results in a way that clearly provides valuable information for the architect, with regard to which building elements are the main contributors to the overall embodied carbon emissions of a building over its entire lifetime. The results are presented by virtually "cutting" the buildings in two different ways, focusing not only on the building as a whole, incorporating all its various materials, but also on the individual impact of each building element (floor, ceilings, external walls, etc.) on the one hand, and on the impact of a predefined standard enclosed floor space (e.g. basement space, typical floor space, roof space) on the other. The first virtual cutting approach aims at breaking down the total kg CO(2)eq of each building to the functional unit of 1 m(2) of general floor space (in this case the energy reference area) for 1 year of the building's lifetime. This functional unit is commonly utilized for LCAs of buildings and facilitates a general comparison of the four apartment buildings by levelling out the differences in building sizes. It is, however, not the best way of showing clearly where exactly the main contributors to the final result are situated within the building. When looking at a building from an architect's point of view, there is no such thing as a general 1 m(2) of floor space to which the overall building emission results could be meaningfully allocated. Instead, each storey has its individual contributors to the final result. The floor element, for instance, only contributes to the lowest building storey, while the roof element normally only covers the top storey. In contrast, the external and internal walls are found on all storeys. Therefore, the second approach aims at systematically defining four typical storeys within a building (basement, ground floor, upper floor and loft) by their specific characteristics. The carbon emissions are then calculated for 1 m(2) of this specific floor space and 1 year of the building's lifetime. The objective of this second approach is to clarify the interrelations of the different individual parts of the buildings within their overall functional context, while at the same time allowing for a meaningful presentation and interpretation of their respective impacts with regard to embodied carbon emissions. Different perspectives and levels of detail are covered in the critical impact evaluation of each building, giving a thorough and comprehensible answer to the question of where its embodied CO2 is primarily located. While the first functional unit can be used in order to get a broad view of the embodied carbon emissions of the various building elements of the whole building, the second functional unit facilitates a more sophisticated allocation of the results, with regard to the anticipated location of the most relevant elements per storey. It can be observed that the second virtual cutting approach shows fewer individual differences and a more generic distribution of the carbon emission results of the four buildings compared with the results of the first cutting approach. Furthermore, using the second approach, the embodied emissions of an average square metre of basement, ground floor, upper floor and loft with a minimum and maximum deviation from the mean value can be determined. As the buildings within the depicted set exhibit a high level of variety with regard to their construction types and the embodied carbon emissions of their individual building elements, the rather high degree of homogeneity of the results as displayed by the second virtual cutting approach is especially remarkable. It was demonstrated that by schematically cutting the buildings on the basis of only a few simple conceptual assumptions about the specifications of each storey, a consistent comparison of a set of diverse buildings is feasible, and that quite similar results can be generated from the direct comparison of the same storey of the various buildings. Furthermore, determining the impact of a standard storey of basement, ground floor, upper floor and loft can help architects and planners to quickly evaluate the performance of their building. design by using these values as benchmarks, enabling them to localize which storey and which building elements bear the highest optimization potential for their specific project.The high value chemical manufacturing industrial sector (HVCM) is an important contributor to Europe's economy. This industries output consists of complex end user chemicals like drugs, agro chemicals, Colours, fragrances and surfactants. This paper demonstrates the sustainability of the HVCM sector is difficult to assess and how splitting the unit process in 3 parts: a) contributory materials and energy, (b) processing related emissions and (c) secondary process streams requiring further processing can facilitate the understanding of the LCIA. A rapid and consistent assessment LCIA tool is necessary before engineers and chemist can consistently rank green and conventional processing options in the HVCM sector.Strategies for sustainably using biofuels must be thoroughly assessed at several levels. First, the use of biofuels must comply with sustainable development's main dimensions. Second, the use of biofuels must comply with sustainable transport's main dimensions. Third, gains from using biofuels strategies must compare favorably to gains from other sustainable transport strategies, such as altering transport patterns and reducing transport volume. Fourth, the gains must compare favorably to gains from improving conventional fossil-fuel-based advanced vehicles. Fifth, the gains must compare favorably to gains from using other alternative fuels. Sixth, the gains from using one generation of biofuels (e.g., first generation) must compare favorably to gains from using others (e. g., second through fourth generations). Performing scientifically sound and fair comparisons demands reliable theoretical perspectives and a well-established methodological basis. Industrial ecology theory and life cycle assessment methodology, respectively, are well-suited for these tasks.Animal waste is an important source of anthropogenic GHG emissions, and in most cases, manure is managed by land application. Nevertheless, due to the huge amounts of manure produced annually, alternative manure management practices have been proposed, one of which is gasification, aimed to convert manure into clean energy-syngas. Syngas can be utilized to provide energy or power. At the same time, the byproduct of gasification, biochar, can be transported back to fields as a soil amendment. Environmental impacts are crucial in selecting the appropriate manure strategy. Therefore, GHG emissions during manure management systems (land application and gasification) were evaluated and compared by life cycle assessment (LCA) in our study. LCA is a universally accepted tool to determine GHG emissions associated with every stage of a system. Results showed that the net GHG emissions in land application scenario and gasification scenario were 119 and -643 kg CO2-eq for one tonne of dry feedlot manure, respectively. Moreover, sensitive factors in the gasification scenario were efficiency of the biomass integrated gasification combined cycle (BIGCC) system and energy source of avoided electricity generation. Overall, due to the environmental effects of syngas and biochar, gasification of feedlot manure is a much more promising technique as a way to reduce GHG emissions than is land application. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Introduction. The cultivation of high-value fruit species is a profitable agricultural activity in many tropical countries; however, intensive fruit cultivation may depend on high amounts of external inputs. The objective of our study was to quantify and compare the resource use during the cultivation of eight tropical fruit species (Rubus glaucus, Solanum quitoense, Passiflora edulis, Cyphomandra betacea, Physalis peruviana, Ananas comosus, Persea americana and Mangifera indica) commonly cultivated in Colombia. It further aimed to identify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the selected production systems and to highlight the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. Materials and methods. The analysis was based on data from agricultural databases and applied a life-cycle assessment with energy use and GHG emissions as impact categories. Furthermore, economic indicators were taken into account with the aim of integrating the environmental and economic goals of production systems. Results and discussion. Among the eight fruit species studied, mango (Mangifera indica) was found to have the lowest and tree tomato (Cyphomandra betacea) the highest emission profile. The variability in resource use among growers of the same species was high, indicating the need to improve management abilities at the farm level. Mineral fertilizer production was the highest contributor to GHG emissions. GHG- and energy-efficient management alternatives would have a high potential to reduce the carbon footprint of fruit cultivation.A life cycle inventory framework of "cradle to gate" combined with Monte Carlo stochastic simulation was used to analyze the forest carbon balance and emissions from mechanized and manual harvesting operations from 2000 to 2009 in West Virginia. Mechanized and manual harvesting operations were compared on the slope of the sites ranging from 10 to 35% where average diameter at breast height of harvested trees was 40.64 cm. The results showed that the annual carbon balance of the forests per hectare was not significantly affected by carbon loss from the removal of sawlog volume (or timber), fire, and limited dead trees, until tree mortality and/or harvesting intensity reached a high level. Additionally, it was found that average carbon emission from fossil fuel consumption was 5.06 +/- 0.90 metric tons per thousand cubic meters (Mg/TCM) of timber produced for a manual harvesting system and 6.84 +/- 1.22 Mg/TCM for a mechanized harvesting system. Approximately 1.71 and 2.31% of the stored carbon in processed lumber would be displaced by harvesting emissions, respectively, for manual and mechanized systems. The forest carbon displacement rate during timber harvesting was affected largely by hauling process, while felling, processing, skidding, and loading processes had smaller impacts. Among the harvest processes studied, uncertainty of carbon emissions from fuel consumption and forest carbon displacement rate could be attributed to hauling distance, payload size, forest type, and machine productivity.Brazil's status as a rapidly developing country is visible in its need for more energy, including electricity. While the current electricity generation mix is primarily hydropower based, high-quality dam sites are diminishing and diversification to other sources is likely. We combined life-cycle data for electricity production with scenarios developed using the IAEA's MESSAGE model to examine environmental impacts of future electricity generation under a baseline case and four side cases, using a Monte-Carlo approach to incorporate uncertainty in power plant performance and LCA impacts. Our results show that, under the cost-optimal base case scenario, Brazil's GHGs from electricity (excluding hydroelectric reservoir emissions) rise 370% by 2040 relative to 2010, with the carbon intensity per MWh rising 100%. This rise would make Brazil's carbon emissions targets difficult to meet without demand-side programs. Our results show a future electricity mix dominated by environmental tradeoffs in the use of large-scale renewables, questioning the use tropical hydropower and highlighting the need for additional work to assess and include ecosystem and social impacts, where information is currently sparse.This paper presents LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and exergy analysis for the environmental evaluation of selected polymers: PE, PP, PVC, PS and PET. In the analysis, damages to human health and ecosystem quality as well as resource consumption were considered, also global warming potential and cumulative energy use were determined. As a result of exergy analysis the sustainable development index and thermo-ecological cost of selected polymers were evaluated. The results from LCA study were compared with those obtained using exergy analysis and the impact of the production of selected polymers on the consumption of non-renewable natural resources was assessed. A life cycle assessment was conducted using three methods: Ecoindicator 99, IPCC and CED.Introducing environmental innovations in product and process design can affect the product's cost and demand, as well as the environmental impact in different stages of its life cycle (such as manufacturing and use stages). In this article, we advance understanding on where such design changes can be most effective economically to the firm and examine their corresponding environmental consequences. We consider a profit maximizing firm (newsvendor) deciding on the production quantity as well as its environmentally focused design efforts. We focus our results along the two dimensions of demand characteristics and life-cycle environmental impact levels, specifically functional vs. innovative products, and higher manufacturing stage environmental impact vs. higher use stage environmental impact. We also discuss the environmental impact of overproduction and how it relates to the different types of products and their salvage options. We find that although the environmental impact per unit always improves when firms use eco-efficient or demand-enhancing innovations, the total environmental impact can either increase or decrease due to increased production quantities. We identify the conditions for such cases by looking at the environmentally focused design efforts needed to compensate for the increase in production. We also show that the environmental impact of overproduction plays an important role in the overall environmental impact of the firm. We conclude by applying our model to different product categories.Many transportation environmental life cycle analyses neglect the contribution of the energy supply infrastructures. In alternative light duty vehicle technologies, it has been shown through case studies that this can be a relevant factor. However, no model that can generalise the evaluation of energy and emissions from construction, maintenance and decommissioning of such infrastructure to analyse different scenarios currently exists. A model is proposed, focussing on electricity and on hydrogen supply through centralised steam methane reforming (H-2(a)) and on-site electrolysis (H-2(b)). The model outputs are in gCO(2eq)/MJ and MJ(eq)/MJ of the final energy. Model main inputs are the region's electricity mix, the annual distance driven, supply chain losses and the number of vehicles per station or chargers. The evaluation of the number of vehicles served per each charger/station as a function of annual distance driven is presented. The uncertainty is estimated by using the pedigree matrix, impact uncertainty and literature estimates. The model shows consistency in the results and uncertainty range. Charging policies that minimise the electricity infrastructure burden should incentivise approximately 37% of normal charging. H-2(a) pipeline lifetime should be extended. Efforts in the electrolyser should be undertaken to approximate the ratio of vehicles per station with a conventional one. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The LCA (life-cycle assessment) was applied to evaluate El (the environmental impact) of ORCPW (organic Rankine cycle power-plant for waste-heat-recovery) in this paper. The model of LCA on the ORCPW was established. The life-cycle of ORCPW was divided into construction, operation and decommissioning phases. The inventory of environmental emissions was listed for the ORCPW with 7 different working fluids. The GWP (global warming potential), AP (acidification potential), EP (eutrophication potential), HIP (human toxicity potential), SWP (solid waste potential) and SAP (soot and dust potential) were investigated. Some EIs of ORCPW were compared with the EIs of other power generation modes. The results show that the construction phase of ORCPW contributes mostly to the GWP and EP. GWP is the most serious El followed by HTP among all the environmental impacts. The average pay back times of greenhouse gas discharged from ORCPW is calculated on the basis of five other power generation modes. For 7 different working fluids, it is 3-5 years for CO2, about one year for CH4 and 3-6 years for NOx. But CO cannot be paid back during the life-cycle of ORCPW according to the average pay back time. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper uses exergoenvironmental analysis to tackle the energetic, exergetic, and environmental performance of three heating systems commonly used in the residential building sector in Turkey: a conventional coal boiler, a condensing natural gas boiler, and a ground source heat pump. This analysis presents a combination of exergy analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA). The obtained results show that the ground source heat pump is an efficient heating system for the given application from a thermodynamic perspective in terms of the coefficient of performance and exergy efficiency with values of 2.5 and 10%, respectively. On the other hand, the LCA results demonstrate that the system-related environmental impact associated with ground source heat pump is the highest among the compared systems. Based on exergoenvironmental analysis the environmental impact per kWh exergy demand for each system is found to be 4.0, 1.69, and 1.93 mPt/kWh, respectively. This demonstrates that using an efficient system from thermodynamic perspective does not offer a significant environmental advantage and Turkey must renounce the use of coal in heating applications as soon as possible in order to get rid of environmental burdens as the first step and should promote the use of natural gas at building level in order to generate heating energy. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The exploitation of coal-mine methane is analysed to reduce the environmental impact from coal power systems. The analyses are based on a life cycle assessment, and the results were compared with carbon-capture and storage technologies. The results suggest that by increasing the use of coalmine methane, the environmental impacts of coal power plants could be clearly reduced. Although the CO2 reduction is much less than through sequestration of CO2, increased use of coal-mine methane in Poland could potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 9 million tonnes of CO2 per year, which corresponds to about 2.5% of the emissions of Poland. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.As a consequence of the multi-functionality of land, the impact assessment of land use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment requires the modelling of several impact pathways covering biodiversity and ecosystem services. To provide consistency amongst these separate impact pathways, general principles for their modelling are provided in this paper. These are refinements to the principles that have already been proposed in publications by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. In particular, this paper addresses the calculation of land use interventions and land use impacts, the issue of impact reversibility, the spatial and temporal distribution of such impacts and the assessment of absolute or relative ecosystem quality changes. Based on this, we propose a guideline to build methods for land use impact assessment in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Recommendations are given for the development of new characterization models and for which a series of key elements should explicitly be stated, such as the modelled land use impact pathways, the land use/cover typology covered, the level of biogeographical differentiation used for the characterization factors, the reference land use situation used and if relative or absolute quality changes are used to calculate land use impacts. Moreover, for an application of the characterisation factors (CFs) in an LCA study, data collection should be transparent with respect to the data input required from the land use inventory and the regeneration times. Indications on how generic CFs can be used for the background system as well as how spatial-based CFs can be calculated for the foreground system in a specific LCA study and how land use change is to be allocated should be detailed. Finally, it becomes necessary to justify the modelling period for which land use impacts of land transformation and occupation are calculated and how uncertainty is accounted for. The presented guideline is based on a number of assumptions: Discrete land use types are sufficient for an assessment of land use impacts; ecosystem quality remains constant over time of occupation; time and area of occupation are substitutable; transformation time is negligible; regeneration is linear and independent from land use history and landscape configuration; biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services are independent; the ecological impact is linearly increasing with the intervention; and there is no interaction between land use and other drivers such as climate change. These assumptions might influence the results of land use Life Cycle Impact Assessment and need to be critically reflected. In this and the other papers of the special issue, we presented the principles and recommendations for the calculation of land use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services on a global scale. In the framework of LCA, they are mainly used for the assessment of land use impacts in the background system. The main areas for further development are the link to regional ecological models running in the foreground system, relative weighting of the ecosystem services midpoints and indirect land use.To assess the diverse environmental impacts of land use, a standardization of quantifying land use elementary flows is needed in life cycle assessment (LCA). The purpose of this paper is to propose how to standardize the land use classification and how to regionalize land use elementary flows. In life cycle inventories, land occupation and transformation are elementary flows providing relevant information on the type and location of land use for land use impact assessment. To find a suitable land use classification system for LCA, existing global land cover classification systems and global approaches to define biogeographical regions are reviewed. A new multi-level classification of land use is presented. It consists of four levels of detail ranging from very general global land cover classes to more refined categories and very specific categories indicating land use intensities. Regionalization is built on five levels, first distinguishing between terrestrial, freshwater, and marine biomes and further specifying climatic regions, specific biomes, ecoregions and finally indicating the exact geo-referenced information of land use. Current land use inventories and impact assessment methods do not always match and hinder a comprehensive assessment of land use impact. A standardized definition of land use types and geographic location helps to overcome this gap and provides the opportunity to test the optimal resolution of land cover types and regionalization for each impact pathway. The presented approach provides the necessary flexibility to providers of inventories and developers of impact assessment methods. To simplify inventories and impact assessment methods of land use, we need to find archetypical situations across impact pathways, land use types and regions, and aggregate inventory entries and methods accordingly.The inclusion of land-use activities in life cycle assessment (LCA) has been subject to much debate in the LCA community. Despite the recent methodological developments in this area, the impacts of land occupation and transformation on its long-term ability to produce biomass (referred to here as biotic production potential [BPP]) - an important endpoint for the Area of Protection (AoP) Natural Resources - have been largely excluded from LCAs partly due to the lack of life cycle impact assessment methods. Several possible methods/indicators for BPP associated with biomass, carbon balance, soil erosion, salinisation, energy, soil biota and soil organic matter (SOM) were evaluated. The latter indicator was considered the most appropriate for LCA, and characterisation factors for eight land use types at the climate region level were developed. Most of the indicators assessed address land-use impacts satisfactorily for land uses that include biotic production of some kind (agriculture or silviculture). However, some fail to address potentially important land use impacts from other life cycle stages, such as those arising from transport. It is shown that the change in soil organic carbon (SOC) can be used as an indicator for impacts on BPP, because SOC relates to a range of soil properties responsible for soil resilience and fertility. The characterisation factors developed suggest that the proposed approach to characterize land use impacts on BBP, despite its limitations, is both possible and robust. The availability of land-use-specific and biogeographically differentiated data on SOC makes BPP impact assessments operational. The characterisation factors provided allow for the assessment of land-use impacts on BPP, regardless of where they occur thus enabling more complete LCAs of products and services. Existing databases on every country's terrestrial carbon stocks and land use enable the operability of this method. Furthermore, BPP impacts will be better assessed by this approach as increasingly spatially specific data are available for all geographical regions of the world at a large scale. The characterisation factors developed are applied to the case studies (Part D of this special issue), which show the practical issues related to their implementation.Rarely considered in environmental assessment methods, potential land use impacts on a series of ecosystem services must be accounted for in widely used decision-making tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA). The main goal of this study is to provide an operational life cycle impact assessment characterization method that addresses land use impacts at a global scale by developing spatially differentiated characterization factors (CFs) and assessing the extent of their spatial variability using different regionalization levels. The proposed method follows the recommendations of previous work and falls within the framework and principles for land use impact assessment established by the United Nations Environment Programme/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Life Cycle Initiative. Based on the spatial approach suggested by Saad et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 16: 198-211, 2011), the intended impact pathways that are modeled pertain to impacts on ecosystem services damage potential and focus on three major ecosystem services: (1) erosion regulation potential, (2) freshwater regulation potential, and (3) water purification potential. Spatially-differentiated CFs were calculated for each biogeographic region of all three regionalization scale (Holdridge life regions, Holdridge life zones, and terrestrial biomes) along with a nonspatial world average level. In addition, seven land use types were assessed considering both land occupation and land transformation interventions. A comprehensive analysis of the results indicates that, when compared to all resolution schemes, the world generic averaged CF can deviate for various ecosystem types. In the case of groundwater recharge potential impacts, this range varied up to factors of 7, 4.7, and 3 when using the Holdridge life zones, the Holdridge regions, and the terrestrial biomes regionalization levels, respectively. This validates the importance of introducing a regionalized assessment and highlights how a finer scale increases the level of detail and consequently the discriminating power across several biogeographic regions, which could not have been captured using a coarser scale. In practice, the implementation of such regionalized CFs suggests that an LCA practitioner must identify the ecosystem in which land occupation or transformation activities occur in addition to the traditional inventory data required-namely, the land use activity and the inventory flow. The variability of CFs across all three regionalization levels provides an indication of the uncertainty linked to nonspatial CFs. Among other assumptions and value choices made throughout the study, the use of ecological borders over political boundaries was deemed more relevant to the interpretation of environmental issues related to specific functional ecosystem behaviors.This paper presents a case study of margarine, demonstrating the application of new characterisation factors (CF) for land use and a number of land use change impacts relating to biodiversity and ecosystem services. The objectives of this study were to generate insights as to the ease of applying these new factors and to assess their value in describing a number of environmental impacts from land use and land use change relating to the margarine product system. This case study is a partial descriptive life cycle assessment (LCA) of margarine. The functional unit of the study is 500 g of packaged margarine used as a spread in the UK and Germany. The life cycle stages included were: agricultural production, oil processing, margarine manufacture and transportation to regional European distribution centres. Essential for the application of the new CF was the identification and quantification of the inventory flows for land occupation (land use) and land transformation (land use change) flows. A variety of methods have been applied to determine the inventory flows for the agricultural and industrial stages in the life cycle. These flows were then assessed using the new CF and land use-related environmental impact categories recommended in this special issue. Land occupation was the major determinant for all the new impact categories with the exception of the water purification potential. Many of the impact categories followed a similar pattern and therefore, the inventory result for land occupation in this case study explains a large share of most of the impacts. Where land occupation alone is not a suitable proxy for environmental impacts (i.e. for freshwater regulation potential), differentiation at the level of biomes has proven relevant. In addition, the land use types distinguished so far were found to be useful in highlighting likely hotspots in the life cycle, although further differentiation of 'agricultural land' is suggested to account for the differences between annual and permanent crops. The new land use impact assessment methods applied help to identify hotspots in the life cycle of margarines, with different proportions and sources of vegetable oils. The specific impacts of each vegetable oil are determined mainly by the yield (and thus land occupation), but also by the type of agriculture (annual vs. permanent crops) and the sourcing location (and thus the sensitivity of biomes and occurrence of land use change). More research is needed to understand the usefulness of the various impact categories. For land use types, further refinement is required to describe different agricultural systems consistently across impact categories (e.g. annual vs. permanent cropping). In addition, the conceptual basis for the CFs applied in this case study (i.e. use of a potential reference for occupation and transformation) has limitations for some types of decisions normally supported by LCA.The research on the impact of chemical pollution is now increasingly attracted by the topic of organic micropollutants: as secondary biological treatment of wastewater does not provide the complete elimination of these substances, an advanced treatment downstream the biological process can be implemented. Notwithstanding, the benefits of improved effluent quality can be weakened by the negative effects on air quality, when energy consumption and related pollutants emissions deriving from the advanced treatment technologies are taken into account. It is the aim of this work to present an innovative methodology to judge the environmental compatibility of wastewater treatment processes on the basis of the damage on human health produced/avoided, expressed as an economic value. In particular, while for air pollution the established external costs were applied, for water pollution the rates of the impacts on human health have been evaluated in terms of Global Burden of Disease and measured in units of DALY (Disability-Adjusted Life Years), then converted into costs based on Gross Domestic Product. As a first application, this procedure was used for assessing environmental compatibility of a final ozonation: the results of this study showed that the reduction of water pollution achieved by means of ozonation might be beneficial for human health at an extent which is in the same order of magnitude of damage caused by air pollution, emphasizing that the question if the use of advanced (energy-intensive) treatments is a proper solution to remove organic micropollutants from wastewater remains still open. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Primary energy savings potential is used to compare five residual municipal solid waste treatment systems, including configurations with mechanical (MT) and mechanical-biological (MBT) pre-treatment, which produce waste-derived fuels (RDF and SRF), biogas and/or recover additional materials for recycling, alongside a system based on conventional mass burn waste-to-energy and ash treatment. To examine the magnitude of potential savings we consider two energy efficiency levels (state-of-the-art and best available technology), the inclusion/exclusion of heat recovery (CHP vs. PP) and three different background end-use energy production systems (coal condensing electricity and natural gas heat, Nordic electricity mix and natural gas heat, and coal CHP energy quality allocation). The systems achieved net primary energy savings in a range between 34 and 140 MJ(primary)/100 Mj(input) waste, in the different scenario settings. The energy footprint of transportation needs, pre-treatment and reprocessing of recyclable materials was 3-9.5%, 1-18% and 1-8% respectively, relative to total energy savings. Mass combustion WtE achieved the highest savings in scenarios with CHP production, nonetheless, MBT-based systems had similarly high performance if SRF streams were co-combusted with coal. When RDF and SRF was only used in,dedicated WtE plants, MBT-based systems totalled lower savings due to inherent system losses and additional energy costs. In scenarios without heat recovery, the biodrying MBS-based system achieved the highest savings, on the condition of SRF co-combustion. As a sensitivity scenario, alternative utilisation of SRF in cement kilns was modelled. It supported similar or higher net savings for all pre-treatment systems compared to mass combustion WtE, except when WtE CHP was possible in the first two background energy scenarios. Recovery of plastics for recycling before energy recovery increased net energy savings in most scenario variations, over those of full stream combustion. Sensitivity to assumptions regarding virgin plastic substitution was tested and was found to mostly favour plastic recovery. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conventional agricultural systems depend on high inputs of fertilizers and toxic pesticides that are a threat for human health and the environment. Such issues are rapidly changing agriculture in Europe. As a consequence sustainable production systems are currently developed as safer alternatives, for instance organic and low-input systems use of mechanical and biological methods versus toxic substances. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the overall impact of these alternative systems on toxicity, energy use, and global warming, notably for perennial crops such as apple orchards, which require the control of many pests. Here we present the first analysis of the environmental impacts of nine apple orchard systems using life cycle analysis. We used data from a survey of apple orchard systems located in Southern France, covering 2006-2009. Conventional, low-input, and organic orchards were planted with three apple cultivars differing in their disease susceptibility, hence designing nine apple systems, with the Golden Delicious conventional system being considered as the reference. Our results show that low-input systems planted with low disease susceptibility Melrose cultivar decreased environmental impacts by 6-99 %. Organic systems had one of the highest impacts per mass unit due to low yields, but showed low impacts per area unit planted with low-susceptibility cultivars generally. Potential toxicity was decreased by 2-40 % for human, 71-82 % for aquatic life, and 97-99 % for terrestrial life using mechanical control versus toxic pesticides to control weeds and diseases.This study aims to analyse the attitudes of building professionals towards the use of wood in building design and construction in Taiwan, and to investigate how professionals' backgrounds affect their attitudes upon the wood usage using statistical analysis. 123 valid questionnaires were collected from various building professionals, including architecture students, architects, interior designers and building construction engineers. It has been shown that wood is regarded as the most environmentally-friendly material in building design and construction. 'Beauty' and 'proprietor' are the most two essential factors identified by professionals that may influence their decisions to use wood, whereas the deconstruction phase and post-use of demolished wood are considered less important. With respect to the wood utilisation in construction, building professionals prefer using wood in the substructure to main structure at present. On the other hand, the differences between professionals' experience in designing wood houses or wood elements, and their attitudes towards the importance of reasons in using wood are generally insignificant, except for the easy assembly (p = 0.03) and easy disassembly (p = 0.02) of wood construction. Professionals in favour of wood substitution are more likely to choose wood in column, beam, window, outdoor wall and door. Moreover, there are significant differences between professionals' occupations and their opinions upon the recyclability issues of materials (p = 0.02). In the future, more sufficient communications are required through the design process among various professional groups.As oil palm has been considered one of the most favorable oilseeds for biodiesel production in Brazil, it is important to understand how cultivation of this perennial crop will affect the dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) in the long term. The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes in soil C stocks after the conversion of forest and pasture into oil palm production in the Amazon Region. Soil samples were collected in March 2008 and September 2009 in five areas: native forest (NARF), pasture cultivated for 55years (PAST), and oil palm cultivated for 4 (OP-4), 8 (OP-8) and 25years (OP-25), respectively. Soils were sampled in March 2008 to evaluate the spatial variability of SOC and nitrogen (N) contents in relation to the spacing between trees. In September 2009, soils were sampled to evaluate the soil C stocks in the avenues (inter rows) and frond piles, and to compare the total C stocks with natural forest and pasture system. Soil C contents were 22-38% higher in the area nearest the oil palm base (0.6m) than the average across the inter row (0-4.5m from the tree), indicating that the increment in soil organic matter (SOM) must have been largely derived from root material. The soil C stocks under palm frond piles were 9-26% higher than in the inter rows, due to inputs of SOM by pruned palm fronds. The soil carbon stocks in oil palm areas, after adjustments for differences in bulk density and clay content across treatments, were 35-46% lower than pasture soil C stocks, but were 0-18% higher than the native forest soil C content. The results found here may be used to improve the life cycle assessment of biodiesel derived from palm oil.Forests of the Midwestern United States are an important source of fiber for the wood and paper products industries. Scientists, land managers, and policy makers are interested in using woody biomass and/or harvest residue for biofuel feedstocks. However, the effects of increased biomass removal for biofuel production on forest production and forest system carbon balance remain uncertain. We modeled the carbon (C) cycle of the forest system by dividing it into two distinct components: (1) biological (net ecosystem production, net primary production, autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration, vegetation, and soil C content) and (2) industrial (harvest operations and transportation, production, use, and disposal of major wood products including biofuel and associated C emissions). We modeled available woody biomass feedstock and whole-system carbon balance of 220000km2 of temperate forests in the Upper Midwest, USA by coupling an ecosystem process model to a collection of greenhouse gas life-cycle inventory models and simulating seven forest harvest scenarios in the biological ecosystem and three biofuel production scenarios in the industrial system for 50 years. The forest system was a carbon sink (118gCm-2yr-1) under current management practices and forest product production rates. However, the system became a C source when harvest area was doubled and biofuel production replaced traditional forest products. Total carbon stores in the vegetation and soil increased by 5-10% under low-intensity management scenarios and current management, but decreased up to 3% under high-intensity harvest regimes. Increasing harvest residue removal during harvest had more modest effects on forest system C balance and total biomass removal than increasing the rate of clear-cut harvests or area harvested. Net forest system C balance was significantly, and negatively correlated (R2=0.67) with biomass harvested, illustrating the trade-offs between increased C uptake by forests and utilization of woody biomass for biofuel feedstock.The overall aim of this work was to assess the effects of stump and root extraction on the long-term carbon sequestration and average carbon storage in the integrated production of energy biomass and stemwood (pulpwood and sawlogs) under different thinning options (unthinned, current thinning and 30% increased thinning thresholds from current thresholds). The growth and development of Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst.) stands on a fertile site (Oxalis-myrtillus) in central Finland (Joensuu region: 6239?N, 2937?E) was simulated for two consecutive rotation periods (80+80years/160years). Stemwood and energy biomass production, carbon sequestration, and average storage and emission dynamics related to the entire production process of biomass were assessed. The assessment was done by employing a life cycle assessment tool, which combines simulation outputs from an ecosystem model and the related technosystem emissions. It was found that stump and root harvesting constituted 21-36% of the total biomass production (energy biomass and stemwood) depending on the thinning regimes and rotation period. No considerable effect was found in stemwood production when stump and root extraction was compared to the regime in which stumps and roots were left at the site. Stump and root extraction did not affect carbon sequestration on the following rotation and, in fact, an increase in forest growth was found for the unthinned and 30% increased thresholds compared to the first rotation. The results also showed that if current thinning threshold is increased, win-win situations are possible, especially when climate change mitigation is the main concern. The substitution of coal with energy biomass is possible without reducing carbon storage in the forest ecosystem. The utilization of energy biomass, including stumps and roots, instead of coal could reduce up to 33% of emissions over two rotation periods depending on the thinning regimes. Even if stumps and roots were excluded, a maximum of 19% carbon emissions could be reduced by using only logging residues.Bioenergy makes up a significant portion of the global primary energy pie, and its production from modernized technology is foreseen to substantially increase. The climate neutrality of biogenic CO2 emissions from bioenergy grown from sustainably managed biomass resource pools has recently been questioned. The temporary change caused in atmospheric CO2 concentration from biogenic carbon fluxes was found to be largely dependent on the length of biomass rotation period. In this work, we also show the importance of accounting for the unutilized biomass that is left to decompose in the resource pool and how the characterization factor for the climate impact of biogenic CO2 emissions changes whether residues are removed for bioenergy or not. With the case of Norwegian Spruce biomass grown in Norway, we found that significantly more biogenic CO2 emissions should be accounted towards contributing to global warming potential when residues are left in the forest. For a 100-year time horizon, the global warming potential bio factors suggest that between 44 and 62% of carbon-flux, neutral biogenic CO2 emissions at the energy conversion plant should be attributed to causing equivalent climate change potential as fossil-based CO2 emissions. For a given forest residue extraction scenario, the same factor should be applied to the combustion of any combination of stem and forest residues. Life cycle analysis practitioners should take these impacts into account and similar region/species specific factors should be developed.All renewable energy systems make some contribution to climate change. This is due to fuel combusted for their construction and as back up energy during their operation. Accurate calculation of greenhouse gas emission per kilowatt hour of electricity is difficult but is an important part of policy making and planning. This study, an attempt has been made to analyze and review the development and potential of wind and solar energy in India. LCA has been carried out for the on shore wind turbine and poly crystalline PV module. Based on the past studies, life cycle inventory data has been collected for the investigation. Using that data, the detailed investigation has been made for the existing grid connected 1.65 MW wind turbine project in and around Udumalpet, Tamil Nadu and 25 kW Roof top solar PV Power plant at Sewa Bhawan, New Delhi. Carbon intensity, energy pay back period and carbon pay back period for the above system have been calculated and compared with each other. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In spite of the existence of a generalized debate about sustainable development, the natural constraints imposed by the irreversibility nature of technical and economic transformations are normally less discussed. The Second Law of thermodynamics (Entropy Law) reveals the unidirectional and irreversible aspect of such transformations, and it can be used as an auxiliary tool to deal with sustainability assessment. The exergy, a concept derived from entropy, can offer qualitative measurements of resources depletion and environmental impact not covered by mass or energy. This opens opportunities to enrich the sustainability discussion. The multiple interactions among the ecosystem, the economic environment and the technical level are highlighted, along with discussions about how the entropy concept has improved the description of the three levels. The aim of this paper is to review the environmental sustainability concept from the perspective of entropy law, offering a survey of relevant applications of exergy available in literature. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of bioenergy supply systems can be determined using life cycle assessment methodologies. This study focuses on the impact of production of Miscanthus pellets and briquettes, potentially used to satisfy renewable energy requirements in Ireland. The impact categories considered are particularly important when assessing bioenergy systems; global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, and energy demand. The scope of the study incorporates Miscanthus cultivation, harvest, processing and transport to a biomass distributor. The aim of the research is to evaluate the effects of changes in keys variables on the overall environmental impacts of the system. The scenarios examined include replacement of synthetic fertilisers with biosolids, Miscanthus processing by pelleting and briquetting, and transport distances of 50 and 100 km. Results indicate that maintenance and processing of the Miscanthus crop have the most environmental impacts with transport having less of an effect. Replacing synthetic fertiliser with biosolids results in a reduction in global warming potential of 23-33% and energy demand of 12-18%, but raises both acidification and eutrophication potential by 290-400% and 258-300%, respectively. Pelleting of Miscanthus requires more energy than briquetting, hence has higher impacts in each category assessed. Increasing the transport distance from 50 to 100 kin, results in a small increase in each impact category. Miscanthus briquette production compares favourably with wood pellet, kerosene, and coal production, with Miscanthus pelleting proving more environmentally damaging. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biological treatment of organic waste is environmentally friendly and a wide range of treatment methods exists. Integrated biological treatment systems with additional equipments, such as pretreatment, wastewater treatment and deodorisation processes are currently in use. To promote and spread the application of biological waste treatment, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study was conducted on six biological treatment methods: integrated wet anaerobic digestion (AD), integrated dry AD, simple wet AD, simple dry AD, integrated composting and simple composting systems. The impacts of operating rate and wastewater treatment, which affect GHG emissions, were also quantitatively analysed. Integrated wet AD showed the highest total GHG emissions due to the high energy consumption by additional equipments which occupy 80% of the whole process. Integrated composting also presented higher GHG emissions than simple composting because of the higher electricity consumption. Additional equipments are necessary for integrated systems installed in urban areas, and this study suggests that the reduction of energy consumption for these additional equipments is an important issue. Among the additional equipments for AD, wastewater treatment largely affected the GHG emissions. Dry AD normally generates less wastewater due to low moisture content in the waste. Thus, effective treatment of wastes with low environmental loads can be achieved by dry AD, where energy consumption from wastewater treatment is low. On the other hand, methane yield from food waste by dry AD is generally smaller than wet AD. Installing an advanced dry AD reactor with additional functions such as long solid retention time, and adjusting the moisture content of input waste by mixing paper waste will contribute to the efficient treatment of organic waste in urban areas. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study explores a bibliometric approach to quantitatively assessing current research trends on solid waste, by using the related literature published between 1997 and 2011 in journals of all the subject categories of the Science Citation Index. The articles acquired from such literature were concentrated on the general analysis by publication type and language, characteristics of articles outputs, country, subject categories and journals, and the frequency of title-words and keywords used. Over the past 15 years, there had been a notable growth trend in publication outputs, along with more participation of countries/territories. The seven major industrialized countries (G7) published the majority of the world articles, while their article share was being replacing by other countries represented by BRIC countries. An analysis of the title-words, author keywords and keywords plus showed that municipal solid waste and sludge were the major research types of solid wastes and "anaerobic digestion", "wastewater" and "heavy metals" were recent major topics of solid waste research. Meanwhile, the analysis indicated the analysis technologies, represented by solid-phase extraction and tandem mass-spectrometry, were more and more widely used for solid waste research. Besides, life cycle assessment and health risk assessment were the most two frequently environmental assessment tools used for solid waste research in the 15-year research period.Energy security concerns due to high oil import dependence and climate change concerns due to related greenhouse gas emissions are important policy discussions in India. Could life cycle assessment (LCA) of petroleum oil products provide inputs to crude oil sourcing and domestic oil pricing policies to address the two concerns? This paper presents a baseline study on LCA of petroleum products in India from Well to Storage depending on the oil source, type of refinery, product and the selected destinations. The LCA based GHG emissions are found to be higher by 4-12 per cent than GHG emissions from direct fuel consumption alone for LPG, 7-10 per cent for Gasoline, 3-9 per cent for Diesel and 4-10 per cent for Kerosene based on various supply chain routes supplying oil to six largest cities in India. Overall the energy used in oil exploration, refinery and transportation in the LCA have a share of 72-77 per cent, 11-15 per cent and 6-8 per cent, respectively. The paper proposes imposing a relative carbon cess for various oil products in different Indian cities. States could accommodate this additional carbon cess by reducing their respective state taxes without increasing the final delivery price to the consumers. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China proposed a CO2 mitigation target in 2020 to deal with anthropogenic global climate change. Chinese policy makers mainly focus on three factors comprising consumption structure changes, energy technology development, and new energy increments. In addition, sectoral CO2 reduction is inCreasingly concerned in the world. Thus, it is significant to investigate integrated impacts of three factors to China's CO2 mitigation target as well as to identify key economic sectors for achieving this target. In this study, energy demand and CO2 emission in 2020 are predicted. Five scenarios are generated to illustrate the contributions of three factors. In addition, twelve key economic sectors for reducing energy demand and CO2 emission are identified from both production and final demand perspectives. Under integrated impacts of three factors, China's CO2 intensity per unit gross domestic product in 2020 will decrease by about 43.9% in 2020 than 2005 level. In the short term, China's CO2 mitigation will be highly dependent on energy technology development. In the long term, it will mainly rely on reshaped consumption structure changes and new energy development. In addition, China's future policies should focus on 12 identified key economic sectors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The temporal imbalance between the release and sequestration of forest carbon has raised a fundamental concern about the climate mitigation potential of forest biomass for energy. The potential carbon debt caused by harvest and the resulting time spans needed to reach pre-harvest carbon levels (payback) or those of a reference case (parity) have become important parameters for climate and bioenergy policy developments. The present range of analyses however varies in assumptions, regional scopes, and conclusions. Comparing these modeling efforts, we reveal that they apply different principle modeling frameworks while results are largely affected by the same parameters. The size of the carbon debt is mostly determined by the type and amount of biomass harvested and whether land-use change emissions need to be accounted for. Payback times are mainly determined by plant growth rates, i.e. the forest biome, tree species, site productivity and management. Parity times are primarily influenced by the choice and construction of the reference scenario and fossil carbon displacement efficiencies. Using small residual biomass (harvesting/processing), deadwood from highly insect-infected sites, or new plantations on highly productive or marginal land offers (almost) immediate net carbon benefits. Their eventual climate mitigation potential however is determined by the effectiveness of the fossil fuel displacement. We deem it therefore unsuitable to define political guidance by feedstock alone. Current global wood pellet production is predominantly residue based. Production increases based on low-grade stemwood are expected in regions with a downturn in the local wood product sector, highlighting the importance of accounting for regional forest carbon trends. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe costs and life cycle impacts of microalgae harvesting for biofuel production were investigated. Algae were grown in semi-continuous culture in pilot-scale photobioreactors under natural light with anaerobic digester centrate as the feed source. Algae suspensions were collected and the optimal coagulant dosages for metal salts (alum, ferric chloride), cationic polymer (Zetag 8819), anionic polymer (E-38) and natural coagulants (Moringa Oleifera and Opuntia ficus-indica cactus) were determined using jar tests. The relative dewaterability of the algae cake was estimated by centrifugation. Alum, ferric chloride and cationic polymer could all achieve >91% algae recovery at optimal dosages. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost analysis results revealed that cationic polymer had the lowest cost but the highest environmental impacts, while ferric chloride had the highest cost and lowest environmental impacts. Based on the LCA results, belt presses are the recommended algae dewatering technology prior to oil extraction. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study deals with laboratory-scale investigations to evaluate the efficiency of different chemical leaching agents (i.e. sulfuric, oxalic and citric acids) and bioleaching processes (based on different acidophilic bacterial strains) on the mobilisation of metals/semi-metals in contaminated harbour sediments. A simplified life-cycle assessment was also performed in order to compare the investigated strategies in terms of their main environmental impacts. The different chemical leaching agents provided different extraction efficiencies of toxic metals. Among the investigated chemical leaching agents, citric acid 0.5M and sulfuric acid pH 2 were the most effective, with average mobilisation efficiencies of approximate to 30% for Zn and Cr, approximate to 40% for Ni, and 35 and 58% for As, under citric and sulfuric acid, respectively. Similar higher extraction efficiencies of metals were also observed in bioleaching experiments with the presence of ferrous iron. The life-cycle assessment revealed that treatments based on diluted sulfuric acid are a better option considering both resource requirements and emissions, leading to lower environmental impacts compared with the other treatment strategies. Overall results from this study provide new insights for the definition of the most efficient and environmentally friendly strategies to be used for dredged sediments contaminated with metals.In recent decades, Chinese agriculture has moved towards higher-energy and higher carbon-input systems to increase food production in the country's limited area of croplands. To investigate the environmental impacts of this trend, this study aimed to develop an "Integrated Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Input-Output Model" (LCA-EIO Model). Using the tri-scope carbon footprint (CF) accounting method, the agricultural carbon footprint of Zhejiang Province, China was calculated for the years from 1997 to 2007, and the categories and structure of carbon emissions sources were analyzed, including patterns of change. In addition, the carbon intensity of crop farming in Zhejiang Province was examined. While an overall reduction in cropland areas has resulted in a substantial decline in direct greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production, the proportion of carbon emissions caused by energy and chemical consumption has increased dramatically, and this consumption has become the primary source of carbon emissions. A decomposition analysis also identified the key driving forces of energy-related CF dynamics, such as the machinery-labor substitution effect. The results of the decomposition analysis can support decision makers in understanding and promoting low-carbon output agriculture. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper presents an energy and environmental extended input-output model combined with the life cycle assessment, applied to assess the energy and environmental benefits arising from the Italian policy of tax deduction for energy retrofit actions of buildings. The study allowed to assess the advantages due to the above policy, taking into account both direct and indirect energy saving and avoided CO2 emissions obtained with the retrofit actions and indirect energy consumption and related CO2 emissions due to the realization of the above actions. Moreover, the authors defined an original model to assess the indirect rebound effect caused by the energy saving actions. The obtained results showed that a reliable evaluation of the benefits arising from sustainable policies strongly depends on the indirect rate of the energy consumption and energy saving, that in the examined case study has the same order of magnitude of the direct one, and on the rebound effect, that can partially avoid the obtained benefits. The study represents one of the first Italian experiences aimed at assessing the effectiveness of sustainable production and consumption strategies. It can be used to support decision-makers in the selection of policies aimed at reducing energy and environmental impacts caused by final consumptions. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As the capital of China, Beijing is regarded as a major metropolis in the world. Study of the variation in temporal CO2 emissions generated by the driving forces in Beijing can provide guidance for policy decisions on CO2 emissions mitigation in global metropolises. Based on input-output structural decomposition analysis (IO-SDA), we analysed the driving forces for the increment in CO2 emissions in Beijing from both production and final demand perspectives during 1997-2010. According to our results, the CO2 emission growth in Beijing is driven mainly by production structure change and population growth, partly offset by CO2 emission intensity reduction as well as the decline in per capita final demand volume during the study period. Final demand structure change has a limited effect on the change in the CO2 emissions in Beijing. From the final demand perspective, urban trades, urban residential consumption, government consumption and fixed capital formation are mainly responsible for the booming emissions. This study showed how the "top-down" IO-SDA methodology was implemented on a city scale. Policy implications from this study would be helpful for addressing CO2 emissions mitigation in global capital cities and metropolises. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using waste-cooking-oil biodiesel as a renewable fuel for diesel engines can have several environmental benefits. However, the engine design parameters such as the compression ratio need to be optimized to achieve the best engine performance. The aim of this paper was to experimentally study the effect of changing the compression ratio on the engine performance and combustion characteristics of a compression-ignition engine fueled by different biodiesel/diesel fuel blends. It was found that the engine performance deteriorated when a high percentage of biodiesel was used in the fuel blend. However, the engine performance was significantly improved when the engine compression ratio was increased. The engine torque increased by 11.1% when the engine was fueled by a biodiesel blend of 50% at a compression ratio of 18 in comparison to the torque produced when the engine was fueled by the diesel fuel at a compression ratio of 14. Also, the engine brake thermal efficiency increased by 6%. Both the ignition delay period and combustion duration decreased with the increase of engine compression ratio.Bioenergy has the unique potential to provide a dispatchable and carbon-negative component to renewable energy portfolios. However, the sustainability, spatial distribution, and capacity for bioenergy are critically dependent on highly uncertain land-use impacts of biomass agriculture. Biomass cultivation on abandoned agriculture lands is thought to reduce land-use impacts relative to biomass production on currently used croplands. While coarse global estimates of abandoned agriculture lands have been used for large-scale bioenergy assessments, more practical technological and policy applications will require regional, high-resolution information on land availability. Here, we present US county-level estimates of the magnitude and distribution of abandoned cropland and potential bioenergy production on this land using remote sensing data, agriculture inventories, and land-use modeling. These abandoned land estimates are 61% larger than previous estimates for the US, mainly due to the coarse resolution of data applied in previous studies. We apply the land availability results to consider the capacity of biomass electricity to meet the seasonal energy storage requirement in a national energy system that is dominated by wind and solar electricity production. Bioenergy from abandoned croplands can supply most of the seasonal storage needs for a range of energy production scenarios, regions, and biomass yield estimates. These data provide the basis for further down-scaling using models of spatially gridded land-use areas as well as a range of applications for the exploration of bioenergy sustainability.The relationship between urban form and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been studied extensively during the last two decades. The prevailing paradigm arising from these studies is that a dense or compact urban form would best enable low-carbon living. However, the vast majority of these studies have actually concentrated on transportation and/or housing energy, whereas a growing number of studies argue that the GHG implications of other consumption should be taken into account and the relationships evaluated. With this two-part study of four different area types in Finland we illustrate the importance of including all the consumption activities into the GHG assessment. Furthermore, we add to the discussion the idea that consumption choices, or lifestyles, and the resulting GHGs are not just a product of the values of individuals but actually tied to the form of the surrounding urbanization: that is, lifestyles are situated. In part I (Heinonen et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 025003) we looked into this situation in Finland, showing how the residents of the most urbanized areas bring about the highest GHG emissions due to their higher consumption volumes and the economies-of-scale advantages in the less urbanized areas. In part II here, we concentrate only on the middle-income segment and look for differences in the lifestyles when the budget constraints are equal. Here we also add the variables housing type and motorization into the assessment. The same time-use and private expenditure data as in part I and the same GHG assessment method are used here to maintain high transparency and comparability between the two parts. The results of the study imply that larger family sizes and economies-of-scale effects in the less dense areas offset the advantages of more dense living when the emissions are assessed on per capita basis. Also, at equal income levels the carbon footprints vary surprisingly little due to complementary effects of the majority of low-carbon lifestyle choices. Motorization was still found to increase the emissions, but a similar pattern regarding housing type was not found.Carbon footprint is a key indicator of the contribution of food production to climate change and its importance is increasing worldwide. Although it has been used as a sustainability index for assessing production systems, it does not take into account many other biophysical environmental dimensions more relevant at the local scale, such as soil erosion, nutrient imbalance, and pesticide contamination. We estimated carbon footprint, fossil fuel energy use, soil erosion, nutrient imbalance, and risk of pesticide contamination for five real beef background-finishing systems with increasing levels of intensification in Uruguay, which were combinations of grazing rangelands (RL), seeded pastures (SP), and confined in feedlot (FL). Carbon footprint decreased from 16.7 (RL-RL) to 6.9 kg (SP-FL) CO2 eq kg body weight(-1) (BW; 'eq': equivalent). Energy use was zero for RL-RL and increased up to 17.3 MJ kg BW-1 for SP-FL. Soil erosion values varied from 7.7 (RL-RL) to 14.8 kg of soil kg BW-1 (SP-FL). Nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient balances showed surpluses for systems with seeded pastures and feedlots while RL-RL was deficient. Pesticide contamination risk was zero for RL-RL, and increased up to 21.2 for SP-FL. For the range of systems studied with increasing use of inputs, trade-offs were observed between global and local environmental problems. These results demonstrate that several indicators are needed to evaluate the sustainability of livestock production systems.Use of lignocellulosic crop harvest residues for liquid or gaseous biofuel production may impact soil quality, long-term soil fertility and the major determinants of the latter, stocks of soil organic carbon and nutrients. When soil organic carbon stocks of mineral cropland soils are to be maintained, there is scope for the removal of lignocellulosic harvest residues in several systems with much reduced tillage or no tillage. The scope for such removal might be increased when suitably treated residues from the conversion of harvest residues into biofuel are returned to cropland soils. For mineral cropland soils under conventional tillage, the scope for the production of liquid biofuels from harvest residues is likely to be less than in the case of no-till systems. When fertility of cropland soils is to be sustainable, nutrients present in suitably treated biofuel production residues have to be returned to these soils. Apparently, the actual return of carbon and nutrients present in residues of biofuel production from crop harvest residues to arable soils currently predominantly concerns the application of digestates of anaerobic digestion. The effects thereof on soil fertility and quality need further clarification. Further clarification about the effects on soil fertility and quality of chars and of co-products of lignocellulosic ethanol production is also needed.Sustainable operations have become extremely important for the survival of present day shipbuilding business wherein triple bottom-line criteria - profit, planet and people, needs to be satisfied. This paper discusses about recapturing value at the end-of-life of a ship and reintroducing it to the value chain through reverse supply chain channel, thereby reducing environmental impact and also benefitting humans and ecology. It also describes about the advantages of recycling ships vis-a-vis scrapping it in terms of environmental and human impact.Micro manufacturing is an extremely demanding technological field where very special materials are used, extreme production condition like clean room, super high temperature, toxic chemicals, etc. are employed. Due to these facts, micro products can be environmentally damaging even after their smaller dimensional scale. So performing of LCA for micro products is equally important as it is for macro products. Keeping this motivation in mind, current paper systematically performs the LCA of a micro Socket used in hearing aids. The analysis makes a guide line about how to use the conventional knowledge about LCA and tools for the efficient LCA analysis of the micro parts. A comparative study is made in the paper by comparing two different sockets of hearing aid and it shows well how to make a comparative study for LCA when the manufacturer makes a new product to replace an old one. Another comparative study is made in the paper for micro and macro which shows that scaled up effect of the micro product compared to macro counterpart. The critical finding of this comparative study shows that the relative environmental damage done by micro product is higher than the macro product and that is confirmed by the net impact analysis. Finally, the LCA procedure presented in the paper, and the knowledge documented can be a valuable source of information for the researchers and scientists who work with the LCA of micro and macro products.Land use is a main driver of global biodiversity loss and its environmental relevance is widely recognized in research on life cycle assessment (LCA). The inherent spatial heterogeneity of biodiversity and its non-uniform response to land use requires a regionalized assessment, whereas many LCA applications with globally distributed value chains require a global scale. This paper presents a first approach to quantify land use impacts on biodiversity across different world regions and highlights uncertainties and research needs. The study is based on the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) land use assessment framework and focuses on occupation impacts, quantified as a biodiversity damage potential (BDP). Species richness of different land use types was compared to a (semi-)natural regional reference situation to calculate relative changes in species richness. Data on multiple species groups were derived from a global quantitative literature review and national biodiversity monitoring data from Switzerland. Differences across land use types, biogeographic regions (i.e., biomes), species groups and data source were statistically analyzed. For a data subset from the biome (sub-)tropical moist broadleaf forest, different species-based biodiversity indicators were calculated and the results compared. An overall negative land use impact was found for all analyzed land use types, but results varied considerably. Different land use impacts across biogeographic regions and taxonomic groups explained some of the variability. The choice of indicator also strongly influenced the results. Relative species richness was less sensitive to land use than indicators that considered similarity of species of the reference and the land use situation. Possible sources of uncertainty, such as choice of indicators and taxonomic groups, land use classification and regionalization are critically discussed and further improvements are suggested. Data on land use impacts were very unevenly distributed across the globe and considerable knowledge gaps on cause-effect chains remain. The presented approach allows for a first rough quantification of land use impact on biodiversity in LCA on a global scale. As biodiversity is inherently heterogeneous and data availability is limited, uncertainty of the results is considerable. The presented characterization factors for BDP can approximate land use impacts on biodiversity in LCA studies that are not intended to directly support decision-making on land management practices. For such studies, more detailed and site-dependent assessments are required. To assess overall land use impacts, transformation impacts should additionally be quantified. Therefore, more accurate and regionalized data on regeneration times of ecosystems are needed.The focus of land use modeling in life cycle impact assessment has been mainly on taxonomic measures of biodiversity, namely species richness (SR). However, increasing availability of trait data for species has led to the use of functional diversity (FD) as a promising metric to reflect the distinctiveness of species; this paper proposes the use of an FD index to calculate characterization factors (CFs) for land use impacts. Furthermore, we compare the results of the CFs to current practice and assess the increase in complexity introduced by the use of the new indicator. The model proposed is based on data compiled by previous regional meta-analysis on SR and FD, in different land use types in the Americas. The taxonomic groups included were mammals, birds, and plants. Within each study, calculated values for FD for different land use types were compared with the natural or close-to-natural state, taken as the reference situation. FD values among different land uses were standardized, and CFs were calculated. The final results were then analyzed and compared by analysis of variance and post hoc tests. A sensitivity analysis was also applied to verify the influence on the choice of the reference state. The results show that significant differences exist between CFs for SR and FD metrics. Across all taxa, CFs differ significantly between land use types. The results support the use of CF for FD, as a complement to current practice. Distinct CFs should be applied for at least six groups of land use categories. The choice of reference land use type did not significantly alter the results but can be a source of variability. A sensitivity analysis evaluating the impact of alternate land use types as reference types found only few significant changes on the results. Given the results, we believe the use of CFs based on FD can help on the establishment of possible links between species loss and key ecosystem functions, i.e., on the association between the midpoint indicator (e.g., biodiversity loss) and the damage caused to ecosystem quality, in terms of functions lost. Basing CFs on FD is not without challenges. Such indices are data hungry (requiring species composition and traits) require more complex calculations than current common practice, including decisions on the choice of a method to calculate FD and the selection of traits.The objective of this study was to develop and test a user-friendly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting tool for water utilities. The tool was designed to assist utilities in calculating GHG emissions for the purposes of complying with future regulation and reporting requirements; providing information for city and state climate action plans, and fulfilling voluntary carbon emissions goals. For utilities. lacking accurate energy-use data, equations were developed to predict energy use for three phases of water production: raw water collection, water treatment, and finished water distribution. The tool was tested by seven Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina utilities, which had an average carbon intensity of 1,240 kg carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO2-eq)/mil gal when scope 1 and 2 emissions were evaluated. However, the averages ranged from 550 to 2,190 kg CO2-eq/mil gal, depending on the electrical grid used.Little consideration has been given to how farm management, specifically tactics used to implement the management strategy, may influence the carbon footprint (CF) and land use for milk produced on commercial farms. In this study, the CF and land use of milk production from 18 Irish commercial dairy farms were analyzed based on foreground data from a 12-mo survey capturing management tactics and background data from the literature. Large variation was found in farm attributes and management tactics; for example, up to a 1.5-fold difference in fertilizer nitrogen input was used to support the same stocking density, and up to a 3.5-fold difference in concentrate fed for similar milk output per cow. However, the coefficient of variation for milk CF between farms only varied by 13% and for land use by 18%. The overall CF and overall land use of the milk production from the 18 dairy farms was 1.23 +/- 0.04 kg of CO2 Eq and 1.22 +/- 0.05 m(2) per kilogram of energy-corrected milk. Milk output per cow, economic allocation between exports of milk and liveweight, and on-farm diesel use per ha were found to be influential factors on milk CF, whereas the fertilizer N rate, milk output per cow, and economic allocation between exports of milk and liveweight were influential on land use. Effective sward management of white clover within a few farms appeared to lower the CF but increased on-farm land use. It was concluded that a combination of multiple tactics determines CF and land use for milk production on commercial dairy farms and, although these 2 measures of environmental impact are correlated, a farm with a low CF did not always have low land use and vice versa.A leaching process for the recovery of cobalt and lithium from spent lithium-ion batteries (LIB) is developed in this work. Three different organic acids, namely citric acid, malic acid and aspartic acid, are used as leaching reagents in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. The cathode active materials before and after acid leaching are characterized by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Recovery of cobalt and lithium is optimized by varying the leachant and H2O2 concentrations, the solid-to-liquid ratio, and the reaction temperature and duration. Whereas leaching with citric and malic acids recovered in excess of 90% of cobalt and lithium, leaching with aspartic acid recovered significantly less of these metals. The leaching mechanism likely begins with the dissolution of the active material (LiCoO2) in the presence of H2O2 followed by chelation of Co(II) and Li with citrate, malate or aspartate. An environmental analysis of the process indicates that it may be less energy and greenhouse gas intensive to recover Co from spent LIBs than to produce virgin cobalt oxide. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The French "Grenelle" laws sparked a French national experiment trialling the environmental labelling of fast-moving consumer goods. The data required for this labelling scheme are generated by carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA). The aim of this study is to provide all necessary information to fit the national experiment for two standard oils: sunflower oil and rapeseed oil. The complete oil life cycle was studied, from oilseed farming through to the end-of-life of the packaging. We focused heavily on the impacts of crushing and refining. The seed processing data was collected from different plants that are representative of the French crushing/ refining industry and packaging site practice. The data inventory was used to calculate the identified environmental labelling indicators, i. e. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water consumption. The production of 100g of refined bulk sunflower and rapeseed emits 89 and 127 g equivalent CO2 and consumes 1.7 L and 0.8 L of water, respectively. Most impacts on the studied indicators stem from the farming phase. Energy and water consumptions during crushing and refining also weigh on the studied indicators. The results of this study provide a relevant overview of all sunflower and rapeseed oils produced in France, and are usable as standard values for vegetable oil producers and users. Oil supply chain operators can use these values to compare to their own process values and gauge the improvements brought about by their ecodesign strategies. For example, using a biomass boiler, using less packaging, and making different choices on seed suppliers can lead to a lower set of impact values.Academic and corporate interest in sustainable product and process development has risen considerably in recent years. This can be seen by the number of papers published and in particular by special issued of journals. This paper reports the results of a review of published peer-reviewed literature from 1987 to 2012 to provide an up-to-date picture of sustainability and sustainable assessment. A structured methodology is followed to narrow down the search from around 3500 papers to 111. A variety of different sustainability assessment methodologies are reviewed in two classified research areas: product sustainability assessment and process sustainability assessment. In presenting a detailed taxonomy of product and process sustainability assessment methods, the paper also outlines the advantages and weaknesses of the sustainability assessment methods. The review sheds light on the weak points of current research in this area. The paper also highlights several key issues which have to be taken into account in attempting to develop a product or process sustainability assessment research paradigm for future applications in manufacturing systems.While electric vehicles including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) are considered as promising alternative vehicle/fuel systems to significantly reduce petroleum consumption of the transportation sector, it is important to analyze the emission characteristics and to assess the emission reduction potentials of electric vehicles so that their environmental impacts in terms of climate change, air quality, as well as human health effects could be better understood. To fulfill this objective, we explicitly analyzed the emission characteristics of greenhouse gases (GHG) and criteria air pollutants (CAP, representing VOC, CO, NOx, PM10 and PM2.5, and SOx,) of the U.S. power sector, a pivotal upstream sector that impacts the life-cycle GHG and CAP emissions associated with electric vehicles. In particular, we established statistically robust probability distribution functions (PDFs) to address the uncertainty and variation in both thermal and environmental performances of various types of power plants that can result in uncertainties of the life-cycle GHG and CAP emissions of electric vehicles. With the detailed characterization of the GHG and CAP emissions from the power sector, we performed a life-cycle analysis (LCA) of the GHG and CAP emissions of electric vehicles in the United States, with the GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) model developed at Argonne National Laboratory. The LCA results with the inherent uncertainties investigated illuminate the real-world chances of GHG and CAP emission reduction benefits that are influenced by uncertain factors when introducing electric vehicles to displace gasoline vehicles in the United States.In 2010, the National Organic Program implemented a rule for the US stating that pasture must be a significant source of feed in organic ruminant systems. This article will focus on how the pasture rule has impacted the management, economics and nutritional value of products derived from organic ruminant systems and the interactions of grazing cattle with pasture forages and soils. The use of synthetic fertilizers is prohibited in organic systems; therefore, producers must rely on animal manures, compost and cover crops to increase and maintain soil nitrogen content. Rotational and strip grazing are two of the most common grazing management practices utilized in grazing ruminant production systems; however, these practices are not exclusive to organic livestock producers. For dairy cattle, grazing reduces foot and leg problems common in confinement systems, but lowers milk production and exposes cows to parasites that can be difficult to treat without pharmaceuticals. Organic beef cattle may still be finished in feedlots for no more than 120 days in the US, but without growth hormones and antibiotics, gains may be reduced and illnesses increased. Grazing reduces the use of environmentally and economically costly concentrate feeds and recycles nutrients back to the soil efficiently, but lowers the rate of beef liveweight gain. Increased use of pasture can be economically, environmentally and socially sustainable if forage use efficiency is high and US consumers continue to pay a premium for organic beef and dairy products.Controlled traffic farming (CTF) is a strategy to minimise soil compaction, which is being implemented worldwide. The aim of this study was to review and analyse the state-of-the-art regarding the environmental impacts of CTF. CTF, when compared with random traffic farming (RTF), was able to reduce environmental issues, such as soil emissions of nitrous oxide (21-45%) and methane (372-2100%), water runoff (27-42%), in-field operations direct emissions (23%), and indirect impacts associated with fertilisers (1-26%), pesticides (1-26%), seeds (11-36%), and fuels (23%). CTF, in addition, is likely to cause reductions on environmental issues, such as ammonia emissions, and runoff of soil, nutrients, and agrochemicals. Effects of CTF on soil-C balance, leaching of nutrients and agrochemicals, and in-field-machinery indirect impacts cannot be determined by the currently available literature. Research on the non-determined environmental issues and a quantitative environmental impact assessment, such as life cycle assessment, would contribute to advance agriculture towards more environmentally-friendly systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Jatropha oil is an emerging feedstock for the production of biodiesels. The increasing use of this nonedible, toxic oil will result in higher potential for accidental exposures. A repeated-dose 28-day oral toxicity study was conducted to provide data for risk assessment. Jatropha oil diluted in corn oil was administered by gavage to male and female rats at 0.5, 5, 50 and 500mgkg1 body weight per day for 28 consecutive days. Control rats were administered corn oil only. The growth rates and consumption of food and water were monitored. At necropsy, organs were weighed and hematological parameters assessed. Serum clinical chemistry and C-reactive protein were measured and histological examinations of organs and tissues were performed. Markedly depressed growth rate was observed in males and females receiving Jatropha oil at 500mgkg1 per day. Decreased white blood cell and lymphocyte counts were detected in females at 50 and 500mgkg1 per day and in males at 500mgkg1 per day. These changes were correlated to mild and reversible histological changes in male and female spleens. In the liver, a mild increase in portal hepatocytes cytoplasm density was observed in males and females, while periportal vacuolation was observed exclusively in females. Mild acinar proliferation was observed in the female mammary glands at all dose levels. It is concluded that Jatropha oil produces adverse effects on female rats starting at 50mgkg1 per day with decreased white blood cell and lymphocyte counts and at 500mgkg1 per day in both genders in term of depressed growth rates. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) has become one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, and many countries have established e-waste treatment enterprises to solve their e-waste problems. Because of the potential environmental pollution from e-waste, evaluating the overall sustainability of e-waste enterprises is critical to both nations and cities, although a great challenge academically. In this study, a combined approach of emergy analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) was undertaken, to quantitatively investigate the effectiveness of an e-waste treatment trial project in Macau. In the emergy analysis, we also introduced two new indices (emergy recovery and technical efficiency) in order to evaluate the technical level of e-waste treatment in Macau. The research results show that the trial project has low competitive ability, due to high input emergy and low economic benefits. The emergy environmental efficiency analysis and LCA analysis together indicated that the trial project will indeed produce a low impact on the local environment, and because of the recovery of some resources in the e-waste treatment process, can even generate some environmental benefits. The analysis on the emergy recovery efficiency and technical efficiency shows that trial project has a relatively higher emergy recovery rate (52.78%) and technical level (72.36%) than the e-waste treatment enterprises in mainland China. However, based on both the emergy sustainability index (ESI) and the emergy-LCA sustainability index, it was found that the e-waste treatment trial project is not sustainable over the long term, due to low economic efficiency. Compared to ESI, the emergy-LCA sustainability index is more intuitive and easier to understand. Relevant results and data from this study could provide decision support to enterprise managers and government sectors, so that they could implement appropriate policies on e-waste treatment, to promote sustainable development and improved e-waste processing technologies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent fuel price increases, together with future scarcity of fossil fuels and pollution have raised awareness about the efficient use of energy. Expenditure on marine fuel represents a significant component of the operational costs of the fishing fleets and, as a result, the profitability of the fishing fleets is very sensitive to fuel price variations. By assembling data from 54 fishing fleets around Europe, representing one fourth of the European Union (EU) fishing fleet in terms of vessel numbers and one third in terms of the volume of landings, the effects of the fuel price increase on the economic performance and the energy efficiency of the EU fleet, were estimated for the period 2002-2008. Results demonstrate declining trends in the economic indicators through the years, with a 33% reduction in profitability of the fleets since the beginning of the study. Most energy efficiency indicators, which featured a deteriorating trend over time, have improved their performance after 2004, when the first fuel price increase of the period was observed. However, results do vary across fleet segments. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents a summary of the available software for performing various aspects of energy assessments based on a review of the web and the literature. The software tools are broadly classified in four areas: residential building simulation software, regulatory application software, heating, ventilation and air conditioning related software, and life cycle/cost analysis software. The study found that the software development is moving at a rapid pace to meet the growing demand for reducing energy consumption. (c) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 32: 170-175, 2013Biomass for bioenergy is an important option within global change mitigation policies. The present research focused on energy net production, net reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) (considered as CO2-equivalents), and energy output:input ratio of the energy cropping systems 'rapeseed', 'maize', and 'Miscanthus'. The system-specific main products were biodiesel (rapeseed), electricity from biogas (maize), and Miscanthus chips (loose, chopped material); the related substituted fossil resources were diesel fuel (rapeseed), electricity from the German energy mix (maize), and heating oil (Miscanthus). However, research did not aim for a direct quantitative comparison of the crops. The study followed a case study approach with averaged data from commercial farms within an enclosed agricultural area (<5 km(2)) in Western Germany. Cultivation techniques were considered as communicated by farmers and operation managers; the diesel fuel consumption of agricultural machinery was modeled using an online-based calculator of the German Association for Technology and Structures in Agriculture (KTBL). Overall, rounded net energy production amounted to 66 GJ ha(-1) (rapeseed), 91 GJ ha(-1) (maize), and 254 GJ ha(-1) yr(-1) (Miscanthus); the related energy output:input ratios were 4.7 (rapeseed), 5.5 (maize), and 47.3 (Miscanthus), respectively. Compared to the respective fossil fuel-related energy supply, CO2-equivalent reduction potential ranged between 30 and 76% for electrical energy from maize biomass, 29 -82% for biodiesel from rapeseed, and 96-117% for Miscanthus chips, depending on whether or not the accruing by-products rapeseed cake, glycerin (rapeseed cropping system), and waste heat (maize) were considered. True 'CO2-neutrality' was only reached by the Miscanthus cropping system and was related to an additional credit from carbon sequestration in soil during the cultivation period; thus, this cropping system could be attributed to be a CO2-sink. The study indicated that bioenergy can be produced sustainably under commercial farming conditions in terms of a significantly reduced consumption of natural resources. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Stationarity assumptions of linked human-water systems are frequently invalid given the difficult-to-predict changes affecting such systems. In this case water planning occurs under conditions of deep or severe uncertainty, where the statistical distributions of future conditions and events are poorly known. In such situations predictive system simulation models are typically run under different scenarios to evaluate the performance of future plans under different conditions. Given that there are many possible plans and many possible futures, which simulations will lead to the best designs? Robust Decision Making (RDM) and Info-Gap Decision Theory (IGDT) provide a structured approach to planning complex systems under such uncertainty. Both RDM and IGDT make repeated use of trusted simulation models to evaluate different plans under different future conditions. Both methods seek to identify robust rather than optimal decisions, where a robust decision works satisfactorily over a broad range of possible futures. IGDT efficiently charts system performance with robustness and opportuneness plots summarising system performance for different plans under the most dire and favourable sets of future conditions. RDM samples a wider range of dire, benign and opportune futures and offers a holistic assessment of the performance of different options. RDM also identifies through 'scenario discovery' which combinations of uncertain future stresses lead to system vulnerabilities. In our study we apply both frameworks to a water resource system planning problem: London's water supply system expansion in the Thames basin, UK. The methods help identify which out of 20 proposed water supply infrastructure portfolios is the most robust given severely uncertain future hydrological inflows, water demands and energy prices. Multiple criteria of system performance are considered: service reliability, storage susceptibility, capital and operating cost, energy use and environmental flows. Initially the two decision frameworks lead to different recommendations. We show the methods are complementary and can be beneficially used together to better understand results and reveal how the particulars of each method can skew results towards particular future plans. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates biomass and solid wastes co-gasification with coal for energy vectors poly-generation with carbon capture. The evaluated co-gasification cases were evaluated in term of key plant performance indicators for generation of totally or partially decarbonized energy vectors (power, hydrogen, substitute natural gas, liquid fuels by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis). The work streamlines one significant advantage of gasification process, namely the capability to process lower grade fuels on condition of high energy efficiency. Introduction in the evaluated IGCC-based schemes of carbon capture step (based on pre-combustion capture) significantly reduces CO2 emissions, the carbon capture rate being higher than 90% for decarbonized energy vectors (power and hydrogen) and in the range of 47-60% for partially decarbonized energy vectors (SNG, liquid fuels). Various plant concepts were assessed (e.g. 420-425 MW net power with 0-200 MWth flexible hydrogen output, 800 MWth SNG, 700 MWth liquid fuel, all of them with CCS). The paper evaluates fuel blending for optimizing gasification performance. A detailed techno-economic evaluation for hydrogen and power co-generation with CCS was also presented. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Microalgae are touted as an attractive alternative to traditional forms of biomass for biofuel production, due to high productivity, ability to be cultivated on marginal lands, and potential to utilize carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial flue gas. This work examines the fossil energy return on investment (EROIfossil), greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and direct Water Demands (WD) of producing dried algal biomass through the cultivation of microalgae in Open Raceway Ponds (ORP) for 21 geographic locations in the contiguous United States (U.S.). For each location, comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed for multiple microalgal biomass production pathways, consisting of a combination of cultivation and harvesting options. Results: Results indicate that the EROIfossil for microalgae biomass vary from 0.38 to 1.08 with life cycle GHG emissions of -46.2 to 48.9 (g CO2 eq/MJ-biomass) and direct WDs of 20.8 to 38.8 (Liters/MJ-biomass) over the range of scenarios analyzed. Further anaylsis reveals that the EROIfossil for production pathways is relatively location invariant, and that algae's life cycle energy balance and GHG impacts are highly dependent on cultivation and harvesting parameters. Contrarily, algae's direct water demands were found to be highly sensitive to geographic location, and thus may be a constraining factor in sustainable algal-derived biofuel production. Additionally, scenarios with promising EROIfossil and GHG emissions profiles are plagued with high technological uncertainty. Conclusions: Given the high variability in microalgae's energy and environmental performance, careful evaluation of the algae-to-fuel supply chain is necessary to ensure the long-term sustainability of emerging algal biofuel systems. Alternative production scenarios and technologies may have the potential to reduce the critical demands of biomass production, and should be considered to make algae a viable and more efficient biofuel alternative.Gasification of biomass can be used for obtaining hydrogen reducing the total greenhouse gases. emissions due the fixation of CO2 during photosynthetic processes. The kind of raw materials is an important variable since has a great influence on the energy balance and environmental impacts. Wastes from forestry are considered as the most appropriate raw materials since they do not compete for land. The aim of this work is to determine the environmental feasibility of four Spanish lignocellulosic wastes (vine and almond pruning and forest waste coming from pine and eucalyptus plantation) for the production of hydrogen through gasification. LCA methodology was applied using global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication and the gross energy necessary for the production of 1 Nm(3) of hydrogen as impact categories. As expected, the use of biomass instead of natural gas leads to the reduction of CO2 emissions. Regarding to the different feedstocks, biomass coming from forestry is more environmental friendly since does not need cropping procedures. Finally, the distribution of environmental charges between pruning wastes and fruits (grape and almond) and the use of obtained by-products have a great influence, reducing the environmental impacts. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Replacing conventional materials (steel and iron) with lighter alternatives (e.g., aluminum, magnesium, and composites) decreases energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during vehicle use but may increase energy consumption and GHG emissions during vehicle production. There have been many life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on the benefits of vehicle lightweighting, but the wide variety of assumptions used makes it difficult to compare results from the studies. To clarify the benefits of vehicle lightweighting we have reviewed the available literature (43 studies). The GHG emissions and primary energy results from 33 studies that passed a screening process were harmonized using a common set of assumptions (lifetime distance traveled, fuel-mass coefficient, secondary weight reduction factor, fuel consumption allocation, recycling rate, and energy intensity of materials). After harmonization, all studies indicate that using aluminum, glass-fiber reinforced plastic, and high strength steel to replace conventional steel decreases the vehicle life cycle energy use and GHG emissions. Given the flexibility in options implied by the variety of materials available and consensus that these materials have substantial energy and emissions benefits, it seems likely that lightweighting will be used increasingly to improve fuel economy and reduce life cycle GHG emissions from vehicles.Comprehensive sensitivity analysis is a: significant tool to interpret and improve life cycle assessment (LCA) models, but is rarely performed. Sensitivity analysis will increase in importance as inventory databases become regionalized, increasing the number of system parameters, and parametrized, adding complexity through variables and nonlinear formulas. We propose and implement a new two-step approach to sensitivity analysis. First we identify parameters with high global sensitivities for further examination and analysis with a screening step, the method of elementary effects. Second, the more computationally intensive contribution to variance test is used to quantify the relative importance of these parameters. The two-step sensitivity test is illustrated on a regionalized, nonlinear case study of the biodiversity impacts from land use of cocoa production, including a worldwide cocoa products trade model. Our simplified trade model can be used for transformable commodities where one is assessing market shares that vary over time. In the case study, the highly uncertain characterization factors for the Ivory Coast and Ghana contributed more than 50% of variance for almost all countries and years examined. The two-step sensitivity test allows for the interpretation, understanding, and improvement of large, complex, and nonlinear LCA systemsA hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate four sustainability metrics over the life cycle of a power tower concentrating solar power (CSP) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption, cumulative energy demand (CED), and energy payback time (EPBT). The reference design is for a dry-cooled, 106 MWnet power tower facility located near Tucson, AZ that Uses a mixture of mined nitrite salts as the heat. transfer. fluid and storage medium, a two-tank thermal energy storage system designed for six hours of full load-equivalent storage, and receives auxiliary power from the local electric grid. A thermocline-based storage system, synthetically derived salts, and natural gas auxiliary power are evaluated as design alternatives. Over its life cycle, the reference plant is to have GHG emissions of 37 g CO2eq/kWh, consume 1.4 L/kWh of water and 0.49 MJ/kWh of energy, and have an EPBT of 15 months. Using synthetic salts is estimated to increase GHG emissions by 12%, CED by 7%, and water consumption by 4% compared to mined salts. Natural gas auxiliary power results in greater than 10% decreases in GHG emissions, water consumption, and CED. The thermocline design is most advantageous when coupled with the use of synthetic salts.A method combining life cycle assessment (LCA) and real options analyses is developed to predict project environmental and financial performance over time, under market uncertainties and decision-making flexibility. The method is applied to examine alternative uses for oil sands coke, a carbonaceous byproduct of processing the unconventional petroleum found in northern Alberta, Canada. Under uncertainties in natural gas price and the imposition of a carbon price, our method identifies that selling the coke to China for electricity generation by integrated gasification combined cycle is likely to be financially preferred initially, but eventually hydrogen production in Alberta is likely to be preferred. Compared to the results of a previous study that used life cycle costing to identify the financially preferred alternative, the inclusion of real options analysis adds value as it accounts for flexibility in decision-making (e.g., to delay investment), increasing the project's expected net present value by 25% and decreasing the expected life cycle greenhouse gas emissions by 11%. Different formulations of the carbon pricing policy or changes to the natural gas price forecast alter these findings. The combined LCA/real options method provides researchers and decision-makers with more comprehensive information than can be provided by either technique aloneHousehold consumption, apart from governmental consumption, is the main driver of worldwide economy. Attached to each household purchase are economic activities along the preceding supply chain, with the associated resource use and emissions. A method to capture and assess all these resource uses and emissions is life cycle assessment. We developed a model for the life cycle assessment of housing and land-based mobility (excluding air travel) consumption of individual households a small village in Switzerland. Statistical census and dwelling register data are the foundations of the model. In a case study performed on a midsized community, we found a median value of greenhouse gas emissions of 3.12 t CO2 equiv and a mean value of 4.30 t CO2 equiv per capita and year for housing and mobility. Twenty-one percent of the households in the investigated region were responsible for 50% of the total greenhouse gas emissions, meaning that if their emissions could be halved the total emissions of the community would be reduced by 25%. Furthermore, a cluster analysis revealed that driving factors for large environmental footprints are demands of large living area heated by fossil energy carriers, as well as large demands of motorized private transportation.Existing transportation fuel cycle emissions models are either general and calculate nonspecific values of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from crude oil production, or are not available for public review and auditing. We have developed the Oil Production Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimator (OPGEE) to provide open-source, transparent, rigorous GHG assessments for use in scientific assessment, regulatory processes, and analysis of GHG mitigation options by producers. OPGEE uses petroleum engineering fundamentals to model emissions from oil and gas production operations. We introduce OPGEE and explain the methods and assumptions used in its construction. We run OPGEE on a small set of fictional oil fields and explore model sensitivity to selected input parameters. Results show that upstream emissions from petroleum production operations can vary from 3 gCO(2)/MJ to over 30 gCO(2)/MJ using realistic ranges of input parameters. Significant drivers of emissions variation are steam injection rates, water handling requirements, and rates of flaring of associated gasThe last decade has seen an increase in environmental systems analysis of livestock production, resulting in a significant number of studies with a holistic approach often based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The growing public interest in global warming has added to this development; guidelines for carbon footprint (CF) accounting have been developed, including for greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting of animal products. Here we give an overview of methods for estimating GHG emissions, with emphasis on nitrous oxide, methane and carbon from land use change, presently used in LCA/CF studies of animal products. We discuss where methods and data availability for GHGs and nitrogen (N) compounds most urgently need to be improved in order to produce more accurate environmental assessments of livestock production. We conclude that the top priority is to improve models for N fluxes and emissions from soils and to implement soil carbon change models in LCA/CF studies of animal products. We also point at the need for more farm data and studies measuring emissions from soils, manure and livestock in developing countries.The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq), of different Austrian biogas systems were analyzed and evaluated using life-cycle assessment (LCA) as part of a national project. Six commercial biogas plants were investigated and the analysis included the complete process chain: viz., the production and collection of substrates, the fermentation of the substrates in the biogas plant, the upgrading of biogas to biomethane (if applicable) and the use of the biogas or biomethane for heat and electricity or as transportation fuel. Furthermore, the LCA included the GHG emissions of construction, operation and dismantling of the major components involved in the process chain, as well as the use of by-products (e.g. fermentation residues used as fertilizers). All of the biogas systems reduced GHG emissions (in CO2-eq) compared with fossil reference systems. The potential for GHG reduction of the individual biogas systems varied between 60% and 100%. Type of feedstock and its reference use, agricultural practices, coverage of storage tanks for fermentation residues, methane leakage at the combined heat and power plant unit and the proportion of energy used as heat were identified as key factors influencing the GHG emissions of anaerobic digestion processes.The farm level is the most appropriate scale for evaluating options for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because the farm represents the unit at which management decisions in livestock production are made. To date, a number of whole farm modelling approaches have been developed to quantify GHG emissions and explore climate change mitigation strategies for livestock systems. This paper analyses the limitations and strengths of the different existing approaches for modelling GHG mitigation by considering basic model structures, approaches for simulating GHG emissions from various farm components and the sensitivity of GHG outputs and mitigation measures to different approaches. Potential challenges for linking existing models with the simulation of impacts and adaptation measures under climate change are explored along with a brief discussion of the effects on other ecosystem services.The user inputs to OVERSEER (R) Nutrient Budgets (Overseer) allow farm-specific greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be estimated. Since the development of the original model, life cycle assessment standards (e.g. PAS 2050) have been proposed and adopted for determining GHG or carbon footprints, which are usually reported as emissions per unit of product, for example, per kg milk, meat or wool. New Zealand pastoral farms frequently generate a range of products with different management practices. A robust system is required to allocate the individual sources of GHGs (e.g. methane, nitrous oxide, direct carbon dioxide and embodied carbon dioxide emissions for inputs used on the farm) to each product from a farm. This paper describes a method for allocating emissions to co-products from New Zealand farms. The method requires allocating the emissions, first, to an animal enterprise, separating the emissions between breeding and trading animals, and then allocating to a specific product to give product (e.g. milk, meat, wool, velvet) footprints from the cradle-to-farm-gate'. The meat product was based on live-weight gain. Procedures were adopted so that emissions associated with rearing of young stock used in live-weight gain systems, both as a by-product or a primary product could be estimated. This allows the possibility of total emissions for a meat product to be built up from contributing farms along the production chain.In this paper we apply an Environmental Extended Input-Output (EEIO) model to calculate the Carbon Footprint (CF) of the Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU). Results show that the CF of NTNU is very significant with an average contribution of 4.6 tonnes per student. In particular, the purchase of large amounts of equipment and consumables for scientific use is found to be an important contributor to this. In the paper we also derive per-department CFs, enabled by the standardized structure of the financial accounting system used by the university. Results show large variations in the CF of the different faculties. Social Science and Humanities have a significantly lower CF per student compared to Natural Science, Engineering, and, in particular, the Faculty of Medicine. The single most important CF contributing input to the university is, however, allocated to the property department regarding the use of energy and other building related activities. Also, the CF structures of the departments/faculties show large differences that indicate that different mitigation strategies are needed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has shown that first generation biofuels provide a little to no benefit for greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions compared to petroleum fuels, particularly when indirect effects are considered. Second generation fuels are intended to achieve greater GHG reductions and avoid other sustainability issues. LCAs of second generation biofuels exhibit great variability and uncertainty, leading to inconclusive results for the performance of particular pathways (combinations of feedstocks and fuels). Variability arises in part because of the prospective nature of LCAs for future fuels; however, a review of recent articles on biofuel LCA methodology indicates two additional sources of variability: real sources such as spatiotemporal heterogeneity, and methodological sources such as choices for co-product allocation methods and system boundary definition.Fatigue deterioration profiles of critical elements in a railway truss bridge are determined using a probabilistic approach. A performance function including fatigue strength, R, and fatigue action, D, is used, where R is a material property with lognormal distribution. The random variable D depends on AASHTO category, stress spectrum and traffic features. By applying Monte-Carlo simulations on the performance function of each year, reliability index profile is calculated. The reliability profile decreases with life, and whenever reaches to a critical value, an MR&R action should be implemented. A numerical approach is presented to specify the effects of MR&R actions on the deterioration profile. These actions include re-welding, attaching CFRP and combination of them. The structural model is calibrated by results of a loading test. In addition, the uncertainties arisen from future traffic volume and the relevant S-N curve are considered by a statistical analysis. For a target reliability of 2.0, the retrofit time for deck and truss are estimated. Finally, the outputs of the research are used to recommend a plan for maintenance of Neka Bridge.Biogas production and use are generally regarded as a sustainable practice that can guarantee high greenhouse gas (GHG) savings. However, the actual carbon footprint of biogas is strongly influenced by several factors. The aim of this study is to analyse the environmental performance of different biogas to electricity scenarios. Two criticalities are identified as important: the choice of feedstock and the operational practice concerning the digestate. Maize, manure and co-digestion of them are the different feedstocks chosen. Maize has higher yields, but its cultivation has to be accounted for, which consists of 28-42% of the GHG emissions of the whole process of producing electricity. Manure is considered a residue and as a result benefits from no production stage, but also from avoided emissions from the normal agricultural practice of storing it in the farm and spreading it as fertiliser, but has lower methane yields. Co-digestion combines the benefits and disadvantages of the two different feedstocks. Digestate storage in open or closed tanks and further use as fertiliser is analysed. The environmental impact analysis shows that a substantial reduction of GHG emissions can be achieved with closed digestate storage. The GHG emissions savings vary from about 3% in the maize pathways with open storage up to 330% in the manure pathway with closed storage. The biogas pathways, though, have worse environmental performances in all other environmental impacts considered but ozone depletion potential when compared to the European electricity average mix. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reports subcritical aqueous phase re-forming of wastepaper in presence of homogeneous Ni(NO3)(2) catalyst for biocrude and H-2 production. Reforming of aqueous wastepaper slurry (15 g/150 mL) was performed using 5 wt % catalyst in high-temperature high-pressure 300 mL SS316 PARR reactor at 200-275 degrees C. During the progress of the reforming reaction, gas and liquid samples were withdrawn at regular time intervals and analyzed using gas chromatography (GC), gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS), total organic carbon (TOC) analyzer, and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). At 200 degrees C, negligible liquefaction of wastepaper was noticed; however, liquefaction was found to increase with temperatures from 225-275 degrees C. At 250 degrees C, about 44 wt % biocrude and 3.8 mol % H-2 were observed after 120 min of reaction time. The other gases observed in product gas were CO2, CO, and CH4 whereas the liquid phase (biocrude) was found to contain sugars (7.5 wt %), HMF/furfural (similar to 1 wt %), oxygenated hydrocarbons (42.4 wt %) and monocarboxylic acids (49.1 wt %) such as acetic, formic, propionic, and lactic (2-hydroxypropionic). The effect of Ni(NO3)(2) on the production of carboxylic acids as well as H-2 from the mixture of sugars (prepared as concentration ratio of the sugars observed during wastepaper reforming) was separately investigated with the viewpoint of developing understanding of possible reaction pathways.An environmental assessment of biocomposites with PP or PLA matrices reinforced with natural fibres (cotton fibers, cellulose, jute fiber and kenaf) and glass fibre, was carried out using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology Four methods were employed to determine the indicators of greenhouse gas emission (IPCC), renewable and non-renewable energy demand (CED) and land use (Ecological footprint) as well as the influence of composites on human health, ecosystem quality and fossil resource consumption (Ecoindicator 99 H/A). It was found that reinforcing the polymer matrix with cotton fibres is the least advantageous to the environment, while the lowest environmental impact was assessed for the composites of PLA and PP with cellulose fibre.Energy demand in buildings has been restricted in recent years by EU Directives and national standards. Buildings now need to be assessed as proof that they meet the relevant energy demand requirements. These assessments must also be performed on public buildings, including museums. As part of a collaborative project, the BMWi (Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology) is currently addressing the issues of heating, cooling, comfort, life-cycle analysis, conservation-related requirements for air-conditioning, ventilation, flow simulation, structural preservation and acoustics. The project will also involve the development of definitive design guidance for implementing lighting and visibility with maximum energy efficiency. This will cover both new lamp and ballast technology and the combined use of daylight technology with electronic control systems.We analyze the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a regulatory tool using biofuel regulations as an illustrative example. A regulatory context calls for a consequential LCA (CLCA) of a policy as opposed to an attributional LCA (ALCA) of a product. In performing CLCA, issues of scale, price effects, technology and policy in the counterfactual state of the world, strategic behavior, policy horizon etc. need consideration. This appears to increase both uncertainty in estimates and the cost of performing LCA. We suggest heuristics for determining vulnerability to harmful indirect effects at an early stage in the policy process and discuss alternative policies to limit harmful indirect effects without engaging in the full effort of computation and selection of a central estimate for uncertain outcomes. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This review aims to synthesise and discuss current literature applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework for the environmental assessment of fisheries. The review introduces and illustrates the LCA framework, and highlights energy use by fishing vessels, among other key factors determining environmental impacts of fisheries operations. Moreover, the review concludes with recommendations on future developments of LCA in the fisheries and seafood sectors. We reviewed 16 studies on LCA applied to fisheries, with perspectives from a few additional publications on closely related topics. The main Aspects considered in the ad hoc comparison of studies include: scope and system boundaries, functional units, allocation strategies for co-products, conventional and fishery-specific impact categories used, fuel use, impact assessment methods, level of detail in inventories, normalisation of results and sensitivity analyses. A number of patterns and singularities were detected. Fishery-specific impact categories, despite not being standardised, and fuel use in fishing operations were identified as the main contributors to environmental impacts. Energy efficiency was found to be strongly related to the fishing gear used. Several studies discussed the impacts of antifouling substances and metals use. The need for standardisation of fisheries LCA research is justified and ideas on how to do so and what elements to standardise (fisheries-specific impact categories, inventory details, normalisation references, etc.) are discussed. Finally, fisheries LCA constitute a useful research field when studying the sustainability of seafood and fisheries-based agrifood, and it should likewise contribute to an ecosystem approach to fisheries. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Goose barnacles constitute an important market product in Spain, where they are considered a top seafood attraction in first-class restaurants. However, their environmental sustainability has not been explored beyond the implementation of co-management schemes to avoid overexploitation. Therefore, the main objective of this article is to understand the environmental implications of goose barnacles in terms of carbon footprint (CF), in the wake of recent studies which have highlighted the importance that fishing systems can have on climate change, as well as to facilitate accountability concerning CF reduction policies for stakeholders and consumers. Results for the six scenarios under analysis showed substantial changes depending on the harvesting area and especially on the means of transport chosen, since this intertidal species can be accessed by land or by sea. The average CF per kg of harvested barnacles ranged from 0.64 kg CO2 equiv. to over II kg CO2 equiv., showing substantially higher CF values whenever the resource was accessed by sea. The wide CF gap observed between harvesting carried out on foot or by sea suggests that different management schemes should be implemented for each of the two methods in terms of environmental monitoring, as well as different strategies concerning environmental transparency and reporting. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Are microalgae a potential energy source for biofuel production? This paper presents the laboratory results from a Nannochloropsis sp. microalga biorefinery for the production of oil, high-value pigments, and biohydrogen (bioH(2)). The energy consumption and CO2 emissions involved in the whole process (microalgae cultivation, harvest, dewater, mill, extraction and leftover biomass fermentation) were evaluated. An economic evaluation was also performed. Oil was obtained by soxhlet (SE) and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). The bioH(2) was produced by fermentation of the leftover biomass. The oil production pathway by SE shows the lowest value of energy consumption, 177-245 MJ/MJ(prod), and CO2 emissions, 13-15 kgCO(2)/MJ(prod). Despite consuming and emitting c.a. 20% more than the SE pathway, the oil obtained by SFE, proved to be more economically viable, with a cost of 365(sic)/kg(oil) produced and simultaneously extracting high-value pigments. The bioH(2) as co-product may be advantageous in terms of product yield or profit. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents a framework to evaluate emerging systems in life cycle assessment (LCA). Current LCA methods are effective for established systems; however, lack of data often inhibits robust analysis of future products or processes that may benefit the most from life cycle information. In many cases the life cycle inventory (LCI) of a system can change depending on its development pathway. Modeling emerging systems allows insights into probable trends and a greater understanding of the effect of future scenarios on LCA results. The proposed framework uses Bayesian probabilities to model technology adoption. The method presents a unique approach to modeling system evolution and can be used independently or within the context of an agent-based model (ABM). LCA can be made more robust and dynamic by using this framework to couple scenario modeling with life cycle data, analyzing the effect of decision-making patterns over time. Potential uses include examining the changing urban metabolism of growing cities, understanding the development of renewable energy technologies, identifying transformations in material flows over space and time, and forecasting industrial networks for developing products. A switchgrass-to-energy case demonstrates the approach.The iron and steel industry represents an important case for industrial ecology due to its ability to accept waste-derived inputs and due to the generation of useful by-products. With the objective of supporting environmentally conscious decisions regarding resource use and waste management, a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool for ironmaking was developed. The tool combines mass flow-based process models with an LCA database to assess the use of alternative resources in ironmaking, considering various process configurations. The article contains a description of the tool and a case study illustrating two areas of application. In the first part of the case study, an inventory analysis focused on the effects of feedstock recycling of waste plastics in ironmaking on heavy metal distribution is presented. It is demonstrated how uncertainties in input heavy metal concentrations and mass transfer can be incorporated into the model to predict the heavy metal loads in the process outputs. In the second part, the substitution of coke with a range of alternative reducing agents are assessed with regard to impact on climate change and fossil resource depletion. It was found that the use of sustainably sourced charcoal and waste-derived reducing agents is beneficial both with respect to the impact on climate change and fossil resource depletion at the respective calculated coke replacement ratio, whereas the results for heavy oil, coke oven gas, and raw tar indicate that trade-offs between impact categories occur. The results also highlight the importance of considering the avoided impacts of alternative treatments for waste-derived resources.A normalization step is widely exercised in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in order to better understand the relative significance of impact category results. In the normalization stage, normalization references (NRs) are the characterized results of a reference system, typically a national or regional economy. Normalization is widely practiced in LCA-based decision support and policy analysis (e.g., LCA cases in municipal solid waste treatment technologies, renewable energy technologies, and environmentally preferable purchasing programs, etc.). The compilation of NRs demands significant effort and time as well as an intimate knowledge of data availability and quality. Consequently only one set of published NRs is available for the United States, and has been adopted by various studies. In this study, the completeness of the previous NRs was evaluated and significant data gaps were identified. One of the reasons for the significant data gaps was that the toxic release inventory (TRI) data significantly underestimate the potential impact of toxic releases for some sectors. Also the previous NRs did not consider the soil emissions and nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) runoffs to water and chemical emissions to soils. Filling in these data gaps increased the magnitude of NRs for human health cancer, human health noncancer, ecotoxicity, and eutrophication significantly. Such significant changes can alter or even reverse the outcome of an LCA study. We applied the previous and updated NRs to conventional gasoline and corn ethanol LCAs. The results demonstrate that NRs play a decisive role in the interpretation of LCA results that use a normalization step.A life cycle assessment (LCA) of various end-of-life management options for construction and demolition (C&D) debris was conducted using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Municipal Solid Waste Decision Support Tool. A comparative LCA evaluated seven different management scenarios using the annual production of C&D debris in New Hampshire as the functional unit. Each scenario encompassed C&D debris transport, processing, separation, and recycling, as well as varying end-of-life management options for the C&D debris (e.g., combustion to generate electricity versus landfilling for the wood debris stream and recycling versus landfilling for the nonwood debris stream) and different bases for the electricity generation offsets (e.g., the northeastern U.S. power grid versus coal-fired power generation). A sensitivity analysis was also conducted by varying the energy content of the C&D wood debris and by examining the impact of basing the energy offsets on electricity generated from various fossil fuels. The results include impacts for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, criteria air pollutants, ancillary solid waste production, and organic and inorganic constituents in water emissions. Scenarios with nonwood C&D debris recycling coupled with combustion of C&D wood debris to generate electricity had lower impacts than other scenarios. The nonwood C&D debris recycling scenarios where C&D wood debris was landfilled resulted in less overall impact than the scenarios where all C&D debris was landfilled. The lowest impact scenario included nonwood C&D debris recycling with local combustion of the C&D wood debris to generate electricity, providing a net gain in energy production of more than 7 trillion British thermal units (BTU) per year and a 130,000 tons per year reduction in GHG emissions. The sensitivity analysis revealed that for energy consumption, the model is sensitive to the energy content of the C&D wood debris but insensitive to the basis for the energy offset, and the opposite is true for GHG emissions.It is vital to find reasons for differences in the results of environmental input-output (EIO), physical input-output (PIO), and hybrid input-output (HIO) models for industrial and environmental policy analysis. Using EIO, PIO, and HIO models, China's industrial metabolism is calculated. Four reasons were found to account for differences in the results of analysis using EIO, PIO, and HIO models: the manner in which they deal with residential consumption, service sectors, and waste recycling, and the assumption of unique sector prices. The HIO model, which treats residential consumption as sectors of the intermediate delivery matrix, is preferred to the EIO and PIO models for analyzing industrial and environmental policies. Moreover, waste recycling in five sectorsagriculture; the manufacture of paper, printing, and articles for culture, education, and sports activities; the manufacture of nonmetallic mineral products; smelting and pressing of metals; and constructionshould be comprehensively considered when using the HIO model to study problems related to these five sectors. Improvements in the EIO, PIO, and HIO models and future work are also discussed.The classical sustainability perspective on packaging is to reduce the environmental impact or eco-burden of the packaging, using life cycle assessment to evaluate different design alternatives. Simultaneously, the classical marketing perspective on packaging is to generate value through differentiation, for instance, by providing additional convenience. These two perspectives often conflict. In business reality, there is currently no established method to deal with these conflicts. Life cycle assessment is methodologically incapable of incorporating the difference in convenience. This article uses the eco-costs/value ratio (EVR), as a method for dealing with the environmental assessment of packaging design alternatives with such unequal soft' functionality. The article reviews the current debate on packaging and sustainability, highlighting some of the shortcomings of the methods currently applied. Subsequently, the EVR model is introduced and applied to five examples. These examples consist of pairs of products, where the product, the amount, the brand and the retail outlet are identical and only the packaging design and the value differ. The examples illustrate how the EVR model fits better to design decision making in business reality than classical life cycle assessment. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.As an alternative food source to wild fisheries, aquaculture shows a great potential to help meet the growing demand for seafood and animal protein. The expansion of aquaculture has been achieved partly by system intensification, which has drawn vast criticisms of aquaculture for its environmental, social and economic sustainability issues. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become the leading tool for identifying key environmental impacts of seafood production systems. A LCA evaluates the sustainability of diverse aquaculture systems quantitatively from a cradle-to-grave perspective. It provides a scientific basis for analysing system improvement and the development of certification and eco-labelling criteria. Current efforts focus on integrating local ecological and socio-economic impacts into the LCA framework. A LCA can play an important role in informing decision makers in order to achieve more sustainable seafood production and consumption. This article reviews recent applications of LCA in aquaculture, compares the environmental performance of different aquaculture production systems, explores the potential of including biodiversity issues into LCA analysis and examines the potential of LCA in setting criteria for certification and eco-labelling.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become increasingly popular in chemical industry as a standardized methodology for analysis of the environmental impact of products during their whole life cycle. Changes in process design by novel approaches like micro reaction engineering and the respective influence on the use of life cycle assessment are reviewed. The available literature on LCA in early research and development is comprehensively explored for conventional chemical and micro reaction engineering.Integrated Assessment, and the development of strategies to reduce the impacts of air pollution, has tended to focus only upon the direct emissions from different sources, with the indirect emissions associated with the full life-cycle of a technology often overlooked. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) reflects a number of new technologies designed to reduce CO2 emissions, but which may have much broader environmental implications than greenhouse gas emissions. This paper considers a wider range of pollutants from a full life-cycle perspective, illustrating a methodology for assessing environmental impacts using source-apportioned effects based impact factors calculated by the national scale UK Integrated Assessment Model,(UKIAM). Contrasting illustrative scenarios for the deployment of CCS towards 2050 are presented which compare the life-cycle effects of air pollutant emissions upon human health and ecosystems of business-as-usual, deployment of CCS and widespread uptake of IGCC for power generation. Together with estimation of the transboundary impacts we discuss the benefits of an effects based approach to such assessments in relation to emissions based techniques. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study is to assess the green house gas (GHG) emission for the production of bio-oil from oil palm biomass and its utilization for 10 MW power generation by evaluating the life cycle carbon footprint analysis. The life cycle GHG emission assessment includes four main stages, which cover the oil-palm cultivation, palm oil mill operation, biomass transportation and pyrolysis process for the production of bio-oil and its utilization for 10MW power generation. The results obtained suggest that the palm bio-oil has potential as a carbon neutral renewable energy source in the future. More importantly, it has no negative impact on the environment as the amount of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere during combustion of this fuel is lower than that of the CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere during cultivation stage.The geometry of railway track governs the quality of the ride for passengers and, should it deteriorate to an extreme state, can become a safety concern with potential derailment. The geometry is dependent upon a number of different factors, among which is the condition of the ballast. Several options exist to control the condition of the ballast, including manual intervention, tamping and stoneblowing. Ballast condition is monitored implicitly by measuring the geometry of the railway lines using a specially equipped measurement train. By analysing the data collected by this train, the deterioration process of the railway geometry can be understood. Using this understanding, mathematical models can then be constructed, which take account of the possible maintenance and renewal options to predict the track state. This model enables decisions to be made on the best or optimal strategy for maintenance and renewal of the ballast. This article describes a model of the track maintenance process for a railway network. Owing to their flexibility, the model is formulated using a Petri net and combines the deterioration, maintenance and inspection processes for a railway network containing a number of regions. There are a limited number of maintenance machines in the network and the maintenance in each region is organised independently. The model also takes account of the fact that the maintenance of track sections with severe levels of ballast deterioration must take priority over all other maintenance in the network and allows for opportunistic maintenance to be analysed.With a target production of 1000 ton of dry algae/yr, lipid content of 30 wt.%, and productivity of 30 g/m(2)-d in a 340-day annual operation, four common scenarios of microalgae bioenergy routes were assessed in terms of cost, energy, and CO2 inputs and outputs. Scenario I (biodiesel production), Scenario 2 (Scenario 1 with integrated anaerobic digestion system), Scenario 3 (biogas production), and Scenario 4 (supercritical gasification) were evaluated. Scenario 4 outperformed other scenarios in terms of net energy production (1282.42 kWh/ton algae) and CO2 removal (1.32 ton CO2/ton algae) while Scenario 2 surpassed the other three scenarios in terms of net cost. Scenario 1 produced the lowest energy while Scenario 3 was the most expensive bioenergy system. This study evaluated critical parameters that could direct the proper design of the microalgae bioenergy system with an efficient energy production, CO2 removal, and economic feasibility. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental benefits of recycling are assessed against other end-of-life (EOL) treatments for Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) waste. Recycling via pyrolysis, incineration with energy recovery, and disposal via landfilling are compared. To account for physical changes to materials from use and recycling, equivalence between recycled and virgin materials is calculated based on the ability to produce a short fibre composite beam of equivalent stiffness. Secondary effects of using Recycled Carbon Fibre (RCF) in a hypothetical automotive application are also analysed. Results underline the ecological constraints towards recycling CFRPs and demonstrate that benefits from recycling are strongly linked to the impacts of the selected recovery process, the materials replaced by RCF in a secondary application, and also to the type of secondary application in which they are used. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to address society's concerns regarding the sustainability of sugar and ethanol production and use, this paper calculates the energy and greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions' balances of a non-vertically integrated sugarcane industry in Tucuman-Argentina. The essential operations involved in the sugar/ethanol production cycle were taken into account. Results show that this industry generated an energy balance of 3.4:1. GHG emissions during sugarcane production were 1824 and 2231 kg CO(2)eq. ha(-1) year(-1) for low and middle to high farms' technological levels, respectively. The mill process emitted 1187 kg CO(2)eq. ha(-1) year(-1). The main factors influencing these balances were gas-oil and nitrogen fertilizers used in the agricultural stage, natural gas consumed by the sugar mill, and sugarcane burning (only for GHG balance). The impact of ethanol use in reducing GHG emissions under the current production scheme (6.8 Mg ha(-1) of sugar + 380.9 kg ha(-1) of ethanol), in final blends of 95% gasoline and 5% ethanol in vehicles, is negligible. A sensitivity analysis indicates that switching to 100% bagasse used as fuel in mill's boilers, ethanol being produced directly from sugarcane juice, and a final blend of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol, an amount of 1746 kg CO(2)eq. ha(-1) year(-1) of GHG emissions could be avoided. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Construction and demolition (C&D) waste recycling has been considered to be a valuable option not only for minimising C&D waste streams to landfills but also for mitigating primary mineral resource depletion. However, the potentially higher cement demand due to the larger surface of the coarse recycled aggregates challenges the environmental benefits of recycling concrete. Furthermore, it is unclear how the environmental impacts depend on concrete mixture, cement type, aggregates composition and transport distances. We therefore analysed the life cycle impacts of 12 recycled concrete (RC) mixtures with two different cement types and compared it with corresponding conventional concretes (CC) for three structural applications. The RC mixtures were selected according to laws, standards and construction practice in Switzerland. We compared the environmental impacts of ready-for-use concrete on the construction site, assuming equal lifetimes for recycled and conventional concrete in a full life cycle assessment. System expansion and substitution are considered to achieve the same functionality for all systems. The results show clear (similar to 30 %) environmental benefits for all RC options at endpoint level (ecoindicator 99 and ecological scarcity). The difference is mainly due to the avoided burdens associated to reinforcing steel recycling and avoided disposal of C&D waste. Regarding global warming potential (GWP), the results are more balanced and primarily depend on the additional amount of cement needed for RC. Above 22 to 40 kg additional cement per cubic metre of concrete, RC exhibits a GWP comparable to CC. Additional transport distances above 15 km for the RC options do result in environmental impacts higher than those for CC. In summary, the current market mixtures of recycled concrete in Switzerland show significant environmental benefits compared to conventional concrete and cause similar GWP, if additional cement and transport for RC are limited.Environmental data for steel products are generally proposed at a continental or a global scale. The question we are tackling here is: does the fact that steel as a global market necessarily reduces the need for national data? In this study, the environmental impact of reinforcing steel sold in France is evaluated. To do so, a specific environmental inventory is adapted from Ecoinvent database. CML method is used for impact calculation and both methods "recycled content" as well as "end of life recycling approach" are tested. This study shows that there is a specificity of reinforcing steel products sold in France compared to European value. It is due to the fact that reinforcing steel is mainly made with recycled steel as the market growth for construction product in France is limited allowing a very high recycled content. This result is not sensitive neither to the allocation method used for recycling (cut-off approach or system expansion) nor to transport distance and electricity country mix used. The result of this study can be used with confidence in every construction site work located on the French territory. Furthermore, the present study advocates for an adaptation of global database to local context defined by a specific industrial sector and a geographic region even for product such as steel that may be considered as a first approximation as a global product.The construction industry has considerable impacts on the environment, economy, and society. Although quantifying and analyzing the sustainability implications of the built environment is of great importance, it has not been studied sufficiently. Therefore, the overarching goal of this study is to quantify the overall environmental, economic, and social impacts of the U.S. construction sectors using an economic input-output-based sustainability assessment framework. In this research, the commodity-by-industry supply and use tables published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, as part of the International System of National Accounts, are merged with a range of environmental, economic, and social metrics to develop a comprehensive sustainability assessment framework for the U.S. construction industry. After determining these sustainability assessment metrics, the direct and indirect sustainability impacts of U.S construction sectors have been analyzed from a triple bottom-line perspective. When analyzing the total sustainability impacts by each construction sector, "Residential Permanent Single and Multi-Family Structures" and "Other Non-residential Structures" are found to have the highest environmental, economic, and social impacts in comparison with other construction sectors. The analysis results also show that indirect suppliers of construction sectors have the largest sustainability impacts compared with on-site activities. For example, for all U.S. construction sectors, on-site construction processes are found to be responsible for less than 5 % of total water consumption, whereas about 95 % of total water use can be attributed to indirect suppliers. In addition, Scope 3 emissions are responsible for the highest carbon emissions compared with Scopes 1 and 2. Therefore, using narrowly defined system boundaries by ignoring supply chain-related impacts can result in underestimation of triple bottom-line sustainability impacts of the U.S. construction industry. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies that consider all dimensions of sustainability impacts of civil infrastructures are still limited, and the current research is an important attempt to analyze the triple bottom-line sustainability impacts of the U.S. construction sectors in a holistic way. We believe that this comprehensive sustainability assessment model will complement previous LCA studies on resource consumption of U.S. construction sectors by evaluating them not only from environmental standpoint, but also from economic and social perspectives.Concerns about global warming led to the calculation of the carbon footprint (CF) left by human activities. The agricultural sector is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, though cropland soils can also act as sinks. So far, most LCA studies on agricultural products have not considered changes in soil organic matter (SOM). This paper aimed to: (1) integrate the H,nin-Dupuis SOM model into the CF study and (2) outline the impacts of different vineyard soil management scenarios on the overall CF. A representative wine chain in the Maremma Rural District, Tuscany (Italy), made up of a cooperative winery and nine of its associated farms, was selected to investigate the production of a non-aged, high-quality red wine. The system boundary was established from vineyard planting to waste management after use. The functional unit (FU) chosen for this study was a 0.75-L bottle of wine, and all data refer to the year 2009. The SOM balance, based on H,nin-Dupuis' equation, was integrated and run using GaBi4 software. A sensitivity analysis was performed, and four scenarios were developed to assess the impact of vineyard soil management types with decreasing levels of organic matter inputs. SOM accounting reduced the overall CF of one wine bottle from 0.663 to 0.531 kg CO2-eq/FU. The vineyard planting sub-phase produced a loss of SOM while, in the pre-production and production sub-phases, the loss/accumulation of SOM was related to the soil management practices. On average, soil management in the production sub-phase led to a net accumulation of SOM, and the overall vineyard phase was a sink of CO2. Residue incorporation and grassing were identified as the main factors affecting changes in SOM in vineyard soils. Our results showed that incorporating SOM accounting into the wine chain's CF analysis changed the vineyard phase from a GHG source to a modest net GHG sink. These results highlighted the need to include soil C dynamics in the CF of the agricultural product. Here, the SOM balance method proposed was sensitive to changes in management practices and was site specific. Moreover, we were also able to define a minimum data set for SOM accounting. The EU recognises soil carbon sequestration as one of the major European strategies for mitigation. However, specific measures have yet to be included in the CAP 2020. It would be desirable to include soil in the new ISO 14067-Carbon Footprint of Products.Light-emitting diode (LED) technology is increasingly being used for general lighting. Thus, it is timely to study the environmental impacts of LED products. No life cycle assessments (LCA) of recessed LED downlight luminaires exist in the literature, and only a few assessments of any type of LED light source (component, lamp and luminaire) are available. The LCA of a recessed LED downlight luminaire was conducted by using the data from the luminaire manufacturer, laboratory measurements, industry experts and literature. The assessment was conducted using SimaPro LCA software. EcoInvent and European Reference Life Cycle Database were used as the databases. The LCA included a range of environmental impacts in order to obtain a broad overview. The functional unit of the LCA was one luminaire used for 50,000 h. In addition, the sensitivity of the environmental impacts to the life was studied by assessing the LED downlight luminaire of 36,000 h and 15,000 h useful life and to the used energy sources by calculating the environmental impacts using two average energy mixes: French and European. The environmental impacts of the LED luminaire were mostly dominated by the energy consumption of the use. However, manufacturing caused approximately 23 % of the environmental impacts, on average. The environmental impacts of manufacturing were mainly due to the driver, LED array and aluminium parts. The installation, transport and end of life had nearly no effect on the total life cycle impacts, except for the end of life in hazardous waste. The life cycle environmental impacts were found to be sensitive to the life of the luminaire. The change from the French to the European average energy mix in use resulted to an even clearer dominance of the use stage. The case study showed that the environmental impacts of the LED downlight luminaire were dominated by the use-stage energy consumption, especially in the case of the European energy mix in use. Luminous efficacy is, thus, a relatively appropriate environmental indicator of the luminaire. As LED technology possesses generally higher luminous efficacy compared to conventional ones, the LED luminaire is considered to represent an environmentally friendly lighting technology. However, data gaps exist in the data in LED product manufacturing and its environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of different LED products need to be analysed in order to be able to precisely compare the LED technology to the conventional lighting technologies.A life cycle assessment was conducted to determine a baseline for environmental impacts of cheddar and mozzarella cheese consumption. Product loss/waste, as well as consumer transport and storage, is included. The study scope was from cradle-to-grave with particular emphasis on unit operations under the control of typical cheese-processing plants. SimaProA (c) 7.3 (PR, Consultants, The Netherlands, 2013) was used as the primary modeling software. The ecoinvent life cycle inventory database was used for background unit processes (Frischknecht and Rebitzer, J Cleaner Prod 13(13-14):1337-1343, 2005), modified to incorporate US electricity (EarthShift 2012). Operational data was collected from 17 cheese-manufacturing plants representing 24 % of mozzarella production and 38 % of cheddar production in the USA. Incoming raw milk, cream, or dry milk solids were allocated to coproducts by mass of milk solids. Plant-level engineering assessments of allocation fractions were adopted for major inputs such as electricity, natural gas, and chemicals. Revenue-based allocation was applied for the remaining in-plant processes. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are of significant interest. For cheddar, as sold at retail (63.2 % milk solids), the carbon footprint using the IPCC 2007 factors is 8.60 kg CO(2)e/kg cheese consumed with a 95 % confidence interval (CI) of 5.86-12.2 kg CO(2)e/kg. For mozzarella, as sold at retail (51.4 % milk solids), the carbon footprint is 7.28 kg CO(2)e/kg mozzarella consumed, with a 95 % CI of 5.13-9.89 kg CO(2)e/kg. Normalization of the results based on the IMPACT 2002+ life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) framework suggests that nutrient emissions from both the farm and manufacturing facility wastewater treatment represent the most significant relative impacts across multiple environmental midpoint indicators. Raw milk is the major contributor to most impact categories; thus, efforts to reduce milk/cheese loss across the supply chain are important. On-farm mitigation efforts around enteric methane, manure management, phosphorus and nitrogen runoff, and pesticides used on crops and livestock can also significantly reduce impacts. Water-related impacts such as depletion and eutrophication can be considered resource management issues-specifically of water quantity and nutrients. Thus, all opportunities for water conservation should be evaluated, and cheese manufacturers, while not having direct control over crop irrigation, the largest water consumption activity, can investigate the water use efficiency of the milk they procure. The regionalized normalization, based on annual US per capita cheese consumption, showed that eutrophication represents the largest relative impact driven by phosphorus runoff from agricultural fields and emissions associated with whey-processing wastewater. Therefore, incorporating best practices around phosphorous and nitrogen management could yield improvements.The goal and scope of this research is focused on the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate two alternatives (batch and continuous distillation and incineration with energy recovery) for the treatment of four waste-solvent mixtures typically produced in the chemical industry: acetonitrile-toluene, acetonitrile-toluene-tetrahydrofuran (THF), ethyl acetate-water and methanol-THF, with several compositions in order to determine the most appropriate technology depending on the characteristics of the mixture. EcosolventA (R) v.1.0.1 software is used to perform the LCA, considering two scenarios and the following methods of impact assessment: Eco-indicator 99, cumulative energy demand, method of ecological scarcity (UBP'97), global warming potential and CO2 balances. Results show that distillation gives more environmental credits for the recovery of the most concentrated compound in acetonitrile-toluene mixtures. However, when THF is present in the waste solvent even in small quantities, it has to be recovered due to the high impact associated to its manufacture. Regarding the mixture ethyl acetate-water, distillation takes advantage at concentrations of ethyl acetate higher than 50 wt%, and for the mixture methanol-THF, recovery of methanol is not advantageous from an environmental point of view, but the recovery of THF is clearly necessary to decrease the total impact. From this study, it can be concluded that those compounds that yield a great environmental burden during the production step should be always recovered in order to minimize the total impact, even if they represent the minor concentration in the mixture. In case that similar impact is produced during the solvent production, the major compound in the mixture should be the target for recovery.The application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to the design of water treatment plants is hampered by: (1) a large diversity of unit processes, (2) the high variability of the operation conditions in relation with the water quality input, and (3) the range of possible technical solutions to fulfil the treatment needs. For a consistent prospective assessment, the LCA should be based on the simulated functioning of the unit processes rather than on average data, as it is most often the case when no real data are available. Here, a novel, integrated and flexible process modelling-life cycle assessment (PM-LCA) tool for design and LCA of water treatment technologies is presented. The tool (EVALEAU) was developed in UmbertoA (R) (v5.5) using the Python language for code scripting. A library of unit process (UP) modules was built. Each module is a detailed and highly parameterized model of a specific water treatment process, which is further linked with the software PHREEQCA (R) for water chemistry calculation. Input data are: water composition, design, operation parameters, including literature or user-defined values. The modules are linked to Ecoinvent datasets (v2.2) for background processes. By combining the modules, water treatment chains can be designed and evaluated in UmbertoA (R) with a high level of detail and specifications. A sensitivity analysis toolbox (Morris method) was included for the identification of the process parameters mainly affecting the impact results. The tool was successfully applied to the test bed case of an existing drinking water plant located in the Paris region. The conventional LCA results, based on average recorded data, were compared with the results obtained using the PM-LCA tool. Modelling results for technical parameters were also compared with data collected on site. An overall good agreement between simulations and real data was obtained, proving the relevance of the developed tool. Sensitivity analysis indicated that ozone production and transfer into water are the main technological parameters influencing climate change (taken as example since it is of high interest for stakeholders), which have therefore to be fine-tuned. The EVALEAU tool successfully solves the challenge of linking LCA results to the related engineering design choices, from the assessment and eco-design perspectives. The concepts and methodologies embedded within the tool provide the user with complementary views of the designed system, in terms of potable water quality, design and operation parameters and environmental impacts generated over its life cycle.In order to reduce its environmental impact, the chemical industry no longer produces base chemicals such as ethylene, solely from fossil, but also from biomass-based feedstocks. However, a biomass option suitable for one region might not be as suitable for another region due to, e.g., long transport and the related environmental. Therefore, local biomass alternatives and the environmental impact related to the production of chemicals from these alternatives need to be investigated. This study assesses the environmental impact of producing ethylene from Swedish wood ethanol. The study was conducted following the methodology of life cycle assessment. The life cycle was assessed using a cradle-to-gate perspective for the production of 50,000 tonnes ethylene/year for the impact categories global warming, acidification (ACP), photochemical ozone creation, and eutrophication (EP). The production of enzymes used during the life cycle had a significant effect on all investigated impacts. However, reduced consumption of enzyme product, which could possibly be realized considering the rapid development of enzymes, lowered the overall environmental impact of the ethylene. Another approach could be to use alternative hydrolyzing agents. However, little information on their environmental impact is available. An additional key contributor, with regard to ACP, EP, and POCP, was the ethanol production. Therefore, further improvements with regard to the process' design may have beneficial effects on its environmental impact. The study assessed the environmental impact of wood ethylene and pointed to several directions for improvements, such as improved enzyme production and reduced consumption of enzyme products. Moreover, the analysis showed that further investigations into other process options and increase of ethylene production from biomass are worth continued research.The objective of this case study is to identify the relevant processes needed in the environmental assessment of the end of life of a building and to identify the demolition process variables that significantly affect energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases. Different scenarios of demolition, based on three alternatives for managing construction and demolition waste (C&DW) generated during demolition works, are analyzed. This study is based upon typical construction and demolition practices and waste management in Spain. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied to assess objectively and quantitatively different C&DW management plans during the design phase and to identify the significant environmental aspects. The impact categories considered are global warming potential and human toxicity potential. Furthermore, the indicator primary energy (non renewable energy from fossil fuels) is also studied. Design of C&DW management plans to enhance the recovery of waste, reducing significantly the selected environmental indicators, was assessed in this study. Waste transport from the demolition work to the treatment plant and the transport of the non-recyclable fraction to the final disposal, as well as the fuel consumption in hydraulic demolition equipment and in the loading/unloading equipment of the treatment plants, are the most significant environmental aspects associated with the management plan based on a selective demolition, whereas in a conventional demolition process, the main environmental aspect is waste transport from the demolition work to final disposal. LCA studies allow an assessment of different demolition processes. A tool for recording environmental data has been developed. This tool provides in a systematic manner life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment of the end of life of a building, facilitating the study of management plans in the design phase.This study aimed to establish a set of disability weights (DWs) for sleep problems and fatigue which could be applied in composite health outcome measures in order to quantify the burden of symptoms and economically evaluate the effects of increasing temperatures on a life cycle approach. The conditions were evaluated by a two-step questionnaire study. In the first step, specialists determined the DW for each condition. The second step was identical to the first, except that the determinations were made by primary care physicians. Both groups of medical practitioners used an interpolation method consisting of a comprehensive set of 31 disease-specific DWs. Mean DWs for sleep disturbance were 0.101 for environmental sleep disturbance, 0.069 for mild sleep disturbance, and 0.086 for moderate sleep disturbance. Mean DWs for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) were 0.099 for a diagnosis of CFS, 0.164 for mild handicap, 0.281 for moderate handicap, and 0.459 for severe handicap. Mean DWs assigned by primary care physicians for sleep disturbance were 0.114 for environmental sleep disturbance, 0.140 for mild sleep disturbance, and 0.126 for severe sleep disturbance. Those for CFS were 0.154 for a diagnosis, 0.099 for mild handicap, 0.147 for moderate handicap, and 0.226 for severe handicap. Using the present valuation protocol, it appeared feasible to establish the burden of symptoms as attributable to increasing temperatures. The results can be applied in composite health outcome measures for public health research, environmental research, and economic evaluations.This paper concerns the Ecodesign Directive (2009/125/EC) and the implementing measures (IM) in which ecodesign requirements are set up for energy-using and energy-related products. Previous studies have found that the requirements have a unilateral focus on energy consumption and the use phase. This is not in line with the scientific understanding of ecodesign, where attention should be put on all life cycle phases and all relevant environmental impact categories. This study focuses on the requirements for televisions (TV). A life cycle assessment (LCA) is carried out on two TVs to analyse if other environmental hotspots and life cycle phases should be included in the requirements in the IM of the Ecodesign Directive besides energy consumption in the use phase analysis. The consequential approach is used. The data for the LCA have been gathered from two manufacturers of TVs. In one case, the data were delivered in Excel spreadsheets; in the other case, the authors of this paper together with the manufacturer disassembled a TV and collected the data manually. When applying the consequential approach, the production phase has the highest environmental impact, which is in contradiction with the focus area of the IM. The result of the sensitivity analysis is that the source of electricity is a potentially significant contributor of uncertainty. However, even in a coal-based scenario, the contribution from the production phase is approximately 30 %. Based on these results, it is concluded that for future requirement setting in IM, it is necessary to set up requirements that cover more life cycle phases of the product in order to address the most important impacts.Informal recycling is one of the most significant activities within waste management systems in low-income countries. The main aspect of a number of recently implemented waste management systems has been to organise the informal recycling sector. The implementation of formalisation is expected to eliminate social problems related to the informal sector, but this has not been precisely measured and evaluated. A lack of methodology to assess social impacts persists, as does the comparison of different formalisation approaches. The goal of this work is to develop a methodological procedure for assessing the contribution of formalised recycling systems in low-income countries in terms of social impacts, in comparison with informal systems. Some existing social assessment approaches were evaluated by a review of literature. This investigation focuses on the development of the social life cycle assessment approach, the analysed social aspects, proposed indicators and characterisation models within this framework. This study proposes an approach for the social assessment of recycling systems based on formalisation approaches in low-income countries oriented towards the social life cycle assessment methodology (sLCA). The approach developed considers 3 social impact categories, 9 social subcategories and 26 semi-quantitative indicators for the assessment of the social impacts on formalised recyclers. It includes a characterisation procedure that takes into consideration the application of a score system and the calculation of average scores at both the indicator and subcategory levels. This research shows that it would be feasible to apply a sLCA-based methodology to evaluate recycling systems based on formalisation of the informal sector. The impact categories and subcategories identified represent the social problems of informal recyclers. The 26 semi-quantitative indicators and the proposed characterisation approach attempt to measure the social impacts that currently are only qualitatively assumed. The applicability and validation of the indicators and characterisation procedure will be determined by further research. The methodology developed will be tested using data from three recycling systems in Peruvian cities.In a previous phase of this work, a methodology oriented towards social Life Cycle Assessment (sLCA) was developed to assess the social impact of formalised recycling systems in low income countries. To support this, a literature review of social impact assessment methodologies was carried out incorporating the social issues of both the informal and the implemented, formal recycling approaches. The goal of this study is to determine the feasibility of applying this methodology by assessing the current social impacts of three Peruvian recycling systems based on two formalisation approaches. A further goal is to identify and measure the social impacts of the formalisation procedures, thereby confirming or rebutting the expectations and forecasts of organisations (NGOs, Local Authorities, Ministries & Business) involved in the implementation. The methodology developed was applied to three Peruvian recycling systems which had been formalised using two different approaches. One approach utilizes cooperation with recyclers' associations and the second one, operated by the municipality uses formalised recyclers as employees. Interviews were conducted with local recycling system stakeholders in order to collect data to assess fulfilment of the social criteria. Three impact categories and 9 subcategories were analysed using 26 indicators. To transform the qualitative information into numerical values, a score system 1 or 0 for the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of social criteria was applied. After obtaining the indicators' average scores, further characterisation by social impact subcategory was effected. The final scores for the subcategories show the fulfilment or otherwise of all social criteria related to the subcategory. The assessment substantiates similar negative impacts of both formalisation approaches for the social subcategories discrimination, recognised employment relationships and fulfilment of social benefit, physical working conditions and education. The formalisation based on cooperation with recyclers' associations reveals a positive social impact for freedom of association and collective bargaining, psychological working conditions and social acceptance whereas the method operated by the municipality scores better for working time and minimum, fair incomes. Regarding the methodology, no difficulties were detected in applying the indicators. It can be concluded that although sLCA was originally used to analyse products and production processes, it is feasible to adapt it for the social assessment of recycling systems based on formalisation of the informal sector in low income countries. A comparison of current social impacts between different formalisation approaches using this methodology is also viable. A further conclusion is that it is feasible to measure the social impacts of formalisation approaches using the selected indicators and characterisation procedure. Social issues such as anti-discrimination policies, employment terms, payment of social benefits, preventive policies, occupational and health training and adult education can be improved following the evaluation.In recent years, the rising costs and infection control lead to an increasing use of disposable surgical instruments in daily hospital practices. Environmental impacts have risen as a result across the life cycle of plastic or stainless steel disposables. Compared with the conventional reusable products, different qualities and quantities of disposable scissors have to be taken into account. An eco-efficiency analysis can shed some light for the potential contribution of those products towards a sustainable development. Disposable scissors made of either stainless steel or fibre-reinforced plastic were compared with reusable stainless steel scissors for 4,500 use cycles of surgical scissors used in Germany. A screening life cycle assessment (LCA) and a life cycle costing were performed by following ISO 14040 procedure and total cost of ownership (TCO) from a customer perspective, respectively. Subsequently, their results were used to conduct an eco-efficiency analysis. The screening LCA showed a clear ranking regarding the environmental impacts of the three types of scissors. The impacts of the disposable steel product exceeds those of the two others by 80 % (disposable plastic scissors) and 99 % (reusable steel scissors), respectively. Differences in TCO were smaller, however, revealing significant economic advantages of the reusable stainless steel product under the constraints and assumptions of this case study. Accordingly, the reusable stainless steel product was revealed as the most eco-efficient choice. It was followed by the plastic scissors which turned out to be significantly more environmentally sound than the disposable stainless steel scissors but also more cost-intensive. The overall results of the study prove to be robust against variations of critical parameters for the prescribed case study. The sensitivity analyses were also conducted for LCA and TCO results. LCA results are shown to be reliable throughout all assumptions and data uncertainties. TCO results are more dependent on the choice of case study parameters whereby the price of the disposable products can severely influence the comparison of the stainless steel and the plastic scissors. The costs related to the sterilisation of the reusable product are strongly case-specific and can reduce the economic benefit of the reusable scissors to zero. Differences in environmental and economic break-even analyses underline the comparatively high share of externalised environmental costs in the case of the disposable steel product.Devices that condense and disinfect water vapour to provide chilled drinking water in office environments, so-called 'air water generators' (AWGs), are being marketed as environmentally friendly alternatives to the traditional bottled water cooler. We sought to examine this claim. The approach adopted was a preliminary life cycle assessment with performance indicators for the use of energy and water and the emission of greenhouse gases. We compared an AWG with its main market competitor, the traditional bottled water cooler and a simple refrigerator containing a jug of water. Modelling was based on Australian conditions and energy supply. To manage possible scope uncertainty, we borrowed the idea of 'triangulation' as defined in the social sciences. We found that without a renewable energy supply, the claim of environmental superiority is not supported by quantitative analysis. For each indicator, the AWG's score was typically two to four times higher than the alternatives. Energy consumption was the key issue driving all three indicators. Considering the principal environmental issues related to these systems, air-to-water machines significantly underperform bottled water coolers. A simple refrigerator has the capacity to perform multiple functions and therefore outperform both the bottled and atmospheric water options once allocation of burdens is considered. These conclusions are supported by all three perspectives examined to manage uncertainty.The aim of the present paper is to describe the development of a life cycle assessment study of the service of potable water supply in Sicily, Italy. The analysis considers the stages of collection, treatment and distribution of potable water through the regional network, whilst the use stage of water is not included. The selection of a methodological pattern coherently with the requirements of an environmental label, such as the EPDs, aims at allowing comparability among different studies. The analysis shows the shares of impacts along the life cycle chain, i.e. outputs by well fields and spring groups, purification and desalination plants, water losses in the waterworks, electrical consumption of waterworks systems and impacts of network maintenance. With regard to global warming potential (GWP), the impact of purification plants represents a 6-7 % share of the total, whilst desalination is at 74 %. Water losses in the waterworks show an impact of 15-17 %; the contribution owing to electrical consumption of waterworks systems and network maintenance results to be 3 %. Desalination plants represent the major contribution to all impact categories considered. In respect to management issues, the most relevant impact categories resulted to be GWP, non-renewable energy resources and water consumption. Since the results for non-renewable energy resources are strictly connected to GWP emissions, carbon footprint and water footprint can be profitably used as single-issue indicators without the risk of burden shifting in studies aiming to evaluate the impact of potable water distribution.The paper introduces the publication on "Global Guidance Principles for Life Cycle Assessment Databases"; it focuses on the development of training material and other implementation activities on the publication. The document is the output of the "Shonan Guidance Principles" workshop. The publication provides guidance principles for life cycle assessment (LCA) databases; this includes how to collect raw data, how to develop datasets, and how to manage databases. The publication also addresses questions concerning data documentation and review, coordination among databases, capacity building, and future scenarios. As a next step, the publication is used to prepare training material and other implementation activities. The publication was launched at the LCM 2011 Conference. Since then outreach activities have been organized in particular in emerging economies. Further developments with regard to the guidance principles are foreseen as part of a flagship project within phase 3 of the Life Cycle Initiative. Training material is being developed that will include how to set up databases and develop datasets. The topic has been taken up by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in its Rio + 20 Voluntary Commitments: UNEP and Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) through the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative commit to facilitate improved access to good quality life cycle data and databases as well as expanded use of key environmental indicators that allows the measurement and monitoring of progress towards the environmental sustainability of selected product chains. The adoption of the "Global Guidance Principles" publication as a de facto global standard is expected to facilitate the work of database teams, especially, in developing countries, and the collaboration in regional networks. These efforts are supported by the development of training material and other implementation activities.Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is an important environmental challenge and subject in urban planning. A sustainable MSWM strategy should consider not only economic efficiency but also life-cycle assessment of environmental impact. This study employs the fuzzy multiobjective linear programming (FMOLP) technique to find the optimal compromise between economic optimization and pollutant emission reduction for the MSWM strategy. Taichung City in Taiwan is evaluated as a case study. The results indicate that the optimal compromise MSWM strategy can reduce significant amounts of pollutant emissions and still achieve positive net profits. Minimization of the sulfur oxide (SOx) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions are the two major priorities in achieving this optimal compromise strategy when recyclables recovery rate is lower; however, minimization of the carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM) emissions become priority factors when recovery rate is higher. Implications: This paper applied the multiobjective optimization model to find the optimal compromise municipal solid waste management (MSWM) strategy, which minimizes both life-cycle operating cost and air pollutant emissions, and also to analyze the correlation between recyclables recovery rates and optimal compromise strategies. It is different from past studies, which only consider economic optimization or environmental impacts of the MSWM system. The result shows that optimal compromise MSWM strategy can achieve a net profit and reduce air pollution emission. In addition, scenario investigation of recyclables recovery rates indicates that resource recycling is beneficial for both economic optimization and air pollutant emission minimization.This paper reports the findings of research on the environmental performance of two case-study houses, a retrofit and new build. The retrofit was completed to a Passivhaus standard while the new build was completed to current Irish building regulations. Environmental performance of the retrofit and new build was measured using life-cycle assessments, examining the assembly, operational and end-of-life stage over life spans of 50 and 80 years. Using primary information, life-cycle assessment software and life-cycle assessment databases the environmental impacts of each stage were modelled. The operational stage of both case studies was found to be the source of the most significant environmental damage, followed by the assembly and the end-of-life stage respectively. The relative importance of the assembly and end-of-life stage decreased as the life span increased. It was found that the retrofit house studied outperformed the new build in the assembly and operational stage, whereas the new build performed better in the end-of-life stage; however, this is highly sensitive, depending on the standards to which both are completed. Operational energy savings pre- and post-retrofit were significant, indicating the future potential for adoption of high-quality retrofitting practices.The present study dealt with the whole valorization process of exhaust refinery catalysts, including metal extraction by ferric iron leaching and metal recovery by precipitation with sodium hydroxide. In the leaching operation the effects on metal recovery of the concentration and kind of acid, the concentration of catalyst and iron (III) were determined. The best operating conditions were 0.05 mol L-1 sulfuric acid, 40 g L-1 iron (III), 10% catalyst concentration; almost complete extraction of nickel and vanadium, and 50% extraction efficiency of aluminium and less than 20% for molybdenum. Sequential precipitation on the leach liquor showed that it was not possible to separate metals through such an approach and a recovery operation by means of a single-stage precipitation at pH 6.5 would simplify the procedures and give a product with an average content of iron (68%), aluminium (13%), vanadium (11%), nickel (6%) and molybdenum (1%) which would be potentially of interest in the iron alloy market. The environmental sustainability of the process was also assessed by means of life cycle assessment and yielded an estimate that the highest impact was in the category of global warming potential with 0.42 kg carbon dioxide per kg recovered metal.Materials and energy used for construction of a hill-type landfill of 4 million m(3) were quantified in detail. The landfill is engineered with a liner and leachate collections system, as well as a gas collection and control system. Gravel and clay were the most common materials used, amounting to approximately 260 kg per tonne of waste landfilled. The environmental burdens from the extraction and manufacturing of the materials used in the landfill, as well as from the construction of the landfill, were modelled as potential environmental impacts. For example, the potential impact on global warming was 2.5 kg carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents or 0.32 milli person equivalents per tonne of waste. The potential impacts from the use of materials and construction of the landfill are low-to-insignificant compared with data reported in the literature on impact potentials of landfills in operation. The construction of the landfill is only a significant contributor to the impact of resource depletion owing to the high use of gravel and steel.Industrial solid waste has potential impacts on soil, water and air quality, as well as human health, during its whole life stages. A framework for the life cycle management of industrial solid waste, which integrates the source reduction process, is presented and applied to copper slag management. Three management scenarios of copper slag are developed: (i) production of cement after electric furnace treatment, (ii) production of cement after flotation, and (iii) source reduction before the recycling process. A life cycle assessment is carried out to estimate the environmental burdens of these three scenarios. Life cycle assessment results showed that the environmental burdens of the three scenarios are 2710.09, 2061.19 and 2145.02 Pt respectively. In consideration of the closed-loop recycling process, the environmental performance of the flotation approach excelled that of the electric furnace approach. Additionally, although flash smelting promotes the source reduction of copper slag compared with bath smelting, it did not reduce the overall environmental burdens resulting from the complete copper slag management process. Moreover, it led to the shifting of environmental burdens from ecosystem quality damage and resources depletion to human health damage. The case study shows that it is necessary to integrate the generation process into the whole life cycle of industrial solid waste, and to make an integrated assessment for quantifying the contribution of source reduction, rather than to simply follow the priority of source reduction and the hierarchy of waste management.Four municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in India based on different technologies are compared by conducting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) using field data. CML 2 baseline 2000 methodology is adopted in which eight impact categories are considered. SBRs ranked highest in energy consumption and global warming potential (GWP) but also produced the best effluent with respect to organics and nutrients. Constructed wetlands have negligible energy consumption and negative GWP because of carbon sequestration in the macrophytes. Emissions associated with electricity production required to operate the WWTPs, emissions to water from treated effluent and heavy metal emissions from waste sludge applied to land are identified as main contributors for overall environmental impacts of WWTPs. This comparison of technologies suggests that results from LCA can be used as indicators in a multicriteria decision-making framework along with other sustainability indicators.This paper presents life cycle assessment (LCA) as a methodology to evaluate environmental, economic, and social performance of green infrastructure stormwater control measures (SCMs). A case study examining a bio-infiltration rain garden at the Villanova University Campus is offered to demonstrate this methodology. The scope of this analysis is cradle to grave benefits and impacts of green infrastructure. Metrics used in this case study to evaluate benefits and impacts include carbon footprint (global warming potential), acidification potential, human health cancer impact, human health non-cancer impact, respiratory effects, eutrophication potential, ozone depletion potential, eco-toxicity, smog formation potential, labor impacts, and life cycle economic costs. Results of this bio-infiltration rain garden case study show that the construction phase is the main contributing life cycle phase for all adverse environmental impacts, as well as total life cycle cost and labor impacts. The majority of these construction phase environmental impacts are attributed to the use of silica sand as a soil amendment for the rain garden media and the use of bark mulch to provide ground cover, repress invasive vegetation, and establish target vegetation. The bio-infiltration rain garden operation phase was found to provide significant avoided environmental impacts relative to the construction phase impacts. These avoided impacts are attributed to urban forest benefits from rain garden vegetation, benefits due to stormwater runoff pollutant treatment by the practice, and benefits to combined sewer systems due to reduced stormwater volume through infiltration and evapo-transpiration. Consideration of multiple rain garden decommissioning phase scenarios makes a case to support the onsite reuse on rain garden media at the end of the practice life. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The energy ratio metrics are increasingly important means of assessing the efficiency of energy production for emerging biofuels platforms, making comparisons among multiple alternatives, and formulating policies to foster commercialization of sustainable energy systems. However, these metrics are susceptible to inadvertent or meaningful mathematical manipulation, whereby the same dataset can be used to compute dramatically different values of energy return on investment (EROI). In this study, previously published life cycle assessment (LCA) data for algal biofuels, corn ethanol, and switchgrass ethanol are used to demonstrate how seven seemingly reasonable EROI formulations give rise to a wide range of output values. It is then demonstrated that production of bioelectricity, and to a lesser extent, other co-products, significantly increases EROI ambiguity. Overall, the EROI results are used to illustrate how EROI ambiguity makes it difficult to properly assess the energetic favorability of a particular energy system or to make accurate comparisons among multiple systems. It is then recommended that all future biofuels studies restrict themselves to usage of "EROI1", which documents all input and outputs as explicit terms, to mitigate EROI ambiguity and improve policy decision-making. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent decades, pavement management optimization has been designed with the objective of minimizing user and agency costs. However, recent analyses indicate that pavement management decisions also have significant impacts on life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study expands beyond minimization of life-cycle costs to also include GHG emissions. Previous work on the single-facility, continuous-state, continuous-time optimal pavement resurfacing problem is extended to solve the multicriteria optimization problem with the two objectives of minimizing costs and GHG emissions. Results indicate that there is a trade-off between costs and emissions when developing a pavement resurfacing policy, providing a range of GHG emissions reduction cost-effectiveness options. Case studies for an arterial and a major highway are presented to highlight the contrast between policy decisions for various pavement and vehicle technologies. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Assessing the extent to which all bio-fuels that are claimed to be renewable are in fact renewable is essential because producing such renewable fuels itself requires some amount of non-renewable energy (NE) and materials. Using hybrid life cycle analysis (LCA)-from raw material collection to delivery of pellets to end users-the energy cost of wood pellet production in China was estimated at 1.35 J/J, of which only 0.09 J was derived from NE, indicating that only 0.09 J of NE is required to deliver 1 J of renewable energy into society and showing that the process is truly renewable. Most of the NE was consumed during the conversion process (46.21%) and delivery of pellets to end users (40.69%), during which electricity and diesel are the two major forms of NE used, respectively. Sensitivity analysis showed that the distance over which the pellets are transported affects the cost of NE significantly. Therefore the location of the terminal market and the site where wood resources are available are crucial to saving diesel.One of the main objectives of the Kyoto Protocol and also the global directives is the reduction of GreenHouse Gas emissions (GHG) from consumption of fossil fuels and biofuels used mostly for transportation. Nowadays, a very important aspect is the technology process for production of biofuels together with the by-products from different renewable sources of raw materials. In this study two sources of oil for biofuels production in Romania, are studied: the well-known Rapeseed (Brassica napus) and Camelina (Camelina sativa), a new source of oil for several type of biofuels. Depending on the kind raw materials used, the by-products obtained during crushing of seeds and after transesterification or hydrogenation and hydrotreatment of the oil can be used either as feed stocks, or as secondary fuels. In this study the Camelina cultivation requirements is assess by the authors, as well as the pilot scale oil recovery to calculate life cycle analyses of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy demand; a comparison with the rapeseed cultivation in Romania is also conducted. The team has determined the response to model assumptions including the allocation methodology, as part of N fertilizer application rate. The use of Nitrogen as a fertilizer, the use of Rapeseed and Camelina by-products can also be related for further GHG emissions and energy consumption assessment and investigation. The best result obtained for camelina value chain, regarding the greenhouse gas emissions reduction was over 60% compared to petroleum jet fuel reported.Global installed capacity of renewable energy technologies is growing rapidly. The ability of renewable technologies to enable a rapid transition to a low carbon energy system is highly dependent on the energy that must be "consumed" during their life-cycle. This paper presents the results of meta-analyses of life-cycle assessments (LCA) of energy costs of three renewable technologies: solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrating solar power (CSP), and wind. The paper presents these findings as energetic analogies with financial cost parameters for assessing energy technologies: overnight capital cost, operating costs and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The findings suggest that wind energy has the lowest energy costs, followed by CSP and then PV.Micro-algae have received considerable interest as a potential feedstock for producing sustainable transport fuels (biofuels). The perceived benefits provide the underpinning rationale for much of the public support directed towards micro-algae research. Here we examine three aspects of micro-algae production that will ultimately determine the future economic viability and environmental sustainability: the energy and carbon balance, environmental impacts and production cost. This analysis combines systematic review and meta-analysis with insights gained from expert workshops. We find that achieving a positive energy balance will require technological advances and highly optimised production systems. Aspects that will need to be addressed in a viable commercial system include: energy required for pumping, the embodied energy required for construction, the embodied energy in fertilizer, and the energy required for drying and de-watering. The conceptual and often incomplete nature of algae production systems investigated within the existing literature, together with limited sources of primary data for process and scale-up assumptions, highlights future uncertainties around micro-algae biofuel production. Environmental impacts from water management, carbon dioxide handling, and nutrient supply could constrain system design and implementation options. Cost estimates need to be improved and this will require empirical data on the performance of systems designed specifically to produce biofuels. Significant (>50%) cost reductions may be achieved if CO2, nutrients and water can be obtained at low cost. This is a very demanding requirement, however, and it could dramatically restrict the number of production locations available. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need for biofuels is steadily increasing as a result of political strategies and the need for energy security. Biorefineries have the potential to improve the sustainability of biofuels through further recovery of valuable bioproducts and bioenergy. A life cycle assessment (LCA)-based environmental assessment of a Danish biorefinery system was carried out to thoroughly analyze and optimize the concept and address future research. The LCA study was based on case-specific mass and energy balances and inventory data, and was conducted using consequential LCA approach to take into account market mechanisms determining the fate of products, lost opportunities and marginal productions. The results show that introduction of enzymatic transesterification and improved oil extraction procedure result in environmental benefits compared to a traditional process. Utilization of rapeseed straw seems to have positive effects on the greenhouse gases (GHG) footprint of the biorefinery system, with improvements in the range of 9 % to 29 %, depending on the considered alternative. The mass and energy balances showed the potential for improvement of straw treatment processes (hydrothermal pre-treatment and dark fermentation) as well as minor issues related to enzymes utilization in different bio-processes.The exponential development of the urban real estate sector has become one of the main forces behind the development of China's urban economy. The massive development of urban buildings, however, aggregates domestic environmental pressures. This study develops a four-quadrant matrix to elaborate the direct and indirect impacts on the construction and operation of urban residential buildings and applies a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) method to quantify the overall impacts. The results show that the total energy consumption, water consumption, chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), sulphur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions of the overall life span of the urban residential buildings accounted for 5.4%, 5.6%, 3.0%, 3.5%, 3.9%, and 4.0%, respectively, of the national total in 2010. The indirect productive impacts accounted for 76.2% of the energy consumption, 86.4% of the water consumption, and 81.6% of the air pollution emission in 2010. With respect to the potential mitigation alternatives in the next five years, a scenario analysis suggests that a moderate slow-down of the construction of new buildings should be the highest priority, and promoting the application of greener housing materials and more advanced construction techniques should also be desired. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of the study was to compare three cases of biodiesel production from microalgae dried biomass applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique by means of the "cradle to grave" concept, presenting preliminary results for environmental assessment of emerging technologies for microalgae biodiesel production in Colombia focused on oil extraction stage. The evaluated processes correspond to the following cases: case 1 hexane-based extraction (HE), case 2 methanol/chloroform (MCE) and case 3 ethanol/hexane (EHE). Operating conditions for each extraction method were adjusted with experimental work. Routes were simulated using the Aspen Plus (R) 7.1 software, taking as a feedstock a robust modeled composition of Chlorella sp. Environmental emissions associated with algae biodiesel production were quantified and-evaluated through the Simapro 7.1 software. The outcomes confirm the potential of microalgae as a sink of greenhouses gases, but highlight the crucial necessity of decreasing energy consumption and some technical improvements in oil extraction step. Results related with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were compared with European sustainability criteria, in order to identify the reduction of the hypothetical microalgae biodiesel. Case 1 presents the most important reduction respect to fossil reference (156%). For the other two scenarios, reduction decreases because of higher energy consumption. Case 2 presents a reduction of approximately 99% and case 3 presents a reduction reaching 14%.Affordable construction has identified low embodied energy in materials as key issue. This review paper shows that even though there is a lack of research on this topic, embodied energy and carbon are studied in the context of buildings and construction materials. Moreover, comparison between studies is not possible due to the different assumptions used by the researchers, due to the fact that most studies are focused in a given location, and also due to the great variation between data presented in the embodied energy databases available. This paper shows different studies published in scientific journal papers and carried out around the world on the accounting of embodied energy in building materials. The paper includes the boundary of each of this study, including the location, type of material or building studied, and the conclusions found. Moreover, the paper discusses the definition of embodied energy and the significance of this concept in buildings.Buildings account for a significant proportion of the total energy and carbon emissions worldwide, and play an important role in formulating sustainable development strategies. There is a growing interest in ZEBs (zero energy buildings) in recent years. Several countries have adopted or considering establishing ZEBs as their future building energy targets to help alleviate the problems concerning the depletion of energy resources and the deterioration of the environment. Broadly speaking, ZEBs involve two design strategies - minimizing the need for energy use in buildings (especially for heating and cooling) through EEMs (energy-efficient measures) and adopting RETs (renewable energy and other technologies) to meet the remaining energy needs. This paper reviews the works related to these two strategies. EEMs include building envelopes, internal conditions, and building services systems; RETs cover photovoltaic/building-integrated photovoltaic, wind turbines, solar thermal (solar water heaters), heat pumps, and district heating and cooling. Issues pertaining to sustainable development implications and further research work required are also highlighted. These include life-cycle cost and environmental impacts, climate change and social policy issues. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial parks have become the effective strategies for government to promote sustainable economic development due to the following advantages: shared infrastructure and concentrated industrial activities within planned areas. However, due to intensive energy consumption and dependence on fossil fuels, industrial parks have become the main areas for greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is critical to quantify their carbon footprints so that appropriate emission reduction policies can be raised. The objective of this paper is to seek an appropriate method on evaluating the carbon footprint of one industrial park. The tiered hybrid LCA method was selected due to its advantages over other methods. Shenyang Economic and Technological Development Zone (SETDZ), a typical comprehensive industrial park in China, was chosen as a case study park. The results show that the total life cycle carbon footprint of SETDZ was 15.29 Mt, including 6.81 Mt onsite (direct) carbon footprint, 8.47 Mt upstream carbon footprint, and only 3201 t downstream carbon footprint. Analysis from industrial sector perspectives shows that chemical industry and manufacture of general purpose machinery and special purposes machinery sector were the two largest sectors for life cycle carbon footprint. Such a sector analysis may be useful for investigation of appropriate emission reduction policies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Service life of buildings is an essential parameter to evaluate its operational impact in life cycle assessment (LCA). Although most studies assume building service life about 75 to 100 years since no reliable data are available, its accurate quantification is still an unresolved work. To avoid wrong generalizations, the determination of the service life of buildings according to the characteristics of every region is required. Life table, a methodology traditionally used in demographic studies, has been used in this paper to estimate the service life of buildings. This methodology has been applied to the dwelling stock of Spain for each of its 19 regions. Data acquisition and sources have been pointed out. The building obsolescence has been considered in the moment that they are in a ruinous state. Life table of buildings showed that the average service life of a residential building constructed in 2001 in Spain was expected to be 80 years. Significant different results of service life among regions were found, from 54 years for a building in Ceuta to 95 years in La Rioja. It also showed that 50 % of total Spanish dwellings are younger than 30 years, and they are expected to reach the ruinous state in 2063 to 2081. Life table applied to buildings allows determining their service life. Its quantification is based on the buildings census, given by official institutions. Building census has to consider the year of construction and the state of conservation of the building to be applied in buildings' life table. Building service life can be used in LCA, renovation and deconstruction of the building stock, and future construction and demolition debris management.In life cycle assessment (LCA), literature suggests accounting for land as a resource either by what it delivers (e.g., biomass content) or the time and space needed to produce biomass (land occupation), in order to avoid double-counting. This paper proposes and implements a new framework to calculate exergy-based spatial explicit characterization factors (CF) for land as a resource, which deals with both biomass and area occupied on the global scale. We created a schematic overview of the Earth, dividing it into two systems (human-made and natural), making it possible to account for what is actually extracted from nature, i.e., the biomass content was set as the elementary flow to be accounted at natural systems and the land occupation (through the potential natural net primary production) was set as the elementary flow at human-made systems. Through exergy, we were able to create CF for land resources for these two different systems. The relevancy of the new CF was tested for a number of biobased products. Site-generic CF were created for land as a resource for natural systems providing goods to humans, and site-generic and site-dependent CF (at grid, region, country, and continent level) were created for land as a resource within human-made systems. This framework differed from other methods in the sense of accounting for both land occupation and biomass content but without double-counting. It is set operationally for LCA and able to account for land resources with more completeness, allowing spatial differentiation. When site-dependent CF were considered for land resources, the overall resource consumption of certain products increased up to 77 % in comparison with site-generic CF-based data. This paper clearly distinguished the origin of the resource (natural or human-made systems), allowing consistent accounting for land as a resource. Site-dependent CF for human-made systems allowed spatial differentiation, which was not considered in other resource accounting life cycle impact assessment methods.The main goal of any life cycle assessment (LCA) study is to identify solutions leading to environmental savings. In conventional LCA studies, practitioners select from some alternatives the one which better matches their preferences. This task is sometimes simplified by ranking these alternatives using an aggregated indicator defined by attaching weights to impacts. We address here the inverse problem. That is, given an alternative, we aim to determine the weights for which that solution becomes optimal. We propose a method based on linear programming (LP) that determines, for a given alternative, the ranges within which the weights attached to a set of impact metrics must lie so that when a weighting combination of these impacts is optimized, the alternative can be optimal, while if the weights fall outside this range, it is guaranteed that the solution will be suboptimal. A large weight value implies that the corresponding LCA impact is given more importance, while a low value implies the converse. Furthermore, we provide a rigorous mathematical analysis on the implications of using weighting schemes in LCA, showing that this practice guides decision-making towards the adoption of some specific alternatives (those lying on the convex envelope of the resulting trade-off curve). A case study based on the design of hydrogen infrastructures is taken as a test bed to illustrate the capabilities of the approach presented. Given are a set of production and storage technologies available to produce and deliver hydrogen, a final demand, and cost and environmental data. A set of designs, each achieving a unique combination of cost and LCA impact, is considered. For each of them, we calculate the minimum and maximum weight to be given to every LCA impact so that the alternative can be optimal among all the candidate designs. Numerical results show that solutions with lower impact are selected when decision makers are willing to pay larger monetary penalties for the environmental damage caused. LP can be used in LCA to translate the decision makers' preferences into weights. This information is rather valuable, particularly when these weights represent economic penalties, as it allows screening and ranking alternatives on the basis of a common economic basis. Our framework is aimed at facilitating decision making in LCA studies and defines a general framework for comparing alternatives that show different performance in a wide variety of impact metrics.Full life cycle assessment (LCA) impacts from decommissioning have rarely been assessed, largely because few sites have been decommissioned so that the impacts of decommissioning are currently uncertain. This paper presents the results of an LCA study of the ongoing decommissioning of the Magnox power plant at Trawsfynydd in the UK. These results have been used to estimate the potential environmental impacts for the whole UK Magnox fleet of 11 reactors that will have to be decommissioned during this century. The functional unit is defined as 'decommissioning one Magnox power plant'. The system boundary considers all stages in the life cycle of decommissioning, including site management, waste retrieval, plant deconstruction, packaging and storage of intermediate- and low-level wastes (ILW and LLW). High-level waste, i.e. waste fuel is excluded as it was being removed from the site to be reprocessed at Sellafield. The environmental impacts have been estimated using the CML 2001 methodology. Primary data have been sourced from the Trawsfynydd site and the background from Ecoinvent. Most impacts from decommissioning are due to the plant deconstruction (25-75 %) and ILW storage and disposal (25-70 %). For the example of global warming potential (GWP), estimated at 241 kt CO2 eq./functional unit, or 3.5 g CO2 eq./kWh of electricity generated during the lifetime of the plant, 55 % of the impact is from plant deconstruction and 30 % from ILW disposal. The results for the whole UK Magnox fleet indicate that the impacts vary greatly for different sites. For example, the GWP ranges from 0.89 to 7.14 g CO2 eq./kWh. If the impacts from storage of waste fuel at Sellafield are included in the estimates, the GWP increases on average by four times. Overall, decommissioning of the UK Magnox reactors would generate 2 Mt of CO2 eq. without and 11 Mt of CO2 eq. with the waste from Sellafield. This represents 0.4 and 2 % of the total UK annual emissions, respectively. The impacts of decommissioning can vary greatly at different sites depending on the amount of waste and electricity generated by the plants. Delaying decommissioning to allow the energy system to decarbonise could reduce the environmental impacts, e.g. GWP could be reduced by 50 %. The impacts could also be reduced by reducing the volume of waste and increasing recycling of materials. For example, recycling 70 % of steel would reduce the impacts on average by 34 %.In this study, a life cycle assessment of a bioplastic based diaper was performed. The product has several innovative elements, due to the implementation of eco-design principles, such as: (1) introduction of biopolymers (namely polylactic acid (PLA) and Mater-biA (R)), (2) relevant reduction of petrochemical plastics, and (3) minimization of energy consumptions and use of renewable energy in manufacturing. The aim of the study is to evaluate the environmental benefits gained through eco-innovation, while identifying further areas of improvement. The bio-based diaper has been evaluated using a "cradle-to-gate" analysis. The functional unit is one diaper, assuming an average size among the different commercial options. A case study of an enterprise in Italy (WIP S.p.A) was carried out to collect as much reliable primary data as possible. In order to highlight potential areas of improvement and to compare the environmental performance of the product, a sensitivity analysis based on three different impact assessment methods (adopting ReCiPe 2008, IMPACT 2002+ and Cumulative Energy Demand (CED)) and a comparison with a standard commercial diaper were performed. Finally, three possible end-of-life scenarios including composting of WIP diaper were hypothesized and tested. Contribution analysis suggested that sourcing and production of raw materials used in WIP diaper manufacturing contributed most significantly to the potential environmental impacts. Adopting ReCiPe method, pulp, and sodium polyacrylate present the highest environmental burdens in WIP diaper system. Applying IMPACT2002+ method, PLA relative contribution to the toxicity increases, due to the generation of the electricity used in corn production and in PLA production phases. For both methods, impacts related to energy consumption of the WIP diapers' production process look to be negligible. WIP diaper performance has room for improvement, since critical points were detected in the life cycle stages of raw materials used. However, the results of the normalization step, according to ReCiPe method, state that WIP diapers can bring environmental benefits, compared to standard ones. Moreover, if composting end-of-life scenario is included in the assessment, there is a significant improvement in WIP diaper environmental performance compared to a standard diaper. Integrating eco-innovation and eco-design principles in the production of the bio-based diaper leads to a better environmental profile, compared to the standard one. Nevertheless, there are several areas of concerns to be considered in order to further improve its environmental performance. So far, the possible improvements identified from the case study are: (1) the selection of biopolymers suppliers with better production systems from an environmental point of view, (2) the reduction of distances along the supply chain, and (3) the implementation of composting procedures for the end of life. In conclusion, the introduction of biopolymers in diaper composition could lead them to be preferable compared to standard diapers, but criticisms arise, which need to be solved, to avoid the risk of burdens shifting.Simulation plays a critical role in the design of products, materials, and manufacturing processes. However, there are gaps in the simulation tools used by industry to provide reliable results from which effective decisions can be made about environmental impacts at different stages of product life cycle. A holistic and systems approach to predicting impacts via sustainable manufacturing planning and simulation (SMPS) is presented in an effort to incorporate sustainability aspects across a product life cycle. Increasingly, simulation is replacing physical tests to ensure product reliability and quality, thereby facilitating steady reductions in design and manufacturing cycles. For SMPS, we propose to extend an earlier framework developed in the Systems Integration for Manufacturing Applications (SIMA) program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. SMPS framework has four phases, viz. design product, engineer manufacturing, engineer production system, and produce products. Each phase has its inputs, outputs, phase level activities, and sustainability-related data, metrics and tools. An automotive manufacturing scenario that highlights the potential of utilizing SMPS framework to facilitate decision making across different phases of product life cycle is presented. Various research opportunities are discussed for the SMPS framework and corresponding information models. The SMPS framework built on the SIMA model has potential in aiding sustainable product development.Advances in high-performance sensing and signal processing technology enable the development of failure-prognosis tools for wind turbines to detect, diagnose, and predict the systemwide effects of failure events. Although prognostics can provide valuable information for proactive actions in preventing system failures, the benefits have not been fully utilized for the operation and maintenance decision-making of wind turbines. This paper presents a generic failure prognosis informed decision-making tool for wind farm operation and maintenance while considering the predictive failure information of an individual turbine and its uncertainty. In the presented approach, the probabilistic damage growth model is used to characterize individual wind turbine performance degradation and failure prognostics, whereas the economic loss measured by monetary values and environmental performance measured by unified carbon credits are considered in the decision-making process. Based on customized wind farm information input, the developed decision-making methodology can be used to identify optimum and robust strategies for wind farm operation and maintenance in order to maximize economic and environmental benefits concurrently The efficacy of the proposed prognosis-informed maintenance strategy is compared with the condition-based maintenance strategy and demonstrated with a wind farm case study.In this paper we analyse and discuss the views of Swedish stakeholders on how to mitigate climate change to the extent it is caused by meat production. The stakeholders include meat producer organisations, governmental agencies with direct influence on meat production, political parties as well as non-governmental organisations. Representatives of twelve organisations were interviewed. Several organisations argued against the mitigation option of reducing beef production despite the higher greenhouse gas intensity of beef compared to pork and chicken meat (according to life cycle analysis). Regarding feed production some organisations proposed use of the best available industrial fertilizers, others were against all use of such fertilizers. Several organizations suggested domestic production of more protein-rich fodder and use of manure for biogas production. Regarding meat consumption the focus was on throwing away less food as waste and on eating less meat but the best (most climate friendly) meat, which was considered to be Swedish meat in contrast to imported meat. There was agreement on many issues. Most disagreement was found regarding political steering. We find many of the stakeholders' mitigation proposals regarding meat production and consumption acceptable. However, we are to some extent critical to their defence of Swedish beef production. We also point out certain problems with the suggestion to reduce consumption of imported meat but not of domestically produced meat.Consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) has emerged as a tool for estimating environmental impacts of changes in product systems that go beyond physical relationships accounted for in attributional LCA (ALCA). This study builds on recent efforts to use more complex economic models for policy-based CLCA. A partial market equilibrium (PME) model, called the U.S. Forest Products Module (USFPM), is combined with LCA to analyze an energy demand scenario in which wood use increases 400 million cubic meters in the United States for ethanol production. Several types of indirect economic and environmental impacts are identified and estimated using USFPM-LCA. A key finding is that if wood use for biofuels increases to high levels and mill residue is used for biofuels and replaced by natural gas for heat and power in forest products mills, then the increased greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas could offset reductions obtained by substituting biofuels for gasoline. Such high levels of biofuel demand, however, appear to have relatively low environmental impacts across related forest product sectors.This paper presents an environmental life cycle assessment of a roof-integrated flexible solar cell laminate with tandem solar cells composed of amorphous silicon/nanocrystalline silicon (a-Si/nc-Si). The a-Si/nc-Si cells are considered to have 10% conversion efficiency. Their expected service life is 20years. The production scale considered is 100MWp per year. A comparison of the a-Si/nc-Si photovoltaic (PV) system with the roof-mounted multicrystalline silicon (multi-Si) PV system is also presented. For both PV systems, application in the Netherlands with an annual insolation of 1000kWh/m2 is considered. We found that the overall damage scores of the a-Si/nc-Si PV system and the multi-Si PV system are 0.012 and 0.010Ecopoints/kWh, respectively. For both PV systems, the impacts due to climate change, human toxicity, particulate matter formation, and fossil resources depletion together contribute to 96% of the overall damage scores. Each of both PV systems has a cumulative primary energy demand of 1.4MJ/kWh. The cumulative primary energy demand of the a-Si/nc-Si PV system has an uncertainty of up to 41%. For the a-Si/nc-Si PV system, an energy payback time of 2.3years is derived. The construction for roof integration, the silicon deposition, and etching are found to be the largest contributors to the primary energy demand of the a-Si/nc-Si PV system, whereas encapsulation and the construction for roof integration are the largest contributors to its impact on climate change. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The increasing energy demand, surging oil prices, depleting oil reserves and environmental pollution problems associated with the use of fossil fuels have sparked renewed interest to find out clean alternative fuels. Alcohols such as methanol, ethanol and butanol are competitive alternative fuels due to their liquid nature, high oxygen contents, high octane number and their production from renewable biomass. In this review, the fuel properties of these alcohols are compared with conventional gasoline and diesel fuel. The comparison of fuel properties represents that butanol has the potential to overcome the problems associated with the use of methanol and ethanol. Progresses of their production from different sources are also introduced. Further, several techniques such as alcohol-diesel fuel blends and alcohol-diesel fuel emulsions are discussed, especially for lower alcohols, in order to use them in diesel engines. The effects of diesel-alcohol blends on the combustion, performance and emissions of diesel engines are also analyzed. It is examined that blending of alcohols, along with some CN improver, to diesel fuels can reduce diesel engine emissions without adverse impacts on the performance of diesel engines. These studies also reveal that butanol is a better alternative for diesel fuel due to its superior fuel properties and miscibility with diesel fuel than those of methanol and ethanol. Finally, some critical conclusions and future research directions are highlighted. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Landfilling and recycling, the predominant waste management methods in Thailand have been evaluated in a life cycle perspective using a case study in Nonthaburi municipality. The major focus was to identify the effects of the recycling activities on the sustainability of the existing waste management. A set of relevant indicators has been used to evaluate the ultimate damages/effects related to environmental, economic and social aspects of waste management methods, including valorisation. "Damage to ecosystems" and "damage to abiotic resource" were considered as the most relevant indicators to assess environmental sustainability. "Life cycle cost" was used as the economic indicator. "Damage to human health" and "income based community well-being" were considered as the most relevant indicators for social sustainability assessment. The results obtained showed that recycling contributes substantially to improving overall social, economic and environmental sustainability of the waste management system. In fact, the recycling of 24 % of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) was found to compensate the negative environmental, economic and social impacts resulting from the landfilling of the remaining 76 % of MSW. Furthermore, the quantified results in relation to sustainability of recycling reflect the progress made in realizing the policy targets and policy effectiveness in Nonthaburi. Thus, the results of this study could be used to convince stakeholders involved in waste management about the overall benefits of recycling and its influences on sustainability for promoting and strengthening recycling activities in Thailand.Whereas life cycle assessment (LCA) is more and more used for assessing the environmental load of waste management systems and of biomass production and valorization systems, various scientific issues are still to be dealt with. The purpose of this paper is to enlighten these scientific issues and to describe the current attempt to overcome them. The method used has been to go through the steps of the LCA standardized framework (ISO 14040) and to outline at each step the points that could be improved and still deserve research efforts. The various identified issues are: in step 1 (goal and scope), the choice of attributional/consequential modelling, the difficult choice of the functional unit due to the highly multifunctional nature of such systems, the allocation choices and the need for spatial differentiation; in step 2 (inventory), the thorny issue of modelling such complex systems and properly estimating field emissions; in step 3 (impact assessment), the lack of appropriate impacts (such as odours) in current LCA impact categories; in step 4 (interpretation and use), research efforts are needed to understand and facilitate the way actors take over and use LCA multi-criteria results. A transversal issue, i. e. uncertainty characterization and reduction, is also analyzed. These various scientific bottlenecks are currently under study; some are handled by this `` Waste and Biomass Valorization'' special topic, which includes a selection of papers presented in 2011 at the Ecotech& Tools conference (Montpellier, France).This study presents the energy and environmental performance assessment of producing magnesium hydroxide (Mg(OH)(2)) from Mg-silicates for CO2 mineral sequestration applied to a natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plant. Mg(OH)(2) produced via a closed loop reaction of serpentinite and ammonium sulfate (AS), precipitation of Mg(OH)(2) and AS looping/recovery binds CO2 into a thermodynamically stable, environmentally benign and leak-free magnesium carbonate (MgCO3). We used results from laboratory, modeling and life cycle assessment (LCA) studies to determine the extent to which magnesium (Mg) from serpentinite rock can be converted to Mg(OH)(2), the effects of reaction parameters, scalability and the associated life cycle greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). We found that reaction temperature positively affects Mg extraction from serpentinite, reaching a maximum yield at different temperatures depending on the reaction time. Also, the reactor properties affect the extraction results as the optimal extraction yield and conditions reported for different reactors differ. While the process of producing Mg(OH)(2) is promising, it also possesses a level of energy and environmental burden that cannot be ignored when considering large scale implementation. At 100% conversion and recovery of reagent, the CO2 mineralization process has a life cycle global warming potential (GWP) of 433 kg CO2 equivalents per ton CO2 (CO(2)e/t-CO2). This value increases by 82, 7 and 0.4 kg CO(2)e/t-CO2 for every %-point efficiency loss of AS recovery, Mg(OH)(2) production and Mg(OH)(2) carbonation respectively. Mineral sequestration applied to the 555 MW NGCC plant reduces its net plant efficiency from 50.2% to 38.6%-points (an energy penalty of 30%) but avoids 51% of the GHG emissions to the atmosphere. The results from this study are timely, and could have significant implications on mineral sequestration methods that consider the exothermic nature of the overall mineral carbonation chemistry beneficial. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A single-plant biobased composite material was prepared from fibre and matrix constituents produced from the castor plant, ricinus communis. It is shown that the mechanical properties of the castor plant fibres are comparable to those of other bast fibres and that the stiffness and strength characteristics of the castor fibre/polyamide 11 biocomposite compare well with those of other natural fibre composites. By using a biobased thermoplastic matrix material the reliance on non-renewable feedstock sources is reduced and end-of-lifetime recyclability is improved. The analysis of the environmental performance of the new castor plant composite suggests that the biobased material has great potential as a sustainable alternative replacing glass fibre-reinforced plastics.An integrated approach is required to optimise fish farming systems by maximising output while minimising their negative environmental impacts. We developed a holistic approach to assess the environmental performances by combining two methods based on energetic and physical flow analysis. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a normalised method that estimates resource use and potential impacts throughout a product's life cycle. Emergy Accounting (EA) refers the amount of energy directly or indirectly required by a product or a service. The combination of these two methods was used to evaluate the environmental impacts of three contrasting fish-farming systems: a farm producing salmon in a recirculating system (RSF), a semi-extensive polyculture pond (PF1) and an extensive polyculture pond (PF2). The RSF system, with a low feed-conversion ratio (FCR = 0.95), had lower environmental impacts per tonne of live fish produced than did the two pond farms, when the effects on climate change, acidification, total cumulative energy demand, land competition and water dependence were considered. However, RSF was clearly disconnected from the surrounding environment and depended highly on external resources (e.g. nutrients, energy). Ponds adequately incorporated renewable natural resources but had higher environmental impacts due to incomplete use of external inputs. This study highlighted key factors necessary for the successful ecological intensification of fish farming, i.e., minimise external inputs, lower the FCR, and increase the use of renewable resources from the surrounding environment. The combination of LCA and EA seems to be a practical approach to address the complexity of optimising biophysical efficiency in aquaculture systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work, we analyze the effect of demand uncertainty on the multi-objective optimization of chemical supply chains (SC) considering simultaneously their economic and environmental performance. To this end, we present a stochastic multi-scenario mixed-integer linear program (MILP) with the unique feature of incorporating explicitly the demand uncertainty using scenarios with given probability of occurrence. The environmental performance is quantified following life cycle assessment (LCA) principles, which are represented in the model formulation through standard algebraic equations. The capabilities of our approach are illustrated through a case study. We show that the stochastic solution improves the economic performance of the SC in comparison with the deterministic one at any level of the environmental impact. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique used to assess the environmental impact of products, processes, or materials. Recently, its importance as a decision making tool to help evaluate current inventories and innovation of environmentally responsible products has grown; however, the amount of information needed to completely assess even the simplest produces environmental impact may require significant time and resources. Myriad quantitative and qualitative effort-reducing strategies have been considered to accelerate the pace and reduce the cost of LCA. Although these streamlining methodologies reduce the time and effort of conducting LCA, they introduce variability and uncertainty into the results, creating a challenge for stakeholders who may need to make decisions based on the information. This Article explores the impact of streamlining on the credibility of LCA results given the uncertainty in the context of several case studies related to materials production in common consumer products. A technique for the structured analysis of the bill of materials is proposed, which leverages statistical analysis in the context of uncertainty.In order to investigate the potential for process intensification, various reaction conditions were applied to the Kolbe-Schmitt synthesis starting from resorcinol. Different CO2 precursors such as aqueous potassium hydrogencarbonate, hydrogencarbonate-based ionic liquids, DIMCARB, or sc-CO2, the application of microwave irradiation for fast volumetric heating of the reaction mixture, and the effect of harsh reaction conditions were investigated. The experiments, carried out in conventional batch-wise as well as in continuously operated microstructured reactors, aimed at the development of an environmentally benign process for the preparation of 2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid. To provide decision support toward a green process design, a research-accompanying simplified life cycle assessment (SLCA) was performed throughout the whole investigation. Following this approach, it was found that convective heating methods such as oil bath or electrical heating were more beneficial than the application of microwave irradiation. Furthermore, the consideration of workup procedures was crucial for a holistic view on the environmental burdens.The Marcellus Shale (MS) represents a large potential source of energy in the form of tightly trapped natural gas (NG). Producing this NG requires the use of energy and water, and has varying environmental impacts, including greenhouse gases. One well-established tool for quantifying these impacts is life-cycle assessment (LCA). This study collected information from current operating companies to perform a process LCA of production for MS NG in three areas-greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy consumption, and water consumption-under both present (2011-2012) and past (2007-2010) operating practices. Energy return on investment (EROI) was also calculated. Information was collected from current well development operators and public databases, and combined with process LCA data to calculate per-well and per-MJ delivered impacts, and with literature data on combustion for calculation of impacts on a per-kWh basis during electricity generation. Results show that GHG emissions through combustion are similar to conventional natural gas, with an EROI of 12:1 (90% confidence interval of 4:1-13:1), lower than conventional fossil fuels but higher than unconventional oil sources.Synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer has played a key role in enhancing food production and keeping half of the world's population adequately fed. However, decades of N fertilizer overuse in many parts of the world have contributed to soil, water, and air pollution; reducing excessive N losses and emissions is a central environmental challenge in the 21st century. China's participation is essential to global efforts in reducing N-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because China is the largest producer and consumer of fertilizer N. To evaluate the impact of China's use of N fertilizer, we quantify the carbon footprint of China's N fertilizer production and consumption chain using life cycle analysis. For every ton of N fertilizer manufactured and used, 13.5 tons of CO2-equivalent (eq) (t CO2-eq) is emitted, compared with 9.7 t CO2-eq in Europe. Emissions in China tripled from 1980 [131 terrogram (Tg) of CO2-eq (Tg CO2-eq)] to 2010 (452 Tg CO2-eq). N fertilizer-related emissions constitute about 7% of GHG emissions from the entire Chinese economy and exceed soil carbon gain resulting from N fertilizer use by several-fold. We identified potential emission reductions by comparing prevailing technologies and management practices in China with more advanced options worldwide. Mitigation opportunities include improving methane recovery during coal mining, enhancing energy efficiency in fertilizer manufacture, and minimizing N overuse in field-level crop production. We find that use of advanced technologies could cut N fertilizer-related emissions by 20-63%, amounting to 102-357 Tg CO2-eq annually. Such reduction would decrease China's total GHG emissions by 2-6%, which is significant on a global scale.A comparative environmental study is reported of nuclear-based hydrogen production using thermochemical water decomposition cycles. The investigation uses a life cycle assessment (LCA) as is an analytical tool to evaluate and reduce the environmental impact of the system or product. The LCA results are presented in terms of acidification potential and global warming potential. Since LCA often utilizes software to model and analyse the system, an artificial neural network (ANN) method can be advantageous. Here, an ANN method is applied to a nuclear-based hydrogen production system. Using an ANN method in this study eliminates the need to use LCA software separately and facilitates the determination of the impacts of altering input parameters of a system (e.g., heat, work, production capacity and plant lifetime). The neural network approach to identify the best system option, consistent with LCA software results, is developed here using ten neurons in the hidden layers. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Commonly, the main contributors to the environmental impacts of desalination are energy consumptions and chemical usage. In this work, two alternatives for pretreatment of seawater feed to Fujairah-1 seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant in United Arab Emirates, were compared: sedimentation-based and ultrafiltration (UF) membrane-based pretreatment. Life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology was applied in this case study research, based on real data from the Fujairah-1 plant for the sedimentation-based system and full design data for the alternative UF system, provided by X-Flow (R). By use of the LCA, a comprehensive environmental modeling of the considered options was conducted. The pretreatment systems, including their components (e.g., equipment) and material and energy flows throughout their lifetime, were modeled. Environmental impacts of these systems, using alternative energy mixes, were also modeled. Our findings indicate that a membrane-based pretreatment has a lower environmental impact, throughout the system's life cycle, than the existing sedimentation-based pretreatment in the Fujairah-1 desalination plant. This result holds under all alternative energy mix assumptions; including renewable, natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy. Our findings also show that the most significant contributor to the overall environmental impacts of both pretreatment systems is energy consumption. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Bioethanol is produced mainly from sugar cane and corn. In the last years it has been subject of debate due to the effects in food prices and land use change. The use of lignocellulosic materials for bioethanol production, such as agroindustry, forestry and municipal residues, wood or dendroenergetic species, has been proposed as a sustainable way for producing this biofuel. The design of a sustainable process for producing bioethanol requires a methodological approach whereby economical, environmental and social criteria are systematically integrated from the early stages of process design. Results: Until now a methodology for guiding the design of a sustainable process for bioethanol production is not available, and there are just a few studies on this subject. Moreover, with the recent global concerns on climate change, developed technologies have been confronted with additional requirements to validate their sustainability. In this sense, the inclusion of sustainability criteria on process design becomes necessary for defining a systematic methodology to select the most appropriate operations in the process stages to achieve a sustainable bioethanol production. Conclusions: A description of the stages for the production of bioethanol from lignocellulosic materials is provided in this review and the main findings in relation to the more important sustainability indicators are presented.Six dairy farms with the same on-farm area and milk production were compared. One farm (G-No) used grass as the sole forage for a herd of Normande cows, a dual-purpose breed. Three farms, with Holstein cows, varied forage for the herd from grass only (G-Ho) to low (G/LM-Ho) or high (G/HM-Ho) proportion of maize silage in the total forage area. Finally, two farms based on G/LM-Ho and G/HM-Ho systems aimed to increase omega-3 fatty acids in the winter diets of cows (G/LM/O3-Ho, G/HM/O3-Ho). Allocation methods (biophysical, protein, economic allocation) and system expansion applied for co-product (milk and meat) handling were examined. The impact categories considered were climate change, climate change including the effects of land use and land use change (CC/LULUC), cumulative energy demand, eutrophication, acidification and land occupation. The impacts per kg of fat-and-protein-corrected milk (FPCM) of G-No were highest, followed by those of G-Ho, G/LM-Ho and G/HM-Ho, regardless co-product handling methods and impact categories (except for eutrophication). CC/LULUC per kg FPCM of G/LM/O3-Ho and G/HM/O3-Ho were both 1% and 3% lower than those of G/LM-Ho and G/HM-Ho, respectively, but other impacts were higher. With system expansion, impacts per kg FPCM were lower than when allocation methods were used. Enteric fermentation was the greatest contributor (45-50%) to CC/LULUC, while grass production was the most important contributor to other impacts. The highest CC/LULUC (for G-No) can be explained by (1) G-No having the lowest milk yield/cow (though it produced the most meat) and (2) the fact that grass required more N fertiliser, but had lower yields than silage maize, even though grassland sequestered C. Among Holstein systems, increasing cow productivity by increasing feed intake (including maize silage and supplementing with concentrate) decreased impacts of milk. Reducing replacement rate and age of first calving also decreased impacts of milk. Increasing cow productivity reduced the amount of on-farm area required to produce a given amount of milk. Thus, the "liberated" on-farm area of Holstein systems was used to produce cash crops, and total impacts of these systems were lower than those of G-No (except for eutrophication and land occupation). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Along with population growth, rapid urbanization and industrialization process, the volume of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in China has been increasing sharply in the past 30 years and the total amount of MSW yields will continue to increase. Nowadays, due to global warming warrants particular attention throughout the world, a series of air pollutants (including greenhouse gases, odorous gases, PCDD/Fs, heavy metals, PM, etc.) discharged from waste disposal and treatment processes have become one of the new significant emerging air pollution sources, which arousing great concerns about their adverse effects on surrounding ambient air quality and public health. At present, the overall safely disposed ratio of the collected MSW in China is reported at approximately 78% in 2010, and there are mainly three types of MSW disposal methods practiced in China, including landfill, composting and incineration. The characteristics of air pollutants and greenhouse gases discharge vary substantially among different MSW disposal methods. By presenting a thorough review of MSW generation in China and providing a summarization of the current status of MSW disposal methods practices, this review article makes an integrated overview analysis of existing air pollution problems associated with MSW collection, separation, and disposal processes. Furthermore, some comprehensive control proposals to prevent air pollution for improving MSW management of China in the future are put forward. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, we investigate a solar-assisted biomass gasification system for hydrogen production and assess its performance thermodynamically using actual literature data. We also analyze the entire system both energetically and exergetically and evaluate its performance through both energy and exergy efficiencies. Three feedstocks, namely beech charcoal, sewage sludge and fluff, are considered as samples in the same reactor. While energy efficiencies vary from 14.14% to 27.29%, exergy efficiencies change from 10.43% to 23.92%. We use a sustainability index (SI), as a function of exergy efficiency, to calculate the impacts on sustainable development and environment. This index changes from 1.12 to 1.31 due to intensive utilization of solar energy. Also, environmental impact of these systems is evaluated through calculating the specific greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They are determined to be 17.97, 17.51 and 26.74 g CO2/MJ H-2 for beech charcoal, sewage sludge and fluff, respectively. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper proposes a multiobjective, mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model for the superstructure optimization of hydrocarbon biorefineries via gasification pathway under economic and environmental criteria. The proposed hydrocarbon biorefinery superstructure includes a number of major processing stages, such as drying of the cellulosic biomass feedstocks, air separation unit, gasification, syngas conditioning, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, hydroprocessing, power generation, and the diesel and gasoline production. The superstructure considers alternatives of technologies and equipment, such as gasification technologies, cooling options, hydrogen production sources, and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis catalysts. The economic objective is measured by the net present value (NPV), and the environmental concern is measured using global warming potential (GWP) that follows the life cycle assessment procedures, which evaluates the gate-to-gate environmental impacts of hydrocarbon biofuels. The multiobjective MINLP model simultaneously determines the technology selection, operation conditions, flow rate of each stream, energy consumption of each unit, economic performance, environmental impacts, and equipment sizes. The multiobjective MINLP problem is solved with the e-constraint method. The resulting Pareto-optimal curve reveals the trade-off between the economic and environmental performances. The optimal solution reveals that the high-temperature gasification, direct cooling, internal hydrogen production and cobalt catalysis have the best environmental and economic performances. At the breakeven point, where the optimal NPV is 0, the unit production cost of hydrocarbon biorefinery is $4.43 per gasoline-equivalent gallon (GEG) with unit GWP of 20.92 kg CO2 eqv./GEG. In the case of maximum NPV of $810 MM, the corresponding unit production cost is $3.17/GEG. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Information and communications technology (ICT) contributes substantially to global greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutant emissions, but it is time-consuming, to estimate the environmental impacts caused by the production of ICT devices, and the literature lacks coverage for newer products Using a process sum life cycle assessment (LCA); approach, we estimate and compare the embodied GHG emissions of 11 ICT products, including large- and small-form-factor desktop and : laptop personal computers, a: thin client device, an LCD monitor, newer mobile devices (an Apple iPad, an iPod Touch, and an. Amazon Kindle), a:rack server, and a network switch. Full bills of materials are provided via hand disassembly and weighing and are mapped to processes in the ecoinvent v2.2 database to produce impact estimates. Results are analyzed to develop simplified impact estimation models using linear regressions based on product characteristics. A simple and robust linear relationship between mass and embodied emissions is identified; a more sophisticated linear model using display mass, battery Mass, and circuit board mass as inputs is slightly more accurate. Embodied GHG emissions for newer products are 50-60% lower than corresponding older products with similar functionality, largely due to decreased material usage, especially reductions in integrated circuit content.Since Fukushima, few people still consider nuclear power as a safe technology. The explosion of Deepwater Horizon was yet another incident revealing the dangers involved in the hunt for fossil fuels. Despite the public attention and outrage at these events, neither the concept of environmental citizenship, nor the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has prevailed in the struggle against environmental degradation. Economic growth offsets efficiency gains, while strategies for energy sufficiency are usually not seriously considered. Action toward a more sustainable society, for example, a 2000 W- and 1 ton CO2-society, must be taken by individuals but further incentives must be set In order to provide individuals with detailed information about their mitigation options, we took the results from a survey of environmental behavior of 3369 Swiss Citizens, and combined them with life cycle assessment Our results from this bottom-up approach show a huge bandwidth of the ecological footprints among the individuals interviewed. We conclude that a continuous consumption of not more than 2000 W per person seems possible for the major part of the population in this society. However, it will be far more difficult not to exceed 1 ton CO2 per capita.We present results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of Marcellus shale gas used for power generation. The analysis employs the most extensive data set of any LCA of shale gas to date, encompassing data from actual gas production and power generation operations. Results indicate that a typical Marcellus gas life cycle yields 466 kg CO(2)eq/MWh (80% confidence interval: 450-567 kg CO(2)eq/MWh) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 224 gal/MWh (80% CI: 185-305 gal/MWh) of freshwater consumption. Operations associated with hydraulic fracturing constitute only 1.2% of the life cycle GHG emissions, and 6.2% of the life cycle freshwater consumption. These results are influenced most strongly by the estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) of the well and the power plant efficiency: increase in either quantity will reduce both life cycle freshwater consumption and GHG emissions relative to power generated at the plant. We conclude by comparing the life cycle impacts of Marcellus gas and U.S. coal: The carbon footprint of Marcellus gas is 53% (80% CI: 44-61%) lower than coal, and its freshwater consumption is about 50% of coal. We conclude that substantial GHG reductions and freshwater savings may result from the replacement of coal-fired power generation with gas-fired power generationEnvironmental impacts of conventional and emerging perchlorate drinking water treatment technologies were assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA). Comparison of two ion exchange (IX) technologies (i.e., nonselective LX with periodic regeneration using brines and perchlorate-selective IX without regeneration) at an existing plant shows that brine is the dominant contributor for nonselective IX, which shows higher impact than perchlorate-selective IX. Resource consumption during the operational phase comprises >80% of the total impacts. Having identified consumables as the driving force behind environmental impacts, the relative environmental sustainability of IX, biological treatment, and catalytic reduction technologies are compared more generally using consumable inputs. The analysis indicates that the environmental impacts of heterotrophic biological treatment are 2-5 times more sensitive to influent conditions (i.e, nitrate/oxygen concentration) and are 3-14 times higher compared to IX. However, autotrophic biological treatment is most environmentally beneficial among all Catalytic treatment using carbon supported Re-Pd has a higher (ca. 4600 times) impact than others, but is within 0.9-30 times the impact of IX with a newly developed ligand-complexed Re-Pd catalyst formulation. This suggests catalytic reduction can be competitive with increased activity. Our assessment shows that while IX is an environmentally competitive, emerging technologies also show great promise from an environmental sustainability perspective.At present there is a very high level of interest in public-private partnerships in the provision and timely maintenance of highway infrastructure. Although in the past a number of jurisdictions around the world developed toll ring roads and sometimes radial roads in major urban areas, the current heightened interest in toll facilities is unprecedented, given that it even extends to the level of toll lanes. The experience of a number of existing public-private partnership type of toll facilities suggests that risk variables are encountered in the development, operations and maintenance/rehabilitation phases. According to literature sources, although the financial and research community are aware of the need to address risk, only a small number of practitioners carry out a detailed risk assessment. There could be a number of reasons for inaction. One of these is the lack of awareness of methodologies that address risk in key parts of the life cycle. This article identifies risk factors in the lifecycle analysis of a toll road and suggests measures to address risks. A methodological framework and constituent components are described while highlighting risk factors in the revenue estimation and maintenance/rehabilitation phases. Risk analysis methods, namely sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo simulation and Bayesian statistical method are illustrated. The conclusions are drawn from the synthesis of information and analyses carried out on the merits of treating risk factors in toll road life cycle analysis.Since signing the Kyoto Protocol, efforts in the search of processes to slow climate change down have been increased. In the case of the manufacture of bituminous mixtures, new products and procedures that allow a significant reduction of emissions of greenhouse fumes and consumption of energy resources, keeping the demanded benefits, have been developed. However, there is still some reluctance to use them, due to the ignorance of the manufacturers about the changes needed in the asphalt plants to adapt their technology, as well as about the economic consequences of their use. Therefore, this paper shows an analysis of the key technologies used to manufacture mixtures at low temperature that exist nowadays. Changes in plants to incorporate these new technologies are detailed, and an economical and environmental balance that compares the manufacture of these mixes with the traditional hot mixes is carried out. Everything with the aim of encouraging producers and Authorities to employ these new products, both effective, environmentally sustainable and profitable.In a context of food security concerns, reducing huge and worldwide food losses and waste (more than one third of food production) is the priority action to focus on. The paper aims at explaining at which levels packaging could be a key player for sustainable food consumption: (i) by improving food preservation, and therefore reducing food losses, by balancing cold chain issues with modified atmosphere packaging implementation which means to develop food requirements driven approaches to design tailor made packaging, (ii) by reducing the environmental impact of the packaging materials themselves, including wastes management issues, which means developing eco-friendly packaging and (iii) by reaching a compromise to answer the sometimes contradictory concerns of environmental, economical and social sustainability of food, using decision-making tools to select or design optimised food packaging. An example of a current European research project, EcoBioCAP, illustrates how the combination of both specialised and integrated researches makes it possible to improve the overall sustainability of food packaging.Ecological footprint analysis (EFA) can be used by cities to account for their on-going demands on global renewable resources. To date, EFA has not been fully implemented as an urban policy and planning tool in part due to limitations of local data availability. In this paper we focus on the material consumption component of the urban ecological footprint and identify the 'component, solid waste life cycle assessment approach' as one that overcomes data limitations by using data many cities regularly collect: municipal, solid waste composition data which serves as a proxy for material consumption. The approach requires energy use and/or carbon dioxide emissions data from process LCA studies as well as agricultural and forest land data for calculation of a material's ecological footprint conversion value. We reviewed the process LCA literature for twelve materials commonly consumed in cities and determined ecological footprint conversion values for each. We found a limited number of original LCA studies but were able to generate a range of values for each material. Our set of values highlights the importance for cities to identify both the quantities consumed and per unit production impacts of a material. Some materials like textiles and aluminum have high ecological footprints but make up relatively smaller proportions of urban waste streams than products like paper and diapers. Local government use of the solid waste LCA approach helps to clearly identify the ecological loads associated with the waste they manage on behalf of their residents. This direct connection can be used to communicate to citizens about stewardship, recycling and ecologically responsible consumption choices that contribute to urban sustainability.The purpose of this study is to assess the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a mechanochemical method for preparing cellulose nanofibers (CNF) from woody biomass using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The energy requirements and GHG emissions from CNF production were compared to those of petroleum-based polymers to evaluate the environmental performance of CNF as a reinforcement of polypropylene (PP) or other petroleum-based polymers. The functional unit used in this study was 1 kg dry CNF. The background data (emission factors of industrial steam and water, wood density, grid emission factor, etc.) were collected from the Inventory Database for Environmental Analysis (IDEA) and published literature. The foreground data (power, heat, and water requirements in a CNF production plant) were obtained from pilot plant experiments. The energy requirement for preparing CNF was 11.1 to 30.2 MJ kg(-1), which was lower than that of petroleum-based polymers (63.4 to 131.0 MJ kg(-1)). The GHG emissions of preparing CNF ranged from 1.2 to 3.7 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1), without accounting for carbon fixation of the biomass. The water consumption for producing CNF was 17.8 to 19.4 L kg(-1), which was much lower than that of petroleum-based polymers (192.6 to 960.8 L kg(-1)). When the CNF were used to produce a composite with PP, the maximum GHG reduction was 2.4 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1), taking into account carbon fixation of the biomass. The results showed that the utilization of CNF prepared from woody biomass using the mechanochemical method could contribute to saving energy and mitigating GHG emissions.This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary forage type and concentrate-to-forage ratio (CTFR) on CH4 emissions from dairy cows in China using the SF6 tracer method. Rumen fluid concentrations of NH4-N and VFA, rumen fluid pH, and daily milk yield were measured as well. The dietary regimens included: corn stalks (dry corn stalks after corn harvest) as the forage source at CTFR of 40:60 (ration A), corn silage as the forage source at CTFR of 40:60 (ration B), and corn silage as the forage source at CTFR of 60:40 (ration C). Twelve dairy cows (body weight = 525 +/- 12 kg, mean +/- SE) were divided into three groups of four animals each, balanced in age and body weight, and randomly allocated to the dietary treatments. The study was run for 25 days, with the first 15 days used for adjustment and the subsequent 10 days used fbr response measurement. The dietary treatments ranked ration A > ration B> ration C for CH4 emissions quantity (L d(-1) head(-1)), rumen fluid pH, acetic acid concentration, and ratio of acetic acid and propionic acid concentration. For example, CH4 emissions (mean +/- SE) for rations A, B, and C were 353 +/- 13.4, 283 +/- 7.48, and 263 +/- 9.04 L d(-1) head(-1), respectively, or 335 +/- 12.75, 270 +/- 7.12, and 250 +/- 8.6 L d(-1) AU(-1) (AU = 500 kg live weight). On the other hand, the treatments ranked ration A < ration B < ration C for concentrations of NH3-N, propionic acid, and butyric acid in the rumen fluid This study indicates that CH4 emissions intensity from dairy cows (g kg(-1) milk output) can be significantly reduced by using corn silage as a forage source and by increasing the content of concentrates in the ration. Compared with rations B and C, ration A increased CH4 emissions by 25% and 34% (p < 0.01), respectively A full assessment of the effectiveness of such an improved feeding management, through life cycle analysis, in reducing carbon footprint would be warranted in future studies.In this work we present a mathematical optimization based methodology for simultaneous formulae and process design in the consumer product business applied to the case of the laundry detergent. The design of a new detergent is formulated as a modified pooling problem including process, performance, processability and environmental constraints. This new features add a number of nonlinearities related to the modeling of the different aspects of the process and customer acceptance. The problem becomes a multiobjective optimization problem that is solved using the epsilon-constraint method with global optimization techniques to minimize of the environmental impact while minimizing the production cost for a couple of case studies. As future work, further process, product and legal constraints can be added to make the problem more realistic. (c) 2012 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper compares the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of natural gas (NG)-based fuels to the GHG emissions of electric vehicles (EVs) powered with NG-to-electricity in China. A life-cycle model is used to account for full fuel cycle and use-phase emissions, as well as vehicle cycle and battery manufacturing. The reduction of life-cycle GHG emissions of EVs charged by electricity generated from NG, without utilizing carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology can be 36%-47% when compared to gasoline vehicles. The large range change in emissions reduction potential is driven by the different generation technologies that could in the future be used to generate electricity in China. When CCS is employed in power plants, the GHG emission reductions increase to about 71%-73% compared to gasoline vehicles. It is found that compressed NG (CNG) and liquefied NG (LNG) fuels can save about 10% of carbon as compared to gasoline vehicles. However, gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel made through the Fischer-Tropsch method will likely lead to a life-cycle GHG emissions increase, potentially 3%-15% higher than gasoline, but roughly equal to petroleum-based diesel. When CCS is utilized, the GTL fueled vehicles emit roughly equal GHG emissions to petroleum-based diesel fuel high-efficient hybrid electric vehicle from the life-cycle perspective.The promotion of hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs) has been proposed as one promising solution for reducing transport energy consumption and mitigating vehicular emissions in China. In this study, the energy and environmental impacts of hybrid and EVs during 2010-2020 were evaluated through an energy conversion analysis and a life cycle assessment (LCA), and the per-kilometer energy consumptions of gasoline, coal, natural gas (NG), oil, biomass, garbage and electricity for EVs and HEVs were estimated. Results show that the EVs and HEVs can reduce the energy consumption of vehicles by national average ratios of 17%-19% and 30%-33%, respectively. The study also calculated the detailed emission factors of SO2, NOX, VOC, CO, NH3, PM10, PM2.5, OC, EC, CO2, N2O, CH4, Pb and Hg. It is indicated that the HEVs can bring significant reductions of NOX, VOC and CO emissions and lesser decreases of SO2 and CO2 for a single vehicle. The EVs could decrease many of the VOC, NH3, CO and CO2 emissions, but increase the SO2, NOX and particles by 10.8-13.0, 2.7-2.9 and 3.6-11.5 times, respectively. In addition, the electricity sources had significant influence on energy consumption (EC) and emissions. A high proportion of coal-fired energy resulted in large ECs and emission factors. The total energy consumption and pollutants emission changes in 2015 and 2020 were also calculated. Based on the energy use and emission analysis of HEVs and EVs, it is suggested that EVs should be promoted in the regions with higher proportions of hydropower, natural gas-fired power and clean energy power, while HEVs can be widely adopted in the regions with high coal-fired power ratios. This is to achieve a higher energy consumption reduction and pollutant emission mitigation. Moreover, the results can also provide scientific support for the total amount control of regional air pollutants in China.This paper surveys decision support models that are commonly used in the solid waste management area. Most models are mainly developed within three decision support frameworks, which are the life-cycle assessment, the cost-benefit analysis and the multi-criteria decision-making. These frameworks are reviewed and their strengths and weaknesses as well as their critical issues are analyzed, while their possible combinations and extensions are also discussed. Furthermore, the paper presents how cooperative and non-cooperative game-theoretic approaches can be used for the purpose of modeling and analyzing decision-making in situations with multiple stakeholders. Specifically, since a waste management model is sustainable when considering not only environmental and economic but also social aspects, the waste management bargaining game is introduced as a specific decision support framework in which future models can be developed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This contribution provides implications for academic research and practitioners, as it identifies the lack, necessity and major benefits of transdisciplinary research and the collaboration of academics and industry in order to fulfill the goals of a sustainable supply chain. Closed-loop supply chain management is a major contributor to implementing sustainable operations. An essential prerequisite for successful realization is the expertise and cooperation of representatives from engineering, management and natural sciences as well as practice. We identify a need for transdisciplinary collaboration within two steps. First, a literature review points out that various research disciplines as well as practice mostly operate in isolation. Second, we develop a framework that highlights the benefits of collaboration between these research areas. This paper provides an overview to better understand current trends in this complex field, which is a rich area for research that is still in its infancy. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentGreen teams are frequently considered in the state-of-the-art literature as an essential factor for companies aiming to implement and improve environmental management approaches and practices. However, most of the available literature on green teams is conceptual and theoretical by nature. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to evaluate the main characteristics of green teams in Brazilian companies and to analyse the relationships between green teams and the maturity level of environmental management in those companies. Based on a conceptual background on corporate environmental management and green teams, a research was done in two complementary phases: a survey of 94 companies with ISO 14001 certification; and a multiple case study of four industrial companies. Survey results suggest that 82% of the studied companies have cross-functional green teams, i.e. involving various companies' departments; and 65% have functional green teams, i.e. individual department teams. The results of the case study suggest that the use of green teams is an instrument to the greening of companies with ISO 14001 in Brazil. The company with the most proactive and advanced environmental management is the same company which uses green teams more intensely. Green teams are especially necessary for implementing more technical environmental management practices, e.g. Life Cycle Assessment. Since this is one of the first studies analysing green teams, the results presented can be useful for companies and public policies aiming to implementation of environmental initiatives. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many manufacturing companies are looking for ways to substitute environmentally problematic cleaning methods for surface treatments with more environmentally friendly ones. In this paper, one potential solution is described. The Qlean method, based on cleaning with highly pure water (in this paper defined as Qlean Water), is a novel cleaning method. This method, now utilized at one plant at a leading major international electronic company, has substituted previous chemical-based methods for cleaning printed circuit boards prior to lacquering. This paper presents, based on that company's primary data, a comparative study using environmental analysis and economic life cycle cost review between cleaning with Qlean Water and conventional cleaning. The focus is on the environmental and economic performance of the two alternatives. The conclusion is that Qlean Water offers both a significant economic and environmental cost reduction and a better product. This is the case even though all identified economic benefits derived from using Qlean Water, e.g. that the quality and technical lifetime have been extended for the printed circuit boards with the Qlean Water cleaning method, are not considered in the economic analysis. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Digestate, the by-product of the anaerobic digestion, can present characteristics which would limit its recycling by direct use in agricultural soils. Composting can be a feasible treatment to stabilise digestate and thus, to improve its properties for using as a soil conditioner or substrate. The aim of this work was to study the viability of composting for the recycling of digestates after solid-liquid separation and the effect of the bulking agent used in the characteristics of the end-products obtained. For this, five piles were elaborated by mixing the solid fraction of a pig slurry digestate (SD) with different bulking agents (wheat straw (WS), vine shoot prunings (VP), exhausted grape marc (EGM) and pepper plant prunings (PP)). Also, one of these piles was watered with the liquid fraction of the pig slurry digestate (LD). Throughout the composting process, the temperature of the mixtures was monitored and physico-chemical, chemical, physical properties and maturity degree were determined. Also, factorial analysis (FA) was used for interpreting the data set of compost characteristics. The composts obtained showed a suitable degree of stability and maturity and suitable physical properties for their potential use as growing media. Also, the type of bulking agent strongly influenced the development of composting and the final properties of the composts, showing the mixtures with WS and VP the most suitable characteristics. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Home composting (also known as backyard composting) presents some potential benefits for the industrial treatment of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste or biowaste. Home composting avoids the collection of biowaste, reduces the impurities present in the waste being treated and, consequently, in the resulting compost, and theoretically decreases the material and energy needs of the process. However, self-composting requires a composting bin and pruning waste as bulking material as well as space in a garden or on a roof that is not always available. An alternative for the self-management of biowaste is vermicomposting, which requires less space and no bulking material. Both the home composting and vermicomposting methods were studied over an eight-month period to determine the quality of the compost produced, the capacity of the methodology and the resulting gaseous emissions. The treatment capacity of the composters used in this work was determined on a weekly basis. The vermicomposter had a treatment capacity of 50 g biowaste per L, whereas the home composter had a treatment capacity of 16 g biowaste per L The home composter required the addition of 6.3 g of bulking agent per L of composter. The quality of the final product, compost, was similar in both cases, with each batch of compost having low metal content and a high degree of stability, with Dynamic Respiration Indices of 0.43 and 0.89 mg O-2 g(-1) Organic Matter h(-1) for compost and vermicompost, respectively. Gaseous emissions from home composters show the presence of 1.3 kg NH3 Mg-1 biowaste and 1.35 kg CH4 Mg-1 biowaste, values that are within the range reported in the literature for home and industrial composting, although N2O emissions, 1.16 kg Mg-1 biowaste, were higher. Gaseous emissions from the vermicomposters were lower than from the home composters: 333 x 10(-3), 2.19 x 10(-3) and 3.66 x 10(-3) kg of pollutant Mg-1 biowaste for NH3, CH4 and volatile organic compounds, respectively. No odours were detected for either system. Home and vermicomposting can be considered suitable alternatives to divert a portion of the biowaste from the traditional waste-management system. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Enterprises comprise several functions, such as production, marketing, sales, human resources, logistics, safety and environment, which interact with each other. As a result, decision-making becomes highly challenging in the alignment of decisions to support the success of business goals. Specifically, environmental management is closely related to several levels in the enterprise structure, since they share a large amount of data and information. Hence, effective integration of environmental issues by means of tools improving information sharing and communication, may play a crucial role for the enhanced enterprise operation from an environmental perspective. In this sense, knowledge management technologies have proved to be highly promising for supporting this integration task. In this work, an ontological framework is developed as the technology for information and knowledge models sharing for the environmental assessment of the enterprise. The ontological model is applied to a case study considering a supply chain network design-planning and a process scheduling problem. The ontology provides an enterprise decision-making supporting tool by combining different information systems, which adapts and recognizes the different elements associated with the enterprise functions, and facilitates assessing the environmental performance of enterprises. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A quantitative assessment of the environmental impact of construction activities is useful to identify the main environmental impacts and to improve their environmental footprint. This study presents the life cycle assessment of an earthwork project. The results show that earthwork activities entail important environmental impacts; mainly energy consumption, global warming and human toxicity. This study proposes and implements cleaner production strategies, based on the hierarchy of waste management, to improve the environmental performance of the earthwork project. The approach allows reducing the amount of soil to be used by the earthwork project. Moreover both the diesel consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by about 41%. This coincides with a saving of about 1.76 million dollars. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mexico has set a desirable 50% reduction goal of Greenhouse Gas emissions by 2050, compared to the 2000 baseline. In this regard, all the activity sectors, including universities and research institutions, are encouraged to adopt similar targets. As a contribution to the national efforts on the subject, this paper presents the 2010 Greenhouse Gas emission inventory of the Institute of Engineering at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico based on the academic and research activities developed in 2010. The inventory report, generated according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and under a consumption based methodology integrating life-cycle assessment, considers the following activity categories: electric energy generation, vehicle fleet, purchased electricity, commuting, air travels, courier shipments, paper consumption and solid waste. The total Carbon Footprint of the Institute of Engineering in 2010 was calculated in about 1577 tCO(2)e, where 42% of the Greenhouse Gas emissions were generated by the use of electricity, 50% by transportation; including its own fleet and commuting vehicles, 5% by air travel, 1% by shipments, 1% by use of paper and 1% associated to the final disposal of solid waste. Four scenarios of potential reduction are proposed based on changes in commuting activity. From the proposed scenarios, the one with a combination of teleworking and carpooling is the most effective. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work presents an analysis of the different modes of the Turkish transportation sector along the guidelines of the Extended Exergy Accounting (EEA) method. The results refer to year 2006 because that was the most complete and sufficiently disaggregated database available. The evaluation of the transportation sector leads to the calculation of its extended exergetic efficiency (EEA(eff)) and requires the inclusion of all commercial and private transportation services (passengers and goods) as well as of all services directly related to transportation (post, cargo, pipeline transport, etc.). The environmental remediation costs (EEEnv) of sectoral solid waste and gas emissions (direct and indirect) are obtained in accordance with the original calculation procedure, without recurring to the conversion of monetary into exergetic costs. The resulting EEAeff of the sector is 0.36, which is rather low (in the EE sense), because of the sector's largely unsustainable structure: fossil-fuelled road transportation widely prevails, which not only destroys a very high percentage of the incoming exergy, but is also affected by quite large CO2-equivalent emissions that demand for a high EEEnv. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The end of the age of cheap oil and global warming are causing worldwide concerns about energy security and climate change mitigation. Recognizing that the continuous growth paradigm will not change at short to medium time periods, alternative energy sources to fossil fuels are being sought, in which a promising source seems to be that obtained from vegetal biomass. Specifically in Brazil, there are Conventional Ethanol Plants (CEP) using sugarcane, but due to the energy versus food debate and an increasing demand for ethanol, cellulosic ethanol produced by Biorefineries seems to be a viable option. The question is whether the Biorefinery is more sustainable than CEP. This work aims to assess the energetic-environmental performance of a Biorefinery scenario in Brazil, comparing its results against CEP and another alternative small-scale system. For this, a multi-criteria approach was considered through the following methodologies: Embodied Energy Analysis, Ecological Rucksack, Emergy Accounting and Gas Emission Inventory. Results show that Biorefinery scenario has better rating than CEP for the most indicators when the functional unit is mass of ethanol produced, but when dealing with overall system performance, the Biorefinery performance worse. Neither the Biorefinery nor CEP was superior for all indicators, showing the existence of a trade-off. On the other hand, the small-scale system suggests being the best alternative if the aim is to get higher energetic-environmental performance. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Whether to recycle the recyclable fraction in the MSW (municipal solid waste) or to incinerate it for energy recovery is a debating issue. In this paper we present a simple criterion to judge what type of waste components should be recycled or incinerated with energy recovery. According to the R1 formula presented by the waste framework directive (Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament), this paper calculates the energy performances of MSW waste-to-energy plants currently operated in Taiwan firstly. By using the assumed value of energy recovery efficiency and carbon emission costs, we compare the treatment methods between recycling (material recovery) and energy recovery by the cost and benefit analysis, and examine the suitability of recycling for waste fractions of paper, food waste, PET, PVC, and plastic bags/films under a variety of scenarios. The results show that food waste is more appropriate to be treated by recycling while plastic bags/films are suggested to be incinerated with energy recovery. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study presents the contributions of materials, earth engineering machines and construction techniques to potential environmental impacts from the main items of typical road earthworks. To achieve this goal, the overall activity at a 1.9-km long French earthworks project site for a heavily trafficked highway was surveyed during its 2007-2009 construction period. Using data collected and a numerical model of road life cycle assessment (LCA), i.e. ECORCE, six indicators could be evaluated, namely: energy consumption, global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical ozone creation, and human chronic toxicity. When available, several life cycle inventories were implemented in order to appraise indicator sensitivity with respect to the considered panel of pollutants. Results also allowed estimating from an LCA point of view: (i) the conservation of both aggregates and soil as induced by quicklime treatment and (ii) the duration necessary for projected traffic levels to offset the potential environmental impacts of the earthworks stage. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The cost of cellulases remains a key issue in the production of cellulosic ethanol, and the impact of enzymes on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of cellulosic ethanol has received little attention. This study evaluates life cycle emissions and cellulase production costs for bioethanol production, considering on-site and off-site production options. A complete enzyme production process was simulated using AspenPlus, generating mass and energy balance information required to calculate GHG emissions and financial metrics. GHG emissions for cellulase production range from 10.2 to 16.0 g CO2 eq g1 enzyme protein, depending on on-site or off-site production and the method of transportation. Enzyme GHG emissions are predicted to be 258 g CO2 eq. L1 of ethanol for on-site production, versus 403 g CO2 eq. L1 for off-site production, based on a 150 MMLY ethanol plant using 11.5 mg enzyme g1 substrate and a cellulase fermentation yield of 90%. Cellulase production costs were estimated for a range of conditions, including ethanol plant size, enzyme dose and protein yield for on-site production, and enzyme plant size, protein yield and return on investment for off-site production. On-site production costs range between $3.80 and $6.75 kg1 protein, versus $4.00 to $8.80 kg1 for off-site production. In both scenarios, the lowest cost corresponds to a 90% protein yield, and a high enzyme demand and production capacity. An enzyme production cost of $4.70 USD kg1 corresponds to an enzyme cost of 0.46 USD gal1 ($0.12 L1) of ethanol in a 150 MMLY plant using 11.5 mg enzyme g1 substrate. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis article presents a comparison of indicators based on an economy-wide material flow analysis, namely imports, exports, domestic material consumption, raw material equivalents of imports, raw material equivalents of exports and raw material consumption. These indicators were calculated for the Czech Republic for 1995-2010 using, besides an economy-wide material flow analysis, the hybrid input-output life cycle assessment method, which allows for a calculation of raw material equivalents of imports and exports. The results show that a calculation of indicators, which include raw material equivalents, is useful, as it provides some important information which is not obvious from imports, exports and domestic material consumption indicators. We have proved that the latter group of indicators provide the incorrect information regarding the environmental pressure trend related to material flows, underestimate the overall pressure related to foreign trade and provide incorrect information on the importance of various material categories in particular indicators. Consequently, in the case of the Czech Republic, the implications stemming from these points such as the very high dependency of the Czech production system on metal ores from abroad and a rather unequal distribution of environmental pressures between the Czech Republic and its trading partners have not been more thoroughly addressed by Czech economic, environmental and sustainability policies so far and present unresolved issues which will have to be dealt with in the future. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The inclusion of indirect land use change (ILUC) can dramatically affect the calculated greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of biofuels in comparison to conventional fuels. Due to the potential magnitude and impacts of ILUC, this concept is being included in many biofuel policies, such as the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) and California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The approaches to modeling ILUC are complex and fraught with uncertainties, and results tend to lack agreement. In this work, we have investigated the modeling approaches and emission factor databases employed to determine their effects on ILUC variability in several key studies, with particular focus on U.S. policy. The amount and location of ILUC, which is predicted by agro-economic models, vary greatly from the studies investigated: Searchinger et al. (2008) predicted more than twice the amount of land conversion compared to more recent studies that have used updated models. Even more influential, yet more understated, is the estimation of the type of land converted, since conversion of forests results in significantly greater GHG emissions than conversion from other land types, and RFS2 and LCFS have estimated only a fraction of conversion of forest in comparison to Searchinger. Additionally, many studies investigated have relied on the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) emission factor database to determine GHG emissions from ILUC, but each has applied data differently to arrive at different results. It is recognized that this database is coarse, so a more spatially explicit approach in the Winrock database, which has carbon stock data for over 750 regions worldwide, has been used in the RES2 fuel policy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was conducted for the Zn-electroplating products passivated by different processes in a small and medium enterprise: The Oar was to evaluate and to compare the environmental impact associated to the conventional and alternative passivation process from a "cradle to grave". analysis. The assessment was divided into "cradle to gate", "gate to gate", and "gate to grave" steps for natural resources usage and environmental burdens. The innovative process was based on the integration of emulsion pertraction technology to the passivation bath in order to extend its lifetime. Results showed that the transferred hazardous waste from the process to the landfill was the major contributor to the environmental impact of the conventional and innovative passivation. The manufacture of the sodium hydroxide needed in the wastewater treatment process had a main role in the impacts of the "cradle to gate" cycle. This work concluded that the innovative passivation decreased most of the generated waste (92%) during the manufacture cycle of the passivated product as a consequence of the extension of the lifetime of the passivation bath. A reduction of the total environmental burdens to air and to water and the resource usage during the whole manufacture cycle of the product was stated. The environmental burdens to air and to water were mainly connected to the environmental impacts: human health effects and ecotoxicity to aquatic life, respectively.The most stable forms of chromium in the environment are chromium (III) and chromium (VI), the former being relatively immobile and necessary for organisms, and the latter being highly soluble and toxic. It is thus important to characterise ecotoxicological impacts of Cr(VI). However, there are still some important uncertainties in the calculation of ecotoxicological impacts of heavy metals in the LCIA global approach. The aim of this paper is to understand how the spatial and dynamic characterization of life cycle inventory (LCI) data can be exploited in life cycle impact assessment and particularly for the evaluation of the aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicity of Cr(VI). To quantify these impacts, we studied an industrial waste landfill in the North of France that was contaminated with chromium. On the polluted area, the aquatic contamination is due to the slag heap as well as to chromium spots in soil. The soil contamination is mainly due to infiltration of chromium from the infill. The concentration of Cr(VI) in soil and water varies according to seasonal climatic variations and groundwater level. These variations have an effect on the Cr(VI) fate factor, in particular on transfer and residence time of the substance. This study underlines the spatial distribution of aquatic ecotoxicity and the temporal variation of freshwater ecotoxicity. We analysed the correlation between precipitation, temperature, concentration and ecotoxicity impact. With regards to the terrestrial ecotoxicity, the study focused on the vertical variation of the ecotoxicity and the major role of the soil layer composition into terrestrial pollution.Cork forest systems are responsible for making an important economic contribution to the Mediterranean region, especially Portugal where the cork oak woodlands or montados contain about 32% of the world's area. The environmental profile derived from reproduction cork production and extraction in two Portuguese regions (Tagus valley and Alentejo) representative of the Portuguese sector were assessed in detail using the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology from a cradle-to-gate perspective. The production line was divided into four stages considering all the processes involved: stand establishment, stand management, cork stripping and field recovery. According to the environmental results, there were remarkable differences between the two production scenarios mainly due to the intensity and repetition of forest activities even though the cork yield was reported to be the same. The management system in the Alentejo region presented the worse environmental profile in almost all the impact categories under assessment, mainly due to the shorter cycle duration of the mechanical cleaning and pruning processes. Cork stripping was identified in both scenarios as the production stage with the highest contribution to the environmental profile due to the cleaning and pruning processes. A sensitivity assessment concerning the cork yield was performed since the average production yields in the Portuguese montados are lower than the ones used in this study. Thus, if the cork yield is reduced, the environmental profile in both scenarios gets worse since almost all the forest activities involved are the same. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Policies formulated to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, such as a low-carbon fuel standard, frequently rely on life-cycle assessment (LCA) to estimate emissions, but LCA results are often highly uncertain. This study develops life-cycle models that quantitatively and qualitatively describe the uncertainty and variability in GHG emissions for both fossil fuels and ethanol and examines mechanisms to reduce those uncertainties in the policy process. Uncertainty regarding emissions from gasoline is non-negligible, with an estimated 90% confidence interval ranging from 84 to 100 g CO(2)e/MJ. Emissions from biofuels have greater uncertainty. The widths of the 90% confidence intervals for corn and switchgrass ethanol are estimated to be on the order of 100 g CO(2)e/MJ, and removing emissions from indirect land use change still leaves significant remaining uncertainty. Though an opt-in policy mechanism can reduce some uncertainty by incentivizing producers to self-report fuel production parameters, some important parameters, such as land use change emissions and nitrogen volatilization, cannot be accurately measured and self-reported. Low-carbon fuel policies should explicitly acknowledge, quantify, and incorporate uncertainty in life cycle emissions in order to more effectively achieve emissions reductions. Two complementary ways to incorporate this uncertainty in low carbon fuel policy design are presented. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electricity is unique among the alternative fuels in a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) policy, in that demand from vehicles is the major barrier to its usage, not supply. This paper presents a policy discussion and policy recommendations on a number of topics related to the regulation and incentives for fuel electricity within the LCFS. In the near-term, the LCFS will have a limited role in incentivizing the use of electricity and lowering the carbon intensity of electricity, and electricity will play a small role in meeting LCFS targets. Calculating a carbon intensity value for electricity is a complex process, requiring many decisions and trade-offs to be made, including allocation methods, system boundaries, temporal resolution and how to treat electricity demand for vehicle charging. These choices along with other regulatory decisions about who can obtain LCFS credits will influence the incentives for providing electricity and charging infrastructure relative to other low-carbon fuels as well as across different electricity providers. The paper discusses how fuel electricity would fit into an LCFS, identifying those special characteristics that could reduce the effectiveness of the policy. It also provides specific recommendations to enable better policy design that appropriately incentivizes the use of low-carbon fuels. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biogas production processes are often multifunctional systems, which also produce fertilizers from digested sludge. The environmental impacts of such systems are usually determined using life cycle assessment (LCA). There are alternative approaches to conduct the LCA, e.g., allocation of emissions based on a product's and co-product's energy content according to the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), or substitution without allocation according to the ISO 14040 standard. We calculated the climate change impacts of biogas production using these two alternative methods, whilst also considering process modifications of the base case biogas production process. The aim was to find out whether the production system achieves the saving targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions set by the RED. Since the RED enables different interpretations of its calculation rules, we created four case studies representing alternative ways to allocate the emissions to the reject water and solid fractions separated from the sludge. Consequently, our emission estimates for the base case vary between 16.9 and 47.7 g CO2/MJ, while the emission savings range from 42% to 80%. Most of the case studies achieved the most stringent saving target (60%). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chemical looping reforming (CLR) is a novel technology that can be used for reforming of cheaply available abundant biofuel like ethanol for the production of hydrogen/syngas for fuel cells. A systematic thermodynamic study for the CLR process using selected oxygen carriers was done to analyze the products and energy requirements of the CLR process in the temperature range of 5001200 degrees C at 1bar pressure for ethanol. The results showed favorable conditions for syngas manufacture from this process. Fe2O3 was found to be the best performing oxygen carrier followed by calcium and sodium sulfates, while Mn oxides were the least preferred oxygen carriers for CLR of ethanol process. The optimum process temperature was found to be 1000 degrees C. The actual CLR-ethanol process shows exothermicity against the theoretical endothermic partial oxidation of ethanol. The results obtained in this theoretical study can pave the way for experimental programs for syngas generation for SOFC-type fuel cells. Similar studies can be undertaken for other fuels for fuel processor development by CLR process. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The environmental profiles of photovoltaic (PV) systems are becoming better as materials are used more efficiently in their production, and overall system performance improves. Our analysis details the material and energy inventories in the life cycle of high-concentration PV systems, and, based on measured field-performances, evaluates their energy payback times, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, and usage of land and water. Although operating high-concentration PV systems require considerable maintenance, their life cycle environmental burden is much lower than that of the flat-plate c-Si systems operating in the same high-insolation regions. The estimated energy payback times of the Amonix 7700 PV system in operation at Phoenix, AZ, is only 0.9year, and its estimated greenhouse gas emissions are 27g CO2-eq./kWh over 30years, or approximately 16g CO2-eq./kWh over 50years. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The environmental problem arising from unscientific and indiscriminate disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a real menace for the whole society. Present study deals with characterization and life cycle assessment of MSW along with mass balancing studies for an integrated municipal solid waste management plant in Kanpur city. The studies were carried out to investigate the feasibility of the plant and technology used to achieve zero garbage strategy. The MSW characterization shows that MSW contains a good C/N ratio (23.59), while the compost has C/N ratio slightly below (15.27) the standard (20-40). The refused derived fuel (RDF) made from dry organic material of MSW has high calorific value. The inert material (brick and stone waste) is used for making building components like road pavers, blocks, tiles etc. Mass balancing studies show that waste processing is carried out in an efficient way by focusing on the 4Rs, reduce, reuse, recycle and finally recover in concurrence to the MSW Rules for effective management. After MSW processing, many useful products are produced generating revenue and only small quantities of reject material (12 %) are dumped in landfill liner (SLF), thereby reducing the burden on land.Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is an important, practical and challenging environmental subject. The processes of a MSWM system include household collection, transportation, treatment, material recycling, compost and disposal. A regional program of MSWM is more complicated owing to the involvement of multi-municipality and multi-facility issues. Therefore, an effective decision support system capable of solving regional MSWM problems is necessary for decision-makers. This article employs linear programming techniques to establish a MSWM decision support system (MSWM-DSS) that is able to determine the least costs of regional MSWM strategies. The results of investigating a real-world case in central Taiwan indicate that a regional program is more economical and efficient. For the redeployment of MSW streams, the relatively least cost of operation for the MSWM system can still be achieved through the re-estimation of the MSWM-DSS. This tool and results are useful for MSWM policy-making in central Taiwan.Continuous growth in the quantity of municipal solid waste (MSW) and increasing demands for their environmentally-friendly treatment are one of the main consequences of the growing social and economic development rate in modern society. Despite ecologically sustainable trends in waste management systems around the world, open dumps are still the main waste treatment option in Russia. This study aims to help the local municipality administration in Irkutsk (Russia) identify the most appropriate direction for current waste management and its optimization. Within this study four developed MSW management scenarios were assessed and compared with respect to their ecological, economic and social aspects using a life cycle-based integrated waste management model. The evaluation results of these scenarios show that the development of environmental sustainability and the reduction of social effects lead to an increase in handling of costs of waste. The best scenario, regarding both environmental and social aspects, is scenario four, which includes the separate collection and reprocessing of recyclables in combination with an aerobic mechanical-biological pre-treatment of the residual waste before landfilling. However, this scenario is 3.6 times more expensive than the existing system. The results of all assessed scenarios were further analyzed and recommendations were made to design integrated waste management solutions that are optimal not only from the ecological and social points of view, but which are also realistic within the given economic situation.The majority of the waste in Greenland is disposed of in open dumps or incinerated in simple small-scale incinerators. There are relatively few environmental regulations that control the emissions of leachate, landfill gas and/or flue gases from incineration. Only some scrap metal and hazardous waste are collected separately and exported to Europe. The impacts from the current waste management system were modelled from a life-cycle perspective using the LCA-waste model EASEWASTE. Impacts with regard to global warming, acidification, etc. are small (a few hundred person-equivalents (PE) for a system serving 56 000 inhabitants), but significant environmental loads are caused by air emissions from the incinerators and leachate from the landfills. Several alternative management scenarios were modelled and results show that increased use of incineration, full utilization of the heat production for district heating and separation of hazardous waste probably could improve Greenland's waste management system. Segregation of recyclable materials as paper, cardboard and biowaste will do little to environmentally improve the waste management system due to loss of energy recovery from incineration and the long transport of the recyclables to markets. Export of waste to Denmark for incineration at modern waste incinerators with advanced flue gas cleaning could also be considered as a means to achieve better environmental performance of the waste management system.There are many immediate adverse effects on the environment such as large amount of greenhouse gases and pollutants emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation. Photovoltaic (PV) systems are promising solar energy applications to generate electricity without emitting pollutants and requiring no fuel. In modern urban cities, most buildings are high-rise with limited spaces for PV system installation, the concept of building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) would be an appropriate alternative form of the application. This paper studies a medium size grid-connected BIPV system mounted in an institutional building. Technical data including solar radiation and energy output were analyzed. The operational performance and electricity benefits of the BIPV system were examined in terms of cost, energy and environmental aspects. The monetary, embodied energy and greenhouse gas payback periods were estimated and reported. To shorten the payback periods, the BIPV system should incorporate with more passive energy-efficient architecture designs. This on-site measurement contributes the most accurate method of obtaining reliable data for determining the performance of various designs under the actual operating environments for evaluation. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Earth faces an urgent need for climate change mitigation, and carbon storage is discussed as an option. Approaches for assessing the benefit of temporary carbon storage in relation to carbon footprinting exist, but many are based on a 100-year accounting period, disregarding impacts after this time. The aim of this paper is to assess the consequences of using such approaches that disregard the long timescale on which complete removal of atmospheric CO2 occurs. Based on these findings, an assessment is made on what are relevant timescales to consider when including the value of temporary carbon storage in carbon footprinting. Implications of using a 100-year accounting period is evaluated via a literature review study of the global carbon cycle, as well as by analysing the crediting approaches that are exemplified by the PAS 2050 scheme for crediting temporary carbon storage. The global carbon cycle shows timescales of thousands of years for the transport of carbon from the atmosphere to pools beyond the near-surface layers of the Earth, from where it will not readily be re-emitted as a response to change in near-surface conditions. Compared to such timescales, the use of the 100-year accounting period appears hard to justify. We illustrate how the use of the 100-year accounting period can cause long-term global warming impacts to be hidden by short-term storage solutions that may not offer real long-term climate change mitigation. Obtaining long-term climatic benefits is considered to require storage of carbon for at least thousand years. However, it has been proposed that there may exist tipping points for the atmospheric CO2 concentration beyond which irreversible climate changes occur. To reduce the risk of passing such tipping points, fast mitigation of the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration is required and in this perspective, shorter storage times may still provide climatic benefits. Both short- and long-term perspectives should be considered when crediting temporary carbon storage, addressing both acute effects on the climate and the long-term climate change. It is however essential to distinguish between short- and long-term mitigation potential by treating them separately and avoid that short-term mitigation is used to counterbalance long-term climate change impacts from burning of fossil fuels.Despite the fundamental role of ecosystem goods and services in sustaining human activities, there is no harmonized and internationally agreed method for including them in life cycle assessment (LCA). The main goal of this study was to develop a globally applicable and spatially resolved method for assessing land use impacts on the erosion regulation ecosystem service. Soil erosion depends much on location. Thus, unlike conventional LCA, the endpoint method was regionalized at the grid cell level (5 arcmin, approximately 10 x 10 km(2)) to reflect the spatial conditions of the site. Spatially explicit characterization factors were not further aggregated at broader spatial scales. Life cycle inventory data of topsoil and topsoil organic carbon (SOC) losses were interpreted at the endpoint level in terms of the ultimate damage to soil resources and ecosystem quality. Human health damages were excluded from the assessment. The method was tested on a case study of five 3-year agricultural rotations, two of them with energy crops, grown in several locations in Spain. A large variation in soil and SOC losses was recorded in the inventory step, depending on climatic and edaphic conditions. The importance of using a spatially explicit model and characterization factors is shown in the case study. The regionalized assessment takes into account the differences in soil erosion-related environmental impacts caused by the great variability of soils. Taking this regionalized framework as the starting point, further research should focus on testing the applicability of the method through the complete life cycle of a product and on determining an appropriate spatial scale at which to aggregate characterization factors in order to deal with data gaps on the location of processes, especially in the background system. Additional research should also focus on improving the reliability of the method by quantifying and, insofar as it is possible, reducing uncertainty.Two different bioenergy systems using willow chips as raw material has been assessed in detail applying life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to compare its environmental profile with conventional alternatives based on fossil fuels and demonstrate the potential of this biomass as a lignocellulosic energy source. Short rotation forest willow plantations dedicated to biomass chips production for energy purposes and located in Southern Sweden were considered as the agricultural case study. The bioenergy systems under assessment were based on the production and use of willow-based ethanol in a flexi fuel vehicle blended with gasoline (85 % ethanol by volume) and the direct combustion of willow chips in an industrial furnace in order to produce heat for end users. The standard framework for LCA from the International Standards Organisation was followed in this study. The environmental profiles as well as the hot spots all through the life cycles were identified. According to the results, Swedish willow biomass production is energetically efficient, and the destination of this biomass for energy purposes (independently the sort of energy) presents environmental benefits, specifically in terms of avoided greenhouse gases emissions and fossil fuels depletion. Several processes from the agricultural activities were identified as hot spots, and special considerations should be paid on them due to their contribution to the environmental impact categories under analysis. This was the case for the production and use of the nitrogen-based fertilizer, as well as the diesel used in agricultural machineries. Special attention should be paid on diffuse emissions from the ethanol production plant as well as on the control system of the combustion emissions from the boiler.The aims of this study were to provide an up-to-date overview of global, regional and local networks supporting life cycle thinking and to characterize them according to their structure and activities. Following a tentative life cycle assessment (LCA) network definition, a mapping was performed based on (1) a literature search, (2) a web search and (3) an inquiry to stakeholders distributed via the two largest LCA fora. Networks were characterized based on responses from a survey. We identified 100 networks, of which 29 fulfilled all six criteria composing our tentative network definition (the remaining fulfilled four to five criteria). The networks are mainly located in Europe and the USA, whilst Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are less covered regions. The survey results (from 25 network responses) indicate that LCA networks appear to be primarily small- to medium-sized (< 100 members) and to include a large proportion of academia and industries, including small- and medium-sized enterprises, with much less involvement of authorities and non-governmental organisations. Their major activities relate to knowledge sharing and communication, support of case studies, and development of life cycle inventories and impact assessment methods. Networks in developing economies have different structures and activities than networks in developed economies and, for instance, more frequently have members from non-governmental organisations. Globally, an increasing trend in the formation of LCA networks over time is observed, which tends to correlate with the number of LCA scientific publications over the same time period. Continental distributions of networks also show a correlation with the number of LCA publications from the same region. The provided list of LCA networks is currently the most comprehensive, publicly available mapping. We believe that the results of this mapping can serve as a basis for deciding where priorities should be set to increase the dissemination and development of LCA worldwide. In this aim, we also advocate the creation of an online, regularly updated database of LCA networks supplemented by an online platform that could facilitate network communication and knowledge sharing.Multi-product processes are one source of multi-functionality causing widely discussed methodological problems within life cycle assessment. A multi-functionality problem exists for comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of multi-product processes with non-common products. This work develops a systematic workflow for fixing the multi-functionality problem caused by the non-common products. A novel technology for chlor-alkali electrolysis is analyzed and compared to the industrial standard technology to illustrate the approach and to benchmark the new technology's environmental impact. A matrix-based workflow for comparative LCA of multi-product systems is presented. Products are distinguished in main products and by-products based on the reason of process operation. We argue that only main products form the reference flows of the compared multi-product systems. Fixing the multi-functionality problem follows directly from the chosen reference flows. The framework suggests system expansion to fix the multi-functionality problem if non-common main products exist. Non-common by-products still cause a multi-functionality problem. These by-products are systematically identified and the multi-functionality problem is fixed with avoided burden and allocation. A case study applies the workflow for comparing environmental impacts of the standard chlorine electrolysis to a novel process using oxygen-depolarized cathodes. Three scenarios are derived and evaluated. The assessed impact categories are cumulative energy demand, global warming potential, acidification potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, eutrophication potential, and human toxicity potential. The proposed workflow minimizes the methodological choices. The multi-functionality problem is systematically fixed based on the distinction between the main products and by-products. Inconsistent solutions are prevented by rigorous identification of unequal by-products within the compared systems. Selecting avoided burden processes or allocation factors is the remaining ambiguous choice common to the standard methods. The case study demonstrates the applicability of the workflow to comparative LCA of multi-product systems. The case study results show lower environmental impacts for the novel electrolysis technology in all practically relevant scenarios and impact categories. The framework for comparative LCA of multi-product systems with non-common products adds systematic clarity to the general ISO standards. The approach reduces the subjective choices of LCA practitioners to the identification of reason of process operation. This reason is defined if the site-specific economic conditions are known. The matrix-based formulation allows identification of inconsistencies caused by multi-functionality. For the novel electrolysis technology, the results indicate significant potential for environmental impact reduction.Information communication technology (ICT) offers the chance of enhancing the efficiency of public services and economic processes. The use of server-based computing is supposed to reduce the energy and material consumption in ICT services. This hypothesis will be investigated and quantified looking at the whole life cycle of the products. In this paper, server-based computing in combination with thin clients (SBCTC) is compared to a typical desktop PC (DPC) workplace over a time period of 5 years. The LCA method used in this paper is focused on the impact category of global warming potential. The calculations were performed using the MicrosoftA (R) Excel-based methodology for ecodesign of energy-related products tool. This tool includes the requirements of energy-related products (Directive 2009/125/EC). Moreover, an input-orientated method-material input per service unit (MIPS)-is applied which allows for an additional comparison between the two ICT solutions. Electricity consumption could be identified as a crucial environmental impact factor of DPC and SBCTC with both methods. Depending on the user behavior, more than 200 kg CO2e can be saved by switching from DPC to SBCTC. Over 80 kg CO2e can be saved in the material and extraction life cycle stage. The largest savings are achieved in the material category electronics (about 70 kg CO2e). A correlation analysis between the results of global warming potential (GWP) and the MIPS category "air" shows that both indicators GWP and air lead to the same conclusions when evaluating life cycle stages and ICT material categories. Taking into account all assumptions made in this paper, SBCTC saves more than 65 % of greenhouse gas emissions compared to DPC during the entire life cycle. To ensure further profound comparisons of the ICT solutions, current data on the energy demand and detailed information on the composition of the IT products should be made available by industry.It has been recognised that life cycle assessment (LCA) has a role in framing problem situations in environmental management. Yet relatively few studies have investigated whether the use of LCA does actually lead to the reconceptualisation of product systems as opposed to answering predefined questions. This paper discusses the experiences of six manufacturing firms that commissioned LCA studies as part of a life cycle management project managed by Landcare Research in New Zealand. The initial goal and scope of the study was developed by each company's representative in a workshop that was organised as part of the LCM project. The scope for three of the studies was subsequently redefined by the LCA specialists at Landcare Research and agreed with senior managers at the company. The LCA specialists undertook the LCA studies and presented the results to the companies. A significant reconceptualisation of the product system took place in three of the six LCA studies. This reconceptualisation would not have taken place if the scope of the LCA studies had been restricted to address the questions originally asked by the companies. The three companies showed some resistance to expanding the scope. Use of LCA can lead to reconceptualisation of product systems by companies and quite different priorities for improvement options. Initial resistance to expanding a study's scope may be (partially) overcome by data collection activities and informal discussions between the LCA specialist and company staff during the process of undertaking the LCA study.Impacts of activities related to freshwater use are gaining interest among the life cycle assessment (LCA) community and several approaches are nowadays available in the literature. However, the general trend still is to ignore the assessment of its impact or, luckily, its inclusion on the inventory. This paper describes a procedure to incorporate water source information at the inventory level and evaluate the influence of that profile on the environmental impact assessment level. The methodology lies on two main elements: the "irrigation mix" concept and the freshwater ecosystem impact indicator already defined in the literature. By doing so, the results obtained can be easily integrated in LCA studies of irrigated crops, or more complex studies with agricultural ingredients, where only information regarding the amount (but not the origin) of irrigation water is available. The results make more visible the benefits associated to the use of nonconventional, artificial water sources, by quantifying the improvement achieved on the water stress of a specific basin. Besides, the irrigation mix gives a better picture of the real contribution of irrigation to other impact categories (here, the global warming potential). Finally, the results were applied in a LCA study of lettuce production (an irrigated product cultivated in the studied region), and the method was analyzed against the criteria defined by the International Reference Life Cycle Data System handbook. The inclusion of the water mix in the inventory level (irrigation profile) as well as in the impact assessment level (water stress index) is straightforward to apply by LCA practitioners, resulting in a more realistic assessment of the impacts of freshwater consumption associated to crops. The implementation on a case study allowed the quantification of promoting alternative water sources in a region suffering from significant water stress as well as to improve knowledge on the environmental impact associated to freshwater consumed by one of the irrigated crops grown there. We recommend using the approach defined here in order to check its applicability to other river basins and products.As the average wood products usage per unit of floor area in Australia has decreased significantly over time, there is potential for increased greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation benefits through an increased use of wood products in buildings. This study determined the GHG outcomes of the extraction, manufacture, transport, use in construction, maintenance and disposal of wood products and other building materials for two popular house designs in Sydney, Australia. The life cycle assessment (LCA) was undertaken using the computer model SimaPro 7.1, with the functional unit being the supply of base building elements for domestic houses in Sydney and its subsequent use over a 50-year period. The key data libraries used were the Australian Life Cycle Inventory library, the ecoinvent library (with data adapted to Australian circumstances where appropriate) and data for timber production from an Australian study for a range of Australian forestry production systems and wood products. Two construction variations were assessed: the original intended construction, and a "timber-maximised" alternative. The indicator assessed was global warming, as the focus was on GHG emissions, and the effect of timber production, use and disposal on the fate of carbon. The timber maximised design resulted in approximately half the GHG emissions associated with the base designs. The sub-floor had the largest greenhouse impact due to the concrete components, followed by the walls due to the usage of bricks. The use of a "timber maximised" design offset between 23 and 25 % of the total operational energy of the houses. Inclusion of carbon storage in landfill made a very significant difference to GHG outcomes, equivalent to 40-60 % of total house GHG emissions. The most beneficial options for disposal from a GHG perspective were landfill and incineration with energy recovery. The study showed that significant GHG emission savings were achieved by optimising the use of wood products for two common house designs in Sydney. The switch of the sub-floor and floor covering components to a "wood" option accounted for most of the GHG savings. Inclusion of end of life parameters significantly impacted on the outcomes of the study.Energy-savings measures have been implemented in fluid milk plants to lower energy costs and the energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Although these measures have resulted in reductions in steam, electricity, compressed air, and refrigeration use of up to 30%, a benchmarking framework is necessary to examine the implementation of process-specific measures that would lower energy use, costs, and CO2 emissions even further. In this study, using information provided by the dairy industry and equipment vendors, a customizable model of the fluid milk process was developed for use in process design software to benchmark the electrical and fuel energy consumption and CO2 emissions of current processes. It may also be used to test the feasibility of new processing concepts to lower energy and CO2 emissions with calculation of new capital and operating costs. The accuracy of the model in predicting total energy usage of the entire fluid milk process and the pasteurization step was validated using available literature and industry energy data. Computer simulation of small (40.0 million L/yr), medium (113.6 million L/yr), and large (227.1 million L/yr) processing plants predicted the carbon footprint of milk, defined as grams of CO2 equivalents (CO2e) per kilogram of packaged milk, to within 5% of the value of 96 g of CO2e/kg of packaged milk obtained in an industry-conducted life cycle assessment and also showed, in agreement with the same study, that plant size had no effect on the carbon footprint of milk but that larger plants were more cost effective in producing milk. Analysis of the pasteurization step showed that increasing the percentage regeneration of the pasteurizer from 90 to 96% would lower its thermal energy use by almost 60% and that implementation of partial homogenization would lower electrical energy use and CO2e emissions of homogenization by 82 and 5.4%, respectively. It was also demonstrated that implementation of steps to lower non-process-related electrical energy in the plant would be more effective in lowering energy use and CO2e emissions than fuel-related energy reductions. The model also predicts process-related water usage, but this portion of the model was not validated due to a lack of data. The simulator model can serve as a benchmarking framework for current plant operations and a tool to test cost-effective process upgrades or evaluate new technologies that improve the energy efficiency and lower the carbon footprint of milk processing plants.Four alternative cases for water supply were environmentally evaluated and compared based on the standard environmental impact categories from the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology extended with a freshwater withdrawal category (FWI). The cases were designed for Copenhagen, a part of Denmark with high population density and relatively low available water resources. FWI was applied at local groundwater catchments based on data from the national implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive. The base case of the study was the current practice of groundwater abstraction from well fields situated near Copenhagen. The 4 cases studied were: Rain & stormwater harvesting from several blocks in the city; Today's groundwater abstraction with compensating actions applied in the affected freshwater environments to ensure sufficient water flow in water courses; Establishment of well fields further away from the city; And seawater desalination. The standard LCA showed that the Rain & stormwater harvesting case had the lowest overall environmental impact (81.9 mu PET/m(3)) followed by the cases relying on groundwater abstraction (123.5-137.8 mu PET/m(3)), and that desalination had a relatively small but still important increase in environmental impact (204.8 mu PET/m(3)). Rain & stormwater harvesting and desalination had a markedly lower environmental impact compared to the base case, due to the reduced water hardness leading to e.g. a decrease in electricity consumption in households. For a relevant comparison, it is therefore essential to include the effects of water hardness when comparing the environmental impacts of water systems of different hardness. This study also emphasizes the necessity of including freshwater withdrawal respecting the relevant affected geographical scale, i.e. by focusing the assessment on the local groundwater catchments rather than on the regional catchments. Our work shows that freshwater withdrawal methods previously used on a regional level can also be applied to local groundwater catchments and integrated into the standard LCA as an impact category. When standard LCA is extended to include impacts of freshwater withdrawal, rain & stormwater and seawater (0.09-0.18 compared to 11.45 -17.16 mPET/m(3)) were the resources resulting in least overall environmental impact. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A simple methodology for producing biodiesel is presented. The noncatalytic transesterification was carried out via the thermochemical process because the main driving force of biodiesel conversion was temperature rather than pressure. Noncatalytic transformation of rapeseed oil into fatty acid ethyl ester (FAEE) was performed in a continuous flow system under ambient pressure in the presence of activated alumina, charcoal, and carbon dioxide (CO2). The biodiesel conversion methodology introduced in this work enables the esterification of fatty acids (FFAs), and transesterification of triglycerides to be combined into a single process and leads to a 97.5 (+/- 0.5)% conversion efficiency of biodiesel within 1 min at 420-500 degrees C. The new process has high potential to achieve a breakthrough in minimizing the cost of biodiesel production owing to its simplicity and technical advantages. (C) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 1468-1471, 2013Optimal storage conditions for apples are usually defined as those that maximise possible storage duration, but could be redefined as those conditions that result in sufficient preservation whilst minimising energy costs. A review of research on controlled atmosphere (CA) storage suggests that temperature changes in CA have less impact on product deterioration than in air. This paper reviews the underpinning observations of fruit physiology in CA and the possible approaches to reducing energy costs through temperature manipulation. Experimental results indicate that minor increases in temperature during CA storage have little influence on apple quality outcomes across a number of apple cultivars. Calculations for applying a 9 h on 15 h off cycle estimated an approximate 40% of electricity cost savings whilst only incurring a 0.5 degrees C average fruit temperature swing. These results suggest that opportunities for substantial energy cost savings in controlled atmosphere apple stores exist. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd and IIR.Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a procedural tool for environmental management that identifies, predicts, evaluates and mitigates the environmental impact of development proposals. In the process of EIA, EIA reports, prepared by developers, are expected to delineate the environmental impact, but in practice they usually determine whether the amounts or concentrations of pollutants comply with the relevant standards. Actually, many analytical tools can improve the analysis of environmental impact in EIA reports, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental risk assessment (ERA). Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is one of steps in LCA that takes account of the causal relationships between environmental hazards and damage. Incorporating the concept of LCIA into an ERA as an integrated tool for the preparation of EIA reports extends the focus of the reports from the regulatory compliance of the environmental impact, to determine the significance of the environmental impact. Sometimes, when using integrated tools, it is necessary to consider fuzzy situations, because of a lack of sufficient information; therefore, so ERA should be generalized to a fuzzy risk assessment (FRA). Therefore, this paper proposes the integration of a LCIA and a FRA as an assessment tool for the preparation of EIA reports, whereby the LCIA clearly identifies the causal linkage for hazard-pathway-receptor-damage and then better explain the significance of the impact; furthermore, a FRA copes with fuzzy and probabilistic situations in the assessment of pollution severity and the estimation of exposure probability. Finally, the use of the proposed methodology is demonstrated in a case study of the expansion plan for the world's largest plastics processing factory.A life cycle analysis (LCA) was performed for six commonly used types of water and wastewater pipe materials: polyvinyl chloride (PVC), ductile iron, cast iron, high density polyethylene (HDPE), concrete, and reinforced concrete. The objectives were to (1) compare the six pipe materials in terms of global warming potential (GWP) through four LCA phases: pipe production, transport, installation, and use; (2) determine the primary source(s) of differences in LCA results; and (3) examine the effectiveness of currently used pipe size selection criteria when LCA GWP is considered. The results for unit lengths of discrete pipe sizes were used to generate functions relating GWP per kilometer of pipe to diameter and material selections. The LCA results were monetized using an emission penalty of $25/equivalent ton of CO2. For pipe diameters <= 61 cm (24 in.), GWP due to pipe manufacture, transport, and installation of ductile iron pipe was the largest among the six materials. At diameters >= 76 cm (30 in.), the GWP of PVC was highest. Concrete pipe resulted in the lowest GWP across the entire range of pipe sizes investigated. The GWP for pipe production, transport, and installation in a high-growth planning area in southeast Tucson, Arizona, was approximately one-tenth of the GWP derived from pipe network operation. The lifetime GWP from production, transport, and installation increased monotonically with pipe diameter for all materials analyzed, whereas, for a given flow, GWP from energy loss due to friction in flow simulations was inversely related to pipe diameter. The tradeoff suggests that there is an optimum diameter that minimizes lifetime GWP. However, optimum pipe sizes based on GWP were similar to pipe diameters selected based on economic cost alone, suggesting that LCA of water distribution and wastewater collection systems will not yield major changes in criteria for selection of pipe size. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0000638. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.This paper introduces a new normative decision analysis method for the sustainability-based design of products (NASDOP). It is based on the fundamental principles of normative decision-making methods for design optimisation when multiple and often conflicting criteria influence the design of products. A unique feature of NASDOP is that it enables direct consideration of both environmental and economic impacts during a design process. Furthermore, NASDOP takes full advantage of the enhanced life cycle assessment (LCA) capabilities, reflecting the increase in knowledge about the material and energy flows of various processes in recent years, and offers a methodical approach to account for the inherent uncertainty associated with such knowledge. This paper details the development of sustainability models, including the effective integration of LCA mathematical models combined with compatible life cycle costing models from the early stages of conceptual design for use throughout the entire design process. This paper also highlights the design and deployment of hypothetical equivalents and inequivalents method, a proven normative decision method, to consistently model the preferences of a designer during sustainable product design. The implementation and usefulness of NASDOP are demonstrated with the aid of an illustrative case study and the results are discussed.This article assesses the life cycle emissions of a fictive onshore wind power station consisting of 141.5-MW wind turbines situated on the northeastern coast of Brazil. The objective is to identify the main sources of CO2(eq)-emissions during the life cycle of the wind farm. The novelty of this work lies in the focus on Brazil and its emerging national manufacturing industry. With an electricity matrix that is primarily based on renewable energy sources (87% in 2010), this country emits eight times less CO2 for the production of 1 kWh of electricity than the global average. Although this fact jeopardizes the CO2 mitigation potential of wind power projects, it also reduces the carbon footprint of parts and components manufactured in Brazil. The analysis showed that reduced CO2-emissions in the material production stage and the low emissions of the component production stage led to a favorable CO2-intensity of 7.1 g CO2/kWh. The bulk of the emissions, a share of over 90%, were unambiguously caused by the production stage, and the transportation stage was responsible for another 6% of the CO2-emissions. The small contributions from the construction and operation phases could be neglected. Within the manufacturing process, the steel tower was identified as the source responsible for more than half of the emissions. The environmental impacts of the wind farm are small in terms of CO2-emissions, which can be credited to a green electricity mix. This scenario presents an advantage for the country and for further production sites, particularly in the surroundings of the preferred wind farm sites in Brazil, which should be favored to reduce CO2 emissions to an even greater extent. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Swiss dairy farms must increasingly cope with climate protection, environmental conservation and the use of limited resources. In the context of the Hohenrain comparison of dairy production systems, a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts was conducted using the Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment method. The environmental strengths and weaknesses of seasonal full-pasture and indoor feeding systems were compared. The indoor herd performed significantly better than the pasture herd in three of thirteen impact categories. In contrast, the pasture herd performed better in seven of thirteen impact categories. A considerable weakness in the pasture herd was its higher methane emissions per kilogram of energy-corrected milk and the one-and-a-half times greater land requirement per kilogram of energy-corrected milk. The indoor herd had its main weaknesses in deforestation, the phosphorous and potassium resource requirements and higher ecotoxicity. The main causes for poor performance in these categories were maize and soybean meal.Corn (Zea mays L.) and corn stover are currently considered the most abundant and readily accessible feedstock resources for renewable bioethanol. Whole-plant corn harvest could increase bioethanol yield compared with a conventional separated grain and stover harvest. There is limited research, however, on the environmental effects of whole-plant harvest strategies, including nonrenewable energy efficiency, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity, and soil organic C (SOC) changes. In this study, harvest methods together with bioprocessing steps were combined through life cycle analysis (LCA) models, and SOC changes for corn farming with different harvest methods were simulated by a Daycent ecosystem model. The harvest data were from four agronomy farms (Branch, Ingham, Huron, and Menominee) of Michigan State University across south to north in Michigan. The LCA results showed that a whole-plant harvest strategy could increase energy efficiency 3.4 to 4.3 times and reduce GHG emissions by 38 +/- 2% relative to a traditional separate grain and stover harvest strategy. The analyses also indicated, however, that whole-plant harvest could reduce SOC (66.9 +/- 22.9 g CO2 equivalent m(-2)) annually during 50 yr of continuous corn farming at Branch, Ingham, and Huron, while the conventional harvest system could sequestrate CO2 into SOC at Ingham, Huron, and Menominee. The Daycent simulation also showed that a winter cover crop planted after whole-plant immature corn harvest could compensate for part of the SOC loss associated with a whole-corn-plant harvest.The superstructure optimization of algae-based hydrocarbon biorefinery with sequestration of CO2 from power plant flue gas is proposed. The major processing steps include carbon capture, algae growth, dewatering, lipid extraction and power generation, and algal biorefinery. We propose a multiobjective mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model that simultaneously maximizes the net present value (NPV) and minimizes the global warming potential (GWP) subject to technology selection constraints, mass balance constraints, energy balance constraints, technoeconomic analysis constraints, and environmental impact constraints. The model simultaneously determines the optimal decisions that include production capacity, size of each processing unit, mass flow rates at each stage of the process, utility consumption, economic, and environmental performances. We propose a two-stage heuristic solution algorithm to solve the non-convex MINLP model. Finally, the bicriteria optimization problem is solved with e-constraint method, and the resulting Pareto-optimal curve reveals the trade-off between the economic and environmental criteria. The results show that for maximum NPV, the optimal process design uses direct flue gas, a tubular photobioreactor for algae growth, a filtration dewatering unit, and a hydroprocessing pathway leading to 47.1 MM gallons of green diesel production per year at $6.33/gal corresponding to GWP of 108.7 kg CO2-eq per gallon. (C) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 1599-1621, 2013This study evaluated effects of farming practice scenarios aiming to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and subsequent alternative land use on environmental impacts of a beef cattle production system using the life cycle assessment approach. The baseline scenario includes a standard cow-calf herd with finishing heifers based on grazing, and a standard bull-fattening herd using a diet mainly based on maize silage, corresponding to current farm characteristics and management by beef farmers in France. Alternative scenarios were developed with changes in farming practices. Some scenarios modified grassland management (S1: decreasing mineral N fertiliser on permanent grassland; S2: decreasing grass losses during grazing) or herd management (S3: underfeeding of heifers in winter; S4: fattening female calves instead of being reared at a moderate growth rate; S5: increasing longevity of cows from 7 to 9 years; S6: advancing first calving age from 3 to 2 years). Other scenarios replaced protein sources (S7: partially replacing a protein supplement by lucerne hay for the cow-calf herd; S8: replacing soya bean meal with rapeseed meal for the fattening herd) or increased n-3 fatty acid content using extruded linseed (S9). The combination of compatible scenarios S1, S2, S5, S6 and S8 was also studied (S10). The impacts, such as climate change (CC, not including CO2 emissions/sequestration of land use and land-use change, LULUC), CC/LULUC (including CO2 emissions of LULUC), cumulative energy demand, eutrophication (EP), acidification and land occupation (LO) were expressed per kg of carcass mass and per ha of land occupied. Compared with the baseline, the most promising practice to reduce impacts per kg carcass mass was S10 (all reduced by 13% to 28%), followed by S6 (by 8% to 10%). For other scenarios, impact reduction did not exceed 5%, except for EP (up to 11%) and LO (up to 10%). Effects of changes in farming practices (the scenarios) on environmental impacts varied according to impact category and functional unit. For some scenarios (S2, S4, S6 and S10), permanent grassland area and LO per kg of carcass decreased by 12% to 23% and 9% to 19%, respectively. If the 'excess' permanent grassland was converted to fast-growing conifer forest to sequester carbon in tree and soil biomass, CC/LULUC per kg of carcass could be reduced by 20%, 25%, 27% and 48% for scenarios S2, S4, S6 and S10, respectively. These results illustrate the potential of farming practices and forest as an alternative land use to contribute to short-and mid-term GHG mitigation of beef cattle production systems.The production of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss Walbaum 1792) is practiced in different production systems including extensive system (ES), intensive system (IS) and recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). These production systems are different in their quantitative requirements of resource utilization and subsequent output and emissions that impact the environment. In this paper, consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to analyze the environmental impact of rainbow trout production using these production systems in an attempt to determine the relative performances and identify options for future improvements. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) indicate that impact from four impact categories chosen, RAS showed the largest impact in global warming (GWP), acidification (AP) and land competition (LC), while its impact on eutrophication (EP) and water-use was the lowest relative to ES and IS. This signified that while RAS has the capability to reduce impacts in the EP category by avoiding water emissions, the increased use of energy for water filtration and reuse increases impact through global emissions. However, sensitivity analysis revealed that RAS has the potential to reduce the overall impact when using a marginal energy source based on wind power as compared to ES and IS. In conclusion, impacts which are specific to aquaculture need to be considered in LCA to draw comprehensive analysis of the impacts. In addition, identification of the underlying problems of the different impacts is important in finding solution leading to sustainability of aquaculture. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change and its potential effects on ecosystems justify the need to implement forest management strategies that increase carbon (C) sequestration. A process-based model, TRIPLEX-Management, was used to investigate how to increase C sequestration within managed jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.) forests. The simulations included a constant climate scenario and two climate change scenarios generated from the Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM 3.1). A total of 36 forest management scenarios (a control where no forest management occurred, five varied rotation length harvesting-only regimes, and combinations of six thinning regimes and five rotation lengths) were simulated under each climate scenario for nine sites characterized by stocking levels from 0.3 to 0.7. A significant increase in C sequestration was generated under the climate change scenarios compared with those under constant climate. Mean annual net ecosystem productivity (NEP) varied with rotation length, but was not changed by precommercial thinning. Future studies should consider life cycle analysis of harvested wood products as in this study they were assumed to be a permanent C sink. Climate warming might enhance limited positive effects of forest thinning on C sequestration. Shortening rotation length from 70-80 years to 50 years might enhance NEP, increase wood production, and decrease the risk of climate change impacts on jack pine forests.Novel Process Windows make use of process conditions that are far from conventional practices. This involves the use of high temperatures, high pressures, high concentrations (solvent-free), new chemical transformations, explosive conditions, and process simplification and integration to boost synthetic chemistry on both the laboratory and production scale. Such harsh reaction conditions can be safely reached in microstructured reactors due to their excellent transport intensification properties. This Review discusses the different routes towards Novel Process Windows and provides several examples for each route grouped into different classes of chemical and process-design intensification.In the frame of the European project titled "Zero Waste" (1G-MED08-533), a tool has been developed called CO2ZW for estimating the GHG emissions for the management of MSW at the municipal, regional or national levels with small amounts of input data. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the CO2ZW tool allows us to inventory and monitor GHG emissions from MSW following the IPCC guidelines for national inventories and the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA). The CO2ZW tool includes the key stages and parameters for calculating GHG emissions and includes several advantages regarding the implementation of the default values of the Mediterranean European countries, an improvement in accessibility (online free access) and two approaches for calculating GHG emissions from landfills. The results of this paper show that for countries with medium and high rates of deposition, implementation of the European policies limiting waste in landfills can contribute to mitigate climate change in a remarkable way. With the CO2ZW tool, it is possible to evaluate waste management choices depending on waste management infrastructures and waste policies, along with the quantification of GHG emissions from MSW management, which is essential to guide waste policy options and climate change solutions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents an updated overview of recent literature on the role of nuclear power in mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) and particulate matter (PM) emissions from electricity generation. Emission intensities are strongly dependent on the country of operation and type of technology used in each category of power production options, but robust observations can be made with regards to the average emission intensity of each main alternative. The majority of emissions from nuclear energy is associated with parts of its overall life cycle other than the operation of nuclear power plants. Technological progress in especially uranium enrichment has recently yielded energy intensity reductions that have significantly lowered the GHG footprint of nuclear power, which at present amounts to 5-17 gCO(2) eq/kWh. As a result, average GHG emissions are today around two orders of magnitude lower for nuclear energy than for conventional coal-based power production. This article also addresses the feasibility of potential deployment scenarios for nuclear power and their implications in terms of global GHG emissions mitigation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioethanol from sugarcane is becoming an increasingly important alternative energy source worldwide as it is considered to be both economically and environmentally sustainable. Besides being produced from a tropical perennial grass with high photosynthetic efficiency, sugarcane ethanol is commonly associated with low N fertilizer use because sugarcane from Brazil, the world's largest sugarcane producer, has a low N demand. In recent years, several models have predicted that the use of sugarcane ethanol in replacement to fossil fuel could lead to high greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings. However, empirical data that can be used to validate model predictions and estimates from indirect methodologies are scarce, especially with regard to emissions associated with different fertilization methods and agricultural management practices commonly used in sugarcane agriculture in Brazil. In this study, we provide in situ data on emissions of three GHG (CO2, N2O, and CH4) from sugarcane soils in Brazil and assess how they vary with fertilization methods and management practices. We measured emissions during the two main phases of the sugarcane crop cycle (plant and ratoon cane), which include different fertilization methods and field conditions. Our results show that N2O and CO2 emissions in plant cane varied significantly depending on the fertilization method and that waste products from ethanol production used as organic fertilizers with mineral fertilizer, as it is the common practice in Brazil, increase emission rates significantly. Cumulatively, the highest emissions were observed for ratoon cane treated with vinasse (liquid waste from ethanol production) especially as the amount of crop trash on the soil surface increased. Emissions of CO2 and N2O were 6.9kgha1yr1 and 7.5kgha1yr1, respectively, totaling about 3000kg in CO2 equivalent ha1yr1.Environmental concerns, from consumers, governments, and academics, have encouraged businesses to incorporate more environmentally conscious designs in their new product development. However, selection of the best green design is a decision-making process that is not easy to address. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular and comprehensive tool to accomplish the objective. Nevertheless, LCA is a time-consuming process that requires substantial resources and expertise. This research proposes an innovative approach to performing structured LCA in conjunction with the concept known as fuzzy analytical hierarchical process. In doing so, some of the disadvantages of LCA can be remedied and this provides a practical tool for performing LCA.This article is a survey of operational research contributions to the operational, tactical, and strategic planning of the wine supply chain. It is divided into three parts. The introduction motivates the interest of investigating this research stream. The remaining two parts consider operational, and tactical-strategic analyses. The article aims at raising awareness amongst the actors of the wine supply chain, as well as operational researchers on the benefits of using quantitative methods on this topic.Production of feed is an important contributor to life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, or carbon footprints (CFPs), of livestock products. Consequences of methodological choices and data sensitivity on CFPs of feed ingredients were explored to improve comparison and interpretation of CFP studies. Methods and data for emissions from cultivation and processing, land use (LU), and land use change (LUC) were analyzed. For six ingredients (maize, wheat, palm kernel expeller, rapeseed meal, soybean meal, and beet pulp), CFPs resulting from a single change in methods and data were compared with a reference CFP, i.e., based on IPCC Tier 1 methods, and data from literature. Results show that using more detailed methods to compute N2O emissions from cultivation hardly affected reference CFPs, except for methods to determine leaching (contributing to indirect N2O emissions) in which the influence is about -7 to +12 %. Overall, CFPs appeared most sensitive to changes in crop yield and applied synthetic fertilizer N. The inclusion of LULUC emissions can change CFPs considerably, i.e., up to 877 %. The level of LUC emissions per feed ingredient highly depends on the method chosen, as well as on assumptions on area of LUC, C stock levels (mainly aboveground C and soil C), and amortization period. We concluded that variability in methods and data can significantly affect CFPs of feed ingredients and hence CFPs of livestock products. Transparency in methods and data is therefore required. For harmonization, focus should be on methods to calculate leaching and emissions from LULUC. It is important to consider LUC in CFP studies of food, feed, and bioenergy products.The dairy sector covers multiple activities related to milk production and treatment for alimentary uses. Different dairy products are available in the markets, with yoghurt being the second most important in terms of production. The goal of this study was to analyse from a cradle-to-grave approach the environmental impacts and energy balance derived from the yoghurt (solid, stirred and drinking yoghurts) manufacture process in a specific dairy factory processing 100 % Portuguese raw milk. The standard framework of life cycle assessment (LCA) was followed and inventory data were collected on site in the dairy factory and completed using the literature and databases. The following impact categories were evaluated adopting a CML method: abiotic depletion (ADP), acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), global warming (GWP), ozone layer depletion (ODP), land competition (LC) and photochemical oxidants formation (POFP), with the energy analysis carried out based on the cumulative non-renewable fossil and nuclear energy demand (CED). A mass allocation approach was considered for the partitioning of the environmental burdens between the different products obtained since not only yoghurts are produced but also dairy fodder. The key processes from an environmental point of view were identified. Some of the potential results obtained were in line with other specific related studies where dairy systems were assessed from an LCA perspective. The production of the milk-based inputs (i.e. raw milk, concentrated and powdered milk) was the main factor responsible of the environmental loads and energy requirements, with remarkable contributions of 91 % of AP, 92 % of EP and 62 % of GWP. Other activities that have important environmental impacts include the production of the energy requirements in the dairy factory, packaging materials production and retailing. Potential alternatives were proposed in order to reduce the contributions to the environmental profile throughout the life cycle of the yoghurt. These alternatives were based on the minimisation of milk losses, reductions of distances travelled and energy consumption at retailing and household use, as well as changes to the formulation of the animal feed. All of these factors derived from light environmental reductions. The main reductions of the environmental impact derived from yoghurt production can be primarily obtained at dairy farms, although important improvements could also be made at the dairy factory.In the process of selecting where effective environmental measures should be directed, the weighting step of life cycle assessment (LCA) is an optional, controversial, but nevertheless important tool. A set of criteria for evaluating weighting methods has relevance in the process of acquiring meta-knowledge, and thus competence, in assigning relative weights to environmental impact categories. This competence is helpful when choosing between presently available weighting methods, and in creating new weighting methods. Criteria in LCA-related literature are reviewed. The authors have focused on identifying lists of criteria rather than extracting criteria from bulks of text. An important starting point has been the actual use of the term "criterion", while at the same time disqualifying certain definitions of the term which are too far removed from the two definitions provided in this article. Criteria for evaluating weighting methods are shown to fall into two general categories. The first being general criteria for weighting methods, demanding that weighting methods have a broad scope, are practical for users and scientists, are scientific and have ethical goals. The second being criteria proposing characteristics of concrete environmental damage which should be taken into account by a weighting method. A noteworthy example is reversibility. While the comprehensive tables of criteria speak for themselves, it can be observed that the need for transparency is particularly highlighted in literature. Furthermore, ISO 14044's statement that the weighting step is "not scientifically based" would appear to defy a significant proportion of the other criteria reviewed; this, however, depends on its interpretation.The purpose of this study was to answer the following three questions: (1) What are the reference values of normalisation for Finnish production and Finnish consumption and how do they differ from the European reference values?, (2) How do these differences influence the interpretation of normalised LCIA results?, and (3) How can normalised LCIA results be made more comprehensible to non-LCA experts with the help of communication material? Finnish reference values for normalisation were calculated on the basis of the Finnish environmentally extended input-output model and ReCiPe LCIA method. The influence of different normalised results on the interpretation of LCIA was assessed based on an LCA study of print products. LCA communication material (product-specific fact sheets) was developed by organising workshops and interviews with stakeholders in the paper and printing industry. A comparison of the production based Finnish reference values to the European reference values shows that Finland contributes roughly 1 % to the European values in all impact categories except in the fossil depletion category where the contribution is 3 %. The order of magnitude of the impact categories varies depending on the reference system used for normalisation, which influences the interpretation of LCIA results. The normalised results were made more comprehensible by developing fact sheets including background information and guidance for interpretation of the LCIA results. The interpreter of normalised LCIA results does not usually have the information to estimate how the chosen reference system influences the results. A sensitivity analysis with different reference values may help to highlight this effect. When communicating to non-LCA-practitioners, LCIA results need to be connected to a wider context, which can be achieved by using normalisation to give an idea of the order of magnitude of the results. However, the harmfulness of the impact categories in relation to each other cannot be judged on the basis of the normalised results, which seems to be a difficult concept for non-LCA-practitioners to understand.This study presents a possible implementation of a second generation bioethanol production chain within the Province of Siena (Tuscany, Italy) by means of a biorefinery, and its consequences for the regional GHG balance in order to meet the European requirements for partial substitution of 10% bioethanol for gasoline by 2020. According to the last GHG balance of the territory of the Province of Siena, the transport sector represents the main contributor to the overall GHG emissions within the Province. A biorefinery project is hypothesized, fed by residual straw (from the local production of wheat, barley and oat) and residual geothermal heat (from local geothermal power plant) in order to produce bioethanol. The target of the production plant was about 8200 tons/year of bioethanol, representing the amount needed to replace 10% of the gasoline consumed in 2008 in the Province of Siena. The results of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the entire production chain have been included within the GHG balance of the Province of Siena in order to assess the effect of this substitution. The emissions derived from the production chain have been added to the current gross CO2eq emissions, and the CO2eq avoided, thanks to the substitution of bioethanol, has been subtracted. The main results of this paper are: 1) the territory of the Province of Siena produces enough straw to implement the bioethanol production chain (38,000 tons/year of ethanol out of 147,000 tons/year of straw); 2) the emissions deriving from the entire bioethanol production chain are about 601.51 kg CO2eq per ton of bioethanol produced (about 4932 tons of CO2eq are the emissions associated to the production of 8200 tons of bioethanol); 3) the use of the produced bioethanol in Siena's transport sector could bring about a reduction of 15,393 tons of CO2eq in emissions, equal to 6% of the net CO2eq emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon footprint of food has become important for producers worldwide as consumers and retail companies increasingly base their purchase decisions on carbon footprint labels. In this context, our objectives is to assess the carbon footprint (CF) of Brazilian yellow melon exported from the Low Jaguaribe and Acu region, including an uncertainty assessment, and to evaluate reduction potentials and improvement options. Exporting farms located in this region account for about 99 percent of Brazilian melon exports, mainly to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. To determine the CF, we followed Life Cycle Assessment, according to ISO standards (14040 and 14044). The results are expressed in kg of CO2-eq/t of exported melon. The production system encompasses processes in the Low Jaguaribe and Acu region (such as seedling, plant production, packing, and disposal of solid wastes from farms), upstream processes (including the production and transportation of inputs, such as seeds, plastics, and fertilizers), and downstream processes (melon transport). The total yellow melon CF in the reference situation is 710 kg CO2-eq/t exported melon. However, scenario results indicate that this value can be reduced by 44 percent if melon fields are located in pre-existing agricultural areas, nitrogen fertilization is reduced, and no plastic field trays are used in melon production. GHG emissions from melon transport are relatively unimportant in the total CF. These results provide melon producers with an insight into the CF of their product, and options to reduce it. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Given the rising expectations for the substitution of fossil energy with renewable energy as one of the solutions to cope with climate change, the carbon emission reduction potential of possible solutions should be evaluated in a holistic and systematic way. In this paper, a systematic account of carbon emission reduction potential was conducted for a typical household biogas system with a digester volume of 8 m(3), using a hybrid life-cycle assessment method. Using a 20 year operation scenario, the total life cycle CO2 emission of this family-size biogas utilization system is 2.60 tons, i.e., 0.02 kg CO2/MJ, of which 98.46% is attributed to indirect emissions from building materials and labor inputs. Considering the carbon emission savings due to energy and fertilizer substitution, the annual CO2 emission reduction potential is 1.25 tons for the biogas system that is under consideration. Consequently, such rural household biogas systems should be operated for at least 1.78 years to achieve a positive reduction benefit, i.e., cumulative CO2 emission savings could offset the life-cycle-related CO2 emissions. The results also indicate that long-term, stable running and maintenance are key points to maximize the benefits of household biogas as an effective approach for carbon emission abatement in the rural areas of China. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents a method for Life Cycle Assessment LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) to evaluate the ecological characteristics of products, presents a procedure for the implementation of the LCA with an overview of the various stages. Moreover the validity of using this method to evaluate the energy sector. The article also points to the directions of the Polish energy sector and pointed to the need to determine the environmental risks associated with the production of energy. Energy industry in Poland, the structure of energy production requires special supervision. The use of coal and lignite as a primary fuel results in signifi cant the environmental impact.The eighth edition of the "international conference on Life Cycle Assessment in the Agrifood sector" was held in Saint Malo (France) in October 2012. It was organized by INRA, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, with the support of ADEME, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency. The LCA Food conferences are the first international scientific forum on LCA in the agri-food sector. ITERG and CETIOM attended this conference. This paper reviews the principal research topics in progress on life cycle assessment shown and interesting for vegetable oil sector.Several formalisation approaches of informal recycling have been implemented in developing countries, aiming at its integration into formal recycling systems. These strategies are often implemented through the initiative of local recyclers and non-government organisations. The aim is to tackle not only the poor economic situation but also common social problems of the informal recycling sector, such as social rejection, lack of education and inappropriate health and working conditions. Nevertheless, the expected positive social impacts are not precisely assessed or measured. This paper aims to develop a methodological approach based on the social life cycle assessment methodology for the assessment of recycling systems in developing countries with implemented formalisation measures. A field study in three Peruvian cities shows the feasibility of applying this methodology for assessing recycling systems. The case studies displayed negative performances regarding the indicators of discrimination, recognised employment relationships, and fulfilment of social benefits, physical working conditions and access to education. Regarding freedom of association, psychological working conditions and social acceptance, the city with formalisation of (formerly informal) recyclers obtained better evaluations whereas the city without formalisation was better evaluated in terms of working time and minimum and fair wages.The world today is continuously striving toward a carbon neutral clean energy technology. Hence, renewable wind power systems are increasingly receiving the attention of mankind. Energy production with structurally more promising and economically more competitive design is no more the sole criterion while installing new megawatt (MW) range of turbines. Rather important life cycle analysis (LCA) issues like climate change, ozone layer depletion, effect on surrounding environments e.g. ecosystem quality, natural resources and human health emerge as dominant factors from green energy point of view. Hence, the study covers life cycle impact analysis (LCIA) of three wind farms: one onshore horizontal, one offshore horizontal, another vertical axis. It appears that vertical axis wind farm generates per unit electricity with lowest impact followed by horizontal offshore and horizontal onshore farms. The study, henceforward, discovers most adverse impact contributing materials in today's multi megawatt wind turbines and subsequently substitutes copper, the topmost impact contributor, with more eco-friendly aluminum alloys and its corresponding process routes. In this process, it reduces overall life cycle impacts up to 30% for future greener wind farms. In later stages, it compares all major electricity production technologies, viz., oil, diesel, coal, natural gas, wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, hydro plant in a common platform which demonstrates the wind farms performing the best except the hydro-kinetic ones. However, as the study suggests, offshore VAWT farm may even perform better than hydro-kinetic farms because of higher capacity factors in the high sea. Findings from the study can be deployed to harness massive scale green electricity from environmentally more clean and green turbines. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings consume nearly 40% of global energy annually in their production, operation, maintenance, replacement and demolition stages. Energy consumed in their life cycle stages other than the operation is called life cycle embodied energy. Total life cycle energy constitutes the building's embodied and operational energy over its service life. Operational energy constitutes a relatively larger fraction of life cycle energy in a conventional building. However, with the emergence of larger number of low energy buildings the significance of embodied energy is expected to grow. Current embodied energy calculations exhibit problems of variation, inaccuracy and incompleteness. System boundary definition is a key parameter that differs across studies and causes these problems, as studies define their system boundary subjectively. Research studies have proposed various system boundary models that should be applied to the buildings for life cycle analysis; however, the extent of their boundary definition differs. This paper gathers and synthesizes relevant literature opinions to develop a comprehensive system boundary model that can be adopted while performing the life cycle energy analysis of a building. The purpose of developing this model is twofold. Firstly, it would provide a clear picture of the system boundary. Second, it would provide a model to quantify the embodied energy of a building. Three possible approaches to cover the proposed system boundary are also recommended. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, along with the progress of modern wind energy technology, the trends of wind energy technology and potential challenges have been studied thoroughly. It is estimated that within the next 2-3 decades, the Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) can dominate the wind-energy technology. The VAWT requires less land space and using the same space; it is capable of producing more wind energy than that of its counterpart. By implying the Fish Schooling Concept effectively and successfully, it is possible to advance the wind-energy technology more. In the last 3-4 decades, the wind turbine capacity has been increased around 30-40 times. With the increase of wind energy capacity, the demand of the energy storage system has been increased significantly. Along with the many energy storage systems, fuel cells and batteries are the two most promising devices to meet the demand in RE systems. The wind-energy technology is established itself but not yet fully mature and hence there are many areas where improvements are required to reduce the cost of wind energy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.All municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems even "high quality systems" or those employing "best practices"-face multiple challenges, e.g., decreasing prices of secondary raw materials recovered by municipalities, increasing complexity of waste composition, technological lock-ins. Policy-making involves translating these challenges into goals that are generic in nature and implementing them on MSW fractions thanks to tailor-made policy tools, e.g., anticipated disposal fees. Anticipating the impacts of policies can provide valuable insights into the adequacy of policy tools with respect to economic, political, and social contexts of MSW. The goal of this paper is to construct consistent, future scenarios of Swiss waste glass-packaging disposal based on literature and stakeholder knowledge, including the allocation of waste to different disposal routes. These scenarios are future states to which the current system could transit to due to alternative policies in line with waste policy goals and varying societal constraints (e.g., commodity prices). Results of scenario construction show that policy has a limited effect on waste glass-packaging disposal because of economic constraints, preventing goals from consistently being achieved. For instance, increases in energy prices can impede a policy favoring recycling over downcycling to foam glass, an energy-saving product. The procedure applied to construct possible scenarios suits well the ambition of considering uncertain future developments affecting MSW management as it integrates qualitative and quantitative knowledge of various sources and disciplines. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A comprehensive life cycle assessment of asphalt pavements was conducted including hot mix asphalt (HMA), warm mix asphalt (WMA) with the addition of synthetic zeolites, and asphalt mixes with reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP). The environmental impacts associated with energy consumption and air emissions were assessed, as well as other environmental impacts resulting from the extraction and processing of minerals, binders and chemical additives; asphalt production; transportation of materials; asphalt paving; road traffic on the pavement; land use; dismantling of the pavement at the end-of-life and its landfill disposal or recycling. Monte Carlo simulations were also conducted to take into account the variability of critical input parameters. Taking into account the entire life cycle, the impacts of zeolite-based WMA pavements were almost equal to the impacts of HMA pavements with the same RAP content. The reduction in the impacts of WMA resulting from the lowering of the manufacturing temperature was offset by the greater impacts of the materials used, especially the impacts of the synthetic zeolites. Moreover, by comparing asphalt mixes with different RAP contents, it was shown that the impacts of asphalt mixes were significantly reduced when RAP was added. All endpoint impacts as well as climate change, fossil depletion and total cumulative energy demand were decreased by 13-14% by adding 15% RAP. A key advantage of WMA is the potentially greater use of RAP. Thus, the decrease in the impacts achieved by adding large amounts of RAP to WMA could turn these asphalt mixes into a good alternative to HMA in environmental terms. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greening cities, defined as growing vegetation in urban areas, is an effective way to reduce the imbalance between urbanization and environmental protection. This review article describes the main environmental, hydrological, waste management, health and social problems solved by greening cities. The greening systems were classified according to their complexity and the urban surface greened. The basic layers of a greening system and the materials used are analyzed. Finally, an overview of the state-of-the-art in urban greening systems created to help achieve sustainable city development is presented.Electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest-growing pollution problems worldwide given the presence if a variety of toxic substances which can contaminate the environment and threaten human health, if disposal protocols are not meticulously managed. This paper presents an overview of toxic substances present in e-waste, their potential environmental and human health impacts together with management strategies currently being used in certain countries. Several tools including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Material Flow Analysis (MFA), Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) have been developed to manage e-wastes especially in developed countries. The key to success in terms of e-waste management is to develop eco-design devices, properly collect e-waste, recover and recycle material by safe methods, dispose of e-waste by suitable techniques, forbid the transfer of used electronic devices to developing countries, and raise awareness of the impact of e-waste. No single tool is adequate but together they can complement each other to solve this issue. A national scheme such as EPR is a good policy in solving the growing e-waste problems. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work is a part of a wider study involving the economic and environmental implications of managing construction and demolition waste (CDW), focused on the operation of a large scale CDW recycling plant. This plant, to be operated in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (including the Setubal peninsula), is analysed for a 60 year period, using primary energy consumption and CO(2)eq emission impact factors as environmental impact performance indicators. Simplified estimation methods are used to calculate industrial equipment incorporated, and the operation and transport related impacts. Material recycling - sorted materials sent to other industries, to act as input - is taken into account by discounting the impacts related to industrial processes no longer needed. This first part focuses on calculating the selected impact factors for a base case scenario (with a 350 tonnes/h installed capacity), while a sensitivity analysis is provided in part two. Overall, a 60 year global primary energy consumption of 71.4 thousand toe (tonne of oil equivalent) and a total CO(2)eq emission of 135.4 thousand tonnes are expected. Under this operating regime, around 563 thousand toe and 1465 thousand tonnes CO(2)eq could be prevented by replacing raw materials in several construction materials industries (e.g.: ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics, paper and cardboard). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With increasing numbers and quantities of chemicals in commerce and use, scientific attention continues to focus on the environmental and public health consequences of chemical production processes and exposures. Concerns about environmental stewardship have been gaining broader traction through emphases on sustainability and "green chemistry" principles. Occupational safety and health has not been fully promoted as a component of environmental sustainability. However, there is a natural convergence of green chemistry/sustainability and occupational safety and health efforts. Addressing both together can have a synergistic effect. Failure to promote this convergence could lead to increasing worker hazards and lack of support for sustainability efforts. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has made a concerted effort involving multiple stakeholders to anticipate and identify potential hazards associated with sustainable practices and green jobs for workers. Examples of potential hazards are presented in case studies with suggested solutions such as implementing the hierarchy of controls and prevention through design principles in green chemistry and green building practices. Practical considerations and strategies for green chemistry, and environmental stewardship could benefit from the incorporation of occupational safety and health concepts which in turn protect affected workers.Site remediation involves balancing numerous costs and benefits but often neglects the environmental impacts over the entire project life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) offers a framework for inclusion of global environmental "systems-level" decision metrics in combination with technological and cost analysis. We compare colloidal silica (CS) and cement grouted soil barrier remediation technologies for soils affected by low level radionuclides at a U.S. Superfund site using hybrid LCA methods. CS is a new, high performance grouting material installed using permeation grouting techniques. Cement, a more traditional grouting material, is typically installed using jet grouting techniques. Life cycle impacts were evaluated using the US EPA TRACI 2 model. Results show the highest life cycle environmental impacts for the CS barrier occur during materials production and transportation to the site. In general, the life cycle impacts for the cement barrier were dominated by materials production; however, in the extreme scenario the life cycle impacts were dominated by truck transportation of spoils to a distant, off-site radioactive waste facility. It is only in the extreme scenario tested in which soils are transported by truck (Option 2) that spoils waste transport dominates LCIA results. Life cycle environmental impacts for both grout barriers were most sensitive to resource input requirements for manufacturing volumes and transportation. Uncertainty associated with the efficacy of new technology such as CS over its required design life indicates that barrier replacement could increase its life cycle environmental impact above that of the cement barrier. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that may accompany land-use change (LUC) from increased biofuel feedstock production are a source of debate in the discussion of drawbacks and advantages of biofuels. Estimates of LUC GHG emissions focus mainly on corn ethanol and vary widely. Increasing the understanding of LUC GHG impacts associated with both corn and cellulosic ethanol will inform the on-going debate concerning their magnitudes and sources of variability. Results: In our study, we estimate LUC GHG emissions for ethanol from four feedstocks: corn, corn stover, switchgrass, and miscanthus. We use new computable general equilibrium (CGE) results for worldwide LUC. U.S. domestic carbon emission factors are from state-level modelling with a surrogate CENTURY model and U. S. Forest Service data. This paper investigates the effect of several key domestic lands carbon content modelling parameters on LUC GHG emissions. International carbon emission factors are from the Woods Hole Research Center. LUC GHG emissions are calculated from these LUCs and carbon content data with Argonne National Laboratory's Carbon Calculator for Land Use Change from Biofuels Production (CCLUB) model. Our results indicate that miscanthus and corn ethanol have the lowest (-10 g CO(2)e/MJ) and highest (7.6 g CO(2)e/MJ) LUC GHG emissions under base case modelling assumptions. The results for corn ethanol are lower than corresponding results from previous studies. Switchgrass ethanol base case results (2.8 g CO(2)e/MJ) were the most influenced by assumptions regarding converted forestlands and the fate of carbon in harvested wood products. They are greater than miscanthus LUC GHG emissions because switchgrass is a lower-yielding crop. Finally, LUC GHG emissions for corn stover are essentially negligible and insensitive to changes in model assumptions. Conclusions: This research provides new insight into the influence of key carbon content modelling variables on LUC GHG emissions associated with the four bioethanol pathways we examined. Our results indicate that LUC GHG emissions may have a smaller contribution to the overall biofuel life cycle than previously thought. Additionally, they highlight the need for future advances in LUC GHG emissions estimation including improvements to CGE models and aboveground and belowground carbon content data.This paper presents a systematic approach to identify the optimal pathway configurations of a biorefinery while incorporating technical, economic, and environmental objectives. This problem is formulated as a generalized disjunctive programming model which accounts for the simultaneous selection of products, feedstocks, and processing steps. The optimal solution can involve multiproduct and multifeedstock biorefineries. The optimization model takes into account two potentially conflicting objectives, the maximization of the net profit and the minimization of the greenhouse gas emissions, while considering the number of processing steps. The environmental criterion is measured using the life cycle assessment methodology. The epsilon-constraint method is used to determine the Pareto curves of this multiobjective optimization problem and to show the trade-offs between the competing objectives. A case study is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed methodology for the optimal selection of the biorefinery configuration for the conditions of Mexico under several scenarios. The results show that the optimal combination of different feedstocks and products allows for proper trade-off between the economic and environmental objectives. Results also show that bioethanol, biodiesel, and biohydrogen usually appear as products, whereas sugar cane, jatropha, and microalgae appear as feedstocks in the optimal pathways.With the goal to move society toward less reliance on fossil fuels and the mitigation of climate change, there is increasing interest and investment in the bioenergy sector. However, current bioenergy growth patterns may, in the long term, only be met through an expansion of global arable land at the expense of natural ecosystems and in competition with the food sector. Increasing thermal energy recovery from solid waste reduces dependence on fossil- and biobased energy production while enhancing landfill diversion. Using inventory data from pilot processes, this work assesses the cradle-to-gate environmental burdens of plasma gasification as a route capable of transforming construction and demolition (C&D) derived biomass (CDDB) and forest residues into electricity. Results indicate that the environmental burdens associated with CDDB and forest residue gasification may be similar to conventional electricity generation. Land occupation is lowest when CDDB is used. Environmental impacts are to a large extent due to coal cogasified, coke used as gasifier bed material, and fuel oil cocombusted in the steam boiler. However, uncertainties associated with preliminary system designs may be large, particularly the heat loss associated with pilot scale data resulting in overall low efficiencies of energy conversion to electricity; a sensitivity analysis assesses these uncertainties in further detail.A combination of declining costs and policy measures motivated by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and energy security have driven rapid growth in the global installed capacity of solar photovoltaics (PV). This paper develops a number of unique data sets, namely the following: calculation of distribution of global capacity factor for PV deployment; meta-analysis of energy consumption in PV system manufacture and deployment; and documentation of reduction in energetic costs of PV system production. These data are used as input into a new net energy analysis of the global PV industry, as opposed to device level analysis. In addition, the paper introduces a new concept: a model tracking energetic costs of manufacturing and installing PV systems, including balance of system (BOS) components. The model is used to forecast electrical energy requirements to scale up the PV industry and determine the electricity balance of the global PV industry to 2020. Results suggest that the industry was a net consumer of electricity as recently as 2010. However, there is a >50% that in 2012 the PV industry is a net electricity provider and will "pay back" the electrical energy required for its early growth before 2020. Further reducing energetic costs of PV deployment will enable more rapid growth of the PV industry. There is also great potential to increase the capacity factor of PV deployment. These conclusions have a number of implications for R&D and deployment, including the following: monitoring of the energy embodied within PV systems; designing more efficient and durable systems; and deploying PV systems in locations that will achieve high capacity factors.Comparative toxicity potentials (CTP), in life cycle impact assessment also known as characterization factors (CF), of copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni) were calculated for a global set of 760 soils. An accessibility factor (ACF) that takes into account the role of the reactive, solid-phase metal pool in the soil was introduced into the definition of CTP. Geographic differences in fate, accessibility, bioavailability, and terrestrial toxicity were assessed by combining the USEtox characterization model, empirical regression models, and terrestrial biotic ligand models. The median CTPs for Cu and Ni with 95% geographic variability intervals are 1.4 x 10(3) (1.7 x 10(2) to 2.0 x 10(4)) and 1.7 x 10(3) (2.1 x 10(2) to 1.1 x 10(4)) m(3)/kg.day, respectively. The geographic variability of 3.5 orders of magnitude in the CTP of Cu is mainly associated with the variability in soil organic carbon and pH. They largely influence the fate and bioavailability of Cu in soils. In contrast, the geographic variability of 3 orders of magnitude in the CTP of Ni can mainly be explained by differences in pore water concentration of magnesium (Mg2+). Mg2+ competes with Ni2+ for binding to biotic ligands, influencing the toxicity. Our findings stress the importance of dealing with geographic variability in the calculation of CTPs for terrestrial ecotoxicity of metals.Construction and demolition waste (C&DW) are the result of inefficient and unsustainable use of natural resources and energy in production processes and other human activities, leading to economic losses. In this paper, the Ecological Footprint (EF), as a new indicator and methodology in environmental sustainability assessment was used to calculate where and how the humans induce impacts on the environment, in particular due to the generation of C&DW. Ecological footprint makes a relationship between two factors - the amount of land required to dispose per capita generated waste. The study proposes the calculation of EF to develop a sustainable C&DW integrated waste management in European countries, considering the methodologies developed for solid waste management. For the development of the proposed analysis, four C&DW management scenarios were proposed based on the actual situation of C&DW in 2009, in Iasi, Romania and Bologna, Italy. The evaluation is based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, assisted by SimaPro software that calculates the EF using indicators like CO2, land use and nuclear footprints. The research showed that the EF could be used as an indicator able to evaluate the sustainability of C&DW integrated management systems in various countries and locations, being recommended as a decision making support tool..Biofuels are expected to be a major contributor to renewable energy in the coming decades under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). These fuels have many attractive properties including the promotion of energy independence, rural development, and the reduction of national carbon emissions. However, several unresolved environmental and economic concerns remain. Environmentally, much of the biomass is expected to come from agricultural expansion and/or intensification, which may greatly affect the net environmental impact, and economically, the lack of a developed infrastructure and bottlenecks along the supply chain may affect the industry's economic vitality. The approximately 30 million acres (12 million hectares) under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) represent one land base for possible expansion. Here, we examine the potential role of the CRP in biofuels industry development, by (1) assessing the range of environmental effects on six end points of concern, and (2) simulating differences in potential industry growth nationally using a systems dynamics model. The model examines seven land-use scenarios (various percentages of CRP cultivation for biofuel) and five economic scenarios (subsidy schemes) to explore the benefits of using the CRP. The environmental assessment revealed wide variation in potential impacts. Lignocellulosic feedstocks had the greatest potential to improve the environmental condition relative to row crops, but the most plausible impacts were considered to be neutral or slightly negative. Model simulations revealed that industry growth was much more sensitive to economic scenarios than land-use scenarios-similar volumes of biofuels could be produced with no CRP as with 100% utilization. The range of responses to economic policy was substantial, including long-term market stagnation at current levels of first-generation biofuels under minimal policy intervention, or RFS-scale quantities of biofuels if policy or market conditions were more favorable. In total, the combination of the environmental assessment and the supply chain model suggests that large-scale conversion of the CRP to row crops would likely incur a significant environmental cost, without a concomitant benefit in terms of biofuel production.Second generation ethanol bioconversion technologies are under demonstration-scale development for the production of lignocellulosic fuels to meet the US federal Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS2). Bioconversion technology utilizes the fermentable sugars generated from the cellulosic fraction of the feedstock, and most commonly assumes that the lignin fraction may be used as a source of thermal and electrical energy. We examine the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and techno-economic cost tradeoffs for alternative uses of the lignin fraction of agricultural residues (corn stover, and wheat and barley straw) produced within a 2000 dry metric ton per day ethanol biorefinery in three locations in the United States. We compare three scenarios in which the lignin is (1) used as a land amendment to replace soil organic carbon (SOC); (2) separated, dried and sold as a coal substitute to produce electricity; and (3) used to produce electricity onsite at the biorefinery. Results from this analysis indicate that for life cycle GHG intensity, amending the lignin to land is lowest among the three ethanol production options (-25 to -2 g CO(2)e MJ(-1)), substituting coal with lignin is second lowest (4-32 g CO(2)e MJ(-1)), and onsite power generation is highest (36-41 g CO(2)e MJ(-1)). Moreover, the onsite power generation case may not meet RFS2 cellulosic fuel requirements given the uncertainty in electricity substitution. Options that use lignin for energy do so at the expense of SOC loss. The lignin-land amendment option has the lowest capital cost among the three options due to lower equipment costs for the biorefinery's thermal energy needs and use of biogas generated onsite. The need to purchase electricity and uncertain market value of the lignin-land amendment could raise its cost compared to onsite power generation and electricity co-production. However, assuming a market value ($50-$100/dry Mg) for nutrient and soil carbon replacement in agricultural soils, and potentially economy of scale residue collection prices at higher collection volumes associated with low SOC loss, the lignin-land amendment option is economically and environmentally preferable, with the lowest GHG abatement costs relative to gasoline among the three lignin co-product options we consider.This life cycle assessment evaluates and quantifies the environmental impacts of the production of hydrogen and transportation fuels from the fast pyrolysis and upgrading of corn stover. Input data for this analysis come from Aspen Plus modeling, a GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) model database and a US Life Cycle Inventory Database. SimaPro 7.3 software is employed to estimate the environmental impacts. The results indicate that the net fossil energy input is 0.25 MJ and 0.23 MJ per km traveled for a light-duty vehicle fueled by gasoline and diesel fuel, respectively. Bio-oil production requires the largest fossil energy input. The net global warming potential (GWP) is 0.037 kg CO(2)eq and 0.015 kg CO(2)eq per km traveled for a vehicle fueled by gasoline and diesel fuel, respectively. Vehicle operations contribute up to 33% of the total positive GWP, which is the largest greenhouse gas footprint of all the unit processes. The net GWPs in this study are 88% and 94% lower than for petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuel (2005 baseline), respectively. Biomass transportation has the largest impact on ozone depletion among all of the unit processes. Sensitivity analysis shows that fuel economy, transportation fuel yield, bio-oil yield, and electricity consumption are the key factors that influence greenhouse gas emissions.The increasing interest for biotechnological use of microalgae demands amethodology for selection of species suitable to support the development of technologies based on the use of such non-conventional renewable rawmaterial, i.e., green industrial applications. The vast and expanding collection of experimental data on both cell growth and biomass composition available in the literature can be used to reduce the cost of the experimental investigations required to support process engineering and optimization. Selecting the appropriate organism requires extracting useful information from such data, a cumbersome task since various multidisciplinary factors must be considered. This paper presents a computer-aided methodology for selecting appropriate algal species given an energy or green chemical process application employing microalgae as a renewable raw material. The approach is "systemoriented'', based on biomass composition and chemical processing of the biomass downstream of the CO2 biofixation and harvesting operations. Quantitative performance results are supported by professional process simulation. Besides comparison of a set of species performances, the proposed methodology also allows the discrimination among distinct algal compositions resulting from different growth conditions for a given species. Furthermore, three categories of screening metrics are proposed to be maximized by the decision making procedure in order to elicit the relevant information. To demonstrate the potential of the proposed methodology, a databank of both biochemical and elemental compositions of microalgal biomass was used in three green applications: Assessment of biomass heating value; production of syngas by gasification of the biomass; and production of Bio-H-2. Within the accuracy of the databank employed to illustrate the procedure, the methodology selected Botryococcus braunii and Isochrysis galbana as potential promising candidates, for the three examined applications.The study assess the environmental impacts of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and PLA/cassava starch blend at the ratio of 1:1 (PLA/starch) boxes for a single use box from cradle to waste treatment. The various waste management options for both PLA/starch and PET boxes were considered. The functional unit is specified as 10,000 units of 8 x 10 x 2.5 cm of PET and PLA/starch boxes which weigh 582.7.5 and 430.6 kilograms, respectively. Non-renewable energy, global warming, acidification, and eutrophication were considered. The results from cradle to production gate were found that in all impact categories of PLA/starch has 0.14-3.01 times lower than that of PET except EU impact, because PET has higher weight of the PET box. The resin production stage of both PET and PLA/starch boxes has the highest contribution in all impacts categories studied. The results from cradle to grave showed that the high impacts are observed from the disposal incineration and landfill for PET and PLA/starch boxes respectively. The less impacts from disposal PLA/starch and PET boxes are from composting and incineration with heat recovery.A gate-to-gate life cycle assessment was conducted to evaluate the Global Warming Potential associated with USA fluid milk processing. Data collected from 50 fluid milk processing plants were used to construct a life cycle assessment model for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the milk processing system, from raw milk entering the plant's refrigerated storage silo through delivery of packaged fluid milk to retail store's loading dock. Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions associated with the processing, packaging, and distribution in the processing of packaged fluid milk were investigated. Upstream emissions associated with raw materials, extraction, and transportation were included. Average GHG emissions for processing, packaging and distribution were 0.077, 0.054 and 0.072 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) packaged fluid milk, respectively. Overall GHG emissions were 0.203 (+/- 0.017) kg CO(2)e kg(-1) packaged fluid milk with major individual GHG contributors being plant electricity usage (27% of total) and truck fleet tailpipe emissions (29% of total). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In 2008 the US dairy industry committed to reducing green house gases (GHG) associated with milk production. Understanding the contributions of dairy practices to GHG requires the collection of extensive complex farm level data. The purpose of this paper is three fold: 1) to describe the innovative model of data collection involving an expansive collaborative process, 2) discuss survey response rates and 3) offer lessons learned that will facilitate the replication of this method for data collection needs associated with other agricultural industries or other agriculturally related research questions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This article presents a cradle-to-grave analysis of the United States fluid milk supply chain greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are accounted from fertilizer production through consumption and disposal of milk packaging. Crop production and on-farm GHG emissions were evaluated using public data and 536 farm operation surveys. Milk processing data were collected from 50 dairy plants nationwide. Retail and consumer GHG emissions were estimated from primary data, design estimates, and publicly available data. Total GHG emissions, based primarily on 2007 to 2008 data, were 2.05(90% confidence limits: 1.77-2.4) kg CO(2)e per kg milk consumed, which accounted for loss of 12% at retail and an additional 20% loss at consumption. A complementary analysis showed the entire dairy sector contributes approximately 1.9% of US GHG emissions. While the largest GHG contributors are feed production, enteric methane, and manure management; there are opportunities to reduce impacts throughout the supply chain. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were evaluated from crop production through the on-farm portion of the milk supply chain for five production regions in the USA derived from publicly available data and from 536 surveys of farm operations collected from dairy operations nationwide. The production weighted national average footprint at the farm gate was 1.23 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) per kg of fat and protein corrected milk (fat, 4%; protein 3.3%). Regional differences in GHG emissions per kg milk produced can be primarily traced to differences in production and management practices. Feed-to-milk conversion efficiency is shown to be the single most important explanatory variable, followed by choice of manure management technology. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, GHG emissions reduction opportunities exist across the spectrum of dairy management options. However, as with all decisions, it is important to weigh potential trade-offs with other environmental and economic impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) is characterized by a unique combination of extremely low permeability, high strength and deformability. Extensive R&D works and applications over the last 10 years have demonstrated that cast on site UHPFRC is a fast, efficient and price competitive method for the repair/rehabilitation of existing structures. More recently, an original concept of ECO-UHPFRC with a high dosage of mineral addition, a low clinker content, and a majority of local components has been applied successfully for the rehabilitation of a bridge in Slovenia. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the global warming impact of bridge rehabilitations with different types of UHPFRC and to compare them to more standard solutions, both on the basis of the bridge rehabilitation performed in Slovenia. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used. The analysis shows that rehabilitations with UHPFRC, and even more ECO-UHPFRC, have a lower impact than traditional methods over the life cycle. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emerging risks of innovative technologies, like for instance nanotechnology, require proactive assessments in order to guarantee that their future materials and products will not result in adverse effects on health, safety and the environment. The combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Risk Assessment (RA) offers a systematic approach to identify and assess potential impacts. LCA is a well-known analytical tool, standardised in ISO 14040-14044, to assess the environmental impact of the entire life-cycle of a product or service. Its strengths are the systematic approach to analyse all life-cycle stages of complex systems. Integrated risk management can benefit in various ways from LCA. Firstly, LCA offers a new dimension to the safety paradigm, exploring the principles and synergies between LCA and RA. Secondly, LCA offers a systematic approach to analyse the risks of innovative technologies along their entire life-cycle (from design, building, maintenance, operation to decommissioning). Thirdly, LCA offers an analytical tool to quantify the environmental impact of emerging technologies. In combination with RA, LCA can provide scientifically sound information for the early assessment of potential impacts on health, safety and the environment.Biofuel production has been promoted to save fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, there have been concerns about the potential of biofuel to improve energy efficiency and mitigate climate change. This paper investigates energy efficiency and GHG emission saving of cassava-based ethanol as energy for transportation. Energy and GHG balances are calculated for a functional unit of 1 km of road transportation using life-cycle assessment and considering effects of land use change (LUC). Based on a case study in Vietnam, the results show that the energy input for and GHG emissions from ethanol production are 0.93 MJ and 34.95 g carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule of ethanol respectively. The use of E5 and E10 as a substitute for gasoline results in energy savings, provided that their fuel consumption in terms of liter per kilometer of transportation is not exceeding the consumption of gasoline per kilometer by more than 2.4% and 4.5% respectively. It will reduce GHG emissions, provided that the fuel consumption of E5 and E10 is not exceeding the consumption of gasoline per kilometer by more than 3.8% and 7.8% respectively. The quantitative effects depend on the efficiency in production and on the fuel efficiency of E5 and E10. The variations in results of energy input and GHG emissions in the ethanol production among studies are due to differences in coverage of effects of LUC, CO2 photosynthesis of cassava, yields of cassava, energy efficiency in farming, and by-product analyses. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate the energy efficiency and environmental impacts of sweet potato-based bioethanol production. The scope covered all stages in the life cycle of bioethanol production, including the cultivation and treatment, transport, as well as bioethanol conversion of sweet potato. Results show that the net energy ratio of sweet potato-based bioethanol is 1.48 and the net energy gain is 6.55 MJ/L. Eutrophication is identified as the most significant environmental impact category, followed by acidification, global warming, human toxicity, and photochemical oxidation. Sensitivity analysis reveals that steam consumption during bioethanol conversion exerts the most effect on the results, followed by sweet potato yields and fertilizers input. It is suggested that substituting coal with cleaner energy for steam generation in bioethanol conversion stage and promotion of better management practices in sweet potato cultivation stage could lead to a significant improvement of energy and environmental performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A well-to-wheels (WTW) analysis of pyrolysis-based gasoline was conducted and compared with petroleum gasoline. To address the variation and uncertainty in the pyrolysis pathways, probability distributions for key parameters were developed with data from literature. The impacts of two different hydrogen sources for pyrolysis oil upgrading and of two bio-char co-product applications were investigated. Reforming fuel gas/natural gas for H-2 reduces WTW GHG emissions by 60% (range of 55-64%) compared to the mean of petroleum fuels. Reforming pyrolysis oil for H-2 increases the WTW GHG emissions reduction up to 112% (range of 97-126%), but reduces petroleum savings per unit of biomass used due to the dramatic decline in the liquid fuel yield. Thus, the hydrogen source causes a trade-off between GHG reduction per unit fuel output and petroleum displacement per unit biomass used. Soil application of biochar could provide significant carbon sequestration with large uncertainty. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy and environmental effects of wheat-based fuel, produced continuously by a Blenke cascade system, were assessed. Two scenarios: (1) no-co-products utilization scenario; and (2) co-products utilization scenario, were compared. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model was used for analysis. The scope covered a cradle-to-gate inventory. The results from energy analysis showed, that wheat-based ethanol has a positive average net energy value (NEV), NEV = 3.35 MJ/kg ethanol with an average net energy ratio (NER), NER = 1.14 MJ/MJ fossils for scenario 1, while for scenario 2, NEV = 20 MJ/kg ethanol with NER = 3.94 MJ/MJ fossils. The environmental performance analysis indicated that in scenario 1, the strongest contribution to environmental impacts was from the ethanol conversion stage; whereas in scenario 2, it was from wheat production stage. The use of a continuous fermentation system based on Blenke cascade is a promising technology that increases wheat based bio-ethanol's energy benefits. In addition, the calculated parameters show the potential to significantly reduce emissions level.The energy returned on invested, EROI, has been evaluated for typical power plants representing wind energy, photovoltaics, solar thermal, hydro, natural gas, biogas, coal and nuclear power. The strict exergy concept with no "primary energy weighting", updated material databases, and updated technical procedures make it possible to directly compare the overall efficiency of those power plants on a uniform mathematical and physical basis. Pump storage systems, needed for solar and wind energy, have been included in the EROI so that the efficiency can be compared with an "unbuffered" scenario. The results show that nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than photovoltaics and wind power. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To evaluate whether replacing an existing product with a new, more energy-efficient product is environmentally preferable, we used an assessment approach based on life cycle assessment. With this approach, consumers can assess various replacement products, including products of different sizes or environmental performance in addition to consideration of various conditions of product use. The approach utilizes a diagram in which replacement conditions of products are compared with iso-environmental-load lines to determine the appropriateness of replacement. The approach also allows the assessment of energy and resource consumption and environmental impacts not only during the use stage, but also at other product stages. Iso-environmental-load lines to assess delayed replacement were also examined and derived. We then applied the approach in a case study of energy consumption by replacing three types of electric home appliances in Japan: TVs, air conditioners, and refrigerators. The results of assessment showed that replacing refrigerators after 810 years of use was preferable even if the replacement product was larger. The appropriateness of replacing TVs and air conditioners based on energy consumption depended on the replacement product and on the duration of daily use, and in several cases, delayed replacement was preferable. Replacement of air conditioners after 810 years of use was not preferable if the consumer already owned the most energy-efficient product at the time of the purchase. The necessity of accounting for a variety of available replacement products was confirmed.The cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept has emerged as an alternative to the more established eco-efficiency concept based on life cycle assessment (LCA). The two concepts differ fundamentally in that eco-efficiency aims to reduce the negative environmental footprint of human activities while C2C attempts to increase the positive footprint. This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each concept and suggests how they may learn from each other. The eco-efficiency concept involves no long-term vision or strategy, the links between resource consumption and waste emissions are not well related to the sustainability state, and increases in eco-efficiency may lead to increases in consumption levels and hence overall impact. The C2C concept's disregard for energy efficiency means that many current C2C products will likely not perform well in an LCA. Inherent drawbacks are restrictions on the development of new materials posed by the ambition of continuous loop recycling, the perception that human interactions with nature can benefit all parts of all ecosystems, and the hinted compatibility with continued economic growth. Practitioners of eco-efficiency can benefit from the visions of C2C to avoid a narrow-minded focus on the eco-efficiency of products that are inherently unsustainable. Moreover, resource efficiency and positive environmental effects could be included more strongly in LCA. Practitioners of C2C on the other hand should recognize the value of LCA in addressing trade-offs between resource conservation and energy use. Also, when designing a healthy emission it should be recognized that it will often have an adverse effect on parts of the exposed ecosystem.This work presents a systematic approach for the simultaneous optimization of energy supply management, biocide dosing and maintenance scheduling in heat integrated plants considering economic, technical and environmental aspects. The resulting model is a multi-objective mixed integer non-linear programming problem. The considered plants use seawater as cooling fluid above room temperature and a refrigerant below room temperature. One of the main advantages of this work is that it considers not only the economic aspect of the process, but also the technical challenges associated to the use of seawater, the seasonal availability of energy resources and the global environmental impact of the process. The environmental impact is measured through the life cycle analysis of the energy resources (fossil fuels, biofuels and solar energy), expressed in terms of the overall greenhouse gas emissions. A case study for an acrylonitrile plant is solved to show the applicability of the proposed methodology. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes a collaborative project to design and teach a general education science course, Chemistry of Sustainability. Our goal was to show how chemistry plays a central role in addressing the grand challenges of protecting the environment and human health by developing the knowledge and tools that meet our basic needs for energy, clean water, and consumer products. Course content was designed using a case-study approach that illustrates how basic chemical concepts including atomic structure, bonding, intermolecular forces, and reactivity are applied to address environmental issues. The cases tapped faculty research expertise and addressed topics such as renewable energy, sustainable consumer products, bioplastics, clean water, and nanoscience. Because sustainability is an interdisciplinary activity, we illustrated how life-cycle assessment and the principles of green chemistry can be used to provide sustainable chemical solutions. A surprising outcome of this project was the breadth and significance of the impacts on our students, faculty, and institution. This communication summarizes one of the invited papers to the ConfChem online conference Educating the Next Generation: Green and Sustainable Chemistry, held from May 7 to June 30, 2010 and hosted by the ACS DivCHED Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE).The production of first generation biofuels, such as sunflower-based biodiesel, is potentially an option for diversifying the energy matrix in several South American countries. However, biofuels present environmental challenges, especially concerning the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study, using a life-cycle approach, evaluates the GHG emissions and energy balance of the future nationwide production of sunflower-based biodiesel in Chile. Direct land use change is included in the analysis. The overall findings indicate that sunflower biodiesel, under the most likely production conditions, will have better environmental performance than fossil diesel in terms of both indicators. The agricultural stage is associated to key factors such as land use change, and nitrogen fertilizers. These factors contribute significantly to GHG emissions or energy demand in the biodiesel life cycle. The sensitivity analysis shows that no GHG emission saving could occur if nitrogen fertilizers rate exceeds 330 kg N/ha. In order to reduce the environmental impacts of this biofuel, improvement measures are suggested. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental impacts of water and land use are often omitted or treated in an over-simplified manner in life cycle assessments (LCAs). This may provide insufficient foundation for LCA-based decision-making when product life cycles include agriculture or forestry. The aim of this paper is to assess water and land use impacts of biobased textile fibres and contribute to the development of methods for characterising such impacts in LCA. This was done by applying and developing methods suggested in literature to an LCA case study of a wood-based textile fibre under development. The water use assessment method considers water deprivation at the midpoint level and the impact on human health, ecosystem quality and resources at the endpoint level. The land use assessment method measures the impact on biodiversity, by considering changes in the vascular plant species richness and the vulnerability of the surrounding ecosystem. In the case study, five wood-based fibre production scenarios were set up in order to account for uncertainties in the future location of operations. For comparison, two cotton production scenarios were set up. An innovative consequential approach was applied in the inventory analysis of water use, in order to capture the system-scale effects of how forestry and cotton farming influence the hydrological cycle. This was compared to a more traditional attributional approach. The results show that the location of operations influences water use impacts, as water extracted from relatively water stressed environments leads to higher impacts. Furthermore, for some scenarios, the result differed considerably between the consequential and attributional inventory approaches. Moreover, it is shown that the consequential approach adds the possibility of recognising increased runoff as a potential benefit of certain types of land use. Biodiversity impacts from the transformation of natural land are much higher than impacts from the occupation of land. If transformation of land takes place, and all impact is allocated to the first harvest, cotton production appears to have a particularly high impact. However, if the transformational impact is allocated over several subsequent harvests, the impact of cotton and wood-based fibres becomes more similar. How to handle this allocation problem deserves further attention in the development of characterisation methods for land use impacts. The study has contributed to the development of characterisation methods by developing a water use inventory approach and by illuminating several methodological aspects of both water and land use impact assessment which need further research. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The quantification of impacts in the abiotic resource category in life cycle assessment is still controversial. However, this is a pertinent issue because of the growing dependence of our industrial society on these resources, particularly on metal resources. One of the important shortcomings of the existing assessment methods used today is that characterization factors are not based on actual mining practice data. In this paper, a new characterization factor derived from recent (1998-2010) and representative (more than 50% coverage of global primary metal production) mining data was established for nine metals: copper, zinc, lead, nickel, molybdenum, gold, silver, platinum and palladium. The quantification of this new characterization factor is based on the annual increase in mass of ore required per unit mass of metal in the ore. This quantification relies on the concept that the mining of resources is threatened not by lack of ores but by changing ore characteristics, e.g., the percentage of metal in the ore, mineral type and location. The characterization factors determined in this study ranged from below 0.1 kg ore kg(-1) y(-1) for zinc to more than 15,000 kg ore kg(-1) y(-1) for gold. These results indicate that in 1999,370,000 kg of ore was required per kg of gold in the ore, whereas in 2008,530,000 kg of ore was required per kg of gold in the ore (an increase of approximately 4% per annum). When comparing these results with traditional life cycle impact assessment methods, it was found that in all but one method gold, palladium and platinum have the highest characterization factors among the nine metals. In all methods based on ore grade changes lead and zinc are the metals with the lowest characterization factors. However, an important difference in the proposed method is that it assigns higher relative values to precious metals. This suggests that the supply of precious metals may be under more pressure than indicated by other methods, which in the framework of the proposed method implies greater efforts in mining and mineral processing. There is still scope for improvement of the proposed method if more data become readily available. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Concerns over non-renewable fossil fuel supply and climate change have been driving the Renaissance of bio-based materials. To substantiate environmental claims, the impacts of bio-based materials are typically quantified by applying life cycle assessment (LCA). The internationally agreed LCA standards provide generic recommendations on how to evaluate the environmental impacts of products and services but do not address details that are specifically relevant for the life cycles of bio-based materials. Here, we provide an overview of key issues and methodologies explicitly pertinent to the LCA of bio-based materials. We argue that the treatment of biogenic carbon storage is critical for quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions of bio-based materials in comparison with petrochemical materials. We acknowledge that biogenic carbon storage remains controversial but recommend accounting for it, depending on product-specific life cycles and the likely time duration of carbon storage. If carbon storage is considered, co-product allocation is nontrivial and should be chosen with care in order to: (i) ensure that carbon storage is assigned to the main product and the co-product(s) in the intended manner and (ii) avoid double counting of stored carbon in the main product and once more in the co-product(s). Land-use change, soil degradation, water use, and impacts on soil carbon stocks and biodiversity are important aspects that have recently received attention. We explain various approaches to account for these and conclude that substantial methodological progress is necessary, which is however hampered by the complex and often case- and site-specific nature of impacts. With the exception of soil degradation, we recommend preliminary approaches for including these impacts in the LCA of bio-based materials. The use of attributional versus consequential LCA approaches is particularly relevant in the context of bio-based materials. We conclude that it is more challenging to prepare accurate consequential LCA studies, especially because these should account for future developments and secondary impacts around bio-based materials which are often difficult to anticipate and quantify. Although hampered by complexity and limited data availability, the application of the proposed approaches to the extent possible would allow obtaining a more comprehensive insight into the environmental impacts of the production, use, and disposal of bio-based materials. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A framework was developed for integrating indoor environmental quality (IEQ) into life cycle assessment (LCA). The framework includes three main impact types: 1) chemical-specific impacts directly comparable to conventional life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) human health categories, 2) non-chemical health impacts, and 3) productivity/performance impacts. The first part of the framework related to contaminant specific impacts was explored using a green university building as a case study, while the remaining categories will be the subject of future work. Results showed that including IEQ aspects in whole-building LCA revealed LCIA internal impacts in some categories comparable to external impacts. For human health respiratory effects, building-specific indoor impacts from the case study were 12% of global external impacts in conventional LCA. Building-specific indoor cancer toxicity impacts were greater than external impacts by an order of magnitude, and building-specific indoor noncancer toxicity impacts were lower than external impacts by an order of magnitude. Although internal impacts were greater than external impacts in one category cancer toxicity, the source of the contamination in the other two categories respiratory effects and noncancer toxicity was related to intake of outdoor air. The findings of this study underscore the importance of filtration or other treatment of mechanically supplied outdoor or recirculated indoor air, as well as control of pollution from indoor sources such as building materials or cleaning products. These findings may support the use of green building rating systems which include acknowledgment of the aforementioned IEQ-related features. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work a real sour stripping plant of a petrochemical complex simulated in AspenHysys (R) is improved using an automated tool programmed in Matlab (R). The new developed procedure provides the performance evaluation and the comparison between different alternatives of the plant through the calculation and aggregation of environmental and economic indicators. The results obtained give insights into the plant environmental behavior, being very useful to find the suitable modifications in operation and topology of the plant. Moreover, the use of this tool allows the implementation of optimization algorithms and heat integration strategies, with the aim of minimizing resources consumption, pollutants releases, energy requirements and total costs. Specifically, the procedure helps to significantly improve the performance of the studied process: the operating costs are reduced near 8%, while the amount of released CO2-eq is 7% lower, and the process consumes 66% less water. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bio-based materials have come increasingly into focus during the last years, as alternatives to conventional materials such as fossil-based polymers, metals, and glass. The present paper is an application of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology in order to explore the possibility of improving the eco efficiency of glass fibre composite materials by replacing part of the glass fibres with hemp mats. The main purpose and contribution of this study is the exploration of the eco-efficiency of this new material. To a minor degree, it is also a contribution in the sense that it provides life cycle inventory data on composites, which as yet is scarce in the LCA community. The study is a development of a previous work conducted on a pipe system used to transport cooling sea waters in a Sicilian petrochemical company. A comparative LCA was performed of two different elbow-fittings made of glass fibre/thermoset composite and hybrid (glass fibre-hemp)/thermoset composite, respectively. Primary data were collected mainly for the manufacturing process of the composite, while the Ecoinvent v2.2 database (PRe-Product Ecology Consultants, 2012) was used to model other parts of the system. Significant environmental benefits of using hemp mats were found mainly in the production phase. An LCC was also carried out from cradle to grave to find ways to optimise the costs. Material costs reduction was significant for the hybrid elbow formulation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The existing methods of process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) fail to account for the role of ecosystem goods and services derived from natural capital. This study presents an in-depth analysis of resource consumption and atmospheric emissions across a wood-derived bioethanol supply chain. The analysis is based on energy consumption, Industrial Cumulative Exergy Consumption (ICEC), and Ecological Cumulative Exergy Consumption (ECEC) of resources used in the production of one ton of ethanol from woodchips using the near-neutral hemicellulose extraction technology. We found that when compared with fossil-based fuels and corn ethanol, wood-based cellulosic ethanol derived under the near-neutral hemicellulose extraction process demonstrated superior environmental performance. Renewable resources - mostly sunlight and detrital matters - are the dominant contributors to ICEC analysis, whereas non-renewable resources such as crushed stone, crude oil, ores and minerals contribute more to total ECEC. Lime manufacturing, inorganic chemicals production for green liquor preparation, and anthraquinone production have the highest resource consumption. The woodchip washing process and transportation stages consume relatively fewer resources. A performance metric analysis suggests that even though cellulosic ethanol uses a renewable feedstock, its environmental sustainability performance is reduced due to the large consumption of non-renewable resources during the ethanol production stage. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The case study shows an example application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to the field of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), analysing dematerialization in a Public Administration. The Municipality of Rimini (Italy) was taken as the geography of focus, since its economic framework is representative of the whole Province. Some of the procedures existing between the City itself and the companies operating in the tourism sector were considered. In particular, three types of procedures managed by SUAP (Sportello Unico Attivita Produttive, Central Office for Production Activities) were chosen for evaluation: 1) the opening/closing of hotel communication, 2) the opening declaration for new activities with structural changes and 3) the same without structural changes. Administrative operations imply at present the printing of forms and their delivery, personally or by fax to SUAP for each procedure (traditional system), but a new system (innovative system) is replacing the old one and schedules such procedures through the use of ICT. The LCA methodology was applied to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the two proposed systems (traditional and innovative) and to provide an opportunity to make a comparative analysis. The results show that the innovative system creates lower environmental impacts. The improvements range from a maximum value of 99.2% for the category Land occupation to a minimum value of 54.5% for the category Mineral extraction. In the traditional scenario, transportation is the main source of potential impacts for all categories, from a peak of 96.2% for the category respiratory inorganics to a minimum of 54.5% for Land occupation. To check the reliability of results, two different scenario analyses were performed. In the first one, we changed the assumptions about transportation in the traditional scenario: in traditional system A transport by car was reduced by considering one way delivery, while in traditional system B fax was supposed to be used whenever is possible, which means a reduction of transport by car by 78%. The results of this scenario analysis confirmed that the traditional system leads to greater environmental burden compared to the innovative one. The second scenario analysis supposed a further implementation of the innovative management system to the whole SUAP office and procedures and proved that increasing the scope of intervention cause environmental benefits to increase as well. Transportation was identified as the main source of environmental impacts for the traditional system, the innovative system has 80% less impacts. We can conclude that the implementation of the new ICT system will have a positive effect from an environmental point of view and greater benefits could be achieved with implementation at a large scale. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study is to conduct a comparative life cycle assessment of eight hydrogen production scenarios. The analysis enables a comparison of the sustainability performance of H-2 production alternatives, as well as the identification of the key elements of each option. The scenarios investigated are based on (1) fossil CH4 reforming processes, namely steam reforming, partial oxidation and auto-thermal reforming; (2) biological CH4 reforming, i.e., steam CH4 reforming, partial oxidation and auto-thermal reforming; and (3) bioethanol-to-hydrogen systems, namely steam reforming and auto-thermal reforming. The assessment is carried out with the SimaPro 7.1 program. Both CML baseline 2000 and Eco-indicator 99 are used as life cycle impact assessment methods. The results indicate that the biomethane reforming systems have the lowest impact of all of the systems. The fossil CH4 reforming scenarios produce the highest emissions of global warming gas and have the greatest contribution to the abiotic depletion potential impact. Although wheat-derived bioethanol is considered to be a biofuel, bioethanol-to-hydrogen production systems have a higher impact than fossil CH4 on acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion and toxicological impacts. This research provides regulators and policy makers with a basis upon which to guide further research and development in the H-2 sector. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production system of a wide range of fish products have been analysed in literature. However, the evaluation of complex multi-ingredient products of marine origin from a carbon footprint perspective has remained unexplored. Therefore, this article assessed the environmental profile of hake fish sticks extracted in Chile and processed at a seafood industry near Vigo (NW Spain) for distribution throughout the Spanish market. Despite a brief discussion on the distribution and consumption life cycle stages, result reporting adopted a business-to-business approach, focussing on raw material production and fish stick processing and packaging. In spite of the increased processing stages that a product of these characteristics requires, as well as the on land production systems for the agricultural products, fishery operations, mainly vessel fuelling and cooling agent leakage, were still responsible for over 50% of total emissions. Additionally, a series of improvement actions were identified in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the product. Finally, the fish sticks, when equated to other comparable substitutable production systems in terms of carbon footprint, energy use and energy return on investment, showed values in the lower range of previously analysed processes. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The demilitarization of ammunition that has reached the end of life (or become obsolete) has to be carried out with minimum energy and environmental impacts. The Portuguese Armed Forces have significant amounts of ammunition that need to be eliminated. In order to assess and improve ammunition demilitarization, a life-cycle approach must be adopted. The main goal of this article is to present a comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the ammunition demilitarization performed by the Portuguese company IDD (Industria de DesmilitarizacAo e Defesa). A life-cycle model was developed for the entire demilitarization process, which involves ammunition dismantling, discharging, the incineration of energetic material, and the subsequent flue gas treatment. A detailed inventory was based on data collected from the IDD. A life-cycle impact assessment was carried out, based on three complementary methods used to assess a total of ten impact categories: cumulative energy demand (primary energy); CML 2001 (six environmental impact categories) and USEtox (three toxicological categories). The results show that the main contributor in nine out of the ten impact categories is the incineration and gas treatment process, due to the high energy requirements (electricity and propane). Nevertheless, equipment manufacture also has a significant impact in the Human Toxicity (non-cancer) category, mainly related to the manufacture of the static kiln. These findings enhance our understanding of demilitarization using a static kiln, showing that the associated impacts are significant and should be reduced.Recently, several energetic ionic salts and liquids have been proposed as novel high-energy materials, propellants, and explosives. The life cycle environmental impacts of these new energetic salts have not been previously studied. Environmental impacts arise both from release of these energetic materials themselves as well as from their synthesis. In this work, for the first time, we report the results of cradle-to-gate life cycle environmental impacts of production of energetic ionic salt 1,2,3-triazolium nitrate and compare it with traditional energetic material 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). The results indicate that the production processes of ionic salt have a significantly higher environmental footprint than conventional energetic materials. The above result was consistent across all nine impact categories analyzed and can be directly attributed to energy intensive steps needed to prepare the ionic salt and its precursors. The findings suggest that ionic energetic materials have higher environmental impact than TNT from a life cycle perspective.Sugarcane produced in Brazil has several environmental advantages. However, burning residues, which leads to GHG and black carbon (BC) emissions, has been used to facilitate manual harvest. BC emissions have a net warming effect and cause health problems. Mechanized harvest without burning is gradually replacing manually harvested burned sugarcane. Global warming potential (GWP) and human health indicators of sugarcane ethanol production in Brazil, in the pre-mechanization (100% burned), current (similar to 50% burned) and future (100% without burning) scenarios, were calculated. In the past, the GWP of ethanol production was 1.1 kg CO2 eq L-1 and BC emissions were 32.6 kg CO2 eq L-1. The human health impact in disability adjusted life years (DALY) was 3.16E-05 DALY L-1 ethanol. The current ethanol production process has a GWP 46% smaller, while BC emissions are seven times smaller than before mechanization started. The human health impact is currently 7.72E-06 DALY L-1. In the future, with complete mechanization and the integration of first and second generation ethanol, the expected GWP emissions will be 70% smaller, and BC emissions will be 216 times smaller than when all sugarcane was harvested with burning. These results show that ethanol production in Brazil is improving in terms of global warming and human health aspects. Other upstream aspects of ethanol production such as direct and indirect land use change, and downstream impacts such as the emissions of acetaldehydes were not considered in this study, which focused on a major technological shift in residue management in the agricultural phase of sugarcane ethanol production. A broader assessment of the sustainability of ethanol must account for those issues, as well as economic and social aspects. Sugarcane-derived ethanol produced in Brazil has been considered one of the most sustainable biofuels options, but it is essential to identify and promote practices and policies that further improve its production, such as the phase out of pre-harvest sugarcane burning and the increase in ethanol yield per unit of area. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a comparative analysis of environmental impacts in Brazil's industrial charcoal industry resulting from a shift from hot-tail kilns, which are the most common kiln used by the industry, to metal container kilns. Hot-tail kilns vent pyrolysis emissions directly to the atmosphere, but container kilns allow for easy capture of pyrolysis gases, which may be used as co-products, adding value to charcoal production and reducing environmental impacts through the displacement of other products and/or processes. This analysis uses hot-tail kilns as a reference scenario and considers four alternative scenarios using container kilns in which pyrolysis gases are utilized in different ways. We find that the container kilns improve environmental performance relative to hot-tail kilns across a range of indicators including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water demand, energy-return-on-investment (EROI), Ozone depletion potential (ODP), photochemical oxidation (PCO), acidification, and eutrophication. GHG reductions range from 28% to 119% (10-43 ktons of CO(2)e per year) depending on the utilization of specific co-products. Water consumption declines by 25% consistently across all scenarios, and EROI improves by 24-157%. ODP also improves between 30% and 300%. However, container kilns do not show improvements in other impact categories: PCO increases by 20-58% while the potential for both acidification and eutrophication increase 20 to 40 fold. These increases in environmental impacts arise primarily from NO and non-methane hydrocarbon emissions, which increase when charcoal production is coupled to cogeneration using pyrolysis gases and/or woodwaste. These additional emissions could be avoided with existing control technologies. (C) 2012 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to apply life cycle assessment in the waste management sector, in order to compare the environmental performance of different waste management methods. The methods that are studied are: landfilling, aerobic and anaerobic biological treatment, incineration and recycling, focusing on mass and energy balances and the environmental performance of each applied scenario. The Peloponnese Region in Greece was selected as a case for the application of this methodology and more specifically its largest municipalities, where a significant amount of waste is presented. The conducted LCA study proves the necessity of the adoption of an integrated waste management system and indicates its principal objectives by measuring environmental impacts. Thermal scenario contributes significant to the mitigation on the Greenhouse Gases. On the other hand, separation at source and recycling practices provides significant benefits to the abiotic depletion impact.The building stock is one of the most important energy consumers worldwide. Therefore, a number of energy reduction targets and regulations exist for the construction sector. Different building stock models have been developed in order to investigate the potentials of energy-efficiency and changes in energy source in the building stock. However, these models often have important shortcomings, since they are single-issued and do not include the life cycle of buildings. Thus, we propose an innovative assessment methodology in the form of a life cycle-based building stock model (LC-Build). The building stock is clustered in building cohorts of similar construction and equipment characteristics in terms of type, construction period and building technology systems. The most important building components are assigned specific thermal transmittance values. Figures for diffusion and retrofit rate describe the development of the building stock fabric. Additionally, environmental impact from the energy supply side is taken into account. This approach facilitates the evaluation of the effectiveness of measures and their dynamics on the building stock, such as newer and more efficient technologies and practices related to energy policies and prices. Furthermore, the model has a direct relationship to the construction activity (energy-efficiency measures, substitution of fossil energy based heating systems) and fosters the comprehension of material flows, related environmental impact, and costs. The practicality of this approach is demonstrated by means of a case study in the city of Zurich in Switzerland. The results suggest that Zurich has a remarkable potential to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector: 85% by 2050. The case study highlights the advantages of the proposed modeling approach. The LC-Build is a valuable tool to identify and test sustainable energy targets for building stocks, such as the European 20-20-20 target. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global warming is attracting a growing interest worldwide for the generation of large-scale energy from renewable energy sources as it is free from greenhouse gas emissions. Wind energy is one of the most promising renewable energy sources due to its availability and low cost and due to the fact that it is more efficient and advanced in technology. Hence, harvesting of large-scale wind energy is of prime interest today. However, large-scale integration of wind energy sources creates environmental, economic, social and technical impacts that need to be investigated and mitigated as part of developing a sustainable power system for the future. Government, utilities and research communities are working together to increase penetration of wind energy into the power grid and overcome potential barriers associated with this. This paper presents an extensive and useful survey on wind energy technology and associated implementation issues including effects of wind farms on the nearby locality. This paper also reviews the social, environmental and cost-economic impacts of installing large-scale wind energy plants. Finally, potential technical challenges to the integration of large-scale wind energy into the power grid are reviewed in regard to current research With their available mitigation techniques. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Cost Analysis for Decision Support in Chemical Process Development The need for environmentally benign processes as a crucial basis of future competitiveness is in the focus of today's chemical industry. Decision support in the development of such processes can be provided by life cycle assessment. New technologies, however, can be established only if they lead to cost-efficient production processes as well. Life cycle cost analyses provide an appropriate methodological basis of linking the cost-side evaluation of alternative options during the process development with environmental decision criteria. The results of both methods can be combined in an eco portfolio. In summary, development of both, ecologically and economically efficient processes, can thus be supported already in the early design phase of chemical processes.A good portion of greenhouse gas emissions is caused by the energy used in the built environment. Emission reduction goals may be achieved by combining cogeneration with fuel cells (PC). This paper investigates electricity production costs for PC based cogeneration systems with recent data for Swedish conditions. The types of FCs that are investigated are proton exchange membrane PC and molten carbonate FC. Based solely on cost, PC based cogeneration systems cannot compete with conventional systems. However, our results show that Molten Carbonate PC based cogeneration systems will be profitable by 2020. To compete with conventional systems, the capital cost, lifetime and efficiency of FCs must be improved. Creation of a reasonably broad market is essential since it will greatly help to reduce capital costs and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, the dominating parts of the overall costs according to the analysis. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water electrolysis is a well-established process for hydrogen production but requires efficiency improvements to reduce costs. High temperature electrolysis (HTE) as a means to higher efficiency was advanced in the EU project RelHY. Through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), also the environmental performance of five HTE-based hydrogen production systems was evaluated: operation with power and steam from a nuclear plant, continuous and intermittent operation with wind power and water, intermittent operation with natural gas or biogas reforming as back-up. Large scale natural gas reforming (NGR) was used as a reference. The LCA aims to identifying environmental hotspots of HTE plants and comparing their operation. The results show that stack manufacturing has the strongest impact during construction of the HTE plant while the impacts during H-2 production are largely due to power supply. All HTE variants studied lead to less life cycle CO2-equivalent emissions than NGR. However, only the wind powered HTE variants without back-up use less energy than NGR. The other impacts and flows show different patterns. The results and limitations of the study are discussed. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An improved steel sheet pile (SSP) inspection procedure is proposed in this paper, which couples the field inspection condition-index methodology previously developed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers with reliability assessments to quantify the life-cycle costs and environmental impacts associated with various maintenance and repair (M&R) scenarios. Maintenance and repair strategies over the analysis period (from present to the end of the structure's lifetime) are determined through reliability assessment for structures with relatively low condition indices. The level of maintenance activity is then to be determined by the life-cycle cost analysis and environmental life-cycle assessment of M&R alternatives. The optimal M&R alternative is the one with the lowest cost combined with minimal environmental impact. Using these methodologies, the SSP structure owners will gain improved capabilities to monitor present-day conditions of SSP infrastructure and prioritize structures that will require sustainable M&R. Further research is proposed to collect real field-inspection data and create M&R records that can be used to estimate the reliability more accurately. In addition, the methodology developed for this relatively simple type of structure can be extended to more complex and critical structural systems such as gates, valves, and other components making up locks, dams, and other related navigational facilities. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CF.1943-5509.0000301. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.A new procedure for environmental targeting of co-generation system is presented. The proposed method is based on the concepts of pinch technology for total site targeting of fuel, power, steam, environmental impacts and total annualized cost with considering emissions taxes. This approach provides a consistent, general procedure for determining mass flow rates and efficiencies of the applied turbines. This algorithm utilizes the relationship of entropy with enthalpy and isentropic efficiency. Also, the life cycle assessment (LCA) as a well-known tool for analyzing environmental impacts on a wide perspective with reference to a product system and the related environmental and economic impacts have been applied. In this regard, a damage-oriented impact analysis method based on Eco-indicator 99 and footprints analysis was considered. In addition, the present work demonstrates the effect of including both sensible and latent heating of steam in the extended Site Utility Grand Composite Curve (ESUGCC). It is shown that including sensible heating allows for better thermal matching between the processes. Furthermore, the other representation Y-SUGCC as the other form of Site Utility Grand Composite has been proposed. Two case studies were used to illustrate the usefulness of the new environmental targeting method.Nitrogen (N) inputs from fertilizer, biologically-fixed N, feed, and animal manure sustain productive agriculture. Agricultural systems are limited however in their ability to incorporate N into products, and environmental N losses may become local, regional and global concerns. The anticipated increases in global demand for food, especially for animal products, necessitate an urgent search for practices that enhance N use efficiency (NUE) and reduce environmental N loss. The objectives of this study were to determine feed-milk-manure N relationships for the global dairy herd, and to evaluate how well regional and production system determinations of these relationships correspond to measurements made under experimental conditions and on commercial dairy farms. Data on dairy cattle populations, feed and milk production from 142 countries were used in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model to determine dry matter intake (DMI), N intake (NI), the percentage of NI secreted as milk N (NUE-milk), the percent of NI used by the whole-herd (NUE-herd), and manure N excretion (Nex). On a global basis, an average lactating cow weighs approximately 420 kg; per animal unit (AU = 1000 kg live weight) daily DMI and NI are 21.0 kg and 477 g, respectively; annual milk production is 5000 kg/AU; and NUE-milk and NUE-herd are 16.0% and 15.6%, respectively. Approximately 37% of global lactating cows have NUE-milk of < 10% and these low efficient cows account for 10% of the milk production and 33% of Nex globally. Approximately 30% of global lactating cows have NUE-milk between 21% and 25% and these cows account for 53% of the milk production and 35% of Nex globally. Estimates of NUE-milk and Nex corresponded well to measurements under experimental and commercial farm conditions. Study determinations of Nex were however 3-50% lower than IPCC Tier 1 values of Nex for Africa, Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The apparent accuracy of LCA model calculations of Nex should enhance regional, production system and global determinations of dairy Nex loss during collection, storage, and land application, and the amounts of Nex actually recycled through crops and pastures. Published by Elsevier B.V.In order to assess the environmental impact of the Swedish building and property (real estate) management sector, a new top-down life cycle assessment (LCA) method was used which was based on inputoutput analysis using national statistical data. Six indicators were developed as suitable for environmental monitoring of the sector: energy use; emissions of greenhouse gases; emissions of nitrogen oxides; emissions of particulates; use of hazardous chemical products; and generation of waste. These indicators were then used to describe the environmental performance of the sector over a 15-year period in order to monitor change and improvement. The use of energy and emissions to air can be effectively followed in time-series. These indicators could be used to create incentives to evaluate regularly improvement work and to inform policy and practice. For greenhouse gas emissions, a trend was identified for space heating to become less important than construction and management towards the end of the period studied, most likely due to a transition from fossil fuels to renewable fuels for heat production. Key implications will be on the selection of building materials, the construction process and the extension of building longevity.Life cycle assessments (LCAs) of buildings often use an operational lifetime of approximately 50 years, and have simplified descriptions of building operations and maintenance. The typical service life period is inappropriate for some materials given their exposure and use, and the simplified descriptions do not fully represent maintenance, repair and replacement cycles. Building service life prediction modelling is examined to improve the representation of service life in LCA and the evaluation of environmental impacts. A process is developed that incorporates service life, operational energy and LCA modelling which provides a means of examining the effects of materials and systems in building operation, maintenance, repair and replacement. This process advances the field of building LCA by representing a more complete and accurate building life cycle, and by highlighting the impact of building service life models on the LCA methodological assumptions. Nine building envelope combinations are modelled. Cumulative life cycle impact and life cycle impact per year are shown to be primarily dependent on predicted material longevity (i.e. the frequency of major replacement of the envelope systems, as well as the differences in the frequency and intensity of prescribed maintenance) and the environmental indicators analysed.In developing countries, particularly in Latin America, the rapid growth of urban areas has led to complex problems, including the exploitation of natural resources, environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Massive structures are being built to meet the housing demand. Moreover, there is excessive use of energy through appliances, interior lightning and air conditioning which generate GHG. This paper aims to propose green sustainable strategies to reduce GHG emissions associated with energy consumption in a social neighbourhood in Merida, Mexico. The strategies were eco-technology (efficient equipment) and green spaces (sedum + food production). Once the context is set, the study collected data about energy habits and consumption. The global warming potential (GWP) was calculated through a life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the level of GHG emissions associated with household energy consumption. The CO(2)eq emissions avoided by the transport of the food (tomatoes) from the production site to the consumer were calculated. Distribution, packaging and retail were included. All strategies combined can prevent up 1.06 tons CO(2)eq/year; this represents 67% of the emissions originating from a reference household (34% avoided by eco-technology, 24.5% fixed by green spaces and 8.4% avoided by food logistics). At city scale (112,000 houses) this represents 100,352 tons/CO(2)eq/year. This study supports the importance of integrating environmental quantitative tools in planning cities. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The biotreatment of flue gases with algae cultures is a promising option to sequestrate CO2, yet the emission of other greenhouse gases (GHG) from the cultures can hamper their environmental benefit. Quantitative data on the sequestration potential for CO2 and NO (x) in relation to the direct production of CH4 and N2O are urgently required. The present study assessed the flows of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) through cultures of the green alga Dunaliella salina, supplied with biodiesel flue gas, by means of mass balancing. D. salina was grown in artificially lighted, field- (42-L bubble column reactor) and laboratory-scale cultures (23 A degrees C, pH 7.5). In the bubble column reactor, algae grew with an average specific growth rate of 0.237 day(-1) under flue gas supplementation (6.3 % (v/v) CO2, 1.2 ppmv NO (x) ), and CO2 was retained to 39 % in the system. The specific sequestration rate for CO2 was low, with 0.13 g CO2 L-1 day(-1). Cultures emitted up to 13.03 mu g CH4 L-1 day(-1) and 4261 mu g N2O L-1 day(-1). The moderate retention of NO (x) -N was outweighed by emissions of N2O-N, and total N in the system decreased by 15.48 % during the 9-day trial. Results suggest that GHG production was mainly the outcome of anaerobic microbial processes and their emission was lower in pre-sterilized cultures. Under the tested conditions, up to six times more CO2 equivalents were emitted during flue gas treatment. Therefore, the direct GHG emissions of algae culture systems, intended for flue gas treatment (i.e. open ponds) need to be reviewed critically.This paper describes the trend of utilizing oil palm residue, i.e. the empty fruit bunches (EFB) left after extraction of the palm oil, using a case study of Malaysia, which is one of the world's major palm oil producers, and discusses the environmental performance of recycling technologies being developed in Malaysia for fuel, fiber, and fertilizer. Seven technologies are analyzed: ethanol production, methane recovery, briquette production, biofuel for combined heat and power (CHP) plants, composting, medium density fiberboard (MDF) production, and pulp and paper production. The life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used to discuss the environmental impacts of these technologies for adding value to this biomass. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to determine the land use effects for the various technologies utilizing EFB and to estimate the energy generation potential of raw EFB in CHP plants and methane production. Among the technologies for energy production, CHP plants have the best performance if the electricity generated is connected to the national grid, with superior benefits in the majority of impact categories compared to briquette, methane, and ethanol production. Overall, we find that methane recovery and composting are more environmentally friendly than other technologies, as measured by reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Pulp and paper, and MDF production are favorable technologies for land use impacts; however, they have intense primary energy requirements, chemical use in the processes, and emissions from their waste treatment systems. Our results provide information for decision makers when planning for sustainable use of oil palm biomass. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As aquaculture production expands, we must avoid mistakes made during increasing intensification of agriculture. Understanding environmental impacts and measures to mitigate them is important for designing responsible aquaculture production systems. There are four realistic goals that can make future aquaculture operations more sustainable and productive: (I) improvement of management practices to create more efficient and diverse systems at every production level; (2) emphasis on local decisionmaking, human capacity development, and collective action to generate productive aquaculture systems that fit into societal constraints and demands; (3) development of risk management efforts for all systems that reduce disease problems, eliminate antibiotic and drug abuse, and prevent exotic organism introduction into local waters; and (4) creation of systems to better identify more sustainably grown aquaculture products in the market and promote them to individual consumers. By 2050, seafood will be predominantly sourced through aquaculture, including not only finfish and invertebrates but also seaweeds.A combination of agro-environmental indicators and energy analysis of a production system, such as vineyards located in Natura 2000 sites, for which little is known, may be a useful tool to decide best farm management practices with low greenhouse gas emissions. In randomly selected vineyards at six sites of Natura 2000 network in Cyprus, we evaluated the energy flow and the greenhouse gas emissions. Hierarchical cluster analysis using production coefficients and a topographic variable (altitude) was used to detect clusters of the studied vineyards. Three groups were revealed. Group 1 (eight vineyards) with the lowest energy inputs, followed by Group 2 (three vineyards) with intermediate inputs and Group 3 (three vineyards) with the highest energy inputs. Altitude, fertilizers, labour, fuel and transportation had the greatest contribution on cluster formation. Non-parametric comparisons concerning 28 indicators showed that ten indicators (total energy inputs, renewable and non-renewable energy inputs, fruit energy outputs, shoot energy outputs, total energy outputs, fruit production, CO2, CH4, and N2O) were significantly higher in high energy input vineyards (Group 3) and three (energy use for renewable inputs, energy productivity and energy fruit efficiency) in low energy input vineyards (Group 1). Five indicators (energy use for fuel, transportation and non-renewable inputs, and energy efficiency for (shoot + fruit) outputs and renewable energy inputs) were significantly lower in Group 3 and two (intensity and non-renewable energy consumption) in Group 1. Similarities and/or dissimilarities among vineyards in Natura 2000 sites were related to altitude, production coefficients and local farming practices. These mixed results stress the importance of taking both local management indicators and vineyard topography into consideration when developing future agri-environment schemes, and suggest that local-regional interactions may affect Natura 2000 sites services and functions. It is important that EU agricultural policies are complemented by national-regional interventions in order to regulate the fragile balance between Natura 2000 sites and agriculture, reducing non-renewable energy inputs as percent of total energy inputs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to explore how and where phase change materials (PCMs) are used in passive latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) systems, and to present an overview of how these construction solutions are related to building's energy performance. A survey on research trends are firstly presented followed by the discussion of some physical and theoretical considerations about the building and the potential of integrating PCMs in construction elements. The different types of PCMs and main criteria that govern their selection are reviewed, as well as the main methods to measure PCMs' thermal properties, and the techniques to incorporate PCMs into building elements. The numerical modeling of heat transfer with phase-change and heat transfer enhanced techniques are discussed, followed by a review of several passive LHTES systems with PCMs. Studies on dynamic simulation of energy in buildings (DSEB) incorporating PCMs are reviewed, mainly those supported by EnergyPlus, ESP-r and TRNSYS software tools. Lifecycle assessments, both environmental and economic are discussed. This review shows that passive construction solutions with PCMs provide the potential for reducing energy consumption for heating and cooling due to the load reduction/shifting, and for increasing indoor thermal comfort due to the reduced indoor temperature fluctuations. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents the life cycle environmental impacts and economic costs of the passenger transport sector in Nigeria for 2003-2030. Four scenarios are considered: business as usual (BAU); increased use of public transport (buses) at the expense of cars (LOWCAR) and motorcycles (LOWMC), respectively; and high economic growth with increased car ownership and decline of public transport (HICAR). The findings show that for the BAU scenario the life cycle environmental impacts double over the period, despite the assumption of increased fuel and vehicle efficiency of 35% over time. The total fuel costs at the sectoral level increase three times, from US$3.4 billion/yr in 2003 to US$9.7 billion in 2030. Increasing the use of buses would reduce the environmental impacts on average by 15-20% compared to BAU; at the same time, the total fuel costs would be 25-30% lower. If the use of cars grows much faster due to a high economic growth as in HICAR, the environmental impacts and fuel costs would increase by 16% and 26%, respectively. These results demonstrate clearly that future transport policy in Nigeria should promote and incentivise public (bus) transport as a much more environmentally and economically sustainable option than transport by cars and motorcycles. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Considering natural gas (NG) to be the most promising low-carbon option for the energy industry, large state owned companies in China have established numerous coal-based synthetic natural gas (SNG) projects. The objective of this paper is to use a system approach to evaluate coal-derived SNG in terms of life-cycle energy efficiency and CO2 emissions. This project examined main applications of the SNG and developed a model that can be used for evaluating energy efficiency and CO2 emissions of various fuel pathway systems. The model development started with the GREET model, and added the SNG module and an end-use equipment module. The database was constructed with Chinese data. The analyses show when the SNG are used for cooking, power generation, steam production for heating and industry, life-cycle energies are 20-108% higher than all competitive pathways, with a similar rate of increase in life-cycle CO2 emissions. When a compressed natural gas (CNG) car uses the SNG, life-cycle CO2 emission will increase by 150-190% compared to the baseline gasoline car and by 140-210% compared to an electric car powered by electricity from coal-fired power plants. The life-cycle CO2 emission of SNG-powered city bus will be 220-270% higher than that of traditional diesel city bus. The gap between SNG-powered buses and new hybrid diesel buses will be even larger-life-cycle CO2 emission of the former being around 4 times of that of the latter. It is concluded that the SNG will not accomplish the tasks of both energy conservation and CO2 reduction. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An extensive body of literature demonstrates how higher density leads to more efficient energy use and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport and housing. However, our current understanding seems to be limited on the relationships between the urban form and the GHG emissions, namely how the urban form affects the lifestyles and thus the GHGs on a much wider scale than traditionally assumed. The urban form affects housing types, commuting distances, availability of different goods and services, social contacts and emulation, and the alternatives for pastimes, meaning that lifestyles are actually situated instead of personal projects. As almost all consumption, be it services or products, involves GHG emissions, looking at the emissions from transport and housing may not be sufficient to define whether one form would be more desirable than another. In the paper we analyze the urban form-lifestyle relationships in Finland together with the resulting GHG implications, employing both monetary expenditure and time use data to portray lifestyles in different basic urban forms: metropolitan, urban, semi-urban and rural. The GHG implications are assessed with a life cycle assessment (LCA) method that takes into account the GHG emissions embedded in different goods and services. The paper depicts that, while the direct emissions from transportation and housing energy slightly decrease with higher density, the reductions can be easily overridden by sources of indirect emissions. We also highlight that the indirect emissions actually seem to have strong structural determinants, often undermined in studies concerning sustainable urban forms. Further, we introduce a concept of 'parallel consumption' to explain how the lifestyles especially in more urbanized areas lead to multiplication of consumption outside of the limits of time budget and the living environment. This is also part I of a two-stage study. In part II we will depict how various other contextual and socioeconomic variables are actually also very important to take into account, and how diverse GHG mitigation strategies would be needed for different types of area in different locations towards a low-carbon future.A previous Iowa State University (ISU) analysis published in 2010 investigated the technical and economic feasibility of the fast pyrolysis and hydroprocessing of biomass, and concluded that the pathway could produce cellulosic biofuels for a minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) of $2.11/gal. The 2010 ISU study was largely theoretical in that no commercial-scale fast pyrolysis facilities were being constructed at the time of publication. The present analysis expands upon the 2010 ISU study by performing an updated techno-economic analysis of the fast pyrolysis and hydroprocessing pathway. Recent advances in pathway technology and commercialization and new parameters suggested by the recent literature are accounted for. The MFSP for a 2000 MTPD facility employing fast pyrolysis and hydroprocessing to convert corn stover to gasoline and diesel fuel is calculated to quantify the economic feasibility of the pathway. The present analysis determines the MFSP of gasoline and diesel fuel produced via fast pyrolysis and hydroprocessing to be $2.57/gal. This result indicates that the pathway could be competitive with petroleum, although not as competitive as suggested by the 2010 ISU study. The present analysis also demonstrates the sensitivity of the result to process assumptions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This document presents an optimization methodology for an injection moulding food package. This methodology was based on economic, ecological and technical criteria, including barrier properties of the whole package, viability of injection and mechanical behavior. These technical criteria set cutoff values that limit packaging design. Once these cutoff values were calculated, an economic and environmental assessment was carried out in order to obtain several graphics that show the different solutions that are technically viable and allow us to choose the optimal one. This methodology was applied to a small-size non-respiring food packages. Four different thermoplastic materials (HDPE, LDPE, PET and PP) and two types of renewable resources based PLAs were studied. Some are discarded due to technical criteria and the other ones may be considered as optimal depending on which criteria is considered more important. If environmental criteria are applied, PLA would be the preferred option. However, economic factors show that PET is more cost-competitive. Final choice will depend on which decisive factor is chosen. The methodology applied was an effective tool to integrate the criteria that supports the decision making, considering technical, economical and environmental factors.The aim of the present study has been to assess the environmental profile of an experimental decentralized waste management system which is based on the anaerobic codigestion of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) and dewatered sewage sludge in small plants (annual capacity: about 3000 t coupled at a 75 kW CHP unit) distributed over the territory. Two scenarios have been analysed: with and without aerobic composting post-treatment. In so far as an environmental point of view is concerned, such scenarios have been compared with the past and the current approaches occurring in the case study area (NE Italy) and characterized by a strong centralization. Environmental performances of the different scenarios have been assessed through Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Our results indicate that the anaerobic codigestion of dewatered sewage sludge and OFMSW in small plants combined with composting post-treatment may offer an environmentally sustainable option of waste management in small communities. This is achieved by (1) a strong reduction in the distances and volumes transported by. road, (2) low energy requirement for the process itself, (3) energy saving from CHP unit and (4) energy/resources saving from the compost produced by the digested matter. Also social advantages may be gained, such as increased public acceptability of waste treatment facilities and increased awareness among citizen on waste management issue. To note that these advantages are closely related to some key assumptions like the use of digested matter as fertilizer. Assumptions and work limits are discussed in the final section of the paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.What is the burden upon your feet? With sales of running and jogging shoes in the world averaging a nontrivial 25 billion shoes per year, or 34 million per day, the impact of the footwear industry represents a significant portion of the apparel sector's environmental burden. A single shoe can contain 65 discrete parts that require 360 processing steps for assembly. While brand name companies dictate product design and material specifications, the actual manufacturing of footwear is typically contracted to manufacturers based in emerging economies. Using life cycle assessment methodology in accordance with the ISO 14040/14044 standards, this effort quantifies the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, often referred to as a carbon footprint, of a pair of running shoes. Furthermore, mitigation strategies are proposed focusing on high leverage aspects of the life cycle. Using this approach, it is estimated that the carbon footprint of a typical pair of running shoes made of synthetic materials is 14 +/- 2.7 kg CO2-equivalent. The vast majority of this impact is incurred during the materials processing and manufacturing stages, which make up around 29% and 68% of the total impact, respectively. Other similar studies in the apparel industry have reported carbon footprints of running shoes ranging between 18 and 41 kg CO2-equivalent/pair (PUMA, 2008; Timberland, 2009). For consumer products not requiring electricity during use, the intensity of emissions in the manufacturing phase is atypical; most commonly, materials make up the biggest percentage of impact. This distinction highlights the importance of identifying mitigation strategies within the manufacturing process, and the need to evaluate the emissions reduction efficacy of each potential strategy. By suggesting a few of the causes of manufacturing dominance in the global warming potential assessment of this product, this study hypothesizes the characteristics of a product that could lead to high manufacturing impact. Some of these characteristics include the source of energy in manufacturing and the form of manufacturing, in other words the complexity of processes used and the area over which these process are performed (particularly when a product involves numerous parts and light materials). Thereby, the work provides an example when relying solely on the bill of materials information for product greenhouse gas emissions assessment may underestimate life cycle burden and ignore potentially high impact mitigation strategies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This life cycle assessment (LCA) examines the claim that lightweight and refillable packaging alternatives to conventional single use glass bottles for wines and spirits reduce environmental impacts. Using LCA input data from laboratory and field research, as well as questionnaires to industry, the potential life cycle impacts of five types of 11 wine packages and four types of 750 ml spirit packages are compared. In addition, detailed wine and spirit volume sales data are used to undertake an LCA comparison of packaging consumption at a municipal scale. Impacts associated with the wine and spirit packaging supplied in the City of Toronto, Canada in 2008 are compared with a plausible alternative comprising only lightweight and refillable containers which reduces the mass of waste by approximately half. Four alternative means of packaging, including the container, closures, capsules and labels, are evaluated; lightweight single use glass bottles; refillable glass bottles; polyethylene terephthalate bottles; and aseptic cartons. LCA results estimated using the ReCiPe impact assessment method address both the relative impact differences between the packaging systems, as well as the cumulative impacts from the consumption of packages of multiple sizes and types within a municipality. Out of the five types of packages evaluated, the refillable glass bottle and aseptic carton prove to have the lowest net endpoint level environmental impacts, with impact reductions, relative to the conventional single use glass container, reaching as high as 87%. At the municipal scale, the alternative packaging scenario is responsible for endpoint level impact reductions of between 40% and 42%. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Globally, food industries are confronting the serious challenges associated with freshwater use. The water footprint (WF) is a metric that quantifies the potential environmental impact related to water. A number of methods for water footprinting have been proposed, while international standards are in the process of being developed. The water footprints of bottles of wine produced in two different regions of New Zealand were assessed using four water-footprinting methods: the consumptive use method of the Water Footprint Network (WFN), plus two recently proposed life cycle assessment (LCA) based methods and the hydrological water balance method. The outcomes of these methods were evaluated for their ability to indicate the local impacts on water resources and their usefulness to key stakeholders. The WF method of WFN quantifies the blue and green-water consumption, and further information on water resource availability is required to assess the impacts on local water resources. The grey-WF indicates the impact on water quality, and comparisons can be made between products, but the absolute values are less meaningful. The LCA based methods of the stress-weighted WF, freshwater ecosystem impact and freshwater depletion do indicate impacts. Also products from different locations can be compared. However, these indicators are limited in their ability to show local impacts because of constraints in their characterization factors. The WFN method and two LCA methods are based on consumptive water use. The water consumed through evapotranspiration, however, returns as precipitation within a reasonably short time and often at a local scale. So water footprinting based on water consumption alone is limited in terms of assessing the local impact of primary production on water resources. Furthermore, the applicability of the outcomes of these three methods to growers and resource regulators is not straightforward. The hydrological water-balance method indicates the impact on water quantity as a volumetric measure, so that it can be understood by the non-technical community. For the growers, it provides a sensible measure of the impact of their production, as well as useful information for setting measurable targets to reduce the WF. It can also be helpful for resource regulators to manage their water resources by matching water demand to water availability or replenishment. The robustness of the WF protocols for measuring the impact of product life cycle on water quality needs further improvement so that water footprinting can provide metrics of the sustainable use of our water resources. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To increase food production while minimizing its influence on climate change, farming systems in future will need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of product (i.e., GHG intensity). To assess the level and variation in GHG emissions intensity among Norwegian dairy farms, we conducted an analysis of 30 dairy farms to calculate farm scale emissions of GHGs, expressed as CO2 equivalents (CO(2)eq) per kg fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM), and CO(2)eq/kg carcass weight (CW) sold. A model, HolosNor, was developed to estimate net GHG emissions, including soil C changes, from dairy farms. The model requires farm scale input data of soil physical characteristics, weather, and farm operations. Based on data from 2008 the estimated level of GHG intensity was 1.02 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) FPCM, 21.67 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) CW sold as culled cows and heifers, and 17.25 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) CW sold as young bulls. On average, enteric CH4 was the largest emission source both per unit FPCM and CW, accounting for 0.39 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) FPCM, 8.34 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) CW sold as culled cows and heifers, and 6.84 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) CW sold as young bulls. Variation in the estimated soil N2O emissions was the source that contributed the most to the total variation among the farms; the difference between the minimum and the maximum levels was estimated to be 0.30 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) FPCM, and 6.43 and 6.49 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) CW sold as culled cows/heifers and young bulls, respectively. Other GHG emission sources also varied considerably among the farms; similar to the N2O emissions, higher emissions of enteric CH4, indirect energy use due to manufacturing of farm inputs, and soil C change all contributed to the higher GHG intensity of some farms. Our study estimates large variation in GHG intensity among dairy farms in Norway and indicates a sensitivity of the emissions to mitigation measures. Production of milk and beef is a complex biological system, thus mitigation options are likely to be most successful when applied in small steps. Thus, the most valuable contribution of the current work is the framework of an on-farm tool for assessing farm-specific mitigation options of Norwegian dairy and beef production. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has turned into a powerful tool to critically and straightforward assess the holistic impact of bio-based plastics and other bio-based products. In order to assure at the same time ecological soundness and to support the economical success of a bioproduct, an early assessment already in the stage of product development is needed. This strategy helps to identify and subsequently to avoid ecological "hot spots". Assessment by using the sustainable process index (SPI), a member of the ecological footprint family, is considered as an especially viable strategy to realize this goal. The software SPIonExcel was developed to make the assessment methodology easily applicable and operator-friendly. During the process of development for archaebacterial production of poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) biopolyesters from the industrial surplus material whey, a SPI assessment was accomplished to optimize the process in terms of ecological sustainability. As the major outcome, the resulting ecological footprint was comparable with that of competing fossil plastics. Additionally, optimization potentials to further increase the ecological competitiveness were highlighted and quantified. In addition, the developed PHA production process was compared with production of whey powder as the competing, conventional application of surplus whey. Also in this case, the novel PHA production process was superior according to the SPI calculations. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission factors are used with increased frequency for the accounting and reporting of GHG from waste management. However, these factors have been calculated for developed countries of the Northern Hemisphere and are lacking for developing countries. This paper shows how such factors have been developed for the collection, transport and landfilling of municipal waste in South Africa. As such it presents a model on how international results and methodology can be adapted and used to calculate country-specific GHG emission factors from waste. For the collection and transport of municipal waste in South Africa, the average diesel consumption is around 5 dm(3) (litres) per tonne of wet waste and the associated GHG emissions are about 15 kg CO2 equivalents (CO2 e). Depending on the type of landfill, the GHG emissions from the landfilling of waste have been calculated to range from -145 to 1016 kg CO2 e per tonne of wet waste, when taking into account carbon storage, and from 441 to 2532 kg CO2 e per tonne of wet waste, when carbon storage is left out. The highest emission factor per unit of wet waste is for landfill sites without landfill gas collection and these are the dominant waste disposal facilities in South Africa. However, cash strapped municipalities in Africa and the developing world will not be able to significantly upgrade these sites and reduce their GHG burdens if there is no equivalent replacement of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) resulting from the Kyoto agreement. Other low cost avenues need to be investigated to suit local conditions, in particular landfill covers which enhance methane oxidation. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integrated solar absorption cooling and heating (SACH) systems, which use solar energy to provide space heating, space cooling, and water heating, represent a promising substitute to reduce the earth's carbon emissions. SACH systems currently are designed based on engineering experience for the most part and few systematic methodologies are available to identify the key optimal parameters for SACH systems, such as the slope of the solar collectors, the area of the solar collectors, and the volume of the storage tanks. As a result, the established systems usually are not capable of yielding the greatest returns on investment. Motivated by the above facts, this study investigates a formal method for SACH system optimization by incorporating simultaneously a system's performance related to its economic, energy, and environmental aspects. The proposed method includes central composite design, regression, and multi-objective optimization. Central composite design (CCD) is used to select the significant experimental data generated by energy system simulation and life cycle analysis. Linear regression models are used to predict the functional relationship between system performance and the key system parameters using data sets. A multi-objective optimization model is then formulated and solved based on the Weighted-Tchebycheff metric approach. The proposed approach is applied to medium-sized office buildings located in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago; and the results suggest that the approach can provide a systematic mechanism to optimally design SACH systems. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Multiple web-based calculators have come on the market as tools to support sustainable decision making, but few are available to agriculture. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has proved to be an objective, transparent tool for calculating environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of products and services, but can often be too complex for non-specialists. The objective of this study was therefore to develop an environmental support tool to determine the environmental impacts of protected crops. An effort was made to provide an easy-to-use tool in order to reach a wide audience and help horticulture stakeholders choose efficient options to mitigate the environmental impacts of protected crops. Users can estimate the environmental performance of their crops by entering a limited amount of data and following a few easy steps. A questionnaire must be answered with data on the crop, greenhouse dimensions, substrate, waste management, and the consumption of water, energy, fertilisers and pesticides. The calculator was designed as a simplified LCA, based on two scenarios analysed in detail in previous tasks of the EUPHOROS project and used as reference systems in this study. Two spreadsheets were provided based on these reference scenarios: one for a tomato crop in a multi-tunnel greenhouse under Southern European climate conditions and the other for a tomato crop in a Venlo glass greenhouse under Central European climate conditions. The selected functional unit was one tonne of tomatoes. Default data were given for each reference system for users who did not have complete specific data and to provide results for comparison with users' own results. The results were presented for water use as an inventory indicator and for the impact categories abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, photochemical oxidation and cumulative energy demand. In the multi-tunnel greenhouse, the main contributors based on the default data were the structure, fertilisers and auxiliary equipment, whereas, for the Venlo glass greenhouse, the main contributors were energy consumption for heating and, to a lesser extent, the structure. The results were evaluated for alternative options of electricity, fertilisers, pesticides and means of transport, as these areas were found to have potential variability, depending on the characterisation model and datasets used. The resulting calculator is a useful tool to simulate the environmental performance of protected horticultural production systems and is also helpful to growers and advisers for evaluating the efficiency of input reduction options. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New insights into the sustainable use of natural resources in human systems can be gained through comparison with ecosystems via common indices. In both kinds of system, resources are processed by a number of users within a network, but we consider ecosystems as the only ones displaying sustainable patterns of growth and development. This study aims at using Network Analysis (NA) to move such "ecosystem perspective" from theory into practice. A Danish municipal Water Management System (WMS) is used as case study to test the NA methodology and to discuss its generic applicability. We identified water users within the WMS and represented their interactions as a network of water flows. We computed intensive and extensive indices of system-level performance for seven different network configurations illustrating past conditions (2004-2008) and future scenarios (2015 and 2020). We also computed the same indices for other 24 human systems and for 12 ecosystems, by using information from the existing scientific literature on NA. The comparison of these results reveals that the WMS is similar to the other human systems and that human systems generally differ from ecosystems. The WMS is highly efficient at processing the water resource, but the rigid and almost linear structure makes it vulnerable in situations of stress such as heavy rain events. The analysis of future scenarios showed a trend towards increased sustainability, but differences between past and expected future performance of the VVMS are marginal. We argue that future interventions should create alternative pathways for reusing rainwater within the WMS, increasing its potential to withstand the occurrence of flooding. We discuss advantages, limitations, and general applicability of NA as a tool for assessing environmental sustainability in human systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessments of environmental performance are challenged by multifunctionality of production systems where impacts cannot be assigned to any one specific output. In the assessment method emergy accounting, all available energy used up for a process is summed up after being converted to solar equivalent Joules. In emergy accounting each output carries the resource use burden of all co-produced outputs. When comparing emergy indicators on a product-to-product basis (reference approach), products from single-output processes tend to be favoured. This constitutes a method bias. Building on emergy algebra rules, we describe approaches to calculate solar transformities when co-production is involved and give guidelines on how to compare products and systems. The approaches are exemplified in a comparison between willow biomass, fertilised with manure, and natural gas used as feedstock for combined heat and power (CHP) production. A Danish willow-based CHP model system was assessed whereas data for the fossil-based system was from literature. When compared on a product-to-product basis using the reference approach, bio-based CHP production is inferior to fossil-based CHP with respect to resource use (transformities of 2.31 E+05 seJ/J and 0.88 E+05 seJ/J, respectively). If the manure is considered as a waste and modelled as heat loss, the single-product transformity for biobased production is only 0.37 E+05 seJ/J. When compared on a system-to-system basis, bio-based production is competitive with fossil-based production (transformities of 2.21 E+05 seJ/J and 2.29 E+05 seJ/J, respectively). The paper evaluates compatibility of suggested approaches with emergy theory and practices and presents a discussion of the distinction between waste and resource. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We develop a novel inventory method called Dynamic Hybrid Multi-Region Inventory analysis (DHMRI), which integrates the EEMRIOA and Integrated Hybrid LCA and applies time-dependent environmental intervention information for inventory analysis. Consequently, DHMRI is able to quantify the change in the environmental footprint caused by a specific policy while taking structural changes and technological dynamics into consideration. DHMRI is applied to assess the change in the total CO2 emissions associated with the total final demand caused by the climate policy in Taiwan to demonstrate the practicality of this novel method. The evaluation reveals that the implementation of mitigation measures included in the existing climate policy, such as an enhancement in energy efficiency, promotion of renewable energy, and limitation of the growth of energy-intensive industries, will lead to a 28% increase in the total CO2 emissions and that the main driver is the export-oriented electronics industry. Moreover, a major increase in the total emissions is predicted to occur in Southeast Asia and China. The observations from the case study reveal that DHMRI is capable of overcoming the limitations of existing assessment tools at macro-level evaluation of environmental policies.We develop and assess life cycle inventories of a conceptual offshore wind farm using a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Special emphasis is placed on aspects of installation, operation, and maintenance, as these stages have been given only cursory consideration in previous LCAs. The results indicate that previous studies have underestimated the impacts caused by offshore operations and (though less important) exchange of parts. Offshore installation and maintenance activities cause 28% (10 g CO2-Eq/kWh) of total greenhouse gas emissions and 31-45% of total impact indicator values at the most (marine eutrophication, acidification, particulates, photochemical ozone). Transport and dumping of rock in installation phase and maintenance of wind turbines in use phase are major contributory activities. Manufacturing of spare parts is responsible for 6% (2 g CO2-Eq/kWh) of greenhouse gas emissions and up to 13% of total impact indicator values (freshwater ecotoxicity). Assumptions on lifetimes, work times for offshore activities and implementation of NO abatement on vessels are shown to have a significant influence on results. Another source of uncertainty is assumed operating mode data for vessels determining fuel consumption rates.Because a variety of human-related activities, engineered nanoparticles (ENMs) may be released to various environmental media and may cross environmental boundaries, and thus will be found in most media. Therefore, the potential environmental impacts of ENMs must be assessed from a multimedia perspective and with an integrated risk management approach that considers rapid developments and increasing use of new nanomaterials. Accordingly, this Account presents a rational process for the integration of in silico ENM toxicity and fate and transport analyses for environmental impact assessment. This approach requires knowledge of ENM toxicity and environmental exposure concentrations. Considering the large number of current different types of ENMs and that those numbers are likely to increase, there is an urgent need to accelerate the evaluation of their toxicity and the assessment of their potential distribution in the environment. Developments in high throughput screening (HTS) are now enabling the rapid generation of large data sets for ENM toxicity assessment. However, these analyses require the establishment of reliable toxicity metrics, especially when HTS includes data from multiple assays, cell lines, or organisms. Establishing toxicity metrics with HTS data requires advanced data processing techniques in order to clearly identify significant biological effects associated with exposure to ENMs. HTS data can form the basis for developing and validating in silico toxicity models (e.g., quantitative structure-activity relationships) and for generating data-driven hypotheses to aid in establishing and/or validating possible toxicity mechanisms. To correlate the toxicity of ENMs with their physicochemical properties, researchers will need to develop quantitative structure-activity relationships for nanomaterials (i.e., nano-SARs). However, as nano-SARs are applied in regulatory applications, researchers must consider their applicability and the acceptance level of false positive relative to false negative predictions and the reliability of toxicity data. To establish the environmental impact of ENMs identified as toxic, researchers will need to estimate the potential level of environmental exposure concentration of ENMs in the various media such as air, water, soil, and vegetation. When environmental monitoring data are not available, models of ENMs fate and transport (at various levels of complexity) serve as alternative approaches for estimating exposure concentrations. Risk management decisions regarding the manufacturing, use, and environmental regulations of ENMs would dearly benefit from both the assessment of potential ENMs exposure concentrations and suitable toxicity metrics. The decision process should consider the totality of available information: quantitative and qualitative data and the analysis of nanomaterials toxicity, and fate and transport behavior in the environment. Effective decision-making to address the potential impacts of nanomaterials will require considerations of the relevant environmental, ecological, technological, economic, and sociopolitical factors affecting the complete lifecycle of nanomaterials, while accounting for data and modeling uncertainties. Accordingly, researchers will need to establish standardized data management and analysis tools through nanoinformatics as a basis for the development of rational decision tools.Although researchers have intentionally produced and used nanomaterials for more than a century, nanotechnology has made its mark in most areas of daily life in the past 20 years. Now thousands of products contain nanopartides, nanofibers, or nanostructured parts. Because some chemical products have caused severe problems to human health and to the environment, we should consider the overall biological and toxicological effects of nanomaterials as we dedde whether to use them in various products. We should also reflect on the mechanisms for making these dedsions, which may greatly influence the development, production, and use of such products. The preselection of appropriate materials during the early product design state should allow industry and applied researchers to mitigate the risks of these new materials. However, currently the human and ecological risks of the applied nanomaterials during their life cycle are unknown. A large set of physicochemical characteristics can determine the potential human and environmental exposure to and hazards from nanomaterials. Thus, researchers will need many years to gather and analyze all the data to perform a comprehensive risk assessment for engineered nanomaterials and to develop a sound decision making process. The ideal risk assessment approach would indude cost-effective screening processes to target resources toward the risks of greatest concern. The outcome of the risk assessment is only as good as the quality of the data used. Unfortunately, the actual review process of most journals that publish on nanotoxicology focuses on "mechanistic studies and results" rather than a toxicologically relevant outcome. For example, journals often do not include studies that show no effect as worthy of publication ("no-effect-studies" dilemma), which can lead to misleading interpretations of toxicological data for hazard identification. However, even with insuffident data sets, researchers can produce a preliminary comparable risk assessment ("approximate" risk assessment). Researchers have already performed risk-based evaluations of nanomaterials grounded on the comparison of exposure concentrations with no-effect levels (as required for chemical risk assessment), examining generic nanomaterials such as "nano-Ti02" but not specific forms or modifications. Even though these data sets on hazard and exposure are incomplete, they already provide the basis to illustrate the current state of knowledge and uncertainties. Therefore industry and applied researchers can calculate the probability that an adverse effect might occur and begin to balance the benefits and potential risks of an innovation. Based on the increasing numbers of nanotoxicology publications and funding programs, this Account reviews the decision support approaches that already exist to safely implement engineered nanomaterials during an early phase of innovation.In this study, a comprehensive infrastructure assessment model for carbon capture and storage (CiamCCS) is developed for (i) planning a carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure that includes CO2 capture, utilization, sequestration and transportation technologies, and for (ii) integrating the major CCS assessment methods, i.e., techno-economic assessment (TEA), environmental assessment (EA), and technical risk assessment (TRA). The model also applies an inexact two-stage stochastic programming approach to consider the effect of every possible uncertainty in input data, including economic profit (i.e., CO2 emission inventories, product prices, operating costs), environmental impact (i.e., environment emission inventories) and technical loss (i.e., technical accident inventories). The proposed model determines where and how much CO2 to capture, transport, sequester, and utilize to achieve an acceptable compromise between profit and the combination of environmental impact and technical loss. To implement this concept, fuzzy multiple objective programming was used to attain a compromise solution among all objectives of the CiamCCS. The capability of CiamCSS is tested by applying it to design and operate a future CCS infrastructure for treating CO2 emitted by burning carbon-based fossil fuels in power plants throughout Korea in 2020. The result helps decision makers to establish an optimal strategy that balances economy, environment, and safety efficiency against stability in an uncertain future CCS infrastructure.Accurate thermodynamic models for phase equilibria calculations of carbon dioxide mixtures with other gases are of high importance for the safe and economic design of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. In this work, we assess the capability of Redlich-Kwong (RK), Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK), Peng-Robinson (PR) cubic equations of state (EoS), as well as Statistical Associating Fluid Theory (SAFT) and Perturbed-Chain SAFT (PC-SAFT) in modeling vapor-liquid equilibria for binary mixtures of CO2 with CH4, N-2, O-2, SO2, Ar, and H2S, and for the ternary mixture CO2-N-2-O-2. Liquid density calculations for some of these mixtures are also performed. Experimental data available are used to assess the accuracy of the models. Two different expressions are used for the calculation of parameter a in PR EoS. PC-SAFT is, on average, more accurate than cubic EoS and SAFT when no binary interaction parameter is used. However, when a binary interaction parameter fitted to the experimental data is used, model correlations from SRK, PR, SAFT, and PC-SAFT are of comparable accuracy.Material efficiency-using less of a material to make a product or supply a service-is gaining attention as a means for accomplishing important environmental goals. The ultimate goal of material efficiency is not to use less physical material but to reduce the impacts associated with its use. This article examines the concept and definition of material efficiency and argues that for it to be an effective strategy it must confront the challenges of operating in a multi-material world, providing guidance when materials are used together and when they compete. A series of conceptions of material efficiency are described, starting with mass-based formulations and expanding to consider multiple resources in the supply chain of a single material, and then to multiple resources in the supply chains of multiple materials used together, and further to multiple environmental impacts. The conception of material efficiency is further broadened by considering material choice, exploring the technical and economic effects both of using less material and of materials competition. Finally, this entire materials-based techno-economic system is considered with respect to the impact of complex policies and political forces. The overall goal here is to show how the concept of material efficiency when faced with more expansive-and yet directly relevant-definitional boundaries is forced to confront analytical challenges that are both familiar and difficult in life cycle assessment and product-based approaches.Background: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a systems-based method used to determine potential impacts to the environment associated with a product throughout its life cycle. Conclusions from LCA studies can be applied to support decisions regarding product design or public policy, therefore, all relevant inputs (e. g., raw materials, energy) and outputs (e.g., emissions, waste) to the product system should be evaluated to estimate impacts. Currently, work-related impacts are not routinely considered in LCA. The objectives of this paper are: 1) introduce the work environment disability-adjusted life year (WE-DALY), one portion of a characterization factor used to express the magnitude of impacts to human health attributable to work-related exposures to workplace hazards; 2) outline the methods for calculating the WE-DALY; 3) demonstrate the calculation; and 4) highlight strengths and weaknesses of the methodological approach. Methods: The concept of the WE-DALY and the methodological approach to its calculation is grounded in the World Health Organization's disability-adjusted life year (DALY). Like the DALY, the WE-DALY equation considers the years of life lost due to premature mortality and the years of life lived with disability outcomes to estimate the total number of years of healthy life lost in a population. The equation requires input in the form of the number of fatal and nonfatal injuries and illnesses that occur in the industries relevant to the product system evaluated in the LCA study, the age of the worker at the time of the fatal or nonfatal injury or illness, the severity of the injury or illness, and the duration of time lived with the outcomes of the injury or illness. Results: The methodological approach for the WE-DALY requires data from various sources, multi-step instructions to determine each variable used in the WE-DALY equation, and assumptions based on professional opinion. Conclusions: Results support the use of the WE-DALY in a characterization factor in LCA. Integrating occupational health into LCA studies will provide opportunities to prevent shifting of impacts between the work environment and the environment external to the workplace and co-optimize human health, to include worker health, and environmental health.This paper addresses the optimal design and operation of hydrocarbon biorefinery via fast pyrolysis, hydrotreating and hydrocracking of hybrid poplar feedstock under economic and environmental criteria. The hydrocarbon biorefinery encompasses fast pyrolysis for crude bio-oil production, upgrading of the bio-oil through hydrotreating, separation and hydrocracking of long chained hydrocarbons into gasoline and diesel range products, and steam reforming for hydrogen production. We propose a bi-criteria nonlinear programming (NLP) model that seeks to maximize the economic performance measured by the net present value (NPV) and to minimize the environmental impacts. The environmental objective is measured with the global warming potential (GWP) metric according to the life cycle assessment procedures, which covers gate-to-gate environmental impacts of the hydrocarbon biorefinery. The multi-objective NLP model simultaneously determines the production capacity, size of each process units, operational conditions, the flow rates of species and streams at each stage of the process, hydrocarbon biofuel yields, and consumption rate of feedstock, steam, electricity, and natural gas. The bi-criteria NLP model is solved with the e-constraint method, and the resulting Pareto-optimal curve reveals the trade-off between the economic and environmental dimensions of the sustainable hydrocarbon biorefinery. The optimization results reveal that the unit production cost of the hydrocarbon biofuels is $2.31 per gallon of gasoline equivalent (GGE) for the maximum NPV solution and $3.67/GGE for the minimum GWP design. The corresponding greenhouse emission is 8.07 kgCO(2-eq)/GGE. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chemical processes are continuously facing challenges from the demands of the global market related to economics, environment and social issues. This paper presents the development of a software tool (SustainPro) and its application to chemical processes operating in batch or continuous modes. The software tool is based on the implementation of an extended systematic methodology for sustainable process design (Carvalho, Matos, & Gani, 2008, 2009). Using process information/data such as the process flowsheet, the associated mass/energy balance data and the cost data, SustainPro guides the user through the necessary steps according to work-flow of the implemented methodology. At the end the design alternatives, are evaluated using environmental impact assessment tools and safety indices. The extended features of the methodology incorporate life cycle assessment analysis and economic analysis. The application and the main features of SustainPro are illustrated through a case study of beta-galactosidase production. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China is the largest paper producer and consumer in the world. However, China's paper industry is inefficient in its consumption of natural resources. Whereas the proportion of wood pulp used by the paper industry in developed countries is up to 63%, the corresponding figure for China is only 23%, leading to high energy and water consumption and severe environmental pollution. This article presents a systematic risk analysis using life cycle assessment and carbon footprint calculation associated with China's straw-pulp and wood-pulp paper industries. Risk prevention measures are proposed based on the results of this analysis. The study has important ramifications for the sustainable development of China's paper industry.Introduction. The paper develops a framework for identifying the level of penetration and maturity of linked data technologies, as a specific facet of the W3C open model for the semantic Web, in the field of libraries, archives and museums. Method. The paper applies the conceptual framework of the classical theory of diffusion of innovations, along with patterns of life-cycle analysis of technologies ( hype cycle) developed by Gartner Group. We compose a model for the analysis of global factors, adapted to the nature of linked data technology. Results. A framework for identifying the level of maturity of the linked data technology drivers is outlined. Our analysis indicates that, despite the intense activity detected in the libraries and archives sector, there is still not enough balance between publication, consumption, regulation and technologies to state that we are entering in the phase of maturity. Conclusions. More linked data initiatives aimed at apps and consumer data are needed, besides exploiting collaborative aspects and build further networks with entities outside the field of libraries, archives and museums. We assume that leadership from the biggest institutions will continue and open innovation will be intensified.The aim of this paper is to suggest and discuss policy instruments that could lead towards a more sustainable waste management. The paper is based on evaluations from a large scale multi-disciplinary Swedish research program. The evaluations focus on environmental and economic impacts as well as social acceptance. The focus is on the Swedish waste management system but the results should be relevant also for other countries. Through the assessments and lessons learned during the research program we conclude that several policy instruments can be effective and possible to implement. Particularly, we put forward the following policy instruments: "Information"; "Compulsory recycling of recyclable materials"; "Weight-based waste fee in combination with information and developed recycling systems"; "Mandatory labeling of products containing hazardous chemicals", "Advertisements on request only and other waste minimization measures"; and "Differentiated VAT and subsidies for some services". Compulsory recycling of recyclable materials is the policy instrument that has the largest potential for decreasing the environmental impacts with the configurations studied here. The effects of the other policy instruments studied may be more limited and they typically need to be implemented in combination in order to have more significant impacts. Furthermore, policy makers need to take into account market and international aspects when implementing new instruments. In the more long term perspective, the above set of policy instruments may also need to be complemented with more transformational policy instruments that can significantly decrease the generation of waste.A multi-objective optimization methodology for hazardous liquid waste management is presented in this paper using industrially based LCA models and operating constraints. This approach is used to optimize the handling of waste streams introducing flexible mixing policy scenarios compared to the rigid policy scenarios of the industrial system. It is shown that increasing the degrees of freedom for the waste mixing reduces significantly both the operating cost and the environmental impact by avoiding the use of utilities. Moreover, the influence of waste availability as function of production planning without waste storage is analyzed in several multiperiod optimizations. There, it is demonstrated that this saving potential can be further increased by integration of multiperiod production planning with waste management policies, up to the level of 40% for the environmental impact, and more than 50% for the operating cost, compared to the industrial base case. In some specific cases, a proper matching of production planning and waste mixing policies can also turn the waste treatment into a source of profit exploiting energy production from the incineration process.The evaluation of the environmental impact of transport infrastructure entails a complex characterization of factors, attitudes and consequences. In the frame of an ecologically friendly approach, sustainable alternatives and solutions for road asphalt pavements production and exploitation must be identified. A comparative evaluation of the environmental impact for recycled and traditional road pavements asphalt mixtures, expressed as the amount of equivalent carbon dioxide, per ton of mixture has been carried out in the present study. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, used to perform the evaluation, has been divided into two analytical perspectives, "cradle to site" and "cradle to grave". The application of this methodology in road engineering proved its usefulness by pointing out the consequences of the construction process on the environment. For a proper analysis and reliable results, have been used two computer software that support the LCA methodology, asPECT (asphalt Pavement Embodied Carbon Tool) and PRAS (Pavement Rehabilitation Analysis System). The analysis intended to highlight the benefits of the recyclability process, the applicability of LCA methodology on the environmental impact of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP), resulted from the road construction process. As a main outcome, the research found that by enforcing sustainability to the transport infrastructure sector, the environmental effect will have a positive trend due to the reductions obtained in kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions.During the last 10 years, several instances have emerged in which a life cycle approach has been applied to the remediation of contaminated sites. A life cycle management (LCM) approach structuring environmental activities and life cycle assessment (LCA) for a quantitative examination, can be helpful for the selection of site remediation options with a lower impact on the ecosystem and human health. Besides addressing the environmental impacts of the remediation activities for a specific site, attention should also be paid to the engagement of different stakeholders and socio-economical consequences of reintroducing a remediated site into the economy.Eco-efficiency of coal gasification technology was assessed in the whole life cycle according to std. methods. Four variants of the shell gasification technology (bituminous coal and lignite with and without CO2 capture) were taken into consideration. The technology included prodn., transport and gasification of coal, purifn. of syngas and electricity generation. The gasification of lignite without CO2 capture showed the highest eco-efficiency.The importance of climate change is shaping public policy internationally at several levels with much of the effort aimed at reducing the amount of carbon emissions released to the atmosphere through anthropogenic activity. Public procurement is a key financial mechanism available to governments to drive policy change and because of its scale can be also one of the most effective. During the past decade Low Carbon Procurement (LCP) has emerged as focal policy agenda in the UK and other countries. However, the implementation of LCP requires improved definition by governments and a greater understanding of Carbon Management tools and concepts such as Lifecycle Analysis on the part of procurement chiefs. Focusing on public procurement in the UK within the context of international policy development, this paper develops a working definition and model for LCP to guide future discussions on policy and practice. The paper presents an agenda of expected challenges for the implementation of LCP, including problems associated with weighing trade-offs between carbon and wider environmental or sustainability objectives, use of carbon tools and methodologies. The paper concludes by identifying key directions for further LCP research. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioethanol produced from the lignocellulosic feedstock is a potential alternative to fossil fuels in transportation sector and can help in reducing environmental burdens. Straw produced from perennial ryegrass (PR) and wheat is a non-food, cellulosic biomass resource available in abundance in the Pacific Northwest U.S. The aim of this study was to evaluate the economic viability and to estimate the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during life cycle of ethanol production from PR and wheat straw. Economic analysis of ethanol production on commercial scale was performed using engineering process model of ethanol production plant with processing capacity of 250 000 metric tons of feedstock/year, simulated in SuperPro designer. Ethanol yields for PR and wheat straw were estimated 250.7 and 316.2 l/dry metric ton biomass, respectively, with annual ethanol production capacity of 58.3 and 73.5 x 10(6) l, respectively. Corresponding production costs of ethanol from PR and wheat straw were projected to be $0.86 and $0.71/l ethanol. Energy and emissions were calculated per functional unit which was defined as 10 000 MJ of available energy in fuel at the pump. Fossil energies were calculated as 4282.9 and 2656.7 MJ to produce one functional unit of ethanol from PR and wheat straw, respectively. The GHG emissions during life cycle of ethanol production from PR and wheat straw were found to be 227.6% and 284.3% less than those produced for 10 000 MJ of gasoline. Results from sensitivity analysis indicated that there is a potential to reduce ethanol production cost by making technological improvements in pentose fermentation and enzyme production. The integrated economic and ecological assessment analyses are helpful in determining long-term sustainability of a product and can be used to drive energy policies in an environmentally sustainable direction. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4803747]High population growth and providing the food for this population have increased the amount of energy consumption in agricultural production systems. One of the most important issues for high energy consumption in recent century is the global warming where greenhouse gas (GHG) emission plays an important role. This study evaluated the energy balance between the input and output and the amount of GHG emission per unit area of wheat production in Iran. The total energy input and output were calculated as 31.5 and 44.6 GJ ha(-1), respectively, where the highest energy consumer was chemical fertilizer with share of 64% of total energy. Total GHG emission was 1118.94 kgCO(2eq) ha(-1) in which chemical fertilizer and diesel fuel had the highest contributions. The results of regression analysis indicated that use of 10 MJ in forms of direct, indirect, renewable, and nonrenewable energy leads to 3.0, 0.4, 2.8, and 0.6 kg ha(-1) growth in wheat yield, respectively. The results of farm size analysis indicated that very large farms have better energy ratio and less GHG emission in comparison with other farm size levels due to better management. The results of this study indicated a list of choices which are available to reduce energy use and GHG emission in wheat production. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4800207]A life cycle analysis has been conducted on geothermal electricity generation. The technologies covered in the study include flash, binary, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), and coproduced gas and electricity plants. The life cycle performance metrics quantified in the study include materials, water, and energy use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The life cycle stages taken into account were the plant and fuel cycle stages, the latter of which includes fuel production and fuel use (operational). The plant cycle includes the construction of the plant, wells, and above ground piping and the production of the materials that comprise those systems. With the exception of geothermal flash plants, GHG emissions from the plant cycle are generally small and the only such emissions from geothermal plants. Some operational GHGs arise from flash plants, and though substantial when compared to other geothermal power plants, these are nonetheless considerably smaller than those emitted from fossil fuel fired plants. For operational geothermal emissions, an emission rate (g/kW h) distribution function vs. cumulative capacity was developed using California plant data. Substantial GHG emissions arise from coproduced facilities and two other "renewable" power plants, but these are almost totally due to the production and use of natural gas and biofuels. Nonetheless, those GHGs are still much less than those from fossil fuel fired plants. Though significant amounts of water are consumed for plant and well construction, especially for well field stimulation of EGS plants, they are small in comparison to estimated water consumed during plant operation. This also applies to air cooled plants, which nominally should consume no water during operation. Considering that geothermal operational water use data are scarce, our estimates show the lowest water consumption for flash and coproduced plants and the highest for EGS, though the latter must be considered provisional due to the absence of field data. The EGS estimate was based on binary plant data. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4798315]Eco-labelling of agricultural products in France: Which method for which objectives?. Comparison of two approaches of impact assessment (LCA) or practice certification (HEV) Within the frame of the French Grenelle for the environment, in the agricultural sector, the need to orient consumers toward environmental-friendly products was emphasised. In June 2011, a new certification was hence promulgated by decree: the agriculture of high environmental value (HEV). This certification aims at harmonising all agri-environmental initiatives and is based on a semi-quantitative system for the environmental impact assessment of agricultural practices. This certification consists of three levels of commitment, with only the highest level being recognised by a logo on products. At the same time, a national experimentation phase was launched (July 2011) on eco-labelling involving dozens of companies with their own labelling projects on consuming goods. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) is the recommended method within the national methodological framework for eco-labelling. It is a holistic method that quantifies environmental impacts along the product life-cycle. The certification HEV and LCA are based on very different approaches of impact assessment, which can be complementary. However, the two approaches are also likely to compete with one another in terms of visibility, implementation and potential economic added-value. LCA-based eco-labelling is becoming mandatory, whereas the HEV certification is voluntary. Development of LCA-based eco-labelling is thus more likely to develop. Both approaches remain under development and numerous methodological questions are still open. More generally, eco-labelling also raises questions on the difficulty to find a good compromise between scientific reliability and efficient communication.The treatment and disposal of sewage sludge generate considerable amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and pose environmental and economic challenges to wastewater treatment in China. To achieve a more informed and sustainable sludge management, this study conducts a life cycle inventory to investigate the GHG performances of six scenarios involving various sludge treatment technologies and disposal strategies. These scenarios are landfilling (S1), mono-incineration (S2), co-incineration (S3), brick manufacturing (S4), cement manufacturing (S5), and fertilizer for urban greening (S6). In terms of GHG emissions, S2 demonstrates the best performance with its large offset from sludge incineration energy recovery, followed by S4 and S6, whereas S1 demonstrates the poorest performance primarily because of its large quantity of methane leaks. The scenario rankings are affected by the assumptions of GHG offset calculation. In most scenarios, GHG performance could be improved by using waste gas or steam from existing facilities for drying sludge. Furthermore, considering the GHG performance along with economic, health, and other concerns, S6 is recommended. We thus suggest that local governments promote the use of composted sludge as urban greening fertilizers. In addition, the use of sludge with 60% water content, in place of the current standard of 80%, in wastewater treatment plants is proposed to be the new standard for Tai Lake Watershed in China. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bioenergy is becoming increasingly important for agriculture. However, the use of first generation crops for biofuels and bioenergy production is controversial due to their competition with food and feed. The cultivation of three different energy crops - wheat, maize and triticale - for biomass in order to produce biogas in Lombardy, in the Po Valley (Italy), was evaluated in this study to quantify their environmental profiles and identify the best biomass source from an environmental perspective. The choice of these cropping systems was based on the fact that they are well-known and extensively cultivated for energy purposes in Italy. The standard framework of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was followed in this study and detailed inventories for these crops were designed. The environmental profile was analysed in terms of abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidants formation, human toxicity and ecotoxicity. In addition, an energy analysis was performed using the cumulative energy demand method. According to the results, the selection of the best biomass source depends on several factors such as the functional unit and biomass yield. Therefore, a sensitivity assessment was done in order to identify these differences. Moreover, the most critical processes throughout the life cycle of the cropping systems were identified and improvement alternatives were proposed, specifically for the mineral fertilization (one of the most important hot spots). Thus, different scenarios built on alternative nitrogen based fertilizers were assessed in detail and discussed, resulting in the identification that the use of calcium ammonium nitrate instead of urea should improve the environmental profile regardless of the energy crop. Finally, the combination of triticale or wheat with maize classes 300, 400 and 500 in rotation systems was done in order to achieve similar biomass yields, per ha, to the maize classes 600 and 700, which were also evaluated. The best results were obtained for maize classes 600 and 700 regardless of the functional unit considered in all the categories assessed except in GWP, where triticale with maize 400 and with maize 500 were the best options. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban water authorities in many countries are struggling to satisfy the increasing demand for both potable and non-potable water whilst also improving the environmental profile of the urban water system. The main goal of this study is to use the Life Cycle Assessment methodology to carry out an environmental analysis of every stage of the urban water cycle in Tarragona, a Mediterranean city of Spain (scenario I). These stages are: water abstraction, potable water treatment, intermediate pumping, distribution network, sewage collection and wastewater treatment. This study also proposes possible scenarios for improving the environmental performance reducing the high level of water stress resulting from increasing demand and limited resources: using reclaimed water (scenario II) and using desalination plants and reclaimed water to supply water during a drought (scenario III). Inventory analysis was performed using local operation data. In the current situation (scenario I) the main environmental impacts on urban water cycle were caused by 35.2% of distribution network, 20.5% of collection pumping and 13.8% of wastewater treatment plant for the Global Warming Potential impact category because these stages have high energy consumption. In Reclaimed water (scenario II), no significant improvement in indicators is observed, because the addition of environmental loads introduced by the tertiary treatment, except for the reduction in freshwater consumption due to the net water saving. In the drought scenario (scenario III), all impact categories have been increased from Scenario II e.g. 18% in Photochemical Oxidation, 21% in Eutrophication Potential, 30% Ozone Depletion Potential and Ecotoxicity Potential, 36% in Depletion of Abiotic Resources and Cumulative Energy Demand, 38% in Global Warming Potential and 42% in Acidification Potential. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A number of studies have highlighted the usefulness of carbon footprint (CF) to report environmental results in the wine sector, due to its common use by stakeholders and its favourable acceptance by the general public. The main aim of this study was to calculate the CF of 9 different types of wine in three different European nations (Italy, Luxembourg and Spain) under the same life-cycle methodological assumptions, to determine the main reasons for varying CF results. Moreover, the consequences that these discrepancies can cause in CF reporting were explored. Results demonstrated relevant differences in CF values depending on the appellation and on the type of wine. These were linked to a variety of factors, such as wine ageing, optimization of inputs, harvest yields, data quality or agricultural practices (i.e. organic vs. conventional). In fact, these differences, linked to the differing niche markets of the wines assessed, indicate the difficulty in standardizing specific mechanisms for GHG emissions communication in the wine sector. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bio-based products are considered to be a sustainable alternative to conventional fossil fuel-based materials. This paper studies the production of glucose from corn starch, an important feedstock for a wide range of bio-based products (e.g. ethanol, bio-based monomers), in a European corn wet mill (CWM). Following the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles, non-renewable energy use (NREU) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are assessed for the system cradle-to-factory gate. The allocation problem that the analysis is faced with is addressed by applying seven different approaches: namely subdivision (two variants), partitioning based on physical causalities and on economic relationships and the principles of system expansion (three variants). Depending on the approach, the NREU for glucose production ranges from 6.8 to 9.3 MJ/kg glucose dry solids (ds) and the GHG emissions from 0.7 to 1.1 kg CO2 eq./kg glucose ds. The results for NREU per tonne of glucose are robust while for GHG, large deviation from the average is found for system expansion and for the approach main process. The influence of each calculation should be kept in mind when assessing bio-based products from glucose produced in a CWM. The results provide a good basis for future analyses of bio-based products, as they are also similar to values published by other authors for the US, bearing in mind the different impacts of corn production in the two regions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article aims to respond to the absence of ecodesign tools for products in the early stages of the design process especially in the domain of complex systems. A complex system has numerous interdependent sub-systems, each of these having several design alternatives and variable conditions of use which affect the choice of technological solutions and environmental performance. A complex system is also one which evolves throughout its life cycle, interacting with the external environment. These characteristics rapidly result in a great number of configurations which must be assessed in order to identify the optimal system for the environment (using many criteria and over the whole of the life cycle). To ecodesign such a system in the early stages of the design process, we have investigated, from the literature, 3 different methodological approaches, each of which uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Approach I is the intuitive approach of the designer based on simple rules or on a Pareto combined with LCA. Approach 2 is based on Design of Experiments (DoE) combined with LCA and in approach 3 the Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP), based on the calculation of intervals, are combined with the LCA. These three methods (Pareto/LCA, DoE/LCA and CSP/LCA) have been tested in an ecodesign project for a complex system: a hybrid passenger ferry. The results of each method are evaluated according to the following criteria: time consumed, training, exploration of fields of possibility, interpretation of results and reusability. These results show that the CSP/LCA approach has certain advantages, in particular for exploring the fields of possibilities, interpreting results and the time saving through reusing results obtained for similar systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since China became a member of World Trade Organization (WTO), its economy develops at a fast speed. At the same time, the environmental problem becomes more and more serious and increasingly affects economic development. Studying the factors that influence environmental efficiency has become an essential point in dealing with the relationship between economy and environment. Considering the differences in space and economic development among different districts, this paper discusses the quantitative relationship among exports figure, imports figure, GDP per capita, industrialization level, fiscal decentralization and environmental efficiency of each Chinese province by using statistical analysis. Furthermore, this paper discusses differences among each district's influential factors from the perspective of Spatial Economics and makes combination forecast on the trend of environmental efficiency. It also shows that the environmental efficiency of Chinese provinces is generally at a low level. In addition, as the economic statuses of different provinces vary and the factors that influence environmental efficiency in different provinces also have significant differences, each province should take certain measures to design the environmental protection policy in line with its local circumstance. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle thinking is the scientific approach behind modern business decision support related to sustainable consumption and production. However, such techniques provide a large amount of multidimensional data that are difficult to comprehend and to interpret. Thus, the present work intends to provide a useful tool to aid the assessment of the environmental performance of products, which will be as unambiguous and reliable as possible. This tool will be based on the life cycle inventory results, on Principal Component Analysis and on probability distributions providing in that way an objective framework for evaluating products' environmental performance. Furthermore, a graphical representation that may be used as a tag in each product providing its environmental efficiency has been developed and proposed. This tool is being presented through a real application of various beverage containers of the Greek market, to better highlight its use. As was revealed by this application, the tool can be used for categorizing the examined products according to the impact severity as well as the impact types associated with them. Finally, a consistency appraisal test has been accomplished, confirming the consistency of the proposed model. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Enzymatic processes have been implemented in a broad range of industries in recent decades because they are specific, fast in action and often save raw materials, energy, chemicals and/or water compared to conventional processes. A number of comparative environmental assessment studies have been conducted in the past 15 years to investigate whether these properties of enzymatic processes lead to environmental improvements and assess whether they could play a role in moving toward cleaner industrial production. The purpose of this review is to summarize and discuss the findings of these studies and to recommend further developments regarding environmental assessment and implementation of the technology. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been widely used as an assessment tool, while use of the 'carbon footprint' concept and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is limited to a few studies. Many studies have addressed global warming as an indicator and several studies have furthermore addressed other impact categories (acidification, eutrophication, photochemical ozone formation, energy and land use). The results show that implementing enzymatic processes in place of conventional processes generally results in a reduced contribution to global warming and also a reduced contribution to acidification, eutrophication, photochemical ozone formation and energy use to the extent that this has been investigated. Agricultural land has been addressed in few studies and land use savings appear to occur in industries where enzymatic processes save agricultural raw materials, whereas it becomes a trade-off in processes where only fossil fuels and/or inorganic chemicals are saved. Agricultural land use appears to be justified by other considerable environmental improvements in the latter cases, and the results of this review support the hypothesis that enzyme technology is a promising means of moving toward cleaner industrial production. LCA gives a more complete picture of the environmental properties of the processes considered than EIA and carbon footprint studies, and it is recommended that researchers move toward LCA in future studies. Tradition, lack of knowledge and bureaucracy are barriers to implementation of enzymatic processes in industry. Education and streamlining of public approval processes etc. are means of overcoming the barriers and accelerating the harvesting of the environmental benefits. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Service industries continue to be to be a driving force economically, both within the US and globally, yet their environmental impacts still tend to be overlooked. This article presents a hybrid life cycle assessment case study to assess and quantify the life cycle impacts of an engineering service firm. The data for the hybrid LCA of the firm's activities and operations was collected for one fiscal year, from January 2009 to December 2009. Data collection methods include an energy audit, personnel survey, and assessment of waste management practices. The results of the case study show that the impacts of employee travel and transportation as well as the building premises are the major contributors to the environmental impact of a service industry (40% and 24% of GWP, respectively) and should be the areas targeted for improvements to reduce life-cycle impacts of similar service firms. The study also reveals that in order to make specific targeted reductions to a firm's life-cycle impacts, more in depth evaluation of certain activities, such as workstation energy consumption, can be essential to identifying unnecessary wastes of resources. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) offers a comprehensive approach to evaluate and improve the environmental impacts of pavements. First, a general pavement LCA methodology is created that describes the concepts necessary to conduct a comprehensive pavement LCA. Second, the methodology is applied to the life cycle of concrete pavements to quantify current emissions across the road network. System boundaries are drawn to include all phases of the pavement life cycle - materials production, construction, use, maintenance, and end of life. Greenhouse gas emissions are quantified for twelve functional units, which evaluate average conditions for each major roadway classification in the United States. The results present the relative contribution of each component in the life cycle, the annual emissions occurring during the 40-year analysis period, and the sensitivity of these results to model parameters. It is found for all roads that the majority of emissions occur in year one - from cradle-to-gate materials production, and pavement construction - primarily due to cement production. The results are most sensitive to traffic volume, and then to parameters affecting the cement production. Based on emissions and their sensitivity, the LCA results suggest three broad reduction approaches: reducing embodied emissions, reducing use phase emissions, and reducing end-of-life emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study used life cycle assessment software SimaPro 7.2 and impact assessment model IMPACT 2002+ to evaluate the environmental impact and benefits of a biochar cofiring supply chain used for electricity generation. The biochar was assumed to be produced by rice straw torrefaction and the case study was located in Taoyuan County, Taiwan. This supply chain may provide impact reduction benefits in five categories (aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, land occupation, global warming, and non-renewable energy) but cause higher impacts than coal firing systems in other categories. Damage assessment of cofiring systems indicated that damage to human health was higher while the damage categories of eco-systemluality, climate change, and resources were lower. Carbon reduction could be 4.32 and 4.68 metric tons CO2 eq/ha/yr at 10% and 20% cofiring ratios, respectively. The improvement of electricity generation efficiency of cofiring systems may be the most important factor for reducing its environmental impact. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental burdens for the production and utilisation of biomethane vehicle fuel or a biohydrogen/biomethane blend produced from food waste or wheat feed, based on data from two different laboratory experiments, have been compared. For food waste treated by batch processes the two stage system gave high hydrogen yields (84.21 H-2 kg(-1) VS added) but a lower overall energy output than the single stage system. Reduction in environmental burdens compared with diesel was achieved, supported by the diversion of waste from landfill. For wheat feed, the semi continuously fed two stage process gave low hydrogen yields (7.51 H-2 kg(-1) VS added) but higher overall energy output. The process delivers reduction in fossil fuel burdens, and improvements in process efficiencies will lead to reduction in CO2 burdens compared with diesel. The study highlights the importance of understanding and optimising biofuel production parameters according to the feedstock utilised. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The impressive development in global multi-region inputoutput (IO) databases is accompanied by an increase in applications published in the scientific literature. However, it is not obvious whether the insights gained from these studies have indeed been used in political decision-making. We ask whether and to what extent there is policy uptake of results from environmentally extended multi-region IO (EE-MRIO) models and how it may be improved. We identify unique characteristics of such models not inherent to other approaches. We then present evidence from the UK showing that a policy process around consumption-based accounting for greenhouse gas emissions and resource use has evolved that is based on results from EE-MRIO modelling. This suggests that specific, policy-relevant information that would be impossible to obtain otherwise can be generated with the help of EE-MRIO models. Our analysis is limited to environmental applications of global MRIO models and to government policies in the UK.The choice of accounting methods and indicators to support national stakeholders and public authorities in environmental decision-making policies is made difficult by the extensive number of available tools and the general divergence of scientific opinions on their effectiveness. In this paper, a set of life cycle-based approaches are compared and a methodological framework is recommended to support policy makers in the evaluation and choice of environmental impact mitigation strategies. The net consumption (=production + imports - exports) of Luxembourg, taken as a case study, is inventoried based on different Environmentally Extended Input-Output (EE-IO) scenarios and further assessed using the Ecological Footprint (EF), ReCiPe and Solar Energy Demand (SED). All the compartments of resources extraction and pollutant emissions and the main environmental impacts generated by the Luxembourgish economic trade-offs are evaluated. Results highlight the need for higher consistency in the use of EE-IO tables mainly because of the uncertainty affecting the environmental extensions (EEs). This aspect plays a major role when applying different assessment methods and relevant changes in terms of overall environmental impact are observed according to different sets of resources and emissions inventoried. These changes, however, do not substantially influence the results at the level of single economic sector's contribution. Regardless the consumption scenario and the indicator considered, the financial and banking sectors contribute to more than 40% to the total EF, SED and ReCiPe results. Strengths and weaknesses of each indicator are discussed, and direct and indirect contribution analyses by sector allowed outlining strategies for impact mitigation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar has been advocated as a method of sequestering carbon while simultaneously improving crop yields and agro-ecosystem sustainability. It can be produced from a wide variety of biomass feedstocks using different thermochemical conversion technologies with or without the recovery of energy coproducts, resulting in chars of differing quality and a range of overall system greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation outcomes. This analysis expands on previous sustainability studies by proposing a mechanistic life cycle GHG and economic operating cost assessment model for the coproduction of biochar and bioenergy from biomass residue feedstocks, with a case study for north-central Colorado presented. Production is modeled as a continuous function of temperature for slow pyrolysis, fast pyrolysis, and gasification systems. Biochar environmental benefits (C sequestration, N2O suppression, crop yield improvements) are predicted in terms of expected liming value and recalcitrance. System-level net GHG mitigation is computed, and net returns are estimated that reflect the variable economic costs of production, the agronomic value of biochar based on agricultural limestone or fertilizer displacement, and the value of GHG mitigation, with results compared to the alternate use of char for energy production. Case study results indicate that slow pyrolysis systems can mitigate up to 1.4 Mg CO2eq/Mg feedstock consumed, provided a favorable feedstock is utilized, production air pollutant emissions are mitigated, and energy coproducts are recovered. The model suggests that while financial returns are generally greater when char is consumed for energy (biocoal) than when used as a soil amendment (biochar), chars produced through high-temperature conversion processes will have greater GHG-mitigation value as biochar. The biochar scenario reaches economic parity at carbon prices as low as $50/Mg CO2eq for optimal scenarios, despite conservative modeling assumptions. This model is a step toward spatially explicit assessment and optimization of biochar system design across different feedstocks, conversion technologies, and agricultural soils.The competing demand for food and bioenergy requires new solutions for the agricultural sector as, for instance, the coupling of energy production from gasification technology and the application of the resulting biochar as soil amendment. A prerequisite for the implementation of this strategy is the scale-specific assessment of both the energetic performance and of the impacts in terms of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission and crop responses. This study considered the gasification process developed by Advanced Gasification Technology (AGT, Italy), which is a fixed-bed, down-draft, open core, compact gasifier, having 350kW of nominal electric capacity (microgeneration); this gasifier uses biomass feedstock deriving from agricultural/forest products and byproducts. In this study, the resulting biochar, derived from conifer wood chips of mountain forestry management in North-western Italy, was applied to a nearby paddy rice field, located in the largest rice agricultural area of Europe. We performed a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) adapting the BEAT2 model specifically focusing on the GHG balance of the supply chain, from the forestry management to the field distribution of the resulting biochar. The results indicated that the gasification stage had the highest impact in the supply chain in terms of emissions, but net emissions allocated to biochar were always negative (ranging between 0.54 and 2.1t CO2et1 biochar), hypothesizing two scenarios of 32% and 7.3% biochar mineralization rate in soil, over a time period of 100years. Finally, biochar had a marginal but positive effect on rice yield, thus increasing the sustainability of this energy-biochar chain.The authors have developed a new network-level pavement asset management system (PAMS) utilizing life-cycle analysis and optimization methods. Integrated life-cycle assessment and cost analysis expand the scope of the conventional network-level PAMS from raw material extraction to end-of-life management. To aid the decision-making process, the authors applied a life-cycle optimization model to determine the near-optimal preservation strategy for a pavement network. The authors utilized a geographic information system (GIS) model to enhance the network-level PAMS by collecting, managing, and visualizing pavement information data. The network-level pavement asset management system proposed in this paper allows decision makers to preserve a healthy pavement network and minimize life-cycle energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or cost as a single objective, and also meet budget constraints and other agency constraints within an analysis period. A case study of a pavement network in Michigan compares the near-optimal preservation strategy to the Michigan DOT's current preservation practice. Compared with the current preservation plan, the optimal preservation strategy reduces life-cycle energy consumption, GHG emissions, and cost by 20, 24, and 10%, respectively. The authors also analyzed the impact of annual preservation budget cuts on total life-cycle cost. AUS$3 million annual preservation budget reduction (75% reduction of current annual budget) will significantly increase user cost (caused by congestion and pavement surface deterioration) by US$450 million for a 40-year analysis period. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000093. (c) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.To estimate the future development of one technology and make decisions whether to invest in it or not, one needs to know the current stage of its technology life cycle (TLC). The dominant approach to analysing TLC uses the S-curve to observe patent applications over time. But using the patent application counts alone to represent the development of technology oversimplifies the situation. In this paper, we build a model to calculate the TLC for an object technology based on multiple patent-related indicators. The model includes the following steps: first, we focus on devising and assessing patent-based TLC indicators. Then we choose some technologies (training technologies) with identified life cycle stages, and finally compare the indicator features in training technologies with the indicator values in an object technology (test technology) using a nearest neighbour classifier, which is widely used in pattern recognition to measure the technology life cycle stage of the object technology. Such study can be used in management practice to enable technology observers to determine the current life cycle stage of a particular technology of interest and make their R&D strategy accordingly. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper is the second of a two part study which quantifies the economic and greenhouse performance of conventional, hybrid and fully electric passenger vehicles operating in Australian driving conditions. This second study focuses on the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Two vehicle sizes are considered, Class-B and Class-E, which bracket the large majority of passenger vehicles on Australian roads. Using vehicle simulation models developed in the first study, the trade-offs between the ability of increasingly electric powertrains in curtailing the tailpipe emissions and the corresponding rise in the embedded vehicle emissions have been evaluated. The sensitivity of the life cycle emissions to fuel, electricity and the change in the energy mix are all considered. In conjunction with the total cost of ownership calculated in the companion paper, this allows the cost of mitigating life cycle greenhouse gas emissions through electrification of passenger transport to be estimated under different scenarios. For Class-B vehicles, fully electric vehicles were found to have a higher total cost of ownership and higher life cycle emissions than an equivalent vehicle with an internal combustion engine. For Class-E vehicles, hybrids are found to be the most cost effective whilst also having lowest life cycle emissions under current conditions. Further, hybrid vehicles also exhibit little sensitivity in terms of greenhouse emissions and cost with large changes in system inputs. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper applies a life cycle methodology to estimate activity-related contributions of transport modes to GHG emissions. The methodology uses national input-output tables, environmental accounts, household budget data and nutritional data to derive food-sector GHG coefficients of consumption for ten European countries. The food energy requirements for each mode of transport are estimated taking account of the modal activity level and energy requirements. Typical national food energy-related emissions for walking, cycling, and driving ranged from 25.6 to 77.3 gCO(2)-eq/pass.km, 10.4-31.4 gCO(2)-eq/pass.km and 1.7-5.2 gCO(2)-eq/pass.km; passenger transport was found to result in no food-related emissions above those for a resting individual. Emissions vary between countries depending on the emissions intensities of their energy sectors as well as food prices and average body weights. A life cycle assessment of modal emissions in the UK is undertaken using the food-energy emissions intensities estimated and car travel was found to have the highest emissions intensity, followed by bus, cycling and walking. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper uses a life cycle assessment of an Airbus A320 commercial airliner to determine the relative environmental impact of each service life phase. It was conducted in accordance with ISO 14040/44, the Ecolnvent inventory database, customised unit process entries for the most important processes and materials and the Eco-Indicator 99 weighting method. The conclusions highlighting the very low contribution of the manufacturing phase to the overall service life emissions. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Ugra in Siberia has recently started to play a major role in the Russian economy because key oil and gas extraction sites are located in this region. As a result, the extensions of infrastructure and higher incomes have been leading to an accelerated population growth and consequent increase in the generation of solid household waste. The current methods of waste disposal have now reached their limits, especially in the towns Khanty-Mansiysk and Surgut. The key objectives of this study were to identify the influence of waste composition and transport routes on the life cycle assessment (LCA) results and to assess the current waste treatment option for solid household waste and to compare it with proposed scenarios. Furthermore, recommendations for an optimal use of LCA within a decision-making process for a waste management plan are presented. LCA methodology was used to evaluate different waste management scenarios such as landfilling and incineration. One result was that the options 'incineration with recycling' and 'anaerobic mechanical-biological treatment with recycling' demonstrated lower environmental impact in both Khanty-Mansiysk and Surgut. Another finding was that there were hardly any differences in the ranking of the scenarios for Surgut and Khanty-Mansiysk. However, the special socio-cultural circumstances and location of each town have to be considered seriously in the development of a sustainable waste management plan.The use of nano-sized titanium dioxide (TiO2) as coating in buildings has received considerable interests in recent years due to its excellent ability to purify the environment by capturing some of the pollutants in the air and by using its inherent photocatalytic properties to its advantage. This study employs Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the use of nano-sized titanium dioxide coating on residential window glass. To achieve this objective, this study compiled a Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) for quantifying the energy and emissions of the coating during the manufacturing process and in-service. The Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) model was employed to develop the life cycle inventory of titanium dioxide coating on windows. The LCA framework used in this study was based on a life cycle methodology that follows the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 standard for life cycle assessment and the ASTM standard for Multi-attribute Decision Analysis. Based on the analysis conducted, it may be concluded that the use of TiO2 coating on window panes carries a positive effect on acidification potential, eutrophication potential, criteria air pollutants and smog formation potential, while it increases environmental loads in global warming, fossil fuel depletion, water intake, human health, and ecological toxicity. However, the overall normalized performance on the environment and air purification is positive. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Producing electricity from waste gas is an after treatment for waste gas while recovering the energy content. This paper addresses the methodology to calculate the effect that waste gas energy recovery has on lowering the impact of climate change. Greenhouse gases are emitted while burning the waste gas. However, a thorough study should include the production of the feedstock as well as the production of the infrastructure. A framework is developed to calculate the environmental impact of electricity production from waste gas with a life cycle approach. The present paper has a twofold purpose: to assess the climate change impact of generating electricity with blast furnace gas (BFG) as a waste gas from the steel industry; and to establish a sensitivity assessment of the environmental implications of different allocation rules.Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a very innovative and promising solution for greenhouse gases (GHG) reduction, i.e., capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) at its source and storing it indefinitely to avoid its release to the atmosphere. This paper investigates a set of key issues in the development of specific rules for the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to CCS. The following LCA-based information are addressed in this work: definition of service type, definition of functional unit, definition of system boundaries, choice of allocation rules, choice of selected Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) results or other selected parameters for description of environmental performance. From a communication perspective, the specific rules defined in this study have been developed coherently with the requirements of a type III environment label scheme, the International EPD (R) System, according to the ISO 14025 standard.Shifting consumer preferences towards 'green' consumption is promoted by many governments and environmental groups. Rebound effects, which reduce the effectiveness of such actions, are estimated for cost-saving 'green' consumption choices using Australian data. Cases examined are: reduced vehicle use, reduced electricity use, changing to smaller passenger vehicles, and utilising fluorescent lighting. It is found that if rebound effects are ignored when evaluating 'green' consumption, environmental benefits will be overstated by around 20% for reduced vehicle use, and 7% for reduced electricity use. Rebound effects are higher, and environmental benefits lower, when more efficient vehicles or lighting are utilised rather than simple conservation actions of forgoing use. In addition, lower income households have higher rebound effects, suggesting that environmental policy directed at changing consumer behaviour is most effective when targeted at high income households. An inherent trade-off between economic and environmental benefits of 'green' consumption choices is demonstrated. The size of the rebound effect, and the observed variation with household income, is attributed to Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodologies associated with the calculation of embodied GHG emissions of consumption goods. These results should be therefore be interpreted as the minimum rebound effect to include in policy evaluation. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agricultural biofuels require the use of scarce land, and this land has opportunity cost. We explore the objective function of a social planner who includes a land constraint in the optimization decision to minimize environmental cost. The inclusion of this land constraint in our optimization model motivates the measurement of emissions on a per-hectare basis. Switchgrass and corn are modeled as competing alternatives to show how the inclusion of a land constraint can influence life cycle rankings and alter policy conclusions. With land use unconstrained, ethanol produced from switchgrass is always an optimal feedstock relative to ethanol produced from corn. With land use constrained, however, our results show that it is unlikely that switchgrass would be optimal in the midwestern United States, but may be optimal in southern states if carbon is priced relatively high. Whether biofuel policy advocates for one feedstock over another should consider these contrasting results. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land-use changes are one of the three major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to human activity, along with fossil fuel combustion and cement production. Because road construction is the foremost cause of land-use changes, it is crucial to quantify the GHG emissions from road construction. However, the effect of GHG emissions attributed to land-use change for a single road construction project has not yet been fully investigated. This study quantified GHG emissions and sequestration from land-use changes due to road construction. Following the guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this study developed a framework to estimate GHG emissions for land-use changes. Eighteen cases involving a typical highway construction project in the Republic of Korea were selected for this study. The net GHG emissions from road construction were estimated to be within the range of 24-105 tons of carbon (tC)/lane-km, with an average of 66 tC/lane-km. Practical methods are suggested to effectively minimize emissions and maximize sequestration. These findings are expected to facilitate the identification of strategies for transportation policies and the realization of a low-carbon society. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000620. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.In-pit crushing and conveying (IPCC) and ore sorting are two developing technologies that, in addition to providing likely economic benefits, also have the potential to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of mining and mineral processing operations. A life cycle assessment study was carried out to provide estimates of the likely greenhouse gas reductions from the implementation of IPCC and ore sorting technologies in a hypothetical copper mining and mineral processing operation. Based on the assumed configurations and operating characteristics of the two systems, the results indicated that IPCC had 4% less (i.e. 3 kg CO(2)e/t ore or 0.16 kg CO(2)e/t ore.km) greenhouse gas emissions than truck haulage for the base case configuration. Using electricity generated from natural gas rather than black coal increased the greenhouse gas advantage of IPCC over truck haulage from 4% to about 22% (i.e. 14 kg CO(2)e/t ore or 0.74 kg CO(2)e/t ore.km). However, transport distance and annual plant feedrate affect the magnitude of these greenhouse gas reductions. A potential reduction of about 13 kg CO(2)e/t ore in greenhouse gas emissions was estimated from the use of ore sorting technology based on black coal generated electricity, while with natural gas-based electricity the reduction was only 8 kg CO(2)e/t ore. The mass rejection rate of the ore sorting device was the main operational variable affecting the magnitude of this reduction, although it is also affected by the specific comminution and concentration energy requirements of the ore. While the results indicate that ore sorting offers nearly four times the potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions than IPCC did at the same annual plant feedrate for the base case configuration with black coal-based electricity, the situation was reversed with natural gas-based electricity, with IPCC offering nearly double the potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions than ore sorting. However, it should be appreciated that due to the limited amount of publicly available data on these technologies at the present time, the results of this study should be viewed as first estimates only. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The selection of most appropriate design and technological solutions to produce certain mould should capture technical performance, economical issues as well as environmental impacts occurred during the mould life cycle. In the paper an approach is presented to support the selection of alternative mould design solutions in the early design stage. It includes the use of Life Cycle Assessment methodology, Life Cycle Cost methodology and is supported by numerical simulations. The approach is applied to a case study where three mould designs for production of the same plastic product were compared. Finally, general conclusions regarding the resource efficient injection moulding processes are presented.Glycerol that originates as a by-product from the production of biodiesel is a bio-based feedstock, which neither has the disadvantages of fossil resources nor can be used as food. It was studied in a life cycle assessment whether a use in the chemical industry leads to environmental advantages. The life cycle assessment of options of use of glycerol from the biodiesel production shows that a conventional material use without conversion is the environmentally most advantageous option. However, it is to be expected that not all glycerol can be used this way if the biodiesel production increases. In this case, innovative biotechnological conversions of glycerol to n-butanol or 1,3-propanediol as well as the use for energy production can be environmentally advantageous if especially the energy and resource efficiencies are further optimized.This paper uses a dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA) approach and illustrates the potential importance of the method using a simplified case study of an institutional building. Previous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have consistently found that energy consumption in the use phase of a building is dominant in most environmental impact categories. Due to the long life span of buildings and potential for changes in usage patterns over time, a shift toward DLCA has been suggested. We define DLCA as an approach to LCA which explicitly incorporates dynamic process modeling in the context of temporal and spatial variations in the surrounding industrial and environmental systems. A simplified mathematical model is used to incorporate dynamic information from the case study building, temporally explicit sources of life cycle inventory data and temporally explicit life cycle impact assessment characterization factors, where available. The DLCA model was evaluated for the historical and projected future environmental impacts of an existing institutional building, with additional scenario development for sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of future impacts. Results showed that overall life cycle impacts varied greatly in some categories when compared to static LCA results, generated from the temporal perspective of either the building's initial construction or its recent renovation. From the initial construction perspective, impacts in categories related to criteria air pollutants were reduced by more than 50 % when compared to a static LCA, even though nonrenewable energy use increased by 15 %. Pollution controls were a major reason for these reductions. In the future scenario analysis, the baseline DLCA scenario showed a decrease in all impact categories compared with the static LCA. The outer bounds of the sensitivity analysis varied from slightly higher to strongly lower than the static results, indicating the general robustness of the decline across the scenarios. These findings support the use of dynamic modeling in life cycle assessment to increase the relevance of results. In some cases, decision making related to building design and operations may be affected by considering the interaction of temporally explicit information in multiple steps of the LCA. The DLCA results suggest that in some cases, changes during a building's lifetime can influence the LCA results to a greater degree than the material and construction phases. Adapting LCA to a more dynamic approach may increase the usefulness of the method in assessing the performance of buildings and other complex systems in the built environment.With the tremendous growth in the worldwide electronic information and telecommunication industries, there continues to be an increasing awareness of the environmental impacts related to the accelerating mass production, electricity use, and waste management of electrical and electronic products (e-products). Although Macau is a small region with a total land area of about 29.5 km(2) and a population of 557,000 in 2011, there are two personal computers (PCs) for every household in Macau. This paper aims to describe the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental performance of PCs in Macau. An assessment of the PC (focusing on the desktop PC) was carried out using a detailed modular LCA based on the international standards of the ISO 14040 series. The LCA was constructed using SimaPro software version 7.2 and expressed with both the Eco-indicator'99 method and the Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen method. Life cycle inventory information was compiled by Ecoinvent 2.2 databases, combined with literature and field investigations of the actual situations. The established LCA study showed that the manufacturing and the use of such devices are of the highest environmental importance. In the manufacturing stage, the desktop contributes the most to the total environmental impacts (44.89 Pt), followed by the LCD screens (about 27.53 Pt), while the CRT screen, keyboard, and mouse are of minor importance. During the use phase, the environmental impact is due entirely to the consumption of electricity generated by coal, oil, natural gas, and hydropower. The electricity generated by coal is by far the most important, accounting for about 66 % of the total environmental impact, followed by oil and gas. Within the EoL treatment phase, using incineration, there will be little environmental impact. When adopting recycling technology in the EoL phase, apparent environmental benefits will be generated due mainly to avoiding emissions to water (arsenic ions and cadmium ions) and to air (SO2) in the primary production phase. For the competing technologies of CRT and LCD screens, the environmental impacts are different in different phases, but the total impacts over their entire life cycle are similar. Results from a life cycle assessment can be used to compare the relative environmental impacts of competing technologies; it can also help designers and managers to focus efforts toward making environmental improvements to a particular technology.There has been lively debate, especially in Finland and Sweden, on the climate impacts of peat fuel. Previous studies of peat fuel's life-cycle climate impacts were controversial in their interpretation. The aim of this paper is conclusive examination of the issues of LCA methodology, derived from critical review of previous studies and recalculation based on the latest knowledge of greenhouse gas balances related to peat fuel's utilisation and the radiative forcing impacts of greenhouse gases. The most recent findings on emissions and the gas fluxes between soil, vegetation and atmosphere were used in calculation of the life-cycle climate impacts of the various peat fuel utilisation chains by means of LCA methodology. In the main, the calculation methods and rules were the same as in the previous studies, with the aim being to distinguish the impact of peat fuel's utilisation from that of the natural or semi-natural situation. A dynamic method was employed for assessing changes in radiative forcing. The results of alternative peat fuel utilisation chains were compared to the corresponding result for coal. There are many steps in peat fuel LCA, where different assumptions lead to different outcomes. Determining the functional unit, reference situations and system boundaries, as well as the emission calculation methods, is important from this point of view. Determination of the initial reference situation emerged as one of the critical points in the calculations. Time scale can strongly affect the final outcomes in a study where effects of long-term land-use change are considered. Each peatland area is unique. The higher the greenhouse gas emissions in the initial reference situation, the greater is the climate impact of the area and the more suitable the area is for peat extraction. The study showed that more greenhouse gas flux measurements are needed, for better assessment of the climate impacts of different potential peat extraction sites. Climate change mitigation requires quick actions, and uncertainties related to emissions are higher for longer time spans. Therefore, it can be concluded that a perspective spanning more than 100 years is inappropriate in peat fuel's life-cycle climate impact assessments.This paper performs a life cycle assessment study for a white wine produced in the northern part of Portugal, i.e. the white vinho verde. The purpose is to identify the environmental impacts occurring along the wine life cycle as well as the stages that mostly contribute to the environmental impact, as well as the associated causes. The stages considered include: (1) viticulture, (2) wine production (vinification to storage), (3) wine distribution and (4) bottles production. The consumption of materials and energy, as well as the emissions to air, soil and water from the wine campaign of 2008/2009 were reported to the functional unit (0.75 l of white vinho verde). A Portuguese company that produces about 25 % of the current total production of white vinho verde supplied specific life cycle data for the stages of viticulture, wine production and distribution. SimaPro and the Ecoinvent database were used to perform the environmental assessment using CML 2001 impact methodology. A sensitivity analysis for a set of significant parameters was performed. Results show that for viticulture the contribution of each impact category is larger than 50 %. The production of bottles is the second contributor varying from about 4 % (to eutrophication) to 26 % (to acidification). Wine production and distribution are the subsequent contributors. The contribution of wine production varies between 0.6 % (to land competition) and about 13 % (from marine aquatic and sediment ecotoxicity 100a). The contribution of distribution is up to 14 % (to photochemical oxidation). Sensitivity analysis shows that significant changes are calculated for parameters as the nitrate leaching to groundwater, the emission of nitrous oxide from managed soil, and from runoff and leaching. Changes in these parameters are significant for only a few impact categories as eutrophication and global warming. Viticulture is the stage with the largest relative contribution to the overall environmental impact and the bottle production is the subsequent stage. In order to improve the environmental performance of the supply chain for wine, it is necessary to optimise the dosage of fertilisers and phytosanitary products used during viticulture. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the most influential parameters relate with the emission of nitrogen compounds associated with the use of fertilisers.Shifting the resource base for chemical and energy production from fossil feed stocks to renewable raw materials is seen by many as one of the key strategies towards sustainable development. The objective of this study is to assess the environmental burdens of producing polyitaconic acid (PIA), a water-soluble polymer derived from itaconic acid identified by the US Department of Energy as one of the top 12 value added chemicals from northeast (NE) US softwood biomass. Results are compared to corn-derived PIA and fossil-based poly acrylic acid (PAA) on the basis of 1 kg of polymer at the factory gate. This study uses attributional life cycle assessment to quantify global warming potential (GWP), fossil energy demand (CED), acidification, eutrophication, water use, and land occupation of the polymer production routes. This includes feedstock growth and harvest, sugar extraction, fermentation, itaconic acid recovery, and subsequent polymerization. Foreground data for softwood-derived PIA comes from lab- and pilot plant runs undertaken by Itaconix LLC. Results indicate that the use of softwood-based PIA may be advantageous in terms of GWP, CED, and acidification when compared to both, the integrated corn biorefinery and fossil-based PAA production. When looking at impacts to eutrophication and water use, the use of softwood leads to lower potential impacts compared to its corn-based counterpart but to higher impacts when compared to fossil-based PAA. Land occupation, to a large extent, due to lower yields and longer growth cycles associated with softwood growth in the NE, is highest for softwood-derived PIA and lowest for fossil-based PAA. Environmental impacts are mainly the results of onsite electricity use, inputs of activated carbon and sodium hydroxide, as well as water use during sugar extraction and fermentation. Assumptions with regards to allocation, activated carbon inputs, and electricity mixes to processes of the foreground system are tested in a sensitivity analysis. Wood-derived PIA production may be an interesting alternative to current fossil-based pathways and could contribute to a future biobased economy. However, currently, land occupation, water use, and eutrophication are high when compared to traditional PAA production. The use of short rotation crops or waste feedstocks and optimization with regards to water requirements and reuse should be investigated to further lower system-wide impacts.This life cycle assessment (LCA) study compares two prevalent end-of-life (EOL) treatment methods for scrap tires: material recycling and energy recovery. The primary intended use of the study results is to inform stakeholders of the relative environmental burdens and trade-offs associated with these two EOL vehicle tire treatment methods. The study supports prioritization of the waste treatment hierarchy for this material stream in the US. This LCA compares (1) material recycling through ambient-temperature mechanical processing and (2) energy recovery through co-incineration of both whole and preprocessed scrap tires at a cement kiln. The avoided burden recycling methodology reflects the substitution of virgin synthetic rubber used in asphalt modification with the ground tire rubber from material recycling and the substitution of conventional kiln fuels with the tire-derived fuel (TDF). Both attributional (ALCA) and consequential (CLCA) methodologies are used: the ALCA assesses the environmental profiles of the treatment methods and the CLCA examines the potential effects of shifting more scrap tires to material recycling. The attributional portion of the LCA study was conducted in accordance with ISO standards 14044 series. The results in both methodological approaches indicate that the material recycling scenario provides greater impact reductions than the energy recovery scenario in terms of the examined environmental impact potentials: energy demand, iron ore consumption, global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, smog formation, and respiratory effects. The additional impact reductions from material recycling are significant, and the establishment of new infrastructure required for a shift to material recycling incurs relatively insignificant burdens. Sensitivity analyses indicate that this conclusion does not change for (1) a range of TDF heating values, (2) a decrease in the mixed scrap tire rubber-to-steel composition ratio, (3) two alternative electricity grid fuel mixes with higher and lower carbon dioxide emission rankings than that of the baseline scenario, or (4) a comparison of material recycling to energy recovery when TDF is used in pulp and paper mills instead of cement kilns. These results provide a basis for more informed decision-making when prioritizing scrap tire waste treatment hierarchy.Approximately 46,000 t/day of packaging waste was generated in China in 2010, of which, 2,500 t was composite packaging waste. Due to the lack of recycling technology and an imperfect recovery system, most of this waste is processed in sanitary landfills. An effective packaging waste management system is needed since this waste not only uses up valuable resources, but also increases environmental pollution. The purpose of this study is to estimate the environmental impact of the treatment scenarios in composite packaging waste which are commonly used in China, to determine the optimum composite packaging waste management strategy, and to design new separating and recycling technology for composite packaging, based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) results. To identify the best treatment for composite packaging waste, the LCA software SimaPro 7.1.6 was used to assist in the analysis of the environmental impacts, coupled with the impact assessment method Eco-Indicator 99. LCA for composite packaging waste management was carried out by estimating the environmental impacts of the four scenarios most often used in China: landfill, incineration, paper recycling, and separation of polyethylene and aluminum. One ton of post-consumption Tetra Pak waste was selected as the functional unit. The data on the mass, energy fluxes, and environmental emissions were obtained from literature and site investigations. Landfill-scenario 1-was the worst waste management option. Paper recycling-scenario 3-was more environmentally friendly than incineration, scenario 2. Scenario 4, separating out polyethylene and aluminum, was established based on the LCA result, and inventory data were obtained from the demonstration project built by this research. In scenario 4, the demonstration project for the separation of polyethylene and aluminum was built based on the optimum conditions from single-factor and orthogonal experiments. Adding this flow process into the life cycle of composite packaging waste treatment decreased the environmental impacts significantly. The research results can provide useful scientific information for policymakers in China to make decisions regarding composite packaging waste. Incineration could reduce more environmental impacts in the respiratory inorganics category, and separation of polyethylene and aluminum, in the fossil fuel category. If energy saving is the primary governmental goal, the separation of polyethylene and aluminum would be the better choice, while incineration would be the better choice for emission reduction.Indoor emissions of toxic substances from products can have a negative effect on human health. These are typically not considered in a life cycle assessment (LCA), potentially underestimating the importance of the use stage. The purpose of this paper is to develop a method that, based on a set of measured emission rates, calculates the impact on human health during the use stage of products that are used indoors and that emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Emissions from a product are measured in a test chamber and reported as a set of emission rates (microgrammes per hour) at specific points in time (hour/day). Constrained non-linear regression (CNLR) analysis is then used to determine parameters for three emission models, and a model is selected based on goodness of fit with the measured emission rates (R (2) and expert judgement). The emission model is integrated over a defined time period to estimate the total use stage emissions per functional unit (FU). The total emissions are subsequently integrated in a homogeneously mixed one-box model within the USEtox model. Intake fraction (iF) is calculated based on size of residential home, inhalation rate, exposure time, ventilation rate, mixing factor and number of people exposed. The method is tested in a case study of a chair, with the results showing that the impacts in the use stage are in most cases significantly higher than from the production and disposal stages combined. The sensitivity to parameter variations is evaluated. Intake fraction (factor of 761), replacement frequency (factor of 70) and emission model (factor of 24) are found to be the most important model parameters. Limiting early exposure (> 14 % of emissions may occur in the first month and > 50 % in the first year) and replacing furniture less frequently will reduce exposure. The case study shows that the impact on human health from indoor emissions can be of significance, when compared to the impact on human health from total outdoor emissions. Without specific exposure data (e.g. ventilation rates) the uncertainty will be high. The developed method is applicable to all products that emit VOCs, provided that the emission rate can be modelled using an exponential decay model and that the product amount is related to a meaningful functional unit. It is recommended that when performing an LCA of products that emit VOCs, the indoor use stage is included in the life cycle impact assessment.The main objective of this study is to expand the discussion about how, and to what extent, the environmental performance is affected by the use of different life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) illustrated by the case study of the comparison between environmental impacts of gasoline and ethanol form sugarcane in Brazil. The following LCIA methods have been considered in the evaluation: CML 2001, Impact 2002+, EDIP 2003, Eco-indicator 99, TRACI 2, ReCiPe, and Ecological Scarcity 2006. Energy allocation was used to split the environmental burdens between ethanol and surplus electricity generated at the sugarcane mill. The phases of feedstock and (bio)fuel production, distribution, and use are included in system boundaries. At the midpoint level, comparison of different LCIA methods showed that ethanol presents lower impacts than gasoline in important categories such as global warming, fossil depletion, and ozone layer depletion. However, ethanol presents higher impacts in acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation, and agricultural land use categories. Regarding to single-score indicators, ethanol presented better performance than gasoline using ReCiPe Endpoint LCIA method. Using IMPACT 2002+, Eco-indicator 99, and Ecological Scarcity 2006, higher scores are verified for ethanol, mainly due to the impacts related to particulate emissions and land use impacts. Although there is a relative agreement on the results regarding equivalent environmental impact categories using different LCIA methods at midpoint level, when single-score indicators are considered, use of different LCIA methods lead to different conclusions. Single-score results also limit the interpretability at endpoint level, as a consequence of small contributions of relevant environmental impact categories weighted in a single-score indicator.China is the largest producer of textile-dyeing products in the world. The production of these materials consumes high amounts of water and energy and results in the discharge of huge amounts of pollutants. This study aimed at evaluating the life-cycle environmental impacts of the textile-dyeing industry and determining the key processes for mitigating life-cycle environmental impacts efficiently and effectively, which will benefit the application of cleaner production technologies. A life-cycle assessment was performed according to the ISO 14040 standard series. The system investigated includes the dyeing process and final disposal and the transportation of raw material, energy production, and transportation. The functional unit is 10,000 m of cotton fabric, which weighs 2,000 kg. Our study encompasses three types of data. The data regarding the production process and the major raw materials, necessary energy, and the source of the energy, as well as the emissions of some pollutants, were provided by a textile-dyeing enterprise in Jiangsu Province. The data regarding transport were generated using the GaBi version 4.3 database. Some emission factor data such as those on CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions were obtained from the literature. Resources, energy consumption, and emissions are quantified, and some of the potential environmental effects were evaluated using the CML2001 method built into the GaBi version 4.3 database. Scouring and oxygen bleaching, dyeing, stentering and setting, wastewater treatment, and incineration are the key processes in terms of global warming potential, acidification potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, and eutrophication potential. It will therefore be useful to enhance the recycling of water, control the consumption of additives and dyes, and conserve energy as much as possible. Through scenario analysis, we note that motorized shipment should be used instead of shipment by trucks, when conditions permit. To promote energy conservation and the clean production of continuous pad-dyeing technology for cotton fabrics, other environmental impact categories besides the impact of the water system should be given focus. Additional work can be performed on the following: considering a consumption-based perspective of the entire process, uncertainty in data on life-cycle inventory, the evaluation methodology employed, temporal and spatial variation, the normalized toxicity of dyes and additives, and weighting methods.This study discusses the significance of the use of non-renewable fossil cumulative energy demand (CED) as proxy indicator in the beverage packaging sector, in order to detect those situations in which companies can benefit from the use of proxy indicators before a full life cycle assessment (LCA) application. Starting from a case study of two milk containers, the objectives of this paper are to assess if the use of this inventory indicator can be a suitable proxy indicator both (1) to decide which is the packaging alternative with the lowest environmental impact and (2) to identify the most impacting process units of the two products under study. The analysis was made according to ISO14040-44. The goal of the comparative LCA was to evaluate and to compare the potential environmental impacts from cradle to grave of a laminated carton container and a HDPE bottle. The results of the comparative LCA obtained with the non-renewable CED indicator are compared with a selection of impact categories: climate change, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, fossil depletion, photochemical oxidant formation. A further analysis is made for the two products under study in order to determine which are the environmental hot spots in terms of life cycle stages, by the means of a contribution analysis. From the comparative LCA, the use of non-renewable CED revealed to be useful for a screening as the results given by the non-renewable CED indicator are confirmed by all the impact categories considered, even if underestimated. If the aim of the LCA study was to define which is the packaging solution with a lower environmental impact, the choice of this inventory indicator could have led to the same decision as if a comprehensive LCIA method was used. The contribution analysis, focusing on the identification of environmental hot spots in the packaging value chain, revealed that the choice of an inventory indicator as non-renewable CED can lead to misleading results, if compared with another impact category, such as climate change. As in the future development of beverage packaging system, LCA will be necessarily integrated in the design process, it is important to define other ways of simplifying its application and spread its use among companies. The LCI indicator non-renewable fossil CED can effectively be used in order to obtain a preliminary estimation of the life cycle environmental impacts of two or more competing products in the beverage packaging sector.This study analyzes the influence of value choices in impact assessment models for human health, such as the choice of time horizon, on life cycle assessment outcomes. For 756 products, the human health damage score is calculated using three sets of characterization factors (CFs). The CFs represent seven human health impact assessment categories: water scarcity, tropospheric ozone formation, particulate matter formation, human toxicity, ionizing radiation, stratospheric ozone depletion, and climate change. Each set of CFs embeds a combination of value choices following the Cultural Theory, and reflects the individualist, hierarchist, or egalitarian perspective. We found that the average difference in human health damage score goes from 1 order of magnitude between the individualist and hierarchist perspectives to 2.5 orders of magnitude between the individualist and egalitarian perspectives. The difference in damage score of individual materials among perspectives depends on the combination of emissions driving the impact of both perspectives and can rise up to 5 orders of magnitude. The value choices mainly responsible for the differences in results among perspectives are the choice of time horizon and inclusion of highly uncertain effects. A product comparison can be affected when the human health damage score of two products differ less than a factor of 5, or the comparing products largely differ in their emitted substances. Overall, our study implies that value choices in impact assessment modeling can modify the outcomes of a life cycle assessment (LCA) and thus the practical implication of decisions based on the results of an LCA.In recent years, several methods have been developed which propose different freshwater use inventory schemes and impact assessment characterization models considering various cause-effect chain relationships. This work reviewed a multitude of methods and indicators for freshwater use potentially applicable in life cycle assessment (LCA). This review is used as a basis to identify the key elements to build a scientific consensus for operational characterization methods for LCA. This evaluation builds on the criteria and procedure developed within the International Reference Life Cycle Data System Handbook and has been adapted for the purpose of this project. It therefore includes (1) description of relevant cause-effect chains, (2) definition of criteria to evaluate the existing methods, (3) development of sub-criteria specific to freshwater use, and (4) description and review of existing methods addressing freshwater in LCA. No single method is available which comprehensively describes all potential impacts derived from freshwater use. However, this review highlights several key findings to design a characterization method encompassing all the impact pathways of the assessment of freshwater use and consumption in life cycle assessment framework as the following: (1) in most of databases and methods, consistent freshwater balances are not reported either because output is not considered or because polluted freshwater is recalculated based on a critical dilution approach; (2) at the midpoint level, most methods are related to water scarcity index and correspond to the methodological choice of an indicator simplified in terms of the number of parameters (scarcity) and freshwater uses (freshwater consumption or freshwater withdrawal) considered. More comprehensive scarcity indices distinguish different freshwater types and functionalities. (3) At the endpoint level, several methods already exist which report results in units compatible with traditional human health and ecosystem quality damage and cover various cause-effect chains, e.g., the decrease of terrestrial biodiversity due to freshwater consumption. (4) Midpoint and endpoint indicators have various levels of spatial differentiation, i.e., generic factors with no differentiation at all, or country, watershed, and grid cell differentiation. Existing databases should be (1) completed with input and output freshwater flow differentiated according to water types based on its origin (surface water, groundwater, and precipitation water stored as soil moisture), (2) regionalized, and (3) if possible, characterized with a set of quality parameters. The assessment of impacts related to freshwater use is possible by assembling methods in a comprehensive methodology to characterize each use adequately.Growing public concern about the current state of our planet led to the creation of numerous regulations, standards, and certifications for the protection of humans and the environment. Ecolabels were defined for products such as cleaning products, paints, and many others. Wood building products are no exception. The objective of this study is to analyze the existing ecolabelling programs for appearance wood products in nonresidential applications and to evaluate them relatively to their effective role in environment protection or reduction of environment footprint. The research was conducted on the most common International Organization for Standardization (ISO) type I ecolabels in North America, the European Union, and Japan. Certification schemes applicable to appearance wood products for nonresidential applications were considered. In a life cycle assessment perspective, certification criteria were compared regarding their ability to consider and integrate environment impacts. A wide range of ecolabels can apply to appearance wood products, from indoor air quality to wood from sustainable forest management. Moreover, it has been found that among all certification schemes studied, those integrating the whole life cycle were the most relevant. The remaining limitation of ISO type I ecolabels is the lack of environmental information enabling the differentiation between products bearing the same ecolabel. This can be overcome by ISO type III environmental product declarations. Thus, allowing a better understanding of the implications related with the use of wood products compared to other materials in the nonresidential building sector.Substantial evidence from numerous studies indicate that Uganda is already experiencing the negative impacts attributed to climate change, manifested by changing and unpredictable weather patterns, with implications to food production, water, and livelihood. Therefore, reducing carbon footprints is a key ingredient in mitigating climate change. However, this requires availability of adequate knowledge and human resource capacities to analyze and manage the carbon dynamics as well as energy-related aspects at all levels of organizations. It is against this background that training activities were designed to equip participants with knowledge and skills on the subject of carbon footprints. Participants were exposed to current techniques and methods of estimating and reducing carbon footprints; and equipped with knowledge on pathways for realizing carbon neutral resilient systems. In addition, participants formed a carbon footprint network with a view of sharing experience with other actors elsewhere in this field, and periodically organize similar trainings and other avenues for experience and knowledge sharing.The production and supply of food currently accounts for 20-30% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK and the government and nongovernmental organisations are seeking to reduce these environmental burdens. Local authorities all over UK establish community farms with the aim to produce more sustainable food for citizens. This study used environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify the potential savings of food-related GHG emissions that may be achieved with the establishment of an urban community farm, based on a case study recently found in the London Borough of Sutton. The work identified elements of the farm design that require the greatest attention to maximise these savings. The greatest reductions can be achieved by selecting the right crops: (i) providing the highest yields in local conditions and (ii) usually produced in energy-intensive greenhouses or air-freighted to UK from outside Europe. Implications from further development of the farm on the local, unused land were examined, taking into account market requirements. This showed that land used on an urban fringe for food production could potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Sutton by up to 34 t CO(2)e ha(-1) a(-1). Although the percentage of this reduction in total diet emissions is relatively low, the result exceeds carbon sequestration rates for the conventional urban green space projects, such as parks and forests. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Fossil energy depletion and growing environmental concerns have brought up increasing interest in bio-based eco-efficient and high technology materials. Among them, starch nanocrystals (SNC) consist of crystalline nano-platelets produced from the hydrolysis of starch and mainly used as nano-fillers in polymeric matrix. New applications have brought up the need for scaling-up the SNC preparation process. However, for this new bio-based nano-material to be sustainable, its preparation and processing should have limited impacts on the environment. Thus, together with analyzing and making recommendations for the scaling-up of SNC production process, it is worth identifying "environmentally sensitive" steps using life cycle analysis (LCA). To that purpose, different scenarios have been proposed and compared according to different environmental impacts. Also, a comparison to its main competitor, i.e. organically modified nanoclay (OMMT), is proposed. From a LCA point of view, SNC preparation requires less energy than OMMT extraction, but global warming and acidification indicators were higher than for OMMT. However, SNC have the added advantages to be renewable and biodegradable contrary to OMMT which contribute to non-renewable energy and mineral depletion. Thus, used as filler, SNC have a positive impact on the end of life of the filled material. From these observations, recommendations for the scaling-up of the SNC preparation process are made and deal mainly with the use of land and water.At present, research activities on the role of orchard systems in sequestering atmospheric CO2 remain scarce. This paper aimed to contribute to assessing the carbon balance of a Mediterranean olive (Olea europea) orchard. The net ecosystem exchange, the ecosystem respiration and the gross primary production were computed for two consecutive years through eddy covariance, and the different biomass accumulation terms were also inferred in the same period through an inventorial method. The net carbon exchange ranged from 13.45 t(C) ha(-1) year(-1) to 11.60 t(C) ha(-1) year(-1). Very similar values [12.2 and 11.5 t(C) ha(-1) year(-1)] were found with the direct carbon accumulation inventory. The intensive farming management (irrigation included) and the young age of the plants (12-16 years old), still in an active growing phase, led the olive plantation to be a higher carbon sink with respect to other evergreen orchards reported in the literature.Decision making in sanitation planning is often complex, with inherent trade-offs among sociopolitical, environmental, technical and economic factors. The selection of appropriate and sustainable sanitation systems for municipal wastewater treatment involves multiple criteria with conflicting stakeholder preferences. To fulfil conflicting yet complementary objectives, one of the best known and most widely used multi-criteria analysis (MCA) approaches called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been employed as a decision support tool to aid decision makers in sanitation planning process in developing countries. AHP, in combination with life cycle assessment (LCA) and a proposed set of multidimensional criteria, has worked as an effective decision support tool for the sustainability assessment and selection of appropriate wastewater treatment system with a capacity of 1200m3/day, in a case study in Toan Thang, a small town in Vietnam. Results from this case study have indicated that the public's understanding of trade-offs is critical in gaining public support for long-term sustainability of the solution. The findings from this study have also shown AHP as an effective and flexible communication tool for group decision making in sanitation planning.The work presents a method of assessing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of forest-based biomass supply chains on a site-specific level. The method includes biomass availability and transportation network assessments based on geographical information system data, and GHG emission assessment based on life-cycle assessment methods. The GHG assessment takes into account distances traveled on the various types of road by trucks. Two case studies are presented, with 720 TJ year(-1) of small-diameter energy wood chips delivered to two locations in Finland: Mikkeli and Rovaniemi. In the case studies, possibilities for train transportation from distant supply areas were included. Regarding railway transportation, it was assumed that the end-points have direct railway connections. The case study results show that if direct truck transportation around the plants were supplemented with one trainload per week (230 TJ year(-1)) from suitably located railway loading points, GHG emission savings of 8 % could be achieved in both cases. The most GHG-efficient supply chains around the railway loading points were found to be based on transportation of loose trees to the loading spots. Because of better biomass availability and better roads, the emissions of the least GHG-emitting supply chain were 9 % lower in Mikkeli's case than for Rovaniemi. The results indicate that site-specific biomass availability and transportation possibilities should be taken into account in assessment of the GHG emissions of a particular biomass supply chain. Also, if suitable conditions exist, railway transportation offers potential for reduced supply-chain GHG emissions.Aquaculture is increasingly interacting with fisheries from a socio-economic perspective at the level of the global food market. In addition, since 36% of landings from fisheries are used for the production of fishmeal and fish oil, which are essential feed elements for many aquaculture species, another source of interaction is at the level of the aqua feed market. The relevance of the interactions between the two sectors is becoming more evident as the process of transition from fishing to farming has reached a pivotal point, with almost 50% of the fish food supply now coming from aquaculture. The analyses on aquaculture and fisheries interactions often result in diverging views. This paper reviews the main positions in the recent scientific literature, structuring the discussion along the following themes: food market interactions; comparison of resources use by means of Life Cycle Assessment; use of fishmeal and fish oil and aqua feed markets; impacts on small pelagic fish stocks; food security; technical substitution of fishmeal and fish oil with alternative ingredients. The review is not aimed at taking a definitive position in respect of these complex issues but rather at summarising the different scientific contributions and indicating possible areas for further research. Research on fisheries and aquaculture interactions is considered beneficial in terms of policy support especially now that the reform of European Common Fishery Policy is assigning greater relevance to the growth of aquaculture and to its role in terms of socio-economic development for coastal and rural communities. In a more global perspective, the understanding of interactions between aquaculture and fisheries is important to evaluate the respective contributions to food security goals and the implications in terms of environmental sustainability and resource use efficiency. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Intensifying animal production is generally advocated to mitigate greenhouse gases emissions associated with production of animal-source food. Sheep farming systems (SFSs) in Spain are generally considered to be pasture-based and extensive, but large differences in input utilization, land use and intensification level exist. Their environmental impacts, therefore, are expected to differ also. We used life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions of three contrasting meat-sheep farming systems in Spain, which differed in their degree of intensification (reproduction rate, land use and grazing management). The GHGs emissions of these systems varied from 19.5 to 25.9 kg CO2-eq per kg of lamb live weight, or 39.0-51.7 kg CO2-eq per kg of lamb meat, with highest values referring to the pasture-based livestock system. In addition to meat, however, these SFSs also provide other services to society (e.g. public goods such as biodiversity and landscape conservation). We valued these services for each SFSs based on agri-environmental subsidies of the EU and used farm economic values to allocate GHGs emissions of SFSs between meat and cultural ecosystem services. When accounting for multifunctionality, GHGs emission per kg of lamb live weight among the SFSs was reversed: with lowest values for the pasture-based system (13.9 kg CO2-eq per kg of lamb live weight) and highest for zero-grazing system (19.5 kg CO2-eq per kg of lamb live weight). A comparison of GHGs emissions among SFSs should account for the multifunctionality of pasture-based livestock systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of the present study is to demonstrate that environmental impacts exerted by manufactured products throughout their entire life cycle are major aspects to be considered, alongside their functional features and cost-effectiveness. One of the available methods to evaluate environmental impacts is known to as the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The study summarises the reports from the literature on the subject of environmental impact assessment. In conclusions, the authors indicate the need for assessing the environmental impact of cast products made from conventional and newly introduced alloys.Shrub willow biomass crops (SWBC) have been developed as a biomass feedstock for bioenergy, biofuels, and bioproducts in the northeastern and midwestern USA as well as in Europe. A previous life cycle analysis in North America showed that the SWBC production system is a low-carbon fuel source. However, this analysis is potentially inaccurate due to the limited belowground biomass data and the lack of aboveground stool biomass data. This study provides new information on the above- and belowground biomass, the carbon-nitrogen (C/N) ratio, and the root/shoot (R/S) ratio of willow biomass crops (Salix x dasyclados [SV1]), which have been in production from 5 to 19 years. The measured amounts of biomass were: 2.6 to 4.1 odt ha(-1) for foliage, 4.9 to 10.9 odt ha(-1) for aboveground stool (AGS), 2.9 to 5.7 odt ha(-1) for coarse roots (CR), 3.1 to 10.2 odt ha(-1) for belowground stool (BGS), and 5.6 to 9.9 odt ha(-1) for standing fine root (FR). The stem biomass production ranged from 7.0 to 18.0 odt ha(-1) year(-1) for the 5- and 19-year-old willows, respectively. C/N ratios ranged from 23 for foliage to 209 for belowground stool. An average R/S ratio of 2.0, calculated as total belowground biomass (BGS, CR, and FR) plus AGS divided by annual stem biomass, can be applied to estimate the total belowground biomass production of a mature SWBC. Based on AGS, BGS, and CR and standing FR biomass data, SWBC showed a net GHG potential of -42.9 Mg CO2 eq ha(-1) at the end of seven 3-year rotations.Several European countries have expanded the traditional use of anaerobic digestion, i.e. waste treatment, to energy generation through attractive incentives. In some countries, it is further promoted by additional payments to generate biogas from biomass. This review aims to summarise agronomic aspects of methane production from maize, to address resulting abiotic environmental effects and to highlight challenges and prospects. The opportunities of biogas production are manifold, including the mitigation of climate change, decreasing reliance on fossil fuels and diversification of farm income. Although the anaerobic digestion of animal manure is regarded as the most beneficial for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from manure storage, the energy output can be substantially enhanced by co-digesting manure and maize, which is the most efficient crop for substrate provision in many regions. Although first regarded as beneficial, the rush into biogas production strongly based on maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) is being questioned in view of its environmental soundness. Main areas of concern comprise the spatial concentration of biogas plant together with the high amount of digestate and resulting pollution of surface and ground water, emission of climate-relevant gases and detrimental effects of maize cultivation on soil organic matter degradation. Key challenges that have been identified to enhance the sustainability of maize-based biogas production include (1) the design of regionally adapted maize rotations, (2) an improved management of biogas residues (BR), (3) the establishment of a more comprehensive data base for evaluating soil C fluxes in maize production as well as GHG emissions at the biogas plant and during BR storage and (4) the consideration of direct and indirect land use change impact of maize-based biogas production.Reduction of noise is one of the multiple benefits of building envelope greening measures. The potential of wall vegetation systems, green roofs, vegetated low screens at roof edges, and also combinations of such treatments, have been studied by means of combining 2D and 3D full-wave numerical methodologies. This study is concerned with road traffic noise propagation towards the traffic-free sides of inner-city buildings (courtyards). Preserving quietness at such locations has been shown before to be beneficial for the health and well-being of citizens. The results in this study show that green roofs have the highest potential to enhance quietness in courtyards. Favourable combinations of roof shape and green roofs have been identified. Vegetated facades are most efficient when applied to narrow city canyons with otherwise acoustically hard facade materials. Greening of the upper storey's in the street and (full) facades in the courtyard itself is most efficient to achieve noise reduction. Low-height roof screens were shown to be effective when multiple screens are placed, but only on conditions that their faces are absorbing. The combination of different greening measures results in a lower combined effect than when the separate effects would have been linearly added. The combination of green roofs or wall vegetation with roof screens seems most interesting. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The benefits of choosing refurbishment over new build have recently been brought into focus for reducing environmental impacts of buildings. This is due to the fact that the existing buildings will comprise the majority of the total building stocks for years to come and hence will remain responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions from the sector. This paper investigates the total potentials of sustainable refurbishment and conversion of the existing buildings by adopting a holistic approach to sustainability. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and questionnaires have been used to analyse the environmental impact savings (Co(2)e), improved health and well-being, and satisfaction of people living in refurbished homes. The results reported in the paper are based on a two year externally funded research project completed in January 2013.More than 300 papers have been published in the last 15 years on the topic of green or sustainable (forward) supply chains. Looking at the research methodologies employed, only 36 papers apply quantitative models. This is in contrast to, for example, the neighboring field of reverse or closed-loop supply chains where several reviews on respective quantitative models have already been provided. The paper summarizes research on quantitative models for forward supply chains and thereby contributes to the further substantiation of the field. While different kinds of models are applied, it is evident that the social side of sustainability is not taken into account. On the environmental side, life-cycle assessment based approaches and impact criteria clearly dominate. On the modeling side there are three dominant approaches: equilibrium models, multi-criteria decision making and analytical hierarchy process. There has been only limited empirical research so far. The paper ends with suggestions for future research. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Multi-objective optimization (MOO) is increasingly being used in a wide variety of applications to identify alternatives that balance several criteria. The energy sector is not an exception to this trend. Unfortunately, the complexity of MOO grows with the number of environmental objectives. This limitation is critical in energy systems, in which several environmental criteria are typically used to assess the merits of a given technology. In this paper, we investigate the use of a rigorous dimensionality reduction method for reducing the complexity of MOO as applied to an energy system (i.e., a solar Rankine cycle coupled with reverse osmosis and thermal storage). Instead of using an aggregated environmental metric, a common approach for reducing the number of environmental objectives in MOO, we propose to optimize the system in a reduced search space of objectives that fully describe its performance and which results from eliminating redundant criteria from the analysis. Numerical results show that it is possible to reduce the problem complexity by omitting redundant environmental indicators from the optimization. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many antimicrobial technologies are available for textiles. They may be used in many different textile applications to prevent the growth of microorganisms. Due to the biological activity of the antimicrobial compounds, the assessment of the safety of these substances is an ongoing subject of research and regulatory scrutiny. This review aims to give an overview on the main compounds used today for antimicrobial textile functionalization. Based on an evaluation of scientific publications, market data as well as regulatory documents, the potential effects of antimicrobials on the environment and on human health were considered and also life cycle perspectives were taken into account The characteristics of each compound were summarized according to technical, environmental and human health criteria. Triclosan, silane quaternary ammonium compounds, zinc pyrithione and silver-based compounds are the main antimicrobials used in,textiles. The synthetic organic compounds dominate the antimicrobials market on a weight basis. On the technical side the application rates of the antimicrobials used to functionalize a textile product are an important parameter with treatments requiring lower dosage rates offering clear benefits in terms of less active substance required to achieve the functionality. The durability of the antimicrobial treatment has a strong influence on the potential for release and subsequent environmental effects. In terms of environmental criteria, all compounds were rated similarly in effective removal in wastewater treatment processes. The extent of published information about environmental behavior for each compound varies, limiting the possibility for an in-depth comparison of all textile-relevant parameters across the antimicrobials. Nevertheless the comparative evaluation showed that each antimicrobial technology has specific risks and benefits that should be taken into account in evaluating the suitability of different antimicrobial products. The results also indicated that nanoscale silver and silver salts that achieve functionality with very low application rates offer clear potential benefits for textile use. The regular care of textiles consumes lots of resources (e.g. water, energy, chemicals) and antimicrobial treatments can play a role in reducing the frequency and/or intensity of laundering which can give potential for significant resource savings and associated impact on the environment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study performs an assessment of existing LCA literature to obtain insights into potential environmental impacts over the complete life cycle of fossil fuel fired power plants with CCS. CCS results in a net reduction of the GWP of power plants through their life cycle in the order of 65-84% (PC-CCS), 68-87% (IGCC-CCS), 47-80% (NGCC-CCS), and 76-97% (Oxyfuel). The results show a lower performance for NGCCs on GWP, although in absolute terms, the GWP of NGCCs with CCS appears in the same order of magnitude as PC-CCS (76-245 gCO(2)eq/kWh vs. 79-275 gCO(2)eg/kWh in PC-CCS). This is due to upstream emissions in NGCC chains. Deploying CCS in PC, IGCC and NGCC results in relative increases in eutrophication and acidification when comparing to power plants without CCS. The limited available LCA literature on oxyfuel with CCS shows this technology as generating the lowest relative increases in the environmental impact categories. For power plants without CCS, direct emissions account as the main contributor to GWP, acidification and eutrophication while for power plants with CCS, indirect emissions appear as the main contributor to GWP, acidification and human toxicity potential. The highly relative importance of emissions occurring upstream (e.g. coal mining, coal transport, MEA production) and downstream (e.g., CO2 transport, CO2 storage) when assessing the environmental performance of power plants with CCS implies the need for optimal designs of CCS chains to also include up- and downstream processes. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been in the last one decade used as a standardized and structured method of evaluating the environmental impacts of aquaculture arising throughout the entire life cycle. However, aquaculture system hardly applied system expansion whenever a multifunctional process has more than one functional flow. The objective of this study is to develop a methodological approach for consequential LCA and model the system expansion of the different affected processes of aquaculture. In this study, we have considered the system expansion in two different stages in the life cycle of the fish production: aquacultural stage, with case study of trout aquaculture, and feed manufacturing stage. Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) production was used as a case study to illustrate the method using different scenarios of system expansion. The results of the six different scenarios of system expansion showed considerable variation among the different scenarios towards the environmental impact of trout aquaculture. Regarding global warming potential, the contributions vary by 5-fold; for acidification, variations were up to 32 %, and for land use, the contributions varied from 0.6 to 1.3 m(2)a/kg of trout demanded in Germany. It appeared that eutrophication is similar in all the scenarios considered. This article showed that system expansion can be used to handle the allocation issues of the co-products in the rainbow trout supply chain, thus, can be effectively used when analyzing the environmental consequences of changes in future rainbow trout production. Furthermore, consequential LCA may be important when comparing the impacts of alternative meal choices of aquafeeds. This may increase the incentive for speedy replacement of alternative meals, thus, reducing the dependence on the utilization of the limiting fisheries resources.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a field of active development. The last decade has seen prolific publication of new impact assessment methods covering many different impact categories and providing characterization factors that often deviate from each other for the same substance and impact. The LCA standard ISO 14044 is rather general and unspecific in its requirements and offers little help to the LCA practitioner who needs to make a choice. With the aim to identify the best among existing characterization models and provide recommendations to the LCA practitioner, a study was performed for the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC). Existing LCIA methods were collected and their individual characterization models identified at both midpoint and endpoint levels and supplemented with other environmental models of potential use for LCIA. No new developments of characterization models or factors were done in the project. From a total of 156 models, 91 were short listed as possible candidates for a recommendation within their impact category. Criteria were developed for analyzing the models within each impact category. The criteria addressed both scientific qualities and stakeholder acceptance. The criteria were reviewed by external experts and stakeholders and applied in a comprehensive analysis of the short-listed characterization models (the total number of criteria varied between 35 and 50 per impact category). For each impact category, the analysis concluded with identification of the best among the existing characterization models. If the identified model was of sufficient quality, it was recommended by the JRC. Analysis and recommendation process involved hearing of both scientific experts and stakeholders. Recommendations were developed for 14 impact categories at midpoint level, and among these recommendations, three were classified as "satisfactory" while ten were "in need of some improvements" and one was so weak that it has "to be applied with caution." For some of the impact categories, the classification of the recommended model varied with the type of substance. At endpoint level, recommendations were only found relevant for three impact categories. For the rest, the quality of the existing methods was too weak, and the methods that came out best in the analysis were classified as "interim," i.e., not recommended by the JRC but suitable to provide an initial basis for further development. The level of characterization modeling at midpoint level has improved considerably over the last decade and now also considers important aspects like geographical differentiation and combination of midpoint and endpoint characterization, although the latter is in clear need for further development. With the realization of the potential importance of geographical differentiation comes the need for characterization models that are able to produce characterization factors that are representative for different continents and still support aggregation of impact scores over the whole life cycle. For the impact categories human toxicity and ecotoxicity, we are now able to recommend a model, but the number of chemical substances in common use is so high that there is a need to address the substance data shortage and calculate characterization factors for many new substances. Another unresolved issue is the need for quantitative information about the uncertainties that accompany the characterization factors. This is still only adequately addressed for one or two impact categories at midpoint, and this should be a focus point in future research. The dynamic character of LCIA research means that what is best practice will change quickly in time. The characterization methods presented in this paper represent what was best practice in 2008-2009.Asphalt waste from State roads in Sweden is usually recycled in order to preserve natural resources and reduce the burden on landfill. However, there appears to be a knowledge gap regarding the methods of asphalt recycling used by municipalities and private owners in Sweden. There is also a lack of knowledge regarding best practice from a life cycle environmental point of view. This study identified and evaluated potential ways of improving the life cycle environmental performance of asphalt recycling in Sweden. Data and information about the current situation of asphalt recycling in Sweden were collected through reviewing the literature and through interviews. It was observed that asphalt recycling practices were different for all three groups of road owners: the State, represented by the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), municipalities and industry. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was used to identify processes within asphalt recycling and reuse that contribute a significant share of the total environmental impact (hotspots), and to compare the life cycle environmental performance of the main techniques used for asphalt recycling and reuse in Sweden: hot in-plant, hot in-place and reuse as an unbound material. The results showed that hot in-place recycling gave slightly more global warming potential (GWP) and cumulative energy demand (CED) savings than hot in-plant recycling. There were no savings of GWP and small savings of CED during asphalt reuse. It was concluded that asphalt recycling is environmentally preferable to asphalt reuse. However each method of asphalt recycling can provide different benefits, so possibilities exist for improving the environmental performance of the processes involved. These possibilities were subdivided into logistic, technical and organisational. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) has been conducted on the growth of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) via catalytic chemical vapour deposition (cCVD). Using a directly measured process, a cradle-to-gate approach has been employed for this assessment whereby analysis of the synthetic routes of the reactants used, the process energy inputs, the equipment infrastructure and generated emissions have been assessed to determine the environmental impacts of the MWNT product. Conducting an LCA has allowed the major and, arguably just as informative, minor contributors to the environmental impact of MWNT growth via a cCVD synthesis to be quantified. The high embodied energy of MWNT synthesis is often quoted as the major embodied impact in carbon nanotube growth. However, previously unmeasured contributions of the embodied impacts of the equipment infrastructure have been shown to be in the same order of magnitude in terms of environmental damage during the growth period of the MWNTs, other life cycle stages associated with the production of the chemical reactants used have a very minimal effect on the overall environmental impact due to the relatively small quantities involved in MWNT synthesis. Unique among similar studies is the capture of the impacts attributed to all chemical reactants involved in the cCVD synthesis of MWNTs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Manufacturing techniques are concerned with quality, cost, productivity and sustainability. With today's environmental awareness and the pressure of the sustainability requirements, existing manufacturing techniques of heating devices are evolving into the redesign manufacturing unit processes to increase overall sustainability. Also, these techniques need a measurement method to assess processes-related sustainability performance indicators. The purpose of this paper is to stress the role of manufacturing techniques: welding, cleaning and painting in the manufacture of heating appliances (solid fuel fired boilers used renewable energy sources) in terms of incorporating into the field the concept of sustainable development. It then focuses on the environmental, technical, economical and social impact of sustainable technologies and argues for the need to ensure that the concept is being applied to the manufacture of heating devices. In this paper, author tries to propose a unified, standard scientific factory-level methodology to evaluate the influence of manufacturing techniques on the sustainability of enterprises producing heating devices. The proposed methodology in the terms of the case study is a comprehensive answer to the question of to what extent the improvements in those techniques influence the sustainable development of the enterprises. An industrial case study demonstrates that the proposed improvements can effectively influence the sustainability of enterprise. The results of this assessment can be applied to broad industry sectors, and can lead to the accepted measures and practices.Technical efficiency, uncertainties in data quality and natural fluctuations in fishing stocks constitute potential sources of fishing vessel inefficiency. Moreover, debate is on-going as to whether the skill of the fishermen ("skipper effect") is an underlying actor in fishing efficiency. Therefore, this article monitors, calculates and quantifies the inefficiency caused by the "skipper effect", if any, through the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA), with the aim of determining whether best practice target operational values in DEA, and their associated environmental impact reductions through LCA+DEA methodology, are achievable beyond the theoretical baseline they involve. A window analysis model is applied to the US menhaden fishery, a purse seining fleet with high homogeneity, since it is owned by the same company, with similar vessel and management characteristics. Results revealed relevant inefficiency levels in the four ports assessed, suggesting the existence of a "skipper effect" in all of them. Strong variances between vessels were identified, not only on an annual mean basis, but also per week of study. These variances could be attributed to random variation through time, if it were not for the fact that best performing vessels managed to repeatedly perform at high efficiency rates throughout the period. Moreover, standard deviations of low efficiency vessels were higher in all ports. Consequently, best performing targets calculated in LCA+ DEA may be difficult to achieve in fleets where skipper skill strongly influences the sources of inefficiency. In these cases, the results suggest that resource minimization should be linked to specific measures to improve the individual skills of low performing vessels to attain best practice targets. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Among the research activities that aim at reducing energy consumption in buildings and their impact on the environment is an experimental set-up that has several house-shaped cubicles constructed in Puigverd de Lleida (Spain). Assessing the environmental impact through studying the manufacturing, operational and disposal phases of these cubicles have been done in previous research. The objective of this paper is to investigate the use of esters as PCM in order to estimate its environmental impact in building envelopes in comparison to the use of paraffin or salt hydrates through a theoretical study. The evaluation of the environmental impact of this type of PCM material is conducted using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based on the Eco-indicator 99 method. It is found that the impact of ester used as PCM presents slightly better results than the case of using salt hydrates during the manufacturing impact. On the other hand, the use of salt hydrates or ester as PCM in the cubicles results in an impact reduction of 9% and 10.5% respectively, compared to the case of using paraffin. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present work has conducted a comprehensive life-cycle analysis of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission for various fuel/vehicles systems. Focus is placed on the hydrogen-based fuel cell vehicle (FCV) technology, while the gasoline vehicle (GV) equipped with an internal combustion engine (ICE) serves as a reference technology. A fuel-cycle model developed at Argonne National Laboratory, the GREET model, is employed to evaluate the well-to-wheels (WTW) energy and emissions impacts caused by various fuel/vehicle systems. Six potential hydrogen pathways using renewable and non-renewable energy sources are simulated, namely, steam reforming of natural gas and corn ethanol, water electrolysis using grid generation and solar electricity, and coal gasification with and without carbon sequestration. Results showed that the FCVs fuelled with solar electrolysis hydrogen have the greatest benefits in energy conservation and GHG emission reduction. However, by incorporating with the economic consideration, hydrogen from the natural gas reforming is likely to be the primary mode of production for the initial introduction of FCVs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to examine the sustainability and environmental performance of PV-based electricity generation systems by conducting a thorough review of the life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of five common photovoltaic (PV) systems, i.e., mono-crystalline (mono-Si), multi-crystalline (multi-Si), amorphous silicon (a-Si), CdTe thin film (CdTe) and CIS thin film (CIS), and some advanced PV systems. The results show that, among the five common PV systems, the CdTe PV system presents the best environmental performance in terms of energy payback time (EPBT) and greenhouse gases (GHG) emission rate due to its low life-cycle energy requirement and relatively high conversion efficiency. Meanwhile, the mono-Si PV system demonstrates the worst because of its high energy intensity during the solar cells' production process. The EPBT and GHG emission rate of thin film PV systems are within the range of 0.75-3.5 years and 10.5-50 g CO2-eq./kW h, respectively. In general, the EPBT of mono-Si PV systems range from 1.7 to 2.7 years with GHG emission rate from 29 to 45 g CO2-eq./kW h, which is an order of magnitude smaller than that of fossil-based electricity. This paper also reviews the EPBT and GHG emission rates of some advanced PV systems, such as high-concentration, heterojunction and dye-sensitized technologies. The EBPT of high-concentration PV system is lower, ranging from 0.7 to 2.0 years, but the CO2 emission rate of dye-sensitized PV system is higher than the ones of other PV systems at the moment. The LCA results show that PV technologies are already proved to be very sustainable and environmental-friendly in the state of the art. With the emerging of new manufacturing technologies, the environmental performance of PV technologies is expected to be further improved in the near future. In addition, considering the existing limitations in the previous LCA studies, a few suggestions are recommended. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The City of Johannesburg, South Africa, implemented the first phase of its Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system named Rea Vaya between 2009 and 2011. The system design and organisational arrangements drew heavily on precedents from South America, especially insofar as BRT is used as an instrument for securing the transformation and formalisation of a fragmented and problematic informal public transport industry. Despite the inevitable transition problems, the formalisation scheme appears to be generally successful - an outcome that surprised many analysts as it follows a long history of mistrust, resistance, and unsuccessful interventions between government and the minibus taxi industry. The paper offers an analysis of the reasons for the successful transformation of participating taxi operators, by using a life-cycle analogy. We argue that the minibus-taxi industry in South Africa has reached a state of stasis and maturity, with limited opportunities for further growth in its present form. BRT, as it is implemented locally, offers opportunities for re-invention - for moving onto new a potential growth trajectory - by overcoming the binding constraints of informality and by opening up new markets to operators. The life-cycle analysis also offers some insights into critical success factors that, if not met in the long run, could jeopardise the longevity and scalability of the formalisation project. The paper concludes with insights regarding the planning and management of BRT systems to maximise their potential for leveraging the formalisation of informal operators, both in South Africa and in other developing countries. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability has received great attention by the scientific community, due to concerns for meeting current needs of energy without compromising, for instance, non-renewable resources for future generations. Indeed, the higher demand for energy is an issue that has impacted the way systems are conceived (e.g. data centers), in the sense that designers need to verify several trade-offs and select the feasible solution considering energy utilization and other metrics, such as dependability. Tools are important in this context to automate several design activities and provide results as fast as possible. This paper presents an integrated environment, namely, ASTRO, which contemplates: (i) Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs), Stochastic Petri Nets (SPN) and continuous-time Markov chains (CTMC) for dependability evaluation; and (ii) a method based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) for quantification of sustainability impact. ASTRO has been conceived to evaluate data center infrastructures, but the environment is generic enough to evaluate general systems. Besides, a real world case study is provided to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed environment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Favorable growth characteristics continue to generate interest in using triacylglycerides (TAGs) produced from microalgae for biodiesel feedstocks. In this opinion article, we suggest that due to the energy consumption associated with the production of external nitrogen fertilizers, the manner in which nitrogen is supplied to microalgae biorefineries will be an important driver of energy yields, sustainability, and commercial success. Schemes including the reuse of urban wastewater represent improvements on the overall energy balance, but will not allow for significant production of biofuels unless the nitrogen from the non-TAG portions of microalgae is recycled. Approaches to recycling nitrogen require an improved understanding of the tradeoffs between the different potential uses of the non-TAG microalgal portion (i.e., energy production via anaerobic digestion or thermal catalytic processes), and the development of nitrogen separation technologies.Life cycle assessment has confirmed the effectiveness of carbon fiber reinforced polymer-matrix composite (CFRP) materials' application in CO2 reduction as well as in weight reduction (JCMA in 2008). Thanks to these strong and ultimate lightweight structure materials, burdens imposed by vehicles on environment nowadays could be significantly relieved. However, speedy manufacturing and recycle technology have to be established to apply to mass-production of automobiles using CFRP components. It is estimated that 3,000 t of CFRP scrap being generated annually in Europe and the USA. Some 6,000-8,000 commercial planes are expected to reach end-of-life dismantlement by 2030 (McConnell inReinf Plast 54(2):33-37, 2010). Historically, CFRP waste has been disposed of in landfills. Since 2004, most European countries have banned the landfill disposal of CFRP waste. Future EU regulations will be imposed on the recycling of end-of-life aircraft along the same lines as those for scrapped vehicles. Besides, high cost of the carbon fibers is likely to be one of the strongest drivers for recycling of CFRP waste if an economic and environmentally friendly technology can be developed to provide a potential sustainable resource of reusable fibers. Numerous recycling approaches have been proposed and investigated: microwave treatment (Lester et al. in Mater Res Bull 39(10):1549-1556, 2004), vacuum pyrolysis (Cunliffe et al. in J Anal Appl Pyrol 70(2):315-338, 2003), chemical solvolysis (Pinero-Hernanz et al. in J Supercrit Fluids 46(1):83-92, 2008; Goto in J Supercrit Fluids 47(3):500507, 2009), as well as hydro-thermolysis (Pinero-Hernanz et al. in Compos A 39(3):454-461, 2008). Steam thermolysis, a combination of vacuum pyrolysis and mild gasification, has been studied in our laboratory. The process takes place under medium temperatures (until 600 degrees C) and atmospheric pressure. By using superheated steam as a soft oxidant, the polymer matrix can be converted into lower molecular weight hydrocarbons, CO and CO2 without seriously reducing the mechanical properties of the carbon fiber reinforcement. The steam-thermolysis has been studied and confirmed efficient in treating epoxy based CFRP materials at bench scale. In order to optimize the process, an experimental design has been carried out by using Taguchi method at semi-industrial scale. Initially, an orthogonal array testing was applied to determine the potential influence of the operational parameters on the decomposition rate of the polymer matrix as wall as on the mechanical property of the reclaimed carbon fibers. Three operational parameters at two levels each (target temperature, isothermal dwell time and steam flow-rate) were identified and tested. During the test, some 100 g epoxy based CFRP scrap samples were loaded into a thermal reactor preheated till desired temperature. The steam is flushed with a flow of nitrogen throughout the test to avoid oxidative side reactions. Additional tests were also conducted to complete and validate the results.Energy decisions play an essential role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector. Biogas is a renewable energy source and can be used as an energy source for gas-operated cars or for electric cars. This paper compares different ways to use biogas, which is produced on a medium scale anaerobic digestion plants, as an energy source for transportation. The research is conducted from an economic and environmental point of view, and the option to deliver upgraded biogas via a natural gas grid is taken into account. Different processes for the use of biogas for transportation purposes are compared using life cycle assessment (LCA) methods in the Finnish operational environment. It seems that the most economical way is to use biogas in gas-operated cars due to the high price of methane for vehicle fuel use. A. new feed-in tariff for electricity produced with biogas will, however, have highly positive economic effects on electricity production from biogas. From the environmental point of view, the highest CO2 reductions are gained when biogas is used in gas-operated cars or in CHP plants for power and heat production. During the transition stage, it might be reasonable to use biogas in gas-operated cars and most importantly in heavy vehicles to reduce GHG and local pollutants rapidly. If biogas production is located near a natural gas grid, the biogas can be delivered effectively via the natural gas grid. The use of biogas in gas-operated cars is an effective way to reduce carbon dioxide significantly in the transportation sector. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, several alternative methods of computing cumulative emergy requirements at the regional scale are constructed, with their advantages and disadvantages addressed. The traditional emergy synthesis originating from the H.T. Odum's contribution appears suboptimal from the theoretical as well as methodological viewpoints. It fails to account for the intra- and interregional shipments of products, and necessarily underestimates the life-cycle assessment of emergy requirements. On the contrary, the Ghosh thermodynamic input-output frameworks provide a promising method for estimating emergy requirements. Of the two Ghosh modeling schemes, the interregional input-output model offers a superior medium to the single-region model. Furthermore, the Ghoshian regional input-output framework can be extended to incorporate the conservation conditions. It appears that the conservation rule-implicit interregional input-output framework can also be a reliable method for emergy estimation. Overall, the Ghosh interregional input-output framework, regardless of thermodynamic or conservation rule-based, provides a most favorable technique. This conclusion confirms the prevailing criticisms of the traditional emergy synthesis in the related literature. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A life cycle analysis of hydrogen is presented involving several processes of H-2 production. The main goal was to adapt the GREET 1.8c model in order to represent the European reality and more specifically the Portuguese energy sector. GEMIS model was used in order to obtain energy consumption and pollutant emissions related to the production of photovoltaic panels and wind towers, since GREET model consider zero emissions in renewable technologies. The integration between these two models generated MACV2H(2) model that was calibrated. The main conclusions from a Well-To-Wheel (WTW) analysis are that wind energy is the best way to produce hydrogen, and its application in Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCV) presents less 85% of greenhouse gases emissions (GHGs) when compared with the gasoline vehicle. In the opposite situation, the FCV with hydrogen from electrolysis using the Portuguese electricity grid presents an increase of 43% on GHGs. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates various calcium-based chemical looping concepts to be applied in Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants for decarbonised energy vectors poly-generation (with emphasis on power generation and hydrogen and power co-generation). Two calcium-based chemical looping configurations were analysed. The first concept is based on post-combustion capture using the flue gases resulted from the power block (combined cycle gas turbine). The second concept is based on pre-combustion capture, the calcium-based chemical looping systems being used simultaneous to capture carbon dioxide (by sorbent enhanced water gas shift) and to concentrate the syngas energy in the form of hydrogen-rich gas. The paper assess in details coal-based IGCC with calcium carbonate looping cycle used for power generation. Net power output is in the range of 550-600 MW with more than 95% carbon capture rate. Critical design and operation factors like process integration, heat and power integration, quality specification of captured CO2, stream were evaluated in details. The hydrogen and power co-generation scenario (in the range of 0-200 MW hydrogen) was also evaluated as a potential way to improve the plant flexibility. IGCC power plant without carbon capture was also considered to quantify the energy penalty for carbon capture cases. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The application of manufactured nanomaterials provides not only advantages resulting from their unique properties but also disadvantages derived from the high energy use and CO2 burden related to their manufacture, operation, and disposal. It is therefore important to understand the trade-offs of process economics of nanomaterial production and their associated environmental footprints in order to strengthen the existing advantages while counteracting disadvantages. This work reports the synthesis, characterization, and life cycle assessment (LCA) of a new type of superinsulating materials, nano insulation materials (NIMs), which are made of hollow silica nanospheres (HSNSs) and have great flexibility in modifying their properties by tuning the corresponding structural parameters. The as-prepared HSNSs in this work have a typical inner pore diameter of about 150 nm and a shell thickness of about 10-15 nm and exhibit a reduced thermal conductivity of about 0.02 W/(m K) because of their size-dependent thermal conduction at the nanometer scale. The energy and raw material consumption related to the synthesis of HSNSs have been analyzed by the LCA method. The results indicate that the recycle of chemicals, up-scaling production, and use of environmentally friendly materials can greatly affect the process of environmental footprints. New synthesis routes for NIMs with improved thermal performance and energy and environmental features are also recommended on the basis of the LCA study.Biochar amendment to soil is a potential technology for carbon storage and climate change mitigation. It may, in addition, be a valuable soil fertility enhancer for agricultural purposes in sandy and/or weathered soils. A life cycle assessment including ecological, health and resource impacts has been conducted for field sites in Zambia to evaluate the overall impacts of biochar for agricultural use. The life cycle impacts from conservation farming using cultivation growth basins and precision fertilization with and without biochar addition were in the present study compared to conventional agricultural methods. Three different biochar production methods were evaluated: traditional earth-mound kilns, improved retort kilns, and micro top-lit updraft (TLUD) gasifier stoves. The results confirm that the use of biochar in conservation farming is beneficial for climate change mitigation purposes. However, when including health impacts from particle emissions originating from biochar production, conservation farming plus biochar from earth-mound kilns generally results in a larger negative effect over the whole life cycle than conservation farming without biochar addition. The use of cleaner technologies such as retort kilns or TLUDs can overcome this problem, mainly because fewer particles and less volatile organic compounds, methane and carbon monoxide are emitted. These results emphasize the need for a holistic view on biochar use in agricultural systems. Of special importance is the biochar production technique which has to be evaluated from both environmental/climate, health and social perspectives.This study presents a generic methodology to produce simplified models able to provide a comprehensive life cycle impact assessment of energy pathways. The methodology relies on the application of global sensitivity analysis to identify key parameters explaining the impact variability of systems over their life cycle. Simplified models are built upon the identification of such key parameters. The methodology is applied to one energy pathway: onshore wind turbines of medium size considering a large sample of possible configurations representative of European conditions. Among several technological, geographical, and methodological parameters, we identified the turbine load factor and the wind turbine lifetime as the most influent parameters. Greenhouse Gas (GHG) performances have been plotted as a function of these key parameters identified. Using these curves, GHG performances of a specific wind turbine can be estimated, thus avoiding the undertaking of an extensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This methodology should be useful for decisions makers, providing them a robust but simple support tool for assessing the environmental performance of energy systems.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to hydrometallurgical treatments carried out using a new portable prototype plant for the recovery of valuable metals from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). The plant was fed with the WEEE residues from physical processes for the recycling of fluorescent lamps, cathode ray tubes (CRTs), Li-ion accumulators and printed circuit boards (PCBs). Leaching with sulfuric acid was carried out, followed by metal recovery by selective precipitation. A final step of wastewater treatment with lime was performed. The recovered metals included yttrium, zinc, cobalt, lithium, copper, gold, and silver. The category of global warming potential was the most critical one considering the specifications for southern European territories, with 13.3 kg CO2/kg recovered metal from the powders/residues from fluorescent lamps, 19.2 kg CO2/kg from CRTs, 27.0 kg CO2/kg from Li-ion accumulators and 25.9 kg CO2/kg from PCBs. Data also show that metal extraction steps have the highest load for the environment. In general, these processes appear beneficial for the environment in terms of CO2 emissions, especially for metal recovery from WEEE residues from fluorescent lamps and CRTs.Gaseous emissions from in-house storage of liquid animal manure remain a major contributor to the environmental impact of manure management. Our aim was to assess the life cycle environmental consequences and reduction potential of segregating fattening pig urine and feces with an innovative V-belt system and to compare it to conventional liquid manure management, that is, the reference. Moreover, we aimed at analyzing the uncertainty of the outcomes related to applied emission factors. We compared a reference with two scenarios: segregation with solid, aerobically, stored feces and with liquid, anaerobically, stored feces. Results showed that, compared to the reference, segregation reduced climate change (CC) up to 82%, due to lower methane emission, reduced terrestrial acidification (TA) and particulate matter formation (PMF) up to 49%, through lower ammonia emission, but increased marine eutrophication up to 11% through nitrogen oxide emission from storage and nitrate leaching after field application. Fossil fuel depletion did not change. Segregation with liquid feces revealed lower environmental impact than segregation with solid feces. Uncertainty analysis supported the conclusion that segregating fattening pig urine and feces significantly reduced CC and additionally segregation with liquid feces significantly reduced TA and PMF compared to the reference.Electric vehicles (EVs) and compressed natural gas vehicles (CNGVs), which are mainly coal-based and natural gas-based, are the two most widely proposed replacements of gasoline internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) in P.R. China. We examine fuel-cycle emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), PM2.5 , PM10, NOx, and SO2 of CNGVs and EVs relative to gasoline ICEVs and hybrids, by Chinese province. CNGVs can currently reduce emissions of GHGs, PM,, NOx, and SO2 by approximately 6%, 7%, 20%, 18% and 22%, respectively. EVs can reduce GHG emissions by 20%, but increase PM10, PM2.5, NOx, and SO2 emissions by approximately 360%, 250%, 120%, and 370%, respectively. Nevertheless, results vary significantly by province. Regarding their contribution to national emissions, PM increases from EVs are unimportant, because light-duty passenger vehicles contribute very little to overall PM emissions nationwide (<= 0.05%); however, their NOx and SO2 increases are important. Since China is striving to reduce power plant emissions, EVs are expected to have equivalent or even lower SO2 and NOx emissions relative to ICEVs in the future (2030). Before then, however, EVs should be developed according to the cleanness of regional power mixes. This would lower their SO2 and NOx emissions and earn more GHG reduction credits.This study aims to evaluate energy, economic, and environmental performances of seven categories of biodiesel feedstocks by using the mixed-unit input-output life cycle assessment method. Various feedstocks have different environmental performances, indicating potential environmental problem-shift. Jatropha seed, castor seed, waste cooking oil, and waste extraction oil are preferred feedstocks for biodiesel production in the short term. Positive net energy yields and positive net economic benefits of biodiesel from these four feedstocks are 2.3-52.0% of their life cycle energy demands and 74.1-448.4% of their economic costs, respectively. Algae are preferred in the long term mainly due to their less arable land demands. Special attention should be paid to potential environmental problems accompanying feedstock choice: freshwater use, ecotoxicity potentials, photochemical oxidation potential, acidification potential and eutrophication potential. Moreover, key processes are identified by sensitivity analysis to direct future technology improvements. Finally, supporting measures are proposed to optimize China's biodiesel development. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The noncatalytic transformation of the crude lipid of Chlorella vulgaris (C vulgaris) into fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) via a thermo-chemical process was mainly investigated in this work. The crude lipid of C vulgaris was recovered by means of solvent extraction from C vulgaris cultivated in a raceway pond. The conventional catalyzed transesterification of crude lipid of C vulgaris is notably inhibited by the impurities contained in the crude lipid of C vulgaris. These impurities are inevitably derived from the solvent extraction process for C vulgaris. However, this work presents the noncatalytic transesterification of microalgal lipid into FAME, Which could be an alternative option. For example, the noncatalytic transformation of microalgal lipid into FAME provides evidence that the esterification of free fatty acids (FFAs) and the transesterification of triglycerides can be combined into a single step less susceptible to the impurities and with a high conversion efficiency (similar to 97%). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The consequences of using wood pellets to replace traditional firewood for residential heating in British Columbia, Canada have been investigated based on a streamlined life cycle analysis. Survey data in 2002 and 2005 indicated that 1.44 Mt of firewood is used in BC residential heating annually. If current wood-burning residential heating equipments were replaced by their pellet-equivalent counterparts, then only 667 kt of wood pellets would be needed annually and the impacts on human health, ecosystem quality, climate change, and primary energy consumption will be reduced fractionally by 95%, 26%, 17% and 34%, respectively. Savings of $749,277,000 per year in externality can also be achieved, representing a fractional reduction of 94% from the current practice. For every tonne of pellet burnt to replace firewood, $1124 in externality is avoided. In terms of capital investment for new equipment, replacing conventional fireplace, masonry heater and outdoor boiler are desirable whether bulk or bagged pellets are to be used. If bulk pellets are to be utilized then all users except the owners of any type of fireplace inserts should consider switching to wood pellets. For the equipment and pellet type combinations with negative net present value (NPV), the estimated external cost savings and the NPV calculated may be the basis for the establishment of an incentive program. Promoting pellet consumption for residential heating through introducing government subsidies and improving distribution logistics will be beneficial to both pellet producers and local consumers, as well as to the local environment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a life cycle assessment of the energy and emission intensity of wired and wireless local area network access. Following a cradle-to-grave approach, the energy consumed and greenhouse gas emissions in the manufacture of Ethernet switches and WiFi access points (including the extraction of raw materials, component manufacturing, assembly, and transportation) as well as during their actual usage are evaluated. The results show that while the manufacturing stage is responsible for a significant fraction of the overall energy consumption, the usage phase accounts for most of the emissions(1).Life-cycle fossil primary energy consumption (FPEC) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of nine types of dominant secondary energy (SE) pathways for China in 2010 are calculated with iterative methods, using the TLCAM (Tsinghua Life-cycle Analysis Model). Three major types of GHG (CO2, CH4 and N2O) are considered for GHG emission intensity, and non-combustion CH4 leakage during the feedstock production sub-stage is included. We found the following. (1) Life-cycle FPEC intensities in units of per MJ SE are obtained and used, in order of magnitude, for: raw coal (recovered only); raw natural gas (NG, recovered and processed only); raw oil (recovered and processed); final coal (finally transported to end-user); final NG (finally transported to end-user); diesel; gasoline; residual oil and electricity. (2) Although their upstream GHG emission intensities are small, their life-cycle intensities are 103.5, 68.3, 81.6, 99.3, 70.0, 101.6, 91.7, 93.5 and 226.4 g CO2,e/MJ SE, respectively, when direct GHG emissions are included. (3) Life-cycle intensities of both FPEC and GHG emissions for SE in China are higher than those in some other countries, because of the relatively low overall efficiency and high percentage of coal in the national energy mix. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study evaluates the environmental and thermodynamic performance of six coal-fired power plants with CO2 capture and storage. The technologies examined are post-combustion capture using monoethanolamine, membrane separation, cryogenic fractionation and pressure swing adsorption, pre-combustion capture through coal gasification, and capture performing conventional oxy-fuel combustion. The incorporation of CO2 capture is evaluated both on its own and in combination with CO2 transport and geological storage, with and without beneficial use. Overall, we find that pre-combustion CO2 capture and post-combustion through membrane separation present relatively low life-cycle environmental impacts and high exergetic efficiencies. When accounting for transport and storage, the environmental impacts increase and the efficiencies decrease. However, a better environmental performance can be achieved for CO2 capture, transport and storage when incorporating beneficial use through enhanced oil recovery. The performance with enhanced coal-bed methane recovery, on the other hand, depends on the impact categories evaluated. The incorporation of methane recovery results in a better thermodynamic performance, when compared to the incorporation of oil recovery. The cumulative energy demand shows that the integration of enhanced resource recovery strategies is necessary to attain favourable life-cycle energy balances. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the life cycle impacts of recycling PVC window frames. Both post-industrial and post-consumer waste are considered to produce white and non-white chips and powder. The results suggest that significant savings of environmental impacts can be achieved by using PVC from recycled waste frames compared to virgin PVC resin. Recycling post-consumer waste leads to higher savings than post-industrial waste due to the credits for metals recycling. For example, replacing virgin by PVC from post-consumer waste saves around 2 t of CO2 eq./t of PVC while PVC from post-industrial waste saves 1.8 t. The results are sensitive to transport distances and truck payloads. For instance, the global warming potential (GWP) of non-white PVC chips increases 1.7 times when the transport distance increases from 100 to 500 km and the payload factor decreases from 0.7 to 0.2. Credits for metals recycling influence the environmental savings: crediting the system for virgin aluminium saves 54 times more CO2 eq./t of recycled PVC compared to the credits for recycled aluminium. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work proposes an environmental analysis based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. LCA was applied to determine if energy savings are large enough to balance the environmental impact caused during phase change material (PCM) manufacture and its installation on tiles. Inputs and outputs of each management stage have been defined and the inventory emissions were calculated by SIMAPRO v 7.3.2. Emissions were classified into several impact categories; climate change, human toxicity, acidification, ozone depletion, particulate matter formation and eutrophication. Three commercial PCMs, evaluated using five different Spanish weather climates, were studied to explore a wide range of conditions. The main results conclude that the use of PCM can reduce the overall energy consumption and the environmental impacts. This reduction is strongly influenced by the climate conditions and the PCM introduced. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Essential sustainability requirements for biodiesel are that the product should be truly renewable and have a lower negative environmental impact than fossil fuels based on the latest insights. Biodiesel is not a most sustainable product in all geographical circumstances. This survey paper reviews the performance and prospects of rape biodiesel production on a global basis using some 40 life cycle assessments (LCAs). The paper identifies best (agricultural) practice and laggards. Life cycle energy balance depends on specific climatic conditions, and the agro- and processing technologies used. Alternative oilcrop cultivation practices and technologies were assessed. Opportunities to improve rape biodiesel life cycle energy efficiency and environmental impact by implementing new technologies in agriculture as well as in industrial processing have been identified for various Brassica oilcrop cultivars in relevant production areas. The consequences of large-scale renewable energy action plans have been considered. Improvements are needed for rape biodiesel to stay in business. The paper concludes with perspectives and recommendations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbonization is a newly developed process that converts sewage sludge to biocoal, a type of solid biomass that can partially substitute for coal during power generation. This study presents an assessment of the environmental effects of various sewage sludge treatment processes, including carbonization, direct landfills, co-incineration with municipal solid waste, and mono-incineration in Taiwan. This assessment was conducted using the life cycle assessment software SimaPro 7.2 and the IMPACT2002+ model. Results show that carbonization is the best approach for sewage sludge treatment, followed in descending order by co-incineration with municipal solid waste, direct landfills, and mono-incineration. The carbonization process has noticeable positive effects in the environmental impact categories of terrestrial ecotoxicity, aquatic ecotoxicity, land occupation, ionizing radiation, aquatic eutrophication, non-renewable energy, and mineral extraction. For the emission quantity of greenhouse gases, landfilling has the greatest impact (296.9 kg CO2 eq./t sludge), followed by mono-incineration (232.2 kg CO2 eq./t sludge) and carbonization (146.1 kg CO2 eq./t sludge). Co-incineration with municipal solid waste has the benefit of reducing green house gas emission (-15.4 kg CO2 eq./t sludge). In the aspect of energy recovery, sewerage sludge that has been pretreated by thickening, digestion, and dewatering still retains a high moisture content, and thus requires a significant amount of energy use when used as a substitute solid fuel. Therefore, the carbonization of sewage sludge would be a more sustainable option if the energy delivery and integration processes are made more efficient.The modern manufacturing organizations are forced to adopt the principles of sustainability to sustain in the competitive market scenario. Sustainability paradigm stipulates that manufacturing organizations develop eco-friendly products coupled with economic and social dimensions. Sustainability concepts include life cycle impact assessment, environmental conscious quality function deployment, environmental impact assessment, life cycle assessment, and theory of inventive problem solving. The concept selection in the context of sustainability is the typical multicriteria decision-making problem (MCDM). MCDM method can be used to find out the best alternative among the given alternatives. In our study, we have utilized the compromise ranking method namely VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje. This method focuses on ranking and selecting from a set of conflicting criteria based on the measure of closeness to the ideal solution. The best concept has been selected for implementation in the organization as stated by Opricovic and Tzeng (Eur J Oper Res 156:445-455, 2004).Many authors have agreed on the interest of considering environmental concerns in the early stages of product development. However, most eco-design tools are based on life cycle assessment principles and require a model to give information about the product's environmental performance. This modeling can have negative effects on team performance and on the potential for innovation, not to mention on the project's duration. Additionally, the model requires information that is not available in the early design stages. This article analyzes the potential of inferring conclusions about the life cycle stages with the highest impact by using similar products. From a database of previous products, environmental profile estimations are carried out, that is, the assessments of the contribution of each life cycle stage to the total impact and the variability of this measure. It is then possible to discardor ensure consideration oflife cycle stages. Furthermore, the level of the conclusions is assessed on a five-point scale. The proposed approach is applied to four case studies with different levels of abstraction and the relevance of the conclusions is assessed. The article resolves the problems regarding potential for estimating the distribution of the environmental impacts along the life cycle.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a promising tool in the pursuit of sustainable mining. However, the accounting methodologies used in LCA for abiotic resource depletion still have some shortcomings and need to be improved. In this article a new thermodynamic approach is presented for the evaluation of the depletion of nonfuel minerals. The method is based on quantifying the exergy costs required to replace the extracted minerals with current available technologies, from a completely degraded state in what we term Thanatia to the conditions currently found in nature. Thanatia is an estimated reference model of a commercial end of the planet, where all resources have been extracted and dispersed, and all fossil fuels have been burned. Mineral deposits constitute an exergy bonus that nature gives us for free by providing minerals in a concentrated state and not dispersed in the crust. The exergy replacement costs provide a measure of the bonus lost through extraction. This approach allows performing an LCA by including a new stage in the analysis: namely the grave to cradle path. The methodology is explained through the case study of nickel depletion.This work identifies shortcomings in water footprinting and discusses whether the water footprint should be a volumetric or impact-oriented index. A key challenge is the current definition of water consumption according to which evaporated water is regarded as lost for the originating watershed per se. Continental evaporation recycling rates of up to 100% within short time and length scales show that this definition is not generally valid. Also, the inclusion of land use effects on the hydrological balance is questionable, as land transformation often leads to higher water availability due to locally increased runoff. Unless potentially negative consequences, such as flooding or waterlogging, and adverse effects on the global water cycle are considered, water credits from land transformation seem unjustified. Most impact assessment methods use ratios of annual withdrawal or consumption to renewability rates to denote local water scarcity. As these ratios are influenced by two metricswithdrawal and availabilityarid regions can be regarded as uncritical if only small fractions of the limited renewable supplies are used. Besides neglecting sensitivities to additional water uses, such indicators consider neither ground nor surface water stocks, which can buffer water shortages temporally. Authors favoring volumetric indicators claim that global freshwater appropriation is more important than local impacts, easier to determine, and less error prone than putting complex ecological interaction into mathematical models. As shown in an example, volumetric water footprints can be misleading without additional interpretation because numerically smaller footprints can cause higher impacts.The environmental impact of the water consumption of four typical crop rotations grown in Spain, including energy crops, was analyzed and compared against Spanish agricultural and natural reference situations. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used for the assessment of the potential environmental impact of blue water (withdrawal from water bodies) and green water (uptake of soil moisture) consumption. The latter has so far been disregarded in LCA. To account for green water, two approaches have been applied: the first accounts for the difference in green water demand of the crops and a reference situation. The second is a green water scarcity index, which measures the fraction of the soil-water plant consumption to the available green water. Our results show that, if the aim is to minimize the environmental impacts of water consumption, the energy crop rotations assessed in this study were most suitable in basins in the northeast of Spain. In contrast, the energy crops grown in basins in the southeast of Spain were associated with the greatest environmental impacts. Further research into the integration of quantitative green water assessment in LCA is crucial in studies of systems with a high dependence on green water resources.The aim of this cradle-to-farm-gate LCA study is the comparison of the impacts generated by different modes of cultivation of beans in the Prespa National Park in Greece. More specifically, three different bean varieties have been assessed based on three different cultivation practices: conventional, integrated and organic. Moreover, the cultivation practices of the three bean varieties are compared based on two different functional units, namely a mass and an area unit. The bean cultivation inventory is compiled from raw agricultural data for the year 2008, extracted from multiple producers involved in a pilot labelling programme. Impact assessment was performed using the CML baseline 2000 method. The results of our analysis indicate that the high input high yield bean varieties are environmentally preferable if we base our assessment on a mass-based functional unit, while the lower input lower yielding variety is preferable if we base our assessment on land use. The integrated agricultural practice is the preferable among the three, in terms of the regional acidification and eutrophication impacts and the global warming potential. On the other hand, organic cultivation of beans leads to protection of the global abiotic resources. Electricity required for irrigation is the major input that affects the environmental impacts followed by the application of sheep manure. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Transportation, or rather access, is a major challenge in relation to achieving environmental goals and in striving for sustainable development. One potential means suggested to decrease the environmental impact related to accessibility is mediated meetings. However, few studies have quantified the potential environmental impacts with a life cycle perspective. With inspiration from a project involving four major Swedish media companies experiencing an increasing need for business travel and decreasing resources, this study assessed the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cumulative energy demand (CED) related to different types of business meetings, using a life cycle perspective. The potential consequences for emissions of GHG and CED in two hypothetical companies introducing mediated meetings were also assessed. The results indicated that mediated meetings using personal computers can reduce GHG emissions and CED per meeting and that more advanced mediated solutions are preferable to meetings which require travel, if the equipment is frequently used to replace travel. However, advanced technology that is under-used may give similar or higher GHG emissions and CED than meetings traveled to by train. All mediated meeting alternatives studied here had lower GHG emissions and CED than meetings which required travel by plane or car. LCD screen manufacture contributed the main environmental impact of mediated meetings, but the meeting rooms needed, electricity use for equipment and internet use for data transmission were also important in some cases. As LCD screen manufacture and internet energy use were main issues and as the data on these issues are uncertain, they should be further assessed+ and updated in future studies. Introduction of mediated meetings in companies and organizations should involve a thorough consideration of needs and possible solutions to achieve the best possible environmental benefits through efficient use and replacement of travel. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many biopharmaceutical companies have replaced or are planning to replace traditional multi-use facilities (fixed-in-place stainless-steel fermenters, tanks, downstream equipment, and associated piping) with single-use systems to improve flexibility and cost. This article will describe a recently-completed comparative study of the environmental impacts of producing monoclonal antibodies using either single use or traditional process technology. The study was performed using Life cycle assessment methodology in which environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of each process component, from materials extraction and refining through component manufacturing, packaging, distribution, use, and disposal at end-of life are all considered. The assessment looked at the production of monoclonal antibodies (MAb) over a 10-batch campaign at three production scales chosen to reflect the clinical phase, scale-up phase, and production phase: The entire process trains were modeled including upstream and downstream processes from N-2 seed fermentation through product purification. Inventory data were derived mainly from Biopharm Services Ltd., developer of BioSolve, an industry standard bioprocess model that includes standard benchmark operations and costs that can be used to build any process including those for manufacture of mAbs, vaccines and bacterial based products. The results of this study indicate that the single-use process train exhibited lower environmental impacts compared to the traditional fixed-in-place process train in each environmental impact category studied. This is primarily due to a reduced need for the energy intensive water-for-injection, process water and clean steam that are required to perform cleaning and sterilization between batches for traditional fixed-in-place equipment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The cogeneration process from sugarcane bagasse is an alternative way to reduce fossil fuels consumption. In the environmental assessment of products, processes and services the methodology of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is commonly used. This study aimed to evaluate and compare the environmental impacts of the life cycle of different cogeneration technologies currently used in the Cuban sugar industry. For doing this, a combination of nine steam generators models with eight turbogenerators was analyzed, for a total of 72 alternatives, using the Eco-indicator 99 and the software SimaPro. The electricity generated daily (1000 kWh) was the functional unit used for the analysis. The results showed that the reduction of this process emissions to the air, water and soil had a favorable effect on the categories of carcinogenesis, radiation, ecotoxicity and land use. The category of Human Health damages reached higher impacts in the cogeneration stage, which represented about 80% of the total environmental impact of the process. It was evidenced that the largest contribution to this category was the emissions of particulate material from bagasse combustion. The combination of the steam generator German Modified EKE 80 with the Russian turbogenerator 2500 was the alternative that involved a reduction of the total impact compared to the rest of alternatives. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The problems posed by municipal solid waste in Asia are more complex because here, most nations urbanize rapidly with about 30-50% population increase. In developing countries, the growth rate of most cities exceeds 4% per annum. The issue at stake is that the 20-40% of municipal revenues spent in most countries to manage the waste is not enough to handle the rising trend of the waste generated. The problems are multi-dimensional. In Asia for example, issues ranging from disputes, norms, health concerns have continued to create obstacles and sometimes alarming situations. This had interfered with proper decisions in managing the waste that menaces the environment at a pace faster than the modern technology itself. In the paper some of the municipal solid waste management options are reviewed in some of these Asian countries with emphasis on a life cycle assessment (LCA) to adopt an integrated approach in solving the problem. Some solid waste management options were evaluated where some viable and suitable options could be derived based on Asian approach. Therefore, sustainable scenarios are suggested for stakeholders to manage municipal solid waste properly. The results are specifically intended to be used as a basis for decisions on strategies and policies for waste management and investments for new waste treatment facilities by decision makers in local, regional and national authorities or industries in the region. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of the cradle to retailer or quick service restaurant gate life cycle assessment (LCA) of chicken production by Inghams Enterprises, a major poultry producer in Australia. The aim of this study was to identify environmental hot spots in order to reduce impacts and costs, improve products, processes and supply chains for Inghams. Of specific interest to Inghams was the comparative environmental impact of conventional and free-range chicken production. Foreground data were obtained from Inghams' internal and external reports and guidelines for litter emission factors; background data were sourced from the Australian and international databases and modeled in the SimaPro software. The life cycle impact assessment includes 12 environmental impact categories (abiotic resource depletion; acidification; eco-toxicity; eutrophication; global warming; human toxicity; ionizing radiation; land transformation and use; ozone depletion; photochemical smog; respiratory effects; and water depletion), characterized at midpoint, normalized per capita Australia and weighted into Australian ecopoints for overall impact. The ecopoint scale is that 100 points equal the average Australian's annual weighted impact. Allocation of impact between co-products was based on the associated economic wholesale price of roast chicken and breast fillet in relation to the average overall production output value. The allocated impact per product was calculated to 11.4 and 12.4 ecopoints per ton of roast chicken and 35.2 and 33.4 ecopoints per ton of breast fillet for free-range and conventional production respectively. Upstream feed production is the largest impact area of the chicken meat supply chain, contributing approximately half of the overall impact and two thirds of the overall water consumed for chicken meat. Poultry farm operation contributes approximately one third of the overall impact, primarily from manure emissions and energy used in chicken housing, and over half of non-renewable energy consumption. Meat processing is the third largest impact source with approximately 10% of the overall impact. All other life cycle stages, including feed mill operations, hatcheries, packaging and distribution combine to less than 10% of the overall impact. The results highlight the importance of productivity measures, such as feed conversion ratio (FCR), energy efficiency and clean energy provision for facility operations, but also adoption of low-impact agricultural practices downstream from Inghams' operations. Several LCA studies of poultry production and products have been published. The most common unit for comparison is the calculated life-cycle global warming potential, typically assessed from cradle to farm gate or retail. Often sufficiently detailed information of the assumptions behind meat processing and allocation approach is missing in cradle to retail or consumer studies. Attempts to benchmark the study results emphasized the need for a consistent and level playing field methodology for the food sector in order for LCA to provide meaningful and reliable input into businesses decision-making and for product comparisons. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable has utilized process mass intensity (PMI) as the key high-level metric to evaluate and benchmark progress towards more sustainable manufacturing. The long-term aim is to move towards metrics based on life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies. This paper describes the development of a streamlined PMI and LCA tool intended to be used as the standard early assessment of synthetic routes for active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and fine chemicals, especially during the route development stages when life cycle inventory data are often not readily available.The effects of changes in culling parity of cows and diet composition on economic and environmental outputs in Japanese beef cow-calf production systems were deterministically analyzed using a herd model simulation. The model simulated the annualized net revenue as an economic indicator and the overall environmental index derived from a life cycle assessment (LCA) as an environmental indicator. Biological factors (survivability, growth, reproduction, and feed requirements) and economic factors (returns from sales of live calves and cows' carcasses and production costs) were included in the model. The model also included modified feed formulation methods, allowing us to analyze the effect of reductions in environmental loads caused by the change in diet compositions. The results of the present study indicated that later culling was economically and environmentally optimal under the current production system, which suggested that the selection of economically optimal culling parity of cows could result in environmentally optimization of the beef cow-calf production system. The difference in feed composition derived from the difference in feed formulation methods did not affect the determination of optimal culling parity, whereas the use of modified feed formulation methods could reduce environmental loads at a higher rate than that of economic benefits. However, the reduction rate of the environmental impact was much higher in the case of selection of the optimal culling parity than in the case of use of modified feed formulation methods, which stressed the importance of choosing the optimal culling parity of cows both from the economic and environmental points of view. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper describes the results of a co-operative research project aimed at the energetic exploitation of the biodiesel derived glycerol. The research objective is the definition and validation of a synthesis process for conversion of glycerol in an oxygenated fuel additive (glycerol alkyl-ether) suitable for blending with diesel and biodiesel. The employed facilities, methodologies and first results from engine tests are described, including a preliminary Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Etherification of glycerol with tert-butyl alcohol and isobutylene allowed to identify the suitable experimental conditions required to obtain a mixture predominantly composed of higher glycerol ethers (GEM). Novel catalysts, based on perfluorosulphonic ionomers as active species and spherical silica as support, were found to be stable and easy reusable allowing to obtain mixtures containing very low amount of monoethers and oligomers considered as undesired products. Engine tests with blends of GEM in diesel fuels revealed good combustion and emission performances when compared both to neat diesel fuel and a blend diesel/biodiesel. LCA analysis indicates that the GEM/diesel blend generates an environmental impact which is lower than the one of neat diesel. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents a survey of the most important techno-economic factors for the implementation of biorefineries based on agricultural residues, in the form of straw, and biochemical conversion into ethanol and biogas, together with production of electricity and heat. The paper suggests locations where the necessary conditions can be met in Sweden. The requirements identified are regional availability of feedstock, the possibility to integrate with external heat sinks, appropriate process design and the scale of the plant. The scale of the plant should be adapted to the potential, regional, raw-material supply, but still be large enough to give economies of scale. The integration with heat sinks proved to be most important to achieve high energy-efficiency, but it was of somewhat less importance for the profitability. Development of pentose fermentation, leading to higher ethanol yields, was important to gain high profitability. Promising locations were identified in the county of Ostergotland where integration with an existing 1st generation ethanol plant and district heating systems (DHSs) is possible, and in the county of Skane where both a significant, potential straw supply and integration potential with DHSs are available. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of different materials for the same solar system component (collector, water tank, etc.) affects both the efficiency and the amount of conventional energy substituted by the system and hence the overall environmental impact of a Domestic Solar Hot Water System (DSHWS). The net environmental gain achieved by the use of DSHWS therefore is influenced, among others, by the materials and techniques used, up to 20% in some cases. In this paper, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of a variety of typical, for the Greek market, DSHWS is performed. Their environmental impact, as well as the influence from the use of different materials or/and manufacturing techniques on their impact, is identified. In all cases examined, the environmental impact of the solar systems is significantly lower compared to that of the energy conserved. As thermal efficiency differs from system to system, their environmental performance is influenced mainly by the conventional energy substituted and to a lesser extent by the materials used for their production. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper outlines the results of a comprehensive life cycle study of the production of energy, in the form of biogas, using a small scale farm based cattle waste fed anaerobic digestion (AD) plant. The life cycle assessment (LCA) shows that in terms of environmental and energy impact the plant manufacture contributes very little to the whole life cycle impacts. The results show that compared with alternative energy supply the production and use of biogas is beneficial in terms of greenhouse gases and fossil fuel use. This is mainly due to the replacement of the alternative, kerosene, and from fertiliser production from the AD process. However, these benefits come at a cost to ecosystem health and the production of respiratory inorganics. These were found to be a result of ammonia emissions during the production phase of the biogas. These damages can be significantly reduced if further emission control measures are undertaken. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A regional model for sustainable biogas electricity production was formulated and tested for a Finnish province, North-Savo. By using the model the aim was to support decision making for reducing green-house gas (GHG) emissions and increasing renewable energy (RE) production in the studied region in the biogas electricity production system. The system boundary of the model included transportation of waste, biogas production, heat and electricity production, as well as the delivery of heat and digestate to the end users. When electricity production was maximized in the studied region, the electricity production and GHG emissions were 20 GW h/year and 24 kt/year of CO2 equivalent, respectively. When GHG emissions were minimized, the electricity production and GHG emissions were 20 GW h/year and 23 kt/year of CO2 equivalent, respectively. By producing electricity of 20 GW h/year, the maximum GHG reductions were roughly 74% of the theoretical maximum GHG emissions of 90 kt/year of CO2 equivalent in both cases. The regional electricity production potential of 20 GW h/year was only 21% of the maximum electricity production potential of 94 GW h/year. The locations of biogas plants, regional relative GHG emissions, potential feedstocks and regional electricity production were optimized in both cases in the studied region. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar energy is an important alternative energy source to fossil fuels and theoretically the most available energy source on the earth. Solar energy can be converted into electric energy by using two different processes: by means of thermodynamic cycles and the photovoltaic conversion. Solar thermal technologies, sometimes called thermodynamic solar technologies, operating at medium (about 500 degrees C) and high temperatures (about 1000 degrees C), have recently attracted a renewed interest and have become one of the most promising alternatives in the field of solar energy utilization. Photovoltaic conversion is very interesting, although still quite expensive, because of the absence of moving components and the reduced operating and management costs. The main objectives of the present work are: to carry out comparative technical evaluations on the amount of electricity produced by two hypothetical plants, located on the same site, for which a preliminary design was made: a solar thermal power plant with parabolic trough collectors and a photovoltaic plant with a single-axis tracking system; to carry out a comparative analysis of the environmental impact derived from the processes of electricity generation during the whole life cycle of the two hypothetical power plants. First a technical comparison between the two plants was made assuming that they have the same nominal electric power and then the same total covered surface. The methodology chosen to evaluate the environmental impact associated with the power plants is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). It allows to analyze all the phases of the life cycle of the plants, from the extraction of raw materials until their disposal, following the "from cradle to grave" perspective. The environmental impact of the two power plants was simulated by using the software SimaPro 7.1, elaborated by PRe Consultants and using the Eco-Indicator 99 methodology. Finally, the results of the analysis of the environmental impact are used to calculate the following parameters associated to the power plants: EPBT (Energy Pay-Back Time), CO2 emissions and GWP100 (Global Warming Potential over a 100 year time horizon). (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As one of the most developed provinces in China, Jiangsu Province has been actively developing bio-energy in order to deal with its electricity supply shortage. By the end of 2010, there are 12 grid-connected straw-based power plants, but only two of them are profitable in this province. This paper presents a simple and detailed method for estimating the cost of straw-based power generation with life cycle analysis, and identifies the main causes for the financial deficit of these plants through a sensitivity analysis and survey. It concludes that: (i) compared with coal-fired power generation, the cost of straw-based power generation is indeed high. (ii) The fuel cost takes the largest share in the operation cost. (iii) The basic causes of the high cost are from straw characteristics, mismatch between demand and supply, immature technology, inappropriate project planning and low motivation of farmer selling straw. Based on the basic causes, we propose the countermeasures. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The selection of a municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment alternative is a complex task in which a widespread set of criteria must be taken into account. Additionally to economic or social aspects, the decision process should consider the environmental perspective. With the purpose of quantifying the environmental burdens, a wide variety of environmental and sustainability indicators have been developed in the last years. Furthermore, integrative frameworks have been highlighted as the best option to achieve more comprehensive assessments. In this work, four different options of MSW treatment were ranked from an environmental point of view applying two methods: (1) the ecological footprint (EF) as single composite indicator and (2) multi-criteria analysis (MCA) integrating the EF together with other material flow indicators related to water consumption, emissions to air and water and occupied landfill volume. The MCA methods selected were a combination of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) aided by Geometrical Analysis for Interactive Aid (GAIA). The objective was twofold: on the one side, the identification of the most beneficial waste treatment alternative (including thermal plasma gasification which as yet has not been assessed systematically) from an environmental perspective and, on the other side, the comparison of the results yielded by the two ranking methods proposed. The ranking obtained in both cases was (from best to worst): thermal plasma gasification, biological treatment of organic fraction with energy recovery from refuse derived fuel, incineration with energy recovery and landfilling. Hence, the EF proved to be a good screening indicator although it did not provide a comprehensive measure of environmental impacts associated to the waste treatment options considered. Besides, the combined application of AHP and PROMETHEE/GAIA as MCA methodology was found to be a suitable way, not very complex at user level, to integrate the information provided by a set of environmental criteria and to aid decision making. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of bioethanol as regards to its carbon dioxide emissions. The production of the raw material accounts for more than 50 % of the total cost as well as having a significant part of greenhouse gases emitted during the entire process. For this reason, special emphasis is given to a change in agricultural land usage influenced by the demand of biofuel. Therefore, we have estimated the extent of policy influence according to its bioethanol cost-effectiveness. A case study on bioethanol production in an ex-sugar factory in the region of Thessaly, Greece, illustrates the above ideas. A partial equilibrium micro-economic model of regional supply in the arable farming system of Thessaly was coupled to industrial processing sub-models of bioethanol production from beets and grains. The maximisation of total welfare determines the most suitable crop mix for farmers as well as the lowest cost configurations for industry and, eventually, the minimal level of support by the government for biofuel activity to take off. The environmental performance is assessed under the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework following three interrelated phases: data inventory, data analysis and interpretation. The economic burden to society to support the activity divided by avoided CO2 eq. emissions indicates the bioethanol cost-effectiveness, in other words, the cost of greenhouse gases emissions savings. The integrated agro-industry model has been parametrically run for a range of biofuel capacities. A change in direct land use results in lower emissions in the agricultural phase, since energy crops are a substitute for intensive cultivations, such as cotton and corn. A change in indirect land use moderates these estimations, as it takes in account imported food crops that are replaced by energy crops in the region. The savings in cost vary around 160 euros per ton of CO2 eq. for the basic agricultural policy scenario. The current policy that supports cotton production by means of increased coupled area payment has increased up to 30 % the cost of greenhouse gas savings due to bioethanol production. An integrated model, articulating the agricultural supply of biomass with ethanol processing, maximises the total surplus that is under constraints in order to determine the cost-effectiveness for different production levels. Results demonstrate that economic performances, as well as the environmental cost-effectiveness of bioethanol, are clearly affected by the parameters of agricultural policies. Therefore, bioenergy, environmental and economic performances, when based on LCA and the conceptual change in land usage, are context dependent. Agricultural policies for decoupling subsidies from production are in favour of cultivation in biomass for energy purposes.Current estimations of the climate impact from indirect land use change (ILUC) caused by biofuels are heavily influenced by assumptions regarding the biofuel production period. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new method (baseline time accounting) that takes global land use dynamics into account that is consistent with the global warming potential, that is applicable to any phenomenon causing land use change, and that is independent of production period assumptions. We consider ILUC in two forms. The first is called "accelerated expansion" and concerns ILUC in regions with an expanding agricultural area. The second is called "delayed reversion" and concerns ILUC in regions with a decreasing agricultural area. We use recent trends in international land use and projections of future land use change to assess how ILUC from biofuels will alter the development in global agricultural land use dynamics compared to the existing trend (i.e., the baseline development). We then use the definition of the global warming potential to determine the CO2 equivalence of the change in land use dynamics. We apply baseline time accounting to two existing ILUC studies in the literature. With current trends in global agricultural land use, the method significantly reduces the estimated climate impact in the previous ILUC studies (by more than half). Sensitivity analyses show that results are somewhat sensitive to assumptions regarding carbon sequestration and assumptions regarding postreversion ecosystems. The global dynamic development in land use has important implications for the time accounting step when estimating the climate impact of ILUC caused by biofuel production or other issues affecting land use. Ignoring this may lead to erroneous conclusions about the actual climate impact of ILUC. Several land use projections indicate that the global agricultural area will keep expanding up to and beyond 2050. We therefore recommend to apply the baseline time accounting concept as an integrated part of future ILUC studies and to update the results on a regular basis.Earlier studies on agricultural life cycle assessment recommend that practitioners use two functional units-product weight and land area-because agriculture entails commodity production and land use. However, there are still ambiguities in this approach from the perspective of decision support. The purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations to support farming conversion decisions on the basis of a framework constructed on two alternative views of agricultural production. Organic conversion of arable farming is selected as a case study. Four types of conversion were constructed on the basis of land-oriented expression, in which inputs into and outputs from land were depicted, and product-oriented expression, in which inputs into and outputs from products were depicted. Then, the frequencies for each type were counted using LCI databases and data from journal papers. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) trade-off conversion, in which improvements in environmental impacts per area unit are involved in decrease of yield per area unit, is common. (2) Conversion tended to be efficient; that is, environmental impacts per product unit tended to improve. (3) Within trade-off conversion, the conversion tended to be efficient. (4) When conversion was efficient, there were trade-offs. Since the results for one expression were not always derivable from the results for another expression, the recommendation of this study is to use the two expressions complementarily, knowing that win-win conversion is rare. In addition, there is a general recommendation to use decision criteria rather than trying to make decisions on the basis of multiple functional units because comparisons based on the two functional units are not on the same level.Perennial crops globally provide a lot of fruit and other food products. They may also provide feedstock for bioenergy and have been, notably to this end, the subject of several LCA-based studies mostly focusing on energy and GHG balances. The purpose of this review was to investigate the relevance of LCAs on perennial crops, especially focusing on how the perennial crop specificities were accounted for in the farm stage modelling. More than 100 papers were reviewed covering 14 products from perennial crops: apple, banana (managed over several years), orange and other citrus fruits, cocoa, coconut, coffee, grape fruit, Jatropha oil, kiwi fruit, palm oil, olive, pear and sugarcane. These papers were classified into three categories according to the comprehensiveness of the LCA study and depending on whether they were peer-reviewed or not. An in-depth analysis of the goal and scope, data origin for farming systems, modelling approach for the perennial cropping systems and methods and data for field emissions helped reveal the more critical issues and design some key recommendations to account better for perennial cropping systems in LCA. In the vast majority of the reviewed papers, very little attention was paid on integrating the perennial cropping cycle in the LCA. It is especially true for bioenergy LCA-based studies that often mostly focused on the industrial transformation without detailing the agricultural raw material production, although it might contribute to a large extent to the studied impacts. Some key parameters, such as the length of the crop cycle, the immature and unproductive phase or the biannual yield alternance, were mostly not accounted for. Moreover, the lack of conceptual modelling of the perennial cycle was not balanced by any attempt to represent the temporal variability of the system with a comprehensive inventory of crop managements and field emissions over several years. According to the reviewed papers and complementary references, we identified the gaps in current LCA of perennial cropping systems and proposed a road map for scientific researches to help fill-in the knowledge-based gaps. We also made some methodological recommendations in order to account better for the perennial cycle within LCA considering the aim of the study and data availability.This paper presents a cradle-to-grave comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of new gas atomised (GA) sponge nickel catalysts and evaluates their performance against the current cast and crush standard currently used in the industrial hydrogenation of butyraldehyde to butanol. A comparative LCA has been made, accounting for the energy used and emissions throughout the entire life cycle of sponge nickel catalysts-ranging from the upstream production of materials (mainly aluminium and nickel), to the manufacturing, to the operation and finally to the recycling and disposal. The LCA was performed following ISO14040 principles where possible, and subsequently implemented in the software package GaBi 4.3. The CML2001 impact assessment methodology was used, with primary focus on comparing catalysts for equivalent greenhouse gasses generated over their lifetime and their relative global warming potential and secondary focus on acidification potential. This is justified as the lifetime is dominated by energy use in the operational phase, and acidification is dominated by the production of nickel for which existing ISO14040 collected data has been used. A sensitivity analysis was used to provide a number of scenarios and overall environmental performances of the various sponge nickels considered when compared to the existing industrial standard. It was found that the energy and emissions during the operation phase associated with a given catalyst significantly outweigh the primary production, manufacturing and recycling. Primary production of the nickel (and to a lesser extent molybdenum when used as a dopant) also has a significant environmental impact in terms of acidification potential, but this is offset by operational energy savings over the catalysts' estimated lifetime and end of life recyclability. Finally, the impact of activity improvement and lifetime duration of sponge nickel catalysts was determined as both total life cycle energy for operational use and as a total life cycle global warming potential. From this assessment, the newly developed, higher activity spongy nickel catalysts produced by gas atomisation could have a significantly lower environmental impact than the current industry standard cast and crush method. Given the potential environmental benefits of such catalysts, applications in other processes that require a catalyst should also be investigated.This paper assesses facility-specific life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensities for electricity-generating facilities in the province of Ontario in 2008. It offers policy makers, researchers and other stakeholders of the Ontario electricity system with data regarding some of the environmental burdens from multiple generation technology currently deployed in the province. Methods involved extraction of data and analysis from several publically accessible datasets, as well as from the LCA literature. GHG emissions data for operation of power plants came from the Government of Canada GHG registry and the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) Sustainable Development reports. Facility-specific generation data came from the Independent Electricity System Operator in Ontario and the OPG. Full life cycle GHG intensity (tonnes of CO2 equivalent per gigawatt hour) estimates are provided for 4 coal facilities, 27 natural gas facilities, 1 oil/natural gas facility, 3 nuclear facilities, 7 run-of-river hydro facilities and 37 reservoir hydro facilities, and 7 wind facilities. Average (output weighted) life cycle GHG intensities are calculated for each fuel type in Ontario, and the life cycle GHG intensity for the Ontario grid as a whole (in 2008) is estimated to be 201 t CO(2)e/GWh. The results reflect only the global warming impact of electricity generation, and they are meant to inform a broader discussion which includes other environmental, social, cultural, institutional and economic factors. This full range of factors should be included in decisions regarding energy policy for the Province of Ontario, and in future work on the Ontario electricity system.Several factors contribute to the current increased focus on alternative fuels such as biodiesel, including an increasing awareness of the environmental impact of petrochemical (PC) oil products such as PC diesel, the continuously increasing price of PC oil, and the depletion of PC oil. For these reasons, the European Union has enacted a directive requiring each member state to ensure that the share of energy from renewable sources in transport be at least 10 % of the final consumption of energy by 2020 (The European Parliament and the Council 2009). This LCA study assesses the specific environmental impacts from the production and use of biodiesel as it is today (real-time), based on rapeseed oil and different types of alcohols, and using technologies that are currently available or will be available shortly. Different options are evaluated for the environmental improvement of production methods. The modeling of the LCA is based on a specific Danish biodiesel production facility. The functional unit is "1,000 km transportation for a standard passenger car." All relevant process stages are included, such as rapeseed production including carbon sequestration and N2O balances, and transportation of products used in the life cycle of biodiesel. System expansion has been used to handle allocation issues. The climate change potential from the production and use of biodiesel today is 57 kg CO2-eq/1,000 km, while PC diesel is 214 kg CO2-eq/1,000 km. Options for improvement include the increased use of residual straw from rapeseed fields for combustion in a power plant where carbon sequestration is considered, and a change in transesterification from a conventional process to an enzymatic process when using bioethanol instead of PC methanol. This research also evaluates results for land use, respiratory inorganics potential, human toxicity (carc) potential, ecotoxicity (freshwater) potential, and aquatic eutrophication (N) potential. Different sources for uncertainty are evaluated, and the largest drivers for uncertainty are the assumptions embedded into the substitution effects. The results presented should not be interpreted as a blueprint for the increased production of biodiesel but rather as a benchmarking point for the present, actual impact in a well-to-wheels perspective of biodiesel, with options for improving production and use. Based on this analysis, we recommend investigating additional options and incentives regarding the increased use of rape straw, particularly considering the carbon sequestration issues (from the perspective of potential climate change) of using bioalcohol instead of PC alcohol for the transesterification process.Several articles within the area of green chemistry often promote new techniques or products as 'green' or 'more environmentally benign' than their conventional counterpart although these articles often do not quantitatively assess the environmental performance. In order to do this, life cycle assessment (LCA) is a valuable methodology. However, on the planning stage, a full-scale LCA is considered to be too time consuming and complicated. Two reasons for this have been recognised, the method is too comprehensive and it is hard to find inventory data. In this review, key parameters are presented with the purpose to reduce the time-consuming steps in LCA. In this review, several LCAs of so-called 'green chemicals' are analysed and key parameters and methodological concerns are identified. Further, some conclusions on the environmental performance of chemicals were drawn. For fossil-based platform chemicals several LCAs exists but for chemicals produced with industrial biotechnology or from renewable resources the number of LCAs is limited, with the exception of biofuels, for which a large number of studies are made. In the review, a significant difference in the environmental performance of bulk and fine chemicals was identified. The environmental performance of bulk chemicals are closely connected to the production of the raw material and thereby different land use aspects. Here, a lot can be learnt from biofuel LCAs. In many of the reviewed articles focusing on bulk chemicals a comparison regarding fossil and renewable raw material was done. In most of the comparisons the renewable alternative turned out to be more environmentally preferable, especially for the impact on GWP and energy use. However, some environmental concerns were identified as important to include to assess overall environmental concern, for example eutrophication and the use of land. To assess the environmental performance of green chemicals, quantitative methods are needed. For this purpose, both simple metrics and more comprehensive methods have been developed, one recognised method being LCA. However, this method is often too time consuming to be valuable in the process planning stage. This is partly due to a lack of available inventory data, but also because the method itself is too comprehensive. Here, key parameters for the environmental performance and methodological concerns were described to facilitate a faster and simpler use of LCA of green chemicals in the future.Used cooking oil (UCO) is a domestic waste generated as the result of cooking and frying food with vegetable oil. The purpose of this study is to compare the sustainability of three domestic UCO collection systems: through schools (SCH), door-to-door (DTD), and through urban collection centres (UCC), to determine which systems should be promoted for the collection of UCO in cities in Mediterranean countries. The present paper uses the recent life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) methodology. LCSA is the combination of life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing, and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). Of the three UCO collection systems compared, the results show that UCC presents the best values for sustainability assessment, followed by DTD and finally SCH system, although there are no substantial differences between DTD and SCH. UCC has the best environmental and economic performance but not for social component. DTD and SCH present suitable values for social performance but not for the environmental and economic components. The environmental component improves when the collection points are near to citizens' homes. Depending on the vehicle used in the collection process, the management costs and efficiency can improve. UCO collection systems that carry out different kind of waste (such as UCC) are more sustainable than those that collect only one type of waste. Regarding the methodology used in this paper, the sustainability assessment proposed is suitable for use in decision making to analyse processes, products or services, even so in social assessment an approach is needed to quantify the indicators. Defining units for sustainability quantification is a difficult task because not all social indicators are quantifiable and comparable; some need to be adapted, raising the subjectivity of the analysis. Research into S-LCA and LCSA is recent; more research is needed in order to improve the methodology.Disposable beverage bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) stand in sharp contrast to many other disposable plastic packaging systems in the US for their high level of post-consumer recovery for recycling. This is due in part to container deposit programs in several US states, such as the California Redemption Value (CRV) program. We investigate the impacts of PET bottle recycling in the CRV program to evaluate its effectiveness at reducing environmental burdens. We develop a life cycle model using standard process LCA techniques. We use the US LCI database to describe the energy production infrastructure and the production of primary materials. We describe the inventory and logistical requirements for materials recovery on the basis of state-maintained statistics and interviews with operators and industry representatives. We report inventory indicators describing energy, freight, and waste disposal requirements. We report several impact indicators based on CML and TRACI-2.0 techniques. We apply system expansion to compare post-consumer activities to produce secondary polymer against equivalent primary production. While bottle collection is distributed across the state, processing is more centralized and occurs primarily near urban centers. The average distance traveled by a bottle from discard to recovery is 145-175 km. Recycling requires 0.45-0.66 MJ of primary energy/L of beverage, versus 3.96 MJ during the pre-consumer phase. Post-consumer environmental impacts are significantly lower than pre-consumer impacts, with the exception of eutrophication. The results are robust to model sensitivity, with allocation of fuel for bottle collection being the most significant parameter. Curbside collection is slightly more energy efficient than consumer drop-off, and is subject to smaller parametric uncertainty. Recycling has the potential for net environmental benefits in five of seven impact categories, the exceptions being smog (marginal benefits) and eutrophication (increased impacts). California's decentralized program for collecting and processing PET bottles has produced a system which generates a large stream of post-consumer material with minimal environmental impact. The selection of a reclamation locale is the most significant factor influencing post-consumer impacts. If secondary PET displaces primary material, several environmental burdens can be reduced. Our results suggest that deposit programs on disposable packaging are an effective policy mechanism to increase material recovery and reduce environmental burdens. Deposit programs for other packaging systems should be considered.In this two-part paper (Background and Initial Assumptions (part 1) and Results of Survey Research (part 2)), we present surveys whose main objective is to determine whether, and to what extent, the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique is used for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems (EMS) and whether there are any differences in this respect between the companies and countries analysed. The survey research was carried out using the computer assisted self-administered interviewing method among selected Polish, German and Swedish organisations which implement EMS in accordance with the requirements of ISO 14001 and/or the EMAS regulation. The organisations investigated, regardless of their country, are dominated by qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques of assessment and identification of environmental aspects. LCA was used sporadically, although some differences can be observed between the countries analysed. The environmental managers accustomed to traditional qualitative and semi-quantitative solutions have not been given preparation to enable them to understand and adopt different approaches such as LCA. On the other hand, representatives of the organisations investigated declared that they were ready to accept an even longer timescale for the identification and assessment processes relating to environmental aspects, which represents a potential opportunity for LCA. The more precise understanding and definition of environmental problems that are precisely defined in LCA would represent a novelty for environmental managers. In practice, environmental problems are defined in a general sense and rather ambiguously, as this level of detail is sufficient in the context of qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques commonly used for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects.In this two-part paper (Background and Initial Assumptions (Part 1) and Results of Survey Research (Part 2)), we present surveys whose main objective is to determine, whether and to what extent the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique is used for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems (EMS) and whether there are any differences in this respect between the companies and countries analysed. The survey research was carried out using the computer assisted self-administered interviewing (CASI) method among selected Polish, German and Swedish organisations which implement EMS in accordance with the requirements of ISO 14001 and/or the EMAS regulation. The organisations investigated, regardless of their country, are dominated by qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques of assessment and identification of environmental aspects. LCA was used sporadically, although some differences can be observed between the countries analysed. The environmental managers accustomed to traditional qualitative and semi-quantitative solutions, have not been given preparation to enable them to understand and adopt the different approaches such as LCA. On the other hand, representatives of the organisations investigated declared that they were ready to accept an even longer timescale for the identification and assessment processes relating to environmental aspects, which represents a potential opportunity for LCA. The more precise understanding and definition of environmental problems that are precisely defined in LCA would represent a novelty for environmental managers. In practice, environmental problems are defined in a general sense and rather ambiguously, as this level of detail is sufficient in the context of qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques commonly used for the identification and assessment of environmental aspects.The purpose of the social Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is to predict the social impacts on people caused by the changes in the functioning of one product chain throughout its life cycle. Changes in health status are very important experiences for people. The aim of this paper is to build a pathway between changes in economic activity generated by the functioning of a product chain and the changes in health status of the population in the country where the economic activity takes place. Empirical and historical factors suggest that increased economic activity through growth in income leads to improvements in the health of a country's population. This empirical relationship is well known in economics as the Preston curve. Using this relationship, we design a pathway for social LCA impact assessment. This pathway may be used to explain or predict the potential impact caused by the modification of one product sector upon the health of a population. The Preston relationship usually is calculated for a cross section of countries. We assess whether the Preston relationship is valid when a single country is considered alone. Drawing from scientific literature regarding development, we define the context where the use of the Preston relationship is justified. We describe the general design of the Preston pathway, using a recalculated (panel based) relationship, and specify the conditions for its use. We apply it to the case of company B, a banana industry in Cameroon, for the period between 2010 and 2030. We highlight that the panel calculation of the Preston relationship remains significant when a country is considered alone. We suggest that the following conditions are required for the pathway to be used: (1) the activity is set within countries where the GDP per capita in purchasing power parity is less than $10,000 at the start of the period, (2) the assessed activity accounts for a significant part of the annual GDP and/or demonstrates obvious signs that it represents a huge stake in the country's economy, (3) the duration of the assessed activity is regular and long enough, and (4) the added value created by the activity is shared within the country. We found that the future activity of company B would improve the potential LEX of the entire population of Cameroon by 5 days over 20 years, based on 200,000 t of bananas exported annually (in comparison with no activity). When the four conditions for use are met, and provided results are interpreted by comparing them with other situations or countries, the recalculated panel-based relationship may be used to explain or predict a change in potential life expectancy generated by a change in economic activity. The Preston pathway may be useful for impact assessment in social LCA. The assessment is valid only when used for a comparative analysis and must be done within a multi-criteria framework. Complementary pathways therefore need to be designed. We suggest that the conditions for use and other research issues be discussed and fine-tuned further. Moreover, we welcome comments and criticisms.Sustainable development aims to enhance the quality of life by improving the social, economic and environmental conditions for present and future generations. A sustainable engineering decision-making strategy for design and assessment of construction works (i.e., civil engineering and buildings) should take into account considerations regarding the society, the economy and the environment. This study presents a novel approach for the life cycle assessment (LCA) of a case-study building subjected to seismic actions during its service life, accounting for structural reliability. A methodology is presented that evaluates the time-dependent probability of exceeding a limit state considering the uncertainty in the representation of seismic action. By employing this methodology, the earthquake-induced damages are related to the environmental and social losses caused by the occurrence of the earthquake. A LCA of a case-study building accounting for the time-dependent seismic reliability is conducted using a damage-oriented LCA approach. The contributions of the different life cycle phases to the total environmental impact related to the building lifetime are in agreement with previous results in this field of study. However, the LCA results revealed significant risk-based contributions for the rehabilitation phase due to the induced damage resulting in seismic events. Particularly, the rehabilitation phase is expected to contribute to the total environmental impact with around the 25 % of the initial environmental impact load (related to the pre-use phase) as a consequence of seismic damage. The probability of occurrence of seismic events affects the LCA results for various life cycle phases of a building in terms of all the indicators adopted in the analysis. The time-dependent probability of collapse in a year can represent a benchmark indicator for human safety in the context of social sustainability for the building sector. The proposed approach can be implemented in a sustainable decision-making tool for design and assessment.This short note re-examines the proof of fuzzy error propagation with matrix-based LCI in Heijungs and Tan (Int J Life Cycle Assess 15:1014-1019, 2010) paper (referred to as HT hereafter), published in this journal. We provide counter examples to the claims made therein, point out the key error in their proof and identify correct sufficient conditions under which the largest (smallest) values of the given alpha-cuts of fuzzy numbers in the technology matrix yield the smallest (largest) scaling factors. HT uses iterative perturbations of a matrix to seemingly provide a rigorous proof of this result. Flaws in their arguments are identified and demonstrated by way of a counterexample. A classical result on monotonic property of the inverse of M-matrices leads to the correct sufficient conditions under which HT result holds. Since counter examples can be found, the result stated in HT is not, in general, guaranteed. As claimed in the HT paper, checking the upper and lower bounds of alpha-cuts may not be sufficient to describe the uncertainty (the full range of values) in the final inventory. However, slightly stronger conditions on the fuzzy technology matrix provide these inventory bounds.Lignin is a by-product of wood pulping that is normally used as fuel on-site (black liquor), but also has some applications in the field of new biomaterials. This study focuses on the life cycle inventory of lignin originating from the kraft pulping process, for polymer applications. The system boundary includes lignin precipitation from black liquor, washing, and drying, but excludes subsequent application-specific compatibilization modifications. Lignin transportation is considered to rely exclusively on trucking. This work is based on the ecoinvent v2.2 database and the IMPACT 2002+ impact assessment method. Special attention is given to the net effect of lignin precipitation on the mass and energy balances of the kraft process. Because the kraft black liquor supply will far exceed the demand for non-fuel uses for the foreseeable future, it is considered appropriate to use either the marginal variation method of physical allocation or a system boundary expansion. Consequently, the system boundary includes natural gas as a substitute fuel (when applicable) but excludes wood harvesting and the pulping process. The main impacts of kraft lignin come from the natural gas subsystem (fuel substitution and drying) despite a significantly cleaner combustion than for black liquor. Other significant contributors include the production of carbon dioxide for precipitation, sulfuric acid for washing, and sodium hydroxide to make up for sodium losses, all of which have some improvement potential. The environmental profile of kraft lignin tends to be preferable to synthetic organic compounds of similar molecular complexity because its initial transformation chain is relatively energy efficient. It is thus an environmentally sound choice for polymer applications as long as near-unity substitution ratios can be achieved without requiring compatibilization modifications that are too environmentally intensive and without affecting other stages of the product life cycle. In particular, the end-of-life performance depends on long-term lignin sequestration.Carbon footprint (CF) calculated by life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare greenhouse gas emissions from pasture-based milk production relying mainly on (1) fertilizer N (FN), or (2) white clover (WC). Data were sourced from studies conducted at Solohead Research Farm in Ireland between 2001 and 2006. Ten FN pastures stocked between 2.0 and 2.5 livestock units (LU)/ha with fertilizer N input between 180 and 353 kg/ha were compared with 6 WC pastures stocked between 1.75 and 2.2 LU/ha with fertilizer N input between 80 and 99 kg/ha. The WC-based system had 11 to 23% lower CF compared with FN (average CF was 0.86 to 0.87 and 0.97 to 1.13 kg of CO2-eq/kg of energy-corrected milk, respectively, 91% economic allocation). Emissions of both N2O and CO2 were lower in WC, whereas emissions of CH4 (per kg of energy-corrected milk) were similar in both systems. Ratio sensitivity analysis indicated that the difference was not caused by error due to modeling assumptions. Replacing fertilizer N by biological nitrogen fixation could lower the CF of pasture-based milk production.The increased consumption of plastics in day to day life has a significant impact on the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used to select a sustainable alternative in plastic waste management. The LCA studies on mechanical recycling and energy recovery scenarios showed that recycling resulted in lower emissions and provided benefits to the environment. These results are valid only if the performance of the recycled plastic is equivalent to those of the virgin materials. Many LCA studies have been focused on individual impact categories rather than aggregated single score. The decision making process becomes complex if individual impact categories are used. This research is focused on the comparison of LCA results between individual and aggregated impacts and integration of performance of recycled plastics in LCA. The results indicated that recycling was the preferred option if it could replace a minimum of 70-80% of virgin plastics.Biofuels are nowadays considered a questionable environmental alternative to fossil fuels. In that context, this work analyses the environmental impacts when introducing rapeseed on the traditional and current wheat and barley agricultural rotation by means of a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA). The introduction of rapeseed, the correctness of its conversion to obtain straight vegetable oil and its use as self-consumption biofuel in tractors are evaluated. Life cycle assessment is used in this work to evaluate the impacts of different considered scenarios. A sensitivity analysis has also been conducted. The results presented show a modest environmental improvement (diminishment of 6 out of the 10 analyzed environmental impacts) when introducing rapeseed to local crop rotations and its partial conversion to oil to be used as fuel in existing diesel engines. Additionally, the ratio between the energy obtained and the total energy input shows moderate positive results when comparing the latter case with the current one. Results from this study can be used to support research and decision making to assess the convenience of introducing alternative fuels in agricultural exploitations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The biorefinery of the future will be an integrated complex that makes a variety of products (e.g., biofuels, chemicals, power and protein) from a variety of feedstocks. The objective of this work was to evaluate the environmental benefits, compared to the traditional sugarcane ethanol system, of the integrated production of ethanol and biodiesel through a sugarcane-soybean biorefinery concept in Brazil. The environmental aspects considered here were the fossil energy use and the greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions associated with ethanol production. In the Integrated System, soybean would be cultivated in part of the sugarcane reforming areas, which represents similar to 17% of the total sugarcane area. Sugarcane and soybean oil would be processed in a combined ethanol-biodiesel plant, which would use only bagasse as fuel. All the demand for utilities of the biodiesel plant would be provided by the distillery. The output products of the combined plant would comprise sugarcane ethanol, soybean biodiesel (which would be used as diesel (B5) substitute in the sugarcane cultivation), bioelectricity and glycerin. The results indicate that the Integrated System can reduce the fossil energy consumption from 75 to 37 kJ/MJ of ethanol, when compared to the traditional system. For GHG emissions, the value would drop from 22.5 to 19.7 g CO(2)eq/MJ of ethanol. This analysis shows that the Integrated System is an important option to contribute to ethanol's life cycle independence from fossil resources. This is an attractive environmental aspect, but socio-economic (as well as other environmental) aspects should also be analyzed in order to assess the sustainability of such systems in a broader perspective. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper addresses the optimal design of desalination plants that integrate reverse osmosis, a Rankine cycle, parabolic trough solar collectors and thermal energy storage (TES). A multi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear programming model (MINLP) is developed to model such an integrated system and optimize its design and operating conditions according to economic and environmental metrics. The model considers the simultaneous minimization of cost and environmental impact given a specific water demand to be fulfilled. The environmental performance is quantified via life cycle assessment (LCA) principles. Particularly, the CML 2001 methodology, a widely used LCA-based framework, is used to assess the impact, enabling the identification of the main sources of damage across the entire life cycle of the plant. The capabilities of our method are illustrated through its application to a case study considering weather data in Tarragona (Spain). We show that coupling seawater desalination with solar collectors and thermal energy storage leads to significant environmental savings at a marginal increase in cost. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) are used to investigate integrated algae bioenergy production and nutrient management on small dairy farms. Four cases are considered: a reference land-application scenario (REF), anaerobic digestion with land-application of liquid digestate (AD), and anaerobic digestion with recycling of liquid digestate to either an open-pond algae cultivation system (UPS) or an algae turf scrubber (ATS). LCA indicates that all three "improved" scenarios (AD, UPS, and ATS) are environmentally favorable compared to REF, exhibiting increases in net energy output up to 854 GJ/yr, reductions in net eutrophication potential up to 2700 kg PO4-eq/yr, and reductions in global warming potential up to 196 Mg CO2-eq/yr. LCC reveals that the integrated algae systems are much more financially attractive than either AD or REF, whereby net present values (NPV) are as follows: $853,250 for OPS, $790,280 for ATS, $62,279 for REF, and $211,126 for AD. However, these results are highly dependent on the sale price for nutrient credits. Comparison of LCA and LCC results indicates that robust nutrient credit markets or other policy tools are required to align financial and environmental preferability of energy production systems and foster widespread adoption of sustainable nutrient management systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use use of algae for biofuel production is expected to play an important role in securing energy supply in the next decades. A consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) and an energy analysis of seaweed-based biofuel production were carried out in Nordic conditions to document and improve the sustainability of the process. Two scenarios were analyzed for the brown seaweed (Laminaria digitata), namely, biogas production (scenario I) and bioethanol + biogas production (scenario 2). Potential environmental impact categories under investigation were Global Warming, Acidification and Terrestrial Eutrophication. The production of seaweed was identified to be the most energy intensive step. Scenario 1 showed better performance compared to scenario 2 for all impact categories, partly because of the energy intensive bioethanol separation process and the consequently lower overall efficiency of the system. For improved environmental performance, focus should be on optimization of seaweed production, bioethanol distillation, and management of digestate on land. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Decisions made during a building's early design stages critically determine its environmental impact. However, designers are faced with many decisions during these stages and typically lack intuition on which decisions are most significant to a building's impact. As a result, designers often defer decisions to later stages of the design process. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to enable better early stage decision-making by providing feedback on the environmental impacts of building information modeling (BIM) design choices. This paper presents a method for applying LCA to early stage decision-making in order to inform designers of the relative environmental impact importance of building component material and dimensioning choices. Sensitivity analysis is used to generalize the method across a range of building shapes and design parameters. An impact allocation scheme is developed that shows the distribution of embodied impacts among building elements, and an impact reduction scheme shows which material and thickness decisions achieve the greatest embodied impact reductions. A multi-building residential development is used as a case study for introducing the proposed method to industry practice. Results show that the method can assist in the building design process by highlighting those early stage decisions that frequently achieve the most significant reductions in embodied carbon footprint. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of nano-sized particles in cementitious materials introduces a myriad of potential innovations from new functionality to enhanced mechanical performance, but such materials can be energy-intensive to manufacture. With increasing emphasis on sustainable development, it is important to investigate and understand benefits and costs of using nanomaterials compared to relatively less energy-intensive microparticles. The current research investigates the effect of chemically inert nano and microparticles (i.e., titanium dioxide (TiO2) and calcium carbonate (limestone)) on early age properties and behavior of cement-based materials. Results indicate that the early age hydration rates, shrinkage, and pore structure of cement-based materials can be modified and optimized by tailoring the size of fillers. Life cycle analysis indicates that photocatalytic reactivity of TiO2 could offset initial higher environmental impacts. Thus, optimally sized nanoparticles could revolutionize the construction industry by allowing tailoring of structure and properties of cement-based composites, with environmental sustainability preserved through the selection of lower embodied-energy particles. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Construction activity is now a major consumer of natural resources. As a general rule, resource consumption has been evaluated through methodologies related to Life Cycle Analysis. This research is proposed to integrate the Ecological Footprint indicator into the building sector: to observe the difficulties and the benefits it can generate relative to other indicators. To this end, prior knowledge related to the Ecological Footprint indicator must first be adapted to the residential sector, by analyzing the construction of buildings, and secondly a calculation methodology is established in order to quantitatively determine what impacts are generated by industry according to the Ecological Footprint indicator. This methodology applies the indicator to resources used (energy, water, labour, construction materials, etc.) and to waste generated in the construction of residential buildings. The methodology is applied to a case study corresponding to the urbanization and building construction of a representative building type in Andalusia (Spain) when the building is in the planning stage. The final result is 0.384 gha/year/m(2). (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analyzed the environmental impacts of the materials phase of a net-zero energy building. The Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL) is a three-story, 24,350 square foot educational, research, and administrative office in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. This net-zero energy building is designed to meet Living Building Challenge criteria. The largest environmental impacts from the production of building materials is from concrete, structural steel, photovoltaic (PV) panels, inverters, and gravel. Comparing the LCA results of the CSL to standard commercial structures reveals a 10% larger global warming potential and a nearly equal embodied energy per square feet, largely due to the CSL's PV system. As a net-zero energy building, the environmental impacts associated with the use phase are expected to be very low relative to standard structures. Future studies will incorporate the construction and use phases of the CSL for a more comprehensive life cycle perspective.The Brazilian government has started up a large social housing program for low-income families. Considering the large investment for this program, it is important to analyse the environmental impact to create a base for further improvement assessment. The goal of this paper is to visualise the energy use (embodied and operational) during the life cycle of case study for a house in the social housing program. The case study showed that the embodied energy (EE) is 7.2 GJ/m(2) or 30% of the total energy from the life cycle, the operational energy is 17.5 GJ/m(2). Half of the Embodied Energy is due to material use for maintenance and around 57% of the embodied energy is used in the wall construction. Compared to other international studies (5.8 GJ/m(2) per 50 years), the embodied energy is relative high (7.2 GJ/m(2) per 50 years) whereas the operational energy is only the half (17.5 compared to 36 GJ/m(2) per 50 year). The study indicates that the largest improvement potential for reducing the embodied energy is connected to the walls trough choosing materials and systems with less Embodied Energy and higher durability to decrease the need for maintenance and substitution of materials. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The primary purpose of this study is to estimate the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (carbon footprint) and criteria pollutant emissions during honey production and processing for US conditions based on several case studies of different scale beekeeping and processing operations. Commercial beekeeping operations yield two coproducts, honey and pollination services. These two products present an interesting coproduct allocation problem since beekeeping operations cannot be clearly subdivided, pollination services do not have a substitutable product or service, and pollination services cannot be characterized by physical properties for value-based allocation. Thus, a secondary purpose is to identify an appropriate allocation method and to discuss how the choice of allocation strategies influences the outcomes. The commercial honey production supply chain comprises the following two primary steps: raw honey production by beekeepers and honey processing and packaging by processors. A case study approach was used based on detailed operation data provided by several beekeepers and processors from key honey-producing regions in the USA. Process-based life cycle assessment was conducted following the ISO guidelines, and economic allocation was used as a baseline method for coproduct allocation. Life cycle modeling of one complete commercial supply chain (raw honey production, transport to a processer, and processing) shows that total life cycle GHG emissions range from 0.67 to 0.92 kg CO2 equivalent/kg of processed honey; however, outcomes show significant variability. Results show commercial honey production emits more GHGs and criteria pollutants than processing. Truck transport of bees is the dominant contributor of both GHG emissions and criteria pollutants within the life cycle of raw honey production. However, honey processing, which depends on natural gas and electricity, contributes a significant fraction of SO (x) . These results are based on economic allocation among beekeeping coproducts. In addition to economic allocation, subdivision was applied to beekeeping activities. Because hive management (feed and medication) could not be further subdivided, a bounded range was generated for raw honey production, where the lower and upper bounds represent two extremes where all the environmental burdens associated with hive management were allocated to pollination or honey production. Economic allocation tends to fall near or below the lower bound for the subdivision method. Interestingly, some beekeepers reported that their hive management practices were driven more by demand for pollination services than honey, which seems to be reflected in the coordination of lower-bound subdivision and economic allocation results.Currently, the bio-based plastics have been drawing considerable attention from the packaging industry as a sustainable solution for replacing petroleum-based plastics in order to reduce the accumulation of plastic waste in the environment. This work has benchmarked the environmental impact of bio-based against petroleum-based plastics for single use boxes. In this paper, the cradle to consumer gate environmental impact data of these boxes was calculated and reported as part 1. End-of-life options of both bio- and petroleum-based boxes are an important subject which will be further studied for part 2. The energy sources in this work were taken from the Thailand energy database namely: Thai electricity grid mix (TEGM), Thai coal electricity (TCE), Thai natural gas combine cycle (TNGCC), and Thai coal integrated gasification combine cycle (TIGCC). The materials studied were polystyrene (PS) derived from petroleum, polylactic acid (PLA) derived from corn, and PLA/cassava starch blend (PLA/starch). The tray with lid (herein after called box) was processed in a plastic manufacturing in Thailand using cast sheet extrusion and then thermoforming techniques. The functional unit is specified as 10,000 units of 8.0 x 10.0 x 2.5 cm of PS, PLA, and PLA/starch boxes which weigh 447.60, 597.60, and 549.56 kg, respectively. Three impact categories; namely global warming potential including direct greenhouse gas, and indirect land use change (LUC) emissions, acidification, and photochemical ozone formation are investigated. Finally, the normalization results including and excluding LUC consideration were compared and reported. The results from this study have shown that the total environmental impact including LUC emission of bio-based boxes were different when the various energy sources were supplied throughout the life cycle production stage. It can be seen that the PS box has lower environmental impact than PLA and PLA/starch boxes when TEGM, TCE, TNGCC, and TIGCC were used as energy supplied. LUC of renewable feedstocks, such as corn and cassava, were considered as the biggest impact of absolute scores of PLA and PLA/starch boxes. These results are consistent with Piemonte and Gironi (2010). PLA and PLA/starch boxes give a slightly higher environmental impact than the PS box by 1.59 and 1.09 times, respectively, when LUC was not accounted in the absolute scores and clean energy TIGCC was used throughout the life cycle.This paper presents a detailed comparative environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) case study of three built bridges in Norway. To encompass a wide scale of bridge designs, the analysis dealt with a steel box girder bridge, a concrete box girder bridge, and a wooden arch bridge. This study presents the first LCA of road bridges using a standardized bridge classification. The LCA includes a wide range of pollutants and a high level of detail in life cycle material and energy consumption. Findings here and from earlier LCAs on bridges are together used as bases for general recommendations on conducting LCAs on bridges. The study shows that it is the production of materials for the main load-carrying systems (i.e., the bridge superstructure) and the abutments that accounts for the main share of the environmental impacts, as these parts require large quantities of materials, with a limited number of materials being the important ones. The construction phase accounts for relatively fewer impacts. The use phase contributes more significantly, mainly because of resurfacing with asphalt. Use of building equipment and transport of personnel in all the life cycle phases are of minor importance, as are the use of formwork, mastic, blasting, and the end-of-life incineration of wood. The environmental issues of global warming, abiotic depletion, and acidification are found to be the most important given the assumptions made in this study. A comparison of the three bridges shows that the concrete bridge alternative performs best environmentally on the whole, but when it comes to global warming, the wooden bridge is better than the other two. The results support the idea that it is possible to decide upon environmentally effective design alternatives, at a fair level of accuracy, at different stages of the bridge design process, a target that is now becoming more and more emphasized in the bridge-engineering sector. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)BE.1943-5592.0000328. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Asphalt rubber mixtures are often described as environmentally friendly mixtures due to the incorporation of recycled rubber from used tires and due to their improved service life. In fact, their fatigue cracking and rut resistance properties are better than those of conventional asphalt concrete mixtures. However, asphalt rubber mixtures demand higher production temperatures than conventional mixtures due to the higher viscosity of the asphalt rubber binder. The objective of this paper is to assess the efficiency of using a surfactant based additive in the production of warm mix asphalts, by lowering the mixing temperatures of asphalt rubber and asphalt concrete mixtures without changing their performance. Several laboratory tests were carried out on asphalt rubber and asphalt concrete mixtures, with and without the additive, in order to evaluate and compare the performance of the mixtures. It was concluded that the incorporation of small amounts of a surfactant based additive allowed reducing the production temperatures of both types of mixture by 30 degrees C without compromising their performance, and this can be seen as a great step forward towards the production of cleaner asphalt rubber mixtures. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An environmental assessment was carried out in order to quantify the environmental consequences of the life cycle of mature cheese production from a cradle-to-gate perspective and to identify the environmental hotspots. To do so, an international cheese-making dairy factory located in Portugal was assessed in detail and inventory data for the different production steps (milk production at dairy farm, cheese manufacturing and whey transformation at industrial dairy factory) were taken on-site. The production line at the industrial dairy factory presents two main products: mature cheese and whey powder. The environmental burdens were allocated between both products based on an economic allocation approach as baseline. However, different methodological approaches, mass allocation and no allocation (assigning the whole environmental load of the production line to the cheese), were also applied in this study. Dairy-farm-related activities play an important role concerning different environmental impact categories, namely acidification (91%), eutrophication (86%), global warming (82%), land competition (99%) and photo-oxidants formation (69%) due to on-farm emissions such as methane from enteric fermentation, ammonia from manure management, combustion emissions from agricultural machineries as well as land requirements for animal fodder production. From cheese-making, the most important contributions are related to abiotic depletion (55%), ozone layer depletion (51%) and cumulative energy demand (55%) mainly due to the energy requirements in the different production processes and to the distribution of input goods up to the dairy gate. Improvement alternatives for the environmental key factors within the limits of the dairy factory were proposed based on a reduction of energy consumption, the use of a more environmentally friendly fuel in the boilers and the use of new trucks with lower exhaust emissions. According to the results, it has been demonstrated that it should be possible to slightly reduce the environmental profile in some impact categories (acidification, eutrophication, global warming and photo-oxidants formation) without involving significant economic investment. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is growing interest in understanding how storage or delayed emission of carbon in products based on bioresources might mitigate climate change, and how such activities could be credited. In this research we extend the recently introduced approach that integrates biogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes with the global carbon cycle (using biogenic global warming potential [GWPbio]) to consider the storage period of harvested biomass in the anthroposphere, with subsequent oxidation. We then examine how this affects the climate impact from a bioenergy resource. This approach is compared to several recent methods designed to address the same problem. Using both a 100- and a 500-year fixed time horizon we calculate the GWPbio factor for every combination of rotational and anthropogenic storage periods between 0 and 100 years. The resulting GWPbio factors range from 0.99 (1-year rotation and 100-year storage) to +0.44 (100-year rotation and 0-year storage). The approach proposed in this study includes the interface between biomass growth and emissions and the global carbon cycle, whereas other methods do not model this. These results and the characterization factors produced can determine the climate change benefits or impacts associated with the storage of biomass in the anthroposphere, and the subsequent release of biogenic CO2 with the radiative forcing integrated in a fixed time window.Electric vehicles (EVs) coupled with low-carbon electricity sources offer the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to tailpipe emissions from personal transportation. In considering these benefits, it is important to address concerns of problem-shifting. In addition, while many studies have focused on the use phase in comparing transportation options, vehicle production is also significant when comparing conventional and EVs. We develop and provide a transparent life cycle inventory of conventional and electric vehicles and apply our inventory to assess conventional and EVs over a range of impact categories. We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km. However, EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain. Results are sensitive to assumptions regarding electricity source, use phase energy consumption, vehicle lifetime, and battery replacement schedules. Because production impacts are more significant for EVs than conventional vehicles, assuming a vehicle lifetime of 200,000 km exaggerates the GWP benefits of EVs to 27% to 29% relative to gasoline vehicles or 17% to 20% relative to diesel. An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle. Improving the environmental profile of EVs requires engagement around reducing vehicle production supply chain impacts and promoting clean electricity sources in decision making regarding electricity infrastructure.Greenhouse gas emissions caused by food production are receiving increased attention worldwide. A problem with many studies is that they only consider one product; methodological differences also make it difficult to compare results across studies. Using a consistent methodology to ensure comparability, we quantified the carbon footprint of more than 20 Norwegian seafood products, including fresh and frozen, processed and unprocessed cod, haddock, saithe, herring, mackerel, farmed salmon, and farmed blue mussels. The previous finding that fuel use in fishing and feed production in aquaculture are key inputs was confirmed. Additional key aspects identified were refrigerants used on fishing vessels, product yield, and by-product use. Results also include that product form (fresh or frozen) only matters when freezing makes slower transportation possible. Processing before export was favorable due to the greater potential to use by-products and the reduced need for transportation. The most efficient seafood product was herring shipped frozen in bulk to Moscow at 0.7 kilograms CO2 equivalents per kilogram (kg CO2-eq/kg) edible product. At the other end we found fresh gutted salmon airfreighted to Tokyo at 14 kg CO2-eq/kg edible product. This wide range points to major differences between seafood products and room for considerable improvement within supply chains and in product choices. In fisheries, we found considerable variability between fishing methods used to land the same species, which indicates the importance of fisheries management favoring the most resource-efficient ways of fishing. Both production and consumption patterns matter, and a range of improvements could benefit the carbon performance of Norwegian seafood products.A growing tendency in policy making and carbon footprint estimation gives value to temporary carbon storage in biomass products or to delayed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some life cycle-based methods, such as the British publicly available specification (PAS) 2050 or the recently published European Commission's International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, address this issue. This article shows the importance of consistent consideration of biogenic carbon and timing of GHG emissions in life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint analysis. We use a fictitious case study assessing the life cycle of a wooden chair for four end-of-life scenarios to compare different approaches: traditional LCA with and without consideration of biogenic carbon, the PAS 2050 and ILCD Handbook methods, and a dynamic LCA approach. Reliable results require accounting for the timing of every GHG emission, including biogenic carbon flows, as soon as a benefit is given for temporarily storing carbon or delaying GHG emissions. The conclusions of a comparative LCA can change depending on the time horizon chosen for the analysis. The dynamic LCA approach allows for a consistent assessment of the impact, through time, of all GHG emissions (positive) and sequestration (negative). The dynamic LCA is also a valuable approach for decision makers who have to understand the sensitivity of the conclusions to the chosen time horizon.Departments of Transportation (DOTs) rely heavily on chloride-based treatments for winter road maintenance despite the well-documented effects of these chemicals on infrastructure and the environment. Proposed alternative treatments have yet to be widely adopted because of economic and technical limitations that are largely outside of the control of the DOT. This work explores the application of winter maintenance chemicals with a life-cycle approach to understand which actions a DOT can take to reduce the negative life-cycle environmental impacts of these activities. Three representative treatments and/or best management practices are compared: conventional rock salt, calcium magnesium acetate (CMA), and preemptive treatments of roadways with a brine of salt and/or CMA. The results conclusively show that CMA, which has been widely touted as an environmentally preferable, if more expensive, alternative to chloride-based treatments, has considerably higher environmental impacts over its entire life cycle. Most of these burdens are associated with the upstream production processes required to generate the CMA. The salt-based treatments consume considerably less water, energy, and generate fewer greenhouse gases and biochemical oxygen demand in receiving waters. Applying the chloride chemicals as a brine rather than in the dry form results in important reductions in all environmental impacts over the entire life cycle. This result is consistent for a variety of climate conditions (e.g., representative of coastal, piedmont, and mountain climates) considered for this study, which used historical weather data from Virginia. Because DOTs can affect appreciable improvements in efficiency by using brines, sensitivity analysis identifies the activities specifically resulting in the most important environmental improvement on a systems basis. The DOT-controlled steps with the greatest potential for improvement include reducing the energy consumed for the salt application process and implementing practices that reduce total storm water runoff to reduce chloride loading. DOI:10.1061/(ASCE)TE.1943-5436.0000453. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.The objective of this research was to assess the potential to reduce the integral ecological impact (i.e. impact along the egg production chain per kg egg) of Dutch organic egg production by replacing currently used imported diet ingredients with Dutch diet ingredients. We realized this objective by comparing the life cycle assessments (LCA) of current Dutch organic egg production, i.e. base situation (B) with different scenarios. In each scenario, one imported diet ingredient was replaced with a diet ingredient produced in the Netherlands. Finally, we formulated a scenario in which several ingredients, that individually resulted in the lowest mean change in ecological impact along the organic egg production chain, were replaced simultaneously. We included differences between production chains in cultivation (i.e. field operation, manure application and yield), transport, feed intake, egg production and N excretion. Replacement of Ukrainian wheat with Dutch triticale, and of Brazilian soybeans, Italian sunflower seed expeller and German peas with Dutch rapeseed expeller reduced the integral ecological impact compared with current organic egg production. Simultaneous replacement of these ingredients (scenario MU) resulted in an overall lower and more balanced reduction of the different ecological impacts (41-101%) than single replacement of these ingredients (41-215%). Compared with B ecological impact of scenario MU decreased for global warming potential (91%), energy use (79%), land occupation (68%), acidification potential (99%), N deficit (85%), P deficit (41%) and P surplus (81%), but slightly increased for N surplus (101%). The low ecological impact of MU was explained by (1) a relative small increase in feed conversion ratio (from 2.32 for B to 2.37 for MU), (2) a reduction of the transport distance of 44.4% of the diet ingredients, (3) replacement of the currently used crops with crops that have a higher yield in combination with a balanced applied amount of N and P in manure, and (4) use of expeller instead of whole ingredients. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.At the end of life, post-consumer clothing in the UK either enters the municipal solid waste stream or is collected by way of an extensive network of clothing banks, charity shops and doorstep collections for recycling or reuse. This study reports the fibre/polymer composition of a large sample (n=34 635) of post-consumer clothing collected by The Salvation Army, one of the largest used clothing supply chain operators in the UK. The results revealed that 36.2% of the clothing items were of heterogeneous polymer composition, consisting of a blend or mixture of two or more fibre components; however, the largest fraction was composed of a single fibre type (excluding accessories and sewing threads). Cotton accounted for 54.7% of the total collected clothing and 22.6% was composed of polyester. There were no large geographical or collection source variations in terms of fibre compositions. A minimum economic recyclability index was approximated based on a potential value of fibre recyclate in post-consumer clothing that is currently directed to landfill.In the last time, some factors and especially the environmental protection requirements have determined to aide the ecological criterion for design of electro technical equipments, within a new Ecodesign concept. The essence of this concept consists in the integration of environmental aspects at project phase, taking into account full life cycle of product. The work presents some theoretical and practical aspects of Ecodesign for electrotechnical equipments.This study presents an analysis of the environmental performances of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) located in central Europe based on life cycle assessment (LCA) of ten significant design options. Each of those is identified with a set of several technical parameters including the risk of induced seismicity. Results show that EGS impacts are comparable to those of other renewable energy technologies and significantly lower than those of conventional power plants. A comparison of the ten scenarios enables us to formulate recommendations on the environmental suitability of their design. Moreover, it emerges from this study that the risk of induced seismicity is a key discriminating factor, as it increases proportionally to the environmental benefit. The model based on five impact categories presented in this paper provides a useful tool for obtaining an overview of the environmental constraints of EGS installations and can be replicated to evaluate possible analogous installations exploring other design options. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Livestock production is indicated to be one of the major emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG), particularly methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), around the globe, and the reduction of these emissions is an important goal. GHG emissions as well as other environmental impacts of two pig (Sus scrofa domesticus) farming systems, one using conventional diets (CNV) and the other using low-protein diets supplemented with crystalline amino acids (LOW), were therefore evaluated by comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) focusing on manure management and by cradle-to-farm gate LCA. The functional unit was defined as one marketed pig. For the comparative LCA of manure management, the CH4 and N2O emissions from manure management of CNV were set as a baseline, and the system boundary of LOW included the CH4 and N2O emissions from manure management, and changes in the GHG emissions from feed production including amino acid manufacturing, feed transport, and the materials and energy consumed in manure management. For the cradle-to-farm gate LCA of pig farming, the evaluated system included the processes of feed production including amino acid manufacturing for LOW, feed transport, animal housing including the biological activity of the animal, and manure management. The results of the comparative LCA showed that the GHG emissions from manure management of LOW were 20% less than those of CNV, and the GHG reduction rate of LOW compared to CNV was even greater in the case of a stricter target of effluent nitrogen content. The results of cradle-to-farm gate LCA showed that LOW had lower GHG emissions, acidification potential, eutrophication potential and overall environmental impact, and slightly larger energy consumption, than CNV. The sensitivity analysis showed that LOW still had less GHG emissions than CNV, even in the least preferable case assuming a 40% lower reduction rate of nitrogen excretion.In some arid regions where landfill produces minimal amount of leachate, leachate recirculation is suggested as a cost-effective option. However, its long-term impacts to environment remain disputed. For the purpose of revealing the environmental impacts of leachate recirculation in landfill, four scenarios were modeled using EASEWASTE, comparing the strategies of leachate recirculation (with or without gas management), evaporation and discharge. In the current situation (Scenario A), a total of 280 t of waste was generated and then transported to a conventional landfill for disposal. A number of contaminants derived from waste can be stored in the landfill for long periods, with 11.69 person equivalent (PE) for stored ecotoxicity in water and 29.62 PE for stored ecotoxicity in soil, considered as potential risks of releasing to the environment someday. Meanwhile, impacts to ecotoxicity and human toxicity in surface water, and those to groundwater, present relatively low levels. In Scenario B, leachate evaporation in a collecting pool has minimal impacts on surface water. However, this strategy significantly impacts groundwater (1055.16 PE) because of the potential infiltration of leachate, with major contaminants of As, ammonia, and Cd. A number of ions, such as Cl-, Mg2+, and Ca2+, may also contaminate groundwater. In Scenario C, the direct discharge of leachate to surface water may result in acidification (2.71 PE) and nutrient enrichment (2.88 PE), primarily attributed to soluble ammonia in leachate and the depositional ammonia from biogas. Moreover, the direct discharge of leachate may also result in ecotoxicity and human toxicity via water contaminated by heavy metals in leachate, with 3.96 PE and 11.64 PE respectively. The results also show that landfill gas is the main contributor to global warming and photochemical ozone formation due to methane emission. In Scenario D, landfill gas flaring was thus be modeled and proven to be efficient for reducing impacts by approximately 90% in most categories, like global warming, photochemical ozone formation, acidification, nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity. Therefore, leachate recirculation is considered a cost-effective and environmentally viable solution for the current situation, and landfill gas treatment is urgently required. These results can provide important evidence for leachate and gas management of landfill in arid regions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Goal and scope: The life cycle inventory of landfill emissions is a key point in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of waste management options and is highly subject to discussion. Result sensitivity to data inventory is accounted for through the implementation of scenarios that help examine how waste landfilling should be modeled in LCA. Method: Four landfill biogas management options are environmentally evaluated in a Life Cycle Assessment perspective: (1) no biogas management (open dump), conventional landfill with (2) flaring, (3) combined heat and power (CHP) production in an internal combustion engine and (4) biogas upgrading for use as a fuel in buses. Average, maximum and minimum literature values are considered both for combustion emission factors in flares and engines and for trace pollutant concentrations in biogas. Results: Biogas upgrading for use as a fuel in buses appears as the most relevant option with respect to most non-toxic impact categories and ecotoxicity, when considering average values for trace gas concentrations and combustion emission factors. Biogas combustion in an engine for CHP production shows the best performances in terms of climate change, but generates significantly higher photochemical oxidant formation and marine eutrophication impact potentials than flaring or biogas upgrading for use as a fuel in buses. Interpretation and discussion: However the calculated environmental impact potentials of landfill biogas management options depend largely on the trace gas concentrations implemented in the model. The use of average or extreme values reported in the literature significantly modifies the impact potential of a given scenario (up to two orders of magnitude for open dumps with respect to human toxicity). This should be taken into account when comparing landfilling with other waste management options. Also, the actual performances of a landfill top cover (in terms of oxidation rates) and combustion technology (in terms of emission factors) appear as key parameters affecting the ranking of biogas management options. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable farming in the fruit production systems of the Piemonte Region of Northern Italy was examined using a multifunctional Ecological Footprint based method. The analysis is based on the quantification of four different ecological footprint applications related to different functional units: tons of product, nutrient content in the fruit produced, hectare of crop and 1000(sic) of revenue. Of the major fruit production in the region, apricot and nectarine show the best overall performance from an ecological and economic point of view. This result is mainly due to the low input requirements of the cultivation processes, combined with a good product mass and the high market value of the fruit. Kiwifruit production had the worst overall ranking due to the high requirement of agronomical inputs and a low market value of the final product. The problems and the key aspects of a multifunctional assessment are discussed from a methodological point of view. The results highlight that standard Ecological Footprint Analysis alone does not allow for the complete evaluation of the environmental profile of different production systems. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water intensity, or environmental footprints, of global primary copper production have been estimated. The primary data have been collected from the sustainability reports published by copper producing mines, operations and companies. The mines analysed in this paper are from Australia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Laos, Papua New Guniea, South Africa, Turkey, Finland, the USA and Canada. The typical range of energy intensity was found to be 10-70 GJ/t Cu, with an average of 22.2 GJ/t Cu. The range of GHG emissions was 1-9 t CO2-e/t Cu, with an average of 2.6 t CO2-e/t Cu. The large variation exists largely due to the form of copper produced, ore grade, sources of fuel and electrical energy, and to a lesser extent the reporting methods and procedures used by the companies. The water footprint averages 70.4 kL/t Cu but can range from several kilolitres to up to 350 kL/t Cu. Variation in water intensity is generally due to inconsistencies in reporting method, the geographical location of the mining operations, limited economies of scale of production site, and the climate type (i.e. arid regions in Australia and Chile or temperate to sub-arctic climates in Canada or Finland). It is recommended that company sustainability reports should clearly specify fuel use by type for vehicles, heat or electrical energy, sources of electricity and their mixes (including GHG emissions factors), and the boundaries of the operation for meaningful use in life cycle assessment (LCA). Sustainability reports should be published at regular intervals so that improvements towards more sustainable performance can be measured, and an LCA of mining activities can be developed for primary copper production more readily. The paper provides a valuable insight into the strong value of sustainability reporting for an industrial sector such as copper mining and how such data can be linked to LCA studies. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As interest grows in developing materials with low environmental impact, research on bio-based composites is gaining attention in the composites industry. Bio-based composites are polymer matrix composites reinforced with natural fibers. This study uses life cycle assessment methods to examine the environmental impact of and improvements to production processes for bio-based composites made of a renewable polymer matrix, poly(beta-hydroxybutyrate)-co-(beta-hydroxyvalerate), and natural fiber fabric. Investigated production improvements include targeting reduced thermal energy use, biomass reuse as a fuel source, and design alterations such as reduced waste and fiber replacement. The greatest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, and weighted impact score were found to be possible through incineration of excess biomass and the use of alternate fiber types. The application of thermal energy recycling mechanisms had little influence on the examined environmental impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodrying is a technology that makes use of bioenergy from organic waste with high water content to remove moisture and improve the utilization value and treatability of the waste. The essential feature of biodrying is the utilization of thermal energy, generated by aeration degradation of organic matter in waste, to evaporate water, thus achieving self-drying. The effectiveness of biodrying depends on the energy balance of the system, in which simultaneous heat and mass transfer are driven by biogenerated heat. We have focused on improving drying efficiency of these wastes and in this article we review the energy balance characteristics of the biodrying process. This encompasses the framework of biodrying energy balance analysis methodology, modeling expressions for energy release and utilization, and identification of the main model parameters and the main factors that affect the energy balance of the process. Finally, this review investigates possible ways to improve the efficiency of energy utilization. The heat source of the biodrying process can be calculated by combining a first-order biodegradation kinetics model of organic components with combustion heat (H c ) of biodegradable volatile solids (BVS). Heat consumption is mainly described by the enthalpy difference of the ventilation air flow through the system. The biodegradation rate and ventilation modewhich includes the ventilation rate, ventilation time, and ventilation distributionall influence the energy balance of the biodrying system. There are some possible alternatives that can be considered in order to optimize the energy balance and improve the drying efficiency, such asoptimizing organic biodegradation, improving material physical structures, utilizing sensible heat in exhaust gas in biodrying, and utilization of external low-grade heat sources, such as solar and industrial waste heat, to assist drying.Legislation on biofuels production in the USA(1) and Europe(2,3) is directing food crops towards the production of grain-based ethanol(2,3), which can have detrimental consequences for soil carbon sequestration(4), nitrous oxide emissions(5), nitrate pollution(6), biodiversity(7) and human health(8). An alternative is to grow lignocellulosic (cellulosic) crops on 'marginal' lands(9). Cellulosic feedstocks can have positive environmental outcomes(10,11) and could make up a substantial proportion of future energy portfolios(12,13). However, the availability of marginal lands for cellulosic feedstock production, and the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, remains uncertain. Here we evaluate the potential for marginal lands in ten Midwestern US states to produce sizeable amounts of biomass and concurrently mitigate GHG emissions. In a comparative assessment of six alternative cropping systems over 20 years, we found that successional herbaceous vegetation, once well established, has a direct GHG emissions mitigation capacity that rivals that of purpose-grown crops (-851 +/- 46 grams of CO2 equivalent emissions per square metre per year (gCO(2)e m(-2) yr(-1))). If fertilized, these communities have the capacity to produce about 63 +/- 5 gigajoules of ethanol energy per hectare per year. By contrast, an adjacent, no-till corn-soybean-wheat rotation produces on average 41 +/- 1 gigajoules of biofuel energy per hectare per year and has a net direct mitigation capacity of -397 +/- 32 gCO(2)e m(-2) yr(-1); a continuous corn rotation would probably produce about 62 +/- 7 gigajoules of biofuel energy per hectare per year, with 13% less mitigation. We also perform quantitative modelling of successional vegetation on marginal lands in the region at a resolution of 0.4 hectares, constrained by the requirement that each modelled location be within 80 kilometres of a potential biorefinery. Our results suggest that such vegetation could produce about 21 gigalitres of ethanol per year from around 11 million hectares, or approximately 25 per cent of the 2022 target for cellulosic biofuel mandated by the US Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, with no initial carbon debt nor the indirect land-use costs associated with food-based biofuels. Other regional-scale aspects of biofuel sustainability(2), such as water quality(11,14) and biodiversity(15), await future study.A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for Ethiopian rose cultivation. The LCA covered the cradle-to-gate production of all inputs to Ethiopian rose cultivation up to, and including transport to the Ethiopian airport. Primary data were collected about materials and resources used as inputs to, and about the product outputs from 21 farms in 4 geographical regions (i.e. Holleta, Sebeta, Debre Ziet, and Ziway). The primary data were imported in, and analyzed with the SimaPro7.3 software. Data for the production of used inputs were taken from the EcoInvent (R) 2.0 database. Emissions from input use on the farms were quantified based on estimates and emission factors from various studies and guidelines. The resulting life cycle inventory (LCI) table was next evaluated with the CML 2 baseline 2000 V2/world, 1990/characterization method to quantify the contribution of the rose cultivation chain to 10 environmental impact categories. The set of collected primary data was comprehensive and of high quality. The data point to an intensive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and greenhouse plastic. Production and use of these inputs also represent the major contributors in all environmental impact categories. The largest contribution comes from the production of the used fertilizers, specifically nitrogen-based fertilizers. The use of calcium nitrate dominates Abiotic Depletion (AD), Global Warming (GW), Human Toxicity (HT) and Marine Aquatic Ecotoxicity (MAET). It also makes a large contribution to Ozone Depletion (OD), Acidification (AD) and Fresh water Aquatic Ecotoxicity (FAET). Acidification (AC) and Eutrophication (EU) are dominated by the emission of fertilizers. The emissions from the use of pesticides, especially insecticides dominate Terrestrial Ecotoxicity (TE) and make a considerable contribution to Freshwater Aquatic Ecotoxicity (FAET) and Photochemical Oxidation (PhO). There is no visible contribution from the use of pesticides to the other toxicity categories. Production and use of greenhouse plastic are another important contributors, and just a bit less than the contribution of calcium nitrate to Abiotic Depletion (AD). The results of this study clearly indicate nutrient management and emissions from pesticide use, especially insecticides, as a focus point for environmental optimization of the rose cultivation sector in Ethiopia. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To compare potable water production plants on the basis of the environmental impacts generated by the treatment, including water resource depletion, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is often used as referential. A comparison based only on the environmental impacts can however be misleading. Criteria for drinkability are usually defined as thresholds and the actual water quality gain achieved by different treatment chains shall be considered in the assessment for a fair comparison. Otherwise, chains treating low quality water resources could be disadvantaged as compared to alternatives using higher quality water resource, also when the depletion of the raw resource is included in the impact assessment. In this study, a novel Cost-Performance (CP) indicator has been developed and tested for the case of two existing water treatment plants located in the Paris Region. CP is the ratio between the total environmental impact generated by the treatment (i.e. the LCA score, eventually monetarised) and the total quality gain from raw to treated water. For the test case, three life cycle impact assessment methods, ReCiPe, Stepwise and Eco-costs (the latter two including monetarisation) have been considered. The water quality gain is based on 8 relevant parameters measured before and after treatment. The parameters are further aggregated using the French water quality valuation system SEQ-Eau. Paired t-test is then used to calculate the confidence interval for the average quality gain which then determines the confidence interval of the CP. Independent t-test on the CPs of the two alternative plants allows checking if their performances can be distinguished. Although in the specific test case the comparison is not conclusive, due to the similarity between the water quality gains, realistic breakthrough values have been obtained, especially using ReCiPe. The meaningfulness of the monetarisation of the LCA results has been highlighted as well. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Artificial lighting systems are transitioning from incandescent to compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs in response to the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act and the EU Ecodesign Directive, which leads to energy savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Although CFLs and LEDs are more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, they require more metal-containing components. There is uncertainty about the potential environmental impacts of these components and whether special provisions must be made for their disposal at the end of useful life. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the resource depletion and toxicity potentials from the metals in incandescent, CFL, and LED bulbs to complement the development of sustainable energy policy. We assessed the potentials by examining whether the lighting products are to be categorized as hazardous waste under existing U.S. federal and California state regulations and by applying life cycle impact-based based assessment methods (note that "life cycle impact-based method" does not mean a general life cycle assessment (LCA) but rather the elements in LCA used to quantify toxicity potentials). We discovered that both CFL and LED bulbs are categorized as hazardous, due to excessive levels of lead (Pb) leachability (132 and 44 mg/L, respectively; regulatory limit: 5) and the high contents of copper (111 000 and 31 600 mg/kg, respectively; limit: 2500), lead (3860 mg/kg for the CFL bulb; limit: 1000), and zinc (34 500 mg/kg for the CFL bulb; limit: 5000), while the incandescent bulb is not hazardous (note that the results for CFL bulbs excluded mercury vapor not captured during sample preparation). The CFLs and LEDs have higher resource depletion and toxicity potentials than the incandescent bulb due primarily to their high aluminum, copper, gold, lead, silver, and zinc. Comparing the bulbs on an equivalent quantity basis with respect to the expected lifetimes of the bulbs, the CFLs and LEDs have 3-26 and 2-3 times higher potential impacts than the incandescent bulb, respectively. We conclude that in addition to enhancing energy efficiency, conservation and sustainability policies should focus on the development of technologies that reduce the content of hazardous and rare metals in lighting products without compromising their performance and useful lifespan.Carbon metabolism of a chemical industrial park remains scarce in literature, due to overwhelming data collection workload and intricate interfirm flow examination. Based on five-year intensive data collection and verification, this research presents the findings of one-year static carbon metabolism in a typical Chinese fine chemical industrial park. As to the total direct carbon input (0.38 million tons), 32% concern chemicals production, while the remaining 68% are related to energy conversion. Three common metrics, carbon efficiency, C factor, and E factor are applied to assess the performance of carbon flows. Based on an analysis of 380 raw chemicals and 130 chemical products, performance of the three kinds of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, dyes, and other fine chemicals, and the chemical industrial park as a whole are considered and compared with similar industrial area, respectively. The carbon efficiency of chemicals production is 69%, while the other 31% ends up in waste. The interfirm carbon flow accounts for 3.4% of the carbon inputs in raw chemicals. Pursuing local environmental goals (i.e., abatement of odor, chemical oxygen demand, and solid waste) results in greater CO2 emissions, which runs against protection of the global environment. Options to improve carbon efficiency were also discussed from three aspects. This study lays groundwork for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions, benchmarldng carbon efficiency, and conducting life cycle assessment on the park level.Biogas will be of increasing importance in the future as a factor in reducing greenhouse gas emissions cost-efficiently by the optimal use of available resources and technologies. The goal of this study was to identify the most ecological and economical use of a given resource (organic waste from residential, commercial and industry sectors) using one specific treatment technology (anaerobic digestion) but applying different energy conversion technologies. Average and marginal abatement costs were calculated based on Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies. Eight new biogas systems producing electricity, heat, gas or automotive fuel were analyzed in order to identify the most cost-efficient way of reducing GHG emissions. A system using a combined heat and power station (which is connected to waste treatment and digestion operation facilities and located nearby potential residential, commercial or industrial heat users) was found to be the most cost-efficient biogas technology for reducing GHG emissions. Up to (sic) 198 per tonne of CO2 equivalents can be saved by replacing the "business as usual" systems based on fossil resources with ones based on biogas. Limited gas injection (desulfurized and dried biogas, without compression and upgrading) into the gas grid can also be a viable option with an abatement cost saving of (sic) 72 per tonne of CO2 equivalents, while a heating plant with a district heating grid or a system based on biogas results in higher abatement costs ((sic) 267 and (sic) 270 per tonne CO2 eq). Results from all systems are significantly influenced by whether average or marginal data are used as a reference. Beside that energy efficiency, the reference system that was replaced and the by-products as well as feedstock and investment costs were identified to be parameters with major impacts on abatement costs. The quantitative analysis was completed by a discussion of the role that abatement cost methodology can play in decision-making. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development of value-added products made from post-consumer plastic recyclates has become an important goal in the quest for a sustainable society. To attain such goal, tools with higher accuracy and wider scope are increasingly necessary. The present work describes the application of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)/Life Cycle Costing (LCC) integrated model, with inclusion of externalities (environmental and social costs), to Anti-Glare Lamellae (AGL) made with High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). It compares an AGL currently manufactured from virgin HDPE (current AGL) with an alternative one made with recycled HDPE (optional AGL). The results obtained show that neither the current nor the optional AGL depict the best environmental performance in all impact categories. Nevertheless, there is a clear overall environmental and economic advantage in replacing virgin HDPE with recycled HDPE. The present work also makes evident that the LCA/LCC integrated model allows the identification of economic and environmental win win and trade-off situations related to the full life cycle of products. As such, its results can be used as valuable guidelines in product development. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a result of algae's promise as a renewable energy feedstock, numerous studies have used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental performance of algal biofuels, yet there is no consensus of results among them. Our work, motivated by the lack of comprehensive uncertainty analysis in previous studies, uses a Monte Carlo approach to estimate ranges of expected values of LCA metrics by incorporating parameter variability with empirically specified distribution functions. Results show that large uncertainties exist at virtually all steps of the biofuel production process. Although our findings agree with a number of earlier studies on matters such as the need for wet lipid extraction, nutrients recovered from waste streams, and high energy coproducts, the ranges of reported LCA metrics show that uncertainty analysis is crucial for developing technologies, such as algal biofuels. In addition, the ranges of energy return on (energy) invested (EROI) values resulting from our analysis help explain the high variability in EROI values from earlier studies. Reporting results from LCA models as ranges, and not single values, will more reliably inform industry and policy makers on expected energetic and environmental performance of biofuels produced from microalgae.Growth in biofuel production, which is meant to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil energy demand, is increasingly seen as a threat to food supply and natural habitats. Using photovoltaics (PV) to directly convert solar radiation into electricity for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is an alternative to photosynthesis, which suffers from a very low energy conversion efficiency. Assessments need to be spatially explicit, since solar insolation and crop yields vary widely between locations. This paper therefore compares direct land use, life cycle GHG emissions and fossil fuel requirements of five different sun-to-wheels conversion pathways for every county in the contiguous U.S.: Ethanol from corn or switchgrass for internal combustion vehicles (ICVs), electricity from corn or switchgrass for BEVs, and PV electricity for BEVs. Even the most land-use efficient biomass-based pathway (i.e., switchgrass bioelectricity in U.S. counties with hypothetical crop yields of over 24 tonnes/ha) requires 29 times more land than the PV-based alternative in the same locations. PV BEV systems also have the lowest life cycle GHG emissions throughout the U.S. and the lowest fossil fuel inputs, except for locations with hypothetical switchgrass yields of 16 or more tonnes/ha. Including indirect land use effects further strengthens the case for PV.BACKGROUND: As urban populations increase so does the amount of food transported to cities worldwide, and innovative agro-urban systems are being developed to integrate agricultural production into buildings; for example, by using roof top greenhouses (RTGs). This paper aims to quantify and compare, through a life cycle assessment, the environmental impact of the current linear supply system with a RTG system by using a case study for the production of tomatoes. RESULTS: The main results indicate that a change from the current linear system to the RTG system could result in a reduction, per kilogram of tomatoes (the functional unit), in the range of 44.4-75.5% for the different impact categories analysed, and savings of up to 73.5% in energy requirements. These savings are associated with re-utilisation of packaging systems (55.4-85.2%), minimisation of transport requirements (7.6-15.6%) and reduction of the loss of product during transportation and retail stages (7.3-37%). CONCLUSIONS: The RTG may become a strategic factor in the design of low-carbon cities in Mediterranean areas. Short-term implementation in the city of Barcelona could result in savings of 66.1 tonnes of CO2 eq. ha(-1) when considering the global warming potential, and of 71.03 t ha(-1) when considering that the transformation from woodland to agricultural land is avoided. (C) 2012 Society of Chemical IndustryA life cycle assessment has been undertaken in order to determine the environmental feasibility of hydrogen as an automotive fuel in Western Australia. The criterion for environmental feasibility has been defined as having life cycle impacts equal to or lower than those of petrol. Two hydrogen production methods have been analysed. The first is steam methane reforming (SMR), which uses natural gas (methane) as a feedstock. The second method analysed is alkaline electrolysis (AE), a mature technology that uses water as a feedstock. The life cycle emissions and impacts were assessed per kilometre of vehicle travel. Initial results found that hydrogen production under the SMR scenario produced less greenhouse gas, photochemical oxidation and eutrophication emissions per kilometre than petrol. Petrol produced less greenhouse gas and eutrophication emissions than hydrogen produced under the AE scenario, but the only improvement was in the terms of photochemical oxidation emissions. "Hotspot" analysis showed that while the usage life cycle phase of hydrogen produced very few emissions, the reliance on electricity and fossil fuels during production was responsible for emission levels higher than those from petrol. After wind-generated electricity was incorporated, the emissions were significantly reduced below the levels of those from petrol under both SMR and AE scenarios. However, with the incorporation of wind-generated electricity, the production of hydrogen, particularly from electrolysis, is more environmentally friendly than the SMR process. Copyright (c) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Successful market penetration of Fuel Cell (FC) technologies requires increased research and technological efforts towards improved efficiency, durability, costs and environmental performance according to accepted standards. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can help understand to what extent FCs are environmentally sound, to what extent they can be improved and what steps and components require attention. A guidance manual for LCA application to FC technologies, processes and systems, compliant with the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD), was developed within the European Union-funded Fuel Cell-Hydrogen Guide (FC-Hy Guide) Consortium. The purpose was to provide entrepreneurs, consultants and experts with a specific guidance tool for use in policy context and decision-making. This paper presents the application of the FC-Hy Guide scheme to Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells (MCFC), with focus on the following aspects: (1) data quality; (2) information needed; (3) background and foreground data; (4) FC stack and balance of system; (5) improvement potential; (6) sensitivity of results and data uncertainty. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emergy analysis is an environmental accounting approach which evaluates the memory of the geobiosphere exergy (environmental work) supporting economic systems, e.g. to make a product or service available via the use of natural resources. This paper presents the software SCALE (Software for CALculating Emergy based on life cycle inventories), which allows a rigorous and replicable calculation of the emergy associated to any product or service. The software exploits an ad hoc algorithm, fulfilling the emergy algebra rules, which requires as input the matrix describing a given system of interconnected processes, containing the amount of natural resources used by the output product and its linked technological processes. Starting from this matrix the algorithm performs a graph search across the corresponding network and records the output emergy associated with each of the explored paths linking the input nodes of the network (i.e. the emergy sources) to the output nodes (i.e. the studied products). The algorithm is specifically devised to be used with data coming (in matrix form) from any available life cycle inventory (LCI) database used in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the features of the software: the first one deals with heat generation from grape marc pellets, the second with drinking water production. The use of large LCI databases for emergy calculation using SCALE could contribute to extend the application of emergy systems evaluation in the practice of sustainability science. To our knowledge, this is the first software tool which allows exact calculation of the emergy of products using LCI databases,and therefore it achieves an operational integration between the well-known and standardized LCI methodology and emergy evaluation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.One striking feature of the biology of trypanosomes is the changes in mitochondrial structure and function that occur as these parasites transition from one life cycle stage to another. Our laboratory has been interested in the role the mitochondrial ATP synthase plays in mitochondrial changes through the life cycle. Analysis of the recently completed T. brucei genome suggested that there may be multiple putative genes encoding ATP synthase subunit c. While homologous in their 39 ends, these genes differ in their 59 ends and, if expressed, would result in three distinct proteins. Our analysis showed that all three of the possible transcripts were detected in both procyclic and bloodstream stages, although the c-3 transcript was less abundant than that for c-1 or c-2. The three isoforms of subunit c are produced in both the bloodstream and procyclic stages and their mature protein products possess distinct N-terminal regions of the protein as found within mitochondria. All three isoforms are also incorporated into the assembled ATP synthase complex from procyclic cells. Although multiple subunit c genes have been found in other organisms, they produce identical polypeptides and the finding of significant differences in the mature proteins is unique to T. brucei.There has been a growing interest in microgrids because of various advantages such as environmental benefits through its integration with renewables, possible cost-efficient replacement of the electricity infrastructure in isolated areas, and improvement of reliability and resilience using multiple energy sources. However, the microgrid faces various challenges in operational management because it deals with a multitude of energy sources mainly comprising renewables (municipal solid waste incineration and solar and wind energy), fuels (natural gas, hydrogen, and biofuel), and batteries. In this work, we developed a mixed-integer linear programming model for cost-efficient and environmentally friendly scheduling in the microgrid operation. The model provides optimal schedules with minimal cost or reduced environmental impacts, e.g., global warming potential, while satisfying the balance of electricity supply and demand. Notably, an additional set of diversity constraints is incorporated within the model to ensure reasonable allocation of electricity generation from each source, thereby allowing us to maintain grid reliability. To demonstrate the applicability and utility of the model, a case study of a hypothetical microgid system in Singapore Island is presented. A comparison result with the national grid system clearly proves the cost efficiency and environmental friendliness of the microgrid. We also investigated the effects of uncertainty in local demands and seasonal weather conditions on the microgrid scheduling, suggesting capacity planning to manage the dependency on national grid and renewable sources.Most Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies did not quantify the aquatic eco-toxic potential (aquatic ETP) of the brine disposal mainly due to the limitation of current life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) approaches. The purpose of this study is to develop an improved approach for assessing the aquatic ETP of brine disposal from seawater desalination plants. The proposed approach, named group-by-group approach, calculates the average aquatic ETP as the sum of the impacts generated by acknowledged groups of influential chemicals. This approach firstly identifies the influential chemicals. According to the chemical property and the impact pathway to the aquatic ecosystem, the important chemicals are then categorized into groups under three categories. Depending on the characteristics of the defined groups, different strategies are applied to determine the impact of each group. The group-by-group approach takes the merits of two most commonly-used approaches, chemical specific approach and whole effluent approach. The results from the case study indicated that this approach reduces the reliance on the comprehensive chemical composition analysis and temporal ecotoxicology test of the complex desalination brine. It also provides a more comprehensive coverage, not only considering the impact of organic chemicals and metals, but also including the contribution of inorganic chemicals. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A systematic methodology for integrated techno-economic and environmental assessment of CCS value chains is presented and applied to assess the impact of the CO2 concentration on an amine-based post-combustion CO2 capture process. In this methodology, the technical assessment, economic evaluation, and environmental assessment (focusing on the global warming effect) are integrated in order to avoid the unilateral understandings obtained when these assessments are performed separately. Seven cases with CO2 concentrations between 2.5 and 20.5% (mol) are investigated in terms of energy consumptions, the overall costs, as well as the climate impact of the capture process. The process simulation is performed with Aspen Plus (R), and the techno-economic evaluation using Aspen Process Economic Analyzer (R). A hybrid life cycle assessment approach is used to estimate the climate impact of the capture based on the results of techno-economic assessment. The CO2 avoided capture cost, which reflects both the techno-economic and environmental performances, is used to assess the comprehensive impact of the CO2 concentration on the capture process. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.For a commercial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) chain to be successful, it must satisfy a whole range of requirements: technical, economic, environmental, safety, and societal. A comprehensive, understandable and reproducible assessment of CCS projects is a complex task due to several reasons: wide range of actors and factors involved, substantial differences in the type and nature of both actors and factors, and numerous associated uncertainties. In this paper, a standardised methodology is described and illustrated on a few examples of relatively simple case studies. The proposed methodology provides means and tools for evaluation of several economic, environmental, and in the future also risk associated criteria and thereby enables selection of the most promising options for CCS. The methodology will also help to reduce the uncertainty by improving understanding of the most important dependencies and trends for the investigated key performance indicators as enlightened by the case studies examples. It could also help to design efficient incentives and measures to stimulate realization of CCS by identifying and evaluating the most important non-technical factors affecting the CCS chain viability. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.New and intensified technologies are being defined within the field of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) and the uptake is set to increase dramatically. This contribution focuses on three representative installations for CCS capture, whose safety and environmental issues might potentially be underestimated based on their presence in other industrial fields, but with different scales and uses. A simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the new hazard identification technique denominated DyPASI (Dynamic Procedure for Atypical Scenarios Identification) were used to identify respectively environmental impact and atypical accident scenarios and add a useful dimension to risk information that can particularly help in determining the best technological options. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of GHGTThis paper presents the new models developed for the natural gas fuelled power generation chain, involving various natural gas production methods, gas processing routes, gas transport options, and alternative gas based power generation with/without CO2 capture. The comprehensive and quantitative Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) database developed models inputs/outputs of processes at high level of detail, allowing to account for technical and geographic differences in the power generation value chain scenarios analysed. With the advantage of LCI models developed at unit process level, this work successfully identified the key operational parameters for alternative gas-fuelled power plants and the key component processes that emit the majority of GHGs across the gas supply chains. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of GHGTThis paper reports the development of a tool to assess the environmental performance of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) chains. The environmental assessment is done for the whole CCS chain. The tool has been designed to produce transparent and traceable results and is easy to work with. The tool is meant for a broad group of stakeholders for assessing CCS chains on their environmental performance. It provides insights into the environmental performance of CCS chains by using a learning-by-doing experience for users. It allows both knowledge sharing and stakeholder engagement so that view points of stakeholders are better understood and decision making on the deployment of CCS can be improved. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of GHGTOxyfuel combustion is a promising candidate for carbon capture. However, the high energy demand for cryogenic oxygen production is associated with a considerable loss in efficiency. A promising new development to reduce these losses is the application of high temperature ceramic membranes. This paper compares the environmental impacts of both air separation concepts in an Oxyfuel process using life cycle assessment methodology (LCA). The results are reflected to the environmental effects of conventional power generation without CCS. To consider technical innovation the concepts are modelled based on a state-of-the-art supercritical (600 degrees C) and on an advanced ultra-supercritical (700 degrees C) coal-fired power plant. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of GHGTThe availability of industrial alkalinity sources is investigated to determine their potential for the mineral carbonation of CO2 from point-source emissions in the United States. The available aggregate markets are investigated as potential sinks for the mineralized CO2 products. Additionally, a life-cycle assessment of aqueous mineral carbonation suggests that a variety of alkalinity sources and process configurations are capable of net CO2 reductions. The CO2 storage potential of mineral carbonation was estimated using the life-cycle assessment results and alkalinity source availability. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.We have developed a roadmap of CO2 utilization technologies for the California Energy Commission, a state government energy research, policy and permitting agency. The objective of the roadmap is to identify technologies that can make significant contributions to the state's 2020 and 2050 greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals. The state of California, under Assembly Bill 32, is committed to achieving reductions to 1990 GHG inventory levels by 2020 and, under Governor's Executive Order S-3-05, to 80 percent below those levels by 2050. The roadmap will guide future R&D investment and policy development for enabling carbon utilization technologies in California. For the purposes of the roadmap, we defined utilization as including teclmologies that produce a useful product from anthropogenic CO2, or through the processes of capture or sequestration of CO, Technologies may contribute to reductions directly by permanently sequestering CO2, or indirectly by displacing the use of fossil fuels or more potent GHGs, such as CFCs. Technologies considered include: CO2 as a working fluid (including enhanced oil recovery (FOR), enhanced gas recovery (EGR), and enhanced geothennal systems (EGS)), chemical feedstocks, biofuels, building materials, compressed gas energy storage, cushion gas for natural gas storage, and water and marketable minerals produced from displaced sequestration reservoir fluids. Evaluation criteria include technological maturity, potential market size, purity of CO2 required, commercialization time frame, environmental impacts, water use, data on energy-carbon life cycle analysis, and potential local economic benefits such as job creation. In addition, we evaluated the potential impact of non-technical barriers to commercial-scale adoption, such as the need for clear accounting protocols to provide incentives for CO2 producers to adopt these technologies to meet carbon standards. It may be possible to integrate different utilization approaches. For example, CO2 can be reduced to produce methanol or formic acid, is can be converted into fuels. Other processes to functionalize the carbon atom produce saleable chemicals, such as urea. By combining these two approaches, synthesis of even more chemicals directly from CO2 could be achieved. Widespread deployment of CO2 utilization technologies also depends on integration into planning of a future carbon-energy infrastructure. While single projects for some technologies, such as FOR, may create a demand comparable to the CO2 volumes generated by large sources, other technologies may have to be aggregated and/or combined with geologic sequestration to provide the volume of sequestration required. Deployment networks provide opportunities for cost optimization of pipeline infrastructure and for focusing public or private investment to facilitate commercialization. Currently in California, utilization projects are in the research, pilot, or permitting stages, including projects to combine urea production and EOR, produce high carbon-content building materials, and develop chemical and biological CO2 recycling technologies. None of these projects have yet reached the development stage necessary to demonstrate whether the technologies can contribute effectively to reducing California's GHG emissions. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The world faces a number of environmental issues. Developments especially technological) in our society are still of highly extensive nature and the forthcoming process of globalization significantly affects the state of the environment. There is also a slight increase in population, uncontrolled extraction of raw materials for production of materials, energy and urbanization of the environment. At the same time the amount of harmful emissions and wastes increase. Mineral resources are considerably limited. As well as limited resources to feed a growing population (problems of drinking water and food) limited resources and materials needed for construction of buildings; infrastructure development and industry provision to further ensure the welfare of people. It follows the need for change of approach in area of civil engineering. Concrete is the most used building material in the world, but unfortunately it also leaves a major carbon dioxide emission. In building industry, it includes cutting back carbon dioxide emissions by using less energy consumptive materials - that is, by maximizing use of waste products. Many articles have been written on how this industry can contribute. This can occur in a number of ways and one of them is use substitutes for Portland cement with waste products such as fly ash, ground-granulated blast furnace slag cement, rice hull ash, silica fume, pozzolans of all types, and ground limestone, in the process of concrete production. This paper is focused on the possibility of using fly ash to replace cement in concrete pavement. Mechanical properties, chemical resistance, freezing and thawing of fly ash concrete were measured and compared with the reference specimen (C 30/37), which met the requirements of STN 73 6123. Besides, the economic assessment of costs of both concretes (with/without fly ash) was made. Finally, environmental benefits of brown coal fly ash utilization in the area of Slovak road engineering based on its life cycle analysis are also presented. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Production of district heat is increasing in Norway, and this paper simulates the possibility to use its abundant national resources of forests and/or natural gas as energy carriers. In this study we analyze an idealized future energy scenario and compare the climate impacts from using forest biomass or natural gas as energy sources. Results show that bioenergy is a better energy option than natural gas, mainly thanks to the cooling contributions from the change in surface albedo that can more than offset the warming associated with biogenic CO2. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The heavy clay industry brick is in many countries a very important economic factor with far reaching financial and environmental impacts. In the industrialized countries the use of alternative fuels in the heavy clay industry is rather limited. The European brick industries common current research activity is mainly focused on synthgas from waste streams. In-house research activity by single brick companies does, at least in Europe, not take place at the moment. The situation in the developing and industrializing countries is far different: The use of alternative, fossil and renewable, fuels in these countries is still wide spread. The use of such fuels does sometimes have severe negative impacts on the environment. This paper gives an overview of the use of various renewable and alternative fuels in the heavy clay industry in several countries and the environmental and financial impacts these fuels have or might have on the operation of a typical installation in various parts of the world (Maghreb, Europe, USA, Australia, India, Vietnam). Two examples in which alternative fuels have been or are used, one in an industrializing and one in an industrialized country, are briefly presented. A comparative product life cycle analysis, LCA, is presented. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is currently widely used to quantify environmental impacts and thus support decision making within business sectors such as steel construction, which utilizes vast amounts of materials to deliver large-scale projects globally. Because the validity of LCA results greatly depends on the quality and appropriateness of the life cycle inventory (LCI) data referring to the environmental inputs and outputs associated with the examined subject, it is necessary to estimate the degree of uncertainty embedded in these data, which will inevitably be incorporated into the final LCA results. The purpose of this research is to examine the extent and the characteristics of uncertainty due to LCI data, based on findings for the case of commonly used structural steel components. Impact assessment results are calculated according to four relevant LCI databases and two assessment methods. The results are compared based on a detailed analysis of the impact caused for the production of the steel members. Major conclusions include the observation that data quality characteristics do not ensure the accuracy of the final LCA results because datasets referring to the same steel member type were found to lead to noticeable divergence. An overall lack of uniformity was observed within each of the mainly burdened impact indicators, while the influence of system boundaries was also examined. Issues concerning the collection of primary LCI data were raised, and it was also shown that different impact assessment methods provide different perspectives, which result in a more complete and factual approach.Sustainable development is a key goal in town and country planning, as well as in the building industry. The main aims are to avoid inefficient land use, to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and, thus, to move towards meeting the challenges of climate change. In this article we consider how the use of a traditional low-energy building material, namely clay, might contribute. Recent research has identified a promising connection between the reinforcement of clay for internal wall plastering with fibres from the wetland plant Typha latifolia (cattail) and the positive environmental effects of cultivating this species. If large quantities of Typha fibres were to be used in building, the need for cultivation of the plant would increase and create new possibilities for the renaturalisation of polluted or/and degraded peatlands. We explore the topic first on the basis of literature, considering the suitability of Typha for this application and possibilities for its sustainable cultivation, as well as implications for the life cycle analyses of buildings in which it is used. We then report (qualitatively) the results of testing different combinations of clay with natural plant (straw and cattail) fibres for their suitability as a universal plaster, which demonstrate clearly the superior properties of Typha fibres as a reinforcement material for clay plaster mortars.Construction process is the broad mechanism for the realization of human settlements and the creation of infrastructure that supports development. This includes the extraction and beneficiation of raw materials, the manufacturing of construction materials and components, the construction project cycle from feasibility to deconstruction, and the management and operation of the built environment In Greece, the complex problems shared by cities are evidence of the impacts of urban sprawl. This research aims to investigate the sustainability components affecting decisions for green building projects. The research method is based on a questionnaire survey of thirty two participants who asked to assess nine sustainability components namely: Life cycle assessment, energy efficiency and renewable energy, water efficiency, environmentally preferable building materials and specifications, waste reduction, toxics reduction, indoor air quality, smart growth and sustainable development and environmentally innovative projects, which affect the decisions for green building projects. The respondent results indicate how participants prioritized the sustainability components ensuring a better quality of life inside buildings based on the principals of "green" buildings economy. Energy efficiency and renewable energy is considered of high priority followed by the reduction of toxic materials, indoor pollution and water saving. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V. and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Organising Committee of ICOAE 2013Commercial cultivation of autotrophic microalgae for food production dates back to the 1950s. Autotrophic microalgae have also been proposed as a source for lipid-based liquid biofuels. As yet, there is no commercial production of such biofuels and estimated near-term prices are far in excess of fossil fuel prices and prices of biofuels based on terrestrial food oil crops. Future costs of autotrophic microalgal lipid-based biofuels are very uncertain. The energetic return of energy investment in liquid autotrophic microalgal biofuels is below a factor 5, even if optimistic assumptions are made about future technologies. Available studies do not allow for firm estimates of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of autotrophic microalgal lipid-based biofuels. Apart from greenhouse gases, life cycle pollutant emissions of autotrophic microalgal biodiesel may well be more of an environmental burden than the life cycle pollutant emissions linked to fossil diesel or biofuels based on canola or switchgrass. Whether the prospects for, and performance of, lipid-based biofuels from autotrophic microalgae in the more distant future will much improve appears to be largely dependent on breakthroughs in production technology which may, or may not, occur. (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The renewable energy technologies are developed as a tool for reduction of the climate change as well as the dependence on fossil fuels. These technologies are generally considered as environmentally friendly, nevertheless the impacts of production, installation, operation and final disposal of devices needed for energy conversion cannot be neglected in the total environmental balance indicators. Considering the above mentioned, the use of Life Cycle Assessment method seems to be reasonable in the case of renewable energy technologies. In this paper, the LCA method was applied to assess resource use and other environmental burdens related to entire life cycle steps of solar hot water system for multifamily house. Based on Global Warming Potential method as impact assessment tool, the carbon dioxide payback time was calculated.Time-dependent life-cycle analysis of breakwater projects is addressed in new software CSsim. The system provides tools for risk assessments of breakwater/harbor projects. Recent innovations within this system include improvements to the time-dependent breakwater profile evolution, in-stream computation of wave diffraction, and consequence analysis. Companion software called StormSim provides tools for extremal probabilistic analysis of storm parameters and simulation of future wave, wind, and water level storm life cycles. StormSim simulation strategy employs a traditional Monte Carlo simulation of future offshore storm life cycles based on repeated sampling from joint probability distributions. The modeled storm characteristics include typical wave and water level parameters, storm hydrograph, relative phasing between parameters, tidal influences, and storm time-of-year. Climate change issues are addressed. Storm wave life cycles are transformed to nearshore using a table lookup. The historical and simulated nearshore wave and water level time series are used within CSsim to determine structure damage and wave transmission for a traditional multilayer rubble mound breakwater using innovative time-dependent process modeling. Wave transmission into the bay is computed for historical and simulated storm time series. The consequences, such as downtime for the harbor or channel and damage to infrastructure, are determined for breakwater repair alternatives. The probabilities of exceeding damage limit states are also computed. The method provides a basis for selecting the least-cost alternative for rehabilitation or new construction.This chapter presents a broad environmental evaluation of residential Photovoltaic (PV) systems. It focuses mainly on how variations in irradiation levels, assessment methodology, and the lifetime of the solar panel influence the perception regarding its sustainability. Data from the Ecoinvent Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) database and the literature were used and various Life-Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods were considered for six different PV types. The results indicate that variations in irradiation levels, methodology and lifetime can significantly influence the final results and conclusions of a LCA. By carefully selecting assumptions and methodology, one can clearly influence the perceived environmental impact of PV systems. In addition, we state that multidimensional indicators should be used along with the one-dimensional ones. Also, the choice of the perspective (Hierarchist, Egalitarian or Individualist) has a major impact on the final results. In our opinion, the current focus on Greenhouse Gas (GHG)-emissions and energy efficiency ignores important environmental impact dimensions such as resource depletion.The intensive increase of biofuel demand has pushed the researchers to find a sustainable biofuel production system. LCA is the most accepted tool to assess the sustainability of biofuel production systems. The functional unit, scope, system boundary, reference system, data source, and allocation are the most important steps of an LCA study. Variations in these steps between studies affect the results significantly. Previous studies have shown that different biofuel feedstocks have different environmental burden hot spots, which refer to elevated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with a specific life cycle stage or facility process. The present chapter is an effort to compare various LCA studies on different biofuels. The well-to-wheel (cradle-to-grave) system is recommended for the assessment of biofuels production system. An LCA study of biofuels can demonstrate their sustainability and can guide the policy makers in adopting the policies for their promotions.There is a critical need to incorporate life cycle assessment (LCA) into research and development of renewable energy technologies, so that cradle-to-grave environmental concerns are identified early and communicated to technology developers. For example, environmental analyses of photovoltaic (PV) technologies may call attention to energetically burdensome processes with room for improvement, and can be used to compare the net energy balance of competing PV technologies. However, existing LCA frameworks are largely retrospective (i.e., requiring detailed data from existing industries and supply chains), and are thereby unable to provide timely information to decision makers. Large growth in the photovoltaic industry necessitates the development of anticipatory LCA methods, which can be used to explore potential environmental impacts of technologies and industries as they evolve. While the economic experience curves (i.e., $/watt) in PV project the costs to continuously come down as efficiency improves, it is not obvious that environmental experience curves (i.e., embodied energy/watt) are also monotonically declining. We review the boundaries and assumptions of all published PV-LCAs, and develop environmental experience curves for mono-Si, multi-Si, amorphous Si, and cadmium tellurium PV cells. The curves show decreasing manufacturing energy burden for silicon cells and relatively little improvement for thin film technologies. Using these environmental experience curves, we calculate the Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI) from cradle-to-use for each technology, plotting historic improvements for each technology and calling attention to the different rates of improvement. Results suggest alternate research and policy agenda,for example, silicon research should focus on decreasing manufacturing and supply chain investments while the net energy production of thin film PV may be improved largely through increases in efficiency.The paper provides some information regarding comprehensive evaluation of the environmental hazard caused by the operation of automotive vehicles with internal combustion (IC) engines powered by bioethanol fuel. It presents the assumptions made for the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the environmental impact of fuel, carried out according to the Well-to-Wheel (WtW) method, where the fuel preparation stage, including the acquisition of raw materials as well as the production, transport, and distribution processes, and the vehicle operation stage are taken into account. The technologies and raw materials used to make bioethanol of the first and second generation have been presented and compared with each other. Results of research on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and non-renewable energy input in the process of preparation of bioethanol fuels of the first and second generation have been analysed. Nine versions of the production process, differing from each other in the process methods used and the types of the biomass processed, have been examined.Wind energy is constantly gaining ground, especially in the UK, helping to tackle climate change and support energy security as the country wants to become less dependent to imported fossil fuels like coal and gas. Nevertheless, wind farm life cycle environmental impacts are not negligible and the construction and operation of wind turbine generators can cause several environmental impacts to the area where they have been sited. Therefore, it is reasonable to question, (a) whether there are "hidden'' environmental impacts from the use of renewable energy technologies, and (b) whether supporting wind energy in order to displace fossil fuels just substitutes one environmental problem with another one (or more). This chapter uses UK as a case-study to describe thorough processes of environmental assessment and the environmental impacts related to wind energy. This lecture creates a pallet of potential issues that should be taken into account with regards to implementing environmental energy governance practices. The two methods used here, are (a) the Environmental Impact Assessment approach (used to identify on-site impacts that wind farms have on the environment) and (b) the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, which connects the energy, material, wastes and emissions with a wide range of environmental impact categories. The findings could change the way we think about wind energy and might make it easy to understand why there are still people who are opposed to the development of wind farms.Electrochemical double layer capacitors, also known as supercapacitors are considered as a promising option for stationary or mobile electric energy storage. At present lithium ion and nickel metal hydride batteries are used for automotive applications. In comparison to this type of batteries supercapacitors possess a high specific power, but a relatively low specific energy. Therefore, the goal of ongoing research is to develop a new generation of supercapacitors with high specific power and high specific energy. To reach this development goal particularly nano materials are under investigation on cell level. In the presented study the ecological implications (regarding known environmental effects) of carbon based nano materials are analysed using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Major attention is paid to efficiency gains of nano material production due to scaling up of such processes from laboratory to industrial production scales. Furthermore, a developed approach will be displayed, how to assess the environmental impact of nano materials on an automotive system level over the whole life cycle.To estimate the benefits of reuse building, this study selected 8 street-house cases from "Old House, New Life" reuse movement and calculated the average CO2 emissions of rebuilding and refinishing in their life cycle. The results indicated that the average CO2 emission is 103.14 kg- CO2 /m(2) before renovation, and 5.73 kg- CO2 /m(2) after renovation. The efficiency of CO2 emission reduction can be raised up to 60% and 70%. If the street houses extend their life span from 60 years to 90 years, the life cycle CO2 emissions can be reduced from the original 1.89 kg- CO2 /m(2). yr to 1.39 kg- CO2 / m(2). yr. It's advantageous not only to make the best of old houses, but to decrease the environmental load.The increasing demand for sustainable renewable energy sources to reduce the pollution and dependency on conventional energy resources creates a path to assess the various energy sources for their sustainability. One renewable energy source might be very attractive for heat production and not so attractive for electricity and transport purposes. The commercial-scale production of these energy sources requires careful consideration of several issues that can be broadly categorized as raw material production, technology, by-products, etc. The life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used effectively in evaluating various renewable energy sources for their sustainability and can help policy makers choose the best energy source for specific purpose. Choice of allocation method is very important in assessing the sustainability of energy source as different allocation methods respond in present differently. The present chapter is an effort to highlight the importance of LCA of renewable energy sources.Although there is an ISO-standardized method for conducting life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, its application to renewable energy sources, in particular to bio-based renewable energy (bioenergy) involving agricultural chains, is not straight forward. There are theoretical and practical issues in goal and scope definition, functional unit, inventory analysis, and impact assessment. The debate between attributional LCA and consequential LCA is, for bioenergy, even more crucial than for ordinary products, especially when it comes to either direct or indirect land-use change. Data are often highly variable, and system boundaries are quite arbitrary. For bioenergy from biomass residues, allocation and recycling provide complications. The treatment of biogenic carbon is of particular interest. The choice of impact categories and the necessity of a regionalized impact assessment are another problem. This chapter provides a systematic overview of these topics.The need for new approaches in agricultural production such as these of integrated agricultural systems for food and energy production necessitates the rapprochement of these systems in terms of their environmental burden. This in combination with the importance of lignocellulosic materials for biofuel production makes the system under examination extremely complex. The feedstock production, transport, processing, and conversion of cellulosic materials have not been attempted to any real degree anywhere in the world; hence, a number of sustainability issues related to energy inputs and environmental quality need to be examined. This highlights the importance of LCA as an important optimization tool. Nevertheless, the interactions and intra-, interrelationships necessitate a thorough study of the system under examination and a good knowledge of life cycle thinking.This chapter evaluates the life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies of biomethane produced from lignocellulosic biomass as a biofuel and it is released into the environment in comparison with other bioenergy systems. A case study of grass biomethane that is produced by anaerobic digestion (AD) of grass silage and used as a transport fuel is described. The production of biomethane from AD is a well-known technological procedure that fulfills the requirements imposed by the environment, agronomy, and legislation in developing rural economies and sustainable biofuel production. All across Europe, the biomethane yield from various lignocellulosic biomass ranges from 10 to 1,150 m(3) h(-1). The LCA studies have been gaining importance over the past few years to analyze biofuel sources from cradle to grave in determining optimal biofuel strategies. Included in these, LCA studies is the indirect input of biofuel production processes, related emissions and waste as well as the fate of downstream products. Eighty-nine percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings are achieved by AD of grass silage to produce biomethane as a transport fuel.Though the energy balance for the cultivation of oil palm biomass for biodiesel production is positive, current debate has been raised on its environmental sustainability due to the high consumption of fossil fuel, fertilizer, and pesticides. This chapter employs the well-to-wheel variant of life cycle analysis (LCA) to assess the various potential environmental impacts, energy and land use/conversion impacts associated with the production of biodiesel from palm oil. Eleven (11) main impact categories, namely land use, fossil fuel use, climate change, ozone layer depletion potential, minerals/heavy metals, acidification/eutrophication potential, ionizing radiation potential, ecotoxicity potentials, carcinogens, respiratory organics, and respiratory in organics based on Eco-Indicator 99, are analyzed and discussed. Excluding transportation impacts, the oil palm cultivation stage contributed the highest overall environmental impacts (44 % of the total impacts) compared to the other stages. On the other hand, fossil fuel consumption was highest (43 % of total impacts) in the transesterification unit exclusive of all impacts from transportation.Liquid transportation fuels derived from biomass (biofuels) are widely promoted inter alia due to their perceived environmental benefits. The environmental sustainability of biofuels, however, must be rigorously tested using scientific tools. Several such tools, namely net energy ratio (NER), net energy balance (NEB), renewability, and life cycle assessment (LCA), are defined and then used to analyze the environmental sustainability of ethanol produced from cassava and sugarcane molasses in Thailand. These studies show the utility of such tools in the evaluation and also point various areas of improvement. Use of renewable energy sources in the supply chain, utilization of co-products as well as waste products, and good management practices at the farm such as use of organic fertilizers are some of the options that can help improve the environmental benefits of biofuels.The consideration of algal biomass in biodiesel production increased very rapidly in the last decade. A life cycle assessment (LCA) study is presented to compare six different biodiesel production pathways (three different harvesting techniques, i.e., aluminum as flocculent, lime flocculent, and centrifugation, and two different oil extraction methods, i.e., supercritical CO2 (sCO(2)) and press and co-solvent extraction). The cultivation of Nannochloropsis sp. considered in a flat-panel photobioreactor (FPPBR). These algal biodiesel production systems were compared with the conventional diesel in a EURO 5 passenger car used for transport purpose (functional unit 1 person km (pkm). The algal biodiesel production systems provide lesser impact (22-105 %) in comparison with conventional diesel. Impacts of algal biodiesel on climate change were far better than conventional diesel, but impacts on human health, ecosystem quality, and resources were higher than the conventional diesel. This study recommends more practical data at pilot-scale production plant with maximum utilization of byproducts generated during the production to produce a sustainable algal biodiesel.The contents of this Chapter focus on the theoretical sustainable energy approach and its application to hydrogen and methane production, on the basis of results obtained from experimental tests on the Anaerobic Digestion (AD) technology. The evaluation of sustainability is pursued through the life cycle assessment (LCA), energy return on investment (EROI) and energy payback time (EPT) approaches. The EROI and EPT parameters are defined and applied to score the sustainability of the H-2/CH4 energy carrier. The evaluation of the indirect energy following a life cycle assessment is consistent for the sustainability analysis. The sustainability of AD technology strongly depends on the reactor diameter: for values lower than 1 m the technology is not able to sustain the well-being of the society; the effect of the insulating material as well as the labor could be very important, and in this respect, thus, a sensitivity analysis on the sustainability is reported.This chapter looks at wind power from the viewpoint of life-cycle assessment (LCA). Such analyses have, of course, been conducted at various times throughout the development of wind power, and their results have varied as the designs and main characteristics of wind turbines have evolved. For that reason, modern double-fed induction generator (DFIG) multimegawatt turbines are considered here, as this is the most frequently used type on wind farms. On that basis, a comprehensive LCA is conducted on a wind turbine, covering all phases from its manufacture to its decommissioning and the processing of waste at the end of its useful lifetime.Hydropower studies are among the least discussed themes concerning energy systems life-cycle assessments (LCA). This scarcity may be related both to the relevance of this energy source in only a small group of countries and to the difficulty in obtaining the necessary data to conduct those evaluations. The present chapter gives some useful insights regarding specifically the construction of hydropower life-cycle inventories (LCI), aiming to help LCA practitioners involved with environmental evaluation of this source of electricity. Starting with a brief review of the available studies, methodological considerations are given, separated by each LCI methodological step. These recommendations are illustrated with a case study of Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant, the largest energy plant in operation worldwide, leading to conclusions and recommendations for further studies. With the present chapter, the authors hope not only to guide, but encourage the conduction of new hydropower plants LCIs, in order to improve the actual LCA databases used for renewable energy sources comparison.By means of the finite element(FE) method, the beam-shell model on elastic foundation of CRTS-I ballastless track was established. On the basis of Palmgren-Miner linear cumulative fatigue damage criterion, life cycle analysis method was used to analyze the CA mortar fatigue life under different train loads. Results show that the overall average CA mortar life is 10 to the 11th power. As the train load increases the CA mortar fatigue life decreases, the biggest drop is 4.1 percent. The danger areas of CA mortar fatigue life are on the slab ends. It is suggested that maintaining the CA mortar on the slab ends should be considered as the main task during the maintenance.This paper aims at proposing a structured approach in reliability design and analysis for mechatronic devices. Mechatronic systems are a complex integration of extremely advanced technological components able to perform tasks with high accuracy and flexibility. This complexity at all levels increases the risks of malfunction, failures and issues. The definition of an effective roadmap is necessary to provide prompt solutions in terms of product performances and duration. This study presents a set of reliability activities to be integrated in the product process development and during its cycle life. This approach may contribute to improve the mechatronic product functionalities and duration.Based on the existed study at home and abroad on product carbon footprint, we change product carbon footprint calculation perspective from "Life Cycle Assessment" to"Innovation Chain" perspective, trying to build a "Reverse-trace product carbon footprint calculation model based on innovation chain", dedicated to breakthrough results achieved by the original calculation method, at the same time, to provide a scientific basis for setting reasonable standard for product carbon, identifying the opportunities accurately for carbon emission and measuring carbon reduction potential potential accurately and implementing the carbon reduction strategies effectively.The aim of this paper is to compare electrical, mechanical and thermal characteristics of two self-bonding solutions to the impregnation one. An alternative solution is developed without Volatile Organic Compound (VOC). The study focuses on two parameters: the Partial Discharge Inception Voltage (PDIV) of turn-to-turn insulation and the thermal conductivity between the heart of the winding and the magnetic core. This study place the problem of electrical machines design in a broader context which includes the life cycle analysis, in order to go towards the eco-design of electrical machines able to reduce the global environmental footprint.One feature of globalisation is the increasing spread of international standards. In general, standards define benchmarks and rules for production. They can stem from a variety of sources ranging from NGOs to industries and governments. This article focuses on standard setting by international standards development organisations. We explore into the global regimes that govern standards for wooden products that are used in construction. Although the regimes are under the notion of "self-regulation", such forms of "private" governing are questionable from a democratic perspective. The article explores the composition and interest distribution of the actors steering standardisation in construction. Construction is one of the biggest producers of green house gas emissions. Since recently wood has been promoted as a means of carbon storage we focus on the norms that internationally are the most dominant with the intention to regulate sustainability and carbon efficiency for wood use in construction. Standardisation in this emerging field is still under development. The article aims to draw a comprehensive picture of the institutionalised rules and processes that up to now are globally most influential. In conclusion the process is best described as a "regulation of self-regulation" taking place mainly under the institutional umbrella of the private actors CEN and ISO, with some influence from governments.In world with limited amount of resources and with serious environmental pollution, it is obvious that more sustainable life style will be more and more important. The case study deals with possible way to sustainable development of dwelling located in Slovak Republic. The paper focuses on evaluation of energy and environmental performance of the building structures. The energy used in the extraction, processing and transportation of materials used in building structures can be significant part of the total energy used over the life cycle of a building, particularly in nearly-zero energy performance buildings. In order to reduce the embodied energy and embodied carbon, this study is aimed at material selection during the design stage of building. Material selection represents systematic and holistic approach to making decisions and can significantly affect the performance and sustainability of the building during its overall lifetime. For the purpose of optimalisation, it uses the method of multi-criteria analysis. The analysis of material compositions of structure alternatives shows that local available materials on plant base improve environmental potential of building because they lock carbon in their mass and consume solar energy for production of raw material source. The results of LCA (within boundary "cradle to gate") demonstrate that in spite of the increased amount of applied materials, the designed nearly zero energy family house with optimised structures achieves approximately 2.6 GJ per floor area and high negative balance of embodied carbon more than -700 kg of CO(2)eq per floor area and represents possible way to reduce the carbon footprint.Dynamic simulation, design improvements and control issues in solar power plants might compete with special considerations on storing techniques along with optimal store technically and from economic point of view. In order to provide the stability in production of power in spite of inconsistency in the source of energy, i.e., sun, overall concerns in the details of solar power plant, competition and comparison of common storing technologies should be taken into account in designation of the plant and plantwide control based on the performance of the storage in charging and discharging periods for the delivery and produce the electricity steadily. This research activity is mainly focused on the simulation of solar power plant for direct thermal energy storage technologies (double-tank and single-tank storage technologies) with DYNSIM (TM) suite to simulate dynamics and control the entire of plant and FLUENT (TM) for computational fluid-dynamics studies of thermocline effects in single-tank storage. Assessment of effectiveness, controllability, and flexibility of different direct technologies are brought together with the development of ad hoc control strategies to manage optimally.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an ISO standardized and widely used methodology for environmental assessment of products, processes and services, by identifying, quantifying and evaluating all the resources consumed and all the emissions and wastes released. The LCA methodology enables adequate comparison between different remediation options and can be used as a decision-making tool for the authorities. In this study, LCA was used to compare, in terms of their associated environmental burdens, two scenarios for managing the contaminated dredged sediments of the seabed of the Livorno Port area. The compared options were: (i) confined longshore disposal, i.e. placement of dredged material in a confined disposal facility; (ii) phytoremediation treatment, by an association of salt-tolerant shrub and grass species, aimed at turning the polluted sediment an agronomic substrate (techno-soil). The results of the life cycle impact assessment underline that the potential impacts of the two compared options involve different environmental problems. Indeed, for phytoremediation the most significant impacts are related to energy and resources consumption, while for the confined disposal is related to loads in the marine ecotoxicity categories. Therefore, phytoremediation can be considered a promising alternative solution for the management and valorization of contaminated dredged sediments.Thermal treatment of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) results in various types of solid wastes, distinguishing mainly bottom, boiler and fly ashes and slag. To minimise waste generation it necessary to carry out primary measures for controlling residue outputs that involve optimising control of the combustion process. Obviously, after primary measures a secondary treatment is required. The conventional bottom ash management is to carry out a solidification process. This solidification or stabilization process produces a material with physical and mechanical properties that promote a reduction in contaminant release from the residue matrix. Solidification methods commonly make use of inorganic binder reagents such as cement, lime and other pozzolanic materials. Once waste is stabilized, it is usually sent to the landfill. However, despite the heavy metal content, it is getting more and more common the use of this waste as a natural aggregate. In particular, it could be used as a raw material for clinker production, cement mortar or frit production. Other possible management options included its utilization as a drainage layer on a landfill and as a sub-base material in a road construction. In this work it was assessed different bottom ash management options. In this work the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to assess the environmental impact of different bottom ash management options. Specifically, the conventional ash solidification was compared with the ash recycling in Portland cement production.This chapter investigates the following issues: (a) key types of flame retardants; (b) toxic effects of smoke on fire victims and effects of flame retardants on smoke toxicity and fire safety; (c) acute effects of individual components of smoke on fire victims; (d) individual potential acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) toxicity of major individual flame retardants; (e) effects of flame retardants on the environment and (f) life cycle analysis on the generation of toxic combustion products and environmental damage when comparing flame-retarded products with products that are not flame retarded and have high flammability. The work demonstrates that the use of flame retardants presents an important benefit to society and the environment via the improvement of fire safety. Undoubtedly not all flame retardants ever developed or about to be developed are safe from all points of view, but the use of appropriate scientific knowledge and the regulatory environment can effectively ensure that if any specific material is shown to be unsafe it is kept away from consumers. In summary, this survey shows that the appropriate use of flame retardants, as a class, effectively provides improved fire safety via lowering the probability of ignition, the heat released and the amounts of smoke, combustion products and dangerous environmental toxicants. In consequence the use of flame retardants increases the available time for escape from a fire.Water scarcity, a function of supply and demand, is a regional issue with global repercussions, given that i) the increasing human population and demand for animal products will increase water demand and that it) global climate change is altering rainfall patterns worldwide. Water can be divided into "blue" (surface and groundwater), "green" (soil water subject to evapotranspiration) and "grey" water (water necessary to dilute pollutants to acceptable levels). On a global scale, agriculture represents 70% of blue water use. One main difference among all methods for assessing water use is whether and how they include green and grey water with blue water. The "water footprint" approach includes green and grey water, whereas life cycle assessment approaches tend to exclude them or to include only the variation in green water availability resulting from land use change. A second difference is whether water use is reported as a volume of water (L) or a volume weighted by a water stress index (L water equivalents). Because of these differences and the few livestock systems studied, methods give wildly different results for the same livestock product. Ultimately, water scarcity depends on blue water use. The contribution of livestock to water scarcity can be reduced by decreasing their water consumption and/or that of the irrigated crops they consume.We present the results of an eco-design approach to offer innovations that reduce the environmental impacts of the production of foie gras. A Life Cycle Assessment was carried out on the standard French foie gras production system. It shows that the feed explains most of the environmental impact of the product (more than 50% on average) and thus represents the most powerful action point. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the technical feasibility, the response of the biological system and the consequences on system sustainability of a substitution of corn by sorghum in the diet of geese The studies show that the use of sorghum is technically possible and that complete substitution of corn by sorghum reduced the environmental impact of the production of 1 kg of foie gras (global warming potential: - 18%, acidification potential : - 12%, primary energy use: - 23%, water use: - 62%). However, some indicators were reduced, such as the intension reuptake product (- 17 pts) due to a paler color of the fatty liver, and viability during the overfeeding period (+ 4.6 pts in mortality rate). The overall results suggest that the use of sorghum in the diet of geese may improve the sustainability of the production of foie gras. Some adjustments in production practices are needed to optimize the use of this feedstuff.It is significant to studying the supply chain of household electrical appliances in low-carbon product certification. In the situation of low-carbon product certification, this paper used the LCA method to analyze the carbon emissions of household electrical appliances and to study how to optimize household electrical appliances' supply chain management in the situation of China's low-carbon product certification.The presentation examines the factors that have led to the increased interest in the sustainability of paving products and specifically the sustainability of asphalt pavements. Four main sustainability factors have an impact on the pavement types that are selected: Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change Green Construction Mandates Pavement Economics Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) The National Asphalt Pavement Association focuses on sustainability demands, specifically recycled materials (RAP, RAS, and tire rubber), sustainable technologies (WMA, porous asphalt, alternative binders), and green metrics (rating systems, LCA). The presentation also examined the impact of pavements on fuel use. Although research conducted by MIT advocates that flexible pavements might require more vehicle energy, most other researchers recognize that MIT's modeling effort is too simplistic. A number of independent studies now confirm that the characteristic of smoothness accounts for the majority of pavement impacts on vehicle fuel economy and that the smoother the pavement, the greater the fuel savings for the driving public. Finally, the presentation examined the issue of pavement reflectivity and the urban heat island effect. Original research by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab was developed for buildings and modeled for pavements. Subsequent research has contradicted some of the original conclusions.The chapter starts with an overview on the recycling of construction and demolition wastes (CDW), followed by a brief analysis on the EU 70% recycling target for 2020. The chapter also includes a book outline.Waste arising from construction and demolition activities in civil and structural engineering, so-called C&D waste, represents a major share of total waste generation, showing its high importance from both a waste management and a resource efficiency perspective. Whereas re-use of construction products or elements is rarely practised, there is an increasing effort to foster C&D waste recycling in many countries requiring processing of the waste in waste management plants. The current and future framework for waste management plants is analysed with a focus on techno-economic and environmental life cycle, as well as resource policy aspects. Remaining and upcoming challenges with some C&D waste fractions, as well as future changes in quantity and quality of C&D waste supply and recycled aggregate materials demand, are discussed.Technological aspects of conventional demolition/deconstruction are discussed, and an economic analysis is performed on a case study, directly comparing these two options. This comparison illustrates that although deconstruction is not yet competitive with conventional demolition, within the conditions established in the study, some deconstruction scenarios do present economic advantages. In environmental terms, from a simplified life-cycle analysis (LCA) approach, it can be concluded that, with current techniques and transportation methods, only significant separation efforts that actually result in re-use or recycling of bulk aggregate materials may lead to sizable environmental impact reductions, compared to a conventional demolition scenario.This chapter describes and provides data on relevant technological, economic and environmental aspects of operating construction and demolition waste (CDW) recycling facilities which, among other output materials (e. g. wood, plastics, metals), produce average to high-quality recycled concrete aggregates. It defines and frames what is meant by recycled concrete aggregates' quality and what it might take to achieve, at an industrial level, that same quality. Market and economic conditions are discussed, focusing on the CDW recycling facility perspective, as well as environmental consequences of its operation, in a life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach.In considering the use of alternative aggregates in pavements, Recycled Asphalt (RA) is the most suitable alternative material. First, because the materials contained in RA are of a high quality, as fresh aggregates, they meet standard requirements. Second, RA can be 100% recycled. Good quality control is critical in determining the use of recycled material in construction projects. This chapter discusses various methods for RA assessment, mix design, mechanical testing procedures, recycling methods and future trends in the recycling of asphalt pavements.This chapter focuses on the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of aggregates obtained by recycling of demolished concrete - recycled concrete aggregates (RCA), and concrete made with such aggregates - recycled aggregate concrete (RAC). It includes methodological aspects, such as the treatment of allocation in the case of concrete recycling. The results of LCA case studies on two different RCA applications - as aggregate in structural RAC concrete and as material for road base, are presented. The potentials and limitations of LCA in comparing different waste management scenarios are discussed based on the published research. Recommendations regarding future research are given.This paper presents an application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in analyzing the environment aspects of rice straw-based power generation in Malaysia. It also compares rice straw-based power generation with coal and natural gas. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings were calculated. Rice straw power generation can save GHG emissions of about 32.35 kg CO2 / kWh compared to coal and 3.17 kg CO2 / kWh with natural gas based power generation. While the development of rice straw-based power generation in Malaysia is still in early stage, these paddy residues offer a large potential to generate electricity because they are abundant. Rice straw power plants not only could solve the problem of removing rice straw from fields without open burning, but also could reduce GHG emissions that contribute to climate change, acidification, and eutrophication, among other environmental problems.Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is currently the material most widely used for windows. However, their environmental impact is considerable and should be reduced. In order to contribute to the reduction, this paper presents an environmental impact assessment of PVC window products with the support of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and a novel prototype of the eco-window. Based on industrial data, the environmental impact of PVC window frame was analyzed in this research using an LCA method, the LCA results show that the PVC window has a high Carcinogen which may cause cancer in humans and the selling rubber strip has been taken more land use for degradation. Other toxic chemicals also make the PVC window one of the most environmentally hazardous consumer windows. At the end of the paper, a solution to reduce the environmental impact is proposed with new material and new structure design.An alternative pickle-chrome tannage step with a lower inherent potential environmental impact than the traditional one was developed. The innovative process is based on the use of tanning products containing chrome(III) salts with less astringency than the traditional ones. The use of sodium chloride and sulfuric acid is avoided and a significant reduction of chlorides and sulphates dissolved in the exhaust baths is obtained. The technical feasibility of the innovative chrome tannage process was experimentally explored. Several experimental activities on a pilot scale have been performed, in order to assess the quality of the finished leather obtained by the new pickle-free tanning process. The results have shown that the finished leathers are comparable to the ones obtained by the traditional process in terms of physical-mechanical and technical properties. Besides, a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) analysis was performed in order to check the actual reduction in environmental burdens due to the process proposed by the authors, in comparison with the traditional pickle-based one.To reduce the environmental impact of residential construction a holistic understanding of the building life cycle is necessary. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is well suited to the task of calculating the impacts associated with building products and systems so it is used in this study to assess building material options for a typical New Zealand house design. The LCA and underlying data adhered to international standards and framework. Four house designs comparing concrete and timber flooring, steel and timber framing and fibre cement and timber cladding were investigated. The different designs were modified to have the same thermal performance using NZS4214:2006. Consequently the difference in environmental performance can be attributed to the wooden building products. Substituting steel with timber framing results in a 20-30% decrease in global warming emissions, eutrophication and photochemical oxidation, but an increase in land and water use. Exchanging concrete with timber flooring results in a similar trend but there is a significant reduction of solid waste. Substituting fibre cement cladding with timber weatherboards yielded had little difference on the LCA-metrics. It is an over-simplification to focus on environmental performance as other building product characteristics are important.Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) are high performance load-bearing panels, which are considered to be the next generation construction material. Based on the results of the previous studies on SIP building, combined with the theory of life-cycle assessment, this paper constructs a dual-index evaluation model of economical efficiency and carbon emission in life cycle. By adopting the data of previous research, comparisons were conducted between SIP building and traditional masonry-concrete house, which suggests significant advantages of SIP building. The results implicate that SIPs would have extensive popularization potential in the process of development of low-carbon buildings.The environmental impact of a product throughout its life-cycle is a significant issue. Complex products such as footwear require many different materials and manufacturing processes, all of which have an effect on the overall environmental impact of the product. This chapter reviews the state of research in this area, looking at the effect of footwear materials, production and disposal on the environment and focusing on life-cycle assessment as a means of measuring this impact.Lubricants impact on the environment from raw material extraction to manufacturing, usage and disposal or reuse. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is utilised for evaluation of the environmental impacts of energy and material flows throughout the product life. Several comprehensive LCAs have compared mineral oil-based and bio-based lubricants, reporting varying conclusions. Environmental savings of biolubricants are more apparent at a local level than at a global scale. Negative impacts mainly stem from their agricultural production and performance in the use phase. LCAs should be used in industrial product design of biolubricants. Sustainable development indicators also consider the socio-economic impact of a product. Optimised lubricants determine significant energy savings.This paperdeals with specificthe geothermal heating project with low-temperature reservoirs in specific districts of China and attempts to make a comprehensive life-cycle assessment of it. We apply the environment impact potential method to evaluate underground construction, aboveground construction, operation and decommissioning stages of the project. Compared with other energies the result of 17.08 person equivalents indicates that geothermal is a clean energy. The coal-fired electricity used in operation stage is the largest source of environment impact.Thermal power plant is the main CO2 emission source in China. This paper discusses the carbon footprint of a thermal power plant in Liaoning province of China based on LCA (Life Cycle Assessment. The reviewed thermal power plant's total carbon footprint is about 6.52 million tons, of which 90.23% are from fuel combustion. The onsite emission is 5.91 million tons which depends on the power plant's technology level and energy efficiency. In order to alleviate carbon emissions at the power enterprise level, an integrated effort should be taken, including the optimization of energy structures, improvement of energy efficiency and technology level. Recommendations for thermal power plant management are that companies should make full use of geographical advantages and adopt high-quality fuels actively.In the process of supply chain management, the environmental impact is one important concern. Carbon footprint is a popular metric to quantify a product's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and assist supply chain management. In this paper, carbon footprints were calculated for three common milk products, 180 g Yogurt, 250 mL Fluid milk and 400g Skim milk powder (SMP) at the product brand level (YiYi (R)). The results demonstrated the well comprehensiveness and practicality of carbon footprint as streamlined indicator in supply chain management for agri-food products. The carbon footprints were compared among different life cycle stages as well as different products, and possible mitigation strategies were put forward for GHGs reductions. The relative contributions that different phases over the supply chain make were highlighted. On-farm emissions from cropping and livestock subsystems made up the majority of the carbon footprint, which deserved special attention in agri-food sector.Environmental impact is more and more being paid attention to in construction engineering. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an effective assessment tool; however, the application of LCA in construction engineering is still in its infancy, a series of issues on theoretical approaches and practical applications still exist. In this paper, the existing work of the application of LCA in construction engineering has been reviewed from two aspects of theoretical framework and application method, and then the existing problems were analyzed and some perspectives were put forward.Building exterior wall full life cycle assessment is the whole life cycle of various building materials, components production, planning, design, construction, operation and disposal phases in the material energy flow generated by the economic benefit, social benefit and environmental benefit,which is the sum of the evaluation. Full life cycle assessment is a very broad concept, it is to do the comprehensive analysis of the life cycle process, including the environmental systems, energy systems, natural resources, human health and so on. various aspects are to assess the influence of the potential, and ultimately to find ways to improve. Exterior wall full life cycle of economic evaluation model is established, the core content is a comprehensive economic evaluation of the scheme of building external wall structure, economic benefit evaluation of different exterior design, which provides the strong basis for the adoption of reasonable solution.With the rise of global warming issues due to the increase of the greenhouse gas emission and more generally with growing importance granted to sustainable development, process system engineering (PSE) has turned to think more and more environmentally. Indeed, the chemical engineer has now taken into account not only the economic criteria of the process, but also its environmental and social performances. To evaluate such non-economic performances is challenging and arduous. For this purpose, many approaches could be taken into consideration like environmental impact assessment, environmental impact indices, environmental risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, life cycle assessment (LCA) and Social LCA. Among these approaches, the coupling of PSE and LCA will be investigated here because it is viewed as a good instrument to evaluate the environmental performance of different unitary processes and whole process. The coupling can be of different nature depending on the focus of the study. Either the study is focused on PSE with an associated LCA study (LCA applied to PSE), or LCA study including mass balance and energy balance (PSE applied to LCA). PSE mainly focuses on design, operation, control and optimization of process with the help of computer based methods i.e. Computer Aided Process Engineering (CAPE). In this study we proceed to an environmental analysis of a non-food agro-process (i.e. biodiesel production from Jatropha) applying our CAPE based LCA proposal. To complement the experimental data the highly impactful unitary processes (i.e. transesterification) is selected for further analysis via simulation. A modelling tool on Microsoft Excel is developed to link LCA and process simulation. For results validation we also implement LCA in a dedicated tool (SIMAPRO) and simulation in a CAPE simulator (ProSim Plus). Furthermore this development of simulation based LCA framework can serve as a step forward for determination of sustainability and eco-efficient designing.There is commercial production of biofuels and biochemicals in Thailand. Yet there are no biorefineries at present. This study aims to evaluate the life cycle energy and environmental impacts associated with the production of biofuels and biopolymers for a model biorefinery in Thailand. Since there is currently no biorefinery in the country, secondary data sources from existing bioethanol and biopolymer plants were used for life cycle analysis (LCA). Sugarcane and cassava were chosen as feedstocks for the proposed biorefinery to produce bioethanol and polylactic acid (PLA). The system boundary was defined as cradle-to-gate with LCA methodology based on ISO 14040 series. Data were analyzed by using commercial LCA software, SimaPro 7.1, with Eco-Indicator 95 and CML 2 baseline 2000. The biorefinery system was modeled and its performance was evaluated for several factors such as fuel and biopolymer production, raw materials consumption, and total revenue generation for five scenarios. The results indicated that the biorefinery showed better performance in both global warming potential (GWP) and energy resources with increasing sugarcane usage. This was due to the use of bagasse and biogas as sources of fuel to generate electricity and steam by using a highly efficient electrical energy cogeneration process in the biorefinery. In contrast, increasing PLA production led to higher GWP and energy resource impacts due to high electricity and steam usage in the bioplastic production process. Finally, two Eco-efficiency parameters was developed in order to combine both environmental (GWP and energy resources) and economic (revenue) aspects by using average revenue gained and average impact associated. Among five scenarios studied, the results showed that S4 - high sugarcane usage and ethanol production - was the best scenario as it has higher eco-efficiency in both aspects.In this study we present results on the environmental impacts associated to the production of an interior side door panel made of hemp fiber and epoxy resin, by using the life cycle assessment method. The composite was manufactured through vacuum bag infusion that improves the fiber-to-resin ratio and results in a lighter product. In this case, the weight of the panel is a very important aspect for the impact evaluation because the vehicle use phase is dominant compared to the manufacture and end of life phase. Recycling of the composite through coprocessing in cement kilns was assumed as waste scenario. One limit of thermoset composite wastes is that they are usually landfilled because recycling is not easy. Recent applications of recycled composite have shown that thermoset composite regrind is an ideal raw material for cement manufacturing. The mineral composition of the regrind is consistent with the optimum ratio between calcium oxide, silica, and aluminium oxide. Additionally, the organic fraction supplies fuel for the reaction heat, right at the spot where it is needed most. LCA comparison with petroleum-based composites was carried out.Electro-chemical storage systems can be used in the electricity grid to store energy when demand is low and feed it back during demand peaks. The so-called load leveling might reduce the overall fossil fuel demand, but the production efforts for the batteries must be taken into account in a holistic approach. This study employs life cycle assessment with the cumulative energy demand impact assessment method. It is used as an indicator to evaluate if grid-integrated stationary battery systems in future load leveling applications create benefits which can offset the batteries' production efforts. Lead acid, nickel metal-hydride and lithium iron-phosphate batteries are assessed. Only lithium iron-phosphate batteries with a long life-cycle can reduce the overall fossil cumulative energy demand. Battery efficiency and degradation were found to be significant parameters in this analysis.Solid waste is predominantly domestic garbage and can be either solid or semisolid. It does not include industrial or hazardous wastes. Energy recovery from garbage is not a new idea globally but the method of determining the energy content of the waste stream has developed over the period. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool used to determine the environmental impact, of any product from its raw material (cradle) stage to finally being discarded (grave) as a waste deposit. For a complete LCA, scenarios have to be created which will aid the study by comparing results of activities with the base case scenario. The aim of this study are to cconduct a study for waste to energy (WTE) technology, harnessing household garbage for educational purpose and to create an LCA models to show the environmental impact on various scenarios. In this study, two scenarios were created, namely the base case scenario and energy recovery scenario, respectively. In the base case scenario, all the waste generated is taken to landfill, while in the energy recovery scenario, energy and material recovery is involved. All scenarios are based on a Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) case study. From the result of the LCA, about 12 MW of electricity can be recovered by harnessing the garbage in UTM, with associated high decrease in environmental emissions from 5 tons of CO2 and 390 kg of deposited goods at the landfills to -0.97 tons of CO2 and no deposited goods. This is because materials can be recovered from the waste that can be recycled. Gabi (TM) software was used for the LCA assessment. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The environmental impacts of the dregs disposal in cement kiln and conventional production were contrastively evaluated by life cycle assessment (LCA) in this study. The results showed that the environmental load ratio of both cement productions followed the order of energy depletion potential (EDP) > depletion potential (ADP) > global warming potential (GWP) > acidification potential (AP) > human toxicity (HT) > photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP). The comprehensive environmental load of disposal dregs was 14.465 x 10(-12)/a, which was 3.98% lower than that of the conventional cement production. Moreover, the reduced percentage of the environmental load followed the order of HT > AP > POCP > EDP > ADP > GWP, which indicated that the reduced percentage of human toxicity and acidification reached 10.62% and 10.06% respectively. Thus, considering the environmental benefits, it would be a better method to dispose dregs instead of limestone in cement kiln.This study aims to develop a simplified life cycle assessment model for residential buildings in Indonesia, which can be used under relatively poor data availability conditions. In order to obtain material inventory data and household energy consumption profiles for constructing the above model, a survey was conducted in Bandung in 2011. This paper analyzes life cycle energy and CO2 emissions employing an input-output analysis-based method within unplanned houses (n=250), which are classified into three categories, namely simple, medium and luxurious houses. The results showed that the average embodied energy of simple, medium and luxurious houses was 36.3, 130.0 and 367.7 GJ respectively. The cement consumed the largest energy and emitted the most CO2 emissions among all materials. The annual average operational energy of simple, medium and luxurious houses varied widely at 11.6, 17.4 and 32.1 GJ/year respectively. The energy consumption for cooking accounted for the largest percentage of operational energy. The profiles of life cycle CO2 emissions were similar with those of life cycle energy. The factors affecting embodied, operational and life cycle energy were also studied.An important facet of infrastructure project development is to achieve a dynamic balance between benefits and cost throughout the project's life cycle. However, in light of the uncertainty of a range of critical parameters governing this balance, it is rather challenging for project decision makers to adequately assess a project's feasibility. A risk-based, cost-benefit analytical framework to explore the feasibility of a project is proposed to aid decision making and provide recommendations. Uncertainty modeling is employed through the use of the Hasofer-Lind method or advanced first-order second-moment analysis. The framework developed brings together concepts from engineering reliability analysis, life cycle costing, autoregression, and uses the risk metric of probability of loss. This paper presents the logic behind the approach and tests the framework using a synthetic residential property project formulated around the economic perspective of an investor. It studies the effects of variations in cost and benefits, with particular focus on the uncertainty of future benefits. It was found that as the variation in total benefit increases, the probability that the investment would make a loss increases. For this study's scenario when the coefficient of variation of benefits (CVB) increased by 5%, the probability of loss (P-f) increased by almost 10%. Furthermore, when the expected benefit exceeds the expected cost, large uncertainty in benefits are seen as negative risk and would increase the chance of investment loss. An increase in CVB by 25% led to an increase of 15.8% in P-f. It was also found that low levels of benefit variation do not have a large effect on P-f for a given low cost level. In contrast, when the expected cost exceeds expected benefits, large uncertainty in benefit is seen as positive risk and would decrease the chance of investment loss. An increase in CVB by 25% led to a decrease in P-f by 22.1%. A study of investors' preference to risk was also carried out and it was found that for all levels of risk preference, increasing the uncertainty of future benefit should encourage investors to decrease their exposure to cost uncertainty in order to maintain their acceptable risk level. In addition, a small increase in variation in benefit has a larger effect on risk averse investors.This paper discusses a life cycle analysis of a thermal power plant to quantify environmental impacts of thermal power production at an old power plant. Coal is used in electricity generation worldwide and many power plants in developing countries are very old. Knowing the life cycle environmental impacts of such power plants is very important since they produce a lot of greenhouse gases. This paper develops life cycle inventories for an old power plant in Africa and identifies ways to minimize coal consumption for the same capacity of power output. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was done for the power plant. The emitted carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides and solid waste have adverse effects on flora, fauna, water bodies and humans. A number of environmental metrics were obtained for the thermal power plant and these form the basis for future comparative and extended studies.Rebound effects, also known as take-back effects, refer to the behavioral or systemic responses that can be experienced after a new technology or policy measure has been implemented. Such rebound effects have been experienced from efforts to reduce energy use, climate emissions, and other pollutants as well as polluting behavior. This chapter presents a detailed account of the concept of rebound effects and presents examples of different areas where rebound effects are observed. The chapter also discusses the usefulness and limitations of the concept rebound effects in relation to improving the knowledge of the unintended consequences of renewable energy. Finally, potential rebound effects connected to nanomaterials used in new types of energy harvesting technologies are presented.This chapter describes the life cycle approach to energy chain analysis and the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA). Consequential LCA (cLCA) is discussed in comparison with attributional LCA (aLCA). The methodological approach of environmental impact assessment (EIA) is also presented. The methods, with emphasis on cLCA, are discussed in the context of improving the knowledge of unintended consequences from various forms of renewable energy. The chapter presents a series of examples where cLCA are used to predict in advance, unanticipated impacts of different forms of renewable energy technologies throughout their life cycle, with particularly focus on the impact of biofuels production.Producing electricity by harvesting solar energy in photovoltaic (PV) solar cells can, as we will see, lead to serious unintended consequences. It is the manufacturing of the PV that causes the most evident impacts on health and the environment. The large consumption of water for rinsing wafers between etching steps, creates a subsequent need for wastewater treatment facilities. Production of the cells also leads to additional emissions of fluorinated compounds, such as hexafluoroethane (C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). These are all extremely strong greenhouse gases, with global warming potentials (GWPs) of 9,200, 17,200, and 39,800 times that of CO2. These emissions from PV manufacturing are worth serious consideration, as they are counter to the prevailing idea that solar PV cells are a very "green'' energy technology. In fact, massive production of new PV solar panels will imply huge global emissions of greenhouse gases. Alternative, lower GHG emitting production processes are being developed, but they rely on the use of very toxic and explosive gases, such as fluorine (F-2).Batteries are increasingly being used as a primary power source and for energy recovery and storage in renewable energy systems such as photovoltaic (solar cell) applications, wind energy and hybrid and battery electric vehicles. This paper aims to analyze the life cycles of lead acid, lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries in their applications and also some methods that may be used to safely recycle or dispose the batteries after they have been used.Oceans, islands, and coastal areas are at least as threatened by humanity's rapidly increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations as the remaining 30% of Earth's surface. Yet most of the discussion for sequestering the dominant greenhouse gas, CO2, involves deep sub-earth geologic structures limited to relatively small areas in continental plates. Humanity needs a secure carbon storage alternative that is available in more countries. Secure Seafloor Container Storage (SSCS) is an alternative that could safely store trillions of tons of CO2. The paper presents a computational geophysical, chemical, and economic model of SSCS. Our research shows that appropriate undisturbed geosynthetics will prevent contact with seawater for millennia (<0.06% osmosis loss per millennium). CO2 hydrate below 500 meters is a rock-like solid denser than water. Our life cycle assessment predicts a mass ratio of stored-CO2:materials needed of 1,700:1. The projected cost to compress pure gaseous CO2 to a liquid, convert the liquid to hydrate inside a geosynthetic membrane, monitor and maintain the structures is approximately $16 per ton of CO2.With the deterioration of the environment and energy crisis is becoming more and more serious, the development of low carbon industry has risen to national strategies. In the energy utilization and environmental effect, electric vehicle to the fuel vehicle has the advantages of energy saving and emission reduction prominent; the whole life cycle analysis, the electric vehicle complete life cycle into electric energy transmission cycle and vehicle life cycle of two parts; electric vehicle power battery as storage unit, strengthen the relationship between electric vehicle, new energy and smart grid among the three, promotes the development and application of clean energy, speed up the construction of smart grid, realize the real energy-saving and emission-reduction.A life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluation of the aerobic and manufacturing processes of nursery growing media and a growth analysis of Bougainvillea in protected environment have been realized in order to evaluate the environmental and agronomical quality of a compost coming from urban sewage sludge and green waste. The LCA has enabled the environmental impact evaluation of both the compost and the growing media; the analysis has been done considering a composting process lasting 120 days, made by a firm specialized in waste recovery. The structures and equipment together with all the inputs and outputs, both energy-related and coming from the composting matter, have been considered. The transport of the composted waste and the materials used to produce the media has been evaluated. In order to produce the growing media, the compost has been mixed with draining material at the 30% of the volume. The remaining 70% has been obtained mixing peat and compost in the percentages of 0%, 25%, 40%, 55%, and 70% of the total volume. The Bougainvillea plants have been grown for 150 days and fertirrigated with a different nutrient solution according to the growing media compost percentage. The electric conductivity of the nutrient solution and, therefore, its fertilizing ability, was inversely proportional to the growing media compost content. The growing media physical and chemical characteristics have been determined. Regarding the LCA analysis, the peat substratum productive process is the most impacting; this because of the peat extraction process and its transport from the north east of Europe to Southern Italy. At the end of the cultivation trial, the best ornamental performance has been obtained using the compost-based growing media compared to only peat.The aim of the study was to analyze environmental impact of cow milk production in an alpine area through a cradle-to-farm-gate Life Cycle Assessment and to identify farming strategies that can improve environmental sustainability without negatively affecting profitability. Data were collected from farmers in 28 dairy farms in an Italian alpine valley. The production of 1 kg of fat protein corrected milk (FPCM) needed 3.18 m(2) of land; land use on-farm was high because a large part of farm land consisted of pastures in the highland, used extensively during summer. Also the use of energy from non-renewable sources was high, 5.14 MJ kg FPCM-1 on average. Diesel for production and transportation of feed purchased off-farm was mainly used, especially concentrates which were entirely purchased. The average emission of greenhouse and acidification causing gases was 1.14 kg CO2-eq and 0.021 kg SO2-eq kg FPCM-1 . Eutrophication was on average 0.077 kg of nitrate-eq kg FPCM-1. Farms with low producing cows had higher environmental impact per kg of milk and lower gross margin per cow compared to the others. Low stocking rate farms had the best results regarding acidification and eutrophication per kg FPCM. Farms with high feed self-sufficiency had significantly lower acidification potential than the others. Increasing milk yield per cow, by selection and feeding, and enhancing feed self-sufficiency, by higher forage production and quality and more exploitation of highland pastures, seem to be the best strategies to improve ecological performances of dairy farms in the Alps while maintaining their profitability.The article presents a simplified method for estimating milk carbon footprint. LatteGHG is an electronic worksheet dedicated to the typical Italian dairy production systems. The literature concerning the estimation of milk carbon footprint has been examined, with particular attention to background information and methodologies that are adopted for estimating greenhouse gas emissions. The aim is to identify the solutions that best fit an intensive production system, such as the milk production system in Italy. The article includes an in-depth description of the procedures used in the estimation in order to ensure the greatest transparency. The proposed tool is also flexible because it allows the users to upload the most up-dated and suitable emission factors. LatteGHG has been tested by simulating four dairy farm models and has been shown to be able to at least point out differences due to milk productivity, the stocking rate and the manure management system.The Coal-fired power industry accounts for more than 80% of total power generating capacity in China. However, the coal-fired power stations produce approximately 10% of the global total carbon dioxide emissions. This paper uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method to calculate carbon emissions of a typical coal-fired power station in China. The result shows that carbon emission per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh) of the power plant is 1.018 kilogram. Besides, it is assumed that carbon tax will be imposed on power plants in China in the future. Supposing carbon tax rate is 20 similar to 200 Yuan/ton, the cost of power plant will increase 0.0204 similar to 0.2036 Yuan/kWh. As a result, the international greenhouse gas (GHG) emission constraints will have great negative impact on China's coal-fired power plant.Eco-towns in Japan have been developed through a national initiative, which was inaugurated in 1997, aimed to extend the life of existing landfill sites and to revitalize local industries. With years of development, 26 Eco-towns scatters around Japan, with approximately 1.65 billion USD was invested in 61 innovative recycling projects. This paper introduces the general situation of Japanese Eco-towns from a much needed recycling perspective. Subsequently, we take Gifu Prefecture, a typical eco-town in Japan, as an example, specifically analyzing the recycling process of plastic packaging. On this basis, summarize the Japanese experience in Eco-towns construction. Through analyzing the current situation of Chinese Eco-cities, find out the obstacle in construction, and make appropriate suggestions according to the Japanese experience, which is of a great significance to urbanization.In production processes Life Cycle Assessment represent effective tool for accessing information about potential and real impacts of products life cycle. Life cycle analyses of products involve especially material, energy and economic flows. But they are also suitable for information about production and consumption impacts on the workers, the consumers, the local communities, the society and other shareholders. Social Life Cycle Assessment is an extended concept for decision-making processes, covering traditional environmental content and on the top of that assessing social and socio-economic impacts related to products' life cycles. Many companies in metallurgy introduce Life Cycle Assessment and environmental management systems in consideration of potential savings and avoiding material wastage. But effective corporate management system should bring balanced information covering economic, environmental and social tasks of company's production processes. The contribution deals with the application of Social Life Cycle Assessment on metallurgical materials production and their limitations and problems. The main objective is to determine optimized ways of implementation of Social Life Cycle Assessment for company materials and products to reinforce company competitiveness, environmental performance and sustainability.This paper examines the potential for incorporating life-cycle assessment (LCA) into transportation planning and policy by drawing on analysis and precedent-setting policy structures from California. The paper first summarizes a case study of a transportation system LCA for Los Angeles County and briefly describes the existing structure of transportation policy, emissions regulation, and existing partial precedents for incorporating LCA and decision criteria into transportation policy and planning. Using standard criteria for good policy, the paper then identifies and describes six possible policy mechanisms for incorporating LCA into the transportation planning process. These include legislative requirements for project planning, a preferential finance program, a planning standard for regional transportation plans, an environmental impact assessment criterion, a criterion for selecting transportation control measures under the federal Clean Air Act, and a cap-and-trade system for transportation-related life-cycle emissions. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are identified, with an ultimate recommendation to refine and pursue a blended approach focusing on the regional planning scale.The nonnegative least squares problems are useful in applications where the physical nature of problem domain permits only additive linear combinations. We discuss the l(1)-regularized nonnegative least squares (L1-NLS) problem, where l(1)-regularization is used to induce sparsity. Although l(1)-regularization has been successfully used in least squares regression, when combined with nonnegativity constraints, developments of algorithms and their understandings have been limited. We propose an algorithm that generates the entire regularization paths of the L1-NLS problem. We prove the correctness of the proposed algorithm and illustrate a novel application in environmental sustainability. The application relates to life cycle assessment (LCA), a technique used to estimate environmental impact during the entire lifetime of a product. We address an inverse problem in LCA. Given environmental impact factors of a target product and of a large library of constituents, the goal is to reverse engineer an inventory tree for the product. Using real-world data sets, we demonstrate how our L1-NLS approach controls the size of discovered trees, and how the full regularization paths effectively illustrate the spectrum of discovered trees with varying sparsity and compositions.Green computing has become synonymous with low-power/energy computing. However, many environmental impacts of computing, such as manufacturing, are significant, possibly moreso than the operational/use phase. In this paper we motivate manufacturing as an issue of sustainable computing. We also demonstrate the manufacturing component of chips plays a significant role in the overall energy consumption of the computer over its life- cycle. Current trends indicate this component will increase at more aggressive technology nodes. In the context of life- cycle assessment of larger systems, manufacturing of computer systems deployed in buildings can be significant compared to the construction of the building itself.The electronics industry is now being impacted by a rapidly growing number of chemical regulations and substance restrictions. In the light of this trend, there is a significant risk of facing multiple substitutions for the same application unless potential replacement technologies are properly assessed against environmental and human health criteria in advance of their widespread adoption. To ensure that replacements for restricted substances have lower impact to human health and the environment, it is essential to be able to determine the impacts of the alternatives compared with the original substances. In this work, we evaluated tools and methods for comparing restricted substances to their alternatives, including restricted substance list (RSL) screening, risk phrase or hazard statement screening, multi-criteria decision analysis, life-cycle analysis (LCA), risk assessment and hazard scoring schemes. This chapter describes how these tools were incorporated into an integrated alternatives assessment protocol for evaluating the environmental and human health impacts of replacements for restricted substances.This paper presents centralized control for a wind farm using model predictive control (MPC) method. In order to solve intra-day unit commitment (UC) problem, the UC problem is solved by using the MPC method with short-term wind power forecasting. We introduce a new dynamics model for the UC with some constraints to utilize the benefits of the MPC method. The objective function considering the operation and maintenance costs is formulated by adding a new variable in order to average the operating time of each wind turbine (WT) within the whole time. The proposed method could solve the UC problems on-line using the prediction time horizon that could be selected flexibly considering time horizon based on wind power forecasting errors. From the simulation study using 10 WTs, we observed that the proposed dynamics model of UC effectively provided the optimal solution to each scenario. Numerical study will validate that the proposed method can be applied to solving the UC problem of a large scale wind farm by aggregating WTs.This paper presents the environmental comparison of Air Insulated and Gas Insulated switchgears for a specific 220 kV project. The study evaluates the impact of the two technologies on 18 environmental indicators. Results confirm that the GIS substation has a lower environmental impact than the AIS one on the majority of environmental indicators. This is due to electricity losses that are four times lower with GIS than with AIS. However, it is more impacting on global warming indicator due to higher quantities of SF6 used in GIS. The sensitivity analysis shows that the source of electricity generation, taken to model electrical losses during the 40 years of service life, has important consequences on the results: the more the electricity mix chosen has a strong environmental impact (when coming mainly from hard coal plant for example), the more the environmental comparison will be in favor of the GIS technology.Purpose - To date, sustainability in technology firms has focused on improving outputs while maintaining the same inputs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a six-stage model for enhancing inputs as well as outputs, named sustainable human capital. The paper extends traditional views of individuals as human capital, measured as formal education and direct experience to incorporate more holistic and humanistic views of informal education and indirectly related experience. This allows technology firms, whose lifeblood is innovation, to increase employee satisfaction and performance, quality and quantity of technology firm innovation, and societal well-being in the form of sustainable products and services. Design/methodology/approach - This paper extends concepts in innovation management to build a holistic model of employees as sustainable human capital. By bridging theory and practice, this paper provides a framework for knowledge-building partnerships and, thus, relational wealth, or the value created by and for a firm through its internal relations among and with employees. Findings - A model of sustainable human capital starts with pre-hiring processes (raw materials), on-boarding (design stage), training and development (production stage), developing external partnerships and integrating individual employees with the ecosystem (distribution stage), building internal relationships through mentoring (use and maintenance stage), and employee's exit through succession planning (recovery stage). Originality/value - Technology managers have been utilizing a lifecycle approach for product innovation, yet have de-coupled the product from the people, the fundamental source of innovation. Thus, re-incorporating the human aspect to the lifecycle approach offers practices for holistic engagement of employees in innovation. Just as management literature pushed economists to shift their views of employees from homogeneous units of human capital to heterogeneous individuals, sustainability literature must evolve in its approach to start thinking of employees as discrete individuals with differentiated skills that change over time.The oil palm industry heavily relies on the world market. It is essential to ensure that the oil palm industry is ready to meet the demands and expectation of these overseas customers on the environmental performance of the oil palm industry. Malaysia produces 13.9 million tons of oil palm biomass including oil palm trunk (OPT), frond and empty fruits bunches (EFB) annually. OPT felled in some oil palm plantations during replanting is transported to various industries and one such industry is the plywood factories. In order to gauge the environmental performance of the use of OPT as plywood a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was conducted for palm based plywood. LCA is an important tool to assess the environmental performance of a product or process. Life cycle inventory (LCI) is the heart of a LCA study. This LCI study has a gate-to-gate system boundary and the functional unit is 1 m(3) palm plywood produced and covers three types of plywood; Moisture Resistance Plywood (MR), Weather Boiling Proof Plywood Grade 1 (WBP Grade 1) at Factory D and Weather Boiling Proof Plywood Grade 2 (WBP Grade 2) at Factory E. Both factories use two different types of drying processes; conventional drying at Factory D and kiln drying at Factory E. This inventory data was collected from two factories (D and E) representing 40% of Malaysia palm plywood industry. The inputs are mainly the raw materials which are the oil palm trunks and tropical wood veneers and the energy from diesel and electricity from grid which is mainly used for the drying process. The other inputs include water, urea formaldehyde, phenol formaldehyde, flour and melamine powder. The outputs are the biomass waste which consists of oil palm trunk off-cut and emission from boiler. Generally, all types of plywood production use almost same materials and processing methods in different quantities. Due to the different process efficiency, Factory D uses less input of raw materials and energy compared to Factory E.The increasing global demand for edible oil has encouraged Malaysia to increase the areas under oil palm cultivation. The total demand for germinated oil palm seeds in the years 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 were 86.4, 76.5, 72.6 and 75.2 million, respectively. Production of germinated oil palm seeds is the first link in the palm oil supply chain. Therefore, good management practices at seed production stage is required to ensure only high quality germinated oil palm seeds are produced before sale to customers. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used as a tool to assess environmental impact of the processes throughout a product's lifespan and this approach is an important tool for assessing green house gas (GHG) emission. For this study, a gate-to-gate life cycle inventory (LCI) of a single germinated oil palm seed production unit was carried out. The functional unit used for this LCI was one germinated oil palm seed. To determine the environmental impact for the production of germinated oil palm seeds, information on the inputs were obtained. The inputs for the production of germinated oil palm seeds involved materials such as polyethylene bags, electricity, water, chemicals and fungicides. For this study, the system boundary involved seed germination process and management of germinated oil palm seeds. It was found that the amount of input such as materials and energy used in the production of germinated oil palm seeds was very minimal.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that quantifies the environmental impacts of products and processes and has been used in several fields, including transportation. This paper explains the fundamentals of LCA and describes the application of LCA to transportation. The paper specifically analyzes cooperative vehicle infrastructure systems (CVISs). CVISs are the basis of connected vehicle technology applications, which promise to provide improvements in safety, mobility, and the environmental impacts of transportation. A change to a CVIS requires renovations, primarily the addition of electronics and communication hardware to vehicles and infrastructure. Electronics manufacturing has been challenged because of its strong impacts on natural resources and energy demand. These impacts create concern about the potential environmental benefits or drawbacks of CVISs. Despite the need for additional electronics, the vehicle fuel savings yielded enough reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and energy use to offset the effects of the added electronics. Over the lifetime of a vehicle, drivers could reduce energy use by 106 GJ and prevent a net 71 metric tons of CO2 emissions.At the end of 2008 and in response to the economic crisis, the EU launched a Recovery Plan supported by technology initiatives, one of them being the European Green Car Initiative (EGCI) to help the car industry design next-generation passenger vehicles, which address fuel efficiency and carbon footprint issues at the level of the challenges of the 21st century. The European steel sector, which supplies material to the European car industry, which builds 1/3 of all passenger cars in the world, has launched an extensive, bold and imaginative series of projects to address lightweight design, cost, safety, sustainability, availability, recycling, electric applications and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which are the main technical topics, as steel retains an essential role in the design of these future green vehicles. Highlights of these are presented here, such as the development of new steel grades, either new advanced high-strength steels or low-loss steels for electric cores, the co-design of steel solutions with OEMs and the importance of LCA in vehicle conception.The term green computing has become effectively synonymous with low-power/energy computing. However, for computing to be truly sustainable, all phases of the system life-cycle must be considered. In contrast to the considerable effort that has been applied to address the use-phase energy consumption issue-ranging from battery powered embedded systems to data center servers-there is limited awareness or attention to the considerable energy consumption and environmental impacts from semiconductor fabrication. Current research indicates that fabrication is responsible for a significant factor of the energy utilized by these systems throughout their life-cycle. The trends of technology scaling coupled with developing hybrid fabrication solutions for integration of emerging technologies, while beneficial for use-phase power consumption, exacerbate these increasing environmental impacts from fabrication. Thus, design for sustainability is a grand challenge that must be addressed over the next decade.One main reason for the popularity of microalgae as an acceptable fuel source is their potential to maximize productivity (e.g., gallons of oil or fuel produced per acre per year) by converting the energy of solar photons during the process of carbon dioxide fixation into biomass energy, benefiting the environment. Marketing the coproducts generated (i.e., postextraction algal residue) could make transportation fuel from microalgae a viable product. The biofuel obtained from microalgae is qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed, with a focus on the energetic and environmental feasibility of this fuel for use in the transportation sector. Obstacles to and limitations of the process, in terms of energy and environmental performance, are identified. An important aspect of this issue is the need to improve product processing and recovery, which include mechanical and energy-intensive processes such as centrifugation, filtration, flocculation, and cell disruption. Results obtained so far indicate that the various strains of microalgae obtained from lagoons in Portugal and Spain offer a huge prospect for biodiesel production. However, results of life-cycle analysis with the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation model (updated with Portuguese data) lead to the conclusion that, at this stage, biodiesel from microalgae is not a valid option for the large-scale replacement of conventional fuels. Specifically, the extraction step for biodiesel production is detrimental in terms of energy and solvent use and must be refined.Life cycle assessment (LCA) as an environmental characteristics and environmental management tool, technically matured, has been more widely used in the international green building evaluation. This article analyzed the research of domestic and international Green Building Evaluation system and evaluation methods, on the basis of previous studies and combined with the development of green building, established a focused, scientific, practical, comprehensive multi-dimensional green building evaluation index system, combined with the life cycle assessment (LCA) and artificial neural network; and analyzed an engineering example to improve the assessment of green building, and help the organizations and individuals screen the green building, striving to achieve the humane, geographical, intelligent level in green building evaluation, by intelligent processing the evaluation indicators and taking advantage of the superiority of the computer technology.The aim of the paper is to address the EU policy for achieving low carbon economy by assessing energy technologies in electricity and road transport sector based on costs and impact on climate change and to indicate the most competitive electricity and transport technologies taking into account EU policy targets in GHG emission reduction, utilization of renewable and energy efficiency improvements. The main tasks of the paper are: to develop the multi-criteria framework for comparative assessment of energy technologies by applying MCDM methods for the electricity generation and transport technologies assessment. The interval TOPSIS method is employed in order to tackle the uncertain criteria. The assessment framework allows the comparison of electricity generation technologies and road transport technologies in terms of their GHG emission reduction and economic impacts and facilitates decision making process in energy sector seeking to implement EU energy policies. The main indicators selected for technologies assessment are: private costs and life cycle GHG emissions. The ranking of energy technologies based on private costs and GHG emissions allowed prioritizing these technologies taking into account the lowest GHG emission reduction costs.When aiming to a more sustainable world, enterprises such as aircraft and automobile industries are highly interested in light weight components and solutions. Of these solutions are aluminum wrought alloys that offer high potentials for dramatic weight reduction of structural parts. Nevertheless, the production of virgin aluminum is, however, highly energy consuming. Hence, and in SuPLight project, we are interested in recycled aluminum. The aim of this project is to address new industrial models for sustainable light weight solutions - with recycling in high-end structural components based on wrought alloys. In this article we address the issue of designing the reverse logistics chain assuring the needed volume of recycled aluminum for the production of L-shaped Front Lower Control Arms for personal cars.The evaluation method to compare municipal solid waste management (MSWM) systems has been presented. The results of the integrated waste management model (IWM-1), were used as the input data for the analysis. The results were integrated into life cycle analysis (LCA) impact categories. The authors present possible to calculate categories, and calculate them for the two MSWM scenarios. Next, the system performance was compared using a multicriteria method, called analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The hierarchical preference analysis on the World Wide Web software (Web-HIPRE) was applied to conduct the analysis. The criteria ratios for the AHP were assumed arbitrarily based on the best knowledge of the authors. Finally, the presented sensitivity analysis showed the confidence of the obtained results and pointed out the most important assumptions of the whole analysis. The two Cracow MSWM systems were used as a case study.Green building is being paid more attention at present with the development of resource economizing social, and there are wider development space for water conservation technology. Water conservation evaluation is accordingly becoming an important part in green building study. A green residential area, which including a series of water conservation project is selected as a study case. With evaluating its water conservation of incremental cost, rainwater utilization and comprehensive benefit, the paper aims at consulting on the investment decision in green building's water conservation technology to reduce the environmental impact on the earth due to water consumption and wastewater discharge.There is a huge impact of railway projects on the regional environment. A life cycle assessment (LCA) framework using quantitative methodwas developed to evaluate the environment impact of railway projects quantitatively. The railway life cycle was divided into 5 phases: survey and design, raw materials processing, construction, operation, and demolition. The life cycle environmental impact for railway project was categorized into 5 grades: great negative influence, little negative influence, no influence, little positive influence, and great positive influence. Based on the improved AHP method, a quantitative method was introduced to evaluate comprehensive environmental impact of railway projects. A railway project was analyzed as a case study. The results show that the major environment impact is occurred during the phases of operation and demolition. It is demonstrated that the method is applicable to assess the life-cycle environmental impact of railway projects. In recent years, China's railway projects construction has made great achievement and promoted the economic and social development. In the meantime, due to its large work quantity and long construction period, the railway projects have a major environmental impact([1,2]). Nowadays, the life cycle environmental assessment of railway projects in China is still under research. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the corresponding evaluation methods and theories on the life cycle environmental assessment of railway projects by establishing index system. In this paper, a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework using quantitative method was developed to evaluate the environment impact of railway projects quantitatively. The railway life cycle was divided into 5 phases: survey and design, raw materials processing, construction, operation, and demolition.The well-known benchmark process for hydrodealkylation of toluene (HDA) to produce benzene is revisited in a multi-objective approach to identify environmentally friendly and cost-effective solutions. Some guidelines to develop an eco-design framework for chemical processes, involving multiple criteria to be satisfied simultaneously are proposed, based on simulation, optimization, multiple choice decision making procedures and life cycle assessment. Two studies related to the selection of the primary energy source, either fuel oil or natural gas for the utility production system (UPS) of the HDA process are conducted. In each case, a multi-objective optimization problem involving the total annual cost of the process, and five environmental burdens is carried out.Solar energy is one of the most promising renewable energy alternatives for the replacement of traditional fossil fuels. CdTe photovoltaics (PVs) are thin-film solar cells that have the highest market share among all thin-film technologies. Previous LCA studies of CdTe PVs were based on the data from countries that have similar level of industrialization and strict environmental policies. Thus, to date, no LCA results have explored impacts of dramatic geographic diversity on environmental performance of CdTe PVs. Furthermore, few LCAs for CdTe PVs have taken uncertainty, which is an often overlooked but important aspect, into consideration. In this paper, we apply a " Cradle to Gate" LCA to two scenarios in China and the U. S. respectively and calculate the corresponding energy payback time and life cycle environmental impacts. Then, an uncertainty analysis is undertaken through Monte Carlo simulation. Both deterministic and uncertainty-based results indicate that geographic diversity can drastically change performance of CdTe PVs on environmental sustainability. However, this diversity of production locations has no correlation with other uncertain parameters. Results of uncertainty analysis indicate the influence of each parameter and provide guidance for future optimization of CdTe technology. Finally, comparison between CdTe and other PV technologies is displayed and discussed.A framework is proposed for sustainability study of coal based chemical and energy processes. Comprehensive analysis from efficiency, energy, economic, and environment perspectives. Process modelling, synthesis, and life cycle analysis, are conducted. Based on these multi-layer analyses, optimization is applied to explore for new process innovation and existing process modification. The analysis is illustrated with two case studies. The first case is the coal based methanol production process, which environmental impacts were investigated in a life cycle assessment. The second case is the co-production of electricity and methanol, in which key parameters are designed by mutual optimisation of energy efficiency and economic cost.Environmental process design methods often incorporate life-cycle assessment (LCA) as a deterministic black-box methodology. However, LCA suffers from several sources of ambiguity and uncertainty. These limitations are particularly severe for the multifunctional processes typical for the chemical industry. This work introduces a rigorous uncertainty assessment framework. The framework quantifies data uncertainties and also uncertainties that result from fixing multi-functionality in LCA by allocation. The method is derived from a matrix-framework for LCA and applied to a comparison of alternative chlorine electrolysis technologies.Wood and other biomass have the great potential of decreasing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, or at least mitigating the speed of the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide. This paper presents an analysis of the possible use of degraded land - thermal power plant ash ponds - for the growth of fast-growing trees for fuel wood and the subsequent utilization of this fuel wood by means of a verified technique - co-combustion with coal, or a proposed technique - pyrolysis. Pyrolysis of wood with the combustion of pyrolysis gases and carbon sequestration would provide approximately 26% more favorable effects on climate change than the co-combustion of wood in a coal-fired boiler.With more and more governments and organizations taking Carbon Footprint as the measure of greenhouse gas emission, the study about the calculation of carbon footprint has become a hot spot. The paper analyzed the carbon footprint in different stages of a product life circle, including manufacturing, transporting, using and disposing and also studied the part contributing the largest carbon emission. Especially in the calculation of carbon emission of manufacturing stage, recursive call algorithm was applied. The optimization design model of carbon footprint was also depicted. All the work this paper had undertaken facilitates to formulate specific carbon emission reduction measures.How do corporate select and employ streamlined indictors to facilitate supply chain management on its products is an issue of interest and practical significance. Both water footprint and carbon footprint are popular indicators with sound public perception to assess product environmental performance and further undertake supply chain management. As a big contributor to water scarcity as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, immense potential exists in agrifood sector for reducing environmental impacts exerted from humanity's production and consumption activities. In this paper, water and carbon footprints were calculated for three soybean products at brand level, under a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate the applicability of the concept and method for food product. The results demonstrated well comprehensiveness and practicality of water and carbon footprints as streamlined indicators in product supply chain management for the selected products. Footprinting values were compared among different life cycle stages and possible mitigation strategies were put forward for water use and GHGs reductions throughout the supply chain.External wall exterior insulation technology is one of the most common energy-saving measures in the existing residential building energy saving reform, after confirming the energy-saving standards, how to choose the optimum insulation thickness to make it the lowest cost of renovation in the life cycle is of great significance. Taking a dormitory building in Shihezi area as an object, we developed the mathematic model based on life cycle analysis for calculating the optimum insulation thickness. Finally we simulated the building with DeST-h and analyzed the economic.The introduction of life cycle assessment (LCA) to the building industry is important due to its ability to systematically quantify every environmental impact involved in every process from cradle to grave. Within the last two decades, research on LCA has increased considerably covering from manufacturing of building materials and construction processes. However, the LCA application for buildings in Asia are limited and fragmented due to different research objectives, type of buildings and locations. This paper has attempted to collect and review the application of LCA in the building industry in Asia from the selected publications over the last 12 years, from 2001 to 2012. The result shows that most LCA research basic methodology is based on International Organization of Standardization (ISO) 14040 series but with variance. It is found that the operational phase consume highest energy and concrete responsible for the highest total embodied energy and environmental impact. It also suggested that building material with low initial embodied energy does not necessarily have low life cycle energy. Overall, findings from LCA studies can help to make informed decisions in terms of environmental impact and help realizing sustainable buildings in the future.Resource shortage and people's concern about the problems in eco-environment deterioration will have a great influence on building energy efficiency. Building energy efficiency is base for achieving green reduction and energy conservation is the key point to green building design. This paper starts with green building concept and evaluation, studies the important role of science and technology in the development of green building and analyzes building energy conservation from three aspects: green materials, energy-saving measures and building practices. The paper aims to promote the development of China's green building in the new era. Exploration and research of green building began in the 1960s and derived from a concept proposed by Italian-American architect PaolaSoleri, namely, "eco-architecture" (or "Arology"), which combines the two terms- "ecology" and "architecture". In the 1970s and 1980s, industrial countries began to focus on building energy efficiency research. With the gradual perfection of energy-saving building system, new technologies such as solar energy, geothermal energy, wind energy, energy-saving envelope emerge as the times required. By the 1990s, green building theory study gets formally started. In 1991, a book named "Green Building: Design for Sustainable Development", written by Brenda Vale and Robert Vale, put forward the overall designing concept, which takes into consideration all elements like energy, climate, materials, household and regional environment. In "21st Century Agenda", released in 1992, China put the environment protecting and the development of green products as an important part of the sustainable development strategy. Over the past 10 years, many countries have extensively carried out green building practices, developing the corresponding green building evaluation system, applying the thought of comprehensive optimization design and using new technologies, new materials and new processes, so that consumption of the resource and energy could be minimized during the construction process, and the sustainable development of the human environment could be guranteed.The method of Life Cycle Assessment is used to assess environment impact of building envelope in its life cycle in this paper, in order to achieve the purpose of providing reference for selecting optimal envelope and reducing the environment impact caused by envelope.There has been great attention focused on the effects of first and second generation biofuels on global warming. The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) have mandated production levels and performance criteria of biofuels in the United States. The thermochemical conversion of biomass to ethanol shows potential as a biofuel production pathway. The objective of this research was to examine the alcohol yields and GHG emissions from the thermochemical conversion process for six different feedstocks on a gate-to-gate basis. GHG analyses and life cycle assessments were performed for natural hardwood, loblolly pine, eucalyptus, miscanthus, corn stover, and switchgrass feedstocks using a NREL thermochemical model and SimaPro. Alcohol yield and GHG emission for the hybrid poplar baseline feedstock conversion were 105,400 L dry metric ton(-1) and 2.8 kg CO2 eq. per liter, respectively. Compared with the baseline, loblolly pine produced the highest alcohol yields, an 8.5% increase, and the lowest GHG emissions per liter of ethanol, a 9.1% decrease. Corn stover, due to its high ash content, had the lowest yields and the highest GHG emissions per liter of ethanol. The results were highly sensitive to the ash and water content of the biomass, indicating that biomass properties can significantly affect the environmental impact of the thermochemical ethanol conversion process.This study inspects the benefits of using RAP on both financial and environmental aspects from life cycle viewpoints. The Life Cycle Cost Saving (LCCS) and the Life Cycle Carbon Reduction (LCCR) of various RAP mixtures (RAP content 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%) to the virgin mixture are introduced and applied in this study. Carbon emission data of associated materials are obtained from PaLATE database. According to calculations, the RAP mixture's corresponding cost ratio and service life ratio exceed certain thresholds to have advantages over virgin mixtures. From a financial perspective, the service life ratio of RAP mixtures to virgin mixtures must be larger than the cost ratio of these two materials. For environmental benefit, the service life of RAP mixtures must be over 70% (40% RAP) to 90% (10% RAP) of that of the virgin mixture.In the context of climate change, emissions of different species (e. g., carbon dioxide and methane) are not directly comparable since they have different radiative efficiencies and lifetimes. Since comparisons via detailed climate models are computationally expensive and complex, emission metrics were developed to allow a simple and straightforward comparison of the estimated climate impacts of emissions of different species. Emission metrics are not unique and variety of different emission metrics has been proposed, with key choices being the climate impacts and time horizon to use for comparisons. In this paper, we present analytical expressions and describe how to calculate common emission metrics for different species. We include the climate metrics radiative forcing, integrated radiative forcing, temperature change and integrated temperature change in both absolute form and normalised to a reference gas. We consider pulse emissions, sustained emissions and emission scenarios. The species are separated into three types: CO2 which has a complex decay over time, species with a simple exponential decay, and ozone precursors (NOx, CO, VOC) which indirectly effect climate via various chemical interactions. We also discuss deriving Impulse Response Functions, radiative efficiency, regional dependencies, consistency within and between metrics and uncertainties. We perform various applications to highlight key applications of emission metrics, which show that emissions of CO2 are important regardless of what metric and time horizon is used, but that the importance of short lived climate forcers varies greatly depending on the metric choices made. Further, the ranking of countries by emissions changes very little with different metrics despite large differences in metric values, except for the shortest time horizons (GWP20).Agriculture is a diverse field that produces a wide array of products vital to society. As global populations continue to grow the competition for natural resources will increase pressure on agricultural production of food, fiber, energy, and various high value by-products. With elevated concerns related to environmental impacts associated with the needs of a growing population, a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework can be used to determine areas of greatest impact and compare reduction strategies for agricultural production systems. The LCA methodology was originally developed for industrial operations but has been expanded to a wider range of fields including agriculture. There are various factors that increase the complexity of determining impacts associated with agricultural production including multiple products from a single system, regional and crop specific management techniques, temporal variations (seasonally and annually), spatial variations (multilocation production of end products), and the large quantity of nonpoint emission sources. The lack of consistent methodology of some impacts that are of major concern to agriculture (e. g., land use and water usage) increases the complexity of this analysis. This paper strives to review some of these issues and give perspective to the LCA practitioner in the field of agriculture.The discharge standards for wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in China are trending towards increasingly stringent nutrient removal requirements over recent decades. However, the current paradigm for WWTPs has a singular focus on effluent quality, seldom considering the broader environmental consequences of the treatment required to meet these more stringent limits. In this article, the operating data of 17 WWTPs with three different discharge standards were collected. Using an inventory-type approach, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and eutrophication potential (EP) of each plant were calculated. Results show diminishing marginal returns in terms of pollution reduction as the level of treatment increases, taking environmental influences into consideration. Therefore, the strictest standards are not the most cost-effective ones in current China. Rather than focusing strictly on point source dischargers and requiring advanced treatments, regulatory agencies should reconsider their water quality protection strategies.The recycling of anthropogenic nutrients derived from the wastewater management systems is often characterized by a complex and uncertain scenario, due not only to the nature of the process but also to the involvement of different stakeholder groups. Over the past 10 years in Switzerland, policies regarding the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer have gradually shifted to a ban on use in agriculture. As a result, alternative methods for the recycling of anthropogenic nutrients may play a relevant role in the near future. This paper uses the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to examine more closely the nutrient-recycling dilemma by analysing the preferences of a group of German-speaking residents in the city of Zurich for various management scenarios. Nutrient recycling by the use of urine separation toilets and the BioCon treatment process are presented as possible management alternatives in addition to current practice. The study shows that AHP can incorporate the respondents' preferences and multiple objectives when evaluating alternatives with different attributes.Life cycle assessment has been used to compare a rubberized asphalt road prototype with a conventional asphalt road, designed within the EU LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance Project ROADTIRE "Integration of end-of-life tires in the life cycle of road construction", to be constructed in Lamia, Greece. The analysis covers the construction of the road bituminous layer, base and subbase, including production of materials and components, energy consumption, materials transportation and maintenance of the road. The disposal of the road is not included within the analyzed system. The assessment shows that, in both cases (conventional and rubberized asphalt layer), the main contribution to the environmental impacts is due to bitumen production and fuel consumption in the top asphalt layer construction. However, although the addition of end-of-life tires crumb rubber to the bitumen in the road construction yields increased burdens on some impact categories, rubberized asphalt shows overall reduced environmental impacts with respect to conventional asphalt, mainly due to its better performance over time.This review article describes analytical chemistry beyond green chemistry and all efforts that contribute to a more sustainable development. A background is given on sustainable development and green chemistry. Examples of "greening" strategies for sample preparation, chromatography, and detection are given. Thereafter, the review discusses how and why a method or a solvent could be claimed as being "green". Green metrics for analytical chemistry is discussed, including the environment, health, and safety (EHS) index and life cycle assessment (LCA). The choice of solvent and the criteria for a solvent being "green" is also discussed. Finally, sustainable analytical chemistry is described by considering the three important "legs" so as to obtain sustainable development-economic feasibility, societal relevance, and environmental soundness. Hopefully, the review article will stimulate some new perspectives on the difference between greenness and sustainability in analytical chemistry.In automotive, mechanical, medical and plant engineering, and the construction industry, lightweight construction is considered one of the most important future technologies, providing good market opportunities for small and medium-sized companies. Due to the increasing relevance of energy and resource efficiency, not only technical and economic, but also environmental aspects have to be considered when assessing lightweight construction. Only with the consideration of environmental and economic aspects modern technologies can succeed in different fields of application and gain societies acceptance. In the study commissioned by the e-mobil BW GmbH in Germany, the topic of sustainability in lightweight construction is analyzed on basis of environment and health (Rommel et al. 2012). This article gives an overview on the most important findings and results of this study with special focus on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of lightweight construction considering the lightweight materials steel, high performance steel, aluminum and carbon fiber composites.In this study, extraction processes for the acquisition of extracts from natural sources are evaluated. These extracts are considered as ingredients for the production of improved food and cosmetics products. Innovative extraction methods such as ultrasound and microwave assisted liquid extraction using green solvent systems will be evaluated for the isolation of the desired natural compounds. A life cycle assessment was carried out to evaluate the sustainability of these extraction methods. Taking into consideration that the extracts have multifunctional properties due to their richness in both antioxidants and colorants, they are considered to be good replacement for the corresponding synthetic ones. This review targets to suggest effective alternative solutions to food and cosmetics industries, in order to minimize their environmental impact over the product's lifecycle, improving their sustainability and viability, through the use of renewable natural raw materials and non-polluting processes.Ships have an indispensable role in trading and transportation. Due to the growth of population and the new demands of the growing economies, the need for shipping is increasing. Besides shipping causes a considerable problem for human and environmental issues, increasing amount of shipping activity will constitute a greater danger by more energy consumption and harmful emissions to air and water. Ship operation is the most emission-produced phase of a ship's life cycle. Due to the spillages, accidents, gaseous form of emissions as a result of main and auxiliary engines' activities, and discharges to water (solid and liquid wastes), ship operation phase has a considerable role of the environmental impact of a ship. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a totally new method that is used by universities, companies and even local and international legislators. LCA aims to reduce, minimize and if possible, initialize the consumed energy, harmful emissions and discharges in a whole life cycle of a product. LCA consists all of the phases from the raw material to disposal/recycling. In this paper, LCA method is presented and the method's effects on reducing the emissions and discharges during ship operation. Waste management modeling is highlighted.Shipbuilding industry is known as one of the hardest metal industry with several chemicals and hazardous material. Most of the production processes such as welding, painting, blasting and fiberglass production have direct impact on workers' health. There are several wastes and pollutants being released during shipbuilding and ship repairing processes. The volume of these wastes and pollutants create a huge amount with major risk on environmental and ecological point of interest. The effect of shipyard on environment and human health can be reduced with technological improvements on shipbuilding industries. The inputs of these processes are various types of products and raw material such as primarily steel and other metals, paints and solvents, blasting abrasives, and machine and cutting oils with an outcome of different forms (solid, liquid, and gaseous) of wastes and pollutants as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Particulates (PM), waste solvents, oils and resins, metal bearing sludge and wastewater, waste paint, waste paint chips and sent abrasives. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the most innovative and effective methods to minimize and initialize the harmful emissions caused by manufacturing and operation. LCA is also aims to minimize the energy consumption. For ship production phase is a long-term and emission-produced stage in a ship's life cycle, LCA method is used to manage the logistics and production process to provide time efficiency and besides, the method is used to reduce the emissions and discharges. In this paper, LCA method is explained and a new LCA method is established for a green shipyard.The methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a support tool for environmental management that helps to identify and quantify the use of natural resources in production processes of products along their life cycles, allowing identification of potential environmental impacts. The aim of this study was to analyze, applying LCA, the production process of grilled hake steaks in the Food Service Segment in Portugal, focusing the water use and effluents contamination. The results showed the employment of about 1300 liters of drinking water and the production of 1315 liters of effluents per ton. Preeminence is given for the effluent from thawing and preparation stages of hake, which showed high levels of organic matter and solids, as well as appreciable levels of total coliforms and viable microorganisms at 30 degrees C. Issues of eco-efficiency are commented as contribution to support decision-making for sustainable management of companies of the Food Service Segment.This document builds on an environmental relevance study of metal processing for the Eco-Design of lightweight components in the aviation industry and highlights the relevance of metal processing for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based Eco-Design of lightweight applications. The environmental relevance of metal processing is often low when compared to the environmental impacts of the preceding mining and refining of ores as well as their processing into metal ingots, so that the negligibility of metal processing has become a commonly used axiom of many LCA studies. Even for the production of lightweight components in the aviation industry, this credo is commonly recited while referring to the good recyclability of metal. This paper analyses whether this credo of the negligibility of metal processing in LCA can really hold true for the production of lightweight components and crystallizes its major environmental hotspots.Many organizations are increasingly aware of the relevance of the environmental impacts of their products and want to measure, and systematically reduce them. Recognized methods such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provide a central basis to do so. LCA takes into account the entire life cycle of products and provides information on their environmental impacts, based on inputs and outputs of materials, resources and energy. However, many companies have difficulties integrating environmental impacts in strategic and operational planning. One way of doing this is the monetization of environmental impacts. The approach presented in this paper allows for a systematical and objective monetization of environmental impacts. It does so by using the simplex algorithm, an established method for production planning. This allows for an economic optimized portfolio planning that takes into account environmental restrictions. This approach represents an innovative way of an systematic integrated economic and environmental portfolio planning.Currently, there is no common methodology for a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) rating within a common sustainability scheme of buildings in a European context. Due to local and regional differences, comparisons between different buildings in different countries are so far not yet possible. An increasing need for a transparent sustainability classification method of buildings on a European level induced the European Commission to fund the project "OPEN HOUSE". The local and regional differences in legal framework, energy demand calculation methodology, weather conditions, etc. made it a prerequisite that the developed LCA methodology enables comparisons of European buildings on the basis of national ratings. Special focus was paid to the development of national benchmarks for the construction and use phase for both a "quick and basic assessment" as well as a "complete assessment". Summarizing, a LCA methodology was created that serves for comparisons and ratings of different buildings within different local contexts.Construction and demolition wastes (C&DW) are usually recognized as not dangerous, but their accumulation can generate serious environmental problems. In spite of C&DW high potential to be reused/recycled, the practical procedures need to be assessed in terms of environmental consequences. The objective of this study is to quantify the environmental impacts of C&DW recycling/reuse, specifically in the production of aggregate 0/30 min, comparative to those generated during the natural inert processing, in terms of global impacts addressing the whole process and for each technological phase. The analysis was carried out using Life Cycle Assessment methodology, assisted by SimaPro software, and based on primary data collected directly from the Italian Emilia Romagna region. Three methods were used for impact quantification: Eco-Indicator 99, EDIP/UMIP and Cumulative Energy Demand. The analysis revealed that the environmental impacts generated by C&DW recycling/reuse accounting for about 40% of the impacts induced by natural inert processing.Life cycle analysis data of the free-living, bacterial-feeding Panagrolaimus sp. strain NFS 24-5 were assessed at different temperatures using a hanging drop method with single male and female individuals and a food density of 3 x 10(9) Escherichia coli cells ml(-1). Lifespan at the moment when the first egg was laid was 5.7 days at 21 degrees C and 4 days at 25, 27 and 29 degrees C. The intrinsic rate of natural increase (r(m)) was 0.53 at 21 degrees C, 0.81 at 25 degrees C, 0.93 at 27 degrees C and 0.81 at 29 degrees C, corresponding to population doubling times (PDT = ln 2/r(m)) of 1.3, 0.9, 0.7 and 0.9 days, respectively. Over 200 offspring per female were produced at 27 degrees C. All other temperatures yielded fewer offspring. When females were kept without males, the life span was 49 days, whereas the last reproductive female (hanging drop with male individual) died after 16.5 days. These data will contribute to the interpretation of nematode population dynamics recorded in liquid culture.The actors involved within the Parmigiano-Reggiano food chain are growing their interest about environmental issues related to this important PDO product. This study aimed to develop a model for applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to this product system, and through this model, to identify major impacts and hot spots. Applying this model to a specific organic dairy farm, and the related product system, this study showed that major environmental impacts for all impact categories considered are related to the agricultural phase, mainly land occupation for fodder production, and greenhouse gases (methane and nitrous oxide) from enteric fermentation and manure management. Infrastructure, mainly buildings, showed to have great importance in some impact categories.The integration of environmental aspects in design frameworks has become a necessity for manufacturers to maintain their market position. This is especially true in the Computer Aided Design (CAD) phase, which is the last phase in the design process. At this stage, more than 80% of choices have been made. However, the environmental impacts generated by the remaining choices are significant. Features Technology (FT), the core of the CAD phase, is used to integrate environmental aspects. This paper presents a literature review of different works based on FT to ecodesign products. First, we present an overview of features in CAD systems. Second, we present a critical review of works done on ecodesigning with features that we divide into two subsections: the first one concerns CAD-Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) integration (methodologies, prototype tools, and commercial tools), and the second one, works using FT in CAD phase to reduce the environmental impact of one life cycle stage such as material selection or manufacturing. Finally, we propose an approach based on FT for ecodesigning products to promote simple new ecodesign tools which will help the inexperienced designer.Motivated by the need to address the challenges of global climate change, this paper develops and implements a project-based life-cycle framework that can be used to estimate the carbon footprint for typical construction work items found in reconstruction, rehabilitation, and capital preventive maintenance projects. Through applying existing life-cycle assessment methods and inventories, the proposed framework considers the life-cycle emissions of products and processes involved in the raw material acquisition and manufacturing phase and in the pavement construction phase. The framework also estimates emissions from vehicular use and maintenance operations during the service life of the pavement. The Project Emission Estimator (PE-2), a web-based tool that implements the project-based life-cycle framework, can be used to benchmark the carbon dioxide (CO2) footprint of highway construction projects. This paper suggests ways contractors and state transportation agencies can implement the PE-2 to benchmark and help reduce the CO2 footprints of highway construction projects.Using wood wastes provides an opportunity to avoid fossil carbon emissions from the combustion of natural gas or other fossil fuels. Using a life-cycle assessment, a new biomass boiler sourced by forest residuals, sawmill residuals, and clean demolition material (CDM) was compared with an existing natural gas boiler for supplying heat to a large-scale district heating system. Potential alternative uses of these feedstocks, such as recycled or reprocessed products, and landfill alternatives were also evaluated for their relative impact on carbon emissions. We found a reduction in emissions from natural gas of 0.62 unit of carbon for every unit of carbon in the wood combusted. Temporary losses of forest carbon after initiating the collection of forest residuals were minimal over a short interval. These losses were more than offset by the joint production of wood products displacing fossil emissions. Carbon mitigation in the Pacific Northwest was increased from 5.5 metric tons/ha/y from the production of forest products with no collection of forest residuals to 6.5 metric tons/ha/y after completing the first rotation, an 18 percent reduction in fossil emissions per hectare of forest. The potential to recycle CDM into wood products may ultimately raise the efficiency in avoiding carbon emissions by 40 to 60 percent, although available wood quality and logistics currently favor use of CDM as biofuel feedstock. In the absence of any "incentives" or value for carbon mitigation, feedstock collection costs relative to low-cost fossil fuel will substantially limit the use of waste woods for biofuel or recycling alternatives.Biofuel production is dependent upon agriculture and forestry systems, and the expectations of future biofuel potential are high. A study of the global food production and biofuel production from edible crops implies that biofuel produced from edible parts of crops lead to a global deficit of food. This is rather well known, which is why there is a strong urge to develop biofuel systems that make use of residues or products from forest to eliminate competition with food production. However, biofuel from agro-residues still depend upon the crop production system, and there are many parameters to deal with in order to investigate the sustainability of biofuel production. There is a theoretical limit to how much biofuel can be achieved globally from agro-residues and this amounts to approximately one third of todays' use of fossil fuels in the transport sector. In reality this theoretical potential may be eliminated by the energy use in the biomass-conversion technologies and production systems, depending on what type of assessment method is used. By surveying existing studies on biofuel conversion the theoretical limit of biofuels from 2010 years' agricultural production was found to be either non-existent due to energy consumption in the conversion process, or up to 2-6000 TWh (biogas from residues and waste and ethanol from woody biomass) in the more optimistic cases.This paper aims to provide a short overview on the complex aspects and growing concern about energy in architecture by gradually zooming into it, starting from a macro-scale analysis of building contribution in the total EU energy consumption, related policies, user behaviour's impacts and vernacular architecture techniques; then looking at the meso scale of building energy performance during its use, dynamic simulations of heat transfer and insights from a whole life cycle analysis of the energy involved during construction and disposal phases; finally, at the building element micro-scale, describing local heat transfer and human thermal comfort measurements. Conclusions gather recommendations and further scenarios where different stakeholders and techniques can play their part for a wiser and more sustainable energy use, and a better built environment for us and those to come.Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) is an important tool for industry and policy makers, used to determine the actual emissions of a product or technology throughout its whole life cycle. In case of energy production systems or power plants, analysis of energy required to produce the materials and processes; emissions resulting from various processes for materials production and processes resulting into their Cumulated Energy Demand (CED) and Global Warming Potential (GWP) become important parameters when making decisions on further research, development and deployment of any technology. The method of carrying out such analysis is explained through a case study.Within the next 40 years, the global livestock industry will have to considerably increase production in order to supply the population with animal-source foods, yet the industry must concurrently improve the three metrics of sustainability - economic viability, environmental stewardship and social responsibility. Environmental stewardship is currently the area for which animal agriculture is under the most scrutiny, as many consumers perceive that animal-source foods have an unacceptable environmental cost. These concerns are intensified by activist group campaigns propounding that reducing meat consumption will have significant environmental mitigation effects. Animal-source foods have been shown to be essential dietary components for improving health of inhabitants in developing regions, for whom such foods are often economically unavailable. Moreover, reducing meat consumption in developed countries has a negligible effect upon national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and leads to further questions with regards to the implications for use of animal and plant by-products, and the difficulty of producing human food crops on grazed pasturelands. Improving livestock productivity has positive sustainability implications as it reduces resource use and GHG emissions whilst improving economic viability, yet it is often difficult to attain consumer acceptance of modern best practices and technologies. Productivity metrics that enhance sustainability include milk and meat yield, growth rates, feed efficiency, calving rate, parasite control and use of growth-enhancing technologies.Construction operations are highly energy-intensive and account for significant environmental impacts, including greenhouse gases (GHG) and other engine exhaust associated with material procurement/delivery and on-site construction activities. The opportunities for mitigating air pollutant emissions from construction operations can be captured by estimating and benchmarking during the preconstruction phase and then monitoring during the construction phase. However, a formal process model to manage the environmental aspects of on-site construction activities has yet to be clearly delineated, although recently several research efforts have appeared in relevant areas such as the development of in-use emission factors of construction equipment, methods for reliably estimating emissions at the project level, embodied carbon footprint benchmarking methods, and practical monitoring tools. Such a lack of a formal process model causes the misinterpretation of the benefits from recent research efforts in each area and hinders their implementation in practice. In this context, this paper aims to establish a framework model that could be a systematic and generic reference to the management of pollutant emissions from construction operations with state-of-the-art methods and tools. To do so, the paper identifies a generic process to be supported by research efforts in each area and presents an integrated framework based on the analysis of data connectivity between processes. An example of the indirect emission measurement is presented to demonstrate how data connectivity can be ensured between processes within the framework. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Making U.S. infrastructure more sustainable by reducing long-term infrastructure costs is a stated goal of the U.S. EPA. A case study of a small development in northern Colorado used both life-cycle cost (LCC) and environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) to better exemplify how this goal might be attained and also provide environmental benefits. By choosing community-scale technology (CST) for wastewater treatment application, the developer obviated the need to construct 10.46km of main sewer line needed to connect to an existing centralized wastewater treatment facility. By eliminating the need for the 10.46km main sewer line, the LCC, global warming potential from greenhouse gasses, energy use, and hazardous waste creation and disposal were reduced significantly. In the future, the use of CST in redevelopment planning for shrinking cities may have additional benefits to area residents and landowners. This work is significant to decision makers in the wastewater treatment community for two reasons. First, it provides alternatives for sewer districts to consider in the design phase of new and redevelopment projects that could impact scope, first costs, and LCC, all of which flow through to the user in a fee structure. Second, it is the first study using LCC and LCA to focus on sustainability considerations of wastewater infrastructure in shrinking cities and redevelopment applications. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Construction activities generate large amounts of differing emissions, including particulate matter (PM). These particles are of various aerodynamic diametersbetween 10 and 2.5m (PM10-2.5), or coarse particulates, and smaller than 2.5m (PM2.5), or fine particulates. Coarse particulates are more commonly associated with fugitive dust releases, whereas fine particulates are generally from the combustion of fossil fuels. The combination of construction equipment and diesel fuel combustion emissions and excavated and then exposed earth on a construction site is of particular concern with respect to PM emissions. This research developed a life-cycle assessment model to quantitatively evaluate PM emissions at different scales. An illustrative case study is used to explore the excavation phase of an urban high-rise. The excavation phase includes excavation and hauling of soil, mobilizing and demobilizing of equipment, workers commuting, delivery of fuel, handling of soil at the soil disposal site and the nonregional activities of equipment manufacturing, and the production and distribution of fuels. The emissions generated at the excavation site accounted for 23% of PM10-2.5 and 13% of PM2.5 total life-cycle emissions by location, whereas the emissions generated over roadways accounted for 59 and 77% of total life-cycle PM10-2.5 and PM2.5, respectively. The remaining emissions by location were generated at the soil disposal site and outside of the regional boundary. The majority of regional PM10-2.5 (89%) and PM2.5 (90%) emissions were a direct result of soil-hauling activities. The results present a case for further discussion and analysis of the impacts of hauling soil on regional human health. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.A rating system is introduced that employs life-cycle analysis techniques to provide a quantitative assessment of the environmental and economic sustainability of highway designs. Energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, life-cycle cost, and other factors are considered. On the basis of the score received, a design is assigned a label commensurate with the level of sustainability achieved. Analysis of a pilot project shows that relatively modest changes in a highway pavement design, such as using recycled materials, results in significant environmental and economic benefits. The system can be used to motivate material recycling, resulting in more sustainable construction and growth. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Massive concrete dam projects will be constructed in the next 10years to respond to the increasing demand for clean energy and water resources in developing countries. Because of their ample use of cement, these projects have a significant environmental impact, including the production of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Rock-filled concrete (RFC) is an innovative dam construction method that promises better environmental performance than conventional concrete (CC) in the material production stage by saving a large amount of cement. However, the environmental loads throughout the entire life cycle of a dam must be quantified. Thus, this paper aims to evaluate the environmental loads in the lifetime of a dam and reveal the environmental impact of RFC relative to CC over the entire life cycle of a concrete dam. Through reviewing the limitations of the existing life-cycle assessment (LCA) models, a hybrid LCA model is applied to achieve this goal. The results from a case study of a concrete dam project in China are presented to demonstrate the environmental benefit of RFC throughout the lifetime of a dam. The results indicate that RFC reduces greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 64% and energy consumption by approximately 55% compared with CC. With regard to each life cycle stage, RFC decreased the CO2 emissions by 72% in material production, 25% in transportation, 51% in construction, and 15.6% in operation and maintenance. The conclusion is that RFC is more environmentally responsible throughout the life cycle of a dam's, and that the environmental benefit of RFC may help to encourage decision makers to select the appropriate methods in the planning phase. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Until recently, the main environmental concerns associated with information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been their use-phase electricity consumption and the chemicals associated with their manufacture, and the environmental effects of these technologies on other parts of the economy have largely been ignored. With the advent of mobile computing, communication, and sensing devices, these indirect effects have the potential to be much more important than the impacts from the use and manufacturing phases of this equipment. This article summarizes the trends that have propelled modern technological societies into the ultralow-power design space and explores the implications of these trends for the direct and indirect environmental impacts associated with these new technologies. It reviews the literature on environmental effects of information technology (also with an emphasis on low-power systems) and suggests areas for further research.One of the effective ways of low carbon concrete is to reduce the cement content. It can not only reduce the greenhouse gas emission, but also improve the comprehensive utilization of industrial solid waste. In this paper, the mix design and experimental research of C15 Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) were carried out by substituting cement with high volume fly ash. A partition coefficient of environmental burden C-m was introduced in order to assess the environmental effect of different mix proportion SCC precisely by using life cycle assessment method. Evaluation results showed that the mixing of fly ash can reduce the consumption of coal, the discharge of CO2 and the solid wastes effectively. The study provided a rational basis for the high performance and low cost fly ash concrete.According to the idea of the life cycle assessment method (LCA), the consumption of the energy and material, which is involved in the whole life cycle in each phase of single green construction technique, and the impact on the environment, is discussed. Based on the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation theory, a green degree evaluation system is established. The Analytic Hierarchy Process method (AHP) is adopted to establish green assessment system of the hierarchical structure model, and by means of 10/10-18/2 scaling method through pairwise comparison on tectonic judgment matrix of each level, the weight of each affecting factor is ultimately determined. Finally, VB program is used to compile visual programs of green degrees assessment. The quantitative assessment of integrated green degree for green construction technology is obtained, after inputting the score of the corresponding index, with reference to the influence of the factors assessment standards. By verifying rationality of the assessment system, the study proves that the system plays a guidance role in the self-assessment and reasonable construction for the construction of green technology.Using antibiotic assays and genomic analysis, this study demonstrates nitrous oxide (N2O) is generated from axenic Chlorella vulgaris cultures. In batch assays, this production is magnified under conditions favouring intracellular nitrite accumulation, but repressed when nitrate reductase (NR) activity is inhibited. These observations suggest N2O formation in C. vulgaris might proceed via NR-mediated nitrite reduction into nitric oxide (NO) acting as N2O precursor via a pathway similar to N2O formation in bacterial denitrifiers, although NO reduction to N2O under oxia remains unproven in plant cells. Alternatively, NR may reduce nitrite to nitroxyl (HNO), the latter being known to dimerize to N2O under oxia. Regardless of the precursor considered, an NR-mediated nitrite reduction pathway provides a unifying explanation for correlations reported between N2O emissions from algae-based ecosystems and NR activity, nitrate concentration, nitrite concentration, and photosynthesis repression. Moreover, these results indicate microalgae-mediated N2O formation might significantly contribute to N2O emissions in algae-based ecosystems (e.g. 1.38-10.1 kg N2O-N ha(-1) yr(-1) in a 0.25 m deep raceway pond operated under Mediterranean climatic conditions). These findings have profound implications for the life cycle analysis of algae biotechnologies and our understanding of the global biogeochemical nitrogen cycle.This paper elaborated eco-building-materials and life cycle assessment, proposed to follow in the eco-design philosophy of the construction, and focuses on the basic approach of building materials eco, including the ecology of the traditional building materials and high-tech research and development of eco-building materials. It pointed out the urgency and importance of the development of eco-building-materials.Ecosystem goods and services (EGSs) are of crucial importance for the economic and social development of human communities. The well-established life cycle assessment (LCA) method is facing a number of challenging improvements to define new Characterization factors (CFs) for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of EGSs. Very recently, extensive work conducted under the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle initiative has been completed with the goal of providing new LCIA methods and spatially differentiated mid-point CFs for land use and land use change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, the implemented models do not enable one to assess the actual damage to ecosystem functionality, and thus the relationship among EGSs and related areas of protection (e.g. AoP of "Natural Resources") remains undefined. This paper aims at investigating the potential characterization ability of the Emergy method for LCIA of EGSs. The goal is to use the extensive libraries of Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) of primary services and resources as CFs for LCIA to evaluate the physical contribution of EGSs in supporting life cycle processes. Having its roots in thermodynamics and systems ecology, Emergy can appraise a larger and more diversified (than LCA) number of EGSs through a common physical denominator, i.e. the solar emjoule or seJ, which measures the solar energy embodied in natural products. Emergy thus has a typical Nature-oriented perspective, accounting for the available energy that is used up by the natural cycles, directly and indirectly, to generate biotic and abiotic resources. A library of selected UEVs (more than 100) for biophysical EGS valuation has been framed including values collected from the Emergy literature and formulated on the latest planetary baseline (i.e. 15.2E + 24 seJ/yr). Advantages and limitations for future application of these values toward an LCIA mid-point impact characterization of Emergy are discussed. UEVs may represent mid-point LCIA factors for ecological contribution analysis, enabling one to account for the memory of energy previously required to produce EGSs, which can be used as a proxy to assess the future environmental work necessary to regenerate the used EGSs. However, the added value of Emergy for LCA is still debated, mainly because of the low accuracy and unclear meaning of the UEVs in relation to the availability of resources. Therefore, Emergy can be conceived as a suitable physical measure complementary to the economic valuations and current "user-side" tools applied in LCA.This chapter discusses automation in the form of computer-aided analysis and control engineering methods that facilitate sustainable development in the food industry. The concepts of sustainability and automation are analyzed in the context of food manufacturing processes. A number of automated tools, methods and technologies that facilitate automated design and control in the broader chemical process industry are reviewed and discussed with respect to their ability to incorporate sustainability considerations. A review of the scientific developments associated with automated design and control in food manufacturing is also performed to evaluate the assimilation of the presented tools, methods and technologies. It is concluded that food manufacturing processes provide significant opportunities for further integration of automated tools, methods and technologies that advocate sustainable development.In recent years, laptops have become very commonly used, causing a significant environmental impact. In Poland about 2 million portable computers are sold every year. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool which evaluates environmental impacts associated with a product throughout its life. In this paper, a screening life cycle assessment for a personal computer -Actina laptop, assembled, used and disposed in Poland was performed. Values for eleven impact categories were provided with the application of the Eco-indicator 99 method, expressing the significance of the burden on the environment. For the whole life cycle, the most significant stage is the use phase, due to electricity consumption (over 60% of all environmental impacts) followed by the manufacturing of the product with over 37% of the share.This paper presents an overview of research on sustainability of abrasive processes. It incorporates results from a round robin study on "energy-efficiency of abrasive processes" which has been carried out within the scientific technical committee "abrasive processes" (STC G) of CIRP, the content of technical presentations in STC G, and the results of a comprehensive literature study. The approach to sustainability includes environmental, social, and economic sustainability in accordance with the definition proposed in the Brundtland Report of the United Nations [156]. The main focus is on environmental and social sustainability. Economic sustainability will be considered as manufacturing productivity. (C) 2013 CIRP.Wood is regarded as an Environmentally Friendly material. However, it is difficult to show quantitative evidence. Therefore we conducted a life cycle assessment of domestic logs. As a result of this analysis, it was estimated that to produce 1 m(3) of domestic logs caused the emission of 11.1 kg of CO2 and had an environmental impact of 70.6 Yen. Besides, for reducing the environmental impact from domestic log production it is important to improve the logging processes such as thinning and final cutting. Among them, we could reduce the impact more if high-performance forest machinery was used more efficiently in the logging process.Horticultural products, like all food products, are currently faced with three challenges concerning sustainable development. The first is to protect the environment The second challenge regards nutrition and health. Variety, transport conditions (temperature and duration), the type of technology used in processing (cold break, hot break) and the conditions of use of the final product are highly responsible for nutrient loss. The third challenge is the economic and social impact. Every segment of the food chains must guarantee an improvement in human wellbeing and social justice. Furthermore, consumers have changed and have replaced the traditional price-quality criteria used in making choices. They require information on environmental, nutritional and social aspects of the whole production and distribution systems Like all other products, industrial tomatoes must mirror these new market requirements and customer demands. Professionals are unable to cope with all three challenges simultaneously. With this in mind, an on-going national research programme in France (FLONUDEP) is aiming to create a decision-making tool adapted to this new context for the impact of both fresh and processed tomato production chains. A life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to all stages of the product's life cycle, from the extraction of raw ingredient to the production system, processing, commercialisation, consumption and end of life, taking into account environmental, nutritional, economic and social considerations. Three countries have been studied: France, Turkey and Morocco. Results show considerable differences among the 3 countries, not only in terms of values, but also in terms of the most polluting stage across the LCA (whether agriculture, logistics, factory etc.). However, in general, the production methods, the organization of logistics circuits, and the choice of packaging seem to be crucial to environmental impact. In nutritional terms, product processing times are essential as is the ambient temperature which can alter nutrients. Logistics are therefore fundamental. Consumers must also modify their behaviour with regard to conserving products.The global livestock industry is charged with providing sufficient animal source foods to supply the global population while improving the environmental sustainability of animal production. Improved productivity within dairy and beef systems has demonstrably reduced resource use and greenhouse gas emissions per unit of food over the past century through the dilution of maintenance effect. Further environmental mitigation effects have been gained through the current use of technologies and practices that enhance milk yield or growth in ruminants; however, the social acceptability of continued intensification and use of productivity-enhancing technologies is subject to debate. As the environmental impact of food production continues to be a significant issue for all stakeholders within the field, further research is needed to ensure that comparisons among foods are made based on both environmental impact and nutritive value to truly assess the sustainability of ruminant products.With the current focus on sustainability, it is necessary to evaluate cement's environmental impact properly, especially when developing new 'green' concrete types. Therefore, this chapter investigates the available literature on every process concerned during the production of cement. Inventory data on energy use, CO2, PM10, SOx and NOx emissions are collected. Alternatives and improvement are briefly described regarding energy performance and mineralogy changes that it induces for clinker.The concrete industry is considered to be a large consumer of energy and natural resources, and is one of the main sources of greenhouse emissions and waste generation. The production and utilization of concrete and concrete structures have a large impact on the environment, and so the environmental assessment of concrete is of great importance in terms of achieving a sustainable society. This chapter includes instructions on how to apply the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to concrete, including a general description, life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment of concrete, future trends and sources of further information.Biomass materials are the best substitute for those made of plastic packaging materials all over the world. Widespread application of these materials can control or eliminate the increase of white pollution problem effectively. In this paper, the analysis model of biomass 450 ml lunch box was established based on Life Cycle Assessment, and then the environment Friendliness of the box, such as resource consumption, environment quality and human health, was analyzed. The results have shown that the resource consumption, environment quality and human health of biomass products were 26.6mPt, 6.23mPt, 16mPt, and these parameters of plastic products were 291mPt, 12.1mPt, 74.1mPt. Therefore, the biomass products have better environmental Friendliness than plastic products.This paper reports a life cycle assessment undertaken to assess the environmental impact of a range of biosolid reuse options selected by the Kaikoura community. The reuse options were identified as: vermiculture and open-air composting; mixture with biochar; direct land application to disturbed sites for forestry using native tree species; and application to exotic forestry plantations or pastoral farmland. The aim of the study was to calculate the possible environmental impacts of the reuse options so the information can be used in a community dialogue process where the fate of the biosolids is decided upon. All reuse options showed improved environmental performance relative to landfilling. The direct application to land options showed the least environmental impact and the composting options had the most environmental impact. This is the first time this approach has been applied to biosolids management in New Zealand, and whilst there are limitations, the approach should be encouraged in other communities because it increases the engagement of the community with waste management decision-making and the environment.The aim of the research carried out under the grant FAST-J-12-1773 is the optimization of the proposed mass production of newly developed thermal insulation composite material in terms of its impact on the environment without causing a disproportionate increase in costs. This paper presents current results of research - life cycle assessment (LCA) of the production of thermal insulation block made of composite plastic. LCA methodology that was used for this assessment is contained in international standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14044.Under the harsh climate, environment protection and sustainable development have become a global issue. Deep impacts have been caused by over packaging. Taiwanese government has legislated for related issues. However, different understanding and cognition are aroused among industry and specific guidelines for lightweight packaging are needed, which also caused our interest to start this research. This research is based on the discussion of related Green Package documents to introduce Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to establish the development foundation of Green Package strategy. Meanwhile experts and related personnel of industrial circles have been interviewed to process reversed fuzzy logic grounded theory to analyze the main consider components of Green Package. Finally the outcome concepts and principles are introduced to Analytical Network Process (ANP) to generalize Green Package development strategy via quantification analysis and prioritization. We hope the Green Package Development Strategy could help industrial circles and also offer related reference in all respects.Advances in high performance sensing and signal processing technology enable the development of failure prognosis tools for wind turbines to detect, diagnose, and predict the system-wide effects of failure events. Although prognostics can provide valuable information for proactive actions in preventing system failures, the benefits have not been fully utilized for the operation and maintenance decision making of wind turbines. This paper presents a generic failure prognosis informed decision making tool for wind farm operation and maintenance while considering the predictive failure information of individual turbine and its uncertainty. In the presented approach, the probabilistic damage growth model is used to characterize individual wind turbine performance degradation and failure prognostics, whereas the economic loss measured by monetary values and environmental performance measured by unified carbon credits are considered in the decision making process. Based on the customized wind farm information inputs, the developed decision making methodology can be used to identify optimum and robust strategies for wind farm operation and maintenance in order to maximize the economic and environmental benefits concurrently. The efficacy of proposed prognosis informed maintenance strategy is compared with the condition based maintenance strategy and demonstrated with the case study.This paper presents a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) study of heavy duty off-road equipment. The machine studied here is a typical piece of diesel construction machinery equipped with the iT4 (interim Tier 4) certified diesel engine. Two life cycle impact assessment methods, Eco-Indicator 99 and TPCC 2007, are used to calculate the environmental impact and global warming potential associated with the machine's life cycle, from material extraction to end-of-life recycling and disposal. Due to fuel consumption and emissions, machine utilization during the usage phase is expected to account for most of the total environmental impact. However, the impact from usage can vary greatly, depending on how customers use the machine. To take into account various machine usage patterns, this LCA study performs two sensitivity analyses, varying the load factor and varying the fuel consumption rate, respectively.Wind power is an important type of renewable energy sources. In this passage we will apply Life Cycle Assessment to analyze the four stages of wind power generation, which are production of raw materials, transportation, build-operate process of wind plants and demolition stages, calculate the energy consumption and the environmental impact, set a contrastive analysis between coal-fired power plants and wind power plants. We will take WangHaiSi Wind Plant in Faku, Shenyang as an example to show the difference between the two ways of getting power. The analysis shows that: in comparison with coal-fired generation, wind power generation saves more energy and reduces emissions of pollutants markedly; the main energy consumption comes from production of raw materials, which takes 79.3% of the total energy consumption throughout the life cycle. In the meantime, the large amount of ecological resources consumption from construction, operation and maintenance of wind plants leads to mass emission of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, which respectively take 67.3% and 96.6% of total emissions. Besides, wind generation only accounts for 0.93%, 0.89% and 2.72% of energy consumption, global warming potential (GWP) and acid potential (AP) of coal-fired power generation. Thus, it proved that wind power generation has lesser impacts on environment than coal-fired power generation. However, it is still of great necessity to strengthen the environmental protection measures to reduce the consumption and destroy of ecologic resources.As nanotechnology-based products enter into widespread use, nanomaterials will end up in disposal waste streams that are ultimately discharged to the environment. One possible end-of-life scenario is incineration. This review attempts to ascertain the potential pathways by which nanomaterials may enter incinerator waste streams and the fate of these nanomaterials during the incineration process. Although the literature on incineration of nanomaterials is scarce, results from studies of their behavior at high temperature or in combustion environments for other applications can help predict their fate within an incinerator. Preliminary evidence suggests nanomaterials may catalyze the formation or destruction of combustion by-products. Depending on their composition, nanomaterials may undergo physical and chemical transformations within the incinerator, impacting their partitioning within the incineration system (e.g., bottom ash, fly ash) and the effectiveness of control technology for removing them. These transformations may also drastically affect nanomaterial transport and impacts in the environment. Current regulations on incinerator emissions do not specifically address nanomaterials, but limits on particle and metal emissions may prove somewhat effective at reducing the release of nanomaterials in incinerator effluent. Control technology used to meet these regulations, such as fabric filters, electrostatic precipitators, and wet electrostatic scrubbers, are expected to be at least partially effective at removing nanomaterials from incinerator flue gas.Waternet, the water cycle company of Amsterdam and surrounding areas, uses the life cycle assessment (LCA) method to evaluate the environmental impact of investment decisions and to determine the potential reduction of direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of different alternatives. This approach enables Waternet to fulfil its corporate objective to improve sustainability and to become climate neutral by 2020. Three example studies that give a good overview of the use of LCAs at Waternet and problems encountered are discussed: phosphate removal and recovery from wastewater, pH correction of drinking water with carbon dioxide (CO2) and materials for drinking water distribution pipes. The environmental impact assessments were performed in SimaPro 7 using the ReCiPe method and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Global Warming Potential (IPCC GWP) 100a method. The Ecoinvent 2.0 and 2.2 databases were used for the material and process data. From the examples described, it can be concluded that only the phosphate removal case had a significant effect on the climate footprint. The article discusses applications and limitations of the LCA technique. The most important limitation is that the impact of water consumption and the possible impact of effluent compounds to surface water are not considered within the used methods.One of the methods proposed to improve access to clean drinking water is the mobile packaged water treatment system (MPWTS). The lack of published system performance comparisons combined with the diversity of technology available and intended operating conditions make it difficult for stakeholders to choose the system best suited for their application. MPWTS are often deployed in emergency situations, making selection of the appropriate system crucial to avoiding wasted resources and loss of life. Measurable critical-to-quality characteristics (CTQs) and a system selection tool for MPWTS were developed by utilizing relevant literature, including field studies, and implementing and comparing seven different MPWTS. The proposed System Life Cycle Evaluation (SLiCE) method uses these CTQs to evaluate the diversity in system performance and harmonize relevant performance with stakeholder preference via a selection tool. Agencies and field workers can use SLiCE results to inform and drive decision-making. The evaluation and selection tool also serves as a catalyst for communicating system performance, common design flaws, and stakeholder needs to system manufacturers. The SLiCE framework can be adopted into other emerging system technologies to communicate system performance over the life cycle of use.The work deals with the creation and verification of the model of biogas station and its utilization for the production of electricity and heat. The model is based on realized biogas plants, where the author participated on their construction. The introduction is a description of the use of biogas technology and other types of biomass. In addition, it is assessing the current situation and the outlook for biogas production in the Slovak Republic. The last part describes the components of the parametric model, which is developed in the numerical and economic model.This study estimates the carbon footprints of 16 municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), all situated in Scandinavian countries, by using a simple model. The carbon footprint calculations were based on operational data, literature emission factors (efs) and measurements of greenhouse gas emissions at some of the studied WWTPs. No carbon neutral WWTPs were found. The carbon footprints ranged between 7 and 108 kg CO2e P.E.(-1) year(-1). Generally, the major positive contributors to the carbon footprint were direct emissions of nitrous oxide from wastewater treatment. Whether heat pumps for effluents have high coefficient of performance or not is extremely important for the carbon footprint. The choice of efs largely influenced the carbon footprint. Increased biogas production, efficient biogas usage, and decreased addition of external fossil carbon source for denitrification are important activities to decrease the carbon footprint of a WWTP.To efficiently move towards a more sustainable dwelling stock in Belgium, priorities need to be defined. Accordingly, it should be questioned if the new policy measure requiring the passive standard for newly built residential buildings from 2020 onwards is justified. This paper emphasises on the energy related aspects of the results of a PhD research. In the research residential buildings in the Belgian context were optimised from a life cycle environmental impact and cost perspective. The results proved that not for all dwelling types and layouts the passive standard is the optimal variant. A well-considered design, orientation and choice of dwelling type will be necessary to make the future requirement of the passive standard technically feasible and efficient.For strategic chemicals management in process design, the chemical risk and environmental impact due to the use of chemicals must be identified and controlled. Although various scientific methodologies evaluating such issues have been developed, a single application of one of the methodologies cannot address all of the adverse effects. In this paper, we classify chemical risks using suitable scientific assessment methodologies for risk trade-off analysis on the basis of the features of adverse effects. On the basis of this classification, current problems can be identified through the understanding of differences in the existing chemical risk and environmental impact. An actual case study of agent selection in metal-cleaning process design has been performed. It is thereby demonstrated that risk trade-off among agents can be visualized to distinguish agents. In appropriate agent selection, all adverse effects associated with the use of chemicals can be considered with such a visualized risk trade-off. Risk trade-off analysis based on the classification of risk enables the identification of increased and decreased risk upon substituting chemicals and processes. This analysis can be used as a foundation for the discussion of practical strategies on chemicals management in process design.One of the challenging issues to be dealt in priority and of any country's agenda today is the management of solid waste, and it is a difficulty to environmentalists also. Diapers are one of the important products leading to this waste management issue. Diapers are classified into two major categories: single use (disposable) and reusable. Landfills of any country are mainly clogged with disposable products, such as diapers. It is one of the problematic topics of today that needs to be investigated in detail. There is a longstanding debate among environmentalists to conclude disposable and reusable diapers in terms of which one poses more threat to the environment. The authors aim to critically review this issue and discusses the major findings from the previous studies along with highlighting of the gaps in the literature in each area of environmental impact studies on diapers. They also recommend the scope for further research as far as the studies associated with diapers are concerned.In this chapter, life cycle assessment (LCA) is modified and extended, by incorporating exergy, to form exergetic life cycle assessment (ExLCA). LCA is a methodology for cradle-to-grave assessment, and represents a systematic set of procedures for compiling and examining the inputs and outputs of materials and energy, and the associated environmental impacts, directly attributable to the product or service throughout its life cycle. A life cycle is the interlinked stages of a product or service system, from the extraction of natural resources to final disposal. ExLCA extends the benefits of LCA by considering the environmental impact of exergy factors like exergy losses. ExLCA is applied, as case studies, to internal combustion engine and fuel cell vehicles, and to several hydrogen production technologies.Molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) is achieving relatively high output and efficiency and reaching the level of commercialization compared to other fuel cells. Recently many studies are dealt with mobile applications of MCFC to use those superlative properties. But until now, researches are dealt with steady state energy analysis and life cycle assessment analysis. The practical dynamic feasibility analysis has not been done. Here we report, dynamic MCFC model and simultaneous mechanical balance of plant (MBOP) test algorithm can be used for evaluating feasibility of MCFC marine application. We modeled four 300 kW class MCFC stacks with a dynamic form in MATLAB/SIMULINK package. Developed simulation bed can be used to deal with overall MCFC performance evaluation and various MBOP feasibility test.Citrus production is one of the most important sectors of Sicilian agriculture. In particular, Sicilian orange production is of the best quality, producing mainly pigmented or blood oranges (cv Tarocco, Moro, and Sanguinello). No other region in the Mediterranean area or on the American Continent produces, on a large scale, blood oranges. The Sicilian blood oranges have some special flavours and organoleptic and functional characteristics. The aim of this paper is to quantify the total environmental impacts of the life cycle of Tarocco oranges - integrated production. The study was conducted in accordance with the ISO standards 14040:2006 and 14044:2006. The analysis of the input and output materials and energy flows indicates that the production phase has the most environmental impacts, causing almost half of the total damage. In terms of the substances having the most environmental impacts, the study shows that: the emission to air of Nitrogen oxides, particulates, Sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide; the emission into soil of zinc; and the consumption of resources such as crude oil, uranium and natural gas have the most impacts. These results enable us to propose different ways to reduce the impact of the production of the oranges on the environment.A major goal/challenge in catalysis research is to design stable catalysts that selectively form targeted products in high yields. This chapter presents a brief overview of recent progress towards this goal including: (1) fundamental concepts, (2) current approaches to heterogeneous catalyst design and discovery, (3) catalytic materials and synthesis methods, (4) in situ characterization, (5) modern kinetic and computational tools, and (6) emerging catalytic applications for fuels and chemicals from renewable (e.g., biomass) and alternative abundant (e.g., natural gas) feedstocks. In the final section, perspectives and anticipated advances in catalyst synthesis, in situ characterization, and kinetics and computational tools for the design of heterogeneous catalysts are presented. Further, we also briefly highlight concepts that incorporate environmental, health, and safety (EHS), risk, and life cycle assessment (LCA) analyses to guide catalyst design. The literature covering these topics is immense and it would be nearly impossible to include all available references in a single publication such as this. Therefore, only a selected number of references are cited herein to illustrate the most relevant aspects in the design of heterogeneous catalysts for fuels and chemicals processing.The objective of the paper is to define CO2 intensity for Estonian oil shale used for energy generation. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is selected as a modelling tool to reach the objective. The model analysis energy requirements and CO2 emissions are associated with mining and transportation of shale rocks and production of shale oil. Since the oil shale retorting process works as a 100% self-compensation energy technology (heat and gas derived from retorting of oil shale are reused within the on-going and next retorting), the paper lays emphasis on analysis of the co-products life cycle in elimination of CO2 emissions. Preliminary results of the research show that life cycle CO2 emission factors of oil shale processing mainly depend on the technology used for production of final raw products as shale oil, semi-coke gas and generator gas. Also, boundaries of the researched system must be taken into account due to avoided emissions from co-products production instead of using universal CO2 emission factors and assumptions. Future work will be focused on 1) material based life cycle analysis to investigate whether the energy produced from oil shale resources can compete with other fuels in terms of life cycle emissions, and 2) LCA impact assessment of the system.Approximately 416.9 million m(3) of concrete were used in China in buildings, roads and other constructions in 2009. This makes concrete one of the most common building materials on the market. While consuming large amounts of energy, concrete industry has also cause large burden on the environment due to the environmental emissions by the production of cement and the transport of materials. Therefore, more detailed quantitative studies are necessary to finally acknowledge its effects of energy and environment. The objective of this paper is to identify and quantify the energy consumption, and environmental emissions during all life-cycle phases of concrete in China by LCA.With the development of materials industry, the problem of water pollution is increasingly serious, and therefore it is important to establish an appropriate characterization model of heavy metals in water in China. This paper provides the human toxicity potential factors of several heavy metals, including Hg, Cd, Cr, Pb and As. The result showed that China's HTP factors are partial greater than Europe factors, caused by the different industrial situation and the ratio of total human intake to total emissions.Over the past ten years, the automobile manufacturing basis has shifted to Thailand, thus transforming the country into an automobile industrial hub in Asia. An integral part of this industry, lead acid battery manufacturing has exhibited tremendous growth with increasing trends toward new manufacturing technology. This research aimed to study life cycle assessments of lead-acid automobile battery manufactured in Thailand by comparing conventional batteries with calcium-maintenance free batteries. Global warming and acidification are the largest environmental impacts associated with both battery types. Changing from conventional batteries to calcium-maintenance free batteries is able to reduce environmental impact by approximately 28% due to longer usage life and reduced utilization of manufacturing resources and energy. The greenhouse gases and acidification caused by one conventional battery amounted to 102 kg CO2 and 0.94 kg SO2, respectively. These amounts decrease to 72 kg CO2 and 0.56 kg SO2, respectively, when calcium-maintenance free technology is used. Raw material procurement is found to have the greatest environmental impact, followed by product usage. In this study, the information on environmental impact is incorporated with MET matrix principles to propose guidelines for environmental improvement throughout the battery life cycle.The aim of the paper is to assess energy technologies in road transport sector based on costs and impact on climate change and to indicate the most competitive transport technologies taking into account international post-Kyoto climate change mitigation policies into account. The main tasks of the paper are: to develop the multi criteria framework for comparative assessment of energy technologies in road transport and to apply MCDM methods for the transport technologies assessment. The interval TOPSIS method is employed in order to tackle the uncertain criteria. The assessment framework allows comparing road transport technologies in terms of their environmental and economic impacts and facilitates decision making process in transport sector. The main indicators selected for technologies assessment are: private costs and life cycle GHG emissions. The ranking of road transport technologies based on private costs and GHG emissions allowed prioritizingthese technologies thus mitigating GHG emissions at the lowest costs. However the extent, capacity, and quality of road infrastructure affects the overall level of transportation activity, which in turn affects how much energy is consumed by vehicles and the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted. The paper presents the impact of transportation infrastructure on GHG emissions from road vehicles and policy implications of performed assessment.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to focus on two aspects. First, to analyse the spread of labelled environmental certification in food products, considering both private labels and producer brands with reference to the Italian and German markets. Second, to outline how environmental certification can affect the vertical organisation of food supply chains. Design/methodology/approach - The method used is based on an empirical analysis carried out in two sample cities: Milan for Italy and Bonn for Germany, examining ten and seven retailers, respectively, using the case studies approach, through an ad hoc questionnaire. The authors analysed two cases related to fruit and vegetables and ichthyic products, in order to assess the effect of the standards provided by the sustainability certification on the vertical organisation of the supply chains. Findings - The certifications focus on three main areas: ichthyic products; tropical products; and fruits and vegetables. They are much more widespread on private label items, rather than on the industrial brands. The German market is more "sensitive" to sustainability issues than the Italian market. Environmental certification leads to a reorganisation of the supply chain relationships, determining a higher bilateral dependency among the supply chain agents, a reduction in product uncertainty, and an increased degree of vertical coordination. Originality/value - The paper analyses, through a new perspective, the environmental issues of food products, quantifying the spread of labelled environmental certification and comparing Italy and Germany. The vertical reorganisation of the supply chains involved the adoption of production rules, connected to environmentally-friendly practices, and the introduction of a new form of transaction governance.Reagent guides ranking commonly used reagents for 15 transformations have been developed to reduce the environmental impact of drug discovery and development. Reagents have been scored by a combination of health, safety and environmental risk phrases, life cycle analysis (where possible) and an assessment of the chemistry including considerations of atom efficiency, stoichiometry, work-up and other issues. Guides covering alkene reduction, amide formation, C-H bromination, C-H chlorination, deoxychlorination, epoxidation, ester formation, ether formation, fluorination, iodination, ketone reduction, nitro reduction, oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes and ketones, reductive amination and sulfur oxidation are shared, with an explanation of the methodology behind their generation.Organic photovoltaic modules have been evaluated for their integration in mobile electronic applications such as a laser pointer. An evaluation of roll-to-roll processed indium and silver free polymer solar cells has been carried out from different perspectives: life cycle assessment, cost analysis and layer quality evaluation using inline optical and functional inspection tools. The polymer solar cells were fabricated in credit card sized modules by three routes, and several encapsulation alternatives have been explored, with the aim to provide the simplest but functional protection against moisture and oxygen, which could deteriorate the performance of the cells. The analysis shows that ITO- and silver-free options are clearly advantageous in terms of energy embedded over the traditional modules, and that encapsulation must balance satisfying the protection requirements while having at the same time a low carbon footprint. From the economic perspective there is a huge reduction in the cost of the ITO- and silver-free options, reaching as low as 0.25 (sic) for the OPV module. We used inspection tools such as a roll-to-roll inspection system to evaluate all processing steps during the fabrication and analyse the layers' quality and forecast whether a module will work or not and establish any misalignment of the printed pattern or defects in the layers that can affect the performance of the devices. This has been found to be a good tool to control the process and to increase the yield.Due to global climate changes, Earth sustainability issues have become topics of international attention. The frequency of abnormal weather occurrences and disasters around the world has doubled and the health of the environment has been deteriorating, causing catastrophes around the world. All countries must have a prudent response to this situation. The environmental topics debated globally have changed from passive discussions about environmental protection and energy consumption to more proactive dialogues on sustainable cycles and LOHAS. Taiwan has actively proposed relevant environmental responsive measures, including plans for ecological cities, green buildings, and green building materials (GBMs). GBMs are the basic factor of environmental building projects and they have the most extensive scope of applications, as they have a direct effect on human health and are the key to the Earth's sustainability. This research summarized international sustainability assessment systems, international green building material labels, and relevant building material assessment mechanisms, in order to summarize and integrate a variety of factors with the life cyclic assessment (LCA) of the ISO14040 series as the axis for establishing a preliminary green building material assessment system. In addition, the Fuzzy Delphi Methods was employed for analysis to discuss the green building material environmental load (Ln) factor and the green building material quality (Qn) factor. According to the research and analysis results, this research established the GBM Eco-Efficiency Assessment System in the context of climate change, to be used as the basis for subsequent research on GBM eco-efficiency standards. Using efficiency as a starting point, this research hoped to achieve a win-win strategy of balancing human health with the Earth's sustainable development.Aiming for a sustainable and secure energy future, policies are being formulated in Brunei Darussalam for supplementing the national energy base with renewable resources and technologies. Some preliminary studies in this direction indicated that solar energy could be a potential energy option for the country. Technical feasibility and economic viability of such grid integrated solar PV power plants, under the Bruneian environment, are investigated in this study. The prevailing energy scenario is analyzed and future trends in electricity consumption are predicted based on the time series energy use data. The forecast indicates that the annual electricity consumption may reach up to 4.32 Billion kWh by the year 2020. The possibility of exploiting the available solar energy resource for meeting this growing electricity demand is investigated. Five year's solar radiation data from Maura district were collected and analyzed under the study. The solar energy resource is characterized in terms of monthly averaged total daily global, beam and diffused radiations and hourly variations in solar intensity. Availability of solar energy in the region is also statistically modeled using Beta distribution. Performance of a solar photovoltaic power plant under these levels of insolation was simulated using the RETScreen model. With a total panel area of 10,619 m(2), such a plant is expected to show a capacity factor of 18.1 per-cent and generate 1,899.2 MWh electricity annually. This clearly indicates the technical feasibility of grid integrated solar power plants in Brunei Darussalam. Under the economic analysis, the unit cost of electricity generation was estimated to be BND 0.30/kWh. A detailed cost benefit analysis, over the life cycle of such power projects, is also presented.In China, the environmental impact from the construction of the distribution system is seldom discussed. In this study, the environmental impacts in production of district pipes are considered. The functional unit used in the study is production of one pipe unit. The studied pipes are: pipe of the dimension DN100, DN200 (Seamless steel tubes) and DN500 (spirally welded steel tubes) with specified length (12m). Based on the concept of the Distance-to-Target weighting method, the total environment load is given. The results can be used to identify environmental significant parts in the actual projects including once more parts of the district distribution system have been investigated with LCA methodology.What environmental constraints will materials have to face in the future? Can current measurement tools like LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) support the choices of material and adapt to these constraints to pave the way to a sustainable world? Are there some alternative or complementary approaches to enhance the quality of information for decision makers? The aim of this article is to provide answers to these three questions. The society of tomorrow, in the second half of the 21st century, will be a society where the circular economy will play a more important role and thus will help reduce materials waste. This is a critical aspect of sustainability. To get there, the decisions have to be enlightened and fair, because the decisions (or non-decisions) made today shape the world that future generations will have to manage. Furthermore, Lord Kelvin used to say: "what you can't measure, you can't improve". Therefore, these decisions have to be supported by measurement tools that will properly capture the stakes of reuse and recycling at the end of life of products. Today, LCA is the common tool used to address this matter. However, the present article has shown that LCA cannot incorporate the whole complexity of sustainability. LCA is good at considering micro-scale issues, comparing one solution with another, in a static approach. How can it give right directions to decision makers in order to support the vision of a circular economy? The application of different standards showed that it is not easy at all and that recycling product at their end of life are not rewarded equally and sometimes not promoted at all. Therefore rebound effects leading to contradictory decisions may occur. LCA alone is not enough to make enlightened decisions. It should be complemented by other methods. This was proposed in the last part. Based on the IPAT equation, this approach tries to capture different aspects that are not addressed properly by LCA, due to the fact that the functional unit is too restrictive, that the time dimension and prospective approach should be more integrated, and that it should enlarge the scale of the analysis to the macro-economy and the socio-economy. It should also recognize that the efforts have to be shared by different players including material industry and manufacturers, policy makers and society in general. As a general conclusion, we are convinced that tomorrow's society will recognize the value of materials that are recyclable and reusable, like steel has been for many decades. But there is still a clear need to addressing, in research and development, the improvement of the metrics, combining social, environmental and economic assessment, so that the sustainability value of materials is properly measured. These are the objectives of the Sovamat Initiative and the SAM conferences.The European Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) explicitly specifies the hierarchy for waste management: prevention, preparation for re-use, recycling, other recovery actions, disposal. When selecting waste management options, this waste hierarchy should be followed. A deviation can only be justified by Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) on the overall impacts. The application of this principle in the Flemish waste management practice triggered the need for evaluation of treatment options for several waste streams. Alternative treatments were evaluated for waste batteries, used frying oils and waste oil. The evaluation methodology combined life cycle assessment with technical and economical viability criteria. These cases show that LCT does not allow to establish a "general priority order". In each case reasons for deviation from the standard waste hierarchy could be given, but also none of the evaluated options can be considered as the best. The evaluation showed that the priority is largely dependent on location-specific characteristics of inputs, outputs, processes and installations and that the establishment of local and global environmental priorities always implies a value choice. In this presentation, we will present the results of the three cases and provide a methodological framework for life cycle thinking in waste management policy.The year of 2012 marks the 20th anniversary since the concept of ecological footprint was introduced to the global community for the first time. Nowadays footprint studies have gained extensive debates as well as popularity. In this paper, we define the footprint family as an indicator system of selected footprints that measure some aspects of human impacts on the environment. A relatively comprehensive introduction and comparison of four key footprints is represented by listing their characteristics in different aspects. The interaction among these footprints within the footprint family is classified into three types: overlap, contradiction and complement. The description of each type is provided in detail. Limitations and uncertainties of the footprint family, and priorities for further improvement are also performed. This research makes a preliminary attempt at developing the conceptual framework for the footprint family, which allows us to examine the performance of footprints combination. The footprint family will serve as a tool for integrating footprints on human impacts assessment, and a support for environmental decision-making.Emergy evaluation (EME) is an environmental assessment method which is gaining international recognition and has increasingly been applied during the last decade. Emergy represents the memory of the geobiosphere exergy (environmental work) measured in solar emjoules (seJ) - that has been used in the past or accumulated over time to make a natural resource available. The rationale behind the concept of Emergy is the consideration that all different forms of energy can be sorted under a hierarchy and measured with the common metric of the seJ, which is then the yardstick through which all energy inputs and outputs can be compared with each other. For this reason EME is suggested to be a suitable method of environmental accounting for a wide set of natural resources, and can be used to define guidelines for sustainable consumption of resources. Despite those interesting features, EME is still affected by several drawbacks in its calculation procedures and in its general methodological background, which prevent it from being accepted by a wider community. The main operational hurdle lays in the set of mathematical rules (known as Emergy algebra rules) governing EME, which do not follow logic of conservation and make their automatic implementation very difficult. This work presents an open source code specifically created for allowing a rigorous Emergy calculation (complying with all the Emergy algebra rules). We modeled the Emergy values circulating in multi-component systems with an oriented graph, formalized the problem in a matrix-based structure and developed a variant of the well-known track summing algorithm to obtain the total Emergy flow associated with the investigated product. The calculation routine (written in C++) implements the Depth First Search (DFS) strategy for graph searches. The most important features of the calculation routine are: (1) its ability to read the input in matrix form without the need of drawing a graph; (2) its rigorous implementation of the Emergy rules; (3) its low running time, which makes the algorithm applicable to any system described at the level of detail nowadays made possible by the use of the available life cycle inventory (LCI) databases. A version of the Emergy calculation routine based on the DFS algorithm has been completed and is being tested on case studies involving matrices of thousands of rows and columns, describing real product production systems.The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine environmental impacts of agricultural production, as well as production by other industry sectors has increased. LCA provides an internationally accepted method to underpin labelling and marketing of agricultural products, a valuable tool to compare emissions reduction strategies and a means to identify perverse policy outcomes. A single-issue LCA focussing on greenhouse gas emissions was conducted to determine the emissions profile and carbon footprint of 19-micron wool produced in the Yass Region on the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. Greenhouse gas emissions (in carbon dioxide equivalents; CO2-e) from the production of all enterprise inputs and from the production of wool on-farm were included. Total emissions were found to be 24.9 kg CO2-e per kg of greasy wool at the farm gate, based on a 4941 breeding ewe enterprise on 1000 ha, with a total greasy wool yield of 65.32 t per annum. The co-products included 174 t sheep meat as liveweight from wethers and cull ewes plus 978 maiden ewes sold off-farm as replacement stock. Total emissions from all products grown on 1000 ha were 2899 t CO2-e per annum. The relative contribution of greenhouse gas emissions from different components of the production system was determined. Direct emission of methane on-farm (86% of total) was the dominant emission, followed by nitrous oxide emitted from animal wastes directly (5%) and indirectly (5%), and decomposition of pasture residue (1%). Only 2% of total emissions were embodied in farm inputs, including fertiliser. The emissions profile varied according to calculation method and assumptions. Enteric methane production was calculated using five recognised methods and results were found to vary by 27%. This study also showed that calculated emissions for wool production changed substantially, under an economic allocation method, by changing the enterprise emphasis from wool to meat production (41% decrease) and by changing wool price (29% variability), fibre diameter (23% variability) and fleece weight (11% variability). This paper provides data specific to the Yass Region and addresses broader methodological issues, to ensure that future livestock emissions calculations are robust.Recently, catalytic methodologies have been developed to avoid phosphine oxide waste produced in classic phosphorus-consuming processes, i.e. Appel and Wittig reactions. For these new catalytic methods, however, the requisite stoichiometric amounts of silanes raised the question of whether net environmental improvements can be achieved. Here, we conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA), in which the classic reactions are compared with their catalytic counterparts in terms of cumulative energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis shows that the replacement of phosphines by silanes can offer environmental improvements for the Wittig reaction, but that additional reagents and working in lower concentrations can offset these environmental improvements for the Appel reaction. These results clearly show the importance of LCA in early chemical methodology development.Biomass-derived chemical products are regarded as alternative materials because they substitute fossil resources for renewable resources. In this regard, the environmental impact originating from the production and consumption of the biomass-derived products should be assessed through life-cycle analysis, including biomass cultivation. In 2010, a commercial plant producing ethylene from sugarcane ethanol was constructed in Brazil and production of biomass-derived polyethylene (bio-PE) was started. In this study, we aim to reveal the environmental performance of bio-PE using life-cycle assessment by investigating scenarios in which bio-PE is produced in Brazil, shipped to Japan, used in containers and packages, and finally incinerated. The results demonstrate that bio-PE gives rise to a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission during its life cycle as compared to that of fossil-derived PE (fossil-PE). It is furthermore revealed that neither the transport of bio-PE from Brazil to Japan, the nonuse of surplus biomass, or land use transformation upends the dominance of bio-PE over fossil-PE. Based on these results, we conclude that the adoption of bio-PE can reduce GHG emissions originating from polyethylene production.Purpose - A low-cost, open source, self-replicating rapid prototyper (RepRap) has been developed, which greatly expands the potential user base of rapid prototypers. The operating cost of the Rep Rap can be further reduced using waste polymers as feedstock. Centralized recycling of polymers is often uneconomic and energy intensive due to transportation embodied energy. The purpose of this paper is to provide a proof of concept for high-value recycling of waste polymers at distributed creation sites. Design/methodology/approach - Previous designs of waste plastic extruders (also known as RecycleBots) were evaluated using a weighted evaluation matrix. An updated design was completed and the description and analysis of the design is presented including component summary, testing procedures, a basic life cycle analysis and extrusion results. The filament was tested for consistency of density and diameter while quantifying electricity consumption. Findings - Filament was successfully extruded at an average rate of 90 mm/min and used to print parts. The filament averaged 2.805 mm diameter with 87 per cent of samples between 2.540 mm and 3.081 mm. The average mass was 0.564 g/100 mm length. Energy use was 0.06 kWh/m. Practical implications - The success of the RecycleBot further reduces RepRap operating costs, which enables distributed in-home, value added, plastic recycling. This has implications for municipal waste management programs, as in-home recycling could reduce cost and greenhouse gas emissions associated with waste collection and transportation, as well as the environmental impact of manufacturing custom plastic parts. Originality/value - This paper reports on the first technical evaluation of a feedstock filament for the RepRap from waste plastic material made in a distributed recycling device.The sustainable development of brownfields reflects a fundamental, yet logical, shift in thinking and policymaking regarding pollution prevention. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to assist in determining the conformity of brownfield development projects to the sustainability paradigm. LCA was applied to the process of a real brownfield redevelopment project, now known as the Chicago Center for Green Technology, to determine the cumulative energy required to complete the following redevelopment stages: (1) brownfield assessment and remediation, (2) building rehabilitation and site development and (3) ten years of operation. The results of the LCA have shown that operational energy is the dominant life-cycle stage after ten years of operation. The preservation and rehabilitation of the existing building, the installation of renewable energy systems (geothermal and photovoltaic) on-site and the use of more sustainable building products resulted in 72 terajoules (TJ) of avoided energy impacts, which would provide 14 years of operational energy for the site.Environmental impact studies of forest bioenergy systems usually account for CO2 emissions and removals and identify the so-called carbon debt of bioenergy through comparison with a reference system. This approach is based on a simple sum of fluxes and does not consider any direct physical impact or climate system response. Other recent applications go one step further and elaborate impulse response functions (IRFs) and subsequent metrics for biogenic CO2 emissions that are compatible with the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. However, a thorough discussion about the role of the different metrics in the interpretation of the climate impacts of forest bioenergy systems is still missing. In this work, we assess a single LCA dataset of selected bioenergy systems using different emission metrics based on cumulative CO2 emissions, radiative forcing and global surface temperature. We consider both absolute and normalized metrics for single pulses and sustained emissions. The key challenges are the choice of end point (emissions, concentration, radiative forcing, change in temperature, etc), the type of measure (instantaneous or time-integrated) and the treatment of time. Bioenergy systems usually perform better than fossil counterparts if assessed with instantaneous metrics, including global surface temperature change, and in some cases can give a net global cooling effect in the short term. The analysis of sustained, or continuous emissions, also shows that impacts from bioenergy systems are generally reversible, while those from fossil fuels are permanent. As shown in this study, the metric choice can have a large influence on the results. The dominant role traditionally assigned to cumulative metrics in LCA studies and climate impact accounting schemes should therefore be reconsidered, because such metrics can fail to capture important time dependences unique to the biomass system under analysis (to which instantaneous metrics are well suited).The production of biofuel from cellulosic residues can have both environmental and financial benefits. A particular benefit is that it can alleviate competition for land conventionally used for food and feed production. In this research, we investigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production of ethanol, biomethane, limonene and digestate from citrus waste, a byproduct of the citrus processing industry. The study represents the first life cycle-based evaluations of citrus waste biorefineries. Two biorefinery configurations are studied-a large biorefinery that converts citrus waste into ethanol, biomethane, limonene and digestate, and a small biorefinery that converts citrus waste into biomethane, limonene and digestate. Ethanol is assumed to be used as E85, displacing gasoline as a light-duty vehicle fuel; biomethane displaces natural gas for electricity generation, limonene displaces acetone in solvents, and digestate from the anaerobic digestion process displaces synthetic fertilizer. System expansion and two allocation methods (energy, market value) are considered to determine emissions of co-products. Considerable GHG reductions would be achieved by producing and utilizing the citrus waste-based products in place of the petroleum-based or other non-renewable products. For the large biorefinery, ethanol used as E85 in light-duty vehicles results in a 134% reduction in GHG emissions compared to gasoline-fueled vehicles when applying a system expansion approach. For the small biorefinery, when electricity is generated from biomethane rather than natural gas, GHG emissions are reduced by 77% when applying system expansion. The life cycle GHG emissions vary substantially depending upon biomethane leakage rate, feedstock GHG emissions and the method to determine emissions assigned to co-products. Among the process design parameters, the biomethane leakage rate is critical, and the ethanol produced in the large biorefinery would not meet EISA's requirements for cellulosic biofuel if the leakage rate is higher than 9.7%. For the small biorefinery, there are no GHG emission benefits in the production of biomethane if the leakage rate is higher than 11.5%. Compared to system expansion, the use of energy and market value allocation methods generally results in higher estimates of GHG emissions for the primary biorefinery products (i.e., smaller reductions in emissions compared to reference systems).Complementing centralized water-related infrastructure with decentralized facilities is being considered in some communities and a life-cycle perspective is needed for informed decision making. Our 2012 study presents a framework for analyzing the environmental effects of decentralized wastewater systems. While the analysis framework could be applied to cases with a variety of sizes, we evaluated two currently operating systems in California, one decentralized and one centralized plant with a much larger capacity. The disparate scales of the two plants represent an 'off-the-grid' suburban neighborhood-scale system compared with a similarly sized neighborhood connecting to an adjacent large centralized plant. Deciding whether or not to connect expanding developments to nearby centralized plants is a realistic scenario for future growth, making the treatment plants evaluated in our study a realistic choice for comparison.In the article 'Energy and air emission implications of a decentralized wastewater system' published in Environmental Research Letters (2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 024007), Shehabi et al compared a decentralized and a centralized system on the basis of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants, and claimed that economies of scale lower the environmental impacts from a centralized system on a per-volume basis. In this comment, we present literature and data from New York State, USA to argue that the authors' comparison between a small decentralized system (0.015 MGD) and a large centralized system (66.5 MGD) is unconventional and inappropriate.Embedding the concept of sustainability into a company's culture is immensely challenging but is likely to be critical to the long-term viability of science and technology companies that rely on successful innovation to remain competitive. Moving to a more sustainable society can be expected to provide plenty of commercially attractive business opportunities for forward thinking organizations. The combination of life cycle thinking with the enabling science of chemistry will be essential to successfully address world challenges such as the strain on resources caused by population growth and changing demographics. The Dow Chemical Company has been developing strategies and tools around holistic thinking for more than 20 years and has recently introduced a methodology to broaden sustainability knowledge and encourage life cycle thinking among innovators new to this topic while providing insight into the sustainability of new product development. A tool, the Dow Chemical Sustainability Footprint Tool, is described, using examples to illustrate the insights gained by project teams and business management. With more than 250 project assessments carried out so far, it is fair to say that sustainability knowledge among innovators is increasing, that the tool has met its design criteria such as being self-explanatory and easy and quick to use, and that it is providing business management with sustainability overviews of their project portfolios.Global sustainability goals have led to the development of the green building movement. The Green Building Program, stemming from the movement, has had unprecedented success as it provides a quantifiable metric to people's efforts towards sustainable development. Sustainable development and green buildings are often used interchangeably. Although, sustainable development and green buildings are related, they are not the same. This paper provides an overview of how green building relates to sustainable development practices. Sustainability also governs decisions concerning building materials. A comprehensive explanation of what constitutes a green building material is discussed and how renewable material like wood fare in the deciding criteria. There are many green building rating systems in place. United States Green Building Council administered Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) is the global market leader in the rating systems. LEED is a commendable and grand effort in moving towards sustainable development by converting the built environment green. However, it does have certain pitfalls and challenges. Some of these challenges are with respect to policies on material selection and performance monitoring. The materials used in a project are considered at a common starting point and no consideration is given to the life cycle performance of the material. Statements concerning sustainability require validation, and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a tool that can provide such validity. This paper presents how beneficial it can be, when included, in the bigger scheme of green building rating systems and introduces an integrated design concept for green buildings.The construction industry is one of the less sustainable activities on the planet: with a consumption of 40% of the materials entering the global economy and the generation of 40-50% of the global output of greenhouse gases. The biggest environmental impact caused by buildings is generated during their use phase due to the energy consumption for thermal conditioning. Addition of green elements to buildings is used to improve energy efficiency of buildings. In this study Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to quantify the environmental impact of the green roofs materials to analyze its environmental profile. The identification of hot spots of the system permits an ecodesign strategy that effectively reduces environmental burdens associated with roof construction, optimizing the environmental performance. The results identify the high environmental impact associated to the structure, the important contribution of the felt wick irrigation system and the extruded polystyrene thermal insulation.The integration of combinatorial green chemistry (CGC), a more benign approach to combinatorial chemistry, with environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies as an improved process development methodology is discussed. It is expected that the CGC approach will require less labor and result in more globally optimized assay results, leading to more optimized unit process design. The technique utilizes chemical assay stage information to rapidly predict globally optimized process conditions based on techno-economic and LCA indicators. A simplified kraft pulping case study of the application of CGC-LCA is demonstrated herein, but CGC analyses could be applied to virtually any chemical-based project development and implementation project.This paper presents a survey of the state-of-the-art in tools to assist in the selection of sustainable building assemblies based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The tools are analysed to identify the characteristics that make them suitable to assist in the early phases of design. In a first phase of analysis, the existing tools are classified. In a second phase of analysis, the tools found to be more suitable to assist in building design are further analysed, by describing their advantages and limitations. In conclusion, a list of guidelines for the development of a Spanish tool to assist building designers in the selection of sustainable building assemblies is proposed.A sizing procedure is developed for hybrid system with the aid of mathematical models for photovoltaic cell, wind turbine, and battery that are readily present in the literature. This sizing procedure can simulate the annual performance of different kinds of photovoltaic-wind hybrid power system structures for an identified set of renewable resources, which fulfills technical limitations with the lowest energy cost. The output of the program will display the performance of the system during the year, the total cost of the system, and the best size for the PV-generator, wind generator, and battery capacity. Security lightning application is selected, whereas system performance data and environmental operating conditions are measured and stored. This hybrid system, which includes a PV, wind turbine, inverter, and a battery, was installed to supply energy to 24 W lamps, considering that the renewable energy resources of this site where the system was installed were 1700 Wh/m(2)/day solar radiation and 3.43 m/s yearly average wind speed. Using the measured variables, the inverter and charge regulator efficiencies were calculated as 90% and 98%, respectively, and the overall system's electrical efficiency is calculated as 72%. Life cycle costs per kWh are found to be $0.89 and LLP = 0.0428.This work based on a simplified life cycle assessment (hereinafter referred to as LCA) and conversion of emission production within particular farming and processing operations, evaluates the amount of greenhouse gases emission expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent (hereinafter referred to as CO(2)e) released when cultivating, processing and transporting wheat under conditions of the conventional and organic farming system. The basic data for calculations was obtained using a questionnaire survey supplemented from the Ecoinvent database. The results were calculated using the LCA method in compliance with requirements of CSN EN ISO 14 040(9) and CSN EN ISO 14 044(10) standards. The life cycle of grain products, consisting of three connected processes - agriculture, processing and transport, was modelled in the SIMA Pro software. Besides the comparison of conventional and organic farming systems, also the influence of the regionality of production was evaluated when two basic distances for calculations were determined. The distance of 50 km was considered as the regional one and the distance of 400 km was considered as supra-regional. Based on the achieved results it is evident, that the environmental load is affected by the farming system applied and observance of the principles of regional activity as well. The main difference arises from the agricultural phase when the conventional farming system shows 0.5581 CO(2)e per kg of wheat and the organic farming system 0.4624 CO(2)e per kg of wheat. Other emission arises from transport when within the supra-regional transport of one kg of the final product 0.1094 kg of CO(2)e is released. The processing has also significant influence on the CO2 release when, within current processes and production volumes, the bread processing produces more CO(2)e emissions in the organic system than in the conventional one.A biopolymer coating for plastic films was formulated based on whey protein, and its potential to replace current synthetic oxygen barrier layers used in food packaging such as ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymers (EVOH) was tested. The whey-coating application was performed at semi-industrial scale. High barrier to oxygen with transmission rate down to ranges of 1 cm(3) (STP) m(-2) d(-1) bar(-1) at 23 degrees C and 50% relative humidity (r.h.) but interesting humidity barrier down to ranges of 3 gm(-2) d(-1) (both normalized to 100 mu m thickness) were reached, outperforming most existing biopolymers. Coated films were validated for storing various food products showing that the shelf life and sensory attributes were maintained similar to reference packaging films while complying with food safety regulations. The developed whey coating could be enzymatically removed within 2 hours and is therefore compatible with plastic recycling operations to allow multilayer films to become recyclable by separating the other combined layers. A life cycle assessment was performed showing a significant reduction in the environmental impact of the packaging thanks in particular to the possibility of recycling materials as opposed to incinerating those containing EVOH or polyamide (PA), but due to the use of biosourced raw materials.Using case studies from five typical climatic locations, this study revealed that current quantification of water demand (WD) and water footprint (WF) of freshwater algae cultivation in raceway ponds suffer from uncertainty and variability in the methodologies and assumptions used. Of particular concern, the WF metric had an intrinsically poor geographical resolution and could be biased towards high-productivity arid locations because local levels of water stress are not accounted for. Applying current methodologies could therefore cause the selection of locations that are neither economically viable nor environmentally sustainable. An improved methodology should utilize more accurate evaporation models, determine realistic limits for the maximum hydraulic retention times and process water recycling ratios, and apply weighting to the WF to reflect localized water stress or use an alternative metric such as the equivalent years of rainfall required to support a productivity of 1 GJ m(-2). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A methodology that integrates life cycle assessment (LCA) with thermodynamic analysis is developed and applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of producing biofuels from waste biomass, including biodiesel from waste cooking oil, ethanol from corn stover, and compressed natural gas from municipal solid wastes. Solid oxide fuel cell-based auxiliary power units using bio-fuel as the hydrogen precursor enable generation of auxiliary electricity for idling heavy-duty trucks. Thermodynamic analysis is applied to evaluate the fuel conversion efficiency and determine the amount of fuel feedstock needed to generate a unit of electrical power. These inputs feed into an LCA that compares energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of different fuel pathways. Results show that compressed natural gas from municipal solid wastes is an optimal bio-fuel option for SOFC-APU applications in New York State. However, this methodology can be regionalized within the U.S. or internationally to account for different fuel feedstock options. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concern with the environmental dimension of sustainability has become more and more relevant in studies related to agribusiness. The need of a robust and trusty framework to measure the environmental impacts in the agribusiness activities is being presented as a trend in countries leaders in food production worldwide, like Brazil. In this context, this paper describes a review related to the concept of Life Cycle Assessment - LCA which is being widely recognized and used by technicians and researchers all over the world to the environmental impacts of production chains and allowing various applications on the production systems. The paper was elaborated based on a bibliographical research carried out by accessing national and international publications, websites and proceedings of scientific events. Its main goal is to describe the importance and the diffusion of LCA as a framework to analyse production systems in Brazilian agribusiness. In conclusion, the LCA framework is still not widespread in the Brazilian agribusiness as well as the studies about this subject are still very scarce.The aim of this paper was to analyze energy-related properties of forestry and agricultural wastes for energy production purposes, and to compare them with fossil fuels. The forestry wastes used were red cedar, Eucalyptus, and Pinus wood shavings. The agricultural wastes analyzed were rice husk, coffee wastes, sugar cane bagasse, maize harvesting wastes, and bamboo cellulose pulp. The forestry wastes presented more suitable properties for bioenergy production than the agricultural wastes. Desirable energetic properties were found for coffee wastes. The opposite was verified for rice husks. Among the biomass studied, coffee wastes presented the highest equivalent in fossil fuel volume and hence may lead to the highest decrease in CO2 emissions by fossil fuels used in Brazil for steam and heat production. The results suggests that CO2 benefits can be obtained if bioenergy is generated in the same locale where biomass is produced, avoiding CO2 cost of logistics and leading to greater end-use efficiency. The present work promotes the widespread use of different lignocellulosic wastes for bioenergy production and gives useful information for the planning and the control of power plants using biomass.Experimental strain analysis, structural health monitoring and non-destructive testing and evaluation are regarded as separate disciplines that, in general, are deployed independently at different phases in the life cycle of an engineering component, i.e. in the design process, in service and after an event or service period, respectively. It is proposed that the integrated use of these three disciplines is advantageous and beneficial in terms of reduced capital and operational costs for critical and safety-relevant components, as well as, in validating simulations, in both quantifying and reducing risk of unexpected failure, and in estimating remanent life. We propose the foundation of this integration to be data-rich strain fields measured and compared quantitatively, with each other and with data from simulations, at temporal intervals during the life of a component.A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to explore fossil energy profiles of current and future scenarios for the production of the biopolymer polyhydroxybutyrate-valerate (PHBV). The study was based on primary data collected from industry sources and laboratory research, focused on evaluating the long-term quantitative and qualitative depletion of fossil fuel resources associated with the production of PHBV. The results show that corn farming and corn-glucose production were the dominant contributors to fossil fuel depletion (expressed in MJ surplus energy) over the life cycle of PHBV produced under the current production scale. However, PHBV is presently undergoing substantial development in comparison with the well-developed petrochemical alternatives. The results of forward-looking scenarios under an expanded production scale indicate that the use of renewable resources for process energy requirements for PHBV and glucose production coupled with improved C-utilization efficiency have the potential to reduce fossil fuel depletion by over 50% compared with its current production scale. The use of appropriate lignocellulosic feedstocks and processing technology for glucose production offers potential for further improvement. These results with PHBV support the view that it will be possible with future developments to move to biopolymer production systems that are largely independent of fossil fuels.In the pharmaceutical industry, there is always a desire to identify better synthesis pathways and technologies. Chemistry can be changed resulting in safer reactions, higher yields, better recyclability, etc. Also new technologies as for e. g. continuous flow reactors can be used allowing better heat transfer and better reaction efficiencies compared to batch reactors. It is these innovations that make green chemistry actually happen. However, according to the principle "you can only manage what you can measure", also measuring methods are required for the evaluation of the innovative improvements. Many chemistry related measuring methods are available for the evaluation of the greenness, eco-efficiency or even sustainability of new developments. In this article, exergetic life cycle assessment is used on a real case from the pharmaceutical industry (three generations of Galantamine.HBr synthesis) to illustrate the importance of the continuous search for improved chemical processes and technologies and of using measuring methods in order to support, quantitatively, the decision making towards new, greener and more sustainable processes and technologies. From this case, it can be concluded that a reduction in the overall resource consumption can rise up to 41% by optimizing the first generation pathway by new chemistry and by a new technology, i.e. continuous flow reactors.Decreasing energy resources, world population growth, and the development of societies based on the principle of sustainable development are the main factors increasing the importance of ecological aspects of production and consumption. One of the proposals taking into account the ecological aspect is the introduction of an ecological indicator - carbon footprint - characterized by all kinds of products and services. The proposed methodology for determining the value of carbon footprint does not include some important elements. Identified problems in this work are an unreliable estimation of greenhouse gas emissions and differences in the value of the carbon footprint (depending on the farming techniques used and the manner of its expression). The aim of our study was to analyze the available literature data on the size of its carbon footprint during the production of animal materials. The tool used to determine the CFP value was life cycle analysis (LCA). A study of the literature showed that the CFP value in the production of pork in various agricultural systems ranges from the 2.06 kg CO(2)eq/kg (good agricultural practice) to 3.97 kg CO(2)eq/kg (organic agricultural production).Global climate change caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which severely limits the development of human society and threatens the survival of humanity, has drawn the international community's long-term attention. Gathering the most important production factors in the region, an industrial park usually represents the development level of specific industries in the region. Therefore, the industrial park should be regarded as the base unit for developing a low-carbon economy and reducing GHG emissions. Focusing on a typical high-end industrial park in Beijing, we analyze the carbon sources within the system boundary and probe into the emission structure in view of life-cycle analysis. A GHG inventory is thereby set up to calculate all GHG emissions from the concerned park. Based on the results, suggestions are presented to guide the low-carbon development of the high-end industrial park.Residential buildings account for a large share of global carbon emission, while they play important roles in economic growth and social development at the same time. Therefore, the appropriate evolution routes of residential buildings need balancing their carbon emission and value creation, which is realized in this paper by creating a new concept of life-cycle carbon efficiency and its relative methodology. First, the life-cycle carbon efficiency of a residential building is defined as the ratio of its life-cycle value to carbon emission, and the life-cycle of a residential building is divided into five stages, including construction materials preparation, building construction, building operation, building demolition, and construction & demolition wastes disposal. Second, the life-cycle carbon emission of a residential building is estimated through calculating the carbon emission at each stage based on its consumed energy and resources. Third, the product of the service life span of a residential building (in year), its building area (m(2)) and its storey height (m) is recommended to represent its life-cycle value, since this product is a physical measure and more useful to develop action plans to improve its performance. In the end, the proposed methodology is exemplified in estimating the life-cycle carbon efficiency of a five-storey brick-concrete residential building in Nanjing city (China) at its design phase. Possible measures to enhance the estimated carbon efficiency are further put forward, such as prolonging the service life span, enhancing 3R (reduce, reuse and recycle) principles of cement and rolled steel, saving electricity and natural gas at the stage of building operation. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper focuses on the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the walls of buildings according to their lifespan. These assessments take account of the construction, maintenance and end of life. The contribution of the utilization phase must be equivalent for all technical solutions for a given usage function. In the first part of the paper, the methodology is described by (1) considering a unit area of wall (i.e. 1 square metre), (2) determining a long service life, (3) choosing technical solutions in agreement with the specifications, (4) establishing the lifespan of each technical solution according to experts, (5) finding the corresponding greenhouse gas index from an appropriate database, and finally (6) modelling the evolution of these indicators with time. Several technical solutions (concrete, brick, stone, wood, aerated concrete) are considered and lifespans range from a few years to centuries. The results of this analysis suggest and quantify the important impact of lifespan on greenhouse gas emission indicators. For example, the best technical solution for a short lifetime can be the worst on a longer duration and vice versa. In the second part, since the lifespan of a product is very difficult to determine objectively, it is considered as a variable. The numerical results presented point out the need to revisit the current life cycle tools. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Effective environmental control and energy efficiency in high-technology buildings have become an important subject of investigations across continents since the last decades. This study aims to quantify energy use and associated environmental impact of four high-technology buildings for wafer fabrication in a subtropical region of Asia using life cycle assessment techniques. Wafer fabrication process and its energy and steam consumption were associated with "summer smog," "heavy metals," and "acidification potential" on the environment. All fabs used natural gas, diesel oil, and steam, which together accounted for about 5% of the total energy consumption. Two metrics - production efficiency index (PEI) and the electricity utilization index (EUI) were used to characterize and normalize environmental impact of each of the four high-technology buildings within which dynamic random access memory (DRAM) wafers were manufactured. The GHG emissions in PEI and EUI have declined from 601 g to 367 g (by 39%) and from 28.9 g to 13.7 g (by 53%), respectively, between 1999 and 2007. Energy intensity per unit area of wafer production has increased from 195 to 268 associated with a 37% increase in emission rate of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) from 195 kg to 268 kg (by 73 kg) per unit area of wafers produced. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Taking a novel hybrid-power gas engine heat pump as an example, fuel-consumed rate, fuel-consumed flow, fuel conversion efficiency and life cycle assessment were used to analyze energy-saving effect and natural gas environmental benefits on human health, ecosystem quality and resource consumption through contrast with electric power consumption model. The test results show that the fuel conversion efficiency under different operating conditions of HPGHP is higher than conventional GHP under the same load. Besides, from the total indicator, scores on resource consumption is the highest. Gaseous product is mainly CO2 and other carbon or sulfur oxide gases are discharged in form of negative or water body, which means the use of natural gas effectively control the pollution gas emissions. At last, concept of environmental benefit time was established; the result shows that HPGHP can embody better environmental benefits than gas heat pump when running more than 1778 h. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.We estimated GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions based on life cycle inventory analysis for electric power generated by forest residues. In studying 2 kinds of forest residues (Case 1: Associated with pre-commercial thinning, Case 2: Associated with final cutting) in Hokkaido, the system boundary was from collecting of forest residues to burning (power generation). Moisture content of forest residue in burning (power generation) was defined as 50% (oven dry basis). The highest and lowest GHG emissions were 1.27 and 0.10 kg-CO(2)eq/kWh, respectively. There is the potential for an increase in GHG emissions for electric power generated by forest residues depending on kind of residue, type of boiler and power generation efficiency.Amorphous silicon (a-Si:H)-based solar cells have the lowest ecological impact of photovoltaic (PV) materials. In order to continue to improve the environmental performance of PV manufacturing using proposed industrial symbiosis techniques, this paper performs a life cycle analysis (LCA) on both conventional 1-GW scaled a-Si:H-based single junction and a-Si:H/microcrystalline-Si:H tandem cell solar PV manufacturing plants and such plants coupled to silane recycling plants. Both the energy consumed and greenhouse gas emissions are tracked in the LCA, then silane gas is reused in the manufacturing process rather than standard waste combustion. Using a recycling process that results in a silane loss of only 17% instead of conventional processing that loses 85% silane, results in an energy savings of 81,700 GJ and prevents 4400 tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere per year for the single junction plant. Due to the increased use of silane for the relatively thick microcrystalline-Si:H layers in the tandem junction plants, the savings are even more substantial - 290,000 GJ of energy savings and 15.6 million kg of CO2 eq. emission reductions per year. This recycling process reduces the cost of raw silane by 68%, or approximately $22.6 million per year for a 1-GW a-Si:H-based PV production facility and over $79 million per year for tandem manufacturing. The results are discussed and conclusions are drawn about the technical feasibility and environmental benefits of silane recycling in an eco-industrial park centered around a-Si:H-based PV manufacturing plants. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nanotechnology is one of the most promising technologies to emerge in recent decades. Materials that are specially engineered to have at least one dimension that is no larger than 100 nm are now continuously manufactured and incorporated as critical components of different products that people use daily. While we are taking advantage of nanomaterials (NMs) and nano-products, they may pose a risk to humans and the broader environment. Some types of fibrous NMs such as carbon nanotubes and nano-fibers may present a risk similar to that of asbestos. Some carbon or metal based NMs may threaten the environment due to their bioaccumulative nature within food webs. In order to prevent future adverse effects from products or byproducts of nanotechnology, we suggest an integrated multi-faceted approach which includes an integrated regulation that is based upon life cycle assessment, empirically derived risk assessment. Advanced research that fills the knowledge gap regarding the understanding of NMs in scientific and social norms will be helpful in a full life cycle assessment of NMs. Emphasizing nanotechnology education to the public for an increased understanding and participation associated with media coverage will finally draw governments' attention with an integrated legislation to be instituted. Developing the optimal mix of these tools, including research, public education, media coverage, integrated legislation, will be significant to proactively manage the complexity of nanotechnology and prevent any undesirable effect due to the NMs exposure. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The anesthesia team acts every day in a highly complex and high risk environment for the transmission of pathogenic organisms and the induction of infectious complications. With strict adherence to standard precautions and infection control practices in particular regular hand disinfection before and after direct patient contact and before performance of aseptic tasks during anesthesia and an optimized perioperative process the members of the anesthesia team can become infection control pioneers within the hospital. In order to be successful, structural and organizational resources in the form of training, personnel, materials and time, need to be adequate for the situation. This review summarizes the infection control recommendations for anesthesia practice based on the most recent literature and guidelines and offers practical advice for commonly observed mistakes.In this paper, the results of the complete life-cycle assessment (LCA) analysis of the water cycle in two Spanish urban areas are presented. First case study was Zaragoza city (700,000 inhabitants), with enough surface water resources for drinking purpose. Second case was the Mancomunidad del Sureste, a highly populated and touristic area in a water-scarce island (Gran Canaria). Main objective of the paper was to show, from an environmental global perspective, which was the relative pollutant weights of the diverse water cycle stages in an urban area, in order to put the efforts in reducing the environmental penalties associated to the water cycle. Results showed that environmental load associated to energy consumed in dwelling uses (to produce hot sanitary water) exceeded by far the environmental impact provoked by water cycle infrastructures (water treatment plants, water supply and drainage networks, and wastewater treatment plants). Additionally, it is very important to remark that new water supply alternatives (seawater desalination plant as well as reclaimed wastewater) studied here were energy intensive solutions, and the environmental charge during its life cycle was also very significant.Demographic loop analysis is one of the basic methods applied in life cycle analysis in population ecology. Here, we developed an R package called "loop" to implement the algorithmic approach of loop analysis developed by a previous work. Additionally, the package can provide flexible network plotting and food web analysis as well. In this paper we illustrated the loop decomposition analysis using the life-cycle graph of a tropical tree species Vouacapoua americana; and performed food web statistics for the two real food webs for illustrating food web plotting and detecting key species in securing food web persistence. The package, including source code and binary versions, is available at the following URL: http://cranx-projectorg/web/packages/loop/. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biofuels have been extensively explored and applied in the Brazilian market. In Brazil, ethanol and biodiesel are produced on an industrial scale. Ethanol is commercialized and used in engines in both the hydrated form (96% GL) and the anhydrous form, mixed with gasoline at a proportion of up to 25% by volume. In turn, biodiesel is blended with diesel in a proportion of 5% by volume. Thus, the goal of the use of biofuels is to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gases and other pollutants emitted into the atmosphere during burning. This article describes some recent developments in the characterization of the environmental and economic impacts of the production of these biofuels from different biomass sources. On this regard, this review presents results of life-cycle assessments (LCAs), life-cycle cost assessments (LCCAs) and Structural Path Analysis (SPA), this last one depicting a sectorial perspective rather than LCA process level data approaches. The results showed that the inclusion of biofuels in transportation activities can lead to the mitigation of the environmental impacts of certain activities, such as emissions of greenhouse gases. However, greater attention must be paid to the improvement of agricultural management to decrease fuel, fertilizer and herbicide consumption.The editor of this journal has been waiting for such a contribution of the life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners and users for years, since the last debate of this kind dates back to beginning of the new century. It is remembered as the "Two planets debate" and coincided with the emergence of life cycle management, i.e. the use of life-cycle based methods in industry. This is a metaphor coined at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Europe case studies symposium 2000 and designates the fact that many academic LCA developers and the LCA practitioners seem to live in different spheres. The editorial note by Baitz et al. shows that this seems to be true still today. It is argued that the practitioners do not frequently enough participate in the working groups organized by SETAC, the UNEP/SETAC life cycle initiative and other international organizations and therefore cannot bring in the practical experience they have acquired in performing "real-life" LCA studies. The new LCIA methods, for instance, are often not accepted by the LCA practitioners and commissioners, since essential aspects were not recognised during method development. The solution of the problems pointed out in Baitz et al. cannot be to hinder the inhabitants of the academic planet in inventing ingenious new methods for reasons of academic freedom. It is proposed that new methods developed should be tested by practitioners in real-life LCA studies. Data asymmetries in comparative (i.e. most) LCA studies using more demanding methods may shift problems from LCIA to the LCI databases. With regard to the financing of such studies, it should be remembered that practitioners do their living by performing LCAs and other studies and have to calculate a full overhead in addition to the pure working costs.The protocols of carbon footprints generally define three scopes for different greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions levels. The most important carbon footprint emissions source comes from upstream indirect emissions of scope 3 for products that do not consume energy during their use phase. Upstream scope 3 GHG inventory can usually be analyzed through input-output or hybrid LCA analysis. The economic input-output life cycle analysis (EIO-LCA) and the hybrid LCA model have been widely used for this purpose. However, a cutoff error exists in the hybrid model, and the lack of a truncation criterion between process and IO inventory may lead to a high level of uncertainty in the hybrid model. This study attempts to improve the problem of cutoff uncertainty in hybrid LCA and proposes a method to minimize the cutoff uncertainty. The way to improve the cutoff uncertainty could follow two steps. First, through the IO inventory analysis of EIO-LCA, we can define the emissions by various tiers of product components. The IO inventory indicator can provide a definitive criterion for the process inventory of the hybrid model. Second, we connect the process- and IO-LCI according to the IO inventory result. The advantage of the process inventory is that it provides detailed manufacturing information on the target while the IO encompasses a complete system boundary. For improvements, the process inventory can catch the most important process of the GHG emissions, and the IO inventory could compensate for the remainder of the incomplete system inventory. In this case study, the printed circuit board production process is used to evaluate the efficiency of the improved method. The threshold M was set to 70 in this case study, and the IO inventory provides the remaining 30 %. For the integrated hybrid model, the tier 3 process inventory takes only 64 % while the incorporation of the proposed method can include 92 % of the total emissions, which shows the cutoff uncertainty can be reduced through the improvement. This study provides a clear guideline for process and IO cutoff criteria, which can help the truncation uncertainty. When higher precision is required, process LCI will need to play an important role, and thus, a higher M value should be set. In this situation, the emissions from IO-LCI would be smaller than the emissions from the process LCI. The appropriate solution would attain a comfortable balance between data accuracy and time and labor consumption.The results of published Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of biofuels are characterized by a large variability, arising from the diversity of both biofuel chains and the methodologies used to estimate inventory data. Here, we suggest that the best option to maximize the accuracy of biofuel LCA is to produce local results taking into account the local soil, climatic and agricultural management factors. We focused on a case study involving the production of first-generation ethanol from sugar beet in the Picardy region in Northern France. To account for local factors, we first defined three climatic patterns according to rainfall from a 20-year series of weather data. We subsequently defined two crop rotations with sugar beet as a break crop, corresponding to current practice and an optimized management scenario, respectively. The six combinations of climate types and rotations were run with the process-based model CERES-EGC to estimate crop yields and environmental emissions. We completed the data inventory and compiled the impact assessments using Simapro v.7.1 and Ecoinvent database v2.0. Overall, sugar beet ethanol had lower impacts than gasoline for the abiotic depletion, global warming, ozone layer depletion and photochemical oxidation categories. In particular, it emitted between 28 % and 42 % less greenhouse gases than gasoline. Conversely, sugar beet ethanol had higher impacts than gasoline for acidification and eutrophication due to losses of reactive nitrogen in the arable field. Thus, LCA results were highly sensitive to changes in local conditions and management factors. As a result, an average impact figures for a given biofuel chain at regional or national scales may only be indicative within a large uncertainty band. Although the crop model made it possible to take local factors into account in the life-cycle inventory, best management practices that achieved high yields while reducing environmental impacts could not be identified. Further modelling developments are necessary to better account for the effects of management practices, in particular regarding the benefits of fertiliser incorporation into the topsoil in terms of nitrogen losses abatement. Supplementary data and modelling developments also are needed to better estimate the emissions of pesticides and heavy metals in the field.The article presents the method and results of the life cycle assessments (LCAs) of the Vestas' 2-MW GridStreamer (TM) wind turbines and outlines the state-of-the-art approach adopted. For more than 10 years, Vestas has prepared LCAs of wind power. However, since 2010, a step change in comprehensiveness has been employed, for example, conducting the LCA to individually assess all components within a wind turbine (being composed of around 25,000 parts). Three LCAs have been conducted with the 2-MW GridStreamer(TM) turbines in accordance with ISO 14040/44 and critically reviewed by an expert. The goal was to evaluate potential environmental impacts and other non-impact indicators per kilowatt hour of electricity generated for a 'typical' 50-MW onshore wind plant. The LCAs assessed all life cycle stages and were built using GaBi DfX software. A significant quantity of primary data were gathered, for example, covering over 100 Vestas' sites for manufacturing, sales and servicing, as well as establishing turbine use-phase performance (i.e. electricity generation, servicing, etc.) based on over 20,000 monitored wind turbines around the world, covering around 20 % of the current worldwide installed capacity. The baseline results show that per kilowatt hour of electricity generated by the 2-MW GridStreamer (TM) turbines have the following baseline performance: ADP elements 0.44 to 0.58 mg Sb-e, ADP fossil 0.10 to 0.13 MJ; acidification potential 37 to 45 mg SO2-e, eutrophication potential 3.7 to 4.5 mg PO4-e, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity 100 to 130 mg DCB-e, global warming potential 7 to 10 g CO2-e, human toxicity potential 1,150 to 1,400 mg DCB-e, marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential 1,100 to 1,300 g DCB-e, photochemical oxidant creation 4 to 5 mg ethene, terrestrial ecotoxicity potential 19 to 24 mg DCB-e, return-on energy 8 to 11 months and recyclability 81 to 85 % of turbine mass. Being equipped with extensive facts and comprehensive LCA models provides Vestas the basis to further integrate environmental considerations into product marketing, design and research, procurement and to deliver transparent information to stakeholders. Overall, the article presents a case study of the LCA approach used to assess the potential impacts of 2-MW GridStreamer (TM) turbines based upon comprehensive product knowledge and represents a state-of-the-art approach to LCA modelling of wind power. The article discusses further applications of LCA internally to direct product improvement and for external communications and also highlights the LCAs' aim to improve transparency and robustness of previous LCAs of wind power.The purpose of this project was to provide a parameterized LCA tool that allows performing site specific life cycle assessments for different wind energy converter types by varying a limited number of relevant parameters. Hereby, it addresses the limited transferability of WEC LCA results to other sites as well as the increasing demand for such data. Basis of the work was an extensive primary data collection at the respective production facilities and other relevant stakeholders like site assessment, service etc. Most of the required data was available at first hand and was completed with data from literature and LCA databases. Based on this data, a complex parameterized material flow model has been built and different product variants have been pre-defined within the model, including relevant production processes and upstream. The pre-definition of these product variants allows reducing the minimum number of parameters that need to be configured for site specific LCAs from a total of over 330 to just nine parameters. In the future, choosing the right type of technology for specific sites will become more important; especially in the face of increasing land use conflicts and increasing competition between renewable energy technologies. Site and technology specific LCAs prove to be a valuable tool for this assessment. Tools like the presented significantly reduce the effort required for performing these LCAs. Additionally, they can be used for various other purposes like environmental assessments of different repowering scenarios and eco design.This paper compares 16 waste lubricant oil (WLO) systems (15 management alternatives and a system in use in Portugal) using a life cycle assessment (LCA). The alternatives tested use various mild processing techniques and recovery options: recycling during expanded clay production, recycling and electric energy production, re-refining, energy recovery during cement production, and energy recovery during expanded clay production. The proposed 15 alternatives and the actual present day situation were analyzed using LCA software UMBERTO 5.5, applied to eight environmental impact categories. The LCA included an expansion system to accommodate co-products. The results show that mild processing with low liquid gas fuel consumption and re-refining is the best option to manage WLO with regard to abiotic depletion, eutrophication, global warming, and human toxicity environmental impacts. A further environmental option is to treat the WLO using the same mild processing technique, but then send it to expanded clay recycling to be used as a fuel in expanded clay production, as this is the best option regarding freshwater sedimental ecotoxicity, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, and acidification. It is recommended that there is a shift away from recycling and electric energy production. Although sensitivity analysis shows re-refining and energy recovery in expanded clay production are sensitive to unit location and substituted products emission factors, the LCA analysis as a whole shows that both options are good recovery options; re-refining is the preferable option because it is closer to the New Waste Framework Directive waste hierarchy principle.The most efficient way to reduce the environmental impact of cement production is to replace Portland cement with alternative cementitious materials. These are most often industrial waste such as blast-furnace slags (GBFS) and coal combustion fly ashes (FA). However, a recent European directive no longer considers these products as waste but as by-products. Therefore, the impact of their production has to be considered. Within this new framework, this study develops an evaluation method of their environmental impacts. This paper presents pre-existing methods and underlines their limits. Through our evaluation of these methods, it has become clear that the allocation procedure is necessary; however, results depend highly on the chosen allocation procedure. This study presents a new allocation method, based on the fact that both cement and the alternative materials, GBFS and FA, are produced by energy-intensive industries (cement iron and coal) which are all subjected to the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System. In this carbon trading system, it is economically beneficial for industries to reduce their environmental impact, like for when, by example, by-products from one industry are used as alternative 'green' material by another industry. Our allocation coefficient is calculated so that the economic gains and losses are the same for all of the industries involved in these exchanges and provides the overall environmental benefit of the exchanges. The discussion shows that whilst this method has much in common with other allocation methods, it is more accurate as it allocates the environmental costs fairly over the industries involved and is more robust because of its constant value. One of its limits is that it cannot be used for life cycle inventories; however, we test the possibility of choosing a coefficient from one impact category and applying it to all the others. Lastly, the technical term of the equation this paper presents could be employed for consequential life cycle assessment, to calculate the most environmental uses by-products could be put to.A generic hotspot assessment of social impacts from a product was conducted, using a laptop computer as a case. The aims of the case study were to identify social hotspots of the laptop and to test and evaluate the methodology. The case study was based on the social LCA methodology described in the Guidelines for social LCA and included the product system from 'cradle to grave' as well as the impacts on all relevant stakeholders. We focused on a simplified list of materials and used mainly country-specific data. A new method for impact assessment of hotspots was developed. The total activity in each phase was distributed among countries. The countries were divided into groups related to the extent of activity in the product system, as well as to their performance on a subcategory. High values in both groups were highlighted and hotspots were identified. The results revealed some hotspots, some hot countries and some hot issues, all indicating a risk of negative social impacts in the product system of a laptop. It also identified workers and the local community as the stakeholders most at risk of negative social impacts. Among the hotspots identified, the following subcategories were of importance: safe and healthy living conditions, social benefit/social security, access to material resources, involvement in areas with armed conflicts, community engagement (lack of), corruption, and access to immaterial resources. The study showed it is possible to conduct a social LCA on a generic complex product using the Guidelines, even though data collection was impaired by lack of data and low data quality. It identified methodological issues that need further attention, for example the indicator impact pathways. Still, it is clear that new insights can be gained by social LCA, where the life cycle perspective and the systematic approach help users identify potentially important aspects that could otherwise have been neglected.We present experiences and reflections from social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) case study, the aim of which was to identify social hotspots, test and evaluate the methodology and propose improvements. This paper discusses the usability and applicability of the methodology used based on our experiences from the study. The main issues considered are whether the gathering of data and other information is feasible and straightforward to perform, whether the method provides added value and relevant results and how these can be presented. We have conducted a generic hotspot assessment on a laptop computer according to the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products (BenoIt and Mazijn 2009). The experiences presented were gathered throughout the case study. The supply chain of the laptop was simplified, and we focused on a limited number of materials. The impacts were assessed in relation to the area of protection on human well-being and to affected stakeholders. Social impacts from the actual use of the product were not included. Methodological sheets were used for guidance on inventory indicators and data sources for data collection. Country-specific data were collected and entered into a spreadsheet. The process has been guided by regular meetings in a reference group, composed of representatives of all stakeholder groups. The data collection process was impaired by a lack of data and low data quality. In order to relate the data collected to the product assessed, each country's share of the activity performed in each phase was determined, and the activity percentage was calculated. In order to consider and relate all the phases in the product system, we used an estimated activity variable due to the lack of data. We developed a new approach to impact assessment. By determining the combination of the most extensive activity, as well as the most negative in the range of possible values for involved countries, we identified the hotspots. The results were not further aggregated in order to promote transparency. We found the S-LCA methodology to be feasible and useful. By handling all relevant issues within one study using a systems perspective on the product life cycle, knowledge can be gained. However, there are still some major challenges. The definition of relevant indicators, data availability, impact pathways, activity variables, results presentation and possible aggregation, the handling of stakeholder context and the restricted assessment of the use phase were identified as major issues to deal with in further studies. Communication, and hence use of the results, is a crucial issue to enable the outcome of a study to result in actions that actually improve human well-being.Improper disposal of used polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles constitute an eyesore to the environmental landscape and is a threat to the flourishing tourism industry in Mauritius. It is therefore imperative to determine a suitable disposal method of used PET bottles which not only has the least environmental load but at the same time has minimum harmful impacts on peoples employed in waste disposal companies. In this respect, the present study investigated and compared the environmental and social impacts of four selected disposal alternatives of used PET bottles. Environmental impacts of the four disposal alternatives, namely: 100 % landfilling, 75 % incineration with energy recovery and 25 % landfilling, 40 % flake production (partial recycling) and 60 % landfilling and 75 % flake production and 25 % landfilling, were determined using ISO standardized life cycle assessment (ISO 14040:2006) and with the support of SimaPro 7.1 software. Social life cycle assessments were performed based on the UNEP/SETAC Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of products. Three stakeholder categories (worker, society and local community) and eight sub-category indicators (child labour, fair salary, forced labour, health and safety, social benefit/social security, discrimination, contribution to economic development and community engagement) were identified to be relevant to the study. A new method for aggregating and analysing the social inventory data is proposed and used to draw conclusions. Environmental life cycle assessment results indicated that highest environmental impacts occurred when used PET bottles were disposed by 100 % landfilling while disposal by 75 % flake production and 25 % landfilling gave the least environmental load. Social life cycle assessment results indicated that least social impacts occurred with 75 % flake production and 25 % landfilling. Thus both E-LCA and S-LCA rated 75 % flake production and 25 % landfilling to be the best disposal option. Two dimensions of sustainability (environmental and social) when investigated using the Life Cycle Management tool, favoured scenario 4 (75 % % flake production and 25 % landfilling) which is a partial recycling disposal route. One hundred percent landfilling was found out to be the worst scenario. The next step will be to explore the third pillar of sustainability, economic, and devise a method to integrate the three dimensions with a view to determine the sustainable disposal option of used PET bottles in Mauritius.Changes affecting how product chains function can have a profound impact on human communities. Certain social life cycle assessment (LCA) methods aim to anticipate the important social effects of changes taking place in the functioning of a product's life cycle. They therefore must identify the groups that are most affected. This paper aims to help identify the groups affected by competition beyond those usually highlighted. The objective is to propose rules to identify the organisations involved in the social life cycle of a product within a context of competition. Once these organisations are identified, it is possible to deduce which groups are affected. We analyse how published social LCA studies describe the product system and determine its boundaries. We deduce the necessity of constructing (1) a new model (the systematic competitive model) when there is competition and (2) a cut-off criterion (significant dependency). These allow us to describe the system and determine its boundaries, and thus to draw the social life cycle, in a context of competition. We conducted a simple case study (calculation of the number of rural jobs created/destroyed by a new agricultural filiSre) in which two methods of representing a product system are compared. The first method is the value chain (which does not take into account the situation prior to the establishment of the planned new filiSre), the second method introduces the systematic competitive model, which includes the short term effects of competition with the planned activities. The case study shows that it is possible to define the social life cycle by proceeding in this way. The two ways of representing the same real system produce very different results. The list of organisations affected and the nature of the impact to be assessed determine which actors are affected. The use of the systematic competitive model is indispensable when competition is intense. The organisations to be included in the boundaries of the social LCA (SLCA) study are those whose behaviour with social effects is significantly affected by the changes. Furthermore, there are numerous other phenomena linked to products that provoke important social impacts, but we do not yet know how to model them. They call for further research. Environmental LCA (ELCA) and SLCA studies of the same real system will be coherent, even if the descriptions of the system and the rules of fixing the boundaries differ, provided they reflect the same scenario.A complete assessment of water use in life cycle assessment (LCA) involves modelling both consumptive and degradative water use. Due to the range of environmental mechanisms involved, the results are typically reported as a profile of impact category indicator results. However, there is also demand for a single score stand-alone water footprint, analogous to the carbon footprint. To facilitate single score reporting, the critical dilution volume approach has been used to express a degradative emission in terms of a theoretical water volume, sometimes referred to as grey water. This approach has not received widespread acceptance and a new approach is proposed which takes advantage of the complex fate and effects models normally employed in LCA. Results for both consumptive and degradative water use are expressed in the reference unit H(2)Oe, enabling summation and reporting as a single stand-alone value. Consumptive water use is assessed taking into consideration the local water stress relative to the global average water stress (0.602). Concerning degradative water use, each emission is modelled separately using the ReCiPe impact assessment methodology, with results subsequently normalised, weighted and converted to the reference unit (H(2)Oe) by comparison to the global average value for consumptive water use (1.86 x 10(-3) ReCiPe points m(-3)). The new method, illustrated in a simplified case study, incorporates best practice in terms of life cycle impact assessment modelling for eutrophication, human and eco-toxicity, and is able to assimilate new developments relating to these and any other impact assessment models relevant to water pollution. The new method enables a more comprehensive and robust assessment of degradative water use in a single score stand-alone water footprint than has been possible in the past.Differences in the practice of inclusion and the definition of specific and generic data when performing an LCA for an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) may lead to incomparable EPDs. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the importance of precise definitions regarding data quality in EPDs. The authors define relevant terminology before describing methodological differences between two versions of EPDs for an office chair. The analyses performed for one EPD use generic data for the foreground system, while the other uses specific data. Results for some impact categories as well as inventory findings are shown, and the reasons for differences are investigated and discussed. Relevant dilemmas are examined with regard to the choice of generic or specific data. These include practical hindrances and the promotion of environmental improvement. Some preliminary methodological and organisational implications are described, followed by an outline of further research. This paper shows the substantial variations arising from using two datasets with different degrees of specificity, and concludes that they increase in relation to the distinctiveness of the process or material. This highlights the importance of EPD programmes in establishing precise, unambiguous definitions and vocabulary with regard to specific as against generic data, when combined with foreground and background processes. It is essential to take this into consideration so as to avoid misunderstandings or false agreement when discussing data quality. It is also necessary in order to avoid comparisons of products based on very different assumptions.The degradation of chemicals in the environment is often excluded from life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. This paper describes a method to account for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from degradation, namely carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). A multi-media fate model is proposed to estimate the distribution and degradation of chemicals released to the environment. The environmental distribution, along with emission factors and assumptions for each compartment (air, water, soil and sediments), is used to calculate emissions of CO2, CH4 and N2O associated with the initial release of a chemical to either the air, water or soil compartments. These emissions, along with global warming potentials (GWP), are converted to CO2 equivalents from degradation (GWP(deg)). The method is described and evaluated with nine organic chemicals. Applying the proposed method to the example chemicals shows that all the end products (CO2, CH4 and N2O) have the potential to significantly contribute to GWP(deg), depending on the chemicals' composition and environmental fate. These emissions, taken to represent the end-of-life stage of these nine chemicals, are shown to be significant when compared with the corresponding cradle-to-gate emissions. For three of the nine chemicals, the degradation emissions in the environment exceeded the cradle to gate phase. The method enables the accounting of GHG emissions that are currently neglected in many LCA and carbon footprint studies. The model has been parameterized for a generic environmental scenario, but it can be adapted for more site-specific conditions. Uncertainty in this method is associated to the potential lack of chemical-specific data to use in fate modelling, the generic evaluative environment used in fate models and the uncertainty associated with emission factors. A Monte Carlo analysis on the latter shows that the highest uncertainty is expected for chemicals where N2O emissions are the main contributor to GWP(deg).The sustainable development challenge that many economies are facing worldwide requires stronger measures because some environmental issues (e.g. global warming) are becoming exponentially worse. If we do not act at once, this negative trend has the potential to keep on radically changing the living conditions on the Earth. One of the most effective ways to address this challenge might be developing new Market Based Instruments (MBIs) by adopting a life cycle perspective. In this paper, we propose a new fiscal framework based on Value Added Tax (VAT) and life cycle thinking. This framework might have the potential to drastically change the current consumption and production patterns towards a product life cycle oriented economy. To identify the elements of a new framework enabling to improve the eco-efficiency of the current consumption and production patterns, firstly we have screened the potential of MBIs to face the sustainable development challenge in relation to the existing EU policy framework. Among MBIs, particular emphasis was given to VAT due to its potential to affect market prices. The key research advances for establishing a green VAT framework were then tracked down to outline the state-of-the-art. Moreover, how to use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results for differentiating VAT rates has been investigated. On this basis, a range of methodology proposals to change the current VAT framework have been outlined. A hypothetical case study has been simulated to test these proposals. Some relevant changes to the current VAT taxation system are proposed in this paper bearing in mind the LCA principles and, in a broad sense, the "getting prices right" policy. Special emphasis was given to the methodological framework needed to differentiate VAT rates according to the environmental footprint performance of products. In this context, fiscal neutrality issues related to State budgets have been also taken into account by conceptualising more cautious approaches for differentiating VAT rates. This piece of research has identified life cycle thinking as possible perspective on which basis product VAT rates might be differentiated. Further studies and a policy impact assessment procedure are needed to evaluate the actual feasibility of this new taxation framework. If the response of that assessment were positive, policy makers, companies and other stakeholders concerned should set out a suite of measures to further fine-tune, test, establish and facilitate the implementation of such green VAT framework.To support life cycle-based EU policies, the European Commission created the "European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA)." The platform aims at providing coherent and quality-assured life cycle data, methods, and studies. The LCA Resources Directory (RD), one of the deliverables of the EPLCA, has so far consisted of lists of services, tools, databases, and providers. It has been decided to extend its scope to contain a section on LCA studies with metadata to characterize them. The research question addressed in this paper is "which structure and features should the RD have to store LCA studies so that it can efficiently support and promote robust Life Cycle Thinking practices?" Existing tools with similar aims and objectives have been identified and analyzed to identify current performances and missing functionalities. A literature review concerning LCA studies in scientific and technical literature has been carried out in order to define relevant and consistent patterns. Following this analysis, it has been decided to develop a collaborative platform and an original structure has been proposed for the new section. The structure has been tested with a few LCA studies. A new collaborative web platform of the resources directory has been developed and launched online. Contributors are now able to characterize LCA studies according to 43 fields of metadata, distributed among seven categories: general, goal, scope, inventory, impact assessment, interpretation, and review and compliance. Some fields are mandatory, and the fill-in boxes are either enumeration list or free text. The platform also contains a search tool to identify relevant LCA studies with their metadata. The administrator of the directory performs a consistency check before entries are shared with others. The EPLCA now contains a new collaborative web platform where LCA studies can be characterized and stored. It has been possible to identify a list of criteria for which LCA studies should be characterized. These criteria form the structure of the platform. It is too early to assess the actual usefulness of this new platform; this will be possible only when the directory is populated by contributors. With this new section in the RD, the EPLCA expands its aim of promoting Life Cycle Thinking and robust practices.Globally, many countries worldwide aim at increasing the environmental sustainability of waste management activities. Special attention is devoted to bio-waste, as its improper handling may have severe environmental consequences. In particular, most waste management strategies should encourage diverting bio-waste away from landfills to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and leachate. The European Waste Framework Directive (WFD 2008/98/EC) defines bio-waste as "biodegradable garden and park waste, food and kitchen waste from households, restaurants, caterers and retail premises and comparable waste from food processing plants". Bio-waste should not be confused with the wider term "biodegradable waste", which covers also other biodegradable materials such as wood, paper and cardboard. In Europe, landfilling of untreated bio-waste is being progressively reduced to meet the requirements set by the Landfill Directive (1999/31/EC). Other options for bio-waste management are then prioritised (e.g. biological treatment), in line with the so-called waste hierarchy, the legally binding priority order for waste management established by the Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC). However, following the waste hierarchy may not always lead to the identification of the most environmentally sound option, and new approaches are thus needed for a more differentiated and science-based support to decision-making for bio-waste management. For this purpose, the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of the Joint Research Centre has developed guidelines that provide environmentally sound support to decision-making and policy-making for bio-waste management using life cycle thinking and life cycle assessment. The methodological approach developed in these guidelines is presented and contextualised in this paper.The generation of significant amount of emissions from building construction process has led the promotion of controlling emissions as an important strategy for implementing sustainable development principles in the built environment. The emissions incurred during various stages include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, non methane volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. This paper conducts the life cycle assessment of the air emissions by using a particular case to examine emissions during construction stage. This study examines the emissions sources in each of the six stages and presents an inventory analysis method to measure air emissions to quantify the air emissions during the six life cycle stages for buildings. This method can help evaluating the impacts of implementing a building on the air quality, thus actions can be taken in early stages to reduce the environmental impacts during building life cycle. A case study is presented to demonstrate the practical application of the method with reference to the building practices for all life cycle stages in Hong Kong. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Consumers and organizations worldwide are searching for low-carbon alternatives to conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their impact on the environment. A comprehensive technique used to estimate overall cost and environmental impact of vehicles is known as life cycle assessment (LCA). In this article, a comparative LCA of diesel and compressed natural gas (CNG) powered heavy duty refuse collection vehicles (RCVs) is conducted. The analysis utilizes real-time operational data obtained from the City of Surrey in British Columbia, Canada. The impact of the two alternative vehicles is assessed from various points in their life. No net gain in energy use is found when a diesel powered RCV is replaced by a CNG powered RCV. However, significant reductions (approximately 24% CO2-equivalent) in GHG and criteria air contaminant (CAC) emissions are obtained. Moreover, fuel cost estimations based on 2011 price levels and a 5-year lifetime for both RCVs reveal that considerable cost savings may be achieved by switching to CNG vehicles. Thus, CNG RCVs are not only favorable in terms of reduced climate change impact but also cost effective compared to conventional diesel RCVs, and provide a viable and realistic near-term strategy for cities and municipalities to reduce GHG emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we employ Life-Cycle Assessment to evaluate the energy-related impacts of photovoltaic systems at different scales of integration, in an arid region with especially high solar irradiation. Based on the electrical output and embodied energy of a selection of fixed and tracking systems and including concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) and varying cell technology, we calculate a number of energy evaluation metrics, including the energy payback time (EPBT), energy return factor (ERF), and life-cycle CO2 emissions offset per unit aperture and land area. Studying these metrics in the context of a regionally limited setting, it was found that utilizing existing infrastructure such as existing building roofs and shade structures does significantly reduce the embodied energy requirements (by 20-40%) and in turn the EPBT of flat-plate PV systems due to the avoidance of energy-intensive balance of systems (BOS) components like foundations. Still, high-efficiency CPV field installations were found to yield the shortest EPBT, the highest ERF and the largest life-cycle CO2 offsets under the condition that land availability is not a limitation. A greater life-cycle energy return and carbon offset per unit land area is yielded by locally-integrated non-concentrating systems, despite their lower efficiency per unit module area. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A simplified life cycle assessment was conducted to estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy production from each component of biogenic waste treated in an open dumping site, and by composting, anaerobic digestion, and incineration employed with additional options. The impact of uncertainties and sensitivities of the parameters in the treatment methods were investigated. We conducted a sensitivity analysis to identify the most sensitive parameters, and we discussed the relationship between uncertainty and sensitivity. Our results revealed that the moisture content of food waste and the biomass-derived carbon and methane concentration of the landfill gas of biogenic waste subjected to open dumping are the most sensitive parameters across all the treatment methods. The net GHG emissions from food waste treated in an open dumping site ranged over ten times (0.30 - 3.67 Gg CO2 eq/Gg). In addition, by employing additional options for the open dumping site, including soil cover, a landfill gas collection system, shifting to a semi-aerobic condition, and energy conservation by using a gas engine, we found that the net GHG emissions could be reduced by 10, 27.9, 37.4 %, and up to 56.7 %, respectively. Shifting to a semi-aerobic system is the most effective method for reducing GHG emissions, followed by landfill gas collection.The contributions of interrelated production system components of a field-grown, 2-m-tall, 5-cm-caliper Picea pungens (colorado blue spruce) in the upper midwestern (liner) and lower midwestern (finished tree) regions of the United States to its carbon footprint were analyzed using life cycle assessment protocols. The seed-to-landscape carbon footprint was 13.558 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e), including sequestration of 9.14 kg CO(2)e during production. The global warming potential (GWP) from equipment use was the dominant contributor to the carbon footprint of production. Seventy-six percent of the GWP investments during field production occurred at harvest. Querying the model, among other things, revealed that adding one year to the field production phase would add less than 3% to the seed-to-landscape GWP of the product. The weighted positive impact of carbon (C) sequestration during a 50-year life was 593 kg CO(2)e. After its useful life, takedown and disposal would result in emissions of 148 kg CO(2)e, resulting in a net positive, life cycle impact on atmospheric CO2 of approximate to 431 kg CO(2)e.While unbonded concrete and hot mixture asphalt overlays have been commonly used for concrete pavement rehabilitation, cracking due to stress concentration still limits the service life of pavement overlays. The use of ductile concrete such as Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) should suppress this brittle fracture at the base of the overlay due to existing crack/joint. Therefore, enhancement of long term performance of the overlaid pavements can be expected. Herein we introduce and study the feasibility of this concept via integration of ECC flexural fatigue behavior and finite element analysis for overlaid pavement. The integration results in a service life model for pavement overlays, which was then employed in a life cycle assessment model to reveal the sustainability performance of different overlays. Analysis results suggest that ECC can greatly extend the service life of pavement overlay with less thickness compared with concrete overlay, resulting in a more sustainable overlay. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pharmaceuticals are normally barely removed by conventional wastewater treatments. Advanced technologies as a post-treatment, could prevent these pollutants reaching the environment and could be included in a centralized treatment plant or, alternatively, at the primary point source, e.g. hospitals. In this study, the environmental impacts of different options, as a function of several advanced treatments as well as the centralized/decentralized implementation options, have been evaluated using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. In previous publications, the characterization of the toxicity of pharmaceuticals within LCA suffers from high uncertainties. In our study, LCA was therefore only used to quantify the generated impacts (electricity, chemicals, etc.) of different treatment scenarios. These impacts are then weighted by the average removal rate of pharmaceuticals using a new Eco-efficiency Indicator EFI. This new way of comparing the scenarios shows significant advantages of upgrading a centralized plant with ozonation as the post-treatment. The decentralized treatment option reveals no significant improvement on the avoided environmental impact, due to the comparatively small pollutant load coming from the hospital and the uncertainties in the average removal of the decentralized scenarios. When comparing the post-treatment technologies, UV radiation has a lower performance than both ozonation and activated carbon adsorption.Growing concerns about sustainable development have brought about an urgent need to develop global efforts to mitigate environmental impact. Although construction projects and their related activities consume much energy and generate a significant amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) and other diesel emissions, the efforts to mitigate these emissions remain at an early stage. To address this issue, this paper explores opportunities to consider contractors' green capabilities during the bid evaluation phase. Based on reviews of the success story of the A + B bidding method, this paper suggests a modified bidding system in which contractors bid on the cost (part A) and environmental cost (part C) or on the cost (part A), time (part B), and environmental cost (part C) for public projects. An application of the proposed bidding methods is described using a bid for a highway reconstruction project. This case study reveals the potential impact of environmental cost criteria on the selection of a winning bid. The result of this case study indicates that the proposed bidding methods can offer bidding incentives to create sustainability initiatives for public works contractors. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000124. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Maintenance strategies as a basis for the holistic assessment of steel and composite bridges according to criteria of sustainability. The consideration of all impacts during the life cycle of a bridge is essential for sustainability analyses. For this purpose maintenance scenarios based on of renewal cycles for all components of a bridge - i.e. bearings, expansion joints, caps, etc. - have to be defined. In this article three maintenance strategies for Germany are derived from an empirical database. This database is analyzed to develop input parameters which can be used for sustainability analyses. Concluding, two strategies are applied to a reference bridge as integral crossing of a motorway and evaluated by using the method of life cycle assessment, as one part of sustainability analyses.This paper presents an efficient, accurate, and simple Markov chain model for the life-cycle analysis of individual bridges and bridge groups. The proposed model includes the effect of deterioration, maintenance actions, bridge failures, and rehabilitations. Compared to a comprehensive probabilistic simulation of the life-cycle, the proposed approach is characterized by a computational efficiency increased by several orders of magnitude and by simplicity of implementation. For practical applications, the proposed model provides also good accuracy. In addition, the model is appropriate for risk analysis. In fact, it treats explicitly all the sources of direct and indirect consequences: the bridge operational states, the bridge failures, and the maintenance/rehabilitation actions performed on the bridge. To demonstrate the technique, a realistic application is presented. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of hydrogen produced from renewable energy sources is often reported as an attractive strategy to address the issue of urban environmental sustainability in automotive sector, and a potential alternative to fossil fuel-fed vehicles. The project 'Filiera Idrogeno' (Hydrogen Chain) has investigated the potential realisation of hydrogen production chains from renewables and its use as automotive fuel in Tuscany Region (Italy). In this context, life cycle assessment was used for evaluating the environmental sustainability of such chains, applied to a fleet of hydrogen vehicles for urban commercial delivery. From the energy supply side, renewable wind and biomass energy sources were considered for hydrogen production either by electrolysis or direct separation from biomass gasification syngas, according to specific simulations. Benchmarking with hydrogen produced by using Italian electricity mix was carried out. From the transport side, vehicles equipped with either fuel cell or internal combustion engine were evaluated. A benchmarking analysis with standard electric vehicles supplied with electricity produced from the same renewable energy sources was also carried out. The results give some indications on the environmental aspects of the different alternatives and on the contribution of the chain phases to the overall impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The strong international growth of biofuels in the last decade brought the interest in bioenergy back on the agenda. While many life cycle assessments for biofuels mainly focus on environmental impacts and costs, over the last decade especially the energy balance of biofuel production chains has been a major point of criticism. This study applies a specially adapted and LCA-based analytical framework for rural energy service pathways (RESPs) to compare the use of Jatropha plant oil and biogas with other small-scale RESPs for lighting, cooking and mechanical power. The aim is to analyse their technological feasibility and economical viability by comparing the energy and cost efficiency. Results show strong differences for the investigated plant oil production and processing pathways, while the comparison with a baseline and a competitive renewable energy scenario reveals a weak performance of plant oil and even biogas in the categories of lighting and cooking. The potential for mechanical power depends largely on the careful optimisation of the energy service pathway by balancing the capital, energy, labour, and transport intensity. For the present case, the village scale production of Jatropha plant oil and biogas and their simultaneous use in a dual fuel engine to locally provide power and electricity would be the service pathway with the highest potential in terms of energy and cost efficiency. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electrical grid systems are required as a consequence of energy not being produced in the same place as it is consumed, and they are a key element of our energy systems. Transmission and distribution assets comprised of power lines, cables, transformers, substations and other electrical equipment generate a wide range of environmental impacts. Throughout the lifetime of the equipment, the impacts originate mainly from power losses during the use phase, but other life cycle stages such as installation, maintenance and dismantling also contribute significantly to some impact categories. In this paper, the environmental impacts of the Norwegian transmission grid are assessed. The methodology used here is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with ReCiPe as impact assessment method. In total, 11,097 km of lines and cables, 345 transformers and 121 substations were installed in the Norwegian transmission grid by the end of 2009; the network also included some hundreds of kilometers of sea cables between Norway and abroad. The results show that for each kW h of electricity transmitted in Norway, climate change impacts are of 1.3-1.5 g CO2 eq., assuming a Norwegian electricity mix. Half of these emissions are associated with power losses, and the other half with infrastructure processes such as materials production, installation, maintenance, and end-of-life. The results also show that after the losses, the infrastructure processes for overhead lines and transformers, and the emissions of SF6 from Gas Insulated equipment are the most relevant contributors for total climate impacts. A sensitivity analysis is done with respect to the electricity mix used to model power losses in the system. The results show that the contribution of power losses to the total climate change scores increases to 84% and 94%, by replacing the Norwegian mix by the Nordic mix and the European mix, respectively. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) model comparing the waste management options for starch-polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) biopolymers including landfill, anaerobic digestion (AD), industrial composting and home composting. The ranking of biological treatment routes for starch-PVOH biopolymer wastes depended on their chemical compositions. AD represents the optimum choice for starch-PVOH biopolymer containing N and S elements in global warming potential (GWP(100)), acidification and eutrophication but not on the remaining impact categories, where home composting was shown to be a better option due to its low energy and resource inputs. For those starch-PVOH biopolymers with zero N and S contents home composting delivered the best environmental performance amongst biological treatment routes in most impact categories (except for GWP(100)). The landfill scenario performed generally well due largely to the 100-year time horizon and efficient energy recovery system modeled but this good performance is highly sensitive to assumptions adopted in landfill model. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioethanol production from rice-straw is carbon neutral and less competitive with food supplies, so it provides great possibilities for resolving global issues. This study aims to conduct economic and environmental evaluations on rice-straw bioethanol production in Vietnam, where huge amounts of unused rice-straw are available, by a top-down life-cycle assessment by means of an input-output table. The economic impacts are evaluated by total costs, total production, and total added value; the environmental impacts are assessed by greenhouse gas emissions with consideration of life-cycle, i.e., the plant construction phase, production phase, and plant scrapping phase. Three technology scenarios are assumed: (1) present technology, (2) advanced technology with higher conversion rates, and (3) innovative technology with a new production method and economies of scale. The results demonstrate that, first, rice-straw bioethanol production can reduce annual gasoline consumption by more than 20 %, and plant construction costs account for 8-22 % of the total investment in Vietnam. Second, under the present technology, both economic and environmental net benefits are negative. However, the innovative technology makes both benefits positive. Third, under the advanced technology, the environmental net benefit is positive, while the economic net benefit is negative. This implies that satisfying economic viability is more difficult than attaining environmental viability in rice-straw bioethanol production. Therefore, technological development and transfer are necessary to make rice-straw bioethanol production feasible.The establishment of rules to manage Health Care Waste (HCW) is a challenge for the public sector. Regulatory agencies must ensure the safety of waste management alternatives for two very different profiles of generators: (1) hospitals, which concentrate the production of HCW and (2) small establishments, such as clinics, pharmacies and other sources, that generate dispersed quantities of HCW and are scattered throughout the city. To assist in developing sector regulations for the small generators, we evaluated three management scenarios using decision-making tools. They consisted of a disinfection technique (microwave, autoclave and lime) followed by landfilling, where transportation was also included. The microwave, autoclave and lime techniques were tested at the laboratory to establish the operating parameters to ensure their efficiency in disinfection. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost analysis, the decision-making tools aimed to determine the technique with the best environmental performance. This consisted of evaluating the eco-efficiency of each scenario. Based on the life cycle assessment, microwaving had the lowest environmental impact (12.64 Pt) followed by autoclaving (48.46 Pt). The cost analyses indicated values of US$ 0.12 kg(-1) for the waste treated with microwaves, US$ 1.10 kg(-1) for the waste treated by the autoclave and US$ 1.53 kg(-1) for the waste treated with lime. The microwave disinfection presented the best eco-efficiency performance among those studied and provided a feasible alternative to subsidize the formulation of the policy for small generators of HCW. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article takes a detailed look at an uncertainty factor in waste management LCA that has not been widely discussed previously, namely the uncertainty in waste composition. Waste composition is influenced by many factors: it can vary from year to year, seasonally, and with location, for example. The data publicly available at a municipal level can be highly aggregated and sometimes incomplete, and performing composition analysis is technically challenging. Uncertainty is therefore always present in waste composition. This article performs uncertainty analysis on a systematically modified waste composition using a constructed waste management system. In addition the environmental impacts of several waste management strategies are compared when applied to five different cities. We thus discuss the effect of uncertainty in both accounting LCA and comparative LCA. We found the waste composition to be important for the total environmental impact of the system, especially for the global warming, nutrient enrichment and human toxicity via water impact categories. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The continuous increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions occurring since the Industrial Revolution is offering significant ecological challenges to Earth. These emissions are leading to climate changes which bring about extensive damage to communities, ecosystems and resources. The analysis in this article is focussed on the waste sector within the Maltese islands, which is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the archipelago following the energy and transportation sectors. This work shows how integrated waste management, based on a life cycle assessment methodology, acts as an effective stabilisation wedge strategy for climate change. Ten different scenarios applicable to the Maltese municipal solid waste management sector are analysed. It is shown that the scenario that is most coherent with the stabilisation wedges strategy for the Maltese islands consists of 50% landfilling, 30% mechanical biological treatment and 20% recyclable waste export for recycling. It is calculated that 16.6Mt less CO2-e gases would be emitted over 50 years by means of this integrated waste management stabilisation wedge when compared to the business-as-usual scenario. These scientific results provide evidence in support of policy development in Malta that is implemented through legislation, economic instruments and other applicable tools.This paper describes a decision support methodology for the selection of a wastewater treatment system based on integrated urban water management principles for a remote settlement with failing septic systems. Thirty-two service and treatment technologies options were considered, these included: (i) conventional gravity sewerage, (ii) common effluent drainage, (iii) community sewage treatment plant based on various technology options (lagoon treatment, Living MachineA (R), sequencing batch reactor, membrane biological reactor, rotating biological contactor, recirculating textile filter, extended aeration) with and without urine separation, greywater diversion or treatment and reuse at household scale. The options were assessed using a framework that considered technical, economic, environmental and social factors relevant to the local community and associated stakeholders (water utility, government agencies) and tools such as engineering design, life cycle assessment and multi-criteria analysis for evaluation of overall sustainability. Adoption of a systems approach allowed the identification of benefits and trade-offs among stakeholders creating opportunities for adoption of more innovative treatment options and maximisation of the sustainability of the service. The treatment option that maximised the social, environmental and economic benefits for the settlement consisted of individual households adopting greywater treatment, storage and reuse, urine separation and a community wastewater treatment plant with recirculating textile filter technology. This solution provided the required sanitation, increased the sources of water supply to residents, satisfied environmental regulator requirements, minimised nitrogen discharge to waterways and provided an option for beneficial reuse of urine for neighbouring farmers at a cost and management needs acceptable to the water utility.For a growing number of firms, it is important that life-cycle assessments (LCAs) as well as the interpretation of the results obtained be carried out directly by the design teams. Unfortunately, the complexity of these two elements hinders the development of really eco-designed products. In this paper, we propose a generic approach allowing a company to develop a specific environmental assessment tool which enables designers to carry out simplified environmental assessments during the design process. To be more precise, the generic approach is based on the creation of two main features: impact functions to simplify the inherent complexity of LCAs and an environmental categorisation per product range to facilitate the use of environmental assessment results by the design team. This paper presents the development of such tool (named EcoT) in the context of automotive part suppliers and demonstrates its technical robustness on two case studies (dashboards and door panels). At the end of the paper, we discuss the usability and appropriability of the EcoT tool based on handling tests carried out by the company design team.The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a comprehensive tool to assess environmental impacts of bioenergies is recommended. Nevertheless, several methodological points remain under debate, particularly regarding the feedstock production step, which is a key stage of bioenergy chains. The present work focuses on field emissions during feedstock production, improving assessment methods by the use of process-based models. To do so, a real bioenergy chain, the local feedstock supply for a boiler located in northern France, was studied. The LCA compares flax shives, (the reference) with four other biomass sources: Miscanthus, cereal straw, linseed straw, and triticale as a whole plant. Six feedstock supply scenarios were also compared. The study aimed to test a new LCA methodology for agricultural chains by integrating local characteristics (such as climate, soil, and crop management data) and using models to estimate field dynamics of pesticide emissions and soil organic carbon (SOC). Results showed that flax shives and linseed straw had the lowest impacts, except for global warming: as a consequence, supply scenarios with the largest share of flax shives had the lowest impacts. For all selected impact categories, transportation and fertilization were the main contributors. SOC dynamics led to high C sequestration level (e.g. with Miscanthus) or to high CO 2 emissions level (e.g. with flax shives), thus significantly influencing the global warming impact. Sensitivity analysis showed a large influence of allocation method (economic or mass-based). This study demonstrated the relevance of integrating simulation models using local data in agricultural LCAs, especially for dynamics of SOC and pesticide from fields. Moreover, this work brought scientific elements to support the choice of flax shives as the main biomass feedstock, and the ranking of the other sources as alternative biomass supplies for the boiler.Short rotation coppices (SRC) are considered prime candidates for biomass production, yielding good-quality feedstock that is easy to harvest. Besides technical, social and economical aspects, environmental issues are important to be taken into account when developing SRC. Here, we evaluated the environmental impacts of delivering 1 GJ of heat from eucalyptus SRC using life cycle assessment (LCA), based on management scenarios involving different rotations lengths, fertilizer input rates, stem densities and harvest methods. Compared to equivalent fossil chains, all eucalyptus scenarios achieved savings of fossil energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the 8090% range, and had generally lower impacts, except for eutrophication. The 3 year rotation scenario was the most energy and GHG-intensive, whereas manual felling for the longer rotations resulted in twofold larger photochemical ozone impacts compared to the other scenarios. Transportation of wood chips and fertilization were the top two contributors to the impacts, the latter being more important with the shorter rotation lengths due to the evergreen character of eucalyptus. The possibility of including ecosystem carbon dynamics was also investigated, by translating the temporary sequestration of atmospheric CO2 in the above and belowground biomass of eucalyptus as CO2 savings using various published equivalence factors. This offset the life cycle GHG emissions of heat provision from eucalyptus SRC by 70400%.We used ecosystem model simulations to study the timber and energy biomass potential offered by intensively managed cloned Norway spruce stands. More specifically, we analysed how the use of cloned trees compared with non-cloned trees, together with thinning, nitrogen (N) fertilisation and rotation length (from 60 to 100 years), affects the annual mean production of timber (i.e., saw logs, pulpwood) and energy biomass (i.e., stumps and harvesting residuals in the final felling) and its economic profitability [annual mean of net present value (NPV) with a 2% interest rate]. Furthermore, we employed a life cycle analysis/emission calculation tool to assess the total net CO2 emissions per unit of energy (kg CO2 MW h-1) produced based on energy biomass. We found that both the annual mean production of timber and the NPV increased substantially, regardless of the management regime, if cloned trees with an annual growth increase of up to 30% compared with non-cloned trees were used in regeneration. In general, the use of a short rotation with N fertilisation clearly increased the annual mean of the NPV. Consequently, the use of cloned trees also clearly increased the annual mean production of energy biomass and decreased the total net CO2 emissions per unit of energy produced based on energy biomass. However, the total annual net CO2 emissions were the lowest if a long rotation was used with N fertilisation. To conclude, the use of cloned trees together with intensive management could potentially be highly beneficial for the cost-efficient and sustainable production of timber and energy biomass in an integrated way.This article analyzes the carbon emission research progress of water conservancy industry, establishing the full-process carbon emission calculation list for the bank revetment works based on the life cycle assessment method and setting forth the concept of achieving the carbon source and carbon sink balance year in the life cycle of the bank revetment works, with a view to the characteristics of bank revetment works on the middle and lower reaches of Changjiang River. By using the carbon emission achievements of the materials used for the existing revetment works and selecting the Phragmites as a species for slope surface, analysis is conducted for the same case of three different typical bank revetment schemes in relation to carbon emission. The analysis results of the three revetment schemes indicate that the carbon emission of revetment works in each scheme mainly occurs in its materialization period, with little carbon emission occurred during the years of operation comparatively. Among the slope protection carbon emission parts of the three schemes in their materialization periods, the carbon emission in the concrete scheme is the highest, which is nearly one times as much as the other two, while that of the toe protection part is more than seven times as much as the other two, and it will take a long time for the concrete scheme to achieve the carbon balance year in the in-service stage. Comparing the traditional scheme with biological scheme, their carbon emission in the materialization stage is found basically equivalent, while the time needed by the traditional scheme to achieve the carbon balance year in the in-service stage is comparatively shorter. The carbon emission differences of each scheme in their materialization periods are attributable to the different extent of use of the high-energy consuming products - the cement and reinforcement, while the differences of net carbon sink in the in-service stage are due to the different slope protection structures and the materials used for them.Reducing the overall environmental impact of mobile radio networks is a central factor in achieving improved mobile services whilst at the same time enabling a growing telecommunications industry in emerging markets. The OPERA-Net-2 (Optimising Power Efficiency in Mobile Radio Networks 2) project concentrates on this challenge, addressing both energy and material efficiencies of 3G, 4G and heterogeneous networks, while also considering the use of renewable energy sources. This paper presents an insight into the project after its first year and discusses research trends in 'green communications networks' for the future.Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and the resulting global warming ignited an intensive debate and work on energy consumption, GHG emissions and the overall environmental impact assessment of the Telecom industry and the ICT sector. Initial studies focused on GHG emissions caused by the energy consumption during the use phase, followed by a more detailed analysis of GHG emissions during the complete lifecycle and reached now a level where the total environmental impact is addressed in 15 different impact categories from raw material extraction to end of life of a product (life cycle assessment, LCA). However, the complexity of addressing all the different categories and especially the question of how to weight the different categories is unsolved. For Telecom networks a possible solution is to focus on overall energy consumption in all life cycle stages.Life Cycle Impact Assessment, LCIA, is the third phase of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) described in ISO 14042. The purpose of LCIA is to assess a product system's life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) in order to better understand its environmental significance. However, LCIA typically excludes spatial, temporal, threshold and dose-response information, and combines emissions or activities over space and/or time. This may diminish the environmental relevance of the indicator result. The methodology, Dynamic LCA -Fire proposed in this paper to complete the International Standard ISO 14042 in the fire field, combines the LCA -Fire method with the Dispersion Numerical Model. It is based on the use of the plume model used to assess pollutant concentrations and thermal effects from fire accident scenarios and to cope with the presence of uncertainties in the input data we propose an uncertainty analysis enables to avoid as much as possible bad decisions that may have a large impact in a field such as safety. In this study, The Dynamic LCA -Fire methodology is applied to a case study for petroleum production process management and we are interested in the uncertainty propagation related to NO2 atmospheric dispersion resulting from a crude oil tank fire. Uncertainties were defined a priori in each of the following input parameters: wind speed, pollutant emission rate and its diffusivity coefficient. For that purpose, a Monte Carlo approach has been used.The useful lifetime of a residential building is at least 50 years according to Spanish law; the decisions to be made in year zero (in construction terms) must be conditioned by the defined phase of use for the building on the one hand, and on the other hand by cautious estimates about the availability of resources for such use. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that models the impact of any product, process or service from the very beginning up to the end. This paper presents an optimization of the selection of slab alternatives in residential buildings, based on modelling and simulation of the costs and environmental impact (using the LCA with Ecoindicator' 99 methodology) of all the alternatives with valid behaviour (according with the national laws).Renewable energy resources such as wind and solar are playing increasingly important role in present and future energy scenarios of both developed and developing countries. For example, the installed wind energy in the United States increased from 12 GW in 2006 to 47 GW in 2011 averaging 30% increase over the five year period. Over the same period, global wind energy capacity has increased from 74 GW to 238 GW. Engineering students and future engineers, who will be involved in making decisions on design and implementation of these renewable energy systems, require knowledge of economic and life cycle assessments of these systems in order to make an informed decision. Environmental impact and sustainability as well as tax credit and incentives play key roles in conducting an economic analysis of renewable energy systems. The present paper discussed aspects of economic and life cycle analysis of renewable energy systems that are different from those of conventional energy systems. Two case studies were used to demonstrate the major differences in the economic analyses of renewable and conventional energy systems. These case studies were used in two courses that the author taught at Lamar University.Seven years ago, the Carleton College physics department began offering an introductory materials science course for physics and chemistry students with interests in materials science and engineering (MSE). However, in order to appeal to a broader audience and provide more focus for a course that offered extensive breadth but limited depth, the course has evolved over the years to concentrate on materials science, energy, and the environment. The revised course begins with an overview of the relationship between material structure and properties, with a focus on the mechanical properties of materials, but then contains four units that consider applications of materials science to address environmental and energy issues. The four units are materials for solar energy conversion, smart materials and energy applications, materials for green buildings, and materials life cycle analysis. This modified course aims to serve two groups of students: physics and chemistry majors with an interest in MSE and environmental studies majors. This paper provides an overview of how the course has evolved, including the learning goals, course content, and assessment tools, as well as possible future directions for this course. In addition, the paper discusses the successes and challenges in trying to address the needs and interests of students in these two different constituencies.Energy use, environmental impact and other sustainability-related issues are becoming increasingly important considerations in engineering designs and manufacturing processes. In response to this need, materials engineering courses related to sustainable energy technology, life-cycle analysis and mineral resources have been developed. The courses have been designed to be accessible to non-materials engineering students, and even non-engineering students, to promote interdisciplinary discussions. This paper will include discussion of the content of and experience with these courses, as well as the relationship of the courses to other sustainability-related educational efforts on campus.The pharmaceutical industry plays a key role in today's global economy and chemical engineers can make strong contributions to the industry. In addition, pharmaceutical process and product applications provide an excellent vehicle to introduce students to novel technologies and experimental design and data analysis techniques. This work focuses on the development and implementation of interactive modular experiments, demonstrations and calculations to engage students and introduce them to the chemical engineering aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. This work includes particle and powder processing and drug delivery experiments and demonstrations, pharmaceutical engineering problem sets and life cycle analysis applications. Through these experiments, demonstrations and interactive analysis experiences, students are introduced to pharmaceutical applications, experimental design and Quality by Design (QbD) methodologies in ways that engage and enhance learning. This work is the basis for a workshop presented at the 2012 ASEE - Chemical Engineering Division (CHED) Summer School. The interactive and self-contained workshop modules are highlighted. These modules can be easily integrated into the traditional undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum through laboratories/demonstrations. This project is part of the educational/outreach activities of the NSF-ERC on Structured Organic Particulate Systems.There is consensus about the need to teach sustainability, but also concern about how to accommodate these concepts into a crowded curriculum. Offering a separate course may not be a realistic choice due to resource or credit hour constraints. This paper investigates the capability of the sustainability component recently added to SolidWorks, which many universities use as a main Computer Aided Design (CAD) tool. We studied its usefulness in teaching sustainability concepts to engineering students. The study was performed in a Southern Colorado regional university over a period of two years involving eight sections of a first-year engineering graphics class consisting twenty four students each. In one course module, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to analyze the environmental impact of a cup holder. A sustainability report generated in SolidWorks accounts for the amount of Carbon Footprint, Water Eutrophication, Air Acidification and Total Energy Consumption. The base design scenario along with alternative options was evaluated to identify the environmental impacts and was compared to determine the most environmentally friendly options. To study the impact of this module on students, pre and post surveys were administered and the results suggested a significant improvement in sustainability learning and an increase in interest in sustainability. A similar approach could be used in other engineering programs with modifications depending upon the students' learning styles and educational background.As issues dealing with sustainability are becoming more commonplace in industry, it is important for undergraduate students to become aware of how sustainability principles relate to their intended engineering major. By introducing sustainable design principles early in their academic career, students can apply these principles throughout the remainder of their higher-level courses. In a freshman introduction to design course, a more structured strategy to teaching sustainable design was implemented to incorporate sustainability principles early in the civil engineering curriculum. The purpose at this stage in student learning was to increase students' awareness of sustainable design through the introduction to sustainability concepts, such as the triple bottom line, life-cycle assessment, and carbon footprint, through discussion of concrete as a construction material and case studies of building construction. Pre- and post-surveys were conducted at the beginning and end of the quarter, respectively, to assess student learning. Results confirmed an increase in student awareness and understanding of sustainable design concepts that were incorporated on a weekly basis throughout the course and how they can be related to civil engineering projects.Information dissemination by means of computer networks uses information systems to store, retrieve and transmit knowledge, which are considered very important tools for society nowadays. The concepts of Information Science, their application to the solution of real situations regarding life cycle inventory and the procedures used in Information Technology provide a new direction to Information Science. This article presents an approach regarding life cycle inventories in Brazil and aspects for the concept of information management that gives support to the initiatives of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, contributing to the competitiveness of Brazilian industries in a globalized world.According to ISO standards life cycle assessment (LCA) consists of goal definition and scoping, inventory analysis, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation. In goal definition and scoping LCA system boundary is defined. Since LCA is time consuming then there is a need for a systematic approach to determine which processes needed to be included in the system boundary. This paper fulfills the need by proposing an improved binary linear programming model for LCA system boundary identification. The objective function of the model is to minimize the number of processes included in the system boundary and its constraints are the specified mass, energy and economic value ratios. In order to demonstrate its applicability an example is presented. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted in order to illustrate how the change in the specified mass, energy and economic value ratio will affect current optimum system boundary.The final goal of this paper is to assess the sustainability of electricity production from wheat straw grown in Spain and burned in 25 MWe power plant. For that purpose a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the system was performed. To implement the LCA, inventory data for the agricultural, the transport and the transformation phases were collected considering their most common values and ranges of variability for the Spanish case. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the energy balance of the system were obtained as results of the assessment. These results were compared with those of the electricity produced from natural gas in Spanish power plants, as reference from the cleanest fossil system of electricity production available. The production of electricity from wheat straw in Spain accomplished European Union sustainability criteria of 60% Global Heating Gases (GHG) savings for more than 70% of the simulations.In this paper, a prototype of scenario-based environmental assessment framework of energy-related technology roadmaps is demonstrated using a case study with particular focus on introduction of electric vehicles (EV). Taiwan plans to promote EV-related industries, setting a quantitative target for introduction to its domestic market. Replacement of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines by EVs will increase electricity demand, which is closely coupled with emission of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. On the other hand, it can contribute positively in removing mobile source of pollutants as well as in load balancing of the power grid. Concurrently, introduction of EV reduces gasoline demand, which requires a shift in the operation of petrochemical industry. Power mix optimization model, consequential model for petrochemical industry, and scenario models for vehicles use and replacement are used in an integrated manner to comprehensively assess abovementioned contributions together with other major factors such as nuclear reactor operation, and promotion of renewable energy and other energy saving technologies. Findings from conducting this case study are summarized for the further development of this framework that aims at providing a common platform for evaluating roadmaps into an integrated picture to discuss their effectiveness being aware of interactions among the technologies.CO2 efficiency is currently a popular topic in supply chain management. Most approaches are based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which usually exploits data from a static database. This approach is effective when estimating the carbon footprint of products or groups of products in general. Simulation has been a proper method for metering the effectiveness of logistics systems, and could thus be expected to also support the analysis of CO2 efficiency in supply chains (SC) when combined with an LCA database. However, research shows that this combination does not deliver reliable results when the target of the study is improvement of the logistics in the SC. The paper demonstrates the shortcomings of the LCA-analogous approach and proposes a data model that enables discrete event simulation of SC logistics including its impact on the carbon footprint that is under development in the e-SAVE joint project funded by the European Commission.The agriculture and forestry sector accounts for approximately 24% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Australia. Over the years researchers have produced new knowledge about agricultural GHG emissions and energy use patterns and opportunities to decrease them, albeit in small-scale studies or large-scale ones with coarse resolution. Linking the multiple, diverse and rich datasets around agricultural production in Australia into one dataset that allows for an estimate of GHG emissions and energy use related to agriculture at a national scale and high resolution has not been done before. The approach we describe here is based upon a link between operational data sourced from gross margin (GM) handbooks and life cycle assessment (LCA) process data. We have collected and processed these datasets to produce a comprehensive database of typical agricultural operations covering 72 commodities grown in 42 regions across Australia. We have also created a system that estimates the GHG emission and energy use patterns of the aforementioned commodities using the best available LCA process data. To capture GHG emissions of non-domestically produced fertiliser, we queried the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE) to analyse the fertiliser and pesticide import patterns for Australia between 2000-2010. This analysis determined the average country energy-mix for fertiliser and pesticide manufacturing and allowed linking the associated GHG emissions to Australian agricultural production. Finally we spatialised agricultural operational data, emissions and energy use at the national scale using the latest Australian Land Use Map (2005/06). Our findings suggest that in 2005/06 greenhouse gas emissions related to Australian agricultural production equate to a total of 95.8 Mt CO2-e using 75.7 GWh of energy. According to our results 29.4% of these emissions come from sources that were categorised as nonagricultural (e. g. industrial processes or energy use) in the Australian National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NGGI) 2006. We find that the provision of transparently modeled GHG emissions and having them linked to a spatially explicit component helps identifying new opportunities for emission reduction and facilitates an assessment of their effects. For example, our findings suggest production of ethanol from corn stover and sugarcane bagasse could have avoided 4.37 Mt CO2-e emissions (4.56% of total) without affecting food production.Tourist activity has played an important role in global economic activity, and tourism industry has been the important industry that many countries make effort to develop. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), international visits worldwide have risen from 675 million in 2000 to 940 million in 2010, and tourism industry contributes 9% of global gross domestic product (GDP). In Taiwan, domestic travel increases from 79 million in 2000 to 120 million in 2010, and tourism industry contributes 4.7% of GDP. On the contrary, the environment issue of tourism industry has not yet been recognized since it is known as an "industry without chimney". Most researchers on tourism industry are concerned with the economic growth and they agree that tourism industry is important to local economic development. Moreover, the research of the environmental impact cause of tourism industry is focused on carrying capacity and energy consumption; there are only a few researches discussing the relation between tourism industry and environment. In this research, we combined the regional input-output tables which estimated by using RAS procedures with green-gross national products to assess both the direct and indirect environmental impact of tourism industry development in Taiwan. Because of the data acquisition is restricted, we used transactions table of domestic prices, energy balance sheet, green-gross national products, tourism satellite account, gross county product, etc. in Taiwan in 2006. After adjusting industrial sectors and separating tourism industry from other data, we used regional Economic Input-Output Life-Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) to find out the environmental impact in different regions. Thus, we could analyze the link of environmental impact in different counties by the distribution of demand-supply industries. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.In this paper, the methods of life cycle assessment for microwave hot air systems, and the concept of green degree were proposed. Greenness evaluation index, evaluation system and evaluation model of microwave hot air systems were established. Also, life cycle assessment processing based on these ideas was introduced. Analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy decision making method were utilized to establish and solve the greenness evaluation of assessment model, while the scores of green degree in microwave hot air systems were obtained. The results show that Life cycle assessment can be applied effectively and efficiently to the microwave hot air systems.One of the challenges for the European Union towards sustainability is to reduce the currently growing amount of food packaging waste generated in Europe. There are different strategies to minimize environmental impacts caused by food packaging systems, such as the use of new materials or application of eco-design techniques. Although optimization in processing methods is required, the use of environmentally friendly materials could offer significant opportunities to develop renewable and biodegradable materials in the future. These materials could be employed as short-term use or onetime use plastic products in place of the non-biodegradable materials obtained from fossil fuels used nowadays. Furthermore, designing bio-based materials involves many considerations to successfully manufacture sustainable materials and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a practical key tool to measure environmental impact from the extraction of raw materials to ultimate disposal. Since economical aspects are not enough when a new product is being designed, the knowledge of the environmental impact of food packaging systems is necessary when companies want to integrate sustainable innovation and implement a novel food packaging material. In this context, the aim of this work is to show the benefits of university-industry collaboration in the fabrication of coating and films based on polymers derived from biomass, adding value to by-products and wastes, and assess their environmental behaviour in order to measure their contribution for the development of more sustainable materials.Torrefaction technologies convert assorted biomass feedstocks into energy- concentrated, carbon neutral fuel that is economically transported and easily ground for blending with fossil coals at numerous power plants around the world without needs to retrofit. Utilization of ton-efied biomass in conventional electric generating units may be an increasingly attractive alternative for electricity generation as aging power plants in the world need to be upgraded or improved. This paper examines the economic feasibility of ton-efaction in different scenarios by modeling ton-efaction plants producing 136,078 t/year (150,000 ton/year) biocoal from wood and corn stover. The utilization of biocoal blends in existing coal-fired power plants is modeled to determine the demand for this fuel in the context of emerging policies regulating emissions from coal in the U.S. setting. Opportunities to co-locate torrefaction facilities adjacent to corn ethanol plants and coal-fired power plants are explored as means to improve economics for collaborating businesses. Life cycle analysis was conducted in parallel to this economic study and was used to determine environmental impacts of converting biomass to biocoal for blending in coal-fired power plants as well as the use of substantial flows of off-gasses produced in the torrefaction process. Sensitivity analysis of the financial rates of return of the different businesses has been performed to measure impacts of different factors, whether input prices, output prices, or policy measures that render costs or rewards for the businesses.Barilla put forth a project to increase the use of cereal sustainable cropping systems. The first part of the project was focused on identifying potential improvements in the most diffused cropping systems for the cultivation of Durum wheat in Italy, while maintaining high levels of quality and food safety standards. Results show that the well-known low input agronomic practices are environmentally friendly and also often economically advantageous. Implementation of dicotyledons into a cereal-only rotation allows a reduction of environmental impacts (-36% GHG), a reduction of DON risk and an increase in net income for farmers (up to 31%). In the second part Barilla gave to 13 farmers a decision support system (DSS) to help them in reducing production costs and environmental impacts. Results show that the only adoption of DSS contributes in reducing carbon footprint (-10%), and costs for pesticides and fertilizers (-10%).Full LCA is a well-known methodology which can help decision-makers to select the product or process that results in the least impact to the environment. However performing a Full LCA is resource and time intensive. Therefore different simplified LCA methods are developed in literature. This paper would develop another simplified LCA tool, driven by the extreme ease of use for all the people that don't know in depth environmental issues or that haven't time / data to deepen these topics. This tool can be very useful to the designers. They should be evaluate environmental impacts of something doesn't exist and it can help them to evaluate rapidly the more "green" product.Life Cycle Assessment is a comprehensive life cycle approach that quantifies ecological and human health impacts of a product or system over its complete life cycle [5]. The existing LCA and environmental assessment tools do not model the relations between different lifecycle factors or different environmental dimensions and focus mostly on the inventory analysis. The main idea of the proposed concept is to develop environmental assessment tools in order to evaluate the environmental performance and deliver a dynamic environmental profile for products, services and processes, by taking into account the various dimensions of environmental impact, as well as the relations between different factors in their lifecycle. Furthermore, this concept proposes a graph-based representation of different lifecycle factors and dimensions in order to facilitate the visual analysis and simulation of the product/service/process lifecycle. Finally, this concept provides a way to model environmental KPIs as a representation to different lifecycle factors and a simulation environment.A growing number of textile companies are adopting sustainable principles as a way of distinguishing themselves from their competitors and gaining a competitive advantage. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a predominant methodology for the systematic evaluation of the potential environmental impacts of a product or service system through all stages of its life cycle. However its influence and relevance for decision making is still limited since the important relationships between the economic and environmental performance are not properly addressed. In this paper, a new decision making process, exploiting the LCA methodology and combining economic and environmental aspects, is proposed.With increased environmental awareness, a large amount of studies on green supplier selection has been promoted in the past decade. However the application of traditional impact assessments methodologies to fragmented and globalized supply chains is slowed down by provision of reliable data. Therefore, a comprehensive basis for Green Supplier Selection Model (GSSM) is proposed in this paper. In particular this paper proposes an index based on Life-Cycle-Assessment (LCA) to assess environmental burden of the whole company manufacturing activities. The resulting Company Environmental Performance Index (CEPI) can be used for sectoral benchmark to assess Company environmental Eco-Efficiency. The general methodology is presented with two strategic aims: the easy implementation of available data in standardized models and the reliable assessment of best performers within different manufacturing chains. Finally an application of such methodology to industrial cluster is discussed.The present paper discusses the development of a model to multi-objective optimization of product life-cycle costs and environmental impacts. In modern world European companies need new competitive factors. Costs along the life-cycle and sustainability could provide two of these. A model to optimize costs and environmental impacts could play a relevant role for engineering the life-cycle of a product. Within this context, the paper conducts a state of the art review of existing solutions. In the end a model is proposed.Discrete Event Simulation (DES) provides computational models with different scenarios in which it is possible to check waste and capacity-constrained resources to generate comparative results. However, these analyses are guided by questions such as cost and production time without regard for wastes that impact on the environment. This paper examines how a tool of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can supplement DES in performing analyses of production systems taking into account environmental impacts, such as energy consumption and greenhouse emission. These ideas are demonstrated by a case study developed in an automotive company. The results ratify the importance of global projects with local solutions, even for layout planning.The paper addresses the topic of designing the shape of a warehouse and shows a comparison between a standard storage-handling system, which is designed taking into account the minimization of the handling planar path, and the one which is designed trying to minimizing the overall handling energy consumption. This comparison leads to a discussion on the opportunities which result from the construction of a shallow warehouse in term of building construction costs, layout management and storage surface efficiency. This paper is the first step in the analysis of a more comprehensive research about the life cycle assessment of a warehouse, the manpower utilization and the balanced equilibrium between handling energy requirement and performances of most used handling systems.The application of life-cycle assessment (LCA) to electric power (EP) technologies is a vibrant research pursuit that is likely to continue as the world seeks ways to meet growing electricity demand with reduced environmental and human health impacts. Although LCA is an evolving methodology with a number of barriers and challenges to its effective use, LCA studies to date have improved our understanding of the lifecycle energy, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollutant emissions, and water-use implications of EP technologies. With continued progress, LCA offers promise for assessing and comparing EP technologies in an analytically thorough and environmentally holistic manner for more robust deployment decisions. This article summarizes (a) current challenges in applying LCA to EP technologies, (b) LCA results to date on various impacts of EP technologies, and (c) opportunities for improving LCAs of EP technologies.An evaluation of the environmental impact of construction systems that are composed of facades based on alveolar bricks and macroencapsulated phase change materials done using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is presented. Their energy consumption rates for both heating and cooling have been measured and registered in two experimental cubicles located in Puigverd de Lleida (Spain). This work examines if the reduction of the environmental impact that is reached due to the energy savings achieved during the operational phase of these cubicles compensates the increase of the environmental impact that is induced during the manufacturing phase. Theoretical case studies, such as assuming different climatization and weather conditions, are proposed and studied to determine the most suitable climatic conditions for using the alveolar bricks and PCM technologies. Within the context of the LCA study, it is concluded that the overall benefit of PCM is the highest when summer weather conditions throughout the whole year is theoretically assumed, where for different assumed lifetime periods of the cubicles the reduction of the overall global impact of the cubicle containing PCM ranges from 12% to 14% in comparison to the other cubicle without PCM. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several renewable and (claimed) sustainable energy sources have been introduced into the market during the last century in an attempt to battle pollution from fossil fuels. Especially biomass energy technologies have been under debate for their sustainability. A new biomass energy technology was introduced in 2008: the plant-microbial fuel cell (P-MFC). In this system, electricity can be generated with living plants and thus bioelectricity and biomass production can be combined on the same surface. A green roof producing electricity with a P-MFC could be an interesting combination. P-MFC technology is nearing implementation in the market and therefore we assessed the environmental performance of the system with an early stage life cycle assessment (LCA). The environmental performance of the P-MFC is currently worse than that of conventional electricity production technologies. This is mainly due to the limited power output of the P-MFC and the materials presently used in the P-MFC. Granular activated carbon (anode material), gold wires (current collectors), and Teflon-coated copper wires (connecting anode and cathode) have the largest impact on environmental performance. Use of these materials needs to be reduced or avoided and alternatives need to be sought. Increasing power output and deriving co-products from the P-MFC will increase environmental performance of the P-MFC. At this stage it is too early to compare the P-MFC with other (renewable) energy technologies since the P-MFC is still under development. (C) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdMicroalgae continue to be of great interest as a promising class of biofuel feedstock, with the potential for contributing to liquid transportation fuel supplies while reducing GHG emissions and dependence on imported petroleum through the displacement of petroleum-based fuel and chemical product usage. However, to significantly contribute to fuel supplies will require that algal biofuels be capable of scaling up to large aggregated quantities of biomass and fuel feedstock production that necessarily impose huge demands for land, water, energy, supplemental CO2 and other key nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. The resulting resource requirements will also impose constraints on the level of production scale-up that can be sustainably supported. This paper provides a high-level review of the current status and future prospects for these key resource demand and constraint challenges for the scale-up of autotrophic microalgal biofuel production. Emphasis is placed on the USA, although the issues are generally relevant globally.This chapter describes the potential, requirements, risks, required general conditions and the prospects of biogas production. The necessity of effective government support is emphasized. The pressing question of the ecological importance of biogas production is discussed and it is made clear that state-of-the-art biogas plants are no risk either to humans or the environment. One conclusion at which the author arrives is that biogas has a special role to play in the scenario of the fundamental change of today's energy supply patterns because electricity and heat can be produced as and when needed.A "cradle-to-grave" life cycle assessment was conducted to examine the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission footprints of two emerging sludge-to-energy systems. One system employs a combination of anaerobic digestion (AD) and fast pyrolysis for bioenergy conversion, while the other excludes AD. Each system was divided into five process phases: plant construction, sludge pretreatment, sludge-to-bioenergy conversion, bioenergy utilizations and biochar management. Both systems achieved energy and GHG emission benefits, and the AD-involving system performed better than the AD-excluding system (5.30 vs. 0.63 GJ/t sludge in net energy gain and 0.63 vs. 0.47 t CO(2)eq/t sludge in emission credit for base case). Detailed contribution and sensitivity analyses were conducted to identify how and to what degree the different life-cycle phases are responsible for the energy and emission impacts. The energy and emission performances were significantly affected by variations in bioenergy production, energy requirement for sludge drying and end use of bioenergy. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cellulose and some cellulose derivatives can play vital roles in the enhancement of the performance of absorbent products. Cellulose itself, in the form of cellulosic fibers or nano-fibers, can provide structure, bulk, water-holding capacity, and channeling of fluids over a wide dimensional range. Likewise, cellulose derivatives such as carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) have been widely studied as components in superabsorbent polymer (SAP) formulations. The present review focuses on strategies and mechanisms in which inclusion of cellulose - in its various forms - can enhance either the capacity or the rate of aqueous fluid absorption in various potential applications.The construction industry including its support industries is one of the highest consumers of natural resources. In the act of consumption of natural resources during construction processes, embodied energy and greenhouse gases are emitted which have adverse effects on the natural environment. Thus, recent studies have revealed a significant interest in the quantification of embodied energy and greenhouse gases in construction processes. Unfortunately, current interpretations and quantification procedures of embodied energy and greenhouse gases are quite unclear. More also, while greenhouse gas and embodied energy quantification models are so disaggregated, studies reveal their existence in isolation without any links to other important environmental/construction management variables such as waste, time and cost. The objectives of this study are to identify the gaps in the current computation models, to reveal the relationships between the identified models and to propose a framework towards developing an integrated model for measuring embodied energy, greenhouse gases, construction waste, time and cost. The contributions of this study are three-fold. Firstly, the identification of the different models and variables, such that they can be used in computations, that can lead to consistent and comparable results. Secondly, investigate the relationships amongst embodied energy, greenhouse gases, construction waste, cost and time variables, that can facilitate the quantification process and hence potentially facilitate the engagement into low carbon building design by construction professionals. Lastly, lay the foundation for further research especially with regards to the integration of the different models and variables so that they can be measured simultaneously. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Given the dominating impact of the built environment on global carbon emissions, reducing operational energy use in buildings has long been considered a key strategy towards more sustainable urban development. In contrast, building energy use related to material production, construction, and demolition has been considered to be significantly less important. However, given the proliferation of low and even net zero energy buildings, more holistic life cycle assessment (LCA) of buildings becomes necessary. This paper hence proposes an analytical framework and a new CAD tool for Rhino3d to estimate the cumulative embodied energy content of an urban design proposal or retrofit scenario based on a simple design 3D massing model combined with an interactive online material database. The tool can be linked with traditional, EnergyPlus based operational energy assessments in order to predict the overall environmental impact of a proposed urban design.The present contribution aims at a typical example of a low-energy house to repeat the known facts in environmental assessment of buildings, emphasize the need to use transient calculations of energy demand not only to optimize building envelope and operation of buildings but also in the assessment of their life cycle. It also outlines a possible way of comparing the built and operational energy within the life cycle of buildings, as a contribution to the debate on the implementation of the second Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD II).The building sector is predominantly responsible for energy consumption and environmental impact in the European Union. For this reason the European legal framework related to this sector has had a huge evolution over recent years. The "nearly Zero Energy Building" (nZEB) concept was introduced in 2010 with the Energy Performance Building Directive (recast) 2010/31/EC which stated ".zero consumption as a long-term goal for our buildings.". By 2020 all new buildings will have to be " nearly Zero Energy" (nZEB) and the majority of their energy consumption has to be covered by renewable sources. It is important to underline that the definition nZEB does not concern only the energy efficiency of a house, but also the environmental impact and the lifecycle cost of the adopted solutions. Designing and realizing such buildings is a very ambitious task, which needs to be supported by appropriate tools and software. This paper presents BENIMPACT Suite (Building's ENvironmental IMPACT evaluator & optimizer): a new tool for assessing buildings' performance, developed by EnginSoft (Italy). The suite is organized in different core modules which allow to verify how the building performance is influenced by different design choices, such as envelope shape and materials, plant systems, renewable sources use, etc. One of the test cases used to validate BENIMPACT Suite is CasaZeroEnergy, a ZEB concluded in 2010 and located in Felettano (UD), in north-eastern Italy. This building is an experimental house designed and monitored by the Laboratory of Building Design of the University of Trento (Italy) and built by Polo Le Ville Plus Group (Cassacco-Italy). Energy performance, renewable energy production and Life Cycle Assessment of this building were modelled and evaluated using the BENIMPACT Suite and simulation results were compared to monitored and literature data.The experiment wants to show how a projection exploiting the knowledge of the life cycle analysis of materials has less impact than the same project without the use of this kind of analysis. Recently, the life cycle analysis (LCA) has been commonly used as a check instrument in the design of new buildings, but it is not yet used regularly in existing redevelopments, most of all if they concern a very old building as the example below. The life cycle assessment was introduced in 1993 by the SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology And Chemistry) and it is a method of systematic analysis that values the environmental impacts of a product, the process of production and its activities throughout the life cycle. The life cycle of products surrounds all the phases of the production and also the use and the end of the components of the process itself. The analysis starts from the extraction of the natural resources and the production of energy for the productive process; material and energy are parts of the phases of production, transport and use, as they are part of the phase of recycling, reuse and disposal. We have decided to use a life cycle approach, because we can obtain knowledge of the damage and the environmental potentials, due to what happens in each single operative phase. Our goal is to use solid notions about the environmental impacts of a production choice like the renovation of a building from 1836.Freshwater fate and exposure factors were determined for organic acids and bases, making use of the knowledge on electrical interaction of ionizing chemicals and their sorption to particles. The fate factor represents the residence time in the environment whereas exposure factors equal the dissolved fraction of a chemical. Multimedia fate, exposure, and effect model USES-LCA was updated to take into account the influence of ionization, based upon the acid dissociation constant (pK(a)) of a chemical, and the environmental pH. Freshwater fate (FF) and exposure (XF) factors were determined for 415 acids and 496 bases emitted to freshwater, air, and soil. The relevance of taking account of the degree of ionization of chemicals was tested by determining the ratio (R) of the new vs. fate and exposure factors determined with USES-LCA suitable for neutral chemicals only. Our results show that the majority of freshwater fate and exposure factors of chemicals that are largely ionized in the environment are larger with the ionics model compared to the factors determined with the neutrals model version. R-FF ranged from 2.4 x 10(-1) to 1.6 x 10(1) for freshwater emissions, from 1.2 x 10(-2) to 2.0 x 10(4) for soil emissions and from 5.8 x 10(-2) to 6.0 x 10(3) for air emissions, and R-XF from 5.3 x 10(-1) to 2.2 x 10(1). Prediction of changed solid-water partitioning, implying a change in runoff and in removal via sedimentation, and prediction of negligible air-water partition coefficient, leading to negligible volatilization were the main contributors to the changes in freshwater fate factors. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The efficient and effective usage of energy and resources is of rising importance in manufacturing companies. This paper argues that manufacturing system simulation is a promising way to realistically cope with those issues and simultaneously consider them with traditional target dimensions. Against this background, the paper analyses whether commercial simulation tools are already capable to address those aspects. It turns out that environmentally related aspects are currently not sufficiently considered as standard functions. Therefore, based on the analysis of on-going research work, different directions for further development are presented and discussed. (C) 2012 CIRP.The potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the production of food for three different diets are compared using consequential Life Cycle Assessment. Diet 1 is an Average Danish Diet (ADD); diet 2 is based on the Nordic Nutritional Recommendations (NNR), whilst diet 3 is a New Nordic Diet (NND) developed by the OPUS project. The NND contains locally produced Nordic foods where more than 75 % is organically produced. NNR and NND include less meat and more fruit and vegetables than the ADD. All diets were adjusted to contain a similar energy and protein content. The GHG emissions from the provision of NNR and NND were lower than for ADD, 8 % and 7 % respectively. If GHG emissions from transport (locally produced versus imported food) are also taken into account, the difference in GHG emissions between NND and ADD increases to 12 %. If the production method (organic versus conventional) is taken into account so that the ADD contains the actual ratio of organically produced food (6.6 %) and the NND contains 80 %, the GHG emissions for the NND are only 6 % less than for the ADD. When the NND was optimised to be more climate friendly, the global warming potential of the NND was 27 % lower than it was for the ADD. This was achieved by including less beef, and only including organic produce if the GHG emissions are lower than for the conventional version, or by substituting all meat with legumes, dairy products and eggs.Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) technology has become increasingly popular in pavement construction because of its environmental benefits and its ability to improve the engineering properties of asphalt binders and mixtures. This state-of-the-art article focuses on various aspects of the WMA technology incorporating Sasobit (R) which includes the rheological characteristics of asphalt binders containing Sasobit (R). The findings from laboratory tests and field performance of Sasobit (R)-modified WMA are also presented. This paper also reviews the life-cycle assessment, energy savings potential and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction potential of WMA containing Sasobit (R). The review concludes with a proposal for incorporating aspects related to environmental and energy-efficient asphalt mixes in Superpave (TM) mix design method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reports on a specific effort within the ongoing research and development project SEMERGY. This project is geared toward the development of a performance-guided decision making environment for building design and retrofit. A multi-objective optimization environment requires a dynamic representation of the building, which includes all necessary data for the underlying calculation engines (e.g., energy demand calculation, cost estimation, Life Cycle Analysis). This paper explores the capacities and deficiencies of some existing building data models (IFC and GBXML), within the context of SEMERGY project and reports on the development of "SEMERGY Building Model" (SBM). SBM is a comprehensive building representation, tailored to meet the requirements of advanced energy simulation procedures and normative calculation routines for common inquiries. It can be extended for further functionalities with minimal effort, enables efficient optimization iterations and allows for data entry simplification to reduce user effort and error.To facilitate the development of a screening system for priority setting of chemical substances posing risk to human health and the environment, the authors reviewed and evaluated 27 different screening systems developed by governments and research groups. Description of these systems in terms of important elements was presented. Significant issues involved in developing a screening system were discussed, including selection of endpoints, determination of screening criteria or cutoff values, and ways of acquiring exposure data. There was no scientific consensus regarding to the types and numbers of endpoints incorporated, criteria or screening values for selected endpoints. A risk-based screening-level risk assessment system, therefore, was proposed as a tool to screen chemicals. It was argued that two critical issues concerning the use of risk-based system are effect and exposure characterization. Some suggestions were given for setting screening benchmarks. As for exposure characterization, especially, the potential use of multiresidue methods for obtaining exposure data in screening system was recommended. Given the extensive attention on screening risk chemical substances, it is useful to develop the risk-based screening system for minimizing chemical risks.This paper ties to Fuon Theory, where functional icons are suggested to phrase standardized functional units. Having functional unit parameters at hand, products that can be described by these parameters can be put into one family. This further helps to compare the environmental performances of products that fall into the same family. In this paper, a fuon for digital storage devices is developed and tested. The fuon can be used to phrase the functional units of a variety of products such as magnetic hard-discs, USB flash drives, SD cards or SSD drives. The functional unit parameters are derives for the fuon and its applicability is tested through different statistic tests.Most of the design interventions made in the pursuit of reducing the environmental impact of products, often merely results in shifting the burden from one environmental issue to another, rather than reducing the overall environmental impact. This necessitates the use of more quantitative, comprehensive, life cycle based approaches for eco-design decision making. In this paper, it is argued that the complexity of the results of LCA due to their data intensiveness calls for a need for using information visualization approaches to enable interpret LCA results for eco-design decision making.The paper then argues for a support for communicating the results of LCA to various decision-makers in order to improve their chances of building better environment-friendly products.The proposed nove information visualizationl architecture is intended to serve as a basis for a better representation of LCA results and provide deeper insights into the results of LCA, thereby aiding design decision-makers to improve the chances of reducing the environmental impacts of product life cycles being designed.Purpose - Millions of people die of chronic diseases within inpatient settings annually in the United States, despite patient preferences for dying at home. This medicalization of dying has received social and economic critiques for decades. This chapter offers a further analysis to these critiques by examining the ecological impacts of inpatient end-of-life care on the natural environment and occupational and public health. Methodology - We compare the ecological health outcomes of medical care in three inpatient units (conventional cancer unit, palliative care ward, and hospice facility) using ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, and institutional records on medical supply use, waste generation, and pharmaceutical administration and disposal. Findings - Care provided on all three medical units had significant socioecological impacts. Cumulative impacts were greatest on the conventional unit, followed by palliative care, and lowest on the hospice unit. Variations in impacts mirrored differences in dependence on material interventions, which arose from variations in patient needs, institutional policies, and nursing cultures between the three units. Practical implications - Social and economic concerns have been major drivers in reforming end-of-life medical care, and our analysis shows that ecological concerns must also be considered. Transitioning terminal patients to less materially intensive modes of care when appropriate could mitigate ecological health impacts while honoring patient preferences. Originality - This chapter describes how the medicalization of dying has converged with institutional policies, practices, and actors to increase the negative consequences of medical care, and recognizes that the far-reaching impacts of clinical decisions make the provision of medical care a socioecological act.Sewer systems enclose one of the harshest environments on concrete materials. These systems if made of concrete are usually accessed for maintenance and inspection by precast concrete manholes. The present design practices of these shafts components in Canada are generally conservative which results in heavily reinforced bases. If verified by full scale testing the code allows the use of alternative manhole design. To produce a more sustainable precast concrete manhole the steel reinforcement has to be minimized or even eliminated altogether if possible. In the course of introducing a more sustainable manhole a full scale load testing of non- reinforced base precast concrete manhole in a controlled laboratory environment was performed under critical configurations of the Ontario truck. This was followed by an extensive numerical investigation on the proposed manhole. The results showed that the proposed sustainable manhole can withstands applied loads without cracks in the shaft or its base. After verifying the structural validity of the proposed manhole design the sustainability of this design was evaluated. Also, a life cycle assessment scheme for precast concrete manholes was proposed. And the sustainability efforts in Precast Concrete manholes were summarizesAerated concrete is a new type of wall material with beneficial features like light weight, heat insulation, fire prevention and low energy consumption. As a key milestone in wall materials innovation and energy-saving of building system, it has been proven to be an ideal wall material which can replace traditional clay brick through years of application and practice. This study calculated the CO2 emissions in all the stages of life cycle of aerated concrete production. Compared with clay brick, the life cycle CO2 intensity of aerated concrete block will be decreased by 67.4% with the same insulation effect. Study on the environmental loads of aerated concrete industry will provide theoretical base for the carry out of energy-saving and emission reduction, the formulation of clean production and the development of recycling economy.LCA method was used to model the life cycle of cement manufacturing with multi-stage combustion and low-NOx Burner technology applied as its low-NOx system. The life cycle is from the coal and raw materials transportation, through the coal and raw meal grinding, to the clinker incineration, and finally the flue gas including NOx to the air atmosphere. The functional unit is 1 tonne clinker. Data for cement produced in MSC and LNB technology is analyzed. The data is collected from the real clinker production situation and the measurement is taken in 12 hours continuously.This study attempted to estimate the environmental performance of poly (propylene carbonate, PPC) in the whole life cycle. The life cycle is from raw materials, energy acquisition, manufacture, transportation, to the final disposal, sequentially. The environment impacts of these phases are assessed by the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to identify key aspects of environmental loads involving global warming, non-renewable resource consumption, and acidification effects and so on. Moreover, a comparative study due to manufacturing of PPC in its whole life cycle was taken to reveal which stage would make the most environmental load.Electricity generation contributes a large proportion of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the United Kingdom (UK), due to the predominant use of fossil fuel (coal and natural gas) inputs. Indeed, the various power sector technologies [fossil fuel plants with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power stations, and renewable energy technologies (available on a large and small {or domestic} scale)] all involve differing environmental impacts and other risks. Three transition pathways for a more electric future out to 2050 have therefore been evaluated in terms of their life-cycle energy and environmental performance within a broader sustainability framework. An integrated approach is used here to assess the impact of such pathways, employing both energy analysis and environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA), applied on a 'whole systems' basis: from 'cradle-to-gate'. The present study highlights the significance of 'upstream emissions', in contrast to power plant operational or 'stack' emissions, and their (technological and policy) implications. Upstream environmental burdens arise from the need to expend energy resources in order to deliver, for example, fuel to a power station. They include the energy requirements for extraction, processing/refining, transport, and fabrication, as well as methane leakage that occurs in coal mining activities - a major cotribution and from natural gas pipelines. The impact of upstream emissions on the carbon performance of various low carbon electricity generators [such as large-scale combined heat and power (CHP) plant and CCS] and the pathways distinguish the present findings from those of other UK analysts. It suggests that CCS is likely to deliver only a 70% reduction in carbon emissions on a whole system basis, in contrast to the normal presumption of a 90% reduction. Similar results applied to other power generators. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The power crisis problem is getting worse in the developing countries. Measures are being taken to overcome the power shortage problem by efficiently utilizing the available power. Replacement of high-power consumption lamps with energy efficient lamps is also among these steps. This paper presents a detailed comparative analysis between domestic lighting lamps (DLLs) use for producing artificial light. DLLs include incandescent lamp (IL), fluorescent lamp (FL) and compact fluorescent lamp (CFL). Light emitting diodes (LED) based lamp technology is relatively new in comparison with conventional incandescent and discharge lamps. However, the present study will also cover the LED lamps. Power quality based experiments have been conducted on DLLs in Power System Laboratory and power consumption based calculations are carried out using the lighting design software DIALux. The result shows that with the current technology, the use of FL and LED lamp is beneficial for utility as well as for consumer. However, with the current pace in the development of LED technology, it is possible LED lamps will lead the lighting market in the near future. The paper has also presented the uncertainties that exist in lighting market and proposed the guidelines that will help in making future energy policy. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public transportation systems are often part of strategies to reduce urban environmental impacts from passenger transportation, yet comprehensive energy and environmental life-cycle measures, including upfront infrastructure effects and indirect and supply chain processes, are rarely considered. Using the new bus rapid transit and light rail lines in Los Angeles, near-term and long-term life-cycle impact assessments are developed, including consideration of reduced automobile travel. Energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants are assessed, as well the potential for smog and respiratory impacts. Results show that life-cycle infrastructure, vehicle, and energy production components significantly increase the footprint of each mode (by 48-100% for energy and greenhouse gases, and up to 6200% for environmental impacts), and emerging technologies and renewable electricity standards will significantly reduce impacts. Life-cycle results are identified as either local (in Los Angeles) or remote, and show how the decision to build and operate a transit system in a city produces environmental impacts far outside of geopolitical boundaries. Ensuring shifts of between 20-30% of transit riders from automobiles will result in passenger transportation greenhouse gas reductions for the city, and the larger the shift, the quicker the payback, which should be considered for time-specific environmental goals.This article provides consolidated estimates of water withdrawal and water consumption for the full life cycle of selected electricity generating technologies, which includes component manufacturing, fuel acquisition, processing, and transport, and power plant operation and decommissioning. Estimates were gathered through a broad search of publicly available sources, screened for quality and relevance, and harmonized for methodological differences. Published estimates vary substantially, due in part to differences in production pathways, in defined boundaries, and in performance parameters. Despite limitations to available data, we find that: water used for cooling of thermoelectric power plants dominates the life cycle water use in most cases; the coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel cycles require substantial water per megawatt-hour in most cases; and, a substantial proportion of life cycle water use per megawatt-hour is required for the manufacturing and construction of concentrating solar, geothermal, photovoltaic, and wind power facilities. On the basis of the best available evidence for the evaluated technologies, total life cycle water use appears lowest for electricity generated by photovoltaics and wind, and highest for thermoelectric generation technologies. This report provides the foundation for conducting water use impact assessments of the power sector while also identifying gaps in data that could guide future research.Quantitative assessment of Canada's boreal forest mitigation potential is not yet possible, though the range of mitigation activities is known, requirements for sound analyses of options are increasingly understood, and there is emerging recognition that biogeophysical effects need greater attention. Use of a systems perspective highlights trade-offs between activities aimed at increasing carbon storage in the ecosystem, increasing carbon storage in harvested wood products (HWPs), or increasing the substitution benefits of using wood in place of fossil fuels or more emissions-intensive products. A systems perspective also suggests that erroneous conclusions about mitigation potential could result if analyses assume that HWP carbon is emitted at harvest, or bioenergy is carbon neutral. The greatest short-run boreal mitigation benefit generally would be achieved by avoiding greenhouse gas emissions; but over the longer run, there could be significant potential in activities that increase carbon removals. Mitigation activities could maximize landscape carbon uptake or maximize landscape carbon density, but not both simultaneously. The difference between the two is the rate at which HWPs are produced to meet society's demands, and mitigation activities could seek to delay or reduce HWP emissions and increase substitution benefits. Use of forest biomass for bioenergy could also contribute though the point in time at which this produces a net mitigation benefit relative to a fossil fuel alternative will be situation-specific. Key knowledge gaps exist in understanding boreal mitigation strategies that are robust to climate change and how mitigation could be integrated with adaptation to climate change.The building sector is increasingly identified as being energy and carbon intensive. Although the majority of emissions are linked to energy usage during the operation part of a building's life cycle, choice of construction materials could play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental end-point damages. Increasing the use of wood products in buildings may contribute to the solution, but their environmental impacts are difficult to assess and quantify because they depend on a variety of uncertain parameters. The present cradle-to-gate life-cycle analysis (LCA) focuses exclusively on a glued-laminated wood product (glulam) produced from North American boreal forests located in the province of Quebec, Canada. This study uses primary data to quantify the environmental impacts of all necessary stages of products' life cycle, from harvesting the primary resources, to manufacturing the transformed product into glulam. The functional unit is 1 m(3) of glulam. This is the first study based on primary data pertaining to Quebec's boreal forest. Quebec's boreal glulam manufacturing was compared with two other LCAs on glulam in Europe and the United States. Our results show that Quebec's glulam has a significantly smaller environmental footprint than what is reported in the literature. From an LCA perspective, there is a significant advantage to producing glulam in Quebec, compared with the European and American contexts. The same holds true in regard to the four end-point damage categories.This paper develops an updated study about how environmental risk assessment method can be applied in mineral resources industry to get comparative criteria to establish environmental risk in mining operations, focusing risk assessment in indicators which could be measured easily. Mining process is a complex process which involves several stakeholders, and even different companies. The most part of the studies in this field, which develop environmental impacts assessment, divide the mining process in single steps, studying environmental affection of each single operation. That implies that there could be some interactions between mining phases which have no impact outwards the mine boundaries. In this case they could generate conflicts between mine processes which could penalize overall process. So, a simplified method is used taking into account affections generated outwards mining area, getting a useful tool for comparative study between different mining operations in same area. Also, a regional scale method is developed studying the interaction between several mining projects. The change in the level of risk over the time is evaluated using an objective perspective, getting quantifiable indicators to achieve final level of environmental risk depending on mining method used. A review of Life Cycle Analysis in mining industry is evaluated, focusing the field of study on mineral extraction phase of mining method. There are other traditional methods, mainly based on environmental impact assessment tools which are not so suitable for compare different mining methods. This methodology aims to be an effective tool for determine overall environmental risk assessment and establish updated criteria to quantify environmental affection. Moreover, Mining method is a system which evolves along the time, so risk assessment is not a static value but is a variable parameter. So, a dynamic model approach is developed to be adapted in different scenarios. This technique could provide to mining professionals a toolbox to identify, analyze and manage environmental effects in mining operations. Also this lecture can help to detect effects to be minimized studying standard parameters which should be measure easily on site. This paper can be useful for project managers, occupational health and safety departments and also local or regional regulators, because different operations can be evaluated and compared one to each other to determine the risks that should be managed in different case studies.Currently of global warming, of the critical state of natural resources and of a growing number of endangered species is to get the attention on the specific method of environmental protection. Those methods include the LCA analysis, which has together with waste policy the same center of interest - the preservation of the environment in the sufficient quality for future generations. The basic tool for achieving the objectives is to reduce the environmental and health impacts of waste through their use as alternative substitutes for non-renewable resources. Fly ash, waste of heat generation and of electricity industry is one of the recoverable residues resulting from the burning of coal and it is known as secondary raw material used primarily in the construction industry. As part of ongoing research at the faculty has been studied its 15% wt. cement CEM I 42.5 N replacements in the concrete road cover. The actual contribution is focused on the final stage of research, i.e. to assess of the environmental impact of fly ash concrete pavement throughout their life cycle.The article discusses about the possible approaches to reduce the environmental burden, during the design phase of construction. At this stage, using the calculating tools should be possible to create the parallel calculating building costs and environmental costs. Investor consults with designer the selection of the construction type and type of building materials at the beginning of the design. That choice of building materials and construction products are a significant carrier of the building costs and environmental costs, too. This philosophy promotes the formation of EPD database (Environmental Product Declaration) with lFC format for the potential calculation of the environmental burden of building materials. The paper suggests the methodology for parallel calculating the environmental costs and building costs using national tool for creating budgets. The aim is to reduce the environmental burden throughout the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This approach is based on the idea, that all phases in the life of building materials generate environmental impacts and must be analyzed.Conventional buildings play important role considering the consumption of resources, energy and production of emissions. These serious environmental problems demand an urgent global response. Selection of building materials from the initial phases of building design predetermines the best chance to influence the total intensity of environmental performance. In this paper the environmental assessment in terms of used materials of two conventional Slovak dwellings - standard house from conventional materials and energy passive house from green materials is presented. Despite the fact that the most studies present that improving energy performance of building envelope reflects the increase of embodied energy and emissions, the results demonstrate that the green alternative achieves better environmental potential for all evaluated parameters. The innovated approach using traditional Slovak plant materials such as timber or straw assures elimination of carbon footprint of whole house thanks to the ability of plants to lock a substantial amount of carbon in their mass. Optimization of material compositions of this case study has proven that the reduction of Primary energy intensity by 49.8%, as well as reduction of amount of SO2 emissions by 26.4% and greenhouse gasses emissions even by 164.4% can be achieved by utilization of suitable materials.The assessment of environmental performance of buildings has gained an increasing importance over the last years. Since in the building sector is consumed approx. 40% of the total energy, resulting in CO2 emissions of approx. 30% of the total amount and approx. 30% of the total waste, it is obvious that the development of buildings with low environmental impact has become an imperative of the modern world. The evaluation systems for environment performance are useful for both new buildings - to help in making decisions in the design stage - and for existing buildings - to support the rehabilitation process. In order to evaluate and certify the environmental performance of buildings two types of methods have developed: some are based on life cycle assessment of building materials and components products (eg ECO-QUANTUM, ECO-PRO, EQUER, ATHENA) others start from considering the entire (construction) and focuses on the development of buildings with low environmental impact (BREEAM, LEED, BEPAC, ESCALE). The paper presents an evaluation based on indicators for assessing the relationship between the buildings and the environment applied on education building from Romania. Indicators were calculated based on the regulations currently available in Romania and on local climatic conditions. Some criteria are relatively easy to be measured and they meet a larger consensus: energy consumption, CO2 emissions, water consumption and waste volume, others have a qualitative, subjective assessment methods. The objectives should be appropriate to the type of building and life cycle stage and the performance levels must meet the available national regulations and also have to stimulate the development of high-performance buildings.The livestock sector contributes considerably to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Here, for the year 2007 we examined GHG emissions in the EU27 livestock sector and estimated GHG emissions from production and consumption of livestock products; including imports, exports and wastage. We also reviewed available mitigation options and estimated their potential. The focus of this review is on the beef and dairy sector since these contribute 60% of all livestock production emissions. Particular attention is paid to the role of land use and land use change (LULUC) and carbon sequestration in grasslands. GHG emissions of all livestock products amount to between 630 and 863 Mt CO(2)e, or 1217% of total EU27 GHG emissions in 2007. The highest emissions aside from production, originate from LULUC, followed by emissions from wasted food. The total GHG mitigation potential from the livestock sector in Europe is between 101 and 377 Mt CO(2)e equivalent to between 12 and 61% of total EU27 livestock sector emissions in 2007. A reduction in food waste and consumption of livestock products linked with reduced production, are the most effective mitigation options, and if encouraged, would also deliver environmental and human health benefits. Production of beef and dairy on grassland, as opposed to intensive grain fed production, can be associated with a reduction in GHG emissions depending on actual LULUC emissions. This could be promoted on rough grazing land where appropriate.Research into renewable chemicals, fuels and materials sourced from the oceans at Memorial University and elsewhere is employing green chemical technologies for the transformation of algae and food industry waste streams into useful products. A very small proportion of biomass utilization research is currently focused on these feedstocks and efforts focused in this area could reduce land space competition between food and chemical/fuel production. This perspective highlights some of the achievements and potential opportunities surrounding the use of algae and waste from shellfish and finfish processing. In particular, investigations in this field have used alternative solvents (water, supercritical carbon dioxide and methanol or ionic liquids) extensively. Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) has been used to extract lipids and pigments from algae, and oils from fish-processing plant waste streams. Water can be used to isolate potentially high value biologically-active oligosaccharides from some seaweeds. Biotechnological approaches are showing promise in the separation of biopolymers from shellfish waste streams. Production of new nitrogen-containing bioplatform chemicals (e.g. 3-acetamido-5-acetylfuran) from amino-carbohydrates (chitin, chitosan and N-acetylglucosamine) is being pursued.Identifying better performing Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) synthesis routes with reference to green chemistry and green engineering principles was of the highest importance in the pharmaceutical industry during the past decade. However, very little attention was paid to other life cycle stages such as the Drug Product (DP) production, packaging and distribution. In this case, the environmental sustainability of batch versus continuous granulation based tablet manufacturing is quantified from a resource point of view by conducting Exergy Analysis (EA) and Exergetic Life Cycle Analysis (ELCA) at three different levels in order to identify and locate resource losses throughout the pharmaceutical supply chain. Assessing the potential implementation of the continuous production line ConsiGma (TM) at the Janssen-Cilag SpA pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and thereby replacing the conventional batch manufacturing mode would result in a resource consumption reduction of 10.2% (65.6 to 58.9 kJ(ex) per tablet), 15.2% (111 to 94.0 kJ(ex) per tablet) and 2.2% (2.3 to 2.2 MJ(ex) per tablet) at the process (alpha), plant (beta) and overall industrial level (gamma) respectively. Focusing on DP production processes by excluding transiting exergy in API, excipients and packaging materials resulted in a reduction of 34.0%, 25.9% and 14.7% at the respective system boundaries. The API dose seemed to be the parameter with highest sensitivity towards environmental burden. From an emission point of view, a Carbon Footprint (CF) reduction of 2.0% (0.22 to 0.21 kg CO2-eq per tablet) was obtained at the gamma level in shifting from batch to continuous manufacturing of Tramacet (R). Focusing on DP production revealed a CF reduction of 16.2%.Purpose: Cetearyl glucoside and cetearyl alcohol are an alkyl polyglucoside composition (APG) widely used in personal care as an efficient and versatile self-emulsifier. This ingredient is considered as green thanks to its vegetable origin and to its manufacturing process complying with the 12 rules of Green Chemistry. Beyond these general criteria, the rising environmental concern among consumers encourages manufacturers to provide quantifiable measures highlighting the real impacts of a product on the environment. In order to respond to this need, the aim of this work was to study, from an environmental point of view, the contribution of the use of APG in a cosmetic cream (raw materials, glucosylation process, formulation process, chemical inputs, energy, transport, waste management, end use, and recycling) and to assess several potential improvements to decrease its global impacts. Materials and methods: The methodology used was the life cycle assessment (LCA) according to the ISO 14-040 standard. Two approaches were chosen: (a) from the cultivation of vegetable raw materials to the final use by consumers and recycling (from cradle to grave) and (b) from the cultivation of vegetable raw materials to the production of APG (from cradle to gate). The two corresponding functional units were defined as follows: (a) the preparation of a cosmetic oil in water emulsion having suitable stability and allowing the face hydration of a consumer during 1 year and (b) the preparation of 1 t of packaged APG in a plant located in the South of France. To comply with these two functional units, the life cycle was divided into 4 phases (gate to gate): the agricultural and transformation phase A, the chemical process phase B, the formulation process phase C and finally the end use phase D. The life cycle inventory data collected were based either on bibliographical sources or on direct industrial data. Seven impact categories were selected for their relevance (ozone depletion, global warming, mineral resources, petrochemical resources, eco-toxicity, acidification/eutrophication, and water consumption). For each significant environmental impact, sensitivity assessments were carried out to identify potential improvements regarding the two functional units. Results and discussion: The results show that the formulation process phase C and the end use phase D are the main key issues of the cosmetic cream life cycle. Their respective environmental contributions are between 15 and 51% and between 30 and 77% depending on the impact category. Regarding the formulation step, the two most contributing parameters are the emulsion oil and the cream packaging. The impacts of oil are directly linked to the quantity involved (20% in the cream) and also to the cultivation conditions of the plant from which the oil is extracted. A sensitivity study on the nature of the packaging highlights that glass is much better than PET. As far as the end use of the cream is concerned, the main impacting parameter is the purchasing by the consumer (between 33 and 77%). It was clearly proved that APG has relatively low impacts when it is formulated at 5% in a cosmetic cream (between 4 and 24%). Despite this low contribution, the environmental profile of APG was examined and indicated the high impacts of the cetearyl alcohol (more than 80% by weight in APG). For instance, the carbon footprint of APG directly depends on the cultivation mode of the palm trees and, according to the land use change, it can vary between 1.9 and 49.8 t CO2 eq. per t of APG. The impacts directly due to the glucosylation process are between 2 and 12%, mainly coming from the transport of raw materials and waste management. Conclusions: The present LCA gave a precise picture of the role that APG plays in the environmental profile of a cosmetic emulsion. The next step may be to compare its impacts with those of other surfactants that also respond to the first functional unit in order to functional unit in order to confirm the green status of this kind of biosurfactant. Finally, improvements in APG processing and use can also be brought about and all levels of the production chain are relevant: raw material suppliers (fatty alcohol quality and transport), APG manufacturers (utilities consumption follow-up, waste management and transport), finished cosmetic product formulators (packaging) and final consumers (transport mode).During the last decades there has been a rapid increasing of liquid food (e. g. soft and energy drinks, different types of juices, mineral water, tee, etc.) consumption. Based on development in food technology as well as introduction of new packaging materials, the structure of packaging has been changed too. These processes raise a number of environmental challenges. Based on the comparative analysis of literature the article presents the logic and process of a life-cycle analysis, highlighting the importance of system-based approach. The effects of packaging on greenhouse-effect gases, fossil resources, and the acidification have been analysed. It can be proven, that it is not enough to pick up one or another part of the lifecycle of product, but an integrated approach is necessary, which takes into consideration the environmental burden of raw material production, transportation, recycling, re-using and deposition.Faced with the need to take into account environmental impacts, life cycle analysis (LCA) should emerge as an engine for innovation and eco-design. It is clear that there are many barriers to their deployment. There is thus a need for tools to facilitate their integration in business projects. These LCA tools must be compatible with different existing information systems. In addition, it is also necessary that the coupling of the different data sources helps to make decisions. This article shows the requirements of the company ACV Plus in terms of interoperability and HCI (Human-computer Interaction) in order to make its Siec software easily adaptable to various business sectors. Different peripheral tools have been developed to define data exchange formats and meet specific needs. This research aims to develop a generic bus in order to have easier process maintenance and avoid costly development for each new situation. Two PhD thesis have focused on the HCI aspects and on interoperability aspects. More generally, our project aims to develop a new system with interoperable design and management tools that can help any customer in the definition of its environmental projects and eco-design.The main goal of this study is to provide an introductory background to development of the Life Cycle Assessment studies of pure silk fabric. There are not studies available on the life cycle of pure silk fabric. In this sense, was developed a scenario model for LCA application, following the methodology established by the Standard BNR ISO 14040:2009, which establishes principles and framework for an LCA study. It was considered one of the first steps in ISO, being the definition of the purpose and scope. The limits considered for the system had as a starting point the wiring step within the company, and as a final limit the stage of the finishing of the fabric, where you get the finished product. The information used in this study was collected directly from the company entitled 'Fio de Seda, a Brazilian industry. In order to construct the scenario proposed, was used the software Umberto (R) 5.6 v. Acad and through it, it was possible to generate the scenario model for the production of the silk fabric. Based on this scenario, the accomplishment of the later stages is possible, as outlined in ISO 14040, thus obtaining the inventory of the LCA for the pure silk fabric, as well as its life cycle inventory assessment.This chapter describes the current situation of the chemical manufacturing industry and looks to the future demands on the sector such as: for sustainability, the advent of new bio-based feedstocks for improved energy management and the implications of these demands on the sector. These implications include definitions of sustainability criteria for the chemical manufacturing industry and the need for transparent reporting following the Triple Bottom Line approach. The important role of chemical ( or more generally, process) engineers in delivering bio-based sustainable solutions is emphasised, but this also suggests that a new way of thinking about the discipline is required. Indeed, there are arguments that the demand for a sustainable chemical manufacturing sector could bring about the next paradigm shift in the discipline with concomitant education implications.This work reviews and performs a meta-analysis of the recent life cycle assessment and flow analyses studies palm oil biodiesel. The best available data and information are extracted, summarized, and discussed. Most studies found palm oil biodiesel would produce positive energy balance with an energy ratio between 2.27 and 4.81, and with a net energy production of 112 GJ ha-1y-1. With the exception of a few studies, most conclude that palm oil biodiesel is a net emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG). The origin of oil palm plantation (planted area) is the foremost determinant of GHG emissions and C payback time (CPBT). Converting peatland forest results in GHG emissions up to 60 tons CO2equivalent (eq) ha-1y-1 leading to 420 years of CPBT. In contrast, converting degraded land or grassland for plantation can positively offset the system to become a net sequester of 5 tons CO2eq ha-1y-1. Few studies have discussed cradle-to-grave environmental impacts such as acidification, eutrophication, toxicity, and biodiversity, which open opportunity for further studies. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2013; 9: 134141. (c) 2012 SETACSustainability has long been a part of social responsibility. Today sustainability is a part of the core business strategies. It is viewed with environmental and economic perspectives. India, being a manufacturing hub has to deal with the problem of environmental and social impacts of these manufacturing operations. Smithy operations have large adverse impact on the environment. Life-cycle analysis should be applied to alleviate and reflect environmental burdens of this process. This paper presents the basic concepts of sustainability and life cycle analysis. A study has been carried out in the context of smithy training process. Software tool Umberto 5.6 with eco-invent 2.2 database is used for analysis. The effect of smithy training in term of acidification potential, climate change, eutrophication potential, freshwater aquatic, eco-toxicity, marine aquatic eco-toxicity, human toxicity, ionizing radiation, land use, photochemical Ox (smog), and stratospheric ozone depletion. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper considers both LCA and LCC of the pyrolysis of switchgrass to use as an energy source in a conventional power plant. The process consists of cultivation, harvesting, transportation, storage, pyrolysis, transportation, and power generation. Here pyrolysis oil is converted to electric power through cocombustion in conventional fossil fuel power plants. Several scenarios are conducted to determine the effect of selected design variables on the production of pyrolysis oil and type of conventional power plants. The set of design variables consist of land fraction, land shape, the distance needed to transport switchgrass to the pyrolysis plant, the distance needed to transport pyrolysis oil to electric generation plant, and the pyrolysis plant capacity. Using an average agriculture land fraction of the United States at 0.4, the estimated cost of electricity from pyrolysis of 5000 tons of switchgrass is the lowest at $0.12 per kwh. Using natural gas turbine power plant for electricity generation, the price of electricity can go as low as 7.70 cent/kwh. The main advantage in using a pyrolysis plant is the negative GHG emission from the process which can define that the process is environmentally friendly.This research compares the environmental impact, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of using refillable polyethylene terephthalate (REF-PET) and non-refillable polyethylene terephthalate (NR-PET) bottles in the Norwegian soft drink and carbonated water market. A Microsoft Excel spread sheet was developed in close cooperation with Coca-Cola, Mack, Telemark Springwater, and three of the main food wholesalers in Norway: NorgesGruppen, Coop, and Rema. While academic writers have criticised such life-cycle analysis as impractical, too time-consuming, expensive, and demanding too much effort, and instead advocated qualitative evaluation methods, this project demonstrates that a data-based approach is fully feasible. The research team identifies the CO2 emissions associated with various activities, and finds that NR-PET bottles generate 18% less CO2 emissions than REF-PET bottles. This research provides practical suggestions for achieving environmentally friendly packaging solutions. As a consequence of the study findings, the grocery industry initiated efforts to change legislation, and major Norwegian actors have changed their policies.The civil construction industry has been an industry that significantly impacts the environment due to the amount of materials used in the construction process. Considering this fact, one must consider how to control and manage the environmental, social and economic impacts that permeate their life cycle, which is, according to the literature, between 40 and 100 years. The relevance of this issue, with regard to environmental, social and economic impacts in the civil construction industry, can be found in the discussion where balance is sought between these parameters in sustainable management. We opted for an exploratory study based on the bibliometric analysis of the use of life cycle analysis methods. The data was treated qualitatively by assessing the application of methods proposed by the research. The results indicate that sustainability in the civil construction industry is dynamic with respect to time due to varying impacts during the life cycle.As members of society become more conscious of environmental issues and global warming, they will be asking more questions about the products they are purchasing. Companies will be expected to promote how green their manufacturing processes and supply chain are, their carbon footprint, and how they recycle. A number of companies have already shown that there is proof of the link between improved environmental performance and financial gains. This comprehensive focus has led to the revolution of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM). The aim of the present work is to propose an integrated model that a firm may use to evaluate its own supply chain's environmental performance. The proposed approach promotes sustainable development that can be measured in terms of societal and economic sustainability. The model integrates environmental indexes based on Environmental Performance Evaluation (EPA) and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach with a multi-criteria model based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Benefits, Opportunities, Costs and Risks (BOCR) analysis.Biofuels have received special research interest, driven by concerns over high fuel prices, security of energy supplies, global climate change as well as the search of opportunities for rural economic development. This work examines the production of biodiesel derived from the transesterification of crude rapeseed oil, one of the most important sources of biodiesel in Europe, paying special attention to the environmental profile-associated to the manufacture life cycle (i.e., cradle-to-gate perspective). To do so, a Spanish company with an average annual biodiesel production of 300,000 t was assessed in detail. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study covers the whole life cycle, from the production of the crude rapeseed oil to the biodiesel production and storage. The inventory data for the foreground system consisted of average annual data obtained by on-site measurements in the company, and background data were taken from databases. Seven impact categories have been assessed in detail: abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, land competition, and photochemical oxidant formation. An energy analysis was carried out based on the cumulative nonrenewable fossil and nuclear energy demand as an additional impact category. Furthermore, well-to-wheels environmental characterization results were estimated and compared per ton-kilometer for the biodiesel (B100) and the conventional diesel so as to point out the environmental drawbacks and strengths of using biodiesel as transport fuel in a 28 t lorry. The results showed that the cultivation of the rapeseed was the main key issue in environmental terms (68 %-100 % depending on the category) mainly because of fertilizer doses and intensive agricultural practices required. With regard to the biorefinery production process, pretreatment and transesterification sections considerably contribute to the environmental profile mostly due to electricity and chemical requirements. Concerning the well-to-wheels comparison, using B100 derived from rapeseed oil instead of petroleum-based diesel would reduce nonrenewable energy dependence (-20 %), GHG emissions (-74 %), and ozone layer depletion (-44 %) but would increase acidification (+59 %), eutrophication (+214 %), photochemical smog (+119 %), and land competition. The information presented in this study could help to promote the use of renewable transport biofuels. However, the extensive implementation of biodiesel (particularly rapeseed oil-derived biodiesel) in our society is enormously complex with many issues involved not only from environmental but also economical and social points of view.The UK carbonated drinks sector was worth A 8 pound billion in 2010 and is growing at an annual rate of 4.9 %. In an attempt to provide a better understanding of the environmental impacts of this sector, this paper presents, for the first time, the full life cycle impacts of carbonated soft drinks manufactured and consumed in the UK. Two functional units are considered: 1 l of packaged drink and total annual production of carbonated drinks in the UK. The latter has been used to estimate the impacts at the sectoral level. The system boundary is from 'cradle to grave'. Different packaging used for carbonated drinks is considered: glass bottles (0.75 l), aluminium cans (0.33 l) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles (0.5 and 2 l). The study has been carried out following the ISO 14040/44 life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Data have been sourced from a drink manufacturer as well as the CCaLC, Ecoinvent and Gabi databases. The LCA software tools CCaLC v2.0 and GaBi 4.3 have been used for LCA modelling. The environmental impacts have been estimated according to the CML 2001 method. Packaging is the main hotspot for most environmental impacts, contributing between 59 and 77 %. The ingredients account between 7 and 14 % mainly due to sugar; the manufacturing stage contributes 5-10 %, largely due to the energy for filling and packaging. Refrigeration of the drink at retailer increases global warming potential by up to 33 %. Transport contributes up to 7 % to the total impacts. The drink packaged in 2 l PET bottles is the most sustainable option for most impacts, including the carbon footprint, while the drink in glass bottles is the worst option. However, reusing glass bottles three times would make the carbon footprint of the drink in glass bottles comparable to that in aluminium cans and 0.5 l PET bottles. If recycling of PET bottles is increased to 60 %, the glass bottle would need to be reused 20 times to make their carbon footprints comparable. The estimates at the sectoral level indicate that the carbonated drinks in the UK are responsible for over 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 eq. emissions per year. This represented 13 % of the GHG emissions from the whole food and drink sector or 0.26 % of the UK total emissions in 2010.There are methodological questions concerning life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint evaluation of road pavements, including allocation among co-products or at end-of-life (EOL) recycling. While the development and adoption of a standard methodology for road pavement LCA would assist in transparency and decision making, the impact of the chosen method on the results has not yet been fully explored. This paper examines the methodological choices made in UK PAS 2050 and asphalt Pavement Embodied Carbon Tool (asPECT), and reviews the allocation methods available to conduct road pavement LCA. A case study of a UK inter-urban road construction (cradle-to-laid) is presented to indicate the impact of allocation amongst co-products (bitumen and blast furnace slag); a typical UK asphalt production (cradle-to-gate) is modelled to show the influence of allocation at EOL recycling. Allocation based on mass is found to consistently lead to the highest figures in all impact categories, believed to be typical for construction materials. Changing from industry chosen allocation methods (Eurobitume, asPECT) to 100 % mass or economic allocation leads to changes in results, which vary across impact categories. This study illustrates how the allocation methods for EOL recycling affect the inventory of a unit process (asphalt production). Sensitivity analysis helps to understand the impact of chosen allocation method and boundary setting on LCA results. This initial work suggests that economic allocation to co-products used as secondary pavement materials may be more appropriate than mass allocation. Allocation at EOL recycling by a substitution method may remain most appropriate, even where the balance of credits between producers and users may be hampered by an inability to confidently predict future recycling rates and methods. In developing sector-specific guidelines, further sensitivity checks are recommended, such as for alternative materials and traffic management during maintenance.The research presented here was motivated by an interest in understanding the magnitude of sampling error in crop production unit process data developed for life cycle assessments (LCAs) of food, biofuel, and bioproduct production. More broadly, uncertainty data are placed within the context of conclusive interpretations of comparative bioproduct LCA results. Data from the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Resource Management Survey were parameterized for 466 crop-state-year combinations, using 146 variables representing the previous crop, tillage and seed operations, irrigation, and applications of synthetic fertilizer, lime, nitrogen inhibitor, organic fertilizer, and pesticides. Data are described by Student's t distributions representing sampling error through the relative standard error (RSE) and are organized by the magnitude of the RSE by data point. Also, instances in which the bounds of the 95 % confidence intervals are less than zero or exceed actual limits are identified. Although the vast majority of the data have a RSE less than 100 %, values range from 0 to 1,600 %. The least precision was found in data collected between 2001 and 2002, in the production of corn and soybeans and in synthetic and pesticide applications and irrigation data. The highest precision was seen in the production of durum wheat, rice, oats, and peanuts and in data representing previous crops and till and seed technology use. Additionally, upwards of 20 % of the unit process, data had 95 % confidence intervals that are less than or exceed actual limits, such as an estimation of a negative area or a portion exceeding a total area, as a consequence of using a jackknife on subsets of data for which the weights are not calibrated explicitly and a low presence of certain practices. High RSE values arise from the RSE representing a biased distribution, a jackknife estimate being nearly zero, or error propagation using low-precision data. As error propagates to the final unit process data, care is required when interpreting an inventory, e.g., Monte Carlo simulation should only be sampled within the appropriate bounds. At high levels of sampling error such as those described here, comparisons of LCA bioproduct results must be made with caution and must be tested to ensure mean values are different to a desired level of significance.The assessment of water footprints of a wide range of products has increased awareness on preserving freshwater as a resource. The water footprint of a product was originally defined by Hoekstra and Hung (2002) as the sum of the volumetric water use in terms of green, blue and grey water along the entire life cycle of a product and, as such, does not determine the environmental impact associated with freshwater use. Recently, several papers were published that describe building blocks that enable assessment of the site-specific environmental impact associated with freshwater use along the life cycle of a global food chain, such as the impact on human health (HH), ecosystem quality (EQ) or resource depletion (RD). We integrated this knowledge to enable an assessment of the environmental impact associated with freshwater use along the life cycle of milk production, as a case for a global food chain. Our approach innovatively combined knowledge about the main impact pathways of freshwater use in life cycle assessment (LCA), knowledge about site-specific freshwater impacts and knowledge about modelling of irrigation requirements of global feed crops to assess freshwater impacts along the life cycle of milk production. We evaluated a Dutch model farm situated on loamy sand in the province of Noord-Brabant, where grass and maize land is commonly irrigated. Production of 1 kg of fat-and-protein corrected milk (FPCM) on the model farm in Noord-Brabant required 66 L of consumptive water. About 76 % of this water was used for irrigation during roughage cultivation, 15 % for production of concentrates and 8 % for drinking and cleaning services. Consumptive water use related to production of purchased diesel, gas, electricity and fertiliser was negligible (i.e. total 1 %). Production of 1 kg of FPCM resulted in an impact on HH of 0.8 x 10(-9) disability adjusted life years, on EQ of 12.9 x 10(-3) m(2) x year and on RD of 6.7 kJ. The impact of producing this kilogram of FPCM on RD, for example, was caused mainly by cultivation of concentrate ingredients, and appeared lower than the average impact on RD of production of 1 kg of broccoli in Spain. Integration of existing knowledge from diverse science fields enabled an assessment of freshwater impacts along the life cycle of a global food chain, such as Dutch milk production, and appeared useful to determine its environmental hotspots. Results from this case study support earlier findings that LCA needs to go beyond simple water volume accounting when the focus is on freshwater scarcity. The approach used, however, required high-resolution inventory global data (i.e. especially regarding crop yield, soil type and root depth), and demonstrated a trade-off between scientific quality of results and applicability of the assessment method.The majority of waste in many countries is still landfilled. This represents waste of valuable resources and could lead to higher emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) compared to energy recovered by incineration, even when the landfill gas is recovered. This paper aims to find out which option is more sustainable with respect to the carbon footprint (global warming potential) by comparing energy recovered from MSW incineration with that from biogas recovered from landfilled waste. Life cycle assessment has been used as a tool, following the ISO 14040/44 and PAS 2050 methodologies. Data have been sourced from the operator of the incinerator, the Environment Agency for England and Wales, the CCaLC and Ecoinvent databases. CCaLC v2 and GaBi v4.3 have been used for the LCA modelling. The carbon footprint of MSW incineration is -0.179 t CO2 eq./t MSW while that from landfilling is 0.395 t CO2 eq./t MSW, with both systems credited for energy recovery. The results are sensitive to the composition of waste, energy options chosen to credit the systems and the recovery rate of biogas. Increasing the amount of fossil carbon in the waste by increasing paper recycling between 40 and 80 % increases the carbon footprint of incineration by 9-20 %. If instead of the electricity from the UK grid, electricity from heavy fuel oil or coal is assumed to be displaced by incineration, its carbon footprint reduces to -0.51 and -0.35 t CO2 eq./t MSW, respectively. Increasing the landfill gas recovery from 53 to 75 % and its utilisation for energy from 35 to 50 %, reduces the carbon footprint of landfilling by a half. The results indicate that waste incineration offers significant savings of GHG compared to disposal by landfill. Based on the total amount of MSW of 225,000 t/year considered in this study, MSW incineration could save around 129 kt of CO2 eq. per year compared to landfilling with biogas recovery, with both systems co-generating heat and electricity. At the UK level, diverting all MSW that is currently landfilled to incineration with energy recovery could save around 8.38 million tonnes of CO2 eq. per year or 1.5 % of the total UK GHG emissions. These savings can be increased further by recycling of bottom ash and non-ferrous metals. Incineration remains a better option than landfilling under all the conditions considered in this study.Biological sequestration can increase the carbon stocks of non-atmospheric reservoirs (e.g. land and land-based products). Since this contained carbon is sequestered from, and retained outside, the atmosphere for a period of time, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is temporarily reduced and some radiative forcing is avoided. Carbon removal from the atmosphere and storage in the biosphere or anthroposphere, therefore, has the potential to mitigate climate change, even if the carbon storage and associated benefits might be temporary. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprinting (CF) are increasingly popular tools for the environmental assessment of products, that take into account their entire life cycle. There have been significant efforts to develop robust methods to account for the benefits, if any, of sequestration and temporary storage and release of biogenic carbon. However, there is still no overall consensus on the most appropriate ways of considering and quantifying it. This paper reviews and discusses six available methods for accounting for the potential climate impacts of carbon sequestration and temporary storage or release of biogenic carbon in LCA and CF. Several viewpoints and approaches are presented in a structured manner to help decision-makers in their selection of an option from competing approaches for dealing with timing issues, including delayed emissions of fossil carbon. Key issues identified are that the benefits of temporary carbon removals depend on the time horizon adopted when assessing climate change impacts and are therefore not purely science-based but include value judgments. We therefore did not recommend a preferred option out of the six alternatives presented here. Further work is needed to combine aspects of scientific and socio-economic understanding with value judgements and ethical considerations.Current carbon footprinting (CF) and life cycle assessment (LCA) methods do not treat recycled biogenic carbon adequately, because the calculation rules for recycled products and biogenic carbon stored in products are defined independently from each other. Therefore, an improved and consistent calculation rule for the CF of product systems containing both recycling processes and carbon stored in products is proposed. The methodological approach consists of the application of the same allocation principles for both greenhouse gas (GHG) releases and GHG removals: (1) explicit accounting of inputs (GHG removals) and outputs (GHG releases) of biogenic carbon flows instead of assuming carbon neutrality per se; (2) consistent application of allocation rules for environmental benefits and environmental burdens. It is shown that the different modelling approaches (e.g. polluter pays, conservative or partitioning) lead to different results in LCA and CF calculations, e.g. the GHG emissions of first life cycle of the product system calculated here range between 21.6 units in the polluter pays approach and 4 units in the conservative approach. It is shown that the currently common modelling is an average approach for primary biogenic material, a worst-case approach for recycled biogenic material and a best-case approach for disposed biogenic material. This paper proposes to improve the currently developed standards for CF by adding a requirement to the goal and scope definition phase that ensures the consistent and transparent documentation, how biogenic carbon removal credits are allocated between life cycles.The present world is facing problems like rapid depletion of natural resources and undesired environmental changes on a global scale. Manufacturing organisations are realising the importance of mitigating the present crisis and are adopting sustainable manufacturing principles. Since it is important to achieve sustainable manufacturing, sustainability assessment models were developed. Sustainability assessment models have their own drawbacks and may not provide clear scope for complete sustainable development. A system approach has been developed to overcome this shortcoming by integrating various sustainability assessment models that are already in practice. This article reports the advantages of collecting the advantages of individual sustainability assessment models and how the implementation of the integrated approach has helped to identify the current sustainability level and the scope for future developments in an automotive industry.Dairy farming is constantly evolving towards more intensive levels of mechanization and automation which demand more energy consumption and result in higher economic and environmental costs. The usage of fossil energy in agricultural processes contributes to climate change both with on-farm emissions from the combustion of fuels, and by off-farm emissions due to the use of grid power. As a consequence, a more efficient use of fossil resources together with an increased use of renewable energies can play a key role for the development of more sustainable production systems. The aims of this study were to evaluate the energy requirements (fuels and electricity) in dairy farms, define the distribution of the energy demands among the different farm operations, identify the critical point of the process and estimate the amount of CO2 associated with the energy consumption. The inventory of the energy uses has been outlined by a partial Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, setting the system boundaries at the farm level, from cradle to farm gate. All the flows of materials and energy associated to milk production process, including crops cultivation for fodder production, were investigated in 20 dairy commercial farms over a period of one year. Self-produced energy from renewable sources was also accounted as it influence the overall balance of emissions. Data analysis was focused on the calculation of energy and environmental sustainability indicators (EUI, CO2-eq) referred to the functional units. The production of 1 kg of Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM) required on average 0.044 kWh(el) and 0.251 kWh(th), corresponding to a total emission of 0.085 kg CO2-eq). The farm activities that contribute most to the electricity requirements were milk cooling, milking and slurry management, while feeding management and crop cultivation were the greatest diesel fuel consuming operation and the largest in terms of environmental impact of milk production (73% of energy CO2-eq emissions). The results of the study can assist in the development of dairy farming models based on a more efficient and profitable use of the energy resources.The aim of this work is to evaluate the sustainability, in terms of greenhouse gases emission saving, of a new potential bio-ethanol production chain in comparison with the most common ones. The innovation consists of producing bio-ethanol from different types of no-food grapes, while usually bio-ethanol is obtained from matrices taken away from crop for food destination: sugar cane, corn, wheat, sugar beet. In the past, breeding programs were conducted with the aim of improving grapevine characteristics, a large number of hybrid vine varieties were produced and are nowadays present in the CRA-VIT (Viticulture Research Centre) Germplasm Collection. Some of them are potentially interesting for bio-energy production because of their high production of sugar, good resistance to diseases, and ability to grow in marginal lands. LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) of grape ethanol energy chain was performed following two different methods: (i) using the spreadsheet "BioGrace, developed within the "Intelligent Energy Europe" program to support and to ease the RED (Directive 2009/28/EC) implementation; (ii) using a dedicated LCA software. Emissions were expressed in CO2 equivalent (CO(2)eq). The results showed that the sustainability limits provided by the normative are respected to this day. On the contrary, from 2017 this production will be sustainable only if the transformation processes will be performed using renewable sources of energy. The comparison with other bio-energy chains points out that the production of ethanol using grapes represents an intermediate situation in terms of general emissions among the different production chains..In the on-site rebar delivery system, as the common method of rebar supply in the construction industry, reinforced steel bars are delivered in large batches from supplier's facilities through contractor's warehouse to the construction site. Rebars are then fabricated on-site and installed after assembly. In the new delivery system, called prefabrication Just-In-Time (prefab-JIT) system, the off-site cut and bend along with frequent rebar delivery to the site are applied in order to improve the process and increase its efficiency. The main objective of this paper is to assess and compare the environmental impacts resulting from the air emissions associated with the two rebar delivery systems in a case study construction project. Environmental impact categories of interest include global warming, acidification, eutrophication, and smog formation. A process-based cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment methodology is applied to perform the analysis. The results show that the prefab-JIT rebar delivery system causes less contribution to all mentioned environmental impact categories compared with a traditional on-site delivery system.Energy efficient building are designed to minimize heating, cooling and lighting energy loads, so that attention is now paid on the energy consumption related to inhabitants (e.g. use of appliances) and life cycle issues: fabrication of materials, construction, maintenance, dismantling and waste treatment. In order to study these aspects, both in new construction and renovation projects, thermal simulation has been linked to life cycle assessment. Until now, such studies consider a conventional occupants' behaviour, or use monitoring results to adapt the model. The approach proposed here complements life cycle assessment with a sensitivity study in order to account for the variability in real occupancy scenarios, but does not require monitoring results so that it can be performed during the design phase. Application of this method is illustrated by a case study regarding two attached passive houses built in France. The results show the essential influence of occupants on the performance, but varying the occupancy scenario does not modify the ranking between the compared alternatives. Checking the robustness of life cycle assessment results increases the relevance of this method as a design aid. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reviews the advantages of combining complementary environmental evaluation tools - ecological footprint, life cycle assessment and environmental risk assessment - that were identified as encompassing the most significant features that should be considered in corporate-related appraisals. Together, these tools evaluate key aspects of environmental sustainability, such as depletion of resources, environmental impacts and human health preservation, and their combined application was found to produce more comprehensive analyses and ensure that relevant issues were not being disregarded. The joint application of complementary tools implies a set of indicators for which a compromise solution must be found. In this respect, the applicability of multi-criteria analysis in decision support systems was also reviewed, restricting the areas of application to the following 4 categories: 1) industry-related applications, 2) energy decision making, 3) waste management and treatment and 4) wastewater treatment. Outranking methods were identified as those more widely employed in environmental problems when users were asked to select from a number of discrete alternatives. The incorporation of fuzzy reasoning in decision making has increased significantly in most recent applications, revealing the need to incorporate such features in a problem characterized by imprecision and subjectivity. Although not always conducted, sensitivity analyses were also essential to enhancing the robustness and reliability of such studies. It was concluded that multi-criteria analysis would benefit from the previous application of standardized methodologies as those proposed in this review to derive criteria. Hence, the most relevant environmental burdens and their severity would be identified and characterized in a previous step, helping to reduce the complexity of the decision-making problem and the possibility of duplicating effects. The scientific basis would be enhanced, making the selection of criteria and establishment of weights less arbitrary. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a growing concern for agricultural producers given increased pressure from government, consumers and retail purchasers. This study addresses the changes in greenhouse gas emissions in cotton over time (using years 1997, 2005 and 2008) due to changing production methods including tillage and seed technology. Time series data in this study comes from a single farm in Arkansas with detailed records of seed used, all inputs used (e.g. fertilizers, agrochemicals, irrigation), as well as machinery and tillage type for each of over 121 fields over 11 growing seasons. Results indicate yields increased dramatically (68%) over that time, due primarily to seed technology. At the same time, agrochemical use and fuel use decreased in 2008, primarily due to Bollgard II (R) Roundup Ready((R)) Flex seed technology and the resulting reduced tillage. Reduced inputs can result in lower costs for producers, as well as reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing yields with reduction in input use reduces the overall greenhouse gas emissions per pound of cotton produced, resulting in benefits to producers, consumers who demand such traits, and the environment. However, due to the proliferation of glyphosate-resistant pigweed (Amaranthus palmeri), the decreases in greenhouse gas emissions per pound of cotton that were observed over the past decade may be reversed.The engineering community has been striving to design more sustainable buildings in an attempt to reduce both environmental impact and energy use during all phases of design, construction and operation. Design professionals currently have very limited guidance or tools to incorporate life-cycle and sustainability concepts into their designs. After reviewing the capabilities and limitations of four current life cycle analysis (LCA) computer programs, this research has selected the Athena Impact Estimator v4.0 to perform parametric studies of structural members made up of different construction materials. The energy consumption values are calculated and compared for columns, beams, concrete suspended slabs, precast double-tee sections and various other floor types. While Athena did offer some insights based on its LCA results, this research has concluded that existing LCA and sustainability analysis programs have too few options to meet the current needs of design professionals. A more accurate, sophisticated whole-building LCA tool needs to be developed to assess sustainable properties of design alternatives and to produce the most sustainable structural systems.The temperature difference between an urban space and surrounding non-urban space is called the urban heat island effect (UHI). Global terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET) can consume 1.4803 x 10(23) joules (J) of energy annually, which is about 21.74% of the total available solar energy at the top of atmosphere, whereas annual human energy use is 4.935 x 10(20) J, about 0.33% of annual ET energy consumption. Vegetation ET has great potential to reduce urban and global temperatures. Our literature review suggests that vegetation and urban agricultural ET can reduce urban temperatures by 0.5 to 4.0 degrees C. Green roofs (including urban agriculture) and water bodies have also been shown to be effective ways of reducing urban temperatures. The cooling effects on the ambient temperature and the roof surface temperature can be 0.24-4.0 degrees C and 0.8-60.0 degrees C, respectively. The temperature of a water body (including urban aquaculture) can be lower than the temperature of the surrounding built environment by between 2 and 6 degrees C, and a water body with a 16 m(2) surface area can cool up to 2 826 m(3) of nearby space by 1 degrees C. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the increase of evapotranspiration in cities, derived from vegetation, urban agriculture, and water body, can effectively mitigate the effect of urban heat islands.Water is the source of all the creatures on the earth and energy is the main factor driving the world. With the increasing population and global change, water and energy conservation have become worldwide focal issues, particularly in the water-stressed and energy-limited regions. Rainwater harvesting, based on the collection and storage of rainfall runoff, has been widely used for domestic use and agricultural production in arid and semiarid regions. It has advantages of simple operation, high adaption, low cost and less energy consumption. This study reviewed rainwater harvesting systems adopted in the Loess Plateau of China and analyzed water use efficiency (WUE) for various rainwater harvesting techniques. Supplemental irrigation using harvested rainwater could increase crop yield by more than 30%, and WUE ranged from 0.7 to 5.7 kg m(-3) for spring wheat, corn and flax, and 30-40 kg m(-3) for vegetables. Moreover, energy consumption for rainwater harvesting based on single family was compared with traditional water supply in the city of the Loess Plateau using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. Results showed that energy consumption yielded per unit harvested rainwater was 25.96 MJ m(-3) yr(-1) which was much less than 62.25 MJ m(-3) yr(-1) for main water supply in Baoji City, Shanxi Province, meaning that rainwater harvesting saved energy by 139.8% as compared to the main water supply system. This study highlights the importance and potential of rainwater harvesting for water and energy conservation in the near future.The direct use of cellulose to fabricate materials such as common plastics as synthetic polymers has hardly been investigated. In the present paper, bioplastics of a new class are constructed, for the first time, by hot-pressing cellulose hydrogel, and are different from common plastics in terms of their processability. The cellulose hydrogels were prepared from cellulose solution in an alkali hydroxide/urea aqueous system with cooling by physical cross-linking. Due to the removal of cellulose molecules in the hydrogel state, the hot-pressing induced a transition in the aggregated structure in the cellulose bioplastics, leading to a plastic deformation. The results from C-13 NMR, SEM, and FT-IR confirmed that a radial orientation of cellulose molecules occurred in the planar direction of the plate, whereas an increase of amorphous zones appeared in the vertical direction. The resulting cellulose bioplastics were transparent, as a result of the uniformly orientated structure. Moreover, the cellulose bioplastic exhibited much higher tensile strength, flexural strength and thermal stability as well as a lower coefficient of thermal expansion than common plastics and regenerated cellulose films. The whole life cycle assessment showed that the cellulose bioplastic is an environmentally friendly material. This work opens up a completely new avenue to construct a valuable bioplastic directly from cellulose pulps rather than their derivatives.Decision making is contemplated as a serious task in management context and it becomes more challenging when appropriate alternatives should be selected among various options based on some criteria. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is one of the multi-criteria decision making methods, which is widely used in management science because of its reliable and acceptable performance. In this study, a novel execution of adjusted AHP in decision making was utilized in a case study in Iran in order to find the best method for application of lean concept among alternatives. Previous-mentioned alternatives are consulting, college student, and internal human resource. Case study results demonstrated that using consultants for carrying out lean tools is the best method. The degree of consistency is satisfactory and proved the accuracy and correction of application of AHP in finding the best method for implementation of lean tools.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to inform decision makers about the data and information generated by commonly-used, holistic environmental assessment approaches. Design/methodology/approach - Descriptions of eight types of lifecycle-based methods are provided: Carbon/Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Management, Ecological Footprint, Energy Assessments, Fuel Cycle Analysis, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Risk Management (LCRM), Material Flow Analysis (MFA), and Sustainability Indicators. Example assessments of bio-based products are provided because of the current environmental and socio-economic relevance of bio-feedstocks. Findings - Assessment methods that focus on single impact indicators, such as air emissions (Carbon Management and Fuel Cycle Analysis) and energy, typically show biofuels in a favorable light compared to conventional gasoline (petrol). Ecological Footprint addresses land use implications; LCRM addresses possible impacts to human and ecological health due to chemical contaminant exposure; and MFA identifies areas to improve resource management and decrease the use of natural resources. LCA and Sustainability Indicators cover a wider range of environmental factors. Research limitations/implications - This study of environmental assessment approaches that incorporate a life cycle perspective revealed the importance of integrating the data and information generated by these disparate evaluations to make quality decisions. Developing such synergies is identified as a research need. Practical implications - The growing need by decision makers to look broadly at engineered systems led to a proliferation of approaches that are holistic and wide reaching. This paper provides clear descriptions of them to help dispel the potential confusion regarding what the various approaches cover when applying a lifecycle perspective. Originality/value - The paper bridges the gap between science and the decision-making process by describing what the various lifecycle-based methods for environmental assessment can and cannot do. Moreover, it provides evidence that no single tool encompasses all possible environmental impacts.Algae biomass is an attractive biofuel feedstock when grown with high productivity on marginal land. Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) produces more oil from algae than lipid extraction (LE) does because protein and carbohydrates are converted, in part, to oil. Since nitrogen in the algae biomass is incorporated into the HTL oil, and since lipid extracted algae for generating heat and electricity are not co-produced by HTL, there are questions regarding implications for emissions and energy use. We studied the HTL and LE pathways for renewable diesel (RD) production by modeling all essential operations from nutrient manufacturing through fuel use. Our objective was to identify the key relationships affecting HTL energy consumption and emissions. LE, with identical upstream growth model and consistent hydroprocessing model, served as reference. HTL used 1.8 fold less algae than did LE but required 5.2 times more ammonia when nitrogen incorporated in the HTL oil was treated as lost. HTL RD had life cycle emissions of 31,000 gCO(2) equivalent (gCO(2)e) compared to 21,500 gCO(2)e for LE based RD per million BTU of RD produced. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increased when yields exceeded 0.4 g HTL oil/g algae because insufficient carbon was left for biogas generation. Key variables in the analysis were the HTL oil yield, the hydrogen demand during upgrading, and the nitrogen content of the HTL oil. Future work requires better data for upgrading renewable oils to RD and requires consideration of nitrogen recycling during upgrading.The progress of business is moving fast and the key to maintain advantage and competitiveness is research and continuous improvement. Besides economic, environment is always more object of evaluation analysis. There are numerous ways to assess individually both economic and environmental aspects, but in order to guarantee a high quality of improvement, an integration of different methods and theories is required. Thus, this research provides an integration of two different approaches: The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). The first allows the analyst to understand the environmental issue. The second is useful in order to select the best solution for improvement. The main purpose of this study is to develop a systematic method, easy to use and giving useful results. In the present work existing methods are reviewed and integrated in a new approach proposed to support continuous improvement. A real case in an Italian bearing plant is presented.Waste prevention encompasses all the measures taken before a substance, material or product has become waste, that reduce the quantity of waste, the adverse impacts of the generated waste on environmental and human health or the content of harmful substances. In Greece, the co-funded by the LIFE financial tool "WASP Tool" project is currently under development. The WASP Tool has been designed in order to investigate, demonstrate and optimise the waste prevention potential at the Local Authorities level in the different geographic and waste policy context of Greece and Cyprus. The cornerstone unit of municipalities is the household. Waste prevention in the household level can be implemented via various activities. Based on the review of relevant literature, among the different alternatives, the most practiced are the following: Food waste prevention, Home composting, Prevention of packaging, Using multiple-use carry-bags, Repair of clothes, shoes, furniture, Repair and upgrade of electronic and electrical devices, Buying second-hand products. Waste prevention measures do not just aim at the reduction of waste; they also prevent the environmental impacts associated with the utilisation of resources during their entire life cycle. Thus, a key issue in waste prevention is its environmental assessment. Review of international literature reveals that the use of life cycle assessment is an established way for carrying out this kind of environmental assessments. The aim of this paper is presentation of the results of two different case studies dealing with the preliminary environmental assessment of waste prevention activities in households in Greece. The first deals with the assessment of home composting while the second examines the environmental impacts of the prevention of printed advertising material. Relevant scenarios are built and assumptions are introduced for study of the life cycle environmental impacts of those prevention activities. Two case studies based on the current situation in Greece have been analysed utilising LCA. The results of the first study indicate that home composting is environmentally preferable over the current organic waste management situation in Greece, while the second case study shows that the prevention of waste advertising material has clear environmental benefits. More research is required in order to quantify the environmental benefits of preventing other waste streams via the use of LCA.Disposal of rubber wastes is a serious environmental problem since its natural degradation occurs over long time periods due to its crosslinked structure. The mechanical recycling of waste rubber is an economical and suitable alterative for the recovery of this kind of industrial solid waste. It consists of the size reduction (grinding) of the rubber materials and reuse of the resulting powder as filler in the production of new items. However, technical and environmental aspects concerning the use of waste rubber should be observed, since the recycling process involves some alteration in the conventional productive process. In this context, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodological framework for assessing the environmental impacts of the life cycle of a product or a process. The aim of this study was to evaluate the environmental performance of a recycling process of vulcanized styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) industrial waste. The SBR industrial scraps were incorporated into a base formulation of identical composition used in the fabrication process of extruded profiles. The scraps were ground under ambient conditions. Eight composites with different proportions, varying from 10 to 80 phr (parts per hundred of rubber) of ground rubber (SBR-r) were prepared and the results were compared with a control sample (base formulation with 0 phr of SBR-r). The environmental performance of the fabrication process including the proposed recycling process was characterized by mass balance and Life Cycle Assessment. The evaluation considered the raw materials, water and energy consumption and solid waste generation. The mechanical properties showed that up to 50 phr of SBR-r can be added to the virgin rubber matrix without adversely affecting the properties. For this content, LCA results indicated that the consumption of electricity corresponded to an increase of 14% in terms of environmental impact points. However, the reduction in the consumption of non-renewable raw materials resulted in a reduction of 7% of these points. Since the most significant environmental impacts are related to the use of raw materials from non-renewable resources, the LCA results indicated that the fabrication process including the recycling process presented the best environmental performance compared to the conventional productive process. These results showed that it is possible to recycle up to 50 phr of rubber scraps internally in the industry, with a reduction in the total environmental impacts, maintaining the technical performance of the final product.Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is receiving increasing attention as a means of producing electricity in a sustainable manner. However, like any other industrial activity, CSP plants generate environmental impacts that need to be identified and quantified so that they can be minimized and managed appropriately. This paper analyses the environmental performance associated with the generation of electricity in a commercial 50 MWe CSP plant based on parabolic trough technology and currently operating in Ciudad Real (Spain). The plant incorporates a 7.5 hour thermal energy storage system based on molten salts and an auxiliary boiler utilizing natural gas that provides 12 % of the energy input. The analysis, conducted according to ISO 14040-4, is based on a comprehensive inventory of the life cycle of the plant, including manufacturing, construction, operation and dismantling phases. The results describe the impact of the technology on 8 different environmental categories. The Energy Flux and the Energy Pay Back (EPB) time were also determined for standard operation conditions. ReCiPe Midpoint Europe (H perspective) was used for quantification and aggregation of environmental impacts. The normalized profile of the plant shows that most impacted environmental categories are natural land transformation and fossil fuel depletion. The generation of 1.0 MWh of electricity produced the following impacts in selected environmental categories: global warming 115 kg CO2 eq/MWh; human toxicity 10.2 kg 1,4-DB eq/MWh; marine ecotoxicity 217 g 1,4-DB eq/MWh; natural land transformation 0.02 m(2)/MWh; eutrophication 7.5 g P eq/MWh. The most impacting elements in the life cycle of the CSP plant are associated with its operation phase. In particular, the consumption of natural gas contributed to 87 % and 79 % of the impact associated with climate change and natural land transformation, respectively. Significantly lower impacts were attributed to other stages in the life cycle of the plant like manufacturing of reinforcing steel, copper, heat transfer fluid and molten salts. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate the use of alternative aggregation methods including ReCiPe Midpoint Europe (E and H perspective) and CML2 baseline 2000. The results showed similar results on the environmental impacts estimated for certain environmental categories (such as acidification, global warming, eutrophication) but notable differences in other categories (human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity).The aim of the specific study is to quantify the equivalent carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and to identify the most important areas of extensive energy consumption and of a medium sized municipality, namely Kavala, in Northeastern Greece. An analytical energy balance for the municipality was developed including the total electrical energy and fuel consumption (heating oil, wood, gasoline, diesel and wood) used for municipal, public and tertiary buildings and facilities, municipal lighting, and all transportation sectors (municipal, public, private and commercial). The total energy consumption of the municipality of Kavala was estimated to be 972,814 MWh for the year 2011. In order to estimate the carbon footprint of the municipality of Kavala, three different methods were applied, and more specifically: a) the IPCC standard emission factors method, b) the IPCC life cycle emission factors method and c) the life cycle assessment (LCA) method with the application of relative software. Results ranged from 511,799 to 571,000 tons CO2 or 6.9 to 7.7 tons of equivalent CO2 emissions per capita, exhibiting satisfying correlation among the results. Variations were attributed to the different scope and greenhouse gases inventory included in every method. The majority of CO2 emissions were attributed to the electrical energy consumption (64%) due to the relatively high CO2 emission factor of electricity produced in Greece. The building sector contributed significantly to the total carbon footprint. More specifically the residential building sector and the buildings of the tertiary sector contributed as much as 41% and 30% respectively of the municipality carbon footprint, whereas the private and commercial transportation sector accounted for a percentage in the order of 22%. Based on the specific results an analytical sustainable energy action plan was developed aiming to the reduction of the total carbon footprint by at least 20% by 2020, according to the directions of the Covenant of Mayor signatory. Indicative actions included energy saving interventions to buildings, attempt to change the consumption behavioral habits of inhabitants through campaigns, eco-drive training etc., aiming at the "hot spots" identified during the development of the energy/carbon footprint balance. As an overall statement it could be inferred that the quantification of the energy and carbon footprint of a municipality significantly strengthens the adoption of effective regional strategies, communication of the results and the participation in relative programs and financing.Natural systems are presented as an economic solution for the treatment of wastewater from small settlements. This study presents a detailed technical analysis of three stabilization pond systems designed to treat municipal wastewater, varying in capacity from 250 to 1400 population equivalent. Construction costs for the three systems were estimated using standard costing tables for public works. The data from the three systems were used to derive equations that correlate the required facility surface area and the construction cost to the population served. For the environmental impact, two scenarios were examined: construction using reinforced concrete and using earthen structures. For the latter case, two options were tested: use of a synthetic geomembrane or use of a compacted clay layer as waterproofing materials. The environmental impact was calculated for various scenarios applying the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology. It was concluded that soil structures, and particularly use of clay, had an overall economical and ecological advantage compared to reinforced concrete.The purpose of this paper is to explore emerging applications of consumption-based/life cycle assessment (LCA) accounting methodologies nationally, internationally and in the private sector. Slow progress at the international level in halting the growth of GHG emissions, coupled with the limitations of the territorial methodology for accounting for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions used under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, has triggered an interest in these alternative approaches for accounting for emissions and attributing responsibility. Methods and standards for accounting for the life cycle emissions associated with goods and services, and for estimating the global carbon footprint associated with all consumption within an economy, are now under active development and are beginning to find practical application. The paper identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches for accounting emissions in relation to accuracy, timeliness, data robustness, assesses current applications of the consumption approach and suggests wider potential applications which could influence national climate policies and the international structure.Integrated product policy (IPP) is an initiative at the European Union (EU) level aimed at reducing the environmental burden of products and services throughout their life cycles by using a toolbox of policy instruments to 'green' markets through 'greening' both the demand side (consumption) and the supply side (product development). IPP is part of a growing trend within environmentally advanced countries in Europe towards product-oriented environmental policies. As such, it represents a new shift in thinking towards 'front-of-pipe' solutions (e.g. the greening of product development and design). By focusing on the product development and design phase, IPP aims to tackle the stage at which many of the environmental burdens of products are determined, thus reducing non-point source problems further in the lifecycle. IPP also aims to green the consumption side of the market by focusing on the way that customers (individual, business-to-business, distributors and governmental) choose, use and discard products and services. The aim here is to reduce the environmental impact of products during their use and to ensure their appropriate disposal at the end of their life. The objective of this work is the development of a methodology for identifying "environmentally damaging" products. More specifically a frame was defined to rank the impacts of products or product categories, based on certain simplified indicators. This ranking includes two steps: 1. In the first step (economic assessment) the product categories will be identified according to their contribution to the Gross national product (GNP) at a national level. Moreover, a cut off rule will be defined to take into account only products with a significant impact to the GNP. In this way the methodology takes into account a regional approach. 2. In the second step (environmental assessment), the products will be ranked according to the impacts they cause to the environment, based on environmental indicators that will be set by the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology (ISO 14040, 2006, ISO 14044, 2006). Data mainly from literature or LCA databases will be used as a preliminary way in determining the most damaging to the environment products. In this work, the basic methodology is presented. Future steps include the full development of the "Product - Impact Model" (PIM), as well as its application at a macro level, for various countries.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely used tool to evaluate the environmental profile of a product or process, and can serve as a starting point for product and process improvement. Using LCA to support sustainable product design and sustainable manufacturing has recently attracted increasing interest. Unfortunately, the available life cycle inventory databases have very limited coverage of manufacturing processes. To make matters worse, the available datasets are either highly aggregated or consider only selected processes and process conditions. In addition, in the case of the latter, the data provided may be based on limited measurements or even just estimates. This raises questions on applicability of these databases to manufacturing process improvement where different operating parameters and conditions are adopted. Recently a novel methodology called "unit process life cycle inventory" or "uplci" has been proposed to address these issues, and models for several machining processes(e.g., turning, milling, and drilling) and joining (e.g, submerged arc welding) have been developed. This paper follows the uplci approach and develops models for a series of hot forming processes, including billet heating, performing, and indirect extrusion. It is shown that the model predictions on energy consumption are in good agreement with data measured on a production line. For hot forming processes, the results suggest that billet heating dominates the overall energy consumption and the carbon footprint relative to the deformation steps.Water conservation has risen to be an important issue in today's society. We analyzed the applicability of a rainwater collection system on a major building in the north academic core of The Ohio State University. This was done by doing environmental and economic analyses on the tanks that would be placed at Scott Laboratory. The economic analysis determined the system's financial profile by comparing projected costs of utilizing varying tank sizes, while the environmental impacts were determined through use of Sustainable Minds' Life Cycle Assessment software. It was found that over the course of a year, over 1,700 lbs. of CO2 would be prevented from being released into the atmosphere and that the tanks' initial cost would break-even in less than 2 years as a result of the building's reduced water usage.Microalgae biomass has been described by several authors as the raw material with the greatest potential to meet the goals of replacing petroleum diesel by biodiesel while not competing with arable land suitable for food production. Research groups in different countries are seeking the most appropriate production model for productivity, economic viability and environmental sustainability. This review focused on recent advances and challenges of technology for the production of biodiesel from microalgae, including the procedures used to obtain biomass.This study uses the life cycle assessment (LCA) environmental management tool to measure the performance, at laboratory scale, of a range of iron and palladium based nanoparticle catalysts for carbon dioxide utilisation (CDU). The catalysts combine the reverse-water gas shift reaction with the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into hydrocarbons (HCs) often employed as fuels and feedstocks for the chemical industry; offering the potential synthesis of HCs void of fossil fuel extraction. The catalysts operational performance was shown to vary considerably dependent on the specific iron: palladium loadings. LCA results afforded insight into 'green' catalyst design, palladium addition vastly improves catalyst performance. However, with such a high embodied environmental impact a trade-off is witnessed whereby the continual addition of palladium, although shows favourable CO2 conversion and HC yields, does not return a sufficient environmental offset in terms of produced HCs to cover the embodied impacts present in its formation. With the present laboratory setup their embodied environmental impacts are several orders of magnitude more impactful than traditional process pathways, largely due to the electricity use; a switch to renewable generators can reduce the overall process impacts by 90%, a significant step in increasing the competitiveness of the process, a use of renewable electricity in the synthesis of hydrogen further strengthens the case for its use in HC production has environmental merit. Indeed, from a material exchange perspective the H-2 consumes is of a lesser environmental impact than those offset through the HCs produced. As with all laboratory processes, it is very likely that process scale-up and refinement will further enhance the results witnessed in this study.Increasing demand for energy worldwide, driven largely by the developing world, coupled with the tremendous hidden costs associated with traditional energy sources necessitates an unprecedented fraction of the future global energy mix come from sustainable, renewable sources. The potential solar energy resource dwarfs that of all other renewable sources combined, yet only two photovoltaic technologies are known to have the potential to be scaled up to make dramatic impact on the overall energy mix: silicon and organic photovoltaics. In this paper, we present the long-term sustainability advantages of organics when compared to silicon and other photovoltaic technologies in terms of energy payback time and global warming potential while also discussing the outlook for transitional applications of organic solar cells.Life cycle analysis is one of the methods allowing to classify fuel as biofuel. The main index is energy efficiency indicator, which for biofuel should be equal to 1 or higher. There is no information about life cycle energy efficiency indicators of rapeseed oil butylesters (RBE). In this study we have analyzed the energy efficiency indicator (R-1) (according to the standards ISO 14040-14049) for RBE, synthesized applying traditional (with NaOH as catalyst) and biotechnological (with immobilized lipase Lypozyme TL IM) methods. The analysis was performed taking into account the rapeseed productivity in Lithuania, European Union and Ireland for different years. The values of energy efficiency indicator (R-1) were compared for rapeseed methylesters, produced by applying the chemical and biotechnological methods.Timber represents a common used material in all the activities. There are references which attest its utilization as a construction material since the early known human history. Recent development solutions reintroduce the wood in construction by developing composite materials. The same fact applies to bridges and culverts, but the raw timber is still used, and, in some adequate conditions, the realized constructions present a long life expectancy. In Romania, forest roads are, in their majority, endowed with concrete bridges and culverts. Also, due to the well represented hydrography, their construction and maintaining represents a major cost component in the overall cost of the road. Most of them are no longer technically effective and represent a danger in the transportation activity, especially since the utilized means are realized for increased transport capacities. By comparison with traditional technical solutions (concrete bridges and culverts), timber may present a reduced life expectancy as a construction material. However, its availability at the construction site may compensate in the cost analysis. Also, there cannot be neglected the eco-efficiency of the construction when the timber is used as base material, especially in the context in which traditional concrete solutions are realized involving increased Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. In this context, in the paper are analyzed the existent and some proposed timber solutions for bridges and culverts - forest roads, with regard to the overall involved components with special focus on the costs and GHG emissions (CO2).Milk and dairy products constitute an important ingredient in the human diet. Ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk is the main dairy product consumed in Portugal and its production entails large inputs of resources which derive on negative environmental effects such as nutrient enrichment of the ecosystem and climate change. In this study, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was considered for the environmental assessment of packaged UHT milk produced in Portugal, including simple (whole, semi-skimmed and skimmed) and cocoa milk from a cradle-to-gate perspective and to identify the environmental hot spots. Results showed that the production of the raw milk in the dairy farm is the main hot spot in almost all the categories under assessment mainly due to the emissions from enteric fermentation, manure management and fertilisers production and application. Furthermore, on-site emissions derived from dairy factory are remarkable together with the packages and energy requirements production. The values reported in this study are in the range of other related papers. However, differences were also identified due to several reasons such as allocation approach, data sources, characterisation factors, farm management regimes and assumptions considered. Therefore, these aspects should be carefully addressed and sensitivity to the assumptions and uncertainty of the results should be evaluated. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Strategies to mitigate climate change through the use of biofuels (such as ethanol) are associated not only to the increase in the amount of C stored in soils but also to the reduction of GHG emissions to the atmosphere. This report mainly aimed to propose appropriate methodologies for the determinations of soil organic carbon stocks and greenhouse gas fluxes in agricultural phase of the sugarcane production. Therefore, the text is a piece of contribution that may help to obtain data not only on soil carbon stocks but also on greenhouse gas emissions in order to provide an accurate life cycle assessment for the ethanol. Given that the greenhouse gas value is the primary measure of biofuel product quality, biorefiners that can show a higher offset of their product will have an advantage in the market place.Plaster plays an important role in the building industry. Besides an aesthetic function it provides the protection of external walls from weather conditions. In the paper thermo insulating Thermopor plaster was described. Its chemical and physical properties and manner of using were defined. The impact on the environment with the use of LCA technique was examined. Thermopor plaster can fulfil a thermo insulating function. The economic and ecological analysis of applying this plaster in the thermo insulation of the external walls of the building was conducted. The use of Thermopor plaster on external walls brings ecological benefits. The reimbursement of ecological cost related to the use of this plaster appears already after 2 to 5 years, depending on the source of heat used, which results from the decrease of thermal energy consumption for heating the building. For economic reasons, the partial reimbursement of cost is obtained as a result of the reduction of heating cost. Although Thermopor plaster has thermo insulating properties similar to typical insulating materials, such as polystyrene or mineral wool, the economic cost of using the plaster for thermo insulation becomes several times higher.This paper proposes a method for determining the environmental benefits arising from the use of the combined production of electricity and heat. To determine the environmental burdens and benefits the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique is used, methodologically based on ISO 14040 series. To evaluate the process SimaPro software and the method of Eco Indicator 99 were used, which allows to get the results of the burden and benefit with taking into account three categories of damages: human health, ecosystem quality, raw materials and the eleven categories of the impact process on the environment. The object of evaluation is the process of energy production in combined heat and power plant Lubin.Purpose - The paper aims to discuss how life cycle assessment can be used in the early stage planning phase of new settlements. Design/methodology/approach - By applying the life cycle methodology on the waste, water and wastewater system of a new carbon-neutral settlement under planning in Norway, the authors discuss the pros and cons with applying this methodology in an early planning phase. Findings - The LCA methodology enabled the authors to compare suggestions from interdisciplinary planning teams, relate them to the existing systems in Trondheim and provide quantitative results back to the decision-makers, in this case the municipality. The environmental benefits of implementing alternative solutions in the waste, water and wastewater systems were found to be small. Research limitations/implications - Data availability and uncertainty can be limitations in the early planning phase. Practical implications - By applying this methodology, the life cycle environmental impact of different solutions can be assessed at an early planning stage. Originality/value - Even if life cycle assessment has been used for years in the research community, there is too little experience with applying the methodology in the early planning phase of new projects. This paper discuss how life cycle assessment can be used to compare suggestions from interdisciplinary planning teams, relate them to existing systems and provide quantitative results back to the decision-makers.Purpose - Buildings/infrastructure are recognised to have a significant impact on the environment and the community, and hence there is pressure on industry practitioners to incorporate environmental and social considerations in addition to the traditional cost, time and quality. The development of sustainability reporting tools (SRTs) to assist in the management of "green" building/infrastructure projects is pivotal in informing on progress in sustainability practices. However, the rapid growth of SRTs in the last decade, with different criteria and methodology, has created complications for stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach - The paper provides a comprehensive review of tools to guide practitioners, property investors, policy makers and developers towards making informed choices in "green" building/infrastructure projects. Comparative analyses, benefits and limitations of these tools are discussed in the paper. Findings - Some of the findings from the analysis of SRTs include: an emphasis on environmental issues; scoring which does not account for uncertainty or variability in assessors' perceptions; lack of published reasoning behind the allocation of scores; inadequate definition of scales to permit differentiation among projects; and the existence of non-scientific benchmarks. Originality/value - The paper departs from earlier reviews to include a discussion on infrastructure SRTs, life cycle tools, and issues broader than the environment. Changes and additions, subsequent to earlier reviews, have been made to SRTs, making the updated review provided here useful.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for assessing, in quantifiable terms, the reduction in environmental impacts achieved by applying different credits of sustainability rating systems in building construction projects. Design/methodology/approach - Sustainability rating systems are developed in various regions to evaluate construction projects with respect to their environmental performance. Although implementation of rating systems had a recognized effect on reducing environmental impact of construction projects, there is no objective and quantifiable evidence that the approaches recommended by these rating systems to achieve the required certification lead to optimum environmental results. This paper presents a methodology that utilizes life cycle analysis (LCA) as a powerful and objective tool to validate the way rating systems evaluate project performance. The Qatar Sustainability Assessment System (QSAS), recently developed in the State of Qatar by Gulf Organization for Research and Development (GORD), is chosen as a case study to illustrate application of the developed methodology. Environmental impacts due to implementation of QSAS credits are calculated for one project in Qatar, which is currently under construction. Findings - Results reveal possible use of LCA as a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of rating systems. For the QSAS case study, findings reveal indications of over and, in some instances, under estimation of the weights assigned to some credits and the difficulty in the quantification of the impacts of other credits, which indicates the need for reconsideration of these weights to improve effectiveness of the implementation of these credits. Originality/value - The proposed methodology stands as a step toward the enhancement and rationalization of the currently used building sustainability ratings system.This article presents a comparison of indicators based on an economy-wide material flow analysis, namely imports, exports, domestic material consumption, raw material equivalents of imports, raw material equivalents of exports and raw material consumption. These indicators were calculated for the Czech Republic for 1995-2010 using, besides economy-wide material flow analysis, the hybrid input-output life cycle assessment method, which allows for a calculation of raw material equivalents of imports and exports. The results showed that calculation of indicators including raw material equivalents is useful, as they provided some important information which was not obvious from imports, exports and domestic material consumption. This includes the facts that the latter indicators tended to underestimate environmental pressure related to consumption of materials, high dependency of the Czech production system on metal ores from abroad and quite unequal and unfair distribution of environmental pressures between the Czech Republic and its trading partners.This paper presents findings of an environmental and economical life cycle assessment (LCA) of individual Irish residential building structural wall and roof assemblies. A study found embodied energy (EE) and embodied carbon (EC) to account for up to 27% and 34% of lifecycle energy usage and carbon emissions, respectively, for studied Irish residential dwellings. Building superstructure and roof were discovered to contain on average 56% and 60% of case study associated EE and EC, respectively. This research found little difference between typical timber frame and concrete block cavity wall systems employed in Ireland in terms of lifecycle energy, carbon emissions and economic costs. Analysis on roof systems demonstrated cost and environmental impacts of insulated and un-insulated ceiling and rafter roof systems. Resulting from building envelope LCA, this research highlights the need for designers to consider various lifecycle qualities when selecting building materials. By increasing demand for energy consuming materials, manufacturers will be forced to adopt more energy efficient production methods to satisfy selection standards.Purpose This chapter provides a critical discussion of air to rail mode substitution. Environmental impacts, intermodal competition and integration are considered, examining advantages and disadvantages as well as opportunities and constraints. Originality Both operation and life-cycle analysis perspectives show that high-speed rail (HSR) is much greener' than air transport (per seat-km or per passenger-km) provided that the former achieves high load factors and the latter lower load factors and that freed runway capacity is not reused. HSR travel time is its main competitive advantage against air transport, and a 600-km flight is arguably the current limit for robust intermodal effects. Findings The potential for air HSR integration at the airport relies on various service, business and technical constraints. Even when it is successful, its environmental benefit appears to be marginal, if not negative, if airport capacity is reused for longer flights. In the current context, such integration appears more like a business opportunity for airlines, airports and train operators rather than a sustainable option. Yet the environmental benefit of integration may be larger within potential integrated transport policies. Keywords: High-speed rail; modeThe sustainability is an essential topic in the field of building planning and it became also a necessary requirement of the Cultural Heritage preservation. It's a long time since the STEP laboratory, of the University of Pavia, deals with researches on the themes of recovery and restoration of Inter-departmental Research Centre on Cultural Heritage Conservation (CISRiC). The STEP laboratory has worked on the development of analysis and energy assessment methodologies and on the sustainable management of historical buildings. In this area, a research was conduct and experimented on the southern wing of the royal palace of Monza, in Lombardy (north of Italy). Another project was focused on the creation of assessment models aimed at planning the conservation and the Life Cycle Assessment of "Minor" monuments, such as the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine Annunciata of Serle (province of Brescia), also in Lombardy. The methodological features delineate a unified approach for the sustainable management of the Cultural Heritage, through the conducted case-studies.The importance of energy efficiency in existing buildings and the need for refurbishment appear as key elements in different European regulations. In the same way, the concern about the environmental impact of the products used in refurbishment projects is increasing. Based on those two key issues, this paper presents a methodology for the environmental optimization of refurbishment projects with a life cycle perspective. This methodology has been applied to a real case study, consisting on an apartment building built on the 70's in the district of Amara (San Sebastian). As a result, the best refurbishment solution among several options has been identified.In active windows micro mirror arrays between the layers of conventional glazing allow a fast and only partial blind of selected areas of a window. Glare can be effectively avoided while daylight use is kept to a maximum. In contrast to external sun blinds active windows are supposed to be maintenance-free and thus applicable also in high-rise buildings. An analysis of the environmental soundness of active windows is challenging as active windows are not yet in a commercial stage and the energy demand over the use stage depends on a variety of factors such as control strategy, building design and local climate requiring an illumination and energetic simulation. An important advantage is the lower material demand which in case of aluminum is lower by several orders in the final product compared to typical external sun blinds making a contribution to dematerialization.This paper presents selected environmental impacts of production of thermally insulating composite material (TICM) developed at Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, made of secondary raw materials and its application in form of structural elements (insulating blocks). In building constructions these blocks could be used for minimization of thermal bridges, especially in structural details exposed to high mechanical loads, such as the substructure below doors and windows, thermal insulation of the base of the wall, foundations or attics. For the comparison of environmental impacts is chosen application of these insulating blocks in the structural detail of the base of the wall. For the purpose of comparison of the environmental impacts, also application of foam glass slabs in the same construction detail is assessed.Yarrabah is a community in Queensland, Australia, comprising 2,700 people of whom 97 % are Indigenous. The Yarrabah Council is considering constructing a multi-purpose business and cultural centre, with a view to enhancing economic, cultural, and environmental sustainability in the area. The author's proposed design for the building incorporates design/construction elements and operational performance that meet recognised Australian environmental standards and ratings. Environmental aspects of the design include elements of passive solar energy utilisation and control, the use of natural sources of ventilation and light, solar-based power generation, an energy management system, and a self-sufficient water supply. Life cycle analysis is considered for all materials, systems, and processes. The proposed design also incorporates culturally responsive elements as a result of applying Indigenous knowledge and cultural values. Consultation with Indigenous groups and examination of historical documents indicated that local tribes practiced sustainability and used natural materials to construct huts and shelters that were domed and circular in shape. Conceptually, the building is presented as a creative and innovative sustainable design, encapsulating the essence of an Indigenous spiritual entity by taking on the shape of a sea eagle and also containing domed and circular elements. Due consideration is given to both internal and external spaces. The proposed building represents a fusion of modern materials/methods and Indigenous knowledge/culture in an ethnoscientific approach to design, meaning that the centre will possess both environmental integrity and cultural significance.Since the beginning of 2012, product manufacturers can publish quantified environmental information on their products based on a European standard. This standard (EN 15804) defines the set of environmental indicators to be used, underlying calculation rules, and reporting requirements for so called Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for building products and building related services. What are the experiences of applying the standard in various building products EPDs and in an EN 15804 compliant building product Life Cycle Assessment database development in Germany? There are challenges in adopting the methodology in the different stages of EPD projects for manufacturers, LCA practitioners, verifiers and programme holders. And how is the vast list of 24 environmental indicators required for EPDs used in practice?Environmental quality has become increasingly influenced by world population development and their increasing requirements on living. Buildings play significant role in energy consumption and emission production through all phases of life cycle. The goal of this paper is to assess alternative material solutions of exterior walls and roofs to support decision at project of nearly zero energy houses. The solutions are towards reduced embodied environmental impacts and improved energy performance. This case study uses life cycle analysis in system boundary from Cradle to Gate and is concentrating on environmental indicators such as embodied energy, embodied emissions of CO2-eq. and So(2)-eq. The selection and combination of materials influence amount of energy consumption and associated production of emissions during occupation and therefore the study also calculate thermal-physical parameters (U-value, phase shift of thermal oscillation, relaxation time, etc.) All results of assessments are calculated through four methods of multicriteria decision analysis (MDCA). MDCA seeks to integrate several goals in order to reach the most suitable solution, considering the relative importance of each goal. The total score of MDCA demonstrates that material compositions from massive wood panel and straw insulation are the most environmental and energy effective solutions and present sustainable perspective of future design of zero energy house.The European project OPEN HOUSE aims at merging existing methodologies for sustainability assessment of buildings towards a common view. The research focused on harmonisation and developed a common structure composed of six categories and a set of 56 sustainability indicators on the basis of existing and recognised methodologies. The OPEN HOUSE methodology was tested with the help of 68 case studies distributed all over Europe to study its applicability in diverse climate, political, social and cultural conditions. A first feedback analysis reveals a great acceptance and assessment feasibility in Europe.A third version of a tool for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of reinforced concrete structures was developed based on general methodology (standards) and tested for implementation in Czech regional conditions in the previous two years. The Tool enables to compare objectively and evaluate various types of structures from various kinds of concrete from the perspective of impacts on environment within the whole life cycle of the structure. A LCA approach from cradle to the gate is presented in environmental analysis of three alternatives of experimentally verified subtle columns. Relevant LCA is based on local environmental data collected within the inventory phase of the LCA procedure.Buildings that are constructed and refurbished in a transformable way can be altered easily and meet the demands of changing users or standards. Moreover, since transformability enables the reuse and recycling of buildings and their components, life cycle analysis has proven that it is a more sustainable strategy to build than those that are currently used. Based on an extensive literature study, an analytical framework on transformable building is briefly presented in the introduction of this paper. In order to validate the presented framework and extend it into an applicable design advice, two architectural projects are explored. The framework allowed a comprehensive analysis of both cases, their design concepts and design process, and revealed their ability to deal with predictable and unpredictable change as well as shortcomings. Moreover, these case studies demonstrated that the relation between particular design concepts and the rather general aspects of the analytical framework is not unambiguous. In order to promote transformable building because of its sustainability, a comprehensive design advice concerning 'partially transformable building' is proposed. Like both cases, partially transformable buildings find a balance between transformability and durability or versatility. In order to assist in finding that balance, two acknowledged decision tools, 'bandwidth' and 'time horizon' are adopted.Envimat.cz is an online catalogue of environmental profiles of building materials and structures localized for the Czech Republic. It allows users to compare, model and edit elements of buildings and calculate environmental profiles thereof. It helps architects and designers to choose appropriate materials for their building based on their environmental impacts. Initial dataset is derived from generic database but the goal is to continuously replace them with more accurate, localized data from Czech local Environmental Product Declarations. Envimat.cz brings multiple benefits for the sustainable building stakeholders: it gives clear information to the building owners; architects and students can easily choose environment-friendly options for their projects; producers with lower environmental impacts compared to competitors get marketing advantage and Czech construction practice as a whole is being shifted to higher environmental standard.Certificates that address the sustainability of buildings are applied more and more in Europe. These certificates - e.g. according to DGNB - are based on a set of sustainability indicators for which evaluation methodologies are defined. These indicators give guideline on the selection of relevant sustainability impacts and on how to address expected impacts in the planning and execution phases of a building's development. The authors discuss the factors for when certification leads to improved building sustainability performance. One focus will be on the coherent use of assessment tools during the development phases, e.g. for building life cycle assessment.The rising amount and diversification of green building rating systems causes environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) at the same extent. The definition of ambitious and accomplishable threshold and target values for various LCA indicators is quite difficult, due to relatively small data sets. The Austrian Green Building Council (OGNI), which adapted the DGNB system to Austrian requirements, has certified several buildings within the different system schemes. An analysis of certified office and administrative buildings should indicate first tendency and give suggestions for improvement. The investigation focuses on the share of the construction and utilisation phase in the defined ecological indicators. Beside the environmental impact of used materials an analysis of relevant determinants (surface-to-volume ratio, building size, energy efficiency class, basement garage, etc.) highlight further steering parameters and possible benchmarks.In this study, a gap in a life cycle assessment (LCA) result of a building made in different design phase is investigated. Primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission values for material production of four case study buildings are calculated with three different accuracies of inventories: preliminary design level, detailed design level, and completed building level. The result presents that preliminary design level shows approx. 50-65 % of the value compared to the completed building, and the detailed design level shows approx. 90-95 % of the value. This study indicates the importance of covering overall picture of actual environmental impact throughout a building design process. Possible solution and a gap between practical situation and standardized method regarding building LCA is discussed.The combined impact of the service life and relevant reliability level of structures-on the financial and environmental aspects of concrete infrastructure building is discussed. An approach and tools for advanced design, assessment and decision-making utilizing modeling of degradation phenomena and relevant reliability of concrete structures, taking into account uncertainties involved are presented. The suitable methodology utilizes limit states associated with durability; the reliability assessment is effectively performed by employing the full probabilistic safety format. Different mathematical models are mentioned for both the initiation as well as the propagation period. Such an approach may bring positive economical and sustainability impacts as the resulting software management tool will allow a cost efficient risk based decision support according to lifetime performance during design and maintenance of structures.The paper introduces the activities of the Czech Green Building Council's working group Sustainable Materials. The Working group actively promotes the need of environmentally friendly production of building materials not only to wide public, but also in close discussions with industry and the leading producers of innovative building products. The paper presents a survey of knowledge of the building sustainability assessment systems and sustainable materials in the market. The survey defines the environment in which the WG started to operate. It also identifies the gaps needed to be filled to bring a significant change to the construction market in the Czech Republic.Innovation in the construction industry is often driven by the legislation and by the market mechanisms. After the lever of energy efficiency, new goals are looming on the horizon towards sustainability of interventions. The essay aims to build, with particular reference to the Italian context, a framework of policies, of regulatory pathways and of the initiatives geared towards sustainability, which are determining and will determine the routes of environmental innovation. Central to all these paths is the life-cycle approach and the environmental evaluation based on LCA. Remarkable is the effort that research is producing to refine the assessment tools and the decision support tools toward a systemic vision of sustainability.Sustainability in architecture should involve environmental and social aspects and also economic aspects. However, in a design process budget issues usually outweigh ecological aspects. How can we then drive clients and builders to put more socially responsible buildings on the market that do not exceed the fixed budget but are environmentally friendly? This paper propose an economic and environmental assessment tool to aid private or public building designers and owners to find the global sustainability value of a green building within a life cycle perspective. Sustainable life cycle tools for buildings design and construction help to achieve successfully integrated architecture. The research here presented proposes a new point of view of the "time-costquality triangle" of Project Management, by introducing three further aspects: environment, society and aesthetics.In recent times Life Cycle Approach in building design and construction was set up by means technical standards (e.g. CEN/TC 350) as well as comprehensive impact assessment methods (e.g. LEED (R) and ITACA). Although standards and methods may be considered as accurate and exhaustive, product and system design needs a further organisation and systematisation of those environmental requirements tricky to take into account in preliminary design. It stands to reason such trickiness becomes more important in industrial research projects. Starting with the assumption that there is an urgent need to overcome the gap between design and production, the paper deals with the outcomes of a research project focused on detailed designing, manufacturing and monitoring of a Living Wall System (LWS) aimed at carrying into action a Life Cycle Approach.The concept of environmental thinking is integrated into sustainable supply chain planning and management for biofuels, and a multiobjective modeling framework is developed. The aim is to seek best-compromise solutions that are economically and environmentally sustainable in supplying biofuels from cellulosic biomasses while satisfying demand, resource, and technology constraints. The least-cost objective and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions are integrated into the modeling framework, and carbon footprints are assessed with the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation model, a life-cycle assessment framework, to ensure that strategies to mitigate GHG emissions are factored into system planning and management. Biomass-to-biofuel conversion efficiency can be highly variable because of uncertainties inherent in the conversion processes; this uncertainty is considered explicitly in the integrated modeling framework. A multiobjective, mixed-integer, stochastic programming model is proposed and solved by the compromise method, a subclass of the goal programming method. The model is used to evaluate the economic potential and environmental impact of establishing a cellulosic ethanol supply chain based on biowaste (i.e., corn stover and forest residue) in California as a case study. Significant trade-offs exist between economic competitiveness and environmental quality. The uncertainty inherent in biomass-to-biofuel conversion technology has substantial effects on multicriteria decision making, and the effects may vary with the choice of modeling approaches.This introductory chapter describes the concept of unintended consequences, as well as methods and approaches that can be applied to identify the unintended consequences of renewable energy. The chapter includes a brief introduction to consequential life cycle assessment (cLCA), the study of rebound effects, and assessment of environmental impacts, so-called environmental impact assessment (EIA). Also included are other forms of relevant modeling, including molecular dynamics simulations (MDS). The types of unintended consequences addressed in this book are defined with special attention being paid to their impacts on health and the environment. The main renewable technologies covered in the book are also defined.Part I of this study deals with the primary energy consumption and CO(2)eq emissions of a 350 tonnes/h construction and demolition waste (CDW) recycling facility, taking into account incorporated, operation and transportation impacts. It concludes that the generated impacts are mostly concentrated in operation and transportation, and that the impacts prevented through material recycling can be up to one order of magnitude greater than those generated. However, the conditions considered for the plant's operation and related transportation system may, and very likely will, vary in the near future, which will affect its environmental performance. This performance is particularly affected by the plant's installed capacity, transportation fuel and input CDW mass. In spite of the variations in overall primary energy and CO(2)eq balances, the prevented impacts are always higher than the generated impacts, at least by a factor of three and maybe even as high as 16 times in particular conditions. The analysis indicates environmental performance for variations in single parameters, except for the plant's capacity, which was considered to vary simultaneously with all the others. Extreme best and worst scenarios were also generated to fit the results into extreme limits. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This review on Sustainability covers selected journal articles and conferences papers published in 2012 and is divided into the following sections(1): Sustainable water and wastewater utilities Sustainable water resources management Industrial and corporate approaches towards sustainability. Stormwater and green infrastructure Sustainability in wastewater treatment Life cycle assessment (LCA) applications Sustainability and energy in wastewater industry, climate change, and water reuse Sustainability rating systems The Stormwater and Green Infrastructure (GI) describe the current development in four areas: (1) performance monitoring of GI/LID (low impact development) systems; (2) modeling GI/LID systems; (3) assessment and planning tools for GI/LID systems; and (4) social impacts of GI/LID systems.This review of literature published in 2012 focuses on wastes related to chemicals and allied products. Topics covered include activated carbon adsorption, aerobic and anaerobic treatment, nutrient removal, nitrification and denitrification, membrane biological reactor, chemical waste, physio-chemical treatment, and soil remediation, and waste management.This study exemplifies the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool to quantify the environmental impacts of processes for wastewater treatment. In a case study, the sludge treatment line of a large wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is analysed in terms of cumulative energy demand and the emission of greenhouse gases (carbon footprint). Sludge treatment consists of anaerobic digestion, dewatering, drying, and disposal of stabilized sludge in mono-or co-incineration in power plants or cement kilns. All relevant forms of energy demand (electricity, heat, chemicals, fossil fuels, transport) and greenhouse gas emissions (fossil CO2, CH4, N2O) are accounted in the assessment, including the treatment of return liquor from dewatering in the WWTP. Results show that the existing process is positive in energy balance (-162 MJ/PECOD * a) and carbon footprint (-11.6 kg CO2-eq/PECOD * a) by supplying secondary products such as electricity from biogas production or mono-incineration and substituting fossil fuels in co-incineration. However, disposal routes for stabilized sludge differ considerably in their energy and greenhouse gas profiles. In total, LCA proves to be a suitable tool to support future investment decisions with information of environmental relevance on the impact of wastewater treatment, but also urban water systems in general.A case study was conducted in Beijing to identify municipal sewage sludge (SS) management systems appropriate for a sound material-cycle society. The environmental and economic impacts of four realistic SS-handling scenarios were investigated: stabilization by thermal drying, increased inclusion of SS in cement manufacture, and using either dried or carbonized SS as substitute fuel for coal-fired power generation plants. The results showed that the current sludge management system had the lowest operating cost but higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and a low recycling rate. The case with the use of carbonized SS reused in coal-fired power plants had higher energy consumption and almost the same GHG emissions as the current system. On the other hand, the case including more SS in cement manufacture had the same level of energy consumption with much lower GHG emissions. The case with the use of dried SS in coal-fired power plants also resulted in lower energy consumption and lower GHG emissions than at present. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis showed that drying SS with surplus heat from cement plants used less energy and emitted less GHG compared to the other two drying methods.The goal of this study is to develop an emission based indicator for the health impact of the air pollution caused by traffic. This indicator must make it possible to compare different situations, for example different Urban Travel Plans, or technical innovations. Our work is based on a literature survey of methods for evaluating health impacts and, more particularly, those which relate to the atmospheric pollution caused by transport. We then define a health impact indicator based on the traffic emissions, named IISCEP for Chronic health impact indicator of pollutant emission. Here health is understood in a restricted meaning, excluding well-being. Only primary pollutants can be considered, as the inputs are emission data and an indicator must be simple. The indicator is calculated as the sum of each pollutant emission multiplied by a dispersion and exposition factor and a substance specific toxicity factor taking account of the severity. Last, two examples are shown using the IISCEP: comparison between petrol and diesel vehicles, and Nantes urban district in 2008 vs 2002. Even if it could still be improved, IISCEP is a straightforward indicator which can be used to gauge the chronic effects of inhaling primary pollutants. It can only be used in comparisons, between different scenarios or different technologies. The quality of the emissions data and the choice of the pollutants that are considered are the two essential factors that determine its validity and reliability. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.On a global scale, the Gulf Corporation Council Countries (GCCC), including Bahrain, are amongst the top countries in terms of carbon dioxide emissions per capita. Building authority in Bahrain has set a target of 40% reduction of electricity consumption and associated CO2 emissions to be achieved by using facade parameters. This work evaluates how the life cycle CO2 emissions of buildings are affected by facade parameters. The main focus is placed on direct and indirect CO2 emissions from three contributors, namely, chemical reactions during production processes (Pco(2)), embodied energy (Eco(2)) and operational energy (OPco(2)). By means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, it has been possible to show that the greatest environmental impact occurs during the operational phase (80-90%). However, embodied CO2 emissions are an important factor that needs to be brought into the systems used for appraisal of projects, and hence into the design decisions made in developing projects. The assessment shows that masonry blocks are responsible for 70-90% of the total CO2 emissions of facade construction, mainly due to their physical characteristics. The highest Pco(2) emissions factors are those of window elements, particularly aluminium frames. However, their contribution of CO2 emissions depends largely on the number and size of windows. Each square metre of glazing is able to increase the total CO2 emissions by almost 30% when compared with the same areas of opaque walls. The use of autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) walls reduces the total life cycle CO2 emissions by almost 5.2% when compared with ordinary walls, while the use of thermal insulation with concrete wall reduces CO2 emissions by 1.2%. The outcome of this work offers to the building industry a reliable indicator of the environmental impact of residential facade parameters. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The carbon footprint (CF), the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted during a product's lifecycle, was evaluated as an indicator of the wider environmental impacts of meat production using existing life cycle assessments of different types of meat (pork, chicken and beef). The CF generally acts as an indicator of acidification and eutrophication potential, since more efficient use of nitrogen leads to less eutrophying and acidifying substances being released to the environment and to lower GHG emissions in nitrous oxide form. GHG mitigation strategies based on more efficient use of feed can therefore also lead to decreased acidification and eutrophication potential. Decreased GHG emissions due to increased productivity mean less land is required for feed production, so CF can act as a proxy for land use. For the impact category primary energy use, apparent conflicts with CF were identified. Pasture-based beef production can be either very energy-efficient or energy-demanding, but both forms produce high CH4 emissions from enteric fermentation. For monogastric animal production, CF can function as an indicator of primary energy use, as both energy use and GHG emissions originate mainly from feed production. It is unclear how the biodiversity impact category correlates to CF. More intensive production can allow more land to be left in its natural state, but can involve increased use of pesticides and fertilisers and monocropping locally, threatening biodiversity. Using CF as an indicator of the environmental impact of meat can generate conflicts with other environmental categories in some cases. However, the risk of damaging other environmental areas when acting on CF must be weighed against the risk of further neglecting to act on global warming by failing to exploit the current market momentum of carbon footprinting. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this article is to evaluate the influence of material, structural design variables and exposure conditions on the service life and cost effectiveness of precast concrete culverts in Canada. This investigation will assist practicing engineers to account for long-term performance and integrate life cycle analysis into design and construction decisions. The design variables considered in this study include the percentage of ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) as cement replacement, reinforcing steel cover depth and culvert size. This study proposes the usage of a life-cycle cost assessment approach to compare different culvert designs on an economic basis which accounts for the design variables and the impact of CO2 production and uptake over the life of a culvert from cradle to grave. Analysis of each culvert scenario includes the cost of the initial production of CO2 during the manufacturing process as well as the cost savings that were incurred due to the uptake of CO2 through carbonation processes. Overall, the present cost of the culverts is controlled by the GGBFS content and the reinforcing steel cover depth while carbonation processes have a relatively small economic impact.China has become the primary energy consumer in the world, consuming 48.2% of the world's coal in 2010. Of this percentage, 48.0% of China's coal consumption is used by the power generation industry, which causes unavoidable environmental problems in the country. This paper presents complete life cycle modeling and a comparative assessment of current clean coal power generation technologies in China, including a state-of-the-art commercial ultra super-critical system. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) is adopted for energy and environment analysis, followed by a brief economic discussion. Incorporating up-to-date data and country-specific situations, the present work covers all upstream stages of the electricity life cycle before final consumption: coal mining, coal transportation, and coal power generation. The modeling results show that ultra super-critical systems (USC) have the highest life cycle energy efficiency due to the highest net generating efficiency and the lowest plant auxiliary power consumption among the cases examined. The global warming potential (GWP) scores show reverse dependencies of net generating efficiency. An integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) was demonstrated to be the cleanest technology and has the lowest scores in most of the life cycle impact categories, in particular in acidification potential (AP) and photo-oxidant formation potential (POCP). IGCC ranks as the highest in capital costs due to its complexity, while USC and super-critical systems are among the lowest in capital cost because of their commercialization in China. Evaluation of coal power generation combined with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) shows that the CCS technologies can reduce the total life cycle CO2 emission from coal power plants substantially, although higher levels of CO2 are generated from the extra energy consumption by the CCS. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper assesses the environmental impacts of producing bio-energy, bio-fuels and bio-materials from Australian sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum), and nominates the bio-production pathways offering the best environmental gains. A system-based, consequential approach was taken, which is different to past approaches that have commonly judged bio-production by comparing individual bio-products with their fossil-fuel counterparts. Possible diversified scenarios were developed, and the changes in environmental impacts from the system as a whole (per 100 t sugarcane processed) were assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA). Scenarios based on utilisation of co-products from existing sugarcane production (ethanol from molasses, and electricity and ethanol from surplus bagasse) were found to give modest reductions in non-renewable energy (NRE) use and global warming potential (GWP), and involve no or few trade-offs. Of these, ethanol and electricity from bagasse offer the best benefits. Scenarios necessitating expanded cane growing for dedicated production of ethanol and polylactide (PLA) plastics from cane juice were found to result in more substantial NRE and GWP savings, but involve the trade-offs associated with expanded agricultural production (land use, water use and potential water quality impacts). Of these, PLA production offers the better outcomes, amongst the scenarios. However, ecoefficient cane growing was found to be an equally important improvement strategy and should be implemented to enhance the benefits and mitigate some of the trade-off from bio-production. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ferroalloys are defined as iron-bearing alloys with a high proportion of one or more other elements manganese, chromium, silicon, molybdenum, etc., mainly used by the iron and steel industries. Life cycle assessment methodology was used to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of a number of these ferroalloy production processes. The results of the study showed that GHG footprint for ferroalloy production in Australia was 1.8 t CO(2)e/t FeMn, 2.8 t CO(2)e/t SiMn and 3.4 t CO(2)e/t FeSi alloy metal. These results compare with GHG footprints for ferronickel and ferrochromium of 13.9 t CO(2)e/t and 3.0 t CO(2)e/t, respectively revised from an earlier study. These GHG footprint estimates were calculated using the Tasmanian electricity greenhouse gas emission factor since these ferroalloy industries are located in Tasmania, Australia. The major difference in greenhouse gas emissions between the various ferroalloys is largely due to their respective amounts of electricity use and coke/coal consumption. These results are not too different to the results from a limited number of studies reported in the literature when compared on a similar electricity source basis. The LCA results also showed that coke and coal usage contributed close to 60% or more of the total GHG emissions from the various ferroalloy production processes. In light of this finding, there would appear to be an opportunity to reduce GHG emissions from ferroalloy production if fossil fuel-based coal is replaced with biomass based renewable carbon. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examines energy use patterns and the relationship between energy inputs and yield for prune production in the Tehran province of Iran. In this study, data were collected by administering a questionnaire in face-to-face interviews. This article presents a comprehensive picture of the current status of energy consumption and some energy indices such as energy ratio, energy productivity, specific energy, net energy and energy intensiveness. Also the distribution of total energy input as direct, indirect, renewable and non-renewable forms was analyzed. The Cobb-Douglas production function was used to estimate an econometric model for energy inputs, and the marginal physical productivity technique was applied to analyze the sensitivity of energy inputs. Economic analysis of prune production was carried out, and some economic indicators such as total cost of production, total production value, gross return, net return, benefit-to-cost ratio and productivity were computed. This study suggests some ways to improve energy efficiency such as changing irrigation method, applying conservation agriculture and optimization of energy use. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reports on a literature survey on available approaches for the assessment of product sustainability, with a specific focus on assessing the replacement of non-renewable petroleum-based materials with renewable wood-based materials in absorbent hygiene products. The results are contrasted to needs in a specific material development project. A diverse number of methods exist that can help in assessing different product sustainability characteristics for parts of or whole product life cycles. None of the assessment methods found include guidelines for how to make a case-specific interpretation of sustainability and there is a general lack of assessment parameters that can describe considerations in the comparison between the use of wood or petroleum as main raw material. One reason for this is lack of knowledge and/or consensus on how to describe and assess impacts of land and water use, e.g. on ecosystem services, different types of resource depletion and social impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Traditionally, energy balances in agrarian production have been used to calculate the impact of food on the Spanish economy in physical terms. However, this tool is clearly insufficient. Human diet has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Between production and consumption, previously non-existent or insignificant processes such as transportation, packaging, processing, distribution, preservation, etc. have come to the fore. This article aims to evaluate the energy cost of the Spanish agri-food (AFS) system in the year 2000 with a view to ascertaining the relative importance of each link in the agri-food chain. This information is essential when it comes to designing any strategy for sustainable de-growth. The results of this research show that feeding the Spanish population is an inefficient process: the Spanish AFS currently consumes 1408 PJ, while all of its residents combined consume only 190 PJ. Agrarian production is effectively the main source of this inefficiency (34% of the primary energy consumed), but not the only one: processes such as the preservation and preparation of food in the home (18%), transportation (17%) and packaging (10%) show that the way we feed ourselves is not sustainable. The paper makes a strong point that a fundamental transformation of the AFS is required. A move towards organic farming and corresponding new consumption patterns (i.e., local, seasonal food, less meat consumption) may considerably reduce resource use in the AFS and contribute to sustainable de-growth in Spain. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. In order to build competence for sustainability analysis and assessment of urban systems, it is seen as essential to build on models representing urban form, landuse and transportation, urban metabolism, as well as ecological processes. This type of analysis of interacting sub-systems requires an advanced model integration platform, yet open for learning and for further development. Moreover, since the aim is to increase urban experience with ecosystem management in the wide sense, the platform needs to be open and easily available, with high visualisation capacity. For this purpose, the LEAM model was applied to the Stockholm Region and two potential future scenarios were developed, resulting from alternative policies. The scenarios differed widely and the dense urban development of Scenario Compact could be visualised, destroying much of the Greenstructure of Stockholm, while Scenario Urban Nature steered the development more to outer suburbs and some sprawl. For demonstration of the need for further development of biodiversity assessment models, a network model tied to a prioritised ecological profile was applied and altered by the scenarios. It could be shown that the Greenstructure did not support this profile very well. Thus, there is a need for dynamic models for negotiations, finding alternative solutions and interacting with other models. The LEAM Stockholm case study is planned to be further developed, to interact with more advanced transport and land use models, as well as analysing energy systems and urban water issues. This will enable integrated sustainability analysis and assessment of complex urban systems, for integration in the planning process in Stockholm as well as for comparative sustainability studies between different cities, with the goal to build more sustainable urban systems and to increase urban experiences in ecosystem management.Eco-city projects are becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the globe and are often marketed as new' urban environments focused on achieving sustainable urban living while promoting environmental-economic transitions towards a low-carbon technological and industrial base. The article argues for the need to consider the thermal aspects of urban metabolism, while at the same time focusing on the link between individual buildings and eco-city master plans and wider economic development strategies at a state level. In so doing, the article encourages critical analysis of eco-city design and planning, while keeping a focus on the role of specific building structures within eco-cities as examples of the intermeshing of what can be termed a political ecology of scale' which stretches from specific buildings' climatic characteristics, to the metabolic master plan for eco-cities, to provincial, regional and state-level plans for the integration of eco-cities within wider economic and political development trajectories. The article focuses on Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, an eco-city under construction at the time of writing.The archetypal metabolism of the city is defined by the flows of energy and materials (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, water) entering the city from the rest of the global economy, then circulating around and through its economic, social and industrial life, before returning to the city's environment (and the global economy). Salient in realising a smarter urban metabolism is the change in viewing nutrients not as pollutants - a perception entailed in the historic success of water-based systems for securing public health in cities - but as resources to be gainfully recovered. In order to explore the scope and feasibility of such (radical) change, a computational multi-sectoral systems analysis procedure has been developed and applied to case studies of Atlanta, USA, and London, UK. Starting with an expression of what might constitute a more benign, climate-repairing future for the interaction between these cities and their environments, multi-sectoral systems analysis is used to examine aspects of the economic feasibility and then social legitimacy of candidate policy interventions and technological innovations for attaining such a future. In particular, the notion of a privileged, non-foreclosing innovation or intervention is introduced and illustrated.Using the city of Toronto as a case study, this article examines impacts of energy stocks and flexible demand in the urban metabolism on the resilience of the city, including discussion of directions for further study of the resiliency of the urban metabolism. An important element developed is the nominal residence time of the energy stocks. This value defines how long an energy stock lasts under typical patterns of energy use. The findings suggest that the residence times of many sources of energy overcome vulnerability when energy supply shocks last on the order of hours or a few days, but that the measure is limited to assessing only certain types of commonly used energy sources in aggregate terms. Discussion is included on the uncertainty of this measure and on the metabolic and resiliency implications of new technologies intended to reduce energy use and improve sustainability of cities and the use of the urban metabolism as a means of comparison. The methodology employed highlights how waste energy could be used to increase the resiliency of the city's water supply, but also how the study of the urban metabolism would benefit from a more disaggregate form in the study of sustainable and resilient cities.Nexus security is a compound mix of ideas: reconciling human needs and wants with access to multiple resources; diversity of access to those resources and services; resilience in the face of weather- and climaterelated variability; resilience likewise in the face of infrastructure failure; and the personal, individual sense of belonging. At the level of Systems Thinking there is a very close relationship between resilience in the behavior of natural (ecological) systems and resilience in the social dynamics of governance within communities, where such resilience establishes the viability of these communities over centuries, which in turn entails successful stewardship of the man-environment relationship. We use insights from this cross-system mapping - across natural, built, and human systems - to assess, first, the role of city governance in achieving nexus security (or not) and, second, the role of technological innovations in serving the same purpose. More specifically, eight principles, covering resilience and diversity of access to resources and services, are used to gauge security-enhancing features of city buildings and infrastructure. Case studies include new designs of resilient office blocks, nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) recovery systems for sanitation and wastewater treatment, and the reconstruction of urban parks for the provision of ecosystem services. Throughout the paper, matters of risk in the face of meteorological variability are prominent. We do not conclude, however, that the presence of risk implies nexus insecurity.The residential household becomes an important contributor to carbon emissions under rapid urbanization. This study analyzes the relationship between urban residential energy usage carbon emission and the natural environment in Xiamen, southeast China, using integrated residential data from survey questionnaires and remote sensing and GIS techniques. We first eliminate household social, economic and construction impacts by establishing a standardized family and choosing housing units constructed after the year 2003. We then use ordinary least squares regression to explain the effect of buildings' surrounding natural conditions on urban energy usage carbon emissions. The results show that urban home energy usage carbon emissions were reduced by green spaces and water bodies, after building construction and household social and economic impact factors were eliminated. Water bodies show a closer relationship with carbon emissions than green spaces. These results prove that green spaces and bodies of water are important in residential energy usage carbon emission reduction. Therefore, better green space and water planning will improve sustainable urban development. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To better understand and manage complex systems like ecosystems it is critical to know the relative contribution of the system components to the system function. Ecologists and social scientists have described a diversity of ways that individuals can be important; This paper makes two key contributions to this research area. First, it shows that throughflow (T-j), the total energy or matter entering or exiting a system component, is a global indicator of the relative contribution of the component to the whole system activity. It is global because it includes the direct and indirect exchanges among community members. Further, throughflow is a special case of Hubbell status or centrality as defined in social science. This recognition effectively joins the concepts, enabling ecologists to use and build on the broader centrality research in network science. Second, I characterize the distribution of throughflow in 45 empirically-based trophic ecosystem models. Consistent with theoretical expectations, this analysis shows that a small fraction of the system components are responsible for the majority of the system activity. In 73% of the ecosystem models, 20% or less of the nodes generate 80% or more of the total system throughflow. Four or fewer nodes are required to account for 50% of the total system activity and are thus defined as community dominants. 121 of the 130 dominant nodes in the 45 ecosystem models could be classified as primary producers, dead organic matter, or bacteria. Thus, throughflow centrality indicates the rank power of the ecosystems components and shows the concentration of power in the primary production and decomposition cycle. Although these results are specific to ecosystems, these techniques build on flow analysis based on economic input-output analysis. Therefore these results should be useful for ecosystem ecology, industrial ecology, the study of urban metabolism, as well as other domains using input-output analysis. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The variability of CO2 concentrations and fluxes in dense urban environments is high due to the inherent heterogeneity of these complex areas and their spatio-temporally variable anthropogenic sources. With a focus on micro- to local-scale CO2-exchange processes, measurements were conducted in a street canyon in the city of Basel, Switzerland in 2010. CO2 fluxes were sampled at the top of the canyon (19 m) and at 39 m while vertical CO2 concentration profiles were measured in the center and at a wall of the canyon. CO2 concentration distributions in the street canyon and exchange processes with the layers above show, apart from expected general diurnal patterns due mixing layer heights, a strong dependence on wind direction relative to the canyon. As a consequence of the resulting corkscrew-like canyon vortex, accumulation of CO2 inside the canyon is modulated with distinct distribution patterns. The evaluation of diurnal traffic data provides good explanations for the vertical and horizontal differences in CO2-distribution inside the canyon. Diurnal flux characteristics at the top of the canyon can almost solely be explained with traffic density expressed by the strong linear dependence. Even the diurnal course of the flux at 39 m shows a remarkable relationship to traffic density for east wind conditions while, for west wind situations, a change toward source areas with lower emissions leads to a reduced flux. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the world urbanizes, the role of cities in determining sustainability outcomes grows in importance. Cities are the dominant form of human habitat, and most of the world's resources are either directly or indirectly consumed in cities. Sustainable city analysis and management requires understanding the demands a city places on a wider geographical area and its ecological resource base. We present a detailed, integrated urban metabolism of residential consumption and ecological footprint analysis of the Vancouver metropolitan region for the year 2006. Our overall goal is to demonstrate the application of a bottom-up ecological footprint analysis using an urban metabolism framework at a metropolitan, regional scale. Our specific objectives are: a) to quantify energy and material consumption using locally generated data and b) to relate these data to global ecological carrying capacity. Although water is the largest material flow through Metro Vancouver (424,860,000 m(3)), it has the smallest ecological footprint (23,100 gha). Food (2,636,850 tonnes) contributes the largest component to the ecological footprint (4,514,400 gha) which includes crop and grazing land as well as carbon sinks required to sequester emissions from food production and distribution. Transportation fuels (3,339,000 m(3)) associated with motor vehicle operation and passenger air travel comprises the second largest material flow through the region and the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions (7,577,000 tonnes). Transportation also accounts for the second largest component of the EF (2,323,200 gha). Buildings account for the largest electricity flow (17,515,150 MWh) and constitute the third largest component of the EF (1,779,240 gha). Consumables (2,400,000 tonnes) comprise the fourth largest component of the EF (1,414,440 gha). Metro Vancouver's total Ecological Footprint in 2006 was 10,071,670 gha, an area approximately 36 times larger than the region itself. The EFA reveals that cropland and carbon sinks (forested land required to sequester carbon dioxide emissions) account for 90% of Metro Vancouver's overall demand for biocapacity. The per capita ecological footprint is 4.76 gha, nearly three times the per capita global supply of biocapacity. Note that this value excludes national government services that operate outside the region and could account for up to an additional 2 gha/ca. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities now consume resources and produce waste in amounts that are incommensurate with the populations they contain. Quantifying and benchmarking the environmental impacts of cities is essential if urbanization of the world's growing population is to occur sustainably. Urban metabolism (UM) is a promising assessment form in that it provides the annual sum material and energy inputs, and the resultant emissions of the emergent infrastructural needs of a city's sociotechnical subsystems. By fusing UM and life cycle assessment (UM-LCA) this study advances the ability to quantify environmental impacts of cities by modeling pressures embedded in the flows upstream (entering) and downstream (leaving) of the actual urban systems studied, and by introducing an advanced suite of indicators. Applied to five global cities, the developed UM-LCA model provided enhanced quantification of mass and energy flows through cities over earlier UM methods. The hybrid model approach also enabled the dominant sources of a city's different environmental footprints to be identified, making UM-LCA a novel and potentially powerful tool for policy makers in developing and monitoring urban development policies. Combining outputs with socioeconomic data hinted at how these forces influenced the footprints of the case cities, with wealthier ones more associated with personal consumption related impacts and poorer ones more affected by local burdens from archaic infrastructure.Interest in assessing the sustainability of socio-ecological systems of urban areas has increased notably, with additional attention generated due to the fact that half the world's population now lives in cities. Urban areas face both a changing urban population size and increasing sustainability issues in terms of providing good socioeconomic and environmental living conditions. Urban planning has to deal with both challenges. Households play a major role by being affected by urban planning decisions on the one hand and by being responsible - among many other factors - for the environmental performance of a city (e.g. energy use). We here present an agent-based decision model referring to the city of Vienna, the capital of Austria, with a population of about 1.7 million (2.3 million within the metropolitan area, the latter being more than 25% of Austria's total population). Since the early 1990s, after decades of negative population growth, Vienna has been experiencing a steady increase in population, mainly driven by immigration. The aim of the agent-based decision model is to simulate new residential patterns of different household types based on demographic development and migration scenarios. Model results were used to assess spatial patterns of energy use caused by different household types in the four scenarios (1) conventional urban planning, (2) sustainable urban planning, (3) expensive centre and (4) no green area preference. Outcomes show that changes in preferences of households relating to the presence of nearby green areas have the most important impact on the distribution of households across the small-scaled city area. Additionally, the results demonstrate the importance of the distribution of different household types regarding spatial patterns of energy use. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Spatial variation of solar energy is crucial for the estimation of the regional potential and selection of construction location. This paper presents a case study of using high resolution grid map of solar radiation combined with the other restriction factors to evaluate the comprehensive potential analysis of solar PV generation at the regional scale, in order to present a framework of decision support tool for solar energy management in a regional, area. The cost of PV generation is calculated based on the geographical distribution of technical potential. Moreover, geospatial supply curve (GSC) is employed to portray the evolution of available potential of photovoltaics (PV) generation with the increase of the generation cost. By integrating the economic evaluation variables of net present value and simple payback period, grid-based economic feasibility of PV generation project is then carried out under two feed-in-tariff scenarios. Finally, total CO2 reduction potential and its spatial distribution in the study area are calculated. The results confirm that PV technology provides high potential for roof-top application and large-scale PV stations. Additionally, determining a reasonable feed-in tariff is essential for expanding the application of solar PV energy. The findings improve understanding of regional renewable energy strategies and the supply/demand assessment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban metabolism analysis has become an important tool for the study of urban ecosystems. The problems of large metabolic throughput, low metabolic efficiency, and disordered metabolic processes are a major cause of unhealthy urban systems. In this paper, I summarize the international research on urban metabolism, and describe the progress that has been made in terms of research methodologies. I also review the methods used in accounting for and evaluating material and energy flows in urban metabolic processes, simulation of these flows using a network model, and practical applications of these methods. Based on this review of the literature, I propose directions for future research, and particularly the need to study the urban carbon metabolism because of the modern context of global climate change. Moreover, I recommend more research on the optimal regulation of urban metabolic systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The state of building stocks changes over time. Owners and municipalities face the choice to renovate or rebuild buildings to improve energy efficiency. This review addresses how current sustainability assessment tools support these decisions. It finds that advanced tools are better tailored to evaluate project level energy-related decisions than at larger scales. Information gaps identified within assessment tools lead to uncertainty for decision makers about which option improves energy efficiency. In the case of a number of large-scale EU building renovating/renewing projects these tools have been scarcely used or merely suggested during planning. Recent advances in sustainability assessment tools can begin to close some of the existing knowledge gaps, while incentives and stricter legislation may improve their usage rates.This article presents a framework to evaluate emerging systems in life cycle assessment (LCA). Current LCA methods are effective for established systems; however, lack of data often inhibits robust analysis of future products or processes that may benefit the most from life cycle information. In many cases the life cycle inventory (LCI) of a system can change depending on its development pathway. Modeling emerging systems allows insights into probable trends and a greater understanding of the effect of future scenarios on LCA results. The proposed framework uses Bayesian probabilities to model technology adoption. The method presents a unique approach to modeling system evolution and can be used independently or within the context of an agent-based model (ABM). LCA can be made more robust and dynamic by using this framework to couple scenario modeling with life cycle data, analyzing the effect of decision-making patterns over time. Potential uses include examining the changing urban metabolism of growing cities, understanding the development of renewable energy technologies, identifying transformations in material flows over space and time, and forecasting industrial networks for developing products. A switchgrass-to-energy case demonstrates the approach.The focus of urban water system metabolism studies has, by and large, been restricted to what comes under the domain of the urban water utilities: water treatment and supply, and wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal. The material and energy flows both necessitated and facilitated by the supply of treated water to householdsthe water demand subsystemare by no means negligible. This article studies the key flows into households associated with water consumption and the environmental impacts related to the same for India as a whole. Electricity consumption in washing machines and water heaters contributes the most to almost all the 13 environmental impact categories considered. This is easily explained by the fossil fuel heaviness of the Indian mix (>60%). Soaps contribute the most to terrestrial eco-toxicity and malodorous air. In India, on a national scale, all the environmental impact categories deserve attention. The absolute consumption of electricity, soaps, and detergents, and the demand for home appliances will increase in the years to come.This is a first analysis of end-use energy intensity (EUEI) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in water and wastewater (W/WW) sectors in India, and it examines their contribution to community-wide energy use and GHG emissions in cities in India. EUEI and related GHG emissions for W/WW infrastructures in Indian cities were analyzed and compared with data for cities in the United States. Data gathered by ICLEI-South Asia, Government of India, and the University of Colorado Denver were used to conduct this analysis. W/WW infrastructures were found to contribute 3-16% of community-wide electricity use and GHG emissions for 16 cities in India; for another 23 cities, the proportion was less than 3%. EUEI for drinking water supply and wastewater treatment averaged 0.3 +/- 0.2 W . h/L(n = 7) and 0.1 +/- 0.05 W.h/ L(n = 5), respectively. EUEI for drinking water provision was more than double that for wastewater treatment, the reverse of typical cities in Colorado, likely a result of poorer source water quality in India. In general, although the sample size of Indian W/WW plants is small, EUEI in India appears to be much smaller than in the United States for both water and wastewater sectors based on this first review of quantitative data. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0000661. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Contemporary public scene is usually located in air-conditioned interior spaces related to consume, while our urban landscaped spaces are main consumers of water and energy, as in the Iberian Peninsula many cities can be considered as extremely arid environments. Historical cultures that have been located in arid lands developed spatial syntheses that carefully optimize scarce resources: the oasis is a complex formula that integrates a productive system, an environmental transformation and a public place that lastly refers to the paradise. If we establish links between urban hydrology and its infrastructures with the design of the public realm, some synergies can be found, that around water presence draw together the urban metabolism, new references of public centrality with leisure programs and the creation of modified atmospheres.Urban metabolism considers a city as a system with flows of energy and material between it and the environment. Recent advances in bio-physical sciences provide methods and models to estimate local scale energy, water, carbon and pollutant fluxes. However, good communication is required to provide this new knowledge and its implications to endusers (such as urban planners, architects and engineers). The FP7 project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban planning Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism) aimed to address this gap by illustrating the advantages of considering these issues in urban planning. The BRIDGE Decision Support System (DSS) aids the evaluation of the sustainability of urban planning interventions. The Multi Criteria Analysis approach adopted provides a method to cope with the complexity of urban metabolism. In consultation with targeted end-users, objectives were defined in relation to the interactions between the environmental elements (fluxes of energy, water, carbon and pollutants) and socioeconomic components (investment costs, housing, employment, etc.) of urban sustainability. The tool was tested in five case study cities: Helsinki, Athens, London, Florence and Gliwice: and sub-models were evaluated using flux data selected. This overview of the BRIDGE project covers the methods and tools used to measure and model the physical flows, the selected set of sustainability indicators, the methodological framework for evaluating urban planning alternatives and the resulting DSS prototype. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper proposes an idea of smart, secure and inclusive city that generates new directions for architecture and urban spaces, and especially better management, which encourages the use of alternative energy optimization and energy saving in "optical circular urban metabolism", mobilizing resources and technological behaviors that can make sustainable, and therefore more competitive territory. Future city concept focuses on the optimization of the relationship between technological advancement and challenges of sustainability at the urban scale. A common element in all the cities of the future must be the environmental virtuosity and the participation of smart community. To address the social problems of urban and metropolitan (mobility, security and territorial monitoring, etc.) is not enough to imagine individual services compared to question varied of services, energy control, urban security; policy must be implemented for environmental performance (efficiency and environmental virtuosity) optimizing the participation of the urban community. The implementation of the new idea of the city will strengthen the effective participation of citizens in decision-making: promoting of digital pages and the use of tools that allow you to influence the drafting of policies through electronically dialogue systems. An approach to the city and urban society problems focuses on "prevention"; the answers given by the planning instruments to the new social needs do not end in the "spatialization" of welfare policies. Multiethnic city and security. To elaborate a scientific structure (of knowledge) focused on man, common in multi-ethnic cities in Europe, with the purpose to (evaluate different options) boost the communication and trans-cultural and inter-cultural interaction.In the quest for achieving sustainable cities, Intelligent and Knowledge City Programmes (ICPs and KCPs) represent cost-efficient strategies for improving the overall performance of urban systems, especially when compared with the costs of physical restructuring and/or retrofitting projects. However, even though nobody argues on the desirability of making cities "smarter", the fundamental questions of how and to what extent can ICPs and KCPs contribute to the achievement of urban sustainability lack a precise answer. In the attempt of providing a structured answer to these interrogatives, this paper presents a methodology developed for investigating the modalities through which ICPs and KCPs contribute to the achievement or urban sustainability. Overall, our research suggests that ICPs and KCPs can potentially contribute to all three dimensions of sustainability (i.e. economic, social and environmental), but their main efficacy lies in supporting cities achieve a sustainable urban metabolism through optimization, innovation and behavior changes.The resource shortages and environmental problems that cities face can be attributed to their increasing metabolic throughflow and their metabolic inefficiency. To support urban ecological management, it is necessary to identify the main metabolic actors responsible for these problems and analyze the characteristics of their metabolic structure. In this paper, we divide a typical urban metabolic system into seven components. Using material-flow analysis, we accounted for the amounts of resources and wastes transferred among the system's components and between the system and its environment, using Beijing from 1998 to 2007 as a case study. We used four indicators (metabolic scale, intensity, efficiency, and impact) to represent the inner structural characteristics of the urban metabolic system and analyzed the system based on the proposed indicators. The results provide scientific support for identifying the key metabolic actors responsible for urban metabolic disorders by accurately characterizing the city's metabolic status. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Wetlands are complex habitats with complex hydrologic connections all around. The protection and restoration of wetlands require the information on processes of interactions among different hydrological units inside and outside wetlands. An important but difficult step is to explore their hydrologic relationships from a holistic perspective. In this study, we developed an assessment framework in which the network environ analysis (NEA) was employed to solve the above difficulty. The swamp-dominated Okefenokee watershed in the USA was taken as an example and we explored the hydrologic relationships among four subsystems (swamp surface, swamp subsurface, upland surface and upland groundwater) in the watershed. Three functional analyses, including utility analysis, control analysis and unit environ analysis in NEA, were used to explore their independencies. Results indicate that hydrologic connections among subsystems are extremely important for maintaining integrity of the current system. Direct hydrologic relationships differed from integral one with indirect interactions considered. An interesting finding is that hydrologic relationship between swamp subsurface and upland surface changed from direct neutralism to integral mutualism, indicating the above two subsystems benefited from each others from indirect hydrologic transactions. It is concluded that the proposed method can provide effective ways to examine the hydrologic interdependencies inside and outside a wetland ecosystem and contribute to basin-wide wetland protection and water resources management. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.The functioning of urban systems involves high levels of resource consumption and a complex web of energy, water and material flows. The fundamental aim of this paper is to understand how future urban systems could be designed to be consistently less damaging to the environment. Its main contribution is the proposal of a methodology for evaluating the urban development process from ametabolic perspective, the Metabolic Impact Assessment (MIA). After a brief introduction to evaluation in environmental planning, the paper describes the main influences of MIA, presents a set of principles for a metabolic assessment, and describes in detail the methodology's evaluation procedure.The goal of this paper is to apply graph cut (GC) theory to the classification of hyperspectral remote sensing images. The task is formulated as a labeling problem on Markov random field (MRF) constructed on the image grid, and GC algorithm is employed to solve this task. In general, a large number of user interactive strikes are necessary to obtain satisfactory segmentation results. Due to the spatial variability of spectral signatures, however, hyperspectral remote sensing images often contain many tiny regions. Labeling all these tiny regions usually needs expensive human labor. To overcome this difficulty, a pixelwise fuzzy classification based on support vector machine (SVM) is first applied. As a result, only pixels with high probabilities are preserved as labeled ones. This generates a pseudouser strike map. This map is then employed for GC to evaluate the truthful likelihoods of class labels and propagate them to the MRF. To evaluate the robustness of our method, we have tested our method on both large and small training sets. Additionally, comparisons are made between the results of SVM, SVM with stacking neighboring vectors, SVM with morphological preprocessing, extraction and classification of homogeneous objects, and our method. Comparative experimental results demonstrate the validity of our method.The paper reports on a prototype urban metabolism approach to model carbon cycling through an urban neighborhood. The approach uses bottom-up modeling of urban form components (buildings, vehicles, people, plants) to assess the neighborhood-wide storage, intake and export (including atmospheric emissions) of carbon. Model inputs (land cover, population, building types, vegetation structure) were derived through integration of spatial and non-spatial data from remote sensing, statistical and cadastral sources. Results are quantified and illustrated as whole system and component carbon flows attributable to (i) buildings, (ii) transportation, (iii) humans (including food and waste), and (iv) vegetation and soils sectors. Three emissions reduction scenarios use these results as a baseline against which to illustrate the potential of familiar climate change planning strategies. These scenarios achieve per capita emission reductions targets of approximately 37%, 52% and 69% from that baseline. Concluding discussion considers the limits, replicability and potential of the approach for linking climate change to local planning. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Herein we develop a means to differentiate between the energy required to expand and the energy required to maintain the economies of cities. A nonlinear model is tested against historical data for two cities, Hong Kong and Singapore. A robust fit is obtained for Hong Kong, with energy for maintenance close to that for growth, while Singapore, with a weaker fit, is growth dominated. The findings suggest that decreases in either of the per unit maintenance or growth demands can simultaneously cause gross domestic product (GDP) and total energy use to increase. Furthermore, increasing maintenance demands can significantly limit growth in energy demand and GDP. Thus, the low maintenance demands for Hong Kong, and especially Singapore, imply that, all other things being equal, GDP and energy use of these cities will continue to grow, though Singapore's higher energy use for growth means it will require more energy than Hong Kong.WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) and CMAQ (Community Multiscale Air Quality) models are used in very high spatial resolution (200 m) to simulate urban metabolism. Due to the high spatial resolution of the simulations, it is possible to have a detailed picture of the soil atmosphere exchange fluxes and understand the impact of different urban planning alternatives in the urban environment from a meteorological and air quality point of view. Relation between urban metabolism and urban structure can be described with information of energy, water, and pollution. There are many challenges of the sustainable urban planning. with regards to the above components (for example to optimize energy efficiency of urban structure, to minimize primary water consumption, to minimize the emissions to atmosphere, reduce air pollution, etc.) This information can be extracted from meteorological and air pollution models. Meteorological fluxes (WRF/UCM) are calculated over London (UK), Athens (Greece), Gliwice (Poland), Helsinki (Finland) and Florence (Italy) and air pollution concentrations (CMAQ model) over Athens and Florence. The work was developed into the BRIDGE "Sustainable urban planning decision support accounting for urban metabolism" FP7 (Seventh Framework Programme) EU (European Union) funded project to analyze and study the impact of urban metabolism with different alternatives in urban planning scenarios. The implemented models have been run over the five European cities for full year 2008 and 2010 summer period over two domains. It was necessary to prepare different sets of input data. In general the model when running with very high spatial resolution - produces good results although the quality in slightly reduced. Some numerical stability could be involved in the very high spatial resolution run.Water-related energy accounts for around one-quarter of California's energy use. Most of the influence is within cities. This project aimed to identify research and policy needs associated with managing energy related to urban water. A workshop was convened with diverse representation from water and energy sectors in federal (US), state (California) and municipal governments, research and regulatory agencies, universities, utilities, not-for profit and private sectors. The workshop established a vision of future cities, including elements of success, research needs and barriers. A subsequent on-line survey was used to estimate the potential, effort and 'potential-to-effort' ratio of each suggested element. First suggested steps in the roadmap include: development of educational programmes, combined standards, guidelines, funding and planning for water and energy efficiency, improved understanding and management of factors motivating consumers, and improved methods to quantify and track targets of 'water-related energy and related greenhouse gas emissions'. The 'roadmap' could help streamline future effort and sequencing action. The authors note and reflect on the importance of representation at such a workshop, and an effort is made to understand sources of variability in viewpoints. The semi-quantitative method used could have relevance to wider resource management issues and complex problem resolution.The 'right to the city' has been understood as the right of urban inhabitants to produce urban spaces, and has generally drawn on Henri Lefevbre's work on the social production of urban space. This paper examines the socioenvironmental aspects of the right to produce urban space. The aim of the paper is to draw on and contribute to the literatures on urban political ecology and the right to the city by exploring the concept of the right to urban metabolism through an analysis of everyday food production and consumption in homes in an informal settlement in Managua. The article argues that the ecologies of informal household urban agriculture (primarily the cultivation of fruit trees) are a key way that marginalised urban inhabitants in Managua appropriate and produce urban space, and consequently, demand their rights to urban metabolism. Through the production of home ecologies based on physiological necessities and cultural food practices, households simultaneously challenge their exclusion from urban spatial practices and address the increasing insecurity of access to food in Managua. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The urban sustainability is a new paradigm in the form of understand and manage the city. It is a process more than an end; it recognizes the disposal of resources, the change of the urban metabolism, included in the others matter the limit and the form. In the context of the European Union (EU) has initiated some policies, strategies and compromises to promote the sustainability in the European cities. This article analyzes the main urban problems in the EU, and the initiatives toward the urban sustainability that delineates a European model for a sustainable city.Urban areas have a major impact on natural environment leading to the enhancement of environmental problems through the pollution and overconsumption of natural resources. The pressure of city on environment has been assessed through the notion of ecological footprint, which provides information about the metabolism of cities. It is defined by measuring the complex flows of inputs and outputs by using the prevailing technologies (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). Nowadays, there is a substantial and growing concern over the planning of cities on the basis of the adoption of a more eco-systemic approach. Planners need to expand their scope to implement desired ecological outcomes that comprise urban systems and physical networks in order to achieve eco-development. From energy and transportation to water and green infrastructure, planners can shape systems to shrink the ecological footprint and configure a more resilient urban form (Raven 2010). This change towards a more ecocycle-balanced urban metabolism will contribute to sustainable urban futures. This paper aims to employ new theoretical and methodological insights about the relationship between the physical aspects of urban planning and the management of natural resources in order to improve urban metabolism through spatial planning. The research questions focus on the key factors of the urban form which have significant impact upon the resources needed for the daily operations of the urban system. The main objective of this research is the introduction of a methodological framework of eco-development and more specifically, the development and the elaboration of a set of tools and indicators referring to the diagnosis of urban form and metabolic flows. Key approach of the methodology is that the indicators have to be based and classified according to the two main cross-cutting subject areas: a) Urban Form and b) Metabolic Flows (Resource Use). The identification of the thematic fields of each subject area is in accordance with the basic principles of sustainable planning adopted by the European Union. The foremost European principles governing urban sustainability through planning are set out in the Thematic Strategy on Urban Environment. The main outcome of the research is the development of a methodological framework that allows the assessment of the relationship between urban form and resources use. The understanding of the causes of environmental degradation and resource consumption in relation to urban form is essential for improving the effectiveness of spatial planning practices. By correlating urban form and various aspects of environmental performance, an evaluation of alternative urban forms which are more resource efficient and contribute to eco-development can be accomplished.City scale projects are complex multivariable problems and have previously been addressed using a variety of organisational principles, whether it be the infrastructural grid, used by Ludwig Hilbersheimer in his project "Hochhausstadt" or the spinal organisation of the Tokyo Masterplan done by Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement. This project strays from traditional methods of structuring a city and investigates a novel self-engineered anticipatory model, which focuses on the use of generative and genetic algorithms to develop a new associative system to develop coastal cities in arid climates. The system functions as a negative feedback loop, analysing existing conditions, and by a series of mathematical functions, projecting the new growth patterns for major components of a city, such as building envelopes, road networks, canal networks and public space distribution as a result of the cities internally generated resources.This paper presents the outputs of the research focused on a revision of urban metabolism conceptual framework, and a suggestion for a new approach considering social innovations as a key component shaping and redirecting metabolic processes and determining a city's sustainability.The "urban metabolism" defines the activities of measurement of physical flows and input-output of the urban system: it considers the town as a living organism whose metabolism absorbs energy and matter, producing waste and emissions. Among the flows of urban system, the water resource is of primary importance. It is essential to re-configure a water closed cycle, which allows the settlement to integrate with the natural environment without upsetting its balance. We propose a multi scalar study methodology, based on MFA (Material Flow Accounting) which, from the urban scale to that of the building, measures the reduction of water consumption, thanks to a resource cascade use.Urban metabolism components define the energy and material exchanges within a city and, therefore, can provide valuable information on the environmental quality of urban areas. Assessing the potential impact of urban planning alternatives on urban metabolism components (such as energy, water, carbon and pollutants fluxes) can provide a quantitative estimation of their sustainability performance. Urban metabolism impact assessment can, therefore, contribute to the identification of sustainable urban structures with regards, for example, to building types, materials and layout, as well as to location and capacity of transportation and infrastructural developments. In this way, it enables the formulation of planning and policy recommendations to promote efficient use of resources and enhance environmental quality in urban areas. The European FP7 project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban planning Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism) has developed a decision-support system (DSS) that systematically integrates urban metabolism components into impact assessment processes with the aim of accurately quantifying the potential effects of proposed planning interventions. The DSS enables integration of multiple spatial and non-spatial datasets (e.g. physical flows of energy and material with variables of social and economic change) in a systematic manner to obtain spatially defined assessment results and to thus inform planners and decision-makers. This multi-criteria approach also enables incorporation of stakeholders' perceptions in order to prioritise decisive assessment criteria. This paper describes the methodological framework used to develop the DSS and critically examines the results of its practical application in five European cities. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The industrial revolution and the exploitation of fossil fuels fostered profound changes on transportation systems and infrastructure enabling unprecedented urban growth. Urban regions, which now host the majority of the world's population, resemble a linear metabolism: importing most of their raw materials, food, and energy, and using these resources in an inefficient manner resulting in waste outflows. Regarding energy flows, cities are highly depending on fossil fuels and the rate at which fossil fuels are consumed is faster than their generation rate. Therefore, a shift is needed toward more sustainable energy sources. We propose a sustainable urban energy planning approach, based on the thermodynamic principle, exergy. This approach integrates multi-functionality, interaction between urban functions, and harvesting of local renewable and residual resources Urban Harvest Approach. Synergies between urban functions are crucial to reach productive and sustainable urban regions. Resource exchange among different urban functions offers possibilities toward productive urban regions aiming for closed cycle resources management, e.g. integrating industrial ecosystems in urban ecosystems. Our method consists of six steps: (i) land-use inventory; (ii) energy demand inventory; (iii) local renewable/residual energy potential analysis; (iv) clusters of spatial functions exploration; (v) energetic linkages analysis; (vi) network patterns exploration. We tested the method at neighborhood scale, Kerkrade-West, The Netherlands. Results showed that linking spatial clusters is crucial toward circular urban metabolism. Spatial design should promote mixed land-use. The case showed that spatial planning based on urban energy harvesting is a useful method to translate generic goals to local spatial interventions. Urban energy harvesting can contribute to increased productivity, resulting in increased sustainability of urban areas, e.g. social, environmental benefits. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

 Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are required to mitigate climate change. However, there is low willingness amongst the public to prioritise climate policies for reducing emissions. Here we show that the extent to which Australians are prepared to reduce their country's CO2 emissions is greater when the costs to future national income are framed as a "foregone-gain''-incomes rise in the future but not by as much as in the absence of emission cuts-rather than as a "loss''-incomes decrease relative to the baseline expected future levels (Studies 1 & 2). The provision of a normative message identifying Australia as one of the world's largest CO2 emitters did not increase the amount by which individuals were prepared to reduce emissions (Study 1), whereas a normative message revealing the emission policy preferences of other Australians did (Study 2). The results suggest that framing the costs of reducing emissions as a smaller increase in future income and communicating normative information about others' emission policy preferences are effective methods for leveraging public support for emission cuts.This study delivers empirical evidence regarding the adaptive capacities of spatial planning systems and related factors both supporting and hindering climate change adaptation in the European Alps. Many international and national adaptation strategies consider spatial planning an important policy field for climate change adaptation. Existing adaptation studies, which focus on spatial planning, support these expectations but deliver only a small amount of empirical evidence regarding the specific capacities of spatial planning that support or hinder climate change adaptation. The objectives of this study are firstly to assess how climate change adaptation is addressed in spatial planning systems, and secondly to identify the adaptive capacities of spatial planning to climate change. The study focuses on spatial planning systems in the European Alps and builds upon a content analysis of spatial planning legislation and instruments, as well as an expert survey administered to planning authorities. The findings suggest two approaches for building adaptive capacities: enhancing access to relevant climate information and professional support for spatial planning authorities, and mainstreaming adaptation within the institutional framework of spatial planning.The important role that local knowledge and practices can play in reducing risk and improving disaster preparedness is now acknowledged by disaster risk reduction specialists, especially since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. However, they have yet to be commonly used by communities, scientists, practitioners and policy makers. We believe that local and indigenous knowledge needs to be integrated with science before it can be used in policies, education, and actions related to disaster risk reduction and climate change. This paper presents a process for integrating local and indigenous knowledge related to hydro-meteorological hazards and climate change with science, developed through a project implemented among coastal and small island communities in Indonesia, the Philippines and Timor-Leste. The process involves observation, documentation, validation, and categorization of local and indigenous knowledge, which can then be selected for integration with science. This process is unique in that it allows communities to (1) identify knowledge that can be integrated with science, which could then be further disseminated for use by scientists, practitioners and policy-makers, and (2) safeguard and valorize those that cannot be scientifically explained. By introducing a process that can be used in other communities and countries, we hope to promote the use of local and indigenous knowledge to enable communities to increase their resilience against the impacts of climate change and disasters. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The priorities of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) agendas both include reducing vulnerability and enhancing resilience. Thus, it is crucial to link DRR and CCA to benefit simultaneously from risk reduction and adaptation measures. The article provides conceptual frameworks that could be useful for better understanding and promoting the integration of DRR and CCA by linking these approaches to accelerate risk reduction and adaptation measures at all levels (global, regional, national and local). This linkage could be an important basis for discussion in climate negotiations regarding the allocation of funds needed for tackling climate change, especially in developing countries. This article also identifies common features and practices for DRR and CCA in several sectors and documents the growing acknowledgment and affirmation of the need to integrate DRR and CCA into development policy and planning. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Resource management agencies must be able to integrate current research into their decision-making to effectively address climate change impacts. In this study, we investigated the capacity for climate-adaptive management by surveying the community of researchers, administrators, and field managers who are responsible for wildlife conservation in the state of Wisconsin, USA. We specifically measured differences in how these sectors perceive climate change risk, communicate, and make decisions to represent barriers in how they transmit and use research. We frame these barriers within the literature on evidence-based and adaptive management and risk psychology, as principles that underlie climate change adaptation. Almost all respondents agreed that the climate is changing (223/224), but 22% of the respondents were unsure whether climate change is negative for wildlife and field managers dominated this group (68%). Field managers also reported using components of adaptive management more frequently than did other sectors, but all three questioned the importance of one specific component: predicting the consequence of management before implementation. When seeking information, researchers preferred communicating via published literature, but managers and administrators reported a preference for in-person communication. Although only 29% of the respondents were currently involved in climate change work, 77% said they would get involved without additional incentives or direction at work. These results confirm a common pattern of barriers between research and management sectors across all scales of decision-making. Overall, results suggest that in-person and problem-based communication that is focused on real decisions and that utilizes social networks are a way to enable resource management communities to effectively confront these barriers. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.Predictions of the responses of montane bird communities to climate change generally presuppose that species and assemblages hold constant relationships to temperature across large study regions. However, comparative studies of avian communities exploring the factors that currently shape species richness patterns rarely analyze relationships across neighboring ecological regions of the same mountain chain. Evaluations of the intrinsic regional differences in species-environment relationships are needed to better inform expectations of how bird communities may be affected by future climate change. In this study, we evaluated the relative importance of three environmental factors (temperature, precipitation, and net primary productivity) in structuring avian richness patterns along a continuous mega-transect. We followed the route of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) (32.58 degrees N to 42.00 degrees N, ranging in elevation from 365 to 4020 m) on the California cordillera and completed avian point counts on 3578 systematically established survey plots. We divided this mega-transect into five sections, which corresponded to distinct ecological regions along the mountain chain. Regions differed both for elevation-richness patterns, exhibiting linear and unimodal trends, and for model-supported environmental drivers of patterns, with some richness-environment correlations changing sign across adjacent regions. These results were robust to sampling bias, regional species availability, and spatial autocorrelation. Although seasonal variation in avian movements may have limited influence on our results, we conclude that intrinsic regional environments affect bird species richness differently in each of these sections on the PCT, thus creating region-specific species-environment relationships. Appreciation of regional environmental heterogeneity will only increase in light of forecasted climate change, where regional predictions often diverge greatly from global trends, necessitating a site-specific approach to climate adaptation rather than 'one size fits all' strategies.There is much talk about the need for stakeholder participation and inter-sectoral coordination in forest policy and management. But there is limited understanding about forest agencies' role in the adoption of new governance modes and their contribution to policy delivery. By drawing on a qualitative implementation study of Bavaria's Mountain Forest Initiative in locally-operating forest agencies, the present paper addresses these gaps. The government wants them to establish collaborative arrangements with various stakeholders to facilitate measures for adaptation to climate change in private forests. The cross-case comparison provides detailed empirical insights into distinct sets of activities for making the initiative 'work'. Stakeholder participation gains a firm basis at the local level if forest agencies develop interest in and generate ownership of prospects for collaborative planning, and tailor these to their needs. The study suggests, however, that involvement of local stakeholders in forest planning is not necessarily instrumental for delivery of effective policies, as reliance on the local level entails the risk that the broader picture of initial policy goals gets lost. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Interest in the concept of resilience has grown significantly in recent years. The perceived strengths of resilience as a concept stem from its foundations in the sciences and humanities, and have recently gained currency amongst political actors and in policy spheres. This papers objective is to investigate the value of resilience as a concept when applied to the process of coastal climate change adaptation with a focus on place specificity. As applied to coastal hazards and climate change adaptation, we expect that resilience encompasses more system complexities than a traditional vulnerability or hazards approach. Our aim in this paper is achieved through carrying out a critical analysis of Irish and US academic and policy literature and determining if, and to what degree, one or more of the three selected lenses of psychological, engineering and ecological resilience are applied. Through contrasting the evolution of coastal adaptation policy developments in both Ireland and the U.S. the paper highlights the importance of policy, environment and geography in the area of coastal management. It furthermore examines the question of whether the concept of resilience represents a paradigm shift, or whether it maintains the dominant anthropological perspective of earlier hazard mitigation approaches under new guise. The increasing focus on climate adaptation as more than enhanced hazard mitigation exemplifies that shift. In the U.S. proposals for large-scale retreat programs post-Sandy are further evidence that combined ecological-anthropological approaches are gaining traction, though planning actions taken and factors considered continue to be dominated by parochialism and anthropocentric or psychological definitions of resilience. In Ireland there is a noticeable increase in the ecological resilience grounded practices of adaptive management and co-management in relation to coastal planning. The fostering of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) frameworks as well as a clear linking between climate adaption and the management of coastal regions underlines this development. Results indicate that resilience, under the three forms explored, is a concept that has recently increased in popularity. Simultaneously, there has been a discernible shift in the direction of broader inclusion of concerns about human environment interactions, but the two are not necessarily coextensive, and concepts of resilience do not always encompass these concerns. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The integration of scientific information into the decision-making process for the management of marine resources remains a significant challenge, with the inaccessibility of primary scientific literature to environmental practitioners identified as a key limiting factor. Here, we quantify the use of primary scientific literature in environmental management plans, and explore potential barriers to the efficient integration of such scientific information into the decision-making process. Through a case study of coral dominated Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) spanning three countries (Australia, Kenya and Belize), we find that primary scientific literature represents only 14% of information cited in management plans. Such a low proportion is likely to be symptomatic of several issues regarding the accessibility of primary scientific literature to MPA managers, such as: 1. Long publication times for articles (average 40.2 +/- 1.8 months); 2. Subscription-only access (up to 56% of articles behind paywalls); and/or 3. Poor articulation of management implications (only 19% of articles provided clear outcomes relevant to management). Such impediments can undermine the adaptive governance of MPAs, so we suggest improvements to knowledge transfer among scientists and managers via a diversity of approaches including knowledge brokers, boundary organisations, knowledge co-production and management-orientated summaries in research articles. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Acting on the perception that they perform better for longer, most property owners in the United States choose hard engineered structures, such as bulkheads or riprap revetments, to protect estuarine shorelines from erosion. Less intrusive alternatives, specifically marsh plantings with and without sills, have the potential to better sustain marsh habitat and support its ecosystem services, yet their shoreline protection capabilities during storms have not been evaluated. In this study, the performances of alternative shoreline protection approaches during Hurricane Irene (Category 1 storm) were compared by 1) classifying resultant damage to shorelines with different types of shoreline protection in three NC coastal regions after Irene; and 2) quantifying shoreline erosion at marshes with and without sills in one NC region by using repeated measurements of marsh surface elevation and marsh vegetation stem density before and after Irene. In the central Outer Banks, NC, where the strongest sustained winds blew across the longest fetch; Irene damaged 76% of bulkheads surveyed, while no damage to other shoreline protection options was detected. Across marsh sites within 25 km of its landfall, Hurricane Irene had no effect on marsh surface elevations behind sills or along marsh shorelines without sills. Although Irene temporarily reduced marsh vegetation density at sites with and without sills, vegetation recovered to pre-hurricane levels within a year. Storm responses suggest that marshes with and without sills are more durable and may protect shorelines from erosion better than the bulkheads in a Category 1 storm. This study is the first to provide data on the shoreline protection capabilities of marshes with and without sills relative to bulkheads during a substantial storm event, and to articulate a research framework to assist in the development of comprehensive policies for climate change adaptation and sustainable management of estuarine shorelines and resources in U.S. and globally. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Wave height variability along the Pacific and Okhotsk Sea coasts of northern Japan in June August is investigated using in situ measurements and reanalysis data. The coastal wave height is dominated by the persistent easterly winds induced by the developed Okhotsk high. These winds, which can induce cool summers in northern Japan, favor wave development toward the coast of northern Japan. The wave variability is enhanced along the coast of northern Tohoku by the strong local winds occurring in the lee of Cape Erimo. The results for variability of wave height along the Pacific and Okhotsk Sea coasts of northern Japan are supported by composite analysis of reanalysis wave data. When the Okhotsk high develops and the resulting easterly winds are dominant, the wave height increases near the coast of and to the east of northern Japan. Wave height also increases in the Japan Sea and along the southern coast of Japan, whereas wave height decreases in the Okhotsk Sea. These wave height variations reflect the distinct wind fields associated with the developed Okhotsk high. Trends in wave height are examined using the in situ measurements available for over 20 yr. Only the decreasing trends in the south of northern Japan in August are statistically significant.Given the wealth of information and research on the roles and responsibilities of the general public in climate mitigation, the lack of engagement of householders on climate adaptation is notable by its absence. As climate change impacts vary with locality, local adaption is important; however there are few processes that build awareness and engagement of householders with climate adaptation and planning. Using reports of discussions from 96 groups convened as part of a climate change engagement program called Energymark; this paper explores the concerns of householders around climate change and provides a lay perspective on climate adaptation. Analyses of group discussions reveal that householders were unable to readily distinguish between climate adaptation and mitigation actions. Groups discussed how they could increase local adaptive capacity through active citizenship and community action. This applied research provides empirical evidence of how deliberation can build social capital and contribute to local adaptive solutions. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the first use of a stochastic cyclone model (SCM) to quantify the extreme significant wave height from tropical cyclones across the Southwest Pacific Ocean. The median extreme significant wave heights across the entire SW Pacific Ocean were 7.5, 10 and 11 m for annual exceedance probabilities (AEPs) of 0.1, 0.02 and 0.01 respectively. Maximum significant wave heights in the region were approximately 1.5 times these values for the same AEP. Tables of extreme significant wave heights are provided for selected inhabited locations. The SCM was used to quantify the effects of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on extreme significant wave heights, and also the effects of projected climate change on cyclone intensity and frequency of occurrence. West of the International Dateline in the region of the Vanuatu archipelago, the extreme cyclone wave climate was relatively consistent during all phases of the ENSO cycle, but highest during El Nino. Cyclone formation and propagation eastward of the Dateline are more likely to occur during El Nino conditions, however these cyclones tended to be more intense, particularly during extreme El Nino events, leading to a higher long-term extreme wave climate in the eastern SW Pacific, despite the relatively low cyclone observation rate there. Simulations of climate change cyclone intensity increases of 10-20% of the most intense cyclones (categories 4 and 5) along with 10-20% reduction in number of cyclones indicated little change in extreme significant wave heights for low-occurrence AEPs of 1/20 or less. These changes were much less than induced by present-day ENSO variability, suggesting that future changes in extreme wave climate will be sensitive to climate change influences on the frequency and intensity of ENSO events. These results are significant in the light of indications that the frequency of extreme El Nino events might double in response to greenhouse warming. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate change puts pressure on existing health vulnerabilities through higher frequency of extreme weather events, changes in disease vector distribution or exacerbated air pollution. Climate change adaptation policies may hold potential to reduce societal inequities. We assessed the role of public health and social justice in European climate change adaptation using a three-fold approach: a document analysis, a critical discourse analysis of a subgroup of strategies, and a ranking of strategies against our social justice framework. The ranking approach favored planning that includes various adaptation types, social issues and infrastructure changes. Themes on values identified in the five subgroup documents showed that risks are perceived as contradictory, technology is viewed as savior, responsibilities need to be negotiated, and social justice is advocated by only a few countries. Of 21 strategy documents assessed overall, those from Austria, England and Sweden received the highest scores in the ranking. Our qualitative assessment showed that in European adaptation planning, progress could still be made through community involvement into adaptation decisions, consistent consideration of social and demographic determinants, and a stronger link between infrastructural adaptation and the health sector. Overall, a social justice framework can serve as an evaluation guideline for adaptation policy documents.Understanding large-scale drivers of animal breeding densities and demography has a range of important uses, including informing conservation management. Given the threat of climate change, the importance of developing a process-based understanding of variation in animal populations is increased to inform adaptive management. For a climate-change sensitive species, the European Golden Plover Pluvialis apricaria, we use novel field-collected data on large-scale spatial variation in prey abundance and vegetation structure to understand drivers of breeding abundance and breeding success, and inform potential management responses. The abundance of the key prey, crane flies (Tipulidae), increased with altitude (a surrogate for temperature) and peat depth (a surrogate for soil moisture). Golden plover breeding densities were highest where vegetation was shortest, probably reflecting greater prey accessibility. In contrast, breeding success was not strongly related to vegetation height, but positively correlated with both crane fly abundance and daily minimum temperatures. When combined to model the number of likely successful pairs in any 1 year, the magnitude of vegetation height effect far exceeded that of crane fly abundance. Thus, for golden plover and other shorebirds sharing similar habitats, management to optimize breeding habitat (grazing or burning to promote short vegetation) may differ from management to promote breeding success (drain blocking to increase soil moisture and prey abundance). Adaptive management in the face of climate change should therefore include appropriate vegetation management, as well as maximizing prey abundance. More broadly, as the drivers of breeding density and demographic parameters may differ, we advocate that conservation practitioners collect not just information on species' distributions but also underpinning demographic processes when using science to inform management.In a changing outdoor climate, new buildings as well as the existing building stock need to adapt in order to keep providing their inhabitants and users a comfortable and healthy indoor environment with a minimum or - preferably - no increase in energy consumption. In this paper, the effectiveness of six passive climate change adaptation measures applied at the level of building components is assessed using building energy simulations for three generic residential buildings as commonly built in - among others - the Netherlands: (1) detached house; (2) terraced house; (3) apartment. The study involves both residential buildings that are built according to the regulations and common practice in 2012, and residential buildings that were constructed in the 1970s, with a lower thermal resistance of the opaque and transparent parts of the building envelope. The climate change adaptation measures investigated are: (i) increased thermal resistance; (ii) changed thermal capacity; (iii) increased short-wave reflectivity (albedo); (iv) vegetation roofs; (v) solar shading; and (vi) additional natural ventilation. This paper quantifies the effectiveness of these climate change adaptation measures for new residential buildings as well as for renovation of the current building stock. The performance indicator is the number of overheating hours during a year. It is shown that exterior solar shading and additional natural ventilation are most effective for this performance indicator. Furthermore, increasing thermal insulation to reduce energy use for heating demands additional measures to prevent overheating. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Based upon tectonic as well as facies arguments, two different Helvetic nappes can be distinguished in western Austria (Vorarlberg) and in southwestern Germany (Upper Allgau): the Hohenems nappe and the overlying Vorarlberg Santis nappe. Both encompass Middle Jurassic to Eocene strata deposited on the internal to external shelf of the southward deepening European margin of the Eurasian plate. Synsedimentary normal faults caused changes in thickness and facies of the various strata, which play a crucial role in deformation behavior. Arcuate fold axes in map view and an almost 3 km thick sequence of stacked Middle Jurassic shales and sandstones drilled below a Jurassic anticlinorium in the southern part of the Bregenzerwald are thought to be indicative of an inverted Jurassic basin. Inversion occurred during the Cenozoic Alpine nappe formation along synsedimentary normal faults, reactivated as ramps and tear faults. A lateral ramp, segmented by tear faults, running along the Iller Valley, and a supposed lateral ramp in the subsurface of the Rhine Valley mark the extension of the inverted former basin. Fault deformation style changes across the Rhine Valley. East of it, i.e. in Vorarlberg, the Vorarlberg Santis nappe comprises a coherent succession of Jurassic and Cretaceous strata detached along Middle Jurassic sediments. In the west, on the other hand, Cretaceous strata of the Swiss Santis nappe were largely detached from their Jurassic substrate (Gonzen-Walenstadt imbricates) along the Santis thrust. This allows to correlate the Helvetic nappe stack of eastern Switzerland, comprising the Swiss Santis nappe (together with the Gonzen-Walenstadt imbricates) and the underlying Murtschen nappe, with the Vorarlberg Santis nappe and the Hohenems nappe of Austria.The ringed seal (Phoca hispida) is dependent on sufficient ice and snow cover for a breeding habitat. Therefore, climate change has a negative effect on pup survival. We developed methods to estimate perinatal mortality and to mitigate the effects of mild winters on the critically endangered subspecies (P. h. saimensis). Underwater surveys were used for collecting pup carcasses and placentas. Lanugo pup mortality was 13.5% and Brucella sp. was not found in the placentas. Camera traps showed sporadic human and medium-sized carnivore activity in the breeding habitat. Although carnivore activity was most intensive at lair sites, no penetration of the lairs was observed. We developed a method to mitigate the effects of poor snow cover by piling up snowdrifts (n = 117) at potential lair sites. Seals subsequently occupied 62% of these snow drifts. We suggest that the methods developed in this study should be implemented to conserve the Saimaa ringed seal.This article gives insights into an inter- and transdisciplinary research approach designed to enhance the planning of climate change adaptation responses at urban-regional level. What makes interdisciplinary approaches to adaptation action unique is its ability to unravel the complexity of climate change and the interwoven processes it entails. It is the planning aspect here that makes stakeholder involvement crucial. Hence in contemporary climate change research the science-policy interface takes centre stage, generating response capacity and exchanging 'usable' information with decision-makers within the framework of a transdisciplinary approach. Climate action plans and climate adaptation strategies, for example, have the potential to unite sectors and levels of decision-making around an integrated planning approach. This article discusses the challenges and constraints of the inter- and transdisciplinary research approach developed for a Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile (MRS).Over the past 22 years (1990-2011), the inland part of the Tokyo metropolitan area has had 75 days with an extreme high temperature (EHT) higher than 37.2 degrees C in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture. To determine the synoptic-scale and mesoscale conditions for such EHT events, a statistical analysis was conducted using observational and objective analysis data. The results show that all the EHT events satisfy the conditions of a daily minimum surface air temperature above 21.4 degrees C on Kumagaya and an air temperature at 850 hPa above 18.8 degrees C on Tsukuba. The EHT days satisfying these conditions were categorized into 27 types according to different combinations of synoptic-pressure patterns, surface wind patterns, and the number of consecutive preceding clear-sky days. The most frequent type occurred eight times (10.7% of days) and was the WHALE' (tail of a whale) pressure pattern with a southeast (SE) surface wind, with at least four (4+) consecutive preceding clear-sky days. However, the type with the highest average maximum surface air temperature had a different wind direction, which was WHALE with a northwest (NW) surface wind and 4+ consecutive preceding clear-sky days. This type appeared only twice but produced the average maximum temperature of 39.7 degrees C.We analyzed the impact of climate change due to global warming on the risk of cool summer damage to paddy rice in the Tohoku region of Japan. We downscaled the atmospheric general circulation model of the Meteorological Research Institute (MRI AGCM) to 10 km, and we used monthly average temperatures and their standard deviations to correct the bias of the simulated temperatures. We did not use daily averaged temperatures to determine the risk of cool summer damage. Instead, we used the cooling degree calculated from the average daily temperature over a period of time (CDAT). We also used the standardized yield calculated from temperatures during the month preceding heading. An examination of the reproducibility of cooling damage occurring under the current climate was based on bias-corrected data which revealed that although the simulated risk of cool summer damage slightly underestimated both the CDAT and the standardized yield, the areal distributions of risk were similar to those in years of cool summer damage. We assumed that the heading stage occurred 15.6 days earlier than current climate because of the impact of temperature increase under the future climate and therefore calculated the CDAT and standardized yield by advancing the critical period by half a month. During the second- and third-coolest summers under the future climate scenario, the risk of cool summer damage decreased in the southern Tohoku region facing the Pacific Ocean and in Aomori Prefecture on the Japan Sea side, but the risk of cool summer damage was almost the same as during the observed cool summer of 1980. In summary, our results revealed that under a future climate, simulated by the MRI AGCM, the risk of cool summer damage will persist in the Tohoku region; risk management for cool summer damage will therefore be essential, even though global temperatures rise.The equatorward cold airmass flux below potential temperature theta(T) = 280K across 45 degrees N integrated from 90 degrees E to 180 degrees is used as an index to quantitatively measure cold air outbreaks (CAOs) in the East Asian winter monsoon. Intermittent CAOs over East Asia significantly contribute to the global equatorward cold airmass flux. An autocorrelation analysis indicates that CAO events persist for approximately 5 days. The geographical distributions of lagged correlations/regressions with the CAO index (CAOI) clarify the temporal evolution of synoptic conditions associated with CAOs. The developing Siberian high located northwest of Lake Baikal (65 degrees N, 100 degrees E) on day -4 slowly moves southeastward, reaches maximum intensity over Siberia (50 degrees N, 110 degrees E) on day 0, and then decays while moving rapidly southward. By contrast, the Aleutian low is almost stagnant and maintains a strong intensity. The eastward pressure gradient geostrophically induces the equatorward cold airmass flux. After day -2, the cold air mass significantly decreases over Siberia, but increases over East Asia and the western North Pacific Ocean. The cold air mass continues to migrate southward while spreading eastward, and disappears mainly over the ocean. The leading edge of the high pressure anomaly moves southward at 13 ms(-1) and reaches the equator simultaneously with the equatorward wind anomaly on about day 14. An additional analysis of separating the equatorward flux into 90 degrees-135 degrees E and 135 degrees E-180 degrees suggests that CAOs are, to some extent, caused by the Siberian high and the Aleutian low acting separately.This study investigated the yield response to climate variables towards the causal interdependency analysis between upland rice yield and major climatic variables in three provinces located in Sahelian region, Burkina Faso. Sahel is amongst the most vulnerable regions to weather stressors largely attributed to its typical climatic condition and low capacity to adapt. When promoting climate adaptation measures, data limitation makes very hard to analyze crop yield responses complexity to local weather variables. Therefore, this study attempts to assess the upland rice yield response to rains and temperature factors by using multi-gene-expression programing (GEP) and a conventional local scale time series regression approaches supported by ground station data. Statistically, the results suggested that there is a substantial climate variables combination factors affecting rice yield. It was found that 31%, 37% and 52% of the variance in year-to-year rainfed rice yield changes were explained by the changes observed in temperatures and precipitation variables in the study area. It was observed that a 1 degrees C increase of temperature combined with 200 mm decrease of rains caused yields reduction from 7% to 21%. The results attested that GEP model is a powerful tool in downscaling (CC = 0.88 97, RRSE = 0.474-0.261), and in expressing yields responses function (CC = 0.88, RRSE = 0.472 and RAE = 0.070) to climate variables, deployed for the first time in yield coding in Sahel. Rain is the most important variable in the yield model counting for 70%, while maximum temperature counts for 29.3%. The findings suggested that a robust climate adaptation measure should be axed on rainwater management. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Since a direct, so-called "linear" scientific knowledge transfer from science to political practice does not seem to be possible, we suggest an alternative model of the science-policy-interface. This model understands scientific knowledge transfer as the connection between research (R), integration (I), and utilization (U)-the RIU model. Within this RIU-model, scientific knowledge is produced in the science system (research), and science-based problem solutions are utilized within practice by political actors (utilization). Between the two spheres there is no "automatic" connection that leads to a linear application of science in policy making. Rather, the RIU-model highlights the important sphere of "integration", a step that lies between science and utilization. A case study on a German decision support system for sustainable forest management within climate change is presented. It is shown that this informational instrument failed since no application in practice could be observed. An analysis by using the RIU model demonstrates (1) what are the reasons for the failure in this case and (2) which recommendations can be drawn by the RIU model for scientific advice that matters in forest policy-making.With rising sea levels and possible storm intensification due to climate change, current United States urban coastal flood management strategies will be challenged. Due to limitations of current flood management strategies, evacuation is likely to become increasingly prominent in many coastal areas. Thus it is important to think critically about challenges for successful evacuation planning, particularly for vulnerable communities. This paper brings together the evacuation planning, climate change and environmental justice literatures. We describe the unique challenges that environmental justice communities face with evacuation, and identify best practice guidelines to improve the quality of evacuation planning for these communities. The guidelines presented, while not comprehensive, provide a framework for planners and policymakers to consider when developing evacuation plans, both for current and future climate conditions, and could improve the quality of evacuation planning.Water level extremes for seas and rivers are crucial to determine optimal dike heights. Future development in extremes under climate change is, however, uncertain. In this paper, we explore impacts of uncertainty and learning about increasing water levels on dike investment. We extend previous work in which a constant rate of structural water level increase is assumed. We introduce a probability distribution for this rate and study the impact of learning about this rate. We model learning as a single stochastic event where full information becomes available. Numerical solutions are obtained with dynamic programming. We find that the expected value of information can be substantial. Before information arrives, investment size is reduced as compared with the benchmark without learning, but investment frequency may be increased. The impact of learning on the initial investment strategy, however, is small as compared with the impact of uncertainty about increasing water levels by itself.Time is of the essence in conservation biology. To secure the persistence of a species, we need to understand how to balance time spent among different management actions. A new and simple method to test the efficacy of a range of conservation actions is required. Thus, we devised a general theoretical framework to help determine whether to test a new action and when to cease a trial and revert to an existing action if the new action did not perform well. The framework involves constructing a general population model under the different management actions and specifying a management objective. By maximizing the management objective, we could generate an analytical solution that identifies the optimal timing of when to change management action. We applied the analytical solution to the case of the Christmas Island pipistrelle bat (Pipistrelle murrayi), a species for which captive breeding might have prevented its extinction. For this case, we used our model to determine whether to start a captive breeding program and when to stop a captive breeding program and revert to managing the species in the wild, given that the management goal is to maximize the chance of reaching a target wild population size. For the pipistrelle bat, captive breeding was to start immediately and it was desirable to place the species in captivity for the entire management period. The optimal time to revert to managing the species in the wild was driven by several key parameters, including the management goal, management time frame, and the growth rates of the population under different management actions. Knowing when to change management actions can help conservation managers' act in a timely fashion to avoid species extinction. Determinar Cuando Cambiar el Rumbo en las Acciones de Manejo Resumen El tiempo es de suma importancia en la Biologia de la Conservacion. Para poder asegurar la persistencia de una especie necesitamos entender como equilibrar el tiempo utilizado en diferentes acciones de manejo. Se requiere un metodo novedoso y simple para evaluar la efectividad de una gama de acciones de conservacion. Por esto disenamos un marco de trabajo teorico y general para ayudar a determinar si se debe evaluar una accion nueva y cuando se debe detener una prueba y revertirla a una accion existente si la nueva accion no tuvo un buen desempeno. El marco de trabajo involucra construir un modelo poblacional general bajo las diferentes acciones de manejo y especificar un objetivo de manejo. Al maximizar el objetivo de manejo, podemos generar una solucion analitica que identifica la oportunidad optima de cuando cambiar la accion de manejo. Aplicamos la solucion analitica al caso del murcielago de la Isla Navidad (Pipistrelle murrayi), una especie para la cual la reproduccion en cautiverio puede haber prevenido su extincion. Para este caso, usamos nuestro modelo para determinar si iniciabamos un programa de reproduccion en cautiverio o cuando detendriamos un programa de reproduccion en cautiverio y revertiriamos al manejo en vida libre de la especie, dado que el objetivo de manejo es maximizar la posibilidad de obtener un tamano de poblacion silvestre determinado. Para el murcielago, la reproduccion en cautiverio empezaria de inmediato y lo deseado seria mantener a la especie en cautiverio durante el periodo de manejo. El tiempo optimo para revertirnos a manejar a la especie en vida libre fue conducido por varios parametros clave, incluidos el objetivo de manejo, el marco de tiempo del manejo y las tasas de crecimiento de la poblacion bajo diferentes acciones de manejo. El saber cuando cambiar las acciones de manejo puede ayudar a quienes manejan la conservacion a actuar oportunamente para evitar la extincion de una especie.This study provides first insights into the energetics of the Nesomyinae, a subfamily of rodents endemic to Madagascar. The ancestral nesomyine colonized Madagascar from Africa ca. 30-15 mya at the onset of Oligocene global cooling. We tested the hypothesis that, contrary to what might be expected from Island Biogeography theory, post-colonization character displacement of thermoregulatory traits was constrained by phylogenetic inertia through climate adaptation. The study was conducted in the Parc National d'Ankarafantsika, Madagascar. We measured the basal metabolic rate (BMR) and body temperature (T (b)) patterns of naturally warm-acclimated, freshly captured adult long-tailed big-footed mice Macrotarsomys ingens (67.4 g). The mean +/- A SD BMR of M. ingens was 0.298 +/- A 0.032 Watts (n = 12), 31.7 % lower than that predicted by a phylogenetically independent allometric equation. Body mass was correlated with BMR. The lower critical limit of thermoneutrality (T (lc)) was 30.7 A degrees C. The mean +/- A SD T (b) = 36.1 +/- A 0.8 A degrees C (n = 12) compared well with the mean T (b) values for myomorph rodents from the Afrotropical zone, but was lower than those of the Neotropical and Palearctic zones. M. ingens became pathologically hypothermic when exposed to ambient temperatures lower than 18 A degrees C. The soil temperature at depths of 250 mm and deeper did not decrease below 22 A degrees C throughout the austral winter. The thermoregulatory data for M. ingens did not differ from those that characterize mainland Afrotropical rodents. However, BMR and T (b) were lower than those of Holarctic rodents. Thus, contrary to expectations of Island Biogeography theory that rapid character displacement often occurs in morphological and behavioural traits when mammals colonize islands, M. ingens displayed climate-related physiological traits indicative of phylogenetic inertia. Presumably the tropical conditions that prevailed on Madagascar at the time of colonisation differed very little from those of the African mainland, and hence there was no strong driving force for change. Unlike small tenrecs and lemurs that radiated on Madagascar prior to the Oligocene, traits associated with an insular existence, such as daily torpor and hibernation, were not evident in M. ingens.Climate change adaptation frameworks often emphasize tangible community vulnerabilities, but typically fail to recognize that healthy, vibrant, and resilient communities are also based on many factors that are experiential in nature. In response to the continued undervaluation of such factors, scholars are adopting place identity and place attachment as a way to explore the risks of climate change in a more holistic manner. This study draws on Churchill, Manitoba's unique relationship with climate change to present an early examination of place-based climate change adaptation. Results from a community survey suggest that citizens' sensitivity to local climate impacts is associated most strongly with their connection to the social meanings that are embedded in the natural landscape. Results also indicate that this place driven sensitivity does not necessarily lead to an increase in actions to adapt to climate change. It is suggested that inaction in the face of climate change can persist, even when citizens' have a strong connection to place, particularly because dominant climate change communications fail to produce a socially salient message. By linking place-based adaptation research to an emerging value-based frame for climate adaptation, this study presents new pathways to help legitimize local values in climate change adaptation processes, and to create frames for communication that are more conducive to fostering collective action. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In Asia, the evaluation of black carbon (BC) using global aerosol-transport models has been incomplete due to a lack of available measurements. Recently, new measurements and datasets at various Asian sites have become available for use in model validation. In this study, we compared the BC mass concentrations obtained by an aerosol-coupled global nonhydrostatic model adopting a uniform-grid system with in-situ measurements and other models over Asia. The results revealed that our model, as well as other global models, was unable to reproduce the observed BC values at most sites in China and India, most likely due to strong local hotspots. To overcome the inconsistency between the models and measurements, we developed a new aerosol-transport model using a stretched-grid system for high-resolution simulations with up to approximately 10 km grids. Our model can be used as a global-to-regional seamless aerosol-transport model for low to high horizontal resolution simulations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation to climate change has been recognized as very important in developing countries that face the greatest threats from global warming. In proposing various adaptation approaches, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change required nations to prepare adaptation plans of action. However, the areas of priority in climate change adaptation have not been considered. This study has developed a new prioritization methodology for climate change adaptation in developing countries. Five categories and 25 approaches in climate change adaptation were adopted through a thorough and detailed analysis of pertinent literature related to the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA) in the Gambia. A fuzzy analytic hierarchy process-based questionnaire survey was designed and presented to 12 experts chosen from the committee members of the Gambia's NAPA. The survey was made to determine the relative importance of the strategies for climate change adaptation. The results indicate that the five most important adaptation categories are health (0.223), forestry (0.213), water (0.210), food (0.181), and energy (0.174), with health as the number one priority in climate change adaptation. Further findings show that the prioritization order of the adaptation approaches to climate change in the Gambia is as follows: "Health education," "public sensitization," "water supply infrastructure development," "microfinance," and "infrastructure and technology enhancement.".Farmers in rural Africa use a number of adaptive strategies to cope with observed climatic changes and their impacts on agriculture. Most studies on adaptive capacity focus on socio-economic parameters (such as poverty or education), and few provide detailed analysis on the role played by different institutions at local level, and the effects of how these institutions are perceived on farmers' adaptation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among 46 households from seven villages in southern Benin (West Africa), and among representatives of several institutions at the local level. Half the participants were involved in Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) development projects and half were independent farmers. Results indicate that independent farmers mostly use non-agricultural coping strategies (loans, work in town) while project farmers mainly use agricultural adaptive strategies (improved seed varieties). Lack of adaptive capacity of independent farmers is linked to weak State institutions at the local level. Due to their lack of efficiency and high corruption rates, local State representatives are mistrusted. NGOs are trusted and seek for help, even by independent farmers. Even if NGOs do not have climate change adaptation in their agendas, they promote activities, which help reduce farmers' vulnerability. Although our results are limited to south-western Benin, they question the way adaptation is promoted today, for instance through the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (through the National Adaptation Programmes of Action).Systematic observations of wind speed and direction have been collected at Skagen Fyr (Skagen Lighthouse), northern Denmark from December 1860 to August 2012. Wind speed and wind direction are analyzed based on two, data sets given in Beaufort and m/s respectively and based on these data storminess variation is analyzed. Changes in wind climate during this time interval cover the final phase of the relatively cold Little Ice Age and the following warming since the late 19th century. Since the end of the Little Ice Age the wind pattern has clearly changed in terms of both strength and direction. Between 1860 and 1875 storminess (wind events exceeding Beaufort 8) is extremely high, but since then storminess decreases. Around 1870 the annual drift potential (DP) is also extremely high and reaches up to 9600 vector units (VU); since 1980 DP levels are below 3000 VU and decreasing. Resultant drift direction (RDD) is towards the east or east-north-east until about 1960 when it steadily becomes more and more northerly. Most storms occur during autumn and early winter. Summers are less stormy but characterized by unidirectional winds. Since the end of the Little Ice Age most inland parabolic dunes on Skagen Odde have undergone a general stabilization. This shift in dune dynamics is primarily related to continued dune management, but the change in wind climate including an overall decrease in storminess (including a marked decrease in summer storminess) and an increase in southerly and south-westerly winds probably contribute to dune stabilization. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Wind regime (speed and direction) are typically highly variable in space and in time. Studies often use a selected meteorological station as representative of a specific dune field. However, wind regime may differ widely even between sites located just a few kilometers apart. In this study we explore wind variability and its relationship to dune morphology on Moreton Island, a dune barrier island located in south-east Queensland, Australia. Using wind data from meteorological stations around Moreton Island and from global and regional reanalyses, we analyzed the correspondence between wind power and wind direction, using the variables of resultant drift potential (RDP) and resultant drift direction (RDD). RDP values were higher in the ocean-facing stations than on the adjacent mainland, and the correspondence of wind regime between the different stations was dependent on both distance from station and on wind magnitude. Ocean facing stations were best correlated with the PRECIS regional reanalysis. Wind regime was found to vary between the ocean and bay sides of Moreton Island, especially in the winter months. Three different slip face orientations (towards the north-west, north and north-east) on Moreton Island were successfully explained based on wind regime and topographic details using data from a LiDAR-derived digital elevation model. We conclude that regional reanalysis models are able to fill in spatial and temporal gaps in wind regime data, necessary for understanding dune form and dune activity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change impact assessments on agriculture in Southern Africa are mostly carried out at large spatial scales, risking missing out on local impacts and adaptation potential that reflect the range of multiple and unique bio-physical and agronomic conditions under which farmers in the region operate. This study investigated how climate change may affect yields of various major food crops in specific locations in the region; maize and sorghum (Mohale's Hoek - Lesotho and Big Bend - Swaziland), maize and groundnut (Lilongwe - Malawi). Using statistically downscaled climate projections from nine GCMs and the DSSAT crop model and simulating selected agronomic strategies practiced in each location, the study confirmed that impacts of climate change on crop yields in Southern Africa vary across locations and crops. Despite various uncertainties associated with such assessments, the results showed that crop yields were predominantly projected to decline in Big Bend (maize (-20%); sorghum (-16%)) and Lilongwe (maize (-5%); groundnut (-33%)). However, crop yields in Mohale's Hoek, located in a high altitude region historically prone to cold related crop yield losses were on average projected to increase (maize (+8%) and sorghum (+51%)). The geographical variation of yield projections highlights the importance of location specific climate change impact assessments. The exploration of local agronomic management alternatives revealed prospects for identifying locally relevant adaptation strategies, which cannot easily be captured at larger scales. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Coastal protection strategies increasingly have to take into account the effects of climate change. At present, engineering and natural science models that assess the impact of global climatic transformations on regional coastal zones and their protection structures remain rather detached from the knowledge and insights of regional practitioners. The main thesis of this contribution, using a case study from the North Sea Coast of Germany, is that innovative coastal protection requires not only interdisciplinary research but transdisciplinary collaboration in order to develop a viable adaptation strategy. The investigation of the social dimension of climate change and coastal protection strategies, using qualitative interviews with organized regional stakeholders, climate researchers and coastal engineers, as well as a representative public survey, contributes to a comprehensive understanding of regional perceptions with respect to climate change and coastal protection.As deforestation and fragmentation continue in tropical regions with high human use and disturbance of natural habitats, production landscapes such as agroforests and plantations may provide some forest-based services depending on tree selection, agroforest management and intensification. This is typical to southwest Ethiopia with strong human-dependence on forest biodiversity and ecosystem services. We examined the effects of land-use changes and fragmentation on woody species distribution and the relative importance of forest fragments and coffee farms in wood use and carbon storage. We sampled heartwood from 71 woody species in three land use types: natural forest fragments, smallholder semiforest coffee farms and state-owned coffee plantations. We calculated wood density as an oven-dry biomass per fresh volume of heartwood core samples, and above-ground carbon biomass using allometric methods. We found that average wood density values were not correlated with fragment size. Mean wood density of species in forests was greater than in state-owned plantations. The two coffee systems can store 50-62% of the above-ground carbon biomass found in forests, indicating the need to incorporate coffee farms and forest remnants in carbon incentive, or climate mitigation and adaptation programs. To correlate species wood density with local wood preferences, we interviewed focus groups and households about the use-values of 51 farmer-appreciated species. There was a strong correlation between wood density and local wood-values signifying the concordance of species functional traits and ecosystem service values. Our results indicate the need to integrate functional traits and local ecosystem service uses in climate adaptation and mitigation by incorporating coffee agroforests with the conservation of natural forest remnants. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Identifying refugia is a critical component of effective conservation of biodiversity under anthropogenic climate change. However, despite a surge in conceptual and practical interest, identifying refugia remains a significant challenge across diverse continental landscapes. We provide an overview of the key properties of refugia that promote species' persistence under climate change, including their capacity to (i) buffer species from climate change; (ii) sustain long-term population viability and evolutionary processes; (iii) minimize the potential for deleterious species interactions, provided that the refugia are (iv) available and accessible to species under threat. Further, we classify refugia in terms of the environmental and biotic stressors that they provide protection from (i.e. thermal, hydric, cyclonic, pyric and biotic refugia), but ideally refugia should provide protection from a multitude of stressors. Our systematic characterization of refugia facilitates the identification of refugia in the Australian landscape. Challenges remain, however, specifically with respect to how to assess the quality of refugia at the level of individual species and whole species assemblages. It is essential that these challenges are overcome before refugia can live up to their acclaim as useful targets for conservation and management in the context of climate change.Establishing ecological networks across national boundaries is essential for species to adapt to shifts in future suitable climate zones. This paper presents a method to assess whether the existing ecological network in the Dutch - German border region is "climate proof". Using distribution data and climate envelope models for 846 species in Europe (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and butterflies) we identified 216 species with climate-induced range shifts in the border region. A range expansion is predicted for 99 species and the ranges of 117 species are predicted to contract. The spatial cohesion of the ecological network was analysed for selected species that vary in habitat requirements and colonisation ability (forest species: Brenthis daphne, Dendrocopos medius; wetland species: Maculinea teleius, Lutra lutra). The assessment shows that optimising transboundary networks and developing corridors seems a suitable adaptation strategy for the forest species and for L. lutra. For the immobile butterfly M. teleius, the present habitat network is too weak and translocation into future suitable climate space seems to be a more appropriate adaptation measure. Our results underline that due to climate change landscape planning and management should not only focus on areas where target species occur today. The presented method can identify strongholds and bottlenecks in transboundary ecological networks and incorporate demands of climate adaptation into spatial planning which forms the basis for taking measures at a more detailed level. (C) 2014 Gesellschaft fur Okologie. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.This paper describes the result of a project to develop climate adaptation design strategies funded by the UK's Technology Strategy Board. The aim of the project was to look at the threats and opportunities presented by industrialized and house-building techniques in the light of predicted future increases in flooding and overheating due to anthropogenic climate change. The paper shows that the thermal performance of houses built to the current UK Building Regulations is not adequate to cope with changing weather patterns, and in light of this, develops a detailed design for a new house: one that is industrially produced and climatically resilient, but affordable. This detailed concept IDEAhaus of a modular house is not only flood-proof to a water depth of 750 mm, but also is designed to utilize passive cooling, which dramatically reduces the amount of overheating, both now and in the future.Two province-wide surveys of residents in Alberta and British Columbia were conducted to assess the acceptability of a range of reforestation strategies-many of which revolve around biotechnology-that could be used to aid western Canada's forests in adapting to future climate change. The opinions of leaders of forest-dependent communities were also sought to evaluate how well they align with those of the public at large. Results show that the views of the general public and community leaders correspond. There is a low acceptance for a "do-nothing" strategy that allows climate change to run its course without any human intervention; high acceptance of replanting with local seeds; a decreasing acceptance of strategies that involve more manipulation such as breeding, using nonlocal seeds, and moving seeds outside of a species' natural range; and a low acceptance of genetically engineered solutions. However, a high proportion of respondents changed their answers when told that a particular strategy would lead to either favourable or unfavourable outcomes related to socioeconomics of forest-dependent communities, forest aesthetics, and pest, disease, and fire outbreaks. We conclude that a meaningful and participatory dialogue on forest adaptation strategies in the face of climate change can only emerge if residents and other interested stakeholders have an adequate understanding of current forest management practices, proposed reforestation strategies, the role of technological interventions, and the values and services for which western Canada's forests are to be managed.As growing attention is paid to climate change adaptation as an actual policy issue, the significant meaning of climate variability in adaptation decisions is beginning to be recognized. By using a real option framework for adaptation in agricultural production, we shed light on how climate change and climate variability affect individuals' (farmers') investment decisions with regard to adaptation (switching from rainfed to irrigated farming). The option value delays adaptation easily for several decades with a realistic set of parameter levels, implying a critical role of risk sharing in promoting adaptation. When variability-influenced adaptation involves the use of an open-access resource (groundwater), uncoordinated farmers may adapt too early or too late depending on the level of their risk aversion. Private adaptation should be supported or discouraged accordingly if coordination is infeasible or farmers are not convinced about the possibilities of collective resource management in the long run.Agricultural systems models worldwide are increasingly being used to explore options and solutions for the food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation and carbon trading problem domains. APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) is one such model that continues to be applied and adapted to this challenging research agenda. From its inception twenty years ago, APSIM has evolved into a framework containing many of the key models required to explore changes in agricultural landscapes with capability ranging from simulation of gene expression through to multi-field farms and beyond. Keating et al. (2003) described many of the fundamental attributes of APSIM in detail. Much has changed in the last decade, and the APSIM community has been exploring novel scientific domains and utilising software developments in social media, web and mobile applications to provide simulation tools adapted to new demands. This paper updates the earlier work by Keating et al. (2003) and chronicles the changing external challenges and opportunities being placed on APSIM during the last decade. It also explores and discusses how APSIM has been evolving to a "next generation" framework with improved features and capabilities that allow its use in many diverse topics. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is resulting in rapid poleward shifts in the geographical distribution of many tropical fish species, but it is equally apparent that some fishes are failing to exhibit expected shifts in their geographical distribution. There is still little understanding of the species-specific traits that may constrain or promote successful establishment of populations in temperate regions. We review the factors likely to affect population establishment, including larval supply, settlement and post-settlement processes. In addition, we conduct meta-analyses on existing and new data to examine relationships between species-specific traits and vagrancy. We show that tropical vagrant species are more likely to originate from high-latitude populations, while at the demographic level, tropical fish species with large body size, high swimming ability, large size at settlement and pelagic spawning behaviour are more likely to show successful settlement into temperate habitats. We also show that both habitat and food limitation at settlement and within juvenile stages may constrain tropical vagrant communities to those species with medium to low reliance on coral resources.Least developed countries have prepared national adaptation programs of action (NAPAs) to coordinate international adaptation funding to reduce social vulnerability to climate change. The adaptation programs have been written for consistency with existing sectoral policies and development agendas-policies which have thus far led to inequitable and incomplete decentralization of responsibility to organize and manage adaptation at the local level. The capacity of local social organization and of cross-scale networks and flows of knowledge and resources from higher levels of government is insufficient to facilitate socially equitable and sustainable adaptation to climate change. Tanzania's NAPA, poverty reduction strategy paper, and sectoral policies for forest, water, and agriculture/livestock illustrate the coordination of adaptation plans with existing policies. National and regional statistics and a survey of households on Mount Kilimanjaro-a regional priority for climate adaptation in Tanzania-demonstrate significant gaps in local social organization and cross-scale networks for adaptation. Challenging existing structural causes of vulnerability will be difficult under adaptation plans written for complementarity with the very policies that have produced social inequality. Outside of a few development projects of limited geographic extent, there is limited evidence for socially equitable and sustainable adaptation outcomes. Sustainable adaptation will require substantial new commitments to developing local capacity and cross-scale networks.Recurring drought is a major challenge in the Drought Prone Area of Maharashtra State in India. Agriculture (e.g., rainfed cropping and livestock) is the major income activity ()lover 64% of the state's population. The objective of this study is to understand the rural farming community's perception of drought impacts on their socio-economic activities and environment, their adaptation at the household level and opinions on government drought mitigation measures. This study is based on both secondary and primary data collected via a survey of 223 farming households. The results show that decrease in yield of cereals, horticultural crops, livestock production and loss of employment, all associated with decreased income of farmers, were the most immediate economic impacts of drought. Social impacts such as population migration, impacts on health and schooling of children, hopelessness and sense of loss, conflicts in society for water, and malnutrition due to changed food preferences were also reported. The environmental impacts such as increases in average atmospheric temperature, pasture-forest degradation, deteriorated water quality, damage to fish habitat wild life, and groundwater depletion were perceived by farmers to high extent. In spite of good perception of severity of drought impacts by farmers and their familiarity with various adaptation options, the preference given for their adoption in agriculture was not good enough. Also to mitigate drought, the government provided various mitigation measures, but the level of satisfaction amongst farmers was low. It is expected that this study will help policy makers to develop more appropriate drought adaptation policies in India. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The development of national and sectoral climate change adaptation strategies is burgeoning in the US and elsewhere in response to damages from extreme events and projected future risks from climate change. Increasingly, decision makers are requesting information on the economic damages of climate change as well as costs, benefits, and tradeoffs of alternative actions to inform climate adaptation decisions. This paper provides a practical view of the applications of economic analysis to aid climate change adaptation decision making, with a focus on benefit-cost analysis (BCA). We review the recent developments and applications of BCA with implications for climate risk management and adaptation decision making, both in the US and other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. We found that BCA is still in early stages of development for evaluating adaptation decisions, and to date is mostly being applied to investment project-based appraisals. Moreover, the best practices of economic analysis are not fully reflected in the BCAs of climate adaptation-relevant decisions. The diversity of adaptation measures and decision-making contexts suggest that evaluation of adaptation measures may require multiple analytical methods. The economic tools and information would need to be transparent, accessible, and match with the decision contexts to be effective in enhancing decision making. Based on the current evidence, a set of analytical considerations is proposed for improving economic analysis of climate adaptation that includes the need to better address uncertainty and to understand the cross-sector and general equilibrium effects of sectoral and national adaptation policy.Sensible heat flux (H), latent heat flux (LE), and net radiation (NR) are important surface energy components that directly influence climate systems. In this study, the changes in the surface energy and their contributions from global climate change and/or land-cover change over eastern China during the past nearly 30 years were investigated and assessed using a process-based land surface model [ the Ecosystem-Atmosphere Simulation Scheme (EASS)]. The modeled results show that climate change contributed more to the changes of land surface energy fluxes than land-cover change, with their contribution ratio reaching 4:1 or even higher. Annual average temperature increased before 2000 and reversed thereafter; annual total precipitation continually decreased, and incident solar radiation continually increased over the past nearly 30 years. These climatic changes could lead to increased NR, H, and LE, assuming land cover remained unchanged during the past nearly 30 years. Among these meteorological variables, at spatial distribution, the incident solar radiation has the greatest effect on land surface energy exchange. The impacts of land-cover change on the seasonal variations in land surface heat fluxes between the four periods were large, especially for H. The changes in the regional energy fluxes resulting from different land-cover type conversions varied greatly. The conversion from farmland to evergreen coniferous forests had the greatest influence on land surface energy exchange, leading to a decrease in H by 19.39% and an increase in LE and NR by 7.44% and 2.74%, respectively. The results of this study can provide a basis and reference for climate change adaptation.The contributions of the social sciences to the advancement of protected areas and climate change adaptation discourses and deliberations have remained relatively marginal and under-recognized. Given the slow response by protected area agencies in terms of die development and implementation of adaption strategies and site-level management actions, it is becoming increasingly clear that solutions to the complex challenges posed by rapid climate change will require an integrated approach one that extends beyond the biological realm to one that acknowledges the inextricable links between biological and social systems. This paper illustrates how some of the significant advances in the social sciences are improving the cultivation of knowledge of climate change impacts, and reframing protected areas policy and practice. First, we discuss the ways in which social science work has already unproved conservation knowledge and practice related to climate change. We argue that social science's critique of conservation ideas and management florins has improved both knowledge and understanding of climate change, understanding the management implications thereof, and has contributed to the development of a range of insightful tools and methods in support of adaptation efforts. We then proceed to outline ways in which the social sciences can be used to communicate uncertain climate risks to policy- and decision-makers, and an increasingly concerned public. Next, we look at emerging governance paradigms relevant to protected area management, including adaptive co-management, which may encourage dialogue amongst stakeholders working in complex, multi-jurisdictional land use planning contexts and enhance management flexibility in an uncertain future. We conclude by emphasizing that the ability of the conservation community to better understand and effectively adapt to climate change will require a more substantive effort to integrate natural and social science perspectives in research, policy and practice. Such adaptations will not be easy and imply a major paradigm shift in current parks and protected areas policy and planning, and the practice of climate change research.Proposals to form an insurance mechanism to support Small Island Developing States' adaptation to climate change were first raised in 1991. At that time, the Alliance of Small Island States proposed an international, state-based insurance framework to assist adaptation to sea level rise. After two decades, an effective agreement and institutional structure on climate change insurance is yet to be realised. However, in the last two years, insurance has resurfaced in negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. The 2013 United Nations climate conference meeting in Warsaw created a loss and damage mechanism and reinvigorated interest in risk transfer mechanisms to assist developing countries in adapting to climate change. This article argues that an existing regional international disaster risk-pooling facility, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, offers an instructive model for a regional risk transfer mechanism to further adaptation to climate change-related extreme weather events in the Pacific. The article concludes that there is a good case, on pragmatic grounds and also under existing burden sharing principles in global climate governance, for leading developed states to take a leadership role in developing regional risk-pooling initiatives in the Pacific.Global climate change is anticipated to have consequences on water resources and the environment both at global and local/regional levels. Efforts towards proper management of future water resources and resolving potential water-related conflicts require the formulation of appropriate techniques to downscale the output of global climate models (GCM) to local conditions for hydrologic prediction. The paper presents an integrated framework for modeling the impact of climate change on river runoff that combines methodology for downscaling climate change scenarios for a basin scale with a hydrological model to estimate the impact of climate change on a river runoff. The modeling framework uses long-term observations of meteorological and hydrological variables together with a climate change scenario to provide a projection of future flows for the specified time horizon. The framework is based on a spatial weather generator and a distributed rainfall-runoff model. Such a configuration enables a reflection of the uncertainty of future conditions by running multiple realizations of future conditions, and also take into account the spatial variability of hydrological properties in the catchment by maintaining the physical details at a given grid size. The performance of the framework was presented for the Kaczawa basin that is one of the main left bank tributaries of the Odra River -the second biggest river in Poland. The results show simulated changes of the future river flow regime caused by climatic changes for two time horizons: 2040 and 2080.There are worldwide approximately 4.3 million coffee (Coffea arabica) producing smallholders generating a large share of tropical developing countries' gross domestic product, notably in Central America. Their livelihoods and coffee production are facing major challenges due to projected climate change, requiring adaptation decisions that may range from changes in management practices to changes in crops or migration. Since management practices such as shade use and reforestation influence both climate vulnerability and carbon stocks in coffee, there may be synergies between climate change adaptation and mitigation that could make it advantageous to jointly pursue both objectives. In some cases, carbon accounting for mitigation actions might even be used to incentivize and subsidize adaptation actions. To assess potential synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation in smallholder coffee production systems, we quantified (i) the potential of changes in coffee production and processing practices as well as other livelihood activities to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, (ii) coffee farmers' climate change vulnerability and need for adaptation, including the possibility of carbon markets subsidizing adaptation. We worked with smallholder organic coffee farmers in Northern Nicaragua, using workshops, interviews, farm visits and the Cool Farm Tool software to calculate greenhouse gas balances of coffee farms. From the 12 activities found to be relevant for adaptation, two showed strong and five showed modest synergies with mitigation. Afforestation of degraded areas with coffee agroforestry systems and boundary tree plantings resulted in the highest synergies between adaptation and mitigation. Financing possibilities for joint adaptation-mitigation activities could arise through carbon offsetting, carbon insetting, and carbon footprint reductions. Non-monetary benefits such as technical assistance and capacity building could be effective in promoting such synergies at low transaction costs.Increasingly, various sectors are affected by climate change and need to find ways to adapt with much public guidance and support. This paper examines the adaptation process of a sector that started it some time ago - Swiss Alpine tourism. It identifies barriers that may be relevant for all sectors, all along the successive phases of the adaptation process. It additionally identifies the barriers which are most important and how these can be overcome. In order to do this we use an online survey directed to Swiss tourism stakeholders. Our results indicate that both economic and social feasibility barriers are important impediments to the adjustment process, whereas the acceptability among inhabitants and the willingness to act of stakeholders appear less critical. These barriers can be overcome and adaptation facilitated with more and especially better information about the regional consequences of climate change and feasible adaptation measures, by some top-down leadership and coordination, and by providing financial support.Activities are already underway within the development community to improve climate-change adaptation decision making. In these and related efforts, a focus on building resilience is an important objective, one that resonates with development objectives. Compiling and applying indicators will help development practitioners consider resilience in projects, plans, and decision making. Exactly how to do this is a challenging, but important task. Drawing on diverse methods in the literature, this paper identifies factors important to understanding the evolution of resilience over time and space, and suggests a framework for developing indicators that analysts might select as useful for particular places or sectors. The paper lays the groundwork for an assessment framework that can make future development and adaptation choices more resilient. The framework is intended as a starting point for wider discussions of factors that contribute to building resilience and thus provide the basis to develop a toolkit of metrics and approaches. These discussions will need to bridge research on climate-change adaptation and resilience with practice.Flood management decision-makers face significant challenges as the climate changes. The perceptions of those affected by floods are critical to the successful implementation of adaptation responses; risk perceptions are affected by how information is communicated and, in turn, perceptions influence expectations on flood risk managers to respond. The links between flood experience, risk perception, and responses by individual households were examined in the Hutt Valley, New Zealand, through a household survey, a workshop and interviews with local government practitioners. Two propositions were tested: (1) that flood experience can influence flood risk perceptions; and (2) that flood experience can stimulate increased risk reduction and adaptation actions where changing climate risk is likely. Perceptions of responsibility for flood management were also examined. The study found that previous flood experience contributes to heightened perception of risk, increased preparedness of households, greater willingness to make household-level changes, greater communication with councils, and more advocacy for spatial planning to complement existing structural protection. Flood-affected households had a stronger preference for central government and communities having flood risk responsibilities, in addition to local government. Those who lacked experience were more likely to be normalised to their prior benign experiences and thus optimistic about flood consequences. These results suggest that harnessing positive aspects of experience and communication of changing risk through engagement strategies could help shift the focus from citizens' expectation that governments will always provide protection, to a citizen-local government-central government dialogue about the changing character of flood risk and its implications, and build a 'risk conscious' society in which 'sharing and bearing' is considered desirable.The summer of 2013 lams the hottest on record in Eastern China. Severe extended heatwaves affected the most populous and economically developed part of China and caused substantial economic and societal impacts(1). The estimated direct economic losses from the accompanying drought alone total 59 billion RMB (ref. 2).: Summer (June-August) mean temperature in the region has increased by 0.82 degrees C since reliable observations were established in the 1950s, with the five hottest summers all occurring in the twenty-first century. It is challenging to attribute extreme events to causes(3-6). Nevertheless, quantifying the causes of such extreme summer heat and projecting its future likelihood is necessary to develop climate adaptation strategies'. estimate that anthropogenic influence has caused a more than 60-fold increase in the likelihood of the extreme warm 2013 summer since the early 1950s, and project that similarly hot summers will become even more frequent in the future, with 50% of summers being hotter than the 2013 summer in two decades even under moderate RCP4.5 emissions scenario. Without adaptation to reduce vulnerability to the effects of extreme heat, this would imply rapid increase in risks from extreme summer heat to Eastern China.Climate change is a stress requiring the integration of long-term risks into planning systems at local, regional, and national levels. In policy-making processes, however, climate change competes against other political priorities for funding resulting in the insufficient integration of long-term risks into adaptation strategies. This study reviews the development of policies in relation to insurance programs relevant to climate change-related risks in Hawaii and its county Kauai. The study shows that the integration of climate change adaptation into policy-making processes at different administrative levels is limited by limited disclosure and competing priorities, affecting insurance coverage and resulting in the increase of exposure of local communities to climate changerelated risks.About 35 % of the population of Nepal (1.45 M households) has been engaged in community forestry, depending on the activity for their livelihoods and community development. Climate change is threatening community forestry, for which impacts are likely to be greater than many other sectors, but little scientific information is available. Hence, local knowledge-as drawn on in this paper-is expected to beneficial for conservation planning and climate change adaptation strategies. The analysis is based on a focus group discussion and a survey of 31 members of Thotne Khola Community Forest User Group in Kaski, Nepal. Locally identified climate change effects on community forests and related causes include: coppiced Schima wallichii and Castanopsis indica is dying due to higher summer temperatures, increased pest infestations due to higher summer temperatures and delayed rainfall; more wilted trees due to higher summer temperatures; and more droughts and extended summers. A highly effected tree is Myrica esculenta, the fruit of which are ripening 10-15 days earlier due to higher temperatures in early winter, and have become less palatable and have accumulated more water due to more rainfall in early Chaitra (mid-March to mid-April). Climate change effects identified using local knowledge are aligned with related scientific observations available in published literature. It is concluded that drawing on local knowledge should be accepted as a legitimate approach for climate change adaptation strategies and forestry-related policy in the developing world, where science-based information availability is often lacking.Equity in adaptation to climate change is one of the central issues in scholarly and policy debates about improving climate policy and practice. Although equity issues have now captured the attention of diversity of actors and sectors at the international level, they have received little attention in climate change adaptation which is most visible at the local community level. This paper provides a case study of the City of Lake Macquarie in Australia to investigate how different communities perceive climate change, how they are coping with the effects of climate change and how they are likely to respond to changes in the future. The paper demonstrates the predominance of individual actions over collective action, and the low-level of influence that poorer and disadvantaged groups have over climate change policies, even when they are most impacted. The paper concludes that the known institutional barriers to climate change adaptation should be extended to include equity concerns. This extension recognizes the importance of equity in hampering physical aspects of climate change adaptation as, perversely, low income people are likely to be disadvantaged by the loss of property value. Rather than simply adding another barrier, we suggest that in these situations, equity considerations should focus on procedural equity to become part of the solution. Residents in vulnerable localities saw procedural equity, particularly in the transparency of decision-making, involvement in decision-making processes and the provision of clear and accurate information by local governments on climate change, as being the most important steps to enhance equity in climate change adaptation practice. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Indian cities are currently facing high challenges because of growing urbanization and the impacts of climate change. And there is a lack of understanding on using urban green spaces for climate adaptation and mitigation. This article highlights urban green spaces as a cost effective measure for climate adaptation. Following a review of global literature, it also recommends best practices in green space planning for the conservation of urban biodiversity, climate change adaptation, disaster risk management and enhancement of ecosystem services for Indian cities. The article proposes that there should be guidelines for urban planners and foresters on green space planning, by using integrated approaches that meet the social and ecological needs of the cities. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Pavement-watering has been studied since the 1990's and is currently considered a promising tool for urban heat island reduction and climate change adaptation. However, possible future water resource availability problems require that water consumption be optimized. Although pavement heat flux can be studied to improve pavement-watering methods (frequency and water consumption), these measurements are costly and require invasive construction work to install appropriate sensors in a dense urban environment. Therefore, we analyzed infrared camera measurements of pavement surface temperatures in search of alternative information relevant to this goal. Firstly, surface temperature reductions of up to 4 degrees C during shading and 13 degrees C during insolation were found. Secondly, the infrared camera successfully detected temperature spikes indicative of surface drying and can therefore be used to optimize the watering frequency. Measurements made every 5 min or less are recommended to minimize relevant data loss. Finally, if the water retaining capacity of the studied pavement is known, optimization of total water consumption is possible on the sole basis of surface temperature measurements. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is likely to affect how society will function in this century. Because climate change effects may be severe, a next step is to study not only the effects on natural systems, but also the effects on built infrastructure systems and, in response to anticipated effects, the adaptation of those systems. Studies that discuss interconnected infrastructures, society's backbones, in light of climate change are emerging. We apply a socio-technical systems perspective in order to gain insight into the effects of climate change on our infrastructure systems and possible adaption strategies for the coming decades. We use this perspective to collect and describe the literature on adaptation of infrastructures to climate change. We find that the analysed papers predominantly focus on specific geographic areas and that various types of impacts on and interdependencies of built socio-technical systems are recognized, not only for energy and transport, but also for water infrastructures. A missing step is the modelling of adaptation measures. Recent literature enables an exploration of strategies for adaptation, which should be expected in the coming years. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Anthropogenic climate change is progressively transforming the environment despite political and technological attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to tackle global warming. Here we propose that greater insight and understanding of the health-related impacts of climate change can be gained by integrating the positivist approaches used in public health and epidemiology, with holistic social science perspectives on health in which the concept of 'wellbeing' is more explicitly recognised. Such an approach enables us to acknowledge and explore a wide range of more subtle, yet important health-related outcomes of climate change. At the same time, incorporating notions of wellbeing enables recognition of both the health co-benefits and dis-benefits of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies across different population groups and geographical contexts. The paper recommends that future adaptation and mitigation policies seek to ensure that benefits are available for all since current evidence suggests that they are spatially and socially differentiated, and their accessibility is dependent on a range of contextually specific socio-cultural factors. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation (CCA) planning is an iterative process involving numerous actors and institutions at multiple levels of governance. This study investigates how cross-level differences may be a potential barrier or enabler of adaptation activities. It focuses on five potentially divisive issues: the level support for adaptation planning, adaptation goals, preferences among adaptation strategies, the desired role for the state vis a vis local leadership/control in supporting adaptation, and elements to include state level adaptation plans. The analysis is based on 138 questionnaires from coastal planners (local, state, and NGO) in Alaska, Florida, and Maryland. Findings reveal topics of agreement and disagreement in CCA planning across levels of management and study areas. State and NGO planners are significantly more likely than local planners to favor near-term planning activities and allocation of resources. This mismatch in timing is a potential barrier for adaptation. There were also significant differences in priorities motivating the development of plans among state, local, and NGO planners, though some differences may provide opportunities for the negotiation of planning priorities that have positive synergies. Although most planners indicated the state should play some role in local-level CCA planning, local planners desired a significantly lower level of involvement - a key threshold difference that represents the common and long-standing tension between state-level regulation and the desire for local control. The high proportion of all planners who have started to consider the development of CCA strategies and the desire for state-level adaptation plans to include support for risk and vulnerability assessments highlight potential synergies and opportunities to increase adaptive capacity and implement adaptation strategies. Few differences were detected among preferences for adaptation options. Analysis across multiple study areas provides additional insight into the stability and variation of cross-level differences. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article investigates the messages about climate change that ten nature protection organizations in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States communicate to their members and the public through their Internet sites, member magazines, and annual reports. Based on analysis of this content, we conclude that all the organizations address climate change, but to varying extents and in differing ways. All of the organizations note that climate change is a major problem, has a significant impact on nature, and should be addressed mainly via mitigation. With the partial exception of the Dutch groups, all also inform their members about domestic climate change politics. Other themes, including international dimensions of climate change, adaptation to climate change, consumer behavior, collaboration with and criticism of business, and efforts to pressure business or government received less emphasis overall. How much emphasis the organizations gave these themes was conditioned by their traditions, constituencies, national context, and international affiliations.The Low Impact Development (LID) approach has been implemented worldwide for managing stormwater quantity and quality within the context of land development, re-development, and retrofits within an existing development site. Since the inception of the concept in the 1990s, the application of LID has covered different land uses, spatial scales, and environmental objectives, leading to an expanded vision for applying and testing the LID approach. Recently, holistic methodologies and frameworks have linked land planning to key ecological landscapes larger than the previous site scale practice. This new emerging paradigm considers the watershed, subwatershed, and neighbourhood, in addition to the site scale, and consequently, recommends a landscape-based LID and broader Green Infrastructure (GI) solutions (Benedict and McMahon, 2002; Tzoulas et al, 2007; NRDC, 2011). As part of the holistic understanding of land planning and environmental features and functions within the intended spatial scale, LID and GI measures have been designed and constructed as retrofit measures (i.e., measures implemented within existing development) and as measures implemented within new development areas. Under this new paradigm, the land planning context is linked to environmental objectives to provide end points for environmental conservation and restoration within an ecological landscape such as watersheds, subwatersheds, and stream corridors. This paper presents three case studies for the design and construction of LID and GI measures within different land use contexts and for providing multiple environmental objectives.Due to increasing demands and competition for high quality groundwater resources in many parts of the world, there is an urgent need for efficient methods that shed light on the interplay between complex natural settings and anthropogenic impacts. Thus a new approach is introduced, that aims to identify and quantify the predominant processes or factors of influence that drive groundwater and lake water dynamics on a catchment scale. The approach involves a non-linear dimension reduction method called Isometric feature mapping (Isomap). This method is applied to time series of groundwater head and lake water level data from a complex geological setting in Northeastern Germany. Two factors explaining more than 95% of the observed spatial variations are identified: (1) the anthropogenic impact of a waterworks in the study area and (2) natural groundwater recharge with different degrees of dampening at the respective sites of observation. The approach enables a presumption-free assessment to be made of the existing geological conception in the catchment, leading to an extension of the conception. Previously unknown hydraulic connections between two aquifers are identified, and connections revealed between surface water bodies and groundwater. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Quantitative information on the response of global terrestrial net primary production (NPP) to climate change and increasing atmospheric CO2 is essential for climate change adaptation and mitigation in the 21st century. Using a process-based ecosystem model (the Dynamic Land Ecosystem Model, DLEM), we quantified the magnitude and spatiotemporal variations of contemporary (2000s) global NPP, and projected its potential responses to climate and CO2 changes in the 21st century under the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A2 and B1 of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We estimated a global terrestrial NPP of 54.6 (52.8-56.4) PgC yr(-1) as a result of multiple factors during 2000-2009. Climate change would either reduce global NPP (4.6%) under the A2 scenario or slightly enhance NPP (2.2%) under the B1 scenario during 2010-2099. In response to climate change, global NPP would first increase until surface air temperature increases by 1.5 degrees C (until the 2030s) and then level-off or decline after it increases by more than 1.5 degrees C (after the 2030s). This result supports the Copenhagen Accord Acknowledgement, which states that staying below 2 degrees C may not be sufficient and the need to potentially aim for staying below 1.5 degrees C. The CO2 fertilization effect would result in a 12%-13.9% increase in global NPP during the 21st century. The relative CO2 fertilization effect, i.e. change in NPP on per CO2 (ppm) bases, is projected to first increase quickly then level off in the 2070s and even decline by the end of the 2080s, possibly due to CO2 saturation and nutrient limitation. Terrestrial NPP responses to climate change and elevated atmospheric CO2 largely varied among biomes, with the largest increases in the tundra and boreal needleleaf deciduous forest. Compared to the low emission scenario (B1), the high emission scenario (A2) would lead to larger spatiotemporal variations in NPP, and more dramatic and counteracting impacts from climate and increasing atmospheric CO2.Businesses are expected to become engines for positive change, and mounting evidence indicates that corporate sustainability is a success factor for businesses around the globe. In this context, the 'business as usual' approach to running businesses with negative environmental consequences is not an option. Industrial ecology and sustainable business models offer solutions on how this transformation can take place. However, transformation of non-manufacturing industries in this respect has not been covered in the literature. The aim of this paper is therefore is to use scientific and industry literature and interview data from the Nordic non-life insurance sector to propose closed-loop insurance models. The new models allow insurance leaders to move away from running the insurance business in an old-fashioned linear way, and thus gain a better understanding of how the business contributes to sustainable development. The transformation of insurers' business models is an example of how business models of non-manufacturing industries can be reinvented to support sustainable economic growth by utilizing ideas from industrial ecology. The new business models proposed place insurance business models within the overall research in industrial ecology, thereby filling an evident gap in the literature by showing that the closed-loop concept applies to non-manufacturers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The implications of climate change and changing precipitation patterns need to be investigated to evaluate mitigation measures for source water protection. Potential solutions need first to be evaluated under present climate conditions to determine their utility as climate change adaptation strategies. An urban drainage network receiving both stormwater and wastewater was studied to evaluate potential solutions to reduce the impact of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) in a drinking water source. A detailed hydraulic model was applied to the drainage basin to model the implementation of best management practices at a drainage basin scale. The model was calibrated and validated with field data of CSO flows for seven events from a survey conducted in 2009 and 2010. Rain gardens were evaluated for their reduction of volumes of water entering the drainage network and of CSOs. Scenarios with different levels of implementation were considered and evaluated. Of the total impervious area within the basin directly connected to the sewer system, a maximum of 21% could be alternately directed towards rain gardens. The runoff reductions for the entire catchment ranged from 12.7% to 19.4% depending on the event considered. The maximum discharged volume reduction ranged from 13% to 62% and the maximum peak flow rate reduction ranged from 7% to 56%. Of concern is that in-sewer sediment resuspension is an important process to consider with regard to the efficacy of best management practices aimed at reducing extreme loads and concentrations. Rain gardens were less effective for large events, which are of greater importance for drinking water sources. These practices could increase peak instantaneous loads as a result of greater in-sewer resuspension during large events. Multiple interventions would be required to achieve the objectives of reducing the number, total volumes and peak contaminant loads of overflows upstream of drinking water intakes. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Pollen from Japanese cedar (sugi) and cypress (hinoki) trees is responsible for the growing prevalence of allergic rhinitis, especially pollinosis in Japan. Previous studies have suggested that air pollutants enhance the allergic response to pollen in susceptible individuals. We conducted a time-stratified case-crossover study to examine the potential modifying effects of PM2.5 and suspended particulate matter (SPM) on the association between pollen concentration and daily consultations for pollinosis. A total of 11,713 daily pollinosis cases (International Classification of Diseases, ICD-10, J30.1) from January to May, 2001-2011, were obtained from a clinic in Chiyoda, Tokyo. Daily pollen counts and the daily mean values of air pollutants (PM2.5, SPM, SO2, NO2, CO, and O-3) were collected from monitoring stations across Tokyo. The effects of pollen were stratified by the level of PM2.5 and SPM to examine the interaction effect of pollen and particulate pollutants. We found a statistically significant interaction between pollen concentration and PM2.5/SPM. On days with a high level of PM2.5 (>95th percentile), an interquartile increase in the mean cumulative pollen count (an average of 28 pollen grains per cm(2) during lag-days 0 to 5) corresponded to a 10.30% (95%CI: 8.48%-12.16%) increase in daily new pollinosis cases, compared to 8.04% (95%CI: 7.28%-8.81%) on days with a moderate level of PM2.5 (5th-95th percentile). This interaction persisted when different percentile cut-offs were used and was robust to the inclusion of other air pollutants. A similar interaction pattern was observed between SPM and pollen when a less extreme cut-off for SPM was used to stratify the effect of pollen. Our study showed the acute effect of pollen was greater when the concentration of air particulate pollutant, specifically PM2.5 and SPM, was higher. These findings are consistent with the notion that particulate air pollution may act as an adjuvant that promotes allergic disease (i.e. pollinosis). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Long-term modeling of agricultural land use is central in global scale assessments of climate change, food security, biodiversity, and climate adaptation and mitigation policies. We present a global-scale dynamic land use allocation model and show that it can reproduce the broad spatial features of the past 100 years of evolution of cropland and pastureland patterns. The modeling approach integrates economic theory, observed land use history, and data on both socioeconomic and biophysical determinants of land use change, and estimates relationships using long-term historical data, thereby making it suitable for long-term projections. The underlying economic motivation is maximization of expected profits by hypothesized landowners within each grid cell. The model predicts fractional land use for cropland and pastureland within each grid cell based on socioeconomic and biophysical driving factors that change with time. The model explicitly incorporates the following key features: (1) land use competition, (2) spatial heterogeneity in the nature of driving factors across geographic regions, (3) spatial heterogeneity in the relative importance of driving factors and previous land use patterns in determining land use allocation, and (4) spatial and temporal autocorrelation in land use patterns. We show that land use allocation approaches based solely on previous land use history (but disregarding the impact of driving factors), or those accounting for both land use history and driving factors by mechanistically fitting models for the spatial processes of land use change do not reproduce well long-term historical land use patterns. With an example application to the terrestrial carbon cycle, we show that such inaccuracies in land use allocation can translate into significant implications for global environmental assessments. The modeling approach and its evaluation provide an example that can be useful to the land use, Integrated Assessment, and the Earth system modeling communities. 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.We develop conceptual understanding of political commitment in two approaches to organising municipal responses to climate adaptation. The dedicated approach, based on direct political commitment to climate adaptation, implies political agenda setting, resource allocation, and clear policy objectives which are expected to facilitate rapid implementation due to political pressure and new structures. The mainstreaming approach is based on indirect political commitment: climate adaptation 'piggybacks' on the established commitment of policy domains in which it is integrated, and institutional entrepreneurs and framing are considered necessary to establish policy synergies and to mobilise actors and resources. An implication is that implementation may be erratic, as entrepreneurs have to pioneer within existing structures. The cases of two Dutch cities - Amsterdam and Rotterdam - help to illustrate and refine our propositions on the nature and implications of political commitment.Stakeholder engagement has become increasingly important in research programs focusing on climate change impact on ecosystem services. Communication between researchers and stakeholders, however, is often impaired by linguistic barriers, different priorities, and time constraints. This article examines the organizational aspects of science-stakeholder interactions, focusing on examples from the Swedish forestry sector. The study highlights the need articulated by the Swedish forestry sector for access to scientific knowledge, and we discuss how to present research findings in formats suitable to serve as decision support. Clear communication about common goals, expectations, resources, and time frames is needed in order to reduce the risk of stakeholder fatigue.From an engineering perspective, climate change can affect the energy sector in a number of ways, such as changes in the efficiency of power plants and increases in peak demand due to higher cooling demand in hotter summers. This article reviews how integrated assessment models have estimated the impacts of climate in the energy sector, including the modelling of adaptation. While most of the literature has considered changes in space heating and cooling demand, few models have studied the impacts on the supply side of the energy sector. The article also reviews the main findings of the related literature. A number of knowledge gaps and possible research priorities are identified. Modelling possible adaptation measures and assessing the effects of climate extremes on the energy infrastructure are topics that require further attention. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate change is likely to affect commercial forest and pasture land use and production activities. As such, behavioral responses that adapt to the new and evolving climatic conditions are also likely. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have an important role to play. IAMs are a unique class of models that integrate global biophysical and economic systems in order to explore issues with potentially significant interactions and feedbacks between the two systems, such as potential future impacts from climate change. Climate risks to forestry, pasture, and livestock are potential risks that need to be understood and weighed. Those risks are defined by both the nature of climate change as well as society's adaptive capacity. This paper reviews and characterizes climate change adaptation modeling of forestry and pasture land use by IAMs, as well as economic modeling. The paper discusses what needs to be modeled or considered, what we have learned from the literature available, and issues and opportunities for future research. The literature is sparse, and in an early stage, but has already yielded insights regarding adaptation's potential for reducing risks, and possibly generating societal benefits. Empirical modeling will be important going forward to identify adaptation options and provide an observation based grounding for JAM modeling. Relevant empirical modeling to date is limited but highlights that there are many potential facets to adaptation related to these sectors that need to be considered by IAMs in some form. Data deficiencies will also need to be overcome and IAM model development advanced. This paper is part of a research initiative, and special issue of this journal, to improve adaptation modeling in climate impacts research. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic impacts of natural disasters to inform both the modeling of potential future climate damages and climate adaptation policy related to extreme events. It covers papers that estimate the short- and/or long-run economic impacts of weather-related extreme events as well as studies identifying the determinants of the magnitude of those damages (including fatalities). The paper also reviews the small number of empirical papers on the potential extent of adaptation in response to changing extreme events. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Even with substantially increased attention to climate adaptation in developing countries in recent years, there are a number of important remaining research needs: better incorporating stakeholder input; using replicable methodologies to provide comparability across different settings; assuring that stakeholder input reflects the results of climate science, not simply perceptions; and effectively linking stakeholder input with the regional and national levels at which policy changes are made. This study reports the results of a methodology for identifying and prioritizing local, stakeholder-driven response options to climate change in agriculture. The approach is based on multi-criteria scoring methods previously applied to research planning and priority-setting in agricultural and natural resource management research, public health, and other areas. The methodology is a sequential approach built around needs assessments by local stakeholders; the incorporation of climate science results; the sharing of these results and climate adaption response options with stakeholders at a series of workshops; stakeholder priority-setting exercises using multi-criteria scoring; and validation with policymakers. The application is to three diverse agroecosystems in Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. Among the many findings is that, notwithstanding the wide diversity of agro-ecosystems, them are numerous similarities in the agricultural adaptation responses prioritized by local stakeholders. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The notion of polycentric governance has become increasingly popular in recent years. Such development may be attributed to expectations that polycentric governance systems have a higher capacity to deal with complex challenges arising from global and climate change. Most often, employed interpretations of polycentricity emphasize the presence of several independent centers of authority in a governance domain. A commonly neglected feature of polycentric governance, as introduced by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, is that this concept entails as well operation under one set of overall accepted rules. This paper analyzes the underlying feature of effective polycentric governance and makes a distinction between polycentric, fragmented, and centralized governance regimes. An empirical analysis of water governance systems in 27 national river basins using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) shows that a set of factors associated with polycentricity has the highest explanatory power for high performance regarding climate change adaptation. Factors associated with fragmented and centralized regimes can be identified for paths leading to low performance. Furthermore, the analysis identifies the effectiveness of formal institutions as important condition, in particular for paths leading toward low performance. The paper elaborates on these findings and discusses as well the potential of fsQCA in such comparative analyses. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is clear that we need a climate adaptation policy agenda that is sensitive to the special political, social, and ecological circumstances of highly vulnerable regions, most of which are located in the African Sahel. While the existing literature on climate variability and climate change makes important theoretical contributions on development, vulnerability, and adaptation more broadly, with few exceptions it has not acknowledged that contradictions arise in addressing insecurities via the implementation of development, vulnerability reduction, and adaptation programs. An empirical assessment of how such contradictions are both driven by and negotiated in such programs is particularly useful if we are to design a more robust and grounded adaptation agenda. In this article, we focus on the paradigmatic case of Gambella in Ethiopia, a region that lies near the bottom of many development indices, but has also been the site for recent efforts to reduce climate vulnerability through village and agricultural modernization programs. Drawing on recent research in the region and on these programs, we demonstrate how the politics of development and adaptation lead to differential and contradictory impacts on four arenas of human security (a) elements of water security, (b) temporal aspects of water security and livelihoods security, (c) personal, state and community security, and (d) differentiated geographies economic security which privilege the national and international scale. The result of this complex political economy is that responses have served to increase rather than decrease tensions in the region. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation is a complex, dynamic, and sometimes unequal process. Stemming from social ecological systems theories of climate change adaptation and adaptive capacity, this case study introduces the concept of 'divergent' adaptation. Adaptation is divergent when one user or group's adaptation causes a subsequent reduction in another user or group's adaptive capacity in the same ecosystem. Using the example of pastoral and agricultural groups in northern and southern rainfall zones of Niger, this study illustrates the concept of divergent adaptation by identifying changes to the adaptive capacity of users who are currently engaged in conflicts over access to natural resources. Similar to other studies, we find that expansion of farmland and the consequent loss of pastoral space are restricting pastoral adaptation. Divergent adaptations favoring agricultural livelihoods include cultivating near or around pastoral wells or within pastoral corridors, both of which limit the mobility and entitlements of pastoralists. Institutions rarely secure pastoral routes and access to water points, a problem that is compounded by conflicting modes of governance, low accountability, and corruption. The case study illustrates the need to enhance the adaptive capacity of multiple user groups to reduce conflict, enhance human security, and promote overall resilience. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation governance is in flux. Adaptation policies are being adopted by governments at a rapid pace, particularly in Europe. In the period 2005-2010, the total number of recorded adaptation policy measures in the EU grew by some 635%. Despite the plethora of work on adaptation governance, few if any empirical studies have been conducted that explore the driving forces behind the rapid adoption and diffusion of adaptation policies. Working within the theoretical framework of national policy innovation (see Jordan and Huitema, 2014a,b), we draw on a uniquely systematic database of national climate polices to develop a set of hypotheses on the drivers and barriers surrounding the adoption and diffusion of climate change adaptation policies across 29 European countries. Using an internal/external model we postulate that adaptation is largely being driven by internal factors. Additionally, we look to the possible effects of this policy adoption and diffusion to see if adaptation is emerging into a new and distinct policy field. What we find is that indeed it could be in a handful of countries. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is expected to have severe consequences on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the world, but its effects will not be evenly distributed. Africa is thought to be especially vulnerable, given both high exposure to climate change and relatively low community resilience and governance capabilities. With climate change adaptation looming ever larger as an important policy area, understanding where climate vulnerabilities are located therefore has immense practical significance. This article details the methodological refinements made to an existing model of climate security vulnerability, the rationale for the approach, and the findings. The model introduces more fine-grained data and new methods of normalizing the data to retain more granularity, as well as other changes. The vulnerability maps show the Horn of Africa (Somalia in particular), South Sudan, the eastern coasts of Madagascar and Mozambique, northern Nigeria and southern Mali, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Guinea, as well as pockets along rivers and coasts in Egypt and Nigeria to be the most vulnerable. For validation, the model is also compared to maps of climate-related disaster counts, fatalities, and affected populations derived from the EM-DAT International Disaster database. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The literature on the costing of mitigation measures for reducing impacts of natural hazards is rather fragmented. This paper provides a concise overview of the current state of knowledge in Europe on the costing of mitigation measures for the reduction of natural hazard risks (droughts, floods, storms and induced coastal hazards as well as alpine hazards) and identifies knowledge gaps and related research recommendations. Furthermore, it provides a taxonomy of related mitigation options, classifying them into nine categories: (1) management plans, land-use planning, and climate adaptation; (2) hazard modification; (3) infrastructure; (4) mitigation measures (stricto sensu); (5) communication in advance of events; (6) monitoring and early warning systems; (7) emergency response and evacuation; (8) financial incentives; and (9) risk transfer (including insurance). It is found that the costing of mitigation measures in European and in other countries has almost exclusively focused on estimating direct costs. A cost assessment framework that addresses a range of costs, possibly informed by multiple stakeholders, would provide more accurate estimates and could provide better guidance to decision makers. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.The intensity of tropical cyclones and severe storms is likely to increase due to climate change. Brisbane and the northeast coast of Queensland are regions where design wind specifications may be inadequate under either current or likely future climate conditions. An appropriate adaptation strategy may be one that increases wind classifications for new houses, which leads to a reduced vulnerability of new construction. The present paper will assess the damage risks, adaptation costs, and cost-effectiveness of these adaptation measures for residential construction in Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, and South East Queensland, assuming time-dependent changes in the frequency and intensity of cyclonic and noncyclonic winds to 2100. Loss functions are also developed for direct and indirect losses. It was found that increasing design wind loads for new houses in Brisbane and South East Queensland will lead to a net benefit [net present value (NPV)] of up to $10.5 billion by 2100, assuming a discount rate of 4%, which includes approximately 95% of a direct benefit and 5% of an indirect benefit. The benefits are highest for Brisbane due to its large population and the high vulnerability of existing residential construction, and have a 90-100% likelihood of achieving a net benefit by 2100. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.Climate change will likely have impacts on disease vector distribution. Posing a significant health threat in the 21st century, risk of tick-borne diseases may increase with higher annual mean temperatures and changes in precipitation. We modeled the current and future potential distribution of the Nodes ricinus tick species in Europe. The Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Prediction (GARP) was utilized to predict potential distributions of I. ricinus based on current (1990-2010 averages) and future (2040-2060 averages) environmental variables. A ten model best subset was created out of a possible 200 models based on omission and commission criteria. Our results show that under the A2 climate change scenario the potential habitat range for the I ricinus tick in Europe will expand into higher elevations and latitudes (e.g., Scandinavia, the Baltics, and Belarus), while contracting in other areas (e.g, Alps, Pyrenees, interior Italy, and northwestern Poland). Overall, a potential habitat expansion of 3.8% in all of Europe is possible. Our results may be used to inform climate change adaptation efforts in Europe. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedThe coming agenda for the European Common Agricultural Policy includes more incentives for the environmental compliance of farmer's activities. This will be particularly important in the case of water risk management in Mediterranean countries. Among the new challenges is the need to evaluate some of the instruments necessary to comply with the Water Framework Directive requirements that emphasize the management of water demand to achieve the environmental targets. Here we analyze the implications of changing water rights as a policy response to these challenges. We analyze two important aspects of the decision: (i) the effects on the crop productivity and efficiency and (ii) the effects on the rural income distribution. We provide the empirical estimations for the marginal effects on the two considered aspects. First, we calculate a stochastic frontier production function for five representative crops using historical data to estimate technical efficiency. Second, we use a decomposition of the Gini coefficient to estimate the impact of irrigation rights changes on yield disparity. In our estimates, we consider both bio-physical and socio-economic aspects to conclude that there are long term implications on both efficiency and social disparities. We find disparities in the adaptation strategies depending on the crop and the region analyzed.The hydrolysis reaction rates of p-nitrophenyl anthranilate (p-NPA) have been surveyed in aqueous buffer solutions mixed with acetonitrile (MeCN) containing various salts at 50 +/- 0.1 degrees C. Increase in pH of the buffer solution from 8.50 to 10.0 results in an increase of the hydrolysis rate constant [log (k/s(-1))] in all solutions mixed with 0-75% (v/v) MeCN. The log (k/s(-1)) values significantly decelerate as MeCN contents increase to about 50% (v/v). With further increment of MeCN contents, however, the reversal increases in log (k/s(-1)) are observed. All the added salts significantly influence the hydrolysis rate in solutions containing the borate buffer of pH = 9.18. Alkali metal perchlorates (LiClO4 and NaClO4) cause the deceleration with increasing salt concentration. The presence of as low as 0.1 mol dm(-3) of NaN3 causes a three-fold acceleration, compared to the rate without the salt in no MeCN media. The rate acceleration by NaN3 becomes gradually weaker as the MeCN contents increase. Contrastingly, the rate acceleration by Et4NBr is enhanced with increasing MeCN contents. In 50% (v/v) MeCN solution, the acceleration in log (k/s(-1)) caused by added salts is in the order of NaN3 > (n-Bu)(4)NBr similar to Et4NBr > Et4NCl. The Arrhenius plots in the 50% (v/v) MeCN media without salts and with 0.20 mol dm(-3) of LiClO4, NaN3 and Et4NBr salts give the good linearity of high activation energy values in the temperature range of 35 to 60 +/- 0.1 degrees C, suggesting that the hydrolysis reactions are just of temperature dependence. The whole results have been discussed in terms of changes in the water structure and/or activities of H2O and OH- in the presence of both the added organic solvent and salts, and also in terms of the nucleophilicity of anions from the added salts in the "modified" media. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Development of extension and outreach that effectively engage farmers in climate change adaptation and/or mitigation activities can be informed by an improved understanding of farmers' perspectives on climate change and related impacts. This research employed latent class analysis (LCA) to analyze data from a survey of 4,778 farmers from 11 US Corn Belt states. The research focused on two related research questions: (1) to what degree do farmers differ on key measures of beliefs about climate change, experience with extreme weather, perceived risks to agriculture, efficacy, and level of support for public and private adaptive and mitigative action; and (2) are there potential areas of common ground among farmers? Results indicate that farmers have highly heterogeneous perspectives, and six distinct classes of farmers are identified. We label these as the following: the concerned (14%), the uneasy (25%), the uncertain (25%), the unconcerned (13%), the confident (18%), and the detached (5%). These groups of farmers differ primarily in terms of beliefs about climate change, the degree to which they had experienced extreme weather, and risk perceptions. Despite substantial differences on these variables, areas of similarity were discerned on variables measuring farmers' (1) confidence that they will be able to deal with increases in weather variability and (2) support for public and private efforts to help farmers adapt to increased weather variability. These results can inform segmented approaches to outreach that target subpopulations of farmers as well as broader engagement strategies that would reach wider populations. Further, findings suggest that strategies with specific reference to climate change might be most effective in engaging the subpopulations of farmers who believe that climate change is occurring and a threat, but that use of less charged terms such as weather variability would likely be more effective with a broader range of farmers. Outreach efforts that (1) appeal to farmers' problem solving capacity and (2) employ terms such as "weather variability" instead of more charged terms such as "climate change" are more likely to be effective with a wider farmer audience.US national wildlife refuges have recent, detailed management plans illustrating the state of planning for climate-change adaptation in protected areas. Discussion of and prescriptions for addressing climate change increased in refuge plans between 2005 and 2010 but decreased in 2011. The plans respond to some climate-change impacts on biodiversity and call for monitoring but with little clarity regarding how to act on monitoring results and scant attention to future changes in phenology and community composition. The threats posed by sea-level rise generated the best-developed plan prescriptions. Examples of excellent prescriptions provide models for future planning. Some decision-support tools, such as vulnerability assessments, will improve future planning as they become more available. However, research better targeted at management information gaps is also needed. Region-level coordination, such as through landscape conservation design, offers opportunities for enlarging conservation footprints and improving information generation and sharing.This study was initiated to analyze the effect of increased snow cover on plant photosynthesis in subarctic mires underlain by permafrost. Snow fences were used to increase the accumulation of snow on a subarctic permafrost mire in northern Sweden. By measuring reflected photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) the effect of snow thickness and associated delay of the start of the growing season was assessed in terms of absorbed PAR and estimated gross primary production (GPP). Six plots experienced increased snow accumulation and six plots were untreated. Incoming and reflected PAR was logged hourly from August 2010 to October 2013. In 2010 PAR measurements were coupled with flux chamber measurements to assess GPP and light use efficiency of the plots. The increased snow thickness prolonged the duration of the snow cover in spring. The delay of the growing season start in the treated plots was 18 days in 2011, 3 days in 2012 and 22 days in 2013. Results show higher PAR absorption, together with almost 35 % higher light use efficiency, in treated plots compared to untreated plots. Estimations of GPP suggest that the loss in early season photosynthesis, due to the shortening of the growing season in the treatment plots, is well compensated for by the increased absorption of PAR and higher light use efficiency throughout the whole growing seasons. This compensation is likely to be explained by increased soil moisture and nutrients together with a shift in vegetation composition associated with the accelerated permafrost thaw in the treatment plots.Typhoons can cause substantial sea surface cooling (typically 2-4 A degrees C), which is usually biased to the right side of the storm track. Under influence of the complex bathymetry of the southern Taiwan Strait (TS), two types of sea surface temperature (SST) response, cooling and warming, each associated with a different type of typhoon track were identified using satellite and mooring observations. When a typhoon moved westward (or northwestward) and passed through the TS (track A), the SST cooling in the TS was biased toward the left of the storm track. Numerical model results indicated that in track A, strong wind stress accelerates the flow east of the Taiwan Banks and drove the bottom flow to uplift due to the topography. Moreover, both wind stress and wind stress curl enhanced the Luzon loop. After the typhoon passed, the mean circulation was modified around strong cooling in the southern TS, causing more South China Sea surface water to be distributed to the Kuroshio region. However, when a typhoon moved westward (or northwestward) and passed south of the TS, SST warming was induced in the southern TS (track B). The model results indicated that when the typhoon passed to the south of the TS, the typhoon-induced horizontal divergent flow travelled to the north, where it encountered the shallower shelf of the TS that was confined to the water, causing warm water transported into this area to accumulate and downwelling to occur. This can be regarded as redistributing the heat content in the shelf area. After the typhoon, the thickened mixed layer resulting from downwelling prevented the formation of near-inertial waves and reduced the vertical mixing.There is increasing interest to combine adaptation and mitigation measures that provide win-win solutions to climate change. Agroforestry systems offer compelling synergies between adaptation and mitigation. This article reviews the empirical evidence from various studies on how trees and agroforestry systems enhance smallholders' capacity to adapt to climate risks. Agroforestry systems improve resilience of smallholder farmers through more efficient water utilization, improved microclimate, enhanced soil productivity and nutrient cycling, control of pests and diseases, improved farm productivity, and diversified and increased farm income while at the same time sequestering carbon. Although these seems very promising, tradeoffs may arise both at the farm and landscape scales. (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Assisted colonization, the intentional movement of species beyond their native range, has been proposed as a climate change adaptation tool for biodiversity conservation. The risks and benefits of its implementation are still being debated but already the climate is changing, species are moving and the pressure on at-risk species must therefore be increasing. However, instances where moving species beyond their natural range purely for conservation purposes due to climate change are few, and the opportunity for science to inform practice is limited. Here we survey active participants in flora translocations and/or flora conservation in Australia in order to investigate the gap between theoretical and conceptual ideas about assisted colonization and to gauge preparedness for its implementation. We found that actions that mitigate proximal threats are preferred over those that move species beyond their current range. A lack of knowledge of species biology and ecology is an impediment to the acceptance of assisted colonization. In addition, prohibitive costs and the potential increased risk of the spread of diseases, pests and/or pathogens are viewed as more important obstacles of successful assisted colonization than potential for invasion at the recipient site. Full approval from all stakeholders at the source and recipient sites was found to be the most important factor for the successful assisted colonization of flora.In 2006, a requirement came into effect for World Heritage Site management plans to include an assessment of the possible impact of climate change on the heritage site, and to include mitigation strategies as appropriate. This paper focuses on progress in the UK towards developing and implementing climate-change adaptation policies within these plans. Research undertaken to examine this complex area of work has identified key challenges faced by site managers when including and subsequently implementing climate-change policies. Information was collected through a questionnaire survey of all UK World Heritage Sites, reviews of relevant documents, and in-depth interviews with a wide range of professionals. The study found that plans are gradually being updated to include climate-change considerations, however, this is not always straightforward and plan implementation is proving challenging. Concerns about data reliability and the contested nature of scientific data on climate change are widespread, and there is a perceived lack of the necessary information to make fully informed decisions. Resource constraints, a need for more specialist skills and guidance, and differing levels of interest and motivation in the issue are other challenges.Up to one-fifth of all irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin sold water entitlements to the Australian Commonwealth in the period from the beginning of 2008 to the start of 2012. The sale of water entitlements has positive and negative consequences for irrigators and rural communities. This study focuses specifically on these potential on-farm consequences, by providing an overview of the reasons irrigators sell water, examining fluctuations in water use by irrigators overtime, and modelling the delayed impact of water sales in the previous five years on net farm income. It suggests that to date, many irrigators who sold water to the Commonwealth and continued farming in the southern Murray-Darling Basin have predominately sold their surplus and buffer water (water not used in production). There is only weak to no significant evidence from the regression modelling to suggest that there is a delayed negative impact on net farm income from selling water entitlements, which supports the notion that the reduction in farm production has been offset by many irrigators using water sales proceeds to reduce debt (and hence interest payments), restructure and reinvest on farm. However, given the advent of climate change and future water scarcity, all irrigators, but particularly for some of those who have sold part of their water entitlements, will need to plan for further incremental adaptation, water management or on-farm changes, or risk facing regular water shortages. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Downscaled rainfall projections from climate models are essential for many meteorological and hydrological applications. The technique presented utilizes an approach that efficiently parameterizes spatiotemporal dynamic models in terms of the close association between mean sea level pressure patterns and rainfall during winter over south-west Western Australia by means of Bayesian hierarchical modelling. This approach allows us to understand characteristics of the spatiotemporal variability of the mean sea level pressure patterns and the associated rainfall patterns. An application is presented to show the effectiveness of the technique to reconstruct present day rainfall and to predict future rainfall.Due to its unique geographic environment, Taiwan is prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons that can cause heavy casualties and huge property losses. The effects of global warming have also increased extreme climate events and the frequency and severity of natural disasters. Therefore, disaster prevention/mitigation and response is not only an important government policy issue, but also an important daily life issue. To increase the awareness of natural disasters and the importance of community safety, the Taiwan government actively promotes a community disaster prevention system. However, to avoid over-reliance on the government taskforce, the spontaneous participation and cooperation within communities can complete specific disaster preparedness and reinforce local resources for disaster prevention and response. Although the concept of disaster-resilient community (DRC) has been shaped for a long period of time, community residents cannot keep pace with the government, which may decrease the effectiveness of DRC development. Therefore, theoretical and practical studies of urban DRC become imperative. This qualitative case study used the participant observation method to collect relevant empirical data by performing action research with self-reflection. Particularly, this article is supplemented by service work experience of the researchers in DRC promotion. A qualitative analysis of case communities during training in disaster preparedness revealed the critical success factors (CSFs) affecting the level of community-based disaster prevention and protection works. Based on the literature and empirical data, the CSFs are discussed through three spindle constructs: coping strategy, operations management, and organizational behavior. Finally, the conclusions and suggestions are given for promoting sustainable DRC.Considerable progress has been claimed regarding the establishment of economic reforms in the water sector in Australia, including the development of cost-reflective pricing for water users. This is evidenced by the highly developed status of water markets, especially in agricultural areas, and the substantive efforts that have been made to measure and include the cost of capital and its replacement in charges paid by water users. However, recent government responses to secure additional water for environmental purposes have given rise to a spate of public investments in irrigation infrastructure arguably reminiscent of bygone eras of policy (see, for example, Musgrave, 2008). A critically important, but under-investigated feature of this latest policy response, is that irrigators are subsequently not obliged to pay water prices that reflect the cost of publicly funded irrigation infrastructure. This paper investigates the processes for establishing water charges that are generally cost reflective and contrasts these with the political influences that can markedly distort best practice water pricing. An assessment framework that draws from best practice pricing principles embodied in the National Water Initiative, the Water Industry Regulatory Order and the Victorian Essential Services Commission Act (2001) is used as a framework to consider areas of improvement. Whilst special attention is given to arrangements in Victoria, Australia, we argue that caution about the risks of political interference in water pricing in irrigation should be broadly understood. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bodies located in outdoor environments are radiatively heated in the daytime and cooled at night. Convective heat transfer is subsequently activated between the body surface and the surrounding air. To investigate these heat-exchange processes, we developed a new apparatus, referred to as a "polyethylene chamber", for use in physical model experiments. The chamber is a 1.51-m-long tube with the ends serving as the air inlet and outlet, and is ventilated in the longitudinal direction by using an exhaust fan. The measurement section of the chamber is open but otherwise the device is covered with 0.02-mm-thick polyethylene film. Because such thin polyethylene film transmits approximately 85 % of both shortwave and longwave radiation, the model surface in the chamber is exposed to a radiation level almost equivalent to the outdoor radiation level. For example, at night the surface of the model is cooled by radiation, and subsequently, the air inside the chamber is cooled by the surface. Consequently, the outlet air temperature becomes lower than the inlet air temperature. The use of this temperature difference between the air inlet and outlet, together with other heat balance components, is a unique approach to the chamber technique for evaluating the heat exchange rate at a model's surface. This report describes the design and heat balance of the chamber, and compares the heat-balance-based approach with another approach based on the radiation-convection balance on the model surface. To demonstrate the performance of the polyethylene chamber, two chambers were exposed to outdoor radiation on a clear night; one contained a leaf model. Air and surface temperatures were measured and the convective heat flux at the surfaces of the model and floor surface were calculated from the heat balance components of the chambers by assuming steady-state heat transfer. The fluxes agreed closely with those obtained from the radiation-convection balance at the model or floor surface. The results also clearly showed that the air flowing in the polyethylene chamber was cooled more efficiently when the model surface was installed in the chamber, even though the model surface temperature was high.This paper considers the extent and usefulness of the existing empirical literature on water supply, demand, and adaptation to climate change for incorporation into integrated assessment modeling efforts. We review the existing literature on the likely economic impacts of climate change, acting through water supply and demand effects in specific river basins, and the ability of adaptation to mitigate those impacts. Since adaptive responses will be implemented largely by local, regional, and national water management institutions, we also review what is known about the responses of water users to water prices, non-price water conservation policies, water trading, investment in and operations of storage and conveyance infrastructure, and transboundary water allocation mechanisms the set of policy levers typically available to water managers at various geographic scales. Remaining gaps in the empirical economic literature on these topics are identified. The paper also describes the potential contributions of linking existing and new empirical research on water resource adaptation with IAMs. The importance of further empirical economic and political-economic research on the role of water management institutions in adaptation, or maladaptation, to climate change emerges as an important theme. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper we discuss the scope of the adaptation challenge facing world agriculture in the coming decades. Due to rising temperatures throughout the tropics, pressures for adaptation will be greatest in some of the poorest parts of the world where the adaptive capacity is least abundant. We discuss both autonomous (market driven) and planned adaptations, distinguishing: (a) those that can be undertaken with existing technology, (b) those that involve development of new technologies, and (c) those that involve institutional/market and policy reforms. The paper then proceeds to identify which of these adaptations are currently modeled in integrated assessment studies and related analyses at global scale. This, in turn, gives rise to recommendations about how these models should be modified in order to more effectively capture climate change adaptation in the farm and food sector. In general, we find that existing integrated assessment models are better suited to analyzing adaptation by relatively well-endowed producers operating in market-integrated, developed countries. They likely understate climate impacts on agriculture in developing countries, while overstating the potential adaptations. This is troubling, since the need for adaptation will be greatest amongst the lower income producers in the poorest tropical countries. This is also where policies and public investments are likely to have the highest payoff. We conclude with a discussion of opportunities for improving the empirical foundations of integrated assessment modeling with an emphasis on the poorest countries. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Public health is committed to evidence-based practice, yet there has been minimal discussion of how to apply an evidence-based practice framework to climate change adaptation. Objectives: Our goal was to review the literature on evidence-based public health (EBPH), to determine whether it can be applied to climate change adaptation, and to consider how emphasizing evidence-based practice may influence research and practice decisions related to public health adaptation to climate change. Methods: We conducted a substantive review of EBPH, identified a consensus EBPH framework, and modified it to support an EBPH approach to climate change adaptation. We applied the framework to an example and considered implications for stakeholders. Discussion: A modified EBPH framework can accommodate the wide range of exposures, outcomes, and modes of inquiry associated with climate change adaptation and the variety of settings in which adaptation activities will be pursued. Several factors currently limit application of the framework, including a lack of higher-level evidence of intervention efficacy and a lack of guidelines for reporting climate change health impact projections. To enhance the evidence base, there must be increased attention to designing, evaluating, and reporting adaptation interventions; standardized health impact projection reporting; and increased attention to knowledge translation. This approach has implications for funders, researchers, journal editors, practitioners, and policy makers. Conclusions: The current approach to EBPH can, with modifications, support climate change adaptation activities, but there is little evidence regarding interventions and knowledge translation, and guidelines for projecting health impacts are lacking. Realizing the goal of an evidence-based approach will require systematic, coordinated efforts among various stakeholders.Outcome and context-focused approaches to climate change adaptation dominate the relevant literature. Taking into account values and perceptions of affected actors and decision-makers is a fundamental and necessary prerequisite for a more effective, legitimate and fair climate policy and has not been given the necessary consideration. This paper uses Q methodology to explore such values in the context of climate change in the Ebro Delta, in Catalonia. The delta is an area highly vulnerable to climate change, mainly because of its topography, but also as a result of human intervention. The study identifies five discourses on vulnerability and adaptation held by delta inhabitants and decision-makers. Social justice and security comprise shared values behind arguments; however, discourses differ in their approaches concerning the proper scale for applying these values with adaptation policy. Our results serve to improve policy dialogue and suggest that the adaptation policy agenda should focus on pursuing consensus over the crucial issue of scale. Our use of Q methodology to advance the incipient literature on value-based climate change vulnerability and adaptation is innovative and suggests that the approach has a capacity to contribute to advancing deliberative environmental decision-making on adaptation. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentA method to prepare a set of four climate scenarios for the Netherlands is presented. These scenarios for climate change in 2050 and 2085 (compared to present-day) are intended for general use in climate change adaptation in the Netherlands. An ensemble of eight simulations with the global model EC-Earth and the regional climate model RACMO2 (run at 12 km resolution) is used. For each scenario time horizon, two target values of the global mean temperature rise are chosen based on the spread in the CMIP5 simulations. Next, the corresponding time periods in the EC-Earth/RACMO2 simulations are selected in which these target values of the global temperature rise are reached. The model output for these periods is then resampled using blocks of 5 yr periods. The rationale of resampling is that natural variations in the EC-Earth/RACMO2 ensemble are used to represent (part of the) uncertainty in the CMIP5 projections. Samples are then chosen with the aim of reconstructing the spread in seasonal temperature and precipitation changes in CMIP5 for the Netherlands. These selected samples form the basis of the scenarios. The resulting four scenarios represent 50-80% of the CMIP5 spread for summer and winter changes in seasonal means as well as a limited number of monthly statistics (warm, cold, wet and dry months). The strong point of the method-also in relation to the previous set of the climate scenarios for the Netherlands issued in 2006-is that it preserves nearly all physical inter-variable consistencies as they exist in the original model output in both space and time.This paper discusses how climatic-hydrological and socio-political developments will affect water allocation in the Syr Darya river basin and which adaptation measures will be needed to cope with changing water resources. In view of the geo-political complexity, climate-driven changes in water availability are of particular importance in this region. Water shortages during summer will become more frequent as precipitation is expected to further decrease and glacial meltwater releases will decrease in the long-term due to reduced glacier volume. Being the main valve to the entire Syr Darya river system, the Toktogul reservoir in Kyrgyzstan could take over, at least partly, the role of glaciers as seasonal water redistributors, thus allowing the generation of energy in winter -benefiting upstream countries - and irrigation for large-scale agriculture in summer-benefiting downstream countries. To date, however, there is no regional consensus on a balanced reservoir management, which currently favours irrigation according to past Soviet priorities. Moreover, the perception of water as a 'national concern' in Central Asia discourages efforts towards cooperation between states at the regional level. So far, climate change adaptation has focused on technical rather than institutional solutions. We suggest that policy-relevant adaptation measures should include consistent data collection and dissemination, cross-sectoral collaboration, promotion of national responsibility and initiative, and agreeing on a regional strategy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Unprecedented global challenges demand wide-reaching societal modification to ensure life support functions and human well-being. In the absence of adequate international responses to climate change and the need for place-based adaptation, local governments have a pivotal role in fostering sustainability transitions. In this context, the importance of ecosystem-based adaptation is increasingly recognized as a multi-benefit approach that utilizes ecosystem services to harmonize human-environment systems. Although research advocates the mainstreaming of ecosystem-based adaptation to advance sustainable planning, the pathways for its systematic implementation are missing and it remains unclear how local authorities can best integrate this new approach into their core work. The purpose of this study is to increase knowledge of the potential ways to mainstream ecosystem-based adaptation into municipal planning. We investigate four coastal municipalities in southern Sweden (Malmo, Helsingborg, Lomma and Kristianstad) and examine, based on vertical and horizontal integration processes, the key characteristics of existing mainstreaming strategies. Results show that, although ecosystem service planning and climate change adaptation planning together establish the conceptual foundation for ecosystem-based adaptation, related activities are often implemented separately and are rarely comprehensive. We illustrate how combined mainstreaming strategies can reinforce and complement each other and how strong leadership in the integration of processes has the ability to compensate for a lack of guidance or supporting legislation from higher decision-making levels. Finally, we conclude that systemic mainstreaming of sustainability issues is a promising avenue for initiating and promoting sustainability transitions and has the potential to address the criticism that other mainstreaming topics have faced. On this basis, we specify the core characteristics necessary to ensure its effective and meaningful application. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Resilient ecosystems are vital to human well-being and are increasingly recognised as critical to supporting communities' efforts to adapt to climate change. The governing bodies of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are encouraging parties to adopt 'ecosystem-based adaptation' (EbA) approaches, which utilise biodiversity and ecosystem services to support climate change adaptation. These approaches are wide ranging and include mangrove restoration to buffer against storm surges; watershed management to protect against droughts and floods; rangeland management to prevent desertification; and sustainable management of fisheries and forests to ensure food security. This article examines the emergence of EbA in international legal frameworks for climate change and biodiversity and progress towards implementation. The EbA concept is potentially powerful in catalysing international and national commitments to act due to its key defining features of a focus on societal adaptation rather than ecocentricism, and a targeting of the immediate adaptation needs of the poorest and most vulnerable communities who are adversely affected by climate change. However, examination of national policy and practice in two least developed countries, Samoa and Cambodia, reveals that institutional and legal barriers at national level can pose significant challenges to operationalising EbA to achieve adaptation objectives.The specific interactions between alkaline earth metal (Mg2+, Ca2+, or Ba2+) and p-toluenesulfonate (L-), 1,5-naphthalenedisulfonate (L2-), or 1,3,6-naphthalenetrisulfonate (L3-) ions (from the tetraethylammonium salt of L-, L2-, or L3-) have been examined by means of UV-visible spectroscopy in primary alcohols (from methanol to hexanol) as well as in the binary acetonitrile-alcohols (MeCN-MeOH, MeCN-EtOH), ethanol-methanol (EtOH-MeOH) and methanol-water (MeOH-H2O) solvents. The precipitation of non-charged species (e.g. ML0) and the successive re-dissolution of the precipitates, with increasing concentration of M(ClO4)(2), have revealed the formation of cationic charged species or "reverse coordinated" species, M2L2+, even in the protic media as well as in the aprotic solvent MeCN. The solubility products (K-sp) and the "reverse coordination" constants (2M(2+) + L2- reversible arrow M2L2+, K2(-2) = [M2L2+] / [M2+](2)[L2-] have been evaluated. In ethanol, both phenomena of the precipitation of ML and the successive re-dissolution to produce M2L2+ are observed for Ca2+ or Ba2+, but not for Mg2+. In butanol, the interaction between Mg2+ and the L2- causes the complete precipitation of MgL0 (pK(sp) = 1039) and also the successive re-dissolution of Mg2L2+ (log K2(-2) = 8.08). Even in methanol, the interaction between Ba2+ and L2- results in precipitation (log K-sp = 8.28) and the "reverse coordinated" species, Ba2L2+ (log K2(-2) = 5.58). The interaction of Ba2+ with L- or L3- causes no precipitation in methanol; however, in all the other alcohols, it results both in precipitation (BaL2 or Ba3L2) and the "reverse coordinated" species, BaL+ or Ba2L+. The formulation for the formation constants (K2(-3)) for M2+ and L3- is newly presented and the constants (2Ba(2+) + L3- reversible arrow Ba2L+, K2(-3) = [Ba2L+] / [Ba2+](2) [L3-]) are evaluated in ethanol and propanol as well as in the binary EtOH-MeOH solvents, up to 70% (v/v) MeOH. The donicities toward M2+ of the media have been related to the pKsp and "reverse coordination" constants for L-, L2- and L3-. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is a growing understanding that the impacts of climate change affect different communities within a country, in a variety of ways-not always uniformly. This article reports on research conducted in the middle hills region of Nepal that explored climate change vulnerability in terms of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity across different well-being groups, genders of the head of household and household location. In the study region, dry land farming has increasingly experienced climate-induced changes to farm productivity and natural resources. The experience of vulnerability to decreased livelihood options and natural resource hazards due to a changing climate varied according to household wealth and well-being status, with very poor and poor households more vulnerable than medium and well-off households. The research indicates that the climate change adaptation would benefit by considering: (i) differential impacts of vulnerability mainly based on well-being status of households; (ii) understanding of the local sociopolitical context and underlying causes of vulnerability and its application; and (iii) identifying vulnerable populations for the units of vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning.The potential for development in decision support for forest management is set by decision theory, available technology and methods. Demands for decision support are emerging from contemporary challenges and problems of forest management which act as stimuli for the science community. Objectives and approaches in forest management as well as technologies have been changing throughout history. Accordingly, the demand for tools to support planning and decision-making has evolved. In this contribution, the authors review the historic development of decision support systems (DSS) for forest management and discuss past, current and future drivers. Based on evidence from scientific literature, case studies in the frame of the Forest Management Decision Support Systems (FORSYS) action, as well as experiences of the authors some hypotheses about the future of DSS are drawn. It is shown that in the past, the drivers evolving from forest management as well as decision support technologies have influenced the way of how models and methods have been applied as well as how DSS architectures have been designed. It is concluded that in the future, the challenges for DSS development will increase, as the complexity of decision-making processes and the related models will compete with the user demands which ask for simplicity.This study analyzes changes in monthly reference evapotranspiration (ETo) by use of the Penman-Monteith equation and data from 46 meteorological stations in Spain from 1961 to 2011. Over the 51 year study period, there were trends for increasing average ETo during all months and annually at most of the individual meteorological stations. Sensitivity analysis of ETo to changes in meteorological variables was conducted by increasing and decreasing an individual climate variable holding the other variables constant. Sensitivity analysis indicated that relative humidity, wind speed, and maximum temperature had stronger effects on ETo than sunshine duration and minimum temperature. This suggests that aerodynamic component has more importance than radiative component to determine the atmospheric evaporative demand in Spain. The analysis showed a dominant latitudinal spatial gradient in the ETo relative changes across the 46 meteorological observatories, mainly controlled by the increasing available solar energy southward. In addition, the role of different meteorological variables on ETo is influenced by the average climatology at each observatory. ETo trends are mainly explained by the decrease in relative humidity and the increase in maximum temperature since the 1960s, particularly during the summer months. The physical mechanisms that explain ETo sensitivity to the different physical variables and current ETo trends are discussed in detail.The Asian Highlands, the vast mountainous area from Pakistan to China including the Hindu-Kush Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau, have considerable global importance; they are the source of most of the major rivers of Asia, which sustain billions of downstream dwellers, are part of four Global Biodiversity Hotspots, and support rich cultural diversity. However, climate warming in the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau has been greater than two times the global average, and regional climate appears to be shifting with potential to trigger large-scale ecosystem regime shifts (landscape traps'). A host of other driversurbanization/infrastructure development, land-use/agricultural practices, upstream/downstream water management and ongoing nation-state security conflictsinteract with climate signals to produce complex changes across ecological and social systems. In response, highlands people are evolving hybrid forms of adaptive capacity where bottom-up' behaviors are mixing with top-down' state and market policies. To increase ecosystem and livelihood resilience to future change, there is a need to link upstream and downstream conservation action with local climate adaptation. While the key problem is that institutional and government capacity for coordination is low, we present four general strategies to move forward: application of cross-sector coordinated planning, strategic integration of science-based conservation with developing local-level hybrid knowledge, recognition of the critical role of governance in support of change, and increased emphasis on environmental security. We discuss these strategies for each driver of change in the region. (C) 2014 The Authors. WIREs Climate Change published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The islands of the south west Pacific (SWP) are highly biodiverse, yet records of their bee fauna suggest a region depauperate of a key pollinator suite. Studies of the bees of Fiji based on molecular data have revealed a recent origin with the majority of species having arrived since the last glacial maximum or introduced since human colonization. Here we use DNA barcodes to provide the first detailed account of Apidae bees from Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa. We show that most if not all species in these archipelagos have been recently introduced from Australia and south east Asia, with a further species introduced from the New World. Some of these species have become regionally abundant and we discuss the potential impact of introduced pollinators on endemic plant-pollinator associations. Given the wide-reaching role of native pollinators in island systems, yet lack of understanding of SWP pollinator suites, our study highlights the urgent need for more detailed pollinator research in the region.Background: Extreme heat is an important public health risk. Climate change will likely increase the temperatures humans are exposed to through exacerbated heat wave intensity and frequency, possibly increasing health risks from heat. To prevent adverse effects on human health, heat prevention plans and climate change adaptation strategies are being implemented. But are these measures effectively reducing heat-related mortality and morbidity? This study assesses the evidence base in 2014. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed published literature. We applied a combined search strategy of automated search and journal content search using the electronic databases PubMed, Web of Knowledge, Biological Abstracts, CAB Abstracts and ProQuest Dissertation & Theses A&I. Quality appraisal was conducted using CASP checklists, and we identified recurrent themes in studies with content analysis methodology. We conducted sub-group analyses for two types of studies: survey and interview research on behavioral change and perception, and observational studies with regression. Results: 30 articles were included in the review. The majority of studies (n = 17) assessed mortality or morbidity reductions with regression analysis. Overall, the assessments report a reduction of adverse effects during extreme heat in places where preventive measures have been implemented. Population perception and behavior change were assessed in five studies, none of which had carried out a pre-test. Two themes emerged from the review: methodological challenges are a major hindrance to rigorous evaluation, and what counts as proof of an effective reduction in adverse health outcomes is disputed. Conclusions: Attributing health outcomes to heat adaptation remains a challenge. Recent study designs are less rigorous due to difficulties assigning the counterfactual. While sensitivity to heat is decreasing, the examined studies provide inconclusive evidence on individual planned adaptation measures.Background: The association between food insecurity and mental health is established. Increasingly, associations between drought and mental health and drought and food insecurity have been observed in a number of countries. The impact of drought on the association between food insecurity and mental health has received little attention. Methods: Population-based study using data from a nationally representative panel survey of Australian adults in which participants report behaviour, health, social, economic and demographic information annually. Exposure to drought was modelled using annual rainfall data during Australia's 'Big Dry'. Regression modelling examined associations between drought and three indicative measures of food insecurity and mental health, controlling for confounding factors. Results: People who reported missing meals due to financial stress reported borderline moderate/high distress levels. People who consumed below-average levels of core foods reported more distress than those who consumed above the average level, while people consuming discretionary foods above the average level reported greater distress than those consuming below the threshold. In all drought exposure categories, people missing meals due to cost reported higher psychological distress than those not missing meals. Compared to drought-unadjusted psychological distress levels, in most drought categories, people consuming higher-than-average discretionary food levels reported higher levels of distress. Conclusions: Exposure to drought moderates the association between measures of food insecurity and psychological distress, generally increasing the distress level. Climate adaptation strategies that consider social, nutrition and health impacts are needed.No observed data have been found in the Fukushima Prefecture (FP) for the time-series of atmospheric radionuclides concentrations just after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FD1NPP) accident. Accordingly, current estimates of internal radiation doses from inhalation, and atmospheric radionuclide concentrations by atmospheric transport models are highly uncertain. Here, we present a new method for retrieving the hourly atmospheric Cs-137 concentrations by measuring the radioactivity of suspended particulate matter (SPM) collected on filter tapes in SPM monitors which were operated even after the accident. This new dataset focused on the period of March 12-23, 2011 just after the accident, when massive radioactive materials were released from the FD1NPP to the atmosphere. Overall, 40 sites of the more than 400 sites in the air quality monitoring stations in eastern Japan were studied. For the first time, we show the spatio-temporal variation of atmospheric Cs-137 concentrations in the FP and the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA) located more than 170 km southwest of the FD1NPP. The comprehensive dataset revealed how the polluted air masses were transported to the FP and TMA, and can be used to re-evaluate internal exposure, time-series radionuclides release rates, and atmospheric transport models.Data from global high-resolution, nonhydrostatic simulations, covering a 1-yr period and with horizontal grid sizes of 7 and 14 km, were analyzed to evaluate the response of high cloud to global warming. The results indicate that, in a warmer atmosphere, high-cloud cover increases robustly and associated longwave (LW) cloud radiative forcing (CRF) increases on average. To develop a better understanding of high-cloud responses to climate change, the geographical distribution of high-cloud size obtained from the model was analyzed and compared with observations. In warmer atmospheres, the contribution per cloud to CRP decreases for both the LW and shortwave (SW) components. However, because of significant increases in the numbers of high clouds in almost all cloud size categories, the magnitude of both LW and SW CRF increases in the simulations. In particular, the contribution from an increase in the number of smaller clouds has more effect on the CRF change. It was also found that the ice and liquid water paths decrease in smaller clouds and that particularly the former contributes to reduced LW CRF per high cloud.Decadal climate predictions are now established as a source of information on future climate alongside longer-term climate projections. This information has the potential to provide key evidence for decisions on climate change adaptation, especially at regional scales. Its importance implies that following the creation of an initial generation of decadal prediction systems, a process of continual development is needed to produce successive versions with better predictive skill. Here, a new version of the Met Office Hadley Centre Decadal Prediction System (DePreSys 2) is introduced, which builds upon the success of the original DePreSys. DePreSys 2 benefits from inclusion of a newer and more realistic climate model, the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 3 (HadGEM3), but shares a very similar approach to initialization with its predecessor. By performing a large suite of reforecasts, it is shown that DePreSys 2 offers improved skill in predicting climate several years ahead. Differences in skill between the two systems are likely due to a multitude of differences between the underlying climate models, but it is demonstrated herein that improved simulation of tropical Pacific variability is a key source of the improved skill in DePreSys 2. While DePreSys 2 is clearly more skilful than DePreSys in a global sense, it is shown that decreases in skill in some high-latitude regions are related to errors in representing long-term trends. Detrending the results focuses on the prediction of decadal time-scale variability, and shows that the improvement in skill in DePreSys 2 is even more marked.European water policy developments are essentially linked to the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive and parent legislation, which is built upon the principle of river basin management planning with the objective of achieving good status for all European water bodies. Recent policy developments in the climate change area call for 'climate proofing' of EU actions through mainstreaming of adaptation measures into policies and programmes. These policy trends are very closely related to the capacity to get access to supporting scientific information and to bridge the knowledge gap. This paper is about these features, serving as an introduction to the special issue of Journal of Hydrology on climatic change impact on water: overcoming data and science gaps. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Glacier and snow cover changes with related impacts on melt runoff can seriously affect human societies which are depending on fresh water from cryospheric sources. Observed trends and projected future evolutions of climatic and cryospheric variables clearly show the need to adapt to these changes. Accordingly, the topics addressed herein have been put on the agendas of many larger funding agencies. This article provides a brief overview on major ongoing activities on glacier, snow and related runoff research in order to then analyze data gaps and research needs from a climate change adaptation perspective. Major data needs are identified with respect to the spatial and temporal coverage of local-scale data and related needs for (data) services that distribute and maintain these data sets. Moreover, clear research needs are also recognized at the local scale where process knowledge needs to be improved (e.g., the influence of albedo on snow and ice or debris cover on glaciers) in order to derive plausible climate change impacts assessments. The paper then discusses directions on how to move forward to better serve the practical needs for climate change adaptation planning. In the future, substantial support by large funding agencies might be key for capacity building in target regions of climate change adaptation programs, for longer-term and more sustainable commitments, and for the development of approaches, which aim at assessing the transferability of data, techniques, and tools. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) was introduced in 1980s to better optimise water uses between different water demanding sectors. However, since it was introduced water systems have become more complicated due to changes in the global water cycle as a result of climate change. The realization that climate change will have a significant impact on water availability and flood risks has driven research and policy making on adaptation. This paper discusses the main similarities and differences between climate change adaptation and IWRM. The main difference between the two is the focus on current and historic issues of IWRM compared to the (long-term) future focus of adaptation. One of the main problems of implementing climate change adaptation is the large uncertainties in future projections. Two completely different approaches to adaptation have been developed in response to these large uncertainties. A top-down approach based on large scale biophysical impacts analyses focussing on quantifying and minimizing uncertainty by using a large range of scenarios and different climate and impact models. The main problem with this approach is the propagation of uncertainties within the modelling chain. The opposite is the bottom up approach which basically ignores uncertainty. It focusses on reducing vulnerabilities, often at local scale, by developing resilient water systems. Both these approaches however are unsuitable for integrating into water management. The bottom up approach focuses too much on socioeconomic vulnerability and too little on developing (technical) solutions. The top-down approach often results in an "explosion" of uncertainty and therefore complicates decision making. A more promising direction of adaptation would be a risk based approach. Future research should further develop and test an approach which starts with developing adaptation strategies based on current and future risks. These strategies should then be evaluated using a range of future scenarios in order to develop robust adaptation measures and strategies. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Water markets have increasingly been adopted as a reallocation tool around the world as water scarcity intensifies. Water markets were first introduced in Australia in the 1980s, and water entitlement and allocation trade have been increasingly adopted by both private individuals and governments. As well as providing an overview of water policy in Australia since the 1900s, this paper examines the adoption of water trading in the southern Murray-Darling Basin of Australia (the largest hydrologically connected water market in Australia), and investigates the associated social, economic and environmental impacts that have arisen from the implementation of water markets. This study found that up to 86% of irrigators in one state in the southern Murray-Darling Basin had undertaken at least one water market trade by 2010-2011, hence, water market strategies are now a common tool employed by irrigators to assist their farm management. A variety of institutional, policy and informational changes are identified to increase the benefits from water markets in the future. There is no doubt that managing the impact of climate change and water scarcity are intertwined, suggesting that policy, institutional and governance responses should be similarly structured and coordinated. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Glacier shrinkage caused by climate change is likely to trigger diminished and less consistent stream flow in glacier-fed watersheds worldwide. To understand, model, and adapt to these climate-glacier-water changes, it is vital to integrate the analysis of both water availability (the domain of hydrologists) and water use (the focus for social scientists). Drawn from a case study of the Santa River watershed below Peru's glaciated Cordillera Blanca mountain range, this paper provides a holistic hydro-social framework that identifies five major human variables critical to hydrological modeling because these forces have profoundly influenced water use over the last 60 years: (1) political agendas and economic development; (2) governance: laws and institutions; (3) technology and engineering; (4) land and resource use; and (5) societal responses. Notable shifts in Santa River water use-including major expansions in hydroelectricity generation, large-scale irrigation projects, and other land and resource-use practices did not necessarily stem from changing glacier runoff or hydrologic shifts, but rather from these human variables. Ultimately, then, water usage is not predictable based on water availability alone. Glacier runoff conforms to certain expected trends predicted by models of progressively reduced glacier storage. However, societal forces establish the legal, economic, political, cultural, and social drivers that actually shape water usage patterns via human modification of watershed dynamics. This hydro-social framework has widespread implications for hydrological modeling in glaciated watersheds from the Andes and Alps to the Himalaya and Tien Shan, as well as for the development of climate change adaptation plans. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Focus of recent scientific research in the water sector has shifted from analysis of climate change impacts to assessment of climate change adaptation options. However, limited attention has been given to integration of bottom-up and top-down methods for assessment of adaptation options. The integrated approach used in this study uses hydrological modelling to assess the effect of stakeholder prioritized adaptation options for the Kangsabati river catchment in India. A series of 14 multi-level stakeholder consultations are used to ascertain locally relevant no-regret adaptation options using Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) and scenario analysis methods. A validated Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) model is then used to project the effect of three options; option 1 check dams (CD), option 2 increasing forest cover (IFC) and option 3 combined CD and IFC, on future (2021-2050) streamflow. High resolution (similar to 25 km) climatic projections from four Regional Climate Models (RCMs) and their ensemble based on the SRES A1B scenario for the mid-21st century period are used to force the WEAP model. Results indicate that although all three adaptation options reduce streamflow, in comparison with scenario without adaptation, their magnitude, temporal pattern and effect on high and low streamflows are different. Options 2 and 3 reduce streamflow percentage by an order of magnitude greater than option 1. These characteristics affect their ability to address key adaptation requirements and therefore, we find that IFC emerges as a hydrologically suitable adaptation option for the study area. Based on study results we also conclude that such an integrated approach is advantageous and is a valuable tool for locally relevant climate change adaptation policymaking. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ecological thresholds, associated with abrupt changes in the state and organisation of ecosystems, challenge both scientists and managers. Adaptive response to such changes, and planning for their occurrence, requires an understanding of the underlying drivers and system responses as well as appropriate monitoring. In addition to field studies, modelling can advance our ability to anticipate or deal with such major ecosystem shifts. Here, we used an existing multi species model with smooth continuous functions that were modified to include thresholds representing 3 alternative scenarios of predator responses when prey numbers drop below a critical threshold: (I) no threshold-like response; (II) an abrupt decrease in breeding success by 90%, and (III) an abrupt halving of adult survival. Second, we analysed field observations from 3 independent marine case studies (abalone, starfish, penguins) for evidence of abrupt non-linear responses of predators to changes in abundance of principal prey. Third, we compared the model output with empirical results and tested (using both a statistical method and by fitting multispecies models) the 3 alternative response scenarios. With this approach, we found evidence for nonlinear changes in population parameters (such as survival rate) of predators as prey numbers declined below critical thresholds. As an example of the potential for this approach to inform management, we found that abundances of a range of marine predators become more variable as prey numbers decline, which may be a useful indicator that a system is approaching a tipping point.Climate change is impacting agro-ecosystems, crops, and farmer livelihoods in communities worldwide. While it is well understood that more frequent and intense climate events in many areas are resulting in a decline in crop yields, the impact on crop quality is less acknowledged, yet it is critical for food systems that benefit both farmers and consumers through high-quality products. This study examines tea (Camellia sinensis; Theaceae), the world's most widely consumed beverage after water, as a study system to measure effects of seasonal precipitation variability on crop functional quality and associated farmer knowledge, preferences, and livelihoods. Sampling was conducted in a major tea producing area of China during an extreme drought through the onset of the East Asian Monsoon in order to capture effects of extreme climate events that are likely to become more frequent with climate change. Compared to the spring drought, tea growth during the monsoon period was up to 50% higher. Concurrently, concentrations of catechin and methylxanthine secondary metabolites, major compounds that determine tea functional quality, were up to 50% lower during the monsoon while total phenolic concentrations and antioxidant activity increased. The inverse relationship between tea growth and concentrations of individual secondary metabolites suggests a dilution effect of precipitation on tea quality. The decrease in concentrations of tea secondary metabolites was accompanied by reduced farmer preference on the basis of sensory characteristics as well as a decline of up to 50% in household income from tea sales. Farmer surveys indicate a high degree of agreement regarding climate patterns and the effects of precipitation on tea yields and quality. Extrapolating findings from this seasonal study to long-term climate scenario projections suggests that farmers and consumers face variable implications with forecasted precipitation scenarios and calls for research on management practices to facilitate climate adaptation for sustainable crop production.Problem, research strategy and findings: A pre-disaster recovery plan that considers how a community should be redeveloped is a logical first step to support resiliency during high uncertainty and rapid change, yet limited attention has been given to recovery plans. In this study, we evaluate local disaster recovery planning in eight southeastern states and find that such planning receives limited public support: Less than one-third of vulnerable local jurisdictions had a recovery plan, and those plans received low plan quality scores. Unfunded state mandates produce weaker plans than plans in other states without mandates. We find that a collaborative network of stakeholders initially intent on reordering priorities results in stronger plans. Takeaway for practice: Local recovery planning should be designed to operate under conditions of high uncertainty. Local jurisdictions can choose plan design options that reflect how they build capability for recovery planning: 1) standalone community-wide recovery plan; 2) comprehensive land use plan; 3) emergency management plan; and 4) small area recovery plan. Because recovery planning lacks a public constituency, and is new to most local jurisdictions, the stand-alone community-wide recovery plan design option is the most effective at building local commitment. This option involves a plan-making process that concentrates time, effort, and resources focused on a building a network of stakeholders who likely have the greatest responsibility in rebuilding efforts because they care most about the impacts of a disaster.Climate change is an urgent problem with implications registered not only globally, but also on national and local scales. It is a particularly challenging case of environmental communication because its main cause, greenhouse gas emissions, is invisible. The predominant approach of making climate change visible is the use of iconic, often affective, imagery. Literature on the iconography of climate change shows that global iconic motifs, such as polar bears, have contributed to a public perception of the problem as spatially and temporally remote. This paper proposes an alternative approach to global climate change icons by focusing on recognizable representations of local impacts within an interactive game environment. This approach was implemented and tested in a research project based on the municipality of Delta, British Columbia. A major outcome of the research is Future Delta, an interactive educational game featuring 3D visualizations and simulation tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation future scenarios. The empirical evaluation is based on quantitative pre/post-game play questionnaires with 18 students and 10 qualitative expert interviews. The findings support the assumption that interactive 3D imagery is effective in communicating climate change. The quantitative post-questionnaires particularly highlight a shift in support of more local responsibility.The close linkages between climate change adaptation and development have led to calls for addressing the two issues in an integrated way. 'Mainstreaming' climate information, policies and measures into ongoing development planning and decision-making has been proposed as one solution, making a more sustainable, effective and efficient use of resources than designing and managing climate policies separately from ongoing activities. But what does mainstreaming look like in practice? This paper reviews the process of mainstreaming in Bangladesh, one of the countries that has made significant progress on adaptation planning and mainstreaming. The paper begins by making the case for mainstreaming, by exploring linkages and trade-offs between adaptation and development and reviewing the literature on mainstreaming. Second, it considers how to implement mainstreaming in practice, reviewing an existing four-step framework. Examining this framework against the plethora of mainstreaming experiences in Bangladesh, the paper considers how the framework can be used as a tool to review progress on mainstreaming in Bangladesh. The paper concludes that while the framework is useful for considering some of the preconditions necessary for mainstreaming, experiences in Bangladesh reflect a much more complex patchwork of processes and stakeholders that need to be taken into consideration in further research.Mainstreaming is a feasible and viable option for scaling up initiatives on community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change. However, there is little evidence on how to get CBA mainstreaming feasible and to work effectively. This paper aims to investigate two major questions: (1) what kind of policies favour mainstreaming CBA; and (2) what kinds of approaches or practices are required to operationalize CBA mainstreaming in the case of Nepal? The field research for this paper was conducted in the Dhading, Nawalparasi and Pyuthan districts of Nepal. The research used a mix of approaches and methods for data generation and analysis. The findings reveal that policies to operationalize CBA mainstreaming should build on past policy successes and include community-centric provisions that empower local institutions and encourage them to practice inclusive decision-making and benefit-sharing mechanisms. One lesson from this analysis of the practices of mainstreaming in Nepal is that an integrated co-management approach to mainstreaming is necessary to overcome the barriers related to knowledge, finance and technology. It is concluded that the operational mechanisms of mainstreaming CBA in development should have an inclusive local structure and be responsive to national policies and governance arrangements.Climate change creates widespread risks for food production. As climate impacts are often locally specific, it is imperative that large-scale initiatives to support smallholder farmers consider local priorities and integrate lessons from successful autonomous adaptation efforts. This article explores how large-scale programmes for smallholder adaptation to climate change might link effectively with community-led adaptation initiatives. Drawing on experiences in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Uganda and India, this article identifies key success factors and barriers for considering local priorities, capacities and lessons in large-scale adaptation programmes. It highlights the key roles of extension services and farmers' organizations as mechanisms for linking between national-level and community-level adaptation, and a range of other success factors which include participative and locally driven vulnerability assessments, tailoring of adaptation technologies to local contexts, mapping local institutions and working in partnership across institutions. Barriers include weak governance, gaps in the regulatory and policy environment, high opportunity costs, low literacy and underdeveloped markets. The article concludes that mainstreaming climate adaptation into large-scale agricultural initiatives requires not only integration of lessons from community-based adaptation, but also the building of inclusive governance to ensure smallholders can engage with those policies and processes affecting their vulnerability.Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change such as flooding, cyclones and drought. Women in Bangladesh are disproportionately affected by these impacts due to the nature of their livelihoods, their social obligations and confines, and their unique nutritional and health requirements, particularly during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Climate change policy in Bangladesh seeks to replicate adaptation policies under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This paper will briefly review the policy response to climate change in Bangladesh. As climate adaptation requires a multi-sectoral response, relevant policy concerned with climate, adaptation, poverty, gender and health will be studied. This assessment will determine whether gender issues related to adaptation are addressed in key policy pieces in Bangladesh. Key interventions related to climate change will also be assessed to determine whether gender is integrated in operational activity. Finally, the role of women in the development of adaptation policy will be assessed by outlining their participation in adaptation discourse. Findings indicate that gender-sensitive policies are quite limited. Policies may acknowledge the particular vulnerabilities of women, but operational planning to address these is absent. Whilst some operational responses superficially acknowledge vulnerability and may include women in planning processes, few address the unique impacts of climate change on women.This article draws on research findings from fieldwork undertaken in Gaibandha District of Northwest Bangladesh from 2009 to 2010 to analyse the influence of power-related factors on climate change vulnerability and adaptation in two rural communities. The principal aim of the research was to explore the factors that shape differentiated vulnerability and adaptive capacity within the two communities, with a focus on extremely poor community members. Findings indicate that climate-related vulnerability is differentiated at the sub-community level, both among different socio-economic, livelihood and social groups, as well as within them. Some of the central factors highlighted by respondents as underpinning differentiation had clear power and inequality dimensions. These include political ties and corruption; community and family networks; and the capability to enforce one's own rights, for example to land, in lieu of access to impartial law enforcement and justice institutions. The article concludes with implications of these findings for supporting adaptive capacity and mainstreaming climate change into planning processes at different levels. In particular, interventions focused on assets may be less important than those directed at power relations, networks and the security dimensions of extreme poverty.Children are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Despite this, relatively little attention is paid to building their capacity to manage the impacts of climate change they experience now and those they will experience in future. While child-centred approaches are starting to emerge in the field of community-based adaptation, these approaches are almost exclusively used by child-focused organizations. This article argues that mainstreaming children's needs and capacities into broader adaptation efforts can lead to more sustainable outcomes that can help to build long-term community-level adaptive capacity. A series of short examples from the field are used to highlight the different contexts in which child-centred approaches to community-based adaptation are taking place and some outcomes achieved to date. The article concludes that while there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence that taking a child-centred approach to community-based adaptation can build the adaptive capacity of children and also provide benefits to entire communities, there is no solid evidence-base proving that what has worked in a growing number of cases is more broadly applicable, translatable to other regions or sustainable in the absence of direct project support. The article recommends that collaborative efforts between researchers and practitioners should be launched to gather this evidence.Effective mainstreaming of climate change adaptation (CCA) into related policy and development initiatives relies on comprehensive knowledge sharing between multiple stakeholders. In Bangladesh, community-based adaptation (CBA) practitioners are critical for facilitating communication among global, national and local scales. They can also take responsibility for finding appropriate channels through which to share relevant information. Interviews with CBA practitioners examine how knowledge is gained and transmitted between practitioners and other CCA stakeholders, focusing on the challenges experienced. These challenges represent friction in knowledge transmittal. Key to lubricating smooth knowledge flows is an understanding of the specific contexts within which knowledge is to be exchanged. At the professional level, multidisciplinary knowledge must be made accessible through provision of widely comprehensible content shared in an appropriate format. At the local level, understandings of trust, priorities and power relations are vital for ensuring relevance in the knowledge shared by professional stakeholders. Mobilizing appropriate knowledge can allow widespread comprehension of adaptation aims, enabling the mainstreaming of CCA and ensuring that resulting action is beneficial at the local level, for communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.While most adaptation actions occur at the local level, there is an absence of commitment at the international level to channel adaptation finance to local communities. Without such a commitment, there is a risk that climate finance will continue to support top-down, centralized activities that may struggle to address the needs of vulnerable communities. This paper explores ways in which community-based adaptation is presently being mainstreamed through the multilateral funds that are used to channel adaptation finance under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process, and points to two promising examples that demonstrate this. The first is the Small Grants Programme of the Global Environmental Facility, an established modality through which community organizations can access finance to manage their adaptation needs. The second is the direct access modality of the Adaptation Fund, which devolves decision-making power from multilateral agencies towards the national and local levels. At the country level, experiences from Nepal demonstrate an institutional environment that helps to prioritize the adaptation needs of the most vulnerable. Nepal achieves this by mandating that at least 80% of available finance flows to the community level, and that the implementation of projects is conducted in a bottom-up and inclusive process.In this paper, outcomes from an investigation of plausible climate futures over the next century, and the potential impacts on water services including water resource management and disaster risk reduction, such as flash flooding in Ekurhuleni (EMM), are presented. Four key aspects are examined: (i) the extent to which the frequency of extreme rainfall events may change in South Africa as a result of climate change; (ii) the identification of some of the implications of extreme rainfall events for local government (iii) the identification of some of the challenges communities most at risk of flooding as a result of extreme rainfall events face, finally, (iv) the opportunities for future co-production of design methods and approaches to reduce current and future climate risks in EMM and elsewhere. Climate modelling conducted for this research indicates that it is plausible for an increase in the number of extreme rainfall events to occur over central and eastern South Africa over the next century. Over EMM, for example, an increase in extreme rainfall events is likely to be accompanied by flash flooding and a range of deleterious impacts, if planning and maintenance of the water services infrastructure is not improved - a result that is likely to be valid for all large metropolitan municipalities in the country. The paper provides some lessons learnt when trying to include a climate risk reduction approach into the planning of urban development.Modern maize varieties have been bred for drought tolerance and early maturity, to assist farmers in avoiding or escaping the effects of moisture stress in drought-prone areas. This study evaluates the prospects for widespread adoption of these modern maize varieties as a climate change adaptation strategy for smallholder farmers. Data are from a detailed household survey completed in four rural villages in Southern Malawi between May and July 2010. The empirical analysis involves estimation of an ordered logit regression model because the dependent variable is categorical, with one category for nonadoption (has never grown modern maize varieties) and three categories for the duration of growing a modern maize variety among adopters (this year only, 2 to 5 years and 6 years or more). The empirical findings indicate a positive association between a farmer's perception of drought risk and the adoption and continued use of modern maize. Regression results also show that farmers that value the traits of early maturity and drought tolerance are more likely to adopt modern maize varieties. There is evidence of some disadoption among farmers dissatisfied with maize genotype performance, in terms of poor storability and yield under drought conditions. Finally, the study highlights the urgent need for maize breeders interested in sustained use of modern varieties to simultaneously address robust drought tolerance, early maturity and storability. This underscores the importance of cognizance of local farmer preferences in crop breeding efforts.Transhumance system of livelihood of the Brokpa pastoral nomads inhabiting in the yak tracts of Arunachal Pradesh with special emphasis on climate change adaptation was assessed in the present study. A representative sample of the 240 Brokpa pastoral nomads from all the yak rearing tracts of Arunachal Pradesh was selected randomly. The Brokpa pastoral nomads mainly depend upon livestock, like yak, yak-cattle hybrid etc, rearing for their livelihood. They perceived that season cycle has been changed in lower and mid altitude. They also perceived that onset of summer is getting started 1-2 month(s) earlier than before and also extended by 2-3 months. Therefore, Brokpa pastoral nomads of Arunachal Pradesh have expanded their migration duration by 2-3 months in searching of congenial environment for their livestock specially yak and yak-cattle hybrid. They adopted 10 coping mechanisms to cope up with negative impact of climate change. Among the coping mechanisms, 'duration of migration has expanded by 2-3 months' and 'change in pasture utilization practice' were found to be mostly adopted.The concept of barriers is increasingly used to describe the obstacles that hinder the planning and implementation of climate change adaptation. The growing literature on barriers to adaptation reveals not only commonly reported barriers, but also conflicting evidence, and few explanations of why barriers exist and change. There is thus a need for research that focuses on the interdependencies between barriers and considers the dynamic ways in which barriers develop and persist. Such research, which would be actor-centred and comparative, would help to explain barriers to adaptation and provide insights into how to overcome them.Synoptic-scale atmospheric circulations are crucial for extreme snowfall events. On the basis of topmost 100 snowfall intensity days in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan over winter seasons from 1992 to 2011, this study uses principal component analysis and K-means clustering to characterize synoptic circulation patterns. Composite maps were constructed for sea-level pressure, 850 hPa moisture and wind field, and 500 hPa geopotential height. The circulation patterns of the topmost seven snowfall events were triggered by the advection of very cold airmass from eastern Siberia, anomalously huge moisture with northerly strong wind, active and stationary Aleutian low, and 500 hPa deep cold-core low over the southern Hokkaido.We revealed long-term variation of winter precipitation at the northwest coast of Japan and its link to decadal variation of autumn-to-winter sea-surface fluxes from the Japan/East Sea with observational data of sea-surface fluxes, sea-surface temperature (SST), and ocean heat content (OHC) data. Much precipitation was observed after 1995 because both SST and OHC were significantly higher in the Japan/East Sea. In a numerical experiment forced by the climatological SST that excluded the decadal change, the decadal variation of the land precipitation did not appear, suggesting that the decadal variation of the coastal precipitation is sensitive to SST.Recently, three processes were used to analyze the consequences of plausible climate change scenarios for urban water governance in Lima. The first process, led by a German-financed research team, developed climate change scenarios using innovative tools. The second, Chance2Sustain, brought spatial perspectives to urban development and water governance, mapping spatial inequities in water-related vulnerabilities and including community-based knowledge. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima (MML) initiated the third process, to prepare a city development and Climate Change Adaptation Strategy. This paper examines how these processes of knowledge construction contributed to transitions in water governance and climate change adaptation strategies. Although all processes used concertacion((1)) in their knowledge construction, the actors and the incorporated knowledge differed considerably. While the first example was dominated by professional groups and technical-professional knowledge, the Chance2Sustain and city processes included a wider range of actors and shifted thinking about adaptive management towards including contextual-embedded knowledge.Runoff and sediment loads have exhibited significant changes over the past six decades in the Yellow River Basin, China. The current study evaluates the changing trends and regime shifts in runoff and sediment loads at both the annual and monthly time scales. The associated spatial and temporal variations are analyzed by a sequential t-test analysis of the regime shifts (STARS) approach and the "breaks for additive seasonal and trend" (BFAST) model using hydrological data at eight stations from the 1950s to 2011. Both runoff and sediment loads exhibit significant declines (p < 0.05), except in the upper reaches of the river near the Tangnaihai station. The regime shifts detected by the STARS approach are not completely consistent with the results from the BFAST method. In most cases, the regime shifts occurred in 1969 and 1986, due to the construction of large reservoirs. Climate change and other human activities, such as large-scale soil and water conservation measures, can result in abrupt changes in hydrological series at some stations. The trapping effects of reservoirs not only cause regime shifts of runoff and sediment loads, but also adjust their inter-annual and seasonal distributions. Various soil and water conservation measures are responsible for the significant reduction in runoff and sediment loads in the mid-lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin. In addition, water withdrawals from both river runoff and ground water play a critical role in the changing trends in runoff and indirectly alter the sediment loads. The findings provide a good reference for the effective promotion of climate change adaptation, water resources planning and river basin management.Alpine snowpatches are areas that, due to topographical and climatic factors, retain snow long after the thaw in the surrounding landscape. Within snowpatches there are often reliable patterns of snowmelt resulting in differences in plant composition, with snowpatch specialists limited to areas of late snowmelt. In 2013, we resurveyed vegetation in early, mid and late snowmelt zones across seven alpine snowpatches in the Snowy Mountains, Australia, 6 years after the initial 2007 survey. In both surveys, there were differences in vegetation cover and species composition among snowmelt zones; in particular, the cover of graminoids was higher in areas of earlier thaw. Differences in functional composition between survey periods were determined using functional traits (plant height, percent leaf dry matter content and specific leaf area) to calculate community trait-weighted means. In both surveys, early and mid snowmelt zones were dominated by taller species with larger leaves, mostly graminoids. Notably, by 2013 there was an increase in species richness in the late snowmelt zone and an increase in the cover of the tall tussock grass Poa costiniana across all snowmelt zones, driving changes in the community trait-weighted means for plant height and specific leaf area in the late snowmelt zone. The results highlight that snowpatch vegetation can change within relatively short time periods and that snowpatch plant communities may not remain as discrete units in the near future due to the encroachment of more competitive and productive species from the surrounding landscape.The way in which people perceive climate change risk is informed by their social interactions and cultural worldviews comprising fundamental beliefs about society and nature. Therefore, perceptions of climate change risk and vulnerability along with people's "myths of nature"-that is, how groups of people conceptualize the way nature functions influence the feasibility and acceptability of climate adaptation planning, policy making, and implementation. This study presents analyses of cultural worldviews that broaden the current treatments of culture and climate change mitigation and adaptation decision making in communities. The authors use insights from community-based climate research and engage the Cultural Theory of Risk conceptual framework to situate community understandings of, and responses to, climate impacts. This study looks at how the issue of climate change manifests socially in four cases in the United States and Tuvalu and how ideas about climate change are produced by the institutional cultural contexts across scales from the local to the global. This approach helps us identify local and regional priorities and support the development of new relationships for adaptation research and planning by helping to diagnose barriers to climate change adaptation, assist improved communication through framing/reframing climate issues based on shared understandings and collective learning, and help move from conflict to cooperation through better negotiation of diverse worldviews.Few studies have explored the relationships between nation-building, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Focusing on small island developing states, this paper examines nation-building in Timor-Leste, a small island developing state that recently achieved independence. Nation-building in Timor-Leste is explored in the context of disaster risk reduction, which necessarily includes climate change adaptation. The study presents a synopsis of Timor-Leste's history and its nation-building efforts as well as an overview of the state of knowledge of disaster risk reduction including climate change adaptation. It also offers an analysis of significant gaps and challenges in terms of vertical and horizontal governance, large donor presence, data availability and the integration of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation for nationbuilding in Timor-Leste. Relevant and applicable lessons are provided from other small island developing states to assist Timor-Leste in identifying its own trajectory out of underdevelopment while it builds on existing strengths.The characteristics of the physical science basis and mitigation of climate change lend themselves well to a science-policy interface focused on global assessment-the function of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). By contrast, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs three additional functions of knowledge generation, capacity-building, and policy support, in addition to traditional assessment, and the same is true for climate change adaptation. These functions are included in the work program for IPBES, but their total share of the budget, currently less than a third, is inadequate. For climate change adaptation they are delivered by mechanisms like the Nairobi Work Programme and the Adaptation Committee, which should similarly receive greater attention.Climate change adaptation (CCA) has recently emerged as a new fundamental dimension to be considered in the planning and management of water resources. Because of the need to consider the already perceived changes in climate trends, variability and extremes, and their interactions with evolving social and ecological systems, water management is now facing new challenges. The research community is expected to contribute with innovative methods and tools to support to decision- and policy-makers. Decision Support Systems (DSSs), have a relatively long history in the water management sector. They are usually developed upon pre-existing hydrologic simulation models, providing interfaces for facilitated use beyond the limited group of model developers, and specific routines for decision making (e.g. optimization methods). In recent years, the traditional focus of DSS research has shifted away from the software component, towards the process of structuring problems and aiding decisions, thus including in particular robust methods for stakeholders' participation. The paper analyses the scientific literature, identifies the main open issues, and proposes an innovative operational approach for the implementation of participatory planning and decision-making processes for CCA in the water domain.Tropical forests are vulnerable to climate-change representing a risk for indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities. Mechanisms to conserve the forest, such as REDD+, could assist in the mitigation of climate change, reduce vulnerability, and enable people to adapt. Ninety-eight interviews were conducted in three countries containing the Congo Basin forest, Cameroon, CAR, and DRC, to investigate perceptions of decision-makers within, and responses of the institutions of the state, private sector, and civil society to the challenges of climate change. Results indicate that while decision-makers' awareness of climate change is high, direct institutional action is at an early stage. Adaptive capacity is currently low, but it could be enhanced with further development of institutional linkages and increased coordination of multilevel responses across all institutions and with local people. It is important to build networks with forest-dependent stakeholders at the local level, who can contribute knowledge that will build overall institutional adaptive capacity.Primary producers, including graziers, crop farmers and commercial fishers are especially vulnerable to climate change because they depend on highly climate-sensitive natural resources. Adaptation to climate change will make a major difference to the severity of the impacts experienced. However, individuals (resource users) can erect sometimes seemingly peculiar barriers to potential adaptation options that need to be addressed if adaptation is to be effective. Our aim was to understand the nature of barriers to change for cattle graziers in the northern Australian rangelands. We conceptualised barriers as adverse reactions where resource users are unlikely to contemplate adaptations that threaten core values or perceptions about themselves. We assumed that resource users that were more sensitive to climate change impacts-or more dependent on the resource-were more proximate to thresholds of coping and thus more likely to erect barriers, especially people with little adaptive capacity. Given that climate sensitivity and adaptive capacity are important components of vulnerability, our approach was to conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify potential but important barriers to change. Data from 240 graziers suggest that graziers in northern Australia might be especially vulnerable to climate change because their identity, place attachment, low employability, weak networks and dependents can make them sensitive to change, and their sensitivity can be compounded by a low adaptive capacity. We argue that greater attention needs to be placed on the social context of climate change impacts and on the processes shaping vulnerability and adaptation, especially at the scale of the individual.Carrying out wildlife conservation in a changing climate requires planning on long timescales at both a site and network level, while also having the flexibility to adapt actions at sites over short timescales in response to changing conditions and new information. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), a land-owning wildlife conservation charity in the UK, achieves this on its nature reserves through its system of management planning. This involves setting network-wide objectives which inform the 25-year vision and 5-year conservation objectives for each site. Progress toward achieving each site's conservation objectives is reviewed annually, to identify any adjustments which might be needed to the site's management. The conservation objectives and 25-year vision of each site are reviewed every 5 years. Significant long-term impacts of climate change most frequently identified at RSPB reserves are: loss of intertidal habitat through coastal squeeze, loss of low-lying islands due to higher sea levels and coastal erosion, loss of coastal freshwater and brackish wetlands due to increased coastal flooding, and changes in the hydrology of wetlands. The main types of adaptation measures in place on RSPB reserves to address climate change-related impacts are: re-creation of intertidal habitat, re-creation and restoration of freshwater wetlands away from vulnerable coastal areas, blocking artificial drainage on peatlands, and addressing pressures on freshwater supply for lowland wet grasslands in eastern and southeastern England. Developing partnerships between organizations has been crucial in delivering large-scale adaptation projects.Although good general principles for climate change adaptation in conservation have been developed, it is proving a challenge to translate them into more detailed recommendations for action. To improve our understanding of what adaptation might involve in practice, we investigated how the managers of conservation areas in eastern England are considering climate change. We used a written questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to collect information from managers of a range of different conservation areas. Topics investigated include the impacts of climate change perceived to be of the greatest importance; adaptation goals being set; management actions being carried out to achieve these goals; sources of information used; and perceived barriers to taking action. We identified major themes and issues that were apparent across the sites studied. Specifically, we found ways in which adaptation had been informed by past experience; different strategies relating to whether to accept or resist change; approaches for coping with more variable conditions; ways of taking a large-scale approach and managing sites as networks; some practical examples of aspects of adaptive management; and examples of the role that other sectors can play in both constraining and increasing a conservation area's capacity to adapt. We discuss the relevance of these findings to the growing discussion in conservation about identifying adaptation pathways for different conservation areas and a potential progression from a focus on resilience and incremental change to embracing "transformation." Though adaptation will be place-specific, we believe these findings provide useful lessons for future action in both England and other countries.The implementation of adaptation actions in local conservation management is a new and complex task with multiple facets, influenced by factors differing from site to site. A transdisciplinary perspective is therefore required to identify and implement effective solutions. To address this, the International Conference on Managing Protected Areas under Climate Change brought together international scientists, conservation managers, and decision-makers to discuss current experiences with local adaptation of conservation management. This paper summarizes the main issues for implementing adaptation that emerged from the conference. These include a series of conclusions and recommendations on monitoring, sensitivity assessment, current and future management practices, and legal and policy aspects. A range of spatial and temporal scales must be considered in the implementation of climate-adapted management. The adaptation process must be area-specific and consider the ecosystem and the social and economic conditions within and beyond protected area boundaries. However, a strategic overview is also needed: management at each site should be informed by conservation priorities and likely impacts of climate change at regional or even wider scales. Acting across these levels will be a long and continuous process, requiring coordination with actors outside the "traditional" conservation sector. To achieve this, a range of research, communication, and policy/legal actions is required. We identify a series of important actions that need to be taken at different scales to enable managers of protected sites to adapt successfully to a changing climate.Investments in restoring native vegetation must increasingly allow for likely impacts of climate change, requiring re-evaluation of limits to ecological recovery and persistence. Nutrient enrichment and weed invasion are significant limits to restoration in mesic ecosystems, but in a drying climate, limits could shift towards more fundamental ecosystem functions. We used a state and transition framework to identify landuse-related changes in topsoil biophysical characteristics likely to influence climate resilience in mesic temperate eucalypt woodlands. We compared topsoil condition in little-modified 'reference' states of the native ground-layer (dominated by tall tussock grasses) with four degraded ground-layer states identified in our state and transition framework. We hypothesized that 'nutrient-depleted' states (dominated by short tussock grasses) and 'nutrient-enriched' states (dominated by exotic annuals) would exhibit characteristics reflecting increased and decreased ecosystem vulnerability to a drying climate respectively. Our hypothesis that nutrient-depleted states are more vulnerable to a drying climate was supported by their significantly slower soil-water infiltration rates and significantly lower levels of topsoil carbon, clay, micro-invertebrates, microbial activity and modeled water holding capacity than reference states. However, degradation was less pronounced beneath trees, and our prediction regarding enriched states was supported only for carbon. Topsoil biophysical characteristics associated with different ground-layer states are predictable using a state and transition framework. Climate resilience of nutrient-depleted states appears compromised by topsoil biophysical degradation, indicating increasing need for attention in mesic ecosystems predicted to become drier under climate change.Despite increased commitment to manage for climate change by various levels of government around the world, empirical knowledge of how adaptation processes are convened and policies developed remains scarce. In this paper, we describe the approach, methods, and results of a multi-partner pilot project that was used to assess vulnerabilities of natural and built systems to climate change and develop adaptation options for inclusion in a climate change adaptation strategy for the Lake Simcoe Watershed in Ontario, Canada. The multi-method approach, which included workshops, face-to-face meetings, and an iterative Policy Delphi survey, proved to be efficient and effective in helping identify and understand multi-sector climate change vulnerabilities in the watershed, and in bringing climate change experts and decision-makers together to work on a proactive, science-based policy outcome. Challenges experienced during the adaptation planning process included short project timelines, limited financial resources, and a lack of expertise to address regional vulnerabilities in some sectors. However, the non-linear, iterative nature of the approach provided the capacity required to respond to some of these capacity issues during the pilot project. Overall, the process demonstrated the importance of engaging appropriate expertise and adopting a flexible and stakeholder-enabling adaptation framework. Perspectives for strengthening links among the scientific and policy-making communities are highlighted, and practical lessons learned are provided to help other decision-makers begin and amplify the process of integrating climate change into public policy and planning initiatives. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Barriers to adaptation have become an important concept in scientific and political discussions in the governance of climate change adaptation. Over the past years, these discussions have been dominated by one analytical lens in examining barriers and proposing ways to overcome them: the problem solving lens. In this paper, we aim to demonstrate theoretically and empirically that the choice of analytical lens influences how barriers to adaptation are constructed and the intervention strategies proposed. Drawing from recent governance literature, we explore the rationale of three dominant philosophies in the study of governance: the optimist, the realist, and the pessimist philosophy. Next, we demonstrate how these philosophies are operationalized and guide scientific inquiry on barriers to adaptation through four empirically rooted analytical lenses: i) governance as problem solving, ii) governance as competing values and interests, iii) governance as institutional interaction, and iv) governance as dealing with structural constraints. We investigate the Dutch government's Spatial Adaptation to Climate Change programme through each of the four lenses. We discuss how each analytical lens frames barriers in a specific way, identifies different causes of barriers, leads to competing interpretations of key events, and presents other types of interventions to overcome barriers. We conclude that it is necessary to increase analytical variety in order to critically engage in theoretical debates about barriers and to empower policy practitioners in their search for successful intervention strategies to implement adaptation measures.A network of 92 pedigreed ex situ conservation plantings of Pinus tecunumanii, established as replicated progeny within provenance trials, is used to present a principal components-based analysis that illustrates the climatic preferences of 23 populations from the species' native range. This meta-analysis quantifies changes in the relative productivity, assessed as individual-tree volume, of populations across climatic gradients and associates the preference of a population with increased volume production along the climatic gradient. Clustering and ordination on the matrix containing estimates of change in productivity for each population summarise differentials in productivity associated with climatic gradients. The preference of populations along principal components therefore reflects the adaptive profiles of populations, which may be used with breeding-value estimates from routine genetic evaluations to assist with the development of deployment populations targeting different environments. As well, the approach may be used to test whether the preference of a population, estimated as population loadings for growth differentials, is affected by the climate in the native range of the population. This relationship may be interpreted as an estimate of how much local climate shapes the adaptive profiles of populations. The amount and seasonality of precipitation most clearly differentiate the adaptive profiles of populations, with less variation in the population responses explained by temperature differentiation. As expected from type-B correlation estimates, most populations exhibited small changes in relative productivity across climatic gradients. However, patterns of similarities in adaptive profiles among populations were evident using spatial orientation to display population responses to the climatic variables experienced in the provenance trials. Clustering and ordination of population responses derived from empirical data served to identify populations that responded positively or negatively to climatic variables; this information may help guide conservation genetics efforts, direct the deployment of germplasm, or identify seed sources that are sensitive to changes in climatic variables. Linking response patterns to the climatic data from the native range of each population indicated little effect of local climate shaping adaptive profiles.This paper presents a simulation tool that allows local councils, emergency services organisations, and communities to explore the viability and details of sandbagging depots and their operation as one of the components in a preparation and response strategy to flooding. The tool was developed in collaboration with Victorian State Emergency Services and the City of Port Phillip Council. The focus of this case study is the coastal suburb of Elwood, which has a canal through its centre and a worrying increase in damaging flash floods. The tool that was developed is suitable for use in any location, once relevant geographical information and flood maps are supplied.Aim Correlative species distribution models (SDMs) often involve some degree of projection into novel covariate space (i.e. extrapolation), because calibration data may not encompass the entire space of interest. Most methods for identifying extrapolation focus on the range of each model covariate individually. However, extrapolation can occur that is well within the range of univariate variation, but which exhibits novel combinations between covariates. Our objective was to develop a tool that can detect, distinguish and quantify these two types of novelties: novel univariate range and novel combinations of covariates. Location Global, Australia, South Africa. Methods We developed a new multivariate statistical tool, based on the Mahalanobis distance, which measures the similarity between the reference and projection domains by accounting for both the deviation from the mean and the correlation between variables. The method also provides an assessment tool for the detection of the most influential covariates leading to dissimilarity. As an example application, we modelled an Australian shrub (Acacia cyclops) widely introduced to other countries and compared reference data, global distribution data and both types of model extrapolation against the projection globally and in South Africa. Results The new tool successfully detected and quantified the degree of dissimilarity for points that were either outside the univariate range or formed novel covariate combinations (correlations) but were still within the univariate range of covariates. For A. cyclops, more than half of the points (6617 of 10,785) from the global projection space that were found to lie within the univariate range of reference data exhibited distorted correlations. Not all the climate covariates used for modelling contributed to novelty equally over the geographical space of the model projection. Main conclusions Identifying non-analogous environments is a critical component of model interrogation. Our extrapolation detection (ExDet) tool can be used as a quantitative method for exploring novelty and interpreting the projections from correlative SDMs and is available for free download as standalone software from http://www.climond.org/exdet.South Asia has been identified as one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the impact of climate change. Empirical studies carried out in recent years using the partial equilibrium approach suggest that climate change-induced yield losses in agriculture are becoming a serious concern. In this study, we use a global dynamic computable general equilibrium model to examine the impact of changes in crop productivity due to climate change on food prices and food security in South Asia, focusing on five large countries in the region, namely, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Our results suggest that there is likely to be a significant negative impact on food production and prices in all South Asian countries due to climate change-induced agricultural productivity changes. The results further suggest that countries in this region are likely to face problems of food security given that nearly half of the world's poor reside in this region and agriculture plays an important role in the gross domestic product (GDP) and employment generation in the region. The results support the need for policy analysts and policy makers in the region to develop climate change adaptation measures that address the likely negative consequences of climate change-induced agricultural productivity losses. (C) 2014 Economic Society of Australia, Queensland. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present study provides a review of existing assessments of preferences for climate change mitigation and adaptation policies through a worldwide meta-analysis. In this study, we analyze the impact of social values and norms on preferences towards climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. In a sample of 58 international studies, we found that mitigation actions were preferred over adaptation actions, and that preferences towards climate change policies are affected by attitudes towards time and social norms. In particular, societies with a long-term orientation display greater support towards climate change policies. These results therefore reveal the role of social factors as being crucial in order to understand the acceptability of climate change policies at a worldwide level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Arctic climate is rapidly changing, with wide ranging impacts on natural and social systems. A variety of adaptation policies, programs and practices have been adopted to this end, yet our understanding of if, how, and where adaptation is occurring is limited. In response, this paper develops a systematic approach to characterize the current state of adaptation in the Arctic. Using reported adaptations in the English language peer reviewed literature as our data source, we document 157 discrete adaptation initiatives between 2003 and 2013. Results indicate large variations in adaptation by region and sector, dominated by reporting from North America, particularly with regards to subsistence harvesting by Inuit communities. Few adaptations were documented in the European and Russian Arctic, or have a focus on the business and economy, or infrastructure sectors. Adaptations are being motivated primarily by the combination of climatic and non-climatic factors, have a strong emphasis on reducing current vulnerability involving incremental changes to existing risk management processes, and are primarily initiated and led at the individual/community level. There is limited evidence of trans-boundary adaptations or initiatives considering potential cross-scale/sector impacts.In this study we analyzed the spatial distribution, temporal variability and trends in reference evapotranspiration (ET0) in Spain from 1961 to 2011. Twelve methods were analyzed to quantify ET0 from quality controlled and homogeneous series of various meteorological variables measured at 46 meteorological stations. Some of the models used are temperature based (e.g., Thornthwaite, Hargreaves, Linacre), whereas others are more complex and require more meteorological variables for calculation (e.g., Priestley-Taylor, Papadakis, FAO-Blaney-Criddle). The Penman-Monteith equation was used as a reference to quantify ET, and for comparison among the other methods applied in the study. No major differences in the spatial distribution of the average ET were evident among the various methods. At annual and seasonal scales some of the ET0 methods requiring only temperature data for calculation provided better results than more complex methods requiring more variables. Among them the Hargreaves (HG) equation provided the best results, at both the annual and seasonal scales. The analysis of the temporal variability and trends in the magnitude of ET0 indicated that all methods show a marked increase in ET0 at the seasonal and annual time scales. Nevertheless, results obtained suggested substantial uncertainties among the methods assessed to determine ET0 changes, due to differences in temporal variability of the resulting time series, but mainly for the differences in the magnitude of change of ET and its spatial distribution. This suggests that ET0 trends obtained by means of methods that only require temperature data for ET0 calculations should be evaluated carefully under the current global warming scenario. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Shifting climate parameters and their rippling effects through social-ecological systems have altered the abilities of rural households and communities around the world to make livelihood decisions based on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). National and regional climate services are responding, but the information they provide may not meet local needs or concerns in an accessible format. Previous anthropological research suggests that integrating different knowledge systems to improve climate services, assist in local decision-making, and strengthen climate models remains problematic. To reduce or avoid some of these problems, a participatory, community-based environmental monitoring project was co-developed with residents of four rural Tanzanian communities. A field team brought in equipment and facilitated the training of local monitors, while communities chose the environmental sectors to monitor, collected and analyzed data, and evaluated the results in light of their local TEK. This interaction between scientists and participating community members highlights the value of knowledge co-production in making sense of environmental changes associated with climate that are observed and experienced at the local level. These activities also empowered communities to explore local climate adaptation and policy creation.Local values and knowledge can be important components in creating robust climate change adaptation strategies for marginalized communities. Incorporating local values into the climate change planning process in a structured way and effectively using local knowledge not only improves the identification of priority actions for climate change adaptation, but also supports successful implementation. Much of climate change adaptation planning in recent years identifies actions derived from expert-driven vulnerability assessments and adaptation actions. Yet the values of each community influence how climate change impacts are perceived, and what adaptation actions are locally acceptable and will have local buy-in for implementation. Thus, it is important that planning incorporates local values if the goal is successful adaptation to climate change. This paper provides one approach for addressing this through a participatory, values-based process for climate change adaptation planning. The approach is contextualized through a case study of the Gitga'at Nation, located in northern coastal British Columbia, Canada, where key values were found to be culturally important food sources, culture, environmental resources, self-sufficiency, health, infrastructure to enable us to live well, and Gitga'at pride and cooperation. These values were used throughout the planning process to contextualize climate change impacts on Gitga'at members' way of life and to develop and evaluate adaptation actions. It is hoped that this case study provides further proof of the utility of values-based planning in the context of adaptation planning for marginalized communities.Opportunities to experience nature are important for human wellbeing, yet they are often inequitably distributed across society. Socio-economic variation can explain some of this inequity, but there has been relatively limited consideration of how access to different kinds of nature experiences varies across society. Here we examine how tree cover (as a measure of the general 'greenness' of urban environments) and native remnant vegetation cover (as a measure of access to higher quality natural areas) varies across the socio-economic gradient within public parkland and residential yards in Brisbane, Australia. We found that most tree cover was provided on residential land, and spatial regression models revealed that tree cover in both public parkland and private spaces was strongly positively related to socio-economic advantage. Conversely, most remnant vegetation cover was located on public parkland, and this was only weakly positively related to socio-economic status. These results suggest that municipal management of remnant vegetation can support equity in access to high quality nature experiences across the socio-economic gradient. However, the results also highlight the important role of residential yards in providing access to nature in general, as these areas provide the majority of overall tree cover. Thus, while public policy can enhance equity in access to nature on public lands, strategies such as social marketing and incentives that enhance nature within private spaces are important particularly within more disadvantaged neighbourhoods. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Effectively addressing the health risks of climate change necessitates an active crosssectoral approach because health risks arise predominantly via sectors such as water, agriculture and energy. Much has been written on climate change and its impact on health, but little attention has focused on the realpolitik of how to progress the development and implementation of health-relevant strategies and policies to reduce this impact. The objective of this paper is to propose three solutions to address current deficiencies: i) strengthening the capacity and understanding of health officials in relation to climate change and health; ii) improving cross-sectoral partnerships with sectors relevant to climate change and health, and iii) identifying organisations influential in the development of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and policies, with a view to better target advocacy efforts. Practical examples of each solution are provided. In conclusion, as a steward of public health, the health sector must take the initiative to encourage a cross-sectoral approach that includes capacity development, coupled with an understanding of influential organisations. If this is done effectively, health, social and economic development goals can be reached more efficiently.There has been an increasing focus on providing better weather, climate, and resource information for decision making in drylands. This study explores what kind of information pastoralists in the Sahel received in 2013 and how they responded to this information. Moreover, the study assesses whether the disseminated information corresponds to the actual needs of pastoralists. The overall objective is thus to identify the outcome of providing weather, climate, and resource information to pastoralists and thereby to explore whether and how various products may guide their mobility and decision-making patterns. The results show that few of the interviewed pastoralists receive the seasonal rainfall forecasts, which have been produced since 1998 by the Climate Outlook Forum for West Africa. The pastoralists who did receive the forecasts used the information to adjust their crop cultivation strategies rather than to support livestock management decisions. To do the latter, pastoralists need information pertaining to the availability of grazing resources in various areas, the onset date of the rains, flooding events, and finescale information on rainfall amount during the first weeks of the rainy season. Such information could be used to adjust the purchase of supplementary fodder, to make qualified choices on transhumance destinations, and to make changes in herd composition. As pastoralists primarily acquire this information by calling friends and family in nearby areas, the results point to a strong disconnect between the parameters and scale of information that pastoralists need and those currently provided.Exploring adaptation pathways is an emerging approach for supporting decision making under uncertain changing conditions. An adaptation pathway is a sequence of policy actions to reach specified objectives. To develop adaptation pathways, interactions between environment and policy response need to be analysed over time for an ensemble of plausible futures. A fast, integrated model can facilitate this. Here, we describe the development and evaluation of such a model, an Integrated Assessment Metamodel (IAMM), to explore adaptation pathways in the Rhine delta for a decision problem currently faced by the Dutch Government. The theory-motivated metamodel is a simplified physically based model. Closed questions reflecting the required accuracy were used to evaluate the model's fitness. The results show that such a model fits the purpose of screening and ranking of policy options and pathways to support the strategic decision making. A complex model can subsequently be used to obtain more detailed information. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).The mealybug Phenacoccus solenopsis Tinsley (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) is a highly invasive and polyphagous pest of global incidence. The fundamental hypothesis of the present study was that the temperature variations due to global climate change may affect seriously the future distribution and abundance of P. solenopsis, which might further aggravate the crop yield losses. We employed a temperature-based phenology model of P. solenopsis in a geographic information system for mapping population growth potentials of P. solenopsis. The three risk indices viz., establishment risk index, generation index and activity index were computed using interpolated temperature data from worldclim database for current (2000) and future (2050) climatic conditions. The daily minimum and maximum temperature data from four selected weather stations in India were used for analysing within-year variation of pest population. A linear relationship was established between the activity indices and yield losses at various locations reported in literatures for predicting the future trend of yield loss due to climate change. The results revealed that, under current temperature conditions P. solenopsis can complete >4.0 generations per year on similar to 80% of the global cotton production areas. Economic losses are likely to occur in areas where at least 8.0 generations can develop in a year; under current climate similar to 40% areas fall under this category. The increased geographical suitability at higher latitudes in cotton production areas, additional 2.0 generations per year, and 4.0 fold increase of population abundance of P. solenopsis are expected in tropical and sub-tropical cotton areas of Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan and India due to predicted climate change. Analysis of within year population increase at various selected locations in India revealed that, P. solenopsis attained maximum potential population increase during the major cotton growing season (May-June to October-November). On the other hand, the innate ability of P. solenopsis population to increase reduced considerably during off season and cooler winter months. The increased pest activity of P. solenopsis due to climate change may intensify the losses in cotton yield, with forecasted losses in India to increase from existing losses of million US$ 1217.10 to future losses of million US$ 1764.85 by the year 2050. Here, we illustrate the possible impact of climate change on future P. solettopsis exacerbation based on temperature-driven population studies, which will help in undertaking agro-ecoregion specific management strategies. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban water services are challenged from many perspectives and different stakeholders demand performance improvements along economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. In response, urban water utilities systematically give more attention to criteria such as water safety, climate change adaptation and mitigation, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), total cost efficiency, and on how to improve their operations within the water-energy-carbon nexus. The authors of this paper collaborated in the development of a 'Dynamic Metabolism Model' (DMM). The model is developed for generic use in the sustainability assessment of urban water services, and it has been initially tested for the city of Oslo, Norway. The purpose has been to adopt a holistic systemic perspective to the analysis of metabolism and environmental impacts of resource flows in urban water and wastewater systems, in order to offer a tool for the examination of future strategies and intervention options in such systems. This paper describes the model and its application to the city of Oslo for the analysis time period 2013-2040. The external factors impacting decision-making and interventions are introduced along with realistic scenarios developed for the testing, after consultation with officials at the Oslo Water and Wastewater Works (Norway). Possible interventions that the utility intends to set in motion are defined and numerically interpreted for incorporation into the model, and changes in the indicator values over the time period are determined. This paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the DMM, as a decision-support tool for water-wastewater utilities. The scenarios considered and interventions identified do not include all possible scenarios and interventions that can be relevant for water-wastewater utilities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Infrastructures in Europe have been affected by impacts of extreme natural events with increasing frequency over the past decades. One of the most recent examples is the flooding that affected parts of Germany in June 2013. Global warming is expected to change patterns of climate-related extreme events affecting infrastructure. This article presents an explanatory approach. Based on an observational design, causal connections between the occurrence and patterns of extreme events and related road infrastructure impacts are analyzed. The hazard mapping case study in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg combines traffic information and data on the June 2013 extreme precipitation in Germany. It examines the precipitation occurrence and road infrastructure impact characteristics in Baden-Wurttemberg and identifies spatiotemporal hazard patterns. The article suggests further research needs and fields of application for risk mapping in climate change adaptation research in Germany.Extremes of wet and dry weather experienced in the UK in recent years have raised many questions and issues about traditional water management and farming practices. Farm infrastructure and traditional machinery have been found to be limited when addressing these issues, which include increases in flooding, diffuse pollution and the inability to access land to carry out basic farming operations. This paper reviews reactions to these issues from those tasked with addressing them in the short and long term. Drawing on theories of learning systems, it considers the nature of some of the learning that has taken place and what kinds of social infrastructure can support such learning. Implications for future learning system design are discussed. Key examples are drawn from two research contexts, one concerned with a new generation of agricultural machines and the other with water management, governance and climate adaptation.Glaciated mountains remain among the most under-studied regions in the world from a physical, social and climate change perspective, which complicates the development of appropriate adaptation and hazard mitigation approaches. The goal of the High Mountains Adaptation Partnership (HiMAP) project is to create conditions necessary for all the stakeholders who live in, or are dependent upon glacial watersheds, to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change. This article documents the origins, establishment, implementation and experiences of the HiMAP in the Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone in Khumbu, Nepal, from its formation in March 2012 up to August 2014. Regardless of the Partnership's success, it is clear that glacier-dominated areas of the world will continue to pose unique challenges to highland and downstream communities as they adapt to the impacts of global climate change, particularly in terms of the increasing threats of glacial lake outburst floods. Given the critical importance of glaciated landscapes to the millions of people living in cities and communities downstream, this article demonstrates that interdisciplinary climate change research approaches and applied field projects are necessary for climate change adaptation initiatives to be effective.Projections of surface hydrology and local ecosystem responses to expected climate change in the 21st century can inform regional planners and land use managers in the broader context of climate change adaptation at regional scales. We use bias-corrected and downscaled projections for 3 IPCC scenarios (B1, A1B, and A2) to assess projected climate impacts on ecosystem function and services for different regions of the conterminous USA utilizing the Terrestrial Ecosystems Model version Hydro. Significance of model trends is analyzed for each of the 6 US National Climate Assessment megaregions for several climatological, hydrological, and ecological variables based on projections and consistency among the multimodel ensemble from phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3). Our regional analysis reveals that there are some robust and significant trends that can be useful to decision-makers, and that these trends are specific to each region, as each region responds to climate forcing differently in ways that reflect emergent behavior from the interaction of climate, ecosystem, and surface processes. Generally, runoff is simulated to increase in winter and decrease in summer throughout the northern USA, snowpack is reduced everywhere, and net primary productivity and maize yield increase except where limited by moisture. Model reconstructions of magnitudes and directions of some historical regional trends are incorrect, so predicted reversals may be spurious. Some model variables such as precipitation show no significant projected trends, yet in concert, they control the responses of other variables such as soil moisture, in which the trends are projected to be significant. As such, variables whose trends are less observable may be revealed by other variables controlled by them, and can thus be used as proxies to enhance predictive capacity.As a direct measure of watershed resilience, watershed storage is important for understanding climate change impacts on water resources. In this paper we quantify water budget components and storage changes for two of the largest watersheds in the State of Michigan, USA (the Grand River and the Saginaw Bay watersheds) using remotely sensed data and a process-based hydrologic model (PAWS) that includes detailed representations of subsurface and land surface processes. Model performance is evaluated using ground-based observations (streamflows, groundwater heads, soil moisture, and soil temperature) as well as satellite-based estimates of evapotranspiration (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS) and watershed storage changes (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, GRACE). We use the model to compute annual-average fluxes due to evapotranspiration, surface runoff, recharge and groundwater contribution to streams and analyze the impacts of land use and land cover (LULC) and soil types on annual hydrologic budgets using correlation analysis. Watershed storage changes based on GRACE data and model results showed similar patterns. Storage was dominated by subsurface components and showed an increasing trend over the past decade. This work provides new estimates of water budgets and storage changes in Great Lakes watersheds and the results are expected to aid in the analysis and interpretation of the current trend of declining lake levels, in understanding projected future impacts of climate change as well as in identifying appropriate climate adaptation strategies.Cold- and warm-water species' fishing grounds show a spatial synchrony around fronts in the western North Pacific (WNP). However, it is not yet clear whether a front (thermal, salinity or chlorophyll) acts as an absolute barrier to fish migration on either side or its structure allows interaction of species with different physiological requirements. Our objective was to assess potential areas of overlap between cold- and warm-water species using probabilities of presence derived from fishery datasets and remotely sensed environment data in the Kuroshio-Oyashio region in the WNP. Fishery data comprised skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) fishing locations and proxy presences (derived from fishing night light images) for neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartrami) and Pacific saury (Cololabis saira). Monthly (August-November) satellite remotely sensed sea-surface temperature, chlorophyll-a and sea-surface height anomaly images were used as environment data. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) models were used to determine probabilities of presence (PoP) for each set of fishery and environment data for the area 35-45 degrees N and 140-160 degrees E. Maps of both sets of PoPs were compared and areas of overlap identified using a combined probability map. Results indicated that areas of spatial overlap existed among the species habitats, which gradually widened from September to November. The reasons for these overlaps include the presence of strong thermal/ocean-color gradients between cold Oyashio and warm Kuroshio waters, and also the presence of the sub-arctic front. Due to the high abundance of food along frontal zones, the species use the fronts as foraging grounds while confining within physiologically tolerable waters on either side of the front. The interaction zone around the front points to areas that might be accessible to both species for foraging, which suggests intense prey-predator interaction zones. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need to adapt to climate change is now widely recognised as evidence of its impacts on social and natural systems grows and greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Yet efforts to adapt to climate change, as reported in the literature over the last decade and in selected case studies, have not led to substantial rates of implementation of adaptation actions despite substantial investments in adaptation science. Moreover, implemented actions have been mostly incremental and focused on proximate causes; there are far fewer reports of more systemic or transformative actions. We found that the nature and effectiveness of responses was strongly influenced by framing. Recent decision-oriented approaches that aim to overcome this situation are framed within a "pathways" metaphor to emphasise the need for robust decision making within adaptive processes in the face of uncertainty and inter-temporal complexity. However, to date, such "adaptation pathways" approaches have mostly focused on contexts with clearly identified decision-makers and unambiguous goals; as a result, they generally assume prevailing governance regimes are conducive for adaptation and hence constrain responses to proximate causes of vulnerability. In this paper, we explore a broader conceptualisation of "adaptation pathways" that draws on 'pathways thinking' in the sustainable development domain to consider the implications of path dependency, interactions between adaptation plans, vested interests and global change, and situations where values, interests, or institutions constrain societal responses to change. This reconceptualisation of adaptation pathways aims to inform decision makers about integrating incremental actions on proximate causes with the transformative aspects of societal change. Case studies illustrate what this might entail. The paper ends with a call for further exploration of theory, methods and procedures to operationalise this broader conceptualisation of adaptation. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We develop a systems framework for exploring adaptation pathways to climate change among people in remote and marginalized regions. The framework builds on two common and seemingly paradoxical narratives about people in remote regions. The first is recognition that people in remote regions demonstrate significant resilience to climate and resource variability, and may therefore be among the best equipped to adapt to climate change. The second narrative is that many people in remote regions are chronically disadvantaged and therefore are among the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. These narratives, taken in isolation and in extremis, can have significant maladaptive policy and practice implications. From a systems perspective, both narratives may be valid, because they form elements of latent and dominant feedback loops that require articulation for a nuanced understanding of vulnerability-reducing and resilience-building responses in a joint framework. Through literature review and community engagement across three remote regions on different continents, we test the potential of the framework to assist dialogue about adaptation pathways in remote marginalized communities. In an adaptation pathway view, short-term responses to vulnerability can risk locking in a pathway that increases specific resilience but creates greater vulnerability in the long-term. Equally, longer-term actions towards increasing desirable forms of resilience need to take account of short-term realities to respond to acute and multiple needs of marginalized remote communities. The framework was useful in uniting vulnerability and resilience narratives, and broadening the scope for adaptation policy and action on adaptation pathways for remote regions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.How do innovators respond to the shock of a natural disaster? Do natural disasters spur technical innovations that can reduce the risk of future hazards? This paper examines the impact of three types of natural disasters floods, droughts and earthquakes on the innovation of their respective mitigation technologies. Using patent and disaster data, our study is the first to empirically examine adaptation responses across multiple sectors at the country level. Considering the potential endogeneity of disaster damages, we use meteorological and geophysical data to create hazard intensity measures as instrumental variables. Overall, we show that natural disasters lead to more risk-mitigating innovations, while the degree of influence varies across different types of disasters and technologies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The 2010/2011 floods in Queensland, Australia inflicted significant damages to government's critical infrastructures, private properties and businesses reaching an estimated amount of AU$16 billion. Mitigating the devastating effects of floods to the community and critical infrastructures entails competing financial requirements at the different levels of government. Hence, the main objective of this study was to examine the financial optimality of disaster risk reduction measures by integrating Markov decision processes (MOP for short) with geographic information system (GIS). Conducted in the core suburbs of Brisbane City, we organised the MDP variables using the following: 1) flood risk levels as the states of the urban system; 2) Queensland's disaster risk reduction measures as the action variables; 3) percentage of government expenditures by disaster risk reduction category as the state transition probabilities; 4) total lost earnings to businesses affected by the flood events as the reward variables; and 5) the weighted average riskless rate of return, the weighted average rate of return, and rate of return for a riskier asset as discounting factors. We analysed 36 MDP scenarios at four-level iteration and then calculated the expectimax values to find the optimal policy. The results from the analyses revealed that the Commonwealth government optimised the use of its natural disaster risk reduction expenditures to recovery while the State government focused on mitigation. When both government expenditures combined, the mitigation measure was identified as the optimum natural disaster risk reduction policy. The methodology presented in this study allowed a spatial representation and computationally feasible integration of complex flood disaster risk model with government expenditures and business earnings. The insights from this integrated approach emphasise the viability of finding optimum expenditures, and re-examine if necessary, in implementing natural disaster risk reduction policies and climate adaptation strategies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Variation in productivity will affect the level of fishing mortality that a population can sustain without decline. We examined three Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) stocks off Canada for evidence of changing productivity and determined the impact this variation would have on different fishing mortality reference points and their sustainability. Productivity was found to vary greatly over time within all three cod stocks. Under high productivity conditions, G(0) (i.e. the potential growth in spawning-stock biomass at a fishing mortality of zero) for the three populations was 20-30%. But under low productivity conditions, G(0) was much less. Two of the populations had G(0) that was near zero or negative when productivity was low, indicating the possibility of population decline even in the absence of fishing. The degree to which the levels of common fishing mortality reference points (F-MSY, F-MAX, F-0.1, and F-40%SPR) changed across productivity periods was variable. All showed significant variation with changing productivity; however, the differences in reference points between productivity periods were generally very small except for F-MAX and F-MSY. All four reference points examined here were sustainable under conditions of high and average productivity. YPR and SPR reference points do not incorporate recruitment in their calculation. During periods of low productivity, recruitment was reduced and these reference points generally became unsustainable. F-MAX was similar to F-MSY only under high and average productivity but was not a good proxy for F-MSY under lower levels of productivity. Reference points should incorporate recruitment because of its importance in determining the productivity of the stock and should be updated as productivity changes.There is an ever-growing body of literature on forest management strategies for climate change adaptation; however, few frameworks have been presented for integrating these strategies with the real-world challenges of forest management. We have developed a structured approach for translating broad adaptation concepts into specific management actions and silvicultural practices for forest adaptation, as well as an associated set of resources to assist managers in using this approach. A variety of public, private, nongovernmental, and tribal natural resource managers are using this approach to develop projects that implement a diversity of adaptation actions while also meeting manager-identified goals. We describe how managers can integrate climate change information into management planning and activities and provide examples of real-world forest management projects that identify actions to help forests adapt to changing conditions.This paper critically reviews ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) approaches for food security under climate change, specifically for the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) comprising the Africa, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and South China Sea (AIMS) region. The focus is on integrating different knowledge forms. An analysis of current EbA approaches for food security is undertaken, alongside a review of methodologies for integrating local and external knowledge. Key gaps and actions for EbA for food security in the AIMS region, and potentially further afield, are identified. The gaps indicate the lack of coherence in AIMS SIDS approaching food security, in terms of policies and actions not reflecting the ecosystem-food-climate nexus, the lack of a regional framework despite similarities amongst the SIDS, and the infrequency with which knowledge integration occurs. To fill these gaps, suggested actions highlight knowledge identification and combination, learning from others and from history, using local champions, and regularly monitoring and evaluating progress. These actions will push forward the EbA agenda through improved development and use of knowledge, better connections amongst the AIMS SIDS and farther afield, and more local-national-regional collaboration.In the context of global concerns about climate change that stem from the alarming and unprecedented growth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, this study discusses the use of energy by large consumers of electricity in Brazil in the perspective of sustainable development, energy resources, and regulatory policies. It evaluates the commitment to emissions restrictions among the major customers of an electricity utility company that serves 4.1 million consumers (68% of the population and 66% of the gross internal product for the second-highest economically developed Brazilian state). The evaluation is based on proposed metrics and indicators. By considering the Brazilian commitment to a policy of sustainable development, this study reviews the primary international agreements and recommendations that have been developed to mitigate and adapt to climate change and sustainability. A survey was developed for participating organizations classified by economic sector to assess their awareness to 18 issues that reflect international guidelines on emission constraints. Based on total energy consumption, the survey discusses the worrying level of GHG emissions (tCO(2)eq) that is associated with the generation of electricity by customers of the largest utility company. In spite of 90% of the organizations having considered sustainability as a business opportunity and a competitive differential that enables niche markets, the results of this study demonstrated low commitment to the desired emissions restrictions.There is a recognised gap between what climate science can currently provide and what end users of that information require to make robust adaptation decisions about their climate-related risks. This issue has been identified as a major barrier to successful climate change adaptation outcomes and is emphasised within the water resource management and agricultural sectors because of high uncertainty surrounding precipitation projections. This paper details the outcomes of a survey and workshop aimed at better understanding this gap. To bridge the gap, it is recommended that communication and packaging of climate information be improved via a formalised 'knowledge broker'. It is also suggested that a 'terms of reference' for key climate change-related terms be developed and agreed upon by both climate science providers and end users to reduce the misuse of terminology and subsequent confusion. Further, it is recommended that additional research be conducted into natural variability and baseline risk to provide a realistic background on which climate change projections and associated uncertainties are assessed. Finally, for successful climate change adaptation, new tools and methods are needed that deal explicitly with end user needs and the practical limitations end users face (e.g. time, funding, human resources, politics) when attempting to make robust decisions under climate change-related uncertainty.Climate models agree that semi-arid regions around the world are likely to experience increased rainfall variability and longer droughts in the coming decades. In regions dependent on agriculture, such changes threaten to aggravate existing food insecurity and economic underdevelopment, and to push migration to urban areas. In the Brazilian semi-arid region, the Sertao, farmers' vulnerability to climate-past, present, and future-stems from several factors, including low yielding production practices and reliance on scarce and seasonally variable water resources. Using interpolated local climate data, we show that, since 1962, in the Bacia do Jacuipe-one of the poorest regions in the Sertao of Bahia state-average temperatures have increased similar to 2 degrees C and rainfall has decreased similar to 350 mm. Over the same time period, average milk productivity-the main rural economic activity in the county-has fallen while in Brazil and in Bahia as a whole milk productivity has increased dramatically. This paper teases apart the drivers of climate vulnerability of the Bacia do Jacuipe in relation to the rest of Bahia. We then present the results of a suite of pilot projects by Adapta Sertao, a coalition of organizations working to improve the adaptive capacity of farmers living in the semi-arid region. By testing a number of different technologies and arrangements at the farm level, Adapta Sertao has shown that interventions focused on balanced animal diets and efficient irrigation systems can help reduce (but not eliminate) the dependence of production systems from climate. They are thus viable adaptation strategies that should be tested at a larger scale, with implications for semi-arid regions worldwide.While health impact assessment (HIA) has typically been applied to projects, plans or policies, it has significant potential with regard to strategic considerations of major health issues facing society such as climate change. Given the complexity of climate change, assessing health impacts presents new challenges that may require different approaches compared to traditional applications of HIA. This research focuses on the development of health consequence scales suited to assessing and comparing health effects associated with climate change and applied within a HIA framework. This assists in setting priorities for adaptation plans to minimize the public health impacts of climate change. The scales presented in this paper were initially developed for a HIA of climate change in Perth in 2050, but they can be applied across spatial and temporal scales. The design is based on a health effects pyramid with health measures expressed in orders of magnitude and linked to baseline population and health data. The health consequence measures are combined with a measure of likelihood to determine the level of risk associated with each health potential health impact. In addition, a simple visual framework that can be used to collate, compare and communicate the level of health risks associated with climate change has been developed.Deforestation is a major environmental challenge in the mountain areas of Pakistan. The study assessed trends in the forest cover in Chitral tehsil over the last two decades using supervised land cover classification of Landsat TM satellite images from 1992, 2000, and 2009, with a maximum likelihood algorithm. In 2009, the forest cover was 10.3% of the land area of Chitral (60,000 ha). The deforestation rate increased from 0.14% per annum in 1992-2000 to 0.54% per annum in 2000-2009, with 3,759 ha forest lost over the 17 years. The spatial drivers of deforestation were investigated using a cellular automaton modelling technique to project future forest conditions. Accessibility (elevation, slope), population density, distance to settlements, and distance to administrative boundary were strongly associated with neighbourhood deforestation. A model projection showed a further loss of 23% of existing forest in Chitral tehsil by 2030, and degradation of 8%, if deforestation continues at the present rate. Arandu Union Council, with 2212 households, will lose 85% of its forest. Local communities have limited income resources and high poverty and are heavily dependent on non-timber forest products for their livelihoods. Continued deforestation will further worsen their livelihood conditions, thus improved conservation efforts are essential.Many aspects of the Californian approach to controlling the greenhouse gases that cause climate change now have a sufficient track record to provide potential models or lessons for national and even international action. In comparison, the state's efforts on climate change adaptation, although multifaceted, are less well developed and thus far have focused largely on information sharing, impact assessments, and planning. Still, adaptation could advance more quickly in California than in many other regions, given relatively high public awareness and concern, extensive scientific information, a strong tradition of local and regional planning, and some enabling policies and institutions. Much more political support and sufficient financing will have to be mustered at state and local levels to enable new projects and initiatives to cope with sea level rise, water management, and ecosystem adaptation, not to mention public health and other key areas of concern. Even so, California's initial efforts to adapt to unavoidable changes in climate may offer insights for other governments that will, inevitably, need to fashion their own adaptation strategies.We analyse whether and how six regional partnerships catalyse innovations in climate adaptation policies in Canada and England. The relatively rare and underexplored adaptation partnerships are collaborative arrangements in which governmental, business, and civil society actors strive to facilitate adaptation to climate change. Representing new political spaces, partnerships are expected to produce more innovative policies than hierarchies do. We find that the partnerships catalyse policy innovations in three distinct ways: through collaboration among the partners, through scaling up their activities beyond the partnerships, and by supporting national adaptation politics. However, the instrumental portfolio of the policy innovations is limited. It primarily comprises informational policies (e. g. guidelines), strategies, and plans (usually non-binding). Regarding innovation mechanisms, the analysis highlights the importance of collaboration and learning. Although there is a risk that partnerships will become talking shops, we conclude that, thus far, they support policymakers in tackling the challenges of an emerging policy field.This paper details the Infrastructure Planning Support System (IPSS), a software tool that incorporates five areas of analysis, including climate change, environment, and social impact, to provide a holistic, longer-term approach to the management and planning of road infrastructure. The system combines quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to develop an estimated fiscal cost, in addition to estimates of GHG emissions, transportation time and cost savings, and a prioritization metric focusing on social impact of road construction. The IPSS system has been applied in several case studies, including South Africa, Mozambique, Vietnam, a pan-African analysis, and several Asian countries including China, South Korea, Mongolia, and Japan. This paper serves as the first comprehensive explanation of the IPSS system, including the literature review, background, and methodology. The results section focuses on the costs of climate change in an illustrative case study of the State of Colorado in the United States, due to specific data and outputs required for the other analysis components. This paper focuses on the need for a holistic systems approach, its relevance to transportation planning and investment, and one example of how climate change considerations can be quantified and applied at the policy level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Analyses of climate change and the forest sector have identified the importance of individual actors, institutions, and organizations within communities for effective adaption and climate mitigation. Yet, there remains little recognition of how the internal dynamics of these institutions and organizations are influenced by gender and other social considerations such as age and culture. Research from developing countries and cognate resource sectors suggests that these considerations are critical for enhancing local adaptive capacity. Despite extensive review of forestry research across North America and western Europe, we found almost no research that addresses how differential social capabilities within forest-based communities affect adaptation to climate change. In this paper, we document the potential that gender sensitivity might provide to conceptions and practical applications of adaptive capacity and identify four types of research opportunities to address this gap: (i) developing disaggregated capitals frameworks; (ii) creating inclusive models; (iii) informing social planning; and (iv) understanding gender main-streaming. Research focused on these opportunities, among others, will provide more robust theoretical understanding of adaptive capacity and strategic interventions necessary for effective adaptation.With the changing climate, more and more natural disasters such as cyclone, hurricane and typhoon take place around the world, which cause tremendous loss and damage. Damages of building structures by windborne debris impacts have been reported in almost all the previous major wind events. The windborne debris usually imposes localized impact loading and creates an opening on the building envelope, which might trigger serious damages to the building structures such as roof lift-up and collapse because strong wind pressures propagating into the structure. To withstand the impact of such extreme event, climate adaptation engineering solutions and technique need to be provided or improved for the building protection. The capacity requirement of panels to resist windborne debris impact is given in the Australian Wind Loading Code (AS/NZS 1170.2:2011) [1]. Corrugated metal panel, widely used as building envelope such as roof and wall cladding, might subject to the windborne debris impact. This study evaluates the capacity of corrugated panels to resist wind borne debris impact. Laboratory tests were carried out on corrugated metal panels of dimension 0.76 m by 1.2 m subjected to 4 kg wooden projectile impacts. The effect of various impact locations, impact velocities and boundary conditions on their performance has been studied. The failure and deformation modes under various impact scenarios were observed and compared. The dynamic responses were examined based on the deformations and the strains on the panel back face. The perforation resistance capacity of panels subjected to windborne debris impact were assessed and analyzed. In addition, a numerical model was developed in LS-DYNA to simulate the response and failure of the corrugated panel under windborne debris impact. The accuracy of the numerical model was calibrated with the test data. The validated numerical model was then used to obtain the results such as impact force, boundary reaction force and energy absorption. The vulnerability curve of the corrugated panel against windborne debris impact was also derived. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Future food production is highly vulnerable to both climate change and air pollution with implications for global food security(1-4). Climate change adaptation and ozone regulation have been identified as important strategies to safeguard food production(5,6), but little is known about how climate and ozone pollution interact to affect agriculture, nor the relative effectiveness of these two strategies for different crops and regions. Here we present an integrated analysis of the individual and combined effects of 2000-2050 climate change and ozone trends on the production of four major crops (wheat, rice, maize and soybean) worldwide based on historical observations and model projections, specifically accounting for ozone-temperature co-variation. The projections exclude the effect of rising CO2, which has complex and potentially offsetting impacts on global food supply(7-10). We show that warming reduces global crop production by >10% by 2050 with a potential to substantially worsen global malnutrition in all scenarios considered. Ozone trends either exacerbate or offset a substantial fraction of climate impacts depending on the scenario, suggesting the importance of air quality management in agricultural planning. Furthermore, we find that depending on region some crops are primarily sensitive to either ozone (for example, wheat) or heat (for example, maize) alone, providing a measure of relative benefits of climate adaptation versus ozone regulation for food security in different regions.Hydrological and land use changes can affect species in human altered landscapes. Typically the impacts of hydrological and land use changes are examined separately, with hydrological determinants used to explain the distribution of species in water dependent and aquatic habitats and land use factors used to examine terrestrial species. However, given the connectedness of aquatic and terrestrial habitats, stressors originating in one domain may be important in the other. To explore the importance of integrating both hydrological and land use factors, we tested the relative contribution of hydrological factors and land use context as determinants of the dominant riparian tree species, Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehn. throughout wetlands of the Condamine catchment, southern Queensland, Australia. The occurrence of E. camaldulensis was modelled against hydrological and land use factors using generalized linear models (GLMs) and validated using internal bootstrapping procedures. Validated models which included both hydrological (distance from weir, wetland-river connectivity and groundwater depth) and land use factors (agricultural land cover and grazing intensity) performed better than those developed using only hydrological factors. The study results highlight the importance of an integrated perspective which considers both hydrological and land use factors in order to understand occurrence patterns of riparian and floodplain tree species in a range of settings. This approach could be especially important when assessing changes to hydrology and land use which may be triggered by climatic changes.Projected impacts of climate change on the populations and distributions of species pose a challenge for conservationists. In response, a number of adaptation strategies to enable species to persist in a changing climate have been proposed. Management to maximise the quality of habitat at existing sites may reduce the magnitude or frequency of climate-driven population declines. In addition large-scale management of landscapes could potentially improve the resilience of populations by facilitating inter-population movements. A reduction in the obstacles to species' range expansion, may also allow species to track changing conditions better through shifts to new locations, either regionally or locally. However, despite a strong theoretical base, there is limited empirical evidence to support these management interventions. This makes it difficult for conservationists to decide on the most appropriate strategy for different circumstances. Here extensive data from long-term monitoring of woodland birds at individual sites are used to examine the two-way interactions between habitat and both weather and population count in the previous year. This tests the extent to which site-scale and landscape-scale habitat attributes may buff er populations against variation in winter weather (a key driver of woodland bird population size) and facilitate subsequent population growth. Our results provide some support for the prediction that landscape-scale attributes (patch isolation and area of woodland habitat) may influence the ability of some woodland bird species to withstand weather-mediated population declines. These effects were most apparent among generalist woodland species. There was also evidence that several, primarily specialist, woodland species are more likely to increase following population decline where there is more woodland at both site and landscape scales. These results provide empirical support for the concept that landscape-scale conservation efforts may make the populations of some woodland bird species more resilient to climate change. However in isolation, management is unlikely to provide a universal benefit to all species.The goal of this study was to set-up the basis for climate change adaptation of water resources management policies in Seyhan River basin. The first priority was to identify the balances between water resources and water users with respect to existing and planned projects. In this respect various aspects of Seyhan basin were evaluated, including evaluation of existing water resources, determination of water demand of existing and planned projects, and water resources supply-demand characteristics. The global climate change model was downscaled to the basin scale, the results were associated with hydrometeorological monitoring network and finally the impact of climate change on surface water resources and demands were determined for specific projection years. Water resources management scenarios were developed to evaluate adaptation alternatives to climate change scenarios at the basin level. It was determined that even though there was no water stress in Seyhan basin in 2010, many parts of the basin were expected to suffer significant shortages over the coming years.The US National Park Service (NPS) manages over 8900 km(2) of forest area in the eastern United States where climate change and nonnative species are altering forest structure, composition, and processes. Understanding potential forest change in response to climate, differences in habitat projections among models (uncertainty), and nonnative biotic stressors (tree pests and diseases and invasive plants) are vital for forward-looking land management. In this research, we examined potential changes in tree habitat suitability using two climate scenarios ('least change' and 'major change') to evaluate uncertainty in the magnitude of potential forest change. We further used nonnative tree pest and plant data to examine strengths and spatial patterns of these stressors and their correlations with projected changes in tree habitat. Analyses included 121 national parks, 134 tree species (from the US Forest Service Climate Change Atlas), 81 nonnative tree pests (from the US Forest Service Alien Forest Pest Explorer Database), and nonnative vascular plant presence data from each park. Lastly, for individual tree species in individual parks, we categorized potential habitat suitability change (from late 20th century baseline to 2100) into three change classes: large decrease (<50%), minor change (50-200%), and large increase (>200%). Results show that the potential magnitude of forest change (percentage of modeled tree species in the large decrease and large increase classes, combined) varies from 22% to 77% at individual parks. Uncertainty (the percentage of tree species in differing change classes across climate scenarios) varies from 18% to 84% at parks. Nonnative plant species comprise from <10% to about 50% of the flora at parks. The number of nonnative tree pest species ranges from 15 to 70 among parks. Potential forest change, uncertainty, and nonnative pests and plants have significant positive correlations, illustrating the broad scope of potential compounding effects and future changes in many eastern forests. The combination of rapid climate change and nonnative stressors may accelerate decline of some tree species and inhibit other species from occupying climatically suitable habitat. Stewarding forests for continuous change is a challenge for park managers. Understanding and anticipating projected rates and directions of forest change and nonnative biotic stressors should facilitate monitoring and management efforts on park lands and across the broader landscape. Published by Elsevier B.V.Water scarcity, energy consumption, and air temperature regulation are three critical resource and environmental challenges linked to urban population growth. While appliance efficiency continues to increase, today's homes are larger and residents are using more energy-consuming devices. Recent research has often described the energy-water nexus as a "tradeoff" between energy and water due to reduced temperatures resulting from irrigated vegetation. Accordingly, some arid cities have implemented landscape-conversion programs that encourage homeowners to convert their yards from grass (mesic) to drought-tolerant (xeric) landscapes to help conserve water resources. We investigated these relationships in Phoenix, Arizona by examining energy and water data for the summer months of June-September 2005 while temperature variability was analyzed from a local heat wave. Results show parallel consumption patterns with energy and water use strongly correlated and newer homes using more of both. The counterintuitive findings show that "drought-resistant" models may not be beneficial for community health, environment, or economics and that this issue is further complicated by socio-economic variables.The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of climate change on the drought and flood risks of a multipurpose dam. To achieve this, A2 climate change scenarios of RegCM3 were collected about Chungju Dam in Korea. To analyze drought risks, weather data obtained by the statistical downscaling method were entered to produce runoff series by runoff modeling and water balance was analyzed based on water use scenarios to review changes in the storage volume under climate change. To analyze flood risks, changes in water levels of the dam in future flood seasons were reviewed based on the current dam operation method. The results of the review indicated that both the drought and the flood risks of the dam would increase in the future. The reason was considered to be the movement of the flood season's runoff characteristics from July and August to August and September because of climate change. Therefore, for climate change adaptation planning, not only quantitative changes in hydrologic values but also changes in temporal characteristics should be considered and given importance.Research into the climate change and migration nexus has often focussed solely on how people move in response to the impacts of variability and change in climate. This notion often ignores the nature of migration as a tried and tested livelihood choice amid a variety of socio-economic and environmental opportunities and limitations. This paper closely looks at the behavioural aspects of migration decision-making in Bangladesh in the context of changes in its economy, and, increasingly, exposure to the impacts of climate variability and change. We find that villagers in areas particularly affected by increasing climatic stresses and shocks are diversifying their traditional livelihood strategies by migrating. Environmental factors, including climatic stresses and shocks, often make such shifts even more necessary. Although the migrants' primary motivation is better income, in effect, migration becomes an effective form of adaptation. Based on a qualitative study in three geographically distinct places of Bangladesh, we propose that migration is a socially acceptable behaviour that occurs in the context of perceived environmental change and climate variability. Migration decisions are mediated by a set of 'behavioural factors' that assesses the efficacy of different responses to opportunities and challenges, their socio-cultural acceptance and the ability to respond successfully. This understanding has policy relevance for climate change adaptation, in terms of both how migrants are perceived and how their movements are planned for.The combination of global warming, resource exploitation and the resulting increase in Arctic shipping activity are expected to increase the risk of exotic species introductions to Arctic waters in the near future. Here, we provide for the first time a benthic invertebrate survey for non-indigenous species (NIS) from the Canadian Arctic coasts, incorporating historical information to identify new records. The top three ports at highest risk for introduction of NIS of the Canadian Arctic were surveyed: Churchill (Manitoba), Deception Bay (Quebec) and Iqaluit (Nunavut). A total of 236 genera and species were identified. Based on cross referencing comparisons of contemporary and historical information on species composition and distributions, 14.4% of the taxa identified can be considered new records within the port regions surveyed and 7.2% within the more extended, adjacent surrounding regions. Increased survey effort is the most likely explanation for the majority of new occurrences, however, a small number of records (n=7) were new mentions for Canada and were categorized as cryptogenic since we could not confidently describe them as being either native or introduced. Further research is required to better understand the status of these new taxa. This study provides a benchmark for early detection for benthic invertebrates in the region. Significant costs and intensive labor are involved in monitoring and in early detection surveys, but they provide a great opportunity for identifying native and introduced biodiversity, crucial to analyzing the changes taking place along one of the longest coastlines in the world, the Canadian Arctic coast.The extreme heat watch and warnings (EHWW) which is constructed as a part of the climate change adaptation took effect in the summer of 2008, but active response actions failed to be taken because of low perception among citizens. Therefore, a survey investigation targeting citizens residing in Busan and the Gyeongnam province was conducted in order to know the perception regarding EHWW issued by the Korea Meteorological Administration, to identify the main media through which information is acquired, and to propose an improvement measures which may enhance the usefulness and the degree of satisfaction of weather information. The results are as follows; The perception regarding EHWW was not very high as it remained at 59.8% in terms of percentile. Although the statistical significance was not fulfilled in the categories of gender or occupation, significant differences did exist among age groups. The main medium through which citizens acquired information regarding EHWW was the television, which was followed in order by the internet, acquaintances, short message service (SMS), radio, newspapers, the 131 weather hotline, and other media. The usefulness of EHWW was somewhat high (67.2%), and female students were found to utilize the information to a higher degree than male students. The statistics on the level of satisfaction regarding the weather information (65.4%) revealed that most respondents were satisfied. Housewives, professional, and the elder age groups exhibited great satisfaction, leading to the conclusions that the level of perception and interest regarding to the special weather reports (SWR) have an impact on satisfaction of SWR.The potential benefit of urban vegetation in reducing heat related mortality in the city of Melbourne, Australia is investigated using a two-scale modelling approach. A meso-scale urban climate model was used to quantify the effects of ten urban vegetation schemes on the current climate in 2009 and future climates in 2030 and 2050. The indoor thermal performance of five residential buildings was then simulated using a building simulation tool with the local meso-climates associated with various urban vegetation schemes. Simulation results suggest that average seasonal summer temperatures can be reduced in the range of around 0.5 and 2 degrees C if the city were replaced by vegetated suburbs and parklands, respectively. With the limited buildings and local meso-climates investigated in this study, around 5-28% and 37-99% reduction in heat related mortality rate have been estimated by doubling the city's vegetation coverage and transforming the city into parklands respectively. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adjustment to predicted environmental change in a place requires people in that place to consider short- and long-term futures there. These futures are imagined with reference to pasts and presents, remembered and lived. This paper presents the stories relating possible futures to pasts and presents of residents in tiny, low-lying coastal communities in Gippsland East, Australia, as they make sense of the uncertain futures they may face. It identifies four time stories, about generational continuity, the temporariness of inundation, endurance and acceptance in older age, and the impermanence of infrastructure. It sets these alongside the time-based practices inherent in existing adaptation policies, which do not satisfy the demands for adaptation arising from residents' time stories. We suggest that understanding local residents' time stories can contribute to a better synchronisation in the timing of local adaptation policies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aim To identify the main spatiotemporal patterns of tree growth responses to different time-scales of drought at a hemispheric scale using a climate drought index and tree-ring records, and to determine whether those patterns are driven by different climate and forest features. Location Northern Hemisphere. Methods We used a large-scale dendrochronological data set of tree-ring width series from 1657 sites and a time-dependent drought index which incorporates information on precipitation and temperature variability (standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index, SPEI). Correlation analysis was used to quantify how tree growth responds to different drought time-scales. Variation in the correlations was summarized using principal components analysis (PCA) and the contribution of the various environmental factors was estimated using predictive discriminant analysis (PDA). Results The period between the water shortage and the impact on tree growth differs noticeably among forest types and tree families. There is a gradient in the response of growth to drought including: (1) forests that do not respond to drought, such as those located in cold and very humid areas; (2) forests located in semi-arid areas characterized by responses to long-term droughts; (3) forests that respond to medium-to long-term droughts subjected to subhumid conditions; and (4) forests that dominate humid sites and respond to short-term droughts. Main conclusion Forests that experience semi-arid and subhumid conditions tend to respond over longer time-scales than those located in more humid areas. The characteristic time-scale at which forest growth mainly responds to drought is a proxy for drought vulnerability, reflecting the trees' ability to cope with water deficits of different durations and severities.Knowledge of climate change and its impacts can facilitate adaptation efforts. However, complex system dynamics, data scarcity, and heterogeneity often generate both contradictory findings and unexpected climate change impacts. Here we present local ecological knowledge of climate and ecological change in central Tibet to support the finding of delayed summer on the Tibetan Plateau, a finding that has been subject to vigorous, ongoing debate based on Western scientific data. Tibetans who actively herd on a daily basis and are located at higher elevations were most likely to notice changes in seasonality, reported as later start of summer and green-up, and as delayed and shortened livestock milking season. Local meteorological data, indigenous observations of higher snowlines and long-term animal number data suggest that a regional warming trend, rather than land use change, may underlie the delayed phenology trends. We demonstrate that local ecological knowledge can reveal counter-intuitive outcomes and help resolve apparent contradictions through its strengths in situations of high variability, ability to integrate over a range of variables and time scales, and operation outside of Western scientific logic. This suggests local knowledge does not exist to be confirmed or disproved by Western science, but rather can also advance Western science and help contribute to its debates. It is precisely points of apparent contradiction within and between knowledge systems that are most productive for more extensive inquiry. Future research on climate change, and climate adaptation policy-making, will benefit from careful, contextual dialog with local observations, focusing on observable biophysical phenomena that are affected by temperature and precipitation and that are important to livelihoods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In developing countries adaptation responses to climate and global change should be integrated with human development to generate no regrets, co-benefit strategies for the rural poor, but there are few examples of how to achieve this. The adaptation pathways approach provides a potentially useful decision-making framework because it aims to steer societies towards sustainable futures by accounting for complex systems, uncertainty and contested multi-stakeholder arenas, and by maintaining adaptation options. Using Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, Indonesia, as an example we consider whether generic justifications for adaptation pathways are tenable in the local context of climate and global change, rural poverty and development. Interviews and focus groups held with a cross-section of provincial leaders showed that the causes of community vulnerability are indeed highly complex and dynamic, influenced by 20 interacting drivers, of which climate variability and change are only two. Climate change interacts with population growth and ecosystem degradation to reduce land, water and food availability. Although poverty is resilient due to corruption, traditional institutions and fatalism, there is also considerable system flux due to decentralisation, modernisation and erosion of traditional culture. Together with several thresholds in drivers, potential shocks and paradoxes, these characteristics result in unpredictable system trajectories. Decision-making is also contested due to tensions around formal and informal leadership, corruption, community participation in planning and female empowerment. Based on this context we propose an adaptation pathways approach which can address the proximate and systemic causes of vulnerability and contested decision-making. Appropriate participatory processes and governance structures are suggested, including integrated livelihoods and multi-scale systems analysis, scenario planning, adaptive co-management and 'livelihood innovation niches'. We briefly discuss how this framing of adaptation pathways would differ from one in the developed context of neighbouring Australia, including the influence of the province's island geography on the heterogeneity of livelihoods and climate change, the pre-eminence and rapid change of social drivers, and the necessity to 'leap-frog' the Millennium Development Goals by mid-century to build adaptive capacity for imminent climate change impacts. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change impact studies are subject to numerous uncertainties and assumptions. One of the main sources of uncertainty arises from the interpretation of climate model projections. Probabilistic procedures based on multimodel ensembles have been suggested in the literature to quantify this source of uncertainty. However, the interpretation of multimodel ensembles remains challenging. Several assumptions are often required in the uncertainty quantification of climate model projections. For example, most methods often assume that the climate models are independent and/or that changes in climate model biases are negligible. This study develops a Bayesian framework that accounts for model dependencies and changes in model biases and compares it to estimates calculated based on a frequentist approach. The Bayesian framework is used to investigate the effects of the two assumptions on the uncertainty quantification of extreme precipitation projections over Denmark. An ensemble of regional climate models from the Ensemble-Based Predictions of Climate Changes and their Impacts (ENSEMBLES) project is used for this purpose. The results confirm that the climate models cannot be considered independent and show that the bias depends on the value of precipitation. This has an influence on the results of the uncertainty quantification. Both the mean and spread of the change in extreme precipitation depends on both assumptions. If the models are assumed independent and the bias constant, the results will be overconfident and may be treated as more precise than they really are. This study highlights the importance of investigating the underlying assumptions in climate change impact studies, as these may have serious consequences for the design of climate change adaptation strategies.Utilizing theory and empirical insights from psychology and behavioural economics, this paper examines individuals' cognitive and motivational barriers to adopting climate change adaptation and mitigation measures that increase consumer welfare. We explore various strategies that take into account the simplified decision-making processes used by individuals and resulting biases. We make these points by working through two examples: (1) investments in energy efficiency products and new technology and (2) adaptation measures to reduce property damage from future floods and hurricanes. In both cases there is a reluctance to undertake these measures due to high and certain upfront costs, delayed and probabilistic benefits, and behavioural biases related to this asymmetry. The use of choice architecture through framing and the use of default options coupled with short-term incentives and long-term contracts can encourage greater investment in these measures.Land use patterns are the consequence of dynamic processes that often include important legacy issues. Evaluation of past trends can be used to investigate the role of path dependence in influencing future land use through a reference "business as usual" (BAU) scenario. These issues are explored with regard to objectives for woodland expansion in Scotland as a major pillar of climate change policy. Land use changes based upon recent trends and future transient scenarios to 2050 are used to assess viability of targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions using analysis based on net emission change factors. The BAU scenario is compared with alternative future scenarios incorporating policy targets and stronger spatial targeting of land use change. Analysis highlights recent trends in new woodland planting on lower quality agricultural land due to socioeconomic and cultural factors. This land is mainly in the wetter uplands and often on carbon-rich soils. Woodland planting following this path dependence can therefore result in net carbon emissions for many years into the future due to soil disturbance during establishment. In contrast, alternative scenarios with more lowland woodland planting have net sequestration potential, with greatest benefits when carbon-rich soils are excluded from afforestation. Spatial targeting can also enhance other co-benefits such as habitat networks and climate change adaptation.The destructive environmental and socio-economic impacts of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation(1,2) (ENSO) demand an improved understanding of how ENSO will change under future greenhouse warming. Robust projected changes in certain aspects of ENSO have been recently established(3-5). However, there is as yet no consensus on the change in the magnitude of the associated sea surface temperature (SST) variability(6-8), commonly used to represent ENSO amplitude(1,6), despite its strong effects on marine ecosystems and rainfall worldwide(1-4,9). Here we show that the response of ENSO SST amplitude is time-varying, with an increasing trend in ENSO amplitude before 2040, followed by a decreasing trend thereafter. We attribute the previous lack of consensus to an expectation that the trend in ENSO amplitude over the entire twenty-first century is unidirectional, and to unrealistic model dynamics of tropical Pacific SST variability. We examine these complex processes across 22 models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) database(10), forced under historical and greenhouse warming conditions. The nine most realistic models identified show a strong consensus on the time-varying response and reveal that the non-unidirectional behaviour is linked to a longitudinal difference in the surface warming rate across the Indo-Pacific basin. Our results carry important implications for climate projections and climate adaptation pathways.The question of how climate model projections have tracked the actual evolution of global mean surface air temperature is important in establishing the credibility of their projections. Some studies and the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report suggest that the recent 15-year period (1998-2012) provides evidence that models are overestimating current temperature evolution. Such comparisons are not evidence against model trends because they represent only one realization where the decadal natural variability component of the model climate is generally not in phase with observations. We present a more appropriate test of models where only those models with natural variability (represented by El Nino/Southern Oscillation) largely in phase with observations are selected from multi-model ensembles for comparison with observations. These tests show that climate models have provided good estimates of 15-year trends, including for recent periods and for Pacific spatial trend patterns.This paper analyzed the evolving response of daily water use to weather fluctuations over 29 years (1981-2009) for two Portland-area municipal water providers - Portland Water Bureau (PWB), serving a dense urban area, and Tualatin Valley Water District (TVWD), serving a rapidly growing suburban area. Temperature sensitivity, the response of water use to a temperature increase, generally declined for both water providers. A downward shift in temperature sensitivity was identified for PWB in 1992, owing to outdoor water use curtailment during a water scarcity event, followed by aggressive demand management measures. No corresponding shift was detected for TVWD due to high suburban growth rates throughout the 1990s. Recent downward step changes in temperature sensitivity for both providers indicated some modicum of convergence in water use patterns, reflecting converging trends in socio-economic and land development characteristics in both areas. We argue that a confluence of historical factors, including the 1992 drought, aggressive (though uneven) demand management, changes to the building code, and ongoing densification of both urban and suburban areas, have reduced per-capita water use and attenuated the connection between water use and temperature. Softening the seasonality of water use represents an important but often-overlooked component of urban climate change adaptation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The persistent gap, termed the "adaptation deficit,'' between the assumed ability of communities to adapt to climate change and the on-the-ground evidence of their progress to adapt is well-documented. To at least partially explain this adaptation deficit, a growing number of researchers have focused on the existence and nature of barriers to adaptation and about society's ability to overcome them. This paper presents an empirical study that systematically identifies barriers to adaptation processes in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA. To do so, a theory-driven framework, previously developed by the authors, was used here to identify, organize, and diagnose barriers in four cities and one largely urbanized region. The study identified as the most frequent type of barrier encountered in these cases is related to institutional and governance issues, followed by the attitudes, values and motivations of the actors involved. Resource and funding constraints also matter, but scientific and technical issues are far less prominent than often presumed. The theoretical framework was found to usefully support the empirical identification and organization of barriers and to provide a "road map'' for designing strategies to circumvent, remove, or lower the barriers and thus come closer to closing the adaptation deficit. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper explores challenges for adapting urban areas to climate change by analyzing urban flood management systems in Bangkok, Thailand. The paper first identifies a set of common integrated urban flood management measures. Then it analyzes whether such measures are being practiced in Bangkok with considerations to climate change. While the analysis reveals that most identified measures are already being practiced, none of the measures have explicitly taken climate change into account in the design of the interventions. Moreover, a number of measures are being implemented as stand-alone interventions without considering implications to flood management. This is because there is no systematic coordination among departments in the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA). The current practice emphasizes structural options such as heightening flood walls and strengthening drainage and pumping capacity, but reducing flood risks under uncertainty requires putting more non-structural options in place that are compatible with structural options. Although measures that BMA should take to make the ongoing interventions more effective and climate-resilient can generally be incremental to what is being practiced, institutional arrangements to achieve such objectives will require a transformational change. The paper describes specific areas and steps as to how relevant departments can strengthen collaboration. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Governance dynamics and the interplay between inadequate infrastructural investment and institutional inertia undermine the potential of low-income cities in low-elevation coastal zones to become climate change resilient. This paper explores the influence of these factors as well as household socio-economic characteristics on autonomous household adaptation to climate change. George-town, Guyana is used as a case study. Empirical analysis revealed that state inability to solve socio-economic, infrastructural and environmental problems led urban households to independently adopt measures aimed at reducing climate change impacts. Spontaneous maladaptation by all households in response to state failure and weak urban governance, however, exacerbated vulnerability to flooding. The paper has global applicability in that it cautions policymakers and practitioners on the shortcomings of spontaneous maladaptation, and provides prescriptions for improved urban governance and spatial planning to facilitate the climate proofing of cities. Furthermore, it highlights the importance and complexities of financing climate change adaptation, and concludes these will continue to constrain the adaptive capacity of vulnerable city populations in the less developed countries of the South, unless developed global partners cooperate. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Malaria epidemics remain a serious threat to human populations living in the highlands of East Africa where transmission is unstable and climate sensitive. An existing early malaria epidemic prediction model required further development, validations and automation before its wide use and application in the region. The model has a lead-time of two to four months between the detection of the epidemic signal and the evolution of the epidemic. The validated models would be of great use in the early detection and prevention of malaria epidemics. Methods: Confirmed inpatient malaria data were collected from eight sites in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for the period 1995-2009. Temperature and rainfall data for the period 1960-2009 were collected from meteorological stations closest to the source of the malaria data. Process-based models were constructed for computing the risk of an epidemic in two general highland ecosystems using temperature and rainfall data. The sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive power were used to validate the models. Results: Depending on the availability and quality of the malaria and meteorological data, the models indicated good functionality at all sites. Only two sites in Kenya had data that met the criteria for the full validation of the models. The additive model was found most suited for the poorly drained U-shaped valley ecosystems while the multiplicative model was most suited for the well-drained V-shaped valley ecosystem. The + 18 degrees C model was adaptable to any of the ecosystems and was designed for conditions where climatology data were not available. The additive model scored 100% for sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive power. The multiplicative model had a sensitivity of 75% specificity of 99% and a positive predictive power of 86%. Conclusions: The additive and multiplicative models were validated and were shown to be robust and with high climate-based, early epidemic predictive power. They are designed for use in the common, well-and poorly drained valley ecosystems in the highlands of East Africa.Background: Despite efforts in eradication and control, malaria remains a global challenge, particularly affecting vulnerable groups. Despite the recession in malaria cases, previously malaria free areas are increasingly confronted with epidemics as a result of changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions. Next to modeling transmission intensities and probabilities, integrated spatial methods targeting the complex interplay of factors that contribute to social vulnerability are required to effectively reduce malaria burden. We propose an integrative method for mapping relative levels of social vulnerability in a spatially explicit manner to support the identification of intervention measures. Methods: Based on a literature review, a holistic risk and vulnerability framework has been developed to guide the assessment of social vulnerability to water-related vector-borne diseases (VBDs) in the context of changing environmental and societal conditions. Building on the framework, this paper applies spatially explicit modeling for delineating homogeneous regions of social vulnerability to malaria in eastern Africa, while taking into account expert knowledge for weighting the single vulnerability indicators. To assess the influence of the selected indicators on the final index a local sensitivity analysis is carried out. Results: Results indicate that high levels of malaria vulnerability are concentrated in the highlands, where immunity within the population is currently low. Additionally, regions with a lack of access to education and health services aggravate vulnerability. Lower values can be found in regions with relatively low poverty, low population pressure, low conflict density and reduced contributions from the biological susceptibility domain. Overall, the factors characterizing vulnerability vary spatially in the region. The vulnerability index reveals a high level of robustness in regard to the final choice of input datasets, with the exception of the immunity indicator which has a marked impact on the composite vulnerability index. Conclusions: We introduce a conceptual framework for modeling risk and vulnerability to VBDs. Drawing on the framework we modeled social vulnerability to malaria in the context of global change using a spatially explicit approach. The results provide decision makers with place-specific options for targeting interventions that aim at reducing the burden of the disease amongst the different vulnerable population groups.Natural resource-dependent isolated mountain communities are highly vulnerable to climatic and environmental stresses, and migration is often the most important livelihood diversification strategy for insuring a household against shocks. In this paper, we present some key results from a study conducted in the West Karakoram region of Pakistan to assess the influence of environmental shocks on migration and the effect of remittances on the adaptive capacity of recipient households and on gender relations. Primary data were collected at community and household level through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and quantitative questionnaires covering 210 households in 6 villages of the West Karakoram. Our findings suggest that migration is adopted as a core response to environmental pressure, both as an ex ante form of household risk mitigation against decreased and uncertain agricultural production, and as an ex post coping mechanism in the wake of environmental shocks. Gender structures migration; only men participate in circular labor migration to urban areas, while women are left behind to take care of the agricultural work and the household. Despite women's increased role in farming activities, no significant changes were noted in the decision-making power of women as a result of male outmigration. Gender positive transformative processes are more likely to be intergenerational and driven by increased access to education for girls.Over the last 30 years, scientific research has increasingly implicated human activities in contemporary regional- to global-scale climatic change. Over the last decade, this research has extended to the detection of the fingerprint of human activities on individual extreme weather events. Is it possible to say that this or that weather extreme was caused by' human activities? Pursuing answers to this question raises many difficult philosophical, epistemological and political issues. In this progress report, I survey the nascent science of extreme weather event attribution by examining the field in four stages: motivations for extreme weather attribution, methods of attribution, some example case studies and the politics of weather event attribution. There remain outstanding political dangers and obstacles for extreme weather attribution if it is to be used, as some claim it can and should be, for guiding climate adaptation investments, for servicing the putative loss and damage agenda of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or for underpinning legal claims for liability for damages caused by extreme weather.This study investigated the moderation of the urban heat island via changes in the urban form in the Tokyo metropolitan area (TMA). Two urban scenarios with the same population as that of the current urban form were used for sensitivity experiments: the dispersed-city and compact-city scenarios. Numerical experiments using the two urban scenarios as well as an experiment using the current urban form were conducted using a regional climate model coupled with a single-layer urban canopy model. The averaged nighttime surface air temperature in TMA increased by similar to 0.34 degrees C in the dispersed-city scenario and decreased by similar to 0.1 degrees C in the compact-city scenario. Therefore, the compact-city scenario had significant potential for moderating the mean areal heat-island effect in the entire TMA. Alternatively, in the central part of the TMA, these two urban-form scenarios produced opposite effects on the surface air temperature; that is, severe thermal conditions worsened further in the compact-city scenario because of the denser population. This result suggests that the compact-city form is not always appropriate for moderation of the urban-heat-island effect. This scenario would need to combine with other mitigation strategies, such as the additional greening of urban areas, especially in the central area. This study suggests that it is important to design a plan to adapt to higher urban temperatures, which are likely to ensue from future global warming and the urban heat island, from several perspectives; that is, designs should take into account not only climatological aspects but also impacts on urban inhabitants.When examining how the ecosystems of remote islands have developed, it is important to know the timing of when various elements arrived and whether they then diversified. Our understanding of the histories behind the biodiverse south west Pacific (SWP) archipelagos is limited, and further impeded by the complex geological histories of this region. Previous studies of the SWP short-tongued halictine bee fauna suggest their presence is much younger than the geological ages of these archipelagos, which is surprising given their critical role as pollinators in other terrestrial ecosystems. The long-tongued megachilid bees represent a considerable proportion of the known bee species for the region, yet little is known of their origin. Here we use genetic diversity within mitochondrial DNA to infer the likely ages and origins of megachilid species from Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa. Our results indicate a very recent origin for megachilids in the SWP, with many species exhibiting small intraspecific genetic distances. Three species share almost identical haplotypes with specimens from Southeast Asia, suggesting multiple human-aided introductions. Combined with data from recent studies on other bee groups present in the region, our results have broad implications for how the Pacific island biota developed and how we should approach its management.We analysed the spatial distribution of fine roots and light availability in a tree-based intercrop system (TBI) composed of Quercus rubra L. (QUR), hybrid poplar (Populus deltoides x Populus nigra-HYP) and hay (CROP) in southern Qu,bec (Canada) to evaluate interactions between trees and crop. Trees in the 8-year-old TBI system had superficial fine root profiles, which is common in tree species grown in conventional plantations and natural forests. More than 95 % of fine roots were found within the first 25 and 45 cm for QUR and HYP, respectively, and 35 cm for CROP. However, vertical separation between the fine root systems of QUR and CROP was evident, as QUR allocated less fine roots to the top 10 cm of soil, and more to depths between 10 and 30 cm, as opposed to CROP which had a greater proportion of fine roots in the top 10 cm. HYP fine roots showed no adaption when intercropped with hay. High tree fine root length density (FRLD) in the top soil layer was observed near the tree stems while hay FRLD was reduced by 45 %, suggesting strong competition for resources. Hay yield analysis revealed significant reduction near trees, particularly HYP. However, light did seem to be the main driver of intercrop yield, as it not only accounted for the effect of competition by roots (being correlated), but also had a singular effect.Drought is a part of the normal climate variability and the life and livelihoods of the Western United States. However, drought can also be a high impact or extreme event in some cases, such as the exceptional 2002 drought that had deleterious impacts across the Western United States. Studies of long-term climate variability along with climate change projections indicate that the Western United States should expect much more severe and extended drought episodes than experienced over the last century when most modern water law and policies were developed, such as the 1922 Colorado River Compact. This paper will discuss research examining regional socio-natural climate vulnerability and adaptive response capacities to the 2002 drought in the Yampa-White Basins region of Colorado across sectors and will demonstrate how a bottom-up or "toad's eye" approach to understanding drought is paramount to complement top-down, instrumental data-driven analyses of drought. The results of empirical observations through interviews and participant observation in combination with analysis of drought indicators will be presented. Implications for adaptation research and planning for climate variability and change will be discussed.The academic literature on climate change communications is growing. However, the majority of this literature focuses on the issue of climate change mitigation in a developed country context, and there is little published material regarding communication in a developing country and adaptation context. Similarly, despite community-based approaches to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction increasing in the Pacific Islands region, there is very limited guidance on how to effectively communicate climate change in a way that enhances people's resilience. This paper documents the experiences of organisations, including local and international non-government and faith-based organisations, governments, regional technical organisations and donor agencies in communicating climate change for adaptation in the Pacific region. Three key climate change communication challenges are highlighted and suggestions made for overcoming them based on results from interviews, a focus group discussion and an online forum. Finally, recommendations are made for good practice guidance in climate change communication that is empowering and culturally relevant.Australian resource-extraction industries-mining, fisheries and forestry-operate year-round in the natural environment with all three exposed to climate extremes and to long-term climatic change. However, the industries differ in terms of size, ownership and mobility. Although mining companies are 'mobile,' a commitment to a mine site makes them immobile at a location dictated by the presence of a mineral; forestry of natural and managed trees takes place in a specifically selected location that can be changed given a reasonably long time-frame and high financial investment; fishing is the last of the major hunting industries, and despite operating from fixed ports, fishers chase fish across the ocean. All three industries as employers and product providers seek a sustainable future under a changing climate but are subject to environmental variability that impacts on their activities. As each industry has historically dealt with and survived major climate impacts, they typically consider themselves to be resilient, although we illustrate in several case studies that recent climate variability significantly impacts productivity and current resilience is limited. Projected climate change and variability are likely to exacerbate impacts on these industries through new or intensified hazards. Although each industry performs risk management controls to minimize climate-related impacts, a new approach incorporating future climate projections in addition to historical experiences would better prepare each to reduce vulnerability to changing climate. We find that wholesale transformation may not be appropriate or necessary at this time for these industries, and in most cases anticipatory, incremental adaptation should be encouraged, while larger-scale changes are considered in the longer term. Additionally, to overcome some of the barriers and promote the drivers of adaptation, we suggest that a model of adaptive governance coupled with greater use of climate champions may be the most effective method for improving adaptation uptake in these industries.Aim To assess how the inclusion of predicted climate-change-related range shifts alters the spatial prioritization of habitats and predicted biodiversity benefits from systematic conservation planning under alternative realized climates. Location Victoria, Australia. Methods We combined predicted distribution patterns of freshwater fish under multiple climate scenarios with marginal benefit conservation planning algorithms to compare conservation outcomes from multiple planning scenarios based on predicted present and future range-shifted distributions. For each of these planning options, we examined the outcomes under a range of possible realized climates. Results Expected conservation outcomes under future climate scenarios were always better when potential range shifts were incorporated into the planning process, irrespective of which climate scenario was realized. However, the differences in conservation outcomes between planning strategies were often small, and expected conservation outcomes always were worse under altered climate scenarios than under a stable baseline climate scenario. River segments with variable rankings across planning scenarios reflected areas where risks of maladaptive prioritization are potentially high. Main conclusions This study highlights that greatest conservation gains will come from ongoing efforts to limit the degree of global warming. Nevertheless, within the constraints imposed by a changing climate, the inclusion of future range shifts in conservation plans can help insure against ineffective and potentially maladaptive prioritization decisions. The acknowledged caveats around statistical predictions of species distributions and range shifts also need to be considered when acting on the outputs from modelled predictions such as these.The Murray dairy region produces approximately 1.85 billion litres of milk each year, representing about 20 % of Australia's total annual milk production. An ongoing production challenge in this region is the management of the impacts of heat stress during spring and summer. An increase in the frequency and severity of extreme temperature events due to climate change may result in additional heat stress and production losses. This paper assesses the changing nature of heat stress now, and into the future, using historical data and climate change projections for the region using the temperature humidity index (THI). Projected temperature and relative humidity changes from two global climate models (GCMs), CSIRO MK3.5 and CCR-MIROC-H, have been used to calculate THI values for 2025 and 2050, and summarized as mean occurrence of, and mean length of consecutive high heat stress periods. The future climate scenarios explored show that by 2025 an additional 12-15 days (compared to 1971 to 2000 baseline data) of moderate to severe heat stress are likely across much of the study region. By 2050, larger increases in severity and occurrence of heat stress are likely (i.e. an additional 31-42 moderate to severe heat stress days compared with baseline data). This increasing trend will have a negative impact on milk production among dairy cattle in the region. The results from this study provide useful insights on the trends in THI in the region. Dairy farmers and the dairy industry could use these results to devise and prioritise adaptation options to deal with projected increases in heat stress frequency and severity.More than a century of observations has established that climate influences grape berry composition. Accordingly, the projected global climate change is expected to impact on grape berry composition although the magnitude and direction of impact at regional and subregional scales are not fully known. The aim of this study was to assess potential impacts of climate change on levels of berry anthocyanin and titratable acidity (TA) of the major grapevine varieties grown across all of the Western Australian (WA) wine regions. Grape berry anthocyanin and TA responses across all WA wine regions were projected for 2030, 2050 and 2070 by utilising empirical models that link these berry attributes and climate data downscaled (to similar to 5 km resolution) from the csiro_mk3_5 and miroc3_2_medres global climate model outputs under IPCC SRES A2 emissions scenario. Due to the dependence of berry composition on maturity, climate impacts on anthocyanin and TA levels were assessed at a common maturity of 22 A degrees Brix total soluble solids (TSS), which necessitated the determination of when this maturity will be reached for each variety, region and warming scenario, and future period. The results indicate that both anthocyanin and TA levels will be affected negatively by a warming climate, but the magnitude of the impacts will differ between varieties and wine regions. Compared to 1990 levels, median anthocyanins concentrations are projected to decrease, depending on global climate model, by up to 3-12 % and 9-33 % for the northern wine regions by 2030 and 2070, respectively while 2-18 % reductions are projected in the southern wine regions for the same time periods. Patterns of reductions in the median Shiraz berry anthocyanin concentrations are similar to that of Cabernet Sauvignon; however, the magnitude is lower (up to 9-18 % in southern and northern wine regions respectively by 2070). Similarly, uneven declines in TA levels are projected across the study regions. The largest reductions in median TA are likely to occur in the present day warmer wine regions, up to 40 % for Chardonnay followed by 15 % and 12 % for Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon, respectively, by 2070 under the high warming projection (csiro_mk3_5). It is concluded that, under existing management practices, some of the key grape attributes that are integral to premium wine production will be affected negatively by a warming climate, but the magnitudes of the impacts vary across the established wine regions, varieties, the magnitude of warming and future periods considered.The potential of phase change materials (PCM) in reducing the heating/cooling energy consumption of residential houses along with several factors influencing the effectiveness of PCM were investigated using EnergyPlus. Simulations were carried out using five different phase change temperature ranges at eight Australian cities which represent six climate zones. It was found that the effectiveness of PCM strongly depends on local weather, thermostat range, PCM layer thickness and surface area. The optimum PCM melting range for lowest energy consumption in each month of the year was found to be far from unique. Different PCM was found to be effective in different times of the year. Depending on local weather, the integration of PCM resulted in 17-23% annual energy savings in the studied house except hot and humid cities like Darwin. For a given amount of PCM, energy saving potential was found to improve further with the increase of applied surface area and decrease of PCM layer thickness up to certain limit beyond which the potential started to decline. The energy saving potential was also found to decrease when the PCM melting point was outside the thermostat range of the corresponding city. The paper also presented the potential effect of climate change on the effectiveness of PCM. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The recent low CO2 prices in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) have triggered a discussion whether the EU ETS needs to be adjusted. We study the effects of CO2 price floors and a price ceiling on the dynamic investment pathway of two interlinked electricity markets (loosely based on Great Britain, which already has introduced a price floor, and on Central Western Europe). Using an agent-based electricity market simulation with endogenous investment and a CO2 market (including banking), we analyse the cross-border effects of national policies as well as system-wide policy options. A common, moderate CO2 auction reserve price results in a more continuous decarbonisation pathway. This reduces CO2 price volatility and the occurrence of carbon shortage price periods, as well as the average cost to consumers. A price ceiling can shield consumers from extreme price shocks. These price restrictions do not cause a large risk of an overall emissions overshoot in the long run. A national price floor lowers the cost to consumers in the other zone; the larger the zone with the price floor, the stronger the effect. Price floors that are too high lead to inefficiencies in investment choices and to higher consumer costs. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY licenseClimate change, land degradation and drought affect millions of people living in drylands worldwide. With its food security depending almost entirely on irrigated agriculture, Central Asia is one of the arid regions highly vulnerable to water scarcity. Previous research of land and water use in the region has focused on improving water-use efficiency, soil management and identifying technical, institutional and agricultural innovations. However, vulnerability to climate change has rarely been considered, in spite of the imminent risks due to a higher-than-average warming perspective and the predicted melting of glaciers, which will greatly affect the availability of irrigation water. Using the Khorezm region in the irrigated lowlands of northwest Uzbekistan as an example, we identify the local patterns of vulnerability to climate variability and extremes. We look at on-going environmental degradation, water-use inefficiency, and barriers to climate change adaptation and mitigation, and based on an extensive review of research evidence from the region, we present concrete examples of initiatives for building resilience and improving climate risk management. These include improving water use efficiency and changing the cropping patterns that have a high potential to decrease the exposure and sensitivity of rural communities to climate risks. In addition, changes in land use such as the afforestation of degraded croplands, and introducing resource-smart cultivation practices such as conservation agriculture, may strengthen the capacity of farmers and institutions to respond to climate challenges. As these can be out-scaled to similar environments, i.e. the irrigated cotton and wheat growing lowland regions in Central Asia and the Caucasus, these findings may be relevant for regions beyond the immediate geographic area from which it draws its examples. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate is a strong modulator of berry composition. Accordingly, the projected change in climate is expected to impact on the composition of berries and of the resultant wines. However, the direction and extent of climate change impact on fruit composition of winegrape cultivars are not fully known. This study utilised a climate gradient along a 700 km transect, covering all wine regions of Western Australia, to explore and empirically describe influences of climate on anthocyanins, pH and titratable acidity (TA) levels in two or three cultivars of Vitis vinifera (Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Shiraz). The results showed that, at a common maturity of 22A degrees Brix total soluble solids, berries from the warmer regions had low levels of anthocyanins and TA as well as high pH compared to berries from the cooler regions. Most of these regional variations in berry composition reflected the prevailing climatic conditions of the regions. Thus, depending on cultivar, 82-87 % of TA, 83 % of anthocyanins and about half of the pH variations across the gradient were explained by climate-variable-based empirical models. Some of the variables that were relevant in describing the variations in berry attributes included: diurnal ranges and ripening period temperature (TA), vapour pressure deficit in October and growing degree days (pH), and ripening period temperatures (anthocyanins). Further, the rates of change in these berry attributes in response to climate variables were cultivar dependent. Based on the observed patterns along the climate gradient, it is concluded that: (1) in a warming climate, all other things being equal, berry anthocyanins and TA levels will decline whereas pH levels will rise; and (2) despite variations in non-climatic factors (e.g. soil type and management) along the sampling transect, variations in TA and anthocyanins were satisfactorily described using climate-variable-based empirical models, indicating the overriding impact of climate on berry composition. The models presented here are useful tools for assessing likely changes in berry TA and anthocyanins in response to changing climate for the wine regions and cultivars covered in this study.The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) was developed in 2010 and has been used in an increasing number of climatology and hydrology studies. The objective of this article is to describe computing options that provide flexible and robust use of the SPEI. In particular, we present methods for estimating the parameters of the log-logistic distribution for obtaining standardized values, methods for computing reference evapotranspiration (ET0), and weighting kernels used for calculation of the SPEI at different time scales. We discuss the use of alternative ET0 and actual evapotranspiration (ETa) methods and different options on the resulting SPEI series by use of observational and global gridded data. The results indicate that the equation used to calculate ET0 can have a significant effect on the SPEI in some regions of the world. Although the original formulation of the SPEI was based on plotting-positions Probability Weighted Moment (PWM), we now recommend use of unbiased PWM for model fitting. Finally, we present new software tools for computation and analysis of SPEI series, an updated global gridded database, and a real-time drought-monitoring system.Dynamical downscaling (DDS), in which a regional atmospheric model (RAM) experiment nested into coarser-resolution data provides a spatio-temporal fine dataset for a particular region, was performed to assess the present climate in Ghana. The DDS successfully evaluated realistic seasonal march and inter-annual variability in rainfall, in comparison with gauge and satellite observation. The DDS also indicated that land-lake and land-sea circulation interacted with the West African monsoon likely characterized the local climate in Ghana.Northern Ghana is becoming vulnerable to risks induced by climate change. There is an urgent need to improve communities' ability to cope by implementing risk-preventive measures at the household and community levels. However, studies have shown that the existing risk communication system often fails to encourage the people to implement risk-preventive measures because community concerns are not seriously taken in the adaptation planning and management process. The present study systematically examines community concerns about existing risks and possible adaptation strategies by conducting group meetings in four rural communities in the Wa West District. Results show that local communities consider drought or water scarcity to be the most severe risk from climate change because it is directly affecting their livelihood, which is mainly rain-fed subsistence agriculture. As their livelihood is increasingly affected by drought, the local communities are becoming more exposed to floods and other natural calamities. Presently, the climate change adaptation strategies of the local communities are weak and ineffective. It is found that improved irrigation facilitated by rainwater harvesting, watershed management, and seasonal weather forecasting are the preferred adaption strategies. Though a high level of intention to adopt non-structural preventive measures is observed, local communities report that a lack of knowledge and insufficient financial resources are major impediments to their implementation.Climate variability poses a significant threat to many sectors of Sub-Saharan Africa's economy. Agriculture is one of the most climate sensitive sectors because of its dependence on rain-fed cultivation. This paper identifies the main adaptation strategies used by farming households in the Sudan savannah and forest-savannah transitional agro-ecological zones of Ghana, in order to reduce the adverse impacts of climate variability on their livelihood activities. It combines questionnaire surveys, key informant interviews and a range of participatory methods. Results show that households employ a range of on- and off-farm adaptation strategies including changing the timing of planting, planting early maturing varieties, diversification of crops, support from family and friends, and changing their diets to manage climate variability. Results reveal that most households use adaptation strategies linked to livelihood diversification to adapt to the increased climate variability seen in recent decades. Most households now engage in multiple non-arable farming livelihood activities in an attempt to avoid destitution because of crop failure linked to climate variability (particularly drought). The findings suggest that policy makers need to formulate more targeted climate adaptation policies and programmes that are linked to enhancing livelihood diversification, as well as establishing communication routes for farming communities to better share their knowledge on successful local climate adaptation strategies.The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of renewable energy technologies (RETs) such as biogas, improved cooking stoves (ICSs), micro hydro (MH) and solar power (SP) in helping rural communities in Nepal to adapt to climate change. The analysis considers the energy efficiency of different RETs as well as their socio-economic and environmental impacts. The efficient use of biomass in new technology, such as biogas and ICSs for cooking, has increased energy security and reduced the negative effects of traditional biomass usage. MH and SP systems are replacing candles and kerosene lamps, and are the most promising RET models for electricity generation in rural Nepal. The improved illumination from these technologies also produces better education, health, environments, and social harmony in rural communities. This study uses the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning model (LEAP) model to develop a plan for long-term RETs use in Nepal, and specifically focuses on household energy use in rural areas. It assesses the role of biogas and ICSs in rural communities and climate change adaptation in Nepal, along with the potential role of MH and SP technologies. According to the LEAP analysis, the planned implementation of MH for 20-year long-term will result in the reduction of 2.553 million tons of CO2 emissions. Similarly SP, biogas, and ICSs will result in a reduction in CO2 emissions of 5.214 million tons, 35.880 million tons, and 7.452 million tons, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Only recently, research communities and professional organizations have started to incorporate the factor of climate change in software-based environmental simulation with a view to inform climate adaptation planning and design. Based on the results from simulating a neighborhood design proposed for New Cairo, Egypt, we develop a conceptual framework and an environmental simulation workflow aimed at achieving Climate Change-conscious Urban Neighborhood Design (C3UND). Central to the C3UND approach is the coupling of neighborhood outdoor simulation and building indoor simulation and taking into account climate change scenarios as projected by today's meteorological modeling. Utilizing two existing software systems, ENVI-met for urban neighborhood outdoor simulation and Ecotect for building indoor simulation, we demonstrate how a workflow can be implemented to play out climate change scenarios on urban neighborhoods and the buildings located within. The C3UND simulation framework and workflow was further applied to a neighborhood site at the Sheffield University campus in England with weather data input of the present day (2012) and of the 2050s generated by the CCWorldWeatherGen tool. Our current study suggests that environmental simulation of climate change scenarios at an urban neighborhood scale is currently achievable but not without considerable gaps. Use of additional three-dimensional virtual neighborhood models, for instance, is required to bring outdoor and indoor simulation outcomes together through graphic overlay to enable more intuitive and holistic understanding of potential climate change impacts. The implications of the C3UND framework for sustainable urban and architecture design are discussed, leading to a list of research questions to be further investigated.This study uses a spatial bio-economic modelling framework to estimate the impact of the 2012 weather extreme in the USA on food security in the developing world. The study also quantities the potential effects of a similar weather extreme occurring in 2050 under climate change. The study results indicate that weather extremes that affect maize productivity in key grain baskets can negatively affect food security in vulnerable countries. The 2012 weather extreme which occurred in the USA reduced US and global maize production by 29% compared to trend; maize consumption in the country decreased by 5% only and this resulted in less surplus maize for exports from the largest maize exporter in the world. Global maize production decreased by 6% compared to trend. The decrease in global maize production coupled with a reduction in the volume of global maize exports worsened food insecurity in eastern Africa, the Caribbean and Central America and India. The effects of the weather extreme on global food security would be worse, if the latter were to occur under climate change in 2050, assuming no climate change adaptation worldwide over the years. In addition, the hardest-hit regions would remain the same, whether the weather extreme occurs in 2012 instead of 2050: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), South Asia and the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region. However, sustained growth in per capita income across world economies between 2000 and 2050 would allow few countries in SSA and the LAC region to virtually eliminate hunger within their borders. In these countries, per capita income would be high enough by 2050 to completely offset the negative effect of the weather extreme. The study results are also consistent with USDA's estimates on US and global maize production and consumption in 2012 after the weather extreme. Some discrepancy is found on the volume of global maize trade; this implies that the bio-economic model likely overestimates the effect of the weather extreme on food insecurity. However, the trends from the analysis are likely to be valid. Further research would involve using a CGE model that can capture the net effects of weather extremes. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Observed daily precipitation and near surface air temperature data from 34 synoptic weather stations in the Philippines for the period 1951-2010 were subjected to trend analysis which revealed an overall warming tendency compared to the normal mean values for the period 1961-1990. This warming trend can be observed in the annual mean temperatures, daily minimum mean temperatures and to a lesser extent, daily maximum mean temperatures. Precipitation and temperature extremes for the period 1951-2010 were also analysed relative to the mean 1961-1990 baseline values. Some stations (Cotabato, Iloilo, Laoag and Tacloban,) show increases in both frequency and intensity of extreme daily rainfall events which are significant at the 95% level with none of the stations showing decreasing trends. The frequency of daily temperature maximum above the 99th percentile (hot days) and nights at the 1st percentile (cold nights) suggests that both days and nights in particular are becoming warmer. Such indicators of a warming trend and increase in extreme events in the Philippines are discussed in the context of similar national, regional (Asia Pacific) and global studies. The relevance of such empirically based climatology studies, particularly for nations such as the Philippines which are increasingly vulnerable to the multiple impacts of global climate change, is also considered. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Habitat management under the auspices of conservation biological control is a widely used approach to foster conditions that ensure a diversity of predator species can persist spatially and temporally within agricultural landscapes in order to control their prey (pest) species. However, an emerging new factor, global climate change, has the potential to disrupt existing conservation biological control programs. Climate change may alter abiotic conditions such as temperature, precipitation, humidity and wind that in turn could alter the life-cycle timing of predator and prey species and the behavioral nature and strength of their interactions. Anticipating how climate change will affect predator and prey communities represents an important research challenge. We present a conceptual framework-the habitat domain concept-that is useful for understanding contingencies in the nature of predator diversity effects on prey based on predator and prey spatial movement in their habitat. We illustrate how this framework can be used to forecast whether biological control by predators will become more effective or become disrupted due to changing climate. We discuss how changes in predator-prey interactions are contingent on the tolerances of predators and prey species to changing abiotic conditions as determined by the degree of local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity exhibited by species populations. We conclude by discussing research approaches that are needed to help adjust conservation biological control management to deal with a climate future. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.How do farmers understand and predict weather variability; in what ways are local weather prediction techniques institutionalized (e.g., in new agricultural practices or cropping decisions) to meet the agricultural challenges of climate change-induced socioecological variability; and how do these vary across space, according to socioecological difference? This article examines these questions through a case study examination of local weather prediction methods and adaptive strategies to ongoing weather-related variability by groundwater-dependent, irrigating farmers in Rajasthan, India. Conducted in 2009 and 2011, the work finds, first, that farmers rely on multiple local methods of weather prediction, which, along with multiple and often conflicting social and ecological factors, inform their cropping decisions. Second, these prediction methods and associated cropping strategies interact with a number of strategies to mitigate weather and agrarian variability more generally, such as new cropping strategies, seasonal migration, and market articulations. The article advances our thinking about what climate change, as yet another (but perhaps unique) agrarian perturbation, means for farmers' livelihoods. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for formal climate change adaptation strategies and related ongoing groundwater policy.Natural disasters such as cyclone, hurricane, tornado and typhoon cause tremendous loss around the world. The windborne debris usually imposes high speed localized impact on the building envelope, which may harm people inside the building and create dominant openings. A dominant opening in the building envelope might cause internal pressure increasing and result in substantial damage to the building structures, such as roof lifting up or even collapse. To withstand the impact of such extreme event, the penetration resistant capacity of wall or roof panels to windborne debris impact should meet the requirements specified in the wind loading codes, e. g., the Australian Wind Loading Code (AS/NZS 1170.2:2011). In this study, a composite Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) with Extended Polystyrene (EPS) core sandwiched by flat metal skins that is commonly used in building industry was investigated. To study the structural response and penetration resistant capacity of the composite panel against windborne debris impacts, a series of laboratory tests were carried out by using a pneumatic cannon testing system. The effects of various specimen configurations, impact locations and debris impact velocities on their performance were investigated. The failure modes under various projectile impact scenarios were observed and compared by using two high-speed cameras. The dynamic responses were examined quantitatively in terms of the opening size, residual velocity of projectile, deformation and strain time histories on the back skin measured in the tests. The penetration resistance capacity of the panels subjected to windborne debris impact were examined and analyzed. In addition, numerical models were developed in LS-DYNA to simulate the response and damage of the composite SIP under windborne debris impact. Laboratory tested panels were first modeled. The test data was used to calibrate the accuracy of the numerical model. The validated numerical model was then used to conduct more numerical simulations to obtain more results such as energy absorption, impact force and vulnerability curve of the SIP against windborne debris impact. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Local governments can encourage proactive action on climate change by incorporating adaptation measures into long-term planning documents. The authors undertook action-oriented, case study research by participating (as adaptation experts) in the process to create a sustainability and land use policy plan for the City of Prince George, Canada. A range of adaptation measures was incorporated into both documents. Factors enabling the incorporation of adaptation included a high level of local awareness, an existing adaptation strategy to draw upon and the flexible process used to create the plans. Challenges such as a lack of priority, limited policy direction and perceptions of climate change as solely an environmental challenge persist as barriers to incorporating adaptation into local plans, particularly in smaller centres.Despite ambitious biodiversity policy goals, less than a fifth of the European Union's (EU) legally protected species and habitats show a favorable conservation status. The recent EU biodiversity strategy recognizes that climate change adds to the challenge of halting biodiversity loss, and that an optimal distribution of financial resources is needed. Here, we analyze recent EU biodiversity funding from a climate change perspective. We compare the allocation of funds to the distribution of both current conservation priorities (within and beyond Natura 2000) and future conservation needs at the level of NUTS-2 regions, using modeled bird distributions as indicators of conservation value. We find that funding is reasonably well aligned with current conservation efforts but poorly fit with future needs under climate change, indicating obstacles for implementing adaptation measures. We suggest revising EU biodiversity funding instruments for the 2014-2020 budget period to better account for potential climate change impacts on biodiversity.There are two forms of capacity to adapt to global change: those associated with fundamental human development goals (generic capacity), and those necessary for managing and reducing specific climatic threats (specific). We argue that these two domains of capacity must be addressed explicitly, simultaneously and iteratively if climate change adaptation and sustainable development goals are to be attained. We propose a simple heuristic to understand the four main ways these two capacities interact, leading to more or less desirable outcomes. Drawing from three case studies of agricultural adaptation to climatic risk (Phoenix, AZ; Northeast Brazil; Chiapas, Mexico) we argue that the institutional context of adaptation can implicitly or explicitly undermine one form of capacity with repercussions for the development of the other. A better and more strategic balance of generic and specific capacities is needed if the promised synergies between sustainable development and adaptation are to be achieved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Learning is gaining attention in relation to governance processes for contemporary environmental challenges; however, scholarship at the nexus of learning and environmental governance lacks clarity and understanding about how to define and measure learning, and the linkages between learning, social interactions, and environment. In response, this study aimed to advance and operationalize a typology of learning in an environmental governance context, and examined if a participatory decision-making process (adaptive co-management) for climate change adaptation fostered learning. Three types of learning were identified: cognitive learning, related to the acquisition of new or the structuring of existing knowledge; normative learning, which concerns a shift in viewpoints, values or paradigms, and relational learning, referring to an improved understanding of others' mindsets, enhanced trust and ability to cooperate. A robust mixed methods approach with a focus on quantitative measures including concept map analysis, social network analysis, and self-reflective questions, was designed to gauge indicators for each learning type. A participatory decision-making process for climate change adaptation was initiated with stakeholders in the Niagara region, Canada. A pseudo-control group was used to minimize external contextual influences on results. Clear empirical evidence of cognitive and relational learning was gained; however, the results from normative learning measures were inconclusive. The learning typology and measurement method operationalized in this research advances previous treatments of learning in relation to participatory decision-making processes, and supports adaptive co-management as a governance strategy that fosters learning and adaptive capacity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Previous research has demonstrated a striking difference in climate change beliefs and policy support between people who identify with the right-wing of politics and with the left-wing of politics. But are we destined to continue with this divergence? We suggest that there is movement around these differences based on the politicization of climate change and we conducted two experimental studies with 126 and 646 people, respectively, to examine this effect. We found that those people whose political identity was made salient were less likely to believe in an anthropogenic cause of climate change and less likely to support government climate change policies than those whose identity was not made salient; particularly when those people were aligned with the right-wing of politics. The results demonstrate the importance of the salience of one's political identity in determining attitudes and beliefs even for scientific facts such as climate change. Our research also identifies some ways forward in dealing with climate change-based on depoliticizing the issue. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Weather conditions that influence natural resource-based tourist destinations are likely to be affected by climate change, but our understanding of how businesses and destinations manage for present and future conditions is limited. In this study we report on the relationships between weather and tourism activities in the Queenstown-Lake Wanaka region, South Island, New Zealand. Key stakeholder interviews and a workshop form the empirical basis of this paper. Coping range application ideas derived from ecological management literature are used to develop a framework to understand and inform thinking and strategies around how tourism businesses and destinations are currently responding to the weather and perhaps could in future respond to climate change. Results show that within a destination individual businesses have widely varying relationships with the weather, with each type of activity operating within its own coping range to particular environmental gradients, for example temperature. Coping, which can be observed outside the 'ideal' range of a particular environmental gradient, requires business adjustments so as to cope with increasingly marginal conditions, up to a Critical Stop Point - the ultimate threshold. The data suggest that increased need for adjustments impacts on business viability, and more planned adaptation measures would be necessary to increase viability under increasingly detrimental climatic conditions. Discussion at a destination level workshop indicates that at and beyond thresholds, keystone industry and destination level strategic adaptation planning is required to ensure the viability of the destination as a whole. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Reforms in the Murray-Darling Basin over the past several decades have led to well developed water entitlement and allocation markets. Irrigators now use a diversity of water trade and ownership approaches, ranging from owning relatively large amounts of water entitlements relative to their annual demand and selling when they have excess water, to owning smaller amounts (or less secure) water entitlements and relying heavily on water allocation markets to meet annual demands. Some irrigators do not trade at all. Although the benefits of water markets in reallocating water have been well established, there has been very little empirical analysis of the impact that water ownership and water market trade strategy has had on irrigators' farm net incomes. This study uses irrigation industry survey data collected over a five year period from 2006/2007 to 2010/2011 across the Murray-Darling Basin to investigate the relationship that water trade strategy and water ownership have with farm viability (namely farm net income and rate of return). Although this is an interesting period to investigate these relationships, it must be noted that it was a period of extreme water scarcity and high water prices; hence any interpretation of results must take this into account. It was found that the actual volume of water received (which is a measure of water allocations for that region and size and security of water entitlements) is a more significant and positive influence on farm net income than water ownership per se, with this result most strongest in the horticulture industry. Water reliability is not as important in the broadacre industry as other industries. Selling water allocations was a significant and positive influence on farm net income and rate of return. Buying water entitlements was sometimes associated negatively with farm net income and rate of return in our time period, with no statistical significance found for the impact of selling water entitlements in the current year. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Vegetation fires in urban and pen-urban (human) landscapes damage property and infrastructure, threaten lives and incur considerable suppression costs. This study investigated the timing of fires burning in vegetation within and around the city of Perth, Western Australia. The timing of fires from 16 different cause types were investigated at hourly, daily, monthly and annual scales, and using fire danger indices and fuel moisture. Ignitions from most causes were shown to have hourly and monthly profiles that reflect fire danger and fuel availability. Some causes with low heat outputs, such as cigarettes and sparks from cutting and welding, were more sensitive to fire danger and fuel availability than others. Causes related to arson and recreational activities, such as camp fires, were more likely to occur on weekends and public holidays. Arson prevention measures appear to have reduced the incidence of deliberately lit fires, and may have reduced the number of fires occurring on days of total fire ban, although these days have much higher rates of ignition than other days. High profile fire events also increase public awareness and reduce ignition rates. Lessons learned from analyses of fire occurrence can help fire agencies more effectively apply prevention and mitigation programs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Identifying effective adaptation strategies for coastal communities dependent on marine resources and impacted by climate change can be difficult due to the dynamic nature of marine ecosystems. The task is more difficult if current and predicted shifts in social and economic trends are considered. Information about social and economic change is often limited to qualitative data. A combination of qualitative and quantitative models provide the flexibility to allow the assessment of current and future ecological and socio-economic risks and can provide information on alternative adaptations. Here, we demonstrate how stakeholder input, qualitative models and Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) can provide semi-quantitative predictions, including uncertainty levels, for the assessment of climate and non-climate-driven change in a case study community. Issues are identified, including the need to increase the capacity of the community to cope with change. Adaptation strategies are identified that alter positive feedback cycles contributing to a continued decline in population, local employment and retail spending. For instance, the diversification of employment opportunities and the attraction of new residents of different ages would be beneficial in preventing further population decline. Some impacts of climate change can be combated through recreational bag or size limits and monitoring of popular range-shifted species that are currently unmanaged, to reduce the potential for excessive removal. Our results also demonstrate that combining BBNs and qualitative models can assist with the effective communication of information between stakeholders and researchers. Furthermore, the combination of techniques provides a dynamic, learning-based, semi-quantitative approach for the assessment of climate and socio-economic impacts and the identification of potential adaptation strategies.This study has developed sampling downscaling (SmDS), in which dynamical downscaling (DDS) is executed for a few of period selected from a long-term integration by general circulation model based on an observed statistical relationship between large-scale climate and regional-scale precipitation. SmDS expectedly produces climatology and frequency distribution of precipitation over a nested region with reducing computational cost, if a global-scale climate pattern mostly controls regional-scale weather statistics. Here SmDS was attempted for wintertime precipitation over Hokkaido, Japan, because a linkage between snowfall and sea-level pressure patterns has been known by Japanese synopticians and it can be detected by singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis on wintertime inter-annual variability during the period from 1980/1981 to 2009/2010 for precipitation over Hokkaido and moisture flux convergence around there. DDS for the full period over the same domain was also performed for comparison with SmDS. SmDS selected two winters from the top and two winters from the bottom of the projection onto the first SVD mode. It was found that, comparing with the full DDS, SmDS indeed provided unbiased statistics for average but exaggerated extreme statistics such as heavy rainfall frequency. It was also shown that the sampling in the SmDS method was much more effective than the random sampling.Determination of coastal hazard lines is a key task for coastal engineers worldwide. While current practice differs from country to country and even within countries, in many coastal hazard assessments three main components of coastline recession are taken into account: episodic recession due to storm erosion, long term recession due to an imbalance in sediment transport, and recession due to sea-level rise. In Australia, the state of New South Wales has a well-established procedure for the definition of coastal hazards that has evolved since the 1970's. Accepted practice in NSW is intentionally conservative, due to uncertainties and a limited understanding of physical processes. This article (i) provides an historical perspective on the development of the established methodology; (ii) discusses the various components of coastal hazard considered, and (iii) examines the way in which these components can be combined. Suggestions are subsequently provided for a way forward that better suits emerging risk-based coastal management/planning frameworks. The article also considers the advantages and practicalities associated with assigning numerical probabilities to hazard lines as part of risk-based coastal management. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sea-level rise, potential changes in the intensity and frequency of storms, and consequent shoreline erosion and flooding will have increasing impacts on the economy and culture of coastal regions. A growing body of evidence suggests that coastal ecosystems natural infrastructure can play an important role in reducing the vulnerability of people and property to these impacts. To effectively inform climate adaptation planning, experts often struggle to develop relevant local and regional information at a scale that is appropriate for decision-making. In addition, institutional capacity and resource constraints often limit planners' ability to incorporate innovative, scientifically based approaches into planning. In this paper, we detail our collaborative process in two coastal California counties to account for the role of natural infrastructure in climate adaptation planning. We used an interdisciplinary team of scientists, economists, engineers, and law and policy experts and planners, and an iterative engagement process to (1) identify natural infrastructure that is geographically relevant to local jurisdictional planning units, (2) refine data and models to reflect regional processes, and (3) develop metrics likely to resonate within the local decision contexts. Using an open source decision-support tool, we demonstrated that protecting existing natural infrastructure including coastal dunes and wetlands could reduce the vulnerability of water resource-related structures, coastal populations, and farmland most exposed to coastal flooding and erosion. This information formed part of the rationale for priority climate adaptation projects the county governments are now pursuing. Our collaborative and iterative approach, as well as replicable use of an open source decision-support tool, facilitated inclusion of relevant natural infrastructure information into regional climate adaptation planning processes and products. This approach can be applied in diverse coastal climate adaptation planning contexts to locate and characterize the degree to which specific natural habitats can reduce vulnerability to sea-level rise and storms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The state of Goa in West India has a 105 km long coastline with beaches and cultural heritage sites of significant importance to tourism. The increasing incidence of tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea in recent decades and the devastating impacts of the December 2004 tsunami in India stressed the importance of assessing the vulnerability of coastal areas to flooding and inundation, notably in view of climate change induced sea-level rising (SLR). This study aims to develop a Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) for the state of Goa and to use this index to examine the vulnerability of the different administrative units of the state, known as talukas. This is accomplished by using seven physical and geologic risk variables characterising the vulnerability of the coast, including historical shoreline change, rate of relative sea-level change, coastal regional elevation, coastal slope, mean tidal range, significant wave height, and geomorphology using conventional and remotely sensed data, in addition to two socioeconomic parameters: population and tourist density data. Using a composite CVI based on those relative risk variables, each of the seven coastal talukas was categorised according to its vulnerability. The resulting vulnerability map depicts the talukas that are the most and least vulnerable to erosion, flooding and inundation of coastal lands, and that the inclusion of socio-economic parameters influences the overall assessment of vulnerability. This study provides information aimed at increasing awareness amongst decision-makers to deal with disaster mitigation and coastal zone management, and is a first step towards prioritising areas for climate change adaptation in view of the projected SLR and increased storminess. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we found that there were significant positive correlations between the catch per unit effort (CPUE, a squid abundance index) for the neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii) winter-spring cohort and the satellite-derived chlorophyll a concentrations in their spawning grounds located at 140-160 degrees E where 21 degrees C<sea surface temperature<25 degrees C from February to May. The spawning grounds of the winter-spring cohort are located in a quiet stream region, and a particle tracking experiment, based on the velocity field obtained from an ocean data assimilation system, showed that paralarvae and juveniles aged <90days remained in their spawning grounds and the chlorophyll a concentration in their habitat had a significant positive correlation with the CPUE. A backward particle tracking experiment also showed that the chlorophyll a concentration in the spawning grounds had a significant positive correlation with the autumn-winter mixed layer depth. Based on these results, we hypothesize that the CPUE interannual variability is caused by variations in the feeding environment of the paralarvae and juveniles, which may be linked to autumn-winter mixed layer depth variations.One of the effects of climate change expected to take place in urban areas in the Netherlands is an increase in periods of extreme heat and drought. How the soil can contribute to making cities more climate proof is often neglected. Unsealed soil and green spaces increase water storage capacity and can consequently prevent flooding. The planning of public or private green spaces can have a cooling effect and, in general, have a positive effect on how people perceive their health. This paper reviews existing guidelines from Dutch policy documents regarding unsealed soil and green spaces in the Netherlands; do they support climate adaptation policies? Scientific literature was used to quantify the positive effects of green spaces on water storage capacity, cooling and public health. Finally we present a case study of a model town where different policy areas are linked together. Maps were made to provide insight into the ratio of unsealed soil and the number of green spaces in relation to existing guidelines using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Maps marking the age and social-economic status of the population were also made. The benefits of green spaces are difficult to express in averages because they depend on many different factors such as soil properties, type of green spaces, population characteristics and spatial planning. Moreover, it is not possible to provide quantifications of the benefits of green spaces because of a lack of scientific evidence at the moment Based on the maps, however, policy assessments can be made, for example, in which site a neighborhood will most benefit from investment in parks and public gardens. Neighborhoods where people have a low social-economic status have for example fewer green spaces than others. This offers opportunities for efficient adaptation policies linking goals of several policy fields. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate adaptation research increasingly focuses on the socio-cultural dimensions of change. In this context, narrative research is often seen as a qualitative social science method used to frame adaptation communication. However, this perspective neglects an important insight provided by narrative theory as applied in the cognitive sciences and other practical fields: human cognition is organized around specific narrative structures. In adaptation, this means that how we 'story' the environment determines how we understand and practice adaptation, how risks are defined, who is authorized as actors in the change debate, and the range of policy options considered. Furthermore, relating an experience through story-telling is already doing 'knowledge work', or learning. In taking narrative beyond its use as an extractive social research methodology, we argue that narrative research offers an innovative, holistic approach to a better understanding of socio-ecological systems and the improved, participatory design of local adaptation policies. Beyond producing data on local knowledge(s) and socio-cultural and affective-emotive factors influencing adaptive capacity, it can significantly inform public engagement, deliberation and learning strategies-features of systemic adaptive governance. We critically discuss narrative as both a self-reflective methodology and as a paradigmatic shift in future adaptation research and practice. We explore the narrative approach as a basis for participatory learning in the governance of socio-ecological systems. Finally, we assemble arguments for investing in alternative governance approaches consistent with a shift to a 'narrative paradigm'. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The food industry is vulnerable to climate change. Producers will need to adapt to climate change if they, and the communities dependent on them, are to remain viable. There are essentially two ways to adapt-incrementally and transformationally. We differentiate between incremental and transformative adaptation mostly on the basis of the size of the change needed. Here, we studied the Australian peanut industry, which is already experiencing the effects of climate change. We expand on the notion of adaptive capacity and refer to 'transformational capacity' and test its association with resource dependency. Resource dependency is a measure of the interactions that primary producers have with a natural resource and includes factors such as occupational identity, networks, resource use as well as a range of financial factors. We hypothesized that some primary producers were more likely to demonstrate higher levels of transformational capacity if they possessed lower levels of resource dependency. We surveyed, by phone, 69 farmers representing 87 % of the peanut industry in northern Australia. Our results show that the capacity to transform depends upon individual's networks, their employability, tendency for strategic thinking and planning, business profitability, local knowledge, environmental awareness, use of irrigation and use of climate technology. Barriers to transformational change were occupational identity, place attachment and dependents. Our study is one of the first to focus on transformational capacity. This approach allows us to understand why some individuals are better able to adapt to change than others and also to assist industry and community leaders to develop broad-scale strategies.Globally, groundwater use is intensifying to meet demands for irrigation, urban supply, industrialization, and, in some instances, electrical power generation. In response to hydroclimatic variability, surface water is being substituted with groundwater, which must be viewed as a strategic resource for climate adaptation. In this sense, the supply of electricity for pumping is an adaptation policy tool. Additionally, planning for climate-change mitigation must consider CO2 emissions resulting from pumping. This paper examines the influence of electricity supply and pricing on groundwater irrigation and resulting emissions, with specific reference to Mexico - a climate-water-energy 'perfect storm'. Night-time power supply at tariffs below the already-subsidized rates for agricultural groundwater use has caused Mexican farmers to increase pumping, reversing important water and electricity conservation gains achieved. Indiscriminate groundwater pumping, including for virtual-water exports of agricultural produce, threatens the long-term sustainability of aquifers, non-agricultural water uses, and stream-aquifer interactions that sustain riparian ecosystems. Emissions resulting from agricultural groundwater pumping in Mexico are estimated to be 3.6% of total national emissions and are equivalent to emissions from transporting the same agricultural produce to market. The paper concludes with an assessment of energy, water, and climate trends coupled with policy futures to address these challenges.Increasingly decision-makers and politicians are becoming aware of the importance of urban ecosystem services (ESS). This creates an opportunity to deal with recent challenges of urban development. However, questions remain on how to assess and manage these services as well as to transfer the opportunities which present themselves into planning procedures. Since urban planning is mainly about land use decisions, approaches are required that describe and evaluate ESS in relation to the typologies and procedures of urban planners. ESS depend on the structural parameters of urban green spaces. In order to facilitate the analysis and evaluation of these parameters, a method has been sought to enable the detailed identification of ESS on the basis of urban vegetation structures. The so-called urban vegetation structure type (UVST) approach is based on the mapping of urban biotope types as well as an analysis of terrestrial and aerial photographs. It enables the identification and description of all areas within a city characterized by vegetation according to type, size, structural characterization as well as density, structure and building type. The analysis of vegetation structures and the determination of patterns of greenery were realized for the map of the urban biotope types of the City of Dresden, Germany. This led to the identification of 57 UVSTs, distinguished in terms of the level of soil-sealing, structure and type of building as well as the structure and amount of vegetation. By applying these UVSTs, average values for the amount of green space, the green volume and the proportion of sealed surface for the entire city as well as for urban districts can be determined. This provides a solid basis upon which to investigate diverse ESS and assess the ecological quality of urban structures. Climate change models predict that average temperatures are to rise. As densely built-up urban areas are particularly affected by such warming effects, planners need to take account of climate data in urban planning processes. An analysis of micro-climatic effects is offered by this paper as an example for the application of the introduced approach, particularly aimed at illustrating the differences between various urban vegetation structures concerning their micro-climatic effects. Selected results of climate modelling are presented, confirming clear differences in the micro-climatic effects of several UVSTs, both at city and urban-district level. The UVST approach is also appropriate for case studies concerning the micro-climatic impact of changes in land use at the urban-district level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Demand for water will continue to increase as per capita income rises and the population grows, and climate change can exacerbate the problem through changes in precipitation patterns and quantities, evapotranspiration, and land cover-all of which directly or indirectly affect the amount of water that ultimately infiltrates back into groundwater aquifers. We develop a dynamic management framework that incorporates alternative climate-change (and hence, recharge) scenarios and apply it to the Pearl Harbor aquifer system on O'ahu, Hawai'i. By calculating the net present value of water for a variety of plausible climate scenarios, we are able to estimate the indirect value of groundwater recharge that would be generated by watershed conservation activities. Enhancing recharge increases welfare by lowering the scarcity value of water in both the near term and the future, as well as delaying the need for costly alternatives such as desalination. For a reasonable range of parameter values, we find that the present value gain of maintaining recharge ranges from $31.1 million to over $1.5 billion.In recent years, an increasing number of local governments are recognizing the impact of climate change on different urban sectors. This has led many to pursue climate adaptation planning, seeking to achieve preparedness through reducing vulnerability and enhancing resilience of populations, assets, and municipal operations. Although cities typically share these common goals, many are electing to pursue different planning approaches. In this paper, we examine three climate adaptation planning approaches in the cities of Quito (Ecuador), Surat (India), and Durban (South Africa) and analyze the trade-offs associated with different planning pathways and different forms of stakeholder involvement. We assess the potentials and limitations of these different approaches, including their implications for enhancing government integration and coordination, promoting participation and adaptive capacity of vulnerable groups, and facilitating overall urban resilience. We find that, in order to gain widespread commitment on adaptation, sustained political leadership from the top, departmental engagement, and continued involvement from a variety of stakeholders are integral to effective decision-making and institutionalization of programs in the long run. When climate adaptation is advanced with a focus on learning, awareness, and capacity building, the process will likely lead to more sustained, legitimate, and comprehensive adaptation plans and policies that enhance the resilience of the most affected urban areas and residents. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A primary goal of studying climate change adaptation is to estimate the net impacts of climate change. Many potential changes in agricultural management and technology, including shifts in crop phenology and improved drought and heat tolerance, would help to improve crop productivity but do not necessarily represent true adaptations. Here the importance of retaining a strict definition of adaptation - as an action that reduces negative or enhances positive impacts of climate change - is discussed, as are common ways in which studies misinterpret the adaptation benefits of various changes. These "adaptation illusions" arise from a combination of faulty logic, model errors, and management assumptions that ignore the tendency for Farmers to maximize profits for a given technology. More consistent treatment of adaptation is needed to better inform synthetic assessments of climate change impacts, and to more easily identify innovations in agriculture that are truly more effective in Future climates than in current or past ones. Of course, some of the best innovations in agriculture in coming decades may have no adaptation benefits, and that makes them no less worthy of attention. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mixed crop-liveslock systems produce most of the world's milk and ruminant meat, and are particularly important for the livelihoods and food security of poor people in developing countries. These systems will bear the brunt of helping to satisfy the burgeoning demand for food from increasing populations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where rural poverty and hunger are already concentrated. The potential impacts of changes in climate and climate variability on these mixed systems are not that well understood, particularly as regards how the food security of vulnerable households may be affected. There are many ways in which the mixed systems may be able to adapt to climate change in the future, including via increased efficiencies of production that sometimes provide important mitigation co-benefits as well. But effective adaptation will require an enabling policy, technical, infrastructural and informational environment, and the development challenge is daunting. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Despite rising concern on the impact of heat on human health, the risk of high summer temperature on heatstroke-related emergency dispatches is not well understood in Japan. A time-series study was conducted to examine the association between apparent temperature and daily heatstroke-related ambulance dispatches (HSAD) within the Kanto area of Japan. A total of 12,907 HSAD occurring from 2000 to 2009 in five major cities-Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kawasaki, and Yokohama-were analyzed. Generalized additive models and zero-inflated Poisson regressions were used to estimate the effects of daily maximum three-hour apparent temperature (AT) on dispatch frequency from May to September, with adjustment for seasonality, long-term trend, weekends, and public holidays. Linear and non-linear exposure effects were considered. Effects on days when AT first exceeded its summer median were also investigated. City-specific estimates were combined using random effects meta-analyses. Exposure-response relationship was found to be fairly linear. Significant risk increase began from 21 A degrees C with a combined relative risk (RR) of 1.22 (95 % confidence interval, 1.03-1.44), increasing to 1.49 (1.42-1.57) at peak AT. When linear exposure was assumed, combined RR was 1.43 (1.37-1.50) per degree Celsius increment. Overall association was significant the first few times when median AT was initially exceeded in a particular warm season. More than two-thirds of these initial hot days were in June, implying the harmful effect of initial warming as the season changed. Risk increase that began early at the fairly mild perceived temperature implies the need for early precaution.Cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) is one of the infectious diseases likely to be affected by climate change. Although there are a few studies on the climate change-CSM nexus, none has considered perceptions of community members. However, understanding public perception in relation to a phenomenon is very significant for the design of effective communication and mitigation strategies as well as coping and adaptation strategies. This paper uses focus group discussions (FGDs) to fill this knowledge lacuna. Results show that although a few elderly participants ascribed fatal causes (disobedience to gods, ancestors, and evil spirits) to CSM infections during FGDs, majority of participants rightly linked CSM infections to dry, very hot and dusty conditions experienced during the dry season. Finally, community members use a suite of adaptation options to curb future CSM epidemics.Multidecadal shoreline changes along ca. 7000 km coastline around Denmark were computed for the time interval between 1862 AD and 2005 AD and were connected with a geomorphological coastal classification. The shoreline data set was based on shoreline positions from historical and modern topographic maps. Coastal landforms were identified on a digital terrain model in combination with aerial photographs. Two shoreline-change computation methods were evaluated at a test site, aiming for optimized time efficiency and accuracy of the countrywide application: a Nearest Neighbor search and a cross-shore transect method based on the ArcGIS-based Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS). The cross-shore transect method was more robust and performed better in the detection of local extremes in shoreline changes, which was crucial for the scope of the mapping. Countrywide shoreline-change distances and rates were, therefore, computed with the DSAS method. Patterns in coastline dynamics were identified through the connection of shoreline-change rates with the occurrence of coastal landforms. Short-term changes and alterations of shoreline evolution through coastal structures were not resolved in this study. Because of the long time span covered, the relative errors originating from data and method are acceptable. The scope of the mapping was to provide a coastal management tool that allows screening for critical sites with respect to coastal erosion. As the first countrywide quantification of historical shoreline changes around Denmark, the mapping can contribute to enhanced adaptation and mitigation strategies in response to increased risks of erosion and flooding under a changing climate.Resilience has become prominent in academia where it is used as a central framework in disciplines such as ecology, climate change adaptation or urban planning. Policy makers and international development agencies also increasingly refer to it. The objective of this paper is to assess the advantages and limits of resilience in the context of development. Although the review highlights some positive elements-for example, the ability to foster an integrated approach-it also shows that resilience has important limitations. In particular, it is not a pro-poor concept, in the sense that it does not exclusively apply to, or benefit, the poor. As such, resilience building cannot replace poverty reduction. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Rivers originating in the high mountains of Asia are among the most meltwater-dependent river systems on Earth, yet large human populations depend on their resources downstream(1). Across High Asia's river basins, there is large variation in the contribution of glacier and snow melt to total runoff(2), which is poorly quantified. The lack of understanding of the hydrological regimes of High Asia's rivers is one of the main sources of uncertainty in assessing the regional hydrological impacts of climate change(3). Here we use a large-scale, high-resolution cryospheric-hydrological model to quantify the upstream hydrological regimes of the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong rivers. Subsequently, we analyse the impacts of climate change on future water availability in these basins using the latest climate model ensemble. Despite large differences in runoff composition and regimes between basins and between tributaries within basins, we project an increase in runoff at least until 2050 caused primarily by an increase in precipitation in the upper Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong basins and from accelerated melt in the upper Indus Basin. These findings have immediate consequences for climate change policies where a transition towards coping with intra-annual shifts in water availability is desirable.International aid is increasingly focused on adaptation to climate change. At recent meetings of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the developed world agreed to rapidly increase international assistance to help the developing world respond to the impacts of climate change. In this paper, we examine the decision-making challenges facing internationally supported climate change adaptation projects, using the example of efforts to implement coastal protection measures (e.g. sea walls, mangrove planting) in Kiribati. The central equatorial Pacific country is home to the Kiribati Adaptation Project, the first national-level climate change adaptation project supported by the World Bank. Drawing on interview and document research conducted over an 8-year period, we trace the forces influencing decisions about coastal protection measures, starting from the variability and uncertainty in climate change projections, through the trade-offs between different measures, to the social, political, and economic context in which decisions are finally made. We then discuss how sub-optimal adaptation measures may be implemented despite years of planning, consultation, and technical studies. This qualitative analysis of the real-world process of climate change adaptation reveals that embracing a culturally appropriate and short-term (similar to 20 years) planning horizon, while not ignoring the longer-term future, may reduce the influence of scientific uncertainty on decisions and provide opportunities to learn from mistakes, reassess the science, and adjust suboptimal investments. The limiting element in this approach to adaptation is likely to be the availability of consistent, long-term financing.The Andean Altiplano has a diversity of landscapes supporting rural livelihoods. Climate change historical trends and projections point to disruptions in the livelihoods of farmers in this region. This context of climate change requires system-wide analysis to determine socio-ecological adjustments. In response, we conceptualized agritourism as a climate change adaptation strategy capable of supplementing agricultural incomes and sustaining rural livelihoods in the Andean Altiplano. We operationalized the framework of change with data gathered from134 households in Ancoraimes (Bolivian Altiplano) to identify attributes that could enable or constraint agritourismdevelopment at five intervention scales: production, livelihood, community/watershed, landscape/ecosystem, and government. By assessing the climate and socio-economic drivers and dynamics of change, and the local assets enabling agency in rural communities, agritourism is presented as a short-term strategy to increase household's revenues, reduce risks associatedwith agricultural production, and decrease the depletion of natural resources (soils, water, biodiversity) for the long-term sustainability of Andean agriculture-based livelihoods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is projected to be a major change factor for many tourism-dependent communities around the world. While this fact is broadly acknowledged in the academic community, there is still lacking evidence of how local tourism actors in different geographical settings perceive climate change, and how climate change impacts are projected to affect the respective tourism governance systems in the future. Based on empirical evidence froma mountain-tourismcommunity in the Alps, the perceived vulnerabilities are laid open in a participatory focus group research approach, and future development paths as well as their effect upon local destination governance are discussed. Special attention is given to existing and future cooperation patterns, with the overarching goal to understand how perceptions of climate change influence future adaptation paths, and what role cooperation plays in implementing climate change adaptation measures on a local and regional level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Population productivity is determined in large part by growth, maturity and recruitment. This determines the level of fishing that the population can sustain without declining. We examined how these components of productivity have varied during warm and cold periods for two Grand Bank fish populations, and how this variation affects fishing mortality reference points. Productivity of both Div. 3NO Atlantic cod and Div. 3LNO American plaice has varied considerably over time. Projections of population size under different conditions showed that the level of recruits per spawner played a major role in determining the level of fishing mortality that did not result in population decline. For plaice there was also a substantial impact of varying proportion mature at age. The impact of factors other than temperature on recruits per spawner and maturity meant that the association of productivity with temperature was not consistent. When productivity was at its lowest, the level of fishing mortality that could be sustained without causing rapid population decline was very low. The results of this study clearly demonstrate that the impacts of changing productivity can be rapid and very large and if fishing mortality reference points are not adjusted accordingly the results can be catastrophic. It may be helpful to develop fishing mortality reference points that incorporate all components of productivity and are updated using only recent data. Such reference points could be used in combination with buffers around a biomass limit reference point (B-lim) and/or low risk tolerances for declining below B-lim to account for the uncertainties that would remain even in frequently updated reference points. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A new high-quality daily and monthly temperature station dataset was prepared for the tropical Western Pacific through a quality control and homogenization process. The homogeneity of 46 temperature stations, collected at a workshop conducted as part of the Pacific-Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning program, was assessed and the non-climatic step changes were removed. Here we present trends in mean and extreme temperature for the Western Pacific, covering an extended time period and larger geographical area compared with previous analyses. We discuss five main conclusions: (1) There is a significant warming trend in annual mean temperature over the past 50 years (1961-2011), of between 0.05 and 0.34 degrees C per decade. (2) Significant and spatially homogeneous warming trends are evident at the station level over 1961-2011 for the warm and cool extremes of both maximum and minimum temperatures. (3) Sub-regional trends, over the period 1951-2011, are spatially coherent, with the largest warming trends in the hottest day and night of the year and the coolest night of the year. (4) This analysis highlights the role of decadal variability in the number of days exceeding extreme temperature thresholds, with the upper (lower) tails of the distribution warming more (less) in recent decades. (5) We show that strong relationships exist between local and remote sea-surface temperature anomalies and all indices of extreme temperature, particularly with minimum temperature extremes.Rainfall records for 23 countries and territories in the western Pacific have been collated for the purpose of examining trends in total and extreme rainfall since 1951. For some countries this is the first time that their data have been included in this type of analysis and for others the number of stations examined is more than twice that available in the current literature. Station trends in annual total and extreme rainfall for 1961-2011 are spatially heterogeneous and largely not statistically significant. This differs with the results of earlier studies that show spatially coherent trends that tended to reverse in the vicinity of the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ). We infer that the difference is due to the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation switching to a negative phase from about 1999, largely reversing earlier rainfall changes. Trend analyses for 1981-2011 show wetter conditions in the West Pacific Monsoon (WPM) region and southwest of the mean SPCZ position. In the tropical North Pacific it has become wetter west of 160 degrees E with the Intertropical Convergence Zone/WPM expanding northwards west of 140 degrees E. Northeast of the SPCZ and in the central tropical Pacific east of about 160 degrees E it has become drier. Our findings for the South Pacific subtropics are consistent with broader trends seen in parts of southern and eastern Australia towards reduced rainfall. The relationship between total and extreme rainfall and Pacific basin sea surface temperatures (SSTs) has been investigated with a focus on the influence of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). We substantiate a strong relationship between ENSO and total rainfall and establish similar relationships for the threshold extreme indices. The percentile-based and absolute extreme indices are influenced by ENSO to a lesser extent and in some cases the influence is marginal. Undoubtedly, larger-scale SST variability is not the only influence on these indices.The Budyko framework characterizes landscape water cycles as a function of climate. We used this framework to identify regions with contrasting hydroclimatic change during the past 50years in Sweden. This analysis revealed three distinct regions: the mountains, the forests, and the areas with agriculture. Each region responded markedly different to recent climate and anthropogenic changes, and within each region, we identified the most sensitive subregions. These results highlight the need for regional differentiation in climate change adaptation strategies to protect vulnerable ecosystems and freshwater resources. Further, the Budyko curve moved systematically towards its water and energy limits, indicating augmentation of the water cycle driven by changing vegetation, climate and human interactions. This finding challenges the steady state assumption of the Budyko curve and therefore its ability to predict future water cycles. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Heat-related mortality in US cities is expected to more than double by the mid-to-late 21st century. Rising heat exposure in cities is projected to result from: 1) climate forcings from changing global atmospheric composition; and 2) local land surface characteristics responsible for the urban heat island effect. The extent to which heat management strategies designed to lessen the urban heat island effect could offset future heat-related mortality remains unexplored in the literature. Using coupled global and regional climate models with a human health effects model, we estimate changes in the number of heat-related deaths in 2050 resulting from modifications to vegetative cover and surface albedo across three climatically and demographically diverse US metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Georgia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix, Arizona. Employing separate health impact functions for average warm season and heat wave conditions in 2050, we find combinations of vegetation and albedo enhancement to offset projected increases in heat-related mortality by 40 to 99% across the three metropolitan regions. These results demonstrate the potential for extensive land surface changes in cities to provide adaptive benefits to urban populations at risk for rising heat exposure with climate change.The impacts of glacial cycles on the geographical distribution and size of populations have been explored for numerous terrestrial and marine taxa. However, most studies have focused on high latitudes, with only a few focused on the response of biota to the last glacial maximum (LGM) in equatorial regions. Here, we examine how population sizes of key bee fauna in the southwest Pacific archipelagos of Fiji, Vanuatu and Samoa have fluctuated over the Quaternary. We show that all three island faunas suffered massive population declines, roughly corresponding in time to the LGM, followed by rapid expansion post-LGM. Our data therefore suggest that Pleistocene climate change has had major impacts across a very broad tropical region. While other studies indicate widespread Holarctic effects of the LGM, our data suggest a much wider range of latitudes, extending to the tropics, where these climate change repercussions were important. As key pollinators, the inferred changes in these bee faunas may have been critical in the development of the diverse Pacific island flora. The magnitude of these responses indicates future climate change scenarios may have alarming consequences for Pacific island systems involving pollinator-dependent plant communities and agricultural crops.This study utilizes hydrometeor sonde and radiometer sonde in situ observations to simultaneously evaluate ice cloud microphysics and radiative fluxes. In addition, the impact of nonsphericity and heterogeneous ice nucleation schemes on radiative fluxes are examined using a double-moment bulk cloud microphysics scheme on a midlatitude frontal system. The distribution of simulated outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is systematically reduced by assuming the presence of columnar ice crystals instead of planar ice crystals because of the difference in the effective radii (the projected area) between the two shapes. However, the choice of the heterogeneous ice nucleation schemes drastically changes the distribution of OLR by modifying the number concentration of the cloud ice (Ni) (more than tenfold). The observed shortwave fluxes are useful for evaluating the simulated number concentration of cloud ice when nonspherical single scattering properties are used instead of spherical single scattering properties. The dependence of the asymmetry factor on the effective radius is the key to quantitatively estimating the ice cloud radiative forcing and determining the aerosol indirect effect on ice clouds. Based on the comparison of shortwave fluxes, the cloud microphysics scheme was found to underestimate the Ni near the cloud base (a robust bias). A possible method of modifying the bias is discussed.The Jamuna River is the downstream continuation of the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. It is one of the largest sand-bed braided rivers in the world and every year it erodes thousand hectares of mainland floodplain, rendering tens of thousands of people landless and/or homeless. Understanding the morpho-dynamics of this river and its responses to the various drivers of morphological change that act on it is essential to improving the livelihoods of millions of floodplain dwellers in Bangladesh, especially given the threats posed by climate change. Reliable data, information and knowledge of river process are sparse and so progress in linking the impacts of multiple drivers (including neo-tectonics, earthquakes, large-scale avulsions and engineering interventions) to complex morphological responses depends on making best use of historical maps, time-series satellite images, hydro-morphological data, expert judgment and local knowledge. This paper draws on all these sources to chronicle the morphological evolution of the Jamuna River since the avulsion that created it about 200 years ago, and to establish temporal trends and spatial patterns in the changes that have characterized process-response mechanisms in this fluvial system since then. The understanding gained from these investigations then supports deeper analyses to: explain how historical migration of the river westward has produced significant contrasts between left and right (west) bank material properties; elucidate the relationships between discharge, fluvial processes, anabranch instability and floodplain erosion rates, and; identify causal links between drivers and morphological responses at a variety of time and space scales. Finally, the new knowledge generated by the analyses developed herein are combined with existing, conceptual and empirical process-response models for the Jamuna to predict possible future morphological adjustments in ways helpful in identifying appropriate strategies for climate change adaptation in Bangladesh. The enhanced knowledge gained from these historical and contemporary investigations may also be useful in assessing the impacts of natural and anthropogenic drivers on other large, braided rivers. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change impact assessments form the basis for the development of suitable climate change adaptation strategies. For this purpose, ensembles consisting of stepwise coupled models are generally used [emission scenario global circulation model downscaling approach (DA) bias correction impact model (hydrological model)], in which every item is affected by considerable uncertainty. The aim of the current study is (1) to analyse the uncertainty related to the choice of the DA as well as the hydrological model and its parameterization and (2) to evaluate the vulnerability of the studied catchment, a subcatchment of the highly anthropogenically impacted Spree River catchment, to hydrological change. Four different DAs are used to drive four different model configurations of two conceptually different hydrological models (Water Balance Simulation Model developed at ETH Zurich and HBV-light). In total, 452 simulations are carried out. The results show that all simulations compute an increase in air temperature and potential evapotranspiration. For precipitation, runoff and actual evapotranspiration, opposing trends are computed depending on the DA used to drive the hydrological models. Overall, the largest source of uncertainty can be attributed to the choice of the DA, especially regarding whether it is statistical or dynamical. The choice of the hydrological model and its parameterization is of less importance when long-term mean annual changes are compared. The large bandwidth at the end of the modelling chain may exacerbate the formulation of suitable climate change adaption strategies on the regional scale. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Background: Despite acclimatisation to hot weather, many individuals in Australia are adversely affected by extreme heat each summer, placing added pressure on the health sector. In terms of public health, it is therefore important to identify vulnerable groups, particularly in the face of a warming climate. International evidence points to a disparity in heat-susceptibility in certain minority groups, although it is unknown if this occurs in Australia. With cultural diversity increasing, the aim of this study was to explore how migrants from different cultural backgrounds and climate experiences manage periods of extreme heat in Australia. Methods: A qualitative study was undertaken across three Australian cities, involving interviews and focus groups with key informants including stakeholders involved in multicultural service provision and community members. Thematic analysis and a framework approach were used to analyse the data. Results: Whilst migrants and refugees generally adapt well upon resettlement, there are sociocultural barriers encountered by some that hinder environmental adaptation to periods of extreme heat in Australia. These barriers include socioeconomic disadvantage and poor housing, language barriers to the access of information, isolation, health issues, cultural factors and lack of acclimatisation. Most often mentioned as being at risk were new arrivals, people in new and emerging communities, and older migrants. Conclusions: With increasing diversity within populations, it is important that the health sector is aware that during periods of extreme heat there may be disparities in the adaptive capacity of minority groups, underpinned by sociocultural and language-based vulnerabilities in migrants and refugees. These factors need to be considered by policymakers when formulating and disseminating heat health strategies.Indigenous peoples must adapt to current and coming climate-induced environmental changes like sea-level rise, glacier retreat, and shifts in the ranges of important species. For some indigenous peoples, such changes can disrupt the continuance of the systems of responsibilities that their communities rely on self-consciously for living lives closely connected to the earth. Within this domain of indigeneity, some indigenous women take seriously the responsibilities that they may perceive they have as members of their communities. For the indigenous women who have such outlooks, responsibilities that they assume in their communities expose them to harms stemming from climate change impacts and other environmental changes. Yet at the same time, their commitment to these responsibilities motivates them to take on leadership positions in efforts at climate change adaptation and mitigation. I show why, at least for some indigenous women, this is an important way of framing the climate change impacts that affect them. I then argue that there is an important implication in this conversation for how we understand the political responsibilities of nonindigenous parties for supporting distinctly indigenous efforts at climate change adaptation and mitigation.Professional associations of health care workers are issuing policy statements on climate change and health with greater frequency, calling on their members to act in their duty to protect and fulfill the right to health. These health care providers' perceptions of their roles in the intersection of climate and health, however, have not been well-studied. This article presents results from a qualitative study using focus groups conducted with health care providers serving the low-income, ethnic minority population in East Harlem, New York. The focus groups sought to identify and explore providers' perceived health threats of climate change, as well as their perceived role as frontline disseminators of information and detectors of disease for their patients. Extreme heat events were used to frame the discussion in each group. Three major themes emerged: 1) environmental awareness, 2) an "ecohealth" lens, and 3) heat and health vulnerability. The participants demonstrated their interest in playing a role in climate change adaptation by identifying at-risk patients and helping to tailor clinical care to better serve these individuals.Few, if any, political scientists currently study climate change adaptation or are even aware that there is a large and growing interdisciplinary field of study devoted not just to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions but to reducing our vulnerability to the now-inevitable impacts of climate change. The lack of political science expertise and research represents an obstacle for adapting to climate change, because adaptation is fundamentally political. Technical advances in adaptations for infrastructure, agriculture, public health, coastal protection, conservation, and other fields all depend on political variables for their implementation and effectiveness. For example, adaptation raises questions about political economy (adaptation costs money), political theory (adaptation involves questions of social justice), comparative politics (some countries more aggressively pursue adaptation), urban politics (some cities more aggressively pursue adaptation), regime type (democracies and authoritarian regimes may differently pursue adaptation), federalism (different levels of government may be involved), and several other fields of study including political conflict, international development, bureaucracy, migration, media, political parties, elections, civil society, and public opinion. I review the field of climate change adaptation and then explore the tremendous contributions that political scientists could make to adaptation research.Projected climatic changes for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia for the period 2025-2100 will be most intense in the warmest period of the year with more frequent and more intense heat-waves, droughts and flood events compared with the period 1961-1990. The country has examined their vulnerabilities to climate change and many public health impacts have been projected. A variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used in the assessment: literature reviews, interviews, focus groups, time series and regression analysis, damage and adaptation cost estimation, and scenario-based assessment. Policies and interventions to minimize the risks and development of long-term adaptation strategies have been explored. The generation of a robust evidence base and the development of stakeholder engagement have been used to support the development of an adaptation strategy and to promote adaptive capacity by improving the resilience of public health systems to climate change. Climate change adaptation has been established as a priority within existing national policy instruments. The lessons learnt from the process are applicable to countries considering how best to improve adaptive capacity and resilience of health systems to climate variability and its associated impacts.Heat waves can be lethal and routinely prompt public warnings about the dangers of heat. With climate change, extreme heat events will become more frequent and intense. However, little is known about public awareness of heat warnings or behaviors during hot weather. Awareness of heat warnings, prevention behaviors, and air conditioning (AC) prevalence and use in New York City were assessed using quantitative and qualitative methods. A random sample telephone survey was conducted in September 2011 among 719 adults and follow-up focus groups were held in winter 2012 among seniors and potential senior caregivers. During summer 2011, 79 % of adults heard or saw a heat warning. Of the 24 % who were seniors or in fair or poor health, 34 % did not own AC or never/rarely used it on hot days. Of this subgroup, 30 % were unaware of warnings, and 49 % stay home during hot weather. Reasons for not using AC during hot weather include disliking AC (29 %), not feeling hot (19 %), and a preference for fans (18 %). Seniors in the focus groups did not perceive themselves to be at risk, and often did not identify AC as an important health protection strategy. While heat warnings are received by most New Yorkers, AC cost, risk perception problems, and a preference for staying home leave many at risk during heat waves. Improving AC access and risk communications will help better protect the most vulnerable during heat waves.Closing the gap between the health and well-being status of Indigenous people living in remote areas of northern Australia and non-Indigenous Australians has long been a major target of federal health policy. With climate projections suggesting large increases in hot spells in desert regions and more extremes in rainfall in other areas of the north, direct and indirect impacts resulting from these changes are likely to further entrench this health and well-being disparity. This paper argues that it is time to explicitly draw on Indigenous definitions of health, which directly address the need to connect individual and community health to the health of their country, in order to develop effective climate adaptation and health strategies. We detail how current health policies overlook this 'missing' dimension of Indigenous connection to country, and why that is likely to be detrimental to the health and well-being of people living in remote communities in a climate-changed future.Climate adaptation projects often involve joint knowledge production, including different stakeholders and disciplines. One of the main challenges of transdisciplinary research projects is to balance the convergence and divergence of epistemic contributions. We explore to what extent organisational embedding of project teams, input in the project, and project governance influence project performance in climate adaptation projects. Our results indicate that aligning incentive systems and lower partner diversity lead to higher effectiveness and satisfaction. Project size enhances effectiveness, but decreases satisfaction. Satisfaction is enhanced by committed project members. Furthermore, dealing with diverse partner sets and large teams is not eased by careful management in the course of the project. Careful balancing of divergence and convergence should be taken into account during the design stage of these projects. In the context of knowledge co-production for environmental challenges, project management should proactively consider project structure, required level of partner diversity and project size. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change needs to be incorporated in future designs of the electricity sector. This paper argues for a policy framework in which utilities take the lead by performing an electrical climate change impact assessment that evaluates to what extent utilities' electrical assets are vulnerable to future climate change. Based on this assessment, electrical climate change adaptation plans should be formulated by the utility in cooperation with utility regulators, municipalities and supralocal governments. A collaborative process is essential, because adaptation measures need to be tailored to the regional circumstances and many types of adaptation measures require governmental approval. In order for the most sustainable and cost-efficient measures to be selected, cooperation between governments, utilities and utility regulators is necessary. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation to climate change is gradually becoming accepted as one of the major challenges in regional and urban planning. However, the scope for options that make our societies less vulnerable to flood risks, disruptive quantities of rainwater in cities, or urban heat stress tends to be narrowed down, often implicitly, by the existing institutional context. Institutions reflect past choices made regarding the legitimate distribution of burdens and benefits between government and society of measures against weather-related calamities. Alternative options, like innovative dyke concepts, green roofs, or urban planning to reduce heat stress, would require political debate on the legitimacy of different arrangements and would take climate adaptation policy out of the technocratic 'comfort zone'. This article offers a framework of analysis for describing the institutionalized distribution of responsibilities for initiation, implementation, costs and liability for climate adaptation measures, and the shift in these that alternative options would entail. Furthermore, it offers four perspectives for assessing the legitimacy of present and alternative distributions. The framework is applied to the Dutch context in three cases concerning flooding, urban water drainage and urban heat stress.Adaptation to climate change and variability has recently become a subject of increasing importance in climate change research with an objective to reduce the vulnerability of climate sensitive people. The present study was designed to identify and assess the adaptation strategies followed by the climate sensitive livestock rearers of coastal Odisha and West Bengal. Livestock rearers (480) were selected from 4 coastal districts of Odisha and West Bengal. The study revealed that 17 adaptation strategies were followed by the livestock rearer. To trace the relative importance among the adaptation strategies, an exclusively climate change adaptation index was developed. It was observed that change in micro-climate in cattle shed/grazing area/stall was the most preferred adaptation strategy followed by providing the frequent clean and fresh drinking water and additional washing/sprinkling of cattle and buffaloes. Livestocks are very much susceptible to heat stress. Therefore, most of the livestock rearers followed heat alleviating adaptation strategies.Barriers to adaptation have emerged as key concerns in climate change theory and practice, however there remains little consensus about which barriers are the most significant to different groups and how competing concerns may be addressed. We investigate the significance of different barriers to adaptation for governments, the private sector, and civil society in Australia through a systematic analysis of submissions to the Australian Productivity Commission's inquiry into barriers to adaptation. Our results show that respondents prioritise barriers differently according to their respective sectors, and that there are competing concerns about which barriers should be addressed first. Nevertheless, some barriers are more persistent in the submissions than others, with governance and policy seen by most groups as being the major impediments to adaptation. We explain the implications of our analysis for adaptation politics and policy.This article focuses on vulnerability assessment and climate change adaptation strategies in the city of Hammerfest (Northern Norway). The analysis is based on the CoastAdapt framework and will be looking at both current and future climate. Vulnerability is split into "natural vulnerability", "socio-economic vulnerability" and "institutional vulnerability". Historically, Hammerfest has been vulnerable to avalanches and landslides, and has over time built up considerable climate adaptive experience. Hammerfest is now undergoing deep transformation. The petroleum industry descended on Hammerfest in 2002; ten years later it provides employment for more than 1 000 people in a town with a total population of approximately 10 000. Over this period, new property taxes and other sources of income have made Hammerfest an affluent community. The result is considerable investment in urban development and new infrastructure (schools, a culture center, new sewers and a streets renovation scheme, etc.). In terms of climate adaptation the impact of the oil industry may be seen as a double edge sword. On the one hand, greenhouse gas emissions have rocketed. One the other hand, the economic development has boosted the municipality's revenue and population, thus enabling Hammerfest to consider, and spends money on, local climate adaptive projects that are far beyond the realm of possibility for neighbouring municipalities. The article will look at the instruments employed by Hammerfest in this process. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An analysis method is proposed for polar cold airmass streams from generation to disappearance. It designates a threshold potential temperature theta(T) at around the turning point of the extratropical direct (ETD) meridional circulation from downward to equatorward in the mass-weighted isentropic zonal mean (MIM) and clarifies the geographical distributions of the cold air mass, the negative heat content (NHC), their horizontal fluxes, and their diabatic change rates on the basis of conservation relations of the air mass and thermodynamic energy. In the Northern Hemispheric winter, the polar cold air mass below theta(T) = 280 K has two main streams: the East Asian stream and the North American stream. The former grows over the northern part of the Eurasian continent, flows eastward, turns down southeastward toward East Asia via Siberia, and disappears over the western North Pacific Ocean. The latter grows over the Arctic Ocean, flows toward the eastern coast of North America via Hudson Bay, and disappears over the western North Atlantic Ocean. In their exit regions, wave-mean flow interactions are considered to transfer the angular momentum from the cold airstreams to the upward Eliassen-Palm flux and convert the available potential energy to wave energy.The urgent need for policy decisions often outpaces scientific discovery. At such times, policymakers must rely on scientific opinion. This is the case with many aspects of current climate policy, especially those involving untested but potentially necessary adaptations to reduce vulnerability to climate change. Unfortunately, scientific opinion is not currently defined, measured, or used in a standardized way, which often allows for the accidental or intentional dissemination of misinformation and the marginalization of science where science could be most beneficial. In this article, we argue that scientific opinion can be usefully measured by systematic surveys of scientists that employ standards similar to those that govern public opinion surveys, including systematic decisions about target populations, sampling frames, and sampling techniques. We demonstrate this approach with the methodology for a study of scientific opinion on a potential adaptation to climate change, the managed relocation of species. We show that survey results may be used to corroborate other types of information, refine or contradict other information, and offer novel insights into emerging issues, such as adaptations to climate change, that are currently not addressed with any other type of available information.Sweet potato technologies that increase productivity, such as drought resistant varieties and virus free planting material are being promoted in order to reduce the vulnerability of poor farm households to climate change. In this paper, the Trade-off Analysis, Minimum Data Model Approach (TOA-MD) was used to assess the adoption potential of these technologies by resource poor farmers under climate change in Uganda. The model was calibrated and validated using household survey data collected in 2009 from Kabale district. To simulate adoption potential, the base system data was generated from household data and adjusted to reflect impact of climate change on crop yields and prices by 2050. The percentage increase in yields resulting from the use of climate resilient sweet potato technologies were used to estimate yields for alternative systems based on the results from sweet potato trials by the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), Uganda. Adoption potential of sweet potato technologies varied across altitudes. Compared with the high and lower altitudes, adoption potential is lowest at moderate altitude despite higher yields and lower costs of production. Paying farmers to adopt new sweet potato technologies is economically rational at the higher and moderate altitudes but not at the lower altitudes. The provision of free planting material (subsidy) for the evaluated technologies resulted in a modest increase of 2 % in adoption potential. Therefore, providing this as a way of increasing adoption of sweet potato technologies to reduce vulnerability of poor farm households to climate change will have a very small impact. Instead, climate change adaptation policy should focus on creating enabling environments for farmers to market their produce so as to raise returns and reduce the opportunity costs of climate change adaptation strategies.In order to demonstrate further the oxidation ability of diluted aqueous nitric acid containing abundant amounts of salts, the dissolution of precious metals (Au. Pt, and Pd), especially, of gold has been examined in 0.1-2 mol dm(-3) HNO3 accompanied by alkali metal, alkaline earth metal, and aluminum chlorides. The complete dissolution time of pure gold plate (20 +/- 2 mg, 0.1 mm thickness) in 2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 accompanied by 1.0 mol dm(-3) AlCl3 was shortened remarkably with a temperature increase from 15 to 80 degrees C. The dissolution rate constants, log (k/s(-1)), of a piece of gold wire (19.7 +/- 0.5 mg) in 20 mL of 2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 accompanied by the metal chlorides, in general, increase with increasing salt concentrations at 40 and 60 degrees C. For instance, the log (k/s-1) values linearly increase from -4.15 via -3.77, -3.45 to -3.14 by the addition of 1.0., 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 mol dm(-3) LiCl in a 2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 solution at 60 degrees C. The gold can be dissolved in the solution of 1.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 and 1.0 mol dm(-3) HCl, i.e. a "dilute aqua regia." We have achieved a total dissolution of five pieces (0.10 g) of the gold wire in 100 mL of the 1:1 mixture between seawater and 2.0 mol dm(-3) HNO3 at ca. 100 degrees C, with a complete dissolution time of within 17 h and log (k/s-1) = 4.52. At 60 C, the complete dissolution experiments of the gold wire in much lower HNO3 concentrations (down to 0.1 mol dm-3) with the chloride salts have been also successfully performed. The distortion of bulk water and alternation of water properties are discussed based on the Raman spectra with increasing HCl concentrations. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy brings to light the tenuous U.S. model of natural disaster management. Climatic extremes, like Sandy, are projected to increase in magnitude and frequency, calling upon societies to adapt appropriately to imminent threats. In this paper, we describe the knowledge and policy disconnect exposed by Sandy between what we submit are four key elements of adaptive capacity: resources, institutions, knowledge and innovation of technology. Our synthesis of multi-disciplinary expert knowledge and admonition from civil engineers, climatologists, and urban planners demonstrates the significance of mobilizing knowledge to design robust socio-ecological systems. We contrast the U.S. model to the Dutch system of climate adaptation to emphasize the feasibility, value, and effectiveness of adopting robust adaptive capacities, rather than policies steeped in reactionary responses. Such strategies that integrate coordination and imagination from members across society are imperative in translating scientific foresight into institutional action. The solution we offer is not only material for a more action-based discussion, but also provides an illustration of crafting policy that enhances adaptive capacities of socio-ecological systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Computer simulation models can provide valuable insights for climate-related analysis and help streamline policy interventions for improved adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. Computable general equilibrium (CGE) and partial equilibrium (PE) models are currently being expanded to include land-use change and energy markets so that the effects of various policy measures on agricultural production can be assessed. Agent-based modelling (ABM) or multi-agent systems (MAS) have been suggested as a complementary tool for assessing farmer responses to climate change in agriculture and how these are affected by policies. MAS applied to agricultural systems draw on techniques used for Recursive Farm Programming, but include models of all individual farms, their spatial interactions and the natural environment. In this article, we discuss the specific insights MAS provide for developing robust policies and land-use strategies in response to climate change. We show that MAS are well-suited for uncertainty analysis and can thereby complement existing simulation approaches to advance the understanding and implementation of effective climate-related policies in agriculture.In response to Albrecht et al.'s (J Agric Environ Ethics 26(4):827-845, 2013) discussion on the ethics of assisted migration, we emphasize the issues of risk and scientific uncertainty as an inextricable part of a comprehensive ethical evaluation. Insisting on a separation of risk and ethical considerations, although arguably common in many policy contexts, is at best misguided and at worst damaging.Climate change is expected to cause profound changes in marine ecosystems that will vary in magnitude and effect among regions. We explore the potential effects of climate change on the western Scotian Shelf ecosystem in eastern Canada using an ecosystem model and two scenarios of climatic changes. The model includes the effects of temperature, pH, oxygen, decreased primary productivity and change in zooplankton size structure. These factors had differential, and sometimes opposing additive effects on the functional groups and species. The results also illustrate how the effects of climate change can be further enhanced or ameliorated by predator-prey interactions. At the individual species or functional group level, some effects were negligible, but at the ecosystem level, the combined predicted effect of climate change on the western Scotian Shelf led to a reduction in biomass of 19% to 29% with an associated decrease in catches of 20% and 22%. Dramatic declines in biomass due to climate drivers could be alleviated in part by a 50% decrease in exploitation rate. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over the past decades, significant experience has been gained in demand-driven research on climate change in many countries. In the Netherlands, a competitive call for proposals for large research programmes at the interface between policy, science and private sector was issued in 2001. Members of the Dutch climate research community proved they were able to develop two large research programme proposals which were funded: 'Climate changes Spatial Planning' and its successor 'Knowledge for Climate'. The programmes ran from 2004 to 2012 and from 2008 to 2014, respectively. Both programmes can be considered as a 10-year research programme experiment to develop knowledge about both the climate system and climate compatible development by crossing disciplines, institutions and national research funding strategies. Within this 10-year period, a trend can be observed in which a 'top-down' climate impact assessment approach is increasingly combined with a 'bottom-up' approach. Based on the 15 articles presented in this special issue (and others), we argue that this development has enriched both fundamental and applied research on climate adaptation. Despite the predominantly Dutch-oriented scope of the presented research, we believe that such experiences can be of international interest. Climate adaptation research finds itself in between global systems knowledge on the one hand and practical needs and experiences at the local, regional and national level on the other. This demands the utmost from all actors involved to enable an efficient and constructive flow and use of knowledge and expertise.Climate change will have an impact on various sectors, such as housing, infrastructure, recreation and agriculture. Climate change may change spatial demands. For example, rising temperatures will increase the need for recreation areas, and areas could be assigned for water storage. There is a growing sense that, especially at the local scale, spatial planning has a key role in addressing the causes and impacts of climate change. This paper promotes an approach to help translate information on climate change impacts into a guiding model for adaptive spatial planning. We describe how guiding models can be used in designing integrated adaptation strategies. The concept of guiding models has been developed in the 1990s by Tjallingii to translate the principles of integrated water management in urban planning. We have integrated information about the present and future climate change and set up a climate adaptation guiding model approach. Making use of climate adaptation guiding models, spatial planners should be able to better cope with complexities of climate change impacts and be able to translate these to implications for spatial planning. The climate adaptation guiding model approach was first applied in the Zuidplaspolder case study, one of the first major attempts in the Netherlands to develop and implement an integrated adaptation strategy. This paper demonstrates how the construction of climate adaptation guiding models requires a participatory approach and how the use of climate adaptation guiding models can contribute to the information needs of spatial planners at the local scale, leading to an increasing sense of urgency and integrated adaptation planning process.Infrastructures are critical for human society, but vulnerable to climate change. The current body of research on infrastructure adaptation does not adequately account for the interconnectedness of infrastructures, both internally and with one another. We take a step toward addressing this gap through the introduction of a framework for infrastructure adaptation that conceptualizes infrastructures as complex socio-technical "systems of systems" embedded in a changing natural environment. We demonstrate the use of this framework by structuring potential climate change impacts and identifying adaptation options for a preliminary set of cases-road, electricity and drinking water infrastructures. By helping to clarify the relationships between impacts at different levels, we find that the framework facilitates the identification of key nodes in the web of possible impacts and helps in the identification of particularly nocuous weather conditions. We also explore how the framework may be applied more comprehensively to facilitate adaptation governance. We suggest that it may help to ensure that the mental models of stakeholders and the quantitative models of researchers incorporate the essential aspects of interacting climate and infrastructure systems. Further research is necessary to test the framework in these contexts and to determine when and where its application may be most beneficial.Climate change impacts on individual species are various and range from shifts in phenology and functional properties to changes in productivity and dispersal. The combination of impacts determines future biodiversity and species composition, but is difficult to evaluate with a single method. Instead, a comparison of mutually independent approaches provides information and confidence in patterns observed beyond what may be achieved in individual approaches. Here, we carried out such comparison to assess which ecosystem types in the Netherlands appear most vulnerable to climate change impacts, as arising from changes in hydrology, nutrient conditions and dispersal limitations. We thus combined meta-analyses of species range shifts with species distribution modelling and ecohydrological modelling with expert knowledge in two respective impact studies. Both impact studies showed that nutrient-poor ecosystems and ecosystem types with fluctuating water tables-like hay meadows, moist heathlands and moorlands-seem to be most at risk upon climate change. A subsequent meta-analysis of species-environmental stress relations indicated that particularly endangered species are adversely affected by the combination of drought and oxygen stress, caused by fluctuating moisture conditions. This implies that adaptation measures should not only aim to optimise mean environmental conditions but should also buffer environmental extremes. Major uncertainties in the assessment included the quantitative impacts of vegetation-hydrology feedbacks, vegetation adaptation and interactions between dispersal capacity and traits linked to environmental selection. Once such quantifications become feasible, adaptation measures may be tailor-made and optimised to conserve vulnerable ecosystem types.Climate change increases the vulnerability of low-lying coastal areas. Careful spatial planning can reduce this vulnerability, provided that decision-makers have insight into the costs and benefits of adaptation options. This paper addresses the question which adaptation options are suitable, from an economic perspective, to adapt spatial planning to climate change at a regional scale. We apply social cost-benefit analysis to assess the net benefits of adaptation options that deal with the impacts of climate change-induced extreme events. From the methods applied and results obtained, we also aim at learning lessons for assessing climate adaptation options. The case study area, the Zuidplaspolder, is a large-scale urban development project in the Netherlands. The costs as well as the primary and secondary benefits of adaptation options relating to spatial planning (e.g. flood-proof housing and adjusted infrastructure) are identified and where possible quantified. Our results show that three adaptation options are not efficient investments, as the investment costs exceed the benefits of avoided damages. When we focus on 'climate proofing' the total area of the Zuidplaspolder, when the costs and benefits of all the presented adaptation options are considered together, the total package has a positive net present value. The study shows that it is possible to anticipate climate change impacts and assess the costs and benefits of adjusting spatial planning. We have learned that scenario studies provide a useful tool but that decision-making under climate change uncertainty also requires insight into the probabilities of occurrence of weather extremes in the future.There is a growing availability of climate change information, offered to scientists and policy makers through climate services. However, climate services are not well taken up by the policy-making and planning community. Climate services focus on primary impacts of climate change, e.g., the disclosure of precipitation and temperature data, and this seems insufficient in meeting their needs. In this paper, we argue that, in order to reach the spatial planning community, climate services should take on a wider perspective by translating climate data to policy-relevant indicators and by offering support in the design of adaptation strategies. We argue there should be more focus on translating consequences of climate change to land-use claims and subsequently discuss the validity, consequences and implications of these claims with stakeholders, so they can play a role in spatial planning processes where much of the climate adaptation takes place. The term Climate Adaptation Services is introduced as being a stepwise approach supporting the assessment of vulnerability in a wider perspective and include the design and appraisal of adaptation strategies in a multi-stakeholder setting. We developed the Climate Adaptation Atlas and the Climate Ateliers as tools within the Climate Adaptation Services approach to support decision-making and planning processes. In this paper, we describe the different steps of our approach and report how some of the challenges were addressed.In various countries, actors try to reconcile climate science and policy through joint knowledge production (JNP). While many conceptual analyses of JNP exist, empirical studies that actually try to assess JNP processes are rare. This paper aims to fill this gap through an empirical analysis of the 'Hotspot Zuidplaspolder' project in which scientists, policymakers and other actors collaboratively looked for ways to 'climate proof' existing plans for urban development in one of the deepest polders of the Netherlands. The analysis is done by identifying and explaining the credibility and salience of the knowledge produced as well as the perceived legitimacy of the JNP process. Seven success factors derived from existing literature were used in the analysis. Stakeholders appeared to evaluate this project as positive, but the analysis shows that criteria and thresholds regarding success differ between the actors involved. We found three underlying design principles that should be followed to enhance the success of future JNP projects. First, it is necessary to organize several instances for reflection on the project processes. Second, new reward structures are needed to stimulate actors to take new initiatives and come up with creative ideas. Third, projects and programs should provide room to make mistakes and learn from them. This first set of empirical design principles for JNP is useful but should be further refined and nuanced in order to better deal with the social complexity of climate change and other wicked problems.This paper discusses the application of qualitative scenarios to understand community vulnerability and adaptation responses, based on a case study in the Slave River Delta region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. Three qualitative, graphic scenarios of possible alternative futures were developed, focusing on two main drivers: climate change and resource development. These were used as a focal point for discussions with a cross-section of residents from the community during focus groups, interviews and a community workshop. Significant overlap among the areas of perceived vulnerability is evident among scenarios, particularly in relation to traditional land use. However, each scenario also offers insights about specific challenges facing community members. Climate change was perceived to engender mostly negative livelihood impacts, whereas resource development was expected to trigger a mix of positive and negative impacts, both of which may be more dramatic than in the "climate change only" scenario. The scenarios were also used to identify adaptation options specific to individual drivers of change, as well as more universally applicable options. Identified adaptation options were generally aligned with five sectors-environment and natural resources, economy, community management and development, infrastructure and services, and information and training-which effectively offer a first step towards prioritization of "no regrets" measures. From an empirical perspective, while the scenarios highlighted the need for bottom-up measures, they also elucidated discussion about local agency in adaptation and enabled the examination of multi-dimensional impacts on different community sub-groups. An incongruity emerged between the suite of technically oriented adaptation options and more socially and behaviourally oriented barriers to implementation. Methodologically, the qualitative scenarios were flexible, socially inclusive and consistent with the Indigenous worldview; allowed the incorporation of different knowledge systems; addressed future community vulnerability and adaptation; and led to the identification of socially feasible and bottom-up adaptation outcomes. Despite some caveats regarding resource requirements for participatory scenario development, qualitative scenarios offer a versatile tool to address a range of vulnerability and adaptation issues in the context of other Indigenous communities.In this paper, we investigate how mountain communities perceive and adapt to climatic and environmental change. Primary data were collected at community and household level through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and quantitative questionnaires covering 210 households in six villages of the West Karakoram (Hundur and Darkut in the Yasin Valley; Hussainabad, Altit, Gulmit, and Shiskat in the Hunza valley of Gilgit-Baltistan). The relevance of the area with respect to our scopes is manifold. First, this is one of the most extreme and remote mountainous areas of the world, characterized by complex and fragile institutional and social fabrics. Second, this region is one of the focal points of research for the hydro-meteo-climatological scientific community, because of its relevance in terms of storage and variability of water resources for the whole Indus basin, and for the presence of conflicting signals of climate change with respect to the neighboring regions. Third, the extreme hardships due to a changing environment, as well as to the volatility of the social and economic conditions are putting great stress on the local population. As isolating climate change as a single driver is often not possible, community perceptions of change are analyzed in the livelihood context and confronted with multi-drivers scenarios affecting the lives of mountain people. We compare the collected perceptions with the available hydro-climatological data, trying to answer some key questions such as: how are communities perceiving, coping with, and adapting to climatic and environmental change? Which are the most resorted adaptation strategies? How is their perception of change influencing the decision to undertake certain adaptive measures?.The marine life of Canada's Pacific marine ecosystems, adjacent to the province of British Columbia, may be relatively responsive to rapid oceanographic and environmental change associated with global climate change due to uniquely evolved plasticities and resiliencies as well as particular sensitivities and vulnerabilities, given this dynamic and highly textured natural setting. These marine ecosystems feature complex interfaces of coastal geomorphology, climate, and oceanography, including a dynamic oceanographic and ecological transition zone formed by the divergence of the North Pacific Current into the Alaskan coastal current and the California Current, and by currents transporting warm tropical waters from the south. Despite long-term warming in the region, sea surface temperatures in Canada's Pacific have been anomalously cool since 2007 with La Nia-type conditions prevailing as we enter a cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, possibly masking future warming. When warmer El Nio conditions prevail, many southern species invade, strongly impacting local species and reorganizing biological communities. Acidification and deoxygenation are anomalously high in the region due to the weakening ventilation of subsurface waters resulting from increased stratification. A broad spectrum of biological responses to these changes are expected. Non-climate anthropogenic stressors affect the capacity of biota to adapt to climate changes. It will be challenging to forecast the responses of particular species, and to map climate vulnerabilities accurately enough to help prioritize and guide adaptation planning. It will be more challenging to develop forecasts that account for indirect effects within biological communities and the intricate and apparently non-deterministic behaviours of highly complex and variable marine ecosystems, such as those of Canada's Pacific. We recommend and outline national and regional climate assessments in Canada and adaptation planning and implementation including integrated coastal management and marine spatial planning and management.Southeast Asian countries are confronting climate variability, challenging agricultural sustainability and rural livelihoods. However, little research effort has been devoted to exploring how farmers in those countries perceive climate variability and how the perceptions link to adaptive responses. This paper deploys information from three focus group discussions with 30 male farmers; and six in-depth interviews with one female and five male agricultural officers in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Recorded 34-year meteorological data in the delta from 1978 to 2011 is also incorporated to demonstrate the actual climate variability of the region. We find that farmers are becoming increasingly conscious of local climate variability issues. However, they have limited understanding of the importance of adaptation to their livelihoods. They also have limited knowledge of where and who to contact for appropriate climate change adaptation information. No opinions about the link between global warming and local climate variability and change were observed. Casual observation via public media and personal experience dominated farmers' sources of information. Barriers to farmers' adaptation are not exclusively restricted to socio-economic factors and resource constraints; e.g. land tenure, technical knowledge, market, social relationship, credit, information, health care, and demographics. Maladaptation, habit, and the perception of the importance of climate variability and adaptation are found as additional constraints. Observed differences in farmers' and agricultural officers' perspectives regarding barriers to farmers' adaptation suggest important policy implications.Climate change exacerbates the public policy challenges already present in managing contested landscapes. Coastal managers deal with multiple stressors and multiple stakeholders and have a difficult challenge in managing competing land use as sea level rise (SLR) reduces the amount of prized coastal land. The information needed to inform on the type and timing of adaptation strategies reflects a major gap in the planning and implementation of adaptation options. We present here an inundation risk assessment framework (IRAF) for estimating the impacts of increasing SLR inundation extent probabilities and the cost of inundation damage through time for public and private infrastructure assets. The framework integrates the cost of damage across asset classes in order to help decision-makers judge the economic utility of various adaptation options and the timing of implementation. We provide an example of this methodology using a case study from Southeast Australia in a low lying estuarine region with an increasingly urbanized population. The methodology shows a clear pathway in which to integrate multiple asset classes into a temporally based damage cost analysis. Such methodology will help address the timing of adaptation and allow for the development of trigger points to guide adaptation planning. Thus, the framework developed in this paper can be easily transferred to other regions and countries facing the same types of SLR risks. As SLR and inundation encroachment continue to occur, decisions regarding protection, repair, and retreat will be made depending on the resources available to local governments. The challenge is to balance decision making with both the timing of implementation as well as costs (both of action and inaction). By understanding the areas of land lost to inundation and the cost of inaction through time, local governments can assess the rationality of adaptation at points in the present and future.Geographic factors make mountain communities around the world vulnerable to the direct effects of climate change, and reliance on recreation and tourism can increase vulnerability to the secondary economic impacts.The goal of this research was to investigate the current state of community adaptation planning in the Southern Rocky Mountain region of North America. Using original survey data this paper discusses the challenges that community and county officials currently face, the perceived effects of future climate change in this region, and the perceived barriers to adaptation planning and hurdles to adaptation implementation. Results show lack of resources, information and political will are the most commonly reported barriers to adaptation. This paper also examines the connectivity between mountain communities and the surrounding federal public lands. Fifty one percent of respondents report that decisions made on nearby public lands frequently or always affect planning and decision making in their community. Collaborative efforts between these entities are proposed as a way to reduce the resource burden of adaptation planning for both entities. Finally, this paper discusses how attitudes and beliefs about climate change affect responses to questions about adaptation planning. On average, respondents who report higher levels of concern about and belief in climate change and those who are better informed about climate change report higher levels of adaptation planning. Elected officials in this sample have, on average, lower concern about and belief in climate change than bureaucratic respondents. Thus changes in elected official composition or improved leadership on climate change planning by incumbent officials could facilitate progress on adaptation.Plant breeding trials are extensive (100s to 1000s of plots) and are difficult and expensive to monitor by conventional means, especially where measurements are time-sensitive. For example, in a land-based measure of canopy temperature (hand-held infrared thermometer at two to 10 plots per minute), the atmospheric conditions may change greatly during the time of measurement. Such sensors measure small spot samples (2 to 50 cm(2)), whereas image-based methods allow the sampling of entire plots (2 to 30 m(2)). Capturing images from an aircraft which is flown precisely at low altitude (10 to 40 m) to obtain high ground resolution data for every plot allows the rapid measurement of large numbers of plots. This paper outlines the implementation of a customized robotic helicopter (gas-powered, 1.78-m rotor diameter) with autonomous flight control and software to plan flights over experiments that were 0.5 to 3 ha in area and, then, to extract, straighten and characterize multiple experimental field plots from images taken by three cameras. With a capacity to carry 1.5 kg for 30 min or 1.1 kg for 60 min, the system successfully completed >150 flights for a total duration of 40 h. Example applications presented here are estimations of the variation in: ground cover in sorghum (early season); canopy temperature in sugarcane (mid-season); and three-dimensional measures of crop lodging in wheat (late season). Together with this hardware platform, improved software to automate the production of ortho-mosaics and digital elevation models and to extract plot data would further benefit the development of high-throughput field-based phenotyping systems.Commercial marine fishing contributes significantly to the Australian economy, and has great importance for coastal communities. However, climate change presents significant challenges for Australia's fishing industries, now and into the future. With greater use of targeted information, the fishing industry will be better placed to minimise the negative impacts and take advantage of opportunities associated with the effects of climate change. The future of the fishing industry-specifically wild capture fisheries-will depend on its ability and capacity to apply appropriate adaptation strategies for its viability and sustainability in the long-term. Knowledge regarding expected long-term changes in species distributions, improved weather and seasonal climate forecasts and their influence on target species, and better understanding of species tolerances, can inform adaptation responses. This paper provides a review of recent advances in research addressing Australia's priorities in relation to commercial marine fisheries' responses to current and anticipated future climate change impacts, and considers barriers and adaptation options for fisheries management over the near-term planning horizon of 5-7 years.Predicting how climate change is likely to interact with myriad other stressors that threaten species of conservation concern is an essential challenge in aquatic ecosystems. This study provides a framework to accomplish this task in salmon-bearing streams of the northwestern United States, where land-use-related reductions in riparian shading have caused changes in stream thermal regimes, and additional warming from projected climate change may result in significant losses of coldwater fish habitat over the next century. Predatory, nonnative smallmouth bass have also been introduced into many northwestern streams, and their range is likely to expand as streams warm, presenting an additional challenge to the persistence of threatened Pacific salmon. The goal of this work was to forecast the interactive effects of climate change, riparian management, and nonnative species on stream-rearing salmon and to evaluate the capacity of restoration to mitigate these effects. We intersected downscaled global climate forecasts with a local-scale water temperature model to predict mid- and end-of-century temperatures in streams in the Columbia River basin. We compared one stream that is thermally impaired due to the loss of riparian vegetation and another that is cooler and has a largely intact riparian corridor. Using the forecasted stream temperatures in conjunction with fish habitat models, we predicted how stream-rearing chinook salmon and bass distributions would change as each stream warmed. In the highly modified stream, end-of-century warming may cause near total loss of chinook salmon-rearing habitat and a complete invasion of the upper watershed by bass. In the less modified stream, bass were thermally restricted from the upstream-most areas. In both systems, temperature increases resulted in higher predicted spatial overlap between stream-rearing chinook salmon and potentially predatory bass in the early summer (two- to fourfold increase) and greater abundance of bass. We found that riparian restoration could prevent the extirpation of chinook salmon from the more altered stream and could also restrict bass from occupying the upper 31 km of salmon-rearing habitat. The proposed methodology and model predictions are critical for prioritizing climate-change adaptation strategies before salmonids are exposed to both warmer water and greater predation risk by nonnative species.Intraspecific assisted migration (ISAM) through seed transfer during artificial forest regeneration has been suggested as an adaptation strategy to enhance forest resilience and productivity under future climate. In this study, we assessed the risks and benefits of ISAM in white spruce based on long-term and multilocation, rangewide provenance test data. Our results indicate that the adaptive capacity and growth potential of white spruce varied considerably among 245 range-wide provenances sampled across North America; however, the results revealed that local populations could be outperformed by nonlocal ones. Provenances originating from south-central Ontario and southwestern Quebec, Canada, close to the southern edge of the species' natural distribution, demonstrated superior growth in more northerly environments compared with local populations and performed much better than populations from western Canada and Alaska, United States. During the 19-28 years between planting and measurement, the southern provenances have not been more susceptible to freezing damage compared with local populations, indicating they have the potential to be used now for the reforestation of more northerly planting sites; based on changing temperature, these seed sources potentially could maintain or increase white spruce productivity at or above historical levels at northern sites. A universal response function (URF), which uses climatic variables to predict provenance performance across field trials, indicated a relatively weak relationship between provenance performance and the climate at provenance origin. Consequently, the URF from this study did not provide information useful to ISAM. The ecological and economic importance of conserving white spruce genetic resources in south-central Ontario and southwestern Quebec for use in ISAM is discussed.In this study, three grades of diatomite particles, DPI, DP2 and DP3, were used to produce phase change material composites, DPI P, DP2P and DP3P, by absorbing paraffin into the pores of diatomite particles. The absorption mechanism of the finest DPI was found to be different with that of DP2 and DP3. In addition to absorption mechanism, stability of the composites was also investigated. However, a significant amount, up to 67%, of paraffin leaked from the composites when they were used in concrete mixture directly. In order to prevent the leakage, a surface-modification method was proposed and promising results were achieved. Thermal behaviors of concrete panels incorporating with DP1P and Micronal were then compared with a control one. The results indicate that addition of PCM composites improves the thermal inertia. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The past ten years have seen a substantial increase in research on climate change adaptation, but a large gap remains between adaptation research and action. Adaptation researchers have either failed to demonstrate the relevance of their findings to practitioners and policymakers, or stakeholders have based their views and decisions on other kinds of information. In addition, in sectors such as agriculture, forestry, nature conservation, urban planning, water management and energy supply, adaptation has been studied separately from mitigation, which contradicts the reality of many practitioners. This paper identifies five bottlenecks to the use of adaptation research in adaptation practice and policy. These bottlenecks have gone unnoticed because the traditional framing of adaptation does not adequately consider the notion of agency, often rendering stakeholder interactions ineffective. Knowledge and use of actor-oriented theory when analysing and discussing adaptation needs and options could serve to find ways to overcome the bottlenecks and narrow the gap between research and action. The paper presents a novel framework for actor-oriented adaptation research that is being conducted within the Nordic Centre of Excellence for Strategic Adaptation Research (NORD-STAR). It frames climate adaptation as addressing both the impacts of climate change and the consequences of climate policy. Two methodological approaches - modelling and visualisation, and policy analysis - are applied to three thematic issues: land-use change, energy transitions, and insurance and finance. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the Yellow Sea region of East Asia, tidal wetlands are the frontline ecosystem protecting a coastal population of more than 60 million people from storms and sea-level rise. However, unprecedented coastal development has led to growing concern about the status of these ecosystems. We developed a remote-sensing method to assess change over similar to 4000 km of the Yellow Sea coastline and discovered extensive losses of the region's principal coastal ecosystem - tidal flats - associated with urban, industrial, and agricultural land reclamations. Our analysis revealed that 28% of tidal flats existing in the 1980s had disappeared by the late 2000s (1.2% annually). Moreover, reference to historical maps suggests that up to 65% of tidal flats were lost over the past five decades. With the region forecast to be a global hotspot of urban expansion, development of the Yellow Sea coastline should pursue a course that minimizes the loss of remaining coastal ecosystems.Facing the double menace of climate change and water crisis, poor communities are now encountering ever more severe challenges in ensuring agricultural productivity and food security. Hence, communities have to manage these challenges by adopting a comprehensive approach that not only enhances water resource management, but also adapts agricultural activities to climate variability. Implemented by the Global Environment Facility's Small Grants Programme, the Community Water Initiative (CWI) has adopted a distinctive approach to support demand-driven, innovative, low cost and community-based water resource management for food security. Experiences from CWI show that a comprehensive, locally adapted approach that integrates water resources management, poverty reduction, climate adaptation and community empowerment provides a good model for sustainable development in poor rural areas.In recent years, the potential role of planned, internal resettlement as a climate change adaptation measure has been highlighted by national governments and the international policy community. However, in many developing countries, resettlement is a deeply political process that often results in an unequal distribution of costs and benefits among relocated persons. This paper examines these tensions in Mozambique, drawing on a case study of flood-affected communities in the Lower Zambezi River valley. It takes a political ecology approach - focusing on discourses of human-environment interaction, as well as the power relationships that are supported by such discourses - to show how a dominant narrative of climate change-induced hazards for small-scale farmers is contributing to their involuntary resettlement to higher-altitude, less fertile areas of land. These forced relocations are buttressed by a series of wider economic and political interests in the Lower Zambezi River region, such as dam construction for hydroelectric power generation and the extension of control over rural populations, from which resettled people derive little direct benefit. Rather than engaging with these challenging issues, most international donors present in the country accept the 'inevitability' of extreme weather impacts and view resettlement as an unfortunate and, in some cases, necessary step to increase people's 'resilience', thus rationalising the top-down imposition of unpopular social policies. The findings add weight to the argument that a depoliticised interpretation of climate change can deflect attention away from underlying drivers of vulnerability and poverty, as well as obscure the interests of governments that are intent on reordering poor and vulnerable populations.This paper provides a survey of ancient and traditional rainwater harvesting applications as effective climate adaptation strategies. Rainwater harvesting has a more significant past than a present. The fifteen identified ancient and traditional rainwater harvesting practices and the societies that practiced them may provide a key water conservation strategy for the future in vulnerable regions found in the dry-wet, semi-arid, and arid climatic regions. In the past several decades, there has been a call from scientific and non-governmental organization communities to combine modern water systems and old rainwater harvesting methods or to modernize the existing rainwater harvesting knowledge to benefit human settlements facing water scarcity.Migration out of hazard-prone areas presents significant opportunities for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Alongside and intermingled with opportunistic migration there has always been relocation to escape, particularly from calamity, disaster and warfare. As climate change is considered a likely driver of migration, the literature encompasses a debate as to whether or not migration can be considered to be adaptation. This paper investigates the concept of voluntary within-country migration as an adaptation strategy to reduce disaster risk in Australia. We refer to this internal migration as relocation. The paper examines results of research carried out in Australia at the time of recent and extensive disasters, where opportunities were presented to examine household attitudes towards relocation in the face of future disasters of similar extent. Individuals' attitudes towards relocation were ascertained within an adaptation and mitigation context, at a time of emerging longer term climate change government policy that advocates retreat from hazard prone locations. The paper examines demographic data to reveal who is likely to leave or stay. Policy implications of relocation strategies as climate change adaptation strategy within a developed nation are discussed. This research concludes that relocation is a strategy available to some as part of an extensive range of responses to extreme weather events but undertaking unsupported resettlement is not always an option for reasons of family commitment, livelihood opportunities, financial constraints and emotional lies. Those who remain, and those who leave a hazard prone location may both demonstrate a capacity for adaptation and resilience. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change and land-use change are having substantial impacts on biodiversity world-wide, but few studies have considered the impact of these factors together. If the combined effects of climate and land-use change are greater than the effects of each threat individually, current conservation management strategies may be inefficient and/or ineffective. This is particularly important with respect to freshwater ecosystems because freshwater biodiversity has declined faster than either terrestrial or marine biodiversity over the last three decades. This is the first study to model the independent and combined effects of climate change and land-use change on freshwater macroinvertebrates and fish. Using a case study in south-east Queensland, Australia, we built a Bayesian belief network populated with a combination of field data, simulations, existing models and expert judgment. Different land-use and climate scenarios were used to make predictions on how the richness of freshwater macroinvertebrates and fish is likely to respond in future. We discovered little change in richness averaged across the region, but identified important impacts and effects at finer scales. High nutrients and high runoff as a result of urbanization combined with high nutrients and high water temperature as a result of climate change and were the leading drivers of potential declines in macroinvertebrates and fish at fine scales. Synthesis and applications. This is the first study to separate out the constituent drivers of impacts on biodiversity that result from climate change and land-use change. Mitigation requires management actions that reduce in-stream nutrients, slows terrestrial runoff and provides shade, to improve the resilience of biodiversity in streams. Encouragingly, the restoration of riparian habitats is identified as an important buffering tool that can mitigate the negative effects of climate change and land-use change.National material stock (MS) accounts have been a neglected field of analysis in industrial ecology, possibly because of the difficulty in establishing such accounts. In this research, we propose a novel method to model national MS based on historical material flow data. This enables us to avoid the laborious data work involved with bottom-up accounts for stocks and to arrive at plausible levels of stock accumulation for nations. We apply the method for the United States and Japan to establish a proof of concept for two very different cases of industrial development. Looking at a period of 75 years (1930-2005), we find that per capita MS has been much higher in the United States for the entire period, but that Japan has experienced much higher growth rates throughout, in line with Japan's late industrial development. By 2005, however, both Japan and the United States arrive at a very similar level of national MS of 310 to 375 tonnes per capita, respectively. This research provides new insight into the relationship between MS and flows in national economies and enables us to extend the debate about material efficiency from a narrow perspective of throughput to a broader perspective of stocks.The objective of this research is to quantitatively valuate the economic value of analysis model related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Due to the fact that the subject of this research, which is the Korean climate change mitigation and adaptation model, has not been actualized, a conjoint analysis applying stated preference data has utilized. As results, among the many attributes considered in this research, the value of the attribute related to reflecting Korea's current situation is analyzed to be largest in both greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation model and climate change adaptation model. Additionally, if all the considered functional aspects are assumed to be feasible, the economic value of the Korean GHG mitigation model is assumed to be 60.3 billion Korean won(KRW) and the Korean climate change adaptation model is assumed to be 51 billion KRW.Sea-level rise poses major challenges to coastal land uses, and therefore to urban planning processes. In theory, if done well, urban planning can lead to responses to sea-level rise that are socially and environmentally sustainable. In practice, urban planning processes may fall short of this ideal. We use multiple methods to describe and analyse how urban planning processes have led to adaptation to sea-level rise in Lakes Entrance in Victoria, Australia. Adaptation has principally taken the form of restrictions on development on low-lying land. In this town, which is considered particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, the urban planning process and its outcomes have been controversial and divisive. Policies at the state level were imposed rapidly on this particular local community, and were later applied across the state. Our findings support the emerging consensus that to be sustainable, urban planning needs to: facilitate local ownership of adaptation responses; build collective action within local communities and between local communities and different arms and levels of government; and be fair in its application across space and over time. Addressing these social, dimensions of adaptation takes time, but they are a sine qua non of sustainable adaptation to sea-level, rise. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Understanding the factors that shape the evolution of gene expression is a central goal in biology, but the molecular mechanisms behind this remain controversial. A related major goal is ascertaining how such factors may affect the adaptive potential of a species or population. Here we demonstrate that temperature-driven gene expression changes in fish adapted to differing thermal environments are constrained by the level of gene pleiotropy estimated by either the number of protein interactions or gene biological processes. Genes with low pleiotropy levels were the main drivers of both plastic and evolutionary global expression profile changes, while highly pleiotropic genes had limited expression response to temperature treatment. Our study provides critical insights into the molecular mechanisms by which natural populations can adapt to changing environments. In addition to having important implications for climate change adaptation, these results suggest that gene pleiotropy should be considered more carefully when interpreting expression profiling data.Adaptation to climate change in geographically isolated, peripheral coastal communities holds particular challenges. In the CoastAdapt project a common approach was applied to support climate change adaptation in study sites in peripheral regions of Northwest Europe (Scotland, Ireland, Norway and Iceland). This involved a series of workshops at each site to describe the nature of future climate change, identify site-specific climate-change-related issues and explore adaptation options. While there are common issues related to the impacts of sea level rise, other aspects tend to be site and time-specific. The occurrence of recent high impact events (storms or floods), in particular, exert a strong influence on community perceptions. The studies reveal that availability of resources, knowledge of options (and their implications), and the particular governance framework in operation are major determinants of the adaptation options selected. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The realisation of climate change and its potential impacts on coastal environments and coastal communities has prompted much activity in the realm of 'adaptation'. Adaptation is typically viewed as actions in response to climate change that seek to limit its impacts and/or bring some benefit to human society. In this paper we consider adaptation actions in response to the twin risks of coastal flooding and recession both of which are likely to increase in frequency/rate and magnitude as a result of global climate change. Adaptation actions are classified on a spectrum based on the degree of planned modification of (i) human activities or (ii) the physical coastal environment. At one end of the spectrum is a set of activities that involve changing human activities to suit the changing environment (e.g. innovative building design, relocation of infrastructure and/or people, changing landuse or livelihoods). At the other extreme are activities (e.g. building or raising flood defences, building or strengthening seawalls, nourishing beaches) that involve resisting environmental change in order to preserve existing infrastructure and human activities. Between these two extremes are a few initiatives that involve components of both approaches. A qualitative review of current practice suggests that most adaptation activity is in the category of seeking to preserve human activities and infrastructure. This form of response is better termed 'resistance' than 'adaptation'. These conservative and short-term goals of protecting fixed assets and existing activities, are damaging to the environment, involve significant cost and increase future risk of catastrophic failure. Those measures that involve adaptation of human activities in response to the changing coastal environment are likely to be more sustainable in the longer term, but are politically more difficult to implement. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Widespread species often occur across a range of climatic conditions, through a combination of local genetic adaptations and phenotypic plasticity. Species with greater phenotypic plasticity are likely to be better positioned to cope with rapid anthropogenic climate changes, while those displaying strong local adaptations might benefit from translocations to assist the movement of adaptive genes as the climate changes. Eucalyptus tricarpa occurs across a climatic gradient in south-eastern Australia, a region of increasing aridity, and we hypothesized that this species would display local adaptation to climate. We measured morphological and physiological traits reflecting climate responses in nine provenances from sites of 460 to 1040mm annual rainfall, in their natural habitat and in common gardens near each end of the gradient. Local adaptation was evident in functional traits and differential growth rates in the common gardens. Some traits displayed complex combinations of plasticity and genetic divergence among provenances, including clinal variation in plasticity itself. Provenances from drier locations were more plastic in leaf thickness, whereas leaf size was more plastic in provenances from higher rainfall locations. Leaf density and stomatal physiology (as indicated by C-13 and O-18) were highly and uniformly plastic. In addition to variation in mean trait values, genetic variation in trait plasticity may play a role in climate adaptation. Our study investigates the nature of adaptation to climate in a widespread tree species, a topic of current and growing scientific interest, given the ongoing pressures of climate change. However, surprisingly few studies to date have examined within-species patterns of phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation in climate related traits, in any detail. Our study reveals clinal variation across a rainfall gradient, not only in the values of functional traits, but in the plasticity of several morphological traits. The findings support the hypothesis that the adaptive value of plasticity depends on both the environment and the trait in question, with genetic variation for plasticity itself forming part of local adaptations to climate.This article provides a review and synthesis of scholarly knowledge of Depression-era droughts on the North American Great Plains, a time and place known colloquially as the Dust Bowl era or the Dirty Thirties. Recent events, including the 2008 financial crisis, severe droughts in the US corn belt, and the release of a popular documentary film, have spawned a resurgence in public interest in the Dust Bowl. Events of the Dust Bowl era have also proven in recent years to be of considerable interest to scholars researching phenomena related to global environmental change, including atmospheric circulation, drought modeling, land management, institutional behavior, adaptation processes, and human migration. In this review, we draw out common themes in terms of not only what natural and social scientists have learned about the Dust Bowl era itself, but also how insights gained from the study of that period are helping to enhance our understanding of climate-human relations more generally.It is generally acknowledged that adapting low-lying, flood-prone deltas to the projected impacts of climate change is of great importance. Deltas are densely populated and often subject to high risk. Climate-proof planning is, however, not only a new but also a highly complex task that poses problems for existing institutional and administrative structures, which are the product of times in which climate issues were of little importance. This paper assesses the capacity of the historically grown Dutch planning institutions to promote climate-proof planning for flood-prone areas. The Adaptive Capacity Wheel provides the methodological framework. The analysis focuses on two planning projects in the west of the Netherlands: the Zuidplas Polder project at the regional level and the Westergouwe project at the local level. It is shown that the planning institutions involved in these projects enable climate-proof planning, but to a limited extent. They face five institutional weaknesses that may cause risks on the long term. To climate-proof urban developments in flood-prone areas, it is necessary to break through the strong path-dependent development of planning institutions and to build in more flexibility in existing rules and procedures.In general, the issue of climate change is characterized by uncertainty, complexity, and multifacetedness. In the Netherlands, climate change is in above highly controversial. These characteristics make it difficult to realize adaptation measures that are perceived as legitimate. In this article, we analyze the main difficulties and dilemmas with regard to the issue of legitimacy in the context of climate adaptation. We conceptualize legitimacy from a legal, a planning, and a network perspective and show how the concept of legitimacy evolves within these three perspectives. From a legal perspective, the focus is on the issues of good governance. From a planning perspective, the focus is on the flexibility, learning, and governance capacity. From a network perspective, issues of dialogue, involvement, and support are important. These perspectives bring in different criteria, which are not easy compatible. We describe and illustrate these legitimacy challenges using an in-depth study of the Dutch IJsseldelta Zuid case. From our case study, we conclude that, from a legitimacy perspective, the often acclaimed necessity to be adaptive and flexible is quite problematic. The same holds true for the plea to mainstream adaptation into other policy domains. In our case study, these strategies give rise to serious challenges in relation to good governance and consensus-two indispensable cornerstones of legitimacy.Climate change is a current phenomenon: the temperatures rise, rainfall patterns are changing, glaciers melt and the average global sea level is rising. It is expected that these changes will continue and that the extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts, will become more frequent and intense. The impact and vulnerability factors for nature, for the economy and for our health are different, depending on the territorial, social and economic aspects. The current scientific debate is focused on the need to formulate effective policies for adaptation and mitigation to climate change. The city plays an important role in this issue: it emits the most greenhouse gas emissions (more than 60% of the world population currently lives in urban areas) and the city is more exposed and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Urban planning and territorial governance play a crucial role in this context: the international debate on the sustainability of urban areas is increasing. It's necessary to adapt the tools of building regulations to increase the quality of energy -environment of the cities.Climate Change (CC) increasingly affects cities in low-elevation coastal zones, and households in low-income areas in particular. This article focuses on local CC adaptation and governance in Trinidad and Tobago. First, it investigates the capacity of a poor urban community to adapt to CC, by examining the local impacts of and responses to flooding. Second, based on interviews with a selection of local stakeholders, the article sheds light on the institutional barriers preventing the development and implementation of effective CC adaptation strategies. The data show that households in the case study community experience the impacts of changing climatic conditions, in particular flooding. Households implement a wide range of adaptive measures before, during and after floods. It was revealed that the case study community receives very limited institutional support to withstand flooding. Looking at the different levels of CC adaptation governance in Trinidad and Tobago it can be concluded that although the institutional architecture to support local CC adaptation seems to cover all governance levels, vertical linkages between the various levels have to be strengthened to bridge the gap between community-based and national-level adaptation planning. The main institutional challenges are the lack of coordination and communication between the relevant actors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presented here is intended to share lessons learnt from the operations that the international Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (lFRC) and its National Societies undertook from 2008 to 2010 in the Horn of Africa, related to the adaptation to climate change and addressing drought. It acknowledges that to avoid further suffering from drought, not only in Africa (in the Horn and the Sahel region) but also other parts of the world, we need to change the way we invest. The IFRC advocates that for a national drought policy to be effective in its implementation, the policy itself will need to be developed with an integrated approach, a strong linkage to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in a country. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Of all the natural hazards, drought affects the maximum number of people globally causing devastating impacts. It is a reality that drought results in sets of socio-economic impacts starting with crop-yield failure, unemployment, erosion of assets, income decrease, poor nutrition and decreasing risk absorptive capacity, thereby increasing the vulnerability of the community. This paper gives a brief of the existing approaches that focus on vulnerability and impact assessment aid to characterize and identity regions, sectors and communities which are at risk for drought currently and in the future. It also discusses the limitation, constraints and pre-requisites in these approaches and highlights the importance of micro level information to have a more realistic understanding of impact and vulnerability through illustration, with reference to the recent study conducted by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). This exercise will provide a guiding framework for devising action plans to improve adaptive capacity among vulnerable populations. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.As the driest inhabited continent with a highly variable climate, Australia has had a long and evolving history of drought management in agriculture. This paper analyses the changing roles of science in the management of climate risk and uncertainty and how this may continue into the future. Initially science had a role in documenting the underlying nature of Australia's climate, and later broadening the understanding around the drivers of variability so as to provide useful climate forecasts and developing metrics to measure and compare the severity of extreme climatic events. Over time this has shifted to providing effective integrating approaches to enhance social cohesion, rural economies, environmental protection, health, and food security under drought conditions. Institutional responses initially framed drought as a natural disaster, for which State and Federal fondling for farmers was distributed; however, the need for farmers to proactively manage climate risk and build adaptive capacity has resulted in climate variability being seen as a risk to be managed as part of normal practise. The formulation of a national drought policy in 1992 placed responsibility for adaptation and education in the hands of the farmers, where science played various roles, including the provision of training for strategic business planning and decision-making, methods of managing uncertainty as well as via delivery of climate data and methods to integrate this into meaningful information that is embedded into the social and institutional processes through which decisions are made. This policy continues to evolve and science inputs will evolve with this. In particular, we anticipate that ongoing and projected climate changes will impact on drought frequency and severity and will require science integrated with stakeholder input into developing climate adaptation practices and technologies and effective adoption paths particularly to deal with climate extremes. A key need will be science that enhances processes of engagement between science, institutions and the agricultural community and is increasingly self-reflective and self-critical. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Proactive drought preparedness is a challenge for a variety of physical, institutional, and social reasons. Significant progress has been made in monitoring and forecasting water deficits, both temporally and spatially. However, less progress has been made in translating this information into proactive decision making frameworks to support drought preparedness. The Invitational Drought Tournament (DT), a simulation adaptation framework developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, is a recent innovation that supports drought preparedness efforts. The IDT provides a mechanism for presenting physical science information to decision makers across a variety of educational levels and professional backgrounds, in a way that allows for peer-to-peer education and synthesis. Second, the game simulation environment allows players to integrate this information into economic, policy and institutional frameworks in a non-threatening manner. Third, it maintains realism by constraining players' risk management options via a budget, the physical realities of the drought presented, and the technical expertise of the 'referees'. Post-game follow-up allows players to explore lessons learned and to identify topics that warrant further in-depth exploration of policy options and subsequent implementation. The game provides an interim step between recognition of the risk posed by drought hazards and the actual implementation of vulnerability-reduction actions. This allows for a broad discussion within a sports-themed process that provides room for reflection and a richer understanding of the issues that must be addressed to ensure drought preparedness actions are effective. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a sensitive area of global climate changes, and riparian ecosystems are thought as "hotspots" for climate change adaptation, but little work has been conducted regarding the alpine riparian ecosystems on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. We measured evapotranspiration (ET) and surface energy fluxes over the riparian shrub Myricaria squamosa Desv., which is widely distributed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau but has not been studied until now. The results indicated that annual ET was 390 mm and 503 mm for the period of 2010 to 2011 and 2011 to 2012, respectively, which was higher than the amount of precipitation during the same period. Cumulative ET was lower than the cumulative reference evapotranspiration during the entire experimental period, whereas ET in August was higher than reference evapotranspiration. ET in the growing season occupied over 80% of annual ET with a maximum daily ET of 7.2 mm d(-1), and the ET in the non-growing season was quite low because of the frozen soil. In general, temperature and net radiation were the key variables controlling daily ET rates for M. squamosa. Annual sensible heat flux (H) consumed 60% of net radiation (R-n) and latent heat flux (LE) 40% during the three years of the study. LE occupied the main part of R-n from July to September. H was the highest in May and June, then sunk in the mid-growing season, and rebounded the other peak at late September and early October. Daily ground heat flux was positive from April to mid-September, and it was an important heat source of land surface in the winter and spring. This study highlighted that as an alpine riparian ecosystem in a semiarid region, ET and surface energy partitioning of the M. squamosa community are strongly affected by the freeze-thaw cycle, groundwater fluctuation, precipitation pulses and soil water content. We speculate that climate warming has a significant impact on ET process and surface energy partitioning of the M. squamosa community by influencing the freeze-thaw cycle and soil water content. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the face of an already changing climate, conservation practitioners and local communities face the major challenge of how to plan for a future climate. In data-sparse areas of the world, where action is often most needed, the daunting scope of the problem can lead to inaction. This paper shows that climate adaptation planning can be accomplished successfully with publicly and globally available data by linking science and stakeholders through a facilitated process. Working with local stakeholders in the western Tanzanian Greater Mahale and Greater Gombe Ecosystems, future climate projections produced using Climate Wizard and analyses of literature provided an understanding of the climate vulnerabilities of local ecosystems and human livelihoods. Facilitated workshops enabled local stakeholders to use this information to develop conceptual models and hypotheses of change for these systems, and to identify possible modifications to conservation plans. Here, climate change planning required the modification of most current conservation strategies, developing some new strategies and abandoning others. The paper indicates that climate adaptation planning is achievable even in data-sparse rural and developing areas, but requires appropriate scientific analyses, engaged stakeholders and a facilitated process.Climate change may create risks that, without sufficient adaptation measures in place, endanger lives and damage natural, semi-natural and designed landscapes. This article explores the use of green infrastructure in climate change adaptation in London. A review of the current literature identifies how and where green infrastructure can deliver climate adaptation services and considers the benefits of taking a green infrastructure (or ecosystems services) approach to development. Selected examples are used to demonstrate how green infrastructure is being integrated into London's urban landscape. The article considers how existing mechanisms are facilitating the growth of green infrastructure in the capital and identifies three key focus areas for future research and policy. It concludes by suggesting that a more collaborative and imaginative approach to optimising the potential for green infrastructure benefits is needed.Understanding the capacity of organisms to cope with projected global warming through acclimation and adaptation is critical to predicting their likely future persistence. While recent research has shown that developmental acclimation of metabolic attributes to ocean warming is possible, our understanding of the plasticity of key fitness-associated traits, such as reproductive performance, is lacking. We show that while the reproductive ability of a tropical reef fish is highly sensitive to increases in water temperature, reproductive capacity at +1.5 degrees C above present-day was improved to match fish maintained at present-day temperatures when fish complete their development at the higher temperature. However, reproductive acclimation was not observed in fish reared at +3.0 degrees C warmer than present-day, suggesting limitations to the acclimation possible within one generation. Surprisingly, the improvements seen in reproduction were not predicted by the oxygen-and capacity-limited thermal tolerance hypothesis. Specifically, pairs reared at +1.5 degrees C, which showed the greatest capacity for reproductive acclimation, exhibited no acclimation of metabolic attributes. Conversely, pairs reared at +3.0 degrees C, which exhibited acclimation in resting metabolic rate, demonstrated little capacity for reproductive acclimation. Our study suggests that understanding the acclimation capacity of reproductive performance will be critically important to predicting the impacts of climate change on biological systems.Local strategies for adaptation to climate change in Denmark and Norway are discussed. In both countries, the national impetus for local adaptation is weak; it is largely left to local actors to take the initiative. The dynamics of the different approaches to climate-change adaptation at the local level are illuminated. Using decision-making and learning theory, we present an analytical framework to examine four cases, two in Norway and two in Denmark, which represent two different responses, i.e. anticipatory actions and obligatory actions. We find that, by bringing in knowledge and resources and engaging in persuasive communication across sectors, the presence of institutional entrepreneurs in the adaptation process plays a key role in building legitimacy for anticipatory action in the municipal organisation.This paper focuses on learning from existing cross-border governance arrangements with a view to strengthening and improving climate change adaptation within the Australian context. Using an institutional learning framework, the research offers a critical analysis of two Australian cross-border cases: (1) the Murray-Darling Basin, and (2) the Australian Alps. The research findings focus on the issues of geographic (place), administrative (space) and political (territory) fragmentation as key concepts that underpin integrated environmental planning and management in practice. There are significant implications for climate change adaptation in evolving cross-border regions at scale that this paper highlights.Institution-oriented, top-down and community-oriented, bottom-up stakeholder approaches are evaluated for their ability to enable or constrain the implementation of adaptation in developing nations. A systematic review approach is used evaluate the project performance of 18 adaptation projects by three of the Global Environment Facility's (GEF) adaptation programmes (the Strategic Priority for Adaptation (SPA), the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), and the National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPA)) according to effectiveness, efficiency, equity, legitimacy, flexibility, sustainability, and replicability. The ten SPA projects reviewed performed highest overall, especially with regards to efficiency, legitimacy, and replicability. The five SCCF projects performed the highest in equity, flexibility, and sustainability, and the three NAPA-related projects were the highest-performing projects with regards to effectiveness. A comparison of top-down and bottom-up approaches revealed that community stakeholder engagement in project design and implementation led to higher effectiveness, efficiency, equity, flexibility, legitimacy, sustainability, and replicability. Although low institutional capacity constrained both project success and effective community participation, projects that hired international staff to assist in implementation experienced higher overall performance. These case studies also illustrate how participatory methods can fail to genuinely empower or involve communities in adaptation interventions in both top-down and bottom-up approaches. It is thus crucial to carefully consider stakeholder engagement strategies in adaptation interventions.Policy relevanceWhile adaptation is now firmly on the policy and research agenda, actual interventions to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience remain in their infancy, and there is limited information on the factors that influence the successful implementation of adaptation in developing areas. Engaging stakeholders in assessing vulnerability and implementing adaptation interventions is widely regarded to be an important factor for adaptation implementation and success. However, no study has evaluated the effects of stakeholder engagement in the actual implementation of adaptation initiatives. Effective stakeholder engagement is challenging, especially in a developing nation setting, due to high levels of poverty, inadequate knowledge on adaptation options, weak institutions, and competing interests to address more immediate problems related to poverty and underdevelopment. In this context, this article documents and characterizes stakeholder engagement in adaptation interventions supported through the GEF, examining how top-down or bottom-up stakeholder approaches enable or constrain project performance.A key question for climate change adaptation is whether existing cropping systems can become less sensitive to climate variations. We use a field-level data set on maize and soybean yields in the central United States for 1995 through 2012 to examine changes in drought sensitivity. Although yields have increased in absolute value under all levels of stress for both crops, the sensitivity of maize yields to drought stress associated with high vapor pressure deficits has increased. The greater sensitivity has occurred despite cultivar improvements and increased carbon dioxide and reflects the agronomic trend toward higher sowing densities. The results suggest that agronomic changes tend to translate improved drought tolerance of plants to higher average yields but not to decreasing drought sensitivity of yields at the field scale.In this paper soil conventional tillage (CT) in two adiacent on-farm sites, hilly and plain fields, was carried out in comparison with direct-seeding + fertilizing at very low water content. The quality and quantity of work were evaluated through machine performance, fossil-fuel energy requirements and carbon dioxide emissions from agricultural machinery. The fields were previously sampled and mapped to investigate spatial variability of soil properties, to find soil quality indicators and to asses soil workability. The results, revealed good traction performance during CT operations (slip values were lower than 15%). During plowing, time efficiency of the wheeled tractor was 40% lower with respect to the tracked tractor. Global energy employed was of the same magnitude for the tracked and wheeled tractor (220 kWh ha(-1)) while was significantly lower (52 kWh ha-1) for direct-seeding+fertilizing. The degree of crushing of the soil caused by CT required further energy employed (98 kWh ha-1) to seedbed preparation. Fossil-fuel energy requirements from agricultural machinery were significantly lower during direct-seeding+fertilizing (0.52 GJ ha(-1)) with respect to the conventional soil tillage (2.30 GJ ha(-1)). Wheat yield of direct seeded field and the total cost of the crop cycle ((sic)/ha) were 9% and 16% lower respectively than the values recorded on fields under conventional tillage.Global demand for minerals is often considered an insignificant driver of land-use change because mines are small. We (1) investigated evidence supporting a link between global demand for steel and land-use change in Brazil's Iron Quadrangle, and (2) quantified the extent of land-use change and associated impacts on native vegetation. Historic land-use change was quantified using Landsat TM, relationships between demand for steel and land-use change were investigated using a simple linear model, and future scenarios were simulated using a calibrated land-use change model. Results support our hypothesis that global demand for steel drives extensive land-use change in the Iron Quadrangle, where increased steel production was correlated with increased iron ore production and mine expansion, and with increased charcoal production and plantation expansion. The direct impacts of mining on native vegetation were disproportionate to their relatively small spatial extent, while direct impacts of plantations were spatially extensive, as were their impacts on surrounding native vegetation. Additionally, evidence of two indirect impacts emerged during 1990-2010. Plantation expansion decreased native forest regrowth, while competition for land between mining companies and urban developers increased deforestation pressures. In combination, global demand for steel affected the majority of land in the Iron Quadrangle; however, many impacts were poorly captured by current land management approaches. Similar processes may operate in other mining regions, where global demand for minerals drives production of multiple resources (non-renewable and renewable) and thus extensive land-use change. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changes in the timing of plant and animal life cycle events, in response to climate change, are already happening across the globe. The impacts of these changes may affect biodiversity via disruption to mutualisms, trophic mismatches, invasions and population declines. To understand the nature, causes and consequences of changed, varied or static phenologies, new data resources and tools are being developed across the globe. The USA National Phenology Network is developing a long-term, multi-taxa phenological database, together with a customizable infrastructure, to support conservation and management needs. We present current and potential applications of the infrastructure, across scales and user groups. The approaches described here are congruent with recent trends towards multi-agency, large-scale research and action. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Uncertainty forms an integral part of climate science, and it is often used to argue against mitigative action. This article presents an analysis of uncertainty in climate sensitivity that is robust to a range of assumptions. We show that increasing uncertainty is necessarily associated with greater expected damages from warming, provided the function relating warming to damages is convex. This constraint is unaffected by subjective or cultural risk-perception factors, it is unlikely to be overcome by the discount rate, and it is independent of the presumed magnitude of climate sensitivity. The analysis also extends to "second-order" uncertainty; that is, situations in which experts disagree. Greater disagreement among experts increases the likelihood that the risk of exceeding a global temperature threshold is greater. Likewise, increasing uncertainty requires increasingly greater protective measures against sea level rise. This constraint derives directly from the statistical properties of extreme values. We conclude that any appeal to uncertainty compels a stronger, rather than weaker, concern about unabated warming than in the absence of uncertainty.In public debate surrounding climate change, scientific uncertainty is often cited in connection with arguments against mitigative action. This article examines the role of uncertainty about future climate change in determining the likely success or failure of mitigative action. We show by Monte Carlo simulation that greater uncertainty translates into a greater likelihood that mitigation efforts will fail to limit global warming to a target (e.g., 2 A degrees C). The effect of uncertainty can be reduced by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Taken together with the fact that greater uncertainty also increases the potential damages arising from unabated emissions (Lewandowsky et al. 2014), any appeal to uncertainty implies a stronger, rather than weaker, need to cut greenhouse gas emissions than in the absence of uncertainty.New hybrid forms of climate change adaptation combining local and nonlocal/scientific knowledge are emerging across the Asian Highlands region. Yet, while local adaptive capacity can be based on place-based knowledge that governments often lack, communities still need assistance from states to better adjust to climate change and socioeconomic impacts. Using a regional literature review, we evaluate the role of evolving hybrid forms of adaptive knowledge for coping with environmental and social change. The literature is clear that appreciating local knowledge is not enough; enfranchising people with representative decision-making and resource rights and responsibilities is also required so that people can employ that knowledge toward climate adaptation. Into the future, Asian Highland climate change actions must include more targeted state support for locally evolving hybrid knowledge, behaviors and institutions.Patterns of adaptive variation within plant species are best studied through common garden experiments, but these are costly and time-consuming, especially for trees that have long generation times. We explored whether genome-wide scanning technology combined with outlier marker detection could be used to detect adaptation to climate and provide an alternative to common garden experiments. As a case study, we sampled nine provenances of the widespread forest tree species, Eucalyptus tricarpa, across an aridity gradient in southeastern Australia. Using a Bayesian analysis, we identified a suite of 94 putatively adaptive (outlying) sequence-tagged markers across the genome. Population-level allele frequencies of these outlier markers were strongly correlated with temperature and moisture availability at the site of origin, and with population differences in functional traits measured in two common gardens. Using the output from a canonical analysis of principal coordinates, we devised a metric that provides a holistic measure of genomic adaptation to aridity that could be used to guide assisted migration or genetic augmentation.This study presents a model that determines the position of the high water mark (HWM) based on the spatial continuity of inundation probability due to swash for a range of HWM indicators. These indicators include mean high water (MHW), high water line (HWL), and, a number of shoreline features, such as the vegetation line. HWM identifies the landward extent of the ocean and is required for cadastral boundary definition, land-use and infrastructure development along the foreshore,and for planning associated with climate change adaptation. In this paper, shoreline indicators are extracted using an object-oriented image analysis (OOIA) approach. Ten-year hourly swash heights (shoreline excursion length) are fitted into a cumulative distribution function. The probability that swash will reach the various HWM indicators over a 10 y period is then estimated. The spatial continuity distances of the swash probability of HWM indicators are calculated using semivariogram models that measure similarity of swash probability. The spatial continuity distance is defined as the distance between the lower bound of sampling position (the most seaward HWM indicator) and the position where autocorrelation, or the similarity of swash probability of the various MAIM indictors, approaches zero. The latter is considered as the HWM position in this study. This HWM determination method is evaluated at two study sites at different latitudes and with distinct coastal features.Objectives: We aimed to identify the effect of environmental factors on sleep in the summertime in Japan. Methods: A self-reported questionnaire survey was conducted in Japan. Age of participants ranged from 20 to 70 years. Results: The mean Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) score was 4.9 (+/- 2.7), and 123 (35.0%) participants had scores of > 5. According to the results of multivariate logistic regression analysis, the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for PSQI scores of > 5 without installation of air conditioner was 1.8 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.0-3.3; P <.05), use of a light bulb was 3.7 (95% CI, 1.1-12.6; P <.05), and noise was 2.1 (95% CI, 1.1-4.1; P <.05) after controlling for several confounding variables. Difficulty initiating sleep (DIS) was associated with installation of an air conditioner (1 [reference] to 3 [aOR, 2.5 {95% CI, 1.2-5.1}] and 4 [aOR, 2.8 {95% CI, 1.1-7.1}]) and noise (1 [reference] to 3 [aOR, 2.4 {95% CI, 1.0-5.9}] and 4 [aOR, 8.8 {95% CI, 3.1-25.0}]). Difficulty maintaining sleep (DMS) was associated with installation of a fan (1 [reference] to 2 [aOR, 0.4 {95% CI, 0.2-0.8}] and noise (1 [reference] to 3 [aOR, 2.3 {95% CI, 1.0-5.3}]) after controlling for several confounding variables. Conclusions: Our finding using analysis of the association between residential environments and subjective sleep statuses, which determined that the installation of an air conditioner and lighting equipment might affect sleep, may be useful to discuss sleep environments and improve sleep quality. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Coastal zones with their natural and societal sub-systems are exposed to rapid changes and pressures on resources. Scarcity of space and impacts of climate change are prominent drivers of land use and adaptation management today. Necessary modifications to present land use management strategies and schemes influence both the structures of coastal communities and the ecosystems involved. Approaches to identify the impacts and account for (i) the linkages between social preferences and needs and (ii) ecosystem services in coastal zones have been largely absent. The presented method focuses on improving the inclusion of ecosystem services in planning processes and clarifies the linkages with social impacts. In this study, fourteen stakeholders in decision-making on land use planning in the region of Krummhorn (northwestern Germany, southern North Sea coastal region) conducted a regional participative and informal process for local planning capable to adapt to climate driven changes. It is argued that scientific and practical implications of this integrated assessment focus on multi-functional options and contribute to more sustainable practices in future land use planning. The method operationalizes the ecosystem service approach and social impact analysis and demonstrates that social demands and provision of ecosystem services are inherently connected. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is predicted to have major consequences for small-scale farmers in the developing rural areas of the world. Rural areas, nonetheless, harbor opportunities to mitigate global climate changes. Identification of innovative adaptation strategies used by small-scale farmers, therefore, is crucial in order to understand the extent of their implications. This paper identifies the relationships between livelihood units and landscapes that they depend upon, in a small-scale farm community. It examines their experiences of increasing climatic variability, and how the different groups in the community are adapting to it. The study was conducted in a typical rural ejido community on the Pacific coast of Mexico (Ejido Ticuiz), where a detailed socio-cultural profile was obtained by means of semi-structured interviews. In the study area we encountered a range of individual and community-based adaptation strategies, built on farmers' recognition of the different types of landscapes which supply goods and benefits. Small-scale farmers have used their landscape diversity to build adaptation strategies to guarantee the supply of goods and benefits to cope with uncertain of climate events. Households rather than individuals or the community as an institution were depicted as the core socio-cultural group for better understanding of patterns, behavior and aspirations related to climate change adaptation at local level. The adaptation capacities of rural communities could be significantly strengthened if political, financial and institutional support is targeted at households rather than at individuals or the community level only. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Spatial patterns of multidecadal shoreline changes in two microtidal, low-energetic embayments of southern Zealand, Denmark, were investigated by using the directional distribution of wave energy fluxes. The sites include a barrier island system attached to moraine bluffs, and a recurved spit adjacent to a cliff coast. The barrier island system is characterized by cross-shore translation and by an alignment of the barrier alongshore alternating directions of barrier-spit progradation in a bidirectional wave field. The recurved spit adjacent to the cliff coast experienced shoreline rotation through proximal erosion and distal lateral accretion in a unidirectional wave climate. The multidecadal shoreline changes were coupled to a slope-based morphological coastal classification. All erosive shores occurred within a narrow range of onshore and offshore coastal slopes. The alongshore variability of directional distributions of wave energy fluxes furthermore outlined potential sediment sources and sinks for the evolution of the barrier island system and for the evolution of the recurved spit.This paper presents a study conducted to investigate occupants' thermal comfort and responses during a summer period in a low to middle income housing development. The study was conducted with the overall aims of understanding how occupants in this context responded to their indoor environment during hot weather and the strategies they used to achieve thermal comfort. The study found that resorting to air-conditioners was the least preferred strategy due to implications for their energy bills. Turning on ceiling fans, opening or closing windows and doors, and opening or closing curtains were the first set of actions taken by most occupants when they wanted to be cooler. The occupants also adjusted their clothing and activity according to the anticipated weather condition. The study highlights the importance of providing appropriate thermal comfort provisions, such as operable windows and ceiling fans, in houses in general, and particularly in low to middle income housing developments. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To investigate the relative importance of projected sea-level rise, climate change effects on recharge, and groundwater extraction on seawater intrusion in important coastal aquifers in Atlantic Canada, a three-dimensional numerical model of density-dependent groundwater flow coupled with solute transport was developed for the Richibucto region of New Brunswick. The model was used, with an efficient 2(k) factorial design approach, to perform simulations for the period 2011-2100. The results of the factorial analyses indicate that the relative importance of the three factors investigated varies depending on the model location considered. The effect of declining recharge is most significant at shallow to intermediate depths along the freshwater-seawater transition zone, while the effect of increasing pumping rates dominates at a location relatively close to the well field. The effect of sea-level rise is shown to be significant only at the much deeper inland toe of the transition zone. The spatial variation in importance is related to how different model boundary conditions influence freshwater flow at the different locations within the model domain. This investigation indicates that sea-level rise has the least significant effect (of the three factors considered) on future seawater intrusion in sandstone aquifers in the Richibucto region.This paper analyzes potential criteria to allocate international funding for adaptation to climate change, as a response to one of the main governance challenges of international adaptation funding-the prioritization of project proposals given scarce funding. Based on the review of the equity and cost-effectiveness literature and relevant policy documents, we identify three potential indicators for equity (vulnerability level, poverty, equal funding per capita), and three indicators for cost-effectiveness (economic savings in absolute and relative terms, human lives saved). Applying these simple indicators to information provided in all 39 project documents considered by the Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) in 2011, we find that projects approved or endorsed by the AFB rank high according to one cost-effectiveness indicator (absolute economic savings), while they rather rank low according to all equity and further cost-effectiveness indicators. Furthermore, we analyze whether equity and cost-effectiveness are two contradicting goals, or whether ways can be found to reconcile both goals in multilateral adaptation finance. We conclude from both the theory and the 39 analyzed project documents that a pure economic definition of cost-effectiveness tends to be in contradiction with equity but that trade-offs between equity and cost-effectiveness can be limited if relative economic savings or human live savings are used as indicator for cost-effectiveness.Throughout the Cenozoic, the fitness benefits of the scrotum in placental mammals presumably outweighed the fitness costs through damage, yet a definitive hypothesis for its evolution remains elusive. Here, I present an hypothesis (Endothermic Pulses Hypothesis) which argues that the evolution of the scrotum was driven by Cenozoic pulses in endothermy, that is, increases in normothermic body temperature, which occurred in Boreotheria (rodents, primates, lagomorphs, carnivores, bats, lipotyphylans and ungulates) in response to factors such as cursoriality and climate adaptation. The model argues that stabilizing selection maintained an optimum temperature for spermatogenesis and sperm storage throughout the Cenozoic at the lower plesiomorphic levels of body temperature that prevailed in ancestral mammals for at least 163million years. Evolutionary stasis may have been driven by reduced rates of germ-cell mutations at lower body temperatures. Following the extinction of the dinosaurs at the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary 65.5mya, immediate pulses in endothermy occurred associated with the dramatic radiation of the modern placental mammal orders. The fitness advantages of an optimum temperature of spermatogenesis outweighed the potential costs of testes externalization and paved the way for the evolution of the scrotum. The scrotum evolved within several hundred thousand years of the K-Pg extinction, probably associated initially with the evolution of cursoriality, and arguably facilitated mid- and late Cenozoic metabolic adaptations to factors such as climate, flight in bats and sociality in primates.This exploratory study aims to examine (1) the reasons for farmers' range of climate change beliefs and (2) how those beliefs affect their climate change adaptation responses. Interviews with 11 key-informant irrigators from the South Australian Riverland uncovered skepticism about climate change predictions. Interviewees mostly believed changes to the climate were not human-induced but were a result of natural cycles, which meant that they then felt less obliged to undertake climate-change adaptation responses. With low water allocations and low commodity prices, most did not identify climate change as their most compelling problem. They found it hard to identify climate change adaptation options beyond those they had implemented to manage their immediate problems. The reasons for interviewees' stated skepticism are complex, but not as equated to disbelief as they might seem. Their beliefs about climate change appear to be chosen to allow them to retain hope for the future.Livability has risen, alongside sustainability, as a guiding principle for planning and policy. Promoted as the more tangible of the two concepts, livability shapes public perception and infrastructure investments in cities, as well as competition among cities for the attention of the public, investment communities, and potentially fickle and mobile human capital. This paper takes stock of the current discourse on livability, identifies two central elements that have yet to shape the assessments of livability and policies to promote it, and explores strategies for research and practice to transform the livability concept, and with it the places in which the lives and livelihoods of people unfold. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.BACKGROUND Undesirable impacts of climate change have been a common occurrence that has made fish farmers in developing countries adopt some climate-change adaptation strategies. However, little is known about determinants of climate-change adaptation strategies used by these fish farmers. This study, therefore, articulates novelties on adaptation to climate change, as well ascertains determinants of adaptation strategies used by fish farmers in Epe, Lagos State, Nigeria. RESULTS Climate change adaptation strategies mostly used by fish farmers include frequent seeking for early warning information about climate change (76.7%) and avoidance of areas susceptible to flooding (60.0%). Climate-change adaptation strategies used by fish farmers were significantly influenced by access to early warning information (beta = 7.21), knowledge of farmers about climate change adaptation strategies (beta = 8.86), access to capital (beta = 28.25), and participation in workshop and conferences (beta = 37.19) but were reduced by number of fish stocking (beta = -2.06). CONCLUSION The adaptation strategies used by fish farmers were autonomous and mostly determined by the access to credit facilities and information. Development policy should focus on carbon capture and storage technology in order to reduce adverse impacts of climate change, as well as making early warning information on climate change available to fish farmers. These will enhance adaptation to climate change. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical IndustryMilne Bay Province (MBP) in Papua New Guinea is a priority seascape in the Coral Triangle marine biodiversity hotspot. Goal 4 of the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security promotes adaptation planning for small island ecosystems and communities threatened by climate change, but information to identify vulnerable islands and priority interventions is limited. This study adapted the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) framework in MBP with regional stakeholders to project trends in harvested or cultivated 'provisioning' ecosystem goods and services (EGS), human wellbeing, drivers of change and necessary management strategies, based on their tacit knowledge. In 2010 five island subregions which are susceptible to food insecurity were assessed. Workshop participants identified freshwater, garden food crops, coral, beche-de-mer, reef fish and sharks as the most important EGS in all subregions. Terrestrial EGS contributed 43% of aggregated ecosystem-derived well-being, and marine EGS 57%. By 2030 the overall condition of EGS was projected to decline by > 50%. The primary driver in all subregions was human population growth, and climate change impacts were predicted in only two subregions. Improved garden and agricultural productivity and population control were the highest ranked management strategies. Population relocation was also prioritised for two subregions where human carrying capacities may soon be exceeded. Although none of the strategies addressed climate change directly, all could yield climate adaptation and marine conservation co-benefits by enhancing ecosystem-based adaptation and community adaptive capacity. It is suggested that there is a 20-30 year 'adaptation window' in which to address population growth, which otherwise will continue to erode the capacity of communities and ecosystems to cope with potentially extreme climate impacts after mid-century. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) efforts to achieve food security are challenged by poverty, low soil fertility, unequal global trade relationships, population growth, weak institutions and infrastructure, and future climate changes and variability. Crop models are the primary tools available to assess the impacts of climate change and other drivers on crop productivity, a key aspect of food security. This review examines their role and suitability for informing climate change adaptation decisions in the SSA context. Perception of climate change is rarely the only factor leading to changed farming practices, with labor availability, recent extreme climatic events (floods or droughts) and access to formal credit, constituting the main factors farmers respond to. Further, farmers' socio-economic status constrains the adaptations they make in response to these drivers. Many crop modeling studies reviewed investigating climate change adaptation currently do not capture many of these drivers, adaptations nor constraints. However, a number of areas were identified where crop models could aid in adaptations decision-making. For instance, crop models can: test which changes farmers are making are most robust to future climate scenarios; be used as tools for experimentation in farmer organizations to build farmer capacity, minimize risk and empower farmers; be linked to economic, farm systems or livestock models to widen the scope of potential impacts, adaptations and farmer constraints considered, and to probe the interactions of cropping systems with other systems; and evaluate various indicators of resilience. Finally it is suggested that one of the greatest benefits of linking crop models across disciplines and in integrated assessment frameworks may be providing a platform to bring specialists and stakeholders from diverse backgrounds together to assess climate change adaptation options to enhance food security in SSA. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Networks of citizen scientists (CS) have the potential to observe biodiversity and species distributions at global scales. Yet the adoption of such datasets in conservation science may be hindered by a perception that the data are of low quality. This perception likely stems from the propensity of data generated by CS to contain greater levels of variability (e.g., measurement error) or bias (e.g., spatio-temporal clustering) in comparison to data collected by scientists or instruments. Modern analytical approaches can account for many types of error and bias typical of CS datasets. It is possible to (1) describe how pseudo-replication in sampling influences the overall variability in response data using mixed-effects modeling, (2) integrate data to explicitly model the sampling process and account for bias using a hierarchical modeling framework, and (3) examine the relative influence of many different or related explanatory factors using machine learning tools. Information from these modeling approaches can be used to predict species distributions and to estimate biodiversity. Even so, achieving the full potential from CS projects requires meta-data describing the sampling process, reference data to allow for standardization, and insightful modeling suitable to the question of interest. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We analyzed the evolution of surface relative humidity (RH) and specific humidity (q) in Spain, based on complete records available from the State Meteorological Agency of Spain. The surface RH records used span the period 1920-2011, but because of spatial and temporal constraints in the dataset we used a subset of the data, covering the period 1961-2011. The subset contained 50 monthly series of RH, which were created through a process of quality control, reconstruction and homogenization. The data shows that there was a large decrease in RH over mainland Spain from 1961 to 2011, which was greatest in spring and summer. In contrast, there was no overall change in the specific humidity in this period, except in spring, when an increase was observed. The decrease in RH affected the entire country, but the changes in specific humidity were less homogeneous. For specific humidity there was a general increase in the northern and eastern parts of Spain, whereas negative trends dominated in the central and southern areas, mainly during the summer months. The results suggest that an increase in the water holding capacity of the atmosphere as a consequence of warming during recent decades has not been accompanied by an increase in the surface water vapor content, probably because the supply of water vapor from the main terrestrial and oceanic areas has been constrained. We discuss the implications of these findings for evapotranspiration processes, precipitation and water management in Spain.That the climate is changing and societies will have to adapt is now unequivocal, with adaptation becoming a core focus of climate policy. Our understanding of the challenges, needs, and opportunities for climate change adaptation has advanced significantly in recent years yet remains limited. Research has identified and theorized key determinants of adaptive capacity and barriers to adaptation, and more recently begun to track adaptation in practice. Despite this, there is negligible research investigating whether and indeed if adaptive capacity is translating into actual adaptation action. Here we test whether theorized determinants of adaptive capacity are associated with adaptation policy outcomes at the national level for 117 nations. We show that institutional capacity, in particular measures of good governance, are the strongest predictors of national adaptation policy. Adaptation at the national level is limited in countries with poor governance, and in the absence of good governance other presumed determinants of adaptive capacity show limited effect on adaptation. Our results highlight the critical importance of institutional good governance as a prerequisite for national adaptation. Other elements of theorized adaptive capacity are unlikely to be sufficient, effective, or present at the national level where national institutions and governance are poor.With limited land resources, inadequate energy supply, and growing water stress, South Asia faces the challenge of providing enough water and energy to grow enough food for the burgeoning population. Using secondary data from diverse sources, this paper explores the food, water, and energy nexus from a regional dimension, emphasizing the role of Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) ecosystem services in sustaining food, water, and energy security downstream. The analysis reveals that the issues and challenges in the food, water, and energy sectors are interwoven in many complex ways and cannot be managed effectively without cross-sectoral integration. The most distinctive feature of the nexus in South Asia is the high degree of dependency of downstream communities on upstream ecosystem services for dry-season water for irrigation and hydropower, drinking water, and soil fertility and nutrients. This finding suggests that along with cross-sectoral integration to improve the resource-use efficiency and productivity of the three sectors, regional integration between upstream and downstream areas is critical in food, water, and energy security. Within the nexus approach in South Asia, equal attention should be paid to management of HKH ecosystems-especially the watersheds, catchments, and headwaters of river systems and to tapping the potential of collaborative gains in water, hydropower, and other ecosystem services through coordination across HKH countries. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.European forests are a resource that is targeted by several EU environmental and land use policies as forests can be of critical importance to mitigate climate change. At the same time, they are central to the EU's biodiversity policy, and particular the Natura 2000 network of protected areas. Yet, the interlinkage between climate change and biodiversity policy is complex and discursively contested. In this paper, we assess how the debate on climate change adaptation affects forest conservation and management under Natura 2000. Drawing on the concept of argumentative discourse analysis, we present evidence from 213 qualitative interviews with policy stakeholders and practitioners that were conducted at both the European policy level and the local country level in 6 EU member states. Our results demonstrate that the nexus between climate change adaptation and forest conservation policy is conceptualised differently by different stakeholders and practioners at different levels. Three major discourses can be made out (pragmatic discourse, dynamics discourse, threat discourse), which are characterised by a set of partially overlapping story lines. These discourses are employed by four discourse coalitions (environmental, forest users', expert, and grass root coalition). As a general rule, debates at the European level are more polarised and politicised, while the local debates on climate change and Natura 2000 remain rather vague and are less polarised. This seems to indicate that the link between climate change adaptation and forest conservation is mostly an issue for an abstract high-level policy debate. At this level, climate change is used to influence well-known policies, and to legitimise distinct interests that were already present before the climate change debate has emerged. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mangrove forests and saltmarshes are important habitats for carbon (C) sequestration in the coastal zone but variation in rates of C sequestration and the factors controlling sequestration are poorly understood. We assessed C sequestration in Moreton Bay, South East Queensland in mangrove forests and tidal marshes that span a range of environmental settings and plant communities, including mangrove forests and tidal marshes on the oligotrophic sand islands of the eastern side of Moreton Bay and on the nutrient enriched, western side of the bay adjacent to the city of Brisbane. We found that rates of C sequestration in sediments were similar among mangrove forests over the bay, despite large differences in the C density of sediments, because of different rates of vertical accretion of sediments. The C sequestration on the oligotrophic sand island tidal marshes, dominated by Juncus kraussii, had the highest rate of C sequestration in the bay while the western saltmarshes, which were dominated by Sarcocornia quinqueflora, had the lowest rate of C sequestration. Our data indicate C sequestration varies among different tidal wetland plant community types, due to variation in sediment characteristics and rates of sediment accretion over time.Global change is driving a massive rearrangement of the world's biota. Trajectories of distributional shifts are shaped by species traits, the recipient environment and driving forces with many of the driving forces directly due to human activities. The relative importance of each in determining the distributions of introduced species is poorly understood. We consider 11 Australian Acacia species introduced to South Africa for different reasons (commercial forestry, dune stabilization and ornamentation) to determine how features of the introduction pathway have shaped their invasion history. Projections from species distribution models (SDMs) were developed to assess how the reason for introduction influences the similarity between climatic envelopes in native and alien ranges. A lattice model for an idealized invasion was developed to assess the relative contribution of intrinsic traits and introduction dynamics on the abundance and extent over the course of simulated invasions. SDMs show that alien populations of ornamental species in South Africa occupy substantially different climate space from their native ranges, whereas species introduced for forestry occupy a similar climate space in native and introduced ranges. This may partly explain the slow spread rates observed for some alien ornamental plants. Such mismatches are likely to become less pronounced with the current drive towards 'eco gardens' resulting in more introductions of ornamental species with a close climate match between native and newly introduced regions. The results from the lattice model showed that the conditions associated with the introduction pathway (especially introduction pressure) dominate early invasion dynamics. The placement of introduction foci in urban areas limited the extent and abundance of invasive populations. Features of introduction events appear to initially mask the influence of intrinsic species traits on invasions and help to explain the relative success of species introduced for different purposes. Introduction dynamics therefore can have long-lasting influences on the outcomes of species redistributions, and must be explicitly considered in management plans.Many of the possible barriers in the governance of climate change adaptation have already been identified and catalogued in the academic literature. Thus far it has proven to be difficult to provide meaningful recommendations on how to deal with these barriers. In this paper we propose a different perspective, with different epistemological assumptions about cause and effect than most existing barrier studies, to analyze why adaptation is often challenging. Using the mechanismic framework, we study how the idea for an innovative "Water Plaza" was realized in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Mechanisms are understood as patterns of interaction between actors that bring about change in the governance process that lead to policy impasses. Our analysis reveals three mechanisms that explain the impasses in the first Water Plaza pilot project: the risk-innovation mechanism, the frame polarization mechanism, and the conflict infection mechanism. Only after several substantive changes in the project design, location choice, and process architecture was the project of Water Plaza's revitalized. We discuss how the short-sighted ideas about cause-effect relationships, reflected in the superficial identification of barriers, may prove to be counterproductive; if there is high uncertainty about the risks of an innovation, the solution of offering more certainty is not very helpful and could, as it happened in the case study, trigger other mechanisms, creating an even tighter deadlock. Our study also suggests that when adaptation is considered as something innovative, the chances will increase that the risk-innovation mechanism will occur. We conclude that unearthing mechanisms offers new opportunities and different types of strategic interventions in practice than most existing studies have offered. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mitigating summertime overheating is increasingly viewed as a key issue in urban planning - a warming climate and increasing urbanisation will exacerbate the problem. The effectiveness of green and cool roofs at reducing summertime overheating was assessed for a naturally ventilated, poorly insulated office roof in London. This was contrasted to the application of retrofitting traditional insulation. The new Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers overheating criteria was used to assess the level of overheating as predicted by a whole building thermal simulation model. The impacts of the roofing strategies were split into the direct and indirect effects. The indirect effects of the roofs were modelled using microclimatic modelling software. The results indicate the direct effects of green and cool roofs at reducing overheating are much greater than the indirect cooling effect. A non-insulated cool roof was found to be the most effective strategy. By insulating the roof, the level of overheating was slightly reduced. Non-insulated green and cool roofs were more effective than insulated roofs at reducing levels of overheating. When using a 2050 weather file, the building frequently overheated without the use of green or cool roof.This article synthesizes relevant literature and examples from practice to examine what is known to date about communicating climate change adaptation. It explores the language used to discuss adaptation, what is known about resonant frames, drawing on adaptation discourses in policy, practice, and the media. Identifying trends and widely applicable insights is made challenging not only by the variety of words used to speak of adaptation, but by the fact that adaptation' language is often not used at all. A broad literature on perceptions and experiences of climate change impacts and how these experiences affect people's valuations and emotional responses to climate change offers crucial insights to the challenges and opportunities in communicating adaptation. It reveals much about people's interest in and acceptability and knowledge of adaptation, about preferred timing and who is thought to be responsible for enacting adaptive actions. Insights from the literature on place attachment and place identity are of particular relevance to public engagement on adaptation as it goes a long way toward explaining the quality of the adaptation debate to date while offering promising opportunities for dialogue. Suggestions for improved adaptation communication practice and critical research gaps are offered. For further resources related to this article, please visit the . Conflict of interest: The author has declared no conflicts of interest for this article. Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article.This study investigates ozone changes and the individual impacts of transport and chemistry on those changes. We specifically examine (1) variation related to El Nino Southern Oscillation, which is a dominant mode of interannual variation of tropospheric ozone, and (2) long-term change between the 2000s and 2100s. During El Nino, the simulated ozone shows an increase (1 ppbv/K) over Indonesia, a decrease (2-10 ppbv/K) over the eastern Pacific in the tropical troposphere, and an increase (50 ppbv/K) over the eastern Pacific in the midlatitude lower stratosphere. These variations fundamentally agree with those observed by Microwave Limb Sounder/Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer instruments. The model demonstrates that tropospheric chemistry has a strong impact on the variation over the eastern Pacific in the tropical lower troposphere and that transport dominates the variation in the midlatitude lower stratosphere. Between the 2000s and 2100s, the model predicts an increase in the global burden of stratospheric ozone (0.24%/decade) and a decrease in the global burden of tropospheric ozone (0.82%/decade). The increase in the stratospheric burden is controlled by stratospheric chemistry. Tropospheric chemistry reduces the tropospheric burden by 1.07%/decade. However, transport (i.e., stratosphere-troposphere exchange and tropospheric circulation) causes an increase in the burden (0.25%/decade). Additionally, we test the sensitivity of ozone changes to increased horizontal resolution of the representation of atmospheric circulation and advection apart from any aspects of the nonlinearity of chemistry sensitivity to horizontal resolution. No marked difference is found in medium-resolution or high-resolution simulations, suggesting that the increased horizontal resolution of transport has a minor impact.Increased risk due to global warming has already become embedded in agricultural decision making in Central Asia and uncertainties are projected to increase even further. Agro-ecology and economies of Central Asia are heterogenous and very little is known about the impact of climate change at the subnational levels. The bio-economic farm model (BEFM) is used for ex ante assessment of climate change impacts at sub-national levels in Central Asia. The BEFM is calibrated to 10 farming systems in Central Asia based on the household survey and crop growth experiment data. The production uncertainties and the adaptation options of agricultural producers to changing environments are considered paramount in the simulations. Very large differences in climate change impacts across the studied farming systems are found. The positive income gains in large-scale commercial farms in the northern regions of Kazakhstan and negative impact in small-scale farms in arid zones of Tajikistan are likely to happen. Producers in Kyrgyzstan may expect higher revenues but also higher income volatilities in the future. Agricultural producers in Uzbekistan may benefit in the near future but may lose their income in the distant future. The negative impacts could be further aggravated in arid zones of Central Asia if irrigation water availability decline due to climate change and water demand increase in upstream regions. The scenario simulations show that market liberalization and improved commodity exchange between the countries have very good potential to cope with the negative consequences of climate change. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Thermal-energy performance of green roofs in winter is seldom investigated. With poor building thermal insulation and lacking artificial heating, indoor space in winter in subtropics can become uncomfortably cold with health implications for elderly and weak people. This experimental study established two extensive green roofs on a residential building in humid-subtropical Hong Kong. Broadleaved Perennial Peanut (Arachis pintoi) and succulent Mexican- Sedum (Sedum mexicanum) plots were compared with bare concrete-tile Control Plot. Temperature sensors were installed along a holistic vertical temperature profile. Three apartments below the plots were left vacant to permit undisturbed monitoring. At Control Plot, notable heat loss especially in nighttime induces upward heat flux to cool indoor air. Vegetated roofs provide receptor and repository of solar energy as sensible heat to generate green-roof heat-sink effect (GHE). The porous substrate stores interstitial water to augment thermal capacity, conductivity and GHE. Warmer green-roof vis-A-vis cooler ceiling generates a thermal gradient to induce downward heat flux to warm indoor space. Peanut Plot with thicker substrate creates a stronger GHE than Sedum. Extensive green roofs in subtropical areas offer passive warming to indoor space in winter, with implications on indoor-heating energy consumption for a progressively aging population and climate-change adaptation. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We provide results from a study of two separate sectors within the cotton-growing region of southern Mali. In one sector, farmers have engaged in a farmer field school (FFS) training programme since 2003-the other not. One goal of the training was the adoption of alternatives to the use of hazardous insecticides, through integrated pest management (IPM) methods. Over an 8-year period, analysis showed that with roughly 20% of the 4324 cotton-growing farm households having undergone training, hazardous insecticide use for the entire sector fell by 92.5% compared with earlier figures and with the second (control) sector. Yields for cotton in both sectors were highly variable over time, but no evidence was found for changes in yield owing to shifts in pest management practices. Evidence is presented for a likely diffusion of new practices having taken place, from FFS participants to non-participants. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of the FFS approach, in general, and highlight the need for improved baseline survey and impact analyses to be integrated into FFS projects.Problem, research strategy, and findings: Many global cities are making good progress on climate adaptation. There is less information, however, on climate adaptation among smaller cities and towns: Are their approaches similar when undertaking adaptation? Do the barriers they face mirror those of large cities? In this study, we undertake fine-grained empirical research on the perceptions of 18 municipal planners in 14 coastal cities and towns in Massachusetts; our findings are thus limited to planners' perceptions of efforts and barriers in one region of the United States. These communities are very early in the uptake of climate adaptation policies and use a range of approaches when they do begin adaptation, including planning, mainstreaming, or addressing current hazards. The planners interviewed reported that barriers to adaptation actions tend to be interconnected; for example, the strength of private property interests often limits local political leadership on the issue. Without such leadership, it is difficult for planners to allocate time and/or money to adaptation activities. It is also challenging to gain support from local residents for climate adaptation action, while a lack of accepted technical data complicates efforts. Takeaway for practice: In coastal Massachusetts, and perhaps elsewhere, local residents, planners, and their municipal bodies, as well as the states, must act in multiple ways to encourage the development of meaningful climate adaptation action in smaller cities and towns.Local governments are responding to top-down policy initiatives from both federal and State governments to reduce emissions, and adapt to any potential impacts of climate change. Although climate change is clearly a global problem, many of the solutions will be implemented at the local level. To explore this issue, the aim of this research was to examine regional variation in climate change response across New South Wales (NSW). To this end, between September 2010 and September 2011, we reviewed publicly available council and regional documentations for all NSW councils. The indicators of response examined were based on the NSW Greenhouse Plan (2005). These were awareness-raising, emissions reduction and adaptation planning. It was found that councils were undertaking many practical projects to fulfil the goals of this plan. As a result, they are abating significant quantities of emissions. Adaptation is progressing through the development of risk-based climate change adaptation plans. Councils are addressing particular areas of management, such as water management, assisted by guidelines which incorporate consideration for climate change as part of best practice. While overall responses to this threat are progressing, a distinct urban bias in action has been observed, due to biases in policy and funding arrangements.The paper analyses the capacities of different local institutions to enhance farmers' climate change adaptation (CCA) strategies in Southern Benin. Results are used to reflect on the international support to CCA for developing countries. The study is based on field researches led among farmers' households in Southern Benin, on interviews conducted among governmental and non-governmental institutions, and on analysis of relevant literature. Constraints and opportunities to the development of adaptation practices, and their relation to institutional support (or lack of support) are examined. In addition, the impact of farmers' perceptions of institutions is studied. Results highlight that State institutions are currently unable to support adaptive capacities. On the contrary, non-governmental organizations have promoted agricultural adaptive strategies to cope with changing climate patterns. Findings, furthermore, highlight a lack of trust in state institutions among farmers, while traditional chiefs and local organizations are trusted, even when their capacities to provide support are limited. The results question the ability of state institutions to enhance adaptation in the local communities: they, therefore, challenge the significant role given to governmental structures in the international support to CCA in developing countries, for instance, in the National Adaptation Programmes of Action. Suggestions to better support adaptive capacities at the local level are discussed in the concluding section.This paper explores farmers' willingness to be (better) informed about reaction options to climate change and to pay for agricultural extension as related to modes of adaptation to climate change. Following a contingent valuation approach, the study was conducted through a survey on 336 producers farmers in northern Benin (West Africa). The results show that farmers were very willing to be informed about both climate change (predictions) and documented adaptation (strategies). However, they are willing to pay more for documented climate change adaptation strategies than for climate change predictions. The Heckman probit and seemingly unrelated regression models highlighted that age, gender, level of education, experience in agriculture, access to credit, organization membership, contact with extension, perception of and adaptation to climate change, and farm size have differential effects on farmers' behaviours towards agricultural extension services related to climate change.Supplying our world's growing nutrition needs in more sustainable ways has become an urgent global imperative, given the constraints of finite resources and the challenges of accelerating climate change. We present national-level eco-efficiency metrics in several representative production countries during the most recent decade (2000-2010) for four important crops: canola, cotton, maize, and soybeans. The metrics address greenhouse gas emissions and the utilization of land, water, and energy - all calculated per unit of production. We group countries based on their level of agricultural intensification and find that high-intensification countries are achieving the highest and yet still increasing levels of eco-efficiency, with these decadal gains: canola (26%), cotton (23%), maize (17%), and soybeans (18%). By stark contrast, low-intensification countries had no change in eco-efficiency during this same decade. Overall, our results suggest large opportunities for additional improvements in the developing world, and that cumulative resource savings through intensification have been significant. For instance, in the case of irrigated maize, if the high- and medium-intensification production countries had only achieved the same irrigation water-use efficiency as in the low-intensification countries, approximately 4 quadrillion (4x10(15)) more litres of irrigation water would have been consumed during the period 2000-2010.Extreme weather events have been increasingly in the news, accompanied by images. At the end of 2011, when such reports were ever present, the International Panel on Climate Change published a draft report on extreme weather and climate change adaptation. This report itself was covered in the news and illustrated with images. Some of these depicted extreme weather', in particular with relation to floods, droughts and heat waves, hurricanes and ice/sea-level rise. For this article, these images were studied using visual thematic analysis, with a focus on examining the way they may symbolise certain emotional responses, such as compassion, fear, guilt, vulnerability, helpless, courage or resilience. Climate change communicators have examined the way that evoking such emotions in verbal communication can lead to engagement or disengagements with the topic of climate change. However, while researchers have also become increasingly interested in climate change images, they have not yet studied them with respect to symbolising certain emotions. Various typologies of images have been proposed in the past, distinguishing, for example, between human and natural impact images or iconic and geographically specific images. The images studied here do not neatly map onto these distinctions. They symbolise human suffering and loss and they are sometimes geographically and socially distinctive, but they are also iconic of climate change and they are symbols of its natural impacts. They all, to some extent, symbolise helplessness and may thus lead to disengagement rather than engagement with the issue of climate change.In a study to identify strategies to deal with rapid urbanization and threatening climate change, in Can Tho City, Vietnam, a survey of 1200 households was undertaken to investigate water access and sanitation services. The survey targeted three different groups based on their access to water services: (a) those with piped water supply, (b) without piped water, and (c) a mix of (a) and (b). Socio-economic factors and level of urbanization significantly influenced the different water sources accessed by households and their type of sanitation. Results indicated that householders often employed multiple water sources in an attempt to match source with intended use. The use of multiple water sources, levels of sanitation and the quality of water were found to be good indicators of reported rates of illness. Results also showed that the provision of piped water does not always provide the desired health outcomes, as the definition of adequate water supply does not include water quality objectives. Therefore, more detailed assessments may be required to understand how people use and access water and sanitation, and the impacts on public health.Coextinction (loss of dependent species with their host or partner species) presents a threat to untold numbers of organisms. Climate change may act synergistically to accelerate rates of coextinction. In this review, we present the first synthesis of the available literature and propose a novel schematic diagram that can be used when assessing the potential risk climate change represents for dependent species. We highlight traits that may increase the susceptibility of insect species to coextinction induced by climate change, suggest the most influential host characteristics, and identify regions where climate change may have the greatest impact on dependent species. The aim of this review was to provide a platform for future research, directing efforts toward taxa and habitats at greatest risk of species loss through coextinction accelerated by climate change.The neon flying squid, Ommastrephes bartramii, is widespread in subtropical and temperate regions. In the North Pacific Ocean, the species is comprised of two spawning cohorts; an autumn cohort and a winter-spring cohort. Interestingly, despite their apparently contiguous hatching periods, there is a marked disparity in the mantle length of both cohorts. We hypothesized that differences in the ambient temperature during larval development were responsible for the observed disparity in mantle size. Numerical simulations of ambient temperature revealed that water temperatures were approximately 1 degrees C higher in areas inhabited by the autumn cohort than they were in areas inhabited by the winter-spring cohort. The findings imply that differences in ambient water temperature and nutrient condition may be responsible for the observed differences in the growth of the autumn and winter-spring cohorts.Climate change risk assessment, adaptation, and mitigation planning have become increasingly important to environmental health practitioners (EHPs). The NEHA/UL Sabbatical Exchange Award allowed me to investigate how EHPs in the UK are incorporating climate change planning and communication strategies into their work. Projected climate change risks in the UK include flooding, extreme heat, water shortages, severe weather, decreased air quality, and changes in vectors. Despite public perception and funding challenges, all the local government representatives with whom I met incorporated climate change risk assessment, adaptation, and mitigation planning into their work. The mandated Community Risk Register serves as a key planning document developed by each local government authority and is a meaningful way to look at potential climate change health risks. Adaptation and sustainability were common threads in my meetings. These often took the form of "going green" with transportation, energy efficiency, conserving resources, and building design because the efforts made sense monetarily as future cost savings. Communication strategies targeted a variety of audiences (EHPs, non-EHP government employees, politicians, and the general public) using a broad range of communication channels (professional training, lobbying, conferences and fairs, publications, print materials, Internet resources, social media, billboards, etc).Natural hazard mitigation is a recent field in name only. For decades various professionals have been practicing hazard mitigation: for example, emergency managers have been working with architects and city planners to update building codes for disaster-resistant construction, civil engineers have been working with local officials to design flood-resistant urban drainage systems, and foresters have been working with state officials to enact more effective prescribed burning practices. Yet most often, natural hazard mitigation has taken place as isolated activities scattered within the daily duties of diverse professions - an accidentally cross-disciplinary effort recognized as vitally important to protect individuals and communities, yet not recognized as its own multidisciplinary field. The crucial importance of natural hazard mitigation requires a more coherent approach, with consistent and accessible technical information and training, formal and informal discourse among hazard mitigation professionals, interaction with a greater public awareness of the social components, and recognition of hazard mitigation as a profession in its own right. Simultaneously, hazard mitigation professionals need to strengthen their multidisciplinary tendencies and continue to collaborate with other key fields, such as public health and the various sciences. Today many professionals are starting to bridge the gaps between disaster risk reduction, hazard mitigation, and climate adaptation. This article discusses the benefits of emergency management professionals working with others in community partnerships to achieve resilienceRecent reports from credible research groups suggest that climate change is a reality. The steady rise in extreme weather events over the past decade represents the leading edge of climate change. Climate-induced interactions within and between the natural environment and our human and constructed systems will not only exacerbate existing vulnerabilities but will create new ones. Emergency managers at all levels need to plan and prepare for climate adaptation challenges, which should enable communities to successfully weather the storm. The ability to adapt to the coming changes is dependent upon the actions we take today to create resilience and sustainability. Leaving aside the issue of causation, this paper discusses the implications of climate change for emergency mangers by examining predicted impacts, exploring barriers to action, and concluding with strategies for moving forward.This study examines how urbanization affects the precipitation climatology in Tokyo, Japan. Aunique aspect of this study is that an ensemble, regional climatological simulation approach is used with sensitivity experiments to reduce uncertainty arising fromnonlinearity in the precipitation simulations. Another aspect is that the robustness of the precipitation response is tested with "stress response" simulations with increasing urban forcing. The results show that urbanization causes a robust increase in the amount of precipitation in the Tokyo metropolitan area and a reduction in the inland areas. These anomalies are statistically significant at the 95% and 99% levels in some parts. There is no measureable change in the surrounding rural and ocean areas. These precipitation responses are attributed to an increase of surface sensible heat flux in Tokyo, which destabilizes the atmosphere and induces an anomalous surface low pressure pattern and the convergence of grid-scale horizontal moisture flux. The anomalous convergence of grid-scale horizontal moisture flux is a consequence of urbanization modifying the sea breeze.Assisted colonization is a contentious climate change adaptation strategy, but we have limited understanding of the bases of disagreement amongst scientists and far less has been done to understand the views of other stakeholders. To establish an initial empirical understanding of the terms of the debate, we conducted a Q method study of the views of scientists and resource managers, a key constituency because of their role in decision-making and implementation. We asked 24 forest managers in Ontario, Canada and 26 top-publishing ecologists and conservation biologists to evaluate their level of agreement with 33 statements about assisted colonization from the published literature and other relevant sources. The analysis revealed four main, contrasting perspectives, which we label Ecological Interventionist, Nativist Technocrat, Interventionist Technocrat, and Reluctant Interventionist; all but the Nativist Technocrats were open to assisted colonization. Disagreements between the four perspectives were defined by value-based and policy-strategic considerations at least as much as they were by varied understandings of technical issues. Assisted colonization as a climate adaptation strategy exists within the context of multiple competing and incompatible problem definitions even amongst these technical stakeholders. Based upon our findings and the relevant literature, we conclude that disputes surrounding assisted colonization will likely not be settled by additional scientific research. Rather, underlying non-technical considerations need to be brought to the fore and addressed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reflects on how the city of Manizales, Colombia, is incorporating climate change adaptation into its plans, and how this can build on the foundations of the city's long-established urban environmental policy (Biomanizales) and local environmental action plan (Bioplan) that have guided urban development and have developed incorporating disaster risk reduction into local development policies and local land use plans. The success is rooted in coherent, multi-level governance, including capacity to integrate disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, land use and territorial planning within a holistic view of development that includes the views and capacities of multiple stakeholders. As the process matures, an acknowledgment of weaknesses leads to improved ways of addressing climate-related risks and adaptation challenges.This paper is a report on one of three related case studies in Latin America and shows the progress in the city of Chetumal, and the larger state of which it is the capital (Quintana Roo), in disaster response, especially with regard to cyclones. It also shows the progress in land use and ecological planning through the development of certain tools, which have changed the approach from one of prohibiting action to suggesting alternatives. Rather than stopping development, the focus has been on taking full account of its impacts and trying to make development compatible with environmental protection. There has also been progress in ecosystem conservation and water management, coordinated between different levels of government and different stakeholders. While much of this has taken place within the formal framework set by government, participatory processes have increased civil society awareness and commitment to environmental issues, and its capacity to participate and take a position, especially during the planning stages.In studies of climate change vulnerability, an important constraint relates to the uncertainty of the climate projections that local governments need to estimate precisely the risks and impacts climate events have on different parts of a city. In addition, the lack of "downscaled", or local, climate information makes it very difficult to compare how individual communities and households adapt to severe and extreme weather events and, more importantly, what actions local governments can carry out to increase resilience in poor urban areas. Based on a conceptual and operational framework developed in recent years by the authors in collaboration with partners in the global South, this paper illustrates how "bottom-up" community asset planning for climate change adaptation can help to address this gap and be mainstreamed into "top-down" citywide strategic and operational planning. The paper describes the process by which community members and representatives of local government, the private sector and NGOs working in the city of Cartagena, Colombia, set up a dialogue space that enables them to identify, negotiate and agree climate change adaptation solutions that are legally, financially, socially and technically feasible.Studies that evaluate determinants of residential water demand typically use data from a single spatial scale. Although household-scale data are preferred, especially when econometric models are used, researchers may be limited to aggregate data. There is little, if any, empirical analysis to assess whether spatial scale may lead to ecological fallacy problems in residential water use research. Using linear mixed-effects models, we compare the results for the relationship of single-family water use with its determinants using data from the household and census tract scales in the city of Phoenix. Model results between the household and census tract scale are similar suggesting the ecological fallacy may not be significant. Common significant determinants on these two spatial scales include household size, household income, house age, pool size, irrigable lot size, precipitation, and temperature. We also use city/town scale data from the Phoenix metropolitan area to parameterize the linear mixed-effects model. The difference in the parameter estimates of those common variables compared to the first two scales indicates there is spatial heterogeneity in the relationship between single-family water use and its determinants among cities and towns. The negative relationship between single-family house density and residential water use suggests that residential water consumption could be reduced through coordination of land use planning and water demand management.A multireplicate multimodel ensemble of hydrological simulations covering the 1860-2099 period has been produced for the Upper Durance River basin (French Alps). An original quasi-ergodic analysis of variance was applied to quantify uncertainties related to General Circulation Models (GCMs), Statistical Downscaling Models (SDMs) and the internal variability of each GCM/SDM simulation chain. For temperature, GCM uncertainty prevails and SDM uncertainty is nonnegligible. Significant warming and in turn significant changes are predicted for evaporation, snow cover and seasonality of discharges. For precipitation, GCM and SDM uncertainty components are of the same order. A high contribution of the large and small-scale components of internal variability is also obtained, inherited, respectively, from the GCMs and the different replicates of a given SDM. The same applies for annual discharge. The uncertainty in values that could be experienced for any given future period is therefore very high. For both discharge and precipitation, even the sign of future realizations is uncertain at a 90% confidence level. These findings have important implications. Similarly to GCM uncertainty, SDM uncertainty cannot be neglected. The same applies for both components of internal variability. Climate change impact studies based on a single SDM realization are likely to be no more relevant than those based on a single GCM run. They may lead to poor decisions for climate change adaptation.Locally adapted genotypes have higher fitness in their native site in comparison to foreign genotypes. Recent studies have demonstrated both local adaptation to and genomic associations with a range of climate variables. For climate adaptation, the most common genomic pattern is conditional neutrality, as proven by weak across-environment correlations, frequent SNP x environment interactions, and the topology of some developmental and physiological pathways potentially involved in local adaptation. Genomic association approaches readily translate to non-model systems, and genetically explicit climate envelope models will predict future species' distributions under changing climates. Here, we review recent evidence for local adaptation to climate, focusing primarily on the model system, Arabidopsis thaliana, and on studies incorporating genomic tools into field studies or climate analyses.Proteome profiling was performed on Arabidopsis plant exposed to cold stress at 4 degrees C for 24 h in an attempt to explore the mechanisms of plant climate adaptation. The polyethylene glycol(PEG) fractionation protocol developed in this lab was used to identify as many differentially expressed low-abundance proteins as possible. In comparison with those of the biological controls, 67 protein spots with at least two-fold difference in expression were identified for the plant exposed to cold temperatures; and from these spots, 50 proteins were successfully identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry(MALDI-TOF MS). Bioinformatics studies on these proteins show that 57.8% of these proteins were localized in the chloroplast. Of these proteins, 8 ones have functions in photosynthesis, including glycine hydroxymethyltransferase, Rubisco large subunit, Rubisco activase, PSBO2, fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase, NADP-dependent malate dehydrogenase, sedoheptulose bisphosphatase and photosystem II reaction center PsbP family protein, suggesting that photosynthesis is greatly affected by cold stress. The identified proteins were validated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction(qPCR). Taken together, our results suggest that the chloroplast might also act as a cold stress sensor and that photosynthesis-related proteins may play important roles in cold acclimation for Arabidopsis.Adapting to climate change in the water sector requires abandoning two crucial assumptions. First, that the climate represented in the instrumental record is representative of the future. Instead, future water resource planning cannot be based on old measurements (or sequences derived from attaching change factors to instrumental data) and it should be recognized that stationarity is no longer viable, and, second, that climate modelling can be expected to give precise and certain predictions of the future. Instead, probabilistic projections of the future that take into account the full range of uncertainty should form the basis of robust climate change adaptation plans. As a response to the first assumption, it is suggested that stochastic weather generators represent a particularly useful approach to understanding the impacts of future climate change on water resources at a catchment scale, particularly given the recent release of 'science-hidden' tools such as the UKCP09 weather generator. With regards to the second assumption, it is suggested that modelling activity should identify the range of plausible futures to develop probabilities of risk, using those robust decision-making techniques which can gauge the performance of potential adaptation strategies. The best practice for delivering a replicable and practical hydroclimatological impact assessment for UK water resources at a catchment scale is identified, and an hypothetical example is outlined. It is suggested that although augmenting the resilience of water resources to climate change on a catchment scale is dependent on using the correct modelling tools, the robustness of the method with which that information is used to make adaptation decisions is equally as important. Copyright (c) 2012 Royal Meteorological SocietyCollective actions of stakeholders are required for fulfilling the climate commitments of the Kyoto protocol. The insurance sector's global influence and societal impact is fairly well documented. The sector influences societies based on its interaction with stakeholders, on its products, business and political stance. As such, it is a critical actor in facilitating key climate change actions of mitigation and adaptation, and has already been recognized as a leading sector in terms of climate adaptation. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of non-life insurers in fulfilling the climate commitments of the Kyoto Protocol. This paper is based on a case study on Nordic non-life insurance companies. The study documents that Nordic insurers are responding to climate-related threats and opportunities in a strategic manner by reducing their own impacts, through their core activities, and by influencing others to act. Although Nordic insurers do not classify their actions into mitigation and adaptation, but classify them according to their core activities, they demonstrate through actions their role as potential allies for nations in fulfilling the Kyoto protocol climate commitments. The study also reveals that the commercial reality of the industry is not the same as the expected contribution to climate commitments, for instance as specified in international conventions and treaties and in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and industry reports. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Effects of climate variability and change on yields of pearl millet have frequently been evaluated but yield responses to combined changes in crop management and climate are not well understood. The objectives of this study were to determine the combined effects of nutrient fertilization management and climatic variability on yield of pearl millet in the Republic of Niger. Considered fertilization treatments refer to (i) no fertilization and the use of (ii) crop residues, (iii) mineral fertilizer and (iv) a combination of both. A crop simulation model (DSSAT 4.5) was evaluated by using data from field experiments reported in the literature and applied to estimate pearl millet yields for two historical periods and under projected climate change. Combination of crop residues and mineral fertilizer resulted in higher pearl millet yields compared to sole application of crop residues or fertilizer. Pearl millet yields showed a strong response to mean temperature under all fertilization practices except the combined treatment in which yields showed higher correlation to precipitation. The crop model reproduced reported yields well including the detected sensitivity of crop yields to mean temperature, but underestimated the response of yields to precipitation for the treatments in which crop residues were applied. The crop model simulated yield declines due to projected climate change by -11 to -62% depending on the scenario and time period. Future crop yields in the combined crop residues + fertilizer treatment were still larger than crop yields in the control treatment with baseline climate, underlining the importance of crop management for climate change adaptation. We conclude that nutrient fertilization and other crop yield limiting factors need to be considered when analyzing and assessing the impact of climate variability and change on crop yields. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Traditional justifications for state-to-state development assistance include charity, basic rights and self-interest. Except in unusual cases such as war-reparations agreements, development assistance has typically been justified for reasons such as the above, without reference to any history of injury that holds between the states. We argue that climate change creates relationships of harm that can be cited to supplement and strengthen the traditional claims for development assistance. Finally, to demonstrate the utility of this analysis, we offer a brief application of our reasoning to the emerging conflict in the United Nations over the future post-2015 development agenda.Lever-Tracy (2010) concluded from a review of major international sociological journals that sociology is 'lagging behind' in terms of research on the challenges of global climate change. More recently, John Urry (2011) contributed a rather speculative book on 'post-carbon sociology', yet sociologists continue to lag behind geographers and psychologists in contemplating the social and cultural dimensions of climate-change adaptation. The findings of the present paper suggest that the sociology of climate-change adaptation could take its lead from the work of cultural and human geographers on people-place relationships, and engage with art theory and practice to offer imaginative insights into the scope and scale of the climate-change challenge. Sociologists could also make a major contribution to current debate on the roles of community action and community engagement in climate-change adaptation, noting that the word 'community' is open to abuse and misunderstanding. Drawing on his own research on the challenges facing local communities in Australia and Sri Lanka, the author combines previously disconnected bodies of literature to identify some important points of departure for the journey towards Urry's 'post-carbon sociology'.Uncertainty in forest planning is a prevailing problem affecting decision-making processes, especially those relating to climate change adaptation. Limited knowledge about uncertainty has prompted this empirical investigation of forest planners' understanding of uncertainty related to its recognition, its management and risk perception. We used a comprehensive uncertainty framework to address and test these uncertainties, with data from an online survey, to identify the views of 33 forest planners through Britain. Responses were analysed using non-parametric tests. The results showed that planners have significantly different views on uncertainty among economic, social and climatic categories. Uncertainty in the climatic category was more acutely perceived than in the economic and social categories. Planners preferred to practice active uncertainty management, as the results suggest they feel more able to manage uncertainty in forest models and their outcomes. Forest planners also indicated diverse perceptions of salient risks of change over the next 30 years. The results show they may take action only to pests, drought and wind risks posing a threat to forests even though they perceived these risks potentially to be highly regulated and controlled by forestry policies. The findings provide a better understanding of uncertainty as a source of inertia to climate change adaptation in forestry, identify new research objectives and support the development of forestry policies for climate change adaptation. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change scenarios generated by general circulation models (GCMs) have too coarse a spatial resolution to be useful in planning disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies at regional to river/lake basin scales. This paper investigates the performances of existing state-of-the-art rule induction and tree algorithms, namely, single conjunctive rule learner, decision table, M5P model tree, decision stump, and REPTree. Downscaling models are developed to obtain projections of mean monthly maximum and minimum temperatures (Tmax and Tmin) as well as pan evaporation to lake-basin scale in an arid region in India using these algorithms. The predictor variables, such as air temperature, zonal wind, meridional wind, and geo-potential height, are extracted from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data set for the period 1948-2000 and from the simulations using third-generation Canadian coupled global climate models for emission scenarios for the period 2001-2100. A simple multiplicative shift was used for correcting predictand values. The performances of various models have been evaluated on several statistical performance parameters such as correlation coefficient, mean absolute error, and root mean square error. The M5P model tree algorithm was found to yield better performance among all other learning techniques explored in the present study. An increasing trend is observed for Tmax and Tmin for emission scenarios, whereas no trend has been observed for pan evaporation in the future.While many scientific assessments have been recommending general strategies for biodiversity conservation under climate change, translation of these recommendations into specific actions and practice has been limited. Focusing on two biomes, rainforest and wetlands in biodiverse South East Queensland, Australia, we demonstrate how general principles can be translated into specific actions for stakeholders and responsible agencies. We synthesize research that is contextualizing protection of refugia and habitat connectivity, establishing baseline data sets to detect change and developing strategic conservation planning scenarios to adjust reserve boundaries or situate new reserves. This has been achieved by coupling spatial information on biological assets (i.e. ecosystems and species) with future climate scenarios and process models to anticipate movement of critical habitats. Conservation planning software is also being used to prioritize investment to meet specific objectives. This approach is enabling us to identify at-risk biological assets, opportunities to ameliorate threats and obstacles to delivering regional adaptation actions. A larger total reserved area is needed, with proactive planning to capture areas further inland and along watercourses. Major obstacles include conflict between urbanization and priorities for habitat conservation and the need for greater levels of investment for monitoring programmes and to protect landward shifted wetlands on private land.Despite an exponential growth in the volume of adaptation research over the last decade, there is still a research gap in regard to the provision of suitable information to adequately inform climate change adaptation policy makers. Contributing to this gap is a paucity of research reporting on the effectiveness of implemented adaptation strategies. This paper reports on the success, failures and future risks of the responses taken by the South East Queensland (SEQ) water sector during the Millennium Drought. The adaptation strategy employed a portfolio approach mixing 'hard' and 'soft' adaptations. Strategies included the following: large-scale water manufacturing facilities and distribution networks; the exploitation of local water resources; regulatory instruments; institutional reforms; support for research and training and a range of demand management programmes. The strategies employed were innovative and in many cases required rigorous scientific evidence for their development, implementation and follow-up assessments. However, we show that there has been considerable disparity between anticipated and actual policy outcomes, which points to maladaptive consequences. By revisiting the effectiveness of implemented adaptation strategies in the SEQ water sector, our paper provides evidence for the need for integrative studies with genuine policy integration.South East Queensland's (SEQ's) centralised electricity system is under great pressure to adapt. Climate change is converging with socio-economic, demographic and technological changes to create a 'perfect storm' for the region's electricity system. Distribution networks are particularly affected, with these factors contributing to tremendous peak demand growth, about double the rate of growth in average demand in recent years. This paper reviews how Australia's electricity system is adapting to multiple drivers of peak electricity demand. We use socio-technical transitions theory to understand the temporal interconnected social and technical dimensions of adaptation in this setting. Specifically, we present an historical narrative of the emergence of centralisation in Australia and outline the peak demand problem in SEQ and review adaptation options from the international literature. We also analyse the interactions between key social groups and their adaptation responses over the past decade. Our analysis shows that adaptation has become a contested process between supply-chain actors and end-users, each with different economic objectives, adaptation needs and capacities. The resulting adaptation dynamic that is emerging shows worrying signs of maladaptation. Implications for market governance and urban policy and research are discussed.In the wake of the flood that affected Brisbane, Australia, in January 2011, public attention turned to the causes of the event and lessons for minimizing the impacts of future floods. The news media was an important vehicle for understanding and internalizing the 2011 Brisbane flood. Examining how the flood was framed in the media is, therefore, useful to understand broad public perception of floods. We undertook a systematic newspaper analysis during a one-year period to explore media framings of the flood, focused on learning as an aspect of resilience in relation to two themes: (1) perceived links between the flood and climate change and (2) perceived roles of government in managing the flood. We show that media coverage of the flood reinforces aspects of resilience by acknowledging community spirit, self-reliance and the importance of sharing experiences for learning; articulating the risk of extreme events in a changing climate; and highlighting regional management trade-offs. Much of the discourse is likely to inhibit resilience, however, by casting the flood in terms of blame and political opportunity and paying inadequate attention to longer-term aspects of regional resilience. The limited learning observed to date may highlight a need for other mechanisms and actors to lead learning processes. As policy related to the 2011 Brisbane flood, and extreme events more generally, is influenced by the public discourse, it is important to understand the nuances of communication around these events and the media's role in reinforcing or changing perceptions.The effectiveness of climate adaptation policies in one sector can be compromised or aided by policies developed in another sector. When the focus of adaptation is a single geographical region, this potential for interaction between sectoral policies is heightened due to spatial, political and functional proximities. This paper analyses interactions within three suites of climate adaptation options developed for Australia's 'South-East Queensland' region relating to: (1) wetland migration, coastal infrastructure and planned retreat; (2) urban water security and energy demand; and (3) terrestrial biodiversity and agricultural viability. Using the concept of 'institutional interplay' to structure a process of dialogue amongst researchers, we identify a number of critical implementation requirements for successful regional-scale adaptation. There is a need for greater focus on neighbourhood or sub-regional scales of policy design and intervention, particularly for the coordination of adapted infrastructure and services to households. Policy-makers must also be more explicit in considering broader drivers of land-use change and economic adjustment likely to impact on proposed adaptations. In considering these issues, our paper also demonstrates a process for conducting cross-sectoral syntheses that can be employed in other regional-scale adaptation studies.It has recently been recommended that a shift from traditional flood prevention to more adaptive strategies is made, focusing on the reduction in and recovery from flood impacts as a means to improve resilience to climate impacts. This shift has had implications for the public-private divide in adaptive flood risk governance. In an urban context, it means that private actors such as developers and residents come into play, necessitating governance arrangements which cross the public-private divide. The division of responsibilities for water safety between the public and private sectors affects the way legitimacy is gained for these arrangements and raises new legitimacy issues. The paper offers an analysis of public and private responsibilities in adaptive flood risk governance arrangements, as well as of the legitimacy of the arrangements in the light of the public-private divide. A comparative case study is presented for three urban regeneration projects in un-embanked areas in Hamburg, Germany, Helsinki, Finland, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where adaptive strategies have been applied. The results show that network arrangements with joint public-private responsibilities use direct forms of participation and deliberation, but that these do not necessarily lead to more legitimate arrangements in the eyes of stakeholders as is often suggested in the literature. Both network and more public hierarchical arrangements can be perceived as quite legitimate under certain conditions.Human communities inhabiting remote and geomorphically fragile high-altitude regions are particularly vulnerable to climate change-related glacial hazards and hydrometeorological extremes. This study presents a strategy for enhancing adaptation and resilience of communities living immediately downstream of two potentially hazardous glacial lakes in the Upper Chenab Basin of the Western Himalaya in India. It uses an interdisciplinary investigative framework, involving ground surveys, participatory mapping, comparison of local perceptions of environmental change and hazards with scientific data, identification of assets and livelihood resources at risk, assessment of existing community-level adaptive capacity and resilience and a brief review of governance issues. In addition to recommending specific actions for securing lives and livelihoods in the study area, the study demonstrates the crucial role of regional ground-level, community-centric assessments in evolving an integrated approach to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation for high-altitude environments, particularly in the developing world.Due to the dependence of its economy on rainfed agriculture and livestock husbandry, Burkina Faso, like other Sahelian countries, is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Adaptation is needed to counteract anticipated drawbacks of climate change on crop and livestock productivity; therefore, we examined climate change perceptions of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists and analysed their adaptation strategies. To this end, focus group discussions were held in six villages distributed across three agro-ecological zones. In three of these sites, 162 farmers were also individually interviewed. Perceptions of farmers were compared to actual trends of different climatic parameters extracted from official long-term meteorological records (1988-2008). Results showed that farmers in Burkina Faso were partly aware of climate change, particularly of changes in temperature and rainfall patterns, but their perception did not match well with the recorded annual rainfall data in the southern Sahelian and Sudanian zones. The most important adaptation strategies mentioned by agro-pastoralists were crop diversification, combination of cropping and livestock operations, use of water harvesting technologies and anti-erosive measures such as half-moons or stone dikes. Strategies of pastoralists included seasonal, annual and permanent migration and taking up of cereal cropping. Logistic regression analysis indicated that agro-ecological zone, cultivated surface, ruminant herd size, household size and education were the most important variables affecting farmers' choice of adaptation strategies. These factors should be taken into account in the development and implementation of any programme of adaptation to climate change in Burkina Faso.Managing the risks of extreme events such as natural disasters to advance climate change adaptation (CCA) has been a global focus. However, a critical challenge in supporting CCA is to improve its linkage with disaster risk reduction (DRR). Based on discussions on similarities and differences between CCA and DRR concerning their spatial-temporal scales, main focuses, preferred research approaches and methodologies, etc., this paper tentatively put forward an analytical framework of "6W" for linking DRR with CCA. This framework presented preliminary answers to a series of fundamental questions, such as "What is adaptation with respect to disaster risk?" "Why adaptation is needed?" "Who adapt to what?" "How to adapt?" "What are the possible principles to assess the adaptation effect?" To bridge the research gaps between CCA and DRR, it is imperative to associate the adaptation actions with both near-term disaster risk and long-term climate change and formulate adaptation strategies at various spatial-temporal scales by embracing uncertainty in a changing climate.Extreme climatic events are likely to adversely affect many countries throughout the world, but the degrees among countries may be different. China and Japan are the countries with high incidences of extreme weather/disaster, both facing with the urgent task of addressing climate change. This study seeks to quantitatively compare the impacts of extreme climatic events on socioeconomic systems (defined as vulnerability) of the two countries by simulating the consequences of hypothetical same degree of electricity disruption along with extreme events. To do that, two computable general equilibrium models are constructed, by using which three-stage scenarios are simulated for China and Japan, respectively. The results reveal that China and Japan have unequal socioeconomic vulnerabilities to extreme events. (1) Negative impact of the same degree of power outages is bigger on China's socioeconomic system than on that of Japan, and this difference is more obvious in the very short-run scenario. (2) The decline of China's GDP, total output, and employment levels is 2-3 times higher than that of Japan, while the difference of the resident welfare levels is sharper, which of China drops 3-5 times of Japan. (3) Structural factors are the main reason for vulnerability differences between China and Japan, including the differences of expenditure structure, factor input structure for production of life requirement sectors, material and energy dependence for the production of industrial sectors, and usage structure of services outputs. Based on these findings, some policy implications and recommendations for fairness issues on climate change adaptation are proposed.Recent research indicates increasing openness among conservation experts toward a set of previously controversial proposals for biodiversity protection. These include actions such as assisted migration, and the application of climate-change-informed triage principles for decision-making (e.g., forgoing attention to target species deemed no longer viable). Little is known however, about the levels of expert agreement across different conservation adaptation actions, or the preferences that may come to shape policy recommendations. In this paper, we report findings from a web-based survey of biodiversity experts that assessed: (1) perceived risks of climate change (and other drivers) to biodiversity, (2) relative importance of different conservation goals, (3) levels of agreement/disagreement with the potential necessity of unconventional-taboo actions and approaches including affective evaluations of these, (4) preferences regarding the most important adaptation action for biodiversity, and (5) perceived barriers and strategic considerations regarding implementing adaptation initiatives. We found widespread agreement with a set of previously contentious approaches and actions, including the need for frameworks for prioritization and decision-making that take expected losses and emerging novel ecosystems into consideration. Simultaneously, this survey found enduring preferences for conventional actions (such as protected areas) as the most important policy action, and negative affective responses toward more interventionist proposals. We argue that expert views are converging on agreement across a set of taboo components in ways that differ from earlier published positions, and that these views are tempered by preferences for existing conventional actions and discomfort toward interventionist options. We discuss these findings in the context of anticipating some of the likely contours of future conservation debates. Lastly, we underscore the critical need for interdisciplinary, comparative, place-based adaptation research.Outdoor water use is a key component in arid city water systems for achieving sustainable water use and ensuring water security. Using evapotranspiration (ET) calculations as a proxy for outdoor water consumption, the objectives of this research are to quantify outdoor water consumption of different land use and land cover types, and compare the spatio-temporal variation in water consumption between drought and wet years. An energy balance model was applied to Landsat 5 TM time series images to estimate daily and seasonal ET for the Central Arizona Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research region (CAP-LTER). Modeled ET estimations were correlated with water use data in 49 parks within CAP-LTER and showed good agreement (r (2) = 0.77), indicating model effectiveness to capture the variations across park water consumption. Seasonally, active agriculture shows high ET (> 500 mm) for both wet and dry conditions, while the desert and urban land cover types experienced lower ET during drought (< 300 mm). Within urban locales of CAP-LTER, xeric neighborhoods show significant differences from year to year, while mesic neighborhoods retain their ET values (400-500 mm) during drought, implying considerable use of irrigation to sustain their greenness. Considering the potentially limiting water availability of this region in the future due to large population increases and the threat of a warming and drying climate, maintaining large water-consuming, irrigated landscapes challenges sustainable practices of water conservation and the need to provide amenities of this desert area for enhancing quality of life.We use high quality climate data from ground meteorological stations in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) and robust drought indices to confirm that drought severity has increased in the past five decades, as a consequence of greater atmospheric evaporative demand resulting from temperature rise. Increased drought severity is independent of the model used to quantify the reference evapotranspiration. We have also focused on drought impacts to drought-sensitive systems, such as river discharge, by analyzing streamflow data for 287 rivers in the IP, and found that hydrological drought frequency and severity have also increased in the past five decades in natural, regulated and highly regulated basins. Recent positive trend in the atmospheric water demand has had a direct influence on the temporal evolution of streamflows, clearly identified during the warm season, in which higher evapotranspiration rates are recorded. This pattern of increase in evaporative demand and greater drought severity is probably applicable to other semiarid regions of the world, including other Mediterranean areas, the Sahel, southern Australia and South Africa, and can be expected to increasingly compromise water supplies and cause political, social and economic tensions among regions in the near future.This study investigates the impact of climate change adaptation on farm households' downside risk exposure in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. The analysis relies on a moment-based specification of the stochastic production function. We use an empirical strategy that accounts for the heterogeneity in the decision on whether to adapt or not, and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm. We find that past adaptation to climate change (i) reduces current downside risk exposure, and so the risk of crop failure; (ii) would have been more beneficial to the non-adapters if they adapted, in terms of reduction in downside risk exposure; and (iii) is a successful risk management strategy that makes the adapters more resilient to climatic conditions.Questions as to which crop to grow, where, when and with what management, will be increasingly challenging for farmers in the face of a changing climate. The objective of this study was to evaluate emergence, yield and financial benefits of maize, finger millet and sorghum, planted at different dates and managed with variable soil nutrient inputs in order to develop adaptation options for stabilizing food production and income for smallholder households in the face of climate change and variability. Field experiments with maize, finger millet and sorghum were conducted in farmers' fields in Makoni and Hwedza districts in eastern Zimbabwe for three seasons: 2009/10,2010/11 and 2011/12. Three fertilization rates: high (90 kg N ha(-1), 26 kg Pha(-1), 7 t ha(-1) manure), low (35 kg N ha(-1), 14 kg P ha(-1), 3 t ha(-1) manure) and a control (zero fertilization); and three planting dates: early, normal and late, were compared. Crop emergence for the unfertilized finger millet and sorghum was <15% compared with >70% for the fertilized treatments. In contrast, the emergence for maize (a medium-maturity hybrid cultivar, SC635), was >80% regardless of the amount of fertilizer applied. Maize yield was greater than that of finger millet and sorghum, also in the season (2010/11) which had poor rainfall distribution. Maize yielded 5.4 t ha(-1) compared with 3.1 t ha(-1) for finger millet and 3.3 t ha(-1) for sorghum for the early plantings in the 2009/10 rainfall season in Makoni, a site with relatively fertile soils. In the poorer 2010/11 season, early planted maize yielded 2.4 t ha(-1), against 1.6 t ha(-1) for finger millet and 0.4 t ha(-1) for sorghum in Makoni. Similar yield trends were observed on the nutrient-depleted soils in Hwedza, although yields were less than those observed in Makoni. All crops yielded significantly more with increasing rates of fertilization when planting was done early or in what farmers considered the 'normal window'. Crops planted early or during the normal planting window gave comparable yields that were greater than yields of late-planted crops. Water productivity for each crop planted early or during the normal window increased with increase in the amount of fertilizer applied, but differed between crop type. Maize had the highest water productivity (8.0 kg dry matter mm(-1) ha(-1)) followed by sorghum (4.9 kg mm(-1) ha(-1)) and then finger millet (4.6 kg mm(-1) ha(-1)) when a high fertilizer rate was applied to the early-planted crop. Marginal rates of return for maize production were greater for the high fertilization rate (>50%) than for thelow rate (<50%). However, the financial returns for finger millet were more attractive for the low fertilization rate (>100%) than for the high rate (<100%). Although maize yield was greater compared with finger millet, the latter had a higher content of calcium and can be stored for up to five years. The superiority of maize, in terms of yields, over finger millet and sorghum, suggests that the recommendation to substitute maize with small grains may not be a robust option for adaptation to increased temperatures and more frequent droughts likely to be experienced in Zimbabwe and other parts of southern Africa. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recently, carbon capture and storage by soils is recognized as an important function of agricultural fields. When discussing global warming mitigation such as proper agricultural practices and/or an appropriate depth of composting in agricultural lands for soil carbon storage, not only CO2 efflux, but also profiles of CO2 concentrations in soil air, are important. This study evaluated the performance of the SOILCO2 model in predicting soil CO2 dynamics, especially CO2 concentrations at various depths in an arable bare land of Andisol. We attempted to experimentally determine two soil parameters required for the CO2 production model, the optimal CO2 production rate and the parameter of a depth-dependent CO2 production function by measuring CO2 efflux from the surface and a vertical distribution of concentration of dissolved organic carbon, respectively. Soil CO2 concentrations, water contents and temperatures were continuously monitored for approximately one year at three different depths, and simulated results were compared with the observed data for model validation. We concluded that, for the upper soil layer (from the surface to approximately 20 cm in depth), the two soil parameters were properly determined, and soil CO2 dynamics in arable bare land could be well predicted by using the SOILCO2 model. To improve simulation results of CO2 concentrations, especially in deeper layers, it may be necessary to consider the biodegradability of dissolved organic carbon. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.The IPCC 5th Assessment Report (Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis) was accepted at the 36th Session of the IPCC on 26 September 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden. It consists of the full scientific and technical assessment undertaken by Working Group I. This comprehensive assessment of the physical aspects of climate change puts a focus on those elements that are relevant to understand past, document current, and project future of climate change. The assessment builds on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and the recent Special Report on Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. The assessment covers the current knowledge of various processes within, and interactions among, climate system components, which determine the sensitivity and response of the system to changes in forcing, and they quantify the link between the changes in atmospheric constituents, and hence radiative forcing, and the consequent detection and attribution of climate change. Projections of changes in all climate system components are based on model simulations forced by a new set of scenarios. The report also provides a comprehensive assessment of past and future sea level change in a dedicated chapter. The primary purpose of this Technical Summary is to provide the link between the complete assessment of the multiple lines of independent evidence presented in the main report and the highly condensed summary prepared as Policy makers Summary. The Technical Summary thus serves as a starting point for those readers who seek the full information on more specific topics covered by this assessment. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased. Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system. The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750. Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system. Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. The in-depth review for past, present and future of climate change is carried out on the basis of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.Climate projections in many U.S. metropolitan areas show increases in daily temperature, and potential shifts in rainfall patterns toward stronger, more intense storms. At the same time, metropolitan regions continuing to experience population growth face the prospect of areal expansion and higher land-use intensities. The possible coupling of such developmental changes and more frequent intense precipitation events poses a litany of well-known challenges to storm-water management. This paper reports survey research that examines the experiences and expectations of engineers, planners, and other agency staff in storm-water management in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan region in the context of climate change. We find that staff from jurisdictions with a high degree of development and strong population growth, and those with more work experience, engagement with climate issues in their work, and greater belief that scientists understand climate change, exhibit a higher level of concern with the potential threat of climate change on storm water runoff.This paper explores the lessons learned by leaders in agricultural adaptation planning in order to assist other jurisdictions to develop adaptation strategies. It seeks to identify effective institutional, participatory and collaborative processes involved in designing agricultural adaptation strategies at the national and sub-national levels in Germany, Finland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Its methodology is based on review of agricultural adaptation policy documents, research initiatives, stakeholder engagement processes, and cross-sectoral collaborations as well as interviews with key informants such as leaders and actors in adaptation planning. The gathered data show that early adapters have an improved regional and national understanding of climatic impacts, and of the risks to agriculture before the initiation of the planning process. The results indicate that the interplay between bottom-up and top-down initiatives has been crucial in the development of adaptation strategies. The former has provided rich and robust participation in designing, implementing and monitoring adaptations, while the latter was important for prioritizing and legitimizing the development of strategy. It also provided access to high-level decision makers and funding. The results of the study suggest that fostering cross-sectoral collaborations-especially by focusing on broader questions such as the role of agriculture in society-has become an important part of adaptation planning. Finally, our results also stress that adaptation planning in agriculture could be enhanced by skills development and mutual learning across stakeholder groups, research and policy-makers, and through the ongoing interactive development of institutional capabilities.Climate change impacts affecting coastal areas, such as sea-level rise and storm surge events, are expected to have significant social, economic and environmental consequences worldwide. Ongoing population growth and development in highly urbanised coastal areas will exacerbate the predicted impacts on coastal settlements. Improving the adaptation potential of highly vulnerable coastal communities will require greater levels of planning and policy integration across sectors and scales. However, to date, there is little evidence in the literature which demonstrates how climate policy integration is being achieved. This paper contributes to this gap in knowledge by drawing on the example provided by the process of developing cross-sectoral climate change adaptation policies and programmes generated for three coastal settlement types as part of the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQCARI), a 3-year multi-sectoral study of climate change adaptation options for human settlements in South East Queensland, Australia. In doing so, we first investigate the benefits and challenges to cross-sectoral adaptation to address climate change broadly and in coastal areas. We then describe how cross-sectoral adaptation policies and programmes were generated and appraised involving the sectors of urban planning and management, coastal management, emergency management, human health and physical infrastructure as part of SEQCARI. The paper concludes by discussing key considerations that can inform the development and assessment of cross-sectoral climate change adaptation policies and programmes in highly urbanised coastal areas.The strategic use of science in regional policy-making forums often assumes collaborative interactions between stakeholders. However, other types of stakeholder interactions are possible. This paper uses the ecology of games to frame an investigation into stakeholder participation in the policy networks for regional climate change planning for South East Queensland, Australia. We tracked organisational participation in policy forums between 2008 and 2012. We then used a novel bipartite network theoretical approach to identify participation by different types of organisations across shared multiple forums, which we argue prefaces: cooperation, collaboration, support or advocacy. Network analysis was then combined with semi-structured interviews to access how scientific information was utilised across the regional network. Our results suggest that stakeholder interactions were predominately used to advocate for organisational agendas. Advocacy artificially narrows the scope of possible policy options and represents a biased, selective use of information. While advocacy is an important part of policy process, as a counter balance, explicit efforts are needed to recurrently expand the scope of policy options.Climate compatible development (CCD) has emerged as a new concept that bridges climate change adaptation, mitigation and community-based development. Progress towards CCD requires multi-stakeholder, multi-sector working and the development of partnerships between actors who may not otherwise have worked together. This creates challenges and opportunities that require careful examination at project and institutional levels and necessitates the sharing of experiences between different settings. In this paper, we draw on the outcomes from a multi-stakeholder workshop held in Mozambique in 2012, the final in a series of activities in a regional project assessing emerging CCD partnerships across southern Africa. The workshop involved policymakers, researchers and representatives from NGOs and the private sector. We employ a content analysis of workshop notes and presentations to identify the progress and challenges in moving four case study countries (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe) towards CCD pathways, by exploring experiences from both project and policy levels. To advance institutional support for the development of successful CCD policies, practices and partnerships, we conclude that there is a need for: (a) institutional development at the national level to strengthen coordination and more clearly define roles and responsibilities across sectors, based on the identification of capacity and knowledge gaps; (b) partnership development, drawing on key strengths and competences of different stakeholders and emphasising the roles of the private sector and traditional authorities; (c) learning and knowledge-sharing through national and regional fora; and (d) development of mechanisms that permit more equitable and transparent distribution of costs and benefits. These factors can facilitate development of multi-stakeholder, multi-level partnerships that are grounded in community engagement from the outset, helping to translate CCD policy statements into on-the-ground action.Climate change is one of the main environmental issues challenging cities in the 21th century. At present, more than half of the world population lives in cities and the latter are responsible for 60% to 80% of global energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are the main causes of the change in climate conditions. In the meantime, they are seriously threatened by the heterogeneous climate-related phenomena, very often exacerbated by the features of the cities themselves. In the last decade, international and European efforts have been mainly focused on mitigation rather than on adaptation strategies. Europe is one of the world leaders in global mitigation policies, while the issue of adaptation has gained growing importance in the last years. As underlined by the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change, even though climate change mitigation still remains a priority for the global community, large room has to be devoted to adaptation measures, in order to effectively face the unavoidable impacts and related economic, environmental and social costs of climate change (EC, 2013). Thus, measures for adaptation to climate change are receiving an increasing financial support and a growing number of European countries are implementing national and urban adaptation strategies to deal with the actual and potential climate change impacts. According to the above considerations, this paper explores strengths and weaknesses of current adaptation strategies in European cities. First the main suggestions of the European Community to improve urban adaptation to climate change are examined; then, some recent Adaptation Plans are analyzed, in order to highlight challenges and opportunities arising from the adaptation processes at urban level and to explore the potential of Adaptation Plans to promote a smart growth in the European cities.Homegarden agroforestry is believed to be more diverse and provide multiple services for household than other monocropping system and this is due to the combination of crops, trees and livestock. The aim of this study was to assess socio-economic and agro-ecological role of homegardens in Jabithenan district, North-western Ethiopia. Two sites purposively and two villages randomly from each site were selected. Totally 96 households; in which 48 from homegarden agroforestry user and 48 from non-tree based garden user were selected for this study. Socio-economic data and potential economic and agro-ecosystem role of homegarden agroforestry over non-tree based garden were collected by using semi-structured and structured questionnaires to the households. Homegarden agroforestry significantly (P < 0.05) improved the farmers cash income than non-tree based garden. With insignificant garden size; homegarden agroforestry practice provides good socio-economical and agro-ecological service for farmers which have a higher implication for climate change adaptation than non-tree based garden.Carbon offset mechanisms have been established to mitigate climate change through changes in land management. Regulatory frameworks enable landowners and managers to generate saleable carbon credits on domestic and international markets. Identifying and managing the associated co-benefits and dis-benefits involved in the adoption of carbon offset projects is important for the projects to contribute to the broader goal of sustainable development and the provision of benefits to the local communities. So far it has been unclear how Indigenous communities can benefit from such initiatives. We provide a spatial analysis of the carbon and biodiversity potential of one offset method, planting biodiverse native vegetation, on Indigenous land across Australia. We discover significant potential for opportunities for Indigenous communities to achieve carbon sequestration and biodiversity goals through biodiverse plantings, largely in southern and eastern Australia, but the economic feasibility of these projects depend on carbon market assumptions. Our national scale cost-effectiveness analysis is critical to enable Indigenous communities to maximise the benefits available to them through participation in carbon offset schemes.Adaptation of agricultural industries to climate change will make a major difference to the extent of the impacts experienced as a result of climate change. Vulnerability assessments provide the basis for developing strategies to reduce social vulnerability and plan for climate adaptation. Primary industries have been identified as the most vulnerable industry sector globally. We review how primary producers might be socially vulnerable to climate change and develop a 'vulnerability typology' of cattle producers based on survey responses from 240 producers across northern Australia. We measured social vulnerability according to ten indicators of climate sensitivity (resource dependency) and four indicators of adaptive capacity. Using a K-means clustering analysis we identified four main types' of cattle producers. Type 1 producers (43%) were vulnerable because they had low strategic skills and low interest in changing behaviour. Mean age was 59 years old, they were weakly networked within the industry and businesses were small. Type II producers (41%) had low strategic skills, poorly managed risk and uncertainty, had medium sized businesses and were 51 years old on average. Only 16% of producers (Type III and IV) appeared to have resilience to change. Type III producers (13.4%) had a stronger psychological and financial buffer, were 52 years old on average, were well networked and managed or owned larger businesses. Type IV producers (2.6%) managed risk well, liked to experiment with options and were interested in change. They were 41 years old on average, managed extremely large properties, were well networked, perceived themselves as responsible for the future productivity of their land and were early adopters of new technology. By providing knowledge of the different ways in which people can be vulnerable to climate change, vulnerability assessments can enable decision-makers to prioritise their efforts, provide a basis for early engagement, and tailor a range of adaptation approaches to most effectively accommodate and support the divergent requirements of different "types" of resource-users. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The magnitude and frequency of climatic extremes, such as drought, are predicted to increase under future climate change conditions. However, little is known about how other factors such as CO2 concentration will modify plant community responses to these extreme climatic events, even though such modifications are highly likely. We asked whether the response of grasslands to repeat extreme drought events is modified by elevated CO2, and if so, what are the underlying mechanisms? We grew grassland mesocosms consisting of 10 co-occurring grass species common to the Cumberland Plain Woodland of western Sydney under ambient and elevated CO2 and subjected them to repeated extreme drought treatments. The 10 species included a mix of C-3, C-4, native and exotic species. We hypothesized that a reduction in the stomatal conductance of the grasses under elevated CO2 would be offset by increases in the leaf area index thus the retention of soil water and the consequent vulnerability of the grasses to extreme drought would not differ between the CO2 treatments. Our results did not support this hypothesis: soil water content was significantly lower in the mesocosms grown under elevated CO2 and extreme drought-related mortality of the grasses was greater. The C-4 and native grasses had significantly higher leaf area index under elevated CO2 levels. This offset the reduction in the stomatal conductance of the exotic grasses as well as increased rainfall interception, resulting in reduced soil water content in the elevated CO2 mesocosms. Our results suggest that projected increases in net primary productivity globally of grasslands in a high CO2 world may be limited by reduced soil water availability in the future.A theoretical basis is required for comparing key features and critical elements in wild fisheries and aquaculture supply chains under a changing climate. Here we develop a new quantitative metric that is analogous to indices used to analyse food-webs and identify key species. The Supply Chain Index (SCI) identifies critical elements as those elements with large throughput rates, as well as greater connectivity. The sum of the scores for a supply chain provides a single metric that roughly captures both the resilience and connectedness of a supply chain. Standardised scores can facilitate cross-comparisons both under current conditions as well as under a changing climate. Identification of key elements along the supply chain may assist in informing adaptation strategies to reduce anticipated future risks posed by climate change. The SCI also provides information on the relative stability of different supply chains based on whether there is a fairly even spread in the individual scores of the top few key elements, compared with a more critical dependence on a few key individual supply chain elements. We use as a case study the Australian southern rock lobster Jasus edwardsii fishery, which is challenged by a number of climate change drivers such as impacts on recruitment and growth due to changes in large-scale and local oceanographic features. The SCI identifies airports, processors and Chinese consumers as the key elements in the lobster supply chain that merit attention to enhance stability and potentially enable growth. We also apply the index to an additional four real-world Australian commercial fishery and two aquaculture industry supply chains to highlight the utility of a systematic method for describing supply chains. Overall, our simple methodological approach to empirically-based supply chain research provides an objective method for comparing the resilience of supply chains and highlighting components that may be critical.Global scale forecasts of range shifts in response to global warming have provided vital insight into predicted species redistribution. We build on that insight by examining whether local warming will affect habitat on spatiotemporal scales relevant to regional agencies. We used generalized additive models to quantify the realized habitat of 46 temperate/boreal marine species using 41+ years of survey data from 35 degrees N-48 degrees N in the Northwest Atlantic. We then estimated change in a "realized thermal habitat index" under short-term (2030) and long-term (2060) warming scenarios. Under the 2030 scenario similar to 10% of species will lose realized thermal habitat at the national scale (USA and Canada) but planktivores are expected to lose significantly in both countries which may result in indirect changes in their predators' distribution. In contrast, by 2060 in Canada, the realized habitat of 76% of species will change (55% will lose, 21% will gain) while in the USA, the realized habitat of 85% of species will change (65% will lose, 20% will gain). If all else were held constant, the ecosystem is projected to change radically based on thermal habitat alone. The magnitude of the 2060 warming projection (similar to 1.5-3 degrees C) was observed in 2012 affirming that research is needed on effects of extreme "weather" in addition to increasing mean temperature. Our approach can be used to aggregate at smaller spatial scales where temperate/boreal species are hypothesized to have a greater loss at similar to 40 degrees N. The uncertainty associated with climate change forecasts is large, yet resource management agencies still have to address climate change. How? Since many fishery agencies do not plan beyond 5 years, a logical way forward is to incorporate a "realized thermal habitat index" into the stock assessment process. Over time, decisions would be influenced by the amount of suitable thermal habitat, in concert with gradual or extreme warming.This special issue provides a synthesis of the status and development of marine protected area (MPA) networks at regional, national, and subnational scales in response to the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF) commitments to establish a Coral Triangle Marine Protected Area System (CTMPAS) to reduce threats to marine resources in the region. The six articles selected describe: the status of MPAs in the Coral Triangle; key principles and strategies to apply at a regional scale under the Coral Triangle Marine Protected Area System (CTMPAS) Framework and Action Plan; successes and challenges regarding developing a regional database (the Coral Triangle Atlas) to track progress toward MPA targets; ecological considerations and guidelines for designing marine reserves to maximize benefits for fisheries management, biodiversity protection, and climate adaptation; social-economic drivers affecting marine resource use, and strategies required to improve food security and incomes; and case studies (one from each of the six countries) that exemplify different approaches, best practices, and lessons learned for developing MPA networks in the Coral Triangle. This introduction provides the context regarding the Coral Triangle and MPA commitments under the CTI-CFF, which endorsed a Regional Plan of Action for marine conservation in 2009.Overfishing and habitat destruction due to local and global threats are undermining fisheries, biodiversity, and the long-term sustainability of tropical marine ecosystems worldwide, including in the Coral Triangle. Well-designed and effectively managed marine reserve networks can reduce local threats, and contribute to achieving multiple objectives regarding fisheries management, biodiversity conservation and adaptation to changes in climate and ocean chemistry. Previous studies provided advice regarding ecological guidelines for designing marine reserves to achieve one or two of these objectives. While there are many similarities in these guidelines, there are key differences that provide conflicting advice. Thus, there is a need to provide integrated guidelines for practitioners who wish to design marine reserves to achieve all three objectives simultaneously. Scientific advances regarding fish connectivity and recovery rates, and climate and ocean change vulnerability, also necessitate refining advice for marine reserve design. Here we review ecological considerations for marine reserve design, and provide guidelines to achieve all three objectives simultaneously regarding: habitat representation; risk spreading; protecting critical, special and unique areas; reserve size, spacing, location, and duration; protecting climate resilient areas; and minimizing and avoiding threats. In addition to applying ecological guidelines, reserves must be designed to address social and governance considerations, and be integrated within broader fisheries and coastal management regimes.Agricultural production is sensitive to weather and thus directly affected by climate change. Plausible estimates of these climate change impacts require combined use of climate, crop, and economic models. Results from previous studies vary substantially due to differences in models, scenarios, and data. This paper is part of a collective effort to systematically integrate these three types of models. We focus on the economic component of the assessment, investigating how nine global economic models of agriculture represent endogenous responses to seven standardized climate change scenarios produced by two climate and five crop models. These responses include adjustments in yields, area, consumption, and international trade. We apply biophysical shocks derived from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's representative concentration pathway with end-of-century radiative forcing of 8.5 W/m(2). The mean biophysical yield effect with no incremental CO2 fertilization is a 17% reduction globally by 2050 relative to a scenario with unchanging climate. Endogenous economic responses reduce yield loss to 11%, increase area of major crops by 11%, and reduce consumption by 3%. Agricultural production, crop-land area, trade, and prices show the greatest degree of variability in response to climate change, and consumption the lowest. The sources of these differences include model structure and specification; in particular, model assumptions about ease of land use conversion, intensification, and trade. This study identifies where models disagree on the relative responses to climate shocks and highlights research activities needed to improve the representation of agricultural adaptation responses to climate change.Researchers and policy makers increasingly recognize the need to adapt to future changes in climate, given that past emissions of greenhouse gases have already committed the world to some level of climate change. However, the current understanding of the costs and benefits of adaptation measures is still fairly rudimentary, and far from comprehensive. An assessment is presented of the current state of knowledge on the magnitude of adaptation costs in the United States. While incomplete, the studies suggest that adaptation cost could be as high as tens or hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the middle of this century. Key studies are identified in each sector, and the cost estimates and approaches to cost estimation are surveyed. Methodological issues are highlighted in interpreting, comparing, and aggregating adaptation cost estimates. Policy recommendations are made along with appropriate steps to make future adaptation cost studies more comparable within and across sectors and more accessible and relevant to policy and decision makers.Policy relevanceDesigning and implementing climate change adaptation policy requires good information about the effectiveness and cost of available adaptive options. The current state of knowledge on adaptation costs in the United States is assessed and significant gaps in the literature are highlighted - particularly in terms of sectoral and geographic coverage - as well as inconsistencies in methodologies and assumptions that hamper comparison across studies. Critical steps are identified that can be taken to make adaptation cost studies more accessible and useful to decision makers. The findings and recommendations are relevant to adaptation cost studies globally, not just in the United States.This article assesses the role of the public sector in adaptation to climate change. We first offer a definition and categorization of climate change adaptation. We then consider the primary economic principles that can guide the assignment of adaptation tasks to either the private or the public sector, as well as those guiding assignment within the public sector itself. We find that the role of the state in adaptation policy is limited. We identify information policy, the provision of a suitable regulatory framework in some markets, the formation of human capital and policies fostering economic growth, as well as technological and medical knowledge as the main areas in which the public sector has a role in climate change adaptation. (JEL classification numbers: H54, Q54, Q58).Discussing adaptation has previously been viewed as "taboo", a distraction that shifts focus away from mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. However, this view has recently changed as researchers, governments, and the UNFCCC have acknowledged the necessity of both mitigation and adaptation. Yet there has been little research on the public's view of adaptation and whether public consideration of adaptation (local or otherwise) might have positive effects or, as feared, distract people from mitigation. Contrary to these fears, here we experimentally show that consideration of local adaptation to sea-level rise significantly increased people's willingness to perform personal emissions-reducing behaviors, such as using public transport, eating less meat, and flying less. We surveyed residents in the Wellington region of New Zealand, randomly assigning respondents either to answer questions about climate change and mitigation only, or first to answer questions about potential local sea-level rise and adaptation measures that could be taken in their region. Respondents who first considered this local adaptation scored significantly higher on a measure of personal willingness to mitigate, and responses did not change depending on participants' level of skepticism of anthropogenic climate change. These results reveal the potential for discussion and consideration of local adaptation to engage the public in mitigation actions, possibly by making the problem of climate change less distant and more tangible. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Managing disaster risk is increasingly being considered a key line of response in climate adaptation. While funding support for adaptation has been pledged, rationales for support and cost implications are essentially unclear, which may explain why financing is currently only forthcoming at low levels. Various estimates for the costs of adaptation have been suggested, yet the rationale and robustness of the estimates have been difficult to verify. Focusing on weather-related extreme events, we conduct a global assessment of the public finance costs for financially managing extreme event risks. In doing so, we assess countries' fiscal disaster vulnerability, which we operationalize as the public sector's ability to pay for relief to the affected population and support the reconstruction of lost assets and infrastructure. Methods employed include minimum-distance techniques to estimate the tail behaviour of country disaster risks as well as the inclusion of non-linear loss and financing resources relationships. We find that many countries appear fiscal vulnerable and would require assistance from the donor community in order to bolster their fiscal resilience. Our estimates may inform decisions pertaining to a global fund for absorbing different levels of country risks. We find the costs of funds covering different risk layers to be in the lower billions of dollars annually, compared to estimates of global climate adaptation which reach to more than USD 100 billion annually. Our estimates relate to today's climate, and while disaster losses have currently not been robustly linked to climate change, physical science has made a strong case in attributing changes in climate extremes to anthropogenic Climate Change. We suggest that estimates of current weather variability and related risks, although also associated with substantial uncertainty, can be interpreted as a baseline for discussion and any future projections of risks. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change impacts threaten existing development efforts and achieving future sustainability goals. To build resilience and societal preparedness towards climate change, integration of adaptation into development is being increasingly emphasized. To date, much of the adaptation literature has been theoretical, reflecting the absence of empirical data from activities on the ground. However, the Funds established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and managed by the Global Environment Facility, the Least Developed Countries Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund and the Strategic Priority for Adaptation, have approved financing for 133 adaptation projects in 70 countries with sufficient documented experience to allow for initial categorization and evaluation. This article provides the first substantial compendium of adaptation actions identified through the allocation and disbursement of these Funds and organizes these actions into a generalized typology of adaptation activities. The information obtained sheds new insight into what adaptation is, in practice, and suggests some next steps to strengthen the empirical database. Ten types of overarching adaptation activities were identified through an analysis of 92 projects financed through these Funds. This paper analyzes these adaptation activities and compares them with theoretical constructs of adaptation typologies. We find that many of the early ideas and concepts advanced by theoreticians are consistent with results from the field. The adaptation categories that recur the most in Global Environment Facility projects are enabling and relatively inexpensive measures, such as those related to capacity building, policy reform, and planning and management. However, a rich panoply of technical actions ranging from information and communications technology, to early warning systems, to new or improved infrastructure, are also identified as common project goals. Future refinements of the costs of various adaptation actions, the mixture of technical and management options, and evaluating the efficacy of actions implemented, will be key to informing the future global adaptation agenda. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A long history of household-level research has provided important local-level insights into climate adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. It remains unclear to what extent these strategies are generalizable or vary across regions. In this study we ask about three potential key factors influencing farming households' ability to adapt: access to weather information, household and agricultural production-related assets, and participation in local social institutions. We use a 12-country data set from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to explore the links between these three potential drivers of agricultural change and the likelihood that farmers made farm-associated changes, such as adopting improved crop varieties, increasing fertilizer use, investing in improved land management practices, and changing the timing of agricultural activities. We find evidence that access to weather information, assets, and participation in social institutions are associated with households that have reported making farming changes in recent years, although these results vary across countries and types of practices. Understanding these drivers and outcomes of farm-associated changes across different socio-economic and environmental conditions is critical for ongoing dialogues for climate-resilient strategies and policies for increasing the adaptive capacity of smallholders under climate change. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Intensified climate and market turbulence requires resilience to a multitude of changes. Diversity reduces the sensitivity to disturbance and fosters the capacity to adapt to various future scenarios. What really matters is diversity of responses. Despite appeals to manage resilience, conceptual developments have not yet yielded a break-through in empirical applications. Here, we present an approach to empirically reveal the 'response diversity': the factors of change that are critical to a system are identified, and the response diversity is determined based on the documented component responses to these factors. We illustrate this approach and its added value using an example of securing food supply in the face of climate variability and change. This example demonstrates that quantifying response diversity allows for a new perspective: despite continued increase in cultivar diversity of barley, the diversity in responses to weather declined during the last decade in the regions where most of the barley is grown in Finland. This was due to greater homogeneity in responses among new cultivars than among older ones. Such a decline in the response diversity indicates increased vulnerability and reduced resilience. The assessment serves adaptive management in the face of both ecological and socioeconomic drivers. Supplier diversity in the food retail industry in order to secure affordable food in spite of global price volatility could represent another application. The approach is, indeed, applicable to any system for which it is possible to adopt empirical information regarding the response by its components to the critical factors of variability and change. Targeting diversification in response to critical change brings efficiency into diversity. We propose the generic procedure that is demonstrated in this study as a means to efficiently enhance resilience at multiple levels of agrifood systems and beyond. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Faced with the growing influence of climate change on climate driven perturbations such as flooding and biodiversity loss, managing the relationship between mangroves and their environment has become imperative for their protection. Hampering this is the fact that the full scope of the threats faced by specific mangrove forests is not yet well documented. Amongst some uncertainties is the nature of the relationship/interaction of mangroves with climate driven perturbations prevalent in their habitat such as coastal floods. We investigated the relationship between coastal flooding and mangrove forest stabilization, identify perceptions of flood risk and responses to offset identified effects. Random household surveys were carried out within four communities purposively sampled within the Cap Cameroon. Coastal changes were investigated over a period of 43 years (1965-2008). Seasonal flooding improved access to mangrove forests and hence promoted their exploitation for non-timber forest products (NTFPs) such as fuel wood and mangrove poles. 989 ha of mangrove forests were estimated to be lost over a period of 43 years in Cap Cameroon with implications on forest resources base, ecosystem stability, and livelihoods. Alternative livelihood activities were found to be carried out to moderate interruptions in fishing, with associated implications for mangrove forest dynamics. Respondents were of the opinion that risks associated with floods and mangrove deforestation will pose a major challenge for sustainable management of mangroves. These locally relevant perceptions and responses should however enable the identification of pertinent needs, challenges and opportunities to inform and orient effective decision-making, and to facilitate the development and participation in adaptive management strategies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rising sea levels, due to thermal expansion of the ocean, and higher frequency and intensity of coastal and inland storms threaten coastal communities worldwide. The implementation of pro-active, planned adaptation to reduce community vulnerability is strongly dependent upon people's perception of the threat posed to their communities at the local scale. Unfortunately, the scarcity of research into effective risk communication limits our understanding of how climate change evidence can most effectively raise risk awareness and inspire community adaptation. With a focus on a case study situated in the Tantramar area of South-East New Brunswick, Canada an area subject to very large tidal forces from the Bay of Fundy this study set out to assess public awareness about the link between climate change and elevated risk of regional dyke failure, measure how different multi-media visualizations influence public risk perception, and provide general recommendations for the development of flood risk communication strategies in coastal zones. The results from 14 focus groups (n = 157 participants) revealed that 81% of respondents felt that the problem of climate change was considerable or severe. However, when asked for their assessment of personal vulnerability to dyke failure and subsequent coastal flooding, only 35.6% considered themselves to be at considerable or severe personal risk. Gender, education, and age were found to significantly influence initial risk perception to varying degrees, and were also associated with changes in risk perception following the communication session. While geovisually-enhanced communication strategies, involving 3D flood animations and web-based GIS maps, were no more effective at raising risk awareness than a non-enhanced communication package, qualitative responses suggested that the geovisualizations had greater emotional impact ("shock"), and contributed disproportionately to an expressed desire to become politically and socially active around the issue. In conclusion, in addition to presenting evidence in a clear and compelling way, effective coastal flood risk communication requires a supportive framework capable of building trust and encouraging public dialogue. Recommendations towards creating this framework are provided. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents a methodology for planning new water resources infrastructure investments and operating strategies in a world of climate change uncertainty. It combines a real options (e.g., options to defer, expand, contract, abandon, switch use, or otherwise alter a capital investment) approach with principles drawn from robust decision-making (RDM). RDM comprises a class of methods that are used to identify investment strategies that perform relatively well, compared to the alternatives, across a wide range of plausible future scenarios. Our proposed framework relies on a simulation model that includes linkages between climate change and system hydrology, combined with sensitivity analyses that explore how economic outcomes of investments in new dams vary with forecasts of changing runoff and other uncertainties. To demonstrate the framework, we consider the case of new multipurpose dams along the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. We model flexibility in design and operating decisionsthe selection, sizing, and sequencing of new dams, and reservoir operating rules. Results show that there is no single investment plan that performs best across a range of plausible future runoff conditions. The decision-analytic framework is then used to identify dam configurations that are both robust to poor outcomes and sufficiently flexible to capture high upside benefits if favorable future climate and hydrological conditions should arise. The approach could be extended to explore design and operating features of development and adaptation projects other than dams. Key Points <list id="wrcr20813-list-0001" list-type="bulleted"> <list-item id="wrcr20813-li-0001">No planning alternative is likely to dominate across plausible future conditions <list-item id="wrcr20813-li-0002">We present a method for generating information for the selection of robust planning alternatives <list-item id="wrcr20813-li-0003">Downside and upside metrics can assist enhanced decision makingThis study addresses the need for a policy-relevant climatic vulnerability model in sub-Saharan Africa, where data is typically poor and people are exposed to a wide range of environmental and socioeconomic stressors that are unique to the region. This research applies a multi-scale, multi-indicator methodology that allows policy-makers and experts flexibility to contextualize causal factors in the modeling process through selection of evidence-based variables of vulnerability. This process is easily scaled to stakeholders needs, whether at a state, district or local level. This article provides a framework to assist stakeholders and policy-makers in Malawi to determine what drives vulnerability at a household level, which areas in the country are most vulnerable and where development solutions should be applied. As financial assistance related to climate adaptation increases rapidly in Africa, this article presents timely results for Malawi and an auspicious methodology that can assist other vulnerable countries. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The new forest management stewardship of Quebec acknowledges the importance of integrating climate change consequences into forest management. However, forest professionals do not know how they could take climate change into account into their decision-making. This paper proposes the assessment of climate change vulnerability for three ecosystem-based forest management (EBFM) projects in Quebec: the Tembec project in the Abitibi region, the Triad project in the Mauricie region, and the Laurentian Wildlife Reserve project. The objectives were to identify: i) climate change vulnerabilities affecting forest ecosystems and forest management, ii) adaptation options to decrease these vulnerabilities, and iii) current EBFM practices impeding or facilitating the integration of climate change adaptations in forest management. Several features of EBFM, like promoting ecosystem resilience and using an adaptive management framework, may facilitate the integration of adaptation measures into the current forest management approach. We present climate change adaptation as a piece of the puzzle that would facilitate the achievement of EBFM objectives.While mitigation has been the dominant policy response to climate change in the global community, practitioners and scholars have argued that significant climate change will occur even in the event of dramatic emissions reductions in the near term, thus adaptation is vital to address these impacts and to maintain or restore ecosystem resilience to multiple stresses. Increasingly the need to mainstream this adaptation into development planning, sectoral decision-making and policy making is being recognised. This paper explores the challenges faced in trying to mainstream climate change adaptation policy in the context of other priorities, specifically biodiversity conservation. By investigating the case study of recent efforts by Defra and the England Biodiversity Group to embed climate change adaptation principles into their biodiversity conservation work and the insights gained into the barriers faced, we propose specific strategies that may be employed to overcome these barriers and speculate about the transferability of the lessons into other policy contexts. Key barriers include uncertainty about the future of funding and climate change as a policy priority, organisational silos leading to insufficient communication of the relevance of adaptation to conservation, and legacy of policies that deliver sub-optimal outcomes in the event of a changing climate. ECosystem-based climate change adaptation and mitigation may serve to overcome some of these barriers by delivering on multiple priorities simultaneously, and embedding adaptation in job descriptions/standard operating procedures may help to build new modes of practice. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change creates challenges for developments in coastal and delta areas. The risks are reduced more effectively if both planned and autonomous adaptations take place. Flood risk management is dominated by planned adaptation, which is primarily command-and-control in nature, e.g. spatial planning and engineered flood defenses. If autonomous adaptation is downplayed people are more likely to make land-use choices that collectively lead to increasing flood risks while leaving the costs of adaptation and land scarcity with governments. Unless governments provide stimuli, autonomous adaptation in flood-prone areas is unlikely to happen due to spatial externalities, path-dependency and time lag between private investment decisions and consequences. This paper reviews the theory and practice of using market-based instruments (MBIs) for flood-risk management as means for autonomous climate change adaptation. While the use of MBIs for climate change mitigation is widely discussed, systematized reviews of various MBIs for climate change adaptation are rare. Yet, international experience shows that such measures as preferential taxes, non-perverse subsidies, flood insurance, marketable permits and transferable development rights can engage local stakeholders and provide price signals that stimulate individual adaptation. MBIs combined with command-based instruments help policy-makers to guide developments in flood-prone zone by affecting individual behavior via market forces. As adverse consequences of climate change become more pronounced locally, quantity-based MBIs unfeasible at present should become more attractive. Price-based MBIs that are currently employed could be designed to strategically account for increasing climate-induced flood and erosion probabilities in coastal and delta areas. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As both global (GCM) and regional (RCM) climate models have their own advantages, the most comprehensive picture of changes in precipitation and their uncertainty ranges can be achieved by comparing the results of both model categories. Here we have evaluated seasonal changes in indices representing excess or scarcity of precipitation in Europe on the basis of simulations performed with ten GCMs with a reasonably high spatial resolution and, for comparison, with five RCMs driven by one and the same GCM. We found no fundamental differences between the GCMs and RCMs in the projected tendency towards a more extreme precipitation climate, characterized by increases both in indices representing wet conditions and also dry conditions. Most evidently in the Northern European summer and Southern European winter, the differences in the responses of the various indices between the present sets of GCMs and RCMs could be explained by the dissimilar changes in seasonal mean precipitation. The scatter among the projected changes was in general much smaller for the RCM than for the GCM simulations. The projections of individual RCMs mainly fall within the interval determined by the GCM projections. This indicates that the GCM ensemble yielded more comprehensive estimates for the uncertainty ranges in the extreme precipitation indices.In this study, the summertime outdoor heat stress hazard and heat disorder risks (HDR) were simulated numerically using a mesoscale meteorological model combined with an urban canopy model and a building energy model. Model grid maps including the 23 wards of Tokyo (23 Tokyo), Japan, were produced with a 1-km horizontal resolution for the period of July-September 2010. Model simulations of the daily maximum wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT(max)), which was adopted as a heat stress index, indicated the spatial heterogeneity of the heat stress hazard within 23 Tokyo. The heat stress hazard was greater in the inland western region, particularly for sunny conditions in July and August (based on the monthly mean; the maximum difference exceeded 2 degrees C for both sunny and shaded conditions). This likely occurred as a result of greater spatial heterogeneity in the globe temperature than in the air temperature among model grid cells, with differences in the radiation environment induced by differences in urban geometric parameters. Gridded mapping of HDR simulations proceeded in two steps, using the incidence rate and the absolute number of heat disorder patients (HDP). These simulations were achieved by combining the exponential relationships between the actual WBGT(max) and the number of HDP with the daytime grid population. Eventually, the resulting HDR maps incorporated the effects of the spatial heterogeneities of both the outdoor heat stress hazard and the daytime grid population.Following three decades of rather low investment in dams, many regions throughout the world are now seeking to further develop new storage capacity to meet exploding demands for water and to hedge against the risk posed by climate change. Storage capacity is often perceived as a key element of climate change adaptation strategies, while at the same time contributing to socioeconomic development through irrigation, energy generation, fish production, and municipal and industrial water supply. The benefits provided by dams must be balanced with the associated environmental and social costs, which can take various forms, such as the degradation of ecosystems because of altered flow regimes and the relocation of people from the impoundment area. The benefits of storage essentially come from the ability to move water in time, making it available during the low-flow season when it becomes more valuable. As river basins develop and new dams are constructed, it may be important for planning and operational purposes to assess the individual contribution of each reservoir to the benefits of storage. This paper presents a methodology to determine the economic value of storage in multireservoir systems based on the marginal net benefit functions of storage and on hydroeconomic modeling. A cascade of reservoirs in the Euphrates river basin is used to illustrate the methodology.Anthropogenic climate change is likely to add significant pressure to the determinants of public health, and to current health and social protection measures in high, middle and low income countries. Adaptation strategies within the health sector are being developed to address the multi-dimensional nature of the costs and impacts. We further develop and apply a new generic conceptual framework for development-compatible climate policy planning to evaluate policy options for middle and low income countries that reduce the adverse health effects of climate change. The criteria used for comparative evaluation included economic, environment, social and institutional factors. The proposed framework, incorporating system dynamics, provides a foundation for a decision-analytical approach to support the formulation of robust climate change adaptation policies to protect human health.Climate change is rapidly undermining terrestrial ecosystem resilience and capacity to continue providing their services to the benefit of humanity and nature. Because of the importance of terrestrial ecosystems to human well-being and supporting services, decision makers throughout the world are busy creating policy responses that secure multiple development and conservation objectives- including that of supporting terrestrial ecosystem resilience in the context of climate change. This article aims to advance analyses on climate policy evaluation and planning in the area of terrestrial ecosystem resilience by discussing adaptation policy options within the ecology-economy-social nexus. The paper evaluates these decisions in the realm of terrestrial ecosystem resilience and evaluates the utility of a set of criteria, indicators, and assessment methods, proposed by a new conceptual multi-criteria framework for pro-development climate policy and planning developed by the United Nations Environment Programme. Potential applications of a multicriteria approach to climate policy vis-A -vis terrestrial ecosystems are then explored through two hypothetical case study examples. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the utility of the multi-criteria approach in the context of other climate policy evaluation approaches, considers lessons learned as a result efforts to evaluate climate policy in the realm of terrestrial ecosystems, and reiterates the role of ecosystem resilience in creating sound policies and actions that support the integration of climate change and development goals.There is now a growing literature emphasizing the critical importance of social variables in the formulation of coastal management policies seeking to tackle climate change impacts. This paper focuses on the role of social capital, which is increasingly identified as having a significant role in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. We focus on public perceptions of the social costs and benefits arising from two management options (managed retreat/realignment and hold-the-line), the resulting level of policy acceptability, and how this acceptability is mediated by social capital parameters within coastal communities. These issues are examined by means of a quantitative social survey implemented in Romney Marsh (east Sussex/Kent, UK), an area facing significant impacts from climate change. We tested two models through path analysis with latent structures. The first correlates respondents' perceived costs and benefits with the level of public acceptability of the two policy options. In the second model, we introduce social capital variables, investigating the impacts on perceived social costs and benefits of the policy options, and the overall effect on the level of public acceptability. Our findings demonstrate: (1) perceived social costs and benefits of proposed policy options influence the level of public acceptability of these policies; (2) these social costs and benefits are connected with the level of public acceptability; and (3) specific social capital parameters (i.e. social trust, institutional trust, social networks and social reciprocity) influence perceived policy costs and benefits, and also have a significant impact on the level of public acceptability of proposed policy options.An integrated process involving participatory and modelling approaches for prioritizing and evaluating climate change adaptation options for the Kangsabati reservoir catchment is presented here. We assess the potential effects of climate change on water resources and evaluate the ability of stakeholder prioritized adaptation options to address adaptation requirements using the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) model. Two adaptation options, check dams and increasing forest cover, are prioritized using pair-wise comparison and scenario analysis. Future streamflow projections are generated for the mid-21st century period (2021-2050) using four high resolution (similar to 25 km) Regional Climate Models and their ensemble mean for SRES A1B scenario. WEAP simulations indicate that, compared to a base scenario without adaptation, both adaptation options reduce streamflow. In comparison to check dams, increasing forest cover shows greater ability to address adaptation requirements as demonstrated by the temporal pattern and magnitude of streamflow reduction. Additionally, over the 30 year period, effectiveness of check dams in reducing streamflow decreases by up to 40 %, while that of forest cover increases by up to 47 %. Our study highlights the merits of a comparative assessment of adaptation options and we conclude that a combined approach involving stakeholders, scenario analysis, modelling techniques and multi-model projections may support climate change adaptation decision-making in the face of uncertainty.Peacebuilding countries are concentrated in areas of heightened vulnerability to climate change impacts, and almost certainly lack the capacity to manage these impacts. In spite of this overlap, climate change adaptation and mitigation projects are typically excluded from peacebuilding activities. This is particularly alarming given that many analysts believe climate change will trigger, amplify or perpetuate humanitarian crises, population displacement, political extremism and violent conflict in the regions in which most peacebuilding operations take place. This paper investigates opportunities for integrating climate change into peacebuilding. It identifies three obstacles to this integration-the lack of climate change tools and policies that can be easily introduced into typical peacebuilding programming; the skepticism and complacency of the donor community; and tensions between the objectives and timeframes of peacebuilding and those of climate change response. The paper then examines opportunities to integrate climate change into four principal programmatic areas of peacebuilding-socio-economic recovery, politics and governance, security and rule of law, and human rights-and concludes that more attention needs to be given to these opportunities in order to build resilience and reduce the likelihood of more daunting and costly challenges in the future.Monitoring and evaluation is a critical component of adaptive management, enabling adjustment of management actions and the assumptions upon which they are based. Despite the recognised need for adaptive management of the coastal zone, the way in which monitoring and evaluation can support practice is not often considered. Monitoring involves activities that measure the effectiveness of actions, whereas evaluation involves the interpretation of that information. In the first national study of its type, we analysed the extent that monitoring and evaluation was used to support adaptive management in the coastal zone in Australia. An on-line survey of 70 practitioners found 54 (77%) conducted monitoring and evaluation, and of these, only 25 (46%) used it for adapting management, and 17 (32%) for evaluating management effectiveness and assumptions. Use of monitoring and evaluation for adapting management was significantly correlated with organisation type, but not with perceived sufficiency of monitoring and evaluation, or the extent it informed decision-making. Assessment breadth was highly variable. Organisations who used monitoring and evaluation to adapt management and test assumptions were significantly more likely to conduct broad assessment, although assessment of socio-economic condition, resources and activities were least likely to be assessed. This has implications for the types of management decisions monitoring and evaluation can inform. For example, to determine which actions are most cost effective in preventing coastal erosion, both resources and outcomes need to be assessed. Overall, our results indicate a propensity for organisations to claim adaptive behaviour, but evaluation design does not facilitate it. Inappropriate design, insufficient resources (financial, technical skills), and concern for assessment scale (including the need to share information across organisations to inform regionally meaningful assessments) impede more adaptive behaviour. Capacity building in the use of evaluation frameworks designed to specifically support learning would enhance adaptive coastal management in Australia. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article examines the role that civic agriculture in Georgia (US) plays in shaping attitudes, strategies, and relationships that foster both sustainability and adaptation to a changing climate. Civic agriculture is a social movement that attracts a specific type of "activist" farmer, who is linked to a strong social network that includes other farmers and consumers. Positioning farmers' practices within a social movement broadens the understanding of adaptive capacity beyond how farmers adapt to understand why they do so. By drawing upon qualitative and quantitative data and by focusing on the cosmological, organizational, and technical dimensions of the social movement, the study illuminates how social values and networks shape production and marketing strategies that enable farmers to share resources and risks. We propose a conceptual framework for understanding how technical and social strategies aimed to address the sustainability goals of the movement also increase adaptive capacity at multiple timescales. In conclusion, we outline directions for future research, including the need for longitudinal studies that focus on consumer motivation and willingness to pay, the effects of scale on consumer loyalty and producer cooperation, and the role of a social movement in climate change adaptation. Finally, we stress that farmers' ability to thrive in uncertain climate futures calls for transformative approaches to sustainable agriculture that support the development of strong social networks.Adaptation to climate change, particularly flood risks, may come to pose large challenges in the future and will require cooperation among a range of stakeholders. However, there presently exists little research especially on the integration of the private sector in adaptation. In particular, recently developed state programs for adaptation have so far been focused on the public sector. Insurance providers may have much to contribute as they offer other parts of society services to appropriately identify, assess and reduce the financial impacts of climate change-induced risks. This study aims to explore how the institutional distribution of responsibility for flood risk is being renegotiated within the UK, Germany and Netherlands. Examining how the insurance industry and the public sector can coordinate their actions to promote climate change adaptation, the study discusses how layered natural hazard insurance systems may result from attempts to deal with increasing risks due to increasing incidences of extreme events and climate change. It illustrates that concerns over the risks from extreme natural events have prompted re-assessments of the current systems, with insurance requiring long-term legislative frameworks that defines the objectives and responsibilities of insurers and the different political authorities.Islands are known to be vulnerable to natural hazards, resulting in substantial risks for their tourism industries. To facilitate the systematic analysis of the underlying vulnerability drivers, a tourism disaster vulnerability framework was developed. The conceptual model then guided qualitative empirical research in three regions: the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. The results from 73 interviews highlight common, as well as idiosyncratic, factors that shape the islands' hazardscapes and vulnerabilities. Key vulnerabilities included social, economic, political, and environmental dimensions. Probably, the most critical vulnerability driver is the lack of private sector investment in disaster risk reduction. This is interrelated with deficient planning processes, on-going demand for coastal products, lack of political will, and poor environmental conditions. Notwithstanding many barriers, some businesses and organisations engage proactively in addressing disaster risk. The paper's empirical evidence supports the validity of the framework, and suggestions for further research are made.This article offers a review of research and policy on climate change in Portugal and is organized into three main themes: scientific knowledge and assessment of climate change; policy analysis and evaluation; and public engagement. Modern scientific research on meteorology and climatology started in Portugal in the 1950s and a strong community of researchers in climate science, vulnerabilities, impacts, and adaptation has since developed, particularly in the last decade. Nevertheless, there are still many gaps in research, especially regarding the economic costs of climate change in Portugal and costs and benefits of adaptation. Governmental policies with a strong emphasis on mitigation were introduced at the end of the 1990s. As greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise beyond its Kyoto target for 2012, the country had to resort to the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms in order to comply. Climate change adaptation policies were introduced in 2010 but are far from being fully implemented. Regarding public engagement with climate change, high levels of concern contrast with limited understanding and rather weak behavioral dispositions to address climate change. Citizens display a heavy reliance on the media as sources of information, which are dominated by a techno-managerial discourse mainly focused on the global level. The final part of the article identifies research gaps and outlines a research agenda. Connections between policy and research are also discussed. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:199-217. doi: 10.1002/wcc.258 Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the .We assess the feasibility of using airborne imagery for Buffel grass detection in Australian arid lands and evaluate four commonly used image classification techniques (visual estimate, manual digitisation, unsupervised classification and normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) thresholding) for their suitability to this purpose. Colour digital aerial photography captured at approximately 5 cm of ground sample distance (GSD) and four-band (visible-near-infrared) multispectral imagery (25 cm GSD) were acquired (14 February 2012) across overlapping subsets of our study site. In the field, Buffel grass projected cover estimates were collected for quadrates (10 m diameter), which were subsequently used to evaluate the four image classification techniques. Buffel grass was found to be widespread throughout our study site; it was particularly prevalent in riparian land systems and alluvial plains. On hill slopes, Buffel grass was often present in depressions, valleys and crevices of rock outcrops, but the spread appeared to be dependent on soil type and vegetation communities. Visual cover estimates performed best (r (2) 0.39), and pixel-based classifiers (unsupervised classification and NDVI thresholding) performed worst (r (2) 0.21). Manual digitising consistently underrepresented Buffel grass cover compared with field- and image-based visual cover estimates; we did not find the labours of digitising rewarding. Our recommendation for regional documentation of new infestation of Buffel grass is to acquire ultra-high-resolution aerial photography and have a trained observer score cover against visual standards and use the scored sites to interpolate density across the region.Scientists, managers, and policy-makers need functional and effective metrics to improve our understanding and management of biological invasions. Such metrics would help to assess progress towards management goals, increase compatibility across administrative borders, and facilitate comparisons between invasions. Here we outline key characteristics of tree invasions (status, abundance, spatial extent, and impact), discuss how each of these characteristics changes with time, and examine potential metrics to describe and monitor them. We recommend quantifying tree invasions using six metrics: (a) current status in the region; (b) potential status; (c) the number of foci requiring management; (d) area of occupancy (AOO) (i.e. compressed canopy area or net infestation); (e) extent of occurrence (EOO) (i.e. range size or gross infestation); and (f) observations of current and potential impact. We discuss how each metric can be parameterised (e.g. we include a practical method for classifying the current stage of invasion for trees following Blackburn's unified framework for biological invasions); their potential management value (e.g. EOO provides an indication of the area over which management is needed); and how they can be used in concert (e.g. combining AOO and EOO can provide insights into invasion dynamics; and we use potential status and threat together to develop a simple risk analysis tool). Based on these metrics, we propose a standardized template for reporting tree invasions that we hope will facilitate cross-species and inter-regional comparisons. While we feel this represents a valuable step towards standardized reporting, there is an urgent need to develop more consistent metrics for impact and threat, and for many specific purposes additional metrics are still needed (e.g. detectability is required to assess the feasibility of eradication).Climate change will likely have adverse human health effects that require federal agency involvement in adaptation activities. In 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13514, Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance. The order required federal agencies to develop and implement climate change adaptation plans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as part of a larger Department of Health and Human Services response to climate change, is developing such plans. We provide background on Executive Orders, outline tenets of climate change adaptation, discuss public health adaptation planning at both the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC, and outline possible future CDC efforts. We also consider how these activities may be better integrated with other adaptation activities that manage emerging health threats posed by climate change.Climate change is expected to increase forest vulnerability through disturbances such as windstorms and droughts. Forest managers are therefore investigating strategies to increase forest resistance and resilience, especially by promoting uneven-aged and mixed forests through group selection, and by reducing stand stocking and large trees proportion. However, there is little information on the long-term impacts of these two practices. The objectives of this study were (1) to develop an original silviculture algorithm designed for uneven-aged management and (2) to use it to assess the effects of the above-mentioned management methods in long-term simulations. We simulated individual and group selection techniques in order to study the effects of group size, harvesting intensity and their interactions on wood production, stand heterogeneity, and regeneration in mountain spruce-fir forests. We used the spatially explicit individual-based forest model Samsara2 to simulate forest dynamics. Our simulation results confirmed the positive effect of group selection practices on structure diversity and regeneration but not on spruce maintenance. Increasing harvesting intensity enabled forest destocking but decreased structure diversity and led to non-sustained yields for the most intensive scenarios. As adaptation measure, we thus recommend moderate group selection harvesting creating 500 m(2) gaps.Two-thirds of Britain's forest area is privately owned. Thus, understanding private forest owners and managers, and their attitudes to uncertainty and change, is essential for the success of climate change adaptation policies. The aims of this study are to (1) assess how beliefs in climate change in the private sector have influenced forest management practices; (2) identify constraints related to changes in species choice and silvicultural systems; (3) analyse the implications for implementing climate change policy in forestry. Semi-structured interviews with key informants who provide advice to, or manage woodlands in, the private forest sector in north Wales. Woodland managers and some advisers are not generally convinced of a need to adapt. They feel the future is uncertain, more usually in relation to tree disease than to climate change itself. Species choice is the principle focus of adaptation activities and reveals a deep divide in opinion. Commercial advisors look to new exotics but are inhibited by absence of markets, while small-scale owners rely more on native genetic diversity. Findings that are likely to apply widely include: the influential role of forest agents in forest management decisions including species choice; lack of confidence in climate change predictions, and in markets; more immediate concerns about tree pests and diseases; demand for leadership from the public sector, and for engagement amongst the private sector. Further research is needed across a wider area to test the variability in relationship between attitudes and behaviours, and local conditions including climate change predictions.This paper measures the economic impacts of climate change on China's grain production by using provincial time series data over a 32-year period. The panel data model and time series region model with/without adaptation are applied at the same time to assess the effectiveness of a common production function. To capture the effects of weather variables we employ a random coefficients model where the production elasticities are the logarithmic function on temperature and rainfall. A Cobb-Douglas production function with additional interaction between inputs and climate variables is applied. We find that the economic impacts of climate change are mixed, that is, some regions are winners and others are losers, and the effect is crop-specific, not general. With adaptation, the economic impacts of warming on grain production are always positive; less precipitation will benefit rice production, but will harm wheat and maize production. Most of the central, western and northern China, which have already been adapted, are less sensitive to climate variables, but some eastern provinces, such as Shandong and Hebei, are very vulnerable. However, this study finds that the adaptation by irrigation is not sensitive to climate change. In summary, the analysis indicates that policymakers should recognize that the climate change would change the productivity of factors, so a regional and crop-specific total-factor-adaptation model is recommended. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Increasingly, funding agencies are investing in integrated and transdisciplinary research to tackle "grand challenge" priority areas, critical for sustaining agriculture and protecting the environment. Coordinating multidisciplinary research teams capable of addressing these priority areas, however, presents its own unique set of challenges, ranging from bridging across multiple disciplinary perspectives to achieve common questions and methods to facilitating engagement in holistic and integrative thinking that promotes linkages from scholarship to societal needs. We propose that structural equation modeling (SEM) can provide a powerful framework for synergizing multidisciplinary research teams around grand challenge issues. Structural equation modeling can integrate both visual and statistical expression of complex hypotheses at all stages of the research process, from planning to analysis. Three elements of the SEM framework are particularly beneficial to multidisciplinary research teams; these include (i) a common graphical language that transcends disciplinary boundaries, (ii) iterative, critical evaluation of complex hypotheses involving manifest and latent variables and direct and indirect interactions, and (iii) enhanced opportunities to discover unanticipated interactions or causal pathways as empirical data are tested statistically against the model. Using our ongoing multidisciplinary, multisite field investigation of climate change adaptation and mitigation in annual row crop agroecosystems as a case study, we demonstrate the value of the SEM framework for project design, coordination, and implementation and provide recommendations for its broader application as a means to more effectively engage and address issues of critical societal concern.The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) clearly has a role to play in how projects with a federal nexus prepare for climate change. To help agencies improve their consideration of climate change, the Council on Environmental Quality in February 2010 released the NEPA draft guidance, which addresses both emissions and the effects of climate change on agency actions and the affected environment. We analyzed every available final environmental impact statement (154 total) released in July 2011-April 2012, and found that very few incorporated the climate adaptation elements of the 2010 draft guidance. Even the environmental impact statements with the most attention to climate change adaptation considered the effect of climate change with respect to only a limited number of the elements of the affected environment, failed to fully compare the various alternatives, or used short, qualitative statements rather than full analysis based on the best available science. We explore the possible reasons for this and present recommendations for overcoming these obstacles.The impacts of climate variability and change impinge upon different lives and livelihoods within agrarian populations in complex ways. While academic, donor, and implementer efforts to understand and act on this complexity have been profoundly influenced by gender analysis, most contemporary analyses are predicated on a construction of gender as binary (men versus women). This approach runs contrary to current understandings of gender and identity in the wider social science literature, which treats gender as a social categorization that takes meaning from its intersection with other identities, roles, and responsibilities. An emerging adaptation literature takes on this intersectional approach to gender, making conceptual, methodological, and empirical arguments against assessing the vulnerability of agrarian populations to the impacts of climate variability and change through binary gender categories. This literature argues that binary approaches are likely to overlook the specific challenges facing significant portions of any agrarian population, and therefore can result in maladaptive interventions that enhance, instead of ameliorate, the vulnerability of the most marginal and vulnerable. Though this emerging literature makes a compelling case for change, efforts to convince the academic and implementation communities focused on agrarian adaptation to adopt intersectional gender analyses point to two broad research frontiers. First, convincing these communities of the value of this shift will require an expanded, rigorous empirical base of evidence for who is overlooked by binary gender analysis relative to intersectional analysis in particular places. Second, facilitating the implementation of intersectional approaches will require methodological innovations that have thus far been under- addressed in this literature.The integration of risk reduction and climate change adaptation has become an urgent task in addressing increasing urban risk more effectively and efficiently. This paper analyses the extent to which climate change adaptation is integrated into the policies and regulatory frameworks that guide urban risk reduction in Nicaragua, and discusses related progress. The results reveal significant progress in integrating climate change adaptation into the policy and regulatory frameworks of the three relatively new fields of (a) disaster risk reduction, (b) environmental management and (c) urban planning. They show that differences in the degree of integration relate to the development and updates to policy instruments in each field, and the extent to which they are related to the implementation of international climate change agreements. Although initially climate change adaptation integration was focused on the protection of natural resources in general, and food production in particular, since 2008 authorities have shown increasing interest in a more comprehensive and integrated approach. Nevertheless, the integration of climate change adaptation into disaster risk reduction and urban planning still lags behind the advances made in the environmental management field, It is concluded that in order to achieve greater and more coherent integration of CCA and, ultimately, improve the way climate-related risks is dealt with, urban authorities need to systematically review current policies and regulations to assess the synergies and gaps. This requires inter-sectoral and participative work with the actors concerned at national and local level, as well as the establishment of related monitoring and learning mechanisms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Risk transfer, including insurance, is widely recognized as a tool for increasing financial resilience to severe weather events such as floods. The application of this mechanism varies widely across countries, with a range of different types and schemes in operation. While most of the analytical focus has so far been on those markets that have a long tradition of insurance, there is still a clear gap in our understanding of how this mechanism works in a developing country context. This paper assesses 27 insurance schemes that transfer the risk of economic losses arising from floods in low and middle income countries, focusing on the linkages between financial risk transfer and risk reduction. This aspect is important to avoid the effect of moral hazard and has gained particular relevance in the context of the climate change adaptation discourse, where some scholars and practitioners view insurance as a potential tool not just for current risks, but also to address projected future impacts of a changing climate by incentivizing risk reduction. We therefore look beyond the pure financial risk transfer nature of those 27 insurance schemes and investigate any prevention and risk reduction elements. Our analysis suggests that the potential for utilizing risk transfer for risk reduction is far from exhausted, with only very few schemes showing an operational link between risk transfer and risk reduction, while the effectiveness and implementation on the ground remains unclear. The dearth of linkages between risk reduction and insurance is a missed opportunity in the efforts to address rising risk levels, particularly in the context of climate change. Rising risk levels pose a threat to the insurability of floods, and insurance without risk reduction elements could lead to moral hazard. Therefore a closer linkage between risk transfer and risk reduction could make this a more sustainable and robust tool. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,One relatively novel way of assessing the characteristics and limitations of resilience and vulnerability (R&V) is undertaken in this article by investigating a growing alternative paradigm-loss and damage (L&D) policy. The idea of L&D as an emerging policy may be surprising to many in the disaster risk management community, and so we first outline the origins of this trend, and then explore the potential benefits and pitfalls of adopting it. This short article represents our preliminary opinions and observations regarding this reintroduction of a long-established concept. We also present results from a very brief peer-group survey on some of the first immediate reactions towards L&D policy. At this early stage, this article cannot offer a full-fledged analysis, but our reflections may serve as a starting point to encourage further discussion.The urban heat island (UHI) refers to the phenomenon of higher atmospheric and surface temperatures occurring in urban areas than in the surrounding rural areas. Mitigation of the UHI effects via the configuration of green spaces and sustainable design of urban environments has become an issue of increasing concern under changing climate. In this paper, the effects of the composition and configuration of green space on land surface temperatures (LST) were explored using landscape metrics including percentage of landscape (PLAND), edge density (ED) and patch density (PD). An oasis city of Aksu in Northwestern China was used as a case study. The metrics were calculated by moving window method based on a green space map derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery, and LST data were retrieved from Landsat TM thermal band. A normalized mutual information measure was employed to investigate the relationship between LST and the spatial pattern of green space. The results showed that while the PLAND is the most important variable that elicits LST dynamics, spatial configuration of green space also has significant effect on LST. Though, the highest normalized mutual information measure was with the PLAND (0.71), it was found that the ED and PD combination is the most deterministic factors of LST than the unique effects of a single variable or the joint effects of PLAND and PD or PLAND and ED. Normalized mutual information measure estimations between LST and PLAND and ED, PLAND and PD and ED and PD were 0.7679, 0.7650 and 0.7832, respectively. A combination of the three factors PLAND, PD and ED explained much of the variance of LST with a normalized mutual information measure of 0.8694. Results from this study can expand our understanding of the relationship between LST and street trees and vegetation, and provide insights for sustainable urban planning and management under changing climate. (C) 2014 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS) Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Anthropogenic climate change is likely to significantly increase human exposure to droughts and floods. It will also alter seasonal patterns of water availability and affect water quality and the health of aquatic ecosystems with various implications for social and economic wellbeing. Policy development for water resource adaptation needs to allow for a holistic and transparent analysis of the probable consequences of policy options for the wide variety of water uses and users, and the existing ecosystem services associated with any stream basin. This paper puts forward an innovative methodological framework for planning development-compatible climate policies drawing on multi-criteria decision analysis and an implicit risk-management approach to the economics of climate change. Its objectives are to describe how the generic methodology could be tailored for analysis of long-range water planning and policy options in developing countries, and to describe the place of climate change considerations in water governance and planning processes. An experimental thought-exercise applying the methodology to water policy development in Yemen provides further insights on the complexity of water adaptation planning. It also highlights the value of conducting sensitivity analysis to explore the implications of multiple climate scenarios, and the importance of accounting for policy portfolios rather than individual policy options. Rather than constituting a tool that can generate clear measures of optimal solutions in the context of adaptation to uncertain climate futures, we find that this approach is best suited to supporting comprehensive and inclusive planning processes, where the focus is on finding socially acceptable paths forward.This paper reports exploratory research conducted in a flood-impacted rural Australian town to identify the factors which residents perceived as supporting community resilience to disaster. There is a gap in this research area centred in the Australian disaster context. Since Australia is predicted to be highly impacted by the effects of climate change in the form of an increased incidence of flooding, an urgent need exists to examine the factors that confer resilience to disaster-impacted localities to inform suitable disaster mitigation and adaptation policies for the future. Because of the complexity of community resilience and its interrelationship with individual resilience, a multi-method approach was used: a demographic study to assess community stability and functioning before and after the flood disaster, focus group interviews to obtain from community members their views on what supported them and their community resilience and a survey to generalise the interview findings. Our operating hypothesis was that individuals remaining in the town post-flood were likely to be resilient to the flood disaster. The demographic study results pointed to a resilient community after the floods as they reflected stability in population numbers and socio-economic indicators. The interviews and survey showed that individual resilience was promoted by social connectedness and a sense of place, a factor that was also negatively linked to the desire to relocate from the community. The use of structural equation modelling of our results provided verification of prior research findings about the role of sense of place in supporting individuals' resilience. Results are discussed in the context of future climate change adaptation policy.Social, economic, and political context for women in Bangladesh makes them more vulnerable to climate change and food security. Climate change has serious impact on food insecurity. However, FAO emphasized that food security depends more on socio-economic condition than agro-climatic ones. To improve the socio-economic condition of the poor women thousands of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are working in Bangladesh and it is expected that there are numerous opportunities for strategic collaboration allowing Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and climate change adaptation, disaster management, and food security of poor. Through, empirical research in the south-western coastal area of Bangladesh this paper reveal that relatively poor understanding on climate change coupled with several other coastal issues (salinity, sea level rise, inundation, cyclones etc.) make rural livelihood a challenge, particularly for women. A number of MFIs are trying to create alternative employment opportunities to enhance food security of women. But study reveals that majority of the poor women failed to induce any improvement in their food security after being member of MFIs. By identifying the problems and expectations related to present forms of MFIs this study explores the expected model of MFIs, which would ensure food security for the rural poor women.Emerging literature on urban climate adaptation emphasizes the need to ''mainstream" climate change resilience into city planning, while simultaneously acknowledging a frequent disconnect between planning and implementation, especially in countries where governance lacks transparency and/or technical capacity. Moreover, how to influence planning towards prioritizing climate vulnerabilities is by no means self-evident. Particularly in developing countries, policy and planning processes are often complex, murky, and can be poorly understood even by the planners themselves. This paper discusses gaps in the process of mainstreaming climate resilience in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. Experience indicates that there is a common fundamental governance deficit among the three countries in that there is frequently no effective planning process into which climate change resilience could be mainstreamed. Even where governance mechanisms do function, they are often at odds with the kinds of adaptive, learning oriented processes that are at the heart of climate resilience theory. Reconfiguring urban governance is the core challenge, and within this, greater accountability and transparency. This requires informed public dialogue, where critical information about land, current and projected risks and vulnerabilities is in the public domain, and where regulatory framework, public access to redress and remedy is strengthened. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change poses a serious challenge to sustainable urban development, placing many cities at risk. Climatic conditions are changing to such an extent that the capacity of urban institutions and associated governance systems to deal with climatic extremes and variability is being reduced. New approaches for urban climate change adaptation are thus urgently needed. There is an increasing consensus that local-level capacities are critical for successful adaptation to climate change and the achievement of sustainable development. However, knowledge about local-level capacities is scarce, and regulatory frameworks are often ambiguous in terms of assigning (complementary) responsibilities for adaptation to institutions and citizens. Against that background, the paper investigates the adaptive practice of Swedish citizens and how this relates to local municipalities' adaptation efforts and to the 'interface' between citizens' and institutions' legal responsibilities. By theorising the interplay between the adaptive practice of citizens and institutions, it demonstrates that adaptive capacity at the local level does not automatically translate into adaptation itself, thus showing the requirement for planned and more complementary interventions. The outcomes suggest the need for more distributed urban risk governance systems and people-oriented planning to foster an adaptive and sustainable transformation of cities. The potential scope of action for more people-oriented adaptation planning is presented. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper explores new challenges for adaptive urban and spatial governance in highly dynamic environments. It examines whether or not we have to rethink existing planning systems and tools in the context of climate change, natural hazards and societal transformation, focusing particularly on emerging economies in Asia. Key pressures for urban governance and planning in these countries are explored. Against this background requirements for a more adaptive and strategic planning approach are discussed by examining the discourses about climate change adaptation including adaptive urban governance - and strategic planning. Compared to earlier papers on urban governance in the context of climate change, this paper aims particularly to provide an entry point for the discussion of the adjustment and modification of specific planning systems and tools. Two case studies are used for a concrete exploration of the gaps and challenges of adaptive urban governance on the ground, considering particularly formal regulative planning tools. The findings from the case study analysis show opportunities but also constraints of existing planning tools to strengthen adaptive urban governance. At the same time, a number of gaps have been found between currently debated planning tools for adaptation and the requirements emerging from adaptive and strategic planning theory. Recommendations to further strengthen adaptive urban governance and strategic planning are derived. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Divided by interdisciplinary realms of application, both climate change and urbanism are ultimately bound together by cause-and-effect in our ever mutable cities. Although suggested that cities are changing faster than Mankind have been able to adjust out thinking, the yearly dissemination scientific data on climatic change is continually improving the efficiency of urbanism to tackle new looming paradigms. Respectively, it is considered that urbanism encounters its greatest opportunities in this uncertain 'third modernity', where flexible approaches such as 'what if?' scenarios allow urbanism to continuously uphold the ever evolving identity and continuum within eventful horizons. This collaboration between these two interrelating realms of contemporary practice is currently being applied upon the case of Lisbon, where regional and local climate change scenarios are assessed in terms of their potential territorial impacts. This originated the opportunity to evaluate how the city components and functioning within its waterfronts shall be affected by climate change. Resultantly, and embedded within its niche, urbanism presents a new creative laboratory where flexible and innovative urban adaptation strategies can be developed to counter-act the impending impacts upon Lisbon within the XXI century.Food security requires the development and deployment of crop varieties resilient to climate variation and change. The study of variations in the genome of wild plant populations can be used to guide crop improvement. Genome variation found in wild crop relatives may be directly relevant to the breeding of environmentally adapted and climate resilient crops. Analysis of the genomes of populations growing in contrasting environments will reveal the genes subject to natural selection in adaptation to climate variations. Whole genome sequencing of these populations should define the numbers and types of genes associated with climate adaptation. This strategy is facilitated by recent advances in sequencing technologies. Wild relatives of rice and barley have been used to assess these approaches. This strategy is most easily applied to species for which a high quality reference genome sequence is available and where populations of wild relatives can be found growing in diverse environments or across environmental gradients.Exploring the ability of organisms to locally adapt is critical for determining the outcome of rapid climate changes, yet few studies have addressed this question in microorganisms. We investigated the role of a heterogeneous climate on adaptation of North American populations of the wild yeast Saccharomyces paradoxus. We found abundant among-strain variation for fitness components across a range of temperatures, but this variation was only partially explained by climatic variation in the distribution area. Most of fitness variation was explained by the divergence of genetically distinct groups, distributed along a north-south cline, suggesting that these groups have adapted to distinct climatic conditions. Within-group fitness components were correlated with climatic conditions, illustrating that even ubiquitous microorganisms locally adapt and harbour standing genetic variation for climate-related traits. Our results suggest that global climatic changes could lead to adaptation to new conditions within groups, or changes in their geographical distributions.Changing climatic conditions are influencing large wildfire frequency, a globally widespread disturbance that affects both human and natural systems. Understanding how climate change, population growth, and development patterns will affect the area burned by and emissions from wildfires and how populations will in turn be exposed to emissions is critical for climate change adaptation and mitigation planning. We quantified the effects of a range of population growth and development patterns in California on emission projections from large wildfires under six future climate scenarios. Here we show that end-of-century wildfire emissions are projected to increase by 19-101% (median increase 56%) above the baseline period (1961-1990) in California for a medium-high temperature scenario, with the largest emissions increases concentrated in northern California. In contrast to other measures of wildfire impacts previously studied (e.g., structural loss), projected population growth and development patterns are unlikely to substantially influence the amount of projected statewide wildfire emissions. However, increases in wildfire emissions due to climate change may have detrimental impacts on air quality and, combined with a growing population, may result in increased population exposure to unhealthy air pollutants.During the last decades numerous environmental problems have been exacerbated, and in some cases created. Traditionally, such problems have been addressed through environmentally sound technologies. The diffusion of such technologies has, however, been slow, where the focus has primarily been on high-polluting sectors. This paper explores the environmental actions of a relatively low-polluting sector, the insurer industry, in regards to environmentally sound technologies, by schematizing the concept of environmentally sound technologies as it is defined in Agenda 21. The Agenda 21 definition is critical when discussing environmentally sound technologies, as typologies of academic scholars are defined from the perspective of manufacturers ignoring the role of relatively low-polluting sectors when dealing with environmental issues. Five focus points from a climate change statement issued by the Nordic insurance industry are then integrated into the schematic framework. Case study examples from 16 Nordic insurance companies and secondary data of insurers' activities are used to illustrate insurers' role in enhancing development and utilization of environmentally sound technologies. Although the insurance industry offers many examples of its role in the development and utilization of environmentally sound technologies, this paper highlights the following points (1) there are still areas for improvements, (2) there is a large capacity that could be utilized, and (3) business opportunities are expected to increase once climate change consequences become more apparent. Due to the slow uptake of environmentally sound technologies, it is important to strengthen the focus on the role and obligation of low-polluting sectors as a part of the supporting infrastructure dealing with environmental sustainability issues. This paper shows the potential of opportunities arising from the synergies between environmentally sound technologies and finance and service providers to address such issues. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wetlands are valuable ecosystems that provide many valuable services, yet many of these important ecosystems are at risk because of current trends in climate change. The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) in the upper-midwest of the United States and south-central Canada, characterized by glacially sculpted landscapes and abundant wetlands, is one such vulnerable region. According to regional/global climate model predictions, drought occurrence will increase in the PPR region through the 21st century and thus will probably cause the amount of water in wetlands to decline. Water surface area (WSA) of Kidder County, ND, from 1984-2011 was measured by classifying TM/ETM+(Landsat Thematic Mapper / Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus) images through the modified normalized difference water index. We then developed a linear model based on the WSA of these wetlands and historical climate data and used this to determine the wetland sensitivity to climate change and predict future wetlands WSA in the PPR. Our model based on Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) of the current year (PDSIt-0) and of the previous two years (PDSIt-2) can explain 79% of the annual wetland WSA variance, suggesting a high sensitivity of wetlands to drought/climate change. We also predicted the PPR wetlands WSA in the 21st century under A1B scenario (a mid-carbon emission scenario) using simulated PDSI based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR4 22-model ensemble climate. According to our prediction, the WSA of the PPR wetlands will decrease to less than half of the baseline WSA (defined as the mean wetlands WSA of the 2000s) by the mid of the 21st century, and to less than one-third by the 2080s, and will then slightly increase in the 2090s. This considerable future wetland loss caused only by climate change provides important implication to future wetland management and climate adaptation policy. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Background: There is a growing body of evidence that the impacts of climate change are affecting population health negatively. The Pacific region is particularly vulnerable to climate change; a strong health-care system is required to respond during times of disaster. This paper examines the capacity of the health sector in Pacific Island Countries to adapt to changing disaster response needs, in terms of: (i) health workforce governance, management, policy and involvement; (ii) health-care capacity and skills; and (iii) human resources for health training and workforce development. Methods: Key stakeholder interviews informed the assessment of the capacity of the health sector and disaster response organizations in Pacific Island Countries to adapt to disaster response needs under a changing climate. The research specifically drew upon and examined the adaptive capacity of individual organizations and the broader system of disaster response in four case study countries (Fiji, Cook Islands, Vanuatu and Samoa). Results: 'Capacity' including health-care capacity was one of the objective determinants identified as most significant in influencing the adaptive capacity of disaster response systems in the Pacific. The research identified several elements that could support the adaptive capacity of the health sector such as: inclusive involvement in disaster coordination; policies in place for health workforce coordination; belief in their abilities; and strong donor support. Factors constraining adaptive capacity included: weak coordination of international health personnel; lack of policies to address health worker welfare; limited human resources and material resources; shortages of personnel to deal with psychosocial needs; inadequate skills in field triage and counselling; and limited capacity for training. Conclusion: Findings from this study can be used to inform the development of human resources for health policies and strategic plans, and to support the development of a coordinated and collaborative approach to disaster response training across the Pacific and other developing contexts. This study also provides an overview of health-care capacity and some of the challenges and strengths that can inform future development work by humanitarian organizations, regional and international donors involved in climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction in the Pacific region.This paper considers a situation where a real risk exists that requires precautions, but the public mostly experiences the risk through infrequently occurring extreme events; this type of risk includes risk from climate change, international terrorism, natural calamities or financial crises. The analysis shows that if a risk-mitigating policy is based on the perceived riskiness of that risk, it will call for disproportionate responses (compared to what the real' risk suggests) by either under- or over-investing in risk-reducing policies, depending on the characteristics of the problem, implying significant volatility in the policy response. This type of response provides at least three challenges to society: policy cycles where implementation lags behind the actual change in risk, a lock-in to inefficient technologies and additional costs. Finally, this paper addresses the question of how the above-mentioned challenges can be managed through proper risk communication.Adaptive strategies are important for reducing the vulnerability of atoll communities to climate change and sea level rise in both the short and long term. This paper seeks to contribute to the emerging discourse on migration as a form of adaptation to climate change based on empirical studies in the two atoll communities, Reef Islands and Ontong Java, which are located in the periphery of Solomon Islands. The paper will outline current migration patterns in the two island groups and discuss how some of this migration may contribute to adaptation to climate change and other stresses. It shows that migration currently improves access to financial and social capital, reduces pressure on natural resources and makes island communities less vulnerable to extreme weather events and other shocks all factors that contribute positively to adaptive capacity. It also shows that there are major barriers to migration that reduce the efficacy of positive outcomes to both migrants and their home communities, including high transport costs and problems in gaining access to housing, employment and government services in urban destination areas. If it is accepted that voluntary migration may play a positive role in adaptation to climate change in exposed atoll communities, addressing some of the barriers to migration seems logical. This may be done by efforts to stimulate migrant income opportunities, by improving migrant living conditions and by improving the transport services to the islands.The vulnerability of tourism-dependent communities, coastal tourism facilities, and beaches to climate change demands the use of measures that can urgently minimise vulnerability and in the long term achieve sustainable development. This paper makes policy recommendations to address climate change and sea level rise challenges in small island developing states. Using Barbados as a case study, the paper found that innovations in policies and projects have offset the past ills of mass tourism and fortuitously now serve as pre-emptive measures in adapting to climate change. The array of methods for combating these changes includes physical planning policies, integrated coastal zone management, and infrastructure projects. Among the key areas for policy innovation are the adoption of protection, accommodation, and retreat strategies, which are informed by rigorous cost-benefit analysis and stakeholder consultation. Ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change is also necessary, especially for islands where coral reef protection is urgent. Moreover, policy adjustments are required on building construction, water resources management, sewage treatment, coastal zone management, physical planning, and land management. Institutional constraints, including the lack of capacity to implement, monitor, and enforce measures, must also be addressed if progress is to be made in adapting to climate change. A major conclusion is that the severity of coastal damage, the importance of tourism to sustainable development, and the country's adaptive capacity play a key part in the selection and implementation of climate change adaptation measures.Using a nonhydrostatic model with a double-moment bulk cloud microphysics scheme, the authors introduce an aerosol effect on a convective cloud system by accelerating the condensation and evaporation processes (the aerosol condensational effect). To evaluate this effect, the authors use an explicit condensation scheme rather than the saturation adjustment method and propose a method to isolate the aerosol condensational effect. This study shows that the aerosol condensational effect not only accelerates growth rates but also increases cloud water, even though the degree of the acceleration of evaporation exceeds that of condensation. In the early developing stage of the convective system, increased cloud water is, in turn, linked to ice-phase processes and modifies the ice water path of anvil clouds and the ice cloud fraction. In the mature stage, although the aerosol condensational effect has a secondary role in dynamical feedbacks when combined with other aerosol effects, the degree of modulation of the cloud microphysical parameters by the aerosol condensational effect continues to be nonnegligible. These findings indicate that feedback mechanisms, such as latent heat release and the interaction of various aerosol effects, are important in convective cloud systems that involve ice-phase processes.Extreme heat events (EHEs) are becoming more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in the 21st century. These events can disproportionately impact the health of low-income, minority, and urban populations. To better understand heat-related intervention strategies used by four U.S. cities, we conducted 73 semi-structured interviews with government and non-governmental organization leaders representing public health, general social services, emergency management, meteorology, and the environmental planning sectors in Detroit, MI; New York City, NY; Philadelphia, PA and Phoenix, AZ-cities selected for their diverse demographics, climates, and climate adaptation strategies. We identified activities these leaders used to reduce the harmful effects of heat for residents in their city, as well as the obstacles they faced and the approaches they used to evaluate these efforts. Local leaders provided a description of how local context (e. g., climate, governance and city structure) impacted heat preparedness. Despite the differences among study cities, political will and resource access were critical to driving heat-health related programming. Upon completion of our interviews, we convened leaders in each city to discuss these findings and their ongoing efforts through day-long workshops. Our findings and the recommendations that emerged from these workshops could inform other local or national efforts towards preventing heat-related morbidity and mortality.Achieving food security in the face of climate change is a major challenge for humanity in the 21st century but comprehensive analyses of climate change impacts, including global market feedbacks are still lacking. In the context of uneven impacts of climate change across regions interconnected through trade, climate change impact and adaptation policies in one region need to be assessed in a global framework. Focusing on four Eastern Asian countries and using a global integrated modeling framework we show that i) once imports are considered, the overall climate change impact on the amount of food available could be of opposite sign to the direct domestic impacts and ii) production and trade adjustments following price signals could reduce the spread of climate change impacts on food availability. We then investigated how pressure on the food system in Eastern Asia could bc mitigated by a consumer support policy. We found that the costs of adaptation policies to 2050 varied greatly across climate projections. The costs of consumer support policies would also be lower if only implemented in one region but market price leakage could exacerbate pressure on food systems in other regions. We conclude that climate adaptation should no longer be viewed only as a geographically isolated local problem.Smallholder farmers are vulnerable to environmental, climate and weather-related stress, including climate change. There is an increase in understanding of the benefits of agroforestry systems both at farm and landscape scales, and that incorporating trees on farms through agroforestry systems has emerged as having the potential to enhance the resilience of smallholders to current and future climate risks including future climate change. Drawing on global examples with a focus on African case studies, this paper demonstrates the versatile roles of trees and agroforestry in reducing smallholder's exposure to climate-related risks. It goes on to identify challenges in the promotion and adoption of agroforestry at the farm and landscape levels as a climate change adaptation strategy. The paper highlights areas for further research, policy and dissemination efforts, and identifies entry points for agroforestry adoption.This study explores the effects of observed warming trends since 1980 on crop yields at both national and regional scales for the four main staple crops (rice, wheat, maize, and soybean) in China, using gridded climate and observed crop yield data, and identifies the areas in China where food production is susceptible to warming. National scale yield-temperature relationships show that there are clear negative yield responses of maize, wheat, and soybean to increased growing-season temperature. Regional scale yield-temperature relationships show that over 50 % of the arable land exhibited yield susceptibility to past warming trends, with maize showing the highest vulnerability and rice the lowest vulnerability. However, in most of the main food-producing areas, crops experienced increases or insignificant changes in yields due to better agronomic management. The Loess plain is revealed as the most vulnerable region to the past warming, as at least two food crops have exhibited the signs of warming susceptibility in the majority of the area. We also find considerable yield reductions in spring wheat in the central northeast, winter wheat in the Yellow River basin, and maize in Southwest China. These findings of hotspot areas are valuable in prioritizing future climate adaptation strategies for Chinese agriculture.Besides its primary role in producing food and fiber, agriculture also has relevant effects on several other functions, such as management of renewable natural resources. Climate change (CC) may lead to new trade-offs between agricultural functions or aggravate existing ones, but suitable agricultural management may maintain or even improve the ability of agroecosystems to supply these functions. Hence, it is necessary to identify relevant drivers (e. g., cropping practices, local conditions) and their interactions, and how they affect agricultural functions in a changing climate. The goal of this study was to use a modeling framework to analyze the sensitivity of indicators of three important agricultural functions, namely crop yield (food and fiber production function), soil erosion (soil conservation function), and nutrient leaching (clean water provision function), to a wide range of agricultural practices for current and future climate conditions. In a two-step approach, cropping practices that explain high proportions of variance of the different indicators were first identified by an analysis of variance-based sensitivity analysis. Then, most suitable combinations of practices to achieve best performance with respect to each indicator were extracted, and trade-offs were analyzed. The procedure was applied to a region in western Switzerland, considering two different soil types to test the importance of local environmental constraints. Results show that the sensitivity of crop yield and soil erosion due to management is high, while nutrient leaching mostly depends on soil type. We found that the influence of most agricultural practices does not change significantly with CC; only irrigation becomes more relevant as a consequence of decreasing summer rainfall. Trade-offs were identified when focusing on best performances of each indicator separately, and these were amplified under CC. For adaptation to CC in the selected study region, conservation soil management and the use of cropped grasslands appear to be the most suitable options to avoid tradeoffs.The water level of Devils Lake, a terminal lake in the northeast of North Dakota, U.S., has risen nearly 10 m since 1993, inundating farm land and causing significant damages to the infrastructure and surrounding communities. The currently adopted flood adaptation policy is continuing infrastructural protection (CIP), under which the infrastructure, such as levees or roads, is raised gradually in response to the rising water. Since the Devils Lake city and the adjacent communities are built within the historical confines of the lake, we introduce and estimate potential costs of two diametrical, but long-term targeted adaptation strategies involving either buyout or relocation (B/R) to contrast against the CIP. The comparison shows that B/R, while more expensive initially, would be cheaper than CIP accumulated over longer term. We further explore the reason that policymakers prefer CIP: the near-term uncertainty regarding the future lake levels has led to significant discount of long-term potential risk. With future risk significantly discounted, not only B/R, but any other alternatives that feature long-term perspective, could become less attractive than CIP. Were we able to predict the flooding more accurately or willing to discount future less, we might have chosen a different plan of action. The ultimate choice of CIP among the possible adaptation options reveals that policymakers have privileged the present and favored near-term remedies instead of long-term solutions. Although certainly not on the same scale, the lesson we have learned in dealing with Devils Lake has far-reaching implications on climate change adaptation strategies. The passive decision to wait and ignore the full potential for disaster ultimately leaves us with no other option, but to continue to "wait and see" and then spend more.This paper examines perceived climate risks, their impacts, and existing adaptation practices at the local level, including the role of local institutions. The analysis focuses on two selected areas in Vietnam and Thailand. The paper is based on the information collected through key informant interviews at provincial and district level, focus group discussions at village level, and household survey. Several adaptation practices exist at local level to deal with the perceived risks of drought, floods, and salinity intrusion. Most of the adaptation practices were autonomous focusing on coping with short-term risks rather than structural long-term climate risks. Some adaptation practices, such as crop insurance and regulatory measures included in the literature and practiced in other places, did not exist at local level in the case study countries, but some local practices such as farmers' annual fair could be an important addition to the inventory of potential adaptation measures. Local institutions have facilitated adaptation in different ways. They (1) lead and support unique adaptation practices suitable to the local context; (2) act as a catalyst to help people to adapt some practices by providing technical and material support; and (3) act as the bridge between local people and the governmental and non-governmental agencies. But several factors constrain the effectiveness of locally practiced adaptation measures. Thus, to enhance the adaptive capacity of households and the local community, it is necessary to: (1) improve the technical capacity of farmers; (2) create effective mechanisms for strengthening, promoting, and disseminating locally initiated efforts; (3) subsidize and improve access to credit services; (4) improve links between production and markets; and (5) establish effective mechanisms for coordination.A variety of climate change adaptation support tools (CCASTs) have become available to support adaptation, but there is limited information about the types of tools available, their aims or their effectiveness. We reviewed the CCASTs currently in use, or in development, in Australia in order to identify those most used, the areas covered and the key knowledge gaps where development of new support tools is required. To ascertain the effectiveness of the CCASTs, we contacted CCAST developers/owners and logged evidence of uptake and/or evaluations already produced. We identified a total of 85 CCASTs, 65 in Australia and 20 selected international examples. Over half of the support tools identified in Australia were found to be associated with the infrastructure and planning and local government sectors. Biodiversity and business sectors offered the fewest CCASTs, 3 and 2 %, respectively. The majority of Australian CCASTs were developed at State and local government levels, presumably because adaptation tools are most applicable at local scales. Interestingly, the number of CCASTs showed a marked increase from 2007 onwards, with approximately 30 % of those recorded being currently in development. In Australia, the prevalent adaptation activity, and CCAST type, presently taking place is the identification and assessment of climate change risks. Knowledge gaps identified were for support tools providing guidance on: costing and prioritising adaptation options, evaluating and monitoring adaptation measures, conducting vulnerability assessments, facilitating adaptation for vulnerable species and ecosystems. Most organisations are at the early stages of adaptation: assessing climate risks and beginning to formulate adaptation options.There is an increasing call for local measures to adapt to climate change, based on foresight analyses in collaboration with actors. However, such analyses involve many challenges, particularly because the actors concerned may not consider climate change to be an urgent concern. This paper examines the methodological choices made by three research teams in the design and implementation of participatory foresight analyses to explore agricultural and water management options for adaptation to climate change. Case studies were conducted in coastal areas of France, Morocco, and Portugal where the groundwater is intensively used for irrigation, the aquifers are at risk or are currently overexploited, and a serious agricultural crisis is underway. When designing the participatory processes, the researchers had to address four main issues: whether to avoid or prepare dialogue between actors whose relations may be limited or tense; how to select participants and get them involved; how to facilitate discussion of issues that the actors may not initially consider to be of great concern; and finally, how to design and use scenarios. In each case, most of the invited actors responded and met to discuss and evaluate a series of scenarios. Strategies were discussed at different levels, from farming practices to aquifer management. It was shown that such participatory analyses can be implemented in situations which may initially appear to be unfavourable. This was made possible by the flexibility in the methodological choices, in particular the possibility of framing the climate change issue in a broader agenda for discussion with the actors.Warming rivers and an improved knowledge of thermal impacts on fish are fueling a need for simple tools to generate water temperature forecasts that aid in decision making for the management of aquatic resources. Although there is strong evidence for temperature-dependent mortality in freshwater fish populations, the application of water temperature models for in-season fisheries management is still limited due to a lack of appropriate temperature thresholds and due to uncertainty in forecasts. We evaluated the ability of statistical models based on seasonal trends, air temperature, and discharge to produce daily forecasts of water temperature in the Fraser River, British Columbia, including explicit quantification of uncertainty in predictor variables. For all models evaluated (with and without air temperature and/or discharge predictor variables), the top model choice varied as a function of environmental conditions, uncertainty in the air temperature forecasts used to predict water temperature, and the selection of quantitative performance criteria (i.e., defining the best model based on the smallest mean raw error or based on the ability to accurately forecast extreme water temperatures). Water temperature forecasts averaged across 10 d produced by simple models that were fitted only to historical seasonal water temperature trends were as accurate as forecasts generated from uncertain air temperature predictions. Models fitted to air temperature were critical for forecasting high temperature thresholds; even the use of uncertain air temperature forecasts predicted high water temperatures with greater accuracy than models that lacked an air temperature covariate. In contrast, models that were fitted to discharge variables lowered the rate of false-negative and false-positive errors associated with estimating below-average temperatures. On the basis of our findings, we suggest that fisheries managers should quantify the effect of uncertainties in model predictor variables when assessing water temperature models and should evaluate model performance in the context of system-specific conditions and management objectives. Received May 15, 2013; accepted September 13, 2013Processes that control permafrost warming in Alpine regions are still not completely understood. Recently, geoelectrical monitoring has emerged as a useful tool to investigate thawing and freezing processes. However, high resistive environments and harsh environmental conditions pose very unfavourable conditions for automated resistivity measurements. Based on the results of several test studies, an improved data acquisition system for geoelectrical monitoring of frozen soils was developed. Furthermore, the implementation of algorithms for statistical analysis of raw data time series led to a significant improvement in the reliability of inversion results. At two Alpine sites, namely Molltaler Glacier and Magnetkopfl/Kitzsteinhorn, the adapted system was tested at soil temperature conditions between 0 degrees C and -12 degrees C. Data was continuously collected at both locations over nearly a full seasonal cycle. The results showed an almost linear dependency of resistivity and temperature at values above -0.5 degrees C. At lower temperatures, the relation was non-linear, indicating that the reduction of porosity due to the shrinking of connected brine channels was the dominating process that determined the value of resistivity. Based on the derived results, further improvements were suggested, especially for measurements at soil temperatures below -4.5 degrees C as low injection currents make it extremely challenging to gather these.The aim of this study is to determine whether dam reoperation (the adjustment of reservoir operating rules) is an effective adaptation strategy to reduce the potential impacts of climate change and regional socio-economic developments. The Xinanjiang-Fuchunjiang reservoir cascade, located in Hangzhou Region (China), is selected as case study. We use a scenario-based approach to explore the effects of various likely degrees of water stress for the future period between 2011 and 2040, which are compared to the control period from 1971 to 2000. The scenario impacts are simulated with the WEAP water allocation model, which is interlinked with the NSGA-II metaheuristic algorithm in order to derive optimal operating rules adapted to each scenario. Reservoir performance is measured with the Shortage Index (SI) and Mean Annual Energy Production (MAEP). For the investigated scenarios, adapted operating rules on average reduce the SI with 84 % and increase the MAEP with 6.4 % (compared to the projected future performance of conventional operation). Based on the optimization results, we conclude that for the studied case dam reoperation is an effective adaptation strategy to reduce the impact of changing patterns of water supply and demand, even though it is insufficient to completely restore system performance to that of the control period.Aim Our aims were to identify centres of endemism and to infer whether these areas have functioned as refugia for subtropical rain forest plants through historical climate fluctuations. Location Subtropical eastern Australia (23-33 degrees S; 145-155 degrees E). Methods We collated 25,000 records of 179 endemic rain forest plants to identify geographical areas with unusually high concentrations of endemic taxa and range-restricted endemics. We then tested whether centres of endemism coincide with other features indicating refugia, including habitat stability over 120,000 years, and we related dispersal patterns to past habitat stability using seed weight as a surrogate for dispersal ability of endemic plant taxa. Results We identified five main centres of endemism. Historical stability and other processes affecting diversity, including current rainfall, rain forest area, and topographic complexity, explained 58% of variation in plant-weighted endemism. Taxa with poor dispersal ability were concentrated in the areas that were most stable historically. Main conclusions Several lines of evidence suggest that centres of endemism have functioned as important refugia for subtropical rain forest taxa through historical climate fluctuations. The highest concentrations of range-restricted endemic species occur in locations that are predicted to have maintained stable rain forest habitat over at least the past 120,000 years. This association was independent from other factors that were expected to promote diversity (i.e. rain forest area and current environmental suitability). These locations have disproportionately high concentrations of species with poor dispersal ability (large-seeded species).Sustainability policy in the early 2000s is based on and therefore influenced by scientific literature on 'transition'. The importance of this link has inspired the authors to explore the structure of cooperating authors and citation networks in the field. In order to understand 'transition' literature, we compare it with an alternative term for change, 'transformation', which is also used in the context of socio-technical shifts towards sustainability. We expose the different structures of these fields with an overview of keywords, key references, key authors, and the coherence between references and authors. By analysing co-author and citation networks, we find large differences in these groups of documents. The transition literature is characterised by a large network of directly and indirectly cooperating authors with clear clusters; transformation literature contains smaller author networks. Key transition authors are predominantly Dutch. They repeatedly write together and cite each other's work. The transition literature is tightly knit with high degrees of internal references and a clearly distinguishable core. Transformation literature has fewer connections between authors and articles. The connecting articles, each with many global citations, form its basis. This analysis can be used as a step to continue the debate on the role of transition and transformation literature in sustainability and renewable energy policy. The transformation literature teaches us that older streams of thought are still relevant and may be used as 'glue' for linking change with respect to sustainable energy to wider developments. Rediscovering existing literature in new combinations may lead to promising new views on sustainable energy. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A consistency between seasonal fluctuation of actual sea surface height (SSH) and those caused by mass and density variations in gyre-scale regions is examined. The SSH obtained from satellite altimetry (altimetric SSH) is adopted as the actual SSH. SSH caused by mass variation (mass-related SSH) is simulated using a barotropic global ocean model forced by water flux, wind stress and surface pressure. SSH caused by density variation (steric SSH) is calculated from water density profile, i.e. temperature and salinity profiles. The model SSH well represents mass-related SSH for gyre-scale regional means, and seasonal fluctuation of the altimetric SSH corrected for the model SSH is similar to that of steric SSH above a pressure level larger than 300 dbar. The results indicate that the mass-related SSH does not much respond to the baroclinic adjustment to the seasonally varying wind stress curl. The mass-related SSH forced by wind stress and surface pressure should be accounted for regional evaluation, though it is not necessary for global mean evaluation. Detection of steric SSH from altimetric SSH would be useful for assimilation approaches in which the altimetric SSH is treated as the variable reflecting subsurface temperature and salinity.Edge effects of native forest fragmentation have been well studied, but there are few studies of open-ground habitats fragmented by plantation forests. We measure forestry edge effects on open-ground breeding birds, following one of Europe's biggest and most controversial land-use transformations. The Flow Country' of northern Scotland is one of the world's greatest expanses of blanket bog. It became fragmented by conifer forests planted in the late 20th century, and these now adjoin open peatlands protected under European conservation legislation. Detrimental edge effects on breeding birds were anticipated, but not apparent shortly after planting. Using survey data collected in 2003-2006, and logistic regression modelling, we tested whether breeding distributions of three wader species of international conservation concern, dunlin, European golden plover and common greenshank, were influenced by distance to forest edge, controlling for habitat and topography. All three species were more likely to occupy flatter, more exposed ground close to bog pools and were influenced by peatland vegetation structure. There was an additive and adverse effect of proximity to forest edge for dunlin and European golden plover, but not common greenshank. This effect was strongest within 700m of forest edges. We used these results to predict which areas should benefit most from removal of adjacent forestry and so guide maintenance and restoration of the bird interests of the protected areas.Synthesis and applications. Edge effects of mature forestry on dunlin and golden plover are apparent over several hundred metres and are now being used to guide forest planning in northern Scotland. The scale of edge effect is broadly consistent with other avian studies in open-ground habitats across Eurasia and North America, so buffer zones of this order are consistent with possible impacts of plantation forestry on open-ground habitats of bird conservation interest. Given renewed interest in conifer afforestation as a climate change mitigation measure, an improved understanding of edge effects and the mechanisms through which they operate is vital to managing plantation forestry in ways that maintain open-ground landscapes of high conservation value. Edge effects of mature forestry on dunlin and golden plover are apparent over several hundred metres and are now being used to guide forest planning in northern Scotland. The scale of edge effect is broadly consistent with other avian studies in open-ground habitats across Eurasia and North America, so buffer zones of this order are consistent with possible impacts of plantation forestry on open-ground habitats of bird conservation interest. Given renewed interest in conifer afforestation as a climate change mitigation measure, an improved understanding of edge effects and the mechanisms through which they operate is vital to managing plantation forestry in ways that maintain open-ground landscapes of high conservation value.Climate scenarios for the Amazon region (Brazil) indicate an increase in temperature and a precipitation decrease, affecting society and economic activities, particularly small-scale rural communities. The research aims to identify, describe and evaluate factors present in sustainable development projects for small rural communities (Type- A Demonstration Projects - PDA and Alternatives to Deforestation and Burnt Projects - PADEQ), already implemented, for recognizing its potential use as strategies for adaptation to climate change for small rural communities in the Amazon region. The researches, concerning fifteen projects in Rondonia, Para and Mato Grosso States, were developed through document analysis, technical visits, and interviews with stakeholders of three projects about the community perception, vulnerability and adaptation capacity. The analysis of documents regarding the potential success of the projects highlights their short history, important in the local context, prospects for continuity, and community participation in decision making. Few activities developed in projects could be associated with climate change adaptation practices. Two strategies and practices are the most important: the social organization and the process of awareness and training of the community, and the diversification of the types and forms of agricultural production. The interviews indicate that adaptation is implemented in projects, but without considering the pressures of climate variability and change. While these projects were not planned in the context of climate change, the greatest role of the projects relates to the strengthening of the already existing adaptation capacity, creating good conditions for incorporation of new strategies and adaptation measures, now clearly associated to the objective to reduce the vulnerability to climate change and variability impacts.European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) is one of the most economically and ecologically important deciduous trees in Europe, yet little is known about its genomic diversity and its adaptive potential. Here, we detail the discovery and analysis of 573 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 58 candidate gene fragments that are potentially involved in abiotic stress response and budburst phenology using a panel of 96 individuals from southeastern France. The mean nucleotide diversity was low (theta (pi) = 2.2 x 10(-3)) but extremely variable among gene fragments (range from 0.02 to 10), with genes carrying insertion/deletion mutations exhibiting significantly higher diversity. The decay of linkage disequilibrium (LD) measured at gene fragments > 800 base pairs was moderate (the half distance of r (2) was 154 bp), consistent with the low average population-scaled recombination rate (rho = 5.4 x 10(-3)). Overall, the population-scaled recombination rate estimated in F. sylvatica was lower than for other angiosperm tree genera (such as Quercus or Populus) and similar to conifers. As a methodological perspective, we explored the effect of minimum allele frequency (MAF) on LD and showed that higher MAF resulted in slower decay of LD. It is thus essential that the same MAF is used when comparing the decay of LD among different studies and species. Our results suggest that genome-wide association mapping can be a potentially efficient approach in F. sylvatica, which has a relatively small genome size.The scientific community is developing new global, regional, and sectoral scenarios to facilitate interdisciplinary research and assessment to explore the range of possible future climates and related physical changes that could pose risks to human and natural systems; how these changes could interact with social, economic, and environmental development pathways; the degree to which mitigation and adaptation policies can avoid and reduce risks; the costs and benefits of various policy mixes; and the relationship of future climate change adaptation and mitigation policy responses with sustainable development. This paper provides the background to and process of developing the conceptual framework for these scenarios, as described in the three subsequent papers in this Special Issue (Van Vuuren et al., 2013; O'Neill et al., 2013; Kriegler et al., Submitted for publication in this special issue). The paper also discusses research needs to further develop, apply, and revise this framework in an iterative and open-ended process. A key goal of the framework design and its future development is to facilitate the collaboration of climate change researchers from a broad range of perspectives and disciplines to develop policy- and decision-relevant scenarios and explore the challenges and opportunities human and natural systems could face with additional climate change.The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) offer benefits for communities concerned with climate change adaptation research and actions (IAV), but some challenges need to be overcome in order to facilitate active IAV involvement in SSP use. This essay summarizes potential benefits, challenges, and possible strategies for enhancing the value of the SSP approach for IAV communities. Uses of the Shared Socioeconomics Pathways (SSPs) and the new climate scenarios by the climate change impact, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research communities have been very limited because of a combination of the characteristics of most IAV research and the framing of SSPs at the outset. Recent refinements of the SSP framework should improve IAV receptivity to the SSP perspectives and tools and encourage engagement in the scenario development process, and ways can be suggested to accelerate this process; but a number of challenges remain to be addressed, many of them by the IAV communities themselves rather than by the SSP development process per se.Trees inside and outside forests contribute to food security in Africa in the face of climate variability and change. They also provide environmental and social benefits as part of farming, livelihoods. Varied ecological and socio-economic conditions have given rise to specific forms of agroforestry in different parts of Africa. Policies that institutionally segregate forest from agriculture miss opportunities for synergy at landscape scale. More explicit inclusion of agroforestry and the integration of agriculture and forestry agendas in global initiatives on climate change adaptation and mitigation can increase their effectiveness. We identify research gaps and overarching research questions for the contributions in this special issue that may help shape current opinion in environmental sustainability.Green facades are climbing plants grown either directly against, or on support structures affixed to, external building walls. Like other forms of green infrastructure, they are increasingly being considered as a design feature to cool internal building temperatures, reduce building energy consumption and facilitate urban adaptation to a warming climate. To develop a better predictive framework for green facade thermal performance we reviewed the scientific literature - a literature currently dominated by the disciplines of architecture and engineering, and lacking inter-disciplinary input from plant biology, ecology, horticulture and soil science. We found that many of the studies were prone to research design problems; the small number of experimental studies lacked replication and provided insufficient information about the microclimate parameters measured, while the assumptions of modelling studies were not always delineated or justified. Few studies considered the influence of climbing plant characteristics, and fewer still investigated the impact of green facade design components (support structures, growing media, plant containers and irrigation systems) on green facade thermal performance. As a framework for future green facade research, we propose that standardised methods be adopted, and to this end, set out the minimum microclimatic data required to enable comparative assessment of green fac, ade performance. Furthermore, we stress the need for research on the interaction between climbing plant parameters and building energy balances, as well as on the influence of green fac, ade design elements on thermal performance. Without this shift in approach, unrealistic expectations of green facade performance and their climate change adaptation benefits will persist. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the Sudano-Sahelian region, smallholder agricultural production is dominated by rain-fed production of millet, sorghum and maize for food consumption and of cotton for the market. A major constraint for crop production is the amount of rainfall and its intra and inter-annual variability. We evaluated the effects of planting date on the yield of different varieties of four major crops (maize, millet, sorghum and cotton) over three contrasting growing seasons in 2009-2011 (with 842 mm, 1248 mm and 685 mm of rainfall respectively) with the aim of identifying climate adaptation options in the Sudano-Sahelian region. Three planting dates (early, medium, and late) and three varieties of long, medium, and short duration of each crop were compared. For fertilized cereal crops, maize out yielded millet and sorghum by respectively 57% and 45% across the three seasons. Analysis of 40 years of weather data indicates that this finding holds for the longer time periods than the length of this trial. Late planting resulted in significant yield decreases for maize, sorghum and cotton, but not for millet. However, a short duration variety of millet was better adapted for late planting. When the rainy season starts late, sorghum planting can be delayed from the beginning of June to early July without substantial reductions in grain yield. Cotton yield at early planting was 28% larger than yield at medium planting and late planting gave the lowest yield with all three varieties. For all four crops the largest stover yields were obtained with early planting and the longer planting was delayed, the less stover was produced. There was an interaction between planting date and variety for millet and sorghum, while for maize and cotton the best planting date was more affected by the weather conditions. The findings of this study can support simple adaptation decisions: priority should be given to planting cotton early; maize is the best option if fertilizer is available; planting of maize and sorghum can be delayed by up to a month without strong yield penalties; and millet should be planted last. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation in the health sector requires decisions across sectors, levels of government, and organisations. The networks that link these different institutions, and the relationships among people within these networks, are therefore critical influences on the nature of adaptive responses to climate change in the health sector. This study uses social network research to identify key organisational players engaged in developing health-related adaptation activities in Cambodia. It finds that strong partnerships are reported as developing across sectors and different types of organisations in relation to the health risks from climate change. Government ministries are influential organisations, whereas donors, development banks and non-government organisations do not appear to be as influential in the development of adaptation policy in the health sector. Finally, the study highlights the importance of informal partnerships (or 'shadow networks') in the context of climate change adaptation policy and activities. The health governance 'map' in relation to health and climate change adaptation that is developed in this paper is a novel way of identifying organisations that are perceived as key agents in the decision-making process, and it holds substantial benefits for both understanding and intervening in a broad range of climate change-related policy problems where collaboration is paramount for successful outcomes.The use of bicycle is substantially affected by the weather patterns, which is expected to change in the future as a result of climate change. It is therefore important to understand the resulting potential changes in bicycle flows in order to accommodate adaptation planning for cycling. We propose a framework to model the changes in bicycle flow in London by developing a negative binomial count-data model and by incorporating future projected weather data from downscaled global climate models, a first such approach in this area. High temporal resolution (hourly) of our model allows us to decipher changes not only on an annual basis, but also on a seasonal and daily basis. We find that there will be a modest 0.5% increase in the average annual hourly bicycle flows in London's network due to a changed climate. The increase is primarily driven by a higher temperature due to a changed climate, although the increase is tempered due to a higher rainfall. The annual average masks the differences of impacts between seasons though - bicycle flows are expected to increase during the summer and winter months (by 1.6%), decrease during the spring (by 2%) and remain nearly unchanged during the autumn. Leisure cycling will be more affected by a changed climate, with an increase of around 7% during the weekend and holiday cycle flows in the summer months. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study investigates the impact of urban form and landscaping type on the mid-afternoon microclimate in semi-arid Phoenix, Arizona. The goal is to find effective urban form and design strategies to ameliorate temperatures during the summer months. We simulated near-ground air temperatures for typical residential neighborhoods in Phoenix using the three-dimensional microclimate model ENVI-met. The model was validated using weather observations from the North Desert Village (NDV) landscape experiment, located on the Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus. The NDV is an ideal site to determine the model's input parameters, since it is a controlled environment recreating three prevailing residential landscape types in the Phoenix metropolitan area (mesic, oasis, and xeric). After validation, we designed five neighborhoods with different urban forms that represent a realistic cross-section of typical residential neighborhoods in Phoenix. The scenarios follow the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) classification scheme after Stewart and Oke. We then combined the neighborhoods with three landscape designs and, using ENVI-met, simulated microclimate conditions for these neighborhoods for a typical summer day. Results were analyzed in terms of mid-afternoon air temperature distribution and variation, ventilation, surface temperatures, and shading. Findings show that advection is important for the distribution of within-design temperatures and that spatial differences in cooling are strongly related to solar radiation and local shading patterns. In mid-afternoon, dense urban forms can create local cool islands. Our approach suggests that the LCZ concept is useful for planning and design purposes. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Pacific Island Countries are highly exposed to climate change. Most impact studies have focused on the most densely populated core areas where top-down governance is most effective. In contrast, this research looks at peripheral (rural/outer-island) communities where long-established systems of environmental governance exist that contrast markedly with those which governments and their donor partners in this region favour. Peripheral communities in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, and Vanuatu were studied. Traditional systems of environmental governance are described, and three common barriers to effective and sustainable climate-change adaptation identified. The first is lack of awareness among key community decision makers about climate change and associated environmental sustainability that could be lessened by targeted awareness raising. The second is the inappropriateness of traditional decision-making structures for dealing with both the complexity and pace of climate-driven environmental changes. The third is the short-term views of resource management and sustainability held by many community decision makers. Despite 30 years of assistance, there has been negligible effective and sustainable adaptation for climate change in peripheral parts of Pacific Island Countries, something that is explicable by both the ineffectiveness of top-down approaches in such places as well as a lack of attention to the nature and the context of adaptation communications. It is timely for interventions to be made at community level where the greatest disconnect lies between the science and stakeholder awareness of climate change.The benefits of integrated approaches to climate risk and adaptation studies are increasingly recognised. Thus, there is an increasing need for practical examples of such work in the literature. This paper describes a practical application of an integrated framework for climate change impacts on regional surface water resources and the urban water system in the Mamminasata metropolitan region, Indonesia. Two main features of the framework are: the integration of both climate and other physical and social considerations in the assessment; and the high stakeholder involvement before, during and after project implementation. Although the study is concerned with the Mamminasata region, the overall methodology is transferable to any region in Indonesia or internationally. Key outcomes from this study are: (1) creation of information for Mamminasata planners and water resources managers for when, and under what conditions, the water supply may or may not meet the demand; (2) a clear consensus and shared learning of the problems facing the region among cross-institutional stakeholders; and (3) identification of adaptation options for the urban water system and knowledge gaps and strategies for their implementation. Results of stakeholders' surveys conducted at the mid-point and at the end of the study indicate that these outputs will provide valuable guidance for future planning and management of Mamminasata regional water resources.Several recent international assessments have concluded that climate change has the potential to reverse the modest economic gains achieved in many developing countries over the past decade. The phenomenon of climate change threatens to worsen poverty or burden populations with additional hardships, especially in poor societies with weak infrastructure and economic well-being. The importance of the perceptions, experiences, and knowledge of indigenous peoples has gained prominence in discussions of climate change and adaptation in developing countries and among international development organizations. Efforts to evaluate the role of indigenous knowledge in adaptation planning, however, have largely focused on rural people and their agricultural livelihoods. This paper presents the results of a study that examines perceptions, experiences, and indigenous knowledge relating to climate change and variability in three communities of metropolitan Accra, which is the capital of Ghana. The study design is based on a three-part conceptual framework and interview process involving risk mapping, mental models, and individual stressor cognition. Most of the residents interviewed in the three communities of urban Accra attributed climate change to the combination of deforestation and the burning of firewood and rubbish. None of the residents associated climate change with fossil fuel emissions from developed countries. Numerous potential adaptation strategies were suggested by the residents, many of which have been used effectively during past drought and flood events. Results suggest that ethnic residential clustering as well as strong community bonds in metropolitan Accra have allowed various groups and long-settled communities to engage in the sharing and transmission of knowledge of weather patterns and trends. Understanding and building upon indigenous knowledge may enhance the design, acceptance, and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies in Accra and urban regions of other developing nations.Comparison is common in water management research: every table, map, and graph invites comparisons of different places and variables. Detailed international comparisons, however, seem infrequent in water resources research. To assess this perceived gap, this paper searched for examples of comparative research between two water sub-sectors in two countries using systematic bibliographic mapping procedures. It focused on rural and urban water conservation research in India and the United States. Search methods built upon procedures initially developed for the FAO Investment Centre and more advanced systematic review methods. The search generally confirmed that there have been few detailed comparative international studies on the subject of this review. Not surprisingly, there are a greater number of comparative studies between rural and urban water conservation within each country. The search also identified different conservation emphases in the two countries, e.g., rainwater harvesting in India compared with stormwater quality management in the United States. It identified unanticipated publications and lines of comparative water conservation (e.g. comparative physiology). Some transnational research goes beyond comparison to address the diffusion of innovations, i.e. research linkages as well as comparisons, although these studies are also few. The more prevalent pattern involves parallel literatures, which indicate substantial opportunities for future comparative and transnational research. This review also identified diffusion of international knowledge paths that are not the product of formal comparative research. The final section focuses on the prospects and priorities for future international and inter-sectoral research, e.g. paired multi-objective river basin research, linkages between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, diffusion of water conservation innovations, and synthesis of research on urban and rural rainwater harvesting in different countries.Recent years have witnessed increased investment in African rural landscapes for agriculture and food security, poverty alleviation, climate change adaptation, and ecosystem conservation. While such investments historically tended to be made independently under sectoral programs, a new wave of integrated landscape initiatives (ILIs) is promoting integrated, multi-objective management of rural landscapes. We surveyed leaders and managers of 87 ILIs in 33 African countries to provide the first region-wide portrait of contexts, motivations, design, participation, and outcomes of such initiatives. Results suggest that ILIs are promoting "multi-functionality" of rural regions, while aiding stakeholders in mediating tradeoffs and synergies among multiple outcomes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is growing recognition that interactions with nature provide many desirable human well-being outcomes, yet increasing urbanization is degrading the quality and quantity of nature experiences. Thus, it has become increasingly important to understand how and why urban dwellers interact with nature. Studies of urban green space use have largely focused on the availability and ease of access to green space, suggesting that greater opportunities to experience such space will lead to increased use. However, a growing literature emphasizes the potential for an individual's nature orientation to affect their interaction with green space. Here we measure the importance of both opportunity and orientation factors in explaining urban park use. An urban lifestyle survey was deployed across Brisbane, Australia in November 2012 to assess patterns of green space use. Participants (n = 1479) were asked to provide information on demographics, private yard use, park visitations in the past week, and their orientation toward nature. About 60% of those surveyed had visited a park in the past week, and while this park user population had significantly greater nearby park coverage (within a 250 m radius; p = 0.006), a much stronger determinant of visitation was their higher nature orientation (p<0.00001), suggesting that while both opportunity and orientation are important drivers for park visitation, nature orientation is the primary effect. Park users also spent significantly more time in their yards than non-park users (p<0.00001), suggesting that yard use does not necessarily compensate for lower park use. Park users with stronger nature orientation (i) spent more time in their yard, (ii) traveled further to green spaces, and (iii) made longer visits than park visitors with weaker nature orientation. Overall, our results suggest that measures to increase people's connection to nature could be more important than measures to increase urban green space availability if we want to encourage park visitation.Energy-saving design must be based on regional climate conditions. This study takes the gymnasium in cold regions of northeast China as the research object, by analyzing the temperature, humidity, wind, rainfall and other climatic conditions of cold regions in China and combining with the characteristics of gymnasium, based on the field research, model simulation, data analysis result, and via study on mutual relationship of energy-saving strategies and construction techniques of gymnasium, proposes the envelope insulation, solar utilization, natural ventilation and other related strategies adopted by gymnasium in cold regions of northeast China to cope with local climatic conditions.Assemblages of megabenthos are structured in seven depth-related zones between similar to 700 and 4000 m on the rocky and topographically complex continental margin south of Tasmania, southeastern Australia. These patterns emerge from analysis of imagery and specimen collections taken from a suite of surveys using photographic and in situ sampling by epibenthic sleds, towed video cameras, an autonomous underwater vehicle and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Seamount peaks in shallow zones had relatively low biomass and low diversity assemblages, which may be in part natural and in part due to effects of bottom trawl fishing. Species richness was highest at intermediate depths (1000-1300 m) as a result of an extensive coral reef community based on the bioherm-forming scleractinian Solenosmilia variabilis. However, megabenthos abundance peaked in a deeper, low diversity assemblage at 2000-2500 m. The S. variabilis reef and the deep biomass zone were separated by an extensive dead, sub-fossil S. variabilis reef and a relatively low biomass stratum on volcanic rock roughly coincident with the oxygen minimum layer. Below 2400 m, megabenthos was increasingly sparse, though punctuated by occasional small pockets of relatively high diversity and biomass. Nonetheless, megabenthic organisms were observed in the vast majority of photographs on all seabed habitats and to the maximum depths observed - a sandy plain below 3950 m. Taxonomic studies in progress suggest that the observed depth zonation is based in part on changing species mixes with depth, but also an underlying commonality to much of the seamount and rocky substrate biota across all depths. Although the mechanisms supporting the extraordinarily high biomass in 2000-2500 m depths remains obscure, plausible explanations include equatorwards lateral transport of polar production and/or a response to depth-stratified oxygen availability.Drought conditions in Amazonia are associated with increased fire incidence, enhancing aerosol emissions with degradation in air quality. Quantifying the synergic influence of climate and human-driven environmental changes on human health is, therefore, critical for identifying climate change adaptation pathways for this vulnerable region. Here we show a significant increase (1.2%-267%) in hospitalisations for respiratory diseases in children under-five in municipalities highly exposed to drought. Aerosol was the primary driver of hospitalisations in drought affected municipalities during 2005, while human development conditions mitigated the impacts in 2010. Our results demonstrated that drought events deteriorated children's respiratory health particularly during 2005 when the drought was more geographically concentrated. This indicates that if governments act on curbing fire usage and effectively plan public health provision, as a climate change adaptation procedure, health quality would improve and public expenditure for treatment would decrease in the region during future drought events.Inadequate information has been repeatedly identified as a barrier to climate change adaptation planning and implementation. However less is known about how information functions as a barrier, and to what degree it prevents adaptation compared to other perceived barriers. In addition, the role of institutional context in mediating the demand for information in the context of adaptation has been less well studied. This paper helps to clarify the role that information plays in adaptation planning for two sectors of public employees working at similar scales, in similar locations, with similar challenges. We conducted surveys and semi-structured interviews to investigate the demand for information in support of adaptation implementation and planning from US federal public lands managers and municipal officials in the US interior West. We found that federal managers and municipal officials both consulted information frequently for decision making, and while both groups indicated that lack of information at relevant scales was a barrier to adaptation planning, this was seen as a much stronger barrier for federal managers than for communities. Uncertainty of information was raised as an issue, but results were mixed on whether or not this acted as a strong barrier. While peer-reviewed publications were seen as the "best available science," and correlated with adaptation planning, they were not accessed directly as frequently as other sources of information, including colleagues, the Internet and reports. The strong connection between communities and adjacent federal lands may provide an opportunity for networking that could facilitate the flow of information relevant for adaptation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conductometric titrations with triethylamine (Et3N) of mono-, di-, and trisulfonic acids have been performed in acetonitrile, and strong homoconjugation (homoassociation) for di- and trisulfonic acids have been revealed. The appearance of a maximum in the conductometric titration curve enables us to predict the stable homoconjugation species in the solution. The homoconjugation reaction of monosulfonic acids, such as methanesulfonic and p-toluenesulfonic acids, are not large enough to give a maximum. However, disulfoiaic acids, 1,5, 2,6-, and 2,7-naphthalenedisulfonic acids, give maxima at the first equivalence point, which indicates that the conjugate ions (HA(-)) cause homoconjugation reactions. By means of UV-visible spectroscopy, the stability constant (K-D) of dimerization or homoconjugation reaction between two anions [2 HA(-) reversible arrow; (HA-)2] of the hydrogen 1,5-naphthalenedisulfonate (HA(-)) has been given to be logK(D) = 4.11 in acetonitrile. In the same solvent, 1,3,6-naphthalenetrisulfonic acid forms more stable species of not only (H(2)A(-))2 but also (H2A-)(HA(2-)). Double hydrogen-bonds can operate between two H(2)A(-) anions in the (H2A(-))2 species, while even triple hydrogen-bonds in the (H2A(-))(HA(2-)) species. Effects of second solvents, including H2O, have been examined in detail on the homoconjugation reactions. In order to differentiate the role of acidities of acids on homoconjugation, the conductometric titrations of nitrobenzenedicarboxylic acids have been also performed. The geometries of homoconjugated sulfonic acids have been justified by DFT calculations.The impacts of rainfall variability are threatening food production systems, leading to losses of livelihood and food insecurity. The frequency and intensity of floods and drought are likely to be higher as a result of climate change. This case study presents an empirical account of the impacts of rainfall variability on agriculture, food security, livelihoods and human mobility in the Janjigir-Champa district of Chhattisgarh. The research tests the hypothesis that human migration is a major coping mechanism against climate variability. The findings confirm that a coordination mechanism exists between rainfall changes (i.e. erratic rainfall patterns in terms of delayed monsoons, seasonal shifts, drought and floods) and livelihood and food security of a number of farmers and farm labourers in the research site. Because there is only a single annual harvest of paddy rice (practiced as monoculture) in the research site, which is partly due to the non-availability of water for a second crop, marginal farmers and farm labourers are left with very few options in finding sufficient employment in and around their villages. Some people cope with the situation by seeking assistance from their relatives, friends and the government. However, seasonal and permanent migrations are the most opted-for coping strategies in the study area.The Ganges basin shared by India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and China is the most heavily populated river basin in the world. It sustains approximately 500 million people. Even though people living in the basin have coped with and adapted to change in climate for centuries, they are finding it increasingly difficult, as both the frequency and magnitude of climate-induced extreme weather events have increased over the years. Both market and non-market impacts of climate change are increasing, and increasing quite significantly. In 2007, floods resulting from monsoon rains killed over 2000 people and displaced more than 20 million people in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. As traditional coping mechanisms are proving to be increasingly insufficient, improvement in climate change adaptation planning and practices in the basin is becoming increasingly urgent. This paper makes an attempt to assess the effectiveness of climate information system, infrastructure, and institutions, which are considered as three important pillars of successful climate change adaptation. The needs and capacities of agencies and institutions to observe, collect, disseminate climate information products and early warning, and existing physical and institutional structures' robustness and flexibility in responding to climatic change and climate-induced extreme events are evaluated.There are few countries in the world where the importance of addressing climate change in urban policy is as acutely felt as in the Netherlands. As a low-lying country located on a large river delta, it is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Its vulnerable position is one of the reasons why the country (and several of its cities) is a leading player in climate change-related initiatives. Although some of the policy responses to climate change are based on water management tasks that predate all climate change debates, a range of new responses involving both adaptation and mitigation have been developed at the national and local levels in the Netherlands. Recent shifts in policy have been accompanied by the emergence of a new underlying concept - the concept of resilience. This paper has two main areas of investigation. First, it examines the shifts in emphasis on climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban planning, water management and climate change strategies. Second, it studies the origins and nature of the concept of urban resilience and the way in which the notion has permeated national and local policy in the Netherlands. The city of Rotterdam is used to illustrate the situation at the local level. The paper reveals shifting emphases on adaptation and mitigation over time and across different policy documents as well as a range of interpretations of the concept of resilience.Since the turn of the century, an increasing number of local and regional authorities in Europe started making their city or region resilient to climate change, or climate-proof'. Publications about the actual experiences with implementing these adaptation policies are as yet anecdotal, determined by the local context and the methods applied. In order to identify common processes and characteristics, moving beyond individual cases, this paper systematically assesses 100 spatial planning and water management projects in the Netherlands that included climate resilience as one of their objectives. We derive eight defining characteristics that not only increase climate resilience, but are also found to lead to a greater quality' of the project area. We structure these properties into a stylized sequence: (i) a longer timeframe, (ii) an integrative and sustainable approach, (iii) consideration of new spatial functions, (iv) a broader spatial context, (v) participation of multiple stakeholders, (vi) new opportunities for entrepreneurs, (vii) increased cost-effectiveness, and (viii) enhanced quality of the project area. The assessment also suggests four process-related conditions that contribute to the success of a project: early incorporation of adaptation; multi-actor collaboration and co-creation of knowledge; integrated, multifunctional and forward-looking solutions; and early political commitment.Global warming poses a significant challenge for the Mediterranean region (Southern Europe, North Africa and Middle East). The assessment starts from a description of the physical effects of climate change, including variations in temperature, precipitation, weather extremes and sea-level, that affect soil erosion, desertification, river flows, coastal zones, rural and urban areas. The vulnerability of the region is analysed in various dimensions, including water, food, migration and energy. Climate hotspots are discussed which are particularly vulnerable, including North Africa and the Nile River basin. The potential consequences of these developments for population, economy and societal stability as well as human security and violent conflict in the region are considered. Finally, we investigate policy responses and institutional frameworks for climate adaptation, conflict resolution and cooperation, with a particular focus on renewable energy collaboration across the Mediterranean region.How to deploy passive building design strategy adaptive to climate change scenarios at urban neighbourhood level is currently not well understood. A microclimate change outdoor and indoor coupled simulation assessment framework for passive building adaptation design in an urban neighborhood context is proposed. Based on computational modelling, it was developed to investigate summer overheating and to apply to a passive design strategy in an existing green building case study, taking into account the seasonal conditions in 2012 and 2050 as projected by a current climate change scenario. Through a series of numerical modelling and prognostic visualization, the results from applying the framework show how building indoor thermal performance interacts with specific outdoor microclimates. This study shows the importance of outdoor and indoor coupled assessment at microclimate level to deploy passive design features to changing climate. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper examines how the land reclamation and development of the Eko Atlantic Shoreline Protection and Reclamation Project affect communities on the Lagos coastline. It suggests mitigating tools as a re-vitalization planning strategy to preserve, manage and protect the Lagos coastline beaches that have become endangered. The controversial Eko Atlantic project which is portrayed by Lagos State Government (LASG) and developers as a model of sustainability, climate change adaptation and economic growth, is an example for the difficult process of reconciling the three conflicting interests of protecting the environment, promoting economic development and striving for social justice for all.Purpose - Climate change is a global threat to social, economic, and environmental sustainability. In an increasingly urbanized world, homeowners play an important role in climate adaptation and environmental sustainability through decisions to landscape and manage their residential properties. Methodology/approach - In this chapter, we review the potential impacts of climate change on environmental sustainability in urban ecosystems and highlight the role of urban and suburban residents in conserving biodiversity. We focus extensively on the interactions of homeowners and residential landscapes in urban coastal and desert environments. Practical implications - Understanding how human-environment interactions are linked with a changing climate is especially relevant for coastal and desert cities in the United States, which are already experiencing visible impacts of climate change. In fact, many homeowners are already making decisions in response to environmental change, and these decisions will ultimately shape the future structure, function and sustainability of these critically important ecosystems. Social implications - Considering the close relationship between biodiversity and the health and well-being of human societies, understanding how climate change and other social motivations affect the landscaping decisions of urban residents will be critical for predicting and enhancing sustainability in these social-ecological systems.The impact of climate disasters (e.g., floods, storms, or landslides), which are generally of low intensity and high frequency, should not be overlooked in developing countries. Global experiences related to the damage due to these disasters indicate that such events can be devastating in communities that are vulnerable to hazardous impacts. Cumulative effects of climate disasters are a sign of a potential catastrophe. Moreover, the recent increase in these events poses additional issues that increase the cost of local public administration, including emergency operation and infrastructure recovery. This chapter explains key problems related to climate disasters that are increasing, particularly in the local area of developing countries, and clarifies the need to incorporate climate disaster risk reduction into public development planning and practice. The chapter also provides descriptions of the research location, approaches of the study, and the structure of this book.In North America, hydroelectric development of James Bay (started in 1973) is of primary importance, not only for the energy needs of Quebec, but also for the provinces and neighboring countries. In a context of climate change adaptation, mathematical modeling of climate announced the strengthening of precipitation over North America. However the trend of energy inputs (TWh) decreases since 1985. The research project ARCHIVES aims to lift this contradiction. The knowledge of the past should inform the debate and allow a bet winner on the future. To this end, retrospective forecast of the level flows involves dendrochronology, i.e. tree-ring analysis with a view to dating timber. A Bayesian hierarchical model allows extract a common series from a set of tree growth index series to summarize the influence all the weather conditions during the period of vegetation on the growth of trees over the last century.Disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change (CC) are pressing fields of action for scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to promote a sustainable level of wellbeing for local communities and to increase the resilience of communities coping with multi-origin hazards. Unfortunately, in the case of Australia, there is evidence to suggest that disaster risk reduction and climate-change policy is highly fragmented and politicised (von Meding et al., 2013). The main focus of this paper is, therefore, to develop a deep understanding of the underpinning factors of local, regional and national policies in Australia. In terms of policy and multilevel integration of policies, we will particularly focus on the risk of failure to adapt to climate change in Australia. The national and local Australian context will be analysed in terms of its recent past experiences in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation policies, stressing on the changes through the years, investigating key terminology, frameworks and goals. These will be described and critically analysed in a multilevel context, beginning with national government objectives and working through to the local dimension of these policies. A clear and comprehensive analysis of the evolution of local, regional and national policy in Australia, as well as a critique on the past and current effectiveness of implementation, will pave the way for further research to take place towards DRR and CCA action. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://croadvocommons.org/1censes/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and/or peer-reviewed under responsibility of the Centre for Disaster Resili c School of the Built Environment, University of Salford.This chapter describes the challenges to supply water services for cities in the future, considering the impacts of climate change. Many of these challenges will be present even in the absence of climate variation as they are also caused by population growth, types of development and the inefficient management of urban water worldwide. Options to address the problems identified are presented, highlighting those specifically linked to climate change adaptation or mitigation measures. One important aspect is the need to review the concept of urban water services as it has been made urgent by the need to properly manage water in cities.A climate change simulation framework for intelligent green building adaptation design is proposed. The simulation framework is developed for studying environmental performance of existing or proposed green buildings under present and future urban microclimate conditions. It draws on a synthesis of environmental computer simulation in three areas: (1) overall climate change scenario modelling at city level, (2) outdoor urban microclimate modelling at neighbourhood level, and (3) indoor environmental simulation at building level. A case study of applying the climate change simulation framework to an existing university campus green building is presented for 2012 and 2050. In response to the simulation results, strategies for adapting the case study green building in relation to its changing urban neighbourhood are assessed as an example. The case study shows that the simulation framework can generate requirements for intelligent green building adaptation design by linking urban microclimate change projection to simulated energy demand in maintaining building indoor thermal comfort.Each agency or individual researcher addresses different cross cutting issues in disaster risk reduction (DRR) based on the areas of their expertise and focuses. These cross cutting issues can be categorized mainly into five groups: Sector-focused (Health, Livelihood, etc.), Target-focused (Elderly, Children Persons with disabilities, etc.), Underlying causes-focused (Environment, Urbanization, etc.), Tool-focused (Information management, Capacity development etc.), and Approach-focused (Multi-hazards, Gender and cultural diversity, Community and volunteer participation etc.). A number of projects and activities that target different cross cutting issues in conjunction with DRR have been implemented by CSOs. Developing a creative and innovative project that can tackle both disaster risks and various cross cutting issues together requires a holistic and scaling-up multidisciplinary approach, and this is an area that CSOs can highly contribute to. This chapter addresses five topics as cross cutting issues: food security, health, human security, environment and microfinance. When the capacity of these cross cutting issues is successfully developed, it has a huge impact on DRR improvement. It is discussed why the five topics are important to be included in the cross cutting issues.Resilience is much more than bouncing back after a shock. It also involves the ability of individuals, communities, and entire regions to self-organize and increase their capacity for learning, experimentation, and adaptation. In the context of climate change, a resilience perspective emphasizes learning from the past (memory), monitoring the present, and the ability to anticipate and prepare for the worst. It includes learning to live with change and uncertainty by combining different types of knowledge, envisioning possible futures, and enhancing flexibility in decision-making and planning. Rather than learning by shock, a resilience lens offers a potentially empowering arena for nurturing innovation and the capacity to transform in order to navigate both slow and incremental environmental changes and rapid-onset crises. This chapter explores the role and potential limits of iterative learning processes for climate change adaptation in rural African communities characterized by high and chronic poverty, coupled with low awareness for complex drivers of change. It stresses learning, memory, creativity, and the need to move forward in spite of imperfect knowledge and vast uncertainties. At the same time, the chapter identifies critical institutional, policy, and power barriers, and potential limits at multiple scales that inhibit just and timely adaptation among vulnerable and marginalized populations, especially those dependent on rainfed agriculture. We identify poverty traps as complex thresholds typified by shifts and losses of key household assets, increasing failure of livelihood response strategies to social and ecological stresses and shocks, ineffective social networks, and limited anticipatory capacity to embrace change, uncertainty, and surprises. We conclude by proposing adaptive social protection as a prospective yet potentially insufficient means for bypassing or escaping poverty traps in the semi-arid tropics of Africa, and facilitating transitions towards livelihood resilience.This paper explores the potential role of indigenous transport for increasing the adaptive capacity of selected cities in developing Asia. Indigenous transport drivers were surveyed face-to-face in Bandung, Indonesia, and in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to gain an understanding of how transport workers, specifically drivers-operators, characterize transport modes considered as indigenous and perceive their potential role in increasing the adaptive capacity of these cities. The main finding was that indigenous transport modes in the two cities in the case study had evolved to fit a niche market influenced by differing urban scales and divergent demographic and geographic characteristics. Thus, the experiences and the perceptions of transport workers on indigenous transport were highly contextualized in relation to service and route characteristics. Operating conditions for drivers were indicative of the regulatory status of indigenous transport modes in the informal landscape. This analysis contributes to an increased understanding of the role and the operation of indigenous transport modes within the transport system. The analysis also contributes policy-relevant insights to improve an understanding of the potential role of indigenous transport in climate change adaptation, as well as to increase awareness and to anticipate a shift to a more environmentally sustainable transport mode.Options for adapting to changing water resources' availability due to climate change have been routinely assessed for ability to alleviate expected impacts. Methods for evaluating effectiveness of adaptation options are usually based on, fundamentally different but complementary, hazards and vulnerability assessment based approaches. In this paper, we describe a framework to integrate these approaches for improved climate change adaptation policy making. We further review assessment approaches and corresponding criteria used for evaluation of planned adaptation options in the water sector. A synthesis of methods for evaluation reveals four main categories: (i) natural sciences based, (ii) social sciences based, (iii) overlapping and (iv) trans-disciplinary. Criteria from reviewed studies are classified using a scale vis-a-vis theme based classification, and unified into a criteria set covering important adaptation requirements while allowing case-specific modification. We find that important criteria, such as temporal scope of adaptation and implementability, have not been explicitly considered in scientific literature. The type of adaptation has an important bearing on evaluation and should be effectively modelled to make an informed decision regarding performance. Moreover, we suggest that it is important to explicitly consider influence of future changes in non-climatic factors along with climatic changes for a more robust analysis.In recent years, there is no doubt that global climate change (CC) has observable development impacts, which seriously threatens the ability of individuals and communities at all levels. During this process, the clear degradation in the situation of ecosystems has produced a global concern of the urgency to mitigate climate threats and related effects. Assessing the impacts and vulnerability of CC requires accurate, up-to-date and improved information. Coupled with the ready availability of historical remote sensing (RS) data, the reduction in data cost and increased resolution from satellite platforms, RS technology appears poised to make a great impact on planning agencies and providing better understanding the dynamics of the climate system, predict and mitigate the expected global changes and the effects on human civilization involved in mapping Land Use Land Cover (LU/LC) at a variety of spatial scales. This research was designed to study the impact of CC in conflict zones and potential flashpoints in Sudan namely Nuba Mountains, where the community in this area living in fragile and unstable conditions, which making them more vulnerable to the risk of violent conflict and CC effects. And to determine the factors that exacerbate vulnerability in the study area as well as to map and assess the LU/LC change during the period 1984 to 2011 covered the years (1999, 2002 and 2009). Multispectral satellite data (i.e. LANDSAT TM and TERRA ASTER) integrated with socio economic data were used. Change detection techniques were applied to analyze the rate of changes, causal factors as well as the drivers of changes. Recent study showed the importance of spatial variables in tackling CC which promoted the use of maps made within a RS. In addition to provide an input for climate models; and thus plan adaptation strategies.To assess medium-range forecasts of detailed spatial distributions of the daily mean temperature, an ensemble downscaling forecast experiment was conducted using the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) nonhydrostatic model (NHM) with horizontal resolutions of 25 km and 5 km. Special attention was paid to the anomalously cool summers over northeastern Japan caused by northeasterly winds called Yamase. The results are validated against the daily mean surface temperatures observed by the Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) in the study area. Ensemble mean downscaling forecasts can successfully extract reliable signals with information about local circulations. The ensemble mean forecasts reduce the root mean square errors of the daily mean surface temperature by 15 % compared to single downscaling forecasts. The ensemble spreads also indicate the possibility of making prob-abilistic predictions that consider the effects of local circulations in addition to large-scale motions. The ensemble downscaling forecasts have 80 % larger spreads than the global forecasts with the JMA global spectral model at a resolution TL159L60 and approach the theoretical value. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis indicates that the predictability depends on the EOF modes. The predictable periods are 8 days for the homogeneous mode over northeastern Japan, 5 days for the Yamase mode (east-west mode), and 2 days for the north-south mode. The dynamical downscaling can properly predict the amplitudes of the EOF modes. In particular, the dynamical downscaling can predict 90 % of the Yamase mode, as compared to 20 % prediction of the global model for the same mode.The world's rangelands are often seen as offering considerable potential as a carbon (C) sink, which could contribute to the management of atmospheric C levels, but there are often few data available to assess this potential or to inform the type of management regimes that would be necessary. This paper reports on a review of the literature, a field study and modelling of C stocks under a selection of experimental fire regimes in two plant communities in Australia's northern rangelands. The field study on an open eucalypt savanna woodland and a savanna grassland-open shrubland suggested that fire regime had no effect or an inconsistent effect on aboveground C stocks. However, modelling using the Century model for the open woodland site showed that increasing fire frequency was associated with reduced aboveground and soil C stocks. Thus, while infrequent fires allowed C stocks to increase (10-yearly fire) or remain stable (6-yearly fire) over a modelled 58-year period, a regime of more frequent fires (4- and 2-yearly fires) reduced C stocks over time. Simulation of C dynamics over 93 years of pastoral settlement suggested that total C stocks had increased by 9.5 t ha(-1), largely due to an increase in C in woody vegetation following a reduction in fire frequency associated with pastoral settlement. Frequent burning, as recommended to maintain low woody density and promote pasture production for grazing, will, therefore, reduce aboveground and to a lesser extent soil C stocks where there has been a history of infrequent fire. The opportunities for pastoralists to increase C stocks will depend on the frequency of fire and vegetation type, especially its woodiness or potential woodiness. Reducing fire frequency in woody rangelands will increase C stocks but may have adverse effects on pasture and livestock production. Reducing grazing pressure or destocking might also increase C stocks but may be relevant only when a property is overstocked or where relatively unproductive land could be taken out of livestock production. Any C gains from altering fire and grazing management are likely to be modest.The problem of anthelmintic resistance in ovine trichostrongyles is growing in tropical areas such as Chiapas, Mexico. Hair-sheep breeds are frequently used by farmers because of their climate adaptation, however, anthelmintic resistance incidence requires more sensitive methods of diagnosis in this region in order to apply selective treatments. The aim of this study was to evaluate in vitro and in vivo the relative efficacy of the three main anthelmintics used to control gastrointestinal nematodes (GIN) in hair sheep. Naturally infected ewes and lambs experimentally infected with 100 larvae (L-3) of Haemonchus contortus and Cooperia curticei per kg body weight were used. Sheep were treated with 10 mg kg(-1) albendazole, 7,5 mg kg(-1) levamisole or 0,2 mg kg-1 ivermectin. Positive faecal samples were cultured to obtain infective larvae (L3). Larvae of C. curticei and H. contortus were tested in vitro and data were analyzed using the PROBIT procedure. Also, the relative anthelmintic efficacy was evaluated by faecal egg reduction test (FECRT). The results of the FECRT showed 30% of levamisole efficacy while efficacies of and 87%. 64% and 65% were observed for ivermectin, albendazole and commercial combination of ivermectin + levamisole (Iv+L), respectively. Problems of anthelmintic resistance were manly showed with the mix Iv+L. The lethal dose (LD50) to albendazole, levamisole and ivermectin estimated after 12 h were 38, 8, 9,5 and 0,41 mg. These result show anthelmintic resistance problems in hair sheep using the three main commercial drugs and for the combination of Iv+L in the tropical region of Chiapas, Mexico.Environmental flows continue to shift conceptually from a utilitarian means of protecting 'environmental' needs - often equated with specific fish species of economic and/or conservation value - within the water resources planning and management cycle to a process underpinning the adaptive, sustainable management of social-ecological aquatic systems for multiple benefits and at multiple scales. We explore some of the ways in which environmental flows are clearly transitioning from a discipline designed mainly to conserve aquatic species, through improved site-level water resources infrastructure operations, to a more sophisticated vehicle for achieving the ever challenging goals for sustainable water management and human well-being. These goals are achieved through good governance and policy, and by setting targets for socioeconomic development and climate-resilient resource management. As these dimensions of the policy and practice evolve, the need grows to engage with and draw upon the expertise of a broader community of stakeholders, from the public and private sectors, the social sciences and civil society. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.The rapid development of adaptation as a mainstream strategy for managing the risks of climate change has led to the emergence of a broad range of adaptation policies and management strategies globally. However, the success of such policies or management interventions depends on the effective integration of new scientific research into the decision-making process. Ineffective communication between scientists and environmental decision makers represents one of the key barriers limiting the integration of science into the decision-making process in many areas of natural resource management. This can be overcome by understanding the perceptions of end users, so as to identify knowledge gaps and develop improved and targeted strategies for communication and engagement. We assessed what one group of environmental decision makers, Australian marine protected area (MPA) managers, viewed as the major risks associated with climate change, and their perceptions regarding the role, importance, and achievability of adaptation for managing these risks. We also assessed what these managers perceived as the role of science in managing the risks from climate change, and identified the factors that increased their trust in scientific information. We do so by quantitatively surveying 30 MPA managers across 3 Australian management agencies. We found that although MPA managers have a very strong awareness of the range and severity of risks posed by climate change, their understanding of adaptation as an option for managing these risks is less comprehensive. We also found that although MPA managers view science as a critical source of information for informing the decision-making process, it should be considered in context with other knowledge types such as community and cultural knowledge, and be impartial, evidence based, and pragmatic in outlining policy and management recommendations that are realistically achievable.Ice volume estimates are crucial for assessing water reserves stored in glaciers. Due to its large glacier coverage, such estimates are of particular interest for the Himalayan-Karakoram (HK) region. In this study, different existing methodologies are used to estimate the ice reserves: three area-volume relations, one slope-dependent volume estimation method, and two ice-thickness distribution models are applied to a recent, detailed, and complete glacier inventory of the HK region, spanning over the period 2000-2010 and revealing an ice coverage of 40 775 km(2). An uncertainty and sensitivity assessment is performed to investigate the influence of the observed glacier area and important model parameters on the resulting total ice volume. Results of the two ice-thickness distribution models are validated with local ice-thickness measurements at six glaciers. The resulting ice volumes for the entire HK region range from 2955 to 4737 km(3), depending on the approach. This range is lower than most previous estimates. Results from the ice thickness distribution models and the slope-dependent thickness estimations agree well with measured local ice thicknesses. However, total volume estimates from area-related relations are larger than those from other approaches. The study provides evidence on the significant effect of the selected method on results and underlines the importance of a careful and critical evaluation.There is an increased interest in institutions and the role they play in the context of adaptation to climate change. The present chapter contributes to the growing debate by providing an analysis of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The chapter shows that while member states originally made use of the institutional framework of ASEAN to generate a common understanding of climate change mitigation and to apply it externally, the association is now becoming increasingly accepted for internal framing of adaptation processes. Yet while ASEAN has undoubtedly 'come to terms' with climate change, the notion of sustainability, which is a key concept for any adaptation strategy, remains on a broad rhetoric level only. Results thus show that without elaborating more fundamental linkages between sustainability and the overarching topic of economic development, any adaptation strategy will be prone to fail.Plants respond to water stress with a variety of physiological and biochemical changes, but their response vary between species, varieties and cultivars. The present study focused on changes of bio-functional phytochemicals (phenolic compounds, chlorophyll, carotenoids, dietary fiber) in commercial cultivars and old, traditional varieties of lettuce under different water regimes (water-deficit, well-watered and water-logged). Results revealed lettuce varieties and cultivars with a different response behavior to water stress. Biomass production under drought conditions was reduced significantly in old varieties ('Struwelpeter', 'Trianon'), but in contrast, it was only affected tendentiously in the commercial cultivars ('Wiske', 'Teodore'). Carotenoid and chlorophyll contents decreased in both water extremes, while total phenols accumulated under limited water availability, predominantly found in 'Teodore'. Dietary fiber content was not influenced by different water regimes in all lettuce cultivars and varieties. Water stress reduced biomass production and led to a change of phytochemicals in lettuce, however, old and traditional varieties did not show a different water stress adaptation compared to commercial cultivars.Together with other stressors, interactions between fire and climate change are expressing their potential to drive ecosystem shifts and losses in biodiversity. Closely linked to human well-being in most regions of the globe, fires and their consequences should no longer be regarded as repeated surprise events. Instead, we should regard fires as common and enduring components of most terrestrial systems, including their social context. At the global scale, too much fire and the wrong kinds of fire are trumping not enough fire as the most influential fire problems we must address. Intensified fire suppression and government prohibition of burning is not a long-term solution at the global scale. Acknowledging the importance of programs to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, I propose that fire ecologists come together to elevate attention on four less-discussed priorities: ecological systems in which people depend on fire for survival and well-being; systems in which governments unwisely insist on command and control approaches to fire; places where peatlands are burning; and, places where climate-driven changes in fire will cause type conversion. Finally, I propose holding a worldwide fire summit to debate these priorities and to create fire management goals at the global scale. Taken all together, these proposed steps could enable fire ecologists to mount a worldwide offensive to shape the future of fire in the era of climate change.Climate change is projected to alter river flows and the magnitude/frequency characteristics of floods and droughts. Ecosystem-based adaptation highlights the interdependence of human and natural systems, and the potential to buffer the impacts of climate change by maintaining functioning ecosystems that continue to provide multiple societal benefits. Natural flood management (NFM), emphasising the restoration of innate hydrological pathways, provides important regulating services in relation to both runoff rates and water quality and is heralded as a potentially important climate change adaptation strategy. This paper draws together 25 NFM schemes, providing a meta-analysis of hydrological performance along with a wider consideration of their net (dis) benefits. Increasing woodland coverage, whilst positively linked to peak flow reduction (more pronounced for low magnitude events), biodiversity and carbon storage, can adversely impact other provisioning service-especially food production. Similarly, reversing historical land drainage operations appears to have mixed impacts on flood alleviation, carbon sequestration and water quality depending on landscape setting and local catchment characteristics. Wetlands and floodplain restoration strategies typically have fewer disbenefits and provide improvements for regulating and supporting services. It is concluded that future NFM proposals should be framed as ecosystem-based assessments, with trade-offs considered on a case-by-case basis.The goal of this paper is to show the process of adaptation and technological innovation and environment adaptation made between the 1940's to 1970's, whose results are observable in spatiality, volumetric and climate adaptation which characterize Yucatan modern architecture. In first place it shows the background technology and thermal performance of pre-modern architectures in which predominate the envelopes thick and heavy and with a predominance of the massif on the vain. Followed by the discussion about the introduction of the ideas of modernity in Mexico and Yucatan considering that initially only architectural forms were taken without considering the social and environmental conditions of each region and how it tried to reconcile both aspects. A characterization of constructive technology of modern architecture through a chronological journey is made from the years 40's up to the 70's, pointing out the building systems used in residential architecture and architecture of equipment. Then sets the transit between the architecture of large thermal mass to architecture that changes the articulation of spaces and lighter thermal mass through the dominance of the vain on the massif. And finally the Yucatan modern architecture that manages to combine the architectural and technological solutions with the climatic conditions is exemplified.The predicted manifestations of global climate change are diverse and extensive. Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) offer great potential to enable and enhance climate change adaptation projects, programmes and activities. As yet these roles have received relatively little systematic consideration. In this paper we outline the nature of climate change adaptation contexts and present a set of prototype tools that aim to enable the identification and exploration of opportunities for ICTs to play positive roles across the full spectrum of climate change adaptation contexts. The tools are both generative and systemic-generative in enabling the creative identification of potential adaptation roles for ICTs, of all kinds, and systemic in providing a means of taking into account the complex interactions between the key elements of any climate change adaptation context. Further because of their systemic nature they can be iteratively applied enabling adaptive responses to the inevitable change within any climate change adaptation project. The paper provides an illustration of the generative use of the tools and finally explores key limitations in the initial work leading to suggestion for further development.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the private sector consider voluntary involvement in efforts to combat the impacts of climate change in the lines mitigation approaches and adaptation approaches. Today's world has increasingly become aware of the adverse effects of climate change and its impact on the poor, though the latter impact is not that well known. To address these impacts, recommendations exist that follow two different though interrelated approaches - mitigation and adaptation. Design/methodology/approach - Using a survey questionnaire as the research instrument and a sampling frame of 350 junior corporate executives, an empirical study was conducted in the Chennai area in southern part of India to evaluate/measure the linkages between awareness to climate change, its impact on the poor and the willingness of private sector to act on adaptation as well as mitigation strategies. Findings - From the data analysis, it emerges that there is significant awareness about the impacts of climate change, though the awareness to vulnerability of the poor is not yet significant in Chennai area in the private sector. However, the study concludes that there does exist a significant linkage between awareness and the willingness to support adaptation strategies on the part of junior corporate executives. Research limitations/implications - The study is country specific because the research was carried out in a defined region in India. Practical implications - Because the study brought out the result that private sector was willing to participate in adaptation strategies, extensive awareness building can be carried out for corporate executives and plan out activities which will enable them to participate in adaptation strategies which would help the poor in India to help address the devastations caused by Climate Change from time to time. Social implications - Executives taking up the Climate Change adaptation strategy would help protect and benefit all communities especially the poor in the country. Companies operating in India would find an avenue to reach out in their efforts to touch communities around them. Employees in such companies may be organized and gathered together to participate in such reach-out activities on the part of the companies. Originality/value - This paper fulfils urgent need to inspire the corporate executives to take up initiatives related to climate change. The paper lays the groundwork on which an array of corporate activities can be developed to implement the adaptation strategies. Further extensive thinking can follow this research as to where and how exactly private sector can help.Purpose - This paper aims to present a new framework for climate change vulnerability, impact and adaptation (VIA) assessment. Greater attention has been given in recent years to the importance of conducting climate change VIA assessment prior to, or as part of, climate change adaptation strategies and projects. A VIA assessment provides decision-makers and project developers with information on the location and causes of vulnerability based on local knowledge and scientific data, so that effective adaptation responses that are targeted and site-specific can be designed. A challenge facing practitioners in this field is the lack of clear methodologies or agreed frameworks on how to conduct a VIA assessment. Design/methodology/approach - This paper presents a VIA methodological framework that has been developed through three sub-regional pilot assessments on vulnerability and impacts of climate change, as part of the Regional Gateway for Technology Transfer and Action on Climate Change in Latin America and The Caribbean. Findings - While it is recognized that methodologies and tools may differ depending on the unique local context of the study area and sector under analysis, there are key components that every assessment needs to consider. Originality/value - The framework proposed can assist practitioners to deliver outputs from VIAs that are holistic, and provide the most appropriate type of information required for effective, context-specific adaptation responses.Herders' perceptions are important in relation to adopting adaptive behavioural approaches to climate change. A survey of 1080 herder households was conducted in six rangeland regions of Inner Mongolia in northern China to investigate relationships between herder's perceptions and actual climate change. Across all six regions, more than 90% of herders perceived a decline in precipitation in the past 30 years, whereas actual data showed no significant change. Many herders also perceived an increase in temperature, which was in agreement with the temperature data, although the proportion of herders who perceived a change in temperature differed among regions. A further survey of 58 households was conducted to better understand the reasons for these differences, by simultaneously surveying their perceptions of the changes in both rainfall and rangeland condition. The results showed that the herders' perceptions of a decrease in rainfall could be influenced by their perceptions of the changes in the condition of their rangeland (reductions in production). An alternative explanation could relate to rainfall being interpreted in terms of the frequency and pattern rather than the absolute amounts. These findings have important implications for understanding how herders' perceptions can improve their adaptive behavioural responses to climate change.In this paper we ponder this question: what types of institutional principles would help to establish a macroregional climate change adaptation strategy in the Baltic Sea Region? Inspired by a new institutionalism approach, we trace some of the important elements of regulatory and normative institutional functions. We then discuss how top-down and bottom-up government and governance can contribute to a macroregional climate change adaptation strategy, and profile the local, national, and transnational development efforts that are already underway to facilitate coordination and learning about climate change adaptation in the Baltic Sea Region. Finally, we look at the specific role that a macroregional climate change adaptation strategy has in helping to manage institutional complexity inherent in a multilevel governance context.EU rural development policy (RDP) regulation 1305/2013 aims to protect farmers' incomes from ongoing change of climate variability (CCV), and the increase in frequency of adverse climatic events. An income stabilization tool (IST) is provided to compensate drastic drops in income, including those caused by climatic events. The present study examines some aspect of its application focussing on Mediterranean irrigation area where frequent water shortages may generate significant income reductions in the current climate conditions, and may be further exacerbated by climate change. This enhanced loss of income in the future would occur due to a change in climate variability. This change would appreciably reduce the probability of weather conditions that are favourable for irrigation, but would not significantly increase either the probability of unfavourable weather conditions or the magnitude of their impact. As the IST and other insurance tools that protect against adversity and catastrophic events are only activated under extreme conditions, farmers may not consider them to be suitable in dealing with the new climate regime. This would leave a portion of the financial resources allocated by the RDP unused, resulting in less support for climate change adaptation.The environment around concrete structures may be influenced by a changing climate, especially in the long run, leading to an acceleration of deterioration. Therefore, the safety, serviceability and durability of concrete infrastructure may decline at a faster rate than expected. Carbonation-induced deterioration to concrete structures constructed in Sydney, Australia and Kunming, China under a changing climate is investigated in this paper. Two emissions scenarios are considered - RCP 8.5 and RCP 4.5, representing high and medium greenhouse gas emissions scenarios respectively. The spatial time-dependent reliability analysis includes time-dependent climate scenarios and deterioration processes, as well as a large number of random variables and spatial random fields of material properties and dimensions. The surface of concrete structures is discretised into a large number of elements and the likelihood and extent of corrosion damage is calculated by tracking the evolution of the corrosion process of each element using Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that a changing climate could cause the extent of damage to increase by up to 6% for reinforced concrete infrastructure in Kunming. The findings may be used to assess climate adaptation measures in the design stage, as well as a cost-benefit analysis of climate adaptation measures.The on-going changes in the climate conditions have been affecting the agriculture industries, where the effects are likely to be region specific. There is a need for different types and levels of adaptation in each region based on its conditions and resources. This study focuses on theUji area of Kyoto, which is one of the oldest and most famous producers of green tea in Japan. Recent changes have been slowly affecting the quality of the tea produced in the region, as well as further decliningofthe tea quantity cultivated in Uji area. In order to sustain the area as a vibrant tea producer, specific and localized adaptation methods need to be developed. The development of terroir(as used in winegrape producing regions) derived bio-climatic indicators linked withtraditional agriculture knowledgein long-standing tea farmer communities, is very important in developingprecision agriculture systemfor adapting to climate change. Indicators such as Heliothermal Index, THSW Index, Cool Night Index, Dryness Index, as well as Soil Respiration Index can be retranslated into indicators for evaluating optimal conditions for growing quality teas. Selection of the most appropriate land, cultivars and cultivation methods for quality tea production can be applied and conducted as these indicators are likely to become a powerful tool for monitoring the impacts of climate change and adapting pro-actively to the environmental transformation, while maintaining and enhancing the values of the teas produced.The development of bio-climatic indicators will not only be useful for Uji area, but also in other tea growing regions in the world. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Learning about and embracing change and uncertainty are essential for responding to climate change. Creativity, critical reflection, and cogenerative inquiry can enhance adaptive capacity, or the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to adverse future impacts. However, precisely how learning about change and its driving forces occurs and how experiences are combined with envisioned yet indefinite prospects of the future are poorly understood. We present two linked methodological tools-an assessment of drivers of change and participatory scenario building-used in a climate change adaptation project in Ghana and Tanzania (ALCCAR). We discuss opportunities and challenges of such iterative learning. Our findings suggest that joint exploration, diverse storylines, and deliberation help to expand community-based adaptation repertoires and to strike a balance between hopelessness and a tendency to idealize potential future realities.A system for generating information for an urban inventory by analysing remotely sensed or ground based sensed images is described. The urban inventory contains information about all land parcels in an urban area and the information is stored in a GIS database. The analysis system uses the semi-hierarchical multiresolution MCV image labeling algorithm and ensemble SVM classifiers to detect building footprints, trees and other urban land cover classes. The system has high accuracy for building footprint and tree detection on the data on which it has been tested.Extreme weather events related to climate change in the future are likely to increase a number and scale of disasters. In order to prepare for these changes and the impacts they will have on natural systems and human communities, it is need "climate change adaptation". Understandably, much attention has been focused to date on "climate change mitigation," or efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere and help slow the rate of climate change. Climate change adaptation and mitigation are related, and both are important for local government because adaptation to climate change needs to be on going. Successful adaptation will require not only good information about climate change, and prioritization of actions, but also the ability to implement responses and modify hose responses over time. This paper summarizes some literatures to demonstrate that there are some different inclusive partnership approaches that have been taken to conduct mitigation and adaptation planning in East Kalimantan. Those approaches of climate change mitigation and adaptation planning provide better understanding on the usage of planning in any different levels of mitigation and adaptation and its limitation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.Resilience of urban structures towards impacts of a changing climate is one of the emerging tasks that cities all over the world are facing at present. Effects of climate change take many forms, depending on local climate, spatial patterns, and socioeconomic structures. Cities are only just beginning to be aware of the task, and some time will pass before it is integrated into mainstream urban governance. This chapter is based on work in progress. It covers urban governance and planning aspects of climate change adaptation as studied in the CLUVA project (CLimate change and Urban Vulnerability in Africa), as well as some experiences from Denmark. Focus is on the responses and capacities of urban authorities, strengths and weaknesses of the efforts, data needs and possible ways forward. The chapter concludes that many adaptation activities are taking place in the CLUVA case cities, but that they need integration at city level to form strategic adaptation plans. A combined rational and pragmatic approach is advisable as is involvement of stakeholders in the production of relevant knowledge.Ecosystems often show sudden and drastic shifts in their states following relatively small environmental changes, yet the environmental restoration does not necessarily easily recover the original state. The resilience theory has played a pivotal role in ecosystem management by providing a theoretical basis for such abrupt and irreversible phase transitions (i.e., regime shifts). However, a major concern remains that the existing theory considers ecosystem responses along only a single disturbance axis (e.g., eutrophication), despite the fact that natural ecosystems are subject to multiple anthropogenic disturbances. In this chapter, I introduce ontogenetic niche shifts (i.e., changes in resource use or predation vulnerability during individual growth) as a possible common mechanism of regime shifts. Based on this framework, I show how additional factors not accounted for the basic resilience theory (e.g., species extinction and invasion, habitat loss and fragmentation, and phenological shifts) may affect whether or where regime shifts occur along environmental gradients. I conclude that these results taken together illustrate the importance of interdisciplinary research integrating biodiversity conservation, landscape protection, and climate change adaptation for more effective management of lake ecosystems.Computationally-expensive regional climate models (RCM) are increasingly being used to generate local climate data for climate change impact studies. These studies usually process RCM output to remove errors in the simulated climate. However, this paper investigates the suitability of raw output from simulations of a single RCM as input to a biophysical impact model. Our study analyses errors in wheat yields simulated for New South Wales (NSW), Australia by the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) model forced with output from 2 RCM simulations with horizontal resolutions of approximately 50 and 10 km over NSW and with output from the global climate model (GCM) simulation that they downscale. Overall, across the NSW wheat belt, the similar to 50 km simulation has a better simulation of mean yields for the 1990-2010 period than the GCM simulation, and the similar to 10 km simulation has a better simulation than the similar to 50 km simulation. The average mean yield from APSIM simulations forced with observations is 3.5 t ha(-1). The average magnitudes of errors in mean yields for the GCM, similar to 50 km and similar to 10 km simulations are 1.2, 1.0 and 0.5 t ha(-1) respectively. We suggest that the improvement in the simulation of mean yields with increasing climate model resolution is largely due to an improvement in the simulation of mean rainfall totals for the growing season. However, for a given value of mean growing season total rainfall, all 3 climate model simulations have a climate that is more conducive to high yields than the observed climate. This difference must be due to errors in other aspects of the simulated climates.Birch pollen mainly causes springtime allergy-related diseases, birch pollinoses, widely known in high-latitude countries. By utilizing the observation in Sapporo from 2001 to 2011, we found that the daily pollen amount almost follows the log-normal distribution with its characteristic time-scale of several days. The pollen amount itself was therefore taken as a major predictor for its day-to-day variations. Another predictor was chosen from climatic variables that were possibly related to the pollen amount such as temperature, rainfall, sunshine duration, wind, relative humidity, rainfall, and daily temperature difference to explain daily variations of the pollen amount. A resulting statistical equation with two independent predictors of lagged pollen amount and diurnal temperature range based on the multiple regression analysis provided a reasonable hindcast prediction with the correlation coeffcient with observation being 0.80. Moreover, the equation was better fitted to the observations in abundant years than in poor-yield years.The mass media has ensured that the challenging and complex phenomenon of climate change now has the household familiarity of a brand name. But what is it that is understood by climate change, and by whom? What frame of reference is drawn upon to communicate meaningfully about climate change? Do particular subgroups within our society hold different understandings, or have the debate and the prolific dissemination of information about this issue coalesced around a core perception or image of what climate change is? To answer these questions, we conceptualized climate change within the theory of social representations as emergent socially constructed knowledge. We analyzed word association data collected in Australia from persons identifying as having a scientific, government, or general public background (N = 3300). All respondents were asked to write the first words that came to mind when they thought about climate change. Comparative analyses of the word associations reveal that respondents from different backgrounds define climate change in different ways. The results suggest that there is a common core set of concepts shared by the different groups, but there are also a great many differences in how climate change is framed and conceived by respondents. The results are discussed in relation to what they imply for responses to climate change by these social groups and in relation to interventions designed to encourage climate adaptation.With regional variations, climate change has a significant impact on water quality deterioration and scarcity, which are serious challenges in developing countries and emerging economies. Often, effective projects to improve water management in the light of climate change are difficult to develop because of the complex interrelations between direct and indirect climate impacts and local perceptions of vulnerabilities and needs. Adaptation projects can be developed through a combination of participatory, bottom-up needs assessments and top-down analyses. Climate change impact chains can help to display the causal chain of climate signals and resulting impacts and thereby establish a system map as a basis for stakeholder discussions. This article aims to develop specific climate change impact chains for the water management sector in rural coastal India that combine bottom-up and top-down perspectives. Case studies from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, India, provide a basis for the impact chains developed. Bottom-up data were gathered through a vulnerability and needs assessment in 18 villages complemented with top-down research data. The article is divided into four steps: (1) system of interest; (2) data on climate change signals; (3) climate change impacts based on top-down as well as bottom-up information; (4) specific impact chains complemented by initial climate change adaptation options.Australia represents a global proving ground for effective riparian climate change adaptation due to its scale and diversity, extreme variation in runoff and degrees of aridity. An array of autonomous riparian zone (RZ) management adaptations have emerged in Australia that have captivated the international community but have yet to be effectively delivered. This paper reviews government policies, governance structures, the application of market-based instruments and voluntary measures to ask why Australia has not achieved more. We find promise in: the resurgence of application of indigenous knowledge and engagement in management; understanding of the catalytic roles of women, means of better engaging individuals, strengthening of social networks and fostering leadership in rural communities; transferring of urban resources to their rural hinterlands; better engaging communities through campaigns, businesses and political leaders; and strategic research programmes. These findings have application in other difficult hydrologies. We contend that government and market-based programmes are underpinned by voluntary and cultural institutions, and that these require strengthening through fostering of an ethic to conserve RZs as the core element of the biophysical and human landscape. It calls for stakeholders to adopt a common vision for conservation of RZs that can sustain implementation through institutional changes.Water management systems have been typically designed and operated under the assumption of stationarity. This assumption may no longer be valid under climate change scenarios. Water availability may change dramatically at some locations due mainly to possible impacts of changes in temperature and precipitation over streamflow volume and seasonality, adding pressure to water supply systems. It has been shown that snowmelt-dominated basins are particularly sensitive to such changes. Hence, human settlements and economic activities developed in such areas are particularly vulnerable. The Maipo river basin in Central Chile - where more than 6 million people live - is one of these areas. We used a calibrated water resources model of the Maipo river basin, in order to propose a general framework to evaluate adaptation options at the urban level. When comparing a mid-21st century period to a historic control period, results for three selected performance metrics showed a decrease in water system performance. Adaptation measures were evaluated in their capacity to maintain current water security standards. Two alternatives stand as highly effective options to this end: water rights purchases and improvements in water use efficiency. The political and economic costs of implementing these options, which could deem them unviable, are not considered here but are worthy of further research.Mainstreaming climate adaptation requires the inclusion of climate adaptation in the policies of various policy domains such as water management and spatial planning. This paper investigates the organizational values present in several municipal policy departments in order to explore their willingness to act upon climate adaptation and the implications for mainstreaming. Q methodology, supplemented by interviews and focus groups, applied in three major Dutch municipalities - Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam - reveals three value patterns: (1) start today; (2) not for us to lead; and (3) shared responsibility. These different value patterns indicate that there is a general agreement on the problem, impacts and solutions, but disagreement on the time frame for action and the allocation of resources. Although all three value patterns are present within departments in each municipality, different value patterns prevail in each municipality. Additionally, the analysis shows barriers as well as opportunities for mainstreaming. A lack of political commitment and leadership, and unsupportive organizational structures, create barriers. In spite of this, there is willingness to act and strategic framing is applied to gain acceptance for the mainstreaming of climate adaptation.We investigated the impact of assimilating amapped dataset of subsurface ocean currents into an ocean state estimation. We carried out two global ocean state estimations from 2000 to 2007 using the K7 four-dimensional variational data synthesis system, one of which included an additional map of climatological geostrophic currents estimated from the global set of Argo floats. We assessed the representativeness of the volume transport in the two exercises. The assimilation of Argo ocean current data at only one level, 1000 dbar depth, had subtle impacts on the estimated volume transports, which were strongest in the subtropical North Pacific. The corrections at 10 degrees N, where the impact was most notable, arose through the nearly complete offset of wind stress curl by the data synthesis system in conjunction with the first mode baroclinic Rossby wave adjustment. Our results imply that subsurface current data can be effective for improving the estimation of global oceanic circulation by a data synthesis.The peaks of the appearance frequency of the surface air temperature during precipitation are clearly observed near the melting point of water on the Toyama Plain during the winter monsoon. The peaks could be explained by the hypothesis that the melting of snowfall is the primary cause of the cooling on the Toyama Plain. To verify this hypothesis, we investigated the relation of temperature between the inland and the coast using observed data in January from 1990 to 2009 and applied a simple estimation method of the cooling due to the melting of snowfall. The temperature on the Toyama Plain tends to remain around the melting point when the surface air temperature on the coast is higher than 273.15 K and lower than 277.15 K, which almost corresponds to the changeover from snowfall to rainfall. The relation is unclear when hardly any precipitation is observed. The simply estimated cooling by the melting of snowfall using the observed precipitation can also represents the cooling on the Toyama Plain. Accordingly, the local climatic temperature could be greatly influenced by advection of the air mass cooled by the melting of snowfall until the air mass reaches the Toyama Plain during the winter monsoon.Nepal is one of the 20 most disaster-prone countries in the world. Unequal access to and control over resources by women also add to Nepal's vulnerability. Rautahat district faces many hazards every year, such as floods, fire, epidemics, and cold waves. Floods displace more than 756 families temporarily each year. Women are considered the most vulnerable group in disaster situations due to several factors, such as illiteracy, poverty, lack of awareness, social taboos, domestic and other violence, lack of access to and control over resources, low influence and decision-making capacity and so on. Disaster risk reduction, as a multi-hazard approach, is directly linked to community resiliency. It covers all aspects of development identified by local communities. With the objective of empowering women for leadership skills in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA), via the Nepal Red Cross Society, we established six Women Empowerment Centers (WEC) in the Village Development Committees (VDCs). The project has equipped them with several training inputs. WEC members have had several tangible achievements by mobilizing community people in the sector of disaster management and by coordinating with other agencies for the technical expertise they need.Bihar, in the central Gangetic Basin, is simultaneously India's poorest and most flood-prone State. Climate change models currently identify a heightening of Bihar's flood risk, as rainfall patterns become more intense and Himalayan glaciers recede. During the past half century, the major strategy deployed by the State and national governments to address the risk of floods has involved the construction of embankments: raised areas of land that seek to control river flow and provide temporary sanctuaries for flood-affected populations. In this article, qualitative data from interviews with flood-affected villagers and policy makers at local, district and State levels are used to assess the social implications of embankments as an adaptive response to flood risk. Evidence from these testimonies leads us to conceptualise embankments as contributing to recursive cycles of vulnerability, in which women, children and poorer social segments have been unwitting bearers. Hence, reliance on embankments is a maladaptation that perpetuates, if not exacerbates, the severe manifestations of social and economic inequality that continue to plague rural Bihar. Perhaps not surprisingly, the voices of those whose lives have been made more difficult by embankments are heard all too infrequently in policy debates. This emphasises the need for climate adaptation initiatives to be anchored in a sustainable livelihood approach, for which the prime analytical objective is to understand the factors that enable or constrain the abilities of people, especially those who are most vulnerable, to make decisions about their lives.The Kandyan homegardens, or forest gardens, of central Sri Lanka are diverse, smallholder agroforestry ecosystems that for 2000 years have reflected evolving environmental, economic, and social livelihood needs. An ecosystem services approach interrogated homegarden changes over the last 10 years in 31 Kandyan households. Livelihood strategies favouring homegardens were found to have broader benefits across household, national, and global scales than those favouring commercial simplification or those abandoning cultivation for alternative incomes. Livelihood benefits beyond income included resilience to economic and environmental shocks; food security; and higher stocks of biological and agricultural diversity. This revealed overlooked socio-ecological feedbacks between drivers that frustrated interventions to sustain homegarden livelihoods, including increased wild animal incursions thwarting household climate adaptation and disaster recovery; global organic and fair trade incentives reducing food security and livelihood resilience; and national seed and animal regulations counteracting homegarden sustainability programs. Despite these pressures, households maintained homegarden systems for their cultural, aesthetic and eating preferences. An ecosystem services approach can complement sustainable livelihood approaches by identifying overlooked environmental and cultural benefits; reveal livelihood feedbacks from drivers of ecosystem change; avoid unintended consequences from interventions; and capitalise on synergies between stakeholder priorities.The Taiwan Breeding Bird Survey (BBS Taiwan) is a national monitoring project with the aim of establishing a breeding bird population index for conservation. It was established as a citizen science project with the working group operating on a cross-organizational cooperation basis. From 2009 to 2012, BBS Taiwan has obtained data from more than 300 sampling sites and has reported on national population trends for more than 60 % of the diurnal breeding bird species in Taiwan. Descriptions of sampling design, survey methods, and current results are given in this chapter. With ongoing monitoring projects covering other taxa such as anurans, butterflies, bats, and reptiles, biodiversity observation networks in Taiwan are expected to provide critical information to aid conservation and climate change adaptation strategies, and also to increase public awareness of the importance of biodiversity.In the face of global climate change, radical design proposals present a rare optimistic perspective for future environmental adaptation, and ultimately, human survival. Artificial glaciers in the Himalaya illustrate just one of the many innovative landform designs that have recently emerged as a response to climate change challenges. These projects for climate change adaptation represent a new genre of design work that could have considerable implications for the profession of landscape architecture. As cities and towns confront the volatile environmental conditions of the twenty-first century, the broad reach and disciplinary expertise of landscape architecture could provide valuable design thinking around climate change geoengineering, adaptation, and mitigation. However, while large-scale infrastructural projects, such as artificial glaciers, appear to mediate the negative effects of climate change in the short term, these solutions may only provide temporary relief from the larger crisis of a warming planet.This brief communication presents the work and objectives of the CATALYST project on "Capacity Development for Hazard Risk Reduction and Adaptation" funded by the European Commission (October 2011-September 2013). CATALYST set up a multi-regional think tank covering four regions (Central America and the Caribbean, East and West Africa, the European Mediterranean, and South and Southeast Asia), intending to strengthen capacity development for stakeholders involved in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation, in the context of natural hazards. This communication concludes with a selection of recommendations for capacity development in DRR and climate change adaptation from the perspective of governance issues.Adaptation is increasingly planned and funded to reduce negative impacts of climate change for vulnerable social groups; however, vulnerable groups have the least capacity to adapt. Adaptation is therefore unlikely to produce socially sustainable or equitable outcomes. Six adaptation processes on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, are modeled with logistic regression to identify their determinant factors. Most adaptations simply reproduce unsustainable patterns of social vulnerability rooted in unequal access to land and other resource entitlements. A few exceptions are observed, where low costs, widely accessible knowledge, and community groups with cross-scale social networks enabled vulnerable social groups to implement adaptations.Climate change is increasingly discussed in apocalyptic terms, a spectre-invoking crisis discourse that simultaneously legitimises society-wide action, while de-politicising this very political issue. This paper examines the depoliticisation of climate change adaptation in Kenya, a country which has been recently praised as a developing country with a progressive adaptation policy. Using examples from fieldwork in Kenya, it focusses on Kenya's recently adopted National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS), and argues that Kenya's adaptation discourse is driven by particular imaginaries, specifically: adaptation as a 'universal apocalypse', and adaptation as a technical-economic problem. These function as deliberate anti-political strategies, aimed at obscuring the highly charged realities of adaptation. For Kenya's current political elite adaptation is predominantly a matter of reducing the perceived risks to economic growth, and enhancing opportunities to gain revenue from international funding sources. This is achieved through a discursive construction of a particular vision of adaptation, and against a backdrop of a capitalist strategy for growth. The paper concludes that a critical and political interpretation of the NCCRS and similar adaptation strategies is necessary to keep equity and justice at the centre of the climate debate, and to dispel the myth of adaptation policy making as a rational and disinterested process.The Douglas-fir, native to western North America, is a drought-tolerant species and considered as one of the most promising key tree species in Western and Central Europe for forest adaption under changing climate conditions. The wide native distribution range of the Douglas-fir, covering a large latitudinal and elevation range, constitutes genetically differentiated populations. Thus, the selection of suitable proveniences and site conditions are of major importance in guaranteeing a successful cultivation outside its natural distribution range. In this study, we investigate how environmental conditions may influence the growth of Douglas-fir in Austria and Southern Bavaria-fir stands. We develop a basal area increment model based on stand density, tree size and site conditions. Furthermore, the environmental factors climate, topography and soil and their relationship versus site index are investigated. Eleven Douglas-fir stands from Austria and Bavaria are randomly selected. The genetic seed sources are from the Western Cascades in Washington and Oregon. The 10 year basal area increment per hectare (BAI10) was modeled with a nonlinear power function explaining 77% of the existing variation.Many recent planning decisions, such as planned retreat of coastal settlements from the sea, are premised upon the scientific consensus that climate change is real. Not all local residents accept forced relocation, and some hold a radical form of rights-based belief that is hostile to government intervention into private arenas. This 'deontological libertarian' belief is related to a sceptical view of climate science. Data from an Australian survey are employed to demonstrate that climate scepticism is associated with the tendency to see private-property rights as a fundamental entitlement irredeemable in the prospect of forced retreat, regardless of compensation. The sceptical view has defensible normative elements constructed upon the framework of inviolable rights also underpinning recognised environmental and development imperatives. Appealing to absolute rights generally may be an effective way to approach the sceptical public. Rights offer a generalisable framework in which sceptics which they can see how their non-sceptical counterparts are similarly situated despite expressing a different policy preference. Although consensus is not guaranteed, communication can proceed more easily by making a common ontological terrain explicit.Purpose - This paper aims to describe the conduct and outcomes of an integrated assessment (IA) of the vulnerability to climate change of government service provision at regional scale in New South Wales, Australia. The assessment was co-designed with regional public sector managers to address their needs for an improved understanding of regional vulnerabilities to climate change and variability. Design/methodology/approach - The study used IA of climate change impacts through a complex adaptive systems approach incorporating social learning and stakeholder-led research processes. Workshops were conducted with stakeholders from NSW government agencies, state-owned corporations and local governments representing the tourism, water, primary industries, human settlements, emergency management, human health, infrastructure and natural landscapes sectors. Participants used regional socioeconomic profiling and climate projections to consider the impacts on and the need to adapt community service provision to future climate. Findings - Many sectors are currently experiencing difficulty coping with changes in regional demographics and structural adjustment in the economy. Climate change will result in further impacts on already vulnerable systems in the forms of resource conflicts between expanded human settlements, the infrastructure that supports them and the environment (particularly for water); increased energy costs; and declining agricultural production and food security. Originality/value - This paper describes the application of meta-analysis in climate change policy research and frames climate change as a problem of environmental pollution and an issue of development and social equity.Of the total area of arid zones of the world, Africa, accounts for 46.1 % followed by Asia (35.5 %). Majority of rest 19.4 % of arid zones are spread over in Australia, North America (Mexico and Southern part of USA), and South America. The hot Indian arid zone is spread in 31.7 million hectare area of which major part is in northwestern India (28.57 m ha) and some in southern India (3.13 m ha). The arid regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, and Haryana together constitute Great Indian Desert, better known as Thar. Arid western Rajasthan covers 61 % of total hot arid areas of the country and thus, forms the principal hot arid region of the country. Major part of it occurs between Aravalli ranges on the east and southeast and Thal desert of Pakistan (Thal desert is simply the western extension of Thar, only name has been changed) which is spread up to Suleman Kithara ranges in extreme west. The production and life support system in this part of hot Indian arid zone are constrained by climatic limitations. Sand dunes are dominant land formation of principal hot arid zone. More than 64 % area is sandy and intensities of dune vary from place to place. The human population density of this part of the country is quite high (127 person/km(2)) as compared to global average of 6-8 persons per km(2) for arid zones. Large tracts of lands in Thar desert region of Rajasthan having widely scattered trees/shrubs of various species in association with crops of food grain and fodder as the best example of traditional agroforestry. The people of the region have evolved agroforestry-based drought protective mechanism through their ingenuity and centuries old experience, which has descended from one generation to other. Depending upon climatic, edaphic, socioeconomic, and cultural situation, drought hardy woody perennials, which are multipurpose in nature, are integrated in farming systems to develop productive systems in form of traditional agroforestry. This paper describes the structure and production functions of traditional agroforestry systems of the region and their improvement with emphasis on livelihood improvement and climate change adaptation potential of these systems.The gales of climate change blow the future open and closed. In response, we are having to learn to live with a renewed notion of limits and a novel level of uncertainty. One emerging governance response is a turn to scenario planning, which generates narratives about multiple futures refracted out from the present. Like climate change itself, scenario planning, and the broader field of futures studies it is part of, is historically and socially positioned, belying its application as a mere method or tool. This paper discusses the growing turn to scenario planning within government climate change adaptation initiatives in light of parallel shifts in governance (eg, interest in efficiency and wicked problems) and adaptation efforts (eg, framed as risk management or resilience) and their shared roots in the ambiguities of sustainable development. It provides an extended introduction to a theme issue that provides, overall, a nested discussion of the role of scenario planning by government for climate change adaptation, noting how governance, climate change adaptation, and scenario planning all fold together the motifs of openness and closedness. This paper engages with the emerging field of future geographies and critical interest in future orientations to highlight the way society's growing engagement on climate change adaptation exposes, critiques, replicates, and amplifies our existing orientations to the future and time and their politically contested and embedded character. It points to the way the motif of open futures can be both progressive and conservative, as political and economic interests seek to open up some futures while closing down others in the name of the ambivalent goals of adaptation and sustainable development.Scenario praxis, critically explored as the theory-informed practice of scenarioing, is proposed as a modality for institutionalising knowing within a systemic governance framework. Framing and institutional considerations associated with a constructivist inquiry-based learning approach that might open capacity for innovation in future scenarioing praxis are outlined to complement and counterbalance positivistoriented evidence-based approaches. Drawing on espoused theoretical and epistemological commitments, background literature, researcher experience, and our framing choices, we describe a heuristic device for use ex post to critically examine accounts of past scenario development, or ex ante to generate scenarios. The heuristic and its process of generation are designed for use in context-sensitive ways suited to the systemic governance of climate change adaptation and similar situations that can be framed as 'wicked' or uncertain.Policy makers have had great difficulty in understanding and responding effectively to complex or 'wicked' problems. Contentious policy initiatives are hard to implement when knowledge bases are divergent and incomplete, when short-term interests conflict with long-term benefits, and when problems are construed or framed in very different ways. These features of wicked problems have been central in Australian debates about initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to address the likely impacts of climate change. Given the closely interconnected nature of social, technical, legal-political, economic, and natural-resource issues, the political challenges of managing adaptive change are numerous. A strategic adaptation framework is necessary to complement ongoing mitigation efforts directed at greenhouse gas reduction. Strategic innovation requires pluralistic and adaptive processes, such as multistakeholder forums, consideration of scenario analyses, and the use of boundary organizations. In light of the highly contested nature of the issues, the multiple bases of knowledge and interests, and the provisional nature of adaptation choices, there are major policy governance challenges facing the Australian government and stakeholders in grappling with climate adaptation.Climate change represents an unavoidable and growing challenge to food security, imposing new adaptation imperatives on all farmers. Maize is arguably the world's most productive grain crop, as measured by grain yield. However, maize yields vary dramatically due to many factors, including soils, climate, pests, disease, agronomic practices, and seed quality. The difference between observed yields and those achievable by optimized crop production methods is called the yield gap. In this work we quantified the current yield gap for 44 countries through the use of a large private-sector data set recently made available to the crop modelling community. The yield gap was quantified for three groups of countries, categorized by level of intensification. Observed yield gaps for high, medium, and low levels of intensification are 23%, 46%, and 68%, respectively. If all maize production countries were able to shrink their yield gap to 16.5% (as in the USA) an additional 335 million metric tons (MMT) of maize grain would be produced. This represents a 45% increase over the 741 MMT produced by these countries in 2010. These data demonstrate that a major untapped maize yield opportunity exists, especially in those countries where intensification has not kept pace with the rest of the world.Vietnam and Bangladesh are countries already impacted by weather-related extreme events. Scientific modelling projections indicate that climate change, and changes to climate variability, will increase risks for both countries in the future. Targeting this challenging contemporary agenda, this paper reflects on the lessons learned from a collaborative research project, funded by the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research, which was carried out jointly in the Vietnamese city of Hue and the Bangladeshi city of Satkhira. The focus on secondary cities was intentional as they face unique challenges - a combination of rapid growth and development, adverse climate-related impacts, and in many cases less institutional adaptive capacity than their primary city counterparts. Whilst numerous assessment tool kits already exist, these have typically been developed for rural or natural resource contexts. Therefore, the objective of this action research activity was to develop a flexible suite of participatory assessment tools and methodologies that were refined specifically for the urban context; as well as being easy to use by local practitioners at the city and neighbourhood scales. This paper summarizes the research and stakeholder engagement activity that was carried out before presenting the main findings from each of the case study cities (detailing both climate-related risks and potential adaptation options). This analysis is further extended to include a reflective critique of the assessment process, a comparative analysis of the activity carried out in the two case studies, and the 'South-South' learning process that occurred between project partners. Key findings are then distilled to put forward recommendations in support of climate change assessment activity in secondary cities across the Asia-Pacific region.Although adaptation to climate change is vital in vulnerable developing country communities, there are limits to what these communities can do autonomously. Many face existing challenges such as poverty, food insecurity and lack of resources. Hence, there seems to be a logical case for planned community-based adaptation (CBA) in these contexts, but there is limited empirical evidence of planned CBA in developing countries. Numerous barriers hinder the implementation of planned CBA. This systematic literature review investigated what these barriers are and how they influence adaptation. Context-specific social, resource and physical barriers are significant, and these overlap and interact with one another. The most pervasive of these barriers relate to poor coordination within and between organizations responsible for planning and implementing adaptation actions, who adhere to discourses that are often technical and managerial and therefore not well suited to supporting CBA, and a lack of, or irrelevant knowledge/information on climate change as well as ineffectual communication between stakeholders involved in CBA actions.Climate change challenges water managers to make decisions about future infrastructure and the adequacy of current supplies before the uncertainties of the climate models and their hydrological impacts are resolved. Water managers thus face the classic problem of decision making under uncertainty (DMUU). The aim of DMUU is not to be paralyzed by uncertainty, but to highlight and use it to better manage risk. Strategies for DMUU include scenario planning, exploratory simulation modeling, robust decision making, and anticipatory planning and governance. These tools imply a new role for social scientists in the fields of water science and engineering and a new relationship between water science and the practitioner community. Examples are drawn from Phoenix, Arizona, and the US Southwest for DMUU support tools and strategies for science-policy engagement. Simulation experiments for Phoenix reveal challenging, but feasible, strategies for climate adaptation in the water sector for all but the most dire future climate conditions.Quantifying the effectiveness of management actions to mitigate the effects of changing climatic conditions (i.e., climate adaptation) can be difficult, yet critical for conservation. We used population genetic data from 1984 to 2011 to assess the degree to which ambient climatic conditions and targeted suppression of sources of nonnative Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss have influenced the spread of introgressive hybridization in native populations of Westslope Cutthroat Trout O. clarkii lewisi. We found rapid expansion in the spatial distribution and proportion of nonnative genetic admixture in hybridized populations from 1984 to 2004, but minimal change since 2004. The spread of hybridization was negatively correlated with the number of streamflow events in May that exceeded the 75th percentile of historic flows (r = -0.98) and positively correlated with August stream temperatures (r = 0.89). Concomitantly, suppression data showed a 60% decline in catch per unit effort for fish with a high proportion of Rainbow Trout admixture, rendering some uncertainty as to the relative strength of factors controlling the spread of hybridization. Our results illustrate the importance of initiating management actions to mitigate the potential effects of climate change, even where data describing the effectiveness of such actions are initially limited but the risks are severe.A modular framework for assessing the economic, environmental, and social impacts of structural durability has been proposed and applied to a concrete structure expected to undergo climate-change-accelerated chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion. The proposed performance-based durability engineering (PBDE) framework comprehensively considers uncertainty, accommodates non-stationary exposure, and computes quantitative sustainability metrics. Drawing on previous work in the nuclear risk and earthquake engineering communities, PBDE's three analysis stages are de-coupled at pinch-points, allowing the use of a convolution integral to link uncertainty in exposure, deterioration and repair, and sustainability impacts. The convolution-based methodology for the PBDE framework has been compared with traditional Monte Carlo simulation. Results of the convolution approach were statistically equivalent to brute-force Monte Carlo analysis using the same number of simulations, and the convolution approach has advantages in deaggregation, backwards conditioning, and updating of results to reflect new information or models. Limitations of the convolution approach are discussed, as are possible techniques for decreasing computational expense and areas for future work. Potential applications for PBDE include design code calibration, decision support for climate change adaptation policy, and sensitivity assessment to direct research. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Three new species of jumping plant-lice (Psylloidea) are described from Western Australia. Acizzia hughesae sp.n. occurs on Acacia veronica Maslin (Fabaceae: Mimosoideae), A. mccarthyi sp.n. on an undescribed species of Grevillea (Proteaceae) identified by the Western Australian State Government as in need of conservation action (Grevillea sp. 'Stirling Range') and Trioza barrettae sp.n. from the critically endangered Banksia brownii (Proteaceae). These new species of jumping plant-lice are considered rare, and at risk of extinction, or coextinction, as they are recorded from plant species with highly restricted distributions in the south-west of Western Australia. Indeed, the Western Australian State Government recently classified two of the three new jumping plant-lice species as threatened.Climate change threatens the health of global forests. Integrating climate information into forest management can help with climate change adaptation but doing so requires extensive engagement between scientists, practitioners, and decisionmakers. Forestry advisors are an important source of forest management information for many private landowners. However, little is known about forestry advisors' attitudes toward using and delivering climate and weather information. We surveyed state service foresters in the midwestern United States to assess their information needs and attitudes toward incorporating climate and weather forecasts into their practices. Most respondents (70%) indicated that they could find the short-term weather information they needed to advise landowners. Only 26% indicated that they could find the long-term climate information they needed. A majority of respondents indicated they would be interested in receiving long-term climate information. Results suggest that service foresters are open to using climate forecasts and information. Work needs to be done to ensure that the information presented is valuable to and usable by foresters.Projected change in climate in the coming decades adds a layer of complexity in the search for sustainability. Warming temperatures, rising sea levels, changing precipitation patterns and their impacts on natural and human systems could threaten the attainment of development goals. Many countries in Asia and the Pacific are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and there is growing recognition that climate change adaptation must be tackled as an integral part of the development process, for example in mainstreaming climate change adaptation into national plans and programmes. The aim of Chap. 6 is to explore linkages between sustainable development and efforts to address climate change in Asia and the Pacific, particularly focussing in two areas of low carbon development (LCD) pathways for the region, and the importance of natural ecosystems in sustaining the delivery of ecosystem services that are essential for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The challenges posed by climate change will be felt in the coming decades in Asia and the Pacific. In parallel, nations in the region will continue to aspire for sustainable development. Policy makers and development workers must find ways to ensure that both these concerns are addressed synergistically while avoiding negative outcomes. One way to mitigate climate change while pursuing sustainable development is through LCD, which will require negotiations across many stakeholders of governments, non-government agencies, industry and broader communities. In Asia and the Pacific natural ecosystems will continue to play a critical role in addressing climate change adaptation and mitigation. Nations in the region will have to find innovative ways to manage and rehabilitate natural ecosystems for a multiplicity of functions and services. This will involve greater collaboration and communication between scientists and policy makers as well as between natural and social scientists. In many developing countries, there is still very limited empirical information and research needs to be ramped up. North-South and South-South partnerships could help fill the gap.Resource users require the capacity to cope and adapt to climate changes affecting resource condition if they, and their industries, are to remain viable. Understanding individual-scale responses to a changing climate will be an important component of designing well-targeted, broad-scale strategies and policies. Because of the interdependencies between people and ecosystems, understanding and supporting resilience of resource-dependent people may be as important an aspect of effective resource management as managing the resilience of ecological components. We refer to the northern Australian rangelands as an example of a system that is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and look for ways to enhance the resilience of the system. Vulnerability of the social system comprises elements of adaptive capacity and sensitivity to change (resource dependency) as well as exposure, which is not examined here. We assessed the adaptive capacity of 240 cattle producers, using four established dimensions, and investigated the association between adaptive capacity and climate sensitivity (or resource dependency) as measured through 14 established dimensions. We found that occupational identity, employability, networks, strategic approach, environmental awareness, dynamic resource use, and use of technology were all positively correlated with at least one dimension of adaptive capacity and that place attachment was negatively correlated with adaptive capacity. These results suggest that adaptation processes could be influenced by focusing on adaptive capacity and these aspects of climate sensitivity. Managing the resilience of individuals is critical to processes of adaptation at higher levels and needs greater attention if adaptation processes are to be shaped and influenced.Resilience thinking and ecosystems approaches to health (EAH), or ecohealth, share roots in complexity science, although they have distinct foundations in ecology and population health, respectively. The current articulations of these two approaches are strongly converging, but each approach has its strengths. Resilience thinking has developed theoretical models to the study of social-ecological systems, whereas ecohealth has a vast repertoire of experience in dealing with complex health issues. With the two fields dovetailing, there is ripe opportunity to create a dialog centered on concepts that are more thoroughly developed in one field, which can then serve to advance the other. In this article, we first present an overview of the ecohealth and resilience thinking frameworks before opening a dialog centered on seven themes that have strong potential for cross-pollination between the two approaches: scale interactions, regime shifts, adaptive environmental management, social learning, participation, social and gender equity, and knowledge to action. We conclude with some future research suggestions for those interested in theoretical and practical applications at the intersection of environment and health. In particular, closer collaboration between these two fields can lead to addressing blind spots in the ecosystem services framework, complementary social-network analysis, the application of resilience heuristics to the understanding of health, and the development of a normative dimension in resilience thinking.In the domain of climate change adaptation, joint knowledge production (JKP) through intensive cooperation between scientists, policy-makers, and other actors is often proposed as a means to reconcile supply and demand for knowledge. Regional adaptation projects in the Netherlands form prominent examples of this. However, there is a lack of systematic empirical studies on how JKP can be done successfully. Here, we take the next step toward generating design principles for JKP. We do so by carrying out a comparative analysis of six Dutch adaptation projects using a previously developed assessment framework. Project documents were studied, and 30 semi-structured interviews were held with researchers, policy-makers, and financiers in the projects. Based on project comparisons, we derive and elaborate on two design principles for JKP. First, the most successful projects managed to create what we term a protected space for knowledge development while establishing connections with ongoing policy processes. Successful JKP seems to be more likely in cases in which actors make a conscious decision for the institutional location of the project on the research-policy nexus, whereby the coordinating entity has some characteristics of a boundary organization. Second, specific resources, including facilities, boundary objects, and specific competencies increase the chance for success.Policy instruments can help put climate adaptation plans into action. Here, we propose a method for the systematic assessment and selection of policy instruments for stimulating adaptation action. The multi-disciplinary set of six assessment criteria is derived from economics, policy, and legal studies. These criteria are specified for the purpose of climate adaptation by taking into account four challenges to the governance of climate adaptation: uncertainty, spatial diversity, controversy, and social complexity. The six criteria and four challenges are integrated into a step-wise method that enables the selection of instruments starting from a generic assessment and ending with a specific assessment of policy instrument mixes for the stimulation of a specific adaptation measure. We then apply the method to three examples of adaptation measures. The method's merits lie in enabling deliberate choices through a holistic and comprehensive set of adaptation specific criteria, as well as deliberative choices by offering a stepwise method that structures an informed dialog on instrument selection. Although the method was created and applied by scientific experts, policy-makers can also use the method.Climate adaptation is a dynamic social and institutional process where the governance dimension is receiving growing attention. Adaptive governance is an approach that promises to reduce uncertainty by improving the knowledge base for decision making. As uncertainty is an inherent feature of climate adaptation, adaptive governance seems to be a promising approach for improving climate adaptation governance. However, the adaptive governance literature has so far paid little attention to decision-making tools and methods, and the literature on the governance of adaptation is in its infancy in this regard. We argue that climate adaptation governance would benefit from systematic and yet flexible decision-making tools and methods such as participatory multicriteria methods for the evaluation of adaptation options, and that these methods can be linked to key adaptive governance principles. Moving from these premises, we propose a framework that integrates key adaptive governance features into participatory multicriteria methods for the governance of climate adaptation.Minimizing the impact of climate change on farmer livelihoods is crucial, but adaptation efforts may have unintended consequences for ecosystems, with potential impacts on farmers' welfare. Unintended outcomes of climate adaptation strategies have been widely discussed, however, empirical exploration has been neglected. Grounded in scholarship on climate adaptation, environmental governance, social-ecological systems, and land-use change, this paper studies whether farmers' climate adaptation contributes to deforestation or forest conservation. The paper draws on interviews with 353 farmers from 46 communities in Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Mexico and Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala. Farmers in the area of study have implemented adaptation strategies that people around the world have used for centuries, including migration, diversification, savings, and pooling. The findings show that climate adaptation can increase deforestation or support forest conservation depending on the type of adaptation strategy farmers implement. Saving, based on cattle ranching, is a deforestation-driving strategy. The choice of this strategy is influenced by distance to the commercial and administrative center and cash benefits from the forest. Deforestation can have a negative impact on farmers' welfare, as well as harm biodiversity and contribute to increased climate change. Thus, deforestation-driving adaptation strategies may be ineffective. However, diversification, based on off-farm jobs and operating provision shops, is a conservation-driving strategy influenced by distance as well as by family size. Farmers who choose diversification to adapt may contribute to a virtuous circle in which livelihood improvement in the short term leads to enhanced social-ecological resilience in the longer term. The need for farmers to implement adaptation strategies thus represents great risk but also opportunities.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) indicates that vulnerable industries should adapt to the increasing likelihood of extreme weather events along with slowly shifting mean annual temperatures and precipitation patterns, to prevent major damages or periods of inoperability in the future. Most articles in the literature on business management frame organizational adaptation to climate change as a private action. This makes adaptation the sole responsibility of a company, for its sole benefit, and overlooks the fact that some companies provide critical goods and services such a food, water, electricity, and medical care, that are so vital to society that even a short-term setback in operations could put public security at risk. This raises the following questions: (1) Who is responsible for climate change adaptation by private-sector suppliers of critical infrastructure? (2) How can those who are identified to be responsible, actually be held to assume their responsibility for adapting to climate change? These questions will be addressed through a comprehensive review of the literature on business management, complemented by a review of specialized literature on public management. This review leads to several conclusions. Even though tasks that formerly belonged to the state have been taken over by private companies, the state still holds ultimate responsibility in the event of failure of private-sector owned utilities, insofar as they are "critical infrastructure." Therefore, it remains the state's responsibility to foster adaptation to climate change with appropriate action. In theory, effective ways of assuming this responsibility, while enabling critical infrastructure providers the flexibility adapt to climate change, would be to delegate adaptation to an agency, or to conduct negotiations with stakeholders. In view of this theory, Germany will be used as a case study to demonstrate how private-sector critical infrastructure providers can plan and implement climate change adaptation in practice, through the regulatory modes of "negotiations" and "enforced self-regulation."Climate change adaptation and mitigation have become key policy drivers in the UK under its Climate Change Act of 2008. At the same time, urbanization has been high on the agenda, given the pressing need for substantial additional housing, particularly in southeast England. These twin policy objectives were brought together in the UK government's 'eco-town' initiative for England launched in 2007, which has since resulted in four eco-town projects currently under development. We critically analyze the eco-town initiative's policy evolution and early planning phase from a multilevel governance perspective by focusing on the following two interrelated aspects: (1) the evolving governance structures and resulting dynamics arising from the development of the eco-town initiative at UK governmental level, and the subsequent partial devolution to local stakeholders, including local authorities and nongovernmental actors, under the new 'localism' agenda; and (2) the effect of these governance dynamics on the conceptual and practical approach to adaptation through the emerging eco-town projects. As such, we problematize the impact of multilevel governance relations, and competing governance strategies and leadership, on shaping eco-town and related adaptation strategies and practice.Since it became clear that mitigation efforts will not suffice to halt climate change, governments have complemented them with adaptation efforts. While adaptation to climate change in unitary states is mainly concerned with mainstreaming or integrating respective goals and measures horizontally into a variety of sectors, federal states such as Austria or Germany add a vertical dimension to the challenge: here more than anywhere else, climate change adaptation also requires coordination between federal and provincial governments. While the literature on environmental federalism suggests that federal states are ill-equipped to protect global public goods but have advantages in solving local environmental problems, it is unclear how helpful federalism is in addressing local impacts of a global problem. We address this gap by exploring to what extent two sectors highly vulnerable to climate change but rarely subject to policy analyses flood protection and tourism embrace adaptation at and across federal, provincial and local levels of government in Austria. With regard to horizontal mainstreaming, the paper shows that both sectors struggle with adaptation issues in their own ways. With regard to vertical mainstreaming, it reveals strong coordination and support functions of the provinces (in particular in flood protection). Since municipalities are often overwhelmed by the complexities of climate change, we conclude that federal systems could prove helpful in mediating between national guidance and local adaption measures.The Adaptation Fund, established under the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has now been approving funding for adaptation projects for more than two years. Given its particular institutional status and specific focus on concrete adaptation, it is particularly relevant to study the initial experiences of it for any future upscaling of international adaptation finance, despite the fact that its own resources are getting scarce. Alternative rationales for allocating funds, based on equity and efficiency concerns at both international and subnational levels, are here tested against the criteria and priorities of the Fund and decisions made on project approval. It is concluded that equity concerns appear to be the primary motivation and that allocation is de facto made between states rather than by considering inequity between subnational communities. However, the currency of vulnerability for determining equitable outcomes in allocation decisions has not been formalized, despite its central importance to the Fund. Instead, uniform national caps have been introduced. Such an equality approach can be considered inequitable. Finally, it is noted that although the Adaptation Fund Board has continuously developed its proposal review practices and adopted a learning-by-doing approach, it should provide both a further specification of the evaluation criteria and a compilation of best practices from approved proposals, and moreover enhance the transparency of the review process, all of which would clarify its core priorities for current and future project proponents. Policy relevance Adaptation to climate change is a complex phenomenon. Given the uncertainty of climate impacts, the magnitude of expected adaptation needs globally, the limited knowledge regarding what constitutes effective adaptation, and scarce public resources, it is of vital importance that the policy and scientific communities learn how it can best be supported. The Adaptation Fund is an innovative funding mechanism in several respects, yet it is still unclear what the underlying rationale is that informs the allocation of its scarce resources. This article aims to interpret whether equity or efficiency concerns influence allocation and make some concrete recommendations as to its future form, thereby contributing to the state of knowledge regarding the Fund's role.Background: The Arctic and subarctic area are likely to be highly affected by climate change, with possible impacts on human health due to effects on food security and infectious diseases. Objectives: To investigate the evidence for an association between climatic factors and infectious diseases, and to identify the most climate-sensitive diseases and vulnerable populations in the Arctic and subarctic region. Methods: A systematic review was conducted. A search was made in PubMed, with the last update in May 2013. Inclusion criteria included human cases of infectious disease as outcome, climate or weather factor as exposure, and Arctic or subarctic areas as study origin. Narrative reviews, case reports, and projection studies were excluded. Abstracts and selected full texts were read and evaluated by two independent readers. A data collection sheet and an adjusted version of the SIGN methodology checklist were used to assess the quality grade of each article. Results: In total, 1953 abstracts were initially found, of which finally 29 articles were included. Almost half of the studies were carried out in Canada (n = 14), the rest from Sweden (n = 6), Finland (n = 4), Norway (n = 2), Russia (n = 2), and Alaska, US (n = 1). Articles were analyzed by disease group: food-and waterborne diseases, vector-borne diseases, airborne viral-and airborne bacterial diseases. Strong evidence was found in our review for an association between climatic factors and food-and waterborne diseases. The scientific evidence for a link between climate and specific vector-and rodent-borne diseases was weak due to that only a few diseases being addressed in more than one publication, although several articles were of very high quality. Air temperature and humidity seem to be important climatic factors to investigate further for viral-and bacterial airborne diseases, but from our results no conclusion about a causal relationship could be drawn. Conclusions: More studies of high quality are needed to investigate the adverse health impacts of weather and climatic factors in the Arctic and subarctic region. No studies from Greenland or Iceland were found, and only a few from Siberia and Alaska. Disease and syndromic surveillance should be part of climate change adaptation measures in the Arctic and subarctic regions, with monitoring of extreme weather events known to pose a risk for certain infectious diseases implemented at the community level.In Malawi, production from subsistence rain fed agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change and variability. In response to the adverse effects of climate change and variability, a National Adaptation Programme of Action is used as framework for implementing adaptation programmes. However, this framework puts limited significance on indigenous knowledge systems (IKS). In many parts of the world, IKS have shown potential in the development of locally relevant and therefore sustainable adaptation strategies. This study was aimed at assessing the role of IKS in adaptation to climate change and variability in the agricultural sector in a rural district of Chikhwawa, southern Malawi. The study used both qualitative data from focus group and key informant interviews and quantitative data from household interviews and secondary data to address the research objectives. The study established that the local communities are able to recognise the changes in their climate and local environment. Commonly mentioned indicators of changing climatic patterns included delayed and unpredictable onset of rainfall, declining rainfall trends, warming temperatures and increased frequency of prolonged dry spells. An analysis of empirical data corroborates the people's perception. In addition, the community is able to use their IKS to adapt their agricultural systems to partially offset the effects of climate change. Like vulnerability to climate change, IKS varies over a short spatial scale, providing locally relevant adaptation to impacts of climate change. This paper therefore advocates for the integration of IKS in programmes addressing adaptation to climate change and vulnerability. This will serve to ensure sustainable and relevant adaptation strategies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Design and management of the Indus Basin Irrigation System are aimed at achieving equity in canal water supply. This concept, which is more than a century old, ignores the due aspect of groundwater management in today's perspective. Recent research has proved that variation in irrigation demand and rainfall within the irrigation units has given birth to varying stresses on groundwater. In response to spatial climate variability, reallocation of canal supplies from the head towards the tail of the Lower Bari Doab Canal (LBDC) command was evaluated in this study, with the objective of achieving equitable total irrigation costs. The ensuing groundwater regime was simulated for 50 years' time with a groundwater model. A 25% reallocation from head towards tail-end improves the standard deviation of total irrigation cost equity from 1905 to 241. This command scale integration of available water resources also demonstrated a net saving in groundwater pumping cost to the tune of 7.24 to 18.9%, in comparison with existing equitable canal supplies. With this approach, at least minimal or no waterlogging in the headend area, even during wet years, and no groundwater mining in the tail-end, even during dry periods, are anticipated. In addition, this system-scale integrated water management would increase adaptive capacity to climate change adaptation.Flooding often has devastating consequences. It is important to understand the evolution of these risks as climate changes. Municipal infrastructure is designed using historical data that no longer accurately represents current climate conditions, indicating infrastructure may underperform. The purpose of this study is to apply a new methodology for the assessment of climate change caused flood risk by Bowering et al. (2013) to the City of London, Ontario, Canada. Floodplain maps derived from climate, hydrologic and hydraulic analyses provide direct input into risk assessment procedure. Inundated infrastructure and high risk areas are identified in tables and maps for two climate and two hydraulic scenarios. Results indicate the most critical flood scenario is the 100 year climate change upper bound and high risk is driven by expensive infrastructure located in the floodplains. Results of the study are used as the support for climate change adaptation policy development and emergency management.Among species, relative brain size (RBS) is correlated with aspects of ecology and behaviour. We analysed patterns of RBS in Australian birds based on 3164 measurements of brain size in 504 species, and provide species-level data for further analysis. Regression slopes calculated both with and without phylogenetic correction are provided for all species and for well-represented orders and passerine families. Patterns of brain-size allometry differ among orders but the evidence for variation among passerine families is equivocal, depending on the method of analysis. These differences are attributable both to absolute differences in RBS corresponding to different regression intercepts and to different regression slopes. Allometric patterns in Australian birds are virtually identical to those reported elsewhere, with large RBS in parrots, cockatoos and owls, and particularly small RBS in galliforms, dromaiids, grebes, swifts and swallows. Our data can be used to generate hypotheses about the drivers of RBS in particular avian groups. For example, small RBS in unrelated aerial foragers suggests that physical constraints may influence the evolution of RBS.The Mackenzie Basin in northwestern Canada is a high-latitude region, with one of the largest watersheds in the world. The Mackenzie great lakes, consisting of Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake and Lake Athabasca form the large lake complex. The human presence in the area is small in terms of population and industry and thus these ecosystems remain comparatively pristine and show no major changes in the fish communities. Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE), the most important and most used ecosystem trophic network modelling tool to study the ecosystem-level responses to changes, and information available in the scientific literature together with traditional knowledge about Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake was used to elucidate the ecosystem attributes. Our models give a cohesive view of these two ecosystems that will allow researchers and decision makers to explore questions regarding the stability of fisheries and future ecological change. The moderate trophic level of fish catch along with the small percentage of primary production required to sustain fisheries in both lakes demonstrated that fisheries were sustainable during the time period modelled. The ecosystem indices and attributes of the comparatively pristine Mackenzie great lakes were compared with those of two Laurentian Great Lakes having similar types of Ecopath ecosystem models. The metrics utilized to assess comparatively the ecosystem's maturity, stability and health indicated a decline in ecosystem maturity and stability from pristine Great Bear Lake to transitioning Lake Ontario.Classical approaches to investigating temporal and spatial changes in community composition offer only partial insight into the ecology that drives species distribution, community patterns and processes, whereas a functional approach can help to determine many of the underlying mechanisms that drive such patterns. Here, we aim to bring these two approaches together to understand such drivers, using an elevation gradient of sites, a repeat species survey and species functional traits. We used data from a repeat vegetation survey on five alpine summits and measured plant height, leaf area, leaf dry matter content and specific leaf area (SLA) for every species recorded in the surveys. We combined species abundances with trait values to produce a community trait-weighted mean (CTWM) for each trait, and then combined survey results with the CTWMs. Across the gradient of summits, more favourable conditions for plant growth (warmer, longer growing season) occurred at the lower elevations. Vegetation composition changes between 2004 and 2011 (according to non-metric multi-dimensional scaling ordination) were strongly affected by the high and increasing abundance of species with high SLA at high elevations. Species life-form categories strongly affected compositional changes and functional composition, with increasing dominance of tall shrubs and graminoids at the lower-elevation summits, and an overall increase in graminoids across the gradient. The CTWM for plant height and leaf dry matter content significantly decreased with elevation, whereas for leaf area and SLA it significantly increased. The significant relationships between CTWM and elevation may suggest specific ecological processes, namely plant competition and local productivity, influencing vegetation preferentially across the elevation gradient, with the dominance of shrubs and graminoids driving the patterns in the CTWMs.Objectives To assess the heterogeneity of heatwave-related impacts on mortality across different cities. Design A multicity time series study. Setting 3 largest Australian cities: Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Participants All residents living in these cities. Main outcome measures Non-external causes mortality data by gender and two age groups (ie, 0-75 and 75+) for these cities during the period 1988-2009 were obtained from relevant government agencies. Results Total mortality increased mostly within the same day (lag 0) or a lag of 1day (lag 1) during almost all heatwaves in three cities. Using the heatwave definition (HWD) as the 95th centile of mean temperature for two or more consecutive days in the summer season, the relative risk for total mortality at lag 1 in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney was 1.13 (95% CI 1.08 to 1.19), 1.10 (95% CI 1.06 to 1.14) and 1.06 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.10), respectively. Using the more stringent HWDthe 99th centile of mean temperature for two or more consecutive days, the relative risk of total mortality at the lags of 0-2days in Brisbane and Melbourne was 1.40 (95% CI 1.29 to 1.51) and 1.47 (95% CI 1.36 to 1.59), respectively. Elderly, particularly females, were more vulnerable to the impact of heatwaves. Conclusions A consistent and significant increase in mortality was observed during heatwaves in the three largest Australian cities, but the impacts of heatwave appeared to vary with age, gender, the HWD and geographical area.While the use of timber harvests is generally accepted as an effective approach to controlling bark beetles during outbreaks, in reality there has been a dearth of monitoring to assess outcomes, and failures are often not reported. Additionally, few studies have focused on how these treatments affect forest structure and function over the long term, or our forests' ability to adapt to climate change. Despite this, there is a widespread belief in the policy arena that timber harvesting is an effective and necessary tool to address beetle infestations. That belief has led to numerous proposals for, and enactment of, significant changes in federal environmental laws to encourage more timber harvests for beetle control. In this review, we use mountain pine beetle as an exemplar to critically evaluate the state of science behind the use of timber harvest treatments for bark beetle suppression during outbreaks. It is our hope that this review will stimulate research to fill important gaps and to help guide the development of policy and management firmly based in science, and thus, more likely to aid in forest conservation, reduce financial waste, and bolster public trust in public agency decision-making and practice.This paper predicts future changes in fire danger and the fire season in the current century for south-western China under two different climate change scenarios. The fire weather index (FWI) system calculated from daily outputs of a regional climate model with a horizontal resolution of 50x50km was used to assess fire danger. Temperature and precipitation demonstrated a gradually increasing trend for the future. Forest fire statistics for 1987-2011 revealed that the FWI, initial spread index and seasonal severity rating were significantly related to the number of forest fires between 100 and 1000ha in size. Over three future periods, the FWI component indices will increase greatly. The mean FWI value will increase by 0.83-1.85, 1.83-2.91 and 3.33-3.97 in the periods 2011-2040, 2041-2070 and 2071-2100. The regions with predicted FWI increases are mainly in central and south-eastern China. The fire season (including days with high, very high and extreme fire danger ratings) will be prolonged by 9-13, 18-21 and 28-31 days over these periods. This fire season extension will mainly be due to days with an extreme fire danger rating. Considering predicted future changes in the forest fire danger rating and the fire season, it is suggested that climate change adaptation measures be implemented.The Global Partnership for Oceans (GPO) is an alliance of governments, private firms, international organizations, and civil society groups that aims to promote ocean health while contributing to human wellbeing. A Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) was commissioned to develop guiding principles for GPO investments. Here we offer commentary on the BRP report from scholars in multiple disciplines that study the oceans: environmental economics, environmental politics, fisheries science, physical oceanography, and political economy. The BRP is a prominent, unique group of individuals representing diverse interests of GPO partners. We applaud the call for knowledge creation, but identify diverse issues that the BRP omitted: the need for effective governance to address data-poor stocks so that gaps do not dictate solutions; the deployment of projects that facilitate learning about governance effectiveness through program evaluation; and the importance of large-scale coordination of data collection in furthering the BRP's call for capacity building. Commenters' opinions are mixed on the likely impact of the report's recommendations on ocean health, governance, and economic development, but they highlight several key features of the report. A centerpiece of the report that distinguishes it from most previous high-level reports on the oceans is the prominence given to human well-being. The report emphasizes the commons problem as a critical institutional failure that must be addressed and focuses heavily on market-based mechanisms to improve governance. The report successfully acknowledges tradeoffs-across different stakeholders as well as across human well-being and ocean health but there is little specific guidance on how to make these tradeoffs. Historical tensions among GPO partners run deep, and resolving them will require more than high-level principles. For instance, it is unclear how to resolve the potential conflict between proprietary data and the report's stated desire for transparency and open access to information. Some differences may ultimately be irreconcilable. The report appropriately advocates flexibility for the GPO to adapt solutions to particulars of a problem, avoiding the trap of one size fits all. However, flexibility is also a weakness because the BRP does not provide guidance on how best to approach problems that span multiple scales. Some scales may be beyond the scope of the GPO; for example, the GPO cannot meaningfully contribute to global climate change mitigation. Nevertheless, the GPO could play an important role in climate adaptation by facilitating the development of governance regimes that are resilient to climate-induced species migrations.Climate change becomes one of the most significant challenges faced by most environmentalist all over the world. Every country either developed or developing one has the same need in climate change impact mitigation and adaptation. However, developed countries are believed to have better ability rather than developing countries in particular to climate change adaptation impact. It is described by several indications pointed out by several practitioners. The methods compare findings in both developing and developed countries. It is analyzing two salient data justified by rational arguments and emphasizing with some justifications then finally summarizing with solutions and recommendations.Previous research on the impacts of extreme events has focussed mainly on plant performance. Selective effects of extremes suggests that appropriate traits to withstand extremes, or the ability to modulate traits, may increase the competitive advantage and survival of a species. We tested how multiple extreme events affect riparian plant performance, and whether this relates to intraspecific trait variation. We hypothesised that species tolerant to extreme environmental conditions would show highest intraspecific trait variation. We conducted a greenhouse experiment where 25 wet to drought-tolerant species (grasses and herbs) were subjected to single and double 10 day drought and inundation events, and all combinations thereof. We measured plant performance and multiple traits. Performance was severely reduced, with clear synergistic, non-additive effects of extreme events. Adverse effects were stronger for wet-tolerant than drought-tolerant species and for grasses than herbs. Three traits were identified as predictors of species responses to extremes. Despite known trait variation for these species, no variation occurred under these conditions, indicating that responses are difficult to explain from impacts of mean environmental conditions. Our results indicate that multiple events may lead to quantitatively different impacts than single events, which hampers predicting plant response to a future climate.While there is a popular perception that Canada is a water-rich country, the Saskatchewan River basin (SRB) in Western Canada exemplifies the multiple threats to water security seen worldwide. It is Canada's major food-producing region and home to globally significant natural resource development. The SRB faces current water challenges stemming from (1) a series of extreme events, including major flood and drought events since the turn of the 21st century, (2) full allocation of existing water resources in parts of the basin, (3) rapid population growth and economic development, (4) increasing pollution, and (5) fragmented and overlapping governance that includes the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, various Federal and First Nations responsibilities, and international boundaries. The interplay of these factors has increased competition for water across economic sectors and among provinces, between upstream and downstream users, between environmental flows and human needs, and among people who hold different values about the meaning, ownership, and use of water. These current challenges are set in a context of significant environmental and societal change, including widespread land modification, rapid urbanization, resource exploitation, climate warming, and deep uncertainties about future water supplies. We use Sivapalan et al.'s (2012) framework of socio-hydrology to argue that the SRB's water security challenges are symptoms of dynamic and complex water systems approaching critical thresholds and tipping points. To Sivapalan et al.'s (2012) emphasis on water cycle dynamics, we add the need for governance mechanisms to manage emergent systems and translational science to link science and policy to the socio-hydrology agenda.Drawing on the analytical concept of 'sensemaking' as defined by Weick [1995, Sensemaking in Organizations (Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA)], and on scholarship concerning discourses on architect identity and the regulatory context of architecture, in this paper I examine how architects make sense of the issue of climate adaptation. I found that discourses on architects' identity and context appeared to shape the way climate adaptation was made sense of, rather than the other way around. Also, architect identity and contextual factors were more important in architects' sensemaking than features of the climate adaptation issue itself. Most important among the identity-related element of architects' sensemaking was the conception of architects' expertise as holistic-encompassing both aesthetic-creative and technical-craft-related dimensions. Among contextual factors in architects' sensemaking, national building regulations and the industry's focus on cost efficiency were the most central.This study examined seven indices of the cool summer climate in northern Japan in terms of spatial representativeness and interannual variability using weather observation station data and reanalysis data from the Japanese 25-year Reanalysis/Japan Meteorological Agency Climate Data Assimilation System in June August for 1979 2010. The indices are constructed using sea level pressure (SLP) and surface air temperature (SAT): area-average SLP over the Okhotsk Sea; north south SLP difference in northern Japan; east west SLP difference along the Tsugaru Strait; east west SLP difference along the Soya Strait; SAT anomaly from climatology at a location along the coasts of the Pacific and the Okhotsk Sea; diurnal variance of SAT at a location along the coasts of the Pacific and the Olchotsk Sea; and time coefficient of the east west oscillation mode of SAT in northern Japan. The last two are newly proposed. The atmospheric fields represented by the indices commonly show the following features: the developed Okhotsk high at the surface and a mid-troposphere ridge to its northwest; southward extensions of low SAT, high SLP, low specific humidity, and high cloud water content along the Pacific coast of northern Japan and along the Japan Sea coast of the Eurasian continent; and strong easterly/northeasterly winds to the east and west of northern Japan. Furthermore, these indices show consistent interannual variabilities and clearly detect cool summers in northern Japan in the past. Meanwhile, differences between the indices lie in the location of the ridge in the mid-troposphere and the vertical structure of the Okhotsk high, the center locations of low SAT and enhanced easterly/northeasterly surface winds, and the degree of the southward extensions of the cool air along the Pacific coast of northern Japan and along the Japan Sea coast of the Eurasian continent. Based on these characteristics, we can choose a suitable index for the intended use.This paper examines whether key legislative and regulatory frameworks for the provision of water services in Sydney, Australia, successfully support the complex task of planning and managing urban water systems to balance water security, cost and sustainability considerations. The challenges of managing urban water systems under a changing and uncertain climate became starkly apparent during Australia's 'Millennium Drought', a decade-long period of extremely dry conditions throughout the 2000s. As the drought progressed, several state and territory governments assumed control of planning and approvals processes in order to implement large water-supply infrastructure projects with great urgency. However, at the end of the decade La Nina rains saturated catchments, spilled over dam walls and devastated several communities with flooding. Analysis of the frameworks for third-party access, private-sector participation, planning, and water-conservation initiatives reveals that the rules, roles and responsibilities of the many actors are interlinked but not always effectively integrated. The introduction and expansion of competition in the urban water industry are an ongoing experiment with great influence on the governance of the sector and the ways in which water services are planned for and provided.Climate change adaptation presents a challenge to current top-down governance structures, including the tension between provision of public goods and actions required by diverse stakeholders, including private actors. Alternative governance approaches that facilitate participation and learning across scales are gaining attention for their ability to bring together diverse actors across sectors and to foster adaptive capacity and resilience. We have described the method and outcomes from the application of a social-ecological inventory to "prime," i.e., hasten the development of, a regional climate change adaptation network. The social-ecological inventory tool draws on the social-ecological systems approach in which social and ecological systems are considered linked. The tool bridges the gap between conventional stakeholder analysis and biological inventories, drawing on a social-ecological systems approach, and incorporates local knowledge as an explicit component. The process, which is dynamic and iterative, includes six phases: preparations, preliminary identification, identification of key individuals, interviewing, reviewing and enriching the inventory, and engagement. By considering the social and ecological aspects of a system, a more comprehensive inventory is achieved that provides a foundational platform to facilitate or support climate change adaptation processes that are participatory and learning oriented. Although social-ecological inventories have been used for ecosystem management, the intent of this research was to understand the potential of the tool for climate change adaptation. A social-ecological inventory was undertaken in the Niagara Region of Canada to assemble and facilitate a regional governance group to champion climate change adaptation. Moreover, the social-ecological inventory was purposefully undertaken as the initial step in priming the governance system and led into an adaptive comanagement process for climate change adaptation. Early indicators suggest that the social-ecological inventory has been instrumental in facilitating a multisectoral adaptive comanagement governance approach to climate change in the Niagara Region.Climate change presents new challenges for the management of social-ecological systems and the ecosystem services they provide. Although the instrument of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has emerged as a promising tool to safeguard or enhance the provision of ecosystem services (ES), little attention has been paid to the potential role of PES in climate change adaptation. As an external stressor climate change has an impact on the social-ecological system in which PES takes place, including the various actors taking part in the PES scheme. Following a short description of the conceptual link between PES and adaptation to climate change, we provide practical insights into the relationship between PES and adaptation to climate change by presenting results from a case study of a rural watershed in Kenya. Drawing upon the results of a participatory vulnerability assessment among potential ecosystem service providers in Sasumua watershed north of Nairobi, we show that PES can play a role in enhancing adaptation to climate change by influencing certain elements of adaptive capacity and incentivizing adaptation measures. In addition, trade-offs and synergies between proposed measures under PES and adaptation to climate change are identified. Results show that although it may not be possible to establish PES schemes based on water utilities as the sole source of financing, embedding PES in a wider adaptation framework creates an opportunity for the development of watershed PES schemes in Africa and ensures their sustainability. We conclude that there is a need to embed PES in a wider institutional framework and that extra financial resources are needed to foster greater integration between PES and adaptation to climate change. This can be achieved through scaling up PES by bringing in other buyers and additional ecosystem services. PES can achieve important coadaptation benefits, but for more effective adaptation outcomes it needs to be combined with vulnerability assessments and climate scenarios to ensure that these are realized and potential trade-offs between PES measures and adaptation measures minimized.The seasonal (monthly) variation in temperature difference between a meteorological station in an urban-area and nearby farmland in Kumagaya City was examined over 2010-2012. Kumagaya, one of the hottest cities in Japan, has an urban area of about 5 x 5 km and is surrounded by farmland. The daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures (T-mean, T-max, and T-min) routinely observed at the meteorological station (urban site) were higher than at the nearby farmland site across all seasons. Differences in the monthly temperatures between the two sites were 0.17-0.90 degrees C (T-mean), 0.55-1.63 degrees C (T-max), and 0.20-0.62 degrees C (T-min), and the maximum differences were in August (T-mean and T-max) and April (T-min). Large temperature differences (> 1 degrees C) for T-max were observed during the paddy rice-growing season in farmland from July to September. Differences in daily T-max and T-mean between the two sites were found to increase with daily solar radiation Sd. The sensitivities of these temperature differences to Sd were larger from July to September. The number of "extremely hot days" (T-max >= 35 degrees C) at the farmland site was only 36% of the number at the urban site, while the relative proportion of "sultry nights" (T-min >= 25 degrees C) was 62%.Satellite data were used to investigate maritime-continental differences in the characteristics of the low-level cloud (the Yamase cloud) that covered northeast Japan during the summer of 2003. The features of the Yamase cloud were found to be almost the same as those of general stratus clouds but with a smaller effective radius (r(e)) and a greater optical thickness (tau) over land, as compared with general stratus clouds. The values of r(e) over land (average, 11.8 mu m) were smaller than those over the ocean (13.5 mu m), and the values of tau and the cloud water path over land (20 and 145 gm(-2), resp.) showed larger spatial variances than those over the ocean (10 and 86 gm(-2), resp.), although the cloud top altitude was nearly the same over both ocean and land (1-3 km). We suggest that this maritime-continental contrast is a result of the combined effects of topography and aerosols characteristics. The Yamase wind blowing from the ocean is forced upwards in coastal regions by the steep mountainous terrain. The updraft drives the inhomogeneity in cloud parameters, and a convective-like cloud develops without precipitation. The relationship between r(e) and tau suggests high aerosol concentrations and unstable conditions over land.Sustainability of organic farming depends on the organic inputs. As such, other than a few fertilizers and plant protection measures, there have been scanty resources available to farmers for continuing organic farming. Some farmers in India have evolved traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) based location specific practices to sustain their agroecosystems and continue organic farming. In this paper, an attempt has been made to explore TEK-led adaptations in bio-mulching to grow ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) as a crop and to test empirically the best practices including identifying the best leaves and local bio-mulching materials applied by farmers. The role of TEK-led adaptive practices for controlling moisture loss, temperature regulation, reduced disease incidence, quality yield and economic aspects of ginger production are examined. The study was conducted in nine randomly selected villages of Champawat district, Uttrakhand (Western Himalaya). Data was collected using open ended questions in association with participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tools. Results indicated that farmers have developed major TEK led adaptive practices for organic ginger production after seeding in the field, namely using the leaves of oak (Quercus leucotrichophora A. Camus.), chir pine needles (Pinta roxburghii Sarg.), local mixed grasses (e.g., Chrysopogon fulvus (Spreng.) Chiov, [Cymbopogon distans (Nees ex Steud.) W. Watson], [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br. syn. Setaria glauca (L.) P. Beauv], [Heteropogon contortus (L.) P.Beauv. ex Roem. & Schult]. shrubs [Chromolaena odorata (L.) R.M.King & H.Rob.] syn. Eupatorium odoratum L.) and animal wastage. This last consists of mixed oak, bhimal (Grewia optiva J.R. Drumm ex Burret), kharik (Celtis australis L.), timala (Ficus auriculata Lour.syn. Ficus roxburghii Stud.) leaves, grasses, paddy and finger millet straw and cow dung and urine. Women were observed to be using more of these TEK led adaptive practices than men. Empirical field studies carried out on TEK led adaptive practices under rain-fed agro ecosystems of farmers revealed significant results including longer rhizome length (up to 6.50 cm), higher number of rhizomes per plant (35.30), higher ginger yield (211.50 q/ha), higher B:C (benefit to cost) ratio (1:2.18) and lower percentage of disease (bacterial wilt; soft rot and leaf spot) incidence (17.5%) in oak leaf mulch. Soil moisture conservation (44.75%) and optimum soil temperature (24.80 degrees C) were recorded as significantly better under the oak leaves for using bio-mulching as compared to all other TEK led bio-mulching practices for organic ginger production. The oak leaves used as bio-mulch in organic ginger increased yield by 43% and net returns by 61% as compared to no mulching (control). It is concluded that, under temperate climate and rain-fed agro ecosystems, TEK led adaptive practices by farmers in growing ginger are economically feasible, energy efficient and ecologically sustainable, through the addition of soil organic carbon. However, there is need for scientific and institutional promotion in participatory modes for such practices, with a provision for integrating these practices with science and policy on climate adaptation.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a perspective on disaster management and climate change adaptation often left out of the literature that of a remote outer island in Fiji. Design/methodology/approach - Qualitative fieldwork was conducted on a small, remote island in the north of Fiji, during 2012. Interviews with community members on this island looked at their experiences and perceptions of disaster response and aid, and their expectations for the future. The perspectives of government and aid organisations involved in disaster response were compared with the remote community views. Findings - There is a prevalent view in Fiji of communities as having very high expectations of disaster relief aid, and being dependent on it. However, on a remote island where the community counts the wait for help in weeks rather than days, such expectations and dependence must be viewed in a different light. There is much to be learned from the resilience and self-help these communities have no choice but to exhibit. Originality/value - This paper helps to fill a gap in the disaster and climate change adaptation literature, by providing some insight into the experiences and perceptions of a remote outer island community, within the remote small island developing state of Fiji.This study applies the Dynamics of Land System (DLS) model to simulating the land cover under the designed scenarios and then analyzes the effects of land cover conversion on energy flux in the semiarid grassland area of China with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The results indicate that the grassland will show a steadily upgrowing trend under the coordinated environmental sustainability (CES) scenario. Compared to the CES scenario, the rate of increase in grassland cover is lower, while the rate of increase in urban land cover will be higher under the rapid economic growth (REG) scenario. Although the conversion from cropland to grassland will reduce the energy flux, the expansion of urban area and decreasing of forestry area will bring about more energy flux. As a whole, the energy flux of near surface will obviously not change under the CES scenario, and the climate therefore will not be possible to be influenced greatly by land cover change. The energy flux under the REG scenario is higher than that under the CES scenario. Those research conclusions can offer valuable information for the land use planning and climate change adaptation in the semiarid grassland area of China.Schemes for optimizing ocean observation programs are presently the subject of increased interest since in principle they should lead to the improved understanding of the dynamical state of the ocean that is required within the present regime of climate change. Here we use an adjoint sensitivity analysis together with a four-dimensional fluctuating oceanic current system to identify key regions for intensive monitoring by drifting profiling float. In this way we aim to maximize observational efficiency. As a scientific benchmark for the validity of our approach, we have attempted to define the ambient sensitivity of the oceanic heat content to a subtle change in water temperature within the Pacific Basin. We focus on the interannual to multidecadal variations in particular. As a result, sensitivity signals reflecting changes in heat content exhibit a characteristic pattern in the three-dimensional continuum and have drastic temporal changes. This implies that the key regions will depend greatly on the operational timeframe of the observing system. We demonstrate a more effective geographic deployment strategy for the profiling floats monitoring changes in the oceanic heat content on a decadal timescale.Purpose - The article surveys dairy farmers' lay knowledge of climate change and the adaptation strategies they have implemented to respond to climatic and economic drivers. Dairy farming is highly dependent on local weather and climate. The case study is in Western Victoria, Australia, part of a major dairy farming region that contributes 26 per cent of national milk production and 86 per cent of the country's dairy exports. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - This study utilised a survey and semi-structured interviews in Corangamite Shire, to document dairy farmers' perceptions of climate variability and the adaptation strategies they have implemented, compared to meteorological data collected on climate variability in the recent past. Findings - Farmers in this region perceive a change in rainfall and temperature broadly in line with meteorological records. Those that have experienced a greater degree of climate variability in drier regions were found to perceive it more accurately. Almost all respondents had already made changes to their dairy businesses, but in doing so only a small percentage were responding directly to seasonal variability or to longer term changes (9 and 15 per cent, respectively); the majority said they were responding to changing economic conditions in the industry. Originality/value - A primary survey of dairy farming adds to knowledge of how climate variability is perceived, and how it is adapted to in a region heavily reliant on rainfall for its prime economic activity.Adaptation to climate change is widely recognized as a multi-level governance challenge because expected impacts and respective measures cut across governmental levels, sectors and societal domains. The present paper analyses the role of regional adaptation partnerships in Canada and England in the multi-level governance of climate change adaptation. We describe and compare three partnerships per country with regard to their evolution, membership and governing structures, coordination across levels and societal domains, and their adaptation activities and outputs. Although both partnership schemes represent new collaborative approaches, their genesis and governance differ. While the Canadian collaboratives are a government-centred approach that originated and partly operated top-down through a national programme for the period 2009-2012, the English partnerships follow a more pluralistic stakeholder-centred approach that evolved bottom-up already in the early 2000s. Both schemes have in common that they mediate between governmental levels, foster networking between public and private actors, and eventually build adaptive capacities and inform adaptation policies. We conclude that regional adaptation partnerships represent a new governance approach that facilitates climate change adaptation, albeit with limits. Since state actors play(ed) key roles in both partnership schemes, they do not represent a new sphere of authority outside the state. Instead of blurring or destabilizing governmental levels they complement (and perhaps even stabilise) them with multi-level interactions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This reply is in response to Lorenz et al.'s commentary on our original article, "Deja vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature." Their commentary criticizes our literature review method for not being sufficiently systematic. They do not dispute our conclusions yet call them "biased." We believe the claim of bias is unfounded and we stand by the methods and conclusions in our article. In this reply to their commentary we review 40 articles in a journal they suggest would have led us to a different set of conclusions. The results of that review demonstrate the limitations of the authors' proposed "systematic literature review" to the social sciences. We similarly contend that the authors' recommendation to expand the search terms (e.g. risk management) would confine analysis to just one branch of the climate change adaptation literature. We utilize the more inclusive term "adaptation" to chart the degree of continuity and change in this keyword's meanings and politics. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we examine how development status and water scarcity shape people's perceptions of "hard path" and "soft path" water solutions. Based on ethnographic research conducted in four semi-rural/peri-urban sites (in Bolivia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the US), we use content analysis to conduct statistical and thematic comparisons of interview data. Our results indicate clear differences associated with development status and, to a lesser extent, water scarcity. People in the two less developed sites were more likely to suggest hard path solutions, less likely to suggest soft path solutions, and more likely to see no path to solutions than people in the more developed sites. Thematically, people in the two less developed sites envisioned solutions that involve small-scale water infrastructure and decentralized, community-based solutions, while people in the more developed sites envisioned solutions that involve large-scale infrastructure and centralized, regulatory water solutions. People in the two water-scarce sites were less likely to suggest soft path solutions and more likely to see no path to solutions (but no more likely to suggest hard path solutions) than people in the water-rich sites. Thematically, people in the two water-rich sites seemed to perceive a wider array of unrealized potential soft path solutions than those in the water-scarce sites. On balance, our findings are encouraging in that they indicate that people are receptive to soft path solutions in a range of sites, even those with limited financial or water resources. Our research points to the need for more studies that investigate the social feasibility of soft path water solutions, particularly in sites with significant financial and natural resource constraints.Recent rapid changes in global scale drivers of desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD) have two important consequences for drylands. First, changes in these drivers, for example in food and energy prices, make improving interventions in drylands more urgent because of their potential impacts. Second, these changes introduce new knowledge gaps regarding both the potential impacts on social-ecological dryland systems and the design of options to take advantage of opportunities. This paper identifies the most salient research needs in DLDD in drylands brought on by global drivers. The question was addressed through an iterative stakeholder consultative forum. First, relevant global scale drivers were identified through a literature review and preliminary consultation. Next, stakeholders and experts were further consulted to identify research priorities given rise to by these drivers. Identified research priorities were as follows: (i) assessing impacts of rising prices on DLDD in mixed market and subsistence production contexts; (ii) assessing options and limits of agricultural modernisation on fragile lands; (iii) developing methods for assessing land-use trade-offs and mapping productive lands; (iv) modelling and participatory methods for monitoring and evaluating soil carbon sequestration; (v) developing policy frameworks to regulate impacts of investment on the environment and local livelihoods; (vi) participatory modelling for regional and local adaptation planning; and (vii) valuation of non-market land degradation outcomes including biodiversity loss. Concluding, we call for a forward-looking interdisciplinary drylands research agenda with an increased emphasis on governance to address these priorities. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Communities have competing priorities for limited financial resources. Identifying a capable and affordable tool that can be used in flood adaptation planning will assist in determining strategic investments and enhancing public communication. A state-of-the-art review was conducted of commonly available flood modeling and impact assessment tools that could be utilized for climate adaptation planning by municipalities. Assessment criteria such as flood modeling capabilities, geographic information system integration, damage assessment functions and ease of use were used. Although there are many tools available, based on the criteria used in assessing these models, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency's Hazus-MH tool appears to hold the most promise in being repurposed for adaptation planning.This study focuses on the main factor of regional difference in Altitudinal Dependency of Snow Depth (ADSD) and discusses the applicable range of snow cover estimation method with ADSD. We use the high-density surface observational data and a regional climate model in Niigata Prefecture. The estimation method with ADSD produces significant estimation error if the method is applied to broad areas. The high-density observational data show the regional difference of ADSD between windward and leeward areas with a coastal mountain. Numerical simulation reproduces these observational results. We evaluate mountain effects on the regional difference of ADSD using sensitivity experiments. In the sensitivity experiment, the altitude is changed from a mountain to a flat plain. The sensitivity experiment shows that the regional differences of ADSD are not simulated. The results indicate that the applicable range of the estimation method with ADSD is limited to a single slope and mountain. It should be noted that this method has a high probability of increasing the estimation error in complex mountainous areas, particularly in the coastal area of the Japan Sea.Rock lobster fisheries are Australia's most valuable wild fisheries in terms of both value of production and value of exports. Different states harvest and export different lobster species, with most of the landings being sent to the Hong Kong market. A perception in the Australian lobster industry is that the different species are independent on the export market, such that a change in landings of one species has no impact on the price of the others. This study investigates the market integration of Australian exports to Hong Kong for the four species and different exporting states. Our results indicate all four species and producers/export states are perceived to be substitutes for one another, so that, in the long run, prices paid to operators in the industry will move together. The integrated nature of the Hong Kong export market for Australian lobster suggests that the potential impacts of alternative fisheries management and development strategies at state and species levels cannot be considered in isolation, at least from an economic perspective. In addition, impacts of external shocks affecting production in one state (e.g. climate change) can be expected to affect all Australian lobster fisheries.We developed statistical models (called impact functions) in this study that mimicked the responses of summer mean, maximum, and minimum surface temperatures to given land-use changes (LUC) simulated with a regional climate model (RCM). The island of Shikoku in western Japan was used as an example. The impact functions were based on the RCM-simulated sensitivity of temperatures to changes for each of 5 land-surface parameters (surface albedo, evaporative efficiency, roughness length, heat capacity, and thermal conductivity). Thus, the relative importance of a specific land-surface parameter for the local temperature (e. g. greater sensitivity of daily mean temperature to evaporative efficiency) determines the impact functions. We compared the impact functions to the independently evaluated RCM simulations to assess how well our results matched the historical LUC-induced RCM warming simulations in this area between 1987 and 2006. The impact function performance varied with grid size: the 10 km results matched the RCM simulations best, with an error of 10-15%. Next, the impact functions were used to estimate the potential warming range for different LUC scenarios. Given the geographical distribution of present-day land use/land cover, the Monte Carlo simulations with impact functions indicate that LUC-induced changes in summer mean temperature potentially range from -0.4 (when forest is converted to paddy) to + 1.3 degrees C (when forest is converted to building lots). This result indicates that, on an area mean basis, the cooling achieved through land-use management is limited in its ability to offset climate change-induced warming in future decades.Climate change and food insecurity are the two major challenges for humanity in developing countries. Drawing lessons from numerous research studies from southern Africa and regions on other continents, this review discusses possible interventions for climate and ecological change adaptation using improved water management, soil fertility amelioration, and intensive crop management options. This review and the proposed framework should provide useful information for improving agricultural policy in southern Africa to help poor farmers contend with erratic rainfall, declining soil fertility, and fragile economies while ensuring long-term ecosystem sustainability, increased crop yields, improved farm incomes, and sustained social livelihoods.We analyse the potential impacts of sea-level rise on the management of saline coastal wetlands in the Hunter River estuary, NSW, Australia. We model two management options: leaving all floodgates open, facilitating retreat of mangrove and saltmarsh into low-lying coastal lands; and leaving floodgates closed. For both management options we modelled the potential extent of saline coastal wetland to 2100 under a low sea-level rise scenario (based on 5 % minima of SRES B1 emissions scenario) and a high sea-level rise scenario (based on 95 % maxima of SRES A1FI emissions scenario). In both instances we quantified the carbon burial benefits associated with those actions. Using a dynamic elevation model, which factored in the accretion and vertical elevation responses of mangrove and saltmarsh to rising sea levels, we projected the distribution of saline coastal wetlands, and estimated the volume of sediment and carbon burial across the estuary under each scenario. We found that the management of floodgates is the primary determinant of potential saline coastal wetland extent to 2100, with only 33 % of the potential wetland area remaining under the high sea-level rise scenario, with floodgates closed, and with a 127 % expansion of potential wetland extent with floodgates open and levees breached. Carbon burial was an additional benefit of accommodating landward retreat of wetlands, with an additional 280,000 tonnes of carbon buried under the high sea-level rise scenario with floodgates open (775,075 tonnes with floodgates open and 490,280 tonnes with floodgates closed). Nearly all of the Hunter Wetlands National Park, a Ramsar wetland, will be lost under the high sea-level rise scenario, while there is potential for expansion of the wetland area by 35 % under the low sea-level rise scenario, regardless of floodgate management. We recommend that National Parks, Reserves, Ramsar sites and other static conservation mechanisms employed to protect significant coastal wetlands must begin to employ dynamic buffers to accommodate sea-level rise change impacts, which will likely require land purchase or other agreements with private landholders. The costs of facilitating adaptation may be offset by carbon sequestration gains.Techniques for, and the results of, downscaling forcing and initial fields for an ocean-only regional climate model of the British Columbia continental shelf are presented. Fields from one regional-global model combination within the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program archive are shown to be representative of a larger ensemble of eight. Because model winds over the baseline period of 1970 to 1999 represent upwelling favourable conditions poorly, a strategy of computing future-minus-contemporary anomalies and adding them to the analogous values used in a recent hindcast simulation for the same region is justified and adopted. Average surface air temperatures over the future period of 2040 to 2069 are projected to be warmer for all months, with those in January generally having the highest increases and those in June the lowest. Because average precipitation is generally projected to increase in winter and decrease in summer, total freshwater discharges follow a similar pattern, increasing by about 10% in all months except June to August when they are projected to decrease by up to 10%. Though projected changes to the seasonally averaged heat flux are shown here, the consequence of applying all these forcing and initial fields to a circulation model of the British Columbia continental shelf is described in a subsequent companion manuscript.An ocean circulation model for the British Columbia continental shelf is run with future initial conditions and forcing fields downscaled from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program archive. Average seasonal sea surface temperatures for the period 2065 to 2078 are projected to increase by between 0.5 degrees and 2.0 degrees C with respect to analogous averages from 1995 to 2008. Seasonal sea surface salinities are projected to decrease by as much as 2.0 over the same period, though there are some regions where and periods when small increases are projected. Though stronger winter winds result in larger Haida Eddies, slightly stronger summer winds along the western Vancouver Island shelf do not result in appreciable changes to either the cross-shelf upwelling or to the magnitude of Juan de Fuca Eddies or the timing of their formation. However, increased flows are projected in some seasons for the Rose Spit, Middle Bank, and Goose Island Bank eddies. More precipitation over the watersheds emptying into coastal waters produces larger freshwater discharges and, in particular, a stronger estuarine flow in Juan de Fuca Strait and a stronger Vancouver Island Coastal Current. Generally increasing winds and decreasing density mean that the winter minus summer range of sea surface heights is projected to increase all along the coast.Oceanic island ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to invasion by exotic species, and this vulnerability may be intensified by the effects of climate change, particularly if favorable climate conditions allow exotic invaders to spread to new areas. Effective management of such species requires knowledge of their potential distribution under current and future climate. This research examines the value of species distribution modeling in invasive species management in small island ecosystems using the specific case of Lantana camara L. invasion in Fiji. A niche model of L. camara was developed using CLIMEX species distribution modeling (SDM) software. Several sources of data were used to develop the model including phenological observations and geographic distribution records. The model was used to estimate its potential distribution under historical climate. The CSIRO Mk3.0 Global Climate Model (GCM) was used to explore impacts of climate change on its potential future distribution. The model was run with the A1B and A2 scenarios for 2030 and 2070. Large parts of both major islands of Fiji, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, were shown to have high climatic suitability for L. camara. However, under future climate scenarios, climatic suitability for L. camara in Fiji was projected to contract. The results illustrate that SDMs can play a useful role in formulation of cost-effective invasive species management strategies and the resulting species distribution maps have broad applicability throughout the many islands of the South Pacific region.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore whether "resilience" offers any positive inputs to international discourse in the field of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and if so, what recommendations can be made for further research on the topic. Design/methodology/approach - In addition to an in-depth literature review, observations on resilience were made based on interdisciplinary research conducted in Nepal 2008-2011 with landslide affected communities, to map local understandings of resilience in contrast to issues of risk and vulnerability. Findings - Resilience has the potential to offer a more systemic and cross-cutting approach to disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and the humanitarian sector. However, it needs to be assessed critically as one attribute of sustainable development, not as a lesser substitute. Originality/value - This paper provides new insights to the emerging contrast between proponents and critics of the resilience paradigm with recommendations for avoiding potential dangers that this paradigm brings.Climate change is a critical sustainability challenge for alpine tourism and the ski industry. Climate change adaptation is characterised as identifying and taking advantage of new business opportunities plus reducing physical risks. For adaptation strategies to be sustainable they should consider the environment, economy and society. While several adaptive ski industry strategies have been identified, not all can fulfil these criteria; some adaptive strategies could be perceived as unsustainable, or maladaptive. This paper provides a qualitative, perceptual study of ski industry stakeholders in Queenstown, New Zealand, addressing perceptions of climate change adaptation by the core industry, wider industry actors, local community and tourists. It answers two research questions: What are perceived as the main climate change adaptation strategies for Queenstown's ski industry? How do ski industry stakeholders perceive current adaptation strategies in terms of sustainability? It finds snowmaking central to addressing both current weather variability and medium/long-term future climate change. Ski-field operators use snowmaking to ensure the industry's economic sustainability, to extend seasons even beyond traditional norms, but with little consideration for environmental or social sustainability. It finds some local people questioning snowmaking on ethical and environmental grounds, and skier acceptance of snowmaking connected to activity preference.In the context of climate change, adaptation to climatic extremes, such as drought, has attracted worldwide attention, yet many practical adaptation strategies need to be examined at the local level. Based on a case study of the village of Beidian, located in a drought-prone region in northern China, this study demonstrates that when faced with multiple pressures of regional climate change, drought risk and rural poverty, reasonable adjustments in land use patterns can serve as an effective adaptation strategy in the agricultural sector. We used household questionnaires, in-depth interviews with village managers, and land use surveys at the farming plot level to quantify the relationship between land use change and drought mitigation effects. Our findings indicate that in the past decade, the farming practices in Beidian have transformed from a complete reliance on the winter wheat-summer corn rotation to a new diversified mode of apple as the main crop and corn and coarse cereals as the subsidiary crops. The current farming mode is proven to possess a stronger adaptive capacity to drought due to its higher water-saving efficiency and economic benefit, which facilitates rural poverty reduction and socio-economic development. This study presents a feasible approach to address adaptation strategies at the local level, which provides policymakers with information on how to best support farm-level adaptation and to reduce farmers' vulnerability to climatic extremes within the broader context of climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is receiving increasing political and scientific attention as a climate change mitigation approach. The government of Cameroon has expressed an interest in participating in REDD+, and national deliberation on a policy strategy has attracted interest from different actors in the forest sector. This paper analyses the challenges of designing a governance structure for a REDD+ strategy in Cameroon. Theoretically, the paper builds on the literature on governance structures for resource management, focusing analytically on the interactions between actor constellations (state and non-state) and institutions (formal and informal) to produce policy outcomes. The paper draws on documentation of REDD+ policy events, policy texts and 23 in-depth interviews with members from government, civil society, research organizations, development partners and the private sector. It argues that although the actors involved in REDD+ are, to an extent, polarized around different issues and priorities, they are nonetheless increasingly distributing roles and responsibilities among themselves. The institutional arrangements within the policy process include: (1) rule-making systems for engagement; (2) expanding existing coordination mechanisms; (3) national safeguard standards; and (4) building on existing forest governance initiatives. The paper concludes that the multiple benefits promised by REDD+, such as poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation and economic development, are critical for the legitimacy of the mechanism. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the nation's public health agency, CDC recognizes that climate change poses a multifaceted and potentially significant threat to domestic public health. To facilitate climate change preparedness in public health, the agency developed the Climate and Health Program, which is housed in the National Center for Environmental Health. The Program's mission is to translate science for public health partners, develop decision support tools to facilitate climate change adaptation in public health, and to serve as a credible leader in planning for the human health impacts of a changing climate. Since its formation, the Program has worked to articulate a public health approach to climate change and integrate science from public health and other sectors to facilitate public health adaptation efforts. The Program has developed an adaptive management framework for public health, the BRACE framework, and is working cooperatively with several state and local health departments to pursue an evidence-based approach to climate change adaptation. As public health's expertise and experience grows, the Climate and Health Program will work to continue disseminating relevant information for the increasing number of public health practitioners focused on reducing the adverse health effects of climate change.Climate change is a fundamental aspect of the Anthropocene. Climate assessments are frequently undertaken to evaluate climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity. Assessments are complex endeavors with numerous challenges. Five aspects of a climate assessment that can be particularly challenging are highlighted: choice of assessment strategy, incorporation of spatial linkages and interactions, the constraints of climate observations, interpretation of a climate projection ensemble, uncertainty associated with weather/climate dependency models, and consideration of landscape-climate influences. In addition, a climate assessment strategy that incorporates both traditional "top-down" and "bottom-up" methods is proposed for assessments of adaptation options at the local/regional scale. Uncertainties associated with climate observations and projections and with weather/climate dependency (i.e., response) models are incorporated into the assessment through the "top-down" component, and stakeholder knowledge and experience are included through the "bottom-up" component. Considerable further research is required to improve assessment strategies and the usefulness and usability of assessment findings. In particular, new methods are needed which better incorporate spatial linkages and interactions, yet maintain the fine grain detail needed for decision making at the local and regional scales. Also, new methods are needed which go beyond sensitivity analyses of the relative contribution of land use and land cover changes on local/regional climate to more explicitly consider landscape-climate interactions in the context of uncertain future climates. Assessment teams must clearly communicate the choices made when designing an assessment and recognize the implications of these choices on the interpretation and application of the assessment findings.This paper investigates the perceived and observed trends of associated health risks with seasonal climate variability and identifies types of and preference for adaptation strategies that are available at households and community levels in Oke-Ogun region, Nigeria. The study made use of household survey and rapid appraisal through focus group discussion and key informant interviews. For a short term climate-health impacts analysis, cases of notable diseases were correlated with monthly mean temperature and rainfall for the period 2006 and 2008. The findings show similar trends in relation to local perception on climate-health risks and observed cases of some notable diseases during seasonal changes. Diarrhea, measles and malaria were prevalent during dry season, while flu cases increased at the onset of harmattan and monsoon of rainy season. Available adaptation strategies are autonomous, mostly in the form of treatment measures such as consultation with medical officers in hospitals (17.5%), self-medication (34%) and use of traditional therapy such as herbs (48.5%). Traditional therapy is mostly preferred and approved based on long-term experience of the study population. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The population of subsaharan Africa, and particularly of the countries of the Sahel and western Africa, is one of the most vulnerable to climate change and climate-related extreme events. To provide updated information for targeted climate change adaptation measures, we modeled hotspots of climate change and related extreme events in an integrative manner. This was achieved by constructing a spatial composite indicator of cumulative climate change impact, which integrates four climate- and hazard-related subindicators: seasonal temperature trends, seasonal precipitation trends, drought occurrences, and major flood events. The analysis is based on time-series of freely available continuous, gridded geo-spatial datasets, including remote sensing data. The aggregation of the four subindicators was performed by making use of a regionalization approach, based on segmentation techniques widely used in the remote sensing community in the field of object-based image analysis. Following the approach presented in this paper, 19 hotspots with most severe climatic changes were identified, evaluated, and mapped. The method enables not only the prioritization of intervention areas, but also allows decomposing the identified hotspots into their underlying subindicators, and thus additional information for effective climate change adaptation measures can be provided.Cities represent thermal load areas compared with their surrounding environments. Due to climate change, summer heat events will increase. Therefore, mitigation and adaptation are needed. In this study, meteorological measurements in various local climate zones were performed to demonstrate the influence of evaporation surfaces and other factors on thermal comfort, as determined by the physiologically equivalent temperature (PET). Furthermore, a quantification of the thermal effects of several adaptation measures and varying meteorological parameters was made using model simulations (ENVI-met) in an inner-city neighborhood (Oberhausen, Germany). The results show that the most effective adaptation measure was increased wind speed (maximal 15 K PET reduction). Moreover, vegetation areas show greater PET reductions by the combination of shading and evapotranspiration than water surfaces. The creation of park areas with sufficient water supply and tall, isolated, shade-providing trees that allow for adequate ventilation can be recommended for planning.Four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4D-Var) on a seasonal-to-interdecadal time scale under the existence of unstable modes can be viewed as an optimization problem of synchronized, coupled chaotic systems. The problem is tackled by adjusting initial conditions to bring all stable modes closer to observations and by using a continuous guide to direct unstable modes toward a reference time series. This interpretation provides a consistent and effective procedure for solving problems of long-term state estimation. By applying this approach to an ocean general circulation model with a parameterized vertical diffusion procedure, it is demonstrated that tangent linear and adjoint models in this framework should have no unstable modes and hence be suitable for tracking persistent signals. This methodology is widely applicable to extend the assimilation period in 4D-Var.The effect of changing the planting date on the dry season rice yield was simulated by using the software Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT 4.5) for four rice varieties grown in Kurunegala district, Sri Lanka under expected climate change. Daily weather data up to the year 2090 were downscaled to the district from Global Climate Model outputs under the emission scenarios A2 and B2 published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change using the Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM 4.2). The DSSAT model was applied to simulate future rice yields from four rice varieties grown in the district under three different planting dates: (1) planting in May-the base condition; (2) advancing the planting date by 1 month, i.e., to June; and (3) planting 1 month earlier, i.e., in April. Results show that the seasonally averaged dry season rice yield would increase compared to the base condition when the planting date is advanced by 1 month and, on the other hand, the seasonally averaged rice yield would decrease compared to the base condition when the planting date is delayed by 1 month for all four varieties under both A2 and B2 scenarios. Advancing the rice planting date by 1 month for all four rice varieties can be identified as a non-cost climate change adaptation strategy for rice production in Kurunegala district.This study proposed a method to construct urban hourly weather data by adopting the morphing' approach considering urban heat islands. The method starts with the surrounding rural weather as the baseline climate' and an Urban Canopy Model is used to provide the differences in the monthly average values of major climate parameters due to urban heat islands. The baseline climate' is then morphed to generate the urban hourly weather file for building simulations. It was demonstrated that the constructed hourly weather data agree well with the observations. When used for building thermal simulations, the differences between the proposed approach and the observation in the total energy requirement of space heating and cooling and heat stress risk index were within 5% and 1.0?, respectively. Practical applications: The proposed approach will allow academics and building engineers to construct realistic urban hourly weather data to analyse the impacts of urban heat islands on energy requirements and thermal stress for different urban planning and design options.This article explores the extent to which efforts to improve productivity of smallholder agriculture through a new 'Green Revolution' in Sub Saharan Africa are likely to enhance the capacity of smallholder farmers to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Drawing on empirical material from Malawi and Kenya, the paper finds more conflicts than synergies between the pursuit of higher productivity through the promotion of hybrid maize adoption and crop diversification as a strategy for climate change adaptation. This is despite an oft-assumed causal link between escape from the 'low maize productivity trap' and progression towards crop diversification as an adaptive strategy. In both countries, a convergence of interests between governments, donors and seed companies, combined with a historical preference for, and dependence on maize as the primary staple, has led to a narrowing of options for smallholder farmers, undermining the development of adaptive capacities in the longer term. This dynamic is linked to the conflation of market-based variety of agricultural technologies, as viewed 'from the top down', with diversity-in-context, as represented by site-specific and locally derived and adapted technologies and institutions that can only be developed 'from the bottom up'.A diagnostic approach to climate change adaptation for fisheries is proposed to define potential climate adaptation pathways in well-managed fisheries. Traditional climate vulnerability and risk assessments tend to focus on biophysical threats and opportunities and thereby what needs to be done to adapt to climate change. Our diagnostic approach moves from such analysis to focus on how the processes of adaptation and development of adaptive capacity can be structured to achieve desired outcomes. Using a well-grounded framework, the diagnostic approach moves from system description to characterization of challenges and opportunities, through two stages of analysis and validation, to the definition and embedding of adaptation options and pathways. The framework can include all contextually relevant variables and accommodate evaluation of adaptation outcomes and comparisons across scales and contexts. Such an approach can serve as a basis for enabling stakeholders to identify challenges and opportunities, and to explore and prioritize options for development and implementation of legitimate adaptation pathways.Increasing ocean temperatures and strengthening boundary currents have caused the poleward migration of many marine species. Cubozoan jellyfish known to cause Irukandji syndrome have historically been confined to tropical waters but may be expanding into subtropical regions. Here, we examine the interactive effects of warming and acidification on the population dynamics of polyps of an Irukandji jellyfish, Alatina nr mordens, and the formation of statoliths in newly metamorphosed medusae, to determine if this jellyfish could tolerate future conditions predicted for southeast Queensland (SEQ), Australia. Two experiments, examining the orthogonal factors of temperature and pH, were undertaken. Experiment 1 mimicked the current, ca. 2050 and ca. 2100 summer temperature and pH conditions predicted for SEQ using A1F1 scenarios (temperature: 25, 27, 29 degrees C; pH: 7.9, 7.8, 7.6) and Experiment 2 mimicked current and future winter conditions (18 and 22 degrees C, pH 7.9, 7.8, 7.6). All polyps in Experiment 1 survived and budded. Fewer polyps budded in the lower pH treatments; however, patterns varied slightly among temperature treatments. Statoliths at pH 7.6 were 24% narrower than those at pH 7.8 and 7.9. Most polyps survived the winter conditions mimicked by Experiment 2 but only polyps in the 22 degrees C, pH 7.9 treatment increased significantly. The current absence of A. nr mordens medusae in SEQ, despite the polyps' ability to tolerate the current temperature and pH conditions, suggests that ecological, rather than abiotic factors currently limit their distribution. Observations that budding was lower under low pH treatments suggest that rates of asexual reproduction will likely be much slower in the future. We consider that A. nr mordens polyps are likely to tolerate future conditions but are unlikely to thrive in the long term. However, if polyps can overcome potential ecological boundaries and acidification proceeds slowly A. nr mordens could expand polewards in the short term.Managing urban growth is inherently contentious. Government policies seek to facilitate and spatially contain growth, while balancing public and private interests. The need for climate adaptation strategies in the urban context is recognised but arguably poorly institutionalised in growth management policies or in urban governance more broadly. This paper considers how debates around urban adaptation and growth management are structured in the discourses of local government, private developers and other actors. A discourse analysis of written submissions and media releases from four urban policy debates in Queensland, Australia, is presented. The analysis highlights the discursive strategies employed by different actors and the way their arguments have been consolidated in the practices of urban policy-making. The analysis suggests a divergence of growth and adaptation storylines, contributing to maintaining the gap between these policy agendas. Progress may be made, however, in the pragmatic discourses of actual policy implementation.The close linkages between climate change adaptation and development have led to calls for addressing the two issues in an integrated way. Mainstreaming' climate information, policies and measures into ongoing development planning and decision-making has been proposed as one solution, seen as making more sustainable, effective and efficient use of resources than designing and managing climate policies separately from ongoing development activities. But what does mainstreaming look like in practice? This article explores the process of mainstreaming, drawing on the country case study of Bangladesh, one of the countries that have made significant progress on adaptation planning and mainstreaming. The article begins by making the case for mainstreaming, by exploring the linkages and trade-offs between adaptation and development and describing the various approaches to mainstreaming from the literature. Second, it considers how to implement mainstreaming in practice, reviewing an existing four-step framework. Examining this framework against the plethora of mainstreaming experiences in Bangladesh, the article considers how the framework can be used as a tool for assessing the progress of mainstreaming progress in Bangladesh. The article concludes that while the framework is useful for considering some of the preconditions necessary for getting mainstreaming underway, experiences of mainstreaming in Bangladesh reflect a much more complex patchwork of processes and stakeholders that need to be taken into consideration in further research on this topic. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This study investigates cultural differences in tourist preferences for climate change adaptation strategies of cross-country skiers in Austria and Finland. We used the value orientation approach to empirically test whether this concept is sensitive to skiers' climate change adaptation preferences in the two respective countries. The comparisons between the two countries were made even more specific with three identical motivation-based segments that accounted for heterogeneity within the respective samples. All comparisons were based on either regular survey questions or on the results of a choice experiment. The results reveal significant differences between skiers for the overall national samples, as well as for numerous comparisons between specific segments. Thus, we conclude that adaptation strategy planning should consider cultural differences and that the transferability of strategies even within the western cultures of Europe is limited.The management of freshwater ecosystems is usually targeted through the regulation of water quantity (limiting diversions and providing environmental flows) and regulation of water quality (setting limits or targets for constituent concentrations). Climate change is likely to affect water quantity and quality in multiple ways and the future management of freshwater ecosystems requires predictions of plausible future conditions. We use a suite of ecologically-relevant hydrological indicators to determine the significance of projected climate-driven hydrological changes in the Upper Murrumbidgee River Catchment in south eastern Australia in relation to river regulation. We also determine the possible water quality changes (in relation to guidelines for aquatic ecosystem protection) associated with the climate change projections to identify the combined effects of hydrological and water quality changes. The results of this study suggest that river regulation has resulted in greater changes to ecologically-relevant streamflow characteristics than climate change scenarios that involve a 1 and 2 degrees C temperature rise in the Upper Murrumbidgee River Catchment. In contrast to the projected hydrological changes, Bayesian Network modelling suggests very small changes to violations of water quality thresholds designed to protect aquatic ecosystems as a result of climate change. By identifying key components of the flow and water quality regimes that may be affected by climate change, we are able to provide managers with information that assists in developing adaptation initiatives.Complex collaborative applications often involve multiple sectors and numerous heterogeneous open and private data sources. Although these applications are starting to emerge as a result of scientific and technological advances in integration and analytical data capabilities, there is a lack of understanding about the nature of collaborative multi-sectoral open data applications, their architecture and the role of open data in these applications. In this paper we describe the main features of collaborative multi-sectoral applications and illustrate our ideas using a collaborative application called "Integrated Science and Watershed Management System" (ISWMSTM), which supports climate adaptation assessment and real-time predictive modeling capabilities. The collaborative efforts around building this application involve experts such as those in environment, rural and urban development, and climate change.The Very Low Head (VLH) turbine is a recent turbine technology developed in Europe for low head sites in the 1.4 - 4.2 m range. The VLH turbine is primarily targeted for installation at existing hydraulic structures to provide a low impact, low cost, yet highly efficient solution. Over 35 VLH turbines have been successfully installed in Europe and the first VLH deployment for North America is underway at Wasdell Falls in Ontario, Canada. Deployment opportunities abound in Canada with an estimated 80,000 existing structures within North America for possible low-head hydro development. There are several new considerations and challenges for the deployment of the VLH turbine technology in Canada in adapting to the hydraulic, environmental, electrical and social requirements. Several studies were completed to determine suitable approaches and design modifications to mitigate risk and confirm turbine performance. Diverse types of existing weirs and spillways pose certain hydraulic design challenges. Physical and numerical modelling of the VLH deployment alternatives provided for performance optimization For this application, studies characterizing the influence of upstream obstacles using water tunnel model testing as well as full-scale prototype flow dynamics testing were completed. A Cold Climate Adaptation Package (CCA) was developed to allow year-round turbine operation in ice covered rivers. The CCA package facilitates turbine extraction and accommodates ice forces, frazil ice, ad-freezing and cold temperatures that are not present at the European sites. The Permanent Magnet Generator (PMG) presents some unique challenges in meeting Canadian utility interconnection requirements. Specific attention to the frequency driver control and protection requirements resulted in a driver design with greater over-voltage capability for the PMG as well as other key attributes. Environmental studies in Europe included fish friendliness testing comprised of multiple in-river live passage tests for a wide variety of fish species. Latest test results indicate fish passage survivability close to 100%. Further fish studies are planned in Canada later this year. Successful deployment must meet societal requirements to gain community acceptance and public approval. Aesthetics considerations include low noise, disguised control buildings and vigilant turbine integration into the low profile existing structures. The resulting design was selected for deployment at existing historic National Park waterway structures. The integration of all of these design elements permits the successful deployment of the VLH turbine in Canada.A case study report of the good practices of the Sri Lankan Early Warning System (EWS) was prepared for the ANDROID Disaster Resilience Network funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme. The objective was to highlight good practices, identify gaps and useful recommendations (within an up-to-date and comprehensive context) to achieve disaster resilient governance. The EWS components; Infrastructure, Risk Knowledge (i.e. Hazard, Vulnerability and Risk Assessment), Preparedness and Early Warning Dissemination, Disaster Response and Coordination were scrutinised. These components were compared against the exemplary structure of a people-centred EWS to assess its efficacy in achieving disaster resilience. Since the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was the first contemporary large-scale disaster faced by Sri Lanka, it lacked the legislative framework and institutional capacity to respond and only thereafter the integration of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) was observed. The importance of training was demonstrated within risk knowledge, preparedness and early warning dissemination, and disaster response and coordination. Thereby training is considered crucial in achieving a progressive, people-centred EWS. However it can be consolidated through joint resource utilisation (particularly personnel) between organisations and creating a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certification system. There has been considerable progress in integrating DRR into development at all levels, which is a key measure in achieving disaster resilience. It was notably observed in achieving disaster resilient development, climate change adaptation and DRR was integrated despite a general tendency to be polarised in other areas. Despite some existing projects there is a need for greater government and private sector engagement in ecosystem-based DRR. Finally to achieve a disaster resilient Sri Lankan EWS, risk transfer measures require further evaluation. The emergence of some disaster risk financing and insurance is observed but issues, such as assuring applicability to a local context and scientific, evidence-based underpinning, need to be addressed. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V.In the Algarve southern Portugal region, Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) research activities have been developed to provide not only water surplus storage in aquifers during wet years, focusing in the Querenca-Silves aquifer (FP6 ASEMWATERNet Coordination Action), but also groundwater quality rehabilitation in the Campina de Faro aquifer (FP6 Gabardine Project). Following MAR research potentialities in southern Portugal, this paper describes the objectives, conceptual demonstration, background and capabilities of one of the selected Circum-Mediterranean pilot sites (in Portugal) that will be researched in the new FP7-ENV-2013-WATER-INNO-DEMO MARSOL project, which started Dec. 1st, 2013. In the Algarve pilot site, several case-study areas will be located in the Querenca-Silves aquifer and in the Campina de Faro aquifer.This paper provides a review of the definitions, challenges and prospects toward resilient cities. It refers to the definitions provided by several researchers for resilience, links resilience to sustainability, discusses the role of spatial planning in strengthening urban resilience, identifies barriers to resilience, summarizes the requirements for creating resilient cities and exemplifies on cities, climate change and resilience. The paper concludes that the concept of resilience adds a new perspective to the issue of sustainability in the sense that resilience is needed for a sustainable environment. Finally, it refers to the link between climate change adaptation and mitigation plans for cities on the one hand and plans for resilient cities on the other.African women, particularly in eastern, western, and northern Africa, still engage in pastoralism as a key livelihood strategy. Pastoralism as it is practised in this part of Africa largely involves the rearing of livestock in climate sensitive and vulnerable environments. Research on pastoralism in Africa identifies climate change as a major factor that adversely impacts pastoral women's livelihood, thus challenging them to develop coping mechanisms to minimise the effects of resultant stresses and shocks. Such coping and adaptive strategies are dependent on several socially differentiated variables which include entitlements and assets, health status and disability, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion and gender. This Briefing is a desk-top study of climate change adaptation among pastoralist women in Africa. The study indicates that women tend to interact with the environment and with livestock (in relation to pastoralism) in ways that differ from men: women have lower coping and adaptive capacities to climate variability and change compared to men. It is therefore imperative that appropriate policies and strategies be developed to improve adaptive capacities among women in these communities.The literature indicates that there are different types of conflicts that range from disputes / disagreements to outright violence and wars. This Article focuses on the literature regarding environmentally-induced conflicts in Africa. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) reports that Africa is the region of the world that is most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change and this is likely to contribute to a range of conflicts on the continent. The significant gap in the literature on climate change and environmental conflicts induced by climate change is a gendered focus that examines the impacts and implications for women. It is widely accepted that in Africa women (and children) are the most vulnerable groups as a result of persistent poverty, poor institutional and physical infrastructure, poor social services, lower coping and adaptive capacities, and higher reliance on the natural resource base for livelihoods which are sensitive to climate variability. Furthermore, women in Africa are often the primary natural resource users and managers because of gendered productive and reproductive responsibilities which are highly dependent on natural resources. This results in the impacts of climate change being more pronounced and severe for women. Furthermore, women and men experience and respond to environmentally-induced conflicts in different ways. This Article identifies land, water, agricultural and forestry-related environmentally-induced conflicts linked to climate change and examines, using specific illustrative examples, the impacts and implications of environmentally-induced conflicts in Africa for women. Coping and adaptation strategies used by women are also discussed. The Article argues that conflicts in Africa are increasingly induced by environmental stressors and these conflicts have more severe impacts on women. It is therefore important that conflict resolution approaches and climate adaptation strategies are gender-sensitive.This issue of Agricultural Economics is a special issue containing articles on model performance in assessing the effects of climate change, bioenergy policy, and socioeconomics on agriculture. The contributions present results from a global economic model intercomparison activity undertaken as part of the AgMIP Project (www.agmip.org). The origins of the comparison activities can be traced to a project that was organized by the OECD in late 2010 to compare results from three models. The current phase of the research includes 10 models and was designed in part to support of the IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5). The special issue includes seven peer-reviewed articles that present thematic results from a range of modeling strategies, with partial and general equilibrium modeling as a high level distinction but a myriad of differences within these two model types. A central common element is harmonization on biophysical effects using crop models and socioeconomic effects using drivers from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways developed as part of the AR5 process. The special issue provides broad insights into how the modeling communities approached the interactions of climate, socioeconomics, bioenergy policy on agricultural outcomes, including land use, prices, consumption, and production.This study describes an interdisciplinary methodology for helping small farmers prepare for climatic variability. We facilitated workshops in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, Mexico, in which groups of small farmers described how they had adapted to and prepared for past climate challenges. Farmers reported that their cropping systems were changing for multiple reasons: more drought, later rainfall onset, decreased rural labor, and introduced labor-saving technologies. Examination of climate data found that farmers' climate narratives were largely consistent with the observational record. There have been increases in temperature and rainfall intensity, and an increase in rainfall seasonality that may be perceived as later rainfall onset. Farmers also identified 14 indicators that they subsequently used to evaluate the condition of their agroecosystems. Farmers ranked landscape-scale indicators as more marginal than farmer management or soil quality indicators. From this analysis, farmers proposed strategies to improve the ability of their agroecosystems to cope with climatic variability. Notably, they recognized that social organizing and education are required for landscape-scale indicators to be improved. This outcome suggests that climate change adaptation by small farmers involves much more than just a set of farming practices, but also community action to tackle collective problems.This paper is concerned with climate change and its implications, making particular reference to Dizin in Iran which is one of the country's leading snow ski resorts. The impacts of climate change on ski businesses are examined, alongside the consequences for local communities, their economies, and overall sustainability. In addition, attention is given to responses by affected enterprises and other stakeholders to the problems caused by falls in demand for snow skiing due to decreasing snow cover attributed to global warming. Adaptive strategies focus on marketing and product diversification with attempts to develop other nature-based pursuits throughout the year as an alternative to that of skiing, but there are concerns about the future among those who rely on snow skiers for a livelihood. Findings are derived from original research incorporating 30 interviews with those involved in the ski industry in Dizin, including residents from a nearby village.Climate change predictions indicate more extremes in weather conditions in the coming decades with more frequent and severe heat waves in certain locations including Australia. It is likely that the more vulnerable members of the community will be at risk during heat waves in the future from both health and financial perspectives. The trend towards fully air conditioned larger homes has already seen very large peaks in electricity demand during past heat waves. Electricity prices have increased substantially in recent years and will increase further due to greater peak demand and environmental levies. To manage the risks to dwelling occupants during heat waves, research has been carried out to determine methods of promoting adaptive behaviours through residential design. This paper describes the concept of a "cool retreat" within a dwelling which can provide comfort conditions with minimal cooling costs during heat wave periods. The cool retreat concept is shown to have its origins in the past in a number of locations around the world subject to hot conditions. Various cool retreat configurations have been analysed for thermal performance, demonstrating the viability of this approach for dealing with extreme conditions in the future.To exclude children and young people from disaster planning processes undermines their safety when a disaster strikes. Moreover, this exclusion ignores the potential communication opportunities for risk reduction between emergency and disaster management agencies and families. This research applied a child-centred approach to the collection of data regarding children's perceptions of how the wet and dry season affects the young people in Broome, particularly where they play, how they get to school and where they live. The research, which was conducted with assistance from the Principal, staff and students of St Mary's Catholic College in Broome Western Australia, also asked students to describe the adaptive and mitigative actions they believed would alleviate the negative impacts of seasonal changes on their lives.Sea level rise poses significant risks to the Gold Coast, which is particularly vulnerable to coastal retreat, inundation and flooding. Drawing on policy transfer literature as the conceptual framework, this paper aims to draw lessons from the Netherlands, as an exemplar of adaptive flood management, to inform the future direction of adaptation to sea level rise on the Gold Coast. On both the Gold Coast and in the Netherlands, the traditional approach taken to adapt to sea level rise has been characterised by a structural approach to protect properties through flood defences. However, the Dutch Government has recently acknowledged the need to adopt a proactive approach to water management and accommodate water through spatial planning initiatives to minimise long-term risk from climate change. From the Dutch experience, three important lessons can be drawn: (1) the need to use spatial planning to accommodate water; (2) the need to adopt a proactive approach to climate adaptation; and (3) the importance of a strong centralised approach to water management. As the current adaptation framework in the Netherlands reflects centuries of experimenting with flood mitigation, these lessons should be of particular interest to Australian planners and policy-makers.This article proposes a new theoretical framework that supports the preparation of local communities to deal with climate impacts. In this framework, derived from the metabolism model, the resources that form the input (social capital and practical conditions) for design charrettes are processed to deliver output resources in the form of enhanced and sophisticated spatial design propositions, which are more resilient en adaptive. Elaborating this model, processing input to deliver desired outputs can only occur when deep learning experiences are offered to the local community. The framework is used and tested in two case studies in northwest Victoria, the City of Bendigo and town of Sea Lake. The findings from the study show the performance of the framework and the improved properties of the design propositions. Conducting design charrettes has two effects. New ways of collaboration are explored allowing exchange to happen between community members with different interests. This leads to new social constructs that are capable of achieving results that would be otherwise impossible or unknown of. Secondly, the design propositions suggest highly resilient and adaptive spatial transformations in the city or town.Mangrove forests are the critical coastal ecosystems that are increasing seen as an effective mean of climate change adaptation viz-a-viz. disaster risk reduction in coastal areas. Yet, the very own existence of mangroves in India are vastly challenged due to heavy biotic pressure, unsustainable practices of forest exploitation and environmental degradation despite of significant legislative protection. Following nearly four decades of a state owned conservative management of mangroves, India has emerged with the concepts of community based co-management of mangrove resources (also known as 'Joint Mangrove Management') since the last decade. One of the key components of Joint Mangrove Management (JMM) is the involvement of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in development, conservation and restoration of mangrove resources which has been largely described as an ameliorative management of these exclusive coastal resources. Under this backdrop, this chapter critically examines the participation of NGOs and CBOs in JMM over the last decade and attempts to identify their strength, weakness, opportunities and threats in the existing co-management system of mangrove resources. The analysis leads to the conclusion that despite CBOs and NGOs being the two major stakeholders in JMM; their role is largely restricted mostly due to lacking of legal and tenurial rights. The chapter concludes with some key recommendations to enhance their involvement in JMM where sharing of statutory rights and integration of disaster risk reduction with mangrove conservation remains extremely important in the future course of action.Climate variability is contributing to water-scarcity problems in Kenya and to extreme flooding and drought in Vietnam. This paper compares diversity-based climate adaptation approaches in current land use in the Cam Xuyen district, Ha Tinh province, Central Vietnam and in the Kapingazi river watershed in Embu district, Eastern province, Kenya, in order to understand local responses to climate variability and examine the potential for policy support of diversity management by local people. Literature reviews and trend analysis of local time series of rainfall and temperature were combined with stakeholder interviews and workshops to identify technology and policy options for dealing with current and future climate variability. At all study sites, diversity in land use at farm level and along agriculture-forestry landscape gradients was a key strategy. Policy options to support such an approach could include legalization of agroforestry in Vietnam and a combination of regulations and incentive-based approaches to reconcile household decision-making with longer term and collective actions to benefit landscape diversity in Kenya. Lessons learnt in both study areas about payments for environmental services can be used in policy discussions.Interest is growing in the trends of atmospheric evaporation demand, increasing the need for long-term time series. This work describes, for the first time, the development of a dataset on evaporation in Spain based on long-term series of Piche and pan measurement records. Piche measurements have been reported for > 50 stations since the 1960s. Measurements of pan evaporation, which is a much more widely studied variable in the literature, are also available, but only since 1984 for 21 stations. Particular emphasis was placed on the homogenization of this dataset. Both the mean annual Piche and pan series over Spain showed evaporative increases during the common study period (1985-2011), by a rate of around +0.1 mm d(-1) decade(-1). Furthermore, using the annual Piche records since the 1960s, an evaporation decline was detected from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, which resulted in a non-significant trend over the entire 1961-2011 period. Our results indicate agreement between the decadal variability of reference evapotranspiration and the surface solar radiation previously reported and the evaporation from Piche and pan measurements, especially during summer. The suitability of Piche records compared to pan evaporation data to represent past trends is discussed.Like other countries, the United Kingdom faces the unavoidable challenge of adapting to a changing climate. However, public perceptions of the risk posed by climate change and support for adaptation policies vary between countries. This article provides a UK-specific review of climate change beliefs, risk perceptions regarding potential climate change impacts, and attitudes towards climate change adaptation. We report on differences between expert and public conceptualisations of climate change risks. We also examine the effects of psychological distancing, climate change awareness, and hazard experience on both concerns about climate change and perceptions of the weather-related risks posed by climate change. Additionally, we review the effects of emotion, agency, perceived responsibility, place attachment, personal values and uncertainty on the willingness of UK residents to support and engage with climate change adaptation. We outline the implications of these factors for climate risk communication and highlight key areas for future research. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Risk-based management approaches to climate adaptation depend on the assessment of potential threats, and their causes, vulnerabilities, and impacts. The refinement of these approaches relies heavily on detailed local knowledge of places and priorities, such as infrastructure, governance structures, and socio-economic conditions, as well as scientific understanding of climate projections and trends. Developing processes that integrate local and scientific knowledge will enhance the value of risk-based management approaches, facilitate group learning and planning processes, and support the capacity of communities to prepare for change. This study uses the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process, a form of analytic-deliberative dialogue, and the conceptual frameworks of hazard management and climate vulnerability, to integrate scientific and local knowledge. We worked with local government staff in an urbanized barrier island community (Sullivan's Island, South Carolina) to consider climate risks, impacts, and adaptation challenges associated with sea level rise and wastewater and stormwater management. The findings discuss how the process increases understanding of town officials' views of risks and climate change impacts to barrier islands, the management actions being considered to address of the multiple impacts of concern, and the local tradeoffs and challenges in adaptation planning. We also comment on group learning and specific adaptation tasks, strategies, and needs identified. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper examines the role of crop advisors as brokers of climate information to support US corn farmers to adapt to climatic change. It uses quantitative data collected from a broad survey of crop advisors in the US Corn Belt to examine the factors that shape advisors' use of (and willingness to provide) climate information to their clients. Building upon a general model of climate information usability we argue that advisors' willingness to provide climate advice to farmers is influenced by three main factors: their information seeking habits and behavior, their experience with innovation in the past, and how climate information interplays with other kinds of information that they provide-especially agronomic advice. We find that advisors' willingness to provide climate related information depends both on factors at the individual and organizational level and on the type of advice they provide. First, at the individual and organizational levels, advisors who work in supportive organizations and who collaborate with other advisors are more likely to provide climate information. Second, advisors are more likely to provide climate information if it does not interfere with their main profit making business (e.g. provision of agronomic advice). Third, there is a significant positive relationship between trust in a greater number or sources of information and use of climate information. Fourth, the way advisors perceive short-and long-term risk also influences their willingness to provide climate information; the more concerned they are about long-term climate-related risks to farming, the more likely they are to provide (or want to provide) advice based on climate information. Differently from other empirical work in the literature, our analytical model suggests that neither negative experiences with climate information in the past nor the high level of uncertainty characteristic of climate information appear to influence advisors willingness to provide climate information in the future. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Debate regarding the relationship between socioeconomic development and natural disasters remains at the fore of global discussions, as the potential risk from climate extremes and uncertainty pose an increasing threat to developmental prospects. This study reviews statistical investigations of disaster and development linkages, across topics of macroeconomic growth, public governance and others to identify key challenges to the current approach to macro-level statistical investigation. Both theoretically and qualitatively, disaster is known to affect development through a number of channels: haphazard development, weak institutions, lack of social safety nets and short-termism of our decision-making practices are some of the factors that drive natural disaster risk. Developmental potentials, including the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth, are in turn threatened by such accumulation of disaster risks. However, quantitative evidence regarding these complex causality chains remains contested due to several reasons. A number of theoretical and methodological limitations have been identified, including the use of GDP as a proxy measurement of welfare, issues with natural disaster damage reporting and the adoption of ad hoc model specifications and variables, which render interpretation and cross-comparison of statistical analysis difficult. Additionally, while greater attention is paid to economic and institutional parameters such as GDP, remittance, corruption and public expenditure as opposed to hard-to-quantify yet critical factors such as environmental conditions and social vulnerabilities. These are gaps in our approach that hamper our comprehensive understanding of the disaster-development nexus. Important areas for further research are identified, including recognizing and addressing the data constraints, incorporating sustainability and equity concerns through alternatives to GDP, and finding novel approaches to examining the complex and dynamic relationships between risk, vulnerability, resilience, adaptive capacity and development. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseHow to better assess, communicate and respond to risks from climate change at the community level have emerged as key questions within climate risk management. Recent research to address these questions centres largely on psychological factors, exploring how cognition and emotion lead to biases in risk assessment. Yet, making sense of climate change and its responses at the community level demands attention to the cultural and political processes that shape how risk is conceived, prioritized and managed. I review the emergent literature on risk perceptions and responses to climate change using a cultural-political lens. This lens highlights how knowledge, meaning and power are produced and negotiated across multiple stakeholders at the community level. It draws attention to the different ways of constructing climate change risks and suggests an array of responses at the community level. It further illustrates how different constructions of risk intersect with agency and power to shape the capacity for response and collective action. What matters are whose constructions of risk, and whose responses, count in decision- making. I argue for greater engagement with the interpretive social sciences in research, practice and policy. The interpretive social sciences offer theories and tools for capturing and problematising the ways of knowing, sense-making and mobilising around risks from climate change. I also highlight the importance of participatory approaches in incorporating the multiplicity of interests at the community level into climate risk management in fair, transparent and culturally appropriate ways. (C) 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseVulnerability analysis is essential for targeting adaptation options to impacts of climate variability and change, particularly in diverse systems with limited resources such as smallholder farms in sub-Saharan Africa. To investigate the nature and sources of vulnerability of smallholder farmers to climate variability and change, we analysed long term climate data and interviewed farmers individually and in groups in Makoni and Hwedza districts in eastern Zimbabwe. Farmers' perceptions of changes in climate characteristics matched the recorded data. Total seasonal rainfall has not changed, but variability in the rainfall distribution within seasons has increased. The mean daily minimum temperature increased by 0.2 degrees C per decade in both Makoni and Hwedza. The mean daily maximum temperature increased by 0.5 degrees C per decade in Hwedza. The number of days with temperatures > 30 degrees C also increased in Hwedza. Farmers indicated that livestock production was sensitive to drought due to lack of feed, affecting resource-endowed farmers, who own relatively large herds of cattle. Crop production was more sensitive to increased rainfall variability, largely affecting farmers with intermediate resource endowment. Availability of wild fruits and social safety nets were affected directly and indirectly by extreme temperatures and increased rainfall variability, impacting on the livelihoods of resource-constrained farmers. There was no evidence of a simple one-to-one relationship between vulnerability and farmer resource endowment, suggesting that vulnerability to climate variability and change is complex and not simply related to assets. Alongside climate variability and change, farmers were also faced with biophysical and socioeconomic challenges such as lack of fertilizers, and these problems had strong interactions with adaptation options to climate change. Diversifying crops and cultivars, staggering planting date and managing soil fertility were identified as the major adaptation options to stabilize yields against increased rainfall variability. There is need to evaluate the identified adaptation options on farm and with the participation of farmers to provide empirical evidence on the best options for different households. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseDespite information on the benefits of climate change adaptation planning being widely available and well documented, in the UK at least relatively few real-world cases of scenario led adaptation have been documented. This limited uptake has been attributed to a variety of factors including the vast uncertainties faced, a lack of resources and potentially the absence of probabilities assigned to current climate change projections, thereby hampering conventional approaches to decision making under risk. Decision criteria for problems of uncertainty have been criticised for being too restrictive, crude, overly pessimistic, and data intensive. Furthermore, many cannot be reproduced reliably from sub-samples of the UKCP09 probabilistic dataset. This study critically compares current decision criteria for problems of uncertainty and subsequently outlines an improved criterion which overcomes some of their limitations and criticisms. This criterion, termed the Green Z-score, is then applied to a simplified real-world problem of designing an irrigation reservoir in the UK under climate change. The criterion is designed to be simple to implement, support robust decision making and provide reproducible results from sub-samples of the UKCP09 probabilistic dataset. It is designed to accommodate a wide range of risk appetites and attitudes and thereby encourage its use by decision makers who are presently struggling to determine whether and how to adapt to future climate change and its potential impacts. Analyses using sub-samples of the complete probabilistic dataset showed that the Green Z-score had comparable reproducibility to Laplace and improved reproducibility compared to other current decision criteria, and unlike Laplace is able to accommodate different risk attitudes. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Weather index insurance is being offered to low-income farmers in developing countries as an alternative to traditional multi-peril crop insurance. There is widespread support for index insurance as a means of climate change adaptation but whether or not these products are themselves resilient to climate change has not been well studied. Given climate variability and climate change, an over-reliance on historical climate observations to guide the design of such products can result in premiums which mislead policyholders and insurers alike, about the magnitude of underlying risks. Here, a method to incorporate different sources of climate data into the product design phase is presented. Bayesian Networks are constructed to demonstrate how insurers can assess the product viability from a climate perspective, using past observations and simulations of future climate. Sensitivity analyses illustrate the dependence of pricing decisions on both the choice of information, and the method for incorporating such data. The methods and their sensitivities are illustrated using a case study analysing the provision of index-based crop insurance in Kolhapur, India. We expose the benefits and limitations of the Bayesian Network approach, weather index insurance as an adaptation measure and climate simulations as a source of quantitative predictive information. Current climate model output is shown to be of limited value and difficult to use by index insurance practitioners. The method presented, however, is shown to be an effective tool for testing pricing assumptions and could feasibly be employed in the future to incorporate multiple sources of climate data. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Urban areas are pivotal to global adaptation and mitigation efforts. But how do cities actually perform in terms of climate change response? This study sheds light on the state of urban climate change adaptation and mitigation planning across Europe. Europe is an excellent test case given its advanced environmental policies and high urbanization. We performed a detailed analysis of 200 large and medium-sized cities across 11 European countries and analysed the cities' climate change adaptation and mitigation plans. We investigate the regional distribution of plans, adaptation and mitigation foci and the extent to which planned greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions contribute to national and international climate objectives. To our knowledge, it is the first study of its kind as it does not rely on self-assessment (questionnaires or social surveys). Our results show that 35 % of European cities studied have no dedicated mitigation plan and 72 % have no adaptation plan. No city has an adaptation plan without a mitigation plan. One quarter of the cities have both an adaptation and a mitigation plan and set quantitative GHG reduction targets, but those vary extensively in scope and ambition. Furthermore, we show that if the planned actions within cities are nationally representative the 11 countries investigated would achieve a 37 % reduction in GHG emissions by 2050, translating into a 27 % reduction in GHG emissions for the EU as a whole. However, the actions would often be insufficient to reach national targets and fall short of the 80 % reduction in GHG emissions recommended to avoid global mean temperature rising by 2 A degrees C above pre-industrial levels.The article discusses action research in a Dutch intergovernmental project group DV2050. That group was to assess the effects of climate change and soil subsidence on the regional water system and to propose adaptive policies to increase regional water safety. In this study, we draw a parallel between the stakeholder participation trajectory of DV2050 and our collaborative learning trajectory within the DV2050 project. In the academic literature, both participatory policy-making and action research are advocated for instrumental, normative and quality reasons. In our case, both trajectories took place in an entrenched context, i.e. a strongly institutionalized environment in which the involved governments compete for competencies. Despite broader ambitions stated at the beginning of these trajectories, we explain that both became instrumentalized by actors involved, narrowing their scope. Instrumentalization was influenced by powerful interests, a strongly institutionalized science-policy interface and the pressure of imminent decision-making.This paper develops debates about reflexivity and its role in adaptive management and collaborative research through recounting the case of an action research project aiming to support water utilities in adapting to climate change. The project sought to produce 'usable' knowledge about adaptation through interpretive social scientists working closely with water utility practitioners operating within a positivist knowledge context. Developing the work of Stirling, Vo beta and Kemp, the paper identifies four challenges arising from this collaboration. We have named these the challenges of difference, integrity, fit and valid knowledge. Each challenge was addressed through reflexive processes of first opening up debate and then closing down discussion by identifying routes for action. The paper argues that these same challenges may pose difficulties and hence require careful consideration in other collaborative projects that cross not only the interpretive-positivist but also the research-practice divide. We conclude that if collaborations are to be maintained, making things less comfortable and more reflexive must be cautious, based on strong relations of trust and willingness to, at times, compromise on what one believes is 'usable' knowledge.The problem of past emissions - how to share fairly the costs of climate-changing emissions caused by polluters who are no longer in existence - presents an increasingly pressing challenge to scholars and policy-makers. Since standard contribution-based principles are inapplicable when it comes to past emissions, theorists have instead proposed various non-contribution-based historical principles. This paper develops such a principle - the Inherited Debt Principle - which seeks to account for the intuition that historical injustice matters to current duties in a way that does not appeal to the counterfactual benefits derived from that injustice. This principle, it is argued, offers a surprisingly plausible solution to the problem of past emissions.This paper draws on the results from a recent World Bank-funded project designed to inform policy-making and climate change adaptation planning in small and medium-sized cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. The focus was on floods and landslides, which are the two most common climate-related risks in cities across the region. The project allowed the application of the Urban Risk Assessment (URA) tool developed by the World Bank and the drawing of valuable lessons which may also be applicable to the many methods and tools available for climate change adaptation planning in the rapidly urbanising cities of developing countries.This paper examines how mainstreaming of urban climate change resilience - a crucial consideration in an increasingly urbanised world - is occurring at both the city and national scale, using the case of an internationally-funded resilience-building initiative in India. Surat city's newly-established Climate Change Trust illustrates the importance of an institutionalised mechanism for coordinating and sustaining climate initiatives. Concurrently, climate resilience is being mainstreamed into the national urban development agenda, through a network of Indian institutions. These two nascent mechanisms offer avenues for local city-level experiences to inform national directives, driving and sustaining the urban climate adaptation agenda across India.Policies developed at national levels can be unresponsive to local needs. Often they do not provide the rural poor with access to the assets and services they need to allow them to innovate and adapt to the ways that increased climate variability and change exacerbate challenges to basic securities - food, water, energy, and well-being. In development deficit circumstances, common pool resources are important for climate adaptation purposes. In order for climate adaptation actions to deliver resilience, local perspectives and knowledge need to be recognised and given due priority in formal planning systems. Basing formal adaptive development planning on local strategies can support and strengthen measures that people have been tested and know to work. Local climate adaptation through collective action can address current increases in climate variability, future incremental changes, and the need to transform existing systems to deal with qualitative shifts in climate. These types of adaptation can work in cumulative ways. The results of local adaptation collective action that have benefits of low rivalry between users while being highly inclusive can be considered "local public goods". Evidence is beginning to emerge that when local governance systems facilitate high levels of participation in planning collective action for climate adaptation, and direct access to resources for implementing local plans, "local public goods" can be created and common pool resources better managed.The economy of Odisha is primarily agrarian. Over 80% of the population of Odisha live in rural areas, where levels of poverty are higher than in the state's towns and cities. They depend for their livelihoods on farming and collecting forest products. During the dry season, many migrate elsewhere in Odisha and nearby states in search of temporary work as labourers. Odisha has the highest proportion of inhabitants from scheduled tribes and scheduled castes of all the states in India (39.9% compared to 24% nationally). These groups are marginalised and experience high rates of poverty, low levels of education and poor health. They are highly vulnerable to climate change, due to poverty and dependence on climate-sensitive livelihoods in a vulnerable region. The Western Odisha Rural Livelihoods Project sought to reduce poverty by improving communities' water resources, agriculture, and incomes. Communities were involved throughout and are now better able to respond to climate variability (both droughts and heavy rains). The Government of Odisha took full ownership of the project and state and national governments subsequently adopted approaches used by WORLP.This paper examines mainstreaming environment and climate change into development policy, planning, and budgeting. It looks at why we should integrate environment and climate and outlines challenges and successes. One result is that governments' progress pro-poor and equitable development. Governance gains are important too: co-benefits include more transparent decision making and better cross-government working. Ultimately, the impact of mainstreaming has increased awareness, changed perceptions, and improved the way inter-sectoral decisions are made, especially in climate adaptation. This supports countries to achieve their sustainable development ambitions -lessons which could be applied to a post-2015 development agenda.Confronted with climate change, cities appear to be spaces at risk, not so much because of their exposure to climatic threats but rather because of their present and future vulnerabilities to such hazards taking into account their limited capacities to cope with or to respond to such events. This article attempts firstly to precise both the definition and the epistemological frame of resilience and its complex links with the afferent notions of vulnerability and adaptation in a context of ineluctable climatic disasters. It shows why the adoption of a systemic perspective, i.e. complex and dynamic, of resilience can offer a pertinent frame, under specific conditions, to envisage sustainable futures for urbanized territories faced with present and forthcoming climate risks. Secondly, considering the actual uses and meanings of resilience, this article interrogates the operational feature of this concept to re-think about the "urban fabric" in an integrated manner with the climate risks prevention. Finally, it aims to clarify why planned adaptation strategies aimed at reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing proactive resilience of cities, that have progressively become in both academic and institutional discourses a key feature, and even a tipping point, for urban sustainable development pathways, can revealed to be ambiguous.Global wetland biodiversity loss continues unabated, driven by increased demand for freshwater. A key strategy for conservation management of freshwater systems is to maintain the quantity and quality of the natural water regimes, including the frequency and timing of flows. Formalizing an ecological model depicting the key ecological components and the underlying processes of cause and effect is required for successful conservation management. Models linking hydrology with ecological responses can prove to be an invaluable tool for robust decision-making of environmental flows. Here, we explored alternative water management strategies and identified maximal strategies for successful long-term management of colonial waterbirds in the Macquarie Marshes, Australia. We modeled fluctuations in breeding abundances of 10 colonial waterbird species over the past quarter century (1986-2010). Clear relationships existed between flows and breeding, both in frequencies and total abundances, with a strong linear relationship for flows >200 GL. Thresholds emerged for triggering breeding events in all 10 species, but these varied among species. Three species displayed a sharp threshold response between 100 GL and 250 GL. These had a breeding probability of 0.5 when flows were >180 GL and a 0.9 probability of breeding with flows >350 GL. The remaining species had a probability greater than 0.5 of breeding with flows >400 GL. Using developed models, we examined the effects of five environmental flow management strategies on the variability of flows and subsequent likelihood of breeding. Management to different target volumes of environmental flows affected overall and specific breeding probabilities. The likelihood of breeding for all 10 colonial waterbirds increased from a regulated historical mean (+/- SD) of 0.36 +/- 0.09 to 0.53 +/- 0.14, an improvement of 47.5% +/- 18.7%. Management of complex ecosystems depends on good understanding of the responses of organisms to the main drivers of change. Considerable opportunity exists for implementing similar frameworks for other ecosystem attributes, following understanding of their responses to the flow regime, achieving a more complete model of the entire ecosystem.Background: There is a growing body of literature that examines the role of local governments in addressing climate change vis-a-vis mitigation and adaptation. Although it appears that climate change mitigation strategies - in particular those addressing energy issues - are being adopted by a large majority of local governments, this cannot be said of climate change adaptation. This paper explores the uptake of these two types of climate change policy by local governments in the Netherlands. The central research question is: What lessons can be drawn from comparing the adoption and implementation of local climate change mitigation policies with local climate change adaptation policies in the Netherlands? Our paper contributes to the body of literature on climate change policy implementation, drawing particular attention to the ongoing debate on the institutional dimension of the adaptation-mitigation dichotomy. Methods: A comparative case study research design was chosen to study the adoption and implementation of climate change (i) mitigation and (ii) adaptation policies by local governments in the Netherlands during the period 1998 to 2013. The data involved 89 expert interviews and secondary data sources from four research projects conducted by the present authors on local climate change policy implementation. Results: Most Dutch municipalities have local climate change policies that address mitigation. Local governments pay relatively little attention to adaptation. The difference is mostly due to the take-up of central government-led policy support schemes aimed at the vertical integration of climate change mitigation policies. Moreover, mitigation is typically framed as an 'energy' issue whereas adaptation is framed as a 'water' issue. This has far-reaching consequences. Climate change adaptation has never been prioritized, nor has it been supported with properly funded policy support schemes. Conclusions: In the realm of local climate change policies, adaptation is still considered an 'add-on' to climate change mitigation policy. Moreover, adoption and implementation of both adaptation and mitigation suffers from institutional inertia in Dutch local policy practice.Complex policy issues such as climate change adaptation can be interpreted in many different ways, resulting in different assumptions about their purpose and goals. Using material from a qualitative study in the Australian local government sector, this research shows that stakeholders involved in local adaptation policy formulation often do not have a shared view about the meaning and purposes of adaptation, although such shared understanding is commonly assumed in adaptation processes. Drawing on the frame-research literature and current conceptualisations of climate change adaptation, we argue that subconscious frame divergence can present a major challenge for effective organisational-level adaptation. Conversely, making frames and framing processes explicit is a first step towards clarifying adaptation goals and generating shared ownership of adaptation processes. While frames have been shown to be intrinsically subjective, we discuss three dominant frames that emerged from the study: avoiding disasters, community resilience, and averting organisational risk. We evaluate these in light of their theoretical origin and recent application towards climate change adaptation. Our research suggest that the 'averting organisational risks' frame is by far the most commonly activated frame. Individuals working in the community services sector frequently referred to the 'community resilience' frame, while the 'avoiding disasters frame' was used in public and policy discourse to circumvent the arguments of those sceptical about the existence and causes of climate change. We suggest that, by incorporating frame reflexivity into existing adaptation planning processes, a more diverse range of policy options can be explored, delivering more effective adaptation policies.Adapting to climate change is a new responsibility for state and local government. Yet there is little clarity about what is involved, beyond an expectation of acting in a rational, informed manner. This paper presents a study from Victoria, Australia into public servants' perceptions and experiences of using scenario techniques for adaptation. It suggests that while scenario development is often positive for those involved, utilising scenarios to directly 'inform' adaptation decision making is more difficult. It seems that scenarios are a valuable but awkward form of evidence in the contemporary environment of evidence-based adaptation, introducing new substantive knowledge in an unfamiliar form, easily dismissed on credibility, legitimacy, and salience grounds. While scenario thinking is a good fit with climate change adaptation, it clashes with the predictive paradigm underlying the evidence-based decision-making model. This suggests that, for adaptation to better fit the institutional environment, alterations to the latter are needed.Climate change presents a unique threat to Australia's biodiversity. It will amplify the effect of existing non-climate anthropogenic stressors and act in its own right to accelerate biodiversity decline. New approaches to conservation practice will be needed and these must be supported by strong but flexible conservation legal frameworks. This article reviews the principal adaptation strategies supported in the conservation literature and considers the extent to which they are currently represented in Australian law. It identifies the ways in which these strategies are facilitated or impeded under current legal frameworks. To conserve biodiversity under climate change, new processes are needed for negotiating trade- offs between competing conservation goals, particularly in relation to high-intervention strategies such as assisted colonisation and ex situ conservation.Unlike the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Rio+20 Conference Outcome Document recognizes the key role of education for sustainable development and envisages education as both a human right in itself and a tool to achieve sustainability. But are these two aspects perfectly consistent? Is it really necessary to provide education with new "contents" (such as environmental education, biodiversity education, education for water conservation, education on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction) in order to conclude that the right to education, already considered as a condition of self-fulfillment and human development, also serves as a prior vehicle to reach the ambitious goal of sustainable development? And last but not least, provided that " political will must be underpinned by resources", who has the duty to fund basic education in the current global development effort? This paper aims to provide answers to these questions by developing a twofold analysis. First, it stresses the dynamic nature of the right to education, which implies both a full and equal access to education and a good quality of teaching and learning, suited to the socio-economic and environmental context. Secondly, this paper tries to shed light on the un-style rhetoric of education, which muddles up some measurable targets (the collective commitments of the Dakar Framework for Action, the Millennium Development Goals) with a series of political documents and initiatives (the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014, the Rio+ 20 Commitments).Climate change is affecting Canada's boreal zone, which includes most of the country's managed forests. The impacts of climate change in this zone are expected to be pervasive and will require adaptation of Canada's forest management system. This paper reviews potential climate change adaptation actions and strategies for the forest management system, considering current and projected climate change impacts and their related vulnerabilities. These impacts and vulnerabilities include regional increases in disturbance rates, regional changes in forest productivity, increased variability in timber supply, decreased socioeconomic resilience, and increased severity of safety and health issues for forest communities. Potential climate change adaptation actions of the forest management system are categorized as those that reduce nonclimatic stressors, those that reduce sensitivity to climate change, or those that maintain or enhance adaptive capacity in the biophysical and human subsystems of the forest management system. Efficient adaptation of the forest management system will revolve around the inclusion of risk management in planning processes, the selection of robust, diversified, and no-regret adaptation actions, and the adoption of an adaptive management framework. Monitoring is highlighted as a no-regret action that is central to the implementation of adaptive forest management.Climate adaptation is being embraced by many municipalities worldwide. An element of this is the planting and protection of urban trees. However, the fact that climate change will also have an impact on urban trees has been largely overlooked. We argue that climate vulnerability assessments are necessary for addressing climate adaptation in urban forests and contribute to successful climate adaptation in cities. We review and integrate the literature on climate vulnerability and urban forests to explore how the general notion of urban forest vulnerability to climate change can be developed into an operational framework for undertaking a vulnerability assessment. The framework characterizes climate exposure, impact, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, as well as nonclimatic drivers and factors, in urban forests. The most important themes in this discussion include urban tree species selection and diversity, naturalization, resource access, social awareness and engagement, budget and economic valuation, liability issues, and governance structures. Climate change vulnerability assessments help us understand how and why urban forests are vulnerable to climate change, identify future areas for research, and determine what adaptation measures could be included in urban forest management. These assessments help bring climate change to the forefront of the decision-making process and contribute to successful urban adaptation to climate change.One of the most decisive natural framework conditions of agriculture the regional climate is in transition. This requires considering climate change and climate change impact for decision making. Although this knowledge is uncertain and depends on future green-house gas emission, it is rapidly expanding and improving. Therefore, it is important to create flexible systems with adaptable data bases and analytical tools to integrate knowledge of future climate change in agronomy for impact studies and adaptation planning. The joint project LandCaRe (Land, Climate, and Resources) 2020 aimed at developing a conceptual framework and prototype of a model-based decision support system (DSS) based on improved process knowledge and stakeholder communication. The final product, the LandCaRe DSS should combine grid-based information on regional climate and land surface, robust climate impact models and socio-economic boundary conditions to develop spatially explicit climate impact scenarios. Emphasis was put on the integration of different knowledge from science and practice. Climate projections had to be adapted to the needs of impact modelling of agricultural and ecological processes at regional and farm scale. Impact modelling included new process knowledge, especially related to the CO2 fertilisation effect on crop rotations. A new Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Experiment (FACE) on the C-4 plant maize was conducted during the project. A new agro-ecosystem model was developed which integrates soil plant atmosphere exchange and plant production to predict crop yield as well as water, carbon and nitrogen fluxes. Stakeholders included representatives of agricultural and environmental administrations, managers of agro-enterprises and large farms as well as organisations for regional planning and nature conservation. Their central common interests were future land use, water availability and management. Stakeholders from agriculture requested not only to assess potential impacts of regional climate change on yield but also to interpret climate impact on farm economy. This required the design of a farm-economy module linking effects of management and adaptation on crop yield with scenarios of costs and prices. Here an introduction to the project, components of the DSS and its further perspectives are presented. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Adaptation of agriculture to climate change will be driven at the farm level in first place. The MONICA model was employed in four different modelling exercises for demonstration and testing different management options for farmers in Germany to adjust their production system. 30-Year simulations were run for the periods 1996-2025 and 2056-2085 using future climate data generated by a statistical method on the basis of measured data from 1961 to 2000 and the A1B scenario of the IPCC (2007a). Crop rotation designs that are expected to become possible in the future due to a prolonged vegetation period and at the same time shortened cereal growth period were tested for their likely success. The model suggested that a spring barley succeeding a winter barley may be successfully grown in the second half of the century, allowing for a larger yields by intensification of the cropping cycle. Growing a winter wheat after a sugar beet may lead to future problems as late sowing makes the winter wheat grow into periods prone to drought. Irrigation is projected to considerably improve and stabilise the yields of late cereals and of shallow rooting crops (maize and pea) on sandy soils in the continental climate part of Germany, but not in the humid West. Nitrogen fertiliser management needs to be adjusted to increasing or decreasing yield expectations and for decreasing soil moisture. On soils containing sufficient amounts of Moisture and soil organic matter, enhanced mineralisation is expected to compensate for a greater N demand. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Today, spatial planning is expected to deliver climate adaptation and to manage, merge and balance various societal interests and priorities. To what extent proactive shaping of change is enabled by spatial planning practice is less explored. This paper illustrates how the ideals and ambitions of climate adaptation are manifested in waterfront spatial planning via a case study of Norrkoping, Sweden. Based on interviews with spatial planners and politicians responsible for strategic urban development planning, our study identifies a divergence in ambitions, approaches and positions. In local development plans, the position taken has less to do with climate risk severity than with an area's perceived political and economic attractiveness. When perceived attractiveness is low, precautionary climate adaptation serves as a pretext not to develop, whereas high perceived attractiveness leads to negotiated pragmatism allowing continued waterfront exploitation. We also identify a fragmentation in spatial planning, with weak interplay between municipal comprehensive planning and local development plans, resulting in ad hoc, case-by-case planning. Furthermore, different planning actors are organizationally compartmentalized, creating unfortunate intra-sectoral silos. We conclude that the integrative, proactive and reflexive potentials of spatial planning to deliver climate adaptation have yet to be realized.Many studies have recorded phenotypic changes in natural populations and attributed them to climate change. However, controversy and uncertainty has arisen around three levels of inference in such studies. First, it has proven difficult to conclusively distinguish whether phenotypic changes are genetically based or the result of phenotypic plasticity. Second, whether or not the change is adaptive is usually assumed rather than tested. Third, inferences that climate change is the specific causal agent have rarely involved the testing - and exclusion - of other potential drivers. We here review the various ways in which the above inferences have been attempted, and evaluate the strength of support that each approach can provide. This methodological assessment sets the stage for 11 accompanying review articles that attempt comprehensive syntheses of what is currently known - and not known - about responses to climate change in a variety of taxa and in theory. Summarizing and relying on the results of these reviews, we arrive at the conclusion that evidence for genetic adaptation to climate change has been found in some systems, but is still relatively scarce. Most importantly, it is clear that more studies are needed - and these must employ better inferential methods - before general conclusions can be drawn. Overall, we hope that the present paper and special issue provide inspiration for future research and guidelines on best practices for its execution.Adaptation to climate change has gained a prominent place next to mitigation on global, national, and local policy agendas. However, while an abundance of adaptation strategies, plans, and programmes have been developed, progress in turning these into action has been slow. The development of a sound knowledge basis to support adaptation globally is suggested to accelerate progress, but has lagged behind. The emphasis in both current and newly proposed programmes is very much on practice-oriented research with strong stakeholder participation. This paper supports such practice-oriented research, but argues that this is insufficient to support adaptation policy and practice in a productive manner. We argue that there is not only a need for science for adaptation, but also a science of adaptation. The paper argues that participatory, practice-oriented research is indeed essential, but has to be complemented by and connected to more fundamental inquiry and concept development, which takes into account knowledge that has been developed in disciplinary sciences and on issues other than climate change adaptation. At the same time, the level and method of participation in science for adaptation should be determined on the basis of the specific project context and goals. More emphasis on science of adaptation can lead to improved understanding of the conditions for successful science for adaptation.An understanding of processes regulating wheat floret and grain number at higher temperatures is required to better exploit genetic variation. In this study we tested the hypothesis that at higher temperatures, a reduction in floret fertility is associated with a decrease in soluble sugars and this response is exacerbated in genotypes low in water soluble carbohydrates (WSC). Four recombinant inbred lines contrasting for stem WSC were grown at 20/10 degrees C and 11 h photoperiod until terminal spikelet, and then continued in a factorial combination of 20/10 degrees C or 28/14 degrees C with 11 h or 16 h photoperiod until anthesis. Across environments, High WSC lines had more grains per spike associated with more florets per spike. The number of fertile florets was associated with spike biomass at booting and, by extension, with glucose amount, both higher in High WSC lines. At booting, High WSC lines had higher fixed C-13 and higher levels of expression of genes involved in photosynthesis and sucrose transport and lower in sucrose degradation compared with Low WSC lines. At higher temperature, the intrinsic rate of floret development rate before booting was slower in High WSC lines. Grain set declined with the intrinsic rate of floret development before booting, with an advantage for High WSC lines at 28/14 degrees C and 16 h. Genotypic and environmental action on floret fertility and grain set was summarised in a model.Over the last years, communicating climate change adaptation has gained increasing attention in science and practise. This paper provides an overview of existing adaptation communication formats in ten OECD countries and offers recommendations for their successful design. Via online search we identified 278 communication formats on climate change adaptation. Based on a literature review and a consultation process with climate and communication experts from science and practise, a list of 16 success factors for adaptation communication was compiled with regard to communication content, target group adequacy, adaptation motivation and communication evaluation. Using the success factors as evaluation criteria, we analysed the 278 formats. The analysis yields 13 good practise examples that can inspire future adaptation communication. Following our discussion which of the success factors have not yet been sufficiently addressed we propose going beyond the content level and address emotions, norms and values as well as making use of trusted messengers.This critical review debates the issues raised in Bassett and Fogelman's 2013 article "Deja vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature". After summarising the main findings of their article, we examine the methodology that Bassett and Fogelman adopted. We question the narrow sample of journals analysed, which we argue has led to a bias in the conclusions drawn. We use this opportunity to draw attention to the use of systematic literature reviews as an important methodological approach to synthesise the climate change adaptation literature. To demonstrate this we discuss the use of an alternate method more akin to that of a systematic literature review, and highlight where differences between this and the originally proposed methodology exist, and what this means for the concluding results. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture in developing countries has attracted increasing attention in international negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for both adaptation to climate change and greenhouse gas mitigation. However, there is limited understanding about potential complementarity between management practices that promote adaptation and mitigation, and limited basis to account for greenhouse gas emission reductions in this sector. The good news is that the global research community could provide the support needed to address these issues through further research linking adaptation and mitigation. In addition, a small shift in strategy by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and ongoing assistance from agricultural organizations could produce a framework to move the research and development from concept to reality. In turn, significant progress is possible in the near term providing the basis for UNFCCC negotiations to move beyond discussion to action for the agricultural sector in developing countries.Ecosystem models play a crucial role in understanding and evaluating the combined impacts of rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and changing climate on terrestrial ecosystems. However, we are not aware of any studies where the capacity of models to simulate intra- and inter-annual variation in responses to elevated CO2 has been tested against long-term experimental data. Here we tested how well the ecosystem model APSIM/AgPasture was able to simulate the results from a free air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE) experiment on grazed pasture. At this FACE site, during 11years of CO2 enrichment, a wide range in annual plant production response to CO2 (-6 to +28%) was observed. As well as running the full model, which includes three plant CO2 response functions (plant photosynthesis, nitrogen (N) demand and stomatal conductance), we also tested the influence of these three functions on model predictions. Model/data comparisons showed that: (i) overall the model over-predicted the mean annual plant production response to CO2 (18.5% cf 13.1%) largely because years with small or negative responses to CO2 were not well simulated; (ii) in general seasonal and inter-annual variation in plant production responses to elevated CO2 were well represented by the model; (iii) the observed CO2 enhancement in overall mean legume content was well simulated but year-to-year variation in legume content was poorly captured by the model; (iv) the best fit of the model to the data required all three CO2 response functions to be invoked; (v) using actual legume content and reduced N fixation rate under elevated CO2 in the model provided the best fit to the experimental data. We conclude that in temperate grasslands the N dynamics (particularly the legume content and N fixation activity) play a critical role in pasture production responses to elevated CO2, and are processes for model improvement.Grassroots innovations emerge as networks generating innovative solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, it is unclear if grassroots innovations can be successful in responding to climate change. Little evidence exists on replication, international comparisons are rare, and research tends to overlook discontinued responses in favour of successful ones. We take the Transition Movement as a case study of a rapidly spreading transnational grassroots network, and include both active and non-active local transition initiatives. We investigate the replication of grassroots innovations in different contexts with the aim to uncover general patterns of success and failure, and identify questions for future research. An online survey was carried out in 23 countries (N = 276). The data analysis entailed testing the effect of internal and contextual factors of success as drawn from the existing literature, and the identification of clusters of transition initiatives with similar internal and contextual factor configurations. Most transition initiatives consider themselves successful. Success is defined along the lines of social connectivity and empowerment, and external environmental impact. We find that less successful transition initiatives might underestimate the importance of contextual factors and material resources in influencing success. We also find that their diffusion is linked to the combination of local-global learning processes, and that there is an incubation period during which a transition initiative is consolidated. Transition initiatives seem capable of generalising organisational principles derived from unique local experiences that seem to be effective in other local contexts. However, the geographical locations matter with regard to where transition initiatives take root and the extent of their success, and 'place attachment' may have a role in the diffusion of successful initiatives. We suggest that longitudinal comparative studies can advance our understanding in this regard, as well as inform the changing nature of the definition of success at different stages of grassroots innovation development, and the dynamic nature of local and global linkages. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.International cooperation on climate change adaptation is regarded as one of the major avenues to reduce vulnerability in developing countries. Nevertheless, it remains unclear which design properties of international arrangements match with specific problems in local adaptation processes. This paper analyses conditions and institutional design options under which international cooperation can facilitate climate adaptation in urban areas in developing countries. We conduct a qualitative meta-analysis of empirical evidence from 23 cases. Using the archetype approach, we identify re-appearing barriers and change factors in urban squatter settlements and municipal public sectors in developing countries. We characterise five generic modes of international cooperation for climate adaptation based on UNFCCC documents, process observation, and literature review. Combining these analyses, we develop testable propositions that explain how specific design options of international arrangements can alleviate barriers and make use of change factors for urban adaptation in developing countries. We find, first, that international cooperation has the most potential to tackle adaptation barriers in squatter settlements if its institutional mechanisms support improvements of procedures and rights in localised state society interactions. Second, national or regional centres of competence may foster endogenous dynamics in municipal public sectors. Third, national adaptation policies can enable and incentivise municipal adaptation. Fourth, flexible indicators of adaptation benefits are instruments to tailor international decision making and monitoring systems to local needs. We conclude that these insights, the archetypes approach, and a multi-level study design can be used to advance research on international cooperation, barriers, and success factors for climate change adaptation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Within an Australian context, the medium to long-term health impacts of climate change are likely to be wide, varied and amplify many existing disorders and health inequities. How the health system responds to these challenges will be best considered in the context of existing health facilities and services. This paper provides a snapshot of the understanding that Australian health planners have of the potential health impacts of climate change. Methods: The first author interviewed (n = 16) health service planners from five Australian states and territories using an interpretivist paradigm. All interviews were digitally recorded, key components transcribed and thematically analysed. Results: Results indicate that the majority of participants were aware of climate change but not of its potential health impacts. Despite this, most planners were of the opinion that they would need to plan for the health impacts of climate change on the community. Conclusion: With the best available evidence pointing towards there being significant health impacts as a result of climate change, now is the time to undertake proactive service planning that address market failures within the health system. If considered planning is not undertaken then Australian health system can only deal with climate change in an expensive ad hoc, crisis management manner. Without meeting the challenges of climate change to the health system head on, Australia will remain unprepared for the health impacts of climate change with negative consequences for the health of the Australian population.Background: Climate change is expected to affect the health of most populations in the coming decades, having the greatest impact on the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the world. The Pacific islands, including Fiji, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Objective: The three major health impacts of climate change in Fiji explored in this study were dengue fever, diarrhoeal disease, and malnutrition, as they each pose a significant threat to human health. The aim of this study was to investigate to what extent the Fiji National Climate Change Policy, and a selection of relevant sectoral policies, account for these human health effects of climate change. Design: The study employed a three-pronged policy analysis to evaluate: 1) the content of the Fijian National Climate Change Policy and to what extent health was incorporated within this; 2) the context within which the policy was developed; 3) the relevant processes; and 4) the actors involved. A selection of relevant sectoral policies were also analysed to assess the extent to which these included climate change and health considerations. Results: The policy analysis showed that these three health impacts of climate change were only considered to a minor extent, and often indirectly, in both the Fiji National Climate Change Policy and the corresponding National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, as well as the Public Health Act. Furthermore, supporting documents in relevant sectors including water and agriculture made no mention of climate change and health impacts. Conclusions: The projected health impacts of climate change should be considered as part of reviewing the Fiji National Climate Change Policy and National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, and the Public Health Act. In the interest of public health, this should include strategies for combating dengue fever, malnutrition, and water-borne disease. Related sectoral policies in water and agriculture should also be revised to consider climate change and its impact on human health. Approaches to include health aspects of climate change within sectoral and climate change specific policies should be encouraged, via a number of mechanisms, such as the Health in All Policies approach. Future research could support the Fiji health sector in developing climate change and health programmes.Background: Ambient temperatures can cause an increase in mortality. A better understanding is needed of how health status and other factors modify the risk associated with high and low temperatures, to improve the basis of preventive measures. Differences in susceptibility to temperature and to heat and cold wave duration are relatively unexplored. Objectives: We studied the associations between mortality and temperature and heat and cold wave duration, stratified by age and individual and medical factors. Methods: Deaths among all residents of Stockholm County between 1990 and 2002 were linked to discharge diagnosis data from hospital admissions, and associations were examined using the time stratified casecrossover design. Analyses were stratified by gender, age, pre-existing disease, country of origin, and municipality level wealth, and adjusted for potential confounding factors. Results: The effect on mortality by heat wave duration was higher for lower ages, in areas with lower wealth, for hospitalized patients younger than age 65. Odds were elevated among females younger than age 65, in groups with a previous hospital admission for mental disorders, and in persons with previous cardiovascular disease. Gradual increases in summer temperatures were associated with mortality in people older than 80 years, and with mortality in groups with a previous myocardial infarction and with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the population younger than 65 years. During winter, mortality was associated with a decrease in temperature particularly in men and with the duration of cold spells for the population older than 80. A history of hospitalization for myocardial infarction increased the odds associated with cold temperatures among the population older than 65. Previous mental disease or substance abuse increased the odds of death among the population younger than 65. Conclusion: To increase effectiveness, we suggest preventive efforts should not assume susceptible groups are the same for warm and cold days and heat and cold waves, respectively.This paper introduces a method named "hybrid-downscaling" to estimate the future extreme hourly precipitation intensity based on observational evidence of the 99th percentile precipitation intensity against air temperature in Sapporo and Tokyo, Japan. The future projected air temperature under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B was used after dynamical downscaling using 3 different regional atmospheric models (RAMs) with lateral boundary conditions from 3 different general circulation models (GCMs). We analyzed the 99th percentile of hourly precipitation intensity against daily mean air temperature in Sapporo and Tokyo. The 99th percentile precipitation intensity tended to have an approximate equation in which the rate of increment was similar to the Clausius-Clapeyron rate of change in the saturated water vapor. This study also showed that the precipitable water vapor and the convective instability followed the Clausius-Clapeyron-like rate of change during the hours with the 99th percentile precipitation intensity.Adequate estimation of the spatial distribution of snowfall is critical in hydrologic modelling. However, this is a well-known problem in estimating basin-scale snowfall, especially in mountainous basins with data scarcity. This study focuses on correction and estimation of this spatial distribution, which considers topographic effects within the basin. A method is proposed that optimises an altitude-based snowfall correction factor (C-fsnow). This is done through multi-objective calibration of a spatially distributed, multilayer energy and water balance-based snowmelt model (WEB-DHM-S) with observed discharge and remotely sensed snow cover data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The Shuffled Complex Evolution-University of Arizona (SCE-UA) automatic search algorithm is used to obtain the optimal value of C-fsnow for minimum cumulative error in discharge and snow cover simulations. Discharge error is quantified by Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency and relative volume deviation, and snow cover error was estimated by pixel-by-pixel analysis. The study region is the heavily snow-fed Yagisawa Basin of the Upper Tone River in northeast Japan. First, the system was applied to one snow season (2002-2003), obtaining an optimised C-fsnow of 0.0007m(-1). For validation purposes, the optimised C-fsnow was implemented to correct snowfall in 2004, 2002 and 2001. Overall, the system was effective, implying improvements in correlation of simulated versus observed discharge and snow cover. The 4 yr mean of basin-average snowfall for the corrected spatial snowfall distribution was 1160mm (780mm before correction). Execution of sensitivity runs against other model input and parameters indicated that C-fsnow could be affected by uncertainty in shortwave radiation and setting of the threshold air temperature parameter. Our approach is suitable to correct snowfall and estimate its distribution in poorly gauged basins, where elevation dependence of snowfall amount is strong.This study compares trends in both the magnitude and frequency of high flow events in small catchments in Norway, using both daily and instantaneous data. Datasets of 31 annual maxima and 24 peak over-threshold series were analysed to detect spatial and temporal changes, addressing the question of whether floods have increased and/or become more frequent in Norway, and for improving flood estimates for climate change adaptation. All series were assessed for temporal autocorrelation prior to analysis. The Maim-Kendall trend test was applied to study changes, with trends evaluated for field significance. Results suggest that trends in the frequency of high flow events are stronger than the trend in the magnitude of annual maxima flood events. Similar spatial patterns are obtained when using daily and instantaneous flood peak data, but the number of stations showing a trend in both annual maxima and peak over threshold series is less pronounced when comparing daily with instantaneous data.To enhance the teaching of Environmental Science at Virginia State University (VSU) and its partner institutions (Delaware State University-DSU and Morgan State University-MSU) in the Mid-Atlantic Region, the course on climate change and adaptation studies was developed and offered in 2013. This course was designed to include information on the physical basis for the earth's climate system and current climate change instruction modules by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and historic climate information (NOAA Climate Services, U.S. and World Weather Data, NCAR Climate Model, NASA Climate Model and NCAR Community Earth System Model). By using the Global Seminar as a Model, the faculty members (Dr. Shobha Sriharan, VSU, Dr. Gulnihal Ozbay, DSU, and Dr. Chunlei Fan, MSU) at the collaborating institutions worked in teams to engage students in communications via videoconferencing on climate change throughout the courses which included Contemporary Global Studies and Climate Change and Adaptation Response Science at VSU, Sustainable Agriculture, Introduction to Environmental Sciences and Climatology at DSU, and an Ecology and Adaptation course at MSU. This interactive and innovative instruction is the outcome of the joint effort of several educators (S. Sriharan, G. Ozbay, and C. Fan) in engaging minority students of VSU, DSU, and MSU in the Study Abroad Program through their participation in the course Climate Change and Course (ENS 310) taught by Professor Richard Warrick at the University of Sunshine Coast (USC), Queensland, Australia. The students examined various extreme scenarios due to climate change tcould potentially occur by the year 2100 by using two modeling programs (SimCLIM and TrainCLIM) from CLIMSystems. The students earned three credits for their successful completion of this course. In addition, the above-mentioned educators also learned to use SimCLIM software to demonstrate the impact of weather change on soils, water, and plants across different global regions at USC. The partnership between VSU, DSU, and MSU has enriched the environmental science education by preparing students to: (1) know how to gather information about climate and weather, and how to distinguish credible from non-credible scientific sources on the subject, (2) communicate about climate and climate change in a meaningful way, and (3) make scientifically informed and responsible decisions regarding actions that may affect climate. Further, the instructional delivery system via the E-learning community is planned to promote effective learning of climate related science through the Blackboard system which is integrated with the National Climate Adaptation and Mitigation E-Learning (CAMEL) community which was created by NCSE through climate change education grants from NASA and NSF. The offering of the newly-developed climate course has increased the capacity of the faculty to teach team building and critical thinking skills, and prepare students to fully capitalize on the power of teamwork for meeting the needs of environmental and agricultural professionals/employers.Studies have suggested the importance of implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in combination with considering possible co-benefit and trade-off among them. However, quantification of such co-benefit/trade-off at city level is still in its infancy. Accordingly, using a micro zone level spatial explicit land use model which we have developed, this study assesses the co-benefit/trade-off of mitigation measure (compact city policy) and adaptation measure (retreat from high flood hazard areas) from the view point of CO2 emissions and expected loss due to the damage by river floods. For the assessment of residential CO2 emissions, this paper utilizes the microdata of National survey of family income and expenditure. The results suggest the importance of careful planning to create compact city to avoid trade-off. This study was funded by "Research Program on Climate Change Adaptation (RECCA)" of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this viewpoint I argue for a perspective on climate change in African cities that focuses on challenges and also opportunities for action. Delivering climate change adaptation in cities in the first instance requires addressing immediate infrastructure and service provision needs, because increasing climate change resilience in cities also requires improving the delivery of services to all citizens. However, there is a risk that climate change discourses facilitate the deployment of technocratic, expert-led forms of planning, particularly when climate change is used as an excuse to facilitate the intervention of international planning consultants who most often know little about the local context of planning. This paper advocates instead approaches to climate change action that harness opportunities on the ground to engage with the creative potential that urban citizens already have and to draw attention to the need to develop planning skills from within the city.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a spatial model of population vulnerability (VI) capable of identifying areas of high emergency service demand (ESD) during extreme heat events (EHE). Design/methodology/approach - An index of population vulnerability to EHE was developed from a literature review. Threshold temperatures for EHE were defined using local temperatures, and indicators of increased morbidity. Spearman correlations determined the strength of the relationship between the VI and morbidity during EHE. The VI was mapped providing a visual guide of risk during EHE. Future changes in population vulnerability based on future population projections (2020-2030) were mapped. Findings - The VI can be used to explain the spatial distribution of ESD during EHE. Mapping future changes in population density/demography indicated several areas currently showing high risk will continue to show increased risk. Research limitations/implications - The limitations include using outdoor temperatures to determine health-related thresholds. Due to data restrictions three different measures of morbidity were used and aggregated to postal areas. Practical implications - Identifying areas of increased service demand during EHE allows the development of proactive as-well-as reactive responses to heat. The model uses readily available data, is replicable in larger urban areas. Social implications - The model allows emergency service providers to work with high risk communities to build resilience to heat exposure and subsequently save lives. Originality/value - To the authors' knowledge this triangulated approach using heat thresholds, ESD and projected changes in risk in a spatial framework has not been presented to date.Science has long been recognized as having an important role in generating popular discourses on animals and the natural world, and the paucity of information on how animals are represented in popular science narratives of environmental degradation is striking. Our study begins to fill that gap. We examine representations of animals in articles on climate change published over two decades in the most widely read popular science magazine in the world, National Geographic. National Geographic uses a variety of animal representations to make salient the problem of a changing climate. Analysis of 108 photographs and their captions in articles on climate change revealed four major themes: vulnerability of wildlife to climate change, representation of animals as specimens in climate change adaptation and conservation, the contribution of food animal consumption to climate change, and the vulnerability of the livelihoods of draft animals (sled dogs) and their human companions to climate change. We conclude that popular science is contributing to an expanded public discourse on climate change that extends beyond the vulnerability of iconic wild megafauna to include insects and amphibians and issues facing the relationship we have with other animals, such as the widespread consumption of animals for food.Green Infrastructure has recently gained importance as a planning tool at the regional and local levels. While it provides a range of ecosystem services, greater attention is needed on integrating the economic, environmental and social benefits produced, particularly in the context of climate change adaptation and mitigation. This paper maps out the urban green infrastructure as a delivery mechanism of ecosystem services and identifies a number of measures for ecosystem services improvement using the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats approach for the city of Faro within the context of the Algarve region. The absence of an integrated strategy for the urban built and green areas and the low connectivity with the hinterland green areas were the main weaknesses of the city. The solutions, identified by means of ecosystem services regulation functions, address the related measures, anticipate the climate change challenges and enhance the city's resilience. Social, economic, health and visual-aesthetic benefits have been particularly emphasised for each measure identified.The devolution of authority for resource management is an important approach to overcome challenges of centralized state bureaucracies. The literature on common-pool resources identifies important design principles to enhance efficiency, equity and sustainability of local user groups. In spite of intensive research, knowledge gaps remain regarding the question as to why some groups are able to overcome governance challenges, while others are not. The paper addresses this gap by conducting case studies in India. It was found that two villages were able to minimize governance challenges, which enabled water distribution to become a community activity. The other two villages have, despite similar guidelines, failed to live up to the participatory approach and are dealing with challenges such as lack of accountability and social exclusion. The Grounded Theory approach identified individual agency and local leadership as a major factor that plays a significant role in the success of participatory irrigation management.Interviews with scallop aquaculturists were conducted using the Grid Evaluation Method to evaluate the information most valuable to them. The interviews suggested that low-salinity nearshore water, which can increase the mortality of cultured scallop in the nursery stage, is a major concern in spring. Here, we show that a coupled land-ocean, high-resolution model predicted springtime maps of the low-salinity nearshore water and its interannual variations in the specific enclosed bay with aquafarms. The proposed visualization for simultaneous display of low-salinity water, snow cover, and river runoff may be preferable to provide helpful information. The predicted salinity around aquafarms can provide essential information to help reduce mortal risks.Data compression is always required in large-scale time-varying volume visualization. In some recent application cases, the compression method is also required to include a low-cost decompression process. In this paper, we propose a compression scheme for large-scale time-varying volume data using spatio-temporal features. With this compression scheme, we can provide a proper compression ratio to satisfy many system environments by setting proper compression parameters. After the compression, we can also provide a low-cost and fast decompression process for the compressed data. Furthermore, we also achieve an accelerated rendering process for the decompressed data.Climate change poses a great threat to human security through erratic rainfall patterns and decreasing crop yields, contributing to increased hunger. The perceptions of the indigenous people about climate change and their responses to climate change have significant roles to play in addressing climate change. Therefore a critical study on farmers' choices of adaptation is critical for ensuring food security and poverty alleviation. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 156 households in Ekiti state while descriptive statistics and multinomial logit (MNL) were used to analyze the data obtained from the households. The results showed that the most widely used adaptation method by the farmers were soil and water conservation technique measures (67 percent). The multinomial logit analysis revealed that the factors explaining farmer's choices of climate change adaptation include age of the farmers, gender of the household head, years of education, years of farming experience, household size, farmers information on climate change, farmers access to credit, farm income, non-farm income, livestock ownership and extension contact.Use of vetiver as a green technology can address African farmers' ecological problems through protecting farmlands on steep lands. In addition, it offers the opportunity to integrate smallholders into the green economy as it sequesters carbon, keep water and nutrient fluxes within the system, sustain high crop yield with climate change adaptation potentials. This is particularly important as more slopes are converted to agricultural lands due to increase in population density and poverty. Thus, the study investigated the optimal strip width for increases in soil productivity and farmers' preferences for space. The study planted maize and cassava in between vetiver field structures (VFS) installed on the contour at 5, 15, 25 m apart and compared it with Farmers' Practice (FP) on a 45 % slope and quantified the amount of soil displaced, water and plant nutrient losses and crop yields. Vetiver installed at 5 m surface interval spacing significantly enhanced carbon sequestration indicating potentials for GHGs mitigation and reduced N, P, Ca, Mg, Na and K losses when compared with FP. Vetiver allowed only 7% rainfall lost as against 29% on FP this demonstrates the climate change adaptation potentials of vetiver. Soil displaced under FP was 68 times higher than the soil loss tolerance limit of 12 t ha(-1) yr(-1) whereas under VFS at 5, 15 and 25 m it was 2 1/2, 13 and 12 times higher. Maize grain yield were 35, 23 and 24% higher on the VFS field at 5, 15 and 25 m respectively when compared to FP. The corresponding values for cassava fresh tuber were 43, 32 and 29% higher. Unlike other technologies, vetiver grass contributes to the livelihood of the farmers by providing raw material for house thatching, handicrafts and fodder for livestock during lean seasons.Mexico is the primal)) center of origin and diversity for maize (Zea mays L.). Farmers grow the crop largely under rain fed conditions. Mexico is at considerable risk from climate change because of predicted rising temperatures, declining rainfall, and an increase in extreme weather events. Small-scale maize farmers are particularly vulnerable because of their geographical location as well as their limited adaptive capacity. Recommended climate change adaptation strategies include farmers' increased use of heat and drought stress-tolerant maize. Farmer adoption of improved germplasm has been disappointing because of inefficient seed input chains and farmers' preference for landraces for culinary, agronomic, and cultural reasons. Scientists have tended to overlook the fact that maize landraces have a critical role to play in climate change adaptation. Landraces may already exist that are appropriate for predicted climates. Furthermore, within the primary gene pool of maize and its wild relatives there exists unexploited genetic diversity for novel traits and alleles that can be used for breeding new high yielding and stress-tolerant cultivars. The breeding component of adaptation strategies should focus more on improving farmers' landraces. The desired result would be a segmented maize seed sector characterized by both (improved) landraces and improved maize varieties. The public and private sector could continue to provide farmers with improved maize varieties and different actors, including farmers themselves, would generate seed of improved landraces for sale and/or exchange.Health effects from climate change are an international concern with urban areas at particular risk due to urban heat island effects. Theburden of disease on vulnerable populations in non-climate-controlled settings has not been well studied. This study compared neonatal morbidity in a non-air-conditioned hospital during the 2010 heat wave in Ahmedabad to morbidity in the prior and subsequent years. The outcome of interest was neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions for heat. During the months of April, May, and June of 2010, 24 NICU admissions were for heat versus 8 and 4 in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Both the effect of moving the maternity ward and the effect of high temperatures were statistically significant, controlling for each other. Above 42 degrees Celsius, each daily maximum temperature increase of a degree was associated with 43% increase in heat-related admissions (95% CI 9.2-88%). Lower floor location of the maternity ward within hospital which occurred after the 2010 heat wave showed a protective effect. These findings demonstrate the importance of simple surveillance measures in motivating a hospital policy change for climate change adaptation-here relocating one ward-and the potential increasing health burden of heat in non-climate-controlled institutions on vulnerable populations.Background: Ambient temperature affects mortality in susceptible populations, but regional differences in this association remain unclear in Japan. We conducted a time-series study to examine the variation in the effects of ambient temperature on daily mortality across Japan. Methods: A total of 731 558 all-age non-accidental deaths in 6 cities during 2002-2007 were analyzed. The association between daily mortality and ambient temperature was examined using distributed lag nonlinear models with Poisson distribution. City-specific estimates were combined using random-effects meta-analysis. Bivariate random-effects meta-regressions were used to examine the moderating effect of city characteristics. Results: The effect of heat generally persisted for 1 to 2 days. In warmer communities, the effect of cold weather lasted for approximately 1 week. The combined increases in mortality risk due to heat (99th vs 90th percentile of city-specific temperature) and cold (first vs 10th percentile) were 2.21% (95% CI, 1.38%-3.04%) and 3.47% (1.75%-5.21%), respectively. City-specific effects based on absolute temperature changes were more heterogeneous than estimates based on relative changes, which suggests some degree of acclimatization. Northern populations with a cool climate appeared acclimatized to low temperature but were still vulnerable to extreme cold weather. Population density, average income, cost of property rental, and number of nurses appeared to influence variation in heat effect across cities. Conclusions: We noted clear regional variation in temperature-related increases in mortality risk, which should be considered when planning preventive measures.Purpose - This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainable development through the lens of two United Nations (UN) publications, Our Common Future (1987) and the 25-year update Resilient People: Resilient Planet (2012). The analysis attempts to highlight how sustainable development requires a systemic understanding and this in turn necessitates an imperative of responsibility. To reinforce its case, the paper highlights how sustainable development has never been about saving the environment and to think so is naive. In the final analysis, the paper outlines how a systemic understanding is a key concern for organisational leaders and in turn a responsible understanding of humanity's entwinement with, rather than separation from, all that surrounds us. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is a discussion paper that weaves together existing literature. Findings - The aim of the paper is to reinforce systemic thinking and an imperative of responsibility. Practical implications - The arguments offered highlight how systemic thinking and the associated responsibility that comes with this view are necessary for realising sustainable outcomes. Originality/value - Weaving together and reinforcing arguments that highlight systemic thinking and responsibility.Current surveillance methods for adult Aedes aegypti (L.) are expensive, require electrical power (e. g., the BG-Sentinel trap, BGS), are labor intensive (aspirators), or require difficult to use and costly adhesives (sticky ovitraps). Field trials were conducted in Cairns (Australia) to compare the efficacy of the newly designed Gravid Aedes Trap (GAT) against existing sticky ovitraps (MosquiTRAP and double sticky ovitrap) and the BGS. Latin square design trials confirmed that a large GAT using a 9.2-liters bucket treated with Mortein Barrier Outdoor Surface Spray ([ AI] 0.3 g/ kg imiprothrin and 0.6 g/ kg deltamethrin) outperformed a smaller 1.2-liters GAT and collected, on average, 3.7 X and 2.4 X more female Ae. aegypti than the MosquiTRAP and double sticky ovitrap, respectively. Field trials showed that the GAT collected 10-50% less female Ae. aegypti than the BGS trap but 30% more gravid mosquitoes than the BGS. Trials using the BGS and the GAT indicated that there was no difference in capture rates between female Ae. aegypti uninfected and infected with the wMel strain of Wolbachia, and wMel infection rates were nearly identical at > 90% to field captured Ae. aegypti. The potential for the GAT to be used for dengue virus surveillance was also demonstrated with dengue virus type 3RNAdetected in five-sixths and six-sixths pools of Ae. aegypti stored in a GAT held at 28 degrees C and 60% relative humidity for 7 and 14 d, respectively. Mosquito knock down in GATs treated with Mortein surface spray set in 30, 70, and 99% shade was comparable for up to 2 mo, with only similar to 10% of adults escaping. The GAT is therefore a useful tool for capturing adult Ae. aegypti and may be suitable for other container-inhabiting species such as Aedes albopictus (Skuse) and Culex quinquefasciatus Say. The low cost and practicality of operation make the GAT suitable for vector surveillance and projects requiring monitoring of mosquitoes for Wolbachia and arboviruses, especially in developing countries.Rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems are increasingly being implemented in buildings. It is common in the UK for simple RWH tank sizing methods to be utilised, and these do not consider future climate change. This paper describes the development of a tool, which integrates elements of basic and detailed sizing approaches from the British Standard for RWH, with the latest probabilistic UK Climate Projections data. The method was initially applied to the design of a university building in Cornwall, UK. The methodology utilises 3,000 equi-probable rainfall patterns for tank sizing for each time period. Results indicate that, to ensure that it is 'likely' that the same non-potable demand could be met in 2080 as in the present, a tank 112% larger would be required. This increases to a 225% over-sizing for a 'very likely' probability of meeting the same level of non-potable demand. The same RWH system design was then assessed for three further UK locations with different rainfall characteristics. From these assessments, a simplified method was developed to enable practitioners to size RWH system tanks for current and future climates. The method provides a new approach to meet present and future non-potable demands, while preventing excessive over-sizing of tanks.The combined use of remote sensing based land cover classification and landscape metrics has provided a positive step toward gaining a comprehensive understanding of the features of landscape structure. However, numerous limitations of land cover classification indicate that the utilization of classified thematic maps in landscape pattern analysis is questionable and may even lead to large errors in subsequent analyses. Instead of generating and employing detailed land cover classification maps, the utility of local spatial autocorrelation indices derived directly from satellite imagery to measure landscape fragmentation was examined. Since local spatial autocorrelation can capture spatial pattern at a local scale, it can be expected to detail the spatial heterogeneity for various parts of a landscape instead of providing a single value as in the case with the global measures. This study compares the traditional landscape metrics to the use of satellite imagery based local spatial autocorrelation measures in quantifying landscape structure over Phoenix urban area. Two local spatial autocorrelation indices, the Getis statistic and the local Moran's I were employed in evaluating landscape pattern, using normalized indices as the inputs. Results show that there is a clear relationship between local spatial autocorrelation indices and FRAGSTATS metrics. Both the Getis statistic and the local Moran's I can serve as useful indicators of landscape heterogeneity, for the entire landscape, and for different land use and land cover types. The paper provides a feasible methodology for urban planners and resource managers for effectively characterizing landscape fragmentation using continuous dataset.With increasing urbanisation and predictions of increased frequency of heat waves under projected climate change scenarios, one strategy that has been suggested to address both adaptation and mitigation for urban areas is the increased use of greenspace. A number of studies have analysed this strategy through the use of empirical, analytical methods, or numerical methods. These tend to focus on city or regional scale changes in land use with only a broad categorisation of greenspace type. This study tests seven greenspace scenarios that might be applied at a block or neighbourhood level and the resulting microclimate changes that can be achieved through such applications for a temperate city in northwest England. Using a suburban commercial site in Manchester, UK as the case study area, the research utilises the urban microclimate model ENVI-met to compare the changes in air and surface temperatures on a warm summer day in July 2010 (approximately 4 C above the rural reference July average maximum temperature). The modelling demonstrates that even in suburban areas in temperate cities a 5% increase in mature deciduous trees can reduce mean hourly surface temperatures by 1 C over the course of a summer's day. A marked increase in air temperature of 3.2 C at mid-day is modelled for the worst case scenario of replacing all current vegetation with asphalt. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a solid understanding, policy and action recommendations to motivate and capacitate more cities to start such urban vulnerability processes and to guide them in their first steps in a direction which will more easily allow the direct use of vulnerability assessments for subsequent adaptation and resilience planning. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology adopted for this assessment builds on several years of ICLEI's international experience in climate change adaptation work. It specifically draws on the urban vulnerability component of the ICLEI ACCCRN process, a toolkit developed with support from Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network program, by ICLEI South Asia in partnership with ICLEI Oceania. A participatory approach that includes all key stakeholders and builds on past or ongoing relevant work in the city, as well as draws on existing data sources were adopted in view of the limited timeframe of this study (five months). A stakeholder consultation methodology referred to as Shared Learning Dialogues (SLDs) was adopted to engage not only various departments within the city government but also other local stakeholders. SLDs facilitate multi dimensional information sharing with everyone contributing information and experiences, and everyone learning from the exchanges as well. Findings - The critical impacts have been identified through a series of participatory learning processes which were corroborated with existing secondary data and baseline studies, where available. During SLD process, a timeline exercise was carried out and the consequences of those climatic hazards were also chalked out. Subsequently, these identified impacts were justified broadly with the available data and studies. These are saline water intrusion, loss of assets and infrastructure, health impacts-increased morbidity, water supply contaminated, sanitation and drainage systems disrupted, heightened threat situation (fear of embankment breach), in-migration, increasing siltation in the canals, river bank encroachment, livelihood change, biodiversity loss. Practical implications - The resilience interventions identified by the stakeholders can be assessed for potential linkages with existing or planned schemes, followed by supporting sectoral and pre-feasibility studies, resulting finally in the identification of financing options. These actions can be focussed on the vulnerable areas within the cities, especially hotspots, and social groups identified and their adaptive capacities were assessed. Originality/value - The resilience interventions identified by the stakeholders provides a focussed starting point for further discussion in terms of refinement of these actions as well their prioritization according to resilience and feasibility (economic, social, environmental) criteria.Global climate change already caused temperature increase in the Netherlands and is predicted to increase further. Especially in summer there is a greater probability of heat wave occurrences. In cities the warmer climate can have positive effects on for example recreation and tourism in summer and less energy consumption for heating in winter. The warmer climate can also have negative effects on human comfort and health due to heat stress. Although cities are already experiencing problems during periods with warm weather, no clear spatial strategies are available for urban designers to guide them in actions against heat stress. For a specific neighbourhood in Rotterdam this paper compares the cooling effect of various climate adaptation strategies. The master plan of the Vestia housing corporation and the Rotterdam municipality has a cooling influence on 13% of the neighbourhood under the simulated climate conditions.In semi-arid and sub-humid sub-Saharan Africa highly variable rainfall, frequent droughts and low water productivity are consistently undermining food security. Rainwater harvesting technologies (RWHTs) help utilise water more productively whilst raising yield levels. In this article it is argued that realising the potential of RWHTs for resilience building and climate adaptation requires a better understanding of global and regional processes influencing RWHTs adoption combined with pre-existing analysis at the household scale. On the basis of a systematic literature review, processes of influence in the diffusion and uptake of RWHTs are identified. These relate to shifting ideology associated with food production systems; the scope of investments in agriculture science and technology; emergent actors shaping development assistance; and patterns of farmer mobility. Drawing insights from theory on transformations for sustainability and development, this article adds to the understanding of connectedness between farm-level adoption of RWHTs, and regional to global level actors, institutions and processes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need to integrate adaptation efforts into land-use planning policies has been only recently recognized in Ho Chi Minh City. The city's latest planning guidance addresses both flooding resilience and mitigation of urban heat. This paper outlines the development contexts and the current barriers for adapted land-use planning within the city. The key challenge for land-use planning is communicating the important functions and services of open and natural urban spaces and effectively guiding the mainly individual developer-driven development. As the realization of nonstructural adaptation measures is in strong contrast to the current market-driven private and short-term developer interests, the main development trajectories are questioned and synergies identified.This study investigated the role of snowmelt runoff on water circulation, water mass formation, and the production of cultured scallop larvae, as a part of a land-sea linkage, by analyzing hydrological data in conjunction with nutrient data and by conducting sensitivity experiments based on a coupled land-sea model of Funka Bay, Japan, a typical semi-enclosed bay. A comparison between observed data and the simulated runoff showed that, using newly compiled datasets of nutrient concentrations in rivers and groundwater, the model was sufficiently accurate to estimate the terrestrial dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) flux from the river and submarine groundwater discharges (SGDs). The average volume flux from the SGDs accounted for 26% of the riverine runoff flux. The DIN flux from SGDs accounted for a maximum of 40% of the total DIN loading to the bay before the snowmelt period. Sensitivity experiments using an ocean simulation indicated that the freshwater flux supplied by snowmelt runoff not only enhances clockwise circulations along with upwelling along the coast, but also modifies the distributions of wintertime water masses in the bay. However, the snowmelt runoff has little effect on larvae transport since wind forcing, rather than riverine buoyancy, dominates the circulation patterns. The annual density of scallop spat was highly correlated with snowmelt runoffs associated with high DIN concentrations, which suggested that riverine nutrients can increase the biomass of phytoplankton in near-shore seas and improve food availability for scallop spawners, resulting in increased egg production in March to April. Therefore, the nutrient flux from agricultural source areas through the large snowmelt runoff has an important role in larvae production. Land-sea linkages need to be identified to design sustainable and synergetic systems of aquaculture and agriculture for the integrated management of coastal regions.This paper argues that resilience, as a dominant paradigm for the administration of life, presents new possibilities for resistance. I begin from the proposition that resilience theory was an important part of the neoliberal counter-revolution. Resilience's counter-revolutionary origins attest to a critical potential that points beyond its enrolment in neoliberal strategies of control. To pursue this, I outline two different trajectories for resilient ecologies: first, I explore current trends in climate change adaptation in which fostering adaptability means integrating flows of social, natural and monetary 'capital' in a continuous framework of financial control. Second, I engage recent literature on social-ecological transformation to demonstrate how resilience theory can be (re) appropriated as a critical tool. With an understanding of system potential in terms of a social-ecological common rather than capital, resilience theory can inform a radical ecological politics that finds its conditions of possibility precisely in the accelerating financialisation of social-ecological systems.Insufficient attention has been paid to how concepts of resilience can be operationalised in wicked, contested situations. Within the environmental sciences, the contemporary social-ecological resilience narrative is not geared to examining social dilemmas in ill-defined problem contexts. These conditions require a different resilience narrative, one centred on epistemological and ontological considerations. This paper examines four resilience narratives (engineering, social-ecological, epistemic and intersubjective) in order to stimulate an improved awareness of the possibility of more deliberative choices for research and governance in the resilience domain. We argue that the resilience research community needs to be more cognizant of the diversity of resilience narratives in order to empower and learn from the perspectives and local practices of stakeholders, who will often express narratives better aligned to the wicked situation at hand. Ultimately, the resilience narratives of the research community can be little more than toolkits to support greater understanding of the diversity of people, perspectives and 'performances' jointly narrating the 'real' stories of our wicked and contested realities.Sustainable development policies foster resilient subjects, specifically by offering insecurity and climate adaptation to the global South. In contrast, this article presents an analysis of how the overdeveloped subject in the North is seduced to join the social-ecological system, to revalue life and actively spread a certain way of living to everyone. The empirical material consists of a Swedish state-business-citizen conglomerate that collaborates in two CO2-social experiments. By unravelling the details of how a corporatisation of biopolitics enables the becoming of a resilience facilitator, conceptualised as Homo Clima, I illustrate how indispensable this subject is for a mobilisation of moral subjectivities biopolitically. This complements our understanding of how self-regulation is part of resilience-assembling, when some individuals are greatly invested in, both financially and morally. To end, I address the method used to further the discussion on how we may analyse transformations towards resilience in less abstract and more populated ways.Farming freshwater prawns with fish in rice fields is widespread in the coastal region of southwest Bangladesh because of favourable resources and ecological conditions. This article provides an overview of an ecosystem-based approach to integrated prawn-fish-rice farming in southwest Bangladesh. The practice of prawn and fish farming in rice fields is a form of integrated aquaculture-agriculture, which provides a wide range of social, economic and environmental benefits. Integrated prawn-fish-rice farming plays an important role in the economy of Bangladesh, earning foreign exchange and increasing food production. However, this unique farming system in coastal Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to climate change. We suggest that community-based adaptation strategies must be developed to cope with the challenges. We propose that integrated prawn-fish-rice farming could be relocated from the coastal region to less vulnerable inland areas, but caution that this will require appropriate adaptation strategies and an enabling institutional environment.Climate changes that are already occurring require that species and ecosystems, but also society as a whole and the economy adapt to the new conditions. As indicated by climate models, each region of the planet will suffer some sort of changes, which will he specific for each geographical area. These changes imply risks for certain economic activities, but also some opportunities. This research analyzes the main chances and economic opportunities from climate change adaptation in Catalonia. To do that, we follow a methodology that combines qualitative analysis, literature reviews, interviews and quantitative analysis, using methods such as input-output analysis. Firstly, an introduction to the most important aspects of climate change and climate change adaptation in Catalonia, Spain and the Mediterranean regions in general is conducted. Then the vulnerability of the Catalan economy is analyzed, considering the economic importance of those activities that depend most on climate. An input-output analysis has been conducted for this purpose. Finally, a set of challenges and opportunities are shown, in order not only to adapt the economy to climate change, but also to take advantage of those aspects that can arise from the new expected climate scenario. From the analysis, the most vulnerable sectors to climate change in Catalonia are: Agriculture and livestock, infrastructures and construction, tourism, finance services and insurances, and consultancy and other professional services. All these activities account for approximately 30% of value added and 28.7% of employment in Catalonia. Those are static effects, so without considering the ability to attract other sectors and, therefore, in generating employment. Moreover, there are several important opportunities that could arise from climate change in Catalonia. For the agricultural sector, some opportunities are: planting of crops more resistant to water scarcity and rising temperatures, and more adaptable species to more arid climates; adjustment of planting dates of crops; plantations at higher altitudes; increased efficiency of irrigation, and the promotion of xeriscaping. For infrastructure and construction sectors: more effective facilities for water availability and treatment; improvements in wastewater treatment; adaptation of buildings to the new climatic conditions (roofs, improved insulation, etc.); building renovation; prevention of flooding (coastal defenses, dams and other infrastructure); sustainable urbanism, consistent with reduced availability of water, and with the inclusion of bioclimatic design. For the tourism sector: seasonal adjustment of tourism activities; possibility of extending the tourist seasons, since is tending to bimodal distribution of tourism; possibility to generalize tourism based on secondary homes; installation of technologies that improve the efficiency of water supply in hotels; landscape design adapted to local climatic conditions; for winter tourism: diversification of activities, slope enlargement, moving to higher altitudes and to north face slopes, promoting glacier skiing and snowmaking. In relation to financial services: increase the supply of products linked to new technologies and new risks; promotion of transfer of risks to the capital markets; increased demand for consultancy risk management; extend the customer base due to more protection required against new and extreme climate risks. For the consultancy and professional services sector: advisory services, legal consultancy and risk management; environmental information; applications of consumer softvvare and business applications on portable devices with climate-related services; public relations services and tools to deal with new conflicts that arise from climate change; training and education. Finally, we have concluded that in order to exploit the opportunities that the adaptation process to climate change can offer it is necessary to have a greater understanding of the impacts that climate change is producing and will produce in the future. This is an essential and unknown aspect by most of economic and social agents. Moreover, in the long-term, the public intervention is key. As the interviews have shown, in business there is no a temporal perspective that enables an appropriate pace of adaptation measures to climate change, not even longer term business strategies, nor for those sectors that will be most affected. The public sector should provide an adequate knowledge of the impacts and the best adaptive strategies, and create an appropriate regulatory framework and incentives to stimulate long-term consideration of the current decision-making.Australian forestry plantations have doubled in the past 15 years, with rural communities harbouring a diverse range of positive and negative of economic, environmental and social impacts - the so-called triple bottom line (TBL). Utilising two Australian rural communities in Eden/Gippsland and Tasmania as qualitative case studies, this research explores how 23 non-forestry affiliated rural residents perceived and experienced the TBL economic, environmental and social impacts of plantation forestry. Residents criticised the economic plantation forestry benefits because of lengthy periods of inactivity and limited local employment, explaining that their community was reliant on the industry yet the promised economic benefits had never fully materialised. There was a sense the industry 'plant and walk away.' Residents were concerned about the environment impact on water quality, water tables and fire hazards, although they praised plantation forestry for carbon sequestering, eradicating erosion and water run-off. Negative social impacts were described, specifically how the land-use change from farming to forestry had significantly reduced the local population, employment and need for services. Natural resource management and communication strategies are offered, derived from non-forestry affiliated rural resident perspectives on how best to ensure sustainable forest development in their community.This chapter examines the biophysical, socio-economic, environmental and human health dimensions of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Dakar city (Senegal) and identifies structural threats to urban agriculture, including those already induced, or have the potential to be induced, by climate change. Urban agriculture, which provides an important source of fresh vegetables and other fresh products for the city is being increasingly marginalised due to a combination of factors including diminished soil and water quality, increasing temperatures and reduced rainfall, urban encroachment and pollution from industrial sources. A lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities between local and national governments hinders the ability to protect urban agricultural land from urban encroachment and a lack of access to credit by farmers adds to their ability to cope with the multitude of other pressures. Dakar is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the northern, western and southern sides with no room for expansion, including any potential expansion of urban agriculture. Ground water in this urban zone is steadily deteriorating due to nitrate pollution of shallow groundwater in soil aquifers combined with increasing saltwater intrusion. Recycling of untreated wastewater for use in urban agriculture, a common practice in Dakar and other cities in Africa has increased the incidence of food-borne contamination. For example, recent microbial sampling of water showed a very high proportion of sites (87 %) with contamination levels above World Health Organisation standards for irrigation without restriction. Solid and liquid waste management is one of the biggest problems Dakar is facing as are many other cities of developing countries. Climate change will further impact urban agriculture. Shortening of cold periods favorable to vegetable cropping in semi-arid areas, increasingly hotter summers, more frequent flooding and drought periods, and higher incidence of pest and diseases are among the potential impacts of climate change. Coastal zones of the city are particularly under threat due to the rising sea level with negative consequences of coastal erosion and salt-water intrusion in lowlands. Projection models show a strong warming trend in the region. Conversely, there is no agreed trend of rainfall prediction at present but deficits are anticipated by general circulation models. Adaptation strategies of farmers include lifting the ground surface with landfill in order to better cope with flooding (specifically for flower cultivation), development of soil and soilless micro gardens in boxes, crop diversification and use of hybrid seeds. Urban agriculture has the potential to contribute to climate change adaptation through reinforcement of urban agricultural systems resilience, water recycling, buffering thermal and hydraulic shocks, providing safe and nutritious food, recycling wastes and conserving biodiversity. Despite its huge potential to reduce poverty and make the city more resilient to impacts from climate change, urban agriculture is not high on the urban planning agenda. Recommendations are formulated towards taking into consideration urban agriculture in national and local planning, strengthening capacities of stakeholders and awareness at all levels of society on the economic, social and environmental role of urban agriculture can play in sustainable development and greening of the city and its economy.Most global climate models (GCMs) suffer from prediction biases in their dynamic and thermodynamic structures in and around the boundary layer (BL). It remains unclear which of these biases within the large-scale conditions are crucial to the accurate reproduction of BL clouds. To develop a better understanding of the effects of variations in the simulated large-scale conditions, this paper uses large-eddy simulations to evaluate the effects of the fluctuation based on the latest GCM ensemble data on the prediction of a Californian stratocumulus under perturbed environments. The result indicates the relative importance of each component, and the most important factors controlling cloud behavior are the amplitudes of jumps in vapor and temperature across a BL top. The given variations in wind velocity and its vertical shear, large-scale subsidence, and surface heat fluxes have a lesser effect. This suggests that to reduce model biases predicted in GCMs, greater attention should be paid to the stratification structure across the BL top.This paper is based on part of the findings of a PhD study that was carried out to determine how farmers have used indigenous knowledge (IK) to adapt to climate change and variability in the semiarid region of central Tanzania. Two villages, Maluga and Chibelela, were used as the case studies. The study applied Rogers' (2003) Diffusion of Innovations theory and model. It adopted a predominantly qualitative approach and a post-positivist paradigm. The study population was made up of farmers, agricultural extension officers and the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa project manager. The principal data collection methods were interviews and focus group discussions. The qualitative data collected were subjected to content analysis whereas quantitative data were analysed with the help of SPSS to generate descriptive statistics. The findings revealed that the farmers in the two villages under study perceive conventional information on weather as unreliable and untimely. Consequently, the farmers turned to IK to predict weather patterns and make the necessary farming adjustments. It was established that uncertainty about seasonal weather forecasts is one of the most critical factors which forces farmers to continue using IK. Farmers' knowledge of birds, insects, plants, animals, wind direction and astronomical indicators is used to predict weather patterns. The recommendations include the provision of timely and accurate weather forecast information to the farmers to enhance their coping and adaptation strategies under varying climate conditions; and a clear policy framework on the dissemination of information related to weather patterns in rural Tanzania.In the past decades, topics related to socio-economic impacts of climate change and to mapping of potential natural risks caused by extreme climatic situations have been put high on the researchers' agenda. Extreme weather conditions increase the vulnerability of local communities, who are in need of proper climate adaptation and mitigating strategies. There have been a number of transnational projects in the Carpathian Basin financed by different EU funding schemes, which examined the causes and impacts of climate change from various perspectives (e.g. CARPATH CC, earlier ADAM, CECILIA, ENSEMBLES, PRUDENCE, etc.). SEERISK, including nine Central and South-East European countries, is a SEE (South East Europe Transnational Cooperation Programme) funded project, commenced in 2012. The project objectives were elaborating, testing and sharing uniform methodologies for mapping risks related to climate change, examining the social consequences, and formulating recommendations for community strategy building which are applicable across the Danube region. The project also aimed to share experience and prepare local communities for extreme weather situations and for managing natural disaster situations using adaptable innovative methods. The present study aims at presenting the major outcomes of the SEERISK project. The main ambition of the paper is to present the applicability of the methodologies used in social sciences for the problem field of climate change and also the way these methods can be combined with natural science and GIS methods in order to formulate an integrated project framework. The combined methodology was applied in six case study areas. Common risk assessment methodology integrates the European Commission's Risk Assessment and Mapping Guidelines for Disaster Management. Each case study area prepared a risk matrix focusing on the natural hazard that they chose as the most relevant for their area and developed a risk scenario describing the natural hazard and its consequences. The methodology offers various alternative solutions for implementing the risk assessment process, especially for developing risk maps. Examining the social aspect of climate change involved the assessment of awareness and preparedness of individuals and stakeholders in the pilot communities. The social survey of the project reflected on the awareness and preparedness of inhabitants and institutions in the pilot communities regarding climate-change-related natural hazards. The approach and behaviour of the inhabitants were studied by a non-representative questionnaire survey, while the approach of the institutions and decision makers was revealed by conducting interviews and by scrutinising local planning documents of the municipalities concerned. The questionnaire survey served to build firm knowledge about the local people's awareness of climate change impacts on their life and their preparedness for related natural hazards. Personal interviewing and analysing planning documents contributed to understanding the administrative and institutional approach and reaction to climate change and its consequences in the Danube macro-region. By combining risk assessment and social surveys, gaps were identified between the actual exposure to hazards and the level of community preparedness. Finally, a collection of recommendations was compiled in a guideline of climate change mitigation and adaptation useful for decision makers, academics and individuals who are all equally exposed to the impacts of global climate change.The portfolio of approaches to respond to the challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change has broadened beyond mitigation and adaptation with the recent discussion of potential climate engineering options. How to define and categorize climate engineering options has been a recurring issue in both public and specialist discussions. We assert here that current definitions of mitigation, adaptation, and climate engineering are ambiguous, overlap with each other and thus contribute to confusing the discourse on how to tackle anthropogenic climate change. We propose a new and more inclusive categorization into five different classes: anthropogenic emissions reductions (AER), territorial or domestic removal of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases (D-GGR), trans-territorial removal of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases (T-GGR), regional to planetary targeted climate modification (TCM), and climate change adaptation measures (including local targeted climate and environmental modification, abbreviated CCAM). Thus, we suggest that techniques for domestic greenhouse gas removal might better be thought of as forming a separate category alongside more traditional mitigation techniques that consist of emissions reductions. Local targeted climate modification can be seen as an adaptation measure as long as there are no detectable remote environmental effects. In both cases, the scale and intensity of action are essential attributes from the technological, climatic, and political viewpoints. While some of the boundaries in this revised classification depend on policy and judgement, it offers a foundation for debating on how to define and categorize climate engineering options and differentiate them from both mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Climate and weather variables such as rainfall, temperature, and pressure are indicators for hazards such as tropical cyclones, floods, and fires. The impact of these events can be due to a single variable being in an extreme state, but more often it is the result of a combination of variables not all of which are necessarily extreme. Here, the combination of variables or events that lead to an extreme impact is referred to as a compound event. Any given compound event will depend upon the nature and number of physical variables, the range of spatial and temporal scales, the strength of dependence between processes, and the perspective of the stakeholder who defines the impact. Modeling compound events is a large, complex, and interdisciplinary undertaking. To facilitate this task we propose the use of influence diagrams for defining, mapping, analyzing, modeling, and communicating the risk of the compound event. Ultimately, a greater appreciation of compound events will lead to further insight and a changed perspective on how impact risks are associated with climate-related hazards. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The climate change mitigation potential of irrigation powered by a photovoltaic water pumping system (PVWPS) to restore degraded grasslands has been investigated using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories for Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use. The purpose of this study is to develop a generic and simple method to estimate the climate change mitigation benefit of a PVWPS. The possibility to develop carbon credits for the carbon offset markets has also been studied comparing carbon sequestration in grasslands to other carbon sequestration projects. The soil carbon sequestration following irrigation of the grassland is calculated as an annual increase in the soil organic carbon pool. The PVWPS can also generate an excess of electricity when irrigation is not needed and the emissions reductions due to substitution of grid electricity give additional climate change mitigation potential. The results from this study show that the carbon sequestration and emissions reductions benefits per land area using a PVWPS for irrigating grasslands are comparable to other carbon sequestration options such as switching to no-till practice. Soil carbon in irrigated grasslands is increased with over 60% relative to severely degraded grasslands and if nitrogen fixing species are introduced the increase in soil organic carbon can be almost 80%. Renewable electricity generation by the PVWPS will further increase the mitigation benefit of the system with 70-90%. When applying the methodology developed in this paper to a case in Qinghai, China, we conclude that using a PVWPS to restore degraded grasslands for increased grass production and desertification control has a climate change mitigation benefit of 148 Mg (1 Mg = 1 metric ton) CO2-equivalents (CO2-eq) per hectare in a cold temperate, dry climate during a 20 year process of soil organic carbon sequestration and emissions reductions. Leakage due to an increase in N2O emissions from the additional biomass production and introduction of nitrogen fixing species is included in this result. The most important conclusion from our case is that if soil carbon sequestration is lower than 24 Mg CO2-eq per hectare including leakage, then the climate change mitigation benefit is larger if PV is used to produce electricity for the grid. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emerging pandemics threaten global health and economies and are increasing in frequency. Globally coordinated strategies to combat pandemics, similar to current strategies that address climate change, are largely adaptive, in that they attempt to reduce the impact of a pathogen after it has emerged. However, like climate change, mitigation strategies have been developed that include programs to reduce the underlying drivers of pandemics, particularly animal-to-human disease transmission. Here, we use real options economic modeling of current globally coordinated adaptation strategies for pandemic prevention. We show that they would be optimally implemented within 27 y to reduce the annual rise of emerging infectious disease events by 50% at an estimated one-time cost of approximately $343.7 billion. We then analyze World Bank data on multilateral "One Health" pandemic mitigation programs. We find that, because most pandemics have animal origins, mitigation is a more cost-effective policy than business-asusual adaptation programs, saving between $344.0.7 billion and $360.3 billion over the next 100 y if implemented today. We conclude that globally coordinated pandemic prevention policies need to be enacted urgently to be optimally effective and that strategies to mitigate pandemics by reducing the impact of their underlying drivers are likely to be more effective than business as usual.Efforts to meet climate change mitigation and energy security targets spur investments in variable renewable energy sources. Their implications for the operation of power plants are frequently investigated drawing on unit commitment and dispatch models. However, the temporal granularity and operational detail these models consider is commonly omitted in the broader family of long-term energy system models. To compensate this short-coming, these two types of tools have sometimes been 'soft-linked' and harmonised for limited simulation years. This paper assesses an alternative approach. We examine an extended version of an open source energy system model (0SeMOSYS), which is able to capture operating reserve and related investment requirements within a single tool. The implications of these model extensions are quantified through comparison with an Irish case study. That case study examined the effects of linking a long-term energy system model (TIMES) with a unit commitment and dispatch model (PLEXOS). It analysed the year 2020 in detail, applying a yearly temporal resolution that is over 700 times higher than in OSeMOSYS. Without increasing temporal resolution (and computational burden) we show that results of the enhanced OSeMOSYS model converge to results of TIMES and PLEXOS: Investment mismatches decrease from 21.4% to 5.0%. The OSeMOSYS analysis was then extended to 2050 to assess the implications of short-term variability on future capacity investment decisions. When variability was ignored, power system investments in 2050 were found to be 143% lower. This might imply that energy policies derived from such long-term models - of which there are many - may underestimate the costs of introducing variable renewables and thus meeting climate change or energy security targets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Photovoltaics (PV) has recently undergone impressive growth and substantial cost decreases, while deployment for concentrating solar power (CSP) has been much slower. As the share of PV rises, the challenge of system integration will increase. This favors CSP, which can be combined with thermal storage and co-firing to reduce variability. It is thus an open question how important solar power will be for achieving climate mitigation targets, and which solar technology will be dominant in the long-term. We address these questions with the state-of-the-art integrated energy-economy-climate model REMIND 1.5, which embodies an advanced representation of the most important drivers of solar deployment. We derive up-to-date values for current and future costs of solar technologies. We calculate a consistent global resource potential dataset for both CSP and PV, aggregated to country-level. We also present a simplified representation of system integration costs of variable renewable energies, suitable for large-scale energy-economy-models. Finally, we calculate a large number of scenarios and perform a sensitivity study to analyze how robust our results are towards future cost reductions of PV and CSP. The results show that solar power becomes the dominant electricity source in a scenario limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, with PV and CSP together supplying 48% of total 2010-2100 electricity. Solar technologies have a stabilizing effect on electricity price: if both solar technologies are excluded in a climate policy scenario, electricity prices rise much higher than in the case with full technology availability. We also analyze the competition between PV and CSP: PV is cheaper on a direct technology basis and is thus deployed earlier, but at high supply shares the PV integration costs become so high that CSP gains a competitive advantage and is rapidly developed, eventually overtaking PV. Even in the most pessimistic scenario of our sensitivity study with no further cost reductions, CSP and PV still supply 19% of 2010-2100 electricity. We conclude that if a stringent climate target of 2 degrees C is to be met cost-efficiently, solar power will play a paramount role in the long-term transformation of the electricity system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Achieving ambitious climate change mitigation targets clearly requires a focus on transport that should include changes in travel behaviour in addition to increased vehicle efficiency and low-carbon fuels. Most available energy/economy/environment/engineering (E4) modelling tools focus however on technology and fuel switching and tend to poorly incorporate mitigation options from travel behaviour, and in particular, switching between modes is not an option. This paper describes a novel methodology for incorporating competition between private cars, buses and trains in a least-cost linear optimisation E4 model, called TIMES. This is achieved by imposing a constraint on overall travel time in the system, which represents the empirically observed fixed travel time budget (TUB) of individuals, and introducing a cost for infrastructural investments (travel time investment, TT), which reduces the travel time of public transport. Two case studies from California and Ireland are developed using a simple TIMES model, and results are generated to 2030 for a reference scenario, an investments scenario and a CO2 emissions reduction scenario. The results show that with no travel time constraint, the model chooses public transport exclusively. With a travel time constraint, mode choice is determined by income and investment cost assumptions, and the level of CO2 constraint, with greater levels of public transport in the mitigation scenario. At low travel investment cost, new rail is introduced for short distances and increased bus capacity for longer distances. At higher investment costs rail is increasingly chosen for long distances also. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to develop climate resilient urban areas and reduce emissions, several opportunities exist starting from conscious planning and design of green (and blue) spaces in these landscapes. Green urban infrastructure has been regarded as beneficial, e.g. by balancing water flows, providing thermal comfort. This article explores the existing evidence on the contribution of green spaces to climate change mitigation and adaptation services. We suggest a framework of ecosystem services for systematizing the evidence on the provision of bio-physical benefits (e.g. CO2 sequestration) as well as social and psychological benefits (e.g. improved health) that enable coping with (adaptation) or reducing the adverse effects (mitigation) of climate change. The multi-functional and multi-scale nature of green urban infrastructure complicates the categorization of services and benefits, since in reality the interactions between various benefits are manifold and appear on different scales. We will show the relevance of the benefits from green urban infrastructures on three spatial scales (i.e. city, neighborhood and site specific scales). We will further report on co-benefits and trade-offs between the various services indicating that a benefit could in turn be detrimental in relation to other functions. The manuscript identifies avenues for further research on the role of green urban infrastructure, in different types of cities, climates and social contexts. Our systematic understanding of the bio-physical and social processes defining various services allows targeting stressors that may hamper the provision of green urban infrastructure services in individual behavior as well as in wider planning and environmental management in urban areas. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Deforestation in tropical regions causes 15% of global anthropogenic carbon emissions and reduces the mitigation potential of carbon sequestration services. A global market failure occurs as the value of many ecosystem services provided by forests is not recognised by the markets. Identifying the contribution of individual countries to tropical carbon stocks and sequestration might help identify responsibilities and facilitate debate towards the correction of the market failure through international payments for ecosystem services. We compare and rank tropical countries' contributions by estimating carbon sequestration services vs. emissions disservices. The annual value of tropical carbon sequestration services in 2010 from 88 tropical countries was estimated to range from $2.8 to $30.7 billion, using market and social prices of carbon respectively. Democratic Republic of Congo, India and Sudan contribute the highest net carbon sequestration, whereas Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia are the highest net emitters. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tropical forests convert more atmospheric carbon into biomass each year than any terrestrial ecosystem on Earth, underscoring the importance of accurate tropical forest structure and biomass maps for the understanding and management of the global carbon cycle. Ecologists have long used field inventory plots as the main tool for understanding forest structure and biomass at landscape-to-regional scales, under the implicit assumption that these plots accurately represent their surrounding landscape. However, no study has used continuous, high-spatial-resolution data to test whether field plots meet this assumption in tropical forests. Using airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging) acquired over three regions in Peru, we assessed how representative a typical set of field plots are relative to their surrounding host landscapes. We uncovered substantial mean biases (9-98%) in forest canopy structure (height, gaps, and layers) and aboveground biomass in both lowland Amazonian and montane Andean landscapes. Moreover, simulations reveal that an impractical number of 1-ha field plots (from 10 to more than 100 per landscape) are needed to develop accurate estimates of aboveground biomass at landscape scales. These biases should temper the use of plots for extrapolations of forest dynamics to larger scales, and they demonstrate the need for a fundamental shift to high-resolution active remote sensing techniques as a primary sampling tool in tropical forest biomass studies. The potential decrease in the bias and uncertainty of remotely sensed estimates of forest structure and biomass is a vital step toward successful tropical forest conservation and climate-change mitigation policy.This paper summarises the results of a survey carried out amongst the student population of one of the largest Greek Technological Educational Institutes. It explores attitudes toward the environment in general and then, more specifically, toward global warming and global warming-mitigation technologies. It also explores student understanding of sources of carbon dioxide and climate change-mitigation technologies, such as carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). Further, it analyses responses to questions about willingness of respondents to pay to solve global warming. The data was collected in October and November of 2011 using a structured questionnaire which was first formulated in English and then translated into Greek. The analysis was performed using the statistical package SPSS v17.0 and focused on descriptive statistics, in order to compare the average ratings for the different statements. The present study concludes that university students in Greece are overwhelmingly positively disposed towards the environment with the majority of respondents believing that protecting the environment should have priority over economic considerations. Students also view the effects of global warming as serious enough to warrant action and state their belief that the current generation should meet its own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. Moreover, the majority of the participants are against the development of nuclear energy, favoring RES (solar wind and bioenergy), and energy conservation technologies. However, the study has also identified a lack of understanding in regards to sources of carbon dioxide. The majority of the respondents do not seem to know that oceans act as sinks of CO2 emissions or that the housing stock is a significant contributor to this problem.Peatlands, including those transformed by economic activities (drainage for forestry and agriculture, peat extraction), belong to various land categories. There is no general system for their inventory and accounting. Remote sensing methodology based on high-resolution space imagery is proposed and applied for mapping peatlands of different types and states based on the example of Moscow oblast. The methodology can be used to solve scientific and practical tasks that require the development of a regional peatland geoin-formation system (GIS) using a common base map. The total area of peatlands and peatbogs is shown to surpass 6% of the oblast territory.Carbon Capture and Storage is considered as a key option for climate change mitigation; policy makers and investors need to know when CCS becomes economically attractive. Integrating CCS in a power plant adds significant costs which can be offset by a sufficient CO2 price. However, most markets have failed: currently, the weak carbon price threatens CCS deployment in the European Union (EU). In China, a carbon regulation is appearing and CCS encounters a rising interest. This study investigates two questions: how much is the extra-cost of a CCS plant in the EU in comparison with China? Second, what is the CO2 price beyond which CCS plants become more profitable than reference plants in the EU and in China? To address these issues, I conducted a literature review on public studies about CCS costs. To objectively assess the profitability of CCS plants, I constructed a net present value model to calculate the Levelised Cost of Electricity and the breakeven CO2 price. CCS plants become the most profitable plant type beyond 115 /tCO(2) in the Eli vs. 45 (sic)/tCO(2) in China (offshore transport and storage costs). I advise on the optimal plant type choice depending on the CO2 price in both countries. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A reduction of energy service demand is a climate mitigation option, but its effectiveness has never been quantified. We quantify the effectiveness of energy service demand reduction in the building, transport, and industry sectors using the Asia-Pacific Integrated Assessment/Computable General Equilibrium (A1M/CGE) model for the period 2015-2050 under various scenarios. There were two major findings. First, a 25% energy service demand reduction in the building, transport, and basic material industry sectors would reduce the GDP loss induced by climate mitigation from 4.0% to 3.0% and from 1.2% to 0.7% in 2050 under the 450 ppm and 550 ppm CO2 equivalent concentration stabilization scenarios, respectively. Second, the effectiveness of a reduction in the building sector's energy service demand would be higher than those of the other sectors at the same rate of the energy service demand reduction. Furthermore, we also conducted a sensitivity analysis of different socioeconomic conditions, and the climate mitigation target was found to be a key determinant of the effectiveness of energy service demand reduction measures. Therefore, more certain climate mitigation targets would be useful for the decision makers who design energy service demand reduction measures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Given the wealth of information and research on the roles and responsibilities of the general public in climate mitigation, the lack of engagement of householders on climate adaptation is notable by its absence. As climate change impacts vary with locality, local adaption is important; however there are few processes that build awareness and engagement of householders with climate adaptation and planning. Using reports of discussions from 96 groups convened as part of a climate change engagement program called Energymark; this paper explores the concerns of householders around climate change and provides a lay perspective on climate adaptation. Analyses of group discussions reveal that householders were unable to readily distinguish between climate adaptation and mitigation actions. Groups discussed how they could increase local adaptive capacity through active citizenship and community action. This applied research provides empirical evidence of how deliberation can build social capital and contribute to local adaptive solutions. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Philippines claims international recognition for its mangrove-rich ecosystem which play significant functions from the viewpoint of ecosystem services and climate change mitigation. In this study, we assessed the species diversity of the natural mangrove forest of Bahile, Puerto Princesa City, Palawan and evaluated its potential to sequester and store carbon. Sixteen plots with a size of 10 m x 10 m were established using quadrat sampling technique to identify, record, and measure the trees. Diversity index and allometric equations were utilized to determine species diversity, and biomass and carbon stocks. Sediment samples in undisturbed portions using a 30 cm high and 5 cm diameter corer were collected in all plots to determine near-surface sediment carbon. The diversity index (H' = 0.9918) was very low having a total of five true mangrove species identified dominated by Rhizophora apiculata Bl. with an importance value index of 148.1%. Among the stands, 74% of the total biomass was attributed to the above-ground (561.2 t ha(-1)) while 26% was credited to the roots (196.5 t ha(-1)). The total carbon sequestered and stored in the above-ground and root biomass were 263.8 t C ha(-1) (50%) and 92.3 t C ha(-1) (17%), respectively. Sediments contained 33% (173.75 t C ha(-1)) of the mangrove C-stocks. Stored carbon was equivalent to 1944.5 t CO2 ha(-1). These values suggest that Bahile natural mangrove forest has a potential to sequester and store substantial amounts of atmospheric carbon, hence the need for sustainable management and protection of this important coastal ecosystem.The agenda towards greenhouse gas mitigation within agriculture implies changes in farm management practices. Based on a survey of Scottish dairy farmers, this study investigates farmers' perceptions of how different GHG mitigation practices affect the economic and environmental performance of their farms, and the degree to which those farmers have adopted those practices. The results of the farm survey data are used to identify promising mitigation practices for immediate policy support based on their potential for additional adoption by farmers, their perceived contribution to the farm's financial and environmental performance and information on their cost-effectiveness. The study demonstrates the usefulness of including adoption behaviour and farmers' perception of mitigation practices to inform early stages of policy development. This would ultimately contribute to the robustness and effectiveness of climate change mitigation policies in the agricultural sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Successful implementation of a forest based climate change mitigation mechanism such as REDD + depends on robust and available methods for measurement and estimation of forest degradation. Currently available methods are for application in single-hit degradation incidents in high density humid forests. However, it has been suggested that gradual degradation, especially in dry forests, is more widespread and that methods are needed for measuring and estimating associated emissions. We assess the applicability of an indirect remote sensing approach for monitoring forest degradation: infrastructure and other indicators of human activities are mapped and used for spatial prediction of degradation activities. For proxy variables we tested distance to forest edge, distance to roads, and population pressure calculated as the sum of inhabitants per pixel in the Landscan 2010 population raster dataset multiplied by an inverse power distance decay function. Wood extraction incidents were counted in 160 plots in two dry forests in Tanzania with infrastructural entry from one side only. We analyzed the spatial pattern of forest degradation as a function of the chosen proxy variables using zero inflated count models which allows for an excess of zero counts. A jack-knife bootstrap using 10,000 runs was applied to optimize the population distance decay function. We found that the impact of forest degradation is highest near high population concentration, above 1000 individuals. Furthermore, distance to nearest forest edge or road was a significant proxy for estimation of the number of wood extraction incidents (p < 0.001), where degradation incidents decreased with increasing distance to forest edge or road. At 3000 m from the forest edge towards the forest core the probability of wood extraction is 20% and dropping. The population distance decay function was found to have a steep decline indicating a relative small impact on forest degradation. Further, and perhaps larger, studies are needed to be able to recommend a distance decay function for general application in Tanzania. However, the results are useful for understanding spatial patterns of wood harvesting as a function of distance to nearest forest edge or road in dry Miombo woodland areas with average population pressure at 1685 +/- 101 persons within a radius of 4000 m from the wood extraction sites. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In 2009, the conference of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change recognized the need to engage communities and indigenous groups into the systems to monitor, report and verify the results of REDD+. Since then, many countries have started to prepare for REDD+ implementation. This article reviews early experiences under development in 11 projects financed by the Alliance Mexico REDD+ located in four Early Action Areas to identify the potential integration of Community Based Monitoring (CBM). The evaluation of the projects is made based on a multi-criteria analysis which considers the potential to produce information relevant for national monitoring systems and the prospects for sustained monitoring practices over time. Results indicate there are challenges to harmonizing monitoring practices and protocols between projects since activities proposed differ greatly from one project to another. Technical specifications for integrating local data into national systems are thus required. The results of these projects can help to identify best practices for planning and implementing REDD+. Findings indicate that in general, resources and capacities to gather, analyse and report information as part of CBM systems are in place in the projects, but usually these reside with non-local experts (i.e., NGOs and Academia); however, there are notable examples where these capacities reside in the communities. If national forest monitoring systems are geared to include information gathered through locally-driven processes REDD+ should promote activities that produce local benefits, but countries would need to build local capacities for managing and monitoring natural resources and would also need to create agreements for sharing and using local data. Otherwise, national systems may need to rely on monitoring practices external to communities, which depend on the continued availability of external financial resources.The "urban transition" agenda is as a conglomerate of ambitions derived from international policy documents and as applied in the Oresund area. Encompassing locally set goals for (i) climate change mitigation; (ii) energy efficiency; and (iii) human wellbeing in the built environment. Its implementation is largely dependent on private sector joining in, since transitioning the building stock is to be financed by the market. This paper explores strategies to meet this agenda in the Oresund area. A particular focus is on the refurbishment of multi-family housing relative to these set goals. The paper finds meaningful differences between Denmark and Sweden. In general, exceptionally high energy standards come at an additional cost that is likely to be incompatible with rational economic behavior. Furthermore, actions appropriate for one goal are likely to have modest effects on ancillary goals. The paper concludes by suggesting to revisit current strategies in the Oresund area to reflect market constraints and to promote more coherent ways to achieve the set goals.The EU's energy sector depends heavily on fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change. This is why climate mitigation targets for energy production have been set, including an increased biomass use requirement. In Finland, biomass is commonly utilised but its capital, Helsinki, is still dependent on fossil fuels. With the ambition of becoming climate neutral by 2050, Helsinki is testing, inter alia, low-share wood pellet and coal co-combustion in a CHP (combined heat and power) plant. The objectives of this paper were to assess the net environmental impacts of the co-combustion and changes in urban air quality connected to pellet transport, and to identify environmental hotspots relevant to possible future higher-share co-combustion. The applied methods were screening LCA (life cycle assessment) and fine particle dispersion modelling. The results prove that low-share wood pellet co-combustion in CHP production leads to net environmental impact reductions and does not deteriorate air quality in the urban environment. If higher-share co-combustion were to be implemented, the environmental hotspots to focus on would be the operational issues of a power plant and the origin and sustainability aspects of wood pellet production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electric power production using biomass residues from agricultural production using high efficiency electricity generation technologies would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and contribute to climate change mitigation. This study investigated the case of the sugar industry in Thailand and identified scenarios offering GHG emissions reduction benefits. Electricity generation potential from using sugarcane residues and/or upgrading power generation systems represent beneficial options. The largest potential of electricity export to the national grid can be achieved by upgrading boiler systems of all sugar mills to 103 bar and 515 degrees C. Using 19% of the generated sugarcane tops and leaves along with bagasse can generate 9 TWh electricity and would reduce GHG emissions by 4.8 Mt CO2 equivalent a year. The economic analysis shows that using high steam pressure boiler configurations for power generation results in substantial reduction in production cost and increase in benefit. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Climate scientists agree that a drastic reduction in carbon emissions in the coming decades is necessary to avoid major disasters due to global warming. Using computer modeling, citywide data sets, and insights from experts in the building community, we show how New York City (NYC) can lead the way toward climate change mitigation by improving the efficiency of its building sector (which is currently responsible for 75% of its greenhouse gas emissions) by 2050 using technologies available today. Though the total elimination of greenhouse gas emissions is possible only with the use of carbon-free energy sources, emissions can be reduced by over 60% from energy efficiency measures alone. After eliminating fuel combustion, carbon-free electric energy roughly equal to total electric energy used in 2010 would be consumed, but with a peak demand 60% higher than today's, establishing requirements for generation capacity and storage. Our economic analysis of the building measures shows them to be essentially cost-neutral over time. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Merging climate change mitigation and sustainable development in developing countries is pivotal for the transition towards low carbon growth pathways. This paper combines the field of technology transfer and technology-specific aspects with sustainable development objectives. The general climate change mitigation paradigm has shifted from project oriented mitigation action to more strategic, country-wide, cross-sectoral mitigation plans, in order to explicitly take into account also economic development goals. Local technology needs and socio-technical circumstances are important towards economic development induced by technology transfer. Yet, this approach is not sufficient for the success of technology transfer, which shall also deliver on economic development. A strategy for the adoption of technologies, as well as the broadening of the domestic technology manufacturing base, needs to consider also the technology properties itself in greater detail. The technology transfer process should emphasize the economic developmental purpose as well as the properties of technologies. Thus, I propose a detailed assessment of the technology and its potential of being adopted by suggesting that technology complexity assessments should be integrated into technology transfer mechanisms. By using CSP, PV and wind technology as examples, I describe how the evaluation of technology complexity and of potential economic development, determined by demand for manufactured goods and services within domestic economies, which could lead to job creation and value added, could be used to inform policy makers. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.This paper reviews the situation of biofuels production with regard to climate change and sustainability. The biomass energy or biofuels combustion is carbon neutral or even carbon negative as the carbon, which is stored during its growth, is released and does not add new carbon to the active carbon cycle, whereas fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas remove carbon from geologic storage and contribute to climate change by emission of GHGs. Biofuel also controls the carbon emissions from biomass facilities which would have been released back into the atmosphere through natural decay or disposal through open-burning. Inspite of these GHG benefits, the progress in biofuels expansion is at crossroads as it is influenced by various factors like land use changes and food security related issues. However biofuels from degraded land and from non-food crops are promising and will help in climate change mitigation. Proper planning in land use and identifying most appropriate policies for promoting this will help in tackling the global issue and in achieving the goal. The technology utilizing carbon sequestered in various sources, for ethanol, biodiesel and other biofuels production is a sustainable solution to climate change rather than biofuels from food crops.We calculated the life cycle CO2 emissions and direct installation costs for two types of timber check dams (all-wood timber and hybrid timber) developed in Akita Prefecture and non-timber check dams (concrete and steel). Additionally, we evaluated the effect of timber check dams in reducing CO2 emissions and their economic efficiency compared with non-timber check dams. We found that switching from concrete to all-wood timber and hybrid timber check dams reduced CO2 emissions by 54 and 43 %, respectively. Switching from steel to all-wood timber and hybrid timber check dams reduced CO2 emissions by 28 and 11 %, respectively. In terms of direct installation costs, all-wood timber check dams were 241 % that of concrete check dams and 179 % that of steel check dams, but hybrid timber check dams were only 132 and 98 %, confirming that they could be competitive in terms of price. From the perspective of reducing CO2 emissions costs, we found that a policy for switching from concrete to all-wood or hybrid timber check dams did not constitute a low-cost means of reducing CO2 emissions, compared with other policies for reducing CO2 emissions.The nexus of climate change and food security challenges currently facing humanity requires better understanding of how to balance food production needs with climate change mitigation. Life cycle assessment methods provide a way to quantify the climate impacts of a food product by accounting for all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with its production, including upstream and downstream from the farm. This study modeled life cycle GHG emissions for one kg of milled, unpackaged rice produced in California, USA, a state that achieves some of the highest rice yields in the world. The goal was to (1) provide an assessment of life cycle GHG emissions of a comparatively intensive production system, using local field emissions data, (2) identify emissions hotspots, and (3) create a model that elucidates the life cycle-wide consequences of potential changes in field management practices. Study parameters are based on an annual cropping cycle, with continuous flooding during the growing season and soil incorporation of straw post-harvest, and yields of 9.3 Mt ha(-1) dried paddy rice. Field emissions (growing and fallow seasons) were estimated with empirical data while other emissions were calculated using an engineering model coupled with life cycle inventory datasets and vehicle emission models. The 100-year global warming potential (GWP, based on CO2, CH4 and N2O) was 1.47 kg CO2-equivalent (CO(2)e) kg(-1) of milled rice; of which field emissions contributed 69%. These results are relatively low when compared to life cycle studies in other parts of the world, due in large part to higher grain yields and lower field emissions. When using IPCC Tier 1 estimates of field emissions, the GWP increased to 3.60 CO(2)e kg(-1) rice, highlighting the importance of using direct field measurements as we have in this study. Due to their large contributions to life cycle GWP, reducing field CH4 emissions through different field management practices, optimizing N fertilizer use, and increasing fuel efficiency or reducing use of farm machinery present the greatest opportunities to reduce life cycle emissions. Because of high variability and uncertainty in estimating field emissions, they should also be targeted for improved measurement and modeling. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Complex environmental challenges cut horizontally across sectors and vertically across levels of government. To address them in coordinated and integrated ways, governments have resorted to integrated, multi-sectoral strategies since the 1990s. After introducing this new governance approach, we describe the policy rationale, prevalence, governance characteristics and performance of three distinct yet thematically related, integrated strategies on sustainable development, climate change mitigation and adaptation in the EU-15 countries. Based on this literature-based synthesis, we highlight their similarities and differences and the lack of linkages between them. The concluding discussion explores options on how to develop integrated strategies further. Since all three integrated strategies failed as comprehensive governing processes that aim to better coordinate policies, we suggest recalibrating them towards communication so that they can be more effective in pursuing the functions they can realistically fulfil: providing direction and raising awareness.Impetus to expand electricity access in developing nations is urgent(1). Yet aspirations to provide universal access to electricity are often considered potentially conflicting with efforts to mitigate climate change(2). How much newly electrified, largely poor, households raise emissions, however, remains uncertain. Results from a first retrospective analysis show that improvements in household electricity access contributed 3-4% of national emissions growth in India over the past three decades. Emissions from both the direct and indirect electricity use of more than 650 million people connected since 1981 accounted for 11-25% of Indian emissions growth or, on average, a rise of 0.008-0.018 tons of CO2 per person per year between 1981 and 2011. Although this is a marginal share of global emissions, it does not detract from the importance for developing countries to start reducing the carbon intensities of their electricity generation to ensure sustainable development and avoid future carbon lock-in(3,4). Significant ancillary benefits for air quality, health, energy security and efficiency may also make this attractive for reasons other than climate mitigation alone(5,6).Land-use change, mainly the conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land, is a massive source of carbon emissions and contributes substantially to global warming(1-3). Therefore, mechanisms that aim to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation are widely discussed, A central challenge is the avoidance of international carbon leakage if forest conservation is not implemented globally'', Here, We show that forest conservation schemes, even if implemented globally, could lead to another type of carbon leakage by driving cropland expansion in non-forested areas that are not subject to forest conservation schemes (non-forest leakage). These areas have a smaller,. but still considerable potential to store carbon(5,6). We show that a global forest policy could reduce carbon emissions by 77 Gt CO2, but would still allow for decreases in carbon stocks of non-forest land by 96 Gt CO2, until 2100 due to non-forest leakage effects. Furthermore; abandonment of agricultural hand and associated carbon uptake through vegetation regrowth is hampered. Effective mitigation measures thus require financing structures and conservation investments that cover the full range of carbon-rich ecosystems. However, our analysis indicates that greater agricultural productivity increases would be needed to compensate for such restrictions on agricultural expansion.Short-rotation coppice willow (SRCW) is a fast-growing and potentially high-yielding energy crop. Transition to bioenergy has been identified in Sweden as one strategy to mitigate climate change and decrease the current dependency on fossil fuel. In this study, life cycle assessment was used to evaluate and compare the climate impacts of SRCW systems, for the purpose of evaluating key factors influencing the climate change mitigation potential of SRCW grown on agricultural land in Sweden. Seven different scenarios were defined and analysed to identify the factors with the most influence on the climate. A carbon balance model was used to model carbon fluxes between soil, biomass and atmosphere under Swedish growing conditions. The results indicated that SRCW can act as a temporary carbon sink and therefore has a mitigating effect on climate change. The most important factor in obtaining a high climate change-mitigating effect was shown to be high yield. Low yield gave the worst mitigating effect of the seven scenarios, but it was still better than the effect of the reference systems, district heating produced from coal or natural gas.Bioenergy production is considered the single most significant contributor to the climate change mitigation within the forest sector. In addition, the production of forest-based bioenergy may also positively affect social welfare, local development and forest economy. In environmental markets the role of forests and the challenge of combining international, national and local needs related to their sustainable use for bioenergy and social livelihood is increasing. These global ecological and socioeconomic changes pose new challenges for ecologically, economically, socially and culturally sustainable utilization of forest resources. The purpose of this literature review is to map the existing indicator sets introduced in scientific literature suitable for evaluating the sustainability of forest-based bioenergy production systems from a local perspective. In addition, also the challenges in assessing ecological, economic, social and cultural sustainability by using different types of indicators are discussed. According to the results of this study, there are plenty of indicators suitable for assessing either the ecological, economic, social and cultural sustainability of forest-based bioenergy production at a local level. In contrast, information on appropriate procedures for taking into account local development goals abreast with the objectives of sustainable development at general global level are lacking. Additionally, in order to analyze trade-offs in different sustainability dimensions caused by optional decisions regarding forest-based energy production, methodological development would be required. The comprehensive indicators lists presented in this study can employed as background information to define the measures that are especially relevant in enhancing the local sustainability goals from the perspective of different stakeholders in specific localities. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The risk posed by anthropogenic climate change is generally accepted, and the challenge we face to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to a tolerable limit cannot be underestimated. Reducing GHG emissions can be achieved either by producing less GHG to begin with or by emitting less GHG into the atmosphere. One carbon mitigation technology with large potential for capturing carbon dioxide at the point source of emissions is carbon capture and storage (CCS). However, the merits of CCS have been questioned, both on practical and ethical grounds. While the practical concerns have already received substantial attention, the ethical concerns still demand further consideration. This article aims to respond to this deficit by reviewing the critical ethical challenges raised by CCS as a possible tool in a climate mitigation strategy and argues that the urgency stemming from climate change underpins many of the concerns raised by CCS.India is the world's second-largest host of projects implemented under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). There is, however, considerable variation in the distribution of CDM projects implemented across different Indian states. While a large body of the literature examines cross-national variation in the implementation of CDM projects, few studies have analyzed the determinants of sub-national variation in different national contexts. We theorize that given India's laissez-faire approach to CDM project implementation the availability of profitable climate mitigation opportunities and the political stability are two factors that promote CDM project implementation. Using sub-national data collected from a variety of sources, we conduct systematic analysis that provides empirical support for a set of hypotheses regarding the effects of these variables on project implementation. First, we find that states with a lot of public electricity-generating capacity and industrial capital implement more CDM projects than other states. Additionally, project developers rarely propose CDM projects during election years as a result of high levels of political uncertainty associated with those years. Our findings show that India's liberal approach prevents the central government from using the CDM to promote sustainable development in less developed states. In India and other host countries where coordinated national policies to maximize their gains from CDM projects is absent, there is a paucity of project implementation in states that need it the most.Harvesting of Mediterranean oak coppice forests has been progressively suspended on a share of cover over the last decades. Positive growth trend in outgrown coppices no longer harvested on short rotations now drives natural forest restoration on wide areas, and it represents a potential carbon sink in view of global warming. Our goals were to estimate carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) content per compartment in two deciduous oak outgrown coppice forests, aged differently and growing under unequal site quality, to verify whether C concentration across compartments is in agreement with the conventional conversion rate of 0.5. Ecosystem C and N pools were assessed by multiplying the whole coppice mass (combining specific allometric functions, root-to-shoot ratio, and soil sampling) by respective C and N concentrations. The results point out that the largest percentage of N was stored in 15-cm topsoil (84.06 and 73.34 % at the younger and older site, respectively), whereas the proportion of organic ecosystem C pool was more variable, as a consequence of the amount and allocation of phytomass. We found that, in most cases, C concentration was less than the conventional conversion rate of 0.5, especially in deadwood, O layer, and root compartments. The findings provide further knowledge of C and N storage into these new built-up forest types and the evidence that a detailed analysis may get higher accuracy in the pools estimate, producing a more reliable outlook on dynamics and climate change mitigation ability of these systems.Low Carbon Society (LCS) has emerged as a holistic approach to reduce carbon (C) emissions that result from human activities. Although there has been successful implementation of the LCS approach in some cities of developed countries, it is more difficult in developing countries like Thailand. The objectives of this paper are to present drivers and barriers affecting the abilities of three regional cities of Thailand to combine LCS activities with their strategies. Lessons learned from this study will allow for sharing these experiences with municipalities in other developing countries. This research was based on interviews of key informants representing state agencies and local public service associations. It was found that no particular driver significantly influenced local government agencies to implement LCS activities. Conversely, there were financial and managerial barriers to implementing (C) reduction activities. This paper identifies the need for more specific and tailor-made assistance to allow urban municipalities to shift towards LCS activities by considering their individual strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, stakeholders' understanding of the advantages of implementing LCS activities within locally governed areas was found to be critical for success. The paper concludes that climate change mitigation activities not only reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also produce tangible benefits such as improvement the quality of life of people. Such an approach can motivate stakeholders to pursue LCS as a shared goal.China has set the goal for its CO2 emissions to peak around 2030, which is not only a strategic decision coordinating domestic sustainable development and global climate change mitigation but also an overarching target and a key point of action for China's resource conservation, environmental protection, shift in economic development patterns, and CO2 emission reduction to avoid climate change. The development stage where China maps out the CO2 emission peak target is earlier than that of the developed countries. It is a necessity that the non-fossil energy supplies be able to meet all the increased energy demand for achieving CO2 emission peaking. Given that China's potential GDP annual increasing rate will be more than 4%, and China's total energy demand will continue to increase by approximately 1.0%-1.5% annually around 2030, new and renewable energies will need to increase by 6%-8% annually to meet the desired CO2 emission peak. The share of new and renewable energies in China's total primary energy supply will be approximately 20% by 2030. At that time, the energy consumption elasticity will decrease to around 0.3, and the annual decrease in the rate of CO2 intensity will also be higher than 4% to ensure the sustained growth of GDP. To achieve the CO2 emission peaking target and substantially promote the low-carbon development transformation, China needs to actively promote an energy production and consumption revolution, the innovation of advanced energy technologies, the reform of the energy regulatory system and pricing mechanism, and especially the construction of a national carbon emission cap and trade system.As deforestation and fragmentation continue in tropical regions with high human use and disturbance of natural habitats, production landscapes such as agroforests and plantations may provide some forest-based services depending on tree selection, agroforest management and intensification. This is typical to southwest Ethiopia with strong human-dependence on forest biodiversity and ecosystem services. We examined the effects of land-use changes and fragmentation on woody species distribution and the relative importance of forest fragments and coffee farms in wood use and carbon storage. We sampled heartwood from 71 woody species in three land use types: natural forest fragments, smallholder semiforest coffee farms and state-owned coffee plantations. We calculated wood density as an oven-dry biomass per fresh volume of heartwood core samples, and above-ground carbon biomass using allometric methods. We found that average wood density values were not correlated with fragment size. Mean wood density of species in forests was greater than in state-owned plantations. The two coffee systems can store 50-62% of the above-ground carbon biomass found in forests, indicating the need to incorporate coffee farms and forest remnants in carbon incentive, or climate mitigation and adaptation programs. To correlate species wood density with local wood preferences, we interviewed focus groups and households about the use-values of 51 farmer-appreciated species. There was a strong correlation between wood density and local wood-values signifying the concordance of species functional traits and ecosystem service values. Our results indicate the need to integrate functional traits and local ecosystem service uses in climate adaptation and mitigation by incorporating coffee agroforests with the conservation of natural forest remnants. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents an overview and analysis of air quality in Europe from 2002 to 2011. It reviews progress towards meeting the requirements of the EU air quality directives, as well as the development of European air pollutant emissions over the last decade. An overview of the latest findings and estimates of the exposure of urban population and ecosystems to air pollution in Europe is also given. The evaluation of the status and trends of air quality is based on ambient air measurements, in conjunction with data on anthropogenic emissions and their trends. The analysis covers up to 38 European countries, including EU Member States and member countries of the European Environment Agency (EEA) as of 2011. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The United States and China have common but differentiated climate mitigation responses. Most studies so far have sought to explain this divergence with a focus on energy resources, technology, economic, or social factors. These studies ignore the role of strategy and institutions, and thus appear incomplete. In this paper, the author investigates the climate mitigation responses of the United States and China from a strategic and institutional perspective, explores how their climate responses are shaped, and identifies possible weaknesses hidden in their climate approaches. The paper finds that the United States and China have distinct national climate positions due to their diverse strategies and institutions. However, they have chosen similar policy tools and have achieved fairly comparable emission reductions thus far. In the long run, the effectiveness and efficiency of the low-carbon transformation will possibly be hindered by weaker policy innovation capability at sub-national levels in China and the operationally volatile energy strategy in the United States.Sustainable agricultural production requires prudent management backed by reliable information that accurately elucidates the complex relationships between land management practices and soil quality trends. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of management on soil properties acquired at different depths, and yields, at five different field sites within Ohio, USA. The principal management systems considered were no till with or without manure and cover crops, natural vegetation (NV) or forest, and conventional tillage (CT) defined as farms with surface residue cover (< 30 %). Analyses of variance (ANOVA), correlation analyses, stepwise regression, and the principal component analyses (PCA) were used to elucidate and model the link between four different management practices and the soil physical and chemical properties. The ANOVA results indicate that the available water capacity and electrical conductivity (EC) were the major variables affected by management. In contrast, soil pH, bulk density (rho (b)), porosity, soil organic carbon (SOC), and total nitrogen (TN), were invariable with management, yet only pH and EC did not significantly vary with the interaction of soil type and management effects. In comparison, the PCA results suggest that SOC, TN, porosity, rho (b), and EC were the major determining factors controlling yield variability. Interestingly, the derived models revealed that the highest yields, notably 10 and 2.7 Mg ha(-1) for corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) occurred in soils under CT management. Quantifying the nexus between soil properties and management choices as demonstrated in this study, can provide critical insight for sustainable agricultural production.Over the next 25 years, the San Francisco Bay Area is expected to add two million new people, mostly in compact urban centers along transportation corridors. While this approach supports regional climate change mitigation goals, it also poses hazards to community health by siting new housing near sources of air pollution such as freeways, rail yards, ports, and distribution centers. This will exacerbate poor health outcomes in low-income communities of color, where many already live in housing with unsafe levels of indoor and outdoor pollution. In recent years the Ditching Dirty Diesel Collaborative (DDD)-a regional coalition of environmental justice advocates, public health departments, and researchers in the Bay Area-has advanced a campaign to win pollution-free housing for all through policy change that secures healthier housing siting, design, and mitigations to reduce toxic exposure. DDD worked to answer two interrelated questions: 1) How can land use conflicts be avoided so that sensitive uses like housing are better sited and designed to reduce exposure to outdoor pollution? and 2) What tools are available to improve indoor air quality in new and existing housing in locations with poor outdoor air quality? By engaging regional planning agencies and affordable housing advocates, coalition members identified and advanced policies to build health-protective measures into local and regional transportation and land use planning guidelines. It also assesses strategies used to build a broader coalition of advocates, agencies, and decision makers to support pollution-free housing for all by reducing exposure to transportation-related pollutants in housing.This paper assesses the effects of a global emissions trading scheme (GETS) for international aviation and shipping as a way of reducing emissions of both greenhouse gases (GHG) and other atmospheric emissions that lead to air pollution. A prior assessment of such integration requires the coupling of energy-environment-economy (E3) global modelling of mitigation policies with the atmospheric modelling of pollution sources, mixing and deposition. We report the methodology and results of coupling of the E3MG model and the global atmospheric model, p-TOMCAT. We assess the effects of GETS on the concentrations of atmospheric gases and on the radiative forcing, comparing a GETS scenario to a reference BASE scenario with higher use of fossil fuels. The paper assesses the outcome of GETS for atmospheric composition and radiative forcing for 2050. GETS on international shipping and aviation reduces their CO2 and non-CO2 emissions up to 65%. As a consequence atmospheric concentrations are modified and the radiative forcing due to international transport is reduced by different amounts as a function of the pollutant studied (15% for CO2, 35% for methane and up to 50% for ozone). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rural land use sector could potentially mitigate a large amount of GHG emissions. Implementation requires the engagement of farmers and other land managers. Understanding the barriers and enablers for the uptake of these practices is essential both to inform policy-makers and to achieve effective policy outreach. In Scotland, the rural land use sector is subject to a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target of 21% by 2020 relative to 1990 levels. This study contributes to the body of research on stakeholders' perspectives about suitability of climate change mitigation practices at the regional level. Mixed-methods were used to collect the data, namely participatory workshops with scientists and relevant stakeholders, a farmer questionnaire, and focus groups with farmers. Findings show that farmers were mainly willing to expand the uptake of mitigation practices they were already implementing because they consider these are the most cost-effective. Barriers to the implementation of mitigation practices are mainly related to physical-environmental constraints, lack of information and education and personal interests and values. Similarly, enablers are also related to physical-environmental factors and personal interests and values. Economic incentives, voluntary approaches and provision of information have been identified by workshop participants as the most favourable approaches needed to promote the uptake of technically feasible mitigation practices. Farmers, however, consider that agriculture is a "special case" and should have not to comply with GHG emission reduction targets. Mitigation practices, should, therefore, be integrated with other initiatives. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Abandonment of agricultural land and the subsequent recolonization by natural vegetation is known to cause increases in C contents, contributing to reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Assessment of the possible mitigation of CO2 excess requires understanding the SOC dynamics, the origin of C pools and the pathways of their transformation. The aims of this work were to assess, by using the delta C-13 signature, the changes of old and new organic C in total (soil organic carbon, SOC) and labile (microbial biomass C, MBC, dissolved organic C, DOC, CO2 efflux from soil) pools after vegetation change from vineyard (C-3) to grassland (C-4) under semiarid Mediterranean climate. Colonization of abandoned vineyard by the perennial C-4-grass Hyparrhenia hirta after 15 or 35 years increased topsoil C stocks by 13% and 16%, respectively. Such an increase was attributed to new above- and below-ground biomass C input from H. hirta. The maximal incorporation of new C was observed in MBC, whereas the DOC derived mainly from old SOC. Based on delta C-13 values of SOC, MBC, DOC and CO2 in C-3 soil and in soils after 15 and 35 years of C-4 grass colonization, C-13 fractionation per se from changes in isotopic composition by preferential utilization of substrates with different availability was separated. MBC in C-3-C-4 soil used more recent (C-13-enriched) versus old C (relatively C-13-depleted) sources. The Delta C-13 by decomposition of SOC to CO2 (delta C-13 of CO2 minus delta C-13 of SOC) was higher than, Delta C-13 by microbial respiration (CO2 minus MBC), demonstrating that under semiarid climate, soil microorganisms do not always preferentially decompose the most available SOC pools. The use of delta C-13 signature of SOC after C-3-C-4 vegetation change combined with soil incubation is a powerful tool to assess the exchange between old and new C in pools of various availability. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Tropical rainforests store enormous amounts of carbon, the protection of which represents a vital component of efforts to mitigate global climate change. Currently, tropical forest conservation, science, policies, and climate mitigation actions focus predominantly on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation alone. However, every year vast areas of the humid tropics are disturbed by selective logging, understory fires, and habitat fragmentation. There is an urgent need to understand the effect of such disturbances on carbon stocks, and how stocks in disturbed forests compare to those found in undisturbed primary forests as well as in regenerating secondary forests. Here, we present the results of the largest field study to date on the impacts of human disturbances on above and belowground carbon stocks in tropical forests. Live vegetation, the largest carbon pool, was extremely sensitive to disturbance: forests that experienced both selective logging and understory fires stored, on average, 40% less aboveground carbon than undisturbed forests and were structurally similar to secondary forests. Edge effects also played an important role in explaining variability in aboveground carbon stocks of disturbed forests. Results indicate a potential rapid recovery of the dead wood and litter carbon pools, while soil stocks (0-30cm) appeared to be resistant to the effects of logging and fire. Carbon loss and subsequent emissions due to human disturbances remain largely unaccounted for in greenhouse gas inventories, but by comparing our estimates of depleted carbon stocks in disturbed forests with Brazilian government assessments of the total forest area annually disturbed in the Amazon, we show that these emissions could represent up to 40% of the carbon loss from deforestation in the region. We conclude that conservation programs aiming to ensure the long-term permanence of forest carbon stocks, such as REDD+, will remain limited in their success unless they effectively avoid degradation as well as deforestation.The study ascertained knowledge and perceived roles of state based-Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in climate change mitigation and adaptation in Anambra State, Nigeria. Multistage random sampling technique was employed to select thirty five respondents from 4 local government areas and 7 NGOs in the state while data were collected with questionnaire. Percentage and mean scores were used in analyzing the data. Results revealed that greater proportion (60%) of NGO members were not aware of climate change while about 63% indicated that issues on climate change have not been included in their programme. They perceived major causes of climate change as over industrialization (M=2.77) and use of automobiles (M=2.74) while land degradation and over flooding (M=2.77 each) were major effects of climate change. Proper land use and management (M=2.89) and reforestation/(M=2.83) were mitigation measures while minimum tillage (M=2.74) and use of resistant varieties (M=) were adaptive measures to climate change as perceived by them. They further perceived creation of awareness and sensitization of rural people/farmers about climate change (77.1%each) and helping government in enforcement of policies and laws that will help to mitigate climate change (57.1%) as roles they can play in climate change mitigation and adaptation. They did not perceive any major problem that can mar their contributions to climate change issue. The study emphasized on the need for private sector especially NGOs investment and participation in global and sensitive issues like climate change. This will go a long way in discovering and disseminating quick and useful information on climate change and probably ultimate solution to it.The present work addresses calls to clarify the role of gender in climate change mitigation and adaptation by testing a theoretical model linking gender and concern with future and immediate consequences to mitigation actions through political orientation, environmental values, and belief in global warming (gender x time orientation -> liberal political orientation -> environmental values -> belief in global warming -> willingness to pay to reduce global warming). Drawing on a sample of 299 U.S. residents, structural equation modeling and bootstrapped indirect effects testing revealed support for the model. Interaction analyses further revealed that women scored higher than men on model variables among respondents who routinely consider the future consequences of their actions, but the gender difference was reversed among those low in concern with future consequences (on liberal political orientation and willingness to pay to reduce global warming). Practical and theoretical implications are considered. (c) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.There are worldwide approximately 4.3 million coffee (Coffea arabica) producing smallholders generating a large share of tropical developing countries' gross domestic product, notably in Central America. Their livelihoods and coffee production are facing major challenges due to projected climate change, requiring adaptation decisions that may range from changes in management practices to changes in crops or migration. Since management practices such as shade use and reforestation influence both climate vulnerability and carbon stocks in coffee, there may be synergies between climate change adaptation and mitigation that could make it advantageous to jointly pursue both objectives. In some cases, carbon accounting for mitigation actions might even be used to incentivize and subsidize adaptation actions. To assess potential synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation in smallholder coffee production systems, we quantified (i) the potential of changes in coffee production and processing practices as well as other livelihood activities to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, (ii) coffee farmers' climate change vulnerability and need for adaptation, including the possibility of carbon markets subsidizing adaptation. We worked with smallholder organic coffee farmers in Northern Nicaragua, using workshops, interviews, farm visits and the Cool Farm Tool software to calculate greenhouse gas balances of coffee farms. From the 12 activities found to be relevant for adaptation, two showed strong and five showed modest synergies with mitigation. Afforestation of degraded areas with coffee agroforestry systems and boundary tree plantings resulted in the highest synergies between adaptation and mitigation. Financing possibilities for joint adaptation-mitigation activities could arise through carbon offsetting, carbon insetting, and carbon footprint reductions. Non-monetary benefits such as technical assistance and capacity building could be effective in promoting such synergies at low transaction costs.Background: The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has set a target for increasing forest cover from the present level of 23% of land area to 33% and agroforestry contributes to this target. Methods: The effect of agroforestry on carbon sequestration and livelihood security of people in India was reviewed. Also, a survey was conducted in two regions of West Bengal, one drought-prone and the other in a mountainous district, to assess the contribution of agroforestry to human well-being and livelihood security. Results: The average carbon sequestration potential of agroforestry systems is estimated to be 25t. ha(-1) over 96 million ha but there is substantial regional variability. The survey showed that village communities are dependent on agroforestry systems for income, employment opportunities and livelihood security. An account is also given of Government forestry and tree-planting programmes that encourage the practice of silvipasture, agrisilviculture, and agrihorticulture in rain-fed and irrigated areas. Conclusions: Agroforestry systems offer opportunities for the improvement of the livelihood of poor people through provision of economic and environmental security.Voluntary carbon offsetting was popularised during the last decade, particularly by airlines, as a tool to 'neutralise' emissions associated with travel. Although there is a wide range of carbon offsetting schemes for tourism, the uptake of these programs has been reportedly low. Regardless, little research has explored the visitor segments who voluntarily undertake carbon offsetting. Consequently, this research investigates the prevalence of carbon offsetting amongst international tourists to Australia between 2008 and 2010 and, using cluster analysis, segments the carbon offsetters into three distinct markets. Findings reveal a stable carbon offsetting market, despite a Global Financial Crisis occurring during the reference period. Further, travellers from the United Kingdom/Europe were more likely to carbon offset, while those from Asia were less likely to participate in the schemes. Thus, this could indicate that the social marketing, public discourse and substantial media coverage in the United Kingdom/Europe had enhanced climate change mitigation behaviours. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In some areas of Sub-Saharan Africa appropriate organic waste management technology could address development issues such as soil degradation, unemployment and energy scarcity, while at the same time reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper investigates the role that carbon markets could have in facilitating the implementation of composting, anaerobic digestion and biochar production, in the city of Tamale, in the North of Ghana. Through a life cycle assessment of implementation scenarios for lowtech, small scale variants of the above mentioned three technologies, the potential contribution they could give to climate change mitigation was assessed. Furthermore an economic assessment was carried out to study their viability and the impact thereon of accessing carbon markets. It was found that substantial climate benefits can be achieved by avoiding landfilling of organic waste, producing electricity and substituting the use of chemical fertilizer. Biochar production could result in a net carbon sequestration. These technologies were however found not to be economically viable without external subsidies, and access to carbon markets at the considered carbon price of 7 EUR/ton of carbon would not change the situation significantly. Carbon markets could help the realization of the considered composting and anaerobic digestion systems only if the carbon price will rise above 75-84 EUR/t of carbon (respectively for anaerobic digestion and composting). Biochar production could achieve large climate benefits and, if approved as a land based climate mitigation mechanism in carbon markets, it would become economically viable at the lower carbon price of 30 EUR/t of carbon. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Woodfuel is a renewable energy source with good potential for climate change mitigation. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the sector employs over 300,000 people for the supply of Kinshasa alone, but the benefits to the poor are often unknown. This paper analyzes the contribution of commercial woodfuel production to livelihoods and poverty reduction in the DRC. Woodfuel revenues, especially those of charcoal, contribute substantially to producers' household income, ranging from 12% for fuelwood producers around Kisangani to 75% for charcoal producers around Kinshasa. It supports basic needs and investments in other livelihood activities (for 82% of charcoal producers and 65% of fuelwood producers), which helps to reduce poverty. The contribution of woodfuel commercialization to poverty reduction should be part of energy and forestry policies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several studies point out the importance of agricultural emissions to particulate matter (PM) concentrations, and particularly of NH3 emissions to PM2.5. Our study used three different chemical transport models (CHIMERE, EMEP and LOTOS-EUROS) to quantify the reductions of PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations due to reductions of NH3 emissions beyond the Gothenburg Protocol (GP), as well as due to the GP alone compared to 2009. Simulations of PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations using 2009 meteorology were undertaken for five emission scenarios: 2009 emissions (as the reference simulation), GP emissions in 2020, and further 10%, 20% and 30% NH3 emission reductions in EU27 beyond the GP. The modelling results for the scenarios with further 10%, 20% and 30% NH3 agriculture emission reductions in EU27 beyond the GP show that the reduction achieved in PM concentrations is not linear with the emission reductions. In fact, the results from the study show that the impact of ammonia emissions reduction is significantly more efficient when the emission reduction rises. Moreover, based on the evaluation on 2009, the modelling study shows that the expected impact of ammonia emissions on the formation of particulate ammonium was underestimated by all models. This would imply that the role of ammonia on PM concentration and exceedances of PM2.5 and PM10 limit values is likely to be even larger than quantified in this study. This study shows that the implementation of the emission reductions imposed by the revised GP for 2020 will not suffice to achieve compliance with PM limit values everywhere in Europe; hence further European and local measures may be considered. NH3 emissions from agriculture can be further reduced with the implementation of proven and feasible measures (substitution of fertilizers, improved storage of manure, way fertilizer injections, etc.,...), in order to reduce PM concentrations and their impacts on human health across Europe. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While bioenergy plays a key role in strategies for increasing renewable energy deployment, studies assessing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from forest bioenergy systems have identified a potential trade-off of the system with forest carbon stocks. Of particular importance to national GHG inventories is how trade-offs between forest carbon stocks and bioenergy production are accounted for within the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector under current and future international climate change mitigation agreements. Through a case study of electricity produced using wood pellets from harvested forest stands in Ontario, Canada, this study assesses the implications of forest carbon accounting approaches on net emissions attributable to pellets produced for domestic use or export. Particular emphasis is placed on the forest management reference level (FMRL) method, as it will be employed by most Annex I nations in the next Kyoto Protocol Commitment Period. While bioenergy production is found to reduce forest carbon sequestration, under the FMRL approach this trade-off may not be accounted for and thus not incur an accountable AFOLU-related emission, provided that total forest harvest remains at or below that defined under the FMRL baseline. In contrast, accounting for forest carbon trade-offs associated with harvest for bioenergy results in an increase in net GHG emissions (AFOLU and life cycle emissions) lasting 37 or 90 years (if displacing coal or natural gas combined cycle generation, respectively). AFOLU emissions calculated using the Gross-Net approach are dominated by legacy effects of past management and natural disturbance, indicating near-term net forest carbon increase but longer-term reduction in forest carbon stocks. Export of wood pellets to EU markets does not greatly affect the total life cycle GHG emissions of wood pellets. However, pellet exporting countries risk creating a considerable GHG emissions burden, as they are responsible for AFOLU and bioenergy production emissions but do not receive credit for pellets displacing fossil fuel-related GHG emissions. Countries producing bioenergy from forest biomass, whether for domestic use or for export, should carefully consider potential implications of alternate forest carbon accounting methods to ensure that potential bioenergy pathways can contribute to GHG emissions reduction targets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Advance biochar production technique, hydrothermal carbonization (HTC, wet pyrolysis) offers an option to tap the benefits of biomass residues of food industry characterized by high moisture and low calorific value. HTC is more energy efficient due to its low temperature operations and higher biochar recovery rates (up to 90%). Biochar offers multitude of benefits in terms of agronomical and environmental management. It can contribute to climate change mitigation, increase plant productivity and crop yield and remediation of contaminated sites. Limitations and knowledge gaps in the current understanding of biochar along with its properties have been identified. Major hurdles recognized in commercialization of biochar application are permanency, diversity and economic viability.The changing climate in the Arctic opens new shipping routes. A shift to shorter Arctic transit will, however, incur a climate penalty over the first one and a half centuries. We investigate the net climate effect of diverting a segment of Europe Asia container traffic from the Suez to an Arctic transit route. We find an initial net warming for the first one-and-a-half centuries, which gradually declines and transitions to net cooling as the effects of CO2 reductions become dominant, resulting in climate mitigation only in the long term. Thus, the possibilities for shifting shipping to the Arctic confront policymakers with the question of how to weigh a century scale warming with large uncertainties versus a long-term climate benefit from CO2 reductions.Anthropogenic global warming is driven by emissions of a wide variety of radiative forcers ranging from very short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), like black carbon, to very long-lived, like CO2. These species are often released from common sources and are therefore intricately linked. However, for reasons of simplification, this CO2-SLCF linkage was often disregarded in long-term projections of earlier studies. Here we explicitly account for CO2-SLCF linkages and show that the short-and long-term climate effects of many SLCF measures consistently become smaller in scenarios that keep warming to below 2 degrees C relative to preindustrial levels. Although long-term mitigation of methane and hydrofluorocarbons are integral parts of 2 degrees C scenarios, early action on these species mainly influences near-term temperatures and brings small benefits for limiting maximum warming relative to comparable reductions taking place later. Furthermore, we find that maximum 21st-century warming in 2 degrees C-consistent scenarios is largely unaffected by additional black-carbon-related measures because key emission sources are already phased-out through CO2 mitigation. Our study demonstrates the importance of coherently considering CO2-SLCF coevolutions. Failing to do so leads to strongly and consistently overestimating the effect of SLCF measures in climate stabilization scenarios. Our results reinforce that SLCF measures are to be considered complementary rather than a substitute for early and stringent CO2 mitigation. Near-term SLCF measures do not allow for more time for CO2 mitigation. We disentangle and resolve the distinct benefits across different species and therewith facilitate an integrated strategy for mitigating both short and long-term climate change.This study provides the comprehensive analysis of changes in mean and extreme temperature indices of India to assist the climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and to add information for the global comparisons, using a high-resolution daily gridded temperature data set (1 degrees x1 degrees) during 1971-2005. In addition to the indices recommended by the World Meteorological Organization/CLIVAR Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices, few more indices having social and agricultural implication are investigated at the seasonal and annual scales, utilizing widely adopted statistical methodologies in climate research. The results show, in general, a robust signal of warming, broadly consistent with what has been observed and predicted in other parts of the world in the context of global warming. The frequency and intensity of warm extremes, especially representing the daily minimum temperature, have increased with simultaneous decreases in cold extremes in large parts of the country, but the spatial distribution of the trend magnitude reflects the complex natural climatic settings of India and its possible interaction with the anthropogenic forcing. Seasonal analysis reveals a faster warming in day and night temperatures in winter affecting the major wheat crop. In summer, however, both human and ecosystems appear to be more vulnerable to the increasing tendency of the heatwave occurrences, particularly during night-time, since the 1990s. The relationship with the large-scale natural climatic modes indicates that the warming indices tend to increase in the year following the El Nino events as evident from the correlation with the NINO3.4 index, with a relatively higher association in the monsoon season. Moreover, the concurrent correspondence of the summer heatwaves with the north Indian Ocean sea surface temperature suggests a degree of predictability of the heat stress episode.Hydrotreated Renewable Jet (HRJ) fuel has increasingly become important for the aviation sector to address energy security and climate change mitigation. Rapeseed (Brassica Napus) is a favored candidate feedstock for HRJ because of its high quality oil content and agroeconomic benefit to replace the fallow period in wheat/fallow rotations. We conducted research to evaluate regional differences in nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions for rapeseed cultivation in several counties in 10 states in the United States (U.S.). The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) methodology was applied, and results were compared to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines. In this study, yield, nitrogen fertilizer rate, and types were held constant for all locations in order to understand the similarities and differences in the RSB and IPCC methods for estimating N2O emissions. From the results, the RSB-calculated N2O emissions varied for different U.S. states, though regional differences were very small, 0.72-0.73 kg N2O Mr(-1)seed, while N2O emissions from IPCC method were the same for all sites, 0.87 kg N2O Mr(-1)seed. The difference between the RSB and IPCC methods is caused by the indirect N2O emissions from ammonia emissions and nitrate leaching. However, the influence of indirect effect is relatively small compared to overall N2O emissions. The utilization of the RSB method may not be justified for estimating regional variations in N2O emissions. As a consequence, the preliminary greenhouse gas (GHG) of rapeseed HRJ fuel using the RSB method in several locations had small differences in result 42.7 -43.0 g CO2 eq/MJ compared to 45.9 g CO2 eq/MJ using the IPCC method. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Businesses are expected to become engines for positive change, and mounting evidence indicates that corporate sustainability is a success factor for businesses around the globe. In this context, the 'business as usual' approach to running businesses with negative environmental consequences is not an option. Industrial ecology and sustainable business models offer solutions on how this transformation can take place. However, transformation of non-manufacturing industries in this respect has not been covered in the literature. The aim of this paper is therefore is to use scientific and industry literature and interview data from the Nordic non-life insurance sector to propose closed-loop insurance models. The new models allow insurance leaders to move away from running the insurance business in an old-fashioned linear way, and thus gain a better understanding of how the business contributes to sustainable development. The transformation of insurers' business models is an example of how business models of non-manufacturing industries can be reinvented to support sustainable economic growth by utilizing ideas from industrial ecology. The new business models proposed place insurance business models within the overall research in industrial ecology, thereby filling an evident gap in the literature by showing that the closed-loop concept applies to non-manufacturers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) initiative has emerged in recent years as a mechanism to simultaneously address climate change, biodiversity, and poverty reduction challenges at the margins of tropical forests. Congo Basin countries, including Cameroon, have embraced the opportunities that REDD+ provides, with great expectations. Yet, it needs to be investigated whether the enabling institutional environment, which is required for implementing REDD+, is present. Understanding is still limited on how to build adequate and strong institutional relations that could shape the reforms towards the establishment of efficient emissions reductions schemes. Furthermore, uncertainty remains on the operational mechanisms of REDD+, suggesting that, to catalyse effectiveness, there is a need to come up with a governance model nested in relevant policy frameworks. This study builds on a modified '4Is' framework - Institutions, Interests, Ideas and Information - to analyse REDD+ and explore stakeholders' perceptions on the local forest governance potential. A structural implementation model to optimize the effectiveness of REDD+ is developed. Findings suggest that governments need to review existing policies to take into account participation, local people rights, and information access as a way to stimulate actors' willingness to contribute to emissions reductions and carbon stock increases under REDD+ regimes.Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are "wicked problems," such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uekll and Peirce.Our paper explores the implication of climate mitigation policy and electricity generation technology performance for capital investment demands by the electric power sector on near term to century time scales. We find that stabilizing GHG emissions will require additional investment in the electricity generation sector over and above investments that would be needed in the absence of climate policy, in the range of 15 to 29 trillion US$ (48-94%) depending on the stringency of climate policy during the period 2015 to 2095 under default technology assumptions. This increase reflects the higher capital intensity of power systems that control emissions as well as increased electrification of the global economy. Limits on the penetration of nuclear and carbon capture and storage technology could increase costs substantially. Energy efficiency improvements can reduce the investment requirement by 18 to 24 trillion US$ (compared to default technology climate policy assumptions), depending on climate policy scenario. We also highlight the implications of different technology evolution scenarios for different regions. Under default technology set, the heaviest investments across scenarios in power generation were observed in China, India, SE Asia and Africa regions with the latter three regions dominating in the second half of the 21st century. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change impacts on marine environments have been somewhat neglected in climate change research, particularly with regard to their social dimensions and implications. This paper contributes to addressing this gap through presenting a UK focused mixed-method study of how publics frame, understand and respond to marine climate change-related issues. It draws on data from a large national survey of UK publics (N = 1,001), undertaken in January 2011 as part of a wider European survey, in conjunction with in-depth qualitative insights from a citizens' panel with participants from the East Anglia region, UK. This reveals that discrete marine climate change impacts, as often framed in technical or institutional terms, were not the most immediate or significant issues for most respondents. Study participants tended to view these climate impacts 'in context', in situated ways, and as entangled with other issues relating to marine environments and their everyday lives. Whilst making connections with scientific knowledge on the subject, public understandings of marine climate impacts were mainly shaped by personal experience, the visibility and proximity of impacts, sense of personal risk and moral or equity-based arguments. In terms of responses, study participants prioritised climate change mitigation measures over adaptation, even in high-risk areas. We consider the implications of these insights for research and practices of public engagement on marine climate impacts specifically, and climate change more generally. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This introduction to the special section on "Governing Agriculture-Forest Landscapes to Achieve Climate Change Mitigation" reviews external interventions to improve forest conditions and reduce deforestation, and by extension, influence carbon storage in agriculture-forest landscapes. The review is based on a careful survey of 123 cases of project-based and policy interventions to influence land use and forest cover outcomes. We propose that outcomes of interventions can be explained in terms of rights, incentives, and technologies related to land use and apply this framework to examine 12 types of interventions in agriculture-forest landscapes. The analysis of the identified 123 cases raises concerns about consistency of data and comparability of cases. Our preliminary evidence suggests limited association between the stated objective of an intervention and its success. This evidence also suggests that smaller scale and effective enforcement may be positively associated with improved forest outcomes. But the effectiveness of interventions across different agriculture-forest landscapes varies and available evidence does not permit easy generalizations. The variable effects of interventions across different agriculture-forest landscapes point to the need to better understand the forms and functions of interventions and to problems associated with assessing their relative efficacy. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Rural and regional hinterlands provide the ecosystem service needs for increasingly urbanised communities across the globe. These inter-related ecosystem services provide key opportunities in securing climate change mitigation and adaptation. Their integrated management in the face of climate change, however, can be confounded by fragmentation within the complex institutional arrangements concerned with natural resource management. This suggests the need for a more systemic approach to continuous improvement in the integrated and adaptive governance of natural resources. This paper explores the theoretical foundations for integrated natural resource management and reviews positive systemic improvements that have been emerging in the Australian context. In setting clear theoretical foundations, the paper explores both functional and structural aspects of natural resource governance systems. Functional considerations include issues of connectivity, knowledge use and capacity within the natural resource decision making environment. Structural considerations refer to the institutions and processes that undertake planning through to implementation, monitoring and evaluation. From this foundation, we review the last decade of emerging initiatives in governance regarding the integration of agriculture and forests across the entire Australian landscape. This includes the shift towards more devolved regional approaches to integrated natural resource management and recent progress towards the use of terrestrial carbon at landscape scale to assist in climate change mitigation and adaptation. These developments, however, have also been tempered by a significant raft of new landscape-scale regulations that have tended to be based on a more centralist philosophy that landowners should be providing ecosystem services for the wider public good without substantive reward. Given this background, we explore a case study of efforts taken to integrate the management of landscape-scale agro-ecological services in the Wet Tropics of tropical Queensland. This is being achieved primarily through the integration of regional natural resource management planning and the development of aggregated terrestrial carbon offset products at a whole of landscape scale via the Degree Celsius initiative. Finally, the paper teases out the barriers and opportunities being experienced, leading to discussion about the global implications for managing climate change, income generation and poverty reduction. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The adoption of clean energy policies is becoming more common among US localities, but is still far from universal. Policy innovation theory suggests that some shared internal characteristics should distinguish the localities that adopt those policies from others that do not. Based on a survey of US local government officials, and supplementary data from the US Census, we use multiple regression analysis to identify those distinguishing characteristics. We find that collaborative planning approaches play a crucial role in helping localities build the local civic capacity necessary to adopt these innovative policies. Our results reinforce prior studies which have found that citizen participation and stakeholder participation in planning processes can help to foster the development of innovative local policies for sustainability and climate change mitigation. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentThe construction of new fossil fuel energy infrastructure implies a commitment to burn fossil fuels and therefore produce CO2 emissions for several decades into the future. The recent letter by Davis and Socolow (2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 084018) highlights the current and growing commitment to future emissions, and argues that this emission commitment should be accounted for at the time of new construction. The idea of accounting for future committed emissions associated with current energy policy decisions is compelling and could equally be applied to other aspects of the fossil fuel supply chain, such as investing in the development of new fossil fuel reserves. There is evidence, for example, that oil reserves are growing faster that the rate of extraction, implying a growing future emissions commitment that is likely incompatible with climate mitigation targets.European Union (EU) legal studies generally picture the Member States' local and regional authorities as implementers of national and supranational norms rather than independent regulators. Yet, sub-national authorities (SNAs) have become active regulators in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation, a role not foreseen by EU primary law, which this article understands to constitute the surface of EU law. This article examines regulatory activity of SNAs from the perspective of EU law. It illustrates that sub-national, national, supranational and international actors are engaged in a process of mutual learning and experimentation and that, below its surface, EU law recognises that SNAs are not mere implementers of norms but also independent regulators.Integration of land use and transport decisions to achieve sustainable travel behavior has been considered an integral element for sustainable urban development. However, before the popularity of urban sustainability concept, land use and transport interaction had been scrutinized as strictly separate entities in the urban planning and development domains. Fortunately, today the concept of sustainability has been pushed to the forefront of policy-making and politics as the world wakes up to the impacts of climate change and the effects of the rapid urbanization and modern urban lifestyles. The paper therefore aims to highlight the importance of the interplay between transport, land use and the environment. This review paper provides evidence from the literature including the Transport, Land Use and the Environment Special Issue contributions and global best practice cases to showcase new empirical approaches and investigations from different parts of the world that contribute to the wealth of knowledge in exploring the interplay between transport, land use and the environment thoroughly.Agricultural nonpoint source pollution is the main source of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in the intensely row-cropped Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) stream system and is considered the primary cause of the northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. A point of crucial importance in this region is therefore how intensive corn (Zea mays L.)-based cropping systems for food and fuel production can be sustainable and coexist with a healthy water environment, not only under existing climate conditions but also under a changed climate in the future. To address this issue, a UMRB integrated modeling system has been built with a greatly refined 12-digit subbasin structure based on the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) water quality model, which is capable of estimating landscape and in-stream water and pollutant yields in response to a wide array of alternative cropping and/or management strategies and climatic conditions. The effects of the following four agricultural management scenarios on crop production and pollutant loads exported from the cropland of the UMRB to streams and rivers were evaluated: (1) expansion of continuous corn across the entire basin, (2) adoption of no-till on all corn and soybean (Glycine max L.) fields in the region, (3) substitution of the traditional continuous corn and corn-soybean rotations with an extended five-year rotation consisting of corn, soybean, and three years of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), and (4) implementation of a winter cover crop within the baseline rotations. The effects of each management scenario were evaluated both for current climate and a projected midcentury (2046 to 2065) climate from a General Circulation Model (GCM). All four scenarios behaved similarly under the historical and future climate, generally resulting in reduced erosion and nutrient loadings to surface water bodies compared to the baseline agricultural management. Continuous corn was the only scenario which resulted in increased N pollution while no-till was the most environmentally effective and able to sustain production at almost the same levels. Rye (Secale cereale L.) cover crop within the fallow period was also effective in reducing erosion and both sediment-bound and soluble forms of nutrients. The results indicated that alternative management practices could reduce sediment, N, and P exports from UMRB cropland by up to 50% without significantly affecting yields. Results for the climate change scenario showed that the effectiveness of the management scenarios was strongly linked to the reduced water availability predicted under the future climate, which assisted in mitigating pollutant transport, although with a small loss of production.Soils may be a source or sink of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide [CO2], nitrous oxide [N2O], and methane [CH4]) that lead to global warming and climate change. While it is known that greenhouse gases are naturally cycled through soil and are part of the carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles, it is not fully understood what effect crop production practices have on this cycling. Therefore, a study was conducted at the longest, continually maintained no-tillage plots in the world at Wooster (50 years no-till), near Wooster, Ohio, and Hoytville (49 years no-till), near Custar, Ohio, that represent two contrasting Ohio soils. Fluxes of greenhouse gases were measured by gas chromatography (GC) biweekly and following rain-fall events greater than 1.2 cm (0.5 in) during the growing season of the corn (Zea mays L.), starting in July of 2011 until October of 2011, and then from May of 2012 to July of 2012. Samples were obtained at both sites in plots with rotations of corn after corn (CC) and corn after soybean (Glycine max L.) (CS), and when soils were managed using no-tillage (NT) and chisel or minimum conservation tillage (MT). Comparisons statistically significant at the p < 0.10 level are as follows. For CO2, the CS rotation yielded lower emissions than the CC at both sites, due to less biomass cycling. For N2O, the CS rotation yielded lower emissions than the CC at both sites due to less total N fertilizer input in the CS than the CC rotation. The NT system resulted in lower N2O emissions than the MT system at Hoytville, but not at Wooster. For CH4, soil in the long-term plots often acted as sinks. Global warming potentials were lower for Hoytville than Wooster and lower for rotation of CS than CC at both Hoytville and Wooster. Overall, after about 50 years, it is evident that the use of no-tillage combined with crop rotations can lead to improved environmental (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions and global warming potential) benefits.The drought of 2012 provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the effects of cover crop on soil moisture under relatively extreme conditions. The objective of this study was to quantify potential differences in soil moisture due to the presence of a rye (Secale cerale L.) cover crop in a corn (Zea mays L.)-soybean (Glycine max L.) rotation at various locations in the Midwestern United States during the drought of 2012. Soil volumetric water content (.) and soil water storage (SWS) were monitored at three sites in Iowa and Indiana. Daily measurements of soil. were taken at 10, 20, 40, and 60 cm (3.9, 7.9, 15.7, and 23.6 in) soil depths, and SWS was estimated to an 80 cm (31.5 in) depth. Soil water during the drought of 2012 was affected by a rye cover crop in comparison to without a rye cover crop for one (i.e., located in Iowa) of the three sites monitored. At the Iowa site, soil theta was on average 0.041 and 0.033 cm(3) cm(-3) (0.041 and 0.033 in(3) in(-3)) greater at the 10 and 20 cm (3.9 and 7.8 in) depths, respectively, following termination of a rye cover crop than crops without a rye cover crop. Thus, during the 2012 drought, the use of a rye cover crop as compared to without a rye cover crop in a corn-soybean rotation did not significantly lower soil water conditions. The use of a cover crop either had no impact or significantly increased soil water conservation.This paper analyzes key factors that led to rising global energy demand in recent decades. In addition to income and price elasticities traditionally examined, this research takes into account the effects of structural, demographic, technological and temperature changes on energy demand. Using newly developed panel data techniques allowing for spatial error and/or spatial lag dependence, this research finds evidence for the existence of spatial lag dependence, a positive but declining income elasticity, a negative price elasticity, and the significant effects of industry/service value added, urbanization and technical innovations on energy demand. This research has important implications for public policies that aim to encourage energy savings, develop service sector and promote energy-efficient technologies towards a sustainable energy future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Australia, as in other Western countries, peri-urban farmland is increasingly being considered a public good, contributing to urban sustainability and climate change mitigation. To retain local food production, advocates have called for the implementation of farmland protection policies that restrict urban development, such as exclusion zoning. Many such policies have been abandoned due to protests, often from the very people the policies are ostensibly intended to protect - farmers. Examining the failure of Sydney's latest green zones' through a political ecology lens, this paper challenges the prevailing narrative that these protests indicate a lack of community support for the ideal of farmland protection. The failure of the green zones was one of political process, specifically the lack of consultation with Sydney's culturally and linguistically diverse small-scale farmers, rather than community rejection of the principle of protection. Interview responses from farmers suggest that a bottom-up approach to policy-making would have yielded alternative and more successful approaches to maintaining farming on the fringe. This paper concludes that ensuring small-scale farmers have access to and agency in the environmental decision-making process generates options for farmland protection policy that move beyond a housing-versus-farming dichotomy.In this paper, for the first time, we present findings on the life cycle environmental implications of an ionic liquid (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate, [bmim](+)[Ac](-))-based carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) process retrofitted to a coal-fired power plant. Ionic liquids are considered as promising alternative solvents to currently proven technology based on monoethanolamine (MEA). The results indicate that a CCS process with 90% CO2 capture efficiency based on [bmim](+)[Ac](-) reduces life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by only 50%. This does not compare favorably with 75% life cycle GHG reductions offered by the MBA-based CCS process. In depth analysis reveals that despite lower total energy requirements for the ionic liquid process the increased need for electricity results in poor environmental performance. The insights gained from the results of the ionic liquid [bmim](+)[Ac](-) CCS process is used to explore critical life cycle environmental performance parameters and trade-offs in the context of future design of functionalized ionic liquids for CO2 capture. This work will aid energy system and policy analysts to understand the full implications of future ionic liquid-based CCS systems.While it has been recognized that actions reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can have significant positive and negative impacts on human health through reductions in ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations, these impacts are rarely taken into account when analyzing specific policies. This study presents a new framework for estimating the change in health outcomes resulting from implementation of specific carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction activities, allowing comparison of different sectors and options for climate mitigation activities. Our estimates suggest that in the year 2020, the reductions in adverse health outcomes from lessened exposure to PM2.5 would yield economic benefits in the range of $6 to $30 billion (in 2008 USD), depending on the specific activity. This equates to between $40 and $198 per metric ton of CO2 in health benefits. Specific climate interventions will vary in the health co-benefits they provide as well as in potential harms that may result from their implementation. Rigorous assessment of these health impacts is essential for guiding policy decisions as efforts to reduce GHG emissions increase in scope and intensity.While the case for rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is compelling, actions being taken by most senior decision makers (SDMs) in government and business compound the problem. Given the systemic reach of much senior decision making, including decisions that constrain their own actions, there is an urgent need to open up the SDM black box. Focused on Western governments and multinational corporations, this article examines a cross-disciplinary range of literature to ask: What are the key factors affecting the preparedness of SDMsparticularly those who accept the climate scienceto take the decisive actions needed to drive rapid and significant emission reductions? The review brings together multiple perspectives on the many compounding factors operating across three interconnected scales: micro (individual and interpersonal factors including disciplinary background, worldview, gender, and risk perceptions); meso (network, organizational and institutional factors including management paradigms, organizational culture, and institutional complexity); and macro (environmental, social, cultural, political, and economic factors including climatic extremes, vested interests, and public opinion). It concludes that SDMs are strongly focused on their local' professional context and near-term pressures, including reputation among peers, relationships with competitors, and real-time financial status. As a group they exist within a largely closed circuit and perceive the world from a particular narrow perspective. Combined with the complexity and embedded character of existing systems, this occludes more systemic or reflexive thinking or action. This deep propensity for inaction suggests that a coordinated multi-frontal approach is essential for a new more effective mitigation approach. (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Blue carbon - the carbon stored and sequestered in mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and tidal salt marshes is considered a cost-effective means to achieve positive climate change mitigation and adaptation outcomes. Blue carbon is therefore of considerable interest to the scientific and policy communities, and is frequently discussed in relation to carbon markets and climate finance opportunities. This paper identifies peer-reviewed and 'gray literature' documents that discuss blue carbon in the context of finance and market mechanisms. The document set is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, and the principal scientific, economic, regulatory, social, and management issues that emerge are discussed. The study reveals that (1) the blue carbon literature is dominated by technical and policy commentary, with a dearth of research into practical social considerations and a stark absence of private sector perspectives; (2) there is confusion over the nature and role of important concepts including private and public sector finance and instruments; and (3) understanding of the important issues of investment priorities and risk considerations is also limited. This paper therefore identifies gaps in the blue carbon literature, clarifies critical concepts and issues, and proposes novel pathways for blue carbon research and project development (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Restoration of degraded land is recognized by the international community as an important way of enhancing both biodiversity and ecosystem services, but more information is needed about its costs and benefits. In Cambridgeshire, U.K., a long-term initiative to convert drained, intensively farmed arable land to a wetland habitat mosaic is driven by a desire both to prevent biodiversity loss from the nationally important Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve (Wicken Fen NNR) and to increase the provision of ecosystem services. We evaluated the changes in ecosystem service delivery resulting from this land conversion, using a new Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment (TESSA) to estimate biophysical and monetary values of ecosystem services provided by the restored wetland mosaic compared with the former arable land. Overall results suggest that restoration is associated with a net gain to society as a whole of $199ha(-1)y(-1), for a one-off investment in restoration of $2320ha(-1). Restoration has led to an estimated loss of arable production of $2040ha(-1)y(-1), but estimated gains of $671ha(-1)y(-1) in nature-based recreation, $120ha(-1)y(-1) from grazing, $48ha(-1)y(-1) from flood protection, and a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worth an estimated $72ha(-1)y(-1). Management costs have also declined by an estimated $1325ha(-1)y(-1). Despite uncertainties associated with all measured values and the conservative assumptions used, we conclude that there was a substantial gain to society as a whole from this land-use conversion. The beneficiaries also changed from local arable farmers under arable production to graziers, countryside users from towns and villages, and the global community, under restoration. We emphasize that the values reported here are not necessarily transferable to other sites.Peatlands are large terrestrial stores of carbon, and sustained CO2 sinks, but over the last century large areas have been drained for agriculture and forestry, potentially converting them into net carbon sources. More recently, some peatlands have been re-wetted by blocking drainage ditches, with the aims of enhancing biodiversity, mitigating flooding, and promoting carbon storage. One potential detrimental consequence of peatland re-wetting is an increase in methane (CH4) emissions, offsetting the benefits of increased CO2 sequestration. We examined differences in CH4 emissions between an area of ditch-drained blanket bog, and an adjacent area where drainage ditches were recently infilled. Results showed that Eriophorum vaginatum colonization led to a "hotspot'' of CH4 emissions from the infilled ditches themselves, with smaller increases in CH4 from other re-wetted areas. Extrapolated to the area of blanket bog surrounding the study site, we estimated that CH4 emissions were around 60 kg CH4 ha(-1) y(-1) prior to drainage, reducing to 44 kg CH4 ha(-1) y(-1) after drainage. We calculated that fully re-wetting this area would initially increase emissions to a peak of around 120 kg CH4 ha(-1) y(-1), with around two-thirds of the increase (and 90% of the increase over pre-drainage conditions) attributable to CH4 emissions from E. vaginatum-colonized infilled ditches, despite these areas only occupying 7% of the landscape. We predicted that emissions should eventually decline toward pre-drainage values as the ecosystem recovers, but only if Sphagnum mosses displace E. vaginatum from the infilled ditches. These results have implications for peatland management for climate change mitigation, suggesting that restoration methods should aim, if possible, to avoid the colonization of infilled ditches by aerenchymatous species such as E. vaginatum, and to encourage Sphagnum establishment.The activities of the electricity sector in production and consumption have implications in almost all environmental problems of today. The main environmental impacts occur during the production of electricity, mainly due to the emission of air pollutants, which is directly linked to climate change that has been observed over time. Ambitious climate change mitigation requires significant changes in many economic sectors, in particular in the production and consumption of energy. Considering that the primary energy consumption has increased, doubling since the 1970s, and in particular the consumption of electricity has had a sharper increase, nearly quadrupling in the same period, all measures that can mitigate environmental impacts on both the supply and demand sides of electricity are of interest. This paper introduces a new software application that analyses efficient investment in street lighting and industrial and domestic electrical equipment, accounting for the reduction of losses in the conductors of electrical installations, which is usually neglected. It also determines the reduction of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, which contributes to the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases from a country or particular product. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, we address the challenge of Germany's energy transition (Energiewende) as the centrepiece of the country's green industrial policy. In addition to contributing to global climate change objectives, the Energiewende is intended to create a leading position for German industry in renewable energy technologies, boost innovative capabilities and create employment opportunities in future growth markets at the least possible cost. The success in reaching these aims, and indeed the future of the entire concept, is hotly debated. The paper aims to provide an up-to-date assessment of what has become a fierce controversy by comparing solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy along five policy objectives: (1) competitiveness, (2) innovation, (3) job creation, (4) climate change mitigation, and (5) cost. We find mixed evidence that Germany reaches its green industrial policy aims at reasonable costs. Wind energy seems to perform better against all policy objectives, while the solar PV sector has come under intense pressure from international competition. However, this is only a snapshot of current performance, and the long term and systemic perspective required for the energy sector transformation suggests a need for a balanced mix of a variety of clean energy sources. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Acacia cyclops is a widespread invader in Mediterranean-climate regions. However, although its naturalization in the Mediterranean Basin dates back only a few years ago, and the invasion process has not been studied hitherto. We investigated seedlings recruitment strategy adopted by A. cyclops in a small island (Lampedusa, Italy) where its natural regeneration was strictly confined under mother plants canopy. Healthy plants (DCP), plants at incipient senescence (SCP) and dead plants (DP) were distinguished according to vitality and canopy status. Living plants were also characterized in relation to leaf C and N isotope composition. Regeneration pattern (seedlings and saplings abundance) was related to the microclimatic differences (soil temperature, air temperature and humidity, soil nutrients, light) observed between canopies and adjacent open areas, and among canopy types. Living canopies ensure milder conditions, reducing extreme values as well as fluctuations between night and day. However, beneath canopies (DP, SCP and DCP) seedlings may benefit from significantly higher soil nutrients content than in the outside, while light availability was much higher under DP. Saplings to seedlings ratio was found to be around 12 under DP, while under SCP it was slightly higher than 1, and just less than 0.5 under DCP. Moreover, saplings growth was significantly higher under SCP and DP, suggesting a prominent role of light in driving seedlings recruitment. Stable isotope analyses of C and N provided ecophysiological information in relation to changes in canopies structure. Thus, while seedling stage appears to be more nutrient-limited, subsequent sapling stage is much more light-limited. Although the species is not yet displaying an invasive spreading on the island, our study provides clear evidence that senescent canopies are better facilitators than healthy in preserving the invasive potential of A. cyclops. This finding suggests some best practices in order to gradually reduce the presence of the alien species within its pristine nuclei of introduction. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The conflicting information on the impacts of management on spatial and temporal soil quality changes necessitates a comprehensive approach that can combine soil property data into a credible soil quality index. Thus, a field study was conducted to demonstrate an application of meta-analytic methods to integrate and quantitatively describe the effects of management practices on key soil physical and chemical properties which influence soil quality. Soil samples were obtained during spring 2012 from 5 sites within Ohio, USA, at a similar landscape position under conventional tillage (CT), no-till (NT), and natural vegetation (NV) land uses. Soil samples from 0-10, 10-20, 20-40, and 40-60 cm depths were analyzed for determination of total soil organic carbon (SOC) concentration, bulk density (rho(b)), available water capacity (AWC), electrical conductivity (EC), and pH. These data were compared using analyses of variance (ANOVA), and the Odds Ratio (OR) from the DerSimonian-Liard (DSL) meta-analysis model. The OR is the ratio of a statistical test being positive relative to being falsely positive. There were significant differences in the soil properties for each site, depth, management, except for AWC and pH which were similar under three land uses and management. The SOC, pH, EC did not vary with site x depth, and management x depth interactions. Soil under CT had a lower OR than that under NT for SOC (0.57), pH (0.81), rho(b) (0.84), and AWC (0.69). However, the OR for EC followed an opposite trend, being higher in soil under CT than NT (1.36). Based on the meta-analyses which provide a systematic comparative assessment within the whole profile, the data support the conclusion that soils under CT are of a relatively lower quality than those under NT because they have lower SOC and AWC, but higher EC. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The establishment of either forest or grassland on degraded cropland has been proposed as an effective method for climate change mitigation because these land use types can increase soil carbon (C) stocks. This paper synthesized 135 recent publications (844 observations at 181 sites) focused on the conversion from cropland to grassland, shrubland or forest in China, better known as the Grain-for-Green' Program to determine which factors were driving changes to soil organic carbon (SOC). The results strongly indicate a positive impact of cropland conversion on soil C stocks. The temporal pattern for soil C stock changes in the 0-100cm soil layer showed an initial decrease in soil C during the early stage (<5years), and then an increase to net C gains (>5years) coincident with vegetation restoration. The rates of soil C change were higher in the surface profile (0-20cm) than in deeper soil (20-100cm). Cropland converted to forest (arbor) had the additional benefit of a slower but more persistent C sequestration capacity than shrubland or grassland. Tree species played a significant role in determining the rate of change in soil C stocks (conifer < broadleaf, evergreen < deciduous forests). Restoration age was the main factor, not temperature and precipitation, affecting soil C stock change after cropland conversion with higher initial soil C stock sites having a negative effect on soil C accumulation. Soil C sequestration significantly increased with restoration age over the long-term, and therefore, the large scale of land-use change under the Grain-for-Green' Program will significantly increase China's C stocks.Despite recent success in reducing forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon, additional forest conservation efforts, for example, through 'Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation' (REDD+), could significantly contribute to global climate-change mitigation. Economic incentives, such as payments for environmental services could promote conservation, but deforestation often occurs on land without crucial tenure-security prerequisites. Improving the enforcement of existing regulatory disincentives thus represents an important element of Brazil's anti-deforestation action plan. However, conservation law enforcement costs and benefits have been much less studied than for conditional payments. We develop a conceptual framework and a spatially explicit model to analyze field-based regulatory enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon. We validate our model, based on historical deforestation and enforcement mission data from 2003 to 2008. By simulating the current conservation law enforcement practice, we analyze the costs of liability establishment and legal coercion for alternative conservation targets, and evaluate corresponding income impacts. Our findings suggest that spatial patterns of both deforestation and inspection costs markedly influence enforcement patterns and their income effects. Field-based enforcement is a highly cost-effective forest conservation instrument from a regulator's point of view, but comes at high opportunity costs for land users. Payments for environmental services could compensate costs, but will increase budget outlays vis-A-vis a command-and-control dominated strategy. Both legal and institutional challenges have to be overcome to make conservation payments work at a larger scale. Decision-makers may have to innovatively combine incentive and disincentive-based policy instruments in order to make tropical forest conservation both financially viable and socially compatible. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While many studies have put forward prescriptions for action on climate change it is not clear under what conditions policy innovations are likely to be pursued or what form they will take. It is the purpose of this paper to bring some clarity to these subjects. The paper follows Hood in describing policy-makers in democratic polities as highly risk-averse and therefore unlikely to take policy action unless the circumstances and the nature of the problem they face are propitious. It also suggests that when actions are taken these are not always 'positive' - that is oriented towards dealing with the objective manifestations of a problem - but can also be 'negative' - that is, geared towards denial of a problem or its rejection. The paper examines the literature on policy failure and success in order to isolate several dimensions of failure which decision-makers would like to avoid. It then combines these elements to construct a two stage model of decision-making which identifies which types of problems and circumstances are likely to lead to innovative activity and which are not. This model is then applied to the case of activities for climate change mitigation and adaptation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the key aspects relating to the transportation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) for climate change mitigation as part of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) schemes is the composition of the CO2 stream to be transported. The specification of this stream has both technical and economic implications and, as CCS schemes start to become realised, the requirement to specify the CO2 stream quality is becoming more important. The aim of this work has been to analyse the effects of the composition of the CO2 stream from post-combustion, pre-combustion and oxyfuel capture processes on the hydraulic network design and the relative costs of the network. Several key conclusions have been drawn to inform the process of specifying the CO2 purity and to guide pipeline operators on the specification of a CO2 stream, for dense phase pipeline operation, on the basis of hydraulic design. The analysis has shown that impurity additions up to 2mol% did not affect the relative cost/km for the networks when compared to a pure CO2 equivalent in terms of the pipeline internal diameter and length. However, the inlet pressure to the network is increased for all of the compositions studied and in this respect, levels of hydrogen in particular should be limited to less than lmol% to reduce inlet pressure and thereby compression costs. It has been demonstrated that direct connection pipelines from source to sink are the most expensive network options however, when designing a pipeline network, the size of the emitters, the phasing of entry into the network and the stability of the network in the event of interruptions in flow needs to be considered. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).There are many environmental benefits to incorporating cover crops into crop rotations, such as their potential to decrease soil erosion, reduce nitrate (NO3) leaching, and increase soil organic matter. Some of these benefits impact other agroecosystem processes, such as greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, there is not a consensus in the literature regarding the effect of cover crops on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Compared to site-specific studies, meta-analysis can provide a more general investigation into these effects. Twenty-six peer-reviewed articles including 106 observations of cover crop effects on N2O emissions from the soil surface were analyzed according to their response ratio, the natural log of the N2O flux with a cover crop divided by the N2O flux without a cover crop (LRR). Forty percent of the observations had negative LRRs, indicating a cover crop treatment which decreased N2O, while 60% had positive LRRs indicating a cover crop treatment which increased N2O. There was a significant interaction between N rate and the type of cover crop where legumes had higher LRRs at lower N rates than nonlegume species. When cover crop residues were incorporated into the soil, LRRs were significantly higher than those where residue was not incorporated. Geographies with higher total precipitation and variability in precipitation tended to produce higher LRRs. Finally, data points measured during cover crop decomposition had large positive LRRs and were larger than those measured when the cover crop was alive. In contrast, those data points measuring for a full year had LRRs close to zero, indicating that there was a balance between periods when cover crops increased N2O and periods when cover crops decreased emissions. Therefore, N2O measurements over the entire year may be needed to determine the net effect of cover crops on N2O. The data included in this meta-analysis indicate some overarching crop management practices that reduce direct N2O emissions from the soil surface, such as no soil incorporation of residues and use of nonlegume cover crop species. However, our results demonstrate that cover crops do not always reduce direct N2O emissions from the soil surface in the short term and that more work is needed to understand the full global warming potential of cover crop management.Variability in soil organic carbon (SOC) results from natural and human processes interacting across time and space, and leads to large variation in the minimum difference in SOC that can be detected with a particular experimental design. Here we report a unique comparison of minimum detectable differences (MDDs) in SOC, and the estimated times required to observe those MDDs across the north central United States, calculated for the two most common SOC experiments: (1) a comparison between two treatments, e.g., moldboard plow (MP) and no-tillage (NT), using a randomized complete block design experiment; and (2) a comparison of changes in SOC over time for a particular treatment, e.g., NT, using a randomized complete block design experiment with time as an additional factor. We estimated the duration of the two experiment types required to achieve MDD through simulation of SOC dynamics. Data for the study came from 13 experimental sites located in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Minnesota. Soil organic carbon, bulk density, and texture were measured at four soil depths. Minimum detectable differences were calculated with probability of Type I error of 0.05 and probability of Type II error of 0.15. The MDDs in SOC were highly variable across the region and increased with soil depth. At 0 to 10 cm (0 to 3.9 in) soil depth, MDDs with five replications ranged from 1.04 g C kg(-1) (0.017 oz C lb(-1); 6%) to 7.15 g C kg(-1) (0.114 oz C lb(-1); 31%) for comparison of two treatments; and from 0.46 g C kg(-1) (0.007 oz C lb(-1); 3%) to 3.12 g C kg(-1) (0.050 oz C lb(-1); 13%) for SOC change over time. Large differences were also predicted in the experiment duration required to detect a difference in SOC between MP and NT (from 8 to > 100 years with five replications), or a change in SOC over time under NT management (from 11 to 71 years with five replications). At most locations, the time required to detect a change in SOC under NT was shorter than the time required to detect a difference between MP and NT. Minimum detectable difference and experiment duration decreased with the number of replications and were correlated with SOC variability and soil texture of the experimental sites, i.e., they tended to be lower in fine textured soils. Experiment duration was also reduced by increased crop productivity and the amount of residue left on the soil. The relationships and methods described here enable the design of experiments with high power of detecting differences and changes in SOC and enhance our understanding of how management practices influence SOC storage.The important questions about agriculture, climate, and sustainability have become increasingly complex and require a coordinated, multifaceted approach for developing new knowledge and understanding. A multistate, transdisciplinary project was begun in 2011 to study the potential for both mitigation and adaptation of corn-based cropping systems to climate variations. The team is measuring the baseline as well as change of the system's carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and water footprints, crop productivity, and pest pressure in response to existing and novel production practices. Nine states and 11 institutions are participating in the project, necessitating a well thought out approach to coordinating field data collection procedures at 35 research sites. In addition, the collected data must be brought together in a way that can be stored and used by persons not originally involved in the data collection, necessitating robust procedures for linking metadata with the data and clearly delineated rules for use and publication of data from the overall project. In order to improve the ability to compare data across sites and begin to make inferences about soil and cropping system responses to climate across the region, detailed research protocols were developed to standardize the types of measurements taken and the specific details such as depth, time, method, numbers of samples, and minimum data set required from each site. This process required significant time, debate, and commitment of all the investigators involved with field data collection and was also informed by the data needed to run the simulation models and life cycle analyses. Although individual research teams are collecting additional measurements beyond those stated in the standardized protocols, the written protocols are used by the team for the base measurements to be compared across the region. A centralized database was constructed to meet the needs of current researchers on this project as well as for future use for data synthesis and modeling for agricultural, ecosystem, and climate sciences.Elevated concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), have affected the global climate. Land-based biological carbon mitigation strategies are considered an important and viable pathway towards climate stabilization. However, to satisfy the growing demands for food, wood products, energy, climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation-all of which compete for increasingly limited quantities of biomass and land-the deployment of mitigation strategies must be driven by sustainable and integrated land management. If executed accordingly, through avoided emissions and carbon sequestration, biological carbon and bioenergy mitigation could save up to 38 billion tonnes of carbon and 3-8% of estimated energy consumption, respectively, by 2050.Edge effects are among the primary mechanisms by which forest fragmentation can influence the link between biodiversity and ecosystem processes, but relatively few studies have quantified these mechanisms in temperate regions. Carbon storage is an important ecosystem function altered by edge effects, with implications for climate change mitigation. Two opposing hypotheses suggest that aboveground carbon (AGC) stocks at the forest edge will (a) decrease due to increased tree mortality and compositional shifts towards smaller, lower wood density species (e.g., as seen in tropical systems) or, less often, (b) increase due to light/temperature-induced increases in diversity and productivity. We used field-based measurements, allometry, and mixed models to investigate the effects of proximity to the forest edge on AGC stocks, species richness, and community composition in 24 forest fragments in southern Quebec. We also asked whether fragment size or connectivity with surrounding forests altered these edge effects. AGC stocks remained constant across a 100 m edge-to-interior gradient in all fragment types, despite changes in tree community composition and stem density consistent with expectations of forest edge effects. We attribute this constancy primarily to compensatory effects of small trees at the forest edge; however, it is due in some cases to the retention of large trees at forest edges, likely a result of forest management. Our results suggest important differences between temperate and tropical fragments with respect to mechanisms linking biodiversity and AGC dynamics. Small temperate forest fragments may be valuable in conservation efforts based on maintaining biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services.This article explores the role of two private steering mechanisms, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA), in REDD+, the climate change mitigation policy that aims to avoid deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. It does so by analyzing input and output legitimacy of the two certification standards at the global level, and at national and local levels in Peru. The findings show an increasing interest among REDD+ actors in using these standards, and a relatively large number of Peruvian REDD+ projects that are certified by the FSC or CCBA. The findings also suggest intrinsic linkages between input and output legitimacy of the FSC and CCBA within single governance levels and across different scales. The article also demonstrates the added value of studying the legitimacy of policy instruments, such as the FSC and CCBA, in a specific context such as REDD+. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentInterest in fallowing as the drought adaptation strategy has increased recently due to the occurrence of frequent droughts in cropping areas of Australia. Weed management in a fallow is crucial as it affects the level of soil water and nitrogen conserved by this practice. Increased use of fallow has implications for nitrous oxide emissions as soil moisture is a major determinant of evolution of nitrous oxide. In a two year study, three types of fallow with different weed management were compared with wheat and canola crops in 2010 and the carry-over effects with wheat on all plots in 2011. The weeds in the fallows were managed either by herbicide (chemical fallow) or by tillage (cultivation fallow) and compared to an unweeded fallow (weedy fallow). The chemical fallow conserved most soil water followed by cultivation fallow, with the lowest soil water content in the weedy fallow. In addition, more weeds were observed in the wheat crop following weedy fallow. Low wheat and canola yields were measured in 2010 because of a drought, which also depleted soil water compared to the chemical and cultivation fallows. Therefore, fallow is a potential strategy for increasing crop yield under dry conditions. The results also indicated that weeds had a detrimental effect by reducing soil water content due to lack of timely weed management. To test the compatibility of fallow with climate-change mitigation, the nitrous oxide emissions were compared in the 2011 wheat crop. There was a temporal fluctuation in nitrous oxide emissions with increased rates of emission after top dressing with urea. Importantly, however, the nitrous oxide emission from wheat following fallow was not increased compared with wheat in the continuous cropping sequences. Therefore, this study found that fallowing with good weed control, could be used as a drought adaptation strategy without increasing nitrous oxide emissions in following crops. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.When assessing soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration and its climate change (CC) mitigation potential at global scale, the dynamic nature of soil carbon storage and interventions to foster it should be taken into account. Firstly, adoption of SOC-sequestration measures will take time, and reasonably such schemes could only be implemented gradually at large-scale. Secondly, if soils are managed as carbon sinks, then SOC will increase only over a limited time, up to the point when a new SOC equilibrium is reached. This paper combines these two processes and predicts potential SOC sequestration dynamics in agricultural land at global scale and the corresponding CC mitigation potential. Assuming that global governments would agree on a worldwide effort to gradually change land use practices towards turning agricultural soils into carbon sinks starting 2014, the projected 87-year (2014-2100) global SOC sequestration potential of agricultural land ranged between 31 and 64 Gt. This is equal to 1.9-3.9% of the SRES-A2 projected 87-year anthropogenic emissions. SOC sequestration would peak 2032-33, at that time reaching 4.3-8.9% of the projected annual SRES-A2 emission. About 30 years later the sequestration rate would have reduced by half. Thus, SOC sequestration is not a C wedge that could contribute increasingly to mitigating CC. Rather, the mitigation potential is limited, contributing very little to solving the climate problem of the coming decades. However, we deliberately did not elaborate on the importance of maintaining or increasing SOC for sustaining soil health, agro-ecosystem functioning and productivity; an issue of global significance that deserves proper consideration irrespectively of any potential additional sequestration of SOC. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Spectral nudginga scale-selective interior constraint techniqueis commonly used in regional climate models to maintain consistency with large-scale forcing while permitting mesoscale features to develop in the downscaled simulations. Several studies have demonstrated that spectral nudging improves the representation of regional climate in reanalysis-forced simulations compared with not using nudging in the interior of the domain. However, in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, spectral nudging tends to produce degraded precipitation simulations when compared to analysis nudgingan interior constraint technique that is scale indiscriminate but also operates on moisture fields which until now could not be altered directly by spectral nudging. Since analysis nudging is less desirable for regional climate modeling because it dampens fine-scale variability, changes are proposed to the spectral nudging methodology to capitalize on differences between the nudging techniques and aim to improve the representation of clouds, radiation, and precipitation without compromising other fields. These changes include adding spectral nudging toward moisture, limiting nudging to below the tropopause, and increasing the nudging time scale for potential temperature, all of which collectively improve the representation of mean and extreme precipitation, 2 m temperature, clouds, and radiation, as demonstrated using a model-simulated 20 year historical period. Such improvements to WRF may increase the fidelity of regional climate data used to assess the potential impacts of climate change on human health and the environment and aid in climate change mitigation and adaptation studies.The most important energy development of the past decade has been the wide deployment of hydraulic fracturing technologies that enable the production of previously uneconomic shale gas resources in North America(1). If these advanced gas production technologies were to be deployed globally, the energy market could see a large influx of economically competitive unconventional gas resources(2). The climate implications of such abundant natural gas have been hotly debated. Some researchers have observed that abundant natural gas substituting for coal could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions(3-6). Others have reported that the non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions associated with shale gas production make its lifecycle emissions higher than those of coal(7,8). Assessment of the full impact of abundant gas on climate change requires an integrated approach to the global energyeconomyclimate systems, but the literature has been limited in either its geographic scope(9,10) or its coverage of greenhouse gases(2). Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing. Our results, based on simulations from five state-of-the-art integrated assessment models(11) of energyeconomyclimate systems independently forced by an abundant gas scenario, project large additional natural gas consumption of up to +170 per cent by 2050. The impact on CO2 emissions, however, is found to be much smaller (from -2 per cent to +11 per cent), and a majority of the models reported a small increase in climate forcing (from -0.3 per cent to +7 per cent) associated with the increased use of abundant gas. Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system, it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy(9,10).Cities face similar challenges to nation-states in coming together for climate change agreements. Cities have joined trans-municipal networks to overcome these collective action problems that provide common problem definitions, policy solutions, formal channels of communication, and publicity. Analyzing the relationship between participation in a network and cities' mitigation policies in 57 C40 member cities using ordered logit models, the article asks what effect group membership has on actual climate change mitigation actions at the city level. The results speak to the growing importance of transnational institutions in providing assistance and visibility to subnational efforts to address international issues.Renewable energy can play an important role in India's climate change mitigation, as India has great potential for renewables, especially solar and wind. This paper analyses the role of renewables to meet India's possible 2050 climate change mitigation targets using a multi-region global energy system model called TIAM-UCL, where India is explicitly represented as a separate region. TIAM-UCL is a cost optimisation model. The climate policy is applied to all regions in the model based on equal per capita emissions of 1.3 tCO(2) by 2050. Analysis shows that renewable energy can play an important role to decarbonise the economy, especially the power sector. Two low-carbon scenarios are explored, the first allowing for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology deployment and the second excluding this technology. In the first low-carbon scenario (LC1), the most critical renewable energy technologies in the power sector are biomass with CCS, solar and wind. In the second low-carbon scenario (LC2), without CCS, there is an even greater role for solar and wind. Over the whole Indian economy, by 2050 renewables contribute 57% of the total CO2 reductions in LC1 (relative to a reference scenario with no CO2 target) and 63% of the CO2 reductions in LC2. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate-mitigation strategies encourage the use of forest products and wood energy. This will likely increase the risk of soil depletion through nutrient exportation. Given the high variability in nutrient concentrations within and between trees, it is crucial to better understand the biochemical patterns of nutrient distribution and the related driving factors. Thus, predictions of nutrient concentrations can be improved, and used for assessing nutrient exportation through roundwood exploitation and for developing forest-management rules to maintain soil fertility. Our aims were to better determine (1) the shapes of the relationships between the total concentrations of different nutrients (N, S, P, K, Ca, Mg, Mn) in roundwood and roundwood diameter; (2) the variation of these relationships between different tissues (wood, bark); and (3) potential effects of site conditions and/or stand age on nutrient concentrations. We therefore developed a new modelling approach that relied on empirical and mechanistic relationships, and allowed for sound predictions of both concentrations in individual tissues and in total. We applied the approach to Fagus sylvatica using 134 trees from 11 plots that covered large ranges of ecological conditions in terms of geographic region (from the northwest to the northeast of France), site index (from <25 m to >35 m), stand age (form 10 years to 159 years), and roundwood diameter with nutrient concentrations being measured separately for wood and bark tissues partly up to a minimum diameter of 1 cm. Relationships between total nutrient concentrations and roundwood diameter showed several different shapes: a reverse-J-shape for N, S and P; a U-shape for K; and no clear, more complex shapes for Ca, Mg and Mn. These shapes were related to concentration changes with roundwood diameter in both wood and bark for N, S and P (but with low goodness of fit for the models of N and S in the bark), while they were only related to concentration change in the wood for K, and in the bark for Ca and Mn (but with low goodness of fit for the model of Mn in the bark). Moreover, shifts of concentration-diameter curves (additive effect) were likely related to site conditions (chemical fertility), as assessed based on foliar nutrient concentrations. An additional effect of stand age could not be excluded, but so far it appeared difficult to clearly distinguish between influences of site and age. We argue that our modelling approach is particularly suitable to further tackle the issue of site and age effects, by combing data from several studies on the same species and/or on other species (genericness). Comprehensive forest-management rules based on silvicultural scenario simulation and assessment may finally be developed by coupling nutrient, biomass and site-sensitive tree-growth models. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Accelerated carbonation of alkaline wastes such as steelmaking slag offers the potential to combine waste valorisation with climate change mitigation by utilising carbon dioxide (CO2). One method of achieving this is through an indirect carbonation process to produce a marketable precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC), using ammonium salts to selectively extract calcium from steelmaking slag. Two unaddressed design parameters for a slag based plant differing from that of a traditional FCC plant are the effect of mineralogy on extraction efficiency when using a multicomponent, heterogeneous feed such as slag and the challenges raised by the resulting leachate chemistry. This paper presents petrographic textural observations on the effect of calcium leaching via ammonium chloride on individual grains of dicalcium silicate in three different widely unutilised steelmaking slags. These observations are then interpreted in conjunction with measured changes in solution leachate chemistry. The results indicate that although silica enriched regions form at the reaction front, the reaction continues into the core of the particle due to fracture propagation caused by volume reduction as calcium is extracted. Co-leaching of sulfur alongside calcium and the formation of precipitate in the leachate highlights potential engineering challenges when the process is scaled up due to fouling of process equipment. The main mineral phases in all untreated slags were found to be calcium silicates, predominantly dicalcium silicate (Ca2SiO4). This was followed by a complex mixture of calcium/magnesium-wustite (CaFeMnMg)0 type phases and srebrodolskite (Ca2Fe2O5(Ti, V)). Results indicate that calcium silicate is the more reactive component of BOS slag, while lime bound as (CaFeMnMg)O is most reactive in HMD and SS slags. Selectivity of the ammonium chloride solvent was high at 95-97% and efficiency of calcium extraction ranged between 25% and 39%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A women's rights perspective can inform and structure research on climate policy impacts on women. To date, climate policy analysis has mostly considered women as agents of climate protection, that is, objects of mitigation policies, rather than subjects in their own right. However, climate change mitigation involves direct and indirect distributive effects depending on which sectors are involved, which instruments are chosen and how funds are obtained and allocated. Since gender roles impact on individual livelihoods and activities, distributive effects are likely to be gendered. This paper suggests that women's human rights can be used as a framework for research aiming to fill this gap. They provide a well-developed, tested range of criteria for gender justice. Such assessments would allow for a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the gendered distributive effects of climate policies, notably with regard to the particularly understudied situation in the industrialized world.This article addresses a potential role that tariff policy can play in encouraging countries to take part in a multilateral effort to mitigate climate change: it complements discussions on border tax adjustment which in law is limited to domestic taxation. It assesses whether increasing tariffs on products from polluting industries amounts to a violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and whether protectionism in this case can be differentiated from genuine environmental concerns. It argues that while lowering tariffs on environmental goods may serve as a carrot to promote dissemination of cleaner technologies, tariff deconsolidation is a legitimate stick to encourage polluting countries to move towards an international climate agreement. The article further explores this view by undertaking a partial equilibrium analysis to examine the impact of a unilateral 5% tariff increase on the most carbon-intensive imports from countries not committed to climate polices. Our results, however, suggest that plurilateral action would be more effective than countries pursuing tariff policy in isolation, with the former leading to an average 1.4% net reduction in carbon-intensive imports from a 5% increase in their tariffs.The emergence of emissions trading as a standard feature of national climate mitigation strategies is commonly considered to be evidence of the neoliberalisation of environmental governance. The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme is distinctive among national climate mitigation programmes in its attempt to establish a financial liability for greenhouse gas emissions arising from agricultural production. This attempt, however, has been politically contentious, with strident and vocal opposition from some members of the agricultural sector. Drawing on the concept of "environmental subjectivities" this study explores farmers' contestation of the policy programme and ascribes the foundering of emissions mitigation in agriculture to the attempt to merely assign financial liabilities rather than cultivate subjects disposed to managing emissions in pastoral production. When discussing climate change and greenhouse gas mitigation during qualitative interviews, pastoral farmers directly challenged the aims and attributes of the ETS, often referring to how the scheme conflicted with existing objectives for farming and how the scheme confused financial liability with environmental responsibility. New Zealand's experience reveals potential contradictions between the political and economic justification for market-based instruments and the unruly subjectivities of market actors. The findings of this research suggest that market-based instruments alone may fail to cultivate environmental subjectivities and highlight the need for agricultural and environmental governance to address the social and cultural foundations of farming practices. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at alarming rates have triggered-the need to revisit potential opportunities in conserving and monitoring carbon (C) stocks for climate change mitigation. The dynamic nature of tropical forests based on topographic variations and biomass components needs reliable estimation of forest C to support conservation and forest monitoring strategies. This study was aimed to determine C stocks of varying components (i.e. litter, soil, aboveground biomass and roots) in a tropical lowland forest and a tropical montane forest at varying topographic positions. Systematically designed 10 m x 10 m plots were established for soil (0-15 cm depth), litter and aboveground biomass sampling along three slope positions at the montane forest and one plot in the lowland forest due to minimal topographic variability. Basic soil characteristics and botanical distribution of both forest sites were determined. Carbon stocks were significantly higher in the tropical montane forest, where litter and soil C stocks at the summit were three and five folds significantly higher compared with the lowland forest. No significant differences were found in vegetation structure (mean diameter at breast height, mean height and stand basal area) but the aboveground biomass ranged from 100 to 120 Mg C ha(-1) and was the most dominant pool (> 40%) for all sites. Soil C pools were comparable (100 to 120 Mg C ha(-1)) with aboveground biomass pools at the summit and toeslope position of the montane forest.South Africa's Province of Gauteng is a fast growing megacity region including the cities of Johannesburg and Tshwane. Increasing population and prosperity lead to a steadily growing energy demand and thereby increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One third of the province's final energy consumption comes from the transport sector, dominated by motorized individual transport. Due to the limited financial resources to fund public transport initiatives, the most cost-effective means to reach the GHG mitigation targets are intended, without jeopardizing the economic growth. Recently, a bus rapid transit (BRT) system (Rea Vaya) and a rapid rail link (Gautrain) have been introduced to enforce the public transport system. In this paper, we investigate planned and possible future network expansions of the BRT and the Gautrain in terms of transport performance, costs of network expansions and GHG mitigation potential. Based on a trip rate model, we show that extensions of the current network can increase passenger numbers significantly (between 320% and 660% between 2013 and 2040 depending on the framework conditions). However, despite these expansions, the modal share of the BRT and the Gautrain in total passenger-kilometres travelled remains below 4% until 2040. This results in a decrease of cumulated GHG emissions of less than 1% until 2040 and relatively high GHG mitigation costs (4948-30045 ZAR(2013)/t CO(2)e). Nevertheless, a better integration of all public transport systems can increase the attractiveness of the services, which can result in a higher modal shift from private cars and thereby higher GHG emissions reductions at lower costs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste management can be regarded as a cross-cutting environmental mega-issue'. Sound waste management practices support the provision of basic needs for general health, such as clean air, clean water and safe supply of food. In addition, climate change mitigation efforts can be achieved through reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from waste management operations, such as landfills. Landfills generate landfill gas, especially methane, as a result of anaerobic degradation of the degradable components of municipal solid waste. Evaluating the mode of generation and collection of landfill gas has posted a challenge over time. Scientifically, landfill gas generation rates are presently estimated using numerical models. In this study the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Waste Model is used to estimate the methane generated from a Malaysian sanitary landfill. Key parameters of the model, which are the decay rate and degradable organic carbon, are analysed in two different approaches; the bulk waste approach and waste composition approach. The model is later validated using error function analysis and optimum decay rate, and degradable organic carbon for both approaches were also obtained. The best fitting values for the bulk waste approach are a decay rate of 0.08 y(-1) and degradable organic carbon value of 0.12; and for the waste composition approach the decay rate was found to be 0.09 y(-1) and degradable organic carbon value of 0.08. From this validation exercise, the estimated error was reduced by 81% and 69% for the bulk waste and waste composition approach, respectively. In conclusion, this type of modelling could constitute a sensible starting point for landfills to introduce careful planning for efficient gas recovery in individual landfills.Climate change and its consequences present one of the most important threats to water resources systems which are vulnerable to such changes due to their limited adaptive capacity. Water resources in arid mountain regions, such as Al Jabal Al Akhdar; northern Sultanate of Oman, are vulnerable to the potential adverse impacts of environmental and climate change. Besides climatic change, current demographic trends, economic development and related land use changes are exerting pressures and have direct impacts on increasing demands for water resources and their vulnerability. In this study, vulnerability assessment was carried out using guidelines prepared by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Peking University to evaluate four components of the water resource system: water resources stress, water development pressure, ecological health, and management capacity. The calculated vulnerability index (VI) was high, indicating that the water resources are experiencing levels of stress. Ecosystem deterioration was the dominant parameter and management capacity was the dominant category driving the vulnerability on water resources. The vulnerability assessment will support policy and decision makers in evaluating options to modify existing policies. It will also help in developing long-term strategic plans for climate change mitigation and adaptation measures and implement effective policies for sustainable water resources management, and therefore the sustenance of human wellbeing in the region.Researchers from various disciplines have built impressive but distinct compendia on climate change; the defining challenge for humanity. In the spirit of Lord Dahrendorf, this paper represents the output of interdisciplinary collaboration and integrates state-of-the-art academic expertise from the fields of philosophy, economics and governance. Our focus is on Europe, which is widely perceived as a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, leadership weakness on climate over recent years, largely due to recession and political vacillation, is eroding this perception. What is needed is a firm justification for strong climate action, acknowledgement of the available tools, awareness of the reasons for our failures to date, and a realistic, but goal-oriented strategy for an integrated climate policy. We therefore present current normative insights from climate justice research highlighting the need to make institutions responsive to those most vulnerable; we discuss the economics of the transition to a low-carbon economy, pointing to key policy instruments and post-2020 climate targets for the EU; we contrast the normative and quantitative synoptic principles with the particularistic implementation schemes and politics of (not) implementing measures on the ground; and we suggest a careful coordination of European climate policies with acute challenges that could increase both climate justice and political feasibility.The emerging scientific focus on cumulative carbon emissions may make climate negotiations harder. But, it serves to clarify the scale and scope of climate mitigation needed to meet potential temperature targets.The way in which people perceive climate change risk is informed by their social interactions and cultural worldviews comprising fundamental beliefs about society and nature. Therefore, perceptions of climate change risk and vulnerability along with people's "myths of nature"-that is, how groups of people conceptualize the way nature functions influence the feasibility and acceptability of climate adaptation planning, policy making, and implementation. This study presents analyses of cultural worldviews that broaden the current treatments of culture and climate change mitigation and adaptation decision making in communities. The authors use insights from community-based climate research and engage the Cultural Theory of Risk conceptual framework to situate community understandings of, and responses to, climate impacts. This study looks at how the issue of climate change manifests socially in four cases in the United States and Tuvalu and how ideas about climate change are produced by the institutional cultural contexts across scales from the local to the global. This approach helps us identify local and regional priorities and support the development of new relationships for adaptation research and planning by helping to diagnose barriers to climate change adaptation, assist improved communication through framing/reframing climate issues based on shared understandings and collective learning, and help move from conflict to cooperation through better negotiation of diverse worldviews.Lignocellulosic biomass production deriving from agro forest species, as well as poplar (Populus spp.), has denoted an increase in last years in UE also thanks to a series of policies aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and promoting renewable sources. In Italy poplar represents the main agro forest species and it is cultivated according to two different methods: very Short Rotation Coppice (vSRC) and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC). The aim of this paper has been to evaluate the economic feasibility of poplar as energy crop in the southern Italy and specifically to consider its competitiveness with respect to conventional crops. In particular, an economic analysis in a representative case study located in the Sicilian hilly hinterland has been carried out, by comparing the direct costs and incomes of poplar (both vSRC and SRC) and durum wheat. Results showed that only introduction of SRC plantation could increase the farm competitiveness, while vSRC could be economically advantageous only with a substantial increase of biomass market price and/or CAP subsidy. However, the introduction of poplar should grant a better contribution to climate change mitigation with respect to annual crop, improving the greenhouse gases balance and diminishing the environmental impact of agricultural activity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities coupled to coal-fired power plants provide a climate change mitigation strategy that potentially permits the continued use of fossil fuels whilst reducing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Potential design routes for the capture, transport and storage of CO2 from United Kingdom (UK) power plants are examined. Energy and carbon analyses were performed on coal-fired power stations with and without CCS. Both currently available and novel CCS technologies are evaluated. Due to lower operating efficiencies, the CCS plants showed a longer energy payback period and a lower energy gain ratio than conventional plant. Cost estimates are reported in the context of recent UK industry-led attempts to determine opportunities for cost reductions across the whole CCS chain, alongside international endeavours to devise common CCS cost estimation methods. These cost figures should be viewed as 'indicative' or suggestive. They are nevertheless helpful to various CCS stakeholder groups [such as those in industry, policy makers (civil servants and the staff of various government agencies), and civil society and environmental 'non-governmental organisations' (NGOs)] in order to enable them to assess the role of this technology in national energy strategies and its impact on local communities. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The present study provides a review of existing assessments of preferences for climate change mitigation and adaptation policies through a worldwide meta-analysis. In this study, we analyze the impact of social values and norms on preferences towards climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. In a sample of 58 international studies, we found that mitigation actions were preferred over adaptation actions, and that preferences towards climate change policies are affected by attitudes towards time and social norms. In particular, societies with a long-term orientation display greater support towards climate change policies. These results therefore reveal the role of social factors as being crucial in order to understand the acceptability of climate change policies at a worldwide level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Endogenous demand responses for energy services, resulting from changing prices, have long been characterised in energy systems models. However, the uncertainty associated with such demand responses, modelled through the use of price elasticities, has often been ignored. This is problematic for two key reasons - elasticity factors used in models are highly uncertain due to the limited evidence base, while at the same time, demand response has been observed as a critical mechanism for meeting long term climate mitigation targets. This paper makes two important contributions for improving the understanding of the role of price-induced demand response. Firstly, it attempts to address the problem of unsatisfactory elasticity input assumptions by undertaking an up-to-date review of the literature. Secondly, the role of demand response under uncertainty is assessed using a probabilistic approach, focusing on its contribution to mitigation. The paper highlights that demand response does play a critical role in mitigation, ensuring a more cost-effective transition to a low carbon energy system. Crucially, the uncertainties associated with price elasticities do not weaken this finding. The transport sector is the driver of this demand response leading to important implications for policy and the focus of demand side interventions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an analysis of climate policy instruments for the decarbonisation of the global electricity sector in a non-equilibrium economic and technology diffusion perspective. Energy markets are driven by innovation, path-dependent technology choices and diffusion. However, conventional optimisation models lack detail on these aspects and have limited ability to address the effectiveness of policy interventions because they do not represent decision-making. As a result, known effects of technology lock-ins are liable to be underestimated. In contrast, our approach places investor decision-making at the core of the analysis and investigates how it drives the diffusion of low-carbon technology in a highly disaggregated, hybrid, global macroeconometric model, FIT:Power-E3MG. Ten scenarios to 2050 of the electricity sector in 21 regions exploring combinations of electricity policy instruments are analysed, including their climate impacts. We show that in a diffusion and path-dependent perspective, the impact of combinations of policies does not correspond to the sum of impacts of individual instruments: synergies exist between policy tools. We argue that the carbon price required to break the current fossil technology lock-in can be much lower when combined with other policies, and that a 90% decarbonisation of the electricity sector by 2050 is affordable without early scrapping. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Wildlife planning for renewable energy must cope with the uncertainties of potential wildlife impacts. Unfortunately, the environmental policies which instigate renewable energy and those which protect wildlife are not coherently aligned-creating a green versus green dilemma. Thus, climate mitigation efforts trigger renewable energy development, but then face substantial barriers from biodiversity protection instruments and practices. This article briefly reviews wind energy and wildlife interactions, highlighting the lively debated effects on bats. Today, planning and siting of renewable energy are guided by the precautionary principle in an attempt to carefully address wildlife challenges. However, this planning attitude creates limitations as it struggles to negotiate the aforementioned green versus green dilemma. More adaptive planning and management strategies and practices hold the potential to reconcile these discrepancies to some degree. This adaptive approach is discussed using facets of case studies from policy, planning, siting, and operational stages of wind energy in Germany and the United States, with one case showing adaptive planning in action for solar energy as well. This article attempts to highlight the benefits of more adaptive approaches as well as the possible shortcomings, such as reduced planning security for renewable energy developers. In conclusion, these studies show that adaptive planning and operation strategies can be designed to supplement and enhance the precautionary principle in wildlife planning for green energy.There is a growing quest for synergy between mitigation and adaptation due to concerns of inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the compartmentalized approaches to climate change. However, little has been done to explore the necessary enabling conditions for synergistic design and implementation. This paper proposes an analytical framework to assess enabling conditions for synergies at the national level and applies it to developing countries to explore the potential move toward synergy. Four enabling conditions for integrating adaptation and mitigation, i.e. policies and strategies, programs and projects, institutional arrangements and financial mechanisms, were used to score developing countries relative to each other. We hypothesized that low income and vulnerable countries might more likely pursue synergy given the urgency for both adaptation and mitigation. Despite the relative infancy of the synergy concept, about half of countries studied exhibited good synergy potential, 80% of which were middle-income developing countries. The assumption of vulnerability as a precursor for pursuing synergy was supported by the fact that small island states possessed relatively high synergy potential. Income was weakly associated with the synergy potential with least developed countries having low synergy scores. Emerging economies possessed strong synergy potential which might be associated with better capacity available and/or potential for shaping their global images due to their growing emissions. In sum, the proposed analytical framework could be useful to identify areas of emphasis to promote holistic and efficient climate policies. As this study largely focused on the enabling conditions, further studies are needed to scrutinize and manage the mitigation-adaptation balances in countries possessing good synergy potentials. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Understanding the effects of management on forest structure and function is increasingly important in light of projected increases in both natural and anthropogenic disturbance severity and frequency with global environmental change. We examined potential impacts of the procurement of forest-derived bioenergy, a change in land use that has been suggested as a climate change mitigation strategy, on the productivity and structural development of aspen-dominated ecosystems. Specifically, we tested the effects of two factors: organic matter removal (stem-only harvest, whole-tree harvest, whole-tree harvest plus forest floor removal) and soil compaction (light, moderate, and heavy) over time. This range of treatments, applied across three sites dominated by aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) but with different soil textures, allowed us to characterize how disturbance severity influences ecosystem recovery. Disturbance severity significantly affected above-ground biomass production and forest structural development with responses varying among sites. At the Huron National Forest (sandy soils), the removal of harvest residues reduced above-ground biomass production, but no negative effect was observed following whole-tree harvest at the Ottawa and Chippewa National Forests (clayey and loamy soils, respectively) relative to stem-only harvest. Maximum diameter and the density of stems greater than 5 cm DBH exhibited negative responses to increased disturbance severity at two sites, indicating that structural development may be slowed. Overall, results suggest that disturbance severity related to procuring harvest residues for bioenergy production may impact future productivity and development, depending on site conditions and quality. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article examines alternative forest harvesting regimes when ecosystem services in terms of water quality, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation are included in the analysis. The harvesting regimes are whole-tree harvesting with stump removal and conventional stem-only harvesting. The harvesting regimes are evaluated under two alternative climate policy contexts. The first alternative is a carbon neutral bioenergy policy, which assumes the carbon dioxide (CO2) neutrality of bioenergy and produces substitution benefits, as bioenergy replaces fossil fuels. The second alternative climate policy, a carbon non-neutral bioenergy policy, takes into account the fact that bioenergy causes carbon dioxide emissions, producing substitution costs, and that harvested woody biomass affects the ability of a forest to act as a carbon sink. We extend the traditional Faustmann (1849) rotation model to include nutrient load damage, biodiversity benefits, and climate impacts. The empirical analysis is based on Finnish data from a catchment experiment carried out on drained peatland forests. The empirical results show that under a carbon neutral bioenergy policy, whole-tree harvesting with stump removal produces the highest net social benefits. However, if a carbon non-neutral bioenergy policy is assumed, the net social benefits are greater under stem-only harvesting. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Terrestrial carbon stock mapping is important for the successful implementation of climate change mitigation policies. Its accuracy depends on the availability of reliable allometric models to infer oven-dry aboveground biomass of trees from census data. The degree of uncertainty associated with previously published pantropical aboveground biomass allometries is large. We analyzed a global database of directly harvested trees at 58 sites, spanning a wide range of climatic conditions and vegetation types (4004 trees5cm trunk diameter). When trunk diameter, total tree height, and wood specific gravity were included in the aboveground biomass model as covariates, a single model was found to hold across tropical vegetation types, with no detectable effect of region or environmental factors. The mean percent bias and variance of this model was only slightly higher than that of locally fitted models. Wood specific gravity was an important predictor of aboveground biomass, especially when including a much broader range of vegetation types than previous studies. The generic tree diameter-height relationship depended linearly on a bioclimatic stress variable E, which compounds indices of temperature variability, precipitation variability, and drought intensity. For cases in which total tree height is unavailable for aboveground biomass estimation, a pantropical model incorporating wood density, trunk diameter, and the variable E outperformed previously published models without height. However, to minimize bias, the development of locally derived diameter-height relationships is advised whenever possible. Both new allometric models should contribute to improve the accuracy of biomass assessment protocols in tropical vegetation types, and to advancing our understanding of architectural and evolutionary constraints on woody plant development.The agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector is responsible for approximately 25% of anthropogenic GHG emissions mainly from deforestation and agricultural emissions from livestock, soil and nutrient management. Mitigation from the sector is thus extremely important in meeting emission reduction targets. The sector offers a variety of cost-competitive mitigation options with most analyses indicating a decline in emissions largely due to decreasing deforestation rates. Sustainability criteria are needed to guide development and implementation of AFOLU mitigation measures with particular focus on multifunctional systems that allow the delivery of multiple services from land. It is striking that almost all of the positive and negative impacts, opportunities and barriers are context specific, precluding generic statements about which AFOLU mitigation measures have the greatest promise at a global scale. This finding underlines the importance of considering each mitigation strategy on a case-by-case basis, systemic effects when implementing mitigation options on the national scale, and suggests that policies need to be flexible enough to allow such assessments. National and international agricultural and forest (climate) policies have the potential to alter the opportunity costs of specific land uses in ways that increase opportunities or barriers for attaining climate change mitigation goals. Policies governing practices in agriculture and in forest conservation and management need to account for both effective mitigation and adaptation and can help to orient practices in agriculture and in forestry towards global sharing of innovative technologies for the efficient use of land resources. Different policy instruments, especially economic incentives and regulatory approaches, are currently being applied however, for its successful implementation it is critical to understand how land-use decisions are made and how new social, political and economic forces in the future will influence this process.The objective of this research was to measure temporal variability in accretion and mass sedimentation rates (including organic carbon (OC), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorous (TP)) from the past century in a mangrove forest on the Shark River in Everglades National Park, USA. The Pb-210 Constant Rate of Supply model was applied to six soil cores to calculate annual rates over the most recent 10, 50, and 100 year time spans. Our results show that rates integrated over longer timeframes are lower than those for shorter, recent periods of observation. Additionally, the substantial spatial variability between cores over the 10 year period is diminished over the 100 year record, raising two important implications. First, a multiple-decade assessment of soil accretion and OC burial provides a more conservative estimate and is likely to be most relevant for forecasting these rates relative to long-term processes of sea level rise and climate change mitigation. Second, a small number of sampling locations are better able to account for spatial variability over the longer periods than for the shorter periods. The site average 100year OC burial rate, 12319 (standard deviation) g m(-2)yr(-1), is low compared with global mangrove values. High TN and TP burial rates in recent decades may lead to increased soil carbon remineralization, contributing to the low carbon burial rates. Finally, the strong correlation between OC burial and accretion across this site signals the substantial contribution of OC to soil building in addition to the ecosystem service of CO2 sequestration.Objectives Hospitals are significant contributors to natural resource depletion and environmental change. Our objective was to establish the extent to which hospital environmental sustainability has been studied and the key issues that emerge for policy, practice and research. Methods The PubMed, Engineering Village, Cochrane and King's Fund databases were searched for articles relating to hospital environmental sustainability published in English between 1 January 1990 and 1 October 2013. Further studies were found by review of reference lists. One hundred ninety-three relevant articles were found and 76 were selected for inclusion in the review. Results Common research themes were identified: hospital design, direct energy consumption, water, procurement, waste, travel and psychology and behaviour. Some countries (particularly the United Kingdom) have begun to invest systematically in understanding the environmental effects of hospitals. We found large variability in the extent of the evidence base according to topic. Research regarding the architectural fabric of hospital buildings is at a relatively mature stage. Similarly, there is a developed research base regarding devices and technologies used within hospitals to reduce the environmental effects of direct hospital energy and water use. Less is known about the clinical, psychological and social factors that influence how health care professionals use resources, travel to/from hospital, and interact with the buildings and technologies available. A significant part of the environmental footprint of hospitals relates to clinical practice, e.g. decisions regarding the use of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Medical cradle to grave' life cycle assessment studies have been published to understand the full financial and environmental costs of hospital activities. The effects of preventive or demand management measures which avoid unnecessary hospital procedures are likely to be much greater than incremental changes to how hospital procedures are performed. Conclusions There remain significant gaps in the evidence base on hospital sustainability. Assessments of environmental impacts and natural resource use are beginning to be produced, both at the level of individual hospitals and at the health system level. These are an important start, but in many areas do not yet provide sufficiently detailed information to guide decision-making. There are many areas where the interests of patients and the environment coincide, but others where tensions exist. Rising resource costs and climate change mitigation measures are likely to create an increasing stimulus for research on hospital sustainability. Such research will benefit from inter-disciplinary coordination across research funders and countries.Pyrogenic carbon (C) is produced by incomplete combustion of fuels including organic matter (OM). Certain ranges in the combustion continuum are termed 'black carbon' (BC). Because of its assumed persistence, surface soils in large parts of the world contain BC with up to 80% of surface soil organic C (SOC) stocks and up to 32% of subsoil SOC in agricultural soils consisting of BC. High SOC stocks and high levels of soil fertility in some ancient soils containing charcoal (e. g., terra preta de Indio) have recently been used as strategies for soil applications of biochar, an engineered BC material similar to charcoal but with the purposeful use as a soil conditioner (1) to mitigate increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) by SOC sequestration and (2) to enhance soil fertility. However, effects of biochar on soils and crop productivity cannot be generalized as they are biochar-, plant-and site-specific. For example, the largest potential increases in crop yields were reported in areas with highly weathered soils, such as those characterizing much of the humid tropics. Soils of high inherent fertility, characterizing much of the world's important agricultural areas, appear to be less likely to benefit from biochar. It has been hypothesized that both liming and aggregating/moistening effects of biochar improved crop productivity. Meta-analyses of biochar effects on SOC sequestration have not yet been reported. To effectively mitigate climate change by SOC sequestration, a net removal of C and storage in soil relative to atmospheric CO 2 must occur and persist for several hundred years to a few millennia. At deeper soil depths, SOC is characterized by long turnover times, enhanced stabilization, and less vulnerability to loss by decomposition and erosion. In fact, some studies have reported preferential long-term accumulation of BC at deeper depths. Thus, it is hypothesized that surface applied biochar-C (1) must be translocated to subsoil layers and (2) result in deepening of SOC distribution for a notable contribution to climate change mitigation. Detailed studies are needed to understand how surface-applied biochar can move to deeper soil depths, and how its application affects organic C input to deeper soil depths. Based on this knowledge, biochar systems for climate change mitigation through SOC sequestration can be designed. It is critically important to identify mechanisms underlying the sometimes observed negative effects of biochar application on biomass, yield and SOC as biochar may persist in soils for long periods of time as well as the impacts on downstream environments and the net climate impact when biochar particles become airborne.Due to criticisms of potential identification issues within spatial panel data models, this study contributes to the literature by comparing forecasts of province-level carbon dioxide emissions against empirical reality using dynamic, spatial panel data models with and without fixed effects. From a policy standpoint, understanding how to predict emissions is important for designing climate change mitigation policies. From a statistical standpoint, it is important to test spatial econometrics models to see if they are a valid strategy to describe the underlying data. We find that the best model is the spatio-temporal panel data model which controls for fixed effects. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering not only spatial and temporal dependence but also the individual or heterogeneous characteristics within each province.Effectively addressing the health risks of climate change necessitates an active crosssectoral approach because health risks arise predominantly via sectors such as water, agriculture and energy. Much has been written on climate change and its impact on health, but little attention has focused on the realpolitik of how to progress the development and implementation of health-relevant strategies and policies to reduce this impact. The objective of this paper is to propose three solutions to address current deficiencies: i) strengthening the capacity and understanding of health officials in relation to climate change and health; ii) improving cross-sectoral partnerships with sectors relevant to climate change and health, and iii) identifying organisations influential in the development of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and policies, with a view to better target advocacy efforts. Practical examples of each solution are provided. In conclusion, as a steward of public health, the health sector must take the initiative to encourage a cross-sectoral approach that includes capacity development, coupled with an understanding of influential organisations. If this is done effectively, health, social and economic development goals can be reached more efficiently.Recent studies show that current trends in yield improvement will not be sufficient to meet projected global food demand in 2050, and suggest that a further expansion of agricultural area will be required. However, agriculture is the main driver of losses of biodiversity and a major contributor to climate change and pollution, and so further expansion is undesirable. The usual proposed alternative-intensification with increased resource use-also has negative effects. It is therefore imperative to find ways to achieve global food security without expanding crop or pastureland and without increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Some authors have emphasized a role for sustainable intensification in closing global yield gaps between the currently realized and potentially achievable yields. However, in this paper we use a transparent, data-driven model, to show that even if yield gaps are closed, the projected demand will drive further agricultural expansion. There are, however, options for reduction on the demand side that are rarely considered. In the second part of this paper we quantify the potential for demand-side mitigation options, and show that improved diets and decreases in food waste are essential to deliver emissions reductions, and to provide global food security in 2050.Biochar application to soils has potential to simultaneously improve soil fertility and store carbon to aid climate change mitigation. While many studies have shown positive effects on plant yields, much less is known about the synergies between biochar and plant growth promoting microbes, such as mycorrhizal fungi. We present the first evidence that arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can use biochar as a physical growth matrix and nutrient source. We used monoxenic cultures of the AM fungus Rhizophagus irregularis in symbiosis with carrot roots. Using scanning electron microscopy we observed that AM fungal hyphae grow on and into two contrasting types of biochar particles, strongly attaching to inner and outer surfaces. Loading a nutrient-poor biochar surface with nutrients stimulated hyphal colonization. We labeled biochar surfaces with P-33 radiotracer and found that hyphal contact to the biochar surfaces permitted uptake of P-33 and its subsequent translocation to the associated host roots. Direct access of fungal hyphae to biochar surfaces resulted in six times more P-33 translocation to the host roots than in systems where a mesh prevented hyphal contact with the biochar. We conclude that AM fungal hyphae access microsites within biochar, that are too small for most plant roots to enter (<10 mu m), and can hence mediate plant phosphorus uptake from the biochar. Thus, combined management of biochar and AM fungi could contribute to sustainable soil and climate management by providing both a carbon-stable nutrient reservoir and a symbiont that facilitates nutrient uptake from it. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable communities are promoted as a desirable policy goal and, in particular, local authorities are encouraged to contribute to climate change mitigation through urban planning. Furthermore, recent research takes a broad perspective on the environmental sustainability of urban areas and considers the environmental impact of all consumption. A focus group study was conducted in Finland for the purpose of examining how increased environmental awareness influences urban land use. The 32 participants of three focus groups were professionals of urban planning and environmental sustainability, at both a municipal and a state level. The main finding was that urban planning is viewed as being unable to support environmental sustainability in the broader sense. In general, the participants did not see a connection between urban structure and sustainable lifestyles and only the influence of planning on housing and daily journeys was recognised. Three main reasons for this were identified. Firstly, environmental sustainability in its broader definition is seen as too complex for urban planners to influence alone. Secondly, the dominance of short-term economic issues in decision-making and the lack of co-operation from other stakeholders to achieve environmental aims demotivate land use planners. Thirdly, the prioritisation of urban density may overrule alternative means of promoting environmental sustainability, such as the encouragement of sustainable suburban or non-urban lifestyles.In this study, pyrolysis kinetics of periphytic microalgae consortia grown using swine manure slurry in two seasonal climatic patterns in northwest Arkansas were investigated. Four heating rates (5, 10, 20 and 40 degrees C min(-1)) were used to determine the pyrolysis kinetics. Differences in proximate, ultimate, and heating value analyses reflected variability in growing substrate conditions, i.e., flocculant use, manure slurry dilution, and differences in diurnal solar radiation and air temperature regimes. Peak decomposition temperature in algal harvests varied with changing the heating rate. Analyzing pyrolysis kinetics using differential and integral isoconversional methods (Friedman, Flynn-Wall-Ozawa, and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose) showed strong dependency of apparent activation energy on the degree of conversion suggesting parallel reaction scheme. Consequently, the weight loss data in each thermogravimetric test was modeled using independent parallel reactions (IPR). The quality of fit (QOF) for the model ranged between 2.09% and 3.31% indicating a good agreement with the experimental data. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that qualitative inquiry is highly effective at facilitating the extraction of personal narratives of senior managers in the New Zealand (NZ) public sector. Specifically, in this article I lay out the method used to develop theme-based narratives from semi-structured interviews with senior managers responsible for the delivery of the Communities for Climate Protection and the Carbon Neutral Public Service programs in NZ. In doing so, I demonstrate why qualitative inquiry is the ideal methodological approach for this kind of research program. Further, in demonstrating the research approach, this article may provide policy makers with insight into how to explore the cognitions of senior managers involved with carbon mitigation initiatives, and/or the nuances of the initiatives themselves. This in turn may provide insight into how to weave climate and carbon management policies with other national strategic policies.The dominant land-use change in the Southern Alps is grassland abandonment, followed by forest expansion. Forest expansion is commonly thought to increase ecosystem C sequestration, but contradictory results have been reported. Our objective was to investigate soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (N) changes after forest expansion on abandoned grasslands. A land use and management gradient was identified in a subalpine area of Trentino (Italy) comprising four successional stages: (i) managed grassland (manG), mown and manured annually for more than 100 years; (ii) grassland abandoned 10 years ago (abanG), with shrubs and Picea abies saplings; (iii) early-stage forest (earlyF), dominated by P. abies established on grassland abandoned around 1970; and (iv) old forest (oldF), dominated by Fagus sylvatica and P. abies, representing a reference for long-term forest land use. Organic and mineral soil layers were collected down to 30 cm at eight points within three plots for each successional stage. Significantly more SOC was stored in organic layers of oldF compared with other successional stages and the organic layer N stocks were higher in oldF compared with manG and abanG. The SOC and N concentrations were higher in the top 10 cm mineral soil of grassland plots compared with forest. The earlyF and oldF stored, on average, 28-35% less SOC in top 10 cm mineral soil compared with manG and abanG when stocks were calculated using equivalent soil mass (ESM) and equivalent soil depth (ESD) approaches respectively. SOC stocks in mineral soil (0-30 cm) calculated with ESD decreased from manG to oldF; when accounting for total stone content, SOC stocks in earlyF and oldF were 40% and 50% lower than in manG, respectively. The inclusion of organic layers offset mineral SOC stock differences when only stones <5 cm were accounted for, but when considering the total stone content, SOC stocks in earlyF remained significantly lower (-31%) than in manG. Tree biomass contributed to higher ecosystem C stocks in oldF, which stored 82-93 Mg ha(-1) of C more than grasslands. Our study revealed a decrease in total SOC stocks after forest expansion on abandoned subalpine grasslands. Tree biomass development contributed to increasing C storage, especially in a long-term forest land use. Forest management should consider that tree biomass and organic layer development require a minimum time period following grassland abandonment to compensate for the decrease in mineral SOC stocks and contribute positively to climate change mitigation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The urgency of climate change mitigation calls for a profound shift in personal behavior. This paper investigates psychosocial correlates of extra mitigation behavior in response to climate change, while also testing for potential (unobserved) heterogeneity in European citizens' decision-making. A person's extra mitigation behavior in response to climate change is conceptualized-and differentiated from common mitigation behavior-as some people's broader and greater levels of behavioral engagement (compared to others) across specific self-reported mitigation actions and behavioral domains. Regression analyses highlight the importance of environmental psychographics (i.e., attitudes, motivations, and knowledge about climate change) and socio-demographics (especially country-level variables) in understanding extra mitigation behavior. By looking at the data through the lens of segmentation, significant heterogeneity is uncovered in the associations of attitudes and knowledge about climate change-but not in motivational or socio-demographic links-with extra mitigation behavior in response to climate change, across two groups of environmentally active respondents. The study has implications for promoting more ambitious behavioral responses to climate change, both at the individual level and across countries.Background: The healthcare sector is a significant contributor to global carbon emissions, in part due to extensive travelling by patients and health workers. Objectives: To evaluate the potential of telemedicine services based on videoconferencing technology to reduce travelling and thus carbon emissions in the healthcare sector. Methods: A life cycle inventory was performed to evaluate the carbon reduction potential of telemedicine activities beyond a reduction in travel related emissions. The study included two rehabilitation units at Umea University Hospital in Sweden. Carbon emissions generated during telemedicine appointments were compared with care-as-usual scenarios. Upper and lower bound emissions scenarios were created based on different teleconferencing solutions and thresholds for when telemedicine becomes favorable were estimated. Sensitivity analyses were performed to pinpoint the most important contributors to emissions for different set-ups and use cases. Results: Replacing physical visits with telemedicine appointments resulted in a significant 40-70 times decrease in carbon emissions. Factors such as meeting duration, bandwidth and use rates influence emissions to various extents. According to the lower bound scenario, telemedicine becomes a greener choice at a distance of a few kilometers when the alternative is transport by car. Conclusions: Telemedicine is a potent carbon reduction strategy in the health sector. But to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation, a paradigm shift might be required where telemedicine is regarded as an essential component of ordinary health care activities and not only considered to be a service to the few who lack access to care due to geography, isolation or other constraints.The EU has established an aggressive portfolio with explicit near-term targets for 2020 - to reduce GHG emissions by 20%, rising to 30% if the conditions are right, to increase the share of renewable energy to 20%, and to make a 20% improvement in energy efficiency - intended to be the first step in a long-term strategy to limit climate forcing. The effectiveness and cost of extending these measures in time are considered along with the ambition and propagation to the rest of the world. Numerical results are reported and analysed for the contribution of the portfolio's various elements through a set of sensitivity experiments. It is found that the hypothetical programme leads to very substantial reductions in GHG emissions, dramatic increases in use of electricity, and substantial changes in land-use including reduced deforestation, but at the expense of higher food prices. The GHG emissions reductions are driven primarily by the direct limits. Although the carbon price is lower under the hypothetical protocol than it would be under the emissions cap alone, the economic cost of the portfolio is higher, between 13% and 22%.Attaining deep greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions in industry in order to support a stringent climate change control target will be difficult without recourse to CO2 capture and storage (CCS). Using the insights from a long-term bottom-up energy systems model, and undertaking a sectoral assessment, we investigated the importance of CCS in the industrial sector. Under climate policy aimed at limiting atmospheric concentration of GHGs to 650 ppm CO(2)e, costs could increase fivefold when CCS is excluded from the portfolio of mitigation option measures in the industry sector as compared to when CCS is excluded in the power sector. This effect is driven largely by the lack of alternatives for deep emission reductions in industry. Our main policy conclusion is that a broader recognition of CCS in industrial applications in both current policy discussions and research, development, and demonstration funding programmes is justified. In recognition of the heterogeneity of the many types of industrial production processes, the size and location of industrial CO2 sources, the specific need for CCS-retrofitting, and the exposure of most industrial sectors to international trade, policies aimed at supporting CCS must distinguish between the different challenges faced by the power and industrial sectors.We evaluate the potential regional macroeconomic impacts of a set of ten greenhouse gas mitigation policy options intended to enable the Southern California Association of Governments to comply with the State's greenhouse gas reduction targets. The Regional Economic Models, Inc. Policy Insight Plus Model, was applied in the analysis by carefully linking technical and microeconomic aspects of each mitigation option to the workings of the regional economy We took into account key considerations, such as how investment in mitigation options would displace ordinary private business investment and the time-phasing of renewable electricity generation. Our results indicate that the combined ten mitigation policy options could create an annual average employment gain of 21 thousand jobs over the entire planning periodfrom now to 2035, but could also have a negative net present value impact of $17 billion in regional GDP. In the papen we explain this and other anomalies. Sensitivity analyses of key assumptions and parameters for the Renewable Portfolio Stoddard indicate that the results are robust. They also provide policy-makers with insights into how to improve the macroeconomic impact of this major policy option.British Columbia (BC)'s forests and wood products industry face tremendous adversity in the face of the mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) epidemic. The death and decay of one of BC's leading merchantable tree species (lodgepole pine; Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud. var. latifolia Engelm.) threatens both the sustainability and climate mitigation opportunities in BC forests. Our study investigates the potential for carbon (C) storage in wood products in the post-epidemic phase of the MPB outbreak. In particular, we contrast the C-balance implications of converting MPB timber into long-lived wood products (i.e., lumber) (scenario 1) versus softwood pellets for bioenergy (scenario 2). Our findings highlight the importance of the C-cycle neutral assumption in determining the net C-balance of lumber versus pellets. Timber harvests for lumber resulted in a net C storage with this assumption (case 1), and net C emissions without this assumption (case 2). With uncertainty surrounding the future C-balance of BC forests, the current assumption of biomass-derived emissions being completely C-neutral may need to be re-evaluated.Achieving climate policy targets will require large-scale deployment of low-carbon energy technologies, including nuclear power. The small modular reactor (SMR) is viewed as a possible solution to the problems of energy security as well as climate change. In this paper, we use an integrated assessment model (IAM) to investigate the evolution of a global energy portfolio with SMRs under a stringent climate policy. Technology selection in the model is based on costs; we use results from previous expert elicitation studies of SMR costs. We find that the costs of achieving a 2 C target are lower with SMRs than without. The costs are higher when large reactors do not compete for market share compared to a world in which they can compete freely. When both SMRs and large reactors compete for market share, reduction in mitigation cost is achieved only under advanced assumptions about SMR technology costs and future cost improvements. While the availability of SMRs could lower mitigation costs by a moderate amount, actual realization of these benefits would depend on the rapid up-scaling of SMRs in the near term. Such rapid deployment could be limited by several social, institutional and behavioral obstacles. (C)2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.REDD+ social safeguards have gained increasing attention in numerous forums. This paper reviews the evolution of multi-level policy dialogues, processes, and actions related to REDD+ social safeguards (e.g., Cancun Safeguards 1-5) among policy makers, civil society organizations, and within the media in Brazil, Indonesia and Tanzania, three countries with well advanced REDD+ programs. We find that progress on core aspects of social safeguards is uneven across the three countries. Brazil is by far the most advanced having drafted a REDD+ social safeguards policy. Both Brazil and Indonesia have benefited from progress made by strong sub-national entities in the operationalization of REDD+ safeguards including free prior and informed consent (FPIC), participation, and benefit sharing. Tanzania has weakly articulated how social safeguards will be operationalized and has a more top-down approach. We conclude that in all three countries, measuring, reporting and verifying progress on social safeguards is likely to be a complex issue. Stakeholders with vested interests in REDD+ social safeguards operate in polycentric rather than nested systems, suggesting that aggregation of information from local to national-scale will be a challenge. However, polycentric systems are also likely to support more transparent and comprehensive safeguards systems. Clear direction from the international community and financing for REDD+ safeguard MRV is essential if REDD+ social safeguards are to be meaningfully integrated into forest-based climate mitigation strategies.This paper reviews the role envisaged for hydrogen energy within the context of global and national 'sustainable' energy strategies, that is, strategies seeking to address climate change imperatives and guarantee energy security. The focus is on studies conducted over the past 5 years. Reviews are provided in turn of the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2012; the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation; one of the first spatially disaggregated energy-economic modeling studies of the role of hydrogen in a national economy using the MARKAL model; and a recent study into whether the world can rely just on energy efficiency and renewable energy alone. Some general guidelines for integrating hydrogen into sustainable energy futures are proposed. Key challenges facing hydrogen energy and technologies are identified and ways to overcome these barriers are suggested. Finally, some positive recent developments indicating that hydrogen energy might be on the verge of a comeback are described. (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.As most power is consumed domestically, the environmental efficiencies of electric power industries in different countries may serve as a benchmark to evaluate their emission reduction efforts. Taking the power generated and carbon emissions as desirable and undesirable outputs respectively, this study adopts the environmental Malmquist index, which is based on a SBM-DEA (slack based measure data envelopment analysis) model, to investigate the environmental TFP (total factor productivity) index of electric power industries in 26 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries from 1996 to 2010. In addition, we employ the Tobit regression model to analyze the influence of related factors on TFP and its decompositions. The empirical results indicate that the dynamic environmental efficiency or TFP provides a good perspective for evaluating emission reduction efforts of electric power industries in different countries. Fuel structure change and technological progress are the main driving forces to promote dynamic environmental efficiency. Furthermore, the economic situation and energy price changes also affect dynamic environmental efficiency significantly. Therefore, taking the energy structure and affordability into consideration, environmental TFP may indicate climate change mitigation efforts to a large extent. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There has been no federal legislation in the US regarding global climate change. Yet, state-level and city governments have exhibited policy leadership on this subject. How has this varied across states, specifically how has newspaper coverage about global climate change influenced legislative activity across US states during the period 1998-2006? Drawing insights from the literature on the impact of media on agenda setting, we employ regression analysis to understand the impact of newspaper coverage on the introduction of global climate change bills across 17 US states. Newspaper coverage is operationalized in two ways. First, we focus on the overall tone of the coverage: (1) negative, anti-policy tone; (2) balanced tone; or (3) positive, pro-policy tone. We find that pro-policy narratives are associated with increased legislative activity and balanced narratives are associated with fewer bills aiming at global climate change mitigation. Second, we examine issues addressing: (1) the occurrence of global climate change; (2) its consequences; and (3) global climate change policy solutions. We find that newspaper coverage focused on consequences and policy solutions is associated with increases in the number of introduced bills whereas coverage focused on occurrence is associated with decreases in the number of introduced bills. This article highlights the need to understand the role of subnational units in global public policy especially the implementation of global regimes. Second, we highlight the important role of media in agenda setting and in influencing subnational policy processes.This paper studies the interplay between climate, health, and the economy in a stylized world with eleven heterogeneous regions, with special emphasis on USA, Europe, China, India, and Africa. We introduce health impacts into a simple economic integrated assessment model where both the local cooling effect of SO2 and the global warming effect of CO2 are endogenous, and investigate how these factors affect the equilibrium path. Regions do not respond in the same way to climate change. In particular, emission abatement rates and health costs depend on the economic and geographical characteristics of each region. Two policy scenarios are considered, Nash and Optimal, for which we present both global and regional results. Results for Africa and China are highlighted.The US public consistently ranks climate change as a low national priority due, in part, to a lack of personal engagement and a sense of temporal and spatial distance from the environmental effects (Leiserowitz 2006). Yet, the chief method for climate change mitigation, the reduction of fossil fuel use, would also reduce particulate air pollution, which is implicated in over three million deaths worldwide each year (Lim et al. 2013). Indeed, in the US, improved public health ranks among the top perceived benefits of reducing fossil fuel use (Leiserowitz et al. 2013), and the scientific community has been promoting these benefits-such as reduction in hospitalizations and premature deaths -for over a decade (Cifuentes et al. 2001; West et al. 2013). Furthermore, the health behavior literature demonstrates that personal perception of risk, which is likely to be linked to health, is one of the strongest motivators of behavioral change (Few 2007; Maibach and Parrott 1995). Thus, one possible method for garnering support for carbon emissions reduction is to emphasize the added co-benefit of reducing present-day, health-related impacts. However, it remains to be understood whether public health messaging can lead to improved climate change mitigation efforts, or how specific segments of the US population will respond to this message. In particular, emphasizing health co-benefits may be a strong motivator of attitude change among individuals who are less concerned about environmental threats or who deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change.China needs to reduce its carbon emissions if global climate change mitigation is to succeed. Conventional economic analysis views cutting emissions as a cost, creating a collective action problem. However, decarbonization can improve productivity and provide co-benefits that accord with multiple national policy objectives. We track China's progress in reducing the emissions intensity of the economy, and construct a macro scenario with China's carbon emissions peaking in the 2020s. Investment in greater energy productivity and economic restructuring away from heavy industries can bring productivity gains, and decarbonization of energy supply has important co-benefits for air pollution and energy security. Combined with lower climate change risks and the likelihood that China's actions will influence other countries, this suggests that cutting carbon emissions is not only in China's self-interest but also in the global interest. To properly identify the true costs and benefits of climate change action requires new thinking in economic analysis.To determine whether innovations in policy concerning climate-change mitigation are symbolic or truly radical in the sense of 'tipping' existing policy portfolios towards a new instrumental logic, we study policy innovations in the context of pre-existing policy portfolios and analyse the associated dynamics over time. Our analysis is facilitated by a new measurement of policy output, the Index of Climate Policy Activity. This new approach sheds light on the relative importance of policy innovations in complex policy portfolios, and serves as a blueprint for further analyses of the politics of policy innovation. Empirically, we analyse policy innovations within the policy portfolios of energy production in Austria, Germany, and the UK between 1998 and 2010. We find high stability in the instrumental logic but substantial change in policy settings and calibrations.Increasing the share of the harvested C ending up in food and returned to soil could contribute to climate change mitigation and food security. The aim of this study was to quantify empirically the proportion of the harvested C ending up in food and soil and the C losses occurring when managing harvested C in smallholder mixed farming systems in Ethiopia. Four case farms were explored; one resource-limited and one better-off farm, in two socio-ecologically contrasting regions important for food production. Material flow analysis (MFA) was used to determine the flows of harvested C. The losses of harvested C, from the livestock, compost and household energy use were quantified based on C balances. The C flows were estimated as means for two growing seasons, 2008/2009 and 2009/2010, with low and average precipitation, respectively. Analysis was founded on semi-structured interviews and sampling, supplemented with information from databases and the literature. From the total harvested C, 9-16% was allocated to food and 4-12% to agricultural soil. Since the residues are utilized apart from human excreta with a negligible significance, increasing the proportion of harvested C used for food and returned to soil is in these farming systems only possible by reducing the gaseous C losses. The largest losses of the harvested C occur through biomass burning (15-60%), animal metabolism (16-44%) and composting (5-23%). The large C loss through the replaceable residue burning seems to offer the most accessible remedy to smallholder management of harvested C. Consequently, the proportion of harvested C used for fuel appears as the main determinant for the proportion of harvested C ending up in soil and food. Energy substitutes for manure and straw, improved manure management and more stable food and fodder supply to reduce the requisite number of animals are all keys to close C cycles in the farming systems. Quantification of the organic C flows using MFA is useful in revealing the allocation of harvested C and losses occurring in its management in farming systems when measurement of gaseous emissions and leaching are not feasible. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Analyses of climate change and the forest sector have identified the importance of individual actors, institutions, and organizations within communities for effective adaption and climate mitigation. Yet, there remains little recognition of how the internal dynamics of these institutions and organizations are influenced by gender and other social considerations such as age and culture. Research from developing countries and cognate resource sectors suggests that these considerations are critical for enhancing local adaptive capacity. Despite extensive review of forestry research across North America and western Europe, we found almost no research that addresses how differential social capabilities within forest-based communities affect adaptation to climate change. In this paper, we document the potential that gender sensitivity might provide to conceptions and practical applications of adaptive capacity and identify four types of research opportunities to address this gap: (i) developing disaggregated capitals frameworks; (ii) creating inclusive models; (iii) informing social planning; and (iv) understanding gender main-streaming. Research focused on these opportunities, among others, will provide more robust theoretical understanding of adaptive capacity and strategic interventions necessary for effective adaptation.The aim of this paper is to propose the main elements of a theoretical and methodological framework for the assessment of the success of complex policy mixes, to highlight the conflicts between individual instruments and other elements within those mixes and to propose policy recommendations in order to mitigate them. Some criteria are defined, and different levels of analysis are considered. The challenges in evaluating policy packages are illustrated with the case of the coexistence between renewable energy support and emissions trading schemes. It is shown that policy mixes inherently lead to interactions between the different instruments, either in the form of conflicts or synergies. Conflicts are horizontal (i.e., between different types of instruments) and/or vertical (i.e., between different administrative levels). It is suggested that mitigating those conflicts could require administrative coordination. Relevant coordination could take place between different administrative levels and relate to different instruments or different design elements within similar instruments. However, given the trade-offs between different criteria, the role of coordination is necessarily limited.Aim Habitat fragmentation threatens species' persistence by increasing subpopulation isolation and vulnerability to stochastic events, and its impacts are expected to worsen under climate change. By reconnecting isolated fragments, habitat corridors should dampen the synergistic impacts of habitat and climate change on population viability. Choosing which fragments to reconnect is typically informed by past and current environmental conditions. However, habitat and climate are dynamic and change over time. Habitat suitability projections could inform fragment selection using current and future conditions, ensuring that corridors connect persistent fragments. We compare the efficacy of using current-day and future forecasts of breeding habitat to inform corridor placement under land cover and climate-change mitigation and no mitigation scenarios by evaluating their influence on subpopulation abundance, and connectivity and long-term metapopulation abundance. Our case study is the threatened orangutan metapopulation in Sabah. Location Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Methods Using coupled niche-population models that capture a metapopulation distribution and its major processes, we forecast the effect of current-day and future-informed habitat corridor implementations under two scenarios where (1) land cover and climate change continue unabated (no mitigation) and (2) local and international cooperation mitigates their synergistic impact (mitigation). Results We show that Future-informed corridor placement maximizes longterm metapopulation abundance when human-driven land cover and climate change alter the spatio-temporal composition of suitable habitat. By contrast, there is no apparent benefit in using future forecasts of breeding habitat to inform corridor placement if conditions remain comparatively stable. For the Sabah orangutan under unabated land cover and climate change, habitat corridors should connect current-day populated eastern habitat fragments with vacant fragments in the state's west. Main conclusions The efficacy of habitat corridors can be improved by using habitat-suitability model projections to inform corridor placement in rapidly changing environments, even for long-lived, low-fecundity, philopatric species such as orangutan.We use a laboratory experiment to elicit discount rates over a 20-year time horizon using government savings bonds as a payment vehicle. When using a constant (exponential) discount rate function, we find an implied average discount rate of 4.9 %, which is much lower than has been found in previous experimental studies that used time horizons of days or months. However, we also find strong support for non-constant, declining discount rates for longer time horizons, with an extrapolated implied annual discount rate approaching 0.5 % in 100 years. There is heterogeneity in discount rates and risk preferences in that people with more optimistic beliefs about technological progress have higher discount rates. These findings contribute to the debate over the appropriate discount rate to use in comparing the long-term benefits of climate change mitigation to the more immediate costs.Bioenergy production using woody biomass is a major climate change mitigation strategy but is often considered in terms of competitive effects on water. This paper describes the use of a short-rotation biomass system (Phase Farming with Trees PFT or Kamikaze Forestry') to manage water in dryland farming systems where this has accumulated below the root zone and has on and off-site environmental impacts. This excess water can be utilized for growth by deep-rooted, high-density biomass plantations inserted as short rotations into agricultural land. The objective is to promote rapid growth and mining of deep stored water through strategies such as high planting densities, the use of fast-growing species or fertilization each of which increases leaf area. Once the water is used, the trees are harvested and excess water is allowed to build up again in the subsequent cropping phase. Biomass production and water depletion were measured in a five-year rotation of trees inserted into a dryland (367mmyr(-1) mean annual rainfall) cereal farming system in south-western Australia. Both were markedly affected by tree age, planting density, and landscape position on a very minor slope. The greatest biomass production was achieved with high-density (4000 stemsha(-1)) plantings of Eucalyptus occidentalis and Eucalyptus globulus in lower landscape positions. High-density plots of these species in mid and upper landscape positions succumbed to drought after 3-4years, but depleted available soil water to depths of >8m, equivalent to 771mm of stored available water. These results suggest that biomass yield can be readily manipulated through planting density and site selection. Moreover, biomass production can produce positive water management co-benefits.Reducing emissions from forest degradation and deforestation, conserving and enhancing forest carbon stocks, and sustainably managing forests (REDD+) has emerged as one of the most anticipated climate change mitigation tools. This paper aims to understand and identify the underlying discourses that have dominated the emergence of REDD+, by identifying the key story lines in the policy and academic debates on REDD+. As such, this paper takes a step away from the "fine-tuning" of policy recommendations and instead studies REDD+ from a more theoretical approach with the intent to provide a critical analysis of the ideational structures that shape the policies that have emerged around REDD+. The analysis shows that ecological modernization and its accompanying story lines constitute a dominant notion of REDD+ as being able to manage the complexities of forest in a synergetic way, combining cost-efficient and effective mitigation with sustainable development. The paper also identifies the critical counter discourse of civic environmentalism, which criticizes this notion of REDD+ and instead promotes issues such as equity, the importance of local knowledge, and the participatory process. It argues that reducing deforestation involves trade-offs between economic, ecological, and social dimensions, also arguing that REDD+ fits overwhelmingly with the interest of the global North.The impact of air emissions from electricity generation depends on the spatial distribution of power plants and electricity dispatch decisions. Thus, any realistic evaluation of the air quality impacts of lower-carbon electricity must account for the spatially heterogeneous changes in associated emissions. Here, we present an analysis of the changes in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) associated with current, expected, and proposed energy efficiency and renewable energy policies in Wisconsin. We simulate the state's electricity system and its potential response to policies using the MyPower electricity-sector model, which calculates plant-by-plant reductions in NOx and SO2 emissions. We find that increased efficiency and renewable generation in a 2024 policy scenario substantially reduce statewide emissions of NOx and SO2 (55% and 59% compared to 2008, 32% and 33% compared to 2024 business-as-usual, BAU). PM2.5 is quantified across the Great Lakes region using the EPA Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for some emissions scenarios. We find that summer mean surface concentrations of sulfate and PM2.5 are less sensitive to policy changes than emissions. In the 2024 policy scenario, sulfate aerosol decreases less than 3% over most of the region relative to BAU and 3-13% relative to 2008 over most of Wisconsin. The lower response of these secondary aerosols arises from chemical and meteorological processing of electricity emissions, and mixing with other emission sources. An analysis of model performance and response to emission reduction at five sites in Wisconsin shows good model agreement with observations and a high level of spatial and temporal variability in sulfate and PM2.5 reductions. In this case study, the marginal improvements in emissions and air quality associated with carbon policies were less than the technology, renewable, and conservation assumptions under a business-as-usual scenario. However, this analysis for Wisconsin shows how integrated modeling can quantify the emission and air quality co-benefits associated with carbon reduction measures, and this approach can be applied to other regions and larger geographical scales. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Air traffic alters the atmospheric composition and thereby contributes to climate change. Here we investigate the trans-Atlantic air traffic for one specific winter day and analyse, which routing changes were required to achieve a reduction in the air traffic's contribution to climate change. We have applied an atmosphere-chemistry model to calculate so-called five dimensional climate cost functions (CCF), which describe the climate effect of a locally confined emission. The five dimensions result from the emission location (3D), time (1D) and the type of emission (1D; carbon dioxide, water vapour, nitrogen oxides). In other words, carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapour (H2O) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are emitted in amounts typical for aviation at many confined locations and times and their impacts on climate calculated with the atmosphere-chemistry model. The impact on climate results from direct effects, such as the changes in the concentration of the greenhouse gases CO2 and H2O and indirect effects such as contrail cirrus formation and chemical changes of ozone and methane by emissions of NOx. These climate cost functions are used by a flight planning tool to optimise flight routes with respect to their climate impact and economic costs of these routes. The results for this specific winter day show that large reductions in the air traffic's contribution to climate warming (up to 60%) can be achieved for westbound flights and smaller reductions for eastbound flights (around 25%). Eastbound flights take advantage of the tail winds from the jet stream and hence routings with lower climate impacts have a large fuel penalty, whenever they leave the jet stream. Maximum reduction in climate impact increases the economic costs by 10-15%, due to higher fuel consumption, caused by a longer flight distance and lower flight levels. However, with only small changes to the air traffic routings and flight altitudes, climate reductions up to 25% can be achieved by only small changes in economic costs (less than 0.5%). (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Forest-oriented climate mitigation policies promote forestation as a means to increase uptake of atmospheric carbon to counteract global warming. Some have pointed out that a carbon-centric forest policy may be overstated because it discounts biophysical aspects of the influence of forests on climate. In extra-tropical regions, many climate models have shown that forests tend to be warmer than grasslands and croplands because forest albedos tend to be lower than non-forest albedos. A lower forest albedo results in higher absorption of solar radiation and increased sensible warming that is not offset by the cooling effects of carbon uptake in extra-tropical regions. However, comparison of forest warming potential in the context of climate models is based on a coarse classification system of tropical, temperate, and boreal. There is considerable variation in climate within the broad latitudinal zonation of tropical, temperate, and boreal, and the relationship between biophysical (albedo) and biogeochemical (carbon uptake) mechanisms may not be constant within these broad zones. We compared wintertime forest and non-forest surface temperatures for the southeastern United States and found that forest surface temperatures shifted from being warmer than non-forest surface temperatures north of approximately 36 degrees N to cooler south of 36 degrees N. Our results suggest that the biophysical aspects of forests' influence on climate reinforce the biogeochemical aspects of forests' influence on climate south of 36 degrees N. South of 36 degrees N, both biophysical and biogeochemical properties of forests appear to support forestation as a climate mitigation policy. We also provide some quantitative evidence that evergreen forests tend to have cooler wintertime surface temperatures than deciduous forests that may be attributable to greater evapotranspiration rates. Published by Elsevier B.V.This study reviewed the status of PM2.5 and tropospheric O-3 observations in China (15-55 degrees N, 72-136 degrees E). Initially, the distribution of tropospheric O-3 over the globe and China was determined based on satellite observations made during 2010-2013. The annual mean values were 29.78 DU and 33.97 DU over the globe and China, respectively. The distribution of PM2.5 and seasonal changes in concentrations in China were then simulated using an aerosol chemistry-climate coupled model system, with an annual mean value of 0.51 x 10(-8) kg m(-3). The contributions from five different aerosols to the simulated PM2.5 concentrations in different seasons were also determined. The relationships among the emissions of aerosols, greenhouse gases and their precursors and radiative forcings were determined with reference to the (IPCC AR5) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the Fifth Assessment Report. From these relationships, the possible effects of controlling O-3 precursors and (PM) particulate matter on the climate were considered. The influence of the control of O-3 precursors was not totally clear, and reducing emissions of short-lived greenhouse gases and black carbon was considered a secondary measure for short-term (the next 50 years) climate-change mitigation. Reducing emissions of CO 2 is still the best strategy for meeting the target of a global average rise in surface air temperature of less than 2 degrees C. Near- and short-term emission reduction strategies are important for both effective environmental protection and climate-change mitigation.Walking and cycling is widely assumed to substitute for at least some motorized travel and thereby reduce energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. While the evidence suggests that a supportive built environment may be needed to promote walking and cycling, it is unclear whether and how interventions in the built environment that attract walkers and cyclists may reduce transport CO2 emissions. Our aim was therefore to evaluate the effects of providing new infrastructure for walking and cycling on CO2 emissions from motorized travel. A cohort of 1849 adults completed questionnaires at baseline (2010) and one-year follow-up (2011), before and after the construction of new high-quality routes provided as part of the Sustrans Connect2 programme in three UK municipalities. A second cohort of 1510 adults completed questionnaires at baseline and two-year follow-up (2012). The participants reported their past-week travel behaviour and car characteristics from which CO2 emissions by mode and purpose were derived using methods described previously. A set of exposure measures of proximity to and use of the new routes were derived. Overall transport CO2 emissions decreased slightly over the study period, consistent with a secular trend in the case study regions. As found previously the new infrastructure was well used at one- and two-year follow-up, and was associated with population-level increases in walking, cycling and physical activity at two-year follow-up. However, these effects did not translate into sizeable CO2 effects as neither living near the infrastructure nor using it predicted changes in CO2 emissions from motorized travel, either overall or disaggregated by journey purpose. This lack of a discernible effect on travel CO2 emissions are consistent with an interpretation that some of those living nearer the infrastructure may simply have changed where they walked or cycled, while others may have walked or cycled more but few, if any, may have substituted active for motorized modes of travel as a result of the interventions. While the findings to date cannot exclude the possibility of small effects of the new routes on CO2 emissions, a more comprehensive approach of a higher 'dosage' of active travel promotion linked with policies targeted at mode shift away from private motorized transport (such as urban car restraint and parking pricing, car sharing/pooling for travel to work, integrating bike sharing into public transport system) may be needed to achieve the substantial CO2 savings needed to meet climate change mitigation and energy security goals. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Different social groups exhibit diverse travel behaviours and will thus experience very different outcomes in adapting to any changes to the transport system. This paper is concerned with making more transparent the equity implications of transport policies that are designed to change people's travel behaviours; explicitly those designed to mitigate the carbon impacts of the domestic transport sector. This is a relatively new area of transport policy delivery within the United Kingdom and elsewhere and, as yet, social equity considerations appear to be largely absent from the policy debate. This is in part due to a lack of suitable policy appraisal tools to identify their social consequences of such policies at the national and local level. To this end, we have developed an evaluation framework to test the social equity effects of the carbon mitigation policies for transport. The paper offers an example analysis of three policy measures that selected from Scotland's strategy for mitigating climate change in the transport sector. The case study has been chosen because the necessary strategy and policies are already well developed and so sufficient information is available to evaluate its likely behaviour changes outcomes. The paper concludes that there is a significant gap in both scientific and policy knowledge in this area and that a universal lack of data (i.e. not only in Scotland but internationally) is a major barrier to the robust analysis of the equity impacts of climate change mitigation measures. It also identifies some potential avenues for future research. (C) 2014 World Conference on Transport Research Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China contributed a majority of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in the first 11 years of this century. The trajectory of emissions has changed radically since then, as China has implemented its Cancun 2010 commitment to reduce the 2005 emissions intensity of economic activity by 40-45 percent by 2020. The change in trajectory has been reinforced by China's new model of economic growth, with its greater emphasis on equity in income distribution, consumption and services. The large-scale deployment of low emissions technology in China is lowering the cost of transition to a low carbon economy all over the world. China's new emissions trajectory improves the opportunity for the international community to meet the 2 degrees C climate target. It is essential that the changes in China are brought to account in shaping global mitigation ambition.As increasingly complex modelling approaches to quantifying embodied carbon in trade have become popular, the lack of disaggregation has been identified as a key weakness. This paper quantifies embodied carbon in bilateral trade at the product level. This is done using the material balance approach, by collecting product carbon intensity factors from multiple data sources and combining with bilateral trade data in physical quantities. The dataset covers trades between 195 countries for 1080 products in 2006. The detailed mapping of trade embodied carbon provides detailed insights into the nature of the flows that were previously masked or under-reported. For example, it finds that the lion's share of global trade embodied emissions are concentrated in a relatively small number of product categories of traded goods, suggesting that focusing mitigation efforts and trade-measures on these products would be an effective strategy to address potential carbon leakage, and to decarbonise international supply chains. The results also highlight that embodied carbon is focused in regional trade, thus regional harmonisation of climate mitigation policy will be effective in mitigating leakage. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recent evidence suggests that the degree of degradation of peatlands is substantial, and that there is a significant potential to enhance the delivery of a wide range of ecosystem services by investing in peatland restoration. However, little is known about the social welfare impacts of peatland restoration and in particular how to spatially target restoration activities to maximise net benefits from investments in restoration. This paper investigates the steps required to conduct a spatially explicit economic impact assessment of peatland restoration, and highlights and discusses key requirements and issues associated with such an assessment. We find that spatially explicit modelling of the biophysical impacts of restoration over time is challenging due to non-linear effects and interaction effects. This has repercussions for the spatially explicit assessment of costs and benefits, which in itself is a demanding task. We conclude that the gains of investing in the research needed to conduct such an assessment can be high, both in terms of advancing science and in terms of providing useful information for decision makers. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is evidence that damaged peatlands can negatively affect the delivery of water related ecosystem services. There is interest in peatland restoration to meet different regulatory targets, including the Water Framework Directive (WFD). A comprehensive assessment of the economic benefits of restoration is missing. This paper synthesises hydrological and bio-geochemical knowledge on peatland restoration, as well as insights in the monetary valuation of water quality improvements in freshwater systems. This is used to identify challenges in valuing water quality related benefits from peatland restoration. The paper concludes that there is strong evidence for rapid ecological responses to peatland restoration related to reduced suspended sediment loads, and sufficient evidence that re-wetting will prevent further decline in water quality. Two main challenges arise for valuation: (1) incomplete evidence of effects of restoration on final ecosystem services and benefits, and (2) the spatial and temporal differences in peatlands' responses. We suggest developing valuation scenarios on a case-by-case basis, using best available evidence of the changes associated with restoration described by a categorization of peatland status similar to the ecological status ladders developed for the WFD. These would need to be tested with the public and should include an element of uncertainty in services provision. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To meet the challenge of proactive ecosystem-based climate mitigation and adaptation, new sources of funding are needed. Peatlands provide the most efficient global store of terrestrial carbon. Degraded peatlands, however, contribute disproportionally to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with approximately 25% of all CO2 emissions from the land use sector, while restoration can be cost-effective. Peatland restoration therefore provides a newopportunity for investing in ecosystem-based mitigation through the development of carbon markets. Set in the international policy and carbon market context, this paper demonstrates the necessary scientific evidence and policy frameworks needed to develop ecosystem service markets for peatland restoration. Using the UK and NE Germany as case studies, we outline the climate change mitigation potential of peatlands and how changes in GHG emissions after restoration may be measured. We report on market demand research in carbon market investments that provide sponsors with quantification and officially certified recognition of the climate and other co-benefits. Building on this, we develop the necessary requirements for developing regional carbon markets to fund peatland restoration. While this paper focuses on the UK and German context, it draws on international experience, and is likely to be directly applicable across peatlands in Europe and North America. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Currently, mitigation and adaptation measures are handled separately, due to differences in priorities for the measures and segregated planning and implementation policies at international and national levels. There is a growing argument that synergistic approaches to adaptation and mitigation could bring substantial benefits at multiple scales in the land use sector. Nonetheless, efforts to implement synergies between adaptation and mitigation measures are rare due to the weak conceptual framing of the approach and constraining policy issues. In this paper, we explore the attributes of synergy and the necessary enabling conditions and discuss, as an example, experience with the Ngitili system in Tanzania that serves both adaptation and mitigation functions. An in-depth look into the current practices suggests that more emphasis is laid on complementarity-i.e., mitigation projects providing adaptation co-benefits and vice versa rather than on synergy. Unlike complementarity, synergy should emphasize functionally sustainable landscape systems in which adaptation and mitigation are optimized as part of multiple functions. We argue that the current practice of seeking co-benefits (complementarity) is a necessary but insufficient step toward addressing synergy. Moving forward from complementarity will require a paradigm shift from current compartmentalization between mitigation and adaptation to systems thinking at landscape scale. However, enabling policy, institutional, and investment conditions need to be developed at global, national, and local levels to achieve synergistic goals.In East Africa, financially strained governments increasingly experiment with voluntary, market-based carbon offset schemes for enhancing the public management of protected areas. Often, conservationists and governments portray these as 'triple-win' solutions for climate change mitigation, biodiversity preservation, and local socioeconomic development. Examining such rhetoric, this paper analyses the rise and decline of an integrated carbon offset and conservation initiative at Mount Elgon National Park in eastern Uganda, involving a partnership between the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and a Dutch NGO, Face the Future. In doing so, the paper reveals the ways in which the uncompensated dispossession of local residents was a necessary precondition for the project's implementation. Although external auditors expected the project to sequester 3.73 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO(2)e) between 1994 and 2034, conflicts forced the scheme to cease reforestation in 2003. Noting this rapid decline, we problematize the ways in which Face the Future and other carbon market intermediaries represented their activities via project documents and websites, obscuring the violence that was necessary for the project's implementation. In so doing, we argue that the maintenance of a 'triple win' spectacle is itself integral to the management of carbon sequestration projects, as it provides consumers with a form of 'ethical' use value, and greatly enhances the capacity of carbon market brokers to accumulate exchange value by attracting 'green' investors. Consequently, what we term a 'spectacular failure' manifests in at least two ways: first, in the unravelling of the heavily mediatized spectacle of harmonious, profitable conservation, and, second, in the deleterious nature of the consequences that accrue to local communities and ecosystems alike. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global agroecosystems can contribute to both climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, and market mechanisms provide a highly prospective means of achieving these outcomes. However, the ability of markets to motivate the supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services from agricultural land is uncertain, especially given the future changes in environmental, economic, and social drivers. We quantified the potential supply of these services from the intensive agricultural land of Australia from 2013 to 2050 under four global outlooks in response to a carbon price and biodiversity payment scheme. Each global outlook specified emissions pathways, climate, food demand, energy price, and carbon price modeled using the Global Integrated Assessment Model (GIAM). Using a simplified version of the Land Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, economic returns to agriculture, carbon plantings, and environmental plantings were calculated each year. The supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services was then quantified given potential land use change under each global outlook, and the sensitivity of the results to key parameters was assessed. We found that carbon supply curves were similar across global outlooks. Sharp increases in carbon sequestration supply occurred at carbon prices exceeding 50 $ tCO(2)(-1) in 2015 and exceeding 65 $ tCO(2)(-1) in 2050. Based on GIAM-modeled carbon prices, little carbon sequestration was expected at 2015 under any global outlook. However, at 2050 expected carbon supply under each outlook differed markedly, ranging from 0 to 189 MtCO(2) yr(-1). Biodiversity services of 3.32% of the maximum may be achieved in 2050 for a 1 $B investment under median scenario settings. We conclude that a carbon market can motivate supply of substantial carbon sequestration but only modest amounts of biodiversity services from agricultural land. A complementary biodiversity payment can synergistically increase the supply of biodiversity services but will not provide much additional carbon sequestration. The results were sensitive to global drivers, especially the carbon price, and the domestic drivers of adoption hurdle rate and agricultural productivity. The results can inform the design of an effective national policy and institutional portfolio addressing the dual objectives of climate change and biodiversity conservation that is robust to future uncertainty in both national and global drivers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Accelerated soil erosion, driven by anthropogenic activities such as conversion of natural ecosystems to agroecosystems and mechanical tillage, has numerous adverse impacts on ecosystem services. In addition to degrading soil quality and reducing agronomic/ biomass productivity on-site through a decrease in use-efficiency of inputs, off-site impacts of accelerated erosion include eutrophication and contamination, sedimentation of reservoirs and waterways, and emissions of greenhouse gases (e. g., CO2, CH4 and N2O). While advancing food and nutritional security, adoption of restorative land use and recommended management practices are important to strengthening numerous ecosystem services such as improving water quality and renewability, increasing below and above-ground biodiversity, enhancing soil resilience to climate change and extreme events, and mitigating climate change by sequestering C in soil and reducing the emission of CO2, CH4 and N2O. An effective control of accelerated erosion is essential to sustainable development and improving the environment.Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the major greenhouse gas and for this reason, several countries are seeking for new strategies to reduce emissions of this gas in the atmosphere. Thus, among the technological options for climate change mitigation, carbon capture and storage (CCS) arises as an interesting and promising choice for reducing GEE emissions from large emitters like power plants, oil refineries and cement factories. The organic-inorganic hybrid materials, or "Metal Organic Frameworks" (MOFs), a class of porous materials, are promising materials in the field of CO2 capture since they are able to adsorb large quantities of this gas. MIL-101 is a MOF that has presented itself as a relevant material in CO2 capture due to its adsorptive properties. Thus, the synthesis, characterization and evaluation of CO2 adsorption capacity of the MIL-101 (Cr) are the goals of this work. The synthesis was carried out using a hydrothermal method at 200 degrees C for eight hours. The formed product was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, infrared spectrometry and measurement of the surface area. CO2 adsorption isotherms, up to 40 bar, were obtained at four different temperatures: 10 degrees C, 15 degrees C, 20 degrees C and 30 degrees C.This paper estimates Nigeria biogas potential from livestock manure and its contribution to climate change mitigation. Findings reveal that Nigeria biogas potential from livestock manure represents a minimum of 1.62 x 10(9) m(3) of biogas per annum. Replacing diesel fuel with methane derived from biogas to produce electricity as well as inorganic nitrogen fertilizer with organic nitrogen from the anaerobic digester for agricultural use will lead to carbon dioxide (CO2) emission savings of 683,600 t per annum. This amount represents the minimum contribution of biogas derived from livestock manure to climate change mitigation if harnessed for electricity and agricultural use in Nigeria. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The article provides the analysis of fuel and energy transition in Lithuanian households sector and its sustainable development after the integration of Lithuania into the European Union (EU) and covers the period 2005-2012. Lithuania has limited quantity of indigenous energy resources and is depended from the import of energy resources, such as natural gas, petroleum and hard coal. Up to the year 2009 about 70-80% of electricity was produced from Ignalina NPP. At the end of 2009, according to the requirements of EU, Ignalina NPP was closed. Lithuania's energy dependence on the imports of fuel increased remarkably from 503% in 2009 to about 82% in 2010-2012 and considerably exceeded the EU average 54%. The share of renewable and indigenous energy sources in gross inland fuel and energy consumption increased from 14.7% in 2009 to 19.5% in 2012. About 40.4% of RES and indigenous energy belonged to households sector and 44.9% were transformed in Combined Heat and Power (CHP), and only 14.7% belonged to industry and other sectors. In article, the sustainable development of Lithuanian and European households were overviewed and recent analysis of Lithuanian households sector was carried out. Dwellings were sorted by the year of construction. Distribution of households by dwelling type and heated area was assessed. Final fuel and energy consumption and distribution by different consumer groups were shown. In 2009-2012 final fuel and energy consumption of Lithuanian households comprised about 65 PJ or 33% of all final consumption. Household's energy consumption by different energy sources was disclosed. In 2012 about 36.5% of household's energy consumption belonged to solid biofuels and about 31.7% to heat energy. Electricity consumptions of households and electricity prices for household consumers were indicated and comparisons with EU-27 countries were made. Lithuanian RES flows diagram was constructed and RES share for households was revealed. The reduction of greenhouse gases emissions in Lithuania and other European countries was indicated. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has allowed industrialized countries to buy credits from developing countries for the purpose of meeting targets under the Kyoto Protocol. In principle, the CDM simply shifts the location of emission reductions, with no net mitigation impact. Departing from this zero-sum calculus, the Cancun Agreements reached at the sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) in 2010 called for "one or more market-based mechanisms" capable of "ensuring a net decrease and/or avoidance of global greenhouse gas emissions", an intention reiterated at COP 17 and COP 18. This article explores the extent to which the CDM may or may not already lead to such a "net decrease." It finds that the CDM's net mitigation impact likely hinges on the additionality of large-scale power projects, which are expected to generate the majority of CDM credits going forward. If these projects are truly additional and continue to operate well beyond the credit issuance period, they will decrease global greenhouse gas emissions. However, if they are mostly non-additional, as research suggests, they could increase global greenhouse gas emissions. The article closes with a discussion of possible means to increase mitigation benefit. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The importance of a focus on mobility and the kilometres travelled using light duty vehicles is reflected in the persistence of strong demand for personal mobility and emissions that tend to be linked with population and economic growth. Simulation results using the WITCH model show that changes in the kilometres driven per year using light duty vehicles have a notable impact on investments related to the development of battery related technologies. As a result, different mobility futures have notably different optimal vehicle fleet compositions. As climate policy becomes more stringent, achieving abatement with increased mobility implies large investments in battery related technologies in comparison to the 2010 level. The model results also show that the Electric Vehicles Initiative goal of a 2% share of vehicles in 2020 could be achieved with climate policy in place. However, notable cost reductions and the removal of barriers to diffusion will need to continue for the EVI goal to be achieved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model integrating detailed energy end-use technologies is developed in this paper. The paper (1) presents how energy end-use technologies are treated within the model and (2) analyzes the characteristics of the model's behavior. Energy service demand and end-use technologies are explicitly considered, and the share of technologies is determined by a discrete probabilistic function, namely a Logit function, to meet the energy service demand. Coupling with detailed technology information enables the CGE model to have more realistic representation in the energy consumption. The proposed model in this paper is compared with the aggregated traditional model under the same assumptions in scenarios with and without mitigation roughly consistent with the two degree climate mitigation target. Although the results of aggregated energy supply and greenhouse gas emissions are similar, there are three main differences between the aggregated and the detailed technologies models. First, GDP losses in mitigation scenarios are lower in the detailed technology model (2.8% in 2050) as compared with the aggregated model (3.2%). Second, price elasticity and autonomous energy efficiency improvement are heterogeneous across regions and sectors in the detailed technology model, whereas the traditional aggregated model generally utilizes a single value for each of these variables. Third, the magnitude of emissions reduction and factors (energy intensity and carbon factor reduction) related to climate mitigation also varies among sectors in the detailed technology model. The household sector in the detailed technology model has a relatively higher reduction for both energy intensity and the carbon factor. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessment of management-induced changes in soil quality is important to sustaining high crop yield. A large diversity of cultivated soils necessitate identification development of an appropriate soil quality index (SQI) based on relative soil properties and crop yield. Whereas numerous attempts have been made to estimate SQI for major soils across the World, there is no standard method established and thus, a strong need exists for developing a user-friendly and credible SQI through comparison of various available methods. Therefore, the objective of this article is to compare three widely used methods to estimate SQI using the data collected from 72 soil samples from three on-farm study sites in Ohio. Additionally, challenge lies in establishing a correlation between crop yield versus SQI calculated either depth wise or in combination of soil layers as standard methodology is not yet available and was not given much attention to date. Predominant soils of the study included one organic (Mc), and two mineral (CrB, Ko) soils. Three methods used to estimate SQI were: (i) simple additive SQI (SQI-1), (ii) weighted additive SQI (SQI-2), and (iii) statistically modeled SQI (SQI-3) based on principal component analysis (PCA). The SQI varied between treatments and soil types and ranged between 0-0.9 (1 being the maximum SQI). In general, SQIs did not significantly differ at depths under any method suggesting that soil quality did not significantly differ for different depths at the studied sites. Additionally, data indicate that SQI-3 was most strongly correlated with crop yield, the correlation coefficient ranged between 0.74-0.78. All three SQIs were significantly correlated (r = 0.92-0.97) to each other and with crop yield (r = 0.65-0.79). Separate analyses by crop variety revealed that correlation was low indicating that some key aspects of soil quality related to crop response are important requirements for estimating SQI.Commuting is considered as one of the high-exposure periods among various daily activities, especially in high vehicle-density metropolitan areas. There is a growing awareness of the need to change our transportation habits by reducing our use of cars and shifting instead to active transport, i.e. walking or cycling. A review was undertaken using the ISI web of knowledge database with the objective to better understand personal exposure during commuting by different modes of transport, and to suggest potential strategies to minimise exposure. The air pollutants studied include particulate matter, PM black carbon, BC and particle number concentration. We focused only in European studies in order to have comparable situation in terms of vehicle fleet and policy regulations applied. Studies on personal exposure to air pollutants during car commuting are more numerous than those dealing with other types of transport, and typically conclude by emphasising that travelling by car involves exposure to relatively high particulate matter, PM exposure concentrations. Thus, compared to other transport methods, travelling by car has been shown to involve exposure both to higher PM and BC as compared with cycling. Widespread dependence on private car transport has produced a significant daily health threat to the urban commuter. However, a forward-looking, integrated transport policy, involving the phased renovation of existing public vehicles and the withdrawal of the more polluting private vehicles, combined with incentives to use public transport and the encouragement of commuter physical exercise, would reduce commuters' exposure. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Drip irrigation combined with split application of fertilizer nitrogen (N) dissolved in the irrigation water (i.e. drip fertigation) is commonly considered best management practice for water and nutrient efficiency. As a consequence, its use is becoming widespread. Some of the main factors (water-filled pore space, NH4+ and NO3-) regulating the emissions of greenhouse gases (i.e. N2O, CO2 and CH4) and NO from agroecosystems can easily be manipulated by drip fertigation without yield penalties. In this study, we tested management options to reduce these emissions in a field experiment with a melon (Cucumis melo L.) crop. Treatments included drip irrigation frequency (weekly/daily) and type of N fertilizer (urea/calcium nitrate) applied by fertigation. Crop yield, environmental parameters, soil mineral N concentrations and fluxes of N2O, NO, CH4 and CO2 were measured during 85 days. Fertigation with urea instead of calcium nitrate increased N2O and NO emissions by a factor of 2.4 and 2.9, respectively (P < 0.005). Daily irrigation reduced NO emissions by 42% (P < 0.005) but increased CO2 emissions by 21% (P < 0.05) compared with weekly irrigation. We found no relation between irrigation frequency and N2O emissions. Based on yield-scaled Global Warming Potential as well as NO cumulative emissions, we conclude that weekly fertigation with a NO3--based fertilizer is the best option to combine agronomic productivity with environmental sustainability. Our study shows that adequate management of drip fertigation, while contributing to the attainment of water and food security, may provide an opportunity for climate change mitigation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, the role of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of products and processes has increased in importance, since it is the best technique to quantify environmental impacts associated with a process or product. The study was carried out in an olive grove located in Central Italy with "Leccino" cultivar. The olive grove was established in year 2000 with a planting distance of 5.5 x 5.5 m, trained to the vase system, under dry conditions. The same methodology used for forestry trees ("model tree") was adopted to estimate the biomass and the respective carbon stock of the below-ground and above-ground parts of the olive tree as well as quantification of the non-permanent components periodically removed, i.e. fruits and prunings. The environmental impacts associated with management processes were evaluated according to LCA standards (UNI EN ISO 14040 and 14044). In relation to the impact on climate change, the CO2 sources and sinks were calculated in order to obtain the net carbon stock of the olive grove. These data were confirmed by experimental measurement of the tree biomass in three representative olive trees. The treatments and processes that had the greatest impact were identified and the individual phases and materials were then analysed in order to propose possible actions for reducing emissions throughout the entire olive grove life cycle. Removals and emissions were compared on a time scale, in order to identify the break-even point. The results allow to assess the carbon footprint of an olive grove, at different stages of its life cycle, as a support tool for creating a sustainable production chain in the olive sector. The paper proposes a methodological approach that can be adopted also in other olive groves with different horticultural management models. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Arguments over equity during abatement goal setting is the principal obstacle to climate mitigation cooperation, while allocating global emissions to each country as deduced from the climate objective according to certain equitable principles offers an effective alternative to ending this dispute. Such an alternative also endows each country with the freedom to determine and develop its own pathway under its emissions budget while ensuring that global climate targets are met. Within this context, this paper integrated economic growth theory with the optimal control model and simulated the optimal abatement pathway as well as the economic growth trajectory for China within the allocated emissions budget. The study found that research and development (R&D) investment is an effective way of improving energy efficiency. Our simulation showed that the R&D intensity of the gross domestic product (GDP) would see a slight decline for the inceptive period, followed by an aggressive rise to a relatively high level before decreasing again. Under the 450 ppm carbon concentration target, the R&D investment intensity would have to increase significantly beginning from 2014 because of the more stringent demands as compared to other less rigorous targets such as 500 ppm. The economy would continue to grow, although growth would occur less rapidly under rigorous targets: relative to 2007 levels, the GDP would grow by 11-fold and 15-fold under the 450 and 500 ppm scenarios, respectively. Before enforcement of an effective R&D investment, the carbon emissions would increase rapidly, while after enforcement, the speed of carbon emissions would slow down.Despite widespread gender issues in natural resource management and rural livelihoods strategies, there has been little study of how new development strategies, such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), consider gender issues. Gender consideration in REDD+ is especially important in mountainous countries like Nepal, where the majority of the rural population, especially women and socioeconomically disadvantaged households, depend on forests for many of their subsistence needs. Any changes in forest access or use rights or rules as a result of REDD+ would impact marginalized people whose inclusion, voice, and access to and control over forest resources are influenced by deeply gendered power relations and socio-institutional practices in Nepali society. This article analyzes ways the REDD+ initiatives in Nepal have considered gender issues identified in earlier studies. The main finding is that the REDD+ policy process is inadequate to account for underlying power dynamics, and thus is unable to achieve equity goals. In the absence of accounting for power, the consideration of gender issues in forest management by explicit inclusion of women in the payment criteria and policy discussions within REDD+ programs, including the REDD+ payment pilot project, is insufficient to redress gender imbalances. Forest actors such as the government and other project implementers-including community institutions-lack strategies and responsibilities for applying REDD+ initiatives that are gender equitable and ensure REDD+ benefits and decision-making opportunities for women and other marginalized people. To tap the potential of REDD+ to contribute to both climate change mitigation and mountain development, efforts are needed to make REDD+ national strategy-and policy-making gender sensitive. The critical areas to be addressed in Nepal include framing the REDD+ strategy within the forest ministry's Gender and Social Inclusion Strategy 2008, and then by judicious implementation ensuring access of poor and disadvantaged women and men to forest resources, carbon funds, and decision-making roles in order to undermine entrenched unequal relations.Recent assessment reports suggest that climate change patterns are threatening social and ecological vulnerability and resilience, with the strong potential of negatively affecting human health. Persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) have weakened physiological responses and are immunologically vulnerable to pathogens and stressors in their environment, putting them at a health disadvantage in climate-based rising temperatures, water scarcity, air pollution, potential water-and vector-borne disease outbreaks, and habitat redistributions. These climatic aberrations may lead to increased surface drying and decreased availability of arable land, threatening food/nutrition security and sanitary water practices. Coupled with HIV/AIDS, climate change threatens ecological biodiversity via a larger-scale socioeconomic recourse to natural resources. Corresponding human and environmental activity shape conditions conducive to exacerbating high rates of HIV/AIDS. In South Africa, this epidemic is forming a 'syndemic' with tuberculosis (TB), which has come to include multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extremely drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) strains. Because of high convergence rates, one epidemic cannot be addressed without understanding the other. Concurrent climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies are becoming increasingly important to curb changes that negatively affect the biospheres on which civilisation is ultimately dependent - from an agricultural, a developmental, and especially a health standpoint. Mitigation strategies such as reducing carbon emissions are essential, but may be only partially effective in slowing the rate of surface warming. However, global climate assessments assert that these are not sufficient to halt climate change patterns. The roles of regionally specific climate research, socioecologically sustainable industrialisation paths for developing countries, and adoption of health system strengthening strategies are therefore vital.In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, climate change looms as a profound health challenge in this century. Socially, politically and economically mediated ('tertiary') effects will probably be the most significant consequences of climate change, substantially exceeding the probable burden of its direct effects and infectious diseases. Climate change will decrease crop yields in many low-latitude areas, decreasing food security in many countries, including those in Africa. Under-nutrition will worsen, aggravated by diminished economic growth - one of the most widely predicted consequences of climate change. Furthermore, migration will increase, which will stretch and could even overwhelm health systems in destination areas, in addition to sapping donor locations of the financial and human capital they could use for further development. Mass migration heightens the risk of conflict, as does resource scarcity caused by climate change. Consequently, the capacity of states to meet the expectations of their citizens and impose law and order could further decrease, incentivising unscrupulous leaders to initiate or sustain conflict to enhance their support base. In summary, health systems on the African continent will be severely challenged by the increased demands caused by climate change, while their capacity will be diminished by its direct effects, reduced economic growth, additional migration and conflict. Adaptation is frequently treated as the best climate change response, but it is especially difficult in poorer countries, where even general development is threatened by these challenges. Reliance on adaptation would exacerbate the health gap. Global climate change mitigation is the surest way to preserve health, in Africa and elsewhere.It is still possible to limit greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the 2 degrees C warming threshold for dangerous climate change(1). Here we explore the potential role of expanded wind energy deployment in climate change mitigation efforts. At present, most turbines are located in extra-tropical Asia, Europe and North America(2,3), where climate projections indicate continuity of the abundant wind resource during this century(4,5). Scenarios from international agencies indicate that this virtually carbon-free source could supply 10-31% of electricity worldwide by 2050 (refs 2,6). Using these projections within Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) climate forcing scenarios(7), we show that dependent on the precise RCP followed, pursuing a moderate wind energy deployment plan by 2050 delays crossing the 2 degrees C warming threshold by 1-6 years. Using more aggressive wind turbine deployment strategies delays 2 degrees C warming by 3-10 years, or in the case of RCP4.5 avoids passing this threshold altogether. To maximize these climate benefits, deployment of non-fossil electricity generation must be coupled with reduced energy use.Given the coincidence of the demographic change and climate change in the upcoming decades the aging voter gains increasing importance in climate change mitigation and adaptation processes. It is generally assumed that information status and comprehension of complex processes underlying climate change are prerequisites for adopting pro-environmental attitudes and taking pro-environmental actions. In a cross-sectional study, we investigated in how far (1) environmental knowledge and comprehension of feedback processes underlying climate change and (2) pro-environmental attitudes change as a function of age. Our sample consisted of 92 participants aged 25-75 years (mean age 49.4 years, SD 17.0). Age was negatively related to comprehension of system structures inherent to climate change, but positively associated with level of fear of consequences and anxiousness towards climate change. No significant relations were found between environmental knowledge and pro-environmental attitude. These results indicate that, albeit understanding of relevant structures of the climate system is less present in older age, age is not a limiting factor for being engaged in the complex dilemma of climate change. Results bear implications for the communication of climate change and pro-environmental actions in aging societies.The world's energy needs have been continually growing over the past decade, yet fossil fuels are limited. Renewable energies are becoming more prevalent, but are still a long way from being commonplace worldwide. Literature mining is applied to review carbon capture and storage (CCS) development trends and to develop and examine a novel carbon capture and storage technological paradigm (CCSTP), which incorporates CCSTP competition, diffusion and shift. This paper first provides an overview of the research and progress in CCS technological development, then applies a techno-paradigm theory to analyze CCSTP development and to provide a guide for future CCS technological trends. CCS could avoid CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Moreover, bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) can make a significant contribution to a net removal of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. In this study, we compare the different CCSTP developmental paths and the conventional techno-paradigm by examining the S-curves. The analyses in this paper provide a useful guide for scholars seeking new inspiration in their research and for potential investors who are seeking to invest research funds in more mature technologies. We conclude that political barriers and public acceptance are the major distinctions between the CCSTP and the conventional techno-paradigm. It is expected that policy instruments and economic instruments are going to play a pivotal role in the accomplishment of global carbon reduction scenarios.1. Habitat structure is important in explaining species diversity patterns for many animal groups. If we could map habitat structure over large spatial scales, we could use habitat structure-species diversity (HS-SD) relationships to model species diversity and inform conservation planning and management. Traditional approaches for measuring habitat structure cannot be applied over entire landscapes, but remote sensing tools are now able to overcome this limitation. Here, we explore the potential of airborne lidar for the assessment and monitoring of animal species diversity in terrestrial environments. 2. We review the habitat attributes commonly recorded in the study of HS-SD relationships and the spatial scale of their measurement, in papers published between 1960 and 2013. We also gather evidence for the use of lidar to make relevant measurements at similar scales. 3. Eight out of 15 attributes of habitat structure commonly used in published studies relate to the vertical dimension of habitat. The core strength of lidar is that it is a vertical profiler, and this technology can be used to derive estimates of all but one of these structural attributes. Lidar can also be used to improve the measurement of the four commonly used attributes focusing on the horizontal heterogeneity of habitat patches. The spatial grain and extent of HS-SD studies is usually within the operational capability of airborne lidar; when a vertical measure of habitat structure has been employed, this is true in 84% of published studies. The potential efficacy of lidar in this field of biodiversity studies is underlined by several published examples of lidar modelling of animal species diversity. 4. We conclude that lidar remote sensing is fit for the purpose of biodiversity assessment and monitoring through its ability to characterize habitat structure, a key driver of animal species diversity, over large spatial scales. We advocate wider application of lidar-based HS-SD indicators to help tackle the current biodiversity crisis. In combination with other remote sensing products, these indicators may support the implementation and monitoring of environmental legislation, inform gap analyses and the planning of management actions for protected areas and species, and drive greater synergy with forest-based climate change mitigation.The benefits of tree-based intercropping (TBI) compared to conventional agro-ecosystems in North America could include climate change mitigation and adaptation, although enhancing resilience to climate change through increasing soil diversity remains poorly explored. Diversity of soil microarthropods supports a series of ecological services that may be altered by soil desiccation due to climate change. Here we study the effect of red oak and hybrid poplar TBI on soil oribatid mite species assemblages associated to forage crops (mix of Timothy-grass and red clover). Abundance and species density of oribatids were affected by treatment, depth and the interaction of both variables. Abundance of oribatid mites was significantly lower in the oak TBI, showing a homogeneous vertical distribution in opposition to a decreasing with depth distribution under poplar TBI and conventional crops. Species density was significantly higher in the conventional crop, showing again significant differences in depth that were not present in both TBI treatments. Distance to tree did not affect mite abundance nor species density. TBI increased oribatid richness (obtained by sample-based rarefaction and extrapolation) only in the presence of oaks. The distribution of oribatids was strongly associated to tree fine root biomass and stress the importance of underground organic resources for the oribatid fauna and their ecological functions. If increasing drought associated with climate change desiccates superficial levels of agro-ecosystem soils, deeper sources of organic resources, such as tree roots, should become crucial in the maintenance of diverse microarthropod communities.Much has been written about the potential of new technologies to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of trucking, but much less on the determinants of these investments. The Trucking Sector Trip Segmentation Model (TSTS) predicts how firms make these investments in the context of operating heterogeneous truck fleets to service the spatially dispersed demand of shippers. This analysis suggests that improving the performance of trucking (speeding up shipments) could significantly reduce GHG emissions: investments in these technologies are incentivized by fuel savings accruing sooner. This effect could be large in the US as trucking firms often discount the future heavily. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reviewing the existing studies of public perception and drawing analogies from other risk technologies, this paper explores the public positions on research and implementation of geoengineering as a means to combat climate change. Existing studies on geoengineering perceptions show low levels of awareness and a lack of knowledge. Hence, existing attitudes on geoengineering can be judged instable and stimulus-dependent. When judged in isolation, at least one third favors the use of geoengineering technologies preferring CDR over SRM technologies; when judged in comparison to other climate mitigation options, approval rates lose considerably support. Moreover, people seem to cautiously support research but oppose deployment while attitude formation depends on personal values and belief systems. The results of the empirical studies were fed into a Delphi workshop with experts for reflecting on the future development of public opinion and for designing a communication and public involvement process that corresponds to the empirical insights gained from the perception studies.The academic literature on climate change communications is growing. However, the majority of this literature focuses on the issue of climate change mitigation in a developed country context, and there is little published material regarding communication in a developing country and adaptation context. Similarly, despite community-based approaches to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction increasing in the Pacific Islands region, there is very limited guidance on how to effectively communicate climate change in a way that enhances people's resilience. This paper documents the experiences of organisations, including local and international non-government and faith-based organisations, governments, regional technical organisations and donor agencies in communicating climate change for adaptation in the Pacific region. Three key climate change communication challenges are highlighted and suggestions made for overcoming them based on results from interviews, a focus group discussion and an online forum. Finally, recommendations are made for good practice guidance in climate change communication that is empowering and culturally relevant.In this paper we analyze the interaction between climate and air pollution policies using the integrated assessment model REMIND coupled to the reduced-form climate model MAGICC. Since overall, aerosols tend to cool the atmosphere, there is a concern that a reduction of pollutant emissions could accelerate global warming and offset the climate benefits of carbon dioxide emission reductions. We investigate scenarios which independently reduce emissions from either large-scale sources, such as power plants, or small-scale sources, such as cooking and heating stoves. Large-scale sources are likely to be easier to control, but their aerosol emissions are characterized by a relatively high sulfur content, which tends to result in atmospheric cooling. Pollution from small-scale sources, by contrast, is characterized by a high share of carbonaceous aerosol, which is an important contributor to global warming. We find that air pollution policies can significantly reduce aerosol emissions when no climate policies are in place. Stringent climate policies lead to a large reduction of fossil fuel use, and therefore result in a concurrent reduction of air pollutant emissions. These reductions partly reduce aerosol masking, thus initially counteracting the reduction of greenhouse gas forcing, however not overcompensating it. If climate policies are in place, air pollution policies have almost no impacts on medium- and long-term radiative forcing. Therefore there is no conflict of objectives between clean air and limiting global warming. We find that the stringency of air pollution policies may influence the rate of global temperature change in the first decade. Afterwards climate change mitigation policies are of greater importance. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers the effects of the Camp for Climate Action, or "Climate Camp," on climate change mitigation and public discourse in the UK on climate change, drawing on participants' views and media coverage in addition to academic sources. Climate Camp was an activist movement best known for summer protest camps in the UK in 2006-2010, which targeted high-profile sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including Heathrow airport and Drax power station; engaged in radical, anti-capitalist critique of climate change; and demonstrated sustainable living. The ongoing effects of Climate Camp on climate change mitigation are analyzed, including specific campaigns, public discourse and mobilization of activists. The paper finds that while specific campaigns were successful and Climate Camp has contributed to a renewal of environmental activism and mobilization of "bystanders," the movement has (so far) failed to shift public discourse on climate change, let alone effect the deep systemic change it deemed necessary to mitigate climate change.Background: Since many governments lack the motivation to lead deep emission reduction initiatives, the climate action movement must strengthen its campaigns. Method and results: This paper offers strategies for the movement derived from historical analysis of mechanisms that achieved effective social change in the past. Common elements of climate action with past social change movements, together with some differences, are identified. Conclusion: Although technologies, strategies and tactics vary, climate action groups can agree to support a shared common goal: effective climate mitigation, that can be accomplished not only through outward-oriented tactics, but also by forms of climate activism that are prefigurative that is, based on action within local communities. Furthermore, the diverse campaigns that take place on a variety of scales and spaces, conducted by heterogeneous groups, should be integrated by establishing national and international hubs to facilitate coordination and communication.Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners across the social sciences, policy and beyond have proposed, trialled and developed a wide range of theoretical and practical approaches designed to bring about changes in behaviors and lifestyles that contribute to climate change. With the exception of the establishment of a small number of iconic behaviors such as recycling, it has, however, proved extremely difficult to bring about meaningful transformations in personal greenhouse gas emissions at the individual or societal level, with multiple reviews now pointing to the limited efficacy of current approaches. We argue that the majority of approaches designed to achieve mitigation have been constrained by the need to operate within prevailing social scientific, economic and political orthodoxies which have precluded the possibility of non-marginal change. In this paper, we ask what a truly radical approach to reducing personal emissions would look like from social science perspectives which challenge the unstated assumptions severely limiting action to date, and which explore new alternatives for change. We emphasize the difficulties likely to impede the instituting of genuinely radical societal change with respect to climate change mitigation, while proposing ways that the ground could be prepared for such a transformation to occur.The transition to a low-carbon society is imperative to climate change mitigation and requires cross-sectoral action at multiple levels. A growing literature emphasizes local action, but less is written about scaling up action at a county level. Combining three analytical perspectives - transition theory, strategic niche management and the middle-out - we examine the evolution and scaling up of local community-scale carbon action in Oxfordshire county. Our analysis is based on four local-level research projects. By identifying the roles and strategies of local actors in the development and scaling up of low carbon innovation and action, we conclude that local meso-level actors are crucial for catalyzing initial stages of county-level transitions, but limited in their capacity to scale up low-carbon innovation.What's the role of unilateral measures in global climate change mitigation in a post-Durban, post 2012 global policy regime? We argue that under conditions of preference heterogeneity, unilateral emissions mitigation at a subnational level may exist even when a nation is unwilling to commit to emission cuts. We establish that under certain assumptions, in a global strongly connected network of countries, learning the costs of switching to a low emissions activity can result in a universal adoption of such activities. We analyze the features of a policy proposal that could accelerate convergence to a low carbon world in the presence of global learning.Thermoelectric power production comprised 41% of total freshwater withdrawals in the U.S., surpassing even agriculture. This review highlights scenarios of the electric sector's future demands for water, including scenarios that limit both CO2 and water availability. A number of studies show withdrawals decreasing with retirement of existing electricity generating units. Consumption, the evaporative losses, also decreases in many scenarios. However, climate mitigation scenarios relying heavily on nuclear and carbon capture technologies may induce increases in water consumption. These increases in consumption represent a potential tradeoff between climate mitigation and adaptation of the electric sector to climate-related changes in water resources. It also points to the need for both analyses and technological solutions from the chemical engineering community.Water and energy are two interwoven factors affecting environmental management and urban development planning. Meanwhile, rapid urban development and a changing climate exacerbate the magnitude and effects of water-energy interactions in what a nexus defines. These factors and their mutual interactions affect how we evaluate urban developmental alternatives. In this perspective, a few pressing issues and a systems approach are discussed for quantitative analysis of the water-energy-climate-urban nexus in climate change mitigation and adaptation.The UK construction industry faces the daunting task of replacing and extending a significant proportion of UK infrastructure, meeting a growing housing shortage and retrofitting millions of homes whilst achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions compatible with the UK's legally binding target of an 80% reduction by 2050. This paper presents a detailed time series of embodied GHG emissions from the construction sector for 1997-2011. This data is used to demonstrate that strategies which focus solely on improving operational performance of buildings and the production efficiencies of domestic material producers will be insufficient to meet sector emission reduction targets. Reductions in the order of 80% will require a substantial decline in the use of materials with carbon-intensive supply chains. A variety of alternative materials, technologies and practices are available and the common barriers to their use are presented based upon an extensive literature survey. Key gaps in qualitative research, data and modelling approaches are also identified. Subsequent discussion highlights the lack of client and regulatory drivers for uptake of alternatives and the ineffective allocation of responsibility for emissions reduction within the industry. Only by addressing and overcoming all these challenges in combination can the construction sector achieve drastic emissions reduction. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper studies the development possibilities of the energy systems of four Central Asia and Caspian countries. It explores options that improve their domestic energy efficiencies and increase their export of fossil energy commodities. Using the MARKAL-TIMES modelling tool, it represents their energy system with a bottom-up partial economic equilibrium growth model. With the help of scenario analyses, it evaluates the direct economic advantage of improving the domestic energy efficiencies. Furthermore it calculates the direct economic advantage of cooperation. It finds out that a new/different geo-economic attitude brings USD billions of annual economic benefits, particularly if the countries aim to differentiate their export routes, increase the amount of export and contribute to climate change mitigation. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Forests play a major role in both climate change mitigation and adaptation, but few policies, if any, integrate these two aspects. Using Indonesia and Vietnam as case studies, we identify challenges at the national level but opportunities at the local level. Although both countries demonstrate political commitment to integrating adaptation and mitigation in their development plans, guidelines for policy and planning treat the two approaches separately. The main challenges identified are lack of knowledge, lack of political will, lack of financial incentives, and fragmentation of mandates and tasks of different government agencies. In contrast, at the local level, integration of mitigation and adaptation is facilitated by subnational autonomy, where mitigation projects might have adaptation co-benefits, and vice versa. Our results also show that many actors have a dual mandate that could bridge adaptation and mitigation if appropriate political and financial incentives are put in place. Successful integration of mitigation and adaptation policies would not only remove contradictions between policies, but also encourage governments that are designing domestic policies to exploit the potential for positive spillovers and realize the benefits of both approaches.Valuation studies about environmental goods, e.g. biodiversity, often use characteristics and indicators that seem ecologically sound. But ecological value and public value are not necessarily the same. Therefore, combining ecological indicators with public knowledge and language in framing valuation studies may improve the consistency of outcomes. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, we investigated lay people's mental constructs about biodiversity and attitudes to biodiversity management. Applying a coding strategy for analysing data from individual interviews and group discussions revealed that 'diversity of animals and plants', 'natural appearance and dynamics of ecosystem', and 'peace and quietness' were the attributes of forest ecosystems most frequently mentioned by lay people. In addition, it was found that regardless of familiarity with the various ecological scientific terminologies, lay people had an intuitive understanding of ecological concepts such as biodiversity. The analyses demonstrated that individuals' perceptions and values of biodiversity could be framed in two interlinking categories: (i) as a good in itself, and (ii) its regulatory function. It was also revealed that individuals' attitudes towards forests and their biodiversity may be rooted in their mental constructs and can be useful in targeting policy and conservation management. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Recurring disagreements during national preparations to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) are contributing to policy reform at multiple scales. The objectives of this study are to (i) develop a general framework to characterise diverse stakeholder perspectives on REDD+ programme objectives and governance arrangements, and (ii) apply this framework to analyse key stakeholders involved in REDD+ readiness process of Peru: the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (Asociacin Inter,tnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana, AIDESEP), the Peruvian government and the World Bank. As indigenous peoples strive to maintain their own traditions and priorities, a turbulent readiness process is helping to resolve long-ignored issues of indigenous rights and to make REDD+ programme governance structures more inclusive. The Peruvian government/World Bank approach to REDD+ is incompatible with that of AIDESEP, therefore parallel implementation will be required for them to co-exist. Although a diversity of participants has helped to check and balance the centralization of decision-making power over REDD+ programme development, a history of failed assurances and agreements point to a need to maintain vigilance as new laws, regulations and safeguards are implemented.The Emissions Gap Report 2013 from the United Nations Environment Programme restates the claim that changing to no-till practices in agriculture, as an alternative to conventional tillage, causes an accumulation of organic carbon in soil, thus mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration. But these claims ignore a large body of experimental evidence showing that the quantity of additional organic carbon in soil under no-till is relatively small: in large part apparent increases result from an altered depth distribution. The larger concentration near the surface in no-till is generally beneficial for soil properties that often, though not always, translate into improved crop growth. In many regions where no-till is practised it is common for soil to be cultivated conventionally every few years for a range of agronomic reasons, so any soil carbon benefit is then lost. We argue that no-till is beneficial for soil quality and adaptation of agriculture to climate change, but its role in mitigation is widely overstated.Extensive clearing of Indonesian primary forests results in increased greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss. However, there is no consensus on the areal extent and temporal trends of primary forest clearing in Indonesia. Here we report a spatially and temporally explicit quantification of Indonesian primary forest loss, which totalled over 6.02 Mha from 2000 to 2012 and increased on average by 47,600 ha per year. By 2012, annual primary forest loss in Indonesia was estimated to be higher than in Brazil (0.84 Mha and 0.46 Mha, respectively). Proportional loss of primary forests in wetland landforms increased and almost all clearing of primary forests occurred within degraded types, meaning logging preceded conversion processes. Loss within official forest land uses that restrict or prohibit clearing totalled 40% of all loss within national forest land. The increasing loss of Indonesian primary forests has significant implications for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation efforts.Fuel expenses, diesel exhaust health externalities, and climate change are concerns that encourage the use of electric vehicles. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) policies provide additional economic incentives. This analysis evaluates the costs and benefits associated with the use of electric vehicles and determines the cost effectiveness of using a V2G-capable electric school bus compared to a traditional diesel school bus. Several factors were analyzed, including fuel expense, electricity and battery costs, health externalities, and frequency regulation market price. The V2G-capable electric bus provides the school savings of $6070 per seat in net present value and becomes a net present benefit after five years of operation. Without externalities, the net present benefit would be $5700 per seat. If the entire school district's fleet switched to V2G-capable electric buses, the net present savings would be upwards of $38 million. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine how the factors influenced the costs and benefits. In all cases, purchasing an electric school bus is consistently a net present benefit. Policies could be set into place to incentivize public school adoption of electric buses, encourage more efficient batteries, and develop V2G capabilities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Encouraging individuals to take action is important for the overall success of climate change mitigation. Campaigns promoting climate change mitigation could address particular groups of the population on the basis of what kind of mitigation actions the group is already taking. To increase the knowledge of such groups performing similar mitigation actions we conducted a population-based cross-sectional study in Finland. The study population comprised 1623 young adults who returned a self-administered questionnaire (response rate 64%). Our aims were to identify groups of people engaged in similar climate change mitigation actions and to study the gender differences in the grouping. We also determined if socio-demographic characteristics can predict group membership. We performed latent class analysis using 14 mitigation actions as manifest variables. Three classes were identified among men: the Inactive (26%), the Semi-active (63%) and the Active (11%) and two classes among women: the Semi-active (72%) and the Active (28%). The Active among both genders were likely to have mitigated climate change through several actions, such as recycling, using environmentally friendly products, preferring public transport, and conserving energy. The Semi-Active had most probably recycled and preferred public transport because of climate change. The Inactive, a class identified among men only, had very probably done nothing to mitigate climate change. Among males, being single or divorced predicted little involvement in climate change mitigation. Among females, those without tertiary degree and those with annual income (sic)>= 16801 were less involved in climate change mitigation. Our results illustrate to what extent young adults are engaged in climate change mitigation, which factors predict little involvement in mitigation and give insight to which segments of the public could be the audiences of targeted mitigation campaigns.Estimates of the magnitude of CO2 emissions reduction brought about by an intervention in the energy system are important because they signal which interventions are the most potent in terms of climate change mitigation. Yet quantifying emissions changes is not trivial because interventions act on the margin of the energy system, rather than acting on all components of the whole energy system equally. Therefore, in order to accurately attribute outcomes to interventions, the specific energy system changes precipitated by the intervention should be estimated, along with the corresponding change in emissions. This paper builds on previous research in this regard estimating short-run marginal emissions factors in national electricity systems. It presents the concept of the long-run marginal emissions factor (LR-MEF), and builds and applies a new electricity system model to study the problem. For the British electricity system it is found that the average LR-MEF is approximately 0.26-0.53 kg CO2/kWh for the coming decade, but this reduces to approximately zero by 2035 and onwards as the system decarbonises. Furthermore, it is found that the LR-MEF can diverge very significantly from the short-run. This highlights the state of flux of the British electricity system and the importance of taking structural changes in the electricity system into account when attributing emissions reduction to interventions. (C) 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In an effort to promote public sector carbon management, in 2004, New Zealand's (NZ) Labour-led government funded local government membership in the Communities for Climate Protection - New Zealand (CCP-NZ) program, the NZ arm of ICLEI's Cities for Climate Protection campaign. In late 2008, the government transitioned from a Labour-led to a National-led government, which resulted in a shift to its climate change agenda, including the abandonment of the CCP-NZ program. This paper examines the experiences of managers from the councils involved in the CCP-NZ program to determine the co-benefits of participation in the initiative, and to assess whether councils will continue activities to mitigate their carbon footprint in the absence of government support. The research approach consists of a series of semi-structured interviews with managers responsible for the delivery of the CCP-NZ program within member councils, as well as program architects from Local Government New Zealand and ICLEI. Findings suggest that while the scheme delivered considerable co-benefits, including improved management awareness around organisational carbon management and broadened inter-council networking on carbon reduction related objectives, without government support, overall, carbon management activities will only continue in a scaled-back manner.Mangroves provide a variety of ecosystem services and are among the most carbon-rich forest types on earth. While much attention has been given in policies and scientific literature to the opportunities mangrove blue carbon can potentially provide for climate change mitigation, sustainable development and ecological conservation, little attention has been paid to identifying a location that can serve as a conducive site for the development of a climate change mechanism. This paper proposes to address this gap by analysing the advantages of integrating a blue carbon based REDD+ pilot project at the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve. The Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve is an interesting case study because it is a large contiguous mangrove forest area (40,466 ha) that has been primarily managed for the production of charcoal for more than a century and has been well managed to achieve favourable outcomes for local communities and ecological health. It is also one of the most studied mangrove forests in the world. However, of late, there have been clear evidences of drastic deterioration in the provision of several of its ecosystem services. REDD+ could offer the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve an alternative management tool to formulate an enhanced sustainable forest management plan. On the other hand, the unique characteristics and structure of the mangrove forest reserve could serve as a conducive pilot project site for the development of the climate change mechanism into a reliable and effective climate combating tool. The proposed blue carbon based REDD+ pilot project could potentially be a crucial building block in the development and implementation of Malaysia's National REDD+ Strategy.Long-term energy scenarios are an important input to policy-relevant assessment reports on climate change such as those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the United Nations Environment Programme to just name a few examples. They are also used by government agencies to support their decision making in the context of climate change mitigation and other energy-related challenges. In response to this demand, two broader categories of model development are currently pursued by the scientific community: (1) the degree of integration is increasing, in other words, the system boundaries of models are being extended, in particular to address the interlinkages between the energy, land, food, water, and climate more comprehensively and (2) the heterogeneity of the representation of various entities (e.g., spatial, sectoral, socio-economic) is increasing to adequately address distributional effects (e.g., countries within regions, urban vs rural areas, different types of households). Moreover, the energy-climate scenarios that are being developed are designed to be more 'realistic' by going beyond very stylized designs and integrate features that are observed in the real world. This includes delayed action on climate mitigation or fragmented approaches to mitigation that not only exclude major emitters from climate action, but also the exclusion of specific technologies from the portfolio of mitigation options in response to technical challenges or public acceptance issues. Finally, an attempt is made to summarize robust insights that have emerged from individual studies and particularly from modeling comparison exercises. (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Low-stabilization scenarios consistent with the 2 degrees C target project large-scale deployment of purpose-grown lignocellulosic biomass. In case a GHG price regime integrates emissions from energy conversion and from land-use/land-use change, the strong demand for bioenergy and the pricing of terrestrial emissions are likely to coincide. We explore the global potential of purpose-grown lignocellulosic biomass and ask the question how the supply prices of biomass depend on prices for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the land-use sector. Using the spatially explicit global land-use optimization model MAgPIE, we construct bioenergy supply curves for ten world regions and a global aggregate in two scenarios, with and without a GHG tax. We find that the implementation of GHG taxes is crucial for the slope of the supply function and the GHG emissions from the land-use sector. Global supply prices start at $5 GJ(-1) and increase almost linearly, doubling at 150 EJ (in 2055 and 2095). The GHG tax increases bioenergy prices by $5 GJ(-1) in 2055 and by $10 GJ-1 in 2095, since it effectively stops deforestation and thus excludes large amounts of high-productivity land. Prices additionally increase due to costs for N2O emissions from fertilizer use. The GHG tax decreases global land-use change emissions by one-third. However, the carbon emissions due to bioenergy production increase by more than 50% from conversion of land that is not under emission control. Average yields required to produce 240 EJ in 2095 are roughly 600 GJ ha(-1) yr(-1) with and without tax.The absence of boreal forests from global policy agendas on sustainable development and climate change mitigation represents a massive missed opportunity for environmental protection. The boreal zone contains some of the world's largest pools of terrestrial carbon that, if not safeguarded from a conversion to a net source of greenhouse gases, could seriously exacerbate global climate change. At the same time, boreal countries have a strong tradition of forest management-expertise that could be effectively leveraged toward global and national carbon mitigation targets and sustainable development. Current obstacles against such contributions include weak incentives for carbon sequestration and a reluctance to embrace change by forest managers and policy makers. We discuss possible solutions to overcome these obstacles, including the improvement of ineffective incentives, the development of alternative forest management strategies, and the need to maintain ecosystem resilience through the pursuit of policy and management options.Climate change mitigation policies include a wide range of actions, including efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuel combustion, energy efficiency and end-use innovations, and reducing carbon emissions through avoided deforestation. Such policies can affect poverty in developing countries either directly or indirectly. Direct impacts on poverty include payments for avoided deforestation that affect the livelihoods of the poor, reduced GHG emissions that also produce co-benefits of improved air quality and health, and clean energy and energy efficiency effects on energy poverty. Indirect impacts on the poor in developing countries occur through the changes in trade, economic growth, and other economy-wide effects. To date, there is a lack of systematic or comprehensive analyses of these direct and indirect impacts of mitigation policies on the poor. Although such policies may benefit the poor, some actions may worsen poverty and hinder its alleviation. This suggests that a more comprehensive approach should be employed in analyzing how mitigation policies affect the poor in developing countries, and in particular, in assessing how policy design and implementation can influence the potential trade-offs between the positive and negative impacts on poverty alleviation. (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Policy initiatives have motivated a search for environmentally sustainable alternatives to fossil-fuel-based electricity generation. Agricultural residues such as corn cobs may be a suitable feedstock. A life cycle approach was used to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impacts associated with the use of pellets produced from corn cobs as the sole fuel for the generation of electricity at a hypothetically retrofitted coal-fired generating station in Ontario, Canada. Pellets are compared with current coal and hypothetical natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) facilities. A life cycle model and soil carbon model calibrated for the agricultural region of interest were combined to quantify the GHG emissions of the biomass product system. The corn cob product system's life cycle emissions (240 g CO(2)eq kWh(-1)) are 40% and 80% lower than those of the NGCC and coal product systems, respectively. If corn cobs are left in the field to decompose, some carbon is sequestered in the soil, thus their removal from the field and combustion at the generation station represents a net GHG emission, accounting for 60% of life cycle emissions. In addition to the GHG impacts of combustion, removing agricultural residues from fields may reduce soil health, increase erosion and affect soil fertility through loss of soil organic carbon and nutrients. Their sustainable use should therefore consider the maintenance of soil fertility over the long-term. Nevertheless, the use of the feedstock in place of coal may provide substantial GHG emissions mitigation. (C) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe paper develops a two-region endogenous growth model with climate change affecting the countries' capital stocks negatively. We compare two different policies aimed at supporting less developed countries: climate mitigation by developed countries, which moderates the increase in stock pollution and hence capital depreciation, and income transfers in the tradition of development aid. Under a mild set of assumptions we find that active climate policies are more efficient for developed economies and also, remarkably, better for developing countries than additional development aid. The main reason is the difference between the two policies with respect to their effects on economic growth. The results are robust with respect to possible model extensions. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Economic growth over the coming centuries is one of the major determinants of today's optimal greenhouse gas mitigation policy. At the same time, long-run economic growth is highly uncertain. This paper is the first to evaluate optimal mitigation policy under long-term growth uncertainty in a stochastic integrated assessment model of climate change. The sign and magnitude of the impact depend on preference characteristics and on how damages scale with production. We explain the different mechanisms driving optimal mitigation under certain growth, under uncertain technological progress in the discounted expected utility model, and under uncertain technological progress in a more comprehensive asset pricing model based on Epstein-Zin-Weil preferences. In the latter framework, the dominating uncertainty impact has the opposite sign of a deterministic growth impact; the sign switch results from an endogenous pessimism weighting. All of our numeric scenarios use a DICE based assessment model and find a higher optimal carbon tax than the deterministic DICE base case calibration. (C) 2014 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.Urinary urea N (UUN) is the principal nitrogen (N) source controlling emissions of ammonia (NH3) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from dairy manure. The objectives of this study were (i) to study the integrative nature of dietary crude protein (CP) management, secretion of milk urea N (MUN), excretion of UUN, and N emissions from dairy production systems; (ii) to evaluate how associative changes in dietary CP, MUN, and UUN affect atmospheric N emissions from dairy farms; and (iii) to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities to an expanded use of MUN to enhance dietary CP use and decrease UUN excretion and N emissions from dairy farms. Milk urea N records of 37,889 cows in 197 herds in Wisconsin revealed that approximately one half of tested cows were likely consuming dietary CP in excess of requirement. Farm simulations were used to quantify the effect of dietary CP on whole-farm N emissions. At a statewide average MUN of 12.5 mg dL(-1), 48 to 87% of UUN was emitted as NH3, with the lowest loss from pasture-based farms and the greatest loss from tie-stall farms. Each 1 mg dL(-1) decrease of MUN (range, 16-10 mg dL(-1)) provided an associated daily decrease in UUN of 16.6 g per cow, which decreased NH3 and N2O emissions from manure by 7 to 12%. Although more site-specific information is required on herd MUN-UUN relationships and more a reliable interpretation of MUN assay results is needed, monitoring of MUN may be used to enhance dietary CP use and to reduce UUN excretion and N emissions from Wisconsin dairy farms.Understanding the links between land-use change (LUC) and climate change is vital in developing effective land-based climate mitigation policies and adaptation measures. Although mitigation and adaptation are human-mediated processes, current global-scale modelling tools do not account for societal learning and other human responses to environmental change. We propose the agent functional type (AFT) method to advance the representation of these processes, by combining socio-economics (agent-based modelling) with natural sciences (dynamic global vegetation models). Initial AFT-based simulations show the emergence of realistic LUC patterns that reflect known LUC processes, demonstrating the potential of the method to enhance our understanding of the role of people in the Earth system.A variety of proposed activities to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions will impact on scarce water resources, which are coming under increasing pressure in many countries due to population growth and shifting weather patterns. However, the integrated analysis of water and carbon impacts has been given limited attention in greenhouse mitigation planning. In this Australian case study, we analyse a suite of 74 mitigation measures ranked as highest priority by one influential analysis, and we find that they have highly variable consequences for water quantity. We find: (1) The largest impacts result from land-based sequestration, which has the potential to intercept large quantities of water and reduce catchment yields, estimated to exceed 100 Mm(3)/MtCO(2)-e of carbon mitigated (100,000 l per tonne CO2-e). (2) Moderate impacts result from some renewable power options, including solar thermal power with a water cost estimated at nearly 4 Mm(3)/MtCO(2)-e. However, the water impacts of solar thermal power facilities could be reduced by designing them to use existing power-related water supplies or to use air or salt-water cooling. (3) Wind power, biogas, solar photovoltaics, energy efficiency and operational improvements to existing power sources can reduce water demand through offsetting the water used to cool thermal power generation, with minor savings estimated at 2 Mm(3)/MtCO(2)-e and amounting to nearly 100 Mm(3) of water saved in Australia per annum in 2020. This integrated analysis significantly changes the attractiveness of some mitigation options, compared to the case where water impacts are not considered.Rapid development of shrimp farming may lead to unrecognized and undesirable changes of land cover/land use patterns in coastal areas. Of special concern is the loss of mangrove forest in coastal areas such as Quang Ninh, Vietnam, which is adjacent to the World Heritage-listed Ha Long Bay. Understanding the status and changes of land cover/land use for coastal shrimp farms and mangrove forests can support environmental protection and decision-making for sustainable development in coastal areas. Within this context, this paper uses the 1999/2001 Landsat ETM+ and the 2008 ALOS AVNIR-2 imagery to investigate the contraction and expansion of shrimp farms and mangrove forests in coastal areas of Ha Long and Mong Cai, which now have a high concentration of intensive and semi-intensive shrimp farms. Images were separately analyzed and classified before using post-classification comparisons to detect land cover/land use changes in the study area. The results of this study found that the area of mangrove forest has been reduced by an estimated 927.5 ha in Ha Long and 1,144.4 ha in Mong Cai, while shrimp farming areas increased by an estimated 1,195.9 and 1,702.5 ha, respectively, over the same period. The majority of shrimp farms in Mong Cai were established at the expense of mangrove forest (49.4 %) while shrimp farms in Ha Long were mainly constructed on areas previously occupied by bare ground (46.5 %) and a significant proportion also replaced mangroves (23.9 %). The remarkable rate of mangrove loss and shrimp farming expansion detected in this study, over a relatively short time scale indicate that greater awareness of environmental impacts of shrimp farm expansion is required if this industry is to be sustainable, the important estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems are to be protected over the long term, and the capturing and storing of carbon in mangrove systems are to be enhanced for global climate change mitigation and for use as carbon offsets.Background: Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) are a major consequence of our dietary choices. Assessments of plant-based compared with meat-based diets are emerging at the intersection of public health, environment, and nutrition. Objectives: The objective was to compare the GHGEs associated with dietary patterns consumed in a large population across North America and to independently assess mortality according to dietary patterns in the same population. Design: Data from the Adventist Health Study 2 (AHS-2) were used to characterize the differential environmental and health impacts of the following 3 dietary patterns, which varied in the quantity of animal and plant foods: vegetarian, semivegetarian, and nonvegetarian. The GHGE intensities of 210 foods were calculated through life-cycle assessments and by using published data. The all-cause mortality rates and all-cause mortality HRs for the AHS-2 subjects were adjusted for a range of lifestyle and sociodemographic factors and estimated according to dietary pattern. Results: With the use of the nonvegetarian diet as a reference, the mean reductions in GHGEs for semivegetarian and vegetarian diets were 22% and 29%, respectively. The mortality rates for nonvegetarians, semivegetarians, and vegetarians were 6.66, 5.53, and 5.56 deaths per 1000 person-years, respectively. The differences were significant. Compared with nonvegetarians, mortality HRs were lower for semivegetarians (0.86) and vegetarians (0.91). Conclusions: Moderate differences in the caloric intake of meat products provided nontrivial reductions in GHGEs and improved health outcomes, as shown through the mortality analyses. However, this does not mean that diets lower in GHGEs are healthy.Trees outside forests support smallholder farmers' livelihoods and play a critical role in the global carbon cycle. However, their contribution to climate change mitigation through carbon storage is not obvious because of limited information regarding their extent, and inadequate methods for biomass quantification. This study evaluated the distribution of aboveground biomass (AGB) in three 100 km(2) benchmark sites in Kasungu, Salima, and Neno districts in Malawi. In 67 sample plots covering 37 cultivated fields and 30 woodland plots, a total of 2481 trees were inventoried over 6 ha. Tree species documented were 56 in Kasungu, 35 in Salima and 33 in Neno. The corresponding values of the Shannon diversity index and its standard error (SE) were 3.45 (0.01) for Kasungu, 2.78 (0.01) for Salima and 2.73 (0.01) for Neno. The three most dominant species in terms of biomass were Faidherbia albida (47.8%), Piliostigma thonningii (11%), and Mangifera indica (9%), all found in cultivated fields. Large trees with diameter at breast height (DBH) >40 cm formed only 3% of the total population inventoried in Salima, but held over 80% of the biomass. These high biomass trees were hardly found in Kasungu and Neno. Smaller trees (DBH < 10 cm) dominated all the sites, representing 93% of all the trees measured. These stock 14, 1, and 67% of the biomass in Kasungu, Salima, and Neno, respectively. The biomass estimates established in this study provide a useful reference against which future estimates can be compared, and sets a baseline for calculating changes in carbon stocks over time. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While much attention has focused on the climate change mitigation potential of biofuels, research from the social sciences increasingly highlights the social and livelihood impacts of their expanded production. Policy and governance measures aimed at improving the social effects of biofuels have proliferated but questions remain about their effectiveness across the value chain. This paper performs three tasks building on emerging insights from social science research on the deployment of biofuel crops. First, we identify livelihood dimensions that are particularly likely to be affected by their cultivation in the global South - income, food security, access to land-based resources, and social assets - revealing that distributional effects are crucial to evaluating the outcomes of biofuel production across these dimensions. Second, we ask how well selected biofuel governance mechanisms address livelihood and equity concerns. Third, we draw insights from literature on non-energy agricultural value chains to provide one set of ideas for improving livelihood outcomes. Our analysis demonstrates that biofuel policies treat livelihoods as a second-degree problem, specifying livelihoods as an afterthought to other goals. We suggest integrating livelihoods into a multi-criteria policy framework from the start - one that prioritizes equity issues as well as overall outcomes. We also show that the instruments with strongest provisions for safeguarding livelihoods and equity appear least likely to be implemented. Together, shifting both the priorities and the relative hierarchy of biofuel governance instruments could help produce strategies that more effectively address livelihood and equity concerns. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The electronics industry leads the world's largest and fastest growing manufacturing sector. Consequently the management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has become a prominent problem in the modern world. In some developed countries, like Japan, strategies have been adopted (e.g. the home appliance recycling law), and comprehensive policy mechanisms have been implemented which aim to recuperate materials from WEEE, conserve resources, and control environmental pollution. At present, global warming and climate-change issues have been identified as key environmental considerations in policy agendas in both developed and developing countries. In this regard assessment of the potential of WEEE recycling in terms of a country's greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target would offer a new path towards climate-change mitigation. Thus, this study aims to provide an in-depth investigation of the effectiveness of WEEE recycling on GHG mitigation. Life cycle GHG emissions were estimated from the overall recycling process of major home appliances in Fukuoka Prefecture under Japan's home appliances recycling law. The calculation indicates that by implementing an appropriate VVEEE recycling and resource recovery program, a significant amount of GHG emissions could be avoided that would have otherwise occurred through the virgin production of materials. For instance, recycling of unit weight of washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners and televisions could contribute to 17.70, 27.34, 45.62 and 3.61 kg CO2-eq of GHG emissions reduction respectively. The findings will be useful for strengthening and implementing appropriate legislation and policies in countries across the Asia-Pacific and enhancing the systematic approaches of sound material recycling. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,Conventional cost-effectiveness calculations ignore the implications of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions timing and thus may not properly inform decision-makers in the efficient allocation of resources to mitigate climate change. To begin to address this disconnect with climate change science, we modify the conventional cost-effectiveness approach to account for emissions timing. GHG emissions flows occurring over time are translated into an 'Equivalent Present Emission' based on radiative forcing, enabling a comparison of system costs and emissions on a consistent present time basis. We apply this 'Present Cost-Effectiveness' method to case studies of biomass-based electricity generation (biomass co-firing with coal, biomass cogeneration) to evaluate implications of forest carbon trade-offs on the cost-effectiveness of emission reductions. Bioenergy production from forest biomass can reduce forest carbon stocks, an immediate emissions source that contributes to atmospheric greenhouse gases. Forest carbon impacts thereby lessen emission reductions in the near-term relative to the assumption of biomass 'carbon neutrality', resulting in higher costs of emission reductions when emissions timing is considered. In contrast, conventional cost-effectiveness approaches implicitly evaluate strategies over an infinite analytical time horizon, underestimating nearer term emissions reduction costs and failing to identify pathways that can most efficiently contribute to climate change mitigation objectives over shorter time spans (e. g. up to 100 years). While providing only a simple representation of the climate change implications of emissions timing, the Present Cost-Effectiveness method provides a straightforward approach to assessing the cost-effectiveness of emission reductions associated with any climate change mitigation strategy where future GHG reductions require significant initial capital investment or increase near-term emissions. Timing is a critical factor in determining the attractiveness of any investment; accounting for emissions timing can better inform decisions related to the merit of alternative resource uses to meet near-, mid-, and long-term climate change mitigation objectives.Background: The accelerating accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere is changing global environmental conditions in unprecedented and potentially irreversible ways. Climate change poses a host of challenges to the health of populations through complex direct and indirect mechanisms. The direct effects include an increased frequency of heat waves, rising sea levels that threaten low-lying communities, anticipated extremes in the global hydrologic cycle (droughts, floods, and intense storms), and adverse effects on agricultural production and fisheries due to environmental stressors and changes in land use. Indirectly, climate change is anticipated to threaten health by worsening urban air pollution and increasing rates of infectious (particularly waterborne and vector-borne) disease transmission. Objective: To provide a state-of-the-science review on the health consequences of a changing climate. Findings: Environmental public health researchers have concluded that, on balance, adverse health outcomes will dominate under these changed climatic conditions. The number of pathways through which climate change can affect the health of populations makes this environmental health threat one of the largest and most formidable of the new century. Geographic location plays an influential role the potential for adverse health effects caused by climate change, and certain regions and populations are more vulnerable than others to expected health effects. Two kinds of strategies are available for responding to climate change: mitigation policies (which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation measures (relating to preparedness for anticipated impacts). Conclusions: To better understand and address the complex nature of health risks posed by climate change, interdisciplinary collaboration is critical. Efforts to move beyond our current reliance on fossil fuels to cleaner, more sustainable energy sources may offer some of the greatest health opportunities in more than a century and cobenefits beyond the health sector. Because the nations least responsible for climate change are most vulnerable to its effects, the challenge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is not merely technical, but also moral.Globally, groundwater use is intensifying to meet demands for irrigation, urban supply, industrialization, and, in some instances, electrical power generation. In response to hydroclimatic variability, surface water is being substituted with groundwater, which must be viewed as a strategic resource for climate adaptation. In this sense, the supply of electricity for pumping is an adaptation policy tool. Additionally, planning for climate-change mitigation must consider CO2 emissions resulting from pumping. This paper examines the influence of electricity supply and pricing on groundwater irrigation and resulting emissions, with specific reference to Mexico - a climate-water-energy 'perfect storm'. Night-time power supply at tariffs below the already-subsidized rates for agricultural groundwater use has caused Mexican farmers to increase pumping, reversing important water and electricity conservation gains achieved. Indiscriminate groundwater pumping, including for virtual-water exports of agricultural produce, threatens the long-term sustainability of aquifers, non-agricultural water uses, and stream-aquifer interactions that sustain riparian ecosystems. Emissions resulting from agricultural groundwater pumping in Mexico are estimated to be 3.6% of total national emissions and are equivalent to emissions from transporting the same agricultural produce to market. The paper concludes with an assessment of energy, water, and climate trends coupled with policy futures to address these challenges.Biochar (pyrolyzed biomass) amendment to soils has been shown to have a multitude of positive effects, e.g., on crop yield, soil quality, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration. So far the majority of studies have focused on agricultural systems, typically with relatively low species diversity and annual cropping schemes. How biochar amendment affects plant communities in more complex and diverse ecosystems that can evolve over time is largely unknown. We investigated such effects in a field experiment at a Dutch nature restoration area. In April 2011, we set up an experiment using biochar produced from cuttings collected from a local natural grassland. The material was pyrolyzed at 400 degrees C or at 600 degrees C. After biochar or residue (non-pyrolyzed cuttings) application (10 Mg/ha), all plots, including control (0 Mg/ha) plots, were sown with an 18-species grassland mixture. In August 2011, we determined characteristics of the developed plant community, as well as soil nutrient status. Biochar amendment did not alter total plant productivity, but it had a strong and significant effect on plant community composition. Legumes were three times as abundant and individual legume plants increased four times in biomass in plots that received biochar as compared to the control treatment. Biomass of the most abundant forb (Plantago lanceolata) was not affected by biochar addition. Available phosphorous, potassium, and pH were significantly higher in soils that received biochar than in Control soils. The rate of biological nitrogen fixation and seed germination were not altered by biochar amendment, but the total amount of biological N fixed per Trifolium pratense (red clover) plant was more than four times greater in biochar-amended soil. This study demonstrates that biochar amendment has a strong and rapid effect on plant communities and soil nutrients. Over time these changes may cascade up to other trophic groups, including above-and belowground organisms. Our results emphasize the need for long-term studies that examine not only the short-term effects of biochar amendment, but also follow how these effects evolve over time and affect ecosystem functioning.Direct transfers of climate finance from governments of developed countries to governments of developing countries are often perceived as risky due to information asymmetries, the infeasibility of perfect contract enforcement at the international level, and uncertain recipient capacities and respective outcomes. Donor governments usually try to minimize such risks by delegating the provision of climate finance to bilateral and multilateral organizations that implement and monitor projects in recipient countries. Such direct interventions generate an alternative set of transaction costs through the fragmentation of finance flows and proliferation of funding organizations that can put an additional burden on recipient institutions. Moreover, long delegation chains between initial donors and targeted beneficiaries trigger a cascade of principal-agent problems. The benefits of channelling climate finance through the international development cooperation system hence need to be weighed against the opportunity cost of this approach. The potential for such scrutiny is however constrained by a broken feedback loop between donor and recipient constituencies. Only if the extent to which transaction costs accrue and the reasons they do so become better understood, policy makers might be able to address them and chose the most cost-effective channel in each particular case. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A simple biofuel production system can be first examined for its policy compliance in terms of GHG emission reduction target relative to fossil-based counterparts. More integrated and optimised biorefinery systems with polygeneration can then be evolved with the aid of graphical analysis of marginal emission savings vs. additional economic margins. This bottom-up approach helps to achieve greater GHG emission cut by integrated systems design and thereby setting a more stringent benchmark to support policies towards achieving climate change mitigation goals. The combined Economic Value and Environmental Impact analysis is a multi-level methodology that can be used to represent biorefinery system performances as an aggregate of differential economic and environmental impact margins of biorefinery products. The methodology is extended in this paper to support process integration strategies that allow achieving policy compliance of biorefinery products in terms of GHG emission savings. An economic and environmental impact profile of the products is introduced for a graphical visualisation of economic costs and values as well as deficits and surpluses in environmental impact savings. The effectiveness of the extended methodology has been demonstrated using a Jatropha-based biorefinery system converting Jatropha seed into biodiesel, glycerol and cake, as a case study. The biodiesel produced can achieve 53% emission cut, while glycerol and cake can achieve an emission cut by 57% by displacing similar functionality fossil based products. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The contribution of forests as climate change mitigation sinks through growth production calls for the accurate determination of their biomass production, therefore it is necessary to to evaluate variables such as weight of dry leaves, diameter at breast height (DBH), diameter at stump height (DSH) and total height and their effect on individual aboveground biomass. The analysis was conducted at the Technological Institute of Costa Rica (TEC) located in the province of Cartago-Sampling consisted on 31 sampling of Eucalyptus saligna and Eucalyptus camaldulensis, in order to estimate a linear regression model to predict average tree biomass. The final model obtained for biomass = e(2,6915+2,1338+`root Dati) with a coefficient of determination of 0,9061. We recommend a study to help determine the biomass and soil organic matter to provide a complete inventory of biomass for a given area.Making the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy seems inevitable. Because energy transition poses new challenges and opportunities to the discipline of landscape architecture, the questions addressed in this paper are: (1) what landscape architects can learn from successful energy transitions in Gussing, Juhnde and Samso; and (2) to what extent landscape architecture (or other spatial disciplines) contributed to energy transition in the aforementioned cases. An exploratory, comparative case study was conducted to identify differences and similarities among the cases, to answer the research questions, and to formulate recommendations for further research and practice. The comparison indicated that the realized renewable energy systems are context-dependent and, therefore, specifically designed to meet the respective energy demand, making use of the available potentials for renewable energy generation and efficiency. Further success factors seemed to be the presence of (local) frontrunners and a certain degree of citizen participation. The relatively smooth implementation of renewable energy technologies in Juhnde and on Samso may indicate the importance of careful and (partly) institutionalized consideration of landscape impact, siting and design. Comparing the cases against the literature demonstrated that landscape architects were not as involved as they, theoretically, could have been. However, particularly when the aim is sustainable development, rather than "merely" renewable energy provision, the integrative concept of "sustainable energy landscapes" can be the arena where landscape architecture and other disciplines meet to pursue global sustainability goals, while empowering local communities and safeguarding landscape quality.Research on tourism and climate change has emphasised the contribution that the sector should make to the effort to reduce and stabilise greenhouse gas emissions. However, the tourism sector response on the supply side has been disappointing and highly variable between and within its sub-sectors. This paper addresses the knowledge gap on the willingness and capacity for tourism businesses to mitigate. Innovation is used as the conceptual framework. At the firm level, mitigation requires innovation, yet businesses innovate at different rates and hence their ability to contribute towards emission reductions varies. A cluster analysis is presented of over 400 accommodation providers from south-west England, a major UK destination region. Three distinctive clusters of small-and medium-sized tourism enterprises are identified based on how they innovated to mitigate climate change. The smallest (12%) had introduced a range of process and managerial innovations and was most forward thinking and active. A second cluster (23%) had introduced several process innovations but its approach to managerial innovations was both partial and confused. The largest cluster (65%) had mainly enacted straightforward process innovations but failed to introduce managerial innovations to measure, monitor and act on their environmental performance. Taken together, these data suggest that the contribution from accommodation providers to emissions reductions targets has been at best modest. Moving forward, greater analytical precision is needed if (this part of) the tourism sector is to be widely mobilised towards tackling climate change. Specifically, policy interventions have to be more effectively targeted at business needs and based on a more differentiated view of planned and enacted behaviour changes. One-size-fits-all prescriptions are inappropriate, arguably even counterproductive for encouraging the greatest level of mitigation activity across the widest range of tourism businesses.Six experiments, initially established to investigate the effects of weed control on establishment of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong) Carr.) were revisited 15-25 years after planting, and 6-22 years after weed control ceased. At three of the six experiments weed control resulted in initial benefits to growth and in some cases survival at Age 3, while no effect was evident at the other three sites. At mid-rotation, 15-25 years after planting, although there were no persistent effects of weed control on height or diameter growth, at three of the experiments there was a positive effect on survival. Projection of the semid-rotation survival effects to full rotation using a growth and yield model indicated that weed control may have the potential to increase final yield and carbon storage at some of these sites in the longer term. The existence and magnitude of benefits from weed control were highly site dependent. This study demonstrates that there is clear potential for early weed control to increase the cost-effective carbon storage and hence the climate change mitigation potential of some British Sitka spruce forests, particularly on nutrient rich sites and with stands that are subsequently thinned. The development of dedicated long-term weeding trials in the UK, including thinned stands where cumulative volume removed in thinning is recorded, is required to confirm this.We present an innovative global-to-local modeling approach to analyze impacts of uncertain and complex futures on Vietnam's economy via changes in land use patterns. Socio-economic changes are shown to have major implications for the Vietnamese landscape, including natural forest losses with negative consequences for biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions, and losses of paddy rice and other agricultural lands in the Red River Delta and the Mekong River delta. Climate-related flood risks in these areas further threaten the population, economic assets, and food security. The scenarios reveal the importance of investments in agriculture, land markets, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to climate changes and the uncertainties in future weather conditions, research on drought monitoring information received more attention from politicians and scientists. The objective of this paper is to develop a new intelligent system concept for drought information extraction and predictions from satellite images. For the modeling experiment, this study used 24 years of data sets on selected attributes. By using these data sets, ten models were developed for predicting DroughtObjects with a one- to four-month time lag for the growing season from June to October with an accuracy rate ranging from 0.71 to 0.95. The process of the system that uses the new concept was also demonstrated on an easy-to-use graphical user interface. The output of this new concept can be developed to a full system and is helpful for extracting the freely available satellite images for drought monitoring and climate change mitigation applications at different levels of decision making.The use of biofuels for road transport in Sweden has increased during the past 10 years as policymakers stimulate demand in response to concerns about climate change. Using a supply chain approach, this paper analyses: (i) existing biofuel supply chains in Sweden (biogas, biodiesel and bioethanol) in terms of security of supply, and (ii) possibilities to achieve synergies between implementation of climate change mitigation practices and security of supply objectives, through increased production and use of biofuels. We argue that synergies can arise when exposure to upstream market risk decreases, the risk of the feedstock does not correlate with the fuel that it replaces, producers can switch between feedstocks and end user vulnerability to disruptions decreases. In the current Swedish context, the features of the biogas supply chain make it the most beneficial option, followed by biodiesel. In the way it has been implemented, bioethanol is the least favourable option. The paper concludes by outlining how biofuels could contribute to security of supply in the future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of the north-central U.S. and south-central Canada contains millions of small prairie wetlands that provide critical habitat to many migrating and breeding waterbirds. Due to their small size and the relatively dry climate of the region, these wetlands are considered at high risk for negative climate change effects as temperatures increase. To estimate the potential impacts of climate change on breeding waterbirds, we predicted current and future distributions of species common in the PPR using species distribution models (SDMs). We created regional-scale SDMs for the U.S. PPR using Breeding Bird Survey occurrence records for 1971-2011 and wetland, upland, and climate variables. For each species, we predicted current distribution based on climate records for 1981-2000 and projected future distributions to climate scenarios for 2040-2049. Species were projected to, on average, lose almost half their current habitat (-46%). However, individual species projections varied widely, from +8% (Upland Sandpiper) to -100% (Wilson's Snipe). Variable importance ranks indicated that land cover (wetland and upland) variables were generally more important than climate variables in predicting species distributions. However, climate variables were relatively more important during a drought period. Projected distributions of species responses to climate change contracted within current areas of distribution rather than shifting. Given the large variation in species-level impacts, we suggest that climate change mitigation efforts focus on species projected to be the most vulnerable by enacting targeted wetland management, easement acquisition, and restoration efforts.Cooking in the developing world generates pollutants that endanger the health of billions of people and contribute to climate change. This study quantified pollutants emitted when cooking with a three-stone fire (TSF) and the Berkeley-Darfur Stove (BDS), the latter of which encloses the fire to increase fuel efficiency. The stoves were operated at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory testing facility with a narrow range of fuel feed rates to minimize performance variability. Fast (1 Hz) measurements of pollutants enabled discrimination between the stoves' emission profiles and development of woodsmoke-specific calibrations for the aethalometer (black carbon, BC) and DustTrak (fine particles, PM2.5). The BDS used 65 +/- 5% (average +/- 95% confidence interval) of the wood consumed by the TSF and emitted 50 +/- 5% of the carbon monoxide emitted by the TSF for an equivalent cooking task, indicating its higher thermal efficiency and a modest improvement in combustion efficiency. The BDS reduced total PM2.5 by 50% but achieved only a 30% reduction in BC emissions. The BDS-emitted particles were, therefore, more sunlight-absorbing: the average single scattering albedo at 532 nm was 0.36 for the BDS and 0.47 for the TSF. Mass emissions of PM2.5 and BC varied more than emissions of CO and wood consumption over all tests, and emissions and wood consumption varied more among TSF than BDS tests. The international community and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves have proposed performance targets for the highest tier of cookstoves that correspond to greater reductions in fuel consumption and PM2.5 emissions of approximately 65% and 95%, respectively, compared to baseline cooking with the TSF. Given the accompanying decrease in BC emissions for stoves that achieve this stretch goal and BC's extremely high global warming potential, the short-term climate change mitigation from avoided BC emissions could exceed that from avoided CO2 emissions.This study applies the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model to examine how information processing influences individuals' support for climate change mitigation policy. Perceived issue salience, attitude toward climate information, and systematic processing are positively related to policy support, whereas heuristic processing is not a significant predictor. The direct and indirect relationships illustrated in the model help expand the utility of the risk information seeking and processing model to address policy support. From an applied perspective, this study suggests important pathways to encourage systematic processing of information related to climate change, which may lead to increased public support for mitigation policies.Restoration of Atlantic Forests is receiving increasing attention because of its role in both biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration for global climate change mitigation. This study was carried out in an Atlantic Forest restoration project in the south-central region of Sao Paulo State - Brazil to develop allometric equations to estimate tree biomass of indigenous tree species in mixed plantations. Above and below-ground biomass (AGB and BGB, respectively), stem diameter (DBH: diameter at 1.3 m height), tree height (H: total height) and specific wood density (WD) were measured for 60 trees of 19 species. Different biomass equations (linear and nonlinear-transformed) were adjusted to estimate AGB and BGB as a function of DBH, H and WD. For estimating AGB and BGB, the linear biomass equation models were the least accurate. The transformed nonlinear biomass equation that used log DBH2, log H and log WD as predictor variables were the most accurate for AGB and the transformed nonlinear biomass equations that used log DBH2*WD as predictor variables were the most accurate for BGB. It is concluded that these adjusted equations can be used to estimate the AGB and BGB in areas of the studied project. The adjusted equations can be recommended for use elsewhere in the region for forest stands of similar age, tree size ranges, species composition and site characteristics.Management of native forests offers opportunities to store more carbon in the land sector through two main activities. Emissions to the atmosphere can be avoided by ceasing logging. Removals of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can be increased by allowing forests to continue growing. However, the relative benefits for carbon storage of managing native forests for wood production versus protection are contested. Additionally, the potential for carbon storage is impacted upon by disturbance events, such as wildfire, that alter the amount and longevity of carbon stocks. Using a case study of montane ash forests in southeastern Australia, we demonstrated that the total biomass carbon stock in logged forest was 55% of the stock in old growth forest. Total biomass included above-and belowground, living and dead. Biomass carbon stock was calculated spatially as an average across the landscape, accounting for variation in environmental conditions and forest age distribution. Reduction in carbon stock in logged forest was due to 66% of the initial biomass being made into products with short lifetimes (<3 years), and to the lower average age of logged forest (, 50 years compared with >100 years in old growth forest). Only 4% of the initial carbon stock in the native forest was converted to sawn timber products with lifetimes of 30-90 years. Carbon stocks are depleted in a harvested forest system compared with an old growth forest, even when storage in wood products and landfill are included. We estimated that continued logging under current plans represented a loss of 5.56 Tg C over 5 years in the area logged (824 km(2)), compared with a potential gain of 5.18-6.05 TgC over 5 years by allowing continued growth across the montane ash forest region (2326 km(2)). Avoiding emissions by not logging native forests and allowing them to continue growing is therefore an important form of carbon sequestration. The mitigation value of forest management options of protection versus logging should be assessed in terms of the amount, longevity and resilience of the carbon stored in the forest, rather than the annual rate of carbon uptake.How far are we in the WHO European Region in implementing action to counter the health impacts of climate change? This was the question posed to representatives of Member States in the WHO European Region of in the WHO working group on health in climate change (HIC). Twenty-two Member States provided answers to a comprehensive 2012 questionnaire that focused on eight thematic areas (governance vulnerability, impact and adaptation (health) assessments (VIA); adaptation strategies and action plans; climate change mitigation; strengthening health systems; raising awareness and building capacity; greening health services; and sharing best practices). Strong development has been in climate change vulnerability and impact assessments, as well as strengthening health systems and awareness raising. Areas where implementation would benefit from further action are the development of national health adaptation plans, greening health systems, sharing best practices and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in other sectors. At the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health in Parma, Italy in 2010, the European Commitment to Act on climate change and health and the European Regional Framework for Action to protect health from climate change were endorsed by the fifty-three European Member States. The results of this questionnaire present the most comprehensive assessment so far of progress made by European Member States to protect public health from climate change since the Parma Conference agreements.Accurate monitoring of land surface dynamics using remote sensing is essential for the synoptic assessment of environmental change. We assessed a Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) full resolution dataset for vegetation monitoring as an alternative to the more commonly used Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. Time series of vegetation indices calculated from 300 m resolution MERIS and 250 m resolution MODIS datasets were analyzed to monitor vegetation productivity trends in the irrigated lowlands in Northern Uzbekistan for the period 2003-2011. Mann-Kendall trend analysis was conducted using the time series of Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI), Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), and MERIS-based Terrestrial Chlorophyll Index (MTCI) to detect trends and examine the capabilities of each sensor and index. The methodology consisted of (1) preprocessing of the original imagery; (2) processing and statistical analysis of the corresponding time series datasets; and (3) comparison of the resulting trends. Results confirmed the occurrence of widespread vegetation productivity decline, ranging from 5.5% (MERIS-MTCI) to 21% (MODIS-NDVI) of the total irrigated cropland in the study area. All indices identified the same spatial patterns of decreasing vegetation. Average vegetation index values of NDVI and SAVI were slightly higher when measured by MERIS than by MODIS. These differences merit further investigation to allow a fusion of these datasets for consistent monitoring of cropland productivity decline at scales suitable for guiding operational land management practices.While issues of land-use have been considered in many direct analyses of biomass systems, little attention has heretofore been paid to land-use in reference fossil systems. Here we address this limitation by comparing forest biomass systems to reference fossil systems with explicit consideration of land-use in both systems. We estimate and compare the time profiles of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and cumulative radiative forcing (CRF) of woody biomass systems and reference fossil systems. A life cycle perspective is used that includes all significant elements of both systems, including GHG emissions along the full material and energy chains. We consider the growth dynamics of forests under different management regimes, as well as energy and material substitution effects of harvested biomass. We determine the annual net emissions of CO2, N2O and CH4 for each system over a 240-year period, and then calculate time profiles of cRF as a proxy measurement of climate change impact. The results show greatest potential for climate change mitigation when intensive forest management is applied in the woody biomass system. This methodological framework provides a tool to help determine optimal strategies for managing forests so as to minimize climate change impacts. The inclusion of land-use in the reference system improves the accuracy of quantitative projections of climate benefits of biomass-based systems. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The relationship between the sky view factor (SVF) and the urban heat island (UHI) effect in Montreal is explored, by assessing the effect of SVF on air temperature (T-a) and mean radiant temperature (MRT). The amount of energy consumed by indoor heating and air conditioning is affected by T-a. The value of MRT is the sum of all short-wave and long-wave radiation fluxes absorbed by the human body that affects its energy balance and human thermal comfort. SVF in urban areas affects both T-a and MRT. We used a microscale urban climate model (ENVI-met) and simulated the effect of building geometry in four typical urban districts (each 300 x 300 m(2) in size) in Montreal, on air and human weighted mean radiant temperature (MRThuman (weighted)) at 1.5-m height above the ground. Urban development consideration of a low SVF could mitigate the UHI effect, by decreasing urban temperatures and increasing outdoor thermal comfort. Most UHI studies are carried out for cities in hot and dry climates; however, UHI mitigation can also reduce energy consumption in colder cities, such as Montreal. Results of this analysis can be used in environmental urban planning standards.We focus on recent progress in reforming the role of forests and other land use in the EU climate policy framework. EU inclusion of LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry) in the climate policy framework still lags international developments, remaining at odds even with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) Kyoto framework. Though the EU has made some important changes that eclipse even the UNFCCC framework-in particular regarding the inclusion of cropland and grazing land management in mandatory EU-level carbon accounting practices-in other respects the EU has far to go. As part of a strategy for fulfilling emission reduction commitments within the EU burden-sharing agreement, Member states are not permitted to trade either in domestically nor foreign produced forest-based carbon credits. On the other hand, both the EU and the UNFCCC/Kyoto LULUCF frameworks remain distant from an idealized model that could facilitate increased climate change mitigation and a more efficient and balanced use of forest-based resources. Limiting the incorporation of forests in the climate policy framework has significant consequences for the cost and rapidity of emission reductions. Forest potential thus remains under-mobilized for climate change mitigation. In this context, we draw particular attention to the fact that forest-based carbon sequestration's potential contribution to negative emissions represents an important missed opportunity. In the context of ongoing discussions over the EU and UNFCCC's Post-Kyoto frameworks, we propose an all-encompassing LULUCF carbon accounting model incorporating all previously omitted carbon pools and activities, thus weighing LULUCF removals and emissions on a par with emissions from other sectors (industry, the energy sector, end-users). The successful integration of LULUCF into the EU climate policy and carbon-trading frameworks could dovetail neatly with emerging international climate change mitigation efforts. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org(licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Planning for the deployment of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), infrastructure must consider numerous uncertainties regarding where and how much CO2 is produced and where captured CO2 can be geologically stored. We used the SimCCS engineering-economic geospatial optimization models to determine the characteristics of CCS deployment in France and corridors for pipelines that are robust to a priori uncertainty in CO2 production from industrial sources and CO2 storage locations. We found a number of stable routes that are robust to these uncertainties, and thus can provide early options for pipeline planning and rights-of-way acquisition. (C) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe paper discusses the development of economic techniques for dealing with uncertainties in economic analysis of planting trees to mitigate climatic change. In consideration of uncertainty, time preference and intergenerational equity, the traditional cost-benefit analysis framework is challenged with regard to the discounting/non-discounting of carbon uptake benefits, and because it usually uses a constant and positive discount rate. We investigate the influence of various discounting protocols on the outputs of economic analysis. The idea of using the declining discount rate is also considered. Several numerical examples dealing with the analysis of afforestation for carbon sequestration in Scotland and Ukraine are provided. We show that the choice of discounting protocols have a considerable influence on the results of economic analysis, and therefore, on the decision-making processes related to climate change mitigation strategies. The paper concludes with some innovative insights on accounting for uncertainties and time preference in tackling climate change through forestry, several climate policy implications of dealing with uncertainties, and a brief discussion of what the use of different discounting protocols might imply for decision making.The nitrogen (N) economy of conifers is hypothesized to reflect three spatially defined and interacting sources of variability in forest nutrition. These include the physiological adaptations of the host tree (N uptake capacities among populations), matched to the particular amount and nature of soil N supply (organic N, NH4+, and NO3-), as mediated by communities of site-adapted ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi. The spatial attributes of an N economy may vary considerably over the ranges of tree species because of wide gradients in climate and soil fertility, underpinning a potentially important aspect of conifer genecology with implications for climate change mitigation. The evidence for an intersection of N supply with host demand, as mediated by EM fungi, will be briefly reviewed and then evaluated in light of assisted migration studies involving provenance trials of coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco var. menziesii) in southwestern British Columbia. The trials were established across a wide range of site types, and so they provide valuable data on host response to gradations in soil N supply and interactions with local EM fungal communities. Preliminary results and knowledge gaps will be discussed under the framework of an N economy and management of forest genetic resources.Secondary and managed plantation forests comprise a rapidly increasing portion of the humid tropical forest biome, a region that, in turn, is a major source of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions to the atmosphere. Previous work has demonstrated reduced N2O emissions in regenerating secondary stands compared to mature forests, yet the importance of species composition in regulating N2O production in young forests remains unclear. We measured N2O fluxes beneath four native tree species planted in replicated, 21-yr-old monodominant stands in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica in comparison with nearby mature forest and abandoned pasture sites at two time points (wetter and drier seasons). We found that species differed eight-fold in their production of N2O, with slower growing, late-successional species (including one legume) promoting high N2O fluxes similar to mature forest, and faster growing, early successional species maintaining low N2O fluxes similar to abandoned pasture. Across all species, N2O flux was positively correlated with soil nitrate concentration in the wetter season and with soil water-filled pore space (WFPS) in the drier season. However, the strongest predictor of N2O fluxes was fine-root growth rate, which was negatively correlated with N2O emissions at both time points. We suggest that tree-specific variation in growth habits creates differences in both N demand and soil water conditions that may exert significant control on N2O fluxes from tropical forests. With the advent of REDD+ and related strategies for fostering climate mitigation. via tropical forest regrowth and plantations, we note that species-specific traits as they relate to N2O fluxes may be an important consideration in estimating overall climate benefits.Biodiversity conveys numerous functional benefits to forested ecosystems, including community stability and resilience. In the context of managing forests for climate change mitigation/adaptation, maximizing and/or maintaining aboveground biomass will require understanding the interactions between tree biodiversity, site productivity, and the stocking of live trees. Species richness may not be the most appropriate tree biodiversity metric in this context as it weights all species as equally important. Measures that account for evolutionary relationships among species should be more biologically meaningful surrogates of functional diversity within forest communities, given that more phylogenetically distinct species should contribute more to the diversity of traits within a community. Using data from approximately 79,000 permanent and standardized forest inventory plots across the United States, we assessed trends in live aboveground tree biomass (LAGB) in relation to metrics of forest tree biodiversity at national and regional scales, controlling for site productivity and live tree stocking. These metrics included four measures of evolutionary diversity associated with distinct components of functional variation. In certain situations and locations across the U.S., evolutionary diversity metrics supply additional information about forest stands beyond that provided by simple species richness counts. This information can potentially include critical insight into tree functional attributes inherently related to evolutionary diversity. Relationships nationally between LAGS and most biodiversity metrics weakened with increasing site productivity and with increasing live tree stocking: The greater the site productivity and tree stocking, the less likely that higher biodiversity was associated with greater LAGB. This is consistent with the expectation that the coexistence of functionally different species increases forest productivity in less productive and more stressful environments, while dominant and highly productive species are able to competitively dominate in more productive habitats. Phylogenetic species clustering (PSC) was increasingly correlated with LAGB as live tree stocking increased on low-productivity sites, suggesting that the co-occurrence of tree species more widely distributed across the phylogenetic tree of life, and therefore likely possessing a wider variety of functional attributes, resulted in greater biomass accumulation on poorer sites. PSC and species richness appear to be the best biodiversity predictors for LAGB on the low-productivity sites likely to be most important for carbon/biomass management. These biodiversity metrics will be important for maximizing biomass/carbon for future carbon sequestration or bioenergy needs and should serve as indicators of forest function in forest resource assessments. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over recent decades forest management has recognized the fact that forests provide a wide variety of services besides timber, such as carbon sequestration and the preservation of biodiversity. During this time, science has found significant evidence that climate change is actually taking place. Since the change in climatic conditions will affect the vital cycle of trees, the optimal management of forests needs to be adapted to these new conditions to make the best use of forests from the social point of view. From the policy side, forest management is confronted with the task of balancing the objectives of competitiveness, compliance with international agreements with respect to climate change mitigation and the preservation of biodiversity. This study aims to analyze the optimal management regime of forests under changing climatic conditions, taking timber, carbon and biodiversity into account. It finds that the objectives of carbon sequestration and biodiversity should target different stands. The cost of the latter can be reduced substantially if only mature stands are pursued and not young stands.The mitigation of climate change may require the implementation of carbon dioxide capture and storage technology (CCS). Both proponents and opponents of CCS will try to convince the public of the (dis) advantages of this technology. This research examines the relative persuasiveness of communications that only contain highly relevant information (e.g., the argument that the implementation of CCS would have important climate benefits) or combine highly relevant with irrelevant or moderately relevant information. The results of three experiments consistently show that adding irrelevant information dilutes the impact of highly relevant information: Irrelevant information reduced the persuasiveness of communications (Experiments 1 and 2) and weakened people's beliefs about the issue (Experiment 3). This dilution effect occurred with both positive (pro-CCS) information and negative (con-CCS) information, but the effect was stronger with positive information. Awareness of the source of the communications moderated the dilution effect. Implications for public communications about CCS are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The research investigated the relation between the individual's deontological stance about environment and the attitude toward a market-based approach to climate change mitigation. We introduced people to the cap-and-trade program which is expected both to reduce the environmental risk and maximize economic benefits. Study I showed that the stronger the deontological mandate people held toward nature, the more likely they were to refuse the cap-and-trade mitigation program regardless of its effectiveness. In Study 2 and in Study 3, a similar win win scenario was adopted to explore whether deontology and consequentialism consist of mutually exclusive orientations. Our results revealed that the deontological approach per se did not preclude the use of the cost benefit analysis and that consequentialism moderated the relationship between deontology and the attitude toward the cap-andtrade program. Taken together, our findings have relevant practical implications for environmental politics and contribute to theoretical insights into moral reasoning. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Theory, common sense and modelling studies suggest that some interventions to mitigate carbon emissions in the transport sector can also have substantial short-term benefits for population health. Policies that encourage active modes of transportation such as cycling may, for example, increase population physical activity and decrease air pollution, thus reducing the burden of conditions such as some cancers, diabetes, heart disease and dementia. In this Perspective we systematically review the evidence from 'real life' transport policies and their impacts on health and CO2 emissions. We identified a few studies that mostly involved personalized travel planning and showed modest increases in active transport such as walking, and reductions in vehicle use and CO2 emissions. Given the poor quality of the studies identified, urgent action is needed to provide more robust evidence for policies.Biofuels production has experienced rapid growth worldwide as one of the several strategies to promote green energy economies. Indeed, climate change mitigation and energy security have been frequent rationales behind biofuel policies, but biofuels production could generate negative impacts, such as additional demand for feedstocks, and therefore for land on which to grow them, with a consequent increase in food commodity prices. In this context, this paper examines the effect of biofuels. and other economic and financial factors on daily returns of a group of commodity futures prices using Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) family models in univariate and multivariate settings. The results show that a complex of drivers are relevant in explaining commodity futures returns; more precisely, the Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500 positively affects commodity markets, while the US/Euro exchange rate brings about a decline in commodity returns. It turns out, in addition, that energy market returns are significant in explaining commodity returns on a daily basis, while monetary liquidity is not. This would imply that biofuel policy should be carefully monitored in order to avoid excessive first-generation subsidization, which would trigger a fuel vs. food conflict. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Economists traditionally view a Pigouvian fee on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, either via carbon taxes or emissions caps and permit trading ("cap-and-trade"), as the economically optimal or "first-best" policy to address climate change-related externalities. Yet several political economy factors can severely constrain the implementation of these carbon pricing policies, including opposition of industrial sectors with a concentration of assets that would lose considerable value under such policies; the collective action nature of climate mitigation efforts; principal agent failures; and a low willingness-to-pay for climate mitigation by citizens. Real-world implementations of carbon pricing policies can thus fall short of the economically optimal outcomes envisioned in theory. Consistent with the general theory of the second-best, the presence of binding political economy constraints opens a significant "opportunity space" for the design of creative climate policy instruments with superior political feasibility, economic efficiency, and environmental efficacy relative to the constrained implementation of carbon pricing policies. This paper presents theoretical political economy frameworks relevant to climate policy design and provides corroborating evidence from the United States context. It concludes with a series of implications for climate policy making and argues for the creative pursuit of a mix of second-best policy instruments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Blue Carbon', which is carbon captured by marine living organisms, has recently been highlighted as a new option for climate change mitigation initiatives. In particular, coastal ecosystems have been recognized as significant carbon stocks because of their high burial rates and long-term sequestration of carbon. However, the direct contribution of Blue Carbon to the uptake of atmospheric CO2 through air-sea gas exchange remains unclear. We performed in situ measurements of carbon flows, including air-sea CO2 fluxes, dissolved inorganic carbon changes, net ecosystem production, and carbon burial rates in the boreal (Furen), temperate (Kurihama), and subtropical (Fukido) seagrass meadows of Japan from 2010 to 2013. In particular, the air-sea CO2 flux was measured using three methods: the bulk formula method, the floating chamber method, and the eddy covariance method. Our empirical results show that submerged autotrophic vegetation in shallow coastal waters can be functionally a sink for atmospheric CO2. This finding is contrary to the conventional perception that most near-shore ecosystems are sources of atmospheric CO2. The key factor determining whether or not coastal ecosystems directly decrease the concentration of atmospheric CO2 may be net ecosystem production. This study thus identifies a new ecosystem function of coastal vegetated systems; they are direct sinks of atmospheric CO2.Semi-arid soils cover a significant area of Earth's land surface and typically contain large amounts of inorganic C. Determining the effects of biochar additions on CO2 emissions from semi-arid soils is therefore essential for evaluating the potential of biochar as a climate change mitigation strategy. Here, we measured the CO2 that evolved from semi-arid calcareous soils amended with biochar at rates of 0 and 20 t ha(-1) in a full factorial combination with three different fertilizers (mineral fertilizer, municipal solid waste compost, and sewage sludge) applied at four rates (equivalent to 0, 75, 150, and 225 kg potentially available N ha(-1)) during 182 days of aerobic incubation. A double exponential model, which describes cumulative CO2 emissions from two active soil C compartments with different turnover rates (one relatively stable and the other more labile), was found to fit very well all the experimental datasets. In general, the organic fertilizers increased the size and decomposition rate of the stable and labile soil C pools. In contrast, biochar addition had no effects on any of the double exponential model parameters and did not interact with the effects ascribed to the type and rate of fertilizer. After 182 days of incubation, soil organic and microbial biomass C contents tended to increase with increasing the application rates of organic fertilizer, especially of compost, whereas increasing the rate of mineral fertilizer tended to suppress microbial biomass. Biochar was found to increase both organic and inorganic C contents in soil and not to interact with the effects of type and rate of fertilizer on C fractions. As a whole, our results suggest that the use of biochar as enhancer of semi-arid soils, either alone or combined with mineral and organic fertilizers, is unlikely to increase abiotic and biotic soil CO2 emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Shipping emissions are currently increasing and will most likely continue to do so in the future due to the increase of global-scale trade. Ship emissions have the potential to contribute to air quality degradation in coastal areas, in addition to contributing to global air pollution. With the aim to quantify the impacts of shipping emissions on urban air quality in coastal areas in Europe, an in depth literature review was carried out focussing on particulate matter and gaseous pollutants but also reviewing the main chemical tracers of shipping emissions, the particle size distribution of ship-derived particulates and their contributions to population exposure and atmospheric deposition. Mitigation strategies were also addressed. In European coastal areas, shipping emissions contribute with 1-7% of ambient air PM10 levels, 1-14% of PM2.5, and at least 11% of PM1. Contributions from shipping to ambient NO2 levels range between 7 and 24%, with the highest values being recorded in the Netherlands and Denmark. Impacts from shipping emissions on SO2 concentrations were reported for Sweden and Spain. Shipping emissions impact not only the levels and composition of particulate and gaseous pollutants, but may also enhance new particle formation processes in urban areas. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.India and China have been cooperating with each other at the climate change negotiations since the inception of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. The paper makes a case that although the road has not been very smooth and has not been free of differences, the two powers have been at the forefront of decision-making in global climate governance and in this exercise, and cooperation has been more prominent than competition or rivalry. The paper analyzes the goals and positions of India at the negotiations within the larger framework of the North-South conflict and South-South cooperation. Whether it is the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) or the bottom-up approach toward climate change mitigation, concerns expressed by both countries have largely been similar, especially since they have championed the cause of equity and climate justice for safeguarding the developing countries' right to develop. The paper explains the manner in which India and China have played an influential role in shaping the technicalities and modalities of various climate mechanisms in the context of their relations with the other developing and least developed countries (LDCs). The paper argues that by building more South-South cooperation mechanisms related to climate change issues, India and China can bring about a just and equitable global climate order that assists developing and LDCs in tackling climate change that affects them most.Smouldering combustion is the driving phenomenon of wildfire in peatlands, like those causing haze episodes in Southeast Asia and Northeast Europe. These are the largest fires on Earth and an extensive source of greenhouse gases, but poorly understood, becoming an emerging research topic in climate-change mitigation. In this work, a series of multistep heterogeneous kinetics are investigated to describe the drying and decomposition in smouldering combustion of peat. The decomposition schemes cover a range of complexity, including 2, 3 or 4-step schemes, and up to 4 solid pseudo-species. The schemes aim to describe the simultaneous pyrolysis and oxidation reactions in smouldering fires. The reaction rates are expressed by Arrhenius law, and a lumped model of mass loss is used to simulate the degradation behaviour seen during thermogravimetric (TG) experiments in both nitrogen and air atmospheres. A genetic algorithm is applied to solve the corresponding inverse problem using TG data from the literature, and find the best kinetic and stoichiometric parameters for four types of boreal peat from different geographical locations (North China, Scotland and Siberia). The results show that at the TG level, all proposed schemes seem to perform well, with a high degree of agreement resulting from the forced optimization in the inverse problem approach. The chemical validity of the schemes is then investigated outside the TG realm and incorporated into a 1-D plug-flow model to study the reaction and the species distribution inside a peat smouldering front. Both lateral and in-depth spread modes are considered. The results show that the drying sub-front is essential, and that the best kinetics is the 4-step decomposition (one pyrolysis, and three oxidations) plus 1-step drying with 5 condensed species (water, peat, alpha-char, beta-char, and ash). This is the first time that the smouldering kinetics and the reaction-zone structure of a peat fire are explained and predicted, thus helping to understand this important natural and widespread phenomenon. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Combustion Institute.Potential conflicts between biodiversity conservation and climate-change mitigation can result in trade-offs in multiple-use land management. This study aimed to detect possible changes in land-use patterns in response to biodiversity conservation and climate-change mitigation measures and the effects on ecosystem services across a watershed. We analyzed land-cover change based on past and future scenarios in the rural Kushiro watershed in northern japan. The analysis showed that if no conservation measures were implemented and the timber and agricultural industry remained small until 2060, supporting and provisioning services would decline due to less land management. Although biodiversity conservation measures are predicted to improve three of the ecosystem services that we studied, carbon sequestration and timber production would be improved to a greater degree by climate-change mitigation measures. The greatest land-cover changes are likely to occur in the unprotected area around the middle reaches of the Kushiro River, and such changes could affect the provision of ecosystem services throughout the entire watershed. Thus, our findings indicate that landuse decisions for the middle reaches of the watershed are particularly important for managing the integrated ecosystem services of the entire watershed for the future. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Longwave (infrared) radiation is exchanged between exterior building surfaces, the ground and the sky. This process affects exterior surface temperatures and hence building energy consumption. Current approaches to modelling this exchange in building and microclimate analysis tools are discussed. There are various shortcomings, the most significant concerning radiation exchange between building surfaces at different temperatures. This work implements improvements to the longwave exchange processes in the EnergyPlus simulation engine, allowing improved calculation of surface temperatures and thus of heating and cooling loads. The improvements cover ground temperature assumptions and the coupling of other building surfaces. The coupling of radiative transfer was achieved by means of a timelag; it is shown that for small timesteps this approach is adequate. The new approaches are compared to the existing implementation in EnergyPlus for arrangements including a street canyon and shading devices. The combined impact gave an increase in surface temperature of up to 6 degrees C, with an average change of 2 degrees C. This caused a decrease in annual heating load of 18% and an increase in cooling load of 19%. This confirms the importance of accurate longwave radiation modelling both for buildings in dense urban areas and for buildings with external shading devices. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The land-use sector can contribute to climate change mitigation not only by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but also by increasing carbon uptake from the atmosphere and thereby creating negative CO2 emissions. In this paper, we investigate two land-based climate change mitigation strategies for carbon removal: (1) afforestation and (2) bioenergy in combination with carbon capture and storage technology (bioenergy CCS). In our approach, a global tax on GHG emissions aimed at ambitious climate change mitigation incentivizes land-based mitigation by penalizing positive and rewarding negative CO2 emissions from the land-use system. We analyze afforestation and bioenergy CCS as standalone and combined mitigation strategies. We find that afforestation is a cost-efficient strategy for carbon removal at relatively low carbon prices, while bioenergy CCS becomes competitive only at higher prices. According to our results, cumulative carbon removal due to afforestation and bioenergy CCS is similar at the end of 21st century (600-700 GtCO(2)), while land-demand for afforestation is much higher compared to bioenergy CCS. In the combined setting, we identify competition for land, but the impact on the mitigation potential (1000 GtCO(2)) is partially alleviated by productivity increases in the agricultural sector. Moreover, our results indicate that early-century afforestation presumably will not negatively impact carbon removal due to bioenergy CCS in the second half of the 21st century. A sensitivity analysis shows that land-based mitigation is very sensitive to different levels of GHG taxes. Besides that, the mitigation potential of bioenergy CCS highly depends on the development of future bioenergy yields and the availability of geological carbon storage, while for afforestation projects the length of the crediting period is crucial.Data gathered through community-based forest monitoring (CBFM) programs may be as accurate as those gathered by professional scientists, but acquired at a much lower cost and capable of providing more detailed data about the occurrence, extent and drivers of forest loss, degradation and regrowth at the community scale. In addition, CBFM enables greater survey repeatability. Therefore, CBFM should be a fundamental component of national forest monitoring systems and programs to measure, report and verify (MRV) REDD+ activities. To contribute to the development of more effective approaches to CBFM, in this paper we assess: (1) the feasibility of using small, low-cost drones (i.e., remotely piloted aerial vehicles) in CBFM programs; (2) their potential advantages and disadvantages for communities, partner organizations and forest data end-users; and (3) to what extent their utilization, coupled with ground surveys and local ecological knowledge, would improve tropical forest monitoring. To do so, we reviewed the existing literature regarding environmental applications of drones, including forest monitoring, and drew on our own firsthand experience flying small drones to map and monitor tropical forests and training people to operate them. We believe that the utilization of small drones can enhance CBFM and that this approach is feasible in many locations throughout the tropics if some degree of external assistance and funding is provided to communities. We suggest that the use of small drones can help tropical communities to better manage and conserve their forests whilst benefiting partner organizations, governments and forest data end-users, particularly those engaged in forestry, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation projects such as REDD+.Frequently forgotten in the global discussions and agreements on climate change are children and young people, who both disproportionately suffer the consequences of a rapidly changing climate, yet also offer innovative solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ( climate change mitigation) and adapt to climate change. Existing evidence is presented of the disproportionately harmful impact of climate-induced changes in precipitation and extreme weather events on today's children, especially in the Global South. This paper examines the existing global climate change agreements under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change for evidence of attention to children and intergenerational climate justice, and suggests the almost universally ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child be leveraged to advance intergenerational climate justice.This article takes as its departure point the problem of 'carbon leakage'. While industrialized countries outsource their most polluting industries, they can pretend to comply with their commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions simply by increasing volumes of imports. Instead of the current fragmentation of the trade and climate change agendas, a more coherent system is needed, in which access to markets is made conditional on the adoption of more robust mitigation efforts, and in which developing countries are supported in such efforts. This article reviews a range of tools that could ensure such coherence, including higher import tariffs for goods produced through methods that do not use the cleanest technologies available, border tax adjustments and ecolabelling schemes. The article concludes that while defining a range of conditions that should be complied with in order to avoid the risk of GHG-reduction related conditionalities being misused for protectionist purposes, WTO law generally allows for meaningful linkages to be established between trade and climate change. It is possible, therefore, to move from the current state of fragmentation of global governance towards greater coherence. Doing so, it is argued here, would serve the cause of climate justice.The objective of this research is to quantitatively valuate the economic value of analysis model related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Due to the fact that the subject of this research, which is the Korean climate change mitigation and adaptation model, has not been actualized, a conjoint analysis applying stated preference data has utilized. As results, among the many attributes considered in this research, the value of the attribute related to reflecting Korea's current situation is analyzed to be largest in both greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation model and climate change adaptation model. Additionally, if all the considered functional aspects are assumed to be feasible, the economic value of the Korean GHG mitigation model is assumed to be 60.3 billion Korean won(KRW) and the Korean climate change adaptation model is assumed to be 51 billion KRW.CO2 emissions and GDP move together over the business cycle. Most climate change researchers would agree with this statement despite the absence of a study that formally analyzes the relationship between emissions and GDP at business cycle frequencies. The paper provides a rigorous empirical analysis of this relationship in a comprehensive cross-country panel by decomposing the emissions and GDP series into their growth and cyclical components using the HP filter. Focusing on the cyclical components, four robust facts emerge: (1) Emissions are procyclical. (2) Procyclicality of emissions is positively correlated with GDP per capita. (3) Emissions are cyclically more volatile than GDP. (4) Cyclical volatility of emissions is negatively correlated with GDP per capita. These facts are potentially important for the calibration of theoretical models used to evaluate climate change mitigation policies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This contribution analyses under what conditions expert input is most likely to be regarded by government representatives as useful and how government representatives use input provided by experts. It widens the analytical lens examining multilateral negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) between 2009 and 2011. The findings confirm the importance of deep knowledge, long-term involvement in the policy subsystem and networks. This research illustrates the importance of policy-entrepreneurial strategies such as proactively approaching government representatives and volunteering knowledge. Joining government delegations can increase expert input as they may gain access to the negotiation text. It is crucial to provide input early on in the negotiation cycle before the national negotiation position is decided. Scientific consensus on climate change facilitated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in a convergence of the actor's beliefs towards understanding climate mitigation and adaptation as normative imperative. Actors, however, interpret expert input based on the consensual IPCC findings differently depending on their conflicting political objectives. Thus, instrumental and political use of expert input by the interest groups overlaps in the UNFCCC.This paper describes the results of a recent urban design studio conducted at the University of Michigan's A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, USA. The studio focused on redesigning the borough of Manhattan in New York City in the face of climate change. The paper summarises the impetus behind the studio (recent '100-year' storms symptomatic of climate changes that challenge Manhattan's habitability), outlines the study's goals and objectives (including leveraging climate-change mitigation strategies towards creating an economically and socially more equitable urban environment), describes features of the studio's concept for Manhattan related to infrastructure, waterfront and community development, and presents the studio process as an example of urban design pedagogy.Cumulative research has demonstrated both the reality and potential impacts of global climate change. In this paper, we focus on the nature of climate-related policy development at a subnational level by considering actions undertaken by municipal governments in the United States. Specifically, our research objective is to provide an initial descriptive assessment of how local governments utilize what we term research-based knowledge (RBK) to inform their planning and action strategies around climate change mitigation and adaptation. Doing so is important because local governments in the United States represent a key source of policy innovation on climate change issues and because there is relatively little existing research on exactly how RBK might be utilized in this domain. Our comparative case descriptions from four locations suggest that city officials use RBK in both strategic and political manners. That is, while using existing information and policy networks and generally relying on outside experts for rational comprehensive evaluation, climate-related RBK often both justifies the existing position of local officials (strategic use) and legitimizes previous policy choices (political use). The implications of this initial assessment can assist in testing future theoretic arguments on the exact nature of RBK acquisition and use surrounding climate change policymaking.Urban areas generally emit large amounts of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). However, studies that quantified the temporal and spatial variability of mean atmospheric CO2 concentrations and fluxes have suggested that dense vegetation may act as a local sink within cities. Consequently, urban greening programmes now form an important part of many urban climate change mitigation policies. Knowledge about the direct impact of urban vegetation and soils (collectively known as urban forests) on atmospheric CO2 concentrations is still limited and comprehensive measurement programmes are scarce. This article examines the methods currently used to quantify carbon (C) pools and CO2 fluxes of urban forests, and compiles currently available results. Whilst vegetation did not offset CO2 emissions on an annual basis in studies from midlatitude cities, vegetative CO2 uptake contributed to the significantly lower atmospheric CO2 fluxes in summer. However, the currently available results are related to a large degree of uncertainty due to the limitations of the applied methods, the limited number of urban areas studied and the temporal/spatial resolution of the measurements. This article demonstrates that in order to effectively quantify CO2 fluxes from urban forests, future research needs to integrate data from a combination of methodologies collected at a range of scales. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper focuses on discussing the potential and feasibility of increasing hydropower production by installing hydrokinetic turbines behind existing conventional hydropower stations to establish "combined-cycle hydropower system (CCHS)". The CCHS will capture additional power from the energy remaining in water currents exiting dams. There are two modes of CCHS. The hydrokinetic turbine can be located directly behind the turbine of existing conventional hydropower plant or it can be placed at sites in the vicinity of powerhouse. The challenges and advantages associated with the CCHS are discussed in this paper. Although the technology of CCHS is still in its research and development phrase, not yet reaches mature and economically feasible; it is believed that it possesses significant potential to produce additional clean hydropower in the large-scale. It may become additional promising way of generating clean energy to mitigate climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The implementation of climate change mitigation strategies may significantly affect the current practices for electricity network operation. Increasing penetration of renewable energy generation technologies into electricity networks is one of the key mitigation strategies to achieve greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Additional climate change mitigation strategies can also contribute to emission reduction thereby supplementing the renewable energy generation participation, which may be limited due to technical constraints of the network. In this paper, the penetration requirements for different renewable energy generation resources are assessed while concurrently examining other mitigation strategies to reduce overall emissions from electricity networks and meet requisite targets. The impacts of climate change mitigation strategies on the demand and generation mix are considered for facilitating the penetration of renewable generation. New climate change mitigation indices namely change in average demand, change in peak demand, generation flexibility and generation mix have been proposed to measure the level of emission reduction by incorporating different mitigation strategies. The marginal emissions associated with the individual generation technologies in the state of New South Wales (NSW) are modelled and the total emissions associated with the electricity grid of NSW are evaluated. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mangroves can capture and store organic carbon and their protection and therefore their restoration is a component of climate change mitigation. However, there are few empirical measurements of long-term carbon storage in mangroves or of how storage varies across environmental gradients. The context dependency of this process combined with geographically limited field sampling has made it difficult to generalize regional and global rates of mangrove carbon sequestration. This has in turn hampered the inclusion of sequestration by mangroves in carbon cycle models and in carbon offset markets. The purpose of this study was to estimate the relative carbon capture and storage potential in natural and restored mangrove forests. We measured depth profiles of soil organic carbon content in 72 cores collected from six sites (three natural, two restored, and one afforested) surrounding Muisne, Ecuador. Samples up to 1 m deep were analyzed for organic matter content using loss-on-ignition and values were converted to organic carbon content using an accepted ratio of 1.72 (g/g). Results suggest that average soil carbon storage is 0.055 +/- 0.002 g cm(-3) (11.3 +/- 0.8% carbon content by dry mass, mean +/- 1 SE) up to 1 m deep in natural sites, and 0.058 +/- 0.002 g cm(-3) (8.0 +/- 0.3%) in restored sites. These estimates are concordant with published global averages. Evidence of equivalent carbon stocks in restored and afforested mangrove patches emphasizes the carbon sink potential for reestablished mangrove systems. We found no relationship between sediment carbon storage and aboveground biomass, forest structure, or within-patch location. Our results demonstrate the long-term carbon storage potential of natural mangroves, high effectiveness of mangrove restoration and afforestation, a lack of predictability in carbon storage strictly based on aboveground parameters, and the need to establish standardized protocol for quantifying mangrove sediment carbon stocks.This study examines whether policies to encourage cattle ranching intensification in Brazil can abate global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by sparing land from deforestation. We use an economic model of global land use to investigate, from 2010 to 2030, the global agricultural outcomes, land use changes, and GHG abatement resulting from two potential Brazilian policies: a tax on cattle from conventional pasture and a subsidy for cattle from semi-intensive pasture. We find that under either policy, Brazil could achieve considerable sparing of forests and abatement of GHGs, in line with its national policy targets. The land spared, particularly under the tax, is far less than proportional to the productivity increased. However, the tax, despite prompting less adoption of semi-intensive ranching, delivers slightly more forest sparing and GHG abatement than the subsidy. This difference is explained by increased deforestation associated with increased beef consumption under the subsidy and reduced deforestation associated with reduced beef consumption under the tax. Complementary policies to directly limit deforestation could help limit these effects. GHG abatement from either the tax or subsidy appears inexpensive but, over time, the tax would become cheaper than the subsidy. A revenue-neutral combination of the policies could be an element of a sustainable development strategy for Brazil and other emerging economies seeking to balance agricultural development and forest protection.Renewable energy sources are widely perceived as 'clean', 'green', and 'inexhaustible'. In recent years the spectre of global warming and ocean acidification, which has been primarily attributed to fossil fuel burning, has brought renewable energy at the forefront of most climate change mitigation strategies. There is strong advocacy for large-scale substitution of conventional energy sources with the renewables on the premise that such a move would substantially reduce environmental degradation and global warming. These sentiments are being echoed by scientists and policy makers as well as environmental activists all over the world. 'Small hydro', which generally represents hydroelectric power projects of capacities 25 MW or lower, is one of the renewable energy options which is believed to be clean and sustainable even as its bigger version, large hydro, is known to cause several strongly adverse environmental impacts. This paper brings out that the prevailing perception of 'eco-friendliness' of small hydro is mainly due to the fact that it has only been used to a very small extent so far. But once it is deployed at a scale comparable to fossil fuel use, the resulting impacts would be quite substantially adverse. The purpose is not to denegrade small hydro, less so to advocate use of fossil fuels. It, rather, is to bring home the point that a much more realistic and elaborate assessment of the likely direct as well as indirect impacts of extensive utilization of this energy source than has been done hitherto is necessary. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is a major public health threat that is exacerbated by food production. Food items differ substantially in the amount of greenhouse gases their production generates and therefore individuals, if willing, can mitigate climate change through dietary choices. We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study to assess if the understanding of climate change, concern over climate change or socio-economic characteristics are reflected in the frequencies of climate-friendly food choices. The study population comprised 1623 young adults in Finland who returned a self-administered questionnaire (response rate 64.0%). We constructed a Climate-Friendly Diet Score (CFDS) ranging theoretically from -14 to 14 based on the consumption of 14 food items. A higher CFDS indicated a climate-friendlier diet. Multivariate linear regression analyses on the determinants of CFDS revealed that medium concern raised CFDS on average by 0.51 points (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.03, 0.98) and high concern by 1.30 points (95% CI 0.80, 1.80) compared to low concern. Understanding had no effect on CFDS on its own. Female gender raised CFDS by 1.92 (95% CI 1.59, 2.25). Unemployment decreased CFDS by 0.92 (95% CI -1.68, -0.15). Separate analyses of genders revealed that high concern over climate change brought about a greater increase in CFDS in females than in males. Good understanding of climate change was weakly connected to climate-friendly diet among females only. Our results indicate that increasing awareness of climate change could lead to increased consumption of climate-friendly food, reduction in GHG emissions, and thus climate change mitigation.This paper proposed environmental parameters are collected by use of outdoor ZigBee based weather stations as a prerequisite for the optimisation of plant growth. In most cases, all the sensors required are integrated into a weather station, due to which merely a single monitoring node is employed following data aggregation. An energy efficient center data aggregation algorithm, where an ant colony algorithm is applied to the construction of a level gradient field, is presented as an effective way to extend the life cycles of sensor nodes. A weather station and a ZigBee module both are portable and easy to install battery operated devices. Furthermore, a remote web-based human machine interface (HMI) is developed by InduSof on a server, and has an access to a database. This proposed algorithm is confirmed by computer simulations as an effective approach to remarkably extend the life cycles of sensor nodes. This work can be applied not merely to traditional outdoor large scale farming, but also to small scale indoor plantation, e.g. in a green house, a plant factory, etc., and applied to the field of conservation ecology.Transport and infrastructure development enables economic and social development, but is often detrimental to sustainable development due to congestion, accidents, air pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Various policy frameworks have been created to connect transport with development, development with climate change and climate change mitigation with the transport sector. However, so far no consistent framework exists that addresses these three areas in an integrated manner.This article demonstrates that sustainable development of the transport sector is not viable on the longer term in the absence of such a three-way framework. First, current perspectives and practices on transport and (sustainable) development are reviewed, demonstrating that outcomes and policies are not consistently positive on all three dimensions. The article then re-evaluates the Avoid-Shift-Improve (ASI) approach, initially developed to address climate change mitigation and other environmental issues in the transport sector, adding two perspectives on sustainable development that are not generally taken into account when discussing ASI: transition theory and sustainable lifestyles. Together with attention to the development function of transport by incorporating Access into ASI, this could enable a more long-term sustainability-oriented view on transport, development and climate mitigation.Climate mitigation policies in Europe call for an extensive build-up of renewable power, which will increase from 320 GIN in 2012 to 536 GW by 2020. The renewable expansion will mainly consist of the installation of new wind and solar power plants, which require additional transmission lines. The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity estimates that 45,300 km of new or upgraded lines are necessary in the region over the next decade to accommodate the renewable power sources. Building a grid for renewables will help Europe achieve its climate goals, but other resulting environmental impacts have not yet been quantified. In this article a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) for the transmission grid expansion is performed. The results show that the grid extension projects correspond to a total impact of 10.7 Mton CO2 eq. and 11.2 Mton Fe eq. Electricity transmission in Europe in 2020 will be more material intensive, requiring about 10% more metal inputs per kWh than today. Manufacturing processes for the production of transmission equipment are important for some impacts categories, particularly water depletion. Finally, a sensitivity analysis regarding recycling rates indicates that the results in some impact categories present great variation depending on the rates assumed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Past research suggests that how we perceive risk can be related to how we attribute responsibility for risk-related issues, such as climate change; however, a gap in research lies in exploring possible connections between attribution of responsibility, risk perception, and information processing. Using the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model, this study fills this gap by examining how RISP-based variables are related to information processing and whether attribution of responsibility for mitigating climate change influences communication behaviors that are often predicted by elevated risk perceptions. Undergraduates at two large research universities (N = 572) were randomly assigned to read one of two newspaper articles that emphasized either individual responsibility (by highlighting personal actions) or societal responsibility (by highlighting government policy) for climate change mitigation. Results indicate that subjects in the individual responsibility condition were significantly more likely to process the message in a systematic manner; however, attribution of responsibility did not interact with risk perception to influence systematic processing. Moreover, attitudes toward climate change information and negative affect mediated the relationship between other key variables and systematic processing. These and other findings suggest that strategic communication about climate change may benefit from emphasizing individual responsibility to attract more attention from diverse audiences and to promote deeper thinking about the issue. Additional theoretical implications are presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Policy decisions regarding climate change mitigation are increasingly incorporating the beneficial and adverse health impacts of greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies. Studies of such co-benefits and co-harms involve modeling approaches requiring a range of analytic decisions that affect the model output. Objective: Our objective was to assess analytic decisions regarding model framework, structure, choice of parameters, and handling of uncertainty when modeling health co-benefits, and to make recommendations for improvements that could increase policy uptake. Methods: We describe the assumptions and analytic decisions underlying models of mitigation co-benefits, examining their effects on modeling outputs, and consider tools for quantifying uncertainty. Discussion: There is considerable variation in approaches to valuation metrics, discounting methods, uncertainty characterization and propagation, and assessment of low-probability/high-impact events. There is also variable inclusion of adverse impacts of mitigation policies, and limited extension of modeling domains to include implementation considerations. Going forward, co-benefits modeling efforts should be carried out in collaboration with policy makers; these efforts should include the full range of positive and negative impacts and critical uncertainties, as well as a range of discount rates, and should explicitly characterize uncertainty. We make recommendations to improve the rigor and consistency of modeling of health co-benefits. Conclusion: Modeling health co-benefits requires systematic consideration of the suitability of model assumptions, of what should be included and excluded from the model framework, and how uncertainty should be treated. Increased attention to these and other analytic decisions has the potential to increase the policy relevance and application of co-benefits modeling studies, potentially helping policy makers to maximize mitigation potential while simultaneously improving health.One of the reasons for deadlock in global climate policy is countries' disagreement on how to share the mitigation burden. Normative theory suggests various fairness criteria for structuring burden sharing, most prominently, historical responsibility for emissions, economic capacity, and vulnerability to climate change. Governments have taken up these criteria in their rhetoric at UNFCCC negotiations. I examine whether normative criteria influence individual burden sharing preferences. This bottom-up perspective is important for two reasons. First, it is unknown if governments' fairness rhetoric matches citizens' actual preferences. Second, international climate agreements directly affect individuals through domestic policy measures (e.g. energy taxes), and therefore require domestic public support for successful implementation. I conducted two laboratory experiments where participants have to agree on how to share climate change mitigation costs in an ultimatum game. Treatment conditions include differences between proposer and responder in capacity, vulnerability (experiment 1), and historical emissions (experiment 2). Historical emissions are endogenously determined in a prior game. Capacity inequality strongly affects burden sharing, with richer players ending up paying more, and poorer players less. Vulnerability differences reduce the influence of fairness, leading to suggested cost distributions more unfavorable to vulnerable players. However, vulnerable responders still reject many "unfair" offers. Differences in historical responsibility result in cost distributions strongly correlated with players' relative contributions to climate change. The results suggest that more nuanced consideration of fairness criteria in burden sharing could make ambitious climate agreements more acceptable for reluctant countries and their citizens.Land-use changes through forestry and other activities alter not just carbon storage, but biophysical properties, including albedo, surface roughness, and canopy conductance, all of which affect temperature. This study assessed the biophysical forcings and climatic impact of vegetation replacement across North America by comparing satellite-derived albedo, land surface temperature (LST), and evapotranspiration (ET) between adjacent vegetation types. We calculated radiative forcings (RF) for potential local conversions from croplands (CRO) or grasslands (GRA) to evergreen needleleaf (ENF) or deciduous broadleaf (DBF) forests. Forests generally had lower albedo than adjacent grasslands or croplands, particularly in locations with snow. They also had warmer nighttime LST, cooler daily and daytime LST in warm seasons, and smaller daily LST ranges. Darker forest surfaces induced positive RFs, dampening the cooling effect of carbon sequestration. The mean (+/- SD) albedo-induced RFs for each land conversion were equivalent to carbon emissions of 2.2 +/- 0.7 kg C/m(2) (GRA-ENF), 2.0 +/- 0.6 kg C/m(2) (CRO-ENF), 0.90 +/- 0.50 kg C/m(2) (CRO-DBF), and 0.73 +/- 0.22 kg C/m(2) (GRA-DBF), suggesting that, given the same carbon sequestration potential, a larger net cooling (integrated globally) is expected for planting DBF than ENF. Both changes in LST and ET induce longwave RFs that sometimes had values comparable to or even larger than albedo-induced shortwave RFs. Sensible heat flux, on average, increased when replacing CRO with ENF, but decreased for conversions to DBF, suggesting that DBF tends to cool near-surface air locally while ENF tends to warm it. This local temperature effect showed some seasonal variation and spatial dependence, but did not differ strongly by latitude. Overall, our results show that a carbon-centric accounting is, in many cases, insufficient for climate mitigation policies. Where afforestation or reforestation occurs, however, deciduous broadleaf trees are likely to produce stronger cooling benefits than evergreen needleleaf trees provide.Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avert potentially disastrous global climate change requires substantial redevelopment of infrastructure systems(1-4). Cities are recognized as key actors for leading such climate change mitigation efforts(6-10). We have studied the greenhouse gas inventories and underlying characteristics of 22 global cities. These cities differ in terms of their climates, income, levels of industrial activity, urban form and existing carbon intensity of electricity supply. Here we show how these differences in city characteristics lead to wide variations in the type of strategies that can be used for reducing emissions. Cities experiencing greater than similar to 1,500 heating degree days (below an 18 degrees C base), for example, will review building construction and retrofitting for cold climates. Electrification of infrastructure technologies is effective for cities where the carbon intensity of the grid is lower than similar to 600 tCO(2)e GWh(-1); whereas transportation strategies will differ between low urban density (< similar to 6,000 persons km(2)) and high urban density (> similar to 6,000 persons km(-2)) cities. As nation states negotiate targets and develop policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, attention to the specific characteristics of their cities will broaden and improve their suite of options. Beyond carbon pricing, markets and taxation, governments may develop policies and target spending towards low-carbon urban infrastructure.Energy technologies emit greenhouse gases with differing radiative efficiencies and atmospheric lifetimes(1-3). Standard practice for evaluating technologies, which uses the global warming potential (GWP) to compare the integrated radiative forcing of emitted gases over a fixed time horizon(4), does not acknowledge the importance of a changing background climate relative to climate change mitigation targets(5,6). Here we demonstrate that the GWP misvalues the impact of CH4-emitting technologies as mid-century approaches, and we propose a new class of metrics to evaluate technologies based on their time of use. The instantaneous climate impact (ICI) compares gases in an expected radiative forcing stabilization year, and the cumulative climate impact (CCI) compares their time-integrated radiative forcing up to a stabilization year. Using these dynamic metrics, we quantify the climate impacts of technologies and show that high-CH4-emitting energy sources become less advantageous over time. The impact of natural gas for transportation, with CH4 leakage, exceeds that of gasoline within 1-2 decades for a commonly cited 3W m(-2) stabilization target. The impact of algae biodiesel overtakes that of corn ethanol within 2-3 decades, where algae co-products are used to produce biogas and corn co-products are used for animal feed. The proposed metrics capture the changing importance of CH4 emissions as a climate threshold is approached, thereby addressing a major shortcoming of the GWP for technology evaluation(7,8).Is inequality within countries relevant for global climate policy? Most burden-sharing proposals for climate mitigation treat states as homogenous agents, even those that aim to protect individual rights. This can lead to free riders in some large emerging economies and expose the poor to mitigation burdens in others. Proposals that incorporate an exemption for the poor can avoid these outcomes, but do not account for the role of internal policies on the poor's actual emissions and mitigation burdens. This will create moral hazards in the design of such agreements and risk the misallocation of mitigation costs when implemented. To ensure equitable outcomes at the individual level, international agreements would need to build in additional provisions to encourage benefiting states to reduce emissions and target exemptions to the poor. But such agreements will face political conflicts over sovereignty and the burdensomeness of such provisions.The recent growth in bioenergy crop cultivation, stimulated by the need to implement measures to reduce net CO2 emissions, is driving major land-use changes with consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem service provision. Although the type of bioenergy crop and its associated management is likely to affect biodiversity at the local (field) scale, landscape context and its interaction with crop type may also influence biodiversity on farms. In this study, we assessed the impact of replacing conventional agricultural crops with two model bioenergy crops (either oilseed rape Brassica napus or Miscanthusxgiganteus) on vascular plant, bumblebee, solitary bee, hoverfly and carabid beetle richness, diversity and abundance in 50 sites in Ireland. We assessed whether within-field biodiversity was also related to surrounding landscape structure. We found that local- and landscape-scale variables correlated with biodiversity in these agricultural landscapes. Overall, the differences between the bioenergy crops and the conventional crops on farmland biodiversity were mostly positive (e.g. higher vascular plant richness in Miscanthus planted on former conventional tillage, higher solitary bee abundance and richness in Miscanthus and oilseed rape compared with conventional crops) or neutral (e.g. no differences between crop types for hoverflies and bumblebees). We showed that these crop type effects were independent of (i.e. no interactions with) the surrounding landscape composition and configuration. However, surrounding landscape context did relate to biodiversity in these farms, negatively for carabid beetles and positively for hoverflies. Although we conclude that the bioenergy crops compared favourably with conventional crops in terms of biodiversity of the taxa studied at the field scale, the effects of large-scale planting in these landscapes could result in very different impacts. Maintaining ecosystem functioning and the delivery of ecosystem services will require a greater understanding of impacts at the landscape scale to ensure the sustainable development of climate change mitigation measures.Mounting research highlights the contribution of ecosystem services provided by urban forests to quality of life in cities, yet these services are rarely explicitly considered in environmental policy targets. We quantify regulating services provided by urban forests and evaluate their contribution to comply with policy targets of air quality and climate change mitigation in the municipality of Barcelona, Spain. We apply the i-Tree Eco model to quantify in biophysical and monetary terms the ecosystem services "air purification," "global climate regulation," and the ecosystem disservice "air pollution" associated with biogenic emissions. Our results show that the contribution of urban forests regulating services to abate pollution is substantial in absolute terms, yet modest when compared to overall city levels of air pollution and GHG emissions. We conclude that in order to be effective, green infrastructure-based efforts to offset urban pollution at the municipal level have to be coordinated with territorial policies at broader spatial scales.Understanding spatial variation in carbon storage in natural habitats is critical for climate change mitigation efforts such as REDD. Terrestrial forests are being mapped with increasing accuracy, but the distribution of ``blue carbon'' in marine ecosystems remains poorly understood. We reviewed the literature to obtain field data on carbon storage and fluxes in mangroves world-wide. Using this material we developed a climate-based model for potential mangrove above-ground biomass (AGB) with almost four times the explanatory power of the only previous published model. From this model, we present the first ever global map of potential mangrove AGB and estimate a total global mangrove AGB of 2.83 Pg, with an average of 184.8 t ha-1. Data on other carbon stocks and fluxes confirm the importance of mangroves in carbon accounting. The map highlights the high variability in mangrove AGB and indicates areas that should be prioritised for mangrove conservation and restoration.In the context of climate change mitigation and poverty reduction, it has been argued that biogas energy is relevant, as it is economically and ecologically useful. In the 1980s, biogas use played an important role in the development of Burundi. Many schools and public institutions had implemented such installations. Unfortunately, many biogas infrastructures were destroyed in the civil war of the 1990s. This study analyzes what could be done, after a decade of crisis, to develop that sector. It aims to assess how and to what extent the inhabitants of villages are willing to contribute to the development of biogas technologies. We interviewed 150 farmers in order to assess their perception on the ecologic and economic features of biogas plants if implemented in their villages. The influence of socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic factors of households was assessed in this study. Results suggest that the maximum amount that a household is willing to pay each month for biogas use at a family level is positive for large-size households, households that are aware of climate change, consumers of candles, households with high income, households with an educated head, women, and breeders. However, the willingness decreases for households with older head of families. The study concludes that awareness campaigns on biogas benefits and financial and nonfinancial incentives are necessary. This policy should probably and primarily be oriented toward some more receptive categories of the population. Women should be fully involved, considering their positive motivation toward sustaining this sector.Panama recently enacted a new law, which aims to promote wind energy by mandating long term power purchase tenders. The implications of this new law lend some uncertainty to Panama's electricity development pathway. This paper quantitatively analyzes the current status of power generation in Panama, and explores various potential future scenarios and the associated impacts on the system marginal cost, global warming potential, and resource diversity index. To this end, this study applies the scenario development methodology developed by Schwartz in the context of the energy-economic modeling platform 'Long-range Energy Alternative Planning' (LEAP). Four scenarios are developed and analyzed. The Business as Usual scenario extrapolates the electricity generation trend that has been observed over the last decade; it is compared to three alternative scenarios which have more specific objectives. Scenario 1 encourages climate mitigation without incorporating new technologies in the generation mix, Scenario 2 maximizes resource diversity, and Scenario 3 minimizes global warming potential. For each scenario, the composition of the electricity generation profile, system marginal cost, global warming potential, and resource diversity is predicted quantitatively. These scenarios to not attempt to forecast likely developments, but rather illuminate the tradeoffs that different development pathways entail. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change, population growth and socio-structural changes will make meeting future food demands extremely challenging. As wheat is a globally traded food commodity central to the food security of many nations, this paper uses it as an example to explore the impact of climate change on global food supply and quantify the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. Published data on projected wheat production is used to analyse how global production can be increased to match projected demand. The results show that the largest projected wheat demand increases are in areas most likely to suffer severe climate change impacts, but that global demand could be met if northern hemisphere producers exploit climate change benefits to increase production and narrow their yield gaps. Life cycle assessment of different climate change scenarios shows that in the case of one of the most important wheat producers (the UK) it may be possible to improve yields with an increase of only 0.6% in the emission intensity per unit of wheat produced in a 2 C scenario. However, UK production would need to rise substantially, increasing total UK wheat production emissions by 26%. This demonstrates how national emission inventories and associated targets do not incentivise minimisation of global greenhouse gas emissions while meeting increased food demands, highlighting a triad of challenges: meeting the rising demand for food, adapting to climate change and reducing emissions. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many Indigenous communities in Australia are well situated to provide greenhouse gas abatement and carbon sequestration benefits, but little is known about the factors affecting the capability of Australia's Indigenous organisations to participate in climate change mitigation strategies. This paper provides a 'snapshot' summary of certain aspects of Australia's Indigenous organisations' participation in carbon offset schemes. The snapshot provides insight into the degree to which Indigenous organisations are aware of carbon market opportunities in Australia, the level that these Indigenous organisations participate in or engage with carbon-based economic enterprises, and the key pathways through which Indigenous carbon market opportunities are pursued. Analysis of data collected from a national survey conducted between 2011 and 2012 show that most obstacles to Indigenous participation in carbon offset schemes relate to land tenure arrangements; geographic and biophysical factors; low levels of requisite technical, human and financial resources; and appropriate recognition of Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsibilities. The snapshot also highlights the value of supporting regionally specific capacity-building strategies to enable Indigenous people to participate in emerging carbon offset activities and the generation of associated ecosystem services. Cultural, socio-economic or demographic factors that are also likely to influence the ability of many Indigenous communities to participate in carbon market opportunities are identified as important areas for further research.Large ensemble climate modelling experiments demonstrate the large role natural variability plays in local climate on a multi-decadal timescale. Variability in local weather and climate influences individual beliefs about climate change. To the extent that support for climate mitigation policies is determined by citizens' local experiences, natural variability will strongly influence the timescale for implementation of such policies. Under a number of illustrative threshold criteria for both national and international climate action, we show that variability-driven uncertainty about local change, even in the face of a well-constrained estimate of global change, can potentially delay the time to policy implementation by decades. Because several decades of greenhouse gas emissions can have a large impact on long-term climate outcomes, there is substantial risk associated with climate policies driven by consensus among individuals who are strongly influenced by local weather conditions.The industrial sector has a high technical potential for reducing energy intensity, and in this way, contribute to climate change mitigation, energy safety and sustainability. This requires establishing public policies, developing specific programs directed to increasing energy efficiency. Since international experience gathered in publications; managers and specialists opinions obtained through different training activities developed in Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama; and from a survey applied to energy managers and specialists of 28 high energy consuming enterprises, the main barriers that should be overcome for a successful development of energy efficiency programs, are summed up. From the analysis of national energy efficiency programs in different countries, a group of key factors for their success are identified.The amendment of biochar derived from crop residues to soil has been proposed as a potential mitigation strategy for tackling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in cropping systems. A field experiment was carried out to investigate GHG emissions from rice paddy fields treated with straw incorporation and straw-derived biochar amendment at various rates during two consecutive rice growing seasons in double rice cropping systems. The treatments included the following: control (no straw incorporation and no biochar amendment), low straw (rice straw incorporated at 3 t ha(-1)), high straw (rice straw incorporated at 6 t ha(-1)), low biochar (straw-derived biochar amended at 7.5 t ha(-1) in 2011 and adjusted to 24 t ha(-1) in 2012) and high biochar (straw-derived biochar amended at 22.5 t ha(-1) in 2011 and adjusted to 48 t ha(-1) in 2012). The results showed that straw incorporation significantly increased CH4 emissions relative to the control treatment, whereas biochar amendment significantly reduced CH4 emissions at the highest application rates (48 t ha(-1)), possibly due to a biochar-induced increase in soil pH. The seasonal cumulative CH4 emissions from the low and high straw treatments were 3.0-4.1 and 6.4-8.6 times greater, respectively, in the 2011 late rice season and 7-13 and 13-23 times greater, respectively, in the 2012 early rice season than those from both biochar treatments. In contrast, N2O emissions decreased by 26-68% in comparison with the control when straw was applied to the soil, but increased by 0.13-0.80 times in the presence of biochar, possibly due to the increased availability of NH4+ or NO3- originating from the added bicichar. The seasonal cumulative N2O emissions were relatively low (15-200 g N ha(-1)) across all the treatments. The estimated seasonal gross global warming potentials (GWP) of CH4 plus N2O among the treatments showed a similar pattern to the seasonal cumulative CH4 emissions due to the dominance of CH4 to gross GWP (83-99% of the total). As rice straw incorporation also reduced rice grain yield, especially during the early rice season, the yield-scaled GWPs were even higher in the straw amendment treatments compared with the biochar treatments (3.2-4.0 and 7.1-8.8 times in 2011 and 9.4-13 and 18-25 times in 2012 for the low and high straw treatments, respectively). The lower gross and yield-scaled GWPs in paddy fields amended with biochar indicated that transforming straw to biochar and subsequent addition to paddy fields has potential to mitigate GHG emissions in double rice cropping systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is one of the major issues that require immediate attention. Sequestering carbon (C) through agroforestry is one of the ways to contribute to global climate change mitigation. In the present study, agroforestry land use systems existing on arable and non-arable lands in the Kwalkhad Watershed of middle Himalayan region of Himachal Pradesh, India, were evaluated for C sequestration and C credits. In total, eight land use systems existed in the watershed. Agrisilvihorticulture (ASH) system (14.78Mgha(-1)) and agrihortisilviculture (AHS) system (14.45Mgha(-1)) sequestered a high amount of C than silvipasture (SP), pure agriculture or grassland and abandoned land, though not significantly more than agrisilviculture (AS) or agrihorticulture. Total C pool in abandoned soils (0-40cm) was highest followed by SP and ASH system. C stocks in soil (0-40cm) exceeded C stocks in plants by a factor of 15.81 for AHS system. SP, ASH and AS systems, with their higher C mitigation potential of 1.71, 1.52 and 1.43, respectively, were more suitable land use systems for C mitigation in the region. The ASH system produced the most (21.49) C credits on a per-hectare basis.The need to understand the scope for comparative lesson-drawing on national-level climate mitigation policy has acquired added significance due to the current impasse in international-level governance. Greater policy learning or lesson-drawing among peers at the national level could, to an extent, foster meaningful developments by overcoming generalised international apathy and inaction. In this respect, we analyse the features of one significant example of national climate policy in order to examine the scope for lesson-drawing, thereby setting out a normative research agenda. The UK Climate Change Act 2008 remains one of the few examples of legally enshrined national mitigation legislation and hence provides a relevant, but surprisingly under-researched, source of learning for policy-makers worldwide. By analysing its development, critical features and implementation, this article shows that-despite criticism of the sustainability and implementation effectiveness of the Act-some aspects of the policy could provide lessons for other states, and hence are potentially transferable extraterritorially, although lesson-drawing itself is conditional on contextual constraints.Environmental historians are largely absent from current climate change conversations. This essay outlines an agenda for critical climate history-asserting that it is critical for environmental historians to be more involved today and that they ought to be more critical of climate change discourse, policies, and scientific modeling of climate scenarios and the data that nourish those models. Using a case study from the Peruvian Andes and briefly describing parallel situations in the Himalaya and US Pacific Northwest, the essay shows that climate-glacier-hydrology models are inadequate and can even be misleading without the integration of historical human variables. Environmental historians are well poised to analyze and contribute to climate modeling that brings together science/knowledge, the physical environment, and societal forces. Moreover, a goal of critical climate history is to inject historical perspectives into present-day climate science and policy to help rethink the hegemony of climate science, to question the dominant climate discourse and framing, and to critique mainstream approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation. This Forum on climate change and environmental history illustrates on a broader scale both the contributions and the unfulfilled opportunities for future scholarship in critical climate history.There are concerns that local people will not be genuinely involved in initiatives to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). We analyzed local participation in the design of one REDD+ project in the eastern Brazilian Amazon, and assessed local hopes, worries and recommendations for the project through four community focus groups and interviews with 137 households at the site. Our results showed that only one-third of households interviewed (31%) had enough information about the project to describe it accurately. Of those, the majority (60%) hoped that the project would improve their incomes, followed by improving their agricultural production (33%) and helping protect forests (26%). While increasing household incomes was the dominant hope, people's recommendations revealed that they favored non-monetary forms of compensation over the direct cash payments included in the proponents' package of incentives. Their main recommendation was that the project should help improve their production systems through access to technical assistance, machinery and training, while valuing local production systems (46%). Our study highlights the need for participation that goes beyond passive consultation with local people to develop REDD+ interventions that best reflect local knowledge, land use practices and aspirations.Due to the fact that forest ecosystems can potentially mitigate the impact of climate change, the carbon balance of managed forests has caught the attention of a large scientific community. Some authors conclude that extending rotation lengths would actually favour the climate change mitigation effect since more carbon would be stored in the biomass on the average. However, when the occurrence of catastrophic disturbances such as windstorms is not considered, the advantage of extending the rotation length might be overestimated for some species. In this study, we addressed this issue by coupling a growth model, a windstorm damage model and a carbon assessment tool. The evolution of an even-aged European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) stand was simulated under three different rotation lengths. Simulations including stochastic windstorm events were run and compared with deterministic simulations with no catastrophic disturbance. Our results indicate that when disturbances caused by storms were not taken into account, the carbon balance was actually overestimated in some cases and that this overestimation increased with the rotation length. In our case study, omitting windstorm damage resulted in an overestimation as large as 8% for the longer rotation length. Nevertheless, when windstorm damage was taken into account in the simulation, the longer rotation length still stored more carbon on the average than shorter rotation lengths. However, the marginal gain in carbon storage induced by the increase of the rotation length was reduced.We estimate the heat flux changes caused by the projected land transformation over the next 40 years across China to improve the understanding of the impacts of land dynamics on regional climate. We use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to investigate these impacts in four representative land transformation zones, where reclamation, overgrazing, afforestation, and urbanization dominates the land use and land cover changes in each zone respectively. As indicated by the significant variance of albedo due to different land use and cover changes, different surface properties cause great spatial variance of the surface flux. From the simulation results, latent heat flux increases by 2 and 21 W/m(2) in the reclamation and afforestation regions respectively. On the contrary, overgrazing and urban expansion results in decrease of latent heat flux by 5 and 36 W/m(2) correspondingly. Urban expansion leads to an average increase of 40 W/m(2) of sensible heat flux in the future 40 years, while reclamation, afforestation, as well as overgrazing result in the decrease of sensible heat flux. Results also show that reclamation and overgrazing lead to net radiation decrease by approximately 4 and 7 W/m(2) respectively, however, afforestation and urbanization lead to net radiation increase by 6 and 3 W/m(2) respectively. The simulated impacts of projected HLCCs on surface energy fluxes will inform sustainable land management and climate change mitigation.The science of climate change integrates many scientific fields to explain and predict the complex effects of greenhouse gas concentrations on the planet's energy balance, weather patterns, and ecosystems as well as economic and social systems. A changing climate requires responses to curtail climate forcing as well as to adapt to impending changes. Responses can be categorized into mitigation and adaptation-the former involving efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the latter involving strategies to adapt to predicted changes. These responses must be of significant scale and extent to be effective, but significant tradeoffs and unintended effects must be avoided. Concepts and science based on systems theory are needed to reduce the risk of unintended consequences from potential responses to climate change. We propose expanding on a conventional risk-based approach to include additional ways of analyzing risks and benefits, such as considering potential cascading ecological effects, full life cycle environmental impacts, and unintended consequences, as well as considering possible co-benefits of responses. Selected responses to climate change are assessed with this expanded set of criteria, and we find that mitigation measures that involve reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that provide corollary benefits are likely to have less negative indirect impacts than large-scale solar radiation management approaches. However, because effects of climate change are unavoidable in the near and medium-term, adaptation strategies that will make societies more resilient in the face of impending change are essential to sustainability.Energy efficiency is one of the main options for mitigating climate change. An accurate representation of various mechanisms of energy efficiency is vital for the assessment of its realistic potential. Results of a questionnaire show that the EMF27 models collectively represent known channels of energy efficiency reasonably well, addressing issues of energy efficiency barriers and rebound effects. The majority of models, including general equilibrium models, have an explicit end-use representation for the transportation sector. All participating partial equilibrium models have some capability of reflecting the actual market behavior of consumers and firms. The EMF27 results show that energy intensity declines faster under climate policy than under a baseline scenario. With a climate policy roughly consistent with a global warming of two degrees, the median annual improvement rate of energy intensity for 2010-2030 reaches 2.3 % per year [with a full model range of 1.3-2.9 %/yr], much faster than the historical rate of 1.3 % per year. The improvement rate increases further if technology is constrained. The results suggest that the target of the United Nations' "Sustainable Energy for All" initiative is consistent with the 2-degree climate change target, as long as there are no technology constraints. The rate of energy intensity decline varies significantly across models, with larger variations at the regional and sectoral levels. Decomposition of the transportation sector down to a service level for a subset of models reveals that to achieve energy efficiency, a general equilibrium model tends to reduce service demands while partial equilibrium models favor technical substitution.Fossil resource endowments and the future development of fossil fuel prices are important factors that will critically influence the nature and direction of the global energy system. In this paper we analyze a multi-model ensemble of long-term energy and emissions scenarios that were developed within the framework of the EMF27 integrated assessment model inter-comparison exercise. The diverse nature of these models highlights large uncertainties in the likely development of fossil resource (coal, oil, and natural gas) consumption, trade, and prices over the course of the twenty-first century and under different climate policy frameworks. We explore and explain some of the differences across scenarios and models and compare the scenario results with fossil resource estimates from the literature. A robust finding across the suite of IAMs is that the cumulative fossil fuel consumption foreseen by the models is well within the bounds of estimated recoverable reserves and resources. Hence, fossil resource constraints are, in and of themselves, unlikely to limit future GHG emissions this century. Our analysis also shows that climate mitigation policies could lead to a major reallocation of financial flows between regions, in terms of expenditures on fossil fuels and carbon, and can help to alleviate near-term energy security concerns via the reductions in oil imports and increases in energy system diversity they will help to motivate. Aggressive efforts to promote energy efficiency are, on their own, not likely to lead to markedly greater energy independence, however, contrary to the stated objectives of certain industrialized countries.In this article, we evaluate and compare results from three integrated assessment models (GCAM, IMAGE, and ReMIND/MAgPIE) regarding the drivers and impacts of bioenergy production on the global land system. The considered model frameworks employ linked energy, economy, climate and land use modules. By the help of these linkages the direct competition of bioenergy with other energy technology options for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, based on economic costs and GHG emissions from bioenergy production, has been taken into account. Our results indicate that dedicated bioenergy crops and biomass residues form a potentially important and cost-effective input into the energy system. At the same time, however, the results differ strongly in terms of deployment rates, feedstock composition and land-use and greenhouse gas implications. The current paper adds to earlier work by specific looking into model differences with respect to the land-use component that could contribute to the noted differences in results, including land cover allocation, land use constraints, energy crop yields, and non-bioenergy land mitigation options modeled. In scenarios without climate change mitigation, bioenergy cropland represents 10-18 % of total cropland by 2100 across the different models, and boosts cropland expansion at the expense of carbon richer ecosystems. Therefore, associated emissions from land-use change and agricultural intensification as a result of bio-energy use range from 14 and 113 Gt CO2-eq cumulatively through 2100. Under climate policy, bioenergy cropland increases to 24-36 % of total cropland by 2100.Following a multi-scenario framework based on the technology assumptions proposed by the 27th Energy Modeling Forum (EMF-27), our analysis focuses on analyzing the impacts of key technology assumptions on climate policies, including the interdependencies of different technological options. Each scenario may be considered as either a possible state of nature upon which one has no influence, each scenario thus dictating the availability (or non availability) of some subset of the technology groups, or as an opportunity for society, by its own actions and policies, to influence the availability of said technology group. The main insights obtained from the assessment show the prominent role of bioenergy as a means to abate greenhouse gas emissions, irrespective of other technological developments, while the role of the other technologies (wind and solar, carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear) are more dependent of one another. It appears that CCS may play a sort of "backstop" role: it compensates for a lower contribution of solar and wind, or of nuclear. This means that an increased social acceptability of one (or all) of these three sets of technology should be at the heart of future climate policies. The costs caused by the adaptation of electricity networks to accommodate a high fraction of intermittent sources would deserve more attention in future research.This paper evaluated the impacts of climate change mitigation technology options on CO2 emission reductions and the effects of model representations regarding renewable intermittency on the assessment of reduction by using a world energy systems model. First, different diffusion scenarios for carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power, and wind power and solar PV are selected from EMF27 scenarios to analyze their impacts on CO2 emission reductions. These technologies are important for reducing CO2 intensity of electricity, and the impacts of their diffusion levels on mitigation costs are significant, according to the analyses. Availability of CCS in particular, among the three kinds of technologies, has a large impact on the marginal CO2 abatement cost. In order to analyze effects of model representations regarding renewables intermittency, four different representations are assumed within the model. A simplistic model representation that does not take into consideration the intermittency of wind power and solar PV evaluates larger contributions of the energy sources than those evaluated by a model representation that takes intermittency into consideration. Appropriate consideration of renewables intermittency within global energy systems models will be important for realistic evaluations of climate change mitigation scenarios.This paper uses the OECD's global recursive-dynamic general equilibrium model ENVLinkages to examine the mid-term economic consequences and the optimal energy supply mix adjustments of a simultaneous implementation of i) a progressive fossil fuel subsidy reform in emerging and developing economies and ii) a progressive phase out of nuclear energy, mostly affecting OECD countries, China and Russia. The analysis is then transposed in the context of climate change mitigation to depict the corresponding implications for CO2 emissions, to assess the interactions between the two energy policies, and to derive how the associated costs are affected by the different policies. The phase-out scenario projects a nuclear capacity halved by 2035 as compared to the Baseline, corresponding to $120 billion losses in value-added of the nuclear industry for that year. The nuclear phase-out leaves GDP and real household consumption marginally affected in energy importing countries. A multilateral subsidy reform is more likely to affect international fossil fuel prices and alter patterns of global energy use. The fossil fuel subsidy reform, when implemented together with nuclear phase-out, more than offsets negative consequences on household consumption but still leads to a decrease in global CO2 emissions. The combined policies help save the equivalent of current energy consumption in the Middle East. Combining a climate policy, an effective fossil fuel subsidy reform, even with a lower nuclear share in the power mix, brings about multiple benefits to OECD countries which reduce their energy bill and achieve large climate change mitigation at lower cost.To underscore both the diversity and severity of energy security tradeoffs, this study examines five different energy security policy packages five distinct strategies aimed at reducing oil dependence, enhancing energy affordability, expanding access to modern energy services, responding to climate change, and minimizing the water intensity of energy production. It identifies both compelling synergies and conflicts between each of the five strategies. The central value of the study is that it turns on its head the widely accepted notion of a "portfolio approach" or "all of the above" strategy to energy policy-making. To make this case, the article begins by elucidating the complexity and multidimensionality of energy security as a concept. It then introduces our five energy security policy packages to illustrate how some energy security objectives complement each other whereas others counteract each other. It concludes by noting that energy security is not an absolute state, and that achieving it only "works" by prioritizing some dimensions, or policy goals and packages, more than others. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Departing from the fact that climate change poses localized effects, this article critically considers from a legal perspective the role of local authorities in the South African government's response to climate change. A brief review of the relevance of climate mitigation and adaptation is followed by an explanation of what these concepts mean for local government. The article then discusses the extent to which the country's environmental and local government law and policy framework provides for municipalities' participation and involvement in climate governance. The article identifies strengths and weaknesses in relation to the local sphere of government's formal involvement in climate governance vis-a-vis authorities in the provincial and national spheres. It concludes that, as a result of their proximity to the effects of climate change, municipalities have a critically important role to play in the climate governance effort, despite the patchwork of environmental and local government laws and lack of explicit, consolidated policy and legal arrangements to this effect.BACKGROUND: Shifting to active modes of transport in the trip to work can achieve substantial co-benefits for health, social equity, and climate change mitigation. Previous integrated modeling of transport scenarios has assumed active transport mode share and has been unable to incorporate acknowledged system feedbacks. OBJECTIVES: We compared the effects of policies to increase bicycle commuting in a car-dominated city and explored the role of participatory modeling to support transport planning in the face of complexity. METHODS: We used system dynamics modeling (SDM) to compare realistic policies, incorporating feedback effects, nonlinear relationships, and time delays between variables. We developed a system dynamics model of commuter bicycling through interviews and workshops with policy, community, and academic stakeholders. We incorporated best available evidence to simulate five policy scenarios over the next 40 years in Auckland, New Zealand. Injury, physical activity, fuel costs, air pollution, and carbon emissions outcomes were simulated. RESULTS: Using the simulation model, we demonstrated the kinds of policies that would likely be needed to change a historical pattern of decline in cycling into a pattern of growth that would meet policy goals. Our model projections suggest that transforming urban roads over the next 40 years, using best practice physical separation on main roads and bicycle-friendly speed reduction on local streets, would yield benefits 10-25 times greater than costs. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first integrated simulation model of future specific bicycling policies. Our projections provide practical evidence that may be used by health and transport policy makers to optimize the benefits of transport bicycling while minimizing negative consequences in a cost-effective manner. The modeling process enhanced understanding by a range of stakeholders of cycling as a complex system. Participatory SDM can be a helpful method for integrating health and environmental outcomes in transport and urban planning.This article analyzes the interaction of newly articulated climate governance goals with long-standing forest policies and practices in India. We focus on India's REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and related forest activities) strategy, with a particular focus on the Green India Mission (GIM). The GIM calls for a doubling of the area for afforestation and reforestation in India in the next decade as a dominant climate mitigation strategy. We analyze how the GIM policy document frames carbon versus noncarbon benefits to be derived from forest-related activities; and how the GIM envisages division of authority (between national, regional and local levels) in its implementation. We are interested in assessing (a) whether the GIM promotes a "carbonization" of Indian forest governance, i.e. an increased focus on forest carbon at the expense of other ecosystem services; and (b) whether it promotes an increased centralization of forest governance in India through retaining or transferring authority and control over forest resources to national and state-level authorities, at the expense of local communities. We argue that the GIM frames the climate-forest interaction as an opportunity to synergistically enhance both carbon and non-carbon benefits to be derived from forests; while simultaneously promoting further decentralization of Indian forest governance. However, based on past experiences and developments to date, we conclude that without significant investments in community-based carbon and biodiversity monitoring, as well as institutionalized benefit-sharing mechanisms that reach down to the local level, the posited REDD+-induced move toward more holistic and decentralized Indian forest governance is unlikely to take place. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing prices and environmental impacts of fossil fuels have made the production of biofuels to reach unprecedented volumes over the last 15 years. Given the increasing land requirement for biofuel production, the assessment of the impacts that extensive biofuel production may cause to food supply and to the environment has considerable importance. Agriculture faces some major inter-connected challenges in delivering food security at a time of increasing pressures from population growth, changing consumption patterns and dietary preferences, and post-harvest losses. At the same time, there are growing opportunities and demands for the use of biomass to provide additional renewables, energy for heat, power and fuel, pharmaceuticals and green chemical feedstocks. Biomass from cellulosic bioenergy crops is expected to play a substantial role in future energy systems. However, the worldwide potential of bioenergy is limited, because all land is multi-functional and land is also needed for food, feed, timber, and fiber production, and for nature conservation and climate protection. Furthermore, the potential of bioenergy for climate change mitigation remains unclear due to large uncertainties about future agricultural yield improvements and land availability for biomass plantations. Large-scale cultivation of dedicated biomass is likely to affect bioenergy potentials, global food prices and water scarcity. Therefore, integrated policies far energy, land use and water management are needed. As biomass contains all the elements found in fossil resources, albeit in different combinations, therefore present and developing technologies can lead to a future based on renewable, sustainable and low carbon economies. This article presents [1] risks to food and energy security [2] estimates of bioenergy potential with regard to biofuel production, and [3] the challenges of the environmental impact. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Aim of study: Forests have vital functions in global carbon cycle, and thus are of prime importance in efforts to curb climate change. This study intends to guide effective forestry solutions to combat climate change in China. Area of study: China, not only a major emitter of greenhouse gases, but also one of the five most-forest richest countries with the largest plantations in the world. Material and methods: We summarize and recommend carbon sequestration forestry by considering two Kyoto Protocol activities: afforestation/reforestation and forest management. Main results: Afforestation has a top priority of carbon sequestration forestry in China. However, the tree-based solution will reach its limits to growth in a predictable near future. Forest management contributes to break the deadlock. When scientifically and sustainably managed, forests still have a central role in climate change mitigation. Research highlights: China's efforts on carbon sequestration forestry should shift the focus from afforestation to forest management.There has been a concerted effort by the international scientific community to understand the multiple causes and patterns of land-cover change to support sustainable land management. Here, we examined biophysical suitability, and a novel integrated index of "Economic Pressure on Land" (EPL) to explain land cover in the year 2000, and estimated the likelihood of future land-cover change through 2050, including protected area effectiveness. Biophysical suitability and EPL explained almost half of the global pattern of land cover (R (2) = 0.45), increasing to almost two-thirds in areas where a long-term equilibrium is likely to have been reached (e.g. R (2) = 0.64 in Europe). We identify a high likelihood of future land-cover change in vast areas with relatively lower current and past deforestation (e.g. the Congo Basin). Further, we simulated emissions arising from a "business as usual" and two reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) scenarios by incorporating data on biomass carbon. As our model incorporates all biome types, it highlights a crucial aspect of the ongoing REDD + debate: if restricted to forests, "cross-biome leakage" would severely reduce REDD + effectiveness for climate change mitigation. If forests were protected from deforestation yet without measures to tackle the drivers of land-cover change, REDD + would only reduce 30 % of total emissions from land-cover change. Fifty-five percent of emissions reductions from forests would be compensated by increased emissions in other biomes. These results suggest that, although REDD + remains a very promising mitigation tool, implementation of complementary measures to reduce land demand is necessary to prevent this leakage.In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by an order of magnitude, a portfolio of mitigation strategies is needed. Currently, many utilities pursue energy efficiency programs. We study a case where utilities could choose whether to allocate their energy efficiency budget to either end-use efficiency or vehicle electrification as a means to reduce CO2 emissions. We build a decision space that displays the conditions under which utilities should pursue either strategy. To build such decision space, assumptions are needed on how consumers respond to electric vehicle incentives, and what would be the baseline vehicle selected by consumers if no incentives were in place. Since these two aspects are highly uncertain, we treat them parametrically: if consumers are replacing a conventional vehicle with a PHEV, utility incentive programs to induce PHEV adoption appear to be cost-effective for a wide range of efficiency program costs and grid emissions factors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rationalisation of consumption, more efficient energy usage and a new energy structure are needed to be achieved in order to shift the structure of energy system towards sustainability. The required energy system is among others characterised by intensive utilisation of renewable energy sources (RES). RES technologies have their own advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, for the strategic planning there is a great demand for the comparison of RES technologies. Furthermore, there are additional functions of RES utilisation expected beyond climate change mitigation, e.g. increment of employment, economic growth and rural development. The aim of the study was to reveal the most beneficial RES technologies with special respect to sustainability. Ten technologies of power generation and seven technologies of heat supply were examined in a multi-criteria sustainability assessment frame of seven attributes which were evaluated based on a choice experiment (CE) survey. According to experts the most important characteristics of RES utilisation technologies are land demand and social impacts i.e. increase in employment and local income generation. Concentrated solar power (CSP), hydropower and geothermal power plants are favourable technologies for power generation, while geothermal district heating, pellet-based non-grid heating and solar thermal heating can offer significant advantages in case of heat supply. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper looks at the interplay between human capital and innovation when climate and educational policies are implemented. Following recent empirical studies, human capital and general purpose research and development (R&D) are introduced in an integrated assessment model used to study the dynamics of climate change mitigation. Our results suggest that climate policy stimulates general purpose as well as clean R&D but reduces the incentive to invest in human capital formation. Both innovation and human capital have a scale effect, which increases pollution, as well as a technique effect, which saves emissions for each unit of output produced. While the energy-saving effect prevails when innovation increases, human capital is pollution-using, also because of the gross complementarity between the labor and energy input. When the role of human capital is the key input in the production of general purpose and energy knowledge is accounted for, the crowding-out of education induced by climate policy is mitigated, though not completely offset. By contrast, a policy mix that combines educational as well as climate objectives offsets the human capital crowding-out, at moderate and short-term costs. Over the long run, the policy mix leads to global welfare gains.AimHigh-latitude ectotherms are predicted to be less physiologically vulnerable to climate warming than tropical species based on their larger thermal safety margins, the distance between ambient temperatures and species' thermal optima. We sought to test the prediction that high latitude amphibians are buffered against the impacts of climate warming. LocationBritish Columbia, Canada. MethodsWe estimated the risk from climate change for three high-latitude amphibian species (Spea intermontana, Rana aurora and Pseudacris regilla) by combining thermal performance experiments with species distribution models and predicted changes in maximum summer temperatures through the 2080s, in order to demonstrate temporal and geographical trends in vulnerability to climate warming among and within species. ResultsWe found that species have thermal safety margins of 3.2-3.8 degrees C based on current maximum summer temperatures. However, by the 2080s (emissions scenario A1B), we estimate that 45-82% of our focal species' current distributions will experience maximum summer temperatures above their thermal optima. We also found that by using long-term average temperatures, as some studies have done, there were almost no scenarios in which populations of any species were experiencing temperatures greater than their thermal optima. Main conclusionsCombining spatially explicit species distribution models with performance physiology allows us to predict where limiting temperatures will occur in the coming decades, and can guide climate mitigation and conservation efforts before populations decline. Despite moderate thermal safety margins, high-latitude ectotherms can be highly vulnerable to climate warming when spatio-temporal variation is incorporated into estimates of risk as a result of climate change.Greenhouse gas (GHG) intensive fuels are currently a major input into the Australian electricity sector. Accordingly, climate change mitigation policies represent a systematic risk to investment in electricity generation assets. Although the Australian government introduced carbon pricing in 2012 and announced a commitment to the continuation of the Kyoto protocol beyond 2012, the opposition at the time signalled that should they be provided the opportunity they would repeal these policies. This paper uses a real options analysis (ROA) framework to investigate the optimal timing of one potential business response to carbon pricing: investment in the conversion of coal plant to lower emission CCGT plant. An American-style option valuation method is used for this purpose. The viewpoint is from that of a private investor assessing three available options for an existing coal plant: (1) to invest in its conversion to CCGT; (2) to abandon it, or; (3) to take no immediate action. The method provides a decision criterion that informs the investor whether or not to delay the investment. The effect of market and political uncertainty is studied for both the Clean Energy Act 2011 (CEA) and high carbon price (HCP) policy scenarios. The results of the modelling suggest that political uncertainty after the implementation of carbon pricing impedes the decision to switch to cleaner technologies. However, this effect can be mitigated by implementing higher expected carbon prices. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations due to emissions from fossil fuel combustion is contributing to recent climate change which is among the major challenges facing the world. Agroforestry systems can contribute to slowing down those increases and, thus, contribute to climate change mitigation. Agroforestry refers to the production of crop, livestock, and tree biomass on the same area of land. The soil organic carbon (SOC) pool, in particular, is the only terrestrial pool storing some carbon (C) for millennia which can be deliberately enhanced by agroforestry practices. Up to 2.2 Pg C (1 Pg = 10(15) g) may be sequestered above- and belowground over 50 years in agroforestry systems, but estimations on global land area occupied by agroforestry systems are particularly uncertain. Global areas under tree intercropping, multistrata systems, protective systems, silvopasture, and tree woodlots are estimated at 700, 100, 300, 450, and 50 Mha, respectively. The SOC storage in agroforestry systems is also uncertain and may amount up to 300 Mg C ha(-1) to 1 m depth. Here, we review and synthesize the current knowledge about SOC sequestration processes and their management in agroforestry systems. The main points are that (1) useful C sequestration in agroforestry systems for climate change mitigation must slow or even reverse the increase in atmospheric concentration of CO2 by storing some SOC for millennia, (2) soil disturbance must be minimized and tree species with a high root biomass-to-aboveground biomass ratio and/or nitrogen-fixing trees planted when SOC sequestration is among the objectives for establishing the agroforestry system, (3) sequestration rates and the processes contributing to the stabilization of SOC in agroforestry soils need additional data and research, (4) retrospective studies are often missing for rigorous determination of SOC and accurate evaluation of effects of different agroforestry practices on SOC sequestration in soil profiles, and (5) the long-term SOC storage is finite as it depends on the availability of binding sites, i.e., the soil's mineral composition and depth. Based on this improved knowledge, site-specific SOC sequestering agroforestry practices can then be developed.This article presents the synthesis of results from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum Study 27, an inter-comparison of 18 energy-economy and integrated assessment models. The study investigated the importance of individual mitigation options such as energy intensity improvements, carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power, solar and wind power and bioenergy for climate mitigation. Limiting the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration to 450 or 550 ppm CO2 equivalent by 2100 would require a decarbonization of the global energy system in the 21(st) century. Robust characteristics of the energy transformation are increased energy intensity improvements and the electrification of energy end use coupled with a fast decarbonization of the electricity sector. Non-electric energy end use is hardest to decarbonize, particularly in the transport sector. Technology is a key element of climate mitigation. Versatile technologies such as CCS and bioenergy are found to be most important, due in part to their combined ability to produce negative emissions. The importance of individual low-carbon electricity technologies is more limited due to the many alternatives in the sector. The scale of the energy transformation is larger for the 450 ppm than for the 550 ppm CO(2)e target. As a result, the achievability and the costs of the 450 ppm target are more sensitive to variations in technology availability.This paper uses the EMF27 scenarios to explore the role of renewable energy (RE) in climate change mitigation. Currently RE supplies almost 20 % of global electricity demand. Almost all EMF27 mitigation scenarios show a strong increase in renewable power production, with a substantial ramp-up of wind and solar power deployment. In many scenarios, renewables are the most important long-term mitigation option for power supply. Wind energy is competitive even without climate policy, whereas the prospects of solar photovoltaics (PV) are highly contingent on the ambitiousness of climate policy. Bioenergy is an important and versatile energy carrier; however-with the exception of low temperature heat-there is less scope for renewables other than biomass for non-electric energy supply. Despite the important role of wind and solar power in climate change mitigation scenarios with full technology availability, limiting their deployment has a relatively small effect on mitigation costs, if nuclear and carbon capture and storage (CCS)-which can serve as substitutes in low-carbon power supply-are available. Limited bioenergy availability in combination with limited wind and solar power by contrast, results in a more substantial increase in mitigation costs. While a number of robust insights emerge, the results on renewable energy deployment levels vary considerably across the models. An in-depth analysis of a subset of EMF27 reveals substantial differences in modeling approaches and parameter assumptions. To a certain degree, differences in model results can be attributed to different assumptions about technology costs, resource potentials and systems integration.Addressing the challenges of global warming requires interventions on both the energy supply and demand side. With the supply side responses being thoroughly discussed in the literature, our paper focuses on analyzing the role of end use efficiency improvements for Indian climate change mitigation policy and the associated co-benefits, within the integrated assessment modeling framework of Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). Six scenarios are analyzed here in total- one no climate policy and two climate policy cases, and within each of these one scenario with reference end use energy technology assumptions and another with advance end use energy technology assumptions has been analyzed. The paper has some important insights. Final energy demand and emissions in India are significantly reduced with energy efficiency improvements, and the role of this policy is important especially for the building and transportation sector under both reference and climate policy scenarios. Though energy efficiency policy should be an integral part of climate policy, by itself it is not sufficient for achieving mitigation targets, and a climate policy is necessary for achieving mitigation goals. There are significant co-benefits of energy efficiency improvements. Energy security for India is improved with reduced oil, coal and gas imports. Significant reduction in local pollutant gases is found which is important for local health concerns. Capital investment requirement for Indian electricity generation is reduced, more so for the climate policy scenarios, and finally there are significant savings in terms of reduced abatement cost for meeting climate change mitigation goals.Agroforestry systems have substantial potential to conserve native biodiversity and provide ecosystem services. In particular, agroforestry systems have the potential to conserve native tree diversity and sequester carbon for climate change mitigation. However, little research has been conducted on the temporal stability of species diversity and aboveground carbon stocks in these systems or the relation between species diversity and aboveground carbon sequestration. We measured changes in shade-tree diversity and shade-tree carbon stocks in 14 plots of a 35-ha coffee cooperative over 9 years and analyzed relations between species diversity and carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration was positively correlated with initial species richness of shade trees. Species diversity of shade trees did not change significantly over the study period, but carbon stocks increased due to tree growth. Our results show a potential for carbon sequestration and long-term biodiversity conservation in smallholder coffee agroforestry systems and illustrate the opportunity for synergies between biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. Interacciones entre el Secuestro de Carbono y la Diversidad de arboles de Sombra en una Cooperativa de Cafe de Pequenos Agricultores en El Salvador Resumen Los sistemas agroforestales tienen potencial sustancial para conservar la biodiversidad nativa y proporcionar servicios ecosistemicos. En particular tienen el potencial para conservar la diversidad nativa de arboles y secuestrar carbono para la mitigacion del cambio climatico. Sin embargo, se han conducido pocas investigaciones sobre la estabilidad temporal de la diversidad de especies y el capital de carbono superficial en estos sistemas o las relaciones entre la diversidad de especies y el secuestro de carbono superficial. Medimos los cambios en la diversidad de arboles de sombra y el capital de carbono de estos mismos arboles en 14 terrenos de 35 hectareas de una cooperativa de cafe a lo largo de 9 anos y analizamos las relaciones entre la diversidad de especies y el secuestro de carbono. El secuestro de carbono tuvo una correlacion positiva con la riqueza inicial de especies de arboles de sombra. La diversidad de especies de estos arboles no cambio significativamente a lo largo del periodo de estudio, pero el capital de carbono incremento debido al crecimiento de los arboles. Nuestros resultados muestran un potencial de secuestro de carbono y una conservacion de biodiversidad a largo plazo en los sistemas agroforestales de pequenos agricultores de cafe; ilustran tambien la oportunidad de sinergias entre la conservacion de la biodiversidad y la mitigacion del cambio climatico.Mangroves are recognized to possess a variety of ecosystem services including high rates of carbon sequestration and storage. Deforestation and conversion of these ecosystems continue to be high and have been predicted to result in significant carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Yet few studies have quantified the carbon stocks or losses associated with conversion of these ecosystems. In this study we quantified the ecosystem carbon stocks of three common mangrove types of the Caribbean as well as those of abandoned shrimp ponds in areas formerly occupied by mangrovea common land-use conversion of mangroves throughout the world. In the mangroves of the Montecristi Province in Northwest Dominican Republic we found C stocks ranged from 706 to 1131 Mg/ha. The medium-statured mangroves (3-10 m in height) had the highest C stocks while the tall (>10 m) mangroves had the lowest ecosystem carbon storage. Carbon stocks of the low mangrove (shrub) type (<3 m) were relatively high due to the presence of carbon-rich soils as deep as 2 m. Carbon stocks of abandoned shrimp ponds were 95 Mg/ha or approximate to 11% that of the mangroves. Using a stock-change approach, the potential emissions from the conversion of mangroves to shrimp ponds ranged from 2244 to 3799 Mg CO(2)e/ha (CO2 equivalents). This is among the largest measured C emissions from land use in the tropics. The 6260 ha of mangroves and converted mangroves in the Montecristi Province are estimated to contain 3841490 Mg of C. Mangroves represented 76% of this area but currently store 97% of the carbon in this coastal wetland (3696722 Mg C). Converted lands store only 4% of the total ecosystem C (144778 Mg C) while they comprised 24% of the area. By these metrics the replacement of mangroves with shrimp and salt ponds has resulted in estimated emissions from this region totaling 3.8 million Mg CO(2)e or approximate to 21% of the total C prior to conversion. Given the high C stocks of mangroves, the high emissions from their conversion, and the other important functions and services they provide, their inclusion in climate-change mitigation strategies is warranted.International shipping transports around 90% of global commerce and is of major importance for the global economy. Whilst it is the most efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transport, CO2 emissions from shipping activities still account for an estimated 3% of global emissions. One means of significantly reducing fuel consumption and thereby GHG emissions from shipping are wind propulsion technologies (i.e. towing kites, Flettner rotors and sails) - yet current market uptake is very low. Therefore, the aim of this article is to identify the barriers and drivers for the uptake of wind propulsion technologies. To this end, the theoretical approach of technological innovation systems is adopted. This approach combines structural system components with so-called system functions which represent the dynamics underlying structural changes in the system. The fulfillment of these functions is considered important for the development and diffusion of innovations. Based on newspaper and academic articles, online expert interviews and semi-structured interviews, the level of function fulfillment is evaluated, followed by the identification of structural drivers and barriers influencing function fulfillment. Third, the possibilities to influence these drivers and barriers are discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wildland fires have influenced the global carbon cycle for similar to 420 million years of Earth history, interacting with climate to define vegetation characteristics and distributions, trigger abrupt ecosystem shifts, and move carbon among terrestrial and atmospheric pools. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the dominant driver of ongoing climate change and the principal emissions component of wildland fires, while black carbon and other aerosols found in fire emissions contribute to uncertainties in climate projections. Fire emissions research to date has been focused on developing knowledge for air pollution regulatory needs and for assessing global climate impacts. Quantifying wildland fire emissions is difficult because their amount and chemical composition vary greatly among fires depending on the amount and type of combusted fuel, its structure, arrangement, chemistry, and condition, and meteorological conditions during the fire. Prediction of potential future wildland fire emissions requires integration of complex interactions of climate, fire, and vegetation; e.g., inference about the direct effects of climate changes on vegetation (fuel) distribution, amount, and condition; direct effects on fire occurrence, behavior, and effects; and feedbacks of altered fire regimes to vegetation and the climate system. Proposed climate change mitigation strategies include management of forests for increased carbon sequestration, and because wildland fires are a key component of the carbon cycle, fire ecology, behavior, and fire effects must be accounted for in these strategies. An understanding of the complex relationships and feedbacks among climate, fire regimes, and fire emissions is needed to account for the importance of fire in the carbon cycle and wildfire and carbon feedbacks to the global climate system. Fire ecology and fire emissions science is thus a necessary component for adaptively managing landscapes and for accurately assessing the long-term effectiveness of carbon sequestration projects. This overview for a special issue on wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate summarizes eight companion papers that describe the current state of knowledge, critical knowledge gaps, and importance of fire emissions for global climate and terrestrial carbon cycling. The goal is to foster understanding of complex fire emission system dynamics and feedbacks. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In Sweden, where forests cover more than 60% of the land area, silviculture and the use of forest products by industry and society play crucial roles in the national carbon balance. A scientific challenge is to understand how different forest management and wood use strategies can best contribute to climate change mitigation benefits. This study uses a set of models to analyze the effects of different forest management and wood use strategies in Sweden on carbon dioxide emissions and removals through 2105. If the present Swedish forest use strategy is continued, the long-term climate change mitigation benefit will correspond to more than 60 million tons of avoided or reduced emissions of carbon dioxide annually, compared to a scenario with similar consumption patterns in society but where non-renewable products are used instead of forest-based products. On average about 470 kg of carbon dioxide emissions are avoided for each cubic meter of biomass harvested, after accounting for carbon stock changes, substitution effects and all emissions related to forest management and industrial processes. Due to Sweden's large export share of forest-based products, the climate change mitigation effect of Swedish forestry is larger abroad than within the country. The study also shows that silvicultural methods to increase forest biomass production can further reduce net carbon dioxide emissions by an additional 40 million tons of per year. Forestry's contribution to climate change mitigation could be significantly increased if management of the boreal forest were oriented towards increased biomass production and if more wood were used to substitute fossil fuels and energy-intensive materials.The impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on climate change receives much focus today. This impact is however often considered only in terms of global warming potential (GWP), which does not take into account the need for staying below climatic target levels, in order to avoid passing critical climate tipping points. Some suggestions to include a target level in climate change impact assessment have been made, but with the consequence of disregarding impacts beyond that target level. The aim of this paper is to introduce the climate tipping impact category, which represents the climate tipping potential (CTP) of GHG emissions relative to a climatic target level. The climate tipping impact category should be seen as complementary to the global warming impact category. The CTP of a GHG emission is expressed as the emission's impact divided by the 'capacity' of the atmosphere for absorbing the impact without exceeding the target level. The GHG emission impact is determined as its cumulative contribution to increase the total atmospheric GHG concentration (expressed in CO2 equivalents) from the emission time to the point in time where the target level is expected to be reached, the target time. The CTP of all the assessed GHGs increases as the emission time approaches the target time, reflecting the rapid decrease in remaining atmospheric capacity and thus the increasing potential impact of the GHG emission. The CTP of a GHG depends on the properties of the GHG as well as on the chosen climatic target level and background scenario for atmospheric GHG concentration development. In order to enable direct application in life cycle assessment (LCA), CTP characterisation factors are presented for the three main anthropogenic GHGs, CO2, CH4 and N2O. The CTP metric distinguishes different GHG emission impacts in terms of their contribution to exceeding a short-term target and highlights their increasing importance when approaching a climatic target level, reflecting the increasing urgency of avoiding further GHG emissions in order to stay below the target level. Inclusion of the climate tipping impact category for assessing climate change impacts in LCA, complimentary to the global warming impact category which shall still represent the long-term climate change impacts, is considered to improve the value of LCA as a tool for decision support for climate change mitigation.Forests serve an essential role in climate change mitigation by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Within a forest, disturbance events can greatly impact C cycling and subsequently influence the exchange of CO2 between forests and the atmosphere. This connection makes understanding the forest C cycle response to disturbance imperative for climate change research. The goal of this study was to examine the temporal response of soil respiration after differing levels of stand disturbance for 3 years at the Black Rock Forest (southeastern NY, USA; oaks comprise 67 % of the stand). Tree girdling was used to mimic pathogen attack and create the following treatments: control, girdling all non-oaks (NOG), girdling half of the oak trees (O50), and girdling all the oaks (OG). Soil respiratory rates on OG plots declined for 2 years following girdling before attaining a full rebound of belowground activity in the third year. Soil respiration on NOG and O50 were statistically similar to the control for the duration of the study although a trend for a stronger decline in respiration on O50 relative to NOG occurred in the first 2 years. Respiratory responses among the various treatments were not proportional to the degree of disturbance and varied over time. The short-lived respiratory response on O50 and OG suggests that belowground activity is resilient to disturbance; however, sources of the recovered respiratory flux on these plots are likely different than they were pre-treatment. The differential taxon response between oaks and non-oaks suggests that after a defoliation or girdling event, the temporal response of the soil respiratory flux may be related to the C allocation pattern of the affected plant group.Climate change is one of the main environmental issues challenging cities in the 21th century. At present, more than half of the world population lives in cities and the latter are responsible for 60% to 80% of global energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are the main causes of the change in climate conditions. In the meantime, they are seriously threatened by the heterogeneous climate-related phenomena, very often exacerbated by the features of the cities themselves. In the last decade, international and European efforts have been mainly focused on mitigation rather than on adaptation strategies. Europe is one of the world leaders in global mitigation policies, while the issue of adaptation has gained growing importance in the last years. As underlined by the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change, even though climate change mitigation still remains a priority for the global community, large room has to be devoted to adaptation measures, in order to effectively face the unavoidable impacts and related economic, environmental and social costs of climate change (EC, 2013). Thus, measures for adaptation to climate change are receiving an increasing financial support and a growing number of European countries are implementing national and urban adaptation strategies to deal with the actual and potential climate change impacts. According to the above considerations, this paper explores strengths and weaknesses of current adaptation strategies in European cities. First the main suggestions of the European Community to improve urban adaptation to climate change are examined; then, some recent Adaptation Plans are analyzed, in order to highlight challenges and opportunities arising from the adaptation processes at urban level and to explore the potential of Adaptation Plans to promote a smart growth in the European cities.Tropical grassy biomes (TGBs) are globally extensive, provide critical ecosystem services, and influence the earth atmosphere system. Yet, globally applied biome definitions ignore vegetation characteristics that are critical to their functioning and evolutionary history. Hence, TGB identification is inconsistent and misinterprets the ecological processes governing vegetation structure, with cascading negative consequences for biodiversity. Here, we discuss threats linked to the definition of TGB, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation schemes (REDD+), and enhanced atmospheric CO2, which may facilitate future state shifts. TGB degradation is insidious and less visible than in forested biomes. With human reliance on TGBs and their propensity for woody change, ecology and evolutionary history are fundamental to not only the identification of TGBs, but also their management for future persistence.Waste management activities can release greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere, intensifying global climate change. Mitigation of the associated GHG emissions is vital and should be considered within integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management planning. In this study, a fuzzy possibilistic integer programming (FPIM) model has been developed for waste management facility expansion and waste flow allocation planning with consideration of GHG emission trading in an MSW management system. It can address the interrelationships between MSW management planning and GHG emission control. The scenario of total system GHG emission control is analyzed for reflecting the feature that GHG emission credits may be tradable. An interactive solution algorithm is used to solve the FPIM model based on the uncertainty-averse preferences of decision makers in terms of p-necessity level, which represents the certainty degree of the imprecise objective. The FPIM model has been applied to a hypothetical MSW planning problem, where optimal decision schemes for facility expansion and waste flow allocation have been achieved with consideration of GHG emission control. The results indicate that GHG emission credit trading can decrease total system cost through re-allocation of GHG emission credits within the entire MSW management system. This will be helpful for decision makers to effectively determine the allowable GHG emission permits in practices. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper compares the effects of two indicative climate mitigation policies on river flows in six catchments in the UK with two scenarios representing un-mitigated emissions. It considers the consequences of uncertainty in both the pattern of catchment climate change as represented by different climate models and hydrological model parameterisation on the effects of mitigation policy. Mitigation policy has little effect on estimated flow magnitudes in 2030. By 2050 a mitigation policy which achieves a 2 degrees C temperature rise target reduces impacts on low flows by 20-25% compared to a business-as-usual emissions scenario which increases temperatures by 4 degrees C by the end of the 21st century, but this is small compared to the range in impacts between different climate model scenarios. However, the analysis also demonstrates that an early peak in emissions would reduce impacts by 40-60% by 2080 (compared with the 4 degrees C pathway), easing the adaptation challenge over the long term, and can delay by several decades the impacts that would be experienced from around 2050 in the absence of policy. The estimated proportion of impacts avoided varies between climate model patterns and, to a lesser extent, hydrological model parameterisations, due to variations in the projected shape of the relationship between climate forcing and hydrological response. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Livestock are responsible for 12% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainable intensification of livestock production systems might become a key climate mitigation technology. However, livestock production systems vary substantially, making the implementation of climate mitigation policies a formidable challenge. Here, we provide results from an economic model using a detailed and high-resolution representation of livestock production systems. We project that by 2030 autonomous transitions toward more efficient systems would decrease emissions by 736 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (MtCO(2)e.y(-1)), mainly through avoided emissions from the conversion of 162 Mha of natural land. A moderate mitigation policy targeting emissions fromboth the agricultural and land-use change sectors with a carbon price of US$10 per tCO(2)e could lead to an abatement of 3,223 MtCO(2)e.y(-1). Livestock system transitions would contribute 21% of the total abatement, intra-and interregional relocation of livestock production another 40%, and all other mechanisms would add 39%. A comparable abatement of 3,068 MtCO(2)e.y(-1) could be achieved also with a policy targeting only emissions from land-use change. Stringent climate policies might lead to reductions in food availability of up to 200 kcal per capita per day globally. We find that mitigation policies targeting emissions from land-use change are 5 to 10 times more efficient-measured in "total abatement calorie cost"-than policies targeting emissions from livestock only. Thus, fostering transitions toward more productive livestock production systems in combination with climate policies targeting the land-use change appears to be the most efficient lever to deliver desirable climate and food availability outcomes.Humans directly change the dynamics of the water cycle through dams constructed for water storage, and through water withdrawals for industrial, agricultural, or domestic purposes. Climate change is expected to additionally affect water supply and demand. Here, analyses of climate change and direct human impacts on the terrestrial water cycle are presented and compared using a multimodel approach. Seven global hydrological models have been forced with multiple climate projections, and with and without taking into account impacts of human interventions such as dams and water withdrawals on the hydrological cycle. Model results are analyzed for different levels of global warming, allowing for analyses in line with temperature targets for climate change mitigation. The results indicate that direct human impacts on the water cycle in some regions, e. g., parts of Asia and in the western United States, are of the same order of magnitude, or even exceed impacts to be expected for moderate levels of global warming (+2 K). Despite some spread in model projections, irrigation water consumption is generally projected to increase with higher global mean temperatures. Irrigation water scarcity is particularly large in parts of southern and eastern Asia, and is expected to become even larger in the future.Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) has emerged as an important carbon governance mechanism. However, forest governance is weak in most REDD+ countries, which undermines efforts to establish REDD+. This study analyses the factors that enable national REDD+ processes in the context of weak governance using a two-step qualitative comparative analysis' (QCA) of 12 REDD+ countries. Assuming that actor-related factors can be effective only if certain institutional preconditions are met, six factors were divided into two categories that were analysed separately: institutional setting (pressure from forest-resource shortage; forest legislation, policy, and governance; already initiated policy change) and the policy arena (national ownership; transformational coalitions; inclusiveness of the policy process). The factors were analysed to determine their role in efforts to establish comprehensive REDD+ policies that target transformational change. The results reveal path dependencies and institutional stickiness in all the study countries. Only countries already undertaking institutional change have been able to establish REDD+ policies in a relatively short period - but only in the presence of either high pressure from forest-resource shortages or key features of effective forest legislation, policy, and governance. Furthermore, where an enabling institutional setting is in place, the policy arena conditions of national ownership and transformational coalitions are crucial.Policy relevance Although the aim of REDD+ is to provide performance-based payments for emissions reductions, the outcomes in terms of actual emission reductions or co-benefits are not yet observable. Most REDD+ countries are still at the design and implementation stage for policies and measures. Indicators and criteria to measure progress in this phase are required to identify which factors enable or hinder countries' performance in delivering necessary policy change to provide targeted financial incentives to support countries' efforts. This study analyses the factors that shape national REDD+ processes in the context of weak governance using a two-step QCA of 12 REDD+ countries. The results show a set of enabling conditions and characteristics of the policy process under which REDD+ policies can be established. These findings may help guide other countries seeking to formulate REDD+ policies that are likely to deliver efficient, effective, and equitable outcomes.Once established, long-lived capital stock (LLKS) such as infrastructure can lock-in a stream of GHG emissions for extended periods of time. Historical examples from industrial countries suggest that investments in LLKS projects and networks are often lumpy and concentrated in time, and often generate significant indirect and induced emissions besides direct emissions. Urbanization and rapid economic growth suggest that similar investments in LLKS projects and networks are being or will soon be made in many developing countries. In their current form, carbon markets do not provide correct incentives for mitigation in LLKS because the constraint on emissions is limited to developed countries and extends only to 2012. Targeted mitigation programmes are thus necessary where LLKS is being built at a rapid rate to avoid getting locked into highly emissions-intensive LLKS. Even if carbon markets were extended geographically, sectorally, and over time, public intervention would still be required to ensure that indirect and induced emissions are accounted for, to facilitate LLKS project/network financing that bridges the gap between carbon revenues accruing over time and capital needed up front to finance lumpy investments, and to internalize other externalities (e.g. local pollution) and/or lift other barriers that penalize low-emissions alternatives relative to high-emissions ones.Policy relevanceLLKS is rapidly being built in developing countries and renewed'/upgraded in developed ones. Investment in LLKS programmes/networks, not just in individual projects, tends to be concentrated in time, two-thirds of which typically takes place in the first quarter of the programme's operating life. Initial/prototype projects can lock in commitment to a particular technology for the whole programme, thus requiring they be evaluated as part of a programme, and not on a stand-alone basis. In addition, indirect and induced emissions of LLKS programmes can be significant. However, scarce empirical evidence affects the utility of cost-benefit analysis in selecting projects or programmes. Finally, addressing the carbon externality alone (whether by market prices, taxes, or regulations) is insufficient to create a level playing field between low- and high-emission LLKS. Removing non-price barriers requires identification of binding constraints, selection of instruments to address them, and mechanisms to learn from and share experiences amongst countries and regions.The question of whether China is on the verge of a shale gas revolution' is examined. This has potentially significant consequences for energy policy and climate change mitigation. Contrary to the optimistic reading of some commentators, it argues that various technological, environmental, political, regulatory and institutional factors will constrain the growth of China's shale gas market and that such a revolution might in any event have consequences that are at best mixed, at worst antithetical to climate change mitigation.Policy relevanceChina's reserves of unconventional gas have the potential to transform energy policy, as has occurred in the US, resulting in the substitution of shale gas for coal in the energy mix. Because gas emits only approximately half the GHG per unit as coal, such a move would have important implications for climate policy. However, substantial obstacles stand in the way of the energy revolution' that some policy analysts see China as embarking upon. The need to acknowledge these obstacles, particularly those relating to regulation and governance (and whether or to what extent they can be overcome), is an issue of profound importance to the future of climate and energy policy.Global climate changes are now well accepted to happen and can likely impact agriculture. Process-based dynamic crop models are able to estimate a range of crop responses to the environment and to assess the biophysical effects of future climate scenarios on crop growth and yield. They are hence scientifically accepted as a predictor of future agricultural scenarios, and the multi-model approach has shown the best performance in such prediction activities. The need of several models for such studies is mainly a consequence of the different physiological and physical approaches applied by model developers. Physiological processes are in fact essential elements for improving plant modeling, and most of the model weakness would be overcome by better understanding of the main physiological aspects related to plant growth and development. Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is an important crop for coping with climate change mitigation as a source of bioenergy and food. In this paper we aim to demonstrate how important is plant physiology for advancing the process-based crop models by briefly reviewing the history of the modeling along the last five decades and presenting the key physiological process considered in crop models. The paper was based in the DSSAT/CANEGRO sugarcane model and a set of field experiments for exemplifying some model responses to key climatic variables expected to vary in the following decades. Those responses were discussed under the light of plant physiology knowledge. We selected two sites in the State of Sao Paulo for an exercise of local sensitivity analysis. As air CO2 concentration is the most likely environmental variable expected to change, we stressed the CO2 effects on plant photosynthesis and water use to highlight the model strengths and opportunities for model improvements based on plant physiology findings.Discussing adaptation has previously been viewed as "taboo", a distraction that shifts focus away from mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. However, this view has recently changed as researchers, governments, and the UNFCCC have acknowledged the necessity of both mitigation and adaptation. Yet there has been little research on the public's view of adaptation and whether public consideration of adaptation (local or otherwise) might have positive effects or, as feared, distract people from mitigation. Contrary to these fears, here we experimentally show that consideration of local adaptation to sea-level rise significantly increased people's willingness to perform personal emissions-reducing behaviors, such as using public transport, eating less meat, and flying less. We surveyed residents in the Wellington region of New Zealand, randomly assigning respondents either to answer questions about climate change and mitigation only, or first to answer questions about potential local sea-level rise and adaptation measures that could be taken in their region. Respondents who first considered this local adaptation scored significantly higher on a measure of personal willingness to mitigate, and responses did not change depending on participants' level of skepticism of anthropogenic climate change. These results reveal the potential for discussion and consideration of local adaptation to engage the public in mitigation actions, possibly by making the problem of climate change less distant and more tangible. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In July 2012, Russ George, the founder of Planktos Inc., organized efforts to dump 100 tons of iron sulfate off the coast of Canada to engineer a plankton bloom that would, ostensibly, absorb carbon dioxide and store it in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. As George's geoengineering experiment is one of the largest and first of its kind, many were quick to denounce his rogue action while others were delighted to see that he succeeded as a large algae bloom was reported to have emerged. Using the George event as a point of entry for exploring alternative futures of geoengineering in an age of global weirding, this project fuses the 2 x 2 scenario modeling technique with the "Manoa School" four-futures method by situating command and control, along X( control) and Y (command) axes as two critical uncertainties and key drivers of change that will impact the design, development, and diffusion of climate mitigation engineering initiatives, which some see as holding the only solution to avert global catastrophe and others condemn as a postnormal remedy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.On-road vehicle use is responsible for about a quarter of US annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Changes in vehicles, travel behavior and fuel are likely required to meet long-term climate change mitigation goals, but may require a long time horizon to deploy. This research examines a near-term opportunity: management of pavement network roughness. Maintenance and rehabilitation treatments can make pavements smoother and reduce vehicle rolling resistance. However, these treatments require material production and equipment operation, thus requiring a life cycle perspective for benefits analysis. They must also be considered in terms of their cost-effectiveness in comparison with other alternatives for affecting climate change. This letter describes a life cycle approach to assess changes in total GHG (measured in CO2-e) emissions from strategic management of highway pavement roughness. Roughness values for triggering treatments are developed to minimize GHG considering both treatment and use phase vehicle emission. With optimal triggering for GHG minimization, annualized reductions on the California state highway network over a 10-year analysis period are calculated to be 0.82, 0.57 and 1.38 million metric tons compared with historical trigger values, recently implemented values and no strategic intervention (reactive maintenance), respectively. Abatement costs calculated using $/metric-ton CO2-e are higher than those reported for other transportation sector abatement measures, however, without considering all benefits associated with pavement smoothness, such as vehicle life and maintenance, or the time needed for deployment.Uncertainty exists over the magnitude of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with open land conversion to short-rotation woody biomass crops (SRWC) for bioenergy in the Northern U.S. Lake States. GHG debts incurred at the plantation establishment phase may delay the climate mitigation benefits of SRWC production. To better understand GFIG debts associated with converting open lands to SRWC, we established research plantations with willow (Salix spp), hybrid-poplar (Populus spp.), and control plots in spring 2010 at two sites in northern Michigan (ES) and Wisconsin (RH). These sites had similar climates, but differed in time since last cultivation: 5 vs. 42 years. To address the short-term effects of plantation establishment, we compared two-year biomass production and GHG emissions. We hypothesized that the long-idle ES site, with higher initial soil C and N stocks, would have higher GHG emissions following conversion compared to the recently-idle RH site, but that this would be balanced in part by greater SRWC productivity at the ES site. As hypothesized, grassland conversion resulted in two-year net GHG emissions due to land conversion of 43.21 and 33.02 Mg-CO(2)eq ha(-1) for poplar and willow at ES that was far greater than the 4.81 and 1.54 Mg-CO(2)eq ha(-1) for poplar and willow at RH. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not observe greater SRWC productivity at ES, which will take longer than RH to reach C neutrality and begin mitigating GHG emissions. Our results show that site-specific soil and management factors determine the magnitude of GHG emissions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.We constructed a model to assess the carbon balance of harvested wood products (HWP) used for building, furniture, paper/paperboard and energy, taking into account flows of wood between regions of Japan. We projected the carbon balance in each region until 2050 under two future scenarios, a BAU (business as usual) scenario and a wood use promotion scenario. We found the carbon stock in domestic harvested wood products became a carbon emission source, with Central Japan becoming the largest emission source, after 2020 in the BAU scenario but continued to function as a carbon sink in every region over the whole period in the wood promotion scenario. Therefore, unless future supply and demand amounts of domestic wood are increased by factors such as policies promoting the use of wood, the carbon stock of domestic wood may become an emission source rather than a sink. By promoting the use of domestic wood, the carbon stock acts as a carbon sink in every region. Carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption with respect to HWP in the whole of Japan fell to 72% of the 2004 value in 2050 in the BAU scenario, but rose to 112% in the wood promotion scenario. Emissions from wood transport were greatest in Central Japan, emissions from sawn wood processing were highest in West Japan, and emissions from plywood processing and woodchip processing were greatest in East Japan. In carbon balances that included the annual changes in the carbon stock amounts of domestic harvested wood, only Central Japan in the wood promotion scenario had carbon removals greater than its carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption in the years 2005-2045. In addition, when considering reductions in carbon emissions by substitution of fossil fuels with wood residues and waste wood in the carbon balances, the sum of the removals from carbon stock changes and the reductions of carbon emissions were greater than the carbon emissions associated with HWP over the entire period in all three regions in both scenarios. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change creates challenges for developments in coastal and delta areas. The risks are reduced more effectively if both planned and autonomous adaptations take place. Flood risk management is dominated by planned adaptation, which is primarily command-and-control in nature, e.g. spatial planning and engineered flood defenses. If autonomous adaptation is downplayed people are more likely to make land-use choices that collectively lead to increasing flood risks while leaving the costs of adaptation and land scarcity with governments. Unless governments provide stimuli, autonomous adaptation in flood-prone areas is unlikely to happen due to spatial externalities, path-dependency and time lag between private investment decisions and consequences. This paper reviews the theory and practice of using market-based instruments (MBIs) for flood-risk management as means for autonomous climate change adaptation. While the use of MBIs for climate change mitigation is widely discussed, systematized reviews of various MBIs for climate change adaptation are rare. Yet, international experience shows that such measures as preferential taxes, non-perverse subsidies, flood insurance, marketable permits and transferable development rights can engage local stakeholders and provide price signals that stimulate individual adaptation. MBIs combined with command-based instruments help policy-makers to guide developments in flood-prone zone by affecting individual behavior via market forces. As adverse consequences of climate change become more pronounced locally, quantity-based MBIs unfeasible at present should become more attractive. Price-based MBIs that are currently employed could be designed to strategically account for increasing climate-induced flood and erosion probabilities in coastal and delta areas. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The estimation of above ground biomass in forests is critical for carbon cycle modeling and climate change mitigation programs. Small footprint lidar provides accurate biomass estimates, but its application in tropical forests has been limited, particularly in Africa. Hyperspectral data record canopy spectral information that is potentially related to forest biomass. To assess lidar ability to retrieve biomass in an African forest and the usefulness of including hyperspectral information, we modeled biomass using small footprint lidar metrics as well as airborne hyperspectral bands and derived vegetation indexes. Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) was adopted to cope with multiple inputs and multicollinearity issues; the Variable of Importance in the Projection was calculated to evaluate importance of individual predictors for biomass. Our findings showed that the integration of hyperspectral bands (R-2 = 0.70) improved the model based on lidar alone (R-2 = 0.64), this encouraging result call for additional research to clarify the possible role of hyperspectral data in tropical regions. Replacing the hyperspectral bands with vegetation indexes resulted in a smaller improvement (R-2 = 0.67). Hyperspectral bands had limited predictive power (R-2 = 0.36) when used alone. This analysis proves the efficiency of using PLSR with small-footprint lidar and high resolution hyperspectral data in tropical forests for biomass estimation. Results also suggest that high quality ground truth data is crucial for lidar-based AGB estimates in tropical African forests, especially if airborne lidar is used as an intermediate step of upscaling field-measured AGB to a larger area. (C) 2014 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS) Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) offers notable potential, as part of larger carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) processes, to be a significant climate change mitigation technology. This paper challenges the argument often put forward that, due to the greater distances from centres of population, it will be 'easier' to garner public and stakeholder support for offshore CO2 storage than onshore. Based on the results of research interviews carried out with stakeholders and informed publics in Scotland, challenges for public and stakeholder acceptance of sub-seabed CO2 storage that may require further policy attention are identified. Whilst existing policy for sub-seabed CO2 storage is cognisant of the need for societal engagement, it may be the case that these regulations may need further reinforcement to ensure future developments are able to address social acceptability issues as fully as possible. The value of taking into account social as well as physical characteristics at the site selection phase, the need for mechanisms to take seriously stakeholder conceptions of uncertainty, and the importance of extending social engagement beyond risk communication are discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are growing calls for identifying climate mitigation and adaptation policy packages that would also support human development objectives at the national and regional levels. The literature on climate policy analysis and impact assessment continues to be driven by standard economics with its body of competitive general equilibrium optimization models and cost-benefit analysis techniques of aggregation and monetization. However, its recommendations for climate action are often based on highly restrictive underlying assumptions, which have been increasingly criticized for being too prescriptive, not adequately capturing salient observed socioeconomic realities, and not acknowledging pluralism in values. The main aim of this paper is to put forward a new methodological approach that seeks to address these deficiencies. A generic but comprehensive framework eliciting mitigation-adaptation-development interactions, accounting for institutional barriers, and drawing on a combination of an emerging body of new climate economics and multi-criteria decision analysis is suggested. We purport that, by using this framework, multi-dimensional impacts and multi-stakeholder interests could be better represented when planning climate policy actions. We also argue that analytical tools drawing on economic thinking which embraces interdisciplinary analysis and deep uncertainty and avoids the fallacy of unique optimal solutions, may deliver more effective strategies for pushing economies onto the transformational pathways required.This paper is concerned with the implications of climate change, and government policies to address it, for countries' fiscal systems at the national level. Given the uncertainties associated with climate change and countries' responses to it, the article can do no more than review and suggest some of the major issues of likely importance for fiscal sustainability and how they might be addressed. First the paper defines fiscal sustainability and addresses some general issues related to countries' attempts to adapt to or mitigate climate change. It then works through a number of more specific issues, discussing policies such as the implementation of environmental taxes or other instruments for the mitigation of climate change. The assessment of the impacts of such policies on fiscal sustainability requires the application of sophisticated economic models, and the paper briefly explores the relative advantages of different modeling approaches in relation to the assessment of fiscal sustainability under policies to mitigate climate change. The major research need identified by the paper is for the development of macroeconomic models that will enable countries identify the wider effects of environmental taxes and help them undertake multi-year budgeting processes.A new set of alternative socioeconomic scenarios for climate change researches-the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs)-includes for the first time a more comprehensive set of demographic conditions on population, urbanization, and education as the central scenario elements, along with other aspects of society, in order to facilitate better analyses of challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, it also raises a new question about the internal consistency of assumptions on different demographic and economic trends under each SSP. This paper examines whether the interactions between the demographic and economic factors implied by the assumptions in the SSP projections are consistent with the research literature, and whether they are consistently represented in the projection results. Our analysis shows that the interactions implied by the demographic assumptions in the SSPs are generally consistent with findings from the literature, and the majority of the assumed relationships are also evident in the projected trends. It also reveals some inconsistency issues, resulting mainly from the use of inconsistent definitions of regions and limitations in our understanding of future changes in the patterns of interactions at different stages of socioeconomic development. Finally, we offer recommendations on how to improve demographic assumptions in the extended SSPs, and how to use the projections of SSP central elements in climate change research.This paper presents the results of a large group process conducted in Edinburgh, Scotland investigating public perceptions of climate change and low-carbon energy technologies, specifically carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). The quantitative and qualitative results reported show that the participants were broadly supportive of efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and that there is an expressed preference for renewable energy technologies to be employed to achieve this. CCS was considered in detail during the research due to its climate mitigation potential; results show that the workshop participants were cautious about its deployment. The paper discusses a number of interrelated factors which appear to influence perceptions of CCS; factors such as the perceived costs and benefits of the technology, and people's personal values and trust in others all impacted upon participants' attitudes towards the technology. The paper thus argues for the need to provide the public with broad-based, balanced and trustworthy information when discussing CCS, and to take seriously the full range of factors that influence public perceptions of low-carbon technologies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Decision makers facing abatement targets need to decide which abatement measures to implement, and in which order. Measure-explicit marginal abatement cost curves depict the cost and abating potential of available mitigation options. Using a simple intertemporal optimization model, we demonstrate why this information is not sufficient to design emission reduction strategies. Because the measures required to achieve ambitious emission reductions cannot be implemented overnight, the optimal strategy to reach a short-term target depends on longer-term targets. For instance, the best strategy to achieve European's -20% by 2020 target may be to implement some expensive, high-potential, and long-to-implement options required to meet the -75% by 2050 target. Using just the cheapest abatement options to reach the 2020 target can create a carbon-intensive lock-in and make the 2050 target too expensive to reach. Designing mitigation policies requires information on the speed at which various measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions can be implemented, in addition to the information on the costs and potential of such measures provided by marginal abatement cost curves. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The literature on climate change's impacts on energy security is scattered across disparate fields of research and schools of thought. Much of this literature has been produced outside of the academy by scholars and practitioners working in "think tanks," government agencies, and international/multilateral institutions. Here we reviewed a selected set of 58 articles and reports primarily from such sources and performed textual analysis of the arguments. Our review of this literature identifies three potential mechanisms for linking climate change and energy security: Climate change may 1) create second-order effects that may exacerbate social instability and disrupt energy systems; 2) directly impact energy supply and/or systems or 3) influence energy security through the effects of climate-related policies. We identify emerging risks to energy security driven by climate mitigation technology choices but find less evidence of climate change's direct physical impacts. We used both empirical and qualitative selection factors for choosing the grey literature sample. The sources we selected were published in the last 5 years, available through electronic media and were written in language accessible to general policy or academic readers. The organizations that published the literature had performed previous research in the general fields of energy and/or climate change with some analytical content and identified themselves as non-partisan. This literature is particularly valuable to scholars because identifies understudied relationships that can be rigorously assessed through academic tools and methodologies and informs a translational research agenda that will allow scholars to engage with practitioners to address challenges that lie at the nexus of climate change and energy security.AimTo understand: (1) how temperature, precipitation and stand age control the above-ground biomass carbon density (BCDa) of mature forests and its macroecology patterns across latitudes; (2) the age threshold for old-growth forests at a global scale. LocationGlobal forests. MethodsWe compiled a database (897 sites) of mature forests between 80 and 1200 years old. The site data include latitude, longitude, mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation, forest type, stand age, BCDa, living biomass (above- and below-ground biomass) carbon density and total (living plus dead) biomass carbon density. Based on the site data, we performed regression analyses to show how BCDa changes with climate and forest stand age. ResultsAt a global scale, the highest BCDa of mature forests occurred mainly in the mid-latitude regions where mean annual temperatures were 8-10 degrees C and mean annual precipitation was between 1000 and 2500mm. The average BCDa of forests in the stand age class of 450-500 years was higher than those in the other stand age classes. For forests between 80 and 450 years old, which form the majority of mature forests, carbon accumulation was faster in dead biomass than in living biomass. Main conclusionsThe highest BCDa of mature forests is located in mid-latitude regions with cool temperatures and moderate precipitation. The age threshold for old-growth forests at a global scale should be 450-500 years, which is much older than the previously documented age of 100-200 years. This older age threshold for old-growth forests is probably one of the primary reasons why recent works have concluded that old-growth forests are still carbon sinks.The Kyoto Protocol allows the use of domestic forest carbon sequestration to offset emissions to a limited degree, while bioenergy as an unlimited emission reduction option receives substantial financial support in many countries. The primary objective of this study was to analyze (1) whether these limits on forest carbon sequestration would be binding, thereby leading to inefficient mitigation, and (2) the total potential effect of the protocol on the greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in the forest sector. A partial equilibrium model of the Norwegian forest sector was used to quantify the GHG fluxes in a base scenario with no climate policy, a Kyoto Protocol policy (KP policy), and a policy with no cap on forest carbon sequestration (FC policy), assuming that the policies apply the rest of the century. Carbon offsets are higher under the KP policy than in the base scenario and likewise higher than under the FC policy in the short run, but the KP policy fails to utilize the forest carbon sequestration potential in the long run as it provides considerably less incentives to invest in forestry than the FC policy. The KP increases the Norwegian forest sector's climate change mitigation compared to no climate policy but less in the long run than a carbon policy with no cap on forest carbon credits.Avoiding dangerous climate changes requires emission reductions in not only industrialized but also developing countries. This opinion piece argues that even if the full incremental costs' of abatement in developing countries would be covered by industrialized countries, the former's development prospects could be hampered by climate change mitigation due to the following reasons. First, financial inflows have the potential to induce a climate finance curse' similar to adverse effects related to natural resource exports. Second, increased use of more expensive low-carbon energy sources could delay structural change and the build-up of physical infrastructure. Third, higher energy prices could have negative effects on poverty and inequality. We conclude that these considerations should not be seen as an indication that one should abstain from emission reductions in developing countries. However, until developing countries' most severe concerns can be appropriately addressed, attention should be focused on measures that promote human well-being while saving emissions. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:161-168. doi: 10.1002/wcc.260 Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the .The importance of biogas as a renewable alternative is being studied because of an increase in the cost of conventional fuels. The present article suggests a numerical study of a biogas powered NH3-H2O absorption refrigeration system where biogas is used to heat the water which serves as an energy input to generator of an absorption system. A computational model has been developed for the analysis which involves the determination of effect of generator temperature on various performance parameters, i.e., exergy losses in the different components, COPcooling, COPheating and the exergy efficiency. The results indicate that COPcooling and COPheating lies in the range of 0.159-0.33 and 1.16-1.33, respectively, whereas exergetic efficiency lies in the range of 0.29-0.80 for the same variation in generator temperature ranging from 50 to 70 A degrees C. The highest exergy loss is found in the generator while the lowest is found in the condenser and it is also found that with an increase in the evaporator as well as absorber and condenser temperature, the COP increases and decreases, respectively. The effect of ambient temperature on exergy loss in the different components is also studied. Exergy analysis is an excellent tool to pin point the losses in the system due to irreversibility which are the basis for the further improvement in the system components.A key question for climate mitigation and adaptation decisions is how quickly significant changes in temperature extremes will emerge as greenhouse gas concentrations increase, and whether that emergence will be uniform between hot and cold extremes and across different geographic areas. We use a high-resolution, multi-member ensemble climate model experiment over the United States (U.S.) to investigate the transient response of the annual frequency, duration and magnitude of 8 daily-scale extreme temperature indices during the twenty-first century of the A1B emissions scenario. We evaluate the time of emergence of a permanent exceedance (PE) above the colder part of the historical (1980-2009) extremes distribution, and the time of emergence of a new norm (NN) centered on the historical maxima (for hot extremes) or minima (for cold extremes). We find that during the twenty-first century, hot extremes permanently exceed the historical distribution's colder half over large areas of the U.S., and that the hot extremes distribution also becomes centered on or above the historical distribution's maxima. The changes are particularly robust for the exceedance of the annual 95th percentile of daily maximum temperature over the West and the Northeast (with the earliest emergence of a PE by 2030 and of a NN by 2040), for warm days over the Southwest (with the earliest emergence of a PE by 2020 and of a NN by 2030), and tropical nights over the eastern U.S. (with the earliest emergence of a PE by 2020 and of a NN by 2030). Conversely, no widespread emergence of a PE or a NN is found for most cold extremes. Exceptions include frost day frequency (with a widespread emergence of a PE below the historical median frequency by 2030 and of a NN by 2040 over the western U.S.), and cold night frequency (with an emergence of a PE below the historical median frequency by 2040 and of a NN by 2060 in virtually the entire U.S.). Our analysis implies a transition over the next half century to a climate of recently unprecedented heat stress in many parts of the U.S., along with cold extremes that, although less frequent, remain at times as long and as severe as are found in the current climate.Increasingly, funding agencies are investing in integrated and transdisciplinary research to tackle "grand challenge" priority areas, critical for sustaining agriculture and protecting the environment. Coordinating multidisciplinary research teams capable of addressing these priority areas, however, presents its own unique set of challenges, ranging from bridging across multiple disciplinary perspectives to achieve common questions and methods to facilitating engagement in holistic and integrative thinking that promotes linkages from scholarship to societal needs. We propose that structural equation modeling (SEM) can provide a powerful framework for synergizing multidisciplinary research teams around grand challenge issues. Structural equation modeling can integrate both visual and statistical expression of complex hypotheses at all stages of the research process, from planning to analysis. Three elements of the SEM framework are particularly beneficial to multidisciplinary research teams; these include (i) a common graphical language that transcends disciplinary boundaries, (ii) iterative, critical evaluation of complex hypotheses involving manifest and latent variables and direct and indirect interactions, and (iii) enhanced opportunities to discover unanticipated interactions or causal pathways as empirical data are tested statistically against the model. Using our ongoing multidisciplinary, multisite field investigation of climate change adaptation and mitigation in annual row crop agroecosystems as a case study, we demonstrate the value of the SEM framework for project design, coordination, and implementation and provide recommendations for its broader application as a means to more effectively engage and address issues of critical societal concern.Identifying the factors that determine the carbon source/sink strength of ecosystems is important for reducing uncertainty in the global carbon cycle. Using the modified Biome-BGC grazing model, we modeled carbon dynamics in Xinjiang, Northwest China for grasslands that varied in grazing intensity. In general, this regional simulation estimated that the grassland ecosystems in Xinjiang acted as a net carbon source, with a value of 0.38 Pg C over the period 1979-2007. There were significant effects of grazing on carbon dynamics. An over-compensatory effect in net primary productivity (NPP) and vegetation carbon (C) stock was observed when grazing intensity was lower than 0.40 head/ha. Grazing resulted in a net carbon source of 23.45 g C m(-2) yr(-1), which equaled 0.37 Pg in Xinjiang in the last 29 years. In general, grazing decreased vegetation C stock, while an increasing trend was observed with low grazing intensity. The soil C increased significantly (17%) with long-term grazing, while the soil C stock exhibited a steady trend without grazing. These findings have implications for grassland ecosystem management as it relates to carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, e.g., removal of grazing should be considered in strategies that aim to increase terrestrial carbon sequestrations at local and regional scales. One of the greatest limitations in quantifying the effects of herbivores on carbon cycling is identifying the grazing systems and intensities within a given region. We hope our study emphasizes the need for large-scale assessments of how grazing impacts carbon cycling. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Agriculture is a key sector for climate change mitigation strategies due to its CO2 sequestration potential. However, in order to increase mitigation changes in current crop and land management are required, which in many cases imply additional costs to farmers. Thus, this research assesses society's willingness to pay using a discrete choice analysis for a soil management programme in Andalusian olive groves identifying different groups based on preference heterogeneity. We identify three groups and characterise them on the basis of socio-demographics. Willingness to pay is higher in areas and for individuals who would directly benefit from the programme. Additionally, the ancillary benefits associated to carbon sequestration capture an important share of the overall benefits. Our results show that soil carbon sequestration in olive groves provides net social value and can be a cheap and cost-effective way of combating climate change. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.How to deal with our changing climate is one of the most controversial topics facing modern society. The two most prevalent choices are to mitigate the effects through global programmes, or adapt to the changes at the local level. While both have positive and negative traits, the reality is that a combination of the two strategies is required. This is the second study in a series investigating the mitigation-adaptation balance from an economic perspective. Using an expected value approach, this study discusses the theoretical sources and impact of uncertainty associated with implementing a mitigation or adaptation programme on the strategic optimisation.Since 2007, gross domestic product (GDP) growth in China's inland provinces has exceeded that of the affluent coastal provinces. Concurrently, they have also been given more lenient energy intensity reduction targets to provide latitude for continued growth. The regional unevenness of economic development and energy policy has implications for the ability of the country to achieve its energy savings target an objective that has become the key part of China's climate change mitigation strategy. This study shows that there is an explicit trend in which changes in regional economic structure is moving towards increasing national energy intensity. This is due, in large part, to carbon leakage between provinces. Changes in regional economic structure increased national energy intensity by 0.13% during the 11th five-year plans (FYP) period, and is on track to cause a further increase of 1.35% during the 12th FYP period. In formulating national energy policy, the existing "Target Responsibility System" (TRS) of policy implementation may need to be improved. Regional economic disparities must be taken directly into account in policymaking, as inland provinces should be assigned higher, not lower, energy intensity reduction targets. This will increase the likelihood that national targets, and hence China's broader climate change mitigation goals, will be met. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extreme heat stress during the crop reproductive period can be critical for crop productivity. Projected changes in the frequency and severity of extreme climatic events are expected to negatively impact crop yields and global food production. This study applies the global crop model PEGASUS to quantify, for the first time at the global scale, impacts of extreme heat stress on maize, spring wheat and soybean yields resulting from 72 climate change scenarios for the 21st century. Our results project maize to face progressively worse impacts under a range of RCPs but spring wheat and soybean to improve globally through to the 2080s due to CO2 fertilization effects, even though parts of the tropic and sub-tropic regions could face substantial yield declines. We find extreme heat stress at anthesis (HSA) by the 2080s (relative to the 1980s) under RCP 8.5, taking into account CO2 fertilization effects, could double global losses of maize yield (Delta Y = -12.8 +/- 6.7% versus -7.0 +/- 5.3% without HSA), reduce projected gains in spring wheat yield by half (Delta Y = 34.3 +/- 13.5% versus 72.0 +/- 10.9% wwithout HSA) and in soybean yield by a quarter (Delta Y= 15.3 +/- 26.5% versus 20.4 +/- 22.1% without HSA). The range reflects uncertainty due to differences between climate model scenarios; soybean exhibits both positive and negative impacts, maize is generally negative and spring wheat generally positive. Furthermore, when assuming CO2 fertilization effects to be negligible, we observe drastic climate mitigation policy as in RCP 2.6 could avoid more than 80% of the global average yield losses otherwise expected by the 2080s under RCP 8.5. We show large disparities in climate impacts across regions and find extreme heat stress adversely affects major producing regions and lower income countries.While carbon taxes and other market-based instruments are widely regarded as optimal for climate mitigation, political constraints have prevented governments from using them. Instead, narrower instruments, including the feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable electricity generation, have become popular. However, their causal effect on renewable electricity generation remains subject to uncertainty. We use instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of FITs on renewable electricity generation in 26 industrialized countries, 1979-2005. We find that increasing the FIT by one U.S. cent (2000 constant prices) per kilowatt hour increases the percentage change in renewable electricity's share of the total by 0.11 % points. All else constant, if a country implemented for a decade the sample mean FIT of three U.S. cents, the national share of renewable electricity would increase by 3.3 % points, which is more than the sample mean. In addition to demonstrating that the FIT is an effective way to increase renewable electricity generation, our approach lays the foundation for future studies of the causal effects of renewable energy policies.While national climate policy can address countries' production or consumption, climate mitigation via changes in consumption has previously received relatively little attention in climate policy literature. In the absence of an effective international climate policy, the focus on consumption is gaining relevance since it has advantages regarding carbon leakage and competitiveness concerns. In addition, consumption oriented climate policy allows for low cost climate mitigation because of behavioral market failures. Therefore, a systematic evaluation of low greenhouse gas consumption options is needed. This article reviews the carbon footprint of products in the five main consumption categories (food, shelter, travel, goods and service) and compares their compatibility with the greenhouse gas intensity required in 2050 to meet the 2 climate target. The evaluation then identifies consumption options compatible with this climate target in all categories. The description of these consumption options allows for the recognition of barriers to their selection. In contrast to production oriented climate policy, besides costs, relevant barriers include consumer preferences, the skills required to find or adopt the product and high initial investments. We conclude that there is substantial climate mitigation potential from changing consumption choices which can be tapped through climate policy by addressing non-cost barriers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The adoption of Conservation Agriculture (CA) in Europe varies according to the ecological regions of the continent. Although Europe is behind other countries in adoption of CA, the indicators for future progress are encouraging. The area where CA is applied is growing rapidly because of increasing environmental awareness, including soil protection, and because of the need to reduce production costs. The European Conservation Agriculture Federation (ECAF) plays an important role in the adoption and dissemination of CA practices, and in discussions involving CA and the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform. Yield performance and stability, operating costs, environmental policies and programs of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and climate change will likely be the major driving forces defining the direction and for the extension of CA in Europe. The role of agriculture in climate change mitigation in the EU is discussed in the paper.As climate change mitigation becomes pervasive on all spatial scales, mitigation options related to urban spatial planning and behavioral change become increasingly important. Because transport energy consumption seems to scale inversely with population density, increased attention focuses on the role of urban form. This study specifically analyzes the importance of population density for the reduction of urban greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. For this, drivers of both carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from transport (for 134 cities) and total urban greenhouse gas emissions (CO2eq emissions) of 62 cities across Europe are investigated. Results indicate that population density is not, per se, a strong determinant of greenhouse gas emissions in European cities. Crucially, the spatial scale of the analysis matters and national influences modulate CO2eq emissions in the analyzed urban areas. Results show that greenhouse gas emissions of European urbanites increase significantly with decreasing household sizes and increasing personal wealth. Although the results are bound by data quality, it is assumed that the relative similarity of European cities is also leading to a lesser degree of importance of population density with respect to climate change mitigation. The results further encourage more thorough analyses of the role of household size and personal wealth for effective mitigation of climate change, additional spatially explicit econometric studies, and detailed, city-specific causal models of urban areas.Environmental concerns and the search for climate change mitigation have led to the deployment of renewable energy technologies (RET) in several countries. The adoption of incentive policies, especially those based on heavy subsides, has motivated the discussion of social and economic benefits brought about by these technologies, mainly on the impact on employment rates. In this context, several studies have been conducted to quantify job creation by RET, concluding that the latter are more labor intensive than traditional fossil fueled technologies. However, results for different assessments vary largely due to distinct methodological approaches, and are frequently highly aggregated. Thus, results are not comparable or applicable to other contexts. Previous studies have failed to quantify the effects of imports and exports of RET equipment in total employment, usually associating employment and installed capacity in the year studied. This study has aimed to address these issues, creating an index for employment quantification based on production, instead of installed, capacity. We have estimated both direct jobs in manufacture, construction, and operation and management, and indirect jobs both in the upstream supply chains of materials and inputs to manufacture of wind turbines and construction of wind farms. We have also performed an assessment of jobs created in wind energy projects which are expected to begin operation in Brazil until 2017. The resulting job potential in Brazil corresponds to 13.5 persons-year equivalent for each MW installed between manufacture and first year of operation of a wind power plant, and 24.5 persons-year equivalent over the wind farm lifetime. Results show that major contribution from wind power for job creation are in the construction stage and, despite of the low amount of jobs created in operation and maintenance relative to new installed capacity, those stable jobs stand out as they persist over the entire wind farm's life time. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of biochar as soil improver and climate change mitigation strategy has gained much attention, although at present the effects of biochar on soil properties and greenhouse gas emissions are not completely understood. The objective of our incubation study was to investigate biochar's effect on N2O and NO emissions from an agricultural Luvisol upon fertilizer (urea, NH4Cl or KNO3) application. Seven biochar types were used, which were produced from four different feedstocks pyrolyzed at various temperatures. At the end of the experiment, after 14 days of incubation, soil nitrate concentrations were decreased upon biochar addition in all fertilizer treatments by 6-16%. Biochar application decreased both cumulative N2O (52-84%) and NO (47-67%) emissions compared to a corresponding treatment without biochar after urea and nitrate fertilizer application, and only NO emissions after ammonium application. N2O emissions were more decreased at high compared to low pyrolysis temperature. Several hypotheses for our observations exist, which were assessed against current literature and discussed thoroughly. In our study, the decreased N2O and NO emissions are expected to be mediated by multiple interacting phenomena such as stimulated NH3 volatilization, microbial N immobilization, non-electrostatic sorption of NH4+ and NO3-, and biochar pH effects. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A range of published and grey literature over the last three decades has underlined the importance of urban and peri-urban agriculture and forestry (UPAF) in cities of developing regions. The focus in the published literature is on livelihoods, poverty reduction and ecosystems services at multiple city scales. Cities of developing regions, particularly in Africa, are searching for ways of addressing the unavoidable impacts of climate change and UPAF has demonstrated scalable adaptation and mitigation potential. However, evidence of UPAF's role in mitigating and adaptation to climate change is scattered in various reports and has not been synthesized for its potential role in developing urban adaptation strategies. Building on the earlier poverty reduction focus of UPAF research, this paper contributes to UPAF knowledge regarding mitigating and adapting to climate change in urban and peri-urban areas in East and West Africa. The paper reports a synthesis based on a systematic review of the available literature on these regions, and selected sources on other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The paper also examines the extent to which literature conveys any evidence for UPAF playing a role in mediating the effects of climate/environmental change. Limited empirical verification was undertaken in Kampala and Ibadan, but this does not form the basis for systematic generalization. The key emerging areas of adaptation and mitigation include enhanced food security, productive greening, ecosystem services and innovative policy for urban resilience and transformation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changes in precipitation and temperature have direct effects on crop water use, water stress, crop yield, evapotranspiration, water nutrient dynamics and other indicators. This study, built on a modelling framework with the Soil and Watershed Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for the Raccoon River Watershed in central Iowa, a typical US Midwestern agricultural watershed, examines the watershed response to changes in meteorological inputs from an ensemble of ten global climate models under the A1B scenario. Changes in climate were directly applied to observations (the delta change method) assuming that the estimates of climate change are reliable even if the simulated current climate may be biased. The ensemble average for the mid-century (1946-1965) predicted 0.7% increase in daily precipitation (monthly variation from -11.3% to +19.5%) and 2.78 degrees C increase in average temperature over the entire watershed. These predictions were translated through a well-calibrated SWAT modelling setup into 22% decrease in snowfall, 16% decrease in surface runoff, 18% decrease in baseflow, 8% increase in evapotranspiration and 17% decrease in total water yield. The spatial impact at the subwatershed level revealed a wide variation (but no defined trend) with decrease in water yield that ranged from 10% to 23%. Flow near the watershed outlet (Van Meter, Iowa) is expected to decline by 17% on an average annual basis with the highest impact occurring during summer months with a maximum 39% reduction in August. Changes in climate were found to have a clear and significant impact signal of decreasing streamflow at the watershed outlet with far-reaching implication for drinking water supplies for the central Iowa communities. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.China has the largest afforested area in the world (similar to 62 million hectares in 2008), and these forests are carbon sinks. The climatic effect of these new forests depends on how radiant and turbulent energy fluxes over these plantations modify surface temperature. For instance, a lower albedo may cause warming, which negates the climatic benefits of carbon sequestration. Here, we used satellite measurements of land surface temperature (LST) from planted forests and adjacent grasslands or croplands in China to understand how afforestation affects LST. Afforestation is found to decrease daytime LST by about 1.1 +/- 0.5 degrees C (mean +/- 1 SD) and to increase nighttime LST by about 0.2 +/- 0.5 degrees C, on average. The observed daytime cooling is a result of increased evapotranspiration. The nighttime warming is found to increase with latitude and decrease with average rainfall. Afforestation in dry regions therefore leads to net warming, as daytime cooling is offset by nighttime warming. Thus, it is necessary to carefully consider where to plant trees to realize potential climatic benefits in future afforestation projects.During the last decades numerous environmental problems have been exacerbated, and in some cases created. Traditionally, such problems have been addressed through environmentally sound technologies. The diffusion of such technologies has, however, been slow, where the focus has primarily been on high-polluting sectors. This paper explores the environmental actions of a relatively low-polluting sector, the insurer industry, in regards to environmentally sound technologies, by schematizing the concept of environmentally sound technologies as it is defined in Agenda 21. The Agenda 21 definition is critical when discussing environmentally sound technologies, as typologies of academic scholars are defined from the perspective of manufacturers ignoring the role of relatively low-polluting sectors when dealing with environmental issues. Five focus points from a climate change statement issued by the Nordic insurance industry are then integrated into the schematic framework. Case study examples from 16 Nordic insurance companies and secondary data of insurers' activities are used to illustrate insurers' role in enhancing development and utilization of environmentally sound technologies. Although the insurance industry offers many examples of its role in the development and utilization of environmentally sound technologies, this paper highlights the following points (1) there are still areas for improvements, (2) there is a large capacity that could be utilized, and (3) business opportunities are expected to increase once climate change consequences become more apparent. Due to the slow uptake of environmentally sound technologies, it is important to strengthen the focus on the role and obligation of low-polluting sectors as a part of the supporting infrastructure dealing with environmental sustainability issues. This paper shows the potential of opportunities arising from the synergies between environmentally sound technologies and finance and service providers to address such issues. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Growing concerns about unnecessarily destructive selective logging of tropical forests and its impacts on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions motivated this study on post-logging biomass dynamics over a 16-year period in a control plot and in plots subjected to conventional logging (CL) or reduced-impact logging (RIL) in Paragominas, Para State, Brazil. All trees >25 cm were monitored in 25.4 ha plots of each treatment, each with a subplot of 5.25 ha for trees >10 cm dbh. The commercial timber volumes in felled trees were 38.9 and 37.4 m(3) ha(-1) in the RIL and CL plots, respectively, but the extracted volumes were 38.6 and 29.7 m(3) ha(-1), respectively. Immediately after logging, plots subjected to RIL and CL lost 17% and 26% of their above-ground biomass, respectively. Over the 16 years after logging, the average annual increments in above-ground biomass (recruitment plus residual tree growth minus mortality) were 2.8 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) in the RIL plot but only 0.5 Mg ha(-1) year in the CL plot. By 16 years post-logging, the RIL plot recovered 100% of its original above-ground biomass while the CL plot recovered only 77%; over the same period, biomass in the control plot maintained 96% of its initial stock. These findings reinforce the claim that conversion from CL to RIL would represent an efficient forest-based strategy to mitigate climate change under the REDD+ and would be an important step towards sustainable forest management. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Establishing the role of climate on wine production is one major goal of the winemaking sector. Portuguese viticulture plays a key role in national exports of agro-food products. The Minho Wine Region, in particular, produces a unique wine type 'Vinho Verde' that has been taking its stand as a prominent international brand. The present study aims at improving the understanding of climate-yield relationships in this region. A long wine production series (1945-2010) is used and some transformations are undertaken for robust statistical relationships. A stepwise methodology is applied to select regressors for logistic modeling of production classes (low, normal and high). New weather regimes are developed to assess large-scale atmospheric forcing and cycles in production are isolated by a spectral analysis. Ten regressors are selected: dryness and hydrothermal indices, 3-yr lagged production, mean temperatures in March and June, precipitation in June and frequencies of occurrence of two regimes in May, and of one in February and September. Overall, moderate water stress during the growing season, high production 3-yrs before, cool weather in February-March, settled-warm weather in May, warm moist weather in June and relatively cool conditions preceding harvest are generally favorable to high wine production. Some of these relationships demonstrate the singularity of Minho Wine Region and justify the present study. The model shows high skill (72% after cross-validation), stressing not only the important role played by atmospheric conditions, but also its value for prediction and management. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Atmospheric aerosols are emitted by natural and anthropogenic sources. Contributions from natural sources to ambient aerosols vary widely with time (inter-annual and seasonal variability) and as a function of the distance to source regions. This work aims to identify the main natural sources of atmospheric aerosols affecting air quality across Europe. The origin, frequency, magnitude, and spatial and temporal variability of natural events were assessed for the years 2008 and 2009. The main natural sources of atmospheric aerosols identified were African dust, sea spray and wildfires. Primary biological particles were not included in the present work. Volcanic eruptions did not affect air quality significantly in Europe during the study period. The impact of natural episodes on air quality was significant in Southern and Western Europe (Cyprus, Spain, France, UK, Greece, Malta, Italy and Portugal), where they contributed to surpass the PM10 daily and annual limit values. In Central and Northern Europe (Germany, Austria and Latvia) the impact of these events was lower, as it resulted in the exceedance of PM daily but not annual limit values. Contributions from natural sources to mean annual PM10 levels in 2008 and 2009 ranged between 1 and 2 mu g/m(3) in Italy, France and Portugal, between 1 and 4 mu g/m(3) in Spain (10 mu g/m(3) when including the Canary Islands), 5 mu g/m(3) in UK, between 3 and 8 mu g/m(3) in Greece, and reached up to 13 mu g/m(3) in Cyprus. The evaluation of the number of monitoring stations per country reporting natural exceedances of the daily limit value (DLV) is suggested as a potential tool for air quality monitoring networks to detect outliers in the assessment of natural contributions. It is strongly suggested that a reference methodology for the identification and quantification of African dust contributions should be adopted across Europe. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The perception that agroforestry systems have higher potential to sequester carbon than comparable single-species crop systems or pasture systems is based on solid scientific foundation. However, the estimates of carbon stock of agroforestry systems in Africa - reported to range from 1.0 to 18.0 Mg C ha(-1) in aboveground biomass and up to 200 Mg C ha-1 in soils, and their C sequestration potential from 0.4 to 3.5 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1)-are based on generalizations and vague or faulty assumptions and therefore are of poor scientific value. Although agroforestry initiatives are promising pathways for climate-change mitigation, rigorous scientific procedures of carbon sequestration estimations are needed for realizing their full potential.Large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions are crucial for achieving the European goals for climate change mitigation. A frequently discussed option is carbon capture and storage (CCS), where CO2 emissions from point sources are captured and stored in geologic structures. However, concerns about risks of leakages of CO2 from geological storage have been raised. These risks could be avoided with ex situ mineral carbonation, where the captured CO2 is stored in an inert and stable solid form after reacting with calcium and magnesium silicates. For a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and economic performance of this CO2 storage option in fossil-fueled power generation chains, life cycle assessment (LCA) and levelized cost of electricity (LCoE) calculations are performed. The implementation of CCS using mineral carbonation leads to life cycle GHG emission reductions of 15-64% and LCoE increases of 90-370% on a per kWh(el) basis compared to a reference power plant without CCS. The life cycle GHG emission reduction achievable with mineral sequestration is less substantial than with geological storage of CO2 due to significant energy and chemical additives requirements. Accordingly, LCA results for other environmental indicators are worse than those of the reference plant without CCS and the geological CO2 storage option. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is generally described as a tool for environmental decision making. Results from attributional LCA (ALCA), the most commonly used LCA method, often are presented in a way that suggests that policy decisions based on these results will yield the quantitative benefits estimated by ALCA. For example, ALCAs of biofuels are routinely used to suggest that the implementation of one alternative (say, a biofuel) will cause an X% change in greenhouse gas emissions, compared with a baseline (typically gasoline). However, because of several simplifications inherent in ALCA, the method, in fact, is not predictive of real-world impacts on climate change, and hence the usual quantitative interpretation of ALCA results is not valid. A conceptually superior approach, consequential LCA (CLCA), avoids many of the limitations of ALCA, but because it is meant to model actual changes in the real world, CLCA results are scenario dependent and uncertain. These limitations mean that even the best practical CLCAs cannot produce definitive quantitative estimates of actual environmental outcomes. Both forms of LCA, however, can yield valuable insights about potential environmental effects, and CLCA can support robust decision making. By openly recognizing the limitations and understanding the appropriate uses of LCA as discussed here, practitioners and researchers can help policy makers implement policies that are less likely to have perverse effects and more likely to lead to effective environmental policies, including climate mitigation strategies.Pledge-and-review is an essential pillar for climate change mitigation up until 2020 under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In this paper, we build on a survey handed out to participants at the Seventeenth Conference of Parties in 2011 to examine to what extent climate negotiators and stakeholders agree with existing critiques towards pledge-and-review. Among the critique examined, we find that the one most agreed with is that the pledges fall short of meeting the 2 degree target, while the one least agreed with is that pledges are voluntary. We also find that respondents from Annex 1 parties are more critical than respondents from Non-Annex 1 parties. Negotiators display strikingly similar responses regardless of where they are from, while there is a remarkable difference between Annex 1 and Non-Annex 1 environmental non-governmental organizations. We build on these results to discuss the legitimacy of pledge-and-review.The recent IPCC reports and conferences drawn attention for the increased likelihood that unexpected climate events and changes might happen especially after reaching the 400 ppm CO2 limit. This concept is getting more scientific understanding as "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations". Therefore, current practice of construction industry in Egypt as a mid-latitude region needs to consider passive architectural design for residential buildings as a crucial strategy for climate change mitigation. To achieve this, building envelope optimization is investigated in this paper both in the present time climate conditions and in the future scenarios as well. Two residential case studies were simulated by Design Builder using morphing methodology with the application of different Glass fibre Reinforced Cement, GRC, walls' compositions in comparison to traditional walls in three Egyptian climatic zones. Both buildings showed gradual energy consumption reduction using the 10 and 12 cm GRC-foam sandwich respectively showed an increase by time towards the year 2080. These reductions were considerable in the hot arid and semi hot arid zones rather than in the moderate zone. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The energetic use of residues from agriculture can foster the transition towards a more renewable energy supply. However, sustainability issues have to be considered along the entire provision chain as they affect the resource and energy potential as well as the achievable contribution to climate mitigation. Straw is one of the most important agricultural residues in Germany. It is not yet used for energy purposes extensively and compared to other agricultural feedstock it shows low competition with food, feed or fiber. This paper analyses on the one hand the sustainable potential of cereal straw for energy application in Germany considering the actual agricultural conditions, and on the other hand the global warming potential from different energy provision chains based on straw. Different humus-balance tools that are able to assess the organic matter (OM) demand to presume soil fertility. The analysis of straw potentials was applied at NUTS 3 level for Germany, based on statistical data. The results of this analysis were used as input data for the modeling of concepts for straw provision and use. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were calculated for each concept in order to compare the global warming potential of various energy applications, to investigate the relative contribution of different production steps and to compare them with fossil energy applications. In total, 29.8 Tg of straw (fresh matter) are produced annually in Germany (1999-2007). Approximately 4.8 Tg of the total straw occurrence are annually required by animal husbandry. Between 7.97 and 13.25 Tg straw can be classified as sustainable straw. Highest straw potential (3.99 Mg ha(-1)) can be found in parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. But there are also regions that show a net deficit. The cumulated GHG emissions for the resulting concepts are between 8 and 35 g CO2-eq. MJ(-1). In comparison to fossil energy applications, the highest reduction potential occurs for concepts for combined heat and power (CHP) provision, i.e. 223 g CO2-eq. MJ(el)(-1). This study highlights the possible contribution of straw as renewable energy carrier, but also demonstrates that there are regional restrictions for straw use. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on technologies which use thermo-chemical or biochemical processes to convert biomass into electricity. We present the results from an expert elicitation exercise involving sixteen leading experts coming from different EU Member States. Aim of the elicitation was to assess the potential cost reduction of RD&D (research, development and demonstration) efforts and to identify barriers to the diffusion of these technologies. The research sheds light on the future potential of bioenergy technologies both in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and non-OECD countries. The results we present are an important input both for the integrated assessment modeling community and for policy makers who draft public RD&D strategies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The emergence of biofuel as a renewable energy source offers opportunities for significant climate change mitigation and greater energy independence to many countries. At the same time, biofuel represents the possibility of substitution between energy and food. For developing countries like India, which imports over 75% of its crude oil, fossil fuels pose two risks-global warming pollution and long-term risk that oil prices will undermine real living standards. This paper examines India's options for managing energy price risk in three ways: biofuel development, energy efficiency promotion, and food productivity improvements. Our salient results suggest that biodiesel shows promise as a transport fuel substitute that can be produced in ways that fully utilize marginal agricultural resources and hence promote rural livelihoods. First-generation bioethanol, by contrast, appears to have a limited ability to offset the impacts of oil price hikes. Combining the biodiesel expansion policy with energy efficiency improvements and food productivity increases proved to be a more effective strategy to enhance both energy and food security, help mitigate climate change, and cushion the economy against oil price shocks. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing use of groundwater for irrigation is linked to high energy demand, depleting resources and resulting in a high carbon footprint. This paper explores how improved on-farm irrigation management can help in reducing groundwater extraction, limiting energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In Pakistan, every year about 50 billion cubic metres (BCM) of groundwater is pumped for irrigation, which consumes more than 6 billion kWh of electricity and 3.5 billion litres of diesel. Carbon emissions attributed to this energy use amount to 3.8 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2 per year. Considerable research carried out in Pakistan has suggested that improved irrigation management can significantly reduce the irrigation water applied to different crops. This study revealed that by adopting improved irrigation schedules, water productivity will increase and groundwater withdrawals for irrigation can be reduced by 24 BCM. Reduced groundwater extraction will result in a 62% decline in energy demand (1.5 billion litres of diesel as most of the private tubewells run on diesel) and a 40% reduction in carbon emissions. In addition, a reduction in irrigation applications will also be beneficial for stabilizing groundwater tables and groundwater quality. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This article considers carbon footprints as a form of climate governance. Drawing on science studies to consider the contingent nature of calculative devices and governmentality studies to examine the intrinsic relationship between how problems are framed and remedied, this article advances two arguments. First, it argues that efforts to define and deploy carbon footprints contributed to a conceptual shift in emissions accounting, from a narrower metric focused on emissions from fossil fuel and electricity useCarbon Footprint 1.0to a more expansive metric that includes emissions embodied in consumption and tradeCarbon Footprint 2.0. Second, this article argues that these approaches to carbon footprints at the individual level have intersected with broader discussions about allocating emissions responsibilities and examining mitigation strategies at the national and international levels, offering alternative grounds for assigning responsibility for climate-change mitigation and expanding the range of policy options available for addressing emissions.The climate change mitigation mechanism Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD+) is currently being negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Integrating biodiversity monitoring into REDD+ facilitates compliance with the safeguards stipulated by the UNFCCC to exclude environmental risks. Interviews with actors engaged in REDD+ implementation and biodiversity conservation at the national and sub-national level in Peru (n = 30) and a literature review (n = 58) were conducted to pinpoint constraints and opportunities for monitoring effects of REDD+ management interventions on biodiversity, and to identify relevant biodiversity data and indicators. It was found that particularly sub-national actors, who were frequently involved in REDD+ pilot projects, acknowledge the availability of biodiversity data. Actors at both the national and sub-national levels, however, criticized data gaps and data being scattered across biodiversity research organizations. Most of the literature reviewed (78 %) included indicators on the state of certain biodiversity aspects, especially mammals. Indicators for pressure on biodiversity, impacts on environmental functions, or policy responses to environmental threats were addressed less frequently (31, 21, and 10 %, respectively). Integrating biodiversity concerns in carbon monitoring schemes was considered to have potential, although few specific examples were identified. The involvement of biodiversity research organizations in sub-national REDD+ activities enhances monitoring capacities. It is discussed how improvements in collaboration among actors from the project to the national level could facilitate the evaluation of existing information at the national level. Monitoring changes in ecosystem services may increase the ecological and socioeconomic viability of REDD+.Edge effects of native forest fragmentation have been well studied, but there are few studies of open-ground habitats fragmented by plantation forests. We measure forestry edge effects on open-ground breeding birds, following one of Europe's biggest and most controversial land-use transformations. The Flow Country' of northern Scotland is one of the world's greatest expanses of blanket bog. It became fragmented by conifer forests planted in the late 20th century, and these now adjoin open peatlands protected under European conservation legislation. Detrimental edge effects on breeding birds were anticipated, but not apparent shortly after planting. Using survey data collected in 2003-2006, and logistic regression modelling, we tested whether breeding distributions of three wader species of international conservation concern, dunlin, European golden plover and common greenshank, were influenced by distance to forest edge, controlling for habitat and topography. All three species were more likely to occupy flatter, more exposed ground close to bog pools and were influenced by peatland vegetation structure. There was an additive and adverse effect of proximity to forest edge for dunlin and European golden plover, but not common greenshank. This effect was strongest within 700m of forest edges. We used these results to predict which areas should benefit most from removal of adjacent forestry and so guide maintenance and restoration of the bird interests of the protected areas.Synthesis and applications. Edge effects of mature forestry on dunlin and golden plover are apparent over several hundred metres and are now being used to guide forest planning in northern Scotland. The scale of edge effect is broadly consistent with other avian studies in open-ground habitats across Eurasia and North America, so buffer zones of this order are consistent with possible impacts of plantation forestry on open-ground habitats of bird conservation interest. Given renewed interest in conifer afforestation as a climate change mitigation measure, an improved understanding of edge effects and the mechanisms through which they operate is vital to managing plantation forestry in ways that maintain open-ground landscapes of high conservation value. Edge effects of mature forestry on dunlin and golden plover are apparent over several hundred metres and are now being used to guide forest planning in northern Scotland. The scale of edge effect is broadly consistent with other avian studies in open-ground habitats across Eurasia and North America, so buffer zones of this order are consistent with possible impacts of plantation forestry on open-ground habitats of bird conservation interest. Given renewed interest in conifer afforestation as a climate change mitigation measure, an improved understanding of edge effects and the mechanisms through which they operate is vital to managing plantation forestry in ways that maintain open-ground landscapes of high conservation value.In the near future global environmental issues, such as ensuring clean air, water, no pollution and assuring the future sustainability of our planet and its resources will drive developments in land use changes, transport policies, energy and carbon pricing and other climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. Urban and peri-urban areas hugely affect global climate change since they consume as much as 75% of commercial energy; generate as much as 80% of all waste and 60% of greenhouse gas emissions(3). We argue that in view of climate change the need and demand for the collection, management and use of reliable spatial information and communication technologies (or Geo-ICT) intensifies to assure the integrated sustainability of the policies used to tackle global, national and local environmental issues. Based on three case studies (the Dutch Kadaster, HeatMap Overlay and the Solar Atlas of Berlin) and a review of recent empirical and policy literature, our findings support the view that cadastres and land registration organizations have an important role to play as part of a wider spatial information infrastructure in adapting and mitigating climate change in cities as a core and part of a wider spatial information infrastructure essential for sustainable urban governance.Objective: To provide an overview of the shared structural causes of obesity and climate change, and analyse policies that could be implemented in Australia to both equitably reduce obesity rates and contribute to mitigating climate change. Methods: Informed by the political economy of health theoretical framework, a review was conducted of the literature on the shared causes of, and solutions to, obesity and climate change. Policies with potential co-benefits for climate change and obesity were then analysed based upon their feasibility and capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and equitably reduce obesity rates in Australia. Results: Policies with potential co-benefits fit within three broad categories: those to replace car use with low-emissions, active modes of transport; those to improve diets and reduce emissions from the food system; and macro-level economic policies to reduce the over-consumption of food and fossil fuel energy. Conclusion: Given the complex causes of both problems, it is argued that a full spectrum of complementary strategies across different sectors should be utilised. Implications: Such an approach would have significant public health, social and environmental benefits.This paper analyzes the results of the climate-energy-economy model, Regionalized Model of Investment and Technological Development (REMIND), to assess the regional costs of climate-change mitigation for reaching the 2 degrees C target with a medium to high likelihood. We assume that the global climate regime remains fragmented until 2020 after which a global mitigation target is adopted. We decompose the regional mitigation costs into (a) domestic and energy trade effects and (b) permit trade effects. Delaying cooperative action affects domestic costs by increasing the energy system's costs as a consequence of lock-in of carbon-intensive infrastructures. This is particularly true in developing countries with low near-term emissions reduction commitments. In a global cap-and-trade system, the effect of delayed action highly depends on whether or not the regions are over-or under-allocated with emissions allowances in the long term. Those with allowances exceeding their long-term emissions will likely benefit from the delay, while others suffer the consequences of higher long-term carbon prices.Transitioning to a low-carbon economy will require significant investment to transform energy systems, alter the built environment and adapt infrastructure. A strategy to finance this investment is needed if the limit of a 2 degrees C increase in global mean temperatures is to be respected. Also, high-income countries have pledged to pay the "agreed full incremental costs" of climate-change mitigation by developing countries, which are not necessarily the same as incremental investment costs. Building on simulations using Integrated Assessment Models and historical evidence, this paper explores some of the issues posed by this dual financing challenge. We discuss the "fiscal self-reliance" of the energy sector, finding that carbon pricing would generate sufficient fiscal revenues within each region to finance total investment in energy supply. Even when allowing for trade in emission permits, regional carbon fiscal revenues should still suffice to cover both their own investment in energy supply and permit purchases from abroad. We show that incremental energy-supply investment (and saving) needs are well within the range of past variation of aggregate investment, and argue that the challenge is rather to ensure that revenues from carbon pricing and other sources are complemented by investment in the appropriate sectors. But fairness and equity are likely to warrant transfers from advanced industrial countries to developing nations.The implementation of mitigation policies will be complicated by several real-world imperfections ("second-best conditions") and constraints typically not included in the more idealized economies assumed in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), based on which such policies are derived. But which of these numerous imperfections found in real economies are actually relevant in this context? And how could they - in principle - be taken into account by IAMs? Based on a literature review, we propose a typology of three categories of obstacles inhibiting "first-best" conditions and outcomes: first, obstacles impeding the setting of least-cost abatement incentives; second, obstacles limiting the supply and exploitation of abatement options; and, third, obstacles creating distortions between the price and marginal costs of abatement. By reviewing the implementation of energy policy in China, we put our typology into practice and identify specific empirical evidence for each category. IAMs in principle can (and in practice often do) incorporate several relevant obstacles by means of additional cost or quantity constraints. However, the nature of some obstacles relating to strategic interactions between economic agents appears to be incompatible with the standard representative agent social-planner framework often employed in IAMs, suggesting a need for complementary analysis with decentralized "Integrated Policy Assessment Models".This study assesses how climate impacts on agriculture may change the evolution of the agricultural and energy systems in meeting the end-of-century radiative forcing targets of the representative concentration pathways (RCPs). We build on the recently completed Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP) exercise that has produced global gridded estimates of future crop yields for major agricultural crops using climate model projections of the RCPs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). For this study we use the bias-corrected outputs of the HadGEM2-ES climate model as inputs to the LPJmL crop growth model, and the outputs of LPJmL to modify inputs to the GCAM integrated assessment model. Our results indicate that agricultural climate impacts generally lead to an increase in global cropland, as compared with corresponding emissions scenarios that do not consider climate impacts on agricultural productivity. This is driven mostly by negative impacts on wheat, rice, other grains, and oil crops. Still, including agricultural climate impacts does not significantly increase the costs or change the technological strategies of global, whole-system emissions mitigation. In fact, to meet the most aggressive climate change mitigation target (2.6W/m(2) in 2100), the net mitigation costs are slightly lower when agricultural climate impacts are considered. Key contributing factors to these results are (a) low levels of climate change in the low-forcing scenarios, (b) adaptation to climate impacts simulated in GCAM through inter-regional shifting in the production of agricultural goods, and (c) positive average climate impacts on bioenergy crop yields.This paper is a review of the most recent literature on the interaction between climate change, land-use and energy, based on the analysis of papers collected through the most relevant scientific literature databases. A total of 114 papers published between 2000 and 2011 were reviewed. The aims of this review are: in general (1) to identify the different research topics that have been developed related to the interaction between climate change, land-use and energy;. more specifically, (2) to analyze what are the most suitable spatial and temporal scales of investigation to focus on for actions and strategies to reduce critical issues in the field of energy and environment; (3) to identify which actions and strategies are deemed as the most appropriate to mitigate critical issues in energy and environment; and given the research gaps found in the review, (4) to propose research recommendation's in the context of effective climate-energy planning. We argue that there are certain gaps and needs for a "nested" environmental governance. It is necessary to understand how different environmental policies overlap and how they can be integrated in order to verify whether there are conflicting targets that may negate each other in the long term. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper critically screens 153 lifecycle studies covering a broad range of wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation technologies to identify 41 of the most relevant, recent, rigorous, original, and complete assessments so that the dynamics of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions profiles can be determined. When viewed in a holistic manner, including initial materials extraction, manufacturing, use and disposal/decommissioning, these 41 studies show that both wind and solar systems are directly tied to and responsible for GHG emissions. They are thus not actually emissions free technologies. Moreover, by spotlighting the lifecycle stages and physical characteristics of these technologies that are most responsible for emissions, improvements can be made to lower their carbon footprint. As such, through in-depth examination of the results of these studies and the variations therein, this article uncovers best practices in wind and solar design and deployment that can better inform climate change mitigation efforts in the electricity sector. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While the primary purpose of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is climate change mitigation, it may have enormous co-benefits for biodiversity conservation. Biodiversity monitoring is essential for REDD+ to safeguard biodiversity. However, methods of biodiversity monitoring have not yet been established, because there is, so far, no reliable metric of biodiversity. Tree assemblage can be a promising indicator for biodiversity monitoring in REDD+, because the sampling of trees is relatively easy and inexpensive, tree diversity often correlates with that of the other taxa, and patterns in remotely-sensed data of forest canopies often correlate with floristic patterns, implying a potential tool of large-scale monitoring of trees. However, it is still unclear (1) which metric (e.g., species richness and species composition) of tree species is more appropriate as an evaluation metric, and (2) how to reduce the cost of tree identification in inventory. We examined (1) the robustness of the two major evaluation metrics (species richness and species composition) as a surrogate of forest degradation, and (2) the cost-effectiveness of two different approaches (i.e., one is raising taxonomic level from species to genus and the other is raising lower limit dbh from 10 cm to 20 cm). We established fifty 20 m-radius circular plots across primary to highly-degraded forests in each of the three logging concessions in Borneo. Stem density and species richness (the number of species per unit number of stems) of shade-tolerant and pioneer species were positively and negatively correlated, respectively, with increasing above-ground biomass (AGB). Total species richness sharply increased with increasing AGB, and became nearly asymptotic when AGB was >200 Mg ha(-1). By contrast, community composition (nMDS axis 1 scores) varied linearly with AGB in all concessions, indicating that community composition (but not richness) is a sensitive and robust metric to evaluate the magnitude of forest degradation. Patterns in species composition corresponded to those in generic composition. Generic-level identification could save the efforts of inventory by 60%, compared with species-level identification. Monitoring generic composition of canopy trees in 50-60 plots in a logging concession will be the most adequate method to detect effects (either negative or positive) of management on biodiversity during a REDD+ project. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Regrowing forests on cleared land is a key strategy to achieve both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation globally. Maximizing these co-benefits, however, remains theoretically and technically challenging because of the complex relationship between carbon sequestration and biodiversity in forests, the strong influence of climate variability and landscape position on forest development, the large number of restoration strategies possible, and long time-frames needed to declare success. Through the synthesis of three decades of knowledge on forest dynamics and plant functional traits combined with decision science, we demonstrate that we cannot always maximize carbon sequestration by simply increasing the functional trait diversity of trees planted. The relationships between plant functional diversity, carbon sequestration rates above ground and in the soil are dependent on climate and landscape positions. We show how to manage identities' and complementarities' between plant functional traits to achieve systematically maximal cobenefits in various climate and landscape contexts. We provide examples of optimal planting and thinning rules that satisfy this ecological strategy and guide the restoration of forests that are rich in both carbon and plant functional diversity. Our framework provides the first mechanistic approach for generating decision-makingrules that can be used to manage forests for multiple objectives, and supports joined carbon credit and biodiversity conservation initiatives, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation REDD+. The decision framework can also be linked to species distribution models and socio-economic models to find restoration solutions that maximize simultaneously biodiversity, carbon stocks, and other ecosystem services across landscapes. Our study provides the foundation for developing and testing cost-effective and adaptable forest management rules to achieve biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and other socio-economic co-benefits under global change.Ancient anthrosols known as Amazonian dark earths or terra preta are part of the human built landscape and often represent valuable landscape capital for modern Amazonian populations in the form of fertile agricultural soils. The fertility, resilience, and large stocks of carbon in terra preta have inspired research on their possible role in soil fertility management and also serve as an example for a growing biochar industry it is claimed will sequester carbon for climate change mitigation. Although there is considerable scientific and public interest in terra preta, there is still much debate and little concrete knowledge of the specific processes and contexts of its formation. Research indicates that the formation of terra preta occurred mainly in midden deposits, themselves patterned around habitation areas, public areas, and routes of movement. Data from topographic mapping, soil analyses, and excavations in three regions of Amazonia demonstrate a widespread pattern of anthrosol formation in ring-shaped mounds surrounding flat terraces that extend across large areas of prehistoric settlements. It is hypothesized that there is a widespread type or types of occupation where the terraces were domestic areas (houses or yards) surrounded by refuse disposal areas in middens which built up into mounds over time, forming large deposits of terra preta and creating what could be called a 'middenscape'. Initial results support the hypotheses, showing the interrelationship of residential and public areas, anthrosols, routes of movement, and natural resources. The patterning of anthrosols in ancient settlements indicates the use of space and can therefore serve as a basis for comparison of community spatial organization between sites and regions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Future land cover will have a significant impact on climate and is strongly influenced by the extent of agricultural land use. Differing assumptions of crop yield increase and carbon pricing mitigation strategies affect projected expansion of agricultural land in future scenarios. In the representative concentration pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5) from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), the carbon effects of these land cover changes are included, although the biogeophysical effects are not. The afforestation in RCP4.5 has important biogeophysical impacts on climate, in addition to the land carbon changes, which are directly related to the assumption of crop yield increase and the universal carbon tax. To investigate the biogeophysical climatic impact of combinations of agricultural crop yield increases and carbon pricing mitigation, five scenarios of land-use change based on RCP4.5 are used as inputs to an earth system model [Hadley Centre Global Environment Model, version 2-Earth System (HadGEM2-ES)]. In the scenario with the greatest increase in agricultural land (as a result of no increase in crop yield and no climate mitigation) there is a significant -0.49 K worldwide cooling by 2100 compared to a control scenario with no land-use change. Regional cooling is up to -2.2 K annually in northeastern Asia. Including carbon feedbacks from the land-use change gives a small global cooling of -0.067 K. This work shows that there are significant impacts from biogeophysical land-use changes caused by assumptions of crop yield and carbon mitigation, which mean that land carbon is not the whole story. It also elucidates the potential conflict between cooling from biogeophysical climate effects of land-use change and wider environmental aims.The negligible levels of energy-related GHG emissions attributable to the Southern African sub-region translates into the sub-region contributing relatively little towards global climate change. Notwithstanding, the member states comprising the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are among the most vulnerable to the trans boundary effects of global climate change. Existing SADC climate change policy documents highlight the important role of the energy sector in climate change mitigation. Furthermore, various international, African Union and SADC legal instruments stress the crucial role of harmonised law and policy as climate change adaptive measure. It is the central hypothesis of this paper that harmonised sub-regional law and policy aimed at regulating SADC member states' mitigation efforts in the energy sector is a crucial climate change adaptive strategy. This hypothesis is based on the mandates for the formulation of a SADC climate change action plan and for mitigation in the energy sector. These mandates are contained in the texts of the SADC-CNGO Climate Change Agenda, 2012 and the Southern Africa Sub - Regional Framework on Climate Change, 2010 respectively. It is the main aim of this paper to investigate recent developments in the formulation of harmonised SADC law and policy on climate change in general and law and policy pertaining to mitigation in the energy sector specifically. In achieving the stated aim, themes to be investigated by means of a literature study are those of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change and harmonised sub-regional policy on mitigation in the energy sector as adaptive measure in the SADC.A key issue in global conservation is how biodiversity co-benefits can be incorporated into land use and climate change mitigation activities, particularly those being negotiated under the United Nations to reduce emissions from tropical deforestation and forest degradation(1,2). Protected areas have been the dominant strategy for tropical forest conservation and they have increased substantially in recent decades(3). Avoiding deforestation by preserving carbon stored in vegetation between protected areas provides an opportunity to mitigate the effects of land use and climate change on biodiversity by maintaining habitat connectivity across landscapes. Here we use a high-resolution data set of vegetation carbon stock to map corridors traversing areas of highest biomass between protected areas in the tropics. The derived corridors contain 15% of the total unprotected aboveground carbon in the tropical region. A large number of corridors have carbon densities that approach or exceed those of the protected areas they connect, suggesting these are suitable areas for achieving both habitat connectivity and climate change mitigation benefits. To further illustrate how economic and biological information can be used for corridor prioritization on a regional scale, we conducted a multicriteria analysis of corridors in the Legal Amazon, identifying corridors with high carbon, high species richness and endemism, and low economic opportunity costs. We also assessed the vulnerability of corridors to future deforestation threat.Wine production is strongly affected by weather and climate and thus highly vulnerable to climate change. In Portugal, viticulture and wine production are an important economic activity. In the present study, current bioclimatic zoning in Portugal (1950-2000) and its projected changes under future climate conditions (2041-2070) are assessed through the analysis of an aggregated, categorized bioclimatic index (CatI) at a very high spatial resolution (near 1 km). CatI incorporates the most relevant bioclimatic characteristics of a given region, thus allowing the direct comparison between different regions. Future viticultural zoning is achieved using data from 13 climate model transient experiments following the A1B emission scenario. These data are downscaled using a two-step method of spatial pattern downscaling. This downscaling approach allows characterizing mesoclimatic influences on viticulture throughout Portugal. Results for the recent past depict the current spatial variability of Portuguese viticultural regions. Under future climate conditions, the current viticultural zoning is projected to undergo significant changes, which may represent important challenges for the Portuguese winemaking sector. The changes are quite robust across the different climate models. A lower bioclimatic diversity is also projected, resulting from a more homogeneous warm and dry climate in most of the wine regions. This will lead to changes in varietal suitability and wine characteristics of each region.Spatial differences in the supply and demand of ecosystem services such as water provisioning often imply that the demand for ecosystem services cannot be fulfilled at the local scale, but it can be fulfilled at larger scales (regional, continental). Differences in the supply:demand (S:D) ratio for a given service result in different values, and these differences might be assessed with monetary or non-monetary metrics. Water scarcity occurs where and when water resources are not enough to meet all the demands, and this affects equally the service of water provisioning and the ecosystem needs. In this study we assess the value of water in a Mediterranean basin under different global change (i.e. both climate and anthropogenic changes) and mitigation scenarios, with a non-monetary metric: the S:D ratio. We computed water balances across the Ebro basin (North-East Spain) with the spatially explicit InVEST model. We highlight the spatial and temporal mismatches existing across a single hydrological basin regarding water provisioning and its consumption, considering or not, the environmental demand (environmental flow). The study shows that water scarcity is commonly a local issue (sub-basin to region), but that all demands are met at the largest considered spatial scale (basin). This was not the case in the worst-case scenario (increasing demands and decreasing supply), as the S:D ratio at the basin scale was near 1, indicating that serious problems of water scarcity might occur in the near future even at the basin scale. The analysis of possible mitigation scenarios reveals that the impact of global change may be counteracted by the decrease of irrigated areas. Furthermore, the comparison between a non-monetary (S:D ratio) and a monetary (water price) valuation metrics reveals that the S:D ratio provides similar values and might be therefore used as a spatially explicit metric to valuate the ecosystem service water provisioning. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Optimization of power generation mix is a significant strategy of climate change mitigation for countries like India. This involves multi-objective optimization of cost reduction, emissions reduction and risk mitigation taking into account relevant constraints. We use a variant of portfolio optimization technique to generate India's 12th five year plan electricity generation portfolio taking into account the carbon costs. For fitness evaluation of a generation portfolio, we use levelized generation costs and a Comprehensive Risk Barrier Index (CRBI), the latter capturing the cost risks modulated by project implementation barrier indices. For constrained optimization, we develop a fast hybrid algorithm, namely, Intelligent Pareto-search Genetic Algorithm (IPGA), which systematically evolves successively efficient frontiers and finally converges to the global Pareto-optimal front. This algorithm combines non-dominated sorting and separate elite population, while utilizing dual mode search for faster convergence and cluster reduction strategy for enhancing diversity. Halting mechanisms have been proposed for local and global Pareto convergence. We apply this generalized algorithm to simulate the impact of carbon costs, risks and barriers on India's optimal generation portfolio. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Understanding soil dynamics is essential for making appropriate land management decisions, as soils can affect the carbon content from the atmosphere, emitting large quantities of CO2 or storing carbon. This property is essential for climate change mitigation strategies as agriculture and forestry soil management can affect the carbon cycle. The Mediterranean dehesa (Mediterranean grassland ecosystem with scattered oak trees - grazing system with Querrus ilex spp. ballota) is a silvopastoral system that integrates forestry, agricultural and livestock practices. The dehesa is characterized by the preservation of forest oaks that provide environmental services including carbon capture and storage. This paper shows the relationships between soil properties and soil organic carbon (SOC) in two soil types: Cambisols (CM) and Leptosols (LP), with two management systems: organic farming (OF) for 20 years and conventional tillage (CT) in a Mediterranean dehesa of southern Spain without cropping. An analysis of 85 soil profiles was performed in 2009 in Los Pedroches Valley (Cordoba, southem Spain). The SOC stock (SOC-S) was greater in CM (75.64 Mg ha(-1)) than in LP (44.01 Mg ha(-1)). Physical parameters were the main variables affecting soil development SOC-S was very similar in OF and CT (CM [74.90 Mg ha(-1)-CT; 76.39 Mg ha(-1)-OF] and LP [44.77 Mg ha(-1)-CT; 43.25 Mg ha(-1)-OF]). Data analysis showed that management practices had little effect on SOC storage in the study zone. Significant differences between soil types and management practices were found in SOC content for different horizons. The stratification ratio was >2 in both soils types (CM and LP) and management systems (OF and CT). These results indicate that the soil is of high quality, and that management practices have little influence on SOC-S in Los Pedroches Valley. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Successful energy planning requires substituting the standard economic model with a more transparent public participatory model because people play a fundamental role in climate change mitigation and renewable energy (RE) deployment. This approach requires improving communication with society and enabling smooth delivery of easy to digest information to citizens in both formal and informal educational settings. In this context, education and teachers, as the principal components, are recognized as one mechanism. We conducted a survey-based study, collecting 260 questionnaires from secondary school teachers in Jordan aiming to investigate their knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes toward RE development. The main findings of this study revealed that teachers have limited knowledge of RE and neutral perceptions regarding its use. However, teachers showed clear positive attitudes toward RE development. Overall, male teachers exhibited slightly higher knowledge of RE and female teachers held stronger positive attitudes. A number of socio-demographic and work related factors did not influence the teachers' knowledge and attitudes toward RE. It was also found that teachers require personal training regarding RE before it is introduced into school curricula. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Stronger demand for medium- to long-haul air transport is the main driver of the tourism industry's increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, causing the current development of global tourism to be environmentally unsustainable. Efficiency improvements and biofuel usage are unlikely to maintain pace with the projected growth in transport volume. Therefore, curbing the growing demand for air transport has been suggested as another option for the sustainable development of tourism. However, the political and industry discourse concerning the restriction of air transport tends to label such a restriction as unethical, as such limits would impair the development that tourism brings to poor countries. This paper investigates the possible impacts of air travel restrictions on the least developed countries (LDCs) and non-LDCs by examining global tourism. The impacts on LDCs are found to be 'neutral' on average, with both losses and gains in tourist arrivals. The extent of any losses does not appear to be beyond the scope of possible economic compensation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Accurate and spatially-explicit maps of tropical forest carbon stocks are needed to implement carbon offset mechanisms such as REDD+ (Reduced Deforestation and Degradation Plus). The Random Forest machine learning algorithm may aid carbon mapping applications using remotely-sensed data. However, Random Forest has never been compared to traditional and potentially more reliable techniques such as regionally stratified sampling and upscaling, and it has rarely been employed with spatial data. Here, we evaluated the performance of Random Forest in upscaling airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)-based carbon estimates compared to the stratification approach over a 16-million hectare focal area of the Western Amazon. We considered two runs of Random Forest, both with and without spatial contextual modeling by including-in the latter case-x, and y position directly in the model. In each case, we set aside 8 million hectares (i.e., half of the focal area) for validation; this rigorous test of Random Forest went above and beyond the internal validation normally compiled by the algorithm (i.e., called "out-of-bag"), which proved insufficient for this spatial application. In this heterogeneous region of Northern Peru, the model with spatial context was the best preforming run of Random Forest, and explained 59% of LiDAR-based carbon estimates within the validation area, compared to 37% for stratification or 43% by Random Forest without spatial context. With the 60% improvement in explained variation, RMSE against validation LiDAR samples improved from 33 to 26 Mg C ha(-1) when using Random Forest with spatial context. Our results suggest that spatial context should be considered when using Random Forest, and that doing so may result in substantially improved carbon stock modeling for purposes of climate change mitigation.The transition to low carbon infrastructure systems required to meet climate change mitigation targets will involve an unprecedented roll-out of technologies reliant upon materials not previously widespread in infrastructure. Many of these materials (including lithium and rare earth metals) are at risk of supply disruption. To ensure the future sustainability and resilience of infrastructure, circular economy policies must be crafted to manage these critical materials effectively. These policies can only be effective if supported by an understanding of the material demands of infrastructure transition and what reuse and recycling options are possible given the future availability of end-of-life stocks. This Article presents a novel, enhanced stocks and flows model for the dynamic assessment of material demands resulting from infrastructure transitions. By including a hierarchical, nested description of infrastructure technologies, their components, and the materials they contain, this model can be used to quantify the effectiveness of recovery at both a technology remanufacturing and reuse level and a material recycling level. The model's potential is demonstrated on a case study on the roll-out of electric vehicles in the UK forecast by UK Department of Energy and Climate Change scenarios. The results suggest policy action should be taken to ensure Li-ion battery recycling infrastructure is in place by 2025 and NdFeB motor magnets should be designed for reuse. This could result in a reduction in primary demand for lithium of 40% and neodymium of 70%.Comprehensive data on the capacity and rates of change for carbon pools in managed and unmanaged forests is essential for evaluating climate change mitigation options being considered by policy makers at regional and national levels. We currently lack real and long-term data on forest carbon dynamics covering a wide range of forest management practices and conditions. Because of this, selecting the best policies for conserving forest carbon must rely on forest growth and yield models such as US Forest Service (USFS) Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) to predict the future forest carbon impacts of management actions. FVS may underestimate the capacity of older stands to accumulate carbon because the model relies on USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis data that lack data from late-successional and old-growth (LSOG) stands. Improving these models will increase the likelihood of selecting policies that successfully use forests to reduce atmospheric carbon. From 1995 to 2002, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences conducted research on 65 10 m by 50 m permanent plots to evaluate forest structure (standing live and dead trees, and down coarse woody material) in LSOG stands across northern Maine. We re-measured these plots in 2011 to assess long-term carbon sequestration trends in LSOG stands of common forest types in the Northern Forest region for above ground alive, standing dead, and coarse woody material carbon pools. Late-successional (LS) and Old-growth (OG) aboveground live carbon (C) stocks were very high relative to regional mean C stocks (2.0-2.5 times the mean), LS plots were accumulating aboveground live C at a positive rate (0.61 Mg ha(-1) year(-1)), while C stocks on OG plots are declining (-0.54 Mg ha(-1) year(-1)). This change is driven by the presence of beech bark fungus (Nectria sp.) that is leading to mortality in larger diameter American beech (Fagus grandifolia) trees. We also found that the Northeast Variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator is not a reliable predictor of aboveground live carbon accumulation rates in Northeastern LS and OG stands. This work provides important baselines for understanding the role of older forests and forest management within climate change mitigation strategies in the northeastern US. Late-successional and old-growth forests can play an important role in mitigating climate change, but understanding and quantifying natural disturbance risk to forest carbon stocks is critical for successful implementation of mitigation strategies. Further, regional forest carbon models will need calibration to accurately predict carbon accumulation rates in older forests. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Large uncertainty surrounds projections of global sea-level rise, resulting from uncertainty about future warming and an incomplete understanding of the complex processes and feedback mechanisms that cause sea level to rise. Consequently, existing models produce widely differing predictions of sea-level rise even for the same temperature scenario. Here we present results of a broad survey of 90 experts who were amongst the most active scientific publishers on the topic of sea level in recent years. They provided a probabilistic assessment of sea-level rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300 under two contrasting temperature scenarios. For the low scenario, which limits warming to <2 degrees C above pre-industrial temperature and has slowly falling temperature after AD 2050, the median 'likely' range provided by the experts is 0.4-0.6 m by AD 2100 and 0.6-1.0 m by AD 2300, suggesting a good chance to limit future sea-level rise to <1.0 m if climate mitigation measures are successfully implemented. In contrast, for the high warming scenario (4.5 degrees C by AD 2100 and 8 degrees C in AD 2300) the median likely ranges are 0.7-1.2 m by AD 2100 and 2.0-3.0 m by AD 2300, calling into question the future survival of some coastal cities and low-lying island nations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Various policy instruments along with increasing oil prices have contributed to a sixfold increase in global biofuels production over the last decade (2000-2010). This rapid growth has proved controversial, however, and has raised concerns over potential conflicts with global food security and climate change mitigation. To address these concerns, policy support is now focused on advanced or second-generation biofuels instead of crop-based first-generation biofuels. This policy shift, together with the global financial crisis, has slowed the growth of biofuels production, which has remained stagnant since 2010. Based upon a review of the literature, this paper examines the potential long-run contribution of biofuels to the global energy mix, particularly for transportation. We find that the contribution of biofuels to global transportation fuel demand is likely to be limited to around 5% over the next 10-15 years. However, a number of studies suggest that biofuels could contribute up to a quarter of global transportation fuel demand by 2050, provided technological breakthroughs reduce the costs of sustainably produced advanced biofuels to a level where they can compete with petroleum fuels.Resistance to adopting a cap on greenhouse gas emissions internationally, and across various national contexts, has encouraged alternative climate change mitigation proposals. These proposals include separately targeting clean energy uptake and demand-side efficiency in individual end-use sectors, an approach to climate change mitigation which we characterize as segmental and technology-centered. A debate has ensued on the detailed implementation of these policies in particular national contexts, but less attention has been paid to the general factors determining the effectiveness of a segmental approach to emissions reduction. We address this topic by probing the interdependencies of segmental policies and their collective ability to control emissions. First, we show for the case of U.S. electricity how the set of suitable energy technologies depends on demand-side efficiency, and changes with the stringency of climate targets. Under a high-efficiency scenario, carbon-free technologies must supply 60-80% of U.S. electricity demand to meet an emissions reduction target of 80% below 1990 levels by midcentury. Second, we quantify the enhanced propensity to exceed any intended emissions target with this approach, even if goals are set on both the supply and demand side, due to the multiplicative accumulation of emissions error. For example, a 10% error in complying with separate policies on the demand and supply side would combine to result in a 20% error in emissions. Third, we discuss why despite these risks, the enhanced planning capability of a segmental approach may help counteract growing infrastructural inertia. The emissions reduction impediment due to infrastructural inertia is significant in the electricity sectors of each of the greatest emitters: China, the U.S., and Europe. Commonly cited climate targets are still within reach but, as we show, would require more than a 50% reduction in the carbon intensity of new power plants built in these regions over the next decade.The literature on equity and justice in climate change mitigation has largely focused on North-South relations and equity between states. However, some initiatives (e.g. the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme (REDD), and voluntary carbon markets (VCMs)) are already establishing multi-level governance structures that involve communities from developing countries in global mitigation efforts. This poses new equity and justice dilemmas: how the burdens and benefits of mitigation are shared across various levels and how host communities are positioned in multi-level governance structures. A review of the existing literature is used to distill a framework for distinguishing between four axes of climate justice from the perspective of communities. Empirical evidence from African and Asian carbon market projects is used to assess the distributive and procedural justice implications for host communities. The evidence suggests that host communities often benefit little from carbon market projects and find it difficult to protect their interests. Capacity building, attention to local power relations, supervision of business practices, promotion of projects with primarily development aims and an active involvement of non-state actors as bridges between local communities and the national/international levels could potentially contribute towards addressing some of the key justice concerns.Policy relevance International negotiations on the institutional frameworks that are envisaged to govern carbon markets are proceeding at a rather slow pace. As a consequence, host countries and private-sector actors are making their own arrangements to safeguard the interests of local communities. While several standards have emerged to guide carbon market activity on the ground, distributive as well as procedural justice concerns nevertheless remain salient. Four empirical case studies across Asia and Africa show that within the multi-scale and multi-actor carbon market governance, local-level actors often lack sufficient agency to advance their claims and protect their interests. This evidence suggests that ameliorating policy reforms are needed to enhance the positioning of local communities. Doing so is important to ensure future acceptability of carbon market activity in potential host communities as well as for ensuring their broader legitimacy.Over 40 studies that analyse future GHG emissions allowances or reduction targets for different regions based on a wide range of effort-sharing approaches and long-term concentration stabilization levels are compared. This updates previous work undertaken for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Regional reduction targets differ significantly for each effort-sharing approach. For example, in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 1990 region, new proposals that emphasize the equity principles of responsibility, capability, and need, and those based on equal cumulative per capita emissions (carbon budgets), lead to relatively stringent emissions reduction targets. In order to reach a low concentration stabilization level of 450ppm CO(2)e, the allowances under all effort sharing approaches in OECD1990 for 2030 would be approximately half of the emissions of 2010 with a large range, roughly two-thirds in the Economies in Transition (EIT), roughly at the 2010 emissions level or slightly below in Asia, slightly above the 2010 level in the Middle East and Africa and well below the 2010 level in Latin America. For 2050, allowances in OECD1990 and EIT would be a fraction of today's emissions, approximately half of 2010 emission levels in Asia, and possibly less than half of the 2010 level in Latin America.Policy relevanceThe concept of equity and the stringency of future national GHG reduction targets are at the heart of the current debate on the new international climate change agreement to be adopted in 2015. Policy insights gained from an analysis of over 40 studies, which have quantitatively analysed the proposed GHG reduction targets, are presented. It is found that the outcome of effort-sharing approaches is often largely determined by the way the equity principle is implemented and that the distributional impacts of such approaches can be significantly different depending on the criteria used, the stabilization level and shape of the global emissions pathway. However, the current literature only covers a small proportion of the possible allocation approaches. There should thus be an in-depth modelling comparison to ensure consistency and comparability of results and inform decision making regarding the reduction of GHG emissions.Labile pools of soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (N) are affecting the carbon (C) and N fluxes in the terrestrial soils, whereas long-term C and N storage is determined by the long-lived recalcitrant fractions. Tillage and subsurface drainage influences these pools; however, the effect of these systems on poorly drained soils may be different. Therefore, the present study was conducted on a field experiment, established at the Waterman Farm of the Ohio State University in 1994. Specific objectives of the study are to assess the influence of no-tillage (NT), chisel tillage (CT) with drainage (TD) and non-drainage (ND) management under a continuous corn (Zea mays L.) system on SOC, C fractions (heavy and light), and water stable aggregates (WSA). Data from this study showed that the SOC stock for the NT was 25, 37 and 32% higher for the 0-10, 10-20 and 40-60cm depths, respectively, as compared to that under CT system. Tillage significantly influenced the light fraction (LF) and heavy fraction (HF) of carbon. The NT system increased LF and HF by 10 and 12%, respectively, compared to CT for the 0-10cm depth. Eighteen years of NT management decreased soil bulk density and improved macroaggregates and mean weight diameter compared to that under CT system. Drainage impacts on soil parameters were negligible, and may be partially due to the reason that the corn-corn cropping system may not have sufficiently improved the soil properties between the two tillage systems. In general, drainage improved porosity and the corn yield. It can be concluded that NT with subsurface management improves SOC dynamics and promotes aggregation and corn yield as compared to that with CT system.In this article we present an application of the energy and climate policy Interactions (ECPI) decision support tool for qualitative ex-ante assessment of 21 combinations of energy policy instruments. Considering the weight given to each criterion of ECPI, we reached an overall result that policy instruments are considered quite fungible as regards their integration to an overall energy policy mix. Interactions of policy instruments for increasing renewable energy sources utilization with energy efficiency improvement and climate change mitigation instruments present a substantial added value compared to their stand-alone implementation.As would be expected, the rapid expansion of energy production and consumption has brought with it a wide range of environmental issues at the local, regional, and global levels. With respect to global environmental issues, Turkey's carbon dioxide emissions have grown along with its energy consumption. States have played a leading role in protecting the environment by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. In this regard, renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solutions for clean and sustainable energy development in Turkey. Turkey's geographical location has several advantages for extensive use of most of these renewable energy sources. This article presents a review of the energy and environmental policies in Turkey. Over the last few decades, a number of Turkish citizens who live in the eastern part of country have migrated to the western part of the country. This caused some problems in the energy utilization and environmental pollution in the western regions in Turkey. For this reason, in the coming decades, global environmental issues could significantly affect patterns of energy use in Turkey.The climate changes and detailed analysis of the district heating system (DHS) in Tuzla pointed out the demand for revision of all the system. The first time we did the analyses of DHS Tuzla was 5 years ago. Through more survey and analyses which we have done in the past 5 y, it became clear that improving the efficiency of energy production, distribution and consumption will be a key method of climate change mitigation. We have decided to develop and utilize technical solutions by which the total thermal, temperature and electrical losses in district heating distribution systems can be further reduced. Besides technical solutions, it is necessary to develop sustainable development strategy and optimal management of the district heating system (Olofsson et al., 2013). Total energy savings in the last three heating season was 142,473 MWh. We had the best results in savings in the last season -88,086 MWh. Implementation new technical solutions based on the first time analysis and new methodology in the system management made possible these results.The CARBOLAB project is funded by the European program RFCS (Research Fund for Coal and Steel). It gathers six partners from Spain, France and Poland. One of the main tasks of this project is to perform in-situ CO2 injection in a coal seam located at 464 m depth in the Montsacro pit, Asturias, Spain. Injection of CO2 in coal seams is one of the options for climate change mitigation but it presents lots of uncertainties and technical difficulties. Therefore work is needed to better constraint the processes especially the adsorption of CO2 and the subsequent desorption of CH4. This work consists in experimental laboratory work, modelling aspects and real tests. This paper is focused on this last topic and more specifically on the water monitoring aspects. Complementary investigations on the gas phase can be found in other works presented by Lafortune et al. in this conference. In-situ injection of CO2 has been performed in July 2013 in one selected coal seam. The CO2 is injected directly in the vein and monitoring boreholes are located at the wall and in the surrounding sedimentary formations. The aim is to get a detailed and representative overview of the consequences of the CO2 injection. Here the focus is on the geochemical monitoring. Baseline acquisitions have been performed in 2012 and early 2013. This allowed to define a strategy mainly focused on the monitoring of the saturated zone albeit the site was initially thought to be drier. Acquisitions in the unsaturated zone (free gas phase) have also been done but in a less extent. Chemical logging of water saturated boreholes (GC1S and GC3N, parallel to the seam) revealed, even at short distance, the existence of different water masses from one side of the coal vein to the other. This is mainly linked to a difference in the amount of dissolved solids in water. During the injection experiment, no noticeable deviations from the baseline values were found for GC1S borehole. At the opposite, the bottom of GC3N experienced strong changes: decrease of more than 2.5 pH units, rise of the electrical conductivity (+29%) and of the alkalinity (+23%). Breakthrough in GC3N cannot be timed precisely as work in the gallery was not continuous, but occurred sometime in between the 05 and the 08 of July (the injection started on the 03 July). The changes on the physico-chemical parameters are linked to changes in concentrations for some major elements and some trace elements. Ca and Mg concentrations were progressively enriched in the water phase whereas species like Na or K remained at stable levels in lien with the geology of the rock formations. Trace elements such as Sr, Ni, Mn, Zn or Ba have experienced rises of their concentrations by factors of 2 to 10. Changes in dissolved gas concentrations were also found for GC3N borehole, the enrichment in CO2 being prominent (2 orders of magnitude enrichment). The monitoring of the free gas phase suggests that the main part of the CO2 has not been injected in the coal seam but rather in the aquifer, on the side of GC3N borehole. Moreover, a strong leakage has been noticed close to the injection borehole wellhead, quantification of the flux with appropriate flux chamber leading to leakage rates of around 20 to 70 l/h. Carbon isotope ratios may suggest a little influence of the seepage from the wellhead in the atmosphere of the gallery, a depletion of the ratio being noticed at the end of the monitoring period. The free gas phase existing at the top of GC3N was not really enriched in CO2 (the water phase does) but on the contrary deviations of the carbon ratio from baseline data are obvious. Such statements have been done e.g. in Norway during a similar CO2 injection in rock formations. Even if the injection has suffered from deviations from the initial plan, it has been possible to detect the injected CO2 on all the monitored compartments but only on one borehole. Geochemical monitoring methods prove once again their sensitivity and their adaptability to changing conditions. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The first CO2 Field Lab built in Brazil was developed at the Ressacada Farm, in Florianopolis, SC with the goal of diminishing technical gaps in CO2 storage covering research in Measuring, Monitoring and Verification (MMV) techniques, a need identified in the PETROBRAS Strategic Plan. Through the Company R&D Center (CENPES), and the Climate Change Mitigation Technological Program (PROCLIMA), PETROBRAS is sponsoring a joint 4-year research Project, in which both company and local academia personnel are collaborating to deploy, test and assess multiple near-surface CO2 detection technologies. Longer term objectives include the validation of accurate and efficient detection, measurement and quantification tools to be deployed in large scale commercial CGS (Carbon Geological Storage) sites scheduled to be installed in the country to assist in validating storage efficiency and minimizing risk. In September 2013, the first CO2 injection campaign was carried out, in which small volumes of gaseous food-grade industrial CO2 (with a delta C-13 signature of ca.-32 ppmil) were injected into the ground at shallow levels through a vertical 3 m depth well and then migrated into the atmosphere. The campaign was run over 12 days, for 24 hours a day, at injection rates low enough not to offer any risks to the formation integrity and enabled the simultaneous assessment of CO2 behavior in the soil, in the groundwater, at the surface and in the air. This paper presents an overview of the atmospheric measurements carried out at Ressacada, covering the background, injection and post-injection scenarios. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Currently one of the main challenges in CO2 storage research is the development, testing and validation of accurate and efficient Measuring, Monitoring and Verification (MMV) techniques to be deployed at geological sequestration sites that are cost effective yet help minimize risk. This perspective motivated PETROBRAS, the National Oil Major in Brazil, through its R&D investments portfolio to prioritize research projects that would contribute to decreasing the technological gap in the area. The Company's periodic surveys indicated the lack of infrastructure, as well as expertise in CO2 MMV, as two of the most critical issues at the national level. In order to bridge that gap, initial steps were taken in 2010 for the start-up and development of the first CO2 MMV Field Lab in Brazil, fully sponsored by PETROBRAS, with a long term goal of enabling the ranking of the best, most cost-effective MMV technology alternatives to be deployed at commercial large scale CCGS sites scheduled to be installed in the country. In addition to providing basic infrastructure to carry out the CO2 injection and controlled release experiments, the facility was designed for the simultaneous testing of multiple measuring methodologies. Additional benefits of the initiative are the creation of expertise and the acceleration of the know-how in MMV in Brazil, as well as the development of a deeper and more practical knowledge of CO2 dynamics and impacts in a real world, open air scenario. Under the full support of the PETROBRAS R&D Center (CENPES), through its Climate Change Mitigation Technological Program (PROCLIMA), the Brazilian Pilot CO2 MMV Lab was made possible through a joint 4-year research Project, conceived and carried out by PETROBRAS and local academia in Brazil, in close cooperation with international experts. An overview of the Project and the multiple research areas encompassed will be presented, together with the preliminary results of the first CO2 injection campaign, which took place in 2013. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by ElsevierSeveral of the world's most carbon-intensive industries have no current alternatives to CCS for deep emissions reduction because much of the CO2 is unavoidably generated by their production processes, not only from fuel use. As a consequence, many models of global decarbonisation foresee a potentially critical role for CCS. The importance of CCS in industrial applications is not matched by existing policy attention and in some key sectors technological progress is slow. CCS suffers from several market failures that confront other low-carbon technologies. In contrast to the power sector, the trade-exposure of the manufacturing and hydrocarbon sectors that would need to deploy CCS exacerbates these market failures and poses significant challenges for policy that creates the foundations for long-term climate change mitigation. Smart policy design will be able to facilitate a transition to a situation in which CCS is actually used to decrease costs, specifically those associated with greenhouse gas abatement. In a world that seriously confronts the climate challenge the first firms that install CCS will reap the benefits of reducing their marginal production costs and in the long run consumers will benefit from lower prices. In addition, producers and users of fossil fuels in sectors where marginal abatement costs could be very high, such as transport, will benefit from some relief from emissions costs as CCS in industrial applications creates headroom within a declining carbon budget. This paper attempts to address two specific questions that policy makers will need to tackle in order to design such policies: how could technology development be accelerated to ensure its availability for deployment in the 2020s?; how might incentive policies be designed to support commercial CCS investments in trade-exposed sectors? (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Norway is among a handful of countries with an explicit policy to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS) at both national and international levels. This paper investigates the internal and external driving forces behind Norway's efforts to advance CCS as a global climate change mitigation option. The ambition is twofold: First, a mapping of Norway's public CCS policy with emphasis on the externally directed efforts is offered based on interviews and document studies. Second, it is explained how CCS foreign policy was chosen as a prioritized means of climate change mitigation policy in Norway. The study is conducted with the application of Foreign Policy Analysis. From the outside-in perspective, the international climate regime is emphasized. From the inside-out perspective, bureaucratic politics is in focus. It is found that the winning coalition behind the domestic CCS agenda also directed CCS foreign policy design and implementation. The CCS foreign policy offers a means to fulfil Norway's regime obligations on terms that harmonize the potential conflict of maintaining a political economy reliant on petroleum exports with a credible climate change mitigation policy. It is shown how technology R&D for global use has been a key ingredient in this context. It is also explored how the CCS foreign policy was materialized with the means of official development assistance and other funding mechanisms. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) is a key climate mitigation technology that can global CO2 emissions by thousands of megatonnes of CO2 annually. CCS is almost certainly required, along with a wide portfolio of other technologies in an "all of the above" strategy, to achieve the reductions in global CO2 emissions necessary to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Despite many high-profile demonstration projects, commercial-scale CCS deployment is still impeded by multiple issues including economic viability, public awareness and acceptance, and regulation and permitting. Developing a large-scale, highly visible and economically feasible CCS network-in addition to existing investment approaches-will be required to overcome these barriers to widespread CCS adoption. We propose a pathway to an integrated CCS network that connects multiple industrial CO2 sources and geologic storage reservoirs using existing CCS technologies. Specifically, we propose that such a network could utilize CO2 emissions from ethylene manufacturing for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, creating a regional ethylene: CO2-EOR network. The ethylene market presents several key advantages for capturing CO2: ethylene is a high-value chemical with a price that can readily absorb capture costs (unlike fossil fuel electricity generation), ethylene sources are both closely clustered and emit a large volume of CO2, and existing capture technology is cost-competitive when coupled with nearby EOR reservoirs. Our analysis describes the techno-economic potential of CO2 capture and EOR, the potential policy implications, and how the ethylene industry could be an ideal first-mover for jumpstarting commercial-scale CCS operations. As part of this analysis we identify the costs and CO2 flows for ethylene production and EOR across the Gulf Coast region. We introduce the concepts of "byproduct CO2" (CO2 as a byproduct or waste stream from an existing industry such as power generation) and "extracted CO2" (naturally-occurring CO2 extracted from subsurface reservoirs for EOR); extracted CO2 cannot decrease the carbon footprint of oil production, unlike byproduct CO2. We also suggest ethylene: CO2-EOR as a blueprint for other regional-scale byproduct CO2-E OR projects such as the Alberta oil sands, Marcellus and other U.S. shale fields, and large-scale coal-to-liquid and coal-to-chemical operations in China. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Carbon dioxide capture and geological storage (CCS) is regarded as a promising option for climate change mitigation; however, the high capture cost is the major barrier to large-scale deployment of CCS technologies. High-purity CO2 emission sources can reduce or even avoid the capture requirements and costs. Among these high-purity CO2 sources, certain coal chemical industry processes are very important, especially in China. In this paper, the basic characteristics of coal chemical industries in China is investigated and analyzed. As of 2013 there were more than 100 coal chemical plants in operation. These emission sources together emit 430 million tons CO2 per year, of which about 30% are emit high-purity and pure O-2 (CO2 concentration > 80% and > 98.5% respectively). Four typical source-sink pairs are chosen for techno-economic evaluation, including site screening and selection, source-sink matching, concept design, and economic evaluation. The technical-economic evaluation shows that the levelized cost of a CO2 capture and aquifer storage project in the coal chemistry industry ranges from 14 USD/t to 17 USD/t CO2. When a 15USD/t CO2 tax and 20USD/t for CO2 sold to EOR are considered, the levelized cost of CCS project are negative, which suggests a benefit from some of these CCS projects. This might provide China CCS projects in the near future. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper aims to place discussions about CO2 utilisation onto a more secure foundation from the perspective of climate change mitigation. A conceptual framework is proposed that comprises three criteria for evaluating CO2 utilisation options from the viewpoint of emission reduction potential. This framework places life cycle analysis at its forefront. Examples of emissions benefits for thermodynamic minimum energy inputs and possible real-world conditions are used to show that not all CO2 utilisation is equally beneficial from a climate perspective. Most current and potential uses of CO2 do not appear to yet satisfy the three main criteria of emission reduction benefits, revenue to cover CO2 feedstock costs and meaningful scale. The notable exceptions are certain (geographically limited) approaches to enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). Due to the energy required to convert CO2 to useful products it appears highly likely that reducing CO2 emissions through CO2 utilisation will only be possible if the electricity (and, in some cases, the thermal energy) inputs are from renewable sources. This raises questions about the most appropriate use of renewable resources, especially if they are to be employed for the purpose of partially mitigating emissions from large stationary fossil fuel combustion plants. It also raises questions about how to match the potential revenue from and scale of CO2 utilisation based on variable renewable resources with investments in CO2 capture at meaningful scales. CO2 utilisation options that can proceed without a CO2 capture and purification step or can be located in regions where CCS is an ongoing commercial business may offer good opportunities for further development if they can scale to multi-million tonne per year activities. Climate policies that aim to support revenues for CO2 utilisation activities will need to carefully consider how the fossil fuel value chain allocates liability for environmental damages associated with life cycle emissions; these are likely to be greater than zero but not accurately predictable. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Energy-efficient lighting is one of the key measures for addressing electricity price rise and climate change mitigation, and fluorescent lamps are expected to dominate the lighting market in Malaysia over the next several years. Lighting energy consumption always tends to be under-assessed. The research was carried out on Techno-Economical feasibility study of Corridor lighting fixture energy saving by using motion sensors. Lighting with motion sensors which controls dimming of the lamp has been proposed as one effective mode to reduce electrical consumption. The ability to dim the lights is an important feature in home lighting, corridors of office buildings, and it is also one way to extend the life of fluorescent lamps. The measurement was taken two (2) times per day to simulate the eight (8) office hours' duration. The tools used were UTS 136 motion detection sensor and Andelia Power Meter (ADM255). Preliminary results show that approximately 35% of electrical consumption can be reduced by applying dimming motion sensors. The annual savings are estimated to be 250.0 kWh / in terms of energy, RM 4.44 / in terms of money, and 150.0 kg / in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The return of investment (ROI) is estimated to be approximately 15 months and 10 days. Electricity consumption of the lighting before and after retrofitting was monitored to verify experimental energy savings. Results indicate that a reduction of 44% is achieved. After retrofitting of the lighting fixture, the annual savings estimated are 324.40 kWh / in terms of energy, RM8.44 / in terms of money and 201.13 / in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The ROI is estimated to be approximately 9 months and 5 days.In the context of international climate policy design and negotiations, sectoral mitigation actions are discussed as options to scale up greenhouse gas mitigation and avoid dangerous climate change. One potential obstacle for crediting sectoral GHG mitigation actions is the need to agree on a credible'baseline scenario' representing the business-as-usual case of sectoral emissions. This paper explores different options for choosing indicators and technology scenarios to establish a baseline scenario for the power sector in Thailand. We argue that absolute technology diffusion targets are not suitable for calculating baseline emissions, since it is not clear whether and how Thailand will achieve its ambitious renewable energy targets. We further show that setting a baseline scenario for the emission intensity per unit of electricity - instead of absolute emissions - circumvents the significant uncertainty resulting from projections for power demand growth. However, the methodology currently used by the Thai government to calculate the emission intensity would need to be reformed to include emissions from imported electricity to ensure effective regional mitigation and avoid carbon leakage. Moreover, transparency and data collection issues need to be addressed to facilitate measurement, reporting and verification of emission reductions beyond the business-as-usual scenario.Studies have suggested the importance of implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in combination with considering possible co-benefit and trade-off among them. However, quantification of such co-benefit/trade-off at city scale is still its infancy. Accordingly, using a micro zone level spatial explicit land use model which we have developed, this study assesses the co-benefit of a mitigation measure (compact city policy) and an adaptation measure (retreat from high flood hazard areas) from the view point of CO2 emissions and expected loss due to the damage by river floods. For the assessment of residential CO2 emissions, this paper utilizes the microdata of the National survey of family income and expenditure. We show an example of effective compact city policy which attains co-benefit with an adaptation measure.Biofuels have been extensively promoted by many countries worldwide as a means to contribute to improved national energy security via reduced dependency on imported fossil fuels. They are also widely perceived as "green fuels" providing environmental benefits that are particularly emphasized for climate change mitigation through reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the rapid increase in the production and use of ethanol and biodiesel over the last decade has been accompanied with rising concerns over the environmental benefits and cost competitiveness they may offer. In this chapter the case of cassava ethanol is taken as an example to address such concerns with a particular focus on Thailand where biofuels have been actively promoted over the last 15 years. To maintain the GHG performance and cost competitiveness of cassava ethanol as compared to its fossil equivalent gasoline, careful considerations are required over a range of parameters including, but not limited to, agricultural intensification of cassava production, land use expansion/land use change, enhanced productivity and co-products utilization, etc. Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions and life-cycle costing studies have been conducted to evaluate the influence of these parameters and help maintain the benefits from biofuels.One of the topics receiving much attention in recent years is climate change and the potential of its integration in impact assessment, both in terms of achieving mitigation and adaptation. Renewable energy projects are part of the efforts to mitigate climate change, replacing the use of fossil fuel with CO2-neutral energy sources. A variety of these projects are subject to environmental impact assessment (EIA), which raises the following questions: What role does an impact assessment play? When is the project environmentally friendly? How are climate change-related impacts assessed in projects with inherent positive effects on climate change? This paper reviews practice, and takes up these questions based on a document study of 19 EIA reports of renewable energy projects in Denmark. The results show that climate change mitigation is included in 18 of the EIA reports reviewed, while adaptation is absent. Also, the results show an emphasis on positive impacts in the reports, and in a few cases discussions of enhancements. Identification and assessment of negative climate change impacts are less apparent. This leads to a discussion of the results in the light of the purpose of EIA.Short rotation coppice willow (SRCW) is a fast-growing and potentially high-yielding energy crop. Replacing fossil fuel with bioenergy has been identified as one strategy to mitigate climate change and decrease the dependency on fossil energy in Sweden. By using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, the climate impact of SRCW systems was assessed and compared. The purpose was to evaluate which key factors that influence climate mitigation potential of SRCW grown on historically tilled soils in Sweden. Carbon fluxes between soil, biomass and atmosphere were modelled by using a carbon balance model. The results indicated that SRCW can increase the soil organic carbon content and thereby lead to a climate mitigating effect. The magnitude of this mitigating effect was shown to be dependent on willow yield, where a high yield gave the highest climatic benefits. Opposite, a low yield gave the lowest mitigating effect of the studied scenarios, nevertheless it was still better than the two reference systems, district heating produced from coal or natural gas.Today, about 1,800,000 m3 of waste wood are generated on the Swiss territory. With the decision of the Federal Council to phase out nuclear energy in the medium term, new energy source need to be found to compensate the shortfall of electricity production without compromising the GHG emission reductions targets. The aim objective is to assess the long term waste wood potentials for the energy generation and climate change mitigation in Switzerland in the span of a century. The evaluation method relied on a modelling by material flux analysis (MFA) of the metabolism of wood and waste wood in the Swiss anthroposphere. The results reveal that waste wood will stays a limited energy source for the electricity generation but a significant secondary feedstock to meet the energy generation targets from the bioenergy. The heat production from waste wood has the potential to become a significant energy source to answer to the heating district demand. Thus, the relevance of the energy recovery of waste wood lies in its ability to substitute the fossil energy sources for heat demand.In the past few decades, energy scientists have focused on "renewable energy", and solar energy in particular. Several technologies are commercialized for utilizing solar energy in the buildings by absorbing solar radiation and converting it to heat and electricity. These technologies can be categorized into the passive and active systems. A special case is a commercial greenhouse, which can be considered a passive solar building. A greenhouse is a structure which is covered by a transparent device such as glass in order to use solar energy while controlling the temperature, humidity and other parameters according to the requirements for cultivation and protection of the particular plants. The cooling demand in the commercial greenhouses is commonly supplied by e.g. ventilation and thermal screen. In the ventilation method a portion of the absorbed solar energy will be lost through ventilation windows and by applying the solar shielding, solar radiation will be blocked. In this study, by considering the solar blind concept as an active system, PVT panels are integrated to absorb the surplus solar heat (instead of blocking) which is then stored in a thermal energy storage for supplying a portion of the greenhouse heating demand at a later time. The overall objective of this study is to assess the potential of cutting external energy demand as well as maximizing solar energy utilization in a commercial greenhouse for Northern climate condition. Thus, a feasibility assessment has been carried out, examining various system configurations with the TRNSYS tool. The results show that the heating demand for a commercial closed greenhouse with solar blind is reduced by 80%, down to 62 kwh/m(2) as compared to a conventional configuration. Also the annual total useful heat gain and electricity generation by solar blind in this concept is around 20 kwh/ m(2) and 80kwh/m(2), respectively. The generated electricity can be used for supplying the greenhouse power demand for e.g. artificial lighting and other devices. Moreover, the cooling demand in a closed greenhouse is reduced by 60% by considering the solar blind system. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Almost 20 years ago, the first CO2 capture and storage (CCS) project began injecting CO2 into a deep geological formation in an offshore aquifer. Relevant science has advanced in areas such as chemical engineering, geophysics, and social psychology. Governments have generously funded demonstrations. As a result, a handful of industrial-scale CCS projects are currently injecting about 15 megatons of CO2 underground annually that contribute to climate change mitigation. However, CCS is struggling to gain a foothold in the set of options for dealing with climate change. This review explores why and discusses critical conditions for CCS to emerge as a viable mitigation option. Explanations for this struggle include the absence of government action on climate change, economic crisis-induced low carbon prices, public skepticism, increasing costs, and advances in other options including renewables and shale gas. Climate change action is identified as a critical condition for progress in CCS, in addition to community support, safe storage, robust policy support, and favorable CCS market conditions.Indonesia faces a huge challenge in continuing the development of its economy while reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the same time. Using examples from the energy sector, which is the backbone of the country's economy as well as one of the largest contributors of GHG emissions, this chapter examines the climate-energy nexus in Indonesia, taking into account the various relevant policies, political contexts and institutions that have influenced the climate change and energy discourses in the country. A particular focus will be given to efforts that have tried to balance actions on climate change mitigation while addressing energy security. The chapter critically reviews policy efforts to integrate climate change objectives into energy policy, and discusses policy impediments and implementation gaps that prevent the country from smoothly integrating its climate change and energy security objectives, with the development of geothermal energy in Indonesia taken as a case study.The choice of the rate at which one should discount the long-term benefits of mitigating climate change is highly controversial. Both the level and the slope of the term structure of discount rates have been discussed intensively in relation to the determination of the social cost of carbon. Although some of the parameters of the problem are ethical and outside the scope of economic analysis, we claim that there are converging and convincing arguments in favor of using an annual real risk-free discount rate going from approximately 4% to approximately 1% for maturities going from zero to infinity. Investing in climate mitigation yields highly uncertain future benefits. Such uncertainty should also be taken into account in the selection of the discount rate, although the appropriate approach is highly controversial.Today, many countries are increasing the biofuel share in national energy supply, mainly to strengthen their domestic energy security and to protect against sudden oil price hikes. Some biofuels also provide greenhouse gas emission offsets, becoming a part of climate change mitigation framework. Second-generation liquid biofuels (e.g., lignocellulosic ethanol, algae fuel, biomethanol) are under ongoing research effort investigating conversion technologies and economic feasibility. In this chapter, we will concentrate on the economic prospects of bioethanol production from lignocellulosic materials in the USA in terms of their cost-efficiency and profitability, and implications for global commodity markets. Moreover, we will analyze the emergence of drop-in fuels (e.g., fuels that can be used in existing infrastructure) and the relative difference this makes in the potential for future market penetration.This paper estimates the economic and jobs impact of the USA displacing 1.2 billion tons of carbon emissions annually by 2030 using energy efficiency and renewable energy. We assess the technologies deployed, their costs, and the necessary time frames. We then estimate the job impacts of the policy and find that it will generate more than 4.5 million net jobs. We disaggregate the jobs created by industry, occupation, skill, and salary, and discuss the policy implications of these findings. Our major conclusion is that climate mitigation initiatives can be a major net job creator for the USA.There is an increased interest in institutions and the role they play in the context of adaptation to climate change. The present chapter contributes to the growing debate by providing an analysis of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The chapter shows that while member states originally made use of the institutional framework of ASEAN to generate a common understanding of climate change mitigation and to apply it externally, the association is now becoming increasingly accepted for internal framing of adaptation processes. Yet while ASEAN has undoubtedly 'come to terms' with climate change, the notion of sustainability, which is a key concept for any adaptation strategy, remains on a broad rhetoric level only. Results thus show that without elaborating more fundamental linkages between sustainability and the overarching topic of economic development, any adaptation strategy will be prone to fail.Many organic residue streams such as pig manure are not or inefficiently used, although they can be converted into valuable materials, as well as energy, using pyrolysis. The yield of the pyrolysis products (i.e. oil, gas and char) is dependent on the process conditions and the feedstock used. Char as a soil amendment or activated carbon are interesting options for valorization of biomass residues. Here, a review is presented of the techno-economic potential of both valorization options based on literature and own experiments with wood from phytoremediation, particle board and waste from beer production. The term "biochar" is specifically used to designate pyrolysis char that is intentionally applied to soil in order to enhance its structure and fertility. Biochar applications are often also motivated by the objective of climate change mitigation. Two main disadvantages for the economic feasibility of biochar applications have been discerned. Firstly, carbon sequestration in agricultural crops and soils is not yet eligible under the Clean Development Mechanism. Secondly, the impact of biochar on crop productivity is unclear. Activated carbon (AC) seems to have interesting adsorption characteristics resulting in potentially high sales prices. A preliminary techno-economic assessment showed that AC production is preferred above oil production for wood from phytoremediation as long as the market price of 2 kEUR.t(-1) for commercially available ACs can be attained. Whenever a feedstock with high nitrogen content is available (e.g. particle board with melamine urea formaldehyde resin), even higher market prices might be attained. This study shows that valorization of the pyrolysis char might be an answer to the slow adoption of pyrolysis in commercial applications. Focus in research and development, for instance in future research with regard to pig manure valorization, should therefore be on sustainable products with high economic value and direct utilization potential.Bagras-corn boundary planting agroforestry system for biomass production and climate change mitigation is essential options for smallholder agroforestry farms in Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon, Philippines. In this study, the multiple linear regression analysis was usedto develop an appropriate prediction modelsfor yield and biomass expansion factor from soil chemical properties, physiographic characteristics, stand attributes, rainfall and temperature. Results showed strong association of age, site index, temperature and spacing with yield (88.7 %). Based on the model, the predicted biomass accumulation at 52 trees per hectare was 24.44, 73.07 and 78.67 Mg ha(-1). The mean annual aboveground biomass accumulation was 24.44, 7.31 and 3.93 Mg ha(-1) y(-1) at ages 1, 10 and 20 years. The equation developed had shown the predicted positive response of bagras to future changes in seasonal mean temperature. Establishing bagras at a distance of 2 m, site index equal to 19 m, age set at 10 y was predicted to yield 0.1974 m(3) per tree in 2020. At 2050, yield was predicted to balloon to approximately 3.1182 m(3) per tree. Yield and biomass production in boundary plantings can be highly variable dependent on environmental and soil characteristics and tree spacing.Polanyi's concept of the 'double movement' is frequently interpreted as the opposition between the problematic and unsustainable dynamics of the market and the benign and normatively desirable reaction against this by 'society'. This paper questions this dualistic interpretation of the double movement and undertakes a problematization of the Polanyian idea of social and environmental protection. It does this by revisiting the concept of the double movement in light of the recent proliferation of market-based mechanisms for environmental regulation. Through an exploration of the different interpretations of Polanyi's work, the paper presents a dialectical reading of the double movement that conceptualizes the idea of social protection within a broader capitalist framework. This is then illustrated with the case of emissions trading as a particular form of environmental protection. Carbon trading as a mitigation strategy, it is argued, corresponds to the Polanyian idea of 'social protection' in that its protective potential to reduce emissions is itself constrained by the socioeconomic framework within which it operates. This in turn points to the need for a critique of climate mitigation efforts that goes beyond a focus on current problems with emissions trading schemes.This study aims to explore the environmental disclosure practice from an Islamic perspective. Content analysis on 2012 annual and sustainability reports of Islamic financial institutions in Malaysia has been carried out. The environmental information was collected using a developed CSR-environmental index. Study results revealed that the key environmental disclosures provided were related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and prevention of pollution type of activities. Further exploration on the prioritization of environmental activities found that the key focus of the vital activities was prevention related programmes while the recommended activities were research and development programmes, and prevention initiatives.(C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.The probably biggest challenge for climate change mitigation is to find a secure low-carbon energy supply, which especially is difficult as the supply of renewable sources underlies strong volatility and storage possibilities are limited. We therefore consider the energy sector of a small country that optimizes a portfolio consisting of fossil and/or renewable energy to cover a given energy demand, considering seasonal fluctuations in renewable energy generation. By solving these non-autonomous optimal control models with infinite horizon, we investigate the impact of fossil energy prices on the annual optimal portfolio composition shown by the obtained periodic solutions.Accelerating the development of low-carbon technologies and promoting their global diffusion, in particular in fast-growing emerging economies like China, are imperative in achieving the transition to a low-carbon economy. In this paper, the question of patent licensing for low-carbon technologies is addressed in the context of climate change mitigation. It discusses the motives of licensors and licensees and explores new patterns of low-carbon technology licensing as effective solutions to facilitate low-carbon technology transfer from developed to developing countries. The design of low-carbon patented technology licensing market and the implications of these developments for public policy are concluded.A key challenge in the twenty-first century is to enable economic growth and increase both environmental quality and social inclusiveness, while mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. The need for a transition to more sustainable consumption and production patterns is undeniable and sustainable economic growth must be placed at the heart of future development for all citizens. The South African private sector is under enormous pressure to remain globally competitive while balancing the interests of society, the environment and its shareholders. It has been suggested that there are discrepancies between what companies say and what they actually do, as they are challenged to move from policy to action. This paper evaluates the extent to which the private sector in South Africa adheres to voluntary climate change mitigation mechanisms and identifies potential market barriers impeding the large-scale uptake of such mechanisms. The research findings suggest that the private sector in South Africa has adopted a "take position, wait and see approach" which places them in a position to take advantage of and influence the opportunities and risks associated with climate change without having a negative impact on the bottom line. The primary barrier to voluntary climate change action is the vagueness of local and international policy frameworks. The different rules and resultant uncertainty around local and international frameworks appear to impede consistent and meaningful action. Although this uncertainty does not prevent the private sector from taking voluntary action, it does appear to negatively affect the overall scale and type of climate change mitigation efforts. While companies are continually improving the quality of sustainability reporting and public disclosure, the challenge still lies in translating these strategies into daily operations and sustainable practice that goes beyond ad hoc mitigation actions.The world rapidly urbanizing, and a majority of the global population will experience climate change in cities. Climate change will exacerbate the existing urban environmental management challenges in cities, in most cases making existing problems much worse. At the same time, cities are responsible for significant global greenhouse gas emissions, and given current demographic trends, this level will likely only increase over time. These challenges highlight the need for cities to rethink how assets are deployed and infrastructure investments are prioritized as well as how climate will affect long-term growth and development plans. Since responding to the complex challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation requires a knowledge-based approach, the present research is based on providing a tool for assessing the climate co-benefits of improving performance of the energy system at the city scale. This research aims to assess the expected co-benefits arising from different sub-sectors of the city-wide energy system. It will also address in some detail the role of executive policy targets support to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and air pollution in cities. The tool is initially tested using real data for the city of Yokohama, Japan and estimates that the city's envisioned Smart City Project could achieve GHG reduction of about 1.68Mt/yr. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Power generation is one of the industrial sectors with major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (especially CO2). For climate change mitigation, a special attention is given to the reduction of CO2 emissions by applying capture and storage techniques in which CO2 is captured from energy-intensive processes and then stored in suitable safe geologic locations. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are expected to play a significant role in the coming decades for curbing the greenhouse gas emissions and to ensure a sustainable development of power generation and other energy-intensive industrial sectors (e. g. cement, metallurgy, petro-chemical etc.). Among various carbon capture options, chemical looping systems are very promising options for intrinsically capture CO2 with lower cost and energy penalties. This paper evaluates calcium looping process as a promising carbon capture option to be applied in the most important coal-based power generation technologies. Combustion technology (Pulverized Fuel - PF) operated in both sub-critical and super-critical steam conditions were evaluated. Also, the gasification technology using an oxygen-blown entrained-flow gasifier was evaluated. As benchmark options, the same power generation technologies were evaluated without CCS. The power plant case studies investigated in the paper produces around 545 - 560 MW net power with at least 90% carbon capture rate. The modeling and simulation of the whole power generation schemes produced the input data for quantitative technical and environmental evaluations of power plants with carbon capture (similar power plant concept without CCS was used as reference for comparison). Mass and energy integration tools were used to assess the integration aspects of calcium looping unit into the whole power plant design, to optimize the overall efficiency and to evaluate the main sources of energy penalty for carbon capture. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).The city's 2-dimensional spatial structure and 3-dimensional form significantly influence its energy and GHG emission intensity. In rapidly developing urban-regions, the ability of the local planning authorities to quantify the spatial structure and form of existing urban areas, new developments and the emergent urban-region in terms of GHG emission is vital to any effective local, national and global climate change mitigation effort. While a wide array of tools has been developed for assessing built environment sustainability at various spatial scales, these are predominantly eco-efficiency rating tools that do not model the 'spatial structure-GHG' relationship and do not illustrate the GHG implications of urban structure and form, which crucially inform local planning decisions with respect to climate change mitigation. This paper takes the first steps in analysing three spatial-based planning models (Envision Tomorrow, GHGProof, URBEMIS) that estimate GHG emissions towards assessing their adaptability for application in Malaysian cities. It looks into the models' "inner working", unpacking the variables and their relationships; assumptions and conversion rates used; and their data requirement and structure. The models' characteristics and features are critically compared to evaluate their capabilities, limitations and relevance to the Malaysian urban planning context, particularly in terms of data availability.The Great Mekong Subregion (GMS) contains one of the world's largest tropical forests and plays a vital role in sustainable development and provides a range of economic, social and environmental benefits, including essential ecosystem services such as climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, the forest in this Subregion is experiencing deforestation rates at high level due to human activities. The reduction of the forest area has negative influence to the environmental and natural resources issues, particularly, more severe disasters have occurred due to global warming and the release of the greenhouse gases. Therefore, in order to conduct forest management in the Subregion efficiently, the Forest Cover and Carbon Mapping in Greater Mekong Subregion and Malaysia project was initialized by the Asia-Pacific Network for Sustainable Forest Management and Rehabilitation (APFNet) with the collaboration of various research institutions including Institute of Forest Resource Information Technique (IFRIT), Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF) and the countries in Sub region and Malaysia comprises of Cambodia, the People's Republic of China (Yunnan province and Guangxi province), Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The main target of the project is to apply the intensive use of recent satellite remote sensing technology, establishing regional forest cover maps, documenting forest change processes and estimating carbon storage in the GMS and Malaysia. In this paper, the authors present the implementation of the project in Thailand and demonstrate the result of forest cover mapping in the whole country in 2005 and 2010. The result of the project will contribute towards developing efficient tools to support decision makers to clearly understand the dynamic change of the forest cover which could benefit sustainable forest resource management in Thailand and the whole Subregion.To dim or not to dim? That is the choice that streetlighting engineers across the world are currently having to make. In the context of austerity politics, increased local-scale responsibility for climate-change mitigation and the emergence of technological developments, this choice of how to provide streetlighting has become newly politicised. In particular, new opportunities for streetlighting practice, including the use of efficient LED lighting and 'computer management systems' for controlling smart urban lighting, have emerged. This research paper draws from the concept of assemblage in order to argue that the practices of developing policy knowledge in this area of technological change need to be connected with understandings of lived experiences of infrastructure. Through interviews conducted with lighting engineers at local authorities in England, I explore the techniques and practices involved in generating the knowledge required to make choices with regards to new technologies and innovative practices. In particular, I argue that, while drawing on experiments and trials allows local authority lighting engineers to measure and understand certain features of an assemblage, it also leaves a significant gap with regards to the more tacit and experiential ways in which people engage with infrastructure on a day-to-day basis. This results in a number of uncertainties which local authority staff are aware of, but which they struggle to overcome. As such, this research comments on the difficulties inherent to understanding assemblages, and the ways in which choices are made at the intersection of energy policy, social governance, and technological innovation.Extreme weather events related to climate change in the future are likely to increase a number and scale of disasters. In order to prepare for these changes and the impacts they will have on natural systems and human communities, it is need "climate change adaptation". Understandably, much attention has been focused to date on "climate change mitigation," or efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere and help slow the rate of climate change. Climate change adaptation and mitigation are related, and both are important for local government because adaptation to climate change needs to be on going. Successful adaptation will require not only good information about climate change, and prioritization of actions, but also the ability to implement responses and modify hose responses over time. This paper summarizes some literatures to demonstrate that there are some different inclusive partnership approaches that have been taken to conduct mitigation and adaptation planning in East Kalimantan. Those approaches of climate change mitigation and adaptation planning provide better understanding on the usage of planning in any different levels of mitigation and adaptation and its limitation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.This paper introduces a modeling framework where a top-down integrated assessment model is soft-linked with a more detailed capacity expansion model for the European power system. This approach aims at adding regional sector specific details to results from climate change mitigation policy studies with a global scope. In particular, the goal is to analyze the cost minimizing investment plan required to achieve a predefined low-carbon power generation mix. Results like country-wise investments in generation and transmission capacity are obtained. The framework is used to analyze three global climate policy scenarios.Over the past 40 years, Nepal has become renowned for its community-based forestry policies, initiatives, and institutions, characterized by local autonomy in decisions about forest management and use and a gradual shift toward more inclusive national policy processes. In recent years, the government, international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), donors, and some civil society organizations have instigated policy and piloting initiatives for an international climate change mitigation scheme known as "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries" (REDD+). Although many people see REDD+ as a means of bolstering forest conservation efforts and enhancing rural livelihoods, its broader implications for decentralized forest governance in Nepal and elsewhere remain uncertain and contested. Using policy network analysis and theories of polycentric and network governance, I examined influence, inclusiveness, and deliberation among actors involved in REDD+ policy making in Nepal. Data were collected between June and December 2011 through a survey of 34 organizations from government, civil society, educational and research institutions, international NGOs and donors, and the private sector. I investigated whether policy processes and the configurations of actors involved reflect state-centric, market-oriented, or polycentric governance, and I discuss the implications for decentralized forest governance in general and for the implementation of REDD+ in particular. Results indicate that REDD+ policy making is dominated by a "development triangle", a tripartite coalition of key government actors, external organizations (international NGOs and donors), and select civil society organizations. As a result, the views and interests of other important stakeholders have been marginalized, threatening recentralized forest governance and hampering the effective implementation of REDD+ in Nepal.Use of biomass fuel in traditional cooking stove (TCS) is the long-established practice that exhibits incomplete combustion and generates substances with global warming potential (GWP). Improved cooking stove (ICS) has been developed worldwide as an alternative household fuel burning device, a climate change mitigation strategy as well. A study was conducted in the female Forest User Groups (FUGs) of Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh to assess the status of ICS disseminated by the Forest Department (FD) under Nishorgo Support Project along with the community's biomass fuel consumption pattern. Consumption of wood fuel was highest (345 kg month(-1) household(-1)) followed by agricultural residues (60 kg month(-1) household(-1)), tree-leaves (51 kg month(-1) household(-1)) and cow-dung (25 kg month(-1) household(-1)). Neighboring forest of the sanctuary was revealed as the core source for wood fuel with little or no reduction in the extraction even after joining the FUG. Twenty two species, both indigenous and introduced, were found in preference for wood fuel by the community. None of the respondents were found willing to use ICS although 43 % of them owned it; either as the status symbol or to meet the condition of the FD to continue membership in FUG. Seven negative features of the disseminated ICS were identified by the households that made them unwilling to use it further. Manufacturing faults may be responsible for the ICS's demerits and FD's negligence was liable to the failure of convincing the community. A proper examination of the disseminated ICS's efficacy is crucial with active involvement of the community members. The Sustainable Energy Triangle Strategy (SETS) could be implemented for this purpose. Findings of the study would be of immense importance in designing the strategy for the introduction of ICS in Bangladesh.A critical discourse analysis (CDA) of three pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) initiatives promoting low-carbon lifestyles in the UK showcased on BBC Radio 4 illustrates the discursive struggles over meaning involved in the various framings of climate change mitigation policies. Climate change mitigation policies are framed in various competing and coalescing ways in political circles, most commonly as economic opportunities but in some instances as an ethical obligation. While the 'win-win' framing associated with the ecological modernisation and green consumption discourses is the most dominant in official UK climate change mitigation policy, PEB initiatives seem to draw on a more diverse, sometimes normative, set of framings to induce behavioural change.Water is accumulated in reservoirs to adapt in time the availability of the resource to various demands like hydropower production, irrigation, water supply or ecological constraints. Deterministic dynamic programming retrospectively optimizes the use of the resource during a given time period. One of its by-products is the estimation of the marginal storage water value (MSWV), defined by the marginal value of the future goods and benefits obtained from an additional unit of storage water volume. Knowledge of the MSWV makes it possible to determine a posteriori the storage requirement scheme that would have led to the best equilibrium between the resource and the demand. The MSWV depends on the water level in the reservoir and shows seasonal as well as inter-annual variations. This study uses the inter-annual average of both the storage requirement scheme and the MSWV cycle as signatures of the best temporal equilibrium that is achievable in a given resource/demand context (the climatological equilibrium). For a simplified water resource system in a French mountainous region, we characterize how and why these signatures change should the climate and/or the demand change, mainly if changes are projected in the mean regional temperature (increase) and/or precipitation (decrease) as well as in the water demand for energy production and/or maintenance of a minimum reservoir level. Results show that the temporal equilibrium between water resource and demand either improves or degrades depending on the considered future scenario. In all scenarios, the seasonality of MSWV changes when, for example, earlier water storage is required to efficiently satisfy increasing summer water demand. Finally, understanding how MSWV signatures change helps to understand changes in the storage requirement scheme.Water safety and climate mitigation measures are global concerns. In this study, climate variability and related health implications were examined. The data included 11,101 outpatient records in the Luwero district from the Ugandan Ministry of Health database, the records of 2,358 outpatients connected with water-related health risks linked to climate variability (diseases such as cholera, typhoid, acute diarrhoea and dysentery) from seven sub-county health centres, monthly mean rainfall data for 30 years (1977-2007), and information from 90 households that harvest rainwater near the local health units. Using a logistic regression, the analysis controlled for the following list of social factors that potentially influence capabilities: personal characteristics (education), cultural norms, the capacity to cope with shocks, seasonal variation, societal favouritism and community segregation. Integrated water management, man-made induced activities and information on effects of climate variability were important in mitigation planning. Young people, including those under the age of 18, were significantly more vulnerable than people of other ages to water-related health risks linked to climate variability. Although both the young and the elderly are susceptible to waterborne illnesses, the findings reveal a link to climate variability, which is inadequately emphasised. We recommend persistence in climate mitigation measures and control against water-related risks.With increasing concerns of the growing emissions of greenhouse gases on a global scale by government agencies, academics, non-governmental organizations (NGO's) and businesses, the carbon offsetting market around the world has evolved. During this worldwide evolution, however, North America has remained at a near standstill with regards to carbon offsetting [1]. The compliance and voluntary offsetting market, often seen as a temporary solution to mitigating climate change, has faced criticism on the actual projects and the lack of standards in place. This in turn has produced a high level of consumer confusion regarding the credibility of carbon offsets and its overall impact on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study determines the status of the voluntary carbon offset market in North America and the current level of the hospitality and tourism industry in mitigating its impact on climate change.Aerosol properties have been monitored by ground-based in situ and remote sensing measurements at the station for atmospheric research located in Ispra, on the edge of the Po Valley, for almost one decade. In situ measurements are performed according to Global Atmosphere Watch recommendations, and quality is assured through the participation in regular inter-laboratory comparisons. Sun-photometer data are produced by the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). Data show significant decreasing trends over the 2004-2010 period for a number of variables, including particulate matter (PM) mass concentration, aerosol scattering, backscattering and absorption coefficients, and aerosol optical thickness (AOT). In situ measurement data show no significant trends in the aerosol backscatter ratio, but they do show a significant decreasing trend of about -0.7 +/- 0.3% yr(-1) in the aerosol single scattering albedo (SSA) in the visible light range. Similar trends are observed in the SSA retrieved from sun-photometer measurements. Correlations appear between in situ PM mass concentration and aerosol scattering coefficient, on the one hand, and elemental carbon (EC) concentration and aerosol absorption coefficient, on the other hand. However, no increase in the EC / PM ratio was observed, which could have explained the decrease in SSA. The application of a simple approximation to calculate the direct radiative forcing by aerosols suggests a significant diminution in their cooling effect, mainly due to the decrease in AOT. Applying the methodology we present to those sites, where the necessary suite of measurements is available, would provide important information to inform future policies for air-quality enhancement and fast climate change mitigation.Intercontinental transport of atmospheric pollution (ITAP) can offset the impact of local emission control efforts, impact human and ecosystem health, and play a role in climate forcing. This study aims to determine the role of ITAP caused by East Asian anthropogenic emissions (EAAEs) under current and future emission and climate scenarios. The contribution from EAAEs is determined using a "brute force method" in which results from simulations with and without EAAEs are compared. ITAP from East Asia is enhanced in the future due to faster wind speeds aloft and a stronger low pressure center near eastern Russia that facilitate enhanced westerly export in the free troposphere and stronger southerly transport near the surface, increased gaseous precursor emissions, and increased temperatures. As a result, the contribution of ozone (O-3) generated by EAAEs to the global average O-3 mixing ratio increases by similar to 0.8 ppb from 1.2 ppb in 2001 to 2.0 ppb in 2050. The contribution of PM2.5 generated by EAAEs to the global PM2.5 level increases by similar to 0.07 mu g m(-3) from 0.32 mu g m(-3) in 2001 to 0.39 mu g m(-3) in 2050, despite a non-homogenous response in PM2.5 resulting from cloud and radiative feedbacks. EAAEs can increase East Asian biogenic secondary organic aerosol by 10-81 %, indicating that it is largely controllable. EAAEs also increase the deposition of nitrogen, black carbon, and mercury both locally and downwind, implying that they may play a role in climate feedbacks and ecosystem health of these regions. These results show that EAAEs have a large impact on global air quality and climate, especially on downwind regions. Such impacts may be enhanced under future climate and emission scenarios, demonstrating a need to synergize global pollution control and climate mitigation efforts.In this chapter we discuss major issues regarding life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental performance analysis of wood-based building materials. We follow the life cycle of a wood product, beginning with a discussion of sustainable forestry and the growth of trees. We then discuss the processes of manufacturing wood-based building products, focusing on issues of adhesives and preservatives. We discuss the design and construction of buildings and infrastructure made of wood, with an emphasis on eco-design processes. We describe the system-wide material and energy flows associated with wood-based construction in a life cycle perspective, and discuss the climate benefits of using wood material from sustainably managed forests.Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Forest Enhancement (REDD+) has become a central focus of global climate change mitigation efforts. Even though the international demand for forest-based carbon sequestration is the key driver of REDD+, forest protection strategies must be implemented on the ground. This cross-scale nature of REDD+ explains why scholars and policy makers increasingly favor nested governance arrangements over either fully centralized or fully decentralized REDD+ governance. The focus of the literature on nested REDD+ governance has mostly been on monitoring, reporting, and verification of carbon emission reductions across sub-national, national, and international levels. We build on Ostrom's principle of 'nested enterprises' to argue that REDD+ must be designed to systematically and formally link national policy reforms with the organization and execution of sub-national (regional and local) forest conservation efforts led by forest users. We also contribute new insights on the political dimensions of nestedness in REDD+, with important roles for inter-community forestry associations and forest rights movements.Researchers assessed the spatial distribution of soil chemical properties and nutrients at four depths in a clay loam soil cropped to corn and soybean at Freeman farm of Lincoln University. Soil samples were taken at depths of 0-10, 10-20, 20-40, and 40-60 cm in a 4.05-ha field and analyzed for acidity or basicity (pH), cation exchange capacity (CEC), total carbon (TC), organic matter (OM), base saturations on the CEC, ammonium (NH4+), nitrate (NO3-), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), sulfur (S), magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), and zinc (Zn). Results showed that coefficients of variation (CV) ranged between 5 and 30%, except for TC, NO3-, and Zn, which had greater CVs. Soil chemical properties and nutrients responded to exponential, linear, Gaussian, and spherical variogram models with nugget-to-sill ratios <= 1.0 and effective ranges from 4 to 56 m. Fractal analysis showed that CEC in all depths belonged to the 1.99 >= D3 >= 1.90 group, which suggests great disorder and antipersistence in the spatial structure.Water scarcity conditions over the 21st century both globally and regionally are assessed in the context of climate change and climate mitigation policies, by estimating both water availability and water demand within the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), a leading community-integrated assessment model of energy, agriculture, climate, and water. To quantify changes in future water availability, a new gridded water-balance global hydrologic model - namely, the Global Water Availability Model (GWAM) - is developed and evaluated. Global water demands for six major demand sectors (irrigation, livestock, domestic, electricity generation, primary energy production, and manufacturing) are modeled in GCAM at the regional scale (14 geopolitical regions, 151 sub-regions) and then spatially downscaled to 0.5 degrees x 0.5 degrees resolution to match the scale of GWAM. Using a baseline scenario (i.e., no climate change mitigation policy) with radiative forcing reaching 8.8 W m(-2) (equivalent to the SRES A1Fi emission scenario) and three climate policy scenarios with increasing mitigation stringency of 7.7, 5.5, and 4.2 W m(-2) (equivalent to the SRES A2, B2, and B1 emission scenarios, respectively), we investigate the effects of emission mitigation policies on water scarcity. Two carbon tax regimes (a universal carbon tax (UCT) which includes land use change emissions, and a fossil fuel and industrial emissions carbon tax (FFICT) which excludes land use change emissions) are analyzed. The baseline scenario results in more than half of the world population living under extreme water scarcity by the end of the 21st century. Additionally, in years 2050 and 2095, 36% (28%) and 44% (39%) of the global population, respectively, is projected to live in grid cells (in basins) that will experience greater water demands than the amount of available water in a year (i.e., the water scarcity index (WSI) > 1.0). When comparing the climate policy scenarios to the baseline scenario while maintaining the same baseline socioeconomic assumptions, water scarcity declines under a UCT mitigation policy but increases with a FFICT mitigation scenario by the year 2095, particularly with more stringent climate mitigation targets. Under the FFICT scenario, water scarcity is projected to increase, driven by higher water demands for bio-energy crops.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evidence for a positive correlation between increased consumption of organic products and potential climate change mitigation via decreased consumption of meat and it is discussed to what extent organic consumption is motivated by climate change concerns. Design/methodology/approach - A fixed effects model together with a factor analysis and ordinary least square are used to analyse household purchase data for 2,000 households in 2006-2010 combined with survey questionnaire data from 2008. Findings - A small but statistically significant correlation between increasing organic budget shares and decreasing meat budget shares is found. People include food-related behaviour such as the purchase of organic food and reduced meat consumption as ways to mitigate climate change. However, other behavioural modifications such as reduction of car usage and household heating are perceived as more important strategies. Research limitations/implications - Other food-related mitigation strategies could be investigated. The climate effect of different diets - and how to motivate consumers to pursue them - could be investigated. Individual as opposed to household data would supplement the analyses. Practical implications - Demand-side policies aiming at climate-friendly consumption could be a central factor in combating climate change. Already, food-related mitigation strategies such as lowered meat consumption are established practices among a group of organic consumers. As some consumers believe that climate change can be mitigated by consuming organic food, the authors propose that this is taken into account in the development of organic farming. Originality/value - The authors propose a shift from analysing the climate-friendliness of production to addressing the climate- friendliness of consumption using consumption of organic food as a case. The authors link stated concerns for climate changes with actual food-related behaviour.Purpose - This paper aims to review the developments in India with respect to clean development mechanism (CDM) of Kyoto Protocol to assess the achievements during first Kyoto Protocol period (2008-2012) in climate change mitigation and suggest measure for better participation during the second commitment period. The paper further makes an attempt to explore the experience, concerns and expectations of the Indian project proponents of green projects registered with CDM Executive Board. Design/methodology/approach - This paper employs two methods: informal interviews with executives of World Bank, Designated National Authority (DNA) of India for CDM, leading international CDM consulting firms and a questionnaire survey of Indian CDM projects proponents. Findings - During first commitment period valid up to December 31, 2012, India remained active participant in the CDM, the only mechanism of Kyoto Protocol where developing countries can participate and join in mitigation of climate change, through the development of green projects and thereby earning additional revenue in terms of carbon finance by sale of carbon credits. The study finds out that in the global CDM experience, India's role is striking with its second highest share both in terms of number of projects registered worldwide and in generation of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs). Originality/value - This paper provides several recommendations for strengthening the institutional frame work in India with respect to CDM as well as suggestions to policy makers for consideration while charting out future policies and programs addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation oriented towards better participation in climate change mitigation during the second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol.Purpose - In order to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it is essential that all industry sectors have the appropriate knowledge and tools to contribute. This includes agriculture, which is considered to contribute about a third of emissions globally. This paper reports on one such tool: IMPACCT: Integrated Management oPtions for Agricultural Climate Change miTigation. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - IMPACCT focuses on GHGs, carbon sequestration and associated mitigation options. However, it also attempts to include information on economic and other environmental impacts in order to provide a more holistic perspective. The model identifies mitigation options, likely economic impacts and any synergies and trade-offs with other environmental objectives. The model has been applied on 22 case study farms in seven Member States. Findings - The tool presents some useful concepts for developing carbon calculators in the future. It has highlighted that calculators need to evolve from simply calculating emissions to identifying cost-effective and integrated emissions reduction options. Practical implications - IMPACCT has potential to become an effective means of provided targeted guidance, as part of a broader knowledge transfer programme based on an integrated suite of guidance, tools and advice delivered via different media. Originality/value - IMPACCT is a new model that demonstrates how to take a more integrated approach to mitigating GHGs on farms across Europe. It is a holistic carbon calculator that presents mitigation options in the context other environmental and economic objectives in the search for more sustainable methods of food production.Purpose - The purpose of this study is to estimate carbon mitigation impacts of project activities in a community forestry project in Andhra Pradesh, India. Measurement and quantification of carbon stocks, monitoring of these stocks over time and projections using models is necessary for assessing the climate change mitigation potential or impacts of all forest development and conservation projects. Design/methodology/approach - In this study, multiple mitigation assessment methods and models were used to estimate the carbon mitigation impacts - PROCOMAP, TARAM and CATIE, by adopting a three-tier approach similar to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines. Findings - There are differences in mitigation potential estimates across models as well as across tiers. The study highlights the strength and weaknesses and/or limitations and advantages of adopting the different approaches and their applicability for estimating mitigation potential of a forestry project. The same could be adopted for a future Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) regime also, given countries may not have the necessary technical capacity and data needed during the post-2012 REDD scheme. While countries with advanced data, technical and research capabilities could use models or, in other words, adopt the Tier-3 approach, countries with data and technical limitations, as in India, could adopt a Tier-2 or Tier-1 approach to begin with. Research limitations/implications - The limitations and advantages of use of the multiple mitigation models is addressed. Originality/value - This work would help understand use of three mitigation models by prospective students and researchers and also the data needs and limitations for use of these models.The current and future costs of meeting climate change mitigation needs in the global South vastly exceed levels of available funding from public sources in the North. As a possible solution to this problem, policy-makers and various observers have pushed increasingly for the adoption of market-based carbon financing strategies, with the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) representing the most consistent application of this approach to date. Nevertheless, market-based carbon finance remains highly volatile given its heavy dependence on conditions in the broader global carbon market which remains in the throes of a devastating crisis, earning carbon the distinction of 2011s worst performing global commodity. By demonstrating that it is through carbon's market price that finance-generating investment in the CDM is largely derived, and which also determines the ex post value of CDM projects, this paper argues for the decoupling of climate change finance from carbon's market value. The need to do so is particularly pressing since, it is argued, the current crisis in the global carbon market reflects an embedded crisis tendency in that market, born in part from the political machinations through which it was born and which leaves it prone to persisting crises of oversupply.CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion have been considered as the most important driving factor of global climate change. A complete understanding of the rules of CO2 emissions is warranted in modifying the climate change mitigation policy. The current paper advanced a new algorithm of parameter estimation for the logistic equation, which was used to simulate the trend of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. The differential equation of the transformed logistic equation was used as the beginning of the parameter estimation. A discretization method was then designed to input the observed samples. After minimizing the residual sum of squares and letting the summation of the residual be equal to 0, the estimated parameters were obtained. Finally, this parameter estimation algorithm was applied to the carbon emissions in China to examine the simulation precision. The error analysis indicators mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), median absolute percentage error (MdAPE), maximal absolute percentage error (MaxAPE), and geometric mean relative absolute error (GMRAE) all showed that the new algorithm was better than the previous ones.Events similar to the 2003 heatwaves in France are likely to become more frequent, more intense and longer by the end of the 21st century. Policies for climate mitigation focus on carbon sequestration techniques while land cover change (LCC) may be a better short-term alternative at regional level. However, LCC impact studies conducted so far have often given contradictory results at mid-latitudes for summer temperature. Using a regional climate model, the impact of an afforestation scenario is evaluated for the years 2002 and 2003, and compared to an agricultural scenario. The favorable meteorological conditions in spring 2003 promote the development of agricultural vegetation compared to (1) conditions in 2002 and (2) tree phenology in the forested scenario. This dampens the extreme values of temperature from April to the end of June 2003 (up to 3 degrees C during the June heatwave). From early July to October, drought conditions cause crop failure, while forests are not affected by the lack of soil moisture owing to a deeper root system. Evapotranspiration is therefore smaller in the agricultural scenario, thus amplifying the July-August extreme temperatures. However this cooling capacity of trees in the afforestation scenario is limited during the August heatwave because the high temperatures reach a critical level above which the stomata close and transpiration is inhibited. Our experimental set-up highlights the role of climate-vegetation interactions during extreme events and demonstrates how choices of vegetation cover (e. g. trees versus crops) may substantially modify the summer temperatures in mid-latitude regions.Variations in climate in the Asia-Pacific region play a major role in the development of natural ecosystems and of human societies. Furthermore, human activities place additional stresses on natural and societal systems and climate change is now considered a significant factor in these increases. The book documents the climate of the region and interactions of the climate with both the environment and societies in the region. The book emphasizes the impacts of climate change as well as strategies to mitigate and adapt to those impacts. A number of aspects of climate in the region that capture interactions between climate and natural and human systems are considered and include climate variability and change, climate and urbanization, climate and security, climate and society, and climate and sustainability. The book draws on published results in the scientific literature and the analysis presented highlights key climate-related issues for Asia and the Pacific. Subsequent chapters of the book include important issues such as: Climate variability and change-large-scale climate systems, trends in mean climate, trends in extreme climate events across Asia and the Pacific, challenges and opportunities for modeling the climate, current projections for future climate under climate change; Society and urbanization - trends in urbanization, interactions between urban areas and climate, climate hazards and vulnerabilities for urban areas, climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies for urban areas; Food, water and energy security - meeting future needs for rice and wheat across Asia, food from fisheries, water security, and balancing energy demands with reduced GHG emissions; Governance and sustainability - institutional arrangements to address the impacts of climate change, prospects for remote communities under climate change, effects of climate change on human health, low carbon development pathways, and ecosystem services to enhance the adaptive capacity of communities.The impacts of increasing natural climate disasters are threatening food security in the Asia-Pacific region. Rice is Asia's most important staple food. Climate variability and change directly impact rice production, through changes in rainfall, temperature and CO2 concentrations. The key for sustainable rice crop is water management. Adaptation can occur through shifts of cropping to higher latitudes and can profit from river systems (via irrigation) so far not considered. New opportunities arise to produce more than one crop per year in cooler areas. Asian wheat production in 2005 represents about 43 % of the global total. Changes in agronomic practices, such as earlier plant dates and cultivar substitution will be required. Fisheries play a crucial role in providing food security with the contribution of fish to dietary animal protein being very high in the region - up to 90 % in small island developing states (SIDS). With the warming of the Pacific and Indian Oceans and increased acidification, marine ecosystems are presently under stress. Despite these trends, maintaining or enhancing food production from the sea is critical. However, future sustainability must be maintained whilst also securing biodiversity conservation. Improved fisheries management to address the existing non-climate threats remains paramount in the Indian and Pacific Oceans with sustainable management regimes being established. Climate-related impacts are expected to increase in magnitude over the coming decades, thus preliminary adaptation to climate change is valuable. Water security has become a defining issue of the twenty-first century for Asia and the Pacific. In the case of the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau (HTP) region, cross-border conflicts over international water rights have also led to increased geopolitical tensions. For the Pacific, the main sources of freshwater for island communities is very limited being constrained to rainwater, surface water and groundwater. There is a need for a range of effective water management strategies for dealing with water security issues ranging from more effective water governance through to enhanced community participation. Flood disasters are the most frequent and devastating and their impacts have grown in the region. For longer term disaster risk reduction planning procedures are required as integral elements for 'good governance' of floods. Energy security in three major energy-consuming economies in Asia; namely China, India and Japan is crucial, and requires climate change mitigation policies. Both energy efficiency and renewable energy are important factors in solutions to the energy conundrum. Technological innovation and diffusion is an important component for improving energy efficiency, with the promotion of renewable energy requiring financial investment and innovation. However, costs of new technologies are likely to decrease as they become more widely adopted. Demand side management is also need to provide key solutions.Becker et al. (2013) argue that an afforestation of 0.73x10(9) ha with Jatropha curcas plants would generate an additional terrestrial carbon sink of 4.3 PgC yr(-1), enough to stabilise the atmospheric mixing ratio of carbon dioxide (CO2) at current levels. However, this is not consistent with the dynamics of the global carbon cycle. Using a well-established global carbon cycle model, the effect of adding such a hypothetical sink leads to a reduction of atmospheric CO2 levels in the year 2030 by 25 ppm compared to a reference scenario. However, the stabilisation of the atmospheric CO2 concentration requires a much larger additional sink or corresponding reduction of anthropogenic emissions. to a typical growth rate of atmospheric CO2 over the last decades, introducing such a sink, as explained below, would not stabilise the atmospheric CO2 concentration.A primary goal of Earth system modelling is to improve understanding of the interactions and feedbacks between human decision making and biophysical processes. The nexus of land use and land cover change (LULCC) and the climate system is an important example. LULCC contributes to global and regional climate change, while climate affects the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems and LULCC. However, at present, LULCC is poorly represented in global circulation models (GCMs). LULCC models that are explicit about human behaviour and decision-making processes have been developed at local to regional scales, but the principles of these approaches have not yet been applied to the global scale level in ways that deal adequately with both direct and indirect feedbacks from the climate system. In this article, we explore current knowledge about LULCC modelling and the interactions between LULCC, GCMs and dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). In doing so, we propose new ways forward for improving LULCC representations in Earth system models. We conclude that LULCC models need to better conceptualise the alternatives for upscaling from the local to global scale. This involves better representation of human agency, including processes such as learning, adaptation and agent evolution, formalising the role and emergence of governance structures, institutional arrangements and policy as endogenous processes and better theorising about the role of teleconnections and connectivity across global networks. Our analysis underlines the importance of observational data in global-scale assessments and the need for coordination in synthesising and assimilating available data.In 2009, New Zealand's new National-led government abandoned the Carbon Neutral Public Service (CNPS) programme, a Labour-led government initiative intended to help Government achieve carbon neutrality within its core agencies. This short analysis article provides an overview and brief assessment of the CNPS initiative by drawing on the relevant scholarly literature and public documents relating to New Zealand's climate change agenda. It is argued that although the CNPS programme faced a range of challenges it was successful in some respects. Although the Labour-led government was keen to act on climate change mitigation, New Zealand no longer intends to take a lead on carbon neutrality under the National-led government. Policy relevance As climate change mitigation policy continues to be prominent on government agendas, it is important to understand the ethos and ambition of national programmes designed to lead in this area. This is particularly relevant during times of political change, as demonstrated by the case of New Zealand, in which the aim of assisting the public sector achieve carbon neutrality (through the CNPS programme) was removed with the out-going Labour-led government. A brief analysis of the CNPS programme is provided and the National-led government's direction on climate change mitigation is highlighted.This study focuses on increasing the efficiency of energy use in buildings by exploiting Phase Change Materials, PCM, as energy storage systems. In particular, we focus on the implementation of phase change materials in to the building system and how that can be achieved. We propose that the most effective implementation will be to incorporate the PCM in to the building envelope. We describe how this may be achieved and the critical conditions required to achieve a successful implementation.This article presents and discusses the main findings of a study focusing on climate change mitigation actions (MAs) in Brazil. Brazilian government presented to the 15th Conference of the Parties of the Climate Change Convention held in Copenhagen in 2009 (UNFCCC COP15) voluntary mitigation goals: a reduction in between 36.1 and 38.9% of the country's green house gases (GHG) emissions projected to 2020. If Brazil meets its voluntary goals, its GHG emissions in 2020 will be 6-10% lower than in 2005. The main research question addressed in this study is what conditions should Brazil meet to achieve its pledge? It discusses how MAs are approached, conceptualized and planned in Brazil. It describes how the country identifies MAs and the contextual framework used to define them. It also maps the initiatives underway in the country, and analyses the issues faced for its successful implementation, as well as for future approaches. The main conclusion is that Brazil seems to be in a good position to meet its voluntary mitigation goals up to 2020, as avoiding deforestation will take up the bulk of the emission reduction. After 2020, Brazil will face a new challenge: combine economic development with low GHG energy-related emissions.Many experts have concluded that, if greenhouse gas concentrations are to be limited while the world's energy demands are nonetheless met, biomass energy will be an indispensable resource. At the same time, climate change is expected to affect agricultural productivity adverselyand 15 percent of people in developing countries, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, already suffer from extreme food insecurity. Authors from three countriesJose R. Moreira of Brazil (2014), Roberto Bissio of Uruguay, and Ethan B. Davis and Tom L. Richard of the United States (2014)explore how the potential climate mitigation benefits of devoting arable land to the production of biomass energy can be achieved without further undermining food security in the developing world.Many experts have concluded that, if greenhouse gas concentrations are to be limited while the world's energy demands are nonetheless met, biomass energy will be an indispensable resource. At the same time, climate change is expected to affect agricultural productivity adverselyand 15 percent of people in developing countries, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, already suffer from extreme food insecurity. Authors from three countriesJose R. Moreira of Brazil, Roberto Bissio of Uruguay (2014), and Ethan B. Davis and Tom L. Richard of the United States (2014)explore how the potential climate mitigation benefits of devoting arable land to the production of biomass energy can be achieved without further undermining food security in the developing world.Many experts have concluded that, if greenhouse gas concentrations are to be limited while the world's energy demands are nonetheless met, biomass energy will be an indispensable resource. At the same time, climate change is expected to affect agricultural productivity adverselyand 15 percent of people in developing countries, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, already suffer from extreme food insecurity. Authors from three countriesJose R. Moreira of Brazil (2014), Roberto Bissio of Uruguay (2014), and Ethan B. Davis and Tom L. Richard of the United Statesexplore how the potential climate mitigation benefits of devoting arable land to the production of biomass energy can be achieved without further undermining food security in the developing world.The Global Partnership for Oceans (GPO) is an alliance of governments, private firms, international organizations, and civil society groups that aims to promote ocean health while contributing to human wellbeing. A Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) was commissioned to develop guiding principles for GPO investments. Here we offer commentary on the BRP report from scholars in multiple disciplines that study the oceans: environmental economics, environmental politics, fisheries science, physical oceanography, and political economy. The BRP is a prominent, unique group of individuals representing diverse interests of GPO partners. We applaud the call for knowledge creation, but identify diverse issues that the BRP omitted: the need for effective governance to address data-poor stocks so that gaps do not dictate solutions; the deployment of projects that facilitate learning about governance effectiveness through program evaluation; and the importance of large-scale coordination of data collection in furthering the BRP's call for capacity building. Commenters' opinions are mixed on the likely impact of the report's recommendations on ocean health, governance, and economic development, but they highlight several key features of the report. A centerpiece of the report that distinguishes it from most previous high-level reports on the oceans is the prominence given to human well-being. The report emphasizes the commons problem as a critical institutional failure that must be addressed and focuses heavily on market-based mechanisms to improve governance. The report successfully acknowledges tradeoffs-across different stakeholders as well as across human well-being and ocean health but there is little specific guidance on how to make these tradeoffs. Historical tensions among GPO partners run deep, and resolving them will require more than high-level principles. For instance, it is unclear how to resolve the potential conflict between proprietary data and the report's stated desire for transparency and open access to information. Some differences may ultimately be irreconcilable. The report appropriately advocates flexibility for the GPO to adapt solutions to particulars of a problem, avoiding the trap of one size fits all. However, flexibility is also a weakness because the BRP does not provide guidance on how best to approach problems that span multiple scales. Some scales may be beyond the scope of the GPO; for example, the GPO cannot meaningfully contribute to global climate change mitigation. Nevertheless, the GPO could play an important role in climate adaptation by facilitating the development of governance regimes that are resilient to climate-induced species migrations.To protect the water tower's ecosystem environment and conserve biodiversity, China has been implementing a huge payment program for ecosystem services in the three rivers source region. We explored here the dynamics of grassland degradation and restoration from 1990 to 2012 and its relationships with climate mitigation in the TRSR to provide a definite answer as to the forcing and response of grassland degradation and restoration to climate change. Then we estimated its potential of climate mitigation benefits to address the question of whether ecological restoration could be effective in reversing the decline of ecosystem carbon mitigation service. The trend of average annual temperature and precipitation observed by meteorological stations were approximately increased. Compared before and after 2004, the area of grassland degradation was increased slightly. However, nearly one-third of degraded grassland showed improvement, and the grassland vegetation coverage showed significant increase. Comparing current grassland vegetation coverage with healthy vegetation cover with the same grass type, nearly half of the area still needs to further restore vegetation cover. The grassland degradation resulted in significant carbon emissions, but the restoration to its healthy status has been estimated to be technical mitigation potential.Investigations of sources and sinks of atmospheric CH4 are needed to understand the global CH4 cycle and climate-change mitigation options. Glaciated environments might play a critical role due to potential feedbacks with global glacial meltdown. In an emerging glacier forefield, an ecological shift occurs from an anoxic, potentially methanogenic subglacial sediment to an oxic proglacial soil, in which soil-microbial consumption of atmospheric CH4 is initiated. The development of this change in CH4 turnover can be quantified by soil-gas profile analysis. We found evidence for CH4 entrapped in glacier forefield soils when comparing two methods for the collection of soilgas samples: a modified steel rod (SR) designed for one-time sampling and rapid screening (samples collected similar to 1 min after hammering the SR into the soil), and a novel multilevel sampler (MLS) for repetitive sampling through a previously installed access tube (samples collected weeks after accesstube installation). In glacier forefields on siliceous bedrock, sub-atmospheric CH4 concentrations were observed with both methods. Conversely, elevated soil-CH4 concentrations were observed in calcareous glacier forefields, but only in samples collected with the SR, while MLS samples all showed sub-atmospheric CH4 concentrations. Time-series of SR soil-gas sampling (additional samples collected 2, 3, 5, and 7 min after hammering) confirmed the transient nature of the elevated soil-CH4 concentrations, which were decreasing from similar to 100 mu L L-1 towards background levels within minutes. This hints towards the existence of entrapped CH4 in calcareous glacier forefield soil that can be released when sampling soil-gas with the SR. Laboratory experiments with miniature soil cores collected from two glacier forefields confirmed CH4 entrapment in these soils. Treatment by sonication and acidification re-sulted in a massive release of CH4 from calcareous cores (on average 0.3-1.8 mu g CH4 (g d. w.)(-1)) (d. w. -dry weight); release from siliceous cores was 1-2 orders of magnitude lower (0.02-0.03 mu g CH4 (g d. w.)(-1)). Clearly, some form of CH4 entrapment exists in calcareous glacier forefield soils, and to a much lesser extent in siliceous glacier forefield soils. Its nature and origin remain unclear and will be subject of future investigations.Within the field of interdisciplinary sustainability science, the popular concept of change agents has been only vaguely theorised. In the current debate, neither sociological theories of practice nor the level of participation required for a transformation towards sustainability are considered. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of change agents in two districts of the city of Cologne, as well as Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, this paper aspires to provide a sociological substantiation of the concept of change agents. The availability of social and/or economic capital, time, and a mental disposition for change are identified as prerequisites for actors to evoke social change. More than half of the analysed change agents were directly or indirectly open to sustainability issues. Here, for urban sustainable development, lies a potential to integrate actors beyond the traditional sustainability community and build on local social networks.In recent years, climate policy under the United Nations system has been characterized by bottom-up, national approaches to climate mitigation. This raises concerns about the overall effectiveness of these mitigation policies, for example due to carbon leakage. In response to these concerns, authors have repeatedly suggested that policy makers consider a consumption-based climate policy approach. We analyze the potential merits of a switch to a consumption-based policy approach using the criteria of justice and economic efficiency. We argue that emissions must be understood as being contributed by both, consumers and producers, but that this fact does not by itself settle the question whether consumption or production ought to serve as the climate policy base. Rather, the perspective of justice necessitates an analysis of the distributive consequences of switching from a production- to a consumption-based policy. We find that both (global) cost-effectiveness and justice can be improved if the unilateral climate policies of industrialized countries are based on emissions from consumption. There are preconditions, however, the switch in the policy base must be accompanied by clean technology transfer, and if implemented by border carbon adjustments, import tax revenues need to be channeled to developing and emerging economies. We further show that in such a setting, export rebates are of minor importance for efficiency and justice. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change mitigation policy is driven by scientific knowledge and involves actors from the international, national and local decision-making levels. This multi-level and cross-sectoral context requires collaborative management when designing mitigation solutions over time and space. But collaboration in general policymaking settings, and particularly in the complex domain of climate mitigation, is not an easy task. This paper addresses the question of what drives collaboration among collective actors involved in climate mitigation policy. We wish to investigate whether common beliefs or power structures influence collaboration among actors. We adopt a longitudinal approach to grasp differences between the early and more advanced stages of mitigation policy design. We use survey data to investigate actors' collaboration, beliefs and power, and apply a Stochastic Actor-oriented Model for network dynamics to three subsequent networks in Swiss climate policy between 1995 and 2012. Results show that common beliefs among actors, as well as formal power structures, have a higher impact on collaboration relations than perceived power structures. Furthermore, those effects hold true for decision-making about initial mitigation strategies, but less so for the implementation of those measures. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land use change is a complex response to changing environmental and socioeconomic systems. Historical drivers of land use change include changes in the natural resource availability of a region, changes in economic conditions for production of certain products and changing policies. Most recently, introduction of policy incentives for biofuel production have influenced land use change in the US Midwest, leading to concerns that bioenergy production systems may compete with food production and land conservation. Here we explore how land use may be impacted by future climate mitigation measures by nesting a high resolution agricultural model (EPIC - Environmental Policy Indicator Climate) for the US Midwest within a global integrated assessment model (GCAM - Global Change Assessment Model). This approach is designed to provide greater spatial resolution and detailed agricultural practice information by focusing on the climate mitigation potential of agriculture and land use in a specific region, while retaining the global economic context necessary to understand the far ranging effects of climate mitigation targets. We find that until the simulated carbon prices are very high, the US Midwest has a comparative advantage in producing traditional food and feed crops over bioenergy crops. Overall, the model responds to multiple pressures by adopting a mix of future responses. We also find that the GCAM model is capable of simulations at multiple spatial scales and agricultural technology resolution, which provides the capability to examine regional response to global policy and economic conditions in the context of climate mitigation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) has gained momentum as a climate mitigation strategy that can be implemented at multiple scales. Sub-nationally, REDD+ projects that aim to capture carbon funding are implemented throughout tropical countries. A spatial targeting approach for optimal REDD+ project landscape is demonstrated using Tanzania as an example. This study used GIS-based Multi-criteria Decision Analysis to identify potential areas for REDD+ projects development incorporating different combinations of criteria. The first approach, efficient targeting, focuses on areas with high forest carbon content, high deforestation risk and low opportunity cost. The second approach, co-benefits targeting, aims at areas with high biodiversity and high poverty rate on top of criteria in efficient targeting. The resulting suitability maps displays areas of high, medium and low suitability for future REDD+ projects development based on the targeting approaches. Locations of current REDD+ projects in Tanzania were also overlaid with suitability map to visually inspect how they match up. This approach allows decision-makers to prioritize preferences for various site-selection criteria and make informed decisions about REDD+ projects locations. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Tree planting for carbon sequestration is a commonly proposed climate change mitigation strategy, with afforestation projects forming part of voluntary and mandatory carbon offset trading schemes. Afforestation is often promoted as a new economic opportunity for private landholders. While multiple studies have identified physical and economic opportunities for afforestation, few have examined the willingness of private landholders to adopt afforestation, and the factors that influence this willingness. We examine this using data from a survey of Australian landholders. The willingness of landholders to adopt afforestation for carbon sequestration varies substantially depending on how this afforestation is designed and implemented: landholders prefer small plantings on less productive land, which minimise the disturbance afforestation presents to land management, and to landholder values about appropriate uses of agricultural land. Landholders are less willing to consider afforestation if it involves planting the large areas required by many current carbon afforestation schemes. Willingness to adopt afforestation is influenced in particular by landholder's perceptions of its potential to provide a diversified income stream, and its impacts on flexibility of land management. More broadly, it is influenced by their views about the social acceptability of afforestation, particularly whether the landholder believes trees should be planted on agricultural land, and how they believe others in the community view afforestation. Our results suggest that widespread adoption requires designing afforestation so it (i) provides a range of socio-economic benefits that go beyond provision of income; (ii) minimises disruption to land management flexibility; and (iii) is compatible with landholder beliefs about appropriate use of agricultural land. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the past decade, polar bears have become the poster species of climate change. But in March 2013, a joint proposal by the governments of the United States and the Russian Federation to up-list polar bears to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) diverted public attention from climate change towards the hunting of polar bears. Prior to a vote on the proposal, non-governmental organisations spear-headed a media campaign to support the up-listing. In the United Kingdom the campaign received support from celebrities and was widely reported in English language news media. Narratives of commercial legal and illegal polar bear hunting and the imminent extinction of polar bears were aggressively promoted, rhetorically supported by the manipulation of trade and scientific data. By rendering discourses of commercial hunting and a lucrative global trade in polar bear parts highly visible, sustainable hunting and climate change-induced habitat loss were rendered invisible. Media reports of commercial hunting de-coupled polar bear conservation from climate change mitigation, and disassociated polar bear hunting from regulated indigenous subsistence practices. A review of current polar bear conservation measures and an analysis of media coverage leading up to the CITES decision reveal these conflicting discourses, and suggest that more nuanced media coverage of polar bear conservation is necessary if appropriate multilateral conservation policies are to be enacted and publicly supported. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In 2008 New Zealand (NZ) changed from a Labour-led to a National-led government, and this resulted in a shift to government's carbon emission mitigation strategy, including the abandonment of the Communities for Climate Protection (CCP) and the Carbon Neutral Public Service (CNPS) programs. Using deLeon's seminal model for program termination, the objective of this research is to determine why NZ's newly elected government discontinued these initiatives. This empirical research is investigative and probing, and comprises a series of semi-structured interviews with senior managers responsible for the delivery of the respective program within their organization. The architects of each program are also investigated. In the end, this study finds that while economic constraints and programmatic inefficiencies may have played a contributing role, political ideology is the primary rationale for the termination of the CNPS and the CCP-NZ programs.The success of climate change strategies depends on how well mitigation and adaptation measures are implemented. It is especially important to implement effective mitigation and adaptation measures in coastal territories because they will be more directly affected by some of the possible effects of climate change. This study assessed and compared how Singapore, Miami-Dade and San Francisco - three coastal territories - implement climate change strategies in their construction industries. Case study method - in which primary and secondary information was collected and analyzed - was used. It was found that these three territories have a few similarities; for example, Singapore and San Francisco mandate green building requirements, whereas Singapore and Miami-Dade do not explicitly consider adaptation measures in their building codes. It was also noted that although mitigation has entered mainstream policy-making, adaptation still lags behind. Consequently, this study has proposed a few lessons; for example, policy-makers in Singapore and Miami-Dade should complement existing measures with platforms to engage the public on disaster management. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The ecosystem resilience plays a key role in maintaining a steady flow of ecosystem services and enables quick and flexible responses to climate changes, and maintaining or restoring the ecosystem resilience of forests is a necessary societal adaptation to climate change; however, there is a great lack of spatially explicit ecosystem resilience assessments. Drawing on principles of the ecosystem resilience highlighted in the literature, we built on the theory of dissipative structures to develop a conceptual model of the ecosystem resilience of forests. A hierarchical indicator system was designed with the influencing factors of the forest ecosystem resilience, including the stand conditions and the ecological memory, which were further disaggregated into specific indicators. Furthermore, indicator weights were determined with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the coefficient of variation method. Based on the remote sensing data and forest inventory data and so forth, the resilience index of forests was calculated. The result suggests that there is significant spatial heterogeneity of the ecosystem resilience of forests, indicating it is feasible to generate large-scale ecosystem resilience maps with this assessment model, and the results can provide a scientific basis for the conservation of forests, which is of great significance to the climate change mitigation.Geological carbon storage can significantly contribute to climate-change mitigation only if it is deployed at a very large scale. This means that injection scenarios must occur, and be analyzed, at the basin scale. Various mathematical models of different complexity may be used to assess the fate of injected CO2 and/or resident brine. These models span the range from multi-dimensional, multi-phase numerical simulators to simple single-phase analytical solutions. In this study, we consider a range of models, all based on vertically integrated governing equations, to predict the basin-scale pressure response to specific injection scenarios. The Canadian section of the mid-continent Basal Aquifer is used as a test site to compare the different modeling approaches. The model domain covers an area of approximately 811,000 km(2), and the total injection rate is 63 Mt/yr, corresponding to 9 locations where large point sources have been identified. Predicted areas of critical pressure exceedance are used as a comparison metric among the different modeling approaches. Comparison of the results shows that single-phase numerical models may be good enough to predict the pressure response over a large aquifer; however, a simple superposition of semi-analytical or analytical solutions is not sufficiently accurate because spatial variability of formation properties plays an important role in the problem, and these variations are not captured properly with simple superposition. We consider two different injection scenarios: injection at the source locations and injection at locations with more suitable aquifer properties. Results indicate that in formations with significant spatial variability of properties, strong variations in injectivity among the different source locations can be expected, leading to the need to transport the captured CO2 to suitable injection locations, thereby necessitating development of a pipeline network. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper constitutes a first attempt to model the relationship between climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystem services, with a specific emphasis on European forests. Firstly, we construct a composite biodiversity indicator that integrates quantitative and qualitative changes of biodiversity projected to 2050 for the EU-17 under future IPCC scenarios. Secondly, this indicator is integrated into two simultaneous equation models to capture the marginal impacts of changes in biodiversity on the value of ecosystem goods and services (EGS) due to climate change. Our estimation results confirm the role of biodiversity as a nature-based policy solution for climate change mitigation, shedding light on the policy actions that generate co-benefits by enhancing ecosystems' capacity to mitigate climate change impacts, while conserving biodiversity and sustaining the flows of EGS for human livelihoods. Especially, nature-based mitigation policies are more cost-effective and better at coping with the ethic and inequality issues associated with distributional impacts of the policy actions, compared to the pure technical solutions to improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions. However, the strength of biodiversity as a nature-based policy option for climate change mitigation depends on both the nature of the EGS and the geographical area under consideration. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The promotion of low-carbon transport systems is largely dependent on the interplay between technology, innovation, markets, people's behaviour and policy. Various policies jointly influence the development of transport systems, some policies implying different or even contradictory designs for future transport systems. Policy interplay has not been much addressed in previous research on sustainability transitions. This article combines the technological innovation system (TIS) functions, within the transitions framework, with policy analysis to empirically map multiple policies and their intended paths towards low-carbon transport systems. Empirically, the article provides a systematic review of Finnish national-level policies for transport and transport-related innovation. The discussion examines the contribution of the current policy mix to sustainability transitions based on its degree of attempt to re-design the transport system. The findings reveal that policy support is more comprehensive regarding more energy-efficient vehicles and low-carbon fuels than based on reduced transport demand or alternative transport modes. A holistic policy approach towards low-carbon transitions is only achieved to a degree and innovation policy gaps are identified. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentIn an attempt to anticipate possible futures of drylands of West Africa in the face of rapid socio-economic and environmental changes, we developed four scenarios based on recent survey data, the literature and our knowledge of the region. The four scenarios are inspired by those developed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: (1) 'downward spiral' characterized by rapid climate change, expansion of agriculture and chaotic urban growth; (2) 'integrated economy' with integrated land management, food production for local markets and rural-urban exchanges; (3) 'open doors' characterized by large-scale out-migrations, land grabbing by foreign companies and development aid and (4) 'climate change mitigation' with an increase in biofuel crops, land management for carbon capture and development of off-farm activities. We conclude that the Sahel region is most likely moving away from being a highly climate-dependent region based on agriculture towards a more open and diversified economy. West African countries have to find a balance between the new opportunities and risks created by economic globalization.Bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) has the potential to be a key mitigation option, because it can generate electricity and absorb emissions at the same time. However, biomass is not distributed evenly across the globe and regions with a potentially high demand might be constrained by limited domestic supply. Therefore, climate mitigation policies might create the incentive to trade biomass internationally. This paper uses scenarios generated by the integrated assessment model WITCH to study trade of woody biomass from multiple perspectives: the volume of biomass traded, its value, the impact on other power generation technologies and on the efficiency of mitigation policy. The policy scenarios consist of three representative carbon tax policies (4.8 W/m(2), 3.8 W/m(2) and 3.2 W/m(2) radiative forcing values in 2100) and a cap-and-trade scheme (3.8 W/m(2) in 2100). Results show that the incentive to trade biomass is high: at least 50% of biomass consumed globally is traded internationally. Regions trade 13-69 EJ/yr of woody biomass in 2050 and 55-81 EJ/yr in 2100. In 2100 the value of biomass traded is equal to US$ 0.7-7.2 Trillion. Trade of woody biomass substantially increases the efficiency of the mitigation policy. In the tax scenarios, abatement increases by 120-323 Gt CO2 over the century. In the cap-and-trade scenario biomass trade reduces the price of emission allowances by 34% in 2100 and cumulative discounted policy-costs by 14%. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Precipitated calcium carbonate, a widely used filler material, is nowadays mainly produced by the so-called carbonation process. Natural limestone is first calcined and then contacted with carbon dioxide to precipitate particles of a controlled purity, size, and morphology. In the production process, an amount of carbon dioxide equal to or larger than what is later bound to the actual product is released. For climate change mitigation, it would be possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by capturing CO2 from flue gases, if the required calcium could be obtained from another source than the natural rocks. Industrial alkaline by-product and waste streams such as slags and ashes contain calcium often in a readily soluble form. Recently, several processes have been developed to apply these materials for carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage, while simultaneously producing materials with market value. Since the chemistry of calcium carbonate precipitation is relatively complex, the levels of impurities should be maintained low in the carbonation process. In case of utilizing a solid waste stream, this requires efficient separation of the residual waste material from the calcium-rich solution after extracting the soluble calcium from the solids. Aspects related to a two-step aqueous process for steel converter slag carbonation are discussed in more detail, since a continuous laboratory-scale setup has been constructed and is currently under further development at Finnish universities. Even though the current issues related to product quality can be resolved, the process is still in such a small scale that it mainly serves the demonstration purposes for mineral carbonation technologies.As one of Kyoto's three flexibility mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows the issuance of Certified Emission Reduction credits from offset projects in non-Annex I countries. As little attention has been paid to how CDM projects are financed, this article assesses whether offset schemes with public bodies should utilise debt swaps as a form of funding. Specifically, we examine whether a debt-for-efficiency swap between Uruguay and Spain within a wind power project increased project finance and generated greater development co-benefits. We assess the transaction using a simple evaluative framework: whether it delivered additional resources to the debtor country and/or government budget; whether it delivered more resources for climate change mitigation; whether it had a sizeable effect on overall debt burdens (creating 'indirect' benefits); and whether it aligned with government policy and systems (elements of the new aid approach). We find evidence that cautions against using the Spanish-Uruguayan case as a model for future debt-for-efficiency swaps.This article takes a fresh look at how public uncertainty influences willingness to pay (WTP) for climate-change mitigation programs. I elicit subjective distribution functions over future global mean temperatures and WTP for mitigation. I find, not surprisingly, that subjects, on average, view climate change as a "bad," and the higher the expected temperature increase they perceive, the more they are willing to pay for mitigation. Subjects are generally risk averse, so that they are WTP more for mitigation programs when the outcome of the program is more certain. The skew of the subjective climate-change distribution also affects preferences, so that aversion to catastrophic outcomes is an important component of WTP for mitigation. I find that models that ignore skew are likely to underestimate the influence of uncertainty on willingness to pay for climate-change mitigation.The implementation of the National Biodiversity Strategies and Actions Plans (NBSAP), as required by Article 6 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), would improve the base for political decisions by quantifying the costs and benefits of biodiversity conservation in monetary terms and by illustrating the benefits of related ecosystem services (ESS). However, so far the costs and benefits of the NBSAP have not been routinely estimated. This paper presents results from research quantifying the financial costs and benefits of implementing a set of measures based on the National Strategy on Biological Diversity in Germany (NBS). Based on the NBS and the Quality Status Reports of the EU Habitat Directive, a conservation program was developed consisting of land use changes for six ecosystems/land use types: forests, arable land, grassland, peatlands, wetlands and dry habitats. In addition to the benefits of maintaining biodiversity, two potential ESS benefits of the NBS, water purification and climate mitigation, are estimated as well as the financial costs of implementation. A nationwide contingent valuation study was undertaken to determine the benefits of maintaining biodiversity as a result of the conservation program. The benefits of the conservation program with regard to the ESS water purification are calculated for N-reduction in the leachate and based on abatement costs. The contribution of nature conservation to climate mitigation is calculated for the avoidance of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and based on damage costs. The results of the study indicate that the implementation of the NBS would lead to significant financial costs, but the benefits would exceed the financial costs of measures. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several land-based policy options are discussed within the current quest for feasible climate change mitigation options, among them the creation and conservation of forest carbon sinks through mechanisms such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation also called REDD+ and the substitution of fossil fuels through biofuels, as legislated in the EU Renewable Energy Directive. While those two policy processes face several methodological challenges, there is one issue that both processes encounter; the displacement of land use and the related emissions, which is referred to as carbon leakage in the context of emissions accounting, and indirect land-use change also called ILUC within the bioenergy realm. The debates surrounding carbon leakage and indirect land-use change issues run in parallel but are rather isolated from each other, without much interaction. This paper analyzes the similarities and differences as well as common challenges within these parallel debates by the use of peer-reviewed articles and reports, with a focus on approaches to address and methods to quantify emissions at national and international scale. The aim is to assess the potential to use synergies and learn from the two debates to optimize climate benefits. The results show that the similarities are many, while the differences between carbon leakage and ILUC are found in the actual commodity at stake and to some degree in the policy forum in which the debate is taken. The geographical scale, actors and parties involved also play a role. Both processes operate under the same theoretical assumption and face the same problem of lacking methods to quantify the emissions caused by international displacement. The approach to international displacement is one of the main differences; while US and EU biofuel policymakers acknowledge uncertainties in ILUC accounting but strive to reduce them, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change excludes accounting for international carbon leakage. Potential explanations behind these differences lie in the liability issue and the underlying accounting principles of producer responsibility for carbon leakage and consumer responsibility for ILUC. This is also reflected on the level of lobby activities, where ILUC has reached greater public and policy interest than carbon leakage. Finally, a possible way forward for international leakage accounting in future climate treaties could be the adoption of accounting methods taking a consumer perspective, to be used alongside the existing set-up, which could improve climate integrity of land-based policies. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Forests and climate change are increasingly dealt with as interconnected policy issues. Both the potential synergies and policy conflicts between forest conservation and restoration and climate change mitigation now receive sustained and high level attention from academic, policy analysis and practitioner communities across the globe. Arguably the most pronounced contemporary policy manifestation of this is the debate on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (or REDD+) by which governments and private investors from developed countries may compensate actors in tropical forest countries for reducing forest loss beneath an agreed baseline. Problems of climate-forest policies implementation and governance, however, can also be found in countries such as Canada, the USA, the UK and Australia. The future of instruments like REDD+ is uncertain with growing critiques on payment and performance-based mechanisms and unresolved issues of governance, government and accountability. This paper, and the special issue it introduces, illustrates that in the REDD+ debate many contentious issues have resurfaced from past debates. These issues include the participation and rights of local communities in forest policy and management; the relationship between internationally agreed payment and performance-based programmes and formal democratic decision-making processes and structures; the complexities of rights to carbon versus tenure rights; and the ways in which - in spite of the high expectations of both developing and developed countries to combat carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through the REDD+ mechanism - effective climate-focused forestry policies are seldom found in most tropical forest-rich countries. REDD+ is now very much the dominant discourse at the forest-climate interface, and one with a primary focus on measurability to communicate carbon mitigation results across various levels. However, this serves to disperse and displace, rather than resolve, policy-making on non-carbon values. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) certification scheme with a particular focus on its aim to deliver multiple benefits and contribute not only to climate mitigation but also to biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development. To that end, the articles analyses the main storylines underpinning the CCB scheme. Our findings suggest that although the scheme is informed by notions of participation and poverty alleviation, it is dominated by a market orientation that focuses on trading environmental services, and by a technocratic logic that focuses on scientific standards to enable monitoring, centralized control and marketing. Drawing on these findings we argue that the dominance of market-based and technocratic storylines potentially threatens the capacity of the Climate Community and Biodiversity certification scheme to deliver multiple benefits in practice. The paper concludes by arguing for the importance of a more balanced debate about multiple benefits in climate mitigation projects. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The new climate change mitigation scheme for developing countries known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) has been proposed as a way of reducing carbon emissions in the forest sector, whilst also protecting and improving the livelihoods and wellbeing of communities. This paper argues that it is important to resolve tenure ambiguity and ensure that communities participate in the REDD+ process by engaging them in project development and implementation. Drawing on data collected in six villages under two REDD+ projects targeted in Cameroon, this paper addresses four questions: (1) What are the tenure conditions at the two study sites? (2) How have the project proponents perceived the tenure and other challenges and how do they plan to address those challenges? (3) What have the proponents done to engage communities in the process of establishing REDD+? (4) Are communities informed about and satisfied with the process of establishing REDD+? The paper shows that while the proponents have worked to resolve tenure issues and engage communities, there is still frustration among project participants because of a lack of progress toward implementing compensation and benefit sharing system. The paper concludes that it is crucial to safeguard the rights, access and participation of local communities, and benefits to them, throughout the design and implementation of REDD+ projects. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is receiving increasing political and scientific attention as a climate change mitigation approach. The government of Cameroon has expressed an interest in participating in REDD+, and national deliberation on a policy strategy has attracted interest from different actors in the forest sector. This paper analyses the challenges of designing a governance structure for a REDD+ strategy in Cameroon. Theoretically, the paper builds on the literature on governance structures for resource management, focusing analytically on the interactions between actor constellations (state and non-state) and institutions (formal and informal) to produce policy outcomes. The paper draws on documentation of REDD+ policy events, policy texts and 23 in-depth interviews with members from government, civil society, research organizations, development partners and the private sector. It argues that although the actors involved in REDD+ are, to an extent, polarized around different issues and priorities, they are nonetheless increasingly distributing roles and responsibilities among themselves. The institutional arrangements within the policy process include: (1) rule-making systems for engagement; (2) expanding existing coordination mechanisms; (3) national safeguard standards; and (4) building on existing forest governance initiatives. The paper concludes that the multiple benefits promised by REDD+, such as poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation and economic development, are critical for the legitimacy of the mechanism. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper seeks to analyze local perspectives in Peruvian Amazon forest communities toward REDD and contrast those perspectives with current global and national REDD narratives. REDD is a global market-based approach to provide financial incentives for local actors to halt deforestation or to improve carbon stocks. To date, the REDD framework has not demonstrated that it is equipped to incorporate the diverse perspectives, potential interactions and uncertainties facing forest communities. We interviewed forest community members in the Amazonian state of Loreto, Peru, using "future scenarios" methods to elicit potential alternative narratives, both with and outside REDD. Indigenous voices reveal ambiguous attitudes toward REDD with regard to livelihoods, benefit distribution and the long-term impacts for communities and forests. They reveal considerable uncertainty about the future and lack of trust in governance regimes. Long-term community priorities were in generating work, providing educational opportunities for their children, and improving the quality of their forest. Conflict within the community, with local loggers and with the recently established regional conservation area was a prevalent theme. A REDD design that recognizes communities as active participants in global and national climate management and pays attention to local narratives will more likely generate the multiple benefits of healthy forests, strong communities and, ultimately, global climate change mitigation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sectors account for 53 % of the domestic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in Vietnam in 2000. However, due to political focus on adaptation, Vietnamese government has not formulated particular policy on mitigation in the sectors. This study aims to identify and assess mitigation potential in AFOLU sectors in Vietnam up to 2030 using AFOLU Bottom-up model. Therefore, the results can help government towards building mitigation strategies in the country. The methodology involves: (1) development of future assumptions of crops harvested areas, livestock population and area of land use and land use change and (2) identification of mitigation countermeasures with high potential and assessment of their cost-effectiveness. In 2030, 11 MtCO(2)eq/year of emission can be reduced by no-regret countermeasures which take zero or negative cost. In the case of full application of countermeasures, 48 MtCO(2)eq/year can be reduced compared to the baseline emission level. Mitigation countermeasures, which have great contribution for GHG reduction in Vietnam, are midseason drainage in rice paddy (7 MtCO(2)eq/year), off-season incorporation of rice straw (3 MtCO(2)eq/year) and conservation of existing protection forests (17 MtCO(2)eq/year). Based on our findings, a package of mitigation countermeasures at 10 USD/tCO(2)eq is expected to have the most economic efficiency and high mitigation for GHG mitigation in AFOLU sectors in Vietnam.The aim of this paper is to assess how policy goals in relation to the promotion of green growth, energy security, pollution control and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions have been aligned in policies that have been implemented in selected countries during the last decades as a basis for discussing how a multi objective policy paradigm can contribute to future climate change mitigation. The paper includes country case studies from Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union (EU), India, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea and the United States covering renewable energy options, industry, transportation, the residential sector and cross-sectoral policies. These countries and regions together contribute more than two thirds of global GHG emissions. The paper finds that policies that are nationally driven and that have multiple objectives, including climate-change mitigation, have been widely applied for decades in both developing countries and industrialised countries. Many of these policies have a long history, and adjustments have taken place based on experience and cost effectiveness concerns. Various energy and climate-change policy goals have worked together in these countries, and in practice a mix of policies reflecting specific priorities and contexts have been pursued. In this way, climate-change mitigation has been aligned with other policy objectives and integrated into broader policy packages, though in many cases specific attention has not been given to the achievement of large GHG emission reductions. Based on these experiences with policy implementation, the paper highlights a number of key coordination and design issues that are pertinent to the successful joint implementation of several energy and climate-change policy goals.The European Commission introduced carbon dioxide emission standards on cars as an obligation to manufacturers in an aim to reduce carbon footprint of passenger cars in EU transportation. Car industry adjusting to a standard targeting 95 gCO(2)/km by 2020 is already marketing increasingly low CO2 emitting technologies. In the context of a strong emission cut strategy until 2050 the EU could adopt CO2 car standards at the levels of 20 gCO(2)/km. The aim of this paper is to explore more optimistic CO2 targets on passenger cars in the medium and the long term by using the PRIMES-TREMOVE energy economic transport model covering the EU-27 countries. In our study, we quantify two policy scenarios implementing more optimistic carbon emission targets at a different pace and we derive policy conclusions in terms of costs, emissions and energy by comparing them with a Reference scenario. The analysis shows a restructuring of the EU car fleet, leading to significant reductions in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption driven by a high penetration of advanced vehicle technologies in the long term. We find that if policy makers intend to pursue more optimistic carbon emission standards then the advanced vehicle technologies will prevail, albeit at an increase in user costs. CO2 emission targets can potentially be a key policy towards sustainable low carbon EU road private passenger transportation, if a decarbonisation strategy is employed.Adoption of the electric car to mitigate air pollution and climate change: myth or reality? This study aims to bring out the energy and climate mitigation impacts of mass introduction of electric cars in city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. A working scenario of 10 percent penetration of electric cars replacing gasoline-powered vehicles by 2020 and 20 percent by 2030 was set. The impact on the energy mix and CO2 emissions was based on indicators available for the city of Sao Paulo. Preliminary results indicate significant energy and environmental benefits to the city. We identified a potential reduction of up to 2030 will be about 11 MtCO(2) representing more than 10 percent compared with the total emissions from the fleet of gasoline-powered cars.Renewable energy options are widely promoted as a means to address the energy-development nexus in response to the need to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Pervasive gender and resource inequalities prevalent in Africa exacerbate current socio-economic and environmental pressures on groups that are considered to be extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, for example, poor rural women. Thus, advancing issues such as energy provision becomes increasingly complex against the backdrop of abject poverty and escalating concerns in relation to the impacts of climate change. Several studies highlight the link between poverty, gender and energy and emphasise the need to adopt integrated and multi-disciplinary approaches to understand and monitor current challenges. However, few studies examine through a gendered lens the perceptions and knowledge of climate change and the potential mitigatory role of renewable energies such as solar energy. This study uses Bergville, a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, as a case study where 400 households were interviewed. There were discernible differences between men and women in relation to levels of energy poverty, energy mix and uses of energy sources. This study shows that there was a negligible difference in the awareness and perceptions of factors contributing to climate change amongst men and women. Moreover, although concepts such as climate change and solar energy were more familiar to the male counterparts, there was an overall limited understanding of climate change mitigation through the use of solar energy. The study highlights the need for mass education campaigns targeting women who are the main end users of energy to emphasise the advantages of using solar energy in the face of the disastrous impacts of climate change.Female student activists, members of an organisation called ENACTUS, are on the move for community awareness and action on climate change. ENACTUS, an international non-profit student organisation, present in over 1 600 universities, works with students, faculty advisors and business leaders, to harness the power of entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better, more sustainable world for communities. Student teams develop outreach projects in accordance with the triple bottom line - "P" for Planet, People and Profit and access resources to improve the quality of life and standard of living of people in need. The research captures the reflections of six female students from the University of KwaZulu-Natal Westville, Edgewood and Pietermaritzburg campuses in South Africa who were involved in ENACTUS climate change initiatives in Umlazi, Wentworth and Umkhumbane where community partnerships were developed for climate change mitigation. In Ukhumbane, an informal settlement, students initiated a process with unemployed women to develop a recycling cooperative and to expand sustainable livelihoods from recycling. In Wentworth, a community experiencing environmental degradation and pollution in South Durban, students led a process to facilitate a programme of tree planting by school learners to reduce pollution and carbon emissions, and in nearby Umlazi, a walk was held to mobilise the community around the problems of climate change. The Focus uses a theoretical framework of reflective empowerment practice to understand student narratives on perceptions of the three projects. Students' narratives reveal the interface between the students' awareness of the meanings of climate change, its mediation through community exposure and the importance of gender equality and women's activism in climate change mitigation.Understanding how people perceive green spaces in their surrounding environments is important for planning of residential areas in a city. Green spaces provide various benefits to communities in the form of recreation, education, relaxation and aesthetic appeal. This Article reports on research on residents' opinions and understanding of green spaces and their access and use of green spaces. It also assesses perceptions regarding climate change and the value of urban green spaces in mitigating against climate change impacts and threats. The importance of urban green spaces in the context of climate change is well documented, specifically to relieve the impacts of increased temperatures and natural disaster events. It also plays a critical role in preserving biodiversity and improving air quality. While several studies focus on residents' perceptions of green spaces, very few (if any) examine differences between men and women. This Article disaggregates results from a resident survey conducted in the South Durban Area (SDA), one of the most environmentally contested locations in South Africa. In total, 200 households residing in close proximity to the Bluff Conservancy were interviewed. Key thematic issues examined include differences in the way in which men and women value and use green spaces, attitudes towards green spaces, the types of green spaces that respondents prefer accessing, knowledge of green spaces and links to climate change. It was found that a greater proportion of men used existing green spaces within their community. Differences in terms of how men and women value and perceive green spaces were also noted. This study concludes that there is a gendered dimension to residential perceptions of the use of green spaces and this should be considered in the formulation of climate change policy and urban planning efforts.This issue of Agricultural Economics is a special issue containing articles on model performance in assessing the effects of climate change, bioenergy policy, and socioeconomics on agriculture. The contributions present results from a global economic model intercomparison activity undertaken as part of the AgMIP Project (www.agmip.org). The origins of the comparison activities can be traced to a project that was organized by the OECD in late 2010 to compare results from three models. The current phase of the research includes 10 models and was designed in part to support of the IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5). The special issue includes seven peer-reviewed articles that present thematic results from a range of modeling strategies, with partial and general equilibrium modeling as a high level distinction but a myriad of differences within these two model types. A central common element is harmonization on biophysical effects using crop models and socioeconomic effects using drivers from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways developed as part of the AR5 process. The special issue provides broad insights into how the modeling communities approached the interactions of climate, socioeconomics, bioenergy policy on agricultural outcomes, including land use, prices, consumption, and production.Integrated Assessment studies have shown that meeting ambitious greenhouse gas mitigation targets will require substantial amounts of bioenergy as part of the future energy mix. In the course of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), five global agro-economic models were used to analyze a future scenario with global demand for ligno-cellulosic bioenergy rising to about 100 ExaJoule in 2050. From this exercise a tentative conclusion can be drawn that ambitious climate change mitigation need not drive up global food prices much, if the extra land required for bioenergy production is accessible or if the feedstock, for example, from forests, does not directly compete for agricultural land. Agricultural price effects across models by the year 2050 from high bioenergy demand in an ambitious mitigation scenario appear to be much smaller (+5% average across models) than from direct climate impacts on crop yields in a high-emission scenario (+25% average across models). However, potential future scarcities of water and nutrients, policy-induced restrictions on agricultural land expansion, as well as potential welfare losses have not been specifically looked at in this exercise.East Asia provides an ideal testbed to study aerosol feedbacks into climate via direct and indirect effects because of high anthropogenic emissions and unique climatology. In this work, an online coupled meteorology-chemistry model, WRF/Chem, is applied to simulate air quality and climate interactions for multiple months in 2001, 2005, and 2008 to characterize long-term seasonal variations of pollutant concentrations and quantify the contributions of anthropogenic aerosols to aerosol direct and indirect effects. The results show a reasonably good performance for most meteorological variables and chemical species concentrations. Large biases in some variables may be caused by large uncertainties in emissions. Anthropogenic aerosols in East Asia can reduce the surface net solar radiation by up to 6 % and enhance cloud condensation nuclei and cloud droplet number concentrations by a factor of up to 3 on domain-average, with much greater impacts over urban areas. These results suggest that aerosol feedbacks are potentially important over polluted areas and should be taken into account in the development of emission control and climate mitigation policies for areas where the aerosol feedback signals are strong.Biomass Based Energy Sources (BBES) are an Ecosystem Service (ES) which can contribute to achieve EU 2020 targets and to ensure energy security. Their effects on other ESs can be different according to biomass typologies, as energy crops and residuals. In order to plan a Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) efficient supply chain and to maintain ES of carbon storage, as well as other related ESs, effect of feedstock chain on Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) should be considered. An ESs approach, based on the cascade model, takes into consideration biological interdependencies and management options to assess trade-offs. This study aims to describe and map trade-off between BBES and carbon storage services in Province of Rovigo (Veneto Region, Italy), a mainly intensive cultivated area. Results show that the trade-offs between the two ESs is potentially high in large part of the territory (75%), while just 25% expresses low possibility of conflict. Possible management options are discussed in order to minimize trade-off between energy provision and climate change mitigation. This study highlights that ESs approach can provide a suitable tool for decision makers, with respect to biomass feedstock chain, whose effects on ecosystems are often underestimated.Co-benefits rarely enter quantitative decision-support frameworks, often because the methodologies for their integration are lacking or not known. This review fills in this gap by providing comprehensive methodological guidance on the quantification of co-impacts and their integration into climate-related decision making based on the literature. The article first clarifies the confusion in the literature about related terms and makes a proposal for a more consistent terminological framework, then emphasizes the importance of working in a multiple-objective-multiple-impact framework. It creates a taxonomy of co-impacts and uses this to propose a methodological framework for the identification of the key co-impacts to be assessed for a given climate policy and to avoid double counting. It reviews the different methods available to quantify and monetize different co-impacts and introduces three methodological frameworks that can be used to integrate these results into decision making. On the basis of an initial assessment of selected studies, it also demonstrates that the incorporation of co-impacts can significantly change the outcome of economic assessments. Finally, the review calls for major new research and innovation toward simplified evaluation methods and streamlined tools for more widely applicable appraisals of co-impacts for decision making.The way in which policy is generated and travels between multiple levels of government and across state and non-state actors in the decision-making process has been the subject of considerable analytical attention in studies of public policy. Although studies of policy learning and change often include post-decision analysis, few focus on the process of learning and change as it unfolds. In line with their growing awareness of climate change and potential hazards, cities around the world are increasingly engaging in such climate policy learning and change. In response, this article develops an analytical framework to examine and possibly explain policy learning and change in cities, with the particular empirical focus being Hong Kong. The argument is that, although cities often build a knowledge-base to support climate mitigation and adaption policies, unless they are genuinely committed and create an institutional framework to sustain it, any effort to promote short and long-term climate change action or to build capacity and disseminate best practices is likely to have limited success.This paper evaluates the current status of global modeling of the organic aerosol (OA) in the troposphere and analyzes the differences between models as well as between models and observations. Thirty-one global chemistry transport models (CTMs) and general circulation models (GCMs) have participated in this intercomparison, in the framework of AeroCom phase II. The simulation of OA varies greatly between models in terms of the magnitude of primary emissions, secondary OA (SOA) formation, the number of OA species used (2 to 62), the complexity of OA parameterizations (gas-particle partitioning, chemical aging, multiphase chemistry, aerosol microphysics), and the OA physical, chemical and optical properties. The diversity of the global OA simulation results has increased since earlier AeroCom experiments, mainly due to the increasing complexity of the SOA parameterization in models, and the implementation of new, highly uncertain, OA sources. Diversity of over one order of magnitude exists in the modeled vertical distribution of OA concentrations that deserves a dedicated future study. Furthermore, although the OA/OC ratio depends on OA sources and atmospheric processing, and is important for model evaluation against OA and OC observations, it is resolved only by a few global models. The median global primary OA (POA) source strength is 56 Tg a(-1) (range 34-144 Tg a(-1)) and the median SOA source strength (natural and anthropogenic) is 19 Tg a(-1) (range 13-121 Tg a(-1)). Among the models that take into account the semi-volatile SOA nature, the median source is calculated to be 51 Tg a(-1) (range 16-121 Tg a(-1)), much larger than the median value of the models that calculate SOA in a more simplistic way (19 Tg a(-1); range 13-20 Tg a(-1), with one model at 37 Tg a(-1)). The median atmospheric burden of OA is 1.4 Tg (24 models in the range of 0.6-2.0 Tg and 4 between 2.0 and 3.8 Tg), with a median OA lifetime of 5.4 days (range 3.8-9.6 days). In models that reported both OA and sulfate burdens, the median value of the OA/sulfate burden ratio is calculated to be 0.77; 13 models calculate a ratio lower than 1, and 9 models higher than 1. For 26 models that reported OA deposition fluxes, the median wet removal is 70 Tg a(-1) (range 28-209 Tg a(-1)), which is on average 85% of the total OA deposition. Fine aerosol organic carbon (OC) and OA observations from continuous monitoring networks and individual field campaigns have been used for model evaluation. At urban locations, the model-observation comparison indicates missing knowledge on anthropogenic OA sources, both strength and seasonality. The combined model-measurements analysis suggests the existence of increased OA levels during summer due to biogenic SOA formation over large areas of the USA that can be of the same order of magnitude as the POA, even at urban locations, and contribute to the measured urban seasonal pattern. Global models are able to simulate the high secondary character of OA observed in the atmosphere as a result of SOA formation and POA aging, although the amount of OA present in the atmosphere remains largely underestimated, with a mean normalized bias (MNB) equal to -0.62 (-0.51) based on the comparison against OC (OA) urban data of all models at the surface, -0.15 (+0.51) when compared with remote measurements, and -0.30 for marine locations with OC data. The mean temporal correlations across all stations are low when compared with OC (OA) measurements: 0.47 (0.52) for urban stations, 0.39 (0.37) for remote stations, and 0.25 for marine stations with OC data. The combination of high (negative) MNB and higher correlation at urban stations when compared with the low MNB and lower correlation at remote sites suggests that knowledge about the processes that govern aerosol processing, transport and removal, on top of their sources, is important at the remote stations. There is no clear change in model skill with increasing model complexity with regard to OC or OA mass concentration. However, the complexity is needed in models in order to distinguish between anthropogenic and natural OA as needed for climate mitigation, and to calculate the impact of OA on climate accurately.This study implemented first, second and glaciation aerosol indirect effects (AIE) on resolved clouds in the two-way coupled Weather Research and Forecasting Community Multiscale Air Quality (WRF-CMAQ) modeling system by including parameterizations for both cloud drop and ice number concentrations on the basis of CMAQ-predicted aerosol distributions and WRF meteorological conditions. The performance of the newly developed WRF-CMAQ model, with alternate Community Atmospheric Model (CAM) and Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for GCMs (RRTMG) radiation schemes, was evaluated with observations from the Clouds and the See http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/. Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite and surface monitoring networks (AQS, IMPROVE, CASTNET, STN, and PRISM) over the continental US (CONUS) (12 km resolution) and eastern Texas (4 km resolution) during August and September of 2006. The results at the Air Quality System (AQS) surface sites show that in August, the normalized mean bias (NMB) values for PM2.5 over the eastern US (EUS) and the western US (WUS) are 5.3% (-0.1%) and 0.4% (-5.2%) for WRF-CMAQ/CAM (WRF-CMAQ/RRTMG), respectively. The evaluation of PM2.5 chemical composition reveals that in August, WRF-CMAQ/CAM (WRF-CMAQ/RRTMG) consistently underestimated the observed SO42- by -23.0% (-27.7%), -12.5% (-18.9%) and -7.9% (-14.8%) over the EUS at the Clean Air Status Trends Network (CASTNET), Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) and Speciated Trends Network (STN) sites, respectively. Both configurations (WRF-CMAQ/CAM, WRF-CMAQ/RRTMG) overestimated the observed mean organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC) and and total carbon (TC) concentrations over the EUS in August at the IMPROVE sites. Both configurations generally underestimated the cloud field (shortwave cloud forcing, SWCF) over the CONUS in August due to the fact that the AIE on the subgrid convective clouds was not considered when the model simulations were run at the 12 km resolution. This is in agreement with the fact that both configurations captured SWCF and longwave cloud forcing (LWCF) very well for the 4 km simulation over eastern Texas, when all clouds were resolved by the finer resolution domain. The simulations of WRF-CMAQ/CAM and WRF-CMAQ/RRTMG show dramatic improvements for SWCF, LWCF, cloud optical depth (COD), cloud fractions and precipitation over the ocean relative to those of WRF default cases in August. The model performance in September is similar to that in August, except for a greater overestimation of PM2.5 due to the overestimations of SO42-, NH4+, NO3-, and TC over the EUS, less underestimation of clouds (SWCF) over the land areas due to the lower SWCF values, and fewer convective clouds in September. This work shows that inclusion of indirect aerosol effect treatments in WRF-CMAQ represents a significant advancement and milestone in air quality modeling and the development of integrated emissions control strategies for air quality management and climate change mitigation.Through 1959-2012, an airborne fraction (AF) of 0.44 of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions remained in the atmosphere, with the rest being taken up by land and ocean CO2 sinks. Understanding of this uptake is critical because it greatly alleviates the emissions reductions required for climate mitigation, and also reduces the risks and damages that adaptation has to embrace. An observable quantity that reflects sink properties more directly than the AF is the CO2 sink rate (k(S)), the combined land-ocean CO2 sink flux per unit excess atmospheric CO2 above preindustrial levels. Here we show from observations that k(S) declined over 1959-2012 by a factor of about 1/3, implying that CO2 sinks increased more slowly than excess CO2. Using a carbon-climate model, we attribute the decline in k(S) to four mechanisms: slower-than-exponential CO2 emissions growth (similar to 35% of the trend), volcanic eruptions (similar to 25 %), sink responses to climate change (similar to 20 %), and nonlinear responses to increasing CO2, mainly oceanic (similar to 20 %). The first of these mechanisms is associated purely with the trajectory of extrinsic forcing, and the last two with intrinsic, feedback responses of sink processes to changes in climate and atmospheric CO2. Our results suggest that the effects of these intrinsic, nonlinear responses are already detectable in the global carbon cycle. Although continuing future decreases in k(S) will occur under all plausible CO2 emission scenarios, the rate of decline varies between scenarios in non-intuitive ways because extrinsic and intrinsic mechanisms respond in opposite ways to changes in emissions: extrinsic mechanisms cause k(S) to decline more strongly with increasing mitigation, while intrinsic mechanisms cause k(S) to decline more strongly under high-emission, low-mitigation scenarios as the carbon-climate system is perturbed further from a near-linear regime.The potential of forests and the forest sector to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is widely recognized, but challenging to quantify at a national scale. Forests and their carbon (C) sequestration potential are affected by management practices, where wood harvesting transfers C out of the forest into products, and subsequent regrowth allows further C sequestration. Here we determine the mitigation potential of the 2.3 x 10(6) km(2) of Canada's managed forests from 2015 to 2050 using the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3), a harvested wood products (HWP) model that estimates emissions based on product half-life decay times, and an account of emission substitution benefits from the use of wood products and bioenergy. We examine several mitigation scenarios with different assumptions about forest management activity levels relative to a base case scenario, including improved growth from silvicultural activities, increased harvest and residue management for bioenergy, and reduced harvest for conservation. We combine forest management options with two mitigation scenarios for harvested wood product use involving an increase in either long-lived products or bioenergy uses. Results demonstrate large differences among alternative scenarios, and we identify potential mitigation scenarios with increasing benefits to the atmosphere for many decades into the future, as well as scenarios with no net benefit over many decades. The greatest mitigation impact was achieved through a mix of strategies that varied across the country and had cumulative mitigation of 254 Tg CO(2)e in 2030, and 1180 Tg CO(2)e in 2050. There was a trade-off between short-term and long-term goals, in that maximizing short-term emissions reduction could reduce the forest sector's ability to contribute to longer-term objectives. We conclude that (i) national-scale forest sector mitigation options need to be assessed rigorously from a systems perspective to avoid the development of policies that deliver no net benefits to the atmosphere, (ii) a mix of strategies implemented across the country achieves the greatest mitigation impact, and (iii) because of the time delays in achieving carbon benefits for many forest-based mitigation activities, future contributions of the forest sector to climate mitigation can be maximized if implemented soon.Climate change strongly affected the structure and functions of natural ecosystems, e.g. the vegetation productivity decreased in the Northeast permafrost region due to the higher temperature and less precipitation, whereas in the Tibetan Plateau, the vegetation productivity increased, owing to the improved thermal resource. Climate change led to reduced precipitation in North and Northeast China and thus the reduced surface runoff. The public needs for energy were changed because of climate change, e.g. the shorter heating period in winter. Climate change profoundly influenced human health, pathophoresis and major projects by increasing extreme events, including frequency and magnitude, and causing more serious water shortage. Under the background of climate change, although the improved thermal resources can be helpful for extending the crop growth period, more extreme events may resulted in more instability in agricultural productivity. Not only did climate change indirectly affect the secondary and tertiary industries through the impacts on agriculture and natural resources, but also climate change mitigation measures, such as carbon tax, tariff and trading, had extensive and profound influences on the socioeconomic system. Further analysis indicated that the impact of climate change presented significant regional differences. The impact had its pros and cons, while the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. Based on the above analysis on the impacts of climate change, we put forward suggestions on coping with climate change. First, scientifically dealing with climate change will need to seek advantages while avoiding the disadvantages of climate change in order to achieve the orderly adaptation to climate change, which is characterized with "Overall best, long-term benefit." Second, quantitative adaptation should be given more attention, e.g. proposing operational schemes and predictable goals and using uncertainty analysis on adaptation measures. Third, more active coping strategy should be adopted to enhance China's future comprehensive competitiveness. The strategies include but are not limited to gradually adjusting the industrial structure, intensifying the research and development (R&D) of emission reduction technology and actively responding to the influence of carbon tax, tariff and trading on socioeconomic development in China.A region's cultural environment-how people communicate and how local media represent the immediate social and natural environment-is indicative of local dominant normative values that underpin potential capacities for climate change mitigation and adaptation. This article explores this premise with a comparison of two regions in Australia: Northern Rivers (New South Wales) and Ipswich-Lockyer (Queensland), and draws attention to readers' letters published in two daily newspapers, The Queensland Times (Ipswich) and The Northern Star (Lismore), with a specific focus on the Clean Energy Legislative Package. Leximancer software is used to analyse the content of readers' letters published over a nine-month period coinciding with the passage of the legislation through the Australian parliament. The results indicate important differences in local discourses and suggest a focus on local socio-cultural landscapes and their capacities for community dialogue are potentially useful for understanding how communities talk about, and the extent to which they will accept climate change policies.Moral duties concerning climate change mitigation are - for good reasons - conventionally construed as duties of institutional agents, usually states. Yet, in both scholarly debate and political discourse, it has occasionally been argued that the moral duties lie not only with states and institutional agents, but also with individual citizens. This argument has been made with regard to mitigation efforts, especially those reducing greenhouse gases. This paper focuses on the question of whether individuals in industrialized countries have duties to reduce their individual carbon footprint. To this end it will examine three kinds of arguments that have been brought forward against individuals having such duties: the view that individual emissions cause no harm; the view that individual mitigation efforts would have no morally significant effect; and the view that lifestyle changes would be overly-demanding. The paper shows how all three arguments fail to convince. While collective endeavours may be most efficient and effective in bringing about significant changes, there are still good reasons to contribute individually to reducing emission. After all, for most people the choice is between reducing one's individual emissions and not doing anything. The author hopes this paper shows that one should not opt for the latter.Global competition for natural resources is intense and the supply of those resources is increasingly more constrained by climate variability and change. Governments and international development agencies have the dual responsibility to meet the socio-economic needs of the poorest and most vulnerable people while preserving and enhancing their natural capital. These responsibilities often are at odds with each other and different stakeholder groups have prioritised one over the other. This paper suggests that the landscape approach provides a solution for stakeholders to achieve climate change mitigation, adaptation, and poverty reduction goals, though not without some trade-offs.Knowledge of the mechanisms influencing phenology can provide insights into the adaptability of species to climate change. Here, we investigated the factors influencing multidecadal trends in the nesting phenology of the leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea at Playa Grande, Costa Rica, in the eastern Pacific Ocean and at Sandy Point, US Virgin Islands, in the western Atlantic Ocean. Between 1993 and 2013, the median nesting date (MND) at Playa Grande occurred later, at a rate of similar to 0.3 d yr(-1). In contrast, between 1982 and 2010, the MND at Sandy Point occurred earlier, at a rate of similar to 0.17 d yr(-1). The opposing trends in the MND of each population were not explained by variation in the multivariate El Nino-Southern Oscillation index, North Atlantic Oscillation index, or Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index; however, the MND at Playa Grande was significantly correlated with nesting population size. We propose that changes in demography, linked to the population decline at Playa Grande, and the population recovery at Sandy Point may explain the contrasting trends in MNDs. If the observed trends in MND continue into the future, the nesting season at Playa Grande will coincide with increasingly adverse conditions for hatching success, exacerbating the already detrimental effects of climate change. Alternatively, shifts in the nesting phenology may make the Atlantic populations more resilient to climate change. Our findings highlight the increasing need for conservation efforts for eastern Pacific leatherback turtles to consider climate change mitigation practices.In recent years, Carbon Capture and Storage (Sequestration) (CCS) has been proposed as a potential method to allow the continued use of fossil-fuelled power stations whilst preventing emissions of CO2 from reaching the atmosphere. Gas, coat (and biomass)-fired power stations can respond to changes in demand more readily than many other sources of electricity production, hence the importance of retaining them as an option in the energy mix. Here, we review the leading CO2 capture technologies, available in the short and long term, and their technological maturity, before discussing CO2 transport and storage. Current pilot plants and demonstrations are highlighted, as is the importance of optimising the CCS system as a whole. Other topics briefly discussed include the viability of both the capture of CO2 from the air and CO2 reutilisation as climate change mitigation strategies. Finally, we discuss the economic and legal aspects of CCS.Background: This paper investigates the decision-making processes of mayors on the municipal level in Brandenburg, Germany, to support 100% renewable energy policies as well as the respective key success factors. Three different cases and their specific settings are examined: (1) Turnow-Preilack with Germany's largest solar power plant, (2) Prenzlau, a town claiming the title 'City of Renewable Energy' and (3) the village of Feldheim, the first energy independent settlement in Germany. Methods: On the basis of exploratory site visits and interviews, the process of implementation of renewable energy is investigated. The methodology developed here is based on the 'theory of planned behaviour' which helps to visualise the individual decision-making processes of key actors. Results: Not surprisingly, many different factors influence the investigated cases. The decision-making processes must be investigated in their context that is shaped by the attitudes of mayors, the expectation of how their actions will be perceived, and the control mayors estimate to have over projects. Conclusion: The identified factors point at the key finding that the mayors first and foremost think about the 'good of their municipality'. This does not necessarily refer to economic factors but can encompass aspects such as 'strengthening community life'. More abstract factors such as climate change or contributing to the transition of the national power supply play - if at all - a minor role. Policies that aim at supporting energy transitions in similar settings should therefore shift their focus from communicating climate change mitigation to the co-benefits that ambitious renewable energy policies can bring to a community.Background: There is a growing body of literature that examines the role of local governments in addressing climate change vis-a-vis mitigation and adaptation. Although it appears that climate change mitigation strategies - in particular those addressing energy issues - are being adopted by a large majority of local governments, this cannot be said of climate change adaptation. This paper explores the uptake of these two types of climate change policy by local governments in the Netherlands. The central research question is: What lessons can be drawn from comparing the adoption and implementation of local climate change mitigation policies with local climate change adaptation policies in the Netherlands? Our paper contributes to the body of literature on climate change policy implementation, drawing particular attention to the ongoing debate on the institutional dimension of the adaptation-mitigation dichotomy. Methods: A comparative case study research design was chosen to study the adoption and implementation of climate change (i) mitigation and (ii) adaptation policies by local governments in the Netherlands during the period 1998 to 2013. The data involved 89 expert interviews and secondary data sources from four research projects conducted by the present authors on local climate change policy implementation. Results: Most Dutch municipalities have local climate change policies that address mitigation. Local governments pay relatively little attention to adaptation. The difference is mostly due to the take-up of central government-led policy support schemes aimed at the vertical integration of climate change mitigation policies. Moreover, mitigation is typically framed as an 'energy' issue whereas adaptation is framed as a 'water' issue. This has far-reaching consequences. Climate change adaptation has never been prioritized, nor has it been supported with properly funded policy support schemes. Conclusions: In the realm of local climate change policies, adaptation is still considered an 'add-on' to climate change mitigation policy. Moreover, adoption and implementation of both adaptation and mitigation suffers from institutional inertia in Dutch local policy practice.Background: Changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks significantly influence the atmospheric C concentration. Agricultural management practices that increase SOC stocks thus may have profound effects on climate mitigation. Additional benefits include higher soil fertility since increased SOC stocks improve the physical and biological properties of the soil. Intensification of agriculture and land-use change from grasslands to croplands are generally known to deplete SOC stocks. The depletion is exacerbated through agricultural practices with low return of organic material and various mechanisms, such as oxidation/mineralization, leaching and erosion. However, a systematic review comparing the efficacy of different agricultural management practices to increase SOC stocks has not yet been produced. Since there are diverging views on this matter, a systematic review would be timely for framing policies not only nationally in Sweden, but also internationally, for promoting long-term sustainable management of soils and mitigating climate change. Methods: The systematic review will examine how changes in SOC are affected by a range of soil-management practices relating to tillage management, addition of crop residues, manure or other organic "wastes", and different crop rotation schemes. Within the warm temperate and the snow climate zones, agricultural management systems in which wheat, barley, rye, oats, silage maize or oilseed rape can grow in the crop rotation will be selected. The review will exclusively focus on studies conducted over at least 10 years. Searches will be made in 15 publication databases as well as in specialist databases. Articles found will be screened using inclusion/exclusion criteria at title, abstract and full-text levels, and screening consistency will be evaluated using Kappa tests. Data from articles that remain after critical appraisal will be extracted using a predefined spreadsheet. Subgroup analyses will be undertaken to elucidate statistical relationships that are specific to particular type of management interventions. Meta-regression within subgroups will be performed as well as sensitivity analysis to investigate the impact of removing groups of studies with low or unclear quality.Countries are known to follow diverse pathways of life expectancy and carbon emissions, but little is known about factors driving these dynamics. In this letter we estimate the cross-sectional economic, demographic and geographic drivers of consumption-based carbon emissions. Using clustering techniques, countries are grouped according to their drivers, and analysed with respect to a criteria of one tonne of carbon emissions per capita and a life expectancy over 70 years (Goldemberg's Corner). Five clusters of countries are identified with distinct drivers and highly differentiated outcomes of life expectancy and carbon emissions. Representatives from four clusters intersect within Goldemberg's Corner, suggesting diverse combinations of drivers may still lead to sustainable outcomes, presenting many countries with an opportunity to follow a pathway towards low-carbon human development. By contrast, within Goldemberg's Corner, there are no countries from the core, wealthy consuming nations. These results reaffirm the need to address economic inequalities within international agreements for climate mitigation, but acknowledge plausible and accessible examples of low-carbon human development for countries that share similar underlying drivers of carbon emissions. In addition, we note differences in drivers between models of territorial and consumption-based carbon emissions, and discuss interesting exceptions to the drivers-based cluster analysis.The contributions of Protected Areas (PAs) in two developing countries (India and Nigeria) to biodiversity conservation and carbon accumulation were assessed in this study. Data were collected through field inventory from 12 plots (25 x 25 m) randomly located in each of the PAs. In each plot, all woody plants were identified and tree growth variables were measured for trees with diameter at breast height >= 10 cm. We discovered that the two PAs are well stocked, mature and rich in tree species diversity with potentials for continuous growth as a result of the presence of young trees in the lower canopy. The biological diversity indices compared favorably with other similar PAs. The high above-ground biomass and carbon of the tree species revealed the roles of PAs in climate change mitigation through CO2 absorption from the atmosphere. The difference in their phytosociological characteristics and carbon sink capacities, with higher values obtained for Nigerian forest, was attributed to the variation in geographical location, climatic conditions and soil properties. The protection of these PAs should be enhanced for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. The perceived challenges in developing countries with forest protection can be mitigated by introducing some institutional policies and rural community involvement in forest management.Now a days climate change and extreme events and droughts in particular could be considered as a fact. As infinity but limited good, water resources are very sensitive to these aspects and require adoption of special measures. This is realized by passing an appropriate legislation and its practical implementation with the help of new technologies, methods and instruments appropriate with scientific knowledge and innovations in the field. Concerning Water as a main driver could be pointed Water Framework Directive and related documents. But IPCC and other conventions and directives turns view on these problems either. By the moment in Bulgaria this is realized in parallel term in the context of Climate change policy and in context of sector Waters. And Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and River Basin Management (RBM) in particular and Environmental Management as tools for practical implementation of drought and Climate Change mitigation and adaptation must put special attention on both aspects. In help of professionals and decision makers related to water this article aims briefly to present main aspects and common ground of pointed categories highlighting the possibility of integration between them to ensure environmentally responsible behavior, sustainable development and " green" future practices.The global physical potential of different methods of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere is reviewed. A new categorisation into plant-based, algal-based and alkalinity-based approaches to CDR is proposed. Within these categories, the key flux-limiting resources for CDR are identified and the potential CO2 removal flux that each technology could generate is quantitatively assessed - with a focus on the present, 2050 and 2100. This reveals, for example, that use of waste nutrient flows to feed macro-algae for biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (algal BECCS), shows significant CDR potential, without needing the large land areas or freshwater supplies of plant biomass energy crops. Adding up the potentials of different CDR methods, the total CDR potential at present is 1.5-3 PgC yr(-1) (Petagram of carbon per year), comparable in size to either the natural land or ocean carbon sinks. Already 0.55-0.76 PgC yr(-1) of this potential has been realised through afforestation and inadvertent ocean fertilisation. The total CDR potential (without including direct air capture) grows such that by mid-century it is 4-9 PgC yr(-1) and by the end of the century it is 9-26 PgC yr(-1), comparable with current total CO2 emissions of 10 PgC yr(-1). The CDR that can be realised under social, economic and engineering constraints is always going to be less than the physical potential. Nevertheless, if combined with reducing CO2 emissions (conventional mitigation), CDR has the physical potential to help stabilise atmospheric CO2 by the middle of this century.Food security and climate change are two of the biggest challenges which face humanity in the 21st Century and agricultural land is the physical interface for these interlinked issues. This chapter addresses how cropland interacts with climate; the ways in which crops have affected climate in the past; and how crops could help mitigate climate change in the future. Of the ways that climate issues and crops are related, one of the most relevant to the future is through geoengineering. The concept of deliberately using crops to reduce the surface air temperature is still in development, but has gathered considerable interest in recent years. Models suggest that in North America and Europe, a moderate increase in crop albedo could decrease summertime temperatures by up to 1 degrees C. Although this amounts to a small change compared with many other geoengineering proposals, it could be made with relatively little cost and would make a significant difference to crops which are particularly sensitive to high temperatures, such as wheat. Along with other climate mitigation strategies, cooling with crops could be one aspect of a deliberate policy to limit the dangerous impacts of climate change.British Columbia (BC) forests are estimated to have become a net carbon source in recent years due to tree death and decay caused primarily by mountain pine beetle (MPB) and related post-harvest slash burning practices. BC forest biomass has also become a major source of wood pellets, exported primarily for bioenergy to Europe, although the sustainability and net carbon emissions of forest bioenergy in general are the subject of current debate. We simulated the temporal carbon balance of BC wood pellets against different reference scenarios for forests affected by MPB in the interior BC timber harvesting area using the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3). We evaluated the carbon dynamics for different insect-mortality levels, at the stand- and landscape level, taking into account carbon storage in the ecosystem, wood products and fossil fuel displacement. Our results indicate that current harvesting practices, in which slash is burnt and only sawdust used for pellet production, require between 20-25years for beetle-impacted pine and 37-39years for spruce-dominated systems to reach pre-harvest carbon levels (i.e. break-even) at the stand-level. Using pellets made from logging slash to replace coal creates immediate net carbon benefits to the atmosphere of 17-21 tonnes C ha(-1), shortening these break-even times by 9-20years and resulting in an instant carbon break-even level on stands most severely impacted by the beetle. Harvesting pine dominated sites for timber while using slash for bioenergy was also found to be more carbon beneficial than a protection reference scenario on both stand- and landscape level. However, harvesting stands exclusively for bioenergy resulted in a net carbon source unless the system contained a high proportion of dead trees (>85%). Systems with higher proportions of living trees provide a greater climate change mitigation if used for long lived wood products.Fossil fuel combustion processes that generate greenhouse gases (GHG) also emit and or cause the creation of other harmful air pollutants. Thus, while policies designed to avert the course of climate change would eventually result in direct human health benefits from lessened global temperature changes and associated impacts, they would also bring much more immediate ancillary human health co-benefits from the associated reduced ground-level air pollution in the short term. Several measures aimed at reducing GHG emissions, notably the reduced use of fossil fuels such as coal, can also improve local air quality, most notably particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O-3) air pollution. Further, whereas the benefits from climate change mitigation would materialize far in the future, these co-benefits, or ancillary benefits, would provide much more immediate "return on investment" in climate change mitigation. Thus, as detailed below, the near-term human health co-benefits of climate mitigation (e.g., fossil fuel emission reductions) may provide the most economically compelling justification for immediate action towards climate change mitigation. Here we discuss the health impacts of PM and ozone, two key air pollutants that have substantial impacts on human health and that are likely to be reduced by policies aimed at controlling GHG emissions.Human well-being includes the use of physical services from buildings, infrastructure, and consumer products. These in-use stocks link the services enjoyed by humans to energy and material consumption. Climate change mitigation requires us to transform current in-use stocks to decouple energy and material throughput from service provision. Assessing the potential environmental benefits of emissions mitigation and other sustainable development strategies requires a solid understanding of in-use stocks and their dynamics. We identified the different roles of in-use stocks in the social metabolism and showed to what extent they are included in current impact assessment models. We extended state-of-the-art dynamic stock models by including direct and indirect energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. We applied the new modeling framework to three case studies in the major sectors transportation, buildings, and industry. We assessed the emissions reduction potential of the decoupling strategies energy efficiency, material efficiency, and moderate lifestyle changes. For the global steel industry and for residential buildings the emissions reduction potential of the above-mentioned strategies was so large that the benchmarks corresponding to the 2 degrees C climate target could be reached. Decoupling alone might be sufficient to reach the 2 degrees C benchmarks in some sectors. Considering decoupling next to supply side measures such as new energy technologies may make it easier to consider other objectives than emissions reduction. Decoupling may therefore revitalize the debate about sustainable development because it allows us to loosen the focus on climate change mitigation and put more weight on the economic, social, cultural, and other environmental aspects of sustainability. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Livestock is the most important source of income for pastoral livelihoods in drylands. Pastoralists have developed flexible resource utilization strategies that enable them to cope with the high spatio-temporal resource variability typical to these areas. However, climate change in the form of decreasing mean annual precipitation accompanied by increasing variability has important consequences for rangeland productivity and thus pastoral livelihood security. Here, we use a spatial simulation model to assess impacts of changing precipitation regimes, and to identify limits of tolerance for these changes beyond which pastoral livelihoods cannot be secured. We also examine strategies to control these limits. Our results indicate that: (i) while reduced mean annual precipitation always had negative effects, increased precipitation variability can have negative, none or even positive effects, depending on the vegetation's recovery potential. (ii) Depending on income requirements there are limits of tolerance to decreases in mean annual precipitation beyond which precipitation regimes overcharge the coping capacity of the pastoral household and threaten its livelihood. (iii) There are certain strategies, in particular "Increasing mobility" and "Diversifying income for coping with income risks from pastoralism", that allow the limits of tolerance to be shifted to a certain extent. We conclude that it is important to consider climate change and human requirements together to create appropriate climate change mitigation strategies in pastoral systems. Our results also shed new light on the discussion on disequilibrium rangeland systems by identifying mechanisms that can support fluctuating but non-degrading herbivore-vegetation dynamics. The paper finishes with remarks on the broader potential of the presented modelling approach beyond rangelands. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are still developing approaches to address the issue of climate change. The aim of the study is to examine how recent EIAs in Canada have approached the issue of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when evaluating each individual project's contribution to and impact significance on climate change. Twelve EIAs performed under national legislation in Canada were analyzed. Canada developed approaches to GHG emissions more than a decade ago, and it is now common to assess the emissions and propose some mitigation in EIAs. Large emitters have proposed some substantial measures, typically the latest technologies, to reduce emissions. However, other proposed ideas may still be ambiguous and hard to examine in terms of real effects. Furthermore, there were many ambiguous and/or inconsistent definitions of GHG emission levels as well as significance of GHG emission impacts. The expressions of GHG emission amounts using percent are potentially misleading. In response to these situations, we suggest the use of clear and reasonable evaluations and definitions of GHG emissions as well as their significance.Climate change mitigation can be achieved through different instruments: policy requirements, technological approaches to minimise greenhouse gases, forestry and agriculture management, educational and public information activities and others. Government, funding institutions, enterprises, educational institutions and nongovernmental organisations play the crucial role in developing and operating the awareness raising platform focused on climate change mitigation. Objective of the research is to evaluate the role of six non-governmental organisations (NGOs), providing different services - consultative, financial, educational, in raising capacities in climate change field in Latvia: Environmental Consultative Council, Environmental Science and Education Council, Climate Change Financing Instrument Consultative Council, Tri-Party Cooperation Sub-Council on Environmental Protection Issues, Climate Technology Cooperation Council. The evaluation is structured used the main evaluation criteria widely used for assessment of the success of activities and projects in the field of the environment. These criteria are: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. Within the research a combined evaluation methodology based on a criteria-based evaluation and multicriteria decision making technique TOPSIS is developed for determination of the most effective activities of the nongovernmental organisations for climate change mitigation.Studies have suggested the importance of implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in combination with considering possible co-benefit and trade-off among them. However, quantification of such co-benefit/trade-off at city level is still in its infancy. Accordingly, using a micro zone level spatial explicit land use model which we have developed, this study assesses the co-benefit/trade-off of mitigation measure (compact city policy) and adaptation measure (retreat from high flood hazard areas) from the view point of CO2 emissions and expected loss due to the damage by river floods. For the assessment of residential CO2 emissions, this paper utilizes the microdata of National survey of family income and expenditure. The results suggest the importance of careful planning to create compact city to avoid trade-off. This study was funded by "Research Program on Climate Change Adaptation (RECCA)" of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.We explore how and by how much assumptions about elasticities of substitution affect estimates of the cost of GHG emissions reduction policies in computable general equilibrium (CGE) models using G-Cubed, an intertemporal CGE model, to carry out a sensitivity and factor decomposition analysis. The results suggest that the average abatement cost rises non-linearly as elasticities are reduced. Substitution elasticities between capital, labor, energy and materials in production have a larger impact on mitigation costs than inter-fuel substitution does. There are notable differences in the effect of the elasticities on costs at the regional level due to interactions in international trade and capital flows in such a global model. Although the results in this study are derived from a particular model, the study, in a broader sense, suggests that there is a necessity for sensitivity analysis before making any conclusive policy recommendation using CGE models. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.To achieve both water conservation and climate change mitigation benefits, photovoltaic water pumping (PVWP) system, which employs solar energy to fuel the water pumping system, has been a widely adopted solar energy technology in the last two decades. Although the PVWP system is driven by direct renewable flux, and has no onsite CO2 emissions, there must be energy consumed during the production of PV modules and the operation of water pumping system. Thus, we estimated the CO2 emissions of a PVWP system in Inner Mongolia, China in a life cycle perspective. A hybrid Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which combines process-sum and economic input-out analysis was employed to reduce uncertainty. Results show that PVWP is a good choice for carbon emission reduction with carbon sequestration benefit much higher than the lifetime carbon emissions. The largest emitters are PV module and engineering, which should be the focus of carbon management of PVWP system. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Because of their relevance as a source of energy as woodfuel, carbon storage capacity and their environmental characteristics in ecosystems, tropical leguminous trees are suitable for their management on plantations to produce biomass for energy or carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. The main purpose of this paper is to present the results of a research project to develop a methodology to estimate the energy content and the carbon sequestered in the above ground biomass of trees in plantations of Acacia cochliacantha and Acacia pennatula, two leguminous tree species of the tropical dry forest of Mexico and Central America. To do this the heating value and carbon content of wood data were integrated to transform allometric equations into energy and carbon sequestered equations. These equations, once supplemented with further experimental data could be very useful in calculating energy content and carbon sequestration to enhance the economics and sustainable management of these energy plantations.In this paper efforts were made to create awareness and evaluate carbon footprint for the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB) for the period August 2011 to July 2012. The aim of this analysis was to determine the carbon footprint of FUNAAB, not only to give a tangible number with which the University's carbon sustainability level can be compared with other academic Institutions, but also to provide the much-needed baseline against which future mitigation efforts on the university campus can be measured. FUNAAB's carbon footprint for the 2011/2012 session was found to be about 5,935 tons CO2, with transportation, campus energy consumption and farm machineries contributing about 63%, 35% and 2% respectively. Staff and student commuting alone contributed about 55% of all emissions associated with University activities. FUNAAB's per-capita emissions with a total of about 10,256 students for the 2011/2012 session amount to about 0.6 tons CO2 emissions per student.Global climate change, its present control and even its future reduction have been considered. Energy has been proposed as the main feed of comprehensive development. The way for meeting energy needs which certainly affects the existing energy resources will have forceful climate consequences. The purpose of this study is to explore how, in practice, the energy requirements of sustainable development can be afforded without any climate-change aggravation. Two fundamental approaches were proposed and completely discussed: the first long-term developing approach is the use of advanced energy-productive technologies instead of the existing ones and/or implementation of hybrid processes, a combination of conventional systems with a newly low energy-consumptive and emission-reductive technology in a newly installed system. The second most sustainable scheme is the development of alternative renewable energy (RE) resources. In this case, available internationally legal documents discovering the RE policies were explored and their commitment strategies were taken into original and deliberate challenges. It was concluded that the best solution to afford energy requirements is the expansion of RE sources, excluding or rarely without any sanctions reflected on the main documents of international climate policy. Since the dominant conditions of international investments have more tendencies to the short-time cost-efficient methods, the documents have only provided a limited situation for the expansion of REs. As a result, the present weak status of REs in the documents comprises their attitude towards the long-term developing scheme (the first approach) and not to the most sustainable scheme of altering the energy resources (the second approach).Purpose - The purpose of this study is first to evaluate whether real options analysis (ROA) is suitable for valuing green building certificates, and second to calculate the real option value of a green certificate in a typical office building setting. Green buildings are demonstrated as one of the most profitable climate mitigation actions. However, no consensus exists among industry professionals about how green buildings and specifically green building certificates should be valued. Design/methodology/approach - The research design of the study involves a theoretical part and an empirical part. In the theoretical part, option characteristics of green building certificates are identified and a contemporary real option valuation method is proposed for application. In the empirical part, the application is demonstrated in an embedded multiple case study design. Two different building cases (with and without green certificate) with eight independent cash flow valuations by eight industry professionals are used as data set for eight valuation case studies and analyses. Additionally, cross-case analysis is executed for strengthening the analysis. Findings - The paper finds that green certificates have several characteristics similar to real options and supports the idea of using ROA in valuing a green certificate. The paper also explains how option pricing theory and discounted cash flow (DCF) method deal with uncertainty and what shortcomings of DCF could be overcome by ROA. The results show that a mean real option value of (sic)985,000 (or 8.8 per cent premium to the mean property value) was found for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum certificate in the Finnish property market. The main finding of the paper suggests that the contemporary real option valuation methods are appropriate to assess the monetary value and the uncertainty of a green building certificate. Originality/value - This is the first study to argue that option-pricing theory can be used for valuing green building certificates. The identification of the option characteristics of green building certificates and demonstration of the ROA in an empirical case makes questions whether the current mainstream investment analysis approaches are the most suitable methods for valuing green building certificates.This meta-analysis aims to identify the key factors governing the economic costs of avoided deforestation in developing countries. To this end, data were collected from 32 primary studies published between 1995 and 2012, yielding 277 observations. Results show that unit costs depend significantly on cost features like estimation methodology, inclusion or exclusion of cost components, carbon accounting method, area size, alternative land uses and beneficiaries, time horizon, and the continent in which the forest protection scheme is implemented, but also factors like the share of agriculture in a nation's economy play a significant role in explaining unit costs. In future studies, greater attention needs to be paid to additional cost components like transaction costs and the presence of the co-benefits of avoided deforestation. (C) 2013 Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umea. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.Nitrogen fertilizer use in agriculture is associated with water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. While practices and programs to reduce nitrogen fertilizer application continue to be developed, inefficient fertilizer use persists and little is known about farmer decision-making regarding application rates. The purpose of this study was to explore farmer decision-making in the context of reducing the application of nitrogen fertilizer as a climate change mitigation strategy and to assess barriers to reduced application and participating in a potential offsets program. Research methods included mail surveys, interviews, and focus groups with corn farmers in Michigan, United States (US). Results indicate that potential barriers to increasing nitrogen use efficiency for climate change mitigation include: perceptions about climate change, limited access to information and technological tools, and constraints imposed by the political economy of US agriculture. Education programs, government subsidies or cost-sharing programs, and including influential market and political actors in discussions about fertilizer use and climate change mitigation may address some of these barriers. Policies and programs focused on nitrogen fertilizer use and climate change mitigation in agriculture should be aware of these barriers and how they might be addressed. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Quantifying the impact of smallholder tree plantation to better design prescriptions tailored to promote climate change mitigation is essential. The study was undertaken to assess the aboveground carbon dioxide sequestration potential of Acacia mangium. Fifty temporary circular sample plots were established comprising 3,910 trees. The aboveground carbon density of A. mangium Willd. was determined nondestructively using Brown and Lugo formula, "AGB (ton per tree) = volume over bark (m(3) per tree) * wood density (g cm(-3)) * biomass expansion factor (BEF). The study was able to develop a new biomass expansion factor equation for A. mangium Willd. The results of the study showed that as tree age increases, the tree biomass and carbon density also increases, but at slower rate from 3-17 yrs. The average aboveground biomass density of A. mangium at ages 3, 10 and 17 years were 3.33, 33.06 and 73.09 t ha(-1), respectively. On the other hand, the mean aboveground biomass density increment at site indices 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24 were 4.04, 4.40, 4.99, 5.47 and 5.86 t ha(-1), respectively. This study explicitly showed the great potential of smallholder A. mangium plantation in sequestering carbon dioxide.KLIMA X, a climate change exhibition adapted for the Finnish Science Center Heureka, promotes climate change mitigation by offering extraordinary opportunities for immersion and physical engagement. The case study presented here investigated how KLIMA X contributed to a change in young people's attitudes towards climate change. A mixed method was applied by combining a scientific field experiment and Personal Meaning Mapping. An observation of multiple facets of attitude revealed that the intention to act against climate change did not increase significantly even though other facets of attitude like emotional involvement and knowledge did. Interestingly, those students that both visited the exhibition and had a follow-up class showed a decreased intent to act against climate change compared to the group that only experienced the exhibition. Those students whose action intent increased significantly were likely to be personally interested in Earth Sciences, prefer an abstract/linguistic learning style and feel that their actions would be acknowledged by peers.The central focus of this paper is to highlight the ways in which path dependencies and increasing returns (network effects) serve to reinforce carbon lock-in in large-scale road transportation infrastructure projects. Breaking carbon lock-in requires drastic changes in the way we plan future transportation infrastructure projects, and documentary evidence presented here from the metropolitan regions of Copenhagen, Denmark and Portland, USA, indicate that there may be a discontinuity in the system of automobility (Urry, 2004), thereby increasing the likelihood that such drastic measures may in fact be successfully realized.In response to the environmental impact of climate change, greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reductions has become a common global goal. This has led to policies and measures to meet GHG reduction targets at country levels without much success. Therefore, the assessment of the effects of energy is important for the promotion of public policies at local levels that can lead to actions on GHG reductions. LED street lighting is more expensive than traditional luminaries and its use remains limited. This study analyzes the technical, economic, environmental and social impacts of LED street lighting in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and proposes changes of the street lighting municipal regulation to promote and ensure the adoption of this technology. The results of the study show that by upgrading the street lighting to LED a 64% of energy savings is achieved, which represents an environmental impact on GHG emissions avoided to the atmosphere of 33,192 tons of equivalent carbon dioxide (tCO2e) per year. We propose that the monetary savings achieved using LED street lightning be used to improve the quality of life for population groups in areas of the city that are most at risk.In both France and the UK, low-energy renovation of housing is an important part of wider climate change mitigation strategy. Policy directed at householders and building professionals aims to increase the number and ambition of low-energy renovations. However, persistent problems exist for delivering genuine energy reductions at scale, including the design-performance gap, which can be understood as a problem for industry related to three factors: knowledge and skills; uncertainty over who has responsibility; and poor communication. This paper reports two case studies, focusing on the practices of innovative construction firms - one in the UK and one in France. The UK case concerns a social housing organisation that developed innovative ways of working and delivered high-quality results at lower than expected costs. The French case study profiles a new start-up company with a co-operative governance structure offering guaranteed performance contracts to clients for its renovation services. Key common themes for these innovative firms are: new configurations of traditional roles and responsibilities on site; new ways of responding to the needs and behaviours of building occupants; and the integration of different feedback mechanisms to provide learning.Temperate grasslands are generally considered carbon (C) sinks, but climate and management likely affect whether they accumulate or lose C on an annual time step. The North Central Region of the United States contains highly productive improved pasture that is used exclusively for livestock grazing and mechanical harvest. The objective of this study was to use a net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) approach to estimate C accumulation or loss in subhumid pastures under four typical livestock management practices: management-intensive rotational grazing (MIRG), continuous grazing (CONT), haymaking (HARV), and land set aside with no harvests (NONE). MIRG lost significantly less C in 2006 than all other treatments, and in 2007 MIRG was the only treatment that had a positive NECB. For 2006, our model resulted in an average change of -236 +/- 15 (CONT), -100 +/- 24 (MIRG), -391 +/- 11 (HARV), and -276 +/- 28 (NONE) g C . m(-2) . y(-1). For 2007, the change was -234 +/- 56 (CONT), -106 +/- 69 (MIRG), -200 +/- 25 (HARV), and -171 +/- 38 (NONE) g C . m(-2) . y(-1). Increased C fixed as net primary production (NPP) and C imported as hay and grain resulted in the MIRG treatment having the most favorable C balance. Even with imported hay and grain, reduced NPP in the CONT treatment led to a less favorable C balance. In the HARV treatment, high biomass removal drove the negative C balance, while the relationship between reduced NPP and heterotrophic respiration alone drove the negative C balance in the NONE treatment. Climate change mitigation services provided from ecosystem C accumulation relative to cultivation may be warranted for pastures, but when all cross-boundary transfers of C are not considered, significant misconceptions can occur regarding how different management strategies affect the NECB of subhumid pasture.Biofuel production and land seizure in Africa has come under the spotlight recently. Ghana is a case in point. Lands taken by multinational companies for biofuel production are common. A total of 769,000 hectares of land has been acquired by foreign companies like Agroils (Italy), Galten Global Alternative Energy (Israel), Gold Star Farms (Ghana), Jatropha Africa (UK/Ghana), Biofuel Africa (Norway), ScanFuel (Norway) and Kimminic Corporation (Canada). Research indicates that Ghana has 3.99 million hectares of arable land and 2,075,000 hectares of permanent culture. This means that more than 37 % of arable land in Ghana is used for the cultivation of Jatropha. The research analysed specific areas of biofuel production such as the Ahanta in the Western Region, Pru in Brong Ahafo and Offinso in the Ashanti Region in Ghana. We will explore the implications of land use changes as well as the climate mitigation potential of biofuels.This study explores the use of spatial models in forecasting U.S. state-level carbon dioxide emissions. We compare forecasts against empirical reality using panel data models with and without spatial effects. Understanding how to predict emissions is important for designing climate change mitigation policies. To determine if spatial econometric models can help us predict emissions, it is important to test these models to see if they are a valid strategy to describe the underlying data, in the context of forecasting. We find that a non-spatial OLS estimator performs best in all out-of-sample forecasts; however, the OLS model is not statistically distinguishable from a spatial panel data model with random effects.The need for large scale low carbon solar electricity production has become increasingly urgent for reasons of energy security and climate change mitigation. Third-generation solar cells (SCs) are solution processed SCs based on semiconducting organic macromolecules, inorganic nanoparticles or hybrids. This review considers and compares three types of promising 3rd-generation SCs: polymer: fullerene, hybrid polymer and perovskite SCs. The review considers work reported since an earlier review (Saunders et al., Adv. Colloid Interface Sci., 2008, 138, 1) and highlights the great progress that has been made in each area. We consider the operation principles for each SC type and also review the state-of-the-art devices. The polymer: fullerene and hybrid polymer SC open circuit voltages are compared to values predicted from the well-known Scharber equation and similarities and differences discussed. The perovskite SCs are also considered and their remarkable rate of power conversion efficiency performance increase is discussed. The review considers the requirements for large-scale deployment in the contexts of semiconducting polymer and hole transport matrix synthesis and materials selection. It is concluded that the 3rd-generation SC technologies discussed here are well placed for major contribution to large scale energy production. (This has already been partially demonstrated for polymer: fullerene SCs.) Looking further ahead we propose that several of the 3rd-generation SCs considered here have excellent potential to provide the low cost large-scale deployment needed to meet the terawatt challenge for solar electricity generation.Organic matter amendments have been proposed as a means to enhance soil carbon (C) stocks on degraded soils. However, only few data exist on rates of soil C sequestration or the fate of added C in grassland soils, which are generally thought to have high C storage potential. We measured changes in the amount of C and nitrogen (N) in soils and in the composition of soil organic matter (SOM) following a single application of composted organic matter in two annual grasslands from different bioclimatic zones (coastal and inland valley). There was a significant increase in bulk soil organic C content at the valley grassland, and a similar but non-significant trend at the coastal grassland. Physical fractionation of soil three years after organic matter amendment revealed increases in C and N in the free- and occluded light fractions in both the valley and coastal grasslands. Amendments resulted in a greater relative increase in the N stored in light soil fractions compared to C, leading to lower C:N ratios. Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform (DRIFT) spectroscopy showed an increase in the ratio of carboxyl and carbonyl functional groups to aliphatic methyl and methylene groups in the free- and occluded light fractions. These data show that the organic matter amendment was incorporated in the free light and occluded light fractions over three years. Our results indicate that a single application of compost to grassland soils can increase soil C and N storage in labile and physically protected pools over relatively short time periods and contribute to climate change mitigation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Subsurface drainage influences the gaseous exchange in soils and improves crop productivity. Thus, gas diffusivity were monitored on a long-term drainage/tillage experiment established in 1994 at the Waterman Farm of The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. Specific objectives of the present study were to compare the gas diffusion and physical properties (bulk density and water retention) of soils managed under no-till (NT) and chisel-tillage (CT) systems with subsurface drainage management. Soils of the experimental site are classified as Crosby silt loam (Fine, mixed, mesic, Aeric Ochraqualf; fine, mixed, mesic, Typic Argiaquall). Treatments included: NT with tile drainage (NT-D), NT with no-drainage (NT-ND), CT with drainage (CT-D), and CT with no-drainage (CT-ND). The research site has been under continuous corn (Zea mays L.) cropping system since the start of the experiment. Intact core samples (n = 36) from 0-10, 10-20, and 20-30 cm depths were collected during November 2011 in three replicated plots of NT and CT systems under D and ND treatments. Results from this study showed that drainage treatments significantly influencing the relative gas diffusion (D-p/D-0), is defined as the ratio of the soil gas diffusion coefficient to that in free air. The D-p/D-0 for NT soils (23.1 x 10(-3)) were 26% higher than those for CT (18.3 x 10(-3)). Similarly, the ratio was 22% higher for soils under D (25.0 x 10(-3)) compared with those under ND (20.5 x 10(-3)). The tillage by drainage interaction was also significant for the D-p/D-0 at the 0-10 cm depth. Corn yield was positively correlated with relative gas diffusion (R-2 = 0.36). It can be concluded from this study that NT system under drainage management can improve the gas diffusivity, enhance the soil structure and increase crop yield. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper examines policies and measures that promote the usage of pedelecs and that contribute to climate friendly passenger transportation thereby. As pedelecs allow the rider to pedal at lower efforts, pedelecs provide the potential to increase the share of bicycle trips in metropolitan regions with hilly landscapes and with a significant share of medium commuting distances. The paper develops attitude-based mobility types and defines their specific pedelec affinity based upon differentiated reasons to use a pedelec. Thereafter policies and measures are examined that foster purchase and usage of pedelecs, and factors influencing the modal behaviour of (potential) attitude-based target groups are defined. Quantification of climate protection effects is conducted based on two scenarios for the German city of Wuppertal, a city known for its steep slopes. The first scenario assumes business as usual, and the second scenario is based on the introduction of ambitious policies and measures to encourage purchase and usage of pedelecs. Following a mixed-method approach, qualitative scenario assumptions are calculated by a quantitative model, which incorporates the analyses on attitude-based mobility types respective pedelec affinities. The results indicate that ambitious promotion of pedelecs significantly contributes to climate change mitigation. Compared to business as usual, ambitious policies and measures to purchase and use pedelecs reduce CO2-emissions of passenger transport in Wuppertal by 11 per cent in 2050. A spatially inclusive and comprehensive 30 kph speed limit proves to be particularly effective. In the scenario of ambitious promotion of pedelecs, interventions solely fostering the purchase of pedelecs significantly increase the modal share of pedelecs, whereas in a business as usual case such efforts remain ineffective. The traditional bicycle profits from the promotion of pedelecs, but its increased usage does not bring about similar climate protection effects. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.In the past decades, topics related to socio-economic impacts of climate change and to mapping of potential natural risks caused by extreme climatic situations have been put high on the researchers' agenda. Extreme weather conditions increase the vulnerability of local communities, who are in need of proper climate adaptation and mitigating strategies. There have been a number of transnational projects in the Carpathian Basin financed by different EU funding schemes, which examined the causes and impacts of climate change from various perspectives (e.g. CARPATH CC, earlier ADAM, CECILIA, ENSEMBLES, PRUDENCE, etc.). SEERISK, including nine Central and South-East European countries, is a SEE (South East Europe Transnational Cooperation Programme) funded project, commenced in 2012. The project objectives were elaborating, testing and sharing uniform methodologies for mapping risks related to climate change, examining the social consequences, and formulating recommendations for community strategy building which are applicable across the Danube region. The project also aimed to share experience and prepare local communities for extreme weather situations and for managing natural disaster situations using adaptable innovative methods. The present study aims at presenting the major outcomes of the SEERISK project. The main ambition of the paper is to present the applicability of the methodologies used in social sciences for the problem field of climate change and also the way these methods can be combined with natural science and GIS methods in order to formulate an integrated project framework. The combined methodology was applied in six case study areas. Common risk assessment methodology integrates the European Commission's Risk Assessment and Mapping Guidelines for Disaster Management. Each case study area prepared a risk matrix focusing on the natural hazard that they chose as the most relevant for their area and developed a risk scenario describing the natural hazard and its consequences. The methodology offers various alternative solutions for implementing the risk assessment process, especially for developing risk maps. Examining the social aspect of climate change involved the assessment of awareness and preparedness of individuals and stakeholders in the pilot communities. The social survey of the project reflected on the awareness and preparedness of inhabitants and institutions in the pilot communities regarding climate-change-related natural hazards. The approach and behaviour of the inhabitants were studied by a non-representative questionnaire survey, while the approach of the institutions and decision makers was revealed by conducting interviews and by scrutinising local planning documents of the municipalities concerned. The questionnaire survey served to build firm knowledge about the local people's awareness of climate change impacts on their life and their preparedness for related natural hazards. Personal interviewing and analysing planning documents contributed to understanding the administrative and institutional approach and reaction to climate change and its consequences in the Danube macro-region. By combining risk assessment and social surveys, gaps were identified between the actual exposure to hazards and the level of community preparedness. Finally, a collection of recommendations was compiled in a guideline of climate change mitigation and adaptation useful for decision makers, academics and individuals who are all equally exposed to the impacts of global climate change.Ecosystem services have been researched and promoted widely as a tool to address biodiversity conservation and as an approach to tackle climate change mitigation/adaptation. This paper explores the potential for delivering ecosystem services through spatial planning, proposing a deepening of an ecological fix in planning theory and practice. Specifically, we examine the emerging literature surrounding green infrastructure to: (1) identify ecological principles to inform planning policies and processes; (2) propose a re-scoping of spatial planning practices to place ecology, ecosystem services and environmental risks as central concerns of planning practice; and (3) examine effective procedures to ensure more ecologically sound outcomes in the planning process.Taking into account the significant role of forest ecosystems in the process of climate change mitigation and the fact that there is, at the same time, increased market demand for wood and paper products, it is clear that innovative forest management practices, should be introduced. These led to the noticeable increase in interest in biotechnology, especially genetic engineering. But, one should be aware that the adoption of genetically modified trees (GMTs) will not depend only on the soundness of the technology and science, but also on how such organisms are perceived by the public. In this chapter legal framework related to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and some public attitudes towards adoption of transgenic forest plants in selected Western Balkan countries are briefly described and analysed. Those countries are Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The method of comparative analysis was applied in order to determine the similarities and differences in the legal framework related to GMOs and also the attitudes of students from different faculties. A survey was conducted with university students, from faculties of forestry, applied ecology and agriculture in 2012. The basic comparison groups were forestry and applied ecology students, while smaller group of agriculture students was used for additional comparisons. The questionnaire covered the following topics: 1) knowledge of genetically modified forest plants; 2) acceptance of transgenic forest plants adoption; 3) perceptions of transgenic forest plants adoption safety. The research results show that legislative framework in selected Western Balkan countries is different and in some countries, it is not in line with the EU legislative. Results of the pilot study show that most students, from all three categories, have knowledge of transgenic forest trees, all surveyed students agree that different genetic modifi cations of forest trees would be important for their country, but there are differences in their attitudes towards the most important benefit.All developed and many developing countries have long established concepts of urban conservation, which are the basis of the preservation and restoration of historic buildings and neighbourhoods. Since the early1990s these specialised concepts have been increasingly integrated with evolving concepts of sustainable urban regeneration, as governments have embraced the goal of planning for sustainable urban development. Most recently concepts of sustainable urban conservation are developing a climate change dimension as more sharply defined policies for climate change mitigation emphasise reducing carbon emissions from cities' building stock and transport systems. Drawing on English experience, this dynamic process is conceptualised as progress towards sustainable urban conservation. This conceptualisation is then applied to analyse the evolution of urban conservation in Istanbul, with particular reference to the Historic Peninsula. The paper concludes that this conceptual and policy dynamic has the potential to provide the basis for 2151 century sustainable urban conservation which delivers a variable mix of social, economic and environmental outcomes.The cumulative effects of a significantly changing climate are projected to have disastrous implications on the world's natural habitats, and along with that, are projected to drastically increase the rate and likelihood of violent conflict globally, particularly in high-density, urban, poverty hotspots. Limiting the effects of a changing climate is thus critical in influencing multiple societal goals including equitable sustainable development, human health, biodiversity, food security and access to reliable energy sources. This paper argues that the G7/8 has led global climate governance in ways other international environmental institutions have largely failed to do. It has done so largely by placing climate protection at the forefront of its policy objectives, alongside economic, health, energy and security goals, and reaching consensus repeatedly amongst its leaders on the importance of stabilizing emissions through energy efficiency, conservation, investment and technological innovation. Moreover, this chapter argues that the summit's predominant capability, its constricted participation, democratic convergence and political cohesion - as well as the combined effects of global shocks - have all had positive impacts on the G7/8' s success in mitigating climate change. Following a detailed process-tracing exercise over the summit's 40-year history in which clear surges and retreats on global climate governance are outlined, this paper concludes by assessing the G7/8' s accountability record on climate mitigation and outlines a set of prescriptive recommendations, allowing for the delivery of a more tangible, coherent, results driven accountability process for global climate governance.The portfolio of approaches to respond to the challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change has broadened beyond mitigation and adaptation with the recent discussion of potential climate engineering options. How to define and categorize climate engineering options has been a recurring issue in both public and specialist discussions. We assert here that current definitions of mitigation, adaptation, and climate engineering are ambiguous, overlap with each other and thus contribute to confusing the discourse on how to tackle anthropogenic climate change. We propose a new and more inclusive categorization into five different classes: anthropogenic emissions reductions (AER), territorial or domestic removal of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases (D-GGR), trans-territorial removal of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases (T-GGR), regional to planetary targeted climate modification (TCM), and climate change adaptation measures (including local targeted climate and environmental modification, abbreviated CCAM). Thus, we suggest that techniques for domestic greenhouse gas removal might better be thought of as forming a separate category alongside more traditional mitigation techniques that consist of emissions reductions. Local targeted climate modification can be seen as an adaptation measure as long as there are no detectable remote environmental effects. In both cases, the scale and intensity of action are essential attributes from the technological, climatic, and political viewpoints. While some of the boundaries in this revised classification depend on policy and judgement, it offers a foundation for debating on how to define and categorize climate engineering options and differentiate them from both mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The objective of this study is to analyze the in situ BECCS capacity for green-field bioenergy plants in South Korea. The technical assessment is used to support a policy discussion on the suitability of BECCS as a mitigation tool. We examined the technical potential of bioenergy production from domestic forest biomass. In a first step, the biophysical global forestry model (G4M) was applied to estimate biomass availability. In a second step, the results from G4M were used as input data to the engineering model BeWhere, which optimizes scaling and location of combined heat and power plants (CHP). The geographically explicit locations and capacities obtained for forest-based bioenergy plants were then overlaid with a geological suitability map for carbon storage. From this, a theoretical potential for in situ BECCS was derived. Results indicate that, given the abundant forest cover in South Korea, there is substantial potential for bioenergy production, which could contribute not only to substituting emissions from fossil fuels but also to meeting the targets of the country's commitments under any climate change mitigation agreement. However, there seems to be only limited potential for direct in situ carbon storage in South Korea. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Depletion in oil resources and environmental concern related to the use of fossil fuels has increased the interest in using second generation biomass as alternative feedstock for fuels and materials. However, the land use and land use change for producing second generation (2G) biomass impacts the environment in various ways, of which not all are usually considered in life cycle assessment. This study assesses the biogenic CO2 fluxes, surface albedo changes and biodiversity impacts for 100 years after changing land use from forest or fallow land to miscanthus plantation in Wisconsin, US. Climate change impacts are addressed in terms of effective forcing, a mid-point indicator which can be used to compare impacts from biogenic CO2 fluxes and albedo changes. Biodiversity impacts are assessed through elaboration on two different existing approaches, to express the change in biodiversity impact from one human influenced state to another. Concerning the impacts from biogenic CO2 fluxes, in the case of conversion from a forest to a miscanthus plantation (case A) there is a contribution to global warming, whereas when a fallow land is converted (case B), there is a climate cooling. When the effects from albedo changes are included, both scenarios show a net cooling impact, which is more pronounced in case B. Both cases reduce biodiversity in the area where the miscanthus plantation is established, though most in case A. The results illustrate the relevance of these issues when considering environmental impacts of land use and land use change. The apparent trade-offs in terms of environmental impacts further highlight the importance of including these aspects in LCA of land use and land use changes, in order to enable informed decision making. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Through a comparative energy flow analysis, this paper examines the energy security impacts of growing biofuels on wastelands in South India. India's National Policy on Biofuels claims that wastelands are well suited for biofuel production because they are empty and unused. However, in rural Tamil Nadu, a Prosopis juliflora fuelwood energy economy already exists on these lands and services a mix of rural and urban consumers at household and industrial levels. This Prosopis economy currently provides 2.5-103 times more useful energy than would the government's proposed Jatropha curcas biodiesel economy, depending on Jatropha by-product usage. Contrary to the government's claims, growing biofuels on wastelands can weaken, rather than improve, the county's energy security. Further, replacing Prosopis with Jatropha could engender changes in economic and property relations that could further weaken energy security. These findings are not specific to rural Tamil Nadu as Prosopis is widely used as a fuelwood throughout Asia and Africa. Calls to 'develop' degraded lands through biofuel promotion similarly exist in these regions. This study underscores the importance of analyzing wasteland-centered biofuel policies at local levels in order to better understand the changes in human-environment relationships resulting from this policy push. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Temporal aspects have traditionally not been recognized adequately in life cycle assessment (LCA). The dynamic LCA model recently proposed offers a significant step forward in the dynamic assessment of global warming impacts. The results obtained with dynamic LCA are highly sensitive to the choice of a time horizon. Therefore, decision making between alternative systems can be critical because conclusions are dependent on the specific time horizon. In this article, we develop a decision-making methodology based on the concept of time dominance. We introduce instantaneous and cumulative time dominance criteria to the dynamic LCA context and argue why the dominance of an alternative should also imply preference. Our approach allows for the rejection of certain alternatives without the determination of a specific time horizon. The number of decision-relevant alternatives can thereby be reduced and the decision problem facilitated. We demonstrate our methodology by means of a case study of end-of-life alternatives for a wooden chair derived from the original authors of dynamic LCA and discuss the implications and limitations of the approach. The methodology based on time dominance criteria is supplementary to the dynamic LCA model, but does not substitute it. The overall value of this article stretches beyond LCA onto more general assessments of global warming, for example, in policy where the choice of a time horizon is equally significant.It is becoming more common to include the effects of delayed greenhouse gas emissions as an additional aspect in carbon footprinting. Although full dynamic assessment is the only accurate option to calculate those effects, the linear approach as outlined in, for example, the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, which is a popular reference. This approach overestimates the benefits of delayed emissions in all cases, but, for methane, the deviation is orders of magnitude. An alternative linear approach is proposed that does not start at t = 0. When using a time horizon of 100years, an initial no-accounting period of 75years is found to be appropriate for delayed emissions of methane, in most cases. The difference between the two approaches, when applying the concept of temporary carbon storage or delayed emissions to landfill, is considerable.Biogeochemical cycles are essential ecosystem services that continue to degrade as a result of human activities, but are not fully considered in efforts toward sustainable engineering. This article develops a model that integrates the carbon cycle with economic activities in the 2002 U.S. economy. Data about the carbon cycle, including emissions and sequestration flows, is obtained from the greenhouse gas inventory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Economic activities are captured by the economic input-output model available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The resulting model is more comprehensive in its accounting for the carbon cycle than existing methods for carbon footprint (CF) calculations. Examples of unique flows in this model include the effect of land-use and land-cover change on carbon dioxide flow within the U.S. national boundary, carbon sequestration in urban trees, and emissions resulting from liming. This model is used to gain unique insight into the carbon profile of U.S. economic sectors by providing the life cycle emissions and sequestration in each sector. Such insight may be used to support policies, manage supply chains, and be used for more comprehensive CF calculations.The use of information and communication technology (ICT) is growing throughout society, and new products and solutions are developed at an increasing rate. To enable environmental assessment of specific ICT products and other products that rely on ICT in some way, a more complete, detailed, and up-to-date study based on real measurements is needed. To date, similar studies have not been readily available or fully comprehensive. This study assessed the overall operational electricity use and life-cycle-based carbon footprint (CF) relating to ICT in Sweden, including activities not commonly addressed previously, such as shared data transport networks and data centers and manufacturing of network infrastructure. Specific, detailed inventory data are presented and used for assessment of the Internet Protocol core network, data transmission, operator activities, and access network. These specific data, in combination with secondary, more generic data for end-user equipment, allow a comprehensive overall assessment. The majority of the ICT network CF is the result of end-user equipment, mainly personal computers, followed by third-party enterprise networks and data centers and then access networks. The parts closest to the user proved to be clearly responsible for the majority of the impact. The results are presented for Swedish ICT networks and for ICT networks in general based on a global average electricity mix.This article is based on the first study worldwide to analyze materials present in the equipment of data centers. The study develops a methodology that allows the calculation of the number of data centers of the various size classes and their average equipment with information technology (IT) components and infrastructure elements, such as air-conditioning systems and power supplies. This enables detailed statements to be made on the materials present in the equipment of approximately 53,000 data centers in Germany. In 2008, the total amount of materials in the equipment of data centers in Germany was 110,300 tonnes (t). IT equipment (servers, storage equipment, and network) accounted for 37,500 t (34%), racks and containments for 30,700 t (28%), cooling and air-conditioning systems for 12,000 t (11%), and the power infrastructure for 30,000 t (27%). A comprehensive analysis of the type of materials being used yielded the following values: Approximately 58,400 t of iron, 18,600 t of copper, 11,600 t of circuit boards, 11,100 t of plastics, 7,400 t of aluminum, and 6,500 t of miscellaneous materials were present in German data centers. The electronic material contained 1.8 t of gold, 7.5 t of silver, and 0.8 t of palladium. Because it can be assumed that prices for precious metals, and also for bulk metals, will continue to rise, the recovery of raw materials from the IT devices of data centers is an interesting option. Additionally, the development of appropriate product design and recycling strategies for servers and storage units should be implemented.This synthesis article presents an overview of an urban metabolism (UM) approach using mixed methods and multiple sources of data for Los Angeles, California. We examine electric energy use in buildings and greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, and calculate embedded infrastructure life cycle effects, water use and solid waste streams in an attempt to better understand the urban flows and sinks in the Los Angeles region (city and county). This quantification is being conducted to help policy-makers better target energy conservation and efficiency programs, pinpoint best locations for distributed solar generation, and support the development of policies for greater environmental sustainability. It provides a framework to which many more UM flows can be added to create greater understanding of the study area's resource dependencies. Going forward, together with policy analysis, UM can help untangle the complex intertwined resource dependencies that cities must address as they attempt to increase their environmental sustainability.This study reports on the carbon, water, and energy footprints of tomatoes grown in a greenhouse in Northern Italy and two possible future variations of heating and carbon dioxide (CO2) fertilization on the current setup. The heat supply in place, consisting of natural gas (NG) and canola oil combustion, is compared to cogeneration and incineration of municipal solid waste for heating and CO2 from industrial exhaust for fertilization. As a benchmark, the current system is also compared to a conventional system, in which heat is delivered solely based on NG. Each kilogram (kg) of fresh tomatoes (Cuore di Bue variety) produced in the current greenhouse emits 2.28kg CO2 equivalents (eq) and uses 95.5 megajoules(MJ) eq energy and 122 liters (L) of water. Relative to the system in place, the carbon footprint (CF) is 57.5% and 18% higher with conventional NG heating and cogeneration and is 40% lower with waste valorization. Further, 33%, 55%, and 63% less energy and 9%, 96%, and 14% less water are used in the conventional, cogeneration, and waste valorization scenarios, respectively. This confirms that there are multiple strategies to reduce the impact of the tomato production under consideration.This article examines an important class of information system that serves as the foundation for corporate energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting: energy and carbon management systems (ECMS). Investors, regulators, customers, and employees increasingly demand that organizations provide information about their organizational energy use and GHG emissions. However, there is little transparency about how organizations use ECMS to meet such demands. To shed light on ECMS implementation and application, we collected extensive qualitative interview data from two service-sector organizations: one that uses a spreadsheet-based ECMS and another that implemented an ECMS provided by a third-party vendor. Our analysis of collected data revealed numerous challenges in the areas of business processes, managerial capabilities, data capture and integration, and data quality. Though our study is built on only two organizations and requires confirmation in large-sample surveys, we provide several recommendations for organizations regarding ECMS. We also provide suggestions for future studies to build on our tentative results.In recent years, industrial ecology (IE) has become increasingly integrated into formal education as a distinct body of work. The aim of this article is to describe the state of IE in postsecondary education across the world by providing an inventory of programs and courses offered from a search conducted during the summer of 2012. Although some interpretation of the results is conducted, the aim of this article is to provide a snapshot of the state of IE in higher education in 2012 and serve as a starting point for future work. Data were collected on IE courses and programs across the world by Internet search in order to determine the prevalence of IE in postsecondary curricula. Subsequently, 190 universities and colleges from 46 countries were identified as offering courses and/or programs in IE. From this research, a total of 409 courses and 78 programs were inventoried and course content was analyzed (where available). The results indicate that IE is mainly studied at the graduate level within engineering and environmental disciplines, although undergraduate-level curricula are emerging. In terms of disciplinary departments offering said curricula, IE is presented as a topic of instruction in varied fields of study, such as business and administration, and the arts. From the course syllabi analyzed, the main subjects being taught within IE education are introductory principles and general tools. Advanced or specialized aspects of the field are also covered, however, less frequently.Aiming at tracing the sources of anthropogenic phosphorus flowing into watercourses, this study develops a static model for analyzing the phosphorus flows within a socioeconomic ecosystem. This model consists of four major subsystems: phosphorus ore mining/processing, phosphorous-containing product manufacturing, phosphorus-containing product use and phosphorus-containing waste/wastewater management. Furthermore, based on the principle of mass balance, we provided formulas for calculating phosphorus flows of the ecosystem. Then, we quantified the anthropogenic phosphorus flows using the bottom up approach for the Chaohu watershed in 2008. The data and parameters are mainly obtained from field surveys, the literature, industrial experts, and official statistics. The results show that approximately 36 thousand tons of phosphorous flowed into watercourses in the Chaohu watershed in 2008, of which 99% came from phosphorus-containing product use (55% from crop farming, 34% from large-scale breeding, 7% from rural consumption, 2% from urban consumption, and 1% from domestic breeding). Therefore, we provided suggestions on mitigating phosphorus loss into watercourses. The study provides a method (model and the calculation formulas) to quantify anthropogenic phosphorus flows at a watershed level, which helps to understand the relationship between human activities and eutrophication. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology academics have embraced with great interest the rebound effect principle operationalised within energy economics. By pursuing more comprehensive assessments, they applied tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) to appraise the environmental consequences of the rebound effect. As a result, the mainstream rebound mechanism was broadened and a diversity of (sometimes inconsistent) definitions and approaches unveiled. To depict the state of play, a comprehensive literature review is needed. A literature review has been carried out by targeting scientific documents relevant for the integration of the rebound effect into LCA-based studies. The search was conducted using two approaches: (1) via online catalogues using a defined search criterion and (2) via cross-citation analysis from the documents identified through the first approach. By analysing a total of 42 works yielded during our review, it was possible to bring together the various advantages of the life cycle perspective, as well as to identify the main inconsistencies and uninformed claims present in literature. Concretely, three main advantages have been identified and are discussed: (1) the representation of the rebound effect as a multi-dimensional, life cycle estimate, (2) the improvement of the technology explicitness and (3) the broadening of the consumption and production factors leading to the rebound effect. Also, inconsistencies on the definition and classification of the rebound effect have been found among studies. The review contributes a number of valuable insights to understand how the rebound effect has been treated within the industrial ecology and LCA fields. For instance, the conceptual and methodological refinements introduced by these fields represent a step forward from traditional viewpoints, making the study of the rebound effect more comprehensive and meaningful for environmental assessment and policy making. However, the broadened scope of this new approach unveiled some conceptual inconsistencies, which calls for a common framework. This framework would help the LCA community to consistently integrate the rebound effect as well as to create a common language with other disciplines, favouring learning and co-evolution. We believe that our findings can serve as a starting point in order to delineate such a common framework.In the Faculty of Science (University of Hradec Kralove) the innovative program in chemistry for the study specialization Physico-technical Measurements and Computer Technology was developed. The innovation of chemistry filed study has been focused especially on increase in competitiveness and in graduates employment. Design of innovation enables graduates applying for the position of experts in physical measurements and informatics and at the same time they expand their competence in the service of the physico-chemical instrumentation in industrial ecology. Because Faculty of Science is not equipped yet in expensive instrumentation for nuclear spectrometry, cross-border cooperation with the Faculty of Natural and Technical Sciences (University of Opole) has been started. In the area of teaching about non-traditional energy sources the cross-border cooperation with the Department of Automation and Renewable Energy Sources, Faculty of Electrical Engineering (Czestochowa University of Technology) has been initiated. Well-developed system of cooperation with companies, which are equipped with the latest technology of environmental protection, was created. In the exchange system Polish students attended for practicing in these companies. The aim of the contribution is to describe one of the means of innovation of chemistry field study in the frame of bachelor study specialization oriented in physics and computer technology. We believe that the new approach will lead to increase in graduate competitiveness as well as to development of their motivation to study and better understanding of regulation principles of chemical processes and patterns.The granite production chain is high energy and water intensive with low resource efficiency. This paper focus on characterizing the potential for environmental improvement of the granite production chain by promoting the optimization of sawing technology, the implementation of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and the material recovery of wasted granite (sludge). The environmental performance of multi-blade gangsaw (MBGS) and diamond multi-wire saw (DMWS) technologies is compared by mean of life cycle assessment. Results demonstrate that DMWS technology contribute 30% of water savings, 40% of energy savings and 80% of material savings per square meter of polished granite tiles (60 x 40 x 2 cm) production. These resource savings contribute together to reduce the product's environmental footprint by 35% to 80%. The potential for RWH is analyzed using Plugrisost (R) simulation software based on system dynamics. RWH depends on the relationship between rainfall, catchment surface and tank size according to the industrial process's water demand. The results demonstrate major potential to satisfy over 50% of the system g daily water requirements using rainwater stored in rainwater tanks of varying capacity. RWH is a sustainable strategy for industrial water cycle management. A comprehensive review of literature reveals a range of technically feasible alternatives to promote material recovery of granite sludge. The ceramic industry is one promising industrial endpoint with which to avoid waste landfilling and contribute to mineral, energy and water savings. This by-product synergy could also serve as starting point for springboarding exchanges with other industrial agents, becoming a global extension of resource efficiency. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sawdust was used as cheap sorbent for the remediation of a diesel and oil fuel-contaminated mining soil whereas biosolids were evaluated as collectors and frothers in froth flotation of copper sulphide ores. The use of these waste materials in copper sulphide ore mining and mineral processing may have a positive impact on the cleaner production of copper from its natural raw sources and may decrease the deleterious effect that mining operations have on the environment Mixtures of oil fuel contaminated mining soil and sawdust were treated in an aerobic reactor at 50.0% humidity for several days. A significant decrease (over 60.0%) of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) content in these mixtures was obtained after one-month of treatment. Rougher flotation of copper sulphide ores using biosolids from wastewater treatment plants and humic acids a component of biosolids as collector and frother yielded a copper sulphide concentrate with a copper grade and copper recovery of 0.8% and 26.0%, and 3.5% and 29.7%, respectively. Biosolids and humic acids have shown to be potential candidates to partially substitute traditional organic chemicals used in industrial flotation of copper sulphide ores. This possibility opens up an alternative for greening copper sulphide ore flotation by using more environmentfriendly flotation reagents. Based on these results, a conceptual model based on industrial ecology and cleaner production principles is proposed for greening the overall copper sulphide ore processing. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology (IE) has recognized the relevance of space in various areas of the field. In particular, industrial symbiosis has argued for proximity and the colocation of firms to reduce emissions and costs from transport. But, space is also relevant for industrial ecosystems more widely. These spatial principles have rarely been spelled out analytically and this article does so. From economic geography, we now have frameworks and analytical tools to undertake this kind of analysis. Using the example of ports and their hinterland, we argue for spatial analyses in IE.Material flow analysis (MFA) is a tool to investigate material flows and stocks in defined systems as a basis for resource management or environmental pollution control. Because of the diverse nature of sources and the varying quality and availability of data, MFA results are inherently uncertain. Uncertainty analyses have received increasing attention in recent MFA studies, but systematic approaches for selection of appropriate uncertainty tools are missing. This article reviews existing literature related to handling of uncertainty in MFA studies and evaluates current practice of uncertainty analysis in MFA. Based on this, recommendations for consideration of uncertainty in MFA are provided. A five-step framework for uncertainty handling is outlined, reflecting aspects such as data quality and goal/scope of the MFA. We distinguish between descriptive (quantification of material turnover in a region) and exploratory MFA (identification of critical parameters and system behavior). Whereas mathematically simpler concepts focusing on data uncertainty characterization are appropriate for descriptive MFAs, statistical approaches enabling more-rigorous evaluation of uncertainty and model sensitivity are needed for exploratory MFAs. Irrespective of the level of sophistication, lack of information about MFA data poses a major challenge for meaningful uncertainty analysis. The step-wise framework suggested here provides a systematic way to consider available information and produce results as precise as the data warrant.This work explores the historical effectiveness of efficiency improvements in reducing humankind's consumption of energy resources. Ten activities are analyzed, including pig iron production, aluminum production, nitrogen fertilizer production, electricity generation from coal, electricity generation from oil, electricity generation from natural gas, freight rail travel, passenger air travel, motor vehicle travel, and residential refrigeration. The data and analyses presented here demonstrate the dynamic interplay between technological innovation, market forces, and government policy. They also show that, historically, over long time periods, incremental improvements in efficiency have not succeeded in outpacing increases in the quantity of goods and services provided. Thus, the end result over these time periods has been, not surprisingly, a sizeable increase in the consumption of energy resources across all ten activities. However, there do exist a few examples of shorter, decade-long time periods in which improvements in efficiency were able to match or outpace increases in quantity. In these cases, efficiency mandates, price pressures, and industry upheaval led to periods of reduced resource consumption. These cases suggest that with appropriate incentives, including, for example, efficiency mandates and price mechanisms, future resource consumption, and its associated environmental impacts, could be stabilized and even reduced.As corporate responsibility for environmental management has gained attention, eco-efficiency has become recognized as an important concept for improving the social performance of the business sector as well as that of the public sector. Improving eco-efficiency is widely accepted not only as a means of increasing economic value, but also as a means of reducing environmental effects. However, managing for eco-efficiency should take into consideration the differences among industries, because the impact of eco-efficiency on financial and social performance varies among industries. To explore this variation, we conducted a cross-industry analysis of eco-efficiency based on social performance using data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA measures relative efficiency and is a useful tool for taking into account the relative importance of industry-specific characteristics. Using DEA, eco-efficiency scores were derived based on the ratio of two factors of social performance: (1) value-added inducing and production-inducing economic spillover effects and (2) the amount of greenhouse gases emitted and energy used. Then, we identified the relationships between our eco-efficiency score and financial performance, which is a measure of the firm's stability. The case study is based on 272 firms in 16 industries in South Korea. Results show that firms in product manufacturing and service-intensive industries tend to have higher eco-efficiency scores than those in raw material or chemical-intensive industries. In addition, most of the industries reveal no relationship between traditional financial performance metrics and eco-efficiency scores. A handful of industries had significant relationships with one or more financial performance metrics; in some cases, these relationships were negative, whereas in others they were positive. Surprisingly, almost all industries have no significant relationships between eco-efficiency and financial performance. This result implies that government support for policies that reward firms that attempt to be eco-efficient are needed, or that other nonfinancial metrics that influence eco-efficiency, such as employment and brand reputation, should be considered. This article is expected to support policy makers as they formulate industry-specific environmental strategies.Businesses are expected to become engines for positive change, and mounting evidence indicates that corporate sustainability is a success factor for businesses around the globe. In this context, the 'business as usual' approach to running businesses with negative environmental consequences is not an option. Industrial ecology and sustainable business models offer solutions on how this transformation can take place. However, transformation of non-manufacturing industries in this respect has not been covered in the literature. The aim of this paper is therefore is to use scientific and industry literature and interview data from the Nordic non-life insurance sector to propose closed-loop insurance models. The new models allow insurance leaders to move away from running the insurance business in an old-fashioned linear way, and thus gain a better understanding of how the business contributes to sustainable development. The transformation of insurers' business models is an example of how business models of non-manufacturing industries can be reinvented to support sustainable economic growth by utilizing ideas from industrial ecology. The new business models proposed place insurance business models within the overall research in industrial ecology, thereby filling an evident gap in the literature by showing that the closed-loop concept applies to non-manufacturers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Gold nanostars coated with cysteine (Cys-AuNSs) were successfully synthesized and used in SERS-based copper ions (Cu2+) detection in aqueous media. The strong coordination ability of cysteine (Cys) with Cu2+ and the resulting Cys-AuNSs-Cu complex formation led to AuNSs aggregation and the drastic change in intensity and strength of COOH band spectra. The aggregation of AuNSs yielded distinct SERS signals, which exhibited remarkable sensitivity and selectivity for Cu2+ over other metal ions. Using this SERS-based sensing method, we have achieved a practical detection limit of 10 mu M. Such AuNSs-based detection could provide promising alternative choices for future SERS-active AuNSs applicationWe investigate the economic and employment consequences of introducing a new sugarcane-based biofuel industry into Australia. We model the new biofuel industry on the production recipe of the existing large-scale gasoalcohol and alcohol sectors in the Brazilian economy. To this end we utilise a hybrid IO-LCA (input-output life cycle assessment) approach, which involves inserting data on new processes and/or sectors into an existing IO table. In particular, we develop and test an analytical and a numerical approach for re-balancing an IO table augmented with rows and columns representing large new biofuel industries. We quantify changes in economic output and employment in the Australian economy. We conclude that a future biofuel industry will be employment-positive for Australia. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.CuInS2/TiO2 nanotube heterojunction arrays electrode was synthesized via a modified successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method. The morphology, crystalline structure and chemical composition of the composite electrode were characterized with field-emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS), respectively. The optical properties were investigated by UV vis diffusion reflection spectra (DRS) and photoluminescence (PL) spectra as well as the photoelectrochemical measurements. Significantly enhanced photoelectrochemical properties of CuInS2/TiO2 NTs electrode were observed under visible light irradiation, which could be attributed to the high absorption coefficient of CuInS2 in visible region and the heterostructure formed between CuInS2 and TiO2. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyzes a unique dataset collected during a 2006 national survey of U.S. households to explore the effectiveness of common household recycling policies for metals, glass, and plastics: curbside recycling, drop-off recycling, deposit refund systems (bottle bills), and marginal pricing for household waste. After estimating either generalized ordered logit or multinomial logit models, we find that the most important determinants of household recycling are people's attitudes toward recycling. Our results also suggest that omitting internal variables (perceived recycling obstacles and benefits as well as moral considerations) may bias policy coefficients. Soda-economic variables are typically not statistically significant, with the exceptions of young adults and of African Americans who tend to recycle less than others. Policies with the largest odds ratios are curbside recycling (which is further strengthened if recycling is mandatory), followed by the presence of drop-off collection centers nearby. Bottle bills are also statistically significant but their odds ratios are smaller, possibly because refunds are relatively small and typically do not change for years. Finally, marginal pricing appears to have a limited impact on recycling. These results suggest avenues for improving household recycling at a time when recycling rates appear to be plateauing. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cu-ZnTPyP coordination polymer with hexagonal micro-lump and micro-prism morphologies has been successfully synthesized through a facile surfactant assisted self-assembly method based on Cu(OAc)(2)center dot 2H(2)O and Zinc-5,10,15,20-tetra(4-pyridyl) porphyrin (ZnTPyP) in DMF/H2O solvent. The morphologies of three-dimensional micro-prisms and micro-lumps obtained at different concentrations of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) were investigated by scanning electronic microscopy. The compositions of the micro-prisms were studied by energy-dispersive spectra and inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed a circular hexametric cage structure cross-linked by the main Zn-N axial coordination of the pyridyl ligands inside the micro-scale coordination polymers. The UV-Vis diffuse reflection spectroscopy revealed the formation of J-type aggregates in the both microstructures. The formation mechanism of Cu-ZnTPyP coordination polymer structure was investigated by varying CTAB concentration. Their surface photovoltage spectra indicated that the novel hexagonal micro-prism morphology of the coordination polymer displayed enhanced photo response under visible light, which is beneficial for exploiting the practical application of Cu-ZnTPyP compound. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Businesses are increasingly interested in exploring the key concepts of industrial ecology (IE), particularly within the context of market-oriented sustainability. However, few studies have researched how green consumers perceive production as having relevant product design and life cycle assessment (LCA) dimensions. In this article, we explore green consumers' mind-set toward such system tools of IE by conducting 18 in-depth interviews with Brazilian and Portuguese green consumers. We propose a simplified theoretical framework for achieving market-oriented sustainability based on the multidisciplinary potential between IE and marketing. Our analysis suggests that there are still important gaps between what green consumers demand and what businesses are currently able (or willing) to supply. Our findings support the idea that businesses interested in following IE within the context of market-oriented sustainability should spend greater effort in understanding the green consumer's production-relatedmind-set. In particular, we propose (1) avoiding consumer skepticism and dissatisfaction with greenwashing and (2) establishing credibility and information transparency. Both seem to act as preconditions to better align the product design and LCA processes with green consumer needs within the emerging paradigm of market-oriented sustainability.The Dow Chemical Co. (Dow) is actively working to develop an approach to value ecosystem services and incorporate them in business decisions. This study investigates the use of replacement cost methodology (RCM) for financial analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental assessment. The case study analyzes a business decision made in 1995, where a constructed wetland was built instead of a sequencing batch reactor to solve a regulatory compliance issue in meeting suspended solids requirements for a wastewater treatment system at the Union Carbide Corp. (a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Co.) plant in Seadrift, Texas. The financial results indicate that the total net present value savings calculated for implementing the constructed wetland instead of the sequencing batch reactor is $282 million over the project's lifetime. The LCA demonstrates that the lower energy and material inputs to the constructed wetland resulted in lower potential impacts for fossil fuel use, acidification, smog formation, and ozone depletion and likely lead to lower potential impacts for global warming and marine eutrophication. The result from the inventory of land use shows that both the upstream land burdens (for the sequencing batch reactor) and the on-site acreage of the constructed wetland are similar in magnitude and importance, contrary to the assumption that green infrastructure always requires greater land area. This case study illustrates how Dow can consider financial and environmental analyses in comparing gray and green infrastructure solutions and further understand the benefits of implementing green infrastructure in an appropriate industrial application.Interface, Inc. Year founded: 1974 Ownership: Public Headquarters: Atlanta, GA, USA Industry: Carpet Employees: 3,500 Approximate gross sales 2013: US$1 billionAU Optronics Year founded: 1996 Ownership: Private Headquarters: Hsinchu, Taiwan Industry: Flat Panel Displays & Solar Business Employees: 46,000 Approximate Net Revenue in 2013: US$13.9 billionHyosung Yongyeon Plants Plant I: Operated since 1991 Plant II: Operated since 1997 Plant III: Built in 2009 Organization type: Production facilities of Hyosung, a public company Headquarters: Seoul, Republic of Korea Industries: Chemical Plant I: Polypropylene (PP) Plant II: TPA (purified terephthalic acid) Plant III: Optical TAC (cellulose triacetate) film Employees: 450 Annual production: Plant I: 300,000 tonnes of PP Plant II: 420,000 tonnes of TPA Plant III: 50 million square meters (m(2)) of liquid crystal display (LCD) TAC filmThis article describes how biological ecology models are adapted to analyze the dynamic structure and function of a consumer electronic product "community." Treating an entire group of interdependent and continually evolving electronic devices as an ecological community provides a basis for more comprehensive analyses of the energy, material, and waste flows associated with household consumption than would be possible using conventional per product approaches. Results show that, similar to a maturing natural community, the average U.S. household electronic product community evolved from a low-diversity structure dominated by a few products to a highly diverse, evenly distributed community of products between 1990 and 2010. The maturing community of household electronics experienced increased functionality at a community and product level resulting, in part, from introduction of new products, but primarily as a result of increasing ownership of multifunctional products. Multifunctional mobile products are driving increased functionality in a manner similar to a broadly adaptive invasive species, but the community's high functional redundancy, as the result of device convergence, resembles a stable natural community. These results suggest that future strategies to encourage green design, production, and consumption of consumer electronics should focus on minimizing the total number of products owned by maximizing multifunctionality with convergent device design.The energy intensity of fuel-based lighting is substantial given the paltry levels of lighting service, poor economic outcomes, and exposure to public health risks for users throughout the developing world. There is a great opportunity to reduce fossil energy consumption (and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions) while improving public health and economic outcomes for the poor by encouraging upgrading from fuel-based to rechargeable light-emitting diode (LED) lighting. However, switching to efficient lighting requires up-front investments of energy for manufacturing. This study explores life cycle energy performance in the market for modern off-grid lighting (OGL) products in Sub-Saharan Africa and introduces a new metric, life cycle efficacy, which facilitates comparisons and analysis of life cycle energy performance (light output per unit of embodied plus use-phase energy consumption) for lighting technology systems. Combining field insights on technology adoption dynamics with embodied energy estimates for a range of products available in 2012 shows that OGL energy "debts" are "paid back" in 20 to 50 days (substantially faster than kilowatt-scale grid-connected solar electricity systems) with energy return on investment ratios from 10 to 40. This stems from greatly improved life cycle efficacy for off-grid LED lighting (similar to 20 lumens/watt [lm/W]), compared to fuel-based lighting (similar to 0.04 lumens/W). Life cycle benefits-not only energy, but also economic and health benefits-depend strongly on product service lifetime (related to quality) and fuel displacement fraction (related to performance). OGL life cycle efficacy increases from longer lifetime and/or improved LED source efficacy lead to better quality and less-expensive lighting available in the developing world with lower energy use than the fuel-based incumbent technology.This article empirically evaluates the results from input-output (I-O) life cycle assessment (LCA) models of the United States for 2002, based on different sources of data: demand-side survey data; supply-side data with homogeneous prices; and supply-side data with heterogeneous prices. These I-O-based results are also compared with those from process LCA databases. The underlying approach is based on the theoretical insight previously developed. The results show significant differences and offer useful heuristic insight: The survey-based data set seems better for sectors that use a large amount of resources and have large intrasectoral transactions. But, it exhibits many missing values. Homogeneous price-based calculation with supply-side data is easiest because of minimal data needs and simplifying assumption on prices. The result shows relatively complete coverage and obeys mass and energy balances. The heterogeneous price-based data set overcomes the price homogeneity assumption, but the result is sensitive to price accuracy. Overall, it is not possible to declare any currently available data sets to be the best, although survey-and heterogeneous price-based data sets may be improved with more information. This insight is based on comparing direct consumption of fossil resources. Comparison of cumulative consumption reduces the disparities among data sets from error cancellation. Further comparison of process-and I-O-based inventories shows that the former values are often larger than the latter, with the two supply-side data sets being closer to process-based data. These results should be useful for choosing between available data to build the best possible I-O and hybrid LCA models and for further research on enhancing their quality.The treatment of coproducts is one of the most persistent methodological challenges for both input-output (IO) analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA). The two fields have developed distinct modeling traditions to artificially extract independent Leontief production functions (technological "recipes") for products of multioutput activities; whereas IO operates in terms of system-wide models named constructs, LCA practitioners usually use allocations or system expansion on a process-by-process basis. Recently, there have been renewed efforts to connect these two modeling traditions on the basis of their underlying assumptions. A formal description of a unified framework for the treatment of coproducts is still lacking, however. The present article strives to fill this gap. From a single generalized allocation equation, we derive all practical LCA allocations and IO constructs. This approach extends previous studies by arranging the different models in a formal "taxonomic tree," clarifying the relation between the different LCA allocation and IO construct models. This framework also clarifies the relation of certain models to classical system expansion. We then analyze the properties of these models when combined with different types of inventories and make recommendations for best practice in inventory compilation.A life cycle assessment was conducted on three industrial effluent water recycling options using a one-, two-, and three-stage effluent treatment plant composed of clarification, aerobic treatment, and ultrafiltration processes. The impact categories dominated by energy use and the category of freshwater use were then further investigated and compared between each recycling system. A dual functional unit of recycled water delivered and effluent treated was identified to make the recycling options functionally equivalent. Three-stage water recycling was the environmentally preferred option, with all three water recycling options investigated producing similar environmental impacts in most impact categories, with the exception of freshwater use, where the one-and two-stage treatment options performed significantly worse than the three-stage treatment. It was found that the impact categories of global warming potential and nonrenewable energy demand did not directly correlate with each other as a result of direct greenhouse gas emissions from sludge disposal. The construction of the equivalent systems shows that external systems required for functional equivalence are important in water recycling comparisons, and considering dual functional units is important for comparing water recycling options. With the increasing prevalence of industries utilizing biomass and other renewable fuels, it is becoming more apparent that measuring energy usage is not sufficient, and the specific impacts and damages associated with energy consumption need to be evaluated. This study provides a framework to identify opportunities in industrial wastewater management, which can be particularly important in industries with large effluent flows and high organic loadings.In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Standard Oil Company undertook an extraordinary experiment to build a company town in northwest Indiana's Calumet region. The history of Standard Oil on the Great Lakes shatters the dichotomy between business and government and serves as a cautionary tale of the effects of "free market" environmentalism. The company town, as envisioned by Standard Oil, represented more than just an attempt to set the terms of the company's social contract with its workers and local government: it was also an aggressive experiment in environmental engineering. Despite attempts by Christine Meisner Rosen to build bridges between environmental and business history by emphasizing an interdisciplinary "industrial ecology," often business historians fall back on "Chandlerian institutional analysis" of a "neoclassical model of the profit maximizing business manager responding in rational ways to market conditions ... that increase the efficiency of firms." For our part, environmental historians have struggled over whether we have imposed narratives of decline that reflect our cultural desires and fears more than historical reality. At stake is the political question of whether state regulation or free markets best protect ecosystems.Nowadays, the intensive use of natural resources in order to satisfy the increasing energy demand suggests a threat to the implementation of the principles of sustainable development. The present study attempts to approach thermodynamically the depletion of natural resources in the methodological framework and the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA). An environmental decision support tool is studied, the exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA). It arises from the convergence of the LCA and exergy analysis (EA) methodologies and attempts to identify the exergetic parameters that are related to the life cycle of the examined system or process. The ELCA methodology, beside the fact that it locates the system parts which involve greater exergy losses, examines the depletion of natural resources (biotic and abiotic) and the sustainable prospective of the examined system or process, under the scope of exergy. In order to obtain concrete results, the ELCA methodology is applied to a large-scale, grid-connected, photovoltaic (PV) system with energy storage that is designed to entirely electrify the Greek island of Nisyros. Four discerned cases were studied that reflect the present state and the future development of the PV technology. The exergy flows and balance for the life cycle of the PV system, as they were formed in the ELCA study, showed that the incoming exergy (solar radiation, energy sources, and materials) is not efficiently utilized. The greater exergy losses appear at the stage of the operation of the PV installation. Due to the fact that contribution of the renewable exergy (solar radiation) to the formation of the total incoming exergy of Life Cycle is significant, it emerges that satisfaction of electric power needs with a PV system appears to be exergetic sustainable. The increase of the Life Cycle exergetic efficiency supported by the future technological scenario in contrast to present scenarios emerges from the increased electricity output of the PV system. Consequently, the increased exergetic efficiency involves decreased irreversibility (exergy losses) of the PV system's life cycle. The application of ELCA in electricity production technologies exceeds the proven sustainable prospective of the PV systems; however, it aims to show the essence of the application of ELCA methodology in the environmental decision making process. ELCA can be a useful tool for the support and formation of the environmental decision making that can illustrate in terms of exergetic sustainability the examined energy system or process.This study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement and behavioural change by UK households and explores how these effects vary with total expenditure. The methodology is based upon estimates of the expenditure elasticity and GHG intensity of 16 categories of goods and services, and allows for the capital cost and embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves. The study finds that rebound effects, in GHG terms, are modest (0-32%) for measures affecting domestic energy use, larger (25-65%) for measures affecting vehicle fuel use and very large (66-106%) for measures that reduce food waste. Furthermore, measures undertaken by low income households are associated with the largest rebound effects, with direct emissions forming a larger proportion of the total rebound effect for those households. Measures that are subsidised or affect highly taxed energy commodities may be less effective in reducing aggregate emissions. These findings highlight the importance of allowing for rebound effects within policy appraisals, as well as reinforcing the case for economy-wide carbon pricing. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).This article seeks to advance the understanding of the relationship between industrial ecology (IE) and business model innovation for sustainability as a means and driver of new value creation and competitive advantage by expanding the understanding of industrial symbiosis (IS) and internal symbiosis. This is explored through the case study of British Sugar, which, at the time of writing, is the UK's largest sugar producer by market share. Over the past three decades, the company has systematically sought opportunities to turn waste streams and emissions from their core production processes into useful and positive inputs to new product lines. Their core business is still sugar, but the business model has evolved to offer a broad range of additional synergistic and profitable product lines, including animal feed, electricity, tomatoes, and bioethanol. The research explores the temporal dimension of dynamic business model innovation, framing it in the context of a continuous evolutionary process rather than a discrete design activity. The case will be of interest as an additional contribution to the growing literature on IS; in offering an approach for linking the themes of IE literature and sustainable business model innovation more concretely in research and practice; and, by presenting the case as an evolutionary innovation process, the article furthers the emerging literature on business model innovation for sustainability.Life cycle assessment (LCA)-based analyses of company value chains can inspire profound modifications to products' design, material procurement, manufacturing, energy/water use, distribution, use, and disposal. However, such modifications often create trade-offs, improving some aspects while worsening others. How can firms decide whether or not to carry out such modifications? Or prioritize between different options to choose the one delivering the most competitive advantage? Typically, firms' metrics fall into two groups: (1) product-level metrics across the life cycle, including up-and downstream of facilities (e.g., product carbon footprints); and (2) facility-level metrics (e.g., plants' annual energy cost). Neither is sufficient for firm-wide cost-benefit analyses of modifications that affect multiple products and value-chain stages. Whereas facility-level metrics do not capture up-and downstream effects-where often most cost and environmental impacts originate-life cycle methodologies are currently not mature enough to be applied at the scale of entire product portfolios. We present a pilot system of key performance indicators (KPIs) that evaluate 3,337 products across 211 brands and five countries of PepsiCo, Inc. KPIs are firm-wide, annual figures (environmental, operational, and financial) across the value chain (cradle to grave) and can be determined at any level (single product, brands, or regions). Uncertainty analysis is included. In addition to KPIs for base cases, the system characterizes KPI impacts for any considered modifications (what-if scenarios). In a detailed case study, we present background about how and why PepsiCo used the system to evaluate all aspects of a strategic value-chain modification. For 7 of the 211 brands, this resulted in avoiding an 8% increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a 7% to 10% increase in procurement costs. It also saved PepsiCo an estimated similar to 200 years full-time equivalent employee time (or alternatively similar to US$30 million in LCA consultant fees) had the LCAs of the 3,337 SKUs been carried out by traditional methods. This cost efficiency of the KPI system enables considering environmental impacts with more-traditional business metrics side by side. As a result, environmental impacts can be considered on a routine basis as part of integrated strategy and business planning. We discuss implementation considerations of the KPI methodology and future improvements.Organizations cognitive of the strategic risk and opportunities associated with environmental challenges may employ industrial ecology (IE) concepts, methods, and tools to develop capabilities that both enhance environmental performance and provide competitive benefits. We introduce a typology of strategic benefits related to competitive advantage that are enabled by improved environmental performance. Industry examples illustrate how organizations embed IE concepts and methods into systems to generate capabilities that deliver these benefits and configure them for competitive advantage. The examples demonstrate the idiosyncratic, path-dependent nature of capability development that helps sustain advantage, especially when competitors lack cognition of the global scope of the challenge, and the risks and benefits involved.For almost 40 years, the relationship between corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) has been analyzed in hundreds of empirical studies without yielding conclusive results. A major reason for this unsatisfying situation is the use of different measurement and theoretical approaches. Our article provides a literature review of existing measurement approaches for CEP and CFP as well as an examination of available theories and factors regarding the causal relation, direction, and potential moderators and mediators of the CEP-CFP relationship. In essence, we provide a synopsis by mapping not only the varying measurement approaches, but also the limited perspectives of the theories and factors about the relationship. With this synopsis, we aim to enhance the design of future studies through a metamodel that merges the limited perspectives of the theories and the factors on the CEP-CFP link.This paper examines the potential for property rights in carbon to affect industrial ecology opportunities. Given that emissions trading schemes for greenhouse gases are becoming more widely implemented, the definition of the carbon property right can affect barriers and opportunities for industrial ecology, alongside other factors. The paper uses legislation for emissions trading in Australia and two possible scenarios for the future of energy generation in the Latrobe Valley, Australia in 2050 as an illustrative case study to identify issues for industrial ecology arising from ill-defined carbon property rights. Currently, electricity generation in the region is reliant on coal-based generators. Scenario one focuses on bio-industries and renewables with no coal usage; and scenario two focuses on electricity from coal with carbon capture and storage resulting in moderate to high coal use. If a carbon property right for soil carbon emerges before a property right for subterranean carbon, then bio-based industrial ecology opportunities could be enabled ahead of a regional symbiosis involving carbon capture and storage. A generalised framework for considering the intersection of industrial ecology and carbon property rights is presented with a focus on tensions in: contributing to sustainable development, system boundaries and finally exchange mechanisms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, the magnetic NdFeB-activated carbon Fenton catalyst (NdFeB-AC-FC) was synthesized by negative pressure impregnation method. The results of magnetite susceptibility measurement show that the NdFeB-AC-FC had hard magnetic properties. Its saturated magnetization, remanent magnetism and coercive force were 18.11 emu/g, 5.7 emu/g, and 905 Oe, respectively. The surface morphology and elementary composition test results show that the specific area and Fe content of NdFeB-AC-FC have been significantly improved by negative pressure impregnation treatment. The feasibility of the NdFeB-AC-FC as catalyst in heterogeneous Fenton-like process has been studied by degrading the simulated dye wastewater. The results show that the NdFeB-AC-FC not only had splendid catalytic activity, but also had reused feasibility in heterogeneous Fenton-like process. Under the optimum conditions ([methyl orange (MO)](0):, = 20 mg/L, temperature = 20 degrees C, [NdFeB-AC-FC](0) = 10 g/L, [H2O2](0) = 0.6 mmol/L and pH = 3.0), MO degradation ratio also could reach 97.1% after 5 cycles. In addition, the results of kinetics study show that the catalytic degradation process follows the pseudo-first order kinetics model. In a word, the catalyst has a good application prospect and it could provide a new technique to solve organic industrial wastewater pollution. (C) 2014 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Identifying the most relevant environment related indicators and how to make them available to decision-makers are current issues. Some seek to enhance their efficiency by means of methods such as aggregations or weighting. More fundamentally, in this chapter we question how industrial ecologists appropriate the notion of environment. On the basis of multidisciplinary research, we argue that, in contexts of geographically bounded networks of social actors forging industrial synergies, environmental questions should be posed from the viewpoint of the actors. Our work might aid to operationalize the complex notion of environment in such contexts, and constitutes a call to develop anthropocentric approaches to defining environmental indications followed by appropriated indicators.China has implemented eco-industrial park (EIP) initiatives as a mainstream strategy of a circular economy since the turn of the new century. This paper presents the sustainable transition processes and outcomes of three EIP cases, Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area (TEDA), Fuzhou Economic and Technological Development Area (FEDA) and the Xi'an High-Tech Zone (XHTZ). The cases uncovered four factors key to the transition of EIPs: technological trajectory dependency, spaces for experimentation, government as an enabler and regional embeddedness.Current industrial production is driven by increasing globalization, which has led to a steady increase in production volumes and complexity of products aimed at the pursuit of meeting the needs of customers. In this context, one of the main tools in the management of customer value is Lean Manufacturing or Production, though it is considered primarily as a set of tools to reduce the total cost of the resources needed to achieve such needs. This philosophy has recently been enriched in the literature with case studies that link Lean Management (LM) with the improvement of environmental sustainability. The consequence is an expansion of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM); indeed, CIM, currently, combining and integrating the key business functions (e.g., business, engineering, manufacturing, and information management) with a view of the life cycle, does not highlight the strategic role of the environmental aspects. In order to deal with the increasingly rapid environmental degradation that is reflected in society, in terms of both economy and quality of life, Industrial Ecology (IE) introduced a new paradigm of principles and instruments of analysis and decision support (e.g., Life Cycle AssessmentLCA, Social Life Cycle Assessment -SLCA, Material Flow AccountMFA, etc.) that can be considered as the main basis for integrating the environmental aspects in each strategy, design, production, final product, and end of life management, through the re-engineering of processes and activities towards the development of an eco-industrial system. This paper presents the preliminary observations based on a analysis of both theories (LM-IE) and provides a possible assessment of the key factors relevant to their integration in a lean environmental management, highlighting both positives (lights) and possible barriers (shadows).In this study, a dynamic model of oil sludge pyrolysis in a rotary kiln with a solid heat carrier was developed. In the proposed model, both the particle motion in the rolling mode and oil sludge pyrolysis were taken into consideration. Saeman's model and a multiple-reaction model were involved to simulate the bed depth profile inside the rotary kiln based on the solid motion and the volatile evolution, respectively. Furthermore, the temperature profiles of three phases (solid carrier, oil sludge, and gaseous phase) in diverse conditions were predicated by combining pyrolysis kinetics, heat transfer, and motion equations. In the proposed model, the yields of CxHy, H-2, CO, and CO2 were successfully stimulated and predicted. The validity of the model was verified from both aspects of solid axial velocity and gas yields by comparing numerical values to literature reports and experimental data, respectively. This simulation practice was expected to provide an alternative approach to obtain helpful parameters for the designing of an industry-scale rotary kiln pyrolyzer.In the last century, the evolution of manufacturing was characterized by several innovations, concerning technologies, processes, but also entire production systems, with radical changes in strategies, product design, and management of organizations. Cost, time, and quality are the pillars on which was based the industrial competitiveness during that era. In the most recent years, a renewed interest in environmental issues and socio-ethical values has gradually promoted the transition towards the so-called low impact economies. Producers are then required to pursue a more rational and eco-efficient use of resources and reduce production wastes to survive; also the concept of value chain has been often associated with the terms environmental/green or sustainable. Various studies have been carried out to encourage companies in including the environment in their strategic and operational decisions making. Industrial Ecology (IE) represents the latest and most ambitious attempt to reach this goal; however, a great deal of work remains to be done to achieve this goal. As a result, enhancing companies to integrate efficiency and sustainable practices still has a long way to go. This study presents an overview on the evolutionary dynamics of manufacturing in the industrial age, and offers a discussion about the potential synergies in integrating IE approaches and tools in Lean Manufacturing, by introducing the environmental load as a further type of Muda; the systematic actions to reduce this waste can build up the basis for improving competitiveness through the eco-efficiency.The definition and the subsequent development of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) have been deeply based on the application of industrial ecology theory, which pays specific attention to metabolic exchanges within industrial processes to address a deep reduction of limited resource consumption and a minimization of waste production in the framework of a sustainable development approach. Despite the EIPs configurations being essentially based on the overall idea of sustainability, the problem of defining their proper location inside the territory and the consequent land use model, to minimize land consumption, have not always been central in the wide range of studies and practices concerning the EIPs. Nevertheless, the specific problem of a drastic reduction of land consumption at the EIP planning stage acquires a crucial role and, therefore, needs to be carefully assessed inside the perspective of sustainable urban development. In this framework, the paper firstly aims at facing the nontrivial relationship between the EIPs' theorizations and implementations and the reduction of land consumption by referencing specific studies and shared tools, where new developments have been favored despite the conversion and redevelopment of existing industrial parks; secondly, it focus on an Italian case study and its emblematic EIP planning processes, in order to deepen the contradictions between sustainable spatial planning and eco-industrial parks. Finally, some final conclusions will be presented, in order to integrate some main issues concerning the reduction of land consumption inside the more traditional EIP design processes.A novel n-type CuInS2 modified TiO2 nanotube arrays (NTs) heterostructure photoelectrode was successfully prepared via an ultrasonication-assisted cathodic electrodeposition strategy. CuInS2 particles were uniformly decorated on the inner and external walls of the TiO2 NTs electrode. The stoichiometry measured by XPS and ICP-OES clearly illustrated the excess indium. Mott-Schottky analysis further demonstrated CuInS2 possessed an n-type feature. Optical characterizations indicated that the introduced CuInS2 could extend the visible-light response range and enhance the visible light photoactivity. Moreover, the electrochemical measurements attested to a significant improvement of the interfacial electron-transfer properties. The photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) activity of CuInS2/TiO2 NTs electrode was evaluated by degradation of 2-chlorophenol (2-CP) under visible light irradiation ()L >420 nm). The results indicated that the as-prepared CuInS2/TiO2 NTs electrode displayed much higher PEC performance than that of the pure TiO2 NTs electrode. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Thiamphenicol and florfenicol are two phenicol antibiotics widely used in aquaculture and are ubiquitous as micropollutants in surface waters. The present study investigated their photodegradation kinetics, hydroxyl-radical ((OH)-O-.) oxidation reactivities and products. Firstly, the photolytic kinetics of the phenicols in pure water was studied as a function of initial concentrations (C-0) under UV-vis irradiation (lambda > 200 nm). It was found that the kinetics was influenced by C-0. A linear plot of the pseudo-first-order rate constant vs C-0 was observed with a negative slope. Secondly, the reaction between the phenicol antibiotics and (OH)-O-. was examined with a competition kinetic method under simulated solar irradiation (lambda > 290 nm), which quantified their bimolecular reaction rate constants of (2.13 +/- 0.02) x 10(9) M-1 s(-1) and (1.82 +/- 0.10) x 10(9) M-1 s(-1) for thiamphenicol and florfenicol, respectively. Then the corresponding (OH)-O-. oxidated half-lives in sunlit surface waters were calculated to be 90.5-106.1 h. Some main intermediates were formed from the reaction, which suggested that the two phenicols underwent hydroxylation, oxygenation and dehydrogenation when (OH)-O-. existed. These results are of importance to assess the phenicol persistence in wastewater treatment and sunlit surface waters. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The photoelectrocatalytic removal of ammonia in water was investigated using highly ordered TiO2 nanotube arrays as a photoanode. The results showed that the removal efficiency of total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) was closely related to the bias potential applied on TiO2 nanotube photoanode. Even without an adjustment of pH, over 99% of TAN (initial concentration 0.145 mM) was removed in 120 min with a bias potential of 1.0V. It is important to note that the TAN could be directly oxidized into N-2 and NO3--N without accumulation of an intermediate product of NO2--N. Meanwhile, the presence of the chemical scavengers revealed that photogenerated holes were the main oxidative species for the TAN oxidation. This work highlights the potential application of photoelectrocatalysis in the field of aqueous ammonia elimination. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial Ecology (IE) is based on the relation between the natural ecosystem and economic ecosystem. The concept refers to the metaphorical relation between the natural and industrial ecosystems as a model for transforming unsustainable industrial systems. Several tools and strategies are particularly significant for the IE development. In other words, the primary purpose of industrial ecology is to assess and reduce the impact economic activities on the environment. Tourism, as an economic activity, resulting in a full range of environmental impacts, should be treated like any other industry. This paper propose uses a theoretical review focused on IE for to investigate what is the best way to implement industrial ecology in the tourism activities. It seemed interesting to search within the IE concept for a model for the tourism sector, one of the fields with the greatest environmental interaction and economic implications.Design for environment (DfE) has become an important strategy for sustainable development. However, tools used for designing and tools used to conduct environmental evaluations are currently independent, and therefore the data these tools rely on are not easily communicated and integrated. In this research, we have developed a new software tool (EcoCAD) to provide support for DfE. The primary aim is to enable designers to spend less time on complicated environmental evaluations and independently and quickly develop products that have improved material toxicity and ease-of-disassembly characteristics. Fraunhofer-Institut fur Zuverlassigkeit und Mikrointegration's method for developing toxic potential indicators (TPIs) was used to create a Taiwanese TPI database from information contained in the United Nations' globally harmonized system's material safety data-sheet databases, and EcoCAD was developed and embedded on a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) software platform. In addition to common industrial materials, the toxicity of materials in generic printed circuit boards and in generic electric/electronic components is built into EcoCAD. EcoCAD not only provides designers with a functionality for monitoring TPIs during the design process, but also provides the designer with suggestions for reducing the toxicity and improving the ease of disassembly of their products. EcoCAD is an extremely practical tool because a designer is able to understand the material toxicity and ease-of-disassembly characteristics of the product during the CAD modeling stage itself, thereby saving time and cost and inspiring better designs. At the present time, EcoCAD focuses on toxicity of materials and ease of disassembly, but our concept could be extended to other environmental characteristics. For example, if a suitable life cycle assessment database was integrated with commercial CAD software, greenhouse gas emissions or European Union energy-related product directives could be considered.As a result of the rapidly depleting global resources, continuing climate change and increasing environmental pollution, and the associated growth in customer awareness, improving product sustainability has become a global trend. Comprehensive sustainability assessment techniques are needed to assess a product's sustainability performance throughout its entire life cycle. This article presents the Product Sustainability Index (ProdSI) methodology and its application. This methodology is metrics based and provides a comprehensive assessment of the overall product sustainability throughout its total life cycle, covering the four life cycle stages: pre-manufacturing; manufacturing; use; and postuse. In this article, first the fundamentals of sustainable manufacturing and product sustainability assessment (PSA) are presented, followed by a review of existing PSA methodologies. Major product sustainability elements that are used to define product sustainability clusters and individual sustainability metrics are then presented. Finally, the ProdSI methodology for PSA, which follows a hierarchical approach for sustainability metrics identification and overall PSA, is introduced. The application of the methodology is demonstrated in a numerical example of ProdSI evaluation for two generations of a consumer electronics component.A computational intelligence-based identification of the properties of maximally sustainable materials for a given application, as derived from key properties of existing candidate materials, is put forward. The correlation surface between material properties (input) and environmental impact (EI) values (output) of the candidate materials is initially created using general regression (GR) artificial neural networks (ANNs). Genetic algorithms (GAs) are subsequently employed for swiftly identifying the minimum point of the correlation surface, thus exposing the properties of the maximally sustainable material. The ANN is compared to and found to be more accurate than classic polynomial regression (PR) interpolation/prediction, with sensitivity and multicriteria analyses further confirming the stability of the proposed methodology under variations in the properties of the materials as well as the relative importance values assigned to the input properties. A nominal demonstration concerning material selection for manufacturing maximally sustainable liquid containers is presented, showing that by appropriately picking the pertinent input properties and the desired material selection criteria, the proposed methodology can be applied to a wide range of material selection tasks.A broad range of energy-using products have been analyzed to shape the eco-design requirements for the European market under the Ecodesign Framework Directive 2009/125/EC in the last several years. Only recently, this approach also addressed production equipment, including ovens, furnaces, machine tools, and related machinery. Welding equipment has been subject to such an analysis as part of the study on machine tools. This article summarizes the individual steps of this technical, economic, and environmental analysis to facilitate the understanding of the policy intentions: The study followed a standardized methodology and identified, through this approach, a significant energy savings potential of 7.6 petajoules per year and suitable policy options. The article discusses these options, addressing in particular the challenges faced by industrial equipment. Some shortcomings of the methodology to be used have to be stated. These are time and resource constraints to develop policy measures with adequate resources, uncertain market evidence, and the challenge to forecast the effect of engineering options not yet implemented in a product. Under these conditions, the findings are a compromise between feasibility and scientific robustness.For many modern products, the use phase is intensive and poses a serious environmental impact because of the energy and resources consumed. This could be resolved by optimizing the product's environmental impact by improving the understanding of the users' relationship with it. In this work, we propose a model that can be used to include the use phase and the eco-oriented strategies in the environmental impact assessment of a product. This model takes into account the changing nature of the interactions between the user and the product over time. An indicator designated mitigation rate is introduced to help model this change. It acknowledges the loss in performance of eco-oriented strategies over time. This work presents the methodology to understand, model, and select among different eco-oriented strategies with different time frames. A case study is also presented, where four alternative models considering different eco-oriented strategies are shown and compared.Increasing pressures from a variety of directives and standards have caused manufacturing enterprises to consider and implement energy assessment and energy performance goals-to improve both their economic and their environmental performance. Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) pose a challenge for energy management because of their complexity and the difficulty of data collection. FMSs allow manufacturers to adjust to customers' requirements and meet changing demands, which makes it possible for manufacturers to respond quickly to the market. To address this challenge, a practical energy model for machining systems based on colored timed Petri nets (CTPNs) is proposed. In this article, the energy consumption of FMS are first analyzed. Then, an energy model of FMSs based on CTPNs is proposed in which the uncertainty of task assignment and volatility of operation time are treated by Petri net (PN) functions so that data on the consumption of FMSs can be collected automatically. Finally, through the case study of an FMS with two jobs, the proposed energy model is simulated and the simulation results with colored PN tools are shown to be significant in practice.Life cycle assessment (LCA) enables us to estimate potential resource and energy consumption as well as environmental emissions resulting from various activities within our economy. The present LCA intends to analyze the energy consumption and environmental emissions of the entire life cycle of an originally manufactured diesel engine compared with its remanufactured counterpart. Further, the article attempts to identify the processes in diesel engine manufacturing and remanufacturing life cycles that contribute most to energy consumption and environmental impacts. Six environmental impacts were assessed in this study: global warming potential (GWP); acidification potential (AP); eutrophication potential (EP); ozone depletion potential (ODP); photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP); and abiotic depletion potential (ADP). The results show that diesel engine remanufacturing could reduce 66% of energy consumption, compared to original manufacturing. The greatest benefit related to environmental impact is with regard to ODP, which is reduced by 97%, followed by EP, GWP, POCP, AP, and ADP, which can be reduced by 79%, 67%, 32%, 32%, and 25%, respectively. In the life cycle of diesel engine manufacturing, production of materials brings about larger environmental impacts, especially with regard to EP and ODP, whereas transportation of materials contributes most to POCP. The situation is similar for diesel engine remanufacturing. Production of materials brings about larger environmental impacts with regard to AP, EP, and ODP, whereas components remanufacturing and production of materials exhibit the same amount of GWP impact. Further, in remanufacturing, the reverse logistics of old diesel engines brings about lesser environmental impacts than the other life cycle stages, except with regard to POCP.This article presents a general multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model aimed at providing decision support for waste and resources management in industrial networks. The MILP model combines material flow analysis, process models of waste treatments and other industrial processes, life cycle assessment, and mathematical optimization techniques within a unified framework. The optimization is based on a simplified representation of industrial networks that makes use of linear process models to describe the flows of mass and energy. Waste-specific characteristics, e.g. heating value or heavy metal contamination, are considered explicitly along with potential technologies or process configurations. The systems perspective, including both provision of waste treatment and industrial production, enables constraints imposed upon the systems, e.g. available treatment capacities, to be explicitly considered in the model. The model output is a set of alternative system configurations in terms of distribution of waste and resources that optimize environmental and economic performance. The MILP also enables quantification of the improvement potential compared to a given reference state. Trade-offs between conflicting objectives are identified through the generation of a set of Pareto-efficient solutions. This information supports the decision making process by revealing the quantified performance of the efficient trade-offs without relying on weighting being expressed prior to the analysis. Key features of the modeling approach are illustrated in a hypothetical case. The optimization model described in this article is applied in a subsequent paper (Part II) to assess and optimize the thermal treatment of sewage sludge in a region in Switzerland. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The SO2-poisoning on a Cu-supported Ti-Zr mixed oxide catalyst (Cu/Ti0.7Zr0.3O2-delta) in selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NOx with C3H6 was investigated, and the different effects of SO2 at varying reaction temperatures were clarified by in situ Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy combined with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. In situ FTIR results of the catalyst at low temperatures (150-250 degrees C) implied that the formation of sulfates on the surface inhibited the activation of NO and C3H6 as well as the reactivity of nitrates and NO2. The weakened capacity of the catalyst toward acetate formation is an important reason for the decline of catalytic activity at low temperatures. At high temperatures (above 275 degrees C), the negative effect of SO2 on the C3H6 activation to acetate is quite weak. More importantly, the generation of -NCO species is enhanced significantly via the reaction -CN + SO2/SO42- -> -NCO, which is confirmed by both in situ FTIR experimental observations and DFT calculations. The promotion in the generation of -NCO species is the primary reason for the elevation of SCR activity at high temperatures.This review concerns the methodological challenges that industrial ecology faces in integrating natural and social sciences. Network analysis can be seen as the most promising method to mediate between industrial ecology's overall systems approach and the complex structures found in society. It is a well established method across scientific disciplines, including the social sciences. It has been successfully applied in industrial ecology, in which localized phenomena of industrial symbiosis have been a key focus, and where metrics from both the social and natural sciences are used to understand socio-metabolic structures. In this paper we classify such studies as Social-Material Network Analyses and we discuss the body of work, drawing on network analyses from various disciplines. A challenge is the hierarchical nature of industrial networks and how it can be addressed socially. We discuss the opportunities and limitations of metric-driven network analysis and offer a review of methodological options for Social-Material Network Analyses. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Sustainable manufacturing has increasingly included design for environment methodologies with the objective of improving the environmental performance of products over their entire life cycles. Current European Union (EU) directives on eco-design focus on the use phase of energy-related products (ErPs). However, the maintenance of various household non-ErPs is performed with ErPs; therefore, the environmental impacts of product maintenance have an important role in the life cycle of non-ErPs. This article presents two eco-design studies where the implementation of improvement strategies of the use and maintenance phase of products had relevant results. Furthermore, environmental communication-to-user strategies were important to ensure the commitment of users toward eco-efficient behaviors. First, a knife was eco-designed according to strategies which focused on materials, processing, maintenance, and communication to user. By applying eco-design in a cradle-to-consumer scope, improvements decreased the environmental impact of the eco-designed product by 30%. However, when considering the entire life cycle of the eco-designed product, environmental impacts could be reduced by up to 40% and even up to approximate to 93% (depending on the cleaning procedure) as a result of large improvements in the maintenance stage. Second, a woman's jacket was eco-designed following multifunctionality, recycled materials, and efficient maintenance strategies. The new Livingstone jacket reached environmental improvements between 32% and 52% in the indicators analyzed. In this case, maintenance contributed between 40% and 87% of the reduction. As shown in this study, maintenance behavior and communication-to-user strategies are crucial to the eco-design of different household products (traditional vs. flexible design) and their consideration in the design process can reduce their environmental impact by between 40% and 80%.Remanufacturing is an industrial process of returning used or worn-out products to an "as-new" functional state with an equal warranty to newly manufactured equivalents. In recent years, remanufacturing has become an emerging research area, a direction toward which China's economic development is tending as well. As the world's fastest-growing solid waste stream, the handling of end-of-life (EOL) electronic products has drawn global concern, and China is no exception. Although it is currently at a preliminary development stage, the remanufacturing of EOL electronic products is rapidly developing, supported by relevant policies. There is a critical need for properly structured management systems, especially when it comes to regulations and standards applicable to EOL electronic products-both at the stage of remanufacturing processes and end products. The status of EOL electronic product remanufacturing in China is reviewed from three perspectives: (1) policies, regulations, and standards; (2) research; and (3) industry. The scope for remanufactured electronic products hereby analyzed mainly covers the following products: cartridge; copier; and information technology (IT) servers. For these, there is an urgent development need of methods and/or tools enabling a standardized remanufacturability assessment. Consumers' willingness to buy remanufactured products could also be promoted through the improvement and dissemination of knowledge and know-hows related to remanufacturing. The rapid advances in technology and products, and the falling prices of electronic products, could result in an adverse impact on remanufacturing.Beef cattle feedlots are estimated to contribute 26% of U.S. agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and future climate change policy could target reducing these emissions. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of GHG emissions from U.S. grain-fed beef cattle was conducted based on industry statistics and previous studies to identify the main sources of uncertainty in these estimations. Uncertainty associated with GHG emissions from indirect land use change, pasture soil emissions (e.g. soil carbon sequestration), enteric fermentation from cattle on pasture, and methane emissions from feedlot manure, respectively, contributed the most variability to life cycle GHG emissions from beef production. Feeding of coproducts from ethanol production was estimated to reduce life cycle emissions by 1.7%, but could increase emissions by 0.6-2.0% with higher feeding rates. Monte Carlo simulation found a range of life cycle emissions from 2.52 to 9.58 kg CO2 per kg live weight (5th and 95th percentiles), with a calculated average of 8.14, which is between recent estimates. Current methods used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) associated with beef production in feedlots were found to account for only 3-20% of life cycle GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mercury is one of the most acutely toxic substances at trace level to human health and living thing. Developing a rapid, cheap and water soluble metal sensor for detecting mercury ions at ppb level remains a challenge. Herein, a metal sensor consisting of MPA coated Mndoped ZnSe/ZnS colloidal nanoparticles was utilized to ultrasensitively and selectively detect Hg2+ ions with a low detection limit (0.1 nM) over a dynamic range from 0 to 20 nM. According to strong interaction between thiol(s) and mercury ions, mercaptopropionic acid (MPA) was used as a highly unique acceptor for mercury ions in the as-obtained ultrasensitive sensor. In the presence of mercury ions, colloidal nanoparticles rapidly agglomerated due to changes of surface chemical properties, which results in severe quenching of fluorescent intensity. Meanwhile, we find that the original ligands are separated from the surface of colloidal nanoparticles involving strongly chelation between mercury ion and thiol(s) proved by controlled IR analysis. The result shows that the QD-based metal ions sensor possesses satisfactory precision, high sensitivity and selectivity, and could be applied for the quantification analysis of real samples.A novel visible-light-activated photocatalyst consisting of porous graphitic C3N4 nanosheets and Ag3PO4 nanoparticles were synthesized through a tunable in situ deposition method. The morphology and microstructure of the C3N4/Ag3PO4 nanocomposites were carefully characterized by scanning electron microscope, TEM, X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), X-ray photoelectron spectra, and so on. The porous C3N4/Ag3PO4 nanocomposites were featured by the typical platelet-like morphology, with an average crystallite size of about 39 nm. The coexistence of porous graphitic C3N4 nanosheets and Ag3PO4 nanoparticles is confirmed via the XRD and EDX results. Owing to its narrower band gap of Ag3PO4, the nanocomposites displayed a significant redshift of UV-Vis spectral absorption edge together with expanded light absorption in comparison with g-C3N4 nanosheets. The photocatalytic activity of the prepared C3N4/Ag3PO4 nanocomposites is demonstrated by the photodegradation of 4-chlorophenol (4-CP). The C3N4/Ag3PO4 nanocomposites displayed higher photocatalytic activity than pure C3N4 or Ag3PO4, which could be attributed to the interfacial effect of the nanocomposites in inhibiting the unfavorable recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes. Electron spin resonance spin-trap study implied that the generation of hydroxyl radicals plays the key role in the photodegradation of 4-CP by the C3N4/Ag3PO4 nanocomposites under visible light irradiation.Freshwater macroalgae represent a largely overlooked group of phototrophic organisms that could play an important role within an industrial ecology context in both utilising waste nutrients and water and supplying biomass for animal feeds and renewable chemicals and fuels. This study used water from the intensive aquaculture of freshwater fish (Barramundi) to examine how the biomass production rate and protein content of the freshwater macroalga Oedogonium responds to increasing the flux of nutrients and carbon, by either increasing water exchange rates or through the addition of supplementary nitrogen and CO2. Biomass production rates were highest at low flow rates (0.1-1 vol.day(-1)) using raw pond water. The addition of CO2 to cultures increased biomass production rates by between 2 and 25% with this effect strongest at low water exchange rates. Paradoxically, the addition of nitrogen to cultures decreased productivity, especially at low water exchange rates. The optimal culture of Oedogonium occurred at flow rates of between 0.5-1 vol.day(-1), where uptake rates peaked at 1.09 g.m(-2).day(-1) for nitrogen and 0.13 g.m(-2).day(-1) for phosphorous. At these flow rates Oedogonium biomass had uptake efficiencies of 75.2% for nitrogen and 22.1% for phosphorous. In this study a nitrogen flux of 1.45 g.m(-2).day(-1) and a phosphorous flux of 0.6 g.m(-2).day(-1) was the minimum required to maintain the growth of Oedogonium at 16-17 g DW.m(-2).day(-1) and a crude protein content of 25%. A simple model of minimum inputs shows that for every gram of dry weight biomass production (g DW.m(-2).day(-1)), Oedogonium requires 0.09 g.m(-2).day(-1) of nitrogen and 0.04 g.m(-2).day(-1) of phosphorous to maintain growth without nutrient limitation whilst simultaneously maintaining a high-nutrient uptake rate and efficiency. As such the integrated culture of freshwater macroalgae with aquaculture for the purposes of nutrient recovery is a feasible solution for the bioremediation of wastewater and the supply of a protein resource.Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a subdiscipline of Industrial Ecology that aims to bring together companies from different sectors to share resources, namely energy, materials, and water. The main goal of IS is to improve resource (materials, waste, energy) efficiency and lead to mutual environmental, financial and social benefits to participants. In this paper we present a semantic approach for IS input/output matching. This approach is based on knowledge modelling and ontologies. Ontologies are used to model all resources - waste, water, energy - along with details about their composition, characteristics (chemical and physical) and tacit knowledge about their flow. The input/output matching algorithm presented enables the valorisation of resources through industrial symbiosis networks. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers methodological approaches to estimating the flow, balance, and accumulation of heavy metals (HMs) in a lake under conditions of long-term air pollution. Using the example of Chunozero Lake in the Lapland State Biospheric Reserve in Murmansk region, the accumulation of HMs in sediments is estimated for over a 70-year period of activity of a metallurgical mining enterprise (GMK Severonikel). The thickness of polluted sediments in a greater part of the lake water area averages 2 cm, and the average sedimentation rate for the last 20 years is 1 mm/year. Metals accumulated in lake sediments can indicate a danger of pollution in the future, particularly if processes of lake eutrophication develop. Due to the peculiar properties of substance flow to the Chunozero, the running type of water-mass movement, and the elongated form of the lake, only about 3% of HMs that enter the catchment area accumulate in sediments, in contrast to Imandra Lake (which has the largest area), where the accumulation of HMs reaches 55% owing to the fact that they enter mainly in the composition of wastewater and the low velocities of water flow.The modern industrial cycle is mainly based on non-renewable mineral resources extracted from the Earth's crust. After being processed and transformed into commodities, the products of mining become manufactured products which go through the economic system and are then discarded in the form of gaseous, liquid or solid waste. Eventually, the mass of the output in the form of waste must balance the input in the form of minerals. A large number of model studies have been performed on the first phase of the cycle-the production of mineral commodities-often with a specific interest in fossil fuels, with the objective of determining the future prospects of production. However, very few model studies of this kind have been performed about the future trends of waste generation. In this paper, we examine models of the industrial cycle compared to historical trends in municipal solid waste generation for different regions of the world. We show that waste generation in developed countries goes in parallel with the trends of industrial production and that several regions are showing a declining trend which may be interpreted in terms of "peaking" just as it is often done for the production of fossil fuels. Therefore, the "waste problem" in terms of increasing amounts of waste to be processed and disposed may not be so urgent as it is commonly perceived.Interest to harvest wild cyanobacteria exists due to the environmental and socioeconomic risks during cyanobacteria blooms coupled with demands for nonterrestrial-based alternatives for biofuel sources. This research, therefore, sought to estimate the wild cyanobacteria harvesting potential using Nodularia spumigena, and using the Baltic Sea as the case study. Data from literature provided during years 2003-2009 were used to perform estimations. Additional benefits of harvesting were also assessed by estimating the nutrient removal and biogas production potentials from the harvested biomass. Results indicate that one boom unit has the potential to harvest approximately 3 to 700 kg dry weight of N. spumigena per hour depending on the algae concentration of the bloom. Results also suggest that nutrient removal and biogas production potentials provide substantial additional incentives to the harvesting operation during years of extensive and highly concentrated blooms. However, during nonextensive or nonconcentrated blooms such potentials are low.Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography has emerged as a valuable alternative approach to ion-pair chromatography for the separation of aminoglycoside antibiotics in recent years. However, the resolution of structurally related aminoglycosides is a great challenge owing to the limited selectivity. In this work, a cysteine-based zwitterionic stationary phase (named Click TE-Cys) was utilized and compared with five commonly used hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography columns. Click TE-Cys displayed much better selectivity for structurally similar aminoglycosides. The retention behaviors of aminoglycosides were investigated in detail, revealing that low pH (2.7 or 3.0) and high buffer concentration (>= 50 mM) were preferable for achieving good peak shape and selectivity. Effective resolution of ten aminoglycosides including spectinomycin, dihydrostreptomycin, streptomycin, gentamicin C1, gentamicin C2/C2a, gentamicin C1a, kanamycin, paromonycin, tobramycin, and neomycin was realized at optimized conditions. Additionally, spectinomycin and its related impurities were successfully resolved. The results indicated the great potential of the Click TE-Cys column in the separation of aminoglycoside mixtures and related impurities.To elucidate the effect of nitrite ion (NO2-) on the photodegradation of organic pollutants, a 300 W mercury lamp and Pyrex tubes restricting the transmission of wavelengths below 290 nm were used to simulate sunlight, and the photodegradation processes of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) with different concentrations of NO2- in freshwater and seawater were studied. The effect of reactive oxygen species (ROS) on the photolysis of 2,4-D was also demonstrated using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). The results indicated that the 2,4-D photolysis reaction followed the first-order kinetics in freshwater and seawater under different concentrations of NO2-. Meanwhile, the photochemical reaction rate of 2,4-D increased with increasing concentration of NO2-. When the concentration of NO2- was lower than 23 mg/L, the photodegradation rate of 2,4-D in seawater was higher than that in freshwater. However, when the concentration of NO2- was reached 230 mg/L, 2,4-D degradation slowed down in seawater. It was important to note that EPR spectra showed NO2 center dot radical was generated in the NO2- solution under simulated sunlight irradiation, indicating that 2,4-D photodegradation could be induced by NO2 center dot. These results show the key role of NO2- in photochemistry and are helpful for better understanding of the phototransformation of environmental contaminants in natural aquatic systems. (C) 2014 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper explores a tension between environmental justice and green jobs. Photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing processes involve hazardous chemicals similar to those found in the electronics industry, where impacts such as groundwater contamination, worker exposures to chemicals, and other air and water emissions overlap with environmental inequality. In the US, cadmium-based thin-film PV was financed with support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act producing new political ecological configurations of energy procurement and generation, linking Malaysian thin film PV fabs to public lands in the US desert southwest. By integrating traditions in global commodity chains, political ecology, and science and technology studies, this research shows how life cycle assessment was used to shape the debate about cadmium pollution from thin-film PV. As metrics have the power to obscure environmental injustice, the findings call for humility when interpreting life cycle assessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The analysis of uncertainty in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies has been a topic for more than 10 years, and many commercial LCA programs now feature a sampling approach called Monte Carlo analysis. Yet, a full Monte Carlo analysis of a large LCA system, for instance containing the 4,000 unit processes of ecoinvent v2.2, is rarely carried out by LCA practitioners. One reason for this is computation time. An alternative faster than Monte Carlo method is analytical error propagation by means of a Taylor series expansion; however, this approach suffers from being explained in the literature in conflicting ways, hampering implementation in most software packages for LCA. The purpose of this paper is to compare the two different approaches from a theoretical and practical perspective. In this paper, we compare the analytical and sampling approaches in terms of their theoretical background and their mathematical formulation. Using three case studies-one stylized, one real-sized, and one input-output (IO)-based-we approach these techniques from a practical perspective and compare them in terms of speed and results. Depending on the precise question, a sampling or an analytical approach provides more useful information. Whenever they provide the same indicators, an analytical approach is much faster but less reliable when the uncertainties are large. For a good analysis, analytical and sampling approaches are equally important, and we recommend practitioners to use both whenever available, and we recommend software suppliers to implement both.Industrial systems can be represented as networks of organizations connected by flows of materials, energy, and money. This network context may produce unexpected consequences in response to policy intervention, so improved understanding is vital; however, industrial network data are commonly unavailable publically. Using a case study in the Humber region, UK, we present a novel methodology of "network coding'' of semistructured interviews with key industrial and political stakeholders, in combination with an "industrial taxonomy'' of network archetypes developed to construct an approximation of the region's networks when data are incomplete. This article describes our methodology and presents the resulting network. (C) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.The aim of Industrial ecology (IE) is to optimize resource management by densifying interactions between stakeholders occupying a common geographic area. This article considers ports, understood as platforms of circulation and transformation of material and energy flows. It addresses the role and capacity of ports to foster the implementation of IE in port cities and to contribute to the optimization of resource management in coastal areas. This article presents the result of a research project (2011-2012) consisting of an international inventory of innovative resource management initiatives in port areas. 18 port-based industrial complexes were visited, enabling the analysis of 23 port IE initiatives. Cross-case analysis was carried out following a 3 step methodology: 1/ definition of the research boundaries; 2/ qualitative data collection by means of interviews and a literature review; 3/ data analysis in order to build a typology of port contribution to the implementation of IE in port-city areas. The case studies analyzed can be classified into 9 patterns based on temporal and spatial characteristics of P-IE initiatives. They provide insights on the ports' influence on local IE dynamics: as areas of testing and implementation of industrial symbiosis, ports can constitute exemplary self-sufficient areas, likely to boost the development of other local eco-parks; as drivers of local economic development, ports act as levers for the implementation of sustainable policies at a regional scale; as nodes in a global port network, ports can develop inter-port by-product exchanges and utility sharing. Ports question the relevance of geographical proximity in IE. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Compiling, deploying and utilising large-scale databases that integrate environmental and economic data have traditionally been labour-and cost-intensive processes, hindered by the large amount of disparate and misaligned data that must be collected and harmonised. The Australian Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab) is a novel, collaborative approach to compiling large-scale environmentally extended multi-region input-output (MRIO) models. The utility of the IELab product is greatly enhanced by avoiding the need to lock in an MRIO structure at the time the MRIO system is developed. The IELab advances the idea of the "mother-daughter" construction principle, whereby a regionally and sectorally very detailed "mother" table is set up, from which "daughter" tables are derived to suit specific research questions. By introducing a third tier - the "root classification"-IELab users are able to define their own mother-MRIO configuration, at no additional cost in terms of data handling. Customised mother-MRIOs can then be built, which maximise disaggregation in aspects that are useful to a family of research questions. The second innovation in the IELab system is to provide a highly automated collaborative research platform in a cloud-computing environment greatly expediting workflows and making these computational benefits accessible to all users. Combining these two aspects realises many benefits. The collaborative nature of the IELab development project allows significant savings in resources. Timely deployment is possible by coupling automation procedures with the comprehensive input from multiple teams. User-defined MRIO tables, coupled with high performance computing, mean that MRIO analysis will be useful and accessible for a great many more research applications than would otherwise be possible. By ensuring that a common set of analytical tools such as for hybrid life-cycle assessment is adopted, the IELab will facilitate the harmonisation of fragmented, dispersed and misaligned raw data for the benefit of all interested parties. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The current flow of carbon for the production, use, and waste management of polymer-based products is still mostly linear from the lithosphere to the atmosphere with rather low rates of material recycling. In view of a limited future supply of biomass, this article outlines the options to further develop carbon recycling (C-REC). The focus is on carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and use for synthesis of platform chemicals to produce polymers. CO2 may be captured from exhaust gases after combustion or fermentation of waste in order to establish a C-REC system within the technosphere. As a long-term option, an external C-REC system can be developed by capturing atmospheric CO2. A central role may be expected from renewable methane (or synthetic natural gas), which is increasingly being used for storage and transport of energy, but may also be used for renewable carbon supply for chemistry. The energy input for the C-REC processes can come from wind and solar systems, in particular, power for the production of hydrogen, which is combined with CO2 to produce various hydrocarbons. Most of the technological components for the system already exist, and, first modules for renewable fuel and polymer production systems are underway in Germany. This article outlines how the system may further develop over the medium to long term, from a piggy-back add-on flow system toward a self-carrying recycling system, which has the potential to provide the material and energy backbone of future societies. A critical bottleneck seems to be the capacity and costs of renewable energy supply, rather than the costs of carbon capture.It has been long recognized in the conceptual literature that industrial symbiosis requires a perspective that focuses on long-term evolution. This has not yet been matched by adopting an adequate process-oriented research methodology. This article provides the underpinnings for such a methodology, presents a developed methodology, event sequence analysis, and shows its added value through a set of research questions and an empirical example. It shows how the process perspective leads to asking new research questions as well as the uncovering of new insights about the emergence, evolution, and dissolution of symbiotic relationships and the institutional capacity required to build such relationships.The Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model developed by Argonne National Laboratory quantifies the life cycle energy consumption and air emissions resulting from the production and use of light-duty vehicles in the United States. GREET is comprised of two components: GREET 1 represents the fuel cycle of various energy carriers, including automotive fuels, and GREET 2 represents the vehicle cycle, which accounts for the production of vehicles and their constituent materials. The GREET model was updated in 2012 and now includes higher-resolution material processing and transformation data. This study evaluated how model updates influence material and vehicle life cycle results. First, new primary energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions results from GREET 2 for steel, aluminum, and plastics resins are compared herein with those from the previous version of the model as well as industrial results. A part of the comparison is a discussion about causes of differences between results. Included in this discussion is an assessment of the impact of the new material production data on vehicle life cycle results for conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by comparing the energy and GHG emission values in the updated and previous versions of GREET 2. Finally, results from a sensitivity analysis are presented for identifying life cycle parameters that most affect vehicle life cycle estimates.This article presents a general framework for macroenvironmental assessment, combining life cycle assessment (LCA) with the IPAT equation, and explores its combination with decomposition analysis to assess the multidimensional contribution of technological innovation to environmental pressures. This approach is illustrated with a case study in which carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) air emissions from diesel passenger cars in Europe during the period 1990-2005 are first decomposed using index decomposition analysis into technology, consumption activity, and population growth effects. By a second decomposition, the contribution of a specific innovation (diesel engine) is calculated on the basis of the technology and consumption activity effects, through a technological comparison with a relevant alternative and the calculation of the rebound effect, respectively. The empirical analysis for diesel passenger cars highlights the discrepancies between the micro (LCA) and macro (IPAT-LCA) analytical approaches. Thus, whereas diesel engines present a relatively less-pollutant environmental product profile than their gasoline counterparts, total CO2 and NOx emissions would have increased partly as a consequence of their introduction, mainly driven by the increase in travel demand caused by the induced direct price rebound effect from fuel savings and fuel price differences. The counterintuitive result shows the need for such an analysis.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies include a vast amount of different products. Often, extrapolations are necessary to obtain the life cycle inventory of a specific product. This article provides quantitative scaling factors with power (heat output) for product properties and life cycle impact assessment results of heat pump and biomass furnace technologies. Included in the study are 508 heat pumps and furnaces with differences in power over three orders of magnitude per product group. The key properties of the heat pump system were defined as mass, refrigerant use, and coefficient of performance. For the biomass furnaces, the key properties analyzed were mass, electrical input, and efficiency. The results indicated that both the mass and the refrigerant use increased subproportionally to power. For coefficient of performance and furnace efficiency, no scaling effect was found. Subproportional growth was found between two environmental impacts (global warming and ozone depletion) and power for the production phase. This scaling behavior was similar to conventional cost scaling. The results of our study imply that in LCA, scaling factors can be applied to estimate key properties and corresponding life cycle impact assessment results. This is particularly useful for prospective technology assessments with limited data available.This article describes research conducted for the Japanese government in the wake of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on March 11, 2011. In this study, material stock analysis (MSA) is used to examine the losses of building and infrastructure materials after this disaster. Estimates of the magnitude of material stock that has lost its social function as a result of a disaster can indicate the quantities required for reconstruction, help garner a better understanding of the volumes of waste flows generated by that disaster, and also help in the course of policy deliberations in the recovery of disaster-stricken areas. Calculations of the lost building and road materials in the five prefectures most affected were undertaken. Analysis in this study is based on the use of geographical information systems (GIS) databases and statistics; it aims to (1) describe in spatial terms what construction materials were lost, (2) estimate the amount of infrastructure material needed to rehabilitate disaster areas, and (3) indicate the amount of lost material stock that should be taken into consideration during government policy deliberations. Our analysis concludes that the material stock losses of buildings and road infrastructure are 31.8 and 2.1 million tonnes, respectively. This research approach and the use of spatial MSA can be useful for urban planners and may also convey more appropriate information about disposal based on the work of municipalities in disaster-afflicted areas.Material management faces a dual challenge: on the one hand satisfying large and increasing demands for goods and on the other hand accommodating wastes and emissions in sinks. Hence, the characterization of material flows and stocks is relevant for both improving resource efficiency and environmental protection. This article focuses on the urban scale, a dimension rarely investigated in past metal flow studies. We compare the copper (Cu) metabolism of two cities in different economic states, namely, Vienna (Europe) and Taipei (Asia). Substance flow analysis is used to calculate urban Cu balances in a comprehensive and transparent form. The main difference between Cu in the two cities appears to be the stock: Vienna seems close to saturation with 180 kilograms per capita (kg/cap) and a growth rate of 2% per year. In contrast, the Taipei stock of 30 kg/cap grows rapidly by 26% per year. Even though most Cu is recycled in both cities, bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration represents an unused Cu potential accounting for 1% to 5% of annual demand. Nonpoint emissions are predominant; up to 50% of the loadings into the sewer system are from nonpoint sources. The results of this research are instrumental for the design of the Cu metabolism in each city. The outcomes serve as a base for identification and recovery of recyclables as well as for directing nonrecyclables to appropriate sinks, avoiding sensitive environmental pathways. The methodology applied is well suited for city benchmarking if sufficient data are available.Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing humankind. Mitigating climate change will require a suite of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a new technology aimed at mitigating climate change by capturing and storing carbon dioxide, typically in deep geological reservoirs. CCS has risks characteristic of new technologies, as well as risks unique to this technology and its application. Large-scale CCS decision making is complex, encompassing environmental, social, and economic considerations and requiring the risks to be taken into consideration. CCS projects have been cancelled as a result of inadequate assessments of risks. To date, studies assessing CCS have been limited mostly to environmental, social, and economic fields in isolation from each other, predominantly using life cycle assessments (LCAs), cost benefit analyses (CBAs), or surveys of public perception. LCAs, CBAs, and surveys of public perception all have limitations for assessing difficult multifaceted problems. Incompatibilities across CCS assessment methods have hindered the comparison of the results across these single-discipline studies and limited the possibility of drawing broader conclusions about CCS development. More standardization across assessment methods, study assumptions, functional units, and assessment criteria for CCS could be beneficial to the integration of multiple study results. We propose a set of criteria, which decision analysts could use to develop CCS-project-specific criteria lists in order to comprehensively assess a CCS project's viability. This list was created by determining the frequency of use of each criterion in recent studies, with a focus on their use across disciplines.The precise understanding of the link between industrial ecology and sustainability is vitally important for a continuous environmental performance. In this study, an intensive review of industrial ecology principles, its application areas and the extent to which industrial ecology has been applied was documented. It was observed that the effective application of industrial ecology is critical for sustainability, since the industry is the main polluter of the environment. It was further inferred that, there is inadequate applicability of the industrial ecology principles by developed countries. Thus I hypothesized that, there is a great opportunity for new investment in this field considering the absence of modern means for the liquid and solid waste management. For example, improper incineration of wastes such as hospital wastes, and the electrical and electronic equipment was perceived to bring health problems in the near future. Therefore, it is time for the governments in both developed and developing countries to increase the applicability of industrial ecology, for sustainable social, economic, political and environmental performances.The aim of this article is to help confront uncertainty in life cycle assessments (LCAs) used for decision support. LCAs offer a quantitative approach to assess environmental effects of products, technologies, and services and are conducted by an LCA practitioner or analyst (AN) to support the decision maker (DM) in making the best possible choice for the environment. At present, some DMs do not trust the LCA to be a reliable decision-support tool-often because DMs consider the uncertainty of an LCA to be too large. The standard evaluation of uncertainty in LCAs is an ex-post approach that can be described as a variance simulation based on individual data points used in an LCA. This article develops and proposes a taxonomy for LCAs based on extensive research in the LCA, management, and economic literature. This taxonomy can be used ex ante to support planning and communication between an AN and DM regarding which type of LCA study to employ for the decision context at hand. This taxonomy enables the derivation of an LCA classification matrix to clearly identify and communicate the type of a given LCA. By relating the LCA classification matrix to statistical principles, we can also rank the different types of LCA on an expected inherent uncertainty scale that can be used to confront and address potential uncertainty. However, this article does not attempt to offer a quantitative approach for assessing uncertainty in LCAs used for decision support.National material stock (MS) accounts have been a neglected field of analysis in industrial ecology, possibly because of the difficulty in establishing such accounts. In this research, we propose a novel method to model national MS based on historical material flow data. This enables us to avoid the laborious data work involved with bottom-up accounts for stocks and to arrive at plausible levels of stock accumulation for nations. We apply the method for the United States and Japan to establish a proof of concept for two very different cases of industrial development. Looking at a period of 75 years (1930-2005), we find that per capita MS has been much higher in the United States for the entire period, but that Japan has experienced much higher growth rates throughout, in line with Japan's late industrial development. By 2005, however, both Japan and the United States arrive at a very similar level of national MS of 310 to 375 tonnes per capita, respectively. This research provides new insight into the relationship between MS and flows in national economies and enables us to extend the debate about material efficiency from a narrow perspective of throughput to a broader perspective of stocks.Drawing on current international industrial ecology thinking and experiences with Australian initiatives, this article critically overviews the current status of industrial ecology in Australia and examines the barriers and potential strategies to realise greater uptake and application of the concept. The analysis is conducted across three categories: heavy industrial areas (including Kwinana and Gladstone), mixed industrial parks (Wagga Wagga and Port Melbourne), and waste exchange networks, and identifies the past and future significance of seven different types of barriers-regulation, information, community, economic, technical, cooperation and trust, commitment to sustainable development-for each of the three categories. The outcomes from this analysis highlight that regulation, information, and economic barriers for heavy industrial area and mixed industrial parks, and economic and technical barriers for waste exchange networks are the current and future focus for industrial ecology applications in Australia. These findings appear to be consistent with recently published frameworks and learnings. The authors propose key questions that could enhance greater adoption of industrial ecology applications in Australia and acknowledge that international research and experiences, while partly providing answers to these questions, need to be adapted and refined for the Australian context.The declining availability of natural resources and the environmental impacts of continued extraction of primary resources for production activities have forced greater focus on waste streams and recycling activities. Industrial ecology as a field of practice and theory has been closely related to sustainability issues, yet despite the development of much theory and specific tools and methodologies, the link between natural, industrial and economic systems is not convincing. Not only that, the need for delivering sustainable production and consumption practices is increasing, which is demanding new solutions to existing problems, particularly around the degree of novelty. The interaction of industrial ecology with business studies and industrial investment decision-making remains under-developed, and this is likely impacting on the adoption of more sustainable and resource-efficient practices. As such, this paper uses a constructive approach and explores how two areas of the literature can support the development of the industrial ecology field into strategic business practice: firstly, the innovation literature, particularly the emerging work on open innovation and sustainable innovation as a model to understand radical innovation processes and the creation and maintenance of networked systems of firms; secondly, the closely related area of business model (BM) innovation, specifically the emerging typologies of sustainable BMs and how these typologies can be developed and used as a route to positioning recycling activities at the strategic management level of the firm.Industrial ecology (IE) argues the need for an efficient materials economy based on recycling where environmental degradation associated with inputs of new materials and outputs of waste or pollution is minimal. There is often an assumption that efficiency in the use of materials equates to economic efficiency; however, this is not necessarily the case. Central to this tension between engineering and economic approaches to materials efficiency are different conceptual framings of value. Because a large scale shift towards valuing waste materials as future resources involves changes to existing practices of a great many actors and organizations, ranging from consumers and household disposal practices, through to government agencies and multi-national corporations, it cannot be assumed that all operate with similar conceptions of value. This paper reviews current understandings of value in IE and argues that they need to be expanded to accommodate approaches to valuing used goods and materials that manifest across different spatial scales, from household disposal practices to national policy to global production networks (GPNs). The paper focuses, in particular, on understandings of value relevant to metals recycling in Australia and contrast material flow models from IE with other models of material flows and transformations available in the social sciences, including anthropological analysis of the movement of objects through different regimes of value within society and analysis in economic geography that highlights spatial and structural dimensions influential in commodity chains and networks for used products and materials. It concludes by reflecting on the significance of the dynamic and creative tensions inherent in the production of value for recycled metals from Australia.The concept of the circular economy proposes new patterns of production, consumption and use, based on circular flows of resources. Under a scenario where there is a global shift towards the circular economy, this paper discusses the advent of two parallel and yet-to-be-connected trends for Australia, namely: (i) responsible minerals supply chains and (ii) additive manufacturing, also known as 3D production systems. Acknowledging the current context for waste management, the paper explores future interlinked questions which arise in the circular economy for responsible supply chains, additive manufacturing, and metals recycling. For example, where do mined and recycled resources fit in responsible supply chains as inputs to responsible production? What is required to ensure 3D production systems are resource efficient? How could more distributed models of production, enabled by additive manufacturing, change the geographical scale at which it is economic or desirable to close the loop? Examples are given to highlight the need for an integrated research agenda to address these questions and to foster Australian opportunities in the circular economy.From a thermodynamic point of view, the attribution of the adjective sustainable to an open system like the city is, at least, very problematic. The biosphere is a closed system, kept far from the thermodynamic equilibrium by the flow of energy coming from the sun. The biosphere maintains and increases its internal order dispersing entropy, generated by all the internal processes, as thermal infrared radiation. But then, the elegant picture of sustainability given by thermodynamics can not be applied to open systems, and notably to the city, without raising both theoretical and practical problems. The city is almost by definition a place of consumption and of degradation of potentials, kept in local equilibrium by external flows of matter and energy, but at the same time plays a key role in shaping and maintaining the global flows of matter, energy, and information, and this role must be taken into account when interpreting thermodynamic-based descriptions. The urban capital probably represents the greatest investment made by mankind. Materials have been harvested from the earth crust and from the natural systems, and have been concentrated and ordered in the city. But the " city" is not the infrastructure: it's concept of a different logical type. The city is a further level of organization that produces services of higher level. The urban infrastructure is necessary, but not sufficient to produce the city services. The city is the most important social and health " device". A proper accounting must consider the city-performance of the urban infrastructure, beyond the mere, local energy and carbon efficiency. In this context, local GHG accounting is proposed as a rather simple and useful basis to ground process-wise studies and projects, including the creation of effective local industrial ecologies, in a continuous city-making effort toward higher sustainability.Industrial ecological system is a sustainable mode of modern industry development. Industrial symbiosis, a sub-field of industrial ecology, engages traditionally separate industries in a collective approach, involving exchange of materials, energy, water, and/or by-products, to enhance competitive ability and environmental performance. To construct a symbiosis analysis method, this article employs a number of parameters embodying information about materials, energy and economics as the main essential parameters in system analysis and introduces symbiosis profit and symbiotic consumption elements as the economic indicators. A modeling and simulation program is designed using the agent-based modeling approach to simulate the evolvement of a hypothetical coal-based industrial system and the change of symbiosis conditions in the process of construction is examined. The simulation program built using the Swarm library, which is a freely available multi-agent simulation package, provides a useful demonstration for the symbiosis analysis method.In an effort to develop nanostructured photocatalysts to achieve high performance in heterogeneous photocatalysis, a novel composite V2O5/BiVO4/TiO2 photocatalyst was successfully synthesized by using a sequentially hydrothermal and adhering method. The structural and optical properties of the as-prepared samples were comparatively characterized. The formed ternary nanojunctions were composed of TiO2 nanobelts and V2O5/BiVO4 nanorods which were self-assembled by smaller V2O5 and BiVO4 nanoparticles. Compared to pure TiO2 nanobelts and V2O5/BiVO4 nanorods, the V2O5/BiVO4/TiO2 composite exhibited higher photocatalytic activity in decomposition of gaseous toluene under visible light irradiation (lambda > 400 nm). Electron spin resonance examination confirmed that the photoinduced active species ((OH)-O-center dot and O-2(center dot-)) were involved in the photocatalytic degradation of toluene. A detailed mechanism accounting for the enhanced photocatalytic activity of the V2O5/BiVO4/TiO2 nanocomposite was proposed in terms of the energy band structures of the components. The rationally designed ternary nanojunctions could effectively enhance the photocatalytic performance by increasing photoinduced charge carriers through the charges separation across their multiple interfaces.In recent years, concepts drawn from industrial ecology have been used to plan and develop eco-industrial parks (EIPs) in China. Attention for eco-industrial parks development projects has grown considerably among national and regional governments and also industries. Among of them, the National Demonstration Eco-industrial Parks program is the most significant program in China. The National Demonstration Eco-industrial Parks program in China has a clear set of indicators and performance targets, strong government support and direct involvement and strict structures and regulations to support it. This article provides an assessment of the progress of the National Demonstration Eco-industrial Parks Program in China by focusing on the key problems and dilemmas that arise in the course of developing EIPs in different economic regions. The paper draws upon both an extensive survey of EIPs and in-depth interviews conducted at 33 EIPs. It begins by introducing the experience of the National Demonstration Eco-industrial Parks Program, and then discusses the geographic distribution of EIPs and compares regional differences by analyzing data from 33 ElPs. The paper offers some brief suggestions for future development of ElPs in China and, finally, it explores factors that could affect the progress of ElPs drawing upon empirical work conducted in China. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Algae offer a multiple-benefit opportunity as the products that can result from algal cultivation are numerous and diverse. However, commercial production of algal-derived materials is scarce and in Queensland Australia is virtually non-existent, partly due to challenges around readily available resources. In this work, the potential to regionally recycle waste nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and CO2 to support algal production is considered. A feature of the work is mapping the availability of the three resources for algal cultivation (N, P and CO2) together with climatic and land use considerations. Mapping resolution is defined by the boundaries of Queensland's (Australia) regional authorities. Layering the maps enables identification of regional hotspots for growing algae. Waste resources are shown to be most abundant in Mackay, Burdekin, Toowoomba, Cassowary and Bundaberg; regions which also have favourable eco-climatic conditions. Waste nitrogen is the limiting waste stream, in these and most other regions however additional requirements can be fixed atmospherically, whereas waste CO2 is shown to be abundant relative to waste nutrients. It is found that, based on the availability of waste phosphorus, the top 5 most suitable regions have sufficient resources to produce around 1.1 million t/y of algal biomass. This could potentially produce 309 ML of biodiesel which is 5% of Queensland's 2011 diesel oil sales. The outcomes of this work highlight new opportunities for industrial ecology in non-urban regions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The core-nanoshell composite materials with magnetic fly-ash hollow cenosphere as core and nano SmFeO3 as shell were synthesized by high-energy ball milling method. The magnetic fly-ash hollow cenosphere, samarium nitrate, and iron nitrate were used as raw materials. The synthesis and growth kinetics of the composite materials were investigated using the thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) at different heating rates. The results show that the precursor of the composite materials decomposes in three steps. The apparent activation energy of each stage was calculated using the Doyle-Ozawa and Kissinger methods. The reaction order, frequency factor, and rate equations were also determined. The activation energy of the nano crystallite growth is calculated to be 16.12 kJ mol(-1) according to kinetics theory of nano crystallite growth. It can be inferred that the crystallite grows primarily by means of an interfacial reaction during the thermal treatment. The magnetic properties and microwave absorbing properties of samples were analyzed by the vibrating sample magnetometer analysis and vector network analyzer. The results indicated that the exchange coupling interaction happens between ferrite of magnetic fly-ash hollow cenosphere and nanosized ferrite coating, which cause outstanding magnetic properties. In the frequency between 1 MHz and 1 GHz, the absorbing effectiveness of the composite absorbers can achieve -32 dB. The magnetic properties of the composite material are better than those of single phase. So it is consistent with requirements of the microwave absorbing material at the low-frequency absorption.Serious environmental problems have appeared in China since the rapid economic growth 30 years ago, which affect human's health and become a limiting factor for further development. It has brought about the rethinking of traditional ways for economy development and environmental protection, and realized that the change in the model of development and environment protection is of significance. A new industrial revolution is needed for protecting the environment and promoting sustainable development. This paper discusses the characteristics of the new industrial revolution for sustainable development including cleaner production, circular economy, and industrial ecology. Lessons from China and abroad will be introduced to prove that new strategies for environment protection and economic development are needed.The application of life cycle assessment (LCA) in a policy context highlights the need for a "consequential" LCA (CLCA), which differs from an "attributional" LCA (ALCA). Although CLCA offers some advantages over ALCA, such as a capacity to account for emissions resulting from both substitution and price effects, it entails additional assumptions and cost and may yield estimates that are more uncertain (e.g., estimates of impact of biofuel policies on greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions). We illustrate how a CLCA that relies on simple partial equilibrium models could provide important insights on the direction and magnitude of price effects while limiting the complexity of CLCA. We describe how such a CLCA, when applied early in the policy life cycle, could help identify policy formulations that reduce the magnitude of adverse price effects relative to the beneficial substitution effect on emissions because-as the experience with biofuel regulations indicates-regulating price effects is costly and controversial. We conclude that the salient contribution of CLCA in the policy process might lie in warning policy makers about the vulnerabilities in a policy with regard to environmental impact and to help modify potentially counterproductive formulations rather than in deriving the precise estimates for uncertain variables, such as the life cycle GHG intensity of product or average indirect emissions.Use of biomass-based electricity and hydrogen in alternative transport could provide environmentally sustainable transport options with possible improvements in greenhouse gas balance. We perform a life cycle assessment of electric vehicle (EV) and fuel cell vehicle (FCV) powered by bioelectricity and biohydrogen, respectively, derived from Norwegian boreal forest biomass, considering the nonclimate neutrality of biological carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and alteration in surface albedo resulting from biomass harvesting-both with and without CO2 capture and storage (CCS)-while benchmarking these options against EVs powered by the average European electricity mix. Results show that with due consideration of the countering effects from global warming potential (GWP) factors for biogenic CO2 emissions and change in radiative forcing of the surface for the studied region, bioenergy-based EVs and FCVs provide reductions of approximately 30%, as compared to the reference EV powered by the average European electricity mix. With CCS coupled to bioenergy production, the biomass-based vehicle transport results in a net global warming impact reduction of approximately 110% to 120% (giving negative GWP and creating a climate-cooling benefit from biomass use). Other environmental impacts vary from -60% to +60%, with freshwater eutrophication showing maximum reductions (40% for the EV case and 60% for the FCV case) and photochemical oxidation showing a maximum increase (60% in the FCV value chain).Models of buildings in life cycle assessment (LCA) often use simple descriptions of operational energy, maintenance, and material replacement. The scope of many building LCAs is often limited and uses assumptions such as building lifetimes of 30 to 50years. In actuality, building lifetimes vary considerably, and scenarios using standard assumptions may have incorrect results. Assumptions concerning material replacement, repair, and maintenance should be deliberate and as realistic as possible. This research was initiated to demonstrate the importance of service life assumptions on building life cycle assessment results. Three roof types (built-up, thermoplastic membrane, and vegetated) and three wall forms (brick, aluminum, and wood siding) were analyzed. These materials were combined and modeled as nine distinct building envelopes. Five service life models were used to determine the service life of materials and systems. The analysis considered impacts related to material manufacturing, construction, operation, and maintenance. The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts global warming potential, atmospheric eco-toxicity, and atmospheric acidification impact assessment indicators were used. The analysis of the cumulative life cycle impact and life cycle impact per year found that life cycle impact was primarily dependent on the predicted frequency of major material replacement as well as differences in the frequency and intensity of prescribed maintenance. In some scenarios, the relative differences in the life cycle impact of the alternatives were dependent on the environmental indicator used.In this article, we extend Namakura and Kondo's waste input-output (WIO) framework by incorporating a supply-use formalism, resulting in waste supply-use tables (WSUTs). We present the theoretical underpinnings of the WSUT and, in particular, the transition from Nakamura and Kondo's WIO form to the new WSUT form. Further, we offer a mathematical proof of the equivalence of WIO and WSUT multipliers. We illustrate the workings of the WSUT calculus using economic and waste data for the Australian economy in 2008-2009.Quantifying differences in resource use and waste generation between individual households and exploring the reasons for the variations observed implies the need for disaggregated data on household activities and related physical flows. The collection of disaggregated data for water use, gas use, electricity use, and mobility has been reported in the literature and is normally achieved through sensors and computational algorithms. This study focuses on collecting disaggregated data for goods consumption and related waste generation at the level of individual households. To this end, two data collection approaches were devised and evaluated: (1) triangulating shopping receipt analysis and waste component analysis and (2) tracking goods consumption and waste generation using a smartphone. A case study on two households demonstrated that it is possible to collect quantitative data on goods consumption and related waste generation on a per unit basis for individual households. The study suggested that the type of data collected can be relevant in a number of different research contexts: eco-feedback; user-centered research; living-lab research; and life cycle impacts of household consumption. The approaches presented in this study are most applicable in the context of user-centered or living-lab research. For the other contexts, alternative data sources (e.g., retailers and producers) may be better suited to data collection on larger samples, though at a lesser level of detail, compared with the two data collection approaches devised and evaluated in this study.Alloying elements in steel add a wide range of valuable properties to steel materials that are indispensable for the global economy. However, they are likely to be effectively irretrievably blended into the steel when recycled because of (among other issues) the lack of information about the composition of the scrap. This results in the alloying elements dissipating in slag during steelmaking and/or becoming contaminants in secondary steel. We used the waste input-output material flow analysis model to quantify the unintentional flows of alloying elements (i.e., chromium, nickel, and molybdenum) that occur in steel materials and that result from mixing during end-of-life (EOL) processes. The model can be used to predict in detail the flows of ferrous materials in various phases, including the recycling phase by extending steel, alloying element source, and iron and steel scrap sectors. Application of the model to Japanese data indicates the critical importance of the recycling of EOL vehicles (ELVs) in Japan because passenger cars are the final destination of the largest share of these alloying elements. However, the contents of alloying elements are rarely considered in current ELV recycling. Consequently, the present study demonstrates that considerable amounts of alloying elements, which correspond to 7% to 8% of the annual consumption in electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking, are unintentionally introduced into EAFs. This result suggests the importance of quality-based scrap recycling for efficient management of alloying elements.Chalcogenide and chalcopyrite photovoltaic (PV) technologies are highly suitable for solar energy conversion because of their high efficiency, long-term stable performance, and low-cost production. However, the absorber materials that are used, such as indium, gallium, and tellurium, are regarded as critical, and their limited availability can hinder market expansion. Therefore, we assess how material efficiency measures along the PV module's life cycle can reduce the net material demand of the absorber materials and thus the material costs. In order to estimate the material flows, we developed a closed-loop model for the life cycle representing the phases module production, module collection, module recycling, and refinement. In order to reflect the variety and uncertainty in each phase, we compose three different efficiency scenarios by varying material efficiency measures on process and product levels. For each scenario, we compute the life cycle material costs based on the computed material flows. The results show that, in the long term, the material demand can be reduced down to one fourth of the required feedstock for module manufacturing; that is, three fourths of the absorber material stays in the life cycle in a very efficient scenario. Thus, total material costs along the life cycle could be significantly reduced, because the costs for material recycling are lower than the costs for "new" technical-grade material. This reduction in life cycle material costs means that cadmium telluride- and copper indium gallium diselenide-PV can still be financially viable even if the price of the absorber materials increases significantly. Hence those technologies will still be competitive against crystalline silicon PV in the mid to long term.Past work on industrial symbiosis (IS) includes a wealth of case studies across diverse settings, including industrial estates, economic regions, and IS networks. Though this work provides needed insight into factors shaping IS, much of it has been descriptive in nature. Relatively few findings have been subjected to hypothesis development and testing. In this study, we develop and empirically test a number of hypotheses on factors influencing IS exchange development, using a unique national-level IS data set of 1,322 individual material resource-based exchanges facilitated through the United Kingdom's National Industrial Symbiosis Programme. Our findings affirm and extend the literature in a number of ways. In particular, we found that a firm's number of identified waste streams decreased the likelihood of initiating an exchange, but increased the likelihood of completing it once initiated. We also found, counter to the literature, that diversity among partnering firms reduced the likelihood of both initiating and completing an IS exchange. Finally, we found that higher economic value exchanges were more likely to be initiated, but less likely to be completed. We discuss implications and conclude with a number of avenues for future research.This study analyzes the evolution of the research field of industrial symbiosis (IS). We elucidate its embedding in industrial ecology (IE), trace the development of research themes, and reveal the evolution of the research network through analysis of the core literature and journals that appeared from 1997 to 2012 by citation analysis, cocitation analysis, and network analysis. In the first period (1997-2005), IS research held a minority share in the IE literature. The research revolved around the concept of IS, the assessment of eco-industrial park projects, and the establishment of waste treatment and recycling networks. In the second period (2006-2012), diverse research approaches and theories enriched the field, which has led to a maturation in theory building. Our findings clearly illustrate that IS evolved from practice-oriented research toward coherent theory building through a systematic underpinning and linking of diverse topics. As scientific attention shifted from exploring a phenomenon to elucidating underlying mechanisms, IS knowledge found worldwide practical implementation. The coauthorship network shows that the academic communities of IS are distributed worldwide and that international collaboration is widespread. Through bibliometric and network analysis of IS, we have created a systemic, quantitative image of the evolution of the IS research field and community, which gives IS researchers an underpinned overview of the IS research and may help them to identify new directions and synergy in worldwide research.Iceland and Trinidad and Tobago are small open, high-income island economies with very specific resource-use patterns. This article presents a material flow analysis (MFA) for the two countries covering a time period of nearly five decades. Both countries have a narrow domestic resource base, their economy being largely based on the exploitation of one or two key resources for export production. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, the physical economy is dominated by oil and natural gas extraction and petrochemical industries, whereas Iceland's economy for centuries has been based on fisheries. More recently, abundant hydropower and geothermal heat were the basis for the establishment of large export-oriented metal processing industries, which fully depend on imported raw materials and make use of domestic renewable electricity. Both countries are highly dependent on these natural resources and vulnerable to overexploitation and price developments. We show how the export-oriented industries lead to high and growing levels of per capita material and energy use and carbon dioxide emissions resulting from large amounts of processing wastes and energy consumption in production processes. The example of small open economies with an industrial production system focused on few, but abundant, key resources and of comparatively low complexity provides interesting insights of how resource endowment paired with availability or absence of infrastructure and specific institutional arrangements drives domestic resource-use patterns. This also contributes to a better understanding and interpretation of MFA indicators, such as domestic material consumption.We develop a hybrid-unit energy input-output (I/O) model with a disaggregated electricity sector for China. The model replaces primary energy rows in monetary value, namely, coal, gas, crude oil, and renewable energy, with physical flow units in order to overcome errors associated with the proportionality assumption in environmental I/O analysis models. Model development and data use are explained and compared with other approaches in the field of environmental life cycle assessment. The model is applied to evaluate the primary energy embodied in economic output to meet Chinese final consumption for the year 2007. Direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions intensities are determined. We find that different final demand categories pose distinctive requirements on the primary energy mix. Also, a considerable amount of energy is embodied in the supply chain of secondary industries. Embodied energy and emissions are crucial to consider for policy development in China based on consumption, rather than production. Consumption-based policies will likely play a more important role in China when per capita income levels have reached those of western countries.Island waste management professionals are faced with limited land resources, high energy costs, large seasonal fluctuations in waste volumes, and complex social and political dynamics that stem from their often closely knit societies. These and other factors can discourage typical waste management practices, but they also provide opportunities for island governments and businesses to explore alternative technologies and policies that suit their particular circumstances and that might be environmentally preferable. This critical review discusses the waste management literature on islands to date, including several industrial ecology (IE) studies. Common advantages and disadvantages faced by island waste management challenges are presented from the perspectives of business and municipal management. Waste generation data are presented from more than 40 islands around the world and tested for correlation with economic and geographic parameters and using cluster analysis, with the aim of identifying trends among island types. Poor data quality and comparability are ongoing challenges that underscore the potential benefits of a consistent program of island waste management data collection. Finally, the review explores opportunities for applying IE research to generate useful insights and policies in the areas of material flow analysis, industrial symbiosis, life cycle assessment, and social ecology.Aiming to achieve a balance between economic growth and the nature preservation, emerged the concept of industrial ecology (IE), with the fundamental perspective of nature as a model by integrating ecological and industrial systems. Thus, residues from a production process can be used as raw material for other products manufacture. Particularly, the ecological crushed stone is a product considered environmentally friendly, because it is an alternative to the proper treatment of waste from one sector (footwear industry) in another economic activity (construction). The construction sector could cause major environmental impacts by the use of natural resources and the waste generation. In this context, this research aims to analyze the opportunities and limitations of the possibility of installing ecological crushed stone industry in Rio Grande. To do so, we conducted interviews with potential suppliers, customers and competitors. The results show that there is interest in selling the product, taking into account the increasing need to reduce consumption and extraction from natural sources. However, there is public resistance to using innovative products targeted to the sector, the lack of knowledge about ecological crushed stone characteristics and constraints involving the amount of waste and the condition for its supply.Owing to the increasingly apparent climate change, it becomes imperative to use renewable energy in the production of fuel that is environmentally friendly. At the same time, there is a need to introduce the related education programs to develop the skills of the technical staff working at the front line of rapidly developing renewable energy technologies. Hydrogen is expected to be the fuel in the near future. At present hydrogen fuel is mainly produced using steam reforming of methane (SRM). However, hydrogen generation using the SRM results in emission of greenhouse gases and climate change. Therefore, there is a common consensus that the SRM technology will soon be challenged by the technologies of solar hydrogen generation using photoelectrochemical cells (PEG). However, the PEG technology will be the ultimate winner only if the effects related to climate change and pollution are fully monetised. While such radical development is difficult for implementation due to economic reasons, the increasingly urgent need to reduce climate change dictates the need to increase competitiveness of the PEG method. This imposes the need to increase the efficiency of the solar energy conversion and reduce the costs of the related raw materials and devices. The development of renewable energy-related technologies, such as those related to solar hydrogen, imposes the need to introduce education programs in order to train technical and research staff working at the front line of rapidly developing sustainable energy systems. The present work considers such programs addressing a range of energy-related topics, such as hydrogen energy, electrochemical energy, photoelectrochemical energy and alternative renewable energy as well as industrial ecology and energy policy. It is concluded that implementation of these programs is urgently needed in order to protect the environment through sustainable development. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this research was to determine how best to utilize two environmentally challenging types of waste: sewage sludge, and a particular type of waste ash, biomass ash, which is obtained from biomass combustion processes. The results of the performed research have shown that liquid sewage sludge can, in fact, be successfully stabilized with biomass ash, so that a stable composite material can be obtained, having a compressive strength within the range between 0.5 to 2.5 MPa, with "Controlled Low-Strength Material" properties. During the stabilization process, the microbial activity of sewage sludge is inhibited, due to raised pH levels and temperatures. Analysis of the chemical composition of water leachates from samples of the composite showed that it is inert, and thus does not pose a threat to the environment. The observed decrease, over time, in the concentrations of the pollutants indicated that the latter are immobilized in the hydrated matrix, due to the formation of new hydration products, i.e. mono- and hemi-carboaluminate and Friedel's salt, and changes associated with pore diameter and distribution. The addition of selected types of recycled aggregates, to the above-described composite material was also investigated, and it was found that a useful material having similar properties could be obtained. This means that such composite materials could be used as low flow material or back fill, road base stabilization material and bedding material for pipes and cables, as well as for daily or intermediate landfill covers. From the point of view of sustainable development, this kind of waste management presents an optimum zero waste solution, since it results in the cleaner production, while preserving natural resources, reducing CO2 emissions, and lowering the costs of sewage sludge management. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pharmaceutical antibiotics, as emerging contaminants, are usually composed of several functional groups that endow them with the ability to interact with adsorbents through different interactions. This makes the preparation of adsorbents tedious and time-consuming to screen appropriate functionalized materials. Herein, we describe the synthesis of clickable SBA-15 and demonstrate its feasibility as a screening material for the adsorption of antibiotics based on similar adsorption trends on materials with similar functional groups obtained by a click reaction and cocondensation/grafting methods.Drawing on the principles of Industrial Ecology, Industrial Symbiosis (IS) engages communities of colocated companies in a cooperative management of material and energy flows. IS includes the tools and applied solutions to reduce inefficiencies and promote the eco-innovation of entire production systems. Contextual factors may affect both the nature of the synergistic solutions that characterise the IS and its potential implementation. If the beginnings of IS are pre-existing organisational relationships, such as industrial networks or clusters, further mechanisms, related to the dynamics of change within the systems, should be taken into account. The article analyses these issues in a local industrial network, through a case study based on a large firm and 18 small medium enterprises (SMEs) working in the motorcycle industry. The analytical model considers the factors that may affect the development of IS. The results indicate the potentials of IS in such a specific context; they also highlight that SMEs provide the technological and organisational basis that enable a step-by-step implementation of the proposed solutions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The field of industrial ecology promotes the establishment of resource exchange networks in eco-industrial parks (EIPs) as an approach toward resource conservation. Previous studies have shown that full blown resource integration can be encouraged through the exchange of common utilities such as energy and water. Different approaches such as mathematical programming, pinch analysis and game theory have been used to identify the optimal network designs, which can simultaneously reduce the utilization of freshwater resources and the generation of wastewater streams. Since water exchange in an EIP involves multiple independently operating plants, information exchange between the participants is not completely transparent and multiple future scenarios are expected to happen as the fate and plans of other participants are not completely divulged. These future scenarios may bring about changes in the capacity or characteristic of industrial processes and may also involve the entry of additional companies and the closure of previously operating ones. Such aspects have not been fully addressed in previous studies. A robust optimization model is thus developed in this work to determine the optimal network design which can effectively operate in anticipation of multiple probable scenarios. Case studies are solved to demonstrate the capability of the model. (C) 2013 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of rare earth elements in various technologies continues to grow despite some alternatives being found for particular uses. Given a history of ecological concerns about pollution from rare earth mines, particularly in China, there are growing social and environmental concerns about the growth of the mining and mineral processing in this sector. This is best exemplified by the recent social and environmental conflict surrounding the development of the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) in Kuantan, Malaysia which led to international activism and claims of environmental and social injustice. This paper analyses the structure of environmental and social conflicts surrounding rare earth minerals and opportunities for improving the social and environmental performance of the sector. Many of these elements are used for green technologies. Opportunities exist that offer a more circular supply chain following industrial ecological principles through which reuse and recycling of the materials can provide a means of mitigating social and environmental conflicts in this sector. In addition, public engagement processes that recognize community concerns about radiation, and transparent scientifically predicated decision-making through an appropriate governance structure within regulatory organizations are also presented.This article briefly discusses the origins and development of the business model concept resulting in a high level definition. Against this backdrop, frameworks from the literature around green business models with examples of green business models and the business model innovation process are presented. The article then discusses the origins and meaning of different "green" concepts relevant for the circular value chain concluding with a high level definition. The article finally outline the process by which a business model for a circular value chain can be developed taking into account the social dilemma that exist in these type of situations. The article concludes with the specific questions that need to be answered in order to create an appropriate business model for a circular value chain.Metal mobilization in general, as well as the number of metals used in products to increase performance and provide sometimes unique functionalities, has increased steadily in the past decades. Materials, such as indium, gallium, platinum group metals (PGM), and rare earths (RE), are used ever more frequently in high-tech applications and their criticality as a function of economic importance and supply risks has been highlighted in various studies. Nevertheless, recycling rates are often below one percent. Against this background, secondary flows of critical metals from three different end-of-life products up to 2020 are modeled and losses along the products' end-of-life (EOL) chain are identified. Two established applications of PGM and RE-industrial catalysts and thermal barrier coatings-and CIGS photovoltaic cells as a relatively new product have been analyzed. In addition to a quantification of future EOL flows, the analysis showed that a relatively well working recycling system exists for PGM-bearing catalysts, while a complete loss of critical metals occurs for the other applications. The reasons include a lack of economic incentives, technologically caused material dissipation and other technological challenges.A fundamental understanding on the inherent mechanisms leading to the different reactivity of the representative systems for unhindered and hindered families of amines, monoethanolamine (MEA) and 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) in CO2 capture, is important for the rational design of novel amines. In this work, a comparative study on the reaction mechanisms between AMP + CO2 and MEA + CO2 was investigated at the B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) level with the appropriate treatment of solvent effects. Two channels that lead to carbamate and bicarbonate were considered. The total reaction rate coefficients, were computed using a microkinetic model. The results indicate that the formation of bicarbonate for AMP + CO2 is more favorable in kinetics than the formation of carbamate. However, the case is reversed for MEA + CO2. This explains well the experimental. observation of different product distributions between the AMP + CO2 and MEA + CO2 reactions. The complementary results from QM/MM molecular dynamics simulations with umbrella sampling confirm the mechanistic difference between AMP + CO2 and MEA + CO2. In addition, it is found that the difference in electrostatic potential distribution between C-a of AMP and MEA is a possible reason leading to their different reaction mechanisms.The production of food waste covers all the food life cycle: from agriculture, up to industrial manufacturing and processing, retail and household consumption. In developed countries, 42% of food waste is produced by households, while 39% losses occur in the food manufacturing industry, 14% in food service sector and remaining 5% in retail and distribution. Increasingly, industrial ecology concepts such as cradle to cradle and circular economy are considered leading principle for eco-innovation, aiming at "zero waste economy" in which waste are used as raw material for new products and applications. The large amount of waste produced by the food industry, in addition to being a great loss of valuable materials, also raises serious management problems, both from the economic and environmental point of view. Many of these residues, however, have the potential to be reused into other production systems, trough e.g. biorefineries. The present work focuses on the use of food waste coming from food manufacturing (FWm). Through extensive literature review, the authors present feasibility and constraints of applying industrial symbiosis in recovering waste from food processing, focusing on recycling (excluding energy recovery) of the solid and liquid waste from food processing industry. The main uses of functional ingredients derived from this transformation are presented and discussed, highlighting mainstream sectors of application, e.g. in the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industry. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article argues that policies aimed at sustainability need to address the spatial dimensions of environmental problems and their solutions. In particular, spatial configurations of economic activities deserve attention, which means addressing land use, infrastructure, trade, and transport. Unfortunately, good theory and indicators to support the analysis and design of spatial-environmental policies are not fully developed. One approach that has become very popular in the last decade is the ecological footprint (EF). It is both an environmental accounting tool and aggregate indicator, which is used by scientists, environmental organizations, and popular media. Despite criticisms of the EF method in the past, its popularity has only increased. In fact, an increasing number of publications with an application of the EF appear in scientific journals. We review the EF approach from indicator-methodology and welfare angles and assess its policy relevance. Our conclusion is that it does not offer any meaningful information for public policy.Beijing is situated in water-scarce northern China, where there is a history of policies aimed at constraining local agricultural water use to meet the increasing urban water demand. This has led to a change in local crop production and subsequent effects in terms of the importation of cereals and vegetables grown in other parts of China. The dilemma is that local policies designed to improve Beijing's water resources situation may have the unintended consequence of increasing water stress in other regions. In this article, life cycle assessment approaches were used to model both consumptive and degradative water use for the major cereals and vegetables consumed in Beijing, enabling comparison of local and imported supplies. In the Beijing region, cropping cereals rather than intensive vegetables in greenhouses could reduce local blue water consumption by 7,216cubic meters per hectare per year (m(3)ha(-1)yr(-1)) and nitrogen pollution by 45kgha(-1)yr(-1). However, depending on how the local food shortfall is balanced by imported food, shifts in cropping pattern in Beijing have the potential to cause either an improvement or exacerbation of the nationwide water stress situation (e.g., -42% to 4% for water scarcity footprint). As such, local policy making regarding agricultural land and water use needs to consider the wider food production context. This situation in Beijing is likely to be representative of the challenge facing many of the world's large and mega-sized cities, where a sustainable means of increasing food supply must be found.In this study, we present an analysis of the average wages paid for producing direct and indirect imports of nations using employment and income footprints. An employment footprint includes a country's domestic employment and that occurring along the supply chains of, and hence embodied in, its imported goods and services. Our results allow us to group the world's nations into masters that enjoy a lifestyle supported by workers in other countries and servants that support the lifestyle of master countries. We show that, in 2010, employment footprints of countries differed substantially from their own workforce footprints. Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Switzerland occupy the top-ranking positions of master countries, whereas many African and Asian countries are servants. Our findings show that the commodities that are servant intensive, such as electronics, agricultural products, and chemicals, tend to have complex supply chains often originating in third-world countries. The quantification of these master-servant relationships and the exposing of implicated supply chains could be of benefit to those concerned with their corporate social responsibility and committed to fairer trading or those developing policy around fair globalization.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is generally described as a tool for environmental decision making. Results from attributional LCA (ALCA), the most commonly used LCA method, often are presented in a way that suggests that policy decisions based on these results will yield the quantitative benefits estimated by ALCA. For example, ALCAs of biofuels are routinely used to suggest that the implementation of one alternative (say, a biofuel) will cause an X% change in greenhouse gas emissions, compared with a baseline (typically gasoline). However, because of several simplifications inherent in ALCA, the method, in fact, is not predictive of real-world impacts on climate change, and hence the usual quantitative interpretation of ALCA results is not valid. A conceptually superior approach, consequential LCA (CLCA), avoids many of the limitations of ALCA, but because it is meant to model actual changes in the real world, CLCA results are scenario dependent and uncertain. These limitations mean that even the best practical CLCAs cannot produce definitive quantitative estimates of actual environmental outcomes. Both forms of LCA, however, can yield valuable insights about potential environmental effects, and CLCA can support robust decision making. By openly recognizing the limitations and understanding the appropriate uses of LCA as discussed here, practitioners and researchers can help policy makers implement policies that are less likely to have perverse effects and more likely to lead to effective environmental policies, including climate mitigation strategies.This article describes a new methodological framework to account for urban material flows and stocks, using material flow accounting (MFA) as the underlying method. The proposed model, urban metabolism analyst (UMAn), bridges seven major gaps in previous urban metabolism studies: lack of a unified methodology; lack of material flows data at the urban level; limited categorizations of material types; limited results about material flows as they are related to economic activities; limited understanding of the origin and destination of flows; lack of understanding about the dynamics of added stock; and lack of knowledge about the magnitude of the flow of materials that are imported and then, to a great extent, exported. To explore and validate the UMAn model, a case study of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area was used. An annual time series of material flows from 2003 to 2009 is disaggregated by the model into 28 material types, 55 economic activity categories, and 18 municipalities. Additionally, an annual projection of the obsolescence of materials for 2010-2050 was performed. The results of the case study validate the proposed methodology, which broadens the contribution of existing urban MFA studies and presents pioneering information in the field of urban metabolism. In particular, the model associates material flows with economic activities and their spatial location within the urban area.This research provides a systematic review and harmonization of the life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of electricity generated from conventionally produced natural gas. We focus on estimates of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted in the life cycle of electricity generation from natural gas-fired combustion turbine (NGCT) and combined-cycle (NGCC) systems. The smaller set of LCAs of liquefied natural gas power systems and natural gas plants with carbon capture and storage were also collected, but analyzed to a lesser extent. A meta-analytical process we term harmonization was employed to align several system boundaries and technical performance parameters to better allow for cross-study comparisons, with the aim of clarifying central tendency and reducing variability in estimates of life cycle GHG emissions. Of over 250 references identified, 42 passed screens for technological relevance and study quality, providing a total of 69 estimates for NGCT and NGCC. Harmonization increased the median estimates in each category as a result of several factors not typically considered in the previous research, including the regular clearing of liquids from a well, and consolidated the interquartile range for NGCC to 420 to 480grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh) and for NGCT to 570 to 750g CO2-eq/kWh, with medians of 450 and 670 CO2-eq/kWh, respectively. Harmonization of thermal efficiency had the largest effect in reducing variability; methane leakage rate is likely similarly influential, but was unharmonized in this assessment as a result of the significant current uncertainties in its estimation, an area that is justifiably receiving significant research attention.The study of industrial symbiosis (IS) has largely focused on the exchange of energy and materials among industrial processes in an effort to increase value and reduce environmental impact. Agricultural systems, particularly those located in developing countries, can benefit from the principles of IS. Relatively few studies have analyzed the potential benefits of integrated material and energy flows in smallholder farming, even though these systems are considered essential to the world's food supply and poverty reduction. Although the concepts can be applied to virtually any system, the study of industrial symbiosis has traditionally focused on industrialized systems in developed countries. The research presented here applies the principles of IS to smallholder farms using optimization techniques to maximize farm output while minimizing wastes. Our research links IS to the growing field of integrated farming research (IFR), which seeks to create new technologies that increase the production of farms by viewing the farm as a system. Bridging these fields enriches the potential for robust research outcomes in both areas and fills a current knowledge gap. IS benefits from exploring new applications and increasing its penetration into the developing world. IFR benefits from established IS tools to create alternate pathways for increased output based on symbiotic relationships. A small farming system in Liberia, West Africa, is used as a case study. System integration of individual unit processes shows increased productivity and decreased waste. The results of this analysis indicate that there are unrealized opportunities for IS in developing countries, and integration of IS techniques into smallholder farming operations has the potential for impacting sustainable development.A debate is still open on issues of waste to energy methodologies aiming to answer to questions of particular relevance, such as whether the concept of SRF/RDF production can be applied directly to MSW through the Mechanical-Biological Treatment (MBT) process, when selective collection acts as a virtual pre-treatment of the same, or if the use of SRF/RDF as alternative fuel in cement kilns is the most sustainable solution. In this study, two scenarios were analyzed and compared: (a) the use of SRF in a new dedicated thermal plant for electricity production and (b) the use of SRF as an alternative fuel in an existing cement plant. The comparative assessment was based on principles of Sustainable Waste Management embracing technical and cost issues, environmental protection, industrial ecology and symbiosis. The application of SWOT analysis showed that the use of SRF in cement kilns is more sustainable compared to its use in a new dedicated plant for electricity production. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Assessing the average energy intensity of Internet transmissions is a complex task that has been a controversial subject of discussion. Estimates published over the last decade diverge by up to four orders of magnitude from 0.0064 kilowatt-hours per gigabyte (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB. This article presents a review of the methodological approaches used so far in such assessments: i) top-down analyses based on estimates of the overall Internet energy consumption and the overall Internet traffic, whereby average energy intensity is calculated by dividing energy by traffic for a given period of time, ii) model-based approaches that model all components needed to sustain an amount of Internet traffic, and iii) bottom-up approaches based on case studies and generalization of the results. Our analysis of the existing studies shows that the large spread of results is mainly caused by two factors: a) the year of reference of the analysis, which has significant influence due to efficiency gains in electronic equipment, and b) whether end devices such as personal computers or servers are included within the system boundary or not. For an overall assessment of the energy needed to perform a specific task involving the Internet, it is necessary to account for the types of end devices needed for the task, while the energy needed for data transmission can be added based on a generic estimate of Internet energy intensity for a given year. Separating the Internet as a data transmission system from the end devices leads to more accurate models and to results that are more informative for decision makers, because end devices and the networking equipment of the Internet usually belong to different spheres of control. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.In this study, we proposed eco-efficiency indicator as an integral parameter for simultaneously quantifying the economic and environmental performance of industrial symbiosis (IS) networks. Based on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development definition of eco-efficiency, the eco-efficiency indicators proposed include one economic indicator, and three generally applicable simplified environmental indicators (raw material consumption, energy consumption, and CO2 emission). Three eco-efficiencies corresponding to three environmental indicators are assessed using seven IS networks that were developed between 2007 and 2012, which are currently operational in Ulsan Eco-Industrial Park (EIP), South Korea. Our results indicate that the eco-efficiency of individual IS networks improved up to 28.7%. Besides, the evolution of seven IS networks comprising 21 companies resulted in an overall eco-efficiency enhancement of about 10%. The proposed eco-efficiency indicators for IS networks can be easily utilized to communicate with decision makers at any level to assist in transforming conventional industrial complexes to EIP. The implications of the study and limitations of the methodology are delineated. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Chinese national demonstration eco-industrial park program has received significant attentions in the field of industrial ecology. The program has just passed its ten-year anniversary. This study aims to assess the economic and environmental performance of the 17 accredited sector-integrated national demonstration eco-industrial parks. A selected group of ten metrics, including resource consumption, economic development, and waste emissions, are applied to assess the performance by comparing the difference of metrics between reference years of eco-industrial park planning and accreditation. The main findings include: (1) industrial added value of the 17 eco-industrial parks as a whole increased by 56%; (2) for comprehensive energy consumption, fresh water consumption, industrial wastewater generation, and solid waste production, the 17 eco-industrial parks had an overall increase of 20%, 18%, 12%, and 6%, respectively. The quantity of energy and fresh water consumption, wastewater and solid waste generation in some eco-industrial parks started to decrease with economic growth. Meanwhile, the average intensity of the four metrics decreased by 22%, 25%, 28%, and 32%, respectively; (3) for chemical oxygen demand and sulfur dioxide, the eco-industrial parks accomplished a two-fold decrease in both total quantity of emissions and intensity. Chemical oxygen demand emissions and its intensity decreased by 25% and 52%, respectively. Sulfur dioxide emissions and its intensity decreased by 51% and 69%m respectively. Measures supporting the performance improvement of Chinese national demonstration eco-industrial parks are also discussed, which mainly include cleaner production and environmental management, infrastructure sharing, energy-saving practices at the firm level, the pillar industries, and industrial symbiosis. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water footprints traditionally estimate water lost as a result of evapotranspiration (or otherwise unavailable for downstream uses) associated with producing a certain good, and the same embodied in trade across regions is used to estimate regional and national water footprints. These footprints, however, do not address risk posed to city energy supplies characterized by insufficient streamflow to support energy production, such as cooling water intake (e.g., withdrawals) at thermoelectric power plants. Water withdrawal intensity factors for producing goods and services are being developed at the national scale, but lack sufficient spatial resolution to address these types of water-energy challenges facing cities. To address this need, this article presents a water withdrawal footprint for energy supply (WWFES) to cities and places it in the context of other water footprints defined in the literature. Analysis of electricity use versus electricity generation in 43 U.S. cities highlights the need for developing WWFES to estimate risks to transboundary city energy supplies resulting from water constraints. The magnitude of the WWFES is computed for Denver, Colorado, and compared to the city's direct use of water to offer perspective. The baseline WWFES for Denver is found to be 66% as large as all direct water uses in the city combined (mean estimate). Minimum, mean, and maximum estimates are computed to demonstrate sensitivity of the WWFES to selection of water withdrawal intensity factors. Finally, scenario analysis explores the effect of energy technology and energy policy choices in shaping the future water footprint of cities.Water consumption related to the life cycle of metals is seldom reported, even though mines are often situated in very dry regions. In this study we quantified the life cycle consumption of groundwater and fresh surface water (blue water footprint [WFblue]) for the extraction and production of high-grade copper refined from both a copper sulfide ore and a copper oxide ore in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Where possible, we used company-specific data. The processes for extracting copper from the two types of ore are quite different from each other, and the WFblue of the sulfide ore refining process is 2.4 times higher than that of the oxide ore refining process (i.e., 96 cubic meters per metric ton [tonne] of copper versus 40 cubic meters per tonne of copper). Most of the water consumption (59% of WFblue) in the sulfide ore process occurred at the concentrator plant, via seepage, accumulation, and also by evaporation. In the oxide ore process, the main user of water is the heap-leaching process, with 45% of WFblue. The crushing and agglomeration operations, electrowinning cells, and solution pools are also significant contributors to the total consumption of water in the oxide ore process. Most of the water consumed in the oxide ore process was lost to evaporation. The WFblue of the oxide ore process can be reduced by preventing water evaporation and using more sophisticated devices during irrigation of the leaching heaps. The WFblue of the sulfide ore refining process can be reduced by improving water recovery (i.e., reducing seepage, accumulation, and evaporation) from the tailings dam at the concentrator plant. Using seawater in the production of copper is also a promising option to reduce the WFblue by up to 62%.In 2007, imports accounted for approximately 34% of the material input (domestic extraction and imports) into the Austrian economy and almost 60% of the GDP stemmed from exports. Upstream material inputs into the production of traded goods, however, are not yet included in the standard framework of material flow accounting (MFA). We have reviewed different approaches accounting for these upstream material inputs, or raw material equivalents (RME), positioning them in a wider debate about consumption-based perspectives in environmental accounting. For the period 1995-2007, we calculated annual RME of Austria's trade and consumption applying a hybrid approach. For exports and competitive imports, we used an environmentally extended input-output model of the Austrian economy, based on annual supply and use tables and MFA data. For noncompetitive imports, coefficients for upstream material inputs were extracted from life cycle inventories. The RME of Austria's imports and exports were approximately three times larger than the trade flows themselves. In 2007, Austria's raw material consumption was 30 million tonnes or 15% higher than its domestic material consumption. We discuss the material composition of these flows and their temporal dynamics. Our results demonstrate the need for a consumption-based perspective in MFA to provide robust indicators for dematerialization and resource efficiency analysis of open economies.Electric vehicles (EVs) have no tailpipe emissions, but the production of their batteries leads to environmental burdens. In order to avoid problem shifting, a life cycle perspective should be applied in the environmental assessment of traction batteries. The aim of this study was to provide a transparent inventory for a lithium-ion nickel-cobalt-manganese traction battery based on primary data and to report its cradle-to-gate impacts. The study was carried out as a process-based attributional life cycle assessment. The environmental impacts were analyzed using midpoint indicators. The global warming potential of the 26.6kilowatt-hour(kWh), 253-kilogram battery pack was found to be 4.6tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. Regardless of impact category, the production impacts of the battery were caused mainly by the production chains of battery cell manufacture, positive electrode paste, and negative current collector. The robustness of the study was tested through sensitivity analysis, and results were compared with preceding studies. Sensitivity analysis indicated that the most effective approach to reducing climate change emissions would be to produce the battery cells with electricity from a cleaner energy mix. On a per-kWh basis, cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emissions of the battery were within the range of those reported in preceding studies. Contribution and structural path analysis allowed for identification of the most impact-intensive processes and value chains. This article provides an inventory based mainly on primary data, which can easily be adapted to subsequent EV studies, and offers an improved understanding of environmental burdens pertaining to lithium-ion traction batteries.A process model of municipal solid waste incinerators (MSWIs) and new technologies for metal recovery from combustion residues was developed. The environmental impact is modeled as a function of waste composition as well as waste treatment and material recovery technologies. The model includes combustion with a grate incinerator, several flue gas treatment technologies, electricity and steam production from waste heat recovery, metal recovery from slag and fly ash, and landfilling of residues and can be tailored to specific plants and sites (software tools can be downloaded free of charge). Application of the model to Switzerland shows that the treatment of one tonne of municipal solid waste results on average in 425 kg CO2-eq. generated in the incineration process, and 54 kg CO2-eq. accrue in upstream processes such as waste transport and the production of operating materials. Downstream processes, i.e. residue disposal, generates 5 kg CO2-eq. Savings from energy recovery are in the range of 67 to 752 kg CO2-eq. depending on the assumptions regarding the substituted energy production, while the recovery of metals from slag and fly ash currently results in a net saving of approximately 35 kg CO2-eq. A similar impact pattern is observed when assessing the MSWI model for aggregated environmental impacts (ReCiPe) and for non-renewable resource consumption (cumulative exergy demand), except that direct emissions have less and no relevance, respectively, on the total score. The study illustrates that MSWI plants can be an important element of industrial ecology as they provide waste disposal services and can help to close material and energetic cycles. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The acute toxicity predictive models are vitally important for the toxicological information used in the ecological risk assessments. In this study, we used Verhaar classification scheme to group compounds into five modes of toxic action. The quantum chemical descriptors that characterize the electron donor-acceptor property of the compounds were introduced into the theoretical linear solvation energy relationship (TLSER) models. The predictive models have relatively larger data sets, which imply that they cover a wide applicability domain (AD). All models were developed following the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) QSAR models development and validation guidelines. The adjusted determination coefficient (R-adj(2)) and external explained variance (Q(EXT)(2)) of the models were ranging from 0.707 to 0.903 and 0.660 to 0.858, respectively, indicating high goodness-of-fit, robustness and predictive capacity. The cavity term (McGowans volume) was the most significant descriptor in the models. Moreover, the electron donor-acceptor (E-TLSER) models are comparable to the TLSER models for the toxicity prediction to fathead minnow. Thus, the E-TLSER models developed can be used to predict acute toxicity of new compounds within the AD. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work aims at the exploration of nanostructured ferroelectric-material-modified semiconductor electrodes for enhanced photo-induced activity. A well-aligned BiFeO3/TiO2-nanotubes (NTs) array with visible-light activity was successfully synthesized on a titanium sheet by combining anodization and an ultrasonic-immersion method followed by annealing. The structural and optical properties of the TiO2-NTs and the composite BiFeO3/TiO2-NTs were comparatively characterized. The composite BiFeO3/TiO2-NTs grown sheet and used as an electrode exhibited a stronger absorption in the visible region and a much higher photoconversion efficiency than the pure TiO2-NTs/Ti electrode. Electrochemical impedance investigation attested to a significant improvement of the interfacial electron-transfer kinetics with enhanced separation of electron-hole pairs. The as-prepared composite electrode showed a high efficiency for photoelectrocatalytic degradation towards rhodamine B under visible-light irradiation (lambda > 400 nm). The enhanced photoelectrocatalytic activity of the composite electrode could be attributed to the synergistic effect between the lowered electron-hole recombination rate by the applied bias and the wider spectral response promoted by the BiFeO3 component.Green Virtual Enterprise Breeding Environments and their Forward-Green Virtual Enterprises, represent a promising paradigm to face the sustainable manufacturing, logistics and consumption challenges towards a Circular Economy. This paper explores the 'build-to-order supply chain management' paradigm and the customers involvement in sustainable supply chains to support the creation and operation of goal-oriented supply networks capable of responding to the two-sided market demands of the Circular Economy by means of sustainable offers by industry and sustainable demand by society.Introducing students to engineering concepts in early education is critical, as literature has shown that students' degree of comfort and acceptance of science and technology is developed very early on in their education. While introducing engineering as a potential profession in K-12 classrooms has its own merits, it has also proven itself to be useful as a teaching tool. Engineering can lend itself to concepts that can engage students in critical thinking, problem solving, as well as the development of math and science skills. In engineering higher education there has been an increased focus on industrial ecology and sustainability in order to help students understand the environmental and social context within today's society. The authors of this paper discuss the importance of these attributes when introducing engineering to K-12 students. Engineering and sustainability are not two mutually exclusive concepts, but sustainability should be considered throughout the practice of the engineering discipline. The ADEPT (Applied Design Engineering Project Teams) program at the University of California, Berkeley was established to design and deploy a standards-based engineering curriculum for middle schools and high schools (grades 6-12) designed to integrate mathematics and science concepts in applied engineering projects, inspire secondary students, and strengthen the classroom experience of current and future faculty in math, science, and engineering. This paper discusses the importance of introducing engineering and sustainability in K-12 classrooms. Example modules that were developed through the ADEPT program are presented as well as a set of recommendations that were designed as a guideline for educators to incorporate engineering and sustainability in K-12 classrooms. While the module discussed here was designed for middle school students, the curriculum and criteria recommended can be adapted to primary and secondary education programs.Purpose - Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) are defined as industrial clusters wherein a community of firms linked in a network of collaborative relationships exploit new business opportunities so as to increase their economic performance, by minimizing the environmental impact and creating benefits for the local community (Cote and Cohen-Rosenthal, 1998). A number of EIPs have recently spread in both developed and developing countries, with specific features and various degrees of success. Despite such a variety, the common driver for these initiatives is the awareness that industrial symbiosis on materials and energy may be beneficial for both the companies and the environment (Yang and Lay, 2004). The aim of this paper is to characterize EIPs and identify specific typologies for them. For this purpose we propose a framework based on relevant literature and articulated in three dimensions, namely organizational, environmental, and social. Design/methodology/approach - To apply the framework, we consider a number of heterogeneous initiatives of EIPs, located in Europe, North America, and developing countries, and characterize them in accordance with the developed framework. In particular, assessing the variables of the framework we describe the organizational structure of EIPs as well as the adoption of practices related to the environmental sustainability and social responsibility. Once we have characterized these cases, we apply the cluster analysis to group them according to the organizational dimension: we identify the emerging clusters as specific types of EIPs. Then, we repeat the cluster analysis on the other dimensions to assess the way environmental and social practices are implemented. Originality/value - Although there are several examples of EIPs in developed countries as well as in emerging economies, and the attendant literature provides some guidelines for the establishment of EIPs, to our knowledge there is a lack of studies that aim at assessing possible linkages between the organizational structure of an EIP and its environmental and social practices This study is a first attempt to address this issue. Practical implications - The research findings can support the policy makers in defining the organizational characteristics of EIPs that allow to foster the environmental and social performance of EIPs.The harmonious development between urbanization and ecological environment is important part of new urbanization. Urbanization is a major symbol of human civilization progress and economic and social development. It is the only way of backward agricultural country changing to a modern industrial nation, and it is a historical stage of the world in the process of modernization process. Ecological economic city is an ecological system which has economic characteristics, is a place that human and other organisms on earth are interdependent in this particular range, meanwhile, exchanging material and energy with the environment continuously, forms a composite system that is dynamic economic-social-ecological comprehensive development. During the time of accelerating the urbanization, attention should also be paid to its relationship with the ecological environment. Taking Daqing City of Heilongjiang Province as an example and basing on the definition of ecologically economic city connotation as well as target model, this paper puts forward the ecologically economic city construction strategy from five aspects: implementation of industrial ecology;to strengthen the construction of infrastructure; reasonable urban planning; Cultivate social culture and Strengthen policy control.Magnetic Nd2Fe14B activated carbon, a new kind of heterogeneous Fenton catalyst has been synthesis to treat the dyestuff wastewater. The obtained catalysts were characterized by X-raydiffraction (XRD) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), and the catalytic activity in heterogeneous Fenton oxidation of Congo red was evaluated. Experiments show that the Nd2Fe14B activated carbon has hard magnetic properties. The saturated magnetization, remanence and coercive force were 15.93emu/g, 6.0emu/g, and 1313Oe, respectively. The results also indicated that Nd2Fe14B activated carbon has good performance on azo dye Congo red oxidation with heterogeneous Fenton process. Under the optimum conditions ([NdFeB-AC-FC](0)=20g/L, [H2O2](0)=8mmol/L and pH=7.0), Congo red degradation rate could reach 83.4%. The pH had few effects on heterogeneous Fenton process degraded Congo red. The kinetics studied shown that Congo red degraded followed the pseudo-first-order reaction by heterogeneous Fenton process.Under the background of low-carbon economy, the researchers analyzed the situation of the development and utilization of mineral resources in West China, and the existing problems. By comparing industrial organization models and synthetically efficient analysis of different organization models of production for resources industries, ways and countermeasures to the ecological development for the mineral resources industries in West China were put forward, in terms of the transformation of organization models of industrial clusters, integration of industrial cycle organization models, reconstruction of industrial ecology organization models and so on.Based on the theory of industrial ecology, compared to traditional steel industry production process and analyzing steel production material flow, energy flow and technology flow, we build the steel industry ecological symbiosis network. Regarding the steel symbiosis network as a complex system, we systematically analyze its operation mechanism. Analyzing the symbiosis network from its forming condition, we build the steel industry symbiosis network dynamic mechanism model and analyze the dynamic factors, so as to provide scientific guidance and decision making for the construction of ecological symbiosis network.Developed countries have walked along the path of "treatment after pollution." This path helped them to accomplish industrialization through an unsustainable linear growth mode, and it deviated from today's economics and resource conditions for developing countries to follow. The biggest reason is that environment pollution has beyond bearing capacity and becoming a bottleneck of further economic growth. The authors hold the view that the basic way to realize sustainable development is changing linear growth mode and promoting the circular economy in the round. In this article, the authors analyze how the energy efficiency influence environment and economy growth, and according to the development actualities of circular economy in Liaoning China, put forward some specific strategies about how to further improve circular economy and how to speed the pace to establish conservation-oriented society.Substantial resource efficiency increase in material-intensive chemical industries requires an integrated analysis and optimization of complex production systems including raw material and energy use, resulting costs and environmental and climate impacts. This necessitates the integration of computer-aided process engineering methods including flowsheet simulation and heat integration with IT-based tools for industrial ecology, life cycle analysis in particular. The paper presents preliminary results of conceptual and case study-based research within the InReff project with particular emphasis on linking flow sheet simulation software used in process engineering and material flow network software applied in industrial ecology. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Ecology and industry, which have been many times considered as antagonists, are now associated together in the sustainability concept to support the three social / economic / environment pillars. In that way, industrial enterprises and more precisely manufacturing ones seek to integrate environment into their strategy by conducting an innovative rationalization of the production as promoted by industrial ecology and circular economy paradigms. This rationalization is favoring the evolution from product to a Product-Service Systems approach (PSS). The continuity of these services is mainly carried out by the maintenance which is no longer an aftermarket service needed for product (system) functionality but rather an inherent service function of the product (system). Thus this paper aims to investigate the role of maintenance to contribute to the development of these paradigms. It is based first on describing the main features of industrial ecology/circular economy transposing the nature concepts to industrial system. It leads to define key principles and levers to be addressed for the development of industrial ecosystems. Then maintenance activity is globally presented allowing, in a second step, to place maintenance services already existing in line with some of these principles and levers (ex. green maintenance), but also to explore advanced maintenance services more able to support promotion of industrial ecosystem by covering others principles and levers. These advanced services can be built from conventional maintenance processes but integrating sustainability goal (ex. prognostics of energy efficiency) or from innovative processes (ex. regenerative management). Finally scientific issues related to these advanced maintenance services are underlining and should concretize future research directions for researchers/practitioners working on maintenance field. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The Fenton, electro-Fenton and Fe(II)-activated peroxydisulfate (PDS) processes have been applied for the treatment of actual furfural industrial wastewater in this paper. Through the comparative study of the three processes, a suitable pretreatment technology for actual furfural wastewater treatment was obtained, and the mechanism and dynamics process of this technology is discussed. The experimental results show that Fenton technology has a good and stable effect without adjusting pH of furfural wastewater. At optimal conditions, which were 40 mmol/L H2O2 initial concentration and 10 mmol/L Fe2+ initial concentration, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal rate can reach 81.2% after 90 min reaction at 80 degrees C temperature. The PDS process also has a good performance. The COD removal rate could attain 80.3% when Na2S2O8 initial concentration was 4.2 mmol/L, Fe2+ initial concentration was 0.1 mol/L, the temperature remained at 70 degrees C, and pH value remained at 2.0. The electro-Fenton process was not competent to deal with the high-temperature furfural industrial wastewater and only 10.2% COD was degraded at 80 degrees C temperature in the optimal conditions (2.25 mA/cm(2) current density, 4 mg/L Na2SO4, 0.3 m(3)/h aeration rate). For the Fenton, electro-Fenton and PDS processes in pretreatment of furfural wastewater, their kinetic processes follow the pseudo first order kinetics law. The pretreatment pathways of furfural wastewater degradation are also investigated in this study. The results show that furfural and furan formic acid in furfural wastewater were preferentially degraded by Fenton technology. Furfural can be degraded into low-toxicity or nontoxic compounds by Fenton pretreatment technology, which could make furfural wastewater harmless and even reusable.It has long been known that dynamic systems typically tend towards some state - an "attractor" - into which they finally settle. The introduction of chaos theory has modified our understanding of these attractors: we no longer think of the final "resting state" as necessarily being at rest. In this essay we consider the attractors of social ecologies: the networks of people, technologies and natural resources that makeup our built environments. Following the work of "communitarians" we posit that basins of attraction could be created for social ecologies that foster both environmental sustainability and social justice. We refer to this confluence as "generative justice"; a phrase which references both the "bottom-up", self-generating source of its adaptive meta stability, as well as its grounding in the ethics of egalitarian political theory.A facile phosphine-free approach is presented to prepare Cu doped ternary Zn-In-Se nanocrystals with high performance photoluminescence. By doping during nucleation stage, Cu dopant serving as a dominative emission centre was introduced into a weak fluorescence ternary system to modify the emission path. As a result of varying the ratios of zinc to indium, emission of the products is tunable ranging from 620 to 545 nm and a photoluminescence quantum yield of up to 20%. Meanwhile, a large Stokes shift of 467 meV is achieved.Do we have the natural resource base to feed future populations? This study gives a quantification of global land use, water use and fertilizer use for the year 2050, for a complete diet and four different futures. Agriculture will need to develop substantially to feed future populations. It is shown that there is a negative correlation between fertilizer use and land use, which makes the necessity of incorporating both in such assessments clear. Water use increases relative to total production and this is going to be a problem unless drastic measures are taken, The high wastage and high consumption of animal products in the developed regions are major contributors to the total global demand. Developing countries' aspirations to such practices are a major factor in increases in diet demand, as are population increases in those regions. In creating a more sustainable food system, a one-solution approach will not do and solutions should combine supply-side and demand-side options. Demand-side solutions should target wastage and animal product consumption. On the supply side, technological development and better feeding efficiency will increase yields. Feeding the future global population, which is necessary to increase living standards worldwide, will require a concerted effort. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.China already has more numerous and larger cities than ever before. If the current trend holds, by 2025 it will have a predicted 1 billion of urban population and 8 megacities, each containing 10 million residents or more. China is facing enormous challenges when it comes to balancing rapid economic development with social development, sustainable use of resources and environmental protection in its fast-growing urban areas. Of the 10 most polluted cities in the world, 7 are in China. To meet these challenges, China has become a vast living laboratory for experiments on sustainable urban development. This paper reviews the use and development of city concepts and approaches regarding sustainable urban development in China. The large number of different concepts used appears to be partly due to institutional reasons and partly because they involve gradual changes in national policies. However, the data indicate that the concepts are generally becoming more comprehensive in relation to sustainable development, including social and heritage aspects. The most common barrier to the development of sustainable cities in China is still lack of clear visions, targets and indicators for sustainable development. More holistic approaches are needed for integrated urban planning, such as that used in Tangshan Bay Eco-city, a joint project between Sweden and China. This paper proposes the use of metabolic thinking and eco-cycle models derived from the discipline of Industrial Ecology to support urban planners in developing more sustainable and resource-efficient urban pathways. This will require closer cooperation between academics and practitioners and better monitoring of projects. Finally, it will be important to identify ways to scale up successful interventions in the urban area, rather than just moving from one innovative pilot project to the next. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waelz slag is an industrial by-product from the recovery of electric arc furnace (EAF) dust which is mainly sent to landfills. Despite the different chemical and mineralogical compositions of Waelz slag compared to traditional clays, previous experiments have demonstrated its potential use as a clay substitute in ceramic processes. Indeed, clayey products containing Waelz slag could improve mechanical and environmental performance, fixing most of the metallic species and moreover decreasing the release of some potential pollutants during firing. However, a deeper understanding of the complex phase transformations during its thermal treatment and the connection of this behaviour with the end properties is desirable in order to explain the role that is played by the Waelz slag and its potential contribution to the ceramic process. For this purpose, in the present study, the chemical, mineralogical, thermal and environmental behaviour of both (i) unfired powdered samples, and (ii) pressed specimen of Waelz slag fired up to different temperatures within the typical range of clay based ceramic production, has been studied. The effect of the heating temperature on the end properties of the fired samples has been assessed. In general, an increase of the firing temperature promotes sintering and densification of the products and decreases the open porosity and water absorption which also contributes to the fixation of heavy metals. On the contrary, an increase in the leaching of Pb, Cr and Mo from the fired specimens is observed. This can be attributed to the creation of Fe and Ca molybdates and chromates that are weakly retained in the alkali matrix. On the other side, at temperature above 950 degrees C a weight gain related to the emission of evolved gases is observed. In conclusion, the firing temperature of the ceramic process is a key parameter that affects not only the technical properties but also strongly affects the leaching behaviour and the process emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The field of industrial ecology applies ecosystem theory to industrial production, human consumption and societies. This article presents a case study of the development of the bio-based economy in the area surrounding the Humber estuary in the North-East of England. The study developed an agent-based model to simulate the evolution of the industrial system. We explain how the qualitative research process led to the development of a toy model that has successively been specified.BACKGROUNDThe integrated approach of using metal chelate (e.g. Fe(II)EDTA) absorption combined with microbial reduction for nitric oxide (NO) removal has been a frequent topic of much recent study. The present study was undertaken to evaluate simultaneous Fe(II)EDTA-NO and Fe(III)EDTA with Paracoccus denitrificans as a model microorganism. RESULTSThe experimental results suggested that Fe(III)EDTA reduction was severely inhibited by Fe(II)EDTA-NO while the addition of Fe(III)EDTA could have a positive effect on the reduction of Fe(II)EDTA-NO. Riboflavin, AQDS and vitamin B12 at 0.1 mmol L-1 did not have significant effects on simultaneous reduction of Fe(II)EDTA-NO and Fe(III)EDTA. Addition of sulfide not only could directly react with Fe(II)EDTA-NO and Fe(III)EDTA but also might play multiple roles in biological Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction and Fe(III)EDTA reduction. The respiratory inhibitor CuCl2 inhibited Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction as well as Fe(III)EDTA reduction while NaN3 and rotenone showed no measurable effects. CONCLUSIONSThe present study showed that Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction and Fe(III)EDTA reduction reacted upon each other. The roles of sulfide were divided in terms of biological and chemical interactions during the simultaneous reduction. CuCl2 could inhibit the simultaneous reduction rates. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical IndustryThis paper describes a newly accredited Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree requiring the completion of a two-course sequence in sustainability. The sustainability courses are the first significant exposure for undergraduate engineering students to sustainability, environmental impacts, and industrial ecology. This paper will discuss the lessons learned after four years of offering the two-course sustainability sequence in a general engineering curriculum. The first offerings of the sustainability courses identified students lacked the requisite understanding of applied chemistry and thermal sciences needed to fully understand potential anthropogenic impacts to the environment and broader sustainability issues. Students also noted dissatisfaction with the available textbooks, being frustrated by either a lack of quantitative examples or an overemphasis on waste treatment. Implementation of the combination of the following course modifications noticeably increased students' understanding of sustainability: More extensive pre-requisites for general chemistry and thermo sciences were required. A sustainable engineering textbook and workbook were adopted. Literature on sustainability and engineering outcomes was adopted, as it became more broadly available. Class time was focused more on student work time and question and answer time, with heavier reliance placed upon reading and independent study time for gaining information about the course content. Remaining challenges include, determining and adapting to prerequisites for the course, adapting the courses to the evolving engineering curriculum, and prioritizing topics to be covered.Eight to 10 percent of the world's total CO2 emissions come from manufacturing cement. The global warming gas is released when limestone and clays are crushed and heated to high temperatures. Green concrete is defined as a concrete which uses waste material as at least one of its components, or its production process does not lead to environmental destruction, or it has high performance and life cycle sustainability. Various efforts have been conducted by researchers to arrive at some alternatives that are able to significantly reduce high energy consumed and environmental impacts during fabrication process of cement, including implementing the concept of industrial ecology and green chemistry as well as nanoengineering that study the behavior of the structure and organization of nanoparticles of cement in the mix for achieving higher performance. The cleaner technologies in concrete production, such as substituting relatively high percentage of cement by fly ash (up to 100%), the use of other natural pozzolans, development of concrete with recycling or waste materials, and developing nanoconcrete by integrating CNT's or self sensing CNT's in the concrete mix for higher performance in terms of strength, stiffness, and durability, have been developed and are addressed in this paper. Several efforts that have been done so far in implementing the concept of green concrete and material development of nanosilica in Indonesia is discussed. Finally, problems in the realization of and potential barriers to green concrete as well as political scenarios that have been adopted by several countries through implementation of various priorities and deregulation in various fields are also discussed. (c) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.India is the world's leading ship recycling country which works on the principle of waste to wealth. In this paper an attempt has been made to articluate the Ecological Engineering, Industrial Ecology and Eco-Industrial Networking aspects which are embedded in beaching method of ship recycling in Alang, India. There is a need to promote such activities for sustainalbe growth, but, it is equally true that, if ship recycling is conducted haphazardly with very little scientific and technical knowledge, it will expose workers to hazardous conduitions as well as would leave disproportionately large environmental footprint behind. In this context, Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB), Government of Gujarat, India has initiated many projects to defend human and environmental health. In India, already impressive positive changes can be seen as the GMB has set training and welfare institute and its efforts resulted in decrease of fatal accidents from 2.0 per 1000 workers to 0.13 per 1000 workers i. e. 93.5% decrease in the fatal accidents from the year 2003 to 2011 in the ship recycling yards. Present status of ship recycling in India is substantial. The overall trend of the industry is towards following more and more Health Safety & Environment (HSE) norms and has commitments with them. Zero accidents and near zero pollution to the surrounding environment should be the ultimate goal of beaching method of recycling in India to handle pile of end-of-life ships in environmentally sound manner -which are expected to reach ship recycling yards in near future. (C) 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier B. V.Eco-design is used as a tool in the manufacturing and services sectors for improving the sustainability of products by integrating environmental aspects into the design stage, where most of the product impacts are determined. Laws (e.g., EU eco-design directive) and international schemes (e.g., ISO 14006) have encouraged the use of eco-design by companies; in addition, the literature has reported advances in methodology and widespread case studies in different economic sectors. This chapter aims to show a combined design for environment (DfE) and life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for the implementation of eco-design by companies. The steps and tools of the methodology, as well as the most common strategies, are described. Product carbon footprint (PCF) plays an important role in the methodology in two main ways. First, PCF is one of the indicators that can be calculated with LCA, which has become a common environmental indicator used by companies, not only as quantitative data of the current environmental performance but also as a benchmark for further improvements. Second, PCF is used as a strategy for environmental communication to consumers through eco-labeling. The main strength of the carbon footprint is that stakeholders (business and consumers) are aware of and understand its meaning due to the presence of carbon emissions and global warming in mass media and public science studies.Packaging products are common in all industrial sectors and in the market place. However, packaging design needs to be optimized while avoiding superfluous designs that do not consider the environment in their design. Directive 94/62/EC established a framework in order to harmonize the environmental requirements for packaging as well as to determine targets for recycling and recovering packaging waste. In this chapter, the eco-design projects of different sectors are presented in order to show the different strategies that are used to improve the environmental performance of packaging products. The carbon footprint of the products is quantified and used as an environmental indicator. Common strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of packaging are optimizing the volume (and therefore reducing the transportation requirements), using renewable materials, and optimizing the end-of-life management.Experimental studies are performed under industrial conditions for slaked lime production waste, i.e., microcrystalline calcium hydroxide (MCH), as a sorbent. Results are given for quantitative chemical analysis of MCH samples. Analysis of MCH selective sorption capacity is performed by a gravimetric method with respect to chemical elements from the difference in sample weight before and after an experiment. Sorption capacity of MCH and AC with respect to Cl, F, S, and metals is calculated for comparative analysis.The reaction rate constants of hydroxyl radicals with organic chemicals (K-OH) are of great importance for assessing the persistence and fate of organic pollutants in the atmosphere. However, experimental determination of K-OH seems fairly unrealistic, due to the soaring number of the emerging chemicals additional to the large number of existing chemicals. Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models are excellent choices for evaluating and predicting K-OH values. In this study, a QSAR model that can predict K-OH at different temperatures was developed by employing quantum chemical descriptors and DRAGON descriptors. The adjusted determination coefficient R-adj(2) of the model is 0.873, and the external validation coefficient (Q(ext)(2) is 0.835, implying that the model has satisfactory robustness and good predictability. Additionally, a QSAR model was also built for koH prediction at room-temperature (298 K). The development of the two models followed the guidelines for development and validation of QSAR models proposed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The applicability domains of the current models were extended to several classes of compounds including long-chain alkenes (C-8-C-13), organophosphates, dimethylnaphthalenes, organic selenium and organic mercury compounds that have not been covered in the previous studies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Freshwater scarcity is a global issue of environmental concern that threatens agricultural production and human health. In this study, we established freshwater stress indices (WSIs) for the nine water basins of Tanzania by using the quantity of freshwater available and various water uses. The relationship between water availability and different water uses, including environmental water requirements, was analyzed, with uncertainty and sensitivity analysis performed by a Monte Carlo simulation technique. Extreme WSI values close to 1.00 were obtained in the Rufiji, Pangani, and Wami-ruvu basins, Internal drainage, and Lake Rukwa, while low and moderate WSI values ranging from 0.03 to 0.84 were found in Lake Victoria and the Ruvuma, Tanganyika, and Nyasa basins. This study adds further knowledge on the level of freshwater scarcity, relationships between water availability and different water uses, and suggests policy options to reduce freshwater scarcity at the basin level for sustainable water supply.In integration of environmental requirements by firms, industrial ecology is generally presented as one of the most ambitious fields of reflection and action. The theoretical base of industrial ecology is established today solidly around an "ecocentric" position, based on the analogy between the natural systems and the socioeconomic systems. However the implementation of the industrial ecology remains difficult to establish and the examples of industrial symbiosis remain limited. In front of these difficulties, we sketch the foundations of a pragmatic reading of industrial ecology, support us for it on the experience of industrial ecology led within the urban area of Dunkirk.More and more frequently, industrial ecology experiments develop on business parks or larger territories. On the one hand, the objective of these approaches is to limit resource use. On the other hand, the aim is also to promote sustainable development models at a territorial scale. Our hypothesis is that success depends primarily on the actors, and their modes of coordination. Thus, governance is essential to understand both the conditions of implementation and the sustainability of these experiments. To analyze governance patterns, we suggest an interpretative framework that aims at understanding the articulation of behavioral variables (actors) and coordination modes (networks of actors) throughout the process. These patterns may appear at the creation of the project ("upstream"), or during the implementation and sustainability of the approach ("downstream"). An application to two French territories is then suggested.Industrial ecology can have different definitions and applications whether it is considered in its technical or human approaches. Among this diversity of approaches, a new research field enlightened the relationship between industrial ecology and its territorial dimension. This article paves the way toward further discussions on the consequences, for industrial ecology, of the possible interactions between this disciplinary field, on the one hand, and the material, organizational, identity and even systemic dimensions of the territory, on the other hand. We question the two major conceptions of industrial ecology through their understanding of the territory: 1/ the technical conception of industrial ecology which involves the material dimension of the territory; 2/ the human conception of industrial ecology which addresses the organizational and identity dimensions of the territory. We then submit to discussion a third conception of industrial ecology which appeals to a more systemic definition of the territory and opens a pathway toward a better articulation of is material, organizational and identity dimensions.Laying the groundwork for "sustainable local rural development", the Local Agri-Food System is here considered as a relevant starting point. To make this local development strategy more "sustainable", firstly, it will be completed by specific environmental tools from the agricultural sector, agroecology and the IFES (Integrated Food Energy System). The socio-economic approach of industrial ecology is then used to wrap up this proposal by systematically including the principle of closed-loop flows.For industrial ecology, officially born in the 1990s, waste produced by some processes or products can be reused as raw material by others. It gradually gained ground within the academic community, but also with companies and public authorities. If the need for human sciences to get involved in industrial ecology research has been acknowledged (Boons and Baas, 2007), the role of the researcher in strategy is often overlooked. This paper aims to highlight the potential contributions of strategic management to the field of industrial ecology and outlines a researchIndustrial Ecology (IE) is a recent field that offers appealing solutions for resources depletion and for implementing sustainable development in industry. As IE implementation is still in a preliminary step, also IE learning experiences are not completely systematized. In this sense, it is important to systematize and publish learning experiences that help students in the way of comprehending and implementing IE. On the other hand, Research-Based Learning (RBL), defined as "experience learning through, and about, research and inquiry" is a way in which knowledge production and student learning can be brought together. Working in a IE research project can be a very effective way for learning IE concepts and practices in a RBL approach. In this paper the study developed by the Research Group in Industrial Ecology (GIEI) of Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico is described. Undergraduate students learn how to apply IE working in a IE research project, as a part of the Institutional Program for Research Promotion. The project chosen this year in GIEI is the production of biodiesel from microalgae. Results show that students comprehend the IE concept and know how to apply it either to a system or to a process.As an introduction to a special issue of the "Animal Production" Journal on innovation in livestock farming, this article considers the contribution of scientists in animal production, to the innovation process. It shows that the new drivers of change in agriculture and livestock farming require an intense effort towards innovative design, and it provides an overview of the approaches that can be used to do this: de novo step-by-step design, model-based design vs design workshops, design at the level of the livestock system or at the landscape level. The analytical frameworks used to study in situ innovations and anticipate their dissemination are also reviewed: typologies of adopters, technological lock-in... The issue concludes on the importance of revisiting the posture of researchers towards innovation.Agroecology and industrial ecology can be viewed as complementary means for the design of sustainable animal farming systems: agroecology by stimulating natural processes to reduce inputs, and using diversity to increase system resilience and provide ecosystem services. Industrial ecology mainly aims to close system loops within a territory, thereby reducing demand for raw materials and lowering pollution. Animal farming systems have so far been ignored in most agroecological thinking. We propose five principles applicable to animal production systems: i) adopting health management practices that minimize the use of chemical drugs, ii) decreasing the inputs needed for production by using grazing lands and by-products, iii) decreasing pollution by optimizing the functioning of farming systems, iv) enhancing diversity within animal production systems to strengthen their resilience, and v) preserving biological diversity and associated ecosystem services by adapting management practices. Based on four case studies, we show how these different principles can be combined to improve economic and environmental performance. We discuss opportunities and resistance to change what needs to be considered for the scaling-up of agroecological systems. Among these, we stress the motivation of farmers to break input dependency and the question of workload.The environmental performance of biomass processing plants can be enhanced through industrial symbiosis in bioenergy parks which utilize synergistic exchanges to ensure more sustainable operations. However, symbiosis will also increase the interdependence of plants, such that when one plant fails, there will be a cascading effect in the entire network. In this work, a criticality index is proposed to quantify the effects of a plant's failure to run at full capacity. This index is the ratio of the fractional change in the net output to the fractional change in capacity of the plant causing the failure. The plants in the entire bioenergy park can then be ranked based on this index. Such information can then be used for developing risk mitigation measures, such us planning for system redundancy. A case study is presented to demonstrate how the method determines the criticality of plants within a bioenergy park. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Industrial ecology draws an analogy between industrial activity and natural ecosystems with the inherent implication that, in its ideal form, an industrial ecosystem cycles resources efficiently, with minimization of waste. Industrial symbiosis between the cement and other industries can make a substantial contribution to sustainability. About 3.6 Gt of cement was produced globally in 2011, consuming more than 5 Gt of raw materials and about 11% of total industrial energy, and leading to about 7% of global CO2 emissions. In the same year, global generation of municipal solid waste was estimated at 1.3 Gt, of which about 16% was thermally processed, usually by combustion to generate energy-from-waste (EfW). This equates to about 2.1% of total industrial energy consumption, but would generate about 6 Mtpa of air pollution control (APC) residues. Use of these EfW APC residues in blended cements has been suggested, but they contain soluble toxic elements and are classified as hazardous wastes in most jurisdictions. This paper discusses the effects of incorporating EfW APC residues on the technical performance of blended cements, and on several characteristics of importance for the environmental acceptability of this practice, including (1) total inorganic pollutant concentrations in blended cements, (2) pH-dependent leachability of toxic metal pollutants, e.g. according to BS EN 12457-2, and DD CEN/TS 15364, and (3) diffusion-controlled leaching of monolithic blended cement pastes, e. g. according to EA NEN 7375. Potential pollutants, especially Pb and Zn, but also Cd, Hg, Sb, Sn, and Se, were found to be enriched in EfW APC residues relative to cements. Apart from their potential to pollute the environment, metals in APC residues can affect cement hydration and hardening, and this has been observed. EfW APC residues also contain high levels of several elements that are problematic for quality control of blended cements, notably chloride, which causes steel reinforcement corrosion, and alkalis (Na and K) implicated in the destructive alkali-silica reaction. Although leaching data for both granular and monolithic samples suggest that the mobility of low concentrations of metal pollutants is reduced in cement-based matrices, leachability of chloride remains high and leaching of soluble constituents in APC residues can also be expected to increase paste porosity over time. Furthermore, the literature indicates that pozzolanic or cementing properties of EfW APC residues are not sufficiently strong or reliable to justify their use as a cement replacement, and there is also the potential for components of APC residues to cause other deleterious expansion reactions in cement-based materials. Therefore, industrial ecology cannot solve the problem of management of EfW APC residues through incorporating them in blended cements without radically re-thinking the principle that 'dilution is not the solution to pollution,' which underlies much waste management policy and legislation. Relaxation of these principles would also have undesirable implications for numerous other hazardous wastes. Management of such wastes by blending into cements might seem convenient, but could ultimately lead to wide uncontrolled dispersal of pollutants, especially in cement product recycling, and undermine the quality of blended cements. Originality: This paper considers the technical benefits and environmental acceptability of using EfW APC residues in blended cement production, with a focus on the fate and behavior of the toxic metal concentrations in the APC residues. It summarizes the available information on this subject, and provides a critical analysis and discussion aimed at the cement and waste management industries, as well as policy-makers, to assist in decision-making.Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to discuss the deepening understanding of the diverging pollution prevention (PP) and occupational and safety practices undertaken in the Mexican maquiladora industry. Design/methodology/approach-This study was outlined by a modified version of the PP Program based on a continuous improvement cycle, which identifies areas of opportunity and then, proposes ideas for solving problems. This study was carried out based merely on a quantitative approach. However, when this was not possible, parameters were determined under a qualitative or semi-quantitative approach. Findings-Findings in this study have proven that Cleaner Production and Pollution Prevention (CP&PP) programs are successful to obtain not only environmental but also occupational benefits at the same time; therefore, they should not be seem only as an environmental tool but as a sustainability tool that have the potential to make possible the creation of a sustainable production system in the maquiladora industry where products and processes, and operations are designed to be not risky for Mexican workers, communities, and environment. Practical implications-The study revealed empirical environmental and occupational practices that took place in nine maquiladoras located in the Northwest of Mexico and analyzes how these practices affect Mexican workers in this industry and their environment. Originality/value-The study evaluated the feasibility and usefulness of CP&PP programs in the maquiladora industry under an integrative approach that takes into account environmental and occupational aspect in order to understand how this industry is changing their production patterns toward sustainability. Wind power technology is one of the cleanest electricity generation technologies that are expected to have a substantial share in the future electricity mix. Nonetheless, the expected increase in the market share of wind technology has led to an increasing concern of the availability, production capacity and geographical concentration of the metals required for the technology, especially the rear earth elements (REE) neodymium (Nd) and the far less abundant dysprosium (Dy), and the impacts associated with their production. Moreover, Nd and Dy are coproduced with other rare earth metals mainly from iron, titanium, zirconium, and thorium deposits. Consequently, an increase in the demand for Nd and Dy in wind power technology and in their traditional applications may lead to an increase in the production of the host metals and other companion REE, with possible implications on their supply and demand. In this regard, we have used a dynamic material flow and stock model to study the impacts of the increasing demand for Nd and Dy on the supply and demand of the host metals and other companion REE. In one scenario, when the supply of Dy is covered by all current and expected producing deposits, the increase in the demand for Dy leads to an oversupply of 255 Gg of total REE and an oversupply of the coproduced REE Nd, La, Ce and Y. In the second and third scenarios, however, when the supply of Dy is covered by critical REE rich deposits or Dy rich deposits, the increase in Dy demand results in an oversupply of Ce and Y only, while the demand for Nd and La exceeds their supply. In the case of an oversupply of REEs, the environmental impacts associated with the REEs production should be allocated to Dy and consequently to the technologies that utilize the metal. The results also show that very large quantities of thorium will be co-produced as a result of the demand for Dy. The thorium would need to be carefully disposed of, or significant thorium applications would need to be found. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to mitigate the effects of global warming, companies are being compelled by governments, investors, and customers to control their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Similar to the European Union's legislation on the airline industry, legislation is expected to require the electronics industry to assess their product's carbon footprint before sale or use, as the electronics industry's contribution to global GHG emissions is comparable to the airline industry's contribution. Thus, it is necessary for members of the electronics industry to assess their current GHG emission rates and identify methods to reduce environmental impacts. Organizations use Carbon Footprint (CF) analysis methods to identify and quantify the GHG emissions associated with the life cycle stages of their product or services. This paper discusses the prevailing methods used by organizations to estimate the CF of their electronics products and identifies the challenges faced by the electronics industry when adopting these methods in an environment of decreasing product development cycles with complex and diffuse supply chains. We find that, as a result of the inconsistencies arising from the system boundary selection methods and databases, the use of outdated LCA approaches, and the lack of supplier's emissions-related data, the CFs of electronic products are typically underestimated. To address these challenges, we present a comprehensive approach to the carbon footprinting of electronic products that involves the use of product-group-oriented standards, hybrid life cycle assessment techniques, and the integration of CF into products' supply chains. A case study on commercial- and military-grade DC-DC buck converters demonstrating the recommended approach is presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Legal barriers currently prohibit nuclear power for electricity generation in Australia. For this reason, published future electricity scenarios aimed at policy makers for this country have not seriously considered a full mix of energy options. Here we addressed this deficiency by comparing the life-cycle sustainability of published scenarios using multi-criteria decision-making analysis, and modeling the optimized future electricity mix using a genetic algorithm. The published 'CSIRO e-future' scenario under its default condition (excluding nuclear) has the largest aggregate negative environmental and economic outcomes (score = 4.51 out of 8), followed by the Australian Energy Market Operator's 100% renewable energy scenario (4.16) and the Greenpeace scenario (3.97). The e-future projection with maximum nuclear-power penetration allowed yields the lowest negative impacts (1.46). After modeling possible future electricity mixes including or excluding nuclear power, the weighted criteria recommended an optimized scenario mix where nuclear power generated >40% of total electricity. The life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of the optimization scenarios including nuclear power were <27 kg CO2-e MW h(-1) in 2050, which achieves the IPCC's target of 50-150 kg CO2-e MW h(-1). Our analyses demonstrate clearly that nuclear power is an effective and logical option for the environmental and economic sustainability of a future electricity network in Australia. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Globally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) desalinates the largest capacity of seawater but through energy-intensive thermal processes such as multi-stage flash (MSF) distillation (>10 kW h per m(3) of desalinated water, including electrical and thermal energies). In other regions where fossil energy is more expensive and not subsidized, seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) is the most common desalination technology but it is still energy-intensive (3-4 kW h_e/m(3)). Both processes therefore lead to the emission of significant amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Moreover, MSF and SWRO technologies are most often used for large desalination facilities serving urban centers with centralized water distribution systems and power grids. While renewable energy (RE) sources could be used to serve centralized systems in urban centers and thus provide an opportunity to make desalination greener, they are mostly used to serve rural communities off of the grid. In the KSA, solar and geothermal energy are of most relevance in terms of local conditions. Our group is focusing on developing new desalination processes, adsorption desalination (AD) and membrane distillation (MD), which can be driven by waste heat, geothermal or solar energy. A demonstration solar-powered AD facility has been constructed and a life cycle assessment showed that a specific energy consumption of <1.5 kW h_e/m(3) is possible. An innovative hybrid-approach has also been explored which would combine solar and geothermal energy using an alternating 12-h cycle to reduce the probability of depleting the heat source within the geothermal reservoir and provide the most effective use of RE without the need for energy storage. This paper highlights the use of RE for desalination in KSA with a focus on our group's contribution in developing innovative low energy-driven desalination technologies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study determines the optimal plant sizes, locations, and product distributions for an integrated fast pyrolysis biorefinery supply chain using a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model. Hydrogen, liquid fuels, commodity chemicals, and lignin are considered as the potential biorefinery products. The proposed approach is illustrated through a case study of Minnesota, where forest residue is selected as the biomass feedstock. The decisions about biomass supply (roadside chipped forest residue and raw forest residue), facility selection, and product distribution are explored in this case study. The total converted bio-oil is 1.1 million metric tons per year and the total cost is $330 million for the base case. Impacts of marketing prices on product selections are investigated. Compared to upgrading of phase separated bio-oil, whole bio-oil upgrading is preferable in terms of economics. Hydrogen and liquid fuel prices have greater influence on the annualized profit than the commodity chemical price.We address the multicriterion optimization of utility plants with economic and environmental concerns. Rather than optimizing a single environmental metric, which was the traditional approach followed in the past, we focus on optimizing these systems considering simultaneously several environmental indicators based on life cycle assessment (LCA) principles. We combine a multiobjective optimization model with an MILP-based dimensionality reduction method that allows identifying key environmental metrics that exhibit the property that their optimization will very likely improve the system simultaneously in all of the remaining damage categories. This analysis reduces the complexity of the underlying multiobjective optimization problem from the viewpoints of generation and interpretation of the solutions. The capabilities of the proposed method are illustrated through a case study based on a real industrial scenario, in which we show that a small number of environmental indicators suffice to optimize the environmental performance of the plant.Biofuels are proposed to play an important role in several mitigation strategies to meet future CO2 emission targets for the transport sector but remain controversial due to significant uncertainties in net impacts on environment, society, and climate. A switch to biofuels can also affect short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), which provide significant contributions to the net climate impact of transportation. We quantify the radiative forcing (RF) and global-mean temperature response over time to EU on-road fossil diesel SLCFs and the impact of 20% (B20) and 100% (B100) replacement of fossil diesel by biodiesel. SLCFs are compared to impacts of on-road CO2 using different approaches from existing literature to account for biodiesel CO2. Given the best estimates for changes in emissions when replacing fossil diesel with biodiesel, the net positive RF from EU on-road fossil diesel SLCFs of 3.4 mW/m(2) is reduced by 15% and 80% in B20 and B100, respectively. Over time the warming of SLCFs is likely small compared to biodiesel CO2 impacts. However, SLCFs may be relatively more important for the total warming than in the fossil fuel case if biodiesel from feedstock with very short rotation periods and low land-use-change impacts replaces a high fraction of fossil diesel.Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that negatively affect human health are emitted from wood products used indoors. However, the existing life cycle inventories of these products only document the emissions occurring during production and disposal phases. Consequently, the life cycle assessment (LCA) of indoor wooden products conducted using these inventories neglect the use-phase impacts from exposure to offgassed VOCs and therefore underestimate the products total environmental impact. This study demonstrates a methodology to calculate the use phase inventory and the corresponding human health impacts resulting from indoor use of any VOC emitting product. For the five most commonly used types of boards used in indoor wood products, the mass of each VOC emitted into the indoor compartment over their service life was calculated by statistically analyzing data from 50 published chamber testing studies. Uncertainty was assessed using Monte Carlo simulations. The calculated inventory data were used in a case study to calculate and compare the health impacts of five different wooden floorings made of above materials. The results show that the use-phase human-toxicity impacts are an order of magnitude higher than those occurring during the rest of the floorings life cycle. The factors influencing the offgassing of VOCs from wood products and measures to reduce exposure are discussed.This article uses a market-based allocation method in a consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) framework to estimate the environmental emissions created by recovering carbon dioxide (CO2). We find that 1 ton of CO2 recovered as a coproduct of chemicals manufacturing leads to additional greenhouse gas emissions of 147-210 kg CO2 eq , while consuming 160-248 kWh of electricity, 254-480 MJ of heat, and 1836-4027 kg of water. The ranges depend on the initial and final purity of the CO2, particularly because higher purity grades require additional processing steps such as distillation, as well as higher temperature and flow rate of regeneration as needed for activated carbon treatment and desiccant beds. Higher purity also reduces process efficiency due to increased yield losses from regeneration gas and distillation reflux. Mass- and revenue-based allocation methods used in attributional LCA estimate that recovering CO2 leads to 19 and 11 times the global warming impact estimated from a market-based allocation used in consequential LCA.Biomass-derived chemical products may offer reduced environmental impacts compared to their fossil-derived counterparts and could improve profit margins at biorefineries when coproduced with higher-volume, lower-profit margin biofuels. It is important to assess on a life-cycle basis the energy and environmental impacts of these bioproducts as compared to conventional, fossil-derived products. We undertook a life-cycle analysis of eight bioproducts produced from either algal-derived glycerol or corn stover-derived sugars. Selected on the basis of technology readiness and market potential, the bioproducts are propylene glycol, 1,3-propanediol, 3-hydroxypropionic acid, acrylic acid, polyethylene, succinic acid, isobutanol, and 1,4-butanediol. We developed process simulations to obtain energy and material flows in the production of each bioproduct and examined sensitivity of these flows to process design assumptions. Conversion process data for fossil-derived products were based on the literature. Conversion process data were combined with upstream parameters in the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model to generate life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil energy consumption (FEC) for each bioproduct and its corresponding petroleum-derived product. The bioproducts uniformly offer GHG emissions reductions compared to their fossil counterparts ranging from 39 to 86% on a cradle-to-grave basis. Similarly, FEC was lower for bioproducts than for conventional products.A systematic framework for evaluating the local economic and environmental impacts of investment in building energy efficiency is developed. Historical residential building energy data, community-wide economic input-output data, and emission intensity data are utilized. The aim of this study is to show the comprehensive insights and connection among achieving variable target reductions for a residential building energy use, economic and environmental impacts. Central to this approach for the building energy reduction goal is the creation of individual energy models for each building based upon historical energy data and available building data. From these models, savings estimates and cost implications can be estimated for various conservation measures. A 'worst to first' (WF) energy efficient investment strategy is adopted to optimize the level of various direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts on the local community. This evaluation helps to illumine opportunities to establish specific energy reduction targets having greatest economic impact in the community. From an environmental perspective, short term economy-wide CO2 emissions increase because of the increased community-wide economic activities spurred by the production and installation of energy efficiency measures, however the resulting energy savings provide continuous CO2 reduction for various target savings. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores why complex systems produce avoidable waste, and presents a new qualitative method to help managers think strategically about waste avoidance. Some approaches to analysing waste creation focus on measuring waste (e.g. Life Cycle Assessment), while others model process solutions (e.g. Lean). However, these are somewhat limited as (a) measures are not always appropriate and do not identify solutions, (b) modelling human as well as process factors is needed as both cause waste, and (c) implementable solutions should be understood and socially negotiated by powerful stakeholders as well as modelled by analysts. Furthermore, the interlinked nature of industrial processes means that managing sources of waste may be complicated by system perturbations from up/downstream operations that stimulate waste creation. Recognising this, we reflect on a new approach, called Waste And Source Analysis - WASAN, that supports the analysis of: sources of waste and how to manage them; wider systemic factors such as how up/downstream operations cause waste generation; and supports stakeholders in exploring and negotiating solutions to optimally manage these sources and systems. We also propose a framework to think through the human and technical reasons for why sources produce waste: behavioural, knowledge, material, processing and systemic (BKMPS) causes of waste. We use this framework to reflect on a case study of applying WASAN to analyse radioactive sources in the UK's nuclear industry. Our theoretical contributions reach beyond waste minimisation and systemic thinking as we consider the generic factors needed to analyse other complex systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With a rapidly growing world population, the demand for palm oil is increasing. In 2010, palm oil accounted for 36.5% of the world's vegetable oil production and it is projected to be the leading vegetable oil in the world by 2016. As the Malaysian palm oil industry is committed to delivering sustainable palm oil products to meet customer demand, this research was to enable identification and prioritisation of areas for improvement. As an example, the Roadmap of Malaysian Palm Oil Industry 2009-2020 was finalised as one of its strategies to attain sustainable production of palm oil and improvement in the quality of planet, people and profit. These include the implementations of Environment Management Systems (since 2004) and National Life Cycle Assessment Project (since 2006). The implementation of carbon footprint labelling is currently being carried out under the National Carbon Footprint Labelling Scheme (2011-2015) by the Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM) as part of continuous improvements for the delivery of sustainable palm oil products. Current approaches used for governing sustainable palm oil products are unsatisfactory due to limitations such as lack of potential impact models, data availability and uncertainty of impact results. Hence, this research addressed the need to improve understanding of having clear information requirements based on the different impacts in the Malaysian palm oil industry supply network tiers. Simulation experiments were then used to explore the aggregation of these information requirements across the Malaysian palm oil industry supply network. Agent-based and system dynamics modelling techniques were applied to simulate the behaviours of different entities and their interactions in the plantation, mill and mill-refinery models. These simulation techniques were able to build understanding on how information could be linked throughout the different tiers in the supply network. In order to have significant results, the output of the models of each tier must be linked (e.g. the mill and refinery models were linked together). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New, stringent fuel economy and emissions regulations are putting increasing pressure on automobile manufacturers to come up with technologies that will help reach those targets. Reducing the weight of the car is one way of achieving better fuel economy during the use stage of the automobile's life cycle. This can be done by replacing the cast iron and steel in the engine with other lighter weight metals such as aluminum and magnesium. However, this change does not come without associated tradeoffs involving cost, performance, and environmental impact. Another way of increasing the fuel efficiency while maintaining the same power output is by going to a lower displacement (essentially a smaller) engine, employing direct fuel injection and turbocharging. This paper reports on a study comparing the life-cycle environmental impacts associated with the two alternatives, along with a cost analysis of the two competing technologies. A combined approach of downsizing the engine and light-weighting the entire vehicle, including the engine components, wherever feasible, is looked upon as the most preferred path to achieving greater improvements in overall lifetime energy consumption and further reductions in environmental impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy-related Products (ErP) account for a large proportion of European energy and natural resource consumption. In 2007, ErP were responsible for the consumption of about 239 Mtoe of electricity and about 555 Mtoe of fuels. In order to reduce the energy and environmental impacts of these products, the European Commission published the Directive 2009/125/EC on the eco-design of ErP. This Directive represents a key component of European policy for improving the energy and environmental performances of products in the internal market. In this context, it is important to develop scientific research aimed at assessing the energy and environmental impacts of ErP, and at defining their eco-design criteria. In fact, the European Commission estimated that, in 2020, the application of eco-design for ErP could save about 32 Mtoe of electricity, which represents more than 12% of the final 2009 electricity consumption in Europe. Among the ErP, an important share of the market is comprised of solid fuel appliances (including biomass boilers), which, in 2007, reached sales of 313,000 units in Europe, and of micro-cogeneration systems, of which worldwide sales, in 2008, were 22,700 units. In the context of the above Directive, the paper presents the results of a Life Cycle Assessment applied to two biomass fuelled systems: 1) a system constituted by a biomass boiler that produces thermal energy for heating and domestic hot water; and 2) a micro-combined heat and power system, comprised of a biomass boiler and electricity equipment that generate heat and electricity. The main goal of the study is to compare the energy and environmental performance of the two systems, and to identify the life-cycle steps of the systems that are characterized by the higher impacts. The selected functional unit is 1 GJ of net thermal energy produced by each examined system. The results show that system 1) causes higher impacts than system 2), in which heat and electricity are produced. For both systems, the operation step is responsible for about 97-99% of the total primary energy consumption, and contributes to environmental impacts by more than 71%. The obtained results can be used as an environmental 'knowledge basis' for the assessment of the energy and environmental performances of biomass boilers and micro-cogeneration systems, the identification of improvement solutions and the definition of eco-design criteria. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Until now, a small number of studies have analysed the carbon footprint (CO2 eq. emissions) of the application of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) in conventional Thermal Energy Storage (TES) systems considering different conventional fossil fuels as the source of heat. In those scarce studies, the different environmental impact categories were estimated using, on the one hand, diverse environmental methodologies and, on the other hand, different environmental evaluation methods (the midpoint and endpoint approaches). Despite the fact that several researchers have used the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology as a tool to estimate the environmental impact of TES systems, there is no unanimity in the scientific community on the environmental evaluation method to be used. As a consequence, research results cannot be easily compared. This article evaluates the introduction of a TES system (using different PCMs) to recover the waste thermal energy released in industrial processes, which can be used in other applications, thereby avoiding fossil fuel consumption by the associated equipment to produce thermal energy. Five different fossil fuels have been considered to generate the 20 case studies that were analysed using the same methodology (LCA) and evaluation method (Global Warming Potential, GWP100, a midpoint approach). The results were used to identify the best cases, considering the environmental benefits that they generate. Additionally, this research indicates that the benefits can be achieved since, in general, the amount of conventional fuels saved is sufficiently large to balance the environmental impact associated with the inclusion of PCMs in conventional TES. Nevertheless, the selection of a PCM can increase or eliminate the environmental benefits obtained. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research measures the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (CO2-e) of the extraction, transport and crushing process of coarse aggregate in Brazil. The goal is to quantify the carbon footprint and identify the critical stages of those activities. The quantification of CO2-e was determined by the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and non-methane volatile organic compound (NMVOC). The results show that the crushing process is the critical stage because of its high electric power consumption. These factors should be addressed in future Brazilian environmental studies in order to find alternative solutions prior to exploring new quarries. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coal-based power generation sector is facing important changes to implement energy efficient carbon capture technologies to comply with emission reduction targets for transition to low carbon economy. This paper assesses CaL (Calcium Looping) as one of the innovative carbon capture options able to deliver low energy and cost penalties. The work evaluates how the integration of post-combustion calcium looping influences the economics of power plants providing up-dated techno-economic indicators. Coal-based combustion plants operated in both sub- and super-critical steam conditions were evaluated, as well as coal gasification plant using an oxygen-blown entrained-flow gasifier. As benchmark options used to quantify the carbon capture energy and cost penalties, the same power generation technologies were evaluated without CCS (Carbon capture and storage). The power plant concepts investigated in the paper generates around 545-560 MW net power with at least 90% carbon capture rate. Introduction of CaL technology for CO2 capture results in a 24-42% increase of specific capital investment, the O&M costs are increasing with 24-30% and the electricity cost with 39-48% (all compared to non-CCS cases). As the techno-economic results suggest, CaL has good application potential in combustion-based power generation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper introduces a process to develop context-specific environmental sustainability strategies by utilising streamlined Life Cycle Assessment and design thinking. This process is referred to as the Double Diamond method of Life Cycle Assessment and design thinking, and is supported by an empirical case study of a major aged care organisation in Australia. The process asked four strategic questions to inform the development of the sustainability strategy: (1) What areas of aged care have the highest environmental impact? (2) How do the areas of high environmental impacts relate to day-to-day organisational practices? (3) What alternatives are available to reduce these impacts? And,(4) How could the alternatives formulate a plan to reduce impacts over time? Each question requires a specific disciplinary approach to answer, drawing on Life Cycle Assessment, social sciences and co-creative problem solving from design. The applied process can be viewed as an extension of ecodesign, moving from a product centric focus into an organizational setting, in part due to the emerging field of design thinking. The outcome of the case study is a plan proposing a mix of social and technical strategies to theoretically reduce carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 54% over a ten-year time frame. Tying the plan together was a financing strategy that scaffolds strategy implementation across time. The paper provides insight into the environmental impacts of the aged care sector, the development of sustainability strategies, and a means to integrate Life Cycle Assessment into a creative problem solving process that may help businesses curtail environmental impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are several hydrogen production technologies. They range from the most widely used fossil fuel based systems such as natural gas steam methane reforming to the least used renewable energy based systems such as wind electrolysis. Currently almost all the industrial hydrogen need worldwide is produced using fossil fuels. Electrolytic hydrogen production based on electricity generated from renewable resources and hydrogen's energetic use could contribute to the global need for a sustainable energy supply. However, these technologies are also not free from environmental burdens. A life cycle assessment (LCA) helps to identify such impacts considering the entire life cycle of the process chains. This paper reviews twenty-one studies that address the LCA of hydrogen production technologies, a majority of them employing electrolytic technologies. It has been observed that global warming potential (GWP) is the impact category analyzed by almost all the authors. Acidification potential (AP) ranks second. Other categories such as toxicity potential are often not analyzed. The main environmental concern associated with electrolytic hydrogen production is electricity supply. The GWP contribution of the electrolyzer unit is relatively small (e.g. only about 4% in wind based electrolysis including hydrogen production and storage systems). From an LCA perspective, it can be concluded that electrolysis using wind or hydropower generated electricity is one of the best hydrogen production technologies, compared to those using conventional grid electricity mix or fossil fuel feedstocks. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study assesses the energy and environmental impacts of sodium/nickel chloride batteries, one of the emerging battery technologies for energy storage and smart grids. The analysis was conducted using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology according to the standards of the ISO 14040 series. The study system was one sodium/nickel cell battery providing electric storage for a photovoltaic system, and the manufacturing, operation, and end-of-life steps were analysed. The results indicated that the operation step has the greatest energy impact (55-70% of the total), with the manufacturing step, particularly cell manufacturing, contributing the greatest environmental impact (>60% of the total). This paper makes two original contributions: 1) it presents one of the first LCA analyses of sodium/nickel chloride batteries with the aim of identifying the energy and environmental impacts of this technology; 2) it provides a set of energy and environmental outcomes identifying the "hot spots" of the selected technology that must be carefully considered to upgrade the current efficiency and sustainability of electric storage device standards. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study focused on the trade-off between milk production and its environmental impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and nitrogen surplus in a high input tropical system. We first identified the objectives of the three main stakeholders in the dairy sector (farmers, a milk cooperative and environmentalists). The main aim of the farmers and cooperative's scenarios was to increase milk production without additional environmental deterioration but with the possibility of increasing the inputs for the cooperative. The environmentalist's objective was to reduce environmental deterioration. Second, we designed a sustainable intensification scenario combining maximization of milk production and minimization of environmental impacts. Third, the objectives for reducing the eco-inefficiency of dairy systems in Reunion Island were incorporated in a framework for activity analysis, which was used to model a technological approach with desirable and undesirable outputs. Of the four scenarios, the sustainable intensification scenario produced the best results, with a potential decrease of 238 g CO2-e per liter of milk (i.e. a reduction of 13.93% compared to the current level) and a potential 7.72 L increase in milk produced for each kg of nitrogen surplus (i.e. an increase of 16.45% compared to the current level). These results were based on the best practices observed in Reunion Island and optimized manure management, crop-livestock interactions, and production processes. Our results also showed that frontier efficiency analysis can shed new light on the challenge of developing sustainable intensification in high input tropical dairy systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Depletion in oil resources and environmental concern related to the use of fossil fuels has increased the interest in using second generation biomass as alternative feedstock for fuels and materials. However, the land use and land use change for producing second generation (2G) biomass impacts the environment in various ways, of which not all are usually considered in life cycle assessment. This study assesses the biogenic CO2 fluxes, surface albedo changes and biodiversity impacts for 100 years after changing land use from forest or fallow land to miscanthus plantation in Wisconsin, US. Climate change impacts are addressed in terms of effective forcing, a mid-point indicator which can be used to compare impacts from biogenic CO2 fluxes and albedo changes. Biodiversity impacts are assessed through elaboration on two different existing approaches, to express the change in biodiversity impact from one human influenced state to another. Concerning the impacts from biogenic CO2 fluxes, in the case of conversion from a forest to a miscanthus plantation (case A) there is a contribution to global warming, whereas when a fallow land is converted (case B), there is a climate cooling. When the effects from albedo changes are included, both scenarios show a net cooling impact, which is more pronounced in case B. Both cases reduce biodiversity in the area where the miscanthus plantation is established, though most in case A. The results illustrate the relevance of these issues when considering environmental impacts of land use and land use change. The apparent trade-offs in terms of environmental impacts further highlight the importance of including these aspects in LCA of land use and land use changes, in order to enable informed decision making. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Flow sheet options for integrating ethanol production from spent sulfite liquor (SSL) into the acid-based sulfite pulping process at the Sappi Saiccor mill (Umkomaas, South Africa) were investigated, including options for generation of thermal and electrical energy from onsite bio-wastes, such as bark. Processes were simulated with Aspen Plus (R) for mass- and energy-balances, followed by an estimation of the economic viability and environmental impacts. Various concentration levels of the total dissolved solids in magnesium oxide-based SSL, which currently fuels a recovery boiler, prior to fermentation was considered, together with return of the fermentation residues (distillation bottoms) to the recovery boiler after ethanol separation. The generation of renewable thermal and electrical energy from onsite bio-wastes were also included in the energy balance of the combined pulping-ethanol process, in order to partially replace coal consumption. The bio-energy supplementations included the combustion of bark for heat and electricity generation and the bio-digestion of the calcium oxide SSL to produce methane as additional energy source. Results: Ethanol production from SSL at the highest substrate concentration was the most economically feasible when coal was used for process energy. However this solution did not provide any savings in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the concentration-fermentation-distillation process. Maximizing the use of renewable energy sources to partially replace coal consumption yielded a satisfactory economic performance, with a minimum ethanol selling price of 0.83 US$/l, and a drastic reduction in the overall greenhouse gas emissions for the entire facility. Conclusion: High substrate concentrations and conventional distillation should be used when considering integrating ethanol production at sulfite pulping mills. Bio-wastes generated onsite should be utilized at their maximum potential for energy generation in order to maximize the GHG emissions reduction.The Green Integrated Forest Biorefinery (GIFBR), a new concept suitable for implementation in pulp and paper mills is characterized by low greenhouse gases emissions, reduced water consumption and production of effluents. Its fossil fuel consumption must be nil. Several challenges have to be addressed to develop a sustainable GIFBR facility. An implementation strategy by phase is proposed to schedule the total capital investment over several years and to mitigate the economic risks associated with the transformation of an existing pulp and paper mill into a GIFBR. In the first phase of the methodology, the receptor mill and the biorefinery plant are selected. An intensive energy and material integration of the two plants is performed in the second phase, then a gasification unit is implemented and, finally a polygeneration unit is installed. The methodology is illustrated by application to a case study based on a reference Canadian Kraft mill. Each phase of the implementation strategy of the GIFBR is described. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While modeling algal productivity outdoors is crucial to assess the economic and environmental performance of full-scale cultivation, most of the models hitherto developed for this purpose have not been validated under fully relevant conditions, especially with regard to temperature variations. The objective of this study was to independently validate a model of algal biomass productivity accounting for both light and temperature and constructed using parameters experimentally derived using short-term indoor experiments. To do this, the accuracy of a model developed for Chlorella vulgaris was assessed against data collected from photobioreactors operated outdoor (New Zealand) over different seasons, years, and operating conditions (temperature-control/no temperature-control, batch, and fed-batch regimes). The model accurately predicted experimental productivities under all conditions tested, yielding an overall accuracy of +/-8.4% over 148 days of cultivation. For the purpose of assessing the feasibility of full-scale algal cultivation, the use of the productivity model was therefore shown to markedly reduce uncertainty in cost of biofuel production while also eliminating uncertainties in water demand, a critical element of environmental impact assessments. Simulations at five climatic locations demonstrated that temperature-control in outdoor photobioreactors would require tremendous amounts of energy without considerable increase of algal biomass. Prior assessments neglecting the impact of temperature variations on algal productivity in photobioreactors may therefore be erroneous.The aim of this work is to quantify the life-cycle emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent grams per megajoule of biodiesel produced from Acrocomia totai, a native oily seed from Paraguay, according to Directive 2009/28/EC. The other key point is to calculate the amount of energy invested to get a megajoule of biodiesel, by means of two different ratios: the EROI (Energy Return On Investment) and the FER (Fossil Energy Ratio). The LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) performed considers the following steps: harvesting, transportation, oil extraction from the fruits, transportation of the vegetable oil, oil conversion to biodiesel, distribution and combustion of the biodiesel. In this case, two different scenarios have been considered: Scenario 1: full distribution in Paraguay; Scenario 2: exportation such as Spain. The first set of results is the emissions in each step of the LC (Life Cycle) as well as the total emissions. The second set of results is the energy ratios. The GHG emission saving is 86.69 % with respect to the LC greenhouse emissions from Diesel EN-590 (with a default emissions value of 83.8 g CO2. MJ(diesel-1)) for Scenario 1 and 74.24 % for Scenario 2.This work employs the environmental methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in compliance with ISO 14040 and uses software SimaPro (R) 7.3.2 to compare the environmental impact in process production of flat plate and evacuated tube solar collectors. In addition, an economic analysis was performed based on the acquisition budgets and the operation of such types of collectors. The results show that the manufacturing of flat plate solar collectors has larger environmental impact, and carcinogen is the major category which causes environmental impact in both types of collector as a result of the consumption and emission of arsenic and cadmium ions. Economically, the cost of acquisition of evacuated tube solar collectors is 104.04%. Therefore, the choice for a specific kind of collector depends on the desired advantages, and a complement is required for decision-making based on the availability of economic resources.Modeling of energy consumption in buildings is essential for different applications such as building energy management and establishing baselines. This makes building energy consumption estimation as a key tool to reduce energy consumption and emissions. Energy performance of building is complex, since it depends on several parameters related to the building characteristics, equipment and systems, weather, occupants, and sociological influences. This paper presents a new model to predict and quantify energy consumption in commercial buildings in the early stages of building design. Building simulation software including eQUEST and DOE-2 was used to build and simulate individual building configuration that were generated using Monte Carlo simulation techniques. Ten thousands simulations for seven building shapes were performed to create a comprehensive dataset covering the full ranges of design parameters. The present study considered building materials, their thickness, building shape, and occupant schedule as design variables since building energy performance is sensitive to these variables. Then, the results of the energy simulations were implemented into a set of regression equation to predict the energy consumption in each design scenario. A good agreement was seen between the predicted data based on the developed regression model and DOE simulation and the maximum error was less than 5%. It is envisioned that the developed regression models can be used to estimate the total energy consumption in the early stages of the design when different building schemes and design concepts are being considered. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The oil palm nursery is the first link in the palm oil supply chain where oil palm seedlings are produced for the cultivation of palms in plantations. The water footprint for this study focuses on the volume of water required for the production of oil palm seedlings in Malaysia, which include direct and indirect water consumption. This study was carried out at 21 nurseries in Peninsular Malaysia for the duration of four years. In this study, the water footprint is expressed as water volume per unit of the product, i.e. m(3) t(-1) fresh fruit bunch (FFB). This article outlines the components of water footprint which are associated with the production of oil palm seedlings. The methodology used to calculate water footprint for the production of oil palm seedlings was based on water footprint network. The results showed that the direct blue water footprint was 1.57E-01 m(3) t(-1) FEB. contributed by irrigation water using sprinklers and also the water used for pesticides application. The total indirect blue water footprint contributed by all the inputs such as diesel, electricity and polybags was 1.46E-04 m(3) t(-1) FFB. Green and grey water footprint was found to be 3.10E-01 and 1.83E-03 m(3) t(-1) FFB, respectively. From the analysis, it was found that the water footprint for the production of oil palm seedlings were 1.57E-01, 3.10E-01 and 1.83E-03 m(3) t(-1) FFB for the blue, green and grey components, respectively. Therefore, it could be concluded that the volume of polluted water (grey water footprint) associated with the production of oil palm seedlings was very minimal.Water accounting across the production of fresh fruit bunch (FFB) in the oil palm's life cycle is gaining momentum arising from the importance placed on the need to quantify water footprint (WE). This article quantifies the WE of FFB production from oil palms grown in some areas in Malaysia, from an inventory data gathered from 2009-2012. The WE methodology of Hoekstra et al. (2009) was applied for calculating WE of FFB production. The data for crop evapotranspiration (ET) of 5.5 mm per day (Roslan and Mohd Haniff, 2004) was used to calculate green and blue WF. The results showed that for oil palm, the FFB yield average of 25-year life span was 20.7 t ha(-1) yr(-1). The FFB production WE was 1166 m(3) t(-1) FFB (WFgreen' 1055; WFblue' 3.56; and WFgrey' 107 m(3) t(-1)). The results showed that the green WE was higher than the grey or the blue WE as planting of oil palm in Malaysia is without irrigation. Oil palm requires a lot of green water (rain water), but when the amount of rain water is lower than ET, it becomes necessary to determine the water deficit of the soil in the oil palm-growing areas. This is to ensure that any shortcoming of water can be provided through irrigation.A comprehensive review of the U.S. federal biofuel-related policies, from 1955 to 2012, was conducted to examine the progression of life cycle thinking within the policies. Over 1300 past and present federal and state biofuel laws and incentives were analyzed to identify the establishment of Life-cycle thinking (Lr) in the biofuel policies. The policies were searched for search terms representing the three themes: life cycle assessment, environmental impact and sustainability. LCT in policies was first seen in the Renewable Fuel Standard under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, where life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions reduction of biofuels was required. Existing U.S. biofuel policies were also characterized to define types of policy as tax incentive, grants, mandate, etc. The results suggested that climate change or energy incentives, air quality or emissions, etc. should be more emphasized in fuel legislation for a continuous improvement of biofuels industry. Only 13% of both the federal and state policies reviewed in this study employed some aspect of LCT. Policies that incorporate LCT often only focused on greenhouse gas emissions; policies should include other environmental impacts to avoid any environmental tradeoffs and unintended consequences from biofuel production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A considerable expansion of biogas production in Germany, paralleled by a strong increase in maize acreage, has caused growing concern that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during crop substrate production might counteract the GHG emission saving potential. Based on a 2-year field trial, a GHG balance was conducted to evaluate the mitigation potential of regionally adapted cropping systems (continuous maize, maize-wheat-Italian ryegrass, perennial ryegrass ley), depending on nitrogen (N) level and N type. Considering the whole production chain, all cropping systems investigated contributed to the mitigation of GHG emissions (6.7-13.3 t CO2 eq/ha), with continuous maize revealing a carbon dioxide (CO2) saving potential of 55-61% compared with a fossil energy mix reference system. The current sustainability thresholds in terms of CO2 savings set by the EU Renewable Energy Directive could be met by all cropping systems (48-76%). Emissions from crop production had the largest impact on the mitigation effect (>= 50%) unless the biogas residue storage was not covered. The comparison of N fertilizer types showed less pronounced differences in GHG mitigation potential, whereas considerable site effects were observed.Despite the greater attention given to biofuels application in the literature, there are many economic and environmental drivers to use vegetables oils (VOs) as a renewable feedstock for other applications. These drivers are discussed in the present work and the technological challenges imposed by this shift towards new VOs uses are also discussed. They are mainly associated to the reaction routes issues, the performance regarding end-user properties, experimental procedures and property prediction models. The need for more holistic approaches (life cycle analysis) is briefly discussed and the potential benefits arising from new computer-aided tools are highlighted as well.Improving milk production through livestock feeding and genetics is a promising approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from dairy production systems. This study investigated emissions intensity, defined as the global warming potential (GWP) per unit energy corrected milk (ECM) output, of high-producing dairy systems. Objectives of this study were: to determine the effect of forage regime and cattle genetic line on GHG emissions from the life cycle of four directly comparable dairy production systems; to examine differences amongst contributing GHG emissions sources, and to identify key parameters contributing the most uncertainty in overall GWP. Life cycle analysis (LCA) was conducted based on seven years data collected from a long-term Holstein-Friesian genetic and management systems project. The four dairy production systems comprised two feeding regimes of High and Low Forage applied to each of two genetic lines. The Control line represented the average UK genetics and Select line representing the top 5% of UK genetics for milk fat and protein. Select genetic line animals managed under Low Forage regime was estimated to hold potential to reduce emissions intensity by 24% compared to Control genetic merit cows managed under a High Forage regime. Individually, improving genetic merit of the herd and implementing Low Forage regime hold potential to reduce emissions intensity by 9% and 16%, respectively. Key factors in the differences amongst systems were greater off-farm emissions under Low Forage regime, and greater on-farm nitrous oxide emissions associated with High Forage. In contrast to overall emissions, the emissions intensity was lower in Low Forage groups than in High Forage groups because of high milk yield in Low Forage groups. Six key parameters contained the greatest influence on uncertainty in results. These included: three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) coefficients concerning indirect emissions from volatilized nitrogen (EF4), direct nitrous oxide emissions from nitrogen input to soil (Hi), and emissions from direct deposition of excreta at pasture (EF3PRP); and three system-specific emissions factors for animals' excreted nitrogen rate, enteric methane and manure methane. The coefficients EF4, EFL, and EF3(PRP) should be prioritized for better definition in order to minimize uncertainty in future studies. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based quantification of the potential human health impacts (HHI) of base-load power generation technologies for the year 2030. Cumulative Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions per kWh electricity produced are shown in order to provide the basis for comparison with existing literature. Minimising negative impacts on human health is one of the key elements of policy making towards sustainable development: besides their direct impacts on quality of life, HHI also trigger other impacts, e.g. external costs in the health care system. These HHI are measured using the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods "ReCiPe" with its three different perspectives and "IMPACT2002+". Total HHI as well as the shares of the contributing damage categories vary largely between these perspectives and methods. Impacts due to climate change, human toxicity, and particulate matter formation are the main contributors to total HHI. Independently of the perspective chosen, the overall impacts on human health from nuclear power and renewables are substantially lower than those caused by coal power, while natural gas can have lower HHI than nuclear and some renewables. Fossil fuel combustion as well as coal, uranium and metal mining are the life cycle stages generating the highest HHI. (C) 2014 International Atomic Energy Agency. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although the potential for biofuel production from microalgae via photosynthesis has been intensively investigated, information on the selection of a suitable operation strategy for microalgae-based biofuel production is lacking. Many published reports describe competitive strains and optimal culture conditions for use in biofuel production; however, the major impediment to further improvements is the absence of effective engineering strategies for microalgae cultivation and biofuel production. This comprehensive review discusses recent advances in understanding the effects of major environmental stresses and the characteristics of various engineering operation strategies on the production of biofuels (mainly biodiesel and bioethanol) using microalgae. The performances of microalgae-based biofuel-producing systems under various environmental stresses (i.e., irradiance, temperature, pH, nitrogen depletion, and salinity) and cultivation strategies (i.e., fed-batch, semi-continuous, continuous, two-stage, and salinity-gradient) are compared. The reasons for variations in performance and the underlying theories of the various production strategies are also critically discussed. The aim of this review is to provide useful information to facilitate development of innovative and feasible operation technologies for effectively increasing the commercial viability of microalgae-based biofuel production. (c) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper investigates the breakdown of primary energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of two common types of exterior walls in the U.K.: insulated concrete form (ICF) and cavity walls. A comprehensive assessment was conducted to evaluate the environmental performance of each exterior wall system over 50 years of service life in Edinburgh and Bristol. The results indicate that for both wall systems, use phase is the major contributor to the overall environmental impacts, mainly due to associated electricity consumption. For the ICF wall system in Edinburgh, 91% of GHG emissions were attributed to the use phase, with 7.8% in the pre-use and 1.2% in end-of-life phases. For the same system in Bristol, emissions were 89%, 9% and 2%, respectively. A similar trend was observed for cavity wall systems in both locations. It was concluded that in each scenario, the ICF wall system performed better when compared to the cavity wall system. The results of the sensitivity analysis clearly show that the uncertainties relevant to the change of the thickness of the wall are quite tolerable: variable up to 5%, as far as energy and greenhouse emissions are concerned.This paper analyzed the characteristic of the tourism destination ecosystem from perspective of entropy in Dunhuang City. Given these circumstances, an evaluation index system that considers the potential of sustainable development was formed based on dissipative structure and entropy change for the tourism destination ecosystem. The sustainable development potential evaluation model for tourism destination ecosystem was built up based on information entropy. Then, we analyzed each indicator impact for the sustainable development potential and proposed some measures for the tourism destination ecosystem. The conclusions include: (a) the requirements of Dunhuang tourism destination ecosystem on the natural ecosystem continuously grew between 2000 and 2012; (b) The sustainable development potential of the Dunhuang tourism destination ecosystem was on an oscillation upward trend during the study period, which is dependent on government attention, and pollution problems were improved.Electric mobility is often presented as a way to tackle the environmental issues associated with individual mobility, provided that electric vehicles are adopted by drivers on a mass scale. In this paper, we propose an agent-based model (ABM) aiming at modelling the deployment of these vehicles. ABM is particularly indicated when modelling complex systems whose final results are the combination of the interactions between individuals and their environment and when the agents have partial information to take their decisions. We selected Luxembourg and its French neighbouring region, Lorraine, as the case study for our model, to test Luxembourg's ambitious objective of deploying 40,000 electric vehicles by the year 2020. Model results show that the number of battery powered electric vehicles in Luxembourg (including vehicles from Lorraine's commuters crossing the border every day) could be between 2000 and 21,000. A high number of commercial vehicles in Luxembourg, as well as an unlikely deployment in the neighbouring Belgium and Germany would therefore be required to meet the deployment objective. However, the deployment of plug-in hybrid vehicles could reach 60,000 cars by the end of 2020. To achieve this number, the deployment of charging points seems to be the more effective policy, along with actions aiming at increasing public awareness and acceptance of electric vehicles. The interest in using the ABM also lies in the identification of the main individuals' characteristics affecting the deployment of electric vehicles (household size, commuting distances, etc.), which further support the setting of public policies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Data centres consume high levels of energy to power the IT equipment contained within them, and extract the heat they produce. Because of the industry's heavy reliance on power, data centre metrics have historically used operational efficiency as a proxy for sustainability. More recently the industry has begun to recognise that its focus needs to go beyond energy consumption, with the creation of metrics for issues such as carbon, water and compute efficiency. However, single-issue metrics often consider only the operational phase, omitting impacts from other issues, during other stages in a facility's lifetime. Further approaches exist to assess more holistically the impact of data centres, such as building environmental assessment methods, but none have the capacity to capture fully the interlinked nature of a system, where improvements in one area and to one impact, can adversely affect a totally different area and totally different impacts. The following review of literature summarises the approach of the data centre industry to environmental impact, and provides direction for future research. Part 1 describes the energy consumption of the ICT industry and in particular data centres; current knowledge on the environmental impact of the industry; and how single-issue metrics have risen to prominence. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The IEQ + DLCA framework, which integrates indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA) at the whole-building level, was revised and expanded to consider non-chemical health impacts and productivity/performance impacts. The complete framework was evaluated for a case study of a LEED gold rated university building, supplemented with a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) designed to elicit qualitative feedback on IEQ and productivity impacts specific to the building. Most non-chemical health impacts (e.g. sick building syndrome (SBS), asthma) were not able to be included in the framework, due to potential overlaps with chemical-specific impacts already included in LCA. However, productivity impacts were able to be included in the framework for the purpose of comparing different design and operational choices for a given building. Occupants were also asked to evaluate the anticipated effects on their individual productivity due to IEQ changes associated with hypothetical energy-saving strategies. Results of the POE showed occupants were generally satisfied with IEQ and considered that increasing summer cooling temperature set points would enhance productivity. Energy savings were calculated using an empirical energy and IEQ model calibrated with sensed data from the building. Evaluation of the full IEQ + DLCA framework suggested potentially significant energy savings potential and possible productivity enhancement, but indicated tradeoffs between internal chemical impact categories related to building ventilation, indoor pollutant generation and outdoor pollutant intake. The tradeoffs and overlaps between internal chemical impact categories themselves, as well as between chemical and non-chemical impact categories such as (SBS) are a challenge for LCA of whole buildings. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study demonstrated the influence of building material selection on the environmental and economic parameters of a building in a Finnish context. The effects of the choice were studied for the three building component categories: structural frame, inner components (i.e. insulation and sheathing) and surface components (i.e. exterior cladding and flooring), in a comparative manner on a reference building. The aim was to illustrate the features of the building materials in a relative manner from several aspects in order to help multi-criteria decision-making for professionals associated with the construction industry. The results showed that the value of alternative materials varies depending on the aspects. It was also revealed that the environmental parameters need to be taken into account over economic aspect, since in many cases they vary much between the alternatives considered. The selection of the structural frame material has greater influence than the other two component categories, and the inner components need to be considered rather than the surface components, even though they are not visible when a building is completed. This paper indicates the importance of expressing and understanding the diversity of the materials. It would be important for sustainable building design to select suitable materials according to the purpose and their features on a case-by-case basis. In order to broaden the range of choice, the market system needs to be developed as well. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Stone is one of the oldest construction materials to have withstood the test of time, as evidenced by the numerous heritage stone buildings and monuments. Its use throughout the centuries has changed from massive stone blocks for walls to thin tiles that are part of the cladding system of the facade of buildings. The objective of this paper is to compare the most commonly used wall systems with stone in an attempt to determine the best use for this material from an environmental point of view. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of three different wall systems has been carried out using data collected from two quarries and processing facilities in Switzerland. The analysis has shown that the use of a thin cladding in the facade is not necessarily the most sustainable solution and that the type of stone product to be used in a structure largely depends on the local availability of the material. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study is concerned with the results of a Life Cycle Assessment comparison between photovoltaic silicon based modules - and thin film modules and solar thermal systems, as technologies which are usually installed for partially covering household energy demand. Several studies focused on energy and environmental performances of photovoltaic and solar thermal collectors, however they have been always analysed separately. This study proposes the comparison of different systems to exploit the solar energy, producing different energy types. The comparison was done referring to one square meter of roof surface occupied by the equipment. The environmental burdens were calculated according to the indicators proposed by Eco-indicator'95 method. The results showed that the system based on thermal solar collector obtained the major number of more favourable indicators: eight out of ten, in the case of no-recycling of materials after dismantling phase, and six out of ten in the case of recycling of materials after dismantling phase. The thin film modules and solar thermal collector showed the lowest values of energy payback time and CO2eq payback time. Results clearly show that photovoltaic and solar thermal collector can effectively provide comparable environmental and energy benefits as regard to domestic scale installation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The EU's energy sector depends heavily on fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change. This is why climate mitigation targets for energy production have been set, including an increased biomass use requirement. In Finland, biomass is commonly utilised but its capital, Helsinki, is still dependent on fossil fuels. With the ambition of becoming climate neutral by 2050, Helsinki is testing, inter alia, low-share wood pellet and coal co-combustion in a CHP (combined heat and power) plant. The objectives of this paper were to assess the net environmental impacts of the co-combustion and changes in urban air quality connected to pellet transport, and to identify environmental hotspots relevant to possible future higher-share co-combustion. The applied methods were screening LCA (life cycle assessment) and fine particle dispersion modelling. The results prove that low-share wood pellet co-combustion in CHP production leads to net environmental impact reductions and does not deteriorate air quality in the urban environment. If higher-share co-combustion were to be implemented, the environmental hotspots to focus on would be the operational issues of a power plant and the origin and sustainability aspects of wood pellet production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Until 2009, the annual reporting of emissions by off-road transport in agriculture in Belgium was based on a 1994 calculation model that needed to be updated. An energy consumption model was established for plant production in Belgium as a backbone for a new emission model. The model starts from agricultural activities involving off-road fuel consumption. Effects of soil type, tractor size, field size and machine load are modelled. Twenty-seven FCIs (fuel consumption indicators) were computed for plant production. FCIs are expressed per year and are used for emission estimates on a regional level. FCIs ranged from 37 to 311 L/ha. Sensitivity analysis showed the highest impact of tractor size with a surplus fuel consumption between 10 and 41% depending on the crop type. Fuel consumption (L) can be further processed into greenhouse gas emissions. FCIs can be adopted in LCA (life cycle assessment) studies. With similar to 310 L/ha, orchards are most fuel intensive, followed by field vegetables and sugar beets (similar to 150 L/ ha). The total off-road energy consumption of field vegetables is high because second cropping is a common practice. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are controversial because of uncertain environmental benefits and reported social drawbacks, including 'land grabs' and threats to food security. The present study investigates the relevance of these concerns for a proposed bioethanol project in Cradock, South Africa. The proposed project is anticipated to lead to economic upliftment and could therefore contribute to reduce poverty and thus strengthen food security. With a projected annual production of up to 16,0001 ethanol per hectare, yields would be substantially higher than in most other countries. Agricultural activity would take place on existing farm land, or on biomes classified as 'least concern'. We estimate a carbon footprint reduction of similar to 30% for sugar beet ethanol in the area. Because various global biofuel concerns do not apply to the proposed Cradock fuel ethanol project, we argue for a more nuanced approach for the evaluation of biofuel projects with more focus on case-specific attributes. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Electric power production using biomass residues from agricultural production using high efficiency electricity generation technologies would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and contribute to climate change mitigation. This study investigated the case of the sugar industry in Thailand and identified scenarios offering GHG emissions reduction benefits. Electricity generation potential from using sugarcane residues and/or upgrading power generation systems represent beneficial options. The largest potential of electricity export to the national grid can be achieved by upgrading boiler systems of all sugar mills to 103 bar and 515 degrees C. Using 19% of the generated sugarcane tops and leaves along with bagasse can generate 9 TWh electricity and would reduce GHG emissions by 4.8 Mt CO2 equivalent a year. The economic analysis shows that using high steam pressure boiler configurations for power generation results in substantial reduction in production cost and increase in benefit. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Jatropha has been promoted in sub-Saharan Africa as a smallholder energy crop promising additional revenue and energetic self-sufficiency. In this case-study located in Southern Mali we performed a comparative life cycle assessment shedding light on the influence of smallholder participation and yield fluctuations on the global warming potential, fossil resource depletion and energy demand of jatropha-based rural electrification in comparison to a fossil fuel-based reference. We found that the global warming potential of jatropha-based electrification can be 13% higher to 20% lower than fossil diesel, depending on the yield. In terms of energy use and fossil fuel depletion, jatropha is more favourable than fossil-based electricity. In either perspective, the activities related to cultivating and processing grain from small farmers accentuate the environmental impacts, owing to low yields. We conclude that outgrower engagement in tending and harvesting jatropha is a key factor for improving the environmental performance of the system. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Temporal aspects have traditionally not been recognized adequately in life cycle assessment (LCA). The dynamic LCA model recently proposed offers a significant step forward in the dynamic assessment of global warming impacts. The results obtained with dynamic LCA are highly sensitive to the choice of a time horizon. Therefore, decision making between alternative systems can be critical because conclusions are dependent on the specific time horizon. In this article, we develop a decision-making methodology based on the concept of time dominance. We introduce instantaneous and cumulative time dominance criteria to the dynamic LCA context and argue why the dominance of an alternative should also imply preference. Our approach allows for the rejection of certain alternatives without the determination of a specific time horizon. The number of decision-relevant alternatives can thereby be reduced and the decision problem facilitated. We demonstrate our methodology by means of a case study of end-of-life alternatives for a wooden chair derived from the original authors of dynamic LCA and discuss the implications and limitations of the approach. The methodology based on time dominance criteria is supplementary to the dynamic LCA model, but does not substitute it. The overall value of this article stretches beyond LCA onto more general assessments of global warming, for example, in policy where the choice of a time horizon is equally significant.It is becoming more common to include the effects of delayed greenhouse gas emissions as an additional aspect in carbon footprinting. Although full dynamic assessment is the only accurate option to calculate those effects, the linear approach as outlined in, for example, the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, which is a popular reference. This approach overestimates the benefits of delayed emissions in all cases, but, for methane, the deviation is orders of magnitude. An alternative linear approach is proposed that does not start at t = 0. When using a time horizon of 100years, an initial no-accounting period of 75years is found to be appropriate for delayed emissions of methane, in most cases. The difference between the two approaches, when applying the concept of temporary carbon storage or delayed emissions to landfill, is considerable.Biogeochemical cycles are essential ecosystem services that continue to degrade as a result of human activities, but are not fully considered in efforts toward sustainable engineering. This article develops a model that integrates the carbon cycle with economic activities in the 2002 U.S. economy. Data about the carbon cycle, including emissions and sequestration flows, is obtained from the greenhouse gas inventory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Economic activities are captured by the economic input-output model available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The resulting model is more comprehensive in its accounting for the carbon cycle than existing methods for carbon footprint (CF) calculations. Examples of unique flows in this model include the effect of land-use and land-cover change on carbon dioxide flow within the U.S. national boundary, carbon sequestration in urban trees, and emissions resulting from liming. This model is used to gain unique insight into the carbon profile of U.S. economic sectors by providing the life cycle emissions and sequestration in each sector. Such insight may be used to support policies, manage supply chains, and be used for more comprehensive CF calculations.The use of information and communication technology (ICT) is growing throughout society, and new products and solutions are developed at an increasing rate. To enable environmental assessment of specific ICT products and other products that rely on ICT in some way, a more complete, detailed, and up-to-date study based on real measurements is needed. To date, similar studies have not been readily available or fully comprehensive. This study assessed the overall operational electricity use and life-cycle-based carbon footprint (CF) relating to ICT in Sweden, including activities not commonly addressed previously, such as shared data transport networks and data centers and manufacturing of network infrastructure. Specific, detailed inventory data are presented and used for assessment of the Internet Protocol core network, data transmission, operator activities, and access network. These specific data, in combination with secondary, more generic data for end-user equipment, allow a comprehensive overall assessment. The majority of the ICT network CF is the result of end-user equipment, mainly personal computers, followed by third-party enterprise networks and data centers and then access networks. The parts closest to the user proved to be clearly responsible for the majority of the impact. The results are presented for Swedish ICT networks and for ICT networks in general based on a global average electricity mix.This synthesis article presents an overview of an urban metabolism (UM) approach using mixed methods and multiple sources of data for Los Angeles, California. We examine electric energy use in buildings and greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, and calculate embedded infrastructure life cycle effects, water use and solid waste streams in an attempt to better understand the urban flows and sinks in the Los Angeles region (city and county). This quantification is being conducted to help policy-makers better target energy conservation and efficiency programs, pinpoint best locations for distributed solar generation, and support the development of policies for greater environmental sustainability. It provides a framework to which many more UM flows can be added to create greater understanding of the study area's resource dependencies. Going forward, together with policy analysis, UM can help untangle the complex intertwined resource dependencies that cities must address as they attempt to increase their environmental sustainability.This study reports on the carbon, water, and energy footprints of tomatoes grown in a greenhouse in Northern Italy and two possible future variations of heating and carbon dioxide (CO2) fertilization on the current setup. The heat supply in place, consisting of natural gas (NG) and canola oil combustion, is compared to cogeneration and incineration of municipal solid waste for heating and CO2 from industrial exhaust for fertilization. As a benchmark, the current system is also compared to a conventional system, in which heat is delivered solely based on NG. Each kilogram (kg) of fresh tomatoes (Cuore di Bue variety) produced in the current greenhouse emits 2.28kg CO2 equivalents (eq) and uses 95.5 megajoules(MJ) eq energy and 122 liters (L) of water. Relative to the system in place, the carbon footprint (CF) is 57.5% and 18% higher with conventional NG heating and cogeneration and is 40% lower with waste valorization. Further, 33%, 55%, and 63% less energy and 9%, 96%, and 14% less water are used in the conventional, cogeneration, and waste valorization scenarios, respectively. This confirms that there are multiple strategies to reduce the impact of the tomato production under consideration.We calculated the life cycle CO2 emissions and direct installation costs for two types of timber check dams (all-wood timber and hybrid timber) developed in Akita Prefecture and non-timber check dams (concrete and steel). Additionally, we evaluated the effect of timber check dams in reducing CO2 emissions and their economic efficiency compared with non-timber check dams. We found that switching from concrete to all-wood timber and hybrid timber check dams reduced CO2 emissions by 54 and 43 %, respectively. Switching from steel to all-wood timber and hybrid timber check dams reduced CO2 emissions by 28 and 11 %, respectively. In terms of direct installation costs, all-wood timber check dams were 241 % that of concrete check dams and 179 % that of steel check dams, but hybrid timber check dams were only 132 and 98 %, confirming that they could be competitive in terms of price. From the perspective of reducing CO2 emissions costs, we found that a policy for switching from concrete to all-wood or hybrid timber check dams did not constitute a low-cost means of reducing CO2 emissions, compared with other policies for reducing CO2 emissions.As the demand for new drugs is rising, the pharmaceutical industry faces the quest of shortening development time, and thus, reducing the time to market. Environmental aspects typically still play a minor role within the early phase of process development. Nevertheless, it is highly promising to rethink, redesign, and optimize process strategies as early as possible in active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) process development, rather than later at the stage of already established processes. The study presented herein deals with a holistic life-cycle-based process optimization and intensification of a pharmaceutical production process targeting a low-volume, high-value API. Striving for process intensification by transfer from batch to continuous processing, as well as an alternative catalytic system, different process options are evaluated with regard to their environmental impact to identify bottlenecks and improvement potentials for further process development activities.The nexus of climate change and food security challenges currently facing humanity requires better understanding of how to balance food production needs with climate change mitigation. Life cycle assessment methods provide a way to quantify the climate impacts of a food product by accounting for all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with its production, including upstream and downstream from the farm. This study modeled life cycle GHG emissions for one kg of milled, unpackaged rice produced in California, USA, a state that achieves some of the highest rice yields in the world. The goal was to (1) provide an assessment of life cycle GHG emissions of a comparatively intensive production system, using local field emissions data, (2) identify emissions hotspots, and (3) create a model that elucidates the life cycle-wide consequences of potential changes in field management practices. Study parameters are based on an annual cropping cycle, with continuous flooding during the growing season and soil incorporation of straw post-harvest, and yields of 9.3 Mt ha(-1) dried paddy rice. Field emissions (growing and fallow seasons) were estimated with empirical data while other emissions were calculated using an engineering model coupled with life cycle inventory datasets and vehicle emission models. The 100-year global warming potential (GWP, based on CO2, CH4 and N2O) was 1.47 kg CO2-equivalent (CO(2)e) kg(-1) of milled rice; of which field emissions contributed 69%. These results are relatively low when compared to life cycle studies in other parts of the world, due in large part to higher grain yields and lower field emissions. When using IPCC Tier 1 estimates of field emissions, the GWP increased to 3.60 CO(2)e kg(-1) rice, highlighting the importance of using direct field measurements as we have in this study. Due to their large contributions to life cycle GWP, reducing field CH4 emissions through different field management practices, optimizing N fertilizer use, and increasing fuel efficiency or reducing use of farm machinery present the greatest opportunities to reduce life cycle emissions. Because of high variability and uncertainty in estimating field emissions, they should also be targeted for improved measurement and modeling. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It is known that bioethanol is an alternative for fossil fuels for reducing GHG emissions, and agro-residues offer potentially significant advantages over other feedstock because of reduced conflict with food production. In this study, which aims to assess biomass energy potential and GHG reduction effects in Ecuador in the present and under climate change, NPP predicted by an ecosystem process model was utilized with a life-cycle GHG assessment and optimization of a biomass energy system. First, the NPP of rice, banana, sugarcane, and corn in the present and under climate change was predicted by Biome-BGC. Next, productivity of each of the four crops was formulated by NPP using government crop statistics and the model-predicted NPP, where the difference in technological and management standards among provinces was considered. Then, based on estimated crop production and geographical distribution of croplands and consumption, a nation-wide bioethanol production plan was proposed. Applying a life-cycle assessment to account for GHGs, crop selection for feedstock and product-delivery allocation, were optimized to maximize GHG reduction. Under the most-severe climate change case, total GHG emission reduction was decreased by 7% of the present condition, caused by decreased crop productivity, longer feedstock transportation, and the use of less-efficient crops.Environmental impacts and economics associated with a potentially greener, Rh-catalyzed, 1-octene hydroformylation process in CO2-expanded liquid (CXL) medium are quantitatively assessed against a conventional Co-catalyzed process. The economic analysis shows a more than 30% lower capital investment for the CXL process compared to the conventional Co-catalyzed process of similar capacity. This is due to the higher reaction and catalyst recovery efficiencies at milder reaction temperature and pressures (compared to the conventional process) used in the CXL process. The total production cost (TPC) associated with the CXL process is lower than the conventional process when the Rh makeup rate is lower than 0.94% (of the total amount of Rh in the reactor) per hour at the current Rh price ($20,800/lb). This translates to an economic viability criterion of ($makeup Rh/$TPC) being 0.042 or less. Life cycle analysis (LCA) was performed using GaBi software and an EIO-LCA method based on plant scale simulation of both the conventional and continuous CXL processes to produce 150 kton/year of nonanal. Gate-to-gate LCA projections show that the CXL process is environmentally friendlier than the conventional process in most impact categories such as ecotoxicity, greenhouse gas emissions, and smog formation. Predicted emissions for the conventional process are of the same order of magnitude as those reported from an actual plant of similar capacity. Cradle-to-gate environmental impacts are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude greater than the gate-to-gate impacts with energy usage for the production of raw materials being the major source of adverse environmental impacts. The EIO-LCA results agree with the GaBi analysis. Our results show that the environmental performance of the CXL process can be further improved with lower solvent usage, thus also providing valuable guidance for process optimization.Pilot-scale cultivation of Chlorella vulgaris in a 100 L sequential baffled photobioreactor was carried out in the present study. The highest biomass yield attained under indoor and outdoor environment was 0.52 g/L and 0.28 g/L, respectively. Although low microalgae biomass yield was attained under outdoor cultivation, however, the overall life cycle energy efficiency ratio was 3.3 times higher than the indoor cultivation. In addition, negative energy balance was observed in producing microalgae biodiesel under both indoor and outdoor cultivation. The minimum production cost of microalgae biodiesel was about RM 237/L (or USD 73.5/L), which was exceptionally high compared to the current petrol diesel price in Malaysia (RM 3.6/L or USD 1.1/L). On the other hand, the estimated production cost of dried microalgae biomass cultivated under outdoor environment was RM 46/kg (or USD 14.3/kg), which was lower than cultivation using chemical fertilizer (RM 111/kg or USD 34.4/kg) and current market price of Chlorella biomass (RM 145/kg or USD 45/kg). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The cement industry is an industry that consumes a considerable quantity of resources and energy and has a very large influence on the efficient use of global resources and energy. In this study, exergetic life cycle assessment is performed for the cement production process, and the energy efficiency and exergy efficiency of each system before and after waste heat power generation is investigated. The study indicates that, before carrying out a waste heat power generation project, the objective energy efficiencies of the raw material preparation system, pulverized coal preparation system and rotary kiln system are 39.4%, 10.8% and 50.2%, respectively, and the objective exergy efficiencies are 4.5%, 1.4% and 33.7%, respectively; after carrying out a waste heat power generation project, the objective energy efficiencies are 45.8%, 15.5% and 55.1%, respectively, and the objective exergy efficiencies are 7.8%, 2.8% and 38.1%, respectively. The waste heat power generation project can recover 3.7% of the total input exergy of a rotary kiln system and improve the objective exergy efficiencies of the above three systems. The study can identify degree of resource and energy utilization and the energy-saving effect of a waste heat power generation project on each system, and provide technical support for managers in the implementation of energy-saving schemes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global climatic change is driving research and development in low emissions technologies. One such technology is the use of charcoal from biomass in steelmaking. This paper adapts social life cycle assessment methodologies to analyse the social dimensions of energy supply alternatives in steelmaking using regionalised production scenarios in Australia. Three energy supply alternatives are investigated: charcoal produced from Radiata pine plantation forestry; charcoal produced from Mallee eucalypt revegetation on agricultural land; and metallurgical coal. Impact indicators analysed include land-use, employment, workplace health & safety and a qualitative analysis of identified stakeholder issues. The research finds that biomass alternatives are significant generators of direct employment at the regional level; have concomitantly higher rates of workplace injuries and represent a significant change in land-use. Charcoal produced from Mallee biomass planted as a conservation measure on farmland, however, has the benefit of representing a shared land-use that provides an additional farm revenue stream and assists dryland salinity management. The paper finds that full substitution of coal by pine or Mallee charcoal does not provide a unique solution for optimising the social performance of the energy supply alternatives across all indicators. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In-situ leaching (ISL) is a chemical method for recovering useful minerals and metals directly from underground ore bodies which is also referred to as 'solution mining'. ISL is commonly used for uranium mining, accounting for about 45% of global production. The main benefits are claimed to be a lower environmental impact in terms of visual disturbances, emissions, lower energy use, cost compared with conventional open-cut or underground mining methods, and potential utilisation of lower grade resources. However, there is a lack of reported studies on the assessment of the environmental impacts of ISL, particularly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The SimaPro LCA software was used to estimate the GHG footprint of the ISL of uranium, gold and copper. The total GHG emissions were estimated to be 38.0 kg CO2-e/kg U3O8 concentrate (yellowcake), 29 t CO2-e/kg gold, and 4.78 kg CO2-e/kg Cu. The GHG footprint of ISL uranium was significantly lower than that of conventional mining, however, the footprints of copper and gold were not much less compared with conventional mining methods. This is due to the lower ore grade of ISL deposits and recovery compared with high ore grades and recovery of conventional technology. Additionally, the use of large amount of electricity for pumping in case of ISL contributes to this result. The electricity consumed in pumping leaching solutions was by far the greatest contributor to the well-field related activities associated with ISL of uranium, gold and copper. The main strategy to reduce the GHG footprint of ISL mining should be to use electricity derived from low emission sources. In particular, renewable sources such as solar would be suitable for ISL as these operations are typically in remote locations with smaller deposits compared with conventional mining sites. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the expansion of the lithium ion (Li-ion) battery market, new materials for lithium ion cathodes are constantly being developed. Especially automotive applications require a decrease in production costs, which often means to increase the content of less expensive metals. However, these composition changes also affect the cathode properties and may also require considerable changes in the processing conditions. There are still considerable gaps regarding life cycle inventories for cathode materials as the availability of commercial process data is limited. The presented study had two main objectives: (1) quantifying the natural resource use for the production and recycling of five cathode materials for Li-ion batteries in a closed loop scenario based on data directly provided by industry and (2) assessing the impact of differences in composition, cathode material properties and production technology. An exergy-based method was employed to assess the cumulative resource use. To get a better view on the impact of the property differences of the cathode materials, resource consumption was expressed per kg, per kWh one cycle and per kWh over the cycle life. The latter was the actual functional unit. The results per kg of cathode were comparable for all (290-346 MJ(ex)/kg) but one (622 MJ(ex)/kg) of the cathode materials. Metal supply and energy use during cathode material production were the main drivers of natural resource use. Due to the diverging characteristics of the cathode materials the relative results in terms of the functional unit (0.39-0.70 MJ(ex)/kWh) differed considerably from the results per kg of cathode material. For example, while the resource use for one of the cathodes was relatively high per kg of material, it was similar to the resource use of two other cathode materials per kWh (cycle life). This implies that it is not sufficient to have good process data to compare the resource consumption of different cathode materials. The properties of the cathode materials, respectively the battery as a whole, have to be carefully determined in function of the application. Two of the cathode materials were developed with the target to reduce cost of feedstock metals while maintaining performance. Indeed, those two cathodes showed low resource use per kg (290-343 MJ(ex)) and per kWh (one cycle) (377-463 MJ(ex)). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Standard material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) models were combined to analyze the historical evolution of greenhouse gas emissions of Italian aluminum over the years 1960-2009 with the aim of providing key features to Italy for prioritizing future industrial and environmental policies. Annual greenhouse gas emissions were calculated for primary and electrical energy, process-related and transportation. Cradle-to-gate emission factors were defined per ton of aluminum produced and used to quantify the cumulative carbon footprint. Consolidation of the model was carried out at domestic and foreign levels for aluminum production in order to analyze the shift in emissions transfers between the location of production and that of use. Overall, average percent contributions from the main CO(2)e-related process reflect the trend of the global aluminum industry in upgrading to standardized production processes worldwide. Cumulative carbon footprint of Italian aluminum was estimated in about 375 MtCO(2)e, of which only 188 MtCO(2)e is from domestic production. Because Italy is a net importer of aluminum, greenhouse gas emissions from the final use of aluminum have increased the impact of domestic production by 140% in the last decade. A potential carbon emissions savings of similar to 160 MtCO(2)e could result if the current anthropogenic aluminum in-use stock will be quantitatively recycled. The study showed potentials for combining MFA and LCA to improve completeness when approaching environmental issues. The outcomes revealed chances for decreasing the contribution to climate change from the aluminum industry and allowed the setting of country indicators usable in future national LCA studies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC), a filler and pigment material, is typically produced by calcining limestone at high temperature processes and by re-carbonating the formed calcium oxide in an aqueous solution. This process causes significant carbon dioxide emissions, while it enables particle size and quality control during processing. An alternative PCC production method named Slag2PCC, where steel converter slag is used as a calcium source instead of limestone, has been recently developed at Finnish universities. When these methods are compared by means of a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA), it is confirmed that the Slag2PCC approach has negative CO2 emissions, i.e. the process captures more CO2 than what is generated. Also, regarding other studied LCA impact categories, human health, ecosystem quality and resources, the alternative method is more environmentally benign. However, if excessive after-treatment processes are required for e.g. purifying the produced PCC, the new approach will pollute more than the traditional PCC manufacturing. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Characterization factors (CFs) are used in life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the potential impact per unit of emission. CFs are obtained from a characterization model which assess the environmental mechanisms along the cause-effect chain linking an emission to its potential damage on a given area of protection, such as loss in ecosystem quality. Up to now, CFs for acidifying emissions did not cover the global scale and were only representative of their characterization model geographical scope. Consequently, current LCA practices implicitly assume that all emissions from a global supply chain occur within the continent referring to the characterization method geographical scope. This paper provides worldwide 2 degrees x 2.5 degrees spatially-explicit CFs, representing the change in relative loss of terrestrial vascular plant species due to an emission change of nitrogen oxides (NO), ammonia (NH3) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). We found that spatial variability in the CFs is much larger compared to statistical uncertainty (six orders of magnitude vs. two orders of magnitude). Spatial variability is mainly caused by the atmospheric fate factor and soil sensitivity factor, while the ecological effect factor is the dominant contributor to the statistical uncertainty. The CFs provided in our study allow the worldwide spatially explicit evaluation of life cycle impacts related to acidifying emissions. This opens the door to evaluate regional life cycle emissions of different products in a global economy. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Private households consume about 30 % of Germany's total primary energy and cause about 15 % of the total CO2 emissions, and so this sector represents a key sector for climate protection targets. Whereas primary energy consumption in buildings is limited by regulations, the production of carbon emissions-intensive materials is only moving slowly into the focus of legislation, regulations and, ultimately, the perception of society. Considering a thermally conditioned building during its life cycle, most environmental effects are during operation. Nevertheless, the grey energy of a concrete structure can add up to 20 % in individual cases. Owing to the carbon-intensive cement production, concrete as a material causes relatively high environmental impacts. Logical options appear to be substituting cement with so called by-products or using recycled additives. In fact, there are only a few projects that have used a resource-saving concrete. In 2010 in Ludwigshafen, one building in a group of buildings was chosen as the first building in Germany to be built almost completely from recycled concrete without increasing the cement content. It was built as a low-energy construction and in a zero-carbon-emissions area. The project was supported scientifically by the Institute of Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg and the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus. The buildings won the Construction Prize 2011 with the distinction "best relation between quality and costs". This paper discusses integral aspects of the use of recycling concrete from the structural design, eco-accounting and materials properties perspectives. It demonstrates the potential and opportunities for the quality-assured use of recycling concrete for sustainable resource management.In accordance with the environmental concerns that national policies still address throughout the world, railways have been extensively studied to provide quantified indicators for assessing construction/operations practices. It is essential to take energy consumption, into account since energy can be measured worldwide, in addition to constituting a global environmental load that is time-limited as regards resource availability and known as a discriminating criterion in comparing transport infrastructure. This article introduces an innovative, generic and systemic method dedicated to determining the energy consumption of a railway line during the pre-project phase by taking into account the complete life cycle of the rail infrastructure, including construction, maintenance and operations. The method developed (called "PEAM") focuses on assessing project variants during the design stage and therefore integrates both the geometric longitudinal constraints of the line and the thicknesses/volumes over the entire itinerary as design parameters for input into the various construction scenarios. PEAM combines methodologies stemming from life cycle assessment with a consumption model derived from physical modeling. The models associated with this method are then applied to study the energy consumption of a new high-speed line located in France that also has major implications for the European connections currently under investigation as well. Two project variants are compared in terms of total energy for a 50-year service life and a given characteristic rail traffic, including passenger and freight flows. Results obtained reveal a 30% difference between the two variants, which prior to applying PEAM were considered to be relatively similar. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Short-rotation coppice willow (SRCW) is a fast-growing and potentially high-yielding energy crop. Transition to bioenergy has been identified in Sweden as one strategy to mitigate climate change and decrease the current dependency on fossil fuel. In this study, life cycle assessment was used to evaluate and compare the climate impacts of SRCW systems, for the purpose of evaluating key factors influencing the climate change mitigation potential of SRCW grown on agricultural land in Sweden. Seven different scenarios were defined and analysed to identify the factors with the most influence on the climate. A carbon balance model was used to model carbon fluxes between soil, biomass and atmosphere under Swedish growing conditions. The results indicated that SRCW can act as a temporary carbon sink and therefore has a mitigating effect on climate change. The most important factor in obtaining a high climate change-mitigating effect was shown to be high yield. Low yield gave the worst mitigating effect of the seven scenarios, but it was still better than the effect of the reference systems, district heating produced from coal or natural gas.Case studies of mountain forest wood fuel supply chains from Norway and Italy are presented and compared. Results from previous studies in which greenhouse gas emissions and costs were evaluated using life cycle assessment and cost analysis respectively, are compared. The supply chain is more mechanized in Norway than Italy. Steeper terrain and low road density partly explain the persistence of motor-manual felling in the Italian case. Mechanized forest harvesting can increase productivity and reduce costs, but generates more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than motor-manual harvesting. In both cases, the main sources of GHG emissions are truck transportation and chipping. The total emissions are 22.9 kg CO2/m(3)s.o.b. (Norway) and 13.2 kg CO2/m(3)s.o.b. (Italy). The Norwegian case has higher costs than the Italian one, 64 (sic)/m(3)s.o.b. and 41 (sic)/m(3)s.o.b. respectively, for the overall supply chain. The study shows that mountain forests constitute an interesting source for fuel biomass in both areas, but are a rather costly source, particularly in Norway. The study also exemplifies the care needed in transferring LCA results between regions and countries, particularly where forest biomass is involved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As it supplies solar power, a priori considered harmless for the environment and human health compared with fossil fuels, the photovoltaic (PV) industry seems to contribute optimally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, overall, to sustainable development. However, considering the forecast for rapid growth, its use of potentially toxic substances and manufacturing processes presenting health and safety problems may jeopardize its benefits. This paper aims to establish a profile of the PV industry in order to determine current and emerging environmental and health concerns. A review of PV system life cycle assessments, in light of the current state of the industry and its developmental prospects, reveals information deficits concerning some sensitive life cycle indicators and environmental impacts, together with incomplete information on toxicological data and studies of workers' exposure to different chemical and physical hazards. Although solar panel installation is generally considered relatively safe, the occupational health concerns related to the growing number of hazardous materials handled in the PV industry warrants an all-inclusive occupational health and safety approach in order to achieve an optimal equilibrium with sustainability. To prevent eco-health problems from offsetting the benefits currently offered by the PV industry, manufacturers should cooperate actively with workers, researchers and government agencies toward improved and more transparent research, the adoption of specific and stricter regulations, the implementation of preventive risk management of occupational health and safety and, lastly, greater responsibilization toward PV systems from their design until their end of life. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper proposes an approach to evaluate the environmental performance of design alternatives during new product development (NPD) processes. The use of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches with life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate design alternatives' environmental performance during NPD processes is first discussed. The proposed approach integrates an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with evidential reasoning (ER) in the environmental performances evaluation and prioritization of different design options. A case study is described to illustrate the use of the proposed method.This study compares the cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), energy use, water use, and potential environmental toxicity of conventional (Conv), glass powder (GP), and alkali-activated slag (AAS) concrete and mortar. The comparison is based on 1 m(3) of concrete/mortar with similar 28-day compressive strength, so the same concrete/mortar member with same dimensions may be manufactured from Conv, GP, or AAS materials and used for same applications. The result shows that compared to a 35-MPa Conv concrete, a 35-MPa GP concrete has, on average, 19% lower GHGs, 17% less energy, 14% less water, and 14-21% lower environmental toxicity. A 35-MPa AAS concrete has 73% lower GHGs, 43% less energy, 25% less water, and 22-94% lower effects for all environmental toxicity categories except an 72% higher ecotoxicity effect. Environmental impact reductions are also found for using GP as a cement replacement in concrete with lower strengths and replacing cement with GP or AAS in mortars with different strengths. The paper concludes that using alternative cementitious materials GP and AAS as cement replacements could significantly reduce the environmental impacts of cement-based products. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare the impacts of two adhesive systems used for medium density fiberboard. Adhesives made from a theoretical protein-lignin-composite and petrochemical feedstocks were investigated. The inventory data was obtained from published literature, site investigations and laboratory scale experiments. Ecoindicator 99, a single score sustainability impact assessment method was applied. Our calculations reveal that the bioadhesive composed only of bio-based ingredients has a 22 % lower life cycle impact than the adhesive from petrochemical origin. The principal impact on both petrochemical and bioadhesive manufacture comes from the use of local mineral resources and the bioadhesive shows a considerable decrease (39 %) in environmental impact scores compared to the petrochemical adhesive. Underlying issues in LCA methodology are discussed in relation to potential contribution to the value proposition and ingredient selection for emerging bioadhesives.Current research aims to make the impact assessment module of life cycle assessment (LCA) less site-generic and thus more relevant to particular regions. The Arctic region attracts its share of interest when it comes to environmental issues, but little research has been performed with the explicit aim to incorporate its particular features into LCA. Through a survey directed to individual experts and a brief literature review, this article identifies environmental impact categories of particular relevance to this region. Findings should be interpreted with caution; nevertheless, impact categories connected to POPs, heavy metals, ecotoxicity, acidification and the cryosphere are with confidence identified as important. The regional scaling factors resulting from the survey could in principle be employed in LCA calculations, but optimally require verification by specified future research. However, indications of a certain resistance to a full quantitative clarification of priorities in the Arctic environment are identified.This paper describes the life cycle assessment and life cycle cost analysis of a typical Australian house designs. It evaluates the effect of selected alternative wall assemblages on environmental impacts and life cycle cost over the various life stages of buildings (i.e. construction, operations, maintenance and final disposal). A case study house was used as the base case for all the alternative wall assemblage designs. This paper also reports on alternative wall assemblage designs that were produced with variations in external wall cladding, insulation type and thickness, air gap thickness and position. Each design was varied such that it achieved a chosen star rating. Five exterior wall claddings were selected, typical of the Australian building industry. These claddings were brick, autoclave aerated concrete block, fibro-cement sheet, pine saw logs and weatherboard. The results were analyzed for the whole building on a whole life cycle basis in terms of economic and environmental impact. The implications of life cycle environmental impacts and life cycle costs were evaluated and the optimum assemblage design is reported using optimization algorithm. A set of best solution is found depending on factors: the model assumptions, range of environmental and economic indicators considered, and the chosen quantitative criteria. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper considers energy conservation practices in Qatar with special emphasis on commercial buildings. Energy conservation approaches are classified into five main areas and an Energy Conservation Matrix (ECM) database for buildings is developed. The ECM maps the energy conservation techniques/technologies to models versus their application domain. Three scenarios (building envelope design, change in customer behavior, and consideration of renewable energy supply) are analyzed to study different alternatives for efficiency improvement. The analysis is done in a case hotel. The analysis shows that, the energy conservation potential of using envelope redesign for the case study is about 7.5% while conservation through behavior change ranges between 2.74% and 15.80%. The conserved energy potential ranges between 10% and 24.12% of the site energy in the combinatorial scenario that integrated envelope design alternatives with customer behavior change. The renewable energy (RE) scenario conserves energy, indirectly, by using green energies generated from renewable sources. The output shows that due to changes as per the three scenarios, total CO2 emissions of the building are also reduced. The analysis shows that adoption of 30% RE alternative can reduce emissions by about 27% with respect to the reference scenario. It is believed that the scenarios developed in this paper and the results obtained will motivate the designers to consider alternative designs or redesigns in the large scale commercial buildings. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present study is a life cycle analysis of a patented building-integrated solar thermal collector which was developed/experimentally tested at the University of Corsica, in France, with the concept "integration into gutters/no visual impact". Three configurations (reference and two alternatives) are evaluated. The life-cycle impact assessment methodologies of embodied energy (EE)/embodied carbon (EC), two databases and multiple scenarios are adopted. The results reveal that the reference system can considerably improve its environmental performance by utilizing collectors connected in parallel. The Energy Payback Time of the reference system decreases to less than 2 years by parallel connection while it is around 0.5 years if recycling is also adopted. The EE of the systems is around 3 GJ(prim)/m(2) and it is reduced to around 0.4-0.5 GJ(prim)/m(2) by recycling. The EC of the configurations is approximately 0.16 t CO2.eq/m(2) without recycling and around 0.02-0.03 t CO2.eq/m(2) with recycling. CO2.eq emissions are strongly related with electricity mix. A reduction 28-96% in CO2.eq emissions of the systems is achieved by adopting configurations with "double collector surface/output". Concerning indicator of sustainability, the system with parallel connection shows a value of 0.78. The findings of the present investigation could be utilized for the design of building-integrated solar thermal systems as well as for research purposes. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sugar sediment waste was incorporated into the raw material mix for the production of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, and was demonstrated by extensive testing to provide greater compressive strength than conventional materials, and an extended time lag. In addition, the use of this otherwise waste material was demonstrated to be highly beneficial both economically and environmentally. Sugar sediment is a waste product of the sugar refining industry in Thailand, and is available in huge quantities. The optimum composition obtained had sugar sediment content of 30% by weight replacement of sand and 7.5% by weight of lime. The resultant product showed a maximum compressive strength of around 6.1 N/mm(2) and the highest proportion of tobermorite phase of 28.9%. The higher strength can be confirmed by a higher crystalline tobermorite phase. The surface of the Autoclaved Aerated Concrete is a finer needle-like crystalline morphology. The Autoclaved Aerated Concrete consisting of the optimum sugar sediment content also extended the time for the heat wave to propagate from the outer wall to the inner wall. This study also considered the environmental, economic and health impacts of removing a substantial quantity of the industrial waste product from landfill sites. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainability characterization of manufacturing processes is key to the inventory data development for life cycle analysis of products and processes in manufacturing industries. The ability of an organization to compare and contrast this sustainability performance in a variety of manufacturing process categories is crucial for purposes of evaluating and improving the process performance or doing tradeoff analysis for dealing with suboptimal performance. In such a situation, it is necessary to abstract this information into broader, aggregated, and consistent viewpoints such that similarities and contrasts in sustainability performance are visually deliberated. For developing such a visual system, the abstracted viewpoint should be transformed to a process classification scheme. A faceted approach to manufacturing process classifications has been proposed in this work for this purpose. We developed a visual interface to navigate the process classification scheme. We also provide a means by which dynamic hierarchical taxonomies can be generated by ranking the abstracted viewpoints called facets and classifiers.The reduction of product-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in milk production appears to be necessary. The reduction of emissions on an individual farm might be highly accepted by farm owners if it were accompanied by an increase in profitability. Using life cycle assessments to determine the product carbon footprints (PCF) and farm-level evaluations to record profitability, we explored opportunities for optimization based on analysis of 81 organic and conventional pasture-based dairy farms in southern Germany. The objective of the present study was to detect common determining factors for low PCF and high management incomes (MI) to achieve GHG reductions at the lowest possible operational cost. In our sample, organic farms, which performed economically better than conventional farms, produced PCF that were significantly higher than those produced by conventional farms [1.61 0.29 vs. 1.45 0.28 kg of CO2 equivalents (CO(2)eq) per kg of milk; means SD)]. A multiple linear regression analysis of the sample demonstrated that low feed demand per kilogram of milk, high grassland yield, and low forage area requirements per cow are the main factors that decrease PCF. These factors are also useful for improving a farm's profitability in principle. For organic farms, a reduction of feed demand of 100 g/kg of milk resulted in a PCF reduction of 105 g of CO(2)eq/ kg of milk and an increase in MI of approximately 2.1 euro cents (c)/kg of milk. For conventional farms, a decrease of feed demand of 100 g/kg of milk corresponded to a reduction in PCF of 117 g of CO(2)eq/kg of milk and an increase in MI of approximately 3.1 c/kg of milk. Accordingly, farmers could achieve higher profits while reducing GHG emissions. Improved education and training of farmers and consultants regarding GHG mitigation and farm profitability appear to be the best methods of improving efficiency under traditional and organic farming practices.Seismic design of concrete structures is currently based on time-invariant capacity design criteria which do not account for environmental hazards. The significant progressive decay of strength and ductility of concrete structures exposed to damage, in particular due to reinforcing steel corrosion, shows that this approach should be revised to consider the deterioration over time of the seismic performance. This is important also for precast systems, for which most of structural members are often directly exposed to the atmosphere and environmental aggressiveness. This paper presents a probabilistic approach for the lifetime assessment of seismic performance of concrete structures considering the interaction of seismic and environmental hazards. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is shown by its application to multistory precast buildings exposed to corrosion. The results show that structures designed for the same seismic action could have different lifetime seismic performance depending on the environmental exposure. These results emphasize the importance of a life-cycle approach to both seismic assessment of existing buildings and seismic design of new structures, and indicate that capacity design criteria need to be properly revised to consider the severity of the environmental exposure.This article summarizes student performance and survey data from a recent massive open online course (MOOC) on life cycle assessment (LCA). Its purpose is to shed light on student learning outcomes, challenges, and success factors, as well as on improvement opportunities for the MOOC and the role of online courses in LCA education in general. Student survey data and course performance data were compiled, analyzed, and interpreted for 1257 students who completed a pre-course survey and 262 students who completed a post-course survey. Both surveys were designed to assess student learning outcomes, topical areas of difficulty, changing perceptions on the nature of LCA, and future plans after completing the MOOC. Results suggest that online courses can attract and motivate a large number of students and equip them with basic analytical skills to move on to more advanced LCA studies. However, results also highlight how MOOCs are not without structural limitations, especially related to mostly "locked in" content and the impracticality of directly supporting individual students, which can create challenges for teaching difficult topics and conveying important limitations of LCA in practice. Online courses, and MOOCs in particular, may present an opportunity for the LCA community to efficiently recruit and train its next generations of LCA analysts and, in particular, those students who might not otherwise have an opportunity to take an LCA course. More surveys should be conducted by LCA instructors and researchers moving forward to enable scientific development and sharing of best practice teaching methods and materials.This paper presents life cycle assessment of planned mass production of the thermal insulation blocks (TIB) made of thermal insulation composite material (TICM) from secondary raw materials-glass and plastic. This material is being developed at Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering for use in structural details of (especially low energy or passive) buildings subjected to higher compressive loads. Two production modes depending on the quality of the input materials are compared. The assessment is conducted using GaBi 4 software tool with inbuilt Ecoinvent database. The results of the assessment are presented in individual impact categories according to used characterization model (CML 2001-Dec. 07). All the necessary energy and material flows are specified in detail for the purpose of the assessment. Cut-off allocation method is used for allocating the environmental impacts of recycled materials. Part of the assessment is sensitivity analysis of one variable parameter-amount of TIB produced per year. The results of the assessment show decisive impact of used electricity source on the overall results-86.2 and 94.3 %, respectively, for both production modes. This is closely connected with quality of used secondary raw materials and design of the production line. Use of higher-quality materials, as well as changes of the designed production line can reduce the overall environmental impacts by almost 30 %. The results show possible improvements in the planned mass production of the TIB. They also find that further investigation will be required before the start of mass production, especially in connection with improving the environmental impacts of used electricity sources.Environmental impacts of the decommissioning of nuclear power plants are brought into focus by the nuclear phase-out in Germany and a worldwide growing number of decommissioning projects. So far, life cycle assessments of decommissioning nuclear power plants have been conducted very rarely or are based on rather uncertain assumptions. Against this background, environmental impacts of the ongoing decommissioning of the nuclear power plant in Lubmin (KGR), Germany are examined. Methodological aspects like transferability to other decommissioning projects as well as influence of assumptions about the lifespan of a power plant are discussed. A life cycle assessment of the decommissioning according to ISO 14040/44 is conducted. The decommissioning of one power plant (of the assessed KGR) is chosen as functional unit. The system boundaries include removal and demolition of plant components and buildings as well as decontamination, conditioning, interim storage, and final repository of low-level and interim-level nuclear waste together with disposal and recycling of conventional waste. Interim storage and final repository of high-level nuclear waste such as fuel rods are excluded from the system boundaries as they are assigned to the use phase of the plant. Primary data was obtained from the plant decommissioning firm (Energiewerke Nord GmbH, EWN) in Lubmin. The GaBi database was used to model background processes. Environmental impacts are estimated using the CML2001 methodology. Environmental impacts are mainly caused by on-site energetic demands of component removal and peripheral tasks. Further significant impacts are caused by the handling, storage, and final repository of low-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste. Recycling conventional, nonradioactive metallic waste has the potential to unburden the process in a significant scale, depending on recycling rates. The dismantling of nuclear power plants shows a relevant environmental impact. Regarding the environmental impacts per kilowatt-hour assumptions concerning the plant' lifespan are a crucial factor. Comparing the result from this study to recent datasets for nuclear power poses the question if LCA datasets represent environmental burdens of nuclear power accurately. The transferability of LCA results to other studies using one parameter for scaling is problematic and needs further research.Industrial ecology academics have embraced with great interest the rebound effect principle operationalised within energy economics. By pursuing more comprehensive assessments, they applied tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) to appraise the environmental consequences of the rebound effect. As a result, the mainstream rebound mechanism was broadened and a diversity of (sometimes inconsistent) definitions and approaches unveiled. To depict the state of play, a comprehensive literature review is needed. A literature review has been carried out by targeting scientific documents relevant for the integration of the rebound effect into LCA-based studies. The search was conducted using two approaches: (1) via online catalogues using a defined search criterion and (2) via cross-citation analysis from the documents identified through the first approach. By analysing a total of 42 works yielded during our review, it was possible to bring together the various advantages of the life cycle perspective, as well as to identify the main inconsistencies and uninformed claims present in literature. Concretely, three main advantages have been identified and are discussed: (1) the representation of the rebound effect as a multi-dimensional, life cycle estimate, (2) the improvement of the technology explicitness and (3) the broadening of the consumption and production factors leading to the rebound effect. Also, inconsistencies on the definition and classification of the rebound effect have been found among studies. The review contributes a number of valuable insights to understand how the rebound effect has been treated within the industrial ecology and LCA fields. For instance, the conceptual and methodological refinements introduced by these fields represent a step forward from traditional viewpoints, making the study of the rebound effect more comprehensive and meaningful for environmental assessment and policy making. However, the broadened scope of this new approach unveiled some conceptual inconsistencies, which calls for a common framework. This framework would help the LCA community to consistently integrate the rebound effect as well as to create a common language with other disciplines, favouring learning and co-evolution. We believe that our findings can serve as a starting point in order to delineate such a common framework.The conventional decision-making for bridges is mostly focusing on technical, economical, and safety perspectives. Nowadays, the society devotes an ever-increased effort to the construction sector regarding their environmental performance. However, considering the complexity of the environmental problems and the diverse character of bridges, the related research for bridge as a whole system is very rare. Most existing studies were only conducted for a single indicator, part of the structure components, or a specific life stage. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized method for quantifying the environmental impact of a product, asset, or service throughout its whole life cycle. However, in the construction sector, LCA is usually applied in the procurement of buildings, but not bridges as yet. This paper presents a comprehensive LCA framework for road bridges, complied with LCA ReCiPe (H) methodology. The framework enables identification of the key structural components and life cycle stages of bridges, followed by aggregation of the environmental impacts into monetary values. The utility of the framework is illustrated by a practical case study comparing five designs for the Karlsnas Bridge in Sweden, which is currently under construction. This paper comprehensively analyzed 20 types of environmental indicators among five proposed bridge designs, which remedies the absence of full spectrum of environmental indicators in the current state of the art. The results show that the monetary weighting system and uncertainties in key variables such as the steel recycling rate and cement content may highly affect the LCA outcome. The materials, structural elements, and overall designs also have varying influences in different impact categories. The result can be largely affected by the system boundaries, surrounding environment, input uncertainties, considered impact indicators, and the weighting systems applied; thus, no general conclusions can be drawn without specifying such issues. Robustly evaluating and ranking the environmental impact of various bridge designs is far from straightforward. This paper is an important attempt to evaluate various designs from full dimensions. The results show that the indicators and weighting systems must be clearly specified to be applicable in a transparent procurement. This paper provides vital knowledge guiding the decision maker to select the most LCA-feasible proposal and mitigate the environmental burden in the early stage.Chemicals produced via chlor-alkali electrolysis are widely used throughout the water industry worldwide, with treatment chemicals often the second largest source of environmental impacts from potable water production after electricity use. Population-driven increases in the future demand for potable water will require concomitant increases in the production of water treatment chemicals, with the associated environmental impacts of chemicals production primarily arising from the additional demand for electricity. Due to the dominance of electricity in the environmental performance of chlor-alkali chemicals, assessment of the future environmental impacts of potable water production is largely dependent on proper identification of the marginal source of electricity. In this paper, we present a consequential cradle-to-gate carbon footprint (cCF) for the most widely used chlor-alkali-produced disinfectant (sodium hypochlorite (13 % w/w)) and coagulant (ferric chloride (42 % w/w)) in Australia, with special emphasis placed upon the identification of future marginal electricity supply and the substitution of hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide during production. While this analysis is presented in an Australian context, commonalities in potable water and chlor-alkali chemical production processes internationally give the findings a broader relevance. Consequential models for sodium hypochlorite (13 % w/w) and ferric chloride (42 % w/w) production were developed, and the identification of the marginal source of electricity was modelled using a "simple marginal technology" approach via operationalisation of the Weidema framework and a "complex marginal technology" using a partial equilibrium model. For the simple marginal technology, the levelised cost of electricity was used to select the most competitive energy generation technologies and those most relevant for the Australian market. For the complex marginal technology, the energy sector model was used to simulate the most likely electricity supply mix. Details of the different paths taken in the substitution of hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide are also presented. To allow for proper incorporation of uncertainties arising from these key factors in the cCF, several scenarios were developed covering fuel and carbon prices for identifying the marginal supply mix of electricity, as well as the likely production routes for sodium carbonate in the context of sodium hydroxide substitution. cCF results of sodium hypochlorite (13 % w/w) and ferric chloride (42 % w/w) are presented using simple and complex marginal technologies, and the implications of choosing one marginal technology over the other in the context of water treatment chemicals are presented. For the simple marginal technology approach, the global warming potential (GWP) per megagram of chemical varied from 68 to 429 kg CO2-eq for sodium hypochlorite (13 % w/w) and 59-1,020 kg CO2-eq for ferric chloride (42 % w/w). For the complex marginal technology approach, the GWP per megagram of chemical varied from 266 to 332 kg CO2-eq for sodium hypochlorite (13 % w/w) and 214-629 kg CO2-eq for ferric chloride (42 % w/w). Insights are given in relation to the impact of the price of fossil fuels, the carbon price, and the different substitution routes. The use of a partial equilibrium model (PEM) has enabled a better understanding of the variability of the results in this study. For example, the use of PEM for the identification of the complex marginal source of electricity shows that, for the case of Australia, any benefit from a carbon price is lost with high prices of natural gas due to the incentive to use cheaper fuels such as black and brown coal. Likewise, the use of explorative scenarios was decisive to manage the inherent uncertainty of the parameters included in the model. In relation to substitution, the case of ferric chloride (42 % w/w) indicated that using only one substitution route was not enough to fully understand the potential continuum of cCF results. The simple marginal approach, where an exclusive marginal source of electricity or substitution route is considered, presents significant risks for the modelling accuracy of the cCF as shown here for sodium hypochlorite (13 % w/w) and ferric chloride (42 % w/w), therefore, it is not recommended.Biofuel production processes at high gravity are currently under development. Most of these processes however use sugars or first generation feedstocks as substrate. This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the production of bio-ethanol at high gravity conditions from a second generation feedstock, namely, wheat straw. The LCA used lab results of a set of 36 process configurations in which dry matter content, enzyme preparation and loading, and process strategy were varied. The LCA results show that higher dry matter content leads to a higher environmental impact of the ethanol production, but this can be compensated by reducing the impact of enzyme production and use, and by polyethylene glycol addition at high dry matter content. The results also show that the renewable and non-renewable energy use resulting from the different process configurations ultimately determine their environmental impact. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates the environmental impacts of an ethanol production system using eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) as the feedstock. Aspen Plus (R) was used to model the acid bisulfite pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, and distillation steps. A cradle-to-gate LCA was conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts from cutting the trees to the production of anhydrous ethanol. The environmental impacts of the redcedar ethanol process were compared to those from the production of corn ethanol. Inventory data for the system were collected and used to calculate a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) using the IMPACT 2002+ and BEES+ framework in SimaPro 8.0.0. Four impact categories were evaluated: land occupation, water use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and non-renewable energy use. Results indicate that acid bisulfite pretreatment contributed to 65% of GHG emissions, 81% of non-renewable energy use, and 77% of water use of the overall process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar is normally produced as a by-product of bioenergy. However, if biochar is produced as a co-product with bioenergy from sustainably managed forests and used for soil amendment, it could provide a carbon neutral or even carbon negative solution for current environmental degradation problems. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of biochar production as a co-product of bioenergy and its implications. We focus on biochar production with reference to biomass availability and sustainability and on biochar utilization for its soil amendment and greenhouse gas emissions reduction properties. Past studies confirm that northwestern Ontario has a sustainable and sufficient supply of biomass feedstock that can be used to produce bioenergy, with biochar as a co-product that can replace fossil fuel consumption, increase soil productivity and sequester carbon in the long run. For the next step, we recommend that comprehensive life cycle assessment of biochar-based bioenergy production, from raw material collection to biochar application, with an extensive economic assessment is necessary for making this technology commercially viable in northwestern Ontario.In this study, we investigated a life cycle assessment (LCA) of six roof-waterproofing systems [asphalt (C1), synthetic polymer-based sheet (C2), improved asphalt (C3), liquid applied membrane (C4), Metal sheet with asphalt sheet (N1), and liquid applied membrane with asphalt sheet (N2)] for reinforced concrete building using an architectural model. To acquire accurate and realistic LCA results, minimum units of material compositions for life cycle inventory and real data for compositions of waterproofing materials were used. Considering only materials and energy demands for waterproofing systems per square meter, higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be generated in the order of C1 > N2 > C4 > N1 > C2 > C3 during construction phase. However, the order was changed to C1 > C4 > C3 > N2 > N1 > C2, when the actual architecture model was applied to the roof based on each specifications. When an entire life cycle including construction, maintenance, and deconstruction were considered, the amount of GHG emission was in the order of C4 > C1 > C3 > N2 > C2 > N1. Consequently, N1 was the most environmental-friendly waterproofing system producing the lowest GHG emission. GHG emissions from maintenance phase accounted for 71.4%similar to 78.3% among whole life cycle.Environmental impacts of 15 European pig farming systems were evaluated in the European Union Q-PorkChains project using life cycle assessment. One conventional and two non-conventional systems were evaluated from each of the five countries: Denmark, The Netherlands, Spain, France and Germany. The data needed for calculations were obtained from surveys of 5 to 10 farms from each system. The systems studied were categorised into conventional (C), adapted conventional (AC), traditional (T) and organic (O). Compared with C systems, AC systems differed little, with only minor changes to improve meat quality, animal welfare or environmental impacts, depending on the system. The difference was much larger for T systems, using very fat, slow-growing traditional breeds and generally outdoor raising of fattening pigs. Environmental impacts were calculated at the farm gate and expressed per kg of pig live weight and per ha of land used. For C systems, impacts per kg LW for climate change, acidification, eutrophication, energy use and land occupation were 2.3 kg CO2-eq, 440g SO2-eq, 18.5g PO4-eq, 16.2 MJ and 41 m(2), respectively. Compared with C, differences in corresponding mean values were +13%, + 5%, 0%, + 2% and +16% higher for AC; +54%, +79%, +23%, +50% and +156% for T, and +4%, -16%, +29%, +11% and +121% for O. Conversely, when expressed per ha of land use, mean impacts were 10% to 60% lower for T and O systems, depending on the impact category. This was mainly because of higher land occupation per kg of pig produced, owing to feed production and the outdoor raising of sows and/or fattening pigs. The use of straw bedding tended to increase climate change impact per kg LW. The use of traditional local breeds, with reduced productivity and feed efficiency, resulted in higher impacts per kg LW for all impact categories. T systems with extensive outdoor raising of pigs resulted in markedly lower impact per ha of land used. Eutrophication potential per ha was substantially lower for 0 systems. Conventional systems had lower global impacts (global warming, energy use, land use), expressed per kg LW, whereas differentiated systems had lower local impacts (eutrophication, acidification), expressed per ha of land use.Insulation is one of the most effective methods intended for reducing energy consumption in both heating and cooling of buildings. Selecting the right materials and determining the optimum insulation thickness in building insulation application is an important issue. Moreover it is important to use green insulating materials in order to limit the environmental impact in the use of these solutions. A growing interest is focused on the incorporation of low cost recycled materials in building products and their potential use as insulating panels for both new buildings and refurbishments. In this paper two panels were investigated, composed by waste paper and textile fibres, joined by glue, with a total thickness of 12 mm and 20 mm respectively. The study is focused on the thermal and acoustic characterisation of the panels, in order to provide accurate data for a reliable building integration. Thermal performance was evaluated by using the hot-box apparatus, according to UNI EN ISO 8990. A good thermal behaviour was found for all the investigated panels: k-values vary in the 0.034-0.039 W/m K range. The investigated panels could be a valid solution in place of classic insulation systems, even though thermal resistance is strongly influenced by the environmental humidity, the rate of the compression, and the presence of air between the layers. Therefore a thermal infrared camera was also used during the measurements, aiming to investigate the weak points of the assembled panels and to select the positions of the sensors. The acoustic absorption coefficient was determined by means of a Kundt's tube, in compliance with ISO 10534-2. The Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC - the arithmetic value of the absorption coefficient at the frequencies 250, 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz) of the samples varies in 0.23-0.38 range, depending on the layer thickness. Finally an initial Life Cycle Assessment of the proposed solutions was considered and compared to the performance of other replaceable insulating materials. Results showed that the panel composed by recycled papers and textile fibres causes relative large energy consumptions and a high global warming potential. The importance of this kind of insulation system is due to the use of recycled materials: both the waste paper and the TNT fibres should be disposed by means of a large use of energy. This way they will be re-used and the cost for the production of the panels is very low. A disadvantage of these panels could be their high density (about 433 kg/m3): the future step for this work will be the improvement of this new insulating type in order to obtain a competitive solution on the market. The manufacturing of lighter solutions will allow the panels to be more competitive on the market in terms of embodied energy and GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Exploitation of shale gas in the UK is at a very early stage, but with the latest estimates suggesting potential resources of 3.8 x 10(13) cubic metres - enough to supply the UK for next 470 years it is viewed by many as an exciting economic prospect. However, its environmental impacts are currently unknown. This is the focus of this paper which estimates for the first time the life cycle impacts of UK shale gas, assuming its use for electricity generation. Shale gas is compared to fossil-fuel alternatives (conventional gas and coal) and low-carbon options (nuclear, offshore wind and solar photovoltaics). The results suggest that the impacts range widely, depending on the assumptions. For example, the global warming potential (GWP100) of electricity from shale gas ranges from 412 to 1102 g CO2-eq./kWh with a central estimate of 462 g. The central estimates suggest that shale gas is comparable or superior to conventional gas and low-carbon technologies for depletion of abiotic resources, eutrophication, and freshwater, marine and human toxicities. Conversely, it has a higher potential for creation of photochemical oxidants (smog) and terrestrial toxicity than any other option considered. For acidification, shale gas is a better option than coal power but an order of magnitude worse than the other options. The impact on ozone layer depletion is within the range found for conventional gas, but nuclear and wind power are better options still. The results of this research highlight the need for tight regulation and further analysis once typical UK values of key parameters for shale gas are established, including its composition, recovery per well, fugitive emissions and disposal of drilling waste. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Worldwide human production systems are tightly coupled to fossil-based energy, the source of which will not be available at low cost in the foreseeable future. Alternative energy sources are being sought for, among which those derived from biomass are considered to have great potential. Brazilian ethanol sugarcane produced at a large scale is being classified in scientific papers and politics as a renewable energy source. However, only the energy return on investment (EROI) and/or the amount of CO2 released to atmosphere have been considered as indicators of renewability. This work aims to discuss some theoretical points, within an embodied energy analysis, that make its use inappropriate for answering all issues related to the concept of renewability. Emergy accounting (with an "m") is used as a comparative tool and the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is evaluated as case study. An EROI of 6.7 for ethanol was obtained, showing that for each unit of "commercial energy" invested within the process, 6.7 units of another kind of energy is obtained e this index shows an excellent value for energy efficiency, but it does not reflect the renewability of ethanol. On the other hand, emergy accounting shows a renewability index of 19%, indicating a low rating for sugarcane ethanol. All scientific methodologies available to assess potential energy sources have their pros and cons, but the analyst must be aware that each methodology supplies different indicators with different meanings. Energy analysts should use methodologies appropriately, avoiding wider conclusions not actually represented by indices calculated. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The interest in third generation biofuels from microalgae has been rising during the past years. Meanwhile, it seems not economically feasible to grow algae just for biofuels. Co-products with a higher value should be produced by extracting a particular algae fraction to improve the economics of an algae biorefinery. The present study aims at analyzing the influence of two main microalgae components (lipids and proteins) on the composition and quantity of biocrude oil obtained via hydrothermal liquefaction of two strains (Nannochloropsis gaditana and Scenedesmus almeriensis). The algae were liquefied as raw biomass, after extracting lipids and after extracting proteins in microautoclave experiments at different temperatures (300-375 degrees C) for 5 and 15 min. The results indicate that extracting the proteins from the microalgae prior to HTL may be interesting to improve the economics of the process while at the same time reducing the nitrogen content of the biocrude oil. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The growing awareness of environmental issues has made the design of eco-friendly products a critical task for modern businesses. Almost all the costs and the environmental performance of a product over its life-cycle are determined in its design and development phase. The selection of alternative green designs is, however, a major challenge in today's competitive environment. The increasing pressure on time-to-market conflicts with the analytical approach typically required when using conventional environmental management accounting (EMA) tools such as Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life-Cycle Costing (LCC). This paper introduces a comprehensive method that integrates the LCA and EMA concepts, fuzzy logic and Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), to measure the environmental and organisational performance of different designs. We propose a screening model to help designers reduce their reliance on LCA and present a case study to demonstrate that this approach provides a systematic method of evaluating alternative designs and identifying product,design improvement options. The measurement approach presented in this research can help companies reduce development lead time by screening out undesirable design options. More importantly, the approach can be modelled with the mere use of an Excel spreadsheet, which means limited resources are needed to implement the proposed method. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Given the recent worldwide environmental issues, there is a need to reduce the energy consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions of the building sector, keeping in mind the whole life cycle assessment of construction materials. Determining the sustainability of the products is complex, and the presence of one or more "eco" features does not necessarily make it "eco" in its entirety. The ITACA Protocol for environmental sustainability promotes the use of recycled, renewable and locally sourced materials. A multi-criteria analysis has been carried out in order to identify high energy efficiency external walls for ZEBs in the Mediterranean climate, privileging eco-friendly building materials. The modeFRONTIER optimization tool, by the use of calculation procedures developed in Matlab, was used to evaluate the dynamic performance of building components. The optimization was performed in terms of steady thermal transmittance, periodic thermal transmittance, decrement factor, time shift, areal heat capacity, thermal admittance, surface mass, thickness and ITACA score. A method for the design of new low-cost residential buildings will be defined; in particular, the final aim is to determine not a single optimal solution, but a set of possible external wall configurations among which the designer can choose the proper solution for his application, according to the Pareto front of the multi-criteria problem. The results underline that, in a warm climate, the best sequences of layers are with high surface mass for the first layer (internal side), followed by common insulating materials for the middle layer and eco-friendly insulating materials for the outer layer. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, we study the maintenance of city parking facilities (CPFs), specifically on modeling and support for decision-making related to planning CPF maintenance. Managing the maintenance of CPFs is complicated because it is a multi-disciplinary problem involving many participants, huge quantities of information, limited budgets, and conflicts of goals and criteria. These facts indicate that the decision-making processes in managing the maintenance of CPFs are ill-defined problems. To help maintenance managers cope with this complexity, we propose an approach that combines analytic hierarchy processing (AHP) and PROMETHEE multicriteria methods, and apply this approach to a priority-setting problem. After assessing the conditions of existing CPFs and the planned states of those CPFs, our approach produced a goal tree and criteria, and defined possible actions for the parking facilities. Representatives of stakeholders provided criteria weights by applying the AHP method. Using PROMETHEE II, we ranked the priorities, and the PROMETHEE V method allowed us to define the implementation phases of maintenance, producing the final maintenance plan. We validated our concept in the city of Split.The UK has targets to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 compared to a 1990 baseline. The Transition Pathways research consortium has generated a set of three low carbon UK electrical futures, together with the corresponding technology mixes. All require a significant amount of technological change, including a significant increase in the contribution of CHP (combined heat and power). This study investigates the appropriateness of industrial CHP as a low carbon electricity generation technology for the UK via an environmental LCA (life cycle assessment) case study of an existing industrial CHP plant in UK. The study shows that harnessing the resource of industrial heat via straight forward CHP conversion can generate electricity with lower associated energy and carbon impacts than the current and the 1990 National Grids. However it is apparent that if the grid successfully reduces in carbon intensity, the technology will come at a comparative carbon cost. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The conversion of biomass to four different outputs via gasification is a renewable technology that could reduce the use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study investigates the energy aspects for a new concept of biomass based quad-generation plant producing power, heat, methanol and methane. Circulating fluidized bed gasifier and the gas technology institute (GTI) gasifier technologies are used for this quad-generation process. Two different biomass feedstocks are considered in this study. The net energy ratio for six different pathways having the range of between 1.3 and 7.2. The lowest limit corresponds to the wood chips-based power, heat, methanol and methane production pathway using GTI technology. Since more efficient alternatives exist for the generation of heat and electricity from biomass, it is argued that syngas is best used for methanol production. The aim of this study was to evaluate the energy performance, reduce GHG and acid rain precursor emission, and use of biomass for different outputs based on demand. Finally, a sensitivity analysis and a comparative study ar conducted for expected technological improvements and factors that could increase the energy performance.This paper presents life cycle environmental impacts of UK shale gas used for electricity generation, in comparison with other fossil, nuclear and renewable options. Per kWh of electricity generated, shale gas has higher environmental impacts than the other options, except for coal. Thus, if it were to replace coal, most impacts would be reduced, including the global warming potential (GWP; by 2.3 times). However, if it were to compete with nuclear or some renewables most impacts would rise, with the GWP increasing by 5-123 times. Within a future UK electricity mix up to 2030, shale gas would make little difference to the environmental impacts of electricity generation, including the GWP, even for the most optimistic assumptions for its domestic production. This suggests that, in the medium term, shale gas cannot help towards meeting UK climate change targets and that certain renewables and nuclear power should be prioritized instead.The study focuses on sustainability evaluation of an algae-based energy system in Latvia with a holistic and integrated approach of multi-criteria analysis combined with life cycle assessment (including a practical side - biogas yield experiments of locally available algae). The study shows potential for sustainable use of algae in Latvian conditions and thus that algal biomass can be utilized for the production of biogas. The most sustainable and feasible scenario of using algae for biogas energy production foresees the collection of algae biomass from natural water bodies. Important beneficial effects through the use of algae are related to avoiding global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication impacts. Biogas batch experiments carried out with the local macrophyte C. demersum have shown a methane yield of 554 1 CH4/kg VS.The aim of this paper is the adaptation of an Ecodesign methodology for product publishing SMEs that have implemented Lean Management. To obtain verification of this methodology, an eco-redesign case study of a product has been carried out from a furniture publishing SME which applies lean management to its entire production chain. Some proposed improvements resulting from this case study were: Design for dismantling, Multifunction, Dematerialisation, Increasing the material of renewable origin & Use of recycled material. The results indicate that this ecodesign proposal may be applied in a simpler procedure in companies which have already lean management criteria. Even more, lean management facilitates the development of life cycle assessment studies.Life cycle assessment (LCA) calculates the environmental impact of a product over its entire life cycle. Uncertainty analysis is an important aspect in LCA, and is usually performed using Monte Carlo sampling. In this study, Monte Carlo sampling, Latin hypercube sampling, quasi Monte Carlo sampling, analytical uncertainty propagation and fuzzy interval arithmetic were compared based on e.g. convergence rate and output statistics. Each method was tested on three LCA case studies, which differed in size and behaviour. Uncertainty propagation in LCA using a sampling method leads to more (directly) usable information compared to fuzzy interval arithmetic or analytical uncertainty propagation. Latin hypercube and quasi Monte Carlo sampling provide more accuracy in determining the sample mean than Monte Carlo sampling and can even converge faster than Monte Carlo sampling for some of the case studies discussed in this paper. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial symbiosis is the sharing of services, utility, and by-product resources among industries. This is usually made in order to add value, reduce costs, and improve the environment, and therefore has been taken as an effective approach for developing an eco-industrial park, improving resource efficiency, and reducing pollutant emission. Most conventional evaluation approaches ignored the contribution of natural ecosystem to the development of industrial symbiosis and cannot reveal the interrelations between economic development and environmental protection, leading to a need of an innovative evaluation method. Under such a circumstance, we present an emergy analysis-based evaluation method by employing a case study at Shenyang Economic and Technological Development Zone (SETDZ). Specific emergy indicators on industrial symbiosis, including emergy savings and emdollar value of total emergy savings, were developed so that the holistic picture of industrial symbiosis can be presented. Research results show that nonrenewable inputs, imported resource inputs, and associated services could be saved by 89.3, 32.51, and 15.7 %, and the ratio of emergy savings to emergy of the total energy used would be about 25.58 %, and the ratio of the emdollar value of total emergy savings to the total gross regional product (GRP) of SETDZ would be 34.38 % through the implementation of industrial symbiosis. In general, research results indicate that industrial symbiosis could effectively reduce material and energy consumption and improve the overall eco-efficiency. Such a method can provide policy insights to industrial park managers so that they can raise appropriate strategies on developing eco-industrial parks. Useful strategies include identifying more potential industrial symbiosis opportunities, optimizing energy structure, increasing industrial efficiency, recovering local ecosystems, and improving public and industrial awareness of eco-industrial park policies.The construction industry is one of the largest sources of carbon emissions. Manufacturing of raw materials, such as cement, steel and aluminium, is energy intensive and has considerable impact on carbon emissions level. Due to the rising recognition of global climate change, the industry is under pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon labelling schemes are therefore developed as meaningful yardsticks to measure and compare carbon emissions. Carbon labelling schemes can help switch consumer-purchasing habits to low-carbon alternatives. However, such switch is dependent on a transparent scheme. The principle of transparency is highlighted in all international greenhouse gas (GHG) standards, including the newly published ISO 14067: Carbon footprint of products - requirements and guidelines for quantification and communication. However, there are few studies which systematically investigate the transparency requirements in carbon labelling schemes. A comparison of five established carbon labelling schemes, namely the Singapore Green Labelling Scheme, the CarbonFree (the U.S.), the CO2 Measured Label and the Reducing CO2 Label (UK), the Carbon-Counted (Canada), and the Hong Kong Carbon Labelling Scheme is therefore conducted to identify and investigate the transparency requirements. The results suggest that the design of current carbon labels have transparency issues relating but not limited to the use of a single sign to represent the comprehensiveness of the carbon footprint. These transparency issues are partially caused by the flexibility given to select system boundary in the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to measure GHG emissions. The primary contribution of this study to the construction industry is to reveal the transparency requirements from international GHG standards and carbon labels for construction products. The findings also offer five key strategies as practical implications for the global community to improve the performance of current carbon labelling schemes on transparency. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose The scope of this paper is to present the results of the Project HyTech, which aimed, amongst other objectives, to quantify the environmental and economic effects of generalized introduction and use of electric vehicles in Greece. Method The expected energy consumption and life cycle economic and environmental cost of electric vehicles for the present and immediate future is estimated after a relevant literature review. The future evolution of the Greek vehicle fleet relative to the Gross Domestic Product per capita is approximated by use of a Gompertz curve. The number of new vehicles registered every year, the age composition of the vehicle fleet, the resulting Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and energy use costs are calculated depending on a set of parameters. Choosing different sets of assumptions and calculating the resulting vehicle fleet statistics through year 2030, we investigated a number of scenarios. Results The effect of market penetration by electric and hybrid vehicles and the resulting benefit on energy use cost and GHG emissions, compared to conventional vehicles is presented for each scenario. Fuel consumption and mileage of the vehicle fleet is a major factor that determines energy use cost and GHG emissions, regardless of fleet composition. In the case of an optimistic scenario that assumes a high renewal rate for the vehicle fleet, significant EV and HEV market penetration and use of renewable energy sources for battery recharging, a reduction of 668 kT CO2 in GHG emissions and 362 million (sic) in energy costs per year in 2030 could be achieved.The identification and working mechanisms of Rebound Effects (REs) have important policy implications. The intensity of these impacts is crucial when it comes to detecting strategies to promote sustainable consumption of food and beverages, as in the case of wine. In fact, neglecting the occurrence of REs in wine production and delivery leads to under- or over-estimating the effects that novel more sustainable technologies may produce. An in-depth analysis on the ways in which the stakeholders may react to the availability of a new product (e.g. wine produced through a process oriented to the reduction of CO2 emissions) may be particularly useful to allow producers and consumers to target the REs with respect to the overall goals of desired sustainability. In this article, we first provide a definition and a classification of different types of REs and then analyse some exemplificative cases applied to the supply and consumption of wine produced through technologies that reduce environmental emissions or resource consumptions. A final step analyses the methodological tools that may be useful when including REs in life cycle thinking as applied to the wine sector. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The following paper presents dangerous and evident phenomenon of communicational chaos in the field of environment protection and sustainable development in a turbulent external environment. It is pointed that this phenomenon gives organizations an opportunity to take pretended pro-environmental actions, such as socially critical greenwashing. As a counterbalance to those practices, a concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is presented, underlining the possibility of developing honest environmental marketing basing on methods such as Life Cycle Assessment.Floodplain forests serve a critical function in the global carbon cycle because floodplains constitute an important carbon sink compared with other terrestrial ecosystems. Forests on dynamic floodplain landscapes, such as those created by river meandering processes, are characterized by uneven-aged trees and exhibit high spatial variability, reflecting the influence of interacting fluvial, hydrological, and ecological processes. Detailed and accurate mapping of aboveground biomass (AGB) on floodplain landscapes characterized by uneven-aged forests is critical for improving estimates of floodplain-forest carbon pools, which is useful for greenhouse gas (GHG) life cycle assessment. It would also help improve our process understanding of biomorphodynamics of river-floodplain systems, as well as planning and monitoring of conservation, restoration, and management of riverine ecosystems. Using stochastic gradient boosting (SGB), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), and Cubist, we remotely estimate AGB of a bottom-land hardwood forest on a meander bend of a dynamic lowland river. As predictors, we use 30-m and 10-m multispectral image bands (Landsat 7 ETM+ and SPOT 5, respectively) and ancillary data. Our findings show that SGB and MARS significantly outperform Cubist, which is used for U.S. national-scale forest biomass mapping. Across all data-experiments and algorithms, at 10-m spatial resolution, SGB yields the best estimates (RMSE = 22.49 tonnes/ha; coefficient of determination (R-2)=0.96) when geomorphometric data are also included. On the other hand, at 30-m spatial resolution, MARS yields the best estimates (RMSE= 29.2 tonnes/ha; R-2 = 0.94) when image-derived data are also included. By enabling more accurate AGB mapping of floodplains characterized by uneven-aged forests, SGB and MARS provide an avenue for improving operational estimates of AGB and carbon at local, regional/continental, and global scales. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper compares environmental impacts of two packaging options for contrast media offered by GE Healthcare: +PLUSPAK (TM) polymer bottle and traditional glass bottle. The study includes all relevant life cycle stages from manufacturing to use and final disposal of the bottles and includes evaluation of a variety of end-of-life disposal scenarios. The study was performed in accordance with the international standards ISO 14040/14044, and a third-party critical review was conducted. The functional unit is defined as the packaging of contrast media required to deliver one dose of 96 mL to a patient for an X-ray procedure. Primary data are from GE Healthcare and its suppliers; secondary data are from the ecoinvent database and the literature. A variety of end-of-life disposal scenarios are explored using both cutoff and market-based allocation. Impact assessment includes human health (midpoint) and ecosystems and resources (end point) categories from ReCiPe (H) and cumulative energy demand. Sensitivity analyses include (1) bottle size, (2) secondary packaging, (3) manufacturing electricity, (4) glass recycled content, (5) scrap rate, (6) distribution transport, (7) contrast media, and (8) choice of impact assessment method. Uncertainty analysis is performed to determine how data quality affects the study conclusions. This study indicates that the polymer bottle outperforms the glass bottle in every environmental impact category considered. Bottle components are the most significant contributors, and the vial body has the highest impacts among bottle components for both polymer and glass bottles. The polymer bottle exhibits lower impact in all impact categories considered regardless of the following: end-of-life treatment (using either cutoff or market-based allocation), bottle size, manufacturing electricity grid mix, glass recycled content, scrap rate, contrast media, distribution transport (air vs. ocean), and choice of impact assessment method. Secondary packaging can be a major contributor to impact. The polymer bottle has considerably lower impact compared to the glass bottle for all multi-pack configurations, but the comparison is less clear for single-pack configurations due to significantly higher packaging material used per functional dose, resulting in proportionally higher impacts in all impact categories. The lower impacts of the polymer bottle for this packaging application can be attributed to lower material and manufacturing impacts, lower distribution impacts, and lower end-of-life disposal impacts. The results of this study suggest that using polymer rather than glass bottles provides a means by which to lower environmental impact of contrast media packaging.This study aims to (1) evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the three types of raw cork produced in Portuguese cork oak woodlands (in Alentejo region) considering two alternative practices for stand establishment (plantation and natural regeneration), (2) compare the environmental impacts of raw cork production in Portuguese cork oak woodlands and in Catalonian cork oak forests, and (3) assess the influence of different allocation criteria for partitioning the environmental impacts between the different types of raw cork produced. A cradle-to-gate approach was adopted starting with stand establishment up to cork storage in a field yard. The system boundaries include all management operations undertaken during the following stages: stand establishment, stand tending, cork stripping, and field recovery. The allocation of the environmental impacts to reproduction, second, and virgin cork was based on mass and market price criteria. An alternative allocation approach was simulated by allocating environmental impacts also to the wood produced in the cork oak stands. The impact assessment was performed using the characterization factors recommended by the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD). In Portugal, cork produced from naturally regenerated stands has a better environmental performance than cork produced from planted stands, but the differences are smaller than 10 %. Different management models of cork oak stands in Portugal and Catalonia (agro-silvopastoral system and forest system, respectively) originate different impact levels, which tend to be significantly lower in Catalonia. The environmental hot spots in the two regions are also distinct. In Catalonia, they are associated with cleaning, road maintenance, and worker and cork transport. In Portugal, they are fertilization, pruning, and cleaning. The two allocation criteria affect significantly the results obtained for virgin cork in Portugal and for virgin and second cork in Catalonia. Besides, when impacts are also allocated to wood, mass allocation should be avoided as it would not create incentives for a sustainable management of cork oak stands. The environmental impact from Catalonian cork may be reduced by decreasing mechanized shrub cleaning and road maintenance operations through the introduction of livestock in cork oak forests, and also by a better planning of management operations. For the Portuguese cork, improvements may be achieved by optimizing fertilizer dosage, planting nitrogen-fixing crops and pastures that improve soil quality, avoiding unnecessary operations, improving the efficiency of management operations, and increasing tree density.A life cycle assessment of nuclear power production based on the uranium nuclear fuel cycle has been carried out, with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as the environmental impact of interest. The study focussed mainly on the once-through cycle with current technologies. The present life cycle-based GHG emissions of nuclear power production for a uranium ore grade of 0.15% U3O8 was estimated to be in the order of 34 kg CO(2)e/MWh, which is significantly less than for fossil fuel-based electricity. However, expected falls in uranium ore grade over time will narrow this gap due to the additional amount of ore that must be mined and processed in order to extract the same amount of uranium. This effect of uranium ore grade was examined in some detail, with the greenhouse gas footprint increasing to 60 kg CO(2)e/MWh when the ore grade falls from 0.15% to 0.01% U3O8. Projections indicate that the average ore grade of the world's uranium resources will fall to this level in about 50 years. Should the contribution of nuclear power to global electricity generation increase significantly beyond that expected over this period, these lower ore grades and associated higher greenhouse gas footprint would be reached much sooner. While the impact of new and improved technologies anticipated in the future in the various stages of the nuclear fuel cycle will help offset the effect of falling uranium ore grades in the near to medium term, the long-term future of nuclear power as a low greenhouse gas source of electrical power would appear to be strongly dependent on the widespread deployment of fast breeder reactors which will significantly increase the lifespan of current uranium resources. However, extrapolating results based on current resource and ore grade data into the future is fraught with uncertainties, and is done here to give indicative rather than definitive values for future uranium ore grades and the likely impact on the GHG footprint of nuclear power. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the unprecedented rate of mining and mineral processing over the past decade, there has been an increasing level of concern worldwide about the fate of tailings and the irreversible consequences of contaminant release through dust, tailings dam seepage, dam wall failure, or direct disposal of tailings into waterways. It is likely that in the future the mining of higher tonnages of lower grade ore and the possibility of more extreme weather events associated with global climatic change, may increase the risks associated with mine tailings management. In this paper we review alternative tailings management methods that aim to improve environmental, social and economic outcomes. Three approaches in particular are highlighted: paste and thickened tailings; tailings reuse, recycling and reprocessing; and proactive management (e.g. the integration of sulphide flotation with cemented paste backfill). The aim of the present study is to scope the opportunities that could be gained by developing an integrated research framework that traces tailings properties back to the orebody. In the future models could be constructed to optimise environmental, social and economic outcomes of tailings management across the value chain through integrated orebody characterisation, mine planning, processing, disposal, reprocessing, recycling and reuse. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study the Impact-Pathway Approach methodology was applied for monetary valuation of health impacts due to cadmium emitted to soil as a micro-pollutant present in phosphorus fertilizers. Due to the high persistency of cadmium in soil, and high soil-to-plant transfer rates, humans are exposed to cadmium through their diet causing potential adverse health impacts. Future scenarios for cadmium emissions to soil via agricultural applications of inorganic and organic fertilizers in Denmark were defined. A simplified fate and speciation model allowed the increase in soil cadmium concentration to be calculated for each scenario. Human exposure was determined based on soil-crop bioconcentration factors for cadmium and dietary intake rates of Danish food crops. Updated dose-response functions linking lifetime cadmium intake to the probability of developing cadmium-induced renal disease and osteoporosis were applied. These impacts were converted into monetary values by using the EU standard value of a life-year adjusted for quality of life experience. Annualized cost per unit of phosphorus and cadmium are presented, discounted and undiscounted, for comparison. Application of struvite (magnesium ammonium phosphate) and mineral fertilizer produced the lowest external health costs, followed by the fertilizer products wastewater sludge and pig manure. The external cost estimates produced in this study could be used to design economic policy instruments to encourage use of cleaner fertilizer products. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The granite production chain is high energy and water intensive with low resource efficiency. This paper focus on characterizing the potential for environmental improvement of the granite production chain by promoting the optimization of sawing technology, the implementation of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and the material recovery of wasted granite (sludge). The environmental performance of multi-blade gangsaw (MBGS) and diamond multi-wire saw (DMWS) technologies is compared by mean of life cycle assessment. Results demonstrate that DMWS technology contribute 30% of water savings, 40% of energy savings and 80% of material savings per square meter of polished granite tiles (60 x 40 x 2 cm) production. These resource savings contribute together to reduce the product's environmental footprint by 35% to 80%. The potential for RWH is analyzed using Plugrisost (R) simulation software based on system dynamics. RWH depends on the relationship between rainfall, catchment surface and tank size according to the industrial process's water demand. The results demonstrate major potential to satisfy over 50% of the system g daily water requirements using rainwater stored in rainwater tanks of varying capacity. RWH is a sustainable strategy for industrial water cycle management. A comprehensive review of literature reveals a range of technically feasible alternatives to promote material recovery of granite sludge. The ceramic industry is one promising industrial endpoint with which to avoid waste landfilling and contribute to mineral, energy and water savings. This by-product synergy could also serve as starting point for springboarding exchanges with other industrial agents, becoming a global extension of resource efficiency. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Material flow analysis (MFA) is a tool to investigate material flows and stocks in defined systems as a basis for resource management or environmental pollution control. Because of the diverse nature of sources and the varying quality and availability of data, MFA results are inherently uncertain. Uncertainty analyses have received increasing attention in recent MFA studies, but systematic approaches for selection of appropriate uncertainty tools are missing. This article reviews existing literature related to handling of uncertainty in MFA studies and evaluates current practice of uncertainty analysis in MFA. Based on this, recommendations for consideration of uncertainty in MFA are provided. A five-step framework for uncertainty handling is outlined, reflecting aspects such as data quality and goal/scope of the MFA. We distinguish between descriptive (quantification of material turnover in a region) and exploratory MFA (identification of critical parameters and system behavior). Whereas mathematically simpler concepts focusing on data uncertainty characterization are appropriate for descriptive MFAs, statistical approaches enabling more-rigorous evaluation of uncertainty and model sensitivity are needed for exploratory MFAs. Irrespective of the level of sophistication, lack of information about MFA data poses a major challenge for meaningful uncertainty analysis. The step-wise framework suggested here provides a systematic way to consider available information and produce results as precise as the data warrant.This paper presents research findings on life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with natural gas production in the Barnett Shale play in Texas. The data sources and approach used in this study differ significantly from previous efforts. The authors used inventories from the year 2009 tracking emissions of regulated air pollutants by the natural gas industry in the Barnett Shale play. These inventories were collected and screened by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). These data cover the characteristics and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions of more than 16,000 individual sources in shale gas production and processing. Translating estimated emissions of VOCs into estimates of methane and carbon dioxide emissions was accomplished through the novel compilation of spatially heterogeneous gas composition analyses. Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity generated from Barnett Shale gas extracted in 2009 were found to be very similar to conventional natural gas and less than half those of coal-fired electricity generation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle assessment is a comprehensive method used to assess and quantify the environmental impact of a product or process over its entire life cycle. The most representative output of a product's environmental impact takes into account all environmental flows over the full life of the product. These environmental flows include material and energy resources that go into a product, as well as all emissions to air, water, and land. A life-cycle assessment over the full life cycle of a product-from extracting raw materials from nature, any transformation or manufacturing of these raw materials into a product, the product use, and end-of-life scenarios, such as recycling or disposal-is considered a cradle-to-grave study. This article defines life-cycle assessment and explains how it fits into U. S. codes and standards.There is currently limited experience on the introduction of new commercial crops as a source of raw material for energy uses. The present paper analyses the introduction and development of commercial willow plantations in Sweden during the period 1986-2005. A general framework is constructed in order to identify all the factors and interrelations that can describe the introduction and expansion of willow as an alternative crop for the production of raw material for energy. The factors are identified and analysed based on a broad database of information from commercial plantations, covering almost all existing plantations, and on documents referring to existing academic literature or official reports. The analysis provides with lessons that can be useful for the introduction of new energy crops in other countries and shows the possible contradictions in policy applications. The analysis confirms that stable policies and long-term contracts reduce the uncertainties associated with the cultivation. The results of this study can be of value for other countries aiming at the introduction of new crops for bioenergy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There have been many efforts to improve sugarcane cultivation and conversion technologies in the ethanol industry. In this study, an economic assessment and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions analysis are performed on ethanol produced conventionally from sugarcane sugar and on an emerging process where the sugarcane bagasse is additionally used to produce ethanol. The combined conventional plus lignocellulosic ethanol pathway is found to be less economically favorable than the conventional ethanol pathway unless a series of technical challenges associated with cost reductions in lignocellulosic ethanol production are overcome, reaching a production cost at 0.31 $/L. This is expected to be achieved in a prospective 2020 scenario. GHG emissions savings against gasoline for both the conventional ethanol and the conventional plus lignocellulosic ethanol pathways are confirmed and found to increase with technological developments projected to occur over time. However, the absolute numbers are highly sensitive to the way of claiming credits from surplus electricity co-generated in the mill. These are 86%, 110% and 150% for the conventional ethanol in the 2020 scenario when the surplus electricity is assumed to replace the average electricity, the 'combined-sources' based electricity and the marginal electricity, respectively. For the conventional plus lignocellulosic ethanol pathway, they are 80%, 85% and 95% respectively in the 2020 scenario. Finally, a series of sensitivity analyses found the comparison in the GHG emissions between the two production pathways is not sensitive to changes in the sugarcane yield or the emissions factor for the enzymes used in the lignocellulosic ethanol process. However, the plant size is an influential factor on both the ethanol production cost (a lowest MESP of 0.26 $/L at the scale of 4 MM tonne cane/yr) and the GHG emission factors, partially because of the important role that transport of feedstock biomass (sugarcane and trash) plays in both elements. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing production of modern bioenergy carriers and biomaterials intensifies the competition for different applications of biomass. To be able to optimize and develop biomass utilization in a sustainable way, this paper first reviews the status and prospects of biomass value chains for heat, power, fuels and materials, next assesses their current and long-term levelized production costs and avoided emissions, and then compares their greenhouse gas abatement costs. At present, the economically and environmentally preferred options are wood chip and pellet combustion in district heating systems and large-scale cofiring power plants (75-81 US$(2005)/tCO(2)-eq(avoided)), and large-scale fermentation of low-cost Brazilian sugarcane to ethanol (-65 to -53 $/tCO(2)-eq(avoided)) or biomaterials (-60 to 50 $/tCO(2)-eq(avoided) for ethylene and -320 to -228 $/tCO(2)-eq(avoided) for PLA; negative costs represent cost- effective options). In the longer term, the cultivation and use of lignocellulosic energy crops can play an important role in reducing the costs and improving the emission balance of biomass value chains. Key conversion technologies for lignocellulosic biomass are large-scale gasification (bioenergy and biomaterials) and fermentation (biofuels and biomaterials). However, both routes require improvement of their technological and economic performance. Further improvements can be attained by biorefineries that integrate different conversion technologies to maximize the use of all biomass components. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rare earths are used in the renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines, batteries, catalysts and electric cars. Current mining, processing and sustainability aspects have been described in this paper. Rare earth availability is undergoing a temporary decline due mainly to quotas being imposed by the Chinese government on export and action taken against illegal mining operations. The reduction in availability coupled with increasing demand has led to increased prices for rare earths. Although the prices have come down recently, this situation is likely to be volatile until material becomes available from new sources or formerly closed mines are reopened. Although the number of identified deposits in the world is close to a thousand, there are only a handful of actual operating mines. Prominent currently operating mines are Bayan Obo in China, Mountain Pass in the US and recently opened Mount Weld in Australia. The major contributor to the total greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of rare earth processing is hydrochloric acid (ca. 38%), followed by steam use (32%) and electricity (12%). Life cycle based water and energy consumption is significantly higher compared with other metals.This study proposes a technical procedure based on a life cycle approach for implementation of the environmental sustainability assessment (ESA) of several waste-to-energy (WtE) plants located in Spain. This methodology uses two main variables: the natural resources sustainability (NRS) and the environmental burdens sustainability (EBS). NRS includes the consumption of energy, materials, and water, whereas EBS considers five burdens to air, five burdens to water, and two burdens to land. To reduce the complexity of ESA, all variables were normalised and weighted using the threshold values proposed in the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register regulation. The results showed the plants studied had a greater consumption of natural resources than Spain, ranging from 1.1 to 2.0 times higher than the Spanish reference consumption. The comparison of Spain with the BREF reference on waste incineration showed that only in the variable related to materials, did Spain have a lower consumption (1.80 times lower). In terms of EBS, air and land impacts were the highest contributors to global burden. The WtE plants presented higher burdens to air and water than Spain, whereas only one plant exceeded the average burden to land of Spain. Finally, this paper demonstrated the usefulness of the ESA methodology to reduce the complexity of LCA and assist the decision-making process in choosing the best option from an environmental point of view. This procedure can be used to obtain an overview of the environmental performance of WtE plants, as well as to assess individual burdens and thereby determine the main environmental hotspots, thereby improving the critical points of the process. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper shows the results of a simplified Life Cycle Assessment, made to determinate the energy and carbon footprint associated to the manufacturing process of a ready-mixed concrete plant in the Region of Biobio, Chile. The energy consumption and CO2 emissions were measured during one year of production and excluding the corporate measure. The used environmental inventory mainly considers major inputs of raw materials transportation, dispensing process, loading and delivery. Applying the life cycle inventory ( LCI) as ISO 14040-2006, the study case showed that, it is necessary 342 MJ, with a carbon footprint of 26 Kg/CO2 to produce a cubic meter of ready-mixed concrete. Comparing these results with international databases, the study case proved to be a 37, 5% lower in embodied energy and more than 50% less of CO2 emissions. This investigation concluded that the unitary process with the most environmental impact, considering energy consumption and CO2 emissions, it was related to the indirect transportation of raw materials, mainly aggregates, which represent a 46% of the total system studied.This paper presents a preliminary energy and environmental analysis of a vertical-axis micro wind turbine with a nominal electric power of 3.7 kW. This prototype is called AM300. The main aim of the paper is to assess the amount of electric energy production of the AM300 and its feasible use in low wind speed areas. Furthermore, analyzing its low environmental impact, a potential installation in a natural protected area was considered. The turbine power curve was estimated by anemometric measurements. Furthermore, foreseeable prototype hybridization with PV array was analyzed. The environmental performance was assessed evaluating the soil, hydro geological, biodiversity and noise impacts. Finally, an analysis of the CO2 emissions avoided is reported. The obtained results show good sustainability perspectives. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An issue in the application of nano-enabled products is how can we evaluate sustainable solutions to current system problems based on performance criteria? This work describes the application of an Input-Process-Output (IPO) model as a framework for a life-cycle analysis approach to identify performance metrics and criteria for evaluating the application of nanomaterials to improve the sustainability of a system. A case study is presented describing a scenario whereby a nano-enabled biocidal paint is considered for a remediation effort to reduce growth of dark molds and bacteria on refrigerated warehouses. The framework is applied to support identification of the energy-consuming steps (such as increased refrigeration energy burden, cleaning and repainting), selection of performance metrics for evaluating consumption, and determination of thresholds to measure sustainability outcomes. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Introduction of electric vehicles (EV) can help to reduce CO2-emissions and the dependence on petroleum products. However, sometimes relatively larger air pollutant emissions from certain power plants can offset the benefits of replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) cars with EV. The goal of this study was to compare the societal impact (climate change & health effects) of EV introduction in the EU-27 under different scenarios for electricity production. The analysis shows that countries that rely on low air pollutant emitting fuel mixes may gain millions of Euro/annum in terms of avoided external costs. Benefits extend across the EU, especially for emissions in small countries. Transport pollution affects the local scale, while electricity pollution has a regional reach. Other European countries, that depend on more polluting fuel mixes, may not benefit at all from introducing EV. Data on the present fuel mix were available for Belgium, France, Portugal, Denmark and the UK on a detailed time scale (5-30' basis) and show that the time dependent variation of external cost for charging EV is dwarfed compared to the overall gain for introducing EV. The largest benefit is found in not driving an ICE car and avoiding local combustion related emissions. Data on the present fuel mix were also available for Romania on a detailed time scale (10') and show that the variation in external costs is relatively larger than for the other countries and at some moments it may be worth the effort, at least in theory, to reschedule EV loading schemes taking into account social impact analysis. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In some areas of Sub-Saharan Africa appropriate organic waste management technology could address development issues such as soil degradation, unemployment and energy scarcity, while at the same time reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper investigates the role that carbon markets could have in facilitating the implementation of composting, anaerobic digestion and biochar production, in the city of Tamale, in the North of Ghana. Through a life cycle assessment of implementation scenarios for lowtech, small scale variants of the above mentioned three technologies, the potential contribution they could give to climate change mitigation was assessed. Furthermore an economic assessment was carried out to study their viability and the impact thereon of accessing carbon markets. It was found that substantial climate benefits can be achieved by avoiding landfilling of organic waste, producing electricity and substituting the use of chemical fertilizer. Biochar production could result in a net carbon sequestration. These technologies were however found not to be economically viable without external subsidies, and access to carbon markets at the considered carbon price of 7 EUR/ton of carbon would not change the situation significantly. Carbon markets could help the realization of the considered composting and anaerobic digestion systems only if the carbon price will rise above 75-84 EUR/t of carbon (respectively for anaerobic digestion and composting). Biochar production could achieve large climate benefits and, if approved as a land based climate mitigation mechanism in carbon markets, it would become economically viable at the lower carbon price of 30 EUR/t of carbon. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the world's leading manufacturing country, China has become the largest dumping ground for e-waste, resulting in serious pollution of heavy metals in China. This study reviews recent studies on environmental effects of heavy metals from the e-waste recycling sites in China, especially Taizhou, Guiyu, and Longtang. The intensive uncontrolled processing of e-waste in China has resulted in the release of large amounts of heavy metals in the local environment, and caused high concentrations of metals to be present in the surrounding air, dust, soils, sediments and plants. Though the pollution of many heavy metals was investigated in the relevant researches, the four kinds of heavy metals (Cu, Pb, Cd and Cr) from e-waste recycling processes attracted more attention. The exceedance of various national and international standards imposed negative effects to the environment, which made the local residents face with the serious heavy metal exposure. In order to protect the environment and human health, there is an urgent need to control and monitor the informal e-waste recycling operations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article describes an accurate methodology for an operational, economic, and environmental assessment of municipal solid waste collection. The proposed methodological tool uses key performance indicators to evaluate independent operational and economic efficiency and performance of municipal solid waste collection practices. These key performance indicators are then used in life cycle inventories and life cycle impact assessment. Finally, the life cycle assessment environmental profiles provide the environmental assessment. We also report a successful application of this tool through a case study in the Portuguese city of Porto. Preliminary results demonstrate the applicability of the methodological tool to real cases. Some of the findings focus a significant difference between average mixed and selective collection effective distance (2.14kmt(-1); 16.12kmt(-1)), fuel consumption (3.96Lt(-1); 15.37Lt(-1)), crew productivity (0.98th(-1)worker(-1); 0.23th(-1)worker(-1)), cost (45.90Eurot(-1); 241.20Eurot(-1)), and global warming impact (19.95kgCO(2eq)t(-1); 57.47kgCO(2eq)t(-1)). Preliminary results consistently indicate: (a) higher global performance of mixed collection as compared with selective collection; (b) dependency of collection performance, even in urban areas, on the waste generation rate and density; (c) the decline of selective collection performances with decreasing source-separated material density and recycling collection rate; and (d) that the main threats to collection route efficiency are the extensive collection distances, high fuel consumption vehicles, and reduced crew productivity.The production of bioenergy is dependent on the supply of biomass. Biomass production for bioenergy may cause large land use conversions, impact agricultural production, food prices, forest conservation, etc. The best solution is to use biomass that does not have agricultural or ecological value. Some of such unconventional sources of biomass are found within urban spaces. We employed Geographic Information System (GIS) and quantitative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies to identify and estimate bioenergy potential of green roofs and other bioenergy options within urban areas. Net Energy Gain (NEG) and Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) were used as indicators to assess the bioenergy potential of urban spaces within the Overijssel province of the Netherlands as a case study. Data regarding suitable areas were geometrically extracted from available GIS datasets, and used to estimate the biomass/bioenergy potential of different species with different yields per hectare, growing under different environmental conditions. We found that potential net-energy gain from built-up areas can meet 0.6-7.7% of the 2030 renewable energy targets of the province without conflicting with socio-ecological concerns, while also improving human habitat. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the expansion of urbanization in China, the integrated biogas-utilization system has gained its popularity for both renewable energy production and multi-level utilization of organic waste. To appraise the ecological performance of the integrated biogas system, systematic accounting is undertaken for an integrated "pig-biogas-fish" system in Hubei province, China. Based on Odum's concept of embodied solar energy as a unified measure for environmental resources, human labors and purchased goods, a set of emergetic indicators are employed to quantify the system sustainability. The results reveal that in a 20-year designed lifetime scenario, 94.69% of the total emergy inputs for the "pig-biogas-fish" system are attributed to purchased social resources. Three kinds of products, namely pig, biogas, fish are taken into consideration, and transformity of the "pig-biogas-fish" system is calculated as 1.26E + 05 seJ/J. Compared with the Chinese conventional agriculture system, the integrated biogas system shows a higher sustainability. Given that most biogas systems have a lifespan less than 20 years, for the "pig-biogas-fish" system, six other scenarios with different lifespans are studied to investigate the impact of the lifespan on sustainability. The findings suggest that the "pig-biogas-fish" system should be well operated for at least 8 years to prove its advantage in ecological economy over the conventional agriculture system. This has essential policy implications that local government should strengthen subsequent management on biogas production to extend the practical service life of the biogas system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental performance of biodiesel derived from Jatropha curcas seed was studied by life cycle assessment methodology in India. This paper also compares the environmental impact of Jatropha-based biodiesel and its blends (20% and 50%) with diesel fuel. The lifecycle of Jatropha-based biodiesel production includes the stages of cultivation, oil extraction, biodiesel production, and transportation to the fuel station. The functional unit of this study was 1 ton of biodiesel production and the impact categories studied were carcinogens, respiratory organics and inorganics, climate change, radiation, ozone layer depletion, ecotoxicity, acidification/eutrophication, land use, mineral use, and fossil fuels. The results revealed that among all the stages, emission from soil and air caused by cultivation process of Jatropha is the largest contributors to most of environmental impact categories. The categories with greater impacts are carcinogens, ecotoxicity, respiratory inorganics, acidification, eutrophication, and land use with the percentage of 80%, 72%, 71%, 66.7%, and 63%, respectively. Comparison results of biodiesel and its blends with diesel fuel showed that increase of biodiesel blends have minimal effect on the environment. Moreover, lifecycle assessment of biodiesel production has a positive contribution to climate change than the fossil fuel. The results suggest the enhanced usage of this renewable fuel in future with inclusion of further technological improvement in farming practices and production process. (c) 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 33: 1340-1349, 2014The objective of this paper is to determine and compare the energy efficiency, energy savings, and pollution prevention for the two hypothetical facilities in USA, XY, and BC, with and without Energy Star((R)) certification (Statement of Energy Performance [SEP]), respectively. Three different toolsEnergy Assessment Spreadsheet (EAS), Economic Input Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIOLCA), and P2 calculators were used in assessing the energy usage and pollution prevention. The energy assessment survey was conducted using the EAS to determine the reduction in energy use and to perform the cost-benefit analysis (CBA). A change in environmental impacts due to use of energy efficient lighting was assessed by the EIOLCA. The P2 was used in estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy savings. Analysis showed a reduction of 58 MTCO(2)e (metric tons of CO2 equivalents) GHGs with a savings of $6878 for the facility XY and 493 MTCO(2)e GHGs with a savings of $55,089 for facility BC. The energy savings calculated with respect to square feet of area were observed to be 0.18 and 20.00 kWh/year, respectively, for XY and BC facilities. (c) 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 33: 1366-1372, 2014Building sector is the main contributor to total energy consumption and the associated CO2 emissions. The enforcement of energy efficient building is considered as the most successful strategy for CO2 emission reduction and energy saving during the life cycle of the building, while the application of suitable green building products plays an important role in facilitating energy efficient building promotion. This article proposes a comprehensive evaluation method for assessing the green performance of building products. The analytic hierarchy process is employed to determine the weights of evaluation indices, while the gray relational analysis is used to find the optimal product. A hypothetical case study is presented and the result shows that the sequence of the size of green performance is: product 3> product 1> product 2> product 4. Meanwhile, the proposed methods are proved feasible for scheme selection. (c) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 33: 1389-1395, 2014Integration of renewable energies differentiates high concentration solar thermal technologies from photovoltaics. The popularization of high concentration solar thermal technologies facilities can be increased if alternative energy sources are used, with a significant advantage in investment recovery. As the operation hours are increased, the environmental impact is also improved. This article analyzes the hybridization of two dish-Stirling facilities, distinguishable by the two different fuels utilized: natural gas and biogas. Different considerations for the design of required elements for hybridization are presented, specifically the burner and the heat exchanger for biogas use. An evaluation of the environmental impact associated with hybridization using natural gas and then biogas is also carried out. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed with SimaPro software for each fuel scenario using: (i) the Ecoindicator-99 impact evaluation method; and (ii) CO2-equivalent emissions. Novel aspects of this study include the analysis of the global output of the hybrid system, considering two different fuels. Analysis also takes into consideration environmental criteria to establish a comparison. Results show an advantage for hybridization using biogas, a renewable source, instead of natural gas. The environmental viewpoint, considered by the LCA, adds a differential decision criterion at the same time that it favors investments in this technology. (c) 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 33: 1459-1466, 2014While bioenergy plays a key role in strategies for increasing renewable energy deployment, studies assessing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from forest bioenergy systems have identified a potential trade-off of the system with forest carbon stocks. Of particular importance to national GHG inventories is how trade-offs between forest carbon stocks and bioenergy production are accounted for within the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector under current and future international climate change mitigation agreements. Through a case study of electricity produced using wood pellets from harvested forest stands in Ontario, Canada, this study assesses the implications of forest carbon accounting approaches on net emissions attributable to pellets produced for domestic use or export. Particular emphasis is placed on the forest management reference level (FMRL) method, as it will be employed by most Annex I nations in the next Kyoto Protocol Commitment Period. While bioenergy production is found to reduce forest carbon sequestration, under the FMRL approach this trade-off may not be accounted for and thus not incur an accountable AFOLU-related emission, provided that total forest harvest remains at or below that defined under the FMRL baseline. In contrast, accounting for forest carbon trade-offs associated with harvest for bioenergy results in an increase in net GHG emissions (AFOLU and life cycle emissions) lasting 37 or 90 years (if displacing coal or natural gas combined cycle generation, respectively). AFOLU emissions calculated using the Gross-Net approach are dominated by legacy effects of past management and natural disturbance, indicating near-term net forest carbon increase but longer-term reduction in forest carbon stocks. Export of wood pellets to EU markets does not greatly affect the total life cycle GHG emissions of wood pellets. However, pellet exporting countries risk creating a considerable GHG emissions burden, as they are responsible for AFOLU and bioenergy production emissions but do not receive credit for pellets displacing fossil fuel-related GHG emissions. Countries producing bioenergy from forest biomass, whether for domestic use or for export, should carefully consider potential implications of alternate forest carbon accounting methods to ensure that potential bioenergy pathways can contribute to GHG emissions reduction targets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.From previous research and monitoring of agricultural biogas plants it is known that there are various possibilities and needs for improving their efficiency. However, a reliable methodological approach for this purpose was missing. Therefore, the objective of this research was to develop a method for assessing and improving the efficiency of agricultural biogas plant operation. Firstly, four performance figures for efficiency assessment and eight performance figures for efficiency improvement analysis of the technical aspect of a biogas plant operation were selected. Based on these, the method was developed by applying approaches of fuzzy logic and expert systems. Using these approaches, it was possible to handle uncertainty in the assessment data and to model expert knowledge from the field of biogas technology. The method was tested with performance data from five agricultural biogas plants with combined heat and power production, located in Bavaria. The method was verified and validated, and is proposed as a comprehensive approach for assessing and improving the efficiency of agricultural biogas plants with respect to the technical aspect. To disseminate the method among potential users such as biogas plant operators or consultants, a web application is being developed. According to changes in the state of the art of biogas technology, continuous updating and improvement of the method is needed. For further development, the method should be adapted to other types of biogas plants, and extended to environmental and socio-economic aspects of biogas plant operation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the booming research on the environmental footprint of, for example, electrical vehicles, heat pumps and other (smart) electricity consuming appliances, there is a clear need to know the hourly CO2 content of one kW h of electricity. Since the CO2 footprint of electricity can vary every hour; the footprint of for example an electric vehicle is influenced by the time when the vehicle is charged. With the availability of the hourly CO2 content of one kW h, a decision support tool is provided to fully exploit the advantages of a future smart grid. In this paper, the GWP (Global Warming Potential) per kWh for each hour of the year is calculated for Belgium using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. This enables evaluating the influence of the electricity demand on the greenhouse gas emissions. Because of the LCA approach, the CO2 equivalent content does not only reflect activities related to the production of the electricity within a power plant, but includes carbon emissions related to the building of the infrastructure and the fuel supply chain. The considered feedstocks are nuclear combustible, oil, coal, natural gas, biowaste, blast furnace gas, and wood. Furthermore, renewable electricity production technologies like photovoltaic cells, hydro installations and wind turbines are covered by the research. The production of the wind turbines and solar panels is more carbon intensive (expressed per generated kW h of electricity) than the production of other conventional power plants, due to the lower electricity output. The overall average GWP per kW h is 0.184 kg CO(2)eq/kW h. Throughout the 2011 this value ranges from a minimum of 0.102 kg CO(2)eq/kW h to a maximum of 0.262 kg CO(2)eq/kW h depending on the timing. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Portuguese electricity mix is undergoing a significant shift away from the technologies that have dominated generation for the past decades. This article aims at assessing the environmental life-cycle impacts of electricity generation and supply in Portugal (PT), including: (i) modeling the main electricity generation systems; (ii) modeling the transmission and distribution (T&D) grid infrastructure; (iii) characterizing the evolution of the electricity sector in PT from 2003 to 2012; and (iv) discussing how the recent changes in the technology portfolio affected the environmental performance of the electricity generated and supplied. The life-cycle assessment methodology was used to quantify impacts in: non-renewable fossil energy demand (nREn), global warming (GW), abiotic depletion (AD), acidification (AC), eutrophication (ET), photochemical oxidation (PO) and ozone layer depletion (OD). From 2003 to 2012, an overall reduction of the environmental impacts was achieved. In particular, since 2008, electricity generation impacts in AC and PO dropped sharply as a result of the installation of desulphurization (62% reduction in AC; 74% reduction in PO) and denitrification (5% reduction in AC) systems in coal power plants (PP), as well as the phase out of large fuel oil PP. For NREn, AD and GW, the reduction of impacts was less pronounced (9-22% in the generation mix; 14-22% in the supply mix). T&D grid added 5-14% to the environmental impacts due to infrastructure (<5%) and T&D losses (5-9%). Despite the large increase in renewable capacity (especially wind) and the investments in lower-carbon fossil fuel technologies (natural gas), electricity generation still relies heavily on coal. There is, however, potential to further reduce environmental impacts in key categories (NREn, AD and GW) since there is significant available capacity of natural gas combined cycle currently underutilized. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For wind power generation offshore sites offer significantly better wind conditions compared to onshore. At the same time, the demand for raw materials and therefore the related environmental impacts increase due to technically more demanding wind energy converters and additional components (e.g. substructure) for the balance of plant. Additionally, due to environmental concerns offshore wind farms will be sited farshore (i.e. in deep water) in the future having a significant impact on the operation and maintenance efforts (O&M). Against this background the goal of this analysis is an assessment of the specific GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions as a function of the site conditions, the wind mill technology and the O&M necessities. Therefore, a representative offshore wind farm is defined and subjected to a detailed LCA (life cycle assessment). Based on parameter variations and modifications within the technical and logistical system, promising configurations regarding GHG emissions are determined for different site conditions. Results show, that all parameters related to the energy yield have a distinctive impact on the specific GHG emissions, whereas the distance to shore and the water depth affect the results marginally. By utilizing the given improvement potentials GHG emissions of electricity from offshore wind farms are comparable to those achieved onshore. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiesel produced from oleaginous microorganisms shows promise in displacing use of petroleum diesel fuel, however, low biodiesel yields and rigorous processing have thwarted large-scale commercialization. Here, we report a simple and efficient two-step process for generating biodiesel blends from microbial biomass, which eliminates the need for solvent extractions, distillations, or additional purifications. In the present work, diesel fuel was utilized to extract biodiesel produced from direct transesterification of the yeast, Cryptococcus curvatus, and microalgae, Scenedesmus dimorphus, thus generating a blend of microbial biodiesel and diesel fuel. Up to 93% and 83% of the produced biodiesel is extracted from both yeast and microalgae, respectively, whereas the majority of pigments are excluded. A B20 blend produced from yeast meets key ASTM fuel requirements including flash point, viscosity, sulfur, oxidation stability, and acid number. Integration of experimental data into system models reveals a 25% reduction in the net energy ratio (NER) with the process presented here compared to traditional solvent extraction. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste rubber and plastic are accumulating heavily in China and causing significant environmental issues. In this study, the rubber and one kind of plastic, polypropylene (PP), were powdered and mixed with base asphalt to form plastic-rubber asphalt (PRA). This study evaluated PRA and the mixture in two-folds, engineering properties and environmental concerns. SBS asphalt, one commonly used asphalt binder in China, was adopted as a control. To evaluate the environmental burdens of PRA mixture and SBS asphalt mixture, a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) modeling was performed. Throughout the study, it is revealed that: (1) as a binder, PRA is weaker in terms of softening point, elastic recovery and fatigue performance versus SBS asphalt, but the differences are limited; (2) PRA mixture are close to SBS asphalt mixture for the high temperature, low temperature performances and water durability; (3) PRA mixture is more environmental-friendly compared to SBS asphalt mixture. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The ecological footprint method has been successful in communicating environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities in the context of ecological limits. We introduce a chemical footprint method that expresses ecotoxicity impacts from anthropogenic chemical emissions as the dilution needed to avoid freshwater ecosystem damage. The indicator is based on USEtox characterization factors with a modified toxicity reference point. Chemical footprint results can be compared to the actual dilution capacity within the geographic vicinity receiving the emissions to estimate whether its ecological limit has been exceeded and hence whether emissions can be expected to be environmentally sustainable. The footprint method was illustrated using two case studies. The first was all inventoried emissions from European countries and selected metropolitan areas in 2004, which indicated that the dilution capacity was likely exceeded for most European countries and all landlocked metropolitan areas. The second case study indicated that peak application of pesticides alone was likely to exceed Denmark's freshwater dilution capacity in 1999-2011. The uncertainty assessment showed that better spatially differentiated fate factors would be useful and pointed out other major sources of uncertainty and some opportunities to reduce these.Nowadays, Eco-design is mainly carried out through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool by companies in the post-production stage of parts to provide useful information for the next production. Although no methodology is currently in the pre-production step that could help companies generate cleaner parts and save time. Thus, the proposed work provides an innovative method that associates a micromechanical analysis, material index selection and LCA methodology. The method is applied to a flax fibre/polypropylene (PP) composite, being potential substitute of glass/PP composites in automotive applications. The studied 30% w/w flax fibre/PP composite is found to be 6% lighter than 30% glass/PP composites and to generate 10%-20% lower environmental burdens. Combining a micromechanical analysis, material index selection and LCA shows that: fibre content, Young's modulus, and aspect ratio have to be maximized to achieve a decrease of the environmental footprint of flax/PP biocomposites. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Comparing environmental impacts of reusable versus disposable equipment most often confirms the intrinsic assumptions of the "Waste Hierarchy" that product reuse is environmentally preferable to disposal. The present study on hospital bedpans contributes to this line of LCA comparisons. It analyzes the influence of the decisive factors in a comparison of four alternative bedpans using LCA. In contradiction to the general guidelines of the "Waste Hierarchy", it finds that disposable bedpans are environmentally preferable to the reusable ones. This study determines three decisive factors in the environmental comparison, which may change the priority. The first factor is the use of energy for preparation for reuse. In this study washing of the reusable bedpans is a dominating contributor to environmental impacts from the reusable bedpans system. The study confirms that an energy use for recovery in the range of 0.1-0.15 MJ/kg plastic is a probable tipping point. The second factor is the benefit from an environmentally better fate of the organic excreta when using disposable bedpans. The disposable bedpans are taken to energy recovery in waste incineration instead of wastewater treatment. Overall, the disposable bedpans, therefore, perform better environmentally despite the fact that they require new production of bedpans at every use. Finally, the third factor is the influence of a change of functionality on the adjoining systems related to the product. In this study a change of workflow can imply significant savings on other materials flows in the system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents a life cycle assessment of two lighting technologies based on compact fluorescent (CFL) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) luminaires for the general lighting of the office. The life cycle assessments are carried out considering all the parts of the luminaire: lamp, housing and ballast (or driver for LED). The environmental impact is evaluated considering the whole life cycle of the devices, from manufacturing (including the extraction of raw materials), to use and disposal. An experimental test was conducted to verify the illuminance produced by the two systems. Alternative end-of-life and electricity production scenarios were assessed and compared in order to evaluate possible variations deriving from these changes. The life cycle assessments show that the LED luminaire allows the environmental impacts to be significantly reduced (reduction of 41-50% of greenhouse gas emission and cumulative energy demand), mainly due to high energy efficiency in the use stage. The present paper makes three original contributions: 1) it presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a last generation kind of LED and luminaire built for this technology and compares it with a similar CFL luminaire; 2) it presents one of the first LCAs for lighting luminaires made with International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) 2011 Midpoint; 3) it shows a comparison evaluated with two functional units: 1 Im per 50,000 h and 1 lux per 50,000 h. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The final disposal of the Municipal Solid Waste is still a problem in many countries. The lack of space, the generation of leachate, and the emission of greenhouse gases as well as the requirements of the new legislation on waste dissuade the administrations involved from using the landfill option as a possible means of final disposal of MSW. The terms of the European Legislation on waste management and energy encourage member states to develop waste recovery techniques before sending it to a landfill. Therefore, member states have introduced source separation and mechanical-biological treatment to separate biodegradable recovery fractions (organic, paper-cardboard, plastic packaging, and glass) from the reject fraction, which is afterwards disposed of in landfills. One of the main aims of this study is to analyse the energy recovery properties of the reject fraction from a biological-mechanical treatment plant in Spain. For this purpose, this work presents a physical and chemical characterization of waste reject fraction from a real mechanical-biological treatment plant as well as the metal and halogen content. Additionally, the quality standards of the refused derived fuel processed at the laboratory and the atmospheric emissions of this type of fuel have been determined. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We used a Life Cycle Assessment approach to determine whether the inherent differences in emissions to air among existing livestock production systems could be used to reconfigure the UK livestock sector in order to meet current greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia (NH3) targets while maintaining production at current levels. Output, defined as financial value, was optimized across all sub-sectors. Using current management systems the greatest livestock output that could be maintained, while meeting emission reduction targets, was 84% of current. Adopting the most appropriate manure management practices and improved feed conversion ratio enables a further increase in outputs to 86% of current. Dairy production could be maintained at 84.1% of current if all production arises from high-yielding herds with autumn calving, all dairy cow manure is managed as slurry and diets to reduce rumen fermentation are adopted. Increasing the proportion of calves obtained from the dairy herd by 10% could maintain beef production at 85% of current. Raising finishing pigs on slurry systems, raising sows and weaners outdoors, finishing pigs at either 89 or 99 kg and improving dietary nitrogen use efficiency could maintain pig production at 87.5% of current. Manure drying within poultry buildings, immediate incorporation of poultry manures to tillage land and reduced protein feeds would allow 82.2% of current poultry meat production. Eliminating free-range egg systems and drying manure within the building could maintain egg production at 85.5% of current. Replacing lowland sheep herds (other than organic) with upland production could maintain sheep output at 86.4% of current. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hydrotreated Renewable Jet (HRJ) fuel has increasingly become important for the aviation sector to address energy security and climate change mitigation. Rapeseed (Brassica Napus) is a favored candidate feedstock for HRJ because of its high quality oil content and agroeconomic benefit to replace the fallow period in wheat/fallow rotations. We conducted research to evaluate regional differences in nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions for rapeseed cultivation in several counties in 10 states in the United States (U.S.). The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) methodology was applied, and results were compared to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines. In this study, yield, nitrogen fertilizer rate, and types were held constant for all locations in order to understand the similarities and differences in the RSB and IPCC methods for estimating N2O emissions. From the results, the RSB-calculated N2O emissions varied for different U.S. states, though regional differences were very small, 0.72-0.73 kg N2O Mr(-1)seed, while N2O emissions from IPCC method were the same for all sites, 0.87 kg N2O Mr(-1)seed. The difference between the RSB and IPCC methods is caused by the indirect N2O emissions from ammonia emissions and nitrate leaching. However, the influence of indirect effect is relatively small compared to overall N2O emissions. The utilization of the RSB method may not be justified for estimating regional variations in N2O emissions. As a consequence, the preliminary greenhouse gas (GHG) of rapeseed HRJ fuel using the RSB method in several locations had small differences in result 42.7 -43.0 g CO2 eq/MJ compared to 45.9 g CO2 eq/MJ using the IPCC method. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Because of the collapse of landfill sites, reduction and recycling of municipal solid wastes is a crucial concern in the small island states of the Caribbean region. This study is part of a project promoted by the General Council of Guadeloupe about home composting of household biodegradable wastes, and concerned 60 volunteer households from 10 municipalities with different pedoclimatic conditions. The aim was to examine the problems observed during home composting, and to assess compost quality. Only 32% of households experienced at least one problem during composting, including the presence of cockroaches and scolopendra (23%), rodents (12%), bad smells and excess leachate (8%). Despite these problems no one stopped composting. Most of these difficulties were not severe and slight changes in the composting procedure should be sufficient to solve them; e.g. to wear gloves when handling composts, to control harmful animals outside the composter, and to increase the stable to labile waste ratio. Neither Escherichia coli nor Salmonella sp. were present in the composts. Organic matter (OM, mean 46%), nitrogen (N, 2.2%), potassium (K, 2.1%), and lignin (20%) contents were much greater than those observed for industrial compost produced in Guadeloupe. Temperature inside the composters during the thermophilic phase (similar to 43 degrees C) was lower than that currently reported for industrial composting, which reduced OM decomposition and favoured the conservation of the more stable organic compounds such as lignin. Also, nutrient leaching was lower in the closed home composting system, which favoured the conservation of N and K. Differences between municipalities concerned the contents of calcium (greatest for the municipalities with calcareous soils) and OM (lowest for the warmer municipalities). These results indicated that home composts may be helpful to improve OM content and nutrient availability in infertile tropical soils. This study highlighted that home composting may be a suitable alternative to help local authorities to achieve targets to divert wastes from landfill. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to provide Characterization Factors (CFs) for the toxicity related impact categories in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs). The CFs already available were updated whereas others were implemented for the first time by means of USEtox and USES-LCA 2.0 methodologies. The list of PPCPs includes human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity for both models whereas terrestrial and marine ecotoxicity were assessed with USES-LCA 2.0. Moreover, all the available emission compartments were considered for the calculation. The resulting CFs were subjected to a sensitivity analysis and results determined that human toxicological and ecotoxicological effects (ED50 and avlogEC50, respectively) as well as degradation rate in water were the most sensitive parameters. The calculated CFs were used in the environmental assessment of a Completely Autotrophic Nitrogen removal Over Nitrite (CANON) pilot plant. PPCPs were found to have a major impact on freshwater ecotoxicity, accounting for 81% or 97% of the total impact with USES-LCA 2.0 and USEtox, respectively. Moreover, a more precise determination of human toxicity was obtained after updating CFs values calculated with USEtox, with contributions up to 50% of the total impact. Therefore, the provision of new and updated CFs allows a more accurate environmental assessment of processes where PPCPs are present. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Plaster plays an important role in buildings. First of all it becomes the protection of external walls from the influence of weather conditions. In the paper it was checked whether it is beneficial to use thermal insulation bims granule or EPS plaster on the external walls of the building instead of cement plaster. The ecological and economic analyses were conducted for these three kinds of plaster depending on the heat source used in the building and the parameters of a wall without a layer of plaster. The calculations were done in Polish conditions. For the indication of the environmental impact [CA technique was used. Bims granule and EPS plaster brings an improvement of thermal insulation properties of walls and as a consequence the reduction of energy consumption to heat in the thermal phase of the building usage. A net ecological effect is positive, related to the use of these types of plaster, after 2-5 years, depending on the source of heat used, whereas for cement plaster it is as long as after 30 years while using an electric energy boiler. For ecological reasons, using bims granule plaster or EPS plaster becomes far more beneficial than using cement plaster. For economic reasons, profits do not fully cover the cost of using the plaster, even after 50 years. The biggest part of the cost is reimbursed in case when the electric energy boiler is used as a heat source: about 22% for bims granule plaster, about 25% for EPS plaster and about 2% for cement plaster. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Co-production of high-value biobased products in biorefineries is a promising option for optimized utilization of biomass. Lignocellulosic materials such as agricultural and forest residues have been identified as attractive alternative feedstocks because of their high availability and low resource demand. This study assessed the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance and energy balance of ethanol co-production with biogas and electricity in biorefineries using straw and forest residues. Two calculation methods were used: Method I (ISO), which applied the international standard for life cycle assessment, and Method II, which applied the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) methodology. These methods differed in allocation procedure, functional unit and system boundaries. Analysis of the importance of significant methodological choices and critical parameters showed that the results varied depending on calculation method, with co-product handling and the inclusion of upstream impacts from residue harvesting explaining most of the differences. Important life cycle steps were process inputs in terms of enzymes and changes in soil organic carbon content due to removal of residues. Ethanol produced from forest residues generally gave lower GHG emissions than straw-based ethanol. The GHG savings for both feedstocks were 51-84% relative to fossil fuel. Omission of upstream impacts from residue recovery in agriculture and forestry in the RED method means that it risks overlooking important environmental effects of residue reuse. Furthermore, the default allocation procedure used in the RED method (energy allocation) may need revision for biorefineries where multiple products with different characteristics are co-produced. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper discusses the application of a novel system for metal recovery from Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) production waste. The recovery process enabled by the "Palette Modular Device" (PMD) avoids the overlapping of different film materials during the production phase, thus limiting the need for chemical separation and refinement of the wasted fraction of the film layers. A description of the new methodology is provided focusing on the particular scenario of multi-layer films (including a gold layer), which are commonly employed in microelectronic contexts. Furthermore, a standard recovery practice and the novel one are compared using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. LCA starts from the definition of the objectives and comes to inventories of all material and energy flows related to the different process stages. Moreover, it provides an impact assessment, which identifies and quantifies potential effects on the environment that is essential information for the interpretation of the results. This research demonstrates how the novel process exhibits interesting performances on different environmental impact indicators, giving a perspective of a "green" technology. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The blue mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis has been used as monitoring organism in many biomonitoring programs because of its broad distribution in South European sea waters and its physiological characteristics. Different pollution-stress biomarkers, including gene expression biomarkers, have been developed to determine its physiological response to the presence of different pollutants. However, the existing information about basal expression profiles is very limited, as very few biomarker-based studies were designed to reflect the natural seasonal variations. In the present study, we analyzed the natural expression patterns of several genes commonly used in biomonitoring, namely ferritin, metallothionein, cytochrome P450, glutathione S-transferase, heat shock protein and the kinase responsive to stress KRS, during an annual life cycle. Analysis of mantle-gonad samples of cultured populations of M. galloprovincialis from the Delta del Ebro (North East Spain) showed natural seasonal variability of these biomarkers, pointing to temperature and oxidative stress as major abiotic modulators. In turn, the reproductive cycle, a process that can be tracked by VCLM7 expression, and known to be influenced by temperature, seems to be the major biotic factor involved in seasonality. Our results illustrate the influence of environmental factors in the physiology of mussels through their annual cycle, a crucial information for the correct interpretation of responses under stress conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The distribution of liquid detergents through self-dispensing systems has been adopted in some Italian retail stores over the last few years. By enabling the consumer to refill several times the same container, it is proposed as a less waste-generating and more environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional distribution with single-use plastic containers. For this-reason, its implementation is encouraged by the national waste prevention programme recently adopted in Italy. In order to assess such claims, a life cycle assessment was carried out to evaluate whether detergent distribution through self-dispensing systems actually allows to achieve the expected reduction in waste generation and environmental impacts. The focus was on the distribution within the large-scale retail trade and on the categories of laundry detergents, fabric softeners and hand dishwashing detergents. For each of them, a set of baseline single-use scenarios were compared with two alternative waste prevention scenarios, where the detergent is distributed through self-dispensing systems. Beyond waste generation, also the Cumulative Energy Demand and thirteen midpoint-level potential impact indicators were calculated for the comparison. Results showed that a reduction in waste generation up to 98% can be achieved, depending on the category of detergent, on the baseline scenario of comparison and on the number of times the refillable container is used. A progressive reduction in the energy demand and in most of the potential impacts was also observed, starting from a minimum number of uses of the refillable container. (C) 2014 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.A multi-period mixed-integer linear programming model has been developed to help explore future pathways for electricity supply where costs and carbon reduction are a priority. The model follows a life cycle approach and can optimise on costs and on a number of environmental objectives. To illustrate the application, the model has been optimised on two objectives: whole system costs and global warming potential (GWP) using the UK as an example. Four different scenarios have been considered up to 2060, each assuming different electricity demand and carbon reduction targets. When optimising on system costs, they range from 156.6 pound bn for the least carbon-constrained scenario with moderate increase in electricity demand to 269.9 pound bn for the scenario with high demand and requiring 100% decarbonisation of electricity supply by 2035. In optimisation on GWP, negative carbon emissions are achieved in all scenarios, ranging from -0.5 to -1.28 Gt CO2 eq. over the period, owing to biomass carbon capture and storage. Optimising on the GWP also reduces significantly other environmental impacts at costs comparable to optimised costs. This research shows that meeting carbon targets will require careful planning and consideration of objectives other than costs alone to ensure that optimal rather than suboptimal solutions are found for a more sustainable electricity supply. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The Life Cycle Assessment enables us to determine environmental loads associated to products, processes or activities. This paper uses this methodology to evaluate the impact of inner walls, considering as case study a traditional house in Brazil, made by: ceramic bricks masonry and sand and cement mortar. The impacts are assessed with the CML2001 method for a lifespan of the building of 50 years. Results show which phase has the greatest influence over life cycle impacts, the most impactful material-component, the waste behavior and other peculiarities of life cycle impacts derived from masonry walls. In addition, we created a method for estimating the demand for materials, waste generation and distance traveled in the transportation of materials and waste. This method can assist not only, in environmental assessment, but also in construction and waste management, and policy development. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays, environmental problems have aroused public awareness about the trade-off between economic growth and environmental conservation. In this regard, sustainable development plays a crucial role in striking a balance between the demands of social productivity and the reserves of natural resources. In the realm of sustainable development, life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important tool to assist in ensuring proper sustainability through assessing the environmental impacts of product designs. Unlike previous reviews, which mainly focus on LCA methodology, this paper presents LCA related studies from the perspective of product development applications. In this article, the approach on how LCA can be used in product development is introduced step by step, from concept design, part design, and process design to decision making. The applications of LCA come in different forms such as impact assessment, selection, classification and decision support. The issues or challenges with respect to the four steps of LCA (i.e. goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact analysis, and interpretation) have been examined and investigated. Corresponding models and theories for coping with these challenges are reviewed. In particular, widespread and popular analytical tools are identified and highlighted. Considering the vague measurement of environmental impact in an agile manufacturing system, it is suggested that the development of LCA should keep pace with the advancing complex product development system. Overall, this article sheds light on the trend of LCA applications in sustainable product development and provides the prospect of promising research directions for LCA researchers and practitioners. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Besides turning to less energy-intensive power train options, lightweighting is commonly regarded as the most effective way to reduce a vehicle's environmental impact. Achieving high recycling rates for energy-intensive lightweight materials is a most important goal, lest the advantages afforded by vehicle lightweighting are unduly diminished or even annulled. Additionally, in order to reap the full benefits of recycling in terms of avoided primary (virgin) material production, it is desirable that the quality of the recycled scraps be kept as close as possible to that demanded by the original application. Solution Heat treatment, Forming and in-die Quenching (HFQ) is a novel sheet metal forming process that allows the forming of large sheet metal parts without the need for extraneous rivets or other bonding techniques which impair end-of-life disassembly and recycling. Our comparative life cycle assessment has shown that the additional energy required for the HFQ process is over-compensated by the ensuing benefits in terms of enhanced end-of-life recyclability, thereby potentially resulting in an overall net improvement of the environmental profile of the manufactured parts over their full life cycle. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Remediation operations may have a wide range of environmental, social and economic impacts not only within the physical boundary of a contaminated site and over the operational period, but also across geophysical boundaries and beyond project life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used by both researchers and industrial practitioners in the ongoing green and sustainable remediation movement. This paper proposes a new hybrid-LCA method. In comparison with most remediation LCA studies in literature, the proposed approach offers several advantages by: 1) expanding the system boundary and reduces truncation errors; 2) incorporating consequential benefits (i.e. tertiary impact) of remediation; and 3) covering social and economic impact in addition to environmental impact. The hybrid LCA method is built on the 123 sector input-output analytical table and environmental account for the UK. The model was augmented with additional socioeconomic data (e.g. employment, occupational health and safety) to measure social and economic impact indicators. A sediment remediation project at the London Olympic Park site was examined using this method. The hybrid LCA was found to capture an additional 32% of secondary impact in soil washing, and 8% of secondary impact in landfilling. The tertiary impact was found to be over twice the primary plus secondary impact in soil washing, and nearly 80% of the primary plus secondary impact in landfilling. The quantitative social and economic impact assessment results also provided useful information for holistic decision making, balancing project costs with social and economic benefits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture production contributes to global warming directly via the release of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide emissions, and indirectly through the consumption of inputs such as fertilizer, fuel and herbicides. We investigated if including a grain legume (Lupinus angustifolius) in a cropping rotation, and/or applying agricultural lime to increase the pH of an acidic soil, decreased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from wheat production in a semi-arid environment by conducting a streamlined life cycle assessment analysis that utilized in situ GHG emission measurements, rather than international default values. We also assessed the economic viability of each GHG mitigation strategy. Incorporating a grain legume in a two year cropping rotation decreased GHG emissions from wheat production by 56% on a per hectare basis, and 35% on a per tonne of wheat basis, primarily by lowering nitrogen fertilizer inputs. However, a large incentive ($93 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalents reduced) was required for the inclusion of grain legumes to be financially attractive. Applying lime was profitable but increased GHG emissions by varying amounts depending upon whether the lime was assumed to dissolve over one, five or 10 years. We recommend further investigating the impact of liming on both CO2 and non-CO2 emissions to accurately account for its effect on GHG emissions from agricultural production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hydrogen is an attractive and clean source of energy with a high energy content and environmentally friendly production using green power. Hydrogen is therefore considered to be one of the future alternatives to fossil fuels that can limit the damage done by climate change. A dynamic GTAP model with LCA method is utilized herein in this investigation to forecast the development of the hydrogen supply chain and CO2 emissions in Japan. The supply chain incorporates six hydrogen-related industries - biohydrogen, steam reforming, electrolysis, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCV), hydrogen fuel cells (HFC), and hydrogen fueling stations. Baseline results reveal that the positive impacts on hydrogen application sectors (HFCV, HFC and HFS) are greater than hydrogen generation sectors (biohydrogen, steam reforming and electrolysis). Sensitivity analysis reveals that HFCV, HFC and biohydrogen are the three industries that are most sensitive to technology advance. Hydrogen-related industries will play a more important role if Japan shut down nuclear power plants or to meet the CO2 mitigation target in response to the conclusions of COP 19. Biohydrogen has the potential gradually to become a major hydrogen-generating technology for future development of green economy. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Scientific models are ideally reproducible, with results that converge despite varying methods. In practice, divergence between models often remains due to varied assumptions, incompleteness, or simply because of avoidable flaws. We examine LCA greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions models to test the reproducibility of their estimates for well-to-refinery inlet gate (WTR) GHG emissions. We use the Oil Production Greenhouse gas Emissions Estimator (OPGEE), an open source engineering-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model, as the reference model for this analysis. We study seven previous studies based on six models. We examine the reproducibility of prior results by successive experiments that align model assumptions and boundaries. The root-mean-square error (RMSE) between results varies between similar to 1 and 8 g CO2 eq/MJ LHV when model inputs are not aligned. After model alignment, RMSE generally decreases only slightly. The proprietary nature of some of the models hinders explanations for divergence between the results. Because verification of the results of LCA GHG emissions is often not possible by direct measurement, we recommend the development of open source models for use in energy policy. Such practice will lead to iterative scientific review, improvement of models, and more reliable understanding of emissions.Little work dealing with the evaluation of aquaculture system sustainability has so far been undertaken on a global and comparative basis. Moreover, such work is mostly based on very unbalanced approaches in terms of the dimensions of sustainable development that are taken into account. The approach adopted in this article is designed to encompass all the dimensions of sustainability including the institutional one (governance). The taking into account of this latter, in particular, together with the role played by aquaculture in sustainability at the territorial level gives the approach its original and innovative nature. The process of establishing the checklist of sustainability indicators in aquaculture relies on a hierarchical nesting approach which makes it possible to link indicators with general sustainability criteria and principles. At once multidisciplinary and participatory, the approach compares several countries with highly differentiated types of aquaculture system. An original finding from this work is that the technically most intensive farming model scores better than more extensive systems, which might have been thought to be closer to natural systems in their environmental dimension and therefore intuitively more 'sustainable'. This result suggests relating sustainability outcomes to the level of control and of devolved responsibilities.After overcoming its earlier denial of negative environmental impacts, the chemical industry has been working toward enhancing its sustainability. Early efforts focused on reducing pollution from individual processes, while today, the focus is on reducing impacts throughout the life cycle. Current methods for sustainable process design solve large multiobjective optimization problems, and attempt to consider economic, environmental and social aspects. This paper provides an overview of recent developments in sustainable process design and its applications. These methods use the latest advances in process systems engineering, but are lagging in their use of advances in Sustainable Engineering. More work is needed for considering impacts over the full life cycle boundary, and to ensure that sustainable designs do not exceed nature's capacity to provide the needed ecosystem goods and services.The chemical industry is poised for significant growth and investment, which presents an opportunity for adoption of greener chemical technologies. This article reviews available and emerging technologies for reducing the fossil fuel demand associated with the ammonia, ethylene, methanol, propylene, and benzene, toluene, and xylenes (BTX) industries. These few energy-intensive commodity chemicals (EICCs) account for around half of the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the global chemical industry. Available data are harmonized to characterize potential energy use and GHG emissions savings, while technical and economic barriers to adoption are discussed. This information sheds light on the status of future technological options for reducing the impacts of the chemicals industry, and provides quantitative data to industry analysts and policy makers seeking a greater understanding of such options for EICCs.The sustainable refurbishment of the existing building stock is a key issue in achieving the ambitious long-term energy and environmental goals of the European Union. Europe has a vast building stock built with prefabricated reinforced concrete large-panel construction technology after World War II to decrease the general housing shortage, mostly in the Eastern-European countries and East Germany. This study focuses on the environmental evaluation of the retrofitting of the existing precast large-panel building stock in Hungary and provides a decision support tool for the architectural design process by identifying the largest environmental impacts. Different scenarios, including demolition/new construction and various refurbishment levels, were analyzed through life cycle assessment and considering the potential impacts throughout the building's lifetime. The effect of building lifetime and calculation period on the environmental performance was evaluated in detail. The typology of the precast large-panel building stock was set up by grouping buildings according to their age, architecture and technical parameters. The methodology is demonstrated on a case study area: the Kelenfold housing estate in Budapest (Hungary) built in 1965-75 was chosen for the analysis. After assessing the environmental performance of the determined types, the mitigation potential of the housing estate was estimated.In our study, we examined the annual carbon footprint and energy balance of a Hungarian biogas power plant with a power output of 0.637 MW in 2013, with reference to the complete life cycle of the biogas production. The life cycle analysis (LCA) considered the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) during the production of feedstock and its transportation into the power plant, during the operation of the factory and during the process of rendering the discarded waste materials harmless. We established that the highest GHG emissions related to the feedstock production in which both the use of machines and N2O release from the use of artificial fertilizers played an important role. In 2013, the power plant produced 4347.21 MWh electric power and 4607.89 MWh thermal energy. The carbon footprint of the complete energy production life cycle was 208173 kg CO2 equivalents (CO(2)e). If the regular Hungarian energy structure produced such a quantity of energy, GHG emissions would be 15 times higher. Therefore, the energy balance of the power plant is positive; in contrast to its 8955.10 MWh energy production, its energy requirements were merely 2720.26 MWh, of which 1520.60 MWh as thermal energy served to heat the digesters. Unfortunately, more than 50% of the produced thermal energy is currently wasted; therefore, in the future, it is important to find a solution for the proper utilization of this valuable energy.Sensitivity anal. of eco-efficiency of energy prodn. based on off-site coal gasification was carried out for 4 technols. based on lignite and bituminous coal and optionally equipped with a CO2 sequestration unit. Life cycle assessment and costing anals. were performed. Plant efficiency, coal price,and investment costs were crucial factors for energy prodn. eco-efficiency.Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) is a renewable, biodegradable biopolymer that has shown great promise to offset the use of hydrocarbon-derived plastics. The genes encoding the bacterial PHB production pathway have been engineered into several higher order plant species providing an opportunity to produce PHB as a co-product on an industrial, agricultural scale. This study investigates the economic feasibility and estimates the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced during the PHB production from hybrid poplar leaves. An established, bench scale extraction procedure was extrapolated upon using SuperPro designer to estimate the product cost, raw materials and energy used during extraction of PHB from poplar leaves on an industrial scale. Assuming an economically feasible concentration of PHB could be produced in the leaf material, a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment was performed under two of the most likely poplar production scenarios for the Northwest United States where poplar is commonly grown for biomass applications. The cost of PHB production was found to vary greatly with the PHB content in the leaves; from $33.28 per kg at 0.5% PHB to $1.72 per kg at 20% PHB content. Poplar production scenarios varied greatly in their emission of GHGs. An irrigated poplar production scenario is estimated to produce 248.8% more GHGs than production of the displaced polypropylene. An un-irrigated poplar production scenario produced 76.1% less GHGs. Both production scenarios produced significant amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with normal poplar growth that could prove detrimental to local air quality. PHB content of 15% in the poplar was required to bring the PHB production price to $2.26 per kg and make production competitive with petroleum-derived plastics. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.Resource depletion is of concern to both present and future generations in terms of access to resources. It is a prominent impact category within life cycle assessment (LCA) and sustainability assessment. This paper examines existing resource depletion approaches and indicators in the context of natural gas depletion, and their limitations in modelling the wider environmental consequences of resource consumption. Some existing models assume substitution of scarce fossil fuels with an alternative fossil fuel or mix, but do not consider all of the subsequent change in impacts. An additional methodology is proposed to measure the impact changes when fossil fuel substitution occurs as a result of scarcity. The methodology will demonstrate the effect of resource scarcity for individual processes but also multiple processes which operate at different levels of resource consumption with varying degrees of impacts. The methodology is applied to a scarcity situation of natural gas in Australia, where black coal is substituted for gas. It is first applied to natural gas consumed for electricity generation only. In the second case, the methodology is applied to the substitution of natural gas for both electricity generation and hydrogen production. The varying impacts on emissions to air and water, together with solid waste generation and water depletion, as a result of the substitution are used to reflect the consequences of fossil fuel depletion. The indicators also provide information on the impacts of substitution in each product, thus enabling users to prioritise products based on the impacts produced during natural gas allocation. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Institution of Chemical Engineers. All rights reserved.Exposures of the general population to manufactured nanoparticles (MNPs) are expected to keep rising due to increasing use of MNPs in common consumer products (PEN 2014). The present study focuses on characterizing ambient and indoor population exposures to silver MNPs (nAg). For situations where detailed, case-specific exposure-related data are not available, as in the present study, a novel tiered modeling system, Prioritization/Ranking of Toxic Exposures with GIS (geographic information system) Extension (PRoTEGE), has been developed: it employs a product life cycle analysis (LCA) approach coupled with basic human life stage analysis (LSA) to characterize potential exposures to chemicals of current and emerging concern. The PRoTEGE system has been implemented for ambient and indoor environments, utilizing available MNP production, usage, and properties databases, along with laboratory measurements of potential personal exposures from consumer spray products containing nAg. Modeling of environmental and microenvironmental levels of MNPs employs probabilistic material flow analysis combined with product LCA to account for releases during manufacturing, transport, usage, disposal, etc. Human exposure and dose characterization further employ screening microenvironmental modeling and intake fraction methods combined with LSA for potentially exposed populations, to assess differences associated with gender, age, and demographics. Population distributions of intakes, estimated using the PRoTEGE framework, are consistent with published individual-based intake estimates, demonstrating that PRoTEGE is capable of capturing realistic exposure scenarios for the US population. Distributions of intakes are also used to calculate biologically relevant population distributions of uptakes and target tissue doses through human airway dosimetry modeling that takes into account product MNP size distributions and age-relevant physiological parameters.Sanitation and wastewater treatment are essential for protecting human health and environmental sustainability. Treatment processes are not free of environmental impacts; consequently assessment of the environmental performance of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) has gained interest in recent years. Unlike other methods, a direct approach is followed to estimate environmental performance indicators (EPIs) using data envelopment analysis (DEA), i.e. an index of overall performance is directly obtained. The present study represents pioneering work to integrate environmental impacts in the assessment of the efficiency of WWTP estimating pure (PEPI) and mixed (MEPI) environmental performance indices fora sample of 60 Spanish WWTPs. Both direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were considered as undesirable outputs. The best functioning WWTPs to be used as references were identified, and the potential for GHG reductions was quantified. A second-stage analysis was conducted to isolate factors affecting WWTP environmental performance. The results of this study are valuable for WWTP operators and policy makers, since the benchmark procedure allows support for environmental and managerial decision-making. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Multi-objective forest planning is a multi-methodological endeavor whose success largely depends on how well the combined use of different methods contributes to the goals of the planning. This review assessed the benefits of mixing methods in natural resources planning. A sample of 30 peer-reviewed research articles was analyzed using an evaluation framework, designed based on democracy and planning theories, and participatory planning literature, including four dimensions: transparency, flexibility, consensus building, and operability. According to analyses, mixing different types (i.e. qualitative and quantitative) of methods generally yields greater benefits than the combination of similar methods. The subsample of 12 planning cases that utilized simulation-optimization software (SOS) appeared operable and moderately transparent, whereas flexibility and consensus building were often lacking. In comparison to the wide scholarly discussion on multi-methodology and mixing methods, it was observed that successful mixing examples in natural resource planning are still scarce and there are weaknesses in bridging the methods together. There is an evident need to pursue and to better communicate the benefits of mixing. Some good mixing examples utilizing SOS provided evidence that forest planning processes would make an excellent venue for studying the benefits and caveats of using mixed methods.The paradigm shift from fossil to renewable energy sources is driven, largely, by a growing sustainability awareness, necessitating more sophisticated measurements in terms of a wider range of criteria. Technical efficiency, financial profitability, environmental friendliness and social acceptance are some of the aspects determining the sustainability of renewable energy systems. The resulting complexity and sometimes conflicting nature of these criteria constitute major barriers to the implementation of renewable energy projects. The Worcester biomass procurement area in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, is used as a case study. It provides a blueprint for measuring the impacts of lignocellulosic bioelectricity systems - using life-cycle assessment (LCA), multi-period budgeting (MPB), geographic information systems (GIS) and multi-criteria decision-making analysis (MCDA), among others e and for prioritising the relevant criteria to determine the most sustainable technological option. Following the LCA approach, 37 plausible lignocellulosic bioenergy systems were assessed against five financial-economic, three socio-economic and five environmental criteria. On translating the quantitative performance data into a standardised 'common language' of relative performance, an expert group attached weights to the considered criteria, using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Assuming the prerequisite of financial-economic viability, the preferred option comprises a feller-buncher for harvesting, a forwarder for biomass extraction, mobile comminution at the roadside, secondary transport in truck-container-trailer combinations and an integrated gasification system for the conversion into electricity. This approach illustrates how to internalise externalities as typical market failures, aiding decision makers to choose the most sustainable bioenergy system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We investigate the economic and employment consequences of introducing a new sugarcane-based biofuel industry into Australia. We model the new biofuel industry on the production recipe of the existing large-scale gasoalcohol and alcohol sectors in the Brazilian economy. To this end we utilise a hybrid IO-LCA (input-output life cycle assessment) approach, which involves inserting data on new processes and/or sectors into an existing IO table. In particular, we develop and test an analytical and a numerical approach for re-balancing an IO table augmented with rows and columns representing large new biofuel industries. We quantify changes in economic output and employment in the Australian economy. We conclude that a future biofuel industry will be employment-positive for Australia. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In addition to risk assessment, effective environmental risk management requires information indicating sources and driving forces of risks. Systematic substance flow analysis can indicate critical emissions and potential strategies of risk reduction by mapping the flows of toxic substances throughout the economic system. This research developed an integrated modeling framework for examining the connections between driving forces and environmental risk. Three methodologies, including substance flow modeling, input-output model, and environmental risk assessment, were integrated into the framework. We built a model of lead flow system integrating four risk chain modules, which are corresponding to the Driver, Presser, State, and Impact component of DPSIR environmental management framework. Thus, risk can be backtraced to its exposure pathways, emission sources, and driving forces. In the results, Sankey diagrams are presented to highlight the sources and driving forces of the lead flow system. Among the driving forces, unit change in the demand on computer products is associated with the most significant change in risk of lead. Backtracing the contributions of the causes along the risk chain, the sectors of electronic product and computer product had driven the electronic supply chain which contributes the greatest to risk of lead by discharging into water body. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To meet Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) cellulosic biofuel mandates, the United States will require an annual domestic supply of about 242 million Mg of biomass by 2022. To improve the feedstock logistics of lignocellulosic biofuels in order to access available biomass resources from areas with varying yields, commodity systems have been proposed and designed to deliver quality-controlled biomass feedstocks at preprocessing "depots". Preprocessing depots densify and stabilize the biomass prior to long-distance transport and delivery to centralized biorefineries. The logistics of biomass commodity supply chains could introduce spatially variable environmental impacts into the biofuel life cycle due to needing to harvest, move, and preprocess biomass from multiple distances that have variable spatial density. This study examines the uncertainty in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of corn stover logistics within a bio-ethanol supply chain in the state of Kansas, where sustainable biomass supply varies spatially. Two scenarios were evaluated each having a different number of depots of varying capacity and location within Kansas relative to a central commodity-receiving biorefinery to test GHG emissions uncertainty. The first scenario sited four preprocessing depots evenly across the state of Kansas but within the vicinity of counties having high biomass supply density. The second scenario located five depots based on the shortest depot-to-biorefinery rail distance and biomass availability. The logistics supply chain consists of corn stover harvest, collection and storage, feedstock transport from field to biomass preprocessing depot, preprocessing depot operations, and commodity transport from the biomass preprocessing depot to the biorefinery. Monte Carlo simulation was used to estimate the spatial uncertainty in the feedstock logistics gate-to-gate sequence. Within the logistics supply chain GHG emissions are most sensitive to the transport of the densified biomass, which introduces the highest variability (0.2-13 g CO(2)e/MJ) to life cycle GHG emissions. Moreover, depending upon the biomass availability and its spatial density and surrounding transportation infrastructure (road and rail), logistics can increase the variability in life cycle environmental impacts for lignocellulosic biofuels. Within Kansas, life cycle GHG emissions could range from 24 g CO(2)e/MJ to 41 g CO(2)e/MJ depending upon the location, size and number of preprocessing depots constructed. However, this range can be minimized through optimizing the siting of preprocessing depots where ample rail infrastructure exists to supply biomass commodity to a regional biorefinery supply system.This paper considers the climate, health and acidification impacts associated with household-level heating technologies; the policy-based incentives that current emission limits might create for switching between these technologies; and the societal costs that would arise from the externalities associated with the emissions. The data and selection of appliances are applicable to Finland, but the approach can be used to analyse also other countries with similar environmental policies. The results indicate that none of the assessed technologies outperforms the others in every impact category, and that trade-offs need to be made between the impacts. Two perspectives are used to compare these trade-offs. From a policy point of view, a switch from light oil to any of the studied biomass-based appliances would help to achieve national emission limits for CO2 and SO2. However, such a switch could potentially increase the externality costs to the society due to increased population exposure to primary PM2.5. Based on this, the results suggest that the present emission reduction policies create incentives that can possibly direct decisions toward sub-optimal technology choices. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines whether the expanded meaning of the term sustainability and its broader use in society, policy and economics will actually bring about the benefits experts anticipate for the forest-based sector. It begins by defining sustainability as a travelling concept, then presents and analyzes two current lines of discourse in Germany on sustainability, both with high relevance for the forest-based sector: strong sustainability and sustainable building. The analysis shows that each discourse has developed and established a diametrically opposed meaning of sustainability. As a result, it could be argued that the two meanings pose a threat to the German forest-based sector by reducing the raw material base and ultimately minimizing market opportunities. This reasoning reveals a paradox: as the term sustainability, originally coined by the forestry sector, becomes mainstream, it could end up limiting the sector's future growth.This article presents results on cost and performance benefit analysis of optimization and intensification activities of a pharmaceutical process. A batch process for the production of a low-volume, high-value active pharmaceutical ingredient, developed at Sanofi (France), has been used as a case study. With the scale of 100 kg/y and a product price of a few thousands Euros per kilogram, also following a general trend in pharmaceutical industry, this process is supposed to be an ideal candidate for continuous, modular plant production of a highly potent drug. It was aimed to keep the information gathered generic, i.e. to stand for the whole class of similarly produced drugs. The impact of various chemical process parameters on the overall production costs has been investigated and process performance represented in terms of operation time, waste, and resource usage as the main process metrics. Five optimized and intensified scenarios were compared to the reference case operated at a Sanofi site: intensified reaction, continuous processing, alternative catalysts, change of solvent, change in the purification sequence, recovery of the key product, and intensified drying option. The analysis has shown that, under the assumptions used, an intensified millireactor-based process with a subsequent continuous postprocessing brings the most benefits in terms of cost, while its process performance, although equal or slightly better than batch, still can be optimized. The total product cost is then reduced by 35%, while the operating time is 27% lower than the base case, with 47% less labor needed compared to that for the reference case. First studies on ecological impact by the University of Jena confirm these promising findings and are outlined hereinwith its own paper on the respective details to follow. The results are now undergoing experimental validation in the newly developed compact container plant of Evonik.Greenhouse tomato cultivation plays an important role in Sicily, being the primary production area in Italy, due to its favorable pedo-climatic conditions that permit extra-seasonal productions. In Sicily, more than half of greenhouse tomato production is derived from the Province of Ragusa on the southeastern coast, where especially cherry tomato typologies are cultivated. Over the last decade, the Ragusa Province has registered a decrease both in terms of greenhouse tomato area and harvested production due to several structural problems that would require restructuring of the tomato supply chain. Thus, since recognition of real costs and profitability of tomato growing is a vital issue, both from the perspective of the farm, as well as from that of the entrepreneur, the aim of this paper was to analyze the economic sustainability of Sicilian greenhouse cherry tomato cultivated in the Ragusa Province. In particular, an economic analysis on 30 representative farms was conducted in order to estimate production costs and profits of greenhouse cherry tomato. According to our results, the lack of commercial organization, which characterizes the small farms we surveyed, determines low contractual power for farmers and, consequently, low profitability.Technology design and effectiveness studies available in the scientific literature demonstrate future mitigation potentials of nitrogen-related greenhouse gases. Here we investigate 'innovations' influencing such emissions. These innovations mainly address agriculture: reduced meat diets, urban gardening, genetically modified crops, and precision farming, but also more distant options such as vertical farming and cultured meat production, that is, indoor agriculture. While the latter approaches, which allow full management of effluents, seem very promising in terms of emission control, the cost estimates available would rule out any practical relevance. Technologies that currently seem more realistic offer much smaller mitigation potential. Information on energy need, greenhouse gas emissions, and land requirements feed into a semi-quantitative assessment, which delivers information in a format useful for existing European policy tools.Microbiological photosynthesis is a promising tool for producing hydrogen in an ecologically friendly and economically efficient way. Certain microorganisms (e.g. algae and bacteria) can produce hydrogen using hydrogenase and/or nitrogenase enzymes. However, their natural capacity to produce hydrogen is relatively low. Thus, there is a need to optimize their core photosynthetic processes as well as their cultivation, for more efficient hydrogen production. This review aims to provide a holistic overview of the recent technological and research developments relating to photobiological hydrogen production and downstream processing. First we cover photobiological hydrogen synthesis within cells and the enzymes that catalyze the hydrogen production. This is followed by strategies for enhancing bacterial hydrogen production by genetic engineering, technological development, and innovation in bioreactor design. The remaining sections focus on hydrogen as a product, that is, quantification via (in-process) gas analysis, recent developments in gas separation technology. Finally, a discussion of the sociological (market) barriers to future hydrogen usage is provided as well as an overview of methods for life cycle assessment that can be used to calculate the environmental consequences of hydrogen production.The objective of the study is to compare different development scenarios of a black water source-separation sanitation system (BWS) that could be environmentally and economically more viable than a conventional system (CONV). Scenarios performance is evaluated using life cycle assessment and environmental life cycle costing. System boundaries include the processes related to the collection and treatment of wastewater and organic kitchen refuse collection and the recycling of by-product (digestate/sludge and biogas) produced in the treatment step. The BWS scenario that entails a vacuum toilet flow-volume reduction to 0.5 L/flush results in significantly higher performances than the ones of CONV for the climate change and resources indicators, while involving a significantly lower performance with regards to human health and a comparable cost. The BWS scenario based on digestate mass reduction with reverse osmosis and acidification prior to its transport to farmland achieves comparable performances to the ones of CONV for all indicators. The BWS scenario with digestate treatment by means of phosphorus precipitation (struvite) and nitritation-anammox reactors gives performances that are comparable to the ones of CONY for all indicators, with the exception of climate change, for which this scenario has a significantly lower performance if the electricity is produced by hydropower. When single-pathway scenarios are combined, the multi-pathway scenarios thus created can produce results that are significantly superior to the CONV result for the climate change, resources and human health indicators although the cost remains comparable. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper deals with the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology for process design, and presents the initial findings of this analysis qualitatively. The work identifies a need for a methodological development of Life Cycle Process Design (LCPD). This is underpinned by a broad literature review. The literature review shows that the application of LCA as an environmental design instrument is recognized in literature. In contrast to that there is hardly any hint which role Life Cycle Costing (LCC) could play within environmental process design. Most interesting in this line is, how LCA and LCC can be combined for environmental process design to be finally the core instruments of LCPD. The applicability of LCA and LCC within LCPD is shown on the example of a novel biorefinery process under development. Both instruments (LCA and LCC) are already applied during basic process development in this work, parallel to laboratory research. The aim is to identify potential environmental threats at an early stage of process design and also to give a hint on economic feasibility. Additionally a trade-off between environmental and economic issues can be drawn out. On the basis of this analysis the role of LCA during process development is highlighted as well as difficulties and challenges are emphasized. One of the major obstacles is data availability for LCA as well as LCC in the basic design stage of a biotechnological process. The findings of this paper serve as basis for the methodological development of LCPD. It is emphasized that conducting LCA and LCC during basic process development can reveal some relevant action areas for process engineers, which may influence technical as well as economic feasibility. The results presented have to be understood as a first outlook and provide key aspects for future research on the topic of accompanying basic process research projects with LCA and LCC to support future sustainable process design. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of food waste management strategies and the effects of energy mix were evaluated using a life cycle assessment model, EASEWASTE. Three different strategies involving land-fill, composting and combined digestion and composting as core technologies were investigated. The results indicate that the landfilling of food waste has an obvious impact on global warming, although the power recovery from landfill gas counteracts some of this. Food waste composting causes serious acidification (68.0 PE) and nutrient enrichment (76.9 PE) because of NH3 and SO2 emissions during decomposition. Using compost on farmland, which can marginally reduce global warming (-1.7 PE), acidification (-0.8 PE), and ecotoxicity and human toxicity through fertilizer substitution, also leads to nutrient enrichment as neutralization of emissions from N loss (27.6 PE) and substitution (-12.8 PE). A combined digestion and composting technology lessens the effects of acidification (-12.2 PE), nutrient enrichment (-5.7 PE), and global warming(-7.9 PE) mainly because energy is recovered efficiently, which decreases emissions including SO2, Hg, NOx, and fossil CO2 during normal energy production. The change of energy mix by introducing more clean energy, which has marginal effects on the performance of composting strategy, results in apparently more loading to acidification and nutrient enrichment in the other two strategies. These are mainly because the recovered energy can avoid fewer emissions than before due to the lower background values in power generation. These results provide quantitative evidence for technical selection and pollution control in food waste management. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A holistic evaluation of the feasibility of producing 100% recycled mixtures is presented. Eleven technologies readily available for producing 100% Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) hot asphalt mixtures are described in the article and the complementary video (http://youtu.be/coj-e5mhHEQ). The recorded performance of 100% RAP mixtures is analyzed along with identification of typical high RAP distresses. Recommended mix design procedures and the best RAP management strategies are described. A cradle-to-gate analysis of environmental effects indicated 18 kg or 35% CO(2)eq savings per t of produced 100% RAP asphalt mixture compared to virgin mix, while cost analysis showed at least 50% savings in material related expenses. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of low-impact energy sources for greenhouse cultivations is growing quickly due to environmental demands, constrained by the increased price of fossil energy sources, market demand for low cost greenhouse production, and need for air pollution reduction. This paper demonstrates via environmental analysis the efficiency of a Photovoltaic-Geothermal Heat Pump integrated system (PV-GHP) as a greenhouse heating system, compared to a conventional hot air generator using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG-HG). The tests were carried out in twin experimental greenhouses in the Mediterranean area (Valenzano-Italy). In order to evaluate the environmental performance of a heat pump system with electricity supplied from the national grid, a scenario (GHP Geothermal Heat Pump) was realised. The microclimatic conditions in the two greenhouses, the thermal energy produced, and the electricity consumption were analysed. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the long-term environmental impact, an environmental analysis was conducted using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, carried out according to standard UNI EN ISO 14040. The interpretation of the results using method CML2001 (Centre of Environmental Science, Leiden, Netherlands) showed that neither system is more advantageous from an environmental point of view and that the GHP scenario has the higher environmental burdens. Limiting the analysis to the emissions responsible for the greenhouse effect, the plant with the geothermal heat pump and photovoltaic panels reduces carbon emissions by 50%. In order to assess the sustainability of the geothermal heat pump plant, the estimated payback-time for energy and for carbon emissions were 1 year and 2.25 years, respectively. (C) 2014 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper an exergo-environmental analysis of a reverse osmosis desalination plant in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) has been performed using real plant operation data. The plant has a nominal capacity of 82,000 m(3)/day. Different configurations are possible depending on the energy recovery, the reverse osmosis stages, the filtration technology or the feed water pressurization. The exergo-environmental analysis combines an exergy analysis and a Life cycle assessment in order to determine the environmental impact associated with the process. The analysis is conducted at the component level. The primary locations of exergy destruction are the first stage reverse osmosis membrane module and the high pressure pump. Based on the value of the component-related environmental impact, these components are also the major candidates for improvement. The environmental impact associated with the exergy destruction is the largest contributor to the total environmental impact. This means that the overall environmental impact can be reduced by reducing the exergy destruction within specific components, which are identified for potential performance improvement. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main design criteria for the modern sustainable development of vehicle powertrains are the high energy efficiency of the conversion system, the competitive cost and the lowest possible environmental impacts. An innovative decision making methodology, using multi-objective optimization technics is currently under development. The idea is to obtain a population of possible design solutions corresponding to the most efficient energy system definition. These solutions meet technical, economic and environmental optimality. This article applies the methodology on an electric vehicle, in order to define the powertrain configuration of the vehicle, to estimate the cost of the equipment and to show the environmental impacts of the technical choices of the powertrain configurations in a life cycle perspective. A physical model of the electric vehicle is made and coupled with a cost model for the vehicle and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) technics are used for the environmental assessment. After multi-objective optimizations with thermo-economic and environmental objectives, the solutions obtained from the Pareto frontiers curve are analyzed. Conclusions about the environomic design of the vehicle for optimal mobility service are made. The greenhouse gas emissions are calculated from a well-to-wheel perspective for different countries of use of the electric vehicle, according to their respective electricity production mixes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban water and waste management continues to be a major challenge, with the Earth's population projected to rise to 9 billion by 2050, with 70% of this population expected to live in cities. A combined treatment of wastewater and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste offers opportunities for improved environmental protection and energy recovery, but the collection and transport of organic wastes must be cost effective. This study compares three alternative kitchen waste collection and transportation systems for a virtual modern urban area with 300,000 residents and a population density of 10,000 persons per square kilometre. Door-to-door collection, being the standard practice in modern urban centres, remains the most economically advantageous at a cost of 263 euros per tonne of kitchen waste. Important drawbacks are the difficult logistics, increased city traffic, air and noise pollution. The quieter, cleaner and more hygienic vacuum transport of kitchen waste comes with a higher cost of 367 euros per tonne, mainly resulting from a higher initial investment cost for the system installation. The third option includes the well-known use of under-sink food waste disposers (often called garbage grinders) that are connected to the kitchen's wastewater piping system, with a total yearly cost of 392 euros per tonne. Important advantages with this system are the clean operation and the current availability of a city-wide sewage conveyance pipeline system. Further research is recommended, for instance the application of a life cycle assessment approach, to more fully compare the advantages and disadvantages of each option.The world's agricultural system has come under increasing scrutiny recently as an important driver of global climate change, creating a demand for indicators that estimate the climatic impacts of agricultural commodities. Such carbon footprints, however, have in most cases excluded emissions from land-use change and the proposed methodologies for including this significant emissions source suffer from different shortcomings. Here, we propose a new methodology for calculating land-use change carbon footprints for agricultural commodities and illustrate this methodology by applying it to three of the most prominent agricultural commodities driving tropical deforestation: Brazilian beef and soybeans, and Indonesian palm oil. We estimate land-use change carbon footprints in 2010 to be 66 tCO(2)/t meat (carcass weight) for Brazilian beef, 0.89 tCO(2)/t for Brazilian soybeans, and 7.5tCO(2)/t for Indonesian palm oil, using a 10year amortization period. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is its flexibility: it can be applied in a tiered approach, using detailed data where it is available while still allowing for estimation of footprints for a broad set of countries and agricultural commodities; it can be applied at different scales, estimating both national and subnational footprints; it can be adopted to account both for direct (proximate) and indirect drivers of land-use change. It is argued that with an increasing commercialization and globalization of the drivers of land-use change, the proposed carbon footprint methodology could help leverage the power needed to alter environmentally destructive land-use practices within the global agricultural system by providing a tool for assessing the environmental impacts of production, thereby informing consumers about the impacts of consumption and incentivizing producers to become more environmentally responsible.The objective of the paper is to discuss the role of a new guidance document for life cycle assessment (LCA) in the construction sector available as an online InfoHub. This InfoHub derives from the EeBGuide European project that aimed at developing a guidance document for energy-efficient building LCA studies. The InfoHub is built on reference documents such as the ISO 14040-44 standards, the EN 15804 and EN 15978 standards as well as the ILCD Handbook. The guidance document was filled with expertise and knowledge of several experts. The focus was put on providing scientifically sound, yet practical guidance. The EeBGuide InfoHub is an online guidance document, setting rules for conducting LCA studies and giving instructions on how to do this. The document has a section on buildings-new and existing-and a section on construction products. It is structured according to the life cycle stages of the European standards EN 15804 and EN 15978, covering all aspects of LCA studies by applying provisions from these standards and the ILCD handbook, wherever applicable. The guidance is presented for different scopes of studies by means of three study types. For the same system boundaries, default values are proposed in early or quick assessment (screening and simplified LCA) while detailed calculation rules correspond to a complete LCA. Such approach is intended to better match the user needs in the building sector. This paper can be viewed as a contribution to the ongoing efforts to improve the consistency and harmonisation in LCA studies for building products and buildings. Further contributions are now needed to improve building LCA guidance and to strengthen links between research, standardisation and implementation of LCA in the construction practice.The aim of this article is to signal the changes envisaged by ISO TC/207 SC1 for introduction in the new version of ISO 14001:2015 as well as to discuss the role of eco-design and life cycle thinking (LCT) in the context of Environmental Management Systems (EMS). A review of the proposed changes to be introduced in the new version of ISO 14000:2015 with particular emphasis on those related to LCT and eco-design has been carried out. Additionally, for the purpose of this article, the guidelines with regard to ISO 14006:2011 have been analysed in the context of the role that eco-design plays in an EMS. The new version of ISO 14001:2015 includes many direct and indirect references to LCT. One of the key changes is organisations adapting a wider perspective to see how their environmental impact stretch across the whole supply chain. Another key recommendation is to use eco-design for identifying and assessing the environmental aspects in relation to products. The whole life cycle of the products should be analysed, which will result in the inclusion of indirect environmental aspects that are beyond the direct control of the organisation. The planned changes to ISO 14001:2015 with regard to the use of LCT and eco-design should be seen as a significant piece of information by eco-designers and life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners since they provide a real opportunity to increase interest in eco-design tools amongst the environmental managers responsible for the environmental management systems within their organisations. It seems that now is the right time to initiate information campaigns and training on eco-design and LCA tailored specifically for organisations, which have implemented environmental management systems.The paper provides an empirical assessment of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system based on hydrogen technologies (HT-UPS) using renewable energy sources (RES) with regard to its environmental impacts and a comparison to a UPS system based on the internal combustion engine (ICE-UPS). For the assessment and comparison of the environmental impacts, the life-cycle assessment (LCA) method was applied, while numerical models for individual components of the UPS systems (electrolyser, storage tank, fuel cell and ICE) were developed using GaBi software. The scope of analysis was cradle-to-end of utilisation with functional unit 1 kWh of uninterrupted electricity produced. For the life-cycle inventory analysis, quantitative data was collected with on-site measurements on an experimental system, project documentation, GaBi software generic databases and literature data. The CML 2001 method was applied to evaluate the system's environmental impacts. Energy consumption of the manufacturing phase was estimated from gross value added (GVA) and the energy intensity of the industry sector in the manufacturer's country. In terms of global warming (GW), acidification (A), abiotic depletion (AD) and eutrophication (E), manufacturing phase of HT-UPS accounts for more than 97 % of environmental impacts. Electrolyser in all its life-cycle phases contributes above 50 % of environmental impacts to the system's GW, A and AD. Energy return on investment (EROI) for the HT-UPS has been calculated to be 0.143 with distinction between renewable (roughly 60 %) and non-renewable energy resources inputs. HT-UPS's life-cycle GW emissions have been calculated to be 375 g of CO2 eq per 1 kWh of uninterruptible electric energy supplied. All these values have also been calculated for the ICE-UPS and show that in terms of GW, A and AD, the ICE-UPS has bigger environmental impacts and emits 1,190 g of CO2 eq per 1 kWh of uninterruptible electric energy supplied. Both systems have similar operation phase energy efficiency. The ICE-UPS has a higher EROI but uses almost none RES inputs. The comparison of two different technologies for providing UPS has shown that in all environmental impact categories, except eutrophication, the HT-UPS is the sounder system. Most of HT-UPS's environmental impacts result from the manufacturing phase. On the contrary, ICE-UPS system's environmental impacts mainly result from operational phase. Efficiency of energy conversion from electricity to hydrogen to electricity again is rather low, as is EROI, but these will likely improve as the technology matures.The two main reasons for producing biomethane as renewable fuel are reduction of climate impacts and depletion of fossil resources. Biomethane is expected to be sustainable, but how sustainable is it actually? This article contributes to the clarification. Therefore, the environmental impacts of several biomethane facilities all over Europe were assessed. A special focus is put on the differences between the facilities as they follow different production routes. The method used for evaluation is life cycle assessment (LCA) applied in a well-to-wheel approach. This enables to show the overall performance in terms of global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) and PE fossil. The system boundary includes the entire chain from biogas production to upgrading, distribution and use. For evaluating the different production routes several years of measuring data, calculating and improving the LCA models in close cooperation with the plant operators were carried out. The evaluation of the production routes shows a high reduction potential compared to fossil fuels. Regarding the depletion of fossil resources, the amounts vary between the sites, but the reduction is at least 50 % and reaches almost 100 % reductions at some sites. The reduction of GWP is at least 65 %, because waste flows free of environmental burdens are used almost exclusively as substrate. Other dominant factors are power and heat demand, methane losses to the environment and the use of by-products, e.g. fertilizer. Despite this caveat, the evaluated systems demonstrate the possible positive results of renewable fuel production if done properly.The number of scrap tires generated in China has grown dramatically every year. Generation of ground rubber from scrap tires is the dominant management option in China. It is necessary to assess the environmental impacts of ground rubber production from scrap tires to provide technical advices on a cleaner production. Production of ground rubber from recycled scrap tires consist of three steps: rubber powder preparation, devulcanization, and refining. A process life cycle assessment (LCA) of ground rubber production from scrap tires is carried out, and Eco-indicator 99 method coupled with ecoinvent database is applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of this process. During the ground rubber production stage, the impact factor of respiratory inorganic is the most serious one. Devulcanization has the highest environmental load of about 66.2 %. Moreover, improvement on the flue gas treatment contributes to a cleaner production and a more environmental-friendly process. Applying clean energy can largely reduce environmental load by about 21.5 %. The results can be a guidance to reduce environmental load when producing ground rubber from scrap tires. Meanwhile, increasing energy efficiency, improving environmental protection equipment, and applying clean energy are the effective measures to achieve this goal.Because the potential impacts of emissions and extractions can be sensitive to timing, the temporal aggregation of life cycle inventory (LCI) data has often been cited as a limitation in life cycle assessment (LCA). Until now, examples of temporal emission and extraction distributions were restricted to the foreground processes of product systems. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the relevance of considering the temporal distribution of the background system inventory. The paper focuses on the global warming impact category for which so-called dynamic characterization factors (CFs) were developed and uses the ecoinvent v2.2 database as both an example database to which temporal information can be added and a source of product systems to test the relevance of adding temporal information to the background system. Temporal information was added to the elementary and intermediate exchanges of 22 % of the unit processes in the database. Using the enhanced structure path analysis (ESPA) method to generate temporally differentiated LCIs in conjunction with time-dependent global warming characterization factors, potential impacts were calculated for all 4,034 product systems in the ecoinvent database. Each time, the results were calculated for (1) systems in which temporal information was only added to the first two tiers, representing studies in which only the foreground system is temporally differentiated, and (2) systems in which temporal information was also added to the background system. For 8.6 % of the database product systems, adding temporal differentiation to background unit processes affected the global warming impact scores by more than 10 %. For most of the affected product systems, considering temporal information in the background unit processes decreased the global warming impact scores. The sectors that show most sensitivity to the temporal differentiation of background unit processes are associated with wood and biofuel sectors. Even though the addition of temporal information to unit processes in LCI databases would not benefit every LCA study, the enhancement can be relevant. It allows for a more accurate global warming impact assessment, especially for LCAs in which products of biomass are present in substantial amounts. Relevance for other impact categories could be discussed in further work.The primary aim of this paper is to indicate that partitioning allocation methods yields only a small subset of solutions to an ill-posed problem that has potentially infinitely many exact solutions. It will be shown that each of the existing partitioning methods arrives at just one particular solution from among infinitely many solutions of an underdetermined system of linear equations. Some life cycle inventories fall into a class of functions called estimable functions in linear model framework, in which case they are invariant to allocation assumptions. This class of functions unites results described by Heijungs and Frischknecht (Int J Life Cycle Assess 3:321-332, 1998) and Heijungs and Suh (2002, Conjecture 1, p. 91). The inventories for non-estimable functions obtained through allocation are, in fact, derived under a set of additional implicit equality constraints called side conditions, often resulting in inventory results which differ greatly from one allocation to the next. This paper explicates (1) identification of all estimable functions from any given technology matrix and (2) recovery of side conditions imposed on non-estimable functions through partitioning. These methods are illustrated in a simple example, and their relation to least squares techniques for allocation explored by Marvuglia et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 15:1020-1040, 2010) ;(Int J Agr Environ Inf Syst 3:51-71, 2012) are discussed. Recommendations are made that may lead to more meaningful ways to obtain additional data or include additional information in life cycle inventories in the future.The purpose of this review article is to investigate the usefulness of different types of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of electrified vehicles to provide robust and relevant stakeholder information. It presents synthesized conclusions based on 79 papers. Another objective is to search for explanations to divergence and "complexity" of results found by other overviewing papers in the research field, and to compile methodological learnings. The hypothesis was that such divergence could be explained by differences in goal and scope definitions of the reviewed LCA studies. The review has set special attention to the goal and scope formulation of all included studies. First, completeness and clarity have been assessed in view of the ISO standard's (ISO 2006a, b) recommendation for goal definition. Secondly, studies have been categorized based on technical and methodological scope, and searched for coherent conclusions. Comprehensive goal formulation according to the ISO standard (ISO 2006a, b) is absent in most reviewed studies. Few give any account of the time scope, indicating the temporal validity of results and conclusions. Furthermore, most studies focus on today's electric vehicle technology, which is under strong development. Consequently, there is a lack of future time perspective, e.g., to advances in material processing, manufacturing of parts, and changes in electricity production. Nevertheless, robust assessment conclusions may still be identified. Most obvious is that electricity production is the main cause of environmental impact for externally chargeable vehicles. If, and only if, the charging electricity has very low emissions of fossil carbon, electric vehicles can reach their full potential in mitigating global warming. Consequently, it is surprising that almost no studies make this stipulation a main conclusion and try to convey it as a clear message to relevant stakeholders. Also, obtaining resources can be observed as a key area for future research. In mining, leakage of toxic substances from mine tailings has been highlighted. Efficient recycling, which is often assumed in LCA studies of electrified vehicles, may reduce demand for virgin resources and production energy. However, its realization remains a future challenge. LCA studies with clearly stated purposes and time scope are key to stakeholder lessons and guidance. It is also necessary for quality assurance. LCA practitioners studying hybrid and electric vehicles are strongly recommended to provide comprehensive and clear goal and scope formulation in line with the ISO standard (ISO 2006a, b).Odour is an important aspect of systems for human and agricultural waste management and many technologies are developed with the sole purpose of reducing odour. Compared with greenhouse gas assessment and the assessment of toxicity, odour assessment has received little attention in the life cycle assessment (LCA) community. This article aims to redress this. Firstly, a framework for the assessment of odour impacts in LCA was developed considering the classical LCA framework of emissions, midpoint and endpoint indicators. This suggested that an odour footprint midpoint indicator was worth striving for. An approach to calculating an areal indicator we call "odour footprint", which considers the odour detection threshold, the diffusion rate and the kinetics of degradation of odourants, was implemented in MATLAB. We demonstrated the use of the characterisation factors we calculated in a case study based on odour removal technology applied to a pig barn. We produced a list of 33 linear characterisation factors based on hydrogen sulphide equivalents, analogous to the linear carbon dioxide equivalency factors in use in carbon footprinting, or the dichlorobenzene equivalency factors developed for assessment of toxic impacts in LCA. Like the latter, this odour footprint method does not take local populations and exposure pathway analysis into account-its intent is not to assess regulatory compliance or detailed design. The case study showed that despite the need for materials and energy, large factor reductions in odour footprint and eutrophication potential were achieved at the cost of a smaller factor increase in greenhouse emissions. The odour footprint method is proposed as an improvement on the established midpoint method for odour assessment in LCA. Unlike it, the method presented here considers the persistence of odourants. Over time, we hope to increase the number of characterised odourants, enabling analysts to perform simple site-generic LCA on systems with odourant emissions.Boosting of eco-innovative solutions for End of Life Tyres (ELTs) management, under the principles of the EU Resource Efficiency Roadmap and the Waste Framework Directive, can not only diminish the environmental hazards and the consequent societal cost, but also result to the establishment of a novel perception regarding ELTs; thus, a valuable stock of resources that can be exploited. Despite the extensive scientific research of the previous years on ELTs depolymerisation via pyrolysis highlighting its eco-innovative characteristics, the use of pyrolysis to process scrap tyres has not yet achieved a broad commercial success, with economic viability and product standardization to constitute the primary impediments. More specifically, pyrolysis was not applied to an extensive industrial scale so far, due to deficient market analysis, legislative barriers, economic instability and sometimes public acceptance. All the above issues are addressed by the present study. Modifications on current EU legislation can prevent or reduce delays or derailment of efforts on pyrolysis, through its differentiation from incineration. The attainment of economic viability could be realized through the valorization of the pyrolytic char towards activated carbon production for environmental depollution applications; needless to say, the penetration on niche and well-organised markets is more than essential. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle analysis of several waste management scenarios for an Italian urban area was performed on the basis of different source segregation collection (SS) intensities from 0% up to 52%. Source segregated waste was recycled and or/recovered by composting. Residual waste management options were by landfilling, incineration with energy recovery or solid recovered fuel (SRF) production to substitute for coal. The increase in fuel and materials consumption due to increase in SS had negligible influence on the environmental impact of the system. Recycling operations such as incineration and SRF were always advantageous for impact reduction. There was lower impact for an SS of 52% even though the difference with the SS intensity of 35% was quite limited, about 15%. In all the configurations analyzed, the best environmental performance was achieved for the management system producing SRF by the biodrying process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study uses different scenarios to evaluate, by means of energy life-cycle assessments (ELCAs), the energy balance of potential gasification technology and limitation boundaries in Taiwan. Rice straw is chosen as the target material in this study because it is the most significant agriculture waste in Taiwan. Energy products include syngas (CO + H-2), methane, carbon dioxide and carbon black residue. The scenarios simulate capacities of 50,000-200,000 tons/year. The distances of collection and transportation are calculated by a circular area 50-100 kin in diameter. Also, the on-site and off-site pretreatments of rice straw are evaluated. For this optimum scenario case, the average of the total input energy for the assessed systems is about 15.9% of the average output energy; the value of the net energy balance (NEB) is 0.841. Every technological process has positive energy benefits at all on-site scenario cases. As the capacity is increased, the energy consumption required for transportation increases and the values of the energy indicators decrease. According to the limitation boundaries from the tendency model at on-site cases, the suggested transportation distance and treatment capacity are below 114.72 km and 251,533 tons/year, respectively, while the energy return on investment (EROI) value is greater than 1. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to the increasing energy demands and global warming, energy quality management (EQM) for districts has been getting importance over the last few decades. The evaluation of the optimum energy systems for specific districts is an essential part of EQM. This paper presents a deep analysis of the optimum energy systems for a district sited in China. A multi-objective optimization approach based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) is proposed for the analysis. The optimization process aims to search for the suitable 3E (minimum economic cost and environmental burden as well as maximum efficiency) energy systems. Here, life cycle CO2 equivalent (LCCO2), life cycle cost (LCC) and exergy efficiency (EE) are set as optimization objectives. Then, the optimum energy systems for the Chinese case are presented. The final work is to investigate the effects of different energy parameters. The results show the optimum energy systems might vary significantly depending on some parameters. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compares the life cycle impacts of three heating plant systems which differ in their source of energy and the type of system. The following heating systems are considered: electric water-water heat pump, absorption water-water heat pump and natural gas fired boiler. The heat source for heat pump systems is low temperature geothermal source with temperature below 20 degrees C and spontaneous outflow 24 m(3)/h. It is assumed that the heat pumps and boiler are working in monovalent system. The analysis was carried out for heat networks temperature characteristic at 50/40 degrees C which is changing with outdoor temperature during heating season. The environmental life cycle impact is evaluated within life cycle assessment methodological framework. The method used for life cycle assessment is eco-indicator '99. The functional unit is defined as heating plant system with given amount of heat to be delivered to meet local heat demand in assumed average season. The data describing heating plant system is derived from literature and energy analysis of these systems. The data describing the preceding life cycle phases: extraction of raw materials and fuels, production of heating devices and their transportation is taken from Ecoinvent 2.0 life cycle inventory database. The results were analyzed on three levels of indicators: single score indicator, damage category indicators and impact category indicator. The indicators were calculated for characterization, normalization and weighting phases as well. SimaPro 7.3.2 is the software used to model the systems' life cycle. The study shows that heating plants using a low temperature geothermal source have lower eco-indicator than a gas boiler unit. In comparison of two heat pumps the absorption heat pump has a lower environmental impact rather than electrical heat pump. However, in spite of high level eco-indicator, gas boiler has the lowest damage to human health. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The sugarcane industry in Brazil has been considered promising for the production of advanced fuels and bio-based products. However, the sugarcane crop requires high volumes of fossil fuel for cultivation and transport. The use of biodiesel as a diesel substitute could reduce the environmental burdens associated with this high consumption. This work performed a stochastic evaluation of the environmental and economic implications of the integrated production of sugarcane bioethanol and soybean biodiesel, in comparison with the traditional sugarcane-to-ethanol process. The analysis was focused on the states of Goias, Mato Grosso and Sao Paulo, where this integration would be particularly attractive. The environmental aspects addressed were the fossil energy use and the GHG emissions in a cradle-to-gate approach. The economic analysis comprised the evaluation of the net present value of an incremental cash flow generated by the soybean production and by the adjacent plants of oil extraction and biodiesel. Results indicate that the integrated system is likely to improve the ethanol environmental performance, especially with regard to the fossil energy use. The integration is economically feasible but highly uncertain; however, it could be significantly improved through fiscal incentives to biodiesel producers, founded on the reduction of fossil energy use and on improvements in logistics. In addition, the proposed model may also assist in the design of other integrated systems applied to the sugarcane sector in Brazil. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Willow Salix sp. is currently cultivated as a short rotation forestry crop in Ireland as a source of biomass to contribute to renewable energy goals. The aim of this study is to evaluate the energy requirements and environmental impacts associated with willow (Salix sp.) cultivation, harvest, and transport using life cycle assessment (LCA). In this study, only emissions from the production of the willow chip are included, end-use emissions from combustion are not considered. In this LCA study, three impact categories are considered; acidification potential, eutrophication potential and global warming potential. In addition, the cumulative energy demand and energy ratio of the system are evaluated. The results identify three key processes in the production chain which contribute most to all impact categories considered; maintenance, harvest and transportation of the crop. Sensitivity analysis on the type of fertilizers used, harvesting technologies and transport distances highlights the effects of these management techniques on overall system performance. Replacement of synthetic fertilizer with biosolids results in a reduction in overall energy demand, but raises acidification potential, eutrophication potential and global warming potential. Rod harvesting compares unfavourably in comparison with direct chip harvesting in each of the impact categories considered due to the additional chipping step required. The results show that dedicated truck transport is preferable to tractor-trailer transport in terms of energy demand and environmental impacts. Finally, willow chip production compares favourably with coal provision in terms of energy ratio and global warming potential, while achieving a higher energy ratio than peat provision but also a higher global warming potential.This study presents experimental measurements of the biochemical methane production for whole and lipid extracted Nannochloropsis salina. Results show whole microalgae produced 430 cm(3)-CH4 g-volatile solids(-1) (g-VS) (sigma = 60), 3 times more methane than was produced by the LEA, 140 cm(3)-CH4 g-VS-1 (sigma = 30). Results illustrate current anaerobic modeling efforts in microalgae to biofuel assessments are not reflecting the impact of lipid removal. On a systems level, the overestimation of methane production is shown to positively skew the environmental impact of the microalgae to biofuels process. Discussion focuses on a comparison results to those of previous anaerobic digestion studies and quantifies the corresponding change in greenhouse gas emissions of the microalgae to biofuels process based on results from this study. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are potent greenhouse gases with global warming potentials (expressed in terms of CO2-equivalents) of 28 and 265, respectively. When emitted to the atmosphere, they significantly contribute to climate change. It was previously suggested that in wastewater treatment facilities that apply anaerobic sludge digestion, CH4 continues to be emitted from digested sludge after leaving the anaerobic digester. This paper studies the CH4 and N2O emissions from anaerobically digested sludge in the subsequent sludge treatment steps. Two full-scale treatment plants were monitored over a 1-year period. Average emissions of CH4 and N2O were 509 +/- 72 mg/m(3)-influent (wastewater) and 7.1 +/- 2.6 mg/m(3)-influent, respectively. These values accounted for 22.4 +/- 3.8% of the indirect reduction in CO2-emissions when electricity was generated using biogas. They are considered to be significant. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biogas production from animal slurry can provide substantial contributions to reach renewable energy targets, yet due to the low methane potential of slurry, biogas plants depend on the addition of co-substrates to make operations profitable. The environmental performance of three underexploited co-substrates, straw, organic household waste and the solid fraction of separated slurry, were assessed against slurry management without biogas production, using LCA methodology. The analysis showed straw, which would have been left on arable fields, to be an environmentally superior co-substrate. Due to its low nutrient content and high methane potential, straw yields the lowest impacts for eutrophication and the highest climate change and fossil depletion savings. Co-substrates diverted from incineration to biogas production had fewer environmental benefits, due to the loss of energy production, which is then produced from conventional fossil fuels. The scenarios can often provide benefits for one impact category while causing impacts in another. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the present study, the potential of Cynara C utilisation for CHP, H-2 and syngas production as a precursor for second generation biofuels with respect to CO2 mitigation by means of air gasification was investigated. Gasification was conducted at a temperature range of 700-900 degrees C at atmospheric pressure, with a main parametric study concerning the effects of temperature and various values of lambda (0.2, 0.3, and 0.4) on gasification product distribution. The experimental results of Cynara C gasification showed that the yield (v/v%) of syngas is optimised at a higher temperature and lower lambda, while for H-2, the maximum yield in v/v% was obtained at a lower temperature. Syngas (H-2 + CO) reached 72.9 v/v% with a LHV of 9.84 MJ/Nm(3) (based on N-2 free gas) at a temperature of 900 degrees C and lambda = 0.2. H-2 achieved a syngas yield of 22 v/v% at 700 degrees C and lambda = 0.2. According to the results, producer gas is recommended for H-2 production rather than for CHP. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Fundamental characteristics identified via observation of the inherently sustainable biosphere can inform and guide environmentally benign design and manufacturing (EBDM). In support of this premise, this paper identifies characteristics, extracts biological principles, translates them into guidelines for EBDM, and briefly reports on their application in situations of engineering interest. It outlines and illustrates the use of constant comparative method (CCM) to identify and extract fundamental biosphere characteristics from biology and ecology literature. Then, it translates these biological principles into general guidelines with associated metrics. To illustrate the efficacy of this approach, bio-inspired metrics are used for the purposes of assessing micro/nanoscale self-cleaning surfaces and designing a carpet tile recycling network. These efforts suggest that learning the phenomena responsible for the biosphere's inherent sustainability can yield insight into EBDM.Measuring consumption may not be the best method of determining whether society is progressing toward sustainability. We have been developing an indicator, the resource occupancy to capacity ratio (ROC ratio), that uses the concept of "resource occupancy" of important multidimensional aspects related to sustainability such as materials, land use, pollution, and labor. Resource occupancy is defined as the product of an amount of potentially reversible use of something such as a piece of land or material and a period of time of use. The ROC ratio is the ratio of resource occupancy of a material or other resource for a specified time period relative to the total capacity of that material or resource to provide a product or service. The ROC ratio of each aspect is expressed in a common unit (years), thereby improving our ability to compare tradeoffs between the different aspects of sustainability and to evaluate the various alternatives used to develop a sustainable society. Two example alternatives are explored as case studies in a comparison of the ROC ratio and monetary value analyses. The ROC ratio offers a different interpretation of the effects of the two alternatives on each aspect, allowing a new perspective on the effectiveness and costs of alternatives used to foster sustainable development. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Decision-making for nature-friendly land use in farming landscapes requires methods and indicators for assessing effects on biodiversity. We developed an expert system for including biodiversity (i.e., organismal diversity) as a life-cycle assessment (LCA) impact category in agricultural production. The method developed is valid for grasslands, arable crops and semi-natural habitats (SNHs) of the farming landscape, and allows us to estimate the impact of management systems on biodiversity. Eleven indicator-species groups or ISGs (flora of crops and grasslands, birds, mammals, amphibians, snails, spiders, carabids, butterflies, wild bees, and grasshoppers) were selected on the basis of ecological and life-cycle assessment criteria. Inventory data on crops, SNHs and agricultural practices with detailed management options were specified. A scoring system estimating the suitability of the farmland crops and SNHs as habitats as well as the reaction of each indicator-species group to the management options was developed. A case study calculated biodiversity scores for grassland along an intensity gradient, as well as those for winter wheat in the case of various cropping systems. The results allowed us to identify management options expected to have a major impact on biodiversity. The number of species observed during a plant and grasshopper survey showed high correlations with the scores derived from the detailed management activities. The use of 11 indicator-species groups allowed a differential, comparatively comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the agricultural practices on biodiversity. Production systems can be compared in terms of their potential impact on biodiversity, which may in turn enable us to make recommendations for good practice. We conclude that the expert system can also be used to investigate land-use scenarios at farm level, as well as on a regional scale. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents the use of Life Assessment Analysis (LCA) to determine the environmental impact of produced electricity and heat for power plants and coal-fired plants in Poland. Moreover, the usefulness of this method of assessment for energy sector was demonstrated. The article also presents the comparative analysis of energy production from burning solid fuels with the use of Ecoindicator 99. The conducted LCA analyses aimed at undergoing a critical review of the objectives of Polish energetic policy. The difference was presented concerning the results of the environmental impact as well as the causes of the essential values of the impact were discussed. Furthermore, the authors identified the measures which will contribute to the reduction of the impact of electricity production on the environment during the production of electricity in the future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emerging photovoltaics has gathered much attention in the last years. Among the innovative technologies developed in order to decrease the costs and broaden the applicability of photovoltaics, the dye sensitized solar cells have gained a flourishing interest for their potential as an economically and environmentally viable alternative to traditional devices. With the aim to increase the efficiency, stability and lifetime of dye sensitized solar cells, the research and development activity has been very productive in order to find the proper set of materials and the best architectures. This present paper aims to trace the progress of dye sensitized solar cells from a life cycle assessment perspective in order to draw the environmental profile of this technology for assessing its potential for eco-friendly innovation in the energy sector. The analysis is performed with a cradle-to-gate approach on three different levels: the synthesis of the solar cell main components, the fabrication of modules with different configurations and, finally, the operational phase of a roof-top photovoltaic system. The comprehensive ReCiPe impact assessment method along with the Cumulative Energy Demand, Global Warming Potential and Energy Payback Time indicators were employed to calculate the photovoltaic performances in comparison with other more mature and best-established thin film technologies. Major outcomes, presented along with a statistical analysis, show that dye sensitized solar cells compare similarly and sometimes better than inorganic devices, even for a far-from-optimum industrial fabrication procedure. Such investigation allows pointing out the usefulness of the life cycle assessment methodology to highlight benefits and drawbacks associated with different technical options that have been proposed for the development of the dye sensitized solar cells technology so far. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Malaysia is currently the world's second largest producer of palm oil. With its large and growing palm oil industry, combined with a strong global demand for palm oil, Malaysia has the potential to play a major role in the world food and biofuel markets. As a result of environmental concerns and reservations concerning the net effect of deforestation in some countries such as Indonesia, a restricted expansion of palm oil plantation area has been analyzed. This paper aims to perform a quantitative analysis on (1) the domestic supply and demand outlook for Malaysia's palm oil, including biodiesel demand and (2) its ability to supply the global markets by 2035, in the context of restricted plantation area. Domestic palm oil production is projected to rise by about 50% to 26.6 million tons in 2035. Domestic demand of palm oil for food consumption, industrial non-food uses and biodiesel is anticipated to increase by more than 200% to 1.4 million tons in 2035, up from 0.4 million tons in 2009. Domestic demand, however, amounts to only a very small portion (5%) of total palm oil production in 2035, with an expected exportable surplus of over 25 million tons. With such surplus capacity, Malaysia will become a formidable competitor in the world vegetable oil and biofuel markets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels have a potential to extend and diversify South Africa's energy supply, thus reducing dependence on imported fuels and pollution levels. Despite several biofuel policies and mandates, biofuel development in South Africa has stalled in the legislative process and no large scale commercial biofuel project has materialized yet. Developing biofuels, especially using food grains, is a big challenge to the government of South Africa due to issues related to food security, commodity prices, economic and social concerns, and impacts of land use changes on the environment. The production cost of feedstock and employment creation opportunities from agricultural production play a vital role in selecting suitable feedstock for the region. Since considerable investment and infrastructure will be required for continued supply of feedstock and efficient biomass conversion technologies, rigorous research and comprehensive studies are required to identify feedstock and technologies best suited for the successful establishment of biofuel industry in South Africa. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Multi-criteria analyses (MCAs) are often applied to assess and compare the sustainability of different renewable energy technologies or energy plans with the aim to provide decision-support for choosing the most sustainable and suitable options either for a given location or more generically. MCAs are attractive given the multi-dimensional and complex nature of sustainability assessments, which typically involve a range of conflicting criteria featuring different forms of data and information. However, the input information on which the MCA is based is often associated with uncertainties. The aim of this study was to develop and apply a MCA for a national-scale sustainability assessment and ranking of eleven renewable energy technologies in Scotland and to critically investigate how the uncertainties in the applied input information influence the result The developed MCA considers nine criteria comprising three technical, three environmental and three socio-economic criteria. Extensive literature reviews for each of the selected criteria were carried out and the information gathered was used with MCA to provide a ranking of the renewable energy alternatives. The reviewed criteria values were generally found to have wide ranges for each technology. To account for this uncertainty in the applied input information, each of the criteria values were defined by probability distributions and the MCA run using Monte Carlo simulation. Hereby a probabilistic ranking of the renewable energy technologies was provided. We show that the ranking provided by the MCA in our specific case is highly uncertain due to the uncertain input information. We conclude that it is important that future MCA studies address these uncertainties explicitly, when assessing the sustainability of different energy projects to obtain more robust results and ensure better informed decision-making. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The food industry is in the crossfire of increasing pressure of competition, consumer demands, and growing importance of ecological sustainability considerations. Life cycle analysis is one of the most important methods for evaluation of environmental effects of food industrial technologies and packaging systems. During the last decades there have been an intense work to collect pieces of information on different environmental aspects of food packaging systems all over the world, but there is a considerable gap between the amount of knowledge and its practical application in decision making on the level of enterprises as well as in the process of determination of environmental protection fee. Application of modern, freely available software frameworks for life cycle analysis offers a favourable possibility for integration of environmental information into managerial and governmental decision making processes. Based on case studies, the article demonstrates the possibilities of utilisation of cumulative environmental burden indicators as well as expert decision-support systems for optimisation of product-portfolio, based on environmental considerations.In this paper, we evaluate the potential of life cycle assessment (LCA) to support environmental decision making at commercial dairy farms. To achieve this, we follow a four-step method that allows converting environmental assessment results using LCA into case-specific advice for farmers. This is illustrated in a case-study involving 20 specialized Flemish dairy farms. Calculated LCA indicators are normalized into scores between 0 and 100, whereby a score of 100 is assumed optimal, to allow for a mutual comparison of indicators for different environmental impact categories. Next, major farm and management characteristics affecting environmental performance are identified using multiple regression and correlation analyses. Finally, comparing specific farm and management characteristics with those of best performing farms identifies farm-specific optimization strategies. We conclude that this approach complies with most of the identified critical success factors for the successful implementation of LCA as a decision support system for farmers. Key aspects herein are (i) the flexibility and accessibility of the model, (ii) the use of readily available farm data, (iii) farm advisors being intended model users, (iv) the identification of key farm and management characteristics affecting environmental performance and (v) the organization of discussion sessions involving farmers and farm advisors. However, attention should be paid (i) to provide sufficient training and guidance for farm advisors on the use of the applied LCA model and the interpretation of results, (ii) to evaluate the correctness of the used data and (iii) to keep the model up-to-date according to new scientific insights and knowledge concerning LCA methodology. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need to reduce dependency on fossil resources and to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is driving many countries towards the implementation of low-carbon electricity systems. In this study the environmental impact of a future (2030) possible low-carbon electricity system in Denmark was assessed and compared with the current situation (2010) and an alternative 2030 scenario using life cycle assessment (LCA). The influence on the final results of the modeling approach used for (i) electricity import, (ii) biomass resources, and (iii) the cogeneration of heat and power was discussed. The results showed that consumption of fossil resources and global warming impacts from the Danish electricity sector could be reduced significantly compared with 2010. Nevertheless, a reduction in GHG may be at the expense of other environmental impacts, such as the increased depletion of abiotic resources. Moreover, the results were very dependent upon biomass origin: when agricultural land was affected by biomass import, and land use changes and transportation were included, GHG emissions from imported biomass were comparable to those from fossil fuels. The results were significantly influenced by the modeling approach regarding the import of electricity, biomass provision, and the allocation between heat and power in cogeneration plants. As the importance of all three aspects is likely to increase in the future, transparency in LCA modeling is critical. Characterized impacts for Danish power plants in 2010 and 2030 (including corresponding electricity supply mixes) were provided, thus enabling future LCA studies to include appropriately impacts from the Danish electricity sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Four manure processing pathways are evaluated to provide a system-level understanding of their impacts on different sustainability indicators. In particular we look at how solid-liquid separation (SLS), anaerobic digestion (AD), and AD+SLS affect depletion of fossil fuels (DFF), nutrient balances, global warming potential (GWP), and ammonia emissions when compared to the base-case (BC) pathway of direct land application. Lifecycle sustainability assessment techniques are applied to develop inventory data and model a Wisconsin dairy farm. For the BC, net GWP is 101.2 kg CO2-eq, DFFS is 106.1 MJ, ammonia emissions are 2.62 kg, and nitrogen availability is 2.45 kg per ton of excreted manure. Net GWP is reduced in all pathways compared to BC by 19% for SLS, 48% for AD, and 47% for AD+SLS. DFF is reduced by 43% for AD and 40% for AD+SLS, but increased by 13% for SLS. Ammonia emissions are increased in all pathways by 2% for SLS, 40% for AD, and 44% for AD+SLS. Nitrogen availability remains the same in SLS but decreases in AD and AD+SLS due to higher ammonia volatilization, which could be reduced by injecting manure. Ratios of fossil energy (FERAD) and energy return on investment (EROIAD) of 3.7 and 0.98-1.8 are determined for AD pathways, compared to FER of 0.29 and EROI of 0.27 for grid electricity. When allocating results to specific outputs, variability can be reduced by applying system subdivision and allocation. Sensitivity analyses highlight the importance of reducing emissions during manure storage and the influence of changes in fertilizer and sand bedding. (C) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis research illuminates the debate on whether there are differences between the manufacturing and service sectors in the matter of developing a sustainable environmental supply chain. Over the past 5 years a survey has been conducted with 800 large European companies, of which half are in the manufacturing sector and half in the service sector. The hypotheses within the survey are related to strategies for developing an environmental supply chain. They were derived from a literature review and were tested by means of a chi-square test. The survey questionnaire enabled the respondents to give some viewpoints about the hypotheses. In this way, strategies for developing the supply chain such as ISO 14001, the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), auditing, waste management systems, reverse logistics, environmental indicators, remanufacturing and reuse have been investigated. Results show interesting and unexpected differences between manufacturing and service sectors that can lead to further research, practical implications and even suggestions for the surveyed companies. For instance, the viewpoints of manufacturing and service industries differ over ISO 14001 and EMAS implementation in the supply chain. In addition, service industries approach the implementation of auditing, reverse logistics, reuse and remanufacturing in a way different from that of manufacturing. Other strategies are considered essential by both sectors. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The described work investigated ethanol-water fractionation of beech wood as the basic technology for a lignocellulose biorefinery. The main products were glucose, lignin and xylose. The fractionation technology was studied, scaled-up and successfully implemented on pilot scale. Based on an Aspen process simulation of an industrial production plant, the process was assessed economically and ecologically, pointing out the potential benefits of a "lignocellulose biorefinery" and the importance to valorize all the obtained fractions. The process assumptions of the assessment have been tested at the pilot plant and its feasibility was verified.Paper-based electronics have been considered as one of the most exciting technologies in the near future due to sustainability, low cost, mechanical flexibility, etc. Even though there have been numerous studies regarding this technology, there is not any available quantitative study on how paper electronics would minimize the impact on the environment. This work aims to give the first detailed analysis regarding this important question. To this end, we for the first time designed and prototyped paper-based multilayer printed circuit boards (P-PCBs), which show comparable functions to the currently available organic printed circuit boards (O-PCBs); yet the P-PCBs adopt a "green" preparation process. A life cycle assessment study was performed to quantify the P-PCBs' environmental impacts, e.g. acidification potential, global warming potential, human toxic potential, ozone layer depletion potential, etc. Our current research reveals that the P-PCBs have about two magnitude lower impact on the environment than O-PCBs based on the results of the life cycle assessment, which suggests that the P-PCB technique is beneficial for the environment at the regional or global production level. The current study gives useful information and sheds light on the future technological directions for various paper based electronics studies.Assessing potential climate effects of natural gas versus coal electricity generation is complicated by the large number of factors reported in life cycle assessment studies, compounded by the large number of proposed climate metrics. Thus, there is a need to identify the key factors affecting the climate effects of natural gas versus coal electricity production, and to present these climate effects in as clear and transparent a way as possible. Here, we identify power plant efficiencies and methane leakage rates as the factors that explain most of the variance in greenhouse gas emissions by natural gas and coal power plants. Thus, we focus on the role of these factors in determining the relative merits of natural gas versus coal power plants. We develop a simple model estimating CO2 and CH4 emissions from natural gas and coal power plants, and resulting temperature change. Simple underlying physical changes can be obscured by abstract evaluation metrics, thus we focus our analysis on the time evolution of global mean temperature. We find that, during the period of plant operation, if there is substantial methane leakage, natural gas plants can produce greater near-term warming than coal plants with the same power output. However, if methane leakage rates are low and power plant efficiency is high, natural gas plants can produce some reduction in near-term warming. In the long term, natural gas power plants produce less warming than would occur with coal power plants. However, without carbon capture and storage natural gas power plants cannot achieve the deep reductions that would be required to avoid substantial contribution to additional global warming.Chitosan is a well-known polysaccharide abundantly published during the last decades. This heteropolymer, composed of 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose and 2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose, is obtained after alkaline deacetylation of chitin from crustaceans, fungi and other non-vegetable organisms. Soluble only at acidic pH, it is the unique polycationic polysaccharide extracted from bioresources. This characteristic gives to it original and specific properties finding some applications in several industrial fields but especially in the biomedical one because of its biocompatibility and its non-toxicity. Besides these traditional applications other ones begin actually to appear in the literature. They focus on the development of chitosan-based adhesives, binders or films. This review synthetizes the state of the art on this domain, but also deals with the assessment of chitosan environmental impact. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land use is a potentially important impact category in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of buildings. Three research questions are addressed in this paper: Is land use a decisive factor in the environmental impact of buildings?; Is it important to include the primary land use of buildings in the assessment?; and How does the environmental performance of solid structure and timber frame dwellings differ when assessed by distinct available models for quantifying land use impacts? This paper compares several operational land use impact assessment models, which are subsequently implemented in an LCA case study comparing a building constructed using timber frame versus a solid structure. Different models were used for addressing the different research questions. The results reveal that contrasting decisions may be supported by LCA study results, depending on whether or not and how land use is included in the assessment. The analysis also highlights the need to include the building land footprint in the assessment and to better distinguish building locations in current land use impact assessment models. Selecting land use assessment models that are most appropriate to the goals of the study is recommended as different models assess different environmental issues related to land use. In general, the combination of two land use assessment methods for buildings is recommended, i.e. soil organic matter (SOM) of MilA i Canals and Eco-indicator 99.The reduction in the use of raw materials and the spread of energy efficient processes and components are necessary from both the economic and the environmental viewpoints. This paper presents the design of an innovative multi-functional agricultural machinery able to integrate three separate traditional implements used for hay raking, hay baling and bale wrapping, i.e. hay rake, round baler and bale wrapper machines, with the aim of speeding up the harvesting operations and reducing both the energy consumption and the global environmental impact. A comparative analysis about the adoption of the traditional implements and the new multi-functional machinery is reported. Particularly, the reduction in both the fuel consumption (-32%), the human labor (-66.7%) is discussed together with a differential environmental analysis of the proposed system and the traditional implements. To meet such a last purpose, the study adopts the life cycle assessment methodology carefully quantifying the impact indicators for three different categories, i.e. human health, ecosysteni quality and resource depletion. The results highlight a global environmental impact reduction of about 35%. The proposed system represents an effective and competitive improvement to ease and speed the haymaking process and to reduce the environmental impact of such a key farmer activity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, we develop a methodology for estimating marginal emissions of electricity demand that vary by location and time of day across the United States. The approach takes account of the generation mix within interconnected electricity markets and shifting load profiles throughout the day. Using data available for 2007 through 2009, with a focus on carbon dioxide (CO2), we find substantial variation among locations and times of day. Marginal emission rates are more than three times as large in the upper Midwest compared to the western United States, and within regions, rates for some hours of the day are more than twice those for others. We apply our results to an evaluation of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The CO2 emissions per mile from driving PEVs are less than those from driving a hybrid car in the western United States and Texas. In the upper Midwest, however, charging during the recommended hours at night implies that PEVs generate more emissions per mile than the average car currently on the road. Underlying many of our results is a fundamental tension between electricity load management and environmental goals: the hours when electricity is the least expensive to produce tend to be the hours with the greatest emissions. In addition to PEVs, we show how our estimates are useful for evaluating the heterogeneous effects of other policies and initiatives, such as distributed solar and real-time pricing. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Livestock production has been challenged as a large contributor to climate change, and carbon footprint has become a widely used measure of cattle environmental impact. This analysis of fifteen beef grazing systems in Uruguay quantifies the range of variation of carbon footprint, and the trade-offs with other relevant environmental variables, using a partial life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Using carbon footprint as the primary environmental indicator has several limitations: different metrics (GWP vs. GTP) may lead to different conclusions, carbon sequestration from soils may drastically affect the results, and systems with lower carbon footprint may have higher energy use, soil erosion, nutrient imbalance, pesticide ecotoxicity, and impact on biodiversity. A multidimensional assessment of sustainability of meat production is therefore needed to inform decision makers. There is great potential to improve grazing livestock systems productivity while reducing carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, and conserving biodiversity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The photovoltaic (PV) market is experiencing vigorous growth, whereas prices are dropping rapidly. This growth has in large part been possible through public support, deserved for its promise to produce electricity at a low cost to the environment. It is therefore important to monitor and minimize environmental impacts associated with PV technologies. In this work, we forecast the environmental performance of crystalline silicon technologies in 2020, the year in which electricity from PV is anticipated to be competitive with wholesale electricity costs all across Europe. Our forecasts are based on technological scenario development and a prospective life cycle assessment with a thorough uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. We estimate that the energy payback time at an in-plane irradiation of 1700kWh/(m(2)year) of crystalline silicon modules can be reduced to below 0.5years by 2020, which is less than half of the current energy payback time. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Between 2000 and 2010, China's electricity production had increased threefold and accounted for 50% of domestic and 12% of global CO2 emissions in 2010. Substantial changes in the electricity fuel mix are urgently required to meet China's carbon intensity target of reducing CO2 emissions by 40-45% by 2020. Moreover, electricity production is the second largest consumer of water in China, but water requirements vary significantly between different electricity generation technologies. By integrating process-based life-cycle analysis (LCA) and input-output analysis (IOA) and through tracking national supply chains, we have provided a detailed account of total life-cycle carbon emissions (g/kWh) and water consumption (I/kWh) for eight electricity generation technologies - (pulverized) coal, gas, oil, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar photovoltaic, and biomass. We have demonstrated that a shift to low carbon renewable electricity generation technologies, i.e. wind, could potentially save more than 79% of total life-cycle CO2 emissions and more than 50% water consumption per kWh electricity generation compared to the current fuel mix and technology for electricity generation. If the projected wind farms are built by 2020, Inner Mongolia, one of the water scarce northern provinces, would annually save 179 MT CO2 (i.e. 44% of Inner Mongolia's total CO2 emissions in 2008) and 418 million m(3) (Mm(3)) water (18% of its industrial water use in 2008) compared with the same amount of electricity produced from coal. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global warming and climate change concerns have triggered global efforts to reduce the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is considered a crucial strategy for meeting CO2 emission reduction targets. In this paper, various aspects of CCS are reviewed and discussed including the state of the art technologies for CO2 capture, separation, transport, storage, leakage, monitoring, and life cycle analysis. The selection of specific CO2 capture technology heavily depends on the type of CO2 generating plant and fuel used. Among those CO2 separation processes, absorption is the most mature and commonly adopted due to its higher efficiency and lower cost. Pipeline is considered to be the most viable solution for large volume of CO2 transport. Among those geological formations for CO2 storage, enhanced oil recovery is mature and has been practiced for many years but its economical viability for anthropogenic sources needs to be demonstrated. There are growing interests in CO2 storage in saline aquifers due to their enormous potential storage capacity and several projects are in the pipeline for demonstration of its viability. There are multiple hurdles to CCS deployment including the absence of a clear business case for CCS investment and the absence of robust economic incentives to support the additional high capital and operating costs of the whole CCS process. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY licenseElectricity and heat generation are key contributors to global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). In this paper, specific attention is paid to renewable energy technologies (RETs) for electricity and heat generation and reviews current understanding and estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from a range of renewable electricity and heat generation technologies. Comprehensive literature reviews for each RET were carried out. The 79 studies reviewed involved the life cycle assessment (LCA) of renewable electricity and heat generation based on onshore and offshore winds, hydropower, marine technologies (wave power and tidal energy), geothermal, photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal, biomass, waste, and heat pumps. The study demonstrates the variability of existing LCA studies (results) in tracking GHG emissions for electricity and heat generation from RETs. This review has shown that the lowest GHG emissions were associated with offshore wind technologies (mean life cycle GHG emissions could be 5.3-13 g CO2 eq/kWh). Results compared with GHG estimates by fossil fuel heat and electricity indicated that life cycle GHG emissions are comparatively higher in conventional sources as compared to renewable sources with the exception of nuclear-based power electricity generation. In this present study, considering renewable energy sources, waste treatment and dedicated biomass technologies (DBTs) were found to potentially have high GHG emissions based on the feedstock, selected boundary and the inputs required for their production. The study identifies additional impacts associated with renewable electricity and heat technologies, points out the effectiveness of life cycle analysis (LCA) as a tool for assessing environmental impacts of renewable energy sources and concludes with opportunities for improvement in the future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy sector in the global scenario faces a major challenge of providing energy at an affordable cost and simultaneously protecting the environment. The energy mix globally is primarily dominated by fossil fuels, coal being the major contributor. Increasing concerns on the adverse effect of the emissions arising from coal conversion technologies on the environment and the gradual depletion of the fossil fuel reserves had led to global initiatives on using renewables and other opportunity resources to meet the future energy demands in a sustainable manner. Use of coal with biomass as a supplementary fuel in the combustion or gasification based processes is a viable technological option for reducing the harmful emissions. Co-combustion of coal with biomass for electricity generation is gradually gaining ground in spite of the fact that their combustion behavior differ widely due to wide variations in their physical and chemical properties. This article deals with the technical aspects of co-combustion with emphasis on the fundamentals of devolatilization, ignition, burnout and ash deposition behavior along with the constraints and uncertainties associated with the use of different types of biomass of diverse characteristics and the likely impact of partial replacement of coal by biomass on the emission of CO2, SOx, NOx. Other issues of no less importance like sustained availability of biomass, transportation and storage, effect on biodiversity, etc., are left out in the study. The investigations reported in. the study reflect the potential of biomass as co-fuel, and the scope of maximizing its proportion in the blend in the coal based power plants and the derived benefits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wastewater treatment practices should pay more attention to their environmental performances due to their resources consumption and emissions' impact. While reclaimed water reuse seems to have become a promising practice, is it always feasible in any condition? To address this issue, this study carried out an extended emergy evaluation of a holistic wastewater treatment system. On one hand, this method was extended to include the emissions' impact. On the other hand, this study integrated a wastewater treatment plant, its excess sludge disposal system and treated water disposal system into an integrated wastewater treatment system (IWTS), so as to evaluate its performances more completely. And then several indicators, including cost per unit pollutant eliminated (CUPE), ratio of positive output (RPO), environmental load ratio (ELR), and sustainability index (SI), were proposed for evaluating the performances of an IWTS. Two scenarios (scenario A: wastewater treatment + sludge landfilling + treated water discharges; scenario B: wastewater treatment + sludge landfilling+ reclaimed water reuse) for a livestock wastewater treatment plant in Sichuan Agricultural University located in Ya'an City in Southwest China, as cases, were researched. The results show that scenario B has lower positive output efficiency and greater environmental load than scenario A. Meanwhile, the reclaimed water reuse raises cost per unit pollutant eliminated compared with the treated water being discharged directly; emissions' impact enhances the environmental load of the two scenarios to different degree; emissions' impact has decisive effect on the sustainability of the two scenarios. These results mean that the reclaimed water reuse should not be advocated in this case. This study provides some policy implications: (1) wastewater treatment process should be comprehensively evaluated from its resources consumption and impact of emissions; (2) reclaimed water reuse should be carefully evaluated from its pros and cons simultaneously; (3) the local conditions should be considered when implementing reclaimed water reuse, such as local water body conditions, market demands, the related laws and regulations, corporations' economic conditions, etc. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Anaerobic co-digestion (AcoD) is established as a techno-economic profitable process by incrementing biogas yield (increased cost-efficiency) and improving the nutrient balance (better quality digestate) in comparison to mono-digestion of livestock wastes. However, few data are available on the environmental consequences of AcoD and most of them are mainly related to the use of energy crops as co-substrates. This work analysed the environmental impact of the AcoD of pig manure (PM) with several agroindustrial wastes (molasses, fish, biodiesel and vinasses residues) using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. For comparative purposes, mono digestion of PM has also been evaluated. Four out of six selected categories (acidification, eutrophication, global warming and photochemical oxidation potentials) showed environmental impacts in all the scenarios assessed, whereas the other two (abiotic depletion and ozone layer depletion potentials) showed environmental credits, remarking the benefit of replacing fossil fuels by biogas. This was also confirmed by the sensitivity analysis applied to the PM quality (i.e. organic matter content) and the avoided energy source demonstrating the importance of the energy recovery step. The influence of the type of co-substrate could not be discerned; however, a link between the environmental performance and the hydraulic retention time, the organic loading rate and the nutrient content in the digestate could be established. Therefore, LCA results were successfully correlated to process variables involved in AcoD, going a step further in the combination of techno-economic and environmental feasibilities. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The assessment of the sustainability of wastewater treatment (WWT) systems has gained interest in recent years. However, most previous studies have focused on environmental and/or economic dimensions ignoring social aspects. Moreover, they tend to be based on sets of indicators rather than providing a holistic assessment. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes an innovative methodology to assess the sustainability of WWT systems based on the development of a composite indicator embracing economic, environmental and social issues. Subsequently, the global sustainability of seven WWT technologies for secondary treatment in small communities is compared. The joint application of the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to assign weights to each indicator allows the incorporation of the preferences of experts. Initially, the global sustainability of the WWT technologies evaluated is quite similar. However, a scenario analysis illustrates that constructed wetlands technology is the most sustainable in five out of the seven scenarios evaluated. Moreover, extended aeration and rotating biological contactors are identified as the technologies with the lowest variability in their sustainability. Hence, in an uncertain context, they might be considered the preferred options. The proposed approach contributes to ease of interpretation of a complex problem such as the selection of the most sustainable WWT alternative. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a thermal conversion process that can be an environmentally beneficial approach for the conversion of municipal solid wastes to value-added products. The influence of using activated sludge and landfill leachate as initial moisture sources during the carbonization of paper, food waste and yard waste over time at 250 degrees C was evaluated. Results from batch experiments indicate that the use of activated sludge and landfill leachate are acceptable alternative supplemental liquid sources, ultimately imparting minimal impact on carbonization product characteristics and yields. Regression results indicate that the initial carbon content of the feedstock is more influential than any of the characteristics of the initial liquid source and is statistically significant when describing the relationship associated with all evaluated carbonization products. Initial liquid-phase characteristics are only statistically significant when describing the solids energy content and the mass of carbon in the gas-phase. The use of these alternative liquid sources has the potential to greatly increase the sustainability of the carbonization process. A life cycle assessment is required to quantify the benefits associated with using these alternative liquid sources. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building retrofit plays an important role in reducing environmental loads associated with the building stock. The main goal of this article is to perform a comprehensive energy and environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the roof retrofit of a Portuguese single-family house integrating thermal dynamic simulation. A life-cycle model was developed to assess 27 alternative retrofit scenarios combining three types of insulation material (rock wool, extruded polystyrene and polyurethane foam), three insulation levels (40, 80 and 120 mm) and three types of frame material (wood, light steel and lightweight concrete). The functional unit selected for this study was 1 square meter of living area over a period of 50 years. Life-cycle (LC) impact assessment results were calculated for six categories showing that wood scenarios had the lowest impacts (all categories). The use phase accounted for 60-70% of the LC impacts in all categories. The results also showed that for insulation thicknesses of 80 mm or more, the reduction in operational energy, due to a further increase of 40 mm, is not significant (5% or less), while the embodied impacts increase from 6 to 20%. This article shows the importance of addressing the entire life cycle of building retrofit to reduce environmental impacts by quantifying the marginal LC benefit of additional insulation levels and provides recommendations for optimal insulation levels for Mediterranean climates. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Short rotation coppice willow is an energy crop used in Sweden to produce electricity and heat in combined heat and power plants. Recent laboratory-scale experiments have shown that SRC willow can also be used for biogas production in anaerobic digestion processes. Here, life cycle assessment is used to compare the climate impact and energy efficiency of electricity and heat generated by these measures. All energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions, including soil organic carbon fluxes were included in the life cycle assessment. The climate impact was determined using time-dependent life cycle assessment methodology. Both systems showed a positive net energy balance, but the direct combustion system delivered ninefold more energy than the biogas system. Both systems had a cooling effect on the global mean surface temperature change. The cooling impact per hectare from the biogas system was ninefold higher due to the carbon returned to soil with the digestate. Compensating the lower energy production of the biogas system with external energy sources had a large impact on the result, effectively determining whether the biogas scenario had a net warming or cooling contribution to the global mean temperature change per kWh of electricity. In all cases, the contribution to global warming was lowered by the inclusion of willow in the energy system. The use of time-dependent climate impact methodology shows that extended use of short rotation coppice willow can contribute to counteract global warming. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Identification of parameter variation allows us to conduct more detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) of energy and carbon emission material over their lifecycle. Previous research studies have demonstrated that hybrid LCA (HLCA) can generally overcome the problems of incompleteness and accuracy of embodied energy (EE) and carbon (EC) emission assessment. Unfortunately, the current interpretation and quantification procedure has not been extensively and empirically studied in a qualitative manner, especially in hybridising between the process LCA and I-O LCA. To determine this weakness, this study empirically demonstrates the changes in EE and EC intensities caused by variations to key parameters in material production. Using Australia and Malaysia as a case study, the results are compared with previous hybrid models to identify key parameters and issues. The parameters considered in this study are technological changes, energy tariffs, primary energy factors, disaggregation constant, emission factors, and material price fluctuation. It was found that changes in technological efficiency, energy tariffs and material prices caused significant variations in the model. Finally, the comparison of hybrid models revealed that non-energy intensive materials greatly influence the variations due to high indirect energy and carbon emission in upstream boundary of material production, and as such, any decision related to these materials should be considered carefully. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Carbon Footprint (CF) can be of great importance for the dissemination of life-cycle information of products. The use of CF has recently increased, despite some methodology aspects being still not sufficiently addressed. This paper deals with the accounting of biogenic carbon exchanges, focusing on the wine sector, which has been the object of several life-cycle-based studies. A review of guidelines, standards and key papers has shown that there are still unresolved issues to be considered when accounting for exchanges of biogenic carbon, such as forest management, agricultural practices and land use, soil erosion, the inclusion of all parts of a tree, the inclusion of the end-of-life phase, etc. As a result, no clear-cut conclusions can yet be drawn with regard to biogenic carbon exchanges related to the life cycle of wine products. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The primary purpose of this paper is to estimate the carbon footprint of conventional rye bread produced on an industrial scale and consumed in Denmark by identifying the stages that contribute significantly to the carbon footprint (hotspots) of production. The results are then interpreted by comparing and discussing the results of this study with the results of other studies identified in the extant body of literature. To estimate the carbon footprint, we considered an industrial bakery supply chain in a single in-depth quantitative case study. Using an attributional approach, we estimated the carbon footprint of 1 kg of rye bread to be 731 g CO2 equivalents (CO(2)eq). As in previous studies, the primary hotspot was found to be the raw material stage, especially agricultural production (cultivation), with processing and distribution stages as secondary hotspots. The waste management stage was determined to be an important and previously overlooked opportunity for improvement. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compares the environmental impacts related to the production of cotton yarn from cultivation to washing and drying, when cotton is supplied by four companies located in four different countries (Egypt, China, India and the USA). Interesting results have been obtained from cultivation scenarios where the productivity influences the value of the environmental impact associated to each country. The highest greenhouse effect is produced by the Indian company, with 0.89 kg of CO2 equivalent (per 1 kg of cotton). Fuel consumption and Ammonium nitrate are the first items of greenhouse effect in all companies because of their extensive use and the lack of rotation with other unprofitable crops. In Chinese and Egyptian companies the irrigation sources are severely threatened and it is necessary to switch from a flood irrigation to a drip irrigation system. The production phase of cotton yarn provides an impact equal to 2.81 CO2 kg-equivalent. The most critical impacts of cotton yarn production are due to Dyeing (1.24 CO2 kg-eq.) and Spinning (0.64 CO2 kg-eq.) phases and they are essentially connected to reactive reagents and pigments, electrical and thermal energy. Regarding thermal energy consumptions some improvements in dyeing plants (recover cooling water, return steam condensate to boilers or reuse different process waters) may allow the company to decrease in CO2 emission by 41.7%. Moreover a reduction in CO2 emission by 34.6% can be achieved in the spinning phase using an optimized suction tube in conjunction with adjustable inverter control. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A method was brought forward for assessing cathode active materials from a perspective that accounts for the environmental impact and the electrochemical performance. Then the integrated performance, referred to as the "final environmental impact", was quantified into a dimensionless score, EIc (see Eq. (2)). Subsequently, four types of cathode active materials- LiFePO4/C, LiFe0.98Mn0.02PO4/C, LiFe0.98Ti0.02PO4/C, and FeF3(H2O)(3)/C- were assessed. The results were: (I) the EIc sequence was LiFePO4/C (1.76E-02Pt) > LiFe0.98Ti0.02PO4/C (1.74E-02 Pt) > LiFe0.98Ti0.02PO4/C (1.66E-02Pt) >FeF3(H2O)(3)/C (4.98E-03 Pt), which meant FeF3(H2O)(3)/C was the optimal material and had the minimal final environmental impact. (2) With regard to the eleven impact categories, the category respiratory effects exerted by inorganics made up the largest percentage of the EIc for the four materials. (3) In the aspects of Elm (El (Eco-indicator) value of a 1 kg cathode active material), average specific discharge capacity, and cycle life, the sub-optimal materials' sequence of theoretical potential for optimization was as follows: LiFe0.98Ti0.02PO4/C > LiFe0.98Mn0.02PO4/C > LiFePO4/C. This meant that the final environmental impact of LiFePO4/C was the most difficult to reduce, and the impact of LiFe0.98Ti0.02PO4/C could not be reduced very easily. (4) To reduce the final environmental impact, the following concrete measures were recommended: (a) the optimization of the synthesis processes for smaller particle diameters; (b) the adoption of other surface-coating agents, utilizing (other) dopants; (c) the substitution of the energy-efficient instruments for the energy-intensive instruments; (d) the optimization of the synthesis processes to contain fewer electricity-intensive steps. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article investigates the applicability of combined Life Cycle Assessment and market analysis, to support efficiency evaluation of rural development strategies developed by the Apulian Rural Development Plan 2007-2013 (BURP n 93 26105/2010). Measure 122 "Improving the economic value of forest" had the aim to improve of forestry farms technological resources addressing them toward the biomass production. As an example pellet production from sawmill residues (PSR) and firewood productions have been compared both under environmental and economic performances. The functional unit (FU) is 1 kWh of residential thermal energy. Environmental impacts of both fuels have been evaluated through the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, considering the most relevant impact categories: the damages on human health, the ecosystems qualities, the kg of CO2 eq. produced (GWP100) and the balance between energy requests and consumed (Cumulative Energy Demand - CED). About the economic analysis, data on pellet and firewood local market prices have been collected and consumer's expenditure for FU calculated. Results supplied relevant suggestions to improve efficiency and farmer's subscription to Apulia Regional Development Plan forestry measures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae are considered as one of the potential major source of biofuel for the future. However, their environmental benefit is still unclear and many scientific publications provide contradictory results. Here we perform the Life Cycle Assessment of the production and combustion of 1 MJ of algal methylester. The system under consideration uses standard open raceways under greenhouses. Lipid extraction and transesterification are carried out on a humid paste produced by centrifugation. Our environmental and energetic analysis shows that improving the energy balance is clearly the key priority to make microalgal cultivation sustainable and to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To achieve significant reduction of the GHG emissions, most of the studies of the literature focus on technological breakthroughs, especially at the production step. However, since a large fraction of environmental impacts and especially GHG emissions do not occur directly at the production facility but stem from the production of the electricity required for producing, harvesting and transforming algae, it seems relevant to question the source of electricity as well as algae production technology. We consider a scenario where up to 45% of electricity was produced by a local renewable source and then we compare it to the improvements resulting from technological breakthroughs resulting in higher microalgal productivity or biomass concentration. It turns out that increasing the yield only drastically reduces the climate change for low starting productivity. The climate change is always significantly reduced by the use of local renewable electricity. It is therefore wiser to increase biomass productivity to easily achievable values (10-15 gm(-2) d(-1)), and then radically change improvements pathways by considering the composition of the electricity mix used for example. At least, it must be underlined that the introduction of renewable electricity also affect energetic efficiency, leading to a positive cumulative energy balance due to better energetic ratios. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture faces great challenges to ensure global food security by increasing yields while reducing environmental costs(1,2). Here we address this challenge by conducting a total of 153 site-year field experiments covering the main agro-ecological areas for rice, wheat and maize production in China. A set of integrated soil-crop system management practices based on a modern understanding of crop ecophysiology and soil biogeochemistry increases average yields for rice, wheat and maize from 7.2 million grams per hectare (Mg ha(-1)), 7.2 Mg ha(-1) and 10.5 Mg ha(-1) to 8.5 Mg ha(-1), 8.9 Mg ha(-1) and 14.2 Mg ha(-1), respectively, without any increase in nitrogen fertilizer. Model simulation and life-cycle assessment(3) show that reactive nitrogen losses and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced substantially by integrated soil-crop system management. If farmers in China could achieve average grain yields equivalent to 80% of this treatment by 2030, over the same planting area as in 2012, total production of rice, wheat and maize in China would be more than enough to meet the demand for direct human consumption and a substantially increased demand for animal feed, while decreasing the environmental costs of intensive agriculture.This article presents a stepwise, refined, and practical analytical framework to model the microeconomic environmental rebound effect (ERE) stemming from cost differences of electric cars in terms of changes in multiple life cycle environmental indicators. The analytical framework is based on marginal consumption analysis and hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA). The article makes a novel contribution through a reinterpretation of the traditional rebound effect and methodological refinements. It also provides novel empirical results about the ERE for plug-in hybrid electric (PHE), full-battery electric (FBE), and hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) cars for Europe. The ERE is found to have a remarkable impact on product-level environmental scores. For the PHE car, the ERE causes a marginal increase in demand and environmental pressures due to a small decrease in the cost of using this technology. For FBE and HFC cars, the high capital costs cause a noteworthy decrease in environmental pressures for some indicators (negative rebound effect). The results corroborate the concern over the high influence of cost differences for environmental assessment, and they prompt sustainable consumption policies to consider markets and prices as tools rather than as an immutable background.The pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries are eager to strive toward innovative products and technologies. This study first derives hotspots in resource consumption of 2839 Basic Operations in 40 Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient synthesis steps through Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA). Second, since companies are increasingly obliged to quantify the environmental sustainability of their products, two alternative ways of simplifying (E)LCA are discussed. The usage of averaged product group values (R-2 = 3.40 x 10(-30)) is compared with multiple linear regression models (R-2 = 8.66 x 10(-01)) in order to estimate resource consumption of synthesis steps. An optimal set of predictor variables is postulated to balance model complexity and embedded information with usability and capability of merging models with existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) data systems. The amount of organic solvents used, molar efficiency, and duration of a synthesis step were shown to be the most significant predictor variables. Including additional predictor variables did not contribute to the predictive power and eventually weakens the model interpretation. Ideally, an organization should be able to derive its environmental impact from readily available ERP data, linking supply chains back to the cradle of resource extraction, excluding the need for an approximation with product group averages.Carbon emissions are an increasingly important consideration in sustainable environmental development. In the green building industry, green construction cost controls and low-carbon construction methods are considered to be the key barriers encountered. Based on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy, management of carbon emissions from green building projects contributes to the acquisition of accurate building cost information and to a reduction in the environmental impact of these projects. This study focuses on the CO2 emission costs and low-carbon construction methods, and proposes a 0-1 mixed integer programming (0-1 MIP) decision model for integrated green building projects, using an Activity-Based Cost (ABC) and life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. The major contributions of this study are as follows: (1) the integrated model can help construction company managers to more accurately understand how to allocate resources and funding for energy saving activities to each green building through appropriate cost drivers; (2) this model provides a pre-construction decision-making tool which will assist management in bidding on environmentally-friendly construction projects; and (3) this study contributes to the innovation operation research (OR) literature, especially in regard to incorporating the life cycle assessment measurement into construction cost management by utilizing a mixed decision model for green building projects. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Fish hold effluent and the effluent produced from the cleaning of fish holds may contain organic material resulting from the degradation of seafood and cleaning products (e.g., soaps and detergents). This effluent is often discharged by vessels into near shore waters and, therefore, could have the potential to contribute to water pollution in bays and estuaries. We characterized effluent from commercial fishing vessels with holds containing refrigerated seawater, ice slurry, or chipped ice. Concentrations of trace heavy metals, wet chemistry parameters, and nutrients in effluent were compared to screening benchmarks to determine if there is a reasonable potential for effluent discharge to contribute to nonattainment of water quality standards. Most analytes (67%) exceeded their benchmark concentration and, therefore, may have the potential to pose risk to human health or the environment if discharges are in significant quantities or there are many vessels discharging in the same areas. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this paper the authors propose a framework for combining life cycle assessment (LCA) and Risk Assessment (RA) to support the sustainability assessment of emerging technologies. This proposal includes four steps of analysis: technological system definition; data collection; risk evaluation and impacts quantification; results interpretation. This scheme has been applied to a case study of nanofluid alumina production in two different pilot lines, "single-stage" and "two-stage". The study has been developed in the NanoHex project (enhanced nano-fluid heat exchange). Goals of the study were analyzing the hotspots and highlighting possible trade-off between the results of LCA, which identifies the processes having the best environmental performance, and the results of RA, which identifies the scenarios having the highest risk for workers. Indeed, due to lack of data about exposure limits, exposure-dose relationships and toxicity of alumina nanopowders (NPs) and nanofluids (NF), the workplace exposure has been evaluated by means of qualitative risk assessment, using Stoffenmanager Nano. Though having different aims, LCA and RA have a complementary role in the description of impacts of products/substances/technologies. Their combined use can overcome limits of each of them and allows a wider vision of the problems to better support the decision making process. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The increase of renewable sources in the power sector is an important step towards more sustainable electricity production. However, introducing high shares of variable renewables, such as wind and solar, cause dispatchable power plants to vary their output to fulfill the remaining electrical demand. The environmental impacts related to potential future energy systems in Ireland for 2025 with high shares of wind power were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA), focusing on cycling emissions (due to part-load operation and start-ups) from dispatchable generators. Part-load operations significantly affect the average power plant efficiency, with all units seeing an average yearly efficiency noticeably less than optimal. In particular, load following units, on average, saw an 11% reduction. Given that production technologies are typically modeled assuming steady-state operation at full load, as part of LCA of electricity generation, the efficiency reduction would result in large underestimation of emissions, e.g. up to 65% for an oil power plant. Overall, cycling emissions accounted for less than 7% of lifecycle CO2, NOx and SO2 emissions in the five scenarios considered: while not overbalancing the benefits from increasing wind energy, cycling emissions are not negligible and should be systematically included (i.e. by using emission factors per unit of fuel input rather than per unit of power generated). As the ability to cycle is an additional service provided by a power plant, it is also recommended that only units with similar roles (load following, mid merit, or base load) should be compared. The results showed that cycling emissions increased with the installed wind capacity, but decreased with the addition of storage. The latter benefits can, however, only be obtained if base-load electricity production shifts to a cleaner source than coal. Finally, the present study indicates that, in terms of emission reductions, the priority for Ireland is to phase out coal-based power plants. While investing in new storage capacity reduces system operating costs at high wind penetrations and limits cycling, the emissions reductions are somewhat negated when coupled with base load coal. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Combining co-firing biomass and carbon capture and storage (CCS) in power plants offers attractive potential for net removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. In this study, the impact of co-firing biomass (wood pellets and straw pellets) on the emission profile of power plants with carbon capture and storage has been assessed for two types of coal-fired power plants: a supercritical pulverised coal power plant (SCPC) and an integrated gasification combined cycle plant (IGCC). Besides, comparative life cycle assessments have been performed to examine the environmental impacts of the combination of co-firing biomass and CCS. Detailed calculations on mass balances of the inputs and outputs of the power plants illustrate the effect of the different content of pollutants in biomass on the capture unit. Life cycle assessment results reveal that 30% co-firing biomass and applying CCS net negative CO2 emissions in the order of 67-85 g/kWh are obtained. The impact in all other environmental categories is increased by 20-200%. However, aggregation into endpoint levels shows that the decrease in CO2 emissions more than offsets the increase in the other categories. Sensitivity analyses illustrate that results are most sensitive to parameters that affect the amount of fuel required, such as the efficiency of the power plant and assumptions regarding the supply chains of coal and biomass. Especially, assumptions regarding land use allocation and carbon debt of biomass significantly influence the environmental performance of BioCCS. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this research was to investigate the efficiency and life cycle environmental impacts of ion exchange (IX) regeneration using conventional NaCl and the alternative salts KCl, NaHCO3, and KHCO3. The regeneration efficiency was evaluated by considering anion exchange resin (AER) exhausted with nitrate and cation exchange resin (CER) exhausted with calcium. The regeneration efficiency of chloride was higher than bicarbonate for polystyrene AER, while the regeneration efficiency of bicarbonate was higher than chloride for polyacrylic AER. The regeneration efficiency of potassium was higher than sodium for all CERs. Because all salts showed high regeneration efficiency, assessing the environmental impacts of the salts from upstream and downstream phases was deemed key to improving the sustainability of the IX unit process. The increasing environmental burden of the salts was NaCl < KCl < KHCO3, while the impacts of NaHCO3 were greater or less than KCl depending on the impact category. The environmental burden was based on a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of mining and processing, and did not include disposal of the waste regeneration solution. A literature study regarding the environmental impacts of the regeneration ions indicated the potential benefit of the alternative salts over NaCl was due to disposal applications. For instance, disposal of KCl waste regeneration solution to soils can offset the demand for potassium fertilizer inputs and is not harmful to soil structure, and disposal of KHCO3 and NaHCO3 waste regeneration solution can offset the chemicals needed during wastewater treatment when nitrification is limited by low alkalinity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The increased usage of composites in industry coupled with European Union restrictions on landfill disposal has resulted in an urgent need to develop resource efficient recycling technologies. The purpose of this work was to model the electrical energy requirements of milling as a recycling option for carbon fibre composite. By separating the contributions to the total energy required of the machine tool, material cutting energy and material removal rate, the energy demand of carbon fibre composite recycling can be theoretically calculated for any milling process. The model was validated experimentally by comparing the theoretical energy demand to the measured energy demand of an industrial scale milling machine. It was found that at a processing (recycling) rate of 10 kg/hr, the specific energy was significantly less than the embodied energy of virgin carbon fibre (2.03 MJ/kg compared to approximately 200 MJ/kg). Although the form of the recyclate fibres (short, single filaments and bundles) was vastly different to their virgin equivalents (continuous tows), the energy difference highlights the potential environmental benefit of utilising recyclate fibres in place of virgin ones in short fibre composites where mechanical performance is less critical. The relationship between specific energy of recycling and processing rate was also calculated, which highlighted that further energy savings can be achieved at higher processing rates. This work is fundamentally important to provide new data sets for Life Cycle Assessment in order to assess the potential environmental benefits of utilising recyclate fibres. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).Water footprinting (WF) is mooted to quantify the impacts of production on water resources. The impact of the rain-fed potato (Solanum tuberosum) production on water resources was assessed for a kilogram of potatoes at the packhouse gate. The hydrological water-balance method was used and this accounts for all inflows and outflows to quantify the net use of groundwater as the blue WF, and that of the soil-water store as the green WF. The green WF was found to be negligible. The blue WF was negative at -67 L/kg. Thus rain-fed potato production here has no deleterious impacts on the water quantity. The grey WF, the water required to 'dilute' NO3-N in the drainage to meet the drinking water standard, was 61 L/kg, of which 56 L/kg was from the cropping stage. The impact of the packhouse phase and the background system was found to be small. However, the average leached NO3-N concentration of 113 mg/L, which is just at the drinking water standard, and the loading of 27.8 kg-N/ha/y during cultivation indicate that a single application of fertilizer at the time of planting has impacts on water quality. Our modelling of different fertilizer application scenarios of two splits, three splits and a late application at 55 days after planting reduced the annual average NO3-N concentrations to 10.5, 10.3 and 9.5 mg/L respectively. Potato yield was not compromised. The grey WE would be reduced to 50.6, 50.9 and 48.9 L/kg respectively for these fertilizer scenarios. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful framework for environmental assessment; however, the reliability of LCA results suffers from many sources of uncertainty and variability. Now that systematic uncertainty analysis in LCA is recommended, it can be useful to revisit past LCA studies to see whether inclusion of uncertainty (or additional types of it) changes interpretation of their results. In this study, we added uncertainty in 67 emission factors (EFs) to the variability in farm characteristics of 47 French dairy farms analyzed in a previous LCA study (van der Werf et al., 2009). We propagated uncertainty in EFs with Monte-Carlo simulation to estimate contributions of uncertainty and variability to uncertainty in potential climate change, acidification, and eutrophication impacts. For individual farms, uncertainty in emission factors added uncertainty to the farms formerly deterministic impacts (coefficients of variation of 2-7% for climate change, 4-11% for acidification, and 2-46% for eutrophication). By farm type (conventional vs. organic), the addition of uncertainty in EFs increased uncertainty in impacts. Although uncertainty in emission factors contributed less to impact uncertainty than variability in farm characteristics did, it did add enough to potentially change decisions about whether differences in certain impacts between farm types were significant, depending upon the significance level and functional unit chosen. Variance-based sensitivity analysis identified emission source categories whose uncertainty contributed most to the uncertainty in impacts: manure deposited in pasture for climate change, cattle housing and manure storage for acidification, and leachate for eutrophication. Although larger uncertainties in potential impacts decrease apparent differences between the systems or scenarios studied, considering more than one type of uncertainty provides decision makers with a more complete and realistic assessment of the state of knowledge. Based on the degree of uncertainty in impacts, they can decide which location on impact intervals (e.g., mean, lower limit, upper limit) is best suited for decisions in a given system. Future studies should explore additional methods to combine multiple sources of uncertainty in LCA and express their relative influences on potential impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of textiles is an area of increasing interest for consumers and legislators. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the commonly used decision support tool for quantifying environmental impacts, and has been applied to most all major textiles. So far there has, however, been no cradle-to-gate assessment of raw silk production. On the basis,of a review of literature on silk production, this paper constructs a first life cycle inventory of the production of high-quality silk under tropical conditions in southern India. Values are calculated for the following environmental impact indicators: global warming potential, ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, land occupation, cumulative energy demand and blue water footprint. The functional unit is defined as 1 kg raw silk, at factory gate. The analysis compares best practice recommendations with observed farm practices. Where applicable, data gaps have been highlighted. Results indicate that silk production following recommended practices is input intensive and that on a mass basis, environmental impacts are above those reported for other natural fibres. The majority of environmental impacts stem from cocoon production, in particular fertilization. Farm practices diverge from recommendations significantly and the observed impact per functional unit is higher. The multiple stages required to manufacture raw silk result in a large amount of co-products. Increasing the efficiency in utilisation of these could reduce the high impact observed in this study. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses six strategies for managing the MSW generated in Asturias (Spain) in terms of their environmental impacts applying the Life Cycle Analysis methodology. To this end, the effect of these strategies on Human Health, Ecosystem Quality, Global Warming and Resource Depletion is studied. The analysed management options include direct landfill with recovery of biogas (S-0), direct incineration with energy recovery (S-1), biomethanization of the source-separated organic fraction with direct incineration of the mixed fraction (S-2), biomethanization of the source-separated organic fraction, sorting of the mixed fraction and incineration of the rejected fraction (S-3), biomethanization of the source-separated organic fraction, sorting of the mixed fraction and incineration of the rejected fraction following aerobic stabilization of the organic fraction (S-4) and biomethanization of the source-separated organic fraction, sorting of the mixed fraction and landfill of the rejected following aerobic stabilization of the organic fraction (S-5). The Consortium for Waste Management (COGERSA) provide data regarding on transport and collection of waste and consumption of energy, water, oil and reagents at each processes. The results obtained suggest that Scenario S-3 has the least impact on the analysed damage categories while the scenarios including landfilling produces the greatest impact in all the categories analysed. Regarding involved processes in studied scenarios, the transport produces a significant impact in the environment, biomethanization contributes to reducing the impact in all the damage categories and incineration adversely affects the categories of Human Health and Climate Change, but helps to reduce damage in the Resources category. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The U.S. final demand categories such as household consumption, private fixed investments, government purchases and investments, and export of goods and services have a wide range of environmental, economic, and social impacts. Analysis of these impacts, termed as the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), stimulated a tremendous interest by policy makers over the last decade. Therefore, current research aims to analyze the TBL of U.S. final demands from a systems perspective. To accomplish this goal, the supply and use tables published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis are merged with a range of environmental, economic, and social metrics. The results show that household consumption has the largest indirect TBL sustainability impacts compared to other final demand categories with shares that range between 43% and 88%. Industrial sectors including manufacturing, utilities, agriculture, construction, transportation, and mining are generally found to be responsible for the highest impacts for most of the environmental impact categories. Service sectors generally have the highest impacts on the economic and social indicators of sustainability. Analysis results also indicate that while meeting the household demand, agriculture, utilities, and manufacturing sectors have relatively more environmental impacts than their contributions to gross domestic product (GDP), whereas service sectors contribute to GDP with a higher share than their environmental burdens. Furthermore, it is envisioned that significant reductions in environmental footprints of U.S. households can be achieved if environmental policies that aim to reduce the household consumption are also supported with sustainable growth through greener and resource efficient economy. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Biodiesel is increasingly considered as an alternative for fossil diesel. Biodiesel can be produced from rapeseed, palm, sunflower, soybean and algae. In this study, the consequences of large-scale production of biodiesel from micro-algae for eutrophication in four large European seas are analysed. To this end, scenarios for the year 2050 are analysed, assuming that in the 27 countries of the European Union fossil diesel will be replaced by biodiesel from algae. Estimates are made for the required fertiliser inputs to algae parks, and how this may increase concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in coastal waters, potentially leading to eutrophication. The Global NEWS (Nutrient Export from WaterSheds) model has been used to estimate the transport of nitrogen and phosphorus to the European coastal waters. The results indicate that the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in the coastal waters may increase considerably in the future as a result of large-scale production of algae for the production of biodiesel, even in scenarios assuming effective waste water treatment and recycling of waste water in algae production. To ensure sustainable production of biodiesel from micro-algae, it is important to develop cultivation systems with low nutrient losses to the environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper presents a calculation and visualization approach for energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from residential stock. The used calculation method is based on a bottom-up approach and is implemented in a case district. The visualization of the energy and emission results employs geographical information system (GIS) techniques. We show two examples of how impacts of behavioral and technical changes in the building stock can be assessed and visualized by using the approach. The results obtained provide meaningful and detailed information about the energy performance and greenhouse gas emissions of the residential stock. The information can be, for instance, used in various hot spot analyses. Additionally, the impacts Of energy efficiency measures and behavioral changes can be assessed. These types of analysis can be useful for policy makers in order to prioritize actions cost efficiently, such as carrying out renovations in the residential sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rising demand for energy is one of the major challenges facing the world today and charcoal is a principal fuel in Kenya. Faced with energy poverty many poor households turn to briquette making. This study assessed the additional cooking fuel obtained from recycling charcoal dust into charcoal briquettes. It applied Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the global warming potential (GWP) from use of charcoal and production of briquettes from charcoal dust and cooking a traditional meal for a standard household of five people. Native vegetation of Acacia drepanolobium and a low efficiency kiln were considered the common practice, while an Acacia mearnsii plantation and a high efficiency kiln was used as an alternative scenario. Charcoal and kerosene were considered as reference fuels. Recovering charcoal dust for charcoal briquettes supplied an additional 16% cooking fuel. Wood carbonization and cooking caused the highest GWP, so there is a need for technologies to improve the efficiency at these two stages of charcoal briquettes and charcoal supply chain. Supplying energy and cooking a traditional meal in a combined system using charcoal and recovering charcoal dust for charcoal briquettes and charcoal alone accounted for 5.3-4.12 and 6.4-4.94 kg CO2 eq. per meal, respectively, assuming trees were not replanted. These amounts declined three times when the carbon dioxide from the carbonization and cooking stages was assumed to be taken up by growing biomass. This requires replanting of trees cut down for charcoal if the neutral impact of biomass energy on GWP is to be maintained. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Production-location and production-technology affect environmental impacts from agriculture and therefore managing these will contribute in the discussion of sustainable agriculture. This research builds on previous research and illustrates the application of current developments in life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify location and technology options to reduce environmental impacts from tomato production systems in Australia. In addition to climate change and water scarcity impacts reported in previous research, this paper presents land use, ecotoxicity and eutrophication footprints based on location specific factors wherever applicable. The results indicated that land use footprints (based on location specific Net Primary Productivity - NPP0 of tomato production systems) varied from 0.03 to 0.2 m(2).yr-e for each kg tomato at the farm gate (where 1 m(2).yr-e represents 1 m(2) of land occupation for 1 year at the global average NPP0). Results for ecotoxicity and eutrophication were up to 500 times that of the normalised results of other environmental indicators for open field cultivation and low-technology greenhouse tomato production systems. Ongoing efforts to quantify location-specific emissions to the environment from the use of pesticides and fertilisers from various production systems, and the development of local/regional characterisation factors in impact assessment, will further progress identification of locations which have the least ecotoxicity and eutrophication impacts. Relocation of greenhouse production to places which require no/limited heating and/or the substitution of fossil fuels in artificial heating by PV are some of the options which should be further discussed for ongoing environmental improvement in vegetable production systems. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Second generation bioenergy such as cellulosic bioethanol is expected to become commercially available in the near future. Large scale production of this bioenergy will require secure and continuous supplies of raw materials. One promising source of materials is biomass residues that currently remain on the fields following harvest, a feedstock that does not compete with food. However, unsustainable removal of these residues may adversely affect soil quality and hamper future harvests. In order to assess this effect, an impact assessment method was developed within the life cycle assessment framework based on a specific system definition, i.e. decomposed biomass residues above soil surfaces resulted in net carbon flow into soil compartment. This soil organic carbon functions as an elementary flow to complete the overall carbon balance. The assessment method considers effects of soil organic carbon on soil biomass-productivity. This impact is expressed as loss of net primary production, a midpoint indicator. The impact assessment method follows the ISO-standard format, comprising a characterization factor and an input term representing changes in elementary flows. The operation of the proposed method was illustrated with a small case study. At 10% biomass removal, the impact is 7.16 g-carbon/m(2).year loss in biomass productivity as compared to the undisturbed reference. We believe that the method has a good potential to be adopted and employed as metrics for assessing the sustainability of bioenergy systems, although data for spatially detailed implementation within bioenergy systems in various regions are to be supplemented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the environmental benefits on global warming, acidification and photochemical oxidation potentials, of biomass direct co-firing with coal on a 20% energy input basis, when compared with coal-fired power generation in The Netherlands. The solid biofuel is produced from Dutch or Canadian forestry biomass via pelletisation, torrefaction or torrefaction and pelletisation. The results show that torrefied biomass co-firing chain can be considered the best option when Dutch biomass is utilised. The reduction is approximately 12% for global warming, 7% for acidification and 5% concerning photochemical oxidation potentials. Even when biomass is imported from Canada, this also results in substantial reduction regarding global warming potential, when compared to the reference case. Alternatively, co-firing of domestic biomass results in a better performance than Canadian biomass for all three impact categories. Therefore, concerning global warming all the suggested resources for co-firing result in environmental benefits compared to coal-fired power generation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Singapore introduced the Concrete Utilization Index to promote the substitution of concrete products with alternate building materials. This study examined the environmental impacts of replacing concrete with bricks. Using an attributional life cycle approach, it was found that replacing concrete with bricks may actually increase the net environmental impacts. In the first ever consequential life cycle assessment done for bricks in the literature, we found that replacing concrete with bricks may result in small reduction in global warming potential, provided there is no change to the amounts of bricks and concrete constituents being imported into Singapore. Considering there are changes to the import quantities, we derived a mathematical relation that enables us to know how much the import of concrete constituents must decrease in order to nullify the increased global warming potential resulted from the increase in import of bricks. In all these assessments, we found that the environmental impacts (including global warming potential) of the manufacturing stage of bricks need to be reduced. To achieve this, we reviewed a few new brick-making approaches that can produce more sustainable bricks; we also proposed a way of creating a "green demand" for these bricks and utilizing policies such as Singapore's Business Angel Scheme to finance the upgrading of brick-making technologies through international partnership. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment analysis was carried out in order to evaluate quantitatively the environmental burdens related to two possible treatment scenarios for tar-containing reclaimed asphalt pavements. About 4500 tons of this hazardous waste material was obtained during the reconstruction of the runway at Ljubljana Airport. According to the first scenario, this material could be transported to a suitable incineration plant where the hazardous compounds would be decomposed. According to the second scenario, it could be treated as a recycled aggregate, and used for the production of lean concrete for different civil engineering applications, in which case 40 wt. % of the natural aggregates would be replaced by reclaimed asphalt. The hazardous PAHs would be immobilised in the concrete. The results of LCA analysis showed that the incineration scenario has an especially significant impact on energy consumption, as well as on Abiotic Depletion Potential and Global Warming Potential. The reason for this can be found in the energy needs at the incineration plant for the maintenance of high combustion temperatures, since the net generation of energy is low during the incineration of low calorific reclaimed asphalt. In the case of the recycling scenario, the results of the study showed only a slight burden or even a benefit for all of the studied environmental indicators. This is a direct consequence of the reduced extraction and production of natural aggregate. The study also showed that around 1.5-2 EUR can be saved for each ton of reclaimed asphalt in the case of recycling scenario. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This multidisciplinary study concerns the optimal design of processes with a view to both maximizing profit and minimizing environmental impacts. This can be achieved by a combination of traditional chemical process design methods, measurements of environmental impacts and advanced mathematical optimization techniques. More to the point, this paper presents a hybrid simulation-multiobjective optimization approach that at once optimizes the production cost and minimizes the associated environmental impacts of isobutane alkylation. This approach has also made it possible to obtain the flow-sheet configurations and process variables that are needed to manufacture isooctane in a way that satisfies the above-stated double aim. The problem is formulated as a Generalized Disjunctive Programming problem and solved using state-of-the-art logic-based algorithms. It is shown, starting from existing alternatives for the process, that it is possible to systematically generate a superstructure that includes alternatives not previously considered. The optimal solution, in the form a Pareto curve, includes different structural alternatives from which the most suitable design can be selected. To evaluate the environmental impact, Life Cycle Assessment based on two different indicators is employed: Ecoindicator 99 and Global Warming Potential. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing the best options among emerging technologies (e.g., new chemicals, nanotechnologies) is complicated because of trade-offs across benefits and risks that are difficult to quantify given limited and fragmented availability of information. This study demonstrates the integration of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) to address technology alternative selection decisions. As a case study, prioritization of six lumber treatment alternatives [micronized copper quaternary (MCQ); alkaline copper quaternary (ACQ); water-borne copper naphthenate (CN); oil-borne copper naphthenate (CNo); water-borne copper quinolate (CQ); and water-borne zinc naphthenate (ZN)] for military use are considered. Multiattribute value theory (MAVT) is used to derive risk and benefit scores. Risk scores are calculated using a cradle-to-gate LCA. Benefit scores are calculated by scoring of cost, durability, and corrosiveness criteria. Three weighting schemes are used, representing Environmental, Military and Balanced stakeholder perspectives. Aggregated scores from all three perspectives show CQ to be the least favorable alterative. MCQ is identified as the most favorable alternative from the Environmental stakeholder perspective. From the Military stakeholder perspective, ZN is determined to be the most favorable alternative, followed closely by MCQ. This type of scoring and ranking of multiple heterogeneous criteria in a systematic and transparent way facilitates better justification of technology selection and regulation.Recent research has proposed integrating wastewater treatment with algae cultivations a way of producing algal biofuels at a commercial scale more sustainably. This study evaluates the environmental performance of wastewater-based algal biofuels with a well-to-wheel life cycle assessment (LCA). Production pathways examined included different nutrient sources (municipal wastewater influent to the activated sludge process, centrate from the sludge drying process, swine manure, and freshwater with synthetic fertilizers) combined with emerging biomass conversion technologies (micro-wave pyrolysis, combustion, wet lipid extraction, and hydrothermal liquefaction). Results show that the environmental performance of waste-water-based algal biofuels is generally better than freshwater-based algal biofuels, but depends on the characteristics of the wastewater and the conversion technologies. Of 16 pathway and the centratge cultivation with combustion pathway have lower impacts than petroleum diesel in all environmental categories examined (fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication potential, and consumptive water use). The potential for large-scale implementation of centrate-based algal biofuel however, is limited by availability of centrate. Thus, it is unlikely that algal biofuels can provide a large-scale and environmentally preferable alternative to petroleum transportation fuels without considerable improvement in current production technologies. Additionally, the cobenefit of wastewater-based algal biofuel production as an alternate means of treating various wastewaters should be further explored.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) for coal power plants reduces onsite carbon dioxide emissions, but affects other air emissions on and offsite. This research assesses the net societal benefits and costs of Monoethanolamine (MEA) CCS, valuing changes in emissions of CO2, SO2, NOX, NH3 and particulate matter (PM), including those in the supply chain. Geographical variability and stochastic uncertainty for 407 coal power plant locations in the U.S. are analyzed. The results show that the net environmental benefits and costs of MEA CCS depend critically on location. For a few favorable sites of both power plant and upstream processes, CCS realizes a net benefit (benefitcost ratio >1) if the social cost of carbon exceeds $51/ton. For much of the U.S. however, the social cost of carbon must be much higher to realize net benefits from CCS, up to a maximum of $910/ton. While the social costs of carbon are uncertain, typical estimates are in the range of $32-220 per ton, much lower than the breakeven value for many potential CCS locations. Increased impacts upstream from the power plant can dramatically change the social acceptability of CCS and needs further consideration and analysisEfforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change will require deep reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions on the scale of gigatonnes per year. CO2 capture and utilization and/or storage technologies are a class of approaches that can substantially reduce CO2 emissions. Even though examples of this approach, such as CO2-enhanced oil recovery, are already being practiced on a scale >0.05 Gt/year, little attention has been focused on the supply of CO2 for these projects. Here, facility-scale data newly collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was processed to produce the first comprehensive map of CO2 sources from industrial sectors currently supplying CO2 in the United States. Collectively these sources produce 0.16 Gt/year, but the data reveal the presence of large areas without access to CO2 at an industrially relevant scale (>25 kt/year). Even though some facilities with the capability to capture CO2 are not doing so and in some regions pipeline networks are being built to link CO2 sources and sinks, much of the country exists in "CO2 deserts". A life cycle analysis of the sources reveals that the predominant source of CO2, dedicated wells, has the largest carbon footprint further confounding prospects for rational carbon management strategiesResources have received significant attention in recent years resulting in development of a wide range of resource depletion indicators within life cycle assessment (LCA). Understanding the differences in assessment principles used to derive these indicators and the effects on the impact assessment results is critical for indicator selection and interpretation of the results. Eleven resource depletion methods were evaluated quantitatively with respect to resource coverage, characterization factors (CF), impact contributions from individual resources, and total impact scores. We included 2247 individual market inventory data sets covering a wide range of societal activities (ecoinvent database v3.0). Loglinear regression analysis was carried out for all pairwise combinations of the 11 methods for identification of correlations in CFs (resources) and total impacts (inventory data sets) between methods. Significant differences in resource coverage were observed (973 resources) revealing a trade-off between resource coverage and model complexity. High correlation in CFs between methods did not necessarily manifest in high correlation in total impacts. This indicates that also resource coverage may be critical for impact assessment results. Although no consistent correlations between methods applying similar assessment models could be observed, all methods showed relatively high correlation regarding the assessment of energy resources. Finally, we classify the existing methods into three groups, according to method focus and modeling approach, to aid method selection within LCA.The inclusion of ecotoxicity impacts of pesticides in environmental assessments of biobased products has long been hampered by methodological challenges. We expanded the pesticide database and the regional coverage of the pesticide emission model PestLCI v.2.0, combined it with the impact assessment model USEtox, and assessed potential freshwater ecotoxicity impacts (PFEIs) of pesticide use in selected biofuel feedstock production cases, namely: maize (Iowa, US, two cases), rapeseed (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany), Salix (South Central Sweden), soybean (Mato Grosso, Brazil, two cases), sugar cane (Sao Paulo, Brazil), and wheat (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany). We found that PFEIs caused by pesticide use in feedstock production varied greatly, up to 3 orders of magnitude. Salix has the lowest PFEI per unit of energy output and per unit of cultivated area. Impacts per biofuel unit were 30, 750, and 1000 times greater, respectively, for the sugar cane, wheat and rapeseed cases than for Salix. For maize genetically engineered (GE) to resist glyphosate herbicides and to produce its own insecticidal toxin, maize GE to resist glyphosate, soybeans GE to resist glyphosate and conventional soybeans, the impacts were 110, 270, 305, and 310 times greater than for Salix, respectively. The significance of field and site-specific conditions are discussed, as well as options for reducing negative impacts in biofuel feedstock production.In Finland, during the past 10 years, the number of dairy cows has declined considerably leading to decreased domestic beef production which is partly compensated by increased suckler beef production. However, production of meat originating from dairy herds has been shown to be economically more profitable and to produce less greenhouse gas emissions per unit of product than beef production from suckler cow systems. Therefore, when safeguarding beef self-sufficiency, the intensification of beef production from dairy herds is a more promising option to consider. In this study, the possibility of different options for increasing dairy beef production was assessed by using a deterministic simulation. Increasing the use of crossbreeding in dairy herds, especially when combined with the use of Y-sorted semen, appeared to be the most efficient strategy for increasing dairy beef production. The decrease in the replacement rate increased beef production through the potential for enhancing crossbreeding.Agricultural wastes (AW) are often characterized by varying pH and substantial contamination potential, which are mainly related to their high organic load, thus affecting-when improperly disposed of-soils, living organisms, and water bodies. Composting of AW is the most commonly used management option and results in the production of soil improver that enhances crop growth and contributes to agricultural sustainability. This study aims to present the framework for assessing human and ecosystem risk when compost produced from AW is applied on soil. In order to develop this framework, issues such as origin, composition and pre-treatment of AW, application rates on soils, bioavailability and mobility of contaminants present in compost, exposure routes and rates as well as determination of the fate of contaminants in soil, air, and water, should be taken into consideration.The expected urbanization of the planet in the coming century coupled with aging infrastructure in developed regions, increasing complexity of man-made systems, and pressing climate change impacts have created opportunities for reassessing the role of infrastructure and technologies in cities and how they contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Modern urbanization is predicated on complex, increasingly coupled infrastructure systems, and energy use continues to be largely met from fossil fuels. Until energy infrastructures evolve away from carbon-based fuels, GHG emissions are critically tied to the urbanization process. Further complicating the challenge of decoupling urban growth from GHG emissions are lock-in effects and interdependencies. This paper synthesizes state-of-the-art thinking for transportation, fuels, buildings, water, electricity, and waste systems and finds that GHG emissions assessments tend to view these systems as static and isolated from social and institutional systems. Despite significant understanding of methods and technologies for reducing infrastructure-related GHG emissions, physical, institutional, and cultural constraints continue to work against us, pointing to knowledge gaps that must be addressed. This paper identifies three challenge themes to improve our understanding of the role of infrastructure and technologies in urbanization processes and position these increasingly complex systems for low-carbon growth. The challenges emphasize how we can reimagine the role of infrastructure in the future and how people, institutions, and ecological systems interface with infrastructure.The exploitation of microalgae in a wastewater treatment process is currently an open issue, and its actual applicability is still under investigation. In this work the effects of temperature, day/night irradiation and bacterial competition were studied on growth and nutrient removal of Chlorella protothecoides cultivated in real and unsterilized primary urban wastewater. C. protothecoides showed a linear dependence of growth rate on temperature under continuous irradiation with a maximum at 30 degrees C. Continuous flow experiment under day-night irradiation condition showed that a cyclic steady state was achieved, with significant differences in biomass concentration and nutrient removal after dark and light periods. The presence of a native microflora in wastewater did not affect the microalgal growth, both in batch and continuous flow experiments. N and P were efficiently removed in all conditions tested, while the COD was not consumed by microalgal biomass. Thus, in view of a large scale application, a two step depuration process would be required, where the photobioreactor will remove nutrients as N and P and an activated sludge reactor downstream will reduce the organic matter. The experimental data obtained were used to design a possible process of this type. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Artemia spp. is one of the most widespread saltwater organism suitable for ecotoxicity testing, but no internationally standardised methods exist. Several endpoints can be considered with Artemia spp. including short-term (24-48 h) and long-term (14 days) mortality, cysts and nauplii hatchability, biomass productivity, biomarkers' expression/inhibition and bioaccumulation on larvae as well as organisms' reproductive ability. Recently, Anemia spp. started to be used as a reference biological model in nanoecotoxicology with both inorganic and organic engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) also in combination with traditional environmental stressors looking for potential interactive effects. Criticisms were detected about the use of Anemia spp. in relation to the hatching phase, the toxicity test design, the occasional use only of reference toxicants and the way testing solution/suspensions were prepared thus potentially compromising the reliability of nanoecotoxicological results. A full list of compulsory information that must accompany Anemia nanoecotoxicity data is provided with positive feedbacks also for other toxicity bioassays. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As road conditions worsen, users experience an increase in fuel consumption and vehicle wear and tear. This increases the costs incurred by the drivers, and also increases the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that vehicles emit. Pavement condition can be improved through rehabilitation activities (resurfacing) to reduce the effects on users, but these activities also have significant cost and GHG emission impacts. The objective of pavement management is to minimize total societal (user and agency) costs. However, the environmental impacts associated with the cost-minimizing policy are not currently accounted for. We show that there exists a range of potentially optimal decisions, known as the Pareto frontier, in which it is not possible to decrease total emissions without increasing total costs and vice versa. This research explores these tradeoffs for a system of pavement segments. For a case study, a network was created from a subset of California's highways using available traffic data. It was shown that the current resurfacing strategy used by the state's transportation agency, Caltrans, does not fall on the Pareto frontier, meaning that significant savings in both total costs and total emissions can be achieved by switching to one of the optimal policies. The methods presented in this paper also allow the decision maker to evaluate the impact of other policies, such as reduced vehicle kilometers traveled or better construction standards.This study compares environmental impacts including carbon footprint of production of liquid epoxy resin (LER) produced from epichlorohydrin synthesed from propylene with LER produced from epichlorohydrin synthesed from glycerin. The influence of upstream and/or core processes on environmental impacts of glycerine-based LER and propylene-based LER are compared.The environmental impact reduction and operating costs savings associated with the purification and recovery of solvent waste in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API's) were investigated. A software toolbox has been developed that combines Aspen Plus (R) process simulation with SimaPro (R) and Ecosolvent life cycle assessment (LCA) databases. A LCA approach was used in order to consider the environmental impact beyond pharmaceutical production plant boundaries. The feasibility of a relatively small flexible equipment-skid capable of recovering multiple solvent waste streams was evaluated. Distillation and pervaporation were considered to separate binary waste solvent mixtures. Optimum distillation reflux ratio and feed stage were determined to maximize the environmental impact reductions and operating cost savings. The optimum reflux ratio was significantly higher than 1.2 times the minimum reflux ratio suggested by traditional heuristics. The emissions and cost reductions obtained were as much as 49% and 56% higher, respectively, as compared to using the conventional optimum reflux ratio. A comprehensive cash flow analysis showed that the recovery of low volume solvent waste streams is economically feasible, despite traditional thinking. Three case studies from Pfizer are presented to show how our software tool can aid in green engineering decision making. (c) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper reports outcomes of life cycle assessments (LCAs) of three different oleaginous bioenergy chains (oilseed rape, Ethiopian mustard and cardoon) under Southern Europe conditions. Accurate data on field practices previously collected during a three-year study at two sites were used. The vegetable oil produced by oleaginous seeds was used for power generation in medium-speed diesel engines while the crop residues were used in steam power plants. For each bioenergy chain, the environmental impact related to cultivation, transportation of agricultural products and industrial conversion for power generation was evaluated by calculating cumulative energy demand, acidification potential and global warming potential. For all three bioenergy chains, the results of the LCA study show a considerable saving of primary energy (from 70 to 86 GJ.ha(-1)) and greenhouse gas emissions (from 4.1 to 5.2 t CO2.ha(-1)) in comparison to power generation from fossil fuels, although the acidification potential of these bioenergy chains may be twice that of conventional power generation. In addition, the study highlights that land use changes due to the cultivation of the abovementioned crops reduce soil organic content and therefore worsen and increase greenhouse gas emissions for all three bioenergy chains. The study also demonstrates that the exploitation of crop residues for energy production greatly contributes to managing environmental impact of the three bioenergy chains.Accelerating demand to reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuels has been driving widespread attention to renewable fuels, such as biogas. In fact, in the last decade numerous policy guidelines and laws regarding energy, the environment and agriculture have been issued to encourage the use of animal sewage as a raw material for the production of biogas. The production of energy from biogas in a dairy farm can provide a good opportunity for sustainable rural development, augmenting the farm's income from traditional sources and helping to reduce the overall environmental impact of the energy sector. This paper investigates the trade-off between the environmental and economic benefits of an agro-energy farm in the Umbria region of Italy that employs livestock sewage and manure, dedicated energy crops (corn and triticale silage) and olive waste. The environmental analysis was performed using the LCA methodology, while the economic investigation was carried out by reconstructing the economic balance of the agro-energetic supply chain based on the budgets of each activity performed. The LCA results show, on the one hand, the predominant weight of producing dedicated crops compared to all other processes in the supply chain and, on the other hand, a significant reduction in environmental impact compared to that caused by energy production from fossil fuels. Economic analysis revealed that the results depend significantly on what rate per kWh the government incentives guarantee to agricultural producers of renewable energy.Data collection, or the inventory step, is often the most labor-intensive phase of any Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study. The S-LCA Guidelines and numerous authors have recommended generic assessment in this first phase of an S-LCA. In an effort to identify the social hotspots in the supply chains of 100 product categories during just a few months' time, adopting a streamlined approach was essential. The Social Hotspots Database system was developed by New Earth over 5 years. It includes a Global Input Output (IO) model derived from the Global Trade Analysis Project, a Worker Hours Model constructed using annual wage payments and wage rates by country and sector, and Social Theme Tables covering 22 themes within five Social Impact CategoriesLabor Rights and Decent Work, Health and Safety, Human Rights, Governance and Community Impacts. The data tables identify social risks for over 100 indicators. Both the ranking of worker hour intensity and the risk levels across multiple social themes for the Country Specific Sectors (CSS) within a product category supply chain are used to calculate Social Hotspots Indexes (SHI) using an additive weighting method. The CSS with the highest SHI are highlighted as social hotspots within the supply chain of the product in question. This system was tested in seven case studies in 2011. In order to further limit the number of hotspots, a set of prioritization rules was applied. This paper will review the method implemented to study the social hotspots of the 100 product categories and provide one detailed example. Limitations of the approach and recommended research avenues will be outlined.In order to assess sustainability of products and processes, different methodologies have been developed and used in the last years. In the road pavement construction area, most methodologies used for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are essentially focused in the construction phase. The present paper analyses the importance of the use phase of a road in the LCA of different paving alternatives, namely by evaluating energy consumption and gaseous emissions throughout the road pavement's life. Therefore, a new LCA methodology for road pavements was developed, and the results of its application to a case study involving the construction of alternative pavement structures are discussed. The study intends to assess the influence of using more sustainable paving construction alternatives (asphalt recycling vs. conventional asphalt mixtures), and/or different surface course materials (which have a higher influence on the rolling resistance and, therefore, affect the performance during the use phase). The LCA results obtained for this case study showed that the reductions in energy consumption and gaseous emissions obtained during the use phase, for pavement alternatives with a lower rolling resistance surface course, are higher than the total amount of energy consumption and gas emissions produced during construction. It is therefore clear that some improvements in the characteristics of the surface course may have an effect over the road use phase that will rapidly balance the initial costs and gas emissions of those interventions. The LCA results obtained also showed that the sustainability of pavement construction may also be improved using recycled asphalt mixtures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a decision analysis technique to allow highway agencies to assess the tradeoffs between costs, condition and energy consumption. It is shown how the entire feasible solution space can be evaluated between multiple stakeholders with differing values to assess the desirability of the outcomes resulting from infrastructure management decisions. Furthermore, an example network-level analysis is presented using data from the Virginia Department of Transportation. The example analysis clearly shows a tradeoff between the most cost effective outcomes (i.e., minimizing the cost divided by the condition) and the outcomes where the energy consumption is minimized, and how decision analysis should account for this tradeoff. The results of the method presented in this paper show that various pavement management alternatives can be represented in terms of desirability, and that this desirability can assist the decision maker with making decisions about performance goals and targets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building envelope, which separates the interior conditioned from exterior unconditioned environment of a building, is the key determinant of thermal and energy performance in many types of buildings. The building envelope is primarily designed to restrict the heat transfer between inside and outside in order to regulate the thermal characteristics of the interior environment and reduce the heating, cooling and electric lighting demand of buildings. The key goal of the present research is to examine the life cycle energy and environmental performance of building envelopes by conducting a comparative energy and environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) study of several envelope scenarios in which some of the major components of building envelope vary. The varying components include insulation material, window-to-wall ratio (WWR), window frame material, and double-glazing cavity gas. The generic building model used in this study was a hypothetical 2-story office building with 335 m(2) (3600 ft(2)) of floor area. The results revealed scenarios with low to medium WWR and fiberglass window frame result in the lowest impacts. The research also shows that use phase of the life cycle is the primary contributor to most environmental impact categories for all scenarios. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, we analyzed the implications of various insulation materials on the primary energy and CO2 emission for material production of a residential building. We modeled changes to the original design of the building to achieve reference buildings to energy-efficiency levels of the Swedish building code of 2012 or the Swedish Passivhus 2012 criteria. We varied the insulation materials in different parts of the reference buildings from mineral rock wool to glass wool, cellulose fiber, expanded polystyrene or foam glass. We compared the primary energy use and CO2 emission from material production of functionally equivalent reference and optimum versions of the building. The results showed a reduction of about 6-7% in primary energy use and 6-8% in CO2 emission when the insulation material in the reference buildings is changed from rock wool to cellulose fiber in the optimum versions. Also, the total fossil fuel use for only insulation material production was reduced by about 39%. This study suggests that enhancing material production technologies by reducing fossil fuel-use and increasing renewable energy sources, as well as careful material choice with renewable-based raw materials can contribute significantly in reducing primary energy use and GHG emission in the building sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study quantifies the environmental impact of milk production of Italian Mediterranean buffaloes and points out the farm characteristics that mainly affect their environmental performance. Life cycle assessment was applied in a sample of 6 farms. The functional unit was 1 kg of normalized buffalo milk (LBN), with a reference milk fat and protein content of 8.3 and 4.73%, respectively. The system boundaries included the agricultural phase of the buffalo milk chain from cradle to farm gate. An economic criterion was adopted to allocate the impacts on milk production. Impact categories investigated were global warming (GW), abiotic depletion (AD), photochemical ozone formation (PO), acidification (AC), and eutrophication (EU). The contribution to the total results of the following farm activities were investigated: (1) on-farm energy consumption, (2) manure management, (3) manure application, (4) on-farm feed production (comprising production and application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides), (5) purchased feed production, (6) enteric fermentation, and (7) transport of purchased feeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides from producers to farms. Global warming associated with 1 kg of LBN resulted in 5.07 kg of CO2 Eq [coefficient of variation (CV) = 21.9%], AD was 3.5 x 10(-3) kg of Sb Eq (CV = 51.7%), PO was 6.8 x 10(-4) kg of C2H4 Eq (CV = 28.8%), AC was 6.5 x 10(-2) kg of SO2 Eq (CV 30.3%), and EU was 3.3 x 10(-2) kg of PO43- Eq (CV = 36.5%). The contribution of enteric fermentation and manure application to GW is 37 and 20%, respectively; on-farm consumption, on-farm feed production, and purchased feed production are the main contributors to AD; about 70% of PO is due to enteric fermentation; manure management and manure application are responsible for 55 and 25% of AC and 25 and 55% of EU, respectively. Methane and N2O are responsible for 44 and 43% of GW, respectively. Crude oil consumption is responsible for about 72% of AD; contribution of CH4 to PO is 77%; NH3 is the main contributor to AC (92%); NO3- and NH3 are responsible for 55 and 41% of EU, respectively; contribution of P to EU is only 3.2%. The main characteristics explaining the significant variability of life cycle assessment are milk productivity and amount of purchased feed per kilogram of LBN. Improvement of LBN production per buffalo cow is the main strategy for reducing GW and PO; improvement of the efficiency of feed use is the strategy proposed for mitigating AD, PO, AC, and EU.Dynamic simulation, design improvements and control issues in solar power plants might compete with special considerations on energy storing techniques. In order to provide the stability in production of power or chemical commodities in spite of discontinuity in the source of energy, i.e., sun, overall concerns in the details of solar power plant, competition and comparison of common storing technologies should be taken into account to ensure the effectiveness and continuity of the supply. This research activity is aimed at extending the study from the power generation purpose to the solar-supplied chemical commodities production, highlighting the limitations of certain well-established thermal energy storage techniques when concentrating solar is directly coupled with chemical processes. The (intrinsically dynamic and closed-loop) simulation of solar power plants and direct thermal energy storage technologies is performed for the direct thermal energy storage technologies and, only for the case of thermocline, it is coupled with computational fluid-dynamic (CFD) studies for the proper assessment of molten salt and steam temperature trends. To investigate benefits/restrictions of the storage technologies, the solar steam generation is integrated with the gasification of biomasses for syngas production. Also, first-principles dynamic model for the biomass gasifier is provided. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although it is not at once evident, water supply and sanitation services provided by urban water and wastewater utilities consume a considerable amount of energy. Energy is an operational sine qua non in water treatment and distribution, wastewater collection, and treatment prior to disposal. How does the urban environment influence the water-energy-carbon nexus? The authors have tried to answer this question by referring to four case studies - based on the cities of Nantes (France), Oslo (Norway), Turin (Italy) and Toronto (Canada). Climate, technology and geography, inter alia, play important roles in shaping the water-energy-carbon nexus in different parts of the world. On the basis of an understanding of these differences and their influences, the authors have attempted to provide directions for process, program and policy interventions. For instance, Nantes needs to make an effort to restrict the use of herbicides and pesticides in order to improve the quality of water in the river Loire and thereby reduce the energy demand for treating raw water. Turin is a part, would do well to invest in more efficient wastewater treatment facilities, thus reducing the energy burden significantly on the upstream, while incurring a higher demand on the downstream. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work develops a thermal simulation model integrated in a life-cycle costing approach aimed at identifying the best choice of insulating material to retrofit the roofs of existing livestock buildings. The developed model integrates the results of the dynamic simulation with cradle-to-grave costs of the materials, by including the typical elements of life-cycle assessment. In this paper, eight insulating materials have been tested to analyse building microclimate responses, sustainability of the intervention and expedience of the investment. The model is applied to the case study of an extensive sheep farm of the Italian Apennines. The results suggest that all of the insulating materials work well for increasing the period of time that a temperature of comfort is maintained that does not exceed the critical value for animal welfare. By analysing their entire life cycle, the best materials are glass wool, sheep wool and hemp fibre, while the polyurethane, which has the best response in terms of temperature control, falls in last place because of its high primary energy input. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Businesses are increasingly interested in exploring the key concepts of industrial ecology (IE), particularly within the context of market-oriented sustainability. However, few studies have researched how green consumers perceive production as having relevant product design and life cycle assessment (LCA) dimensions. In this article, we explore green consumers' mind-set toward such system tools of IE by conducting 18 in-depth interviews with Brazilian and Portuguese green consumers. We propose a simplified theoretical framework for achieving market-oriented sustainability based on the multidisciplinary potential between IE and marketing. Our analysis suggests that there are still important gaps between what green consumers demand and what businesses are currently able (or willing) to supply. Our findings support the idea that businesses interested in following IE within the context of market-oriented sustainability should spend greater effort in understanding the green consumer's production-relatedmind-set. In particular, we propose (1) avoiding consumer skepticism and dissatisfaction with greenwashing and (2) establishing credibility and information transparency. Both seem to act as preconditions to better align the product design and LCA processes with green consumer needs within the emerging paradigm of market-oriented sustainability.The Dow Chemical Co. (Dow) is actively working to develop an approach to value ecosystem services and incorporate them in business decisions. This study investigates the use of replacement cost methodology (RCM) for financial analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental assessment. The case study analyzes a business decision made in 1995, where a constructed wetland was built instead of a sequencing batch reactor to solve a regulatory compliance issue in meeting suspended solids requirements for a wastewater treatment system at the Union Carbide Corp. (a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Co.) plant in Seadrift, Texas. The financial results indicate that the total net present value savings calculated for implementing the constructed wetland instead of the sequencing batch reactor is $282 million over the project's lifetime. The LCA demonstrates that the lower energy and material inputs to the constructed wetland resulted in lower potential impacts for fossil fuel use, acidification, smog formation, and ozone depletion and likely lead to lower potential impacts for global warming and marine eutrophication. The result from the inventory of land use shows that both the upstream land burdens (for the sequencing batch reactor) and the on-site acreage of the constructed wetland are similar in magnitude and importance, contrary to the assumption that green infrastructure always requires greater land area. This case study illustrates how Dow can consider financial and environmental analyses in comparing gray and green infrastructure solutions and further understand the benefits of implementing green infrastructure in an appropriate industrial application.Interface, Inc. Year founded: 1974 Ownership: Public Headquarters: Atlanta, GA, USA Industry: Carpet Employees: 3,500 Approximate gross sales 2013: US$1 billionThe energy intensity of fuel-based lighting is substantial given the paltry levels of lighting service, poor economic outcomes, and exposure to public health risks for users throughout the developing world. There is a great opportunity to reduce fossil energy consumption (and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions) while improving public health and economic outcomes for the poor by encouraging upgrading from fuel-based to rechargeable light-emitting diode (LED) lighting. However, switching to efficient lighting requires up-front investments of energy for manufacturing. This study explores life cycle energy performance in the market for modern off-grid lighting (OGL) products in Sub-Saharan Africa and introduces a new metric, life cycle efficacy, which facilitates comparisons and analysis of life cycle energy performance (light output per unit of embodied plus use-phase energy consumption) for lighting technology systems. Combining field insights on technology adoption dynamics with embodied energy estimates for a range of products available in 2012 shows that OGL energy "debts" are "paid back" in 20 to 50 days (substantially faster than kilowatt-scale grid-connected solar electricity systems) with energy return on investment ratios from 10 to 40. This stems from greatly improved life cycle efficacy for off-grid LED lighting (similar to 20 lumens/watt [lm/W]), compared to fuel-based lighting (similar to 0.04 lumens/W). Life cycle benefits-not only energy, but also economic and health benefits-depend strongly on product service lifetime (related to quality) and fuel displacement fraction (related to performance). OGL life cycle efficacy increases from longer lifetime and/or improved LED source efficacy lead to better quality and less-expensive lighting available in the developing world with lower energy use than the fuel-based incumbent technology.This article empirically evaluates the results from input-output (I-O) life cycle assessment (LCA) models of the United States for 2002, based on different sources of data: demand-side survey data; supply-side data with homogeneous prices; and supply-side data with heterogeneous prices. These I-O-based results are also compared with those from process LCA databases. The underlying approach is based on the theoretical insight previously developed. The results show significant differences and offer useful heuristic insight: The survey-based data set seems better for sectors that use a large amount of resources and have large intrasectoral transactions. But, it exhibits many missing values. Homogeneous price-based calculation with supply-side data is easiest because of minimal data needs and simplifying assumption on prices. The result shows relatively complete coverage and obeys mass and energy balances. The heterogeneous price-based data set overcomes the price homogeneity assumption, but the result is sensitive to price accuracy. Overall, it is not possible to declare any currently available data sets to be the best, although survey-and heterogeneous price-based data sets may be improved with more information. This insight is based on comparing direct consumption of fossil resources. Comparison of cumulative consumption reduces the disparities among data sets from error cancellation. Further comparison of process-and I-O-based inventories shows that the former values are often larger than the latter, with the two supply-side data sets being closer to process-based data. These results should be useful for choosing between available data to build the best possible I-O and hybrid LCA models and for further research on enhancing their quality.The treatment of coproducts is one of the most persistent methodological challenges for both input-output (IO) analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA). The two fields have developed distinct modeling traditions to artificially extract independent Leontief production functions (technological "recipes") for products of multioutput activities; whereas IO operates in terms of system-wide models named constructs, LCA practitioners usually use allocations or system expansion on a process-by-process basis. Recently, there have been renewed efforts to connect these two modeling traditions on the basis of their underlying assumptions. A formal description of a unified framework for the treatment of coproducts is still lacking, however. The present article strives to fill this gap. From a single generalized allocation equation, we derive all practical LCA allocations and IO constructs. This approach extends previous studies by arranging the different models in a formal "taxonomic tree," clarifying the relation between the different LCA allocation and IO construct models. This framework also clarifies the relation of certain models to classical system expansion. We then analyze the properties of these models when combined with different types of inventories and make recommendations for best practice in inventory compilation.A life cycle assessment was conducted on three industrial effluent water recycling options using a one-, two-, and three-stage effluent treatment plant composed of clarification, aerobic treatment, and ultrafiltration processes. The impact categories dominated by energy use and the category of freshwater use were then further investigated and compared between each recycling system. A dual functional unit of recycled water delivered and effluent treated was identified to make the recycling options functionally equivalent. Three-stage water recycling was the environmentally preferred option, with all three water recycling options investigated producing similar environmental impacts in most impact categories, with the exception of freshwater use, where the one-and two-stage treatment options performed significantly worse than the three-stage treatment. It was found that the impact categories of global warming potential and nonrenewable energy demand did not directly correlate with each other as a result of direct greenhouse gas emissions from sludge disposal. The construction of the equivalent systems shows that external systems required for functional equivalence are important in water recycling comparisons, and considering dual functional units is important for comparing water recycling options. With the increasing prevalence of industries utilizing biomass and other renewable fuels, it is becoming more apparent that measuring energy usage is not sufficient, and the specific impacts and damages associated with energy consumption need to be evaluated. This study provides a framework to identify opportunities in industrial wastewater management, which can be particularly important in industries with large effluent flows and high organic loadings.Literature on small-scale fisheries usually depicts them as preferable over large-scale-industrial fisheries regarding societal benefits (jobs, jobs per investment) and relative fuel efficiency (e. g., Thomson 1980). We propose an environmentally extended Thomson table for comparing the Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens) fleets of purse seiners, backed up by methodological information and augmented with life cycle assessment (LCA)-based environmental performance information, as a more comprehensive device for comparing fleets competing for the same resource pool. Findings from LCA and a previous study on the anchoveta steel fleet together allowed characterizing the whole Peruvian anchoveta fishery. These results, along with socioeconomic indicators, are used to build an environmentally extended Thomson table of the fleet's main segments: the steel industrial, the wooden industrial, and the wooden small-and medium-scale (SMS) fleets. In contrast with the world figure, the Peruvian SMS fleets show a fuel performance nearly two times worse than the industrial fleets, due to economies of scale of the latter (although the small-scale segment itself (<10 m(3)) performs similarly to the industrial steel fleet). Furthermore, the absolute number of jobs provided by the industrial fisheries is much larger in Peru than those provided by the SMS fisheries. This is due to the relatively larger development of the industrial fishery, but as in previous studies, the SMS fleets generate more employment per tonne landed than the industrial fleet, as well as more food fish and less discards at sea.Woody feedstocks will play an important role in meeting the total demand for biomass to generate electricity and produce ethanol in the United States. We analyzed 186 different scenarios (31 rotation ages (10 to 40 years in annual time steps); two types of forest management (intensive and nonintensive); and three feedstocks (logging residues only, pulpwood only, logging residues and pulpwood combined)) for ascertaining relative savings in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of two wood-based energy products (electricity and ethanol) on per unit land and per unit energy bases with respect to equivalent fossil fuel based energy products. Relative savings in GHG emissions were higher under intensive forest management compared with nonintensive forest management on a per unit land basis, whereas this situation reverses on a per unit energy basis. Combined use of pulpwood and logging residues saved the highest amount of GHG emissions on a per unit land basis, but on a per unit energy basis, relative GHG savings were similar to when only logging residues were used as a feedstock. Existing policies promoting bioenergy development in the United States only consider GHG savings on a per unit energy basis. A need exists to consider GHG savings on a per unit land basis as well to ensure efficient utilization of existing land resources to mitigate GHG emissions.Several concentrated solar power demonstration plants are being constructed, and a few commercial plants have been announced in northwestern China. However, the mutual impacts between the concentrated solar power plants and their surrounding environments have not yet been addressed comprehensively in literature by the parties involved in these projects. In China, these projects are especially important as an increasing amount of low carbon electricity needs to be generated in order to maintain the current economic growth white simultaneously lessening pollution. In this study, the authors assess the potential environmental impacts of large-scale concentrated solar power plants. Specifically, the water use intensity, soil erosion and soil temperature are quantitatively examined. It was found that some of the impacts are favorable, while some impacts are negative in relation to traditional power generation techniques and some need further research before they can be reasonably appraised. In quantitative terms, concentrated solar power plants consume about 4000 L MW-1 h(-1) of water if wet cooling technology is used, and the collectors lead to the soil temperature changes of between 0.5 and 4 degrees C; however, it was found that the soil erosion is dramatically alleviated. The results of this study are helpful to decision-makers in concentrated solar power site selection and regional planning. Some conclusions of this study are also valid for large-scale photovoltaic plants.As efforts to develop new applications of engineered nanoscale materials (ENMs) continue to grow, so too has interest in the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) implications of these materials. However, thorough evaluation and interpretation of such implications could require substantial resources (e.g., estimated as >$120 million per year in federal funding 2013-2017). A structured, strategic approach for transparently planning research would support improved linkages between ENM research and risk assessments, and thereby enhance the utility of financial and other resources for EHS studies of ENMs. For this reason, we applied Comprehensive Environmental Assessment (CEA) as an approach to provide transparent input into research planning for 2 types of ENMs: nanoscale titanium dioxide and nanoscale silver. For each of these CEA applications, we employed a collective judgment method known as Nominal Group Technique (NGT) in 2 workshops sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The objective of this paper is to present the outcomes of these CEA applications in the context of how our methodology can inform future efforts to identify collective goals in science (e.g., research priorities) through structured decision support approaches. Outcomes include clear lists of research priorities for each ENM developed through transparently engaging stakeholders having diverse technical and sector perspectives. In addition, we identified several procedural aspects that could be refined, including emphasizing breakout group interactions, identifying broad information priorities before more detailed research questions, and using rating rather than ranking prioritization methods. Beyond the research directions identified for specific ENMs, lessons learned about engaging stakeholders in research planning are expected to inform future research planning efforts for ENMs and other emerging materials across the scientific community. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2014;10:498-510. (c) 2014 SETACMany sugar industry programs, such as BSES's Smart Cane program and the Reef Rescue ABCD Framework, promote progressive cane-growing practices. While the economic implications of transition towards progressive practices are starting to be understood, less is known about the environmental implications. Here, we use environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the eco-efficiency of different practice-change scenarios, across a range of impact categories - fossil energy input, greenhouse gas emissions (carbon footprint), water use, and water quality indicators. The recently developed CaneLCA Eco-efficiency Calculator was employed to compare progressive practices against conventional practices for Wet Tropics, Central and Southern regions, using published descriptions of practice change. The results show that many progressive practices, such as those currently described by the ABCD framework, can lead to improved environmental efficiency across all impact categories. However, others may come with some environmental trade-offs. This work provides a preliminary examination of the environmental implications of practice change. It also demonstrates how CaneLCA can be used to understand and manage such trade-offs so that practice change can optimised to maximise the benefits while minimising the trade-offs.The management of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions is currently a very important environmental issue. Mega-event organizers and host cities have attached great importance to GHGs emissions associated with event-related activities. However, GHGs emissions from event solid waste have never been thoroughly discussed. This study investigated GHGs emissions of major event's solid waste using life cycle assessment, based on Shanghai Expo case. The results showed that GHGs from collecting and sorting, transportation and landfill treatment amount to 9790 t CO(2)e. And the emission intensity is estimated to be 134 g CO(2)e per event service. GHGs reduction from recycling amounts to 48 kt CO(2)e, with 78 % of these the result of construction waste recycle. It illustrates that waste recycle plays a vital role in GHGs mitigation. Finally, the study suggests that the concept of waste avoidance, waste reuse and waste recycle is an effective waste management to mitigate climate change and should be implemented in major event to achieve the goal of green event.In 2007 EU Regulation (EC) 834/2007 introduced principles and criteria for organic food processing. These regulations have been analysed and discussed in several scientific publications and research project reports. Recently, organic food quality was described by principles, aspects and criteria. These principles from organic agriculture were verified and adapted for organic food processing. Different levels for evaluation were suggested. In another document, underlying paradigms and consumer perception of organic food were reviewed against functional food, resulting in identifying integral product identity as the underlying paradigm and a holistic quality view connected to naturalness as consumers' perception of organic food quality. In a European study, the quality concept was applied to the organic food chain, resulting in a problem, namely that clear principles and related criteria were missing to evaluate processing methods. Therefore the goal of this paper is to describe and discuss the topic of organic food processing to make it operational. A conceptual background for organic food processing is given by verifying the underlying paradigms and principles of organic farming and organic food as well as on organic processing. The proposed definition connects organic processing to related systems such as minimal, sustainable and careful, gentle processing, and describes clear principles and related criteria. Based on food examples, such as milk with different heat treatments, the concept and definitions were verified. Organic processing can be defined by clear paradigms and principles and evaluated according criteria from a multidimensional approach. Further work has to be done on developing indicators and parameters for assessment of organic food quality. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical IndustryIn industrialized countries, large amounts of mineral wastes are produced. They are re-used in various ways, particularly in road and earth constructions, substituting primary resources such as gravel. However, they may also contain pollutants, such as heavy metals, which may be leached to the groundwater. The toxic impacts of these emissions are so far often neglected within Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of products or waste treatment services and thus, potentially large environmental impacts are currently missed. This study aims at closing this gap by assessing the ecotoxic impacts of heavy metal leaching from industrial mineral wastes in road and earth constructions. The flows of metals such as Sb, As, Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mo, Ni, V and Zn originating from three typical constructions to the environment are quantified, their fate in the environment is assessed and potential ecotoxic effects evaluated. For our reference country, Germany, the industrial wastes that are applied as Granular Secondary Construction Material (GSCM) carry more than 45,000 t of diverse heavy metals per year. Depending on the material quality and construction type applied, up to 150 t of heavy metals may leach to the environment within the first 100 years after construction. Heavy metal retardation in subsoil can potentially reduce the fate to groundwater by up to 100%. One major challenge of integrating leaching from constructions into macro-scale LCA frameworks is the high variability in micro-scale technical and geographical factors, such as material qualities, construction types and soil types. In our work, we consider a broad range of parameter values in the modeling of leaching and fate. This allows distinguishing between the impacts of various road constructions, as well as sites with different soil properties. The findings of this study promote the quantitative consideration of environmental impacts of long-term leaching in Life Cycle Assessment, complementing site-specific risk assessment, for the design of waste management strategies, particularly in the construction sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study involves an environmental impact analysis of rapeseed production in Italy to identify the highest and lowest impact of the method of cultivation. The environmental analysis included five farming units, which were extracted from a sample of 251 rapeseed farm units (2751 ha) using cluster analysis. Using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, we evaluated the environmental performance of the five units, showing how the cultivation practises and the type/quantity of input can cause environmental impact. Practises of intensive farming with high fertilization and mechanization (machinery and fertilizers production and application) are responsible for the greatest environmental impact. When the level of productivity is low, the impact is still higher. The most damaged environmental category is "human health", even if the impact on "ecosystem" and "resource depletion" is critical. The potential feasibility to integrate economic cost with the environmental results was just approached. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recognition of the cumulative effects resulting from financial decisions, a growing number of campaigns are advocating for the removal of investment funds from companies responsible for high levels of carbon emissions. A systematic approach can aid in examining the social, economic and environmental impacts that extend beyond political motivations to divest from fossil fuel companies. We have adapted publicly available economic input-output life cycle assessment models (EIO-LCA) to develop a Shadow Impact Calculator (SIC) for examining the potential environmental impacts of investment decisions. An investment portfolio's shadow impacts represent the economic, social and environmental effects underlying an investor's decision to place their funds in particular financial instruments. In this study, we focus on greenhouse gas emissions to show which sectors of the United States economy have particularly large or small carbon shadows and place those results in the context of volatility and earnings. To demonstrate how SIC may be used, we examine the endowment investments of a Canadian university in the context of divesting from fossil fuel companies. Our analysis suggests that large pooled funds choosing to direct their investments away from heavy carbon emitters may have less of an impact than would otherwise be expected. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Much collective wisdom and experience have been gained as an increasing number of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) reviews are conducted. However, specifics on how and when to conduct critical review of LCA studies are still lacking. Toward this need, a technical session entitled "LCA Critical Review" was held during the Life Cycle Management (LCM) conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, 26 August 2013. The goal of the session was to have experts address LCA critical review as well as engage attendees in discussing gaps in the current guidance and how the review process can be improved. The LCM session consisted of six presentations followed by open discussion with all session attendees. This paper begins with a review of the current state-of-the-practice in LCA critical review (CR) followed by a summary of the LCM session. It concludes with suggestions for how the newly drafted technical specification, ISO TS 14071 Critical review processes and reviewer competencies, can be improved as it is being developed. ISO TS 14071 promises to provide additional guidance to move the practice forward. But at only eight pages in length, its potential effectiveness appears moderate. Additional detailed guidance is needed to move the critical review process toward increased uniformity and clarity of practice, for example, when critical review is necessary. A session on LCA critical review is planned to be held during the Life Cycle Management 2015 conference which will occur in Bordeaux, France (http://lcm2015.org/). Discussion on these issues related to LCA review will be continued.The aim of this study is to assess the life cycle carbon footprint of the New Zealand kiwifruit packaging and transport supply chain to retailers in two major markets (Japan and Germany). Results of this study have been used to identify areas of the New Zealand kiwifruit packaging and transport supply chain that contribute significantly to the carbon footprint and to identify options for reduction. This study is based on the ISO standards for life cycle assessment (namely, ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006). The PAS 2050 also provided further methodological guidance. Primary packaging data were sourced from Zespri's suppliers. End-of-life data were sourced from the market and waste statistics of the relevant countries. Gabi 4.4 was used for upstream material information and modelling. The carbon footprint of the packaging and transport of kiwifruit ranged from 0.33 to 0.67 kg CO(2)e per kilogram of fruit delivered to a store depending on pack type and market. Shipping accounted for the majority of these emissions (58-82 %), and Zespri is actively working with shipping companies to reduce this. There are also opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint through reducing the amount of fruit repacked in the market, using trains for long-distance transport and increasing packaging recycling rates. There is a range of options for reducing the carbon footprint of the New Zealand kiwifruit packaging and transport supply chain. These will tend to be incremental (i.e. a number of small gains) and would involve working closely with partners in the supply chain. Options include increased efficiency in shipping, use of trains for land transport, reductions in the addition of structural packaging in the market, managing the product mix to minimize those supply chains with a higher carbon footprint, identifying alternative material for components of the packaging, replacing the use of polystyrene clamshells with alternative materials or plastic bags and maximizing recycling rates along all stages of the supply chain.The paper introduces a simple retrofit performed on a case study vessel, with the aim of assessing the retrofit's potential environmental impacts via doing a life cycle assessment. Additionally, the case presented herein strives to evidence the applicability of life cycle assessment (LCA) appraisals within shipyard representatives or managers. The environmental results shown in this paper are related to cost calculations presented for the selected retrofit, underlining the potential environmental impacts from the retrofit, while appraising its economic performance. The paper strives to evidence that significant savings with regard to fuel costs can be achieved by the application of this retrofit to ships with a similar operational profile, but more importantly, the improved operational efficiency and the emission reductions can be noteworthy. Lastly, the results summarised intend to offer an optimistic context towards the implementation of the retrofit at a larger scale, i.e. a section of the existing fleet.Nowadays, the intensive use of natural resources in order to satisfy the increasing energy demand suggests a threat to the implementation of the principles of sustainable development. The present study attempts to approach thermodynamically the depletion of natural resources in the methodological framework and the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA). An environmental decision support tool is studied, the exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA). It arises from the convergence of the LCA and exergy analysis (EA) methodologies and attempts to identify the exergetic parameters that are related to the life cycle of the examined system or process. The ELCA methodology, beside the fact that it locates the system parts which involve greater exergy losses, examines the depletion of natural resources (biotic and abiotic) and the sustainable prospective of the examined system or process, under the scope of exergy. In order to obtain concrete results, the ELCA methodology is applied to a large-scale, grid-connected, photovoltaic (PV) system with energy storage that is designed to entirely electrify the Greek island of Nisyros. Four discerned cases were studied that reflect the present state and the future development of the PV technology. The exergy flows and balance for the life cycle of the PV system, as they were formed in the ELCA study, showed that the incoming exergy (solar radiation, energy sources, and materials) is not efficiently utilized. The greater exergy losses appear at the stage of the operation of the PV installation. Due to the fact that contribution of the renewable exergy (solar radiation) to the formation of the total incoming exergy of Life Cycle is significant, it emerges that satisfaction of electric power needs with a PV system appears to be exergetic sustainable. The increase of the Life Cycle exergetic efficiency supported by the future technological scenario in contrast to present scenarios emerges from the increased electricity output of the PV system. Consequently, the increased exergetic efficiency involves decreased irreversibility (exergy losses) of the PV system's life cycle. The application of ELCA in electricity production technologies exceeds the proven sustainable prospective of the PV systems; however, it aims to show the essence of the application of ELCA methodology in the environmental decision making process. ELCA can be a useful tool for the support and formation of the environmental decision making that can illustrate in terms of exergetic sustainability the examined energy system or process.In this communication we reexamine the use of various least squares techniques (namely ordinary least squares (OLS), data least squares (DLS), and total least squares (TLS)) for the purposes of allocation as proposed in an earlier article in this journal (Marvuglia et al. (Int. J. Life Cycle Assess. 15:1020-1040, 2010)). These methods are placed within the context of traditional methods of partitioning allocation. An equivalence between least squares techniques and traditional partitioning is noted and demonstrated on previously published brick production data. A short summary of the relevant least squares techniques is provided followed by a description of the problem of inventory calculation for the case of more products than processes. This is presented in terms of non-unique solutions to underdetermined systems of linear equations with intensity matrix as unknown. We provide another analysis of the Sicilian brick production case study. Upon reexamination of the brick data, a number of disparities in the published inventories for brick can be more fully explained in terms of (1) data quality, (2) additional assumptions made to extract a solution of an underdetermined system of equations, and (3) discrepancy vectors. Like other types of partitioning, inventories produced by least squares techniques correspond to one of the non-unique solutions of an underdetermined system of linear equations. Based on this insight, we advise against the use of least squares techniques as a black-box approach to the allocation problem and conclude that the recommendation of TLS on the basis of its asymptotic properties is not theoretically justified.Sugarcane bagasse is one of the main agro-industrial residues which can be used to produce wood-based panels. However, more investigations related to its environmental performance assessment are needed, focusing on questions such as: Does it provide environmental benefits? What are its main environmental impacts? Could it substitute wood as raw material? Accordingly, this paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) study of particle board manufactured with sugarcane bagasse residues. The cradle-to-gate assessment of 1 m(3) of particle board made with sugarcane bagasse (PSB) considered three main subsystems: bagasse generation, bagasse distribution, and PSB production. For the inventory of PSB, dataset from two previous LCA studies related to the conventional particle board production and the ethanol life cycle for the Brazilian context were used. The allocation criterion for the bagasse generation subsystem was 9.08 % (economic base). The potential environmental impact phase was assessed by applying the CML and USEtox methods. PSB was compared with the conventional particle board manufactured in Brazil by the categories of the CML and USETox, and including land use indicators. Finally, two scenarios were analyzed to evaluate the influence of the allocation criteria and the consumption of sugarcane bagasse. All hotspots identified by CML and USETox methods are mainly related to the PSB production subsystem (24-100 % of impacts) due to heavy fuel oil, electricity, and urea-formaldehyde resin supply chain. The bagasse generation subsystem was more relevant to the eutrophication category (75 % of impacts). The bagasse distribution subsystem was not relevant because the impacts on all categories were lower than 1 %. PSB can substitute the conventional particle board mainly because of its lower contribution to abiotic depletion and ecotoxicity. Regarding land use impacts, PSB showed lower values according to all indicators (38-40 % of all impacts), which is explained by the lower demand for land occupation in comparison to that of the traditional particle board. PSB can replace the traditional particle board due to its better environmental performance. The analysis of the economic allocation criterion was relevant only for the EP category, being important to reduce diesel and N-based fertilizers use during sugarcane cultivation. Regarding the influence of the sugarcane bagasse consumption, it is suggested that the sugarcane bagasse be mixed up to 75 % during particle board manufacturing so that good quality properties and environmental performance of panels can be provided.Conventional bottom ash (BA) management consists of a solidification process using inorganic binder reagents, such as cement. However, despite the heavy metal content, the use of BA as a natural aggregate has become increasingly more common. In particular, bottom ash is used as a raw material for clinker, cement mortar or frit production, as a drainage layer in landfills or as a sub-base material in road construction. In this study, the life cycle assessment approach was used to evaluate and compare ash solidification with ash recycling in Portland cement production as a clinker and gypsum substitute. The findings showed that the substitution of ash for clinker resulted in the lowest natural resources (NR) consumption and the lowest environmental burdens (EB). The decrease in the clinker substitution percentage generated a higher NR consumption and an increased EB. In ash recycling, the distance between the incinerator and the cement facility is an important parameter in the decision-making process. Specifically, ash solidification presented less favourable results than ash recycling (with a clinker substitution of 25 %), despite the increasing distance between the incinerator and the cement facility. However, when the clinker substitution decreased to 2.5 % or when ash was substituted for gypsum, the distance played an important role in the water impact.The objectives of this review are to analyse the potential of bioenergy crops development in European agriculture and to identify research objectives based on transformation technologies. Bioenergy is the chemical energy stored in organic material, which can be directly converted into useful energy sources by biological, mechanical or thermochemical processes. The substitution of food crops with energy crops and the demand for agricultural raw materials for liquid biofuel production will affect agriculture over the next decade and possibly beyond. It is expected that both second-generation biofuel production technology and energy crops used will be more efficient than first-generation. Nonetheless, there are still technical limitations for crop growth and fuel production from second-generation technology. In general, many of the crops that could supply the raw materials for second-generation biofuels are largely undomesticated and are in the first stages of development and management. The development of specific crops dedicated to energy has been proposed as a strategy to produce energy without affecting food security and the environment. The research seeks to develop enzymatic systems for the cost-efficient decomposition of cellulose into its molecular sugar components, which can then be fermented to produce ethanol. This biorefinery of crops into multiple products, including energy, chemical products and materials, will augment the overall value of the biomass. Clearly, multidisciplinary research is necessary to address sustainable biofuel production. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The main objective of the study was to calculate net atmospheric impacts for wood production and utilization in Finnish boreal forest conditions. Net atmospheric impacts were calculated by comparing net CO2 exchanges of the wood production and utilization to the reference management regime. Net CO2 exchanges were simulated with a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool for a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stand (MT, Myrtillys-type) in central Finland (Joensuu region, 62A degrees 39 N, 29A degrees 37 E) over two consecutive rotation periods (100 + 100 years/200 years). Net atmospheric impacts were calculated both for sawn timber and pulpwood, and expressed in kgCO(2)m(-3). According to the results, the production of pulp and sawn timber produced emissions of 0.20 and 0.59 kgCO(2)m(-3) over the 200-year period, respectively, when the unmanagement regime was used as the reference management regime. When 50 % of the processing waste of timber was accounted as an instant emission to the atmosphere, the atmospheric impact increased to 0.55 kgCO(2)m(-3) in pulpwood and to 1.27 kgCO(2)m(-3) in sawn timber over the 200 year period. When turnover rates of sawn timber in the technosystem were decreased by 30 % and the share of energy use was decreased to 30 %, the atmospheric impact decreased by 17 % and 4 % for pulpwood and sawn timber, respectively, compared to the default wood degradation and energy use of 50 %. The utilized LCA approach provided an effective tool for approaching net atmospheric impacts originating from the ecosystem carbon (C) flows and variable wood utilization. Taking the ecosystem production and utilization of wood (i.e. degradation of technosystem C stock) into account, in terms of net CO2 exchange, the mitigation possibilities of wood compared to other products can be accounted for more precisely in the future and C sequestration credited more specifically for a certain wood product.The environmental impact of photovoltaic panels (PVs) is an extensively studied topic, generally assessed using the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology. Due to this large amount of papers, a review seems necessary to have a clear view of the work already done and what is still to be done. The objective of this paper is to present an accurate overview of the LCA already performed on PVs. The analyses are classified by panel type and by impact assessment methodology. When available the information relative to the PV system (efficiency, localization, etc.) is also summarized. The following main observations are noted: Silicon panels are the mostly studied, thin layers on a lesser extent, while new panel types, such as organic, are not yet considered. Regarding the study scope, Balance Of System (BUS) components, although influential, are often omitted and their characteristics (efficiency, etc.) are sometimes not provided. This is the same for the End of life. Most studies focus on energy related indicators such as the Energy Payback Time (EPBT) and indicators relative to climate change such as CO2 emissions. When impact assessment methodologies are used, it is generally Eco-Indicator99 and sometimes CML. But, results are, unfortunately, sometimes expressed only after normalization Finally, this review underlines the necessity to achieve further LCA on photovoltaic panels, as many aspects are still in need of evaluation, such as the electronic properties of the panel or BOS components. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lignocellulosic biomass production deriving from agro forest species, as well as poplar (Populus spp.), has denoted an increase in last years in UE also thanks to a series of policies aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and promoting renewable sources. In Italy poplar represents the main agro forest species and it is cultivated according to two different methods: very Short Rotation Coppice (vSRC) and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC). The aim of this paper has been to evaluate the economic feasibility of poplar as energy crop in the southern Italy and specifically to consider its competitiveness with respect to conventional crops. In particular, an economic analysis in a representative case study located in the Sicilian hilly hinterland has been carried out, by comparing the direct costs and incomes of poplar (both vSRC and SRC) and durum wheat. Results showed that only introduction of SRC plantation could increase the farm competitiveness, while vSRC could be economically advantageous only with a substantial increase of biomass market price and/or CAP subsidy. However, the introduction of poplar should grant a better contribution to climate change mitigation with respect to annual crop, improving the greenhouse gases balance and diminishing the environmental impact of agricultural activity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present paper describes a method that accounts for variation in indoor chemical exposure settings and accompanying human toxicity in life cycle assessment (LCA). Metal degreasing with dichloromethane was used as a case study to show method in practice. We compared the human toxicity related to the degreasing of 1 m(2) of metal surface in different exposure scenarios for industrial workers, professional users outside industrial settings, and home consumers. The fraction of the chemical emission that is taken in by exposed individuals (i.e. the intake fraction) was estimated on the basis of operational conditions (e.g. exposure duration), and protective measures (e.g. local exhaust ventilation). The introduction of a time-dependency and a correction for protective measures resulted in reductions in the intake fraction of up to 1.5 orders of magnitude, compared to application of existing, less advanced models. In every exposure scenario, the life cycle impacts for human toxicity were mainly caused by indoor exposure to metal degreaser (>60%). Emissions released outdoors contributed up to 22% of the life cycle impacts for human toxicity, and the production of metal degreaser contributed up to 19%. These findings illustrate that human toxicity from indoor chemical exposure should not be disregarded in LCA case studies. Particularly when protective measures are taken or in the case of a short duration (1 h or less), we recommend the use of our exposure scenario-specific approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment study is performed for the energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions in an algal biodiesel production system. Subcritical water (SCW) extraction was applied for extracting bio-crude oil from algae, and conventional transesterification method was used for converting the algal oil to biodiesel. 58 MJ of energy is required to produce 1 kg of biodiesel without any co-products management, of which 36% was spent on cultivation and 56% on lipid extraction. SCW extraction with thermal energy recovery reduces the energy consumption by 3-5 folds when compared to the traditional solvent extraction. It is estimated that 1 kg of algal biodiesel fixes about 0.6 kg of CO2. An optimized case considering the energy credits from co-products could further reduce the total energy demand. The energy demand for producing 1 kg of biodiesel in the optimized case is 28.23 MJ. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The integrated generation of solid fuel and biogas from biomass (IFBB) system is an innovative approach to maximising energy conversion from low input high diversity (LIHD) biomass. In this system water pretreated and ensiled LIHD biomass is pressed. The press fluid is anaerobically digested to produce methane that is used to power the process. The fibrous fraction is densified and then sold as a combustion fuel. Two process options designed to concentrate the press fluid were assessed to ascertain their influence on productivity in an IFBB like system: sedimentation and the omission of pre-treatment water. By concentrating press fluid and not adding water during processing, energy production from methane was increased by 75% per unit time and solid fuel productivity increased by 80% per unit of fluid produced. The additional energy requirements for pressing more biomass in order to generate equal volumes of feedstock were accounted for in these calculations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rapid growth in both global energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions associated with the use of fossil fuels has driven the search for alternative sources which are renewable and have a lower environmental impact. This paper reviews the availability and bioenergy potentials of the current biomass feedstocks. These include (i) food crops such as sugarcane, corn and vegetable oils, classified as the first generation feedstocks, and (ii) lignocellulosic biomass derived from agricultural and forestry residues and municipal waste, as second generation feedstocks. The environmental and socioeconomic limitations of the first generation feedstocks have placed greater emphasis on the lignocellulosic biomass, of which the conversion technologies still faces major constraints to full commercial deployment. Key technical challenges and opportunities of the lignocellulosic biomass-to-bioenergy production are discussed in comparison with the first generation technologies. The potential of the emerging third generation biofuel from algal biomass is also reviewed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiesel is regarded as an important renewable fuel for meeting the global future energy demand and resolving the environmental problems (e.g. global warming). Despite its known advantages, it is still very critical to assess the sustainability of biodiesel production prior to greater expansion for commercialisation. Early hazard assessment when the process is still under development and design is very beneficial as process modifications to eliminate or reduce hazards can be made easier at lower costs. In this paper, inherent safety, health and environment (SHE) and economic performance (EP) analysis is conducted for biodiesel production during the earliest process lifecycle which is named as research and development (R&D) stage. Prior to the assessment, eight biodiesel production pathways via base-catalysed, acid-catalysed, enzymatic and supercritical transesterification using fresh or waste oil are classified. The inherent SHE assessments are conducted using the renowned methods of the Prototype Index of Inherent Safety (PIIS), Inherent Occupational Health Index (IOHI) and Inherent Environmental Toxicity Hazard (IETH) for inherent safety, health and environmental friendliness, respectively. The EP assessment is done using a proposed costing assessment based on operating cost and revenue. A systematic framework for assessing alternative biodiesel production pathways during the R&D stage is presented. Fuzzy optimisation approach is used to assess the pathway candidates based on multiple objectives of inherent SHE and EP. From the assessment result, it is found that biodiesel production based on enzymatic transesterification using waste oil is the most desirable pathway. Following the result of the assessments, several improvement actions for inherent SHE in biodiesel production are proposed and discussed.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an acknowledged method to assess the contribution of livestock production to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Most LCA studies so far allocate GHG emissions of livestock to marketable outputs. Smallholder systems, however, provide several products and services besides the production of marketable products. We explored how to account for multi-functionality within the LCA method in a case of smallholder milk production in the Kaptumo area in Kenya. Expressed per kg of milk, GHG emissions were 2.0 (0.9-4.3) kg CO2-e, respectively in case of food allocation, 1.6 (0.8-2.9) kg CO2-e in case of economic function allocation and 1.1 (0.5-1.7) kg CO2-e in case of livelihood allocation. The two Carbon Footprint (CF) estimates of milk production considering multi-functionality were comparable to CF estimates of milk in intensive milk production systems. Future LCA's of smallholder systems should account for multi-functionality, because CF results and consequently mitigation options change depending on the functions included.Increasing interest for use of biomass both for biofuels and materials replacing fossil resources gives increasing reason to make sure that we optimally use available bioresources. Biomass resources should preferably be converted to a maximum of beneficial products with a minimum of harm to the environment. From the second law of thermodynamics we might conclude that the most efficient, and therefore perhaps the most sustainable, utilization of available resources should be the one generating the least amount of entropy. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the entropy production of a process could be used for performance assessment of biomass conversion processes and to explore its implications as a possible aggregated measure for sustainability assessment of such processes. The investigated methodology includes calculation of entropy generation due to both material and energy dispersal and also due to mixing effect of emissions in the environment. The methodology is tested in a case study of the Integrated Biomass Utilization System (IBUS) in Denmark and its different process routes for bioethanol production with several co-products. The impact of energy integrating the IBUS plant with a coal power plant is also assessed to investigate how the assessment outcome is changed by such system changes. The entropy assessment results are compared with an evaluation using traditional LCA methodology. The results from the case study highlight the importance of well integrated and well optimized systems for utilization of biomass. The correlation between the results of entropy generation and weighted environmental load in this case suggest that entropy generation as assessment tool is worth further exploration. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work we present a systematic tool for the optimal retrofit of buildings that considers several economic and environmental criteria simultaneously at the design stage. Our approach is based on a rigorous mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that identifies in a systematic manner the best alternatives for reducing the environmental impact of buildings. These include the use of different insulation materials and windows as well as the installation of solar panels. Environmental concerns are explicitly accounted for in this MILP by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles, which allow evaluating the impact of each alternative being assessed considering all the stages in its life cycle. We illustrate the capabilities of our approach using a case study that considers weather data for Central Portugal. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Insulation is a relevant technical solution for cutting energy consumption in buildings. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the environmental impacts and the consumption of renewable and non-renewable primary energy on the production of conventional thermal insulation materials: extruded and expanded polystyrene, polyurethane, expanded cork agglomerate and expanded clay lightweight aggregates. The comparison per functional unit of the innovative and up-to-date environmental performance of expanded cork and clay with the most common insulation materials used in Europe (the remaining three), and for the environmental categories and life-cycle stages defined in recent European standards, is presented for the first time. These results have been based on site-specific data from companies whose quality was fully characterised, and achieved through a consistent methodology that is fully described, including the modelling of energy processes and a sensitivity analysis of the allocation procedures. These "cradle to gate" results are scientifically sound since they were achieved by following the International standards for Life Cycle Assessment and recent European standards on the environmental evaluation of buildings. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Traditional air conditioning and heating systems in buildings are fossil fuel based energy systems, which take the main responsible for the carbon emissions. In contrast, using solar energy for air conditioning becomes one of the promising approaches to reduce energy consumptions and negative environmental impacts from buildings. University of California, Merced built a test facility to investigate the technology: solar cooling. The solar system has 54 m(2) external compound parabolic concentrator (XCPC) solar collectors to drive a 23 kW double-effect absorption chiller. This paper first provides the detailed energy performance analysis of the experiments conducted in August, 2012. The data collected from the experiments shows that the system could provide adequate cooling for a test facility between 11AM to 5PM in both sunny and cloudy days. The daily average collector efficiency is at the range of 36% to 39%. The average coefficient of performance (COP) of the LiBr absorption chiller is between 0.91 and 1.02 with an average of 1.0, and the daily solar COP is approximately at 0.374. In addition to the experimental investigation, a detailed life cycle economic and environmental assessment was also performed by comparing the solar systems to the conventional systems in two types of office buildings at three locations at California. Two different solar cooling system configurations were considered: (i) configuration 1 sizes the area of solar collectors and absorption chiller to meet the peak cooling demand, and uses natural gas as the only backup energy source; (ii) configuration 2 sizes the area of solar collectors and absorption chiller to meet half of the peak cooling demand, and uses natural gas as the backup energy source for the absorption chiller, while incorporates an electrical vapor compression chiller to meet the rest half of peak cooling demand. The annual performance predicts that the systems can achieve the annual solar fraction around 55-68%. And the configuration 2 achieves better life cycle economic and environmental performance than the configuration 1. Specifically, the configuration 2 can achieve lower present worth cost during the entire life span than the conventional systems. And both configuration 1 and 2 can reduce the life time carbon footprint by 35-70%. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Thai government's renewable energy plan to help increase energy independence and reduce emissions includes a component from wind. Due to Thailand's wind regime, small wind turbines that can operate in low wind speeds are needed to meet this goal. This study assesses the environmental implications and economic feasibility of small wind turbines. Using a functional unit of producing 50 kWh per month for 20 years, a Life Cycle Assessment was conducted comparing the global warming potential (GWP100), embodied energy, energy payback period (EPP) and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of four small wind turbines (<= 20 kW), a diesel generator, and the Thai grid. The turbines had a lower overall GWP100 compared to the diesel generator and Thai grid in areas with reasonable wind resources; the same was true for embodied energy when compared to the diesel generator. Interestingly, in most available wind, speed categories in Thailand the LCOE for wind turbines was lower than for the diesel generator. However, neither could compare to the selling price of the Thai grid, except in the areas with the highest average wind speeds (7.0-9.4 m/s). Because of the increased cost relative to the Thai grid, implementation of wind turbines in Thailand was not found to be economically feasible without government incentive. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The generic social and socioeconomic impacts of various biofuels and fossil fuels were screened by applying Social Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Data were taken from the Social Hotspots Database on all categories for all the related themes and all indicators available. To limit the amount of data, only high and very high risk indicators were considered for each combination. The risks identified per life cycle phase were listed for each fuel assessed and the results were then aggregated by counting the number of high and very high risk indicators for that fuel. All the fossil fuels and biofuels analysed were found to display high or very high risks of negative impacts. Country of origin seemed to be of greater importance for risks than fuel type, as the most risk-related and least risk-related product systems referred to the same type of fuel, fossil oil from Russia/Nigeria and fossil oil from Norway, respectively. These results suggest that in developing policy, strict procurement requirements on social performance should be set for both fossil fuel and biofuel. However, the results must be interpreted with care owing to some limitations in the assessment, such as simplifications to life cycles, method used and data collection. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) has become an important component of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction strategy in the transportation sector. Assessing the net effect of PEVs on GHG emissions, however, is dependent on factors such as type and scale of electricity generation sources, adoption rate, and charging behavior. This study creates a comprehensive model that estimates the energy load and GHG emissions impacts for the years 2020 and 2030 for the city of Los Angeles. For 2020, model simulations show that the PEV charging loads will be modest with negligible effects on the overall system load profile. Contrary to previous study results, the average marginal carbon intensity is higher if PEV charging occurs during off-peak hours. These results suggest that current economic incentives to encourage off-peak charging result in greater GHG emissions. Model simulations for 2030 show that PEV charging loads increase significantly resulting in potential generation shortages. There are also significant grid operation challenges as the region's energy grid is required to ramp up and down rapidly to meet PEV loads. For 2030, the average marginal carbon intensity for off-peak charging becomes lower than peak charging mainly due to the removal of coal from the power generation portfolio. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new model for the environmental assessment of environmental technologies, EASETECH, has been developed. The primary aim of EASETECH is to perform life-cycle assessment (LCA) of complex systems handling heterogeneous material flows. The objectives of this paper are to describe the EASETECH framework and the calculation structure. The main novelties compared to other LCA software are as follows. First, the focus is put on material flow modelling, as each flow is characterised as a mix of material fractions with different properties and flow compositions are computed as a basis for the LCA calculations. Second, the tool has been designed to allow for the easy set-up of scenarios by using a toolbox, the processes within which can handle heterogeneous material flows in different ways and have different emission calculations. Finally, tools for uncertainty analysis are provided, enabling the user to parameterise systems fully and propagate probability distributions through Monte Carlo analysis. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Poor waste flows management in East African cities has become an environmental and public health concerns to the city authorities and the general public. We assessed the environmental impacts of waste recycling in Kampala City, for four designed waste management scenarios, namely: (1) Scenario S1 representing the current status quo, (2) Scenario S2 maximizing landfill, (3) Scenario S3 combining composting, resource recovery, landfill and sewerage, and (4) Scenario S4 integrating anaerobic digestion, resource recovery, landfill and sewerage. These scenarios are quantitatively assessed for environmental impacts of global warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment, photochemical ozone formation, water pollution and resource conservation. Sensitivity analyses are performed on the robustness for the ranking of the scenarios. Scenario S4 integrating anaerobic digestion, resource recovery, landfill and sewerage performs best for all environmental impact categories. Sensitivity analysis shows that this assessment result is robust Therefore, integrating waste recycling into the formal waste management system for Kampala would considerably reduce the environmental impacts of waste flows. Also, considering the similarities in municipal solid waste compositions, sanitation systems and settlement patterns among the large cities in East Africa, assimilating waste recycling into the formal waste management systems for these cities would results in minimal environmental impacts for their waste flows. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An economic and environmentally friendly approach of overcoming the problem of fossil CO2 emissions would be to reuse it through fixation into biomass. Carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the basis for the formation of complex sugars by green plants and microalgae through photosynthesis, has been shown to significantly increase the growth rates of certain microalgal species. Microalgae possess a greater capacity to fix CO2 compared to C-4 plants. Selection of appropriate microalgal strains is based on the CO2 fixation and tolerance capability together with lipid potential, both of which are a function of biomass productivity. Microalgae can be propagated in open raceway ponds or closed photobioreactors. Biological CO2 fixation also depends on the tolerance of selected strains to high temperatures and the amount of CO2 present in flue gas, together with SOx and NOx. Potential uses of microalgal biomass after sequestration could include biodiesel production, fodder for livestock, production of colorants and vitamins. This review summarizes commonly employed microalgal species as well as the physiological pathway involved in the biochemistry of CO2 fixation. It also presents an outlook on microalgal propagation systems for CO2 sequestration as well as a summary on the life cycle analysis of the process.Over the past few decades, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies have been developed extensively, and there has been a growing interest in LCA research. However, as attested by scientific literature, few systematic, synthesizing, and visualizing studies have been found on LCA research which show how this field has evolved over time. The goal of this mainly bibliometric, empirical study is to get insight into publication performance of global LCA research, characterize its intellectual structure, and trace its evolution by using the bibliometric method with visual mapping. Based on the data from the ISI Web of Science databases Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science (CPCI-S) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index -Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH) in the period of 1998-2013, bibliometric methods are used to investigate general development profiles of LCA research, while knowledge domain visualization technologies are employed to conduct a further co-citation analysis. The results and discussions of this research mainly shed light on (1) basic statistics of significant publication performances, (2) research focuses and their intellectual base in LCA research, (3) how the streams of research evolved during the whole period of interest. A new work on systematic and synthesizing study is conducted in this research to evaluate and map LCA research-related context. Some salient scholarly journals and institutions are identified that have shown a significant impact during the exponential growth of LCA research in the past 16 years. Biofuel, process design, solid waste management, and livestock production-related LCA researches are the main areas where interest is surging, confirmed by the active citers in each specialty. Furthermore, from the perspective of science mapping, evolution of LCA research is traced and some pivot publications are identified, which work as structural holes for the LCA-research development in the given time window.Temporal variability is a major source of uncertainty in current life cycle assessment (LCA) practice. In this paper, the recently developed dynamic LCA approach is adapted to assess freshwater ecotoxicity impacts of metals. The objective is to provide relevant information regarding the distribution and magnitude of metal impacts over time and to show whether the dynamic approach significantly influences the conclusions of an LCA. An LCA of zinc fertilization in agriculture was therefore carried out. Dynamic LCA is based on the temporal disaggregation of the inventory, which is then assessed using time-horizon-dependent characterization factors. The USEtox multimedia fate model is used to develop time-horizon-dependent characterization factors for the freshwater ecotoxicity impact of 18 metals. Mass balance equations are solved dynamically to obtain fate factors as a function of time, providing both instantaneous (impact at time t following a pulse emission) and cumulative (total time-integrated impact following a pulse emission) characterization factors (CFs). Time-horizon-dependent CFs for freshwater ecotoxicity depend on the emission compartment and the metal itself. The two variables clearly influence metal fate aspects such as the maximum mass loading reaching freshwater and the persistence time of metals into this compartment. The time needed to reach the total impact for each metal may exceed thousands of years, so the time horizon used in the analysis constitutes a determining factor. The case study reveals that the results of a classical LCA are always higher than those obtained from a dynamic LCA, especially for short time horizons. For instance, at the end of a 100-year fertilization treatment, only 25 % of the impacts obtained through traditional LCA occurred. Results show that dynamic LCA enables assessing freshwater ecotoxicity impacts of metals over time, allowing decision makers to test the sensitivity of their results to the choice of a time horizon. For the particular case study of zinc fertilization over a period of 20 years, the use of time-horizon-dependent CFs is more important in determining the dynamics of impacts than the timing of emission.A cascading utilization of resources is encouraged especially by legislative bodies. However, only few consecutive assessments of the environmental impacts of cascading are available. This study provides answers to the following questions for using recovered wood as a secondary resource: (1) Does cascading decrease impacts on the environment compared to the use of primary wood resources? (2) What aspects of the cascading system are decisive for the life cycle assessment (LCA) results? We conducted full LCAs for cascading utilization options of waste wood and compared the results to functionally equivalent products from primary wood, thereby focusing on the direct effects cascading has on the environmental impacts of the systems. In order to compare waste wood cascading to the use of primary wood with LCA, a functional equivalence of the systems has to be achieved. We applied a system expansion approach, considering different options for providing the additionally needed energy for the cascading system. We found that the cascading systems create fewer environmental impacts than the primary wood systems, if system expansion is based on wood energy. The most noticeable advantages were detected for the impact categories of land transformation and occupation and the demand of primary energy from renewable sources. The results of the sensitivity analyses indicate that the advantage of the cascading system is robust against the majority of considered factors. Efficiency and the method of incineration at the end of life do influence the results. To maximize the benefits and minimize the associated environmental impacts, cascading proves to be a preferable option of utilizing untreated waste wood.The LCA framework was recently adapted to perform the environmental assessment of a territory. The expectations of this framework, called "territorial LCA", are in line with the European Directive (2001/42/EC) on Strategic Environmental Assessment applied to land planning programs, i.e., providing an environmental baseline and comparing land planning scenarios. To test "territorial LCA" applicability for establishing a diagnosis, the approach was implemented in a French Mediterranean case study. According to the "territorial LCA" approach, system boundaries and land use functions must be defined and selected. Then, the inventory for all production and consumption activities is performed with a particular emphasis on data collection and on different ways to handle data gaps. Based on this inventory, certain land use functions are quantified, and the impacts are assessed through the ReCiPe life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method. Indicators of land use functions are compared to different references to highlight the main features of the territory (e.g., high level of societal functions). For environmental impacts, the results point out that most impacts occur beyond the territory borders. Four environmental issues are identified, i.e., climate change, particulate matter formation, human toxicity and land occupation. Finally, the associated driving forces are determined (i.e., the most important ones are imports of food, goods and services and manufacturing activities). For these hotspots, the strategy applied to bridge data gaps was discussed (i.e., using environmental input output tables (EIOT)). In addition, the sensitivity to the chosen impact assessment method was analyzed by using another LCIA method (Impact World+). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this project is to determine the reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the recycling of aerospace alloys. This study is based on an aerospace recycler that sells much of its high-performance alloy scrap directly to remelters that produce these alloys for aircraft engine component manufacturers, with significant potential environmental benefits arising from the substitution of recycled materials for virgin materials. The project team explored existing sources of environmental data for all of the metals that make up aerospace alloys, and ten common alloys were chosen as case studies. Certain metal elements, including niobium, rhenium, tungsten, and zirconium, did not have any robust environmental impact information, and for these GHG emissions factors from primary production were modeled using a variety of statistical and industrial data sources. The project team then investigated the forms of metal inputs into alloying operations to ensure that the model reflects actual industrial practices and that the alloy scrap substitutes for virgin materials. GHG emissions are also incurred through alloy scrap collection and processing, and so a carbon footprint was performed for alloy recycling operations in order to determine these burdens. Overall, the recycling of aerospace alloys for reuse in the aerospace industry represents significant reductions in GHG emissions for each of the ten alloys considered, while emissions associated with collection and processing are <5% in comparison. Certain elements occur in small quantities in aerospace alloys, such as rhenium (Re) and tantalum (Ta), but due to their high carbon intensity they significantly influence the final results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development of energy systems requires consideration of all three sustainability dimensions: environmental, economic and social. Current work presents a new decision-support framework for facilitating this. Taking a life cycle approach, the framework integrates the three sustainability dimensions to enable assessments at both technology and systems levels. The framework comprises scenario analysis, life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social sustainability assessment and multicriteria decision analysis, which are used to assess and identify the most sustainable energy options. The application of the framework is illustrated on the example of future electricity supply in Mexico. Eleven scenarios up to 2050 have been developed considering different technologies, electricity mixes and climate change targets. The results show that, based on the 17 sustainability criteria used in this work, the business-as-usual scenario, mostly based on fossil fuels, is unsustainable regardless of the preferences for different sustainability criteria. This is mainly due to the high costs and environmental impacts associated with fossil fuels. Overall, the most sustainable scenarios are those with higher penetration of renewables (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass) and nuclear power. These electricity pathways would enable meeting the national greenhouse gas emission targets by 2050 in a more sustainable way than envisaged by the current policy. However, some trade-offs among the sustainability criteria are needed, particularly with respect to the social impacts. These trade-offs can be explored easily within the decision-support framework to reveal how different stakeholder preferences affect the outcomes of sustainability assessment, thus contributing to more informed decision and policy making. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-NDLaser direct deposition provides an attractive and cost effective means for repairing or remanufacturing high value engineering components. This study demonstrates the successful repair of defective voids in turbine airfoils based on a new semi-automated geometric reconstruction algorithm and a laser direct deposition process. A Boolean difference between the original defective model and the final reconstructed model yields a parameterized geometric representation of the repair volume. The experimental results of this method demonstrate the effectiveness of laser direct deposition in remanufacturing and its potential to adapt to a wide range of part defects. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on the energy and environmental impacts by remanufacturing is also presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Objectives Hospitals are significant contributors to natural resource depletion and environmental change. Our objective was to establish the extent to which hospital environmental sustainability has been studied and the key issues that emerge for policy, practice and research. Methods The PubMed, Engineering Village, Cochrane and King's Fund databases were searched for articles relating to hospital environmental sustainability published in English between 1 January 1990 and 1 October 2013. Further studies were found by review of reference lists. One hundred ninety-three relevant articles were found and 76 were selected for inclusion in the review. Results Common research themes were identified: hospital design, direct energy consumption, water, procurement, waste, travel and psychology and behaviour. Some countries (particularly the United Kingdom) have begun to invest systematically in understanding the environmental effects of hospitals. We found large variability in the extent of the evidence base according to topic. Research regarding the architectural fabric of hospital buildings is at a relatively mature stage. Similarly, there is a developed research base regarding devices and technologies used within hospitals to reduce the environmental effects of direct hospital energy and water use. Less is known about the clinical, psychological and social factors that influence how health care professionals use resources, travel to/from hospital, and interact with the buildings and technologies available. A significant part of the environmental footprint of hospitals relates to clinical practice, e.g. decisions regarding the use of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Medical cradle to grave' life cycle assessment studies have been published to understand the full financial and environmental costs of hospital activities. The effects of preventive or demand management measures which avoid unnecessary hospital procedures are likely to be much greater than incremental changes to how hospital procedures are performed. Conclusions There remain significant gaps in the evidence base on hospital sustainability. Assessments of environmental impacts and natural resource use are beginning to be produced, both at the level of individual hospitals and at the health system level. These are an important start, but in many areas do not yet provide sufficiently detailed information to guide decision-making. There are many areas where the interests of patients and the environment coincide, but others where tensions exist. Rising resource costs and climate change mitigation measures are likely to create an increasing stimulus for research on hospital sustainability. Such research will benefit from inter-disciplinary coordination across research funders and countries.Life cycle assessment (LCA)-based analyses of company value chains can inspire profound modifications to products' design, material procurement, manufacturing, energy/water use, distribution, use, and disposal. However, such modifications often create trade-offs, improving some aspects while worsening others. How can firms decide whether or not to carry out such modifications? Or prioritize between different options to choose the one delivering the most competitive advantage? Typically, firms' metrics fall into two groups: (1) product-level metrics across the life cycle, including up-and downstream of facilities (e.g., product carbon footprints); and (2) facility-level metrics (e.g., plants' annual energy cost). Neither is sufficient for firm-wide cost-benefit analyses of modifications that affect multiple products and value-chain stages. Whereas facility-level metrics do not capture up-and downstream effects-where often most cost and environmental impacts originate-life cycle methodologies are currently not mature enough to be applied at the scale of entire product portfolios. We present a pilot system of key performance indicators (KPIs) that evaluate 3,337 products across 211 brands and five countries of PepsiCo, Inc. KPIs are firm-wide, annual figures (environmental, operational, and financial) across the value chain (cradle to grave) and can be determined at any level (single product, brands, or regions). Uncertainty analysis is included. In addition to KPIs for base cases, the system characterizes KPI impacts for any considered modifications (what-if scenarios). In a detailed case study, we present background about how and why PepsiCo used the system to evaluate all aspects of a strategic value-chain modification. For 7 of the 211 brands, this resulted in avoiding an 8% increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a 7% to 10% increase in procurement costs. It also saved PepsiCo an estimated similar to 200 years full-time equivalent employee time (or alternatively similar to US$30 million in LCA consultant fees) had the LCAs of the 3,337 SKUs been carried out by traditional methods. This cost efficiency of the KPI system enables considering environmental impacts with more-traditional business metrics side by side. As a result, environmental impacts can be considered on a routine basis as part of integrated strategy and business planning. We discuss implementation considerations of the KPI methodology and future improvements.Although energy consumption during product use can lead to significant environmental impacts, the relationship between a product's usage context and its environmental performance is rarely considered in design evaluations. Traditional analyses rely on broad, average usage conditions and do not differentiate between contexts for which design decisions are highly beneficial and contexts for which the same decision may offer limited benefits or even penalties in terms of environmental performance. In contrast, probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) provide the capability of modeling usage contexts as variable factors. This research demonstrates a method for representing the usage context as a PGM and illustrates it with a lightweight vehicle design example. Factors such as driver behavior, alternative driving schedules, and residential density are connected by conditional probability distributions derived from publicly available data sources. Unique scenarios are then defined as sets of conditions on these factors to provide insight into sources of variability in lifetime energy use. The vehicle example demonstrates that implementation of realistic usage scenarios via a PGM can provide a much higher fidelity investigation of use stage energy savings than commonly found in the literature and that, even in the case of a universally beneficial design decisions, distinct scenarios can have significantly different implications for the effectiveness of lightweight vehicle designs.We document the extent of socio-economic status (SES) inequalities in bodily pain in Australia, Britain and Germany, with a particular focus on whether such inequalities widen over the life course. Random-effects logistic and kernel regressions are used to estimate odds ratios of experiencing severe pain by income, educational qualification and occupational status, and to graph age-pain profiles, while accounting for individual heterogeneity. Cohort level regression analysis is used to control for cohort effects. Low SES is consistently related to higher levels of bodily pain in each country and inequalities widen with increasing age. The odds of experiencing severe bodily pain for individuals in the lowest, relative to the highest, household income quartile is up to two times higher, whereas the odds for those with minimum relative to university education are up to three times higher. For each country, the odds of experiencing severe pain by machine operators are around three times higher than for professionals. Maximum levels, and maximum SES differences in pain, are both reached at around age 60 years, with the differentials ranging between 0.2 and 0.7 of sample standard deviations. No convergence of pain profiles is observed by age 70 years. Controlling for cohort effects in the Australian data confirms the results from the age group analysis. Taken together these results suggest that low SES and manual work have cumulative health effects over the life cycle.Quality management in construction must include building-environment relationship. Of the methods used, the most important is life-cycle analysis. This includes records (inventory) life cycle, life cycle impact analysis, life cycle optimization analysis. Of these records life cycle is fundamental to the other two, and if errors creep in this process, the entire analysis is flawed. While conducting an environmental assessment of the impact of the project as a whole must cover those activities included in the request for authorization / environmental permit. The main difficulty in practical life cycle analysis is the consideration of all environmental effects. Therefore it must be linked to other forms of environmental impact assessment and methodology BAT.This paper reviews existing vehicle environmental rating methodologies worldwide and focuses on how these methodologies deal with alternative vehicle technologies (plug-in vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles) and emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2, N2O, and CH4) and pollutants (NOx, VOC, CO, SOx, PM10 and PM25) derived from embodied materials life cycle. United States, Mexico, Europe and Australia have public access data and websites with top 10 rankings. The ways the scores are calculated for each vehicle have differences in what regards the considered boundaries for the emissions analysis. In Europe, there is still not a unique rating methodology or ranking system, e.g., Belgium, Germany and United Kingdom have their specific scoring schemes. Multilinear regression models were developed as an attempt to estimate the vehicle embodied emissions as a function of vehicle lifecycle mileage, electricity mix, vehicle mass, battery mass and fuel cell power to cope with different production regions and different alternative vehicle technologies. The regression models were validated against Volkswagen life cycle assessments (LCAs), and compared against American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) - Green Book linear functions for material assessment and UK 12 material dataset for materials assessment. The developed models proved to be useful in applications related to rating methodologies using life-cycle concepts, with good reliability for comparisons considering the complexity of processes involved in vehicle materials life-cycle assessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An important objective of the mandated blending of biofuel in conventional gasoline and diesel in the EU is reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. An important assumption thereby is that biofuels replace the production and consumption of oil. However, recent literature challenges this assumption, because an increased use of biofuels will lower oil prices and therefore result in increase crude oil consumption. This so-called rebound effect offsets the expected GHG emission saving effects of using biofuels. A review of eight studies, mainly on current and future US biofuel policies, provides insights in the current state of research into this topic, showing a wide range of values of the rebound effect of biofuel use, depending among others on the biofuel policy, the applied method and the model parameter assumptions. Generally, estimated rebound effects are negative in the country where biofuel use is being promoted (i.e. the use of 1 unit of biofuel reduces oil consumption by less than 1 unit; units on energy basis). The rebound effects in other countries are always positive (biofuel use reduces oil consumption by less than 1 unit so the total fuel consumption is increasing). The net global rebound effect is usually positive, which means that GHG emissions savings are not achieved as much as usually is assumed, or emissions may even increase. Own estimations with the global MAGNET computable general equilibrium model indicate a global rebound effect of the 10% biofuel blend mandate in the EU in the year 2020 of 22-30% (i.e. the use of 1 unit of biofuel reduces global oil consumption by 0.78-0.70 units). This means that GHG emissions will not be reduced as much as usually is assumed, or may even increase. These results show that rebound effects can significantly lower the effectiveness of biofuel policies in reducing GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Focus in determining the environmental component of external transport costs has been mainly directed towards vehicle travel related emissions, while more indirect emissions related to well-to-tank operations, vehicle fleet and transport infrastructure received less attention. Especially for inland waterway transport, little research exists in this domain. n this paper, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) based framework is recommended in order to assess the full environmental impact of inland waterway transport services. Environmental emissions (both air polluting and greenhouse gas emissions) for barge transport are analyzed in detail for one particular geographical region, namely Flanders (in Belgium), applying an LCA approach. Three distinct categories are being considered: emissions directly related to vehicle operation (both "tank-towheel" and "well-to-tank" emissions), emissions related to barge fleet (building and maintenance of barges) and emissions related to transport infrastructure (construction, operation and maintenance of waterway infrastructure). This approach allows to map environmental emissions for different transport components in much greater detail and enables to determine their relative importance. The analysis also shows that for some pollutants, taking into account other categories besides vehicle travel is relevant from a sustainability perspective. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an evaluation method used by decision-makers to help assess the relative environmental impacts of various industrial processes. Despite that many LCA methods remain sensitive to uncertain input data, which can reduce the utility of their results, uncertainty arising from constituent LCA models remains poorly understood. Here, we begin to address this problem by evaluating the extent to which parameter-value uncertainty affects the SimpleBox 2.0 fate and transport model, which serves as a backbone for many LCA ecotoxicological impact categories. Two Monte Carlo type sampling methods were used to evaluate dispersion in steady-state concentration values for three chemicals involved in grenade production: toluene, 2,4-dinitrotoluene (2,4-DNT), and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). Parameters were first sampled stochastically one-at-a-time, then by randomly exploring a local patch of the parameter space. We confirmed that global temperatures contribute primarily to the overall variance of model results, which at most spanned approximately 8 decades in magnitude. These results are consistent with previous results obtained for the whole of the LCA method. LCA methods carry out calculations iteratively; a reduction in the error of a single component, such as the fate and transport model, may therefore improve its performance and utility as a decision-making aid. Published by Elsevier B.V.Italy is the most important European country in terms of paddy rice production. North Italian districts such as Vercelli, Pavia, Novara, and Milano are known as some of the world's most advanced rice cultivation sites. In 2013 Italian rice cultivation represented about 50% of all European rice production by area, and paddy fields extended for over 216,000 ha. Cultivation of rice involves different agricultural activities which have environmental impacts mainly due to fossil fuels and agrochemical requirements as well as the methane emission associated with the fermentation of organic material in the flooded rice fields. In order to assess the environmental consequences of rice production in the District of Vercelli, the cultivation practices most frequently carried out were inventoried and evaluated. The general approach of this study was not only to gather the inventory data for rice production and quantify their environmental impacts, but also to identify the key environmental factors where special attention must be paid. Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied in this study from a cradle-to-farm gate perspective. The environmental profile was analyzed in terms of seven different impact categories: climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, and fossil depletion. Regarding straw management, two different scenarios (burial into the soil of the straw versus harvesting) were compared. The analysis showed that the environmental impact was mainly due to field emissions, the fuel consumption needed for the mechanization of field operations, and the drying of the paddy rice. The comparison between the two scenarios highlighted that the collection of the straw improves the environmental performance of rice production except that for freshwater eutrophicatdon. To improve the environmental performance of rice production, solutions to save fossil fuel and reduce the emissions from fertilizers (leaching, volatilization) as well as methane emissions should be implemented. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study used multiple data sets and modelling choices in an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare typical disposable beverage cups made from polystyrene (PS), polylactic acid (PLA; bioplastic) and paper lined with bioplastic (biopaper). Incineration and recycling were considered as waste processing options, and for the PLA and biopaper cup also composting and anaerobic digestion. Multiple data sets and modelling choices were systematically used to calculate average results and the spread in results for each disposable cup in eleven impact categories. The LCA results of all combinations of data sets and modelling choices consistently identify three processes that dominate the environmental impact: (1) production of the cup's basic material (PS, PLA, biopaper), (2) cup manufacturing, and (3) waste processing. The large spread in results for impact categories strongly overlaps among the cups, however, and therefore does not allow a preference for one type of cup material. Comparison of the individual waste treatment options suggests some cautious preferences. The average waste treatment results indicate that recycling is the preferred option for PLA cups, followed by anaerobic digestion and incineration. Recycling is slightly preferred over incineration for the biopaper cups. There is no preferred waste treatment option for the PS cups. Taking into account the spread in waste treatment results for all cups, however, none of these preferences for waste processing options can be justified. The only exception is composting, which is least preferred for both PIA and biopaper cups. Our study illustrates that using multiple data sets and modelling choices can lead to considerable spread in LCA results. This makes comparing products more complex, but the outcomes more robust (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the frame of the European project NanoValid, potential candidates of reference nanomaterials are manufactured and systematically characterized in particular with respect to their morphology (shape, size and size distribution). In this study, by exploiting the transmission operation mode in a high-resolution SEM, known as transmission SEM, the potential of this methodical approach is demonstrated by means of representative examples of nanoparticles. The method enables quick and accurate morphological inspection and systematic characterization. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy imaging of single nanoparticles by using the transmission mode is demonstrated as feasible, too. Copyright (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In this paper, two-step hierarchical methodology is utilized to quantify the transportation related carbon, energy and water footprint (FP) of nation's manufacturing sectors and evaluate the environmental vs. economic performance based on eco-efficiency scores. The methodology consists of an integrated application of the economic input output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches. In the first phase, EIO-LCA is employed to quantify the environmental impacts associated with the activities between 276 manufacturing sectors and the transportation industry and the second phase compares the overall environmental impact vs. economic benefit tradeoff by determining the eco-efficiency value of each sector. Results of EIO-LCA indicated that food manufacturing is found to be as the major driver of carbon, energy and water FP categories with an approximate share of 22% of the total impact on freight transportation activities in the transportation industry. Additionally, based on DEA-based sustainability performance assessment results, vast majority of U.S. manufacturing sectors were found to be inefficient (eco-efficiency <1). Only tobacco manufacturing was found to be eco-efficient among 53 major manufacturing sectors and the U.S. average was obtained as 0.5. Results indicated that inefficient U.S. manufacturing sectors need to reach an average reduction of 50% on the carbon, energy and water FP impacts to reach the 100% eco-efficiency frontier. Additionally, the weight of the transported goods was incorporated into the economic output as $/ton-km carriage, which yielded highly correlated results with the initial assessment based on total economic output only. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Biofuels vary in their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when displacing fossil fuels. Savings depend primarily on the crop used for biofuel production, and on the effect that expanding its cultivation has on land use. Evidence-based policies should be used to ensure that maximal sustainability benefits result from the development of biofuels.In complex coupled natural-human systems (CNH), multitype networks link social, environmental, and economic systems with flows of matter, energy, information, and value. Embedded Resource Accounting (ERA) is a systems analysis framework that includes the indirect connections of a multitype CNH network. ERA is conditioned on perceived system boundaries, which may vary according to the accountant's point of view. Both direct and indirect impacts are implicit whenever two subnetworks interact in such a system; the ratio of two subnetworks' impacts is the embedded intensity. For trade in the services of water, this is understood as the indirect component of a water footprint, and as virtual water trade. ERA is a generalization of input-output, footprint, and substance flow methods, and is a type of life cycle analysis. This paper presents results for the water and electrical energy system in the western U.S. This system is dominated by California, which outsources the majority of its water footprint of electrical energy. Electricity trade increases total water consumption for electricity production in the western U.S. by 15% and shifts water use to water-stressed Colorado River Basin States. A systemic underaccounting for water footprints occurs because state-level processes discount a portion of the water footprint occurring outside of the state boundary.The production of normal paraffin from the Gas to Liquids (GTL) process is of relevance to the detergents industry. The environmental benefits of GTL derived Linear Alkyl Benzene (LAB) production relative to petroleum derived LAB production can be demonstrated by a rigorous comparison of the lifecycle impacts of both pathways. Using current industrial knowledge and consistent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodological choices, we estimated life-cycle cradle-to-gate environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, of LAB production from petroleum-derived crude oil and natural gas, respectively. In addition, we developed sensitivity cases to assess the robustness of the results due to the uncertainty or variability of key parameters in both pathways. Our base case results show that the lifecycle cradle-to-gate GHG emissions of GTL LAB production are 20% lower than conventional LAB production. Compared to conventional LAB production, lifecycle GHG emissions of GTL LAB are consistently lower, regardless of which allocation method is applied. Despite this, cradle-to-gate GHG emissions of GTL LAB are highly sensitive to assumptions associated with upstream natural gas venting and flaring emissions. Other environmental impacts for the GTL LAB pathway also appear to be favorable when compared to conventional LAB production. This can be rationalized by the GTL LAB route achieving (a) reductions in fired-duty emissions associated with the avoided prefractionation/Molex (TM) step and (b) avoided fired-duty emissions associated with the normal paraffin coproduct displacing kerosene-derived paraffin production. These results are broadly consistent with previous studies that demonstrate high-quality GTL coproducts affording a net GHG emissions avoidance when displacing conventional, crude oil derived analogs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chlorine and caustic soda are two indispensable chemical commodities co-produced in the so-called chlor-alkali electrolysis. Chlor-alkali electrolysis is today a target for cleaner production because of its large electricity demand causing considerable envitonmental impacts. The electricity demand of chloralkali electrolysis can be reduced by 30% using oxygen depolarized cathodes (ODCs) instead of the standard cathodes (STCs) used today. However, ODCs require additional resources and do not produce hydrogen in contrast to existing chlor-alkali plants. This work investigates if the reduction in electricity demand also contributes to cleaner production. For this purpose, environmental impacts from chloralkali electrolysis using ODCs are compared to the impacts from best available existing chlor-alkali plants using STCs. The life cycle assessment includes manufacturing, operation and disposal of the plants. To account for utilization of hydrogen from existing chlor-alkali plants, two alternative utilization scenarios are studied: energy recovery by combustion of hydrogen and use of hydrogen as chemical commodity. Seven environmental impact categories are studied in detail using the ReCiPe method. Chloralkali electrolysis using ODCs yields lower environmental impacts in up to six environmental impact categories. Plant operation contributes most in six out of seven impact categories. Chlor-alkali electrolysis using ODCs has thus potential to contribute to cleaner production in the chlor-alkali industry. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concerns over water conflicts between human beings and ecosystems are increasing. Also, wastewater discharged by manufacturing industries is causing multiple ecological and environmental impacts in many regions. In this research, to comprehensively assess ecological and environmental impacts of wastewater discharged from large-scale industries, a hybrid life-cycle and fuzzy-set-pair analyses (HLCA-FSPA) approach was proposed. This approach represented an integration of life cycle analysis, set pair analysis, and fuzzy sets theory. The developed method could improve previous studies in systematically reflecting impacts of industrial wastewater in terms of multiple dimensions, and considering uncertain parameters in the evaluation process. It could give a complete and robust assessment of wastewater environmental and ecological impacts based on life cycle inventory/database and uncertainty analyses. The developed HLCA-FSPA method was then applied to a pulp and paper mill in Shandong Province of China. The results indicated that the impact of wastewater at the stage of pulp production was under the limit of China's wastewater discharge standard (i.e., level III) with the connection degree of 0.47. Comparatively, the impact level of the entire life cycle of copying paper production was III with a slightly decreased connection degree (i.e., 0.38). Such a difference reflected possibility variations of the impacts at different stages. The results also indicated that the developed method can be expanded to other areas based on the corresponding LCA database. Thus, the results could provide scientific bases for supporting decision-making in industrial wastewater management to mitigate the associated ecological and environmental impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main purpose of this study was first to estimate the carbon footprint (CF) of packaged fluid milk through life cycle assessment (LCA), using regional data in Tehran, and then to identify opportunities for lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The system boundary for cradle to gate assessment was divided into three life cycle stages: agronomy, animal farm and dairy plant, and data were gathered from multiple sources, e.g. questionnaire, published studies and dairy plant database in 2011-2012. Through the study, the IPCC 2006 methodology and the International Dairy Federation (IDF) Carbon Footprint Guide were used to calculate the CF of milk. The functional unit (FU) was one litre of pasteurized milk packaged in a plastic pouch. The average CF for 1 kg of fat-protein corrected milk (FPCM) at the farm gate was 1.57 kg CO2-eq, however, for the FU, it was 1.73 kg CO2-eq. The main contributors to overall CF of milk product were enteric methane 30%, electricity 14%, diesel 8.9%, manure emissions 8.8% and transportations 8.6%. The average CF of FPCM at farm gate was higher than the previous European reports, but lower than the previous estimate of 3-5 kg CO2-eq/kg milk. Developing the infrastructure to utilize renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, may be a solution for high share of energy-related emissions from the dairy sector. We call for more research on CF and other environmental impacts like eutrophication, and impacts from water consumption in different regions of the country both in traditional and industrial dairy farm systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A nursery is a primary system, providing materials used in secondary areas of production such as horticulture, orchards, or forestry. Although the young plants produced in a nursery constitute the fundamental unit of many manufacturing processes, the application of environmental indicators in nursery systems is rare. Several studies indicate that the role of the nursery specifically in the impact assessment of fruit products is usually underestimated or not acknowledged. Reference models for the application of an environmental assessment method, such as ecological footprint analysis (EFA), in nursery systems are also scarce. In this study, a general model of a nursery system is developed taking into consideration the available literature on the topic, adopting a life cycle approach, and the suitability in the application of several environmental assessment methods. An EFA was applied to a real case study in northern Italy in order to validate the model. Strengths and weakness of two units (100 grafted plant to be sold and one hectare production surface) are discussed in the light of the results obtained in the case study. Among other case specific results, plastic had the highest relative environmental impact in the nursery system (about 80% of the value of the total footprint), making it the main resource used which should be re-considered to improve the environmental performance of the system. According to the proposed model, the nursery stage accounts for almost 17% of the entire environmental impact of the main orchard system connected to the nursery in the case study. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compares the environmental impacts of earthen plasters (based on clay) with those of conventional industrial plasters (based on cement or hydraulic lime) from a life cycle perspective. Environmental impacts were assessed via midpoint (Cumulative Energy Demand, Greenhouse Gas Protocol and Ecological Footprint) and endpoint (ReCiPe) indicators. Results show that the environmental performances of earthen materials, whose production is based on simple processes requiring relatively small amounts of energy, are substantially better than those of conventional plasters. The largest impact component is, for all plasters, the energy produced from fossil sources, which accounts for 63-85% of the overall embodied energy. However, the larger impacts of synthetic plasters stem mainly from CO2 emissions during the calcination process in cement manufacturing. On the other hand, transport is very important, at least in relative terms, in determining the overall impact of earth plasters. This highlights the importance of finding local sources of raw materials to avoid nullifying the environmental benefits of natural building products. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent years have seen an increase in the use of stainless steel in buildings, mainly owing to its corrosion properties and therefore long service life. Among stainless steels, ferritic and lean duplex grades are characterized by low nickel content resulting in a more cost-stable and economic material compared to austenitic stainless steels. These grades have comparable (or even higher) strength than carbon steel and good corrosion resistance at lower cost That is why, lately, they have been more often used in structural components. In this paper, attention is first paid to the advantages associated with the use of stainless steel in recent construction projects in view of sustainability. Second, life cycle analysis and the background of the new European standard EN 15804 are introduced, including module D, which allows credits to be taken now for the eventual reuse or recycling of material in the future, at the end-of-life stage. Life cycle inventories of stainless steel products (cold-rolled coils and quarto plate) are presented. Depending on the fraction of material recovered at the end of the lifespan, two potential impacts (Primary Energy Demand and Global Warming Potential) are presented for four grades: 1.4301 (AISI 304) and 1.4401 (AISI 316) austenitic grades, 1.4016 (AISI 430) ferritic grade and 1.4462 (AISI 2205) duplex grade. The influence of module D is underlined. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste-to-ethanol conversion is a promising technology to provide renewable transportation fuel while mitigating feedstock risks and land use conflicts. It also has the potential to reduce environmental impacts from waste management such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change. This paper analyzes the life cycle GHG emissions associated with a novel process for the conversion of food processing waste into ethanol (EtOH) and the co-products of compost and animal feed. Data are based on a pilot plant co-fermenting retail food waste with a sugary industrial wastewater, using a simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) process at room temperature with a grinding pretreatment. The process produced 295 L EtOH/dry t feedstock. Lifecycle GHG emissions associated with the ethanol production process were 1458 gCO(2)e/L EtOH. When the impact of avoided landfill emissions from diverting food waste to use as feedstock are considered, the process results in net negative GHG emissions and approximately 500% improvement relative to corn ethanol or gasoline production. This finding illustrates how feedstock and alternative waste disposal options have important implications in life cycle GHG results for waste-to-energy pathways. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Agriculture has the potential to supply considerable amounts of biomass for renewable energy production from dedicated energy crops as well as from crop residues of existing production. Bioenergy production can contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by using ethanol and biodiesel to displace petroleum-based fuels and through direct burning of biomass to offset coal use for generating electricity. We used the Canadian Economic and Emissions Model for Agriculture to estimate the potential for renewable energy production from biomass, the impacts on agricultural production, land use change and greenhouse gas emissions. We explored two scenarios: the first considers a combination of market incentives and policy mandates (crude oil price of $120 bbl(-1); carbon offset price of $50 Me-1 CO2 equivalent and policy targets of a substitution of 20% of gasoline by biomass-based ethanol; 8% of petroleum diesel by biodiesel and 20% of coal-based electricity by direct biomass combustion), and a second scenario considers only carbon offset market incentives priced at $50 Mg-1 CO2 equivalent. The results show that under the combination of market incentives and policy mandates scenario, the production of biomass-based ethanol and electricity increases considerably and could potentially cause substantial changes in land use practices. Overall, agriculture has considerable potential to generate biomass for energy and a significant potential for GHG emission reductions, however the proportional mix of policy and market incentives would have a large impact on the type of bioenergy produced. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Canada and USA, nearly 80 million students and teachers spend at least eight hours daily in schools that could be unhealthy and restrict their ability to learn. Despite this fact there is lack of adopting sustainability principles in school buildings. Even though life cycle assessment (LCA) and LEED (R) could serve as sustainability measurement tools, studies show that the integration of sustainability principles to LCA has not become standard practice yet. This paper presents an integrated LCA-LEED model that incorporates LCA into LEED and assigns corresponding LEED scores to achieve a high level of sustainability assessment, for the structure and envelope systems of Canadian school buildings. In this model, the selection of the most sustainable structure and envelope type for school buildings is done through the evaluation of three categories of the LEED rating system: energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and LCA (incorporated under the innovation and design process category of LEED). Various options are tested by considering structures such as concrete, steel, masonry and wood, and envelope types such as precast panels, steel stud, wood stud and cavity wall. Energy simulation is performed by eQUEST (R) (version 3.64) program and LCA is performed by ATHENA (R) impact estimator. The results show that concrete and masonry buildings have high energy consumption and global warming potential during certain life cycle stages such as manufacturing, construction and demolition. However they have lower annual energy consumption and environmental impact during the operating stage, as well as for the overall life span. Concrete building with minimum insulation has obtained the highest total LEED score (19) followed by masonry (17), while steel and steel-masonry buildings have the least score (14). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New materials represent an important part of the strategy towards reduced emissions in the building industry. The relative importance of the embodied energy and carbon footprint from the material production in building life cycle assessment is a topic of growing interest. However, there is a recurrent lack of tools to integrate environmental assessment in the early stages of material research and development. This study summarizes a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of a new nano insulation material (NIM), based on hollow silica nanospheres (HSNS). The goal of this analysis is to investigate how the different activities in the production of the material contribute to global warming and demand of energy, in order to find how the environmental impacts may be minimized. The analysis will be used by the scientists to optimize the production process and choice of raw materials with regard to the environment. The main outcome of the LCA is therefore recommendations for a greener production of the HSNS. In addition, this study can serve as a suggestion on how to integrate LCA in the design of other new materials and building components. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The mitigation of potential health hazards and land scarcity due to land use change can be addressed by restoring functional and ecosystem services of contaminated land. Physico-chemical remediation options are criticized as being costly and not providing environment-friendly solutions. The use of plants and associated microorganisms could be a sustainable, cost-effective option to reduce pollutant exposure. Phytomanagement aims at using valuable non-food crops to alleviate environmental and health risks induced by pollutants, and at restoring ecosystem services. Suitable plant species must be tolerant to contaminants, reduce their transfer into the food chain, and efficiently produce marketable biomass. Based on Miscanthus' capacity to sequestrate inorganic contaminants into the root system and to induce dissipation of persistent organic contaminants in soil, these plant species are favorable for phytostabilization and phytodegradation. Among Miscanthus species, the noninvasive hybrid Miscanthus x giganteus, with a high lignocellulosic content, is a promising biomass crop for the bioeconomy, notably the biorefinery and bioenergy industries. Planting this species on contaminated and marginal land is a promising option to avoid changes in arable land use to mitigate the food vs. biofuel controversy. Key issues in promoting sustainable management of Miscanthus sp. on contaminated land are: (a) crop suitability, integration, and sustainability in a region with a potential local market; (b) site suitability in relation to the species' requirements and potential, (c) biotic interactions in the landscape diversity; and (d) increase in shoot yields in line with various stressors (e.g., pollutants, drought, cold temperatures), and with minimal inputs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study composition of sinter Mixtures used in Polish sinter plant were established. Seven sinter mixtures composition Were examined, based on iron-bearing materials, admixtures and fuels. Contents of harmful admixtures were examined according to three kinds of environmental impact: emissions of SOx', heavy metals, polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDDs/PCDFs).A practical engineering tool is being developed for structural engineers. The tool allows for an engineer to quickly evaluate structural element design variations for structural performance, while adding information on environmental performance. This paper explains the structure of the tool and uses the design of a concrete beam element as a case to demonstrate its functioning. The tool is to be expanded to include more materials, building costs and complete building structures in its intended environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Design and production of industrial components and materials are nowadays a compromise between the required performances and the environmental impact. In the case of structural concrete, the existing ecological approaches are mainly focused on sustainability, regardless of mechanical performances. Tailoring a new generation of concretes, capable of maintaining acceptable mechanical properties with a reduced ecological impact, is therefore the big challenge that construction industry has to face. Accordingly, new instruments, based on both mechanical and environmental performances, need to be introduced in place of the classical life cycle assessment procedure. This is the case of the so-called eco-mechanical index (EMI), described in the present paper and applied to different series of plain and fiber-reinforced self-compacting concretes. The basic mechanical properties, such as compression and flexural strengths, and the related post-peak curves, are taken into account by the proposed EMI. Conversely, water, embodied energy consumption and the amount of carbon dioxide, necessary for the production of concrete, are here assumed to represent the environmental performance. As a result, in presence of fiber-reinforced concrete, despite the higher ecological impact than plain concrete, the best eco-mechanical performances are generally measured at each stage of concrete life. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Service life predictions for concrete exposed to chloride-induced corrosion usually result from durability tests performed on uncracked concrete. Chloride migration coefficients for uncracked concrete should only be used if the structure can be considered as uncracked. The seemingly uncracked condition requires crack widths below 0.1 mm. The extra reinforcing steel to achieve this in concrete slabs, results in a 30-43% increase of the global warming potential. Fly ash + silica fume concrete may be preferred because of its low 28 day migration coefficient (3.4 x 10(-12) m(2)/s), its long service life (>100 years) and its autogenous healing ability. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, cost-benefit analysis is performed to compare eight different hydrogen production technologies using the classical analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the Fuzzy AHP. The technologies considered are steam methane reforming, coal gasification, partial oxidation of hydrocarbons, biomass gasification, photovoltaic-based electrolysis, wind-based electrolysis, hydro-based electrolysis, and water splitting by chemical looping. For each of the hydrogen production technologies, five criteria are used for evaluation: greenhouse gas emissions, raw material and utilities consumption, energy efficiency, scalability, as well as waste disposal and atmospheric emissions. The results obtained for benefits category using AHP and Fuzzy AHP are plotted against the normalized equivalent annual costs of each technology. It is concluded that the fossil fuel based processes appear to have less beneficial qualities including greater environmental impacts, but are more cost-effective. On the other hand, the renewable based processes appear to have more benefits as well as being more expensive for hydrogen production. However, the cost-benefit analysis results imply that the process of water splitting by chemical looping among the renewable approaches is the most promising new technology. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current research policy and strategy documents recommend applying life cycle assessment (LCA) early in research and development (R&D) to guide emerging technologies toward decreased environmental burden. However, existing LCA practices are ill-suited to support these recommendations. Barriers related to data availability, rapid technology change, and isolation of environmental from technical research inhibit application of LCA to developing technologies. Overcoming these challenges requires methodological advances that help identify environmental opportunities prior to large R&D investments. Such an anticipatory approach to LCA requires synthesis of social, environmental, and technical knowledge beyond the capabilities of current practices. This paper introduces a novel framework for anticipatory LCA that incorporates technology forecasting, risk research, social engagement, and comparative impact assessment, then applies this framework to photovoltaic (PV) technologies. These examples illustrate the potential for anticipatory LCA to prioritize research questions and help guide environmentally responsible innovation of emerging technologies.This study assesses possible biodiesel pathways for the Spanish transport sector, representing the current situation. Life Cycle Assessment was carried out for two scenarios: Scenario 1, where 1 MJ of soybean biodiesel was imported from Argentina, and Scenario 2, where 1 MJ of biodiesel from used cooking oil (UCO) was manufactured in Spain. System expansion was performed to include the marginal products involved and additional functions were considered under a consequential approach. Scenario 1 included the production of palm oil in Malaysia (+25.27 g), as the marginal supplier in the global market. This also implied a decrease in the production of soybean meal in Brazil (-3.44 g). In Scenario 2, interactions in the global oil market led to changes in the opposite direction: the production of palm oil decreases in Malaysia (-2631 g), whereas the production of soybean meal increases in Brazil (+3.58 g). Without considering emissions from Land Use Change (LUC), UCO biodiesel produced in Spain performed better than imported biodiesel from Argentina in all the analyzed impact categories but Global Warming (GW), which was 138.9% lower in Scenario 1, mainly due to the carbon uptake by soybeans in Argentina and palm trees in Malaysia. Since these results could be misleading, GHG emissions from LUC in each country were included. Indirect functions of the expanded systems appeared to have a great contribution in the overall GW impact, especially in Scenario 2. Results show that there are clear environmental benefits arising from the use of UCO biodiesel in Spain to meet the European targets, as compared to the use of imported soybean biodiesel from Argentina. The Monte Carlo simulation for both scenarios also reinforces confidence in the comparative assessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to propose consistent Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing metrics and indices and to test them to assess an anaerobic digester on a dairy farm. The method is based on a graphic representation of the environmental Life Cycle Impact and economic Life Cycle Cost Differentials. Performance indices are the Internal Rate of Return (discount rate that makes the total cost differential over the lifetime equal to zero), the Breakeven Price of Electricity (unit price of electricity that makes the total cost differential over the life time equal to zero) and the Impact Savings Ratio (the total impact reduction divided by the detrimental impacts generated). A dairy digester producing electricity, chosen as case study yields a substantial carbon footprint reduction close to 0.2 kg CO2e per liter of milk (25% improvement of milk carbon footprint), corresponding to a high Impact Savings Ratio of 34-37. Life Cycle Cost Differentials ranges from -$545 (most favorable) to $808 (least favorable) per cow, depending on electricity price, heat recovery and upfront grant. Economic performances are reflected in the Internal Rates of Return (IRR), that range from -1% to 12%. The Breakeven Price of Electricity ranges from $0.07 to $0.13 per kWh. The effective economic performance is measured by choosing the discount rate equal to the Weighted Average Cost of Capital of the stakeholder. Comparing the IRR to his target rate of return enables the decision maker to check whether its own economic targets are met. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The buildings and construction sector is one the most important economic sectors all over the world but, at the same time, one of the most pollutant emitting and resource demanding. This study focuses on the analysis of the entire main input inventory data used for assessing the environmental impacts linked to the life cycle of a pre-cast concrete shed: great importance was given to the use of on-site collected specific data which was carefully verified for assuring its quality and reliability. The study was conducted in accordance with the ISO standards 14040 and 14044 (2006), with the aim of qualifying and quantifying the resources, the materials and the energy demand for the shed construction, use and end of life phases. The study results show that for the four phases taken into account in the system boundaries (production of the raw materials, construction of the shed, use of the shed and end-of-life of the shed) the most inventories are in the shed construction phase because of the huge amount of materials, fuels and resources such as concrete, steel, electrical energy and water. Other inventories are related: to the use phase, for the huge consumption of electrical energy for indoor heating and cooling; to the maintenance phase, for the number of units, such as fixtures and power plant, which are to be replaced; and to the end-of-life phase for the number of data needed for modelling the shed disassembly. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A process model was analysed with life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental tradeoffs of fourteen process alternatives treating a pulp and paper effluent with high levels of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and adsorbable organic halides (AOX). The process alternatives were constructed from six unit processes: dissolved air flotation, clarification, activated sludge, upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor, ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis (RO) treatment. The tradeoffs between environmental impact categories were investigated, focussing on eutrophication, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity (FWAE), greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water extraction. For each configuration, the water recovery and contaminant removal effectiveness were compared against GHG emissions. While the most intense treatment option was able to reduce AOX by 99.6% and COD by 99.9%, the FWAE and eutrophication categories had a reduction of only 98.6% and 94.2%, respectively. The GHG emissions were heavily influenced by sludge landfilling contributing between 39% and 71% of overall emissions, with electricity production becoming significant as treatment intensity increased. The alternatives considered were able to produce a recycled water stream composed of 3%-100% of treated effluent. Configurations using RO produced effluent with sufficient quality to be used in recycled water applications without dilution. Configurations with ultrafiltration as the highest level of treatment could produce a recycled water stream composed of 35%-81% treated effluent. Contaminant discharge impacts, water recovery and GHG emissions did not have a single optimal configuration. The study demonstrates the ability of this model to identify marginal tradeoffs between environmental impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development of economic growth, population, and rapid urbanization is increasing the pace of energy consumption and waste production. These trends, if left unchecked, will lead to massive environmental degradation. Waste-to-energy (WtE) conversion is one way of alleviating the twin problems of fossil fuel use and solid waste disposal, and their related problems (climate change, pollution etc). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for assessing the environmental performances of WtE systems. Over fifty LCA studies on various WtE systems are reviewed, comprising different waste sources, energy products, and including countries from six continents. A variety of waste types, such as agricultural residues, used cooking oil, manure, municipal solid waste, and waste wood were studied. The review found that a large majority of WtE has lower greenhouse gas emissions when compared to fossil fuels. However, some WtE studies showed an increase in environmental impacts such as acidification and eutrophication, compared to fossil fuel extraction and use. This is due to the use of chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides) in agriculture and the allocation of these impacts to the use of the agricultural waste for energy conversion. Other problems with LCA are also highlighted, including allocation issues, definition of reference systems and functional units. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As China's dairy consumption grows, both the domestic milk production and the importation of dairy products are increasing to meet demand. As a first step toward understanding the environmental impacts of water use in the expanding Chinese dairy industry, life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to calculate the water availability footprint for large-scale production systems in Heilongjiang, a major production region. Comparisons were also made with imported products from the US (California) and New Zealand. The water footprint of milk (cradle to farm gate) produced in Heilongjiang was around 11 L H(2)Oe (H2O-equivalents) kg(-1) fat-protein-corrected milk (FPCM). This compared to 461 and 0.01 L H(2)Oe kg(-1) FPCM for production in California and New Zealand respectively. Accordingly, the water footprints of milk products (cradle to factory gate) produced in Heilongjiang were much lower than those imported from California, but higher than those from New Zealand. From a food industry perspective, shifting the sourcing of dairy products from California to New Zealand or Heilongjiang could greatly reduce the associated life cycle water footprints of dairy-based processed foods. These results highlight that dairy products can be produced with minimal potential to contribute to freshwater scarcity. However, dairy production systems vary, both in production pattern and local environmental context. With the expansion of dairy farming in China, the development of farming systems with high consumptive water requirements should be avoided in water-stressed regions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many stability issues may occur as agricultural reservoir embankments become superannuated in South Korea. Reinforcement of reservoir embankments is necessary because of the potential for the loss of lives and property damage can occur, if an embankment is failed due to its faults. However, construction activities that are associated with repairing reservoir embankments are not recognized as environmentally friendly, although the importance of reservoirs is increasing. Therefore, the objective of this research was to assess the environmental effect for leakage reduction methods of reservoir embankments through estimation of CO2 emissions during the construction using hybrid method for a rational selection considering economic and environmental characteristics. Based on an estimate of the construction cost and CO2 emissions at the scale assumed, the Jumbo Special Pattern (JSP) method had the highest cost and emissions and the surface impermeable wall method had the lowest cost and emissions. However CO2 emissions for the sheet pile method were relatively low compared to the total construction cost due to use of steel sheets, which have a high unit price but low basic unit of CO2 emissions. Among the causes of emissions, material division is the largest contributor to total emissions for all of the methods. The suggested process of estimating CO2 emissions is applied to the targeted reservoir where curtain grouting was applied. For both the total construction cost and CO2 emissions, results were similar to those of the scale that was assumed. The total CO2 emissions for most of the methods were smaller than that of the curtain method that was installed in the study area, except for the JSP method. Thus, the method for estimating CO2 emissions for leakage reduction methods properly described the characteristics of each of the methods proposed in this study, and may provide a basis for establishing a policy to reduce CO2 emissions in the selection of repair methods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Directive 94/62/EC on Packaging and Packaging Waste led to new major investments in infrastructure and equipment for waste management in Portugal to cope with the imposed recycling and recovery targets. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the economic rate of return of the enhanced environmental protection achieved with the implementation of the recycling scheme. Therefore, we calculated, compared, and contrasted all economic and environmental costs and benefits involved in the Portuguese packaging waste recycling system. The economic-financial and environmental assessments were developed based on data collected from the operators in charge of the municipal waste management operations. The same system boundary was used in both assessments. The environmental impacts were quantified through a Life Cycle Assessment and, then, converted into monetary values by means of three environmental valuation methods: Ecovalue08, Eco-costs2012 and Stepwise2006. We concluded that, globally, the benefits surpassed the costs for the three valuation methods. The overall cost coverage ranges between 137% and 196% if the "avoided costs" component is considered. In fact, the refuse collection and waste disposal operations proved to be more costly (mainly in the environmental perspective) than the activities which prepare waste for recycling. The "avoided costs" component assumes an important role in promoting the efficiency of the Portuguese waste management operators (local authorities), reducing their economic costs and also the environmental damage. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Human excreta are potential sources of plant nutrients, but are today usually considered a waste to be disposed of. The requirements on wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to remove nitrogen and phosphorus are increasing and to meet these requirements, more energy and chemicals are needed by WWTPs. Separating the nutrient-rich wastewater fractions at source and recycling them to agriculture as fertiliser is an alternative to removing them at the WWTP. This study used life cycle assessment methodology to compare the environmental impact of different scenarios for recycling the nutrients in the human excreta as fertiliser to arable land or removing them in an advanced WWTP. Three scenarios were assessed. In blackwater scenario, blackwater was source-separated and used as fertiliser. In urine scenario, the urine fraction was source-separated and used as fertiliser and the faecal water treated in an advanced WWTP. In NP scenario, chemical fertiliser was used as fertiliser and the toilet water treated in an advanced WWTP. The emissions from the WWTP were the same for all scenarios. This was fulfilled by the enhanced reduction in the WWTP fully removing the nutrients from the excreta that were not source-separated in the NP and urine scenarios. Recycling source-separated wastewater fractions as fertilisers in agriculture proved efficient for conserving energy and decreasing global warming potential (GWP). However, the blackwater and urine scenarios had a higher impact on potential eutrophication and potential acidification than the WWTP-chemical fertiliser scenario, due to large impacts by the ammonia emitted from storage and after spreading of the fertilisers. The cadmium input to the arable soil was very small with urine fertiliser. Source separation and recycling of excreta fractions as fertiliser thus has potential for saving energy and decreasing GWP emissions associated with wastewater management. However, for improved sustainability, the emissions from storage and after spreading of these fertilisers must decrease. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).As concerns of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation caused by desalination increase, research studies of the environmental sustainability of desalination are growing in importance. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an ISO standardized method and is widely applied to evaluate the environmental performance of desalination. This study reviews more than 30 desalination LCA studies since 2000s and identifies two major issues in need of improvement. The first is feasibility, covering three elements that support the implementation of the LCA to desalination, including accounting methods, supporting databases, and life cycle impact assessment approaches. The second is reliability, addressing three essential aspects that drive uncertainty in results, including the incompleteness of the system boundary, the unrepresentativeness of the database, and the omission of uncertainty analysis. This work can serve as a preliminary LCA reference for desalination specialists, but will also strengthen LCA as an effective method to evaluate the environment footprint of desalination alternatives. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A screening of Life Cycle Assessment for the evaluation of the damage arising from the production of 1 kg of recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (RPET) fibre-based panel for building heat insulation was carried out according to the ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006. All data used were collected on site based on observations during site visits, review of documents and interviews with technical personnel and management. These data were processed by using SimaPro 733, accessing the Ecoinvent v.22 database and using the Impact 2002 + method. The study showed damage to be equal to 0.000299 points mostly due to the: 1) PET thermo-bonding fibre supply from China by means of a freight-equipped intercontinental aircraft; 2) production of bottle-grade granulate PET; 3) medium voltage electricity consumption during the manufacturing of RPET fibre panel. It was also highlighted that there were environmental benefits due to recycling through mainly avoiding significant emissions and reduced resource consumption. An improvement assessment was carried out to find solutions aimed at reducing the damage coming from the most impacting phases. Furthermore, the environmental impacts due to the production of the analysed RPET fibre-based panel were compared to other materials with the same insulating function, such as polystyrene foam, rock wool and cork slab. Finally, the environmental benefits of the recycling of PET bottles for flake production were highlighted compared to other treatment scenarios such as landfill and municipal incineration. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban water services are challenged from many perspectives and different stakeholders demand performance improvements along economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. In response, urban water utilities systematically give more attention to criteria such as water safety, climate change adaptation and mitigation, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), total cost efficiency, and on how to improve their operations within the water-energy-carbon nexus. The authors of this paper collaborated in the development of a 'Dynamic Metabolism Model' (DMM). The model is developed for generic use in the sustainability assessment of urban water services, and it has been initially tested for the city of Oslo, Norway. The purpose has been to adopt a holistic systemic perspective to the analysis of metabolism and environmental impacts of resource flows in urban water and wastewater systems, in order to offer a tool for the examination of future strategies and intervention options in such systems. This paper describes the model and its application to the city of Oslo for the analysis time period 2013-2040. The external factors impacting decision-making and interventions are introduced along with realistic scenarios developed for the testing, after consultation with officials at the Oslo Water and Wastewater Works (Norway). Possible interventions that the utility intends to set in motion are defined and numerically interpreted for incorporation into the model, and changes in the indicator values over the time period are determined. This paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the DMM, as a decision-support tool for water-wastewater utilities. The scenarios considered and interventions identified do not include all possible scenarios and interventions that can be relevant for water-wastewater utilities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With age and cycling, batteries used in Electric Vehicles (EVs) will reach a point in which they will no longer be suitable for electric mobility; however, they still can be used in stationary energy storage. This article aims at assessing the Life-Cycle (LC) environmental impacts associated with the use of a battery in an EV and secondly, at assessing the LC environmental impacts/benefits of using a battery, no longer suitable for electric mobility, for energy storage in a household. Three electricity mixes with different shares of renewable, nuclear and fossil energy sources are considered. For the primary battery use, three in-vehicle use scenarios are assessed, addressing three different driving profiles. For the secondary use, two scenarios of energy storage strategies are analyzed: peak shaving and load shifting. Results show that a light use of the battery in the EV has 42-50% less impacts per km than an intensive use. After its use in the vehicle, the battery life can be extended by 1.8-3.3 years; however, this is not always beneficial from an environmental point of view, since the impacts are strongly dependent on the electricity generation mix and on the additional efficiency losses in the battery. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biomass integrated gasification cogeneration is nowadays considered as one of the most attractive technologies for CO2 emission reduction and non-renewable fuel savings. The paper presents application of the Thermo-Ecological Cost (TEC), which expresses the cumulative consumption of non-renewable exergy, for examination of energy and environmental benefits of biomass energy conversion plant based on gasification technology and medium scale recuperative gas turbine. To express the total effect of considered energy conversion systems the TEC is supplemented with the data resulting from Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). Different available gasification technologies and configurations of a cogeneration plant are investigated. Atmospheric fluidized bed gasification (AFB), pressurized fluidized bed gasification (PFB) and allothermal gasification using pure steam as gasification agent (FICFB) are taken into account as well as simple and combined power cycles with the Mercury 50 Solar gas turbine. The results reveal that simple cycle with gas turbine and waste heat recovery water boiler offers better effects than combined cycle configuration. The best performance has been reported for pressurized gasification technology. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Product-service systems (PSS) that create value by sharing or extending the use of products are expected to improve environmental performances of offerings. However, life-cycle analysis (LCA) which provides a comprehensive view and assesses the environmental impacts (EIs) of products is not well adapted to PSS. In this paper, an approach to help the environmental assessment of PSS using LCA during the design process is presented. It compares the environmental consequences of different PSS design alternatives and compares them to those in a hypothetical case of classical product sale replacing the PSS. The paper highlights characteristic requirements of PSS providing intensified use of products for multiple users. Next, a PSS life-cycle model is proposed to perform LCA during the design process. The parametric model constructed will help designers calculate and compare the EIs related to various scenarios of alternative PSS offers. This will facilitate decision-making during the design phase because the PSS life-cycle parameters are identified and linked to PSS design characteristics. With this approach, actions can be easily identified and engaged to improve the PSS solution. A case study on bicycle sharing in the city of Lyon illustrates the approach.The construction industry generates large environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of their products. Companies and particularly Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are forced to be competitive and add value to their proposals to survive. A way to add value is through the improvement of the environmental performance of buildings, to save time, money and materials. In this paper, we inspect the perceptions of SMEs to the proposed improvements based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The methodology consists of 3 phases: simplified life cycle assessment of modular housing, improvement of the proposals attending LCA results, and evaluation of the proposals by the company, based on criteria determined by them. The results of this case are exploratory about willingness to accept environmental improvements, and this show a lack of understanding about the concept of life cycle, although a positive disposition to incorporate environmental criteria into design decisions. However, the implementation of improvements based on the LCA in the studied case must produce short-term results, not influence the relationship with suppliers, and not affect quality perceived by final customer.Conceptual design decision-making plays a critical role in determining life-cycle environmental impact and cost performance of buildings. Stakeholders often make these decisions without a quantitative understanding of how a particular decision will impact future choices or a project's ultimate performance. The proposed sequential decision support methodology provides stakeholders with quantitative information on the relative influence conceptual design stage decisions have on a project's life-cycle environmental impact and life-cycle cost. A case study is presented showing how the proposed methodology may be used by designers considering these performance criteria Sensitivity analysis is performed on thousands of computationally generated building alternatives. Results are presented in the form of probabilistic distributions showing the degree to which each decision helps in achieving a given performance criterion. The method provides environmental impact and cost feedback throughout the sequential building design process, thereby guiding designers in creating low-carbon, low-cost buildings at the conceptual design phase. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A large proportion of U. S. civil infrastructure will need to be refurbished or replaced in the coming decades. How to do so while considering various aspects of sustainability is a major challenge for engineers, utilities, and government agencies. Additionally, infrastructure decisions have a long time horizon and, as such, the implications of these decisions need to be considered over the life cycle of each project. This study describes a triple-bottom-line analysis that was performed in cooperation with a water utility in the Northeast to quantify the life-cycle economic, environmental, and social impacts of refurbishing or replacing a large water-storage tank. A hybrid environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted and included both on-site use of resources and emissions, as well as those that occur during production and transport of the various materials used in site preparation, construction, and maintenance. The proposed new tank would achieve better water quality and a different overall usable capacity, introducing additional complexity into the comparison. The analysis considered capital and maintenance costs, life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, human health impacts, and ecotoxicity, as well as local societal impacts such as congestion costs, noise, and the effect of aesthetic changes on property values. The results show that refurbishing the existing tank is preferable to new tank construction across all environmental impact categories, both in absolute terms and when normalized by the amount of high-quality water storage provided. Economic and societal cost analyses also preferred tank refurbishment, with significant variations depending on maintenance schedule and assumed tank lifetimes. This analysis provides detailed, quantitative data to support project decision making at the municipal level and demonstrates generally the application of multicriteria sustainability assessment to civil infrastructure planning. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.The Municipality of Citta della Pieve in central Italy, promoted the creation of a "Renewable Energy Park" in a deprived area of its territory, to provide a space where the main technologies for the production of green energy could be installed. An educational/demonstration "zero energy consumption" building for multifunctional activities will also built with the most innovative techniques to save energy. This paper presents the results of the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the "zero energy consumption" building for a useful life of 50 years. All life cycle phases were included in the research: acquisition and production of materials, on-site construction and use/maintenance, demolition and material disposal. Moreover, a few different disposal scenarios were considered. The LCA modeling was performed using the SimaPro software application, connected to the Ecoinvent database. The environmental impact of the zero energy consumption building was assessed by using specific indicators. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study assesses for the first time the environmental sustainability of development organizations involved in North-South cooperation by quantifying the carbon footprint as a widely adopted indicator. Our objectives are to (1) analyze the criteria that should be met for correct greenhouse gas accounting of development organizations, (2) gain insight into the emission profile for a limited sample of development organizations from Belgium and Germany, and (3) set forward policy options for more sustainable practices. Carbon footprints are calculated following official guidelines and include available data from different institutions. Mobility of staff is on average responsible for 60% of total annual emissions of the organizations under study, mainly owing to air travel (40%), followed by electricity and heating of offices. These emissions may be partially offset through voluntary carbon market transactions or within development projects themselves. Either approach requires the adoption of high standards of carbon accounting by development organizations. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The "carbon neutrality" assumption plays an important role in the evaluation of the global warming potential (GWP) of bioenergy relative to fossil fuels. In the case of woody bioenergy, this assumption implies that the carbon dioxide emitted during the combustion of the biomass is equal to the carbon dioxide sequestered from the atmosphere within that biomass. However, the collection and conversion of woody biomass requires energy inputs in various forms that produce emissions to the air or water. To be able to estimate the overall environmental burdens associated with converting woody biomass to bioenergy, and the net reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere by avoiding the use of fossil fuel, a life cycle assessment (LCA) is the internationally recognized method of choice. However, the carbon neutrality of woody biomass and the environmental impacts associated with wood-based bioenergy are hotly debated in national and international arenas. This study presents a comprehensive evaluation of the environmental impacts of woody biomass-based bioenergy and proposes a GWP impact assessment methodology using radiative forcing for incorporating the dynamics of carbon sequestration, decomposition of residues and biomass processing in the life cycle assessment of bioenergy.British Columbia (BC)'s forests and wood products industry face tremendous adversity in the face of the mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) epidemic. The death and decay of one of BC's leading merchantable tree species (lodgepole pine; Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud. var. latifolia Engelm.) threatens both the sustainability and climate mitigation opportunities in BC forests. Our study investigates the potential for carbon (C) storage in wood products in the post-epidemic phase of the MPB outbreak. In particular, we contrast the C-balance implications of converting MPB timber into long-lived wood products (i.e., lumber) (scenario 1) versus softwood pellets for bioenergy (scenario 2). Our findings highlight the importance of the C-cycle neutral assumption in determining the net C-balance of lumber versus pellets. Timber harvests for lumber resulted in a net C storage with this assumption (case 1), and net C emissions without this assumption (case 2). With uncertainty surrounding the future C-balance of BC forests, the current assumption of biomass-derived emissions being completely C-neutral may need to be re-evaluated.China has laid out an ambitious strategy for developing its vast shale gas reserves. This study developed an input-output based hybrid life-cycle inventory model to estimate the energy use, water consumption, and air emissions implications of shale gas infrastructure development in China over the period 2013-2020, including well drilling and operation, land rig and fracturing fleet manufacture, and pipeline construction. Multiple scenarios were analyzed based on different combinations of well development rates, well productivities, and success rates. Results suggest that 700-5100 petajoules (PJ) of primary energy will be required for shale gas infrastructure development, while the net primary energy yield of shale gas production over 2013-2020 was estimated at 1650-7150 PJ, suggesting a favorable energy balance. Associated emissions of CO(2)e were estimated at 80-580 million metric tons, and were primarily attributable to coal-fired electricity generation, fugitive methane, and flaring of methane during shale gas processing and transmission. Direct water consumption was estimated at 20-720 million metric tons. The largest sources of energy use and emissions for infrastructure development were the metals, mining, non-metal mineral products, and power sectors, which should be the focus of energy efficiency initiatives to reduce the impacts of shale gas infrastructure development moving forward. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.One of the most important processes in an integrated waste management system is incineration, which, among the different waste management disposal options still remains a critical waste treatment system. New dynamics and approaches have to be developed to embrace such a wide and complex topic, and better knowledge and assessment of incineration are strategically significant to define future environmental scenarios. Life cycle assessment (LCA), as a tool to optimise process-operating conditions and to support decision making process, is often applied to investigate processes under design in various sectors, since choices made in the development phases can affect the future environmental profile. However, even if the greatest opportunity to improve a process from an environmental perspective is during the design phase, at the same time the knowledge is limited, in accordance with the so-called "design paradox". Thus, in this context, this study used LCA methodology to quantitatively assess the extent to which the environmental impact of an incineration line reflects the environmental burdens perceived during the design phase. A comparative LCA was conducted at the design phase and under operating conditions at an Italian municipal solid waste incineration plant. The outcomes of the study indicated that for almost all of the categories analysed, the impacts associated with the process under design overestimated the impacts associated with the operating process, with the exception of climate change and water depletion. The results suggested that after the conduction of an LCA at the design phase of a process, an LCA of the operative conditions should be carried out to verify how much the over- or under-estimations affected the results. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this report, the environmental aspects of producing proton conducting ceramics are investigated by means of the environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The proton conducting ceramics BaZr0.8Y0.2O3-delta (BZY), BaCe0.9Y0.1O2.95 (BCY10), and Sr(Ce0.9Zr0.1)(0.95)Yb0.05O3-delta (SCZY) were prepared by the sol-gel process. Their material requirements and environmental emissions were inventoried, and their energy requirements were determined, based on actual production data. This latter point makes the present LCA especially worthy of attention as a preliminary indication of future environmental impact. The analysis was performed according to the recommendations of ISO norms 14040 and obtained using the Gabi 6 software. The performance of the analyzed samples was also compared with each other. The LCA results for these proton conducting ceramics production processes indicated that the marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential (MAETP) made up the largest part, followed by fresh-water aquatic ecotoxicity potential (FAETP) and Human Toxicity Potential (HTP). The largest contribution was from energy consumption during annealing and calcinations steps.While solar PV (photovoltaic) cells are promising for clean energy production, their mass deployment is hindered by production costs, material availability, and toxicity. Two materials that can overcome these challenges and replace today's CdTe (cadmium telluride) and CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide) based PV cells are Zn3P2 (zinc phosphide) and CZTS (copper zinc tin sulfide). A cradle to gate life cycle assessment was conducted to understand the environmental impacts from these technologies. The impacts from Zn3P2 and CdTe were similar and lower than the impacts from CZTS and CIGS. While CdTe has the toxic Cd element, the ecotoxicity impact from material acquisition and processing was higher for Zn and P than for CdTe. In CIGS, the ecotoxicity impact came mainly from Ga and would be significantly reduced if CZTS were to replace CIGS in the commercial market. For all four thin films studied, the contribution of raw materials to total impact was much lower than the impact coming from electricity consumption during the manufacturing stage. Therefore, to reduce environmental impact, future PV technology development should focus more on the process improvement The manufacturing stages that contributed most to the impact were the absorber layer for CIGS and CZTS and the substrate cleaning for CdTe and Zn3P2. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emissions from crude recovery contribute significantly to the life cycle GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of transportation fuels. Recovery emissions come from drilling and land use change, crude extraction, crude oil processing, venting, flaring, and fugitives. In this study an attempt has been made to provide a transparent quantification of GHG emissions from oil well drilling and land use change, crude recovery and associated gas and water treatment, and venting and flaring for five North American conventional crudes through the development of data-intensive engineering models. Estimates of emissions from crude extraction were made from recovery efficiency, the amount of energy used, and process fuel shares in extraction techniques. Extraction emissions vary from 1.24 g-CO2eq/MJ for Bow River heavy oil to 23 g-CO2eq/MJ for California's Kern County heavy oil. The amount of gas vented and flared per m(3) of crude extracted was determined to quantify venting and flaring emissions. The amount of energy required for crude oil processing was quantified based on the properties of crude oil and different techniques applied in the Oil fields. Of the five crudes we studied, California's Kern County heavy oil and Mars crude oil emit the highest and lowest emissions: 23.85 g-CO2eq/MJ and 3.94 g-CO2eq/MJ, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A mathematical framework of the life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis in life cycle assessment (LCA) of recycling is systematically reviewed with the aid of graphical interpretation. First, the zero burden approach, which has been applied to LCI analyses of waste management systems, is theoretically justified in terms of relative comparison of waste management options. As recycling is a multi-functional system including the dual functions of waste management and secondary material production, the allocation issue needs to be handled in LCIs of recycling, and two forms of system expansion, i.e., the avoided burden and product basket approaches, have dominated to avoid the allocation problem. Then, it is demonstrated that conclusions derived from both approaches should mathematically be identical as far as system boundaries are correctly defined. A criticism against system expansion is also reviewed from the viewpoint of ambiguity of what-if scenarios. As an approach to this issue, market-based consequential LCA is discussed in the context of LCI analyses of open-loop recycling.Current industrial production is driven by increasing globalization, which has led to a steady increase in production volumes and complexity of products aimed at the pursuit of meeting the needs of customers. In this context, one of the main tools in the management of customer value is Lean Manufacturing or Production, though it is considered primarily as a set of tools to reduce the total cost of the resources needed to achieve such needs. This philosophy has recently been enriched in the literature with case studies that link Lean Management (LM) with the improvement of environmental sustainability. The consequence is an expansion of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM); indeed, CIM, currently, combining and integrating the key business functions (e.g., business, engineering, manufacturing, and information management) with a view of the life cycle, does not highlight the strategic role of the environmental aspects. In order to deal with the increasingly rapid environmental degradation that is reflected in society, in terms of both economy and quality of life, Industrial Ecology (IE) introduced a new paradigm of principles and instruments of analysis and decision support (e.g., Life Cycle AssessmentLCA, Social Life Cycle Assessment -SLCA, Material Flow AccountMFA, etc.) that can be considered as the main basis for integrating the environmental aspects in each strategy, design, production, final product, and end of life management, through the re-engineering of processes and activities towards the development of an eco-industrial system. This paper presents the preliminary observations based on a analysis of both theories (LM-IE) and provides a possible assessment of the key factors relevant to their integration in a lean environmental management, highlighting both positives (lights) and possible barriers (shadows).Petroleum-based plastics constitute a major environmental problem due to their low biodegradability and accumulation in various environments. Therefore, searching for novel biodegradable plastics is of increasing interest. Microbial polyesters known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are biodegradable plastics. Life cycle assessment indicates that PHB is more beneficial than petroleum-based plastics. In this report, bacterial production of PHAs and their industrial applications are reviewed and the synthesis of PHAs in Burkholderia xenovorans LB400 is described. PHAs are synthesized by a large number of microorganisms during unbalanced nutritional conditions. These polymers are accumulated as carbon and energy reserve in discrete granules in the bacterial cytoplasm. 3-hydroxybutyrate and 3-hydroxyvalerate are two main PHA units among 150 monomers that have been reported. B. xenovorans LB400 is a model bacterium for the degradation of polychlorobiphenyls and a wide range of aromatic compounds. A bioinformatic analysis of LB400 genome indicated the presence of pha genes encoding enzymes of pathways for PHA synthesis. This study showed that B. xenovorans LB400 synthesize PHAs under nutrient limitation. Staining with Sudan Black B indicated the production of PHAs by B. xenovorans LB400 colonies. The PHAs produced were characterized by GC-MS. Diverse substrates for the production of PHAs in strain LB400 were analyzed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to enable significant reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from stationary sources such as coal-fired power stations. The most advanced carbon capture technology is CO2 absorption using amine-based solvents, such as monoethanolamine (MEA). However, there is concern that the increased use of amine-based solvents will lead to other potential negative environmental impacts, such as increased human toxicity. The use of benign inorganic solvents, such as potassium carbonate, which do not degrade in the presence of oxygen or other impurities such as sulphurous or nitrous oxides offer significant advantages over amine-based solvents in terms of environmental impact. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) between the use of MEA and the CO2CRC's potassium carbonate based UNO MIC 3 technology for the capture of 1 tonne of CO2 from a brown-coal fired power station has been completed. The results reveal that the UNO MK 3 process is significantly better than MEA on ecotoxicity and carcinogen emissions and substantially better on all other indicators. The benefits of the UNO MK 3 process compared with MEA are due to avoidance of emissions from MEA degradation along with the savings in energy use for CO2 removal. The significant environmental benefits of the UNO MK 3 process compared with MEA were not altered by an uncertainty analysis or sensitivity analysis of key inputs and assumptions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For at least the next few decades, fossil fuels will be used to supply energy globally, and without a proper control technique, carbon dioxide (CO2) atmospheric emissions will continue to increase and pose an even more serious threat to human and environment. Therefore, the use of an effective carbon dioxide capture technology has become important in ensuring reduction of CO2 emissions. However, more raw materials and energy are required for the CO2 capture systems operation. Consequently, it is necessary to evaluate the environmental performance of the complete life cycle of the CO2 capture process in order to fully understand its environmental impacts. This study presents a life cycle assessment study on a hypothetical oxy-fuel combustion CO2 capture system in Saskatchewan, Canada. The study analyses the oxy-fuel carbon dioxide capture and compares it with the lignite coal fired electrical generating station that has no capture system. TRACI, the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method, is used to convert life cycle inventory data into environmental impacts. The observed results include a reduction in global warming and emissions to air impact categories due to capture of particulate matter (PM), trace elements, CO2 and acid gases. However, the emissions captured would eventually leach to soil and then to the ground water when landfilled. Thus, an increase in the impact categories associated with soil and water was also observed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background. Mediastinoscopy (MED) and endobronchial ultrasonography with transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) have similar accuracy for mediastinal lymph node sampling (MLNS). The threatened financial and environmental sustainability of our health care system mandate that surgeons consider cost and environmental impact in clinical decision making of similarly effective procedures. We performed a cost and waste comparison of MED versus EBUS-TBNA for MLNS to raise awareness of the financial and environmental implications of our practices. Methods. We conducted a retrospective review of outpatients who underwent MLNS under general anesthesia in the OR with MED or EBUS-TBNA (September 2007 to December 2009). We analyzed direct costs based on hospital charges, calculated expected payment using a decision support model, and profit margins (modeled expected payment-direct costs). Our waste comparison was measured in kilograms of solid waste per case. Results. We performed MLNS in 148 patients (89 EBUS-TBNA, 39 MED, 20 EBUS D MED). Direct costs were lower for MED ($2,356) compared with EBUSTBNA ($2,503), whereas expected payment was greater (MED, $3,449; EBUS-TBNA, $3,249), resulting in a profit margin that was $347 greater for MED. The amount of solid waste for each MED was 1.8 kg versus 0.5 kg for EBUS-TBNA. Conclusions. MED costs less than EBUS-TBNA in the OR setting but generates 3.6 times the amount of EBUS-TBNA waste. The cost of EBUS-TBNA may improve by performance in the endoscopy suite, and surgical pack revision could reduce the amount of MED solid waste. This comparison sets the stage for sophistication of our clinical decision making, taking into consideration the major threats to our health care system. (C) 2014 by The Society of Thoracic SurgeonsThe recent expansion of unconventional natural gas production in the United States has enabled a steady increase of its use in all consumption sectors, including transportation. In this study, the environmental footprints of three natural gas-based personal mobility options are examined from a life cycle perspective: battery electric vehicles (BEVs), compressed natural gas vehicles (CNGVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs). The results suggest that natural gas-powered vehicles have the potential to considerably reduce the overall environmental impact associated with driven miles in comparison to conventional petroleum-powered internal combustion engine vehicles (PICVs). BEVs and FCVs in particular offer significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, especially if carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies are implemented at the fuel conversion facilities. It was furthermore determined that the use phase dominates the life cycle impacts of all of the vehicles considered, although the manufacture of power sources for BEVs and FCVs significantly contributes to their respective environmental burdens. Efforts presently being exerted for the greener manufacture and more efficient powertrain design of BEVs and FCVs are likely to further extend their environmental advantages over CNGVs for the utilization of natural gas as a transportation energy resource.The experimental results for quasi-brittle materials such as concrete and fibre-reinforced concrete exhibit high variability due to the heterogeneity of their aggregates, additives and general composition. An accurate assessment of the fracture-mechanical parameters of such materials (e.g. compressive strength f(c) and specific fracture energy G(f)) turns out to be much more difficult and problematic than for other engineering materials. The practical design of quasi-brittle material-based structures requires virtual statistical approaches, simulations and probabilistic assessment procedures in order to be able to characterize the variability of these materials. A key parameter of non-linear fracture mechanics modelling is the specific fracture energy G(f) and its variability, which has been a research subject for numerous authors although we will mention only [1, 2] at this point. The aim of this contribution is the characterization of stochastic fracture-mechanical properties of four specific, frequently used classes of concrete on the basis of a comprehensive experimental testing programme.The environmental and economic assessment of neighborhood-scale transit-oriented urban form changes should include initial construction impacts through long-term use to fully understand the benefits and costs of smart growth policies. The long-term impacts of moving people closer to transit require the coupling of behavioral forecasting with environmental assessment. Using new light rail and bus rapid transit in Los Angeles, California as a case study, a life-cycle environmental and economic assessment is developed to assess the potential range of impacts resulting from mixed-use infill development. An integrated transportation and land use life-cycle assessment framework is developed to estimate energy consumption, air emissions, and economic (public, developer, and user) costs. Residential and commercial buildings, automobile travel, and transit operation changes are included and a 60-year forecast is developed that compares transit-oriented growth against growth in areas without close access to high-capacity transit service. The results show that commercial developments create the greatest potential for impact reductions followed by residential commute shifts to transit, both of which may be effected by access to high-capacity transit, reduced parking requirements, and developer incentives. Greenhouse gas emission reductions up to 470 Gg CO2-equivalents per year can be achieved with potential costs savings for TOD users. The potential for respiratory impacts (PM-m-equivalents) and smog formation can be reduced by 28-35%. The shift from business-as-usual growth to transit-oriented development can decrease user costs by $3100 per household per year over the building lifetime, despite higher rental costs within the mixed-use development. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the economic, environmental, and energy issues of the farm to biorefinery continuum related to production of ethanol from soluble sugars recovered from sweet sorghum. using the BE3 (bioenergy economics, energy, and environmental) model methodology. A comparative analysis of five process configurations was conducted to determine how process decentralization affects the total production system. An increased integration of on-farm processing resulted in a moderate increase in the breakeven sales price of ethanol ($0.08/L), however the substantial increase in value-added agricultural practices (approximately 180%) can offer greater returns to the farm operation. Benefits outside the scope of this analysis related to decentralized processing include: increased rural development, reductions in transportation requirements, additional income to farmers, and dissipation of some environmental impacts. Using a single parameter sensitivity analysis for those process configurations the greatest economic impacts were found to be related to conversion efficiency, crop yield, and press efficiency. Conservative values were used throughout the process modeling procedure (e.g. crop yield, Brix level of juice, conversion efficiency, and by-product usage), yet with system optimization, breakeven sales price could be significantly decreased. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We examine the social desirability of renewable diesel production from imported palm oil in the EU when greenhouse gas emissions are taken into account. Using a partial market equilibrium model, we also study the sectoral social welfare effects of a biofuel policy consisting of a blend mandate in a small EU country (Finland), when palm oil based diesel is used to meet the mandated quota for biofuels. We develop a market equilibrium model for three cases: i) no biofuel policy, ii) biofuel policy consisting of socially optimal emission-based biofuel tax credit and iii) actual EU biofuel policy. Our results for the EU biofuel market, Southeast Asia and Finland show very little evidence that a large scale use of imported palm oil in diesel production in the EU can be justified by lower greenhouse gas emission costs. Cuts in emission costs may justify extensive production only if low or negative land-use change emissions result from oil palm cultivation and if the estimated per unit social costs of emissions are high. In contrast, the actual biofuel policies in the EU encourage the production of palm oil based diesel. Our results indicate that the sectoral social welfare effects of the actual biofuel policy in Finland may be negative and that if emissions decrease under actual biofuel policy, the emission abatement costs can be high regardless of the land use change emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to concerns about the sustainability of the energy sector, conversion of biomass to energy is increasing its hold globally. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is being adopted as an analytical tool to assess the environmental impacts in the entire cycle of biomass production and conversions to different products. This study deals with the LCIA of straw conversion to district heat in a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant and in a district heating boiler (producing heat only). Environmental impact categories are Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), aquatic and terrestrial Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Non-Renewable Energy (NRE) use. In the case of CHP, the co-produced electricity is assumed to displace the marginal Danish electricity mix. The current study showed that straw fired in the CHP plant would lead to a GWP of -187 g CO2-eq, AP 0.01 m(2) UES (un-protected ecosystem), aquatic EP 0.16 g NO3-eq, terrestrial EP 0.008 m(2) UES, and NRE use -0.14 MJ-primary per 1 MJ heat production. Straw conversion to heat in the CHP plant showed better environmental performances compared to the district heating boiler. Furthermore, removing straw from the field is related to the consequence e.g. decline in soil carbon sequestration, limiting soil nutrient availability, and when compared with natural gas the conversion of straw to heat would lead to a higher aquatic and terrestrial EP and AP. The study also outlays spaces for the detail sustainability assessment of straw conversion in a biorefinery and compare with the current study. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this trial was to study the influence of choice feeding and cereal type (corn or triticale) during the finishing period on performance of ducks. In total, 624 one-day-old male mule ducks (Cairina moschata x Anas platyrhynchos) were divided into 3 groups differing in the diet they received between 56 and 84 d of age: a commercial complete pelleted diet (control group; AME(n) 12.1 MJ/kg, CP 15%), or corn whole seeds (AME(n) 14.4 MJ/kg, CP 7.3%) and protein-rich pellets (AME(n) 9.9 MJ/kg, CP 22.7%) in 2 separated feeders [choice feeding with corn (CFC) group]; or triticale whole seeds (AME(n) 13.0 MJ/kg, CP 10.5%) and protein-rich pellets (AME(n) 11.2 MJ/kg, CP 19.5%) in 2 separated feeders [choice feeding with triticale (CFT) group]. From 85 to 96 d, 96 birds/group were overfed with corn. Feed intake (complete pellets or cereal and protein-rich pellets) per pen was measured at 60, 62, 65, 69, 78, and 84 d of age. Body weight and body traits were measured at 56 to 84 d of age. Over the entire period, from 56 to 84 d, the feed intake of the CFC group was 7% lower than the control group, and 5% lower than that in the CFT group (P = 0.002). Whatever the diet tested, at 56 and 84 d of age, the BW (4,099 and 4,779 g, P = 0.42 and P = 0.35, respectively) and the carcass traits (P > 0.05) of ducks were similar in the 3 groups. During and after overfeeding, the performances of the ducks were also similar (P > 0.05). The present results suggest that CFC during the finishing period is a solution to reduce the cost of diet destined to ducks. Indeed, using locally grown grains could reduce the economic and environmental impacts of duck feeding, reducing the transportation and crushing processes.Ceramic tiles play a strategic role in the Italian market; currently, the Italian production is of 367.2 million m(2) (Confindustria Ceramica 2012). In 2009, Italy was positioned as the world's fourth largest producer of ceramic tiles, producing 368 million m(2) of the world's total production of 1,735 million m(2) Giacomini (Ceram World Rev 88:52-68, 2010). Therefore, there is an ongoing effort to create innovations in the products offered and their manufacturing processes, in order to better compete on the market and to create eco-friendly products. Recently, the Italian Ceramic District has increased its focus on environmental issues with the aim of protecting natural resources and reducing the energy and material consumption. For this reason, a new product was born in the Italian Ceramic District, namely, a large thin ceramic tile (dimensions 1,000 mm x 3,000 mm x 3.5 mm) reinforced with a fibreglass backing, which gives the product excellent resistance and flexibility properties. The aim was to manufacture a new product with lower environmental impact than the traditional one. The production of a large thin ceramic tile requires, in fact, a lower quantity of materials, transports and energy consumptions comparing to the same metres square of traditional ceramic tile. At the present, no comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have been performed between traditional and innovative ceramic stoneware tiles. This study analyses, for the first time, a life cycle of the innovative ceramic product (porcelain stoneware) developed by a company of the Italian Ceramic District. The analysis is performed using the LCA methodology, in order to identify environmental impacts, energy consumption and CO2 equivalent emissions that occur during extraction of raw materials, transportation, production, material handling, distribution and end-of-life stages within a cradle to grave perspective. LCA analysis indicates that the highest environmental impact mainly affects the respiratory inorganics impact category due to base slip production (27.62 %), caused by the transport of the raw materials and by non-renewable impact category due to both the pasting phase (21.31 %) and the two-component adhesive manufacture. The major greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are related to the production of polyurethane, a component of the adhesive used in the pasting stage, and to the natural gas consumption in the firing process.Adoption of the carbon (C)-friendly and cleaner technology is an effective solution to offset some of the anthropogenic emissions. Conservation tillage is widely considered as an important sustainable technology and for the development of conservation agriculture (CA). Thus, the objective of this study was to assess the C sustainability of different tillage systems in a double rice (Oryza sativa L.) cropping system in southern China. The experiment was established with no-till (NT), rotary tillage (RT), and conventional tillage (CT) treatments since 2005. Emission of greenhouse gasses (GHG), C footprint (CF), and ecosystem service through C sequestration in different tillage systems were compared. Emission of GHG from agricultural inputs (Mg CO2-eq ha(-1) year(-1)) ranged from 1.81 to 1.97 for the early rice, 1.82 to 1.98 for the late rice, and 3.63 to 3.95 for the whole growing season, respectively. The CF (kg CO2-eq kg(-1) of rice year(-1)) in the whole growing seasons were 1.27, 1.85, and 1.40 [excluding soil organic carbon (SOC) storage] and 0.54, 1.20, and 0.72 (including SOC storage) for NT, RT, and CT, respectively. The value of ecosystem services on C sequestration for the whole growing seasons ranged from Ayen3,353 to 4,948 ha(-1) year(-1) and followed the order of NT > CT > RT. The C sustainability under NT was better than that under RT for the late, but reversed for the early rice. However, NT system had better C sustainability for the whole cropping system compared with CT. Therefore, NT is a preferred technology to reduce GHG emissions, increase ecosystem service functions of C sequestration, and improve C sustainability in a double rice cropping region of Southern China.So far no calculations have been made for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from forestry in East Norway. This region stands for 80 % of the Norwegian timber production. The aim of this study was to assess the annual GHG emissions of Norwegian forestry in the eastern parts of the country from seed production to final felling and transport of timber to sawmill and wood processing industry (cradle-to-gate inventory), based on specific Norwegian data. The life cycle inventory was conducted with SimaPro applying primary and secondary data from Norwegian forestry. GHG emissions of fossil-related inputs from the technosphere were calculated for the functional unit of 1 m(3) timber extracted and delivered to industry gate in East Norway in 2010. The analysis includes seed and seedling production, silvicultural operations, forest road construction and upgrading, thinning, final felling, timber forwarding and timber transport on road and rail from the forest to the industry. Norwegian time studies of forestry machines and operations were used to calculate efficiency, fuel consumption and transport distances. Due to the lack of specific Norwegian data in Ecoinvent, we designed and constructed unit processes based on primary and secondary data from forestry in East Norway. GHG emissions from forestry in East Norway amounted to 17.893 kg CO2-equivalents per m(3) of timber delivered to industry gate in 2010. Road transport of timber accounted for almost half of the total GHG emissions, final felling and forwarding for nearly one third of the GHG emissions. Due to longer road transport distances, pulpwood had higher impact on the climate change category than saw timber. The construction of forest roads had the highest impact on the natural land transformation category. The net CO2 emissions of fossil CO2 corresponded to 2.3 % of the CO2 sequestered by 1 m(3) of growing forest trees and were compared to a calculation of biogenic CO2 release from the forest floor as a direct consequence of harvesting. Shorter forwarding and road transport distances, increased logging truck size and higher proportion of railway transport may result in lower emissions per volume of transported timber. A life cycle assessment of forestry may also consider impacts on environmental categories other than climate change. Biogenic CO2 emissions from the soil may be up to 10 times higher than the fossil-related emissions, at least in a short-term perspective, and are highly dependent on stand rotation length.The oft-cited waste hierarchy is considered an important rule of thumb to identify preferential waste management options and places waste prevention at the top. Nevertheless, it has been claimed that waste prevention can sometimes be less favorable than recycling because (1) recycling decreases only the primary production of materials, whereas waste prevention may reduce a combination of both primary and low-impact secondary production, and (2) waste prevention decreases the quantity of material recycled downstream and the avoided impacts associated with recycling. In response to this claim, this study evaluates the life cycle effects of waste prevention activities (WPAs) on a residential waste management system. This life cycle assessment (LCA) contrasts the net impacts of a large residential solid waste management system (including sanitary landfilling, anaerobic digestion, composting, and recycling) with a system that incorporates five WPAs, implemented at plausible levels (preventing a total of 3.6 % of waste generation tonnage) without diminishing product service consumption. WPAs addressed in this LCA reduce the collected tonnage of addressed advertising mail, disposable plastic shopping bags, newspapers, wine and spirit packaging, and yard waste (grass). In all cases, the WPAs reduce the net midpoint and endpoint level impacts of the residential waste management system. If WPAs are incorporated, the lower impacts from waste collection, transportation, sorting, and disposal as well as from the avoided upstream production of goods, more than compensate for the diminished net benefits associated with recycling and the displaced electricity from landfill gas utilization. The results substantiate the uppermost placement of waste prevention within the waste hierarchy. Moreover, further environmental benefits from waste prevention can be realized by targeting WPAs at goods that will be landfilled and at those with low recycled content.Health care infection control has led to increased utilization of disposable medical devices, which has subsequently led to adverse environmental effects attributed to health care and its supply chain. In dental practice, the dental bur is a commonly used instrument that can be either reused or used once and then disposed. To evaluate the disparities in environmental impacts of disposable and reusable dental burs, a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed. The functional unit was defined as one reusable dental bur, where the maximum instances reused was 30 (or in the case of a disposable, the equivalent functional unit would be 30 disposable dental burs). The system boundary included all cradle-to-grave aspects of both single-use and reused burs, including raw material extraction, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, reuse, and disposal. Primary data included the following: operating parameters for ultrasonic cleaning, manual cleaning, and autoclaving of the burs. The secondary data for raw material extraction and production of dental bur and packaging were obtained directly from life cycle inventory databases. Sensitivity analyses were also performed with respect to ultrasonic and autoclave loading. Findings from this research showed that when the ultrasonic and autoclave were loaded optimally, reusable burs had 40 % less of an environmental impact than burs used on a disposable basis. When the autoclave and ultrasonic were loaded to approximately two-third capacity, four environmental impact categories favored reusable burs (i.e., ozone depletion, smog, respiratory effects, exotoxicity), and four impact categories environmentally favored disposables (i.e., acidification, eutrophication, carcinogenics, and non-carcinogenics). When the autoclave and ultrasonic were loaded to approximately one-third capacity, reusable dental burs posed more negative environmental impacts in eight of nine environmental impact categories when compared to disposable burs. Operational efficiency of ultrasonic and autoclave cleaning equipment should be emphasized to enhance the environmental performance of bur reuse. In fact, improper loading of the ultrasonic and autoclave can lead to greater adverse environmental impacts than if the burs were treated as disposables. The environmental and economic impacts associated with bur reuse are expected to be similar with other dental devices that are designated as disposable but are capable of being reused (e.g., scalpels, forceps).In the last decade, the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool for selection between different technologies or products fulfilling the same function has spread rapidly in Latin American countries. However, this accelerated growth in the use of LCA has not always been supported with progress in construction of local inventories or the development of impact assessment methods that consider local and regional characteristics of the sites where technologies, products, and activities or services are being produced or developed. The aim of this study is to propose a local methodology to estimate regional factors for the terrestrial acidification impact category in Argentina based on the critical load exceedance in sensitive areas. Acidification factors for ecological regions in Argentina were calculated following a procedure that compares acidic deposition with critical loads, using a linear function to represent the damage, when the deposition is above the soil buffering capacity. The acidic deposition in the study area was estimated using the air transport model wind trajectory model, with emissions from the global inventory EDGAR. Detailed soil maps were used in order to include the acidification sensitivity of the receiving ecosystems. Also, an application case of the calculated factors is presented in order discuss the relevance of the regional factors implementation in local studies. Deposition fluxes were estimated for different ecoregions in Argentina. The regional factors calculated differ from site-generic factors used commonly to estimate potential impacts, demonstrating that their use in local studies could lead to erroneous outcomes. This was more evident in the application case, where the potential impact calculated was very different, depending on the impact factor used. The model presented in this study allows the assessment of the impact caused by deposition of acidifying substances emitted during the life cycle of a product or process, taking into account the local characteristics where the intervention occurs, and it is the first development of a regional model for acidification within the LCA context carried out in Argentina. The obtained results highlight the importance of developing regional characterization factors for local or regional impacts referred to a definite region.This paper analyzes, from a life cycle perspective, the environmental performance of biodiesel obtained from leather industry fleshing waste (BDF). The indicators used for this environmental evaluation are: global warming potential (GWP) and energy return on investment (EROI). The contribution of each process-step in both GWP and EROI was determined. Transesterification of fat to obtain the BDF has been proved to be the most significant step in the process, mainly due to the consumption of methanol A comparison between BDF and petroleum diesel obtained from non-renewable oil has also been performed using the same indicators. The results show a clear preference for BDF, although data from industrial real plants has to be considered in further works for BDF process to provide more accurate results.Life cycle inventory (LCI) compilations of large and medium-sized equipment manufacturing is labor intensive and time consuming due to complexities involved in data collection processes. Process based Life Cycle Assessment (P-LCA) methods can provide accurate inventory results with up-to-date data; however, it also suffers from several problems including system boundary identification, high cost, data confidentiality, and long timespans. Economic Input-Output (EIO) based inventory is fast and operable method for applying data on a national level which helps to negate truncation errors. This paper conducts an IO based hybrid inventory analysis for a diesel engine manufactured in China with Chinese Economic Input-Output Table and Life Cycle Database. The energy requirements and quantifications regarding air pollutants of the engine's entire life cycle are identified. Moreover, the differences between the LCI results achieved by IO based hybrid approach and process based analysis methods are also presented. Sensitivity analysis of various fuel efficiencies is conducted to demonstrate the effect of fuel efficiency on overall impacts of the engine through its life cycle. Finally, Monte Carlo Simulation is adopted to analyze the uncertainties of various data sources on the LCA results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Traditionally, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies include four stages to assess the environmental impact of a product or process. These four stages are scope definition, life cycle inventory (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and interpretation of results. Data collection for the LCI requires substantial effort and may be considered the most critical phase of a LCA, as poor data availability and inconsistency of data may lead to unrealistic results and conclusions. In machine tools, this inventory definition effort is amplified by the inherent complexity of machine tools and their operational behaviour alternatives. This paper describes a LCI method for machine tools providing a new procedure, which improves the transparency and consistency of LCA data. The method is partially based on the developments and strategies described in the draft standard ISO/DIS 14955-1. In this paper, a detailed description of the new method is presented along with the demonstration of its applicability by its implementation in two different manufacturing cases. One of the cases involves the manufacturing of an aeronautic part, while the other case relates to a part manufactured for the household sector. The environmental impact of these two parts, which are produced by a traditional process and by an alternative process is considered, thus it is demonstrated that LCI method as part of a LCA, can be used as a decision support tool to assess the lifecycle impact of the manufacturing of a product using machine tools. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As technology progresses, so does the concern about the potential health impacts on humans and biodiversity that go in hand with technological development. Emerging new impacts that are characteristic of the anthropocene require more attention in current life cycle assessment (LCA), a framework in which many relevant impact assessment models are still missing. More attention, more data and more concern require the LCA community to intervene and to start or increase the modelling efforts to accommodate new impacts in LCA. To date the process of inclusion of new impacts in LCA has not yet been formalised. To deal with this process, a framework is here proposed and tested through the analysis of three emerging impact categories, noise, ecological light pollution (ELP) and radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF). We show that any development must start from a careful study of the theories and investigations from other specialist fields of science than the field of LCA. The gathering of such information is fundamental to assess the maturity of the impacts, their importance and the quality of the evidence that is available. In addition, this information has to be bridged to the computational structure of LCA, to check whether the physical properties of new impacts may be adjusted to the basics of LCA. We discuss the three new potential impact categories as a paradigm for action for any new development in LCA. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cost-effective and robust waste treatment and recycling system is a requisite of a sustainable society. In our previous study, we proposed a "smart recycling system" that utilizes existing industrial facilities with higher energy efficiency so that a cost-effective and robust recycling system for treating municipal wastes can be established. In this study, we further develop the concept of smart recycling and propose a framework for facilitating the implementation of such a system. By making use of existing facilities and adopting both closed-loop and semi-closed-loop recycling processes, this system allows flexible adaptations on the changes of external factors. A spatially optimal scale is necessary to meet the requirements for such a smart recycling system. Thus, we develop an integrated model that combines both geographical information system based collection model and a process model for a smart recycling center. In order to test its applicability, we employ a case study approach to simulate the implementation of smart recycling in the three satellite cities of Tokyo Metropolitan Area and evaluate its effects under three different scenarios. Our simulation results show that smart recycling cannot only reduce carbon dioxide emission but also lower the overall costs. Also, by comparing with conventional waste incineration, we find that the unit cost of smart recycling is relatively stable to changes of the waste amounts due to its lower fixed costs for facilities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing interest in sustainability has led to the development of sustainability assessment tools such as Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). Due to methodological disparity of these three tools, conflicting assessment results generate confusion for many policy and business decisions. In order to interpret and integrate assessment results, the paper provides a framework that clarifies the connections and coherence between the included assessment methodologies. Building on this framework, the paper further focuses on key aspects to adapt any of the methodologies to full sustainability assessments. Aspects dealt with in the review are for example the reported metrics, the scope, data requirements, discounting, product- or project-related and approaches with respect to scarcity and labor requirements. In addition to these key aspects, the review shows that important connections exist: (i) the three tools can cope with social inequality, (ii) processes such as valuation techniques for LCC and CBA are common, (iii) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is used as input in both LCA and CBA and (iv) LCA can be used in parallel with LCC. Furthermore, the most integrated sustainability approach combines elements of LCA and LCC to achieve the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). The key aspects and the connections referred to in the review are illustrated with a case study on the treatment of end-of-life automotive glass. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Global optimization for sustainable design and synthesis of a large-scale algae processing network under economic and environmental criteria is addressed. An algae processing network superstructure including 7800 processing routes is proposed. Based on the superstructure, a multiobjective mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is developed to simultaneously optimize the unit cost and the unit global warming potential (GWP). To efficiently solve the nonconvex MINLP model with separable concave terms and mixed-integer fractional terms in the objective functions, a global optimization strategy that integrates a branch-and-refine algorithm based on successive piecewise linear approximations is proposed and an exact parametric algorithm based on Newton's method. Two Pareto-optimal curves are obtained for biofuel production and biological carbon sequestration, respectively. The unit annual biofuel production cost ranges from $7.02/gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE) to $9.71/GGE, corresponding to unit GWP's of 26.491 to 16.52 kg CO2-eq/GGE, respectively. (C) 2014 American Institute of Chemical EngineersThis article evaluates the sustainability and economic potential of microalgae grown in brewery wastewater for biodiesel and biomass production. Three sustainability and two economic indicators were considered in the evaluation within a life cycle perspective. For the production system the most efficient process units were selected. Results show that harvesting and oil separation are the main process bottlenecks. Microalgae with higher lipid content and productivity are desirable for biodiesel production, although comparable to other biofuel's feedstock concerning sustainability. However, improvements are still needed to reach the performance level of fossil diesel. Profitability reaches a limit for larger cultivation areas, being higher when extracted biomass is sold together with microalgae oil, in which case the influence of lipid content and areal productivity is smaller. The values of oil and/or biomass prices calculated to ensure that the process is economically sound are still very high compared with other fuel options, especially biodiesel. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Under the label "future-proofing", this paper examines the temporal component of sustainable construction as an unexplored, yet fundamental ingredient in the delivery of low-energy domestic buildings. The overarching aim is to explore the integration of future-proofed design approaches into current mainstream construction practice in the UK, focusing on the example of the Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) tool. Regulation has been the most significant driver for achieving the 2016 zero-carbon target; however, there is a gap between the appeal for future-proofing and the lack of effective implementation by building professionals. Even though the CSH was introduced as the leading tool to drive the "step-change"required for achieving zero-carbon new homes by 2016 and the single national standard to encourage energy performance beyond current statutory minima, it lacks assessment criteria that explicitly promote a futures perspective. Based on an established conceptual model of future-proofing, 14 interviews with building practitioners in the UK were conducted to identify the "feasible" and "reasonably feasible"future-proofed design approaches with the potential to enhance the "Energy and CO2 Emissions" category of the CSH. The findings are categorised under three key aspects; namely: coverage of sustainability issues; adopting lifecycle thinking; and accommodating risks and uncertainties and seek to inform industry practice and policy-making in relation to building energy performance.Backgrounding, raising weaned beef cattle in preparation for finishing in a feedlot, is a common practice in western Canadian beef production systems. The objectives of this study were: (i) to assess the whole-farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a pasture-based backgrounding system using an observation-based and model-based approach and (it) to compare model-based estimated emissions with observation-based emissions from the key components of the farm, in order to identify the knowledge gaps that merit further study. For the observation-based approach, emissions were garnered from a multi-disciplinary field study that examined three fertility treatments applied to the pasture grazed by beef cattle: (i) no liquid hog manure application (control); (ii) split application of liquid hog manure, half applied in fall and half in spring (split) and (iii) single spring application of liquid hog manure (single). The model-based approach used a systems-based model, adapted from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change algorithms, to estimate annual net farm GHG emissions from the three fertility treatments and a hypothetical synthetic fertilizer treatment. Total farm emissions included methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from farm components and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy use. Net farm GHG emissions using the observation-based approach ranged from 0.4 to 2.2 Mg CO2 eq ha(-1) and from 4.2 to 6.5 kg CO2 eq kg(-1) liveweight gain exported; the model-based approach resulted in net farm emissions ranged from 0.6 to 3.7 Mg CO2 eq ha(-1) and from 7.0 to 12.9 kg CO2 eq kg(-1) liveweight gain exported. Except in the control treatment, both enteric CH4 and soil N2O emissions were the major contributors to total farm emissions. Emissions intensity for the hypothetical synthetic fertilizer treatment (9.4 kg CO2 eq kg(-1) liveweight gain) was lower than for the split and single scenarios. Although individual GHG emission estimates varied appreciably, trends in emissions intensity were similar between the two approaches. Efforts to reduce GHG emissions should be directed towards components such as enteric CH4 and soil N2O, which have larger impacts on overall system emissions.Driven by the security of supply and climate change concerns, decarbonisation of energy supply has become a priority for many countries. This study focuses on Mexico, the world's 14th largest economy, and considers the environmental implications of decarbonising its electricity supply. Eleven scenarios are considered for the year 2050 with different technology mixes and GHG reduction targets, ranging from stabilisation at the year 2000 level to a reduction of 60-85%. Unlike most energy scenario analyses which focus mainly on direct CO2 or GHG emissions, this paper presents the full life cycle impacts of electricity generation in 2050 considering ten environmental impacts which, in addition to global warming, include resource and ozone layer depletion, acidification, eutrophication, summer smog, human and ecotoxicity. The results indicate that continuing with business as usual (BAU) would double the current life cycle GHG emissions, even if annual electricity demand growth was reduced to 2.25% from the current 2.8%. Switching from the current fossil fuel mix to a higher contribution of renewables (55-86%) and nuclear power (up to 30%) would lead to a significant reduction of all ten life cycle impacts compared to the current situation and up to an 80% reduction compared to BAU. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The use of tubular towers made of steel, concrete or hybrid steel-concrete has become standard in the wind energy industry. However, more powerful wind energy generators are leading to the need for increasing the towers height. This implies rethinking of existing solutions for the support onshore structure composed of tower and foundation, including design concept, life cycle and environmental repercussion. The need for transportation of larger prefabricated elements and more complex processes of assembling on site become important issues. This paper addresses the comparative study concerning the influence of increasing height on the structural design and outcome of different structural solutions. Steel, concrete and hybrid steel-concrete wind towers with heights of 80, 100 and 150 m supporting multi-megawatt turbines of 2, 3.6 and 5 MW power respectively are addressed. The design of the towers is made in accordance with the structural Eurocodes. Two different scenarios are addressed, the first considering common lifetime of 20 years and the second considering increased lifetime of 40 years with reuse of tower parts. In-situ erection of steel tubular parts is achieved using flange connections or newly developed friction connections. Conclusions point out that, for towers up to 80 m, the use of steel tubular sections and flange connections are the most suitable. Friction connections are suitable for higher towers, leading to less material consumption. The use of concrete towers, particularly for heights above 100 m, is penalized when seismic risk is considered in special in the dimensions of the slab foundations (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the first part of the paper the design of tubular towers and respective onshore foundations was addressed. The considered solutions were based on steel, concrete and hybrid steel-concrete tubular towers supporting multi-megawatt turbines of 2, 3.6 and 5 MW power with hub heights of 80, 100 and 150 m respectively. In this second part of the paper, the life cycle analysis of the designed case studies is performed and conclusions about their environmental impact are drawn. Two different scenarios concerning the lifetime of the towers were established. The first scenario considers 20 years lifetime and two different construction methods for the connection of the steel segments, the first based in current technology using flange connections and the second using newly developed friction connections. Assuming equal importance for all environmental categories in this scenario, it may be concluded that for heights up to 100 m hybrid towers with friction connections are the most efficient solution. For higher heights, the concrete tower becomes more efficient. The second scenario considers an increased total lifetime of 40 years, assuming the reuse of the tower after 20 years of operation. In this case, the use of friction connections in steel towers enhances the possibility of dismantling and reusing the tower potentiating much better performance in relation to the environmental category of global warming. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Based on a review of the most recent available scientific evidence, the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 (USDA DG) provide information and advice for choosing a healthy diet. To compare the environmental impacts of, respectively, omnivorous (OMN), lacto-ovo-vegetarian (LOV) and vegan (VEG) dietary patterns as suggested in the USDA DG, we analyzed the three patterns by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The presence of animal food in the diet was the main determinant of environmental impact. The major impact always stemmed from land and water use. The second largest impact came from energy use. Emission of toxic inorganic compounds into the atmosphere was the third cause of impact. Climate change and acidification/eutrophication represented other substantial impacts.This study proposes an eco-innovative design process taking into consideration quality and environmental aspects in prioritizing and solving technical engineering problems. This approach provides a synergy between the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the nonquality matrix, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), morphological analysis and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). In the sequence of these tools, LCA assesses the environmental impacts generated by the system. Then, for a better consideration of environmental aspects, a new tool is developed, the non-quality matrix, which defines the problem to be solved first from an environmental point of view. The TRIZ method allows the generation of new concepts and contradiction resolution. Then, the morphological analysis offers the possibility of extending the search space of solutions in a design problem in a systematic way. Finally, the AHP identifies the promising solution(s) by providing a clear logic for the choice made. Their usefulness has been demonstrated through their application to a case study involving a centrifugal spreader with spinning discs.Beef production contributes to environmental problems, such as climate change, air pollution and water pollution. Our objective was to determine how much the introduction of beef cow grazing on abandoned lands into a housing system (housed in barns throughout the year) alters environmental impacts. We used life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental impacts of beef cow-calf systems with and without grazing on abandoned cultivated lands, on 11 Japanese farms. The functional unit was one marketed beef calf (Japanese Black) at 8 months of age. A reduction of global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP) was found in all five grazing systems (including an experimental farm), compared with the average values for housing systems. A reduction of energy consumption was also found in the five grazing systems; however, the reduction was not large in one farm. Feed transportation and production were the main contributors to energy consumption, and unless there is a decrease in the energy consumption associated with these two processes, the energy consumption throughout the life cycle will not decrease. Thus, the introduction of grazing on abandoned lands can reduce environmental impacts, but the effects can be weakened or offset depending on the amount of imported feed. In the experimental farm with a grazing system, the reduction of GWP, AP, EP and energy consumption compared with the average values for the housing systems was 32, 48, 48 and 45%, respectively. In the four commercial farms with grazing systems, the reduction of GWP, AP, EP and energy consumption was 11-24, 13-22, 19-24 and 2-21%, respectively, which we regard as possible reductions in a real life situation. We conclude that a large reduction of environmental impacts could not be achieved solely through the introduction of grazing.This study aims to quantify greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the production, transportation and utilization of charcoal and to assess the possibilities of decreasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the charcoal industry in general in Uganda. It also aims to assess the emission intensity of the Ugandan "charcoal production" sector compared to that of some other major charcoal producing nations. This work was done in accordance with ISO 14040 methodology for life-cycle assessment (LCA), using GABi 4.0-a software for life-cycle assessment. A cradle-to-grave study was conducted, excluding emissions arising from machinery use during biomass cultivation and harvesting. The distance from charcoal production locations to Kampala was estimated using ArcGIS 10.0 software and a GPS tool. Emission data from a modern charcoal production process (PYREG methane-free charcoal production equipment), which complies with the German air quality standards (TA-Luft), was compared with emissions from a traditional charcoal production process. Four coupled scenarios were modelled to account for differences in the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted from the "traditional charcoal production phase", "improved charcoal production phase (biomass feedstock sourced sustainably and unsustainably)", "transportation phase" and "utilization phase". Data for this study was obtained via literature review and onsite measurements. The results showed that greenhouse gases emitted due to charcoal supply and use of traditional production technique in Kampala was 1,554,699 tCO(2)eq, with the transportation phase accounting for approximately 0.15 % of total greenhouse gases emitted. The utilization phase (charcoal cookstoves) emitted 723,985 tCO(2)eq (46.6 %), while the charcoal production phase emitted 828,316 tCO(2)eq (53.3 %). Changing the charcoal production technology from a traditional method to an improved production method (PYREG charcoal process) resulted in greenhouse gases reductions for the city of 230,747 tCO(2)eq; however, by using sustainably sourced biomass, this resulted in reductions of 801,817 tCO(2)eq. This study showcased and quantified possible GHG emission reduction scenarios for the charcoal industry in Uganda. The result of 3 tCO(2)eq emitted per tonne of charcoal produced, using earth mound method, can be applied to other countries in Eastern Africa where similar charcoal production methods are used; this will allow for somewhat better regional estimates of the inventory of greenhouse gas emissions from the production of charcoal. The results of this study also suggests that the primary use of charcoal for cooking will lead to increases in GHG emissions and increases in deforestation on the long term, if legal frameworks are not made to ensure that biomass used for charcoal production is obtained via sustainable sources or if alternative cheap energy-generating technologies for cooking are not developed and deployed to the masses.This study seeks to answer the question, "Will the Million Trees LA (Million Trees Los Angeles, MTLA) program be a carbon dioxide (CO2) sink or source?" Because there has never been a full accounting of CO2 emissions, it is unclear if urban tree planting initiatives (TPIs) are likely to be effective means for reaching local reduction targets. Using surveys, interviews, field sampling, and computer simulation of tree growth and survival over a 40-year time period, we developed the first process-based life cycle inventory of CO2 for a large TPI. CO2 emissions and reductions from storage and avoided emissions from energy savings were simulated for 91,786 trees planted from 2006 to 2010, of which only 30,813 (33.6 %) were estimated to survive. The MTLA program was estimated to release 17,048 and 66,360 t of fossil and biogenic CO2 over the 40-year period, respectively. The total amount emitted (83,408 t) was slightly more than the -77,942 t CO2 that trees were projected to store in their biomass. The MTLA program will be a CO2 sink if projected 40-year-avoided fossil fuel CO2 emissions from energy savings (-101,679 t) and biopower (-1,939 t) are realized. The largest sources of CO2 emissions were mulch decomposition (65.1 %), wood combustion (14.5 %), and irrigation water (9.7 %). Although trees planted by the MTLA program are likely to be a net CO2 sink, there is ample opportunity to reduce emissions. Examples of these opportunities include selecting drought-tolerant trees and utilizing wood residue to generate electricity rather than producing mulch.Life cycle environmental performance of lignocellulosic ethanol produced through different production pathways and having different co-products has rarely been reported in the literature, with most studies focusing on a single pre-treatment and single co-product (electricity). The aim of this paper is to understand the life cycle energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions implications of alternative pretreatment technologies (dilute acid hydrolysis, ammonia fiber expansion and autohydrolysis) and co-products (electricity, pellet, protein and xylitol) through developing a consistent life cycle framework for ethanol production from corn stover. Results show that the choices of pre-treatment technology and co-product(s) can impact ethanol yield, life cycle energy use and GHG emissions. Dilute acid pathways generally exhibit higher ethanol yields (20-25%) and lower net total energy use (15-25%) than the autohydrolysis and ammonia fiber expansion pathways. Similar GHG emissions are found for the pretreatment technologies when producing the same co-product. Xylitol co-production diverts xylose from ethanol production and results in the lowest ethanol yield (200 L per dry t of stover). Compared to producing only electricity as a co-product, the co-production of pellets and xylitol decreases life cycle GHG emissions associated with the ethanol, while protein production increases emissions. The life cycle GHG emissions of blended ethanol fuel (85% denatured ethanol by volume) range from -38.5-37.2 g CO(2)eq/MJ of fuel produced, reducing emissions by 61-141% relative to gasoline. All ethanol pathways result in major reductions of fossil energy use relative to gasoline, at least by 47%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food production significantly contributes to consumption of resources and presents remarkable environmental impacts to be evaluated through a life cycle approach. The present paper aims to present and discuss the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) performed on 13 tomato based products (tomato puree, chopped tomatoes and peeled tomatoes in tomato juice) produced in Italy by a Group representing one of largest agri-food industry European companies. The environmental hotspots of the whole supply chains of the investigated products have been identified and technical and managerial solutions have been defined. Agricultural phase and packaging production resulted to be the life-cycle stages with the highest impact in all the considered categories. The identified improvement options related to packaging subsystem are the reduction of weight and the switch to different packaging materials. Other improvement options can be adopted in the cultivation phase, such as use of organic fertilizers or inorganic fertilizers with lower nitrogen and phosphorus content, crop rotation and use of efficient irrigation systems. The application of LCA methodology to tomato product systems has highlighted some methodological issues that will be taken into account during the CPC 2132 and CPC 2139 Product Category Rules (PCR) development in the framework of the International EPD (R) System. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The lean philosophy focuses on eliminating waste and maximizing productivity through the pull system, employee involvement, continuous improvement, etc. Much has been discussed about the waste elimination and productivity improvement that can be achieved by applying the lean concept. However, as the consideration of the environment is becoming an increasingly important part of the construction culture, there is a need to investigate the applicability of the lean concept to achieve environmental sustainability, which is often used interchangeably with the term "green". This research therefore aims to investigate the contribution of the lean concept to achieve low-carbon installation in precast concrete construction sites through a case study in Singapore. The life cycle assessment (LCA) results show that the lean concept can be adopted to reduce carbon emissions in terms of eliminating waste and inappropriate erection arrangements. In the installation cycle of a specific type of precast concrete column, an amount of 20.9kg carbon emissions (71.0%) is caused by wastes and inappropriate erection arrangements and can be reduced by applying lean principles through a detailed simulation. Many lean management practices in site layout, delivery, stock and erection management are identified in this paper. Based on the results, contractors can start to apply lean principles to improve the installation cycle and eventually achieve low-carbon installation.The gloss coatings of printed products in the packaging industry have become increasingly important through adding some additional properties. These coating materials are commonly made from crude oil. The world-wide scarcity of oil resources generates a need to develop product alternatives based on renewable materials, e.g., cellulosic films. In this paper, a comparative life cycle oriented analysis of two different laminating films is presented: (a) one film type is based on crude oil, viz. polypropylene and (b) one laminating film manufactured from wood. The analysis is focused on the cellulosic film type and aims to give information about the environmental impact of this product alternative in comparison to the polypropylene film. The resource consumption of the main materials is included in the study. Furthermore, the global warming potential, which is one of the best investigated and most reliable impact categories, is calculated. The interpretation of the LCA results was conducted in accordance to a so-called 'multi-level approach' developed by the authors. This approach analyzes the LCA results level-by-level and hence generates a high degree of information in the LCA study. The LCA results show savings in the impact category 'oil consumption' and a higher global warming potential for the cellulosic film than for the polypropylene based one. However, a reversed product ranking is possible considering the uncertainty analysis for this impact category. The manufacturing of the cellulosic film is energy consuming and requires a certain amount of chemicals. Hence, these process types are the main contributors, in addition to the transports. We conclude that the use of renewable material in the cellulosic film type preserves the world-wide oil resources. The benefit of this film type is also apparent in the end-of-life phase: CO2 emissions occurring in the incineration of the glossy cardboard are biogenic for the cellulosic film and fossil for the polypropylene based film. This loop approach is common in LCAs and has a great influence on the comparative LCA in the impact category 'global warming potential' in this study. However, there are no advantages of this product alternative concerning the global warming potential. In further work, the LCA study on the film types will be extended including further impact categories to reach a complete LCA.With the increasing pressures imposed upon industries on the environmental impacts of the manufacturing industry and chemical processes, numerous methodologies have been developed for the quantification, assessment and minimisation of waste and emissions. Meanwhile, methods for the simultaneous maximisation of economic performance within a product life cycle have also been developed. Similarly, various methodologies for screening of process alternatives based on the above factors have also been developed. However, the human lives put at risk in a supply chain constituting a life cycle tend to be overlooked as a factor of assessment, selection and optimisation of the process. Despite having life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies for environmental assessment, no methodology has been developed for the minimisation of work-related casualties due to the unpredictable nature of workplace accidents. To address this problem, this paper develops a multi-objective optimisation model that utilises realistic statistical data for estimating the best possible pathway. The model results in the least potential fatality directly involved within the product life cycle while simultaneously minimising operating costs throughout the entire life cycle. A case study involving the utilisation of palm-based biomass formed for the production of value-added green products in Malaysia is used to demonstrate the model. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The ever increasing worldwide demand for liquid and gaseous fuels along with overwhelming environmental concerns for greenhouse gas emissions have driven scientists and technologists to consider different alternative energy sources. In past decades, several biomass sources have been identified with increasing potential to be used as new alternative sources of energy - the "Biofuels". The evolution of biofuels is classified into four different generations. In this article an overview of the systematic evolution of different biofuel generations with their advantages and disadvantages has been presented. The advancements in technology, reduction in greenhouse gas emission and assessment of commercial production cost of each generation of biofuel have also been highlighted. Finally this review provides an outlook for a better future generation biofuel. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global climate change is one of the most significant environmental impacts at the moment. One central issue for the building and construction industry to address global climate change is the development of credible carbon labelling schemes for building materials. Various carbon labelling schemes have been developed for concrete due to its high contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, as most carbon labelling schemes adopt cradle-to-gate as system boundary, the credibility of the eco-label information may not be satisfactory because recent studies show that the use and end-of-life phases can have a significant impact on the life cycle GHG emissions of concrete in terms of carbonation, maintenance and rehabilitation, other indirect emissions, and recycling activities. A comprehensive review on the life cycle assessment of concrete is presented to holistically examine the importance of use and end-of-life phases to the life cycle GHG quantification of concrete. The recent published 15014067: Carbon footprint of products - requirements and guidelines for quantification and communication also mandates the use of cradle-to-grave to provide publicly available eco-label information when the use and end-of-life phases of concrete can be appropriately simulated. With the support of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and other simulation technologies, the contribution of use and end-of-life phases to the life cycle GHG emissions of concrete should not be overlooked in future studies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The key objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the main environmental life cycle impacts and energy balance of ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from soybean and palm oil, in the Brazilian conditions. The methodological tool used was the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), in Well-To-Tank (WIT) perspective. A process based on cradle-to-gate attribution LCA method, was applied as the technique to assess the health and environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel production systems. The environmental assessment was carried out using the SimaPro 7.0.1 software and the CML 2 baseline 2000 methodology, developed by the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML). The assumed common analysis base in this paper was 1.0 MJ of energy released by combustion of the analyzed biofuels. The environmental impacts were quantified and ranked in categories of impacts: Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP), Global Warming Potential (GWP), Human Toxicity Potential (HTP), Acidification Potential (ACP) and Eutrophication Potential (ETP). In addition, the results were compared by meta-analysis with previous published studies. The Net Energy Relation (NER) in the life cycle of biofuels is an important indicator of the technical and environmental performance evaluation of biofuels production. In this study the NER of ethanol and biodiesel from soybean and palm oil were estimated and compared with previous published studies. Direct and embodied energy inputs, based on defined system boundaries, were used to estimate the energy requirement of crops production, juice/oil extraction, and ethanol/biodiesel industrial production. It is possible to conclude, that biofuel production systems with higher agricultural yields and extensive use of co-products in its life cycle present best environmental results. The analysis of obtained results shows that the choices of co-products allocation method, transport distance and inventory database of the country, have significant influence on the results of the life cycle environmental performance of biofuels. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept Material Input per Service Unit (MIPS) was developed 20 years ago as a measure for the overall natural resource use of products and services. The material intensity analysis is used to calculate the material footprint of any economic activities in production and consumption. Environmental assessment has developed extensive databases for life cycle inventories, which can additionally be adopted for material intensity analysis. Based on practical experience in measuring material footprints on the micro level, this paper presents the current state of research and methodology development: it shows the international discussions on the importance of accounting methodologies to measure progress in resource efficiency. The MIPS approach is presented and its micro level application for assessing value chains, supporting business management, and operationalizing sustainability strategies is discussed. Linkages to output-oriented Life Cycle Assessment as well as to Material Flow Analysis (MFA) at the macro level are pointed out. Finally we come to the conclusion that the MIPS approach provides relevant knowledge on resource and energy input at the micro level for fact-based decision-making in science, policy, business, and consumption.The human population is rising and the availability of terrestrial land and its resources are finite and, perhaps, not sufficient to deliver enough food, energy, materials and space. Thus, it is important to (further) explore and exploit the marine environment which covers no less than 71% of the earth's surface. The marine environment is very complex but can roughty be divided into two systems: natural (e.g. wild fishing) and human-made (e.g. artificial islands). In this study, characterization factors (CF) for natural and human-made marine systems were calculated in order to be able to assess the environmental impact of occupying marine surfaces, which was not possible so far in life cycle assessment. When accounting for natural resources while occupying one of these systems, it is important to consider the primary resources that are actually deprived from nature, which differs between the natural and human-made marine systems. In natural systems, the extracted biomass was accounted for through its exergy content, which is the maximum quantity of work that the system can execute in its environment. Reference flows for marine fish, seaweeds, crustaceans and mollusks were proposed and their correlated CF was calculated. For human-made systems, the deprived land resource is, in fact, the occupied area of the marine surface. Based on potential marine net primary production data (NPP), exergy based spatial and temporal CFs for ocean areal occupation were calculated. This approach was included in the Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment (CEENE) method which makes it the first life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method capable of analyzing the environmental impact (and more specific the resource footprint) of marine areal occupation. Furthermore, the methodology was applied to two case studies: comparing resource consumption of on- and offshore oil production, and fish and soybean meal production for fish feed applications. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The formulation and scale-up of batch processes is one of the major challenges in the development of pharmaceutical dosage forms and at the same time a significant resource demanding process which is generally overlooked in environmental sustainability assessments. First, this paper proposes general trends in the experience curve of cumulative resource consumption of pharmaceutical tablet manufacturing of PREZISTA((R)) 800 mg through wet granulation (WG) at four consecutive scales in both R&D and manufacturing environments (resp. WGI = 1 kg/h, WG5 = 5 kg/h, WG30 = 30 kg/h and WG240 = 240 kg/h). Second, the authors aim at evaluating the environmental impact from a life cycle perspective of a daily consumption of PREZISTN((R)) 2x 400 mg tablets versus the bioequivalent PREZISTA((R)) 800 mg tablet which was launched to enhance patient compliance. Environmental sustainability assessment was conducted at three different system boundaries, which enables identification, localization and eventually reduction of burdens, in this case natural resource extraction. Exergy Analysis (EA) was used at process level (alpha) and plant level (beta) while a cradle-to-gate Exergetic Life CyCle Assessment (ELCA) was conducted at the overall industrial level (gamma) by means of the CEENE method (Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment). Life cycle stages taken into account are Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) production, Drug Product (DP) production and Packaging. At process level (a), the total resource extraction for the manufacturing of one daily dose of PREZISTA((R)) (800 mg tablet) amounted up to 0.44 MJ(ex) at the smallest scale (WG1) while this amount proved to be reduced by 58%, 79% and 83% at WG5, WG30 and WG240 respectively. Expanding the boundaries to the overall industrial level (gamma) reveals that the main resource demand is at the production of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API), excipients, packaging materials and cleaning media used in DP production. At the largest scale (WG240) the use of cleaning media during DP production contributes considerably less to the total resource extraction. Overall, the effect of scale-up and learning on resource consumption during DP production showed to possess a power law experience curve y=2.40* x(-0.57) when shifting from WG1 (smallest lab scale) to WG240 (industrial manufacturing). Tablet dosage (2x 400 mg versus lx 800 mg) did not significantly affect the absolute environmental burden. However, the relative contribution of resource categories did change due to the different production technology. It could be concluded that in meeting social and economic demands by launching the PREZISTA((R)) 800 mg tablet, no trade-off in environmental burden occurred. On the long term, future research should strive to take into account R&D processes and all services related to pipeline activities taking place prior to market launch and eventually to allocate impacts to the final product. 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of two home composts with low and high gaseous emissions of the composting process is presented. The study focused on the gaseous emissions of the composting process. Gaseous emissions of methane, nitrous oxides, ammonia and volatic organic compounds of the composting process were experimentally measured in field real trials. The results showed that the differences in gaseous emissions between the two home composts were 4.5, 5.8 and 52 for methane, nitrous oxides and ammonia, respectively. Higher emissions of nitrous oxides and methane affected significantly the category of global warming potential, while higher emissions of ammonia affected mainly the categories of acidification potential, eutrophication potential and photochemical oxidation. The differences found in the compost emissions were attributable to the composting production management (quality and composition of waste stream, frequency mixing of waste, humidity and temperature monitoring, among others) as well as weather conditions (temperature and humidity). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Using a definition of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) which states that eco-efficiency is achieved by the delivery of goods and services at competitive prices that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life while progressively reducing environmental impacts, it is necessary to analyze what the companies have done to achieve this condition. Thus, the following question arises: do mediumand large-sized companies in the State of Minas Gerais adopt environmental management practices that encourage eco-efficient results? The study is classified as descriptive and bibliographic, and a survey yielded information about environmental management practices from a sample of 32 Brazilian companies located in the city of Belo Horizonte-MG. In accordance with the recommendations in the literature on practices that converge to the eco-efficiency as well as an average level of environmental activity by 50%, it was found that companies that were a part of the sample are using a number of elements that, in the medium term, should indeed take them to a situation in which responsible actions from the social and environmental perspective shall also be reflected in effectual financial results. Additionally, the companies' concern on having a waste management plan (72%) is already an indication that they are converging to eco-efficiency business, since they can add more value while consuming less resources and generating less waste. It should be noted, as a limitation of this study, the number and geographical restriction of the sample, and it is suggested that it be expanded for future researches.A solid-state lighting technology was demonstrated at a US Navy Research Center in Maryland - where light-emitting diode (LED) luminaires were substituted for existing high pressure sodium (HPS) street-lighting units, and an intelligent lighting control system was deployed. This paper summarizes the prudent engineering design and implementation of the demand-sensitive feature of the LED streetlighting system at Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Carderock Division that provides an annual average electricity and CO2 savings of 74%. In addition, technical system performance and life-cycle assessment of the HPS and the new LED systems are discussed. Best practices and field experience that can help with other similar smart lighting implementation elsewhere are also summarized. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water and energy are regionally dependent resources that generate significant environmental impacts. There is a growing body of environmental life-cycle impact data related to energy production and water use, and more cities and states are monitoring local conditions or developing future scenarios to assist in planning. This work presents a model that integrates datasets to calculate annual environmental impacts for a given region under varying future scenarios. The model treats energy and water with the same lifecycle framework and incorporates their interdependencies. Uncertainty and variability are included in results through the use of Monte-Carlo methods. Validation is presented here using greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2010 for the U.S. states of Pennsylvania and Arizona. The REWSS model is publicly available, expandable for new sources or regions, and designed for state-scale questions about changes in impacts from use or removal of specific sources, or the changes in sources necessary to achieve specific changes in impacts. REWSS combines existing data in a novel way to allow the quantitative assessment of policy questions around environmental sustainability. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work evaluates the life cycle environmental impacts of producing microalgal biodiesel via baseline and improved technological routes under several coproduct options and allocation schemes, and compares the results to traditional petroleum diesel. Multiple environmental impact categories, as well as sustainability metrics are utilized to assess the environmental sustainability and viability of emerging microalgal biofuels. Analysis reveals that for baseline scenarios the fossil energy return on investment (EROIfossil) ranges from 0.16 to 0.45, energy return on investment (EROI) from 0.15 to 0.40, and life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (gCO2 eq./MJ-fuel) from 142 to 352-depending on the choice of allocation methodology and coproduct option. For improved scenarios EROIfossil range from 0.50 to 1.87, EROI from 0.39 to 1.18, and life cycle GHG emissions from 35 to 141. Further analysis reveals that microalgal fuels provide benefits in only two out of the ten examined environmental impact categories-relative to petroleum diesel. The results are compelling as they suggest that the choice of production pathway and allocation scheme has a significant impact on algae's energy and environmental performance, and in select cases can alter the net energy balance and GHG reduction potential of microalgal fuel production from negative to positive. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochars have received increasing attention in recent years because of their soil improvement potential, contaminant immobilization properties, and ability to function as carbon sinks. This study adopted a pyrolytic process to prepare a series of biochars from dried human manure at varying temperatures.. The thermal analysis of human manure and physicochemical properties of the resulting biochars illustrated that human manure can be a favorable feedstock for biochar production. In particular, the porous texture and nutrient-rich properties of biochars produced from human manure and may significantly enhance soil fertility when used as used soil additives. A temperature range of 500-600 degrees C was optimal for human manure biochar production. Significantly, when the moisture content of the feedstock is lower than 57%, the system could not only harvest manure-derived biochar but also have a net energy output, which can be provide heat source for nearby users. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to assess the environmental impacts associated with an activity or product life cycle. It has also been applied to assess the environmental performance related to waste management activities. This study analyses the packaging waste management system of a local public authority in Portugal. The operations of selective and refuse collection, sorting, recycling, landfilling and incineration of packaging waste were considered. The packaging waste management system in operation in 2010, which we called "Baseline" scenario, was compared with two hypothetical scenarios where all the packaging waste that was selectively collected in 2010 would undergo the refuse collection system and would be sent directly to incineration (called "Incineration" scenario) or to landfill ("Landfill" scenario). Overall, the results show that the "Baseline" scenario is more environmentally sound than the hypothetical scenarios. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Comparability of life cycle assessment (LCA) results based on different background data has long been debated. This is one of the main issues in building LCAs since buildings are complex products, which require multiple material data for the assessment. The objective of this study was to investigate numerical and methodological differences in existing databases related to building LCAs. The five databases selected were compared in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission values in the material production phase of the three reference buildings, two wooden buildings with different frame types and a precast concrete framed building. The results demonstrated that the databases show similar trends in the assessment results and the same order of magnitude differences between the reference buildings are shown by all the databases. It was also revealed that the numerical differences between the databases are quite large at some points and the differences originate from multiple data elements. The findings indicate the importance of the number of data and a clear statement of the bases of the values for comparative assessment. It would be more realistic to develop a reporting and communication system for LCAs rather than trying to unify the methodologies among the databases. An optimization of open information is significant for further development of LCA databases. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mitigating climate change through operational energy reduction in existing buildings is of highest priority for policy-makers in Europe and elsewhere. At the same time there is increasing understanding of the significance of impacts arising from material production for buildings. The aim of this work has therefore been to evaluate the importance of embodied GWP for refurbishment for operational energy reduction on a stockwide basis. It is further intended to judge the relative significance of embodied GWP for specific refurbishment measures implemented for operational energy reduction. We study the case of operational energy reduction in the Swedish residential building stock by 50% compared to 1995. The total embodied GWP to achieve the noted operational energy reduction is 0.35 Mt CO2-e/year. 83% of this total is due to ventilation and window measures alone. Compared with previous studies assessing GWP mitigation from operational energy reduction, the "GWP payback time" is just over 3 years. Many types of measure that contribute significantly to achieving the above operational energy goal had average embodied GWP between 10 and 20 g CO2-e/kW h operational energy reduction, notably window and ventilation measures. Indoor temperature reduction (to 20 degrees C), was also significant for stockwide operational energy reduction but had a very low GWP of 0.4 g CO2-e/kW h operational energy reduction. If this measure proves unfeasible to implement on a stockwide basis then more expensive measures with higher embodied GWP will be needed to achieve the stated energy reduction goal. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Traditionally, building rating systems focused on, among others, energy used during operational stage. Recently, there is a strong push by these rating systems to include the life cycle energy use of buildings, particularly using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), by offering credits that can be used to achieve higher certification levels. As LCA-based tools are evolving to meet this growing demand, it is important to include methods that also quantify the impact of energy being used by ecosystems that indirectly contribute to building life cycle energy use. Using a case-study building, this paper provides an up-to-date comparison of energy-based indicators in tools for building assessment, including those that report both conventional life cycle energy and those that also include a wider systems boundary that captures energy use even further upstream. This paper applies two existing LCA tools, namely, an economic input output based model, Economic Input Output LCA, and a process-based model, ATHENA (R) Impact Estimator, to estimate life cycle energy use in an example building. In order to extend the assessment to address energy use further upstream, this paper also tests the Ecologically based LCA tool and an application of the emergy methodology. All of these tools are applied to the full service life of the building, i.e., all stages, namely, raw material formation, product, construction, use, and end-of-life; and their results are compared. Besides contrasting the use of energy-based indicators in building life cycle tools, this paper uncovered major challenges that confront stakeholders in evaluating the built environments using LCA and similar approaches. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.By extensively reviewing the current state of knowledge, this paper explores the sustainability implications of palm oil biodiesel in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Both ecological and environmental vitality as well as socio-economic equity are emphasized in the authors' exploration of sustainability in the three country cases. The article observes that the main environmental sustainability considerations of palm oil biodiesel include its capacity to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, its carbon debt and its repercussions on forestry, biodiversity, and soil and water quality. Issues surrounding socio-economic sustainability encompass how palm oil biodiesel affects food security in Southeast Asia, along with the impact of palm oil production on rural livelihoods and land-tenure. The authors firstly explore the origins, drivers and current technologies surrounding palm oil biodiesel development in the region. They then present the three country cases in order to concentrate on the particular policies, challenges and opportunities that uniquely impact the sustainability of biodiesel development in each locale. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Shale gas revolution that took place in the United States at the beginning of the 21st century has still been shaping our global fossil fuel market. In 2012, the U.S. has surpassed Russia in natural gas production for the first time since 1982. At the same year, annual average U.S. Henry hub natural gas spot price decreased to $2.75 per million BTU, which was $8.69 per million BTU in 2005. In 2013, proved shale gas reserves of the world is estimated at nearly 2.7 trillion cubic metres (tcm) and unproved resources at staggering 203.9 tcm. As a result, there is a global rush to develop most of this resource as possible. However, shale gas is no miracle fuel. It has been suggested that its effects on the environment could be worse than conventional natural gas. Fugitive methane emissions, groundwater pollution, and increased seismicity are amongst the most important potential environmental side effects. There is also concern about the accuracy of resource potential estimations due to lack of data and specifically designed shale gas reservoir models. Nonetheless, the analysis in this study clearly showed that without developing global shale gas resources we have to consume 66% of our proved natural gas reserves to supply the demand till 2040. This would make most of the world natural gas importers, and rules of economy dictate that limited supply and increasing demand would skyrocket natural gas prices. Therefore, shale gas resource development is not an option but a must for the continuance of our global energy market and economy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential of algal biomass as a source of liquid and gaseous biofuels is a highly topical theme, The process operations for algal biofuel production can be grouped into three areas: growth, harvesting and energy extraction, with a wide range of combinations of unit operations that can form a microalgal biofuel production system, but as yet there is no successful economically viable commercial system producing biofuel. This suggests that there are major technical and engineering difficulties to be resolved before economic algal biofuel production can be achieved. This article briefly reviews the methods by which useful energy may be extracted from microalgae biomass: (a) direct combustion, (b) pyrolysis, (c) gasification, (d) liquefaction, (e) hydrogen production by biochemical processes in certain algae, (f) fuel cells, (g) fermentation to bioethanol, (h) trans-esterification to biodiesel, (i) anaerobic digestion.In order to find efficient trade measures to reduce China's energy consumption and to provide theoretical support for the climate talks between China and America, we investigate the impact of Sino-USA trade on energy consumption from the perspective of embodied energy. An Environmental Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) model was established to calculate the total energy consumption coefficient, the direct consumption coefficient and the complete consumption coefficient of the sectors of the national economies of China and America. After taking into consideration the data of every sector of the national economy in Sino-USA trade, energy embodied in the import and export trade between China and America was calculated to verify the real energy flows in Sino-USA trade. The research results suggest the following: China is the net exporter of embodied energy in Sino-USA trade, and coal, crude oil and natural gas are the major components. In 1997-2011, the net exports of China's embodied energy totaled 1523,082,200 t of standard coal, the amount of China's energy consumption increased by 895,527,900 t of standard coal, and America's energy consumption decreased by 11,871,200 t of standard coal as a result of Sino-USA trade. On this basis, corresponding policies and recommendations are proposed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the carbon footprint of renewable diesel (RD) production from palm oil, jatropha oil and rapeseed oil. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use change (LUC), feedstock cultivation processes, and RD production and delivery are studied from a life-cycle assessment perspective. The goal of the paper is to calculate the carbon footprint of RD and recommend ways of decreasing it. Our findings indicate that the key contributors to the carbon footprint of RD are found in the GHG emissions of LUC, feedstock cultivation and oil extraction processes. In the case of palm oil, methane collection from palm oil mill effluent (POME) is one of the main contributors to the carbon footprint. Our calculations demonstrate that the RD production and distribution stages generate relatively low GHG emissions compared to the other life-cycle stages; therefore, attention should be focused on the contributing role of LUC and cultivation processes to the RD carbon footprint. If cultivation requires a land use conversion from forest to cultivated land, the resultant GHG emissions exceed emission levels from fossil fuels. If feedstock cultivation is done with no LUC or if grasslands are the feedstock cultivation site, then cultivation GHG emission reductions are achieved. In some cases, RD production may even act as a sink for GHGs. Due to its quality RD can be used without blend-wall limitations in vehicles; therefore, it offers a higher biofuel potential for the diesel sector than does traditional biodiesel. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for RD in light of GHG emission reductions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bio-energy systems based on dedicated crops depend on efficient and economic feedstock production as a pre-requisite for sustainable development. In this study, 15 annual and perennial species suited for temperate or tropical areas were assessed in terms of energy and financial balance: oil and coconut palm, jatropha, castor bean, sunflower and rapeseed (biodiesel); sugar cane, maize and wheat (1st generation ethanol); poplar, cardoon, giant reed, miscanthus, switchgrass and fibre sorghum (heat and power, or 2nd generation ethanol). Net energy and energy efficiency as respective difference and ratio between produced and consumed energy, and net profit (revenues minus costs) were appraised under temperate or tropical conditions, depending on crop species. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was run to rate the use of oil and grain crop residues as additional energy sources. Net energy, energy efficiency and net profit exhibited a wide range ranged between 22 and 340 GJ ha(-1), 2.2 and 21.1 GJ GJ(-1), 38 and 415 (sic) ha(-1), respectively. Energy sector (biodiesel < 1st generation ethanol < biomass crops) and plant habit (annual < perennial species) were the two main drivers of these large differences. The complementary use of crop residues enhanced net energy (+202%) and energy efficiency (+71%), whereas net profit decreased, as average (-24%), because of higher costs (residue recovery and additional fertilizer doses) than financial returns. It is concluded that accurate evaluation of energy and economic trade-off should be the driver of crop choice and management in energy initiatives involving dedicated crop cultivation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electricity supply is frequently cited as a significant hot spot in life cycle assessment (LCA) results. Despite its importance, however, LCA research continues to overuse simplified methodologies regarding electricity supply modeling. This work aims to demonstrate the usefulness of electricity trade analysis (proposed model) for integrating the short-term dynamics of electricity supply and refining LCA results. Distributed generation using renewable energy is applied as a case study to demonstrate how electricity trade analysis provides more refined estimates when environmental impact abatements are assessed compared with the conventional (simplified) approaches in LCA. Grid-connected photovoltaic panel (3 kWp mono- and poly-crystalline) and micro-wind turbine (1, 10 and 30 kW) environmental impact abatements are investigated by determining the displaced marginal electricity production on an hourly basis. The results indicate that environmental impact abatements calculated using the developed short-term time horizon approach can be significantly different (up to 200% difference) from those obtained using a simplified approach. Recommendations are provided to LCA practitioners to address this issue of differing results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this work was to present the common anaerobic digestion technologies in a typical farm-scale biogas plant in China. The comprehensive benefits of most biogas plants in China have not been fully assessed in past decades due to the limited information of the anaerobic digestion processes in biogas plants. This paper analyzed four key aspects (i.e., operational performance, nonrenewable energy (NE) savings, CO2 emission reduction (CER) and economic benefits (EBs)) of a typical farm-scale biogas plant, where beef cattle manure was used as feedstock. Owing to the monitoring system, stable operation was achieved with a hydraulic retention time of 18-22 days and a production of 876,000 m(3) of biogas and 37,960 t of digestate fertilizer annually. This could substantially substitute for the nonrenewable energy and chemical fertilizer. The total amount of NE savings and CER derived from biogas and digestate fertilizer was 2.10x10(7) MJ (equivalent to 749.7 tce) and 9.71x10(5) kg, respectively. The EBs of the biogas plant was 6.84x10(5) CNY center dot yr(-1) with an outputs-to-inputs ratio of 2.37. As a result, the monitoring system was proved to contribute significantly to the sound management and quantitative assessment of the biogas plant. Biogas plants could produce biogas which could be used to substitute fossil fuels and reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, and digestate fertilizer is also an important bio-product.Forest harvest residues, which include limbs, branches, and tree tops, have the potential to generate energy. This paper uses a life-cycle assessment to determine the energy input-to-output ratios for each unit operation in the use of these residues for power generation. Two preparation options for obtaining the biomass were evaluated. For Option 1, the forest residues were chipped at the landing, while for Option 2 they were bundled and chipped at the power plant. Energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were found for power plants sizes ranging from 10 to 300 MW. For power plants with capacities greater than 30 MW, the transportation of either bundles or woodchips to the power plant used the most energy, especially at larger power plant sizes. Option 1 used less energy than Option 2 for all power plant sizes, with the difference between the two becoming smaller for larger power plants. For the life-cycle GHG emissions, Option 1 ranges from 14.71 to 19.51 g-CO(2)eq/kW h depending on the power plant size. Option 2 ranges from 21.42 to 20.90 g-CO(2)eq/kW h. The results are not linear and are close to equal at larger power plant sizes. The GHG emissions increase with increasing moisture content. For a 300 MW power plant with chipping at the landing, the GHG emissions range from 11.17 to 22.24 g-CO(2)eq/kW h for moisture contents from 15% to 50%. The sensitivity analysis showed both energy use and GHG emissions are most sensitive to moisture content and then plant lifetime. For the equipment, both the energy use and GHG emissions are most sensitive to changes in the fuel consumption and load capacity of the chip van and the log-haul truck used to transport either bundles or wood chips to the power plant. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Attributional LCA, which monitors specific production systems in steady state conditions, is increasingly used in fisheries to assess the environmental profile of fleets and seafood supply chains. However, this approach is not pertinent to assess the environmental consequences of (large scale) policies. In contrast, consequential LCA (CLCA) has been successfully implemented in other sectors to assess the expected changes in environmental impacts of a given production system and other (marginal) production systems that may be affected in response to changes driven by policy or strategic decisions. CLCA commonly combines LCA with economic models to simulate the interactions occurring between the analysed systems. However, the use of these models may not be the most appropriate approach to follow for fisheries. Hence, it seems feasible that CLCA should be combined with stock prediction tools rather than with economic models, to determine how changes in stock sizes and quota restrictions may cause variations in the environmental impact of fishing fleets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The research focus of resource consumption and emissions from urban water services has, by and large, been restricted to what comes under the domain of the urban water utilities - the upstream sub-systems of water treatment and supply and the downstream sub-systems of wastewater collection, treatment and disposal. However, the material and energy flows necessitated by activities in the water demand sub-system (households, for instance) are by no means negligible. This paper studies the per-capita material and energy requirements, and the related emissions and life cycle environmental impacts, associated with water consumption in households of the city of Oslo for the year 2009. For example, the per-capita energy consumption in the household consumption phase, at 1.38MWh per year, is eight times more than the corresponding consumption for the entire water-wastewater utility. All findings, taken together, clearly demonstrate the imperativeness of paying more attention to the demand-side management issues.A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of biofuel production from corn stover fast pyrolysis and subsequent hydrotreating and hydrocracking was conducted based on the Greenhouse gases Regulated Emissions and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model. Three different cases were investigated as a result of different hydrogen treatment in bio-oil upgrading process. Environmental impacts such as non-renewable energy demand and Global Warming Potential (GWP) were primarily evaluated for 1 MJ biofuel produced. All the results showed obvious environmental benefits compared with conventional gasoline and diesel based on the year of 2010. The results of Case 1 in which hydrogen was provided by external natural gas reforming displayed a reduction of 67.5% in net non-renewable energy demand and a reduction of 69.1% in net GWP in contrast to conventional gasoline and diesel. Net non-renewable energy demand was lowered by 76.6% and net GWP was reduced by 73.0% in Case 2 where 35% of bio-oil aqueous phase was consumed by steam reforming for hydrogen production. Case 3 gained an obvious advantage on both environmental aspects over the others, in which surplus hydrogen from steam reforming of whole aqueous phase of bio-oil was obtained as a coproduct. The results displayed a significant net non-renewable energy reduction of 147.5% and a net GWP reduction of 119.4%. However, the outcomes indicated decreasing biofuel yields from Case 1 to Case 3 compared with increasing environmental benefits. The biofuel yields of three cases were 31.2%, 23.7% and 11.5% respectively in this work. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current building assessment methods limit themselves in their environmental impact by failing to consider the other two aspects of sustainability: the economic and the social. They tend to be complex and costly to run, and therefore are of limited value in comparing design options. This paper proposes and develops a model for the automatic assessment of a building's sustainability life cycle with the building information modelling (BIM) approach and its enabling technologies. A 6D CAD model is developed which could be used as a design aid instead of as a post-construction evaluation tool. 6D CAD includes 3D design as well as a fourth dimension (schedule), a fifth dimension (cost) and a sixth dimension (sustainability). The model can automatically derive quantities (5D), calculate economic (5D and 6D), environmental and social impacts (6D), and evaluate the sustainability performance of alternative design options. The sustainability assessment covers the life cycle stages of a building, namely material production, construction, operation, maintenance, demolition and disposal.Between 1989 and 2011 the aviation traffic has been growing 4.6% per year. The increase on aviation traffic had consequences in terms of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and local pollutant emissions (e.g. carbon monoxide - CO, hydrocarbons - HC, nitrogen oxides - NOx). In order to minimize this problem, the evaluation of sustainable alternatives to current fuel (jet fuel A) has been discussed but their impact on emissions is still unclear. The main research goals of this paper are: (i) to evaluate if the well-to-wake energy consumption in aviation can be reduced with alternative fuels as liquid natural gas (LNG) and/or liquid hydrogen (LH2) and (ii) to assess if alternative fuels can be used in aviation to minimize carbon dioxide emissions and local pollutants. In this analysis two types of flights were evaluated: short flights (<5000 km) and long flights (>5000 km) for six typical aircrafts. We verified that LH2 from SMR can provide between 13% and 21% less environmental and social impacts than jet fuel A, in the same aircraft. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Resource recovery from sewage sludge has the potential to save natural resources, but the potential risks connected to human exposure to heavy metals, organic micropollutants, and pathogenic microorganisms attract stake-holder concern. The purpose of the presented study was to include pathogen risks to human health in life cycle assessment (LCA) of wastewater and sludge management systems, as this is commonly omitted from LCAs due to methodological limitations. Part 1 of this article series estimated the overall pathogen risk for such a system with agricultural use of the sludge, in a way that enables the results to be integrated in LCA. This article (part 2) presents a full LCA for two model systems (with agricultural utilization or incineration of sludge) to reveal the relative importance of pathogen risk in relation to other potential impacts on human health. The study showed that, for both model systems, pathogen risk can constitute an important part (in this study up to 20%) of the total life cycle impacts on human health (expressed in disability adjusted life years) which include other important impacts such as human toxicity potential, global warming potential, and photochemical oxidant formation potential.This paper presents the inclusion of new, relevant impact categories for agriculture life cycle assessments. We performed a specific case study with a focus on the applicability of spatially explicit characterization factors. The main goals were to provide a detailed evaluation of these new impact category methods, compare the results with commonly used methods (ReCiPe and USEtox) and demonstrate how these new methods can help improve environmental assessment in agriculture. As an overall conclusion, the newly developed impact categories helped fill the most important gaps related to land use, water consumption, pesticide toxicity, and nontoxic emissions linked to fertilizer use. We also found that including biodiversity damage due to land use and the effect of water consumption on wetlands represented a scientific advance toward more realistic environmental assessment of agricultural practices. Likewise, the dynamic crop model for assessing human toxicity from pesticide residue in food can lead to better practice in pesticide application. In further life cycle assessment (LCA) method developments, common end point units and normalization units should be agreed upon to make it possible to compare different impacts and methods. In addition, the application of site-specific characterization factors allowed us to be more accurate regarding inventory data and to identify precisely where background flows acquire high relevance.Although natural resources form the basis of our economy, they are not always used in a sustainable way. To achieve a more sustainable economic growth, resource consumption needs to be measured. Therefore, resource footprint frameworks (RFF) are being developed. To easily provide results, these RFF integrate inventory methodologies, at macrolevel mostly input-output (IO) models, with resource accounting methodologies, of which the Ecological Footprint is probably the best known one. The objective of this work is the development of a new RFF, in which a world IO-model (Exiobase), providing a global perspective, is integrated with the CEENE methodology (Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment), offering a more complete resource range: fossil fuels, metals, minerals, nuclear resources, water resources, land resources, abiotic renewable resources, and atmospheric resources. This RFF, called IO-CEENE, allows one to calculate resource footprints for products or services consumed in different countries as the exergy extracted from nature. The way the framework is constructed makes it possible to show which resources and countries contribute to the total footprint. This was illustrated by a case study, presenting the benefits of the framework's worldwide perspective. Additionally, a software file is provided to easily calculate results.Thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technologies have improved significantly recently, and similar improvements are projected into the future, warranting reevaluation of the environmental implications of PV to update and inform policy decisions. By conducting a hybrid life cycle assessment using the most recent manufacturing data and technology roadmaps, we compare present and projected environmental, human health, and natural resource implications of electricity generated from two common thin-film PV technologies-copper indium gallium selenide (GIGS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe)-in the United States (U.S.) to those of the current U.S. electricity mix. We evaluate how the impacts of thin films can be reduced by likely cost-reducing technological changes: (1) module efficiency increases, (2) module dematerialization, (3) changes in upstream energy and materials production, and (4) end-of-life recycling of balance of system (BOS). Results show comparable environmental and resource impacts for CdTe and GIGS. Compared to the U.S. electricity mix in 2010, both perform at least 90% better in 7 of 12 and at least 50% better in 3 of 12 impact categories, with comparable land use, and increased metal depletion unless BOS recycling is ensured. Technological changes, particularly efficiency increases, contribute to 35-80% reductions in all impacts by 2030.The environmental performance of wastewater and sewage sludge management is commonly assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA), whereas pathogen risk is evaluated with quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA). This study explored the application of QMRA methodology with intent to include pathogen risk in LCA and facilitate a comparison with other potential impacts on human health considered in LCA. Pathogen risk was estimated for a model wastewater treatment system (WWTS) located in an industrialized country and consisting of primary, secondary, and tertiary wastewater treatment, anaerobic sludge digestion, and land application of sewage sludge. The estimation was based on eight previous QMRA studies as well as parameter values taken from the literature. A total pathogen risk (expressed as burden of disease) on the order of 0.2-9 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) per year of operation was estimated for the model WWTS serving 28 600 persons and for the pathogens and exposure pathways included in this study. The comparison of pathogen risk with other potential impacts on human health considered in LCA is detailed in part 2 of this article series.Stricter emissions requirements on coal-fired power plants together with low natural gas prices have contributed to a recent decline in the use of coal for electricity generation in the United States. Faced with a shrinking domestic market, many coal companies are taking advantage of a growing coal export market. As a result, U.S. coal exports hit an all-time high in 2012, fueled largely by demand in Asia. This paper presents a comparative life cycle assessment of two scenarios: a baseline scenario in which coal continues to be burned domestically for power generation, and an export scenario in which coal is exported to Asia. For the coal export scenario we focus on the Morrow Pacific export project being planned in Oregon by Ambre Energy that would ship 8.8 million tons of Powder River Basin (PRB) coal annually to Asian markets via rail, river barge, and ocean vessel. Air emissions (SOx, NOx, PM10, and CO(2)e) results assuming that the exported coal is burned for electricity generation in South Korea are compared to those of a business as usual case in which Oregon and Washington's coal plants, Boardman and Centralia, are retrofitted to comply with EPA emissions standards and continue their coal consumption. Findings show that although the environmental impacts of shipping PRB coal to Asia are significant, the combination of superior energy efficiency among newer South Korean coal-fired power plants and lower emissions from U.S. replacement of coal with natural gas could lead to a greenhouse gas reduction of 21% in the case that imported PRB coal replaces other coal sources in this Asian country. If instead PRB coal were to replace natural gas or nuclear generation in South Korea, greenhouse gas emissions per unit of electricity generated would increase. Results are similar for other air emissions such as SOx, NOx and PM. This study provides a framework for comparing energy export scenarios and highlights the importance of complete life cycle assessment in determining net emissions effects resulting from energy export projects and related policy decisions.The supernatant resulting from the anaerobic digestion of sludge generated by wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) is an attractive flow for technologies such as partial nitritation-anammox (CANON), nitrite shortcut (NSC) and struvite crystallization processes (SCP). The high concentration of N and P and its low flow rate facilitate the removal of nutrients under more favorable conditions than in the main water line. Despite their operational and economic benefits, the environmental burdens of these technologies also need to be assessed to prove their feasibility under a more holistic perspective. The potential environmental implications of these technologies were assessed using life cycle assessment, first at pilot plant scale, later integrating them in a modeled full WWTP. Pilot plant results reported a much lower environmental impact for N removal technologies than SCP. Full-scale modeling, however, highlighted that the differences between technologies were not relevant once they are integrated in a WWTP. The impacts associated with the WWTP are slightly reduced in all categories except for eutrophication, where a substantial reduction was achieved using NSC, SCP, and especially when CANON and SCP were combined. This study emphasizes the need for assessing wastewater treatment technologies as part of a WWTP rather than as individual processes and the utility of modeling tools for doing so. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agricultural systems is important in order to assess the impact of agriculture on climate change. In this study experimental data supplemented with results from a biophysical model (DNDC) were combined with life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the impact of management strategies on global warming potential of long-term cropping systems at two locations (Breton and Ellerslie) in Alberta, Canada. The aim was to estimate the difference in global warming potential (GWP) of cropping systems due to N fertilizer reduction and residue removal. Reducing the nitrogen fertilizer rate from 75 to 50 kg N ha(-1) decreased on average the emissions of N2O by 39%, NO by 59% and ammonia volatilisation by 57%. No clear trend for soil CO2 emissions was determined among cropping systems. When evaluated on a per hectare basis, cropping systems with residue removal required 6% more energy and had a little change in GWP. Conversely, when evaluated on the basis of gigajoules of harvestable biomass, residue removal resulted in 28% less energy requirement and 33% lower GWP. Reducing nitrogen fertilizer rate resulted in 18% less GWP on average for both functional units at Breton and 39% less GWP at Ellerslie. Nitrous oxide emissions contributed on average 67% to the overall GWP per ha. This study demonstrated that small changes in N fertilizer have a minimal impact on the productivity of the cropping systems but can still have a substantial environmental impact. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The desalination industry has been growing progressively in the last few decades. A large number of new plants are contracted every year. Strategic decisions related to plant locations and capacity, the selection of the desalination technology, and many other technical decisions related to the plant design and operation are very critical to these strategic investments. Viewing the desalination industry network as a supply chain provides a holistic view allowing decision makers to perform optimization of water desalination operations end to end. The methodology we propose provides the decision makers with (1) a set of investment alternatives comprising combinations of the different desalination locations, capacities, technologies, and energy sources, and (2) a decision graph showing the performance of each decision alternative in terms of quantitative and qualitative performance metrics chosen by the decision maker. The case study of Saudi Arabia, the world leader in desalination, shows how the methodology can present strategic planners with an optimal configuration of the desalination supply chain. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The potential environmental and human health impacts of artisanal mining of electronic waste through open incineration were investigated. A market-representative set of cellphones was dismantled into four component categories-batteries, circuit boards, plastics and screens. The components were shredded, sieved and incinerated at 743-818 degrees C. The concentrations of 17 metals were determined using U.S. EPA methods 6010C (inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry; 6020A (inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry, or 7471B and 7470A (cold-vapor atomic absorption). EPA Method 8270 (gas chromatography/mass spectrometry) was used to identify polyaromatic hydrocarbon compounds and polybrominated diphenyl ethers. EPA Method 8082A was used to measure polychlorinated biphenyls and EPA Method 8290 was used for dioxin/furans in the residue ash. The life cycle assessment model USEtox (R) was used to estimate impacts of the ash residue chemicals on human health and the ecosystem. Among metals, copper in printed circuit boards had the highest ecotoxicity impact (1610-1930 PAF m(3)/kg); Beryllium in plastics had the highest impact on producing non-cancer diseases (0.14-0.44 cases/kg of ash); and Nickel had the largest impact on producing cancers (0.093-0.35 cases/kg of ash). Among organic chemicals, dioxins from incinerated batteries produced the largest ecotoxicological impact (1.07E - 04 to 3.64E - 04 PAF m(3)/kg). Furans in incinerated batteries can generate the largest number of cancers and non-cancer diseases, representing 8.12E - 09 to 2.28E - 08 and 8.96E - 10 and 2.52E - 09 cases/kg of ash, respectively. The results reveal hazards of burning discarded cellphones to recover precious metals, and pinpoints opportunities for manufacturers to reduce toxic materials used in specific electronic components marketed globally. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, the role of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of products and processes has increased in importance, since it is the best technique to quantify environmental impacts associated with a process or product. The study was carried out in an olive grove located in Central Italy with "Leccino" cultivar. The olive grove was established in year 2000 with a planting distance of 5.5 x 5.5 m, trained to the vase system, under dry conditions. The same methodology used for forestry trees ("model tree") was adopted to estimate the biomass and the respective carbon stock of the below-ground and above-ground parts of the olive tree as well as quantification of the non-permanent components periodically removed, i.e. fruits and prunings. The environmental impacts associated with management processes were evaluated according to LCA standards (UNI EN ISO 14040 and 14044). In relation to the impact on climate change, the CO2 sources and sinks were calculated in order to obtain the net carbon stock of the olive grove. These data were confirmed by experimental measurement of the tree biomass in three representative olive trees. The treatments and processes that had the greatest impact were identified and the individual phases and materials were then analysed in order to propose possible actions for reducing emissions throughout the entire olive grove life cycle. Removals and emissions were compared on a time scale, in order to identify the break-even point. The results allow to assess the carbon footprint of an olive grove, at different stages of its life cycle, as a support tool for creating a sustainable production chain in the olive sector. The paper proposes a methodological approach that can be adopted also in other olive groves with different horticultural management models. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The contribution of marine fisheries in Visakhapatnam at all stages of its life cycle to climate change during 2010-2012 was studied by determining its carbon footprint. Pre-harvest phase consisted of vessel construction and maintenance and provision of fishing gear; harvest phase included harvest from mechanized and motorized craft and post-harvest phase involved fish transportation and fish processing. The functional unit selected was 1 kg of marine fish to the consumer. Fuel and electricity consumption was 0.48 1/kg and 0.255 kWh/kg of fish. The C and CO2 emitted were 0.382 kg C/kg and 1.404 kg CO2/kg of fish. The highest consumption of energy and the highest emissions of CO2 were observed from the harvest phase. The fuel and electricity consumption and C and CO2 emissions were high for mechanized landings and low for motorized landings. Reduction in energy consumption and subsequent emissions is possible in mechanized craft by increasing the fuel efficiency of marine diesel engines, controlling craft speed, using large propeller with lower revolutions and reducing the craft drag.Recent technological advances in the recovery of unconventional natural gas, particularly shale gas, have served to dramatically increase domestic production and reserve estimates for the United States and internationally. This trend has led to lowered prices and increased scrutiny on production practices. Questions have been raised as to how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the life cycle of shale gas production and use compares with that of conventionally produced natural gas or other fuel sources such as coal. Recent literature has come to different conclusions on this point, largely due to differing assumptions, comparison baselines, and system boundaries. Through a meta-analytical procedure we call harmonization, we develop robust, analytically consistent, and updated comparisons of estimates of life cycle GHG emissions for electricity produced from shale gas, conventionally produced natural gas, and coal. On a per-unit electrical output basis, harmonization reveals that median estimates of GHG emissions from shale gas-generated electricity are similar to those for conventional natural gas, with both approximately half that of the central tendency of coal. Sensitivity analysis on the harmonized estimates indicates that assumptions regarding liquids unloading and estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) of wells have the greatest influence on life cycle GHG emissions, whereby shale gas life cycle GHG emissions could approach the range of best-performing coal-fired generation under certain scenarios. Despite clarification of published estimates through harmonization, these initial assessments should be confirmed through methane emissions measurements at components and in the atmosphere and through better characterization of EUR and practices.Advances in technologies for extracting oil and gas from shale formations have dramatically increased U.S. production of natural gas. As production expands domestically and abroad, natural gas prices will be lower than without shale gas. Lower prices have two main effects: increasing overall energy consumption, and encouraging substitution away from sources such as coal, nuclear, renewables, and electricity. We examine the evidence and analyze modeling projections to understand how these two dynamics affect greenhouse gas emissions. Most evidence indicates that natural gas as a substitute for coal in electricity production, gasoline in transport, and electricity in buildings decreases greenhouse gases, although as an electricity substitute this depends on the electricity mix displaced. Modeling suggests that absent substantial policy changes, increased natural gas production slightly increases overall energy use, more substantially encourages fuel-switching, and that the combined effect slightly alters economy wide GHG emissions; whether the net effect is a slight decrease or increase depends on modeling assumptions including upstream methane emissions. Our main conclusions are that natural gas can help reduce GHG emissions, but in the absence of targeted climate policy measures, it will not substantially change the course of global GHG concentrations. Abundant natural gas can, however, help reduce the costs of achieving GHG reduction goals.Ground transportation infrastructures, particularly road infrastructure, are essential for economic and social development. The quality level that the user perceives is mainly determined by the pavement condition. More than 400 billion dollars are invested globally each year in pavement construction and maintenance; these tasks increase by 10% the environmental impact generated by vehicle operation. Therefore, a sustainable approach should be incorporated in the assessment of preservation alternatives that consider technical, economic, environmental, political and institutional aspects in an integrated manner over their life-cycle. The purpose of the present research is to examine the models and practices for the economic and environmental evaluation of pavement assets, in order to analyze the advantages and limitations of the current state of the practice and identify the opportunities to improve their sustainable management. One of the main limitations identified is the lack of models that consider the economic and environmental aspects integrally. A need for models which consider the impact on users in work zones, as well as the use of new technologies and recycled materials that are more respectful of the environment, has been detected.Cellulose-calcium silicate (CCS) nanocomposites were fabricated through an environment-friendly process from waste wood, glass, and clam shells. Effect of heat-treatment on synthesis of CCS nanocomposites was investigated in terms of the precursor ratio and firing temperature. The optimization of cellulose, silicon, and calcium ratio resulted in the low temperature synthesis and also reducing input energy and the production of toxic by-products. The synthesized CCS nanocomposites were examined for its versatility, especially regarding its ability to replace plastics. The resulting biodegradable material has the potential for use in a variety of applications, including reducing CO2 emissions.Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) can be synthesized from renewable bio-derived monomers and, as such, it is an alternative to conventional petroleum-based polymers. Since PLA is a relatively new polymer, much effort has been directed toward its development in order to make it an acceptable and effective option to the more traditional petroleum-based polymers. Commercially, PLA has received considerable attention in food packaging applications with a focus on films and coatings that are suitable for short shelf life and ready-to-eat food products. The potential for PLA to be used in active packaging has also been recognized by a number of researchers. This review focuses on the use of PLA in antimicrobial systems for food packaging applications and explores the engineering characteristics and antimicrobial activity of PLA films incorporated and/or coated with antimicrobial agents.Butanol production from renewable resources has been increasingly investigated over the past decade, mostly for its use as a liquid biofuel for road transportation, since its energy density is higher than that of ethanol and it may be used in gasoline driven engines with practically no changes, but also for use as a feedstock in the chemical industry. Most of the research concerning butanol production focuses on the ABE process (fermentation of sugars into a mixture of acetone, butanol and ethanol), which has several drawbacks regarding microorganism performance and product inhibition. An alternative to ABE fermentation, ethanol catalytic conversion to butanol can produce a higher quality product with less retrofitting than ABE in existing ethanol producing facilities. There are different types of catalysts for the chemical conversion of ethanol to butanol being developed in laboratory scale, but their actual use in a sugarcane processing plant has never before been assessed. Butanol production from ethanol in a sugarcane biorefinexy, using data from the literature, was assessed in this study; different technological alternatives (catalytic routes) were evaluated through computer simulation in Aspen Plus (including production of electricity, sugar, ethanol and other products) and economic and environmental impacts were assessed. Results indicate that vapor-phase catalysis presents higher potential for industrial implementation, and commercialization of butanol for use as a chemical feedstock has an economic performance similar to that of current, optimized first generation sugarcane distilleries, but can potentially contribute to cost reduction that will allow commercialization of butanol as a fuel in the future. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work is focused on the use of biomass waste to feed already existing coal combustion plants as a part of paving the way toward the reduction of the environmental impact. The biomass waste supply chain optimization is critical to conceive long-term viable projects and deal with the biomass heterogeneous nature and drawbacks to be used with coal, i.e. principally high moisture content and low bulk density. This paper studies biomass transportation, storage and change of properties (moisture content and hence dry matter, energy density and bulk density) through the use of different pre-treatments: (i) torrefaction, (ii) torrefaction combined with pelletization, (iii) pelletization, (iv) fast pyrolysis and (v) fast pyrolysis combined with char grinding, which produce a range of very different pre-treated biomass. The optimization problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear program (MILP) that evaluates the net present value and the environmental impact through a life cycle assessment (LCA). The results propose location-allocation decision together with the selection/capacity of pre-treatment technologies for each scenario. The scenarios contemplate different biomass characteristics, availability and distribution for a supply chain case study located in Spain: forest and agricultural woody residues used to replace at least 10% of the total thermal inlet power provided by coal in the existing network of thermal plants. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide capture and storage has been presented as a necessary component of energy plans, because it is presumed to deliver significant environmental benefits. In this study, we systematically evaluate the environmental impact of electricity generated by natural gas and coal power plants with selected CO2 capture technologies with and without CO2 storage. To examine uncertainties that could arise from the provided environmental impacts of the applied methodology of life cycle assessment, we perform sensitivity analyses of important parameters over a large range of values. In addition, a sensitivity analysis of the thermodynamic efficiencies allows evaluation of power plants with different thermodynamic performances. We find that, in plants using either natural gas or coal, post-combustion capture results in a higher environmental impact per MWh than that of business-as-usual (i.e., no CO2 capture). Furthermore, chemical looping combustion only marginally decreases the environmental impact of electricity generation in natural gas plants, while in coal plants it can decrease the impact by up to 17%. In addition, CO2 transportation and storage result in a net negative environmental impact, making an improvement in comparison to the business-as-usual environmental footprint of a plant more difficult. Overall, the most decisive factor affecting the environmental impact of electricity is the energy penalty associated with CO2 capture; because of this factor, CO2 capture and storage does not necessarily result in a reduction of the overall environmental impact.This paper analyzes the high relevance of material selection for the sustainable development of an LED weatherproof light fitting. The research reveals how this choice modifies current and future end of life scenarios and can reduce the overall environmental impact. This life cycle assessment has been carried out with Ecotool, a software program especially developed for designers to assess the environmental performance of their designs at the same time that they are working on them. Results show that special attention can be put on the recycling and reusing of the product from the initial stages of development.Since the construction sector uses 50% of the Earth. s raw materials and produces 50% of its waste, the development of more durable and sustainable building materials is crucial. Today, Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) is mainly used in low level applications, namely as unbound material for foundations, e.g., in road construction. Mineral demolition waste can be recycled as crushed aggregates for concrete, but these reduce the compressive strength and affect the workability due to higher values of water absorption. To advance the use of concrete rubble, Completely Recyclable Concrete (CRC) is designed for reincarnation within the cement production, following the Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) principle. By the design, CRC becomes a resource for cement production because the chemical composition of CRC will be similar to that of cement raw materials. If CRC is used on a regular basis, a closed concrete-cement-concrete material cycle will arise, which is completely different from the current life cycle of traditional concrete. Within the research towards this CRC it is important to quantify the benefit for the environment and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) needs to be performed, of which the results are presented in a this paper. It was observed that CRC could significantly reduce the global warming potential of concrete.Social well-being and social justice are meant to create a positive outcome meaningful for people and societies. According to the guidelines of social life cycle assessment, especially well-being should be considered as the main area of protection to assess social impacts of products. In addition, equity and equality need to be addressed in terms of social justice to ensure a fair and ethic society. However, even if a lot of studies focused on the definition social indicators to assess resulting impacts, neither have scientific or common agreements been founded to define a valid set of indicators, nor have consistent pathways from inventory towards impact indicators been established. This work, therefore, proposes possible pathways from life cycle inventory to impact assessment of two social midpoint categories: fair wage and level of education. Respective cause-effect-chains are developed based on the environmental life cycle assessment principle. Correspondingly, social inventory indicators throughout direct impacts to midpoint and endpoint categories are defined. Three endpoint categories are included (economic welfare, damage to human health and environmental stability) to address social well-being and social justice. Qualitative characterization factors and a scaling method are proposed to evaluate the impacts according to threshold and reference values from valuable literature.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used to improve the environmental performance of food systems and simplification of LCA appears to be a vital question, especially for Small-and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Following a literature review on simplified LCA tools and their subsequent ranking, some of the best-rated tools were implemented and the results were examined in parallel to those of a full LCA.The framework for life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA) developed within the project CALCAS (Co-ordination Action for innovation in Life-Cycle Analysis for Sustainability) is introducing a truly integrated approach for sustainability studies. However, it needs to be further conceptually refined and to be made operational. In particular, one of the gaps still hindering the adoption of integrated analytic tools for sustainability studies is the lack of a clear link between the goal and scope definition and the modeling phase. This paper presents an approach to structure the goal and scope phase of LCSA so as to identify the relevant mechanisms to be further detailed and analyzed in the modeling phase. The approach is illustrated with an on-going study on a new technology for the production of high purity hydrogen from biomass, to be used in automotive fuel cells.In order to reduce energy use and cut emissions that contribute to climate change, countries need to radically reinvent their fossil-fuel intensive transportation systems. As a major consumer of energy and contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the U.S. transportation sector faces extraordinary challenges in the twenty-first century. Transportation in the U.S. depends heavily on fossil-fuel dependent cars and planes to the near exclusion of more energy-efficient electric trains. In order to address this concern, some policy makers refer to "technological optimism" which seeks no systemic change but instead focuses on employing technology to reduce the energy demand and environmental impact of the status quo. On the other hand, some researchers suggest a systematic paradigm shift away from cars and planes to intermodal systems that improve the sustainability of the system as a whole. High-speed rail (HSR) is arguably such an investment that can further this shift and help to achieve a more diversified and balanced transportation system. In this respect, by largely examining the role of the U.S. cars and planes "culture" in the economy, this paper elaborates on how building a HSR system may help U.S. advance towards environmental sustainability in transportation, make a break from the status quo, and create a more balanced, multimodal transportation system that will improve the quality and efficiency of travel. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was performed to estimate the environmental impact of corn- and cassava-based ethylene production. An uncertainty analysis based on Taylor series expansion was conducted to confirm the results and add credibility to the study. Both corn- and cassava-based ethylene production significantly contributed to respiratory inorganics, land occupation, and global warming scores, as well as increased the adverse environmental impact of non-renewable energy. The uncertainty analysis results show that cassava-based production has more significant effects on dominant categories than corn-based production, except for land occupation. Increasing the energy and crop consumption efficiency, decreasing the road transport distance, and using natural crop drying are highly recommended to reduce the adverse effect of corn- and cassava-based ethylene production on the environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.ERRs (Energy return ratios) are valuable metrics for understanding and comparing the contributions of individual energy technologies. It is also important to calculate ERRS in the context of a system, or economy, using a mix of energy technologies. In this paper I demonstrate a framework to simultaneously consider individual energy technology and system-wide ERRS using a process-based input output model approach. I demonstrate the approach via an example calculating grid electricity ERRS assuming constant technology with only a shift in dominance from fossil to renewable technology. The framework also enables interpretation of changes in individual ERRS due to a shift from one technology to another, with implications for energy scenario analyses. Another finding of this paper is that the ERR GER (gross energy ratio, often assumed equal to EROImm (energy return on energy invested at the 'mine mouth')), is only well-defined for primary energy extraction and not energy carriers such as gasoline and electricity. NER (Net energy ratio) and NEER (net external energy ratio), also known as EPR (energy payback ratio), are the most appropriate metrics for describing energy carriers sold to consumers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the past several years, the footprinting of food and other goods has become the basis for both corporate and government initiatives aimed at promoting sustainability. Footprinting refers to the use of methods drawn from life cycle assessment (LCA) to collect, analyze and report information about products' cradle-to-grave (or farm-to-landfill) environmental impacts. Initially focused on products' greenhouse gas emissions, most footprinting initiatives now address multiple environmental concerns. Why is this happening, and with what consequences? This paper takes up these questions. I draw on the notion of technopolitics to show how the footprint serves as a tool for achieving certain political ends, discursive as well as material. More precisely, corporate food retailers and manufacturers look to the footprint both to govern supply chains and to legitimate and realize certain ideas of sustainable food. To illustrate its historical and strategic significance, I compare the footprinting of food to governance by other better-known technologies, namely standards and nutritional labels. I also show why its outcomes, like those of many technopolitical projects, are not predetermined. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An integrated framework focusing on the energetic analysis and environmental impacts of a CO2 capture and storage (CCS) system is presented, in which the process simulation method and the life cycle assessment (LCA) method are integrated and applied to the CCS value chain. Three scenarios for carbon capture from post-combustion power plant an MEA-based system, a gas separation membrane process and a hybrid membrane-cryogenic process are studied. The energy efficiency of power plant and the specific capture energy consumption for each scenario are estimated from process simulation. The environmental impacts for each scenario and the base case without CCS are assessed with LCA method. The results show that the MEA-based capture system faces the challenges of higher energy consumption, and higher environmental impact caused by solvent degradation and emissions compared to gas membrane separation processes. The hybrid membrane-cryogenic process shows a better environmental potential for CO2 capture from flue gases due to much lower power consumption and relatively lower environmental impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Design for environment (DfE) has become an important strategy for sustainable development. However, tools used for designing and tools used to conduct environmental evaluations are currently independent, and therefore the data these tools rely on are not easily communicated and integrated. In this research, we have developed a new software tool (EcoCAD) to provide support for DfE. The primary aim is to enable designers to spend less time on complicated environmental evaluations and independently and quickly develop products that have improved material toxicity and ease-of-disassembly characteristics. Fraunhofer-Institut fur Zuverlassigkeit und Mikrointegration's method for developing toxic potential indicators (TPIs) was used to create a Taiwanese TPI database from information contained in the United Nations' globally harmonized system's material safety data-sheet databases, and EcoCAD was developed and embedded on a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) software platform. In addition to common industrial materials, the toxicity of materials in generic printed circuit boards and in generic electric/electronic components is built into EcoCAD. EcoCAD not only provides designers with a functionality for monitoring TPIs during the design process, but also provides the designer with suggestions for reducing the toxicity and improving the ease of disassembly of their products. EcoCAD is an extremely practical tool because a designer is able to understand the material toxicity and ease-of-disassembly characteristics of the product during the CAD modeling stage itself, thereby saving time and cost and inspiring better designs. At the present time, EcoCAD focuses on toxicity of materials and ease of disassembly, but our concept could be extended to other environmental characteristics. For example, if a suitable life cycle assessment database was integrated with commercial CAD software, greenhouse gas emissions or European Union energy-related product directives could be considered.A broad range of energy-using products have been analyzed to shape the eco-design requirements for the European market under the Ecodesign Framework Directive 2009/125/EC in the last several years. Only recently, this approach also addressed production equipment, including ovens, furnaces, machine tools, and related machinery. Welding equipment has been subject to such an analysis as part of the study on machine tools. This article summarizes the individual steps of this technical, economic, and environmental analysis to facilitate the understanding of the policy intentions: The study followed a standardized methodology and identified, through this approach, a significant energy savings potential of 7.6 petajoules per year and suitable policy options. The article discusses these options, addressing in particular the challenges faced by industrial equipment. Some shortcomings of the methodology to be used have to be stated. These are time and resource constraints to develop policy measures with adequate resources, uncertain market evidence, and the challenge to forecast the effect of engineering options not yet implemented in a product. Under these conditions, the findings are a compromise between feasibility and scientific robustness.For many modern products, the use phase is intensive and poses a serious environmental impact because of the energy and resources consumed. This could be resolved by optimizing the product's environmental impact by improving the understanding of the users' relationship with it. In this work, we propose a model that can be used to include the use phase and the eco-oriented strategies in the environmental impact assessment of a product. This model takes into account the changing nature of the interactions between the user and the product over time. An indicator designated mitigation rate is introduced to help model this change. It acknowledges the loss in performance of eco-oriented strategies over time. This work presents the methodology to understand, model, and select among different eco-oriented strategies with different time frames. A case study is also presented, where four alternative models considering different eco-oriented strategies are shown and compared.Life cycle assessment (LCA) enables us to estimate potential resource and energy consumption as well as environmental emissions resulting from various activities within our economy. The present LCA intends to analyze the energy consumption and environmental emissions of the entire life cycle of an originally manufactured diesel engine compared with its remanufactured counterpart. Further, the article attempts to identify the processes in diesel engine manufacturing and remanufacturing life cycles that contribute most to energy consumption and environmental impacts. Six environmental impacts were assessed in this study: global warming potential (GWP); acidification potential (AP); eutrophication potential (EP); ozone depletion potential (ODP); photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP); and abiotic depletion potential (ADP). The results show that diesel engine remanufacturing could reduce 66% of energy consumption, compared to original manufacturing. The greatest benefit related to environmental impact is with regard to ODP, which is reduced by 97%, followed by EP, GWP, POCP, AP, and ADP, which can be reduced by 79%, 67%, 32%, 32%, and 25%, respectively. In the life cycle of diesel engine manufacturing, production of materials brings about larger environmental impacts, especially with regard to EP and ODP, whereas transportation of materials contributes most to POCP. The situation is similar for diesel engine remanufacturing. Production of materials brings about larger environmental impacts with regard to AP, EP, and ODP, whereas components remanufacturing and production of materials exhibit the same amount of GWP impact. Further, in remanufacturing, the reverse logistics of old diesel engines brings about lesser environmental impacts than the other life cycle stages, except with regard to POCP.Environmental impacts of light sources and control gears have been analysed in several life cycle assessments (LCAs). In contrast, this paper analyses the environmental impacts of an entire fluorescent lamp/luminaire combination. The environmental impacts of a fluorescent lamp luminaire with two T5 lamps and an electronic ballast are analysed in a variety of potential environmental impacts. The results show that the energy consumption during use dominates the total environmental impacts by 93% on the average, while manufacturing accounts for 7% and end-of-life less than 1%. The importance of energy consumption is dependent of the used energy source. Compared to a previous LCA of fluorescent lamp luminaire, the division of the results into life cycle stages is similar but there are differences in the numerical results.In the present article, the thermal treatment of digested sewage sludge generated in the Swiss region of Zurich is modeled and optimized from an environmental perspective. The optimization problem is solved using a multi-objective mixed-integer linear program that combines material flow analysis, process models, life cycle assessment (LCA), and mathematical optimization techniques. The treatment options include co-incineration in municipal solid waste incineration, co-processing in cement production, and mono-incineration with the prospect of phosphorus recovery. The model is optimized according to six environmental objectives. Five of the six single-objective optimal solutions involve splits over the treatment options. The results reflect the available treatment capacities and other constraints, aspects rarely considered in conventional LCA studies. Co-processing in cement production is used to the maximum extent possible when minimizing impacts on climate change, human toxicity, fossil resource depletion, and fully aggregated impacts (ReCiPe H/A), whereas mono-incineration with phosphorus recovery receives the bulk of the sludge when optimizing for ecotoxicity and mineral resource depletion. Four of the single-objective optimal solutions (minimization of fossil energy resource depletion and contribution to climate change, human toxicity, and fully aggregated impacts) outperform the reference case over the six impact categories considered, showing that the current situation can be improved in some environmental categories without compromising others. The results of the sensitivity analysis indicate that assumptions regarding the product systems displaced by recovered by-products are critical for the outcome of the optimization. Our approach identifies in all of the cases solutions in which significant environmental improvements can be attained. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article presents a general multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model aimed at providing decision support for waste and resources management in industrial networks. The MILP model combines material flow analysis, process models of waste treatments and other industrial processes, life cycle assessment, and mathematical optimization techniques within a unified framework. The optimization is based on a simplified representation of industrial networks that makes use of linear process models to describe the flows of mass and energy. Waste-specific characteristics, e.g. heating value or heavy metal contamination, are considered explicitly along with potential technologies or process configurations. The systems perspective, including both provision of waste treatment and industrial production, enables constraints imposed upon the systems, e.g. available treatment capacities, to be explicitly considered in the model. The model output is a set of alternative system configurations in terms of distribution of waste and resources that optimize environmental and economic performance. The MILP also enables quantification of the improvement potential compared to a given reference state. Trade-offs between conflicting objectives are identified through the generation of a set of Pareto-efficient solutions. This information supports the decision making process by revealing the quantified performance of the efficient trade-offs without relying on weighting being expressed prior to the analysis. Key features of the modeling approach are illustrated in a hypothetical case. The optimization model described in this article is applied in a subsequent paper (Part II) to assess and optimize the thermal treatment of sewage sludge in a region in Switzerland. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Feed production is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dairy production and demands large arable and pasture acreage. This study analysed how regional conditions influence GHG emissions of dairy feed rations in a life cycle perspective, that is the carbon footprint (CF) and the land area required. Factors assessed included regional climate variations, grass/clover silage nutrient quality, feedstuff availability, crop yield and feed losses. Using the Nordic feed evaluation model NorFor, rations were optimised for different phases of lactation, dry and growing periods for older cows, first calvers and heifers by regional feed advisors and combined to annual herd rations. Feed production data at farm level were based on national statistics and studies. CF estimates followed standards for life cycle assessment and used emissions factors provided by IPCC. The functional unit was 'feed consumption to produce 1 kg energy corrected milk (ECM) from a cow with annual milk yield of 9 900 kg ECM including replacement animals and feed losses'. Feed ration CF varied from 417 to 531 g CO2 e/kg ECM. Grass/clover silage contributed more than 50% of total GHG emissions. Use of higher quality silage increased ration CF by up to 5% as a result of an additional cut and increased rates of synthetic N-fertiliser. Domestically produced horse bean (Vicia faba), by-products from the sugar industry and maize silage were included in the rations with the lowest CF, but horse bean significantly increased ration land requirement. Rations required between 1.4 to 2 m(2) cropland and 0.1 to 0.2 m(2)/kg semi-natural grassland per kg ECM and year. Higher yield levels reduced ration total CF. Inclusion of GHG emissions from land use change associated with Brazilian soya feed significantly increased ration CF. Ration CF and land use depended on ration composition, which was highly influenced by the regional availability and production of feedstuffs. The impact of individual feedstuffs on ration CF varies due to, for example, cultivation practices and climate conditions and feedstuffs should therefore be assessed in a ration and regional perspective before being used to decrease milk CF. Land use efficiency should be considered together with ration CF, as these can generate goal conflicts.Livestock farmers in Sweden usually grow feed grains for livestock but import protein feed from outside Sweden. Aside from the economic implications, some environmental issues are associated with this practice. We used life cycle assessment to evaluate the impact of local protein feed production on land use and greenhouse gas emissions, compared with the use of imported protein feed, for pig meat and dairy milk produced in Sweden. Our results showed that local production reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 4.5% and 12%, respectively, for pigs and dairy cows. Land use for feed production in Sweden increased by 11% for pigs and 25% for dairy cows, but total land use decreased for pig production and increased for dairy milk production. Increased protein feed cultivation in Sweden decreased inputs needed for animal production and improved some ecological processes (e.g. nutrient recycling) of the farm systems. However, the differences in results between scenarios are relatively small and influenced to an extent by methodological choices such as co-product allocation. Moreover, it was difficult to assess the contribution of greenhouse emissions from land use change. The available accounting methods we applied did not adequately account for the potential land use changes and in some cases provided conflicting results. We conclude that local protein feed production presents an opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but at a cost of increasing land occupation in Sweden for feed production.A screening of LCA for the evaluation of the damage arising from the life cycle of a bi-layer film bag for food packaging was carried out. Such packages are made of films obtained matching a layer of PA (Polyamide) with one of LDPE (Low-Density Polyethylene) and are mainly used for vacuum or modified atmosphere packaging and preservation of food. The study was conducted in accordance with the ISO standards 14040:2006 and 14044:2006 choosing, as the functional unit, 1 m(2) of plastic film delivered to the food production and packaging firms. The system boundaries go from cradle to factory-gate and include the phases of: the raw materials production and processing for the bag manufacturing; and the bag delivering to the food production and packaging plant. The damage assessment showed that the most impacting phases are the production of the Polyamide (PA6) and Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) granules due to the consumption of primary resources, such as natural gas and crude oil, in the amount of 53.55 dm(3) and 132.42 g respectively, and to the emission in air of 295.73 g of carbon dioxide, 617 mg of nitrogen oxides, 12.1 mg of particulates, 349 mg of sulphur dioxide and 2.51 mg of aromatic hydrocarbons. The most affected damage category is Resources, followed by Climate Change, Human Health, and Ecosystem Quality. For minimising the total damage associated with the life cycle of the examined bag, the film thickness thinning and the use of a recycled PA granule were considered: the assessment showed that the two proposals allowed a reduction of about 25% and 15% (respectively) of the damage assessed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article, a new procedure was introduced for the optimal design of utility system in process industries. This method was based on the development of the R-curve concept and a new cogeneration targeting through estimating costs, environmental impacts, exergoeconomic, and exergoenvironmental analyses. In the exergoenvironmental analysis, the environmental impacts obtained by life cycle assessment are apportioned to the exergy streams pointing out the main system components with the highest environmental impact and possible improvements associated with these components. Moreover, exergoenvironmental variables are calculated, and an exergoenvironmental evaluation is carried out. In this regard, correlations for estimating the environmental impacts of cogeneration system have been introduced. In addition, the powerful and accurate cogeneration targeting method was applied. Also, the new graphic representations have been proposed. These curves are based on cost estimation, environmental impacts, and exergoenvironmental analysis. In addition, the optimal design of site utility was carried out in Iran LNG cogeneration plant, in which the usefulness of this method was clearly demonstrated.In the light of global warming, this paper develops a framework to compare energy and transportation technologies in terms of cost-efficient GHG emission reduction. We conduct a simultaneous assessment of economic and environmental performances through life cycle costing and life cycle assessment. To calculate the GHG mitigation cost, we create reference systems within the base scenario. Further, we extend the concept of the mitigation cost, allowing (i) comparision of technologies given a limited investment resource, and (ii) evaluation of the direct impact of policy measures by means of the subsidized mitigation cost. The framework is illustrated with a case of solar photovoltaics (PV), grid powered battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and solar powered BEVs for a Belgian small and medium sized enterprise. The study's conclusions are that the mitigation cost of solar PV is high, even though this is a mature technology. The emerging mass produced BEVs on the other hand are found to have a large potential for cost-efficient GHG mitigation as indicated by their low cost of mitigation. Finally, based on the subsidized mitigation cost, we conclude that the current financial stimuli for all three investigated technologies are excessive when compared to the CO2 market value under the EU Emission Trading Scheme.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of carbon footprint (CF) of milk from grass-based farms are usually limited to small numbers of farms (< 30) and rarely certified to international standards, e.g. British Standards Institute publicly available specification 2050 (PAS 2050). The goals of this study were to quantify CF of milk from a large sample of grass-based farms using an accredited PAS 2050 method and to assess the relationships between farm characteristics and CF of milk. Data was collected annually using on-farm surveys, milk processor records and national livestock databases for 171 grass-based Irish dairy farms with information successfully obtained electronically from 124 farms and fed into a cradle to farm-gate LCA model. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were estimated with the LCA model in CO2 equivalents (CO2-eq) and allocated economically between dairy farm products, except exported crops. Carbon footprint of milk was estimated by expressing GHG emissions attributed to milk per kilogram of fat and protein-corrected milk (FPCM). The Carbon Trust tested the LCA model for non-conformities with PAS 2050. PAS 2050 certification was achieved when non-conformities were fixed or where the effect of all unresolved non-conformities on CF of milk was < +/- 5 %. The combined effect of LCA model non-conformities with PAS 2050 on CF of milk was < 1 %. Consequently, PAS 2050 accreditation was granted. The mean certified CF of milk from grass-based farms was 1.11 kg of CO2-eq/kg of FPCM, but varied from 0.87 to 1.72 kg of CO2-eq/kg of FPCM. Although some farm attributes had stronger relationships with CF of milk than the others, no attribute accounted for the majority of variation between farms. However, CF of milk could be reasonably predicted using N efficiency, the length of the grazing season, milk yield/cow and annual replacement rate (R (2) = 0.75). Management changes can be applied simultaneously to improve each of these traits. Thus, grass-based farmers can potentially significantly reduce CF of milk. The certification of an LCA model to PAS 2050 standards for grass-based dairy farms provides a verifiable approach to quantify CF of milk at a farm or national level. The application of the certified model highlighted a wide range between the CF of milk of commercial farms. However, differences between farms' CF of milk were explained by variation in various aspects of farm performance. This implies that improving farm efficiency can mitigate CF of milk.In this article, we present an innovative way of deriving comparable functional systems for comparative life cycle assessments (LCAs) of food products. We define the functional unit as the contribution of one or more foods to the nutrient composition of a weekly diet and, after a product substitution, employ a product system expansion approach to search for an alternative set of products which provides an equivalent nutritional composition. Replacement is regarded within the context of a weekly diet. The comparable diet is a solution to a linear problem which finds the diet that is most similar to the starting one, subject to nutritional and/or other constraints that guarantee a minimum dietary quality. The formulation gives priority to selecting food products according to popularity. We illustrate our method with two examples. We show that a baseline diet containing 3.6 servings of apples a week is equivalent to a similar diet in which the apples are replaced with 3.6 servings of oranges and servings of strawberry and kiwi are removed. These changes are necessary mainly because of differences in the vitamin C content between apples and oranges. The second example is a replacement of all meat in a weekly diet by a soy-based meat substitute. In this case, additional fish products need to be consumed to make up for a lack of selenium and essential amino acids. We present an innovative and objective way to overcome the challenge of comparing two or more food products in a comparative LCA. Our approach is systematic and finds the alternative diet that best meets the nutritional criteria as well as reflecting the food preferences of the population. The method selects products according to the role they play in the dietary pattern. Moreover, the method is flexible enough to allow for different selection criteria and other nutritional and non-nutritional constraints.This article discusses the choice of stakeholder categories and the integration of stakeholders into participatory processes to define impact categories and select indicators. We undertook a literature review concerning the roles and the importance of stakeholders in participatory processes, and the use of such processes in environmental and social LCAs (Biswas et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 3(4):184-190, 1998; Sonnemann et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 6(6):325-333, 2001; Baldo Int J Life Cycle Assess 7(5):269-275, 2002; James et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 7(3):151-157, 2002; Bras-Kapwijk Int J Life Cycle Assess 8(5):266-272, 2003; Mettier et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 11(6):468-476, 2006). As part of the French National Research Agency Piscenlit project, we adapted the Principle, Criteria, Indicator (PCI) method (Rey-Valette et al. 2008), which is an assessment method of sustainable development, as a way to integrate the participatory approach into Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) methodology, mainly at the impact definition stage. Different views of participation were found in the literature; there is no consensual normative approach for the implication of stakeholders in LCA development. Some attempts have been made to integrate stakeholders into environmental LCAs but these attempts have not been generalized. However, they strongly emphasize the interrelationship between research on the growing integration of stakeholders and on the choice of stakeholders. We then propose criteria from stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984; Mitchell et al. Acad Manage Rev 22(4):853-886, 1997; Geibler et al. Bus Strat Environ 15:334-346, 2006) in order to identify relevant stakeholders for SLCA participatory approach. The adaptation of the PCI method to Principles, Impacts, and Indicators (PII) enables stakeholders to express themselves and hence leads to definitions of relevant social indicators that they can appropriate. The paper presents results regarding the selection of stakeholders but no specific results regarding the choice of impact categories and indicators. Integrating a participatory approach into SLCAs is of interest at several levels. It enables various factors to be taken into account: plurality of stakeholder interests, local knowledge, and impact categories that make sense for stakeholders in different contexts. It also promotes dialogue and simplifies the search for indicators. However, it requires a multidisciplinary approach and the integration of new knowledge and skills for the SLCA practitioners.The aim of this work is to propose an objective method for evaluating subcategories in social life cycle impact assessment (S-LCIA). Methods for assessing subcategories have been available since 2006, but a number of these either fail to include all the subcategories envisaged in the guidelines for S-LCA (UNEP/SETAC 2009) or are subjective in their assessment of each subcategory. The methodology is characterized by four steps: (i) the use of the organization as unit process, in which it was decided to assess the social profile of the organization responsible for the processes involved in the product life cycle, (ii) definition of the basic requirement to assess each subcategory, (iii) definition of levels based on the environment context or organizational practice and the data availability and (iv) assignment of a quantitative value. The result of the method applied was the development of the subcategory assessment method (SAM). SAM is a characterization model that evaluates subcategories during the impact assessment phase. This method is based on the behaviour of organizations responsible for the processes along the product life cycle, thereby enabling a social performance evaluation. The method, thus, presents levels for each subcategory assessment. Level A indicates that the organization exhibits proactive behaviour by promoting basic requirement (BR) practices along the value chain. Level B means that the organization fulfils the BR. Levels C and D are assigned to organizations that do not meet the BR and are differentiated by their context. The greatest difficulty when developing SAM was the definition of the BR to be used in the evaluation of the subcategories, though many indications were present in the methodological sheets. SAM makes it possible to go from inventory to subcategory assessment. The method supports evaluation across life cycle products, thereby ensuring a more objective evaluation of the social behaviour of organizations and applicable in different countries. When using SAM, it is advisable to update the data for the context environment. The method might be improved by using data for the social context that would consider not only the country, but also the region, sector and product concerned. A further improvement could be a subdivision of the levels to better encompass differences between organizations. It is advisable to test SAM by applying it to a case study.Life cycle inventory (LCI) data are region-specific because energy fuel mixtures and methods of production often differ from region to region. LCI database examples include US LCI, Ecoinvent v.2, and NIST, each of which is country-specific. Thus, the main aim of this study is to show that Egypt is in need of an Egyptian National LCI (ENLCI) database and to focus on the means of developing a database specific to Egypt. Arab countries have thus far engaged in virtually no life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, and a significant neglect of this matter is in evidence for the continent of Africa and, in particular, Egypt. Thus, this study suggests an organizational and managerial framework for the development of a national LCI database and sheds light on the required LCI database categories and data quality for practical solutions reflecting who is equipped to do what in order to keep pace with the world. The results from this review are useful to standardize the study of the life cycle assessment concept in Egypt; to form a foundation for development of an Egyptian database for facilitating a cleaner environment; to encourage stakeholders, such as the environmental agencies, Egyptian Housing and Building Research Center, and the Ministry of Industry; to propose an organizational framework in which they play a central role; and to provide investment to initiate development. The analysis indicates that the development of a LCI database specific to Egypt is difficult because Egypt has various technical and organizational challenges, but a roadmap of actions to be taken to move ahead is provided. The success of this roadmap depends on the capacity for developing the necessary technical and financial support and on strong partnerships with industry, government, LCA professionals, and academia.The paper reports the results of an extended investigation performed on a sample of wooden window selected as case study. A holistic approach was chosen to define all the main parameters characterizing the sample from the thermal, acoustic, mechanical, optical and environmental points of view. After an accurate state of the art survey, experimental measurements and numerical simulations were performed in order to evaluate the following parameters: thermal transmittance, airborne sound insulation, solar, light and UV transmittance, air permeability, water tightness, resistance to wind load. A LCA study allowed to correlate the energy and environmental impacts. By means of a comprehensive results analysis, a standard configuration of the window was defined (Scenario 0); two optimized scenarios were then selected, one including a solar control film in the glazing (Scenario 1) and another with a warm edge spacer replacing a common aluminium spacer (Scenario 2). A complete energy and environmental analysis was performed for all scenarios achieving a holistic evaluation of the benefits. Results show that in temperate climates the improvement of the window thermal characteristics, obtained through a proper control of solar radiation, is the most relevant criterion to optimize the overall energy and environmental performance of the window. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper examines the uncertainty of a new method - the macro life cycle assessment - to analyze the environmental impacts of public policies. The environmental impacts of two 2005-2025 European energy policies (a business as usual policy and a bioenergy policy) were comparatively assessed and their uncertainty was computed. Following the inventory of each source of uncertainty, uncertainty management methods were sequentially applied to manage these sources whenever possible. Results show that the bioenergy policy causes lower environmental impacts in three of the four environmental damage categories (human health, climate change and natural resources), but more significantly in one (ecosystems). The risk of the business as usual policy causing lower environmental impacts is expected to be low. However, current knowledge makes it impossible to account for all sources of uncertainty or implement advanced uncertainty methods for all elements in the cause-effects chains involved in each European energy policy. Current uncertainty management methods are not adapted to the uncertainty of large models such as the macro life cycle assessment. Hence, while current results are promising, further work is required to improve uncertainty management in macro life cycle assessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green building has achieved a rapid growth as a result of growing public awareness of environmental impacts of the building stock. It is not unusual that governments use policies as a driving force for green building developments. It is well recognized that effective public policies help to overcome barriers to sustainable development. This study proposed a novel approach to evaluate the effectiveness of policies related to green buildings based on the fuzzy impact matrix. This approach was then tested in the Chinese context to assess how effective are those green building policies implemented during the "Eleventh-Five-Year" period. It is found that these green building related policies are heavily environmental sustainability oriented such as building energy efficiency, emission reduction and pollution control. The results showed that some of these policies are effective for promoting green building development in China. However more efforts are required to improve the policy effectiveness on a range of issues such as the fiscal incentive mechanisms; the transformation to integration design model; the development of energy management contracting market; the enhancement of regulatory control during the demolition stage; and increasing the service life of buildings. These findings provide a useful reference to the future policy making process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential of algae-based biofuels to replace petroleum fuels and mitigate greenhouse gas production through microalgal photosynthesis has long been recognized. However, currently there are no commercial algae-to-fuels technologies that can overcome techno-economic barriers and address serious sustainability concerns. Coupling microalgae cultivation with wastewater treatment is considered as one of the most promising routes to produce bio-energy and bio-based byproducts in an economically viable and environmentally friendly way. This paper critically reviews the current status of this specific niche research area covering utilization of different types of wastewaters as media for algae cultivation, microalgae selection, bioreactor type, cultivation mode, environmental factors and operational parameters as well as harvesting techniques and production of a broad spectrum of biofuels and byproducts through various conversion pathways. Future development of practical solutions to key problems and integration of advanced algae cultivation and wastewater treatment, and system analysis approach to the evaluation of economic feasibility and sustainability of wastewater-based algal biofuel production are also discussed in depth. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, there has been an increased awareness about the environmental impact of buildings and construction materials with increasing regulatory pressure to reduce this impact. Properly assessing this impact is the first step towards achieving a green construction sector. Asphalt roofs are an important component of the construction sector in the United States. GaBi (R), a life cycle assessment (LCA) software package, was used to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of an atactic polypropylene (APP) asphalt roofing product. Due to the complexity of the manufacturing process, an average approach where the raw materials and energy use to manufacture the product over an entire year were summed up and the results were normalized per functional unit of the product. Global warming potential (GWP) was used to evaluate the overall GHG emissions. The GHG emissions were estimated to be 75.2 kg CO2-eq per roll. The manufacturing stage was found to be responsible for a majority of the GHG emissions. Certain shortcomings in the LCA study were identified and suggestions to reduce GHG emissions were made. This study differs from previous studies on roofs in that it focuses on the environmental impact of roofing product itself, unlike previous studies that have investigated energy efficiencies or reduction of environmental impact as part of a larger study. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The simulation and economic feasibility evaluation of semi-continuous biodiesel production from sunflower oil were based on the kinetics of homogeneously (Process I) and heterogeneously (Process II) base-catalyzed methanolysis reactions. The annual plant's capacity was determined to be 8356 tonnes of biodiesel. The total energy consumption was influenced by the unit model describing the methanolysis reaction kinetics. The energy consumption of the Process II was more than 2.5 times lower than that of the Process I. Also, the simulation showed the Process I had more and larger process equipment units, compared with the Process II. Based on lower total capital investment costs and biodiesel selling price, the Process II was economically more feasible than the Process I. Sensitivity analysis was conducted using variable sunflower oil and biodiesel prices. Using a biodiesel selling price of 0.990 $/kg, Processes I and II were shown to be economically profitable if the sunflower oil price was 0.525 $/kg and 0.696 $/kg, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Animal fats and waste oils are potential feedstocks for producing hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) jet and diesel fuels. This paper calculates the lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and production costs associated with HEFA jet and diesel fuels from tallow, and from yellow grease (YG) derived from used cooking oil. For YG, total CO2 equivalent (CO2 eq.) GHG emissions of jet and diesel were found to range between 16.8 -21.4 g MJ(-1) and 12.2-16.9 g MJ(-1) respectively. This corresponds to lifecycle GHG emission reductions of 76-81% and 81-86% respectively, compared to their conventional counterparts. Two different system boundaries were considered for tallow-derived HEFA fuels. In System 1 (Si), tallow was treated as a by-product of the rendering industry, and emissions from rendering and fuel production were included. In System 2 (52), tallow was considered as a by-product of the meat production industry, and in addition to the Si emissions, cattle husbandry and slaughtering were also included. The lifecycle emissions (CO2 eq.) from HEFA jet fuel for Si and S2 were estimated to be 25.7-37.5 g MJ(-1) and 67.1-83.9 g MJ(-1) respectively. HEFA diesel lifecycle emissions were found to be 21.3-33.3 g MJ(-1) for Si and 63.4-80.5 g MJ(-1) for S2. Production costs for these fuels were calculated using a discounted cash flow rate of return model. The minimum selling price was estimated to be 880 $ m(-3) -1060 $ m(-3) for YG-derived HEFA, and 1050-1250 $ m(-3) for tallow-derived HEFA fuels. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concrete is one of the most widely used building materials with a global consumption rate approaching 25 gigatonnes per year. Consequentially, its environmental burden is significant in terms of resource use and environmental emissions. There is a diverse audience of decision makers and manufacturers who are interested in understanding and lowering the environmental impact of concrete and other buildings materials, which requires a life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach. A critical first step in any LCA is the compilation of a credible life-cycle inventory (LCI), upon which subsequent life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) can be based. This article reviews the strengths and weaknesses of concrete LCIs to date, and offers a research roadmap to improve the quality of future cement and concrete LCIs and meet the needs of major LCA users. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability plays a key role in the management of a successful and responsible business. When trying to improve the sustainability performance of a business, there are three major challenges that need to be addressed. First, assessment of sustainability requires consideration of not just economic, but also environmental and social impacts. Second, we need to find appropriate sustainability indicators and gather the necessary data in order to quantify sustainability performance. Finally, sustainability has to be seen in the context of the whole system, i.e. it has to include all activities along the supply chain. In this work, we consider all three aspects and propose a multi-objective optimisation framework for the optimisation of a sustainable supply chain. Three sustainability indicators have been considered, namely the total cost, GHG emissions and lead time. We apply this framework to an industrial test case using real-world data drawn from a Dow Chemical business. The results show clear trade-offs between the three different objectives. However, we can also observe that typically a considerable decrease in GHG emissions or lead time can already be achieved by only a relatively small increase in cost. The proposed framework enables us to determine such trade-off relations and consequently make decisions that improve the sustainability performance of the supply chain. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Thermoelectric power production comprised 41% of total freshwater withdrawals in the U.S., surpassing even agriculture. This review highlights scenarios of the electric sector's future demands for water, including scenarios that limit both CO2 and water availability. A number of studies show withdrawals decreasing with retirement of existing electricity generating units. Consumption, the evaporative losses, also decreases in many scenarios. However, climate mitigation scenarios relying heavily on nuclear and carbon capture technologies may induce increases in water consumption. These increases in consumption represent a potential tradeoff between climate mitigation and adaptation of the electric sector to climate-related changes in water resources. It also points to the need for both analyses and technological solutions from the chemical engineering community.In this paper a new numerical tool to estimate the operational energy of buildings, in early design stages, is presented. This tool is part of a novel approach for life-cycle analysis based on macro-components developed in the European research project SB_Steel - Sustainable Buildings in Steel. Two early design stages are considered in the scope of the methodology: the concept stage and the preliminary stage. This numerical tool enables to estimate the energy use for space heating, space cooling and domestic hot water production, taking into account (i) the climate; (ii) the use type of the building (e.g. residential, offices and commercial/industrial); (iii) the building envelope characteristics; and (iv) the building services. The developed algorithm is based on a monthly quasi-steady-state approach, modified for improved accuracy through the calibration of correction factors that depend on the climatic region and the type of building. Good results were achieved, with errors lower than 10% when compared to performance-based approaches such as the use of advanced dynamic methods. Finally, the case study of a low-rise residential building is presented, in which the results obtained from the simplified methodology are compared with the results from the simulation program EnergyPlus, showing a good agreement between them. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper develops continent-specific factors for the USEtox model and analyses the accuracy of different model architectures, spatial scales and archetypes in evaluating toxic impacts, with a focus on freshwater pathways. Inter-continental variation is analysed by comparing chemical fate and intake fractions between sub-continental zones of two life cycle impact assessment models: (1) the nested USEtox model parameterized with sub-continental zones and (2) the spatially differentiated IMPACTWorld model with 17 interconnected sub-continental regions. Substance residence time in water varies by up to two orders of magnitude among the 17 zones assessed with IMPACTWorld and USEtox, and intake fraction varies by up to three orders of magnitude. Despite this variation, the nested USEtox model succeeds in mimicking the results of the spatially differentiated model, with the exception of very persistent volatile pollutants that can be transported to polar regions. Intra- continental variation is analysed by comparing fate and intake fractions modelled with the a-spatial (one box) IMPACT Europe continental model vs. the spatially differentiated version of the same model. Results show that the one box model might overestimate chemical fate and characterisation factors for freshwater eco-toxicity of persistent pollutants by up to three orders of magnitude for point source emissions. Subdividing Europe into three archetypes, based on freshwater residence time (how long it takes water to reach the sea), improves the prediction of fate and intake fractions for point source emissions, bringing them within a factor five compared to the spatial model. We demonstrated that a sub-continental nested model such as USEtox, with continent-specific parameterization complemented with freshwater archetypes, can thus represent inter- and intra-continental spatial variations, whilst minimizing model complexity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste management is a matter experienced by the entire world, mostly encountered in urban areas as a result of population growth and increased income per capita. This issue always posed threats to environmental quality and human health, and continues to be one of the major environmental problems people continues to face. In the last few decades, the systems analysis techniques have been applied to manage the municipal solid waste (MSW) streams through a range of integrative methodologies so as to fulfill the necessity to ensure sustainable development of MSW. The new Waste Directive 2008/98/EC it focuses on the need for choosing appropriate technologies that aim at improving the protection of human health and environment, promoting reuse and recycling, enhancing waste prevention programs via biowaste separate collection. New strategies at European level to promote life cycle thinking in waste management policies were motivated by the scarcity of resources. In this paper Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to analyze and evaluate, from an environmental point of view, different municipal solid waste management (MSWM) scenarios and tissue paper manufacturing processes (two scenarios) based on virgin and recovered fibers.The environmental burdens of Chinese copper production have been identified and quantified in the context of typical technologies, materials supplies and environmental emissions by a life cycle approach. Primary and secondary copper production using copper ores and scraps, respectively, were analyzed in detail. The flash and bath smelting approaches and the recycling of copper scraps were selected as representative copper production processes. A quantitative analysis was also conducted to assess the influence of material transport distance in copper production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) results showed that resources depletion and human health contribute significantly to environmental burdens in Chinese copper production. In addition, the secondary copper production has dramatically lower environmental burdens than the primary production. There is no obvious distinction in overall environmental burdens in primary copper production by flash or bath smelting approach. However, resources depletion is lower and the damage to human health is higher for flash smelting approach. Ecosystem quality damage is slight for both approaches. Environmental burdens from the mining stage contribute most in all life cycle stages in primary copper production. In secondary copper production, the electrolytic refining stage dominates. Based on the life cycle assessment results, some suggestions for improving environmental performance were proposed to meet the sustainable development of Chinese copper industry.With the increasing concerns related to integration of social and economic dimensions of the sustainability into life cycle assessment (LCA), traditional LCA approach has been transformed into a new concept, which is called as life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). This study aims to contribute the existing LCSA framework by integrating several social and economic indicators to demonstrate the usefulness of input-output modeling on quantifying sustainability impacts. Additionally, inclusion of all indirect supply chain-related impacts provides an economy-wide analysis and a macro-level LCSA. Current research also aims to identify and outline economic, social, and environmental impacts, termed as triple bottom line (TBL), of the US residential and commercial buildings encompassing building construction, operation, and disposal phases. To achieve this goal, TBL economic input-output based hybrid LCA model is utilized for assessing building sustainability of the US residential and commercial buildings. Residential buildings include single and multi-family structures, while medical buildings, hospitals, special care buildings, office buildings, including financial buildings, multi-merchandise shopping, beverage and food establishments, warehouses, and other commercial structures are classified as commercial buildings according to the US Department of Commerce. In this analysis, 16 macro-level sustainability assessment indicators were chosen and divided into three main categories, namely environmental, social, and economic indicators. Analysis results revealed that construction phase, electricity use, and commuting played a crucial role in much of the sustainability impact categories. The electricity use was the most dominant component of the environmental impacts with more than 50 % of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption through all life cycle stages of the US buildings. In addition, construction phase has the largest share in income category with 60 % of the total income generated through residential building's life cycle. Residential buildings have higher shares in all of the sustainability impact categories due to their relatively higher economic activity and different supply chain characteristics. This paper is an important attempt toward integrating the TBL perspective into LCSA framework. Policymakers can benefit from such approach and quantify macro-level environmental, economic, and social impacts of their policy implications simultaneously. Another important outcome of this study is that focusing only environmental impacts may misguide decision-makers and compromise social and economic benefits while trying to reduce environmental impacts. Hence, instead of focusing on environmental impacts only, this study filled the gap about analyzing sustainability impacts of buildings from a holistic perspective.Biotic resources are considered a key element of bio-economy. In the present study we focus on the forest supply industry, assessing environmental sustainability through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. We explored and evaluated forestry operations in order to support decision-makers in choosing the best operational modes for site-specific conditions. Main aims of the study are: 1) a LCA-based systematic comparative analysis of different operational modes and technological options associated with wood extraction considering site-specific conditions; 2) the quantification of impacts associated with transport of wood material. A case study on the alpine region of Italy (Intelvi Valley) is presented and discussed. Different forestry activities were investigated, comparing the traditional operational method with a more mechanized one (advanced mechanization). All operations were included within the system boundaries, from felling to transport to sawmill. Regarding the traditional operational method, different options were evaluated, considering that: 1) the extraction could be performed by cable-yard or winch; and 2) the delimbing phase could be performed before or after extraction phase. Each activity was modeled using primary data, assuring that real forest conditions are taken into account and assessed. In spite of the expectations associated with advanced mechanization, the hypothesis to choose traditional mechanization was preferable for Intelvi Valley conditions. Fuel consumption and related emissions proved to be the main source of impacts. Sensitivity analyses highlighted that advanced mechanization could be the best method to perform forestry operations, if used in proper conditions (i.e. at the top productivity rate) and that the choice of a short supply chain drastically reduces the impacts induced by long distance transportation. The choice of the best technological options should be based on a site-specific and context- related assessment. It is very important to give priority to the operational mode which minimizes the hours necessary to perform each operation. It was also found that the technological option should be chosen according to the geomorphology and topography and the site-specific characteristics of the area investigated, and no one option can be considered as the most suitable for all conditions.Furthermore, current impact assessment methods are still lacking in the evaluation of potential impact to biodiversity in the specific context were the extraction takes place. Further investigations related to the environmental profile of a product will be object of a second study that will concern the design of green furniture pieces, starting from certified wood as raw material.Eco-innovation strategies are increasingly adopted to ensure the minimization of environmental impacts. Nonetheless, only a comprehensive integrated assessment along the life cycle stages of a product may ensure a robust analysis of the benefit of the innovation. The object of the present study is the environmental assessment of furniture prototypes produced using certified wood and integrating eco-design criteria in their conception. The aim of the study was twofold: firstly, to evaluate the environmental profile of the furniture, highlighting possible hot spots of impacts, and secondly, to evaluate the capability of life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify the environmental benefit associated to the adoption of eco-innovation strategies, such as the following: ensuring short supply chain from raw material to production; using wood coming from certified forests (according to PEFC scheme); and the implementation of eco-design principles, also associated with green public procurement requirements. LCA has been applied in a case study related to the wood furniture sector in the alpine region of Northern Italy. Every activity was modeled using primary data, related to the inputs and outputs of the processes, provided directly by the designers and by woodworking firms. Input data related to forestry activities and wood extraction were collected and processed in a previous phase of the study. The life cycle of a prototype school desk from the cradle-to-gate perspective was analyzed. A woodworking plant was examined in detail, dividing the whole manufacturing process into four phases: panels production, woodworking, painting and steel parts processing. The system boundaries included all the activities which take place inside the plant as well as energy inputs, transports and ancillary products used. The results highlighted that the working phases showing the greatest environmental burdens were the production of solid wood panels and the processing of iron parts. No concerns about chemicals, glues and paints were raised, due to the eco-design principles implemented in the production of the furniture. The choice of a short supply chain allowed for drastic reductions in the impacts associated to long-distance transports. Three sensitivity analyses were carried out to test the robustness of results concerning the following: (1) glue options, (2) drying phase and VOC emissions, and (3) transport options. This study proves to which extent eco-design criteria implemented in practice improve the environmental performance of products. All positive effects due to decisions taken in school desk design and conception were supported by evidence.Carbon mineralization is a promising process for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage, and it can also be applied for biogas upgrading. This paper uses a life cycle assessment to identify possible methods of improving and reducing the environmental impact of novel biogas upgrading technologies. The two novel pilot-scale technologies that are assessed are alkaline absorption with regeneration (AwR) process and bottom ash for biogas upgrading (BABIU) process. These technologies are still at the pilot-plant scale, which offers the opportunity to identify how their environmental impact can be reduced before industrial-scale production occurs. The AwR technology uses an alkaline solution of either potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide to capture the CO2 and air pollution control residues to regenerate the solution. The BABIU process uses bottom ash (BA) from municipal solid waste incinerators to capture CO2 in a direct gas/solid contact process. For the AwR process, focus was placed on the reuse of wastewater (air pollution control residues require pre- and post-washing steps) and reagent type and concentration. Further improvements have focused on reagent and electricity use in AwR and the transport of BA for BABIU. The lowest environmental impact for AwR resulted when NaOH and in-process wastewater was reused. Even in such a process setting, AwR still has a higher environmental impact in 11 of 12 categories compared to other conventional biogas upgrading processes. On average, the BABIU process has a 73% lower impact than AwR and is comparable to conventional technologies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to assess and compare the environmental and energy profiles of three potential bioenergy production chains using different available feedstocks in Southern European countries. Two wastes, vineyard pruning and eucalypt logging residues, and a wooden energy crop, poplar, were examined in detail. The comparative LCA study showed that the use of poplar biomass for bioenergy production has a greater impact than the use of vineyard pruning and logging residues. The contribution from the poplar-cultivation-related activities considerably affected the results, as all the activities from field preparation to harvesting have been included within the system boundaries. In contrast, all the activities performed in the vineyard and forest prior to collection of the residues have not been computed in both scenarios since they have been allocated to the driving force of these stands: grapes and roundwood, respectively. The results support the idea that forest and agricultural waste would be an interesting and potential raw material for bioenergy purposes. However, further analysis should focus on these potential bioenergy sources, namely in terms of their availability and technical burning conditions, in order to meet energy requirements. Moreover, the environmental results were compared with others from literature corresponding to electricity production using alternative biomass sources and fossil fuels. In all the categories considered for comparison, environmental benefits were reported for the electricity production using a biomass source. However, these results must be carefully used since other issues - such as production costs, water availability and land use - should be considered. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work, we present a systematic method for the optimal design of pharmaceutical manufacturing processes that allows decision-makers to assess economic and environmental concerns in the early stages of the process development. Our approach relies on the combined use of process simulation, multi-objective optimization, economic analysis and life cycle assessment. The pharmaceutical production plant design is mathematically formulated as a multi-objective mixed-integer dynamic optimization (moMIDO) problem, which is solved by a decomposition algorithm that generates as output a set of Pareto optimal solutions. The capabilities of the proposed methodology are illustrated through the production of the antibiotic Penicillin V. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The unprecedented scale of food waste in global food supply chains is attracting increasing attention due to its environmental, social and economic impacts. Drawing on interviews with food waste specialists, this study construes the boundaries between food surplus and food waste, avoidable and unavoidable food waste, and between waste prevention and waste management. This study suggests that the first step towards a more sustainable resolution of the food waste issue is to adopt a sustainable production and consumption approach and tackle food surplus and waste throughout the global food supply chain. The authors examine the factors that give rise to food waste throughout the food supply chain, and propose a framework to identify and prioritize the most appropriate options for prevention and management of food waste. The proposed framework interprets and applies the waste hierarchy in the context of food waste. It considers the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social), offering a more holistic approach in addressing food waste. Additionally, it considers the materiality and temporality of food. The food waste hierarchy posits that prevention, through minimization of food surplus and avoidable food waste, is the most attractive option. The second most attractive option involves the distribution of food surplus to groups affected by food poverty, followed by the option of converting food waste to animal feed. Although the proposed food waste hierarchy requires a fundamental re-think of the current practices and systems in place, it has the potential to deliver substantial environmental, social and economic benefits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases has caused grievous global warming and associated consequences. Lowering carbon footprint to promote the development of cleaner production demands the immediate attention. In this study, the carbon footprint calculations were performed on five cropping systems in North China Plain from 2003 to 2010. The five cropping systems included sweet potato -> cotton -> sweet potato -> winter wheat-summer maize (SpCSpWS, 4-year cycle), ryegrass-cotton -> peanut -> winter wheat-summer maize (RCPWS, 3-year cycle), peanut -> winter wheat-summer maize (PWS, 2-year cycle), winter wheat-summer maize (WS, 1-year cycle), and continuous cotton (Cont C), established in a randomized complete-block design with three replicates. We used a modified carbon footprint calculation with localized greenhouse gas emissions parameters to analyze the carbon footprint of each cropping system per unit area, per kg biomass, and per unit economic output. Results showed that the lowest annual carbon footprint values were observed in SpCSpWS among the five cropping systems, which were only 27.9%, 28.2% and 25.0% of those in WS rotation system (the highest carbon footprint) in terms of per unit area, per unit biomass, and per unit economic output, respectively. The five cropping systems showed the order of SpCSpWS < Cont C < RCPWS < PWS < WS sorting by their annual carbon footprint calculated by all the three metrics above-mentioned. Results revealed that appropriate diversified crop rotation systems could contribute to decreased carbon footprint compared with conventional intensive crop production system in North China Plain. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current decisions on breeding in dairy farming are mainly based on economic values of heritable traits, as earning an income is a primary objective of farmers. Recent literature, however, shows that breeding also has potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The objective of this paper was to compare 2 methods to determine GHG values of genetic traits. Method 1 calculates GHG values using the current strategy (i.e., maximizing labor income), whereas method 2 is based on minimizing GHG per kilogram of milk and shows what can be achieved if the breeding results are fully directed at minimizing GHG emissions. A whole-farm optimization model was used to determine results before and after 1 genetic standard deviation improvement (i.e., unit change) of milk yield and longevity. The objective function of the model differed between method 1 and 2. Method 1 maximizes labor income; method 2 minimizes GHG emissions per kilogram of milk while maintaining labor income and total milk production at least at the level before the change in trait. Results show that the full potential of the traits to reduce GHG emissions given the boundaries that were set for income and milk production (453 and 441 kg of CO2 equivalents/unit change per cow per year for milk yield and longevity, respectively) is about twice as high as the reduction based on maximizing labor income (247 and 210 kg of CO2 equivalents/unit change per cow per year for milk yield and longevity, respectively). The GHG value of milk yield is higher than that of longevity, especially when the focus is on maximizing labor income. Based on a sensitivity analysis, it was shown that including emissions from land use change and using different methods for handling the interaction between milk and meat production can change results, generally in favor of milk yield. Results can be used by breeding organizations that want to include GHG values in their breeding goal. To verify GHG values, the effect of prices and emissions factors should be considered, as well as the potential effect of variation between farm types.A lot of existing wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are rebuilt or retrofitted for advanced wastewater treatment processes to cope with reinforced effluent criteria of nitrogen and phosphorous. Moreover, how to treat the wasted sludge from WWTPs has been also issued since the discharge of the wasted sludge into ocean is impossible from 2011 due to the London Convention 97 protocol. These trend changes of WWTPs get a motivation to assess environmental and economic impacts from the construction stage to the waste stage in WWTPs. Therefore, this study focuses on evaluation of environmental and economic impacts of the advanced wastewater treatment processes and waste sludge treatment process by using life cycle assessment. Four advanced wastewater treatment processes of Anaerobic/Anoxic/Oxic (A(2)O), 5 stages-Bamard Denitrification Phosphate (Bardenpho), Virginia Initiative Plant (VIP), and Modified University of Cape Town (MUCT) are chosen to compare the conventional activated sludge (CAS) and three waste sludge treatment methods of land fill, incineration, and composting are used. To evaluate environmental and economic impacts dof each advanced wastewater treatment processes, life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) are conducted based on International organization for standardization (ISO) guidelines. The results clearly represent that the A(2)O process with composting shows 52% reduction in the environmental impact than the CAS process with landfill. On the other hand, the MUCT process with composting is able to save 62% of the life cycle cost comparing with the CAS process with landfill. This result suggested the qualitative and quantitative criteria for evaluating eco-environmental and economic technologies of advanced treatment processes and also sludge treatment method, where their main influence factors on environmental and economic impacts are analyzed, respectively. The proposed method could be useful for selecting the most efficient and eco-friendly wastewater treatment process and sludge treatment method when retrofitting the existing WWTPs to advanced treatments.Building materials make significant impact on the environment, hence their ecological performance became one of the key sustainability topics. To determine environmental impact of a material, it is necessary to examine the phases of its life cycle, by using the established method. Unified assessment methodology enables comparison between different materials and the selection of more ecologically friendly option. The practice has already been applied internationally and the diverse models for ecological assessment of building materials are in use. In Serbia, on the other hand, various constrains impede researchers' efforts to develop an assessment system. Undeveloped legal regulation in the field and the lack of quantitative data which describe the ecological quality account for the main aggravating circumstances. Within the existing conditions, ecological assessment may be conducted rather by using descriptive method and general knowledge on building materials and their impact, than by applying approach based on impact measurement. In accordance with this thesis, the set of criteria which may be used in current situation, and which are derived after aligning with the life cycle phases and predicted impact, are proposed. In respect to the criteria development, following issues were considered: Use Efficiency; Durability; Eco-Sign; Availability; Construction Waste and Alternative Building Materials. Transitional ecological assessment model represents a step towards sustainable national building practice and may be used until the database with measured impact of all nationally produced building materials is formed.The challenges in reducing the world's dependence on crude oil and the greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, while simultaneously improving engine performance through better fuel efficiency and reduced exhaust emissions, have led to the emergence of new fuels, with formulations blending petrodiesel, biodiesel, bioethanol and water in various proportions. In parallel, the sustainability of the new biofuel industries also requires to maintain a high level of biodiversity while playing on techno-diversity, using a variety of resources that do not compete with edible crops (nor by using arable land for energy crops or food crops for energy production) and flexible conversion technologies satisfying the eco-design, eco-energy and eco-materials criteria. In addition, it would be relevant to consider blending ethyl biodiesel, instead of methyl biodiesel, with petrodiesel, particularly if the fuel formulation is completed with bioethanol (or even water). The supercritical ethanolysis of lipid resources to produce ethyl biodiesel is a simple but efficient route that should have the potential to satisfy the sustainability criteria if analyzed holistically. Therefore, this review focuses specifically on the production of ethyl biodiesel via triglyceride supercritical ethanolysis within a global analysis "feedstocks-conversion-engine". The scientific and technical bottlenecks requiring further development are highlighted by emphasizing (i) the kinetic and thermodynamic aspects (experiments and modeling) required for the process simulation, the results of which aim at securing the life cycle assessment, first at the process level and then at the fuel level; (ii) the proposals to improve the supercritical process performance in terms of eco-material and eco-energy; (iii) the impacts of ethyl vs. methyl biodiesel fuels and of biodiesel ethanol petrodiesel blends (with or without water) on the diesel engine emissions and performance; (iv) the technological flexibility of the supercritical process allowing its conversion toward production of other key products. Finally, built on the state-of-the art review, a new R&D direction combining supercritical ethanolysis of lipids with the addition of CO2, glycerol recovery, and cogeneration, according to the biorefinery concept, is proposed and discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The sustainability assessment of food production represents an important research issue, useful to increase the knowledge about the impacts generated by a system (from an environmental, economic and social point of view). In order to valorise the quality-branded products (e.g., PGI or Protected Geographical Indication, organic growing, etc.) also conferring them some attributes of sustainability, agricultural entrepreneurs can use voluntary certifications as strategic tools in green marketing activities (e.g., agricultural products eco-design). In this sense, it is essential take into account what are the effects-and what is their level of impact-generated by multiples activities of agricultural sector. Many methodologies have been developed to achieve this goal, such as the so-called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) useful to implement specific analysis for environmental and economic sustainability assessment. The aim of this research is to analyse the level of sustainability of different citrus production systems in a specific area of Southern Italy (Calabria Region). In particular, Clementine crop systems-Conventional, Integrated and Organic has been analysed through a joint use of LCA and LCC in order to measure the impacts from both an economic and environmental standpoint. Results have allowed to compare and to rank performances of each scenario for every methodology applied in this study. Findings have highlighted the possible usefulness of an integrated use of LCA and LCC, and that they can be an effective decision making tool for both public and private deciders, also in order to achieve green marketing strategies.This study aims to evaluate the environmental consequences and energy requirements of a biogas production system and its further conversion into bioenergy by means of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. To do so, an Italian biogas plant operating with pig slurry and two energy crops (maize and triticale silages) as feedstock was assessed in detail in order to identify the environmental hotspots. The environmental profile was estimated through six impact categories: abiotic depletion potential (ADP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), global warming potential (GWP), ozone layer depletion potential (ODP) and photochemical oxidation potential (POFP). An energy analysis related to the cumulative non-renewable fossil and nuclear energy demand (CED) was also performed, considering this indicator as an additional impact category. According to the results, the biomass production subsystem was identified as the main environmental key issue in terms of ADP, AP, EP, ODP and CED, with contributions ranging from 26% to 61% of the total impact. Regarding ADP, ODP and CED, these results are mainly related with diesel requirements in agricultural machinery, derived combustion emissions and mineral fertilizers production. Concerning AP and EP the production field emissions derived from fertilizers application was observed as the main contributor. Concerning GWP, this step presents an environmental credit due to the uptake of CO2 during crop growth, which contributes to offset the GHG emissions. The bioenergy production plant significantly contributes to the environmental impact in categories such as GWP (43%) and POFP (59%), mostly related with emissions produced in the gas engine and biogas losses. Emissions derived from digestate storage contribute to AP (52%) and EP (41%). The use of the digestate as an organic fertilizer has a beneficial role because this action avoids the production and use of mineral fertilizers. A sensitivity analysis was also conducted to assess the influence of variations in important parameters of biogas systems. The environmental profile of the biogas system turned out to be highly dependent on the selection of system boundaries and the allocation method. To sum up, this study aims to assess the environmental performance of a biogas technology available not only in Italy but also in other European countries. The environmental analysis of the process under study highlights the environmental benefits of the co-digestion processes, which not only produces biofuel but also reduces the disposal of solid wastes and produces digestate, with special value in the fertilization of agricultural soil. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forest biomass is a renewable source that has the potential to substitute fossil fuels in many applications, from the generation of bioenergy (heat, electricity or transportation fuels) to the production of bioproducts (chemicals and other materials). The increased use of forest biomass could support the reduction of anthropogenic carbon emissions to the environment and could help forest-dependent communities achieve energy independence while generating jobs. The viability and feasibility of generating valuable products from forest biomass depend on ensuring the long-term availability of biomass supply with the required quality at a competitive cost. This calls for a cost-efficient design of the forest biomass supply chain. Social and environmental aspects have to be considered in the design as well to guarantee sustainable use of this renewable resource. In this paper, we present a review of studies that assessed or optimized economic, social and environmental aspects of forest biomass supply chains for the production of bioenergy and bioproducts. The majority of studies so far considered either economic (techno-economic and optimization studies) or environmental (life cycle assessment studies) aspects of bioenergy projects. Nevertheless, there is a recent trend to integrate economic, environmental and social aspects in the assessment and optimization of forest biomass supply chains. Combined approaches integrating multi-objective optimization and life cycle assessment have started to flourish. In these studies, GHG emissions are the most frequently used environmental indicator, production and capital costs are the preferred economic measures and the number of created jobs is the most considered social criterion. Further research has to be done to study and assess the potential social impacts of using forest biomass. There is a need for further development of decision support tools that consider economic, environmental and social criteria to aid the design and planning of forest biomass supply chains. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, the characteristics of physical and chemical composition of municipal solid waste (MSW) in China were reviewed and the statistical indexes, namely mean value, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, and t-test, were applied to analyze the physical composition, proximate, ultimate analysis, and heating value. Listed in decreasing sequence, the physical components of Chinese MSW are in food residue, non-combustibles, plastics, paper, textiles, wood waste, and rubber. In food residue, the average elementary hydrogen (H), oxygen (O) and nitrogen (N) content varied greatly with samples and the chlorine (Cl) and moisture contents were extraordinarily high. While conversely, the components of wood waste were simple and different components displayed little disparity in characteristics. The elemental compositions of paper and textiles were also simple. The properties of chlorine-free plastics (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene) were consistent, with high volatile matter, carbon (C) and H content. The mean higher heating value (HHV) of polrvinyl chloride (PVC) was about a half of that of chlorine-free plastics, because the Cl content of PVC was approximate 50%. It suggested that plastics with or without chlorine should be separated as possible. The HHV of different rubbers varied sharply, from 21,812 to 38,868 kJ/kg. A model was proposed to predict the proximate and ultimate analysis and heating value from physical composition, in which the PVC fraction in plastics and the supplementary moisture coefficient were introduced. The results showed that the predicted results fitted well with the measured ones. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water supply and wastewater services incur a large amount of energy and GHG emissions. It is therefore imperative to understand the link between water and energy as their availability and demand are closely interrelated. This paper presents a literature review and assessment of knowledge gaps related to water energy-greenhouse-gas (GHG) nexus studies in an urban context from an 'energy for water' perspective. The review comprehensively surveyed various studies undertaken in various regions of the world and focusing on individual or multiple subsystems of an urban water system. The paper also analyses the energy intensity of decentralized water systems and various water end-uses together with the major tools and models used. A major gap identified from this review is the lack of a holistic and systematic framework to capture the dynamics of multiple water-energy-GHG linkages in an integrated urban water system where centralized and decentralized water systems are combined to meet increased water demand. Other knowledge gaps identified are the absence of studies, peer reviewed papers, data and information on water-energy interactions while adopting a 'fit for purpose water strategy' for water supply. Finally, based on this review, we propose a water-energy nexus framework to investigate 'fit-for-purpose' water strategy. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nowadays, aluminum scrap is traded globally. This has increased the need to analyze the flows of aluminum scrap, as well as to determine the environmental consequences from aluminum recycling. The objective of this work is to determine the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions of the old scrap collected and sorted for recycling, considering the market interactions. The study focused on Spain as a representative country for Europe. We integrate material flow analysis (MFA) with consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) in order to determine the most likely destination for the old scrap and the most likely corresponding process affected. Based on this analysis, it is possible to project some scenarios and to quantify the GHG emissions (generated and avoided) associated with old scrap recycling within a global market. From the MFA results, we projected that the Spanish demand for aluminum products will be met mainly with an increase in primary aluminum imports, and the excess of old scrap not used in Spain will be exported in future years, mainly to Asia. Depending on the scenario and on the marginal source of primary aluminum considered, the GHG emission estimates varied between -18,140 kg of CO2 eq. t(-1) and -8427 of CO2 eq. t(-1) of old scrap collected. More GHG emissions are avoided with an increase in export flows, but the export of old scrap should be considered as the loss of a key resource, and in the long term, it will also affect the semifinished products industry. Mapping the flows of raw materials and waste, as well as quantifying the GHG impacts derived from recycling, has become an essential prerequisite to consistent development from a linear toward a circular economy (CE). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cities around the world are increasingly involved in climate action and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, in the context of responding to climate pressures in the water sector, very few studies have investigated the impacts of changing water use on GHG emissions, even though water resource adaptation often requires greater energy use. Consequently, reducing GHG emissions, and thus focusing on both mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change in planning and managing urban water supply systems, is necessary. Furthermore, the minimization of GHG emissions is likely to conflict with other objectives. Thus, applying a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA), which can evolve an approximation of entire trade-off (Pareto) fronts of multiple objectives in a single run, would be beneficial. Consequently, the main aim of this paper is to incorporate GHG emissions into a MOEA framework to take into consideration both adaptation and mitigation responses to climate change for a city's water supply system. The approach is applied to a case study based on Adelaide's southern water supply system to demonstrate the framework's practical management implications. Results indicate that trade-offs exist between GHG emissions and risk-based performance, as well as GHG emissions and economic cost. Solutions containing rainwater tanks are expensive, while GHG emissions greatly increase with increased desalinated water supply. Consequently, while desalination plants may be good adaptation options to climate change due to their climate-independence, rainwater may be a better mitigation response, albeit more expensive. Key Points <list id="wrcr21041-list-0001" list-type="bulleted"> <list-item id="wrcr21041-li-0001">Developing an urban water supply planning framework to mitigate GHG emissions <list-item id="wrcr21041-li-0002">Analyzing the impact of minimizing GHG emissions on cost and supply security <list-item id="wrcr21041-li-0003">Using a real-life case study to illustrate the planning value of the approachIndustrial symbiotic networks are based on the principles of ecological systems where waste equals food, to develop synergistic networks. For example, industrial symbiosis (IS) at Kalundborg, Denmark, creates an exchange network of waste, water, and energy among companies based on contractual dependency. Since most of the industrial symbiotic networks are based on ad-hoc opportunities rather than strategic planning, gaining insight into disruptive scenarios is pivotal for understanding the balance of resilience and sustainability and developing heuristics for designing resilient IS networks. The present work focuses on understanding resilience as an emergent property of an IS network via a network-based approach with application to the Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis (KIS). Results from network metrics and simulated disruptive scenarios reveal Asnaes power plant as the most critical node in the system. We also observe a decrease in the vulnerability of nodes and reduction in single points of failure in the system, suggesting an increase in the overall resilience of the KIS system from 1960 to 2010. Based on our findings, we recommend design strategies, such as increasing diversity, redundancy, and multi-functionality to ensure flexibility and plasticity, to develop resilient and sustainable industrial symbiotic networks. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Here, we analyze greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy demand for roundwood supply chain activities (harvesting and transport) within the state of Michigan. A life-cycle assessment was completed, relying on a combination of peer-reviewed literature, national databases, and primary data collected from Michigan loggers and truckers. Several equipment configurations and operating scenarios for roundwood harvesting have been considered. Results indicated that a full processor/forwarder is the best combination of harvesting equipment, with greenhouse gas emissions of 9.9-14.7 kg CO2eq/green tonne, due to relatively low inputs and high reported productivity, although environmental impacts of harvesting depend strongly on the intensity of harvest being conducted. Bimodal truck + rail transport has environmental burdens roughly one third to half that of typical log truck transport at longer transport distances, directly related to the increased fuel efficiency of rail transport. Aggregated results for roundwood supply within Michigan are comparable to similar studies in other regions, although the mechanization of the harvesting industry and large size of Michigan log trucks are factors in the smaller environmental burden. A sensitivity analysis indicated that a variety of factors related to truck transport (distance, fuel economy, load factor, truck capacity) are the most influential for overall environmental impacts of the forest biomass supply chain. Environmental impacts associated with roundwood supply are quite low in comparison to the carbon content and embodied energy of delivered wood, implying that roundwood supply activities do not preclude beneficial use of this feedstock in biofuels or bioenergy applications. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analyzes the environmental performance of the electronic boards used in the current generation of induction hob designed and assembled in Spain. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been performed, defining the functional unit as the electronic boards used in an induction cooktop with 4 hobs and 7.2 kW of nominal power. The electronic boards are two power electronic boards (ELIN PCBAs -Printed Circuit Board Assembly-), and one touch control electronic board (Touch Control PCBA). Each one has been thoroughly analysed having into account every electronic component. The software used to create the LCA model was SimaPro 7.3.3, using two databases Ecoinvent v2.2 and Chalmers CPM LCA Database. The most relevant environmental impact in every category is caused by the two ELIN PCBAs. Touch Control PCBA has significant impact in Ozone Layer Depletion, although its value is four times lower than the emissions of one ELIN PCBA. Both ELIN PCBAs show similar environmental impact distribution. Components create between 70 and 85% of the total impact in most categories. Touch Control PCBA has a different environmental impact distribution from both ELIN PCBA. This analysis of the environmental impact of the ELIN PCBAs and the Touch Control PCBA used in an induction hob has revealed that there are several clear areas for improvement, such as reducing the environmental impact of the components and improving its end-of-life treatment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most common eco-design methods for SMEs often provide guidelines and suggestions too general, if not contradictories, to be considered as a real design practice. This paper presents a method, named "iTree", based on a set of eco-design guidelines specifically conceived to support designers in developing new greener products in accordance with the output of a product Life Cycle Assessment-LCA. The "iTree" guidelines are particularly suitable for SME - Small and Medium Enterprises, because they do not specifically require eco-design or problem solving experts. They have been conceived to provide clear and detailed suggestions on where and how to intervene and are based on problem solving methods, such as TRIZ, design for disassembly, and other computer aided tools, adapted for eco-design purposes and simplified for non-expert users. "iTree" method provides the user with an easy and graphical way to visualize the life cycle inventory and critical areas of intervention. For each area, it suggests only the pertinent set of guidelines, customized to the specific situation. In this way, there is a direct link between the visual outcomes of the Eco-assessment phase and the Eco-improvement phase. The experimentation of the proposed method and guidelines is described with an explanatory example. Furthermore, the method has been tested within the European project, named Remake, which aimed at testing new methods of eco-improvement for SMEs in Europe. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work assesses the potential of electrified vehicles and mass reduction to reduce life cycle energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to account for processes upstream and downstream of the vehicle operation, thereby incorporating regional variation of energy and GHG emissions due to electricity production and distinct energy and GHG emissions due to conventional and lightweight materials. Design harmonization methods developed in previous work are applied to create baseline and lightweight vehicle models of an internal combustion vehicle (ICV), hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). Thus, each vehicle is designed to be functionally equivalent and incorporate the structural support required for heavier powertrains. Lightweight vehicles are designed using body-in-white (BIW) mass reduction scenarios with aluminum and advanced/high strength steel (A/HSS). For the mass reduction scenarios considered in this work, results indicate that the greatest life cycle energy and GHG emissions reductions occur when steel is replaced by aluminum. However, since A/HSS requires less energy to produce as compared to aluminum, the energy and GHG reductions per unit mass removed is greatest for A/HSS. Results of the design harmonization modeling method show that 0.2-0.3 kg of structural support is required per unit increase in powertrain mass, thus extending previous methods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper we present a life cycle assessment (LCA) based biofuel supply chain model with multi-conversion pathways. This model was formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem which took economic, energy, and environmental criteria (3E) into consideration. The economic objective was measured by the total annual profit. The energy objective was measured by using the average fossil energy input per megajoule (MJ) of biofuel. The environmental objective was measured by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per MJ of biofuel. After carefully consideration of the current situation in China, we chose to examine three conversion pathways: bio-ethanol (BE), bio-methanol (BM) and bio-diesel (BD). LCA was integrated to a multi-objective supply chain model by dividing each pathway into several individual parts and analyzing each part. The multi-objective MILP problem was solved using a epsilon-constraint method by defining the total annual profit as the optimization objective and assigning the average fossil energy input per MJ biofuel and GHG emissions per MJ biofuel as constraints. This model was then used to design an experimental biofuel supply chain for China. A surface of the Pareto optimal solutions was obtained by linear interpolation of the non-inferior solutions. The optimal results included the choice of optimal conversion pathway, biomass type, biomass locations, facility locations, and network topology structure in the biofuel supply chain. Distributed and centralized systems were also factored into our experimental system design. In addition, the influence of price change on the optimal solutions was investigated. The optimal solutions obtained in this study reveal a tradeoff between the impact of the 3E criteria. These results indicate that our model will be extremely useful for the design and planning of biofuel supply chains in China. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emergy-based indicators are claimed to be useful outcomes of the emergy evaluation framework, which aims at guiding decision-makers toward environmental sustainability. The calculation of the Emergy Sustainability Index (ESI), in particular, seems widely consensual among emergy scholars, but several variants actually exist in the scientific literature, which may lead to different interpretations or misunderstanding of the ESI result. This paper proposes a semantic study of two variants in both components of the ESI (the Emergy Yield Ratio and the Environmental Loading Ratio, respectively EYR and ELR), to enhance standardization and reproducibility in the calculation of emergy indicators. It is shown that ESI can be consistently defined at the level of the production site as well as from a lifecycle perspective, although several case studies in the literature use an intermediary version with inconsistent system boundaries. A recent definition of lifecycle-oriented EYR is made operational by the development of an algorithm to be implemented in the emergy accounting software SCALE. However, the classification of foreground inputs needs further precision. ESI is also decomposed using partial derivatives, in order to analyze the influence of each input category and retrieve generic recommendations. These multiple outcomes demonstrate the added value of hybrid lifecycle-emergy evaluation to identify specific potential actions toward enhancing ESI of human activities.(C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study quantified the significant environmental impacts of a two-story residential building located in Vancouver, Canada, with a projected 60-year life span: (i) an inventory of all the construction materials was analyzed, covering the building structure and exterior and interior envelopes as well as the energy consumption; (ii) four types of functional units were defined; (iii) the five top building materials were examined, and a sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate the impact associated with the choice of building materials. Two life cycle phases, manufacturing and operation, were more significant in all of the impact categories, and two building assemblies, the walls and the roof, bore most of the environmental loads. In terms of the sensitivity analysis, the roofing asphalt had the largest impact, dominating three of the seven selected impact categories. Despite different definitions of functional units, the function of the dwelling buildings is always the same, to provide protection and housing for their habitants. Additionally, to improve the performance of an existing building, several strategies were proposed for the building renovation and maintenance, including alternative replacement materials regarding the building components with high environmental burdens, good patterns of the occupants' consumption behaviors as well as considerations of the financial and environmental cost. Finally, limitations and challenges are discussed to explore better design decisions in future studies.In the past few decades, very rapid growth in environmental legislation has resulted in an increasing will of companies to address environmental thinking through their supply chain. In this context, great strides have been made to incorporate the environmental concerns, such as "green" and "sustainable" supply chains, along with the traditional economic indicators. To assess the environmental impacts, there is no agreement on a universal environmental metric. Hence, a plethora of indicators has been developed to measure environmental impacts. The environmental indicators (e.g., Eco-indicator 99) that are founded on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework and nowadays are becoming among the popular environmental assessment methodologies. The crude oil tankers and utilities consumptions are the main origins of emissions through the crude oil supply chain. The energy required for operating upstream facilities in the crude oil supply chain represents enormous energy consumption. Whereas, ships and oil tankers are of the highest polluting combustion origins, per unit of fuel used. As a result, environmentally conscious design of upstream crude oil supply chain has created intriguing new challenges for practitioners and the managers. In this work, we introduce an environmentally conscious mathematical model to design the Upstream Oil Supply Chain (i.e., oil field development, and crude oil transportation). The model configure the supply network, select the technologies, establish the pipeline network, and plan the oil tankers with optimizing the economic objective value (i.e., the net present value) and the environmental metric value (i.e., the standard Eco-indicator 99 value).Growing concerns over the availability and cost of extracting fossil fuel resources have increased interest in renewable resources. Therefore, interest in producing numerous needed chemicals from renewable biomass resources has increased. The focus of this comprehensive review is on managing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in biorefinery production chains. To highlight the results of the content analysis an attempt is made to summarize the findings in a climate impact management matrix. In particular, three topics from the matrix are put forward: (1) uncertainties in assessing GHG emissions of feedstock cultivation, harvesting and logistics; (2) found GHG emissions in biorefinery chains; and (3) a short comparative analysis of two potential technologies to improve the GHG and carbon balance of biorefinery operations. In addition, benefits of lignocellulosic biomass, residuals, organic waste and algae are highlighted, sustainability issues of the field are discussed and research gaps are identified. Uncertainties in assessing the sustainability of biofuels supply chains support a more diversified renewable resource base and production of multiple chemicals in biorefinery chains. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There has been a recent resurgence in research investigating bioenergy production from algal biomass due to the potential environmental benefits in comparison to conventional bioenergy crops and conventional fossil fuels. This life cycle assessment (LCA) considered the energy return and environmental impacts of the cultivation and processing of macroalgae (seaweed) to bioethanol and biogas with a particular focus on specific species (Gracilaria chilensis and Macrocystis pyrifera) and cultivation methods (bottom planting and long-line cultivation). The study was based mainly upon data obtained from research conducted in Chile but the results can be applied to other locations where similar cultivation is feasible. Speculative data were also included to test promising data obtained from research. The results suggested that using base case conditions the production of both bioethanol and biogas from bottom planted Gracilaria chilensis was the most sustainable option due to the low input method of cultivation. Using new advances in cultivation and processing methods of long-line cultivated Macrocystis pyrifera however resulted in a much more sustainable source of bioenergy. If these methods can be proven on a large scale, the generation of bioenergy from macroalgae could be highly competitive in terms of its sustainability compared to alternative feedstocks. Future research should bear in mind that the results of this study should however be considered highly optimistic given the early stage of research. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the environmental impacts and identifies the hotspots associated with the sub-processes of the proposed landfill extension (LFE) and advanced incineration facility (AIF) for municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal in Hong Kong using life cycle assessment methodology. On the basis of the data collected, assumptions made, and system boundary defined, results show that sub-processes of LFE that provide most burdens on human health and ecosystem quality are biological reactions at landfill cells and sludge collection and treatment system, respectively. Meanwhile, stack discharge system in the AIF has highest impact on human health and ecosystem quality. Overall, the LFE performs more poorly than the AIF in view of human health but vice versa for ecosystem quality. The comparison of the LFE and AIF, with and without energy recovery systems, indicates quantitatively that the energy recovery systems provide benefits in regard to climate change, respiratory inorganics and acidification/eutrophication. Energy recovery in the waste sector could be enhanced through technological improvement and economic incentives. The environmental performances by applying Hong Kong's target emission levels for the stack discharge system in the AIF are also more favorable with respect to human health and ecosystem quality than those of Mainland China's and U.S.EPA standards. This study provides an additional view to the stakeholders in decision making process for pledging a sustainable management of MSW disposal in Hong Kong. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims at environmentally assessing the most significant input and output flows related to the production of concrete using basalt aggregates. For this purpose, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied according to the ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006. All data used were collected on site based on observations during site visits, review of documents and interviews with technical personnel and management. They were processed by using SimaPro 7.3.3, accessing the Ecoinvent v.2.2 database and using the Impact 2002+ method. The LCIA results show that the most impacting phase is the production of the basalt aggregates, with "Human Health" being the most affected damage category because of the emissions to air, of 2.7 kg of particulates (grain size <2.5 mu m). In addition to this, the concrete production causes, mainly, the emission, in air, of 465 kg of Carbon Dioxide and the consumption of 37.37 kg of crude oil, per cubic metre of concrete, affecting, the damage categories "Climate Change" and "Resources" also. Regarding "Ecosystem Quality", the occurred damage is due to the emission to air, of 29.6 g of Aluminium and of 251 mg of Zinc into the soil per cubic metre of concrete. Based on the obtained results, the increase of the amount of water used for particulates removal during the basalt extraction phase was assessed. Furthermore, the alternative use of limestone aggregates was assessed from both technical and environmental perspectives. The analysis developed highlighted a total damage decrease of 67%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Structured hierarchical catalysts were developed for efficient reduction of bromates in water. In the catalysts a small amount of active metal, 03 wt.% Pd, is supported onto carbon nanofibres grown either on sintered metal fibres or on a carbon cloth. In both cases high rates of reaction and high selectivity were achieved, allowing a significant reduction in the amount of catalyst required for the treatment of a set volumetric flow of polluted water, compared to a conventional Pd/Al2O3 catalyst. Manufacture of carbon nanofibres grown on a hierarchical structured support was scaled to 10 g batches. Cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) study was performed to compare potential water treatment processes based on two catalyst types, and to identify the areas for future optimisation of the novel technology based on structured hierarchical catalysts. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.NZEB (Net zero energy building) is regarded as an integrated solution to address problems of energy-saving, environmental protection, and CO2 emission reduction in the building section. NZEB could be even possible with electricity production if enough renewable energy could be used. Moreover, various building-service systems with renewable energy sources have been widely considered for potential applications in NZEB. All of these new features extend the technical boundary of the conventional energy-efficient buildings, attach a more profound implication to the sustainable development of building technology, and therefore pose a challenge to evaluation works on NZEB performance. This paper presents a guided tour on NZEB evaluation through literature-research. An overview about definitions and energy-efficient measures of NZEB is presented so that the research object and technology boundary can be clarified for NZEB evaluation. Then, a summary of widely-used research method, tool and performance indicator in evaluation is provided for the methodology part. This part also includes a discussion on the application of LCA (life cycle assessment) in NZEB evaluation and LCA's role in promoting a well-defined NZEB. Finally, potential progress in NZEB evaluation with possible development trends is highlighted in terms of energy storage, load match and smart grid. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Beef cattle feedlots are estimated to contribute 26% of U.S. agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and future climate change policy could target reducing these emissions. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of GHG emissions from U.S. grain-fed beef cattle was conducted based on industry statistics and previous studies to identify the main sources of uncertainty in these estimations. Uncertainty associated with GHG emissions from indirect land use change, pasture soil emissions (e.g. soil carbon sequestration), enteric fermentation from cattle on pasture, and methane emissions from feedlot manure, respectively, contributed the most variability to life cycle GHG emissions from beef production. Feeding of coproducts from ethanol production was estimated to reduce life cycle emissions by 1.7%, but could increase emissions by 0.6-2.0% with higher feeding rates. Monte Carlo simulation found a range of life cycle emissions from 2.52 to 9.58 kg CO2 per kg live weight (5th and 95th percentiles), with a calculated average of 8.14, which is between recent estimates. Current methods used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) associated with beef production in feedlots were found to account for only 3-20% of life cycle GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To assess the suitability of solar collector systems in which polymeric materials are used versus those which more traditional materials are used, a case study was undertaken. In this case study a solar heating system with polymeric solar collectors was compared with two equivalent but more traditional solar heating systems: one with flat plate solar collectors and one with evacuated tube solar collectors. To make the comparison, a total cost accounting approach was adopted. The life cycle assessment (LCA) results clearly indicated that the polymeric solar collector system is the best as regards climatic and environmental performance when they are expressed in terms of the IPPC 100 a indicator and the Ecoindicator 99, H/A indicator, respectively. In terms of climatic and environmental costs per amount of solar heat collected, the differences between the three kinds of collector systems were small when compared with existing energy prices. With the present tax rates, it seems unlikely that the differences in environmental and climatic costs will have any significant influence on which system is the most favoured, from a total cost point of view. In the choice between a renewable heat source and a heat source based on the use of a fossil fuel, the conclusion was that for climatic performance to be an important economic factor, the tax or trade rate of carbon dioxide emissions must be increased significantly, given the initial EU carbon dioxide emission trade rate. The rate would need to be at least of the same order of magnitude as the general carbon dioxide emission tax rate used in Sweden. If environmental costs took into account not only the greenhouse effect but also other mechanisms for damaging the environment as, for example, the environmental impact factor Ecoindicator 99 does, the viability of solar heating versus that of a natural gas heating system would be much higher. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Few previous studies consider the GHG implications of biofuels in electricity generation. Yet, the biofuels have become a key replacement for residual petroleum fuel and LNG in stationary power in Hawai'i. This stems from isolated island grid and heavy dependence on imported oil, characteristics which are shared with many island regions. This study calculates life cycle GHG emissions from biodiesel and renewable fuel oil from soybean, oil palm, and jatropha in electricity production as well as the transportation sector. By using Hawai'i as a case, this study aims to compare biofuels supply chain systems for imported and locally produced. The results indicate that variations in GHG emissions reduction are dictated by the choice of feedstock crops and byproduct credits rather than the distance between the fuel production and end-use location. The study suggests that locally produced biofuels have lower GHG emissions than imported ones but the difference is trivial. This study does not calculate the monetary cost of switching to biofuels; instead, it uses GHG emissions as a unit of measurement to show the trade-offs among different counterfactual scenarios in fuel production location, feedstock crops, and supply chain pathways. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We have assembled extensive information on the cradle-to-gate environmental burdens of 63 metals in their major use forms, and illustrated the interconnectedness of metal production systems. Related cumulative energy use, global warming potential, human health implications and ecosystem damage are estimated by metal life cycle stage (i.e., mining, purification, and refining). For some elements, these are the first life cycle estimates of environmental impacts reported in the literature. We show that, if compared on a per kilogram basis, the platinum group metals and gold display the highest environmental burdens, while many of the major industrial metals (e.g., iron, manganese, titanium) are found at the lower end of the environmental impacts scale. If compared on the basis of their global annual production in 2008, iron and aluminum display the largest impacts, and thallium and tellurium the lowest. With the exception of a few metals, environmental impacts of the majority of elements are dominated by the purification and refining stages in which metals are transformed from a concentrate into their metallic form. Out of the 63 metals investigated, 42 metals are obtained as co-products in multi output processes. We test the sensitivity of varying allocation rationales, in which the environmental burden are allocated to the various metal and mineral products, on the overall results. Monte-Carlo simulation is applied to further investigate the stability of our results. This analysis is the most comprehensive life cycle comparison of metals to date and allows for the first time a complete bottom-up estimate of life cycle impacts of the metals and mining sector globally. We estimate global direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions in 2008 at 3.4 Gt CO2-eq per year and primary energy use at 49 EJ per year (9.5% of global use), and report the shares for all metals to both impact categories.This article describes the key challenges and opportunities in modeling and optimization of biomass-tobioenergy supply chains. It reviews the major energy pathways from terrestrial and aquatic biomass to bioenergy/biofuel products as well as power and heat with an emphasis on "drop-in" liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Key components of the bioenergy supply chains are then presented, along with a comprehensive overview and classification of the existing contributions on biofuel/bioenergy supply chain optimization. This paper identifies fertile avenues for future research that focuses on multi-scale modeling and optimization, which allows the integration across spatial scales from unit operations to biorefinery processes and to biofuel value chains, as well as across temporal scales from operational level to strategic level. Perspectives on future biofuel supply chains that integrate with petroleum refinery supply chains and/or carbon capture and sequestration systems are presented. Issues on modeling of sustainability and the treatment of uncertainties in bioenergy supply chain optimization are also discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This contribution addresses the multi-period synthesis of an optimally integrated regional biomass and bioenergy supply network through a mixed-integer linear programing (MILP) approach. The production processes from different sources of biomass include first, second, and third generations of biofuels like bioethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, Fischer Tropsch diesel, and green gasoline. The aim is to maximize the sustainably viable utilization of resources by accounting for the competition between fuels and food production. An MILP model for efficient bioenergy network optimization based on four layers is extended to include several features, such as seasonality and availability of resources, enabling recycles of products and total site heat integration in order to address real-world applications with a systematic decisionmaking approach. The multi-period optimization of a heat-integrated biorefinery's supply network is performed through maximization of the economic performance. Economically efficient solutions are obtained with optimal selection of raw materials, technologies, intermediate and final product flows, and reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Gasification is a promising conversion technology to deliver high energy efficiency simultaneously with low energy and cost penalties for carbon capture. This paper is devoted to in-depth economic evaluations of pre- and post-combustion Calcium Looping (CaL) configurations for Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants. The poly-generation capability, e.g. hydrogen and power co-generation, is also discussed. The post-combustion CaL option is a gasification power plant in which the flue gases from the gas turbine are treated for CO2 capture in a carbonation calcination cycle. In pre-combustion CaL option, the Sorbent Enhanced Water Gas Shift (SEWGS) feature is used to produce hydrogen which is used for power generation. As benchmark case, a conventional gasification power plant without carbon capture was considered. Net power output of evaluated cases is in the range of 550-600 MW with more than 95% carbon capture rate. The pre-combustion capture configuration was evaluated also in hydrogen and power co-generation scenario. The evaluations are concentrated for estimation of capital costs, specific investment cost, operational & maintenance (O&M) costs, CO2 removal and avoidance costs, electricity costs, sensitivity analysis of technical and economic assumptions on key economic indicators etc. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The 'sustainable remediation' concept has been broadly embraced by industry and governments in recent years in both the US and Europe. However, there is a strong need for more research to enhance its 'practicability'. In an attempt to fill this research gap, this study developed a generalised framework for selecting the most environmentally sustainable remedial technology under various site conditions. Four remediation technologies were evaluated: pump and treat (P&T), enhanced in situ bioremediation (EIB), permeable reactive barrier (PRB), and in situ chemical reduction (ISCR). Within the developed framework and examined site condition ranges, our results indicate that site characteristics have a profound effect on the life cycle impact of various remedial alternatives, thus providing insights and valuable information for determining what is considered the most desired remedy from an environmental sustainability perspective.In the present study, the REC (Risk reduction, Environmental Merit and Costs), ReCiPe and PRINCETM methods for the estimation of the environmental, health and financial impacts of a soil remediation process have been evaluated. The evaluation was based on a case study in which a choice had to been made between soil excavation and steam extraction for the remediation of a former oil and fat processing plant. The example shows that it is complicated to come to one overall best remediation option, especially when different stakeholder preferences have to be taken into account. Results of the case study suggest that, besides environmental and human health and cost, the financial risk associated with the remediation project is also an important aspect to include in the evaluation.Cement constitutes one of the major materials used for the construction of buildings. In 2011, the cement output of China reached 2.06 billion tons, which accounts for over 50% of the total cement output of the world. Meanwhile, more than 230 million tons industrial waste and domestic waste are beneficial used as raw materials in cement production each year, which results in a decrease in the total raw materials and energy demands and prevents a large amount of land use for landfill or surface impoundment. The objective of this study is to analyze the environmental impact caused by beneficial use of domestic waste in Chinese cement industry. Subsequently, the environmental burdens of five routes of domestic waste treatments, including landfill, incineration, beneficial used by cement production, etc, are quantified one by one using life cycle assessment methodology. The results demonstrate that the beneficial use of domestic waste has a great potential to decrease the environmental impact caused by waste treatment, especially to lower human toxic impact.This paper focuses on the physical essence of water's quality and, based on exergy theory, makes an update of the chemical exergy values of N and P by modifying the traditional thermodynamic model, and the characterisation factors of water quality are calculated. The exergy values of N and P can be recalculated as 156.15 and 1045.73 kJ mol(-1), respectively, much larger than traditional results; also, the exergy values of phosphoric acid radical and nitric acid radical become positive. The results are suitable for use in life cycle assessment or other water-related research.The climate changes and fossil resource depletion have increased environmental awareness, influencing the market of products based on renewable resources. Natural fibers are renewable materials, which are certainly advantageous for sustainability. They have been extensively used as reinforcements within polymeric matrices due to their renewable origin, relatively high strength and modulus, low density and cost. On the other hand, their high moisture absorption capacity, as well as poor wettability and thermal behaviour during processing represent some impediments that limit their applications. By their numerous applications, lignocellulose polyolefin composites are present in everyday life. They combine the best properties of the neat components and can show outstanding performance. Also, the large market for these composites and their performance in terms of durability, maintenance and cost effectiveness make it possible to achieve more sustainable efficient technologies for new materials with improved properties. The paper reviews the recent advances in the development of lignocellulosic polyolefin composite materials.The main goal of this study was to analyze the environmental profile of MDF panel manufacturing in the Brazilian industry in terms of energy, emissions and dependence on renewable sources. The study was conducted by using the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), specifically through the development of the first Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of MDF in a Brazilian industry. The life cycle inventory and the production processes analysis were constructed using Umberto(R) v.5.6 software and following the ISO 14040 series. The study covers the life cycle of MDF production from gate-to-gate perspective, involving the on-site manufacturing system. The functional unit was defined in 1 m(3) of MDF. About 76% of energy required to produce MDF is thermal (52.8% of thermal energy is required for the drying process of wood fiber). CO2 is a major emission during the MDF production, where natural gas contributes to 96.7% of total CO2 fossils. It was observed a low dependence of non-renewable source (19.2%) compared with the literature.This study uses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate and compare the environmental impacts caused by both the artisanal and the industrial manufacturing processes of "Minas cheese". This is a traditional cheese produced in the state of Minas Gerais (Brazil), and it is considered a "cultural patrimony" in the country. The high participation of artisanal producers in the market justifies this research, and this analysis can help the identification of opportunities to improve the environmental performance of several stages of the production system. The environmental impacts caused were also assessed and compared. The functional unit adopted was 1 kilogram (Kg) of cheese. The system boundaries considered were the production process, conservation of product (before sale), and transport to consumer market. The milk production process was considered similar in both cases, and therefore it was not included in the assessment. The data were collected through interviews with the producers, observation, and a literature review; they were ordered and processed using the SimaPro 7 LCA software. According to the impact categories analyzed, the artisanal production exerted lower environmental impacts. This can be justified mainly because the industrial process includes the pasteurization stage, which uses dry wood as an energy source and refrigeration.This study conducted well-to-pump and well-to wheel life-cycle assessment of fossil energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during ethanol production from tropical Banagrass (Pennisetum purpureum) using green-processing (with the use of fresh feedstocks) and dry or conventional processing (with the use of dried feedstocks) in the state of Hawaii. 10 000MJ of energy was used as a functional unit with a systematic boundary drawn based on relative mass, energy, and economic value method using a 1% cutoff value, and the results were compared to those of conventional gasoline, and ethanol from corn and other ethanol lignocellulosic feedstocks. Detailed techno-economic model was built using the SuperPro designer. Ethanol yields were estimated at 0.27 l/kg (green processing with fungal co-product), 0.27 l/kg (green processing without co-product), and 0.29 l/kg (dry-processing) of feedstock, respectively. The well-to-pump analysis indicate that ethanol production consume 8200MJ (green processing with co-product), 7600MJ (green-processing without co-product) and 7200MJ (dry-processing without co-product) of fossil energy and emit approximately 144 kg CO2-eq., 90.6 kg CO2-eq., and 59.1 kg CO2-eq. per 10 000MJ of ethanol produced, respectively; well-to-wheel analysis showed that 280 g of gCO(2)-eq., 260 g CO2-eq., and 250 g CO2-eq. of emissions were produced per kilometer by driving Flex Fuel Vehicle. In summary, ethanol produced using the green-processing technology required greater amount of fossil energy and produced more GHG emissions compared to that of dry processing technology, due to additional energy needed for fungal growth and related processes. Process power, enzyme, and chemical production during ethanol processing were identified as emissions hot-spots for both green and dry processing. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.This study of the participation of different stakeholders through structured techniques to support decision making in building future alternatives or scenarios for the collection and treatment of municipal solid waste was applied to the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Using the life cycle assessment tool, eight different scenarios, constructed with the participation of social stakeholders and municipal technicians, were evaluated. Different collection alternatives (selective and containerized) and treatment (recycling, composting, anaerobic digestion, thermal processes and landfill disposal) were considered. We conclude that the application of the life cycle assessment tool facilitates decision-making support systems in municipal solid waste management. In our case study, the most sustainable scenario was built by municipal waste management stakeholders.The objective of this work, that improves the enclosure's thermal performance of the building, is to divulge the environmental impacts tied to a new solution of vegetated facade by means of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology with a cradle to grave system boundary. The analysis aims also at generating relevant information of the life cycle as base material for drafting a future Environmental Product Declaration. The facade's component manufacture stage is the one presenting the highest contribution for all the analysed impact categories, with the vegetated layer being the one with the greatest impact. Conversely, the transport stage is the one presenting the least contribution, and can be considered negligible for all the analysed impact categories. Following the analysis of the results, we have obtained useful information about the most problematic aspects and components in the assessed facade's performance, thus paving the way towards possible actions of impact reduction by the manufacturer.This work uses a simplified life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology to explore the impact reduction potential in the design phase in terms of primary energy and greenhouse gas emissions for a given building using several facade solutions. This is achieved through a review of several design criteria (wall characteristics, insulation level, reposition rate and component durability) and their combinations, and analizing how they relate to the selected impacts for the production and use stages in the building life cycle. Results show that both emissions and energy embedded into the building materials or the building process are of great relevance and impact of emissions is comparable to those due to the use stage. This work concludes that, for a given building, a significant impact reduction on the selected impact indicators can be achieved by a careful selection of building solutions and durability strategies (through maintenance or refurbishment) in the design phase.The analyses of algae biorefinery performance are commonly based on fixed performance data for each processing step. In this work, we demonstrate a model-based combinatorial approach to derive the design-specific upstream energy consumption and biodiesel yield in the production of biodiesel from microalgae. Process models based on mass and energy balances and conversion relationships are presented for several possible process units in the algae processing train. They allow incorporating the effects of throughput capacity and process conditions, which is not possible in the data-based approach. Therefore, the effect of choices in the design on the overall performance can be quantified. The process models are organised in a superstructure to evaluate all combinations of routings. First, this is done for selected fixed design conditions, which is followed by optimisation of the process conditions for each route by maximising the net energy ratio (NER), based on upstream energy consumption and biodiesel yield. A scenario based on current energy production and state-of-the art techniques for algae processing is considered. The optimised process conditions yield NER values which are up to about 30% higher than those for fixed process conditions. In addition, the approach allows a quantitative bottleneck analysis for each process route. The model-based approach proves to be a versatile tool to guide the design of efficient microalgae processing systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for microalgae biofuel infrastructure are sometimes neglected during a life-cycle analysis (LCA). Construction materials were found for a baseline facility designed to produce renewable diesel in the United States. Material use was amortized over the material lifetime of thirty years and then, using emission factors available in GREET 2, energy use and GHG emissions were found per MJ of renewable diesel (MJ RD). For the baseline, infrastructure GHG emissions were 8.9 gCO(2)e/MJ RD. Plastic and concrete had the largest emissions, and the growth ponds used the most materials of any unit operation. Fossil fuels comprised 97% of all energy use, which came predominately from natural gas at 0.090 MJ/MJ RD. A sensitivity analysis showed that changes to the pond liner thickness and material lifetime had the largest effects with the lifetime increasing the GHG emissions 28% over the baseline. Increasing the productivity (up to 50 g/m(2)/d) or lipid content (up to 50 wt.%) decreased the emissions. Infrastructure emissions were compared to those from the fuel-cycle of a reduced emission scenario, showing that infrastructure related emissions ranged from 17% to 57% of the fuel-cycle emissions, with higher values at lower productivities. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Microalgae have potential to yield various bioenergy products, including algal biodiesel. For algal energy production, the process energy input must be substantially lower than the product energy. Airlift photobioreactors provide controlled environments with good mixing and mass transfer; however, previous work reports a net energy ratio (NER; energy produced divided by energy consumed) less than 1. Here, the energy consumption in these reactors was improved by combined optimisation of superficial gas velocity and its CO2 concentration. Increasing CO2 concentration resulted in increased tolerance to lower superficial gas velocities, down to a critical minimum value. A 75% reduction in aeration power input was obtained by reducing superficial gas velocity from 0.0210 to 0.0052 ms(-1) at 5 400 ppm CO2, without substantial reduction in biomass concentration (2.27 to 1.93 g L-1, respectively) or productivity (0.189 to 0.173 g L-1 d(-1), respectively). The NER under these conditions was 5.47 for biomass plus lipid and 1.01 for lipid only. The CO2 supply rate, product of superficial gas velocity and CO2 concentration, correlated with the CO2 transfer rate which influenced algal productivity. The range of NERs measured across the superficial gas velocities studied indicates the ability to optimise algal cultivation in photobioreactors for the improved feasibility of algal bioenergy. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Life cycle assessment was used for comparison ecoinnovativeness of biogas prodn. by gasification of sewage sludge by using elec. energy from conventional sources and that produced from renewable sources. Biogasification of sewage sludge with renewable energy reduced the potential burden on the environment by almost 60%.This paper estimates the average social cost of municipal waste management as a function of the recycling rate. Social costs include all municipal costs and revenues, costs to recycling households to prepare materials estimated with an original method, external disposal costs, and external recycling benefits. Results suggest average social costs are minimized with recycling rates well below observed and mandated levels in Japan. Cost-minimizing municipalities are estimated to recycle less than the optimal rate. These results are robust to changes in the components of social costs, indicating that Japan and perhaps other developed countries may be setting inefficiently high recycling goals. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The goal of this study was to firstly compare greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land use and beef output per kg of fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) of German dairy farms using a life cycle approach and secondly determine the relative importance of parameters explaining variation of GHG emissions, beef and land use outcomes. In total, 27 dairy farms from south Germany with dual purpose Fleckvieh cows (South-FV) and 26 dairy farms from west Germany with Holstein-Friesian cows (West-HF) both feeding total mixed rations were assessed. Modelling of GHG emissions was based on international LCA guidelines and included all emissions up to the moment milk is sold from the farm. Beef output was calculated as actual (beef from culled cows) and potential beef output (includes beef from culled cows and from fattening of surplus calves outside the farm). Stepwise multiple linear regression and dominance analysis was used to identify parameters that have the highest impact on variation of GHG emissions, beef output and land use. The results showed that South-FV dairy farms emitted greater GHG emissions/kg of FPCM (P < 0.01) than higher yielding West-HF dairy farms. A wide range in GHG emissions within region was found from 0.90-1.25 kg CO2-eq/kg of FPCM for South-FV German farms and 0.79-1.20 kg CO2-eq/kg of FPCM for West-HF German farms. Average beef output/kg of FPCM of West-HF dairy farms was significantly lower compared to South-FV dairy farms. Outcomes of variable importance analysis showed that milk yield and replacement rate had a high impact on variation of GHG emissions and beef output of both dairy farm groups. A trade off between GHG emissions/kg of FPCM and beef output/kg FPCM was shown in the case of increasing milk yield and reducing replacement rate. However, the impact of replacement rate on potential beef output/kg of FPCM was sensitive to assumptions made to estimate potential beef output. No difference between the regions and breeds was found in case of land use/kg of FPCM. The analysis is a first approach identifying the parameters of commercial dairy farms that are key contributors to GHG emissions/kg of FPCM and are also highly variable between farms. It was also shown that it is important to identify those parameters that have a negative impact on beef output to avoid shifting GHG emissions between production systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rotational perennial grass/clover has multiple effects in cropping systems dominated by cereals. This study evaluated the environmental impact of rotational grass/clover ley for anaerobic digestion in a cereal-dominated grain production system in Sweden. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to compare two scenarios: (i) a cropping system including only spring barley and winter wheat; and (ii) a cropping system including 2-year grass/clover ley in combination with spring barley and winter wheat. The functional unit was one tonne of grain. The two main functions of the grass/clover crop were to provide feedstock for biogas production and to act as an organic fertiliser for allocation among the cereal crops in the rotation. Special consideration was given to nitrogen (N) management and the rotational effects of the grass/clover ley. In total, 73% of the N requirement of cereals in the ley scenario was met through symbiotic N fixation. Replacing diesel with biogas and mineral fertiliser with digested grass/clover biomass (digestate) reduced the use of fossil fuels substantially, from 1480 MJ per tonne in the reference scenario to -2900 MJ per tonne in the ley scenario. Potential eutrophication per tonne grain increased in the ley scenario, mainly owing to significantly higher ammonia emissions from spreading digestate and the larger area required for producing the same amount of grain. Potential acidification also increased when N mineral fertiliser was replaced by digestate. Crops relying on symbiotic N fixation are a promising feedstock for reducing the use of non-renewable energy in the production chain of farm-based bioenergy, but careful handling of the N-rich digestate is required. Replacing cereals intended for feed or food with bioenergy crops leads to indirect land use changes (iLUC) when the displaced crops must be produced elsewhere and the benefits obtained when biofuels replace fossil fuels may thereby be outweighed. In this study, the iLUC factor assumed had a critical effect on global warming potential in the ley scenario. However, carbon sequestration and the higher yield potential of subsequent cereal crops can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from iLUC to a varying extent. We recommend that crop sequences rather than single crops be considered when evaluating the environmental impact of production systems that include perennial legumes for food, feed and bioenergy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To promote the development of Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), we conducted a comprehensive review of recently developed frameworks, methods, and characterization models for impact assessment for future method developers and SLCA practitioners. Two previous reviews served as our foundations for this review. We updated the review by including a comprehensive list of recently-developed SLCA frameworks, methods and characterization models. While a brief discussion from goal, data, and indicator perspectives is provided in Sections 2 to 4 for different frameworks/methods, the focus of this review is Section 5 where discussion on characterization models for impact assessment of different methods is provided. The characterization models are categorized into two types following the UNEP/SETAC guidelines: type I models without impact pathways and type II models with impact pathways. Different from methods incorporating type I/II characterization models, another LCA modeling approach, Life Cycle Attribute Assessment (LCAA), is also discussed in this review. We concluded that methods incorporating either type I or type II models have limitations. For type I models, the challenge lies in the systematic identification of relevant stakeholders and materiality issues; while for type II models, identification of impact pathways that most closely and accurately represent the real-world causal relationships is the key. LCAA may avoid these problems, but the ultimate questions differ from those asked by the methods using type I and II models.In Sweden and in other countries, building owners are encouraged to help reduce energy consumption, both in order to contribute to national energy saving goals and, in terms of their own interests, to reduce the costs of heating and operation of the building. However, it is important to pursue the most optimal strategy available so as to achieve cost-effective energy usage while simultaneously maintaining excellent indoor environments, without sacrificing the architectural quality or negatively affecting the environment. Building managers often do not have the time or expertise required to make a proper evaluation of the available options before making a final decision. Renovation measures are often considered in the light of repaying investments in a short time rather than taking into account life cycle costs, despite the fact that a thoughtful, comprehensive renovation is often more cost-effective in the long run. This article presents a systematic approach for evaluating different renovation alternatives based on sustainability criteria. A methodology has been developed to evaluate different renovation alternatives from environmental, economic, and social perspectives. The benefit of using the proposed methodology is that building managers who face a major renovation work are provided with a clear comparison between the different renovation options, viewed from a sustainability perspective, this may facilitate, in the long run, a culture in which renovation measures which involve marginally increased costs, but are seen to lead to significant environmental and social benefits, will be considered and carried out.This review evaluates a diverse portfolio of technologies that produce hydrogen from renewable energy sources. A number of literature surveys and efficient hydrogen formation pathways are compared. The continuous improvement in hydrogen production pathways is of crucial importance in the making of hydrogen from sustainable energy sources. Evaluation of the economics in producing hydrogen from natural gas (NG), coal, biomass, atoms, sunlight and wind shows that the key to commercialization of hydrogen energy depends on feedstock cost, raw material availability, capital costs of equipment and how long the technology has been established. Estimates reveal that the hydrogen production cost (HPC) from coal is expected to be 0.36 to 1.83 US$/kg, whereas for NG it is 2.48 to 3.17 US$/kg. Depending on the type and cost of raw material employed, the HPC from biomass is expected to be in range of 1.44 to 2.83 US$/kg, while the HPC from wind is expected to be 5.50 US$/kg depending on the size of wind turbines and type of electrolyzers used. Compared to the HPC from coal and NG, the HPC from solar energy is much more higher (by more than 3 orders of magnitude). Considering the capital cost, energy consumption and operating costs, a HPC of 8 US$/kg would be expected for the electrolysis of water. Nevertheless, if the cost of electricity is low, then it would be possible to produce hydrogen from solar and water electrolysis at a cheaper rate. This result implies that hydrogen production from coal, biomass and NG resources will be great enough to meet hydrogen demands in the near future. Of all of the current technologies employed for the yield of hydrogen from fuels, steam methane reforming (SMR) seems to be the most practical and established technology. By the SMR pathway, HPC from NG is expected to be 3.50 US$/kg and 1.25 US $/kg for small and large plant sizes, respectively, while the HPC from NG is estimated to have a cost of 6 US$/GJ. However, production technologies including thermochemical pathways such as biomass gasification, pyrolysis, and supercritical water gasification (SCWG) and biological pathways such as photosynthesis, fermentation, and biological water gas shift reactions (BWGS) are also discussed.Dairy feeding systems in many semi-arid countries are based on imported concentrates and forages. This has economic and ecological implications given the increase in global feed prices and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use change. This paper aims to explore alternative dairy feeding systems under semi-arid conditions, using Jordan as an example. The feedings systems under investigation vary in their share of food industry by-products (replacing concentrates in the diet) and are compared against the current concentrate-based feeding systems. The systems are evaluated against three criteria: their nutritional value, their impact on the cost of milk production, and their GHG mitigation potential. Feed samples from eleven food industry by-products and ten conventional feeds were collected from food factories and from three typical dairy farms, representing the typical large-, medium- and small-scale farm types, respectively. Feed samples were analysed for their chemical composition and metabolisable energy contents. In addition, economic and production farm data were collected and entered into a model for GHGs calculation and economic evaluation. The results suggest that inclusion of locally available food industry by-products in the rations of milk cows in semi-arid production systems can be instrumental in reducing production costs and mitigating GHG emissions. Cost of milk production in the model farms can be lowered by up to 14 %; mitigation of CO2 eq. emission ranged between 70 and 290 g CO2 eq./kg milk. The degree to which these benefits can be reaped is positively related to the level of inclusion of by-product feeds in lactating cows' diets.Developments such as the Common Agricultural Policy reform, growth of the bio-based economy, increasing energy prices, increasing sustainability demands, and expected growth of global sugar demand change the environment in which the sugar producing industry operates. In order to remain competitive and profit from this, the traditional large-scale sugar producing industry can adapt. The aim of this study was to address sustainability and energy issues of the traditional sugar production process and to provide opportunities for improving the process and value chain. The methodological approach included evaluating function and resource usage of the unit operations. More sustainable alternative unit operations and processes were identified and studied. The results indicate that the current sugar production and by-product valorization focuses on centralized processing and has been individually optimized per sector and industry based on relatively inexpensive transportation and energy without a focus as such on the bio-based economy. For incorporation of the opportunities, a process for targeting new bio-based markets and supplementing large-scale sugar production was designed. It was found that small-scale biorefineries as an alternative and/or supplementation of the traditional large-scale process have the ability to increase the overall sustainability of sugarbeet processing, for example reduce energy usage and carbon footprint, by reducing transportation movements. Moreover, it provides opportunities for leaving out certain unit operations and using less capital-intensive technologies. With a holistic approach throughout the value chain, the introduction of small-scale biorefineries can help meet the challenges of the sugar producing industry, while simultaneously benefitting people, planet, and profit. (C) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdBioenergy systems are an essential part of a renewable energy portfolio, particularly as only liquid biofuels can replace petroleum in key applications. Unlike fossil energy systems, bioenergy systems can potentially be sustainable, that is, able to operate indefinitely into the future. Based on our work and the work of others who have examined various sustainability aspects of bioenergy systems, we believe it is possible to operate these systems so that they are sustainably profitable, improve the welfare of local populations, and provide environmental benefits for local and global ecosystems. However achieving greater sustainability by deploying bioenergy systems will not occur without careful thought and consideration. Therefore we propose and apply a set of sustainability objectives for bioenergy systems that span the economic, environmental, and social aspects of sustainability. (C) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe environmental benefits and trade-offs of automotive biofuels are well known, but less is known about aviation biofuels. We modeled the environmental impacts of three pathways for aviation biofuel in Australia (from microalgae, pongamia, and sugarcane molasses) using attributional life cycle assessments (LCAs), applying both economic allocation and system expansion. Based on economic allocation, sugarcane molasses has the better fossil energy ratio FER (1.7 MJ out/MJ in) and GHG abatement (73% less than aviation kerosene) of the three, but with trade-offs of higher water use and eutrophication potential. Microalgae and pongamia have lower FER and GHG abatement (1.0 and 1.1; 53% and 43%), but mostly avoid eutrophication and reduce water use trade-offs. All have similar and relatively low land use intensities. If produced on land where existing carbon stocks are not compromised, the sugarcane and microalgae pathways would currently meet a 50% GHG abatement requirement. Based on system expansion, microalgae and pongamia had lower impacts than sugarcane for all categories except energy input, highlighting the positive aspects of these next-generation feedstocks. The low fossil energy conservation potential of these pathways was found to be a drawback, and significant energy efficiencies will be needed before they can affect fossil energy conservation. Energy recovery from processing residues (base case) was preferable over use as animal feed (variant case), and crucial for favorable energy and GHG conservation. However this finding is at odds with the economic preferences identified in a companion technoeconomic study. (C) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdIn recent years, "green'' nanomaterial synthesis methods that rely upon natural alternatives to industrial chemicals have been increasingly studied. Although the feasibility of synthesizing nanoparticles (NPs) using phytochemicals, carbohydrates, and other biomolecules is well established, environmental burdens of these synthesis processes have not been critically evaluated from a life cycle perspective. Environmental impacts of nanotechnologies may potentially be reduced by applying green chemistry principles. However, doing so without evaluating the life cycle impacts of the processes may be misleading; merely replacing a conventional chemical with a natural or renewable alternative may not reduce environmental impacts. To explore this issue, we conducted a comparative, screening-level life cycle assessment (LCA) of gold nanoparticle (AuNP) synthesis using three conventional reducing agents and 13 green reducing agents. We found that a substantial portion of the energy footprint of AuNP synthesis is due to the embodied energy in gold. As a result of this embodied energy, even green AuNP synthesis methods have significant environmental impacts that are highly dependent upon reaction times and yields. Our results showed that LCA can elucidate the different environmental impacts of AuNP synthesis processes, help in choosing processes with reduced life cycle impacts, and directing decisions for future research and data collection efforts. We also discuss some challenges in conducting LCAs for nanotechnologies and highlight some major gaps in the green nano-synthesis literature that limit the comparability of reported green synthesis protocols. This research showed that screening-level LCAs can direct nanotechnology research toward more environmentally sustainable paths.The use of solar energy for heating greenhouses in the cold period for a Mediterranean climate is an important issue. In this paper, the thermal performance of a new solar air heater using a packed bed of spherical capsules with the latent heat storage system in east-west oriented greenhouse, is analyzed and discussed. The excess heat in the greenhouse was stored in the packed bed through the diurnal period and extracted at night. An experimental comparative study was conducted in two greenhouses installed in the Research and Technologies Centre of Energy (CRTEn) in Tunisia. The greenhouse heat balance in different components of the greenhouse with a heating system (cover, canopy, soil, inside air and packed bed solar collector), has been used to investigate the impact of the phase change material (PCM) on the greenhouse temperature and humidity. Results show that the nocturnal temperature inside the greenhouse equipped by a heating system exceeds the temperature inside the conventional greenhouse by 5 degrees C. The relative humidity was found to be of an average 10-20% lower at night time inside the heated greenhouse. The nighttime recovered heat of the solar system attained 31% of the total requirements of heating. An economic evaluation was made to find the payback period of the new solar air heater, the potential in saving fuel energy and the reducing carbon dioxide emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to develop a Building materials Embodied GHG Assessment Criteria and System (BEGAS) in the newly revised Korea Green Building Certification System (G-SEED). For this purpose, green building certification systems and supporting assessment systems were analyzed in order to grasp the current trend of the GHG emission assessment on building materials. The evaluands were selected by identifying the major building materials in the GHG emission assessment that meet the cut-off level of ISO 14040 for GHG emission assessment. In addition, standard quantity of GHG emissions were calculated for the G-SEED and BEGAS. An auto quantity input technique was presented using pure resource code, composed of standard work codes of the Public Procurement Service (PPS), as a medium, in order to support the easy assessment of GHG emission. Korea LCI DB, the Korean DB of environmental information on building materials, and the Korea carbon footprint labeling certificate were adopted to the database for analyzing the social features of Korea. As a result, based on the aforementioned database, the criteria of GHG emission assessment for building materials in Korea's G-SEED were proposed, and a web-based BEGAS was developed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Awareness of the environmental footprint of building construction and use has led to increasing interest in green building. Defining a green building is an evolving process with life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) emerging as key tools in that evolution and definition process. This study used LCIA to determine the environmental footprint associated with manufacturing 38- x 138-mm redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) decking from sustainably managed northern California redwood forests. Primary survey data were collected from four redwood mills that represent 90% of redwood lumber production. The primary data were then weight-averaged on a per-unit basis of 1 m(3) of planed redwood decking (380 oven-dry kg/m(3)) to calculate material flows and energy use. All of the raw material consumption and environmental outputs were assigned to dry planed redwood decking and none to coproducts. The gate-to-gate, cumulative energy consumption associated with manufacturing 1 m(3) of planed redwood decking from 1.8 m(3) of incoming logs was 1.36 GJ/m(3) with 19% of the energy provided by burning wood residues. Emission data produced through modeling the production process found that the estimated biomass and fossil CO2 emissions were 20.9 and 52.9 kg/m(3), respectively. Based on the carbon content of redwood of 53%, a cubic meter of 38- x 138-mm redwood decking product stores 201 kg of carbon and if released into the atmosphere would emit 738 kg of CO2. The amount of carbon stored in redwood decking is equivalent to about 10 times the total CO2 emissions released during the manufacturing process. Low carbon emissions during the manufacturing process and carbon storage during the service life of a redwood deck are positive environmental attributes that should be considered when selecting a decking product.Considering the importance of the German wood-based panel industry, the current status of available life-cycle inventory (LCI) data for these products is quite unsatisfying. In this study, detailed disaggregated LCI and environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) data and variation in data on production of the core products of the German wood-based panel sector are given. The data suit a wide range of applications and are transparently documented, allowing consistent combination with other raw data sets. The data are analyzed in terms of sensitivity of environmental impacts to the variations in LCI. Also, specific advice is given to LCA practitioners on how to narrow the presented variations with respect to the environmental impact category they are interested in. Results are presented for the typical midpoint environmental impact categories excluding toxicity indicators. For the latter, the relevant data gaps are discussed.This paper presents a regionalized LCA-based multi-objective optimization model of building energy demand and supply for the case of a Swiss municipality for the minimization of greenhouse gas emissions and particulate matter formation. The results show that the environmental improvement potential is very large: in the optimal case, greenhouse gas emissions from energy supply could be reduced by more than 75% and particulate emissions by over 50% in the municipality. This scenario supposes a drastic shift of heat supply systems from a fossil fuel dominated portfolio to a portfolio consisting of mainly heat pump and wood-chip incineration systems. In addition to a change in heat supply technologies, roofs, windows and walls would need to be refurbished in more than 65% of the municipality's buildings. The full potential of the environmental impact reductions will hardly be achieved in reality, particularly in the short term, for example, because of financial constraints and social acceptance, which were not taken into account in this study. Nevertheless, the results of the optimization model can help policy makers to identify the most effective measures for improvement at the decision making level, for example, at the building level for refurbishment and selection of heating systems or at the municipal level for designing district heating networks. Therefore, this work represents a starting point for designing effective incentives to reduce the environmental impact of buildings. While the results of the optimization model are specific to the municipality studied, the model could readily be adapted to other regions.This study presents the results of a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) on the energy requirements and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission implications of recycling construction and demolition (C&D) rubble and container glass in Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town is a medium sized city in a developing country with a growing population and a rising middle class, two factors that are resulting in increased generation of solid waste. The City is constrained in terms of landfill space and competing demands for municipal resources. The LCA assessment was based on locally gathered data, supplemented with ecoinvent life cycle inventory data modified to the local context. The results indicated that recycling container glass instead of landfilling can achieve an energy savings of 27% and a GHG emissions savings of 37%, with a net savings still being achieved even if collection practices are varied. The C&D waste results, however, showed net savings only for certain recycling strategies. Recycling C&D waste can avoid up to 90% of the energy and GHG emissions of landfilling when processed and reused onsite but, due to great dependence on haulage distances, a net reduction of energy use and GHG emissions could not be confidently discerned for off-site recycling. It was also found that recycling glass achieves significantly greater savings of energy and emissions than recycling an equivalent mass of C&D waste. The study demonstrated that LCA provides an important tool to inform decisions on supporting recycling activities where resources are limited. It also confirmed other researchers' observations that strict adherence to the waste management hierarchy will not always result in the best environmental outcome, and that more nuanced analysis is required. The study found that the desirability of recycling from an energy and climate perspective cannot be predicted on the basis of whether such recycling conserves a non-renewable material. However, recycling that replaces a virgin product from an energy-intensive production process appears to be more robustly beneficial than recycling that replaces a product with little embodied energy. Particular caution is needed when applying the waste management hierarchy to the latter situations. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Miscanthus is an emerging crop with high potential for bioenergy production. Its effective sustainability depends greatly on the spatial location of this crop, although few modelling approaches have been based on real maps. To fill this gap, we propose a spatially explicit method based on real location data. We mapped all of the miscanthus fields in the supply area of a transformation plant located in east-central France. Then, we used a boosted regression tree, machine learning method, to model miscanthus presence/absence at the level of the farmer's block as mapped in the French land parcel identification system. Each of these modelling spatial units was characterised on agronomical, morphological and contextual variables selected from in-depth spatially explicit farm surveys. The model fostered a two-fold aim: to assess the farmers' decision criteria and predict miscanthus location probability. In addition, we evaluated the consequence of possible legislative constraints, which could prevent the miscanthus to be planted in protected areas or in place of grasslands. The small and complex-shaped farmer's blocks that were predicted by our model to be planted with miscanthus were also characterised by their great distance from the farm and the roads. This kind of result could provide a different perspective on the definition of "marginal land" by integrating also the farm management criteria. In conclusion, our approach elicited real farmers' criteria regarding miscanthus location to capture local specificities and explore different miscanthus location probabilities at the farm and landscape levels. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle analysis method was used to evaluate the energy efficiency and environmental performance of bioethanol production from sweet sorghum stem in China. The scope covers three units, including plant cultivation, feedstock transport, and bioethanol conversion. Results show that the net energy ratio was 1.56 and the net energy gain was 8.37 MJ/L. Human toxicity was identified as the most significant negative environmental impact, followed by eutrophication and acidification. Steam generation in the bioethanol conversion unit contributed 82.28% and 48.26% to total human toxicity and acidification potential, respectively. Fertilizers loss from farmland represented 67.23% of total eutrophication potential. The results were significantly affected by the inventory allocation methods, vinasse reusing approaches, and feedstock yields. Reusing vinasse as fuel for steam generation and better cultivation practice to control fertilizer loss could significantly contribute to enhance the energy efficiency and environmental performance of bioethanol production from sweet sorghum stem. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed on a putative biodiesel production plant in which the freshwater alga Chlorella vulgaris, was grown using an existing system similar to a published commercial-scale hybrid cultivation. The hybrid system couples airlift tubular photobioreactors with raceway ponds in a two-stage process for high biomass growth and lipid accumulation. The results show that microalgal biodiesel production would have a significantly lower environmental impact than fossil-derived diesel. Based on the functional unit of 1 ton of biodiesel produced, the hybrid cultivation system and hypothetical downstream process (base case) would have 42% and 38% savings in global warming potential (GWP) and fossil-energy requirements (FER) when compared to fossil-derived diesel, respectively. Sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the most influential process parameters on the LCA results. The maximum reduction in GWP and FER was observed under mixotrophic growth conditions with savings of 76% and 75% when compared to conventional diesel, respectively. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores a tension between environmental justice and green jobs. Photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing processes involve hazardous chemicals similar to those found in the electronics industry, where impacts such as groundwater contamination, worker exposures to chemicals, and other air and water emissions overlap with environmental inequality. In the US, cadmium-based thin-film PV was financed with support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act producing new political ecological configurations of energy procurement and generation, linking Malaysian thin film PV fabs to public lands in the US desert southwest. By integrating traditions in global commodity chains, political ecology, and science and technology studies, this research shows how life cycle assessment was used to shape the debate about cadmium pollution from thin-film PV. As metrics have the power to obscure environmental injustice, the findings call for humility when interpreting life cycle assessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.\ Durability of products is generally seen to be a desirable goal. However, the extension of the lifetime of energy-using products is not necessarily the optimal strategy, as the efficiency of products generally decreases with wear, and their substitution by more energy-efficient products can be more environmentally beneficial in the long run. There is currently no standardised approach to resolving this conflict. The article describes an original method for environmentally assessing the durability of energy-using products in order to identify if and to what extent the potential extension of the product's lifetime could have life-cycle benefits. The method is based on the comparison, within a life-cycle perspective, of two scenarios of different lifetimes of a target product and its potential substitution with better performing alternatives. The method considers some key parameters of durability, including the product's lifetime, energy consumptions, impacts of lifetime extension and characteristics of the replacement product. The method can be used for ecodesign purposes by manufacturers or by policy makers. The applicability and robustness of the method are discussed, including limitations, difficulties and possible improvement. A general index and a simplified index have been introduced. The applicability and relevance of the simplified durability index is shown in two case-studies (of washing machines). The article shows that some life-cycle environmental benefits can be gained by extending the lifetime of the products. However, the benefits are variable, mostly depending on the selected impact category, the extension of the lifetime, the impact of repair, and the efficiency of the replacement product. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.A comparative LCA between an eco-sandwich made of bio-based epoxy resin (SuperSap 100/1000) and natural fibers against a traditional sandwich made of epoxy/glass-fibers was carried out. The main purpose and contribution of this study is the exploration of the eco-efficiency of this new material which featured applications span from naval to automotive and building sectors. To a minor degree, it is also a contribution in the sense that it provides life cycle inventory data on composites, which as yet are scarce in the LCA community. Life cycle assessments of bin-based polymers have shown favourable results in terms of environmental impacts and energy use compared to petroleum-based products. However, calculation of these impacts always depends on the system and boundary conditions considered during the study. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Atomic layer deposition (ALD), as a key enabling nano-manufacturing technology, has found a wide range of potential applications in a number of industrial sectors. However, due to the binary reaction and self-limiting nature of the ALD process, its life cycle environmental impact is significant but has never been investigated before. This study is conducted using a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach for evaluating the comprehensive environmental impacts of the ALD process based on the typical ALD of Al2O3 high-k dielectric gate on semiconductors. The hybrid life cycle inventory analysis is conducted using process-based LCA data, economic input output LCA data, and stoichiometric simulation data for a robust LCA study. The impact assessments are conducted using the TRACI method, with both original and U.S. normalized impact results analyzed. Normalized impact results show that, among the twelve selected impact categories, ALD produces the highest impact in the category of fossil fuels use which is 10(8) times that of the least impact in air acidification potential. Significant differences are also observed among the environmental impacts of the ALD life cycle stages. The environmental impacts associated with the auxiliary infrastructure, equipment, and tools for ALD operation are intensive mainly due to the slow ALD cycling process. This hybrid LCA study provides a comprehensive data support for understanding the potential environmental impacts of ALD nanotechnology and is useful for sustainable scaleup of the ALD technology in future. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The electronics industry leads the world's largest and fastest growing manufacturing sector. Consequently the management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has become a prominent problem in the modern world. In some developed countries, like Japan, strategies have been adopted (e.g. the home appliance recycling law), and comprehensive policy mechanisms have been implemented which aim to recuperate materials from WEEE, conserve resources, and control environmental pollution. At present, global warming and climate-change issues have been identified as key environmental considerations in policy agendas in both developed and developing countries. In this regard assessment of the potential of WEEE recycling in terms of a country's greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target would offer a new path towards climate-change mitigation. Thus, this study aims to provide an in-depth investigation of the effectiveness of WEEE recycling on GHG mitigation. Life cycle GHG emissions were estimated from the overall recycling process of major home appliances in Fukuoka Prefecture under Japan's home appliances recycling law. The calculation indicates that by implementing an appropriate VVEEE recycling and resource recovery program, a significant amount of GHG emissions could be avoided that would have otherwise occurred through the virgin production of materials. For instance, recycling of unit weight of washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners and televisions could contribute to 17.70, 27.34, 45.62 and 3.61 kg CO2-eq of GHG emissions reduction respectively. The findings will be useful for strengthening and implementing appropriate legislation and policies in countries across the Asia-Pacific and enhancing the systematic approaches of sound material recycling. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,Biomass from dedicated crops is expected to contribute significantly to the replacement of fossil resources. However, sustainable bioenergy cropping systems must provide high biomass production and low environmental impacts. This study aimed at quantifying biomass production, nutrient removal, expected ethanol production, and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of six bioenergy crops: Miscanthus x giganteus, switchgrass, fescue, alfalfa, triticale, and fiber sorghum. Biomass production and N, P, K balances (input-output) were measured during 4 years in a long-term experiment, which included two nitrogen fertilization treatments. These results were used to calculate a posteriori 'optimized' fertilization practices, which would ensure a sustainable production with a nil balance of nutrients. A modified version of the cost/benefit approach proposed by Crutzen et al. (2008), comparing the GHG emissions resulting from N-P-K fertilization of bioenergy crops and the GHG emissions saved by replacing fossil fuel, was applied to these 'optimized' situations. Biomass production varied among crops between 10.0 (fescue) and 26.9 t DM ha(-1) yr(-1) (miscanthus harvested early) and the expected ethanol production between 1.3 (alfalfa) and 6.1 t ha-(1) yr(-1) (miscanthus harvested early). The cost/benefit ratio ranged from 0.10 (miscanthus harvested late) to 0.71 (fescue); it was closely correlated with the N/C ratio of the harvested biomass, except for alfalfa. The amount of saved CO2 emissions varied from 1.0 (fescue) to 8.6 t CO(2)eq ha(-1) yr(-1) (miscanthus harvested early or late). Due to its high biomass production, miscanthus was able to combine a high production of ethanol and a large saving of CO2 emissions. Miscanthus and switchgrass harvested late gave the best compromise between low N-P-K requirements, high GHG saving per unit of biomass, and high productivity per hectare.Short-rotation woody biomass crops (SRWC) have been proposed as a major feedstock source for bioenergy generation in the Northeastern US. To quantify the environmental effects and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of crops including SRWC, investigators need spatially explicit data which encompass entire plantation cycles. A knowledge gap exists for the establishment period which makes current GHG calculations incomplete. In this study, we investigated the effects of converting pasture and hayfields to willow (Salix spp.) and hybrid-poplar (Populus spp.) SRWC plantations on soil nitrogen (N) cycling, nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, and nitrate (NO3-) leaching at six sites of varying soil and climate conditions across northern Michigan and Wisconsin, following these plantations from pre conversion through their first 2 years. All six sites responded to establishment with increased N2O emissions, available inorganic N, and, where it was measured, NO3- leaching; however, the magnitude of these impacts varied dramatically among sites. Soil NO3- levels varied threefold among sites, with peak extractable NO3- concentrations ranging from 15 to 49 g N kg(-1) soil. Leaching losses were significant and persisted through the second year, with 44-112 kg N ha(-1) leached in SRWC plots. N2O emissions in the first growing season varied 30-fold among sites, from 0.5 to 17.0 Mg-CO(2)eq ha(-1) (carbon dioxide equivalents). N2O emissions over 2 years resulted in N2O emissions due to plantation establishment that ranged from 0.60 to 22.14 Mg-CO(2)eq ha(-1) above baseline control levels across sites. The large N losses we document herein demonstrate the importance of including direct effects of land conversion in life-cycle analysis (LCA) studies of SRWC GHG balance. Our results also demonstrate the need for better estimation of spatial variability of N cycling processes to quantify the full environmental impacts of SRWC plantations.Global climate change is one of the most significant environmental issues that can harm human development. One central issue for the building and construction industry to address global climate change is the development of a credible and meaningful way to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050, the first international GHG standard, has been proven to be successful in standardizing the quantification process, its contribution to the management of carbon labels for construction materials is limited. With the recent publication of ISO 14067 [63]: Greenhouse gases - carbon footprint of products - requirements and guidelines for quantification and communication in May 2013, it is necessary for the building and construction industry to understand the past, present and future of the carbon labelling practices for construction materials. A systematic review shows that international GHG standards have been evolving in terms of providing additional guidance on communication and comparison, as well as less flexibility on the use of carbon labels. At the same time, carbon labelling schemes have been evolving on standardization and benchmarking. In addition, future actions are needed in the aspect of raising consumer awareness, providing benchmarking, ensuring standardization and developing simulation technologies in order for carbon labelling schemes for construction materials to provide credible, accurate and transparent information on GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This life cycle assessment evaluates and quantifies the environmental impacts of renewable chemical production from forest residue via fast pyrolysis with hydrotreating/fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) pathway. The assessment input data are taken from Aspen Plus and greenhouse gases, regulated emissions, and energy use in transportation (GREET) model. The SimaPro 7.3 software is employed to evaluate the environmental impacts. The results indicate that the net fossil energy input is 34.8 MJ to produce 1 kg of chemicals, and the net global warming potential (GWP) is -0.53 kg CO2 eq. per kg chemicals produced under the proposed chemical production pathway. Sensitivity analysis indicates that bio-oil yields and chemical yields play the most important roles in the greenhouse gas footprints. Fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced if commodity chemicals are produced via forest residue fast pyrolysis with hydrotreating/FCC pathway in place of conventional petroleum-based production pathways.Environmental toxicity potential is the potential harm of a chemical substance or a compound that is released into the environment. Such harm is present in the generation of electricity using fossil fuels that release toxins that result in environmental pollution that would certainly have serious implications on human health and the ecosystem quality. This study assessed the environmental toxicity potential of the centralized grid-connected electricity generating systems for the years 2000, 2015, 2020, 2026 and 2030, according to the Tanzania Electricity Supply Company Limited, TANESCO's power system master plan of the year 2009. Life cycle assessment, which is a globally and widely used tool for assessing what impact product or services have during their life cycle, from production stage to disposal stage was used to assess the electricity generating systems based on process analysis. The life cycle impact assessment was calculated using CML 2001 version 2.05. The results show that environmental toxicity potentials increase significantly for the years 2000, 2015, 2020, 2026 and 2030. In addition, the contribution of electricity generation from fossil fuels viz. coal, natural gas, heavy fuel and industrial diesel oils to the environmental toxicity potentials are high as compared to that of hydroelectricity. The result suggests that increasing the share of hydroelectricity would significantly help to reduce the environmental toxicity potentials and ultimately the environmental profile of the electricity generation could be improved.This study presents an educational experience, of a Brazilian center of technological education, focused on the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students, according to directions of UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. It describes an institutional collaborative work, aligned with the Life Cycle Initiative, and evaluates the main actions implemented through a set of indicators, which show the organizational dynamics and changes in the professional profiles of students, between 2006 and 2012. The description of the institutional collaborative work was based on direct observations conducted by the authors, who participated in the experience, and on a documentary research involving data from academic system. This effort led to representations of (a) key interactions among actors of organizations and (b) a set of 11 indicators of changes for individuals and organizations. Interviews with students and representatives of organizations also contributed to generate the structure of the network and to fulfill the set of indicators. Among the research findings, two were considered more relevant from the direct observation: (a) the structuring of an effective laboratory supported by public funds to conduct the educational experience and (b) the introduction of life cycle thinking (LCT), life cycle management (LCM), and the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) as optional areas of study for students. The offer of regular classes, supported by software, and the organization of small-scale research projects made the work feasible, altogether, improving the interest and cooperation of different graduate and undergraduate student groups. This outcome increased the interactions with other public and private organizations; much additional research was accomplished. The experience contributed to materialize the LCT, LCM, and LCA themes and persuades the actors to reflect on new reflections concerning the necessity of changes in their professional profiles. This suggests a potential to produce organizational improvements and innovations. However, some challenges must be faced in Brazil: organization of the national inventory, improvement of academic knowledge and more engagement of scholars, as well as the lack of guidance and assistance to consolidate local and national collaborative work.The analysis of uncertainty in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies has been a topic for more than 10 years, and many commercial LCA programs now feature a sampling approach called Monte Carlo analysis. Yet, a full Monte Carlo analysis of a large LCA system, for instance containing the 4,000 unit processes of ecoinvent v2.2, is rarely carried out by LCA practitioners. One reason for this is computation time. An alternative faster than Monte Carlo method is analytical error propagation by means of a Taylor series expansion; however, this approach suffers from being explained in the literature in conflicting ways, hampering implementation in most software packages for LCA. The purpose of this paper is to compare the two different approaches from a theoretical and practical perspective. In this paper, we compare the analytical and sampling approaches in terms of their theoretical background and their mathematical formulation. Using three case studies-one stylized, one real-sized, and one input-output (IO)-based-we approach these techniques from a practical perspective and compare them in terms of speed and results. Depending on the precise question, a sampling or an analytical approach provides more useful information. Whenever they provide the same indicators, an analytical approach is much faster but less reliable when the uncertainties are large. For a good analysis, analytical and sampling approaches are equally important, and we recommend practitioners to use both whenever available, and we recommend software suppliers to implement both.This paper aims to sort the literatures on life cycle assessments (LCA) by their respective importance through citation and co-citation analysis and to further discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these kinds of scientometric methods in the case of LCA research. CiteSpace II was used to generate document co-citation networks based on 3,824 articles retrieved from the ISI Web of Science database on this topic. Table 1 provides the top 50 highest cited documents in the LCA field. Here, we use two indicators, i.e., citation frequency in citation analysis and betweenness centrality metric in co-citation analysis, to measure the importance of these LCA literatures. Citation and co-citation analysis are useful for environmental scientists and engineers to get a better understanding of the inner structure of LCA research. However, like all other research methods, this kind of analysis has some limitations. On the one hand, Scientometric studies and related software are very dependent on ISI Web of Science database, but considering the ISI Web of Science only began to track the LCA field fairly recently, the Scopus database would probably give a fuller picture. On the other hand, since the essence of scientometrics analysis is outsiders commenting insiders, so with only citation and co-citation analysis, to our understanding of the past, present, and future of LCA field, is insufficient.The European Construction Products Regulation provides a life cycle based framework for the environmental assessment of construction products. Harmonised European standards for the assessment of the release of dangerous substances and for declaration of environmental performance are in progress. Risk based limit values for the protection of soil and groundwater below construction works will still bet set nationally. In this paper we review the possibilities to expand the ongoing harmonisation to include risk assessment and life cycle assessment (LCA). Based on reviews of national European limit value models (LMVs) for assessment of release to soil and groundwater, two areas for harmonisation emerge: 1- The toxicological criteria. Toxicological endpoints to protect human health and environment are similar, and data from the same toxicological data sets are used to establish acceptance criteria. 2- The emission part of LIVIVs. We extracted six generic construction works for granular materials. These encompass the most common choices and span the different release scenarios applied. Harmonised emission models would also facilitate LCA and environmental product declaration (EPD). The immission or transport part of the LVMs is less promising for harmonisation. Locating the acceptance criteria point of compliance close to the construction works is advantageous from many aspects and would facilitate harmonisation of assessments. We have identified two different strategies to include recycling in the assessments: 1- Tiered procedure where assessment and declaration of performance are made for the intended primary use of the product only and renewed assessments are made whenever the construction works are demolished and the product is recovered. 2- Scenario based procedure where future recycling scenarios, into new products and construction works, are forecasted. In this case the initial assessment and declaration of environmental performance of a construction product is performed both for the intended primary use of the product and for the recycling scenarios. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Transport from regional production requires less fossil fuel and thus produces lower greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, policies fostering the production of regional goods support rural development. Tomato consumption has increased fast in Europe over the last decade. Intensive production techniques such as heated greenhouses and long-distance transport overcome seasonal constraints in order to provide year-round fresh goods. However, studies that evaluate seasonal and off-season production are scarce. Here, we analyzed the carbon footprint of tomato production systems in Austria, Spain, and Italy using a life cycle approach. We collected data from four main supply chains ending at the point of sale in an average Austrian supermarket. We aimed to identify hotspots of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production, heating, packaging, processing, and transport. Our results show that imported tomatoes from Spain and Italy have two times lower greenhouse gas emissions than those produced in Austria in capital-intensive heated systems. On the contrary, tomatoes from Spain and Italy were found to have 3.7 to 4.7 times higher greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to less-intensive organic production systems in Austria. Therefore, greenhouse gas emissions from tomato production highly depend on the production system such as the prevalence or absence of heating.This paper describes a framework for applying design for environment (DfE) within an industry setting. Our aim is to couple implicit design knowledge such as redesign/process constraints with quantitative measures of environmental performance to enable informed decision making. We do so by integrating life cycle assessment (LCA) and multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA). Specifically, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used for prioritizing various levels of DfE strategies. The AHP network is formulated so as to improve the environmental performance of a product while considering business-related performance. Moreover, in a realistic industry setting, the onus of decision making often rests with a group, rather than an individual decision maker (DM). While conducting independent evaluations, experts often do not perfectly agree and no individual expert can be considered representative of the ground truth. Hence, we integrate a stochastic simulation module within the MCDA for assessing the variability in preferences among DMs. This variability in judgments is used as a metric for quantifying judgment reliability. A sensitivity analysis is also incorporated to explore the dependence of decisions on specific input preferences. Finally, the paper discusses the results of applying the proposed framework in a real-world case.Water use (WU) in dairy production is a matter of discussion all over the world because water scarcity and water pollution are issues of concern in a large number of regions. Concurrently, climate change has also become an emerging concern for most of the dairy producers because this is leading to a change in rainfall patterns and water availability. However, analyses of disaggregated WU in different milk production systems and different countries are scarce. In this context, this study sets out to measure green, blue and grey WU of milk production in 72 dairy regions from 48 countries representing 85% of the world's milk production. This study further considers differences in three milk production systems to explore the causes of variation on WU in milk production. The analysis was based on typical-farm approach representing common production features regionally and different coefficients to convert all the resources used to WU for milk production. The extended version of TIPI-CAL 5.2 (Technology Impact Policy Impact Calculation) model was used for data analysis. The global comparison results of WU has shown the average green, blue and grey WU are 1466, 121 and 106 L/kg ECM, respectively. The lowest green and blue water was found in Western Europe and Oceania with an average of 743 and 44 L/kg ECM, respectively, whereas the highest green water (4549 L/kg ECM) was in African small-scale farms but the blue water (304 L/kg ECM) was highest in Middle East feedlot farms. Meanwhile, the lowest (65 L/kg ECM) and the highest (268 L/kg ECM) grey water was observed in Oceania and Asia, respectively. However, there was a large intra- and inter-regional differences. Low yielding cows on small-scale farms have the highest WU/kg ECM, followed by grazing and intensive production systems. The determinants for WU variation were mainly due to the interaction effect among the level of production intensity, ration composition, feeding systems and the location where the feed have been cultivated. Feed is the highest single contributor to blue WU accounting for 50-86% of total blue WU depending on farming system. A consequence of using more blue water involves taking water from the environment, meaning it is no longer available for other users or for environmental flows. Although a dairy farmer could increase land productivity by irrigating pasture instead of relying on natural rainfall, the potential increase in environmental harm could be enormous in farms that use irrigation in high water scarce areas. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pig slurry treatment is an important means in reducing nitrogen loads applied to farmland. Solid phase separation prior to biological treatment further allows for recovering phosphorus with the solid phase. The organic residues from the pig slurry treatment can be applied as organic fertilizers to farmland replacing mineral fertilizers. The environmental impacts of nutrient recycling from aerobic, biological pig slurry treatment were evaluated applying the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. LCA results revealed that direct field emissions from organic fertilizer application and the amount of avoided mineral fertilizers dominated the environmental impacts. A modified plant available nitrogen calculation (PAN) was introduced taking into account calculated nitrogen emissions from organic fertilizer application. Additionally, an equation for calculating the quantity of avoided mineral fertilizers based on the modified PAN calculation was proposed, which accounted for nitrogen emissions from mineral fertilizer application. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes a hands-on project that introduces first year engineering students to life cycle assessment (LCA) through the comparison of the environmental impact of the production and use of three diesel fuels: petroleum diesel, biodiesel from new vegetable oil, and biodiesel from waste vegetable oil. The purpose of this LCA project was to incorporate life cycle thinking into the engineering design process, to apply the four main steps of LCA (definition and scope, inventory analysis, impact assessment and improvement assessment), and to explore some of the challenges associated with each step. The inventory for biodiesel production (from both new and waste vegetable oils) was based on measurements obtained by the students in laboratory experiments. The fossil diesel production inventory was obtained from the SimaPro database. The inventory for the use of all three fuels was obtained from measurements taken during combustion of the fuels in a generator. A cradle-to-grave life cycle analysis was then conducted using SimaPro for each fuel. The assessment of learning outcomes indicates a significant increase in conceptual understanding of the four stages of life cycle assessment, and an average gain of over 55% in overall knowledge of life cycle assessment. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As China is one of the countries facing the most serious pollution and human exposure effects of e-waste in the world, much of the population there is exposed to potentially hazardous substances due to informal e-waste recycling processes. This report reviews recent studies on human exposure to e-waste in China, with particular focus on exposure routes (e.g. dietary intake, inhalation, and soil/dust ingestion) and human body burden markers (e.g. placenta, umbilical cord blood, breast milk, blood, hair, and urine) and assesses the evidence for the association between such e-waste exposure and the human body burden in China. The results suggest that residents in the e-waste exposure areas, located mainly in the three traditional e-waste recycling sites (Taizhou, Guiyu, and Qingyuan), are faced with a potential higher daily intake of these pollutants than residents in the control areas, especially via food ingestion. Moreover, pollutants (PBBs, PBDEs, PCBs, PCDD/Fs, and heavy metals) from the e-waste recycling processes were all detectable in the tissue samples at high levels, showing that they had entered residents' bodies through the environment and dietary exposure. Children and neonates are the groups most sensitive to the human body effects of e-waste exposure. We also recorded plausible outcomes associated with exposure to e-waste, including 7 types of human body burden. Although the data suggest that exposure to e-waste is harmful to health, better designed epidemiological investigations in vulnerable populations, especially neonates and children, are needed to confirm these associations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study presents the life cycle environmental impacts of natural gas combined cycle thermal power plant in India. The CML 2001 and Eco-Indicator 99 (H) methods have been used to assess the midpoint and endpoint impacts from cradle to gate'. The primary data was collected by personal visits for environmental emissions, wastewater, fuel used, and technical specifications. The impacts category comprised of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, ecotoxicity, carcinogens, respiratory organics, respiratory inorganics and climate change. The study shows that upstream processes have more impacts except global warming potential if compared at mid-point stage. It is an interesting observation that similar to 81% of the total carcinogen impacts and similar to 88% of the respiratory-organics impacts in terms of disability adjusted life years are due to upstream process. This is due to the reason that during natural gas extraction, treatment and transmission, organic air emissions such as non-methane volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are released. Impacts on ecosystem quality are due to acidification & eutrophication together i.e. 2.27E-03 in terms of potentially disappeared! fraction over a certain area and time frame (PDF x m(2) x yr) andl 1.54E-03 as potentially affected fraction (PAF x m(2) x yr) clue to ecotoxicity. This study shows that climate change potential contributes to 53% impacts on human health; whereas, human toxicity potential results into 47% impacts on human health. Acidification and eutrophication cause 60% impacts on species diversity, mainly for vascular plants and lower organisms; whereas, ecotoxicity results into 40% impacts on aquatic life. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study quantified the contributions of uncertainty and variability to the range of life-cycle greenhouse gas (LCGHG) emissions associated with conventional gas-fired electricity generation in the US. Whereas uncertainty is defined as lack of knowledge and can potentially be reduced by additional research, variability is an inherent characteristic of supply chains and cannot be reduced without physically modifying the system. The life-cycle included four stages: production, processing, transmission and power generation, and utilized a functional unit of 1 kWh of electricity generated at plant. Technological variability requires analyses of life cycles of individual power plants, e.g. combined cycle plants or boilers. Parameter uncertainty was modeled via Monte Carlo simulation. Our approach reveals that technological differences are the predominant cause for the range of LCGHG emissions associated with gas power, primarily due to variability in plant efficiencies. Uncertainties in model parameters played a minor role for 100 year time horizon. Variability in LCGHG emissions was a factor of 1.4 for combined cycle plants, and a factor of 1.3 for simple cycle plants (95% CI, 100 year horizon). The results can be used to assist decision-makers in assessing factors that contribute to LCGHG emissions despite uncertainties in parameters employed to estimate those emissions.This paper describes the development of (1) a formula correlating the variation in overall refinery energy efficiency with crude quality, refinery complexity, and product slate; and (2) a methodology for calculating energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensities and processing fuel shares of major U.S. refinery products. Overall refinery energy efficiency is the ratio of the energy present in all product streams divided by the energy in all input streams. Using linear programming (LP) modeling of the various refinery processing units, we analyzed 43 refineries that process 70% of total crude input to U.S. refineries and cover the largest four Petroleum Administration for Defense District (PADD) regions (I, II, III, V). Based on the allocation of process energy among products at the process unit level, the weighted-average product-specific energy efficiencies (and ranges) are estimated to be 88.6% (86.2%-91.2%) for gasoline, 90.9% (84.8%-94.5%) for diesel, 95.3% (93.0%-97.5%) for jet fuel, 94.5% (91.6%-96.2%) for residual fuel oil (RFO), and 90.8% (88.0%-94.3%) for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The corresponding weighted-average, production GHG emission intensities (and ranges) (in grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) per megajoule (MJ)) are estimated to be 7.8 (6.2-9.8) for gasoline, 4.9 (2.7-9.9) for diesel, 2.3 (0.9-4.4) for jet fuel, 3.4 (1.5-6.9) for RFO, and 6.6 (4.3-9.2) for LPG. The findings of this study are key components of the life-cycle assessment of GHG emissions associated with various petroleum fuels; such assessment is the centerpiece of legislation developed and promulgated by government agencies in the United States and abroad to reduce GHG emissions and abate global warming.The optimum thickness of the building envelope insulation materials depends on a large number of parameters. But the optimum thickness is calculated considering only economic arguments. In this paper, life-cycle assessment of the materials used in the building, and specifically the insulation ones, are included in the process to calculate the optimum insulation thickness from both environmental and energetic points of views. Within this frame, the large influence of the parameters associated with the manufacturing of the materials on the determination of the optimum thickness has been demonstrated: For all the studied cases, the insulation thickness depends in a large way on the unitary economic, energetic and environmental costs. The biggest differences in optimum thicknesses between two different insulation materials correspond to the highest differences in the unitary costs, for all the optimization points of views. The study also demonstrates that increasing values of the characteristic parameters of the manufacturing phase, which depend on the nature of the insulation materials, imply a decrease of the impact of the calculation settings, associated with the use phase of the building.A life cycle analysis (LCA) for pyrolysis biochar systems was carried out to determine greenhouse gas balance, carbon cycling, and the economics of biochar production from different agricultural residues and wastes. Investigating a range of feedstocks (forest residues, corn stover, etc.) provided insight into the use of biomass residues rather than bioenergy crops as biochar production substrates and the resulting energy and climate change impacts. The analyses were conducted based on various optimized pyrolysis parameters for corn fodder and forest residue. The observed reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (CO2 equivalent per Mg dry feedstock) for both corn fodder and forest residue were mainly contributed by the stable carbon in the biochar. Corn fodder showed a greater reduction in emissions than forest residue, indicating the corn fodder's greater economic potential for soil sequestration of stable carbon. The relative GHG emission analysis found that the optimization of a biomass pyrolysis system for biochar production is better suited for soil sequestration of stable carbon than as a fuel source. The economic viability of the pyrolysis-biochar system is largely dependent on the costs of feedstock production, pyrolysis, and the value of C offsets. The LCA reported in this study can be instrumental in assessing the environmental potential of biochar production and its application in the region.The residual forest biomass (RFB) sector has been experiencing strong development at European level and particularly in Portugal mainly due to the increase of energy production from renewable sources. The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of eucalyptus RFB chips production chain in Portugal. The environmental and economic impact comparison of the processes included in the production chain is presented as well. The environmental impacts were calculated by the life cycle assessment approach described in the ISO 14040 series of standards. The production chain assessed included all processes from eucalyptus forest until the delivery of RFB chips at the power plant. The main conclusion of this study is that eucalyptus wood production is the process that presents the greatest environmental impact through the product life cycle. Considering only emissions and depletion of energy resources, RFB chipping is the process that presents the higher environmental impact followed by transport of RFB by truck and trailer and transport of RFB by forwarder. These operations are responsible for approximately 81 % on "Respiratory inorganic'' and 87 % on "Fossil fuels'' which are the two most significant normalized impact categories. In economic terms, the transport of RFB by truck and trailer presents the highest cost followed by chipping and processing of trees. These three operations are responsible for approximately 80 % of total costs. A sensitivity analysis showed that a 32 % increase in the transport distance from the forest to the power plant would cause an 8 % increase in "Climate change''.The European legislation establishes collection rates and states that all identifiable batteries must undergo treatment and recycling. Due to the inexistence in Portugal of recycling plants for alkaline batteries, those collected there have been sent to Austria and France, and currently, it is pondered to send them to Spain. This study aims to know the potential environmental impacts associated with the management of spent domestic alkaline batteries from collection in continental Portugal to recycling abroad. Three alternative recycling processes are considered: in Austria (A), France (F) and Spain (S). The system in study, from battery collection in continental Portugal to recycling abroad, includes complementary processes necessary for this circuit such as the production of boxes for battery collection and/or transportation and, for easiness of analysis and interpretation, is divided into: (i) container manufacture; (ii) distribution of empty containers; (iii) battery collection and sorting; (iv) international transport for the recycling; and (v) battery recycling. Recovered materials were also quantified. The LCA methodology and the method of impact assessment Eco-indicator 99, Hierarchist version, with two options, with and without inclusion of long-term emissions, were used. This method considers three damage categories: human health, ecosystem quality and resources, which group 11 impact categories. For ecosystem quality, there is a preponderance of the impact of recycling processes F and S regarding all other processes and, in particular, regarding recycling process A. After these, the container production impact is the most significant followed by the transport to Austria. For human health, there is a preponderance of the impact of recycling process S followed by the impact of F, and then of the transport to Austria and, only after, the impact of recycling process A. For resources, process S impact is higher than the one of A and this is higher than system F. The transport shows an expectable impact (highest for Austria, lowest for Spain), but for Austria and for France, it is higher than the impact of the recycling process itself. System F is the most negative in terms of ecosystem quality and S is the worst in terms of human health. In these two damage categories, system A is the best but the worst in the damage category of resources, where F is the best system. If the recovered materials are considered in this balance, the environmental advantage of system A is clear.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been increasingly implemented in analyzing the environmental performance of buildings and construction projects. To assess the life cycle environmental performance, decision-makers may adopt the two life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) approaches, namely the midpoint and endpoint models. Any imprudent usage of the two approaches may affect the assessment results and thus lead to misleading findings. ReCiPe, a well-known work, includes a package of LCIA methods to provide assessments on both midpoint and endpoint levels. This study compares different potential LCIA results using the midpoint and endpoint approaches of ReCiPe based on the assessment of a commercial building in Hong Kong. This paper examines 23 materials accounting for over 99 % of the environmental impacts of all the materials consumed in commercial buildings in Hong Kong. The midpoint and endpoint results are compared at the normalization level. A commercial building in Hong Kong is further studied to provide insights as a real case study. The ranking of impact categories and the contributions from various construction materials are examined for the commercial building. Influence due to the weighting factors is discussed. Normalization results of individual impact categories of the midpoint and endpoint approaches are consistent for the selected construction materials. The difference in the two approaches can be detected when several impact categories are considered. The ranking of materials is slightly different under the two approaches. The ranking of impact categories demonstrates completely different features. In the case study of a commercial building in Hong Kong, the contributions from subprocesses are different at the midpoint and endpoint. The weighting factors can determine not only the contributions of the damage categories to the total environment, but also the value of a single score. In this research, the midpoint and endpoint approaches are compared using ReCiPe. Information is whittled down from the inventories to a single score. Midpoint results are comprehensive while endpoint results are concise. The endpoint approach which provides additional information of damage should be used as a supplementary to the midpoint model. When endpoint results are asked for, a LCIA method like ReCiPe that provides both the midpoint and endpoint analysis is recommended. This study can assist LCA designers to interpret the midpoint and endpoint results, in particular, for the assessment of commercial buildings in Hong Kong.A simple biofuel production system can be first examined for its policy compliance in terms of GHG emission reduction target relative to fossil-based counterparts. More integrated and optimised biorefinery systems with polygeneration can then be evolved with the aid of graphical analysis of marginal emission savings vs. additional economic margins. This bottom-up approach helps to achieve greater GHG emission cut by integrated systems design and thereby setting a more stringent benchmark to support policies towards achieving climate change mitigation goals. The combined Economic Value and Environmental Impact analysis is a multi-level methodology that can be used to represent biorefinery system performances as an aggregate of differential economic and environmental impact margins of biorefinery products. The methodology is extended in this paper to support process integration strategies that allow achieving policy compliance of biorefinery products in terms of GHG emission savings. An economic and environmental impact profile of the products is introduced for a graphical visualisation of economic costs and values as well as deficits and surpluses in environmental impact savings. The effectiveness of the extended methodology has been demonstrated using a Jatropha-based biorefinery system converting Jatropha seed into biodiesel, glycerol and cake, as a case study. The biodiesel produced can achieve 53% emission cut, while glycerol and cake can achieve an emission cut by 57% by displacing similar functionality fossil based products. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The combined effort of reducing the emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and greenhouse gases to comply with future regulations and reduce impact on climate change will require a significant change in ship propulsion. One alternative is to change fuels. In this study we compare the life cycle environmental performance of liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied biogas (LBG), methanol and bio-methanol. We also highlight a number of important aspects to consider when selecting marine fuels. A transition to use of LNG or methanol produced from natural gas would significantly improve the overall environmental performance. However, the impact on climate change is of the same order of magnitude as with use of heavy fuel oil. It is only the use of LBG and bio-methanol that has the potential to reduce the climate impact. The analysis did not show any significant differences in environmental performance between methane and methanol when produced from the same raw materials, but the performance of the methanol engines are yet to be validated. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An environmental assessment of the life cycle of broiler chicken production from a cradle-to-slaughterhouse gate perspective was carried out with the aim of identifying the environmental hotspots of the system. To do so, broiler chicken production in Portugal was investigated in detail. Inventory data for the different production stages (chicken farm- and slaughterhouse-related activities) was gathered in collaboration with an integrated Portuguese chicken company. Results showed that the chicken farm is the main factor responsible for the environmental impacts analysed. Specifically, both feed production and on-farm emissions were the main environmental hotspots. Concerning the slaughterhouse-related activities, the production of electricity and packaging materials presented a significant contribution at this stage. The environmental results were compared with other published Life Cycle Assessment studies of chicken production in other countries, with special attention paid to the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions. A number of improvement actions are proposed to reduce the environmental impacts of poultry litter management and feed production. Moreover, studies of pork, beef and fish (sardines) were also included for comparison using a functional unit based on an identical protein content. The results (excluding subsequent packaging) showed that the production of broiler chicken could be preferable in comparison to other types of meat due to its lower global warming potential. On the contrary, sardines presented a reduction of 88% in comparison with the chicken profile; however, the availability of sardines for consumption may be limited throughout the year due to EU fishing protocols concerning sea stocks protection. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The intensification process of the livestock sector has been characterized in recent decades by increasing output of product per hectare, increasing stocking rate, including more concentrated feed in the diet, and improving the genetic merit of the breeds. In dairy farming, the effects of intensification on the environmental impact of milk production are not completely clarified. The aim of the current study was to assess the environmental impacts of dairy production by a life cycle approach and to identify relations between farming intensity and environmental performances expressed on milk and land units. A group of 28 dairy farms located in northern Italy was involved in the study; data collected during personal interviews of farmers were analyzed to estimate emissions (global warming potential, acidification, and eutrophication potentials) and nonrenewable source consumption (energy and land use). The environmental impacts of milk production obtained from the life cycle assessment were similar to those of other recent studies and showed high variability among the farms. From a cluster analysis, 3 groups of farms were identified, characterized by different levels of production intensity. Clusters of farms showed similar environmental performances on product basis, despite important differences in terms of intensification level, management, and structural characteristics. Our study pointed out that, from a product perspective, the most environmentally friendly way to produce milk is not clearly identifiable. However, the principal component analysis showed that some characteristics related to farming intensification, such as milk production per cow, dairy efficiency, and stocking density, were negatively related to the impacts per kilogram of product, suggesting a role of these factors in the mitigation strategy of environmental burden of milk production on a global scale. Considering the environmental burden on a local perspective, the impacts per hectare were positively associated with the intensification level.To enhance local water security, the Singapore government promotes two water conservation policies: the use of eco-friendly toilets to reduce yellow water (YW) disposal and the installation of water efficient devices to minimize gray water (GW) discharge. The proposed water conservation policies have different impacts on the environmental performance of local wastewater management. The main purpose of this study is to examine and compare the impacts of different domestic wastewater streams and the effectiveness of two water conservation policies by means of life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA is used to compare three scenarios, including a baseline scenario (BL), YW-reduced scenario (YWR) and GW-reduced scenario (GWR). The BL is designed based on the current wastewater management system, whereas the latter two scenarios are constructed according to the two water conservation policies that are proposed by the Singapore government. The software SIMPARO 7.3 with local data and an eco-invent database is used to build up the model, and the functional unit is defined as the daily wastewater disposal of a Singapore resident. Due to local water supply characteristics, the system boundary is extended to include the sewage sludge management and tap water production processes. The characterization results indicate that the GWR has a significant impact reduction (22-25%) while the YWR has only a 2-4% impact reduction compared with the BL The contribution analysis reveals that the GW dominates many impact categories except eutrophication potential. The tap water production is identified as the most influential process due to its high embodied energy demand in a local context. Life cycle costing analysis shows that both YWR and GWR are financially favorable. It is also revealed that the current water conservation policies could only achieve Singapore's short-term targets. Therefore, two additional strategies are recommended for achieving long-term goals. This study provides a comprehensive and reliable environmental profile of Singapore's wastewater management with the help of extended system boundary and local data. This work also fills the research gap of previous studies by identifying the contribution of different wastewater streams, which would serve as a good reference for source-separating sanitation system design. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to determine the life cycle CO2 emissions for the production and distribution of energy carriers in China. The mathematical method of input-output analysis was used to model the complicated materials flows between different energy industries. The results show that, for providing 1 GJ fuels, coking products have the largest CO2 emission, followed by oil products, middling coal, cleaned coal, natural gas and crude oil, and raw coal. The results also show that the theory and mathematical model of input-output analysis are more proper for energy carriers than traditional inventory calculation models. The comparison between China and Japan indicates that the life cycle CO2 emissions of energy carriers produced in China are higher than developed level; therefore there is CO2 mitigation potential for China's energy industries.In order to mitigate the impact caused by the loss of home due to constant natural events, the design of a suitable construction system that allows the temporary housing of those affected is proposed. To complete the design, the selection of materials is necessary through a methodology based on the guidelines LCA ( Life Cycle Assessment) on the life cycle of materials with categories indicating their importance depending on the building component such as foundation, structure, walls and cover in relation to the type of building that although this research exercise is applied to the design of temporary shelters can be replicated in the design of other types of buildings. The selection of materials is presented as the basis for a later stage of environmental simulations where different configurations with better performance materials are proposed in order to also evaluate the thermal performance and tend to minimize the environmental impact.There is a need to extend the life and capacity of many existing railway bridges. One of the objects of the EC-FP7-Project MAINLINE, 2011-2014, is to facilitate this. Guidelines for assessment and strengthening methods are presented as well as case studies in which existing bridges are being studied in order to extend their life length. Case studies on bridges tested to failure in order to calibrate assessment methods are also presented. Fatigue is often a vital question. A Life Cycle Assessment Tool (LCAT) is being prepared to enable Infrastructure Managers to choose optimal maintenance strategies.Many renewable energy policies are looking into new incentives to absorb investments by targeting abating CO2 emission and fixing energy price fluctuation. Feed in Tariff (FIT) is a policy for rebating the amount of generated renewable electricity to investor. FIT is also defined as a CO2 mitigation policy in electricity generation from renewable sources. This paper presents a cost benefit survey that estimates the real produced carbon dioxide for electricity generation in selected countries. This study introduces the substitute price of avoiding CO2 emission as an indicator. The new indicator shows how much is paid for avoiding CO2 by each selected countries through the FIT policy for renewable technologies. The amount calculated for solar energy is taken as a case in this paper. The result confirms that the FIT policy reasonably works for solar energy in absorbing investment However the FIT policy claims a large portion of liquidity compared with other approaches. Hence makes this mechanism inept as a CO2 mitigation policy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To be an alternative to fossil fuel, biodiesel should provide a positive energy benefit and a sustainable energy income. Based on the principles of Life Cycle Analysis and using the energy benefits of exploiting Pistacia chinensis in China as a case study, this paper presents a quantitative evaluation of the energy consumed throughout the six-phase life cycle process, which includes planting, fruit transport, oil production, biodiesel production, biodiesel transport and biodiesel combustion. The results show that during the life cycle process, the total energy consumption of the biodiesel production and transformation phase is the greatest and that energy consumption during the plantation phase second greatest. The results indicated that the potential maximum gross annual production is approximately 162.19 billion MJ per year for suitable land and 117.20 billion MJ per year for lands classified as fairly suitable, which could produce 6.35 million t of biodiesel. Considering the net energy production and output potential for P. chinensis based biodiesel at the provincial level, Yunnan Province has the most amount of production potential, while Beijing City has the least amount of production potential. The annual output value created by P. chinensis based bio-fuel is 3007.83 million Yuan in China. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Economic and technical problems related to the reduction of petroleum resources require the valorisation of renewable raw material. Recently, microalgae emerged as promising alternative feedstock that represents an enormous biodiversity with multiple benefits exceeding the potential of conventional agricultural feedstock. Thus, this comprehensive review article spots the light on one of the most interesting microalga Chlorella vulgaris. It assembles the history and a thorough description of its ultrastructure and composition according to growth conditions. The harvesting techniques are presented in relation to the novel algo-refinery concept, with their technological advancements and potential applications in the market. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims at analysing how secondary materials production and end of life recovery processes are modelled in life cycle-based environmental assessment methods in order to discuss their suitability in product policy-support contexts, with a focus on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) policies. The equations prescribed in three published, widely recognised standards are evaluated. In addition, more recent modelling approaches that have been adopted in the context of two EU product policy initiatives (the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Resource Efficiency Assessment of Products (REAPro)) are similarly analysed. All of the methods are scrutinised against eight criteria which we deem to be important in product policy-support contexts, including comprehensiveness, accommodation of open-loop and closed-loop product systems, and consideration of recyclability/recoverability rates, to name a few. Based on this analysis, it is suggested that the PEF and REAPro modelling approaches appear to be better suited for use in product policy-support contexts than do the currently widely endorsed methods that we considered. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Compiling, deploying and utilising large-scale databases that integrate environmental and economic data have traditionally been labour-and cost-intensive processes, hindered by the large amount of disparate and misaligned data that must be collected and harmonised. The Australian Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab) is a novel, collaborative approach to compiling large-scale environmentally extended multi-region input-output (MRIO) models. The utility of the IELab product is greatly enhanced by avoiding the need to lock in an MRIO structure at the time the MRIO system is developed. The IELab advances the idea of the "mother-daughter" construction principle, whereby a regionally and sectorally very detailed "mother" table is set up, from which "daughter" tables are derived to suit specific research questions. By introducing a third tier - the "root classification"-IELab users are able to define their own mother-MRIO configuration, at no additional cost in terms of data handling. Customised mother-MRIOs can then be built, which maximise disaggregation in aspects that are useful to a family of research questions. The second innovation in the IELab system is to provide a highly automated collaborative research platform in a cloud-computing environment greatly expediting workflows and making these computational benefits accessible to all users. Combining these two aspects realises many benefits. The collaborative nature of the IELab development project allows significant savings in resources. Timely deployment is possible by coupling automation procedures with the comprehensive input from multiple teams. User-defined MRIO tables, coupled with high performance computing, mean that MRIO analysis will be useful and accessible for a great many more research applications than would otherwise be possible. By ensuring that a common set of analytical tools such as for hybrid life-cycle assessment is adopted, the IELab will facilitate the harmonisation of fragmented, dispersed and misaligned raw data for the benefit of all interested parties. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.While life cycle assessment (LCA) has been recognized as an invaluable tool to assess the energy and environmental profiles of a photovoltaic (PV) system, current LCA studies are limited to Europe and North America. However, today most PV modules are outsourced to and manufactured in non-OECD countries (e.g., China), which have a substantially different degree of industrialization and environmental restriction. To investigate this issue, we perform a comparative LCA between domestic and overseas manufacturing scenarios illustrated by three kinds of silicon-based PV technologies, namely mono-crystalline silicon, multi-crystalline silicon and ribbon silicon. We take into account geographic diversity by utilizing localized inventory data for processes and materials. The energy payback time, energy return on investment and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for both scenarios are calculated and analyzed. Compared to the domestic manufacturing scenario, the energy use efficiency is generally 30% lower and the carbon footprint is almost doubled in the overseas manufacturing scenario. Moreover, based on the LCA results, we propose a break-even carbon tariff model for the international trade of silicon-based PV modules, indicating an appropriate carbon tariff in the range of is an element of 105-is an element of 129/ton CO2. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increased rate of carbon dioxide sequestration (carbonation) is desired in many primary and secondary life applications of concrete in order to make the life cycle of concrete structures more carbon neutral. Most carbonation rate studies have focused on concrete exposed to air under various conditions. An alternative mechanism for accelerated carbon sequestration in concrete was investigated in this research based on the pH change of waters in contact with pervious concrete which have been submerged in carbonate laden waters. This may be pertinent for applications of concrete reuse in marine or other aqueous applications such as jetties and riprap. The results indicate that the concrete exposed to high levels of carbonate species in water may carbonate faster than when exposed to ambient air, and that the rate is higher with higher concentrations. Validation of increased carbon dioxide sequestration was also performed via thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). It is theorized that the proposed alternative mechanism reduces a limiting rate effect of carbon dioxide dissolution in water in the micro pores of the concrete. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Road pavement is designed to support certain usage conditions. However, many abnormal usages above regulated level often happen. Excess traffic growth is considered as a factor influencing road lifeperformance. Overload phenomenon has also long been recognized as an unexpected force causing extreme decrease of road performance. This study investigates the eco-burden effect of road construction in its maintenance phase along with the influence of above factors in shortening road life-cycle. Because of that, life-cycle assessment (LCA) is used to calculate the eco-burden impact. Furthermore, they are two different options taken for pavement materials: hot-mix and recycled asphalt. They are compared in order to provide comprehensive investigation results for decision makers. Eco-Indicator 99 is used as the impact database in order to standardize calculation processes. Seven sections of Pantura (Pantai Utara - North Beach) road, Indonesia, are picked up to be the case studies as a basis in understanding correlation between all factors to eco-burden impact in road maintenance. This study concludes that each of excess traffic growth and overload is positively correlated with the increase of eco-burden impact. The more extreme shortening of road life-cycle, the more eco-burden will be produced, and it will increase faster in polynomial functions. By looking at previous studies which tend to focus on eco-burden in ideal condition of road life-cycle, this study throws new light on the effects of abnormal phenomena on road usage which shorten pavement life-performance as well as increase eco-burden impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Within the European Union (EU), the implementation of strategies for smart, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth is a major priority. Sustainable growth is summarized in the following objectives for 2020: (i) 20% reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; (ii) 20% energy consumption from renewable resources; (iii) 20% reduction in EU energy consumption by improving energy efficiency in member states. Within this context, this research analyzes the environmental impact of CO2 emissions in building construction in the following Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) processes: (Al) raw material supply; (A2) transport; (A3) manufacturing; (A4) transport; (A5) construction/installation on-site processes. In the case of a single-family detached house, the value obtained was 385 kg CO2/m(2) of the surface area of this building type. The distribution of these emissions among the construction work units was also obtained. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper proposes a multi-objective possibilistic programming model to design a sustainable medical supply chain network under uncertainty considering conflicting economic, environmental and social objectives. Effective social and environmental life cycle assessment-based methods are incorporated in the model to estimate the relevant environmental and social impacts. An accelerated Benders decomposition algorithm utilizing three efficient acceleration mechanisms is devised to cope with computational complexity of solving the proposed model. Computational analysis is also provided by using a medical industrial case study to present the significance of the proposed model as well as the efficiency of the accelerated Benders decomposition algorithm. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Stability is one of the most important properties of compost obtained from the organic fraction of municipal solid wastes. This property is essential for the application of compost to land to avoid further field degradation and emissions of odors, among others. In this study, a massive characterization of compost samples from both home producers and industrial facilities is presented. Results are analyzed in terms of chemical and respiration characterizations, the latter representing the stability of the compost. Results are also analyzed in terms of statistical validation. The main conclusion from this work is that home composting, when properly conducted, can achieve excellent levels of stability, whereas industrial compost produced in the studied facilities can also present a high stability, although an important dispersion is found in these composts. The study also highlights the importance of respiration techniques to have a reliable characterization of compost quality, while the chemical characterization does not provide enough information to have a complete picture of a compost sample. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sludge is a semi-solid residue produced from wastewater treatment processes. It contains biodegradable and recalcitrant organic compounds, as well as pathogens, heavy metals, and other inorganic constituents. Sludge can also be considered a source of nutrients and energy, which could be recovered using economically viable approaches. In the present paper, several commonly used sludge treatment processes including land application, composting, landfilling, anaerobic digestion, and combustion are reviewed, along with their potentials for energy and product recovery. In addition, some innovative thermo-chemical techniques in pyrolysis, gasification, liquefaction, and wet oxidation are briefly introduced. Finally, a brief summary of selected published works on the life cycle assessment of a variety of sludge treatment and end-use scenarios is presented in order to better understand the overall energy balance and environmental burdens associated with each sludge treatment pathway. In all scenarios investigated, the reuse of bioenergy and by-products has been shown to be of crucial importance in enhancing the overall energy efficiency and reducing the carbon footprint.Bioreducer use in the blast furnace could be one of the measures to decrease the fossil CO2 emissions of steelmaking. This paper presents an environmental and economic evaluation of three bioreducers; charcoal, torrefied wood and wood-based synthetic natural gas (Bio-SNG), produced from logging residues, small-diameter wood and stumps. Additionally, the CO2 emission reduction potential of these bioreducers is calculated, using Ruukki, a Finnish steel producer as a reference. Finally, we present the CO2 mitigation cost for each bioreducer. The Carbon Footprint (CFP) of the bioreducers without fertilizer production, carbon stock change and by-product credits is 7.2, 8.7, 8.5, 9.0 gCO(2)/MJ for charcoal, 4.9, 5.2, 5.6, 5.4 gCO(2)/MJ for torrefied wood and 7.4, 8.3, 8.2, 8.5 gCO(2)/MJ for Bio-SNG, produced from logging residues, small-diameter wood with 30% and 50% moisture content and stumps, respectively. The CFP becomes larger when carbon stock change is taken into account; 45-117 gCO(2)/MJ for charcoal, 27-61.0 gCO(2)/MJ for torrefied wood and 32-79 gCO(2)/MJ, for Bio-SNG. By-product credits can turn CFP to negative from -36.3 to -25.0 gCO(2)/MJ for charcoal and from -2.7 to 4.7 gCO(2)/MJ for Bio-SNG without carbon stock change and fertilizer use. Energy Return on Investment (ER01) of all the bioreducers is well above one, which means that production is energetically feasible. Based on the Finnish example, the global CO2 reduction potential could be up to 0.99-1.01 Mtons without and 1.29-1.39 Mtons with by-product credits annually. The CO2 mitigation costs without by-product credits are 33-69 (sic)/tCO(2), 22-53 (sic)/tCO(2) and 112-150 (sic)/tCO(2) and with by-product credits 26-54 (sic)/tCO(2), 22-53 (sic)/tCO(2) and 107-143 (sic)/tCO(2) for charcoal, torrefied wood and Bio-SNG, respectively. Even though the CO2 mitigation cost of bioreducers is considerably high in current cost structures, they provide a flexible alternative to CO2 emission reduction in the steel industry. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The article presents a case study concerning the improvement of the 'kerbside' waste collection system, now increasingly implemented in many Italian municipalities, as an alternative to traditional bring collection, with the aim of increasing the quality of waste collection and the collection rate, in order to reduce the final impact on the environment. A planning model for an integrated waste management system based on kerbside collection is presented. A heuristic procedure is also applied in order to obtain some admissible solutions of the real problem in reasonable computational time. The economic and environmental impacts are considered as significant elements for the evaluation and validation of the obtained solutions. Five alternative configurations of kerbside system, diverging in number of sub-area, synchrony of vehicles and directionality of the arcs, are compared in an economic point of view. Finally, Life-Cycle Assessment is used as a tool to compare the overall potential environmental impacts of the alternative of kerbside collection systems and also to compare the kerbside system with the traditional bring one. The different scenarios of kerbside system are comparable in terms of damage on the impact categories, while the bring system is the worst one, in terms of damage on human health, in the consumption of resources and also for the total damage score.This paper evaluates life cycle Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions of a Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant and assesses its performance under three power supply scenarios. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis is conducted for a plant located in Perth, Western Australia (WA). Input and output flows of SWRO plant are based on literature and Perth desalination plants. The Simapro Australian and Ecoinvent databases are used for operational phase Life Cycle Inventory (LCI). An LCI for the construction phase of the plant is developed using economic input output analysis. Electricity supply scenarios are "100% WA grid", "100% wind energy" and "92% wind energy plus 8% Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy". Results indicate that renewable energy powered desalination plants achieve GHG emissions reduction of similar to 90% compared to the plant powered by WA grid scenario. For the plant powered by fossil based grid electricity, electricity use in the operational phase is found to be responsible for more than 92% of its GHG emissions. On the other hand, for the plants powered by renewable energy, the highest contribution belongs to chemical use in the operational phase (60%) followed by the construction phase (17%). Indirect emissions due to the electricity consumption in the chemical, wind turbine and PV solar panel manufacturing are found to contribute the lion's share (36-39%) of the life cycle emissions for the renewable energy powered desalination plants. Any improvement in fuel mixes in grid electricity towards cleaner energy sources can be beneficial by reducing impacts associated with upstream electricity use in manufacturing. This work provides the first reference to identify and quantify supply chain contributions to the overall environmental impact associated with renewable energy powered desalination plants. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a life-cycle analysis for a new concept in solar thermal power generation. BRRIMS denotes Brayton-cycle, re-heated, recuperated, integrated, modular and storage-equipped. This concept envisages collection temperatures of around 250 degrees C, thermal storage in pebble beds, thermal-electric conversion in a piston-cylinder engine and air as the heat transfer fluid and working gas of the engine. The analysis applies to the manufacturing phase of the overall power plant and separately to the pebble bed thermal storage component. Three sustainability metrics are included - life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative energy demand and energy payback time. On these metrics, the BRRIMS concept has broadly similar results to a conventional parabolic trough plant with molten salt thermal storage. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production of ammonia via the Haber-Bosch process consumes large amounts of fossil fuels and releases large amounts of greenhouse gases. Ammonia has many important applications including fertilizer for crops and for microalgae-derived biofuel systems. Aquatic cyanobacteria fix nitrogen from the air and have been mass-cultured for many uses. This study analyzes, on a life cycle basis, a process to culture the cyanobacterium, Anabaena sp. ATCC 33047, in open ponds; harvest the biomass and exopolysaccharides and convert these to biogas; strip and convert the ammonia from the biogas residue to ammonium sulfate; dry the ammonium sulfate solution to ammonium sulfate crystals; transport the ammonium sulfate and convert it to liquid ammonia and concentrated sulfuric acid. When compared to the ammonia produced via the Haber-Bosch process, savings of about 1.0 x 10(5) MJ of non-renewable energy and 3100 kg CO2 equivalent of global warming potential per 1000 kg of liquid ammonia might be possible. The results are robust and are not sensitive to the model parameters. The proposed system, if implemented, might have a significant impact on many important global issues such as global warming, fossil fuel depletion, and food security. (c) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 33: 618-624, 2014This paper explores the carbon footprint of milk produced by dairy cows in Australia and follows the common carbon footprint approach guidelines of the International Dairy Federation and the International Standard for Life Cycle Assessment. Primary data were collected and analysed from 139 farms representing the main dairy regions in Australia. The scope of the study covers all inputs and outputs from cradle to farm gate for the twelve month period from July 2009 to June 2010 (2009/2010). The carbon footprint of average Australian milk for 2009/2010 was calculated to be 1.11 kg carbon dioxide equivalents kg(-1) fat and protein corrected milk. Differences in GHG emission per kg of milk produced could be traced back to differences in production practices. The feed conversion efficiency was identified as the most important driver for the reduction of enteric methane emissions. Reduction potentials were also identified for manure management practices. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing the environmental performance of emerging technologies using life cycle assessment (LCA) can be challenging due to a lack of data in relation to technologies, application areas or other life cycle considerations, or a lack of LCA methodology that address the specific concerns. Nevertheless, LCA can be a valuable tool in the environmental optimisation in the technology development phase. One emerging technology is the mixed-culture production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). PHA production by pure microbial cultures has been developed and assessed in several LCAs during the previous decade. Recent developments within mixed-culture PHA production call for environmental assessment to guide in technology development. Mixed-culture PHA production can use the organic content in wastewater as a feedstock; the production may then be integrated with wastewater treatment (WWT) processes. This means that mixed-culture PHA is produced as a by-product from services in the WWT. This article explores different methodological challenges for LCA of mixed-culture PHA production using organic material in wastewater as feedstock. LCAs of both pure- and mixed-culture PHA production were reviewed. Challenges, similarities and differences when assessing PHA production by mixed- or pure-cultures were identified and the resulting implications for methodological choices in LCA were evaluated and illustrated, using a case study with mixed- and pure-culture PHA model production systems, based on literature data. Environmental impacts of processes producing multiple products or services need to be allocated between the different products or services. Such situations occur both in feedstock production and when the studied system is providing multiple functions. The selection of allocation method is shown to determine the LCA results. The type of data used, for electricity in the energy system, is shown to be important for the results, which indicates, a strong regional dependency of results for systems with electricity use as an environmental hot spot. The importance of assessing water use, an environmental impact not assessed by any of the reviewed studies, is highlighted.Woody feedstocks will play a critical role in meeting the demand for biomass-based energy products in the US. We developed an integrated model using comparable system boundaries and common set of assumptions to ascertain unit cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of electricity and ethanol derived from slash pine (Pinus elliottii) at the production and consumption levels by considering existing automobile technologies. We also calculated abatement cost of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with respect to comparable energy products derived from fossil fuels. The production cost of electricity derived using wood chips was at least cheaper by 1 (sic)MJ(-1) over electricity derived from wood pellets. The production cost of ethanol without any income from cogenerated electricity was costlier by about 0.7 (sic)MJ(-1) than ethanol with income from cogenerated electricity. The production cost of electricity derived from wood chips was cheaper by at least 0.7 (sic)MJ(-1) than the energy equivalent cost of ethanol produced in presence of cogenerated electricity. The cost of using ethanol as a fuel in a flex-fuel vehicle was at least higher by 6 (sic)km(-1) than a comparable electric vehicle. The GHG intensity of per km distance traveled in a flex-fuel vehicle was greater or lower than an electric vehicle running on electricity derived from wood chips depending on presence and absence of GHG credits related with co-generated electricity. A carbon tax of at least $7 Mg CO(2)e(-1) and $30 Mg CO(2)e(-1) is needed to promote wood-based electricity and ethanol production in the US, respectively. The range of abatement cost of GHG emissions is significantly dependent on the harvest age and selected baseline especially for electricity generation.China's oil imports and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have grown rapidly over the past decade. Addressing energy security and GHG emissions is a national priority. Replacing conventional vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) offers a potential solution to both issues. While the reduction in petroleum use and hence the energy security benefits of switching to EVs are obvious, the GHG benefits are less obvious. We examine the current Chinese electric grid and its evolution and discuss the implications for EVs. China's electric grid will be dominated by coal for the next few decades. In 2015 in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, EVs will need to use less than 14, 19, and 23 kWh/100 km, respectively, to match the 183 gCO(2)/km WTW emissions for energy saving vehicles. In 2020, in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou EVs will need to use less than 13, 18, and 20 kWh/100 km, respectively, to match the 137 gCO(2)/km WTW emissions for energy saving vehicles. EVs currently demonstrated in China use 24-32 kWh/100 km. Electrification will reduce petroleum imports; however, it will be very challenging for EVs to contribute to government targets for GHGs emissions reduction.There has been considerable interest in the development of more efficient processes to generate hydrogen. Currently, steam methane reforming (SMR) is the most widely applied route for producing hydrogen from natural gas. Researchers worldwide have been working to invent more efficient routes to produce hydrogen. One of the routes is thermocatalytic decomposition of methane (TCDM) - a process that decomposes methane thermally to produce hydrogen from natural gas. TCDM has not yet been commercialized. However, the aim of this work was to conduct an economic and environmental analysis to determine whether the TCDM process is competitive with the more popular SMR process. The results indicate that the TCDM process has a lower carbon footprint. Further research on TCDM catalysts could make this process economically competitive with steam methane reforming. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper introduces the Special Volume (SV) dedicated to the 2012 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Food Conference. During recent years, these conferences have seen a rapid increase in the number of participants, reflecting the development of an interdisciplinary research and development community at the intersection between the agronomic, food/nutrition science and environmental system analysis disciplines. This introductory paper summarises the key issues addressed in the individual papers of this SV, which present a balance between methodological and applied studies. The application of LCA to agro-food systems exemplifies a dynamic and productive interaction between scientific disciplines that previously led separate lives. As a result, LCA in the agro-food sector leads LCA methodological developments on topics such as the attributional versus consequential debate, land use changes, impacts on biodiversity, biotic resource depletion, water use, soil quality, and modelling of direct emissions of crop and animal production systems. Future challenges for the LCA Food research and development domain concern the following issues: functional unit and multi-functionality, emission models, land occupation and transformation, LCA for low-income countries, resilience of agro-food systems and presentation and transparency of results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Achieving food system sustainability is a global priority but there are different views on how it might be achieved. Broadly three perspectives are emerging, defined here as: efficiency oriented, demand restraint and food system transformation. These reflect different conceptualisations on what is practically achievable, and what is desirable, underpinned by different values and ideologies about the role technology, our relationship with nature and fundamentally what is meant by a 'good life.' This paper describes these emerging perspectives and explores their underlying values; highlights LCA's role in shaping these perspectives; and considers how LCA could be oriented to clarify thinking and advance policy-relevant knowledge. It argues that more work is needed to understand the values underlying different approaches to the food sustainability problem. This can shed light on why stakeholders disagree, where there are genuine misunderstandings, and where common ground is possible and ways forward agreed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recognizing that research for sustainable agri-food systems will be essential to meet global and European challenges in the coming decades, European countries participate in two Joint Programming Initiatives (Pis): Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE) and Healthy Diet for Healthy Life (HDHL). Mission oriented research agendas have been developed and are focused on delivering key outputs. For FACCE these are: i) to sustainably intensify European agriculture, ii) to operate agriculture within greenhouse gas, energy, biodiversity and contaminant limits and iii) to build resilience to climatic change in agricultural and food systems. HDHL focuses on: i) determinants of diet and physical activity, ii) developing healthy, high-quality, safe and sustainable foods, iii) diet-related chronic diseases. The role of life cycle assessment (LCA) in the context of these research priorities is discussed. Bridging nature capital, on the one hand, and health issues, on the other, with the assessment of the life cycle may lead to breakthroughs in the sustainability assessment of food systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For agri-food products, environmental impacts related to greenhouse gas emissions, water use and land use are all typically of high concern. Concurrent assessment is therefore important to report meaningfully on environmental performance and to avoid potential negative consequences of narrowly focussed environmental improvement strategies, such as carbon footprint reduction alone. In this study, land use footprints were calculated for six diverse beef cattle production systems in southern Australia (cradle to farm gate) using net primary productivity of potential biomass (NPP0) as a means of describing the intrinsic productive capability of occupied land. The results per kg live weight, ranging from 86 to 172 m(2) yr-e (where 1 m(2) yr-e represents 1 m(2) of land occupation for 1 year at the global average NPP0) represent between 1.3 and 2.7% of an average global citizen's annual land use footprint, and highlight the importance of land use in beef cattle production. These results were approximately 10 and 1000 times the normalised carbon and water scarcity footprint results. The diversity of land types supporting livestock production underscores the importance of taking into account land quality in the calculation of a land use footprint. While NPR0 can be used to improve land use assessment beyond a simple measure of land area, further development of the land use footprint indicator is recommended and discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is difficult to address all of the direct environmental impacts of fisheries using conventional methods of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A methodological framework was developed that calculates regionalised characterisation factors for biomass uptake by fishing activities to assess impacts of biotic-resource depletion at both species and ecosystem levels. These two levels were studied to include effects of catch on the collapse of a particular stock of a given species and on total biomass availability in oceans. Characterisation factors were calculated for 127 fish species and 88 marine provinces. The compatibility of this method with other frameworks is discussed, as well as the methodological limitations. The method was applied to two contrasting examples from fisheries (Northern Atlantic albacore tuna and Northern Argentine anchovy). The impacts of one tonne of tuna on biotic natural resources were 4 and 14 times as high as those of anchovy at the ecosystem and species levels, respectively. The application demonstrates that the method is relevant, as it addresses a topic of global interest and fills a gap in LCA impact assessment to contrast impacts of removals of different fish species in terms of biotic natural resource depletion. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The results of life cycle assessments (LCA) can be significantly affected by the choice of allocation procedure because different allocation approaches lead to a wide range of results. Agricultural systems are particularly sensitive due to their co-products being used in various sectors and accounted for at several allocation steps. If the allocation procedures for different products from the same agricultural system are not aligned to one another, methodological inconsistencies might occur. Parts of the environmental burden might be either unaccounted or doubly accounted for. As a consequence, the overall environmental burden of the agricultural system is not properly assessed. The Cereal Unit (CU) has been used as a common denominator in German agricultural statistics for decades and is mainly based on the nutritional value for livestock. Products and co-products not intended for livestock feeds are also covered. More than 200 CU conversion factors are provided for vegetable and animal products and co-products occurring during their processing. To calculate the CU, the specifically aggregated metabolizable energy content is calculated for each feed material and normalized using barley as a reference (1 kg barley = 12.56 MJ specifically aggregated metabolizable energy). The CU approach can be applied to other regions without prohibitive efforts. In this paper, we derive an allocation approach that is based on the CU as an existing unit for agricultural products. The new CU allocation approach is tested and compared to established allocation approaches for wheat, barley, soybean, rapeseed, sugar beet and sunflower. The CU allocation generates results between the approaches of mass, energy and economic allocations. For instance, the allocation shares between wheat grain and wheat straw are as follows: mass allocation 56% (grains)144% (straw), energy allocation 55%/45%, economic allocation 77%/23% and CU allocation 75%/25%. We demonstrate that the CU is an appropriate unit for the description of agricultural products and can serve as the basis for an agriculture-specific allocation approach in LCA. CU allocation may help to address agricultural allocation problems and might lead to more robust LCA results for products and services originating from raw agricultural materials. We recommend further testing and future application of this new allocation approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The role of packaging systems to reduce food waste is rarely modelled in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. This means that a packaging system format with a lower environmental impact that causes high food waste, may appear to be a better alternative than a packaging system with a higher environmental impact that reduces food waste. This can be contradictory to the purpose of using LCA to reduce overall environmental impacts, because food generally has a higher environmental impact than the packaging system. This paper highlights packaging attributes that may influence food waste, and demonstrates via six packaging scenarios how the environmental impact for the functional unit of "eaten food" can be calculated when food waste is included. The results show that the function of "avoiding food waste" is a critical packaging issue. The connection between packaging design and food waste should be acknowledged and valued by relevant stakeholders such as: food producers, manufacturers, brand owners, retailers and consumers, and also in packaging regulations. To fully explore the potential for packaging systems to reduce their overall environmental impact, food waste should be included. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Practical applications of life cycle assessment (LCA) to agricultural production systems require articulating uncertainties caused by scenario indeterminacy, because practitioners do not have sufficient knowledge about agricultural input production processes. However, current understanding about scenario uncertainties is still limited on account of insufficient knowledge. We propose a method to quantify scenario uncertainty in agricultural inputs and to assess the uncertainty in comparative LCA of agricultural production systems. We formulate uncertainty intervals due to scenario indeterminacy (a situation in which decision makers face decision problems without determining the details of the scenarios) and derive uncertainty intervals for conventional, environmentally friendly, and organic rice production systems in Japan, in addition to those for chemical fertilizer production and distribution. The result indicates that, although lack of information on transportation scenarios caused uncertainty, the ranking of global warming potential for conventional, environmentally friendly, and organic rice production systems remained unchanged. It implies that the result is stable with respect to scenario uncertainties due to location of fertilizer production. The proposed methodology for understanding the stability of results can be further developed as a technique to deal with uncertainty and instability in LCA of agricultural production systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Modern food production is very diverse with high levels of specialisation and complexity. These features inevitably reflect on methods in the application of LCA to food products and agro-systems. System boundaries, functional units, allocation procedures and several other aspects contribute to there being substantial differentiation in the structure of LCA applications in fruit production systems, leading to significantly different results. Indeed, although scientific literature on the topic is recent and not particularly extensive, there are already many different ways of conducting LCAs in orchards. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework for selecting the best parameters for an LCA application in fruit production systems according to the objective of the study. This has been achieved by reviewing the scientific and technical literature on the topic. In particular papers from international journals and conference proceedings have been considered and the review has covered all main aspects for conducting an LCA in fruit production systems. The particular characteristics considered were objectives, system boundaries, the product considered, the functional unit, data origin and the environmental impact assessment method used. A substantial part of the paper is devoted to the modelling of the orchard, as this is key to a reliable application of any impact assessment approach. Rather than merely describing the theoretical model, this paper presents concrete recommendations about how to build the orchard system for LCA application avoiding over or under-estimations of the different orchard stages. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a non-profit association promoting sustainable palm oil through a voluntary certification scheme. Two successive science-based working groups on greenhouse gas (GHG) were active in RSPO from 2009 to 2011, with the aim of identifying ways of achieving meaningful and verifiable reductions of GHG emissions. One of the outputs of the second group is PalmGHG, a GHG calculator using the life cycle assessment approach to quantify major sources of emissions and sequestration for individual palm oil mills and their supply base. A pilot study was carried out in 2011 with nine RSPO member companies that gave an average of 1.67 t CO(2)e/t crude palm oil (CPO), with a range of 0.02 to +8.32 t CO(2)e/t CPO. Previous land use and the area of peat soil used were the main causes of the variation. Further modifications to PalmGHG continue to be made in order to make the tool more flexible and comprehensive, to refine default values, and to render it more user-friendly. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) is an in-field traffic management strategy to minimise soil compaction. The aim of this study was to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based on a modelling approach to estimate environmental impacts of producing wheat in Denmark using CTF compared to the conventional practice of Random Traffic Farming (RTF). Compared to the RTF system, CTF reduced environmental impacts on a grain-weight basis in all impact categories analysed: aquatic eutrophication (8-16%), human toxicity (3-15%), terrestrial eutrophication (29%), climate change (50%), acidification (33%), ecotoxicity (11-138%), and land use (7%). Reductions in environmental impacts in the CFF system analysed are caused mainly by higher grain yields, less soil compaction, which decreases P-compound runoff and in-field soil N2O and NH3 emissions, and the use of auto-guidance, which induces less overlap during application of fertilisers and pesticides. The results, moreover, show that these environmental improvements are potentially relevant at a global scale. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study was carried out in Isfahan province, Iran, to assess the environmental impact of greenhouse cucumber and tomato production using life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. In this study a cradle-to-farm-gate approach using data from greenhouse operators and two distinct functional units, one mass-based and the other land-based, were selected to analyze the impact categories. Data for production of inputs were taken from Ecolnvent((R))2.0 database, and SimaPro software was employed for analysis. Ten impact categories including Abiotic Depletion potential, Acidification potential, Eutrophication potential, Global Warming potential for time horizon 100 years, Ozone Depletion potential, Human Toxicity potential, Freshwater and Marine Aquatic Ecotoxicity potential, Terrestrial Ecotoxicity potential, and Photochemical Oxidation potential were selected based on the CML 2 baseline 2000 V2/world, 1990/characterization method. In addition, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was employed to predict the environmental impact of both crops on the basis of input materials. The results indicated that greenhouse tomato production had a lower environmental impact than cucumber due to less total energy input and correspondingly lower environmental burdens in all impact categories. Almost all impact categories were dominated by natural gas, electricity and nylon (as cover of greenhouses). Furthermore, the results revealed that ANFIS was capable of forecasting the environmental indices of greenhouse production with a high degree of accuracy and minimal error. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Exportation of fresh vegetable products, especially to northern European countries, have expanded significantly in recent years in Spain in response to the demand of developed countries for fresh and high-quality products all year round. Many of these products are produced intensively in protected or semi-protected (mulched) cropping systems. The methodology selected for the environmental study was Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The cropping systems were unheated greenhouse (GH), plastic mulch combined with fleece (PM + F), plastic mulch (PM) and open field (OF). The effects of different nitrogen fertiliser application rates (0%, 25%, 50%, 100%, 125% and 150% of an optimum rate) were evaluated for each system. The aim of this analysis was to identify and study the main environmental problems of producing lettuce and escarole in Spain under different production systems and at different N management application levels. The LCA methodology proved to be a useful tool to evaluate the environmental burdens of producing two leafy crops in Spain. The environmental results were very similar for two crops, but the escarole crop produced a major contribution in all impact categories due to lower commercial yields. The main burdens in the production systems were structure, auxiliary equipment and fertilisers. GH was the production system with the largest environmental impact in all categories and crops due to the greenhouse structure. Improving design of the greenhouse structure and the irrigation system and using recycled materials could produce significant impact reduction. The reduction and optimising of N fertiliser application should be considered a priority to improve the environmental impact of the different cultivation systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Northeastern Thailand is an essential production area for high-quality fragrant rice for both domestic use and export. While rain-fed conditions still largely prevail, plans to extend irrigation are being drafted. This paper compares the advantages of rice production under irrigation and rain-fed conditions in both environmental and economic terms. Indicators of techno-economic performances were combined with environmental impact indicators based upon life cycle assessment, energy and water use analyses. Data were collected in 2010 at the farm level in 43 households of Lam Sieo Yai Basin in North-Eastern Thailand, according to 3 cropping systems, namely wet-season rain-fed (Rw), wet-season irrigated (Iw) and dry-season irrigated (Id) systems. Eco-efficiency indicators were calculated as per impact category. Wide-ranging techno-economic performances and environmental impacts were observed, while cropping practices were found to be homogeneous. Differentiation of systems originated mostly from differences in yield, which were mostly impacted by water supply. Yields vary from 2625 kg/ha in the Iw system to 2375 in the Rw system and 2188 in the Id system. The results highlight the low performances of Id systems in both techno-economic and environmental terms. Id systems require mostly blue water, while the two other systems rely primarily on green water. Id systems also require more energy and labour, due to increased water management needs. Overall, the productivity of most production factors was found to be higher in Rw and Iw systems; this results in return on investment being slightly higher in the Iw system compared to the Rw system (0.12 kg/THB and 0.11 kg/THB, respectively) and is lowest in the Id system (0.1 kg/THB) where THB is Thai baht, currency of Thailand. In Id systems, farmers need to produce twice as much rice (0.41 kg) to obtain 1 THB of net income, compared to 0.23 and 0.25 kg for lw and Rw respectively. Emissions proved relatively similar across all 3 systems, with the exception of CH4, which was markedly lower in Rw systems due to specific water and organic residue management. Id systems systematically emitted more nitrates, phosphates and pesticides into water sources. Rw systems showed the lowest environmental impacts per ha and per kg of paddy rice produced. GWP(100) was higher in Id systems (5.55 kg CO2-eq per kg of rice) compared to lw (4.87) and Rw (2.97). Finally, Rw systems were found to be more eco-efficient in most impact categories, including Global Warming Potential. The total value product per kg of CO2-eq emitted is 4, 2.5 and 2.2 THB in Rw, lw, and Id systems respectively. This paper further discusses the results in view of contrasting perspectives, including societal objectives, farmer income and environmental integrity, and possible irrigation development in Northeastern Thailand. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During the last decades, the Italian Alps were characterized by a very high rate of agricultural abandonment that mainly affected small farms. The remaining farms, especially in the dairy cattle sector, moved towards increasing size, intensified production and abandonment of traditional summer grazing of the herds in high altitude pastures. The aim of the study was to estimate the carbon footprint (CF) of cow milk production in the Italian Alps, comparing the traditional farming system based on summer grazing in the highlands with the emerging more intensive systems. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate the variations in the outcomes of different allocation methods and of different scenarios of land use change (LUC) emissions for soybean production. A group of 32 dairy farms was analyzed in a "cradle to farm gate" life cycle assessment (LCA); 9 of them transferred the whole herd including lactating cows to the high altitude pastures for three months in the summer season (Summer Grazing = SG) while the remaining 23 (no Summer Grazing = noSG) maintained their lactating cows in the valley barns all over the year. On average the farms had a small herd size (54 +/- 61 lactating cows) but a high stocking rate (3.7 +/- 2.0 Livestock Unit ha(-1)). The average milk production was 6206 1892 kg FPCM cow(-1) year with a huge difference between the two groups (7017 +/- 1445 kg FPCM cow-I for noSG and 4132 +/- 1184 for SG). NoSG farms had also higher feed efficiency than SG ones. The CF values obtained in the baseline scenario were 1.55 +/- 0.21 and 1.72 +/- 0.37 kg CO2-eq. kg(-1) FPCM for, respectively, noSG and SG farms. Considering different allocation methods, no significant differences were observed between the carbon footprint of the two systems. When LUC emissions were accounted for, CF increased especially in noSG farms due to the high amount of concentrate feed purchased. Traditional activity of summer grazing in high pastureland did not show any mitigation effect on the carbon footprint of milk, mainly as a consequence of low milk yield and low feed efficiency. The sensitivity analysis for different allocation methods and for different LUC emissions underlined the fact that one of LCA's limits is that a change of key assumptions can determine a change of the overall results. In particular including the emissions related to LUC for soybean production significantly affects the final outcome, the amount of feed purchased by the farm becoming one of the major driver of milk CF. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture has a devolved commitment to reduce national emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Using a systems model-based life-cycle analysis we explored the potential for reducing GHG in systems used to produce twelve crop and seven livestock commodities. With a functional unit of kg of product, differences in GHG between crops reflect differences in yield. Metabolisable energy (ME) or crude protein (CP) could be used, but deriving an economic value of GB 8.6 pound/GJ ME and GB 0.62 pound/kg CP, leads to a relatively consistent 2.6 kg CO(2)e/ pound nutrient value. Potential GHG reductions ranged from 2% (sugar beet) to 15% (cereals) with agronomic changes, and 4-12% with increased crop yields. The best alternative livestock systems reduced GHG ranging between 7% (beef from the dairy herd) and 21% (extensive sheep meat). Half of the options reduced national production and hence increased imports. Overall, improvements in productivity and use of resources are the best options for reducing GHG. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental effects of seasonal food supply have been explored through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of raspberries supplied to UK consumers at different times of year. Supply of raspberries at different times of the year draws on different production systems and locations. Despite that, the results of this LCA, based on data from individual producers, reveal relatively small differences in impacts for different times of supply, except in the case of the water footprint measures. LCIA results are very sensitive to fruit yield. So in this case, yield and agricultural practice appear stronger drivers of the environmental burden of food production than is time of supply. In such situations a strong focus on "seasonality" in sustainable food provisioning is unlikely to deliver large environmental benefits. Using LCA to establish what benefits might be available from a more general shift to "seasonal" food consumption, often advocated as more "sustainable", will require a multi-product approach. Such an approach could take current food consumption patterns or environmental targets as its starting point. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to assess the life cycle of tomato puree production by considering the impacts related to the phases of cultivation, processing, packaging and transport, in order to identify potential improvements for each stage of its life cycle. The case study involves companies in the tomato supply chain in northern Italy, with 700 g tomato puree packaged in a glass jar as a reference product. All the operations related to cultivating tomatoes are considered: land preparation, production and transplanting of tomato seedlings, fertilization, watering and harvesting. Each step of the post-harvesting processing is examined, including: unloading, washing and selection of tomatoes, blenching, concentration, pasteurization, filling, packaging and storing. All transport involved in the entire supply chain of this product is accounted for. The life cycle of glass jars, caps and secondary packaging is further evaluated. Primary data are gathered from farmers and a processing company located in the region of analysis, whilst Ecoinvent database v2.2 is used as source of secondary data. The assessment is performed using the CED, CML 2001 and ReCiPe methods. The water footprint for both the cultivation and the processing phase is evaluated too. The results show that packaging is the main cause of environmental impacts, and this is due particularly to the high energy demand for its production. Tomato cultivation phases have a higher environmental impact than the puree processing in most of the impact categories considered, and transport contributions show significant values too. Finally several possible improvements, such as reduction of glass weight, logistic and energy optimization, are analysed. The use of lighter primary packaging material appears to be the option with the largest environmental benefits for environmental sustainability within the whole supply chain. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impact assessment models are readily available for the assessment of pollution-related impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA). These models have led to an increased focus on water pollution issues resulting in numerous LCA studies. Recently, there have been significant developments in methods assessing freshwater use. These improvements widen the scope for the assessment of wastewater treatment (WWT) technologies, now allowing us to apprehend, for the first time, a combination of operational (energy and chemicals use), qualitative (environmental pollution) and quantitative (water deprivation) issues in wastewater treatment. This enables us to address the following question: Is water consumption during wastewater treatment environmentally significant compared to other impacts? To answer this question, a standard life cycle inventory (LCI) was performed with a focus on consumptive water uses at plant level, where several WWT technologies were operating, in different climatic conditions. The impacts of water consumption were assessed by integrating regionalized characterization factors for water deprivation within an existing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method. Results at the midpoint level, show that water deprivation impacts are highly variable in relation to the chosen WWT technology (water volume used) and of WWTP location (local water scarcity). At the endpoint level, water deprivation impacts on ecosystem quality and on the resource damage categories are significant for WWT technologies with great water uses in water-scarce areas. Therefore, our study shows the consideration of water consumption related impacts is essential and underlines the need for a greater understanding of the water consumption impacts caused by WWT systems. This knowledge will help water managers better mitigate local water deprivation impacts, especially in selecting WWT technologies suitable for arid and semi-arid areas. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) related to feed production is one of the hotspots in livestock production. The aim of this paper was to estimate the carbon footprint of different feedstuffs for dairy cattle using life cycle assessment (LCA). The functional unit was '1 kg dry matter (DM) of feed ready to feed'. Included in the study were fodder crops that are grown in Denmark and typically used on Danish cattle farms. The contributions from the growing, processing and transport of feedstuffs were included, as were the changes in soil carbon (soil C) and from land use change (LUC). For each fodder crop, an individual production scheme was set up as the basis for calculating the carbon footprint (CF). In the calculations, all fodder crops were fertilized by artificial fertilizer based on the assumption that the environmental burden of using manure is related to the livestock production. However, the livestock system is also credited for the fact that the use of manure reduces the amount of artificial fertilizer being used. Consequently, a manure handling system was set up as a subsystem to the cattle system. This method allowed a comparison between different fodder crops on an equal basis. Furthermore, the crop-specific contribution from changes in soil C was estimated based on estimated amounts of C input to the soil. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Irrigation is the dominant human activity leading to water stress, with environmental consequences on the local and global level. The relevance of spatial resolution to the assessment of water consumption and to impacts related to crop production has been acknowledged in previous research on water footprint. The temporal aspects of crop cultivation and the related impacts, however, have been neglected in analyses with global coverage. Such aspects are important since different crop options can shift irrigation water consumption within a year, increasing or decreasing the related water stress. Additionally, in some regions, temporal aspects are crucial due to the high variability of water availability. Consequently, an annual assessment might be misleading regarding crop choices within and among different regions. A temporal resolution is therefore essential for proper life cycle assessment (LCA) or water footprint of crop production. For this purpose we develop a water stress index (WSJ) on a monthly basis for more than 11,000 watersheds with global coverage. The median and average watershed area are 1327 and 19591 km(2), respectively. The WSI ranges from 0.01 (least water scarcity) to 1 (maximal water scarcity), and quantifies the fraction of water consumed of which other users are potentially deprived of. Moreover, irrigation water consumption for 160 crop groups is calculated on a monthly basis and on a high spatial resolution (<10 km). Crop water footprints (WFP) are calculated by multiplying monthly WSI with monthly crop irrigation water consumption and by summing the result over the cultivation period. With these results we facilitate a new level of detail for WFP analysis. We estimate global irrigation water consumption in the year 2000 at 1.21*1012 m(3)/a, with an average WSI of 0.44. The regional pattern changes considerably with higher temporal resolution and therefore in many regions it is relevant to consider monthly WSI. Changes are also shown to be sensitive to crop types due to different growth patterns, which might lead to increasing or decreasing water footprint. Additionally, we examine the role of different conceptual assumptions for the definition of water footprint characterization factors, which can be expressed as marginal and average figures. WSI is a marginal characterization factor. However, a practitioner may favor an alternative average factor to match impact assessment with the given goal and scope of the study. An average characterization factor allows for calculating WFP of a whole region as well as the global annual WFP of agriculture, which is estimated at 3.5*10(11) m(3)-equivalents. This number can be interpreted as water consumed in an extremely water-stressed situation and therefore highly depriving others of its use. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cereal-legume intercrops (ICs) are a promising way to combine high productivity and ecological benefits in temperate agroecosystems. This study aims to apply a life cycle assessment (LCA) to ICs by testing several methods of co-product handling to ascertain the environmental impacts of the co-products. Several classic methods of allocation and system expansion were compared, and additional methods were proposed to better analyse the impacts of ICs and sole crops (SCs), taking into account complementarities between species that may provide benefits for each species as well as global benefits compared to the SCs of an equivalent area or production. Unfertilised ICs produce wheat and pea crops that have a lower impact with regards to climate change (CC), acidification (AC), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE) or cumulative energy demand (CED) than N-fertilised SC wheat (W100 N) and unfertilised SC pea (P100 NO), regardless of the allocation method or functional unit (kg of grains of wheat, of pea, or 1 ha). Unfertilised ICs exhibited a higher and lower eutrophication (EU) impact when compared to W100 N and P100 NO, respectively. Concerning land occupation (10), the results were highly variable depending on the allocation method and either increased or decreased the impact of ICs relative to the impact of SCs. Classic allocation methods strongly affected the results, and system expansion yielded surprising results, emphasising the benefits of interspecific complementarity. We then redefined our functional unit to assess the impact of ICs apart from those of SCs (equivalence of area or production). These comparisons demonstrated that ICs always allowed for a significant decrease in environmental impacts when compared to SCs based on the equivalence of production. Based on the equivalence of crop area, similar trends were observed, except for EU and LO, where there was little difference in impact between ICs and SCs. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several studies support the general conclusion that plant-based diets have a lower environmental impact than animal-based diets. These studies, however, do not account for the nutritional quality of diets. The main objective of our study, therefore, was to explore if accounting for nutritional quality affects the comparison of the environmental impacts of human diets varying in their percentage of animal-source food products (ASFP). We also explored whether meals or daily diets are equally suitable to compare environmental impacts of diets. Fifty peer-reviewed studies were found that examined the environmental impact of diets, generally using life cycle assessment (LCA). Only 12 of these studies were reviewed, based on five criteria: study contains more than one scenario; diet scenarios vary in their percentage of ASFP; the weight of each food product was provided; the study assessed global warming potential and/or land use; diet scenarios are not designed for specific (health) groups. For each diet described in the reviewed studies, we quantified the daily intake of nine qualifying and three disqualifying nutrients. Global warming potential and land use, as provided by the reviewed studies, were expressed in four ways: per day, per daily protein intake capped to the recommended intake level of 57 g; per daily protein intake uncapped; and per NRD9.3 (i.e. a composite nutrient score of a diet). We concluded that the nutrient intake resulting from a meal cannot be used to assess the nutritional quality of a daily diet and, hence, the environmental impact of meals cannot be compared to that of daily diets. Studies on meals were therefore excluded from further analysis. Our results further show that daily diets that had higher percentages of ASFP were associated with higher (excess) intakes of total protein and lower values of NRD9.3. Diets that had higher percentages of ASFP were associated with higher GWPs and LU's per gram protein capped and per unit NRD9.3. Without capping protein to the recommended intake level, GWPs and LU per gram of protein were generally lower for diets that had higher percentages of ASFP. Without capping, diets with higher percentages of ASFP are credited for overconsumption of protein. Since overconsumption of protein does not benefit health, we recommend capping to the recommended intake level. The effect of using NRD9.3 rather than day as functional unit was small for GWP. For LU we found no effect. When using NRD9.3 as functional unit, it must be considered that this functional unit requires more data than day or protein. Our analysis is based on a limited number of studies. Although initially a substantial number of studies were found, many of these were excluded because insufficient data were provided about diet composition, only one diet scenario was assessed, or because the studies assessed the environmental impact of meals rather than of diets. We found mainly Western-oriented diets, often designed by the researchers and not representative for actual consumption. For further research on the environmental impact of diets, we therefore recommend analysis on representative daily diets. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Dairy farms produce significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are therefore a focal point for GHG-mitigation practices. To develop viable mitigation options, we need robust (insensitive to changes in model parameters and assumptions) predictions of GHG emissions. To this end, we developed a stochastic model to estimate the robustness of predictions based on input parameters (GHG emission factors and production traits) and their uncertainties. In our study we explored how sensitive predictions of GHG emissions are to three factors: (I) system boundaries of the emission model (2) the uncertainty of input parameters due to quality of data or methodological choices (epistemic uncertainty) and (3) inherent variability in input parameters (variability uncertainty). To assess the effect of system boundaries, we compared two different boundaries: the "dairy farm gate" boundary (all GHG emissions are allocated to milk) and "system expansion" (the model gives a GHG credit to beef derived from culled cows and bull, heifer and calf fattening of surplus dairy calves outside the farm). Results using the farm-gate boundary provide guidance to dairy farmers to reduce GHG emissions of milk production. The results using system expansion are important for defining GHG abatement policies for milk and beef production. We found that the choice of system boundary had the strongest impact on the level and variation of predicted GHG emissions. Model predictions were least robust for lower-yielding dairy cow production systems and when we used system expansion. We also explored which GHG-abatement strategies have the most leverage by assessing the influence of each input parameter on model predictions. Predicted GHG emissions were least sensitive to variability-related uncertainty in production traits (i.e. replacement rate, calving interval). Lower-yielding production systems had the highest variation, indicating the highest potential for GHG mitigation of all production systems studied. Variation in predicted GHG emissions increased substantially when both epistemic and variability uncertainty in emission factors and variability uncertainty in production traits were included in the model. If the system boundary was set at the farm gate, the emission factor of N2O from nitrogen input into the soil had the highest impact on variation in predicted GHG emissions. This variation stems from uncertainties in predicting N2O emissions (epistemic uncertainty) but also from inherent variability of N2O emissions over time and space. The uncertainty of predicted GHG emissions can be reduced by increasing the precision in predicting N2O emissions. However, this additional information does not reduce GHG emissions itself. Knowing site specific variability of N2O emissions can help reduce GHG emissions by specific management (e.g. reduce soil compaction, adopted manure management, choice of suitable crops). In case of system expansion, uncertainty in GHG emission credit for dairy beef contributed the most to increasing the variation in predicted GHG emissions. The stochastic-model approach gave important insights into the robustness of model outcomes, which is crucial in the search for cost-effective GHG-abatement options. Despite the high degree of uncertainty when using system expansion, its results help identifying global GHG mitigation options of combined milk and beef production. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the study is to develop a tool, which can be used for calculation of carbon footprint (using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach) of milk both at a farm level and at a national level. The functional unit is '1 kg energy corrected milk (ECM) at farm gate' and the applied methodology is LCA. The model includes switches that enables for, within the same scope, transforming the results to comply with 1) consequential LCA, 2) allocation/average modelling (or 'attributional LCA'), 3) PAS 2050 and 4) The International Dairy Federations (IDF) guide to standard life cycle assessment methodology for the dairy sector. The key elements of consequential LCA and the IDF guide are presented and explained by examples. The national carbon footprints (CF) for milk produced in Denmark and Sweden in 2005 are presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, there has been a growing concern from the scientific community regarding the significant environmental impacts of animal agriculture. In order to draw consumer attention to this issue, there have been a number of initiatives, such as ecolabeling, that seek to influence consumer purchasing behavior. The growth in popularity of smartphone apps has also led to the creation of apps that aim to assist consumers in making more sustainable and greener choices. The Dutch animal welfare non-governmental organization, Varkens in Nood, set out to create an app that would incorporate both specific life cycle environmental and animal welfare impacts of animal products and alternatives and that would allow consumers to access this information while shopping. The life cycle assessment portion of the study was conducted by CE Delft and involved the modeling of the life cycle environmental impacts of 106 different animal products and animal product alternatives from the farm to the supermarket. Given the breadth of animal products and alternatives studied, the database could be used to model over 19,000 individual products available in Dutch supermarkets. The impacts of the life cycles were assessed using a customized version of the ReCiPe (hierarchic endpoint) method. The results show that there are large differences between the product groups, but also within product groups. The main causes for the differences in biodiversity, climate change and land use change are as a result of the differences in livestock management, feed, feed conversion and greenhouse gas production by ruminants. The project also showcases how the needs of the future app user affected the setup of the study, both in the technical database aspects and in keeping the data robust yet simple to understand for the consumer. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to examine the potential of digestibility-improving enzymes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from commercial broiler production. The enzyme product which was examined is a combination of xylanase (X), alpha-amylase (A), and protease (P) developed by Danisco Animal Nutrition (DuPont Industrial Biosciences). XAP facilitates higher inclusion rates in the diet of cheaper and possibly more environmentally friendly feed ingredients that have a lower nutritional value. XAP can be used for corn soybean based diets comprising up to 12% by-products. Two scenarios were compared: one included XAP whereas the other scenario did not include XAP. The potential of XAP to reduce GHG emissions was documented through a GHG assessment based on Life Cycle Assessment principles. Consequential modelling was applied including indirect land use changes (ILUC) and direct land use (LU). The findings showed that XAP facilitated savings in GHG emissions from broiler production in the order of 90 g CO2 eq. per FU. It corresponded to a 5-9% reduction of GHG emissions from broiler production. The sensitivity analysis showed that the results varied substantially, but in all analyses the GHG emissions were reduced. The two most important parameters were: assumptions about the actual changes in the feed formulation and the modelling of ILUC. The two parameters can significantly influence the estimated improvement potential. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of GHG mitigation measures at farm level are scarce. Hence, the aim of this study was to quantify the GHG mitigation potential of selected measures on two typical organic farms in Switzerland. We built a single-farm model which enabled us to calculate the GHG emissions and energy consumption at farm level using a life cycle assessment approach. The model was used to calculate the effects of 13 different mitigation measures on a Swiss organic dairy and a Swiss organic mixed farm. At the dairy and mixed farm, respectively, 5.4% and 5.5% of mitigation in relation to the farms' total GHG emissions could be realized by technical means and 15.4% and 12.9% with agronomic measures. Technical measures include the use of photovoltaics and heat recovery from milk cooling devices. The agronomic measures include conversion to full-grazing systems, composting livestock manure, and the use of dual-purpose cattle breeds. The total mitigation potential of the analysed measures is 20.8% less GHG emissions for the dairy farm and 18.5% less for the mixed farm. However, some agronomic measures may result in yield decreases, which reduce the total mitigation effect of the analysed portfolio of measures from an LCA perspective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several dairy farms in the Netherlands aim at reducing their environmental impact by improving the internal nutrient cycle (INC) at farm level. Practices to improve nutrient cycling at these INC farms, however, might not only reduce the environmental impact on-farm, but alter also the off-farm environmental impact associated with supply chain processes (production and transport) related to inputs entering the farm, such as purchased feed or fertilizer or the economic or societal performance of these farms. We compared, therefore, a set of sustainability indicators of nine INC farms with a group of benchmark farms, comparable in terms of farm size, intensity and site-specific circumstances. This benchmark group was composed using statistical matching to exclude the effect of these characteristics on economic, environmental and societal performance. Economic indicators used were: farm income per unpaid annual working unit and the costs to revenues ratio. Environmental indicators used were derived from a cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle assessment: land occupation (LO), non-renewable energy use (NREU), global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP), expressed per kg fat-and-protein-corrected milk (FPCM). In addition, we quantified the soil content of organic carbon and phosphorus, and the soil nitrogen supply. Societal indicators used were: payments for agri-environmental measures, grazing hours and penalties for aberrant milk composition. Results showed that INC farms had a lower non-renewable energy use per kg FPCM, higher soil organic carbon content and received higher annual payments for agri-environmental measures, whereas economic and other environmental, societal indicators did not differed. Furthermore, we demonstrated the need for a sound benchmark to assess the effect of INC-farming on the economic, environmental and societal performance. Statistical matching enabled us to define, for each INC farm, a benchmark group with similar farm characteristics, which are known to affect sustainability indicators. Observed differences in sustainability indicators between both farm groups, therefore, truly resulted from aiming at internal nutrient cycling, and not from differences in other farm characteristics. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is increasing recognition of the tension between livestock production and freshwater availability. Changes in freshwater availability can be generated by both freshwater consumptive and freshwater degradative use. Agriculture is a major water user, and beef cattle and sheep farming is an important agricultural activity in New Zealand (NZ). This study assessed potential environmental impacts associated with water use in beef cattle and sheep farming in NZ, following a water footprint method compliant with life cycle assessment principles with a focus on the water scarcity footprint and eutrophication potential (EP) impacts. The life cycle required for the production of beef cattle and sheep was analysed cradle-to-farm-gate, excluding animal transport or processing. Survey data from Beef and Lamb New Zealand for the year 2009/10 were used to cover a range of beef cattle and sheep farm types throughout NZ (426 farms averaged in seven farm classes), and water scarcity footprint and EP weighted averages were calculated for beef cattle and sheep. The normalised NZ weighted average water scarcity footprint of beef cattle of 0.37 L H2O-eq/kg LW was lower than the published normalised values for the water scarcity footprint of beef cattle produced in Australia (3.3-221 L H2O-eq/kg LW) and in the UK. Also, the NZ weighted average water scarcity footprint of sheep of 0.26 L H2O-eq/kg meat (assuming that 40% LW was converted into meat) was lower than the water scarcity footprint of sheep meat reported for the UK (8.4-23.1 L H2O/kg meat). Blue water losses associated with evapotranspiration from irrigated pasture comprised the greatest proportion of the total water scarcity footprint, despite the small areas of farmland irrigated. The weighted average EP of beef cattle was 51.1 g PO4-eq/kg LW, and the weighted average EP of sheep was 26.1 g PO4-eq/kg LW. The NZ weighted average EP for beef cattle was lower than the 105 g PO4-eq/kg LW reported for European Union suclder beef cattle. On-farm nitrate leaching and phosphorus runoff dominated the EP. From an international marketing perspective, beef cattle and sheep produced in NZ have a potential advantage by having low water scarcity footprints compared to some non-NZ pastoral farming systems due to their production efficiencies and low annual water-stress levels. The impact of NZ pastoral farming on freshwater availability can potentially be reduced by practices that decrease water use, increase feed conversion efficiencies, increase the use of non-irrigated feed supplements, and reduce irrigation. The indicator EP was chosen to enable comparisons with non-NZ studies, but gaseous emissions of nitrogen compounds contributed 33-40% of the total, and their contribution to water pollution is uncertain. This study highlighted the need for a harmonised methodology and as well as to consider specific local contextual information when interpreting the absolute and relative implications of EP results, for example by developing NZ-catchment-specific characterisation factors for aquatic eutrophication in future studies. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the current literature, the life cycle, technoeconomic, and resource assessments of microalgae-based biofuel production systems have relied on growth models extrapolated from laboratory-scale data, leading to a large uncertainty in results. This type of simplistic growth modeling overestimates productivity potential and fails to incorporate biological effects, geographical location, or cultivation architecture. This study uses a large-scale, validated, outdoor photo-bioreactor microalgae growth model based on 21 reactor-and species-specific inputs to model the growth of Nannochloropsis. This model accurately accounts for biological effects such as nutrient uptake, respiration, and temperature and uses hourly historical meteorological data to determine the current global productivity potential. Global maps of the current near-term microalgae lipid and biomass productivity were generated based on the results of annual simulations at 4,388 global locations. Maximum annual average lipid yields between 24 and 27 m(3).ha(-1).y(-1), corresponding to biomass yields of 13 to 15 g.m(-2).d(-1), are possible in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, and Saudi Arabia. The microalgae lipid productivity results of this study were integrated with geography-specific fuel consumption and land availability data to perform a scalability assessment. Results highlight the promising potential of microalgae-based biofuels compared with traditional terrestrial feedstocks. When water, nutrients, and CO2 are not limiting, many regions can potentially meet significant fractions of their transportation fuel requirements through microalgae production, without land resource restriction. Discussion focuses on sensitivity of monthly variability in lipid production compared with annual average yields, effects of temperature on productivity, and a comparison of results with previous published modeling assumptions.In the modern economy, international value chains-production, use, and disposal of goods-have global environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims to track these impacts and assess them from a systems perspective, identifying strategies for improvement without burden shifting. We review recent developments in LCA, including existing and emerging applications aimed at supporting environmentally informed decisions in policy-making, product development and procurement, and consumer choices. LCA constitutes a viable screening tool that can pinpoint environmental hotspots in complex value chains, but we also caution that completeness in scope comes at the price of simplifications and uncertainties. Future advances of LCA in enhancing regional detail and accuracy as well as broadening the assessment to economic and social aspects will make it more relevant for producers and consumers alike.A life cycle assessment (LCA) focused on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the production of microalgal biodiesel was carried out based on a detailed engineering and economic analysis. This LCA applies the methodology of the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (CA LCFS) and uses life cycle inventory (LCI) data for process inputs, based on the California-Modified Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (CA GREET) model. Based on detailed mass and energy balances, calculated GHG emissions from this algal biodiesel system are 70% lower than those of conventional diesel fuel, meeting the minimum 50% GHG reduction requirements under the EPA RFS2 and 60% for the European Union Renewable Energy Directive. This LCA study provides a guide to the research and development objectives that must be achieved to meet both economic and environmental goals for microalgae biodiesel production.Green supply chain management (GSCM) has emerged as a key approach for enterprises seeking to become environmentally sustainable. This paper aims to evaluate and describe the advantages of a GSCM approach by analysing practices and performance consequences in the battery recycling sector. It seeks to integrate works in supply chain management (SCM), environmental management, performance management and real option (RO) theory into one framework. In particular, life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to evaluate the environmental impact of a battery recycling plant project, and life cycle costing (LCC) is applied to evaluate its economic impact. Firms, also understanding the relevance of GSCM, have often avoided applying the green principles because of the elevated costs that such management involved. Such costs could also seem superior to the potential advantages since standard performance measurement systems are internally and business focused; for these reasons, we consider all the possible value deriving also by uncertainty associated to a green project using the RO theory. This work is one of the few and pioneering efforts to investigate GSCM practices in the battery recycling sector.This manuscript spans over 180 years of ideas, discoveries, inventions, breakthroughs and research in Capacitive Deionisation (CDI) and Membrane CDI (MCDI) desalination. Starting with the first discovery of the dissociation of ions in solution under an electric field by M. Faraday (1833), through the pioneering work of carbon aerogel flow through capacitors by J. Farmer's group (1996) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), to the utilization of novel graphene and carbon nanotube (CNT) materials as electrodes, the CDI and MCDI technologies are progressively making its path to the desalination industry. Through this review various deficiencies of this technology have been identified, first and far most was the need for low cost and efficient electrode materials. The review identified that a low cost and high efficiency electrode capable of processing high salinity (seawater) stream still does not exists and is considered important if the technology is to make it to the industry. Furthermore, the lack of long term reliability, operation demonstrations and experience meant that information about scaling and fouling are rather scarce. Taking a step further, no comprehensive environmental assessment such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been performed yet. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The plenary theme at the 2008 annual conference of The Wildlife Society was, "Thriving within limits: toward a scenario of hope." Wildlife professionals are still grappling with how wildlife management relates to sustainability as global limits, especially energy, become more obvious in affecting resource management. "Sustainability" as used in this paper is derived from the commonly cited, Brundtland Report definition of sustainable development as, "... development thatmeets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Further, it is activity that simultaneously addresses the interlinked aspects of economy, environment, and social well-being. To be effective in the future, natural resources agencies and organizations (NGOs) will be compelled to 1) reduce energy use by increasing efficiency of unavoidable uses and reducing optional energy uses; 2) anticipate how energy costs will affect resource use by various stakeholders; and 3) mitigate climate change by reducing combustion processes and thereby greenhouse gases. Because of their fundamental missions, natural resource entities have a special obligation to employ exemplary conservation practices. Challenges are great, but opportunities are significant. Higher fuel costs will constrain some management practices, but may limit further development of more rural and underdeveloped lands, thereby reducing habitat fragmentation and often wildlife damage complaints. Will energy costs promote smaller vehicles, reduction of some management practices, greater focus on recreational areas closer to population centers, consolidation of offices with other entities, and more video-conferencing of meetings? Will wildlife management be effectively integrated into landscapes where energy crops are produced along with food and where "life-cycle analysis" measures the full ecological footprint of land management? Agencies and NGOs can partner with stakeholders to design landscape use that is more sustainable (less pollution, conserving of energy and soil, more biologically diverse), provides better connections to nature, and enhances overall resource conservation. Educational institutions have a critical role because they are instrumental in preparing future resource managers. (C) 2014 The Wildlife Society.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the decision support systems which can be considered for assessing the different approaches of Waste Management. However, it only considers environmental effects and ignores other decision making options such as economic and social effects of solid waste management. In this research, we consider a combination of three decision making options including environmental, economic and social effects to compare current waste management system to six alternative scenarios for selecting the best scenario of solid waste management for Isfahan city where a total of approximately 1000 tons/day of waste is generated. SimaPro7 libraries through Eco-Indictor 99 method were used to obtain background data for the life cycle inventory and assessing mid and end points of environmental impacts. One ton of municipal solid waste of Isfahan was selected as the functional unit. Output of LCA along Economic and social effects were compared with Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution method. According to Multi-criteria Decision Making, S5 and Si (recycling, composting and landfilling) were selected as best scenario in terms of lower environmental impacts (human health, ecosystem quality and resources) and finance requirements.Ethanol produced from cellulosic feedstocks has garnered significant interest for greenhouse gas abatement and energy security promotion. One outstanding question in the development of a mature cellulosic ethanol industry is the optimal scale of biorefining activities. This question is important for companies and entrepreneurs seeking to construct and operate cellulosic ethanol biorefineries as it determines the size of investment needed and the amount of feedstock for which they must contract. The question also has important implications for the nature and location of lifecycle environmental impacts from cellulosic ethanol. We use an optimization framework similar to previous studies, but add richer details by treating many of these critical parameters as random variables and incorporating a stochastic sub-model for land conversion. We then use Monte Carlo simulation to obtain a probability distribution for the optimal scale of a biorefinery using a fermentation process and miscanthus feedstock. We find a bimodal distribution with a high peak at around 10-30 MMgal yr(-1) (representing circumstances where a relatively low percentage of farmers elect to participate in miscanthus cultivation) and a lower and flatter peak between 150 and 250 MMgal yr(-1) (representing more typically assumed land-conversion conditions). This distribution leads to useful insights; in particular, the asymmetry of the distribution-with significantly more mass on the low side-indicates that developers of cellulosic ethanol biorefineries may wish to exercise caution in scale-up.The increasing industrial interest in biocatalytic processes is predominantly driven by the need for selective chemistry, with high reaction yield (Y-reaction) and few side reactions, as well as the need for optically pure chiral molecules (in particularly in the pharmaceutical industry). Interestingly, it is often argued that the mild conditions frequently used in biocatalytic reactions (ambient temperature and pressure, neutral pH and aqueous-based media) automatically lead to environmentally-friendly and cost-effective production processes. However, such a conclusion is not justified without the use of adequate tools to evaluate the performance of a process, in particular during process development. Nevertheless, at the early development stage, evaluation of biocatalytic processes is not a trivial task, not only due to the lack of data, but also because at this stage many of the biocatalytic processes are not yet fully optimized. Hence, in this paper we propose the use of a range of tools which can be used to guide process development, research tasks and support decision-making. Three sets of metrics are identified, each for use at different stages of process development (route selection, early development and late development), each with different objectives.Despite the inaccuracy of the official estimates, it is commonly recognised that wood biomasses play a relevant role in the Italian renewable energy production. Moreover, the Italian dependence on the international biomass market has significantly increased over the time. This trend seems to be the antithesis of the "short value chain" objective that is a leitmotif of renewable energy and rural development domestic policies. Starting from this evidence, Italian import flows of woody biomasses for energy use were analyzed over the period 1991-2011 both in quantitative and economic terms. Then, the environmental impacts of these flows have been estimated by means of a Life-Cycle Analysis to determine whether, and to what extent, the increased transport distance reduces the environmental sustainability of these materials with respect to conventional fossil fuels. Some policy considerations concerning the opportunity of further developing local supply chains are finally provided.In recent years, waste management systems have been evaluated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. A main shortcoming of prior studies was the focus on a mixture of waste with different characteristics. The estimation of emissions and consumptions associated with each waste fraction in these studies presented allocation problems. Waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration is a clear example in which municipal solid waste (MSW), comprising many types of materials, is processed to produce several outputs. This paper investigates an approach to better understand incineration processes in Spain and Portugal by applying a multi-input/output allocation model. The application of this model enabled predictions of WTE inputs and outputs, including the consumption of ancillary materials and combustibles, air emissions, solid wastes, and the energy produced during the combustion of each waste fraction.The Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in its Vision 2020 statement identified sustainability in infrastructure as a core element for the civil engineering profession. However, what is sustainable infrastructure and more importantly, how can it be assessed? This paper uses stormwater infrastructure as its primary example to explore these issues, reviews issues with stormwater infrastructure in Canada, and critically examines current sustainability assessment methods. Two groups of problems are identified. The first group concerns issues related to economic, institutions, population growth, ecological, and health and safety. The second group examines the uncertainties in impact prediction associated with climate change effects as well as health impacts on the user. Sustainability evaluation methods (ranking, sustainability indicators, footprint, metabolism, extended metabolism, life cycle assessment), performance assessment tools, infrastructure report card, and the public infrastructure engineering vulnerability committee protocol for climate change assessment are then reviewed. Current methods of assessing infrastructure mostly focus on the functional aspects of the system with resource use reduction as the primary objective. However, they do not explicitly concentrate on resiliency and long-term sustainability, nor do they consider the associated health implications and change management capabilities for long-term sustainability. A new comprehensive framework would be required to assess broad, emerging issues related to infrastructure.production of floor coverings, in terms of environmental impact, is a very complex process due to a large number of influential parameters - various chemical emissions, inevitability of waste, a great number of influential physical quantities such as noise and vibration, dust and radiation, energy consumption, recyclability, etc. Interest in the application of LCA within the production of floor coverings has been present for almost two decades and is intensely increasing. During this period different approaches and attempts of LCA implementation have been recorded in this broad field. This paper presents a general model for environmental impact assessment of the production process of floor coverings based on LCA. The developed model represents a contribution to the improvement and a further step towards the standardization of LCA analysis in this field of floor covering production. Verification has been carried out through a case study based on an industrial facility which produces PVC floor coverings.This paper presents an application of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) with a view to analyzing the environment aspects of rice straw-based power generation in Malaysia. It also compares rice straw-based power generation with that of coal and natural gas. GHG (Greenhouse gas) emission savings were calculated. It finds that rice straw power generation can save GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of about 1.79 kg CO2-eq/kWh compared to coal-based and 1.05 kg CO2-eq/kWh with natural gas based power generation. While the development of rice straw-based power generation in Malaysia is still in its early stage, these paddy residues offer a large potential to generate electricity because of their availability. Rice straw power plants not only could solve the problem of removing rice straw from fields without open burning, but also could reduce GHG emissions that contribute to climate change, acidification, and eutrophication, among other environmental problems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper seeks to shed light on the question whether a magnetic household refrigerator with permanent magnets is more environmentally friendly than a conventional, vapor-compression refrigerator. Life cycle assessment has been used as a tool to investigate the environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of a magnetic refrigerator. The results of the assessment have been compared with those of a conventional, vapor-compression refrigerator with the same functionality. The comparison reveals that the magnetic refrigeration has higher environmental impacts mainly due to the use of rare-earth metals used in the magnet material. The possibility of compensating for this shortcoming through reuse of the magnetic materials or improving the design and efficiency of the magnetic refrigerator has been examined. In addition, the effect of the electricity mix consumed during the use phase, as one of the key factors determining the life cycle environmental impacts, has been investigated. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.Traditionally, primary grain production systems in China have been on a small scale and are associated with high costs and low labor productivity. Therefore, the substitution of small-scale farming with large-scale farming has been discussed in recent years. The North China Plain (NCP) is one of the primary grain production areas in China, and the winter wheat-summer maize double-cropping system dominates the region. Emergy evaluation based on life cycle assessment (LCA) was introduced in a farm case study to explore the ecological and economic effects of the wheat-maize double-cropping system on large-scale grain production compared with small-scale production. The results indicated that the emergy efficiency of maize production on the large-scale farm was 67.4-88.5% higher than that of common maize production systems, and the emergy efficiency of wheat production in the same farm decreased by 23.5-43.0% compared to other wheat production systems. The emergy sustainability index (ESI) of the double-cropping system was 64.0-84.5% lower than that reported by household farms. This is caused by large-scale farming requiring enormous emergy inputs from irrigation, fertilizers, and labor at the pre-sowing and growth stages of wheat production. Nevertheless, the scenario analysis results showed that the emergy efficiency and ESI of wheat production could be improved by 14.7-59.1% and 18.2-123.3%, respectively, using appropriate water, nutrient, and agronomic management measures. We found that the emergy efficiency of wheat production in this large-scale farm was 41.5% higher than in household farms in the same area if comprehensive improvement measures were applied. In conclusion, the ESI value of the double-cropping system in the NCP needs to be modified to increase the emergy efficiency of large-scale grain production farms. If this is accomplished, the large-scale farming pattern may be applicable for grain production in the NCP. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this paper the scenario based optimization of the bulbous bow of the KRISO Container Ship (KCS) is presented. The optimization of the parametrically modeled vessel is based on a statistically developed operational profile generated from noon-to-noon reports of a comparable 3600 TEU container vessel and specific development functions representing the growth of global economy during the vessels service time. In order to consider uncertainties, statistical fluctuations are added. An analysis of these data lead to a number of most probable upcoming operating conditions (OC) the vessel will stay in the future. According to their respective likeliness an objective function for the evaluation of the optimal design variant of the vessel is derived and implemented within the parametrical optimization workbench FRIENDSHIP Framework. In the following this evaluation is done with respect to vessel's calculated effective power based on the usage of potential flow code. The evaluation shows, that the usage of scenarios within the optimization process has a strong influence on the hull form.This paper reviews the current literature around the environmental impacts of dietary recommendations. The focus of the review is on collating evidence relating to environmental impacts of the dietary advice found in the World Health Organisation guidelines, and environmental impact literature: reducing the consumption of fat, reducing the consumption of meat-based protein and animal-based foods, and increasing the consumption of fruit and vegetables. The environmental impact of reducing dietary fat intake is unclear, although reducing consumption of the food category of edible fats and oils appears to have little impact. However most, but not all, studies support environmental benefits of a reduced consumption of animal-based foods and increased consumption of fruit and vegetables. In general, it appears that adhering to dietary guidelines reduces impact on the environment, but further study is required to examine the environmental impacts of animal-based foods, and fruit and vegetable intake in depth.This paper proposes an evaluation of pavement maintenance policies relative to their initial construction, through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and in accordance with the framework established by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry as well as in the ISO 14040 Standard. The respective influence of initial construction and maintenance operations is investigated for both asphalt concrete and cement concrete pavement structures. Several case studies are analysed using a specific method and tool, called ECORCE (French acronym for "ECU-comparator applied to Road Construction and Maintenance"), dedicated to road pavement LCA. ECORCE takes into account the materials production, mixing and laying processes, in addition to their transport between the production site and the jobsite. This environmental assessment is based on the principles underlying the life cycle assessment methodology. The chosen Functional Unit only considers the service to road users; heavily-trafficked French motorway structures are thus described over a 30-year service period. A set of overall indicators, consisting of raw material and energy consumption, global warming potential and eutrophication potential, is then calculated for two case studies. These environmental indicators highlight the ability to assess pavement designs along with two maintenance policies considered for each case studied. Results are thus able to expose the relative influence of maintenance (113 of the entire life cycle). In conclusion, environmental design principles to achieve a reduction in environmental loads are discussed in considering the entire road life cycle. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While issues of land-use have been considered in many direct analyses of biomass systems, little attention has heretofore been paid to land-use in reference fossil systems. Here we address this limitation by comparing forest biomass systems to reference fossil systems with explicit consideration of land-use in both systems. We estimate and compare the time profiles of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and cumulative radiative forcing (CRF) of woody biomass systems and reference fossil systems. A life cycle perspective is used that includes all significant elements of both systems, including GHG emissions along the full material and energy chains. We consider the growth dynamics of forests under different management regimes, as well as energy and material substitution effects of harvested biomass. We determine the annual net emissions of CO2, N2O and CH4 for each system over a 240-year period, and then calculate time profiles of cRF as a proxy measurement of climate change impact. The results show greatest potential for climate change mitigation when intensive forest management is applied in the woody biomass system. This methodological framework provides a tool to help determine optimal strategies for managing forests so as to minimize climate change impacts. The inclusion of land-use in the reference system improves the accuracy of quantitative projections of climate benefits of biomass-based systems. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to the lack of appropriate policies in the last decades, 60% of Brazilian cities still dump their waste in non-regulated landfills (the remaining ones dump their trash in regulated landfills), which represent a serious environmental and social problem. The key objective of this study is to compare, from a techno-economic and environmental point of view, different alternatives to the energy recovery from the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generated in Brazilian cities. The environmental analysis was carried out using current data collected in Betim, a 450,000 inhabitants city that currently produces 200 tonnes of MSW/day. Four scenarios were designed, whose environmental behaviour were studied applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, in accordance with the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards. The results show the landfill systems as the worst waste management option and that a significant environmental savings is achieved when a wasted energy recovery is done. The best option, which presented the best performance based on considered indicators, is the direct combustion of waste as fuel for electricity generation. The study also includes a techno-economical evaluation of the options, using a developed computer simulation tool. The economic indicators of an MSW energy recovery project were calculated. The selected methodology allows to calculate the energy content of the MSW and the CH4 generated by the landfill, the costs and incomes associated with the energy recovery, the sales of electricity and carbon credits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The studies were based on urban centres of 100,000, 500,000 and 1,000,000 inhabitants, using the MSW characteristics of the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte. Two alternatives to recovering waste energy were analyzed: a landfill that used landfill biogas to generate electricity through generator modules and a Waste-to-Energy (WtE) facility also with electricity generation. The results show that power generation projects using landfill biogas in Brazil strongly depend on the existence of a market for emissions reduction credits. The WtE plant projects, due to its high installation, Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs, are highly dependent on MSW treatment fees. And they still rely on an increase of three times the city taxes to become attractive. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper reviews databases on material recycling (primary as well as secondary production) used in life cycle assessments (LCA) of waste management systems. A total of 366 datasets, from 1980 to 2010 and covering 14 materials, were collected from databases and reports. Totals for CO2-equivalent emissions were compared to illustrate variations in the data. It was hypothesised that emissions from material production and the recycling industry had decreased over time due to increasing regulation, energy costs and process optimisation, but the reported datasets did not reveal such a general trend. Data representing the same processes varied considerably between databases, and proper background information was hard to obtain, which in turn made it difficult to explain the large differences observed. Those differences between the highest and lowest estimated CO2 emissions (equivalents) from the primary production of newsprint, HDPE and glass were 238%, 443% and 452%, respectively. For steel and aluminium the differences were 1761% and 235%, respectively. There is a severe lack of data for some recycled materials; for example, only one dataset existed for secondary cardboard. The study shows that the choice of dataset used to represent the environmental load of a material recycling process and credited emissions from the avoided production of virgin materials is crucial for the outcome of an LCA on waste management. Great care and a high degree of transparency are mandatory, but advice on which datasets to use could not be determined from the study. However, from the gathered data, recycling in general showed lower emission of CO2 per kg material than primary production, so the recycling of materials (considered in this study) is thus beneficial in most cases. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Smart technologies provide diverse and promising opportunities to reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions; they are increasingly expected to shift modern societies' patterns of production and consumption towards sustainability. However, the existence of a theoretical potential does not imply that every smart solution (application of a smart technology) will contribute to sustainability. Policy-makers are therefore in need of methodologies to evaluate the sustainability of smart solutions. This paper gives an overview of the current discussion in the field and the emerging methodological challenges. The challenges of assessing the direct impact of the ICT components and infrastructures are special cases of known issues in life cycle assessment methodology. The challenges of assessing indirect impacts are inherently interdisciplinary and call for integrated modelling approaches. The last two sections provide an overview of the papers assembled in this thematic issue that treat specific cases and general principles of modeling and evaluating the sustainability of smart solutions. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper compares two Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies independently carried out to assess the environmental impacts of electronic versus print media. Although the two studies lead to the same overall conclusion for the case of a news magazine namely that the tablet version of the magazine has environmental advantages over the print version there are significant differences in the details of the LCA results. We show how these differences can be explained by differences in the methodological approaches used for life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling, in particular the use of rough average data versus the attempt to use the most specific and detailed data as possible. We conclude that there are several issues in LCA practice (at least when applied in the domain of media) that can significantly influence the results already at the LCI level: The data collection strategy used (e.g. relying on desk-based research or dismantling a given device) and the decisions made at inventory level with regard to parameters with significant geographic variability, such as the electricity mix or recycling quotas. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology to generate environmental impact estimates associated with the life cycle stages of a product or process. The approach facilitates a more comprehensive outlook of the end-of-pipe process impacts, in which wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are included. Here we describe the implementation of the LCA methodology within a knowledge-based Decision support system (DSS) in order to include the environmental criteria to the decision making process when selecting the most appropriate process flow diagrams for specific scenarios. A sample group of 22 actual operating facilities in Spain, corresponding to five different typologies were assessed by two relevant impact categories within the system: Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Global Warming Potential (GWP). DSS includes useful tools that support a user in choosing a consistent, near optimum solution for an environmental impact specific problem in a reduced time frame. The synergistic combination of the two methodologies to address the design and assessment of treatment facilities can serve to identify the most sustainable options, embracing simultaneously a wide variety of analysis criteria, and enhancing the calculation of environmental savings. Results of averaged paired-comparison ratios between DSS estimates and facilities operations empirical data showed up to 70% and 95% EP and GWP, respectively. Interestingly, when unbiased operational efficiencies for existing facilities were discarded, the matching ratios increased substantially, up to 99% in both cases. The in-depth analysis of different output data gathered during the conceptual design and simulation of operating facilities using DSS identified the best performing facilities; and was used to improve the environmental performance of WWTPs, even during preliminary design of new facilities. Results demonstrated that combined LCA and DSS implementation is a suitable tool to assess WWTP design during the decision-making process. Following this procedure, a reliable interpretation and discussion of the results can be performed. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The academic community has already taken notice of the interactions between information technologies (IT), information systems (IS), business organizations and the environment. Despite the interest garnered, research and modelling approaches on the environmental impact of IT/IS are usually explored only through qualitative approaches. This paper introduces a way for researchers and practitioners to engage with the environmental impact of IT/IS in a more quantitative manner using flow based life cycle assessments (LCA). Distinct from other life cycle assessment studies, this research paper confirms that integration of information flows within life cycle inventory analysis can be both useful and viable. Our work presents a conceptual framework for flow-based LCA within the context of IT/IS consisting of possibilities for defining functional units, a meta model for building symbiotic inventory models, the use of established software tools and databases as well as concrete actions to apply our framework within simulation studies. We hope that better knowledge of the environmental impact of IT/IS solutions will facilitate an effort for more sustainable solutions. The framework was derived by literature review, design science research and evaluated via a simulation. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model developed by Argonne National Laboratory quantifies the life cycle energy consumption and air emissions resulting from the production and use of light-duty vehicles in the United States. GREET is comprised of two components: GREET 1 represents the fuel cycle of various energy carriers, including automotive fuels, and GREET 2 represents the vehicle cycle, which accounts for the production of vehicles and their constituent materials. The GREET model was updated in 2012 and now includes higher-resolution material processing and transformation data. This study evaluated how model updates influence material and vehicle life cycle results. First, new primary energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions results from GREET 2 for steel, aluminum, and plastics resins are compared herein with those from the previous version of the model as well as industrial results. A part of the comparison is a discussion about causes of differences between results. Included in this discussion is an assessment of the impact of the new material production data on vehicle life cycle results for conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by comparing the energy and GHG emission values in the updated and previous versions of GREET 2. Finally, results from a sensitivity analysis are presented for identifying life cycle parameters that most affect vehicle life cycle estimates.This article presents a general framework for macroenvironmental assessment, combining life cycle assessment (LCA) with the IPAT equation, and explores its combination with decomposition analysis to assess the multidimensional contribution of technological innovation to environmental pressures. This approach is illustrated with a case study in which carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) air emissions from diesel passenger cars in Europe during the period 1990-2005 are first decomposed using index decomposition analysis into technology, consumption activity, and population growth effects. By a second decomposition, the contribution of a specific innovation (diesel engine) is calculated on the basis of the technology and consumption activity effects, through a technological comparison with a relevant alternative and the calculation of the rebound effect, respectively. The empirical analysis for diesel passenger cars highlights the discrepancies between the micro (LCA) and macro (IPAT-LCA) analytical approaches. Thus, whereas diesel engines present a relatively less-pollutant environmental product profile than their gasoline counterparts, total CO2 and NOx emissions would have increased partly as a consequence of their introduction, mainly driven by the increase in travel demand caused by the induced direct price rebound effect from fuel savings and fuel price differences. The counterintuitive result shows the need for such an analysis.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies include a vast amount of different products. Often, extrapolations are necessary to obtain the life cycle inventory of a specific product. This article provides quantitative scaling factors with power (heat output) for product properties and life cycle impact assessment results of heat pump and biomass furnace technologies. Included in the study are 508 heat pumps and furnaces with differences in power over three orders of magnitude per product group. The key properties of the heat pump system were defined as mass, refrigerant use, and coefficient of performance. For the biomass furnaces, the key properties analyzed were mass, electrical input, and efficiency. The results indicated that both the mass and the refrigerant use increased subproportionally to power. For coefficient of performance and furnace efficiency, no scaling effect was found. Subproportional growth was found between two environmental impacts (global warming and ozone depletion) and power for the production phase. This scaling behavior was similar to conventional cost scaling. The results of our study imply that in LCA, scaling factors can be applied to estimate key properties and corresponding life cycle impact assessment results. This is particularly useful for prospective technology assessments with limited data available.Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing humankind. Mitigating climate change will require a suite of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a new technology aimed at mitigating climate change by capturing and storing carbon dioxide, typically in deep geological reservoirs. CCS has risks characteristic of new technologies, as well as risks unique to this technology and its application. Large-scale CCS decision making is complex, encompassing environmental, social, and economic considerations and requiring the risks to be taken into consideration. CCS projects have been cancelled as a result of inadequate assessments of risks. To date, studies assessing CCS have been limited mostly to environmental, social, and economic fields in isolation from each other, predominantly using life cycle assessments (LCAs), cost benefit analyses (CBAs), or surveys of public perception. LCAs, CBAs, and surveys of public perception all have limitations for assessing difficult multifaceted problems. Incompatibilities across CCS assessment methods have hindered the comparison of the results across these single-discipline studies and limited the possibility of drawing broader conclusions about CCS development. More standardization across assessment methods, study assumptions, functional units, and assessment criteria for CCS could be beneficial to the integration of multiple study results. We propose a set of criteria, which decision analysts could use to develop CCS-project-specific criteria lists in order to comprehensively assess a CCS project's viability. This list was created by determining the frequency of use of each criterion in recent studies, with a focus on their use across disciplines.Life-cycle civil engineering addresses, among other things, the growing number of deteriorating bridges and the associated economic challenges. As a consequence, government bodies, infrastructure and bridge owners as well as industry request objective and rational performance indicators for classification and intervention planning in structural engineering. This paper focuses on a methodology for analysing the damage-based robustness margins of bridge systems under traffic loading. In particular, a series of emergent deterioration-based damage scenarios are compared with the actual or virgin state in terms of loadbearing capacity and serviceability. Non-linear finite element analysis based on a detailed 3D model has a high potential for capturing the available bridge capacity for different degradation phenomena and levels, serving as an input for further reliability-based performance indicators. Notwithstanding, costs associated with fully probabilistic assessment measures are still prohibitive despite technological advances and new methods of reducing the sample size in Monte Carlo computations. In addition, considering the large uncertainties and imprecision involved, it is imperative that probabilistic schemes are preferred over deterministic assessments. The objective of this article is to present strategies for robustness-based performance assessment using non-linear modelling and to discuss relevant reliability-based quantities and performance indicators in relation to structural damage using the example of specific degradation events in an existing prestressed box girder bridge. Furthermore, some strategies are developed on the basis of the new approach for general complex engineering structures.Significant reductions in anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly of fossil carbon dioxide (CO2), are necessary worldwide in order to prevent adverse impacts of global climate change on the socioeconomic sectors, ecological systems, and human health. In this context, this study aims to investigate the economic and environmental aspects of sustainability associated with the integration of algal biodiesel production with a steam electric power plant for microalgae biofixation of CO2 in flue gases and then algal biomass conversion to biodiesel. This integrated energy system is a multipurpose process that provides the CO2 required by the microalgae cultures as well as electricity, biodiesel produced from the algal biomass, and lipid-depleted biomass which is in turn used as an auxiliary fuel in the power plant. A multi-objective optimization strategy based on genetic algorithms is proposed to yield a set of optimal solutions providing the best compromise between the profit and the environmental impact of regenerative Rankine power generation plants coupled with algae-to-biodiesel production facilities. The power plant operates continuously, but CO2 is fed to open pond raceways only during the daytime (12 h a day) for algae growth. The rigorous IAPWS-1F97 formulation is used to calculate the thermodynamic properties of water and steam in the steam power cycle. The environmental impact is measured by the Eco-indicator 99 methodology that follows LCA principles. The optimization problem includes the selection of multiple primary energy sources for the power plant boiler, such as fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), biofuels, and biomass (switchgrass, softwood, and hardwood) in order to achieve significant reductions of CO2 emissions. The optimal trade-off designs are obtained by implementing the e-constraint method. The optimization method has been applied to a case study in Mexico. The Pareto optimal solutions indicate that the current price for biodiesel of $3.91/gal on average would make the integrated energy system under consideration profitable. In addition, the system could achieve significant environmental improvements due to life-cycle GHG reductions that result not only from biofixation of CO2 from combustion flue gases by microalgae and then algal biomass conversion and use as renewable fuels (i.e., biodiesel and lipid-depleted biomass) that substitute for fossil fuels, but also by significantly reducing the fossil fuel requirement compared to stand-alone coal-fired power plants.Originally developed for high-tech applications in the aeronautic and aerospace industry, carbon/epoxy composites have been increasingly used in the automotive, leisure, and sports industries for several years. Nevertheless, the carbon reinforcement is an expensive constituent, and it has been recently shown that it is also the most environmentally impacting in a composite part manufacturing. Recycling these materials (even restricted to the reinforcement recovery) could lead to economic and environmental benefits, while satisfying legislative end-oflife requirements. The solvolysis of the matrix by water under supercritical conditions is an efficient solution to recover the carbon fiber reinforcement with mechanical properties closed to the ones of virgin fibers. This paper aims at demonstrating the environmental feasibility of the recycling of carbon fiber/thermoset matrix composites by solvolysis of the matrix in supercritical water. This demonstration is based on life cycle assessment that this recycling loop.This paper presents a comparative study of greenhouse gas emissions due to different wall compositions in accordance with their lifespans. The assessments carried out take into consideration the construction, maintenance and end of life of the walls, for a specific tropical climate site. The energy spent for heating and cooling during the utilization phase of the building was made equivalent for all calculations, in order to isolate the study on the evaluation of the performance of each technical solution. Initially, the methodology is described by choosing technical solutions to the building envelope, determining the corresponding service life for each solution and finding the corresponding GHG index from an appropriate database. Then, the evolution of this indicator is calculated within a given time for the four different technical solutions: Concrete Block; Solid Clay Brick; Cellular Concrete Block; Multicell Clay Brick. Brazilian national standard materials lifespans were adopted. A building lifespan of 150 years was considered. The results of this analysis suggest and quantify the important impact of the lifespans of both the materials and the building itself on greenhouse gas emission indicators. The numerical results presented point out the need to revisit the current life cycle analysis practices. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents the historical development and background of life cycle assessment (LCA) and nearly zero-energy buildings in Germany. In order to plan and build responsibly for the future, it is necessary to have an overview of the topic at hand. Final energy demand during the operational phase of buildings has fallen steadily. According to European Union guidelines (2010/31/EU), starting in 2021 new buildings must achieve the nearly zero-energy standards. These buildings will have very low operational energy demand. As a consequence of this requirement, the relative impact of construction and disposal increases in terms of the entire life cycle. This is also the case currently for buildings with low operational energy demand. The research - based on a literature analysis and review - shows that LCA has existed since the 1970s as a tool to judge potential environmental impacts. Moreover, the energy building standards in Germany have developed continuously since 1977. This process will continue in the new German Energy Saving Ordinance in 2014, which will be tightened even further in 2016. As LCA is well established and sustainable buildings are becoming increasingly common, the next indispensable step is to consider the life cycle view of nearly zero-energy buildings. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Hazard-resistant materials for homes promise environmental benefits, such as avoided waste and materials for repairs, which can be overlooked by scoping in life-cycle assessment (LCA) approaches. Our motivation for pursuing this research was to see how incorporating these avoided losses in the LCA could impact choices between hazard-resistant and traditional materials. Two choices common in home construction were analyzed using an LCA process that incorporates catastrophe modeling to consider avoided losses made possible with hazard-resistant materials. These findings were compared to those based on a similar LCA that did not consider these avoided losses. The choices considered were standard windows vs. windows with impact-resistant glass and standard windows with no opening protection vs. standard windows with impact-resistant storm panels. For the window comparisons, the standard products were environmentally preferable when avoided losses from storm events were not considered in the LCA. However, when avoided losses were considered, the hazard-resistant products were environmentally preferable. Considering avoided losses in LCAs, as illustrated by the window choices, can change which product appears to be the environmentally preferable option. Further, as home service life increases, the environmental net benefit of the hazard-resistant product increases. Our results show the value of an LCA approach which allows more complete scopings of comparisons between hazard-resistant materials and their traditional counterparts. This approach will help translate the impacts of hazard-resistant products into the more familiar language used to talk about "green" products, enabling more informed decisions by product manufacturers, those who develop building certification systems and codes, researchers, and other building industry stakeholders.In the USA, several studies have been conducted to analyze the energy consumption and atmospheric emissions of Warm-mix Asphalt (WMA) pavements. However, the direct and indirect environmental, economic, and social impacts, termed as Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL), were not addressed sufficiently. Hence, the aim of this study is to develop TBL-oriented sustainability assessment model to evaluate the environmental and socio-economic impacts of pavements constructed with different types of WMA mixtures and compare them to a conventional Hot-mix Asphalt (HMA). The types of WMA technologies investigated in this research include AsphaminA (R) WMA, Evotherm (TM) WMA, and SasobitA (R) WMA. To achieve this goal, supply and use tables published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis were merged with 16 macro-level sustainability metrics. A hybrid TBL-LCA model was built to evaluate the life-cycle sustainability performance of using WMA technologies in construction of asphalt pavements. The impacts on the sustainability were calculated in terms of socio-economic (import, income, gross operating surplus, government tax, work-related injuries, and employment) and environmental (water withdrawal, energy use, carbon footprint, hazardous waste generation, toxic releases into air, and land use). A stochastic compromise programming model was then developed for finding the optimal allocation of different pavement types for the U.S. highways. WMAs did not perform better in terms of environmental impacts compared to HMA. AsphaminA (R) WMA was found to have the highest environmental and socio-economic impacts compared to other pavement types. Material extractions and processing phase had the highest contribution to all environmental impact indicators that shows the importance of cleaner production strategies for pavement materials. Based on stochastic compromised programming results, in a balanced weighting situation, SasobitA (R) WMA had the highest percentage of allocation (61 %); while only socio-economic aspects matter, AsphaminA (R) WMA had the largest share (57 %) among the asphalt pavements. The optimization results also supported the significance of an increased WMA use in the U.S. highways. This research complemented previous LCA studies by evaluating pavements not only from environmental emissions and energy consumption standpoint, but also from socio-economic perspectives. Multi-objective optimization results also provided important insights for decision makers when finding the optimum allocation of pavement alternatives based on different environmental and socio-economic priorities. Consequently, this study aimed to increase awareness of the inherent benefits of economic input-output analysis and multi-criteria decision making through application to emerging sustainable pavement practices.Topsoil erosion due to land use has been characterised as one of the most damaging problems from the perspective of soil-resource depletion, changes in soil fertility and net soil productivity and damage to aquatic ecosystems. On-site environmental damage to topsoil by water erosion has begun to be considered in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) within the context of ecosystem services. However, a framework for modelling soil erosion by water, addressing off-site deposition in surface water systems, to support life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling is still lacking. The objectives of this paper are to conduct an overview of existing methods addressing topsoil erosion issues in LCA and to develop a framework to support LCI modelling of topsoil erosion, transport and deposition in surface water systems, to establish a procedure for assessing the environmental damage from topsoil erosion on water ecosystems. The main features of existing methods addressing topsoil erosion issues in LCA are analysed, particularly with respect to LCI and Life Cycle Impact Assessment methodologies. An overview of nine topsoil erosion models is performed to estimate topsoil erosion by water, soil particle transport through the landscape and its in-stream deposition. The type of erosion evaluated by each of the models, as well as their applicable spatial scale, level of input data requirements and operational complexity issues are considered. The WATEM-SEDEM model is proposed as the most adequate to perform LCI erosion analysis. The definition of land use type, the area of assessment, spatial location and system boundaries are the main elements discussed. Depending on the defined system boundaries and the inherent routing network of the detached soil particles to the water systems, the solving of the multifunctionality of the system assumes particular relevance. Simplifications related to the spatial variability of the input data parameters are recommended. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is recommended to evaluate the effects of the transport capacity coefficient in the LCI results. The published LCA methods focus only on the changes of soil properties due to topsoil erosion by water. This study provides a simplified framework to perform an LCI of topsoil erosion by considering off-site deposition of eroded particles in surface water systems. The widespread use of the proposed framework would require the development of LCI erosion databases. The issues of topsoil erosion impact on aquatic biodiversity, including the development of characterisation factors, are now the subject of on-going research.The aim of this study is apply available methods to assess impacts on biodiversity from the land use caused by plantation grown radiata pine in New Zealand in a life cycle assessment framework. This is done both to quantify the impact as well as compare the results obtained by different methods. Data on location and productivity for wood supply regions in New Zealand was assessed using three methods identified as relevant for the purpose. All data were related to a functional unit of 1 m(3) of timber production. The results show both a significant difference in impact on biodiversity from land use in the different wood supply regions and a significant difference in the results from the three applied methods. Although some of the results obtained from the three methods were correlated, this was not consistent through all the results. The methodological variation emanates from the treatment of the characteristics of the wood supply regions and underlying assumptions, e.g. reference vegetation. Compared to a case study in Norway, the impact on biodiversity from plantation forestry in New Zealand is found to be relatively low following the applied methods and assumptions taken. The study shows a significant variation in how impacts on biodiversity are assessed following different approaches. Research to harmonize methods to quantify impact on biodiversity is recommended, as well as exploring effects of different weighting of crucial aspects of biodiversity, such as rarity, abundance and species richness.Polymers typically have intrinsic thermal conductivity much lower than other materials. Enhancement of this property may be obtained by the addition of conductive fillers. Nanofillers are preferred to traditional ones, due to their low percolation threshold resulting from their high aspect ratio. Beyond these considerations, it is imperative that the development of such new fillers takes place in a safe and sustainable manner. A conventional life cycle assessment (LCA) has been conducted on epoxy-based composites, filled with graphite nanoplatelets (GnP). In particular, this study focuses on energy requirements for the production of such composites, in order to stress environmental hot spots and primary energy of GnP production process (nano-wastes and nanoparticles emissions are not included). A cradle-to-grave approach has been employed for this assessment, in an attributional modeling perspective. The data for the LCA have been gathered from both laboratory data and bibliographic references. A technical LCA software package, SimaPro (SimaPro 7.3), which contains Ecoinvent (2010) life cycle inventory (LCI) database, has been used for the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), studying 13 mid-point indicators. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses have also been performed. One kilogram of GnP filler requires 1,879 MJ of primary energy while the preparation of 1 kg of epoxy composite loaded with 0.058 kg of GnP 303 MJ. Besides energy consumption in the filler preparation, it is shown that the thermoset matrix material has also a non-negligible impact on the life cycle despite the use of GnP: the primary energy required to make epoxy resin is 187 MJ, i.e., 62 % of the total energy to make 1 kg of composite. Raw material extraction and filler and resin preparation phase exhibit the highest environmental impact while the composite production is negligible. Thermosetting resin remains the highest primary energy demand when used as matrix for GnP fillers. The result of the sensitivity analysis carried out on the electricity mix used during the GnP and the composite production processes does not affect the conclusions.This study provides a preliminary comparison of the environmental burdens of three different pathways for production of bio-based purified terephthalic acid (PTA), suitable for the production of 100 % bio-based poly(ethylene terephthalate), PET. These pathways are through (1) muconic acid originating in wheat stover; (2) isobutanol originating in corn; and (3) benzene, toluene, and xylene (BTX) originating in poplar. The goal is to point out what areas of these processes are the largest environmental contributors and hence are the most critical for development of accurate primary data, as well as to indicate which of these pathways looks most promising, from an environmental viewpoint, for production of 100 % bio-based PET. Because much of the needed life cycle information to produce PTA is currently not available, inventory data for each scenario for the production of PTA were estimated based on the chemistry involved. In the impact analysis stage, the inventory data were classified and characterized with a focus on several environmental midpoint categories. SimaPro 7.3.3 software was used as the main computational software and Impact 2002+ v2.1 was used as the life cycle impact assessment methodology in this attributional life cycle assessment. Valuable preliminary environmental impact data including identification of critical steps in the process were obtained. The global warming value of PET synthesized through the muconic acid scenario was 1.6 times larger than that of the scenario of PET synthesized through BTX even after a limited Monte Carlo simulation of 1,000 runs. Among the three scenarios for producing PET, PET synthesized through BTX looked the most promising to pursue for production of bio-based PET with lower environmental burdens. This work also indicated that the first production steps of producing PET through any of the evaluated scenarios (from biomass to the first intermediate) are responsible for the largest environmental burden and should be further characterized since they were the dominant processes in many impact categories.Life cycle assessments (LCAs) of various anchovy (anchoveta) direct human consumption products processed in Peru were carried out, to evaluate their relative environmental performance as alternative products to enhance nutrition of communities with low access to fish products in the country. LCA was carried out for fresh, frozen, canned, salted and cured anchoveta products, both at plant gate and featuring local and national distribution over non-refrigerated, chilled and fully refrigerated distribution chain. The functional unit used was 1 kg of fish in the final product. Results demonstrate that, in environmental terms, more-refined products (cured and canned anchoveta products) represent a much higher burden than less- refined products (fresh, frozen and salted). Although this is a likely result, the magnitude of this difference (4 to 27 times when expressed as an environmental single score) is higher than expected and had not been quantified before for salted and cured products, as far as we know. This difference is mainly due to differences in energy consumption between types of products. Furthermore, cured and salted products feature larger biotic resource use, when calculated based on the whole fish equivalent, due to higher processing losses/discards. The relevance of taking into account the different transportation and storage needs is highlighted. For those products requiring refrigerated transportation and storage, over a national distribution chain, those activities increase the overall environmental impacts of the products by 55 % (fresh chilled) to 67 % (frozen). However, such an increase does not worsen the environmental performance of fresh and frozen products in comparison to the energy-intensive canned and cured products. It is concluded that a more sustainability-oriented analysis, including the social and economic pillars of sustainability, is required towards decision-making involving promotion of either product for addressing nutritional deficiencies in Peru.The aim of this paper is to evaluate assumptions and data used in calculations related to palm oil produced for biodiesel production relative to the European Renewable Energy Directive (EU-RED). The intent of this paper is not to review all assumptions and data, but rather to evaluate whether the methodology is applied in a consistent way and whether current default values address relevant management practices of palm oil production systems. The GHG calculation method provided in Annex V of the EU-RED was used to calculate the GHG-emissions from palm oil production systems. Moreover, the internal nitrogen recycling on the plantation was calculated based on monitoring data in North Sumatra. A calculation methodology is detailed in Annex V of the EU-RED. Some important aspects necessary to calculate the GHG emission savings correctly are insufficiently considered, e.g.: aEuro cent "Nitrogen recycling" within the plantation due to fronds remaining on the plantation is ignored. The associated organic N-input to the plantation and the resulting nitrous oxide emissions is not considered within the calculations, despite crop residues being taken into account for annual crops in the BIOGRACE tool. aEuro cent The calculation of GHG-emissions from residue and waste water treatment is inappropriately implemented despite being a hot-spot for GHG emissions within the life cycle of palm oil and palm oil biodiesel. Additionally, no distinction is made between palm oil and palm kernel oil even though palm kernel oil is rarely used for biodiesel production. aEuro cent The allocation procedure does not address the most relevant oil mill management practices. Palm oil mills produce crude palm oil (CPO) in addition either nuts or palm kernels and nut shells. In the first case, the nuts would be treated as co-products and upstream emissions would be allocated based on the energy content; in the second case the kernels would be treated as co-products while the shelols are considered as waste without upstream emissions. This has a significant impact on the resulst or GHG savings, respectively. aEuro cent It is not specified whether indirect GHG emissions from nitrogen oxide emission from the heat and power unit of palm oil mills should be taken into account. In conclusion, the existing calculation methodology described in Annex V of the EU-RED and default values are insufficient for calculating the real GHG emission savings from palm oil and palm oil biodiesel. The current default values do not reflect relevant management practices. Additionally, they protect poor management practices, such as the disposal of empty fruit bunches (EFB), and lead to an overestimation of GHG savings from palm oil biodiesel. A default value for EFB disposal must be introduced because resulting GHG emissions are substantial. Organic nitrogen from fronds must be taken into account when calculating real GHG savings from palm oil biodiesel. Further, more conservative data for FFB yield and fugitive emissions from wastewater treatment should be introduced in order to foster environmental friendly management options. Moreover, credits for bioenergy production from crop residues should be allowed in order to foster the mobilization of currently unused biomass.Purpose Biopolymers are considered to be environmentally friendlier than petroleum-based polymers, but little is known about their environmental performance against petroleum-based products. This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of two prototype biocomposite formulations produced by extrusion of wood fibre with either polylactic acid (PLA) or a blend of PLA and locally produced thermoplastic starch (TPS). Methods The study followed the LCA methodology outlined in the two standards set out by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO): ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 of 2006. A life cycle inventory (LCI) for the biocomposite formulations was developed, and a contribution analysis was performed to identify the significant inputs. Environmental performances of the two formulations were then compared with each other and polypropylene (PP), a petroleum-based polymer. The US Environmental Protection Agency's impact assessment method, "TRACI: The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts", was combined with Cumulative Energy Demand (a European method) in order to characterize the inventory flows. Environmental impact categories chosen for the analysis were the following: global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, acidification of land and water, eutrophication, smog, human health (respiratory, carcinogenic, and non-carcinogenic) effects and ecotoxicity. Results and discussion We found that PLA is the significant input which contributes mostly to fossil fuel consumption, acidification and respiratory and smog effects. Impacts from PLA transport from the faraway source significantly added more burden to its contributions. TPS causes less environmental burden compared to PLA; the environmental performance of the biocomposite improved when a blend of PLA and TPS is used in formulating the biocomposite. The two formulations performed better than PP in all the environmental impact categories except eutrophication effects, which is important on a regional basis. Conclusions The following conclusions were drawn from this study: PLA is the environmentally significant input among the three raw materials. TPS causes less environmental burden than PLA. Environmental performance of the biocomposite improves in the life cycle energy consumption, fossil energy use, ozone depletion and non-carcinogenic impact categories when a blend of PLA and TPS is used. The biocomposite can outperform PP in all the impact categories except eutrophication effects if manufactured using hydroelectricity. The biopolymer could be a potential alternative to PP as it could cause less of a burden to the environment on a cradle-to-gate basis. Environmental impacts at the complete life cycle levels should be looked into in order to fully understand its potential.Cultures are increasingly recognised for their inherent value, yet, despite political and societal concern, culture is widely unrecognised in assessment techniques. Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), a technique encompassing environmental, social and economic aspects, is growing in popularity. However, cultural values are rarely considered in LCSA. This paper reviews the meaning of culture; current efforts to include culture in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), social LCA (S-LCA) and LCSA; and aspects to address when investigating integration of culture in LCA, S-LCA and LCSA. A literature review was undertaken on definitions of culture, recognition of culture in policy and decision making, and how culture is incorporated into assessment techniques. The potential for integrating culture in LCSA was evaluated in terms of the potential benefits and challenges. Culture is often intangible and inaccessible, which may then lead to a lack of recognition in decision-making processes, or if it is recognised, then it is relegated as an afterthought. Explicitly including consideration of culture within LCSA will allow its representation alongside other sustainability aspects. The challenges of representing culture within LCSA include recognising when 'culture' should be distinguished from 'social'; culture's dynamic nature; the data collection process; and the diversity of cultures between stakeholders and at different scales from community through to nation. The potential benefits of representing culture within LCSA include greater resonance of LCSA results with stakeholders; a more comprehensive decision support tool which appropriately accounts for values; and an assessment technique which may help protect communities and their diversity of cultures. Representing culture in LCSA is not straightforward and, to some extent, may be addressed through social indicators. However, developing LCSA to explicitly address cultural values has potential benefits. Future research should focus on opportunities for the development of (a) a culturally inclusive LCSA process and (b) additional cultural indicators and/or dimensions of existing LCSA indicators that represent cultural values.Ordinary product LCA studies focus on measuring or minimizing environmental impact, but do not address if the product fits in a sustainable consumption pattern. This paper proposes a setup in which the planetary boundaries define the maximum impact, and the minimum requirements for a reasonable consumption level specify a lower impact level. Thus, a "safe operating space" remains. We use an IO table for EU-27 and the consumption pattern of the Bulgarian population extrapolated to the EU level as driving climate impact. The EU's policy targets are used as a planetary boundary for climate change. The 2020 target is shown to be able to accommodate the Bulgarian-style consumption, with room for a much higher GDP. The 2050 target, however, is too narrow, and a slightly smaller consumption pattern is needed to reach the target. Although the approach is highly simplified and neglects many developments, the idea of using IO-tables and minimum consumption levels to backcast directions to be taken is expected to help policymakers. We acknowledge some important limitations of our approach, but accept these in the context of exploring future scenarios and how to get there, instead of predicting the future.Along with climate change-related issues, improved water management is recognized as one of the major challenges to sustainability. However, there are still no commonly accepted methods for measuring sustainability of water uses, resulting in a recent proliferation of water footprint methodologies. The Water Impact Index presented in this paper aims to integrate the issues of volume, scarcity and quality into a single indicator to assess the reduction of available water for the environment induced by freshwater uses for human activities. The Water Impact Index follows life cycle thinking principles. For each unit process, a volumetric water balance is performed; water flows crossing the boundaries between the techno-sphere and environment are multiplied by a water quality index and a water scarcity index. The methodology is illustrated on the current municipal wastewater management system of Milan (Italy). The Water Impact Index is combined with carbon footprint to introduce multi-impact thinking to decision makers. The Water Impact Index is further compared to results obtained using a set of three life cycle impact indicators related to water, from the ReCiPe life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology. Onsite water use is the main contribution to the Water Impact Index for both wastewater management schemes. The release of better quality water is the main driver in favour of the scenario including a wastewater treatment plant, while the energy and chemicals consumed for the treatment increase the indirect water footprint and carbon footprint. Results obtained with the three midpoint indicators depict similar tendencies to the Water Impact Index. This paper presents a simplified single-indicator approach for water footprinting, integrating volume, scarcity and quality issues, representing an initial step toward a better understanding and assessment of the environmental impacts of human activities on water resources. The wastewater treatment plant reduces the Water Impact Index of the wastewater management system. These results are consistent with the profile of the three midpoint indicators related to water from ReCiPe.The objective of this research was to evaluate the appropriateness of using life cycle assessment (LCA) for new applications that incorporate emerging materials and involve site-specific scenarios. Cradle-to-grave impacts of copper-treated lumber used in a raised garden bed are assessed to identify key methodological challenges and recommendations applying LCA for such purposes as well as to improve sustainability within this application. The functional unit is a raised garden bed measuring 6.67 board feet (bf) in volume over a period of 20 years. The garden beds are made from softwood lumber such as southern yellow pine. The two treatment options considered were alkaline copper quaternary and micronized copper quaternary. Ecoinvent 2.2 provided certain life cycle inventory (LCI) data needed for the production of each garden bed, while additional primary and secondary sources were accessed to supplement the LCI. Primary data were not available for all relevant inventory requirements, as was anticipated, but enough secondary data were gathered to conduct a screening-level LCA on these raised garden bed applications. A notable finding was that elimination of organic solvent could result in a more sustainable lumber treatment product. Conclusions are limited by data availability and key methodological challenges facing LCA and emerging materials. Although important data and methodological challenges facing LCA and emerging materials exist, this LCA captured material and process changes that were important drivers of environmental impacts. LCA methods need to be amended to reflect the properties of emerging materials that determine their fate, transport, and impacts to the environment and health. It is not necessary that all recommendations come to light before LCA is applied in the context of emerging materials. Applications of such materials involve many inputs beyond emerging materials that are already properly assessed by LCA. Therefore, LCA should be used in its current state to enhance the decision-making context for the sustainable development of these applications.The 54th LCA forum was held on December 5, 2013 to launch the fourth generation ecological scarcity method, applied to Switzerland. This conference report presents the highlights of the LCA forum. The ecological scarcity method belongs to the family of distance-to-target methods and is based on politically and legally defined environmental goals. The application of the method in industry and politics as well as its benefits, the main elements of the method and new elements such as the assessment of abiotic resources, global land use, noise and nuclear waste are presented. The losses (and not the extraction) of abiotic resources are characterised with the abiotic depletion potential. Land use impacts on flora and fauna biodiversity are quantified per land use type and for 14 different biomes. Transport noise is assessed based on the number of highly annoyed persons. Finally, nuclear waste is characterised using the radio toxicity index, a parameter commonly used in the nuclear industry. In three policy-making areas, LCA in general and the ecological scarcity method in particular are being applied: waste policy, biofuels tax exemption and Green Economy. Practical applications in administration and industry show that the eco-factors are considered useful in decision making because they cover a broad range of environmental impacts aggregated to a single score. The results of first applications and comparisons showed that the switch from third to fourth generation eco-factors hardly affects the results and conclusions although there are some significant changes in the eco-factor of individual pollutants. It was concluded that the fourth generation is a moderate evolution from the third generation published in 2008. It is considered crucial to allow for single-score methods as they allow to assess environmental impacts comprehensively and to identify environmental hot spots. The method presented thus is suited for a "true and fair" reporting on environmental information.Rainwater Harvesting Systems (RHS) are increasingly used in buildings to mitigate water shortage and rising prices of centralised water supply. Notwithstanding the benefits of RHS, they may also promote adverse impacts mainly related to the high consumption of energy. In this context, energy intensity (i.e. unit of energy per unit of water) is a crucial parameter for assessing the environmental feasibility of different RHS. However, only recently has attention been drawn to the connection between water and energy consumption, which has been prompted by the increasing importance of water security, energy efficiency and economic feasibility. This connection, known as the water-energy nexus, has been increasingly acknowledged as a key principal for water planning. The objective of this study is twofold: (i) to review the energy intensity data reported for RHS; and (ii) to outline strategies to enhance the energy performance of RHS in buildings. For the reviewed literature, the median energy intensity of theoretical studies (0.20 kWh/m(3)) was considerably lower than that described in empirical studies (1.40 kWh/m(3)). This implies that theoretical assessments of energy intensity may not sufficiently consider the energy used for pump start-ups and standby mode, as well as the true motor and pump energy efficiency. However, to some extent, this difference may also represent the amount of energy that can be reduced by optimising RHS design and operation. When comparing RHS to conventional town water supply systems, the reviewed empirical studies showed that RHS tend to be three times more energy intensive, although optimised RHS can have more comparable values. Ultimately, it is predominately the local characteristics, such as rainwater demand, building type (single-storey or multi-storey), RHS sub-systems design, potable water plumbing system design, and town water energy intensity, among other factors that will determine whether or not the environmental and economic performances of RHS are acceptable. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a typical heterotrophic city, Macao's economic boom is fueled by external trade, which provides Macao with not only direct energy products in forms of oil, gas and electricity, but also indirect energy embodied in other imports. However, the prevalent studies on Macao's energy issues are confined to direct energy inputs. Based on the most recent trade statistics and embodied energy intensity databases, a comprehensive assessment of energy embodied in Macao's external trade after its sovereignty handover is performed. The results show that Macao's embodied energy consumption is over 2 times as that of direct energy consumption. The net embodied energy transfer via external trade from other regions to Macao increased from 6.31E+7 GJ in 2000 to 8.75E+7 GJ in 2011, while the embodied energy intensity dropped sharply from 1.02E+04 GJ/ million USD to 2.40E+3 GJ/million USD in the same period. Non-energy-products and services rather than energy products play the key role in energy transfer, indicating that indirect energy dominates Macao's embodied energy consumption. The largest energy imbalance happens between Macao and mainland China. Given the nature of Macao's economy and escalating socio-economic development, it is suggested that the invisible but dominant indirect energy consumption by Macao should be addressed by decision makers and included in future development strategies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study monetizes the environmental damage and human health risk externalities associated with the life-cycle production and use of ethanol biofuels from corn-based and cellulosic feedstocks. An integrated economic-environmental assessment framework couples the measured emission impacts from the fuels with individuals' preferences regarding each fuel's externalities. This framework allows the welfare values associated with gasoline and ethanol's externalities to be derived and compared. The results of the study reveal that the production and consumption of corn starch ethanol produce declines in environmental and health outcomes of $1.23 per gallon relative to gasoline for an 85% blend. Depending on the feedstock source, cellulosic based ethanol blends produce modest gains in environmental and health outcomes valued at between $0.04 and $0.06 per gallon relative to gasoline. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study aims to analyse the potential environmental benefits and impacts associated to the anaerobic mono-digestion of two different substrates (pig slurry and maize silage). The Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied in two full-scale Italian biogas plants (Plant A - pig slurry and Plant B - maize silage) in order to calculate the environmental profile of both systems with the aim of identifying the most suitable alternative from an environmental point of view. The study also includes credits due to avoided processes such as electricity production from the grid and mineral fertilisation as well as the conventional management of pig slurry regarding Plant A. The main outcomes show the importance of the feedstock composition on the environmental performance of these systems. While the assessment of Plant A ended up in environmental benefits in all impact categories as a consequence of credits related to replaced processes, its capacity for bioenergy production was limited. On the contrary, the use of maize silage as substrate provided a larger production capacity but it was also associated to negative environmental impacts. In this system, the cultivation of maize showed up as the largest responsible of the environmental impacts, specifically due to diesel fuel consumption in agricultural activities as well as on-site emissions linked to the application of fertilisers. A sensitivity analysis proved that the environmental profile of these bioenergy systems could be improved through surplus heat use as well as technological improvements such as the replacement of the traditional dehumidification unit by a chiller. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The combination of Photovoltaics (PVs) with green roofs is a new tendency in the building sector and provides benefits such as PV output increase because of plant/PV interaction. The present study regards the evaluation of a PV-green roof along with other roof configurations: PV-gravel, green (extensive and intensive), gravel. The evaluation of the systems is based on Life Cycle Analysis by means of Eco-Indicator 99, IMPACT 2002+ and Cumulative Energy Demand methodologies. Stages of the phases of material manufacturing, material transportation, use/maintenance and disposal are considered and the results show that material manufacturing is the most energy-demand phase for all the studied roofs. The roofing systems are separated into PV roofs, non-PV roofs and the comparisons are conducted within each group. Emphasis is given on the PV-green configuration and its comparison with the PV-gravel one, based on different scenarios regarding PV output increase. The results reveal that although the PV-green system has an additional environmental impact in comparison with the PV-gravel one (because of its additional "green" components), this additional impact on a log-term basis can be compensated. Furthermore, the two PV roofs are compared with gasoil and those results also verify the benefits of the PV-green configuration regarding gasoil/cost savings and reduction of CO2 emissions. In general, the study gives emphasis on warm months of Mediterranean climate since PV-green roofs have been proven beneficial under these climatic conditions. Finally, a discussion about critical factors in the field of PV-green systems provides a wider view of the studied issues. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Specific methodologies that consider a more comprehensive/diverse set of parameters must be explored by the LCA community. This study utilises the Group Model-Building (GMB) method to identify, and Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) technique to make explicit, variables which are not typically considered in LCA studies, but may have significant influence upon environmental impacts through cause-effect links and feedback loops in product systems. A literature review on LCAs concerning household washing machines and conventional passenger cars product systems is performed to investigate what are the commonly used functional unit, life cycle stages and system boundaries. Two parallel GMB sessions were organised to elicit relevant variables and relations in the product systems and build in a first version of CLDs. Individual interviews with the participants were undertaken to refine and validate the system models. Final versions of the system models were built. GMB and CLD can serve as a basis for (i) delimitating appropriated system boundaries for LCA and (ii) identifying variables/areas to be included in sensitivity and scenario analysis. Sensitivity and scenario analysis examine the influence that those variables/areas have on the environmental impacts of the product and describe both different contexts and profiles of users. GMB and CLD have the potential to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative variables, for more robust understanding of the causes and mechanisms of environmental impacts and improving conclusions and recommendations in LCA. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Textile wet processing such as dyeing adds value to the apparel but has the potential to cause significant environmental and human health impacts. The objective of this study is to compare the environmental impacts of fabrics made of spun-dyed modal with conventionally dyed modal fabrics (for production in Austria, system "cradle-to-factory gate"). The chosen functional unit is one kilogram of black modal knitted fabric. We assessed energy use, GHG emissions, water use and the impact categories covered by CML 2001 method. We found that the cradle to gate production of spun-dyed modal fabric has 50% lower energy use, 60% lower carbon footprint, and requires only 50% of water and has significantly lower (40-60%) environmental impacts compared to conventionally dyed fabric. Sensitivity analysis with liquor ratios and number of washing cycles does not substantially change the above results. Conventional dyeing in China leads to four-fold higher GHG emissions per kg fabric compared to spin-dyeing in Austria. Finally, we described linkages of sustainable innovation with business value creation. We showed that spin-dyeing can significantly reduce costs for value chain actors, helps reducing the environmental footprint of end products, enhances reputation of brands and retailers, and can contribute to mitigating global problems while catering for the rising demand for clothing fuelled by ever growing world population. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current research measured the indirect water consumption in the milking process in a medium-sized dairy farming in the southwestern region of the state of Bahia, Brazil, to foreground the environmental management of water resources. The environmental impact associated with indirect water consumption throughout milk production (from milking to the moment milk is dispatched) was identified. The water consumption coefficient in the milking sector averaged 3.4 L-1 of milk produced, for 541 L of water consumed and a daily milk production close to 160 L It should be underscored that professionals who deal with milking and cleaning activities have little or no instruction about the adequate use of water. Cleaner Production (CP) initiatives have been identified. It was proposed to the milking personnel that, if the initiatives are applied properly, they may contribute towards the reduction of water consumption and wastes without affecting either the quality of the final production. These initiatives comprised small and big actions such as staff training and replacement of cleaning equipment and fertilizing irrigation, which may immediately contribute towards the prevention or reduction of wastewater during milking. The qualitative and quantitative interpretation of data would contribute towards CP initiatives that might be implemented at the milking sector in the short, medium and long terms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Micropollutants in freshwater, e.g., pharmaceuticals such as contraceptives, are a source of increased concern for human health and wildlife. Even after excretion, some of these compounds are pharmaceutically active in aquatic environment and they are found to cause endocrine disruption in both human and wildlife populations. In this study we analyzed a membrane system, coated with enzymes, which removes endocrine disrupting chemicals or micropollutants from surface water used for drinking. In order to help a membrane manufacturer in product development, we conducted a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment. Water purification with two membrane systems, based on membrane coating covalent binding versus adsorption, were analyzed and compared with granulated activated carbon made from coal and wood. It was found that the membrane with covalent binding can have much lower environmental impacts than activated carbon made from coal. A sensitivity analysis showed that operational electricity use, the source of electricity and membrane coating frequency influence the results significantly. Scenario analysis indicates that a membrane system with covalent binding which uses operational electricity lower than 0.2 kWh per m(3) of filtered water and with monthly enzyme coating frequency can perform better than conventional activated carbon systems irrespective of the electricity source. These findings can be used to guide the optimization of the membrane parameters. This study provided an understanding of the membrane modification for micropollutant removal and its impacts on environment. Finally, we describe how environmental sustainability can be integrated into business decisions, such as process and material selection and design optimization, with the help of life cycle assessment. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Starting from the results of a Life Cycle Assessment of small solar assisted heat driven chillers, the application of such methodology has been extended to systems with a conventional compression chiller assisted by a photovoltaic plant (PV). This study aims to provide a comprehensive compared investigation of these two families of solar assisted cooling systems (with solar thermal or PV). Results indicate that, in many cases, the systems with the PV grid connected plant performed best. In addition, two more configurations were investigated to further define the PV assisted systems, which minimise their interaction with the grid through the use of electricity storages. These systems performed worse than the PV grid connected systems and the solar thermal assisted systems in nearly all the analysed cases. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Project life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is a reasonable approach to compare pavement design alternatives, but not taking into consideration of pavement performance in the most LCCA approaches may lead not to obtain the most desirable alternative for road users and associated highway agencies. This article introduces a multicriteria decision making method for pavement project evaluation using LCCA that (1)utilizes fuzzy set theory to model and handle uncertainties; (2)takes into account the extra user costs attributable to inadequate pavement condition; and (3)as a criterion, considers life-cycle pavement performance that describes overall pavement serviceability condition. Using a hypothetical project, the paper clarifies the performance of the proposed method for long-term evaluating alternative pavement design strategies. The alternatives are compared with respect to each criterion of the method, and also using sensitivity analysis, it is determined that changes in the decision maker's risk and confidence attitudes can affect the ranking of the alternatives. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.The cradle to grave carbon footprint (CF) and energy footprint (EF) analysis of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) produced in the Province of Perugia (Umbria, Italy) is assessed. In this study, olive orchard cultivation, EVOO extraction, bottling, packaging, storage at 18 C and distribution in the main importing countries were studied from a life cycle assessment perspective, with the main objective of identifying the processes with the largest environmental impacts. The selected functional unit was 1 L of EVOO, packaged for distribution. Inventory data was gathered mainly through both direct communication using questionnaires and direct measurements. To determine the CF the ISO/TS 14067:2013 was followed while the EF was evaluated according to ISO standards 14040 and 14044. Results showed that the most impacting process is the distribution, mainly due to the choice of employing air transport. The main other hot spots identified were the olive orchard fertilization, EVOO freezing during its storage at the olive mill factory and the manufacture of glass bottles. Suggested improvement opportunities included shifts in the EVOO transportation policy, the introduction of lighter glass bottles in the bottling process, the use of cooling agent with lower global warming potential and the employment of biodiesel in the farming machineries. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The invasive brown seaweed Sargassum muticum (Yendo) exhibits a significant content of phenolic compounds, polysaccharides and fucoxanthin, with potential biological activities. In this study, four valorization strategies for S. muticum biomass were compared under a life cycle perspective. Depending on the alternative, three products were obtained: sodium alginate, antioxidant extract and fucoxanthin-containing extract. Regardless of the approach, the combined extraction of alginate and antioxidant from wet algae constituted the most efficient scenario. Among the stages, supercritical extraction of fucoxanthin and non-isothermal autohydrolysis were identified as the major environmental burdens due to electricity consumption. Although changes in product distribution fairly affected the environmental impacts of the scenarios, the single extraction of antioxidant fraction and the integral valorization to obtain fucoxanthin, alginate and antioxidant were only competitive when considering a functional unit based on the value of the products through an economic allocation approach instead of the amount of valorized algae. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two processes of utilizing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) waste, an incineration process and a vacuum pyrolysis process, for energy conversion were compared to determine their efficiency and environmental performance. We carried out a life cycle assessment with each of the two processes to evaluate their environmental impact and defined the goals and limits of our remit. As well, we established an inventory of PVC waste from incineration and vacuum pyrolysis based on process analysis, data collection and calculations. The results show that electrical power output per unit mass of PVC waste in the incineration process was twice as high as that of the vacuum pyrolysis process. Incineration had a larger total environmental impact potential than vacuum pyrolysis. The total environmental impact potential of PVC waste from incineration was three times higher than that from vacuum pyrolysis. Incineration of PVC disposed 300 ng.100 kg(-1) of dioxins and vacuum pyrolysis 98.19 ng.100 kg(-1) of dioxins. As well, we analyzed the data for their uncertainty with results quantified in terms of three uncertainties: basic uncertainty, additional uncertainty, and computational uncertainty. The coefficients of variation of the data were less than 25% and the quality of the inventory data was acceptable with low uncertainty. Both PVC waste disposal processes were of similar quality and their results comparable. The results of our life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) showed considerable reliability of our methodology. Overall, the vacuum pyrolysis process has a number advantages and greater potential for development of PVC disposal than the incineration process.The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) specifies that biomass feedstocks must be sustainable and are not directly implicated with conversion of areas of high carbon stock and biodiversity. There are concerns that first generation biofuels from food-based crops will lead to negative indirect impacts on food prices and place pressure on agricultural land. The RED incentivises the use of non-food and land biomass resources by awarding them with financial credits and assigning them a zero greenhouse gas (GHG) 'cost'. This paper questions whether there are any GHG implications with straw removal from soil that should be accounted for in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of straw-based bioethanol. Emission savings of 21-58% are calculated for straw-bioethanol compared to conventional fossil fuels. The direct GHG implications of straw removal from soil are highly dependent on assumptions on the changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) experienced during straw removal, as well as replacing nutrients removed in straw. The results show that these impacts have the potential to reduce the GHG emission savings to -133%. If straw was alternatively incorporated into the soil, this could sequester between 0.58 and 2.24 tonnes CO2 eq./ha, whereas substitution of fossil fuels would avoid 0.46 and 1.16 tonnes CO2 eq./ha, although the full accountable benefit of straw removal is questionable as it is easily reversible. Understanding the full implications of straw removal on GHG emissions relies on further research on residue removal limitations, the impact that losses of SOC has on soil quality, as well as determining whether straw will be acquired from increased removal from soil or displacement from existing markets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioenergy from crop residues is one of the prevailing sustainable energy sources owing to the abundant reserves worldwide. Amongst a wide variety of energy conversion technologies, crop residue gasification has been regarded as promising owing to its higher energy efficiency than that of direct combustion. However, prior to large-scale application of crop residue gasification, the lifetime environmental performance should be investigated to shed light on sustainable strategies. As traditional static life cycle assessment (LCA) does not include temporal information for dynamic processes, we proposed a dynamic life cycle assessment approach, which improves the static LCA approach by considering time-varying factors, e.g., greenhouse gas characterization factors and energy intensity. As the gasification project can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) discharge compared with traditional direct fuel combustion, trade-offs between the benefits of global warming mitigation and the impact on global warming of crop residue gasification should be considered. Therefore, indicators of net global warming mitigation benefit and global warming impact mitigation period are put forward to justify the feasibility of the crop residue gasification project. The proposed dynamic LCA and indicators were then applied to estimate the life cycle global warming impact of a crop residue gasification system in China. Results show that the crop residue gasification project has high net global warming mitigation benefit and a short global warming impact mitigation period, indicating its prominent potential in alleviating global warming impact. During the lifetime of the project, the largest emitters of the crop residue gasification project are the operation and construction stages, attributed mainly to the consumption of crop residue, electricity and steel. In addition, the comparison of the results obtained with both traditional and dynamic LCA approaches indicates that there is an exaggeration of the global warming impact reduction potential of crop residue gasification projects. This dynamic LCA can also make the decision maker acknowledge the real-time GHG performance during the lifetime of a production process, and thus make timely decisions to minimize the lifetime GHG emissions. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Regardless of current market conditions and availability of conventional petroleum sources, alternatives are needed to circumvent future economic and environmental impacts from continued exploration and harvesting of conventional hydrocarbons. Diatoms and green algae (microalgae) are eukaryotic photoautotrophs that can utilize inorganic carbon (e.g., CO2) as a carbon source and sunlight as an energy source, and many microalgae can store carbon and energy in the form of neutral lipids. In addition to accumulating useful precursors for biofuels and chemical feed stocks, the use of autotrophic microorganisms can further contribute to reduced CO2 emissions through utilization of atmospheric CO2. Because of the inherent connection between carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in biological systems, macronutrient deprivation has been proven to significantly enhance lipid accumulation in different diatom and algae species. However, much work is needed to understand the link between carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in controlling resource allocation at different levels of biological resolution (cellular versus ecological). An improved understanding of the relationship between the effects of N, P, and micronutrient availability on carbon resource allocation (cell growth versus lipid storage) in microalgae is needed in conjunction with life cycle analysis. This mini-review will briefly discuss the current literature on the use of nutrient deprivation and other conditions to control and optimize microalgal growth in the context of cell and lipid accumulation for scale-up processes.Quantitative cradle-to-gate environmental impacts for ethylene production from naphtha (petroleum crude), ethane (natural gas) and ethanol (corn-based) are predicted using GaBi (R) software. A comparison reveals that the majority of the predicted environmental impacts for these feedstocks fall within the same order of magnitude. Soil and water pollution associated with corn-based ethylene are however much higher. The main causative factor for greenhouse gas emissions, acidification and air pollution is the burning of fossil-based fuel for agricultural operations, production of fertilizers and pesticides needed for cultivation (in the case of ethanol), ocean-based transportation (for naphtha) and the chemical processing steps (for all feedstocks). An assessment of the environmental impacts of different energy sources (coal, natural gas and fuel oil) reveals almost similar carbon footprints for all the fossil fuels used to produce a given quantity of energy. For most of the environmental impact categories, the GaBi (R) software reliably predicts the qualitative trends. The predicted emissions agree well with the actual emissions data reported by a coal-based power plant (Lawrence Energy Center, Lawrence, KS) and a natural gas-based power plant (Astoria Generating Station, Queens, NY) to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The analysis shows that for ethylene production, fuel burning at the power plant to produce energy is by far the dominant source (78-93 % depending on the fuel source) of adverse environmental impacts.This paper considers the life cycle environmental sustainability of ethanol produced in integrated biorefineries together with chemicals and energy. Four types of second-generation feedstocks are considered: wheat straw, forest residue, poplar, and miscanthus. Seven out of 11 environmental impacts from ethanol are negative, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, when the system is credited for the co-products, indicating environmental savings. Ethanol from poplar is the best and straw the worst option for most impacts. Land use change from forest to miscanthus increases the GHG emissions several-fold. For poplar, the effect is opposite: converting grassland to forest reduces the emissions by three-fold. Compared to fossil and first-generation ethanol, ethanol from integrated biorefineries is more sustainable for most impacts, with the exception of wheat straw. Pure ethanol saves up to 87% of GHG emissions compared to petrol per MJ of fuel. However, for the current 5% ethanol-petrol blends, the savings are much smaller (<3%). Therefore, unless much higher blends become widespread, the contribution of ethanol from integrated biorefineries to the reduction of GHG emissions will be insignificant. Yet, higher ethanol blends would lead to an increase in some impacts, notably terrestrial and freshwater toxicity as well as eutrophication for some feedstocks.This paper describes the methodology used for the life cycle cost (LCC) and life cycle energy (LCE) analyses of the case study house in Quebec, Canada. The TRNSYS energy analysis program is coupled with GenOpt, a general purpose optimization program, for the purpose of this study. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used for the search for the optimum solution. Results show that the optimum levels of insulation should be higher than the reference values, even for the case of LCC analysis. The results are for the most part still valid if electricity costs are assumed to increase below the inflation rate for the duration of the study period.Plastics are inexpensive, easy to mold, and lightweight. These and many other advantages make them very promising candidates for commercial applications. In many areas, they have substantially suppressed traditional materials. However, the problem of recycling still is a major challenge. There are both technological and economic issues that restrain the progress in this field. Herein, a state-of-art overview of recycling is provided together with an outlook for the future by using popular polymers such as polyolefins, poly(vinyl chloride), polyurethane, and poly(ethylene terephthalate) as examples. Different types of recycling, primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and biological recycling, are discussed together with related issues, such as compatibilization and cross-linking. There are various projects in the European Union on research and application of these recycling approaches; selected examples are provided in this article. Their progress is mirrored by granted patents, most of which have a very limited scope and narrowly cover certain technologies. Global introduction of waste utilization techniques to the polymer market is currently not fully developed, but has an enormous potential.We propose an integration of drying with gasification and combined cycle-based power generation for microalgae. This system is based on enhanced process integration, which includes two core technologies: exergy recovery and process integration. Exergy recovery is achieved by exergy elevation and efficient heat coupling, according to each type of heat. Process integration is implemented to minimize the exergy destruction, and hence the remaining energy from one process can be used effectively in other processes. This improves the total energy efficiency. The microalga Chlorella sp. is selected for study because of its high CO2 absorption and high growth rate. The total energy required in the proposed process is calculated based on the target moisture content. It is observed that drying to a lower target moisture content generally consumes less total energy and has a higher coefficient of drying performance than drying to a higher moisture content. A coefficient of drying performance of about 18.5 can be achieved through the proposed process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.From the sustainable perspective, the optimum thickness calculations of the buildings envelope insulation materials published in scientific journals suffer a number of notable shortcomings. The most relevant are the short amortization time periods and the prevalence of economic criterion. The work presented shows that an increase from 20 to 50 years in the amortization time period involves, in some cases, to double the value of the optimum thickness. Moreover, the thicknesses calculated applying energetic or environmental criteria for the optimization give, in some cases, results 10 times higher than the ones obtained using the economic argument. The type of insulation materials (especially their different characteristics at the manufacturing stage) and the calculation conditions (e.g. Degree-Days zone) also affect optimum thicknesses determination. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A new solid tungsten divertor for the fusion experiment axial symmetric divertor experiment upgrade is under construction at present. For special purposes of the plasma diagnostic in the divertor region, special formed solid tungsten divertor tiles are required. A so-called Langmuir probe is used to determine the ion temperature, ion density, and ion potential of the plasma. With the aim to place the probe on the right position, some of the divertor tiles (nine at the device circumference) have been adequately adapted. This paper discusses the main results of the numerical analysis of the thermomechanical behavior under heat load. Initially, the elastic-plastic calculation was applied to analyze thermal stress and the observed elastic and plastic deformation during the heat loading. The influence of a possible material degradation due to thermal cracking was studied. Additionally, the knowledge gained by the numerical analysis was used for the shape optimization of the divertor tile. The first results from the numerical life cycle analysis of the tungsten tiles are reported. Finally, based on the knowledge gained by the numerical analysis, in the light of problem complexity, it is recommended to perform some additional thermal tests. These tests should be performed with the aim to increase the reliability of the special-shaped tungsten tile during operation.The growing concern about the development of sustainable production systems leads organizations to seek the support of management tools for decision-making. Considering the whole life cycle of the product, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has an important role in this scenario. The objective of this paper is to present, through the theoretical discussion, the role of LCA in strategic planning of the organization. It showed the enormous potential for decision making on the environmental aspect, but also the critical factor in the development shares in the competitive context. The use of LCA can reduce the environmental impacts of the system under study (primary purpose) and guide the range of advantages in the fields of marketing, legislation and environmental labeling, competitive strategies, efficiency resources use of and others.Plevin et al. (2014) reviewed relevant life cycle assessment (LCA) studies for biofuels and argued that the use of attributional LCA (ALCA) for estimating the benefits of biofuel policy is misleading. While we agree with the authors on many points, we found that some of the arguments by the authors were not presented fairly and that a number of specific points warrant additional comment. The main objective of this commentary is to examine the authors' comparative statements between consequential LCA (CLCA) and ALCA. We examined the notion that the LCA world is divided into CLCA and ALCA. In addition, we evaluated the authors' notion of "wrong" models. We found that the authors were comparing an idealized, hypothetical CLCA with average (or less than average), real-life ALCAs. Therefore, we found that the comparison alone cannot serve as the basis for endorsing real-life CLCAs for biofuel policy. We also showed that there are many LCA studies that do not belong to either of the two approaches distinguished by the authors. Furthermore, we found that the authors' notion of "wrong" models misses the essence of modeling and reveals the authors' unwarranted confidence in certain modeling approaches. Dividing the LCA world into CLCAs and ALCAs overlooks the studies in between and hampers a constructive dialog about the creative use of modeling frameworks. Unreasonable confidence in certain modeling approaches based on their "conceptual" superiority does not help support "robust decision making" that should ultimately land itself on the ground.Recent life cycle assessment studies for vegetable products have identified the agricultural stage as one of the most important contributors to the environmental impacts for these products, while vegetable production systems are characterized by specific but also widely diverse production conditions. In this context, a review aiming at comparing the potential impacts of vegetable products and analyzing the relevance of the methods and data used for the inventory of the farm stage appeared necessary. Ten papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or ISO-compliant reports were selected. First, a presentation of the selected papers was done to compare the goal and scope and the life cycle inventory data to the related sections in the ILCD Handbook. Second, a quantitative review of input flows and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results (global warming, eutrophication, and acidification) was based on a cropping system typology and on a classification per product group. Third, an in-depth analysis of the methods used to estimate field emissions of reactive nitrogen was proposed. The heated greenhouse system types showed the greatest global warming potential. The giant bean group showed the greatest acidification and eutrophication potentials per kilogram of product, while the tomato group showed the greatest acidification and eutrophication potentials per unit of area. Main sources of variations for impacts across systems were yields and inputs variations and system expansion rules. Overall, the ability to compare the environmental impact for these diverse vegetable products from cradle-to-harvest was hampered by (1) weaknesses regarding transparency of goal and scope, (2) a lack of representativeness and completeness of data used for the field stage, and (3) heterogeneous and inadequate methods for estimating field emissions. In particular, methods to estimate reactive nitrogen emissions were applied beyond their validity domain. This first attempt at comparing the potential impacts of vegetable products pinpointed several gaps in terms of data and methods to reach representative LCIA results for the field production stage. To better account for the specificities of vegetable cropping systems and improve the overall quality of their LCA studies, our key recommendations were (1) to include systematically phosphorus, water, and pesticide fluxes and characterize associated impacts, such as eutrophication, toxicity, and water deprivation; (2) to better address space and time representativeness for field stage inventory data through better sampling procedures and reporting transparency; and (3) to use best available methods and when possible more mechanistic tools for estimating Nr emissions.Concentrating solar power (CSP) plants based on parabolic troughs utilise auxiliary fuels (usually natural gas) to facilitate start-up operations, avoid freezing of HTF and increase power output. This practice has a significant effect on the environmental performance of the technology. The aim of this paper is to quantify the sustainability of CSP and to analyse how this is affected by hybridisation with different natural gas (NG) inputs. A complete life cycle (LC) inventory was gathered for a commercial wet-cooled 50 MWe CSP plant based on parabolic troughs. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the environmental performance of the plant operating with different NG inputs (between 0 and 35 % of gross electricity generation). ReCiPe Europe (H) was used as LCA methodology. CML 2 baseline 2000 World and ReCiPe Europe E were used for comparative purposes. Cumulative energy demands (CED) and energy payback times (EPT) were also determined for each scenario. Operation of CSP using solar energy only produced the following environmental profile: climate change 26.6 kg CO2 eq/KWh, human toxicity 13.1 kg 1,4-DB eq/KWh, marine ecotoxicity 276 g 1,4-DB eq/KWh, natural land transformation 0.005 m(2)/KWh, eutrophication 10.1 g P eq/KWh and acidification 166 g SO2 eq/KWh. Most of these impacts are associated with extraction of raw materials and manufacturing of plant components. The utilisation of NG transformed the environmental profile of the technology, placing increasing weight on impacts related to its operation and maintenance. Significantly higher impacts were observed on categories like climate change (311 kg CO2 eq/MWh when using 35 % NG), natural land transformation, terrestrial acidification and fossil depletion. Despite its fossil nature, the use of NG had a beneficial effect on other impact categories (human and marine toxicity, freshwater eutrophication and natural land transformation) due to the higher electricity output achieved. The overall environmental performance of CSP significantly deteriorated with the use of NG (single score 3.52 pt in solar-only operation compared to 36.1 pt when using 35 % NG). Other sustainability parameters like EPT and CED also increased substantially as a result of higher NG inputs. Quasilinear second-degree polynomial relationships were calculated between various environmental performance parameters and NG contributions. Energy input from auxiliary NG determines the environmental profile of the CSP plant. Aggregated analysis shows a deleterious effect on the overall environmental performance of the technology as a result of NG utilisation. This is due primarily to higher impacts on environmental categories like climate change, natural land transformation, fossil fuel depletion and terrestrial acidification. NG may be used in a more sustainable and cost-effective manner in combined cycle power plants, which achieve higher energy conversion efficiencies.Increasing concern for sustainability compels citizens and enterprises to reduce waste and encourage recycling, reuse and remanufacturing of end-of-life products. Since packaging is one of the most relevant waste sources, attention to packaging design and management is warranted, especially in sectors where packaging is integral to handling and transportation, i.e. the fresh food supply chain. The analysis of a product's life cycle highlights potential sources of waste throughout the food supply chain (FSC). This paper proposes an original conceptual framework for the integrated design of a food packaging and distribution network. The framework's generality supports application to different food manufacturing and distribution supply chains. The paper considers fresh fruit and vegetable flow throughout a food catering chain, from vendors to final customers. The paper compares a multi-use system to traditional single-use packaging (e.g. wooden boxes, disposable plastic crates and cardboard boxes) to quantify the economic returns and environmental impacts of the reusable plastic container (RPC). Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to evaluate the carbon footprint (CF) associated with the life cycle of packages in this distribution network. Sensitivity analysis explores how drivers and parameters (i.e. RPC lifespan, washing rate, waste disposal treatment, network geography) alter the environmental and economic impacts. The paper concludes with implications of the results and suggestions for further investigation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The primary advantage offered by the Eco-indicator 99 (EI99) methodology is its ability to consider life cycle assessment (LCA) uncertainties. EI99 considers these uncertainties through a perspective-specified set that includes egalitarian/egalitarian (e/e), hierarchist/hierarchist (h/h), and individualist/individualist (i/i) methodological options, along with a perspective-averaged set that includes individualist/average (i/a), egalitarian/average (e/a), and hierarchist/average (h/a) methodological options. These two sets of options are based on a cultural theory framework that was initially intended for different areas of interest. The objective of this study was to determine the robustness of EI99 for the environmental evaluation of building technologies under LCA uncertainties. A split-unit design was used to determine the robustness of EI99 for evaluating four reinforced concrete technologies and four masonry structure technologies. A significant disordinal interaction was observed between the two methodological sets evaluated by EI99. The (h/h) and (h/a) options were considered to fall within the same area of interest. Different rankings for the building technologies were obtained using the different EI99 methodological options. A full set of EI99 methodological options should be used by building designers and practitioners to determine the impact of a preferred decision on the initial construction cost, the life-cycle cost, the embodied energy, occupant health, and resource and/or habitat conservation. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.Recent years have witnessed significant worldwide growth in research into the production of algal biomass for fuel, food and food supplements, nutrient recovery from wastewater and feedstocks for chemical and pharmaceutical industries. While there appear to be considerable future benefits, especially in terms of sustainable low carbon energy biofuels, emerging evidence suggests that large-scale algal production could impose multiple negative environmental impacts. Pressing questions therefore concern the significance of these impacts and the adequacy of attendant governance arrangements in ensuring environmental protection. To examine these questions, a qualitative impact assessment methodology is utilised to review, identify and compare the significance of potential impacts from several different production scenarios. Our findings show that significance varies not only between open pond and photo bioreactor (PBR) processes but also between land-based, coastal and marine production sites. We then examine how well these impacts are currently regulated in one specific political context, namely the European Union (EU). Analysis of EU environmental governance reveals evidence of significant policy mismatches and gaps. Recommendations for the future multi-level governance of algal biofuel technologies in the EU and globally are given, along with suggestions for further scientific and policy research as part of a wider investigative agenda. (c) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The UK consumes almost 5% of world's wine production, drinking 12.9 million hectolitres annually or 211 per capita per year. Australian wines are most popular with the UK consumer, accounting for around 17% of total take-home purchases. This paper focuses on Australian red wine and presents the life cycle environmental impacts of its consumption in the UK. The results indicate that a 0.75 1 bottle of wine requires, for example, 21 MJ of primary energy, 363 1 of water and generates 1.25 kg of CO2 eq. For the annual consumption of Australian red wine, this translates to around 3.5 PJ of energy, 600 million hectolitres of water and 210,000 t CO2 eq. Viticulture and wine distribution are the main hot spots contributing over 70% to the environmental impacts considered. Shipping in bulk rather than bottled wine would reduce the global warming potential (GWP) by 13%, equivalent to 27,000 t CO2 eq. annually. For every 10% increase in recycled glass content in bottles, the GWP would be reduced by 2% or 3600 t CO2 eq./yr; the savings in other environmental impacts are smaller (0.7-1.5%). A 10% decrease in bottle weight would reduce the impacts by 3-7%; for the GWP, the saving would be 4% or 7000 t CO2 eq./yr. If only 10% of the wine was packaged in cartons instead of glass bottles, the GWP savings would be 5% or 10,600 t CO2 eq./yr; the other impacts would also be reduced by 2-7%. These measures could together save at least 48,000 t CO2 eq./yr, almost a quarter of the current emissions from the UK consumption of Australian red wine. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Chemical pulp is one of the most important raw materials used in the paper industry. This material is known to make a significant contribution to the water footprint and cost of final paper products; therefore, chemical pulp is crucial in determining the competitiveness of final products'. Several studies have focused on these aspects, but there have been no previous reports on the integrated application of raw material water footprint accounting and costs in the definition of the optimal supply mix of chemical pulps from different countries. The current models that have been applied specifically to the paper industry are based mainly on general sectorial data; therefore, they cannot reflect the importance of the efficiency of the different processes in the supply chain of paper production. The objective of this study was to develop a multi-objective optimization model to identify the supply mix that minimizes the water footprint accounting results and costs of chemical pulp, thereby facilitating the assessment of the water footprint by accounting for different chemical pulps purchased from various suppliers, with a focus on the efficiency of the production process. Water footprint accounting was adapted to better represent the efficiency of pulp and paper production. A multi-objective model for supply mix optimization was also developed using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Water footprint accounting confirmed the importance of the production efficiency of chemical pulp, which affected the final results, with an average factor of 4.7 m(3) wood/t paper. The MCDA that we developed was used to determine the optimal mix of chemical pulps from different countries, which demonstrated how the optimal mix changed when considering only one of the two variables. Herein, we also discuss the latest developments in impact assessments related to water based on a life cycle assessment, which should be used as a framework for the future development of the model that is presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many opportunities exist to reduce enteric methane (CH4) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of product from ruminant livestock. Research over the past century in genetics, animal health, microbiology, nutrition, and physiology has led to improvements in dairy production where intensively managed farms have GHG emissions as low as 1 kg of CO2, equivalents (CO(2)e)/kg of energy-corrected milk (ECM), compared with >7 kg of CO(2)e/kg of ECM in extensive systems. The objectives of this review are to evaluate options that have been demonstrated to mitigate enteric CH4 emissions per unit of ECM (CH4/ECM) from dairy cattle on a quantitative basis and in a sustained manner and to integrate approaches in genetics, feeding and nutrition, physiology, and health to emphasize why herd productivity, not individual animal productivity, is important to environmental sustainability. A nutrition model based on carbohydrate digestion was used to evaluate the effect of feeding and nutrition strategies on CH4/ECM, and a meta-analysis was conducted to quantify the effects of lipid supplementation on CH4/ECM. A second model combining herd structure dynamics and production level was used to estimate the effect of genetic and management strategies that increase milk yield and reduce culling on CH4/ECM. Some of these approaches discussed require further research, but many could be implemented now. Past efforts in CH4 mitigation have largely focused on identifying and evaluating CH4 mitigation approaches based on nutrition, feeding, and modifications of rumen function. Nutrition and feeding approaches may be able to reduce CH4/ECM by 2.5 to 15%, whereas rumen modifiers have had very little success in terms of sustained CH4 reductions without compromising milk production. More significant reductions of 15 to 30% CH4/ECM can be achieved by combinations of genetic and management approaches, including improvements in heat abatement, disease and fertility management, performance-enhancing technologies, and facility design to increase feed efficiency and life-time productivity of individual animals and herds. Many of the approaches discussed are only partially additive, and all approaches to reducing enteric CH4 emissions should consider the economic impacts on farm profitability and the relationships between enteric CH4 and other GHG.The aim of this article is to help confront uncertainty in life cycle assessments (LCAs) used for decision support. LCAs offer a quantitative approach to assess environmental effects of products, technologies, and services and are conducted by an LCA practitioner or analyst (AN) to support the decision maker (DM) in making the best possible choice for the environment. At present, some DMs do not trust the LCA to be a reliable decision-support tool-often because DMs consider the uncertainty of an LCA to be too large. The standard evaluation of uncertainty in LCAs is an ex-post approach that can be described as a variance simulation based on individual data points used in an LCA. This article develops and proposes a taxonomy for LCAs based on extensive research in the LCA, management, and economic literature. This taxonomy can be used ex ante to support planning and communication between an AN and DM regarding which type of LCA study to employ for the decision context at hand. This taxonomy enables the derivation of an LCA classification matrix to clearly identify and communicate the type of a given LCA. By relating the LCA classification matrix to statistical principles, we can also rank the different types of LCA on an expected inherent uncertainty scale that can be used to confront and address potential uncertainty. However, this article does not attempt to offer a quantitative approach for assessing uncertainty in LCAs used for decision support.In recent years, the concepts of resilience and sustainability have become very topical and popular. The concept of sustainability rose to prominence in the late 1980s and became a central issue in world politics, when the construction industry began to generate the first sustainable building assessment systems with more or less equally weighted environmental, economic, and social aspects for office buildings over their life cycles. On the other hand, resilience is usually connected to the occurrence of extreme events during the life cycle of structures and infrastructures. In the last decade, it has been used to minimize specifically direct and indirect losses from hazards through enhanced resistance and robustness to extreme events, as well as more effective recovery strategies. A detailed comparison of the studies dealing with either infrastructure sustainability or resilience presented in this paper leads to the conclusion that they have a vast number of similarities and common characteristics. For instance, they both combine structural analyses with social and economic aspects; they both rely on techniques for the life-cycle analysis and decision making; they both are in an early stage, where the academic world is trying to find the best way to promote the application of the scientific results among professional engineers and the industry. Indeed, both approaches try to optimize a system, such as a civil infrastructure system, with respect to structural design, utilized material, maintenance plans, management strategies, and impacts on the society. However, for the most part, researchers and practitioners focusing on either resilience or sustainability operate without a mutual consideration of the findings, which leads to a severe inefficiency. Therefore, this paper suggests that resilience and sustainability are complementary and should be used in an integrated perspective. In particular, the proposed approach is rooted in the well-established framework of risk assessment. The impact of the infrastructure and its service states on the society in normal operational conditions (assessed by sustainability analysis) and after exceptional events (assessed by resilience analysis) should be weighted by the associated probabilities of occurrence and combined in a global impact assessment. The proposed perspective and assessment technique is applicable to various types of civil infrastructure systems, but the case of transportation networks and bridge systems is emphasized herein. A numerical application dealing with the comparative analysis of two possible bridge layouts is presented to exemplify the approach. The results show that both resilience and sustainability analyses assess a relevant amount of the impact of the bridge on the community where it is built, so neither one can be neglected. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.Due to regulatory pressures from government and non-government bodies and public awareness of the need to protect the environment, incorporating sustainability concerns in product design has become a key strategic consideration in new product development. However, selecting an appropriate sustainable design solution is a challenging task. In addition to the fact that such a decision involves conflicting objectives, there is also the issue that environmental impact considerations can occur at all stages of a product's life cycle. Modelling and assessing new product development and operations management from a life cycle assessment (LCA) perspective is becoming increasingly popular and highly important. However, on its own it is somewhat limited. This paper presents a dynamic approach that integrates LCA, fuzzy logic and analytical network process (ANP) to support the selection of environmental sustainable product designs. A numerical example is provided as an operational guideline on how to apply it to LCA of eco-designs. The results show that the proposed fuzzy ANP approach is a viable methodology and can be used as an effective tool for the evaluation of environmental sustainable product designs.The energetic convenience of electrolytic water splitting is limited by thermodynamics. Consequently, significant levels of hydrogen production can only be obtained with an electrical energy consumption exceeding 45 kWh kg(-1) H-2. Electrochemical reforming allows the overcoming of such thermodynamic limitations by replacing oxygen evolution with the oxidation of biomass-derived alcohols. Here we show that the use of an original anode material consisting of palladium nanoparticles deposited on to a three-dimensional architecture of titania nanotubes allows electrical energy savings up to 26.5 kWh kg(-1) H-2 as compared with proton electrolyte membrane water electrolysis. A net energy analysis shows that for bio-ethanol with energy return of the invested energy larger than 5.1 (for example, cellulose), the electrochemical reforming energy balance is advantageous over proton electrolyte membrane water electrolysis.Although corporate financial distress is an infrequent occurrence, it has an extremely debilitating effect on the stability of a firm when it does occur. For this reason, an accurate risk assessment mechanism is needed in numerous industry sectors, particularly in financial institutions and banking. Based on corporation life cycle theory and risk management, this study develops a risk pre-warning model, namely the RSVMDT model, to eliminate serious financial punching and to examine the effectiveness of transparency and the full disclosure index (TFDI) during each life cycle stage. The RSVMDT model includes three techniques: random forest (RF), support vector machines (SVMs), and decision trees (DTs). The RF is used to determine the essential attributes of firms and therefore decrease the computational complexity of financial analysis and improve the classification accuracy. The SVM is employed as a classifier to identify corporations in financial distress. Finally, the DT is utilized as a rule generator that allows decision makers to adjust the financial structures of firms at specific life cycle stages. Together, these three techniques can increase the probability of corporate survival in a highly competitive environment. Additionally, the study further evaluates the importance of the TFDI during a turbulent economy. The public sectors can benefit from this evaluation by formulating future policies based on the rules derived from the developed RSVMDT model.Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in Malaysian economy. They are considered to be the backbone of industrial development in the country. However, the developments, challenges and prospects of SMEs in accepting the life cycle thinking perspectives have not been investigated thoroughly. This paper discusses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) related to developments in Malaysia and identifies the SMEs challenges during implementation of LCA based on publications and self-experience in conducting the LCA studies. There are a total of five main challenges of LCA implementation in SMEs; lack of awareness and participation, lack of government assistance and directive, short life-span of SMEs and the constraints on Malaysian SMEs. In addition, a possible driver of LCA implementation is the development of national life cycle inventory database which may reduce the cost and time of LCA data collection, and promote the implementation of LCA in Malaysian SMEs in a comprehensive and systematic manner.Food waste can be valorized through different technologies, such as anaerobic digestion, incineration, and animal feed production. In this study we analyzed the environmental performance of two food waste valorization scenarios from a company of the retail sector in Belgium, through exergy analysis, exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA), and a traditional life cycle assessment (LCA). In scenario 1 all food waste was considered to be valorized in an anaerobic digestion (producing electricity, heat, digestate and sorting the packaging material to be used as fuel for cement industry), while in scenario 2 a bread fraction was valorized to produce animal feed and a non-bread fraction was valorized in an anaerobic digestion (producing the same products on scenario I, but in lower amounts). Scenario 2 was 10% more efficient than scenario 1 in the exergy analysis. For the ELCA and the single score LCA, scenario 2 presented lower environmental impacts than scenario 1 (32% and 26% lower, respectively). These results were mainly due to the avoided products from traditional supply chain (animal feed produced from agricultural products) and lower exergy loss at the feed production plant. Nevertheless, the high dry matter content of the bread waste played an important role on these results, therefore it should be pointed out that valorizing food waste to animal feed seems to be a better option only for the fractions of food waste with low water content (as bread waste). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In order to improve energy supply diversity and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, sustainable bio-fuels are strongly supported by EU and other governments in the world. While the feedstock of biofuels has caused a debate on the issue of sustainability, the used cooking oil (UCO) has become a preferred feedstock for biodiesel manufacturers. However, intensive energy consumption in the trans-esterification process during the UCO biodiesel production has significantly compromised the carbon reduction potentials and increased the cost of the UCO biodiesel. Moreover, the yield of biodiesel is only similar to 90% and the remaining similar to 10% feedstock is wasted as by-product glycerol. Direct use of UCO in diesel engines is a way to maximize its carbon saving potentials. This paper, as part of the EPID (Environmental and Performance Impact of Direct use of used cooking oil in 44 tonne trucks under real world driving conditions) project, presents the life cycle analysis of Straight UCO (SUCO) in terms of CO 2 and energy consumption, compared with the UCO biodiesel and petroleum diesel. The UK carbon calculator developed by UK Department for Transport was used for the calculations. The results show that SUCO renewable fuel can reduce the WTW carbon footprint by 98% compared to diesel and by 52% compared to the UCO biodiesel.Advanced lightweight materials are increasingly being incorporated into new vehicle designs by automakers to enhance performance and assist in complying with increasing requirements of corporate average fuel economy standards. To assess the primary energy and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) implications of vehicle designs utilizing these materials, this study examines the potential life cycle impacts of two lightweight material alternative vehicle designs, i.e., steel and aluminum of a typical passenger vehicle operated today in North America. LCA for three common alternative lightweight vehicle designs are evaluated: current production ("Baseline"), an advanced high strength steel and aluminum design ("LWSV"), and an aluminum-intensive design (AIV). This study focuses on body-in-white and closures since these are the largest automotive systems by weight accounting for approximately 40% of total curb weight of a typical passenger vehicle. Secondary mass savings resulting from body lightweighting are considered for the vehicles' engine, driveline and suspension. A "cradle-to-cradle" life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for these three vehicle material alternatives. LCA methodology for this study included material production, mill semi-fabrication, vehicle use phase operation, and end-of-life recycling. This study followed international standards ISO 14040: 2006 [1] and ISO 14044: 2006 [2], consistent with the automotive LCA guidance document currently being developed [3]. Vehicle use phase mass reduction was found to account for over 90% of total vehicle life cycle energy and CO(2)e emissions. The AIV design achieved mass reduction of 25% (versus baseline) resulting in reductions in total life cycle primary energy consumption by 20% and CO(2)e emissions by 17%. Overall, the AIV design showed the best breakeven vehicle mileage from both primary energy consumption and climate change perspectives.In the buildings sector, the use of ventilated double skin facades in order to reduce the energy demand and the environmental impact of the building during its operational phase has grown significantly. However, the use of this constructive system could lead to high environmental costs during the manufacturing and dismantling phase of the building. This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) study based on the EcoIndicator 99 of a ventilated facade with PCM in its air chamber. Two cubicles were built in an experimental set-up located in Puigverd de Lleida (Spain), one with this ventilated facade system and the other without. The differences in the electrical energy consumption of the HVAC systems were registered and used to determine the environmental savings produced during the operational phase of each building. The results of the LCA show that considering a lifetime of 50 years, the use of this particular ventilated facade reduces by 7.7% the overall environmental impact of the whole building. It also highlights that the environmental payback of this active system is significantly lower than other systems which use PCM in the building envelopes. The environmental payback of the system is 30 years, which can be reduced to only 6 years if instead steel wood would have been used in the structure. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental feasibility of re-using electric vehicle (EV) batteries at their automotive end-of-life into stationary applications was analyzed in a parameterized life cycle model. The model assumes that the life of a lithium ion (Li-ion) EV battery is extended to incorporate the re-purposing and re-use in grid storage for a utility application. Compared to using natural gas fuel for peak electrical power generation a 56% reduction in CO2 emissions is possible when an EV battery is re-purposed to store off-peak clean electricity to serve peak demand. The magnitude of CO2 mitigation associated with battery re-use is similar to that of switching from using a conventional vehicle to an electric vehicle, meaning that the greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of vehicle electrification could be doubled by extending the life of EV batteries, and better using off-peak low-cost clean electricity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass gasification is regarded as a sustainable energy technology used for waste management and producing renewable fuel. Using the techniques of life cycle assessment (LCA) and net energy analysis this study quantifies the energy, resource, and emission flows. The purpose of the research is to assess the net energy produced and potential environmental effects of biomass gasification using wood waste. This paper outlines a case study that uses waste wood from a factory for use in an entrained flow gasification CHP plant. Results show that environmental impacts may arise from toxicity, particulates, and resource depletion. Toxicity is a potential issue through the disposal of ash. Particulate matter arises from the combustion of syngas therefore effective gas cleaning and emission control is required. Assessment of resource depletion shows natural gas, electricity, fossil fuels, metals, and water are all crucial components of the system. The energy gain ratio is 4.71MJdelivered/MJprimary when only electricity is considered, this increases to 13.94MJdelivered/MJprimary if 100% of the available heat is utilised. Greenhouse gas emissions are very low (7-15 g CO2-e/kWh(e)) although this would increase if the biomass feedstock was not a waste and needed to be cultivated and transported. Overall small-scale biomass gasification is an attractive technology if the high capital costs and operational difficulties can be overcome, and a consistent feedstock source is available. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We propose an efficient evolutionary multi-objective optimization approach to the capacitated facility location-allocation problem (CFLP) for solving large instances that considers flexibility at the allocation level, where financial costs and CO2 emissions are considered simultaneously. Our approach utilizes suitably adapted Lagrangian Relaxation models for dealing with costs and CO2 emissions at the allocation level, within a multi-objective evolutionary framework at the location level. Thus our method assesses the robustness of each location solution with respect to our two objectives for customer allocation. We extend our exploration of selected solutions by considering a range of trade-offs for customer allocation. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Assessment methods are common tools to support decisions regarding waste management. The objective of this review article is to provide guidance for the selection of appropriate evaluation methods. For this purpose, frequently used assessment methods are reviewed, categorised, and summarised. In total, 151 studies have been considered in view of their goals, methodologies, systems investigated, and results regarding economic, environmental, and social issues. A goal shared by all studies is the support of stakeholders. Most studies are based on life cycle assessments, multi-criteria-decision-making, cost-benefit analysis, risk assessments, and benchmarking. Approximately 40% of the reviewed articles are life cycle assessment-based; and more than 50% apply scenario analysis to identify the best waste management options. Most studies focus on municipal solid waste and consider specific environmental loadings. Economic aspects are considered by approximately 50% of the studies, and only a small number evaluate social aspects. The choice of system elements and boundaries varies significantly among the studies; thus, assessment results are sometimes contradictory. Based on the results of this review, we recommend the following considerations when assessing waste management systems: (i) a mass balance approach based on a rigid input-output analysis of the entire system, (ii) a goal-oriented evaluation of the results of the mass balance, which takes into account the intended waste management objectives; and (iii) a transparent and reproducible presentation of the methodology, data, and results.Waste management in construction is critical for the sustainable treatment of building-related construction and demolition (C&D) waste materials, and recycling of these wastes has been considered as one of the best strategies in minimization of C&D debris. However, recycling of C&D materials may not always be a feasible strategy for every waste type and therefore recycling and other waste treatment strategies should be supported by robust decision-making models. With the aim of assessing the net carbon, energy, and water footprints of C&D recycling and other waste management alternatives, a comprehensive economic input-output-based hybrid life-cycle assessment model is developed by tracing all of the economy-wide supply-chain impacts of three waste management strategies: recycling, landfilling, and incineration. Analysis results showed that only the recycling of construction materials provided positive environmental footprint savings in terms of carbon, energy, and water footprints. Incineration is a better option as a secondary strategy after recycling for water and energy footprint categories, whereas landfilling is found to be as slightly better strategy when carbon footprint is considered as the main focus of comparison. In terms of construction materials' environmental footprint, nonferrous metals are found to have a significant environmental footprint reduction potential if recycled.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was conducted to illustrate the effect of an emission inventory data collection scheme on the outcomes of an environmental impact assessment. Due to their burden in respect to data collection, LCAs often rely heavily on existing emission and operational data, which are gathered under either compulsory monitoring or reporting requirements under law. In this study, an LCA was conducted using three input data sources: Information compiled under compulsory disclosure requirements (the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry), compliance with national discharge limits, and a state-of-the-art emission data collection scheme conducted at the same WWTP. Parameter uncertainty for each collection scheme was assessed through Monte Carlo simulation. The comparison of the results confirmed that LCA results depend heavily on input data coverage. Due to the threshold on reporting value, the E-PRTR did not capture the impact for particulate matter emission, terrestrial acidification, or terrestrial eutrophication. While the current practice can capture more than 90% of non-carcinogenic human toxicity and marine eutrophication, an LCA based on the data collection scheme underestimates impact potential due to limitations of substance coverage. Besides differences between data collection schemes, the results showed that 3-13,500% of the impacts came from background systems, such as from the provisioning of fuel, electricity, and chemicals, which do not need to be disclosed currently under E-PRTR. The incidental release of pollutants was also assessed by employing a scenario-based approach, the results of which demonstrated that these non-routine emissions could increase overall WWTP greenhouse gas emissions by between 113 and 210%. Overall, current data collection schemes have the potential to provide standardized data collection and form the basis for a sound environmental impact assessment, but several improvements are recommended, including the additional collection of energy and chemical usage data, the elimination of a reporting threshold, the expansion of substance coverage, and the inclusion of non-point fugitive gas emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The combined use of multiobjective optimization and life-cycle assessment (LCA) has recently emerged as a useful tool for minimizing the environmental impact of industrial processes. The main limitation of this approach is that it requires large amounts of data that are typically affected by several uncertainty sources. We propose herein a systematic framework to handle these uncertainties that takes advantage of recent advances made in modeling of uncertain LCA data and in optimization under uncertainty. Our strategy is based on a stochastic, multiobjective, and multiscenario mixed-integer nonlinear programming approach in which the uncertain parameters are described via scenarios. We investigate the use of two stochastic metrics: (1) the environmental impact in the worst case and (2) the environmental downside risk. We demonstrate the capabilities of our approach through its application to a generic complex industrial network in which we consider the uncertainty of some key life-cycle inventory parameters. (c) 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 60: 2098-2121, 2014Bio-jet fuel is increasingly being produced from feedstocks such as algae and tested in flight. As the industry adopts bio-jet fuels from various feedstocks and conversion processes, life cycle assessment (LCA) is necessary to determine whether these renewable fuels result in lower life cycle greenhouse gas (LC-GHG) emissions than conventional jet fuel. An LCA was performed for a functional unit of 1 GJ of bio-jet fuel produced through thermochemical conversion (hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL)) of microalgae cultivated in wastewater effluent. Two pathways were analyzed to compare the impacts of siting HTL at a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) to those of siting HTL at a refinery. Base cases for each pathway were developed in part using primary data from algae production in wastewater effluent and HTL experiments of this algae at the University of Kansas. The LC-GHG emissions of these cases were compared to those of conventional jet fuel, and a sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo analyses were performed. When algal conversion using HTL was modeled at a refinery versus at the WWTP site, the transportation steps of biomass and waste nutrients were major contributors to the LC-GHG emissions of algal bio-jet fuel. The LC-GHG emissions were lower for the algal bio-jet fuel pathway that performs HTL at a WWTP (35.2 kg CO2eq/G1 for the base case) than for the pathway for HTL at a refinery (86.5 kg CO2eq/GJ for the base case). The LCA results were particularly sensitive to the extent of heat integration, the source of the heat for HTL, and the solids content of dewatered algae. The GHG emissions of algal bio-jet fuel can be reduced by 76% compared to conventional jet fuel with feasible improvements in those sensitive parameters and siting HTL at a WWTP. Therefore, it is critical that transportation logistics, heat integration of biomass conversion processes, and nutrient supply chains be considered as investment and production of bio-jet fuels increase. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This meta-study quantitatively and qualitatively compares 21 published life cycle assessment (LCA)-type studies for energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of maize production in the USA. Differences between the methodologies and numerical results obtained are described. Nonrenewable energy consumption in maize production (from cradle-to-farm gate) ranges from 1.44 to 3.50 MJ/kg of maize, and GHG emissions associated with maize production range from -27 to 436 g CO2 equivalent/kg of maize. Large variations between studies exist within the input data for lime application, fuels purchased, and life cycle inventory data for fertilizer and agrochemical production. Although most studies use similar methodological approaches, major differences between studies include the following: (1) impacts associated with human labor and farm machinery production, (2) changes in carbon dioxide emissions resulting from soil organic carbon levels, and (3) indirect N2O emissions.This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) based biofuel supply chain (SC) analysis framework which enables the study of economic, energy and environmental (3E) performances by using multi-objective optimization. The economic objective is measured by the total annual profit, the energy objective is measured by the average fossil energy (FE) inputs per MJ biofuel and the environmental objective is measured by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per MJ biofuel. A multi-objective linear fractional programming (MOLFP) model with multi-conversion pathways is formulated based on the framework and is solved by using the e-constraint method. The MOLFP problem is turned into a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem by setting up the total annual profit as the optimization objective and the average FE inputs per MJ biofuel and GHG emissions per MJ biofuel as constraints. In the case study, this model is used to design an experimental biofuel supply chain in China. A set of the weekly Pareto optimal solutions is obtained. Each non-inferior solution indicates the optimal locations and the amount of biomass produced, locations and capacities of conversion factories, locations and amount of biofuel being supplied in final markets and the flow of mass through the supply chain network (SCN). As the model reveals trade-offs among 3E criteria, we think the framework can be a good support tool of decision for the design of biofuel SC.Concurrent Engineering (CE) is regarded as a systematic design approach which integrates concurrent design of product with the related processes which is able to accomplish product that can be produced at lower cost, shorter time and with higher quality and this achievement was termed as cost, time and quality (CTQ) improvement. Since its establishment, CE philosophy was well implemented in product development with traditional materials such as metals but up to date, the work on CE in composite product development is still limited. Hence, a review on the implementation of Concurrent Engineering (CE) approach in the development of composite products is presented in this paper which includes review of various studies of CE techniques in composite product development. In addition, the relationship between CE and Pugh total design method is discussed in the context of composite design. Moreover, publications related to materials selection, life cycle analysis and sustainability issues of composite materials are also reviewed whereby a section is devoted to highlight previous work on materials selection using Analytical Hierarchy Process method. It was observed that materials selection of composite materials is a very important activity as far as CE in composite product development. The use of various techniques and computer aided materials selection tools such as Analytical Hierarchy Process has helped designers to select the most optimum composite materials for engineering components. Furthermore, based on current trends in composites product development, the role of CE is expected to be more crucial to assist composites designers in achieving the design requirements from various stakeholders effectively and efficiently considering the expanding range of composite materials availability as well as realizing new potential for biocomposites applications through introduction of innovative alternative problem solving methods as part of the CE family. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on the calculation of the carbon footprint of a typical West Australian mine site village and the ways by which it can be reduced to a point where the village can be legitimately described as 'carbon neutral'. The study contributes to a broader ARC joint research program by Murdoch and Curtin Universities entitled 'Decarbonising Cities and Regions'. The term carbon neutral has a far from uniform definition. For the purpose of the carbon accounting that follows carbon neutrality is achieved when there is a net zero carbon footprint across the full life cycle or when total emissions are balanced by total offsets. As much of the full life cycle of the village as is practical is included in the process and acknowledges any omissions made. The paper will show how the carbon footprint of a mine site village in Western Australia's mid-west has been measured, calculated and reduced effectively to a point where carbon neutrality can be claimed. This will commence with calculation of the embodied and operational energy in constructing and operating the village, followed by methods towards achieving carbon neutrality. The latter includes energy efficiency opportunities; an environmental and economic sustainability assessment of renewable energy and construction materials; design modification of the infrastructure; and assessment of accredited biomass offset mechanisms. The whole process has been termed LEVI (c), Low Energy Village Infrastructure. An economic assessment of the carbon neutral strategy is the key to implementation. Mining companies are particularly drawn to the 'bottom line' when making investment decisions and only sound financial analysis will facilitate substantial carbon neutral expenditure. LEVI significantly includes a net present cost (NPC) analysis of all such investment and belies the myth that carbon neutral mine site accommodation cannot be achieved. The paper then presents a carbon accounting methodology of the case study mine site village and set out the results and overall carbon emissions the village is responsible for. This life cycle analysis (LCA) is done from cradle to gate in terms of LCA terminology and represents the manufacture, construction, installation and operation. Energy efficiencies and behavioural changes are then applied and estimated as to their carbon reductive effect on the total carbon, followed by verifiable renewable energy offsets. These offsets are substantiated by a vigorous renewable energy analysis and selection supported by an NPC analysis. An optimum renewable energy system (RE) is then selected (best value for money) and its carbon reducing effect over the current power system calculated. This amount, together with that produced by energy efficiencies and behavioural changes, makes a total carbon reduction and is annualised. The paper clearly shows that the projected life of the mine, and therefore the village, is a critical factor in the overall carbon analysis and that the optimum time period within which carbon neutrality of such a mine site village can be claimed lays somewhere between 7 and 10 years. Another key finding was that the capital expenditure (CAPEX) savings by developing such a village as a standalone facility produces clear advantages over connection to a mine power generation system as is the case study example. The optimum standalone RE system for introduction from 2014 was found to be 110 kW fixed amorphous photovoltaic array and two 100 kW wind turbines with one 150 kW and one 100 kW low-cycle diesel generators as a backup. The projected cost was approximately $2 million. It is contended that the metrics produced from the results can provide a pro-rata basis with which to model future carbon neutral villages of similar construction. The model accommodates dependencies such as life of mine, size of village, number of workers and location. The paper will describe some innovative solutions and outcomes from this research that may be applied to the built environment on a broader scale. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Biogas is a biofuel which can be used as an energy source for gas-operated vehicles or for electricity and heat production. This paper studies the greenhouse gas emissions from biowaste, waste water treatment plant sludge and agricultural biomass based biogas use as a transportation fuel and compares the transportation use with the electricity and heat production and composting of feedstock. The research is conducted using Life cycle assessment methods and the calculation follow the directive 2009/28/EC, ISO 14040 standard and Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The use of biogas in transportation sector led in all studied cases to reductions of GHG emissions compared to fossil transportation fuels. The GHG reductions varied from 49% to 84%. Biogas production and use in electricity and heat production also led to GHG reductions compared to composting of feedstock but the reductions are not as high as in transportation use in most of cases. In addition if biogas is already used in energy production, it should be considered carefully whether the advantages of directing biogas to transportation purposes are profitable from a GHG emission point of view. However the GHG reductions are heavily depended on local energy systems. This creates challenges for the policy makers and leads to need for system scale comparisons. The wider use of biogas as a transportation fuel has a potential for high GHG emission reductions in the transportation sector. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents specific life cycle GHG emissions from wind power generation from six different 5 MW offshore wind turbine conceptual designs. In addition, the energy performance, expressed by the energy indicators Energy Payback Ratio (EPR) Energy Payback Time (EPT), is calculated for each of the concepts. There are currently few LCA studies in existence which analyse offshore wind turbines with rated power as great as 5 MW. The results, therefore, give valuable additional environmental information concerning large offshore wind power. The resulting GHG emissions vary between 18 and 31.4 g CO2-equivalents per kWh while the energy performance, assessed as EPR and EPT, varies between 7.5 and 12.9, and 1.6 and 2.7 years, respectively. The relatively large ranges in GHG emissions and energy performance are chiefly the result of the differing steel masses required for the analysed platforms. One major conclusion from this study is that specific platform/foundation steel masses are important for the overall GHG emissions relating to offshore wind power. Other parameters of importance when comparing the environmental performance of offshore wind concepts are the lifetime of the turbines, wind conditions, distance to shore, and installation and decommissioning activities. Even though the GHG emissions from wind power vary to a relatively large degree, wind power can fully compete with other low GHG emission electricity technologies, such as nuclear, photovoltaic and hydro power. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examines three agriculture management practices with the aim of improving the environmental performance of corn-derived products such as bioethanol. Corn production is energy intensive and contributes to water quality degradation and global warming, thus affecting the environmental impact of corn-derived ethanol. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to quantify and compare the environmental impacts of three management strategies: tillage, fertilizer choices and the use of buffer strips to sequester nutrients. Detailed energy, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus inventories are compiled to represent corn production scenarios within the US Corn Belt. The LCA was developed using GREET 1.8 (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation) and emission factors with statistical analyses to estimate energy consumption, associated air emissions, and aqueous nutrient runoff potentials. Results show that using manure fertilizers as opposed to synthetic fertilizers requires less energy, however the use of manure generates more CH4, N2O, CO2 and results in more variable concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus leaching from farmlands. No tillage emits less greenhouse gas emissions, sequesters more soil organic carbon and slightly reduces nutrient runoff compared with conventional tillage practices. Building buffer strips of certain widths is an efficient way to reduce N and P discharge to surrounding waters with minimal effect on the energy or global warming profile. Based on the results of the LCA studies, replacing conventional tillage with no till, and installing buffer strips can improve environmental performances of corn derived ethanol. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants typically incorporate one or various auxiliary boilers operating in parallel to the solar field to facilitate start up operations, provide system stability, avoid freezing of heat transfer fluid (HTF) and increase generation capacity. The environmental performance of these plants is highly influenced by the energy input and the type of auxiliary fuel, which in most cases is natural gas (NC). Replacing the NG with biogas or biomethane (BM) in commercial CSP installations is being considered as a means to produce electricity that is fully renewable and free from fossil inputs. Despite their renewable nature, the use of these biofuels also generates environmental impacts that need to be adequately identified and quantified. This paper investigates the environmental performance of a commercial wet-cooled parabolic trough 50 MWe CSP plant in Spain operating according to two strategies: solar-only, with minimum technically viable energy non-solar contribution; and hybrid operation, where 12% of the electricity derives from auxiliary fuels (as permitted by Spanish legislation). The analysis was based on standard Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology (ISO 14040-14040). The technical viability and the environmental profile of operating the CSP plant with different auxiliary fuels was evaluated, including: NG; biogas from an adjacent plant; and BM withdrawn from the gas network. The effect of using different substrates (biowaste, sewage sludge, grass and a mix of biowaste with animal manure) for the production of the biofuels was also investigated. The results showed that NG is responsible for most of the environmental damage associated with the operation of the plant in hybrid mode. Replacing NC with biogas resulted in a significant improvement of the environmental performance of the installation, primarily due to reduced impact in the following categories: natural land transformation, depletion of fossil resources, and climate change. However, despite the renewable nature of the biofuels, other environmental categories like human toxicity, eutrophication, acidification and marine ecotoxicity scored higher when using biogas and BM. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This report presents a comprehensive analysis and comparison of the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for the following offshore floating wind turbine concepts: Spar-Buoy (Hywind II), Tension-Leg-Spar (SWAY), Semi-Submersible (WindFloat), Tension-Leg-Wind-Turbine (TLWT) and Tension-Leg-Buoy (TLB). The analysis features a generic commercial wind farm consisting of 100 five megawatt turbines, at a far offshore site in a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) perspective. Data for existing bottom-fixed turbines, both jacket and monopile concepts are used as reference values for adaptation to the generic wind farm parameters. The results indicate that LCOE values are strongly dependent on depth and distance from shore, due to mooring costs and export cable length, respectively. Based on the findings, depth is the dominant parameter to determine the optimal concept for a site. Distance to shore, Load Factor and availability are amongst the significant factors affecting the LCOE. The findings also indicate that LCOE of floating turbines applied in large scale and in intermediate depths of 50-150 m is comparable to bottom-fixed turbines. Floating turbines for increasing depths generally experience increased LCOE at a lower rate than bottom-fixed turbines. An optimal site, situated 100 km offshore would give LCOE in the range of (sic) 82.0-(sic) 236.7 per megawatt-hour for the conceptual designs in this paper. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Closed loop supply chain (CLSC) management is a major enabler for sustainability in value creating networks. This contribution aims to describe and analyze the main characteristics of CLSC planning in the process industry and the related publications, in order to determine the evolution and gaps of this current research over time and improve our understanding of this issue. We built up a database with the articles on CLSC in different sectors of the process industry and identified the most relevant journals within this field. Furthermore, we derive and identify the requirements for CLSC considerations in the process industry for verifying whether these requirements are met in the literature so far. In addition, we have explored the topic, the methodology and the techniques of analysis, as well as other relevant aspects of the research in this field. We mainly focus on general and specific quantitative approaches, observing what has been done and how, where and by whom it has been carried out. The result is an extensive review of the research work itself and their limitations having an influence on CLSC concepts for the process industry. We conclude with some suggestions to those who begin to research on this apparently disregarded topic.This article assessed the carbon footprint (CFP) and local environment interface in the Canadian livestock industry. The livestock production activities that generate GHG emissions in Canada organized into four management groups: Farm animals, manure systems, crop production, and farm inputs, were used to define the system boundaries of a life cycle assessment (LCA). For the environmental assessment (EA) stage of the LCA an environmental impact matrix and a network diagram was used to identify the non-CFP of Canadian livestock production. The Unified Livestock Industry and Crop Emissions Estimation System (ULICEES) model was used to estimate the livestock CFP. An index derived from agricultural extension literature was used to assign weights to the non-CFP impacts during the EA stage of the LCA. The attention given to these impacts in this literature, factored by the crop areas associated with each issue and livestock type, resulted in the area-reference index (ARI). The impacts were assessed on the basis of Eastern and Western Canada and on two broad classes of Canadian livestock: ruminants and non-ruminants. Non-ruminants showed much less east-west difference in greenhouse gas emissions than ruminants. The farm animals component had the highest protein based emission intensity. The highest ARI contribution to the non-CFP was from growing annual feed grains for both ruminants and non-ruminants.The potential environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs), and their engineered nanoparticles (ENPs), have, in recent years, been a cause of concern. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a highly qualified tool to assess products and systems and has an increasing extent been applied to ENMs. However, still only 29 case studies on LCA of ENMs have been published in journals and this article investigates these studies. Generally, data on production of ENMs as well as the coverage of the life cycle are limited. In particular, within use and disposal stages data are scarce due to many unknowns regarding the potential release and fate of ENMs/ENPs to and in the environment. This study investigates the sensitivity of case studies with respect to ecotoxicity impacts through a quantification of the potential ecotoxicity impacts to algae, daphnia and fish as a result of direct release of Ag and TiO2 ENPs (mainly < 200 nm in nominal diameter size) from various ENM products to the freshwater compartment. It was found that Ag and TiO2 release, from 1 g Ag or TiO2 ENM product, poses up to ca. 3.5 orders of magnitude higher ecotoxicity impact than the production of 1 g polymer (PP, PE and PET average) or 1 Wh of grid mix electricity from Scandinavia. ENMs from Ag had higher ecotoxic impact than those from TiO2 and there was a linear regression between Ag ENM content in the considered products and the potential ecotoxicity impacts to the freshwater species, according to release of total Ag during use (mainly washing).To define consistent strategies for managing the environmental sustainability of chemicals, it is important to quantify the magnitude of their emissions and their associated impacts. Not all countries monitor and report emissions related to their activities. This is particularly the case for chemical emissions, whose toxic impacts on human health and ecosystems cannot be readily determined because of gaps in the available data. Emission data that can be retrieved from publicly available databases are typically restricted to a limited number of toxic substances, for a few countries, or for aggregated regions. Extrapolation strategies are thus needed to fill in those data gaps and to move from the consideration of single countries or regions to the world scale. Little is known about how effective these strategies are in extrapolating emissions. With the use of emission data available in public databases in the world, the current work explores different opportunities to inventories of toxic emissions. In this study, we build global and European emission inventories using three extrapolation proxies, namely the gross domestic product, the emissions of carbon dioxide, and the emissions of mercury. The three proxies are compared and their efficacies are tested statistically to identify the best performer for specific classes of substances. The potential impacts associated with the emissions in the European and global inventory are further tested by using an impact system adopted for the comparative assessment of chemicals in the field of life cycle assessment.Increased water demand and scarce freshwater resources have forced communities to seek nontraditional water sources. These challenges are exacerbated in coastal communities, where population growth rates and densities in the United States are the highest. To understand the current management dilemma between constrained surface and groundwater sources and potential new water sources, Tampa Bay, Florida (TB), and San Diego, California (SD), were studied through 2030 accounting for changes in population, water demand, and electricity grid mix. These locations were chosen on the basis of their similar populations, land areas, economies, and water consumption characters as well as their coastal locations and rising contradictions between water demand and supply. Three scenarios were evaluated for each study area: (1) maximization of traditional supplies; (2) maximization of seawater desalination; and (3) maximization of nonpotable water reclamation. Three types of impacts were assessed: embodied energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, and energy cost. SD was found to have higher embodied energy and energy cost but lower GHG emission than TB in most of its water infrastructure systems because of the differences between the electricity grid mixes and water resources of the two regions. Maximizing water reclamation was found to be better than increasing either traditional supplies or seawater desalination in both regions in terms of the three impact categories. The results further imply the importance of assessing the energy-water nexus when pursuing demand-side control targets or goals as well to ensure that the potentially most economical options are considered.This study presents the results from a life cycle assessment (LCA) performed on the water and wastewater system in the city of Trondheim. The objective of the study was to examine the system-wide life cycle environmental impact potentials of operating the city's water and wastewater system, in order to clarify the relative importance of different environmental impact categories and how different elements of the water and wastewater system contribute to these impacts. As the results of this study were used in the planning of a new carbon-neutral urban settlement, the climate change impact was of special interest. Freshwater eutrophication due to the consumption of energy and chemicals was found to be the impact category with the largest contribution to the total environmental impact. In practice, urban water utilities would have to perform a trade-off between the consumption of energy and chemicals and the discharge of pollutants to receiving waters.Ineffective management of municipal solid waste (MSW) may cause degradation of valuable land resources and create long-term environmental and human health problems. A sustainable and efficient waste management strategy is needed to balance the need for development, the quality of human life and the environment. This study aims to synthesis a MSW processing network to produce energy and value-added products for achieving economic and environmental competitiveness. An optimisation model that integrates four major utilisation technologies was incorporated to facilitate a cost-effective processing network. The model is able to predict the best mix of waste treatment technologies, forecast the production of by-product from waste treatment process, estimate the facility capacity, forecast the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of the system, and eventually generate an optimal cost-effective solution for municipal solid waste management (MSWM). Four scenarios for MSWM were considered to analyse the economic impact of different waste utilisation alternatives: i) the business as usual (BAU) scenario as a baseline study, ii) the waste-to-energy (WTE) scenario, iii) the waste-to-recycling (WTR) scenario, and iv) the mixed technology (MIXTECH) scenario. The MIXTECH scenario was able to provide the best mix of waste utilisation technologies. The optimal waste allocation in terms of percentage involved landfill gas recovery system (LFGRS) (14%), mass burn incineration (3%), material recycling facilities (MRF) (56%), and composting (27%). The optimal scenario would be able to achieve the renewable energy (RE) target, achieve the recycling target and promote composting as the waste reduction alternative for the region being studied. Sensitivity analyses were conducted for the optimal or MIXTECH scenario to examine the effect of the RE target and GHG emission reduction target with respect to the system cost and waste allocation to each technology. The proposed mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model was applied for Iskandar Malaysia (IM) as a case study. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study evaluated the environmental impact of biodiesel and hydroprocessed renewable jet fuel derived from camelina oil in terms of global warming potential, human health, ecosystem quality, and energy resource consumption. The life cycle inventory is based on production activities in the Canadian Prairies and encompasses activities ranging from agricultural production to oil extraction and fuel conversion. The system expansion method is used in this study to avoid allocation and to credit input energy to co-products associated with the products displaced in the market during camelina oil extraction and fuel processing. This is the preferred allocation method for LCA analysis in the context of most renewable and sustainable energy programs. The results show that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 1 MJ of camelina derived biodiesel ranged from 7.61 to 24.72 g CO2 equivalent and 3.06 to 31.01 kg CO2/MJ equivalent for camelina HRJ fuel. Non-renewable energy consumption for camelina biodiesel ranged from 0.40 to 0.67 MJ/MJ; HRJ fuel ranged from -0.13 to 0.52 MJ/MJ. Camelina oil as a feedstock for fuel production accounted for the highest contribution to overall environmental performance, demonstrating the importance of reducing environmental burdens during the agricultural production process. Attaining higher seed yield would dramatically lower environmental impacts associated with camelina seed, oil, and fuel production. The lower GHG emissions and energy consumption associated with camelina in comparison with other oilseed derived fuel and petroleum fuel make camelina derived fuel from Canadian Prairies environmentally attractive. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work analyzes the environmental impacts of milk production in an intensive dairy farm situated in the Northern Italy region of the Po Valley. Three manure management scenarios are compared: in Scenario 1 the animal slurry is stored in an open tank and then used as fertilizer. In scenario 2 the manure is processed in an anaerobic digestion plant and the biogas produced is combusted in an internal combustion engine to produce heat (required by the digester) and electricity (exported). Scenario 3 is similar to scenario 2 but the digestate is stored in a gas-tight tank. In scenario 1 the GHG emissions are estimated to be equal to 1.21 kg CO2 eq. kg(-1) Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM) without allocation of the environmental burden to the by-product meat. With mass allocation, the GHG emissions associated to the milk are reduced to 1.18 kg CO2 eq. kg(-1) FPCM. Using an economic allocation approach the GHG emissions allocated to the milk are 1.13 kg CO2 eq. kg(-1) FPCM. In scenarios 2 and 3, without allocation, the GHG emissions are reduced respectively to 0.92 ( 23.7%) and 0.77 ( 36.5%) kg CO2 eq. kg(-1) FPCM. If land use change due to soybean production is accounted for, an additional emission of 0.53 kg CO2 eq. should be added, raising the GHG emissions to 1.74, 1.45 and 130 kg CO2 eq kg(-1) FPCM in scenarios 1,2 and 3, respectively. Primary energy from non-renewable resources decreases by 36.2% and 40.6% in scenarios 2 and 3, respectively, with the valorization of the manure in the biogas plant. The other environmental impact mitigated is marine eutrophication that decreases by 8.1% in both scenarios 2 and 3, mostly because of the lower field emissions. There is, however, a trade-off between non-renewable energy and GHG savings and other environmental impacts: acidification ( + 6.1% and + 5.5% in scenarios 2 and 3, respectively), particulate matter emissions ( + 1.4% and + 0.7%) and photochemical ozone formation potential (+41.6% and +423%) increase with the adoption of a biogas plant. The cause of the increase is mostly emissions from the CHP engine. These impacts can be tackled by improving biogas combustion technologies to reduce methane and NO emissions. Freshwater eutrophication slightly increases (+ 0.8% in both scenarios 2 and 3) because of the additional infrastructures needed. In conclusion, on-farm manure anaerobic digestion with the production of electricity is an effective technology to significantly reduce global environmental impacts of dairy farms (GHG emissions and non-renewable energy consumption), however local impacts may increase as a consequence (especially photochemical ozone formation). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study the environmental impact of consolidated rice farms (CF) - farms which have been integrated to increase the mechanization index - and traditional farms (TF) - small farms with lower mechanization index - in Guilan Province, Iran, were evaluated and compared using Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Foreground data were collected from farmers using face-to-face questionnaires and background information about production process and inventory data was taken from the EcoInvent (R) 2.0 database. The system boundary was confined to within the farm gate (cradle to farm gate) and two functional units (land and mass based) were chosen. The study also included a comparison of the input-output energy flows of the farms. The results revealed that the average amount of energy consumed by the CFs was 57 GJ compared to 74.2 GJ for the TFs. The energy ratios for CFs and TFs were 1.6 and 0.9, respectively. The LCA results indicated that CFs produced fewer environmental burdens per ton of produced rice. When compared according to the land-based FU the same results were obtained. This indicates that the differences between the two types of farms were not caused by a difference in their production level, but rather by improved management on the CFs. The analysis also showed that electricity accounted for the greatest share of the impact for both types of farms, followed by P-based and N-based chemical fertilizers. These findings suggest that the CFs had superior overall environmental performance compared to the TFs in the study area. The performance metrics of the model based on ANFIS show that it can be used to predict the environmental burdens of rice production with high accuracy and minimal error. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of the paper is to present the results of application of stochastic approach based on Monte Carlo (MC) simulation for life cycle inventory (LCI) data of Mittal Steel Poland (MSP) complex in Krakow, Poland. In order to assess the uncertainty, the software CrystalBalle (CO), which is associated with Microsoft Excel spreadsheet model, is used. The framework of the study was originally carried out for 2005. The total production of steel, coke, pig iron, sinter, slabs from continuous steel casting (CSC), sheets from hot rolling mill (HRM) and blast furnace gas, collected in 2005 from MSP was analyzed and used for MC simulation of the LCI model. In order to describe random nature of all main products used in this study, normal distribution has been applied. The results of the simulation (10,000 trials) performed with the use of CB consist of frequency charts and statistical reports. The results of this study can be used as the first step in performing a full LCA analysis in the steel industry. Further, it is concluded that the stochastic approach is a powerful method for quantifying parameter uncertainty in LCA/ LCI studies and it can be applied to any steel industry. The results obtained from this study can help practitioners and decision-makers in the steel production management. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to present the results of a life cycle assessment performed for different scenarios reflecting the management, treatment and handling of plastic solid waste as a fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW) in the Greater London area. The study is divided in two parts: Part I comprises a LCA on the current MSW management strategy adopted in the Greater London area. This includes a materials recovery route via a dry Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and an energy recovery route (incineration unit (IU) with combined heat and power). Part II investigates two alternative thermo-chemical treatment (TCT) technologies for the management of plastic solid waste (PSW): a low temperature pyrolysis (LTP) reactor and a hydrogenation reactor (VCC). The LTP process recovers valuable chemicals and petrochemicals (e.g., gases (C-3-C-4), liquid fractions (naphtha), waxes (atmospheric residue, AR) and heat in the form of steam), whilst the hydrogenation process produces syncrude and e-gas which is comparable to natural gas. The system expansion methodology was applied to the scenarios developed. A sensitivity analysis investigated different degrees of material recovery and reprocessing for the substitution of the relevant conventional processes. At the same time the study tackled the impact on the environment of introducing TCT units with the aim of petrochemicals ' recovery. Results showed that the current waste management system is more environmentally friendly compared with the landfill scenario for all the impact categories investigated. Moreover, the employment of the alternative TCT technologies investigated depends on the market's ability to take-in the petrochemical by-products hence replacing their conventional production. Scenarios including pyrolysis appeared to be more environmentally friendly in terms of Greenhouse gas emissions when compared with hydrocracking, while the reverse was true for the eutrophication potential category. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biofuel is recognised as an important renewable and sustainable energy source to substitute fossil fuel. To date, biofuel has been evolved from first to fourth generation and they are mainly differed in feedstock and production technologies. Along with the evolution, various studies on different sustainability criteria have been conducted. In this review paper, the state of the art of technologies and assessment methods on economic performance, safety, health and environment (SHE) as well as social impact for biofuel production are reviewed. In addition, this review paper also evaluates the typical methodological framework used for systematic assessment during early process design phase. As conclusion, to establish the highest sustainability in biofuel production, continuous research and development on all sustainability-related aspects are very much needed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coal gasification, the technology for high-efficient utilization of coal, has been widely used in China. However, it suffers from high CO2 emissions problem due to the carbon-rich character of coal. To reduce CO2 emissions, different CO2 capture technologies are developed and integrated into the coal gasification based processes. However, involving CO2 capture would result in energetic and economic penalty. This paper analyses three cases of coal gasification processes from environmental, technical, and economical points of view. These processes are (1) a conventional coal gasification process; (2) a coal gasification process with CO2 capture and sequestration, in which CO2 is stored by mineral sequestration; (3) a coal gasification process with CO2 capture and utilization, in which CO2 is reused to produce syngas. The results show that the coal gasification process with CO2 capture and sequestration has advantage only in environmental aspect compared to the conventional process. The process with CO2 capture and utilization has advantages in both technical and environmental aspects while disadvantage in economic aspect. However, if the carbon tax higher than 15 USD/t CO2 is introduced, this disadvantage will be negligible. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The sustainable future of the world challenges engineers to develop chemical process designs that are not only technically and economically feasible but also environmental friendly. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for identifying and quantifying environmental impacts of the chemical product and/or the process that makes it. It can be used in conjunction with process simulation and economic analysis tools to evaluate the design of any existing and/or new chemical-biochemical process and to propose improvement options in order to arrive at the best design among various alternatives. Although there are several commercial LCA tools, there is still a need for a simple LCA software that can be integrated with process design tools. In this paper, a new LCA software, LCSoft, is developed for evaluation of chemical, petrochemical, and biochemical processes with options for integration with other process design tools such as sustainable design (SustainPro), economic analysis (ECON) and process simulation. The software framework contains four main tools: Tool-I is for life cycle inventory (LCI) knowledge management that enables easy maintenance and future expansion of the LCI database; Tool-2 is for estimation of environmental impact characterization factors using group contribution(+) method (GC)(+) in order to calculate environmental impacts for a wide range of chemicals; Tool-3 performs LCA calculations based on a library of models; and, Tool-4 provides interfaces for integration with other tools. To test the software, a bioethanol production process using cassava rhizome is employed as a case study. Results from LCSoft highlight the estimated environmental performance in terms of various aspects such as carbon footprint, resource and energy consumptions, and various environmental impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims at presenting a dynamic indicator for life cycle assessment (LCA) measuring cumulative impacts over time of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fertilizers used for wheat cultivation and production. Our approach offers a dynamic indicator of global warming potential (GWP), one of the most used indicator of environmental impacts (e.g. in the Kyoto Protocol). For a case study, the wheat production in France was selected and considered by using data from official sources about fertilizer consumption and production of wheat We propose to assess GWP environmental impact based on LCA method. The system boundary is limited to the fertilizer production for 1 ton of wheat produced (functional unit) from 1910 to 2010. As applied to wheat production in France, traditional LCA shows a maximum GWP impact of 500 kg CO2-eg for 1 ton of wheat production, whereas the GWP impact of wheat production over time with our approach to dynamic LCA and its cumulative effects increases to 18,000 kg CO2-eg for 1 ton of wheat production. In this paper, only one substance and one impact assessment indicator are presented. However, the methodology can be generalized and improved by using different substances and indicators. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper, we propose an extended car-following model and an electricity consumption model to study the effects of the road's slope on the electric vehicle's electricity consumption. The numerical results show that each electric vehicle's electricity consumption increases with the uphill's tilt angle and decreases with the downhill's tilt angle. In addition, each electric vehicle's electricity consumption increases with the uphill's (downhill's) length under a certain tilt angle. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Information related to the potential environmental exposure of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in the solid waste management phase is extremely scarce. In this paper, we define nanowaste as separately collected or collectable waste materials which are or contain ENMs, and we present a five-step framework for the systematic assessment of ENM exposure during nanowaste management. The framework includes deriving EOL nanoproducts and evaluating the physicochemical properties of the nanostructure, matrix properties and nanowaste treatment processes as well as transformation processes and environment releases, eventually leading to a final assessment of potential ENM exposure. The proposed framework was applied to three selected nanoproducts: nanosilver polyester textile, nanoTiO(2) sunscreen lotion and carbon nanotube tennis racquets. We found that the potential global environmental exposure of ENMs associated with these three products was an estimated 0.5-143 Mg/year, which can also be characterised qualitatively as medium, medium, low, respectively. Specific challenges remain and should be subject to further research: (1) analytical techniques for the characterisation of nanowaste and its transformation during waste treatment processes, (2) mechanisms for the release of ENMs, (3) the quantification of nanowaste amounts at the regional scale, (4) a definition of acceptable limit values for exposure to ENMs from nanowaste and (5) the reporting of nanowaste generation data.Biochar is the product of incomplete combustion (pyrolysis) of organic material. In rural areas, it can be used as a soil amendment to increase soil fertility. Fuel-constrained villagers may however prefer to use biochar briquettes as a higher-value fuel for cooking over applying it to soils. A systems-oriented analysis using life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost benefit analysis (CBA) was conducted to analyze these two alternative uses of biochar, applying the study to a rural village system in Indonesia. The results showed soil amendment for enhanced agricultural production to be the preferential choice with a positive benefit to the baseline scenario of -26 ecopoints (LCA) and -173 USD (CBA) annually pr. household. In this case, the positive effects of carbon sequestration to the soil and the economic value of the increased agricultural production outweighed the negative environmental impacts from biochar production and the related production costs. Use of biochar in briquettes for cooking fuel yielded negative net effects in both the LCA and CBA (85 ecopoints and 176 USD), even when positive health effects from reduced indoor air pollution were included. The main reasons for this are that emissions during biochar production are not compensated by carbon sequestration and that briquette making is labor-intensive. The results emphasize the importance of investigating and documenting the carbon storage effect and the agricultural benefit in biochar production-utilization systems for a sustainable use. Further research focus on efficient production is necessary due to the large environmental impact of biochar production. In addition, biochar should continue to be used in those soils where the agricultural effect is most beneficial.One of the major challenges in life cycle assessment (LCA) is the availability and quality of data used to develop models and to make appropriate recommendations. Approximations and assumptions are often made if appropriate data are not readily available. However, these proxies may introduce uncertainty into the results. A regression model framework may be employed to assess missing data in LCAs of products and processes. In this study, we develop such a regression-based framework to estimate CO2 emission factors associated with coal power plants in the absence of reported data. Our framework hypothesizes that emissions from coal power plants can be explained by plant-specific factors (predictors) that include steam pressure, total capacity, plant age, fuel type, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the resident nations of those plants. Using reported emission data for 444 plants worldwide, plant level CO2 emission factors were fitted to the selected predictors by a multiple linear regression model and a local linear regression model. The validated models were then applied to 764 coal power plants worldwide, for which no reported data were available. Cumulatively, available reported data and our predictions together account for 74% of the total world's coal-fired power generation capacity.Environmental burdens associated with small scale (40 L hydrogen per minute) production of hydrogen fuel using electrolysis powered by electricity generated from stand-alone wind turbines (30 kW), stand-alone photovoltaic panels (3 kW peak) and UK grid electricity (current and future) has been undertaken. Utilization of fuel within a proton exchange membrane fuel cell passenger vehicle was included and compared to the operation of a petrol vehicle, a fuel cell vehicle fuelled with non-renewable hydrogen, and an electric (battery only) vehicle. The production of renewable hydrogen from wind energy incurs increased climate change burdens compared with extraction and processing of fossil petrol (0.09 mPt compared with 0.07 mPt). However, lower burdens for fossil fuel (1.85 mPt) and climate change (0.26 mPt) are realised by the renewable hydrogen options compared with petrol (4.44 mPt and 0.44 mPt, respectively) following utilization of the fuel due to lower emissions at end use. Utilizing a combination of renewable hydrogen fuelled vehicles and grid powered electric vehicles was considered to be a viable option for meeting UK policy ambitions. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A considerable body of academic literature has emerged that addresses methods for consumption-based accounting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as opposed to the territorial approach used under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The consumption-based approach attributes emissions to consumers of final goods and services by accounting for the GHG emissions 'embedded' in raw materials and intermediate goods and services. Many authors have advocated the wider adoption of a consumption-based approach. This article does not take one side or another in the consumption-based versus territorial debate. Instead, it explores the extent to which consumption-based thinking has already found practical application by companies and public authorities and assesses the potential for further adoption. The methodologies underlying consumption-based approaches are critically reviewed to note criteria such as accuracy and the timeliness of data generation, which suggest the potential for practical application. A typology of applications is then developed and each category of application is systematically explored citing real-world examples where possible. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential for the wider application of consumption-based approaches and identifies further research needs.Policy relevanceConsumption-based approaches to accounting for GHG emissions are gradually being adopted in the policy domain, albeit in a haphazard way. This article (1) identifies the strengths and weaknesses associated with top-down input-output approaches and bottom-up life cycle assessment approaches to consumption-based accounting in terms of criteria such as accuracy and timeliness of data generation; (2) provides a comprehensive review of actual and proposed applications to date; (3) constructs a taxonomy of applications drawing on the analysis of strengths and weaknesses; and (4) considers the prospects for further application. The article will help policy makers and policy analysts to assess the feasibility and desirability of future applications of consumption-based approaches and address implementation barriers.This article presents a feasibility analysis on photovoltaic (PV)-powered electric vehicles (EVs) by considering the technological and economic aspects involved. The analysis is based on the fact that EVs can provide energy storage capacity to efficiently utilize the intermittent electricity output of a PV system, thus reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Four models of power supply systems are assessed based on net present cost, cost of energy, and carbon emission intensity. The renewable energy optimization software HOMER is used to optimize costs of energy and carbon emission, with the outcome of energy cost ranging from $0.204/kWh to $0.372/kWh for the PV-powered EVs. Although the energy cost of PV-powered EVs is higher than that of grid-connected ones ($0.150/kWh), GHG emissions can be reduced by 47%-78%. The four models may be applicable in different development stages of EVs in China. In the short term, grid-connected EVs have cost advantages, however, considering such factors as the imposition of future carbon tax, increasing electricity supply cost and decreasing price of PV components and batteries, PV-powered EVs could dominate the EV landscape in the near future. Furthermore, our sensitivity analyses also show that the PV power sellback rate and interest rate contribute significantly to the cost of energy and can be used as policy tools to accelerate the development of transportation systems that generate low carbon emissions.Natural systems offer an economic solution for the treatment of wastewater from small settlements. This study presents a detailed technical analysis of three stabilization pond systems designed to treat municipal wastewater, varying in capacity from 250 to 1400 population equivalent. Construction costs for the three systems were estimated using standard costing tables for public works for year 2010. The data from the three systems were used to derive empirical equations predicting the required facility surface area and construction cost as function of the design population. For the environmental impact assessment, two construction scenarios were examined: using reinforced concrete and using earthen,structures. For the latter case, two options were tested: use of a synthetic geomembrane and use of a compacted clay layer as waterproofing materials. The environmental footprint was calculated for these scenarios applying the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology. It was concluded that soil structures, and particularly use of clay, had an overall economic and environmental advantage compared to reinforced concrete.This article presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) performed on a regional beef production system. The analysis includes data for a cow-calf operation, six animal feeding operations, and a beef processing operation within the Pacific Northwest region consisting of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, western Wyoming, northern California, northern Nevada, and southern British Columbia. The objective of this study was to determine the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with beef production on a regional scale in the identified area. This analysis was important for determining the comparative sustainability of beef production methods in the Pacific Northwest. The LCA defined the GHG emissions associated with two separate functional units from two distinct system boundaries. System boundary 1 (SB1) delineates a cradle-to-feedlot-gate analysis of the system and has a functional unit of] kg of live weight (LW) beef production. System boundary 2 (SB2) defines a cradle-to-processing-gate analysis of the system and has a functional unit of] kg of packaged beef These estimates are used as indicators of the environmental burden of the given system in the given region. Total emissions from SB1 and SB2 were found to be 10.40 +/- 0.48 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) LW and 18.75 +/- 0.86 kg CO(2)e kg-1 beef respectively.The municipal waste management system of the region of Irkutsk is described and a life cycle assessment (LCA) performed to assess the environmental performance of the system. Annually about 500 000 tons of waste are managed. The waste originates from three sources: household waste (27%), commercial waste (23%) and office & institutional waste (44%). Other waste of unknown composition constitutes 6%. Only 3% of the waste is recycled; 97% of the municipal waste is disposed of at the old Alexandrovsky landfill. The environmental impact from the current system is dominated by the landfill, which has no gas or leachate collection system. The global warming contribution is due to the emission of methane of the order of 420 000 tons CO2-equivalents per year. Collection and transport of the waste are insignificant compared with impacts from the landfill. As the old landfill runs out of capacity in a few years, the LCA modelling showed that introduction of a new and modern landfill with gas and leachate collection could improve the performance of the waste management system significantly. Collection of landfill gas and utilization for 30 years for electricity production (gas turbine) would reduce the global warming completely and result in a net saving of 100 000 CO2-equivalents per year due to storage of biogenic carbon in the landfill beyond 100 years. Considering other first-order degradation rates for the landfilled organic matter did not overtly affect the results, while assumptions about the top cover oxidation of methane significantly affected the results. This shows the importance of controlling the gas escape from the landfill.Manufacturers have been increasingly considering the implication of materials used in commercial products and the management of such products at the end of their useful lives (as waste or as post-consumer secondary materials). The present work describes the application of the life cycle thinking approach to a plastic product, specifically an anti-glare lamellae (used for road safety applications) made with high-density polyethylene (HDPE). This study shows that optimal environmental and economic outcomes associated with this product can be realized by recovering the material at the end of its useful life (end of life, EoL) and by using the recycled HDPE as a raw material in the production of new similar products. The study confirmed the applicability of the life cycle thinking approach by industry in sustainable products development, supporting the development of robust environmental and economic guidelines.Aim of this work was to point out the main direct environmental impacts (i. e., waste generation, water use, and energy use) of the food industry, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the agro-food system in industrialised countries. Based on GHG inventories and technical literature, agricultural production appears to be the hotspot in the life cycle of food products. Several life cycle assessment procedures, such as the Carbon Footprint (CF), Bilan Carbone (R), Environmental Product Declaration (R), are currently available and can help to identify more sustainable options. The available CF data were used to show how the so called Mediterranean-type diet might promote sustainable lifestyles in the developed countries with a more favourable impact on the environment and health. A progressive approach to food sustainability was also outlined.The rapid growth of streaming video entertainment has recently received attention as a possibly less energy intensive alternative to the manufacturing and transportation of digital video discs (DVDs). This study utilizes a life-cycle assessment approach to estimate the primary energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions associated with video viewing through both traditional DVD methods and online video streaming. Base-case estimates for 2011 video viewing energy and CO2(e) emission intensities indicate video streaming can be more efficient than DVDs, depending on DVD viewing method. Video streaming benefits from relatively more efficient end-user devices than DVD viewing, though much of that savings is lost when accounting for the additional energy from network data transmission. Video streaming appears distinctly favorable when compared against any DVD viewing that includes consumer driving, which significantly increases the energy and CO2(e) emissions per viewing hour. Total US 2011 video viewing required about 192 PJ of primary energy and emitted about 10.5 billion kg of CO2(e). Shifting all 2011 DVD viewing to video streaming reduces the total primary energy use to about 162 PJ and the CO2(e) emissions to about 8.6 billion kg, representing a savings equivalent to the primary energy used to meet the electricity demand of nearly 200 000 US households each year. Sensitivity analysis indicates that results are most influenced by the end-user DVD player power demand, data transmission energy, and consumer travel for store DVDs. Data center energy use-both operational and embodied within the IT equipment-account for <1% of the total video streaming energy use. Results from this study indicate that designers and policy makers should focus on the efficiency of end-user devices and network transmission energy to curb future increases in energy use from the proliferation of video streaming.The ecological costs of open pit metal mining are quantified, which include lost value of direct eco-services, lost value of indirect eco-services, prevention and restoration costs, and cost of carbon emission from energy consumption. These ecological costs are incorporated in an iterative ultimate pit optimization algorithm. A case study is presented to demonstrate the influence of ecological costs on pit design outcome. The results show that it is possible to internalize ecological costs in mine designs. The pit optimization outcome shifts considerably to the conservative side and the profitability decreases substantially when ecological costs are accounted for.This project was initiated in response to the "Regulation [...] laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products" (hereafter referred to as the Construction Products Regulation, ref. [1]) adopted on 28 February 2011 by the Council of the European Union. This created a legal regulatory basis for sustainable use of natural resources by construction works by means of construction product standardization. The apparent massive scale of resource use in the construction sector also prompted increasing calls at Member State level for the use of this regulatory basis. In this project, the suitability of the the existing EPDs for measurement and reduction of resource use was examined in four successive work packages. The results were then taken as a basis for proposed further development of the assessment systems and EPDs, as well as for recommended action in the planning of construction works. In essence, the EPD is a suitable information tool for the detailed description of construction products, but BR 7 calls for more comprehensive data. Mandatory and in the relevant criteria harmonized European EPDs based on the DIN EN 15804 [2] are needed. However, the mandatory part of EPDs must be supplemented with criteria that have been identified in this research project. Generally EPDs from cradle to grave" are recommended to provide a data source with all the necessary data to create a life-cycle analysis. Furthermore, manufacturers of construction products must define the framework conditions for accepting the return of materials, such as the maximum level of impurities and the releasability.Energy perspectives for the current century are dominated by the anticipated significant increase of energy needs. Particularly, electricity consumption is anticipated to increase by a factor higher than two before 2050. Energy choices are considered as structuring political choices that implies a long-standing and stable policy based on objective criteria. LCA (life cycle analysis) is a structured basis for deriving relevant indicators which can allow the comparison of a wide range of impacts of different energy sources. Among the energy-mix, nuclear power is anticipated to have very low GHG-emissions. However, its viability is severely addressed by the public opinion after the Fukushima accident. Therefore, a global LCA of the French nuclear fuel cycle was performed as a reference model. Results were compared in terms of impact with other energy sources. It emphasized that the French nuclear energy is one of the less impacting energy, comparable with renewable energy. In a second, part, the French scenario was compared with an equivalent open fuel cycle scenario. It demonstrates that an open fuel cycle would require about 16% more natural uranium, would have a bigger environmental footprint on the "non radioactive indicators" and would produce a higher volume of high level radioactive waste. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate mitigation policies in Europe call for an extensive build-up of renewable power, which will increase from 320 GIN in 2012 to 536 GW by 2020. The renewable expansion will mainly consist of the installation of new wind and solar power plants, which require additional transmission lines. The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity estimates that 45,300 km of new or upgraded lines are necessary in the region over the next decade to accommodate the renewable power sources. Building a grid for renewables will help Europe achieve its climate goals, but other resulting environmental impacts have not yet been quantified. In this article a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) for the transmission grid expansion is performed. The results show that the grid extension projects correspond to a total impact of 10.7 Mton CO2 eq. and 11.2 Mton Fe eq. Electricity transmission in Europe in 2020 will be more material intensive, requiring about 10% more metal inputs per kWh than today. Manufacturing processes for the production of transmission equipment are important for some impacts categories, particularly water depletion. Finally, a sensitivity analysis regarding recycling rates indicates that the results in some impact categories present great variation depending on the rates assumed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The HelioClim-1 database contains daily values of the solar radiation reaching the ground. This GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) Data Collection of Open Resources for Everyone (Data-CORE) covers Europe, Africa and the Atlantic Ocean, from 1985 to 2005. It is freely accessible at no cost through the SoDa Service (www. soda-is. com). Several assessments of the HelioClim-1 data against measurements made in meteorological networks reveal that the HelioClim-1 database offers a reliable and accurate knowledge of the solar radiation and its daily, seasonal and annual variations over recent years. The HelioClim-1 data may help in qualifying in situ measurements and may supplement them, thus offering 21 years of accurate daily means of surface solar irradiance. Several published works benefited from openness, availability and accuracy of the HelioClim-1 database in various domains: oceanography, climate, energy production, life cycle analysis, agriculture, forestry, architecture, health and air quality. This demonstration of the benefit of the HelioClim-1 database draws attention to resources open to everyone such as those labeled GEOSS Data-CORE.This article develops a quantitative life-cycle model to study the increase in married women's labour force participation (LFP). We calibrate the model to match key life-cycle statistics for the 1935 cohort and use it to assess the changed environment faced by the 1955 cohort. We find that a higher divorce probability and changes in wage structure are each able to explain a large proportion of the LFP increase. Higher divorce risk increases LFP not because the latter contributes to higher marital assets or greater labour market experience, however. Instead, it is the result of conflicting spousal preferences towards the adjustment of marital consumption in the face of increased divorce risk.University researchers have recently quantified the value of carbon sequestration provided by landscape trees (Ingram, 2012, 2013). However, no study to date has captured the economic costs of component horticultural systems while conducting a life cycle assessment of any green industry product. This study attempts to fill that void. The nursery production system modeled in this study was a field-grown, 5-cm (2-in) caliper Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' in the Lower Midwest. Partial budgeting modeling procedures were also used to measure the sensitivity of related costs and potential benefits associated with short-run changes in cultural practices in the production systems analyzed (e.g., transport distance, post-harvest activities, fertilization rates, and plant mortality). Total variable costs for the seedling and liner stages combined amounted to $2.93 per liner, including $1.92 per liner for labor, $0.73 for materials, and $0.27 per liner for equipment use. The global warming potential (GWP) associated with the seedling and liner stages combined included 0.3123 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO(2)e) for materials and 0.2228 kg CO(2)e for equipment use. Total farm-gate variable costs (the seedling, liner, and field production phases combined) amounted to $37.74 per marketable tree, comprised of $9.90 for labor, $21.11 for materials, and $6.73 for equipment use, respectively. However, post-harvest costs (e.g., transportation, transplanting, take-down, and disposal costs) added another $33.78 in labor costs and $27.08 in equipment costs to the farm-gate cost, yielding a total cost from seedling to end of tree life of $98.60. Of this, $43.68 was spent on labor, $21.11 spent on materials, and $33.81 spent on equipment use during the life cycle of each marketable tree. As per an earlier study, the life cycle GWP of the described redbud tree, including greenhouse gas emissions during production, transport, transplanting, take-down, and disposal, would be a negative 63 kg CO(2)e (Ingram et al., 2013). These combined data can be used to communicate to the consuming public the true (positive) value of trees in the landscape.Buildings' sustainability is one of the crucial parts for achieving urban sustainability. Applied to buildings, life-cycle assessment encompasses the analysis and assessment of the environmental effects of building materials, components and assemblies throughout the entire life of the building construction, use and demolition. Estimate of carbon emissions is essential and crucial for an accurate and reasonable life-cycle assessment. Addressing the need for more research into integrating analysis of real-time and automatic recording of key indicators for a more accurate calculation and comparison, this paper aims to design a real-time recording model of these crucial indicators concerning the calculation and estimation of energy use and carbon emissions of buildings based on a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)-based system. The architecture of the RFID-based carbon emission recording/tracking system, which contains four functional layers including data record layer, data collection/update layer, data aggregation layer and data sharing/backup layer, is presented. Each of these layers is formed by RFID or network devices and sub-systems that operate at a specific level. In the end, a proof-of-concept system is developed to illustrate the implementation of the proposed architecture and demonstrate the feasibility of the design. This study would provide the technical solution for real-time recording system of building carbon emissions and thus is of great significance and importance to improve urban sustainability.Corn (Zea mays L.) cobs are being evaluated as a potential bioenergy feedstock for combined heat and power generation (CHP) and conversion into a biofuel. The objective of this study was to determine corn cob availability in north central United States (Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota) using existing corn grain ethanol plants as a proxy for possible future co-located cellulosic ethanol plants. Cob production estimates averaged 6.04 Tg and 8.87 Tg using a 40 km radius area and 80 km radius area, respectively, from existing corn grain ethanol plants. The use of CHP from cobs reduces overall GHG emissions by 60%-65% from existing dry mill ethanol plants. An integrated biorefinery further reduces corn grain ethanol GHG emissions with estimated ranges from 13.9 g CO2 equiv MJ(-1) to 17.4 g CO2 equiv MJ-1. Significant radius area overlap (53% overlap for 40 km radius and 86% overlap for 80 km radius) exists for cob availability between current corn grain ethanol plants in this region suggesting possible cob supply constraints for a mature biofuel industry. A multifeedstock approach will likely be required to meet multiple end user renewable energy requirements for the north central United States. Economic and feedstock logistics models need to account for possible supply constraints under a mature biofuel industry. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) analysis allows the evaluation of strategies to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to some reference scenario and encompasses their costs or benefits. A popular approach to quantify the potential to abate national agricultural emissions is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines for national GHG inventories (IPCC-NI method). This methodology is the standard for assessing compliance with binding national GHG reduction targets and uses a sector based framework to attribute emissions. There is however an alternative to the IPCC-NI method, known as life cycle assessment (LCA), which is the preferred method to assess the GHG intensity of food production (kg of GHG/unit of food). The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of using the IPCC-NI and LCA methodologies when completing a MACC analysis of national agricultural GHG emissions. The MACC was applied to the frith agricultural sector and mitigation measures were only constrained by the biophysical environment. The reference scenario chosen assumed that the 2020 growth targets set by the Irish agricultural industry would be achieved. The comparison of methodologies showed that only 1.1 Mt of the annual GHG abatement potential that can be achieved at zero or negative cost could be attributed to agricultural sector using the IPCC-NI method, which was only 44% of the zero or negative cost abatement potential attributed to the sector using the LCA method. The difference between methodologies was because the IPCC-NI method attributes the abatement from agricultural mitigation measures, partially or fully, to other sectors within a nation or to activity taking in agriculture, if the accounting process does not credit this mitigation to them. The disagreement between methodologies also indicates that unilateral national or regional policies to reduce agricultural GHG emissions based on the IPCC-NI method could lead to mitigation options that increase global emissions (carbon leakage). The limitations of the IPCC-NI method for assessing national agricultural GHG emissions could be overcome by reforming or expanding the accounting methodology to include domestic offsetting and to assess emissions associated with national consumption via LCA. This would overcome the problem of carbon leakage and credit (in part) agricultural practices that reduce emissions in other sectors or nations without emission caps. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the ever-increasing population of the world (expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050), and altered life style, comes an increased demand for food, fuel and fiber. However, scarcity of land, water and energy accompanied by climate change means that to produce enough to meet the demands is getting increasingly challenging. Today we must use every avenue from science and technology available to address these challenges. The natural process of symbiotic nitrogen fixation, whereby plants such as legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen gas to ammonia, usable by plants can have a substantial impact as it is found in nature, has low environmental and economic costs and is broadly established. Here we look at the importance of symbiotic nitrogen fixation in the production of biofuel feedstocks; how this process can address major challenges, how improving nitrogen fixation is essential, and what we can do about it.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a common tool for analyzing the environmental footprint of a production chain, such as that of cereal production. In an earlier study, we found that net mineralization of soil organic carbon (SOC) may contribute significantly to the CO2-emissions from a cereal producing farm at high latitudes, where huge amounts of C are stored in not only organic but also mineral soils. Changes in SOC are, however, rarely included in LCA studies. In this study, we have used LCA to analyze the production chains of grain, from cradle to farm gate, under the contrasting climatic conditions of three typical farms representing the major grain producing areas in Norway; southeast, central southeast, and central. The assessment comprised global warming potential (GWP), marine (ME) and freshwater eutrophication (FE), where the effects of SOC changes were highlighted by means of the ICBM-model. Data for the production of various inputs were taken from the LCA-database Ecoinvent and management details were based on interviews with the local advisory services and Norwegian recommendations. The relatively wide system boundaries used resulted in a GWP of 0.5-0.9 kg CO2-eq. per kg grain, depending on the cereal crop (barley, oats, spring or winter wheat) and site. On average, the contribution to total GWP was 20% for the manufacturing of machinery and buildings, 19% for the manufacturing of inputs, 8% for driving related emissions, and 53% for field emissions. Reduction in SOC accounted for up to 38% of the field emissions and on average 12% for the total GWP. The magnitude of the estimated SOC decay rates was more affected by the distance to the coast than by latitude. When halving the initial SOC level from 2% to 1%, the model simulations indicated C-sequestration at all sites, whereas an initial SOC level above 3.6-4.7% released CO2 from SOC in amounts exceeding the combined emissions from all other sources. The range of ME was 9-18 g N-eq. per kg grain, of which 98% was caused by drainage and runoff from the cropped fields. FE was in the range of 0.2-0.7 g P-eq. per kg grain. Leaching losses were the most important category, followed by manufacturing of inputs, with the production of P fertilizer as the major contributor. Our results show that field emissions may be important both for a global indicator such as GWP and for indicators of more local concern, such as ME and FE. Hence, further environmental improvements should be sought at the farm level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, an environmental assessment on an electrokinetic (EK) system for the remediation of a multimetal-contaminated real site was conducted using a green and sustainable remediation (GSR) tool. The entire EK process was classified into major four phases consisting of remedial investigations (RIs), remedial action construction (RAC), remedial action operation (RAO), and long-term monitoring (LTM) for environmental assessment. The environmental footprints, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, total energy used, air emissions of criteria pollutants, such as NOx, SOx, and PM10, and water consumption, were calculated, and the relative contribution in each phase was analyzed in the environmental assessment. In the RAC phase, the relative contribution of the GHG emissions, total energy used, and PM10 emissions were 77.3, 67.6, and 70.4 %, respectively, which were higher than those of the other phases because the material consumption and equipment used for system construction were high. In the RAO phase, the relative contributions of water consumption and NOx and SOx emissions were 94.7, 85.2, and 91.0 %, respectively, which were higher than those of the other phases, because the water and electricity consumption required for system operation was high. In the RIs and LTM phases, the environmental footprints were negligible because the material and energy consumption was less. In conclusion, the consumable materials and electrical energy consumption might be very important for GSR in the EK remediation process, because the production of consumable materials and electrical energy consumption highly affects the GHG emissions, total energy used, and air emissions such as NOx and SOx.Achieving shell-free kernel recovery from Jatropha fruits is important to improve oil yield and oil quality during oil extraction in biodiesel production. A shelling process with two stages of cracking and separation to remove the shells completely and husks partially was designed. Both stages used double-level cracking rollers and a blower with ducting as a separation unit. For the first, the performance was evaluated using five different roller clearances (9.5 mm, 10.0 mm, 10.5 mm, 11.0 mm and 11.5 mm) with a combination of five blower air speeds (8.5 +/- 0.5 m s(-1), 9.0 +/- 0.6 m s(-1), 9.5 +/- 0.5 m s(-1), 10.0 +/- 0.4 m s(-1) and 10.5 +/- 0.5 m s(-1)). A roller clearance of 10.5 mm and air speed of 10.0 +/- 0.4 m s(-1) were selected as the optimal conditions with the highest separation efficiency between kernels and shells at 94.59%. The shells and husks achieved 95.88% and 12.20% removal respectively while kernel recovery achieved 98.65%. For the second stage, the performance was evaluated using five different roller clearances (5.0 mm, 5.5 mm, 6.0 mm, 6.5 mm and 7.0 mm) with a combination of five blower air speeds (6.5 +/- 0.4 m s(-1), 7.0 +/- 0.2 m s(-1), 7.5 +/- 0.4 m s(-1), 8.0 +/- 0.2 m s(-1) and 8.5 +/- 0.5 m s(-1)). At the optimal conditions, with a roller clearance of 6.0 mm and air speed of 7.5 +/- 0.4 m s(-1), the maximum separation efficiency was 97.69%. Total shell and husk removal achieved for the stages were 100.00% and 45.46% respectively. A total of 2.40% kernels were lost. (C) 2014 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to reduce climate-related CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants CO2 can be captured and stored. Alternatively, CO2 can also be used as resource for new products. One way to use CO2 from flue gases is a photocatalytic conversion of CO2 to methanol or methane using dye-sensitized semiconductors according to the overall equations (1) and (2): CO2 + 2 H2O + solar energy -> CH3OH + 1.5 O-2 (1); CO2 + 2 H2O -> CH4 + 2 O-2 (2). These photocatalytic processes have been investigated within the research project "Solar2Fuel (S2F)", clarifying the technical requirements, economic conditions and ecological impacts of the concepts. This paper evaluates the energetic and ecological prospects of the two photocatalytic S2F concepts in comparison to conventional technologies for power generation and methanol/methane production. The study uses the Life Cycle Assessment method to determine ecological effects and to identify weak points of the concepts. Results of global warming potential indicate that the S2F concept has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions in comparison to conventional power generation and methanol/methane production. But the S2F concept needs large amounts of water in regions which suffer from water shortages. Furthermore, distillation of methanol produced by photocatalysis has been identified as a weak point with respect to energetic and ecological impacts. Hence, the methane producing S2F concept shows a better ecological performance than the S2F methanol process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Photocatalytic methanol and methane production using captured CO2 from coal-fired power plants could be an alternative to reduce climate-related emissions. A detailed Life Cycle Assessment for the photocatalytic production of methanol and methane using captured CO2 is published in Part I (Trudewind and Schreiber, 2014). Beside the use of methanol and methane in the chemical industry the use as fuel for transportation services could be another option. This study determines the environmental impacts of photocatalytically produced methanol or methane as fuel for passenger transportation services. For comparing different passenger transportation services by photocatalytically produced fuels gasoline vehicles and battery electric vehicles powered by electricity from the grid are also considered. Methods and software tools used to calculate the ecological impacts comply with those used in the Life Cycle Assessment for photocatalytic methanol and methane production (Part I). But the functional units of this study are defined as the electricity supply of 1 kWh to the grid as well as the transport service of 7.4 passenger kilometres. Results of the Well-to-Wheel analysis show lower ecological impacts for methane fuelled vehicles than for methanol vehicles, if both fuels were produced photocatalytically. The lowest global warming impact of the considered transport concepts is caused by battery electric vehicles charged with electricity from a power plant with CO2 capture and storage. The reference concept containing a power plant without CO2 capture as well as conventional gasoline vehicles shows the highest ecological impacts. In summary, it can be determined by the Well-to-Wheel analysis that the photocatalytic production of methane and methanol and their use as fuels offer advantages over the conventional concepts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the major objectives of this research was to develop a tool that allows the control of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a dairy cow system by considering variables such as feed composition, growth phase, enteric fermentation, and manure management. Of these, feed composition is the most influential and controllable variable. Therefore, any abatement measure applied for the reduction of GHG emissions from a dairy cow system must include the control of the feed composition. Thus, feedstuffs with lower GHG emission factors and gross energy values should be used. In addition, we developed a GHG emission quantification procedure for dairy cow systems based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach incorporating the IPCC's GHG emission calculation equations, and set up a relationship between the feed composition and corresponding GHG emissions. Finally, a comparative assessment of the alternative feed compared to the original feed was performed to quantify the reduction of GHG emissions from the dairy cow system in order to select the most desirable feed composition. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Olive growing is an important cultural and traditional system in the Mediterranean region that has considerable environmental impacts. Italy is ranked second in the world in terms of olive production and olive-cultivated area. Apulia is Italy's largest olive growing region and accounts for 33% of the total Italian surface area planted to olive trees. Organic farming is assumed to have beneficial effects by reducing the environmental impacts of agricultural practices. However, literature shows that this system is not always less harmful to the environment than the conventional one. This study investigates this hypothesis through the comparison of environmental impacts and economic performances between organic and conventional olive systems in Apulia region. It also provides options to optimize the agricultural practices that could contribute to the reduction of the environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to evaluate the environmental impacts, and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) was utilized to assess the economic performance of the studied systems referring to one hectare as functional unit and to a system boundary limited to olive production (cradle-to-farm gate). Results showed a lower environmental impact of agricultural practices in the organic system, mainly due to the higher efficiency in reducing the impact on fossil fuel depletion. Moreover, the organic system resulted to have higher Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return values that indicate its higher profitability as compared to the conventional system. Optimization of fertilization is the first priority to optimize olive growing, particularly in the organic system, since manure fertilization results in higher costs and higher environmental impact on almost all impact categories compared to synthetic foliar fertilization. Good agricultural practices with electrically-driven irrigation system, mechanical weeding and biological pest control, no-tillage or reduced tillage can be considered as further optimization options to mitigate environmental burdens and reduce their costs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The growth of desktop 3-D printers is driving an interest in recycled 3-D printer filament to reduce costs of distributed production. Life cycle analysis studies were performed on the recycling of high density polyethylene into filament suitable for additive layer manufacturing with 3-D printers. The conventional centralized recycling system for high population density and low population density rural locations was compared to the proposed in home, distributed recycling system. This system would involve shredding and then producing filament with an open-source plastic extruder from post-consumer plastics and then printing the extruded filament into usable, value-added parts and products with 3-D printers such as the open-source self replicating rapid prototyper, or RepRap. The embodied energy and carbon dioxide emissions were calculated for high density polyethylene recycling using SimaPro 7.2 and the database Ecolnvent v2.0. The results showed that distributed recycling uses less embodied energy than the best-case scenario used for centralized recycling. For centralized recycling in a low-density population case study involving substantial embodied energy use for transportation and collection these savings for distributed recycling were found to extend to over 80%. If the distributed process is applied to the U.S. high density polyethylene currently recycled, more than 100 million MJ of energy could be conserved per annum along with the concomitant significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It is concluded that with the open-source 3-D printing network expanding rapidly the potential for widespread adoption of in-home recycling of post-consumer plastic represents a novel path to a future of distributed manufacturing appropriate for both the developed and developing world with lower environmental impacts than the current system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In technical Research and Development (R&D) projects, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the technology under development is sometimes carried out. Particularly in inter-organisational R&D projects, the roles of LCAs tend to be unclear and arbitrary, and as a consequence, LCA work is not adequately designed for the needs of the project. There is a need for research on how to choose an appropriate role for LCA in such projects and how to plan LCA work accordingly. We have identified some possible roles of LCA in inter-organisational R&D projects and used experiences from LCA work in different such projects to identify four project characteristics that are decisive for what roles the LCA can have. The project characteristics are: (i) the project's potential influence on environmental impacts, (ii) the degrees of freedom available for the technical direction of the project, (iii) the project's potential to provide required input to the LCA, and (iv) access to relevant audiences for the LCA results. We discuss how evaluation of these project characteristics can help project commissioners, project managers and LCA practitioners to deliberately choose appropriate roles of LCA in inter-organisational R&D projects and plan projects for efficient use of LCA. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As closed-loop production becomes an increasingly viable strategy for product life cycle management, cost modelling and analytical tools for closed-loop production systems will become increasingly important. Existing tools based on life cycle costing (LCC) methods are lacking an integrated life cycle perspective in their approach a perspective that cannot be overlooked when modelling closed-loop production systems. In this paper, we aim to solve this lack of integrated life cycle approach by proposing the product structure-based integrated life cycle analysis (PSILA) technique. It allows us to streamline the process of modelling a closed-loop production system for a complex product based on its product structure. Through this technique, we developed a cost model of a closed-loop production system for a flat-panel (FPD) monitor case study. In this case study, the results simulated by the cost model show an increase in the economic performance when closed-loop production is adopted for the FPD monitor. Deeper analysis of the results in the case study indicate that in order to improve the economic performance of the closed-loop production system for the FPD monitor, the best strategy is not to merely focus on the reutilisation of materials. Instead, the option to remanufacture the FPD monitor for the secondary market should be explored to maximise the value reclaimed from the monitors in the EoL phase. The case study demonstrates that the cost model developed through the PSILA technique has the ability to function as a tool for analysing the economic performance of closed-loop production systems. More importantly, it has the ability to provide us with strategic insights on the cost feasibility of adopting closed-loop production strategies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Peruvian anchoveta fishery is currently targeted by a large fleet featuring a wide range of vessel sizes (segments), with highly variable capacities. In addition, the landings of the industrial fleet are used exclusively by the reduction industry, while those performed by small- and medium-scale vessels are destined mainly for direct human consumption. Despite these differences, the entire fleet is made up of purse seiners that perform similar operations when at sea. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to identify the differences in eco-efficiency between the different fleet segments in order to delve into the potential environmental improvements that could be attained through operational benchmarking. To this end, the combined use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was applied to the Peruvian anchoveta fleet. More specifically, a modified 5-step LCA + DEA method, whose particularities are broadly discussed throughout the study, was computed to obtain the desired operational benchmarks and, thereafter, estimate the target environmental gains. Results led to an average efficiency score of 86% throughout the segments, with a total of eight fleet segments out of 13 (62%) operating inefficiently. Nevertheless, no clear pattern was identified through the segments, although certain correlations with stock abundance, fuel use intensity, overcapacity and climatic conditions are discussed. Reduction in material inputs based on operational benchmarks translated into environmental gains that ranged from 26% to 53% for inefficient segments. Finally, it is expected that the findings in this study may aid stakeholders and policy makers when revising fuel use optimisation and overcapacity management strategies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Choose an environmentally End-of-Life (EoL) strategy is not an easy task. From a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) point of view, depending on the processes and destinations applied after use, the entire life cycle is affected, even earlier steps, such as the acquisition of raw materials and manufacturing. This paper aimed to assess the environmental impacts of an air compressor in Brazil, from cradle to the grave, with focus on the comparison of three waste management alternatives. We defined a Remanufacturing, Recycling and Landfilling scenarios following European Directive on waste management hierarchy. LCA methodology was applied to evaluate the potentials impacts on Global Warming, Abiotic Resource Depletion, Total Cumulative Energy Demand and Land Occupation based on primary data collected by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). The case study indicates that the hotspot of this product system occurs in the use phase due the high demand of energy during its long life span. This predominance is such that it overcomes the differences among the three EoL scenarios. Removing this phase in LCA's result interpretation we found that for all categories Remanufacturing has the best environmental performance followed by Recycling and Landfilling. Remanufacturing was able to reduce the environmental impact by more than 40% compared to Landfilling through a reduced consumption of raw materials, manufacturing processes and environmental gains of avoided products. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of the environmental evaluation of the waste treatment processes occurring at LIPOR (the Inter-municipal Waste Management System of Greater Porto - Portugal) in the period 2007-2011. To this aim two methodologies are applied, namely the Energy and Material Flow Analysis (EMFA) and the Ecological Footprint (EF). The benefits of their joint application are explored, as well as the usefulness of the indicators derived to guide the company in the identification of the hot spots and in the improvement of their management practices. The Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS) at LIPOR includes several units, specifically the separation of several materials for valorization (namely, packaging materials -as metals and plastics-, glass and paper and cardboard), the incineration of waste with energy recovery, composting of the organic fraction and the landfilling of pre-treated waste. From the EMFA, it can be highlighted that the electricity generated in the energy recovery plant is the most important energy flow and that it largely exceeds the energy demands from the LIPOR system. According to the net EF results, the composting and energy recovery units were found as very beneficial in terms of resources savings. Despite the fact that the composting plant has the largest gross EF (0.28 +/- 0.02 gm(2) kg(-1) in average for the period analyzed, where gm(2) refers to global square meters), a significant counter footprint effect associated with the production of the compost was calculated (-1.51 +/- 0.10 gm(2) kg(-1) of waste composted). The energy recovery plant shows the lower gross EF (0.05 +/- 0.01 gm(2) kg(-1) of waste combusted), but also an important contribution to the counter footprint (-0.78 +/- 0.01 gm(2) kg(-1) in average). These individual results are reported to 1 kg of waste treated at each facility. Meanwhile, the EF for the overall IWMS reaches -0.49 +/- 0.12 gm(2) kg(-1), where this result is reported to the total wastes treated at LIPOR. The negative value means that, in terms of the EF, the global system is environmentally beneficial because of the recovery of resources such as the compost and electricity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The effective management of fresh water through the use of water technologies is central to international debate. However, available indicators used to measure the performance of water technologies have several limitations: they do not comprehensively assess the quantity and quality of water use; they are not able to measure the benefits of locally recovered resources; and they are not simple to apply in a life-cycle perspective. The goals of this paper are to develop a set of indicators based on the Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) and Energy Pay-Back Time (EPBT) models used in the energy sector to compare the performances of water-use technologies in different locations and therefore measure their benefits in term of recovered water resources in different contexts. The Cumulative Water Demand (CWD) and Water Pay-Back Time (WPBT) indicators were developed and tested in a case study of a water-collection system produced in Padova (Italy) and installed in Rovigo (Italy). To determine their effectiveness, a simulation of their application to the same technology in different Italian locations was performed. The results confirmed the applicability of the designed set of indicators and the effectiveness of the WPBT in measuring their performance in different contexts. To obtain comprehensive information on the quantity and quality of water used, it is recommended that CWD and WPBT be used together. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment, LCA, has become a key methodology to evaluate the environmental performance of products, services and processes and it is considered a powerful tool for decision makers. Waste treatment options are frequently evaluated using LCA methodologies in order to determine the option with the lowest environmental impact. Due to the approximate nature of LCA, where results are highly influenced by the assumptions made in the definition of the system, this methodology has certain non-negligible limitations. Because of that, the use of LCA to assess waste co-incineration in cement kilns is reviewed in this paper, with a special attention to those key inventory results highly dependent on the initial assumptions made. Therefore, the main focus of this paper is the life cycle inventory, LCI, of carbon emissions, primary energy and air emissions. When the focus is made on cement production, a tonne of cement is usually the functional unit. In this case, waste co-incineration has a non-significant role on CO2 emissions from the cement kiln and an important energy efficiency loss can be deduced from the industry performance data, which is rarely taken into account by LCA practitioners. If cement kilns are considered as another waste treatment option, the functional unit is usually 1 t of waste to be treated. In this case, it has been observed that contradictory results may arise depending on the initial assumptions, generating high uncertainty in the results. Air emissions, as heavy metals, are quite relevant when assessing waste co-incineration, as the amount of pollutants in the input are increased. Constant transfer factors are mainly used for heavy metals, but it may not be the correct approach for mercury emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The establishment of an integrated rational waste management system is a complex issue, which has to be clearly investigated and a widespread variety of environmental, social and economic criteria should be taken into consideration. Each different waste treatment alternative provides a specific environmental, social and economic performance. Therefore, the crucial environmental, social and economic criteria need to be identified, estimated and thoroughly examined. In this manuscript, mechanical biological aerobic treatment without RDF energy recovery, mechanical biological anaerobic treatment and incineration with energy recovery are compared and finally ranked according to their environmental, social and economic performance. Analytical hierarchical process was used to rank the performance in three examined pillars in the capacity range of 70-90 kt. Incineration with energy recovery provides best performance due to the high amount of generated energy, whereas the other two options provide less capital costs. However, the performance of each treatment alternative is strongly dependent on the selection and weight of criteria. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Acid mine drainage (AMD), resulting from open-cast coal mining, is currently one of the largest environmental challenges facing the mining industry. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the construction, operation and maintenance of different AMD treatment options typically employed. LCA is a well-reported tool but is not documented for AMD treatment systems despite their ubiquitous implementation worldwide. This study conducted detailed LCA analysis for various passive and active AMD treatment approaches implemented or considered at a major coal mine in New Zealand using a comparative functional unit of kg acidity removed per day for each treatment option. Eight treatment scenarios were assessed including active limestone and hydrated lime treatments, and compared to passive treatments using limestone and waste materials such as mussel shells. Both midpoint and endpoint LCA impact categories were assessed. Generally, the active treatment scenarios demonstrated greater LCA impacts compared to an equivalent level of treatment for the passive treatment approaches. Lime slaking had the greatest LCA impacts, while passive treatment approaches incurred consistently less impacts except for one passive treatment with a purchased energy scenario. A 50% reduction in transportation distances resulted in the lowest LCA impacts for all scenarios. This study highlights the importance of evaluating the environmental and social impacts of AMD treatment for the mining industry. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Diversity of agricultural systems can be described at different scales in terms of three main types of variables: technical management of cropping systems, farming systems and food supply chains. We focus on the diversity of technical management routes (TMRs), defined as logical successions of technical options (TOs) designed by the farmers. The study, comparison and assessment of this great diversity of complex routes are impossible with classical agronomic experiments or exhaustive assessments such as life cycle assessment (LCA). Hence, the selection of representative cases is necessary. Multidimensional data analysis methods permit the characterization of a diversity of TMRs and the construction of typologies but do not allow the consideration of the specific associations of TOs constituting the various TMRs. The aim of this paper is threefold: (i) to propose a new combined method, "Typ-iti", to classify the field TMRs of farmers, to identify key TO associations and to select the most relevant cases for study; (ii) to test this method on vineyard management diversity using a panel of vineyard fields of Loire Valley producers; and (iii) to discuss the capability of the proposed Typ-iti method for use in the characterization and selection of cases of other agricultural systems at diverse scales. The example developed in this paper is the selection of vineyard management cases for grape LCA combined with grape quality evaluation. The cases were selected to represent the regional diversity of management practices. A detailed on-farm survey of management methods was performed on a diverse range of wine production estates in the Middle Loire Valley. The Typ-iti method was constructed and implemented on the survey database. It combines a multidimensional analysis of qualitative survey data and typology and partitioning (clustering) associated with data mining methods (frequent pattern mining search and association rules). The surveyed sample was partitioned into 5 types of management practices, 2 of which were organic and 3 conventional. The partitioning was driven primarily by choices involving pest management and floor management. Each type was characterized by specific TOs, specific associations of TOs and remarkable TMRs. The cases were chosen on the basis of these 3 parameters. The Typ-iti method can be applied to other crops and at different scales; the only limitation is the availability of precise information on the practices used by farmers in their fields. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Pneumatic actuators and electric actuators have almost been applied to all manufacturing industries. The two kinds of actuators can replace each other in most fields, such as the point to point transmission occasion and some rotating occasions. However, there are very few research results about the advantages and disadvantages of two kinds of actuators under the same working conditions so far. In this paper, a novel comprehensive assessment method, named as overall life cycle comprehensive assessment (OLCCA), is proposed for comparison and assessment of pneumatic and electric actuators. OLCCA contains mechanical properties evaluation (MPE), life cycle cost analysis based on users (LCCABOU) and life cycle environmental impact analysis (LCEIA) algorithm in order to solve three difficult problems: mechanical properties assessment, cost analysis and environmental impact assessment about actuators. The mechanical properties evaluation of actuators is a multi-objective optimization problem. The fuzzy data quantification and information entropy methods are combined to establish MPE algorithm of actuators. Two kinds of pneumatic actuators and electric actuators with similar bearing capacity and similar work stroke were taken for example to verify the correctness of MPE algorithm. The case study of MPE algorithm for actuators verified its correctness. LCCABOU for actuators is also set up. Considering cost complex structure of pneumatic actuators, public device cost even method (PDCEM) is firstly presented to solve cost division of public devices such as compressors, aftercooler, receivers, etc. LCCABOU method is also effective and verified by the three groups of pneumatic actuators and electric actuators. Finally, LCEIA model of actuators is established for the environmental impact assessment of actuators. LCEIA data collection method and model establishment procedure for actuators are also put forward. With Simapro 7, LCEIA comparison results of six actuators can be obtained: Fossil fuels are the major environmental factor of pneumatic and electric actuators; Environmental impact of electric actuator is large than one of pneumatic actuator under the similar mechanical properties and working conditions of pneumatic and electric actuators. The results are correct and correspond with the actual mechanical properties of actuators. This paper proposes a comprehensive evaluation method of the actuators, which can solve the critical problem that similar electromechanical products are very difficult to be compared with each other from the angle of performance, cost and environment impact.The purpose of this paper is to note the importance of market orientation in agribusiness and to describe the relevance of market-oriented traceability in the export of beef from the Brazilian Legal Amazon, one of the most scrutinised areas of the world in terms of environmental risks. The study is of a descriptive nature and it uses bibliographic references and secondary data to discuss bovine traceability in the context of deforestation of the Brazilian Legal Amazon and its consequences for international beef trade. Analysed data include those related to the Amazon Region and the following aspects are considered: deforestation dynamics, consumer demands, the volume of exported meat and traceability as a prerequisite for meat export based on the market orientation theory. The results indicated that, according to market orientation, beef certification is a prerequisite for meat produced in the Brazilian Amazon Region for maintaining and expanding a sustainable share of the international markets without the burden of presumptive deforestation. The findings markedly affect primary beef production in the region analysed and the local production systems are forced to adapt to the demands of consumers who are anxious to be assured that the environmental footprint of livestock produced is mitigated worldwide, particularly in the Brazilian Amazon. Concerns regarding the environmental impact of animal production are crucial in the promotion of sustainability of agriculture production, furthermore the major drivers of sustainability in agriculture are the demands of the food market. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste cooking oil is one of the energy sources for its unique composition which contains glycerol, It can be a good base for producing biodiesel. The objective of this study is to perform the energy and economic analyses of biodiesel production from Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) by the conventional transesterification method at the Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. Data is acceded by performed biodiesel machine, with three replications during spring season (2012) in the same condition. The volume of biodiesel machine is 2000 L and the area of this lab is 100 m(2). The total energy input and energy output were calculated as 30.05 and 44.91 MJ L-1, respectively. The energy output/input ratio was 1.49 in biodiesel production. The shares of renewable and non-renewable energy were 77.31% and 22.69%, respectively from total energy input. The benefit to cost ratio was found to be 2.081 according to the result of economical analysis of biodiesel production. The mean net return and productivity from biodiesel production were found to be 1.298 $ L-1 and 0.946 kg $(-1), respectively. The results showed that by applying ultrasonic and microwave instead of transesterfication and great managing, more benefit can be resulted. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, there are indicators to assess the sustainable development of a country and the energetic sector in general, but not to assess electric power plants. This work is aimed at evaluating the sustainability of specific technological systems. A multi-criteria method called Analytical Hierarchization Process was applied to analyze sustainability throughout the life cycle of various electric power plants in Mexico (such as hydroelectric, coal, heavy oil thermoelectric, natural gas thermoelectric, geothermal, nuclear, wind energy, photothermal and photovoltaic plants). An analysis throughout the whole life cycle makes it easier to assess and prepare an inventory of all sustainability indicators, resulting in a useful report for decision-making purposes in order to drive sustainable development in the electric sector. Four scenarios were analyzed using information provided by the Comision Federal de Electricidad (Electric Power Federal Commission), the opinion of experts, and scenarios with ecological and technocrat tendencies. The global result, using the measure of central tendency, reflects the benefit of renewable energies: wind energy is the most sustainable energy under the current circumstances of our country. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy plays a pivotal role for the economic development of a country. A reliable source of energy is needed to improve the living standard of people. Today, industrial progress plays a vital role in the development of any country but the industrial progress depends on reliable supply of electricity. However, Pakistan is passing through an energy crisis that is seriously affecting the lives of people. The main reason for the energy crisis is rapidly increasing the prices of hydro-carbon resources and lack of planning to foresee the increasing energy demand in the country. Renewable energy (RE) can play an important role to minimize this crisis. Besides the depletion of fossil fuel, the accumulation of their emissions has catastrophic effects on our environment. Modern civilizations are more curious about environmental cleanliness. Environmental pollution is supposed to be a serious threat to the life on our planet. Our earth could heat up by several degrees in future if we do not stop using non-renewable energy resources. In this article, the exiting production of renewable energy through different RE technologies is discussed and the potential capacity of production of energy through these technologies in Pakistan is studied. Some suggestions are also proposed to increase the RE share in the energy mix of the country. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The upcoming stricter emission control area (ECA) regulations on sulphur and nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions from shipping can be handled by different strategies. In this study, three alternatives complying with the ECA regulations for sulphur as well as Tier III for NOX are presented and compared using life cycle assessment. None of the three alternatives will significantly reduce the life cycle impact on climate change compared to heavy fuel oil (HFO). However, all alternatives will reduce the impact on particulate matter, photochemical ozone formation, acidification and terrestrial eutrophication potential. The assessment also highlighted two important regulatory aspects. Firstly, the need to regulate the ammonia slip from use of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and secondly the need to regulate the methane slip from LNG engines. In addition, an analysis of the use of SCR in Swedish waters is presented showing that SCRs have been used on a number of ships already giving significantly reduced NOX emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgal biodiesel production has been investigated for decades, yet it is not commercially available. Part of the problem is that the production process is energy and chemical intensive due, in part, to the high portion of microalgal biomass left as residues. This study investigated cradle-to-gate life-cycle environmental impacts from six different scenarios of microalgal biodiesel and its co-products. Ozone depletion, global warming, photochemical smog formation, acidification and eutrophication potentials were assessed using the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts (TRACI). Monte Carlo Analysis was conducted to investigate the processes with major contribution in each impact category. The market opportunity for each co-product was examined based on supply, demand and prices of the products that could potentially be substituted by the co-products. The results indicated that the scenario with the least life-cycle environmental impacts in all the five impact categories with the highest net energy ratio was the scenario utilizing a multitude of co-products including bioethanol from lipid-extracted microalgae (LEA), biomethane (to produce electricity and heat) from simultaneous saccharification-fermentation (SSF) residues, land-applied material from SSF residue anaerobic digestion (AD) solid digestate, recycling nutrients from SSF residue AD liquid digestate and CO2 recovered from SSF process contributed. Decreasing the energy consumption of the centrifuge in the land-applied material production process and increasing the lipid content of microalgae can reduce environmental footprints of the co-products. The same scenario also had the highest total income indicating their potential as co-products in the market. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The possibilities for full life cycle assessment (LCA) of new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products are often limited, so simplification approaches are needed. The aim of this paper is to investigate possible simplifications in LCA of a mobile phone and to use the results to discuss the possibilities of LCA simplifications for ICT products in a broader sense. Another aim is to identify processes and data that are sensitive to different methodological choices and assumptions related to the environmental impacts of a mobile phone. Different approaches to a reference LCA of a mobile phone was tested: (1) excluding environmental impact categories, (2) excluding life cycle stages/processes, (3) using secondary process data from generic databases, (4) using input-output data and (5) using a simple linear relationship between mass and embodied emissions. It was not possible to identify one or a few impact categories representative of all others. If several impact categories would be excluded, information would be lost. A precautionary approach of not excluding impact categories is therefore recommended since impacts from the different life cycle stages vary between impact categories. Regarding use of secondary data for an ICT product similar to that studied here, we recommend prioritising collection of primary (specific) data on energy use during production and use, key component data (primarily integrated circuits) and process-specific data regarding raw material acquisition of specific metals (e.g. gold) and air transport. If secondary data are used for important processes, the scaling is crucial. The use of input-output data can be a considerable simplification and is probably best used to avoid data gaps when more specific data are lacking. Further studies are needed to provide for simplified LCAs for ICT products. In particular, the end-of-life treatment stage need to be further addressed, as it could not be investigated here for all simplifications due to data gaps.The present study provides a review on sea-use impacts and how they are handled in life cycle assessments (LCA). It aims at defining the impact pathways for occupation and transformation impacts on marine ecosystems due to human activities (constructions, fishing, aquaculture, navigation). First, a review was performed on human interventions leading to environmental impacts in marine areas and on additional fishery-related impact categories used in LCA of seafood, in order to identify the main methodological deficiencies existing in LCA of seafood products. Second, the sea-use impact category has been defined, by detailing the human interventions leading to impacts on the marine environment and which should be accounted for in LCA. Subsequently, the identification and description of the possible impact pathways linking activities and interventions to impact categories are carried out at endpoint and midpoint levels. This assessment has been based on a review of existing methods of land use, and suggests the use of certain indicators, which could be available for different types of marine activities and ecosystems. This study highlights the needs to account for impacts of human activities due to sea use. Additional indicators have often been added in LCA of seafood, to assess the impacts of seafloor destruction and biomass removal. By extending the scope to other activities than fisheries, many interventions lead to impacts on marine ecosystems: biomass removal and benthic construction, invasive species release, shading, artificial habitat creation, noise, turbidity, and changes in original habitat availability. The impact pathway definition and the identification of the most relevant methods for sea use highlighted the need to assess impacts on ecosystem services (life support functions, global material cycling, and detoxification of pollutants) and on biodiversity as well as biotic resource depletion. A consensus for biotic resource depletion assessment still needs to be found despite recent innovative proposals. For the sea-use impact assessment, methods using species-area relationships, as well as methods focusing on ecosystem services, appear particularly relevant. In a context of strong marine resource overexploitation, and limited marine biodiversity data, the deficiencies in biomass production capability (provisioning services) could be the first stage of sea-use development.This work intends to show whether the Eco-label EU Decision for hard coverings, in which marble is contemplated among hard coverings as a natural product, is really capable of capturing the environmental performances of the marble productive chain, in other words whether it is actually viable for the natural products, like marble. After a preliminary critical analysis of the suitability for marble of the current EU Decision (2009/607/EC), a classical life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied on the field to the marble "Perlato di Sicilia." More specifically, the whole productive chain of a couple of firms treating the "Perlato di Sicilia" marble has been examined. The life cycle analysis is actually a cradle-to-gate analysis which includes the raw material extraction, processing phase, and finishing operations. Both the preliminary critical analyses of the structure of the Decision and the in-field checking on the two firms of the Custonaci marble district in Sicily singled out several conflicting points of the Decision for the marble working chain. These difficulties could be reasonably extended to other natural stones, such as granite, for which similar working processes are applied. Based on the outcomes of both these analyses, in the present work, a set of new indicators and modified criteria, already present in the Decision, is proposed as a candidate to be considered for inclusion in a future release of the Decision. The changes here introduced can represent a useful indication toward a more suitable scheme of the EU Eco-label for marble, at least. Clearly, further investigations need to better assess the proposed scheme, especially in terms of threshold values of pollutant releases and use of explosive that are actually specific for the marble productive chain. The present modified version of the standard has been proposed to the Sicilian administration in order to be voluntarily adopted by marble productive sites of the region, in the aim of extensively verifying its suitability.Cooking energy is an essential requirement of any human dwelling. With the recent upsurge in petroleum prices coupled with intrinsic volatility of international oil markets, it is fast turning into a politico-socio-economic dilemma for countries like India to sustain future subsidies on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and kerosene. The aim of this paper is to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of various cooking fuel options, namely LPG (NG), LPG (CO), kerosene, coal, electricity, firewood, crop residue, dung cake, charcoal, and biogas, in the Indian context. The purpose of this study is to find environmentally suitable alternatives to LPG and kerosene for rural and urban areas of the country. The study assessed the cooking fuel performance on 13 ReCiPe environmental impact categories using the life cycle assessment methodology. The study modeled the system boundary for each fuel based on the Indian scenario and prepared a detailed life cycle inventory for each cooking fuel taking 1 GJ of heat energy transferred to cooking pot as the functional unit. The cooking fuels with the lowest life cycle environmental impacts are biogas followed by LPG, kerosene, and charcoal. The environmental impacts of using LPG are about 15 to 18 % lower than kerosene for most environmental impact categories. LPG derived from natural gas has about 20 to 30 % lower environmental impact than LPG derived from crude oil. Coal and dung cake have the highest environmental impacts because of significant contributions to climate change and particulate formation, respectively. Charcoal produced from renewable wood supply performs better than kerosene on most impact categories except photochemical oxidation, where its contribution is 19 times higher than kerosene. Biogas and charcoal can be viewed as potentially sustainable cooking fuel options in the Indian context because of their environmental benefits and other associated co-benefits such as land farming, local employment opportunities, and skill development. The study concluded that kerosene, biogas, and charcoal for rural areas and LPG, kerosene, and biogas for urban areas have the lower environmental footprint among the chosen household cooking fuels in the study.This work has two major objectives: (1) to perform an attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of a complex mean of production, the main Peruvian fishery targeting anchoveta (anchovy) and (2) to assess common assumptions regarding the exclusion of items from the life cycle inventory (LCI). Data were compiled for 136 vessels of the 661 units in the fleet. The functional unit was 1 t of fresh fish delivered by a steel vessel. Our approach consisted of four steps: (1) a stratified sampling scheme based on a typology of the fleet, (2) a large and very detailed inventory on small representative samples with very limited exclusion based on conventional LCI approaches, (3) an impact assessment on this detailed LCI, followed by a boundary-refining process consisting of retention of items that contributed to the first 95 % of total impacts and (4) increasing the initial sample with a limited number of items, according to the results of (3). The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method mostly used was ReCiPe v1.07 associated to the ecoinvent database. Some items that are usually ignored in an LCI's means of production have a significant impact. The use phase is the most important in terms of impacts (66 %), and within that phase, fuel consumption is the leading inventory item contributing to impacts (99 %). Provision of metals (with special attention to electric wiring which is often overlooked) during construction and maintenance, and of nylon for fishing nets, follows. The anchoveta fishery is shown to display the lowest fuel use intensity worldwide. Boundary setting is crucial to avoid underestimation of environmental impacts of complex means of production. The construction, maintenance and EOL stages of the life cycle of fishing vessels have here a substantial environmental impact. Recommendations can be made to decrease the environmental impact of the fleet.Environmental concerns have been a growing issue when planning energy supply systems for buildings, as the energy demands (presenting seasonal and daily variations) represent one of the most energy-intensive consumptions in industrialized societies. The optimal operation corresponding to different energy demands of a trigeneration system was analyzed by an integrated methodology combining Thermoeconomic analysis and life cycle assessment, in order to adequately allocate the energy resources and the generated environmental loads to the different energy services produced. Thermoeconomic analysis, which is usually used to allocate energy and economic costs, is herein applied to the evaluation of environmental costs and distribution of resources throughout the trigeneration system. Attention is focused on the correct allocation of energy resources and environmental loads to internal flows and final products. Appropriate rules were established to calculate energy and environmental costs. Operation of the system considered the possibilities that surplus electricity could be exported to the national grid and part of the cogenerated heat could be wasted if this resulted in a decrease of operation costs and/or environmental loads. The results obtained show a low-cost and low-emission production with respect to the separate production in different operation modes. It was observed that, in specific periods, the trigeneration system operates wasting part of the cogenerated heat, and, in other periods, part of the electricity produced is exported to the electric grid. The trigeneration system operates in these modes because it results beneficial from environmental or economic viewpoints, achieving a lower economic cost or fewer CO2 emissions. The methodology presented as well as the allocation method proposal were congruent with the objectives of installing trigeneration systems that supplied energy services with fewer emissions than those of separate production and of equally benefitting the consumers of heat, coolth ("coolth" is used as the noun form of "cool"; opposite of warmth. Not to be confused with cooling, which is the opposite of heating.) (alias cooling energy), and electricity.Waste management for end-of-life (EoL) smartphones is a growing problem due to their high turnover rate and concentration of toxic chemicals. The versatility of modern smartphones presents an interesting alternative waste management strategy: repurposing. This paper investigates the environmental impact of smartphone repurposing as compared to traditional refurbishing using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A case study of repurposing was conducted by creating a smartphone "app" that replicates the functionality of an in-car parking meter. The environmental impacts of this prototype were quantified using waste management LCA methodology. Studied systems included three waste management options: traditional refurbishment, repurposing using battery power, and repurposing using a portable solar charger. The functional unit was defined as the EoL management of a used smartphone. Consequential system expansion was employed to account for secondary functions provided; avoided impacts from displaced primary products were included. Impacts were calculated in five impact categories. Break-even displacement rates were calculated and sensitivity to standby power consumption were assessed. LCA results showed that refurbishing creates the highest environmental impacts of the three reuse routes in every impact category except ODP. High break-even displacement rates suggest that this finding is robust within a reasonable range of primary cell phone displacement. The repurposed smartphone in-car parking meter had lower impacts than the primary production parking meter. Impacts for battery-powered devices were dominated by use-phase charging electricity, whereas solar-power impacts were concentrated in manufacturing. Repurposed phones using battery power had lower impacts than those using solar power, however, standby power sensitivity analysis revealed that solar power is preferred if the battery charger is left plugged-in more than 20 % of the use period. Our analysis concludes that repurposing represents an environmentally preferable EoL option to refurbishing for used smartphones. The results suggest two generalizable findings. First, primary product displacement is a major factor affecting whether any EoL strategy is environmentally beneficial. The benefit depends not only on what is displaced, but also on how much displacement occurs; in general, repurposing allows freedom to target reuse opportunities with high "displacement potential." Second, the notion that solar power is preferable to batteries is not always correct; here, the rank-order is sensitive to assumptions about user behavior.Purpose When product systems are optimized to minimize environmental impacts, uncertainty in the process data may impact optimal decisions. The purpose of this article is to propose a mathematical method for life cycle assessment (LCA) optimization that protects decisions against uncertainty at the life cycle inventory (LCI) stage. Methods A robust optimization approach is proposed for decision making under uncertainty in the LCI stage. The proposed approach incorporates data uncertainty into an optimization problem in which the matrix-based LCI model appears as a constraint. The level of protection against data uncertainty in the technology and intervention matrices can be controlled to reflect varying degrees of conservatism. Results and discussion A simple numerical example on an electricity generation product system is used to illustrate the main features of this methodology. A comparison is made between a robust optimization approach, and decision making using a Monte Carlo analysis. Challenges to implement the robust optimization approach on common uncertainty distributions found in LCA and on large product systems are discussed. Supporting source code is available for download at https://github.com/renwang/Robust_Optimization_LCI_Uncertainty. Conclusions A robust optimization approach for matrix-based LCI is proposed. The approach incorporates data uncertainties into an optimization framework for LCI and provides a mechanism to control the level of protection against uncertainty. The tool computes optimal decisions that protects against worst-case realizations of data uncertainty. The robust optimal solution is conservative and is able to avoid the negative consequences of uncertainty in decision making.This article is the third of a series of articles presenting the results of research on the implementation of life cycle management tools in small- and medium-sized companies in Poland. The purpose of the three-part series of articles is to present the results of research on the implementation of life cycle tools in Polish small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This work is part of a project financed by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PAED) which began in February 2011. It was carried out by the Wielkopolska Quality Institute-a business environment institution associated with the Polish Centre for LCA (PCLCA). The main practical objective of the project was to support SMEs in their business development, e.g. by expanding their horizons beyond the sphere of their operation and identifying new areas for the improvement and promotion of the products and services on offer. The specific objective of the analysis involving the assessment of life-cycle costs of products and services was an attempt to answer the question to determine whether the assessment carried out in accordance with the life-cycle cost (LCC) methodology is a good tool for cost management in this type of business. Part 3 describes the results of studies on the assessment of the implementation of LCC in SMEs conducted in 50 companies involved in the project. In order to assess the effectiveness of the project and the effectiveness of the implementation of LCA and LCC, a survey was conducted of small- and medium-sized businesses where the implementation works had been fully completed. In total, 50 organisations agreed to participate in the LCC survey (while 46 in the LCA-part 2 paper), which was 71 % of all the companies where the LCA and LCC studies had been carried out within the project. The survey was conducted using individual in-depth interviews. Questions to the representatives of the companies referred both to aspects of their operating in the market (characteristics of a company, its market share, management systems, environmental policy, suppliers, clients) and the implementation of their environmental service (assessment of its effectiveness, motivation, difficulties in its implementation), as well as opinions on the potential applications of LCA in their current operations. The experience and observations of LCC experts resulting from their cooperation with the analysed organisations are largely supported by the results of the survey. The overall impression gained from the project is that the small- and medium-sized enterprises considered have a problem with accepting and understanding the life-cycle perspective, and show limited interest in taking liability for environmental and cost aspects beyond the mandatory legal standards and boundaries of their business operations. Nevertheless, the LCC analyses aroused much bigger interest among the companies than the environmental due to the fact that the cost aspects in companies undergoing normal development are seen as an important source of information about the structure of the costs generated with respect to the products or services provided. It is important to note that a very important factor encouraging businesses to join the studies was the fact that they were cost-free. Moreover, the planned introduction of a new product onto the market was the argument that often influenced the decision to implement the LCC. The survey has shown that companies rarely perform cost analyses including all stages of the life cycle of a product or service. Although the awareness of the importance of conducting economic researches for the entire life cycle of a product or service is great, it turned out to be problematic to unambiguously define the practical use of such an analysis, at least at the present stage of development of the companies surveyed. The results obtained in the survey indicate that in the case of simple products, with a short life cycle, complex cost analyses may seem less useful. For more complex products or services, with long periods of use, high reliability required, and high operating costs, the analyses presented are useful tools that increase the economic efficiency of the projects implemented. It appears that from the point of view of polish SMEs, the usefulness of an LCA is seen mainly from the angle of opportunities for cost reduction (preferably in business) and increased sales (marketing). A good solution would be to conduct relatively simple, but integrated LCA/LCC analyses in SMEs so that the companies would clearly see the economic effects of the proposed environmental improvements.Conventional wisdom suggests that product reuse can provide environmental savings. The purpose of this study is to first compare the environmental impacts of retail refilling and remanufactured inkjet cartridge alternatives to production of new inkjet cartridges, and then determine the extent to which consumer behavior can influence life cycle outcomes. A life cycle inventory was developed for an inkjet cartridge with an integral print head using material composition data collected from cartridge disassembly and material processing, product manufacturing, and transportation inputs estimated from market data and the ecoinvent database in SimaPro 7.3. Although previous comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) studies for printer cartridges typically use "pages printed" or a variation thereof for the functional unit, "cartridge use cycles" is more suitable for examining reused inkjet cartridge alternatives that depend on the inkjet cartridge end-of-life (EOL) route chosen by the consumer. Since multiple reuse cycles achieved from refilling by a retailer was of specific interest, a functional unit defined in the form of "five use cycles" included the mode and manner in which consumers purchased inkjet cartridge use cycles. Cartridge refills present the lowest environmental impact, offering a 76 % savings in global warming potential (GWP) impact compared to production and purchase of a new inkjet cartridge alternative, followed by the remanufacturing case, which provided a 36 % savings in GWP impact compared to the new inkjet cartridge. However, results varied widely, even switching to favor new cartridge purchase, depending on how consumer transport was modeled, specifically the mode of travel, travel patterns (number of trips), and method of allocating impact to each trip. Refilling an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) cartridge four consecutive times provides the best alternative for reducing environmental impact for those consumers that purchase inkjet cartridges one at a time. On the other hand, consumers that purchase multiple cartridges in a single trip to a retailer reduce environmental impact more by transport minimization than by refilling. Results reinforce the need for more comprehensive inclusion of consumer behavior when modeling life cycle environmental impact of product alternatives.Results of life cycle assessments (LCAs) of power generation technologies are increasingly reported in terms of typical values and possible ranges. Extents of these ranges result from both variability and uncertainty. Uncertainty may be reduced via additional research. However, variability is a characteristic of supply chains as they exist; as such, it cannot be reduced without modifying existing systems. The goal of this study is to separately quantify uncertainty and variability in LCA. In this paper, we present a novel method for differentiating uncertainty from variability in life cycle assessments of coal-fueled power generation, with a specific focus on greenhouse gas emissions. Individual coal supply chains were analyzed for 364 US coal power plants. Uncertainty in CO2 and CH4 emissions throughout these supply chains was quantified via Monte Carlo simulation. The method may be used to identify key factors that drive the range of life cycle emissions as well as the limits of precision of an LCA. Using this method, we statistically characterized the carbon footprint of coal power in the USA in 2009. Our method reveals that the average carbon footprint of coal power (100 year time horizon) ranges from 0.97 to 1.69 kg CO(2)eq/kWh of generated electricity (95 % confidence interval), primarily due to variability in plant efficiency. Uncertainty in the carbon footprints of individual plants spans a factor of 1.04 for the least uncertain plant footprint to a factor of 1.2 for the most uncertain plant footprint (95 % uncertainty intervals). The uncertainty in the total carbon footprint of all US coal power plants spans a factor of 1.05. We have developed and successfully implemented a framework for separating uncertainty and variability in the carbon footprint of coal-fired power plants. Reduction of uncertainty will not substantially reduce the range of predicted emissions. The range can only be reduced via substantial changes to the US coal power infrastructure. The finding that variability is larger than uncertainty can obviously not be generalized to other product systems and impact categories. Our framework can, however, be used to assess the relative influence of uncertainty and variability for a whole range of product systems and environmental impacts.Overfishing is a relevant issue to include in all life cycle assessments (LCAs) involving wild caught fish, as overfishing of fish stocks clearly targets the LCA safeguard objects of natural resources and natural ecosystems. Yet no robust method for assessing overfishing has been available. We propose lost potential yield (LPY) as a midpoint impact category to quantify overfishing, comparing the outcome of current with target fisheries management. This category primarily reflects the impact on biotic resource availability, but also serves as a proxy for ecosystem impacts within each stock. LPY represents average lost catches owing to ongoing overfishing, assessed by simplified biomass projections covering different fishing mortality scenarios. It is based on the maximum sustainable yield concept and complemented by two alternative methods, overfishing though fishing mortality (OF) and overfishedness of biomass (OB), that are less data-demanding. Characterization factors are provided for 31 European commercial fish stocks in 2010, representing 74 % of European and 7 % of global landings. However, large spatial and temporal variations were observed, requiring novel approaches for the LCA practitioner. The methodology is considered compliant with the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) standard in most relevant aspects, although harmonization through normalization and endpoint characterization is only briefly discussed. Seafood LCAs including any of the three approaches can be a powerful communicative tool for the food industry, seafood certification programmes, and for fisheries management.An inventory of material and energy consumption during the construction and operation (C&O) of a typical sanitary landfill site in China was calculated based on Chinese industrial standards for landfill management and design reports. The environmental impacts of landfill C&O were evaluated through life cycle assessment (LCA). The amounts of materials and energy used during this type of undertaking in China are comparable to those in developed countries, except that the consumption of concrete and asphalt is significantly higher in China. A comparison of the normalized impact potential between landfill C&O and the total landfilling technology implies that the contribution of C&O to overall landfill emissions is not negligible. The non-toxic impacts induced by C&O can be attributed mainly to the consumption of diesel used for daily operation, while the toxic impacts are primarily due to the use of mineral materials. To test the influences of different landfill C&O approaches on environmental impacts, six baseline alternatives were assessed through sensitivity analysis. If geomembranes and geonets were utilized to replace daily and intermediate soil covers and gravel drainage systems, respectively, the environmental burdens of C&O could be mitigated by between 2% and 27%. During the LCA of landfill C&O, the research scope or system boundary has to be declared when referring to material consumption values taken from the literature; for example, the misapplication of data could lead to an underestimation of diesel consumption by 60-80%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: The New Nordic Diet (NND) was designed by gastronomic, nutritional, and environmental specialists to be a palatable, healthy, and sustainable diet containing 35% less meat than the Average Danish Diet (ADD); more whole-grain products, nuts, fruit, and vegetables; locally grown food in season; and >75% organic produce. The environmental impact of the 2 diets was compared based on 16 impact categories, which were monetized to evaluate the overall socioeconomic effect of a shift from an ADD to an NND. Objective: The objective was to determine whether this diet shift can be an effective tool in environmental protection. Design: The 3 features by which this diet shift affects the environment composition. transport (import), and type of production (organic/conventional) were separately investigated by using life cycle assessment. Results: When both diet composition and transport were taken into account, the NND reduced the environmental impact relative to the ADD measured by all 16 impact categories. The socioeconomic savings related to this diet shift was 266/person per year, or 32% of the overall environmental cost of the ADD. When the actual 8% content of organic produce in the ADD and the 84% content of organic produce in the investigated recipe-based NND were also taken into account, the NND reduced the environmental impact relative to the ADD measured by Only 10 of the 16 impact categories whereas 6 were increased. The socioeconomic savings related to the diet shift were lowered to 42/person per year, or 5% of the overall environmental cost of the ADD. Conclusion: Reducing the content of meat and excluding most long-distance imports were of substantial environmental and socioeconomic advantage to the NND when compared with the ADD, whereas including high amounts of organic produce was a disadvantage.Due to the effects of a building's whole life cycle processes on the environment and economy, there is an increasing interest in sustainability assessment of new and existing buildings. In Turkey, there is a large building stock constructed before legislative measures on energy efficiency were implemented. This article defines an environmental and economic sustainability assessment method to evaluate the effectiveness of existing residential building retrofits for reducing their space heating energy consumptions and the resulting emissions. The proposed method is based on the life cycle assessment method, and evaluates the environmental and economic sustainability performance of building envelope retrofits; i.e., adding thermal insulation and replacing windows. The intent of this method is to support the decision making process of building owners, users or architects in selecting the most beneficial retrofit alternatives in Turkey. In its current state, the database based on this methodology covers detached buildings located in Istanbul, with a natural gas-fired central heating system. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The built environment can be used to influence travel demand, but very few studies consider the relative energy savings of such policies in context of a complex urban system. This analysis quantifies the day-today and embodied energy consumption of four different neighborhoods in Austin, Texas, to examine how built environment variations influence various sources of urban energy consumption. A microsimulation combines models for petroleum use (from driving) and residential and commercial power and natural gas use with rigorously measured building stock and infrastructure materials quantities (to arrive at embodied energy). Results indicate that the more suburban neighborhoods, with mostly detached single-family homes, consume up to 320% more embodied energy, 150% more operational energy, and about 160% more total life-cycle energy (per capita) than a densely developed neighborhoods with mostly low-rise-apartments and duplexes. Across all neighborhoods, operational energy use comprised 83 to 92% of total energy use, and transportation sources (including personal vehicles and transit, plus street, parking structure, and sidewalk infrastructure) made up 44 to 47% of the life-cycle energy demands tallied. Energy elasticity calculations across the neighborhoods suggest that increased population density and reduced residential unit size offer greatest life-cycle energy savings per capita, by reducing both operational demands from driving and home energy use, and from less embodied energy from construction. These results provide measurable metrics for comparing different neighborhood styles and develop a framework to anticipate energy-savings from changes in the built environment versus household energy efficiency. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The emission of CO2 is becoming an increasingly important consideration in the construction industry, resulting in a significant amount of research actively being conducted to assess CO2 emission by using the completed designs of construction projects. However, studies on estimating CO2 emission of new construction projects remain few and far between. Thus, this study aimed at developing a model for estimating CO2 emission based on materials required in the construction and maintenance phases of residential buildings prior to design completion. Toward this end, the study used a case-based reasoning approach to predict the quantities of materials required in the construction and maintenance phases. Furthermore, through the life-cycle assessment approach, this study established a database of CO2 emission to calculate CO2 emission according to the construction materials. The study then proposed a method that could estimate CO2 emission by using the predicted quantities of materials and the established database. To validate the developed model, the study performed five case studies. Results showed that the error ratios of the prediction were -4.26, -5.06, 7.37, -4.32, and -2.94%, respectively, in each of the cases, and CO2 emissions of materials for residential buildings could be estimated prior to design completion. It is expected that the developed model will be a useful tool in the decision-making process on design alternatives that consider CO2 emission and the type of construction materials.Current applications of carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) can be found mostly in sectors where their use is not principally cost-driven and which have limited production volumes, such as aerospace and sports cars. In order to achieve a step-change in the application of high-performance composites in larger-volume applications, new materials systems are needed that combine very short production cycle times with performance that meets automotive requirements. The EU-FP 7-project HIVOCOMP is developing two material systems that show unique promise for cost effective, higher-volume production of high performance carbon fibre reinforced parts. These materials systems are: Advanced polyurethane (PU) thermoset matrix materials offering a combination of improved mechanical performance and reduced cycle times in comparison with conventional matrix systems, Thermoplastic PP- and PA6-based self-reinforced polymer composites incorporating continuous carbon fibre reinforcements offering increased toughness and reduced cycle times in comparison to current thermoplastic and thermoset solutions. In this introduction, the global concept of the HIVOCOMP-project is presented, and an overview is given of the achievements during the first three project years. Emphasis is then put on the demonstrators (see figures) and how they show the advantages of both innovative material concepts, both in processing (reduced cycle times) and in properties (increased toughness). Finally, the environmental impact of these new material concepts is evaluated by reporting on the results of the LCA (life cycle assessment) and LCC (life cycle costing) studies.The importance of mitigation of climate change due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from various developmental and infrastructure projects has generated interest at global level to reduce environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment may be used as a tool to assess GHG emissions and subsequent environmental impacts resulting from electricity generation from thermal power plants. This study uses life cycle approach for assessing GHG emissions and their impacts due to natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) and imported coal thermal power plants using the IPCC 2001 and Eco-Indicator 99(H) methods in India for the first time. The total GHG emission from the NGCC thermal power plant was 584 g CO2 eq/kWh electricity generation, whereas in case of imported coal, it was 1,127 g CO2 eq/kWh electricity generation. This shows that imported coal has nearly similar to 2 times more impacts when compared to natural gas in terms of global warming potential and human health as disability-adjusted life years from climate change due to GHG emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O).Commercial-scale liquid-biofuel production utilizing forest-based biomass would require feedstock supply from a large geographical area. Feedstock composition, supply chains' arrangements, and the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are location dependent, and case-specific assessments are needed if one is to guarantee the fulfillment of GHG reduction requirements by a specific biofuel product. This work assessed GHG emissions derived from the feedstock supply and transportation chain to three possible commercial-scale biodiesel plant locations in Finland (Rauma, Porvoo, and Kemi) at site-specific level. The supply of 7.2PJyr(-1) (approximately 1millionm(solid)(3)) of forest biomass (harvesting residues, stumps, and small-diameter energy wood) was assessed for each location, including four distinct scenarios for truck and railway transportation and two scenarios for biomass availability. Biomass availability and transportation-network assessments were conducted through utilization of geographical information system methods, and the GHG emissions were assessed by means of life-cycle assessment. The results showed that the GHG emissions of the supply chains can be effectively reduced through use of railway transportation from distant supply areas. Furthermore, even though the supply-chain GHG emissions differed by up to 30% between the case-study locations, the GHG emissions of the feedstock supply chain, from roadside stores of uncomminuted biomass to comminuted biomass delivered to the plants, were relatively low (2-4%) when compared with the GHG emissions of fossil diesel.Life cycle assessment has been used to investigate the environmental impacts associated with using ethylene produced from biomass, rather than from the processing of crude oil, in the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The cases investigated were for polymer production and distribution facilities located either (i) in the United Kingdom (UK) or (ii) in the United States of America (USA). For these cases, the ethylene was assumed to be made in Brazil, starting from ethanol made from sugar cane, and subsequently converted to ethylene glycol before shipping. A further comparison was made for the UK-based plant in which ethylene glycol was produced from a hypothetical plant based in the UK using willow as the feedstock. Using the Brazilian ethylene glycol, the net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, over a process using ethylene glycol from petroleum processing, was similar to 28% when the final product was a 500 mL PET bottle. The accompanying reduction in total use of fossil fuel was similar to 16%. Using ethylene glycol derived from willow biomass in the UK produced similar fossil fuel savings, however, a smaller 3.6% reduction in the greenhouse gases. Comparisons have also been made using other environmental impacts, e.g. acidification and eutrophication, for which the biomass systems are at a disadvantage. An economic assessment of the bioethanol to ethylene conversion process has demonstrated significant dependence on the feedstock cost and product price margin; the analysis suggests that such a process is unprofitable without incentives.Previous research has shown that feeding high fat corn distiller' grains plus solubles (CDDGS; similar to 10% fat, dry matter [DM]) reduces enteric methane (CH4) emission from beef cattle. However, feeding CDDGS (similar to 30% crude protein [CP] DM) or wheat distillers' grains plus solubles (WDDGS; similar to 40% CP, DM) increases N excretion from beef cattle and the resulting increase in nitrous oxide (N2O) from manure may offset any CH4 mediated decrease in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of CDDGS and WDDGS inclusion on GHG emissions from beef cattle using a life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA was conducted using primary data for diet composition, CH4 emission and N excretion generated in two studies using growing and finishing beef cattle. A representative model farm was simulated using the Holos GHG model (www.agr.gc.ca/holos-ghg), which included 40% DM CDDGS or WDDGS in growing and finishing feedlot diets. The simulation was made relative to the standard practice of using barley grain as the main supplemental energy source in western Canadian beef cattle diets (baseline scenario). Feeding CDDGS (14.98 kg CO2 equivalent [CO(2)e]/kg live weight) and WDDGS (15.41 kg CO(2)e/kg live weight) resulted in 6.2 and 9.3% higher GHG intensity compared to the baseline scenario (14.10 kg CO(2)e/kg live weight). Using high-fat distillers' grains in the diet of feedlot cattle may decrease enteric CH4 emissions, but at high dietary levels it increases N excretion and results in a net increase in GHG emissions. To reduce environmental impact, dried distillers' grains should not be included in the diet of feedlot cattle at a level that exceeds N requirements. Manure arising from cattle fed DDGS should be land applied at a level that matches the N requirements of the crop. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reactive nitrogen (N) flows (all forms of N except N-2) are greatly increasing worldwide. This is mainly due to the ever larger use of inorganic N fertilizers used to sustain the growing food production. N flows have major impacts on water, air and soil quality as well as on biodiversity and human health. Reconciling the objectives of feeding the world and preserving the environment is a great challenge for agriculture. One of the main ways to increase food production while reducing its detrimental effects is to increase the efficiency of N use. N use efficiency (NUE) is a commonly used indicator to estimate efficiency of N use at the farm scale, It is defined as the ratio of farm N outputs to N inputs. However, it has some inconsistencies and biases, which raises questions about its reliability for assessing N efficiency of farming systems, As a consequence, we propose a new indicator, called system nitrogen efficiency (SyNE), which is based on NUE and improves upon it in several ways. First, life cycle inventory references are used to estimate N emissions linked to the production of inputs outside the farm. Second, net N flows are calculated by subtracting inputs and outputs of the same product in the farming system. Third, manure is not considered an end product, unlike crop and animal products. Finally, the annual change in N in soil organic matter is estimated. SyNE therefore expresses the efficiency of a farming system in transforming N inputs into desired agricultural products. It takes into account all sources of N, including the annual change in soil N stock as well as N losses occurring during the production and transport of inputs. To test the relevance of this new indicator, 38 mixed farms were surveyed in Brittany, France, and their NUE and SyNE were calculated and compared. Sensitivity analysis was performed to estimate the contribution of each variable to both indicators. We demonstrate SyNE is a useful indicator for comparing the N efficiency of different farming systems. We discuss its use in combination with system N balance (SyNB), a N loss indicator at the system scale. The combination of both indicators gives a more reliable estimate of the productive efficiency and potential environmental impacts of N in various farming systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper aims to investigate whether it is possible to achieve a net Zero Emission Building (nZEB) by balancing emissions from the energy used for operation and embodied emissions from materials with those from on-site renewables in the cold climate of Norway. The residential nZEB concept is a so-called all-electric solution where essentially a well-insulated envelope is heated using a heat pump and where photovoltaic panels (PV) production is used to achieve the CO2eq balance. In addition, the main drivers for the emissions are revealed through the CO2q calculation for a typical Norwegian, single-family house. This concept building provides a benchmark rather than an absolute optimum or an architectural expression of future nZEBs. The main result of this work shows that the criteria for zero emissions in operation (ZEB-O) is easily met, however, it was found that the only use of roof mounted PV production is critical to counterbalance emissions from both operation and materials (ZEB-OM). The results show that the single-family house has a net export to the electric grid with a need for import only during the coldest months. In the next stage of the work, the concept will be further optimised and the evaluation method improved. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rightsBiogas has been earmarked as one of the leading renewable energy sources capable of mitigating environmental emissions in rural areas. Thus, developing an accounting technique is of particular importance in coping with increasing problems related to renewable agriculture and rural energy supply. In this study, extended exergy was generalised for the sustainability evaluation of biogas projects. Furthermore, a series of extended exergy-based indicators was presented as benchmarking from the perspectives of resources, economics and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The sustainability of a "Three-in-One" biogas production system in southern China was thereby evaluated based on the proposed framework. The results show that economic costs concentrate in the construction phase. GHG emissions are mainly derived from bricks and cement, with proportions of 36.23% and 34.91%, respectively. The largest resource depletion occurs during the consumption of feedstock (87.06%) in the operation phase. Compared with other renewable energy conversion systems, the biogas project has a higher renewability (0.925) and economic return on investment ratio (6.82) and a lower GHG emission intensity (0.012). With the merit of bridging thermodynamics and externality, the extended exergy-based approach presented in this study may effectively appraise the energy and environmental performance of biogas projects. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change, population growth and socio-structural changes will make meeting future food demands extremely challenging. As wheat is a globally traded food commodity central to the food security of many nations, this paper uses it as an example to explore the impact of climate change on global food supply and quantify the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. Published data on projected wheat production is used to analyse how global production can be increased to match projected demand. The results show that the largest projected wheat demand increases are in areas most likely to suffer severe climate change impacts, but that global demand could be met if northern hemisphere producers exploit climate change benefits to increase production and narrow their yield gaps. Life cycle assessment of different climate change scenarios shows that in the case of one of the most important wheat producers (the UK) it may be possible to improve yields with an increase of only 0.6% in the emission intensity per unit of wheat produced in a 2 C scenario. However, UK production would need to rise substantially, increasing total UK wheat production emissions by 26%. This demonstrates how national emission inventories and associated targets do not incentivise minimisation of global greenhouse gas emissions while meeting increased food demands, highlighting a triad of challenges: meeting the rising demand for food, adapting to climate change and reducing emissions. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land is not only a critical component of the earth's life support system, but also a precious resource and an important factor of production in economic systems. However, historical industrial operations have resulted in large areas of contaminated land that are only slowly being remediated. In recent years, sustainability has drawn increasing attention in the environmental remediation field. In Europe, there has been a movement towards sustainable land management; and in the US, there is an urge for green remediation. Based on a questionnaire survey and a review of existing theories and empirical evidence, this paper suggests the expanding emphasis on sustainable remediation is driven by three general factors: (1) increased recognition of secondary environmental impacts (e.g., life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, energy consumption, and waste production) from remediation operations, (2) stakeholders' demand for economically sustainable brownfield remediation and "green" practices, and (3) institutional pressures (e.g., social norm and public policy) that promote sustainable practices (e.g., renewable energy, green building, and waste recycling). This paper further argues that the rise of the "sustainable remediation" concept represents a critical intervention point from where the remediation field will be reshaped and new norms and standards will be established for practitioners to follow in future years. This paper presents a holistic view of sustainability considerations in remediation, and an integrated framework for sustainability assessment and decision making. The paper concludes that "sustainability" is becoming a new imperative in the environmental remediation field, with important implications for regulators, liability owners, consultants, contractors, and technology vendors. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy-saving and emission-reduction (ESER), carbon footprint, carbon labeling, and carbon trading have attracted much attention recently due to severe environmental challenges. One key technology for implementing the above concepts is how to realize the effective quantitative evaluation of ESER. In this paper, the existing ESER evaluation technology and systems are summarized first. It is found that the existing ESER evaluation technology and systems are almost isolated from the existing enterprise information systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), product data management (PDM), and customer relationship management (CRM), which results in the expanding of the enterprise information islands. In order to address this problem, a new method for ESER life cycle assessment (LCA) based on Internet of Things (IoT) and bill of material (BOM) is proposed in this paper. A four-layered structure (i.e., perception access layer, data layer, service layer, and application layer) ESER LCA system based on IoT and BOM is designed and presented, as well as the key technologies and the functions in each layer. A prototype application system is developed to validate the proposed method. The main contributions of the proposed method are: 1) facilitate real-time intelligent perception, and the collection of energy consumption and environmental impact data generated in the entire life cycle of manufacturing by using IoT technologies; and 2) realize effective data integration between the ESER evaluation system and the existing enterprise information systems based on BOM.The European Commission has launched a recommended set of characterization models and factors for application in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). However, it is not known how this recommended practice, referred to as the ILCD 2009, performs relative to some of the most frequently used alternative LCIA methodologies. Here, we compare the ILCD 2009 with IMPACT 2002+ and ReCiPe 2008, focusing on characterization at midpoint based on a case study comparing four window design options for use in a residential building. Ranking of the four window options was done for each impact category within each methodology. To allow comparison across the methodologies both in terms of total impact scores and contribution patterns for individual substances, impact scores were converted into common metrics for each impact category. Apart from toxic impacts on human health and ecosystems, all studied methodologies consistently identify the same window option as having the lowest and the highest environmental impact. This is mainly because few processes, associated with production of heat, dominate the total impacts, and there is a large difference in demand for heat between the compared options. Despite this general agreement in ranking, differences in impact scores are above 3 orders of magnitude for human health impacts from ionizing radiation and ecosystem impacts from land use, and they lie between 1 and 3 orders of magnitude for metal depletion and for toxicity-related impact categories. The differences are somewhat smaller (within 1 order of magnitude) for the impact categories respiratory inorganics and photochemical ozone formation, and are within a factor of 3 for the remaining impact categories. The differences in impact scores in our case study are brought about by the differences in underlying characterization models and/or substance coverage, depending on the impact category. In spite of substantial differences in impact scores for the individual impact categories, we find that the studied LCIA methods point to the same conclusion with respect to identifying the alternative with the lowest environmental burden and ascribe this to the fact that few processes are driving the main environmental impacts, and there is large difference in demand for output from these processes between the compared options. Even though the overall conclusions remain the same for our case study, the choice of the ILCD's recommended practice over the existing alternatives does matter for the impact categories ionizing radiation and land use and all toxicity-related impact categories.India's biofuel programme relies on ethanol production from sugarcane molasses. However, there is limited insight on environmental impacts across the Indian ethanol production chain. This study closes this gap by assessing the environmental impacts of ethanol production from sugarcane molasses in Uttar Pradesh, India. A comparative analysis with south-central Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is also presented to compare the performance of sugarcane molasses-based ethanol with sugarcane juice-based ethanol. The production process is assessed by a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment. The multifunctionality problem is solved by applying two variants of system expansion and economic allocation. Environmental impacts are assessed with Impact 2002+ and results are presented at the midpoint level for greenhouse gas emissions, non-renewable energy use, freshwater eutrophication and water use. Furthermore, results include impacts on human health and ecosystem quality at the damage level. Sensitivity analysis is also performed on key contributing parameters such as pesticides, stillage treatment and irrigation water use. It is found that, compared to Brazilian ethanol, Indian ethanol causes lower or comparable greenhouse gas emissions (0.09-0.64 kgCO(2eq)/kg(ethanolIN), 0.46-0.63 kgCO(2eq)/kg(ethanolBR)), non-renewable energy use (-0.3-6.3 MJ/kg(ethanolIN), 1-4 MJ/kg(ethanolBR)), human health impacts (3.6 center dot 10(-6) DALY/kg(ethanolIN), 4 center dot 10(-6) DALY/kg(ethanolBR)) and ecosystem impairment (2.5 PDF center dot m(2) center dot year/kg(ethanolIN), 3.3 PDF center dot m(2) center dot year/kg(ethanolBR)). One reason is that Indian ethanol is exclusively produced from molasses, a co-product of sugar production, resulting in allocation of the environmental burden. Additionally, Indian sugar mills and distilleries produce surplus electricity for which they receive credits for displacing grid electricity of relatively high CO2 emission intensity. When economic allocation is applied, the greenhouse gas emissions for Indian and Brazilian ethanol are comparable. Non-renewable energy use is higher for Indian ethanol, primarily due to energy requirements for irrigation. For water use and related impacts, Indian ethanol scores worse due groundwater irrigation, despite the dampening effect of allocation. The variation on greenhouse gas emissions and non-renewable energy use of Indian mills is much larger for high and low performance than the respective systems in Brazil. Important measures can be taken across the production chain to improve the environmental performance of Indian ethanol production (e.g. avoiding the use of specific pesticides, avoiding the disposal of untreated stillage, transition to water efficient crops). However, to meet the targets of the Indian ethanol blending programme, displacement effects are likely to occur in countries which export ethanol. To assess such effects, a consequential study needs to be prepared.This paper utilizes life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate the conversion of U.S. municipal solid waste (MSW) to liquid transportation fuels via gasification and Fischer-Tropsch (FT). The model estimates the cumulative energy demand and global warming potential (GWP) associated with the conversion of 1 Mg (1 Mg = 1000 kg) of MSW delivered to the front gate of a refuse-derived fuel (RDF) facility into liquid transportation fuels. In addition, net energy production is reported to quantify system performance. The system is expanded to include substituted electricity and fuel. Under a set of default assumptions, the model estimates that 1 Mg of MSW entering the RDF facility yields 123 L of gasoline, 57 L of diesel, 79 kg of other FT products, and 193 kWh of gross electricity production. For each Mg of MSW, the conversion process consumes 4.4 GJ of primary energy while creating fuels and electricity with a cumulative energy content of 10.8 GJ. Across a range of waste compositions, the liquid fuels produced by gasification and FT processing resulted in a net GWP ranging from -267 to -144 kg CO(2)e per Mg MSW, including offsets for conventional electricity and fuel production. The energy requirement associated with syngas compression for FT processing was significant and resulted in high levels of process-related GWP. The model demonstrates that an increased biogenic MSW fraction, assumed to be carbon neutral, reduced the GWP. However, a greater GWP reduction could be obtained through reduced FT pressure requirements, increased gas reaction rates, or a less carbon intensive power mix. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing and selecting the optimal technological alternatives in industrial sector is a fundamental tool to improve and adapt the industrial processes to the European legislation, which encourages the incorporation of new technologies for minimising the environmental impacts of companies such as Best Available Techniques. The aim of this study is to perform a holistic analysis of this process from a sustainability perspective. That is to say, its purpose is to analyse the studies that have been published in the literature over the last decade concerning the way the different improvements incorporated into different industrial sectors (Best Available Techniques, green technologies, remediation technologies, emission abatement technologies, etc.) are assessed and selected from a range of perspectives (environmental, technical, economic, social, etc.). Thus, an extensive review of the literature was performed to determine which criteria are the most widely used, the methodologies applied to choose those criteria, the sources of information the data is obtained from, the methodologies for calculating the indicators that allow each criterion to be measured, the different normalising and weighting methods that are applied, the techniques that are most commonly used to compare and choose the best technological alternatives and, finally, the sensitivity analyses that are most often applied to such processes. As a result, the process for assessing and selecting technologies is characterised and the guidelines to direct the selection of the set of methodologies that are the most appropriate to make a decision related to technology selection in future applications are established. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents the main outputs from the multidisciplinary Carmex project (2009-2012), which was concerned with the possibility of applying ex situ mineral carbonation concepts to mafic/ultramafic mining wastes. Focus points of the project included (i) matching significant and accessible mining wastes to large CO2 emitters through a dedicated geographical information system (GIS), (ii) analysis of aqueous carbonation mechanisms of mining waste and process development and (iii) environmental assessment of ex situ mining waste carbonation through life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. With a number of materials associated with the mining sector, the project took a close look at the aqueous carbonation mechanisms for these materials and obtained unexpected carbonation levels (up to 80%) by coupling mechanical exfoliation and reactive carbonation. Results from this work support the possibility of processing serpentine-rich peridotites without applying the classical first step of heat activation. Perspectives are also given for the carbonation of Ni-pyrometallurgical slag available closed to ultramafic mining residues. LCA of the mining waste carbonation system as a whole made it clear that the viability of this CO2 storage option lies with the carbonation process itself and optimisation of its operating conditions. By combining the body of knowledge acquired by this project, it is concluded that New Caledonia, with its insularity and local abundance of 'carbonable' rocks and industrial wastes coupled with significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from world-class nickel pyro and hydrometallurgical industries stands out as a strong potential candidate for application of ex situ mineral carbonation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Removal of corn residue for biofuels can decrease soil organic carbon (SOC; refs 1,2) and increase CO2 emissions(3) because residue C in biofuels is oxidized to CO2 at a faster rate than when added to soil(4,5). Net CO2 emissions from residue removal are not adequately characterized in biofuel life cycle assessment (LCA; refs 6-8). Here we used a model to estimate CO2 emissions from corn residue removal across the US Corn Belt at 580 million geospatial cells. To test the SOC model(9-11), we compared estimated daily CO2 emissions from corn residue and soil with CO2 emissions measured using eddy covariance(12-14), with 12% average error over nine years. The model estimated residue removal of 6 Mg per ha(-1) yr(-1) over five to ten years could decrease regional net SOC by an average of 0.47-0.66 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). These emissions add an average of 50-70 g CO2 per megajoule of biofuel (range 30-90) and are insensitive to the fraction of residue removed. Unless lost C is replaced(15,16), life cycle emissions will probably exceed the US legislative mandate of 60% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared with gasoline.A key challenge for engineers and scientists over the coming decades is to develop and deploy power plants with sufficient capacity and flexibility to meet the growing demand for energy (mainly electrical) whilst simultaneously reducing emissions (primarily greenhouse gases). With fusion-based power plants not currently being considered viable for large-scale deployment for at least 40 years, other technologies must to be considered. Renewable and high efficiency combined gas-fired plants, along with nuclear solutions, are regarded as the most suitable candidates, with Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) developing as a favoured choice. However, two main impediments to the current deployment of SMRs exist: (1) safety concerns, particularly following the Fukushima accident, and (2) their economic models, with high capital costs only being available through a limited number of investors. The goal of this paper is to provide a review and a holistic assessment of this class of nuclear reactor, with specific focus on the most common technology: the Light Water Reactor (LWR). In particular, the paper provides a state-of-the-art assessment of their life cycle, along with a comparison of their relative merits with other base-load technologies. It is shown that SMRs are a suitable choice when the power to be installed is in the range 1-3 GWe and the social aspects of the investment, such as the creation of new employment positions, is a goal of policy makers. The paper thereby provides governments and stakeholders with key economic and social boundaries for the viable deployment of SMRs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global warming, energy security, and the rising costs of oil have added a greater driving force to the development of feasible alternatives to petroleum-based transportation fuels. In parallel, wastes and wastewater generated from various industries should be avoided or converted to energy more in the future in order to reduce environmental problems and provide additional sources of energy. In this aspect, biogas plant is an effective option where gas is produced biologically by the fermentation of animal dungs, sewage, and agricultural residues. To utilize biogas as a transportation fuel, raw biogas has to undergo two major processes: cleaning and upgrading, to achieve natural gas quality. The upgraded biogas (so called bio-methane or bio-CNG) is considered green fuel with respect to environment, climate, and human health. However, the resulting bio-CNG from the processes still needs to be evaluated in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy aspects. This paper presents the integrated life cycle energy and environmental assessment of compressed bio-methane gas (CBG or bio-CNG) generated from cassava starch wastewater treatment plant in Thailand. The functional units were set to be 1 MJ of bio-CNG and 1 km of vehicle driven. The system boundary covered six main steps: digestion, purification and upgrading, compression, distribution, refueling, and combustion. The energy analysis result showed that the net energy ratio was higher than one, indicating a net energy gain. For the greenhouse gases aspect, the results showed that the biogas production and biogas upgrading step had the highest impact due to methane loss and high energy consumption. Comparing with other fuels, the global warming potential of bio-CNG was lower than those of fossil-based CNG and gasoline. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Meeting future policy targets for bioenergy development worldwide poses major challenges for biomass feedstock supply chains in terms of competitiveness, reliability and sustainability. This paper reviews current knowledge on the sustainability of agricultural feedstock supply chains and emphasizes future research needs. It covers annual and perennial feedstocks, and environmental, economic and social aspects. Knowledge gaps and technological options to assess and meet sustainability criteria are reviewed from plot to landscape and global scales. Bioenergy feedstocks present a wide range of dry matter yields, agricultural input requirements and environmental impacts, depending on crop type, management practices, and soil and climate conditions. Their integration into farmers' cropping systems poses specific challenges in terms of environmental impacts, but also opportunities for improvements via the use of grass-legume intercropping or residues from biomass conversion processes. Taking into account the spatial distribution of bioenergy crops is paramount to assessing their environmental impacts, in particular, on biodiversity or the food versus energy competition issue. However, few modeling frameworks convey the full complexity of the underlying processes and drivers, whether economic, social or biophysical. In particular, social impacts of bioenergy projects are seldom assessed and there is no methodological consensus. The main research areas identified involve multi-crop and multi-site experiments, along with modeling, to optimize management practices and cropping systems producing bioenergy, possibly on alternative lands and under future climate changes; the design of innovative cropping systems using expert knowledge to ensure suitable integration into farmers' cropping systems; the collection of detailed data on the location of bioenergy crops to validate theoretical modeling frameworks and improve sustainability assessment; tackling direct and indirect effects of bioenergy development on land-use changes via coupled economic and agronomical models; investigating the effect of perennial stands on biodiversity in relation to previous land-use and landscape structure; and further developing currently-available methodologies to fully appraise the social implications of bioenergy projects. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change and security of energy supply are main sustainability issues today and an energy systems shift towards renewable energy sources is therefore urgent. However, unless environmental impacts of such a shift are carefully taken into account, imposed resource and land use changes may counteract other sustainability goals, such as preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) provides a comprehensive framework for assessment of policies and plans where a full range of environmental issues are addressed. The aim of this article was to find possibilities for comprehensive sustainability assessment among published energy-environment models and the linking of renewable energy analysis to landscape and biodiversity issues through land use concerns. Based on the review of relevant energy, environmental and linking models, a survey on publications and a case study on the EU Energy Roadmap 2050, the results show that existing energy models and research have low concerns on land use, landscapes and biodiversity. Consequently, it would be difficult to provide comprehensive decision support by using only these tools. However, suitable energy models, ecological assessment models and multi-criteria approaches exist with great potential for inter-linking. The development of energy models could thus have new orientations, connecting them to involve renewable energy options with land use, landscape and biodiversity concerns, which could be advanced into powerful SEA tools for integrated policy assessment. This will enable the development of more comprehensive decision support tools for assessing future energy scenarios, integrating main policy concerns when assessing renewable energy options. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In policy support of municipal solid waste (MSW) management, life cycle assessment (LCA) can serve to compare the environmental or economic impacts of two or more options for waste processing. The scope of waste management LCAs generally focuses less attention on future developments, e.g., where will recycling take place, and more on the environmental performance of prototypes, e.g., the incineration of all waste compared to recycling. To provide more robust support for Swiss waste glass-packaging disposal, scenarios of Swiss waste glass-packaging are assessed from a life cycle perspective. The scenarios consist in schemes for the disposal of the total amount of Swiss waste glass-packaging, i.e., different combinations of recycling and downcycling in Switzerland or abroad developed in Part I, Meylan et al. (2013). In this article (Part II), the disposal schemes are assessed with respect to eco-efficiency, an indicator that combines total environmental impacts and gross value added in Switzerland. Results show that no policy alternative guarantees environmental impact reductions and gross value added gains under all developments of exogenous constraints. Downcycling to foam glass in Switzerland is not only an environmentally sound disposal option, but it also buffers gross value added losses in case domestic recycling (and thus glass-packaging production in Switzerland) ceases in the future. The substitution of products based on raw materials other than Swiss cullet is the main responsible for change in environmental and economic impacts. Hence, an eco-efficiency maximizing policy should consider the products of disposal schemes. The combination of scenario analysis and eco-efficiency assessment as presented in this paper can be applied to other contexts (i.e., countries, waste fractions). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper is to present a tool for classification of environmentally friendly products from the systematization of environmental aspects related to the stages of Life Cycle Analysis of the product (LCA) and the variables considered in each of these steps. The tool was developed through a comprehensive literature review and systematization of the stages of the LCA prepared by Brandalise (2008) model. As a result presents a tool called matrix for classification of environmentally friendly products that can classify qualitatively the products according to their characteristics, since the use of raw materials, production processes, product use, post-use and disposal. The products can be classified as environmentally friendly features into three levels: low, medium and strong. With the development of this tool is expected to contribute to the advancement of technical knowledge of the LCA, so far very little detail, which is of very much importance in the management of organizations concerned with sustainable development.In this study, the environmental loads of 100 kWp cadmium telluride photovoltaic (CdTe PV) power generation systems in Malaysia are analyzed using life cycle assessment. The target renewable energy system is made up of CdTe PV panel, a power conditioning system and a balance of system. Life-cycle environmental issues were analyzed using major indicators like global warming potential, fossil fuel consumption, energy payback time, and CO2 payback time. Then, the results were compared with those of alternative PV systems such as single- and multi-crystalline silicon photovoltaics. The CdTe PV systems presently have a GWP of 15.1 g CO2 equivalent/kW h in Malaysia. The CdTe PV panel is the greatest contributor to global warming potential in the system, accounting for 47.8%. Electricity used in the semiconductor deposition process is the major contributor of GWP in CdTe PV panel. Total fossil fuel consumption is 0.221 MJ/kW h. The CdTe PV panel accounts for 49.3% of the total fossil fuel consumption. Energy payback time and CO2 payback time are 0.94 years and 0.76 years, respectively, and those are relatively short periods compared with other PV power plants. The energy return on investment of the CdTe PV system was found to be superior to other Si-based PV systems. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Background: One of the most problems in developing countries is the integrated waste management and the effects on Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emission, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used in this paper as a decision supporting tool in planning Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) managements. Methods: In this paper the EPA's Waste Reduction Model (WARM) that provide GHG emission factors for waste stream components that are based on life Cycle Inventory (LCI) framework were used and The MSW management methods comprised in seven scenarios. Results: The amount of GHG which was generated from Iran's waste sector estimated about 17836079 Metric Tons of Carbon dioxide Equivalents (MT CO(2)e) in this study. The lowest amount of GHG was generated by LFG capture system with energy recovery (557635 MT CO(2)e), while Incineration of materials being sent to landfill (1756823 MT CO(2)e), Landfill Gas (LFG) capture system with flaring (2929150 MT CO(2)e) and Improved source reduction and recycling (4780278 MT CO(2)e) emitted fewer GHG than the other scenarios. Lowest levels of gross energy consumption occur in source reduction with recycling and composting (-89356240 Mega British Thermal Unit, M BTU), recycling and composting (-86772060 M BTU) as well as Improved source reduction with recycling and composting (-54794888 M BTU). Conclusions: It appears that recycling and composting each offer significant GHG emissions and energy consumption reductions (scenarios 4, 5 and 6). Upon of the GHG emission and energy consumption results concluded that improved source reduction and recycling scenario has been the Balanced and appropriate technology for handling the solid waste streams in municipalities.Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are growing in interest and use due to the enhancements envisaged in many applications. ENM hazard identification and exposure scenarios are growing in interest too. Inhalation, ingestion and assimilation through skin during ENM production or use have to be considered as possible events, and potential ENM toxicity has to be investigated before new ENM-based products are placed on the market. To design new ENM-based additive in lubricants for automotive application, the European FP7 Project AddNano is investigating the use of fullerene-like inorganic nanomaterials, including transition metal disulphides. In this work, the potential toxicities of well-characterized pristine MoS2 and WS2 ENMs were evaluated by in vitro cellular and a cell-free chemical tests. Cytotoxicity and oxidative stress on human pulmonary epithelial cells (A549), ENM surface reactivity (free radical production and lipid peroxidation), and ENM durability in simulated biological fluids were evaluated. In all tests, WS2 did not elicit a response significantly different from the negative control. MoS2 showed a moderate cellular toxicity at the highest dose and was inert in all other circumstances. Both WS2 and MoS2 were soluble in simulated biological fluids, suggesting a short durability in vivo. The low overall biological and chemical reactivity of WS2 and MoS2 suggests that tested nanomaterials are unlikely to be an hazard, as far as human respiratory system is concerned. Data could be usefully implemented in the context of environmental risk assessment and life cycle assessment.The construction, maintenance and disposal of asphalt pavements may lead to considerable environmental impacts, in terms of energy use and emissions during the life of the pavement. In order to enable quantification of the potential environmental impacts due to construction, maintenance and disposal of roads, an open life cycle assessment (LCA) framework for the asphalt pavements is presented in this paper. Emphasis was placed on the calculation and allocation of energy used for binder and additives at the project level. It was concluded from this study that when progressing from LCA to its corresponding life cycle cost, the feedstock energy of the binder becomes highly relevant as the cost of the binder will be reflected in its alternative value as fuel. Regarding additives like wax, a framework for energy allocation was suggested. The suggested project level LCA framework was demonstrated in a limited case study of a Swedish asphalt pavement. It was concluded that the asphalt production and transporting materials were the two most energy-consuming processes, emitting most greenhouse gases depending on the fuel type and electricity mix.Vehicle speed-roughness relationship has a significant research gap in life cycle assessment model. The current available models describing the roughness effect on vehicle speed are very limited and outdated. In this paper, 32 individual pavement sections, each of which has roughness data of up to 8 years, were selected to develop the model. The roughness data cover a wide range, and the selected pavement sections contain both flexible and rigid pavement types and various numbers of lanes. Involved regression variables include the following: vehicle speed, roughness, volume-capacity ratio, pavement type, number of lanes and speed limit. Analysis of variance was first performed, indicating that pavement type and speed limit are not significant factors influencing the average vehicle speed. Following, strict statistical technique was used to correct the unobserved heterogeneity during the regression using a one-way fixed random model. The obtained regression model reveals that the average vehicle speed decreases 0.0083mph with every 1 in/mi increase of the roughness (-0.84km/h per m/km).Efforts to assess the environmental performances of beef production systems often culminate in mitigation strategies without factoring in farm economics. The objective of this study was to co-assess the environmental impacts and economic performances of French suckler-beef production systems based on commercial farm data. We coordinated a technical-economic survey on 59 Charolais suckler-cattle farms in order to calculate GHG emissions and non-renewable energy (NRE) consumption over the years 2010 and 2011. Using real-world data from a farm network instead of modeled or experimental data enabled us to analyze the variability of the results and its determinants. The main variables impacting GHG emissions and NRE consumption per kg of beef (live weight) produced are (i) animal productivity (kg of live weight produced per LU), (ii) farm size (area and herd), and (iii) degree of specialization in beef production (share of cattle revenue in total farm revenue). The large, diversified farms (mixed crop-livestock farming systems) have a more negative environmental impact than the moderate-sized, specialized (beef production) farms. Animal productivity performances decrease with increasing herd size, and inputs use is below-optimal in the most strongly diversified farms. A comparison of the group of farms with the lowest and highest GHG emissions per kg beef (50% difference on GHG emissions per kg of live weight) confirmed these correlations. Through better animal productivity performances and lower use of inputs, the less-GHG-emitting farms also generate higher income per worker (+30%) while consuming less NRE. Our findings argue against the idea that size and diversification bring economic and environmental economies of scale and scope in suckler-beef production systems. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.One promising future bulk application of graphene is as composite additive. Therefore, we compare two production routes for in-solution graphene using a cradle-to-gate lifecycle assessment focusing on potential differences in energy use, blue water footprint, human toxicity, and ecotoxicity. The data used for the assessment is based on information in scientific papers and patents. Considering the prospective nature of this study, environmental impacts from background systems such as energy production were not included. The production routes are either based on ultrasonication or chemical reduction. The results show that the ultrasonication route has lower energy and water use, but higher human and ecotoxicity impacts, compared to the chemical reduction route. However, a sensitivity analysis showed that solvent recovery in the ultrasonication process gives lower impacts for all included impact categories. The sensitivity analysis also showed that solvent recovery is important to lower the blue water footprint of the chemical reduction route as well. The results demonstrate the possibility to conduct a life cycle assessment study based mainly on information from patents and scientific articles, enabling prospective life cycle assessment studies of products at early stages of technological development.Organizing and managing new product development has been perceived as challenging issues in both academia and industry for several decades. The aspect of sustainability has often been neglected in new product development although new product development allows addressing sustainable characteristics upfront in the product life-cycle. The purpose of this paper is to link sustainability and new product development by providing a conceptual framework emphasizing the interconnections of sustainability and new product development with a life-cycle and product-focused perspective. Such a link of sustainable new product development with a life-cycle and product life-cycle point of view has not been presented so far. This paper intends to elaborate on this connection, so that it leads into the subjects of new product development and sustainability, culminating in a life-cycle approach supporting a sustainable new product development. The conceptual framework indicates that it is important to involve life-cycle management, and product life-cycle management to reach a sustainable new product development. The product-focused product life-cycle management approach gives the necessary structure for a jointly sustainable new product development on grounds of cross-departmental and cross-company processes, data, and people. The factor of collaboration integrates the life-cycle-based concepts to reach a sustainable new product development. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it offers a novel conceptual framework of a sustainable new product development by means of product life-cycle management and thus extends current research on green new product development. Second, it provides a life-cycle management focused approach to support collaboration by complexity reduction, process harmonization, and technology. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Colombia, greenhouse tomato production systems are thought to cause considerable environmental impact. In this study, we employ life cycle assessment to assess the environmental impact of tomato production in a key growing area, the Alto Ricaurte province. A regional farmer survey (n = 117) was the primary data source, while secondary data for background processes were based on Ecoinvent v. 2.0 and LCAFoods databases. An uncertainty analysis for the primary data source was carried out considering the high variability in local management practices. All resources consumption and emissions were allocated to a functional unit of one ton of tomatoes, restricting the boundaries of the system from raw material extraction up to the farm gate. We applied the CML2001 v.2.05 impact assessment method including 10 midpoint categories. The production system consisted of six stages: nursery, infrastructure, machinery, fertilization, pest management and waste management. At the inventory level, results exhibited a high dispersion indicating the wide range of products and doses applied by growers, especially for the fertilization and pest management stages. Overall, the infrastructure stage had the largest burden for most impact categories. The fertilization stage was the second highest burden for abiotic depletion, acidification and eutrophication potentials. The waste management stage was the main contributor to the overall impact for freshwater and marine aquatic ecotoxicity potentials. The impacts for each stage were largely determined by the production of agricultural inputs. Uncertainty analysis showed positive skewed distributions, with a few growers extending the tail towards the highest environmental impact side. The main stages contributing to the uncertainty on the outcome were the fertilization, pest management and waste stages. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The role of the life cycle assessment (LCA) in the agrifood sector is widely recognised as an important tool that supports environmental decision-making. The main difference between agricultural and industrial studies is the need to evaluate output data from the natural processes that result from farming practices, especially fertilisation and pesticide treatments. Many LCA studies in the agrifood sector have been conducted on a large geographical scale (regional or national) and have considered data from multiple production years. The main goal of this research is to understand whether a study based on the LCA approach can support a single farm's comparative forecast evaluation of conventional and organic production based on primary data relative to a short time period and considering site-specific climate conditions. For this purpose, two operative steps were implemented: (i) a comparative environmental assessment of conventional and organic production within a simulated three-year cycle that tested the results through an uncertainty analysis and (ii) a sensitivity analysis to assess the influence of the geoclimatic factors on the impact assessment results. Primary data that reference a specific production year from an Italian farm situated in the Polesine area were considered. A "from cradle to farm gate" comparative LCA was performed, considering the conventional and organic production of barley and soybean. The influence of the spring rainfall index on the environmental assessment results was analysed with a sensitivity analysis by modelling 18 different scenarios. This research suggests that the annual variation in agricultural production must be considered when comparing organic and conventional farming. The spring rainfall index significantly influenced yields and, therefore, the comparative results, thus shifting the preference from one farming system to the other. This study confirms the usefulness of the methodological LCA approach, even for a single farm using historical data that related to a short period of time (e.g., one year). The results can be considered for provisional assumptions about the environmental impact assessment of different agricultural cycles (conventional or organic). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Quantitative environmental assessment methodologies such as life cycle assessment demand significant time and resource inputs during the data acquisition and life cycle inventory (LCI) phase. Approaches to streamline the LCI data collection process without degrading data quality are therefore required. This requirement is especially true for agricultural products, as agricultural systems are inherently 'open' and complex. We present a two-part paper on this topic. In this first part, we examine streamlined methods for LCI data collection in agriculture by using today's voluntary or compulsory farm traceability information systems and related information and communication technologies (ICTs), with the aim of later converting them into LCI data. The second part is to examine the application of these technologies in a case study. Our hypothesis is that both traceability data and ICTs could be major drivers for generating accurate, relevant and low-cost LCI data for use in quantitative environmental assessments of agricultural product performance. To that end, we identified the types of data being collected in agriculture as a part of current business practice, especially those with relevance to LCA studies. We also examined the status and current trends in ICTs in use in agriculture to identify the potential for automating LCI data generation. The review identified considerable potential to piggy-back current trends in ICTs in agriculture with the goal of simplifying LCI data collection. This study concludes that given the increasing need to collect traceability data in modern agriculture and the parallel growing adoption of information and communication technologies, it is likely that ICTs and associated information systems will represent an important potential route for the acquisition of future LCI data. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The data uncertainty is a crucial limitation for substance flow analysis (SFA) studies. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is used to assess the data uncertainty of the anthropogenic phosphorous (P) flow analysis in Chaohu Watershed. The study selects the key data in crop farming, large-scale breeding, and rural consumption subsystems, which are the biggest contributors to P emissions. The results show that in the crop farming subsystem, the P-containing rate of crop, soil deposition rate, harvest of crop, proportion of large-scale livestock excrement to field, and the amount of applied chemical fertilizer are the greatest contributors to the output uncertainty. While the amount of feed consumed per large-scale livestock, amount of large-scale livestock, P-containing rate of feed consumed by large-scale livestock, and proportion of large-scale livestock excrement to field have the greatest uncertainties in the large-scale breeding subsystem. Moreover, in the rural consumption subsystem, both of the P-containing rate of crop and the amount of crop consumed per rural people have the greatest uncertainties. By analyzing the reasons leading to the data uncertainties, the suggestions for minimizing the uncertainty are also proposed. The study also shows that the MC methodology is an efficient tool to solve the data uncertainty in SFA study. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Complying with international agreements regarding environment, and particularly the reduction of greenhouse gases emissions, requires appropriate policies in the building sector. This study concerns single family housing in Chile. The aim of this work is to develop knowledge in order to define and prepare implementation of design procedures to minimize the environmental impacts without reducing the level of comfort in such buildings. The model presented is based upon the life cycle assessment methodology. Buildings are described including geometry and technological elements. Thermal simulation is used in a first step to evaluate heating and cooling loads, and to check the level of indoor comfort in summer. The results constitute an input to a life cycle simulation tool, integrating the fabrication of materials, construction, use of the building, maintenance and end of life. Environmental indicators like the global warming potential are evaluated. Other indicators concern air pollution, natural resource consumption, waste production etc. This model has been adapted to the Chilean context, particularly regarding the electricity production mix and climatic conditions, considering four climate zones characteristic of the country. In each zone, a typical social housing unit is defined and the corresponding environmental impacts are evaluated. Various technical and architectural solutions are studied, particularly: increased insulation thickness (applying thermal regulation), orientation of windows and glazing types. The performance improvement is higher in cold climates. A reduction of CO2 emissions up to 50% is estimated, and other technical measures are suggested to improve the performance further. According to these results, reducing energy related impacts does not increase other damage indicators related to e.g. human health and biodiversity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using bamboo-based construction materials has been identified as a potential way of reducing pressure on resources and on the environment. These materials have environmental and mechanical advantages over conventional construction materials. In the present research, the life cycle assessment of five bamboo-based construction materials was carried out: bamboo pole, flattened bamboo, woven bamboo mat, glue laminated bamboo and woven bamboo mat panels. The main objective of the present research is to develop a series of life cycle assessment data that can represent the diversity found in the global production of bamboo-based construction materials. This research also aims to present a simplified and cost effective approach to developing this kind of data while maintaining its quality. The results show that the environmental impacts of the studied materials grow with increased industrialization and that electricity mixture and heat energy sources contribute most to the variability of the results. It was found out that the species of bamboo and harvesting practices do not make a significant contribution to the overall environmental impact of bamboo-based construction materials. It was also found out that, in general, the processes contributing most to environmental impact are not always the most significant contributors to the variability of the result. It was possible to establish a relationship between the processes contributing to the variability of the results and the results' uncertainty. In this way, it was demonstrated that it is possible to identify the main processes contributing to the variability of the results and that by improving the quality of this data the overall uncertainty of the results can be reduced. Thus, the proposed approach can be successfully used to assess the environmental impact of non-conventional materials with a high degree of accuracy in a cost-effective way. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wind turbine used for electricity generation is known as clean and renewable energy technology. The worldwide increasing trend of wind turbine installation present and future projection addressing the issue of energy required for manufacture and environmental impact due to energy consumption. The life cycle energy and environmental impact of wind turbine has been studied in many literature, but some studies are based on average data, the life cycle stages are incomplete of some study, most of the literature are horizontal axis type and the literature for Asian developing countries are rare. In addition, the life cycle study of vertical axis wind turbine is unusual. Since, the life cycle assessment (LCA) study varied from location to location due to industrial performance, countries energy mix and related issues, a life cycle embodied energy, emissions and environmental impacts analysis were undertaken for two grid connected rooftop wind turbines (vertical axis and horizontal axis) considering the industrial performance, applications and related issues in Thailand. The life cycle assessment was done using SimaPro 7.3.3 software from cradle to grave for base case and for alternative cases. The result showed that, wind turbine installation in Thailand at Chiangmai is reliable to deliver wind energy over the year compared to Phuket and Surat Thani Island. The vertical axis wind turbine is energy and emission intensive per kWh/ year energy delivered compared to horizontal axis wind turbine for base case system. The embodied energy and environmental impact could be possible to reduce by more than 60% and 50% respectively using reuse of materials strategy. The embodied energy of vertical axis wind turbine could be possible to reduce by 36% with thermoplastic and 40% with fiberglass plastic turbine instead of aluminum turbine, while the environmental impact reduction more than 15% has been observed. The energy intensity, CO2 emission intensity and energy payback time found to be lower when compared with literature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Gasification is a promising pathway for the conversion of biomass into energy products. In particular, the syngas generated through biomass gasification is of great interest for hydrogen production. Based on an overview of technological options, a base-case system for hydrogen production via biomass gasification is defined, and its environmental and thermodynamic performance is evaluated through a life cycle assessment and an exergetic analysis. The case study involves poplar gasification in a low-pressure char indirect gasifier, catalytic tar destruction, cold wet gas cleaning, syngas conversion and hydrogen purification. The calculated exergetic efficiency of the plant is 48%, a value comparable to that of conventional coal gasification technologies for hydrogen production. The total exergy loss of the plant (mainly associated with the flue gas streams) is found to be 4.6% of the fuel exergy provided to the overall plant, while 47% of the overall fuel exergy vanishes as exergy destruction within the individual components of the plant. The life cycle assessment of the system covers from poplar cultivation to hydrogen purification. Seven impact potentials are considered: cumulative energy demand, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, land competition, acidification and eutrophication. The life-cycle energy balance of the system suggests a relatively promising energy performance. Poplar cultivation and harvesting, biomass pre-treatment and syngas cleaning are identified as the subsystems with the largest contributions to the environmental impacts. Measures to enhance the environmental and energy performance of the system should focus on minimizing the poplar feedstock demand, improving the logistical planning for biomass supply, reducing the natural gas demand of the steam reforming subsystem, and optimizing the electricity demand of the gas cleaning subsystem. Lower consumption levels of fertilizers and diesel for poplar cultivation and harvesting should also be achieved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, we demonstrate a means of simultaneously solving two serious environmental issues by reutilization of calcinated mixture of pulverized waste oyster shells blending with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanospheres to prepare CaO-based sorbents for CO2 capture. After 10 cycles of isothermal carbonation/calcination at 750 degrees C, the greatest CO2 uptake (0.19g CO2/g sorbent) was that for the sorbent featuring 70 wt% of PMMA, which was almost three times higher than that (0.07g CO2/g sorbent) of untreated waste oyster shell. The greater CO2 uptake was likely a result of particle size reduction and afterwards surface basicity enhancement and an increase in the volume of mesopores and macropores. Following simplified life cycle assessment, whose all input values were collected from our experimental results, suggested that a significant CO2 emission reduction along with lesser human health and ecosystems impacts would be achieved immediately once waste is reutilized. Most importantly, the CO2 uptake efficiency must be greater than 20% or sorbents prepared from limestone mining would eventually produce a net positive CO2 emission. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A pump storage system (PSS) is introduced to the coal preparation dense medium cyclone (DMC) plants to improve their energy efficiency while maintaining the required medium supply. The DMC processes are very energy intensive and inefficient because the medium supply pumps are constantly over-pumping. The PSS presented is to reduce energy consumption and cost by introducing an addition medium circulation loop. The corresponding pump operation optimization problem in the PSS scheme under time-based electricity tariff is formulated and solved, based on which the financial benefits of the design is investigated using life cycle cost analysis. A case study based on the operation status of a South African coal mine is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. It is demonstrated that the energy cost can be reduced by more than 50% in the studied case by introducing a 160 m(3) storage tank. According to life cycle analysis, the PSS Option I yields an annual 38% reduction of the overall cost for the beneficiation plant with a payback period of 2.68 years. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The recent introduction of hybrid-electric powertrain technology has disrupted the automotive industry, causing significant powertrain design divergence. As this radical powertrain innovation matures, will hybrid vehicles dominate the future automotive market and does this represent a positive shift in the environmental impact of the industry? The answer to this question is sought within this paper. It seeks to take advantage of the position that the industry has reached, replacing previous theoretical studies with the first extensive empirical models of life cycle emissions and whole-life costing. A comprehensive snapshot of today's hybrid market is presented, with detailed descriptions of the various hybrid powertrain architectures. Design data has been gathered for 44 hybrid passenger cars currently available in the US. The empirical data is used to explore the relative life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and whole-life costing of different hybrid powertrain architectures. Potential dominant designs are identified and their emissions are shown to be reduced. However, both the emissions and economic competitiveness of different hybrid powertrains are shown to vary significantly depending on how the vehicle is used. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to apply the LCA methodology to the industrial chemical sector, in order to compare the traditional process for acrylonitrile production from propylene with alternative routes starting from propane, while assessing which one is the cleaner production in terms of sustainability, from a life cycle perspective. The model created refers to the production of 1 kg of acrylonitrile. System boundaries of each scenario include all mass flows into and out of the reactor, all mass and energy flows into and out of the heat exchanger of the fluid bed, the amount of raw material for the production of each catalyst, the avoided impacts resulting from energy and mass recovery, and all transportations. Also, average infrastructure processes that refer to land use, building, and disposal of the chemical plant were not included. The life cycle evaluation was performed using the ReCiPe 2008 method v1.07, showing results in terms of midpoint categories such as Climate Change, Fossil Fuel Depletion, and Metal Depletion. The results from the inventory show that alternative synthetic routes starting from propane have higher impacts than the traditional processes in terms of fossil fuel depletion and climate change categories due to higher consumption of reactants, caused by the lower efficiency of catalytic systems. Conversely, impacts associated with the metal depletion category have an irregular trend, due mainly to the extraction of different percentages of resources for the catalyst production. The results were validated by a sensitivity analysis using the Monte Carlo method. This study suggests that the LCA methodology may be used as a scientific approach to identify the environmental issues associated with the chemical production of a product. In particular, it is useful in comparing alternative ways of synthesis and evaluating which process is more sustainable, and which production stage should be improved in order to ensure greater environmental sustainability. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper explains and discusses the challenges confronted during the application of the Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) methodology defined by UNEP/SETAC S-LCA guidelines in a case study under the framework of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). The environmental, economic and social aspects related to two mineral fertilizers and one industrial compost were assessed. The system boundaries of the LCSA study included fertilizer production and transportation and certain stages of cultivation. Regarding S-LCA, background and foreground processes were taken into account. The Social Hotspots Database (SHDB) was used to include social aspects related to background processes. Following the approach of Life Cycle Attribute Assessment-proposed, e.g., in the S-LCA Guidelines the amount of working time that had been spent on each unit process was used to aggregate the social aspects over the life cycle. This work is one of the first examples for applying the S-LCA Guidelines within the LCSA framework, as well as for using SHDB in a real case study. The comparability and reliability of the S-LCA results were highly challenged by the definition of the functional unit and the system boundaries, the choice of stakeholders and indicators, the use of working time for aggregating social aspects and the data availability among others. Regarding the latter, it is necessary to find a balance between the use of site-specific primary data and generic data to include the entire life cycle. In addition, for many social indicators, no definition of the social targets to achieve is currently agreed upon in the international community. Thus, a complete and robust interpretation of the S-LCA results is not yet possible because of the many methodological obstacles faced. However, because the social dimension plays a major role in sustainability assessment, and as there is no commonly agreed methodology, every effort to advance the application for S-LCA is highly recommended. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During a product's entire life cycle the significance of packaging varies in terms of environmental impacts. From the perspective of companies which manufacture packaging or packaging has an important role in their value chain it can be a relevant issue to focus on in their efforts to improve the environmental performance of their activities. The aim of this study was to compare the life cycle environmental impacts of a real product (bread) delivery system using either reusable HPDE plastic crates or recyclable corrugated cardboard (CCB) boxes for product transportation. In this paper we focused on the delivery systems (not the delivered product) covering the manufacturing of the crates/boxes, their use, the delivery routes from bakery to retailers and waste management/recycling of the crates/boxes. As a result we concluded that the recyclable CCB box system was a more environmentally friendly option than the reusable HPDE plastic crate system in all the studied impact categories based on the defined boundaries and assumptions. Transportation played a very important role in the environmental impacts of the analysed systems. Therefore, changes, e.g. in the weights of products and their secondary packaging or the transportation distances could affect the results considerably. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Wood waste is a renewable resource that can be recycled for particleboard production or energy production. Particleboard is the most common product of wood waste recycling, and energy production using biomass has been highlighted for energy recovery and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. The aim of this study was to evaluate the environmental benefits of particle board production and energy production using wood wastes. The system expansion method was applied to the quantification of the environmental benefit of two different recycling systems. Life cycle assessment methodology was used to analyze the environmental impacts of the systems, and the functional unit was 1 tonne of wood wastes. The results for both recycling systems showed that the particleboard from wood wastes produces -428 kg CO2-eq compared to particleboard from fresh woods, and the energy production using wood wastes is -154 kg CO2-eq compared to that of the combined heat and power generation process. The concept of temporary biomass carbon storage was applied to the study. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Food choices influence health status, but also have a great impact on the environment. The production of animal-derived foods has a high environmental burden, whereas the burden of refined carbohydrates, vegetables and fruit is low. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations of greenhouse gas emission (GHGE) and land use of usual diet with mortality risk, and to estimate the effect of a modelled meat substitution scenario on health and the environment. Methods: The usual diet of 40011 subjects in the EPIC-NL cohort was assessed using a food frequency questionnaire. GHGE and land use of food products were based on life cycle analysis. Cox proportional hazard ratios (HR) were calculated to determine relative mortality risk. In the modelled meat-substitution scenario, one-third (35 gram) of the usual daily meat intake (105 gram) was substituted by other foods. Results: During a follow-up of 15.9 years, 2563 deaths were registered. GHGE and land use of the usual diet were not associated with all-cause or with cause-specific mortality. Highest vs. lowest quartile of GHGE and land use adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were respectively 1.00 (95% CI: 0.86-1.17) and 1.05 (95% CI: 0.89-1.23). Modelled substitution of 35 g/d of meat with vegetables, fruit-nuts-seeds, pasta-rice-couscous, or fish significantly increased survival rates (6-19%), reduced GHGE (4-11%), and land use (10-12%). Conclusions: There were no significant associations observed between dietary-derived GHGE and land use and mortality in this Dutch cohort. However, the scenario-study showed that substitution of meat with other major food groups was associated with a lower mortality risk and a reduced environmental burden. Especially when vegetables, fruit-nuts-seeds, fish, or pasta-rice-couscous replaced meat.This paper is assessing the hydrogen production from bioethanol at industrial scale (100000 Nm(3)/h hydrogen equivalent to 300 MW thermal) with carbon capture. Three carbon capture designs were investigated, one based on pre-combustion capture using chemical gas-liquid absorption and two based on chemical looping (one based on syngas and one using direct bioethanol looping). The carbon capture options were compared with the similar designs without carbon capture. The designs were simulated to produce mass and energy balances for quantification of key performance indicators. A particular accent is put on assessment of reforming technologies (steam and oxygen-blown autothermal reforming) and chemical looping units, process integration issues of carbon capture step within the plant, modelling and simulation of whole plant, thermal and power integration of various plant sub-systems by pinch analysis. The results for chemical looping designs (either syngas-based or direct bioethanol) show promising energy efficiency coupled with total carbon capture rate. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the most important and controversial phase of life cycle assessment, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has drawn the most attention. How to reflect the spatial characteristics of environmental impacts have become a significant problem, which is urgently needed to be solved to improve the transparency and the reliability of LCIA, especially for the distinct diversity of environments in China. Based on the multi-environmental spatial dimension, this paper proposes a new LCIA method under the framework of ISO14040. First, pollutants released or materials consumed in the life cycle of a product are related to spatial characteristics in order to reflect the diversity of the regional environment. The calculation method of the space characteristic coefficient is presented by analysing the endurance capacity of the regional environment and environmental standards. Second, midpoint and endpoint categories are combined and their relationships are discussed according to the environmental mechanism. Third, normalisation references are proposed that can reflect the latest and most detailed knowledge of environmental science. Also, the distance-to-target method is selected as the weighting method and a single index could be obtained after the weighting. Finally, this LCIA method is employed to study electro-motors in China.Current literature describes a number of environmental management practices and cleaner production methods that facilitate different industrial sectors to address their various environmental impacts. The high number of present practices makes their use especially difficult and complicated. This paper aims to shed light on this field by providing a typology of those environmental management practices (such as environmental management systems, environmental indicators assessment methodologies, and cleaner productions methods) and their limitations. It also describes the strengths and weaknesses of using such tools and thoughts for future research. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2014;10:153-162. (c) 2013 SETACAlgae have significant potential compared to other biomass feedstocks to supplement current transportation fossil fuel usage. To determine the acceptability of algal biodiesel as a replacement for petroleum, a life cycle analysis (LCA) with parameters of aerial productivity, culturing, CO2 mitigation, water use, nutrient loading, biomass harvesting, lipid extraction, and energy conversion was explored on algae production in Louisiana. High and low energy estimates found in several published LCAs were compared to current realistic estimates and analyses completed by the authors. Considering a system with an aerial biomass productivity of 15 g/m(2)/day and cell lipid concentration of 20%, the energy inputs exceeded the outputs from biodiesel production by 53% under the most ideal conditions. However, slight increases in biomass productivities and lipid contents are anticipated to tilt the overall energy balance more favorably. Considering the current conservative estimates (for biomass productivity and lipid content), incorporation of value added processes such as wastewater treatment and biogas production from residual biomass, could improve the sustainability of the system, allowing it to potentially achieve a 13.2% energy surplus. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Commercial technology is available for producing high quality fuels from algae-derived feedstocks, but questions persist about the environmental implications of producing and processing algae through a range of potential routes. In this study, a life-cycle assessment approach was used to investigate the impacts of combining different algae cultivation techniques (raceway vs. effluent cultivation) and fuel conversion pathways (whole cell pyrolysis vs. oil extraction and hydrotreatment). Material and energy input data for the cradle-to-grave study was compiled from peer-reviewed literature, government reports, and confidential commercial processing studies. Results indicated that a wide range of potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and life cycle fossil energy demand results are possible for different algal fuels produced with various unit operations combinations, highlighting the potential for substantial emissions reductions or increases compared to fossil petroleum fuels. The fuel conversion stage is not a large source of GHG emissions (15-20 g CO2eq/MJ fuel), compared to algae cultivation (25-87 g CO2eq/MJ) or dewatering (60-150 g CO2eq/MJ) unit operations. Results indicate that in cases where a portion of the algae biomass is not available for internal heat and power generation, favorable environmental results can be obtained when algae cultivation operations are used to offset current nutrient management activities, such as biological nutrient removal at a wastewater treatment plant. Current estimates suggest that nutrient sources other than municipal wastewater treatment effluents will have to be explored in order for this style of algae cultivation to produce commercially significant quantities of biofuel. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology following ISO 14044:2006 standard is utilized to analyze the environmental impacts of implementing a solar/electric hybrid cooling system in a stadium of 15,000 seating capacity. Four impact categories are investigated: 100 year global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential, eutrophication potential, and abiotic resource depletion (ARD) potential. The life cycle emissions of the solar-assisted absorption chiller (AC) system are compared to that of a conventional electricity-consuming vapor compression (VC) chilling system. The use-phase electricity consumption of the VC and the life time cooling production of the solar-assisted AC are simulated. The results yield reduced AC system net life cycle impacts for GWP, acidification, eutrophication and ARD potentials by factors of 25.8, 40.1, 33.6, and 37.7%, respectively, when compared with those of the VC system. It is found that use-phase impact savings due to the cooling production of the solar AC outweigh the higher non-use phase (raw material extraction, refining, unit manufacturing, transportation, and disposal) impacts of the solar-assisted AC system, and thus the system is found to be environmentally advantageous. The results are applicable to similar cooling systems and building systems within Southeast Asia. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The laccase-mediated heterocoupling of 3-methylcatechol and n-hexylamine was investigated at the milligram to gram scale, and an early eco-efficiency analysis and evaluation revealed bottlenecks in enzymatic synthesis. Eco-efficiency analysis was used as an optimisation tool to create more sustainable solutions and improve subsequent reactions, enabling the scaled-up biocatalytic process to become more economical and competitive compared with the chemocatalysed procedure using sodium iodate. When working with higher substrate concentrations (up to 100 mM), the following key aspects must also be considered: (1) the low solubility of n-hexylamine and the reaction products in aqueous solution, and (2) the poor stability of enzymes in unconventional solvents. The present study includes activity and stability experiments using laccases in methanol, a suitable solvent for the hydrophobic compound n-hexylamine. Contrary to previously published reports, excellent activities were obtained using Novozym 51003 at high methanol contents and substrate concentrations up to 100 mM. In addition, the use of this volatile organic solvent drastically simplified downstream processing. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With increasing public consciousness regarding sustainability, companies are ever more eager to introduce eco-friendly products and services. Assessing environmental footprints and designing sustainable products are challenging tasks since they require analysis of each component of a product through their life cycle. To achieve sustainable design of products, companies need to evaluate the environmental impact of their system, identify the major contributors to the footprint, and select the design alternative with the lowest environmental footprint. In this article, we formulate sustainable design as a series of clustering and classification problems, and propose a framework called AutoLCA that simplifies the effort of estimating the environmental footprint of a product bill of materials by more than an order of magnitude over current methods, which are mostly labor intensive. We apply AutoLCA to real data from a large computer manufacturer. We conduct a case study on bill of materials of four different products, perform a "hotspot" assessment analysis to identify major contributors to carbon footprint, and determine design alternatives that can reduce the carbon footprint from 1% to 36%.A life cycle assessment (LCA) study was conducted to understand and assess potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction benefits of a biomass torrefaction business integrated with other industrial businesses for the use of the excess heat from the tonefaction off-gas volatiles and biocoal. A torrefaction plant processing 30.3 Mg h (1) of corn stover at 17% wet basis (w.b.) moisture content was modeled. The torrefaction plant produced 136,078 Mg y (1) of biocoal at 1.1% w.b. moisture content and 28.1 MW of excess heat energy in the torrefaction off-gas volatiles. At the torrefaction plant gate, the life-cycle GHG emission for the production of biocoal (including corn stover logistics emissions) is 11.35 g MJ (1) carbon dioxide equivalent (dry basis) (i.e., 229.5 kg Mg (1) carbon dioxide equivalent of biocoal at 1.1% w.b. moisture content). The excess heat from the torrefaction plant met 42.8% of the process steam needs of a U.S. Midwest dry-grind corn ethanol plant producing 0.38 hm(3) y (1) of denatured ethanol, which results in about 40% reduction in lifecycle GHG emissions for corn ethanol compared to gasoline. Co-firing 10%, 20%, and 30% (energy basis) of biocoal at a coal-fired power plant reduced the life-cycle GHG emissions of electricity generated by 8.5%, 17.0%, and 25.6%, respectively, compared to 100% coal-fired electricity. A sensitivity analysis showed that adding a combined heat and power (CHP) system at the torrefaction plant to meet 100% electricity demand of the torrefaction plant (2.5 MW) could further reduce the GHG emissions for biocoal, corn ethanol, and co-fired electricity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In light of the perspectives of ethanol from sugar cane industry in Brazil and the bio-fuelscurrent international debate, certain questions ought to be examined. The framework for future expansion of ethanol production, to meet with supply needs at national and international levels using the current production model, does not take into consideration the prospect of Brazil's regional and rural development. Although currently there are no impediments to the culture of sugar cane in Rio Grande do Sul (RS) State, Brazil's largest producer of biodiesel, it imports 98% of its demand for ethanol from Sao Paulo and other regions. The promotion of ethanol market in that State might pass for a productive model different from the practice in industrial monocultures, given their cultural and agricultural characteristics. The IFES (Integrated Food and Energy System) from COOPERBIO-n Cooperativa Mista de Producao, Industrializacao e Comercializacao de Biocombustiveis do Brasil Ltda., established on an experimental basis in the State, presents multiple economic, social and environmental benefits, potentializing the present food procuction by smallholders and favoring a sugar cane ethanol greater consumption in the inland of RS State. With a few tweaks and adequate governmental policies and instruments, the expansion of this model may even cover the current demand in the State. In addition to the production of energy and foods less dependent on fossil fuels, this model contributes for preservation of ecosystem services and for climate smart rural sustainable development. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A partial solution to problems associated with anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be the development and deployment of carbon-negative technologies, i.e., producing energy while reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Biofuels have been considered a possibility but have faced limitations due to competition with food production and GHG emissions through indirect land-use change (ILUC). In this article, we show how emissions from ILUC can potentially be reduced by producing food and bioenergy from biochar amended soils. The possibility of yield improvements from biochar would reduce the land requirement for crop production and thus, lead to a reduction in emissions from ILUC. In our application, biochar and bio-oil are produced via fast pyrolysis of corn stover. ho-oil is subsequently upgraded into a fuel suitable for use in internal combustion engines. Applying the U.S. regulatory method used to determine biofuel life cycle emissions, our results show that a biochar-induced yield improvement in the U.S. Midwest ranging from 1% to 8% above trend can lead to an ILUC credit between 1.65 and 14.79 t CO2- equivalent ha(-1) year(-1) when future emissions are assessed over the next 30 years. The model is generalizable to other feedstocks and locations and illustrates the relationship between biochar and crop production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of HidroBioDiesel (HBD) was carried out. This partly renewable diesel fuel is obtained from the co-processing of soybean vegetable oil with conventional fossil fuel in hydrotreating facilities of crude oil refineries. The environmental profile of HBD was assessed for the fossil energy use and climate change impact categories. The production systems of equivalent fuels -blends of Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME, a biofuel obtained by means of transesterification of vegetable oil) and mineral diesel with sulphur content below 10 ppm were also assessed for comparison purposes. The environmental performance of HBD systems compares favourably to those of FAME and diesel blends for the selected impact categories. The estimated environmental benefits of HBD (assuming a 13% renewable blend) include reductions of up to 2% in fossil energy use and 9% in climate change impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global warming is linked to the reduction of green house gas emissions (GHG). The anaerobic digestion of animal manure and energy crops is a promising way of reducing GHG emissions. The increasing number of biogas plants involves a high consumption of energy crops and the needed of big agricultural area. In Italy, cereals silages are the main feedstock for biogas production and are commonly grown under two different crop systems: single crop (only maize) and double crops (maize later winter cereals). In this paper we present the results of experimental field tests carried out by monitoring the anaerobic biomethane potential (BMP) of different cereals silages commonly grown in the Padanian Plan. A laboratory device has been developed to measure the specific biomethane production of the different cereal silages. The different energy crops have been evaluated, in single and double crop systems, expressing the biomethane production per hectare. The maize hybrids show higher specific biomethane potentials respect to winter cereals. Maize FAO class 700 achieves the highest production per hectare as a single crop. Nevertheless, the highest biomethane productions per hectare are reached with double crop system in particular when maize FAO class 500 follows triticale (+12% respect the best single crop system). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A major driver of cost growth in health care is the rapid increase in the utilisation of existing technology and not simply the adoption of new technology. Health economists and their health technology assessment colleagues have become obsessed by technology adoption questions and have largely ignored 'technology management' questions. Technology management would include the life-cycle assessment of technologies in use, to assess their real-world performance; and monitoring of technology indication creep. A rebalancing of focus might serve to encourage a more self-critical and learning culture amongst those involved in technology evaluation analysis. Further, health economists and health technology assessment analysts could make a more significant contribution to system efficiency through rebalancing their efforts away from technology adoption questions towards technology management issues. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Nowadays rigorous methodologies for performing ecodesign of process plants are still missing in current industrial practices and in the literature. The use of a fully integrated Process Modelling and Life Cycle Assessment (PM-LCA) tool combined with appropriate mathematical analysis methods seems to be an audacious approach. A technical procedure for process ecodesign is formalized in this paper in order to address this issue. The proposed methodological approach is applied to a drinking water treatment plant. The EVALEAU tool, a PM-LCA integrated simulator based on a computational library of models for water treatment processes, is used including a tool box for sensitivity analysis. At first, a ground modelling scenario, representing the regular functioning of the plant is established and validated. An in-depth analysis of this plant model highlights the major environmental issues. Secondly, several technological solutions are tested in alternative modelling scenarios, which are derived from the ground one. Interesting technological solutions are then combined in one optimal scenario, which manages to decrease the environmental impacts (e.g. reduces "Climate Change" by 17.2%). At the same time, operational costs are increased by 10.8% showing opposite behaviour. Compared with field reality, the solutions proposed are realistic and demonstrate that the studied plant functioning is close to the optimum. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing scarcity of freshwater in many parts of the world triggered a growing concern about freshwater use and its quality degradation. Currently, a number of methods to assess the potential environmental harm in ecosystems services derived from freshwater use are available under the framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In this study, the assessment of the quantitative freshwater use impact of a Portuguese wine (white 'vinho verde') was undertaken using the methods suggested by: Pfister et al. (2009), Frischknecht et al. (2009a, b), Ridoutt et al. (2010), and Mita i Canals et al. (2009). These methods differ significantly concerning the type of freshwater, freshwater scarcity level, and characterisation factors considered. The quantitative freshwater use of white' vinho verde' considering both viticulture and wine production stages (disaggregated into foreground and background sub-systems) is analysed at the inventory and impact assessment levels. Moreover, the freshwater footprint profile i.e. the compilation of quantitative and degradative environmental impacts related to freshwater use is also evaluated. The inventory results of freshwater use obtained by the Mila i Canals et al. (2009) method differ significantly from the ones obtained by other used methods due to the consideration of land use effects. At the impact assessment level, a large variability for the freshwater use impact was obtained, mainly due to different characterisation factors considered by each method. Besides, the background subsystems arise as the major hotspots for all methods other than that proposed by Mila i Canals et al. (2009) and for all degradative impact categories other than eutrophication. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) method was used to examine the environmental impact of wheat-maize rotation system emphasizing double high in Quzhou County. The LCA considered the entire system, from raw material extraction to grain production, in arable farming to produce 1 ton each of winter wheat and summer maize. Results indicated that double high agriculture could improve the yield of winter wheat and summer maize by 6.84% and 9.80% respectively, while decreasing the demand for non-renewable energy resources by 13.18% for winter wheat, and 17.45% for summer maize. In the double high production system, N and P fertilizer application was decreased by 5.23% and 7.79% for winter wheat production, and 2.37% and 56.54% for summer maize production. Less use of fertilizers in the winter wheat-summer maize production system decreased global warming, acidification, and aquatic eutrophication potentials. In the double high system, farmers decreased pesticide use by 10.64% for winter wheat and 19.57% for summer maize, thus reducing their potential evaporation, leaching, and surface run-off to environment. In addition, the double high agriculture decreased the heavy metal release to soil as a result of lower use of P fertilizers. In conclusion, the double high agriculture could decrease global warming, acidification, aquatic eutrophication, human toxicity, aquatic eco-toxicity, and soil eco-toxicity potentials as well as life cycle environmental impact index of winter wheat-summer maize production system. The practice in Quzhou County showed that double high system of winter wheat-summer maize production could increase food production while protecting environmental quality and conserving natural resources, and is thus applicable to North China Plain. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Shea butter is an ingredient of growing global importance in the multi-billion dollar cosmetic and confectionary markets. It does not share the same negative environmental impacts of fertilizer use and land use change as alternative vegetable oils and so has been considered an environmentally friendly substitute, yet little is known of its carbon footprint. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was undertaken to investigate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of I kg of shea butter in cosmetic products. The LCA of the traditionally produced ingredient gave an emission value of 10.374 kgCO(2)eq per kg of shea butter in a finished cosmetic product. 75.4% of these were due to the burning of firewood in open hearths during the post-harvest processing (49.5%) and traditional extraction (25.9%) stages of the supply chain. Emissions were attributed using mass allocation to the co-products of the sheanut husk (33.8%) and kernel residue (30.7%) and had the effect of greatly reducing the perceived emissions of the shea butter highlighting the importance of finding useful functions for co-products. Shea production supports local economies and habitats and recommendations to reduce the carbon footprint of shea should retain these existing benefits. Three hypothetical low carbon alternative supply chains are tested here: 1) using stoves to reduce wood consumption by 25%; 2) using stoves to reduce wood consumption by 50% and; 3) mechanical extraction of shea butter. These scenarios were estimated to achieve around 19%, 37% and almost 20% emissions savings over traditionally produced shea respectively. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study is a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) for two widely used flue gas desulphurization (FGD) technologies in China, namely, the circulating fluidized bed flue gas desulfurization (CFB-FGD) and the wet limestone flue gas desulfurization (WFGD). The present study identifies and quantifies the energy consumptions, resource depletions and environmental impacts of CFB-FGD and WFGD technologies throughout the whole life cycle, including production of desulfurizer, production of FGD system manufacturing materials, transport of FGD system manufacturing materials, manufacturing of FGD system, transport of FGD system and FGD system operation. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology provides a quantitative basis for assessing potential improvements in the environmental performance of FGD technologies. The functional unit of the study is 7000 h, the annual operating time of FGD systems. The assessment criteria include five energy consumption categories (electricity, coal, diesel, fuel oil and crude oil), three resource consumption categories (coal, crude oil and water), and six environmental impact categories (global warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment, photochemical ozone formation, bulk waste and slag & ashes). Finally, the total energy consumptions, the resource depletion indexes (RDIs) and the environmental impact loadings (ElLs) of FGD technologies were produced for the overall assessment Overall, the WFGD technology is deemed environmentally benign and energy saving in a relative sense based on the LCA in this study. Concerning environmental impacts, bulk waste is the most critical for both types of FGD technologies. Further observations also help identify some sensitive parameters, including mixed solid waste and carbon monoxide (CO) across the CFB-FGD technology, and mixed solid waste and sulfur dioxide (SO2) across the WFGD technology. Such a study helps identify the least burdening option for constructing FGD technologies to meet the goal of urban sustainability. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential risks and benefits of using silver, especially nanosilver, as an antibacterial agent in consumer and healthcare products are under debate globally. Using content analysis of texts from newspaper and TV, government agencies, municipalities, government and parliament, non-governmental organizations, and companies, we analyze the argumentation in the Swedish public controversy over antibacterial silver and relate the findings to environmental and sustainability assessments. We conclude that silver is regarded as either beneficial or harmful in relation to four main values: the environment, health, sewage treatment, and product effectiveness. Various arguments are used to support positive and negative evaluations of silver, revealing several contradictory reasons for considering silver beneficial or harmful. Current environmental and sustainability assessments (i.e. substance flow analysis, risk analysis, multi-criteria analysis, and lifecycle assessment) cover many of the concerns raised in the public controversy over antibacterial silver and can therefore inform the debate regarding its toxicity, emissions, and environmental impact. However, not all concerns raised in the public controversy are covered by current environmental and sustainability assessments, most notably, concerns over public health and bacterial resistance issues are not paid full attention. For future environmental and sustainability assessments to make an even more significant societal contribution and to inform consumers and decision-makers about concerns articulated in the public debate, a wider range of issues concerning antibacterial silver needs to be considered through a unified framework. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) enable the creation of optimization services, defined in this paper as services aimed at providing information to improve the operation of a system, for example in terms of cost or environmental efficiency. On one hand, these services may help to avoid impacts; on the other hand, they use Id, which are impact-intensive technologies. Consequently, the impact reductions they allow must at least balance the impacts generated by the ICT infrastructures they rely on. This article provides an integrated framework for assessing the environmental impacts and for supporting the design of environmentally-sound ICT-based optimization services. The framework relies on an environmental model of information and a comprehensive ecodesign method considering three levels of analysis: equipment, infrastructure and information. The framework introduced is applied to the ecodesign of an optimization service for urban waste collection based on a city-scale wireless sensor network. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This contribution presents an integrated quantitative approach for the holistic assessment of the sustainability of technologies. The methodology envisages environmental, economic and social sustainability assessments separately, then collates them to obtain a single measure of sustainability. Standard life cycle assessment and economic evaluation methods are used to provide quantitative measures for environmental and economic parameters. A new method is used to evaluate the social sustainability, enabling the quantitative integration of all three indices. Individual indices are developed and combined to provide a single performance index of sustainability. This particular tool allows technology stakeholders to incorporate sustainability principles to their design and operation activities. It provides also a benchmark platform for comparing various technologies from a sustainability standpoint. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Various aspects of bio-ethanol technology have been studied for decades; however the previous literatures do not have a detailed assessment of a whole corn-based polyols system and its integrated impact on the environment. The evaluation system used to analyze the impact of adopting corn-based polyols from an environmental point of view was the system dynamics innovatively. Consequential models were applied to evaluate the environmental impact in four polyols production stages: raw material planting, corn-based polyols production, corn-based polyols products utilization and disposal process. N2O emission from nitrogen fertilizers was important contributor of greenhouse gases produced during agricultural activities. Growing corn was capable of absorbing a lot of CO2 which showed carbon sink. Pollutants discharged during the conversion of corn into polyols were highly dependent on processing technology alternatives. There also existed some worse impacts such as discharged N2O, CO, SO2 and HCl in waste disposal process. Findings from the systemic simulation might be utilized in identifying environmental pollution bottlenecks within the process. The results demonstrated that multiple scientific and technological improvements in polyols production could reduce 1/3 of the production cost per ton in comparison to petrochemical polyols. Through optimal parameter selection, the corn consumption per ton of polyols production could be controlled from 1.68 to 1.42 tons. These findings could provide impetus for further technological advancement of corn-based polyols by reducing the overall environmental impacts of the bio-polyols process. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Resource use and environmental impacts of a small-scale low-input organic vegetable supply system in the United Kingdom were assessed by emergy accounting and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The system consisted of a farm with high crop diversity and a related box-scheme distribution system. We compared empirical data from this case system with two modeled organic food supply systems representing high-and low-yielding practices for organic vegetable production. Further, these systems were embedded in a supermarket distribution system and they provided the same amount of comparable vegetables at the consumers' door as the case system. The on-farm resource use measured in solar equivalent Joules (seJ) was similar for the case system and the high-yielding model system and higher for the low-yielding model system. The distribution phase of the case system was at least three times as resource efficient as the models and had substantially less environmental impacts when assessed using LCA. The three systems ranked differently for emissions with the high-yielding model system being the worst for terrestrial ecotoxicity and the case system the worst for global warming potential. As a consequence of being embedded in an industrial economy, about 90% of resources (seJ) were used for supporting labor and service.This paper highlights the role of a national Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Indonesia as "pioneer" actor in the jatropha global production network, linking solutions for local problems with narratives concerning global concerns. Analysis of previous activities of the NGO positions their jatropha project as one period in a sequence of donor-funded appropriate technology programs. On the island of Flores in Eastern Indonesia the NGO aimed to establish community based jatropha cultivation exclusively on "degraded land", avoiding threats to food cultivation, and responding to local problems of land degradation and water resources depletion. In contrast with investors interested in jatropha based biofuel production for export, the NGO aimed at developing biofuel for local needs, including jatropha based electricity generation in the regional state-owned power plant. Anticipating progress in international and national regulations concerning the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) the 2008 project's design included carbon credit income as a main source of future project financing. Using methods of socio-legal studies and political ecology, this study indicates that when the economic feasibility of a project is based on the future financial value of a legally constructed commodity like carbon credits, the sustainability of the project outcome can be questionable. The author recommends precaution when it comes to including anticipated income from carbon credits in calculating the economic viability of a project, as price developments can fluctuate when political support and regulations change.Despite years of discussion on the merits of sustainability, there is still no consensus on how to determine if environmental sustainability is achieved or even if progress is made. The Brundtland Commission statement that sustainability "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development, Our common future, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987)" establishes the long-term focus of sustainability goals. Impact categories, such as land and water use, that can cause large spatial and long-temporal scale impacts are important for sustainability assessments, and may require detailed spatial analysis to capture all the important input parameters. Environmental sustainability impact assessments can use life cycle impact assessment methodologies, but can also be supplemented with impact assessments conducted from a variety of perspectives. Having this flexibility of perspective can allow more detailed site-specific assessments that may represent unsustainable situations. While it is necessary to provide decision support with a comprehensive assessment, aggregation of impact categories has the disadvantage of obscuring the individual vulnerabilities of each impact category, which can be critically important to the overall sustainability picture. An outline of a sustainability assessment case study focused on biomass-based alternatives required under the renewable fuel standard will be provided to demonstrate a more comprehensive view of sustainability.Industrial processes, particularly those within the chemical industry, contribute products and services to improve and increase society's quality of life. However, the transformation of raw materials into their respective final goods involves the consumption of mass and energy and the possible generation of by-products and releases. To address these issues, the new approach for chemical processing is focused on sustainable production: minimize raw material consumption and energy loads, minimize/eliminate releases, and increase the economic feasibility of the process. To evaluate these advances, a sustainability assessment methodology, GREENSCOPE, has been developed into a tool to evaluate and assist in the synthesis and design of chemical processes. New process sustainability indicators have been proposed based on input/output process data, and the base-case ratio approach is implemented to predict process changes from known process performance data and design relationships. In addition, a discussion regarding the implications of using sustainability evaluations beyond the process boundaries, applying the principles of green chemistry in all steps of chemical process development, and a description of their benefits to the life cycle inventory and the subsequent life cycle assessment is included. Finally, a new methodology approach to integrate GREENSCOPE into a life cycle inventory to develop sustainable systems is introduced.Nanotechnology is a broad-impact technology with applications ranging from materials and electronics to analytical methods and metrology. The many benefits that can be realized through the utilization of nanotechnology are intended to lead to an improved quality of life. However, numerous concerns have been expressed regarding the unchecked growth of nanotechnology and the unforeseen consequences it may bring. To address the concerns, nanotechnology must be examined under the microscope of sustainability. This work applies the life cycle perspective to provide an understanding of the challenges facing the development of sustainable nanotechnology. A discussion of the holistic tools used to assess the components of sustainability serves as the basis to examine how a harmony between policy and product development can be maintained using decision making for sustainability. This harmony will be most readily achieved using an enhanced risk management strategy for sustainability that combines sustainability assessment with sustainable chemical design.This article describes a proposed protocol that is intended to provide a comprehensive list of factors to be considered in evaluating the direct and indirect environmental impacts of building insulation materials, as well as detailed descriptions of standardized calculation methodologies to determine those impacts. The energy and environmental impacts of insulation materials can generally be divided into two categories: (1) direct impact due to the embodied energy of the insulation materials and other factors and (2) indirect or environmental impacts avoided as a result of reduced building energy use due to addition of insulation. Standards and product category rules exist, which provide guidelines about the life cycle assessment (LCA) of materials, including building insulation products. However, critical reviews have suggested that these standards fail to provide complete guidance to LCA studies and suffer from ambiguities regarding the determination of the environmental impacts of building insulation and other products. The focus of the assessment protocol described here is to identify all factors that contribute to the total energy and environmental impacts of different building insulation products and, more importantly, provide standardized determination methods that will allow comparison of different insulation material types. Further, the intent is not to replace current LCA standards but to provide a well-defined, easy-to-use comparison method for insulation materials using existing LCA guidelines. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The application of life cycle assessment (LCA) in a policy context highlights the need for a "consequential" LCA (CLCA), which differs from an "attributional" LCA (ALCA). Although CLCA offers some advantages over ALCA, such as a capacity to account for emissions resulting from both substitution and price effects, it entails additional assumptions and cost and may yield estimates that are more uncertain (e.g., estimates of impact of biofuel policies on greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions). We illustrate how a CLCA that relies on simple partial equilibrium models could provide important insights on the direction and magnitude of price effects while limiting the complexity of CLCA. We describe how such a CLCA, when applied early in the policy life cycle, could help identify policy formulations that reduce the magnitude of adverse price effects relative to the beneficial substitution effect on emissions because-as the experience with biofuel regulations indicates-regulating price effects is costly and controversial. We conclude that the salient contribution of CLCA in the policy process might lie in warning policy makers about the vulnerabilities in a policy with regard to environmental impact and to help modify potentially counterproductive formulations rather than in deriving the precise estimates for uncertain variables, such as the life cycle GHG intensity of product or average indirect emissions.Use of biomass-based electricity and hydrogen in alternative transport could provide environmentally sustainable transport options with possible improvements in greenhouse gas balance. We perform a life cycle assessment of electric vehicle (EV) and fuel cell vehicle (FCV) powered by bioelectricity and biohydrogen, respectively, derived from Norwegian boreal forest biomass, considering the nonclimate neutrality of biological carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and alteration in surface albedo resulting from biomass harvesting-both with and without CO2 capture and storage (CCS)-while benchmarking these options against EVs powered by the average European electricity mix. Results show that with due consideration of the countering effects from global warming potential (GWP) factors for biogenic CO2 emissions and change in radiative forcing of the surface for the studied region, bioenergy-based EVs and FCVs provide reductions of approximately 30%, as compared to the reference EV powered by the average European electricity mix. With CCS coupled to bioenergy production, the biomass-based vehicle transport results in a net global warming impact reduction of approximately 110% to 120% (giving negative GWP and creating a climate-cooling benefit from biomass use). Other environmental impacts vary from -60% to +60%, with freshwater eutrophication showing maximum reductions (40% for the EV case and 60% for the FCV case) and photochemical oxidation showing a maximum increase (60% in the FCV value chain).Models of buildings in life cycle assessment (LCA) often use simple descriptions of operational energy, maintenance, and material replacement. The scope of many building LCAs is often limited and uses assumptions such as building lifetimes of 30 to 50years. In actuality, building lifetimes vary considerably, and scenarios using standard assumptions may have incorrect results. Assumptions concerning material replacement, repair, and maintenance should be deliberate and as realistic as possible. This research was initiated to demonstrate the importance of service life assumptions on building life cycle assessment results. Three roof types (built-up, thermoplastic membrane, and vegetated) and three wall forms (brick, aluminum, and wood siding) were analyzed. These materials were combined and modeled as nine distinct building envelopes. Five service life models were used to determine the service life of materials and systems. The analysis considered impacts related to material manufacturing, construction, operation, and maintenance. The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts global warming potential, atmospheric eco-toxicity, and atmospheric acidification impact assessment indicators were used. The analysis of the cumulative life cycle impact and life cycle impact per year found that life cycle impact was primarily dependent on the predicted frequency of major material replacement as well as differences in the frequency and intensity of prescribed maintenance. In some scenarios, the relative differences in the life cycle impact of the alternatives were dependent on the environmental indicator used.Researchers at the University of Kansas, Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis (CEBC) recently reported a spray process concept as a greener alternative to the conventional Mid-Century (MC) process to produce high-purity terephthalic acid (TPA) [< 25 ppm 4-carboxybenzaldehyde] in a single step at 200 degrees C and 15 bar pressure. Plant-scale simulations of the MC process and the spray process, which considers four cases involving different amounts of acetic acid in the feed, are performed assuming a production rate of 500,000 t/yr of high-purity TPA. Comparative economic analyses and life cycle assessments (gate-to-gate and cradle-to-gate) show that the CEBC spray process significantly reduces capital and operating costs by 55% and 16%, respectively, (when using an identical amount of acetic acid in both processes) and also lowers some (such as global warming, acidification, and human health noncancer air potential) but not all adverse environmental impacts when compared to the MC process. These benefits of the CEBC spray process are mainly derived from the avoidance of a subsequent hydrogenation step required in the conventional process for purifying the crude TPA. These results provide valuable guidance for the rational design and development of a continuous spray process that has the potential to be a greener and more sustainable process for making polymer-grade dicarboxylic acids in one step.Algae are an appealing source for bioenergy due to their high yields relative to terrestrial energy crops. The high cost of production, however, has prohibited commercialization. Hydrothermal liquefaction is a technology that converts more of the algae into oil than alternative technologies, thereby reducing the amount of expensive pond infrastructure and energy required for cultivation. We incorporate recent experimental results into an analysis that models the economic and life cycle performance of an algal biorefinery across a range of reaction conditions. Two strategies are explored: one pathway with gasification of the aqueous waste products for onsite energy recovery and another pathway featuring cultivation of Escherichia coli on the aqueous products and recycling of the biomass back through the reactor for boosted oil yields. We found that the maximum net energy ratio of 1.9 and minimum global warming potential of 1.0 kg CO(2)e L-oil(-1) occurred with gasification, along with the minimum explored, 250 degrees C, and reaction times close to 1 h. The optimal economic and occupied land results occurred at temperature of 400 degrees C and with the shortest reaction time explored of 5 min. The cost of algal oil at these conditions was $1.64 L-oil(-1) (or $263 bbl(-1)). For the regrowth pathway, the land footprint could be further reduced by 10%, and the optimal cost could be reduced to $1.59 L-oil(-1). Forgoing gasification had a significantly detrimental effect on the other two metrics. Given the importance of economics to an algal biorefinery's operations, this could be a viable option.This paper addresses the need for a structured approach to environmental assessment and improvement. We propose a computer-aided methodology, named Eco-OptiCAD, based on the integration of Structural Optimization and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools. Eco-OptiCAD supports the designer during product development, highlighting when and where the core of the environmental impact lies. Furthermore, it provides effective tools to address such impacts, improving the original product, while ensuring structural and functional requirements. It foresees the synergic use of (1) virtual prototyping tools, such as 3D CAD, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Structural optimization, (2) function modeling methodology and (3) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools. The kernel of the methodology is constituted by a set of optimization strategies and a module, named Life Cycle Mapping (LCM). In particular, we have conceived ten optimization strategies converting environmental objectives and constraints into structural and geometrical parameters. They enable the designer to generate alternative green scenarios according to the triad shape-material-production. The LCM tool has been specifically developed to easily trace the growth of environmental impacts throughout the product's life cycle and allow the user to focus his effort on the most relevant aspects. Thanks to the integration of the structural optimizer with an LCA map, the designer becomes aware of the consequences that each change in the geometry, the material or the manufacturing process will produce on the environmental impact of the product throughout its life cycle. With a complete view of the product life cycle, the designer can improve a single phase, while retaining a global perspective; thus avoiding the possibility of gaining a local green improvement at the cost of a global increase in environmental impacts. An exemplary case study is presented to detail each step of the design methodology and shows its potential. Eco-OptiCAD represents a first step toward a fully integrated system for eco-design assessment and improvement, with the potential of working side by side with common design tools, in providing a constant environmental feedback. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The feasibility of the 3R concept tends to increase the reduction, reuse, and recycling of industrial waste. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of 3R methods to cope with industrial waste generated from high-density polyethylene production in Thailand. The sources and types of waste and existing waste management practices were identified. The four sources of waste generation that we identified were: (1) production, (2) packaging, (3) wastewater treatment, and (4) maintenance, distributed as 47, 46, 4, and 3 %, respectively. The main options for management were: sales to recycling plants (60.41 %), reuse and recycling (25.93 %), and industrial-waste landfilling (10.47 %). After 3R options were introduced, the proposed alternatives were found to be capable of reducing the amount of waste by 33.88 %. The results of life-cycle assessment (LCA) were useful for considering the environmental impact where 3R options were adopted. We also found that net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental impacts could be reduced when industrial waste diverted from landfill is used as alternative fuel. However, the cost of waste disposal seems to be the greatest obstacle for the adoption of 3R methods in Thailand.As a response to the growing concerns about a variety of environmental issues expressed by public opinion and political bodies, the leather industry needs to support its market by environmental criteria as a guarantee of quality. For this reason, assessment tools as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which allow a more thorough knowledge of the products to the enterprises and can help to guide the environmental policies, are recommended (e.g. EC Directive on Ecologic Labels). The LCA methodology, described in details by the ISO 14000 series, allows the assessment of the environmental impacts due to products, processes, or services, by the identification of the inputs (e.g. energy and material consumption) and outputs (e.g. waste and pollutant production) streams exchanged by the process with the environment (i.e. from raw materials procurement to waste streams disposal). The application of LCA as tool for integration of sustainability aspects in process design and development is gaining wider acceptance and methodological development. In this study, the life cycle modeling was used to support the development of a novel tanning process based on the use of a new class of tanning agent produced from renewable resources (e.g. glucose). The experimental activity performed to investigate the technical feasibility of the innovative tanning cycle was supported by the modelling of the process using the LCA methodology in order to assess the environmental performance of the leather production cycle. Therefore, an LCA analysis was performed in order to compare the glucose-tannage process with the traditional one from an environmental point of view.The study focuses on analysing the evolution of environmental impacts caused by a medium-large Italian WtE plant before and after revamping and maintenance operations, with the aim of providing an evaluation of how much these structural upgrade measures may affect the total environmental performance. LCA methodology was applied for the modelling and comparison of six WtE scenarios, each describing the main structural upgrades carried out in the plant over the years 1996-2011. The comparison was conducted by adopting 1 ton of MSW as the functional unit, and the net contribution from energy recovery to power generation was distinguished by defining consistent national grid electricity mixes for every year considered. The Ecoindicator99 2.09 impact assessment method was used to evaluate the contribution to midpoint and endpoint categories (e.g. carcinogens, respiratory inorganics and organics, climate change, damage to human health). Lastly, the "Pedigree quality matrix" was applied to verify the reliability and robustness of the model created. As expected, the results showed better environmental scores after both the implementation of new procedures and the integration of operations. However, while a net reduction of air emissions seems to be achievable through dedicated flue gas treatment technologies, outcomes underscored potentials for improving the management of bottom ash through the adoption of alternative options aimed to use that solid residue mainly as filler, and to decrease risks from its current disposal in landfill. If the same effort that is put into flue gas treatment were devoted to energy recovery, the targets for the WtE plant could be easily met, achieving a higher sustainability. This aspect is even more complex: national policies for implementing greener and renewable energy sources would result in a lower impact of the national energy mix and, hence, in a lower net avoided burden from energy recovery. The study confirmed the expected improvements, indicating quantitatively the lower environmental impact resulting from structural upgrade operations in a WtE plant. Furthermore, the work highlights the importance of considering the evolution of the national energy mix in LCA studies, especially during the present years of transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The primary objective of waste management technologies and policies in the United States is to reduce the harmful environmental impacts of waste, particularly those relating to energy consumption and climate change. Performance indicators are frequently used to evaluate the environmental quality of municipal waste systems, as well as to compare and rank programs relative to each other in terms of environmental performance. However, there currently is no consensus on the best indicator for performing these environmental evaluations. The purpose of this study is to examine the common performance indicators used to assess the environmental benefits of municipal waste systems to determine if there is agreement between them regarding which system performs best environmentally. Focus is placed on how indicator selection influences comparisons between municipal waste management programs and subsequent system rankings. The waste systems of ten municipalities in the state of New York, USA, were evaluated using each common performance indicator and Spearman correlations were calculated to see if there was a significant association between system rank orderings. Analyses showed that rank orders of waste systems differ substantially when different indicators are used. Therefore, comparative system assessments based on indicators should be considered carefully, especially those intended to gauge environmental quality. Insight was also gained into specific factors which may lead to one system achieving higher rankings than another. However, despite the insufficiencies of indicators for comparative quality assessments, they do provide important information for waste managers and they can assist in evaluating internal programmatic performance and progress. To enhance these types of assessments, a framework for scoring indicators based on criteria that evaluate their utility and value for system evaluations was developed. This framework was used to construct an improved model for waste system performance assessments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study was to quantify the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction that could be achieved by replacement of fossil-derived materials with biodegradable, biomass-based materials for household plastic containers and packaging, considering a variety of their treatment options. The biomass-based materials were 100% polylactide or a combination of polybutylene succinate adipate and polylactide. A scenario analysis was conducted considering alternative recycling methods. Five scenarios were considered: two for existing fossil-derived materials (the current approach in Japan) and the three for biomass-based materials. Production and waste disposal of 1 m(3) of plastic containers and packaging from households was defined as the functional unit. The results showed that replacement of fossil-derived materials with biomass-based materials could reduce life-cycle GHG emissions by 14-20%. Source separation and recycling should be promoted. When the separate collection ratio reached 100%, replacement with biomass-based materials could potentially reduce GHG emissions by 31.9%. Food containers are a priority for replacement, because they alone could reduce GHG emissions by 10%. A recycling system for biomass-based plastics must be carefully designed, considering aspects such as the transition period from fossil-derived plastics to biomass-based plastics.Carbon dioxide can be used in various ways as a cheap C1 source. However, the utilization of CO2 requires energy or energy-rich reagents, which leads to further emissions, and therefore, diminishes the CO2-saving potential. Therefore, life cycle assessment (LCA) is required for each process that uses CO2 to provide valid data for CO2 savings. Carbon dioxide can be incorporated into epoxidized fatty acid esters to provide the corresponding carbonates. A robust catalytic process was developed based on simple halide salts in combination with a phase-transfer catalyst. The CO2-saving potential was determined by comparing the carbonates as a plasticizer with an established phthalate-based plasticizer. Although CO2 savings of up to 80% were achieved, most of the savings arose from indirect effects and not from CO2 utilization. Furthermore, other categories have been analyzed in the LCA. The use of biobased material has a variety of impacts on categories such as eutrophication and marine toxicity. Therefore, the benefits of biobased materials have to be evaluated carefully for each case. Finally, interesting properties as plasticizers were obtained with the carbonates. The volatility and water extraction could be improved relative to the epoxidized system.This paper aims to identify and quantify the main potential environmental impacts of the sugarcane bagasse electricity generation in Brazil. To do so, it was employed the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique based on primary and secondary data from three previous studies encompassing electricity generation, transmission and distribution processes. It was identified that the main impact potentials of this type of electricity generation in Brazil that should be addressed by decision-makers are the photochemical ozone, the human toxicity via soil and the nutrient enrichment ones, which are caused mainly by the sugarcane straw burning prior harvesting and the chemical application. In addition, it was found that non-renewable resources, renewable resources and energy consumption are also important issues that should be addressed mostly in the process of electricity transmission. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The impact of the management of packaging waste on the environment, economic growth and job creation is analyzed in this paper. This integrated assessment intends to cover a gap in the literature for this type of studies, using the specific case study of the Portuguese packaging waste management system (SIGRE). The net environmental benefits associated with the management of packaging waste, are calculated using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The results show that, for the categories studied, the impacts associated to SIGRE's various activities are surpassed by the benefits associated to material and energy recovery, with special focus on recycling. For example, in 2011 SIGRE avoided the emission of 116 kt CO2 equiv. - the equivalent carbon emission of the electricity consumption of 124.000 households in Portugal. The economic impact of SIGRE is evaluated through Input-Output Analysis. It was found that SIGRE's activities also have a significant economic impact. For example, their added value are ranked amongst the upper third of the economic activities with highest multiplier effect at national level: this means that for each Euro of value added generated within SIGRE, 1.25 additional (sic) are added to the rest of the economy (multiplier effect of 2.25). Regarding the social impacts of SIGRE, the number of direct jobs associated with the system is estimated to be more than two thousand and three hundred workers. Out of these, 83% are connected to the management of municipal waste packaging (selective collection and sorting), 15% are connected to the management of non-municipal packaging waste and only 2% are connected to the Sociedade Ponto Verde (SPV, green dot society in English) - the management entity responsible for SIGRE. In general terms, the results obtained provide quantitative support to the EEA (2011) suggestion that moving up the waste hierarchy - from landfilling to recycling - creates jobs and boosts the economy. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The nature of end-of-life (EoL) processes is highly uncertain for constructions built today. This uncertainty is often neglected in life cycle assessments (LCAs) of construction materials. This paper tests how EoL assumptions influence LCA comparisons of two alternative roof construction elements: glue-laminated wooden beams and steel frames. The assumptions tested include the type of technology and the use of attributional or consequential modelling approaches. The study covers impact categories often considered in the construction industry: total and non-renewable primary energy demand, water depletion, global warming, eutrophication and photo-chemical oxidant creation. The following elements of the EoL processes are tested: energy source used in demolition, fuel type used for transportation to the disposal site, means of disposal and method for handling allocation problems of the EoL modelling. Two assumptions regarding technology development are tested: no development from today's technologies and that today's low-impact technologies have become representative for the average future technologies. For allocating environmental impacts of the waste handling to by-products (heat or recycled material), an attributional cut-off approach is compared with a consequential substitution approach. A scenario excluding all EoL processes is also considered. In all comparable scenarios, glulam beams have clear environmental benefits compared to steel frames, except for in a scenario in which steel frames are recycled and today's average steel production is substituted, in which impacts are similar. The choice of methodological approach (attributional, consequential or fully disregarding EoL processes) does not seem to influence the relative performance of the compared construction elements. In absolute terms, four factors are shown to be critical for the results: whether EoL phases are considered at all, whether recycling or incineration is assumed in the disposal of glulam beams, whether a consequential or attributional approach is used in modelling the disposal processes and whether today's average technology or a low-impact technology is assumed for the substituted technology. The results suggest that EoL assumptions can be highly important for LCA comparisons of construction materials, particularly in absolute terms. Therefore, we recommend that EoL uncertainties are taken into consideration in any LCA of long-lived products. For the studied product type, LCA practitioners should particularly consider EoL assumptions regarding the means of disposal, the expected technology development of disposal processes and any substituted technology and the choice between attributional and consequential approaches.With building construction and demolition waste accounting for 50 % of land fill space, the diversion of reusable materials is essential for Perth"s environment. The reuse and recovery of embodied energy-intensive construction materials during civil engineering works programs can offer significant energy savings and assist in the mitigation of the carbon footprint. A streamlined life cycle assessment, with limited focus, was carried out to determine the carbon footprint and embodied energy associated with a 100-m section of road base. A life cycle inventory of inputs (energy and materials) for all processes that occurred during the development of a 100-m road section was developed. Information regarding the energy and materials used for road construction work was obtained from the Perth-based firm, Cossill and Webley, Consulting Engineers. These inputs were inserted into Simapro LCA software to calculate the associated greenhouse gas emissions and embodied energy required for the construction and maintenance of a 100-m road section using. Two approaches were employed; a traditional approach that predominantly employed virgin materials, and a recycling approach. The GHG emissions and embodied energy associated with the construction of a 100-m road section using virgin materials are 180 tonnes of CO2-e and 10.7 terajoules (TJ), respectively. The substitution of crushed rock with recycled brick road base does not appear to reduce the carbon footprint in the pre-construction stage (i.e. from mining to material construction, plus transportation of materials to the construction site). However, this replacement could potentially offer environmental benefits by reducing quarrying activities, which would not only conserve native bushland but also reduce the loss of biodiversity along with reducing the space and cost requirements associated with landfill. In terms of carbon footprint, it appears that GHG emissions are reduced significantly when using recycled asphalt, as opposed to other materials. About 22 to 30 % of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be avoided by replacing 50 to 100 % of virgin asphalt with Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) during the maintenance period. The use of recycled building and road construction materials such as asphalt, concrete, and limestone can potentially reduce the embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with road construction. The recycling approach that uses 100 % reused crushed rock base and recycled concrete rubble, and 15 % RAP during the maintenance period could reduce the total carbon footprint by approximately 6 %. This large carbon saving in pavement construction is made possible by increasing the percentage of RAP in the wearing course.The construction sector was the second largest contributor of Hong Kong carbon emissions, and 85 % of the emission from construction was external in nature. The carbon footprint embodied in each building construction material varies considerably under different conditions. This study aims to quantify the embodied carbon footprint of building construction materials used in Hong Kong with the consideration of local factors and to investigate how the region-specific characteristic would affect the result. A "cradle-to-site" system boundary was used, including raw material extraction, manufacturing, and transport until the material reaches the construction site. Data were collected from manufacturers in local and nearby regions. Portland cement and ready mix concrete were selected as examples in this study to demonstrate the calculation. It is indicated that for cement, decomposition of limestone contributes the largest to the total greenhouse gas emission over the life cycle, followed by fuel combustion. The surveyed cement plant performs at an average level in manufacture, but the import of raw materials increases the total emissions. For concrete, the major contributor is cement manufacturing. Comparison with other databases reveals that there is room for improvement in carbon reduction of the surveyed plants. The "cradle-to-site" results on cement and concrete show no significant difference from the "cradle-to-gate" results. Hong Kong's dependency on imports increases the carbon footprint of locally used building construction materials. The presented methodology can be modified and extended to other materials, thereby helping lower the carbon footprint of construction activities by providing a benchmark for selecting green materials.A framework for the inclusion of land use impact assessment and a set of land use impact indicators has been recently proposed for life cycle assessment (LCA) and no case studies are available for forest biomass. The proposed methodology is tested for Scandinavian managed forestry; a comparative case study is made for energy from wood, agro-biomass and peat; and sensitivity to forest management options is analysed. The functional unit of this comparative case study is 1 GJ of energy in solid fuels. The land use impact assessment framework of the United Nations Environment Programme and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (UNEP-SETAC) is followed and its application for wood biomass is critically analysed. Applied midpoint indicators include ecological footprint and human appropriation of net primary production, global warming potential indicator for biomass (GWP(bio)-100) and impact indicators proposed by UNEP-SETAC on ecosystem services and biodiversity. Options for forest biomass land inventory modelling are discussed. The system boundary covers only the biomass acquisition phase. Management scenarios are formulated for forest and barley biomass, and a sensitivity analysis focuses on impacts of land transformations for agro-biomass. Meaningful differences were found in between solid biofuels from distinct land use classes. The impact indicator results were sensitive to land occupation and transformation and differed significantly from inventory results. Current impact assessment method is not sensitive to land management scenarios because the published characterisation factors are still too coarse and indicate differences only between land use types. All indicators on ecosystem services and biodiversity were sensitive to the assumptions related with land transformation. The land occupation (m(2)a) approach in inventory was found challenging for Scandinavian wood, due to long rotation periods and variable intensities of harvests. Some suggestions of UNEP-SETAC were challenged for the sake of practicality and relevance for decision support. Land use impact assessment framework for LCA and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) indicators could be applied in a comparison of solid bioenergy sources. Although forest bioenergy has higher land occupation than agro-bioenergy, LCIA indicator results are of similar magnitude or even lower for forest bioenergy. Previous literature indicates that environmental impacts of land use are significant, but it remains questionable if these are captured with satisfactory reliability with the applied LCA methodology, especially for forest biomass. Short and long time perspectives of land use impacts should be studied in LCA with characterisation factors for all relevant timeframes, not only 500 years, with a forward-looking perspective. Characterisation factors need to be modelled further for different (forest) land management intensities and for peat excavation.This study aims to compare the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of two cellulosic bioenergy pathways (i.e., bioethanol and bioelectricity) using different references and functional units. It also aims to address uncertainties associated with a comparative life cycle analysis (LCA) for the two bioenergy pathways. We develop a stochastic, comparative life cycle GHG analysis model for a switchgrass-based bioenergy system. Life cycle GHG offsets of the biofuel and bioelectricity pathways for cellulosic bioenergy are compared. The reference system for bioethanol is the equivalent amount of gasoline to provide the same transportation utility (e.g., vehicle driving for certain distance) as bioethanol does. We use multiple reference systems for bioelectricity, including the average US grid, regional grid in the USA according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and average coal-fired power generation, on the basis of providing the same transportation utility. The functional unit is one unit of energy content (MJ). GHG offsets of bioethanol and bioelectricity relative to reference systems are compared in both grams carbon dioxide equivalents per hectare of land per year (g CO2-eq/ha-yr) and grams carbon dioxide equivalents per vehicle kilometer traveled (g CO2-eq/km). For the latter, we include vehicle cycle to make the comparison meaningful. To address uncertainty and variability, we derive life cycle GHG emissions based on probability distributions of individual parameters representing various unit processes in the life cycle of bioenergy pathways. Our results show the choice of reference system and functional unit significantly changes the competition between switchgrass-based bioethanol and bioelectricity. In particular, our results show that the bioethanol pathway produces more life cycle GHG emissions than the bioelectricity pathway on a per unit energy content or a per unit area of crop land basis. However, the bioethanol pathway can offer more GHG offsets than the bioelectricity pathway on a per vehicle kilometer traveled basis when using bioethanol and bioelectricity for vehicle operation. Given the current energy mix of regional grids, bioethanol can potentially offset more GHG emissions than bioelectricity in all grid regions of the USA. The reference and functional unit can change bioenergy pathway choices. The comparative LCA of bioenergy systems is most useful for decision support only when it is spatially explicit to address regional specifics and differences. The difference of GHG offsets from bioethanol and bioelectricity will change as the grid evolves. When the grids get cleaner over time, the favorability of bioethanol for GHG offsets increases.The purpose of this study is to assess and calculate the potential impacts of climate change on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction potentials of combined production of whole corn bioethanol and stover biomethanol, and whole soybean biodiesel and stalk biomethanol. Both fuels are used as substitutes to conventional fossil-based fuels. The product system includes energy crop (feedstock) production and transportation, biofuels processing, and biofuels distribution to service station. The methodology is underpinned by life cycle thinking. Crop system model and life cycle assessment (LCA) model are linked in the analysis. The Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer - crop system model (DSSAT-CSM) is used to simulate biomass and grain yield under different future climate scenarios generated using a combination of temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric CO2. Historical weather data for Gainesville, Florida, are obtained for the baseline period (1981-1990). Daily minimum and maximum air temperatures are projected to increase by +2.0, +3.0, +4.0, and +5.0 A degrees C, precipitation is projected to change by +/- 20, 10, and 5 %, and atmospheric CO2 concentration is projected to increase by +70, +210, and +350 ppm. All projections are made throughout the growing season. GaBi 4.4 is used as primary LCA modelling software using crop yield data inputs from the DSSAT-CSM software. The models representation of the physical processes inventory (background unit processes) is constructed using the ecoinvent life cycle inventory database v2.0. Under current baseline climate condition, net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings per hectare from corn-integrated biomethanol synthesis (CIBM) and soybean-integrated biomethanol synthesis (SIBM) were calculated as -8,573.31 and -3,441 kg CO2-eq. ha(-1) yr(-1), respectively. However, models predictions suggest that these potential GHG emissions savings would be impacted by changing climate ranging from negative to positive depending on the crop and biofuel type, and climate scenario. Increased atmospheric level of CO2 tends to minimise the negative impacts of increased temperature. While policy measures are being put in place for the use of renewable biofuels driven by the desire to reduce GHG emissions from the use of conventional fossil fuels, climate change would also have impacts on the potential GHG emissions reductions resulting from the use of these renewable biofuels. However, the magnitude of the impact largely depends on the biofuel processing technology and the energy crop (feedstock) type.This study aims to contribute to an improved understanding of the environmental implications of offshore power grid and wind power development pathways. To achieve this aim, we present two assessments. First, we investigate the impacts of a North Sea power grid enabling enhanced trade and integration of offshore wind power. Second, we assess the benefit of the North Sea grid and wind power through a comparison of scenarios for power generation in affected countries. The grid scenario explored in the first assessment is the most ambitious scenario of the Windspeed project and is the result of cost minimization analysis using a transmission-expansion-planning model. We develop a hybrid life cycle inventory for array cables; high voltage, direct current (HVDC) links; and substations. The functional unit is 1 kWh of electricity transmitted. The second assessment compares two different energy scenarios of Windspeed for the North Sea and surrounding countries. Here, we utilize a life cycle inventory for offshore grid components together with an inventory for a catalog of power generation technologies from Ecoinvent and couple these inventories with grid configurations and electricity mixes determined by the optimization procedure in Windspeed. Developing, operating, and dismantling the grid cause emissions of 2.5 g CO2-Eq per kWh electricity transmission or 36 Mt CO2-Eq in total. HVDC cables are the major cause of environmental damage, causing, for example, half of total climate change effects. The next most important contributors are substations and array cabling used in offshore wind parks. Toxicity and eutrophication effects stem largely from leakages from disposed copper and iron mine tailings and overburden. Results from the comparison of two scenarios demonstrate a substantial environmental benefit from the North Sea grid extension and the associated wind power development compared with an alternative generation of electricity from fossil fuels. Offshore grid and wind power, however, entail an increased use of metals and, hence, a higher metal depletion indicator. We present the first life cycle assessment of a large offshore power grid, using the results of an energy planning model as input. HVDC links are the major cause of environmental damage. There are differences across impact categories with respect to which components or types of activities that are responsible for damage. The North Sea grid and wind power are environmentally beneficial by an array of criteria if displacing fossil fuels, but cause substantial metal use.Numerous publications in the last years stressed the growing importance of nanotechnology in our society, highlighting both positive as well as in the negative topics. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is amongst the most established and best-developed tool in the area of product-related assessment. In order to use this tool in the area of nanotechnology, clear rules of how emissions of nanomaterials should be taken into account on the level of life cycle inventory (LCI) modelling are required-i.e. what elements and properties need to be reported for an emission of a nanomaterial. The objective of this paper is to describe such a framework for an adequate and comprehensive integration of releases of nanomaterials. With a three-step method, additional properties are identified that are necessary for an adequate integration of releases of nanomaterials into LCA studies. In the first step, a comprehensive characterisation of the release of a nanomaterial is compiled-based on reviewing scientific publications, results from expert workshops and publications from public authorities and international organisations. In the second step, this comprehensive overview is refined to a list containing only those properties that are effectively relevant for LCA studies-i.e. properties that influence the impacts in the areas of human toxicity and ecotoxicity, respectively. For this, an academic approach is combined with a second, more practical, view point, resulting together in a prioritisation of this list of properties. Finally, in a third step, these findings are translated into the LCA language-by showing how such additional properties could be integrated into the current LCA data formats for a broader use by the LCA community. As a compromise between scholarly knowledge and the (toxicological) reality, this paper presents a clear proposal of an LCI modelling framework for the integration of releases of nanomaterials in LCA studies. However, only the broad testing of this framework in various situations will show if the suggested simplifications and reductions keep the characterisation of releases of nanomaterials specific enough and/or if assessment is accurate enough. Therefore, a next step has to come from the impact assessment, by the development of characterisation factors as a function of size and shape of such releases.By analyzing the latest developments in the dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA) methodology, we identify an implementation challenge with the management of new temporal information to describe each system we might want to model. To address this problem, we propose a new method to differentiate elementary and process flows on a temporal level, and explain how it can generate temporally differentiated life cycle inventories (LCI), which are necessary inputs for dynamic impact assessment methods. First, an analysis of recent DLCA studies is used to identify the relevant temporal characteristics for an LCI. Then, we explain the implementation challenge of handling additional temporal information to describe processes in life cycle assessment (LCA) databases. Finally, a new format of temporal description is proposed to minimize the current implementation problem for DLCA studies. A new format of process-relative temporal distributions is proposed to obtain a temporal differentiation of LCA database information (elementary flows and product flows). A new LCI calculation method is also proposed since the new format for temporal description is not compatible with the traditional LCI calculation method. Description of the requirements and limits for this new method, named enhanced structural path analysis (ESPA), is also presented. To conclude the description of the ESPA method, we illustrate its use in a strategically chosen scenario. The use of the proposed ESPA method for this scenario reveals the need for the LCA community to reach an agreement on common temporal differentiation strategies for future DLCA studies. We propose the ESPA method to obtain temporally differentiated LCIs, which should then require less implementation effort for the system-modeling step (LCA database definition), even if such concepts cannot be applied to every process.In life cycle impact assessment, various proposals have been made on how to characterise fossil resource scarcity, but they lack appropriateness or completeness. In this paper, we propose a method to assess fossil resource scarcity based on surplus cost, which is the global future cost increase due to marginal fossil resource used in the life cycle of products. The marginal cost increase (MCI in US dollars in the year 2008 per kilogram per kilogram produced) is calculated as an intermediate parameter for crude oil, natural gas and coal separately. Its calculations are based on production cost and cumulative future production per production technique or country. The surplus cost (SC in US dollars in the year 2008 per kilogram) is calculated as an indicator for fossil resource scarcity. The SC follows three different societal perspectives used to differentiate the subjective choices regarding discounting and future production scenarios. The hierarchist perspective SCs of crude oil, natural gas, and coal are 2.9, 1.5, and 0.033 US$(2008)/GJ, respectively. The ratios between the indicators of the different types of fossil resources (crude oil/natural gas/coal) are rather constant, except in the egalitarian perspective, where contrastingly no discounting is applied (egalitarian 100:47:21; hierarchist 100:53:1.1; individualist 100:34:0.6). The ratio of the MCIs (100:48:1.0) are similar to the individualist and hierarchist SC ratios. In all perspectives, coal has a much lower resource scarcity impact factor per gigajoule and crude oil has the highest. In absolute terms of costs per heating value (US dollars in the year 2008 per gigajoule), there are large differences between the SCs for each perspective (egalitarian > hierarchist > individualist).Characterization factors (CFs) quantifying the potential impact of acidifying emissions on inland aquatic environments in life cycle assessment are typically available on a generic level. The lack of spatial differentiation may weaken the relevance of generic CFs since it was shown that regional impact categories such as aquatic acidification were influenced by the surroundings of the emission location. This paper presents a novel approach for the development of spatially differentiated CFs at a global scale for the aquatic acidification impact category. CFs were defined as the change in relative decrease of lake fish species richness due to a change in acidifying chemicals emissions. The characterization model includes the modelling steps linking emission to atmospheric acid deposition (atmospheric fate factor) change, which lead to lake H+ concentration (receiving environment fate factor) change and a decrease in relative fish species richness (effect factor). We also evaluated the significance of each factor (i.e. atmospheric fate, receiving environment fate and effects) to the overall CFs spatial variability and parameter uncertainty. The highest CFs were found for emissions occurring in Canada, Scandinavia and the northern central Asia because of the extensive lake areas in these regions (lake areas being one of the parameters of the CFs; the bigger the lake areas, the higher the CFs). The CFs' spatial variability ranged over 5, 6 and 8 orders of magnitude for NOx, SO2 and NH3 emissions, respectively. We found that the aquatic receiving environment fate factor is the dominant contributor to the overall spatial variability of the CFs, while the effect factors contributed to 98 % of the total parameter uncertainty. The resulting characterization model and factors enable a consistent evaluation of spatially explicit acidifying emissions impacts at the global scale.This study discusses the use of parameterization within the life cycle inventory (LCI) in the wooden pallet sector, in order to test the effectiveness of LCI parametric models to calculate the environmental impacts of similar products. Starting from a single case study, the objectives of this paper are (1) to develop a LCI parametric model adaptable to a range of wooden pallets, (2) to test this model with a reference product (non-reversible pallet with four-way blocks) and (3) to determine numerical correlations between the environmental impacts and the most significant LCI parameters; these correlations can be used to improve the design of new wooden pallets. The conceptual scheme for defining the model is based on ISO14040-44 standards. First of all, the product system was defined identifying the life cycle of a generic wood pallet, as well as its life cycle stages. A list of independent and dependent parameters was used to describe the LCI flows of a generic wooden pallet. The LCI parametric model was applied to calculate the environmental impacts of the reference product, with regard to a selection of impact categories at midpoint level (climate change, human toxicity, particulate matter formation, agricultural land occupation, fossil depletion). The model was then applied to further 11 wooden pallets belonging to the same category. The definition of a LCI parametric model based on 31 independent parameters and 21 dependent parameters streamlined the data collection process, as the information required for fulfilling the LCI are standard information about the features of the wooden pallet and its manufacturing process. The contribution analysis on the reference product revealed that the most contributing life cycle stages are wood and nails extraction and manufacturing (positive value of environmental impact) and end-of-life (avoided impact). This result is driven by two parameters: mass of wood and average distance for transport of wood. Based on the results of the application of the LCI parametric model to the identified products, one parameter-based regression and one multiple non-linear regression allowed to define a correlation between the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) category indicators considered and the most influencing parameters. The definition of LCI parametric model in the wooden pallet sector can effectively be used for calculating the environmental impacts of products with different designs, as well as for obtaining a preliminary estimation of the life cycle environmental impacts of new products.Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for 99 % of companies operating in the European food and drink industry and, often, are part of highly fragmented and complex food chains. The article focuses on the development of a social impact assessment methodology for SMEs in selected food and drink products as part of the EU-FP7 SENSE research project. The proposed methodology employs a top-down and bottom-up approach and focuses on labour rights/working conditions along the product supply chain as the key social impact indicator, limiting key stakeholder classification to workers/employees and local communities impacted by the production process. Problems related to this emerging field are discussed, and questions for further research are expounded. The article reviews both academic and 'grey' literature on life cycle assessment (LCA) and its relationship to social LCA (S-LCA) and SMEs at the beginning of 2013 and includes case study evidence from the food sector. A pilot questionnaire survey sent to European food and drink sector SMEs and trade associations (as partners in the research project) about their knowledge, experience and engagement with social impacts is presented. Proposals are elaborated for a social impact assessment methodology that identifies the key data for SMEs to collect. The literature reveals the complexity of the S-LCA approach as it aims to unite disparate and often conflicting interests. Findings from the pilot questionnaire are discussed. Using a top-down and bottom-up approach, the proposed methodology assesses data from SMEs along the supply chain in order to gauge social improvements in the management of labour-related issues for different product sectors. Issues relating to the 'attributional' choice of a social impact indicator and key stakeholder categories are discussed. How 'scoring' is interpreted and reported and what the intended effect of its use will be are also elaborated upon. Whilst recognising the difficulty of devising a robust social impact assessment for SMEs in the food and drink sector, it is argued that the proposed methodology makes a useful contribution in this fast-emerging field.This paper aims at assessing the appropriateness at the system level of different Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data sets (including default models) selected by the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practitioner. This means that the uncertainty measurements are applied on some specific main parameters of the LCI data set instead of measured input values. This approach aims at providing a pragmatic method to approximate and reduce the uncertainties resulting from a lack of information on a specific step. The method proposed in this paper to assess the percentage errors on appropriateness includes three main steps. First, different systems including different versions of the same process with technological or geographical changes are assessed. Second, a hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) or a principal component analysis (PCA) is performed to identify the main variables influencing the results. Third, a multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) assesses the significance of the main variables on the results. An appropriate default model can be developed by setting the variables introducing high variations in results. When comparing the same spinning process located in different countries, the HCA enabled us to identify the electricity mix as the main variable influencing the results. The "world average default models" has proven inappropriate to represent country specific locations. When comparing spinning technologies, the PCAs identified the electricity and the cotton input required as the main variables influencing the results and explained the variations in results due to technological changes. The HCA performed on different yarn manufacturing procedures identified the location and the yarn thickness as the two main variables influencing the results. The MANOVA assessed the percentage marginal variance (PMV) explained by the variable location between 85 and 92 % for four impact categories. The MANOVA performed on different fabric manufacturing systems assessed the PMV explained by the variables harvest, spinning, and weaving locations above 68 % for all impact categories. The HCA and MANOVA analyses helped design an appropriate "technological average default model." From the identification of the main influencing variables (HCA and PCA) to the quantitative appropriateness assessment (MANOVA) and the development of appropriate default models, the method has proven effective in assisting the LCA practitioner in the modeling of textile manufacturing systems, and for other worldwide multi-step manufacturing systems.Many companies around the world have been challenged to make their products in a more sustainable way in the last decade in order to minimize their environmental impacts. Klabin, the largest producer, exporter, and recycler of paper in Brazil, has made great efforts to exchange old for new and more efficient equipment to produce cellulose packaging materials. The objective of this study was to measure the benefits of modernization of its plant located in the southern region of the country for manufacturing carrier board/folding box board (CB/FBB) and kraftliner paper (KP). The goal established was analyzed through a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment methodology. The modernization carried out has led to several improvements such as the reductions measured by the functional units of 1,000 kg of CB/FBB and 1,000 kg of KP, respectively, of energy consumption (21 and 3 %), water (8.5 % for CB/FBB only), wood (6.6 and 7.2 %), and land use (6.9 and 7.1 %). The environmental impact categories (according to CML 2001) that have suffered greater reductions are human toxicity (68 and 69 %), abiotic depletion (59 and 28 %), and global warming potential (51 and 9 %) for the same reference units. The results achieved clearly show the importance of renewing industrial plant in order to achieve better environmental performance and also provide a historical inventory perspective for the company to establish future targets for improvement.Because of the more and more stringent regulations and customer demand, dishwasher detergent manufacturers are constantly improving the composition of the products towards better environmental performances. In order to quantify the pros and cons of these changes on the lifecycle of detergents, as compared to conventional products, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a meaningful opportunity. However, the application of the methodology is hampered by the lack of Characterisation Factors (CFs) relative to the specific chemical substances included in the detergents composition, which cannot be included in the impact assessment of the effluent discharge. In this study we have tackled this problem, taking advantage of the specific case of three dishwasher detergents produced by the Chemolux/McBride group: phosphate-based, eco-labelled and phosphate-free formulations. Nine CFs for freshwater ecotoxicity and seven CFs for human toxicity have been developed, using the USEtox methodology and data made available under the REACH regulation. As a result, the dishwasher effluent composition could be characterised by more than 95% for freshwater ecotoxicity whereas for human toxicity the percentage was less than 36%, due to the lack of adequate and reliable repeated dose toxicity studies. The main contributing substances to freshwater ecotoxicity were found to be sodium percarbonate and sodium triphosphate, the latter confirming the pertinence of phosphates banning in the detergent industry. Regarding human toxicity, zinc shows the highest contribution. Further comparison to previous studies and sensitivity analysis substantiated the robustness of these conclusions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) provides emission data to the various environmental compartments and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) determines the final distribution, fate and effects. Due to the overlap between the Technosphere (anthropogenic system) and Ecosphere (environment) in agricultural case studies, it is, however, complicated to establish what LCI needs to capture and where LCIA takes over. This paper aims to provide guidance and improvements of LCl/LCIA boundary definitions, in the dimensions of space and time. For this, a literature review was conducted to provide a clear overview of available methods and models for both LCI and LCIA regarding toxicological assessments of pesticides used in crop production. Guidelines are provided to overcome the gaps between LCI and LCIA modeling, and prevent the overlaps in their respective operational spheres. The proposed framework provides a starting point for LCA practitioners to gather the right data and use the proper models to include all relevant emission and exposure routes where possible. It is also able to predict a clear distinction between efficient and inefficient management practices (e.g. using different application rates, washing and rinsing management, etc.). By applying this framework for toxicological assessments of pesticides, LCI and LCIA can be directly linked, removing any overlaps or gaps in between the two distinct LCA steps. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aimed at evaluating the co-benefit implications of alternative electricity generation scenarios in Japan, in a post-Fukushima context. Four scenarios were designed assuming different shares of energy sources in a 2030 timeframe. Applying a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, scenarios were assessed in terms of cumulative non-renewable energy (NRE) consumption, global warming potential (GWP), terrestrial acidification potential (TAP), and particulate matter formation (PMF). Additionally electricity generation costs were evaluated. Results demonstrate that the current dependence on fossil fuel is unfeasible in the long run, as it results in 14% higher NRE consumption, an increase of 32% on GHG emissions, 29% on TAP and 34% on PMF, and 9% higher cost than the baseline scenario under pre-Fukushima conditions. On the other hand, a share of up to 27% of renewable energies is technically possible and would result in a 34% reduction of NRE consumption, 29% decrease of GHG emissions, and contribute to the mitigation of 24% of TAP and PMF impacts, at minor increase of levelized costs. Increasing the share of renewables and phasing-out thermal power would therefore increase the resilience of the Japanese economy toward external oil markets, cope with environmental protection priorities, while promoting economic development. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Colombian biofuels are used in the transportation sector at low-percentage blends of biofuel-fossil fuel (until 8:92, volume basis). Since energy policies encourage the increment of Bioenergy percentage in energy matrix, the biofuels production and use should be increased during the next years. In this work, the environmental assessment of several scenarios involving current and promising biofuel supply chains was made. The aim of this paper was the assessment of several possible alternatives to increase the biofuels production from current agricultural supply chains. Sugarcane, cassava, oil-palm and jatropha were considered as feedstocks for the analysis. The environmental assessment included calculations of the greenhouse gas emissions and the potential environmental impacts, using the life cycle assessment approach. The results indicated that the current biofuels production mitigates environmental impacts in comparison to fossil fuels production and use. Additionally, biofuels production using promising feedstocks could be environmentally competitive if the production processes are improved. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental assessments are often performed for industries due to a lot of issues produced in the processes. However, few studies are reported for environmental assessment of Chinese liquor production. A lot of material consumptions in Chinese liquor industries often bring about serious environmental pollution. Thus, Chinese strong aromatic liquor (CSAL) is taken as a representative for the environmental issues assessment of Chinese liquor industry in view of cleaner production (CP). The assessment is performed for the brewing system of CSAL including three main phases: crude liquor brewing, crude liquor blending, and steam production, which addresses resource and energy consumptions and environmental impacts. The results indicate that, according to the standards of Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, the consumptions of materials and energy are acceptable while the water consumption is higher than the requirement. Moreover, the discharge of chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the brewing phase is above the standard requirement and contributes much to eutrophication. The total environmental impacts in the blending phase are less than those in the brewing and steam production phases. In detail, in the brewing phase, high concentration of volatile organic compounds in the wastewater results in the odor threshold values and photochemical ozone creation. In the blending phase, the main environmental impact is eutrophication owing to the wastewater. In the steam production phase, the most and least significant impacts are global warming and soot emission, respectively, wherein waste gas emission is dominated. Cost analysis reveals that when the water consumption and COD discharge meet the requirements according to the CP option, there are plenty of economic and environmental benefits for the CSAL industry. The results confirm that the reform strategies for the Chinese liquor enterprise should be performed to decrease the water consumption, promote the utilization efficiency of water, improve recycle and reuse of by-products, reduce the pollutant discharge, and enhance waste treatment efficiency.There is considerable interest concerning sustainable, economically competitive and environmentally benign hydrogen production pathways. In this study, a large scale wind-hydrogen plant is assessed for the production of electrolytic hydrogen, for the servicing of the oil sands bitumen upgrading industry in Western Canada. The wind-hydrogen plant proposed has a capacity of 563 MW, along with the dual functionality of hydrogen production and electricity generation; with the delivery of hydrogen to the bitumen upgrader via pipeline. The research carried out involved the development of a data intensive techno-economic model in tandem with a simulation model of the plant. Several plant configurations were assessed to determine the optimum electrolyzer size and quantity - which would translate into the minimum hydrogen production cost (including delivery). The optimal plant configuration consists of 80 units of the 3496 kW (760 Nm(3)/h) electrolyzer, which yields a minimum hydrogen production cost of $8.43 and $7.84/kg of H-2 with and without delivery. Therefore, currently, hydrogen production from wind energy remains uncompetitive relative to conventional fossil fuel hydrogen pathways. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability is an issue that has become of key importance to the engineering industry. An important definition for sustainability is True Sustainability: a concept often termed the Triple Bottom Line Approach, which involves the balance of Economic, Social and Environmental sustainability. At present the focus on sustainable design within the engineering profession is on Environmental Sustainability and Green Design. This focus is too narrow with engineering systems not considering the other components of sustainability emphasizing the need for sustainable design to have a broader scope. This paper presents a framework attempting to overcome this narrow focus through the integration of two separate engineering design techniques, Performance Based Design and Life Cycle Assessment. The framework is a 6-step process that combines these two techniques through establishment of common goals. This integration presents a logical methodology that may be adopted by engineering professionals to design engineering systems to achieve True Sustainability. This framework will have several implications for the engineering field including changes to the current design-construction process and education of engineers. The framework is a base for continued research on how to implement design techniques into the engineering industry to enhance the sustainability of constructed systems.Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is one of the most prominent emerging technologies for mitigating global climate change. In this study, a comparative evaluation for CO2 fixation by carbonation of steelmaking slag was performed by life cycle assessment (LCA) using Umberto 5.5.4 software, with the Swiss Eco-invent 2.2 database. Six scenarios of carbonation for basic oxygen furnace slag (BOFS), steel converted slag (SCS), and blended hydraulic slag cement (BHC) if different types of reactors and/or method were established. The environmental impacts for each scenario are quantified using the valuation system of ReCiPe, where global warming potential (GWP), ecosystem quality potential (EQP), an human health potential (HHP) were evaluated. In addition, sensitivity analysis was carried out to evaluate the relevant uncertainties of heating efficiency on the GHG emissions in direct carbonation processes. According to the results of LCA and sensitivity analysis, the direct carbonation of steelmaking slag in a slurry reactor was found to be the most attractive method, since the GWP was the lowest among the selected scenarios. Furthermore, the best available technology (BAT) for CO2 capture by carbonation processes of alkaline wastes was proposed according to the key performance indicators (KPIs) with respect to engineering considerations and environmental impacts. It was concluded that the accelerated carbonation of steelmaking slag should be performed by combining the slurry reactor with a rotating packed bed (RPB) to maximize carbonation conversion and minimize environmental impacts and additional CO2 emissions.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has developed into a useful methodology to assess energy consumption of fishing fleets and their derived seafood products, as well as the associated environmental burdens. In this study, however, the life cycle inventory data is used to provide a dimensionless ratio between energy inputs and the energy provided by the fish: the edible protein energy return on investment (ep-EROI). The main objective was to perform a critical comparison of seafood products landed in Galicia (NW Spain) in terms of ep-EROI. The combination of energy return on investment (EROI) with LCA, the latter having standardized mechanisms regarding data acquisition and system boundary delimitation, allowed a reduction of uncertainties in EROI estimations. Results allow a deeper understanding of the energy efficiency in the Galician fishing sector, showing that small pelagic species present the highest ep-EROI values if captured using specific fishing techniques. Finally, results are expected to provide useful guidelines for policy support in the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.A common value of carbon emission factor, t-CO2/GWh, in nuclear power generation reported in the literature varies by more than a factor of 100. Such a variation suggests a margin of uncertainty and reliability. In this study, we employ a bottom-up approach to better define the system, its input and output, and boundaries. This approach offers improved granularity at the process level and consistency in the results. Based on this approach, we have developed a methodology to enable comparison of carbon emissions from nuclear power generation. The proposed methodology employs the principle of energy balance on a defined power generation system. The resulting system boundary facilitates the use of the "Kaya Identity" and the decomposition technique to identify the carbon emission streams. Using nuclear power as a case study, we obtained a carbon emission factor of 22.80 t-CO2/GWh, which falls to within 2.5% of the median of globally reported LCA results. We demonstrate that the resulting methodology could be used as a generic tool for life cycle analysis of carbon emissions from other power generation technologies and systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The high theoretical productivity of microalgae makes it a promising energy crop, but economically viable large-scale production facilities have yet to emerge. Coupling algae cultivation ponds with flue gas emissions from power utilities to provide carbon dioxide and municipal wastewater to provide nutrients has been recommended as a solution. This flue gas and wastewater co-utilization (FWC) strategy not only reduces the upstream impacts and costs associated with providing inputs, but also provides a credit for wastewater treatment, a service currently required to reduce production costs to a viable level. This study provides the first national assessment of the potential for producing algal bio-oil in the United States using FWC. Spatial-temporal algae growth was simulated using solar radiation and temperature data to calculate the average annual algae yield for any location, which significantly impacts feasibility. The results of this model were integrated into a geospatial analysis which establishes the economically viable bio-oil production potential of FWC by accounting for the relative abundance of the input resources and their proximity. At most, 1.7 billion liters of bio-oil could be produced annually in a manner economically competitive with crude oil prices of $80 per barrel. The amount of nutrients in wastewater limits yields to 20.5 L of bio-oil per capita annually, and climatic constraints further reduce this potential by nearly 60%. Carbon dioxide constraints play a negligible role. Although the bio-oil production potential of FWC is relatively small, it does provide an opportunity to increase national biofuel output while providing a needed service. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using recycled rubber crumbs as drainage layer in extensive green roofs have high potential to reduce the heating and cooling loads in buildings over traditional materials used as drainage layer, such as pozzolana gravel. However, the environmental impact due to the life cycle should be analyzed to assess its environmental benefit. This paper evaluates the environmental performance of green roofs in which the drainage layer is made of rubber crumbs, a recycled material the use of which is still experimental for this purpose. In this paper Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to compare the environmental impact of four constructive systems, two extensive green roofs without insulation layer and with different drainage materials, a recycled material, rubber crumbs, and a conventional one, pozzolana gravel -, in front of two conventional flat roofs, with and without thermal insulation (polyurethane), built in an experimental set-up consisting of four monitored house-like cubicles, located in Mediterranean continental climate (Lleida, Spain). The LCA considered the production, construction, operational, and disposal phases of the roofs, according to UNE-EN 15643-2. The operational phase was carried out using data measured in the experimental set-up, considering heating and cooling energy consumptions in the winter and summer period, respectively. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The definition of criteria for the benchmarking of similar entities is often a critical issue in analytical studies because of the multiplicity of criteria susceptible to be taken into account. This issue can be aggravated by the need to handle multiple data for multiple facilities. This article presents a methodological framework, named the Em + DEA method, which combines emergy analysis with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for the ecocentric benchmarking of multiple resembling entities (i.e., multiple decision making units or DMUs). Provided that the life-cycle inventories of these DMUs are available, an emergy analysis is performed through the computation of seven different indicators, which refer to the use of fossil, metal, mineral, nuclear, renewable energy, water and land resources. These independent emergy values are then implemented as inputs for DEA computation, thus providing operational emergy-based efficiency scores and, for the inefficient DMUs, target emergy flows (i.e., feasible emergy benchmarks that would turn inefficient DMUs into efficient). The use of the Em + DEA method is exemplified through a case study of wind energy farms. The potential use of CED (cumulative energy demand) and CExD (cumulative exergy demand) indicators as alternative benchmarking criteria to emergy is discussed. The combined use of emergy analysis with DEA is proven to be a valid methodological approach to provide benchmarks oriented towards the optimisation of the life-cycle performance of a set of multiple similar facilities, not being limited to the operational traits of the assessed units. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Input-output life cycle assessment (I-O LCA) is a tool for calculating the product chain impacts of goods and services in an economic system. However, specificity and accuracy of model results is compromised by sectoral aggregation in I-O tables. Based on the 135- and 42-sector 2007 Chinese economic benchmark data, this study developed two disaggregated I-O LCA models for construction. The construction sector in Chinese I-O tables was disaggregated into fourteen sub-sectors, including thirteen building types and civil engineering projects. Results show that aggregation in the construction sector causes a 15-225% overestimate for the product chain energy of buildings. The disaggregated 148-sector I-O model yields results that are 10-14% higher than the 55-sector model. Public buildings such as cultural, sports and entertainment, research, and hotel and restaurant, have high product chain energy due to intensive use of steel and concrete. The product chain energy of urban residential buildings is similar, and ranges from 2.9 to 3.3 Gj m(-2). However, this is 87-94% higher than rural residential buildings, which in China are primarily low-rise structures. This study enhanced the capacity of I-O LCA models for calculating the product chain energy of different building types in China. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Solid waste management (SWM) systems must proactively adapt to changing policy requirements, waste composition, and an evolving energy system to sustainably manage future solid waste. This study represents the first application of an optimizable dynamic life-cycle assessment framework capable of considering these future changes. The framework was used to draw insights by analyzing the SWM system of a hypothetical suburban U.S. city of 100 000 people over 30 years while considering changes to population, waste generation, and energy mix and costs. The SWM system included 3 waste generation sectors, 30 types of waste materials, and 9 processes for waste separation, treatment, and disposal. A business-as-usual scenario (BAU) was compared to three optimization scenarios that (1) minimized cost (Min Cost), (2) maximized diversion (Max Diversion), and (3) minimized greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Min GHG) from the system. The MM Cost scenario saved $7.2 million (12%) and reduced GHG emissions (3%) relative to the BAU scenario. Compared to the Max Diversion scenario, the MM GHG scenario cost approximately 27% less and more than doubled the net reduction in GHG emissions. The results illustrate how the timed-deployment of technologies in response to changes in waste composition and the energy system results in more efficient SWM system performance compared to what is possible from static analyses.Neodymium is one of the more critical rare earth elements with respect to current availability and is most often used in high performance magnets. In this paper, we compare the virgin production route of these magnets with two hypothetical recycling processes in terms of environmental impact. The first recycling process looks at manual dismantling of computer hard disk drives (HDDs) combined with a novel hydrogen based recycling process. The second process assumes HDDs are shredded. Our life cycle assessment is based both on up to date literature and on our own experimental data. Because the production process of neodymium oxide is generic to all rare earths, we also report the life cycle inventory data for the production of rare earth oxides separately. We conclude that recycling of neodymium, especially via manual dismantling, is preferable to primary production, with some environmental indicators showing an order of magnitude improvement. The choice of recycling technology is also important with respect to resource recovery. While manual disassembly allows in principle for all magnetic material to be recovered, shredding leads to very low recovery rates (<10%).To further understanding of the environmental implications of rainwater harvesting and its water savings potential relative to conventional U.S. water delivery infrastructure, we present a method to perform life cycle assessment of domestic rainwater harvesting (DRWH) and agricultural rainwater harvesting (ARWH) systems. We also summarize the design aspects of DRWH and ARWH systems adapted to the Back Creek watershed, Virginia. The baseline design reveals that the pump and pumping electricity are the main components of DRWH and ARWH impacts. For nonpotable uses, the minimal design of DRWH (with shortened distribution distance and no pump) outperforms municipal drinking water in all environmental impact categories except ecotoxicity. The minimal design of ARWH outperforms well water in all impact categories. In terms of watershed sustainability, the two minimal designs reduced environmental impacts, from 58% to 78% energy use and 67% to 88% human health criteria pollutants, as well as avoiding up to 20% blue water (surface/groundwater) losses, compared to municipal drinking water and well water. We address potential environmental and human health impacts of urban and rural RWH systems in the region. The Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) model-based life cycle inventory data were used for this study.Change of vegetation cover and increased land use intensity, particularly for agricultural use, can affect species richness. Within life cycle impact assessment, methods to assess impacts of land use on a global scale are still in need of development. In this work, we present a spatially explicit data-driven approach to characterize the effect of agricultural land occupation on different species groups. We derived characterization factors for the direct impact of agricultural land occupation on relative species richness. Our method identifies potential differences in impacts for cultivation of different crop types, on different species groups, and in different world regions. Using empirical species richness data gathered via an extensive literature search, characterization factors were calculated for four crop groups (oil palm, low crops, Pooideae, and Panicoideae), four species groups (arthropods, birds, mammals, and vascular plants), and six biomes. Analysis of the collected data showed that vascular plant richness is more sensitive than the species richness of arthropods to agricultural land occupation. Regarding the differences between world regions, the impact of agricultural land use was lower in boreal forests/taiga than in temperate and tropical regions. The impact of oil palm plantations was found to be larger than that of Pooideae croplands, although we cannot rule out that this difference is influenced by the spatial difference between the oil palm- and Pooideae-growing regions as well. Analysis of a subset of data showed that the impact of conventional farming was larger than the impact of low-input farming. The impact of land occupation on relative species richness depends on the taxonomic groups considered, the climatic region, and farm management. The influence of crop type, however, was found to be of less importance.A Product Category Rules (PCR) document specifies the quantification method and communication format of environmental impacts of a product category. To ensure neutrality and credibility of quantitative environmental information, the development of PCR documents is defined in ISO 14025. Hence, the rules are preconditions for comparative considerations and modular application of information entities and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). However, with the growing number of EPD programs, the producers, purchasers, and consumers feel increasingly alienated in relation to the validity and legitimacy of the environmental information presented by EPDs. This results in a need for enhanced transparency of PCR development and EPD program compatibility. This article offers navigational assistance in this respect. To identify harmonization potential, we compare PCR development regarding two aspects: quantitatively by mapping existing PCR and EPD documents, and qualitatively by comparing existing institutional structures with normative guidance. Information was gathered through an internet search and through direct correspondence with program operators. We identified 27 programs, 556 PCR documents, and 3614 EPD declarations (May 2013). There were significant differences in activity level between programs and sectors. Furthermore, the institutional structures differ widely from each other and from normative guidance on PCR development. This first global PCR register guides practitioners in the search for PCR documents. The analysis of program institutional structures for PCR development and EPD verification indicates the involvement of different stakeholders on Type III environmental declarations. Regarding PCR compatibility and newly released guidance documents from the European Commission and the PCR Guidance Development Initiative, we recommend that operators (1) settle on a common (sector) categorization system, (2) implement a Stakeholder Identification Worksheet, (3) consider the mandatory involvement of consumer and environmental interests in the PCR review panel, (4) require PCR reviewers to declare potential conflicts of interest, and (5) consider installing mandatory third party verification of declarations for any external use.The decentralization of the Brazilian electricity sector in association with the internal electricity supply crisis has encouraged companies in the sugarcane industry to produce electricity by burning sugarcane bagasse in cogeneration plants. This approach reduces the environmental impact of the sugarcane production and has opened up opportunities for distilleries and annex plants to increase their product portfolios. Potential scenarios for technically and environmentally improving the cogeneration performance were analyzed by using thermodynamic analysis and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The method used in this study aimed to provide an understanding and a model of the electrical and thermal energy production and the environmental impacts of conventional vapor power systems which operate with a Rankine cycle that are commonly used by Brazilian distilleries. Vapor power system experts have suggested focusing on the following technical improvement areas: increasing the properties of the steam from 67 bar and 480 A degrees C to 100 bar and 520 A degrees C, regeneration, and reheating. Eight case scenarios were projected based on different combinations of these conditions. A functional unit of "To the delivery of 1.0 MWh of electricity to the power grid from a cogeneration system" was defined. The product system covers the environmental burdens of the industrial stage and the agricultural production of sugarcane. Technical evaluation indicated that the energy efficiency improves as the pressure at which the vapor leaves the boiler increases. Simultaneously, the net power exported to the grid increases and the makeup water consumption in the cooling tower and the makeup water supplied to the boiler reduce. From the LCA, it was noted that the improved energy performance of the system is accompanied by reduced environmental impacts for all evaluated categories. In addition, vapor production at 100 bar and 520 A degrees C results in greater environmental gains, both in absolute and relative terms. Reheating and regeneration concepts were found to be considerably effective in improving the energy and environmental performance of cogeneration systems by burning sugarcane bagasse. For the evaluated categories, the results indicate that the proposed modifications are favorable for increasing the efficiency of the thermodynamic cycle and for decreasing the environmental impacts of the product system.In Korea, natural gas is widely used as city gas, fuel for electricity generation, and fuel for transportation (e.g., city bus). However, the environmental impact associated with the use of natural gas in Korea has not been paid much attention to. In this study, well-to-wheel (WTW) analysis on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy uses associated with natural gas in Korea was performed by considering every step from feedstock recovery to final use in the vehicle operation. The raw data used in the analysis were mainly provided by Korean natural gas industry and related associations. The additional information, especially for the processes in foreign countries, was also collected by literature survey. We adopted the GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) model as a base WTW analysis tool, which was developed by the U.S. Argonne National Laboratory. However, the WTW analysis on natural gas in Korea is far different from that of the U.S, because similar to 99 % of natural gas used in Korea is imported from the oversea countries in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). For this reason, detailed parameters in GREET were changed for Korean situation, and especially, significant modifications were made on liquefaction, LNG transportation and storage, and re-gasification processes. As a result of the analysis, the well-to-pump GHG emissions of city gas and compressed natural gas are calculated as 25,717-30,178 and 28,903-33,422 g CO2 eq./GJ(Fianl_fuel), respectively. The WTW GHG emission of compressed-natural-gas-fueled city bus is calculated as 1,348-1,417 g CO2 eq./km. These values are relatively larger than those of the U.S., because most of the natural gas used in the U.S. is transported by pipeline in a gaseous state, which typically takes less energy and associated GHG emissions, as compared to the import of LNG in Korea. Finally, sensitivity analysis is performed on the parameters, which have either range of values among various sources or uncertainties due to lack of accurate information. The results show that further investigation on three parameters, i.e., CO2 venting during natural gas processing, CH4 leakage in Korea, and CH4 leakage during recovery process, would be helpful to further improve overall accuracy of the analysis.This article is the second part of a series of articles presenting the results of research on the implementation of lifecycle management tools in small- and medium-sized companies in Poland. This work is part of a project financed by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PAED), which began in February 2011. It was carried out by the Wielkopolska Quality Institute, a business environment institution associated with the Polish Centre for life cycle assessment (PCLCA). The main practical objective of the project was to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in their business development, e.g. by expanding their horizons beyond the sphere of their operation and identifying new areas for the improvement and promotion of the products and services they offer. The specific objective of the analysis on the environmental impact was an attempt to answer the question of whether environmental LCA is a good management tool for this type of business. Part 2 describes results of the evaluation of the implementation of LCA in SMEs conducted in 46 companies involved in the project. In order to assess the effectiveness of the project and the effectiveness of the implementation of LCA and life cycle costing (LCC), a survey was conducted of small and medium businesses where the implementation work had been fully completed. In total, 46 organisations agreed to participate in the LCA survey, which was almost 66 % of all the companies where the LCA and LCC studies had been carried out within the project. The survey was conducted using individual in-depth interviews. Questions to the representatives of the companies referred both to aspects of their functioning in the market (characteristics of a company, its market share, management systems, environmental policy, suppliers and clients) and the operation of their environmental service (assessment of its effectiveness, motivation and difficulties in its implementation), as well as opinions on the potential applications of LCA in their current operations. The experience and observations of LCA experts resulting from their cooperation with the organisations analysed are largely supported by the results of the survey. The overall impression gained from the project is that the small- and medium-sized enterprises analysed have a problem with accepting and understanding the life cycle perspective and show limited interest in taking liability for environmental aspects beyond the mandatory legal standards and boundaries of their business operations. The survey shows that the companies rarely analyse environmental aspects appearing on many different stages of the life cycle of their products. Most of them focus on their current operations while trying to meet the mandatory legal requirements relating to environmental protection. It should be noted, however, that SMEs taking part in the studies appreciate the opportunities offered by LCA, their usefulness in business practice, recognise the potential for using life cycle techniques in the future and their impact on the management process, procedure or thinking about the products they manufacture. The result of the study is the identification of four key areas relevant to SMEs which may affect their willingness to adopt the life cycle perspective and undertake environmental measures. It seems that implementing LCT in small- and medium-sized enterprises requires a special approach. These are often companies with limited human resources (often just a few people) and financial resources (often operating on the verge of survival), with a weak position in a supply chain and, therefore, having various priorities in their daily operation. The researchers also encountered awareness barriers as a result of which the idea of going beyond an organisation and making an entire LCA of a product was often simply misunderstood. The studies conducted among SMEs have shown that managers' own intuition and research on customer preferences were largely conducive to improve existing or introducing new products or services, while changes were mostly introduced due to the requirements of the market, or the desire to reduce costs. It can be assumed that their non-obligatory nature also contributed to the relatively low interest in LCA initiatives and not recognising their usefulness. It seems that it would be useful to carry out relatively simple, but integrated, LCA/LCC analyses in SMEs so that the companies would clearly see the economic effect of the proposed environmental improvements. The analyses conducted lead to the conclusion that the incentive for SMEs to take measures should come from outside, e.g. as requirements for green public procurements, or as part of assessment made by suppliers in a supply chain.The impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on climate change receives much focus today. This impact is however often considered only in terms of global warming potential (GWP), which does not take into account the need for staying below climatic target levels, in order to avoid passing critical climate tipping points. Some suggestions to include a target level in climate change impact assessment have been made, but with the consequence of disregarding impacts beyond that target level. The aim of this paper is to introduce the climate tipping impact category, which represents the climate tipping potential (CTP) of GHG emissions relative to a climatic target level. The climate tipping impact category should be seen as complementary to the global warming impact category. The CTP of a GHG emission is expressed as the emission's impact divided by the 'capacity' of the atmosphere for absorbing the impact without exceeding the target level. The GHG emission impact is determined as its cumulative contribution to increase the total atmospheric GHG concentration (expressed in CO2 equivalents) from the emission time to the point in time where the target level is expected to be reached, the target time. The CTP of all the assessed GHGs increases as the emission time approaches the target time, reflecting the rapid decrease in remaining atmospheric capacity and thus the increasing potential impact of the GHG emission. The CTP of a GHG depends on the properties of the GHG as well as on the chosen climatic target level and background scenario for atmospheric GHG concentration development. In order to enable direct application in life cycle assessment (LCA), CTP characterisation factors are presented for the three main anthropogenic GHGs, CO2, CH4 and N2O. The CTP metric distinguishes different GHG emission impacts in terms of their contribution to exceeding a short-term target and highlights their increasing importance when approaching a climatic target level, reflecting the increasing urgency of avoiding further GHG emissions in order to stay below the target level. Inclusion of the climate tipping impact category for assessing climate change impacts in LCA, complimentary to the global warming impact category which shall still represent the long-term climate change impacts, is considered to improve the value of LCA as a tool for decision support for climate change mitigation.Despite interest in an environmentally conscious decision between disposable and reusable cups, a comprehensive and current study for US consumers is not yet available. Guidance in favor of single-use cups rely on outdated or non-ISO-compliant results with limited uncertainty information. Such claims are insufficiently generalizable. This article delivers an updated comparative life cycle impact assessment of reusable ceramic cups and single-use expanded polystyrene cups. The ReCiPe midpoint model was selected. Scenario uncertainties are addressed by evaluating compliant standard dishwashing appliance models from 2004 to 2013 used in 26 US subregional utility grids. A utility snapshot from 2009 is applied with extension to recent shifts in generation from increased penetration of natural gas and renewable energy. Parameter uncertainty is quantified through statistical methods. Where there is statistical difference, results almost entirely favor reusable cups in the USA. For climate change, 16 % of users have higher impact for ceramic cups washed in 2013 by minimally compliant dishwashers. Higher climate change impacts for 32 % of reusable cup users is indicated with 2004 average dishwashers, though using a cup twice between washes shifts the impact in favor of the reusable cup. Disposable cup scenarios do not account for film sleeves, lids, printing, and less conservative shipping weights and distances and therefore reflect a best case scenario. Impact for reusable cups is expected to decrease further as the electricity mix becomes less CO2-intensive with replacement of coal-fired generators by natural gas, wind, and solar and as less efficient dishwashers are replaced with new units compliant to current laws.In this paper, there is an attempt to derive an observation and study of specific machining parameters after turning process of a DIN 34CrNiMo6 nickel-chromium stainless steel in a conventional center (lathe). The machining parameters concerned are the temperatures developed on cutting tools and the workpiece, the surface roughness of the workpiece after process, the level of vibrations of cutting tool, the noise levels of the process, and the current of the lathe motor. Four different experimental scenarios completed namely wet, dry and aircooled process. An optimally designed sensor network installed to monitor and record the measurements of the examined machining parameters. The experimental data considered for examination with statistical analysis of developed charts which presented interesting research findings. In dry cutting, the machining temperatures and the amount of removed material, observed with the highest values among other experimental scenarios. The surface roughness found its smallest value after the end of the lubricated cutting and the machining process with minimum vibrations observed during the operation of the Airgun. However, the study also brought out an interesting and useful observation for future consideration in the area of a Life Cycle Assessment. The chips taken at the end of - experimental scenarios will be used for an LCA analysis in relation to the initial material and machining process. This will give an opportunity of an interesting approach that can be applied to assess the environmental impacts throughout a product's life cycle.Livestock production is a significant source of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions globally. In any sheep-producing nation, an effective agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategy must include sheep-targeted interventions. The most prominent interventions suited to sheep systems are reviewed in the current paper, with a focus on farm-level enteric CH4 and soil N2O emissions. A small number of currently available interventions emerge which have broad consensus on their mitigation potential. These include breeding to increase lambing percentages and diet formulation to minimize nitrogen excretion. The majority of interventions still require significant research and development before deployment. Research into the efficacy of interventions such as incorporation of biochar is in its infancy, while for others such as dietary supplements, successes in isolated studies now need to be replicated in long-term field trials under a range of conditions. Enhancing understanding of underlying biological processes will allow capitalization of interventions such as vaccination against rumen methanogenesis and pasture drainage. Many interventions cannot be recommended at a regional or national scale because, either, their mitigation potential is inextricably linked to soil and weather conditions in the locality of use, or their use is restricted to more intensive, closely managed systems. Distilling the long list of interventions to produce an effective farm-level mitigation strategy must involve: accounting for all GHG fluxes and interactions, identifying complimentary sets of additive interventions, and accounting for baseline emissions and current practice. Tools such as whole farm GHG models and marginal abatement cost curves are crucial in the development of tailored, practical sheep farm GHG mitigation strategies.Wastewater treatment has nowadays multiple functions and produces both clean effluents and sludge, which is increasingly seen as a resource rather than a waste product. Technological as well as management choices influence the performance of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) on the multiple functions. In this context, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can determine what choices provide the best environmental performance. However, the assessment is not straightforward due to the intrinsic space and time-related variability of the wastewater treatment process. These challenges were addressed in a comparative LCA of four types of WWTPs, representative of mainstream treatment options in Denmark. The four plant types differ regarding size and treatment technology: aerobic versus anaerobic, chemical vs. combined chemical and biological. Trade-offs in their environmental performance were identified considering system expansion to model the avoided impacts achievable in different end-of-life scenarios for sludge: combustion with energy production versus agricultural application. To account for the variability in quality of effluents and sludge, and to address the related uncertainties, Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis were applied. Uncertainties related to the choice of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method and to the use of different data sources were also discussed. The results showed that, for the climate change and fossil depletion impact categories, recycling phosphorus to agricultural soils appear as a more sustainable alternative compared to the incineration of sludge. However, the uncertainty and sensitivity analysis showed that robust conclusions could not be drawn on the eutrophication and toxicity-related impact categories. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper was to assess the environmental performance of the production of six types of dairy products/pasteurized and ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk, yoghurt, cream, butter and cheese/from seven dairy plants of different capacities processing 36% of raw milk in Serbia. A total of 29 life cycle assessment calculations have been performed to identify and quantify the environmental impacts from a cradle-to-grave perspective covering three subsystems: 'dairy farm', 'dairy plant' and 'waste and waste water treatment'. Structured surveys in selected dairies have been conducted in order to collect life cycle inventory input data. Six environmental impact potentials were calculated in this study: global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone layer depletion, photochemical smog and human toxicity. The focus of the research was put on global warming potential, acidification potential and eutrophication potential. As a general finding, this study confirmed previous research that the largest contributor to the environmental profile is the raw milk production at dairy farms. Contributions of the dairy processing plants are mainly due to energy requirement and inputs of goods at the dairy gate. Mitigation options for optimization of environmental impacts rely on the choice of the production! packaging portfolio, energy fuel profile, water optimization and waste management. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The low emission and high fuel economy standards set by regulatory agencies are causing an increase in the number of electrified (hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric) vehicles reaching the marketplace. In order for students to obtain a better understanding of the architecture of these vehicles, a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle was converted into a plug-in series hybrid electric vehicle with a generator that runs on used canola oil biodiesel. Moreover, this vehicle is connected to a solar photovoltaic charging station for a comparison of recharging on or off the electrical grid. To analyze this recycling of a vehicle including renewable energy sources requires a life cycle energy and emissions analysis (LCA). To this end, this effort utilizes the Argonne National Laboratory Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model. Moreover, a Matlab-based vehicle dynamics simulation coupled to GREET provides a localized driving cycle examination in the LCA. The resulting outcomes presented include the reduction in energy use and emissions through recycling and component reuse for a vehicle. In addition, on-road testing with model validation demonstrates fuel savings using a more efficient vehicle over the baseline design. Finally, this effort documents improvements in the sustainability of the vehicle by incorporating solar energy for charging. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of 3 feeding strategies to reduce enteric CH4 production in dairy cows by calculating the effect on labor income at the farm level and on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the chain level (i.e., from production of farm inputs to the farm gate)., Strategies included were (1) dietary supplementation of an extruded linseed product (56% linseed; 1 kg/cow per day in summer and 2 kg/cow per day in winter), (2) dietary supplementation of a nitrate source (75% nitrate; 1% of dry matter intake), and (3) reducing the maturity stage of grass and grass silage (grazing at 1,400 instead of 1,700 kg of dry matter/ha and harvesting at 3,000 instead of 3,500 kg of dry matter/ha). A dairy farm linear programing model was used to define an average Dutch dairy farm on sandy soil without a predefined feeding strategy (reference situation). Subsequently, 1 of the 3 feeding strategies was implemented and the model was optimized again to determine the new economically optimal farm situation. Enteric CH4 production in the reference situation and after implementing the strategies was calculated based on a mechanistic model for enteric CH4 and empirical formulas explaining the effect of fat and nitrate supplementation on enteric CH4 production. Other GHG emissions along the chain were calculated using life cycle assessment. Total GHG emissions in the reference situation added up to 840 kg of CO2 equivalents (CO(2)e) per t of fat-and protein-corrected milk (FPCM) and yearly labor income of (sic)42,605. Supplementation of the extruded linseed product reduced emissions by 9 kg of CO(2)e/t of FPCM and labor income by (sic)16,041; supplementation of the dietary nitrate source reduced emissions by 32 kg of CO(2)e/t of FPCM and labor income by (sic)5,463; reducing the maturity stage of grass and grass silage reduced emissions by 11 kg of CO(2)e/t of FPCM and labor income by (sic)463. Of the 3 strategies, reducing grass maturity was the most cost-effective ((sic)57/t of CO(2)e compared with (sic)241/t of CO(2)e for nitrate supplementation and (sic)2,594/t of CO(2)e for linseed supplementation) and had the greatest potential to be used in practice because the additional costs were low.We develop a hybrid-unit energy input-output (I/O) model with a disaggregated electricity sector for China. The model replaces primary energy rows in monetary value, namely, coal, gas, crude oil, and renewable energy, with physical flow units in order to overcome errors associated with the proportionality assumption in environmental I/O analysis models. Model development and data use are explained and compared with other approaches in the field of environmental life cycle assessment. The model is applied to evaluate the primary energy embodied in economic output to meet Chinese final consumption for the year 2007. Direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions intensities are determined. We find that different final demand categories pose distinctive requirements on the primary energy mix. Also, a considerable amount of energy is embodied in the supply chain of secondary industries. Embodied energy and emissions are crucial to consider for policy development in China based on consumption, rather than production. Consumption-based policies will likely play a more important role in China when per capita income levels have reached those of western countries.Island waste management professionals are faced with limited land resources, high energy costs, large seasonal fluctuations in waste volumes, and complex social and political dynamics that stem from their often closely knit societies. These and other factors can discourage typical waste management practices, but they also provide opportunities for island governments and businesses to explore alternative technologies and policies that suit their particular circumstances and that might be environmentally preferable. This critical review discusses the waste management literature on islands to date, including several industrial ecology (IE) studies. Common advantages and disadvantages faced by island waste management challenges are presented from the perspectives of business and municipal management. Waste generation data are presented from more than 40 islands around the world and tested for correlation with economic and geographic parameters and using cluster analysis, with the aim of identifying trends among island types. Poor data quality and comparability are ongoing challenges that underscore the potential benefits of a consistent program of island waste management data collection. Finally, the review explores opportunities for applying IE research to generate useful insights and policies in the areas of material flow analysis, industrial symbiosis, life cycle assessment, and social ecology.This paper examines the environmental impacts of food waste and the influence that packaging alternatives can have on causing food waste. This paper presents the results of three life cycle assessment case studies on packed food products. The life cycle assessments were conducted for ham, dark bread and Soygurt drink (fermented soy-based drink). In each case study, the environmental impacts of the products were assessed with different assumptions about the packaging sizes and alternative materials. The studies especially considered the environmental impacts resulting from food waste generated by consumers as a function of the variable packaging options. The food waste of other parts of the production chain of the studied products was also taken into account. A consumer survey was carried out to estimate the amounts of product waste generated in Finnish households connected to the three investigated products. The environmental impacts of the food products, household food waste and packaging were modelled by scenarios with varying rates of household food waste and different waste management options. The results indicated that the significance of the production and post-consumer life of packaging was relatively low for climate change, eutrophication and acidification, in comparison with the production chain of the ham, dark bread and Soygurt. According to the results, packaging solutions that minimize the waste generation in households as well as in distribution and retail will lead to the lowest environmental impacts of the entire product-packaging chain. Therefore, it is important to design packages that protect the food properly and allow the consumer to use the product fully. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This paper proposes an integrated approach for the evaluation of the equivalent cradle-to-cradle life-cycle impact of building assemblies, including the energy, environmental and economic impacts. The application of this approach is exemplified with external walls of buildings. This integrated approach follows European standards: environmental performance is evaluated following a life-cycle assessment methodology; energy performance is gauged by the consumption of energy for heating and cooling; and the economic module is based on the whole-life costing methodology. The use of an environmental impact assessment method that converts the results of impact categories into an economic unit allows the comparison and selection of alternatives through the addition of the energy, environmental and economic life-cycle costs. The main advantage of this approach is the simultaneous comparison of the energy, environmental and economic life-cycle performance of alternatives (that do not have to be functionally equivalent) without the need to change their characteristics to make them comparable.This is an assessment of key economic, environmental and social issues pertaining to jatropha biofuels, based on almost 150 studies covering 26 countries. The assessment aims to furnish a state-of-the-art overview and identify knowledge gaps. So far, total jatropha production has remained small. Numbers and value of jatropha projects have even declined since 2008. The economic analyses indicate minimal financial feasibility for projects. Yield increase and value addition (e.g., through utilising by-products) are necessary. Plantations seem to fare the worst, mainly due to the higher financial inputs used. in a plantation setting and the still limited yield levels. Smallholders can only achieve financial feasibility in low-input settings and when opportunity costs are low. Unfortunately, hardly any Cost Benefit Analyses (CBA) are based on real data; partly due to a lack of long-running jatropha projects. The environmental impact varies greatly across locations. Most studies indicate significant Greenhouse Gas (GHG) benefits over fossil fuels; however, this is only achieved with limited inputs and no loss of high C-stock biodiversity. The determinants in Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) are yield, input level, by-products utilisation, transesterification, transport distances, and land cover. More LCA research is required with more accurate data, and focusing on nitrous oxide emissions and the relation between production intensity and biodiversity impacts. Minimal negative social impacts have been revealed so far, but discontinuation of projects affects communities through income losses and fostering more negative attitudes towards new projects. Moreover, hardly any studies quantify social impact comprehensively. Detailed data collection is necessary, involving baseline studies to start with. If its financial feasibility is improved, jatropha can still become an option for sustainable energy production, GHG mitigation and rural development, especially through smallholder models. Successful implementation requires careful advance assessment of local circumstances, such as the political climate, gender aspects and land ownership structures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This Special Issue provides several different perspectives on the complex issue of packaging waste recycling. It comprises a diverse and rich set of contributions with insights from very different disciplines that range from economics to engineering. All types of "costs and benefits" are addressed in this collection of articles. In addition to the economic and strictly financial impacts of selective collection and sorting of packaging waste, several authors discuss other types of impacts, such as the environmental and social ones. The reader will find articles that address recycling systems as a whole, pieces that focus on specific impacts and detailed discussions of particular material streams or waste management strategies. The Special Issue represents an indispensable resource for academics, policy-makers and practitioners with interests in recycling and packaging waste management. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.The management of the plastic fraction is one of the most debated issues in the discussion on integrated municipal solid waste systems. Both material and energy recovery can be performed on such a waste stream, and different separate collection schemes can be implemented. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate, based on the analysis of different plastic waste recovery routes. Five scenarios were defined and modelled with a life cycle assessment approach using the EASEWASTE model. In the baseline scenario (P0) the plastic is treated as residual waste and routed partly to incineration with energy recovery and partly to mechanical biological treatment. A range of potential improvements in plastic management is introduced in the other four scenarios (P1-P4). P1 includes a source separation of clean plastic fractions for material recycling, whereas P2 a source separation of mixed plastic fraction for mechanical upgrading and separation into specific polymer types, with the residual plastic fraction being down-cycled and used for "wood items". In P3 a mixed plastic fraction is source separated together with metals in a "dry bin". In P4 plastic is mechanically separated from residual waste prior to incineration. A sensitivity analysis on the marginal energy was carried out. Scenarios were modelled as a first step assuming that marginal electricity and heat were based on coal and on a mix of fuels and then, in the sensitivity analysis, the marginal energy was based on natural gas. The study confirmed the difficulty to clearly identify an optimal strategy for plastic waste management. In fact none of the examined scenarios emerged univocally as the best option for all impact categories. When moving from the P0 treatment strategy to the other scenarios, substantial improvements can be obtained for "Global Warming". For the other impact categories, results are affected by the assumption about the substituted marginal energy. Nevertheless, irrespective of the assumptions on marginal energy, scenario P4, which implies the highest quantities of specific polymer types sent to recycling, resulted the best option in most impact categories. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper describes the results of a municipal solid waste management planning based on an extensive utilization of material and substance flow analysis, combined with the results of specific life cycle assessment studies. The mass flow rates of wastes and their main chemical elements were quantified with a view to providing scientific support to the decision-making process and to ensure that the technical inputs to this process are transparent and rigorous. The role of each waste management option (recycling chains, biological and thermal treatments), as well as that of different levels of household source separation and collection (SSC), was quantitatively determined. The plant requirements were consequently evaluated, by assessing the benefits afforded by the application of high quality SSC, biological treatment of the wet organic fraction, and thermal treatment of unsorted residual waste. Landfill volumes and greenhouse gas emissions are minimized, toxic organic materials are mineralized, heavy metals are concentrated in a small fraction of the total former solid waste volume, and the accumulation of atmophilic metals in the air pollution control residues allows new recycling schemes to be designed for metals. The results also highlight that the sustainability of very high levels of SSC is reduced by the large quantities of sorting and recycling residues, amounts of toxic substances in the recycled products, as well as logistic and economic difficulties of obtaining very high interception levels. The combination of material and substance flow analysis with an environmental assessment method such as life cycle assessment appears an attractive tool-box for comparing alternative waste management technologies and scenarios, and then to support waste management decisions on both strategic and operating levels. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to propose a method for harmonising Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) literature studies on the same product or on different products fulfilling the same function for a reliable and meaningful comparison of their life-cycle environmental impacts. The method is divided in six main steps which aim to rationalize and quicken the efforts needed to carry out the comparison. The steps include: 1) a clear definition of the goal and scope of the review; 2) critical review of the references; 3) identification of significant parameters that have to be harmonised; 4) harmonisation of the parameters; 5) statistical analysis to support the comparison; 6) results and discussion. This approach was then applied to the comparative analysis of the published LCA studies on tap and bottled water production, focussing on Global Warming Potential (GWP) results, with the aim to identify the environmental preferable alternative. A statistical analysis with Wilcoxon's test confirmed that the difference between harmonised GWP values of tap and bottled water was significant. The results obtained from the comparison of the harmonised mean GWP results showed that tap water always has the best environmental performance, even in case of high energy-consuming technologies for drinking water treatments. The strength of the method is that it enables both performing a deep analysis of the LCA literature and obtaining more consistent comparisons across the published LCAs. For these reasons, it can be a valuable tool which provides useful information for both practitioners and decision makers. Finally, its application to the case study allowed both to supply a description of systems variability and to evaluate the importance of several key parameters for tap and bottled water production. The comparative review of LCA studies, with the inclusion of a statistical decision test, can validate and strengthen the final statements of the comparison. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It seems clear that energy production is one of the key aspects of global sustainability. Economic, social and environmental aspects must be taken into account in order to design appropriate policies and thus, multicriteria analysis becomes a very adequate tool to deal with real problems of this kind. This study was directed by the Regional Ministry of Environment of Andalucia, who wanted to know the impact on the cost and on the environmental damage of a potential mix, more focused on renewable sources. Some authorities of the Ministry acted as decision maker in the interactive process. As a result, we have built a linear multiobjective model, in order to determine the optimal electrical mix for the Spanish region of Andalucia. Namely, we determine how much electricity power should be installed and produced, by each of the eight generation systems considered (lignite, other coals, oil, natural gas, nuclear, photovoltaic, wind and mini-hydro). Apart from the economic criterion (yearly cost), we have considered the vulnerability (in terms of percentage of imported fuel) as a strategic criterion, and 12 environmental criteria, which have been derived using the Life Cycle Analysis method on the different production systems. The interactive system PROMOIN was used to solve the multiobjective problem. PROMOIN allows the decision maker to choose how to give preference information to the system, and enables changing it anytime during the solution process, which gives more flexibility to the decision maker and increases the confidence of the decision maker in the final solution.The continued development of urban areas in recent decades has caused multiple issues affecting the sustainability of urban drainage systems. The increase of impervious surface areas in urban regions alters watershed hydrology and water quality. Typical impacts to downstream hydrologic regimes include higher peak flows and runoff volumes, shorter lag times, and reduced infiltration and base flow. Urban runoff increases the transport of pollutants and nutrients and thus degrades water bodies downstream from urban areas. One of the most frequently used practices to mitigate these impacts is bioretention. Despite its widespread use, research on bioretention systems remains active, particularly in terms of mix design and nitrogen treatment. Recent research focusing on bioretention is reviewed herein. The use of mesocosms provides the ability to isolate particular treatment processes and replicate variability. Computational models have been adapted and applied to simulate bioretention, offering potential improvements to their operation, maintenance, and design. Maintenance practices are important for sustained operation and have also been reviewed. Predicting maintenance is essential to assessing lifecycle costs. Within these research areas, gaps are explored, and recommendations made for future work.Optimization approaches for PV grid-connected system (PVGCS) have focused on optimizing the technical and economic performances. The main objective of this study is thus to propose an integrated framework that manages simultaneously technical, economic and environmental criteria. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied for the evaluation of environmental impacts of PVGCS. The proposed framework involves a PVGCS sizing simulator involving the computation of solar irradiance coupled to an outer optimization loop, based on a Genetic Algorithm. The objective is to maximize the annual energy generated by the facility. The analysis was carried out for different types of solar panel technologies: monocrystalline silicon (m-Si), polycrystalline silicon (p-Si), amorphous silicon (a-Si), cadmium telluride (CdTe) and copper indium diselenide (CIS). The environmental impact assessment was achieved by use of the IMPACT 2002+ method embedded in the SimaPro software tool with Ecoinvent database. The other chosen criteria based on technical and economic aspects concern the payback time of investment (PBT) and energy payback time (EPBT). To select the best option among the five choices under study, a weighted evaluation is performed on all criteria in order to obtain a score for each technology. The technology with the lowest total score is the a-Si technology. A more relevant analysis is then performed taking into account the environmental impacts per kWh produced, as new criteria. In this case, the CIS PV module technology best meets the objectives. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are alternatives for vehicular transportation that have the promise of reducing imported petroleum, creating regional agricultural and energy sector employment, and decreasing emission of greenhouse gases. This study analyses greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production and delivery of biofuels using the IH2 process. The IH2 process is a new technology for the conversion of a broad range of biomass types into liquid hydrocarbon transportation fuels spanning the range of gasoline and diesel. A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing and using IH2 biofuels from diverse feedstocks. The biomass feedstocks analyzed include algae (microalgae), bagasse from sugar cane (Brazil or southeast US), corn stover from Midwest US locations, and forest feedstocks from northern Wisconsin. Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions savings of 30-96% were calculated for IH2 gasoline and diesel compared to fossil fuels. Different scenarios were investigated to understand the uncertainties in key inputs to the LCA model; in feedstock production, the IH2 biofuel production, and IH2 biofuel transportation. (c) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 33: 322-329, 2014To evaluate the global warming potential (GWP) of carbonation exposed high-volume fly ash (HVFA) concrete, its expected service life should be known. In the early stages of product development, this is done with rudimentary prediction models based on simple colorimetric carbonation testing. More sophisticated methods (e.g. thin section analysis) and prediction models that consider concrete curing and meteorological conditions (cf. Fib Bulletin 34) can be used later on if the former predictions look promising. This paper shows that both rudimentary and advanced prediction models result in significant GWP decrease (-18% to 27%) for HVFA concrete, regardless the underlying carbonation assessment method. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For buildings applications, an optimum material solution would have the essential structural properties of concrete but with lower thermal conductivity. The reduced thermal conductivity provides a better thermal insulation system that consumes less energy for cooling and heating in the use phase. In the present study, thermal conductivity analysis and environmental analysis were carried out for various materials that are intended for use as external walls for buildings. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of four different proposed systems. An eco-sandwich material containing cork, flax fibres and bio-based epoxy resin as natural materials was manufactured and tested in order to evaluate the thermal conductivity. The use of the eco-sandwich in building structure seems to bring several advantages in terms of innovation, good insulation properties and light-weight structures. The LCA results show that when the eco-sandwich is used, the environmental performance is lower compared to other traditional materials, in the manufacture phase. Nevertheless, impacts due to material transportation and installation could be lowered due to the light weight and handling of the eco-sandwich. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Structural glass-timber composite beams and shear wall elements were investigated in terms of their mechanical behaviour, energy performance and their LCA performance. The load bearing components were manufactured using annealed float glass which was adhesively bonded to the timber with different adhesives. The results show, among other things, that is is possible to join the two materials glass and timber and obtaining a non-brittle failure of the beams. The shear wall elements have the potential of being used as stabilising elements and load bearing walls in buildings of up to 4 storeys height. It is possible to combine glass and timber in a load bearing shear wall without loss of energy performance of a building or without loosing LCA performance. In addition to these benefits, the timber glass composite wall has, of course the benefit of being transparent. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the context of climate change and food provisioning for a growing global population, the impacts of water consumption on aquatic biodiversity (e.g., river water consumption for irrigation) should be considered in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). A previous LCIA method quantifying the potential impacts of river water consumption on fish biodiversity, using a species-discharge relationship (SDR), constituted an essential first step. This method is however limited in terms of regionalization and taxa considered, and predicts the potential risk of local species loss only. Here, we address these shortcomings by developing region-specific SDRs for Europe at various scales (continent, country, and eco-region), and including macro-invertebrate biodiversity. SDR exponents vary from 0.06 to 0.45 between regions, underlining the importance of such regionalization. Furthermore, we provide a new regionalized method which considers the location of water consumption within a river basin, by integrating the concept of longitudinal river zonation. This involves the use of a novel measure of potential loss of species richness, standardizing local species loss to an equivalent of global extinction and reflecting species vulnerability. The new method is applied in a Swiss case-study. The consideration of the location of water consumption within a basin was found to be of high importance in the assessment: potential species loss varied between 4.22 x 10(-3) and 3.95 x 10(-1) species (2 orders of magnitude) depending on location. This work thus provides enhancements in the assessment of potential impacts of river water consumption on aquatic biodiversity and contributes to the ecological relevance of the method.The municipal sanitation system based on black water source-separation (BWS) is often advanced as a viable environmental alternative to conventional systems (CONV). However, current studies have not led to any formal conclusions on the environmental advantage of such a system. The objective of this study is to compare the environmental performances of BWS and CONV in terms of environmental damage using the life cycle assessment method. The functional unit is to ensure wastewater and kitchen refuse collection and treatment and by-product (digestate/sludge and biogas) recycling for one inhabitant for one year. The results show that BWS generates higher impact scores than CONV: 100%, 89%, 24% and 25% more for the human health, ecosystem quality, climate change and resources indicators, respectively, when metal emission impacts from fertilizers are excluded. If metal emission impacts were accounted for the conclusions are reversed for human health and ecosystem quality. The exclusion of metal emission impacts from fertilizers for the interpretation of the results is based on acknowledged overestimation and high degree of uncertainty of (eco)toxicity impacts by existing assessment methods. However, even with such exclusion, the impact scores of both systems for the ecosystem quality indicator are still not significantly different because of the large contribution of metal emissions from the background data, which still remained in the inventory. Depending on the grid mix and organic fertilizer transport distance assumptions, the study conclusions may be inverted for the climate change and resources indicators, since BWS may obtain lower impact scores than CONV. The main contributors to BWS impact scores are ammonia emissions from applied digestate and digestate management (transport, storage and spreading). Suggestions for significant enhancements are required for BWS to attain better environmental performances than CONV. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A cost-combined life-cycle assessment was conducted to estimate the environmental and economic burdens of 13 sewage sludge-treatment scenarios in China. Results. showed that anaerobic digestion was a suitable alternative to reduce both environmental and economic burdens because this approach reduced dry mass volume and applied energy recovery. Landfill and incineration technologies had the highest and lowest environmental burdens, respectively. Direct heavy metal emissions generated from landfill and incineration processes contributed significantly to human toxicity and marine ecotoxicity. However, energy recovery from the landfill and incineration stages was important to reduce both environmental and economic burdens. This study indicated that a sewage sludge-treatment scenario with anaerobic digestion, dewatering, and incineration technologies was the most environmentally and economically suitable method to treat sewage sludge because of energy recovery. All new sewage treatment plants should be constructed to operate according to this method, and existing plants should be retrofitted. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The most extensively used option for the management of municipal solid waste in the Iberian Peninsula is landfilling. Due to the impossibility of distinguishing emissions from the different types of waste with direct measurements, models have to be developed. A mathematical method to determine the leachate composition from different types of landfilled wastes was proposed according to a life cycle assessment approach. The model was specially designed to foresee the average generation of leachate in Iberian facilities through the application of a water balance. However, according to climatic differences related to rainfall and temperature, the entire territory is not homogenous and it should not be modeled jointly. Among the different regions, this research work was focused on the worst case scenario with landfills located in the highest rainfall area (the Oceanic region), where a large production of leachate is expected. With the only requirement of waste composition as data entry, the resultant model provides an estimation of pollutant release and the average leachate production in the Oceanic region. The applicability of both parts of the model was successfully verified with three case studies. The validation was carried out not only through the comparison of field data with the sum of the estimated individual emissions, but also through the contrast of aqueous effluent collected in landfills against the medium value calculated for the Oceanic territory taking into consideration regional weather information. It also enabled to identify those waste fractions responsible for greater environmental impacts. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this research was to determine how best to utilize two environmentally challenging types of waste: sewage sludge, and a particular type of waste ash, biomass ash, which is obtained from biomass combustion processes. The results of the performed research have shown that liquid sewage sludge can, in fact, be successfully stabilized with biomass ash, so that a stable composite material can be obtained, having a compressive strength within the range between 0.5 to 2.5 MPa, with "Controlled Low-Strength Material" properties. During the stabilization process, the microbial activity of sewage sludge is inhibited, due to raised pH levels and temperatures. Analysis of the chemical composition of water leachates from samples of the composite showed that it is inert, and thus does not pose a threat to the environment. The observed decrease, over time, in the concentrations of the pollutants indicated that the latter are immobilized in the hydrated matrix, due to the formation of new hydration products, i.e. mono- and hemi-carboaluminate and Friedel's salt, and changes associated with pore diameter and distribution. The addition of selected types of recycled aggregates, to the above-described composite material was also investigated, and it was found that a useful material having similar properties could be obtained. This means that such composite materials could be used as low flow material or back fill, road base stabilization material and bedding material for pipes and cables, as well as for daily or intermediate landfill covers. From the point of view of sustainable development, this kind of waste management presents an optimum zero waste solution, since it results in the cleaner production, while preserving natural resources, reducing CO2 emissions, and lowering the costs of sewage sludge management. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper is to propose an alternative methodology for normalization and aggregation in life cycle assessment (LCA). The proposed normalization approach is based on target on emission reduction and the aggregation approach is done through fuzzy inference system. A sensitivity analysis methodology is also presented in order to quantify the magnitude of change in index of total environmental improvement when quantity of a particular emission changes. Index of total environmental improvement of a product is computed by utilizing the proposed methodology in order to demonstrate its applicability. The results show that the methodology is simple and effective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The exergetic efficiency of the thermal management system (TMS) in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) has great importance since the supply of available energy onboard is limited, and that the efficiency is closely tied to the overall environmental impact of the vehicle. Thus, it is imperative to have a good understanding of the thermodynamic irreversibilities and environmental impact associated with the system and its components. In this paper, exergoenvironmental analysis is conducted on hybrid electric vehicle thermal management systems. In the exergy analysis part, the balance equations are written for each system component of the TMS to determine exergy destruction rates and exergy efficiencies of the system and its individual components. In the environmental analysis part, a life cycle assessment (LCA) is carried out (using Eco-indicator 99 points) and environmental impact correlations are created in order to obtain the environmental impact of each relevant system components and input and output streams. Consequently, exergoenvironmental variables are calculated, and exergoenvironmental evaluation is performed to determine the most environmentally friendly system components and provide information about trends and possibilities for design improvements. Based on the analysis, it is found that the electric battery has the highest environmental impact in the system due to the copper used in the anodes and gold used in the integrated circuits which accounts for over 40% and 26% of the overall impact respectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.European pilchard or sardines (Sardina pilchardus) are an attractive raw material to extract from Iberian waters, since they constitute a cheap source of protein and they are a popular product among consumers. This has led to a wide range of final products available for consumers to purchase based on this single raw material. Therefore, this study presents a cross-product environmental assessment using life cycle assessment of three different final products based on sardine landings: canned sardines, fresh sardines and European hake caught by using sardine as bait. In addition, the products were followed throughout their entire life cycle, considering different cooking methods for each final product Results showed high variability in environmental impacts, not only between the three final products, but also when one single product was cooked in different ways, highlighting the importance that the consumption phase and other post-landing stages may have on the final environmental profile of seafood. Results are then analysed regarding relevant limitations and uncertainties, as well as in terms of the consumer and policy implications. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Crambe crambe is a Mediterranean marine sponge known to produce original natural substances belonging to two families of guanidine alkaloids, namely crambescins and crambescidins, which exhibit cytotoxic and antiviral activities. These compounds are therefore considered as potential anticancer drugs. The present study focuses on the environmental assessment of a novel in vivo process for the production of pure crambescin and crambescidin using sponge specimens cultured in aquarium. The assessment was performed following the ISO 14040 standard and extended from the production of the different mass and energy flows to the system to the growth of the sponge in indoor aquarium and further periodic extraction and purification of the bioactive compounds. According to the results, the two stages that have a remarkable contribution to all impact categories are the purification of the bioactive molecules followed by the maintenance of the sponge culture in the aquarium. Among the involved activities, the production of the chemicals (particularly methanol) together with the electricity requirements (especially due to the aquarium lighting) are responsible for up to 90% of the impact in most of the assessed categories. However, the contributions of other stages to the environmental burdens, such as the collection of sponges, considerably depend on the assumptions made during the inventory stage. The simulation of alternative scenarios has led to propose improvement alternatives that may allow significant reductions ranging from 20% to 70%, mainly thanks to the reduction of electricity requirements as well as the partial reuse of methanol. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Despite numerous studies that propose environmental performance (EP) indicators for manufacturing firms, little attention is given to measuring the EP of individual companies in the waste management sector (WM sector). Existing literature on the WM sector relies on aggregate, city and municipal data. This study makes use of a disclosure regulation in the European Union to construct an EP measure that can be used to compare the environmental impact of waste-handlers across time and within the sector. The EP indicator introduced in this study measures the plan of a waste-handler to reduce undesirable output such as emission and waste disposal by relying on the recovery and recycling of wastes. Based on a sample of European waste-handlers we find that One-third of waste-handlers in Europe have zero recovery rate while only 16% rely exclusively on recovery and recycling of harmful wastes. In addition, the study builds on existing theories to explain differences in the EP of waste-handlers in Europe. Among several factors identified by the literature, we find that waste-handlers in Europe are most affected by supra-national regulations, national policies and spatial factors in that order. Policy makers can draw lessons from the findings of this study to improve existing disclosure regulations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In 2010, the generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) by the European Union (EU-27) was 252 million tons, with an estimated organic content of 30-40% by weight. Composting this organic matter would significantly improve waste reduction and mineral fertilizer substitution. We present a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and agronomical assessment of the following three fertilization treatments: industrial compost (IC), home compost (HC) and mineral fertilizer (MF), applied to horticultural cauliflower crops. For the IC and HC treatments, we evaluated the entire cycle of the organic matter, starting from the moment it becomes MSW and including collection, production of compost, transportation and application in open field cauliflower crops. For the MF treatment, the analysis includes the raw material extraction, production, transportation and the application of the compost material to crops via irrigation. A higher crop yield was achieved with MF treatment, which was 26% and 91% higher than HC and IC treatment, respectively. However, the application of HC treatment resulted in larger, heavier cauliflowers. No significant differences were found in the nutritional analysis, which included the quantification of the total phenols, glucosilonates and flavonoids. The HC treatment had the best environmental performance with the lowest impact in all categories assessed except for its abiotic depletion potential and eutrophication potential (which was the lowest for IC). The IC treatment had the highest environmental impact in five of the seven categories assessed, whereas the MF treatment had the highest eutrophication and global warming potentials. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We examined the potential life-cycle environmental impact reduction of three green building code and certification (GBCC) systems: LEED, ASHRAE 189.1, and lgCC. A recently completed whole-building life cycle assessment (LCA) database of NIST was applied to a prototype building model specification by NREL. TRACI 2.0 of EPA was used for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The results showed that the baseline building model generates about 18 thousand metric tons CO2-equiv. of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and consumes 6 terajoule (TJ) of primary energy and 328 million liter of water over its life-cycle. Overall, GBCC-compliant building models generated 0% to 25% less environmental impacts than the baseline case (average 14% reduction). The largest reductions were associated with acidification (25%), human health-respiratory (24%), and global warming (GW) (22%), while no reductions were observed for ozone layer depletion performances of the three GBCC-compliant building models measured in life-cycle impact reduction were comparable. A sensitivity analysis showed that the comparative results were reasonably robust, although some results were relatively sensitive to the behavioral parameters, including employee transportation and purchased electricity during the occupancy phase (average sensitivity coefficients 0.26-0.29).The potential for widespread use of domestically available energy resources, in conjunction with climate change concerns, suggest that biomass may be an essential component of U.S. energy systems in the near future. Cellulosic biomass in particular is anticipated to be used in increasing quantities because of policy efforts, such as federal renewable fuel standards and state renewable portfolio standards. Unfortunately, these independently designed biomass policies do not account for the fact that cellulosic biomass can equally be used for different, competing energy demands. An integrated assessment of multiple feedstocks, energy demands, and system costs is critical for making optimal decisions about a unified biomass energy strategy. This study develops a spatially explicit, best-use framework to optimally allocate cellulosic biomass feedstocks to energy demands in transportation, electricity, and residential heating sectors, while minimizing total system costs and tracking greenhouse gas emissions. Comparing biomass usage across three climate policy scenarios suggests that biomass used for space heating is a low cost emissions reduction option, while biomass for liquid fuel or for electricity becomes attractive only as emissions reduction targets or carbon prices increase. Regardless of the policy approach, study results make a strong case for national and regional coordination in policy design and compliance pathways.Although silicon nanowires (SiNW) have been widely studied as an ideal material for developing high-capacity lithium ion batteries (LIBs) for electric vehicles (EVs), little is known about the environmental impacts of such a new EV battery pack during its whole life cycle. This paper reports a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a high-capacity LIB pack using SiNW prepared via metal-assisted chemical etching as anode material. The LCA study is conducted based on the average U.S. driving and electricity supply conditions. Nanowastes and nanoparticle emissions from the SiNW synthesis are also characterized and reported. The LCA results show that over 50% of most characterized impacts are generated from the battery operations, while the battery anode with SiNW material contributes to around 15% of global warming potential and 10% of human toxicity potential. Overall the life cycle impacts of this new battery pack are moderately higher than those of conventional LIBs but could be actually comparable when considering the uncertainties and scale-up potential of the technology. These results are encouraging because they not only provide a solid base for sustainable development of next generation LIBs but also confirm that appropriate nanomanufacturing technologies could be used in sustainable product development.Solar energy installations in deserts are on the rise, fueled by technological advances and policy changes. Deserts, with a combination of high solar radiation and availability of large areas unusable for crop production are ideal locations for large solar installations. However, for efficient power generation, solar infrastructures use large amounts of water for construction and operation. We investigated the water use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with solar installations in North American deserts in comparison to agave-based biofuel production, another widely promoted potential energy source from arid systems. We determined the uncertainty in our analysis by a Monte Carlo approach that varied the most important parameters, as determined by sensitivity analysis. We considered the uncertainty in our estimates as a result of variations in the number of solar modules ha(-1), module efficiency, number of agave plants ha(-1), and overall sugar conversion efficiency for agave. Further, we considered the uncertainty in revenue and returns as a result of variations in the wholesale price of electricity and installation cost of solar photovoltaic (PV), wholesale price of agave ethanol, and cost of agave cultivation and ethanol processing. The life-cycle analyses show that energy outputs and GHG offsets from solar PV systems, mean energy output of 2405 GJ ha(-1) year(-1) (5 and 95% quantile values of 1940-2920) and mean GHG offsets of 464 Mg of CO2 equiv ha(-1) year(-1) (375-562), are much larger than agave, mean energy output from 206 (171-243) to 61 (50-71) GJ ha(-1) year(-1) and mean GHG offsets from 18 (14-22) to 4.6 (3.7-5.5) Mg of CO2 equiv ha(-1) year(-1), depending upon the yield scenario of agave. Importantly though, water inputs for cleaning solar panels and dust suppression are similar to amounts required for annual agave growth, suggesting the possibility of integrating the two systems to maximize the efficiency of land and water use to produce both electricity and liquid fuel. A life-cycle analysis of a hypothetical colocation indicated higher returns per m(3) of water used than either system alone. Water requirements for energy production were 0.22 L MJ(-1) (0.28-0.19) and 0.42 L MJ(-1) (0.52-0.35) for solar PV-agave (baseline yield) and solar PV-agave (high yield), respectively. Even though colocation may not be practical in all locations, in some water-limited areas, colocated solar PV-agave systems may provide attractive economic incentives in addition to efficient land and water use.Currently, the whole world is confronted with great challenges related to environmental issues. As a fundamental infrastructure in transport networks, railway bridges are responsible for numerous material and energy consumption through their life cycle, which in turn leads to significant environmental burdens. However, present management of railway bridge infrastructures is mainly focused on the technical and financial aspects, whereas the environmental assessment is rarely integrated. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is deemed as a systematic method for also assessing the environmental impact of products and systems, but its application in railway bridge infrastructures is rare. Very limited literature and research studies are available in this area. In order to incorporate the implementation of LCA into railway bridges and set new design criteria, this article performs an elaborate literature survey and presents current developments regarding the LCA implementation for railway bridges. Several critical issues are discussed and highlighted in detail. The discussion is focused on the methodology, practical operational issues and data collections. Finally, a systematic LCA framework for quantifying environmental impacts for railway bridges is introduced and interpreted as a potential guideline.This article investigates the potential for environmental benefit from the introduction of the High Speed Train (HST) on the London-Manchester route in the UK, focusing on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The lifecycle carbon emission of HST is assessed, and its sensitivity to demand changes is analyzed for several scenarios. Based on the UK Government demand assumptions, the analysis shows relatively limited potential for reduction in CO2 emissions. In 2033, overall CO2 reduction due to HST operation on the route is estimated at 100,000 tCO(2) per annum, which is less than 0.1% of the total UK domestic transport emissions in 2007.Natural disasters can cause severe damage to infrastructure such as roads. Currently, there are no road deterioration (RD) models that can address flooding or other natural disasters. It is suggested that a probabilistic RD model incorporating uncertainty of events such as flooding should be used for asset management purposes. Moreover, the derivation of post-flood and optimum maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) strategies should also be incorporated into pavement life-cycle analysis. As a case study, the paper has considered flooding in Queensland, Australia, and has used 34 000 km of the Queensland's main road authority's road database. A critical literature review has been undertaken to assess existing RD models, work effect models and optimisation in obtaining an M&R strategy. The paper highlights existing pavement management systems (PMS) in Australia; the importance of RD models (deterministic and probabilistic) in a PMS and the use of probabilistic models for road deterioration prediction. Details of Markov chain, homogenous and non-homogeneous transition probability matrices (TPMs) have been discussed. The paper identifies six methods for deriving RD models using non-homogeneous TPMs. Approaches deriving (0 RD models with flooding, using non-homogenous TPMs and Monte Carlo simulations and (ii) an optimum M&R strategy with HDM-4 model have been highlighted. As an example, the paper has given a new roughness-based RD model for a road group, to show its pavement performance incorporating flooding. Some expected results are also included, to show a pavement performance with post-flood and optimum M&R strategies. It is believed that this new RD model will help in selecting the appropriate treatment with necessary budget for post-flood rehabilitation. Certainly, it will help road engineers to manage flood-damaged roads more efficiently.The objective of this study was to analyze the environmental performance of different wood structural assemblies for residential buildings. Two structural systems (a traditional timber frame and a light-frame) were compared together with alternate material options for each system. Environmental impacts were determined using the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings software. Design alterations for generalization were made to an existing timber frame (TF) structure used as the basis of this analysis, and an equivalent light-frame (LF) structure was designed based on the International Residential Code (IRC). Environmental impacts observed include total energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption, global warming potential (GWP), and wood fiber use. All analyses were considered cradle-to-gate, including the manufacturing and construction life-cycle stages. Results show how GWP is linked to both fossil fuel consumption and wood fiber use, and how ultimate environmental impact is driven by energy source. Environmental impacts of structures are driven by material choice, and levels of carbon stored in structural wood serve to decrease GWP. Of the structural assemblies analyzed, the most traditional TF structure outperformed all other options in almost every measure.Life cycle assessment is the predominant method to compare energy and environmental impacts of agricultural production systems. In this life cycle study, we focused on the comparison of swine manure to synthetic fertilizer as nutrients for corn production in Iowa. Deep pit (DP) and anaerobic lagoon (AL) treatment systems were compared separately, and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) was chosen as the representative synthetic fertilizer. The two functional units used were fertilization of 1000 kg of corn in a continuous corn system and fertilization of a crop yielding 1000 kg of corn and a crop yielding 298 kg of soybean in a 2-yr corn-soybean rotation. Iowa-specific versions of emission factors and energy use were used when available and compared with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change values. Manure was lower than synthetic fertilizer for abiotic depletion and about equal with respect to eutrophication. Synthetic fertilizer was lower than manure for global warming potential (GWP) and acidification. The choice of allocation method and life cycle boundary were important in understanding the context of these results. In the DP system, methane (CH4) from housing was the largest contributor to the GWP, accounting for 60% of the total impact. When storage systems were compared, the DP system had 50% less GWP than the AL system. This comparison was due to reduction in CH4 emissions from the storage system and conservation of nitrogen. Nitrous oxide emissions were the biggest contributor to the GWP of UAN fertilization and the second biggest contributor to the GWP of manure. Monte Carlo and scenario analyses were used to test the robustness of the results and sensitivity to methodology and important impact factors. The available crop-land and associated plant nutrient needs in Iowa was compared with manure production for the current hog population. On a state-or county-wide level, there was generally an excess of available land. On a farm level, there is often an excess of manure, which necessitates long-distance transport.A recent study, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), suggests that natural fluctuations in stock abundance in fisheries may cause high variability in environmental impacts related to the Atlantic mackerel fishery in the Basque Country. The aim of this study is to analyze environmental fluctuations through time of a demersal species, European hake (Merluccius merluccius), caught by Basque bottom trawlers in European waters. The three-step LCA+DEA method, which combines LCA with data envelopment analysis (DEA), a linear programming tool, was implemented to assess annual variability of the environmental impacts in the period 2001-2006. The identification of the varying operational efficiency levels between vessels and the potential environmental gains of input minimization were explored. Results showed variations of up to 25% in the environmental impacts between years, although minimal environmental gains were identified through operational benchmarking, given the similar efficiency values between vessels. Hence, it was observed that despite substantial interannual changes in the impacts, there is limited potential for environmental impact reduction for the assessed environmental dimensions. Environmental and operational differences between years impeded setting a particular best-performing target for this production system, attributable to the high variance observed in input/output distribution through time. Finally, results seem to confirm the lower fluctuations in environmental impacts for demersal species fishing in comparison with those of small pelagic fish.How to compare the environmental performance of different vehicle technologies? Vehicles with lower tailpipe emissions are perceived as cleaner. However, does it make sense to look only to tailpipe emissions? Limiting the comparison only to these emissions denies the fact that there are emissions involved during the production of a fuel and this approach gives too much advantage to zero-tailpipe vehicles like battery electric vehicles (BEV) and fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV). Would it be enough to combine fuel production and tailpipe emissions? Especially when comparing the environmental performance of alternative vehicle technologies, the emissions during production of the specific components and their appropriate end-of-life treatment processes should also be taken into account. Therefore, the complete life cycle of the vehicle should be included in order to avoid problem shifting from one life stage to another. In this article, a full life cycle assessment (LCA) of petrol, diesel, fuel cell electric (FCEV), compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), hybrid electric, battery electric (BEV), bio-diesel and bio-ethanol vehicles has been performed. The aim of the manuscript is to investigate the impact of the different vehicle technologies on the environment and to develop a range-based modeling system that enables a more robust interpretation of the LCA results for a group of vehicles. Results are shown for climate change, respiratory effects, acidification and mineral extraction damage of the different vehicle technologies. A broad range of results is obtained due to the variability within the car market. It is concluded that it is essential to take into account the influence of all the vehicle parameters on the LCA results.The social life cycle assessment approach is used to measure the social performance of companies, using the rules of international labor as a reference. Our purpose is to measure the social performance of sub-sectors of the industrial tomatoes food chain in Algeria. Among the different currents of this approach, the method of attributes was adopted. The system boundaries include a nursery, 150 farms and the biggest cannery of the country. The working conditions are clearly in favour of the cannery and the nursery. At farm level, the hard and precarious work, the absence of social protection and the impossibility to constitute or join a trade union, as well as child labour, determine low social performance. There is a mismatch between the labor time needed at each stage of production and the value assigned to each of these steps.In this study the energy and economic flows and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of olive oil production in Iran were investigated in terms of a life cycle assessment with considering four main stages of agricultural olive production, olive transportation, olive oil extraction and its oil transportation to the customer centers. Data was collected from 150 olive growers in Guilan province of Iran. Results revealed that the total energy consumption through the olive oil life cycle was 20 344 MJ ha(-1) while the mass-based allocation method results indicated that the total energy consumption was 8035 MJ ha(-1). The total energy output was estimated as 23 568 MJ ha(-1). The total GHG emissions was estimated to 1333 kg ha(-1) (CO(2)eq) while the mass-based allocation method results indicated that the total GHG emissions was 525 kg ha(-1) (CO(2)eq). The agricultural production stage ranked the first in GHG emissions among the four stages with the share of 93.81% of total GHG emissions. Results of econometric model estimation revealed that the impact of human labor, farmyard manure and electricity on olive oil yield and the impact of electricity and chemical fertilizers on GHG emissions were significantly positive. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To resolve problems surrounding simultaneous CO2 conversion and COG (coke oven gas) utilization, a novel system combining a dual-gas of CGG (coal gasified gas) and COG with the technology of CO2 recycling into a single gasifier and reforming unit is proposed. 3E performance (energy, environmental, and economic) analysis showed that this novel system renders unnecessary the traditional water gas shift process, and realizes the conversion and utilization of CH4 and CO2 that would otherwise be directly discharged into the air. Under a weak carbon mitigation policy, the economics of co-producing low-carbon fuels and electricity from a dual-gas of CGG and COG are promising. The "dual-gas" technology is a potentially viable option for clean coal and its efficient use in the co-production of low-carbon fuels and electricity in areas possessing COG, natural gas or other unconventional natural gas resources. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the growing share of wind production, understanding its impacts on electricity price and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions becomes increasingly relevant, especially to design better wind-supporting policies. Internal grid congestion is usually not taken into account when assessing the price impact of fluctuating wind output. Using 2006-2011 hourly data from Ontario (Canada), we establish that the impact of wind output, both on price level and marginal GHG emissions, greatly differs depending on the congestion level. Indeed, from an average of 3.3% price reduction when wind production doubles, the reduction jumps to 5.5% during uncongested hours, but is only 0.8% when congestion prevails. Similarly, avoided GHG emissions due to wind are estimated to 331.93 kilograms per megawatt-hour (kg/MWh) using all data, while for uncongested and congested hours, estimates are respectively 283.49 and 393.68 kg/MWh. These empirical estimates, being based on 2006-2011 Ontario data, cannot be generalized to other contexts. The main contribution of this paper is to underscore the importance of congestion in assessing the price and GHG impacts of wind. We also contribute by developing an approach to create clusters of data according to the congestion status and location. Finally, we compare different approaches to estimate avoided GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Europe has a significant target ahead to fulfill: to achieve the goal of nearly zero energy buildings from the year 2021. This paper presents viable scenarios to achieve the achievement of nearly zero energy dwellings in the southern European country of Cyprus. The analysis is based on the documentation of the developments in the building sector after the adoption of mandatory building insulation regulations. For this purpose, data concerning the building stock of Cyprus before the adoption of the regulation of thermal insulation, as well as the construction characteristics for sixty dwellings which were built from 2010 to 2012 are compared. The ability of adoption of renewable energy in the building sector is also analyzed. Several scenarios are examined and a matrix defining the possible ranges of primary consumption of dwellings in Cyprus considered as nearly zero energy are presented. Possible scenarios examined in relation to consumption of dwellings in Cyprus by 2020 showed that this would range from 65 to 40 kWh/m(2) year, depending on the degree of renewable energy technologies penetration. The outcomes of this work are particularly revealing with regard to the definition of feasible consumption targets for nearly zero energy dwellings in southern Europe by 2020. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results obtained from the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the production of Sicilian artichokes (Cynara scolymus) with the aim of reducing impacts, interpreting the results, suggesting possible improvements and enriching the sustainability knowledge already existing in the agro food field. Artichokes represent one of the excellent Italian agricultural products even if still not well-known and not appreciated despite their nutritional and functional quality. According to FAOSTAT (2013) data, Italy is the world leader in artichokes production, grown mainly in the central and southern regions of Italy, in particular in Sicily, Apulia and Sardinia. In particular, among all the Italian regions, Sicily, which is highly suited for this type of cultivation, is ranked first in terms of quantity produced: the reason for this lies in the excellent combination of climate and geological conformation of the soils. The study was conducted in accordance with the ISO standards 14040 and 14044 (2006), with the functional unit of 1 ha of land and, as the system boundaries being the phases of: pre-implantation preparation of the field; artichoke implantation; and harvesting. The most impacting phases are those related with the consumption of fuel and fertilizers as well as with the use of the PVC pipes for irrigation. Possible improvements could be the use of methanol instead of the naphtha (reduction of the total damage of about 13%) and the possibility of recycling the PVC pipes once the field is dismantled (furthermore reduction of the damage of about 3%).Highway infrastructure development typically requires major capital input. Unless planned properly, such requirements can cause serious financial constraints for investors. The push for sustainability adds a new dimension to the complexity of evaluating highway projects. Finding environmentally and socially responsible solutions for highway construction will improve its potential for acceptance by the society and in many instances the infrastructure's life span. Even so, the prediction and determination of a project's long-term financial viability can be a precarious exercise. Existing studies in this area have not indicated details of how to identify and deal with costs incurred in pursuing sustainability measures in highway infrastructure. This paper provides insights into the major challenges of implementing sustainability in highway project development in terms of financial concerns and obligations. It discusses the results from recent research through a literature study and a questionnaire survey of key industry stakeholders involved in highway infrastructure development. The research identified critical cost components relating to sustainability measures based on perspectives of industry stakeholders. All stakeholders believe sustainability related costs are an integral part of the decision making. However, the importance rating of these costs is relative to each stakeholder's core business objectives. This will influence the way these cost components are dealt with during the evaluation of highway investment alternatives and financial implications. This research encourages positive thinking among the highway infrastructure practitioners about sustainability. It calls for the construction industry to maximize sustainability deliverables while ensuring financial viability over the life cycle of highway infrastructure projects.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is based on the basic principles of sustainable development. LCA method demonstrated its efficiency in providing a systematic environmental assessment approach of a product or a process. The effectiveness and efficiency of these methods lies in the fact that they take into account all life cycle stages of a product, from the extraction of raw materials to end of life treatment (recycling, ...) through an assessment covering different impact categories such as climate change, human health, ecosystems and resources. Existing LCA indicators reflect different issues surrounding resource depletion, creating inconsistency and moreover confusion among LCA practitioners. The evaluation of different life cycle impacts assessment (LCIA) methods done by EC JRC showed that available models did not address the same parameters: short- vs long-term, stock vs backup technology, etc. It also showed that if the correlation between the methods was sufficient for some resources, others such as rare earth elements showed a high level of inconsistency between methods. It was therefore necessary to develop a relevant indicator and harmonized assessment of impacts on resources in LCA. Furthermore, a resource strategy indicator based on the three pillars of sustainable development (economic, environmental and social) would better address wider challenges and making it a more powerful decision making tool. This study aimed to introduce an indicator for evaluating the strategy implications of metal resources for products and to compare different ways of production resulting from extraction of raw materials or recycling, with a special focus on rare earth materials. The indicator would assess the impacts based on a reserve-resource vision [BGS NERC] and the evolution over time and founded over three parameters: technical feasibility, economic viability and political stability (including social and environmental aspects) in representing countries.In this research, various assessment tools are applied to comprehensively investigate hydrogen production from steam reforming of poultry tallow (PT). These tools investigate the chemical reactions, design and simulate the entire hydrogen production process, study the energetic performance and perform an environment impact assessment using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The chemical reaction investigation identifies thermodynamically optimal operating conditions at which PT may be converted to hydrogen via the steam reforming process. The synthesis gas composition was determined by simulations to minimize the Gibbs free energy using the Aspen Plus (TM) 10.2 software. These optimal conditions are, subsequently, used in the design and simulation of the entire PT-to-hydrogen process. LCA is applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of PT-to-hydrogen system. The system boundaries include rendering and reforming along with the required transportation process. The reforming inventories data are derived from process simulation in Aspen Plus (TM), whereas the rendering data are adapted from a literature review. The life cycle inventories data of PT-to-hydrogen are computationally implemented into SimaPro 7.3. A set of seven relevant environmental impact categories are evaluated: global warming, abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, and cumulative non-renewable fossil and nuclear energy demand. The results are subject to a systematic sensitivity analysis and compared to those calculated for hydrogen production from conventional steam methane reforming. The LCA results indicate that the thermal energy production process is the main contributor to the selected environmental impact categories. Improvement actions to minimize the reforming thermal energy and the transport distance are strongly recommended as they would lead to relevant environmental improvements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiesel is an alternative fuel that is renewable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. Several different methods of biodiesel production have been studied and proposed by many researchers. However, the environmental impact and energy aspect of the methods need to be evaluated. In this article, a noncatalytic biodiesel production with the superheated methanol vapor (SMV) method was compared with the conventional alkali-catalyzed production method in terms of its environmental performance using a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool. This study used original data from several regions in Indonesia. Given that the plant utilized fossil fuel as an energy source, the assessment shows that the SMV method produces higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and acidification, and consumes more energy than the catalytic method. Utilization of biomass waste as a substitute of fossil fuel can reduce the environmental impact and total energy consumption for both methods. Implementation of a methane capture system in a palm oil mill also had a big influence on the GHG savings of biodiesel production. Implementation of methane capture system in a palm oil mill along with the use of biomass waste as an energy source in the biodiesel plant significantly affected the GHG reduction in the SMV method. Therefore, the SMV method can be made feasible from an environmental and energy point of view by the utilization of biomass waste along its production line.Marine management plans over the world express high expectations to the development of offshore wind energy. This would obviously contribute to renewable energy production, but potential conflicts with other usages of the marine landscape, as well as conservation interests, are evident. The present study synthesizes the current state of understanding on the effects of offshore wind farms on marine wildlife, in order to identify general versus local conclusions in published studies. The results were translated into a generalized impact assessment for coastal waters in Sweden, which covers a range of salinity conditions from marine to nearly fresh waters. Hence, the conclusions are potentially applicable to marine planning situations in various aquatic ecosystems. The assessment considered impact with respect to temporal and spatial extent of the pressure, effect within each ecosystem component, and level of certainty. Research on the environmental effects of offshore wind farms has gone through a rapid maturation and learning process, with the bulk of knowledge being developed within the past ten years. The studies showed a high level of consensus with respect to the construction phase, indicating that potential impacts on marine life should be carefully considered in marine spatial planning. Potential impacts during the operational phase were more locally variable, and could be either negative or positive depending on biological conditions as well as prevailing management goals. There was paucity in studies on cumulative impacts and long-term effects on the food web, as well as on combined effects with other human activities, such as the fisheries. These aspects remain key open issues for a sustainable marine spatial planning.For policy applications, such as for the Kyoto Protocol, the climate-change contributions of different greenhouse gases are usually quantified through their global warming potentials. They are calculated based on the cumulative radiative forcing resulting from a pulse emission of a gas over a specified time period. However, these calculations are not explicitly linked to an assessment of ultimate climate-change impacts. A new metric, the climate-change impact potential (CCIP), is presented here that is based on explicitly defining the climate-change perturbations that lead to three different kinds of climate-change impacts. These kinds of impacts are: (1) those related directly to temperature increases; (2) those related to the rate of warming; and (3) those related to cumulative warming. From those definitions, a quantitative assessment of the importance of pulse emissions of each gas is developed, with each kind of impact assigned equal weight for an overall impact assessment. Total impacts are calculated under the RCP6 concentration pathway as a base case. The relevant climate-change impact potentials are then calculated as the marginal increase of those impacts over 100 years through the emission of an additional unit of each gas in 2010. These calculations are demonstrated for CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. Compared with global warming potentials, climate-change impact potentials would increase the importance of pulse emissions of long-lived nitrous oxide and reduce the importance of short-lived methane.On-road vehicle use is responsible for about a quarter of US annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Changes in vehicles, travel behavior and fuel are likely required to meet long-term climate change mitigation goals, but may require a long time horizon to deploy. This research examines a near-term opportunity: management of pavement network roughness. Maintenance and rehabilitation treatments can make pavements smoother and reduce vehicle rolling resistance. However, these treatments require material production and equipment operation, thus requiring a life cycle perspective for benefits analysis. They must also be considered in terms of their cost-effectiveness in comparison with other alternatives for affecting climate change. This letter describes a life cycle approach to assess changes in total GHG (measured in CO2-e) emissions from strategic management of highway pavement roughness. Roughness values for triggering treatments are developed to minimize GHG considering both treatment and use phase vehicle emission. With optimal triggering for GHG minimization, annualized reductions on the California state highway network over a 10-year analysis period are calculated to be 0.82, 0.57 and 1.38 million metric tons compared with historical trigger values, recently implemented values and no strategic intervention (reactive maintenance), respectively. Abatement costs calculated using $/metric-ton CO2-e are higher than those reported for other transportation sector abatement measures, however, without considering all benefits associated with pavement smoothness, such as vehicle life and maintenance, or the time needed for deployment.Uncertainty exists over the magnitude of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with open land conversion to short-rotation woody biomass crops (SRWC) for bioenergy in the Northern U.S. Lake States. GHG debts incurred at the plantation establishment phase may delay the climate mitigation benefits of SRWC production. To better understand GFIG debts associated with converting open lands to SRWC, we established research plantations with willow (Salix spp), hybrid-poplar (Populus spp.), and control plots in spring 2010 at two sites in northern Michigan (ES) and Wisconsin (RH). These sites had similar climates, but differed in time since last cultivation: 5 vs. 42 years. To address the short-term effects of plantation establishment, we compared two-year biomass production and GHG emissions. We hypothesized that the long-idle ES site, with higher initial soil C and N stocks, would have higher GHG emissions following conversion compared to the recently-idle RH site, but that this would be balanced in part by greater SRWC productivity at the ES site. As hypothesized, grassland conversion resulted in two-year net GHG emissions due to land conversion of 43.21 and 33.02 Mg-CO(2)eq ha(-1) for poplar and willow at ES that was far greater than the 4.81 and 1.54 Mg-CO(2)eq ha(-1) for poplar and willow at RH. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not observe greater SRWC productivity at ES, which will take longer than RH to reach C neutrality and begin mitigating GHG emissions. Our results show that site-specific soil and management factors determine the magnitude of GHG emissions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.With the development of patterns that connect all cells in series, organic photovoltaics have leapt a step forward being ahead of other solar and even other energy technologies in terms of manufacturing speed and energy density. The important questions of how they are meant to be installed for producing power and what the requirements are yet to be explored. We present here the installation of organic solar cell modules in different settings (terrestrial, marine and airborne). For the evaluation of these installations deployed at DTU, we have used the life cycle assessment tools, and calculated key parameters in order to assess their environmental impact. The novel technology when installed in a solar park system can generate more than 1300 kW h kW(p)(-1) of electricity a year, which means that the whole system can pay the energy invested back before the first year of operation, in 320 days. If this electricity is fed back to the same electricity supply system that was used for manufacturing the potential saving of more than 13 GJ of primary energy per kWp per year can be reached. With the real data logged, a dynamic energy payback time has been furthermore calculated for the case of the solar tube installation, giving a value of 1.1 years.Large 100 m long polymer solar cell modules were installed in a solar park using fast installation (>100 m min(-1)) and operated for 5 months ensuring a meaningful energy return factor (ERF > 1) followed by fast de-installation (>200 m min(-1)) and end-of-life management. Focus was on recovery of silver that is an essential component of the two electrodes. We employed life cycle analysis as a tool to evaluate the most efficient silver extraction method as well as the impact on the overall life cycle of the solar cells. Silver from the electrodes could be recovered as silver chloride in 95% yield, which diminishes the overall energy payback time by 13%. The efficient recovery of silver justifies the use of silver electrodes in OPV even in a scenario where it is scaled to production volumes of 1 GW(p) per day.This paper summarizes the results and the lessons learnt from an LCA case study comparing acoustic automotive components. Three alternative acoustic components produced by the Brazilian automotive sector are considered: dual-layer polyurethane (DL-PU) panel, recycled textile absorption-barrier-absorption (ABA-cotton) panel and recycled textile DL (DL-cotton) panel. DL-PU is a "status-quo" alternative, composed mainly of synthetic plastics and the two other alternatives are mainly made of recycled cotton fibres. Using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, the three following phases of the panels' life cycle are examined: production, use and end-of-life. For the latter, two end-of-life scenarios are analysed: land-fill and incineration with energy recovery. For the LCA model, some Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) datasets have been adapted from the data available in the Ecolnvent database in order to adjust to the Brazilian context. LCA results show that, within the entire life cycle, the DL-cotton option, which combines two layers of recycled fibres of different densities, is overall the best alternative from an environmental perspective. This result is therefore independent from the end-of-life scenario. This is mainly due to the lower weight of this component, which is extremely important for the transportation aspects, but also due to its lower consumption of fossil resources, to the energy saving during its production and to the avoidance of textile disposal that would happen otherwise. The obtained results confirm the available literature dealing with the use of renewable fibres in industrial products. The particular behaviour of recycled fibres compared to virgin ones (in terms of shared contribution of agricultural production and of avoidance of landfilling) is highlighted in this paper, thanks to the application of the "50/50" allocation rule. LCA results are discussed in terms of their potential use in an R&D context. Further research needs are also derived from the case study, including the potential benefits of developing multi-objective optimization methods that include environmental impact to be used in the design of such a component. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle approaches are critical for identifying and reducing environmental burdens of products. While these methods can indicate potential environmental impacts of a product, current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods fail to integrate the multiple impacts of a system into unified measures of social, economic or environmental performance related to sustainability. Integrated metrics that combine multiple aspects of system performance based on a common scientific or economic principle have proven to be valuable for sustainability evaluation. In this work, we propose methods of adapting four integrated metrics for use with LCAs of product systems: ecological footprint, emergy, green net value added, and Fisher information. These metrics provide information on the full product system in land, energy, monetary equivalents, and as a unitless information index; each bundled with one or more indicators for reporting. When used together and for relative comparison, integrated metrics provide a broader coverage of sustainability aspects from multiple theoretical perspectives that is more likely to illuminate potential issues than individual impact indicators. These integrated metrics are recommended for use in combination with traditional indicators used in LCA. Future work will test and demonstrate the value of using these integrated metrics and combinations to assess product system sustainability.Employing a life-cycle assessment approach, this paper studies greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from biomethane used as transportation fuel. It focuses on both GHG allocation methodologies and uncertainties regarding GHG emissions from biomethane. The goal is to calculate GHG emissions of two types of biomethane used in transportation: that produced from biowaste feedstock and that extracted from dedicated energy crop feedstocks. The effects of allocation methods used for digestate and those of other factors arising during the life cycle of biomethane are studied. The GHG emissions of biomethane produced from biowaste with digestate use are approximately 22 gCO(2eq) MJ(-1); those of biomethane extracted from dedicated energy crops are 61 gCO(2eq) MJ(-1). However, using the substitution method for digestate decreases biowaste emissions by 10 gCO(2eq) MJ(-1) and dedicated energy crop emissions by 22 gCO(2eq) MJ(-1). The highest emissions uncertainties are related to land use change, cultivation processes, digestate use, and technology selections in digestion and upgrading. Using technology with high energy consumption or methane leakages will significantly increase total emissions. On the other hand, use of renewable energy in processes is one option for decreasing total emissions. It appears that biomethane could be produced with lower emissions than previous studies have shown by optimizing production and implementing new technology. The utilization of digestate in replacing mineral fertilizers, resulting in additional GHG emission reductions, is a key issue which should be accorded more attention in the future. For one to achieve reliable results, factors related to biomethane production and allocation methods for digestate emissions should always be chosen on a case-by-case basis.Four commonly used sewage sludge treatment techniques in China are compared, each with and without the combination of anaerobic digestion: composting, co-combustion in power plant, thermal drying-incineration, and cement manufacturing. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to quantify the environmental burden, while exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA) is supplemented to measure the resources conversion efficiency. Afterward, abatement exergy is adopted to determine their degree of environmental sustainability, so that all environmental issues associated with resource use and environmental emissions can be solved simultaneously. Results show that anaerobic digestion is an effective pretreatment approach to reduce environmental burden. Thermal drying-incineration is preferable to co-combustion and cement production, since fossil fuel combustion is the dominant cause of emissions. Composting poses a positive effect to mitigate global warming, but it introduces high heavy metals to the soil. Results from ELCA reveal that thermal techniques present higher resources conversion efficiency than a biological system. Adopting anaerobic digestion obviously improves the performance of composting, but it has reduced the total energy recovered in thermal techniques. For process improvements, an efficient sludge predrying is important; and the use of a combined heat and power system can also provide more effective recovery of energy.This study assessed the material and energy inputs required to produce a Petunia X hybrida plant from initial propagation to delivery at a regional distribution center. Impacts were expressed in terms of their contribution to the carbon footprint or global warming potential (GWP) of a single finished plant in a approximate to 10-cm diameter container. Beyond this baseline assessment, the study investigated the secondary impacts (e.g., irrigation demand) associated with container type used. Life cycle assessment data were sourced from interviews, published literature, propriety data sources, direct metering at the greenhouse facility, and original findings from a series of university greenhouse experiments. Results show that a traditional plastic container accounts for approximate to 16% of overall CO(2)e emissions (0.544 kg) during petunia production. Although the container was a significant contributor to GWP, electrical consumption for supplemental lighting and irrigation during plug production proved to be the leading source of CO(2)e emissions (over 47%) in our model system. Differences in GWP when considering secondary impacts associated with the various biocontainers were minor, especially when compared with the other elements of production. Our results demonstrate that biocontainers could potentially be as or more sustainable than plastic pots once pot manufacturing and end-of-life data are considered. However, use of more efficient supplemental lighting sources may ultimately have the greatest impact on overall GWP for the production system assessed.Purpose Employing representative data is necessary for producing a credible LCA informing decision making process. When the data is available from multiple sources, and in incompatible formats such as point estimates, intervals, approximations, and may even be conflicting in nature, it is important to synthesize it with minimal loss of information to enhance the credibility of LCA. This article introduces a framework for information fusion that can serve this purpose within the current operational procedure of LCA. Methods The character of information gathered from multiple sources is inherently different than that exhibited by the information generated by a single random source. The framework of possibility theory can be used to merge such heterogeneous information as demonstrated by its application in the diverse fields such as engineering, finance, and social sciences. This article introduces this methodology for LCAs by first introducing the theory behind data modeling and data fusion with possibility theory. Then, this framework is applied to the disparate data from literature on the manufacturing energy requirements for semiconductor device fabrication, and also to a hypothetical example of linguistic inputs from experts in order to demonstrate the operationalization of the theory. A flowchart is provided to recap the framework and for easy navigation through the steps of merging procedure. Results and discussion The framework for fusion of information applied the numerical and linguistic heterogeneous data in the LCA context illustrates that this methodology can be implemented relatively easily to increase the data quality and credibility of LCA. This can be done without making any changes in the usual preferred way of conducting an LCA. Information fusion may be performed either after the sensitivity analysis identifies the most impactful categories that need further investigation, or it can be performed upfront to the select input categories of interest. Conclusions The article introduces a well-established framework of information fusion to the field of LCA where disparate data may need to be fused to perform the assessment under certain conditions. This framework can be easily implemented, and will enhance data quality and LCA credibility. We also hope that data entry software such as ecoEditor make provision for the data entry mechanism necessary to enter fused data.Purpose Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) has developed a statistical-based interpretation methodology, E-valuate T, with the primary objective of assessing the environmental impact of a product, a subassembly, or process across whole product lines. The nature of apparel manufacturing, with raw materials and manufacturing facilities all across the globe, makes comparisons between individual products inherently difficult. With the multitude of decisions at each manufacturing stage, and localized factors such as grid electricitymixes, a noncontextualized comparison between two products yields little actionable information. By assessing the life cycle impact of products and subassemblies within standardized groups of like products, or cohorts of interest, the E-valuate T methodology provides directional indication of whether or not the life cycle impacts for a given product demonstrate an improvement, that is, decreased environmental impact or otherwise as compared to the cohort. Methods Using descriptive statistics of a cohort of products or materials, in this case denim fabrics, performance is determined by percentile rankings. Final scores are expressed as readily understood performance measures of good, better, and best over business-as-usual practices. Thresholds to distinguish good, better, and best scores are based on percentile rankings of performance at the 70th, 80th, and 90th percentiles, respectively. Results and discussion In this paper we present the assessment of 26 fabrics from raw material production or extraction up to and including the dyeing and weaving of a fabric, demonstrating the ability of the E-valuate T method to assess life cycle environmental performance of a product or product component relative to a cohort of like products or components. Conclusions The E-valuate T method is a first major step in the development of a comprehensive science-based approach to measuring the environmental performance of fabrics and apparel products. The pilot assessment of the 26 fabrics has yielded results that can be used to engage both internal and external stakeholders. The E-valuate T method can address the needs of three primary stakeholders: (1) relative rankings to support decisions for product designers and developers, (2) substantiation of external claims of environmental performance, and (3) communication of environmental performance to suppliers and contractors.Purpose As the debate on how to effectively link life cycle analysis ( LCA) and negative externalities of the products or processes is still unsolved, an improved methodology that involves the private and social ( environment) profitability to petrochemical projects in Mexico is presented. We incorporate both environmental impacts, identified through the LCA, using the eco-costs model, within a project appraisal analysis. The eco-costs are a single LCA-based indicator of environmental burden, based on the concept of marginal prevention costs, i.e. costs required to bring back the environmental degradation to a sustainable level. Methods The methodology was carried out in four steps. First, the potential environmental impacts (in physical units) were assessed through life-cycle assessment. Second, the marginal prevention costs of pollution (eco-costs) of impact categories were estimated. Third, since these monetary values are given for a European income level, eco-costs were adjusted to Mexican income levels (i.e., benefit transfer). Fourth, these adjusted values were used for assessing the financial viability of two petrochemical projects at two stages of installed capacity. Results and discussion The costs of marginal prevention (eco-costs) changed from 1.62 USD/kg of acrylonitrile in the old design to 0.926 USD/kg in the redesign. In case of vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), the eco-costs were from 16.08 USD/kg of VCM for the stage design to 1.62 USD/kg for the operational stage (ex post). The sensitivity analysis identified that only 15 % of these eco-costs, in the case of acrylonitrile, and 1.5% for the VCM, could be incorporated to the costs of the project without affecting the profit on the investment. Conclusions The developed methodology was helpful to express potential environmental impacts in monetary units as financial indicators in a project appraisal. Thus, the methodology can be used to internalize the eco-costs into product prices, shifting the financial burden to firms and consumers, in order to offset the high costs of the green net national product.Purpose The development of product category rules (PCRs) is inconsistent among the program operators using ISO 14025 as the basis. Furthermore, the existence of several other product claim standards and specifications that require analogous rules for making product claims has the potential to reduce any consistency in PCRs present in the ISO 14025 domain and result in unnecessary duplication of PCRs. These inconsistencies and duplications can be attributed to (a) insufficient specificity in related standards, (b) the presence of several standards and specifications, (c) lack of/limited coordination among program operators, and (d) lack of a single global database for PCRs. As a result, current PCR development threatens the legitimacy of life cycle assessment-based product claims. Process Through discussions over the past few years, in multistakeholder organizations, it has become clear that more guidance on the development of PCRs is necessary. In response to this need, the Product Category Rule Guidance Development Initiative (www.pcrguidance.org) was launched as an independent multistakeholder effort in early 2012. The premise for the Initiative was that the Guidance would be created by a voluntary group of international stakeholders that would share ownership of the outputs. Outcome The Guidance is now published, along with supplementary materials, on the Initiative website. The guidance document specifies requirements, recommendations, and options on (1) steps to be taken before PCR creation; (2) elements of a PCR; (3) review, publication, and use of PCRs; and (4) best practices for PCR development and management. Supplementary materials include a PCR template, a conformity assessment form, and a list of program operators from around the world. Conclusions The Guidance will help reduce cost and time to develop a PCR by supporting the adaptation of an existing PCR or by building on elements from existing PCRs. It will help reduce confusion and frustration when creating PCRs that are based on one or more standards and programs. Overall, the Guidance is a robust handbook for consistency and clarity in the development of PCRs.Purpose In the transportation sector, reducing vehicle weight is a cornerstone strategy to improve the fuel economy and energy efficiency of road vehicles. This study investigated the environmental implications of lightweighting two automotive parts (Ford Taurus front end bolster, Chevrolet Trailblazer/GMC Envoy assist step) using glass-fiber reinforced polymers (GFRP) instead of steel alloys. Methods The cradle-to-grave life cycle assessments (LCAs) for these studies consider a total service life of 150,000 miles for two applications: a 46 % lighter GFRP bolster on the 2010 Ford Taurus that replaced the 2008 steel and GFRP bolster, and a 51 % lighter GFRP running board for the 2007 Chevrolet Trailblazer/GMC Envoy that replaced the previous steel running board including its polymer fasteners. The life cycle stages in these critically reviewed and ISO-compliant LCA studies include the production of upstream materials and energy, product manufacturing, use, and the end-of-life treatment for all materials throughout the life cycle. Results and discussion The results show that the lighter GFRP products performed better than the steel products for global warming potential and primary energy demand for both case studies. In addition, the GFRP bolster performed better for acidification potential. The savings of fuel combustion and production during the use stage of a vehicle far outweigh the environmental impacts of manufacturing or end-of-life. An even greater benefit would be possible if the total weight reduction in the vehicle would be high enough to allow for the reduction of engine displacement or an elongation of gear ratio while maintaining constant vehicle dynamics. These so-called secondary measures allow the fuel savings per unit of mass to be more than doubled and are able to offset the slightly higher acidification potential of the GFRP running board which occurs when only the mass-induced fuel savings are considered. Conclusions The lightweight GFRP components are shown to outperform their steel counterparts over the full life cycle mainly due to the reduced fuel consumption of the vehicle in the use phase. To harvest the benefits of light weighting to their full extent, it is recommended that the sum of all mass reductions in the design process be monitored and, whenever feasible, invested into fuel economy by adapting the drive train while maintaining constant vehicle performance rather than leveraging the weight reduction to improve vehicle dynamics.Purpose A major task concerning the greening of freight transportation is to influence the process of choosing an appropriate transport solution for a shipment. This paper presents the results of a detailed environmental benchmark study of freight transport chains recorded during a shipper survey administered in Switzerland in 2008. Materials and methods For the environmental evaluation, life cycle assessment was applied and enhanced with a new method for integrating damage to human health caused by traffic accidents based on the disability adjusted life year concept. Results and discussion The results show that in land-based transport, road generally has a lower environmental performance compared to intermodal and rail-only transport. Exceptions exist, e. g. for long pre-and post-haulage distances in intermodal transport or for very low train-load factors. The most relevant environmental interventions to pay attention to are, according to the methods applied, emissions of CO2, NOx and particulates as well as accident damages. Conclusions Rail transport is often, but not always, environmentally preferable than truck transport. Accident damages to human health should be included in each benchmark study. For practical application, a simplified benchmark methodology is proposed requiring a reduced level of detail for the input data.Purpose Proper recycling of mobile phones and other electronic products is important in order to reduce the generation of large amounts of hazardous waste, lessen environmental and social problems associated to the extraction of minerals and primary production of materials, and also minimize the depletion of scarce materials that are often difficult to substitute. Current material recovery processes are used to recycle electronic waste of various compositions. Methods Based on a review of the recycling processes and material flow analysis (MFA), we attribute the material and energy required to recover metals from 1 tonne of discarded mobile phones. Results and discussion We estimate that the recovery rates of gold, palladium, silver, copper, nickel, lead, antimony, and tin from the recycling processes described are 80 to 99%(16.4% of the phone in weight). The two main industrial processes used at present time (pyrometallurgical and combined pyrohydrometallurgical) have similar energy consumptions (7,763 and 7,568 MJ/tonne of mobile phones, respectively). An average tonne of used mobile phones represents a potential of 128 kg of copper, 0.347 kg of gold, 0.15 kg of palladium, 3.63 kg of silver, 15 kg of nickel, 6 kg of lead, 1 kg of antimony, and 10 kg of tin as well as other metals that are not yet profitable to recover but might be in the future. Conclusions We find that the energy consumed to recover copper from mobile phones is half of that needed for copper primary extraction and similar or greater energy savings for precious metal refining. Nevertheless, only 2.5 % of mobile phones arrive to industrial recovery facilities. There is a great potential to increase the amount of metals being recovered, thereby reducing energy consumption and increasing resource efficiency.Purpose This article is the first of a series of articles presenting the results of research on the implementation of life cycle management tools in small-and medium-sized companies in Poland. This work is part of a project financed by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PAED) which began in February 2011. Itwas carried out by the Wielkopolska Quality Institute-a business environment institution associated with the Polish Centre for Life Cycle Assessment (PCLCA). The main practical objective of the project was to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in their business development, e. g. by expanding their horizons beyond the sphere of their operation and identifying new areas for improvement and promotion of the products and services on offer. These publications are a voice in the discussion on the opportunities and pertinence of implementing life cycle thinking (LCT) in small-and medium-sized enterprises and an attempt to identify potential barriers arising from specific characteristics of SMEs which could hinder or even prevent the effective implementation of life cycle techniques. Part 1 presents the situation of SMEs in Poland, general objectives of the project and organisation of the survey process. Methods It was decided to carry out research on the effectiveness of the implementation of LCA and life cycle costing (LCC) in organisations that had received financial support for the implementation of life cycle techniques. Financial constraints, which might potentially be a reason for limited interest in LC techniques among SMEs in Poland, were taken into account. Thus, financial support provided an opportunity for the project to obtain information from a wide range of companies, not only from those companies that were particularly aware of the benefits of LC techniques or had a very good financial situation. Research based on the method of individual in-depth interviews was preceded by an analysis of literature showing the status of SMEs in Poland. Given the results, the project objectives were formulated and the ways of conducting the research were defined. Results and discussion The comparison of Polish SMEs with the same category of companies in the EU shows some similarities, such as the percentage of companies engaged in various businesses. The differences are expressed primarily in the financial potential, which in the case of Polish SMEs, is significantly smaller than the average in the EU. In the SME sector, there are less than half as many small businesses in Poland than in the EU. There are, however, many more microbusinesses in Poland. An evaluation of the prevalence of LCA and LCC techniques indicates that they are used by just 3 % of Polish SMEs, which is a very small proportion compared to the more than 50 % of SMEs taking any environmental measures. Information collected on specific details of Polish SMEs was used to identify the target group and develop a survey questionnaire which aimed to audit, among other things, the approach to environmental and economic analyses in the past and the approach to the LCA and/or LCC analyses that were implemented from the point of view of difficulties in their implementation and potential use of the results. Conclusions Part 1 of the series of articles demonstrates a marginal-scale dissemination of life cycle management techniques among Polish SMEs. Companies definitely prefer to introduce relatively simple solutions that do not require specialised knowledge or unnecessary costs, e. g. they introduce energy-saving bulbs and waste segregation. Only a small percentage of companies implement more complex activities, and most commonly, these are medium-sized companies with greater financial and human capital. So what should be done to make SMEs use life cycle techniques more frequently? Is it appropriate to make changes in the methodology and life cycle techniques as such, or should, rather, the incentive for SMEs to use LCT come from outside as a requirement of public institutions or suppliers in a supply chain? Answers to these questions are provided in the research conclusions presented in parts 2 and 3 of the series of articles.Purpose In life cycle assessment (LCA), resource availability is currently evaluated by means of models based on depletion time, surplus energy, etc. Economic aspects influencing the security of supply and affecting availability of resources for human use are neglected. The aim of this work is the development of a new model for the assessment of resource provision capability from an economic angle, complementing existing LCA models. The inclusion of criteria affecting the economic system enables an identification of potential supply risks associated with resource use. In step with actual practice, such an assessment provides added value compared to conventional (environmental) resource assessment within LCA. Analysis of resource availability including economic information is of major importance to sustain industrial production. Methods New impact categories and characterization models are developed for the assessment of economic resource availability based on existing LCA methodology and terminology. A single score result can be calculated providing information about the economic resource scarcity potential (ESP) of different resources. Based on a life cycle perspective, the supply risk associated with resource use can be assessed, and bottlenecks within the supply chain can be identified. The analysis can be conducted in connection with existing LCA procedures and in line with current resource assessment practice and facilitates easy implementation on an organizational level. Results and discussion A portfolio of 17 metals is assessed based on different impact categories. Different impact factors are calculated, enabling identification of high-risk metals. Furthermore, a comparison of ESP and abiotic depletion potential (ADP) is conducted. Availability of resources differs significantly when economic aspects are taken into account in addition to geologic availability. Resources assumed uncritical based on ADP results, such as rare earths, turn out to be associated with high supply risks. Conclusions The model developed in this work allows for a more realistic assessment of resource availability beyond geologic finiteness. The new impact categories provide organizations with a practical measure to identify supply risks associated with resources. The assessment delivers a basis for developing appropriate mitigation measures and for increasing resilience towards supply disruptions. By including an economic dimension into resource availability assessment, a contribution towards life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is achieved.Purpose Pharmaceutical and biological materials require thermally controlled environments when being transported between manufacturers, clinics, and hospitals. It is the purpose of this report to compare the life cycle impacts of two distinct logistical approaches to packaging commonly used in cold chain logistics and to identify the method of least environmental burden. The approaches of interest are single-use packaging utilizing containers insulated with either polyurethane or polystyrene and reusable packaging utilizing containers with vacuum-insulated panels. Methods This study has taken a cradle-to-grave perspective, which covers material extraction, manufacture, assembly, usage, transportation, and end-of-life realities. The functional unit of comparison is a 2-year clinical trial consisting of 30,000 individual package shipments able to maintain roughly 12 L of payload at a controlled 2-8 degrees C temperature range for approximately 96 h. Published life-cycle inventory data were used for process and material emissions. A population-centered averaging method was used to estimate transportation distances to and from clinical sites during container use. Environmental impacts of the study include global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential, photochemical oxidation potential, human toxicity potential, and postconsumer waste. Results and discussion The average single-use approach emits 1,122 tonnes of CO(2)e compared with 241 tonnes with the reusable approach over the functional unit. This is roughly a 75 % difference in global warming potential between the two approaches. Similar differences exist in other impact categories with the reusable approach showing 60 % less acidification potential, 65 % less eutrophication potential, 85 % less photochemical ozone potential, 85 % less human toxicity potential, and 95 % less postconsumer waste. The cradle-to-gate emissions of the single-use container were the overwhelming cause of its high environmental burden as 30,000 units were required to satisfy the functional unit rather than 772 for the reusable approach. The reusable container was about half the mass of the average single-use container, which lowered its transportation emissions below the single-use approach despite an extra leg of travel. Conclusions The reusable logistical approach has shown to impose a significantly smaller environmental burden in all impact categories of interest. A sensitivity analysis has shown some leeway in the degree of the environmental advantage of the reusable approach, but it confirms the conclusion as no case proved otherwise.Purpose Sustainability of a material-based product mainly depends on the materials used for the product itself or during its lifetime. A material selection decision should not only capture the functional performance required but should also consider the economical, social, and environmental impacts originated during the product life cycle. There is a need to assess social impacts of materials along the full life cycle, not only to be able to address the "social dimension" in sustainable material selection but also for potentially improving the circumstances of affected stakeholders. This paper presents the method and a case study of social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) specialized for comparative studies. Although the authors' focus is on material selection, the proposed methodology can be used for comparative assessment of products in general. Methods The method is based on UNEP/SETAC "guidelines for social life-cycle assessment of products" and includes four main phases: goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory analysis, life cycle impact assessment, and life cycle interpretation. However, some special features are presented to adjust the framework for materials comparison purpose. In life cycle inventory analysis phase, a hot spot assessment is carried out using material flow analysis and stakeholder and experts' interviews. Based on the results of that, a pairwise comparison method is proposed for life cycle impact assessment applying analytic hierarchy process. A case study was conducted to perform a comparative assessment of the social and socioeconomic impacts in life cycle of concrete and steel as building materials in Iran. For hot spot analysis, generic and national level data were gathered, and for impact assessment phase, site-specific data were used. Result and discussion The unique feature of the proposed method compared with other works in S-LCA is its specialty to materials and products comparison. This leads to some differences in methodological issues of S-LCA that are explained in the paper in detail. The case study results assert that "steel/iron" in the north of Iran generally has the better social performance than "concrete/cement." However, steel is associated with many negative social effects in some subcategories, e. g., freedom of association, fair salary, and occupational health in extraction phase. Against, social profile of concrete and cement industry is damaged mainly due to the negative impact of cement production on safe and healthy living condition. The case study presented in this article shows that the evaluation of social impacts is possible, even if the assessment is always affected by subjective value systems. Conclusions Application of the UNEP/SETAC guidelines in comparative studies can be encouraged based on the results of this paper. It enables a hotspot assessment of the social and socio-economic impacts in life cycle of alternative materials. This research showed that the development of a specialized S-LCA approach for materials and products comparison is well underway although many challenges still persist. Particularly characterization method in life cycle impact assessment phase is challenging. The findings of this case study pointed out that social impacts are primarily connected to the conduct of companies and less with processes and materials in general. These findings confirm the results of Dreyer et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 11(2): 88-97, 2006). The proposed approach aims not only to identify the best socially sustainable alternative but also to reveal product/process improvement potentials to facilitate companies to act socially compatible. It will be interesting to apply the UNEP/SETAC approach of S-LCA to other materials and products; materials with a more complex life cycle will be a special challenge. As with any new method, getting experience on data collection and evaluation, building a data base, integrating the method in software tools, and finding ways for effective communication of results are important steps until integrating S-LCA in routine decision support.Purpose Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool for quantifying the overall environmental impacts of a product, process, or service. The scientific scope and boundary definition are important to ensure the accuracy of LCA results. Defining the boundary in LCA is difficult and there are no commonly accepted scientific methods yet. The objective of this research is to present a comprehensive discussion of system boundaries in LCA and to develop an appropriate boundary delimitation method. Methods A product system is partitioned into the primary system and interrelated subsystems. The hierarchical relationship of flow and process is clarified by introducing flow-and process-related interventions. A system boundary curve model of the LCA is developed and the threshold rules for judging whether the system boundary satisfies the research requirement are proposed. Quantitative criteria from environmental, technical, geographical and temporal dimensions are presented to limit the boundaries of LCA. An algorithm is developed to identify an appropriate boundary by searching the process tree and evaluating the environmental impact contribution of each process while it is added into the studied system. Results and discussion The difference between a limited system and a theoretically complete system is presented. A case study is conducted on a color TV set to demonstrate and validate the method of boundary identification. The results showed that the overall environmental impact indicator exhibits a slow growth after a certain number of processes considered, and the gradient of the fitting curve trends to zero gradually. According to the threshold rules, a relatively accurate system boundary could be obtained. Conclusions It is found from this research that the system boundary curve describes the growth of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results as processes are added. The two threshold rules and identification methods presented can be used to identify system boundary of LCA. The case study demonstrated that the methodology presented in this paper is an effective tool for the boundary identification.Purpose In LCA, a multi-functionality problem exists whenever the environmental impacts of a multi-functional process have to be allocated between its multiple functions. Methods for fixing this multi-functionality problem are controversially discussed because the methods include ambiguous choices. To study the influence of these choices, the ISO standard requires a sensitivity analysis. This work presents an analytical method for analyzing sensitivities and uncertainties of LCA results with respect to the choices made when a multi-functionality problem is fixed. Methods The existing matrix algebra for LCA is expanded by explicit equations for methods that fix multi-functionality problems: allocation and avoided burden. For allocation, choices exist between alternative allocation factors. The expanded equations allow calculating LCA results as a function of allocation factors. For avoided burden, choices exist in selecting an avoided burden process from multiple candidates. This choice is represented by so-called aggregation factors. For avoided burden, the expanded equations calculate LCA results as a function of aggregation factors. The expanded equations are used to derive sensitivity coefficients for LCA results with respect to allocation factors and aggregation factors. Based on the sensitivity coefficients, uncertainties due to fixing a multi-functionality problem by allocation or avoided burden are analytically propagated. The method is illustrated using a virtual numerical example. Results and discussion The presented approach rigorously quantifies sensitivities of LCA results with respect to the choices made when multi-functionality problems are fixed with allocation and avoided burden. The uncertainties due to fixing multi-functionality problems are analytically propagated to uncertainties in LCA results using a first-order approximation. For uncertainties in allocation factors, the first-order approximation is exact if no loops of the allocated functional flows exist. The contribution of uncertainties due to fixing multi-functionality problems can be directly compared to the uncertainty contributions induced by uncertain process data or characterization factors. The presented method allows the computationally efficient study of uncertainties due to fixing multi-functionality problems and could be automated in software tools. Conclusions This work provides a systematic method for the sensitivity analysis required by the ISO standard in case choices between alternative allocation procedures exist. The resulting analytical approach includes contributions of uncertainties in process data, characterization factors, and-in extension to existing methods-uncertainties due to fixing multi-functionality problems in a unifying rigorous framework. Based on the uncertainty contributions, LCA practitioners can select fields for data refinement to decrease the overall uncertainty in LCA results.Purpose Oil shale is an unconventional petroleum source that can be produced domestically in the USA. Oil shale resources are primarily located in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, within the Colorado River Basin. In this paper, we analyze the life cycle consumptive water use for oil shale production and its impacts on water resources of the Colorado River Basin. Methods The study is focused on life cycle consumptive water use for oil shale development. Consumptive water use is defined as "water that is evaporated, transpired, incorporated into products, or otherwise removed from the immediate water environment." The analysis includes direct consumptive water requirements to extract, process, and refine shale oil, as well as indirect consumptive water use for generating the electricity associated with the extraction and processing. From the results, strategies for water supply certainty are discussed, and strategies for implementation are suggested. In addition, refining the shale oil outside of the oil shale region (removing the need for local water), using dry cooling systems for electricity generation, and building desalination plants in California (to replace water) are evaluated. Results and discussion Life cycle consumptive water use for oil shale is significant and could impact water availability for consumers in the lower Colorado River Basin. At a level of oil production of 2 million barrels per day, the life cycle consumptive water use would be significant: between 140 and 305 billion gallons (0.4 and 0.9 million acre-ft.) of water per year if surface mining and retorting is done, or between 150 and 340 billion gallons (0.5 and 1 million acre-ft.) of water per year if the Shell in situ process is used. Strategies could be implemented to provide water supply certainty including refining the shale oil outside of the region (removing some need for local water), using dry cooling systems for electricity generation, and building desalination plants in California (to replace water). Conclusions Water supply in the Colorado River Basin could be a primary constraint to the development of oil shale. At a level of oil production of 2 million barrels per day, the life cycle consumptive water use would be significant. Energy companies or governments may want to invest in water management and supply strategies that would eliminate the uncertainty associated with the water availability in the Colorado River Basin for oil shale development.Purpose In this paper, the combined life cycle assessment of the water supply alternatives and the water use in a water-stressed watershed in Spain (the Segura) is presented. Although it is a dry area, agriculture and tourism are very profitable sectors with high water demands. Thus, external water supply alternatives including water transfers or desalination partly balance the reduced natural water availability to cover the existing water demands. Methods In order to integrate both the impact of water supply alternatives and water use, the ReCiPe method was used to assess the water supply alternatives at the endpoint approach with the three specific damage categories: human health, ecosystem diversity and damage to resources availability. At the same time, the water use impact was calculated and grouped in the same categories. Firstly, one average cubic metre of water at the user's gate in the Segura Basin area was taken as the functional unit. As irrigation and drinking water constitute the principal water uses, it was considered that to separately analyse 1 m(3) used for irrigation and 1 m(3) destined to drinking purposes could provide interesting information. Then, these units were also considered as functional units. Then, three additional hypothetical scenarios were introduced: two of them defined by a strong variability in rainfall and the third by a sudden diminution of water transferred from a neighbouring basin. Results and discussion Regarding the facilities to provide 1 m3 at user's gate in the Segura Basin, results showed that the seawater desalination plants obtained the highest score for all the three considered damage categories, followed by the Tajo-Segura water transfer, the groundwater, the local surface waters and the water reuse. In relation to the water use impact, the damage to ecosystems diversity was very representative with respect to the one coming from water supply infrastructures because irrigation constituted 85 % of the total demand. Conclusions The diversification of water supply alternatives within a region considerably increases any environmental impact, primarily stemming from the additional required infrastructures, and frequently from the use of external water sources for their uses. Thus, users and policy makers should be aware of the costs that a guaranteed water supply entails. In water-scarce territories, the use of external solutions such as desalination or water transfer either increase the environmental impact due to their high energy consumption or they are limited by existing climate variability. Therefore, they cannot be considered as the definite solution, which would be a balance between renewable sources and existing demands.Purpose Forest residues are becoming an increasingly important bioenergy feedstock. This study evaluates the environmental impacts associated with the production of fuel chips from eucalypt logging residues in Portugal, in order to identify the supply chains and machinery that bring the best environmental performance. Besides, the stages and operations with the largest environmental impact are identified. Methods Life cycle assessment methodology is used starting with forest management up to delivery of chips to power plant. Three different configurations for logging residue processing were simulated as follows: roadside chipping of loose residues, terminal chipping of loose residues, and terminal chipping of bundled residues. In addition, the use of different equipment for tree felling and extraction of logging residue was considered. The default impact assessment methodology was the CML. In a sensitivity analysis, calculations were performed using characterization factors recommended by the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD). Different allocation criteria were tested for partitioning the environmental burdens between wood and forest residues produced during the stage of forest management. Results and discussion Roadside chipping of loose residues seems to have less impacts regardless of the equipment used in tree felling and residue forwarding. However, for photochemical oxidant formation, this is not the case when trees are felled with a chainsaw when the CML methodology is applied. For the systems with terminal chipping, the better option will depend both on type of machinery used and distances traveled between the forest site and the power plant. The forest management stage has a relevant contribution to all the supply chains analyzed. Chipping and bundling have also important impacts, as well as forwarding when this operation is accomplished with a modified farm tractor. Moreover, transports have a significant impact when loose residues are chipped in a terminal. Conclusions The choice of the allocation method between wood and residues affects significantly the absolute results, but it is irrelevant when the objective is to select the best supply chain configuration. The results obtained are valid for the input data considered, which rely on average values representative of the current most typical practices in Portugal. However, this methodology can also be applied as a decision supporting tool to select the supply chain with the best environmental performance on a case by case basis, using site-specific data.A mixed carbon dioxide (CO2) and methanol (MeOH) system is shown to successfully transesterify triolein into methyl oleate at moderate pressures and temperatures below CO2 100 degrees C in the presence of Nafion NR50, a heterogeneous catalyst. An experimental design was developed to explore the effects of mono-, bi-, and tri-phasic CO2 MeOH triolein systems through pressure, temperature, and 'methanol loading, all of which influence the system phase behavior. It was found that one particular set of conditions (>80 degrees C, 9.5 MPa, 3.6% v/v reactor, ambient MeOH) demonstrated nearly complete yields due to the preferable phase behavior at these conditions. Cloud point curves of the ternary system (MeOH, CO, and substrate, including triolein, diolein, monoolein, glycerol, and methyl oleate) are reported to describe this complex system phase behavior. Results indicate that optimized yields (>98% methyl oleatc at 95 C) are achieved when the reaction is carried out in a three-phase system (not including the solid catalyst as a separate phase), which can partially be attributed to increased solubility of triolein in methanol as well as increased mass transfer due to the presence of dissolved CO2.Biochar is a co-product from biomass pyrolysis that can sequester carbon when applied to soils. It may also reduce N2O and CH4 emissions from soils, increase fertilizer efficiency, increase soil organic carbon, and increase crop yields. Treatment of these additional agricultural effects in life cycle analyses (LCAs) of pyrolysis-based liquid fuels could significantly influence LCA results. In this study, we include these effects in analyses of fast and slow pyrolysis. We also consider scenarios in which biochar is combusted to produce electricity. Probability distribution functions are developed for biochar yield and carbon content whereas average, minimum, and maximum values for biochar's stability factor and agricultural effects are developed from a thorough literature review and used in baseline and sensitivity analyses. Overall, life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for pyrolysis-based gasoline are lower when biochar is applied to soil than when it is combusted. Carbon abatement (CA) values of fast and slow pyrolysis fuel production systems are comparable. CA is reduced for an alternative fast pyrolysis system in which the pyrolysis oil is combusted for heat and electricity generation rather than upgraded to a hydrocarbon fuel. In the baseline case with biochar soil application, inclusion of agricultural effects reduces GHG emissions by 2.1 g CO(2)e/MJ from 16 g CO(2)e/MJ. Biochar carbon content and yield exert the strongest influence on GHG emissions results. Results are also sensitive to biochar's ability to suppress N2O emissions and increase soil organic carbon, which are subject to high uncertainty. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdGlobal biofuels production grew rapidly from 2007 to 2012, led by the United States and Brazil, the world's two largest fuel-ethanol-producing systems. In this paper we provide insights into the characteristics of mature Brazilian sugarcane and maturing US dry mill corn ethanol industries. Both systems continue to improve as measured by life cycle data such as total renewable energy produced per unit of fossil energy consumed [renewable energy ratio (RER)]. Sugarcane self-benchmarking systems showed RER values of 7.0 in 2002 to 9.4 in 2009 as the industry started to switch to mechanized harvesting. The average US RER improved from 1.1 to 1.7 from 2000 to 2010. RERs of 4.4 to 5.5 are observed in corn ethanol plants employing natural gas or corn stover combined heat and power. Ethanol systems configured to produce ethanol and electricity had similar net energy balances (a ratio of net energy produced to energy contained in the fuel). One measure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions (biomass use efficiency) compares the effectiveness of displacing carbon from combustion of fossil fuels with renewable carbon. Advanced corn ethanol systems reach higher GHG emission reduction levels compared to sugarcane ethanol by displacing coal-based electricity. Sugarcane systems achieve double the GHG emissions reductions per unit of harvested land relative to corn ethanol because sugarcane and corn are grown as perennial and annual crops in tropical and temperate climatic zones, respectively. Carbon dioxide capture and storage systems could offer additional GHG emission reductions for both corn and sugarcane ethanol systems. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThroughout the past two decades, numerous studies characterized the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and net energy balance of corn ethanol production in the USA. A wide range of reported values resulted from differences in the vintage of the data used to evaluate the ethanol conversion technology and the agricultural practices of corn production, which evolved substantially during the rapid growth phase of the industry. Methodological differences in life cycle assessments also caused the reported values to vary widely. With corn dry mills growing from 30% of total installed ethanol production capacity in 1990 to 80-90% from 2006 to 2011, we document the evolution of this industry using vintage-specific data to analyze selected energy and environmental metrics, including GHG emissions, fossil energy use, direct land use, and GHG emissions reduction per hectare of land harvested for ethanol production. Our estimates indicate that production and use of corn ethanol emitted 44% fewer GHG emissions, consumed 54% less fossil energy and required 44% less land in 2010 compared to 1990 (on a life cycle basis). Our review and analysis point to strategies for reducing the carbon footprint of the corn dry mill industry by building on the progress already achieved. Using biomass (e.g. residues from corn production) for process heat or combined heat and power is one such strategy. Additional environmental benefits are projected from the adoption of integrated gasification combined cycle technology (using corn residues), which leads to energy-self-sufficient mills or net electricity producers depending on the power system configuration. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdBiochar is a co-product from biomass pyrolysis that can sequester carbon when applied to soils. It may also reduce N2O and CH4 emissions from soils, increase fertilizer efficiency, increase soil organic carbon, and increase crop yields. Treatment of these additional agricultural effects in life cycle analyses (LCAs) of pyrolysis-based liquid fuels could significantly influence LCA results. In this study, we include these effects in analyses of fast and slow pyrolysis. We also consider scenarios in which biochar is combusted to produce electricity. Probability distribution functions are developed for biochar yield and carbon content whereas average, minimum, and maximum values for biochar's stability factor and agricultural effects are developed from a thorough literature review and used in baseline and sensitivity analyses. Overall, life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for pyrolysis-based gasoline are lower when biochar is applied to soil than when it is combusted. Carbon abatement (CA) values of fast and slow pyrolysis fuel production systems are comparable. CA is reduced for an alternative fast pyrolysis system in which the pyrolysis oil is combusted for heat and electricity generation rather than upgraded to a hydrocarbon fuel. In the baseline case with biochar soil application, inclusion of agricultural effects reduces GHG emissions by 2.1 g CO(2)e/MJ from 16 g CO(2)e/MJ. Biochar carbon content and yield exert the strongest influence on GHG emissions results. Results are also sensitive to biochar's ability to suppress N2O emissions and increase soil organic carbon, which are subject to high uncertainty. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdGlobal biofuels production grew rapidly from 2007 to 2012, led by the United States and Brazil, the world's two largest fuel-ethanol-producing systems. In this paper we provide insights into the characteristics of mature Brazilian sugarcane and maturing US dry mill corn ethanol industries. Both systems continue to improve as measured by life cycle data such as total renewable energy produced per unit of fossil energy consumed [renewable energy ratio (RER)]. Sugarcane self-benchmarking systems showed RER values of 7.0 in 2002 to 9.4 in 2009 as the industry started to switch to mechanized harvesting. The average US RER improved from 1.1 to 1.7 from 2000 to 2010. RERs of 4.4 to 5.5 are observed in corn ethanol plants employing natural gas or corn stover combined heat and power. Ethanol systems configured to produce ethanol and electricity had similar net energy balances (a ratio of net energy produced to energy contained in the fuel). One measure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions (biomass use efficiency) compares the effectiveness of displacing carbon from combustion of fossil fuels with renewable carbon. Advanced corn ethanol systems reach higher GHG emission reduction levels compared to sugarcane ethanol by displacing coal-based electricity. Sugarcane systems achieve double the GHG emissions reductions per unit of harvested land relative to corn ethanol because sugarcane and corn are grown as perennial and annual crops in tropical and temperate climatic zones, respectively. Carbon dioxide capture and storage systems could offer additional GHG emission reductions for both corn and sugarcane ethanol systems. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe use of semi-transparent BIPV as a form of on-site renewable energy generation in energy efficient sustainable buildings is increasing. Its popularity is due to its contribution towards zero-(or even plus) energy buildings. In urban cities where the buildings have limited rooftop area but large facade areas, adopting semi-transparent BIPV windows is an alternative for conventional windows. The semi-transparent BIPV windows not only solely generate electricity but also affect the buildings' electricity usage through daylighting and heat gain/loss. In tropical climates where it is hot and humid all year round, the importance of window facade elements is even more pertinent due to high cooling load from the solar heat gains. This paper examines the life cycle environmental and economic performance of commercially available semi-transparent BIPV modules for window application under the tropical conditions of Singapore. Energy simulations, previously performed, were adopted to conduct a life cycle assessment to determine the long term performance in terms of energy and carbon emissions, as well as cost considerations. The EPBT and EROEI for the modules ranged from 0.68 to 1.98 and 11.72 to 34.49 respectively. After considering government subsidies, some modules cost lower than conventional windows, while half of the remaining modules, achieved payback periods of 1.1-13.1 years. These performance indicators were used to form a decision-making tool to assist architects and building designers in the selection of BIPV modules for windows during the early design stages. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To estimate fossil fuel demand and greenhouse gas emissions associated with short-rotation willow (Salix spp.) crops in New York State, we constructed a life cycle assessment model capable of estimating point values and measures of variability for a number of key processes across eight management scenarios. The system used 445.0 to 1,052.4 MJ of fossil energy per oven-dry tonne (odt) of delivered willow biomass, resulting in a net energy balance of 18.3:1 to 43.4:1. The largest fraction of the energy demand across all scenarios was driven by the use of diesel fuels. The largest proportion of diesel fuel was associated with harvesting and delivery of willow chips seven times on 3-year rotations over the life of the crop. Similar patterns were found for greenhouse gas emissions across all scenarios, as fossil fuel use served as the biggest source of emissions in the system. Carbon sequestration in the belowground portion of the willow system provided a large carbon sink that more than compensated for carbon emissions across all scenarios, resulting in final greenhouse gas balances of -138.4 to -52.9 kg CO2 eq. per odt biomass. The subsequent uncertainty analyses revealed that variability associated with data on willow yield, litterfall, and belowground biomass eliminated some of the differences between the tested scenarios. Even with the inclusion of uncertainty analysis, the willow system was still a carbon sequestration system after a single crop cycle (seven 3-year rotations) in all eight scenarios. A better understanding and quantification of factors that drive the variability in the biological portions of the system is necessary to produce more precise estimates of the emissions and energy performance of short-rotation woody crops.This paper examined the potentialities of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as instrument for policy-support. To this respect, the adoption of an initiative within the Madrid Air Quality Plan (AQP) 2011-2015 regarding the substitution of diesel taxis with hybrid, natural gas and LPG alternatives was studied. Four different scenarios were elaborated, a business-as-usual scenario (BAU), the scenario of the AQP, and two extreme-situation scenarios: all-diesel (ADI) and all-ecologic (AEC). Impacts were characterized according to the ILCD methodology, focusing especially on climate change (CC) and photochemical ozone formation (PO). SimaPro 73 was used as analysis and inventory-construction tool. The results indicate that the shift to ecologic alternatives reduced impacts, especially those related to CC and PO. For the complete life cycle, reductions of 13% (CC) and 25% (PO) were observed for AQP against BAU (CC:1365 Gg(co2), P0:13336 Mg-NMVOC). Deeper reductions were observed for AEC (CC:34%, P0:59%), while ADI produced slight increases in impacts if against BAU. The analysis of the use-phase revealed that the central and highest speed zones of the city benefit from the adoption of AQP. This is especially evident in zone 7, with reductions of 16% in CC and 31% in PO respectively against BAU (CCzone1 :3443 kg(CO2)/veh . km, POzone7:11.1 kg(NMVOC)/veh. km). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, measures are evaluated to reduce the environmental impact of concrete and asphalt. Several composition scenarios are designed for these materials and are evaluated based on their environmental performance using life-cycle assessment (LCA). The effect of low-energy production techniques and the application of secondary materials are quantified. The ReCiPe endpoint assessment method is used in order to compare the scenarios. The evaluated concrete-mixes point out that the highest potential for improvement can be realized through application of alternative cement types. The scenarios show a maximum reduction of 39% in environmental impact. The most substantial impact reduction in asphalt can be realized through application of warm-mix asphalt (WMA) instead of hot-mix asphalt (HMA). This yields a reduction of about 33%. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The assessment of environmental performances of building is now commonly based on a life cycle approach. The current studies comparing such performances highlight the problems related to uncertainties in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results. The aim of this study is to identify the sensitivity and robustness of LCA models to uncertainties related to building materials in order to strengthen comparisons which can be done between building projects and secure the assessment of the building environmental performance calculation. However, in this study, all uncertainties are not covered and we restricted our calculation to uncertainties related to the use of building materials during the life cycle of the whole building. We have considered that the relative contribution of each material to the environmental impact of building is sensitive to three key points which are submitted to uncertainties: the service life of the building component; the environmental impact of this building component's production and the amount of material used in the building. The assessments of the uncertainties are treated at two levels: the material or element level and the building level. A statistical method, based on Taylor series expansion is developed to identify the most sensitive and uncertain parameters, with standpoint to strengthen comparison between projects. The first results are promising, although further work remains to be done to better quantify the uncertainties at the material scale. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Borax and boric acid are important primary products in China's boron industry. Their characteristic production technology has been adapted to the low ore grade. To analyze the environmental impacts of different borax and boric acid production processes and to promote cleaner production of boron industry, the life cycle assessment method of cradle-to-gate was applied in this study. GaBi4.4 software was used in the assessment and the environmental impacts were classified according to the CML2001 method. To show the degree of consumption of mineral resources and energy respectively, the abiotic depletion potential was divided into the mineral resources depletion potential and fossil energy depletion potential. A comparison between the mineral processing and entire system studied shows that energy consumption is important in life cycle environmental impacts. Boron production industries should refrain from using coal as their main heat source and try to use clean energy. A comparison between the borax production processes shows that the boron-rich slag is the cleanest material and that blast furnace gas can be used to reduce environmental impacts further in slow cooling link. A comparison between the boric acid production processes shows that flotation (I) is the cleanest process with the material of szaibelyite. Ludwigite should be processed after dressing to reduce the environmental impacts. Boron concentrate can be used to produce borax or boric acid as an alternative to szaibelyite but feasible production processes are still the focus of future research. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,Wood plastic composites (WPC) have become the state-of-the-art commercial products with a growing market potential in the area of building, construction, and automotives in the past ten years. Increasing attention has been given to polylactide (PLA)-based WPC in recent years, due to the renewable raw materials, good mechanical and processing properties. However, the environmental impacts of the wood flour (WF) reinforced PLA-based WPC need be evaluated before they are produced and installed commercially. Life cycle assessment (LCA) based on the input output model was carried out to evaluate the energy demand and environmental impacts, as well as the water requirement of the PLA-based WPC during the cradle-to-gate stages. An attribute hierarchy model (AHM) was used to determine the weighting factors of the different environmental impact categories to the environmental impact load (EIL). The results showed that the energy demand for 1000 kg of the unmodified PLA-based WPC (Sample A, 20 wt% WF+80 wt% PLA) and their polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) toughened counterpart (Sample B, 20 wt% WF+55 wt% PLA+25 wt% PHAs) was 3.08 x 10(8) kJ and 3.05 x 10(8) kJ, respectively. Water requirement for Sample A was more than that of Sample B. The non-dimensional indicator EIL was 1.9 and 1.6 for Sample A and Sample B, respectively. Photochemical oxidation potential made up the largest part among the six environmental impact categories (global warming potential, acidification potential, photochemical oxidation potential, eutrophication potential, smog potential and eco-toxicity potential), while eutrophication potential was the least for both Sample A and Sample B. This cradle-to-gate LCA will contribute to optimizing the eco-design, reducing the energy consumption and pollutant emissions during the eco-profiles of the PEA-based WPC. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Outstanding mechanical, thermal and environmental properties of kenaf, as well as successful applications of kenaf-based boards in structural insulated panels (SIPs), inspired the authors to investigate the incorporation of kenaf core in the polyurethane insulation core of SIPs to create environmentally friendly building material. Three composites made of rigid polyurethane (PU) reinforced with 5, 10 and 15 percent kenaf core were prepared and analyzed. The three composites and pure rigid polyurethane were then used as insulation cores of SIPs with the same kenaf-based structural boards. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to determine the environmental profiles of the four SIPs in 10 and 50 Celsius. It is shown that although kenaf has much less environmental impact than PU, increasing the amount of kenaf core in PU composites does not necessarily result in less environmental impact. In fact with the current practice of making the composites, kenaf core does not replace the PU; instead, it mostly fills the void space, which is initially filled with air and, hence, the kenaf core decreases the porosity of PU composites and increases the density without improving thermal resistance. Structural adequacy of the samples was also examined based on the ASTM C393-00 "three point flexural test". Results show that the more the kenaf loading, the less porous the composites and hence the higher shear resistance. These findings suggest that fabrication methods are critical to maintain optimal thermal and structural characteristics of composites without scarifying their environmental performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become a common and standardized methodology to evaluate the environmental profiles of forest systems. In this study twelve different European forest systems dedicated to wood production for industrial or energy uses (maritime pine, spruce, willow, poplar and Douglas-fir) were compared in detail from environmental and energy points of view considering a cradle-to-gate perspective. The scenarios included the silviculture of these tree species in Sweden, Germany, France, Italy and Portugal. A database with inventory data was constructed for each scenario. The scenarios considered were standardized using the same methodological life cycle assumptions in order to establish comparisons for an overall analysis. The results show a relatively wide range of variations in terms of biomass productivities as well as environmental and energy profiles. These variations depended on the tree species, management regime (different levels of fertilization, time of harvesting and intensity of forest operations) and the overall conditions of the location of the plantations. However, regardless of the scenario considered, operations related to logging such as harvesting and forwarding were identified as hotspots mainly due to the remarkable fuel requirement. Fertilization activities and fertilizer production (when required), thinning processes (when necessary) as well as weed control related processes reported also notable contributions to the categories under assessment. If these twelve scenarios are compared with other similar studies for the same tree species, significant differences' can be found which are mainly linked to different forest management regimes and regional characteristics. The choice and the promotion of a specific forest biomass for industrial applications should not only depend on the biomass yield and the harvesting age but it should be also based on the intensity of forest practices since it considerably affects the environmental and energy profiles. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article aims to assess: i) the carbon footprint (CF) of particleboard produced in Portugal, and ii) the influence of different methodological issues in the particleboard CF calculation by comparing four CF methodologies (ISO/TS 14067; GHG Protocol Product Standard; PAS 2050; Climate Declaration). A life-cycle model was developed for particleboard (functional unit: 1 m(3)). Both cradle-to-gate and cradle-to-grave (end-of-life scenarios: incineration and landfill) assessments were performed. Six methods to assess delayed emissions were analyzed. The main methodological differences between the CF methodologies are the treatment of biogenic CO2, multifunctionality, and unit process exclusions (e.g. capital goods). A wide range of CFs was calculated: -939 to 188 kg CO2 eq/m(3) (cradle-to-gate); 107 to 201 kg CO2 eq/m(3) (cradle-to-grave; incineration) and -692 to 433 kg CO2 eq/m(3) (cradle-to-grave; landfill). The inclusion (negative CF) or exclusion (positive CF) of biogenic carbon storage in the reported CF dominated the differences in results and the ranking of end-of-life scenarios strongly depended on that assumption. ISO/TS 14067, the GHG Protocol and PAS 2050 explicitly include both emissions and removals of biogenic CO2 in the CF calculation. On the other hand, the Climate Declaration does not account for biogenic CO2 or carbon storage, which may bias the comparison with competing products that do not store biogenic carbon (e.g. fossil-based materials). The CF of particleboard was also very sensitive to the different approaches to deal with multifunctionality in the incineration process by the various CF methodologies. Moreover, although not mandatory, delayed emission accounting significantly affected the results for the incineration scenario. Capital goods accounted for 12-20% of the CF. Future guidelines for wood-based panels, such as Product Category Rules, should, therefore, require that carbon storage is assessed and reported, accounting of waste-to-energy burdens is harmonized and capital goods are included. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of biodiesel production from soybean in Golestan province of Iran were studied. For this purpose, the life-cycle process of biodiesel was considered as five stages of agricultural soybean production, soybean transportation, soybean crushing, biodiesel conversion, and its transportation. The results indicated that the total fossil energy consumption with coproduct allocation was 8617.7 MJ ha(-1) and the renewable energy output content (biodiesel as the final outcome) was estimated as 16,991.4 MJ ha(-1). The net energy gain (NEG) and the fossil energy ratio (FER) were calculated as 8373.7 MJ ha(-1) and 1.97, respectively, which show soybean is a suitable energy crop for biodiesel production. Agricultural soybean production stage ranked the first in energy consumption among the five main stages where it consumed 50.56% of total fossil energy consumption in the biodiesel life-cycle process. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data analysis revealed that the total GHG emission was 1710.3 kg CO(2)eq ha(-1) which biodiesel production life-cycle was only account for 311.96 kg CO(2)eq ha(-1) if the mass allocation is considered. Overall, biodiesel production from soybean in Iran can be considered as a way to increase energy security in the near future. Also, soybean cultivation must be considered along with other common oilseeds cultivation in order to prevent food competition between biodiesel feedstocks and food production in Iran. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Geothermal plants supply a significant contribution to the electricity balance from renewable sources in Tuscany. However, this electricity conversion is not exempt from environmental drawbacks. In our study, the electricity production phases of four geothermal electricity plants are analyzed by means of a careful airborne emissions assessment carried out over the entire LCA of the plants. The impact categories considered are global warming (GWP), acidification (ACP) and human toxicology (HTP). The functional unit used is 1 MWh of electric energy produced from geothermal power plants in Mount Amiata area. For the environmental impact categories considered, the impact potentials are evaluated for each of the four geothermal power plants as follows: 380-1045 kg CO2 eq/MWh for GWP, 0.1-44.8 kg SO2 eq/ MWh for ACP and 1.1-31.6 kg, 1.4-DB eq/MWh for HTP. The main contributions to the impact are associated with the high content of NH3, H2S, CH4 and CO2 gases present in the effluents of each plant. The impact change in relation to the geothermal site has a strong correlation to the basin of fluid withdrawal and is related to the technologies used for pollutants depletion. In some cases the impact is higher than that found for production of electricity from fossil fuels (for example, a coal plant of comparable power). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon footprint (CF) of milk produced in six Italian Mediterranean Buffalo farms was estimated through a simplified Life Cycle Assessment. Functional unit was 1 kg of fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM).The farms were characterized by high levels of inputs, as purchased feeds, chemical fertilizers and fossil fuels. Average cultivated area was 53.2 ha; the forage system was based mainly on maize silage, immediately followed by Italian ryegrass and/or whole cereal silage. Average herd size was 360 and the average FPCM per lactating buffalo was 3563 kg/year with an average milk fat and protein percentage of 8.24 and 4.57 respectively. The CF assessment was from cradle to farm gate. The greenhouse gases (GHG) that were taken into account were CH4 from enteric fermentations, CH4 from manure in the stable and in the tank; N2O from nitrification and denitrification processes in the manure before application into the soil and N2O produced after organic and synthetic fertilizer application; direct emissions of CO2 from the fossil fuels combustion within the farms and indirect emissions of CO2 deriving from production of electricity, off-farm feeds, synthetic fertilizers and other minor inputs. Carbon footprint of 1 kg of FPCM was 3.75 kg CO(2)eq. Main sources of GHG are enteric CH4 (45%) and indirect CO(2)eq (25%). Besides enteric CH4, the farm activity that gives the highest contribution to milk CF is on-farm feed production, with 34% on total greenhouse gas emissions (TGE). Carbon footprint with economic allocation (CFea) was estimated by considering the live-weight of males calves and culled cows: its value was 3.60 kg CO(2)eq. If the economic value of the increase of the herd size is considered in the assessment, CFea decreases to 3.45 or 3.27 kg CO(2)eq with an increase of 10% or 20% of the number of mature buffalos. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, we analysed the environmental profile of the strawberry industry in Northern Italy. The analysis was conducted using two scenarios as reference systems: strawberry crops grown in unheated plastic tunnels using currently existing cultivation techniques, post-harvest management practices and consumption patterns (scenario I) and the same strawberry cultivation chain in which some of the materials used were replaced with bio-based materials (scenario 2). In numerous studies, biodegradable polymers have been shown to be environmentally friendly, thus potentially reducing environmental impacts. These materials can be recycled into carbon dioxide and water through composting. Many materials, such as Mater-BI (R) and PLA (R) are also derived from renewable resources. The methodology chosen for the environmental analysis was a life cycle assessment (LCA) based on a consequential approach developed to assess a product's overall environmental impact from the production system to its usage and disposal. In the field stage, a traditional mulching film (non-biodegradable) could be replaced with a biodegradable product. This change would result in waste production of 0 kg/ha for the bio-based product compared to 260 kg/ha of waste for polyethylene (PE). In the post-harvest stage, the issue addressed was the use and disposal of packaging materials. The innovative scenario evaluated herein pertains to the use of new packaging materials that increase the shelf life of strawberries, thereby decreasing product losses while increasing waste management efficiency at the level of a distribution platform and/or sales outlet. In the event of product deterioration or non-sale of the product, the packaging and its contents could be collected together as organic waste without any additional processes because the packaging is compostable according to EN13432. Scenario 2 would achieve reductions of 20% in the global warming potential and non-renewable energy impact categories. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industry sector is an intensive-energy consumer and approximately 20-50% of industrial energy consumption is lost as waste heat. Therefore, there is a great potential for reducing energy consumption and, subsequently, decreasing the fossil fuels used if this lost energy can be recovered. Thermal Energy Storage (TES) based on Latent Heat Storage systems (LHS) using Phase Change Materials (PCMs) has become one of the most feasible solutions in achieving energy savings through waste heat recovery, especially when there is a mismatch between the supply and consumption of energy processes. In this paper, a shell and tube heat exchanger incorporating PCMs has been considered to store the excess energy available in an industrial process. Several attempts have been made to design the most appropriate system considering many cost-benefit and technical criteria to maximise the heat recovery. However, the environmental criterion also is an important factor when determining whether this technology is not only energy and cost-efficient but also environmentally friendly, considering the whole life of the system from its manufacture to its disposal. To this end, this research includes a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine whether the energy savings of conventional fuels during the operation stage are large enough to balance the environmental impact originated in an industrial TES system including the manufacture, use and disposal phases. Inputs and outputs of each management stage have been defined, and the inventory emissions calculated by SIMAPRO v7.3.2. A midpoint and endpoint approaches have been carried out using two methods, CML 2001 and Eco-indicator 99, respectively. As a preliminary result, a promising reduction in the overall impacts was obtained by the use of this technology. From the environmental impact results, a matrix of possible technical solutions is displayed, to improve the environmental performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment has become an increasingly common approach for identifying, quantifying, and evaluating the total potential environmental impact of production processes or products, from the procurement of raw materials (the 'cradle'), to production and utilization (the 'gates') and their final storage (the 'grave'), as well as for determining ways to repair damage to the environment. The paper describes life cycle assessment of mineral fertilizers. On the basis of results provided by life cycle assessment, it can be concluded that an effective strategy for protecting the environment against the harmful effects of fertilizers is to attempt to 'seal' the nutrient cycle on a global, regional, and local scale. Pro-environ-mental measures aim on the one hand to reduce resource utilization, and on the other hand to limit losses of nutrients, during both production and use of fertilizers. An undoubted challenge for life cycle assessment when used in agricultural production is the need for relevance at each scale.The demand for wood for energy production in Ireland is predicted to double from 1.5 million m(3) over bark (OB) in 2011 to 3 million m(3) OB by 2020. There is a large potential for additional biomass recovery for energetic purposes from both thinning forest stands and by harvesting of tops and branches, and stumps. This study builds on research within the wood-for-energy concept in Ireland by analysing the energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions associated with thinning, residue bundling and stump removal for energy purposes. To date there have been no studies on harvesting of residues and stumps in terms of energy balances and greenhouse gas emissions across the life cycle in Ireland. The results of the analysis on wood energy supply chains highlights transport as the most energy and greenhouse gas emissions intensive step in the life cycle. This finding illustrates importance of localised production and use of forest biomass. Production of wood chip, and shredded bundles and stumps, compares favourably with both other sources of biomass in Ireland and fossil fuels. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research examines the gate-to-grave life cycle of salmon processing wastes (offal) management options in Sitka, Alaska using Life Cycle Assessment. The bases for comparison are the management of 1 kg of offal and the management of similar to 33,000 metric tons of offal generated intermittently throughout the 2010 fishing season in Southeast Alaska. Management options are (a) grind and discharge disposal, (b) two types of fresh processing, and (c) stabilized/ensiled offal processing. It is found that the contributions to eutrophication, acidification, and climate change are consistently reduced by assuming product displacements of meal, oil, and gelatin coproducts as compared to grind and discharge disposal. Further, increasing the allowable storage time by stabilizing the offal feedstock provides additional benefit by reducing the amount of offal ground and discharged. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.An intensive and continuous debate centres on the question of whether biomimetics has a specific potential to contribute to sustainability. In the context of a case study, the objective of this paper is to contribute to this debate by presenting the first systematic approach to assess the sustainability of a complex biomimetic product. The object of inquiry is a lecture hall's ribbed slab. Based on criteria suggested by the Association of German Engineers (VDI), it has been verified that the slab has been correctly defined as biomimetic. Moreover, a systematic comparative product sustainability assessment has been carefully carried out. For purposes of comparison, estimated static calculations have been performed for conceivable current state-of-the-art lightweight ceiling structures. Alternative options are a hollow article slab and a pre-stressed flat slab. Besides a detailed benefit analysis and a discussion of social effects, their costs have also been compared. A particularly detailed life cycle assessment on the respective environmental impacts has also been performed. Results show that the biomimetic ribbed slab built in the 1960s is able to keep up with the current state-of-the-art lightweight solutions in terms of sustainability. These promising results encourage a systematic search for a broad range of sustainable biomimetic solutions.This paper considers life cycle environmental sustainability of solar water heating systems in regions with low solar irradiation, such as the UK. The results suggest that flat plate collectors have slightly lower environmental impacts than evacuated tube designs. Reducing the current energy losses of 65%-45% would reduce the impacts by around 35%. Compared to a gas boiler, solar thermal systems are a better option for only five out of 11 environmental impacts considered, with global warming and depletion of fossil resources being lower by 88% and 83%, respectively. Other impacts such as human and eco-toxicity are up to 85% higher. The solar systems score better relative to electrical water heating for eight out of 11 impacts. They are also environmentally more sustainable than heat pumps for seven categories. However, their potential is hampered because they need a back-up heating system, typically gas boiler. For this reason as well as due to a lack of suitable locations and poor efficiency, the potential of solar thermal systems to contribute to a more sustainable domestic energy supply in the UK is limited. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We analyzed the effects of management on the economic profitability of forest biomass production and carbon neutrality of bioenergy use in Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst) stands under the changing climate. We employed a forest ecosystem model and life cycle assessment tool. In particular, we studied the effects of thinning, nitrogen fertilization, and rotation length on: (1) the production of timber and energy biomass, and its economic profitability (net present value), (2) carbon stock in the forest ecosystem and carbon balance in forestry, and (3) carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the use of biomass in energy production. Results showed that the current Finnish baseline management with and without nitrogen fertilization resulted in the highest mean annual timber production and net present value (NPV) for long rotations (60 to 80 years), regardless of climate scenario. Mean annual production of energy biomass was enhanced by increasing stocking by 20-30 % compared to the baseline management, and/or use of nitrogen fertilization. Such management gave lower CO2 emissions per unit of energy compared to the baseline management, as the carbon stock in the forest ecosystem and the carbon balance in forestry increased. Overall, the carbon neutrality and net present value were, on average, the highest in the baseline management or with a 20 % increase in stocking, with nitrogen fertilization and 60- to 80-year rotation lengths, regardless of the climate applied. However, it was not possible to simultaneously maximize the NPV of forest biomass production and the carbon neutrality of bioenergy use.Throughout the past two decades, numerous studies characterized the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and net energy balance of corn ethanol production in the USA. A wide range of reported values resulted from differences in the vintage of the data used to evaluate the ethanol conversion technology and the agricultural practices of corn production, which evolved substantially during the rapid growth phase of the industry. Methodological differences in life cycle assessments also caused the reported values to vary widely. With corn dry mills growing from 30% of total installed ethanol production capacity in 1990 to 80-90% from 2006 to 2011, we document the evolution of this industry using vintage-specific data to analyze selected energy and environmental metrics, including GHG emissions, fossil energy use, direct land use, and GHG emissions reduction per hectare of land harvested for ethanol production. Our estimates indicate that production and use of corn ethanol emitted 44% fewer GHG emissions, consumed 54% less fossil energy and required 44% less land in 2010 compared to 1990 (on a life cycle basis). Our review and analysis point to strategies for reducing the carbon footprint of the corn dry mill industry by building on the progress already achieved. Using biomass (e.g. residues from corn production) for process heat or combined heat and power is one such strategy. Additional environmental benefits are projected from the adoption of integrated gasification combined cycle technology (using corn residues), which leads to energy-self-sufficient mills or net electricity producers depending on the power system configuration. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdAn alternative source of methane that can also reduce the greenhouse gas effect is one that comes from the upgrading of biogas. This paper studies eight technologies through life cycle assessment (LCA). Six of the technologies are ones that are already on the market and the two others are novel technologies that use carbon mineralization to store CO2 upon their removal. The two novel technologies include alkaline with regeneration (AwR) and bottom ash upgrading (BABIU). These technologies use waste rich in calcium, from municipal solid waste incinerators (MSWI), to store the CO2 from biogas. Among all conventional technologies, high pressure water scrubbing and chemical scrubbing with amine had the lowest CO2 impacts. Of the novel technologies BABIU saves 10% more CO2 than AwR. An uncertainty analysis and a material flow analysis demonstrated that proximity to a MSWI is an important factor to consider. As well, it was seen that while the technology is promising it cannot be applied to an entire country if the proper infrastructure is not in place. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The 'food vs. fuel' debate inspired the concept of indirect land use change (iLUC). Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission factors for iLUC are proposed for inclusion into carbon footprints (CF) of biofuels. The range of published iLUC values is enormous: from about 200% below, up to 1700% above the CF values of fossil fuels. From the perspective of life cycle assessment (LCA) and CF science, single iLUC factors are currently more representative for the approach or model used than for the crop or biofuel assessed. The scientific robustness is not sufficient for political and corporate decision making. None of the relevant international standards of LCA or CF require the inclusion of iLUC. The iLUC concept deserves credit for raising awareness of a relevant problem but it is not the solution. Science and policy should focus on proactive real world mitigation of iLUC rather than reactive and theoretical iLUC factors. (C) 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the framework of the European research project SB_Steel, a new life cycle methodology was developed aiming at the evaluation of life cycle impacts of buildings in the early stages of design. The proposed approach includes the estimation of the energy needs of the building during the operation stage. The early stages of design have the higher influence on the life cycle performance of the building; however, in these stages the availability of design data is often limited. Moreover, the estimation of energy needs is usually based on a performed-based approach, requiring a full definition of the building design. In the proposed methodology both problems are addressed by the macro-component approach, which provides a range of pre-defined construction solutions for the main components of a building, integrating life cycle embodied data. The approach enables a simplified estimation of the life cycle environmental performance of a building based on limited design data and provides aid for decision making in relation to the use of different materials and construction solutions aiming to lower life cycle impacts and lower energy consumption. The proposed approach is illustrated by a case-study, in which a residential building is assessed in the early stages. Finally, based in complete data, an advanced analysis of the building is performed in order to discuss the limitations of the developed approach. It is shown that the limitations introduced by the simplified approach are not relevant and that, even with lower availability of data, the guidance provided by the methodology is adequate. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a probabilistic sustainability design framework for the design of concrete repairs and rehabilitations intended to achieve targeted improvements in quantitative sustainability indicators. The framework consists of service life prediction models combining deterioration mechanisms with limit states and life cycle assessment models for measuring the impact of a repair or rehabilitation. Both types of models (service life or LCA) are formulated stochastically so that the time to repair and the accumulated sustainability impact are described by probability density functions. This leads to a probabilistic calculation of cumulative impacts throughout the structure's service life, from initial repair to functional obsolescence (end of life). The methods discussed are in accordance with sustainability design requirements within the 2010 fib Model Code. A case study is presented which computes the probability that reinforced concrete repair strategies using thicker concrete cover will meet future greenhouse gas emission reduction targets proposed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For landfill monitoring and aftercare, long-term prognoses of emission and deformation behaviour are required. Landfills may be considered as heterogeneous porous soil-like structures, in which flow and transport processes of gases and liquids interact with local material degradation and mechanical deformation of the solid skeleton. Therefore, in the framework of continuous porous media mechanics a model is developed that permits the investigation of coupled mechanical, hydraulical and biochemical processes in municipal solid waste landfills.This article offers possibilities to reduce the negative affect industrial products have on the environment, for which products' life span has significantly shortened within the last twenty years. The influence tools designed by the European Commission within the Integrated Product Policy (IPP) are very effective on institutional entities. They were evaluated through their impact on the consumer attitudes of the Polish, German and Belgian citizens. It was concluded, based on empirical research, that the main criteria in the process of purchase decision-making are quality, price and functionality, but there were also communities identified, for which the social proof criteria is the priority. The pro ecology changes in the educational system for children and youth, as well as the social campaigns promoting the sustainable consumption among the citizens of the European Union will increase the implementation of the IPP. The correlation between the quality, price and environment would be most favorable. The thesis consist of two chapters and a subchapter. The first chapter describes the reasons for creating the IPP, as well as its tools and the level of their implementation. The second chapter brings up the concept of the sustainable consumption, the meaning of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro which was about the environment and the development, and it includes the reference to the documents of the Union. It analyses the role of business and the consumers in the implementation of the sustainable development. The subchapter consists of research on the sustainable consumption conducted on individual consumers.Sustainability, the consideration of environmental factors and social aspects, in supply chain management (SCM) has become a highly relevant topic for researchers and practitioners. The application of operations research methods and related models, i.e. formal modeling, for closed-loop SCM and reverse logistics has been effectively reviewed in previously published research. This situation is in contrast to the understanding and review of mathematical models that focus on environmental or social factors in forward supply chains (SC), which has seen less investigation. To evaluate developments and directions of this research area, this paper provides a content analysis of 134 carefully identified papers on quantitative, formal models that address sustainability aspects in the forward SC. It was found that a preponderance of the publications and models appeared in a limited set of six journals, and most were analytically based with a focus on multiple criteria decision making. The tools most often used comprise the analytical hierarchy process or its close relative, the analytical network process, as well as life cycle analysis. Conclusions are drawn showing that numerous possibilities and insights can be gained from expanding the types of tools and factors considered in formal modeling efforts. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.While national climate policy can address countries' production or consumption, climate mitigation via changes in consumption has previously received relatively little attention in climate policy literature. In the absence of an effective international climate policy, the focus on consumption is gaining relevance since it has advantages regarding carbon leakage and competitiveness concerns. In addition, consumption oriented climate policy allows for low cost climate mitigation because of behavioral market failures. Therefore, a systematic evaluation of low greenhouse gas consumption options is needed. This article reviews the carbon footprint of products in the five main consumption categories (food, shelter, travel, goods and service) and compares their compatibility with the greenhouse gas intensity required in 2050 to meet the 2 climate target. The evaluation then identifies consumption options compatible with this climate target in all categories. The description of these consumption options allows for the recognition of barriers to their selection. In contrast to production oriented climate policy, besides costs, relevant barriers include consumer preferences, the skills required to find or adopt the product and high initial investments. We conclude that there is substantial climate mitigation potential from changing consumption choices which can be tapped through climate policy by addressing non-cost barriers. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Evaluation of the implementation and performance of a firm's green supply chain management (GSCM) is an ongoing process. Balanced scorecard is a multi-criteria evaluation concept that highlights implementation and performance measures. The literature on the framework is abundant literature but scarce on how to build a hierarchical framework under uncertainty with dependence relations. Hence, this study proposes a hybrid approach, which includes applied interpretive structural modeling to build a hierarchical structure and uses the analytic network process to analyze the dependence relations. Additionally, this study applies the fuzzy set theory to determine linguistic preferences. Twenty dependence criteria are evaluated for a GSCM implemented firm in Taiwan. The result shows that the financial aspect and life cycle assessment are the most important performance and weighted criteria.Based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Eco-indicator 99 method, a LCA model was applied to conduct environmental impact and end-of-life treatment policy analysis for secondary batteries. This model evaluated the cycle, recycle and waste treatment stages of secondary batteries. Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) batteries and Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries were chosen as the typical secondary batteries in this study. Through this research, the following results were found: (1) A basic number of cycles should be defined. A minimum cycle number of 200 would result in an obvious decline of environmental loads for both battery types. Batteries with high energy density and long life expectancy have small environmental loads. Products and technology that help increase energy density and life expectancy should be encouraged. (2) Secondary batteries should be sorted out from municipal garbage. Meanwhile, different types of discarded batteries should be treated separately under policies and regulations. (3) The incineration rate has obvious impact on the Eco-indicator points of Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) batteries. The influence of recycle rate on Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries is more obvious. These findings indicate that recycling is the most promising direction for reducing secondary batteries' environmental loads. The model proposed here can be used to evaluate environmental loads of other secondary batteries and it can be useful for proposing policies and countermeasures to reduce the environmental impact of secondary batteries.Efficient waste paper recycling has a significant role in the sustainable environment. Recyclable waste paper as a fundamental ingredient of municipal solid wastes (MSWs) is indeed an "urban ore". Waste papers are considered as the solid recovered fuel which is recovered from MSW. Recyclable waste papers are segregated into various grades to produce high-quality products. Moreover, sorted paper streams save energy, chemicals, and water, as well as reduce sludge and rejects. Information technology is widely integrated with the waste management industry into its operations such as recycling, reuse, segregating based on categories and so on. This review article focuses on the life cycle of waste paper and existing waste paper sorting techniques. In the paper industry, many types of sensors are used in different mechanical and optical waste paper sorting systems. Such sensors include lignin, gloss, stiffness, mid-infrared, infrared, and color sensors. In this review, also described the effectiveness of different waste paper sorting systems, and finally, recommended appropriate waste paper sorting techniques based on effectiveness and low-cost implementation.The transportation fuel sector is under pressure to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a result of low-carbon fuel standards (LCFSs), which have been passed by the State of California and the European Union. These standards will be particularly challenging for producers of oil sands, heavy oil, and other unconventional resources. Oxyfiring with CO2 capture is a promising technology for reducing CO2 emissions from the transportation fuel sector, but it requires a significant amount of energy to generate oxygen. This study examines the potential for oxyfiring to reduce life-cycle GHG emissions from transportation fuels derived from in situ and ex situ oil shale and ex situ oil sands in the Uinta Basin of Utah. It also examines the effect of oxyfiring with CO2 capture on the net energy return (NER). The evaluation focuses on the fuel's life-cycle GHG emissions, and it includes resource extraction, upgrading, transportation and refining. The results suggest that oxyfiring could help some unconventional sources of crude oil, such as ex situ production of oil sands and oil shale, meet a LCFS. However, oxyfiring with CO2 capture reduces NER. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose Evaluation of soil functionality in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has progressively gained importance, although only a small cluster of studies deliver detailed guidelines on how to calculate quantified indicators. In addition, there is a lack of bibliography assessing impacts on the pedosphere due to spatially differentiated land use changes (LUC). In this study, an automated geospatial simulation of LUC based on crop rotation probabilities in Luxembourg was implemented in the programming environment R. Furthermore, this method based on coupling LCA and geographic information system (GIS) was used to calculate changes in soil functionality by implementing both the soil organic carbon (SOC) method and the Land Use Indicator Value Calculation Tool (LANCA (R)). The developed R script was then applied to a case study dealing with maize production for bioenergy purposes in Luxembourg. Methods On the one hand, geo-referenced crop information in Luxembourg for the period 2005-2011 was used to calculate the estimated probability in which crop rotation occurs in combination with maize expansion to meet bioenergy production requirements by 2020. On the other hand, geo-referenced information for a wide range of parameters relevant in assessing soil functionality was stored in a geospatial database and mapped using R's geospatial data manipulation, analysis and visualisation capabilities. The geospatial data were used as input for the R LANCA (R) model, which calculates the environmental impacts associated with the five indicators considered in the model (erosion resistance, physicochemical filtration, mechanical filtration, biotic production and ground-water replenishment) for all the cultivated areas in Luxembourg. Results and discussion The application of the two models demonstrated the significant differences in soil functionality in Luxembourgish arable land, namely between the north and south of the country. Spatial differentiation was found to be important in all indicators, except biotic production and physicochemical filtration, in which the availability of more detailed datasets and more specific methods is a must. Finally, the coupling of GIS and LCI data proved to be an interesting tool for estimating transition probabilities in crop rotation and, therefore, useful in forecasting suitable areas to implement future agricultural policies. Conclusions GIS and LCI data coupling may constitute an interesting pathway to combine environmental impact assessment and spatial differentiation, provided that further improvements are performed in the method, including important soil parameters or farmer behaviour. In addition, the spatial mapping of environmental impacts can provide important support in terms of policy-making, conservation of natural resources, landscape, or agricultural planning.Purpose The area of oil palm plantations in Malaysia is expanding by approximately 0.14 million hectare per year, and with the increasing demand for palm oil worldwide, there is no sign of the expansions slowing down. This study aims to identify the greenhouse gas emissions associated with land conversion to oil palm, in a life cycle perspective. Methods LCA methodology is applied to existing land use change data. The assessment includes the issue of temporary carbon storage in the plantations. Through quantification of emissions from state forest reserve and rubber plantation conversions, the average Malaysian palm oil-related land use changes are calculated. Results and discussion The results show that there are high emissions associated with the conversion of Malaysian state forest reserve to oil palm, whereas the conversion of rubber leaves a less significant carbon debt when indirect land use change is not included. Looking at the average Malaysian land use changes associated with oil palm shows that land use change emissions are responsible for approximately half of the total conventional biodiesel production emissions. The sensitivity analysis shows that the results could be significantly influenced by data variations in indirect land use changes, peat soils, and state forest reserve carbon stock. Conclusions The relatively extensive conversions of the state forest reserve must be reversed and preferably with a shift toward conversion of degraded land in order for the average Malaysian land use changes to have less impact on the production life cycle of palm oil and biodiesel.Purpose Political interest in the future availability of natural resources has spiked recently, with new documents from the European Union, United Nations Environment Programme and the US National Research Council assessing the supply situation of key raw materials. As resource efficiency is considered a key element for sustainable development, suitable methods to address sustainability of resource use are increasingly needed. Life cycle thinking and assessment may play a principal role here. Nonetheless, the extent to which current life cycle impact assessment methods are capable to answer to resource sustainability challenges is widely debated. The aim of this paper is to present key elements of the ongoing discussion, contributing to the future development of more robust and comprehensive methods for evaluating resources in the life cycle assessment (LCA) context. Methods We systematically review current impact assessment methods dealing with resources, identifying areas of improvement. Three key issues for sustainability assessment of resources are examined: renewability, recyclability and criticality; this is complemented by a cross-comparison of methodological features and completeness of resource coverage. Results and discussion The approach of LCA to resource depletion is characterised by a lack of consensus on methodology and on the relative ranking of resource depletion impacts as can be seen from a comparison of characterisation factors. The examined models yield vastly different characterisations of the impacts from resource depletion and show gaps in the number and types of resources covered. Conclusions Key areas of improvement are identified and discussed. Firstly, biotic resources and their renewal rates have so far received relatively little regard within LCA; secondly, the debate on critical raw materials and the opportunity of introducing criticality within LCA is controversial and requires further effort for a conciliating vision and indicators. We identify points where current methods can be expanded to accommodate these issues and cover a wider range of natural resources.The aim of this paper is to improve the contribution of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to setting up a cradle to cradle (C2C) life cycle of building materials. For this, the rules included in the most recent European Standards for the environmental assessment of the waste flows in the life cycle of these materials were taken into account. The paper starts with the identification of the waste flows that can be generated or used throughout the life cycle of building materials. Standardized calculation rules for the evaluation of the environmental impacts and benefits of these flows are then described and analysed in detail. Finally, a summary of the information available in LCA databases related to the end-of-life of construction materials is presented, and selected case studies are examined to provide an overview of the contribution of the LCA approach described in European Standards to close the loop in the life cycle of building materials. This paper demonstrates that results achieved through the application of the most recent European standards on the environmental assessment of waste flows can be an important source of data for decision-making at the end-of-life of building materials, especially to ascertain whether the minimization of waste flows, the maximization of their reuse or recycling operations, or the increase of the recycled content maximizes their C2C environmental performance. This work's innovation lies mainly on the systemization, visual representation and analysis of the rules for environmental assessment of the waste flows in the life cycle of building materials, namely the ones defined in the most recent European Standards (EN 15804; FprEN 15978), and on the verification that the later can promote a C2C perspective in LCA of construction materials. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment was conducted to estimate the environmental impact of caustic soda production. Electricity and raw salt production accounted for >90% of the overall environmental burden. These findings can be attributed to electrical consumption for bipolar electrolysis and brine extraction, diesel consumption for generating electricity during well production, and direct heavy metal emissions during drilling fluid loss and waste disposal. The key factors in reducing the overall environmental impact include optimizing raw salt production, electricity, and steam consumption efficiency, choosing drilling fluids with less toxic heavy metals (e.g., arsenic, barium, molybdenum, selenium, vanadium, beryllium, and nickel), minimizing brine leakage during brine transport, reducing the volume of drilling fluid lost, and decreasing the transport distance from brine buyers to suppliers. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The extraction, supply and use of fossil energy carriers and chemicals is a day-by-day increasingly critical issue, linked as it is to severe damages to environment and human health, not to talk of the shrinking availability of fossil fuels worldwide. Therefore, research on suitable alternatives to the extensive use of fossil-based fuels and chemicals is crucial: the potential of Brassica carinata, a non-food oil crop, to grow on marginal lands in Campania Region was investigated, focusing on the production of biodiesel from seeds and platform chemicals from agricultural and extraction residues via an innovative conversion route (so-called Biofine process) in a local industry. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of such an agro-industrial system for biodiesel and bio-chemicals. A comparison with an equivalent system only producing biodiesel and thermal energy is also carried out. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed by means of commercial LCA software (Simapro 7.3.0), investigating energy requirements and environmental impacts (global warming, acidification, abiotic depletion, human toxicity, eutrophication and photochemical oxidation). Results show that, in spite of claims of biomass-based "greenness", both systems still rely on large fractions of nonrenewable energy sources (around 90% of the total use) and mostly affect the same impact categories (abiotic depletion and global warming). The agricultural phase contributes to the total impact more than the industrial extraction and conversion steps, being the nitrogen fertilizers responsible for most of impacts of both systems. However, the conversion of lignocellulosic residues into chemicals instead of heat, conserves the structural quality of natural polymers in the form of marketable value added products (ethyl levulinate and formic acid), also translating into large energy savings compared to traditional chemical routes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental information is required in order to make sustainable consumption decisions. Carbon Footprint offers a new scheme for reporting direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. The latest advances in Organization-Product-Based-Life-Cycle Assessment such as the Compound Method based on Financial Accounts provide an opportunity to work with easy-to-obtain data and to calculate both product Carbon Footprint and corporate Carbon Footprint. This work determines the Carbon Footprint of the School of Forestry Engineering (Technical University of Madrid) using this approach. It is designed to fulfill two objectives: (1) to evaluate Compound Method based on Financial Accounts as a tool for carbon footprinting; and (2) to provide an analytical basis for the implementation of carbon management plans. The total Carbon Footprint of the School of Forestry Engineering in 2010 was 2147 t CO(2)eq, of which 59.0% corresponds to scope 3 emissions. Changes in consumption patterns are easier to capture due to the wide range of consumption categories considered with this approach. We conclude that Compound Method based on Financial Accounts is a practical method that correctly assesses the amount of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. Calculation of Carbon Footprint using this method provides an analytical basis for the implementation of carbon management plans in university centers. This work has led to the integration of new schemes for sustainable development in the School of Forestry Engineering. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Until now, few studies had focused on the environmental impact of the construction phase of a drinking water transport and distribution network (DWTDN). Using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, this article compares the environmental impact of pipes made of different materials as constructive solutions for the DWTDN. Two pipe diameters (90 and 200 mm) commonly used in small to medium-sized cities are analysed. The results show that polyvinyl chloride (PVC), high density polyethylene (HDPE) and low density PE have similar environmental impacts in the case of 90 mm pipe diameter. In the case of 200 mm pipe diameter, ductile iron (DI) and glass fibre reinforced polyester show higher environmental impacts than HDPE and PVC, which in the case of DI are between 3 and 11 times higher than those of HDPE for all the midpoint impact categories. Regarding the different construction phases, installation has a higher percentage of environmental impact for 90 mm pipe diameter (40-68% for HDPE in all the impact categories) than for 200 mm pipe diameter (24-57% for an HDPE) due to the difference in the amount of material required for the manufacture of the pipe. The assessment methodology was applied to calculate the environmental burdens derived from a case study. The impact of the different elements of the case study network has been added to obtain the global impact. The potential reduction of the environmental impacts of the case study has been calculated substituting the whole actual network by less impacting constructive solutions. A potential reduction of between 6 and 16% of the impact has been found for the case study, although the savings might be greater in networks with greater abundance of more impacting pipe materials such as DI. This methodology allows the improvement of the network and the design of more eco-efficient DWTDN. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need to maintain an ever-increasing building stock especially in developed economies is growing. This study provides a computational framework to find the optimal solution for sustainable building maintenance. The methodology is composed of two major steps. First, the authors evaluate the life-cycle carbon emission, cost, and labor requirements of a project, which embody important environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainable building maintenance. Second, the authors develop an optimization model to identify the optimal portfolio of materials that would minimize three sustainability objectives including carbon emission, cost, and labor deployment in their respective turns one at a time. By testing the model with seven scenarios in a case study, the authors demonstrate how this typical case project could significantly improve its sustainability objectives from environmental, economic, and social perspectives. This optimization methodology is generic. It can be readily applied to other new and nonresidential projects of varying scales and in circumstances with a different set of decision criteria. Finally, policy suggestions are proposed to promote sustainable building maintenance in Hong Kong.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is the preferred methodology to assess carbon footprint per unit of milk. The objective of this case study was to apply an LCA method to compare carbon footprints of high-performance confinement and grass-based dairy farms. Physical performance data from research herds were used to quantify carbon footprints of a high-performance Irish grass-based dairy system and a top-performing United Kingdom (UK) confinement dairy system. For the US confinement dairy system, data from the top 5% of herds of a national database were used. Life-cycle assessment was applied using the same dairy farm greenhouse gas (GHG) model for all dairy systems. The model estimated all on- and off-farm GHG sources associated with dairy production until milk is sold from the farm in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) and allocated emissions between milk and meat. The carbon footprint of milk was calculated by expressing GHG emissions attributed to milk per tonne of energy-corrected milk (ECM). The comparison showed that when GHG emissions were only attributed to milk, the carbon footprint of milk from the Irish grass-based system (837 kg of CO2-eq/t of ECM) was 5% lower than the UK confinement system (884 kg of CO2-eq/t of ECM) and 7% lower than the US confinement system (898 kg of CO2-eq/t of ECM). However, without grassland carbon sequestration, the grass-based and confinement dairy systems had similar carbon footprints per tonne of ECM. Emission algorithms and allocation of GHG emissions between milk and meat also affected the relative difference and order of dairy system carbon footprints. For instance, depending on the method chosen to allocate emissions between milk and meat, the relative difference between the carbon footprints of grass-based and confinement dairy systems varied by 3 to 22%. This indicates that further harmonization of several aspects of the LCA methodology is required to compare carbon footprints of contrasting dairy systems. In comparison to recent reports that assess the carbon footprint of milk from average Irish, UK, and US dairy systems, this case study indicates that top-performing herds of the respective nations have carbon footprints 27 to 32% lower than average dairy systems. Although differences between studies are partly explained by methodological inconsistency, the comparison suggests that potential exists to reduce the carbon footprint of milk in each of the nations by implementing practices that improve productivity.Many studies use life-cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool to quantify the environmental impact of buildings. Most of these studies have focused on the maintenance and operation phases of construction projects, which account for the largest part of energy consumption during the life cycle of buildings. However, the construction phase may cause significant environmental impacts, so a detailed analysis on the construction phase is required to conduct a more accurate assessment of the energy consumption and environmental impact of a building's entire life cycle. To assess energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, this study developed a model using process-based LCA and input-output (I-O) LCA. This study divided the construction phase into material manufacturing, transportation, and on-site construction, and applied an appropriate methodology for each part. The analysis of an apartment building project using the developed model showed that the material manufacturing stage had the largest amount of energy consumption and GHG emissions. Quantitatively, material manufacturing, transportation, and on-site construction phases were responsible for 94.89, 1.08, and 4.03% of energy consumption, and 95.16, 1.76, and 3.08% of global warming potential, respectively. It is believed that the developed model would allow a more accurate assessment of energy consumption and GHG emissions during a building's construction phase.Environmental issues are receiving increasing attention from various stakeholders and the media sector is no exception. With the introduction of electronic media, the question of whether electronic or traditional media are more environmentally friendly is often raised. The stakeholders of the Finnish media publisher Alma Media are interested in obtaining more information about the company's environmental performance and thus commissioned a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of Alma Media newspapers, in printed and online versions. This paper presents the results for the morning paper Aamulehti and Aamulehti. fi, and the evening paper Iltalehti and Iltalehti. fi to illustrate the potential environmental impacts of online and printed newspapers. The whole life cycle of each newspaper was assessed as regards its environmental impacts related to printed and online versions. Special emphasis was placed on content production, which has not previously been studied in detail. The online newspapers studied were assumed to be read from laptops and desktop computers. Content production appeared to contribute a rather significant share to the environmental impact of online and printed newspapers, particularly an online newspaper with few readers. With the improvements in other life cycle stages, e. g., more energy-efficient and smaller devices, this might become increasingly important. The reasons for content production impact originated mainly from manufacturing of electronic office equipment, business trips, electricity and heating used in the offices. For printed newspapers, newsprint manufacturing, ink and plates production were the main reasons for the environmental impact. For online newspapers, the end-user devices (manufacturing and use) made the highest contribution to the environmental impacts in various impact categories. Online distribution contributed significantly to the environmental impact when the content of the website was media rich and download volumes large. Comparison of printed and online versions is not straightforward. Here it was done in two different ways, with the environmental impact generated related to two different functional units: " one reader and week" and " one reading hour". The overall results of the comparison differed depending on the functional unit used. This shows the complexity of the question and indicates that there is no easy answer to whether online or printed versions of newspapers are more beneficial from an environmental point of view. In either case, media companies need to take action. Collaboration with value chain stakeholders is crucial for improvements, but collaboration regarding online newspapers will most probably differ from that related to printed newspapers, as the supply chain of the electronic end-user devices is not directly connected to the media company, but to its customers. Actions also need to be taken in-house, e. g., reducing the environmental impact of content production through rethinking business trips, introducing energy-efficiency solutions, using cleaner energy sources, placing environmental demands on procurement of electronic devices and extending their service life.Feed-use (FU) amino acids, at constant performance, make it possible to reduce the protein content of pig feeds and nitrogen excretion by the animals. The aim of this study was to assess the environmental impact of pig production in a conventional farm by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) according to several scenarios of FU amino acid incorporation. Two modalities of waste management (slurry or solid manure), two hypotheses of protein sources (soybean meal only, or soybean meal, rapeseed meal and pea) and two soybean origins (Centre-West Brazil vs. average Brazilian soybean) were considered. In each scenario investigated, gestating, lactating, pre-starter and starter feeds were formulated. Fattening pigs were fed either with only one feed (1P), or with two feeds (2P) or according to multiphase feeding (MP). In three scenarios, feeds were least-cost formulated: without incorporation of FU amino acids (NoAA), with FU amino acid incorporation and reduced protein content (LowCP), and FU amino acid incorporation with free protein content (Min). In the fourth scenario (MinCP), feeds were formulated to minimize protein content. The average protein content of pig feeds decreased, from 190 g/kg in 1P-NoAA down to 123 g/kg in MP-MinCP while FU amino acid incorporation increased. At the same time, the incorporation of soybean meal into feeds decreased from 197 kg/t down to 70 kg/t in MP-MinCP. This reduction of soybean meal incorporation was concomitant with a decrease in feed cost. The incorporation of FU amino acids in low protein diets clearly reduced the impacts of pig production on Climate Change (CC), Acidification (AC) and Eutrophication (EU). The lowest CC, AC and EU potential impacts were reached with the Min or MinCP scenarios, for which tryptophan and valine were incorporated in pig feeds. The impacts on terrestrial ecotoxicity, cumulative energy demand and land occupation were less sensitive to the studied scenarios. The combination of FU amino acid incorporation and multiphase feeding of growing-finishing pigs produced the largest reduction of CC, AC and EU impacts. The underlying mechanisms include the substitution of soybean meal and extruded soybean by cereals and FU amino acids and the reduction of nitrogen excretion which further reduces nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions. This study suggests that environmental impacts of pig production in France can be further reduced through feeding practices, especially for acidification, eutrophication and climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental concerns and the search for climate change mitigation have led to the deployment of renewable energy technologies (RET) in several countries. The adoption of incentive policies, especially those based on heavy subsides, has motivated the discussion of social and economic benefits brought about by these technologies, mainly on the impact on employment rates. In this context, several studies have been conducted to quantify job creation by RET, concluding that the latter are more labor intensive than traditional fossil fueled technologies. However, results for different assessments vary largely due to distinct methodological approaches, and are frequently highly aggregated. Thus, results are not comparable or applicable to other contexts. Previous studies have failed to quantify the effects of imports and exports of RET equipment in total employment, usually associating employment and installed capacity in the year studied. This study has aimed to address these issues, creating an index for employment quantification based on production, instead of installed, capacity. We have estimated both direct jobs in manufacture, construction, and operation and management, and indirect jobs both in the upstream supply chains of materials and inputs to manufacture of wind turbines and construction of wind farms. We have also performed an assessment of jobs created in wind energy projects which are expected to begin operation in Brazil until 2017. The resulting job potential in Brazil corresponds to 13.5 persons-year equivalent for each MW installed between manufacture and first year of operation of a wind power plant, and 24.5 persons-year equivalent over the wind farm lifetime. Results show that major contribution from wind power for job creation are in the construction stage and, despite of the low amount of jobs created in operation and maintenance relative to new installed capacity, those stable jobs stand out as they persist over the entire wind farm's life time. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Of all the renewable energy sources (RESs)-except direct solar heat and light-wind energy is believed to have the least adverse environmental impacts. It is also one of the RES which has become economically affordable much before several other RESs have. As a result, next to biomass (and excluding large hydro), wind energy is the RES being most extensively tapped by the world at present. Despite carrying the drawback of intermittency, wind energy has found favor due to its perceived twin virtues of relatively lesser production cost and environment-friendliness. But with increasing use of turbines for harnessing wind energy, the adverse environmental impacts of this RES are increasingly coming to light. The present paper summarizes the current understanding of these impacts and assesses the challenges they are posing. One among the major hurdles has been the NYMBI (not in my backyard) syndrome due to which there is increasing emphasis on installing windfarms several kilometers offshore. But such moves have serious implications for marine life which is already under great stress due to impacts of overfishing, marine pollution, global warming, ozone hole and ocean acidification. Evidence is also emerging that the adverse impacts of wind power plants on wildlife, especially birds and bats, are likely to be much greater than is reflected in the hitherto reported figures of individuals killed per turbine. Likewise recent findings on the impact of noise and flicker generated by the wind turbines indicate that these can have traumatic impacts on individuals who have certain predispositions. But the greatest of emerging concerns is the likely impact of large wind farms on the weather, and possibly the climate. The prospects of wind energy are discussed in the backdrop of these and other rising environmental concerns. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass supply chain optimisation is essential to overcome barriers and uncertainties that may inhibit the development of a sustainable and competitive bioenergy market. The number of research papers presenting optimisation models in the field of bioenergy systems rises exponentially. This paper gives an overview of the optimisation methods and models focussing on decisions regarding the design and management of the upstream segment of the biomass-for-bioenergy supply chain. After a general description of the supply chain and the decisions coming along with the design and management, all selected publications are classified and discussed according to (1) the mathematical optimisation methodology used, (2) the decision level and decision variables addressed and (3) the objective to be optimised. This classification allows users to identify existing optimisation methods or models that satisfy specific requirements. Moreover, the factual description of the presented optimisation methods and models points to opportunities for development of an integrated, holistic approach to optimise decisions in the field of biomass supply chain design and management. Such approach must be based on the consideration of the interrelationships and interdependence between all operations in the entire biomass-for-bioenergy supply chain. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the specific study a number of issues are addressed and discussed regarding wind turbines positioning in terms of land, coastal and offshore installation. More specifically, technical, environmental, energy, social and economical parameters are evaluated, providing thus a holistic assessment of the systems under examination. The analysis of the systems is based on literature references, theoretical calculations and simulation scenarios, taking into account life cycle thinking. The environmental assessment is performed with the application of special life cycle assessment software, and the results are considered to be representative for Greece and Mediterranean regions. Indicatively, it can be inferred that land wind turbines seem to be the environmentally friendliest choice. Significant questions are raised regarding wind turbines waste management schemes and their material usage. On the other hand, the offshore wind turbine surpasses the other two versions in terms of energy and financial reimbursement. However, existing barriers of different nature, i.e. financial, administrative and/or social may hold up the rapid development of the wind (onshore or offshore) energy in many European countries. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Anthropogenic activities, such as the use of fossil energy sources for electricity generation, are the main contributors to the pollution of the environment. The main energy source used in the Greek electricity generation sector is lignite as there are large reserves in the country. Petroleum is also used at a great extent mainly in the islands in the autonomous power generation systems, while the use of natural gas is also increasing. Although lignite is a "cheap'' energy source, the environmental impacts associated with its use are high, something that applies also for petroleum and in a lower extent with natural gas. The total net production of electricity from thermal power plants in Greece accounts for almost 90% of the total electricity production, while only 10% derives from hydroelectric energy and other renewable energy sources (RES). A typical example of the significance of the environmental impacts associated with the electricity generation sector is the fact that almost 74% of the total CO2 emissions in the country derive from this sector. The work presented in this paper is focused in investigating the environmental impacts associated with the atmospheric emissions and other wastes that are produced during the life cycle of the energy sources (fossil and RES) used for electricity generation in Greece. The environmental evaluation of the different energy sources is performed through the life cycle analysis methodology and the Eco-indicator 99 method and the results are used for comparison purposes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is the instrument of choice for quantifying environmental impacts; in particular, it is useful for estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with bioethanol production from agricultural residues such as straw. The LCA methodology considers process steps across bioethanol production from the crude feedstock to the standardized product bioethanol. However, agro-ecological constraints concerning raw material availability, such as the long-term conservation of soil fertility through the incorporation of straw on the field, are not taken into account within current LCA methodologies. Therefore, in this study, a method for soil organic carbon balancing was applied to ensure the sustainable supply of biomass. In addition to the GHG balance of bioethanol production from straw, the potential availability of straw for energy conversion was estimated on the regional level for Germany and its Federal States. The results of the GHG balance were heavily dependent on the chosen allocation method between grain and straw, and the amount of straw available for potential use as an energy source was largely determined by the structure of existing agricultural production. Potential regions for a 2nd generation bioethanol plant based on the available quantity of feedstock straw are shown in a case study for the German provinces. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The continuously increasing solid waste generation worldwide calls for management strategies that integrate concerns for environmental sustainability. By quantifying environmental impacts of systems, life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool, which can contribute to answer that call. But how, where and to which extent has it been applied to solid waste management systems (SWMSs) until now, and which lessons can be learnt from the findings of these LCA applications? To address these questions, we performed a critical review of 222 published LCA studies of SWMS. We first analysed the geographic distribution and found that the published studies have primarily been concentrated in Europe with little application in developing countries. In terms of technological coverage, they have largely overlooked application of LCA to waste prevention activities and to relevant waste types apart from household waste, e.g. construction and demolition waste. Waste management practitioners are thus encouraged to abridge these gaps in future applications of LCA. In addition to this contextual analysis, we also evaluated the findings of selected studies of good quality and found that there is little agreement in the conclusions among them. The strong dependence of each SWMS on local conditions, such as waste composition or energy system, prevents a meaningful generalisation of the LCA results as we find it in the waste hierarchy. We therefore recommend stakeholders in solid waste management to regard LCA as a tool, which, by its ability of capturing the local specific conditions in the modelling of environmental impacts and benefits of a SWMS, allows identifying critical problems and proposing improvement options adapted to the local specificities. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used in waste management to identify strategies that prevent or minimise negative impacts on ecosystems, human health or natural resources. However, the quality of the provided support to decision- and policy-makers is strongly dependent on a proper conduct of the LCA. How has LCA been applied until now? Are there any inconsistencies in the past practice? To answer these questions, we draw on a critical review of 222 published LCA studies of solid waste management systems. We analyse the past practice against the ISO standard requirements and the ILCD Handbook guidelines for each major step within the goal definition, scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation phases of the methodology. Results show that malpractices exist in several aspects of the LCA with large differences across studies. Examples are a frequent neglect of the goal definition, a frequent lack of transparency and precision in the definition of the scope of the study, e.g. an unclear delimitation of the system boundaries, a truncated impact coverage, difficulties in capturing influential local specificities such as representative waste compositions into the inventory, and a frequent lack of essential sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. Many of these aspects are important for the reliability of the results. For each of them, we therefore provide detailed recommendations to practitioners of waste management LCAs. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a world with an increasing urban population, analysing the construction impacts of sanitation infrastructures through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is necessary for defining the best environmental management strategies. In this study, the environmental impacts of one linear meter of sewer constructive solution were analysed for different pipe materials and diameters used in Southern Europe; a unit of different sewer appurtenances (pump, manhole and inspection chamber) was also considered. The impacts of the pipe materials were compared considering different lifespan periods and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) turned out to be the worst option, being polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and concrete the most favourable ones. Few data are available on the material and energy flows in the installation stage; therefore, a comparative analysis of trenches with sand and concrete bedding was conducted. The results show that the installation stage represents up to 80 % of the total life-cycle impact of the constructive solutions. Concrete pipes with half-concrete/half-sand bedding are the best option and produce 20-30 % of the impact of HDPE pipes with concrete bedding. Hence, designers should focus not only on the pipe but also on the trench model. A methodology was presented to enable the impact aggregation of the different sewer elements, and Betanzos (Spain) was selected to conduct a pilot study in small cities. In the future, studies will need to incorporate the use and maintenance stage, as it is not standard and varies according to the physical features of the cities. Finally, this study provides basic concepts for developing eco-efficiency indicators.With significant water savings and low maintenance requirements, artificial turf is increasingly promoted as a replacement for natural grass on athletic fields and lawns. However, there remains the question of whether it is an environmentally friendly alternative to natural grass. The major concerns stem from the infill material that is typically derived from scrap tires. Tire rubber crumb contains a range of organic contaminants and heavy metals that can volatilize into the air and/or leach into the percolating rainwater, thereby posing a potential risk to the environment and human health. A limited number of studies have shown that the concentrations of volatile and semivolatile organic compounds in the air above artificial turf fields were typically not higher than the local background, while the concentrations of heavy metals and organic contaminants in the field drainages were generally below the respective regulatory limits. Health suggested that users of artificial turf fields, even professional athletes, were not exposed to elevated risks. Preliminary life cycle assessment suggested that the environmental impacts of artificial turf fields were lower than equivalent grass fields. Areas that need further research to better understand and mitigate the potential negative environmental impacts of artificial turf are identified.Biogas, which plays an important role in energy production and environmental protection, is developing at a large-scale in China to accommodate the modernization and fast pace that the Chinese agricultural sector has experienced over the last decade due to the rapid development of large-scale farms and stockbreeding in recent years. This study introduced life cycle assessment (LCA) into emergy evaluation to analyze each production step of a large-scale biogas project in China and to compare the economic and ecological performance of the biogas production system (BPS) and biogas plus electricity production system (BEPS) of a project. Our findings indicated that the energy return rate of biogas production system was lower than that of traditional energy production system currently. Emergy efficiency of the large-scale biogas project was 77.9-95.6% higher than that of the small-scale biogas project. The emission mitigation intensity was also 125.7-172.7 times higher for the large-scale plant than for the small-scale plant. The sustainability of the large-scale biogas project was 1.16-11.87 times higher than that of other renewable energy production systems, but 66.0-74.4% lower than that of the small-scale biogas project due to an insufficient amount of raw material inputs and the higher cost of equipment investment in anaerobic fermentation and electricity generation steps. Moreover, the economic and ecological performance of BEPS was worse than that of BPS. We suggested that the sustainability of the large-scale biogas project would be improved by measures: first, providing a suitable quantity and ratio of raw materials; second, reducing the equipment investment of fermentation and the generator; third, using the electricity from the biogas system. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the potential opportunities, there remain widespread concerns about bioenergy and biofuel feedstock sustainability, assessment and policy. This paper illustrates the value of the Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM) for transparently presenting evidence and judgements relating to four biomass options that are potentially suitable for supplying heat to a university-sized facility. The RIAM approach provides comparable scores for: soybean biodiesel, waste cooking oil biodiesel, anaerobically co-digested food waste and manure; and timber pellets made from sawmill by-product. The high-level nature of the RIAM allows the user to structure a broader range of considerations and contingencies than the life-cycle approach embodied in EU biofuel legislation. We advocate the RIAM not as a substitute for LCA or any other form of assessment in a bioenergy context, but as a means of synthesising the results of different types of impact assessment and for making broader debates and uncertainties explicit, such that non-specialist knowledge users are both guided and made aware of differing scientific and stake-holder opinion. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biorefineries appear to be a viable solution to replace traditional fossil fuel refineries, but their implementation requires the exploration of several aspects, including feedstock selection, processing routes, products, harvesting sites, processing and markets, as well as numerous other sustainability criteria. The optimal solution to these problems is not immediately obvious. Therefore, this study presents an optimization model to design and plan sustainable biorefinery supply chains that considers numerous relevant issues. These issues include the multiple available biomass feedstocks at various harvesting sites, the availability and seasonality of biomass resources, different potential geographical locations for processing plants that produce multiple products using diverse production technologies, economies of scale for the production technologies, demands and prices of multiple products in each market, locations of storage facilities and a number of transportation modes between the supply chain components. Sustainability considerations are incorporated into the proposed model by including simultaneous economic, environmental and social performance data in the evaluation of the supply chain designs. The problem was formulated as a multi-objective, multi-period, mixed-integer linear program that seeks to maximize the profit of the supply chain, minimize its environmental impact and maximize the number of jobs generated by its implementation. The environmental impact was measured by the Eco-indicator99 according to the life-cycle assessment technique, and the social objective was quantified by the number of jobs generated. The Pareto-optimal solutions were obtained using the E-constraint method. To illustrate the capabilities of the proposed multi-site system model, a case study was presented that addresses the optimal design and planning of a biorefinery supply chain to fulfill the expected ethanol and biodiesel demands in Mexico. The results indicate that cost-effective and sustainable solutions can be obtained that satisfy Mexican demand by choosing feedstocks that are available year-round and do not significantly adversely impact the environment. Furthermore, the number of jobs generated by implementing the biorefinery supply chain would have a significant social impact. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main air pollutant in the concrete industry is cement responsible for approximately 6% of man-made CO2 emissions. Due to growing concerns for global warming, reducing the consumption of traditional Portland cement and improving mechanical properties of concrete composites have become two important sustainable development issues in recent decades. Zeolite, a type of natural pozzolanic material, has been used as an alternative to improve the durability of concrete. In this study, environmental impact of concrete containing zeolite and conventional one on the global warming potential are assessed by applying life-cycle assessment method. The calculations indicated that replacing 10%, 20% and 30% of cement with zeolite amounted to a 60.3%, 69.7% and 64.3% global warming potential reduction, respectively, which proves the effectiveness of zeolite in making highly environmentally friendly concrete. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the literature, Life Cycle Assessment studies of drinking water production systems do not show or fully clarify the contribution of the specific unit processes, of the plant infrastructure and of sludge spreading to the overall generated environmental impact. Nevertheless, these constitute key issues for the optimization and management of such plants. This article aims at providing a consistent and up to date assessment based on detailed operation and infrastructure design data at unit process level for two complex plants located in France. At the single score level, the study shows that the complexity of the treatment chain is not a reliable indicator of its environmental footprint. The overall generated impact is driven by the consumption of fossil resources, mainly related to electricity and activated carbon production. These consumptions are mainly concentrated at the settling and distribution unit processes. The contribution of infrastructure to the single score varies from 4% to 11%, with steel usage being the main contributor. The importance of toxicity generated by sludge spreading is still unclear because of the insufficient degree of precision and consistency of the assessment. In particular, significant variability of the toxicity of heavy metals is observed, ranging from 0.10 to 0.55 millipoints/kg sludge. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In many sparsely populated areas, such as the Finnish countryside, most houses are not connected to centralized sewers due to excessive distances. On-site wastewater treatment plants are therefore necessary to reduce local emissions to meet the legislatory limits. Dozens of on-site wastewater treatment applications are marketed to households, with varying operating costs and pollution reduction potentials. The installation and use of these systems will cause environmental impacts outside the site, through their supply chains. The aim of this study is to analyze the potential tradeoff between the reduction of local emissions and the increase in life cycle impacts. Six alternatives were chosen for comparison, including the energy-demanding small sewage treatment plants and the various types of soil systems (including source separation systems). The results show that the dry toilet in combination with gray-water treatment had the least impact and the package plants the greatest. However, which is the optimal on-site system solution for a certain property is strongly dependent on the local conditions and, therefore, appropriate guidance is definitely needed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioplastic polymer that is produced from cassava has been considered the most promising alternative to conventional plastics as there is an abundant renewable resource in Thailand. The objective of this study was to analyze the life cycle environmental performance of polylactic acid (PLA) drinking water bottles produced in Thailand with an emphasis on different end-of-life scenarios. The functional unit was set at 1000 units of 250-ml drinking water bottles. The system boundary of the study covered all stages in the life cycle, including cultivation and harvesting, cassava starch production, transportation, glucose production, the polymerization process to produce PLA resin, PLA bottles production, and disposal process. The input output data included the use of resources (water, chemicals, materials), energy (electricity, fuels), and all emissions based on the functional unit. The life cycle environmental performance of PLA drinking water bottles was compared with that of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles for the same functional unit. The global warming potential, fossil energy demand, acidification, eutrophication, and human toxicity were selected in the analysis. The results obtained in this study showed that the environmental performance of cassava-based PLA bottles was better than PET bottles in terms of global warming, reduction of dependency on fossil energy, and human toxicity. In addition, it was shown that improving cassava starch process by combining with biogas production and utilization will lead to significant reduction in global warming potential and eutrophication potential. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Luxembourg aims at complying with the EU objective of attaining a 14% use of bioenergy in the national grid by 2020. The increase of biomethane production from energy crops could be a valuable option in achieving this objective. However, the overall environmental benefit of such option is yet to be proven. Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (CLCA) has shown to be a useful tool to evaluate the environmental suitability of future energy scenarios and policies. The objective of this study was, therefore, to evaluate the environmental consequences of modifying the Luxembourgish agricultural system to increase maize production for biomethane generation. A total of 10 different scenarios were modelled using a partial equilibrium (PE) model to identify changes in land cultivation based on farmers' revenue maximisation, which were then compared to the baseline scenario, i.e. the state of the agricultural sector in 2009. The results were divided into three different consequential decision contexts, presenting differing patterns in terms of land use changes (LUCs) but with minor shifts in environmental impacts. Nevertheless, energy from maize production would imply substantially higher environmental impacts when compared with the current use of natural gas, mainly due to increases in climate change and agricultural land occupation impacts. The results are discussed based on the consequences they may generate on the bioenergy policy, the management of arable land, the changes in import-export flows in Luxembourg and LUCs in the domestic agricultural system. In addition, the specific PE + LCA method presented intends to be of use for other regional studies in which a high level of site-specific data is available. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The promotion of biofuels as energy for transportation in the world is mainly driven by the perspective of oil depletion, the concerns about energy security and global warming. In Argentina, the legislation has imposed the use of biofuels in blend with fossil fuels (5 to 10%) in the transport sector. The aim of this paper is to assess the environmental impact of corn-based ethanol production in the province of Santa Fe in Argentina based on the life cycle assessment methodology. The studied system includes from raw materials production to anhydrous ethanol production using dry milling technology. The system is divided into two subsystems: agricultural system and refinery system. The treatment of stillage is considered as well as the use of co-products (distiller's dried grains with solubles), but the use and/or application of the produced biofuel is not analyzed: a cradle-to-gate analysis is presented. As functional unit, 1 MJ of anhydrous ethanol at biorefinery is chosen. Two life cycle impact assessment methods are selected to perform the study: Eco-indicator 99 and ReCiPe. SimaPro is the life cycle assessment software used. The influence of the perspectives on the model is analyzed by sensitivity analysis for both methods. The two selected methods identify the same relevant processes. The use of fertilizers and resources, seeds production, harvesting process, corn drying, and phosphorus fertilizers and acetamide-anillide-compounds production are the most relevant processes in agricultural system. For refinery system, corn production, supplied heat and burned natural gas result in the higher contributions. The use of distiller's dried grains with solubles has an important positive environmental impact. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Despite the increasing awareness of our dependence on Ecosystem Services (ES), Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) does not explicitly and fully assess the damages caused by human activities on ES generation. Recent improvements in LCIA focus on specific cause-effect chains, mainly related to land use changes, leading to Characterization Factors (CFs) at the midpoint assessment level. However, despite the complexity and temporal dynamics of ES, current LCIA approaches consider the environmental mechanisms underneath ES to be independent from each other and devoid of dynamic character, leading to constant CFs whose representativeness is debatable. This paper takes a step forward and is aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of using an integrated earth system dynamic modeling perspective to retrieve time- and scenario-dependent CFs that consider the complex interlinkages between natural processes delivering ES. The GUMBO (Global Unified Metamodel of the Biosphere) model is used to quantify changes in ES production in physical terms - leading to midpoint CFs - and changes in human welfare indicators, which are considered here as endpoint CFs. The interpretation of the obtained results highlights the key methodological challenges to be solved to consider this approach as a robust alternative to the mainstream rationale currently adopted in LCIA. Further research should focus on increasing the granularity of environmental interventions in the modeling tools to match current standards in LCA and on adapting the conceptual approach to a spatially-explicit integrated model. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become a common methodology to evaluate the environmental performance of forest systems in recent years. This study aims to estimate the environmental profile associated with maritime pine wood production in two representative European countries: Portugal and France. Different forest management regimes based on low and high intensive conditions were evaluated and differences in logging equipment, biomass yield and lifespan were also reported. The study was completed with a sensitivity analysis based on two allocation approaches (economic and volumetric) since biomass from thinning processes is harvested and can be used as a co-product. The production of maritime pine in Portugal under low intensity conditions should present the best environmental results with reductions of 50-94% in comparison with the worst scenario. It is mainly associated with the absence of forest activities in periods previous to the logging stage. French intensive forest scenario ranks as the second best alternative of pine wood production. The remaining scenarios reported worse results in terms of environmental impacts mostly due to the remarkable repetition of a selection of those forest activities with large fuel requirement (mainly on site preparation and stand establishment and tending). Regardless of the scenario, logging related activities such as final cutting and forwarding were identified as the hotspots mainly due to the fuel requirements. Fertilizer production (if required), thinning and cleaning processes reported also remarkable contributions to the categories under assessment. In addition, an economic estimation for each forest management scenario has been performed mainly considering fuel, machinery and labor costs. According to the results, the Portuguese low intensive scenario is the best choice together with the French intensive scenario under an economic point of view because of the lowest production costs per functional unit. Activities related with the logging stage have also been identified as economic hotspots. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nowadays, the new international market demands challenge the food producing countries to include the measurement of the environmental impact generated along the production process for their products. In order to comply with the environmentally responsible market requests the measurement of the greenhouse gas emissions of Ecuadorian agricultural goods has been promoted employing the carbon footprint concept Ecuador is the largest exporter of bananas in the world. Within this context, this study is a first assessment of the carbon footprint of the Ecuadorian premium export banana (Musa AAA) using a considerable amount of field data. The system boundaries considered from agricultural production to delivery in a European destination port The data collected over three years permitted identifying the hot spot stages. For the calculation, the CCaLC V3.0 software developed by the University of Manchester is used. The carbon footprint of the Ecuadorian export banana ranged from 0.45 to 1.04 kg CO2-equivalent/kg banana depending on the international overseas transport employed. The principal contributors to the carbon footprint are the on farm production and overseas transport stages. Mitigation and reduction strategies were suggested for the main emission sources in order to achieve sustainable banana production. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Building envelope design is considered one of the typical energy-saving techniques. Building envelope serves as the physical separator between building's interior and exterior environment so as to maintain indoor thermal comfort. To achieve building sustainability, this research aims to develop an estimation model for the heating and cooling demand of a residential building with a different envelope design using the finite element method. This research was conducted in three steps: (i) selection of building envelope design elements affecting the heating and cooling demand of a multi-family housing unit; (ii) establishment of a standard database for the heating and cooling demand by building envelope design through energy simulation; and (iii) implementation of the finite element method for estimating the heating and cooling demand by building envelope design. The proposed model was validated compared to the simulation results and the actual data. Regarding the comparison with the simulation results, the average error rate for the heating and cooling demand was determined to be 1.09% and 6.61%, respectively. Also, regarding the comparison with the actual data, the average error rate for the heating and cooling consumption was determined to be 4.95% and 5.77%, respectively. The proposed model could allow an architect or a construction manager to easily and accurately estimate the heating and cooling demand of a residential building with a different envelope design in the early design phase. It could also be useful for contractors in a competitive bidding process to analyze the alternatives. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings account for about 40% of the global energy consumption and contribute over 30% of the CO2 emissions. A large proportion of this energy is used for thermal comfort in buildings. This paper reviews thermal comfort research work and discusses the implications for building energy efficiency. Predicted mean vote works well in air-conditioned spaces but not naturally ventilated buildings, whereas adaptive models tend to have a broader comfort temperature ranges. Higher indoor temperatures in summertime conditions would lead to less prevalence of cooling systems as well as less cooling requirements. Raising summer set point temperature has good energy saving potential, in that it can be applied to both new and existing buildings. Further research and development work conducive to a better understanding of thermal comfort and energy conservation in buildings have been identified and discussed. These include (i) social-economic and cultural studies in general and post-occupancy evaluation of the built environment and the corresponding energy use in particular, and (ii) consideration of future climate scenarios in the analysis of co- and tri-generation schemes for HVAC applications, fuel mix and the associated energy planning/distribution systems in response to the expected changes in heating and cooling requirements due to climate change. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Green roofs have been proposed for sustainable buildings in many countries with different climatic conditions. A state-of-the-art review of green roofs emphasizing current implementations, technologies, and benefits is presented in this paper. Technical and construction aspects of green roofs are used to classify different systems. Environmental benefits are then discussed mainly by examining measured performances. By reviewing the benefits related to the reduction of building energy consumption, mitigation of urban heat island effect, improvement of air pollution, water management, increase of sound insulation, and ecological preservation, this paper shows how green roofs may contribute to more sustainable buildings and cities. However, an efficient integration of green roofs needs to take into account both the specific climatic conditions and the characteristics of the buildings. Economic considerations related to the life-cycle cost of green roofs are presented together with policies promoting green roofs worldwide. Findings indicate the undeniable environmental benefits of green roofs and their economic feasibility. Likewise, new policies for promoting green roofs show the necessity for incentivizing programs. Future research lines are recommended and the necessity of cross-disciplinary studies is stressed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the results of the research project financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (N N309 078138) and coordinated by the Wood Technology Institute in Poznan. One of the key points of this project was LCA study of four detached single-family dwellings in the context of intensification of wood usage. Four functionally equivalent buildings with different material structure, building technology and energy standards have been subjected to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) environmental impact analysis. The study has taken into account a full life cycle of the buildings, including the following stages: production of building materials, prefabrication, transport to the building site, building, use, demolition, transport of waste and final disposal of waste. Wood and wood-based materials, are the only ones from among the analysed building materials, that have shown an environmental benefit both from the "cradle-to-gate" (stage 1) and "gate-to-grave/reincarnation" (stage 7) perspective. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Viticulture is currently experiencing a gradual shift to more sustainable production practices. Many producers see in this shift an opportunity to increase their sales, especially in a context which is greatly influenced by the reduction in wine sales due to the world economic crisis. Hence, both organic and biodynamic viticulture have begun to be applied in many vineyards as alternative attractive agricultural techniques. Nevertheless, it remains unclear which are the exact environmental benefits (or drawbacks) of applying these techniques for numerous environmental impacts, such as climate change or toxicity. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to perform an environmental evaluation using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for three different viticulture techniques within a single appellation (Ribeiro, NW Spain): biodynamic cultivation sites, conventional vineyards and an intermediate biodynamic-conventional wine-growing plantation (i.e. biodynamic site lacking certification). Moreover, two methodological improvements in the field of wine LCA studies are suggested and developed in terms of land use impact categories and labour inclusion in life-cycle thinking. Results demonstrate that biodynamic production implies the lowest environmental burdens, and the highest environmental impacts were linked to conventional agricultural practices. The main reasons for this strong decrease in environmental impacts for the biodynamic site is related to an 80% decrease in diesel inputs, due to a lower application of plant protection products and fertilisers, and the introduction of manual work rather than mechanised activities in the vineyards. Nevertheless, a series of preliminary assessments suggest that the impacts linked to land use and human labour, two under-analysed issues in wine LCA, may show different trends to those obtained for the other environmental dimensions, adding complexity to the integrated interpretation of the results. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Research works on ecotechnologies (plasma treatments) or biotechnologies (enzymatic treatments) are being developed to substitute the alkaline soda process used to improve hydrophilicity of polyester fibres. Environmental impact assessment is necessary to validate these new strategies. Partial "gate to gate" LCA was used to compare three hydrophilisation processes: 1- chemical using sodium hydroxide, 2-air atmospheric plasma and 3- lipase enzyme based process. Laboratory experiments were carried to determine input and output data flows for optimum hydrophilic treatment of a particular polyester (PET) fabric using the three different processes. The functional unit was defined as "treatment of 1 kg of polyester fabric to achieve specific hydrophilic properties, measured by values of water contact angle and capillary uptakes. Generic and specific data bases were also used to determine flows, and the ReCiPe method used to convert all flows into environmental impacts. The energy related impact categories ("Ionising radiation", "Climate change", and "Fossil depletion values") are the highest for all three processes, but air plasma treatment seems to be the most favourable for all impacts. For the enzymatic process, though very high degree of hydrophilisation can be reached compared to the soda treatment, higher environmental impacts are due to energy demanding enzyme deactivation process used. Partial LCA seems an interesting tool to assess process impacts at research stage, and to reorientate future research works. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to deepen the assessment of the environmental impacts of a white wine produced in Sardinia (FU 750 ml), performing an attributional LCA. The system boundaries were extended, from 'cradle to gate' (partial LCA) of a previous study, to 'cradle to grave' (total LCA), in order to identify the environmental impacts occurring along the wine life cycle stages (vine planting, grape production, wine production, bottling and packaging, distribution, final disposal of the glass bottle). Some assumptions were made in order to quantify the environmental impact of the transportation phase, regarding the few data which were available. Inventory data were mainly collected through direct communication with the Company involved in the study. Results showed that the environmental performance of wine was mostly determined by the glass bottle production (for all impact categories except ozone layer depletion). The second contributor was the agricultural phase, which included two sub-phases: vine planting and grape production. Results showed that the vine planting sub-phase was not negligible given its contribution to the agricultural phase, mainly due to diesel fuel consumption. Transportation impact was found to be relevant for long distance distribution (USA); the impact categories more affected by transport were acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation and global warming potential. Suggested opportunities to reduce the overall environmental impact were the introduction of a lighter glass bottle or the substitution of the glass bottle with a polylaminate container. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study estimates the life cycle water consumption and wastewater generation impacts of a Marcellus shale gas well from its construction to end of life. Direct water consumption at the well site was assessed by analysis of data from approximately 500 individual well completion reports collected in 2010 by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Indirect water consumption for supply chain production at each life cycle stage of the well was estimated using the economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) method. Life cycle direct and indirect water quality pollution impacts were assessed and compared using the tool for the reduction and assessment of chemical and other environmental impacts (TRACI). Wastewater treatment cost was proposed as an additional indicator for water quality pollution impacts from shale gas well wastewater. Four water management scenarios for Marcellus shale well wastewater were assessed: current conditions in Pennsylvania; complete discharge; direct reuse and desalination; and complete desalination. The results show that under the current conditions, an average Marcellus shale gas well consumes 20 000 m(3) (with a range from 6700 to 33 000 m(3)) of freshwater per well over its life cycle excluding final gas utilization, with 65% direct water consumption at the well site and 35% indirect water consumption across the supply chain production. If all flowback and produced water is released into the environment without treatment, direct wastewater from a Marcellus shale gas well is estimated to have 300-3000 kg N-eq eutrophication potential, 900-23 000 kg 2,4D-eq freshwater ecotoxicity potential, 0-370 kg benzene-eq carcinogenic potential, and 2800-71 000 MT toluene-eq noncarcinogenic potential. The potential toxicity of the chemicals in the wastewater from the well site exceeds those associated with supply chain production, except for carcinogenic effects. If all the Marcellus shale well wastewater is treated to surface discharge standards by desalination, $59 000-270 000 per well would be required. The life cycle study results indicate that when gas end use is not considered hydraulic fracturing is the largest contributor to the life cycle water impacts of a Marcellus shale gas well.The road infrastructure has a major environmental impact by covering important land surfaces and consuming enormous amounts of raw materials for construction and maintenance. The impact of transport pavements needs to be considered from the design stage and to be examined during the whole life cycle of the infrastructure: raw materials extraction and initial transformation, manufacturing, placement on site, exploitation, maintenance, and demolition. This paper evaluates the impact of asphalt and concrete pavements. Two specific case studies, both involving alternatives available for the construction of pavements, namely the conventional flexible pavement designed according to national standard versus the modern steel fibre-reinforced roller-compacted concrete (SFR-RCC) pavement have been undertaken. These alternatives have been analysed, using the GaBi software, to assess their environmental aspects relating to the sustainability concept. After a detailed discussion of the main results obtained in these studies, conclusions and recommendations for an efficient selection of the construction alternatives are formulated.This paper proposes the integration of life cycle analysis within the production system models as a tool for decision making (whether at the strategic, tactical or operational levels) attending not only economic and technical criteria but also the environmental impact. This methodological proposal advances over the traditional approach of calculating the value of the environmental impact of a particular product, by proposing the use of models to determine the environmental impact of the product, according to the decisions made in the production system. That is, it does not provide an impact value of the product, but rather a model to determine the impact in terms of the decisions made in the production process; therefore, it can be used, especially by means of simulation, for the optimization of the production system, based on multiple criteria (including environmental impact). The methodological approach is exemplified by a case study, which is used to validate the proposal and to expose it more precisely and clearly, although the methodology is equally applicable to any production process, especially processes highly automated or with different alternative production techniques. This case study, based on the wine production sector of the Rioja Qualified Designation of Origin, in Spain, was made with actual data after several years of research in representative wineries; therefore, besides an application example, it is a support tool for sustainability in wineries, by reducing the environmental impact of wine production (especially in La Rioja and Spain, but generally throughout the world).The Chinese government has taken great efforts to popularize rural household scale biogas digesters, since they are regarded as an effective approach to address energy shortage issues in rural areas and as a potential way of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Focusing on a typical rural household biogas system, the aim of this study is to systematically quantify its total direct and indirect energy, concentrating on non-renewable energy and the associated GHG emission cost over the entire life cycle to understand its net dynamic benefits. The results show that the total energetic cost for biogas output is 2.19 J/J, of which 0.56 J is from non-renewable energy sources and the GHG emission cost is 4.54 x 10(-5) g CO2-equivalent (CO2-eq), with respect to its design life cycle of 20 years. Correspondingly, a net non-renewable energy saving of 9.89 x 10(10) J and GHG emission reduction of 50.45 t CO2-eq can be obtained considering the coal substitution and manure disposal. However, it must be run for at least 10 and 3 years, to obtain positive net non-renewable energy savings and GHG emission reduction benefits, respectively. These results have policy implications for development orientation, follow-up services, program management and even national financial subsidy methods.Analysis of the environmental impact of corn (Zea mays L.) uses, such as biofuels and bioproducts, requires cradle to farm-gate life-cycle analysis of energy use and net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with corn production. Previous analyses have been based on case studies. Here we present an analysis based on census data for Ontario at the county level that was performed for three scenarios: (1) corn cultivated only for grain; (2) corn cultivated for grain and 30% stover harvest; and (3) corn cultivated for grain and cob harvest. Energy intensity of corn grain at the county level varied from 1.75 to 2.17 GJ Mg-1 grain, with the largest proportions of energy being consumed for grain drying (33%), production and supply of nitrogen (N) fertilizer (30%) and diesel use for field work (17%). Overall GHG emission intensity of grain corn varied from 243 to 353 kg CO(2)eq Mg-1 grain, of which 72% were associated with N inputs [34% soil nitrous oxide (N2O) from synthetic fertilizer N (SFN), 13% from SFN production and 10% from applied manure N]. Energy intensity of corn stover and cobs was 0.96 and 0.36 GJ Mg-1 dry matter, respectively, with the largest proportion of energy associated with production and supply of replacement nutrients. Intensity of GHG emission was 79 and 31 kg CO2 eq Mg-1 dry matter for stover and for cobs, respectively. Counties with higher corn yields at lower N application rates and reduced tillage tended to produce corn with lower energy and GHG intensity per Mg grain.In this paper a life-cycle model is constructed to study the macroeconomic effects and welfare implications associated with eliminating mandatory retirement. Our short run analysis reveals that changes in welfare during the transition depend on the dynamic nature of the wage rate adjustment process. We distinguish between transitions in which the wage rate clears the labor market and transitions with a sticky wage and youth unemployment. We also examine political feasibility by measuring the popular support that this type of policy might have under the two labor market scenarios. Finally, we identify the effects that the policy has on welfare in the long run. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions are crucial for achieving the European goals for climate change mitigation. A frequently discussed option is carbon capture and storage (CCS), where CO2 emissions from point sources are captured and stored in geologic structures. However, concerns about risks of leakages of CO2 from geological storage have been raised. These risks could be avoided with ex situ mineral carbonation, where the captured CO2 is stored in an inert and stable solid form after reacting with calcium and magnesium silicates. For a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and economic performance of this CO2 storage option in fossil-fueled power generation chains, life cycle assessment (LCA) and levelized cost of electricity (LCoE) calculations are performed. The implementation of CCS using mineral carbonation leads to life cycle GHG emission reductions of 15-64% and LCoE increases of 90-370% on a per kWh(el) basis compared to a reference power plant without CCS. The life cycle GHG emission reduction achievable with mineral sequestration is less substantial than with geological storage of CO2 due to significant energy and chemical additives requirements. Accordingly, LCA results for other environmental indicators are worse than those of the reference plant without CCS and the geological CO2 storage option. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A series of experiments with transesterification of rapeseed oil in supercritical methanol and supercritical ethanol was carried out in a batch reactor at various reaction temperatures (250-350 degrees C), working pressure (8-12 MPa), reaction time (7, 15 and 30 min), and at a constant 42:1 alcohol to oil molar ratio. The effect of alcohol, temperature, pressure and reaction time on biodiesel yield was investigated using linear multiple regression models. In the observed range, temperature has the highest impact on yields, followed by reaction time and pressure. The relative importance of time and pressure in explaining yields is higher in the case of transesterification in supercritical ethanol. The results of environmental life cycle assessment have revealed that contrary to general belief the usage of ethanol instead of methanol cannot improve the sustainability and renewability of the transesterification process significantly. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper deals with transesterification of soybean oil with ethanol in the presence of Novozym 435 (lipase from Candida antarctica) catalyst. H-1 NMR was employed to monitor the conversion of soybean oil to fatty acid ethyl esters in a solvent-free medium. Reaction conditions such as enzyme/substrate ratio, temperature and alcohol to oil molar ratio were studied and the highest yields were found at 5 g of enzyme per 100 g of oil, 37 degrees C, and 3:1 respectively. Stepwise addition of ethanol was also performed, and compared with that of methanol, in order to assess the reduction of inhibition that this method causes on the enzymatic activity. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Civil infrastructure systems are critical assets that are subjected to damage, service-life deterioration, and increasing maintenance and rehabilitation cost. Effective infrastructure management and principles of sustainable development can help to find an optimal compromise between economic growth and environmental protection for all stakeholders. Colloquially, sustainability refers to meeting triple-bottom-line (TBL) performance objectives including environmental protection, economic prosperity, and social acceptability and equity as a result of short- and long-term policy decisions. In this paper, a comprehensive framework based on the integration of emergy synthesis and life cycle assessment (LCA) has been investigated for a public infrastructure system. The main purpose of the applied method, emergy-based LCA (Em-LCA), is to facilitate an informed decision making process for different asset management scenarios, by identifying and quantifying the attributes of TBL impacts over the life cycle of a civil infrastructure system. As a case study, Em-LCA framework has been applied to evaluate the sustainability of two different scenarios for a road construction project in interior British Columbia, Canada. The results indicate that Em-LCA offers a good understanding to address sustainability issues in infrastructure systems and provides quantitative and transparent results to facilitate informed decision making for asset management.In this paper we evaluate the environmental sustainability of a small combined heat and power (CHP) plant operating through an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). The heat sources of the system are from geothermal energy at low temperature (90-95 degrees C) and solar energy. The designed system uses a solar field composed only of evacuated, non-concentrating solar collectors, and work is produced by a single turbine of 50 kW. The project addresses an area of Tuscany, but it could be reproduced in areas where geothermal energy is extensively developed. Therefore, the aim is to exploit existing wells that are either unfit for high-enthalpy technology, abandoned or never fully developed. Furthermore, this project aims to aid in downsizing the geothermal technology in order to reduce the environmental impact and better tailor the production system to the local demand of combined electric and thermal energy. The environmental impact assessment was performed through a Life Cycle Analysis and an Exergy Life Cycle Analysis. According to our findings the reservoir is suitable for a long-term exploitation of the designed system, however, the sustainability and the energy return of this latter is edged by the surface of the heat exchanger and the limited running hours due to the solar plant. Therefore, in order to be comparable to other renewable resources or geothermal systems, the system needs to develop existing wells, previously abandoned. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In addition to economic gains, the use of optimization strategies in the development of a structural design can reduce the consumption of materials whose extraction, manufacture and transport cause large environmental damage, as occurs with reinforced concrete inputs. The aim of the present study was to optimize the monetary and environmental costs associated with pieces of rectangular reinforced concrete columns submitted to uniaxial bending and compression loads, using the harmony search algorithm, which consists of a meta-heuristic approach analogous to the process of attaining the best musical harmony. Therefore, in addition to taking into account the purchasing costs of materials in the structural optimization process, analyses were conducted to determine the environmental costs of each input, estimated from the life-cycle analysis. The sizes of concrete section and the amount and gauges of the structures, as well as concrete strength, were used as variables. The columns were checked as to ultimate and serviceability limit states following the ABNT NBR 6118/07 Brazilian standard. Several indicators were used for environmental cost minimization, and the results were compared to those obtained from conventional sizing processes as well as from other optimization methods. In general, even with structure optimization to minimize monetary costs, important reductions in environmental costs are obtained, regardless of the indicator used for impact analysis, thus yielding cross-sections with different features. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lifecycle analysis is a tool widely used to evaluate the climate impact of greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the production and use of biofuels. In this paper we employ an augmented lifecycle framework that includes climate impacts from changes in surface albedo due to land use change. We consider eleven land-use change scenarios for the cultivation of biomass for middle distillate fuel production, and compare our results to previous estimates of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for the same set of land-use change scenarios in terms of CO(2)e per unit of fuel energy. We find that two of the land-use change scenarios considered demonstrate a warming effect due to changes in surface albedo, compared to conventional fuel, the largest of which is for replacement of desert land with salicornia cultivation. This corresponds to 222 gCO(2)e/MJ, equivalent to 3890% and 247% of the lifecycle GHG emissions of fuels derived from salicornia and crude oil, respectively. Nine of the land-use change scenarios considered demonstrate a cooling effect, the largest of which is for the replacement of tropical rainforests with soybean cultivation. This corresponds to -161 gCO(2)e/MJ, or -28% and -178% of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of fuels derived from soybean and crude oil, respectively. These results indicate that changes in surface albedo have the potential to dominate the climate impact of biofuels, and we conclude that accounting for changes in surface albedo is necessary for a complete assessment of the aggregate climate impacts of biofuel production and use.Power utility companies in the United Kingdom are using imported wood pellets from the southern region of the United States for electricity generation to meet the legally binding mandate of sourcing 15% of the nation's total energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020. This study ascertains relative savings in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a unit of electricity generated using imported wood pellet in the United Kingdom under 930 different scenarios: three woody feedstocks (logging residues, pulpwood, and logging residues and pulpwood combined), two forest management choices (intensive and non-intensive), 31 plantation rotation ages (year 10 to year 40 in steps of 1 year), and five power plant capacities (20-100 MW in steps of 20 MW). Relative savings in GHG emissions with respect to a unit of electricity derived from fossil fuels in the United Kingdom range between 50% and 68% depending upon the capacity of power plant and rotation age. Relative savings in GHG emissions increase with higher power plant capacity. GHG emissions related to wood pellet production and transatlantic shipment of wood pellets typically contribute about 48% and 31% of total GHG emissions, respectively. Overall, use of imported wood pellets for electricity generation could help in reducing the United Kingdom's GHG emissions. We suggest that future research be directed to evaluation of the impacts of additional forest management practices, changing climate, and soil carbon on the overall savings in GHG emissions related to transatlantic wood pellet trade.Water distribution systems (WDSs) face great challenges as aging infrastructures require significant investments in rehabilitation, replacement, and expansion. Reducing environmental impacts as WDSs develop is essential for utility managers and policy makers. This study quantifies the existing greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of common WDS elements using life-cycle assessment (LCA) while identifying the greatest opportunities for emission reduction. This study addresses oversights of the related literature, which fails to capture several WDS elements and to provide detailed life-cycle inventories. The life-cycle inventory results for a US case study utility reveal that 81% of GHGs are from pumping energy, where a large portion of these emissions are a result of distribution leaks, which account for 270 billion l of water losses daily in the United States. Pipe replacement scheduling is analyzed from an environmental perspective where, through incorporating leak impacts, a tool reveals that optimal replacement is no more than 20 years, which is in contrast to the US average of 200 years. Carbon abatement costs (CACs) are calculated for different leak reduction scenarios for the case utility that range from -$130 to -$35 t(-1) CO2(eq). Including life-cycle modeling in evaluating pipe materials identified polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and cement-lined ductile iron (DICL) as the Pareto efficient options, however; utilizing PVC presents human health risks. The model developed for the case utility is applied to California and Texas to determine the CACs of reducing leaks to 5% of distributed water. For California, annual GHG savings from reducing leaks alone (3.4 million tons of CO2(eq)) are found to exceed California Air Resources Board's estimate for energy efficiency improvements in the state's water infrastructure.Beijing is situated in water-scarce northern China, where there is a history of policies aimed at constraining local agricultural water use to meet the increasing urban water demand. This has led to a change in local crop production and subsequent effects in terms of the importation of cereals and vegetables grown in other parts of China. The dilemma is that local policies designed to improve Beijing's water resources situation may have the unintended consequence of increasing water stress in other regions. In this article, life cycle assessment approaches were used to model both consumptive and degradative water use for the major cereals and vegetables consumed in Beijing, enabling comparison of local and imported supplies. In the Beijing region, cropping cereals rather than intensive vegetables in greenhouses could reduce local blue water consumption by 7,216cubic meters per hectare per year (m(3)ha(-1)yr(-1)) and nitrogen pollution by 45kgha(-1)yr(-1). However, depending on how the local food shortfall is balanced by imported food, shifts in cropping pattern in Beijing have the potential to cause either an improvement or exacerbation of the nationwide water stress situation (e.g., -42% to 4% for water scarcity footprint). As such, local policy making regarding agricultural land and water use needs to consider the wider food production context. This situation in Beijing is likely to be representative of the challenge facing many of the world's large and mega-sized cities, where a sustainable means of increasing food supply must be found.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is generally described as a tool for environmental decision making. Results from attributional LCA (ALCA), the most commonly used LCA method, often are presented in a way that suggests that policy decisions based on these results will yield the quantitative benefits estimated by ALCA. For example, ALCAs of biofuels are routinely used to suggest that the implementation of one alternative (say, a biofuel) will cause an X% change in greenhouse gas emissions, compared with a baseline (typically gasoline). However, because of several simplifications inherent in ALCA, the method, in fact, is not predictive of real-world impacts on climate change, and hence the usual quantitative interpretation of ALCA results is not valid. A conceptually superior approach, consequential LCA (CLCA), avoids many of the limitations of ALCA, but because it is meant to model actual changes in the real world, CLCA results are scenario dependent and uncertain. These limitations mean that even the best practical CLCAs cannot produce definitive quantitative estimates of actual environmental outcomes. Both forms of LCA, however, can yield valuable insights about potential environmental effects, and CLCA can support robust decision making. By openly recognizing the limitations and understanding the appropriate uses of LCA as discussed here, practitioners and researchers can help policy makers implement policies that are less likely to have perverse effects and more likely to lead to effective environmental policies, including climate mitigation strategies.This research provides a systematic review and harmonization of the life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of electricity generated from conventionally produced natural gas. We focus on estimates of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted in the life cycle of electricity generation from natural gas-fired combustion turbine (NGCT) and combined-cycle (NGCC) systems. The smaller set of LCAs of liquefied natural gas power systems and natural gas plants with carbon capture and storage were also collected, but analyzed to a lesser extent. A meta-analytical process we term harmonization was employed to align several system boundaries and technical performance parameters to better allow for cross-study comparisons, with the aim of clarifying central tendency and reducing variability in estimates of life cycle GHG emissions. Of over 250 references identified, 42 passed screens for technological relevance and study quality, providing a total of 69 estimates for NGCT and NGCC. Harmonization increased the median estimates in each category as a result of several factors not typically considered in the previous research, including the regular clearing of liquids from a well, and consolidated the interquartile range for NGCC to 420 to 480grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-eq/kWh) and for NGCT to 570 to 750g CO2-eq/kWh, with medians of 450 and 670 CO2-eq/kWh, respectively. Harmonization of thermal efficiency had the largest effect in reducing variability; methane leakage rate is likely similarly influential, but was unharmonized in this assessment as a result of the significant current uncertainties in its estimation, an area that is justifiably receiving significant research attention.With the pavement industry adopting sustainable practices to align itself with the global notion of habitable environments, there has been growing use of life-cycle assessment (LCA). A hybrid LCA was used to analyze the environmental footprint of using a reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) content in asphalt binder mixtures. The analysis took into consideration the material, construction, and maintenance and rehabilitation phases of the pavement life cycle. The results showed significant reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with an increase in RAP content. The contribution of the construction phase to the GHGs and energy consumption throughout pavement life cycle is minimal. Feedstock energy, though not consequential when comparing asphalt mixtures only, has a significant impact on total energy. Based on LCA analysis performed for various performance scenarios, breakeven performance levels were identified for mixtures with RAP. The study highlighted the importance of achieving equivalent field performance for mixtures with RAP and virgin mixtures. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The term sustainability is very topical for 10 years in Germany and also for bridges several German assessment approaches are developed for the life-cycle analysis of bridges. Simultaneously the term resilience gains in importance, especially internationally. Resilience covers direct and indirect social impacts in the case of the occurrence of an extreme event (earthquakes, flooding, storms etc.) during the life-cycle of infrastructures. Until now, both concepts have been developed by - different research disciplines and often the disciplines do not recognize each other. The analysis of both concepts shows many common issues, e. g. integration of social and economic aspects, inclusion of the complete life-cycle and decision support during the design stage of bridges. The paper introduces both concepts resilience and sustainable development, shows the state of the art and presents common grounds and differences. By means of a numerical example the basis of an integral assessment is illustrated and the criteria to be applied are emphasized.Design improvement is critical for achieving a low-cost and high energy-efficient building with low carbon emissions. Thus, designers need to consider many factors (such as energy, economic and environmental performance) in the early design stage. This paper presents a multi-objective analysis for better building design and compares the EDH-based design improvements (introduced by the author in a previous work, EDH means energy difference between households) with seven potential improvement measures commonly used in achieving a better overall performance for the energy, economy and environment. A typical residential building in China was modeled for a number of simulations, and the simulation results were used to carry out a life cycle-based performance analysis. Seven potential improvement options that are commonly used are compared, and the results show that it is difficult to identify an option that has a better performance in all these three aspects. On the other hand, EDH-based design improvement achieves relatively high energy, economic and environmental performance compared to the former seven options. Moreover, EDH-based design improvement can provide designers with flexible options to select from in order to address diverse demands for building aesthetics, function, and so on, or to avoid potential difficulties when some kinds of materials or measures that are planned to be used are unavailable locally.Considering the wide demand for daily meals, the issue of the institutional food system has become very important in highly developed societies and, also, how it affects the flow of energy and matter within a territory. This research originates from a wide multi-disciplinary project aimed at developing a self-sufficient approach to improve the institutional food system in an area of Northern Italy. Thus, the aim of this research is to give some guidelines to implement ideal scenarios of food production, processing, consumption, and waste management at the local level. To that end, the organization of the supply and demand within the local institutional food system is inquired. A methodology has been developed to analyze the main energy flows and matter related to this catering, and to outline possible optimal scenarios. This methodology also allows to analyze case studies and to formulate improvements in order to reduce their energy consumption while exploring all the steps of the supply chain (considering the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach). The use of quantitative indicators allows a comparison of the impacts related to the different steps characterizing the suggested scenarios. This paper presents results related to a test in the context of institutional catering in public schools.Application of information and communication technology (ICT) is often expected to result in decreased environmental impacts. Several studies have, however, also addressed the possibilities of negative impacts. It is therefore important to assess environmental impacts of ICT products and services. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for assessing the potential impacts of a product or service over the whole life-cycle, i.e. from raw material acquisition to waste management via production and use phases. The aim of this paper is to review LCA studies of ICT products and services, including a few Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) studies. Many of the studies have considered consumer products, such as computers and TVs. Other consumer products, such as game consoles and TV peripherals, as well as business products, e.g. related to networks, are however more rarely assessed. Manufacturing and use phase have the highest impact in the life cycle. Use phase seems to be the predominant in energy consumption and global warming for some ICT products but for others, especially energy efficient, low weight products, manufacturing may dominate. Rapid technological development is stressed by several authors as a source of variability of results, impacting the production processes and suppliers as well as the content and energy performance of the actual devices. In the future, conducting LCA on ICT, the research community needs to consider the limitations found in the studies conducted so far. It encompasses, among others, the need to address a broad spectrum of environmental impacts, including human and ecotoxicological impacts; modeling actual e-waste management, covering informal management when relevant; and considering user behavior in a realistic way, accounting for rebound and other indirect effects. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper is focused on providing information to help in decision-making between five different scenarios for energy refurbishment, evaluating the lifecycle of each and also taking into consideration the level of comfort in dwellings. This work centres on one block built in 1983 in which temperatures have been monitored which show that the optimum temperature conditions are not reached for long periods during the year. The current state of the building is referred to as scenario one. Energy consumption is evaluated considering the lifecycle of the components necessary for the refurbishment, their subsequent operation and disposal. All scenarios address the suitability of passive measures or the implementation of active systems in temperate climates under the assumption that comfort in dwellings is achieved. Scenarios two and three are assessed applying insulation and changing the windows. The fourth and fifth implement an alternative solution, a controlled mechanical ventilation based on a typical mild climate cross ventilation. Evaluation uses two environmental indicators, gross energy requirement (GER) and global warming potential (GWP). It is concluded that scenarios four and five reduce the GER in 4.4 and 9%, respectively, and the GWP in 2.6 and 4.3% compared to the current state. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Use of municipal solid waste (MSW) as fuel for electricity generation reduces landfill disposal and can mitigate air quality degradation associated with combustion of conventional fossil fuels. Co-combustion is a waste-to-energy technology that can use MSW and coal as co-fuels, offering potential energy recovery and reduced air emissions. This research discerns how MSW composition influences the heating value and air pollution for the co-combustion of coal with MSW using five MSW composition scenarios, four of which were derived by a reduction of plastics, organics, paper, or a combination thereof, as compared to the national average MSW composition. Numerous combustion products could be evaluated; this study focused on five high impact air combustion products: SO2, CO, CO2, NO, and NO2. The moisture content was varied from similar to 10% (considered dry) to 404 (average MSW Moisture). AspenPlus software was used for the deterministic simulation modeling of incineration (MSW only) and parallel co-firing (co-combustion of coal and MSW) to determine theoretical heating values and pollutant effluent concentrations. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) models WAR and WARM were used to determine the potential environmental impacts (PEIs) and greenhouse gas emission equivalencies, respectively, for each MSW scenario. For the WAR model, values for each impact category parameter can vary, but each parameter is weighed equally. Of the MSW scenarios studied, the national average held the highest heating value with 8519 MBtu/lb and the lowest occurred for the MSW Scenario with recycled paper and composted organics, with 8251 MBtu/lb. Results show that SO2, CO, CO2, NO, and NO2 flue gas concentrations (and therefore PEIs) depend upon the composition and moisture of the MSW, in addition to the MSW/coal ratio. Approximate ranges for the WAR results (PEI/h) are 7410-7663 for NO, 4-8 for NO2, 18 105 for CO, 30-46 for CO2, and 89-2152 for SO2. WARM results show lower net CO2 emission equivalents to landfill MSW with reduced paper and,organics, while combustion is preferred for MSW with paper reduction, organics reduction, and plastics reduction. The results for the national average MSW were independent of the disposal processing method. Reduction in pollutant concentrations did not yield overall cost savings for the electricity producer, as profit was reduced by similar to 20-30%. There are savings associated with emission costs using MSW in lieu of coal: up to similar to 3.3% for NO, similar to 20-47% for NO2, and similar to 95% for SO2. A hypothetical carbon dioxide tax was also imposed to realize the potential cost savings by reducing CO2 emissions. In summary, the measurable impact MSW composition and moisture had on pollutant concentration, heating value, and economic parameters was important.The consumption of the written word is changing, as media transitions from paper products to digital alternatives. We reviewed the life cycle assessment (LCA) research literature that compared the environmental footprint of digital and paper media. To validate the role of context in influencing LCA results, we assessed LCAs that did not compare paper and print, but focused on a product or component that is part of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. Using a framework that identifies problems in LCA conduct, we assessed whether the comparative LCAs were accurate expressions of the environmental footprints of paper and print. We hypothesized that the differences between the product systems that produce paper and digital media weaken LCA's ability to compare environmental footprints. We also hypothesized that the characteristics of ICT as an industrial sector weaken LCA as an environmental assessment methodology. We found that existing comparative LCAs offered problematic comparisons of paper and digital media for two reasons the stark material differences between ICT products and paper products, and the unique characteristics of the ICT sector. We suggested that the context of the ICT sector, best captured by the concept of "Moore's Law", will continuously impede the ability of the LCA methodology to measure la products. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.We compared the environmental burdens in the management of end-of life cathode ray tubes (CRTs) within two frameworks according to the different technologies of the production of televisions/monitors. In the first case, CRT recycling is addressed to the recovery of the panel and funnel glass for the manufacturing of new CRT screens. In the second case, where flat screen technology has replaced that of CRT, the recycling is addressed to the recovery of the glass cullet and lead for other applications. The impacts were evaluated according to the problem-oriented methodology of the Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. Our data confirm that in both cases, the recycling treatment allows benefits to be gained for the environment through the recovery of the secondary raw materials. These benefits are higher for the "CRT technology" framework (1 kg CO2 saved per CRT) than for the "flat screen technology" (0.9 kg CO2 saved, per CRT, as the highest possible), mainly due to the high energy consumption for lead separation from the funnel glass. Furthermore, the recovery of yttrium from the fluorescent powders that are a residue of the recycling treatment would further improve the CO2 credit for both the frameworks considered, which would provide a further saving of about 0.75 kg CO2 per CRT, net of the energy and raw materials needed for the recovery. Overall, this study confirms that, even with a change in the destination of the recovered materials, the recycling processes provide a benefit for the environment: indeed the higher loads for the environment are balanced by avoiding the primary production of the recovered materials. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Harvesting and drying are often described as the most energy intensive stages of microalgal biofuel production. This study analyzes two cultivation and eleven harvest technologies for the production of microalgae biomass with and without the use of drying. These technologies were combined to form 122 different production scenarios. The results of this study present a calculation methodology and optimization of total energy demand for the production of algal biomass for biofuel production. The energetic interaction between unit processes and total process energy demand are compared for each scenario. Energy requirements are shown to be highly dependent on final mass concentration, with thermal drying being the largest energy consumer. Scenarios that omit thermal drying in favor of lipid extraction from wet biomass show the most promise for energy efficient biofuel production. Scenarios which used open ponds for cultivation, followed by settling and membrane filtration were the most energy efficient. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Run-Around Membrane Energy Exchanger (RAMEE) is a novel heat and moisture recovery system that consists of two separate supply and exhaust exchangers coupled with an aqueous salt solution flow. The salt solution transfers energy (heat and moisture) in a closed loop between outdoor ventilation air and the exhaust air from buildings. The system performance is a function of the flow rate of the salt solution and ventilation air and the outdoor air conditions. The dependency of system performance on the solution flow rate and the outdoor conditions requires adjustment of the appropriate flow rate which gives the optimal system performance at any specific outdoor condition. In this paper, the RAMEE is simulated for a hospital building in four different climates using TRNSYS and MATLAB computer programs. The steady-state RAMEE can reduce the annual heating energy by 60% in cold climates and annual cooling energy by 15-20% in hot climates. The RAMEE has an immediate payback in cold climates and a 1 to 3-year payback in hot climates depending on the pressure drop across the exchangers. Finally, the RAMEE reduces greenhouse gas emission (CO2-equivalent) by 25% and 10% in cold climates and hot climates, respectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Residential buildings consume a large fraction of energy and thus represent a major opportunity for reducing energy requirements and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This article presents a life-cycle energy and GHG analysis of three representative residential building types in a well-known area in Lisbon (Bairro de Alvalade). The life-cycle model focused on building construction, retrofit and use phases, applied an econometric model to estimate energy use in Portuguese households, and considered two functional units: per square meter per year and per person per year. Over the buildings' 75-year lifespan, the use phase accounted for most (69-83%) of the primary energy requirements and GHG emissions. Larger buildings have lower life-cycle energy requirements and GHG emissions on a square meter basis. On a per person basis, however, this pattern is reversed and larger buildings are associated with higher energy requirements and GHG emissions. Due to the considerable variability and uncertainty associated with life-cycle analyses of buildings, the use of both occupancy- and area-based functional units is recommended. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bio-fuel has come under consideration due to the effect of fossil oil crisis. Bio-fuels are acting as a renewable replacement of petroleum fuels due to some environmental and economic benefits. Bio-fuel can be produced from different kinds of raw materials. Researchers have seen that absolute utilization of bio-fuel is not appreciable as it will affect the food chain but the blend of bio-fuel with conventional fuel could precisely reduce its use and become beneficial to green house effect. It has been inferred that in the hot and cold environment bio-fuel is not fully convenient to replace fossil fuel. In the controlled environment with modified combustion equipment, biodiesel can be used as an alternate fuel. Research results reveal that bio-fuel has lower heating value in comparison to diesel fuel so it is consumed more in fuel-break mean effective power ratio and emits more NOx in comparison to the diesel fuel. Thus there remains a compromise between GHG emission and saving of fossil fuel energy by introducing bio-fuel either totally or as a blending component of engine fuel. Finally, bio-fuel could be considered as a replenishable energy source which might pave the future pathway management and planning of energy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Efficient use of energy resources in crop production is an important goal in sustainable agriculture. This study compares the energy flow in farming systems across farm size with their corresponding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions - presented in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq.) - in the north of Iran. To reach this aim, primary data were collected by survey with farmers whose main activity was major crops production in the region that included wheat, barley, canola, soybean, paddy and corn silage. The results showed that total energy input for corn silage (52.1 GJ ha(-1)) is greater than other systems. The results also revealed that yield and output energy of crops were not significantly affected by field size, whereas energy use efficiency of systems increased significantly as field size increased. Study shows that the cultivation of paddy emits the highest CO2 eq. emission (6094 kg CO2 eq. ha(-1)) among crops, in which around 60% is contributed by methane (CH4). The efficient use of fertilizers, optimized pumping facilities for irrigation, stopping of crop residue burning in the field and use them for energy supply could be among the options to improve energy use efficiency and mitigate GHG emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coal-fired electricity generation has become the largest source of carbon emission in China. This study utilizes life-cycle assessment to assess the effect of carbon emissions and to calculate the coefficient of carbon emissions in coal-to-energy chains. Results show that the carbon emission coefficient of the coal-to-energy chain in China is 875 g/kW h(-1), which is a relatively low level compared with that of other countries. CO2 is the main type of greenhouse gas emission and is the most abundant type of direct emission. China has to reduce electrical consumption in the coal-mining process to reduce carbon emissions in coal-to-energy chains. Moreover, China has to facilitate railway-line construction to improve the proportion of railway transportation to coal transportation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work proposes a two-stage stochastic optimization model to maximize the expected profit and simultaneously minimize carbon emissions of a dual-feedstock lignocellulosic-based bioethanol supply chain (LBSC) under uncertainties in supply, demand and prices. The model decides the optimal first-stage decisions and the expected values of the second-stage decisions. A case study based on a 4-state Midwestern region in the US demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed stochastic model over a deterministic model under uncertainties. Two regional modes are considered for the geographic scale of the LBSC. Under co-operation mode the 4 states are considered as a combined region while under standalone mode each of the 4 states is considered as an individual region. Each state under co-operation mode gives better financial and environmental outcomes when compared to stand-alone mode. Uncertainty has a significant impact on the biomass processing capacity of biorefineries. While the location and the choice of conversion technology for biorefineries i.e. biochemical vs. thermochemical, are insensitive to the stochastic environment. As variability of the stochastic parameters increases, the financial and environmental performance is degraded. Sensitivity analysis shows that levels of tax credit and carbon price have a major impact on the choice of conversion technology for a selected biorefinery. Biochemical pathway is preferred over the thermochemical as carbon price increases. Thermochemical pathway is preferred over the biochemical as the level of tax credit increases. In addition, bioethanol production in the US is shown to be unviable without adequate governmental subsidy in the form of tax credits. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A multilateral effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been implemented around the world. In particular, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) emerged as a market-based approach used to control GHG emissions by providing carbon credits (or allowances). One of the most controversial issues in the ETS is the question of how the allowances will be distributed. Therefore, this research aimed to develop a decision support model for establishing benchmarks as a tool for free allocation in the construction industry. It can be used in the pre-design phase to estimate the amount of allowances in a given construction site. In this study, a total of 147 types of data on the reinforced concrete frame in multi-family housing projects in South Korea were collected and used to develop the advanced Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), which can be used to establish benchmarks as a tool for free allocation. Results showed that the prediction performance of the advanced CBR model was superior (prediction accuracy; standard deviation) in all classifications: concrete (93.45%; 6.01), steel bar (94.20%; 4.34), and formwork (94.28%; 4.67). In the case study, a total of 60 possible combinations were evaluated in terms of the economic and environmental impact simultaneously with the retrieved cases. The results of this study could be expanded into other areas including new renewable energy, rehabilitation projects, and demolition projects. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this paper is to assess the sustainability of electricity production from winter cereals grown in one of the most important Spanish agricultural areas, Castilla y Leon Region, situated in central-northern Spain. This study analyses greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and energy balances of electricity production in a 25 MWe power plant that was powered using straw biomass from three annual winter cereals (rye, triticale and oat) grown as dedicated energy crops. The results of these analyses were compared with those of electricity produced from natural gas in Spanish power plants. Assessments were performed using a wide range of scenarios, mainly based on the biomass yield variability obtained in demonstration plots of twelve different winter cereal genotypes. Demonstration plots were established in two different locations (provinces of Soria and Leon) of the Castilla y Leon Region during two crop seasons (2009/2010 and 2010/2011) using common management practices and input rates for rain-fed agriculture in these regions. Our results suggest that production of electricity from winter cereals biomass combustion yielded considerable reductions in terms of GHG emissions when compared to electricity from natural gas. Nevertheless, the results show that low biomass yields that are relatively frequent for Spanish farmers on low productivity lands may produce no significant reductions in GHG in comparison with electricity from natural gas. Consequently, the agronomic management of winter cereals should be re-examined in order to find potential improvements that achieve better energy balances and greater reductions in GHG emissions on land which is relatively uncompetitive in terms of crop yields and on existing low productivity scenarios. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Manure-biogas is a renewable energy resource rather untapped in Europe in comparison to its full potential. Given the current and emerging renewable energy targets, considerable increases in its production can be expected. This consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) study investigated the environmental consequences of different co-substrate strategies for reaching drastic increases in manure-biogas production in Denmark. Six co-substrates not already fully used for biogas were considered: energy crops, straw, household food waste, commercial food waste, garden waste and the solid fraction deriving from source-segregation of animal urine and feces. Soil carbon changes as well as direct and indirect land use changes were included in the LCA. Source-segregated manure stood out as the environmentally best co-substrate, followed by garden waste. Co-substrates already in use for energy recovery (straw, household and commercial food wastes) displayed a more modest environmental performance while energy crops, here represented by maize silage, was the only option giving rise to net greenhouse gas emissions. This was essentially due to the indirect land use change emissions related to this scenario, which were quantified to 357 t CO2 eq. ha(-1) displaced. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents an assessment of the environmental performance of rapeseed-based biodiesel, addressing alternative geographical locations and cultivation systems for rapeseed (in Spain, France, Germany and Canada). Four environmental impact categories have been assessed using the CML 2001 life-cycle impact assessment method: abiotic depletion; global warming; acidification; and eutrophication. Results show that rapeseed cultivation has the highest contribution to all the environmental impact categories evaluated, with a share between 40% (abiotic depletion, Germany) and 98% (eutrophication, Spain). The use of fertilizers and associated soil emissions are the main contributions to the environmental impacts of cultivation. Soil carbon changes due to different agricultural practices are particularly important in terms of the global warming impact of rapeseed-based biodiesel. The use of fossil methanol in biodiesel production has significant impacts in terms of abiotic depletion and the consumption of heavy fuel oil in transoceanic transportation is an important contributor to acidification. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main goal of this article is to assess the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of palm oil produced in a specific plantation and mill in Colombia. A comprehensive evaluation of the implications of alternative land use change (LUC) scenarios (forest, shrubland, savanna and cropland conversion) and fertilization schemes (four synthetic and one organic nitrogen-fertilizer) was performed. A sensitivity analysis to field nitrous oxide emission calculation, biogas management options at mill, time horizon considered for global warming and multifunctionality approach were also performed. The results showed that the GHG intensity of palm oil greatly depends on the LUC scenario. Significant differences were observed between the LUC scenarios (-3.0 to 5.3 kg CO(2)eq kg(-1) palm oil). The highest result is obtained if tropical rainforest is converted and the lowest if palm is planted on previous cropland, savanna and shrubland, in which almost all LUC from Colombian oil palm area expansion occurred between 1990 and 2009. Concerning plantation and oil extraction, it was shown that field nitrous oxide emissions and biogas management options have a high influence on GHG emissions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy requirement of buildings is directly related to the technology of their construction and the type and amount of used building materials. The higher the cost of purchasing materials, especially insulation materials is, the lower the expected costs of use are, which is connected with lower energy losses. The dilemma between the increased building costs and the higher costs of use is rather common, and the investors usually make their decisions based on the economic criteria. However, in the era of sustainable building and a tendency of introducing environmental factors into the decision making processes, the environmental costs related to the individual decision making scenarios have become a more frequent additional criterion accompanying the process of resolving of such a dilemma. Within the scope of this article, the results of a comparative environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of four functionally equivalent buildings with different material structure, construction technology and energy standards have been presented. The main goal of the analyses has been providing the answer to the question, what is the key element, from the environmental point of view, in the life cycle of buildings and is it a common element regardless of the technology of construction and the energy standards. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Analyzing building related carbon emissions remains as one of the most increasing interests in sustainability research. While majority of carbon footprint studies addressing buildings differ in system boundaries, scopes, GHGs and methodology selected, the increasing number of carbon footprint reporting in response to legal and business demand paved the way for worldwide acceptance and adoption of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) set by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Current research is an important attempt to quantify the carbon footprint of the U.S. residential and commercial buildings in accordance with carbon accounting standards and Scopes set by WRI, in which all possible indirect emissions are also considered. Emissions through the construction, use, and disposal phases were calculated for the benchmark year 2002 by using a comprehensive hybrid economic input-output life cycle analysis. The results indicate that emissions from direct purchases of electricity (Scope 2) with 48% have the highest carbon footprint in the U.S. buildings. Indirect emissions (Scope 3) with 32% are greater than direct emissions (Scope 1) with 20.4%. Commuting is the most influential activity among the Scope 3 emissions with more than 10% of the carbon footprint of the U.S. buildings overall. Construction supply chain is another important contributor to the U.S. building's carbon footprint with 6% share. Use phase emissions are found to be the highest with 91% of the total emissions through all of the life cycle phases of the U.S. buildings. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a context of sustainable development and energy sparing, a life cycle assessment (LCA) may be useful to make good choices. Thus, this study concerns the LCA of an environmentally friendly material used for building construction, hemp concrete. The functional unit is first defined per square metre such that the wall may provide the function of bearing wall and its thermal performance is described by a thermal resistance of 2.78 m(2) K/W. The results then showed that the production phase of raw materials is mainly responsible for the environmental impact of the wall, mostly due to the binder production. It was also shown that, compared to traditional construction materials, hemp concrete has a low impact on environment. Moreover, hemp concrete contributes to reduce climate change as photosynthesis-mediated carbon sequestration and carbonation serve to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. A sensitivity analysis is performed on three criteria: wall thickness, renewal of coatings and compounds of the indoor coating. Our results show that environmental indicators evolve with wall thickness, except for the climate change indicator. It improves with thickness due to carbon sequestration and carbonation. Moreover the increase in the wall's thermal resistance with wall thickness is not taken into account in such an LCA performed at the material level. The renewal of coating slightly impacts the environmental indicator for small numbers of renewals but it leads to negative effects if they are too numerous. It appears that hemp-lime coating has a greater impact than sand-lime coating as it embeds more binder. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present work aims to examine the strategic decision of future electricity generation mix considering, together with all other factors, the effect of the external cost associated with the available power generation technology options, not only during their operation but also during their whole life cycle. The analysis has been performed by integrating the Life Cycle Assessment concept into a linear programming model for the yearly decisions on which option should be used to minimize the electricity generation cost. The model has been applied for the case of Greece for the years 2012-2050 and has led to several interesting results. Firstly, most of the new generating capacity should be renewable (mostly biomass and wind), while natural gas is usually the only conventional fuel technology chosen. If externalities are considered, wind energy increases its share and hydro-power replaces significant amounts of biomass-generated energy. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis has been performed. One of the most important findings is that natural gas increases its contribution when externalities are increased. Summing-up, external cost has been found to be a significant percentage of the total electricity generation cost for some energy sources, therefore significantly changing the ranking order of cost-competitiveness for the energy sources examined. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Part 1 of this research investigated environmental footprint for the cradle-to-grave of a linear metre I-beam made from traditional and alternative materials which are stainless steel (316) and glass reinforced plastics (GRP). Results revealed that GRP generally produced less environmental footprint than stainless steel. The main contribution found in the cradle-to-gate caused by raw materials (90 %) and associated transportation (10 %). Certain impact categories of GRP were either equalled or higher than stainless steel I-beam including the climate change impact category. Therefore, part 2 of this research further investigates the ecological and economic hot spots of the cradle-to-gate of GRP I-beam and alternative supply chain scenarios. The potential carbon tax was also estimated under two different situations. GRP and stainless steel (316) are used to assess the environmental footprint and the economic impact of 6,098 m I-beams as a production volume in practice. The World ReCiPe midpoint and endpoint methods generated the life cycle inventory, characteristic and single score results for the environmental footprint. The economic impact estimated based on a simple cost calculation associated with the cradle-to-gate including material, production and transportation costs. The ecological and economic hot spots were identified and formed 12 supply chain scenarios. Both identified hot spots came from raw materials that used in large quantities, consumed higher electricity and delivered by road and water transportation over long travel distances. The climate change impact category and the potential carbon tax values are improved under the scenarios that use a supplier from countries that generate electricity from less coal-based energy source and involve less transportation in delivering the raw materials. Win-win and trade-off scenarios were revealed when comparing both impacts. The former scenario reduces material costs, the travel distances and using lower freight rate transportation that consumes less fuel such as shipping. The latter scenarios are often occurred by either attempting to reduce the environmental footprint from using less transportation but the raw material costs are suffered. Manufacturers may select the scenario based on their production constrains. Cradle-to-grave was discussed and shown the benefits in including steel recycling into the assessment which can equate the potential carbon tax of the stainless steel with some GRP I-beam scenarios. Future work can be enhanced by considering other factors in the practice of manufacturing system such as insurance cost and lead time.Habitat loss is a significant cause of biodiversity loss, but while its importance is widely recognized, there is no generally accepted method on how to include impacts on biodiversity from land use and land use changes in cycle assessment (LCA), and existing methods are suffering from data gaps. This paper proposes a methodology for assessing the impact of land use on biodiversity using ecological structures as opposed to information on number of species. Two forms of the model (global and local scales) were used to assess environmental quality, combining ecosystem scarcity, vulnerability, and conditions for maintaining biodiversity. A case study for New Zealand kiwifruit production is presented. As part of the sensitivity analysis, model parameters (area and vulnerability) were altered and New Zealand datasets were also used. When the biodiversity assessment was implemented using a global dataset, the importance of productivity values was shown to depend on the area the results were normalized against. While the area parameter played an important role in the results, the proposed alternative vulnerability scale had little influence on the final outcome. Overall, the paper successfully implements a model to assess biodiversity impacts in LCA using easily accessible, free-of-charge data and software. Comparing the model using global vs. national datasets showed that there is a potential loss of regional significance when using the generalized model with the global dataset. However, as a guide to assessing biodiversity impact, the model allows for consistent comparison of product systems on an international basis.The purse seine fishery for sardine is the most important fishery in Portugal. The aim of the present study is to assess the environmental impacts of sardine fished by the Portuguese fleet and to analyse a number of variables such as vessel size and time scale. An additional goal was to incorporate fishery-specific impact categories in the case study. Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied, and data were collected from nine vessels, which represented around 10 % of the landings. Vessels were divided into two length categories, above and below 12 m, and data were obtained for the years 2005 to 2010. The study was limited to the fishing phase only. The standard impact categories included were energy use, global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential and ozone depletion potential. The fishery-specific impact categories were overfishing, overfishedness, lost potential yield, mean trophic level and the primary production required, and were quantified as much as possible. The landings from the data set were constituted mainly by sardine (91 %), and the remainders were other small pelagic species (e.g. horse mackerel). The most important input was the fuel, and both vessel categories had the same fuel consumption per catch 0.11 l/kg. Average greenhouse gas emissions (carbon footprint) were 0.36 kg CO2 eq. per kilo sardine landed. The fuel use varied between years, and variability between months can be even higher. Fishing mortality has increased, and the spawning stock biomass has decreased resulting in consequential overfishing for 2010. A correlation between fuel use and stock biomass was not found, and the stock condition does not seem to directly influence the global warming potential in this fishery. Discards were primarily non-target small pelagic species, and there was also mortality of target species resulting from slipping. The seafloor impact was considered to be insignificant due to the fishing method. The assessment of the Portuguese purse seine fishery resulted in no difference regarding fuel use between large and small vessels, but differences were found between years. The stock has declined, and it has produced below maximum sustainable yield. By-catch and discard data were missing but may be substantial. Even being difficult to quantify, fishery impact categories complement the environmental results with biological information and precaution is need in relation to the stock management. The sardine carbon footprint from Portuguese purse seine was lower than that of other commercial species reported in.In this series of papers, we present a design of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) recycling system considering environmental impacts, chemical hazards, and resource availability. We applied life cycle assessment (LCA), environment, health, and safety (EHS) assessment as well as material flow analysis to the evaluation of the recycling system. Recycling systems for highly functional plastics such as PMMA have not been studied sufficiently. Along with the popularization of PMMA-containing products such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), the use of PMMA is steadily increasing, which will result in more waste of PMMA in the next decades. In this study, pyrolysis process for recycling waste PMMA into methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer was examined, considering not only general environmental impacts quantified by life cycle assessment but also local environment, health, and safety hazards, and raw material availability. Process EHS hazards assessment was applied to quantify the local effects of the PMMA monomer recycling process. Process hazards are strongly connected with the hazardous properties of chemical substances and stream conditions within the process. Two alternative cooling methods exist, and their difference was analyzed by LCA and EHS assessment. Besides the process hazard, the availability of waste PMMA must be an important point for the feasibility of implementing the PMMA monomer recycling process. The available amount can be quantified by analyzing the material flow of PMMA-containing products. PMMA contained in LCDs as light guide panels was selected as a feasible source of waste PMMA, and the quantity of PMMA flows in the society was evaluated. In the case of PMMA, monomer recycling has less process hazard than the production of fresh MMA from crude oil. The implementation of circulated cooling water could significantly decrease the process hazard in PMMA pyrolysis attributable to chemical hazards. Material flow analysis revealed that the availability of waste PMMA shows a fluctuating trend in the next 20 years because of the sharp peak demand for LCD television sets. The fluctuation is strongly dependent on the lifetime of LCD television sets. PMMA monomer recycling has a potential to reduce environmental impacts with a less process hazards than fresh MMA production from crude oil. The availability of waste PMMA has a strong relationship with the lifetime of LCD television sets. The multiple and comprehensive assessments can reveal various aspects of a process technology.Life cycle assessment is usually an assessment tool, which only considers steady-state processes, as the temporal and spatial dimensions are lost during the life cycle inventory (LCI). This approach therefore reduces the environmental relevance of certain results, as it has been underlined in the case of climate change studies. Given that the development of dynamic impact methods is based on dynamic inventory data, it seems essential to develop a general methodology to achieve a temporal LCI. This study presents a method for selecting the steps, within the whole process network, for which dynamics need to be considered while others can be approximated by steady-state representation. The selection procedure is based on the sensitivity of the impacts on the variation of environmental and economic flows. Once these flows have been identified, their respective timescales are compared to the inherent timescales of the impact categories affected by the flows. The timescales of the impacts are divided into three categories (days, months, years) based on a literature review of the ReCiPe method. The introduction of a temporal dynamic depends on the relationship between the timescale of the environmental and economic flows on the one hand and that of the concerned impact on the other hand. This approach is illustrated by the life cycle assessment of palm methyl ester and ethanol from sugarcane. In both cases, the introduction of a temporal dynamic is limited to a small proportion of the total number of flows: 0.1 % in the sugarcane ethanol production and 0.01 % in the palm methyl ester production. Future developments of time integration in the LCI and in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) are also discussed in order to deal with the need of characterization functions and the recurrent problem of waiting times. This work provides a method to select specific flows where the introduction of temporal dynamics is most relevant. It is based on sensitivity analyses and on the relationship between the timescales of the flows and the timescale of the involved impact. The time-distributed LCI generated by using this approach could then be coupled with a dynamic LCIA proposed in the literature.While carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) has been widely recognized as a useful technology for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, it is necessary to evaluate the environmental performance of CCS from a full life cycle perspective to comprehensively understand its environmental impacts. The primary research objective is to conduct a study on life cycle assessment of the post-combustion carbon dioxide capture process based on data from SaskPower's electricity generation station at the Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada. A secondary objective of this study is to identify the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology which is most suitable for the assessment of carbon dioxide capture technology integrated with the power generation system in the Canadian context. The study takes a comparative approach by including three scenarios of carbon dioxide capture at the electricity generation station: no carbon dioxide capture ("no capture"), partial capture ("retrofit"), and fully integrated carbon dioxide capture of the entire facility ("capture"). The four LCIA methods of EDIP 97, CML2001, IMPACT2002+, and TRACI are used to convert existing inventory data into environmental impacts. The LCIA results from the four methods are compared and interpreted based on midpoint categories. The LCA results showed an increase in the retrofit and capture scenarios compared to the no capture scenario in the impact categories of eutrophication air, ecotoxicity water, ecotoxicity ground surface soil, eutrophication water, human health cancer ground surface soil, human health cancer water, human health noncancer ground surface soil, ozone depletion air, human health noncancer water, and ionizing radiation. The reductions were observed in the retrofit and capture scenarios in the impact categories of acidification, human health criteria air-point source, human health noncancer air, ecotoxicity air, global warming, human health cancer air, and respiratory effects. Although the four LCIA methodologies significantly differ in terms of reference substances used for individual impact categories, all (TRACI, IMPACT2002+, CML2001, and EDIP 97) showed similar results in all impact categories.More energy efficient lighting options, such as compact fluorescent bulbs and light emitting diodes are predicted to significantly reduce the amount of energy used for lighting. Such forecasts are predicated on the assumption of light saturation and do not take into account the potential for economic rebound. The potential of the rebound effect to reduce or negate predicted energy savings is explored here. This work uses an agent-based model with a cellular automata approach to study the impact of rebound on the consumption of residential light and associated energy use, using three lighting technologies, and a time span from 2012 to 2030. Agents, representative of households, select between three lighting options using a multiplicative utility function and a probabilistic choice mechanism. Agents then decide whether to consume more light and potentially more energy based on the lighting technology selected and personal preferences. The agents are heterogeneous in nature, consisting of seven typologies, with their characteristics informed through survey data. The results of the model indicate that although the consumption of light may increase, overall changes in the consumption of energy compared to 2012 levels will be minor. If the consumption of light is held steady, assuming saturation, then there is the potential for the adoption of energy-efficient lighting to result in significant energy savings. However, if the rebound effect occurs, there will be a decrease in the consumption of energy for lighting as consumers adopt more energy efficient options. Overtime as the consumption of light continues to increase, those savings will largely be eroded. This study suggests that the adoption of energy-efficient lighting in itself will not reduce the overall consumption of energy for lighting on a long-term scale although it may be successful in doing so in the short-term. The rebound effect will greatly reduce the projected energy savings from more efficient lighting technologies, with potential for direct rebound to exceed 100 %. In order for the quantity of energy utilized in residential lighting to decrease, solutions beyond that of efficiency gains must be considered.Weighting in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a much-debated topic. Various tools have been used for weighting in LCA, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) being one of the most common. However, it has not been thoroughly assessed how weight elicitation techniques of MCDA with different scales (interval and ratio) along with external and internal normalisation affect weighting and subsequent results. The aim of this survey is to compare different techniques in an illustrative example in the building sector. A panel of Nordic LCA experts accomplished six weighting exercises. The different weight elicitation techniques are SWING which is based on the interval scale; Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) which is based on the ratio scale. Information on the case study was provided for the panellists, along with characterised or normalised impact assessment scores. However, in the first weighting exercise, the panellists were not provided with any scores or background information, but they had to complete the weighting at a more general level. With the weights provided by the panel, the environmental impacts of three alternative house types were aggregated. The calculations were based on three well-grounded aggregation rules, which are commonly used in the field of LCA or decision analysis. In the illustrative construction example, the different aggregation rules had the biggest impact on the results. The results were different in the six calculation methods: when externally normalised scores were applied, house type A was superior in most of the calculations, but when internal normalisation was accomplished, house type C was superior. By using equal weights, similar results were obtained. None of the panellists intuitively considered A as the superior house type, but in some of the calculations, this was indeed the case. Furthermore, the results refer to the fact that the panellists completed the weighting on the basis of their general knowledge, without taking the features of different weight elicitation techniques into account. External normalisation provides information on a magnitude of impacts, and in some cases, external normalisation may be a more influential factor than weighting. Based on the results, it cannot be stated which different weight elicitation technique is the most suitable for LCA. However, the method should be selected based on the aims and purpose of the study. Moreover, the elicitation questions should be explained with care to experts so that they interpret the questions as intended.The European Commission (EC) has developed a reference method for organisation environmental footprinting (OEF) in support of improving the sustainability of production and consumption. This methodological development was guided by four core criteria. Specifically, it was deemed necessary that the method provides for a (1) multi-criteria, (2) life cycle-based approach that considers all organisational and related activities across the supply chain, (3) provides for reproducibility and comparability over flexibility, and (4) ensures physically realistic modelling. Here, we review a subset of existing organisation environmental footprinting methods. We evaluate key areas of convergence (very limited!) and divergence between these methods, and the extent to which the methodological specifications they provide satisfy the four aforementioned criteria for the EC OEF method. On this basis, we specify where and why the EC OEF method necessarily diverges from and/or goes beyond the reviewed methods. We found little consistency between the reviewed methods, and few instances where our four criteria for the EC OEF method were satisfied. We specify the methodological norms for the EC OEF method for, among other things, definition of the unit of analysis (the organisation) and reference flow; organisation and analytical boundaries; cut-off criteria; impact categories and models; allocation solutions; and data quality. We further provide a rationale for each norm, in particular why they diverge from the various options presented in the reviewed methods. In order to satisfy the four core criteria, the EC OEF method diverges from/goes beyond the reviewed methods in a variety of important respects. We suggest that the end result represents a significant advance in the standardization of life cycle-based organisation environmental footprinting.The environmental aspects of paper as a consumer good have been extensively studied. However, the paper machine has been mostly neglected in the literature. The purpose of this article is to present a LCA case study that explicitly focuses on the system of a newsprint paper machine and its environmental impacts and not on the system of the consumer good paper. The relevance of the paper machine as capital equipment is analyzed, and conclusions for the environmental improvement of paper machines are drawn based on identified hotspots. The article hereby answers the more general research questions of whether capital equipment has rightly been neglected in other studies regarding pulp and paper and which impact categories are important for analyzing the environmental burdens of a paper machine. The study has been executed in collaboration with Voith Paper, an original equipment manufacturer. Hence, in distinction to literature-based studies, primary data on the paper machine was available resulting in a high overall data quality. Based on the ISO 14040 (2006) and 14044 (2006) standards, this article pursues a cradle-to-grave approach for the paper machine. It assesses the environmental impacts in the impact categories defined by the ReCiPe impact assessment methodology. Different types of energy generation are examined in a scenario analysis with combined heat and power generation (CHP) as the baseline case. For interpretation, a normalization and a sectoral analysis are performed. The normalized results indicate fossil resource depletion and global warming as the most important impact categories. Global warming impacts are highly dependent on the energy processes and result to 432.7 kg CO2e per production of 1 t of paper for CHP and to 701.7 kg CO2e for EU25 grid mix. The sectoral analysis shows that the machinery's operations/use phase is clearly dominating most impact categories due to its long lifetime. An exception is the metal depletion, for which the materials and manufacturing processes are most important. These findings prove that for most categories, the operations/use phase of the paper machine is the most important life cycle stage. In systems focusing on the consumer good paper, it is therefore sufficient to model the operation of the paper machine, whereas the manufacturing, transport, and end-of-life processes regarding the paper machine equipment can be neglected, unless metal depletion is important to the study.The main objective of this paper is to analyse through life cycle assessment (LCA), the entire water services system in Iasi City (Romania): a representative city for the problems faced by the water services sector in Romania. Furthermore, the study is aimed at demonstrating the usefulness of the LCA approach as a support instrument for water resources management. The life cycle inventory (LCI) of the Iasi water system was organized considering the water system components, as well as their function related to the water use life cycle: before the tap system as production phase (water abstraction, transport, treatment and distribution) and after the tap section as post-use phase (wastewater collection, treatment and discharge). The foreground data describing the LCI processes were provided directly by the company operating the Iasi water system, while the data for the background processes were sourced or selected from Ecoinvent 2.0 database. The assessment considers the quantification of environmental impacts (according to the CML 2000 baseline and Ecological Scarcity 2006 methodologies) of water supply (abstraction, treatment and distribution) and wastewater disposal (collection and treatment) relative to 1 m(3) of tap water. For this given system, the results have pointed out that the before the tap system generates higher impacts than the after tap system, mainly due to the energetic effort needed for water supply and the fairly high water losses in the distribution system. However, the after the tap system, specifically the discharge of treated wastewater is still responsible for many of the water-related impact such as Eutrophication (when using CML) or Emissions to surface waters (when using the Ecological Scarcity method). Apart from the LCA approach, this study presents several scenarios for the improvement of the environmental performance of the water services, such as: changing between water sources, improving the distribution system and upgrading the wastewater treatment plant. This study has demonstrated the usefulness of LCA to describe, compare and predict the environmental performance of complex water services systems (and all its components). The results have provided a reference case for the environmental profile of Iasi city water system, and have enabled the identification of its improvement alternatives. Also, this study, which represents a premiere for Romania, has opened future research directions which may include the development perspectives of the Iasi water services system, as well as improvements of LCIA methodologies to better represent the local specific water-related impacts.Consumers, communities, and regulators are focusing on recycling as a method to potentially reduce environmental impacts. One such recycling approach, the rerefining of used motor oil, is purported to avoid the greenhouse gases (GHG) associated with extracting and processing crude oil, as well as the emissions associated with alternative used oil management methods. This study analyzed the relative GHG reduction benefits of re-refining used motor oil by quantifying the life cycle carbon footprint associated with one gallon of re-refined base oil and contrasting that with the life cycle carbon footprint of an equivalent product derived from virgin stock that is not re-refined. The carbon footprint analysis included the GHG emissions associated with raw material extraction and processing, transportation, manufacturing, and waste management based on Safety-Kleen Systems primary data for re-refining. Safety-Kleen Systems is the largest producer of re-refined oil in North America. All other data was derived from best available secondary sources. The analysis showed that the carbon footprint of re-refined base oil is 81% lower than virgin stock-derived base oil that is not re-refined. This difference is primarily due to differences in emissions associated with base oil production and used oil end of life between the two systems studied.The -sitosterol concentration in pulp and paper mill effluents is typically greater than that of other phytosterols and has been shown to cause a variety of effects in fish. The authors exposed fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) to low (22 +/- 0.93 mu g/L), medium-low (70 +/- 2.1 mu g/L), medium-high (237 +/- 5.5 mu g/L), and high (745 +/- 16.2 mu g/L) concentrations of -sitosterol as well as negative (water), positive (ethynyl estradiol, 16 +/- 0.58ng/L), and carrier (0.6mL/L acetone) controls. Fish were monitored over a full life cycle for population-level endpoints including growth and survival, reproductive endpoints (e.g. fecundity, sex steroids and vitellogenin, gonado-/hepatosomatic indices, and gonad histology). No significant differences were seen in fish growth, mortality, or reproduction with -sitosterol exposure, although a trend for lower egg production in -sitosterol exposures relative to the water control may be related to the acetone carrier. All ethynyl estradiol-exposed fish were smaller, showed female characteristics, and did not spawn. Sex steroid and vitellogenin were highly variable with no detectable treatment-related differences. Gonadal tissue showed no -sitosterol-related differences in reproductive development and spawning capability, although most ethynyl estradiol-exposed males had ovarian tissue and were not spawning-capable. The results indicate that -sitosterol exposure had little apparent impact on fathead minnow survival, growth, and reproduction even at concentrations >10 times that of typical effluents, although small sample size and variability precluded fully evaluating treatment responses on sex steroids and vitellogenin. (c) 2013 SETACA quality and sustainability comparison of the catalytic hydroprocessing of waste cooking oil (WCO) using a single-step (hydrotreatment) vs. a two-steps (hydrotreatment + isomerization) approach was conducted. The product fuel properties from both approaches were excellent, abiding by the newly established CEN TS 15940:2012 standard for Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) fuels. The only consideration of the single-step product regarding its increased cold flow properties was addressed by the second isomerization step or by blending with fossil diesel (<10% v/v). Furthermore, the environmental impact of the examined one- and two-step WCO catalytic hydroprocessing was evaluated via Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), quantifying the associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. LCA indicated a reduced sustainability of the two-step product as compared to the one-step product, due to the additional energy and hydrogen requirements of the second isomerization step. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several methods to evaluate the environmental process impact assessment of industrial chemical processes have been presented in the literature. Although these methods follow the same steps (usually, characterisation, normalisation and weighting), each method addresses different impact categories, considering specific nomenclatures and using different taxonomies to classify their outputs. When industrial chemical processes are being assessed by several methods, different results are obtained. The comparison of these non-standardised results turns out to be a difficult task. This work has two main contributions that help in the choice of the most appropriate method to be used. First, standardise the taxonomy used by the different methods and second, propose a quantitative framework that combines different methods into a final score. Therefore, it is suggested a standard taxonomy, which allows to report the output of the different methods in a systematic way. A new concept called impact categorical groups is also proposed. These groups aggregate similar impact categories presented by different methods, and therefore allow the comparison of the obtained results by different methods. A framework to aggregate impact category indicators from different methods into a final score (index) is also presented. This framework also suggests a path to determine the best method to be applied and provides an insight on the weighting factors that should be considered in the aggregation of the different indicators into the final index. The basis for the proposed achievements was an extensive literature review, which includes 25 methods for environmental process impact assessment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reduction of packaging waste has been a European target for more than 40 years. However, packaging is indispensable for protecting what it carries. In this study, an analysis of the European regulations on packaging and of their resulting effect on recycling performance was performed by means of a literature survey and the national results published in the European Database, Eurostat. Based on these data, two series of five Life Cycle Assessments (corresponding to the national situation of five European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden) were conducted on three olive packaging solutions: doypacks, glass jars and steel cans. The results highlight the influence of national household waste collection rates and selected technologies for waste treatment (recycling and incineration) on the environmental performance of packaging design. A qualitative analysis of user expectations by means of a questionnaire demonstrates that the environmentally better solution (doypack) was not aligned with user expectations. The loss of food introduced by the better packaging solution is also a reason to question its value. The authors conclude that it is important to increase waste collection rates and recycling in order to actually improve packaging sustainability. They also conclude that eco-design of packaging cannot be considered only in terms of the materials employed: the contribution of the consumers' behavior is also a determinant criterion in the design of food packaging. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper quantifies environmental and economic benefits of the Integrated Product Service Offering (IPSO) in real practice from a life cycle perspective, in comparison with its corresponding product-sales type business as a reference. The paper also discusses the engineering activities contributing to those effects, as well as their enablers. To reach this goal, the paper investigates three IPSOs as real-life business cases in industry. Those cases are selected from different sectors and have different characteristics. In addition, the paper calculates and compares environmental impacts and economic costs of different offerings in each case through the use of Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing, respectively. In all three cases, IPSOs had environmental and economic advantages in comparison with the product-sales type business. The engineering activities contributing to those advantages under IPSOs were recycling, remanufacturing, reuse, maintenance, and holistic planning and operation. The enablers were found to be high flexibility for realizing products and services and close relationships with relevant actors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEE) is a source of valuable materials which poses great risks to environment and human health if improperly managed. To overcome this barrier and close the loop in a production chain, several end-of-life (EoL) strategies based on reuse, recovery and recycling are under development. Material recovery from printed circuit board (PCB) scrap may contribute to reduce the environmental impacts caused by the extraction of high-valued and/or highly toxic materials from nature. However, each recovery process itself requires resource consumption and generates some forms of impact. Given that situation, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology can aid decision-making processes on which EoL strategy to adopt. The goal of this study consisted of applying LCA methodology to evaluate and compare two processes for recovering copper from PCB scrap. Initially, a review was conducted, focusing on material recovery processes adopted as EoL options for WEEE management; several methods for copper recovery from PCB scrap were found. LCA methodology was then applied in order to evaluate and compare two of these processes. Both combine mechanical and electrochemical processing and have similar efficiency; one of them employs sulfuric acid and the other employs acqua regia (combination of nitric and chloridric acid). Evaluation of the impact categories considered in the study has shown that the process that uses acqua regia has better environmental performance. The work reported here can be seen as a starting point for more in-depth evaluations of these and other material recovery processes, especially in countries such as Brazil, where WEEE management is often neglected in the absence of a well-structured recycling chain, it is usually disposed of in landfills. In that light, the paper presents some closing remarks and suggestions for future research. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the modeling of life cycle assessment (LCA) of pavement, the usage module is un-avoidable to reach comprehensive conclusions but far from perfect till date. Typically, the usage module consists of rolling resistance, albedo, lighting requirement, carbonation (for cement concrete pavement), leachate, and others. None of the aforementioned components is well studied among the pavement community. This research makes contribution to better modeling of the albedo effect of pavements, a traditionally ignored aspect. A time-dependent climatological model was developed to estimate the CO2 offset due to pavement albedo in the life cycle, in an either deterministic or probabilistic mode. A case study suggests that the albedo effect produces a non-negligible contribution to the life cycle inventory. Specifically, it reduces the CO2-equivalent emission for the portland cement concrete pavement by 9.2% but increases 19.1% for the hot mixture asphalt pavement. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the present work, the environmental impacts of edible sunflower oil production are evaluated by life cycle assessment (LCA), with a particular focus on the processing and packaging phases. The assessment is performed using both a resource oriented method (cumulative energy demand, CED method) and an impacts oriented method (ReCiPe method). Both methods show similar results in the evaluation of two alternatives for energy management in an edible oil refinery. However, the CED method gives misleading results in the identification of hot spots in the life cycle because it does not consider environmental impacts not correlated with the energy consumption. The hot spots of the refining phase are the bleaching step, the production of steam from natural gas and the wastewater treatment plant. A substantial environmental improvement in the processing and packaging phases of the life cycle can be gained by reducing the energy and material consumption (bleaching earth and water) required by the oil refining processes and by reducing the materials used for the packaging of the final product. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays there is a growing demand for natural products from microalgae with applications in the food industry (additives, pigments, vitamins and colorants) as well as in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmetic sectors. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of the production of bioactive compounds with applications in the pharmaceutical and food/feed sectors (PUFAs, alpha-tocopherol, chlorophyll, beta-carotenoid and polyphenols) from the microalgae Tetraselmis suecica was carried out in this study. Following a bio-refinery perspective of the production system, the anaerobic digestion of the algal residual paste obtained after the extraction step was also included. Accordingly, the life cycle was divided in five main stages: i) sterilization, ii) inoculation and culturing, iii) harvesting, iv) extraction and v) anaerobic digestion. The inoculation and culturing stage was identified as the stage with major contribution to the environmental impact, ranging from 73% to 97% depending on the impact category. The nitrogen source (sodium nitrate) required for algae growth was a very relevant issue. As a consequence, alternative nitrogen sources (inorganic and organic fertilizers) were proposed and assessed here, finding notable improvements depending on the source. The valorization of the algal residual paste used as nutrients source (N, P and K) was also an interesting alternative. Regarding the photobioreactor configuration, the combination of a PBR and an open raceway was proposed here in order to demonstrate the potential reductions in terms of electricity consumption. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a research on the environmental impacts of particleboards produced from wastes, based on a comparative Life Cycle Assessment study. The particleboards were manufactured in laboratorial scale from the following residues: sugarcane bagasse (Saccharum spp.) and pine wood shavings (Pinus elliottii). The study was developed following the methodological guidelines of ISO 14040. The functional unit adopted was the m(2) of the particleboards produced and the impacts were evaluated by the Environmental Development of Industrial Products method. The results indicated that pine particleboard present the highest environmental impact potential. Our findings suggested that the factors that mostly aggravated the environmental impacts were: the distance between the raw materials and the production site, and formaldehyde emissions (FE). The first is related to the combustion of fossil fuel during the acquisition of raw material, which achieved the values of 2185.94 g/m(2) for consumption of non-renewable resources for pine particleboard and 893.53 g/m(2) for bagasse particleboard. The second is related to the use of urea-formaldehyde resin, responsible for the FE into the air during production. The FE is accountable for the contamination of approximately 7,800,000.00 m(3) of air per m(2) of particleboard produced, and was the factor with the greatest impact in human toxicity potential. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forest activities are receiving special attention in recent years concerning the quantification of their environmental profiles in order to be competitive. This study aims to evaluate the environmental profile of the production of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.) biomass in France under two different management scenarios (an intensive scenario: IMS and an extensive one: EMS), representative of the real practices in the country. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to evaluate the environmental loads from a cradle-to-gate perspective. According to the results, the choice of the best management scenario will depend on the impact category considered. Thus, IMS has lower fuel requirements and it is the best option in categories directly related to fuel consumption by forest machineries, such as abiotic resources depletion, cumulative energy demand, global warming potential and photochemical oxidants formation. On the contrary, EMS will be preferred in terms of acidification and eutrophication potentials with reductions of up to 26%. The reason behind these reductions is based on the fact that these categories are considerably affected by the fertilizing process, which is not conducted under extensive conditions. Regardless the scenario, the logging stage and specially, the final cutting process, can be considered as the main environmental key factors, playing a major role in all categories. Both the production of the triple superphosphate and pruning processes play leading roles in the IMS and EMS, respectively. The comparison of these environmental profiles with those corresponding to maritime pine in Portugal highlights that the differences observed between both scenarios are related to the intensity of the forest practices as well as the biomass yield. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of seafood sustainability does not typically include the energetic or material demands of the capture or supply chain processes, despite the significant impacts they generate. We used life cycle assessment (LCA) to measure the environmental footprint of the supply of Tasmanian southern rock lobster, Jasus edwardsii (TSRL). International airfreight of live lobsters was the major contributor to global warming potential (GWP) and cumulative energy demand (CED) indicators, while the fishing stage accounted for the majority of impacts to eutrophication potential (EP), water use and marine aquatic ecotoxicity. The environmental footprint of the TSRL in our scenarios was responsive to marine resource management decisions made inside and outside the fishery. Targeting maximum economic yield rather than maximum sustainable yield decreased the carbon footprint by 80% or 10 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) of lobster at capture. Limiting access to the fishery by increasing the coverage of marine protected areas increased the fishery's carbon footprint by 23% or 3 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) of lobster at capture. The unintended consequences of management changes suggest that in a future of increased carbon emission regulation, marine resource decision making should not be made in isolation of broader environmental impacts. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper studies the energy balance between the input and the output per unit area for button mushroom production in Isfahan province of Iran. Data were obtained from 22 greenhouse button mushroom growers using a face to face questionnaire method. Sensitivity analysis of energy and cost inputs was carried out using the marginal physical productivity (MPP) technique. The results revealed that the total input and output energy use was to be 901 and 25.4 MJ m(-2), respectively. The highest share of energy consumption belongs to compost (49%) followed by diesel fuel (45%). Energy use efficiency, specific energy, net energy and energy intensiveness of greenhouse button mushroom production were 0.03, 59.5 MJ kg(-1), -875 MJ m(-2) and 36.1 MJ $(-1), respectively. Econometric model evaluation showed that the impact of compost and human labor energy inputs were significantly positive on yield. The sensitivity analysis of energy inputs indicated that among the inputs, human labor has the highest MPP value of energy inputs. Cost analysis revealed that total cost of button mushroom production was obtained as 24.9 $ m(-2). Accordingly, the benefit-cost ratio and productivity were obtained as 1.15 and 0.62 kg $(-1), respectively. It is suggested that new heating system with high thermal efficiency are to be used, in order to improve the greenhouse environment as well as reduction of diesel fuel consumption. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Compost is usually applied once at the beginning of a cropping plan and provides fertilization to several crops. The paper focuses on the way of distributing compost burdens (environmental and economic) among those crops in a real Mediterranean rotation. Four approaches were proposed and compared to solve that multifunctionality problem, according to the hierarchy recommended by the ISO 14044. The rotation included four crops: chard, tomato, cauliflower, and onion; and two fertilizing options: mineral fertilizers (M) and mineral fertilizers plus compost (CM). Life cycle assessment was used for the environmental assessment, and standard farm accounting for the economic one. Compost production had very relevant responsibility for the total impacts of the option using compost, CM. Therefore, the choice of the multifunctionality-solving approach for compost burden distribution had major effects on the results. The compost was a very modest contributor to the total costs; therefore, the divergences on the economic results due to the solving approach were small. Among the four solving approaches, subdivision according to nitrogen mineralization rates and physical allocation related to nitrogen uptake seemed to be the best options. Both approaches had a tight causal relationship with the amount of nitrogen consumed; however, only the physical allocation was based on the specific data obtained during the study. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Animal traction has supported humans in most field operations since the origin of agriculture. With the introduction of mechanization, humans gained access to much more work power at similar management costs and were able to significantly increase the productivity and time efficiency of field operations. This achievement completely changed food production systems for all populations able to access such technology. Nowadays, animal traction is mainly used in the developing countries, in specific contexts such as mountainous areas due to the difficulties in using tractors, and within farm tourism in the developed countries. Although the consumption of non-renewable resources is clearly higher in crop production systems that use mechanized traction, tractor traction may involve low consumption of fuel relative to that needed for feed production for equivalent draught animals. Mechanical traction can also facilitate precision agriculture, which uses less fuel, while animals, as living systems, consume resources even when they are not working. This study compared the environmental performance of animal traction with that of machine traction in two scenarios: (I) A forest harvesting system, using as the functional unit the logging operations needed to obtain 50 t market-ready wood and (II) a seedbed preparation system, using as the functional unit the management of 1000 m(2) of prepared seedbed. Use of animal traction for these two systems was evaluated on the La Masca farm in Roccaverano, Asti, Northern Italy, while use of machine traction was evaluated using field data on two-wheel tractors performing the operations in similar production systems, converted to the specific functional unit. Owing to the differing properties of mechanical and living systems, it was difficult to establish a reliable standard LCA model of the forestry and food production system. In particular, it proved necessary to include the whole life cycle impacts from tractors and animals. Therefore, we applied a modular LCA approach in which all mechanical implements and animals were accounted as independent modules, a complete life cycle impact assessment phase was performed and results were related to the contribution of the module in the main workflow of the scenario. The final results showed better environmental performance of animal traction both per unit weight of market-ready wood and per unit surface area of prepared seedbed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is often referred to as the next major force shaping the business environment in which companies operate. This study aims at contributing to the needs of businesses for quicker and cost-efficient ways to strategically plan for the future uncertainty of climate change. When structuring the intertextual field around the underlying study, there are two main fields of contribution: (1) the systematical approach to the complex uncertainty related to climate change and its communication from a strategic perspective; and (2) developing novel approaches to life-cycle-based methodologies. The study includes the life-cycle perspective through a new, simplified method of representing product-related climate information in the form of an improved SWOT (i.e. Climate SWOT). We approach the climate-related structural change of the business environment by addressing questions of how usable the Climate SWOT is in building climate strategies; whether or not it raises awareness of the life-cycle perspective and climate change strategies and if it is able to produce strategic or operational changes in the pilot organizations. The focus of this research is therefore not the introduction of the tool itself, but rather the evaluation of the tool, as perceived by the users. Data were collected via surveys targeted at two principal focus groups: users of the tool (analysts), in May 2011; and users of the results (decision-makers), in September 2011. The results were positive in terms that the tool was implemented and seen as useful; it raised awareness both about climate issues and the life-cycle perspective and helped in communicating product-specific strategies to a wider audience; and it facilitated concrete changes. The findings resulted in further refinement of the tool to improve its usability. All in all, the Climate SWOT was indeed seen as helpful in structuring the situation around climate change and to develop strategies. In terms of raising awareness, a significant behavioral trigger, the Climate SWOT was perceived by the respondents to offer a concrete tool to become aware of climate change, in order to relate their activities to the phenomenon and incorporate its opportunities and threats into long-term strategic planning. The second survey was able to confirm that concrete operative or strategic changes had occurred in 50% of the cases. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The effluents from palm oil mills for biodiesel production are generally treated in open ponds, causing large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study assesses the use of palm oil mill effluents (POME) as feedstock to produce biogas via anaerobic digestion. Biogas from POME can be converted into electricity and heat to eventually reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of biodiesel production from palm oil. This study is using two system boundaries, firstly, system a "gate-to-gate" concerning the POME treatments, and secondly a "cradle-to-gate/total combustion" when we assess the impact of varying POME treatments within the biodiesel chain. The research draws on field and experimental data from palm oil and biogas production in Sumatra, Indonesia. The findings show that the energy output from the conversion of POME to methane via anaerobic digestion and the subsequent combustion of the methane in a combined heat-power plant exceeds the energy consumption of the palm oil milling process. Treating POME in an anaerobic digester and using the biogas to generate electricity and heat has the potential to significantly reduce the GHG emissions of biodiesel production from palm oil. In the studied case, the energy output from the conversion of POME to electricity and heat is 0.44 MJ kg(-1) biodiesel and the net energy yield is 0.42 MJ kg(-1) biodiesel. The ratio of energy output to energy input of the conversion process is about 23.1. The potential reduction of GHG emissions is 658 g CO2-eq kg(-1) biodiesel or 15.96 g CO2-eq MJ(-1). This is equivalent to about 33% of the total GHG emissions of biodiesel production from palm oil. Against this background we recommend to further develop and implement the treatment of POME in anaerobic digestion combined with the purposeful use of the methane, electricity and heat produced from the POME. This can make a significant contribution toward meeting international targets of emissions reduction for biodiesel production. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tourism holds a significant share in the global carbon footprint. Transportation to the destination is recognized as the primary contributor, although its contribution can be less dominant in the context of short-haul travel. Previous studies do not provide a critical comparative analysis of how changes in travel behaviour, notably modal shift, affect the total carbon impacts from short-haul holidays; nor do they explore the relative contribution of the specific elements of the holiday product or account for global variations when measuring those contributions. This paper presents a carbon impact assessment case study of short-haul tourism to Southern France by British tourists. It applies an advanced, Life Cycle Assessment-based, method of evaluation, the hybrid DEFRA-LCA (Ecoinvent) approach, which is capable of appraising both the direct and the embodied 'indirect' greenhouse gas emissions. The principal finding supports the traditional view that transportation generates the largest carbon footprint and that the most significant carbon savings can be achieved by switching from air and car-based travel to train and coach. However, the study also indicates that if tourists stay at the destination longer, and travel to the destination by train or coach, the destination-based elements of the holiday can make a large carbon contribution and even outweigh the share of the transit element. The Life Cycle Assessment also shows that the 'indirect' greenhouse gas emissions from tourism in Southern France are significant, thus emphasizing the importance of their incorporation into future carbon impact appraisals. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental and energy parameters of Photovoltaic (PV) systems play a very important role when compared to conventional power systems. In the present paper, a typical PV-system is analyzed to its elements and an assessment of the material and energy requirements during the production procedures is attempted. A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is being performed on the production system of photovoltaics. Energy and environmental analyses are extended to the production of the primary energy carriers. This allows having a complete picture of the life cycle of all the PV-components described in the present study. Four different scenarios are examined in detail providing every possible aspect of scientific interest involving polycrystalline PV systems. In order to obtain concrete results from this study, the specific working tool used is the Eco-Indicator '95 (1999) as being reliable and widely applied and accepted within LCA community. A process that relates inventory information with relevant concerns about natural resource usage and potential effects of environmental loadings is attempted. Large-scale PV-systems have many advantages in comparison with a conventional power system (e.g. diesel power station) in electricity production. As a matter of fact, PV-systems become part of the environment and the ecosystems from the moment of their installation. Carbon Footprints of various PV-systems scenarios are greatly smaller than that of a diesel power station operation. Further technological improvements in PV module production and in the manufacture of Balance-of-System components, as well as extended use of renewable energy resources as primary energy resources could make Carbon Footprint of PV-systems even smaller. Extended operational period of time (O.P.T.) of PV-systems determined by system reliability should be given special attention, because it can dramatically mitigate energy resources and raw materials exploitation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fisheries management determines how much of each stock can be landed when, where and how fishing is permitted. It has been identified to strongly influence the environmental performance of the fishing industry, including fuel use. As fuel data for fisheries is scarce, especially on a detailed level, the aim of this study was to develop an approach for utilizing fleet-wide fuel data to estimate the fuel use of individual fisheries and mapping how fuel efficiency in Swedish fisheries is influenced by management. Swedish demersal trawl fisheries were studied between 2002 and 2010: Results show that the overall fuel efficiency has improved and interesting patterns between different fisheries and vessel sizes emerged. The difference in fuel efficiency per kilo landing between large and small trawlers was generally small, unless catch capacity was lowered e.g. by selective grids. Stock rebuilding was shown to be highly important for fuel efficiency, as fuel use was inversely correlated to the biomass of eastern Baltic cod. However, rebuilding can also lead to trade-offs e.g. in the case of selective trawling, where protection of depleted stocks comes at the cost of higher fuel intensity per landing. Finally, tax exemption of fuel use in fisheries was shown to maintain inefficient fisheries. These results could be used to reduce overall environmental impacts of fishing further by incorporating fuel use as an additional aspect into the fisheries management system. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.How to choose an energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and economically affordable municipal solid waste (MSW) management system has been a major challenge to be taken up by decision makers. Although life cycle assessment (LCA) has been widely used for the evaluation of energy consumption and environmental burden, the economic factor is not considered yet in LCA procedures. Thus, in the present study life cycle 2E (energy and environment) assessment is extended to a 3E (energy, environment, and economy) model. To evaluate economic performance, life cycle cost (LCC) is adjusted in accordance with LCA. Afterwards, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method is improved to integrate 3E factors. Besides, a two-step weight factor analysis is added, not only to test the robustness of the model, but also to adopt different preferences proposed by different stakeholder groups. This novel 3E model is then applied for the comparison of different MSW treatment technologies: (1) landfill; (2) landfill with biogas conversion to electricity; (3) incineration with energy recovery. Results show that incineration scores 0.944/1 and performs best among all scenarios; landfill with biogas to electricity, with final score 0.722/1, ranks second; and landfill without energy recovery (score: 0/1) is the worst choice. Furthermore, the weight factor analysis also shows a highly credibility of the results: when changing each factor's weight from 0 to 1, less than 30% of the cases exhibit the variation in ranking order; almost no change in ranking order occurs when considering the different perspectives from government, enterprise and residents. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, it is common sense that environmentally benign chemical production processes are needed as the basis for future competitiveness and long-term sustainability. Decision support in the development of such processes can be provided by life cycle assessment. New technologies, however, can be established only if they lead to cost-efficient production processes as well. Life cycle costing analyses provide an appropriate methodological basis linking the cost-side evaluation of alternative options during the process development with environmental decision criteria. The results of both methods can be combined in an eco-portfolio. In summary, development of both ecologically and economically efficient processes can thus already be supported in the early design phase of the chemical processes.The need for clean and renewable energy sources due to environmental concerns and resource depletion has continued the trend for innovation in green energy technologies. Recent literature has displayed a strong interest and a wide variety of research, development and innovation in many areas of renewable energy including solar, wind and biofuel disciplines. Publically available data concerning U.S. energy production and issued patents both show growth trends that correlate with each other and are supported by the interest in green energy innovation shown in the current literature.Due to mounting concerns related to fossil fuel use and problems with their supply, the use of alternative sources of energy is increasing. One of the alternative sources is biomass and the European Union has adopted a biofuel directive that describes targets for the use of biofuels in the transport sector. The majority of biofuels produced in Europe comes from rapeseed. In this study, we focused on analyzing the efficiency of rapeseed biodiesel production. Energy efficiency in terms of Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI) was analyzed for two EU countries (Poland and The Netherlands) with different agro-ecological systems. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) accounted for inputs, processes and outputs of energy in the biodiesel production system. Input parameters were derived from literature as well as from farmer's interviews. The use of the outputs-straw, meal, and glycerin-were included in the LCI system boundary. The EROEI values ranged from 1.73 to 2.36 in Poland and from 2.18 to 2.60 in the Netherlands. The low number of respondents makes it risky to draw hard conclusions about these values but the patterns observed show that intensifying the production process and increasing yield bears very little or no benefit in terms of energy produced. Due to a higher amount of organic manure and consequently lower amount of artificial fertilizers used in crop growth in the Netherlands, the rapeseed biodiesel production system in the Netherlands is more efficient than in Poland. In both cases, the EROEI is quite low. More detailed spatial energy efficiency assessments are required to determine if and where sustainable production may be possible.The demand for fossil fuels for non-energy purposes such as production of bulk chemicals is poorly understood. In this study we analyse data on non-energy demand and disaggregate it across key services or products. We construct a simulation model for the main products of non-energy use and project the global demand for primary fuels used as feedstocks and the resulting carbon emissions until 2100. The model is then applied to estimate the potential emission reductions by increased use of biomass, a more ambitious climate policy and advanced post-consumer waste management. We project that the global gross demand for feedstocks more than triples from 30 EJ in 2010 to over 100 EJ in 2100, mainly due to the increased demand for high value chemicals such as ethylene. Carbon emissions increase disproportionately (from 160 MtC per year in 2010 to over 650 MtC per year in 2100) due to greater use of coal, especially in ammonia and methanol production. If biomass is used, it can supply a large portion of the required primary energy and reduce carbon emissions by up to 20% in 2100 compared to the reference development. Climate policy can further reduce emissions by over 30%. Post-consumer waste management options such as recycling or incineration with energy recovery do not necessarily reduce energy demand or carbon emissions.Solving the issue of environmental degradation due to the expansion of the World's energy demand requires a balanced approach. The aim of this paper is to comprehensively rank a large number of electricity generation technologies based on their compatibility with the sustainable development of the industry. The study is based on a set of 10 sustainability indicators which provide a life cycle analysis of the plants. The technologies are ranked using a weighted sum multi-attribute utility method. The indicator weights were established through a survey of 62 academics from the fields of energy and environmental science. Our results show that large hydroelectric projects are the most sustainable technology type, followed by small hydro, onshore wind and solar photovoltaic. We argue that political leaders should have a more structured and strategic approach in implementing sustainable energy policies and this type of research can provide arguments to support such decisions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to explore the synergies between nutritionally healthy and ecologically sustainable diets. The aim was to explore the possibilities for future integrated dietary guidelines that support consumers to make informed dietary choices based on both ecological and nutritional values. We developed a score system for health and sustainability. Subsequently, we tested six different diets: current average Dutch, official 'recommended' Dutch, semi-vegetarian, vegetarian, vegan and Mediterranean. For the sustainability rating, we used the Life Cycle Assessment, measuring the impacts on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and land use (LU). For the health rating, we used ten nutritional indicators. By comparing the overall scores we found that the consumption of meat, dairy products, extras, such as snacks, sweets, pastries, and beverages, in that order, are largely responsible for low sustainability scores. Simultaneously, these food groups contribute to low health scores. We developed a matrix that illustrates that the health and sustainability scores of all six diets go largely hand in hand. Fig. I provides a visualisation of the position of the six diets in the full health and sustainability spectrum. This matrix with scores can be considered a first step in the development of a tool to measure both sustainability and health issues of specific food patterns. In selecting the diets, we examined two directions: health focus diets and the animal protein reduction diets. The Mediterranean diet is generally the health focus option with a high sustainability score. We conclude that guidelines oriented in between the two directions (i.e., semi- and pesco-vegetarian) are the option with the optimal synergy between health and sustainability. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The unique chemical and physical properties of metals mean that they are extensively utilized by industry in a huge variety of applications, including electronics, materials, industrial catalysts and chemicals. The increased consumer demand from a growing population worldwide with rising aspirations for a better life has resulted in concerns over the security of supply and accessibility of these valuable elements. As such, there is a growing need to develop alternative methods to recover them from waste repositories, current or historic, both for hazard avoidance and potentially, as a new source of metals for industry. Phytoextraction (the use of plants for the recovery of metals from waste repositories) is a green and novel technique for metal recovery, which, if done with the goal of resource supply rather than hazard mitigation, is termed "phytomining". The ability for plants to form metallic nanoparticles as a consequence of phytoextraction could make the recovered metal ideally suited for utilization in green chemical technologies, such as catalysis. This review focuses on a multidisciplinary approach to elemental sustainability and highlights important aspects of metal lifecycle analysis, metal waste sources (including mine tailings), phytoextraction and potential green chemical applications that may result from the integration of these approaches.The purpose of this paper is to provide an improved (up-to-date) insight into the environmental burden of textiles made of the base materials cotton, polyester (PET), nylon, acryl, and elastane. The research question is: Which base material and which life cycle stage (cradle-to-gate as well as cradle-to-grave) have the biggest impact on the environment? Life cycle inventory (LCI) data are collected from the literature, life cycle assessment (LCA) databases, and emission registration database of the Dutch government, as well as communications with both manufacturing companies of production equipment and textile companies. The output of the calculations is presented in four single indicators: Eco-costs 2012 (a prevention-based indicator), CO2 equivalent (carbon footprint), cumulative energy demand (CED), and ReCiPe (a damage-based indicator). From an analysis of the data, it becomes clear that the environmental burden is not only a function of the base materials (cotton, PET, nylon, acryl, and elastane) but also of the thickness of the yarn (for this research, the range of 50-500 dtex is examined). The authors propose that the environmental burden of spinning, weaving, and knitting is a function of 1/yarn size. The cradle-to-grave analysis from raw material extraction to discarded textile demonstrates that textiles made out of acryl and PET have the least impact on the environment, followed by elastane, nylon, and cotton. The use phase has less relative impact than it is suggested in the classical literature. The impact of spinning and weaving is relatively high (for yarn thicknesses of less than 100 dtex), and from the environmental point of view, knitting is better than weaving. LCA on textiles can only be accurate when the yarn thickness is specified. In case the functional unit also indicates the fabric per square meter, the density must be known. LCA results of textile products over the whole value chain are case dependent, especially when dyeing and finishing processes and the use phase and end-of-life are included in the analysis. Further LCI data studies on textiles and garments are urgently needed to lower the uncertainties in contemporary LCA of textile materials and products.Comparative life-cycle assessments (LCAs) today lack robust methods of interpretation that help decision makers understand and identify tradeoffs in the selection process. Truncating the analysis at characterization is misleading and existing practices for normalization and weighting may unwittingly oversimplify important aspects of a comparison. This paper introduces a novel approach based on a multi-criteria decision analytic method known as stochastic multi-attribute analysis for life-cycle impact assessment (SMAA-LCIA) that uses internal normalization by means of outranking and exploration of feasible weight spaces. To contrast different valuation methods, this study performs a comparative LCA of liquid and powder laundry detergents using three approaches to normalization and weighting: (1) characterization with internal normalization and equal weighting, (2) typical valuation consisting of external normalization and weights, and (3) SMAA-LCIA using outranking normalization and stochastic weighting. Characterized results are often represented by LCA software with respect to their relative impacts normalized to 100 %. Typical valuation approaches rely on normalization references, single value weights, and utilizes discrete numbers throughout the calculation process to generate single scores. Alternatively, SMAA-LCIA is capable of exploring high uncertainty in the input parameters, normalizes internally by pair-wise comparisons (outranking) and allows for the stochastic exploration of weights. SMAA-LCIA yields probabilistic, rather than discrete comparisons that reflect uncertainty in the relative performance of alternatives. All methods favored liquid over powder detergent. However, each method results in different conclusions regarding the environmental tradeoffs. Graphical outputs at characterization of comparative assessments portray results in a way that is insensitive to magnitude and thus can be easily misinterpreted. Typical valuation generates results that are oversimplified and unintentionally biased towards a few impact categories due to the use of normalization references. Alternatively, SMAA-LCIA avoids the bias introduced by external normalization references, includes uncertainty in the performance of alternatives and weights, and focuses the analysis on identifying the mutual differences most important to the eventual rank ordering. SMAA-LCIA is particularly appropriate for comparative LCAs because it evaluates mutual differences and weights stochastically. This allows for tradeoff identification and the ability to sample multiple perspectives simultaneously. SMAA-LCIA is a robust tool that can improve understanding of comparative LCA by decision or policy makers.Quantitative uncertainties are a direct consequence of averaging, a common procedure when building life cycle inventories (LCIs). This averaging can be amongst locations, times, products, scales or production technologies. To date, however, quantified uncertainties at the unit process level have largely been generated using a Numerical Unit Spread Assessment Pedigree (NUSAP) approach and often disregard inherent uncertainties (inaccurate measurements) and spread (variability around means). A decision tree for primary and secondary data at the unit process level was initially created. Around this decision tree, a protocol was developed with the recognition that dispersions can be either results of inherent uncertainty, spread amongst data points or products of unrepresentative data. In order to estimate the characteristics of uncertainties for secondary data, a method for weighting means amongst studies is proposed. As for unrepresentativeness, the origin and adaptation of NUSAP to the field of life cycle assessment are discussed, and recommendations are given. By using the proposed protocol, cross-referencing of outdated data is avoided, and user influence on results is reduced. In the meantime, more accurate estimates can be made for horizontally averaged data with accompanying spread and inherent uncertainties, as these deviations often contribute substantially towards the overall dispersion. In this article, we highlight the importance of including inherent uncertainties and spread alongside the NUSAP pedigree. As uncertainty data often are missing in LCI literature, we here describe a method for evaluating these by taking several reported values into account. While this protocol presents a practical way towards estimating overall dispersion, better reporting in literature is promoted in order to determine real uncertainty parameters.This study quantifies freshwater consumption throughout the life cycle of Brazilian exported yellow melons and assesses the resulting impact on freshwater availability. Results are used to identify improvement options. Moreover, the study explores the further impact of variations in irrigation volume, yield, and production location. The product system boundary encompasses production of seeds, seedlings, and melon plants; melon packing; disposal of solid farm waste; and farm input and melon transportation to European ports. The primary data in the study were collected from farmers in order to quantify freshwater consumption related to packing and to production of seeds, seedlings, and melons. Open-field melon irrigation was also estimated, considering the region's climate and soil characteristics. Estimated and current water consumptions were compared in order to identify impact reduction opportunities. Sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate variations in the impact because of changes in melon field irrigation, yield, and farm location. This study shows that the average impact on freshwater availability of 1 kg of exported Brazilian yellow melons is 135 l H2O-e, with a range from 17 to 224 l H2O-e depending on the growing season's production period. Irrigation during plant production accounts for 98 % of this impact. Current melon field water consumption in the Low Jaguaribe and A double dagger u region is at least 39 % higher than necessary, which affects the quality of fruits and yield. The impact of melon production in other world regions on freshwater availability may range from 0.3 l H2O-e/kg in Costa Rica to 466 l H2O-e/kg in the USA. The impact of temporary crops, such as melons, on water availability should be presented in ranges, instead of as an average, since regional consumptive water and water stress variations occur in different growing season periods. Current and estimated water consumption for irrigation may also be compared in order to identify opportunities to achieve optimization and reduce water availability impact.Governments around the world have employed a variety of generous subsidies to help promote and develop clean energy technologies in the hope that they will widely replace dirtier carbon-based power sources. Unfortunately these subsidies have not prevented numerous green technology bankruptcies including the infamous 2011 closure of the California based solar panel producer Solyndra, and these failures have cost taxpayers and private investors billions in lost capital. The Green Innovation Value Chain (GIVC) provides a possible framework for determining the diffusion prospects of green technologies through environmental and financial comparisons to conventional alternatives across the separate chain links comprised of manufacturers, distributors, customers, government, and the environment. The GIVC framework is used here to analyze the photovoltaic solar power chain, where financial deficits are found in each link that will need to be reduced or eliminated through technology advancements, subsidies, or changes in market conditions in order to provide the conditions necessary for the technology to achieve mass-market acceptance and positive financial returns. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Considerable interest in bio-based films has been renewed due to their potential use in packaging industries. Polymers from biomass receive increasing interest as potential substitutes for certain conventional polymers since they are derived from renewable sources and can be biodegradable. However, the life cycle assessment of biofilms has not been widely reported in the literature. In this context, this paper discusses the environmental assessment of bio-based films based on agro-industrial by-products and marine residues, providing added value to these wastes. The materials employed to prepare the bio-based films were soy protein obtained as by-product of soy oil industry, chitosan obtained from the skeleton of crustaceans, and agar obtained from marine seaweeds. The results showed that manufacture is the most contaminant stage for chitosan and agar films, whereas the extraction of raw materials is the stage with the highest environmental burden for soy protein films. In addition, soybeans cultivation contributes to the environmental burden in land use category due to the use of glycerol, considered as by-product from biodiesel production, as plasticizer. However, the end of life stage is the least pollutant phase for bio-based films due to the fact that their biodegradable nature allows composting as the end of life scenario, providing environmental benefits. The present study allows identifying the most pollutant phases of the life cycle for biofilms from different resources, which is the first step prior to the analysis of the changes needed during the design of products and processes to minimize negative impacts in the environment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The freshwater green microalga Haematococcus pluvialis is the richest source of natural astaxanthin. Astaxanthin is a high-value red carotenoid pigment commonly used in the food, feed and cosmetics industries due to its well-known antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antitumour properties. This study assesses the environmental impacts associated with the production of natural astaxanthin from H. pluvialis at both lab and pilot scale. Closed airlift photobioreactors with artificial illumination, typically used for the production of high-value products to avoid contamination risks and allow controlled lighting conditions, were considered. The study extends from the production of the different inputs to the system to microalgal production, harvesting and further extraction of the carotenoid. The life cycle assessment was performed following the ISO 14040 and ten impact categories were considered in the study: abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidant formation. According to the results, electricity requirements represented the major contributor to the environmental burdens among the activities involved in the production of astaxanthin. For the lab-scale process, the air supply and the production of chemicals and lab materials were also significant contributors in several categories. In the pilot-scale production, the relative environmental impacts were greatly reduced, partially due to changes implemented in the system as a result of lab-scale environmental assessment. However, the production of electricity still dominated the impacts in all categories, particularly due to the cultivation stage. For this reason, a sensitivity assessment was proposed in order to identify alternative photobioreactor configurations for astaxanthin production. Two of the evaluated options, based on the use of sunlight instead of artificial illumination, presented significant reductions of impact. However, the improvements observed in these cases were limited by the decrease in biomass productivity associated with sunlight culture systems. Therefore, a two flat-panel photobioreactor system with artificial illumination is proposed as a suitable option, allowing reductions between 62% and 79% of the impact depending on the considered category. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas emissions from fertiliser production are set to increase before stabilising due to the increasing demand to secure sustainable food supplies for a growing global population. However, avoiding the impacts of climate change requires all sectors to decarbonise by a very high level within several decades. Economically viable carbon reductions of substituting natural gas reforming with biomass gasification for ammonia production are assessed using techno-economic and life cycle assessment. Greenhouse gas savings of 65% are achieved for the biomass gasification system and the internal rate of return is 9.8% at base-line biomass feedstock and ammonia prices. Uncertainties in the assumptions have been tested by performing sensitivity analysis, which show, for example with a +/-50% change in feedstock price, the rate of return ranges between -0.1% and 18%. It would achieve its target rate of return of 20% at a carbon price of 32 pound/t CO2, making it cost competitive compared to using biomass for heat or electricity. However, the ability to remain competitive to investors will depend on the volatility of ammonia prices, whereby a significant decrease would require high carbon prices to compensate. Moreover, since no such project has been constructed previously, there is high technology risk associated with capital investment. With limited incentives for industrial intensive energy users to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, a sensible policy mechanism could target the support of commercial demonstration plants to help ensure this risk barrier is resolved. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many current organic arable agriculture systems are challenged by a dependency on imported livestock manure from conventional agriculture. At the same time organic agriculture aims at being climate friendly. A life cycle assessment is used in this paper to compare the carbon footprints of different organic arable crop rotations with different sources of N supply. Data from long-term field experiments at three different locations in Denmark were used to analyse three different organic cropping systems ('Slurry', 'Biogas' and 'Mulching'), one conventional cropping system ('Conventional') and a "No input" system as reference systems. The 'Slurry' and 'Conventional' rotations received slurry and mineral fertilizer, respectively, whereas the 'No input' was unfertilized. The 'Mulching' and 'Biogas' rotations had one year of grass-clover instead of a faba bean crop. The grass-clover biomass was incorporated in the soil in the 'Mulching' rotation and removed and used for biogas production in the 'Biogas' rotation (and residues from biogas production were simulated to be returned to the field). A method was suggested for allocating effects of fertility building crops in life cycle assessments. The results showed significantly lower carbon footprint of the crops from the 'Biogas' rotation (assuming that biogas replaces fossil gas) whereas the remaining crop rotations had comparable carbon footprints per kg cash crop. The study showed considerable contributions caused by the green manure crop (grass-clover) and highlights the importance of analysing the whole crop rotation and including soil carbon changes when estimating carbon footprints of organic crops especially where green manure crops are included. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water footprints traditionally estimate water lost as a result of evapotranspiration (or otherwise unavailable for downstream uses) associated with producing a certain good, and the same embodied in trade across regions is used to estimate regional and national water footprints. These footprints, however, do not address risk posed to city energy supplies characterized by insufficient streamflow to support energy production, such as cooling water intake (e.g., withdrawals) at thermoelectric power plants. Water withdrawal intensity factors for producing goods and services are being developed at the national scale, but lack sufficient spatial resolution to address these types of water-energy challenges facing cities. To address this need, this article presents a water withdrawal footprint for energy supply (WWFES) to cities and places it in the context of other water footprints defined in the literature. Analysis of electricity use versus electricity generation in 43 U.S. cities highlights the need for developing WWFES to estimate risks to transboundary city energy supplies resulting from water constraints. The magnitude of the WWFES is computed for Denver, Colorado, and compared to the city's direct use of water to offer perspective. The baseline WWFES for Denver is found to be 66% as large as all direct water uses in the city combined (mean estimate). Minimum, mean, and maximum estimates are computed to demonstrate sensitivity of the WWFES to selection of water withdrawal intensity factors. Finally, scenario analysis explores the effect of energy technology and energy policy choices in shaping the future water footprint of cities.Water consumption related to the life cycle of metals is seldom reported, even though mines are often situated in very dry regions. In this study we quantified the life cycle consumption of groundwater and fresh surface water (blue water footprint [WFblue]) for the extraction and production of high-grade copper refined from both a copper sulfide ore and a copper oxide ore in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Where possible, we used company-specific data. The processes for extracting copper from the two types of ore are quite different from each other, and the WFblue of the sulfide ore refining process is 2.4 times higher than that of the oxide ore refining process (i.e., 96 cubic meters per metric ton [tonne] of copper versus 40 cubic meters per tonne of copper). Most of the water consumption (59% of WFblue) in the sulfide ore process occurred at the concentrator plant, via seepage, accumulation, and also by evaporation. In the oxide ore process, the main user of water is the heap-leaching process, with 45% of WFblue. The crushing and agglomeration operations, electrowinning cells, and solution pools are also significant contributors to the total consumption of water in the oxide ore process. Most of the water consumed in the oxide ore process was lost to evaporation. The WFblue of the oxide ore process can be reduced by preventing water evaporation and using more sophisticated devices during irrigation of the leaching heaps. The WFblue of the sulfide ore refining process can be reduced by improving water recovery (i.e., reducing seepage, accumulation, and evaporation) from the tailings dam at the concentrator plant. Using seawater in the production of copper is also a promising option to reduce the WFblue by up to 62%.Electric vehicles (EVs) have no tailpipe emissions, but the production of their batteries leads to environmental burdens. In order to avoid problem shifting, a life cycle perspective should be applied in the environmental assessment of traction batteries. The aim of this study was to provide a transparent inventory for a lithium-ion nickel-cobalt-manganese traction battery based on primary data and to report its cradle-to-gate impacts. The study was carried out as a process-based attributional life cycle assessment. The environmental impacts were analyzed using midpoint indicators. The global warming potential of the 26.6kilowatt-hour(kWh), 253-kilogram battery pack was found to be 4.6tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. Regardless of impact category, the production impacts of the battery were caused mainly by the production chains of battery cell manufacture, positive electrode paste, and negative current collector. The robustness of the study was tested through sensitivity analysis, and results were compared with preceding studies. Sensitivity analysis indicated that the most effective approach to reducing climate change emissions would be to produce the battery cells with electricity from a cleaner energy mix. On a per-kWh basis, cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emissions of the battery were within the range of those reported in preceding studies. Contribution and structural path analysis allowed for identification of the most impact-intensive processes and value chains. This article provides an inventory based mainly on primary data, which can easily be adapted to subsequent EV studies, and offers an improved understanding of environmental burdens pertaining to lithium-ion traction batteries.Intensive urban development is increasing the demand for green areas within cities. Urban brownfields could become a source for green redevelopment areas. Sustainable redevelopment requires precise information on the environmental impact of the installation of different vegetation types. We performed a Life Cycle Analysis (SimaPro 7 software) of six lawn installation and maintenance scenarios relevant to the conditions of Georgia, USA and confirmed that a traditional turf sod lawn has the highest environmental impact levels. Xeriscaped lawn composed of bark mulch has high impact levels owing to the substantial transportation needs at the installation stage. Hydroseeded lawns (composed of natural materials) are a sustainable alternative for traditional turf sod lawns, especially when native plants are included (11-14 times lower impact level). Professional selection and use of native plants could provide environmental, social, and ecological options for urban brownfield redevelopment into green areas. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The US egg industry has evolved considerably over recent decades by incorporating new technologies and production practices. To date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the resource demand and environmental effects of these changes. This study quantifies the environmental footprint of egg production supply chains in the United States for 2010 compared with 1960 using life cycle assessment. The analysis considers changes in both foreground (e. g., hen production performance) and background (e. g., efficiencies of energy provision, fertilizer production, production of feed inputs, and transport modes) system variables. The results revealed that feed efficiency, feed composition, and manure management are the 3 primary factors that determine the environmental impacts of US egg production. Further research and improvements in these areas will aid in continual reduction of the environmental footprint of the US egg industry over time. Per kilogram of eggs produced, the environmental footprint for 2010 is 65% lower in acidifying emissions, 71% lower in eutrophying emissions, 71% lower in greenhouse gas emissions, and 31% lower in cumulative energy demand compared with 1960. Table egg production was 30% higher in 2010; however, the total environmental footprint was 54% lower in acidifying emissions, 63% lower in eutrophying emissions, 63% lower in greenhouse gas emissions, and 13% lower in cumulative energy demand compared with 1960. reductions in the environmental footprint over the 50-yr interval considered can be attributed to the following: 27 to 30% due to improved efficiencies of background systems, which outweighed the declining energy return on energy invested for primary energy sources; 30 to 44% due to changes in feed composition; and 28 to 43% due to improved bird performance.The environmental impacts of 2 alternative UK broiler production systems that aim to improve bird welfare (a lower stocking density indoor system and the same system combined with heat exchangers for ventilation air) were compared with the baseline standard indoor system of broiler production. Furthermore, the environmental impacts of egg production in the conventional battery cage system (banned in the European Union in 2012) and its replacement, the enriched colony cage system, were compared. All comparisons were based on data obtained from the UK poultry industry, and the life cycle assessment method from cradle to farm gate was applied in the analyses. The results show that the lower density system slightly increased the global warming potential (GWP) of broiler production (by 2%), compared with the standard indoor system, due to increased heating requirements. However, when combined with the heat exchanger, the GWP was actually reduced by 3% when compared with the standard system. Both alternative systems for broilers resulted in a reduction in the eutrophication potential (by up to 8%) and acidification potential (by up to 10%). The results also showed that the colony cage system had 8% lower primary energy use and 3% lower GWP than the baseline cage system, due to better energy use efficiency and slightly improved productivity. There were only minor differences in the eutrophication and acidification potentials between different egg production systems. The results suggest that welfare-friendly changes in chicken systems can be achieved without a compromise in their environmental impacts.The coordination of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection systems involves locating equipment and routing heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning duct, water supply piping, sanitary drainage piping, and electrical conduit and raceway, as well as fire protection systems in a manner that satisfies many different types of constraint. The process has historically been a major challenge for the specialty contractors who fabricate and install these systems. Prior to the development of building information modeling (BIM) technology, the coordination of these building systems involved sequentially comparing and overlaying shop drawings to detect and eliminate spatial and functional interferences between the numerous systems. With BIM, which is able to provide a virtual construction solution where the design (three-dimensional), schedule (four-dimensional), cost (five-dimensional), and life cycle analysis (six-dimensional) can be interlinked, the process has been able to evolve, and the challenges of identifying and resolving physical interferences have been significantly reduced. However, many challenges still remain, and without adequate background and knowledge regarding the functionality of these systems, the likelihood that the results of the process will yield a poorly coordinated system is still high. Factors including systems performance, safety, and constructability must also be taken into account. Lack of knowledge and faulty assumptions often mislead personnel during the process to accepting results produced using BIM technology. This paper describes the development of a meaningful building systems coordination. Exercises for construction engineering and management students were designed in collaboration between academia and industry to enhance awareness and the knowledge required to produce a well-coordinated system. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.Because of the negative environmental and social impacts of built environment activities, several rating systems were developed in the last two decades to help professionals evaluate the sustainability of their design and construction decisions. A recent study revealed that industry leaders reported the shortcomings of these rating systems to provide accurate valuation of the return on their green investments. The study suggested the development of new evaluation processes that consider the triple-bottom-line (TBL) aspects (social, environmental, and financial) of project sustainability in a more holistic approach. Accordingly, this paper identifies the gaps between current practices and envisioned TBL-based practices through the following three main tasks: (1) surveying industry professionals to identify their current practices and required skills of sustainable design and construction; (2) surveying a sample of national academic engineering programs to identify current offerings of required sustainability courses; and (3) applying needs assessment to highlight the gaps and needed actions for achieving envisioned practices. It is proposed to implement a top-bottom action plan to develop new TBL-based processes that better inform sustainable/ green investors and owners. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.The architecture-engineering-construction (AEC) industry faces increasing demands on its projects while budgets appear to be shrinking. Building owners and operators seem to want their buildings to do more for less cost. Although this may seem counterintuitive, it aligns nicely with a sustainable-architecture approach of less is more. Moreover, in a shift from exclusively considering first costs for a project, the AEC industry seems to be moving in the direction of life-cycle cost considerations, furthering the opportunity for a more sustainable built environment. Often sustainable is synonymous with achieving certification [e.g., Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Infrastructure Voluntary Evaluation Sustainability Tool (INVEST) certification]. Whereas the authors acknowledge that certification can improve particular aspects of sustainability, it is necessary to take a broader approach and consider economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability. In this paper, the authors explore each of these dimensions and present examples of how the AEC industry can measure, balance, and monetize them. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.Green building is one of measures been put forward to mitigate significant impacts of the building stock on the environment, society and economy. However, there is lack of a systematic review of this large number of studies that is critical for the future endeavor. The last decades have witnessed rapid growing number of studies on green building. This paper reports a critical review of the existing body of knowledge of researches related to green building. The common research themes and methodology were identified. These common themes are the definition and scope of green building; quantification of benefits of green buildings compared to conventional buildings; and various approaches to achieve green buildings. It is found that the existing studies played predominately focus on the environmental aspect of green building. Other dimensions of sustainability of green building, especially the social sustainability is largely overlooked. Future research opportunities were identified such as effects of climatic conditions on the effectiveness of green building assessment tools, validation of real performance of green buildings, unique demands of specific population, and future proofing. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The concept of "peak oil" has been explored and debated extensively within the literature. However there has been comparatively little research examining the concept of "peak minerals", particularly in-depth analyses for individual metals. This paper presents scenarios for mined copper production based upon a detailed assessment of global copper resources and historic mine production. Scenarios for production from major copper deposit types and from individual countries or regions were developed using the Geologic Resources Supply-Demand Model (GeRS-DeMo). These scenarios were extended using cumulative grade-tonnage data, derived from our resource database, to produce estimates of potential rates of copper ore grade decline. The scenarios indicate that there are sufficient identified copper resources to grow mined copper production for at least the next twenty years. The future rate of ore grade decline may be less than has historically been the case, as mined grades are approaching the average resource grade and there is still significant copper endowment in high grade ore bodies. Despite increasing demand for copper as the developing world experiences economic growth, the economic and environmental impacts associated with increased production rates and declining ore grades (particularly those relating to energy consumption, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions) will present barriers to the continued expansion of the industry. For these reasons peak mined copper production may well be realised during this century. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Selecting actions for improvement of solid waste management in low and middle income countries and understanding how a specific decision choice will fit and impact on a local context is key to identifying sustainable solutions. Assessment of the choice (be it technical or managerial) and assessment of the local enabling or disabling conditions are both important steps in the decision making process. Various assessment tools and methods are currently available to support decision-making in solid waste management. Assessment can be used to identify weaknesses or strengths of existing systems in a structured way and hereby highlight factors of success and failure. Assessment methods can also evaluate and compare different possible choices as in project scenarios. This overview describes established and innovative assessment methods serving both these purposes. A range of assessment tools are often designed to assess a specific sustainability domain (technical, environmental and health, economic and financial, social and institutional, organizational aspects), others attempt to provide a more holistic picture by integrating different sustainability domains into the same tool. This paper reviews a number of methods describing and discussing each of them, and referring to their use in low and middle-income countries if published in scientific literature. The overview concludes that in low-and middle-income countries the use of comprehensive assessment methods is yet very limited. We hypothesize that most formal methods of assessment are still too complex and generally overburden the weak local capacities intended for their usage. The few applications identified, were conducted by academia for scientific purposes. Lack of resources to collect the vast data required for some assessment methods is a further restriction to their practical application. Future development is suggested to improve user friendliness of existing tools or to simplify certain approaches and develop more appropriate methods. A user-oriented focus in the development of assessment tools would enhance their application, provide sound data for informed decision making and foster a dialogue between technicians and policy makers in low- and middle-income countries.There is currently growing interest in quantifying the direct and indirect carbon emissions embodied in construction materials and their components production. Previous research shows that indirect emission could be higher than direct emission for energy intensity materials such as cement and steel reinforcement. Quantifying direct emissions alone would underestimate the carbon emissions associated with a material and in turn its environmental impact. The assessment of indirect emissions is a challenging task involving upstream processes of material production. This paper investigates the existing literature on the quantification of embodied carbon by both direct and indirect emissions as well as demonstrating the application of a hybrid life cycle assessment method in building construction. The focus of this paper is the Malaysian context however the principles apply universally. A typical 2-storey residential building has been investigated to determine the total carbon emissions when comparing two construction techniques: conventionally reinforced concrete and precast concrete panels. This paper demonstrates the application of hybrid life cycle assessment by expanding the boundaries of process methods and reducing the sensitivities of I-O life cycle assessment to the raw material price fluctuation for product manufacturing. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The classical route for iron- and steel-making today is based on massive use of fossil coal, which is responsible for most of the large CO2 emissions of the steel industry. Biomass, as a renewable carbon resource, is a good candidate to substitute for fossil coal and even partial substitution could lead to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Depending on the type of biomass, its processing, and the way it is used in the iron making process, many different scenarios may be considered. Those scenarios should be evaluated and compared from technical, environmental, and economical points of view in order to figure out the best options. The case of a real pig iron plant located in the North East of France was investigated. First, we checked the relevance of various biomass options on the basis of the biomass availability around the plant and of the technical requirements of the processes. Then, we carried out a screening life cycle assessment focusing on global warming impacts and following a cradle-to-gate approach. Different biomass-based pig iron production scenarios were compared. The results showed that for a 20 % substitution of biomass for coke, around 300 kg of CO2-equivalent per ton of pig iron produced could be saved, which represents a reduction of 15 % in the total greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, a brief economic evaluation of the resulting scenarios was performed.A process model of municipal solid waste incinerators (MSWIs) and new technologies for metal recovery from combustion residues was developed. The environmental impact is modeled as a function of waste composition as well as waste treatment and material recovery technologies. The model includes combustion with a grate incinerator, several flue gas treatment technologies, electricity and steam production from waste heat recovery, metal recovery from slag and fly ash, and landfilling of residues and can be tailored to specific plants and sites (software tools can be downloaded free of charge). Application of the model to Switzerland shows that the treatment of one tonne of municipal solid waste results on average in 425 kg CO2-eq. generated in the incineration process, and 54 kg CO2-eq. accrue in upstream processes such as waste transport and the production of operating materials. Downstream processes, i.e. residue disposal, generates 5 kg CO2-eq. Savings from energy recovery are in the range of 67 to 752 kg CO2-eq. depending on the assumptions regarding the substituted energy production, while the recovery of metals from slag and fly ash currently results in a net saving of approximately 35 kg CO2-eq. A similar impact pattern is observed when assessing the MSWI model for aggregated environmental impacts (ReCiPe) and for non-renewable resource consumption (cumulative exergy demand), except that direct emissions have less and no relevance, respectively, on the total score. The study illustrates that MSWI plants can be an important element of industrial ecology as they provide waste disposal services and can help to close material and energetic cycles. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a complex problem influenced by many aspects, such as environmental, social, economic, etc. Due to the involvement of human judgment, various uncertainties are introduced in the EIA process. One critical issue of EIA is the representation and handling of uncertain information. Many different theories are available to deal with uncertainty, however, deficiencies exist in these theories. In this paper, based on a more effective representation of uncertainty, called D numbers, a new method is proposed for the EIA problem. In the proposed method, the assessment results of environmental impacts are expressed and modeled by D numbers. An illustrative case is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work performs a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of two fuels for heating boilers, namely wood chips and oil. The LCA methodology allows comparing the environmental impacts of the two analyzed fuels, thus assessing which is environmentally more advantageous. The study is focused on Mediterranean forests located in the Argencola region (Catalonia, northeastern Spain) by applying forest management practices focused to ensure a sustainable exploitation. The direct use of wood chips as a fuel for boilers simplifies notably the number of processes involved in producing such a fuel. The results presented clearly show the environmental benefits of using small-scale produced wood chips instead of fossil oil by analyzing representative impact categories defined by the CML and EDIP methods, even when considering the changes in the carbon stock in the forests under analysis due to the management approach adopted. A sensitivity analysis has also been conducted to assess the impact of the data with higher uncertainty on the final LCA results. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study was carried out in response to the growing interest on household biogas digesters in Latin America, particularly in rural Andean communities. The aim was to compare the fixed dome and plastic tubular digester in terms of biogas production, cost and environmental impact, using the life cycle assessment methodology. Design and operational parameters, construction materials and implementation costs were based on our previous research and literature results for plastic tubular and fixed dome digesters, respectively. According to this analysis, the main advantage of the plastic tubular digester was its ease of implementation and handling, and lower investment cost compared to the fixed dome digester, which appeared to be more environmentally friendly. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass has become important as an alternative to fossil fuels and as a means to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly in tropical regions such as Brazil. Therefore, the demand for energy crops has increased strongly, and among such crops, palm oil is distinctive because of its productivity and well-developed production techniques. This paper intends to evaluate crude palm oil's GHG balance through a life-cycle assessment approach. This study is based on the average data of an ideal palm oil system in the northern region of Brazil. In the production of crude palm oil, a large amount of CO2 sequestration occurs during the growth of palm oil trees. In contrast, the greatest emissions are biotic CO2, which returns to the atmosphere and emissions from fertilizer production. The GHG balance of an oil palm plantation is approximately -208 kg CO2-equiv./1000 kg crude palm oil per year. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With an overall budget of around 70,000 million E for the next seven years (2014-2020) the EU Framework Programme for research and Innovation-Horizon 2020 constitutes the most important financial instrument for research and innovation in the world. Sustainable development is of paramount significance for Horizon 2020 through climate action and resource efficiency, which will represent at least 60% of the overall budget. This sustainability focus could have a strong impact on the future of the European construction industry and also being an opportunity for the development and commercialization of eco-efficient construction and building materials. This article addresses the case of materials for energy efficiency and materials capable of reusing a high waste content. Nanotech energy efficiency related building materials has the potential to become a hot research area being promoted and funded as a Key Enabling Technology-MET. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents an Exploratory Environmental Impact Assessment (EEIA) of the manufacturing process of a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell mounted in a cargobike, a three-wheel assisted-pedalling vehicle that is equipped to carry small loads, from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Results show that metals (both their production and processing) are the main contributors to the global warming and fossil energy use impact categories. Impact of platinum is considerable in acidification impact category, due to the large emissions of sulphur oxides produced during the extraction of the material. If recycled platinum is considered, a decrease of 20% could be achieved in this impact category. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food is one of the most energy and CO2-intensive consumer goods. While environmental data on primary agricultural products are increasingly becoming available, there are large data gaps concerning food processing. Bridging these gaps is important; for example, the food industry can use such data to optimize processes from an environmental perspective, and retailers may use this information for purchasing decisions. Producers and retailers can then Market sustainable products and deliver the information demanded. by governments and consumers. Finally, consumers are increasingly interested in the environmental information of foods in order to lower their consumption impacts. This study provides estimation tools for the energy demand of a representative set of food process unit operations such as dehydration, evaporation, or pasteurization. These operations are used to manufacture a variety of foods and can be combined, according to the product recipe, to quantify the heat and electricity demand during processing. In combination with inventory data on the production of the primary ingredients, this toolbox will be a basis to perform life cycle assessment studies of a large number of processed food products and to provide decision support to the stakeholders. Furthermore, a case study is performed to illustrate the application of the tools.Carbon nanotube (CNT) field emission displays (FEDs) are currently in the product development stage and are expected to be commercialized in the near future because they offer image quality and viewing angles comparable to a cathode ray tube (CRT) while using a thinner structure, similar to a liquid crystal display (LCD), and enable more efficient power consumption during use. To address concerns regarding the environmental performance of CNT-FEDs, a screening-level, cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted based on a functional unit of 10 000 viewing hours, the viewing lifespan of a CNT-FED. Contribution analysis suggests the impacts for material acquisition and manufacturing are greater, than the combined impacts for use and end-of-life. A scenario analysis of the CNT paste composition identifies the metal components used in the paste are key contributors to the impacts of the upstream stages due to the impacts associated with metal preparation. Further improvement of the manufacturing impacts is possible by considering the use of plant-based oils, such as rapeseed oil, as alternatives to organic solvents for dispersion of CNTs. Given the differences in viewing lifespan, the impacts of the CNT-FED were compared with a LCD and a CRT display to provide more insight on how to improve the CNT-FED to make it a viable product alternative. When compared with CRT technology, CNT-FEDs show better environmental performance, whereas a comparison with LCD technology indicates the environmental impacts are roughly the same. Based on the results, the enhanced viewing capabilities of CNT-FEDs. will be a more viable display option if manufacturers can increase the product's expected viewing lifespan.Noise is a serious stressor affecting the health of millions of citizens. It has been suggested that disturbance by noise is responsible for a substantial part of the damage to human health. However, no recommended approach to address noise impacts was proposed by the handbook for life cycle assessment (LCA) of the European Commission, nor are characterisation factors (CFs) and appropriate inventory data available in commonly used databases. This contribution provides CFs to allow for the quantification of noise impacts on human health in the LCA framework. Noise propagation standards and international reports on acoustics and noise impacts were used to define the model parameters. Spatial data was used to calculate spatially-defined CFs in the form of 10-by-10-km maps. The results of this analysis were combined with data from the literature to select input data for representative archetypal situations of emission (e.g. urban day with a frequency of 63 Hz, rural night at 8000 Hz, etc.). A total of 32 spatial and 216 archetypal CFs were produced to evaluate noise impacts at a European level (i.e. EU27). The possibility of a user-defined characterisation factor was added to support the possibility of portraying the situation of full availability of information, as well as a highly-localised impact analysis. A Monte Carlo-based quantitative global sensitivity analysis method was applied to evaluate the importance of the input factors in determining the variance of the output. The factors produced are ready to be implemented in the available LCA databases and software. The spatial approach and archetypal approach may be combined and selected according to the amount of information available and the life cycle under study. The framework proposed and used for calculations is flexible enough to be expanded to account for impacts on target subjects other than humans and to continents other than Europe. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Scarcity of natural resources and productive land is a global issue affecting the provision of goods and services at the country scale. This is particularly true for small regions with highly developed economies such as Luxembourg, which usually balance the chronic unavailability of resources (in particular with regard to fossil fuels) with an increasing demand of imported raw materials, energy and manufactured commodities. Based on historical time-series analysis (from 1995 to 2009), this paper determines the state of natural capital (NC) utilization in Luxembourg and estimates its ecological deficit (ED). Accordingly, solar energy demand (SED) and ecological footprint (EF) for Luxembourg have been initially calculated based on a recently developed country-specific environmentally extended input-output model. Thereafter, these indicators have been compared to the corresponding annual trends of potential NC (estimated using the emergy concept) and biocapacity, respectively. Results show that the trends in ED and in the use of NC in Luxembourg have not increased substantially during the years surveyed. However, the estimates also highlight that the NC of Luxembourg is directly and indirectly overused by a factor higher than 20, while circa 9 additional 'Luxembourg states' would be ideally necessary to satisfy the current land's requirements of the country and thus balance the impact induced by the EF. An in-depth analysis of the methodological advantages and limitations behind our modelling approach has been performed to validate our findings and propose a road map to improve the environmental accounting for NC and biocapacity in Luxembourg. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study compared the environmental burdens of two broiler chicken production systems in Brazil and two in France. One Brazilian system represents large-scale production in the Center-West region of the country; the other is a small-scale production in the South. One of the French systems represents an extensive broiler chicken production system, known as "Label Rouge"; the other is a standard system. Life-cycle impact assessments were performed using the CML-IA characterization method. The main functional unit adopted was 1 tonne of cooled and packaged chicken, ready for distribution. For the systems and impacts studied, production scale did not affect the environmental impact, but production intensity did. The extensive Label Rouge system had the largest impact among the impact categories studied. This resulted principally from the high feed-conversion ratio of this production system (3.1 kg of feed per kg of live weight) in conjunction with the fact that the feed-production stage contributed most to the overall impact. The contribution of deforestation to the crop-production stage was significant, particularly for climate change, equaling 19% of total emissions of CO(2)eq per tonne of cooled and packaged chicken, in the system of the Center-West of Brazil. The French systems were also affected, since they import crops from Brazil. The system of southern Brazil had less climate change impact because there is no longer deforestation in southern Brazil for crop production. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The availability of fresh water and the quality of aquatic ecosystems are important global concerns, and agriculture plays a major role. Consumers and manufacturers are increasingly sensitive to sustainability issues related to processed food products and drinks. The present study examines the production of sugar from the growing cycle through to processing to the factory gate, and identifies the potential impacts on water scarcity and quality and the ways in which the impact of water use can be minimised. We have reviewed the production phases and processing steps, and how calculations of water use can be complicated, or in some cases how assessments can be relatively straightforward. Finally, we outline several ways that growers and sugar processors are improving the efficiency of water use and reducing environmental impact, and where further advances can be made. This provides a template for the assessment of other crops. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical IndustryIn this study, thermo-environmental sustainability of an oil palm-based biorefinery concept for the coproduction of cellulosic ethanol and phytochemicals from oil palm fronds (OPFs) was evaluated based on exergetic life cycle assessment (ExLCA). For the production of 1 tonne bioethanol, the exergy content of oil palm seeds was upgraded from 236 MJ to 77,999 MJ during the farming process for OPFs production. Again, the high exergy content of the OPFs was degraded by about 62.02% and 98.36% when they were converted into cellulosic ethanol and phenolic compounds respectively. With a total exergy destruction of about 958,606 MJ (internal) and 120,491 MJ (external or exergy of wastes), the biorefinery recorded an overall exergy efficiency and thermodynamic sustainability index (TSI) of about 59.05% and 2.44 per tonne of OPFs' bioethanol respectively. Due to the use of fossil fuels, pesticides, fertilizers and other toxic chemicals during the production, the global warming potential (GWP = 2265.69 kg CO2 eq.), acidification potential (AP = 355.34 kg SO2 eq.) and human toxicity potential (HTP = 142.79 kg DCB eq.) were the most significant environmental impact categories for a tonne of bioethanol produced in the biorefinery. The simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) unit emerged as the most exergetically efficient (89.66%), thermodynamically sustainable (TSI = 9.67) and environmentally friendly (6.59% of total GWP) production system. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emergy attempts to measure the environmental work required to generate (ecosystem) goods and services that can be used by humans. It is claimed that the use of inventory modelling principles behind the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method (European Commission, 2010a) may improve the Emergy Synthesis method, which has been criticized for its low accuracy and lack of standardization in the accounting procedure. LCA has become a standard procedure to investigate the environmental performance of human-dominated products and processes. Where LCA fundamentally differs from Emergy Synthesis is in that the former draws the boundary around the life cycle of the system under study, and looks at impacts that happen as direct consequences of it; conversely, Emergy Synthesis always looks at a system as embedded in the larger natural system that underpins it, and includes all direct and indirect inputs that converged to support it over much larger time and space scales, including 'freely available' ones which are typically neglected or only partly accounted for in LCA (e.g. rainfall, soil organic matter, etc.). Emergy arguably offers the added value of a comprehensive donor-side perspective, an approximation of the work of the environment that would be needed to replace what is used, and presents a unified measure of the provision of environmental support. We maintain that it may be viewed as a valuable complement, rather than an alternative, to existing life cycle impact assessment metrics. The lingering obstacles to such integration are enumerated and discussed. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and a possible future shortage of fossil resources are leading to a growing demand for wood biomass as a renewable material and energy source. In this context, forestry activities are increasing to meet the larger demand for wood biomass supply. Hence, there is also an increasing need for assessing environmental costs and impacts of forestry operations, considering both direct and indirect inputs supporting wood production systems as well as main outputs, co-products, and by-products. In this study, a multi-method assessment encompassing material, energy, and emergy demand as well as relevant emissions was implemented to explore the environmental performance and sustainability of timber and wood biomass production in the Alpine context of Fiemme and Fassa Valleys, Province of Trento (Italy). The Energy Return On Investment (EROI) calculated for timber and wood chips production was 51.9 and 28.1. These output/input energy ratios showed that the products' energy content was high compared to the direct and indirect fossil energy invested in both production processes. The global to local ratio of abiotic material calculated for timber and wood chips was 3.58 and 2.95, proving that about 2 times more matter flows were extracted and processed elsewhere than locally to supply the production processes. The fraction of renewable emergy calculated for timber and wood chips was 81% and 75% while the Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR) was 4.57 and 3.86, respectively, proving that the forestry system is considerably supported by renewable and locally available resources. The release of CO2 was 855 and 133 t CO2/yr when considering the whole Fiemme and Fassa Valleys. These last figures, compared to the potential of the two valleys for greenhouse gas mitigation, showed the ability of the investigated forestry sector to perform within the limits of the local carrying capacity in terms of CO2 emissions. Finally, the scenario analysis highlighted the maximum production level compatible with a sustainable forest exploitation. In conclusion, the development of a multi-method approach to environmental accounting allowed a comprehensive assessment of forestry operations, providing a tool useful for local managers and policy makers committed to implement an environmentally sound management of forestry activities. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A pronounced presence of toluene from rotogravure printed matter has been frequently observed indoors. However, its consequences to human health in the life cycle of magazines are poorly known. Therefore, we quantified human-health risks in indoor environments with Risk Assessment (RA) and impacts relative to the total impact of toxic releases occurring in the life cycle of a magazine with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). We used a one-box indoor model to estimate toluene concentrations in printing facilities, newsstands, and residences in a best, average, and worst-case scenario. The modeled concentrations are in the range of the values measured in on-site campaigns. Toluene concentrations can be close or even surpass the occupational legal thresholds in printing facilities in realistic worst-case scenarios. The concentrations in homes can surpass the US EPA reference dose (69 mu g/kg/day) in worst-case scenarios, but are still at least 1 order of magnitude lower than in press rooms or newsstands. However, toluene inhaled at home becomes the dominant contribution to the total potential human toxicity impacts of toluene from printed matter when assessed with LCA, using the USEtox method complemented with indoor characterization factors for toluene. The significant contribution (44%) of toluene exposure in production, retail, and use in households, to the total life cycle impact of a magazine in the category of human toxicity, demonstrates that the indoor compartment requires particular attention in LCA. While RA works with threshold levels, LCA assumes that every toxic emission causes an incremental change to the total impact. Here, the combination of the two paradigms provides valuable information on the life cycle stages of printed matter.The aim of this paper is to discuss the major technological changes related to the implementation of large-scale cogeneration and biofuel production in the sugar and alcohol industry. The reduction of the process steam consumption, implementation of new alternatives in driving mills, the widespread practice of high steam parameters use in cogeneration facilities, the insertion of new technologies for biofuels production (hydrolysis and gasification), the energy conversion of sugarcane trash and vinasse, animal feed production, process integration and implementation of the biorefinery concept are considered. Another new paradigm consists in the wide spreading of sustainability studies of products and processes using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the implementation of sustainability indexes. Every approach to this issue has as an objective to increase the economic efficiency and the possibilities of the sugarcane as a main source of two basic raw materials: fibres and sugar. The paper briefly presents the concepts, indicators, state-of-the-art and perspectives of each of the referred issues.Although several international carbon footprint (CF) calculation initiatives have been developed, studies that focus specifically on estimating the CF of pigmeat are rather limited. This paper describes the application of a CF methodology, based on lifecycle assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, for Flemish pigmeat production using the Publicly Available Specification methodology (PAS2050, BSI 2011), which is at present the most developed method and relevant within the agricultural and horticultural sector. Both primary and secondary data have been used to model the meat system through a chain approach. The results are reported using the functional unit of 1kg of deboned pigmeat; and range from 4.8 to 6.4kg CO2 eq./kg of deboned pig meat. A sensitivity analysis has been executed on changes in herd and feed characteristics. The results have been compared with other studies on the CF of pigmeat in the European Union and with CF studies on milk and beef production in Flanders. Furthermore, two major hotspots in the CF have been defined: the composition and production of feed, and manure production and usage. It is important to mention that the CF is a good indicator for GHG emissions, but it is not an indicator for environmental impact in general. This paper helps to fill the void in the CF literature which existed around pigmeat products and to define a benchmark for CF of pigmeat.What role does scientific claims-making play in the worldwide promotion of biofuels for transport, which continues despite serious concerns about its potentially adverse social and environmental effects? And how do actors with very different and conflicting viewpoints on the benefits and drawbacks of biofuels enrol scientific authority to support their positions? The sociological theory of functional differentiation combined with the concept of advocacy coalition can help in exploring this relationship between scientific claims-making and the policy stance of different actors in public debates about biofuels. In Denmark two distinct scientific perspectives about biofuels map onto the policy debates through articulation by two competing advocacy coalitions. One is a reductionist biorefinery perspective originating in biochemistry and neighbouring disciplines. This perspective works upwards from the molecular level and envisions positive synergies in the use of biomass. The other is a holistic bioscarcity perspective originating in life-cycle analysis and ecology. This perspective works downwards from global resource scope conditions, and envisions negative consequences from an increased reliance on biomass. Understanding how these scientific perspectives and policy stances are coupled sheds light on three contentious policy questions: how Denmark should include biomass in its energy provision, what role Denmark might play in the global development of biofuels and what kind of subsidy schemes should be implemented.This scoping study assesses the contribution that woody biomass could make to feedstock supply for an aviation biofuel industry in Queensland. The inland 600-900 mm rainfall zone, including the Fitzroy Basin region, is identified as an area that is particularly worthy of closer study as it has potential for supply of woody biomass from existing native regrowth (brigalow and other species) as well as from new plantings. New analyses carried out for this study of Corymbia citriodora subsp. variegata trials suggest biomass plantings could produce harvestable yield of aboveground dry mass of about 85tha(-1) over a 10-year rotation at relatively low-rainfall (600-750mm mean annual precipitation) sites and about 115tha(-1) at medium-rainfall (750-900mm) sites. Estimates of productivity for native regrowth suggest potential productivity should be around 40t ha(-1) during the initial decade after clearing when systems are managed for bioenergy rather than grazing. In this paper, potential production systems are described, and sustainability issues are briefly considered. It is concluded that more detailed studies focused particularly on biomass production would be worthwhile, and further research requirements are briefly discussed.In this study, we present a comparative environmental impact assessment of possible hydrogen production methods from renewable and non-renewable sources with a special emphasis on their application in Turkey. It is aimed to study and compare the performances of hydrogen production methods and assess their economic, social and environmental impacts, The methods considered in this study are natural gas steam reforming, coal gasification, water electrolysis via wind and solar energies, biomass gasification, thermochemical water splitting with a Cu-Cl and S-I cycles, and high temperature electrolysis. Environmental impacts (global warming potential, GWP and acidification potential, AP), production costs, energy and exergy efficiencies of these eight methods are compared. Furthermore, the relationship between plant capacity and hydrogen production capital cost is studied. The social cost of carbon concept is used to present the relations between environmental impacts and economic factors. The results indicate that thermochemical water splitting with the Cu Cl and S I cycles become more environmentally benign than the other traditional methods in terms of emissions. The options with wind, solar and high temperature electrolysis also provide environmentally attractive results. Electrolysis methods are found to be least attractive when production costs are considered. Therefore, increasing the efficiencies and hence decreasing the costs of hydrogen production from solar and wind electrolysis bring them forefront as potential options. The energy and exergy efficiency comparison study indicates the advantages of biomass gasification over other methods. Overall rankings show that thermochemical Cu-Cl and S-I cycles are primarily promising candidates to produce hydrogen in an environmentally benign and cost-effective way. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to evaluate the seismic risk of transportation networks, it is necessary to develop a methodology that integrates the probabilities of occurrence of seismic events in a region, the vulnerability of the civil infrastructure, and the consequences of the seismic hazard to the society, environment, and economy. In this article, a framework for the time-variant seismic sustainability and risk assessment of highway bridge networks is presented. The sustainability of the network is quantified in terms of its social, environmental, and economic metrics. These include the expected downtime, expected energy waste and carbon dioxide emissions, and the expected loss. The methodology considers the probability of occurrence of a set of seismic scenarios that reflect the seismic activity of the region. The performance of network links is quantified based on individual bridge performance evaluated through fragility analyses. The sustainability and risk depend on the damage states of both the links and the bridges within the network following an earthquake scenario. The time-variation of the sustainability metrics and risk due to structural deterioration is identified. The approach is illustrated on a transportation network located in Alameda County, California.To copy with rapidly changing market demands and fierce global competition, the future of chemical manufacturing is modular, flexilble and sustainable. Yet, how can sustainability be measured? The main objective of this chapter is to present the methods and tools to assess the performance of processes considering criteria of sustainable development that could be applied in the preliminary stages of their design. It explores the frontiers of the system to consider when tackling the sustainable design of processes, the stages at which the different criteria need to be taken into account and how they can be quantified. Finally, some design methods for sustainable processes and systems are proposed.Chapter 1 was devoted to project management and presented the industrialization process, where several steps are involved. This chapter focuses on the various methods and tools that can be used in process synthesis, going from preliminary projects to projects. Process design can be viewed as an interactive and multiple-step activity in which process flowsheeting has long been recognized as a valuable tool to aid decision making. Special emphasis is put on the coupling between such simulators and optimization methods, namely multi-objective ones that can be particularly useful for taking into account various criteria. This is particularly relevant for eco-design approaches. Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques have also proved to be efficient when many conflicting criteria are involved. The case study of biodiesel process serves as an illustration to show the potential of the coupling between a flowsheeting simulator, an lifecycle assessment (LCA) model and a multi-objective optimization procedure for eco-design.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method used to quantify potential environmental impacts in the entire life cycle of a product or service, starting at raw material acquisition, production, use, and eventually its disposal. It is the leading methodology for environmental metrics today - the French government recently ran a pilot for a labelling program for consumer goods where indicators displayed in labels should be calculated using LCA. The European Commission did the same for their Product Footprint Guidelines. However, LCA features many methodological shortcomings when dealing with biophysical indicators. Land use, biodiversity and ecosystem services are relevant aspects to policy-makers and consumers, but their characterization factors are not yet accurately calculated. LCA has a hard time grasping effects that are dynamic, scale-dependent, non-linear and/or hard to quantify unambiguously. In fact, out of the four conventional types of ecosystem services (provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services and supporting services) only the first and the last are partially captured in LCA results. Similarly, out of the five drivers of change to biodiversity identified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (habitat change, climate change, pollution, invasive alien species and overexploitation) only the first three are included in standard LCA calculations. This review article presents a brief assessment of how biodiversity and ecosystem services are incorporated in LCA today. The standard Life Cycle Impact Assessment models are described according to the most recent developments. Ground-breaking work is undergoing, making the field very active and constantly innovating. For example, regionalized characterization factors for the impacts of biodiversity are now available using species richness as a proxy for the overall state of biodiversity. Tools for ecosystem services have also been proposed. Finally, a compilation of some challenges ahead is listed to present several ideas for the improvement of current impact assessment methods.The importance of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an impact assessment tool has been growing in recent years. There are important mandates in place that provide incentives for companies to use this method to quantify the environmental impacts of their activities, and more are expected to follow. There are, however, some significant challenges that must still be addressed before the method becomes established practice. One of the most important barriers remaining is finding a widely accepted and accurate impact assessment method for biodiversity. This review article presents a reflection on the concept of species richness as it is currently used in Life Cycle Impact Assessment methodologies. It applies to calculations of biodiversity impacts from land use exclusively. Power law models such as the Species-Area Relationship are useful macroecological tools to predict potential extinctions from land use due to their apparent simplicity and broad applicability. The main assumptions of the SAR models are laid out and their limitations critically assessed when used in the context of LCA. Alternatives models are proposed for future evaluation by Industrial Ecologists and Biologists. The article also proposes a rationale under which a model can be considered to fit LCA's purpose, and finally conclude with a shortlist of topics for future research.The world's global economy is based on the access to energy. The majority of useful energy is still produced by combustion of fossil fuels that belongs to non-renewable natural resources. Besides the depletion of non-renewable resources there is also a problem related to release of waste substances into the natural environment. Moreover, efficient power and energy sector is one of the factors determining the competitive management of countries or regions. Often the improvement of energy management is focused on power technologies or effectiveness of final production processes. However, some improvement can be found in the stage of extraction, processing and transportation of fuels. To evaluate chains of the processes inside the system the ecological analysis such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Thermo-Ecological Cost (TEC) analyses is necessary. LCA in association with characterization factors is commonly used; however, TEC which is based on second law of thermodynamics is not so widespread. In the papers fundamentals of both TEC and LCA methods are described. The example results of TEC and LCA application in the case of extraction of hard coal from Polish coal mines are presented.At present, the Chinese government attaches great importance to the development of the metro, because the traffic problem is thereby alleviated, and the economy is generously promoted. However, the environmental impact caused by metro in China has been little researched, especially the environmental impact during the construction period. This text deals with an example to illustrate the environmental impact caused by metro construction. According to the research, following conclusions could be reached: 1) The damage caused by steel is always at greatest; 2) No matter in which process, the damage to human health is always at greatest; 3) Some measures could be taken to alleviate these problems, and the possible measures are mentioned in this text.This chapter begins by reviewing the long history of maize as a biofuel crop, with a focus on ethanol production and use in the United States. It then turns to its center of origin in Mexico and domestication in the Western Hemisphere. The next sections focus on its botanical descriptions, and economic importance both domestically and internationally. The following sections describe the use of maize as a model plant for bioenergy research, and studies on its suitability as a bioenergy plant from a variety of perspectives. Finally, the chapter ends with brief conclusions.Some people may argue that global demand for renewable energy such as maize-derived biofuels, especially in the industrialized countries, could lead to high maize grain prices worldwide. The affordability of maize seeds by the poor may be affected in the short term by high prices, thereby increasing hunger and malnutrition. Alternatively an increase of maize prices can also create new options for investing in farming that may translate into the long term of promoting economic growth, which will help many maize farmers in the developing world to move out of poverty. A spike in maize grain prices could however reduce its demand as raw material for ethanol because of low profit margins. Life cycle analysis (LCA) suggests that maize ethanol can decrease greenhouse gas emissions vis a vis petrol in some factory settings. Furthermore, maize stover, which is a major source of biomass residue and among the largest in some highly productive agro-ecosystems, could become an important biomass resource for the generation of renewable liquid fuels (e.g., cellulosic ethanol) without causing soil erosion or the depletion of soil carbon. Nonetheless, maize stover may not be competitive as cellulosic ethanol source because there may be extra high costs for collecting and transporting it over large distances to supply processing factories. Complicating these scenarios further is the need to balance the bioenergy demands with national food security. These policies will vary country-by-country and will be shaped by infrastructure in addition to technology development. In this regard, crop yields must increase significantly but sustainably using existing farmland to meet this challenge. Data-driven maize breeding, which combines both conventional and genomics-based approaches, may assist further to increase acreage under cultivation by modifying these plants to grow on challenged soils not currently under agriculture.Accessing information about potential and real impacts of products requires effective tool for evaluating every particular economic, environmental and social impact along the whole supply chain. Traditional environmental LCA - Life Cycle Analyses of products involve basically material, energy and economic flows, but social impacts of the supply chains are often underestimated. Social Life Cycle Assessment represents traditional environmental content of LCA extended by tools for assessment of social and socioeconomic impacts of product/s on the workers, the consumers, the local communities, the society and other shareholders involved in supply chain. Progressive enterprises introduce Supply Chain Management in consideration of potential savings and avoiding resources wastage. But effective supply chain management system should bring balanced information covering economic, environmental and social tasks along the whole supply chain. The contribution deals with limitations and problems related with evaluation of environmental and social impacts along the whole supply chain by Social Life Cycle Assessment method. The main objective is to determine possible system boundaries of Social Life Cycle Assessment for effective measurement and evaluation of social impacts of products and discuss problems related with evaluation of social impacts along the whole supply chain from a company perspective.The number of flexible pipes in operation is increasing due to new field developments and the desire to extend the lifetime of existing fields. There have been many challenges with respect to long term operation of such pipes, in many cases with the need to replace or repair before the end of the initial design life. The number of identified failure mechanisms and observed failure events is also increasing. The present paper summarizes state of the art technology related to operation of flexible pipes and some recent research and development activities that contribute to resolving these issues. In particular, the following topics are addressed: Fatigue testing of flexible pipes subjected to corrosion damage during operation Development of improved numerical models and methods for assessment of the residual capacity of flexible pipes Integrity assessment of flexible pipes also applying quantified risk and reliability assessment Repair methods for damaged pipe sections In addition, an outline is given of a Handbook (ref. Handbook 2014) which addresses the various topics related to life-cycle design and operation of flexible pipes, see Appendix. Future prioritized research efforts with focus on some of the topical issues given in the list above are finally addressed.In this evolving context, to pursue a Life Cycle approach, realizing green products / system at the less cost of ownership, can be a strategic key for Advanced Countries companies to compete and survive in the global market. Aim of this paper is to present a model for Life Cycle Optimisation, considering both economic and environmental dimensions. At the end of the paper a first applica- tion of this model will be presented.Nowadays, the environment becomes a major issue in our society. It gives rise to regulations, market demand and stakeholder's pressure which are concerning companies. These latter have to reduce the negative impact of their new product by eco-design and adopting a continuous improvement for their existing product portfolio. To do so, environmental assessment system is needed. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most known and recognized. However, this method is complex, requires significant resources and a large amount of accurate data. We propose a methodology to connect a simplified LCA tool with PLM system and ERP to evaluate an entire product portfolio at any time. This will allow design teams to consider the environmental issues in early design phase and gives the companies a global vision of their product portfolio. This methodology is experimented with packaging products of luxury brand, using the Teamcenter PLM system and a Simplified LCA Tool.Due to the increasing energy consumption and depletion of fossil fuels, alternative energy sources are becoming an increasingly important topic. One of the most important renewable energy sources is the energy from phytomass. Recently, also in the conditions of the Czech Republic, there has been a significant development of production of energy crops as raw material for the biogas production in biogas plants (BGP). However, farming and particularly technical processes associated with it participate in the anthropogenic emission production. This article presents the results of monitoring of emission load resulting from the cultivation of maize (Zea mays L.) for energy purposes. As a tool for emission load measuring (expressed in CO(2)e where CO(2)e = 1x CO2 + 23x CH4 + 298x N2O), the simplified LCA method, respectively its climate impact category, was used. For calculation, the SIMA Pro software and the Recipe Midpoint (H) method was used. From the results, it is obvious that the cultivation of maize for energy purposes produces the greatest amount of CO2e emissions within nitrate fertilization (0.052455 kg CO(2)e.1kg(-1) of dry matter) and field emissions (0.050359 kg CO(2)e.1kg(-1) of dry matter). Maize cultivation for energy purposes shows a higher emission load as compared for example with energy grasses.Innovation has been touted as a means toward providing sustainability. Innovations in materials, manufacturing, and product design can lead to a reduction of global environmental impacts while helping to realize the goals of a sustainable society. This research aims to explore whether or not product functionality has an effect on environmental impact and if the flow of energy, materials, and signals (EMS) have an effect on product environmental impact. Innovative and common products are identified and life cycle assessment is performed for each product at the component level. Using function impact matrices, the environmental impacts of the product components are propagated back to the functional level, where their impacts are compared. The innovative products of the comparisons conducted appear to be more environmentally impact; more work must be done to understand whether the result is generalizable. The intended use of this research is during the conceptual design phase when little is known about the final form of a product. With approximate impacts of functions known, designers can better utilize their design efforts to reduce overall product environmental impact.Next generation jet engine technologies are typically driven by performance, value and environmental challenges, and appropriate technologies are developed in international research programs. One on-going engine component technology project at an aerospace component manufacturer aims to develop an engine with less fuel consumption. A likely consequence is higher pressure in the core engine, which leads to higher temperature. One way to handle the higher temperature is using a more advanced Ti-alloy for the product component, which will render a different sustainability profile. One weakness in current decision situations is the inability to clarify and understand the "value" and "sustainability" implications compared to e.g. perfoimance features of concepts. Both "value" and "sustainability" include a rich set of features important for successful introduction of new products and product-service solutions to the market. The purpose with this research is to provide decision support for companies in early development phases for assessment of value and sustainability consequences over product-service system lifecycles. A workshop was held with the aerospace component manufacturer and a value chain partner focusing on material handling, to: i) get a better understanding of activities, flows and ownership related to the studied materials at the two companies, ii) to understand the companies' perspective at new suggested scenarios with regard to these materials, and iii) define relevant scenarios to look into more in depth from a sustainability and value perspective. Three different scenarios were developed with differences in ownership, responsibilities and value streams. It is therefore essential to be able to quickly assess and optimize consequences of such alternative scenarios. Based on the workshop experiences and scenarios, a modeling and simulation approach to assess sustainability and value consequences for the scenarios is proposed. The sustainability consequences are based on a sustainability life cycle assessment and a risk assessment. Key features of the proposed tool include: consideration of the time dimension, societal sustainability consequences, risk assessment, company value assessment, and cost/revenue perspectives.Design for sustainability often considers three potentially competing objectives in economic, ecological, and social sustainability. In general, business success hinges on economic sustainability, while ecological and social concerns are treated as secondary objectives for marketing or political purposes. Previous research has shown that there is a tradeoff among these sustainability objectives regarding design decisions that include tolerances and material choices, and different market- or policy-driven incentives may result in different optimal design decisions. This study presents and demonstrates an approach for evaluating legislative opportunities that may internalize ecological and social objectives into the economic objectives of product-developing firms, using the case study of an automotive body panel. Modeling and simulation tools from Computer Aided Tolerancing (CAT), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and design optimization are combined using a novel framework to show how sustainability-driven government policies such as taxation may influence design decisions and sustainability outcomes.As sustainable building design practices become more prevalent in today's construction market, designers are looking to alternative materials for novel design strategies. This paper presents a case study comparing the sustainability performance of cross laminated timber (CLT) and reinforced concrete. A comparative sustainability assessment of cross laminated timber and concrete, considering economic, environmental, and social aspects was performed. Environmental impact is measured in terms of CO2 equivalent, economic impact is measured with total sector cost (including sector interdependencies), and qualitative metrics were considered for social impact. In order to conduct an accurate performance comparison, a functional unit of building facade volume was chosen for each product. For this paper, several end-of-life strategies were modeled for CLT and concrete facades. To understand environmental, economic, and social impact, three different scenarios were analyzed to compare performance of both CLT and concrete, including cradle to gate product manufacturing, manufacturing with landfill end-of-life, and manufacturing with recycling end-of-life. Environmental LCA was modeled using GaBi 5.0 Education Edition, which includes its own database for elements including materials, processes, and transportation. To compare the economic impact, Carnegie Mellon's EIO-LCA online tool is used. Finally, social life cycle impact was considered by identifying process attributes of both products that affect the social domain. Based on this analysis, the use of CLT has a significantly lower environmental impact than concrete, however there are additional costs.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method to measure the environmental impact of a product's life stages from the cradle to the grave, and is widely used for packaging sustainability. Although many successful applications using LCA have been reported, the current state of LCA tools still has many limitations. For example, it is difficult to select the best design among the LCA results of design sets. Moreover, the LCA tool cannot implement a decision maker's preference into the process easily. To overcome these limitations, we developed a decision making tool using LCA for packaging sustainability. First, Pareto Active Set Selection (PASS) method is proposed to find Pareto Front of packaging options. Additionally, Design Preference Function (DPF) is introduced to implement the designer's preference for selecting the best packaging options. Case studies are presented to demonstrate this decision making tool.Global collaboration is now a key for enterprises to rapidly achieve their worldwide successes. During the rapid expansion of their business, many challenges are emerging, e.g., novice training, knowledge transferring, intellectual property (IF) protection. This paper presented an effective approach for gaining new knowledge in a design project through reverse engineering by using Environment Based Design (EBD) methodology. The case study used in this paper was designed to demonstrate how design knowledge can be assimilated by using the proposed approach. A graduate student, without any aerospace design knowledge and experience, was presented with a sentence extracted from a statement of work of a student capstone project in the aerospace engineering department of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal. Within a month, the graduate student designer was able to deliver a conceptual design solution including product life cycle analysis, with only public resources at his disposal. The results were then evaluated by experts in aerospace who have collectively overseen the project for many years, on how much knowledge the student had assimilated. A comparison, between the student designer and other novice designers from the project, was given thereafter. The assessment turns out promising and inspiring in terms of the knowledge assimilation for a novice within such a short tune. In other words, the effectiveness of the presented approach has been validated. This is a feasible attempt to significantly shorten the time and minimize the efforts for novice training and knowledge transferring in education and industry, especially when a firm is expanding their global business.Heavy duty machines consume a tremendous amount of energy during their life cycle. Therefore, designing an energy efficient machine is of great importance. This paper presents a method for the comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of two different types of press machines: servo press and flywheel press to understand quantitatively the environmental emissions during their life cycles. To make a fair comparison of the two machines, the same amount of production is used as the basis for comparison. Assessment scopes and boundaries are defined first, then detailed product structures and manufacturing processes are investigated. After data collection from visiting enterprises, related project reports, academic papers, and commercial software databases, analysis of the life cycle inventory is performed. Comparative inventory tables for each life cycle stages and whole life cycle are presented. The results of the study can be used for decision making during the product purchase, planning and design process.Much progress has been made in sustainable design over the past 20 years since the first publications on design for the environment started to appear in the mechanical engineering literature. Engineering design methods now attempt to include environmental considerations and Life-Cycle Analysis is a commonly used approach nowadays. Nevertheless, some fundamental problems seem to be recurring and remain unresolved. More so, some of these problems can have significant effects on the efficacy of design methods. Without consideration or even acknowledgement of these problems, proposed sustainable design methods may not bring us closer to sustainability at all. In this paper, we highlight a few of these recurring problems. Although true sustainable design should also include social and financial considerations, we will focus primarily on the environmental issues in this paper.The focus of this paper is to present life-cycle assessment (LCA) of a TV/VCR remote, including alkaline batteries, and to compare the environmental impacts with a redesigned remote consisting of a solar cell. LCA is a very helpful tool in identifying the most important factors for improving product sustainability. The remote considered in this study can control both television and video cassette recorder This remote is manufactured in Malaysia and exported to the United States. Its life-cycle system includes raw material, parts, shipment, use phase and waste treatment; its life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is performed using SimaPro 7.1 and employing the TRACI method. LCA uncertainty analyzing is performed for both remotes utilizing Monte Carlo simulation in SimaPro 7.1. LCA result shows use of alkaline battery affects most obviously in environmental impacts. In Eco-design remote model, both energy type and raw materials changed. Environmental impacts reduce in five categories in redesigned remote. This paper: 1) presents a prototype design for product using solar cell; 2) presents a novel method for designers to determine raw materials to improve product sustainability in designing stage; 3) provides suggestions for manufacturers to improve product sustainability through reuse of solar cell or a leasing strategy.The function-to-form (F-T-F) mapping methodology provides a generic reasoning mechanism used in early design synthesis process to help designer map functional requirements of a product to a physical form (product) by optimally composing a set of pre-defined artifacts to satisfy the given physical constraints and design goals. The objective of this paper is to develop an integrated function-to-form technique that incorporates environmental constraints and other sustainable manufacturing issues into a previous function-to-form mapping framework. Since sustainability is considered as a global constraint for any product, a top-down design strategy and an assembly-centric product representation are needed for the product's global evaluation and optimization. In this paper, it is proposed to integrate the Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques into the function-to-form mapping framework for considering the assemblability, manufacturability and other issues related to the product's environmental impacts in its early design stage. A case study has been presented as a proof-of-concept of the proposed methodology.The environmental performance of a carbon dioxide (CO2) capture project at the Saskatchewan Power Corporation's (SaskPower) Boundary Dam Power Station in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada was evaluated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Operations of the lignite coal fired electricity generating station with and without post-combustion CO2 capture and CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2-EOR) were modelled. The results showed a reduction in global warming and air impact categories. Even though increases in some categories associated with soil and water were observed, the broad distribution associated with atmospheric release was significantly reduced, which provided human health benefits that outweigh the negative of increased emissions. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Hydrogen production from natural gas, combined with advanced CO2 capture technologies, such as iron-based chemical looping (CL), is considered in the present work. The processes are compared to the conventional base case, i.e. hydrogen production via natural gas steam reforming (SR) without CO2 capture. The processes are simulated using commercial software (ChemCAD) and evaluated from a technical point of view considering important key performance indicators such as hydrogen thermal output, net electric power, carbon capture rate and specific CO2 emissions. The environmental evaluation is performed using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) with the following system boundaries considered: i) hydrogen production from natural gas coupled to CO2 capture technologies based on CL, ii) upstream processes such as: extraction and processing of natural gas, ilmenite and catalyst production and iii) downstream processes such as: H-2 and CO2 compression, transport and storage. The LCA assessment was carried out using the GaBi6 software. Different environmental impact categories, following here the CML 2001 impact assessment method, were calculated and used to determine the most suitable technology. Sensitivity analyses of the CO2 compression, transport and storage stages were performed in order to examine their effect on the environmental impact categories. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This article presents an overview of an environmental due diligence framework developed as part of the EDDiCCUT project, and presents analysis and results from the first test case - MEA based CO2 capture process. The framework draws upon well-established technical, economic and environmental assessment methods and integrates technical performance, uncertainties, cost estimation and life cycle inventory data to ensure consistency and enhance quality. Results show that for the modelled coal power plant of about 800 MW gross power output, the CO2 capture system lowers the net efficiency by 10.4% efficiency points and results in a 68% increase in the cost of electricity. Environmental performance evaluated on a broad range of 24 impacts and emission categories indicates a 68% reduction in climate change warming potential with 20-90% increase in other impacts. By comparing the quality of the inventory data used for environmental assessment with the state-of-art data in available life cycle assessment literature, it is found that the due diligence analysis brings significant improvement in the quality of data for certain processes in the value chain. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study evaluates the potential environmental impacts of deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) for pulverized coal power plants in Japan by using LCA, focusing on selected environmental impact categories including global warming. The LIME (Life-cycle impact assessment method based on endpoint modeling) method is used to assess and compare the environmental impacts between three cases, a typical ultra-supercritical pulverized coal-fired power generation system (case 1) and two CCS systems, one comprised of CO2 capture with monoethanolamine (MEA) solvent, compression, seafloor pipeline transportation and below seafloor storage (case 2) and the other case was the same as case 2 except that CO2 transportation by ship was used (case 3). The life cycle GHG emissions for case 1 were 0.89 kg-CO2 (eq.)/kWh. GHG emissions for case 2 and case 3 were 20% and 29%, respectively, of emissions for case 1. However non-GHG emissions increased for case 2 and case 3, especially emissions of NH3 from the CO2 capture process and ethylene oxide from the MEA production process. The results for the 3 cases at the endpoint level, which estimated the damage on four safeguard subjects (human health, social asset, biodiversity and primary production), showed that for case 2 and 3, damage to biodiversity and primary productivity increase by 40% respectively caused by increased feed coal to meet energy consumption on CO2 capture process while the damage to human health decreased by approximately 60% due to the large reduction in CO2 emissions. The increased damage to social assets caused by NH3 emission and increased energy consumption due to CCS is similar with the reduction in damage due to reduction of CO2 emissions. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of three different carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technologies, namely post-combustion, pre-combustion and oxy-fuel capture. The Boundary Dam Power Station (BDPS) in Saskatchewan, Canada was chosen as a case study for modeling of operations at the electrical generating station. This study showed that CO2 capture technologies have the potential of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Where an increase in the impact categories associated with soil and water was observed, the release of pollutants to the atmosphere were reduced and became more manageable in their waste streams. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper aims to place discussions about CO2 utilisation onto a more secure foundation from the perspective of climate change mitigation. A conceptual framework is proposed that comprises three criteria for evaluating CO2 utilisation options from the viewpoint of emission reduction potential. This framework places life cycle analysis at its forefront. Examples of emissions benefits for thermodynamic minimum energy inputs and possible real-world conditions are used to show that not all CO2 utilisation is equally beneficial from a climate perspective. Most current and potential uses of CO2 do not appear to yet satisfy the three main criteria of emission reduction benefits, revenue to cover CO2 feedstock costs and meaningful scale. The notable exceptions are certain (geographically limited) approaches to enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). Due to the energy required to convert CO2 to useful products it appears highly likely that reducing CO2 emissions through CO2 utilisation will only be possible if the electricity (and, in some cases, the thermal energy) inputs are from renewable sources. This raises questions about the most appropriate use of renewable resources, especially if they are to be employed for the purpose of partially mitigating emissions from large stationary fossil fuel combustion plants. It also raises questions about how to match the potential revenue from and scale of CO2 utilisation based on variable renewable resources with investments in CO2 capture at meaningful scales. CO2 utilisation options that can proceed without a CO2 capture and purification step or can be located in regions where CCS is an ongoing commercial business may offer good opportunities for further development if they can scale to multi-million tonne per year activities. Climate policies that aim to support revenues for CO2 utilisation activities will need to carefully consider how the fossil fuel value chain allocates liability for environmental damages associated with life cycle emissions; these are likely to be greater than zero but not accurately predictable. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.DNV GL has developed a comprehensive method for evaluation of carbon dioxide utilisation concepts, evaluating technical, environmental and economic aspects, to select the most robust concepts. The method can be described as life cycle assessment extended with a technical and economic assessment. The paper will demonstrate the methodology using two generic cases. Sequestration of carbon dioxide has been under development for more than two decades, and while the technical feasibility may have been sufficiently demonstrated, reducing costs and preferably making a profit is still high on the agenda. A chemical process where carbon dioxide can be used as a feedstock to produce a valuable product is a desirable pursuit. As of today, apart from carbon dioxide-EOR, all other ways of carbon dioxide utilization are niche markets in terms of volume (e.g. carbon dioxide for refrigeration, for drinks, carbon dioxide to methanol). As carbon dioxide has no chemical energy, any chemical utilisation process would require input of energy. However, the list of asserted promising concepts seems endless: utilisation of solar energy via the natural photosynthesis, e.g. algae, is a common factor in many concepts; imitation of the photosynthesis, using one or several catalysts for chemical absorption of solar energy; utilisation of "waste energy" or reacting carbon dioxide with carbonates to form cement are other assertions amongst many others. Governmental bodies and other financial stakeholders are interested in ensuring the soundness of their support or investment for such projects. There is a need for a methodology that would provide them with the means of assessing viability of the various proposed concepts. Some of the published carbon dioxide utilisation concepts are not feasible either due to sizeable costs or, would require so much space that forestation of the land would be a better option for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, or that the energy required for the process would produce more carbon dioxide than is consumed by the process itself DNV GL proposes a methodology to assess the feasibility of these concepts using well established tools readily applied in other industries for various assessments. These tools are integrated in a manner that provides a user-friendly yet robust approach to evaluate the concepts. For assessing the environmental perspective, Life Cycle Assessment (ISO 14040 and ISO 14044) technique can be used to assess cradle-to-grave environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the project. This methodology can be applied to assess if a particular technology is viable from a carbon and energy footprint perspective. For assessing the technical perspective, the Technology Qualification process (DNV-RP-A203) can help identify the novel components of a technology or the unproven applications of the technology as well as the main challenges and uncertainties of the concept. For assessing the economic perspective, an Economic Assessment analysing benefits and costs is applied. The method has been applied to two generic examples; one related to algae production of biofuels; and one related to production of methanol utilising carbon dioxide. The developed methodology can be applied at an early stage of the concept development to evaluate the pros and cons, before an investment decision is made. The tools applied are compatible with each other due to similar boundary conditions, description of the technology, specification of inlet and outlet streams, functional requirements definition etc., and thus allowing for a single combined approach in lieu of various independent studies. Moreover, the single approach will enable better cross-checking of data quality providing a complete picture of the studied concept from a technical, environmental and economic perspective. Indeed selecting a concept that is technically and economically feasible and also has a negative carbon footprint is the challenge when comparing carbon dioxide utilisation concepts. The methodology proposed here provides an integrated solution addressing this challenge, bringing more clarity and transparency in evaluating carbon dioxide utilisation concepts. Applying this methodology will result in a quick, complete and reliable evaluation of such concepts to allow decision makers to make an informed investment decision. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.As an increasing of load demand, scarcity of fossil fuel and green house effect, utilization of renewable energy resources such as solar and wind energy are done seriously. The problem rises when potency of them is far smaller than load demand and the high difference between wind velocity profile and solar radiant intensity and load profile is happened. Its make excess electricity to be higher so the electrical production cost to be higher too. The purpose of this research is designing optimal configuration of microgrid PV-Wind turbine-Grid-Battery through optimization of load capacity to reduce excess electricity. Some parameters of optimal configuration are used to evaluate them, namely electrical production cost, reliability, CO2 coming from life cycle assessment, area of installation and unemployment reduction. Software HOMER version 2.68 Beta from NREL is used to simulate alternative configuration of microgrid. The results show that distribution total load into some sub-microgrids gives the positive impact, namely smaller electrical production cost, higher reliability, minimum CO2, relative smaller area of installation and unemployment reduction.The merits and potential of Building Information Modelling (BIM) have been promoted for several years; however, its widespread adoption and development may potentially stagnate on account of a technical skills shortage, with insufficient personnel having the capabilities to successfully deliver projects. This shortfall covers all aspects of BIM, and building performance and life cycle analysis in particular. Programmes such as Ecotect, Revit, Green Building Studio, and Project Vasari, have transformed data capture and analysis, enabling architects and systems engineers to visualise site analyses and to test preliminary designs. As BIM is a relatively new process which continues to develop rapidly, Higher Education Institutions need to respond to currency and change while striving to provide graduates with the advanced skills to satisfy the needs of the building industry. This work presents a case study of the application of Autodesk's Building Performance Analysis Certificate (BPAC) as a driver for learning in support of the integration of BIM into the architectural curriculum.In this study, two important techniques for estimating the nonprocess energy in industrial and manufacturing buildings were examined. The building energy data for two industrial facilities were collected and analyzed. The building nonprocess energy includes lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation. The power intensity (W/ft(2)) for each energy type use was estimated using two methods and then analyzed. This nonprocess energy needs to be clearly defined to allow more quantitative improvements. Previous analysis of industrial energy use often expressed nonprocess energy as a percentage of total energy but without clear values of actual nonprocess energy. This information is a low value since the actual nonprocess energy is then dominated by the dominator which is unspecified. The research in this paper has further contributed to the life cycle assessment of products by estimating nonprocess energy which can then be added to the process energy to obtain a complete energy profile of product manufacturing.Currently the building sector accounts for almost 40% of total energy consumption in the European Union (EU) making, the reduction in energy consumption and the increased penetration of renewable energy resources important measures in the EU's effort to reduce its energy dependency and GHG emissions. To that end, 2018 was set as the year that all new buildings occupied or owned by public authorities ought to be Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB), while from the end of 2020 all buildings must be NZEB. In the present work, a feasibility analysis is performed concerning a typical (12 m(2)/ 0.65 m(3)) solar space and water heating system, utilized in a representative 100 m(2) "reference house" designed according to the latest national Regulation on the Energy Performance which is in accordance with Directive 2010/31/EC and located in Thessaloniki in the northern part of Greece, as well as variations of the same building with different average Urn values representing different options towards NZEB. For the energy calculations regarding the proposed solar systems and for the buildings heating loads, TRANSOL, a transient simulation software based on TRNSYS was used. Finally, for all cases a financial analysis was performed and the Net Present Value (NPV) and Discounted Pay Back Period (DPBP) were calculated. From the analysis it was apparent that a typical solar space and water heating system can provide a viable solution towards NZEB, with solar coverage and DPBP being influenced strongly by the type of construction of the building and the fuel substituted. In all cases the proposed system covers at least 50% of the total needs.This paper is an analysis of the energy and money needed to construct a renewable energy system with the excess energy available from natural gas obtained by hydraulic fracturing or "fracking". Using data from the Energy Information Administration regarding the future availability of natural gas obtained by fracking and the energy required to build a sustainable system consisting of wind power, photo-voltaic energy generation and hydraulic storage, a scenario for the construction of a sustainable system is generated. Finally, a preliminary financial analysis of the cost of the renewable system is made. The analysis demonstrates that it is possible to build a sustainable system from the excess natural gas obtained by fracking in less than 30 years. After that time the energy produced from the renewable system is sufficient to replace those parts of the system that have reached their expected life and construct new sustainable generation technology as required by population growth.The use of electric vehicle (EV) has been widely recognized as an effective way to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation sector. However, the geographic difference of GHG emission reduction from EV deployment is seldom explored. This paper presents a study on the total GHG emissions generated from the life cycle of an EV (represented by Nissan Leaf) and an internal combustion vehicle (ICV) (represented by Toyota Corolla) for benchmarking on the potential emission reductions in the United States. The differences of electricity mix and driving style in each state are considered in the analysis. The results indicate a 43% GHG emissions reduction from ICV with the deployment of EV under the current average United States' electricity generation scheme and transportation style. But the life cycle GHG emission reductions vary significantly from state to state in the U.S. Some states such as Indiana, Wyoming and West Virginia can only get 7237, 9501 and 9860 kg CO2 equivalent reduced, while some states such as Vermont, New Jersey and Idaho can get 57915, 57206 and 49039 kg CO2 equivalent GHG emissions reduced. This study can be useful in supporting future decision-making and strategy development for EV deployment in the U.S.Water consumption is an important consideration when evaluating technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS). It may in fact become a critical factor in certain regions where water is increasingly a source of conflict. For this reason, water consumption has the potential to become a challenging obstacle to adoption of CCS technologies. This analysis seeks to improve understanding of relative water costs of different CCS technology options. It also helps to identify areas where water use may in fact become a challenge and reveal opportunities for technological improvements that can help minimize these challenges. A life cycle assessment approach was utilized to analyze both the water consumption from carbon capture and storage projects. While there have been previous analyses that have looked at the direct water consumption for some capture processes, there have been few studies that have taken a detailed look at water consumption throughout the complete life cycle of the of electricity production with CCS. This effort expands the system boundaries beyond those of previous analysis while evaluating a range of system configurations to facilitate technology comparison. The range of system configurations considered in this analysis included both pre and post combustion capture systems and multiple sequestration scenarios. The system boundaries for the analysis include fuel production, fuel transport, combustion, capture, CO2 transport, and storage. Water consumption for conventional fossil fuel systems are also calculated for comparison purposes. The results show that while all carbon capture technology pathways result in a net increase in water consumption relative to conventional coal generation, the choice of technology, especially capture technology, can play a significant role in minimizing the increase in water consumption. Integrated gasification combined cycle coal plants with carbon capture were found to be significantly more water efficient than either conventional power plants with post combustion capture or plants utilizing oxy-combustion processes. Also, while other stages of the life cycle do consume water, the volumes were small relative to the power plant operations and capture stages.During the planning phase of the build up or overhaul of factories a large share of the life cycle spanning impact of such production facilities is determined. Furthermore it is very hard to evaluate the impact of possible measures for improvement, resulting Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and environmental impacts of factory systems. Against this background this paper presents an integrated life cycle analysis approach for a streamlined economical and environmental life cycle assessment of factory systems. The approach gets applied while using two interacting tools for a) energy efficiency evaluation of pneumatic systems and b) life cycle evaluation of factory systems.This paper discusses a joint educational effort that incorporates sustainability in engineering and technology curricula at Drexel University (DU) and University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). A critical component of a national "green industries/green jobs" effort is to motivate our citizenry to become proficient in STEM and associated manufacturing fields and societies, thus ensuring we have a 21st century workforce. Sustainable engineering is about design that recognizes the constraints applied by natural resources and the environmental system. The needs for engineering students and practicing engineers to understand sustainability concepts and concerns have been noted by many educators, scientists or engineers, and it is the philosophy of the authors that all engineering students need to become versed in sustainability ideas. This paper describes key factors in enhancing the ability of future engineering graduates to better contribute to a more sustainable future, preserving natural resources and advancing technological and societal development. Two approaches are used to incorporate sustainability into the undergraduate engineering and technology curricula that can be adopted or adapted by science and engineering faculty for this purpose. The two approaches described in the paper include: (1) redesigning existing courses through development of new materials that meet the objectives of the original courses and (2) developing upper division elective courses that address specific topics related to sustainability, such as green manufacturing, clean energy, and life-cycle assessment. The efforts presented in the paper also include an increase in social responsibility, development of innovative thinking skills, better understanding of sustainability issues, and increasing students' interests in the engineering and technology programs. Projects, included in the senior courses or in the senior design project course sequence have been also part of them.The submitted thesis called "Environmental Impact Analysis of Railways" deals with life cycle of superstructure, which includes rails (metals), rail road ties, rail fastening system and track ballast. The analysis is processed using the LCA, by the principle of from cradle-to-grave". This principle is often used in industrial practice. It consists in product life cycle costing, from raw material acquisition, but it ends by leaving the production, the stage of product use and its removal are not weighed. In the process of Life Cycle Assessment all obligatory phases were performed according to valid legislation, the CSN EN ISO 14 000 norm (definition of goals and scope of the performed analysis, inventory analysis, analysis of impact of railways on environment, and interpretation analysis). The analysis of impact of railways on the environment was created by using the SimaPro professional software.Reducing the environmental impact of mobile radio networks is a central factor in achieving improved mobile services. The Opera-Net 2 European project with the benefit of broad skills and expertise of its partners (operator, industry and academia) concentrates on this challenge, addressing models, new hardware architectures and designs, new cooling systems, life cycle assessment, material efficiency, combining renewable energy with new energy management and finally field trials. This paper presents an overview of activities undertaken by the project and focuses on a selection of achievements that are of special interest for off-grid power systems using renewable energy and hybrid systems.The development of low-carbon electric power industry is a key way to deal with the greenhouse effect and lower the PM2.5. When integrated into power grid, renewable energy can efficiently cut down the output of the thermal power and reduce the carbon emission of the grid significantly. However, it lacks a more comprehensive and systematic approach to forecast a medium and long-term carbon emission for provincial power grid. Thus, in this paper, life cycle assessment (LCA) method and gray prediction model are used to forecast the medium and long-term carbon emission. In addition, the carbon intensity of provincial power grid is evaluated based on historical data such as electricity consumption, gross domestic product (GDP), carbon emission coefficient. Taking Jiangxi power grid as the example, the results indicate that the proposed method is of good accuracy and the integration of renewable energy can effectively reduce the carbon emission and the carbon intensity.New type energy saving distribution transformer has been paid to much more attention of energy saving and environmental protection performance of distribution network, area load characteristic of diversification is the key to energy saving with variable comprehensive performance evaluation factors. For life cycle assessment of energy saving with comprehensive performance and energy saving effect, this paper combined with the performance characteristics of energy saving with variable, on the basis of typical region, city, the nature of the load, the three angles of rural electrified wire netting, from A(+), A, B, C, D five categories in the load area to select the typical distribution area, classifying the load characteristics research and summary analysis, aimed at no-load loss and load loss, operation efficiency, such as key performance indicators, energy saving effect evaluation of energy saving with variable, for energy saving with variable selection, replacement, comprehensive performance assessment and provide A theoretical reference and method of economic operation support.Public works departments have responsibility to manage and operate (transportation/water/power) infrastructure assets through planning and adoption of appropriate (facility) management techniques. Efficient asset-management becomes all the more important for countries subject to post-conflict/post-disaster adversity, not only to reactivate essential services, but also because programs that stimulate civil-engineering industry participation contribute much to recovery rates and can make-up 10% of a (recovering) nation's Gross Domestic Product. A good asset-management model needs to address key activities, communicate respective interconnectivities, and realize best practice. Limited study has been done into asset-management model frameworks that link directly with the change-management strategies required by recovering societies; this presents an obstacle to the prompt implementation of essential asset-management systems in sectors operating in adverse conditions. Asset-management techniques able to take account of the full range of factors in less stable environments require to link contributory variables including: dynamic user-needs analyses, life-cycle analysis, national design specifications, building codes, prefabrication opportunities, procurement routes, and project management tools towards re-build/retro-fitting. This early stage research project presents progress thus far in developing an integrative asset-management framework for infrastructure facilities in adverse/high-alert conditions using a multitude of North African case-study locations. Discussion centers upon developing framework(s) as a basis for workable procedures able to be amended with regard to (changing) design specifications/standards/legislation. Secondary research is presented that addresses the need to integrate economic whole-life evaluation techniques, asset-management tools and scopes in flux, and the extent to which such examination allows future development of flexible change-management for adverse situations towards incorporation into an integrative asset-management framework for infrastructure and civil engineering assets. (C) The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The paper deals with the hydrogen production and comparison of the impact of the different processes for hydrogen production via life cycle analysis. Four processes were evaluated and compare - two water splitting thermo-chemical cycles which use solar energy as a main energy source and two conventional processes for hydrogen production, pyrolysis and gasification. Main impact categories, which were evaluated, are human health, ecosystem quality, and the saving of primary energy resources.The article presents a conceptual model of eco-innovative product design and development built on life cycle approach. A proposed model is based on literature review, observations of the design process and interviews carried out among representatives of teams developing eco-innovations. Particular attention was paid to knowledge management related to reduction of the environmental impact of eco-innovation throughout its life cycle. Specific methods, techniques and tools dedicated to the analysis and assessment of environmental aspects related to product life cycle suitable for different stages of design and development process have been identified. The basic assumption was not only to provide useful basis to design and development of eco-innovative products. An effort has also been made to formulate proposal how to use eco-efficiency indicator to assess a level of eco-innovativeness of the alternative products.Carbon footprints were for apple, nectarine, orange and olive orchards using different approaches and indicate the need for a common standard. The PAS 20501( 2012) was released in 2012 as the standard for orchard systems viz. horticulture after a year of public consultation and expert meetings under the hospice of Productschap Tuinbouw in Amsterdam and BSI in London. The PAS 2050-1(2012) was accompanied by five pilot projects in New Zealand, Spain, Netherlands, Germany and the UK, including fruit crops such as Citrus orange (for juice), strawberry, kiwi, pear and apple. The PAS 2050-1 (2012) was developed as a "business to business" (B2B) or "from cradle to gate" standard, which implies a life cycle assessment (LCA) from the supply of the nursery tree to the farm gate, clarification of previously uncertain issues such as 1) provision for carbon sequestration, land use change (LUC) and an option for biogenic carbon (i.e., the carbon stored in the products); 2) allocation on a physical basis (gravimetrical or volumetric) rather than on an economic basis 3) number of harvest seasons required and inclusion of juvenile tree phase and 4) allocation of nitrogen fertiliser application as a major source of nitric oxides and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in orchard carbon footprints. Free access to the standard is provided under http://www.bsigroup.co.uk/html.Improved energy efficiency is the combination of efforts to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. It includes all measures that are suitable to reduce specific components of the energy input, improving energy utilisation and contributing directly to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The AGREE project funded by the European Union aims to quantify the energy requirement (direct and indirect) of the various processes involved in agricultural production, in order to find where the largest gain in energy efficiency may be achieved. The approach is based on the life cycle analysis (LCA) of the primary production process and its direct inputs, up to the farm gate. This preliminary study on tomato (the most common greenhouse crop in EU) is based on data provided by Germany, Greece, Portugal and The Netherlands. In Central Europe the direct energy input (heating and, to a much lesser extent, electricity) is predominant, accounting for over 99% of the estimated total energy input of some 63 GJ t(-1) in Germany and 24 GJ t(-1) in the Netherlands, while in the Southern countries it accounts for 30-70% of a much smaller estimated total energy of 2.0 GJ t(-1). In Portugal, the indirect energy input is mainly associated with application of fertilizers and plastic cover materials, while in Greece it is associated with auxiliary equipment and materials (thermal screens and polyethylene based solarisation and covering films) and fertilizers. In conclusion, the scope for increasing energy efficiency in heated greenhouses is, obviously, to reduce heating requirement (or apply renewable sources). In the Mediterranean region there is a lot to be gained through a better management of fertigation, design improvements and the application of integrated control systems.Although the Region of Waterloo implements a waste recycling program as part of its compliance with the 2004 Ontario Waste Diversion Goal a large fraction of its municipal solid waste ends up in the landfill. Landfill waste disposal adversely impacts the environment through the release of air pollutants and greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and through the generation of leachate that may contaminate water sources. Landfills also require large land areas, which limit their long-term sustainability. This paper presents a quantitative comparison of the environmental, economic, and social impacts of the current waste disposal program in the Region of Waterloo and of three waste management alternatives: (i) expansion of the organics collection program with biogas recovery, (ii) expansion of the recycling program, and (iii) incineration with energy recovery. Environmental impacts were evaluated by performing a life cycle analysis using the US EPA's Waste Reduction Model. Economic impacts were quantified using cost-benefit analysis; social impacts were evaluated using a previously developed scoring scheme. Finally, the overall impacts were ranked and analyzed using the Saaty's Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine an optimal alternative to landfill disposal. Results indicate that incineration with energy recovery is ranked the highest overall in all three evaluation criteria categories. Incineration results in the greatest gas reductions (86%) and the lowest cost to implement. Incineration also ranks the highest in the social impacts ranking due to reductions in foul odors, potential for attracting disease vectors, and land requirements. Expanding the recycling collection improves greenhouse gas emissions by 41% of the current method; it also reduces disposal costs. Overall, all three alternatives are better than the current waste disposal method, and incineration is deemed the optimal waste management option for the Region of Waterloo.The best way to achieve emissions' reduction in the near and mid-term is increasing the demand-side energy efficiency-this is especially true in developing countries where the potential for demand reduction is significant and achievable at relatively lower cost. An ideal candidate for the implementation of demand-side energy efficiency measures is the building sector, since it contributes to a large extent to the total amount of GHGs emitted worldwide. In the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the relative contribution of the building sector to the total GHG emissions is even higher than the worldwide average. This is due to the lower level of industrial activity, the inefficiency of the envelope and technical systems of the existing buildings, as well as harsh climatic conditions requiring the use of energy intensive air-conditioning equipment. The air-conditioning load in buildings is the ideal target for demand-side management because it constitutes approximately 70% of the total energy consumption. Using a detailed engineering model of a typical Abu Dhabi building as specified by the Emirate's Urban Planning Council, we proceed to evaluate the energy impact of different retrofits through numerical simulation. Extrapolating the results to the whole Emirate, we present a demand-side Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC). A surprising number of the abatement levers analyzed in this study exhibit a positive net present value (NPV), if the cost-reflective price of electricity is used for the life-cycle assessment.The several life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of residential buildings conducted in the last decade. In Thailand have focused on conventional houses and very few studies have considered those built for the poor. This study conducted a LCA of self-help housing by using two dwelling types in the Baan Mankong Program as case study. Results indicate that over 85% of the total life cycle energy is the operational energy which is 8.6-17.5 GJ/m(2) or 86-92% and the embodied energy is 1.0-1.5 GJ/m(2). About 75% of embodied energy comes from building materials particularly concrete and steel. Measures to include compact development and the use of less energy intensive materials. The other measure to reduce operational energy is the use of energy efficient appliances which can reduce up to 26% of household electricity consumption.In this paper the authors investigate a study for life cycle assessment of a hybrid photovoltaic-wind system feeding a reverse osmosis desalination unit. Double stage configuration in the reverse osmosis desalination process using spiral modules is presented. The two environmental indicators (total energy requirement and energy payback time) were computed for photovoltaic subsystem, wind subsystem and reverse osmosis desalination unit. Life cycle assessment evaluation of the photovoltaic subsystem was studied for three types of photovoltaic module: mono-crystalline (mono-Si), polycrystalline (poly-Si) and amorphous silicon (a-Si). Three models of total energy requirement of the studied system were elaborated. In reverse osmosis desalination unit, the life cycle assessment is studied for three motor-pumps, two stages of pressure vessels (9 FILMTEC membrane elements), three water reservoirs and three static converters.Life cycle assessment (LCA) as tool to improve sustainability of the construction sector is receiving increasing attention. Different methodological approaches of LCA have already been applied in other research fields, however they have barely been applied on buildings. This study conducts a screening LCA of an apartment located in Buggenhout, Belgium, according to the two main approaches, respectively attributional (ALCA) and consequential (CLCA). Not only the as-built situation is taken into account, but also two brief optimization scenarios are included. The aim is to identify and compare possible differences in results between the two approaches when applied on the same case. The results indicate a shift in proportions between the different life cycle stages, in particular at the end-of-life stage. However, more important are the differences between individual materials and components, which can result in different proposals for optimization. The two included optimization scenarios support this statement, the first one for the selection of insulating materials and the second one for two different actions to improve energy efficiency (increasing insulation vs. installing a heat pump). (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Recent studies have shown that the importance of embodied carbon is growing in relation to assessing the environmental impact of buildings. This paper investigates how designers are looking to tackle this, and the effectiveness of some of the methods chosen. Although a number of commercial and non-commercial organisations are developing in-house tools to calculate embodied carbon, these lack the flexibility to be adopted by a wide range of users as well as the efficiency required to be appealing to designers at the early stages of a design. An alternative to these stand-alone tools is offered through the functionality of Building Information Modelling (BIM) software, which is capable of incorporating embodied carbon assessments as part of the normal design process. The potential of plug-in tools to obtain embodied carbon data from suppliers is an area that remains to be explored further. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Energy use in residential and commercial buildings and towers represents more than 30% of energy consumption. The increase in number of buildings and towers in most of the major cities worldwide led to several initiatives for energy conservation programs with the main objective to achieve energy savings. Most energy strategies include energy conservation beside the increase in the penetration of renewable energy technologies. This paper shows business model and engineering design framework for practical implementation of energy conservation in buildings. Key performance indicators are modeled and used to evaluate energy conservation strategies and energy supply scenarios as part of the design and operation of building energy systems. The proposed system approach shows effective management of building energy knowledge on the basis of Energy Semantic Networks (ESN), which supports the simulation, evaluation, and optimization of several building energy conservation scenarios. Case study hotel is used to illustrate the proposed building energy conservation framework. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Pile foundations, either precast or cast-in-situ, are popular for usage worldwide in many important and costly projects such as bridges in transportation networks, or jetties in harbor areas, etc. In addition, the stability and safety of such strategic structures count to a great extent on the serviceability of the carrying foundations or piles. Thus, the integrity of the pile-foundation systems governs sharply the service life of the supported structures. Moreover, traditional pile foundations include using materials as steel and concrete. Such materials when used in harsh environments such as sea water or salty soil layers suffer severe deterioration including loss of concrete durability, steel corrosion, and sometimes marine borer attacks. Consequently, high repair or replacement costs of the foundation systems led researchers in the last few decades to investigate the feasibility of using FRP composite piles, such as concrete-filled tubular FRP piles. These piles are non-corrosive with benefits of easier construction and repair, and advantages as improved durability in harsh environments and cost savings in terms of life cycle analysis. In spite of that, one of the main drawbacks of composite piles is their relatively short track record of performance and absence of long-term durability data. The main focus in this paper is to study the effect of having FRP filled tubes piles on the seismic behavior of the supported structures. This concerns the soil-structure interaction and the expected behavior of the composite system. This paper describes a proposed methodology to assess the structural capacity of foundations with concrete-filled tubular FRP piles under earthquakes. Results are presented to verify the expected benefits versus the effects on the lateral capacity of structures.As a primary component of a Bridge Management System (BMS), prediction models are crucial for planning the maintenance work, making budgetary decisions, life-cycle analysis and optimization of future maintenance works programs. In a BMS, planned decisions for conducting repairs and rehabilitation are based on inspection data collected for the bridges by trained inspectors following a condition rating method developed by the authority. There is a significant need to produce a practical system where these visual inspection data can be converted into a decision tool. To address this need, a study has been conducted to forecast deterioration of reinforced concrete bridge components using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). Visual inspection data was sourced from Victoria, Australia and utilized to develop an ANN model using Levenberg-Marquardt optimization with the help of Bayesian regularization process. A neural network based model for prediction of bridge condition rating is proposed. The back-propagation algorithm was used to train the network to recognize the pattern of deterioration of bridges. The various factors which influence the deterioration rate are considered as input to the system. Deterioration of three major structural components was modeled and presented in this paper.In light of incorporating sustainability into building, the focus of many researchers has been on using existing assessment methods such as Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED), Building Research Establishment Assessment Method (BREEAM), and Green Star to assess building sustainability. These tools focus on the building design with little focus on sustainable building envelope potentials to building sustainability. This shortcoming on the part of these tools has resulted into lack of consideration for durability, life cycle cost, life cycle energy performance, pre-mature failure of buildings and inability to assess the sustainable performance of building envelope. Besides, the possibility of achieving building sustainability through sustainable building envelope has been largely ignored due to lack of a comprehensive assessment method developed specifically for the building envelope. Therefore, this paper examines the potential of using sustainable building envelope as an effective alternative approach of achieving building sustainability based on life cycle analysis and sustainable performance assessment. This study was conducted using selected building envelope design case studies through a comprehensive assessment method known as Integrated Performance Model (IPM) developed for building envelope sustainable assessment and design. The findings indicated that the energy efficiency performance of a building envelope design is a major determinant of the building sustainability.Construction industry, as it is well known, is one of the industries with the highest negative impacts on the environment concerning the amount of emissions generation and resources consumption. A major percentage of these generated emissions are a result of the massive amounts of different materials utilized and consumed during the different phases of construction processes. Targeting sustainable performance achievement, construction industry has to improve its behavior towards the environment, following the footsteps of other industries. Advanced technological solutions such as BIM and LCA can drive the construction industry towards achieving sustainability. These tools can improve the process of materials selection, alternatives comparison, etc, in order to follow sustainability principles. The creation of a link between LCA and BIM, as it is going to be explained, provides an easy and direct access to the information regarding environmental impacts of the different elements included in the proposed design. Therefore, this information can be considered during decision-making in the early project phases.Micro to nano-scaled structures are progressively being integrated into semiconductor architecture and will have a global impact on electronics, including micro and nano sized fiber membranes for electrodes, nanolaminates for trenched capacitors, or nanofiber membranes for sensing and actuating. For integrated circuits, the thrust is to provide superior functionality and structural durability without adversely impacting the environment. As micro to nano-scaled structures progress toward scalable manufacturing, it is critical to conduct fundamental investigations on assessing material composition impacts on failures and the environment. In this paper, we present and utilize a failure and life cycle assessment (FLCA) framework to evaluate chemical composition, processing parameters, structural analysis, and environmental impact properties of selected nanofiber membranes. This framework will have an impact on nanostructure integration into emerging electronic materials/devices per the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) and a transferable process for a FLCA to evaluate nanofiber technology for ICs.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has become a recognized instrument to assess the ecological impact due to industrial processes or, more generally, to human activities. In the context of a global awareness of climate change, the carbon footprint (CFP) is used as a simple way to sensitize the purchasing behaviour of consumers, and public opinion in general. Limitations of CFP arise if one decides to expand the outlook to include other environmental impacts, which are commonly evaluated in LCA. This chapter is a simple guide to understanding LCA. It describes the history and methodological approach of LCA and how to develop credible environmental communication. Particular focus is placed on the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for food, and virgin olive oil in particular.The decision between component recycling and disposal of aircraft end-of-life constitute an important part of the management strategy of aircraft. However, this process should be mainly determined in aircraft preliminary design. But now most aircraft are designed without considering the process to reduce the amount of waste that is landfilled in order to improve the recyclability of aircraft end-of-life. The main objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework capable of integrating the life cycle assessment - LCA into preliminary aircraft design in order to enable analysis of the recommended prioritization for each alternative (reuse, recycling, remanufacturing and disposal - 3RD).The health problems caused by coal mine dust are growing worse, causing mine workers serious health damages as well as economic losses. This study is based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the coal mine unit process decomposition method, which are combined with the related environmental health and pathology. This study establishes the type indicators of coal dust health damage through collecting coal dust inventory data and it builds an assessment model that uses the health injury factors and the damage quantitative indicators. A monetization analysis is then used as the basis of a quantitative evaluation method that contains a collection of the inventory data, the type indicators of health damage, and the comprehensive quantitative values of health damage. After the application of this method within the coal mine, this study then goes on to examine society's willingness to pay for health damage caused by dust is obtained in both construction and production industries. This study shows that this method is able to quantitatively assess the extent of health damage caused by dust in the mine life cycle. Consequently, it can be used as the basis for decision making and can be provided for the use of the management of mining occupational healthWorldwide research is concentrated on making the Transportation Sector as environment friendly as possible. Replacing the IC Engine driven vehicles with Hybrid Electric Vehicles shall reduce the adverse impact of transportation sector on environment in a big way. But, there are inherent trade-offs between the battery goals for HEVs. Research is focused on developing a battery technology which satisfies these goals in a much better way. It can be observed that the present day battery technologies have many good performance characteristics, but have environmental issues associated with them. It is indeed a challenge to find a battery technology which has the best performance, while has a minimum environmental impact. This paper proposes a novel index for selecting the battery based on performance and environment friendliness.Electricity generation is a key source to global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and their related environmental impact. Sustainable development requires methods and tools to measure the environmental impacts of human activities for various products viz. goods, services, etc. Life-cycle analysis is an invaluable tool for evaluating the environmental profile of a product or technology from cradle to grave. Such life-cycle analysis of energy technologies are essential, especially as material and energy flows are often interwoven, and divergent emissions into the environment may occur at different life-cycle-stages. Photovoltaic system is a technology for the production of electricity from renewable sources that is rapidly growing thanks to its potential to reduce the energy consumption from traditional sources and to decrease the air pollution. During the operational phase, there are no emissions and the only input is solar power. However, it should be noted that, considering the entire life cycle of a plant, photovoltaic systems, like any other means of electricity production, give rise to emissions that focus especially in the manufacturing stage and installation of components. In this study, the environmental load of photovoltaic power generation system (PV) during its life cycle by energy payback time (EPT) and Greenhouse Gas emissions are reviewed through LCA study to the state of art of the photovoltaic technologies.Important mature oil fields are located in the Gulf of Mexico Region (GMR); some of these fields are suitable for future CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) practices. This region also includes the largest industrial CO2 emission sources in Mexico and the location of recommended large areas for geological storage of CO2. Future EOR projects in this region may include Carbon Capture Use and Storage (CCUS) where CO2 may be captured from nearby petrochemical and power plants. Industrial CO2 may support the demand for EOR operations while also reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in Mexico. An early carbon capture strategy in Mexico would be feasible if the projects involved are financed with the economical benefits obtained from EOR practices, given the actual high costs of industrial carbon capture and geological storage. It is still unclear what kind of environmental impacts these CCUS with EOR operations may have; this paper includes first estimates of carbon footprint (CO2 emissions) for a CCUS project casein GMR through the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Four different stages were selected for the LCA evaluation; these were Site Preparation, Construction, Operation and Closure. Preliminary results estimate a carbon footprint of 96.5 kg CO(2)e (+/- 5%) per barrel of oil (bbl) considering a 500 MW-NGCC plant as a 100 km distantCO(2) source.Short rotation coppice willow (SRCW) is a fast-growing and potentially high-yielding energy crop. Replacing fossil fuel with bioenergy has been identified as one strategy to mitigate climate change and decrease the dependency on fossil energy in Sweden. By using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, the climate impact of SRCW systems was assessed and compared. The purpose was to evaluate which key factors that influence climate mitigation potential of SRCW grown on historically tilled soils in Sweden. Carbon fluxes between soil, biomass and atmosphere were modelled by using a carbon balance model. The results indicated that SRCW can increase the soil organic carbon content and thereby lead to a climate mitigating effect. The magnitude of this mitigating effect was shown to be dependent on willow yield, where a high yield gave the highest climatic benefits. Opposite, a low yield gave the lowest mitigating effect of the studied scenarios, nevertheless it was still better than the two reference systems, district heating produced from coal or natural gas.The increasing demand for energy and food, climate change and land availability are causing concerns over land-use conflicts within the "food-energy-environment trilemma". The HEDGE-BIOMASS project addresses the promotion of a new perennial linear landscape element: bioenergy buffers. Bioenergy buffer strips (BBS) are narrow arable field margins and buffer strips along waterways converted to warm-season grasses and short-rotation woody crops for bioenergy applications. Within the HEDGE-BIOMASS project, an extensive review of scientific literature has been performed to identify the state of the art knowledge on perennial biomass crops with particular reference to their capacity to supply ecological services and to define the most suitable biomass supply chain management design. Implementing new bioenergy buffers could significantly enhance the pollination service and natural enemy control in arable crops by neighbouring presence of beneficial organisms on bioenergy buffer. A positive interaction between crop management and species richness was found in bioenergy crops for a long list of taxa. With regards to miscanthus and switchgrass, the deep-rooting system proved to be the main factor for improving water/nutrient use efficiency. Herbaceous BBS can promote positive alterations of C cycling pathways in terms of increased belowground carbon (C) allocation and belowground fine root biomass. Short-rotation woody crops in BBS, instead, increase the litter C and nitrogen (N) input to soil and start to act as net C sink few years after establishment. Several positive experiences have been reported in literature on removal efficiency of non-point source agricultural pollutants coming from adjacent agricultural fields. A 5-10 m wide herbaceous BBS can efficiently mitigate sediment, N and total phosphorus (P) runoff. However, if BBS are placed on flatland regions with slow runoff flow the risk of P delivery from buffers can be increased due to dissolved P remobilization from standing aboveground litter mediated by microbial processes. To the best of our knowledge, there is no data regarding denitrification processes in shallow groundwaters under BBS. Moreover, soil N-2/N2O emission dynamics and annual N2O budget in BBS remain uncertain. Nevertheless, it has been reported that BBS can significantly reduce nitrate leaching compared with surrounding row-cropping systems from the second growing season. Regarding biomass yield achieved on BBS it emerged that no data are available for switchgrass and miscanthus while extensive literature is available for woody crops. We can assume that biomass yields of herbaceous buffers are similar to those reported for large scale cultivations because efficient mechanisms of nutrients up-take, trapping, filtration and infiltration occur usually in BBS. Warm-season grasses presented on average the highest values of greenhouse gas savings, particularly when biomass is used for electricity production by gasification. The width of the bioenergy buffer strip is a fundamental element to design effective systems. Unfortunately, from the logistic point of view, biomass harvesting and collection is limited by the linear arrangement of biomass crops along arable field margins. As a consequence of this restricted operating space, the intra-and extra-farm fragmentation of logisticoperations seems to be the main critical step of BBS management compared to the traditional large-scale bioenergy cultivation scenario. Within the framework of HEDGE-BIOMASS project a comprehensive assessment of ecological services provided by bioenergy buffers is being carried out. Furthermore, a multicriteria spatial analysis combining GIS, Life Cycle Assessment and SWAT model, will be performed to at landscape level propose new bioenergy production scenarios along field margins. This research will develop an energy production strategy that offer an opportunity to rethink how and where bioenergy feedstocks can be sustainably produced and to optimize the trade-offs between the delivery of multiple ecological services and farmer incomes within limited land resources.Microalgae offer different possibilities for energy production but, considering the state of the art, important technological challenges for large-scale plants still have to be solved. The viability of using microalgae for energy production depends on the overall sustainability (environmental, economic, social). Therefore a sustainability assessment is necessary. The existing methodologies e.g. life cycle analysis (LCA) are modified for the application to systems using microalgae for energy production. Within the project FUEL4ME an integrated and sustainable process for continuous biofuel production from microalgae will be developed and demonstrated. The results of the applied life cycle sustainability assessment are used to identify obstacles for an efficient process in different dimensions and will help to guide the development towards the highest possible sustainability (environmental sustainability and economic feasible) in comparison to a substituted reference system.The EU funded project BioGrace-II is creating a user-friendly greenhouse gas calculation tool for the use of solid and gaseous biomass sources in electricity, heating and cooling. By doing so it aims at unambiguously defining key parameters of the calculation and thus enhancing the level playing field on the European bioenergy market. The methodology follows the methodology recommended by the European Commission.In this paper the preliminary results and analysis of a number of bioenergy pathway LCA assessments are presented (biodiesel and wood pellets). The results provide valuable insights in both trade-offs and co-benefits when substituting fossil energy with bioenergy. This is considered relevant for informed decision making and informing the general public about pro's and con's of certain energy options. This paper also aims to send the signal that it is time that both renewable and fossil energies should take their associated environmental, economic and social impacts into account. Using LCA in this way could advance the public debate on sustainable energy beyond a 'dirty versus clean' discussion. A comparative analysis of two wood pellet pathways is provided which triggers strategic thinking about a number of 'contextual factors' that can foster or prevent countries/regions to improve the sustainability performance of their energy systems. The limitations of the LCA assessments also reveal the importance of the geographical (re)distribution of sustainability impacts as well as the relative importance of indirect impacts for local stakeholders and communities. The comparative analysis results are used to illustrate that a too strong policy focus on one specific impact, could potentially result in suboptimal use of biomass resources.New production chains of biomass-to-bioethanol require the successful deployment of efficient and cost-effective bio-technologies. This work offers a multi-objective analysis of sustainability issues involved in setting up a biorefinery. Two case studies are investigated: corn stover-to-EtOH from U.S. and sugarcane bagasse-to-EtOH from Brazil. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to take into account different scenarios of each case. The following factors are studied: land use for agriculture; CO2 intake and emissions; yield of crop; crop-to-lignocellulose biomass ratio; transportation, conversion, as well as, the costs associated with the entire production chain. The biorefinery employed the use of SSF (Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation) with estimated maximum yields of 305 L/tonne stover and 100 L/tonne wet bagasse. The capital costs for each hypothetical case were projected. As part of a sustainability parameter, a land footprint indicator was estimated from the yield of corn and sugarcane, along with lignocelullose amounts and percentage conversion to bio-ethanol.Recently, interest in straws as biomass feedstock has been growing. In this research the environmental sustainability of cereal straw as biomass feedstock is carried out with the aim of underlining the best disposal practice in environmental terms. We compare the current straw uses and disposals (i.e. chopped and left on the field then incorporated into soil or burnt) with a potential straw market for bio-energy purposes (i.e. baled and transported). Through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, the environmental sustainability of the alternative disposal of straw is assessed. The system boundary of analysis is constrained to farm gate. The activities undertaken by the farmers in order to provide on-farm straws (e.g. harvesting, baling) are analyzed. At the same time, changes in the disposal activities of straws and farming-related adaptations (e.g. tillage, fertilization) are accounted. A case study in Italy (Apulia region) is analyzed. Data are collected by a survey to cereals growers. According to the first results, a market of biomass feedstock would lead to improve the environmental impact of straw disposal, provided that the current straw burnt is devoted to biomass market. To this regard, farmer's decision on straws disposal results to be relevant considering both the agricultural and the environmental point of view.Biomass wastes and residues have an essential role in reaching the EU 2020 renewable energy targets because they are widely available, they are generally cheaper than energy crops, they are regarded as free of environmental burdens (such as iLUC) and they do not compete for agricultural land nor in the food market. In the current version of the Renewable Energy Directive and Fuel Quality Directive, biomass residues are assigned zero GHG emissions from upstream operations and are counted double towards the renewable energy targets. However, a strong promotion of bioenergy from residues needs a clear and comprehensive analysis of the associated direct and possible indirect environmental effects. Such assessment is presented here for a few specific materials relevant to the EU bioenergy market: straw, manure, pruning residues and residues from forestry logging operations. The impacts of increased residues removal on soil health and future productivity, on global GHG emissions and on biodiversity have been analyzed based on the latest literature. Possible impacts are assessed based on the availability and quality of the experimental evidence and the risks associated with such impacts are evaluated. Mitigating actions are also evaluated. Finally, a quantitative assessment is provided for some of the reported impacts based on literature and original data. Straw availability for energy has been estimated to be around 49 Mtoe in EU by 2020. The main impacts of an increased straw removal from agricultural fields include a potential decrease in soil organic carbon (SOC) and in nutrients available for crops. Furthermore, observations indicate that effects on the physical characteristics of the soil might have a negative impact on future yields and potentially cause increased fuel consumption for agricultural operations. The balance of GHG emissions from straw bioenergy should take into account eventual decreases in SOC but also a decrease in N2O emissions. However, straw utilization for energy production may guarantee GHG savings in comparison with fossil fuel alternatives even when taking into account the negative impacts on soil properties. However, straw removal should be accompanied by management practices (e.g., cover crops, diverse crop rotations, and manure application) that minimize potential adverse impacts in order not to jeopardize the future productivity of the soil. Experimental and modeling studies have shown that the fertilizer potential of digestate is higher than for untreated slurries in the short term because of a higher share of mineral-N; however, this advantage disappears in the long-term. Digestate, thus, seems to be as effective fertilizer as undigested slurry with the additional production of energy from biogas to substitute fossil fuels. The GHG balance of biogas, furthermore, benefits of avoided methane emissions from the storage of manure and by lower N2O emissions from field application. However, long-term effects on SOC will need to be carefully assessed as they could significantly reduce the GHG savings obtained. The removal of logging residues from the forest floor seems to have limited impact on the soil health and productivity but higher impacts on biodiversity. GHG emissions are mostly time-dependent (in comparison with slow decomposition on the forest floor) and several analyses have demonstrated that GHG savings are accrued only after one or more decades depending on the nature of the residue and climate conditions. This should be accounted for when estimating the full GHG emissions from forest bioenergy. Pruning residues are rarely used as soil amendments or for bioenergy production and both these options offer a better option for management of these residues than on-site combustion.Some Parties (Countries) to the UNFCCC decided to include the carbon uptake by harvested wood products (HWP) in a new general accounting framework after 2012 (post Kyoto). We combine the new HWP framework with an assumed increased 5 0 million m(3) harvest level in Canada and evaluate the impact of the GHG emissions over a 100 year period. Our reference case assumes all harvested wood is an immediate CO2 emission (IPCC default) and no substitution effects, i.e. annual GHG emissions of 41 million tonnes CO2eq. In our wood utilisation scenarios, harvested trees are allocated to three end-products: construction wood, paper products and pellets for power production. In comparison with our base case, a combination of fossil fuel substitution, material substitution and temporary carbon uptake by HWP leads to significant decreases in GHG emissions. A similar approach is intended for future EU-28 harvesting.According to the EU Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC), no direct impacts from residue removal and no GHG emissions should be attributed to cereal residues (straws) when they are removed from agricultural land for the purpose of bioenergy utilization. Crop residues, on the other side, play a critical role in sustaining soil organic matter and preserving soil fertility. How to optimize the trade-off between natural resource preservation and energy resource generation? The application of an "expanded" LCA analysis was assumed and a comparison of three different cropping systems based on wheat cultivation was performed. A crop simulation model (CropSyst) and a Geographical Information System (GIS) were coupled to LCA in order to obtain explicitly spatial distributed results at regional scale. Homogeneous agricultural zones were mapped, thus indicating the area where the best/worst performances were obtained. Our analysis showed that cropping management is a key factor in greenhouse gas emission savings. Sustainable cropping management practices (no-tillage plus cover crops) significantly reduce the total energy demand of the system and save GHG emissions. Therefore, energy from cereal residues can be optimally coupled with grain productions, without detrimental effects on environment, on condition that improved and specifically tailored cropping systems are designed.In the last few years, agro-biogas has received great attention, since allowing for replacing natural gas, it thus represents a tool to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental impacts. The aim of this study was to identify, quantify and environmentally weigh the main inventory flows so as to find out the impact indicators best representing the agro-biogas local chain. The analysis was conducted in accordance with the ISO 14040 and 14044 (2006). All data was loaded into SimaPro 7.3.3 accessing the Ecoinvent v.2.2 database and then processed using the Impact 2002+ calculation method for carrying out the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) phase. The research was developed in collaboration with a farm, located in the province of Foggia (Apulia region in Southern Italy) involved in the agro-biogas system. The study highlighted that the most impacting phase is durum wheat cultivation for production of fine bran in the amount needed for producing 1 kWh of electricity from 0.548 m(3) of biogas. This was because of land occupation, ammonium production and all the transport involved. Environmental impact reduction could be obtained through transport system optimisation and fertilisation management oriented to promoting the use of organic fertiliser, such as digestate solid fraction.In Brazil, all municipalities are responsible for collection and disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW). They have been facing problems due to the increased amount generated and the concentration of population in urban centers. In addition the recent legislation (2014) defines that wastes will not be allowed to be disposed in landfills without previous treatments, including energy conversion. Alternatively, the energy sector has a significant participation in the increasing of the greenhouse effect by the use of fossil fuels recently in Brazil with the introduction of the so-called emergence thermoelectric power plants to complement hydroelectric generation. Thus, studies on the environmental performance of technologies to allow the use of MSW for power production are becoming important. As the changes in the energy and waste management system are driven by the establishment of several policies, it is important that the assumptions used for such policies are based on robust analysis of the current situation considering all different aspects involved in the process. The objective of this paper is to compare the environmental performance of the three commercially available routes for electricity generation from MSW and sewage sludge through life cycle assessment methodology: landfill, incineration and mechanical-biological treatment (MBT).The drainage of peatlands leads to greenhouse gas emissions and other negative impacts on the environment, while at the same time enabling the production of common agricultural products. The negative environmental impacts can be can be reduced by rewetting. Rewetting of drained peatlands may but does not exclude continued land-use. Vegetation established after rewetting can be managed with adapted techniques (so-called paludiculture). How should peatlands be used? This paper presents energy and greenhouse gas balances for different land use options for drained and rewetted peatlands. Using a life cycle assessment approach, the energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions of crop production on drained and rewetted peatlands were estimated. The results show that the drained use of peatlands leads to significant greenhouse gas emissions offsetting all savings obtained by substituting equivalent products such as fossil fuels. But the rewetted use of peatlands is connected to significant greenhouse gas emissions too. Nonetheless only the use of biomass from rewetted peatlands offers under certain conditions a promising potential for saving greenhouse gas emissions and energy.Cold-pressed rapeseed oil (cRSO) is produced in decentralized oil mills and can be used as self-sufficient biofuel in agriculture machinery. In context of European policy for climate and energy it could offer some environmental advantages. For this study input data for rapeseed cultivation (year of harvest 2013) from 15 farms and for rapeseed processing from three decentralized oil mills in Bavaria have been collected. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology with different allocation procedures for co-products, regional and specific GHG balances of cRSO have been calculated. The results were compared with the default value for pure vegetable oil (PVO) from rapeseed defined in the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The results for rapeseed cultivation show a wide range among analyzed case studies highly depending on site and management conditions (28.0 to 46.3 g CO(2)eq MJ(-1) cRSO). The GHG emissions of rapeseed processing in the three decentralized oil mills including the related transport processes average 1.4 g CO(2)eq MJ(-1) cRSO, which marks a considerable reduction of GHG emissions compared to the RED default value for PVO from rapeseed (6 g CO(2)eq MJ(-1) PVO). Furthermore there is a strong influence of allocation procedures on the values for GHG emission savings, ranging from 58 to 80 %.This paper analyses the potential of sweet sorghum used for biofuel production to save greenhouse gas emissions. Four different production concepts for ethanol and biomethane from sweet sorghum are investigated. In each concept the sweet sorghum type, the plant part used for biofuel production, the fermentation process and the type and amount of produced products were varied. The production and use of ethanol and biomethane from sweet sorghum is compared to fossil natural gas and gasoline and other biofuels. The greenhouse gas emissions are calculated according to the methodology provided by the Renewable Energy Directive including the total life cycle: sweet sorghum cultivation and harvesting, transportation, storage and production of ethanol and biomethane, distribution and the use of the biofuels. The data basis for the calculation is obtained from production trials, laboratory tests and simulations. The results show that under good cultivation conditions three out of four investigated concepts attain a GHG emission saving (>= 60%) required by the Renewable Energy Directive in 2018.The pine chemical industry is a global success story and an example of the bioeconomy's ongoing value to society. As a relatively mature and successful bio-industry, it is a role model for other emerging bio-based product industries. This paper provides background on the pine chemical industry including its contributions to the economy of Europe, and its role in advancing the goals of the bioeconomy. The life cycle assessment referenced in this paper contributes to the understanding of a main feedstock of the global pine chemical industry, crude tall oil (CTO), as an invaluable contributor to the aims of the bioeconomy. This paper will also address the major challenge currently facing this industry, otherwise well-meaning policies aimed at incentivizing the burning of CTO. These policies can do great harm to the pine chemical industry without commensurate advances to the underlying bioeconomy policy goals of reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and Europe's dependence on fossil materials. This is a situation that needs to be addressed for the bioeconomy to properly function. Fortunately, through the use of life cycle assessment tools these situations can be analyzed and corrected.The textile industry is considered as ecologically one of the most polluting industries in the world. The issues which make the life cycles of textiles and clothing unsustainable are the use of harmful chemicals, high consumption of water and energy, generation of large quantities of solid and gaseous wastes, huge fuel consumption for transportation to remote places where textile units are located, and use of non-biodegradable packaging materials. The overall impact on the environment by a textile product or process may be best assessed by life cycle assessment (LCA) which is a systematic scientific approach to examine the environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of a product or service.This paper presents a detailed study process of life cycle energy consumption and CO2 emission for transmission system. An assessment framework that consists of six stages is established, within which the energy consumption and CO2 emission contributions from all life cycle chains are considered. A typical 500kV single-circuit AC transmission system in China is taken for instance to illustrate the assessment process of the transmission system over its lifetime. The total energy transmission and CO2 emission reduction benefit of the transmission system is defined, calculated, and compared to the total energy consumption and corresponding CO2 emission over its lifetime. The resulting energy payback ratio (EPR) and CO2 emission reduction benefit can provide useful information for the cost-benefit comparison of different transmission technologies or planning schemes.Adipic acid is an important platform chemical with a turnover of 2.5 million tons per year. It is mainly applied as an intermediate reactant for the production of nylon-6,6, a world-leading polymer in the textile and the automobile industry. Due to a relatively high energy demand and greenhouse gas emission, inherently linked to the traditional petrochemical production, great potential exists for more sustainable bio-based alternatives. In pioneering developments, sugars, fats, and alkanes are used as novel feedstock for the production of bio-adipic acid. Recent approaches that recruit small aromatic compounds from lignin-based materials seem even more promising. Based on life cycle assessment, such aromatics from lignin reduce energy demand and carbon dioxide equivalent emission significantly, in comparison to the conventional petrochemical process. Lignin-rich streams are available in huge amounts as waste streams of low value that accumulate during processing of lignocellulosic biomass. Recent development of superior producing microorganisms and integrated bioprocesses are enabling technologies toward future industrial production of bio-adipic acid, which is highlighted in this chapter.This is a short overview on the world-wide problem of waste, the relevant legislation and management, particularly regarding waste hierarchy, waste classification, and life cycle assessment of wastes combined with environmental risk assessment as a basis for decisions on waste re-use and utilization. Waste utilization on soil will create an innovative link between waste hierarchy, abandoned land, and deteriorated soil reclamation and remediation.Risk-based management of environmental problems requires a careful selection and planning of the best risk management option, the monitoring of environmental, health, social and economic impacts, and finally the verification of the applied measures and technologies. The consecutive selection, planning, implementation, and verification of regulatory measures or technology applications require a tool battery which is adapted to the environmental activity to manage. Part of the impacts can be measured and characterized by absolute values such as monetized benefits. Others can be characterized on a relative scale by comparing them to each other or to a reference value. The evaluation can be prospective or retrospective. Verification of an environmental measure or technology is a generic regulatory process resulting in a certificate for a technology whose appropriateness and efficacy have been proved in general, or it may refer to a site-specific application, where the technology has either fulfilled the requirements or appeared to be capable of achieving the planned target. This chapter introduces the environmental risk assessment (ERA), socio-economic assessment (SEA), multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) tools. These tools are used for the assessment of environmental problems caused by chemical substances or contaminated sites, for the selection of the best possible risk reduction measure (comparative evaluation), monitoring the applied measure/technology (maintaining optimal operation), post-application assessment, and verification of the applied measure/technology by efficiency assessment and approval.Is it possible to save money and at the same time increase productivity while minimizing negative effects on the environment? Long-life oils reduce oil consumption, waste, and CO2 emissions. High-performance characteristics offer greater productivity due to reduced downtime and lead to enhanced machine reliability and availability. If oils also are biodegradable and have low toxicity, any spill will have a reduced impact on the environment. The following key factors are critical for a high-tech lubricant: technology, ecology, and economy. If criteria in these areas are addressed and well balanced, lubricant concepts will provide sustainable solutions. Because of the longer operating life of such oils, appropriate monitoring and upkeep are recommended as preventive maintenance. Through regular oil analyses, necessary measures can be taken in good time if required. Top-tier environmentally considerate lubricant (ECL) profiles (biodegradable and with low toxicity) ensure a minimal negative effect on the environment in the event of an accidental spill. Longevity leads to fewer oil changes and thus reduces CO2 emissions. Better lubricity leads to less friction, causing less energy loss or increased output in mechanical systems such as hydraulics, gear boxes, engines, and bearings in general. In this paper, several issues are discussed. A life cycle assessment is performed comparing a mineral oil and a synthetic ester-based hydraulic fluid. The benefits of top-tier ECLs with regard to their effects on air, soil, and water are differentiated. Finally, field experience with a large railway tamping machine fully equipped with responsible lubricants is reported. In addition to the technical experience acquired over several years, a reduction in CO2 emissions is illustrated, which leads to a smaller carbon footprint.Global warming caused by Greenhouse gas emission has become a major environmental issue. GHG emission generated from service or commodity consumption is measured by Carbon Footprint (CFT) on the basis of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A CFT Model was introduced into Tourism Environmental studies to evaluate LCA of Hotel Accommodation Services. Then the model was applied to empirical research which was mainly fixed on six four-star hotels in Kunming city of China. Results showed that the CFT of hotels, accommodation products was mainly generated during the operation phase, which accounts for about 72.71% of the entire life cycle. And there are three main sources of the CTF of hotels, accommodation products, energy consumption which accounts for about 60.98%, waste release and Refrigerant Leakage. The main effective factors of the CFT of hotel accommodation products was the consumption of material and energy, and the emission coefficient, however, the scale of hotels did not worked dramatically for it was interfered by other factors such as environmental temperature. This study seeks to find solutions to reduce the GHG emission in tourism industry and to provide a relevant theory support.Ensuring sustainability is necessary for balancing economic viability, the environment, and the social system. Because transportation infrastructure projects have direct and indirect impacts on this balance, transportation agencies must consider the sustainability and environmental impacts of transportation investment during the planning and programming phase. An integrated life-cycle analysis approach (ILCA(2)) that integrates life-cycle assessment and life-cycle cost analysis is developed through the establishment of a reasonable life-cycle time frame, representative elements, largely homogeneous transportation facilities with representative cross sections, and accepted construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation practices. The methodology quantifies life-cycle environmental impacts for the carbon footprint of materials in carbon dioxide equivalent, quantity of wasted materials, and quantity of stormwater runoff along with associated costs. The use of the ILCA(2) is demonstrated for a case study of urban roadway projects in a sample transportation state transportation improvement plan. A case study shows that initial costs represent approximately 20% of life-cycle costs; environmental impact costs are higher than direct operational costs, energy costs, and resurfacing costs. The use of the ILCA(2) for transportation programming allows decision makers to evaluate the larger impacts of transportation investments as well as provides opportunities for considering programmatic changes to practices that support sustainability.Today's sustainability-driven systems require a product or process to be environmentally beneficial as well as cost-effective. This study used life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) to consider the economic and environmental feasibility of using a high content of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) in asphalt mixtures. The LCCA conducted in the study incorporated agency cost as well as the costs incurred by the user in the construction work zone. Initial construction as well as future maintenance and rehabilitation activities were considered in the analysis. The hybrid LCA took into account the material, construction, and maintenance and rehabilitation phases of the pavement life cycle. The results showed savings in terms of costs and energy use and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions with an increase in RAP content. On the basis of the LCCA and LCA performed under various performance scenarios, break-even performance levels were identified for mixtures with up to 50% RAP content. Break-even performance levels underscored the importance of achieving field performance for recycled mixtures equivalent to that for control virgin mixtures.Sustainability assessment of concrete manufacturing processes has recently received great attention among scholars and practitioners. While most of the studies on sustainability assessment of concrete manufacturing processes focus on economic and environmental issues, those which consider all three dimensions of sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) simultaneously are rather limited. In this study, a hybrid approach of fuzzy inference system and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is proposedin order to evaluate the sustainability level of concrete manufacturing processes based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principals. AHP is applied to weigh the selected sustainability elements and subelements. Subsequently, fuzzy inference system is used to evaluate the sustainability level of concrete manufacturing processes. The practicality and applicability of the proposed approach are examined by conducting sustainability assessments of four different concrete manufacturing processes: (1) 100% of Portland cement (2) 35 % slag cement and 65% Portland cement (3) 50% slag cement and 50% Portland cement (4) 20% fly ash and 80% Portland cement. The results show that the more sustainable concrete manufacturing process which is the 50 % of Slag cement and 50% Portland cement.This research aimed to compare the carbon footprint between bioplastic straws (PBS/PLA 65/35 and PBS/PLA 70/30 blends) and PP straws through the life cycle. PP straws were prepared by straw extruder and flexible straw bending machine, whereas bioplastic straws involved one additional compounding process; twin screw extrusion. Morphology of blends was investigated by SEM and demonstrated compatibility between PBS and PLA. Young's modulus and tensile stress at break of both blends were similar to PP properties, whereas % elongation at break was around 6 - 9%. The melt flow indexes were about 5 - 7 g/10 min. Carbon footprint of bioplastic straws and PP straws are carried out by life cycle assessment (LCA) typed business to consumer model (B2C). This method estimated the total emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) in carbon equivalents per 1 kg weight of product through their life cycles, from raw material, transportation, manufacturing, and disposals of finished products. The results showed that the carbon footprint of bioplastic straws was higher than that of PP straws because of more wastes from manufacturing. However, if these wastes can be reduced, the carbon footprint of PBS/PLA straws would be less than carbon footprint of PP straws. The statistical analysisd was performed using electrical energy collected from straw extruder as data. The electrical energy was used in the production of bioplastic straws were less than (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.In 2006 the Australian steel industry and CSIRO initiated an R&D program to reduce the industry's net greenhouse emission by at least 50%. Given that most of the CO2 emissions in steel production occur during the reduction of iron ore to hot metal through use of coal and coke, a key focus of this program has been to substitute these with renewable carbon (charcoal) sourced from sustainable sources such as plantations of biomass species. Another key component of the program has been to recover the waste heat from molten slags and produce a by-product that could be substituted for Portland cement. This paper provides an overview of the low-emission Integrated Steelmaking Process, progress made over the past seven years and the program's future direction which includes proposed demonstrations of the technologies developed including large scale piloting and full scale plant trials.Eco-efficiency analysis development with life cycle approach for steel production will be discussed in the paper. Eco-efficiency analysis is a tool for quantifying the relationship between economic value of technology or product and environmental impacts over the entire life cycle. The main goal of the eco-efficiency analysis is to compare similar processes, technologies or products. Possibility of applying multicriteria analysis for eco-efficiency assessment will be presented. This paper adapts Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to undertake an analysis of the environmental dimensions of steel production. The algorithm of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) using for eco-efficiency optimization of steel production will be presented. MCDA allows taking into account the most important criteria of steel production: performance, life cycle of cost, quality of product, environmental aspects, social aspects etc.Significance of water footprint assessment in steel supply chain will be discussed in the paper. Water footprint (WF) is new concept which allows quantification of freshwater appropriation. The main goal of WF is quantifying and mapping of indirect water use in the relevance of involving producers and consumers along chosen supply chain. This helps by sustainable water resource management. Components and phases of water footprint will be presented. Steel supply chain encompasses all those activities needed to design, manufacture and deliver steel. The aim of this paper is to show importance of water footprint in steel supply chain to demonstrate the effect of effective inventory management of water use for higher eco- efficiency of steel supply chain. This paper can help practitioners and decision makers in the steel supply chain field understand their impacts sustainability of water sources and formulate strategies to decrease water footprint.Information about production and consumption impacts on the workers, the consumers, the local communities, the society and other shareholders represents the most mentioned environmental and social impacts of production processes. Many companies in metallurgy solve environmental tasks of company's production processes, introduces Environmental management systems (EMS) to improve material, energy and economic flows, but social tasks and impacts are often underestimated. Consumers are more and more asking themselves questions about not only environmental but also the social circumstances under which a product is made and companies should improve their processes to ensure the products are produced in a sustainable way. End-consumers as well as the consumers who are part of each step of the supply chain represent important group of stakeholders and social impacts related with consumers must be adequately considered. Social impacts like: Health & Safety, Feedback Mechanism, Consumer Privacy, Transparency or End of life responsibility must be identified and evaluated. The contribution deals with identification and evaluation of relevant social impacts of metallurgical products or metallurgical materials production on consumers. The main objective is to determine possible industry specific social impacts and discuss whether suitable indicators for their measurements can be found. Application of indicators offered by Social Life Cycle Assessment method will be closely tested and discussed.Buildings play significant role in energy consumption and emission production through all phases of life cycle. Over the last decade, the development towards sustainability has become important issue in building design decisions. The relative contribution of embodied impacts of building materials and structures has been recognized as being significant, especially for high energy effective buildings. Life cycle assessment (LCA) belongs to broadly used methodology which helps to make decisions in sustainable building design. The lower structure of buildings consisted of external wall, floor and substructure has by far, the most significant contribution of embodied impacts associated with the construction phase. The goal of this paper is to assess alternative material solutions of lower structure to support decision at the design phase of the project. The solutions are towards reduced embodied environmental impacts and improved energy performance. This study uses life cycle analysis in system boundary from Cradle to Gate and focuses on environmental indicators such as embodied energy and emissions of CO2eq. and SO2eq. The selection and combination of materials influence amount of energy consumption and associated production of emissions during building operation phase. Therefore this study also calculates thermalphysical parameters. Methods of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) are used for the interpretation of results of assessments.This paper shows partial results of IEA ECBCS Annex 56 which deals with energy-, economically- and environmentally-efficient renovations of buildings. It describes one of the assessed case studies - renovation of elementary school Kaminky 5 in Brno-Novy Liskovec, Czech Republic into low-energy standard. The school was built in 1987 and renovated in 2009 and 2010. The renovation significantly reduced energy consumption of the school. The energy consumption (heat, electricity) as well as environmental performance (represented by CO2 emissions, non-renewable and cumulative energy demand) of the school, both before and after the renovation, is described in detail in the paper. Data about the energy consumption are based on audits and financial reports that has been provided by the Borough Office Brno - Novy Liskovec. Data for the environmental assessment are taken from renovation's designs (provided by design office Menhir project s. r. o.) and in-situ inspection.Solar power generation technologies are categorized as Concentrated Solar Thermal Power (CSP) and Photo Voltaic (PV). AREVA's Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLER) system is a CSP power generation technology which compares favorably with other technologies in terms of its land efficiency and environmental impact. Analysis of the costs and benefits of solar technologies can inform their design and influence environmental and economic policies. This paper reports a comprehensive "cradle to grave" life cycle analysis (LCA) of AREVA's CLFR technology. A unique element of this study is the availability of comprehensive inventory data from AREVA's Reliance project, a 125 MWe Solar CLFR power plant under construction in India. Using actual project data showed the energy payback time was about 8.2 months and the greenhouse gas intensity was about 31 g-CO2/kWhe. Sensitivity analysis identified that the environmental performance is most sensitive to the solar intensity represented by direct normal irradiance. This study also compares AREVA's CLFR technology with other leading solar power generation technologies. AREVA's CLFR has the similar energy payback time and greenhouse gas intensity as other CSP technologies, and it has lower environmental impact compared to flat-plate PV systems.Among the alternative and renewable fuels, biodiesel derived from plants, such as soybeans, palm, and rapeseeds, has made great contributions to the liquid fuel supply. With the growth of biodiesel production, its principle co-byproduct, crude glycerol, is expected to reach a global production of 6 million tons in 2025. In the US, around 0.6 million tons of glycerol are expected to enter the market in 2025. US glycerol is mainly derived from biodiesel production using soybeans as the feedstock and it has become an excessive product with little value due to the large volume of biodiesel production. To improve the sustainability of agricultural, especially oilseeds production and generate higher profits for biodiesel production, using glycerol as a starting material for value-added chemical production will create a new demand on the glycerol market. This chapter reviews recent development on chemicals derived from glycerol, focusimg on thermochemical catalytic routes that have been put in a commercial production or have great potential for commercial productions. This chapter also looks at the current status of glycerol commercial uses as well as understudied technologies and their potential for producing value-added chemicals with glycerol as a starting material. Obstacles for efficiently converting glycerol are also discussed. (C) 2014 American Chemical SocietyThe limited fossil reserves and environmental concerns have urged to develop sustainable chemistry, green process, and renewable materials. Plant oils including algal oil and soybean oil are readily available renewable resources. Recent progress in chemical functionalization techniques of plant oils promises oleochemicals to replace petrochemicals. However, those renewable resources often require more energy consumption and use of toxic chemicals for their productions that could cause other environmental disadvantages. This chapter is to introduce recent effort to utilize "Green chemistry" defined by Anastas and Warner in 1998, "reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substance in the design, manufacture and application of chemical productions." First, green ring-opening of epoxidized methyl oleate was discussed regarding life cycle assessment (LCA). The novel sulfamic acid functionalized (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) coated Fe/Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) were designed and prepared for a convenient recycling and reaction process in a magnetic field for bio-polyol synthetic applications. Second, solvent-free acid-catalyzed ring-openings of epoxidized oleochemicals using metallic stearates or stearic acid were discussed. The catalytic competition of the ring-openings of plant oil-derived epoxide was studied with Brosted acid (stearic acid) and Lewis acid (its salts), regarding product yields and conversion rate in the same solvent-free condition. Finally, this chapter discusses a green production of amphiphilic, highly conducting molecular sheets of reduced graphene oxide using epoxidized methyl oleate via solvent- and catalyst-free ring-opening.Today, Mexico is one of the leading countries of the Latin American region in receiving foreign direct investment, with expected GDP growth for the coming years between 4% and 6% per annum, according to estimates published by the OECD and other international organizations. Sustaining such growth demands the strengthening of one of the main pillars of economic development, the National Electricity Sector. To accomplish this growth in the electricity sector will require an energy portfolio that allows for three basic conditions in the sector's planning: reliability, economy and sustainability. To ensure the sustainability of the National Electric Sector, the optimal energy portfolio must meet the CO(2)eq emission reduction that the country has adopted based on international commitments. Sources of electricity generation with low water consumption as well as reduced pollutant discharge are needed, given the great importance of water efficiency in energy production. This paper determines an optimal energy portfolio involving conventional technologies, clean technologies and alternative and intermittent renewable technologies, based on a simple optimization model and using variables such as future electricity demand, CO(2)eq emissions by source, and taking into account data from several studies of life cycle assessment of the electricity sector, such as energy payback rate and water pollution. The research presented assumes two scenarios of growth in electricity demand of about 350 and 1,150 TW-hours in 2050. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.We visualize the green building categories in the Israeli Sustainable (Green Buildings) Standard as well as in LEED (Leading in Energy and Environmental Design) as six layers: Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space and Stuff, each reflecting their different lifetime scales and subsequently, their different environmental damages. A comparison between the two standards shows that the Israeli standard puts the emphasis in most categories on the building design layers that has long lifetime scales, while LEED puts more emphasis on the system design that has a shorter lifetime scale than the building design one. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.LCA is quantitative method to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product o service, including relevant stages of the cycle and includes mining, manufacturing and distribution until use and disposal. In this work it is analyzed the LCA of solar selective coatings from manufacturing to the coatings in the life of a solar collector. In this work, the life cycle analysis of solar selective coatings of black cobalt, obtained by a) electrodeposition and b) sol-gel technique is performed. The selective coatings improve the efficiency of solar collectors due their optimized optical response: High solar absorptance and low thermal emittance, which results in an additional crop of solar energy. The life cycle analysis of these films, show that the electro-coating technique is potentially more favorable for manufacturing the solar collectors, in comparison with dipping sol-gel technique, which is accepted to have a favorable LCA. LCA in conceptual terms can be divided into the inventory and analysis stages. The inventory builds a matrix describing the use of materials and energy and emissions in the life cycle. The set builds a matrix describing the use of materials and energy is called the life cycle inventory (LCI). For each considered system is calculated the energetic consumption, kWh/year of energy required to manufacture a unit area of selective coatings prepared by both techniques, starting from fundamental components and amount of materials involved in kg/m(2), it is calculated the kWh/year supplied by each system assessing the lifetime of the coatings, resulting in a matter and energy balance as well as the environmental impacts of the coatings under analysis. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Based on Life Cycle Assessment Theory (LCA Theory), the problems of Zhejiang new rural residential buildings at different stages of life cycle were analyzed. LCCM method of engineering project were adopted to highlight the influence of economic factors on energy-saving process and analyze the energy consumption of Zhejiang new rural residential buildings, so as to put forward reasonable energy-saving measures.Agencies that manage pavement networks have a role in mitigating the factors affecting global climate change by managing their networks in such a way that these factors are minimized. Although much research is still required to quantify the climate change impact of many variables relating to pavements, the impact of pavement condition on vehicle fuel consumption has been clearly demonstrated in several research projects. In the light of extensive research that shows pavement characteristics as having a significant impact on vehicle fuel consumption, it can be shown that maintaining a network of pavements to minimize roughness can limit the energy consumption of vehicles traveling along the pavement network. The objective of this study was to demonstrate a method by which transportation agencies could measure the impact of their management decisions on reducing the energy consumption of their networks. The use of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify energy consumption probabilistically for a given set of expected maintenance actions defined at the network level is demonstrated. This study shows how the results of the LCA can be used to evaluate the energy consumption attributed to the pavement network over a defined time frame.Toxicity characterization of chemicals' emissions is a complex task which proceeds via multimedia fate and exposure models attached to models of dose-response relationships. Several different environmental multimedia models exist, but in any case a vast amount of data on the properties of the chemical compounds being assessed is required. This paper deals with the selection of informative variables in the problem of deriving characterization factors for eco-toxicology and human toxicology of chemical compounds starting from molecular-based properties. The Gamma Test algorithm has been applied to single out the most informative variables. The set of variables retained varies with the subset of the original dataset used to carry out the analysis. In particular, 16 different subsets have been used. They have been created selecting each time only those entries in the data set where one chosen input variable was available only from measurements/estimations, respectively.Prospective Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a relevant approach to assess the environmental performance of future energy pathways. Amongst different types of prospective scenarios, cornerstone scenarios meant for complex systems and long-term approaches, are of interest to assess such performance. They rely on different types of long-term projections, such as projections of technological evolutions and of energy resources. In most studies, scenarios are defined with single values for each parameter, and environmental impacts are assessed in a deterministic way. Inherent uncertainties related to these prospective assumptions are not considered and prospective LCA uncertainties are thus not addressed. In this paper we describe a methodology to account for these uncertainties and to identify the parameters inducing most of the uncertainties in the prospective LCA results. We apply this approach to prospective LCAs of photovoltaic-based electricity generation systems.In this paper we describe an approach that combines system optimization under environmental constraints with a detailed simulation of the processes of a working plant. Specifically, a flow-sheet-based model of a potable water production plant was developed and coupled with a Python script which allowed variation of operational parameters of the plant (dissolved organic carbon (DOC), UV Absorbance at 254 nm (UVA), pH of coagulation unit, etc.) and automatic determination of the values of the objectives (e.g. quantity of sludge produced as a result of the settling phase, CO2 emissions, climate change impact), which are not known in closed form. The Python script runs an optimization algorithm, seeking the global minimum of an objective function in the parameter space. The search procedure is based on the Nelder-Mead algorithm, which does not assume smooth functions. The script was applied to a simplified model of a potable water production plant, which includes pumping, ozonation, powdered activated carbon (PAC) addition, recirculation, coagulation, settling, filtration and disinfection. Every unit is modelled with a set of equations describing input and output mass flows of the process, as well as the chemical reactions taking place within the unit. Therefore, while simplified, the model has all the complexity of a full-fledged simulation of the plant. Systematic exploration of the objective surfaces shows that they are irregular and multimodal in all three cases tested, although there are systematic trends in relation to parameter values.The aluminium scrap market is undergoing rapid changes which will trigger off new recycling strategies. As the cast scrap market saturates it will become economically feasible to apply scrap also in aluminium wrought alloy production. As part of an EU project, Sustainable and efficient Production of Light weight solutions (SuPLight) a method for assessing life cycle environmental and economic consequences of applying aluminium scrap in high-end products has been developed. In this work, the method has been applied to assess life cycle environmental and economic impacts for six scenarios, embracing five various strategies for scrap treatment. This includes processes in material and component production, as well as fuel use during operation of vehicle and end-of-life treatment. The model for scrap strategies includes three grades of sorting and separation, plus simple refining by low-temp electrolysis and fluxing, and refining by Hoopes process. Not surprising, we find that sorting is beneficial compared to refining. More notable, perhaps, is the relative large difference between scenarios with regards to the environmental impacts considered. Finally, we discuss benefits from the life-cycle evaluation of scrap scenarios and use of the tool in business development.Biomass biodegradable packaging material as a new green packaging material is a hot research area of packaging material. In order to obtain its life cycle environmental property, the life cycle environmental impact of biomass biodegradable packaging materials was studied in this paper. Firstly, the life cycle assessment theory and Eco-indicator99 method were used to establish the life cycle assessment model for biomass biodegradable packaging material; Secondly, objective and scope of the assessment are identified through the research on characteristics of life cycle stages of biomass biodegradable packaging material; Finally, Simapro software is used to do the biomass biodegradable packaging materials LCA and the comparative analysis with the corrugated cardboard, kraft paper, modified starch biodegradable plastics packaging materials.Effect and benefits of a product or service could be analyzed and evaluated by life cycle assessment during the whole life cycle. Urban sewage treatment plants could improve and control urban water pollution escalating, but it also had certain harm to environment. Effect and benefits of urban wastewater treatment plant A and B were analyzed and evaluated, 13 factors were selected, and comprehensive benefits were researched quantificationally using the method of analytic hierarchy process. It found that urban wastewater treatment plant A who applied A/O process had better benefits than urban wastewater treatment plant B who applied BIOLAK process.The life cycle of a polypropylene stacking chair is assessed in order to represent the environmental impact of a plastic product. The analysis is categorized into two phases, manufacturing and disposing. The manufacturing process of a chair concerns a prime material, polypropylene (PP) granulate, an injection molding process and a resource, electricity. According to the assessment, the PP granulate seems to contribute the highest impact on the environment in term of the fossil fuel used. Afterwards, the landfill method is used in the disposal scenario of waste, and the analysis shows that the highest impact comes in the form of carcinogens followed by ecotoxicity.Electricity is one of the most important resources in the manufacturing process. This research has demonstrated the environmental impact caused from two fuel options for generating electricity, coal and mixed (oil/petroleum gas/hydro power), in Thailand. The case study is conducted on a sample plastic product, a polypropylene (PP) stacking chair. Moreover, the effect from different disposal scenarios, landfill and incineration, is also analyzed as well. Due to the results, the electricity generated from coal has caused more impact than the one from mixed fuels. For coal option, respiratory inorganics seem to be the most crucial problem while the use of fossil fuels is the major impact from mixed fuels option. When the disposal methods are considered, the incineration is a better choice for disposing PP waste since it causes the least impact on the environment. By the categories of impacts, carcinogens are highly contributed to the landfill method while the climate change is the result from the incineration.This paper makes a brief introduction to the concept of environmental materials and the meaning of road construction materials for environmental ethics. In addition, the paper also discusses a variety of coordination of road construction materials and the environment form the following four aspects : to improve the material performance, to save natural resources, to make full use of waste and to purify the environment. As a result, the life cycle assessment (LEA) method should be put forward to evaluate the road construction materials and the environment coordination.Purpose - Modern supply chains collect and deliver products worldwide and link vendors and consumers over thousands of miles. In the food industry, the quality of products is affected by manufacturing/processing and logistics activities, such as transportation and packaging. Specifically, transportation is likely the most critical step throughout the "food journey" from farm to fork because of the potential stresses that affect the products during shipment and storage activities. The purpose of this paper is to present and apply an original assessment of quality, safety and environmental effects due to the international distribution of food products via different container solutions. A case study that examines the shipment of edible oils from Italy to Canada demonstrates that the quality of a product at the place of consumption can be significantly affected by the use of different containers. Design/methodology/approach - A simulation-based quality assessment, combined with a life cycle and environmental analysis, supports the logistic manager in the decision-making process in order to guarantee the highest level of product quality at the place of consumption. Findings - The proposed approach and the illustrated case study demonstrate the importance of conducting safety and quality assessment combined with environmental analyses of sustainable food supply chains. Originality/value - This paper highlights the interdependency of implications and decisions on food quality and environmental sustainability of supply chain processes and activities.The objective of this study was to evaluate the energy input and output for winter rapeseed cultivation and biodiesel production from rapeseed oil. The total energy use for winter rapeseed cultivation and biodiesel production proceses were 10485.04 MJ/ha and 9199.48 MJ/ha, respectively. The total energy inputs for winter rapeseed cultivation were consisted of 2599.15 MJ/ha direct energy input and 7885.89 MJ/ha indirect energy input. The total energy input was calculated as 4889.66 MJ/t for winter rapeseed cultivation. The average rapeseed and straw yield were 2144.4 kg and 1154.6 kg per hectare cultivated area, respectively. The energy output of rapeseed 56826.6 MJ/ha, if only the seed was taken into account. The output/input ratio for rapeseed cultivation was 7.30 if straw was included. The net energy production was calculated as 66085.22 MJ per hectare of cultivated area. The total energy input was 19684.52 MJ/ha for rapeseed biodiesel production. The energy consumed for the conversion of refined rapeseed oil into biofuel was 6197.32 MJ/ha, which accounted for 67.37% of the total energy consumtion of biodiesel production processes. The total energy output of rapeseed biodiesel processes was consisted of 26768.97 MJ/ha in the form of biodiesel, 4095.8 MJ/ha of in the form of rapeseed meal (cake) and 2558.99 MJ/ha in the form of glycerin. The energy ratio was 2.70 for the rapeseed biodiesel production chain. The specific energy and the energy productivity for rapeseed biodiesel production were calculated as 24.41 MJ/kg and 0.0409 kg/MJ, respectively. The net biodiesel production was 7084.45 MJ/ha, which correspond to 213.39 L biodiesel per hectare of cultivated area.In this study, global warming potential (GWP) is calculated for aircrafts used in Turkish airports. The basic idea of this study is to investigate both emissions and their GWP values. This study is conducted in three steps, namely: 1) finding busiest airports in Turkey; 2) specifying the most used aircraft types and its engines; and 3) calculation of domestic flight-caused GWP value for both the total number of aircraft and per-passenger evaluation. In this regard, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 GWP 100a methodology is utilised along with the method of the life cycle assessment. While the total average GWP value is 1,629 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) per landing and takeoff (LTO), the total domestic flight-caused GWP value was calculated as 257,305 tons of CO(2)e per year in 2002 and 998,118 tons of CO(2)e per year in 2012. While, the last two years have had an average value of 12-13 kg CO(2)e per passenger for one airport, the GWP values per passenger have averaged 15.35 kg CO(2)e per passenger, per airport over these years.Recently, the issue of sustainable resource management has been increasingly recognized. Economic growth of human activity is associated with a rapid rise in the use of resources in our economy, and society has a potential environmental impact. The UNEP International Resource Panel (IRP) pointed out the importance of decoupling resource use and negative environmental impacts from economic activity (UNEP IRP 2011). In order to optimize the material cycles and increase resource efficiency, material flow analysis (MFA) is a powerful tool to understand the resource consumption and material cycle in the national economy. In this study, we present the results of global material flow analysis of nickel, which is one of the important resources for reducing energy use and CO2 emission in our society, and discuss the importance and possibility of controlling its resource logistics. This study also introduces the challenge of identifying the land-use changes in nickel mining sites by a remote-sensing technique, and knowledge to increase the resource efficiency in metal recycling based on the metallurgical thermodynamic approach. The results indicated the importance of recovery of nickel in recycling policies for end-of-life (EoL) vehicles and constructions. Improvement in EoL sorting technologies and implementation of designs for recycling/disassembly at the manufacturing phase are needed. Possible solutions include development of sorting processes for steel scrap and introduction of easier methods for identifying the composition of secondary resources. Recovery of steel scrap with a high alloy content will reduce primary inputs of alloying elements and contribute to more efficient resource use.Although the manufacturing businesses have played an important role in generating the highest GDP for Thailand, they also emit more greenhouse gas (GHG) than other sectors. Due to the cap and trade scheme by European Union (EU), the carbon footprint is the GHG emitted by products, organization or persons and it has to be tracked and recorded. Since the ceramic production process also has a major contribution on the emission, its carbon footprint is a piece of product information which cannot be ignored. In this research, the carbon footprint for the whole life cycle of a local ceramic product was recorded and calculated. It is interesting to note that the resource extraction stage has contributed to the highest emission followed by the product use, manufacturing, disposal and distribution. The results from this research are useful for local ceramic manufacturers who want to export their products to the EU countries and it is also important for the customers who are concerned about the environment.Electric water heaters consumes major part of energy in residential sector and hence there is a need to find an economical solution. One potential solution is to use solar water heating (SWH) systems. The aim of this work is to assess the techno-economic viability of SWH technologies for domestic purpose. In this study, different types of SWH collectors like evacuated tube and glazed collectors are simulated using RETScreen software whose credibility is widely accepted for calculating energy production, life cycle assessment, greenhouse gas emissions, and fuel savings for SWH applications. Calculations are performed to obtain at least 50 % solar fraction on the basis of number of SWH collectors. Other considerations involve collector's types, slope angle, tracking mode, collector thermal loses, collector optical efficiency, and back up fuel which is electricity in our case. Simulations are performed for five different cities of Saudi Arabia. Choices are being made to cover different geographical coordinates of the kingdom that involve Jeddah (western coast), Dhahran (eastern coast), Tabuk (north), Riyadh (center), and Bisha (south). Simulated results based on solar radiations on the horizontal and tilted surface, solar fraction, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy savings are used for comparative analysis of different types of solar collectors while net present value, payback period, benefit to cost ratio, and annual life cycle savings are the deciding factors for economic viability of these systems. Results indicate that under same prevailing conditions Bisha is the most attractive while Tabuk is the least suitable place for solar SWH technology.Initiatives to use, in single or hybrid configurations, solar collectors, photovoltaic panels and wind turbines require an approach of such technologies as an integral part of the organic whole of the built environment, in which quality, in their objective or subjective aspects, includes a range of specific social-environment variables. These variables must be deeply associated with the equipment usage, even if only from the viewpoint of its primary purpose and its role as a generation system. The present research analyses the equipment under broader scales, more specifically its complete specific habitable environment, which is also the target of sustainability certifications for buildings, used worldwide. The paper compares case studies in America and Europe scenarios. Through the case studies, the dichotomy "quality-sustainability" of polices and certifications and its consequent demand for life cycle assessment (LCA) are discussed. The cases also portray the necessity of an integration of scales (spatial and temporal) and dimensions (social, environmental and economic), adapted to each particular scenario, which have been driving the innovation on the LCA itself. Then, based on general investigations of the state of the art of the LCA framework, the innovative issues associated with the aforementioned scales and dimensions are identified and applied to discuss the possibilities on innovation of certifications and policies to solar cities, also regarding their specific environmental contexts.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) models and approaches for comparing the environmental impacts of different pavement decisions continue to be developed and improved. These improvements include methods for making data more regionally applicable, more agreement on methodology, more comprehensive consideration of the life cycle, and application of LCA to a broader range of important decisions. This paper summarizes advances over the past several years in the science and practice of LCA and its application to find ways to reduce the environmental impact of asphalt pavements. The paper summarizes recent studies using LCA methodology to evaluate the effects of smoothness at the network level, as well as mix design, pavement structure, recycling and tire technology at the project level, on green-house gas emissions and energy use. Finally the paper discusses possible next steps in the implementation of LCA for pavement in North America and the role of industry.We analysed the possibilities to use the digestate from pig slurry anaerobic digestion as a nutrient supply for Short Rotation Coppice Salix species. Our greenhouse experiment revealed that the total biomass (roots, cutting and shoots) of one-year-old Salix plants treated with moderate amounts (hereafter 0.5F) of digestate during the vegetative period was more than twice that of control (hereafter C) plants and this difference increased in time. After the first vegetative period both shoot and root biomass production of 0.5F plants were also significantly higher than those of plants supplied with mineral NPK fertiliser at optimal N load (hereafter MIN). Although the digestate application at optimal N load (hereafter F) harmed the plants by damaging the roots during the first vegetative period, they were able to recover and annual production was comparable with C plants during the following year. The MIN plants supplied with the same N load as F plants died back during winter despite the larger supply of K. The largest load (hereafter 2F) of digestate caused serious problems and was lethal to one-year-old plants. By the end of the experiment the pH of the growing substrates treated with digestate or mineral fertiliser was lower than in control pots. Less ammonium N was available but the K and P content increased in growing substrates following digestate application. Our results reveal that digestate can be an alternative fertiliser in SRC and the nutrients from digestate are more available for Salix plants than those from mineral fertiliser.Land use and resource depletion are two main considerations in life cycle assessment (LCA). Unfortunately, the relationship between land use and resource depletion is always ignored and only a few studies tried to connect them. The objective of this paper is to establish an exergy-based model for quantifying land resource in China, which includes both the occupation phase and the renaturalisation phase of land use, and implement this model into a case study on sintered brick production. The results show that the exergy loss caused by land use accounts for an innegligible percentage in the cumulative exergy extracted from natural environment (CEENE) of sintered brick; the results also show that the duration of renaturalisation and the type of land are the cardinal factors for improving the accuracy of results.Amount of material and energy sources and the associated environmental pollution is limited over the world. These issues lead to increasing interest in comparing the embodied energy and environmental impacts of buildings using different structure systems and alternative building materials. Buildings play significant role in energy consumption and emission production through all phases of life cycle. Over the last decade, the development towards sustainability has become important issue in building design decisions. The relative contribution of embodied impacts of building materials and structures has been recognized as being significant, especially for high energy effective buildings. Life cycle assessment (LCA) belongs to broadly used methodology which helps to make decisions in sustainable building design. The lower structure of buildings has by far the most significant contribution of embodied impacts associated with the construction phase. The goal of this paper is to assess alternative material solutions of lower structure to support decision at the design phase of project. The solutions are towards reduced embodied environmental impacts and improved energy performance. This study uses life cycle analysis in system boundary from Cradle to Gate and focuses on environmental indicators such as embodied energy and emissions of CO2eq. and SO2eq. The selection and combination of materials influence amount of energy consumption and associated production of emissions during building operation. Therefore this study also calculates thermal-physical parameters. Methods of multi-criteria decision analysis (MDCA) are used for the interpretation of results.Negative environment impacts from fossil fuel based resource lead to the search of alternative sustainable resources, such as biomass. Biomass technology is limited by the complex biomass characteristic and high transportation cost. A novel technique - Biomass Element Life Cycle Analysis (BELCA) is introduced to tackle these problems. BELCA acts as a platform to study the properties of each biomass, from plantation biomass to biomass generated within processes. This study allows better understanding of respective biomass characteristic which is needed in higher level of biomass utilisation and applications. Biomass characteristic is presented in a simple graphical approach to enhance the understanding and highlight their potential value. Combination of this method with biomass characteristic data bank will make the biomass selection easier. In this work, characteristic of palm biomasses based on literature are presented in radar chart. As the case study for LCA analysis, sago industry is studied to discover underutilised biomass generated within processes. Analysis on the sago biomass characteristic will be conducted with collaboration with sago industry partner and other industry via BELCA approach for better understanding of respective underutilised biomass. With the knowledge in underutilised biomass, biomass supply chain can be improved and support the implementation of respective biomass.With the increasing trend of mobility of the human population, vehicles have to face the problem of primary energy resources scarcity. The vehicles need higher efficiency and better adaptation to the alternative energy sources. The need to improve the efficiency of the vehicle energy system motivates to search for innovative solutions during the design process. The main design criteria for modern sustainable development of vehicle powertrain are the high energy efficiency of the conversion system, the competitive cost and the lowest possible environmental impacts. These objectives are most of the time antagonistic. To cope with this challenge the automotive engineers need a structured optimization methodology. A multi-objective optimization methodology is being applied as search for the best powertrain design solutions. This kind of approach named "multi-objectives optimization" is based on genetic algorithms, which are based on the process of natural selection. An innovative decision- making methodology, using this optimization technic is currently under development at PSA Peugeot Citroen. The idea is to obtain simultaneously a population of possible design solutions corresponding to the most efficient energy system definition for a vehicle. These solutions are optimal from a technical, economic and environmental point of view. In this article the methodology is applied on a hybrid electric vehicle study in order to define the powertrain configuration of the vehicle, estimate the cost of the powertrain equipment and show the environmental impact of the technical choices on the lifecycle perspective of the vehicle. For that a physical model of a hybrid electric vehicle is made. This model is coupled with a cost model for the vehicle and life cycle assessment (LCA) technics are used for the environmental assessment. After multi-objective optimization, the outcoming solutions from the Pareto frontiers curve are analysed.Environmental problems deep-rooted in industrial activities have increased considerably, yet the role companies play in accomplishing environmental sustainability (ES) is disappointing. As a result, this paper disaggregates the components of sustainability into more dynamic formulations. For this reason, the study applies input output life-cycle assessment (IO-LCA) in combination with a simulation of company-specific environmental performance. However, the resulting challenges in this study include integrating environmental, health, and safety concerns with green-product design, lean and green operations, and closed-loop supply chains. It presents a quantitative framework that can be used as a basis for designing sustainable production systems and monitoring existing ones. This includes reflection on how we can harness science and education for ES. This requires the companies to use the concepts of (a) total quality environmental management, (b) ecologically sustainable competitive strategies, (c) technology transfer through technology-for nature-swaps, and (d) reducing the impact of populations on ecosystems.In the last years, the wine production industry has gradually focused its attention in the improvement of the product quality rather than in the production of great quantities. This tendency has allowed the entrance in the market of various small wine producers that have developed new product trademarks of good qualities on a small scale. Recently, the environmental sustainability is establishing to determine the product quality. In this study, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out to compare the environmental impacts and the energy efficiency of four kinds of wines made by a small producer in the southern part of Italy. The system boundary covered the industrial life-cycle stages of wine production. In particular, in this paper, four stages were considered: vinification, bottling, packaging and waste disposal treatments. The aim of the work is to compare the environmental impact of a high and medium quality wine (either in the case of white wines or in the case of red wines) to understand how to address the production toward a higher sustainability. The analysed products have been realized using different processes and different raw materials, depending on the specific characteristics and kind (red or white) of produced wine. The materials and energy consumption and the emissions to air, soil and water were reported to the chosen functional unit (1 bottle of Italian wine). The data were analysed using SimaPro 8.0.2 software and the Ecoinvent database, in accordance with the reference standard for LCA (i.e., ISO 14040-14044) to identify environmental key performance indicators (KPIs).The cultivation of two or more crops in association to each other is an ancient method of utilising agricultural area to get optimum crop productions. The increased cultivation of energy crops to fulfil energy requirements have led to the necessity of optimisation of bio productivity of the available land use, which should be carried out without compromising on the land quality and environmental conditions. Syn-Energy II is an Austrian national project, which focuses on the possibilities of synergetic expansion of agricultural biogas production. The field experiment results reveals that cultivation of intercrops for biogas production between the main crops enhances crop rotation yields, while it reduces erosion, greenhouse gas emissions and ground water pollution. Similarly synergetic calculations will be made for conservational soil cultivation and biological crop rotation systems. The project not only focuses on production of biogas for conventional use (heat and electricity production), but also biogas cleaning to natural gas quality (96 % methane content) which can be injected to the gas grid and its usage as an alternate fuel in the agricultural practice making a recycling loop (Niemetz and Kettl, 2012). The ecological assessment is carried out utilising Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based methodology known as Sustainable Process Index (SPI) (Krotscheck and Narodoslawsky, 1996). A web based tool SPIonWeb (http://spionweb.tugraz.at/en/welcome) is used to calculate ecological footprint and dynamic modelling for biogas production scenarios, based on comprehensive energy and material flows from a variety of intercrop-systems. The process evaluation provides reliable information to figure out ecological hotspots for process optimisation (Kettl and Narodoslawsky, 2013).The U.S. produced 2.6 billion kg of peanuts during the 2012 growing season, up from 1 billion kg in 2002, a 160% increase. Over $2 billion worth of peanuts were produced in seven key states: Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Approximately 32% of U.S. peanuts were made into peanut butter, representing $850 million in sales. The goal of this study was to quantify the greenhouse gas ( GHG) emissions associated with the production, consumption, and disposal of peanut butter packaged in the U.S. A life cycle assessment (LCA) model was created in SimaPro 7.3, and a combination of sources including peer-reviewed literature, producer surveys, and experts' opinions were used to develop and populate a comprehensive model of the peanut butter life cycle from cradle to grave. The system boundaries included peanut production on farm, shelling, blanching, roasting, peanut butter manufacture, consumer use, and package disposal. The functional unit ( FU) was 1 kg of peanut butter consumed by U.S. consumers. GHG impacts were assessed using the IPCC 2007 global warming potential ( GWP) methodology. A Monte Carlo analysis was performed in order to determine the 90% confidence interval of the mean GHG emissions. The Monte Carlo analysis indicated that CO(2)e emissions were between 2.38 and 3.49 kg CO(2)e per FU at a 90% confidence interval with a mean of 2.88. The processor subsystem contributed the greatest amount of GHG to the system ( 1.01 kg CO(2)e), followed by consumer use and disposal ( 0.84 kg CO(2)e) and retail ( 0.51 kg CO(2)e).Carbon materials, whether at macro, micro or at nanoscale, play an important role in the battery industry, as they can be used as electrodes, electrode enhancers, bipolar separators, or current collectors. When conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of novel batteries manufacturing processes, we also need to consider the fate of potentially emitted carbon based nanomaterials. However, the knowledge generated in the last decade regarding the behavior of such materials in the environment and its toxicological effects has yet to be included in the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodologies. Conventional databases of chemical products (e.g. ECHA, ECOTOX) offer little information regarding engineered nanomaterials (ENM). It is thus necessary to go one step further and compile physicochemical and toxicological data directly from scientific literature. Such studies do not only differ in their results, but also in their methodologies, and several calls have been made towards a more consistent approach that would allow us model the fate of ENM in the environment as well as their potentially harmful effects. Trying to overcome these limitations we have developed a tool based on Microsoft Excel (R) combining several methods for the estimation of physicochemical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNT). The information generated with this tool is combined with degradation rates and toxicological data consistent with the methods followed by the USEtox methodology. Thus, it is possible to calculate the characterization factors of CNTs and integrate them as a first proxy in future LCA of products including these ENM.The aim of this project is to industrialise a procedure for producing glass-like, environmentally-friendly and self-healing cerium-based coatings for corrosion protection of aluminium and magnesium alloys. The coatings were developed in a previous Integrated Project, MULTIPROTECT, and the procedure was granted a patent. The new product is intended for the aeronautic market, where it will be introduced as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional Cr-based coatings, which provided optimum corrosion protection, but with a major drawback represented by their toxicity. The market will first focus on the French aeronautic sector and will be further extended to address a wider geographical area. The specific objectives to achieve this target are the following: Optimization of the coating process for industrial applications (process scale-up) Validation of the coated products according to the high standards of the aeronautic industry, in order to ensure replication of the process Life cycle assessment of the entire process and the final product, taking into account all production stages, from raw materials to energy and water consumption, end-of-life, etc. Business plan to ensure penetration of the final product into the French aeronautic market as a first step and then extend it to other geographical areas.Residential ground source heat pump systems in heating-dominated climates often incorporate auxiliary electric resistance heating. This is utilized for some portion of the winter heating - it could be intended only for rare, emergency use, or it could be intended to provide a significant fraction of the annual winter heating. In Sweden, where a typical ground source heat pump provides both heating via radiant panels and domestic hot water, the auxiliary electric resistance heating is activated when there are high domestic hot water loads or when ground heat exchanger temperatures fall to low values. Two design parameters have a strong effect on when and how much the electric resistance heating is used: ground heat exchanger size and heat pump capacity (i.e. of the vapor compression cycle.). In turn, the resulting pattern of electric resistance heating and electricity consumption has a significant influence on emissions associated with electric power generation. This influence may be more significant than might be inferred from simple annual emissions factors - the highest heating requirements occur when it is very cold and that is coincident with when Sweden imports electricity that may be produced with fossil fuels. A range of system designs with different ground heat exchanger designs and heat pump capacities serving a typical renovated 1940s-era house in Stockholm are simulated to estimate hourly electricity consumptions. A range of data sets and models for estimating CO2 emissions are applied and both the effect of the system design and the various assumptions used in the emission analysis are investigated.The theme developed is the Re-design of a cult object of Italian Design: Joe and Gianni Colombo's "Acrilica". The initial lamp has been revisited with the aim of creating a product with a lower weight and a greater efficiency, in order to achieve a sustainable design through the method of "Concurrent Design". At The end of Re-design a comparative environmental assessment with the initial product has been made, using specific software tools. The "AcrIlica", has been subjected to analysis of transversal type. This has led to a new lamp which provides a redefinition of the form of the convector in PMMA, a decrease of its thickness, a change of the direction of whole lighting apparatus; with the aim to ensure the refraction of light along the curve in PMMA and in the direction of its support plane and therefore reduce the dispersion of the light and the environmental impact. The whole design and the choice of the light source aims to an optimization on multiple levels which gives improvements in terms of use of materials, functioning, processing technologies and duration of the life of the lamp. Finally for the comparative LCA(Life cycle assessment), we have followed the ISO14040-ISO14043 standards that regulate the same LCA methodology and to communicate the data, the EPD certification scheme(Environmental Product Declaration. ISO14025). The final product has a higher lighting efficiency with an implementation of the illuminated area of 50% and a weight reduction of 46%.Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied to the industrial sector, with the aim to evaluate the environmental sustainability of different chemical processes. In particular, the ammoxidation reaction to produce acrylonitrile was chosen as a case study, comparing the environmental loads of the traditional process (SOHIO) with the alternative routes starting from propane on the base of the same amount of acrylonitrile produced (1 kg). Information reported on patents, and data collected on Ecoinvent 2.2 database were used to create each ammoxidation scenario in SimaPro 7.3.3 software. The system boundaries of the study include the main production stages on industrial scale: reaction flows, heat exchange, raw materials for catalyst manufacture, the main plant emissions and transportation phase. The comparison was carried out using ReCiPe 2008 method, expressing results in terms of midpoint impact categories, as: climate change (both damage on human health and on ecosystem), particulate matter formation, fossil fuel depletion and metal depletion. Results show how the alternative routes starting from propane seem to have higher potential impact than the traditional SOHIO process, due to the lower catalysts activity. Also, to quantify the environmental load of ammoxidation processes a comparison with other common chemical industrial productions was done. This simplified approach is able to show the environmental impacts of the ammoxidation scenarios in a broader industrial context.As an alternative to the traditional process based on the use of sulfides, an unhairing process in drum by hydrogen peroxide, named DEPOXO, was developed for the production of high-quality bovine upper leather. A preliminary investigation at laboratory scale has allowed to set out the optimal process conditions, in terms of H2O2 dosage (9 %) and pH (12.5), in order to achieve an effective unhairing and a compatible swelling of hides. The following pilot-scaled runs have assessed the industrial feasibility of the process that allows the production of a versatile base for different final applications of the leather (either chrome or vegetable tanned), and appear practical to implement. The crust leather obtained by the oxidative unhairing process showed good physical-mechanical and technical properties comparable with those obtained by the traditional one, and the leather was technically assessed as satisfactory and suitable according to the market request. The actual reduction of the environmental impact of the novel process, in relation with the traditional one, was evaluated performing a Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) using SimaPro 7.3, one of the most used software for LCA analysis. The results of the life cycle impact assessment underline that damages on main impact categories are greatly reduced through the adoption or the oxidative unhairing. Therefore, the DEPOXO process appears a feasible process, either from the environmental or from the technical point of view, to produce high quality bovine upper leather.This research is focused on the production process of the asphalt used for roads, in order to gather the information required for developing an environmental management program in a road construction company. Life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology was used to evaluate the environmental profile of the batch production process of dense graded hot mix asphalt, in terms of its environmental impact. It was found that the environmental impact of the process is caused mainly by the stages where the asphalt binder is involved, such as heating, stock, weighing and mixing. According to the results, three alternative scenarios were proposed for improvement, where the input of the asphalt binder to the heating process is partially replaced with three different additives (polyvinyl resin, amine-based, and a powder synthetic zeolite). The comparison of these three scenarios showed that the amine-based liquid additive is the best to decrease the environmental impact due to the asphalt binder processing.Currently, the biogas production from organic waste (OW) refuses through AD has been and continues to be one of the most widely used processes for energy production. Usually, AD is carried out in thermophilic (TC) or nnesophilic conditions (MC); some authors claim that it is far better to work in TC than MC, others explain that there are no major differences, while some others affirm that the MC has highest performance. Even if each in of single case, the statement is true, it is necessary nowadays to have a valid and objective criterion in order to compare different studies and mainly to assess the energetic sustainability of AD. To this purpose, in this paper, an Energy Sustainability Index (ESI) parameter is candidate. The ESI is the ratio between the energy obtained under form of H-2 and/or CH4, and that spent as direct energy to heat the fermenting broth at the working temperature and when present, the energy spent as heat in the broth pretreatment. In Author's opinion this fact is the first check toward sustainability of AD technology as mean to produce energy. Only in the case of ESI > 1, it is possible to consider others energy spent to produce the energy, in fact, for ESI < 1 the energy obtained is less than the spent one, i.e. the process is unsustainable. About 30 studies were initially taken into account, but only 15 of them provided the necessary information to carry out the study. Among 15, only 3 studies proved to be truly energetically sustainable, with an ESI > 1. The ESI here proposed represents the first step of a more detailed energy sustainability evaluation procedure, performed using a LCA (life cycle assessment) approach.The rapid and continuous development of information and communication technology (ICT) in society today is providing new means for various societal activities. To facilitate that new ICT solutions reduce environmental impacts and bring social improvements the potential impacts of those new solutions should be assessed. One way of making environmental assessments is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper presents and discusses challenges in assessing, comparing, communicating and acting on the results of an LCA of traditional media products and of new ICT solutions for media products, based on case studies of three newspapers in their printed and online versions. The case studies revealed the complexity in assessment and comparison of online and printed newspapers due to differences in functions and characteristics, choice and availability of data (specific and generic data, data gaps and quality), methodological choices (functional unit, allocation, scope) and assumptions on reader profile. Often no single answer can be given regarding the best option from an environmental perspective, leading to challenges in communicating the results to different stakeholders. A particular challenge is how to combine easily communicated messages with robust, transparent background information.In this work, three of many ICT-specific challenges of LCA are discussed. First, the inconsistency versus uncertainty is reviewed with regard to the meta-technological nature of ICT. As an example, the semiconductor technologies are used to highlight the complexities especially with respect to energy and water consumption. The need for specific representations and metric to separately assess products and technologies is discussed. It is highlighted that applying product-oriented approaches would result in abandoning or disfavoring of new technologies that could otherwise help toward a better world. Second, several believed-untouchable hot spots are highlighted to emphasize on their importance and footprint. The list includes, but not limited to, i) User Computer-Interfaces (UCIs), especially screens and displays, ii) Network-Computer Interlaces (NCIs), such as electronic and optical ports, and iii) electricity power interfaces. In addition, considering cross-regional social and economic impacts, and also taking into account the marketing nature of the need for many ICT's product and services in both forms of hardware and software, the complexity of End of Life (EoL) stage of ICT products, technologies, and services is explored. Finally, the impact of smart management and intelligence, and in general software, in ICT solutions and products is highlighted. In particular, it is observed that, even using the same technology, the significance of software could be highly variable depending on the level of intelligence and awareness deployed. With examples from an interconnected network of data centers managed using Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) technology and smart cooling systems, it is shown that the unadjusted assessments could be highly uncertain, and even inconsistent, in calculating the management component's significance on the ICT impacts.Recently, data centres have been called out for their particularly high energy consumption, which already accounts for 1.5% of the total global electricity consumption and is among the world's fastest growing energy consumptions. To reduce the data centres' environmental impacts, technologies such as free cooling and sustainable power sources are used. Another newly developed strategy to improve the energy efficiency of data centres is virtualization, which makes it possible to install several operating systems, known as virtual machines (VMs), so that several tasks and users can share a single server. To evaluate the environmental advantages and burdens of this strategy, assessments tools are required. Several studies have already quantified the energetic and environmental benefits of virtualization but often only considered the use phase and CO2 improvement. This study uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impacts of Internet use in videoconferencing (VC). Preliminary results show the advantages of virtualization in the manufacturing, use and end-of-life phases. Indeed, when virtualization is implemented, one server can be allocated to several tasks. Therefore, the environmental burden of use and manufacturing will be allocated to the various tasks, decreasing the impact of each one.The information and communications technologies (ICT) sector is seeking to reduce the electricity consumption of data processing centres. Among the initiatives to improve energy efficiency is the shift to cloud computing technology. Thanks to very favourable geographical conditions, the Canadian energy mix is highly suited to the implementation of data centres, especially in light of the significant potential of renewable energy, which can help to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In the green sustainable Telco cloud (GSTC) project, an efficient cloud computing network would be set up to optimize renewable energy use based on several data centres. This study aimed to develop a temporally differentiated life cycle assessment (LCA) model, adapted to short-term predictions, to provide a regionalized inventory to model electricity generation. Purpose of this model is (i) to calculate more accurately the carbon emissions of ICT systems and (ii) to minimize the daily carbon emissions of the GSTC servers. This paper focuses mainly on the electricity generation modelling during the use phase in the context of the life cycle assessment methodology. Considering the time scale of the model, the difference between the annual fixed average and a shorter period may be highly relevant, in particular when assessing the green house gases (GHG) emissions of a process such as an ICT system, which mainly operates during peak load hours. The time dependent grid mix modelling makes it possible to manage the server load migrations between data centres on an hourly basis.Sales statistics of computing devices show that users are not replacing units one by one, but rather adding additional devices to their hardware portfolios. In this paper, the authors describe the outcomes of a first attempt to quantify the ecological implications of these changes in the use of the ICT hardware for computing services by using LCA and applying three different perspectives ranging from individual devices, a "model family" up to global sales data of desktop, laptop, and tablet computers. In particular, the paper addresses the question which effect predominates: the increase in efficiency induced by the emergence of new technologies or the growing energy consumption due to the increased number of devices combined with a higher utilization rate by individual users.High levels of mortality after installation can limit the long-term benefits associated with urban tree planting initiatives. Past planting projects funded by the Florida Forest Service were revisited two to five years after installation to document tree survival and growth and assess program success. Additionally, various site (e.g., soil compaction, installed irrigation) and tree-related (e.g., species, nursery production method, initial size at planting) factors were noted to assess their impact on tree growth. Results show that the overall establishment rate for the 26 sites (n = 2354 trees) was high, with 93.6% of trees alive at the time of final inspection. On-site irrigation played a significant role in tree survival and growth, especially for Magnolia grandiflora (97.7% survival on irrigated sites; 73.8% survival on non-irrigated sites). Findings from this work validate the effectiveness of current program policies which include maintenance of tree quality within the first year after planting, and offer further insights regarding the impacts of season of planting and initial size of nursery stock on plant growth and development. (C) 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.The research was aimed to investigate the energy biomass productivity and biogas production from silage of different perennial grasses with evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions through the entire process from biomass cultivation to processing. The experiments with perennial grasses - cocksfoot (Dactylis glomerata L.), tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Scherb.) and reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) were carried out at Institute of Agriculture, Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry in 2008-2010. The swards were grown in an Endocalcari-Endohypogleyic Cambisol(CMg-n-w-can), which contained: organic carbon 1.61-1.75%, available P 145-224 mg kg(-1) and K 128-158 mg kg(-1), soil pH ranging between 6.7-7.0. The three perennial grass species with varying yields of biomass were used to ensure a steady operation of the selected biogas plant of 500 kW(e) electric power. The different quantities of biomass feedstock and varying energy input are required for such biogas plant. Therefore all data correspond to a biogas cogeneration plant of 500 kWe electric power. Required land area for the same amount of energy produced depends on species of perennial grasses, rates of fertilization and number of cuts. These results mainly depended on the biomass productivity and biogas yield from dry mass. Biomass yield from dry matter in the first year of use of tall fescue cut twice per vegetation season was higher compared to that cut three times, while cocksfoot and reed canary grass yielded better cut three times compared to cut twice. The highest yield was obtained in tall fescue swards cut twice and fertilized with N-180. The total balance of greenhouse gas emissions showed their mitigation and ranged from 0.206 to 0.298 kg CO2 eq kWh(-1).Chemicals are an important component of advanced water treatment operations not only in terms of economics but also from an environmental standpoint. Tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) are useful for estimating the environmental impacts of water treatment operations. At the same time, LCA analysts must manage several fundamental and as yet unresolved methodological challenges, one of which is the question of how best to allocate environmental burdens in multifunctional processes. Using water treatment chemicals as a case study example, this article aims to quantify the variability in greenhouse gas emissions estimates stemming from methodological choices made in respect of allocation during LCA. The chemicals investigated and reported here are those most important to coagulation and disinfection processes, and the outcomes are illustrated on the basis of treating 1000 ML of noncoagulated and nondisinfected water. Recent process and economic data for the production of these chemicals is used and methodological alternatives for solving the multifunctionality problem, including system expansion and mass, exergy, and economic allocation, are applied to data from chlor-alkali plants. In addition, Monte Carlo simulation is included to provide a comprehensive picture of the robustness of economic allocation results to changes in the market price of these industrial commodities. For disinfection, results demonstrate that chlorine gas has a lower global warming potential (GWP) than sodium hypochlorite regardless of the technique used to solve allocation issues. For coagulation, when mass or economic allocation is used to solve the multifunctionality problem in the chlor-alkali facility, ferric chloride was found to have a higher GWP than aluminum sulfate and a slightly lower burden where system expansion or exergy allocation are applied instead. Monte Carlo results demonstrate that when economic allocation is used, GWP results were relatively robust and resilient to the changes in commodity prices encountered during the study period, with standard deviations less than 6% for all chlor-alkali-produced chemicals reported here. Overall outcomes from the study demonstrate the potential variability in LCA results according to the allocation approach taken and emphasize the need for a consensus approach to water sector LCAs. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2013;X:000-000. (c) 2013 SETAC Integr Environ Assess Manag 2014;10:87-94. (c) 2013 SETACA strategy to optimize the positive climatic effect of solar energy requires a minimization of embodied energy and a maximization of efficiency to compensate for the upward temperature forcing effect of low albedo solar collector surfaces. Climatic effects of low albedo surfaces are related to those of carbon dioxide emissions. The resulting positive climate forcing effect (cooling) then depends directly on the embodied energy, the absorption, and the efficiency of the system. This analysis favors high efficiency CPV, and even more so dual-use HCPVT systems, over low-efficiency flat panel and thin film technologies. The effect is most prominent in large low latitude cities, where urban heat islands and the subsequent demand for cooling negate positive effects of low-efficiency solar installations.Mass-customization of wearable products are offered as a higher added value to the broad public and had to compete with ready-to-wear offer. However, people with specific requirements are not covered with the current mass-customized products. This is the case of the elderly, disabled, diabetic and obese population groups when wearing textiles, clothing, footwear and textile-based orthotic goods. However, at present, available knowledge and flexibility of production equipment and machinery of SMEs operating in these traditional industries (even those that already offer made-to-measure products to the mass public) is unable to respond to the individual needs among such heterogeneous groups. The FASHION-ABLE project has solved this problem with: a user framework defining and quantifying the relevant user attributes, New Collaborative Product Customization Services, New stretch-leather's manufacturing processes and equipment, New 3D-spacer fabric's flexible manufacturing process and machinery, New textile's finishing operations and equipment, An extended manufacturing order management structure and tools, Life-Cycle Analysis instruments, and Interoperable Product Data Management tools.The aim of this research is to develop a business decision support system to evaluate environmental and economic implications for different end of life alternatives strategies. The case study described in the paper is the evaluation of end of life automotive engine. In detail, the analysis consists of the evaluation of environmental impacts and economic costs of engine remanufacturing process. In particular, will be compared three different alternatives: remanufacturing, reuse and recycling (material recovery). In fact, recycling is a common practice, increased in the last years, because generates an environmental and economic benefit, saving raw materials and selling the recycled materials. It is possible anyway to increase end-of-life benefits avoiding, from a life cycle perspective, the manufacturing process of new products trough refurbishing or reuse, preventing at the same time certain generation of waste. Results will be shown in a bi-dimensional graph displaying the three alternatives with their economic revenue and environmental gain.With today's global awareness of environmental issue as well as social and economic aspects, manufacturing industry is seeking a comprehensive strategic approach to be more sustainable. By continuous sharing of information among the different product lifecycle phases, product lifecycle management acts as an information strategy, which builds a coherent data structure by consolidating systems. Moreover, when the manufacturing is happening, there is location base information available within manufacturing process, which can be used into tools to assess manufacturing process in context of sustainability. This paper presents a new information strategy framework for the green manufacturing paradigm based on integration between current PLM structure and geographical information systems. The proposed IT framework is a comprehensive qualitative answer to the question of how to design and/or improve green manufacturing systems as well as a roadmap for future quantitative research to better evaluate this new paradigm.Bricks are one of the major materials used for the construction of buildings. With the booming infrastructure in India; 140 billion bricks were produced in 200 land 250 billion bricks in 2012. The production of bricks is estimated to be growing at a rate of 4% per year. India is the second largest producer of fired clay bricks with more than hundred thousand brick kilns in operation. Brick production is known to have diffused and seasonal environmental impact along with the social and economic impact. A life cycle assessment (LCA) study, to identify and quantify the environmental performance of the brick as a product, is carried out for the traditional brick kilns in and around the Sangli - Karad area of western Maharashtra, India. The LCA software, SIMAPRO 7.3.3, has been used to carry out the LCA impact studies. The LCA methodology adopted in the study has a scope from "cradle to gate, including the raw material acquisition and transportation along with brick production. Energy use and emissions are quantified and the potential environmental burdens such as the GHG emissions, resource depletion, and loss of biodiversity, are assessed. (c) 2014 Bakul Rao. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Reverse logistics and its processes are crucial in modern companies activities. One of the very important problems in this matter is the management of returns. As returned products are products with defects, there is always the possibility for proper treatment. Decisions about further management of defective product is difficult, regarding the product and its parts environmental impacts. Here, the useful tool is life cycle assessment (LCA), that can support reverse logistics processes in case of defective products management. LCA is used to assess environmental impact of cellular phone and 6 possible scenarios of its handling in case of any defects. The assessment shows that reuse and repair scenarios are helpful in mitigating environmental impact in life cycle while waste scenario and also recycling scenario have much higher impact.Greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation is one of the main challenges facing agriculture, exacerbated by the increasing demand for food, in particular for livestock products. Production expansion needs to be accompanied by reductions in the GHG emission intensity of agricultural products, if significant increases in emissions are to be avoided. Suggested farm management changes often have systemic effects on farm, therefore their investigation requires a whole farm approach. At the same time, changes in GHG emissions arising off-farm in food supply chains (pre- or post-farm) can also occur as a consequence of these management changes. A modelling framework that quantifies the whole-farm, life-cycle effects of GHG mitigation measures on emissions and farm finances has been developed. It is demonstrated via a case study of sexed semen on Scottish dairy farms. The results show that using sexed semen on dairy farms might be a cost-effective way to reduce emissions from cattle production by increasing the amount of lower emission intensity 'dairy beef' produced. It is concluded that a modelling framework combining a GHG life cycle analysis model and an economic model is a useful tool to help designing targeted agri-environmental policies at regional and national levels. It has the flexibility to model a wide variety of farm types, locations and management changes, and the LCA-approach adopted helps to ensure that GHG emission leakage does not occur in the supply chain.The combination of more data-hungry devices and higher service expectations on the part of users has led to inevitably high global mobile data traffic which in turn translates in to huge impact on the environment. In order to analyze and minimize the impact on environment from whole activities (initial to final process), Life cycle assessment (LCA) should be used which will help in achieving carbon credits. Carbon Credits provide an efficient mechanism to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by monetizing the reduction in emissions. In order to protect ourselves, our economy, and our land from the adverse effects of climate change, we must reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is the methodology which can be used to consider carbon footprint or we can say that considering the impact on CO2 emissions. In this paper, we have discussed the approach of LCA of wireless BTS which can help the telecom operators to reduce the carbon footprints of Wireless mobile communication networks. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Since 1978, coal has played an important role in power generation systems in Thailand, and in 2013 it accounts for 19% of the total electricity production of the whole country. However, coal-fired power plants are by far the biggest sources of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emitted into the atmosphere, which contributes to the formation of acidification and directly affects terrestrial ecosystems and materials. In addition, when the acid level (pH) of rainfall reduces, it changes the soil's physical and chemical characteristics and affects the growth rate of the plants. On the other hand, acidity rainfall on buildings causes metal and stone damage and destruction. Therefore, the understanding of the environmental impacts of electricity generation from coal is needed. It can lead to the development of acidification reduction plans and policies. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is one of the useful tools for evaluating the environmental burden of processes by accounting for the inflow and outflow of materials and energy as well as the waste released into environment. Thus, the main objective of this study was to analyses the acidification damage factor from coal-fired power plants using Life-cycle Impact assessment Model based on Endpoint modelling (LIME). As the results, the endpoint effects of acidification indicated that it will definitely and seriously destroy the growth rate of plants and be able to show this in terms of the value of Net Primary Production (NPP) and damage to the building can be shown via the maintenance social assets cost (Baht). Moreover, the results will help us to minimize the acidification damage costs from coal-fired power plants to be more environmentally friendly. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper presents greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission of refuse-derived fuel-5 (RDF-5) production from municipal waste and palm kernel. There are two cases considered in this study. Case no. I, RDF-5 was produced from municipal waste mixed with palm kernel and case no. II, RDF-5 was produced from municipal waste only or without mixing with palm kernel. Life cycle inventory (LCI) of both types of RDFs production was analyzed. Results showed that the production of 1 kg of the RDF-5 contributed the GHGs emission for case no. I of 1.696 kg CO2-eq, and for case no. II of 1.423 kg CO2-eq. For both cases, the highest GHGs emission derived from plastic, which was one of the major material components. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Transport is a key factor of modern economy. In Europe, especially in Slovak, road transport belongs to the most used mode of transport not only for passengers, but also for moving goods. The automotive industry represents for Slovakia a very important source of economic growth. On the one hand, it has significant share in Slovak industrial production, but on the other hand, it has great environmental impact by producing carbon dioxide emissions, which contributes the most to global warming. The purpose of this paper is to provide life cycle assessment analysis of tyre, because it is important and often replaced spare parts of road vehicles and it contributes to fuel consumption by more than one fifth. Analysis is focused on ecological aspects of tyre by production, distribution, using, and recycling. In addition, contribution brings results of survey, what is focusing on customer purchasing behaviour and customers intentions to buy green tyres.One need not look further than the use of the word sustainable to realise that meaning is critical to our shared understanding of the most pertinent discussions concerning the environment. But the need for clear definitions extends to words we believe to be used correctly, and whose meaning we believe is universal. Fortunately, terminology like "Life Cycle Assessment" has been clearly defined, but others like sustainability, sustainable material management, low impact mining, and even "environment" have yet to have universally agreed upon definitions. This paper will put forward definitions for relevant terms used in the context of the CIRP series of LCE conferences and by organizations such as the European Union (EU), the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B. V.Manufacturing, where great amount of energy and materials are being consumed, should take response to have cleaner production and to improve its sustainability. Additive manufacturing (AM) technology shows potential to reduce environment impact as a more sustainable manufacturing method; however, the lack of well documented energy consumption and material flow data limits the development of Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis of AM technology. This paper presents an energy and material consumption model of Binder-Jetting (BJ) process. A Unit-Process (UP) level model is created and validated by experimental data to provide LCI data for further Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) of BJ additive manufacturing processes. The accurate process model provides a tool to industry to understand the energy consumption and material efficiency aspect of the binder-jetting process and to allow comparisons with traditional processes. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B. V.In this paper, measurement results of the embodied energy of a corundum grinding wheel and a coated cemented carbide end mill are presented. Both tools are industrial standard regarding geometry and composition. The single process steps and their energy demands for the manufacturing of both tools is analyzed and compared. In addition, based on literature values, their respective wear behavior machining Inconel 718 is compared. Despite a much higher embodied energy of the grinding wheel compared to the end mill, it is shown that the required embodied energy to machine a specific volume of material (J/mm(3)) is considerably lower for the grinding wheel. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V.Methods and tools for evaluating energy efficiency of machines and manufacturing lines have become available recently. These are e. g. manufacturing system simulation approaches and detailed machine performance simulation approaches. However, there is a lack of applicable tools for the evaluation of whole factory systems. The above mentioned simulation approaches can deliver valuable input for methods and tools for the environmental evaluation of entire factory systems. This paper presents a hierarchical approach and a case study for a synergetic combination of tools for simulating machine behavior and manufacturing line performance as well as for the calculation of Total Cost of Ownership and environmental impacts of factory systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V.The automobile industry is experiencing many challenges that affect its sustained growth. The increasing cost of energy used at production plants is often identified as one of the main challenges. Environmental regulations also pose pressure on industry. Within the automobile manufacturing stages, the painting process is the most energy intensive. In this work, a framework for a European collaborative project is presented. The utility of the framework is briefly presented to highlight improvement opportunities to lower energy consumption and environmental impact of a plastic part paint shop. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.A real option approach for determining the optimal timing of engine remanufacturing is proposed based on the average environmental impacts values F-i by numerical analysis. Life cycle assessment method is conducted to calculate the total environmental impact EItotal of the four life cycle stages, including original manufacturing, first time usage, remanufacturing, and second time usage. Accumulative environmental impacts of the usage periods are calculated by the integral method. F-i is calculated by dividing EItotal by total driven mileage. Theoretical minimum of F-i (F-min) indicates the best environmental benefit and F-min can be obtained by numerical curve fitting. A case study of a diesel engine is conducted with the approach and result shows that F-min is achieved when the engine is remanufactured after driving it for 3.315 x 10(5) kms. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world due to the rapid pace of technology enhancement and development. The exponential growth of e-waste contributes to a rapid increase in the rate of contaminants and waste entering landfills. This paper assesses the waste produced from the recycling of mobile phones in different countries highlighting the material flows and the amount of waste released to the environment. A comparison of mobile phone Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) recycling through the formal recycling facilities in Malaysia and Australia were used as case studies. The results presented highlight the toxicity of waste and the impact to the environment. A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was carried out focusing on the end-of-life (EOL) phase of mobile phone PCBs. The IMPACT 2002+ version 2.10 was used as the assessment tool to indicate the environmental impacts quantitatively. The results show the toxicity of the waste produced from the mobile phone PCBs recycling in Malaysia and Australia. This study identifies that the demand for recycled materials, law enforcement, and the e-waste recycling system are significant drivers to reduce the environmental impact of mobile phone recycling. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Increasing energy demands coupled with decreasing resources and increased concerns about the long-term impacts of energy production are driving the development and full-scale implementation of new energy production systems. In general, several considerations must be addressed to move technology from the prototype phase to complete deployment, while ensuring adequate return on investment. These considerations include: availability of capable manufacturing processes, appropriate material selection, and supply chain resiliency. For new energy production systems, it is also important to evaluate net energy production and life cycle impacts. There is significant uncertainty associated with each of these considerations. This paper proposes a framework for maximizing net energy production in full-scale systems considering these uncertainties. The utility of the framework is demonstrated through a case study focused on an analysis of prototyping and scale-up of artificial photosynthesis as a solar-fuel generator. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Studies are being performed related to environmental, economic and social impact assessments in order to provide a broader analysis of the Sustainability Assessment. However, these approaches rarely provide information about the reliability of the data used in its analyses. Without reliable information the decision making related to the sustainability area is at risk. This paper discusses that the same tool used for the reliability of the data on a global level in LCA studies can be used in economic and social analyses. For this purpose, changes are proposed in three indicators of Matrix Pedigree. As an example, a case study was used only to illustrate the reliability determination on a global level. Using Matrix Pedigree in three dimensions (environmental, economic and social) makes the Sustainability Assessment reliable bringing credibility and transparency to the results obtained with studies and making that decision-making, related to the sustainability area to be better grounded. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.This article aims to present an approach based on a combination of life cycle analysis methods (LCA) and problem solving by constraint satisfaction (CSP). This original approach makes it possible to vary the design of the different dimensions of the functional units of a complex system and thus to make it easier to identify the best architecture along with the best functional definition of the system. Our approach (EcoCSP) presented allows to negotiate performance to move towards an environmental optimum corresponding to a set of acceptable specifications. The EcoCSP approach is implemented to define the functional performance of a green passengers' ferry. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper presents and discusses the marginal cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of using VLSI grade supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO(2)) as a rinsing agent in place of ultrapure water (UPW) in semiconductor fabrication. Impacts are estimated using a consequential life cycle assessment framework for recovered CO2. Upon factoring the cumulative yields of the CO2 recovery and purification processes, compressor energy use (566 kJ/kg CO2 output) together with refrigeration (540 kJ/kg CO2 output) accounts for about 90% of total on-site electricity use. Upstream emissions from production of propylene carbonate co-solvent contribute to more than 50% of the life cycle impacts of scCO(2)-based wafer cleaning. Overall impacts of scCO(2)-wafer cleaning, particularly water and energy use, are found to be significantly lower than UPW. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Pressure of emergent countries, policy makers and industrial companies' interests are pushing European companies towards a high consideration of whole product life cycle. Designers and systems engineers are the main actors involved, due to their high influence on product life cycle costs and environmental impacts since early design phase. The aim of the paper is to propose an integrated, structured and robust model, completed by methods / techniques, to support and help the activity of designers and engineers to create and identify the optimal life cycle oriented solution. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.Car body parts are, among other targets, designed to fulfill requirements of high performance and lightweight construction. New technologies, such as a die casting of hybrid materials, e.g. a combination of steel and aluminum, enable further enhancement of lightweight construction and therefore are able to reduce consumptions during the car usage phase. This paper presents a simplified life cycle assessment of a car body part consisting of steel and aluminum die cast in a process chain. The scope of the examination is from cradle-to-grave and includes several loops for both materials used. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.The application of manufactured nanomaterials provides not only advantages resulting from their unique properties, but also disadvantages derived from the possible high energy use and CO2 burden related to their manufacture, operation, and disposal. It is therefore important to evaluate the trade-offs of process economics with the associated environmental impacts in order to strengthen the existing advantages while counteracting disadvantages of nanomaterials. This is of particular importance at the early stage of the development, where different synthetic approaches with different energy and environmental impacts may be employed. We discuss here the importance of life cycle assessment (LCA) on the synthesis of nano insulation materials (NIMs) consisting of hollow silica nanospheres (HSNSs). The results indicate that the use of recyclable and environmentally friendly raw materials can improve greatly the process environmental footprints. New synthetic procedures are developed accordingly for HSNS NIMs with improved environmental features as well as thermal insulation performance. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.This paper conducts a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the energy consumptions and environmental emissions of an engine with Integrated Hybrid Life Cycle Inventory (IH-LCI) analysis method. Aggregated Input-Output matrix A(int) is established by the methods of site investigation, data collection, and input-output analysis. Furthermore, the paper compares the results of this study with the one achieved by the process based inventory analysis method to show the sources of the differences between the two methods. Data quality of both the methods is checked by uncertainty analysis. The result can be used for exploring the optimal boundary division by LCA practitioners when applying the IH-LCI for more convenient and accurate decision making in future. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.The use phase in Life Cycle Analysis is normally calculated considering both an average use and user. This limits the effectiveness of any strategy aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the product use. To tackle this problem, a tool to model use in detail by differentiating user and product contributions is proposed. It can be coupled coherently with existing environmental assessment approaches. Its application is illustrated with a case study (refrigerator). The proposed works is complementary calculation tool to improve the environmental assessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.Life cycle impact assessment is a crucial phase of the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique, once it identifies and quantifies the environment impacts of products/processes life cycle. This phase, however, is performed in a static way, becoming a bottleneck on a dynamic LCA of manufacturing processes. This paper presents a method to perform a web based dynamic life cycle inventory and impact assessment for manufacturing processes, in order to improve the data quality and accuracy of environmental aspects and potential impacts. The method implementation is based on combining Labview and GaBi softwares, as well as MTConnect (R) standard. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Substantial resource efficiency increase in material-intensive chemical industries requires an integrated analysis and optimization of complex production systems including raw material and energy use, resulting costs and environmental and climate impacts. This necessitates the integration of computer-aided process engineering methods including flowsheet simulation and heat integration with IT-based tools for industrial ecology, life cycle analysis in particular. The paper presents preliminary results of conceptual and case study-based research within the InReff project with particular emphasis on linking flow sheet simulation software used in process engineering and material flow network software applied in industrial ecology. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.The objective of this work is to propose an integrated and generic framework for eco-design that generalizes, automates and optimizes the evaluation of the environmental criteria at earlier design stage. The approach consists of three main stages. The first two steps correspond to process inventory analysis based on mass and energy balances and impact assessment phases of LCA methodology. The third stage of the methodology is based on the interaction of the previous steps with process simulation for environmental impact assessment and cost estimation through a computational framework. Then, the use of multi-objective optimization with a multicriteria choice decision making allows to select optimal solutions. The methodology is illustrated through the acid-catalyzed biodiesel production process.Several studies have been conducted regarding the optimal design of bioethanol supply chains considering economic aspects. However, biofuels were targeted to be more sustainable than traditional fossil fuels. In order to achieve that goal a sustainable supply chain needs to be achieved and therefore environmental impacts should be considered as an optimization objective. The aim of this work is to analyze the influence of including different Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods in the optimization model, namely Recipe, Eco-Indicator 99 and Impact2002+. Conclusions will be drawn regarding the influence of the LCA methods in the final optimized network structure and in the correspondent economic results obtained for the final network structure of the bioethanol's supply chain.This paper presents the Life Cycle Inventory models developed at unit process level for alternative gas-fuelled power plants with/without CO2 capture and storage. The models for Auto-thermal Reforming power plant with Pressure Swing Adsorption CO2 capture are demonstrated in detail. The models developed quantify flows of materials, natural resources, energy, intermediate products or emissions at component unit process level, based on fundamental physical/chemical principles or process simulations which, to a greater extent, account for the technological, spatial and temporal characteristics of the power generation systems in consideration.In the perspective of mitigating climate change, CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is considered as a promising option. To evaluate the environmental benefit of capturing CO2 it is important to make a systematic comparison including the whole life cycle from the resource extraction to the final product (i.e. electricity). Especially when comparing natural gas, coal and biomass fed processes the supply chain differences have to be accounted for. Besides the benefit in terms of greenhouse gas emissions reduction, CCS induces an energy and cost penalty due to the CO2 separation and compression. The trade-offs between environmental impacts, efficiency and costs are systematically assessed here by combining life cycle assessment (LCA) with flowsheeting, energy integration and economic evaluation in a multi-objective optimisation framework. Post- and pre-combustion CO2 capture options for electricity generation processes, using fossil and renewable resources, are analysed, compared and optimised. Multi-objective optimisations are performed for various thermo-economic and environmental objectives to highlight the influence on the optimal process design and on the decision making.We investigate the issue of how to mitigate global warming by performing changes in an economy. We use of a systematic tool that combines linear programming, environmentally extended input-output models and life cycle assessment. The problem of identifying economic sectors that mainly contribute to global warming is posed in mathematical terms as a bi-criteria linear program that seeks to optimize the total output and the life cycle CO2 emissions simultaneously. We applied this approach to the European economy, finding possible to reduce the global warming potential in higher proportion than the economic output by regulating specific sectors.In this work, we analyze the effect of incorporating life cycle inventory (LCI) uncertainty on the multi-objective optimization of chemical supply chains (SC) considering simultaneously their economic and environmental performance. To this end, we present a stochastic multi-scenario mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) coupled with a two-step transformation scenario generation algorithm with the unique feature of providing scenarios where the LCI random variables are correlated and each one of them has the desired lognormal marginal distribution. The environmental performance is quantified following life cycle assessment (LCA) principles, which are represented in the model formulation through standard algebraic equations. The capabilities of our approach are illustrated through a case study of a petrochemical supply chain. We show that the stochastic solution improves the economic performance of the SC in comparison with the deterministic one at any level of the environmental impact, and moreover the correlation among environmental burdens provides more realistic scenarios for the decision making process.Multiobjective Generalized Disjunctive Programming (MO-GDP) optimization has been used for the synthesis of an important industrial process, isobutane alkylation. The two objective functions to be simultaneously optimized are the environmental impact, determined by means of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), and the economic potential of the process. The main reason for including the minimization of the environmental impact in the optimization process is the widespread environmental concern by the general public. For the resolution of the problem we employed a hybrid simulation-optimization methodology, i.e., the superstructure of the process was developed directly in a chemical process simulator connected to a state of the art optimizer. The model was formulated as a GDP and solved using a logic algorithm that avoids the reformulation as MINLP -Mixed Integer Non Linear Programming-. Our research gave us Pareto curves compounded by three different configurations where the LCA has been assessed by two different parameters: global warming potential and ecoindicator-99.In the present paper it is presented a model for the synthesis of HEN considering both economic and environmental features. The model presents a multi-objective mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) formulation. The optimization problem aims to find the optimal HEN considering the total cost as well as the environmental impact minimization. Environmental aspects are incorporated to the objective function by considering Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), using SIMAPRO software. ReCiPe methodology is used and 18 impact categories from midpoint to endpoint are evaluated. An algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) was developed to solve the model and a superstructure that considers the number of stages as an optimization variable is proposed. A literature case was chosen to test the model applicability. Results are better than the previously published ones, even considering environmental impacts. Furthermore, not all impact metrics are in conflict with the cost function.The European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) is taking up the challenge of sustainable development by installing a special Sustainability Section to discuss the wide ranging implications of this development concept. Sustainable development will require a thorough re-structuring of chemical industry within the next decades and a fundamental re-orientation of the way chemical engineers pursue their research, technological development and design work as well. This poses new and formidable challenges to the European CAPE community. Three challenges require new CAPE solutions in particular The integration of life cycle assessment into chemical engineering design; A change towards renewable resources for energy provision and raw materials for industrial processes; A systemic approach to integrating chemical industry sustainably into supply chains while providing energy services to society at the same time. The re-orientation of chemical engineering research and design is already visible in the efforts of young chemical engineering researchers. Interdisciplinary research as well as tackling the tasks linked to the new role of chemical engineering within sustainable development is more and more defining the work of young chemical engineers. This has been particularly visible in the CAPE Forum 2013, that brought together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from 13 European countries to discuss these challenges of sustainable development and that fostered the discourse between young researchers and experienced scientists and practitioners. The paper will link the results of the 32 contributions to the CAPE Forum 2013 and the on-going initiatives in the Sustainability Section of the EFCE to generate a picture of the future role of the CAPE community with regard to sustainable development.Although life cycle of mining and mineral processing systems, including copper production, have been carried out since the mid to late 1990s; these studies are limited to the ore extraction and mineral processing, not considering waste management, which is the most important part of metal production systems when assessing their environmental performance. In addition, the low level of detail in mineral production systems included in conventional LCA tools (not accounting for emission at unit process level) lead to oversimplifications and underestimation of true impacts. This paper presents the life cycle assessment model developed by the authors to assess the impacts of copper extraction and processing, including waste management. The model is designed at unit process level and accounts for emissions to the different environmental compartments (air, water, soil). The model functionality is illustrated through a case study of a Chilean mining and mineral processing operation. The sensitivity of the LCA impact category indicator scores to the variation of input parameters, such as the copper ore grade, mine stripping ratio, metal recovery efficiency and electricity source mix are also evaluated and presented.Hungary, based on former Soviet Union market had had a relatively developed agro-food sector before the system change up to the eighties of last century. In our days this system has collapsed, and the Hungarian agro-food complex can be characterised by extensive arable-crops production. There are numerous plans to develop the agriculture and food sector. The one emphasises the importance of energy crop production. Another approach is based on intensive production, establishment of local food supply, and short food supply systems. Ecologic consequences of these strategies are analysed by life cycle approach, based on combined application of different open-source LCA software. Different solutions of packaging can we compare by OpenLCA software. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Linear motor drives (LMDs) are well known to provide significant advantages in terms of positioning speed and accuracy over traditional screw drives (SDs), making them better suited for high-speed high-precision machine tools. However, their use in such machine tools is severely limited by their tendency to consume a lot of electrical energy and cause thermal issues, particularly under high cutting loads. A hybrid feed drive (HFD) has recently been proposed as a possible solution to this dilemma. The HFD switches between LMD and SD actuation depending on the mode of the manufacturing operation, thus achieving speeds and accuracies similar to LMDs while consuming much less energy. This paper presents a comparative life cycle analysis (LCA) of the proposed HFD with an LMD as the baseline for the comparison. The functional unit is taken as the production of parts that involve heavy cutting by a small-sized 3-axis precision milling machine for 250 8-hour work days per year over a 12-year first-use life span. Energy savings provided by the HFD during its use phase vis-a-vis the additional energy investments into the HFD at various phases in its life cycle are compared. The analysis predicts a net positive impact, in terms of energy and the environment, for the HFD compared to the LMD under high cutting loads. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.Numerous studies have shown that compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented developments contribute to reduced use of automobiles and in turn contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions. When everyday destinations are within walking distance, people are more likely to walk or cycle, and if transit is within walking distance people are more likely to use it. Other studies have shown that compact development enables reductions in building energy consumption that contribute further to emissions savings. The reduced emissions are assumed to rely on the combination of compactness and transit connectedness. However, this combination requires an extensive transit network covering large areas both of residential and of employment destinations. Such networks often do not exist and are too costly to construct. When they do exist, the transit networks often do not reach those outlying neighbourhoods with the greatest potential for future growth and densification. This paper therefore asks what emissions savings compact development can achieve in the absence of high-frequency transit. In an examinination of the life-cycle emissions of four variations of density in three different neighbourhoods in Vancouver, none of which is well served by transit, we found a wide range of emissions profiles. A mixed-use new urbanist development produced 22% fewer emissions than an adjacent development of large single-family homes, both of which were in a transit-poor area on the far edge of a suburban city. A high-density neighbourhood adjacent to a suburban city centre, and one adjacent to a central city centre, produced 50% and 67% fewer emissions than the neighbourhood of large single-family homes. Findings suggest that, while compactness may be most effective when it is coupled with high frequency transit, decoupling the pair and building compactness before or without transit can still yield considerable household emissions reductions.In conformity with the Kyoto Protocol, by the year 2020 the European Union undertook to reduce CO2 emission by at least 20%. The main sources of this greenhouse gas are transport, combustion of fossil fuels for power generation, and some industrial processes [1]. The most effective ways to protect environment are based on pollution prevention and on searching and elimination of its causes. Application of this strategy to manufacturing processes led to formation of "ecodesign" concept. This paper deals with life cycle assessment of mechatronic systems, in our case CNC machine tool. It contains analysis of energy and material consumption during raw material extraction for machine tool production and actual machine tool production. Afterwards, impacts of these life cycle phases on the environment were evaluated according to chosen impact categories.Renewable energies can play a very important role in the development of a new energy model contributing effectively towards a more sustainable development in the mid and long term. In this context Central Solar Heating Plants with Seasonal Storage (CSHPSS) are able to provide space heating and Domestic Hot Water (DHW) to residential buildings with high solar fractions (>50%). These systems are already being used in Central and Northern Europe, as well as in Canada, where there is an important experience in district heating systems. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an objective methodology that evaluates the environmental loads associated with a product, process, or activity, identifying and quantifying the use of mass and energy as well as environmental emissions over its life cycle. It provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of a product or process and a more accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs in product and process selection. In this paper is presented a LCA of a CSHPSS, which should cover the space heating and DHW demand of 500 dwellings of 100 m(2), located in Zaragoza, Spain. Environmental burdens through the life cycle of the system are estimated based on relevant emissions to the atmosphere, e. g. greenhouse gases, NOx, SOx, and comprehensive environmental indicators as, for instance, the IMPACT 2002+ and CED (Cumulative Energy Demand). These indicators allow to evaluate the reduction of the environmental load achieved by the CSHPSS analyzed with respect to conventional space heating and DHW systems, as well as to identify the most critical aspects since an environmental perspective. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The worlds energy consumption has doubled over the past 40 years and it is estimated that one-third comes from industry. Therefore, an increase of the efficiency in energy use in industries would greatly benefit the sustainability of the factories and consequently of the whole environment and society. A factory is a complex entity constituted by possibly networked plants which produce a set of products performing several processes requiring a set of production resources. All these aspects need to be considered as a whole especially is sustainability is of concern. However, this need implies the collaboration between several actors and tools having remarkably different competences and scopes. This paper presents a holistic framework, named Sustainable Factory Semantic Framework (SuFSeF), aiming at integrating digital models and tools to support the design and management of a sustainable factory thanks to its complete virtual representation. This framework extends the Virtual Factory Framework (VFF), outcome of a European research project, by characterizing the industrial building and considering energy and environmental sustainability of the factory during its lifecycle. Both commercial and prototypal software tools can be integrated in the framework. Specifically, the attention will be focused on tools to support the sustainability assessment during the factory design phase, 3D design tools, and the monitoring of the key energy-environmental indicators during the factory operating phase. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Microcellular injection molding is a process that offers numerous benefits due to the internal structure generated; thus, many applications are currently being developed in different fields, especially home appliances. In spite of the advantages, when changing the manufacturing process from conventional to microcellular injection molding, it is necessary to analyze its new mechanical properties and the environmental impact of the component. This paper presents a deep study of the environmental behavior of a manufactured component by both conventional and microcellular injection molding. Environmental impact will be evaluated performing a life cycle assessment. Functionality of the component will be also evaluated with samples obtained from manufactured components, to make sure that the mechanical requirements are fulfilled when using microcellular injection molding. For this purpose a special device has been developed to measure the flexural modulus. With a 16% weight reduction, the variation of flexural properties in the microcellular injected components is only 6.8%. Although the energy consumption of the microcellular injection process slightly increases, there is an overall reduction of the environmental burden of 14.9% in ReCiPe and 15% in carbon footprint. Therefore, MuCell technology can be considered as a green manufacturing technology for components working mainly under flexural load.The methodology of life cycle analysis (LCA) received strong institutional support in 2001 when the European Union (EU) published its green paper on integrated product policy (IPP). In fact, the European Commission itself highlighted the LCA as a cornerstone for the development of that policy. However, little remains known about the effective implementation of this tool in Spain. In order to start filling this gap, a review of scientific papers published in four of the main international journals on the matter has been carried out. Among the 2,030 papers identified, 142 have at least one Spanish author. The topics most frequently addressed by these papers are agriculture and food, waste management, water, and the LCA methodology itself. Among other findings the study reveals a delay in Spain in this field compared to other countries, a certain similarity in the issues discussed and, finally, that the interest shown by the academic world is higher than that shown by the private sector.The fourth volume of the Handbook of Green Materials focuses on green composite materials, including some interesting new raw materials, composites processing as well as properties and some applications. The volume contains 17 chapters covering natural fibers and their characterization methods. Furthermore, some interesting new biobased raw materials such as lignin-based carbon fibers, biobased polymers including hemicelluloses, lactate polymers, natural rubber, and biobased polyurethanes are discussed in this volume. Processing technologies for elastomer, thermoset, and thermoplastic composites are described in detail. Examples of few important technologies are compounding, extrusion, compression molding, and liquid composite molding. Preforms of natural fibers and foaming technology are also discussed to manufacture lightweight composites. Finally, natural fibers composite applications, especially for automotive industry, are exemplified. The last chapter discusses the principles of life cycle analysis of natural materials.There is a growing interest in natural fibers as sustainable reinforcement for composites. For easy processing, a preform with stabilized fiber architecture is important. However, due to the limited length of the natural fibers, the processing from fiber to reinforcement is different than with synthetic fibers. With natural fibers, the first step is to make a continuous yarn-like structure. The necessary spinning leads to misorientation of the fibers in the preforms. This misorientation has a direct influence on the mechanical properties of the preforms. There is also an indirect influence of the spinning on the amount of crimp in the preforms. The influence of spinning on the performance of the composites is discussed within this chapter, together with some other properties of preforms. At the end, some new developments are presented.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used tool to assess the overall environmental impacts of a product or service. The results are used, for example, for policymaking, product development, and environmental communication. Biobased materials have specific features that brings challenges to the LCA methodology, like the balance of biobased carbon and reuse, recycling, or energy recovery. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the results to other assumptions behind the calculations deserves special attention. Typically, the environmental performance of products based on renewable raw materials is superior to those made of non-renewable materials. However, LCA brings out also cases of opposite consequence and helps avoiding burden shifting from one life cycle stage to another.Cumulative exergy consumption (CExC), which represents the total exergy of natural resources required to provide a product, is an appropriate indicator for quantifying the depletion of natural resource. The objective of this study is to determine the CExC values of the principal energy carriers in China, which is the largest energy producer in the world, through the matrix method (balance equation). The results show that electricity has the largest CExC value among different energy carriers, followed by oil-refining products, coal products and fossil fuels. The results also show that matrix method can get more accurate results than process method (sequence method) for energy carriers owing to the flow loops in energy industry.The concepts of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Carbon Footprint (CF) represent powerful tools in aiding towards the reduction of an organization's environmental impacts. Because of the influence of information and communication technology (ICT) on worldwide environmental impacts, these concepts are particularly significant in this field and receive growing interest. Surprisingly, literature constitutes ICT-related LCAs to be strongly affected by uncertainty as well as comparability and validity issues. This contribution aims at clarifying the status quo of ICT-related LCAs by providing a literature review of existing studies. The review reveals and discusses the current situation, displays evidently accepted standards and methodologies as well as similarities within the studies and finally points out research gaps.The current discussions of indirect land use change (iLUC) and the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction potential of bioresources have turned into a rather controversial debate. The scientific robustness and consistency of current iLUC models and data are at least unclear. However, representatives of the scientific community still dare to provide straightforward political advice in their papers - way beyond the fact-based 'proof' of their data and on a level that is usually not accepted by scientific journals. But the actual task and challenge for the scientific community is to determine the environmental performance of bioresources as objectively and fact-based as possible - with a clear and sober focus on integrity and soundness, not sense of mission.Although biofuels have the potential for mitigating climate change and enhancing energy security, controversy regarding their overall environmental sustainability is considered a significant bottleneck in their development at both global and EU levels. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to model the current and prospective environmental profiles for poplar-derived bioethanol across various potential EU supply chains (different poplar plantation management, different pretreatment technologies for bioethanol production, five EU locations). LCA modelling indicated that E100 (100% bioethanol) and E85 (85% bioethanol, 15% petrol) fuels derived from Poplar from various locations in the EU had environmental impact scores some 10% to 90% lower than petrol in global warming potential, abiotic depletion potential, ozone depletion potential and photochemical oxidation potential depending upon the exact poplar supply chain and conversion technology modelled. Hybrid poplar clones with higher biomass yields, modified composition and improved cell wall accessibility had a clear potential to deliver a more environmentally sustainable lignocellulosic biorefining industry with environmental scores some 50% lower than with conventional poplar feedstocks. A particular aspect of the present study that warrants further research is the contribution that soil carbon accumulation can make to achieving low-GHG fuels in the future.Very few studies objectively quantify environmental impact of organic farming practices. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool has proved to be an accurate, objective, and transparent tool to quantify many environmental impacts. The purpose of this paper is to disseminate the LCA methodology, demonstrate its usefulness as an environmental assessment tool for organic farming, and determine which aspects of LCA need further development to improve their relevance in organic systems. Following the stages of LCA, we discuss the main drawback for each stage: a) Goal stage: discussion of the actual function for organic agriculture; b) Inventory stage: lack of specific databases for organic agriculture c) Impact Assessment: importance of local impact categories for agriculture. We briefly summarise recent work that has been conducted addressing local impacts, but there remain some aspects that should be improved. Our recommendation is that further research should focus on: 1) better knowledge of the nutritional quality of organic food; 2) providing homogenised datasets and 3) development of characterisation factors to evaluate intensities of agricultural activity practices.The environmental impacts associated with fossil energy use, in addition to water and fertilisation management continue to be major concerns for Northern greenhouse production systems. To reduce the environmental impacts of greenhouse farming under Northern climate conditions and to maintain its competitiveness, the use of renewable energy sources and suitable nutrient management are becoming essential. From this perspective, a closed-loop demarcated bed-grown organic production system that increases the efficiency of water and nutrient use and utilises waste biomass as a source of energy was developed and tested in the province of Quebec, Canada. The goal of this study was to assess the environmental impacts of this so-called sustainable organic system compared with an open conventional growing system using fossil energy. The environmental analysis was conducted with life cycle assessment methodology as defined by the ILCD handbook (2010) and the SimaPro v. 7.3.2 software. The functional unit was 1,000 kg of tomatoes and 1 ha of cultivated area. The system boundary was from raw materials extraction to the farm gate. The life cycle stages considered were infrastructure, auxiliary equipment, climate control system, farm operation, fertilisers, pesticides, waste management and packaging. For both growing systems, results from the environmental assessment indicate that high energy demand was the main contributor to all impact categories. When organic farming using wood biomass as renewable energy was applied, the CO2 footprint of 1 kg of tomatoes was 0.812 kg CO2 eq kg(-1), while the impact of an open conventional growing system using fossil energy was 5.788 kg CO2 eq kg(-1). The fertiliser assessment of the closed-loop organic crop had a lower environmental burden on abiotic depletion (by 12 times), acidification (by 6 times), eutrophication (by 136 times) and global warming (by 10 times) compared with the fertiliser assessment of the open conventional growing system.This review on Sustainability covers selected 2013 publications on the focus of Sustainability. It is divided into the following sections: Sustainable water and wastewater utilities Sustainable water resources management Stormwater and green infrastructure Sustainability in wastewater treatment Life cycle assessment (LCA) applications Sustainability and energy in wastewater industry, Sustainability and infrastructure Sustainability and asset managementA large amount of agricultural waste was generated all over the world, which could cost many problems such as environment pollution, GHG (greenhouse gas) emission, and serious disease. A review of the literature published in 2013 on topics relating to agricultural waste issues is presented, and about 180 papers were selected. The main treatment methods of agricultural waste can be biodegradation, composing, digestion, and hydrolysis. Researchers paid more attention on the waste reuse, focusing on the environmental friendly utilization such as producing of biofuel, construction material, active carbon, adsorbent etc. Moreover, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied to evaluate the economic and environmental impact widely. This review is divided into the following sections: Waste Characterization, reuse, treatment, and management.A review of the literature from 2013 related to automotive wastes is presented. Topics include solid wastes from autobodies and tires, and vehicle emissions to soil and air as a result of the use of conventional and alternative fuels. Potential toxicological and health risks related to automotive wastes are also discussed.Basic traditional knowledge of the characteristics of materials to formulate growing media was common in the past. Choosing growing media constituents and additives for the manufacture of growing media today, requires a much more differentiated approach. Besides knowing the chemical, physical and biological properties of materials and considering general economic aspects, now environmental and social aspects are gaining importance for decision-making. The careful management and scientific evaluation of growing media constituents and production of such media are essential to satisfy the increasing demands of growers, growing media manufacturers, environmental NGOs, governmental bodies, and other stakeholders. In particular the 'peat issue' continues to gain attention in Europe and elsewhere. Debates are often based on biased approaches by any one stakeholder group. The recent comparative life cycle assessment of horticultural growing media based on peat and other growing media constituents, commissioned by the European Peat and Growing Media Association (EPAGMA), clearly shows that all growing media constituents and growing media have an environmental impact. Sustainable development of the growing media and horticulture industries is only feasible when based on a holistic approach when selecting constituents.We are faced with the problem of energy/carbon dioxide (CO2) in the coming decades. Microalgae has been considered as one of the most promising biomass feedstocks for the production of biofuels. Meanwhile, the productivity of these photosynthetic microorganisms in converting CO2 into carbon-rich lipids, which are only a step or two away from biodiesel, significantly exceed that of agricultural crops without competing for arable land. Worldwide, research and demonstration programs are being carried out to develop the technologies required to expand algal lipid production from a craft to a major industrial process. This paper describes the recent advances on microalgae used for biofuel (e. g., biohydrogen, biodiesel and bioethanol) production, including their cultivation, harvesting, and processing. In addition, the various aspects associated with the design of microalgae production units are described, providing an overview of the current state of the development of algae cultivation systems (photobioreactors and open ponds). Algal cultivation systems integrated with algae-based biorefineries could yield diverse bioresources, such as biodiesel, green gasoline, bio-jet fuel, isolated proteins, food starches, textiles, organic fertilizers, which can mitigate the costs of biofuel production. Algae cultivation becomes a closed-loop engineered ecosystem by utilizing the energy, nutrients and CO2 held within residual waste materials to provide all necessary inputs except sunlight. Consequently, developing this biotechnology is a tangible step towards a waste-free sustainable society.With sustainability within food systems becoming an increasingly important issue, several approaches that claim to assess the sustainability of farms, farming systems, and supply chains have been developed. Looking more closely at these sustainability impact assessment approaches, we discerned considerable differences between them in terms of scope, the level of assessment, and the precision of indicators used for impact assessment. Our aim was to classify and analyze a range of available sustainability impact assessment approaches with respect to scope and precision. From a total of 35 sustainability assessment approaches, we selected 6 for a detailed comparison. From our analysis, we concluded that there are 3 different types of trade-offs in these approaches: between different kinds of scope, between different indicators for precision and trade-offs, and between the scope and precision. Thus, one-size-fits-all solutions, with respect to tool selection, are rarely feasible. Furthermore, as indicator selection determines the assessment results, different and inconsistent indicators can lead to contradictory assessment results that may not be comparable. To overcome these shortcomings, sustainability impact assessments should include a precise definition of the notion of "sustainability" along with a description of the methodological approach and the indicator sets and should aim for harmonization of indicators and assumptions. Global initiatives such as the Sustainability Assessment in Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA) Guidelines are a helpful step toward shedding light on the differences of these approaches and making the assessment results more comparable.This paper presents a new perspective related to computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) problems where environmental impacts (e. g. life cycle impacts) are explicitly integrated within a CAMD framework thereby enabling us to design molecular solvents/ionic liquid structures that have low environmental impacts while maintaining appropriate functional properties related to the design problem. In this approach a multimedia fate & transport model coupled with group contribution method and property correlations are used to characterize the environmental impacts of the designed compound.This paper presents a novel energy system that produce liquid transportation fuels and electricity from hybrid feedstocks. It highlights low-rank coal (LRC) decoupling thermal conversion, char and biomass co-gasification, and LRC syncrude and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) syncrude co-refinery. Finally we propose an exergoeconomy-based life cycle optimization approach that seeks to maximize the primary exergy saving ratio (PES), primary total overnight cost saving ratio (POS), life cycle waste emissions avoidance ratio (EmA) and primary levelized cost saving ratio (LCS) by comparing their reference stand-alone sub-systems, respectively. Accordingly, the approach yields four types of optimal design decisions, namely maximum PES design, maximum POS design, maximum EmA design and maximum LCS design, among which the maximum LCS design can reflect the overall performance improvement compared to other designs. The results show that all these optimal designs produce cheap liquid fuels which are lower than $2.2/GGE (gallon of gasoline equivalent), while the LCS design can reduce breakeven oil price (BEOP) to 1.87 $/GGE under current grid electricity selling price (60$/MWh) and life cycle carbon tax (20 $/ton CO2-eq).Sustainable process design has been identified as one of the key research challenges for process systems engineering. In particular, the applicability of sustainability principles can be more advantageous in earlier phases of process design characterized by more degrees of freedom for decision making. One of the rather data intensive methods for promoting environmental sustainability is the systematic procedure of life cycle analysis (LCA, ISO-Norm 14040). Therefore, estimates of LCA based environmental impacts for process assessment at early design stages pose a great challenge. For the production of basic and fine chemicals based on fossil resources, it has been demonstrated (Wernet et al., 2009) that complementary life cycle impact assessment data can be obtained on the basis of molecular structures. This study is a first step to the same direction for the estimation of the environmental impacts of biorefinery products. A database has been compiled for the environmental impacts of biorefinery products under different conditions (22 biorefinery products, 7 types of biomass feedstock, 58 process configurations) and assessed with different LCA based metrics. Short-cut statistical models have been developed to correlate a set of molecular descriptors of the biobased products and minimum process information extracted from the aforementioned database with the LCA based metrics. The resulting models show a satisfactory accuracy in validation terms (e. g., average relative errors of 50%). These models can be a valuable tool in early design phases for screening alternative biorefinery layouts considering their environmental impact.Biorefinery is emerging as a possibility for improving the business model of forest products companies, however introduces significant market, technological and financial challenges which must be systematically addressed. For sustainable design decision making, economic, environmental and social criteria should be addressed. Different tools are required to analyze the performance of potential biorefinery strategies from each of these perspectives. Such tools provide relevant criteria to be used by a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) framework. This paper presents a systematic methodology for designing the biorefinery which uses PSE tools, including market analysis, techno-economic study, cost accounting, pinch analysis, life cycle assessment (LCA), supply chain (SC) analysis, and ends with an MCDM framework for identifying promising strategies for a given company. Such methodology aggregates the impacts into sustainability scores and helps evaluate strategies based on an overall performance.Innovation is now a prerequisite for institutions aiming to maintain their competitiveness in a more and more liberalized economy. This is also true for agricultural research. One of the objective of ProfiCrops, the research program Agroscope, was to promote the innovation process leading to added value in the cropping sector. This article describes five ideas, their development into innovation and the scope for the innovation's adoption. The sampling was done purposively, based on an innovations' list for the cropping sector. The sample comprised: three process innovations: a portable Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) tool, the sequence of the fire blight pathogen genome and the use of molecular markers, and two service innovations: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in agriculture and urban agriculture. The results show that the innovation process within research requires some scope that includes a clear research mission, sufficient financial resources, time and a risk-taking attitude.A supporting information-infrastructure for implementing sustainability assessment into process design is strongly needed. This study proposes activity and data models for process assessment that take sustainability into account. Firstly, existing assessment methods and indicators were extracted and systematically clustered by a bibliometric analysis based on citation network. Based on the specified clusters on existing cases of sustainability assessment, a commonly applicable activity model was developed by using the integrated definition method type 0 (IDEF0). The structure of required data for applied assessment methods was visualized by using unified modeling language (UML). By tracing existing projects on process assessment onto the proposed models, it was confirmed that some assessment methods such as life cycle assessment, risk assessment, and material flow analysis are easily executable based on the proposed models.Microalgal bioenergy systems are gaining attention as a commercial biotechnical platform for producing renewable transportation fuels. In recent years, process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) has been extensively applied to understand the life cycle environmental impacts of emerging microalgal biofuel systems. However, conventional process-based LCA fails to account for the role of ecological goods and services within fuel and product life cycles. Additionally, traditional life cycle energy analysis suffers from several limitations such as ignoring the difference in quality and substitutability of resources, and accounting for only the first law of thermodynamics. To address these shortcomings, a hybrid Ecologically based-LCA (EcoLCA) model is developed to quantify the contribution of ecological resources within the algae-to-fuel supply chain and to compare the resource intensity of producing microalgal derived renewable diesel (RD) to that of petroleum diesel (PD). Multiple thermodynamic return on investment (ROI) metrics and performance indicators are used to quantify the consumption of ecological goods and services, environmental impacts, and resource intensity of producing microalgal RD. Results indicate that the quality corrected thermodynamic return on investment and renewability index for microalgal RD ranges from 0.17 to 0.44 and 3.51% to 6.36% respectively, depending on the choice of coproduct options and processing technologies. This work reveals that algae-to-fuel systems are highly dependent on non-renewable ecological resources reflected in their low renewability index; have a low quality corrected thermodynamic ROI (< 1) and thus are not energetically viable; and are more ecologically resource intensive as compared to their petroleum equivalent-potentially negating their environmental benefits.This paper reports the result of an investigation on the potential energy saving of the lighting systems at selected buildings of the Universiti Tenaga Nasional. The scope of this project includes evaluation of the lighting system in the Library, Admin Building, College of Engineering, College of Information Technology, Apartments, and COE Food court of the university. The main objectives of this project are to design the proper retrofit scenario and to calculate the potential electricity saving, the payback period, and the potential environmental benefits. In this survey the policy for retrofitting the old lighting system with the new energy saving LEDs starts with 10% for the first year and continues constantly for 10 years until all the lighting systems have been replaced. The result of the life cycle analysis reveals that after four years, the selected buildings will bring profit for the investment.The main purpose for developing biofuel is to reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, but the comprehensive environmental impact of such fuels is not clear. Life cycle analysis (LCA), as a complete comprehensive analysis method, has been widely used in bioenergy assessment studies. Great efforts have been directed toward establishing an efficient method for comprehensively estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction potential from the large-scale cultivation of energy plants by combining LCA with ecosystem/biogeochemical process models. LCA presents a general framework for evaluating the energy consumption and GHG emission from energy crop planting, yield acquisition, production, product use, and postprocessing. Meanwhile, ecosystem/biogeochemical process models are adopted to simulate the fluxes and storage of energy, water, carbon, and nitrogen in the soil-plant (energy crops) soil continuum. Although clear progress has been made in recent years, some problems still exist in current studies and should be addressed. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art method for estimating GHG emission reduction through developing energy crops and introduces in detail a new approach for assessing GHG emission reduction by combining LCA with biogeochemical process models. The main achievements of this study along with the problems in current studies are described and discussed.The aim of the study discussed in this paper was to link existing research about the argumentation skills of students to the teaching of life-cycle analysis (LCA) in order to promote an evidence-based approach to the teaching of and learning about materials used in consumer products. This case-study is part of a larger design research project that focuses on improving education for sustainable development (ESD) in chemistry teaching by means of combining a socio-scientific issue (SSI) and life-cycle analysis with inquiry-based learning. The research question was: How do students (N = 8) use scientific, ecological, socio-economical and ethical argumentation in the life-cycle analysis of a product? The research method for this study was content analysis performed on written student answers and an audio recording of a debate. The results show that the students' scientific and ecological argumentation skills with regard to the life-cycles of products were improved during the life-cycle analysis project. The studying also affected, to a lesser extent, the students' ability to form socio-economical and ethical arguments. The type of student-centred and cross-curricular product life-cycle analysis project discussed in this paper is a suitable new method for teaching socio-scientific argumentation to chemistry students at the secondary school level.Train control management system (TCMS) is responsible for the real-time transmission of monitoring the running state of train operation. The TCMS system safety assessment is an important means to ensure the quality of the products. This paper describes the various stages of the TCMS system in the whole life cycle assessment activities, and defines a complete audit process to prove that the TCMS has certain guidance and significance in the system safety assessment.Environmental impacts related to pavements in the past have focused mainly on materials and construction activities, but ignored other significant processes such as usage stage. Pavement system contributes directly to vehicle operating costs and fuel economy at usage stage due to the rolling resistance at tire-pavement interface, which also affects greenhouse gas (GHG) emission significantly. In this paper, the effect of pavement surface characteristics (roughness, texture, and deflection) on tire rolling resistance was investigated. The HDM-4 model and MOVES software were used to predict fuel consumption and emission caused by different vehicle technologies. Particularly, pavement sections with different levels of surface roughness were used to quantify the benefits of pavement preservation on energy consumption and pollutant emissions. The results indicate that the usage stage plays an important role in the life cycle assessment of pavement system.This paper discusses an approach to life-cycle assessment (LCA) for pavement construction applications. The scope of the study included the material production and construction phases pertaining to the upper layers of pavement; the aim was to quantify energy consumption and greenhouse gases. Life-cycle inventory data were taken from literature sources and questionnaires, with system boundaries including upstream processes for the production of major materials and fuels. The use of regionalized data was necessary to ensure proper application of LCA. Thus, for the material production phase, this LCA included preliminary data collected from regional surveys and incorporated a localized life-cycle model for asphalt binder production. The impact of traffic delay was modeled in the construction phase with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator. A case study was performed for a simulated two-lane reconstruction of an existing Interstate in northern Illinois. The energy consumption in the material phase [5,425 million (M) Btu/lane mile] was significantly higher than that of the construction phase (137 MBtu). The same pattern held for global warming potential [405 versus 12.0 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e)]. With respect to traffic delay, the values of global warming potential (between 2.0 and 9.9 tons of CO(2)e) and energy consumption (between 22.5 and 116.8 MBtu) were comparable to those from the construction phase.Sugarcane ethanol has been produced in Brazil since the early 20th century, but production increased in the mid-1970s aiming at substituting 20% of the gasoline. Despite an increase in the 2000s production has been stable since 2008. This paper presents a review of the main developments achieved and future challenges. The sector has had positive economic and environmental results through technological development, as a result of research and development by private companies and strong public support. Sugarcane yield has steadily increased and positively impacted production costs, primarily due to better agronomic practices and breeding programs. Owing to environmental and economic reasons, there are on-going programs to phase out burning, with the gradual replacement of manual harvest with burning by unburnt mechanised harvest. Important agronomic impacts are expected, caused by the large amount of straw left on the soil surface, which also represents a significant bioenergy potential. The sugarcane industry in Brazil has taken advantage of the combined production of sugar and ethanol, and, recently, many mills have enlarged their revenues with surplus electricity. The current efforts for diversification aim at ethanol production through hydrolysis of sugarcane residues and the development of chemical routes. From an environmental point of view, impacts related to land use change are expected on greenhouse emissions, water resources, and biodiversity. Ethanol production is likely to expand in Brazil due to the potential size of the domestic market and to the opportunities for exporting, but this will occur in a context of different and new challenges. (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Electric vehicles in Germany are expected to have an average lifetime of twelve years. During their long use-phase these vehicles rely on electricity from the power grid. A historic review shows that over the last twelve years the German electricity-mix has undergone a massive transition. Renewable energy sources are on the rise, while nuclear power is phased out. This trend is expected to continue. Since the environmental impacts of electric vehicles depend on the electricity-mix, this study performs a life cycle assessment that respects the transitions in the observed time-span. This study defines the new term "time-resolved LCA", in contrast to conventional LCA- and dynamic LCA-methodology, as an LCA-approach which is based on statistical, time-resolved data. Time-resolved LCA aims at becoming a simple and feasible method to reduce model-uncertainty in LCA. The authors conclude that time-resolved LCA improves model-quality significantly. Most environmental impacts of electric vehicles decrease, when the more precise time-resolved approach is employed. Further implications of the new approach are outlined.The future evolution of energy supply technologies strongly depends on (and affects) the economic and environmental systems, due to the high dependency of this sector on the availability and cost of fossil fuels, especially on the small regional scale. This paper aims at presenting the modeling system and preliminary results of a research project conducted on the scale of Luxembourg to assess the environmental impact of future energy scenarios for the country, integrating outputs from partial and computable general equilibrium models within hybrid Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) frameworks. The general equilibrium model for Luxembourg, LUXGEM, is used to evaluate the economic impacts of policy decisions and other economic shocks over the time horizon 2006-2030. A techno-economic (partial equilibrium) model for Luxembourg, ETEM, is used instead to compute operation levels of various technologies to meet the demand for energy services at the least cost along the same timeline. The future energy demand and supply are made consistent by coupling ETEM with LUXGEM so as to have the same macro-economic variables and energy shares driving both models. The coupling results are then implemented within a set of Environmentally-Extended Input-Output (EE-IO) models in historical time series to test the feasibility of the integrated framework and then to assess the environmental impacts of the country. Accordingly, a disaggregated energy sector was built with the different ETEM technologies in the EE-IO to allow hybridization with Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and enrich the process detail. The results show that the environmental impact slightly decreased overall from 2006 to 2009. Most of the impacts come from some imported commodities (natural gas, used to produce electricity, and metalliferous ores and metal scrap). The main energy production technology is the combined-cycle gas turbine plant "Twinerg", representing almost 80% of the domestic electricity production in Luxembourg. In the hybrid EE-IO model, this technology contributes to around 7% of the total impact of the country's net consumption. The causes of divergence between ETEM and LUXGEM are also thoroughly investigated to outline possible strategies of modeling improvements for future assessment of environmental impacts using EE-IO. Further analyses focus first on the completion of the models' coupling and its application to the defined scenarios. Once the coupling is consistently accomplished, LUXGEM can compute the IO flows from 2010 to 2030, while the LCI processes in the hybrid system are harmonized with ETEM to represent the future domestic and imported energy technologies.In the context of a rapidly growing energy demand and concerns about global climate change, renewable energies and in particular photovoltaic (PV) power are considered long-term solutions towards secured energy supply and for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, is solar PV a truly sustainable solution? Climate change will certainly not be the only environmental issue we will have to deal with. Regarding the issue of mineral resources, current research efforts aim at reducing raw material consumption in the manufacturing of PV panels. But, how do we assess the environmental efficiency of a panel, especially concerning the raw material consumption? Moreover, the PV industry consumes raw materials which are principally produced in non-EU countries such as Cadmium (Cd), Gallium (Ga) and Indium (In). How do we consider the issue of critical substance and accessibility? Required materials for PV modules may also be used in other applications (for example Gallium and Indium in electrical appliance production). Should competitiveness between applications be taken into account in a sustainability assessment? Are we going to valorize the PV module ability to use substitute substances? In addition to responsible resource management indicators, many other aspects have to be taken into account in order to achieve a complete sustainability assessment, especially recyclability, viability of PV industry, equilibrium along the value chain or social indicators such as social acceptability... Designing sustainability metrics is a new and complex research field. The whole value chain has to be evaluated and all dimensions (environmental, economic, and social) need to be explored. The paper will discuss the issues in defining sustainability metrics and propose some methodologies and a system of indicators to lassess the sustainability of a PV module.Topic. Based on the current uses of cereals grown in Wallonia (Belgium), various scenarios defining possible futures for the Walloon cereal sector have been created. Purpose. These scenarios lay the basis for research aiming at assessing the sustainability of food and non-food uses of cereals. Method. Based on contrasted hypotheses, four scenarios for the uses of Walloon cereals by 2030 have been defined with the support of stakeholders involved in all the steps of the chain. Results. The first scenario, called "Business-as-Usual", extrapolates trends from 15 years before 2010 and up to 2030. In the second scenario, called "Strategic", the current system is optimized from the environmental, economic and social point of view. The third and fourth scenarios break with current trends. The third scenario, called "Localization", considers an increased autonomy and the development of new cereal processing units in Wallonia. The fourth scenario, called "Globalization", focuses on a massive level of cereal export in response to an increasing demand from the global market and deals with high added-value products within Wallonia. Conclusions. Issues such as competition between food uses and non-food uses of cereals and of Walloon dependency on imports are addressed in these scenarios illustrating possible future situations, from food self-sufficiency to dramatic globalization, through the development of new outlets combining the adaptation of cropping practices, consumption, the evolution of habits and the use of new technologies.Most studies on the environmental performance of buildings focus on energy demand and associated greenhouse gas emissions. They often neglect to consider the range of other resource demands and environmental impacts associated with buildings, including water. Studies that assess water use in buildings typically consider only operational water, which excludes the embodied water in building materials or the water associated with the mobility of building occupants. A new framework is presented that quantifies water requirements at the building scale (i.e. the embodied and operational water of the building as well as its maintenance and refurbishment) and at the city scale (i.e. the embodied water of nearby infrastructures such as roads, gas distribution and others) and the transport-related indirect water use of building occupants. A case study house located in Melbourne, Australia, is analysed using the new framework. The results show that each of the embodied, operational and transport requirements is nearly equally important. By integrating these three water requirements, the developed framework provides architects, building designers, planners and decision-makers with a powerful means to understand and effectively reduce the overall water use and associated environmental impacts of residential buildings.The recent publication of ISO standard 14045 for eco-efficiency assessment requires a focus on its implementation in a variety of contexts. The ISO standard gives only a general framework; its practical implementation requires a scientific approach. This paper demonstrates how the requirements of the standard were taken into account in an eco-efficiency assessment of technological improvements to Sofia's urban water system. The definition of critical elements - product system, system boundary, system value and environmental performance is discussed. Methods for quantification of the system value and environmental assessment are proposed. Two types of indicators, based on life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment, are suggested. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Earth's natural resources are finite and face increasing human pressure. Over the last few decades, concern has been growing about resource efficiency and the environmental impact of material consumption. The construction industry is responsible for the consumption of a relevant part of all produced materials, however, only recently has this industry started to worry about its environmental impacts. This chapter highlights relevant landmarks on sustainable development, materials efficiency and on the assessment of the environmental impact of construction products. An overview on the European Construction Products Regulation (CPR) enforced since the 1 July 2013 is given followed by an outline of the book.The construction industry is one of the largest exploiters of both renewable and non-renewable natural resources. It was inevitable that it would find itself at the centre of concerns regarding environmental impact. The process and operation of building construction consumes a great deal of materials throughout its service life cycle. The selection and use of sustainable building materials play an important role in the design and construction of green building. This chapter sets out to present an overview of sustainable building materials and their impacts on the environment. It also discusses the life cycle assessment as a methodological principle and framework, and its limitations for the analysis of sustainable building materials.This chapter discusses possibilities and limitations of life cycle assessment (LCA) in the building sector. Through standardisation, LCA has gained global support as a most important tool for furthering more environmentally friendly choices in the sector. However, there are several limitations of LCA at a macro level such as choice of unit of analysis and at a micro level related to methodological and practical matters. Overall and inherent possibilities and limitations in the steps of LCA analyses are scrutinised. The flexibility of the method gives LCA the power to inform decision makers and the public about the environmental performance of buildings and building products.The increase in both the number and complexity of products of all kinds is a main cause of the current environmental problems. Manufacturers and distributors use different types of eco-labels to voluntarily provide environmental information about their goods. By providing accurate and relevant information, eco-labels aim at helping consumers to identify those products and services with a better environmental performance in comparison with other equivalent products or services. A life cycle approach should be applied when defining the rules for awarding eco-labels, no matter the type, to avoid impact shifts between different impact categories, life cycle stages or geographical areas.The aim of this chapter is to describe the EU Ecolabel, an environmental label developed by the European Commission to promote environmental excellence in products and services. The chapter first introduces the working EU Ecolabel: its history, criteria setting procedure and GPP (green public procurement). The link between the EU Ecolabel and national ecolabelling schemes is discussed, followed by a focus on construction and building materials covered by EU Ecolabel criteria. The products are listed, showing the main problems and an explanation of possible future trends is given.The aim of this chapter is to present the eco-label Type III: Environmental product declaration (EPD), regulated by the ISO 14025 (2006), and its application to label construction and building materials. The purpose of the EPD is to provide quantified environmental information about the life cycle of a product in order to facilitate environmental comparison between products that perform the same function. There are many different EPD programmes around the world, all of them operating by product category rules (PCR), which set out the specific guidelines and requirements for the development of the LCA study. As a result, environmental indicators for different impact categories through the life cycle of a product are obtained and included in the EPD in addition to other environmental information.In recent years, there has been a proliferation of eco-labels of differing kinds, resulting in customer fatigue. This chapter discusses the common shortcomings of different eco-labels, especially in the context of construction materials. From the same context, the four most important shortcomings of an eco-label are identified, demonstrating that an eco-label must be comprehensive, clear, credible and customer focused. Further, with the proliferation of eco-labels, clarity is the most important attribute. Eco-labels of important construction materials are discussed.Green public procurement (GPP) involves the incorporation of environmental requirements during the procurement of services and products by public authorities. This chapter provides an overview on the growth of GPP in recent years by focusing on its expansion towards sustainable public procurement (SPP), where sustainable development considerations are integrated. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the implementation of GPP/SPP in the construction sector, and issues related to approaches in procurement procedure, GPP/SPP criteria, and the link between criteria and functional objectives of contracts. The chapter highlights that such issues need to be addressed during the progress towards SPP.With the current focus on sustainability, it is necessary to evaluate cement's environmental impact properly, especially when developing new 'green' concrete types. Therefore, this chapter investigates the available literature on every process involved during the production of cement and its alternatives. A detailed study of ordinary Portland cement's environmental impacts is followed by an assessment of improvement potentials which can be achieved with the use of supplementary cementitious materials. Finally, the environmental impacts of alternative binders such as sulfoaluminate or magnesia cements as well as alkali activated binders are studied.This chapter is devoted to comparative environmental assessment of structural concrete made with recycled concrete aggregates and structural concrete made with natural aggregates. The results of life cycle assessment of concretes with three different types of aggregate: natural gravel, natural crushed and recycled concrete aggregate are presented. The influence of the transport phase and CO2 uptake during the life cycle of concrete structures are analyzed. Conclusions on eco-efficiency of recycled aggregate concrete compared to natural aggregate concrete and recommendations for future research are given.In this chapter thermal insulation materials and types of plaster and their properties are described. The impact of the selected thermal insulation materials and plaster on the environment is assessed using LCA analysis. A method of assessing the ecological and economic benefits resulting from thermal insulation of the external walls of buildings is proposed. On this basis, ecological and economic payback periods for thermal insulation are defined as well as the ecological efficiency of thermal insulation. The conducted analyses conclude that thermal insulation of the external walls of buildings is environmentally favourable.Phase change materials (PCMs) have been studied for thermal storage in buildings since the 1980s. These systems provide a higher thermal inertia to the building that, when combined with thermal insulation, can reduce the energy consumption of the building by absorbing the heat gains and reducing the heat flow. Due to the high embodied energy of PCMs, a life cycle assessment study would allow us to determine whether the reduction of the operational impact can balance out the impact produced during the manufacturing and disposal of the PCM and the encapsulation.In this chapter we discuss major issues regarding life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental performance analysis of wood-based building materials. We follow the life cycle of a wood product, beginning with a discussion of sustainable forestry and the growth of trees. We then discuss the processes of manufacturing wood-based building products, focusing on issues of adhesives and preservatives. We discuss the design and construction of buildings and infrastructure made of wood, with an emphasis on eco-design processes. We describe the system-wide material and energy flows associated with wood-based construction in a life cycle perspective, and discuss the climate benefits of using wood material from sustainably managed forests.Growth in adhesive use has contributed to environmental problems, but impact can be reduced by improving procedures and reducing use of solvents. Adhesives from established renewable resources (starch, gelatine and natural rubber) are being augmented through fermentation techniques or genetic modification. The impact of recycling must be considered from 'cradle to grave'. Some renewable resources or recycling techniques may have a greater impact than the technologies they replace. The Laws of Thermodynamics suggest that technical solutions will never be adequate if we aspire to indefinite growth within a finite global system.At present the choice of materials and techniques in road construction is dictated by structural requirements and economic aspects. However, ecological factors have gained in importance due to environmental considerations in politics and society. To evaluate the environmental impact of motorways, a life cycle assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14040 was carried out for different pavement types. By investigating different case scenarios, the reduction potential of environmental impact was quantified. The biggest reduction in air pollution can be achieved by improving pavement properties (e.g., texture, stiffness and flatness) which would significantly reduce the fuel consumption of vehicles.The topic of this chapter is the confrontation between two different construction technologies through life cycle assessment methods: wood and concrete. Nowadays, cradle-to-gate and cradle to cradle LCA analyses are used successfully in sustainable building design and construction. Our research is focused on the specific European context, trying to enhance the usefulness of the methods from a design perspective, if system boundaries are carefully defined and data sets accurately selected and adapted. According to LCA analysis, wood structures demonstrate an overall better environmental performance, but distinctions and contradictory results emerge in different categories of impact.This chapter aims to determine the sustainability of prefabricated buildings by studying the economic, environmental and social impact of the methods of prefabrication used in their construction. A preliminary study of prefabricated architecture is followed by an assessment of the sustainability of the main technologies used to prefabricate 161 recently constructed school buildings in Spain. This evaluation uses the integrated value model for sustainable assessment (MIVES), which is a multi-criteria decision-making method that includes value functions and has been used in workshops to define a specific sustainability assessment tool for the schools within the sample. Finally, recommendations and future trends are presented.Greening the building envelope using vegetated (green) facades is a good example of a new construction practice. Plants and partly growing building materials, in the case of living wall systems (LWS), have a number of functions that are beneficial for the built environment. However, the development of LWS is so rapid that various different materials and characteristics are available at the moment. The latter positively or negatively influence the environmental burden as discussed in this chapter. Greening the building envelope can be a sustainable option for new and retrofitted constructions, by using materials with a relatively high influence on the environmental profile, although not all benefits are yet quantifiable. The present study identifies new scientific directions to reduce the environmental costs of green constructions.This chapter first introduces the role of cladding systems towards a green future in the building sector. It then gives a brief description of the use of the eco-efficiency concept in the assessment of green cladding systems. This chapter presents a systematic assessment of a real case study from Bahrain. The ultimate purpose of this chapter is to provide a common understanding of the importance of carrying out an eco-efficiency assessment and how that assessment can benefit the appraisal of green cladding systems and therefore the design decisions made in developing various scales of green buildings.Windows are a significant component in sustainable buildings in both the impacts caused by their material life cycles and by their influence on the performance of a building over its service life. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have compared the impacts of different framing materials with mixed results. LCA has also been used to estimate the environmental payback of higher manufacturing impacts from producing better performing windows. Future sustainable window selection should make use of standardized LCA data for windows and utilize advanced technologies to optimize window performance.The excellent mechanical properties of UHPC are mainly achieved by the use of a high amount of energy-intensive raw materials like Portland cement or micro steel fibres. Due to very high strength, it is possible to reduce the cross-sectional area and thus the weight of structures. On the one hand, a smaller amount of raw materials is needed, but, on the other hand, the portion of energy-intensive constituents must be increased. Hence the extent to which environmental effects of construction can be reduced by using UHPC was determined. Therefore the ecological impact was determined at a materials as well as on a structural level. The ecological impact of UHPC structures was also compared to structures made of conventional materials.Fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have been increasingly used in civil engineering applications. These materials provide cost-effective alternatives to conventional materials and their use often has associated financial benefits that are immediate and/or can be foreseen over the service life of the structure. As concerns grow over climate change and depletion of natural resources, it is important that the environmental implications of their use should be properly considered. One of the techniques developed to address this issue is life cycle assessment (LCA). In this chapter, a brief overview is first given of FRP composites and their application in construction, after which the general framework and key features of LCA are discussed in detail. Three LCA case studies of FRP composites, from both the composites and civil engineering industry, are then presented and discussed within the general LCA framework and with reference to current industry practices.Consumers, industry, and government entities are becoming increasingly concerned about the issue of environmental sustainability. With this in mind, manufacturers have begun to explore proactive means for reducing their level of resource consumption, and the amount and impact of their generated waste streams. Little research has been conducted on the development of process planning methods that consider environmental factors. In this paper, a new process planning method based on a carbon emission function model is presented that integrates both economic and environmental considerations. The proposed method consists of four steps: (1) component feature identification, (2) generation of alternative operations, (3) selection of operations with lower carbon emissions, and (4) generation of process plan based on a genetic algorithm. This method produces a comparatively 'green' and economical process plan. The method is demonstrated using an example part and the benefits of the method in terms of energy consumption and carbon emissions are evaluated. This paper concludes with a discussion of potential approaches that can facilitate seamless integration of environmental considerations into process planning.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used for the comprehensive environmental assessment of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) and ENM-enabled products. A complete LCA can highlight a possible shifting of burden where reduction of environmental impacts at one stage may come at the expense of another. The objective of this chapter is to familiarize the reader with LCA as a methodology in the context of ENMs. This is done by first presenting a basic LCA framework, followed by peer-reviewed LCAs on ENMs. We conclude with a brief on evolving approaches that address ENM-specific challenges for LCAs.Many new nanomaterial-based products have been developed recently, due to advances in nanotechnology. These are designed to offer new functionalities or to modify existing products. This chapter examines the thermal degradation and flammability of various nanocomposite polymers and the potential risks of burning them. Different fire scenarios have been simulated with a cone calorimeter coupled with FTIR, condensation nuclei counter (CNC) analysers, and/or cascade impactors in order to produce aerosols emitted at different radiation levels and flammable atmospheres. The testing conditions and influential parameters are presented. Combinations of pristine ultrafine particles with soot or other ultrafine particles during thermal degradation can directly affect human health. Hence, more research is needed into the morphology and composition of the released nano-objects and ultrafine particles.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present an original model for the production-recycling-reuse of plastic beverage bottles. Design/methodology/approach - It is assumed that discarded two-liter plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles are collected from the market. The bottles are then sorted into non-contaminated and contaminated streams. The non-contaminated PET bottles are either remanufactured or used as regrind mixed with virgin PET to produce new bottles to satisfy varying demand. The contaminated bottles are either sold to industries using low-grade plastic or disposed of in a landfill. Numerical studies are used to illustrate the behaviour of the model, with an emphasis on exploring the reduction of total system cost and the amount of bottles going into a landfill. Findings - Numerical analyses conducted on the model found that the amount of bottles collected had the largest influence on the outcome of the total system unit time cost. Alternative materials to PETare surveyed and used to demonstrate a significant reduction in the cost of landfill disposal due to their more rapid degradation in the landfill. Research limitations/implications - Several areas for future work are highlighted. Potential modifications to the model could focus on accommodating bottles made of material other than plastic, incorporating the effects of learning onmanual tasks, and on accommodating shortages or excess inventory. Originality/value - The model incorporates several unique aspects, including accounting for the cost of land use and associated environmental damage through the calculation of a present value that is charged to the manufacturer.Biodiesel, a sustainable and clean energy source, has been greatly attracting interest to compete against serious challenges like energy crisis and environmental pollution. Microalgae are currently promoted as a biodiesel feedstock with the most potential and advantages of high lipid content and productivity. This paper provides an overview on a selection of microalgal strains, supercritical carbon dioxide (SCCO2) extraction of microalgal lipids and the advances of microalgae oils transesterification for producing biodiesel with supercritical alcohols. In particular, a two-step process of microalgal biodiesel production using supercritical technology and the following SCCO2 extraction are generalized in this study. Considering the commercialization of microalgal biodiesel in the future, the cost of microalgal biodiesel published in recent literature is analysed. Furthermore, feasible strategies for improvement are proposed. The overall economic efficiency of microalgal biodiesel industry can be improved by the multi-effect co-production coupling technology.The focus of the work is to define a methodology to evaluate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the nursery industry, comparing two different plant production systems (field- and container-grown plants) and assessing different scenarios for the reduction of the emissions. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, with the "from cradle to gate" approach, was used. The analysis revealed that the total emission of CO(2)eg is higher in container cultivations than in field cultivations, with emissions ranging between 26.1 and 34.7 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) for the former, and between 2.3 and 6.6 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) for the latter; greenhouse horticultural crops emit 2.2-10.3 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) of CO(2)eg and arable crop emissions were measured as 6.2 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) of CO(2)eg. Different scenarios for the reduction of GHG emission were tested and a 15.5% reduction of GHG emission was achieved. Two of the scenarios applied - 50% recycled water usage (scenario 1) and 10% of green waste recovery for substrates (scenario 3) - are already in use in nursery farms. (C) 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.The presentpaper aims to synthesize the state-of-the-art of advanced assessment methods used in bridges and also highlights the involvement, influence and direct relationship of these methods with the different aspects currently considered in the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of existing bridges. It has been shown that advanced methods like reliability-based assessment and updating data from results obtained through both Weight-in-Motion (WIM) and Structural Health Monitoring (SEIM) systems led to better results than conventional methods in terms of having a more realistic understanding of the actual condition of the structure by decreasing some existing uncertainties and, therefore, resulting on a more accurate LCA, sometimes concluding that the bridge has not to be posted/strengthened/replaced.Advanced evaluation methods have a great impact on the LCA of bridges because besides reducing the maintenance and repair costs, they allow a more accurate assessment and to extend the life-span of the structure while maintaining adequate levels of performance and safety.Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of bridges and other infrastructural assets has in some countries been explicitly benchmarked by Life Cycle Cost Studies during the last two decades. This allows for cost optimal managing of infrastructure. The society's increasing awareness of whole life environmental impact related to infrastructure is reflected by the fact that Infrastructural Managers (IMs) now also request Life Cycle Assessments to assist their decision making. Two recent research projects reflect this awareness: MAINLINE (MAINtenance, renewaL and Improvement of rail transport iNfrastructure to reduce Economic and environmental impact, EU 7th framework programme) and ETSI (Nordic research project on Life Cycle Cost, Environment and Aesthetics for road bridges). The present paper focus on key parameters needed in order to provide reliable and possibly integrated LCC and LCA results. It is shown that some of these parameters need detailed as well as governmental considerations. Intervention strategies driven by performance profiles, where degradation, monitoring and examination techniques, availability of real data, life extension by refined structural models and/or strengthening, new construction method and logistics, may add complexity into decision making. The paper also illustrates differences between decision making for road and rail bridges.The objective of the MAINLINE project is to develop methods and tools contributing to an improved railway system by taking into consideration the whole life of specific infrastructure - tunnels, bridges, earthworks and track incl. switches and crossings. The MAINLINE project is partly funded by the European Commission 7th Framework Programme and brings together 19 partners from 11 countries in a consortium of infrastructure managers, industry, universities and a governmental organisation. The MAINLINE project period is 2011-2014. The MAINLINE project will develop the principles for a Life Cycle Assessment Tool (LCAT) that is able to assess whole life environmental and economic impact from track and infrastructure maintenance and renewal activities. MAINLINE will facilitate the utilisation of improved assessment and life extension technologies without compromising safety. These solutions should be both cost effective and minimize traffic interruption. MAINLINE will improve existing knowledge on degradation mechanisms in order to reduce significantly their effects on asset performance (e.g. serviceability and safety related). MAINLINE will identify and implement new cost effective replacement/renewal construction methods and logistics with special focus on bridges and track incl. switches and crossings. MAINLINE will identify and compare new examination and monitoring technologies in order to be able to provide cost-effective and reliable input for time-varying performance models. The present paper highlights the overall outcome of the project as per mid-2013 and illustrates how the results contribute to an improved railway system.Positive growth in demand for rail transportation across Europe is predicted to continue. Much of this growth will be accommodated on existing lines that contain old infrastructure, leading to an increased rate of degradation, with fewer opportunities for intervention. The conflicting demands of maintenance and operation of the railway at a time of limited financing, increases the need for asset managers to have robust tools to assist with decisions. The Life-Cycle Assessment Tool (LCAT) within the MAINLINE project is being developed to compare different intervention strategies for railway assets and provide outputs for both environmental impacts and economic costs to assist infrastructure managers throughout the European rail transport network.Currently, the design of infrastructures requires more than compiling with safety requirements according to safety standards and economic constraints. The construction, operation and ultimately the way the infrastructure is demolished have a significant impact on the environment and in the surrounding population. Moreover, infrastructures are often massive structures and have generally a long target life, therefore environmental efficiency depends on the selection of environmentally-friendly raw materials, high durability, easy maintainability, recycling of construction wastes and finally recycling of the components and materials after demolition. To measure the environmental and economical performances of a infrastructures a Life-cycle Analysis (LCA) can be performed. LCA is based on the belief that all stages in the life of a product-system generate impacts and must therefore be analysed in order to avoid trade-offs. In this paper the basic requirements for LCA of infrastructures are presented.Orthotropic welded steel-deck bridge rib systems, developed by German engineers in the 1950s for the structural systems of bridges, were first adopted for ship and naval structures. The word orthotropic comes from "orthogonal" for "ortho" and "anisotropic" for "tropic", so an orthotropic deck has anisotropic structural properties along the two orthogonal directions of its plane. The open (torsionally soft) and closed (torsionally stiff) rib-framing system for orthotropic deck bridges are alternatives basic types of ribs used for bridge. The technology of orthotropic deck is still growing around the world, however the life cycle analysis of this type of decking is useful to be analyzed during the design stage, as some recent example has highlighted anticipated warning failures. The paper describes the key elements to design orthotropic steel decking with life cycle provisions in terms of life cycle cost optimization and construction details.The Champlain Bridge in Montreal crosses the St-Lawrence River and the adjacent Seaway and is approximately 6 km long. It is in operation since 1962 and with 160,000 daily crossings, it is the busiest bridge in Canada. The bridge is in poor condition and the annual expenditures to extend its life have reached 25 M$; this investment does not improve the quality of the deck built as one pre-stressed unit, neither the seismic performance. Rehabilitation of the deck would imply a complete reconstruction of all spans and the closing of the bridge for months. Construction of a new bridge became the only option and the existing bridge will be demolished. Demolition will constitute an unprecedented challenge due to the environmental issues, winter conditions and the constraints related to the operation of the St-Lawrence Seaway. Parallel to a successive dismantling, a method using explosives was evaluated in the demolition scenarios.Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) resulting from forage production contribute a major share to 'livestock's long shadow'. A 2-year field experiment was conducted at two sites in northern Germany to quantify and evaluate the carbon footprint of arable forage cropping systems (continuous silage maize, maize-wheat-grass rotation, perennial ryegrass ley) as affected by N-fertiliser type and N amount. Total GHG emissions showed a linear increase with N application, with mineral-N supply resulting in a steeper slope. Product carbon footprint (PCF) ranged between -66 and 119 kg CO(2)eq/(GJ net energy lactation) and revealed a quadratic or linear response to fertiliser N input, depending on the cropping system and site. Thus, exploitation of yield potential while mitigating PCF was not feasible for all tested cropping systems. When taking credits or debts for carbon sequestration into account, perennial ryegrass was characterised by a lower PCF than continuous maize or the maize-based rotation, at the N input required for achieving maximum energy yield, whereas similar or higher PCF was found when grassland was assumed to have achieved soil carbon equilibrium. The data indicate potential for sustainable intensification when cropping systems and crop management are adapted to increase resource-use efficiency.Purpose - In order to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it is essential that all industry sectors have the appropriate knowledge and tools to contribute. This includes agriculture, which is considered to contribute about a third of emissions globally. This paper reports on one such tool: IMPACCT: Integrated Management oPtions for Agricultural Climate Change miTigation. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - IMPACCT focuses on GHGs, carbon sequestration and associated mitigation options. However, it also attempts to include information on economic and other environmental impacts in order to provide a more holistic perspective. The model identifies mitigation options, likely economic impacts and any synergies and trade-offs with other environmental objectives. The model has been applied on 22 case study farms in seven Member States. Findings - The tool presents some useful concepts for developing carbon calculators in the future. It has highlighted that calculators need to evolve from simply calculating emissions to identifying cost-effective and integrated emissions reduction options. Practical implications - IMPACCT has potential to become an effective means of provided targeted guidance, as part of a broader knowledge transfer programme based on an integrated suite of guidance, tools and advice delivered via different media. Originality/value - IMPACCT is a new model that demonstrates how to take a more integrated approach to mitigating GHGs on farms across Europe. It is a holistic carbon calculator that presents mitigation options in the context other environmental and economic objectives in the search for more sustainable methods of food production.Despite increasing demands within the healthcare market, the growth of peptide based therapeutic products is challenged by the need for sustainable processing strategies using cheaper and eco-friendly processes. To overcome this hindrance, this study aims to evaluate the potential of the intein autocleavage based bioprocessing platform as an alternative to the solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) route for economical peptide manufacture. The robustness of the bioprocessing strategy was evaluated by designing a processing platform for manufacturing an 11-mer synthetic antimicrobial peptide. The peptide was successfully produced in its active form using the SspDnaB mini intein system and showed antimicrobial efficacy against E. coli, a common pathogen. The cleaved peptide and the cleavage reaction was further characterized by RP-HPLC, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and calorimetric methods. Process simulation studies were also conducted using the Super Pro Designer software to compare the overall process economics and environmental impact of the proposed bioprocessing strategy with the SPPS methodology. Operating costs for the intein based bioprocessing strategy was found to be at least two to three times cheaper compared to the SPPS method while being 5-8 times more environmentally friendly.While water requirement for livestock is widely perceived as daily drinking water consumption, similar to 100 times more water is required for daily feed production than for drinking water. Increasing livestock water productivity can be achieved through increasing the water-use efficiency (WUE) of feed production and utilisation. The current paper briefly reviews water requirements for meat and milk production and the extent of, and reason for, variations therein. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) can reveal these variations in WUE but LCA are not tools that can be employed routinely in designing and implementing water-use-efficient feed resourcing and feeding strategies. This can be achieved by (1) choosing agricultural by-products and crop residues where water applications are partitioned over several products for example grain and straw (or food and fodder) contrary to planted forage production where water and land have to be exclusively allocated to fodder production, (2) select and breed WUE crops and forages and exploit cultivar variations, (3) increase crop productivity by closing yield gaps; and (4) increase per animal productivity to reduce the proportion of feed (and therefore water) allocated for maintenance requirement rather than productive purposes. Feed-mediated WUE of dairy buffalo production on almost completely (94%) by-product-based feeding systems could be reduced from 2350 to 548 L of water per kg of milk by the combined effect of increasing basal ration quality in a total mixed ration, which resulted in increased milk yield of similar to 30%, and by increasing crop productivity from 1 t (actual crop yield) to 3 t (potential crop yield). Exemplary, multi-dimensional sorghum improvement using staygreen quantitative trait loci (QTL) introgression for concomitant improvement of WUE of grain and stover production and stover fodder quality showed opportunities for further linked improvement in WUE of crop and livestock production. Metabolisable energy (ME) yield under water stress conditions measured in lysimeters, (which measure crop water transpired) ranged QTL dependent from 16.47 to 23.93 MJ ME per m(3) H2O. This can be extrapolated to 8.23-11.97 MJ ME per m(3) H2O evapotranspired under field conditions. To mainstream improvement in WUE of feed resourcing and feeding, the paper suggests the combination of feed resource databases with crop-soil-meteorological data to calculate how much water is required to produce the feed at the available smallest spatial scale of crop-soil-meteorological data available. A framework is presented of how such a tool can be constructed from secondary datasets on land use, cropping patterns and spatially explicit crop-soil-meteorological datasets.Solar Building Integrated Technology is an important measure in architecture energy conservation and environment protection. Taking into account of factors of environment, the new LCA model of Solar Building Integrated Technology is set up and then a concept of Environment Impact Payback Time is put forward. At last, an example of a certain solar thermal system is conducted, the final impact value of which is -2382.39Pt, and the Environment Impact Payback Time is 10 years.Aiming at three frequently used air conditioning systems of an actual building, the system boundary under simplified and hypothetical conditions was built according to different research objectives and scopes. And the life cycle assessment model frame was created and the carbon footprint of three plans was analyzed. To collect relative data of energy consumption and emission which were produced in the stages of units operating, the resources obtaining and manufacturing, then the obtained data were arranged into inventory analysis table. In accordance with the characterized model environmental exhaust was transformed to environmental load while normalization and weighted evaluation were also made, from which different environmental impacts potential values could be attained. So as to the environmental impact of life cycle of air conditioning systems could be quantitatively described by the environmental impact load. Ultimately the study conclusions were procured as follows: electric water chiller plus natural direct-fired lithium-bromide absorption chiller/heater makes the least environmental impact followed by the electric water chiller plus gas boiler and water source heat pump makes the most.Idea Management Systems (IMS) manage the innovation life-cycle from the moment of invention until ideas are implemented in the market. During the life-cycle the IMS supports collaboration, allows idea enrichment with comments, contextual data, or connected to other relevant ideas. Semantic technologies can improve the knowledge management capabilities of IMSs allowing relevant information to be easily linked to ideas. Many Enterprises concerned with sustainability encourage employee's participation as a means to boost creative innovation within their Sustainability Initiatives. However little work has examined the role of an IMS within Sustainability. In this paper we analyse the impact of a semantic-enabled IMS within a sustainability innovation process. In particular, how ideas can be enriched with contextual Linked Open Data (LOD), especially Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) data, to improve the understanding, implication and value of the idea from the sustainability perspective.Thermodynamic optimization of thermal devices requires information about the influence of operational and structural parameters on its behaviour. The interconnections among parameters can be estimated by tools such as CFD, experimental statistic of the deviceetc. Despite precise and comprehensive results obtained by CFD, the time of computations is relatively long. This disadvantage often cannot be accepted in case of optimization as well as online control of thermal devices. As opposed to CFD the neural network or regression is characterized by short computational time, but does not take into account any physical phenomena occurring in the considered process. The CFD model of heat exchanger was built using commercial package Fluent/Ansys. The empirical model of heat exchanger has been assessed by regression and neural networks based on the set of pseudo-measurements generated by the exact CFD model. In the paper, the usage of the developed empirical model of heat exchanger for the minimisation of TEC is presented. The optimisationconcerns operational parameters of heat exchanger. The TEC expresses the cumulative exergy consumption of non-renewable resources. The minimization of the TEC is based on the objective function formulated by Szargut However, the authors extended the classical TEC by the introduction of the exergy bonus theory proposed by Valero. The TEC objective function fulfils the rules of life cycle analysis because it contains the investment expenditures (measured by the cumulative exergy consumption of non-renewable natural resources), the operation of devices and the final effects of decommissioning the installation.The emergence of an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) was characterized by the adoption of objectives for maintaining ecosystem health alongside those for fisheries. The EAF was expected to meet some aspirations for biodiversity conservation, but health was principally linked to sustainable use rather than lower levels of human impact. Consequently, while policies including EAF concepts identified objectives for fisheries management and biodiversity conservation, the wording often reflected unresolved societal and political debates about objectives and gave imprecise guidance on addressing inevitable trade-offs. Despite scientific progress in making trade-offs and consequences explicit, there remain substantial differences in interpretations of acceptable impact, responses to uncertainty and risk, and the use of management measures by groups accountable for fisheries management and biodiversity conservation. Within and among nations and regions, these differences are influenced by the contribution of fisheries, aquaculture, farming, and trade to food security, consumers' options, and other social, economic, and environmental factors. Notwithstanding, mutual understanding of the motivations and norms of fisheries management and biodiversity conservation groups is increasing, and interactions between these groups have likely supported more progress toward meeting their stated objectives than would have otherwise been achievable.The economic, environmental, and social performances of energy systems depend on their geographical locations and the surrounding market infrastructure for feedstocks and energy products. Strategic decisions to locate energy conversion facilities must take all upstream and downstream operations into account, prompting the development of supply chain modeling and optimization methods. This article reviews the contributions of energy supply chain studies that include heat, power, and liquid fuels production. Studies are categorized based on specific features of the mathematical model, highlighting those that address energy supply chain models with and without considerations of multiperiod decisions. Studies that incorporate uncertainties are discussed, and opportunities for future research developments are outlined.Given the energy challenges confronted by the world in general, where Chile is not an exception, forest energy crops have been positioned as a viable alternative to diversify this country's energy matrix. These types of crops, still under development, are based on short rotation shifts with high biomass production. The problem arises when assessing the sustainability of such crops. Accordingly, the energy balance is an important factor to assess sustainability i.e. we cannot spend more energy to produce biomass than what is released by the biomass combustion. This work presents the energy balance of harvest products at roadside in a Populus deltoides clone Lux short rotation forestry during eight years (2000-2008), comparing biennial (T2) and triennial (T3) shifts. Consequently, we calculated the energy cost of production and harvest and the amount of energy released in the combustion of the biomass generated. Both rotation shifts got positive results, being triennial shifts more energy efficient than biennial ones (34.7 T2 vs 25 T3).A greenhouse gas (GHG) life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed on a stadium used for sporting events in a subtropical region in Australia. Inventories for the construction and operation of a stadium are presented and the GHG emissions from construction, operations and end-of-life waste management are assessed against the attendance of one person at one event. The inclusion of additional economic activities, patron travel, LCA methodology, attendance and stadium life-time assumptions are likely to affect the overall magnitude of the GHG emissions of one person's attendance. The assessment shows that the stadium operation accounted for 72.5% of GHG emissions, with the operation of baseload heating, ventilation and cooling, lighting and refrigeration systems dominating. The best opportunity to reduce GHG emissions is to reduce the need for the continual operation of these systems. Construction impacts account for 24.7% of impacts, while replacement materials, end-of-life management of materials are relatively insignificant, contributing to less than 3% of life cycle GHG emissions.A significant number of "green concrete" are being developed to meet the growing request of reducing construction industry impacts, saving raw materials and preventing industrial by-products' discard. Between these, black/oxidising electric arc furnace (EAF) slag has been found to be suitable for structural concrete applications when used as replacement of traditional coarse aggregate. This work presents an environmental impacts assessment related to the production of concrete containing EAF slag compared to a traditional one, through Life Cycle Analysis framework using a cradle-to-gate approach. Inventory data are mainly collected from experiments and refer to the considered materials, and the functional unit used to compare both concretes is representative of the same strength and durability/service life characteristics of the material. Results of this specific study show that concrete containing EAF slag as recycled aggregate is responsible of lower emissions production when compared with those related to concrete made with traditional aggregates.This paper reports a study that examines the effect of some key drivers on the construction contractors' adoption of carbon reduction strategies. An industry survey was conducted in Victoria, Australia, for data collection. Interviews with industry experts were conducted to validate the survey findings. The results indicate that most carbon reduction strategies are not being adopted in construction projects. Such findings are in line with scholars' comments on the construction contractors as being apathetic to reduce carbon emissions. The findings further suggested levies on carbon emissions, rewarding schemes and training and education as the effective drivers of carbon reduction. This study contributes to a deeper understanding about driving contractors' behavioural change to achieve carbon reduction. This provides valuable insights into devising pragmatic measures to reduce carbon emissions in projects.Engineering systems typically deteriorate due to regular use and exposure to harsh environment. Under such circumstances the owner of a system must take important decisions such as whether to repair, replace or abandon the system. Such decisions can affect the safety of, and the benefits to the users and the owner. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) provides a rational basis for such decision making process. In particular, LCA can provide helpful information on the performance of a system over its entire life-cycle, like its time-dependent reliability, the costs associated with its operation, and other quantities related to the service life of the system. This paper proposes a novel probabilistic formulation for LCA of deteriorating systems named Renewal Theory-based Life-cycle Analysis (RTLCA). The formulation includes equations to obtain important life-cycle variables such as the expected time lost in repairs, the reliability of the system and the cost of operation and failure. The proposed RTLCA formulation is based on renewal theory and proposes analytical solutions for the desired LCA variables using numerically solvable integral equations. As an illustration, the proposed RTLCA formulation is implemented to analyze the life-cycle of an example reinforced concrete (RC) bridge located in a seismic region. This analysis accounts for the accumulated seismic damage in the bridge columns caused by the earthquakes occurring during bridge's life-cycle. The analysis results provide valuable insight into the importance of seismic damage in a bridge's life-cycle performance and the strategies to operate a system in an optimal manner. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays the RAMS process is very well described in EN50126 by "V Diagram" regarding which activities is necessary in railways life cycle phases. Nevertheless, it is not clear which are the specific reliability engineer and risk analysis methods must be applied in order to achieve high performance a long railways life cycle. The methodology described on EN50126 does not consider explicitly for example reliability engineer methods like accelerated test, growth analysis, Life cycle analysis, RAM analysis by Monte Carlo Simulation a long enterprises life cycle. In many cases, the train industry carry on RAMS and life Cycle Cost to manage their asset but do not optimize the reliability engineer methods to get better results. The equipment life cycle analysis, RAM analysis, Accelerated test, Reliability Growth Analysis, DFMEA, FMECA, RCM and Human reliability analyze are not applied intensively and correctly a long train life cycles to obtain better results. The main objective of this paper is to show advantages on such methods application and how such application can be applied to improve the supplier reliability requirements, the warranty requirement for customer and life cycle cost results. In order to improve RAM process in Railways industry this paper will discuss the RAMS process gaps and propose improvement based on a train project RAMS analysis case example in order to have more efficient Asset Management by RAMs process to achieve better results. Thus, regarding different lifecycle phases will be discussed which the best practices to cover such gap. That means which are the gaps on design phase and which are the proposals to improve that using Accelerated Test, Reliability Growth Analysis and DFMEA as well as risk analysis methods. On Basic project phase there are also some gaps that can be improved by life cycle analysis, FMEA, RCM, RAM Analysis, and on construction phase how human reliability can be applied to avoid human error. In addition such methods can be carried on in also in operational phases in order to keep system high performance.RAMS analysis has main objective to define system availability, reliability and maintainability regarding critical equipment failures and safety issues like incidents and accidents which impact on system availability and employees health. On most of industries, the reliability diagram block is applied to model the complex systems. Regarding safety, in many cases, incidents are results of combined events which are better modeled by Fault three analyses. Nowadays the RAMS process phases is very well described in EN50126 by "V Diagram" regarding which activities is necessary in railways life cycle phases. Nevertheless, it is not clear which are the specific reliability engineer methods which must be applied in order to achieve high performance a long railways life cycle. The methodology described on EN50126 does not consider such application and integration of RBD and FTA as well as Monte Carlo Simulation. In addition, it is no mentioned others reliability engineer tools like accelerated test, growth analysis, Life cycle analysis a long enterprises life cycle. Furthermore, regarding Safety, the Preliminary Hazard Analysis has been the most qualitative risk analysis applied to define hazard events but in most of cases such events are not quantified by FTA and when such events are modeled do not take into account the incidents effect on system availability. On Transportation Industry, the RAMS process analysis carries out RAM and safety access separately. This paper propose to integrate incident and equipment failures which affect System availability by RBD and FTA model and Monte Carlo Simulation in order to find out all events that causing System unavailability as well as define all incidents events which cause employees health damage. Thus, a case study will be carried out to exemplify Integrated RAMS analysis Methodology applied to Train system in project phase regarding Reliability Diagram Block, FMECA and FTA which model equipment failures and incident which impact in System availability. Such incidents modeled by FTA are integrated in Reliability diagram block. Therefore it'll be possible to compare system availability and reliability without and with incidents as well as identify equipment and event bad actors to improve system availability and safety error. In addition such methods can be carried on in also in operational phases in order to keep system high performance.Life cycle analysis combined with technical economic evaluation method in the paper to control the cost of denitration. A simple model for denitration cost is developed. The influence of different flue gas concentration of NOx to the cost of unit denitration is analysed by life cycle analysis, includes construction, operation and decommissioning, which based on 600 MW coal-fired units. Preliminary calculations reveal that comparing with directly using the denitration technology of selective catalytic reduction (SCR), after using Air staged Low NOx Combustion Technology reduced NOx below 400mg/m(3), using SCR denitration further decreased the concentration of NOx in flue gas to 100mg/m(3) can save more than 44% of the general denitration cost. This can improve effectively the environmental protection and economy of the coal-fired unit.Nowadays, sustainability is one of the main driving forces for worldwide economic growth especially in energy production. Combustion of fuel such as natural gas for energy production not only produce electricity but also impacts to environment. In order to assess the environmental impacts of the natural gas power plant, study of life cycle assessment (LCA) has been carried out based on the data obtained from natural gas (NO) power plant in Johor, Malaysia. Data validation has been done by comparing the result with other assessment using the data available in the database. This paper presents the results of the LCA. From this study, it was found that there are insignificant differences in terms of the potential environmental impacts between the LCA studies conducted using the data from the NG power with the assessment conducted using data from the database.This study compares environmental impact of different heating systems with life cycle analysis, and get out if heat pump system has advantage in replacing boiler heating systems. Systems energy use are compared in one-year operation phase for residential buildings located in Tianjin city, including waste water heat pump system, coal boiler system and gas boiler system. In order to analyzed the environment performance of heat pump system in different conditions. The power structure impact to heat pump systems is analyzed using life cycle analysis method. The results indicate that with COP=4, even if 100% coal power is used, heat pump has advantage in the most impact factors, and if more clean power is used, the environment impact in heat pump system will be reduced obviously. The result also shows that waste water use in heat pump system impact the result little for its small quantity.This paper reviews the global progress on welding consumables for high strength low alloy steel. The numerous aspects, such as the toughness and cleanliness of weld metal, the new removal mechanisms of impurity elements and the crack resistance of weld metal, are discussed. To meet increasing environment requirements, the fumes and life cycle assessment of welding consumables are also discussed. Finally, future trends in the development of welding consumables for high strength low alloy steel are pointed out.Kelp cultivation started in Japan, China and Korea, mainly for human consumption; new applications are still expanding. In Chile, three 'wild' Lessonia species and Macrocystis pyrifera are under a strong and increasing pressure of exploitation mainly for alginate production and as a source of feed for abalone. Regulatory restrictions for kelp exploitation and the increased demand for biomass provided a positive environment for the installation of a kelp farming industry. Pilot-production studies demonstrated that 200tonnes (fresh)/ha/year can be achieved and genetic diversity and breeding studies suggested that this volume could be increased. Kelp disease research is a necessary condition for securing the future development of this industry, as are environmental studies on the impacts of large-scale aquaculture. Beyond the positive bioremediation, ecosystem service effects that kelp farming can provide, especially in a region such as in southern Chile, where intensive salmon and mussel cultivation occurs. Life Cycle Assessment suggests that the energy returns on investment in kelp farming are positive, but more detailed data are still required.Garbage incineration is an effective minimization and resource processing methods, but there are no comparative analysises about the environmental impact of incineration processes. To investigate the environmental impacts of three typical MSW incineration processes, we modeled scenarios, calculated energy consumed and six aspects which classified as GWP, ODP, AP, EP, POCP and DUST. The classification results showed the value of the environment impact potential respectively. The impact potential of heat recover-dry absorption processes according to normalized results in descending order is G'WP > EP > DUST > AP > POCP > ODP, in contrast the rank of heat recover-wet absorption and semidry processes is GWP > EP > AP > DUST > POCP > ODP, global warming impacts is the most significant penitential factor. The rank of impact potential according to weight factor in descending order is GWP > EP > DUST > AP > ODP > POCP. Dust potential became more significant. The weight factor of Dust is almost twice as much as that of AP. This is because there is a large gap between baseline level and the target level, the solid-waste are the focus of control in these years. In environmental terms, the environmental depletion index of heat recover-dry absorption process is lowest with minimal environmental impact and the heat recover-wet absorption process is the highest with largest environmental impact. The incineration with dry absorption program is the best environment-friendly process in term of environmental impact. Utilization of waste water and reducing total amount of water entering the system can effectively reduce the environmental implication for both HW and HS processes.Increasing numbers of studies have suggested that a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of cropping practices on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit yield (yield-scaled), rather than by land area (area-scaled), is needed to inform trade-off decisions to increase yields and reduce GHG emissions. We conducted a meta-analysis to quantify impacts of rice varieties on the global warming potential (GWP) of GHG emissions at the yield scale in China. Our results showed that significantly higher yield-scaled GWP occurred with indica rice varieties (1101.72 kg CO2 equiv.Mg-1) than japonica rice varieties (711.38 kg CO2 equiv.Mg-1). Lower yield-scaled GHG emissions occurred within 120-130 days of growth duration after transplanting (GDAT; 613.66 kg CO2 equiv.Mg-1), followed by 90-100 days of GDAT (749.72 kg CO2 equiv.Mg-1), 100-110 days of GDAT (794.29 kg CO2 equiv.Mg-1), and 70-80 days of GDAT (800.85 kg CO2 equiv.Mg-1). The fertilizer rate of 150-200 kg N ha(-1) resulted in the lowest yield-scaled GWP. Consequently, appropriate cultivar choice and pairs were of vital importance in the rice cropping system. A further life cycle assessment of GHG emissions among rice varieties at the yield scale is urgently needed to develop win-win policies for rice production to achieve higher yield with lower emissions.The legislative framework in force in Europe entails restrictive effluent standards for sensitive areas, and quite severe restrictions on the properties of residual sewage sludge, both for landfill disposal and for agricultural use. Several technologies and management strategies have been proposed and applied in wastewater treatment plants to minimise sludge production and contamination. However, their techno-economic and environmental performance has to be carefully evaluated. The ROUTES project, funded within the EU Seventh Framework programme, aims to find new routes for wastewater treatment and sludge management and thereby guide EU members in their future choices. Within this project, the authors have developed and applied a procedure for techno-economic- environmental assessment of new wastewater and sludge processing lines in comparison to reference plants. The reference plants are model conventional plants that experience different types of problems and the new plants are modified plants in which different innovative technologies have been added to solve these problems. The procedure involves a rating of selected technical issues, estimates of operating costs and an assessment of environmental impacts from a life cycle perspective. This paper reports on the procedure and shows examples of results.Electric bicycles (EBs) are now becoming the main vehicles for short-distance trips because of their speediness, flexibility and convenience in many cities in China. However, these benefits come at a cost. This study analyzed the energy consumption and emission of pollutants at every stage of the EB life cycle (production, use, maintenance and recycling) by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The environmental impacts and the energy consumption in production and use were quantified and compared with other competing modes of transport, such as bicycles, buses, motorcycles and cars. The results show that the energy consumption and emissions of pollutants by EBs occur mainly in the use stage, and specifically in the process of electricity production and battery change. The emissions of pollutants by EBs per person per kilometer are several times smaller than the values for motorcycles and cars, more or less equivalent to buses and higher than bicycles.This paper focuses on conceptualizing the quantification of the Carbon Footprint of IT-Services (CFIS). Initially, the increasing relevance of Carbon Footprint to the IS-community is pointed out. Based on literature review, we present related work that describes underlying concepts e. g. the Carbon Footprint of Products, Life Cycle Assessment as well as IT energy and performance measurement. We apply a transfer-oriented approach (design science) to propose a methodological framework for CFIS that is based on the phases of Life Cycle Assessment, and furthermore provide an example for the calculation. To our opinion the conceptualization of CFIS is an inevitable step to advance Green IS, since it quantifies dependencies between IT-Services, IT energy consumption and related greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, the paper contributes to the IS community by providing an applicable and novel method to IT-Service providers for calculating the CFIS and by identifying further important research directions in this field.For the purpose of achieving high performance of intelligent buildings, it needs to pay expanses for maintaining the intelligent systems. So it is in great need to analyze the costs and benefits of building intelligent system to help building owners to make decision on installing intelligent systems or not. This paper proposes an investment-benefit assessing approach for building intelligent systems. Net Present Value (NPV) is used as an index to evaluate the performance of building intelligent system. The NPV is calculated by analyzing the initial capital investment, maintenance costs, and the tangible and intangible benefits in building life cycle. The intangible benefits are quantified using a series of indexes which represent the cash flows brought by the intangible benefits. Different weights of these indexes are used to express the different contributions of these intangible benefits. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method ([7]) is used to quantify the weights of the indexes.In the building industry, decreasing the CO2 emission not only is an important environmental issue but also an international responsibility in the future. This research analyzed building life cycle CO2 emission and used a building life cycle CO2 emission index (LCCO2). LCCO2 allows us to compare the impacts of different building designs to the environment and find out the most efficient CO2 reduction strategy. A low floor house life cycle simulation showed that most CO2 emission in the life cycle comes from the daily use stage. Therefore, energy preservation in the daily life is the most important strategy to reduce CO2 emission in a building. Compared with the RC house, the light weight steel house uses more eco-friendly building materials and heat preservation materials. Therefore, the LCCO2 of the light weight steel house is reduced 31.34%. The research also showed that proper increase in the life span of a building also decreases CO2 emission. The light weight steel house is more eco-friendly than the RC house in the building's life cycle.Sludge from tannery effluent treatment processes is a by-product of leather-making industry, in which chrome compounds are the most common used materials. The objective of this work was to investigate the effects and feasibility in the use of tannery sludge ash as a partial or total replacement of usual mineral filler such as in manufacture of waterproofing membranes. The effects of sludge ash on the morphology and mechanical properties of membranes were investigated. Leaching tests were carried out in order to guarantee that the fulfilment of "filler function" was done in respect with environmental criteria. Besides, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis was performed in order to assess the environmental performance of the waterproofing membrane filled by tannery sludge ash in comparison with the conventionally filled membrane. The performances of the membranes and the results of environmental assessment indicate that tannery sludge ash may be used as total replacement of CaCO3 for waterproofing membranes.This paper proposes a conceptual model to support sustainable product design. The approach develops an integrated multimodal decision making model which is to be introduced early in the design process, as the basis for the integration of the life cycle assessment into an Eco-design model. The model, which is based upon an adapted "House of Quality" analysis, supports designers when assessing the environmental impact of the product design. The resulting Eco-design model evaluates the sustainability of the designed product using criteria that consider the impact of manufacturing process, product usage and end-of-life (EoL) disposal strategy. This approach is demonstrated using a case study that considers the design of a set of crocodile medical forceps, in which the redesign of a new forceps is undertaken by considering all the parameters in the Eco-design model.Reducing the environmental impacts of products surrounding us in our daily lives has become a common concern for the industry as well as for consumers. The practice of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) allows determining not only the environmental impacts centers but also the overriding factors on which it is still possible to act at the design phase. The geometric modeling phase in the design process represents an important step to make the necessary changes on the product in order to reduce its environmental hotspots. In this paper, we have eco-designed a basin mixer by acting on its geometric modeling phase, after identifying its various environmental hotspots from a LCA practiced and determining the factors still editable on CAD phase. An environmental comparison between the eco-designed mixer and the original one has been established, which shows a 66% reduction of impacts linked only to the amount of material used.To ensure that the economic and environmental impact over the entire product life cycle is taken into consideration during the design process, an integrated life cycle approach to Design for Environment (DfE) must be taken. In this paper, we describe the application of the product structure-based methodology for integrated life cycle analysis as a DIE decision-support tool. While maintaining an integrated perspective of the product life cycle, this methodology modularises the product life cycle model to the individual parts of the product structure; thus, allowing product designers to analyse the parts independently from the rest of the product system and enabling them to systematically evaluate the design alternatives. Using a case study on a dive torchlight, we demonstrate how through our proposed methodology, design alternatives for the product can be evaluated based on the life cycle eco-efficiency.Environmental impact assessment ensures that the environmental considerations are accounted before the decision about an economic activity, the new technology or materials is made. In developed countries, e.g. France different methods and tools are used to assess the environmental impact as life cycle assessment (LCA) etc. In countries with transitional economy, as Russia in site assessment of an activity often prevails. There are number of challenges exist to better account the environmental impact, including legislative constraints, culture of methods and tools.This study compares seven different LED commercial lighting systems using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The environmental impact of seven LED systems was assessed in a baseline study in 2010 and monitored in 2012. The next monitoring phases are planned in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The ReCiPe endpoint method was applied to calculate the environmental impact. The results of the baseline study show that the main environmental impacts of LED lighting systems are a result of the use phase. The differences between the seven systems were mainly due to energy consumption, energy efficiency and the level of produced light (luminance).The on-going environmental performance of the different LED lighting systems was monitored based on these Key Environmental Performance Indicators (KEPIs). The first evaluation took place in 2012. The results show that compared with the baseline study, the environmental impact has increased for six out of the seven LED lighting systems mainly as a result of a decrease in luminance.The academic and industrial literature presents a lot of innovations to improve the energy efficiency of the home appliances around the world. However, few methodologies are able to combine innovations and eco-sustainability, during the design phase of green products. In this context, the paper defines an approach to analyse the relationships between different types of innovation and the relative environmental impacts, during the product lifecycle. The analysis has been performed by defining innovations categories and comparing the product Life Cycle Assessment before and after their implementation. This approach represents the preliminary phase of the innovation process, required to support the product manager. The approach has been experimented within a household appliances company, highlighting that there are innovations able to reduce the energy and water consumption respectively of 25% and 30%.During the last decades, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been one of the most common approaches for environmental impact assessment. This methodology has become more and more complex in its representation of the real environmental impacts of products. However, it does not take into account temporal and cumulative aspects, and therefore appear not so suitable to observe potential rebound effect of new technologies. In this paper, we explore the limits of static LCA and understand how some dynamic LCA can be interpreted, by comparing the results of two environmental impacts assessments of energy production from solar cells. The global warming potential (GWP) of different technologies was accounted from the last 50 years. We show with this example how any temporal evolution of technology matters for environmental assessment (e.g. the global warming potential). Turning then to the future, we offer scenarios to see the evolution of greenhouse effect in long term regarding different mixes of technologies. This example opens new horizons for future research in the field of temporal LCA and its applications.This research is about concept of Service Design embedded in Sustainable Design effort. By working on energy efficiency, low-impact materials, reuse and recycling, engineers and designers achieved limited effects in a scenario of rapidly increasing impacts. Sustainable design must create projects of meaningful innovations that can shift consumers' behavior. In this case, knowledge of Service Design would enable the designer to include an optimum Business Model of implementing new ideas of eco-design. A modular furniture system was designed with materials selected according to eco-indicator of Life Cycle Assessment. Materials and furniture parts were design with consideration of recycling and reuse that consumes least energy. On this occasion, a service model following the lifelong guarantee concept was formulated as follows, aiming to benefit both customers and manufacturers. (1) Providing customers with diverse selection of function, scale, style and finish choice that satisfied customs of various demand. (2) All parts of the furniture can be easily replaced, renewed, even functionally upgraded, supporting by easy access logistic channel. This service model includes inventory allocation, delivery and onsite maintenance and (3) In the case of abandoned goods, the logistic system will deliver every parts of the furniture to manufacturer with beneficial rewards.Life cycle thinking has become widely applied in the assessment for building environmental performance. Various tool are developed to support the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) method. This paper focuses on the carbon emission during the building construction stage. A partial LCA framework is established to assess the carbon emission in this phase. Furthermore, five typical LCA tools programs have been compared and analyzed for demonstrating the current application of LCA tools and their limitations in the building construction stage. Based on the analysis of existing tools and sustainability demands in building, a new computer calculation system has been developed to calculate the carbon emission for optimizing the sustainability during the construction stage. The system structure and detail functions are described in this paper. Finally, a case study is analyzed to demonstrate the designed LCA framework and system functions. This case is based on a typical building in UK with different plans of masonry wall and timber frame to make a comparison. The final results disclose that a timber frame wall has less embodied carbon emission than a similar masonry structure. 16% reduction was found in this study.Construction industry has a great contribution to energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the world. In this paper, CO2 emissions of construction industry are calculated based on the method of life cycle assessment (LCA) from 2004 to 2010. According to life cycle theory, building life cycle is divided into four parts, namely building materials production, construction, operation and maintenance, and demolition waste. For the convenience of statistical analysis, the constructing, building maintenance, and demolition waste were merged into one part named the new construction. The results present the macrobuilding CO2 emissions were 3.7 billion tons, accounting for 44.7 % of the China's CO2 emissions in 2010. Among the macrobuilding CO2 emissions, the averaged annual percentage of materials production, new construction, and operation phase were 40, 3, and 57 %, respectively.Plants and associated microorganisms are used to remediate anthropogenic metal(loid) contamination of water, soils and sediments. This review focuses on the potential of Arundo donax L. (Giant reed) for alleviating risks due to soils, water, and sediments contaminated by trace elements (TE), with emphasis on its advantages and limits over macrophytes and perennial grasses used for bioenergy and plant-based feedstock. Arundo donax is relevant to phytomanage TE-contaminated matrices, notably in its native area, as it possesses characteristics of large biomass production even under nutrient and abiotic stresses, fast growth rate, TE tolerance and accumulation mainly in belowground plant parts. Cultivating A. donax on contaminated lands and in constructed wetlands can contribute to increase land availability and limit the food vs. plant-based feedstock controversy. To gain more tools for decision-taking and sustainable management, further researches on A. donax should focus on: interactions between roots, TE exposure, and rhizosphere and endophytic microorganisms; biomass response to (a) biotic factors; sustainable agricultural practices on marginal and contaminated land; integration into local, efficient, energy and biomass conversion chains with concern to biomass quality and production; Life-Cycle Assessment including contaminant behavior, as well as environmental, agricultural and socio-economic benefits and drawbacks.Global warming caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emission has become a common concern in the international community. Building sector is one of the major areas to produce GHG emissions. There are a lot of carbon emission researches by the domestic and overseas scholars, although the international standards for carbon accounting have not been established in the building sector. In this paper, we first introduce the major modeling techniques for estimating the national or urban building energy consumption in brief. And then give an overview of urban building energy consumption and carbon emissions accounting models based on these methods, particularly describe the scale and the scope applied in the accounting, the relationships between the models, the evaluation and analysis of the existing models focused on their purposes, strengths, and shortcomings. Finally, the main part of this paper puts forward an elementary conceives to establishing a more smaller scale of carbon accounting model used the life cycle assessment (LCA) theory aim at regional building energy system. And we wish the carbon accounting model can guide the design of new regional building energy system and the retrofit of existing regional building energy system.Algaculture has the potential to be a sustainable option for nutrient removal at wastewater treatment plants. The purpose of this study was to compare the environmental impacts of three likely algaculture integration strategies to a conventional nutrient removal strategy. Process modeling was used to determine life cycle inventory data and a comparative life cycle assessment was used to determine environmental impacts. Treatment scenarios included a base case treatment plant without nutrient removal, a plant with conventional nutrient removal, and three other cases with algal unit processes placed at the head of the plant, in a side stream, and at the end of the plant, respectively. Impact categories included eutrophication, global warming, ecotoxicity, and primary energy demand. Integrating algaculture prior to activated sludge proved to be most beneficial of the scenarios considered for all impact categories; however, this scenario would also require primary sedimentation and impacts of that unit process should be considered for implementation of such a system.An eco-innovative product design method integrating the concept of green design, process technology, product structure, material selection and other effects. Eco-innovative design evaluates how a product impacts the environment during its entire life cycle. Each system will thus follow one or more "patterns of evolution" as given by Altshuller. This paper attempts to indicate how TRIZ tools and MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) can be used in eco-innovative design research activities. An idea generation support method by using TRIZ is proposed.Life cycle energy consumption and environment emission assessment model of vehicle new energy fuels is established. And life cycle energy consumption and environmental pollutant emissions of new energy fuels are carried out. Results show that the full life cycle energy consumption of alcohol fuels is highest, and the full life cycle energy consumption of the fuel cell is lowest, and the fuel consumption is mainly concentrated in the use stage, and that is lowest in the raw material stage. And the full life cycle CO2 emission of methanol is highest, and the full life cycle CO2 emission of Hybrid is lowest. The full life cycle VOC, HC, NOx, PM10 and SOx emissions of alcohol fuels is highest, and the fuel cell is lowest.This work aimed to develop an alumina composite reinforced with polycrystalline alumina fibers to increase the mechanical properties of the product. A water-based processing was carried out, replacing the use of toxic and flammable organic solvents. The forming technique used was tape casting, which in addition to reliability and low cost, enables to make thin, flat tapes. The parameters for the tape casting process were: gap between the blades of 350 mu m and casting speed of 12 cm/min. The process was optimized through a rheological study and alumina suspension with 50 wt.% solids was used. The slurry showed a pseudoplastic behavior and a high value of thixotropy. Several methods for separation and processing of the fibers were tested and a scattering using a specially designed support was the most efficient option. The tapes were thermopressed at 65 degrees C and 30 MPa. The tensile test of green tapes showed a significant increase of the mechanical resistance for fiber-reinforced tapes, which was also dependent on fiber orientation.Almost identical properties with petroleum-derived diesel make biodiesel one of the best options of renewable and sustainable fuel supply to the transportation sector. Thanks to plentiful sources of palm oil and reasonable cost, it can be a proper feedstock for biodiesel production in Malaysia. Still, there is a paucity of studies concerning the effects of palm biodiesel on the environment. This paper, therefore, deals with life cycle assessment (LCA) of palm biodiesel to find out and validate the common belief regarding suitability of palm biodiesel as a green and sustainable fuel. The LCA study was conducted through three main stages including agricultural activities, oil milling, and transesterification process of biodiesel production. Palm oil biodiesel production results in the production of 1627.748kgCO2-eq of GHG and energy consumption of 12449.48MJ per ton PME. The results indicate that the most relevant environmental impact of this biofuel system is depletion of fossil resources.Great deal of concerns have been aroused after the global surge of prices of petroleum along with shrinking resources of non-renewable fossil fuel and regarding the necessity of renewable energy sources as alternative fuel. Despite the many positive characteristics of biofuels, they cause a variety of environmental, economical, and social challenges that were not known to decision-makers by usual evaluation tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This paper aims to design a Decision Support System (DSS) which covers weakness of existing assessment tools, using Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) models. Furthermore, a sustainable framework for decision making through assessing and considering wider environmental, economic, and social issues pertinent to different steps of development of biofuel is developed.A comprehensive analysis of the energy demand of a building over its entire life, based on actual operational energy data and a comprehensive analysis of both initial and recurring embodied energy, is extremely rare. To address this, the aim of this study was to analyse the total energy demand associated with a case study house located in Australia, based on post-occupancy building energy data. An input-output-based hybrid embodied energy assessment approach was used to quantify initial and recurring embodied energy over a 50-year period, providing the most comprehensive assessment of embodied energy possible. The study showed that the total life cycle energy demand of the case study house was 10,612GJ or 36.4GJ/m(2). Of this, operational energy was shown to account for 40%, initial embodied energy 37% and recurring embodied energy 22% of the total. This demonstrates that the energy embodied in buildings is much more significant than previously thought. With on-going building operational energy efficiency improvements this component of a building's energy demand is likely to become even more important as is the need to utilize best-practice approaches for quantifying embodied energy.The aim of this paper is to develop guidelines in order to assist in decision making with respect to treatment options of waste solvents, and more importantly for the choice of solvent in the design of the process a priori, from an environmental point of view based on the composition of a mixture. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate two treatment alternatives: continuous distillation and incineration. The software Ecosolvent (R) v.1.0.1 was used to perform the LCA, considering two scenarios (the best and worst scenarios) and five environmental indicators: Eco-indicator 99, UBP-97, global warming potential, cumulative energy demand and CO2-balance. From the results, it can be concluded that the environmental impact originating from the production of the solvents is the main issue to consider for the selection of distillation or incineration as the treatment method during the process design. In general, those solvents with a low impact during their production stage were found to be candidates for incineration. Moreover, those compounds that yield a great environmental burden during the production step should be always recovered in order to minimize the total impact. A series of charts is presented as guidelines to select the most environmentally favorable alternative for mixtures of solvents, and to select which solvent to use considering the environmental effects that are produced. Regarding the information given by the different indicators, it was observed that all the studied indicators lead to the same conclusions for the evaluated mixtures with some exceptions for UBP-97.Polyethercarbonate polyols from carbon dioxide (CO2) are starting to be synthesized on industrial scale. These polyols can be further processed into polyurethanes enabling CO2 to be utilized in large amounts. Utilization of CO2 as alternative carbon feedstock for polyols is motivated from the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil resource depletion. This article presents a life cycle assessment for production of CO2-based polyethercarbonate polyols in a real industrial pilot plant. The considered cradle-to-gate system boundaries include polyol production and all upstream processes such as provision of energy and feedstocks. In particular, provision of CO2 from a lignite power plant equipped with a pilot plant for CO2 capture is considered. Production of polyols with 20 wt% CO2 in the polymer chains causes GHG emissions of 2.65-2.86 kg CO2-eq kg(-1) and thus, does not act as GHG sink. However, compared to production of conventional polyether polyols, production of polyols with 20 wt% CO2 allows for GHG reductions of 11-19%. Relating GHG emission reductions to the amount of CO2 incorporated, up to three kg CO2-eq emissions can be avoided per kg CO2 utilized. The use of fossil resources can be reduced by 13-16%. The impacts reductions increase with further increasing the CO2 content in the polyols. All other investigated environmental impacts such as eutrophication, ionizing radiation, ozone depletion, particulate matter formation, photochemical oxidant formation, and terrestrial acidification are also lowered. Therefore, synthesis of polyethercarbonate polyols from CO2 is clearly favorable compared to conventional polyether polyols from an environmental point of view.This article assesses the effect of management practices on the environmental and economic performance of tigernut production. Tigernut is a horticultural crop grown in a very limited and homogeneous area. Results show that the environmental variability among farms was greater than variability in costs. A selection of practices can reduce impacts per kilogram tigernut by factors 252.5 (abiotic depletion), 33 (aquatic ecotoxicity), or 6 (global warming) and costs by factors of between 2 and 3. The analysis shows a positive relationship between economic and environmental performance. Results highlight how proper management leads to both relatively low environmental impacts and costs.Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are considered preferred alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles because they can reduce air emissions and fuel consumption while performing competitively against conventional vehicles in commuter usage scenarios. Hybrid vehicle technologies vary widely and offer different advantages and disadvantages from environmental and socio-economic perspectives for passenger vehicles. At the other extreme, fleet vehicles are operated differently from passenger vehicles and idle for about 70 % of their operation time. Hybrid vehicles have yet to be utilized widely by fleets: they would appear to complement fleet operations but there are other approaches to reduce emissions, including assistive technologies to operate in-vehicle equipment and maintain fleet vehicle capabilities instead of idling. Hybrid vehicles and assistive technologies, such as auxiliary power units could offer significant benefits to fleet vehicles by powering electronics while idling and thus reduce the need for conventional engine operation. However, do hybrids and assistive technologies actually provide justifiable benefits in passenger vehicles and fleet vehicles? There are specific end-of-life issues with hybrids and assistive technologies that should be assessed. These issues and the overall sustainability of vehicles can be assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches.Driven by the growing numbers of intensified pig farms around cities in China, there are problems of nutrient surplus and shortage of arable land for utilising the manure. Hence, sustainable livestock systems with effective manure management are needed. The objective of this study is to compare the existing manure treatment of a typical pig farm in Beijing area (separate collection of faeces; 'Gan qing fen' system) with an alternative system and to identify the nutrients flow of the whole farm in order to quantify environmental burdens and to estimate the arable land required for sustainable nutrients recycling. Life cycle assessment is used for this purpose. Acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP) and global warming potential (GWP) are analysed in detail; the functional unit is the annual production of the pig farm. The results show that the cropland area demand for sustainable land application of the effluent can be reduced from 238 to 139 ha with the alternative system. It is possible to transfer 29% of total nitrogen, 87% of phosphorus, 34% of potassium and 75% of magnesium to the compost, and to reduce the total AP, EP and GWP of manure management on the farm by 64.1%, 96.7% and 22%, respectively, compared with the current system. Besides an effective manure management system, a full inventory of the regional nutrients flow is needed for sustainable development of livestock systems around big cities in China.China has endured the increasing generation of municipal solid waste; hence, environmental analysis of current waste management systems is of crucial importance. This article presents a comprehensive life cycle assessment of three waste treatment technologies practiced in Hangzhou, China: landfill with and without energy recovery, and incineration with waste-to-energy. Adopting region-specific data, the study covers various environmental impacts, such as global warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment, photochemical ozone formation, human toxicity and ecotoxicity. The results show that energy recovery poses a positive effect in environmental savings. Environmental impacts decrease significantly in landfill with the utilization of biogas owing to combined effects by emission reduction and electricity generation. Incineration is preferable to landfill, but toxicity-related impacts also need to be improved. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis shows that the benefit of carbon sequestration will noticeably decrease global warming potential of both landfill scenarios. Gas collection efficiency is also a key parameter influencing the performance of landfill. Based on the results, improvement methods are proposed. Energy recovery is recommended both in landfill and incineration. For landfill, gas collection systems should be upgraded effectively; for incineration, great efforts should be made to reduce heavy metals and dioxin emissions.European national, regional, and local authorities have started to lake action to make public bus transport services more effective and less polluting. Some see the possibility to move beyond a narrow focus on efficiency or carbon dioxide reductions towards an integrated sustainability perspective. This paper uses this perspective to build and test a new assessment approach that should enhance decisions on bus transport powertrains and energy carriers for Swedish medium-sized cities. The study suggests that a superiority of electric powertrains is revealed if a traditional economic analysis is integrated with a strategic sustainability perspective. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Several environmental vehicle rating tools have been developed in order to promote the purchase and the use of greener cars. However those were developed/applied at a regional/country specific level. There is a need to develop a broader methodology that can be applied in a multi-country perspective for the assessment of the environmental rating of vehicles with alternative types of fuels as well as different types of drivetrain, such as electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell hybrid. The environmental indicators usually relates to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), air pollutants emissions (HC, CO, NOx, PM, SOx) and noise levels. US rating methodology developed by ACEEE is guided by Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), but disregards noise impacts (scores vehicles from zero to 100 (best)). EcoScore Belgian methodology adopts a LCA perspective, disregarding the materials of vehicle impact, but giving some importance to the noise impact (scores from zero to 1.00(best)). The German Verkehrsclub Deutschland's (VCD) current rating system does not purport to be an LCA, and it has been modified based on evolving views about the importance of various automobile impacts. VCD scores from 0 to 10 (best). It considers impacts in nature both from CO2 (vehicle manufacturer information) and pollutants (European Standards), in human health from pollutants, also considers noise. Australian Green Vehicle Guide (GVG) rating methodology considers only usage stage, giving zero to 10(best) points to GHG and air pollutants, disregarding noise. The overall rating is based on the sum of the air pollution and greenhouse ratings (zero to five star (best)). For the vehicle in-use emissions usually a non-realistic, standard, driving cycle is used and again differs from country to country, despite aiming at representing urban and extra-urban driving. This paper presents the application of the revised methodologies to existent alternative vehicle technologies, pure electric vehicle (Nissan Leaf), gasoline hybrid (Toyota Prius), plug-in hybrid (Toyota Prius), conventional gasoline (VW Beetle TSI), conventional diesel (VW Golf 2.0 Bluemotion), where the urban and extra-urban driving is considered in the same fashion at a multi-country level. Preliminary results of the methodologies rank highly Honda FCX Clarity and Nissan Leaf. Conventional vehicles occupy bottom places in the rankings The influence of the driving cycles is discussed. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Different technologies for tertiary wastewater treatment are compared in their environmental impacts with life cycle assessment (LCA). Targeting very low phosphorus concentration (50-120 mu g/L) and seasonal disinfection of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) secondary effluent, this LCA compares high-rate sedimentation, microsieve, dual media filtration (all with UV disinfection), and polymer ultrafiltration or ceramic microfiltration membranes for upgrading the large WWTP Berlin-Ruhleben. Results of the LCA show that mean effluent quality of membranes is highest, but at the cost of high electricity and chemical demand and associated emissions of greenhouse gases or other air pollutants. In contrast, gravity-driven treatment processes require less electricity and chemicals, but can reach significant removal of phosphorus. In fact, dual media filter or microsieve cause substantially lower specific CO2 emissions per kg P removed from the secondary effluent (180 kg CO2-eq/kg P, including UV) than the membrane schemes (275 kg CO2-eq/kg P).Jatropha (family-Euphorbiaceae) is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs, and trees. Jatropha seeds have 25-40% oil content. In India, it is being promoted as a biofuel crop and as a means to alleviate poverty. Women's self-help groups are promoting Jatropha to small farmers by capitalizing on a microcredit system. The life-cycle analysis (LCA) developed for this study was carried out in a typical arid area, Panna (India), considering Jatropha cultivation on wasteland, poor agricultural land, and sparsely planted forest land. Block-wise data for land use patterns, land cover, and agricultural resources/practices were collected. The LCA of Jatropha oil processed via transesterification as well as direct mixing with diesel fuel was carried out, and a comparative analysis was undertaken vis-a-vis bio-oil from agricultural biomass (BTL (Ag)) under different cultivation conditions. The investigation's scope included reductions in CO2 emissions and economic returns to farmers. The resulting analysis is presented taking into consideration, globalization and subsidized fossil fuel supplies.This paper uses LCA(Life Cycle Assessment) to make a quantificational analyse for the environment impact of hollow brick produced by the waste, the environment impacts come from the mining of raw materials to the product process. The results show that the greatest impact on the environment is the greenhouse effect in the life cycle of the hollow brick produced by the waste, which possess 24% of the total environmental impact, while the largest environmental impact in the whole process is sintering the brick, accounting for 73% of the total environmental impact.Although external wall thermal insulation layer protects the major structure effectively and is capable of the prolonging of the service life of the structure, building thermal insulation material production brings environmental impact in some degree. In this research, quantitative analysis and evaluation of resources consumption and pollutant emission caused by materials on external wall were carried out based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The results show that, environmental load brought by rock wool board production has a decisive influence on the total environmental load of the external thermal insulation system production.Based on life cycle assessment (LCA), a quantitative analysis and evaluation of resources consumption, energy consumption and pollutant emissions caused by windows production were carried out. The result shows that AP, POCP and GWP are the main contributors of the total environment burden of windows production process, and the proportion is almost 97%. At the stage of windows parts production, the main environmental pressures of windows production process are from windows profiles and glass production process. The result shows that the key of the windows production energy-saving are the windows profiles and glass production process.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardised tool for sustainability, recognized in many international forums, applicable to water treatment projects, but not usually applied to this type of projects. The LCA should be included into this type of projects since it allows making strategic decisions from the study of sustainability at different stages of the project, compares water purification technologies and its phases, and allows optimizing processes and determining the overall impact of the WWTP's life cycle.Purpose - This paper investigates the challenges encountered by manufacturing companies in managing sustainability in new product development (NPD). It describes six case studies of manufacturers aiming for sustainability improvements but experiencing difficulties in implementing them. Design/methodology/approach - The paper starts with a literature study. Academic literature offers explanations as to why manufacturers want to implement sustainability in NPD, and suggests methods for such implementations. This paper employs the systems theory of control to build a research framework for analyzing the challenges Empirical data are gathered through workshops and interviews with NPD managers in the case companies. Findings - In-depth analyses have provided three insights. First, the study shows that sustainability pressures and incentives in a firm's contexts can be fuzzy or even absent. The fuzziness of sustainability incentives is often neglected in the literature on sustainability and NPD. Second, the case companies face difficulties when setting the scope, goals, and ambitions that effectively direct NPD decisions and efforts toward designing sustainable products. Third, the results show that deploying sustainability methods, tools, and metrics, such as a life-cycle assessment or design for environment (DfE), are not sufficient to achieve sustainability in NPD. These findings call for research on sustainability and NPD processes in contexts where sustainability incentives and needs are fuzzy so as to acquire insights applicable to sustainable product development management that is proactive rather than reactive. Originality/value - Instead of focusing only on the output of sustainable products, this paper presents a more nuanced perspective on managing sustainability in NPD. Moreover, by adopting the holistic perspective of the systems theory of control, the authors challenge the assumption that there are already sufficient external incentives to force companies toward greater sustainability. Consequently, in the light of proactive sustainability management, the authors recommend three tracks for further research: organization and filtering of information concerning sustainability pressures and incentives in a firm's context; and how to manage sustainability proactively rather than reactively.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used in design phase to reduce the product's environmental impacts through the whole product life cycle (PLC) during the last two decades. The traditional LCA is restricted to assessing the environmental impacts of a product and the results cannot reflect the effects of changes within the life cycle. In order to improve the quality of ecodesign, it is a growing need to develop an approach which can reflect the changes between the design parameters and product's environmental impacts. A sensitivity analysis approach based on LCA and ecodesign is proposed in this paper. The key environmental performance factors which have significant influence on the products' environmental impacts can be identified by analyzing the relationship between environmental impacts and the design parameters. Users without much environmental knowledge can use this approach to determine which design parameter should be first considered when (re) designing a product. A printed circuit board (PCB) case study is conducted; eight design parameters are chosen to be analyzed by our approach. The result shows that the carbon dioxide emission during the PCB manufacture is highly sensitive to the area of PCB panel.Fish resources are critical to the food security of many nations. Similar to most contemporary food systems, many fisheries and aquaculture resource supply chains are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Energy price increases and volatility may hence undermine food security in some contexts. Here, we explore the relationships between energy price changes, fish resource supply chain viability, seafood availability and food security outcomes - both for producers and consumers of fish resources. We begin by characterizing the energy intensities of fish resource supply chains, which are shown to be highly variable. We subsequently assess the comparative magnitude and distribution of potential food security impacts of energy price increases for nation states by scoring and ranking countries against a set of vulnerability criteria including metrics of national exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Considerable variability in the vulnerability of populations and high levels of exposure for already food-insecure populations are apparent. Developed countries are likely to be most exposed to the effects of energy price increases due to their high rates of fleet motorization and preference for energy-intensive seafood products. However, heavy reliance on seafood as a source of food and income, as well as limited national adaptive capacity, translates into greater overall vulnerability in developing countries. At the level of individual producers, a variety of adaptation options are available that may serve to reduce vulnerability to energy price changes and hence contribute to increased food security for producers and consumers, but uptake capacity depends on numerous situational factors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Determining a technology's merit as a solution to Hungarian drinking water arsenic contamination goes beyond technical concerns: environmental and economic aspects also play very important roles. In an effort to address the current arsenic drinking water requirements in Hungary, life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology was applied on two example arsenic removal technologies, coagulation-filtration and adsorption, from cradle to grave. A distribution of 500 m(3)/day was assumed, along with a range of possible operation boundary conditions modelled solely for As treatment. Nine out of 10 considered impact categories tended to favour coagulation-filtration, however realistic variations in water chemistry and product characteristics led to some overlap of their environmental impact. Unlike other studies on water systems, electricity did not have a large direct impact; this was due to the focussed nature of this study on individual treatment technologies rather than an entire water supply system. Regeneration of the adsorption technology filter material was also observed to require nearly the same mass of materials for one regeneration as what was needed to support the coagulation-filtration technology for an entire year. Hazardous waste was surprisingly not reduced for adsorption compared to coagulation-filtration due to prefiltration requirements and an extra regeneration, even though adsorption shifts some of the environmental burden to the production phase. Additionally, cost analysis observes that coagulation-filtration is the cheaper of the two technologies; its highest cost is that of waste disposal, while the highest single expense modelled is that of the adsorption media cost.Bioenergy from energy plants is an alternative fuel that is expected to play an increasing role in fulfilling future world energy demands. Because cultivated land resources are fairly limited, bioenergy development may rely on the exploitation of marginal land. This study focused on the assessment of marginal land resources and biofuel potential in Asia. A multiple factor analysis method was used to identify marginal land for bioenergy development in Asia using multiple datasets including remote sensing-derived land cover, meteorological data, soil data, and characteristics of energy plants and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. A combined planting zonation strategy was proposed, which targeted three species of energy plants, including Pistacia chinensis (P. chinensis), Jatropha curcas L. (JCL), and Cassava. The marginal land with potential for planting these types of energy plants was identified for each 1 km(2) pixel across Asia. The results indicated that the areas with marginal land suitable for Cassava, P. chinensis, and JCL were established to be 1.12 million, 2.41 million, and 0.237 million km(2), respectively. Shrub land, sparse forest, and grassland are the major classifications of exploitable land. The spatial distribution of the analysis and suggestions for regional planning of bioenergy are also discussed.This article reviews two different but linked issues. The first one is a technical discussion on innovative covering materials for intensive horticulture with emphasis on plastics for greenhouse covering: updated information on the performance of highly diffusive covers, NIR filtering films, anti-drip films, insect-proof screens and other experimental coverings under investigation (such as new anti-drip films and ultrathermic films) is discussed. The second subject is concerned with environmental issues: based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, quantitative information on the environmental impact of greenhouse production in unheated Mediterranean greenhouses is presented and the relative environmental importance of the covering material on the whole greenhouse production process is discussed. After the end of its useful life, greenhouse covers are taken off and treated as waste. In Almeria (Southern Spain) plastic waste is mainly treated in two different ways: recycled to meet some other applications, such as producing rubbish bags, boxes, etc. or incinerated in a nearby power plant to produce electricity. A simplified quantitative environmental impact assessment for both options is presented. This assessment is referred to relevant indicators such as Global Warming Potential and risk of Eutrophication. Results show that the valorization of PE waste as energy source is more positive than recycling PE waste in terms of environmental concern, though deeper analyses on this subject are required.Sewage sludge is an inevitable product of wastewater treatment in municipal wastewater plants and its amount has increased dramatically due to the growing number of sewage systems users. This sludge needs to be adequately treated in order to decrease its hazardous properties and any negative influence on the environment. In this paper, gate to gate analysis, on the basis of life cycle assessment (LCA), was carried out in order to compare the environmental impact of alternative ways of sludge processing employing a dewatering press and three different kinds of dryers - belt dryer, container dryer and batch dryer. SimaPro 7.2 software and Ecoinvent 2.2 database were used to estimate the carbon footprint and energy balance of these processes. The main energy consumption in the scenarios analyzed is caused by the drying process. The solution based on application of the batch dryer allows a saving of 39.6% of energy compared with the most energy-consuming solution using a belt dryer. Sludge processing using belt and container dryers cause greater environmental burdens.The manufacture of helical pinion gears has involved machining processes such as hobbing and shaving to achieve the required dimensional accuracy. However, these conventional processes have some disadvantages such as excessive material loss, low productivity, high-energy consumption, and high carbon emissions. To overcome these problems, a cold extrusion process is applied to the manufacture of helical gears. In this study, we analyze the environmental effects of the cold extrusion process, designed for the sustainable production of helical gears. We quantitatively analyze the environmental effects of the conventional machining and cold extrusion processes, using the Life Cycle Assessment technique in accordance with ISO 14000. This analysis includes the energy consumption and carbon emissions for a helical gear manufactured using the conventional machining processes and those of single- and double-type gears manufactured using the cold extrusion process. Moreover, the material properties of the extruded helical gears are compared with the conventionally machined gears. In conclusion, the extruded gears exhibited a higher strength while consuming less energy during their manufacture than the gears manufactured using the conventional machining processes. Further, this alternative process is more cost effective as it generates less waste and exhibits high productivity compared to the conventional machining processes.Most of the Icelandic cod is caught in bottom trawlers or longliners. These two fishing methods are fundamentally different and have different economic, environmental, and even social effects. In this paper we present a hybrid-simulation framework to assess the impact of changing the ratio between cod quota allocated to vessels with longlines and vessels with bottom trawls. It makes use of conventional bioeconomic models and discrete event modelling and provides a framework for simulating life cycle assessment (LCA) for a cod fishery. The model consists of two submodels, a system dynamics model describing the biological aspect of the fishery and a discrete event model for fishing activities. The model was run multiple times for different quota allocation scenarios and results are presented where different scenarios are presented in the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, social, and economic. The optimal allocation strategy depends on weighing the three different factors. The results were encouraging first-steps towards a useful modelling method but the study would benefit greatly from better data on fishing activities.The importance of environmental protection has been recently upgraded due to the continuously increasing environmental pollution load. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), wellknown as ISO 14040, has been repeatedly shown to be a useful and powerful tool for assessing the environmental performance of industrial processes, both in the European and American continents as well as in many Asian countries (such as Japan and China). To the best of our knowledge, almost no information is provided in relation to LCA implementation in Africa apart from an article related to Egypt. Although food industries are not considered to be among the most heavily polluting ones, for some like olive oil, wine, dairy, and meat processing, their impact on the environment is a heavy burden. The introduction of LCA aimed at identifying both inputs and outputs to find out which are the most detrimental to the environment in terms of water/energy consumption and solid/liquid and gas releases. In this review, a thorough coverage of literature was made in an attempt to compare the implementation of LCA to a variety of products of both plant and animal origin. It was concluded that there is a high number of subsystems suggested for the same product, thereby, occasionally leading to confusion. An idea toward solving the problem is to proceed to some sort of standardization by means of several generic case studies of LCA implementation, similarly to what had happened in the case of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) implementation in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and other countries.In order to assess the sustainability of Chimex processes, we developed a visualization tool called Eco-footprint which gathers 10 indicators allocated either to manufacturing or eco-design footprints. All parameters are described in this article and illustrated by the case studies of Pro-Xylane T and Mexoryl (R) SX syntheses.This paper presents the thermodynamic analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) of the heating strategies in historical buildings. We evaluated two main systems used in historical buildings to provide heat: A central heating system, which is based on a method of heating the whole air volume within the building, and a localised heating system, which is based on a method of supplying the desired amount of heat to the individual occupants. After evaluating both systems in a historic mosque, we found that using a modern localised heating system like the carbon film heating, a comfortable temperature can be maintained while saving 22.4 MWh of electricity annually, compared with a conventional central heating system. Moreover, the carbon film heating system can reduce stress on the environment by 60% when compared with the conventional heat pump system.Hydrogen is expected to play a significant role in the future energy systems, given the global increase in energy demand, which is driven by the accelerated growth of the world's population, the on-going industrial development and urbanization as well as the higher standards of living and education. In this paper, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to evaluate the environmental impact of two different gasification based hydrogen production technologies: hydrogen production by biomass steam gasification in a dual fluidized bed reactor system (DFB) and hydrogen production by gasification of coal and biomass using entrained flow technology (EF). For both hydrogen production pathways the gasification plant, raw materials production, pre-processing, and transportation are included in the life cycle assessment and also hydrogen delivery to consumers. The DFB cases have lower global warming potential than the EF cases. Also the abiotic depletion fossil potential and the human toxicity potential are lower. The acidification and eutrophication potentials are lower for the EF cases. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.The objective of the work reported here was to reduce the uncertainty on the greenhouse gas balances of biofuels using agro-ecosystem modeling at a high resolution over the Ile-de-France region in Northern France. The emissions simulated during the feedstock production stage were input to a life-cycle assessment of candidate biofuel pathways: bioethanol from wheat, sugar-beet and miscanthus, and biodiesel from oilseed rape. Compared to the widely-used methodology based on fixed emission factors, ecosystem modeling lead to 55-70% lower estimates for N2O emissions, emphasizing the importance of regional factors. The lifecycle GHG emissions of first-generation biofuels were 50-70% lower than fossil-based equivalents, and 85% lower for cellulosic ethanol. When including indirect land-use change effects, GHG savings became marginal for biodiesel and wheat ethanol, but were positive due to direct effects for cellulosic ethanol. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background Incorporating environmental sustainability (ES) into engineering education is vital to both individual engineering students' success and to the profession as a whole. This study explores attitudes, conceptions, and misconceptions about ES that students bring to the classroom. A promising framework of design-based research is applied to gauge how instructional innovation can impact student attitudes, conceptions, and misconceptions. Purpose Two questions guided this research: What knowledge and attitudes about ES, particularly those pertaining to engineering, do first-year engineering students have? How can an engineering module focused on life cycle assessment in a first-year engineering course affect students' conceptual understanding to prepare them to develop a robust appreciation of environmental issues and ES in engineering? Design/Method A quantitative research design in the context of a comparative design-based research study was utilized to examine first-year engineering students' environmental awareness coming into the program and changes in their conceptions of ES following their participation in a module that focused on life cycle assessment (LCA). Results/Conclusion Following the participation in the LCA module, the intervention was able to address certain misconceptions and support students' shift to deeper understanding about ES. Students' perceptions regarding the complexity of LCA did not change. Including multifaceted issues such as LCA in the teaching of engineering students seems beneficial.Animal slurry management is associated with a range of impacts on fossil resource use and the environment. The impacts are greatest when large amounts of nutrient-rich slurry from livestock production cannot be adequately utilised on adjacent land. To facilitate nutrient redistribution, a range of different technologies are available. This study comprised a life cycle assessment of the environmental impacts from handling 1000 kg of pig slurry ex-animal. Application of untreated pig slurry onto adjacent land was compared with using four different treatment technologies to enable nutrient redistribution before land application: (a) separation by mechanical screw press, (b) screw press separation with composting of the solid fraction, (c) separation by decanter centrifuge, and (d) decanter centrifuge separation with ammonia stripping of the liquid fraction. Emissions were determined based on a combination of values derived from the literature and simulations with the Farm-N model for Danish agricultural and climatic conditions. The environmental impact categories assessed were climate change, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, terrestrial acidification, natural resource use, and soil carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus storage. In all separation scenarios, the liquid fraction was applied to land on the pig-producing (donor) farm and the solid fraction transported to a recipient farm and utilised for crop production. Separation, especially by centrifuge, was found to result in a lower environmental impact potential than application of untreated slurry to adjacent land. Composting and ammonia stripping either slightly increased or slightly decreased the environmental impact potential, depending on the impact category considered. The relative ranking of scenarios did not change after a sensitivity analysis in which coefficients for field emissions of nitrous oxide, ammonia and phosphorus were varied within the range cited in the literature. Therefore, the best technology to implement in a given situation depends on the environmental problem in question, local policy, cost and practicality. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, a model that is capable of evaluating the environmental benefits of a new elementary school facility was developed. The model is composed of three steps: (i) retrieval of elementary school facilities having similar characteristics as the new elementary school facility using case-based reasoning; (ii) creation of energy consumption and material data for the benchmark elementary school facility using the retrieved similar elementary school facilities; and (iii) evaluation of the environmental benefits of the new elementary school facility by assessing and comparing the environmental impact of the new and created benchmark elementary school facility using life cycle assessment. The developed model can present the environmental benefits of a new elementary school facility in terms of monetary values using Environmental Priority Strategy 2000, a damage-oriented life cycle impact assessment method. The developed model can be used for the following: (i) as criteria for a green-building rating system; (ii) as criteria for setting the support plan and size, such as the government's incentives for promoting green-building projects; and (iii) as criteria for determining the feasibility of green building projects in key business sectors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pavement rehabilitation is carbon intensive and the choice of pavement type is a critical factor in controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The existing body of knowledge is not able to support decision-making on pavement choice due to a lack of consensus on the system boundaries, the functional units and the estimation periods. Excessive data requirements further inhibit the generalization of the existing methodologies for design evaluation at the early planning stage. This study proposes a practical life-cycle GHG estimation approach, which is arguably effective to benchmark pavement emissions given project bid tabulation. A set of case studies conducted for this study suggest that recycled asphalt pavement (e.g., foam stabilized base (FSB), and warm mix asphalt (WMA)) would prevent up to 50% of GHGs from the initial construction phase. However, from a life-cycle perspective, pavement emissions are dictated largely by the traffic characteristics and the analysis period for the use phase. The benefits from using recycled materials (e.g., FSB) are likely to diminish if the recycled products do not perform as well as those properly proportioned with less recycled materials, or if the recycled materials are locally unavailable. When the AADT reaches 10,000, use phase releases more than 97% of the life cycle emissions and the emissions difference among alternative designs will be within 1%. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to the fact that food manufacturing is one of the major drivers of the global environmental issues, there is a strong need to focus on sustainable manufacturing toward achieving long-term sustainability goals in food production of the United States. In this regard, current study assessed the direct and indirect environmental footprint of 33 U.S. food manufacturing sectors by using the Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) model. Then, a non-parametric mathematical optimization tool, namely Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), is utilized to benchmark the sustainability performance of food manufacturing sectors by using the results of the EIO-LCA model. Next, sustainability performance indices (SPIs), rankings, target improvements, and sensitivity of environmental impact indicators are presented. The average SPI score of U.S. food manufacturing sectors is found as 0.76. In addition, 19 out of 33 food sectors are found as inefficient where an average of 45-71% reduction is indicated for various environmental impact categories. Analysis results also indicate that supply chains of food manufacturing sectors are heavily responsible for the impacts with over 80% shares for energy, water and carbon footprint, fishery and grazing categories. Especially, animal (except poultry) slaughtering, rendering and processing sector is found as the most dominant sector in most of the impact categories (ranked as 2nd in fishery and forest land). Sensitivity analysis indicated that forest land footprint is found to be the most sensitive environmental indicator on the overall sustainability performance of food manufacturing sectors. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present study integrates material based Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) with welfare economic Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) to evaluate resource and environmental consequences as well as welfare consequences for society of introducing biofuels in the Danish road transport sector. The integrated method focus on fossil energy consumption, CO2 emissions and total welfare economic changes within the whole LCA flow chain comprising both production of biomass and subsequent conversion into biofuel and combustion in vehicles. With regard to consequences for fossil energy consumption a global delimitation is used whereas only CO2 emissions and welfare economic consequences within Danish borders are included in the analysis. Consequently, calculated emission and welfare economic consequences can be interpreted as the consequences for Denmark of producing and using biofuels from biomass grown on Danish farm land. The method is applied with regard to production of rape diesel (rape methyl ester, RME), 1st generation ethanol from wheat and 2nd generation ethanol based on straw. Advantages and disadvantages of the LCA based material flow approach and the welfare economic based CBA approach are discussed. The influence of uncertainties on the results is evaluated illustrating the importance of paying attention to assumptions with regard to substitution of other products and resources and with regard to their relative prices. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fresh water is one of the most important natural resources required by the societies' proper operation to meet their biological and industrial needs. Thus, water is a key resource, which availability or scarcity, should be considered carefully in strategies of sustainable social, economic and technical development, with full respect to nature and rules of intergenerational justice. Preservation of fresh water resources for the next generations is highly required by the rule of sustainable development, which results in the need for water accounting for industry and services located in the given watershed as well as for the proper, sustainable water management. This paper contains presentation and analysis of five popular methods used in industrial water accounting i.e. Water Footprint, Life Cycle Assessment, Global Water Tool, Water Sustainability Tools and the exemplary industrial method developed by Schornagel. The apllicational abilities of the described methods and the attempt of the presented methods assessment in compliance to the three main priorities of sustainable development were discussed. The set of basic requirements met by the method orientated towards sustainable development was also presented.A combined methodology using life cycle assessment (LCA) and human health risk assessment (HHR) is proposed in order to select the percentage of water in drinking water treatment plants (DWTP) that should be nanofiltered (NF). The methodological approach presented here takes into account environmental and social benefit criteria evaluating the implementation of new processes into conventional ones. The inclusion of NF process improves drinking water quality, reduces HHR but, in turn, increases environmental impacts as a result of energy and material demand. Results from this study lead to balance the increase of the impact in various environmental categories with the reduction in human health risk as a consequence of the respective drinking water production and consumption. From an environmental point of view, the inclusion of NF and recommended pre-treatments to produce 43% of the final drinking water means that the environmental impact is nearly doubled in comparison with conventional plant in impact categories severely related with electricity production, like climate change. On the other hand, the carcinogenic risk (HHR) associated to trihalomethane formation potential (THMFP) decreases with the increase in NF percentage use. Results show a reduction of one order of magnitude for the carcinogenic risk index when 100% of drinking water is produced by NE. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) play an important role in human health. Due to the increased market demand, the production of PUFAs from potential alternative sources such as microalgae is receiving increased interest. The aim of this study was to perform a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the biotechnological production of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) from the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, followed by the identification of avenues to improve its environmental profile. The LCA tackles two production schemes of P. tricornutum PUFAs with an EPA content of 36%: lab and pilot scales. The results at lab scale show that both the electricity requirements and the production of the extraction agent (chloroform) have significant influence on the life cycle environmental performance of microalgal EPA production. An alternative method based on hexane was proposed to replace chloroform and environmental benefits were identified. Regarding the production of EPA at pilot scale, three main environmental factors were identified: the production of the nitrogen source required for microalgae growing, the transport activities and electricity requirements. Improvement alternatives were proposed and discussed concerning: a) the use of nitrogen based fertilizers, b) the valorization of the residual algal paste as soil conditioner and, c) the anaerobic digestion of the residual algal paste for bioenergy production. Encouraging environmental benefits could be achieved if sodium nitrate was substituted by urea, calcium nitrate or ammonium nitrate, regardless the category under assessment. In contrast, minor improvement was found when valorizing the residual algal paste as mineral fertilizer, due to its overall low content in N and P. Concerning the biogas production from the anaerobic digestion, the improvement on the environmental profile was also limited due to the discrepancy between the potential energy production from the algal paste and the high electricity requirements in the culturing and extraction stages. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The interest in renewable energy sources has gained great importance in Europe due to the need to reduce fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, as required by the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) of the European Parliament. The production of energy from energy crops appears to be consistent with RED. The environmental impact related to this kind of energy primarily originates from crop cultivation. This research aimed to evaluate the environmental impact of different crop systems for biomass production: single and double crop. The environmental performances of maize and maize plus wheat were assessed from a life cycle perspective. Two alternative scenarios considering different yields, crop management, and climatic conditions, were also addressed. One normal cubic metre of potential methane was chosen as a functional unit. Methane potential production data were obtained through lab experimental tests. For both of the crop systems, the factors that have the greatest influence on the overall environmental burden are: fertilizer emissions, diesel fuel emissions, diesel fuel production, and pesticide production. Notwithstanding the greater level of methane potential production, the double crop system appears to have the worse environmental performance with respect to its single crop counterpart. This result is due to the bigger quantity of inputs needed for the double crop system. Therefore, the greater amount of biomass (silage) obtained through the double crop system is less than proportional to the environmental burden that results from the bigger quantity of inputs requested for double crop. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used tool for assessing the environmental impacts of a product or service throughout its life cycle. This includes transportation, which causes various environmental problems such as noise. Noise has special characteristics (dependence on local factors, lack of linear additivity of emissions, etc.) which complicate the assessment of its impact. The lack of data on noise has been an additional problem. However, the recent publication of the strategic noise maps offers the opportunity to overcome these limitations. This paper provides a method to assess the impact of noise from road transport and integrate it into the LCA. This method overcomes the methodological limitations of previous studies and uses data from the noise maps to perform the assessments. The health impacts due to noise are quantified in DALYs (disability-adjusted life years), thus allowing the comparison and aggregation of noise with other pollutants harmful to health. The paper includes a case study where the proposed method is used to calculate the noise impact caused by a heavy vehicle that travels one kilometre on three different roads. The noise impact is compared with the health impacts due to fuel consumption and air emissions from the heavy vehicle. Through the case study, the need for specific noise impact assessments for each particular case is justified, while the validity of the proposed method to perform such assessments in an effective way is demonstrated. The results also show that noise has significant relevance in comparison to other impact categories typically assessed in LCA, which justifies its inclusion as a usual impact category.This paper compares environmental impact of traditional construction systems of hoistways made for elevators in residential building sites, using techniques based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), calculation of carbon footprint, quantifying total energy consumption and emissions in the material used as well as building and recycling of all materials in use. Furthermore, other environmental variables directly related with environment sustainability will be studied. We have simulated the analysis with a time frame of 50 years, 100 km track average for the transporting of materials and 15 km residues distance average from rubbish dump. The ceramic brick wall has proved to have the best behavior from building and maintenance cost, risk in health and safety and intensive use of workers point of view, variables all related with economical building aspects. On the other hand, from sustainability point of view it is proved that the 1/2 ceramic brick walls with rock wool insulation and one final layer with ceramic brick had the best environmental sustainability behavior. It proved that from an environmental sustainability point of view, traditional materials and masonry construction systems are less polluting than concrete construction systems, showing advantages in building design when the sustainability concepts are applied in materials selection and construction techniques.The purpose of a steam power plant usually is electrical power generation; however, it can work as dual purpose plant producing steam and power simultaneously. In this paper we seek the optimum integration of a steam power plant as a source and a site utility system as a sink of steam and power. Estimating the cogeneration potential prior to the design of a central utility system for site utility systems is important for setting targets for site fuel demand as well as heat and power production. In this regard, an accurate cogeneration targeting procedure is used for the coupling of a steam power plant and a site utility consisting of a process plant. Exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental evaluations are performed. In the exergoenvironmental analysis, the environmental impacts obtained by life cycle assessment (LCA) are apportioned to the exergy streams, identifying the main system components with the highest environmental impacts and possible improvements associated with these components. Moreover, exergoenvironmental variables are calculated, and an exergoenvironmental evaluation is carried out. In addition, the cogeneration targeting method has been applied. A gas fired steam power plant and a process site utility are considered as a case study, with the integration of steam levels of the steam power plant and the site utility system carried out using the new procedure presented in this paper. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass gasification with absorption enhanced reforming (AER) is a promising technology to produce a hydrogen-rich product gas that can be used to generate electricity, heat, substitute natural gas (SNG) and hydrogen (5.0 quality). To evaluate the production of the four products from an ecological and economic point of view, three different process configurations are considered. The plant setup involves two coupled fluidized beds: the steam gasifier and the regenerator. Subsequently the product gas can be used to operate a CHP plant (configuration one), be methanised (configuration two) or used to produce high-quality hydrogen (configuration three). Regarding ecological criteria, the global warming potential, the acidification potential and the cumulative energy demand of the processes are calculated, based on a life-cycle assessment approach. The economic analysis is based on the levelized costs of energy generation (LCOE). The AER-based processes are compared to conventional and renewable reference processes, which they might stand to substitute. The results show that the AER processes are beneficial from an ecological point of view as they are less carbon intensive (mitigating up to 800 g CO2-eq. kW(-1) h(el)(-1)), require less fossil energy input (only about 0.5 kW h(fossil) kW(-1) h(el)(-1)) and have a comparable acidification potential (300-900mg SO2-eq. kW(-1) h(el)(-1)) to most reference processes. But the results depend heavily on the extent to which excess heat can be used to replace conventional heating processes, and hence on the exact location of the plant. The economic results show that under current German framework conditions, all plant configurations can only be profitable under very favourable site-specific conditions. The main parameters are the investments, accounting for 37-40% of LCOE, the price of the available biomass (27-32% of LCOE) and the revenues generated by selling excess heat. To reflect these dependencies in the economic results, spans between maximum and minimum LCOE-values are given: 19-22 (sic)ct kW(-1) h(el)(-1), 10-11 (sic)ct kW(-1) h(SNG)(-1) and 14-16 (sic)ct kW(-1) h(H2)(-1). While the ecological performance of the considered plant configurations is largely independent of the plant size, the economics of this plant type depend on size and the number of installed plants. Hence future work should consider economies of scale and the learning effects when building multiple plants, and the impact these have on the generation costs. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The viability of solar thermal steam generation for thermal enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) in heavy-oil sands was evaluated using San Joaquin Valley, CA data. The effectiveness of solar TEOR was quantified through reservoir simulation, economic analysis, and life-cycle assessment. Reservoir simulations with continuous but variable rate steam injection were compared with a base-case Tulare Sand steamflood project. For equivalent average injection rates, comparable breakthrough times and recovery factors of 65% of the original oil in place were predicted, in agreement with simulations in the literature. Daily cyclic fluctuations in steam injection rate do not greatly impact recovery. Oil production rates do, however, show seasonal variation. Economic viability was established using historical prices and injection/production volumes from the Kern River oil field. For comparison, this model assumes that present day steam generation technologies were implemented at TEOR startup in 1980. All natural gas cogeneration and 100% solar fraction scenarios had the largest and nearly equal net present values (NPV) of $12.54 B and $12.55 B, respectively. Solar fraction refers to the steam provided by solar steam generation. Given its large capital cost, the 100% solar case shows the greatest sensitivity to discount rate and no sensitivity to natural gas price. Because there are very little emissions associated with day-to-day operations from the solar thermal system, life-cycle emissions are significantly lower than conventional systems even when the embodied energy of the structure is considered. We estimate that less than 1 g of CO2/MJ of refined gasoline results from the TEOR stage of production if solar energy provides all steam. By this assessment, solar thermal or supplemental solar generation systems appear to be a preferred alternative to fully conventional systems using natural gas in areas with large solar insolation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Blended cements use waste products to replace Portland cement, the main contributor to CO2 emissions in concrete manufacture. Using blended cements reduces the embodied greenhouse gas emissions; however, little attention has been paid to the reduction in CO2 capture (carbonation) and durability. The aim of this study is to determine if the reduction in production emissions of blended cements compensates for the reduced durability and CO2 capture. This study evaluates CO2 emissions and CO2 capture for a reinforced concrete column during its service life and after demolition and reuse as gravel filling material. Concrete depletion, due to carbonation and the unavoidable steel embedded corrosion, is studied, as this process consequently ends the concrete service life. Carbonation deepens progressively during service life and captures CO2 even after demolition due to the greater exposed surface area. In this study, results are presented as a function of cement replaced by fly ash (FA) and blast furnace slag (BFS). Concrete made with Portland cement, FA (35 % FA), and BFS blended cements (80 % BFS) captures 47, 41, and 20 % of CO2 emissions, respectively. The service life of blended cements with high amounts of cement replacement, like CEM III/A (50 % BFS), CEM III/B (80 % BFS), and CEM II/B-V (35 % FA), was about 10 % shorter, given the higher carbonation rate coefficient. Compared to Portland cement and despite the reduced CO2 capture and service life, CEM III/B emitted 20 % less CO2 per year. To obtain reliable results in a life cycle assessment, it is crucial to consider carbonation during use and after demolition. Replacing Portland cement with FA, instead of BFS, leads to a lower material emission factor, since FA needs less processing after being collected, and transport distances are usually shorter. However, greater reductions were achieved using BFS, since a larger amount of cement can be replaced. Blended cements emit less CO2 per year during the life cycle of a structure, although a high cement replacement reduces the service life notably. If the demolished concrete is crushed and recycled as gravel filling material, carbonation can cut CO2 emissions by half. A case study is presented in this paper demonstrating how the results may be utilized.There are many recent proposals in life cycle assessment (LCA) to calculate temporary storage of carbon in bio-based products. However, there is still no consensus on how to deal with the issue. The main questions are: how do these proposals relate to each other, to what extent are they in line with the classical LCA method (as defined in ISO 14044) and the global mass balances as proposed by the IPCC, and is there really a need to introduce a discounting system for delayed CO2 emissions? This paper starts with an analysis of the widely applied specification of PAS 2050 and the ILCD Handbook, both specifying the credit for carbon sequestration as 'optional' in LCA. From this analysis, it is concluded that these optional calculations give rather different results compared to the baseline LCA method. Since these optional calculations are not fully in line with the global carbon mass balances, a new calculation method is proposed. To validate the new method, two cases (one on wood and one bamboo products) are given. These cases show the practical application and the consequences of the new approach. Finally, the main issue is evaluated and discussed: is it a realistic approach to allocate less damage to the same emission, when it is released later in time? This paper proposes a new approach based on the global carbon cycle and land-use change, translated to the level of individual products in LCA. It is argued that only a global growth of forest area and a global growth of application of wood in the building industry contribute to extra carbon sequestration, which might be allocated as a credit to the total market of wood products in LCA. This approach is different from approaches where temporary storage of carbon in trees is directly allocated to a product itself. In the proposed approach, there seems to be no need for a discounting system of delayed CO2 emissions. The advantage of wood and wood-based products can be described in terms of land-use change on a global scale in combination with a credit for heat recovery at the end-of-life (if applicable).Previous studies have shown the importance of including agricultural capital goods in environmental assessments. In particular for protected crops, greenhouse structural components may account for nearly 30 % of the total in environmental impact categories such as resource depletion and global warming. The lack of appropriate datasets can make it difficult to include these structural components. The present paper provides a modelling approach for the greenhouse inventory stage to provide better assessments of greenhouse production systems. In this study, four main greenhouse structures were assessed: a glass greenhouse, a multi-tunnel greenhouse, a local Mediterranean type known as the parral greenhouse and a low-tunnel greenhouse. After selecting the main materials of the structure, we generated equations to calculate the amount of the main structural materials as a function of the main greenhouse dimensions. We performed a quality assessment of the data used for different greenhouse structures. We also calculated a simplified environmental assessment made by the different structures to the climate change category in order to test the effects of the different amounts of material in the four greenhouse types. Equations to calculate the amount of the main greenhouse materials as a function of greenhouse size are provided. For the four greenhouse types under consideration, statistical correlations showed a good fit between the amounts of greenhouse materials and the parameters related to the main greenhouse dimensions, such as greenhouse perimeter, surface and volume. The results from the complementary impact assessment study show that glass greenhouses contributed the most in the climate change category, with an average value of 2.9 kg CO2 eq m(-2). After variability was taken into account, multi-tunnel and parral greenhouses showed similar values of between 0.5 and 1.3 kg CO2 eq m(-2), while low-tunnel greenhouses had the lowest ranges, between 0.4 and 0.6 kg CO2 eq m(-2). The environmental assessment was done using the square metre as a reference flow, so the actual impact depends on the functional unit selected, which is usually the yield. Application of the equations developed in this study provides an easy way to calculate the quantity of materials used to make greenhouses of different dimensions, thus resulting in more accurate calculation of greenhouse production system impacts. This analysis also highlights the importance of the different amounts of materials used to build these structures and, therefore, the need to include ranges of uncertainty in environmental analyses.Halting the loss of biodiversity while providing food security for a growing and prospering world population is a challenge. One possible solution to this dilemma is organic agriculture, which is expected to enhance biodiversity on the farmland. However, organic products often require larger areas. This study demonstrates how we can quantify and compare the direct land use impacts on biodiversity of organic and conventional food products such as milk. This study assessed direct land use impacts of 1 l of milk leaving the farm gate. Inventory data on land occupation were extracted from a life cycle assessment study of 15 farms in southern Sweden. Direct land use change data were derived from the FAO statistical database. Spatially differentiated characterization factors of occupation (CFOcc) and transformation (CFTrans) were calculated based on the relative difference of plant species richness on agricultural land compared to a (semi) natural regional reference. Data on plant species richness and regeneration times of ecosystems (for calculating transformation impacts) were derived from a literature review. To account for differences in biodiversity value between regions, a weighting system based on absolute species richness, vulnerability and irreplaceability was applied. Organic milk had a lower direct land use impact than conventional milk, although it required about double the area. Occupation impacts dominated the results and were much smaller for organic than conventional milk, as CFOcc of organic land uses were considerably smaller. For transformation impacts, differences between the two farming practices were even more pronounced. The highest impacts were caused by soymeal in concentrate feeds (conventional milk) due to large-scale deforestation in its country of cultivation (i.e. Brazil and Argentina). However, lack of reliable data posed a challenge in the assessment of transformation impacts. Overall, results were highly sensitive to differences in land occupation area between farms, the CFOcc and assumptions concerning transformed area. Sensitivity and robustness of results were tested and are discussed. Although organic milk required about twice as much land as conventional, it still had lower direct land use impacts on biodiversity. This highlights the importance of assessing land use impacts not only based on area but also considering the actual impacts on biodiversity. The presented approach allows to quantify and compare hot- and coldspots in the agricultural stage of milk production and could potentially also be applied to other agricultural products. However, more research is needed to allow quantification of indirect land use impacts.To consider whether feed supplements that reduce methane emissions from dairy cows result in a net reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity when productivity changes and emissions associated with extra manufacturing and management are included. A life cycle assessment was undertaken using a model farm based on dairy farms in Victoria, Australia. The system boundary included the creation of farm inputs and on-farm activities up to the farm gate where the functional unit was 1 L of fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM). Electricity and diesel (scaled per cow), and fertiliser inputs (scaled on farm size) to the model farm were based on average data from a survey of farms. Fertiliser applied to crops was calculated per area of crop. Animal characteristics were based on available data from farms and literature. Three methane-reducing diets (containing brewers grain, hominy or whole cotton seed) and a control diet (cereal grain) were modelled as being fed during summer, with the control diet being fed for the remainder of the year in all cases. Greenhouse gas intensity (kg CO2-eq/L FPCM) was lower than the control diet when the hominy (97 % compared with control) and brewers grain (98 %) diets were used but increased when the whole cottonseed diet was used (104 %). On-farm GHG emissions (kg CO2-eq) were lower than the control diet when any of the methane-reducing diets were used (98 to 99.5 % of emissions when control diet fed). Diesel use in production and transport of feed supplements accounted for a large portion (63 to 93 %) of their GHG intensity (kg CO2-eq/t dry matter). Adjusting fertiliser application, changing transport method, changing transport fuel, and using nitrification inhibitors all had little effect on GHG emissions or GHG intensity. Although feeding strategies that reduce methane emissions from dairy cows can lower the GHG emissions up to the farm gate, they may not result in lower GHG intensities (g CO2-eq/L FPCM) when pre-farm emissions are included. Both transport distance and the effect of the feed on milk production have important impacts on the outcomes.Biomass provides an attractive solution for residential heating systems based on renewable fuels, even though biomass-based domestic heating systems are recognized as significant particulate matter emitters; thus, a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used in the study to compare two different appliances: a wood stove and a pellet stove, both modeled according to the best available technologies definition. System boundaries of each scenario refer to a cradle-to-grave approach, including production, use and disposal of the heating appliance, as well as the preparation of biomass feedstock. The assessment of environmental impacts was performed assuming 1 MJ of thermal energy as the reference flow, considering the categories of particulate matter formation, human toxicity, climate change, and fossil fuel depletion, according to the ReCiPe 1.07 method. Finally, the comparison was extended to certain innovative heating systems in order to qualitatively evaluate potential improvements in residential heating performances. The results show that the wood stove reaches the highest scores in the categories of particulate matter formation and negative effects for human toxicity, as a consequence of the stove's lower combustion efficiency, which would lead to a preference for the pellet stove. However, when climate change affecting human health and the ecosystem, and fossil depletion are considered, the choice appears more uncertain due to the energy consumption from the pelletizing step. Alternative technologies (e.g., solar panels in combination with a gas boiler) show better scores related to fine particles emission reduction, even if a worsening in other categories is observed. The results were validated by a sensitivity analysis. The study suggests that a LCA approach can support the choice of the best domestic heating system, helping to promote policy initiatives on a sound basis and to understand which are the main key levers to act for reducing the total environmental burdens of biomass-based heating appliances.Bio-based products are often considered sustainable due to their renewable nature. However, the environmental performance of products needs to be assessed considering a life cycle perspective to get a complete picture of potential benefits and trade-offs. We present a life cycle assessment of the global commodity ethanol, produced from different feedstock and geographical origin. The aim is to understand the main drivers for environmental impacts in the production of bio-based ethanol as well as its relative performance compared to a fossil-based alternative. Ethanol production is assessed from cradle to gate; furthermore, end-of-life emissions are also included in order to allow a full comparison of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, assuming degradation of ethanol once emitted to air from household and personal care products. The functional unit is 1 kg ethanol, produced from maize grain in USA, maize stover in USA, sugarcane in North-East of Brazil and Centre-South of Brazil, and sugar beet and wheat in France. As a reference, ethanol produced from fossil ethylene in Western Europe is used. Six impact categories from the ReCiPe assessment method are considered, along with seven novel impact categories on biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES). GHG emissions per kilogram bio-based ethanol range from 0.7 to 1.5 kg CO2 eq per kg ethanol and from 1.3 to 2 kg per kg if emissions at end-of-life are included. Fossil-based ethanol involves GHG emissions of 1.3 kg CO2 eq per kg from cradle-to-gate and 3.7 kg CO2 eq per kg if end-of-life is included. Maize stover in USA and sugar beet in France have the lowest impact from a GHG perspective, although when other impact categories are considered trade-offs are encountered. BES impact indicators show a clear preference for fossil-based ethanol. The sensitivity analyses showed how certain methodological choices (allocation rules, land use change accounting, land use biomes), as well as some scenario choices (sugarcane harvest method, maize drying) affect the environmental performance of bio-based ethanol. Also, the uncertainty assessment showed that results for the bio-based alternatives often overlap, making it difficult to tell whether they are significantly different. Bio-based ethanol appears as a preferable option from a GHG perspective, but when other impacts are considered, especially those related to land use, fossil-based ethanol is preferable. A key methodological aspect that remains to be harmonised is the quantification of land use change, which has an outstanding influence in the results, especially on GHG emissions.In this series of papers, we present a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) recycling system design based on environmental impacts, chemical hazards, and resource availability. We evaluated the recycling system by life cycle assessment, environment, health, and safety method, and material flow analysis. Previous recycling systems have not focused on highly functional plastics such as PMMA, partly because of lower available volumes of waste PMMA compared with other commodity plastics such as polyethylene or polypropylene. However, with the popularization of PMMA-containing products such as liquid crystal displays, the use of PMMA is increasing and this will result in an increase in waste PMMA in the future. The design and testing of recycling systems and technologies for treating waste PMMA is therefore a high research priority. In this study, we analyze recycling of PMMA monomers under a range of scenarios. Based on the differences between PMMA grades and their life cycles, we developed a life cycle model and designed a range of scenarios for PMMA recycling. We obtained monomer recycling process inventory data based on the operational results of a pilot plant. Using this process inventory data, we quantified life cycle greenhouse gas (LC-GHG) emissions and fossil resource consumption, and we calculated the LIME single index. PMMA produces more than twice the amount of GHG emissions than other commodity resins. Through scenario and sensitivity analyses, we demonstrated that monomer recycling is more effective than mechanical recycling. Operational modifications in the monomer recycling process can potentially decrease LC-GHG emissions. Highly functional plastics should be recycled while maintaining their key functions, such as the high transparency of PMMA. Monomer recycling has the potential to achieve a closed-loop recycling of PMMA.A critical evaluation of the life cycle assessment (LCA) studies was performed in the main scientific bibliographic databases (online and free access) of Brazil where the LCA methodology could be considered. This has been an exploratory study with a qualitative evaluation of quantitative LCA studies with regard to International Organization of Standardization (ISO) 14040 standards. Firstly, the selected papers were those which used the LCA methodology in case studies (quantitative LCA studies). This survey was based on previously chosen keywords which were directly and/or indirectly related to LCA in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. One hundred and twenty papers related to LCA were found, among which 21 have been effectively used the LCA methodology applied to case studies. The study has indicated agriculture and livestock as some promising areas for the use of LCA methodology in Brazil. As for the scope of LCA, it has been found that nine papers have adopted the cradle-to-grave approach, whereas 12 papers have limited the study to some life cycle stage (cradle-to-gate, gate-to-gate, or gate-to-grave). This behavior can be justified by the difficulty in obtaining data from raw material, supply chain, inputs, or about the disposal, reuse, and recycling of products/systems. The criteria set out in the ISO 14040 standard was carried out in 17 out of the 21 selected papers. The LCA of Brazilian studies could be improved. For instance, when considering the requirements and guidelines of ISO standards, at the goal phase, the papers have clearly mentioned their target audience. The scope phase requires more explanation about the allocation procedures, once the process/product is not isolated, and for most processes, it may generate more than one product. As regards the Life Cycle Inventory, these studies could improve their data sources, once few papers used primary sources. According to our understanding, the best phase performed by the papers was life cycle impact assessment. Hopefully, LCA will become a known research area and will be adopted by most of the Brazilian scientific community. It is further expected that LCA might have a regular publication in scientific journals (perhaps an own journal).Anthropogenic perturbation of the nitrogen cycle is attracting increasing attention as both an environmental and societal concern. Here, we provide the rationale and propose methods for independent treatment of anthropogenic mobilization, flows (in product systems) and emissions of fixed nitrogen in process-based environmental life cycle assessment. We propose a simple methodology for aggregating N flows in life cycle assessment (LCA), with supporting characterization factors for all nitrogen-containing compounds on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development High Production Volume Chemical List for which specific chemical formulae are available, as well as all nitrogen-containing flows in the International Reference Life Cycle Data System. We subsequently apply our method and characterization factors to a life cycle inventory data set representing a subset of the consumption attributable to an average EU-27 consumer and compare the results against previously published estimates for nitrogen emissions at the consumer level that were generated using alternative methods/approaches. We derive a suite of over 2,000 characterization factors for nitrogen-containing compounds. Overall, the results generated by applying our method and characterization factors to the European Commission Basket-of-Products life cycle inventory data set are consistent with those observed from studies having a similar scope but different methodological approach. This outcome suggests that anthropogenic mobilization, flows (in product systems) and emissions of fixed nitrogen can, indeed, be systematically inventoried and aggregated in process-based LCA for the purpose of better understanding and managing anthropogenic impacts on the global nitrogen cycle using the methods and characterization factors we propose.Applied life cycle assessment (LCA) studies often lead to a comparison of rather few alternatives; we call this the "ad hoc LCA approach." This can seem surprising since applied LCAs normally cover countless options for variations and derived potentials for improvements in a product life cycle. In this paper, we will suggest an alternative approach to the ad hoc approach, which more systematically addresses the many possible variations to identify the most promising. We call it the "structural LCA approach." The goals of this paper are (1) to provide basic guidelines for the structural approach, including an easy expansion of the LCA space; (2) to show that the structural LCA approach can be used for different types of optimization in LCA; and (3) to improve the transparency of the LCA work. The structural approach is based on the methodology "design of experiments" (Montgomery 2005). Through a biodiesel well-to-wheel study, we demonstrate a generic approach of applying explanatory variables and corresponding impact categories within the LCA methodology. Explanatory variables are product system variables that can influence the environmental impacts from the system. Furthermore, using the structural approach enables two different possibilities for optimization: (1) single-objective optimization (SO) based on response surface methodology (Montgomery 2005) and (2) multiobjective optimization (MO) by the hypervolume estimation taboo search (HETS) method. HETS enables MO for more than two or three objectives. Using SO, the explanatory variable "use of residual straw from fields" is, by far, the explanatory variable that can contribute with the highest decrease of climate change potential. For the respiratory inorganics impact category, the most influencing explanatory variable is found to be the use of different alcohol types (bioethanol or petrochemical methanol) in biodiesel production. Using MO, we found the Pareto front based on 5 different life cycle pathways which are nondominated solutions out of 66 different analyzed solutions. Given that there is a fixed amount of resources available for the LCA practitioner, it becomes a prioritizing problem whether to apply the structural LCA approach or not. If the decision maker only has power to change a single explanatory variable, it might not be beneficial to apply the structural LCA approach. However, if the decision maker (such as decision makers at the societal level) has power to change more explanatory variables, then the structural LCA approach seems beneficial for quantifying and comparing the potentials for environmental improvement between the different explanatory variables in an LCA system and identifying the overall most promising product system configurations among the chosen PWs. The implementation of the structural LCA approach and the derived use of SO and MO have been successfully achieved and demonstrated in the present paper. In addition, it is demonstrated that the structural LCA approach can lead to more transparent LCAs since the potentially most important explanatory variables which are used to model the LCAs are explicitly presented through the structural LCA approach. The suggested structural approach is a new approach to LCA and it seems to be a promising approach for searching or screening product systems for environmental optimization potentials. In the presented case, the design has been a rather simple full factorial design. More complicated problems or designs, such as fractional designs, nested designs, split plot designs, and/or unbalanced data, in the context of LCA could be investigated further using the structural approach.The choice of a sustainable packaging alternative is a key issue for the improvement of the environmental performances of a product, both from a production perspective and end-of-life management. The present study is focused on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of two packaging alternatives of a poultry product, in particular a polystyrene-based tray and an aluminum bowl (70 wt% primary and 30 wt% secondary aluminum) were considered. The LCA was performed according to ISO 14040-44 and following a "from-cradle-to-grave" perspective. The following stages were considered: production, use phase (i.e., cooking), and end-of-life. Different end-of-life scenarios were hypothesized. Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Cumulative Energy Demand, and ILCD midpoint method were used in the impact assessment (LCIA). The aluminum bowl was carefully designed in order to allow its use during the cooking stage of the poultry product in the oven and to reduce the cooking time (40 min instead of 50 min needed when using a conventional bowl) at 200 A degrees C: cooking time reduction allows electric energy savings equal to 0.21 kWh (1.38 kWh instead of 1.59 kWh). Electric energy savings become of primary importance to reduce overall emissions, in particular CO2 eq emissions, especially in those countries such as Italy and Germany where there is a predominance of fossil fuels in the electric energy country mix. Over the entire life cycle of the two alternatives considered (taking into account production, transport, cooking, and end-of-life), cooking stage has the most impact; so, the specific design of the packaging bowl/tray can allow significant lowering of the overall CO2 eq emissions. In addition, when designing an aluminum-based packaging, the content of the secondary material can be significantly increased in order to reach higher sustainability during the production stage.Polymer materials play an important role in the improvement and quality of life. However, due to their persistence in the environment, polymer materials may be harmful to the ecosystems. According to the European Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste, management of these wastes should include prevention of their generation as a priority. The main motivation for employing ecodesign of a product is to reduce both raw material consumption and waste generation through a good initial design. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to the design of printed PVC plastic packing tape in order to reduce its environmental impact. LCA software GaBi4.4(A (R)) was used to determine the PVC packing tape life cycle stage with the highest environmental impacts. LCA results showed that PVC film manufacture was the stage with the highest impact. It was therefore reasonable to assume that packing tape manufactured with material other than PVC could have reduced environmental impact, and LCA was used to evaluate this hypothesis. When using Kraft paper or polypropylene plastic packing tape, the weighted impacts were reduced by 36.3 and 39.9 %, respectively. PVC plastic packing tape has been redesigned with the aim of reducing waste and raw material consumption. LCA results showed that a suitable option for reducing life cycle environmental impact is to use alternative film materials. Kraft paper and polypropylene plastic packing tape were found to give lower values of almost all environmental impact indexes and normalized and weighted impacts.This paper considers the variabilities that exist in the exploitation of a complex industrial system. Our scenario-based LCA model ensures the reliability of results in situations where the system life cycle is very uncertain, where there is substantial lack of data, and/or where time and resources available are limited. It is also an effective tool to generate exploitation recommendations for clients. Existing quantitative uncertainty methods in LCA require a huge amount of accurate data. These data are rarely available in simplified and upstream LCA for complex industrial systems. A scenario-based approach is the best compromise between acceptable quality of results and resources required. However, such methods have not yet been proposed to improve the environmental knowledge of the system in the case of exploitation scenarios. The method proposed here considers a limited number of scenarios (three or four) that are defined using the Stanford Research Institute matrix. Using results from past projects, relevant parts of the system are listed, and expert knowledge and parameters are associated with these parts and quantified. A classical LCA process then provides the results for the different scenarios. The method was applied to an Alstom Grid AC/DC conversion substation for the primary aluminum industry. A previous study had limited scope, as the life cycle was poorly understood. Relevant parts were, thus, clearly identified as follows: spare parts program, transport failures, preventive and corrective maintenance, updates and revampings, lifetime modulation, and end-of-life. Four scenarios were considered as follows: best case, worst case, baseline (expected future), and a highly different alternative. Results show the pertinence of considering several exploitation scenarios when the life cycle is not predictable, as the environmental impacts may vary widely from one case to another. A sensitivity analysis also shows that some relevant parts such as updates and revampings will need to be carefully considered in futures studies. The consideration of three exploitation scenarios (best case, baseline, and worst case) appears to be extremely pertinent when considering simplified LCA of industrial systems with high uncertainties and limited time and resources. This model is also very useful to generate good practice and recommendations towards clients, thus initiating a dialog centered on eco-design and continuous improvement.The goal of this study is to develop an estimate of water use and consumption in automotive manufacturing to enhance the data quality of vehicle life cycle assessments that include life cycle water impacts. A benchmark is developed to compare water resources across manufacturing and nonproduction-related manufacturing processes, including an indication whether indirect water consumption due to electricity generation is significant. Data from 12 original equipment manufacturers' (OEM's) sustainability reports are examined for the years 2006 to 2010. Distinctions are made between "water use" and "water consumption." These factors are divided by total reported production to develop use and consumption values in cubic meter/vehicle for comparison. Additionally, total energy consumption is converted to indirect water consumption based on the water consumed in the generation of electricity for the electricity grid mix. Excluding outliers, average direct water use is 5.20 and 5.95 m(3)/vehicle for manufacturing and company-wide activities, respectively, with corresponding standard deviations of 1.42 and 1.20 m(3)/vehicle. Average direct water consumption was calculated to be 1.25 and 4.29 m(3)/vehicle for manufacturing and company-wide activities, respectively, with corresponding standard deviations of 0.52 and 1.56 m(3)/vehicle. Average indirect water consumption due to electricity consumption is found to be 2.21 m(3)/vehicle. Variability arises through different understandings on the words "consumption" and "use," reporting continuity between years and in classification of data as it relates to manufacturing, nonmanufacturing, or company-wide activities. These water values show that needs vary widely across OEMs. Additionally, the magnitude of the indirect water consumption results indicates that OEMs should focus on both indirect and direct water consumption to reduce their overall water footprint. The results also highlight the potential for significance and variability in indirect water consumption, in particular for "cradle-to-gate" type of impact assessments, dependent on electricity generation water consumption assumptions. It is hoped that with the introduction of water reporting standards like the International Organization of Standardization 14046, manufacturers will provide a more comprehensive summary of their water use and consumption in the future.In this study, environmental issues associated with silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) systems in Korea are investigated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The target PV systems are single-crystalline silicon (se-Si) and multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) modules with a power conditioning system (PCS) and balance of system (BOS). In order to identify the environmental benefits and key environmental issues associated with the deployment of these systems, the global warming potential (GWP), fossil-fuel consumption (FFC), CO2 payback time (CO2PBT), and energy payback time (EPBT) of the target PV systems throughout their life cycles are analyzed. The LCA results show that sc-Si and mc-Si PV systems are superior to the current grid mix in Korea with respect to GWP and FFC. For the current conversion efficiency, the mc-Si PV system has lower values of GWP and FFC. With the predicted improvements in conversion efficiency, the GWP results associated with the construction phase of sc-Si and mc-Si PV system will be offset by electricity generated in 1.66 and 1.53 years, since then 1470 and 1477 tonne CO2 equiv. of GHGs are reduced during its lifetimes, respectively. In addition, the energy inputs during sc-Si and mc-Si PV system's construction phase will be offset in 3.11 and 2.97 years, since by then 10.15 and 10.20 TJ of net energy benefit will have been obtained, respectively. Considering the planned deployment of PV systems in Korea and the expected improvements in PV module efficiencies, the net CO2 reduction and net energy benefit between 2010 and 2030 were calculated. If 0.45% of the Korean grid mix was substituted with mc-Si PV systems, and a conversion efficiency of 20.30% were attained, the net CO2 reduction would be a 69.8 Mtonne CO2 equiv. The supply plan is achieved using sc-Si PV systems, which achieve a conversion efficiency of 27.60%; the net energy benefit would be 410.6 TJ, which is equivalent to 4.3% of the total primary energy supply in 2009. It is shown that sc-Si and mc-Si PV systems would be suitable solutions to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions if they replaced non-renewable energy sources in Korea. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A consensus is forming among experts that the best way to achieve emissions' reduction in the near and mid-term is increasing the demand-side energy efficiency-this is especially true in developing countries where the potential for demand reduction is significant and achievable at relatively lower cost. Enhanced energy efficiency also reduces energy costs and can result in a financial benefit to end-users, if the life-cycle value of energy savings offsets the upfront cost of implementing the measure. At the same time, reducing energy demand translates into lower pull for fossil fuel import and supply/distribution capacity expansion. An ideal candidate for the implementation of demand-side energy efficiency measures is the building sector, since it contributes to a large extent to the total amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted worldwide. In most developing countries, the contribution of the building sector to the total national GHG emissions is significantly higher than the worldwide average. This is in part due to the lower level of industrial activity. Other drivers of the high emissions of the building sector are the inefficiency of the envelope and technical systems of the existing buildings, as well as harsh climatic conditions requiring the use of energy intensive air-conditioning equipment. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) currently have the highest ecological footprint per capita in the world. The Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the focus of this study, can be expected to have a footprint that is even higher, being the largest economy and the major oil producer among the seven Emirates. In addition to the environmental consequences of unrestrained energy consumption, the fact that energy prices are heavily subsidized in Abu Dhabi results in a significant financial burden for the government. In the UAE and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the air-conditioning load in buildings is the ideal target for demand-side management because it constitutes more than 60% of the total energy consumption. However, many sources of uncertainty still remain. How should we assess the life-cycle cost/benefit of candidate demand-side interventions? Which ones to choose in order to maximize national utility? This study will start to answer those questions by using a detailed engineering model of a typical Abu Dhabi building as specified by the Emirate's Urban Planning Council. Using the model building as a baseline, we then proceed to evaluate the energy impact of different retrofits through numerical simulation. We present a novel Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) for the Emirate of Abu Dhabi focusing exclusively on demand-side measures having an impact on the air-conditioning load. A surprising number of the abatement levers analyzed in this study exhibit a positive net present value (NPV), if the cost-reflective price of electricity is used for the life-cycle assessment.Product life-cycle assessment (LCA) is an established tool for supporting decisions on the consumer, business, and policy levels. LCA practitioners are in need of continuously updated average LCA data in line with current methodological developments and consensus for supporting decisions with environmental information. For sawmill products, where large deviations in terms of environmental impact among the many single sawmills are known to exist, detailed surveys on LCA data with high sector representativeness are needed to yield reliable average data. Based on a representative study on German sawmills, this article provides detailed environmental average life-cycle inventory and impact assessment data and variations for the production of the four core products of the German sawmill industry setting a status quo for 2010.In consideration of sustainable buildings, closing life cycle loops becomes more and more important. Up to now reuse and recycling is taken rarely into account in building processes. With rising consumption of wood for energetic use recycling of material becomes more important. Up to now there are various studies in EU market ([1], [2], [3]), which quantify the usage of wood in market shares. Explicit calculations on recycling of wooden material in the building sector have not yet been done. In general the demand for reclaimed wood products in the building sector will rise due to the fact that the preferred option has to be the reuse and the recycling of reclaimed wood. The thermal use of wood is the last option in the cascade of use. On this option the refinement of reclaimed wood for innovative products as well as the broadening and enhancement of the cascades of reuse and recycling is strongly needed for the timber construction industry. Long-term and resource efficient use of wood from premium quality (like laminated wood, plywood, timber frame construction) is necessary to ensure sustainable construction with wood. In the process of planning new wooden construction the dismantling and reuse / recycling of the products has to be considered too. In this paper outcomes of the woodwisdom-net research project ECO2-wood in carbon efficient construction - as well as calculations on wood consumption of wide-span timber structures and investigated case studies on a very detailed level are brought together to show the state of art and theories to improve resource efficient usage of wood. Aim is a realistic estimation of theoretical scenarios for end of life and their influence on planning processes as well as the influence on life cycle assessment according to EN 15978. In another approach the total demolition of an old wooden house in the Alps was evaluated. It is a typical example for a long-used construction with numerous repair intervals, changes, and additions. This leads to a wide variety of fractions and often to a contamination of wood from preservatives. The fractions of the demolished house mainly consist of small bits and pieces dedicated to different recycling options than wide span structures. The different waste wood fractions in strength, scale, and size will tolerate certain processing options with an emerging range of recycling products. A better management of its renewable resources supports the material supply of the wood sector to ensure a long-term availability of solid wood products at reasonable prices. This will allow preservation and also gain market shares now and in the future.Nitrogen fertilizer was applied to willow after harvest in 2011, two levels of nitrogen were applied (75; 150 kg N/ha) in addition to a control. The trial was harvested in January 2013, biomass from each treatment was burnt and emissions from combustion were quantified. Nitrogen application increased leaf nitrogen and plant height although there was no difference between the nitrogen treatments. Plant height and maximum stem diameter increased with applied nitrogen at final harvest. Nitrogen fertilization significantly increased yield by 35 % although there was no difference between the two nitrogen treatments. Stem nitrogen content did not differ significantly between treatments and there was no significant difference in NOx emissions between treatments. A life cycle assessment showed that nitrogen fertilization significantly increased net greenhouse gas benefit by up to 30 % depending on the fuel replaced. The study demonstrated that the application of relatively low levels of nitrogenous fertilizer to willow can significantly improve greenhouse gas mitigation without affecting other aspects of the environment such as air quality.Separation processes are among the most energy-intensive stages in the chemical industry, and the evaluation and minimization of environmental impacts is part of the challenges faced by environmental engineering. Pressure swing distillation is a commonly used technique for separation of the mixture methanol/ tetrahydrofuran (THF); the separation is not feasible with conventional distillation due to the presence of an azeotrope. In this work, the design of a hybrid process consisting of distillation and pervaporation is elaborated as an alternative for the separation and evaluated from a technical and an environmental point of view. Three different compositions of the feed stream are considered: 25, 50 and 75 wt% methanol in THF and the simulation of pressure swing distillation and the hybrid process allows comparison of the energy requirements. In addition, the effect of the membrane performance on the purity of the products and the energy demand were studied. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate the environmental impact of both alternatives compared to incineration. From the LCA, it was observed that the hybrid process produces the lowest impact, indicating that solvent recovery is a key issue to minimize the environmental burdens. Thus, integration of membrane technology in a hybrid configuration should be considered in the design and development of more environmentally friendly processes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The health external costs of the electricity generation alternatives associated to a sugar ethanol factory are investigated. Two scenarios of power generation facilities have been analyzed in this study: the first scenario (existing) combines a bagasse cogeneration unit with a diesel combustion engines and the second scenario (future) the diesel engines are substituted by a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) fed with ethanol and integrated into the sugar factory. The health impacts referred as Years of Life Loss (YOLL) for the two proposed scenarios are estimated applying the Uniform World Model (UWM). Monetary values of damage costs related to human health per kW h of generated electricity are determined, as well as its influence on the total production cost. Therefore, the results of the external costs evaluation, shows that the use of a SOFC technology involves a reduction of health impacts in 25.76 YOLL year(-1) (12%) and external costs of 52,175 US$ year(-1) (12%), as well as a reduction of the electricity cost of 0.05 US$ cent per kW h in comparison with the existing scenario (bagasse cogeneration and diesel combustion engines). The internalization of this external cost would increase the production cost and the electricity price by more than 30% and 10%, respectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Two freshwater and two marine microalgae species were grown under nitrogen replete and deplete conditions evaluating the impact on total biomass yield and biomolecular fractions (i.e. starch, protein, and lipid). A life cycle assessment was performed to evaluate varying species/growth conditions considering each biomass fraction and final product substitution based on energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and eutrophication potential. Lipid for biodiesel was assumed as the primary product. Protein and carbohydrate fractions were processed as co-products. Composition of the non-lipid fraction presented significant trade-offs among biogas production, animal feed substitution, nutrient recycling, and carbon sequestration. Maximizing total lipid productivity rather than lipid content yielded the least GHG emissions. A marine, N-deplete case with relatively low lipid productivity but effective nutrient recycling had the lowest eutrophication impacts. Tailoring algal species/growth conditions to optimize the mix of biomolecular fractions matched to desired products and co-products can enable a sustainable integrated microalgal biorefinery. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is the technical and economic evaluation of a typical solar space and water heating system, utilized in an 88 m(2) detached house that is designed according to the latest Greek Regulation on the Energy Performance of Buildings as a means toward Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB). The analysis was conducted for each of the four climatic zones designated in the Greek Regulation. A financial analysis was performed and the Net Present Value and the Discounted Payback Period (DPBP) were calculated and correlated with the solar systems collector area and the storage tank volume. Furthermore, the annual avoided emissions from the substituted fossil fuels are estimated for the solar systems considered. The analysis demonstrates that the typical solar space and water heating system can provide a viable solution toward NZEB with solar coverage and DPBP being strongly influenced by the climatic zone of the building and the type of fossil fuel substituted. In all cases the solar system covers at least 45% of the total heating loads while the payback period is as low as 4.5 years with an annual abatement of more than 50 t of CO2 in the worst case scenario. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Comparisons of buildings in similar climates built in accordance with different regional construction practices and building rating systems can provide useful insights in sustainable design practices. The objectives of this study were: (I) to perform energy related life cycle assessments of a typical LEED-H (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Homes) single-family home in New Jersey (US), and a typical Minergie-P single-family home in Chur, Switzerland; and (2) to assess the effect of rating systems and construction practices on the buildings' environmental impacts. Inventory data was obtained from the Ecoinvent 2.2 database with a replacement of the Western European electricity mix with the US or New Jersey electricity mix for the New Jersey home. The Swiss building performed better regarding non-renewable energy consumption, Global Warming Potential and Acidification Potential mainly due to the geothermal heat pump and the Swiss electricity mix while there was less of a difference regarding Ozone Layer Depletion Potential and Eutrophication Potential. The influence of electricity sources exceeded the effects of longer building life time or the removal of the Swiss basement. Regional building practices, local codes and environmental policies should take the electricity mix into account because it is so important. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Organic agriculture figures prominently in the policies adopted by the EU to improve the environmental impact of agriculture. It may also potentially provide other benefits such as high-quality, health-enhancing food products and advancements in rural development. Recent years have brought new research to assess the environmental and economic implications of organic conversion. Economic efficiency comparisons between organic and conventional farms have been extended to include environmental performance. The inclusion of this variable in efficiency analysis may be useful when assessing the potential impact of suggestions to improve environmental regulations and policies. This paper applies the environmental efficiency model to the analysis of different technologies and calculates productivity and efficiency with and without environmental impacts. In the empirical part of the paper Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and bootstrap techniques are applied to detect and measure differences between organic and conventional agriculture aggregate efficiency and productivity in a sample of vineyard farms operating in semiarid, non-irrigated conditions in Navarre (Spain), taking farms' nitrogen surplus and pesticide toxicity indicators to consideration. The results for these particular agronomic conditions suggest that organic agriculture is more environmentally efficient than conventional agriculture in dryland farming, in that it achieves a more favorable production to environmental impact ratio. Nevertheless, conversion to organic production methods for extensive vine cultivation under arid conditions does not guarantee substantial environmental gains, since the organic farms in our sample do not display inferior levels of pollution emissions per unit input as extensive conventional production. The overall environmental efficiency of organic farming is largely attributable to the fact that organic farms come closer to the frontier of their own technology. We find no significant technological differences in environmental productivity, however. In terms of policy implications, these findings suggest that the tightening of specific environmental restrictions in organic standards should involve consideration of technological differences in environmental productivity between organic and other alternative technologies. If organic technology is less productive, more restrictive regulation could undermine the economic viability of farms, and thus undermine the other benefits of organic farming. The results also indicate that, at the local level, it could be convenient to address part of organic subsidies to further improvements in the control of pollution from fertilizers and pesticides. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rapid depletion of fossil fuel reserves and environmental concerns with their combustion necessitate looking for alternative sources for long term sustainability of the world. These concerns also appear serious in developing countries who are striving for rapid economic growth. The net biomass growing potential on the global land surface is 10 times more than the global food, feed, fiber, and energy demands. This study investigates whether the developing countries have sufficient land resource to meet the projected energy demand towards 2035 by planting energy crops on surplus agricultural land after food and feed production. The annual yields of four commonly grown energy crops specifically jatropha, switchgrass, miscanthus, and willow have been used to make scenarios and estimate land requirements against each scenario. This paper first performs literature reviews on the availability of land resource, past and future trends in land use changes, demand of lands for food production, and potential expansion of croplands. The energy demands towards 2035 are compiled from energy scenarios derived by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the British Petroleum (BP). This paper also reviewed bio-physiological characteristics of these energy crops to determine whether they are cultivable under tropical climatic conditions in developing regions. This paper found that projected energy demand through 2035 in developing regions could be provided by energy crops grown on a portion of surplus croplands or upgraded grasslands (27% and 22% respectively for miscanthus scenario). Sustainable land management practices, improved agricultural productivity, and adopting suitable energy crops cultivation can potentially supply increasing energy demands. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the world's attention focused on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides the basis for global action to encourage sustainable development. A wide variety of measures are being taken in South Korea in line with this trend, but new and renewable energy (NRE) have been highlighted as sustainable energy sources. This study aims to assess the economic and environmental effects of the use of NRE for selecting the optimum NRE system in educational facilities. Towards this end, the following were done: (i) selection of facility and its applicable NRE system type; (ii) calculation of the energy generation by the NRE systems via energy simulation; (iii) life cycle cost analysis for the economic evaluation on the NRE systems; (iv) life cycle assessment for the environmental evaluation on the NRE systems; (v) using the net present value and the savings-to-investment ratio, comprehensive evaluation of the economic and environmental effects on the NRE systems. The results of this study can be used to (i) determine which NRE system is most appropriate for educational facilities; (ii) calculate the payback period for a certain investment; (iii) decide which location is proper for the implementation of an NRE system considering the characteristics of the regional climate; and (iv) select energy- and cost-efficient elementary schools where the NRE system can be applied. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The share of electricity produced from renewable energy is constantly increasing in Germany and worldwide. The transformation to an electricity system based on renewable sources is characterised by an increasing need for balancing power in order to compensate power supply from fluctuating sources, such as solar or wind. Biomass, more precisely energy from biogas, has the potential to generate electricity flexible on-demand. A demand-driven biogas production is vital for balancing power generation and can generally be achieved by biogas storing or flexible biogas production concepts. This study analyses and reviews both concepts regarding their ability to facilitate a biogas supply for short-term and long-term balancing power generation. Results show that a demand-driven biogas supply based on a biogas storing concept is, due to the fast availability of biogas (i.e. biomethane), suitable for the generation of positive secondary and tertiary balancing power. Whereas, long-term balancing power can be provided by flexible biogas production as well as by biomethane, which was injected and stored in the natural gas grid. Basically all reviewed biogas supply concepts that facilitate a shutdown of electricity generation by storing or stopping the biogas production can additionally provide negative balancing power. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to evaluate the nutritional and ecological aspects of feeding systems practiced under semi-arid environments in Jordan. Nine dairy farms representing the different dairy farming systems were selected for this study. Feed samples (n = 58), fecal samples (n = 108), and milk samples (n = 78) were collected from the farms and analysed for chemical composition. Feed samples were also analysed for metabolisable energy (ME) contents and in vitro organic matter digestibility according to Hohenheim-Feed-Test. Furthermore, fecal nitrogen concentration was determined to estimate in vivo organic matter digestibility. ME and nutrient intakes were calculated based on the farmer's estimate of dry matter intake and the analysed composition of the feed ingredients. ME and nutrient intakes were compared to recommended standard values for adequate supply of ME, utilizable crude protein, rumen undegradable crude protein (RUCP), phosphorus (P), and calcium (Ca). Technology Impact Policy Impact Calculation model complemented with a partial life cycle assessment model was used to estimate greenhouse gas emissions of milk production at farm gate. The model predicts CH4, N2O and CO2 gases emitted either directly or indirectly. Average daily energy corrected milk yield (ECM) was 19 kg and ranged between 11 and 27 kg. The mean of ME intake of all farms was 184 MJ/d with a range between 115 and 225 MJ/d. Intake of RUCP was lower than the standard requirements in six farms ranging between 19 and 137 g/d, was higher (32 and 93 g/d) in two farms, and matched the requirements in one farm. P intake was higher than the requirements in all farms (mean oversupply = 19 g/d) and ranged between 3 and 30 g/d. Ca intake was significantly below the requirements in small scale farms. Milk nitrogen efficiency N-(eff) (milk N/intake N) varied between 19% and 28% and was mainly driven by the level of milk yield. Total CO2 equivalent (CO2 equ) emission ranged between 0.90 and 1.88 kg CO2/kg ECM milk, where the enteric and manure CH4 contributed to 52% of the total CO2 equ emissions, followed by the indirect emissions of N2O and the direct emissions of CO2 gases which comprises 17% and 15%, respectively, from total CO2 equ emissions. Emissions per kg of milk were significantly driven by the level of milk production (r(2) = 0.93) and of eDMI (r(2) = 0.88), while the total emissions were not influenced by diet composition. A difference of 16 kg ECM/d in milk yield, 9% in N-(eff) and of 0.9 kg CO2 equ/kg in ECM milk observed between low and high yielding animals. To improve the nutritional status of the animals, protein requirements have to be met. Furthermore, low price by-products with a low carbon credit should be included in the diets to replace the high proportion of imported concentrate feeds and consequently improve the economic situation of dairy farms and mitigate CO2 equ emissions. (C) 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of the same products often result in different, sometimes even contradictory outcomes. Reasons for these differences include using different data sets and deviating modelling choices. This paper purposely used different data sets and modelling choices to identify how these differences propagated in LCA results. Vehicle for this methodological exploration was an LCA case study of a typical polystyrene (PS) disposable cup. An initial LCA of PS cups was made using only one data set per process. Contribution and sensitivity analysis identified those processes with influential contribution to the overall environmental impact. Next additional data sets were acquired for all influential processes. The spread in impact results for each life cycle process was calculated after impact assessment for each individual inventory data set as to preserve the correlation between inventory data within each individual data set. The spread in impact results reflects uncertainty existing between different data sets for the same process and due to modelling choices. The influence on overall LCA results was quantified by systematically applying all combinations of data sets and modelling choices. Results from the different data sets and modelling choices systematically point to the same processes as main contributors to all impact categories (PS production, cup manufacturing, PS incineration and PS recycling). The spread in toxicity indicators exceeds the energy-related impact categories. Causes of spread are resources and energy used (type, amount, date and origin), reported emissions, and applied allocation procedures. Average LCA results show slight preference for recycling PS compared to incineration in most impact categories. Overlapping spread in results of the two waste treatments, however, does not support the preference for recycling. The approach in this paper showed how variation in data sets and modelling choices propagates in LCA outcomes. This is especially useful for generic LCAs as systematic use of multiple data sets and multiple modelling choices increases the insight in relative contributions of processes to, and uncertainty in the overall LCA. These results might be less easy to perceive, but they provide decision makers with more robust information. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One approach to use solar radiation more effectively in solar cells is to stack, in series, multiple photoactive layers with complementary absorption spectra. Such devices are often termed tandem or multi-junction solar cells. The larger number of different materials and processing steps involved in their making when compared with the single junction solar cell has to be justified and compensated by a higher efficiency. A central question to ask is how much energy you need to invest in a system in order for it to produce energy and return the investment at least once and preferably a number of times. As an initial investigation into the potential viability of the tandem or multi-junction approach we have engaged in a detailed analysis based on the manufacturing energy for each step within the tandem module supply chain for full ambient processing of thin flexible polymer tandem solar cells prepared entirely by roll processing methods. We present a comprehensive overview of relevant research results on how the energy consumption affects the energy balance when using single and multi-junction solar cells. Based on the above question we calculate the minimum efficiency that the tandem or multi-junction should present to determine the minimum energy payback time: that is whether (or when) the increase in materials use and complexity of the tandem architecture is compensated by better performance. After analysing the performance and the consideration of a series of technical improvement opportunities, we project that the tandem solar cell has to be similar to 20% higher performing than the corresponding single junction solar cell to be warranted. We also highlight that there is a range in the reciprocal EBPT-efficiency relationship where the tandem solar cell is an advantage. Specific to polymer and organic solar cells are however that they embody very little energy and this implies that the single junction may be an advantage, especially in cases where land mass is not critical. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.BK polyomavirus (BKPyV) is the most common viral pathogen among allograft patients. Increasing evidence links BKPyV to the human oral compartment and to HIV-associated salivary gland disease (HIVSGD). To date, few studies have analyzed orally derived BKPyV. This study aimed to characterize BKPyV isolated from throat wash (TW) samples from HIVSGD patients. The replication potential of HIVSGD-derived clinical isolates HIVSGD-1 and HIVSGD-2, both containing the noncoding control region (NCCR) architecture OPQPQQS, were assessed and compared to urine-derived virus. The BKPyV isolates displayed significant variation in replication potential. Whole-genome alignment of the two isolates revealed three nucleotide differences that were analyzed for a potential effect on the viral life cycle. Analysis revealed a negligible difference in NCCR promoter activity despite sequence variation and emphasized the importance of functional T antigen (Tag) for efficient replication. HIVSGD-1 encoded full-length Tag, underwent productive infection in both human salivary gland cells and kidney cells, and expressed viral DNA and Tag protein. Additionally, HIVSGD-1 generated DNase-resistant particles and by far surpassed the replication potential of the kidney-derived isolate in HSG cells. HIVSGD-2 encoded a truncated form of Tag and replicated much less efficiently. Quantitation of infectious virus, via the fluorescent forming unit assay, suggested that HIVSGD BKPyV had preferential tropism for salivary gland cells over kidney cells. Similarly, the results suggested that kidney-derived virus had preferential tropism for kidney cells over salivary gland cells. Evidence of HIVSGD-derived BKPyV oral tropism and adept viral replication in human salivary gland cells corroborated the potential link between HIVSGD pathogenesis and BKPyV.The adsorptive removal of As(V) from aqueous solutions using iron-coated honeycomb briquette cinder (Fe-HBC) is presented. Low cost mechanical granulation process was integrated with surface amendment technology to prepare iron-oxide modified granular adsorbent for clean water production. Detailed characterizations were performed using FTIR, XRD, EDS and SEM techniques. Operating parameters including initial As(V) concentration, pH, contact time, adsorbent dose, iron leaching and the effects of competing ions on As(V) removal were evaluated. Results demonstrated that high amount of arsenate (961.5 mu g g(-1)) was adsorbed at pH 7.5 in 14 h contact time. Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models were used to analyze the adsorption data, whereas Langmuir model was found to best represent the data with a correlation co-efficient (R-2 = 0.999). Thus, As(V) sorption on Fe-HBC surface suggested monolayer adsorption and indicated surface homogeneity. Moreover, the dimensionless parameter (R-L) value calculated to be about 0.118 that reiterated the process is favorable and spontaneous. The influences of competing ions on As(V) removal decreased in the following order: PO43-> HCO3- > F- > Cl-. The profound inhibition effects of PO43- revealed a high affinity toward iron(oxy) hydroxide. Life-cycle assessment confirmed that spent HBC is non-hazardous and can be used as a promising sorbent for arsenic removal. (C) 2013 Production and hosting by Elsevier B. V. on behalf of King Saud University.Over the past two decades, a continuously expanding list of footprint-style indicators has been introduced to the scientific community with the aim of raising public awareness of how humanity exerts pressures on the environment. A deeper understanding of the connections and interactions between different footprints is required in an attempt to support policy makers in the measurement and choice of environmental impact mitigation strategies. Combining a selection of footprints that address different aspects of environmental issues into an integrated system is, therefore, a natural step. This paper starts with the idea of developing a footprint family from which most important footprints can be compared and integrated. On the basis of literature review in related fields, the ecological, energy, carbon, and water footprints are employed as selected indicators to define a footprint family. A brief survey is presented to provide background information on each of the footprints with an emphasis on their main characteristics in a comparative sense; that is, the footprints differ in many aspects more than just the impacts they are addressed. This allows the four footprints to be complementarily used in assessing environmental impacts associated with natural resource use and waste discharge. We evaluate the performance of the footprint family in terms of data availability, coverage complementarity, methodological consistency, and policy relevance and propose solutions and suggestions for further improvement. The key conclusions are that the footprint family, which captures a broad spectrum of sustainability issues, is able to offer a more complete picture of environmental complexity for policy makers and, in particular, in national-level studies. The research provides new insights into the distinction between environmental impact assessment and sustainability evaluation, properly serving as a reference for multidisciplinary efforts in estimating planetary boundaries for global sustainability. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper industry has a relatively high degree of reliance on suppliers when compared to other industries. Exploring the role of the paper industry in terms of consumption of intermediate inputs from other industries may help to understand how the production of paper does not only generate waste by itself but also affects the amount of waste generated by other industries. The product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful analytical tool to examine and assess environmental impacts over the entire life cycle of a product "from cradle to grave" but it is costly and time intensive. In contrast, Economic Input Output Life Cycle Assessment Models (IO-LCA) that combine LCA with Input-Output analysis (IO) are more accurate and less expensive, as they employ publicly available data. This paper represents one of the first Spanish studies aimed at estimating the waste generated in the production of paper by applying IO-LCA. One of the major benefits is the derivation of the contribution of direct and indirect suppliers to the paper industry. The results obtained show that there was no direct relationship between the impact on output and the impact on waste generation exerted by the paper industry. The major contributors to waste generation were the mining industry and the forestry industry. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Residues from municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration in Switzerland have been a hot topic in recent years, both in the research and practice communities. Regarded by many as an economically and environmentally sound solution to this issue, technological retrofitting of existing grate incinerators has the dual purpose of enhancing the metal recovery of bottom and fly ashes and improving the inertization of residues to be landifiled. How does context influence the economic and environmental performance of this particular technological option? Under which conditions would this technological option be implemented nationwide in the future? What are stakeholders' views on sustainable transitions of MSW incineration? We propose a three-stage methodological procedure to address these questions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Particularly in the UK, there is potential for use of large-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) plants to treat food waste, possibly along with other organic wastes, to produce biogas. This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment to compare the environmental impacts of AD with energy and organic fertiliser production against two alternative approaches: incineration with energy production by CHP and landfill with electricity production. In particular the paper investigates the dependency of the results on some specific assumptions and key process parameters. The input Life Cycle Inventory data are specific to the Greater London area, UK. Anaerobic digestion emerges as the best treatment option in terms of total CO2 and total SO2 saved, when energy and organic fertiliser substitute non-renewable electricity, heat and inorganic fertiliser. For photochemical ozone and nutrient enrichment potentials, AD is the second option while incineration is shown to be the most environmentally friendly solution. The robustness of the model is investigated with a sensitivity analysis. The most critical assumption concerns the quantity and quality of the energy substituted by the biogas production. Two key issues affect the development and deployment of future anaerobic digestion plants: maximising the electricity produced by the CHP unit fuelled by biogas and to defining the future energy scenario in which the plant will be embedded. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The mechanical properties and the life cycle assessment (LCA) of jute woven fabric composites and their hybrids are investigated. Jute woven fabric composites were sandwiched with glass woven composites with the epoxy matrix. The sandwiched composites were prepared using the resin infusion under flexible tooling method. The water absorption test was performed on jute woven composites and composite sandwiches. It shows that thin layers of glass woven composites in the composites sandwich decelerate water penetration to jute woven composites, which are the core materials. The water absorption process applied to jute woven composites and their sandwich was modeled using Fick's second law. The glass woven composites at the outer surface of the sandwich can act as strong skins. The bending and impact (drop weight) properties of jute-glass woven composites are higher than those of jute woven composites. A commercial LCA software product was employed to evaluate the environmental impacts of manufacturing the jute woven composites and their hybrids. The manufacturing of jute-glass woven composites had more negative environmental impacts (global warming, ozone depletion, etc.) than that of jute fabric composites, because glass fibres are less environmental friendly than natural fibres.To increase service life of Internal Combustion engine component and improve efficiency of engine various surface treatment methods are used on cylinder piston group (CPG) components. The piston ring is the very critical component and for the improvement coating is done by the thermal spraying methods. Among thermal spraying methods, plasma spraying is most easily commonly applicable method in the automotive industries because it has a high spray rate and deposition, the process consumes fuel gases which are inexpensive and easily obtainable, the process requires minimum preheating and cooling during spraying, the technical reliability of plasma systems is well established in industrial applications, and spraying conditions can be easily controlled upon various applications. In particular, molybdenum coatings fabricated by atmospheric plasma spraying have enhanced resistance to wear and heat, and thus this coating technology was commercialized for application to the automotive industry. The wear resistance of plasma sprayed molybdenum coatings applicable to piston rings was investigated in this study. The performance parameters of the C I engine (as per IS 10000: Part 8) and wear condition (Endurance Test) of the piston and cylinder assembly (as per IS 10000 Part 5) has been done with and without using moly coated piston rings.Biofuel crops may help achieve the goals of energy-efficient renewable ethanol production and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation through carbon (C) storage. The objective of this study was to compare the aboveground biomass yields and soil organic C (SOC) stocks under four crops (no-till corn, switchgrass, indiangrass, and willow) 7years since establishment at three sites in Ohio to determine if high-yielding biofuel crops are also capable of high levels of C storage. Corn grain had the highest potential ethanol yields, with an average of more than 4100Lha(-1), and ethanol yields increased if both corn grain and stover were converted to biofuel, while willow had the lowest yields. The SOC concentration in soils under biofuels was generally unaffected by crop type; at one site, soil in the top 10cm under willow contained nearly 13Mg Cha(-1) more SOC (or 29% more) than did soils under switchgrass or corn. Crop type affected SOC content of macroaggregates in the top 10cm of soil, where macroaggregates in soil under corn had lower C, N and C:N ratios than those under perennial grasses or trees. Overall, the results suggest that no-till corn is capable of high ethanol yields and equivalent SOC stocks to 40cm depth. Long-term monitoring and measurement of SOC stocks at depth are required to determine whether this trend remains. In addition, ecological, energy, and GHG assessments should be made to estimate the C footprint of each feedstock.The TOPS project takes a radical and holistic approach to coupled UCG-CCS, and thus the site selection criteria for the coupled processes, considering both geological, reservoir and process engineering aspects and different end-uses of the produced synthetic gas in order to optimise the whole value chain. In particular, the experimental research carried out utilises a newly constructed high pressure gasification reactor investigating several prospective options of UCG technology implementations. Integrated research addresses field based technology knowledge gaps, such as cavity progression and geomechanics, potential groundwater contamination and subsidence impacts, together with research into process engineering solutions in order to assess the role/impact of site specific factors and selected reagents on the operability of given CO2 emission mitigation options. Ultimately, research aims to minimise the need for on-site CO2 storage capacity as well as maximising the economic yield of UCG through value added end products. (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study analyze the urban water cycle in the Turin Metropolitan Area (Northwestern Italy), with a focus on quantifying the annual life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, using Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment methods. The annual direct and indirect energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have been quantified as related to system-wide energy consumption and production and transportation of chemicals used in water/wastewater treatment plants. Results says that the wastewater treatment consumes the biggest share of the total energy (44%), but a significant part of this energy demand is provided by the energy in biogas produced from wastewater sludge. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Landscape is supposed to be natural things that composed of natural material. as the urban building swallowed by the natural landscape over time, Man-made landscape and the surrounding environment have been turned into a major place of entertainment. Living in the concrete jungle, what should be done is to seek the real look of landscape architecture. Nowadays, inundated with eco-friendly materials, new materials, recycled materials, low-carbon green materials, people seem to have forgotten the advantages of natural materials, and I would say, the stones, trees as a kind of natural materials is the most environmental, green and the most compatible Landscape Architecture materials with the nature. Based on the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the author draws the conclusion that the use of natural materials in landscape architecture is more energy saving and emission reducing than that of steel or concrete materials in the full life cycle of the buildings, which follows the analysis and research on the life cycle of the wood structure, stone structure or the other structure buildings. This article combines theory with the reality to analyze the examples of landscape design, and finally summarizes three natural materials application principals in landscape design for more direct theoretical reference to the future designs.This paper describes the research effort jointly carried out by the University of Pisa and ENEA on electrochemical energy storage systems based on Lithium-ion batteries, particularly the Lithium-Iron-Phosphate cells. In more detail, the paper first illustrates the design and experimental characterization of a family of 12 V modules, each of them provided with an electronic management system, to be used for electric traction. Then, the sizing of the energy storage system for an electric bus providing a service with "fast and frequent" charge phases is described.Rowan University, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Engineering Research Center for Structured Organic Particulate Systems (C-SOPS), continues to develop teaching modules and problem sets to introduce students to engineering concepts in the particle and powder technology of pharmaceutical processing and drug delivery systems. The Center is hosted by Rutgers University and also includes Purdue University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez. The goal of the Center is to become a national focal point for developing structured organic particulate systems used in pharmaceuticals and their manufacturing processes. Rowan University has partnered as an outreach/education member institution to develop teaching modules for K-12 and college level students. The Rowan University efforts have focused on mobile, hands-on teaching modules, problem sets and illustrative examples. Mobile, self-contained experiments in V-mixing, pneumatic conveying, particulate deagglomeration and segregation, and hopper flow have been designed, constructed and integrated in chemical engineering courses and K-12 outreach efforts. Experiments involving the statistical analysis of pharmaceutical tablet compositions, fluidization of excipients, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, drug delivery using environmentally sensitive polymers, and strip film drug delivery have been developed and integrated in lower and upper level chemical engineering courses. Illustrative examples to teach life cycle analysis concepts in pharmaceutical processes have also been developed. This work will highlight some of the experiments and educational modules and present methods to integrate them in the engineering curriculum and outreach efforts. The new teaching modules and demonstrations presented here add to the material developed over a five (5) year collaboration with the NSF funded C-SOPS. This collaboration can serve as a model for the development of teaching materials and outreach efforts in engineering education. The self-contained, mobile educational modules and illustrative examples give students the opportunity to learn technologies important to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and to apply foundation chemical engineering principles. The completed educational materials will be incorporated into the C-SOPS website for use by Center members and faculty at other schools. This work will serve to expand and strengthen the educational impact of the Center in the region and throughout the country. It also serves to integrate important technologies in the chemical engineering curriculum and enhance the understanding of and interest in engineering among K12 students.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts throughout a product's life cycle from raw materials and energy extraction, components manufacture, assembly, distribution and sale, use and final end-of-life treatment such as disposal, recycling and energy recovery (i.e. cradle-to-grave). The environmental and resource impacts include climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, toxicological stress on human health and ecosystems, the depletion of resources, water use and many others. This paper presents and discusses cases where LCA is used for assessing the environmental impact of electronics products and processes. Included are consumer electronics products, interconnect technology in electronics micro-integration, photovoltaic (PV) solar cells, and electric vehicles.An integrated modeling platform was developed for assessing the potential release rates of ENMs and their environmental distribution. ENM release rates are estimated via life cycle assessment based approach by tracking the target ENM throughout its life cycle from production to release to the environment. Potential ENM exposure concentrations and mass distribution in the various environmental media (i.e., air, water soil, vegetation) are then evaluated via multimedia modeling that considers the environment as a collection of compartments linked by mechanistic intermedia transport processes. A web-based software implementation of the modeling platform enables rapid "what-if?" scenario analysis, which can be used to assess the response of environmental system to various scenarios of ENM releases, investigate the impact of geographical and meteorological parameters on ENM distribution in the environment, compare the impact of ENM production and potential releases on different regions, we well as estimate source release rates based on monitored ENM concentrations. Moreover, the present modeling platform is suitable for research and teaching regarding environmental multimedia impact assessment at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is envisioned that the present multimedia analysis platform can assist regulators, industry, and researchers to rapidly and critically assess the potential environmental implications of ENMs and thus ensure that nanotechnology is developed in a productive and environmentally responsible manner.The technological advances, new concepts and the ranges of possible waste management solutions in the Arctic drilling pose their own peculiar demands and affects the waste management decision making process. Thus, it is become imperative to evaluate the assessment methods for their effectiveness, to support strategic decision. The aim of this paper is to propose steps for evaluating the available assessment method for their effectiveness. The proposed steps can help to assess the assurance of the stringent drilling waste-discharge requirements in the region (such as zero hazardous discharge to the sea). By employing the proposed steps the suitable drilling waste management decision-support tool can be recommended.Using life-cycle assessment methodology, this paper quantifies the carbon footprint of Electric Vehicles (EV) as compared to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV). Thereby, the focus is put on important determinants of vehicle usage, such as lifetime mileage and driving pattern, and quantifies their influence on the relative environmental performance of EVs and ICEVs over the whole lifecycle today. This is contrasted with the influence of variability in the end-of-life and energy production stage of the vehicle, over which the user has only limited control. Based on the findings, some conclusions on policy measures are deducted.Co-firing coal with biomass is one way to reduce greenhouse gas contribution from clinker production. A model was developed to determine the optimum percentage mix of rice hull for a cement plant in the Philippines that would provide the minimum life impact while ensuring product quality and economic viability. Results indicated that optimum environmental benefits is obtained at 64% rice hull thermal substitution. It is important however also to take into consideration rice hull supply limitations and system modification requirements.In Austria there is a unique curriculum of technical education which is taught at Federal Secondary Colleges of Engineering, commonly known as HTL. Since necessity of design collaboration within mechanical engineering projects between students and different colleges is given, the authors of this paper have conducted two projects to implement a PDM system for using at HTL and technical universities. This paper gives an overview of the enhanced PDM functionality, and the gained experiences.Existing pedagogy strategies in engineering interdisciplinary have been refined and new strategies are developed. The students would take equal benefit by developing their understanding as a part of their academic studies whilst gaining valuable scientific level learning experience. Over the recent decades, different scholarly strategies have become common as a consequence of numerous developments in the engineering learning interdisciplinary such as Science and Engineering Ethics (SEE), Excellence in Engineering Education (ExcEEd), Project-Based Learning (PBL), Service Learning (SL), Socratic Method (SM), Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA), Information and Communication Technologies in Engineering Education (ICTEEd), Open Ended Group Project Framework (OEGP) engineering pedagogies. It has already been scrutinized that each pedagogy approach has specifically its own effects and limitations, and no one approach is suitable for every engineering interdisciplinary so it is very essential to make a comparative analysis on different engineering pedagogy strategies and design an approach on global basis that will constitute all the features. This paper presents a comparative assessment of aforementioned pedagogy strategies in engineering interdisciplinary along with their characteristics, features and future scope. More specifically, this paper reports the careful use of each strategy to provide the most invigorating and supportive environment for students to continue exploring their potential. This paper aimed to enhance engineering capability through active student participation as well as openness to diversity of designs which are supported through innovative uses of technology in the engineering education.The aim of this present paper is to evaluate network sustainability applying a quantitative model based on the integration of LCA data with discrete simulation. For this purpose, different scenarios have been defined by collecting several product-chain data as an attempt to develop a formalized approach to share information within networks. As preliminary step, the supply chain environmental impact is assessed through a static modular LCA. Then the paper presents different supply chain configurations in which the variation of three important drivers, like lead-time to the customer, level of sustainability of the suppliers and target Global Warming Potential (GWP) value per product, can influence each other. By collecting data from a footwear company case, the model assesses the environmental sustainability of the supply chain (SC) taking into consideration the following environmental impact: materials and components suppliers, transport and logistics from suppliers to producer or contractors, and producer or contractors. According to the proper data reliability required at inventory level, it was possible to simulate scenarios considering different levels of sustainability. The preliminary results highlighted as specific decisional areas under the control of product managers (e.g. supplier selection and manufacturing defects) can significantly affect the environmental impact of the whole supply chain.Construction and maintenance of road infrastructure is a major source of emissions and energy usage. Procuring green roads, however, is neither commonplace nor trivial to implement. New ways to enhance the green procurement of roads are therefore needed, and can potentially involve life cycle assessment and green labelling methods. Considering the complexity of the pavement industry sector with its many actors and structures, implementing such innovations in the procurement process is surrounded with a series of uncertainties. The current paper formulates a research agenda for green procurement of roads by looking into potential mechanisms for future procurement. Given the objective of green procurement, the paper is focusing on the question what are the short term and long term effects of potential combinations of life cycle assessment principles and procurement process structures on infrastructure costs, risks, environmental impact and the structure of the road sector. Six different approaches are presented and reviewed for relevant earlier work in the literature. Based upon the complexities found, the authors discuss the challenges in finding a matching single research method. A solution is proposed for a holistic approach using gaming simulation, since it allows evaluating the procurement of infrastructure as a complex adaptive system.Inorganic fullerene like nanoparticles made of transition metal dichalcogenides MX2 (M=Mo, W, ..., X=S, Se...) are considered as anti-wear and friction additives allowing excellent lubricating properties thanks to their small size and morphology. Comparing their different synthesis routes is of interest with respect to environmental impact assessment. This issue has been addressed using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach in the case of MoS2 nanoparticles. We have used available inventory data for reactants and electricity supply obtained from literature and database. The objectives were to evaluate the feasibility of this approach at design stage for comparison of the most relevant synthesis strategies of MoS2.This case study will quantify the energy use, the carbon caused by Green House Gases and the sum of the costs for the entire life cycle (Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and a Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA)), using the WaveStar as the wave energy case study device. Life Cycle covers all stages in a product's life from Cradle to grave; the extraction of raw materials from the earth and ends with their ultimate disposal when all materials are returned to the earth. Phases of the life cycle for WaveStar were compiled and the inputs and outputs for the given stage in the life cycle were quantified. Inventory analysis involved data collection and calculation procedures to quantify relevant inputs and outputs of a product system. Results were compared to similar studies for other ocean renewable as well as conventional fossil fuel sources. Results indicated that LCC of wave energy is comparable to offshore wind, but much higher hat onshore wind and other competing fossil fuels.One of the major challenges for the emerging economies like India is the availability of electricity for its industrial growth and household consumption. Lighting accounts for almost 20% of total electricity demand of the country. It is estimated that by 2030 power consumption by lighting will increase to 120,000 GWh/year from 55,000GWh/year consumed currently. Majority of the lighting needs (40 million light points) in India are met by highly inefficient incandescent lamps. Therefore, Central Government of India has initiated a plan to replace the incandescent lamps by compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). But a section of policy makers has pointed out the end of life environmental hazards of CFLs. This study compares the environmental impacts of four lighting systems in India - incandescent lamp, fluorescent lamp, CFL, and light emitting diode lamps - throughout the life cycle of these lighting systems. The methodology is based on the application of the international standards of life cycle assessment. The environmental impacts generated during life cycle of each lighting system have been analyzed and the robustness of the results has been validated by sensitivity analysis. It is expected that the results will provide the required quantitative assessment of different lighting systems through their life cycle to the policy makers particularly in India. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.There is a growing momentum to analyse the broader interdependencies of the energy, water and food systems rather than evaluating them in isolation. For instance, when analysing a food system, it is necessary to consider it in terms of its agriculture, water and energy characteristics using a suitable robust sustainability assessment methodology. The objective of this paper is to integrate energy, water and food (EWF) systems in one resource model described by a series of sub-systems; the agriculture subsystem includes the production and application of fertilizers and the raising of livestock. The water sub-system is represented by reverse osmosis for the production of water. The energy sub-systems consider fossil fuel in the form of combined cycle natural gas based energy production and solar renewable energy. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate impacts on the natural environment by considering the material flows from the sub-systems on a range of impact categories in addition to calculating resource consumption. It is shown that the food sub-system produces the largest emissions, followed by fossil fuel powered desalination for irrigation. The use of renewable energy has a significant land footprint however, it reduces overall emissions significantly.Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is the third phase of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) described in ISO 14042. The purpose of LCIA is to assess a product system's life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) in order to better understand its environmental significance. However, LCIA typically excludes spatial, temporal, threshold and dose-response information, and combines emissions or activities over space and/or time. This may diminish the environmental relevance of the indicator result. The methodology, Dynamic LCA-Fire proposed in this paper to complete the International Standard ISO 14042 in the fire field, combines the LCA-Fire method with the Dispersion Numerical Model. It is based on the use of the plume model used to assess pollutant concentrations and thermal effects from fire accident scenarios. In this study, The Dynamic LCA-Fire methodology is applied to a case study for petroleum production process management. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.This article describes strategic design decisions that architects can make during the initial stages of a project to minimise the use of construction materials, reduce carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency. A proposed prototypical Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station Switch is used as a case study. The investigation focuses on minimising the use of construction materials through an iterative design and assessment process. This article extends an earlier study which analysed existing BRT stations in South Africa by conducting comparative life-cycle analyses (LCA). The earlier study by Hugo, Stoffberg & Barker (2012) identified a series of guidelines to inform the design of low-carbon and embodied energy BRT stations and determined a specific station, the MyCiti station, as the most efficient in terms of its carbon footprint and embodied energy intensity. As a result, the MyCiti station was identified as benchmark for future LCAs of station designs. The Switch prototypical BRT station is purpose designed for the Tshwane(1) context and uses the identified guidelines (Hugo, Stoffberg & Barker, 2012) as well as carbon footprint (CF) and embodied energy (EE) of construction systems and materials as design informants generated from a study conducted by Jones (2011b). These informed material choices, use of low-carbon structural systems and integration of multifunctional station components. A cradle-to-gate(2) life-cycle assessment compares the CF and EE of the Switch station and an existing South African precedent, the MyCiti station in Cape Town. The Switch station is 35% and 34% (4.08 GJ/m(2) & 378.6 kgCO(2)/m(2) vs 6.28 GJ/m(2) & 574.7kgCO(2) /m(2)) more efficient than the existing MyCiti station, in terms of respective embodied energy intensity and carbon- footprint intensity. This prototype is proposed as a benchmark for prospective life- cycle analyses to inform the material choice and design of future BRT stations in South Africa.This article investigates sustainability impacts of building products during production stage in developing countries. An analysis of literature is undertaken in order to establish current building product assessment methodologies and their relevance to developing country contexts. The review finds that many of these methodologies have limited applicability to developing countries and, therefore, an alternative methodology, termed the Sustainable Building Material Index (SBMI), is proposed. The SBMI methodology draws on both a life-cycle assessment approach and an expanded definition of sustainability, which includes social and economic aspects as well as environmental impacts, to develop a sustainability impact index of building products. The article describes and critically evaluates the SBMI and makes recommendations for further research. It appears that the SBMI has potential as methodology for establishing, and presenting, sustainability impacts of building products in developing countries. It is innovative as it provides a way of capturing simple socio-economic sustainability aspects related to building products that do not include other building product assessment methodologies. This aspect makes it particularly relevant to developing countries where there is a strong interest in using construction and related industries to create beneficial social and economic impacts such as job creation and training.A solar park based on polymer solar cells is described and analyzed with respect to performance, practicality, installation speed, and energy payback time. It is found that a high voltage installation where solar cells are all printed in series enables an installation rate in Watts installed per minute that far exceed any other PV technology in existence. The energy payback time for the practical installation of polymer solar cell foil on a wooden 250 square meter platform in its present form is 277 days when operated in Denmark and 180 days when operated in southern Spain. The installation and de-installation rate is above 100 m min(-1), which, with the present performance and web width, implies installation of >200 W min(-1). In comparison, this also exceeds the overall manufacturing speed of the polymer solar cell foil with a width of 305 mm which is currently 1 m min(-1) for complete encapsulated and tested foil. It is also significant that simultaneous installation and de-installation which enables efficient schemes for decommissioning and recycling is possible. It is highlighted where research efforts should most rationally be invested in order to make grid electricity from OPV a reality (and it is within reach).The introduction of a pulse crop into a cereal production rotation has been widely recognized for the rotational benefits resulting from nitrogen fixation and crop diversification. Pulses are the dry, edible seeds of pod-bearing plants in the legume family, such as dry pea and lentil. Both dry pea and lentil are widely grown across Western Canada and provide an important source of food and feed worldwide. In addition, these pulse crops demonstrate positive returns over and above the production of traditional crops in most situations except when their prices are low. Although the economic and environmental benefits of pulse crops have been examined in many different capacities, an examination of the rotational implications of including pulse crops in a cereal-based rotation in Western Canada has not been conducted on a life cycle basis. In this study, life cycle and economic assessments were used to examine the environmental and economic implications of including dry pea and lentil crops in an oilseed-cereal rotation in Western Canada. An analysis was performed in which dry pea or lentil replaced a spring wheat crop in a canola - spring wheat - spring wheat - spring wheat rotation. Pulses were ultimately produced for their protein content. Results suggested that introducing dry pea or lentil in the rotation reduced environmental effects in all impact categories examined (Global Warming and Resource Use: -17% to -25%; Ecosystem Quality: -1% to -24%; and Human Health: -3% to -28%). In addition, the economic benefits of this practice suggested that the farm level returns over variable costs improved for both the dry pea and lentil rotations (from $-20.43 ha(-1) for the traditional rotation to $110.45 and $138.78 ha(-1), respectively, for dry pea and lentil rotation). These reductions were a result of reduced fertilizer requirements for the pulse-containing rotations (i.e. no application of nitrogen fertilizer to the pulse crop and reduced application to the succeeding cereal crop) as well as higher cereal yields. Based on these results, improved returns to producers and reduced amounts of material and energy inputs can be realized with optimized crop management that can include dry pea and/or lentil in rotation with other high yielding crops. Including pulse crops in an oilseed-cereal rotation is an effective method to enhance the economics and environmental effects of crop production. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon footprinting can be used to characterise the greenhouse gas emissions profile of agricultural products, providing a baseline against which mitigation targets can be set and progress measured. Farm-level emissions vary in relation to local conditions and management choices. Carbon footprinting models can be used to assess the impact of farm characteristics on emissions; however, the benefits of such models have been underexploited thus far for sheep production. This study estimated the cradle to farm-gate carbon footprints of 64 sheep farms across England and Wales using empirical farm data. This large dataset enabled an assessment of the relationship between farm variables and carbon footprint at a multi-farm level. Mean carbon footprints of 10.85, 12.85 and 17.86 kg CO(2)e/kg live weight finished lamb were recorded for lowland, upland and hill farms respectively, from samples with coefficients of variation of 33%, 23% and 34%. Multiple linear regression models indicated that four farm management variables had a significant impact on the size of the carbon footprint of finished lamb. Irrespective of farm category, these were the number of lambs reared per ewe (head/ewe), lamb growth rate (g/day), the percentage of ewe and replacement ewe lamb flock not mated (%), and concentrate use (kg/livestock unit). Dominance analysis indicated that, of these, the number of lambs reared per ewe mated and lamb growth rate were the most influential. Productivity improvements are arguably most problematic for extensive hill farms; however, the top performing hill farms in this study outperformed the mean lowland and upland farms. The results suggest that, at a national level, the emphasis for reducing the carbon footprint of lamb should be on closing the productivity gap between poor and top performing farms. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new photovoltaic silicon crystalline solar cell dry chemical etching process (DCEP) is developed. It is an alternative to the current State-of-the-Art (SoA) wet chemical etching process (WCEP), associated with relatively large environmental loadings in the form of high water consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases with high Global Warming Potential (GWP). In order to compare the environmental impacts of DCEP to the corresponding impacts from WCEP, a comparative attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted. From the LCA it can be concluded that the DCEP will lead to 86% reduction in water consumption compared to WCEP (acidic), and 89% reduction compared to WCEP (alkaline). The emissions of greenhouse gases, as expressed by the GWP100 indicator of the etching step, are also reduced with 63% and 20% respectively, when compared with current SoA acidic and alkaline WCEP. The toxicity impacts are also assessed to be lower for the DCEP compared to WCEP technologies, although the uncertainty is relatively high for the applied toxicity indicators. All in all, DCEP can reduce the CO(2)eq emissions of solar photovoltaic systems production by 5-10%.This chapter reviews the different types of gaseous fuel for vehicles, fuel production and distribution processes, engine/fuel systems and on-board storage options. This is followed by a discussion and comparison of life-cycle energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Finally, the advantages and limitations of each fuel are summarized along with a general discussion of future trends.Alternate fuels and powertrain systems will force an increased premium on vehicle mass reduction both to make vehicles more fuel-efficient and to enable greater range. An analysis will shows that life cycle analysis can be used to quantitatively assess how the use of alternate materials to reduce mass will contribute to energy savings and carbon footprint reduction. This justifies aggressive mass reduction driven by the use of alternative materials Also, a detailed look at auto construction shows that the vehicle of the future will likely be made from many materials. This poses many new challenges in design, manufacturing, joining and durability.The need to improve the sustainability of bioethanol production from sugarcane in Brazil has intensified the search for process energy optimization coupled with the environmental suitability of the generated coproducts and wastes. In this scenario, the anaerobic digestion of vinasse (the most abundant effluent from a sugarcane biorefinery) arises as an interesting altemative because, in addition to promoting the stabilization of organic matter, it also enables energy generation from biogas. In this work, vinasse anaerobic digestion in biorefineries was evaluated in terms of energy, environmental, and economic considerations. The energy potential from vinasse of a single sugarcane biorefinery, which is generally lost due to its application to soil with no treatment, was found to be comparable to the electricity supply demand of a city of approximately 130,000 inhabitants or to the surplus energy from bagasse burning that is exported by some sugarcane mills in Brazil. On a national level, such energy is comparable to the electricity generated by some hydroelectric plants, reaching 7.5% of the electricity generated by the world's largest hydroelectric plant. When burned in boilers, biogas could be used to stimulate second-generation ethanol production because almost 12% of the bagasse could be released from burning and the biogas used to attenuate the process energy demand. As an alternative fuel, biogas could replace up to 40% of the annual diesel supply in the agricultural operations of a sugarcane biorefinery and still provide approximately 14 MW h annually from cogeneration. An environmental assessment demonstrated significant savings in terms of greenhouse gas emissions that could financially benefit the biorefineries due to carbon credit commercialization. Such revenue would be more than enough to cover the operational costs of an anaerobic digestion plant. A global economic analysis revealed that the application of biogas as a diesel replacement would be the most attractive alternative for a sugarcane biorefinery with anaerobic digestion of vinasse. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We determine the environmental impact of different biodiesel production strategies from algae feedstock in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and non-renewable energy consumption, we then benchmark the results against those of conventional and synthetic diesel obtained from fossil resources. The algae cultivation in open pond raceways and the transesterification process for the conversion of algae oil into biodiesel constitute the common elements among all considered scenarios. Anaerobic digestion and hydrothermal gasification are considered for the conversion of the residues from the wet oil extraction route; while integrated gasification-heat and power generation and gasification-Fischer-Tropsch processes are considered for the conversion of the residues from the dry oil extraction route. The GHG emissions per unit energy of the biodiesel are calculated as follows: 41 g e-CO2/MJ(b) for hydrothermal gasification, 86 g e-CO2/MJ(b) for anaerobic digestion, 109 g e-CO2/MJ(b) for gasification-power generation, and 124 g e-CO2/MJ(b) for gasification-Fischer-Tropsch. As expected, non-renewable energy consumptions are closely correlated to the GHG values. Also, using the High Dimensional Model Representation (HDMR) method, a global sensitivity analysis over the entire space of input parameters is performed to rank them with respect to their influence on key sustainability metrics. Considering reasonable ranges over which each parameter can vary, the most influential input parameters for the wet extraction route include extractor energy demand and methane yield generated from anaerobic digestion or hydrothermal gasification of the oil extracted-algae. The dominant process input parameters for the dry extraction route include algae oil content, dryer energy demand, and algae annual productivity. The results imply that algal biodiesel production from a dried feedstock may only prove sustainable if a low carbon solution such as solar drying is implemented to help reducing the water content of the feedstock. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper evaluates the potential of integrating renewable energy technological resources for tri-generation applications in an island. The integrated tri-generation system has to be self-sustaining in delivering cooling, heating and power. Several CCHP (combined cooling heating and power) systems at different penetration levels were proposed. The CCHP systems comprising key prime movers include microturbines, photovoltaic, solar Stirling dish, fuel cell system, biomass power generator and an absorption cooling technology. The systems are judiciously designed to provide the island's tri-generation needs. Three different operational schemes of varying renewable energy penetration were considered peak shaving, 20% and 40% renewable energy penetration. Key results have suggested that reductions of approximately 20% in primary energy savings are realizable for all three cases. Additionally, a renewable energy penetration level of 40% yielded the largest reduction in terms of carbon dioxide emission. In terms of cost benefits for the proposed system combinations, peak shaving and 20% renewable energy penetration can realize savings of up to USD $150,000 per annum. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose - This paper aims to provide an introduction to sustainable manufacturing concepts and practices. Design/methodology/approach - Following an introduction to sustainable manufacturing, this article first considers various government programmes and information sources. It then discusses life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques and standards and certain product design issues. The benefits of sustainable manufacturing concepts are then identified, together with some examples of applications. Finally, brief conclusions are drawn. Findings - Sustainable manufacturing involves a multitude of practices which seek to minimise the impact of a product or process on the environment. It encompasses the entire product cycle from "cradle to grave" and many standards and techniques have been developed to assist in its implementation, including LCA. In addition to meeting growing consumer demands for "greener" products, sustainable manufacturing can yield operational and financial benefits, including reduced material use, improved designs, lower energy consumption and reduced waste and scrap levels. Originality/value - This article provides a timely review of sustainable manufacturing principles, practices and benefits.Eco-design is used as a tool in the manufacturing and services sectors for improving the sustainability of products by integrating environmental aspects into the design stage, where most of the product impacts are determined. Laws (e.g., EU eco-design directive) and international schemes (e.g., ISO 14006) have encouraged the use of eco-design by companies; in addition, the literature has reported advances in methodology and widespread case studies in different economic sectors. This chapter aims to show a combined design for environment (DfE) and life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for the implementation of eco-design by companies. The steps and tools of the methodology, as well as the most common strategies, are described. Product carbon footprint (PCF) plays an important role in the methodology in two main ways. First, PCF is one of the indicators that can be calculated with LCA, which has become a common environmental indicator used by companies, not only as quantitative data of the current environmental performance but also as a benchmark for further improvements. Second, PCF is used as a strategy for environmental communication to consumers through eco-labeling. The main strength of the carbon footprint is that stakeholders (business and consumers) are aware of and understand its meaning due to the presence of carbon emissions and global warming in mass media and public science studies.The term "carbon footprint'' has evolved as an important expression of greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity for diverse activities and products. Widespread public acceptance and the ease of conveying information about GHG intensity with this term has also attracted scientists and policy makers to review and refine its calculations. Standard methods for carbon footprinting have been prepared, and sector-specific standards are under development. These standards direct the procedures to carry out carbon footprinting through life cycle assessment in conjunction with GHG accounting, classifes activities into three tiers based on the order of emissions. Agriculture is the largest contributor to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, so the quantification of different agricultural practices is essential for identification of more sustainable practices. Carbon footprinting has potential as a tool for assessing and comparing GHG performances of different agricultural products along with identification of points to improve environmental efficiencies. Case studies on the application of carbon footprinting to cultivation practices are increasing in the scientific literature, but the majority of studies do not comply with the standard three-tier methodology. This leads to nonuniformity among different studies and their comparisons. Hence, a standard guideline addressing carbon footprinting specifically for agriculture is essential for the effective application of this tool in the quantification of GHG intensity, mitigation of global warming, and adaptation against future climate change scenarios.With the increasing activity in the building sector in the last decade, construction has become a major consumer of natural resources. This resource consumption has been traditionally accounted for through life cycle assessment and similar approaches. In this chapter, a methodology to apply the carbon footprint indicator to a building project is proposed in order to predict the emissions generated by the construction work. The methodology takes into account the resources used and the waste generated. Thus, a number of factors involved in the calculations are first defined, followed by the methodology to determine the carbon footprint for each of the elements into which it is divided (i.e., energy, water, food, mobility, construction materials, and waste). Finally, the methodology is applied to a case study corresponding to the urbanization and building construction of a representative building type in Andalusia (Spain) when the building is in the planning stage.The food system has been identified as one of the major contributors to climate change. The main sources of greenhouse gas emissions are nitrous oxide (N2O) from soils, methane (CH4) from enteric fermentation in animals, and carbon dioxide (CO2) from land use change, such as deforestation. Emissions also arise from manure management, mineral fertilizer production, rice cultivation, and energy use on farms and from post-farm activities such as processing, packaging, storage, distribution, and waste management. With increasing awareness of climate change, calculating the carbon footprint (CF) of food products has become increasingly popular among researchers and companies wanting to determine the impact of their products on global warming and/or to communicate the CF of their products to consumers. This chapter discusses issues that are especially relevant when calculating the CF of food products, such as the choice of functional unit, which is challenging owing to the multifunctionality of food. Other issues concern how to include emissions arising from indirect land use change and removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by carbon sequestration in soils into CF calculations. Causes of the large uncertainties associated with calculating the CF of food products and ways to handle this uncertainty are also discussed and examples of uses and results of CF of food products are presented. Despite the large uncertainties, it is clear that the differences in CF between different types of food products are very large. In general, the CF of livestock-based products are much larger than those of plant-based products. CF information on food products may be useful in business-to-business communication, for professionals in the retail sector and in public procurement.Nowadays it is generally recognized that human activities increase anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to dangerous thresholds, leading to climate change due to an increase in global temperatures. In an industrial context, the product carbon footprint concept has been emerging as a relevant tool to support the development and implementation of GHG management strategies throughout product life cycles, in order to reduce GHG emissions along the supply chain, improve energy efficiency, and improve product competitiveness in different markets. This chapter focuses on the carbon footprint of ceramic products and has the following purposes: (1) to present general information on ceramic manufacturing, in particular a characterization of the European ceramic industry with regard to energy sources and production value, and a description of the general ceramic manufacturing process; (2) to carry out case studies in which the carbon footprint of different ceramic products (ornamental earthenware piece, brick, roof tile, wall and floor tile, sanitary ware) is quantified; (3) to identify improvement measures and best available techniques (BAT) to reduce the total carbon footprint of some products; (4) to analyze the specific GHG emission of each of the ceramic products studied, considering a cradle-to-gate approach; and (5) to present some methodological challenges related to carbon footprint quantification.Packaging products are common in all industrial sectors and in the market place. However, packaging design needs to be optimized while avoiding superfluous designs that do not consider the environment in their design. Directive 94/62/EC established a framework in order to harmonize the environmental requirements for packaging as well as to determine targets for recycling and recovering packaging waste. In this chapter, the eco-design projects of different sectors are presented in order to show the different strategies that are used to improve the environmental performance of packaging products. The carbon footprint of the products is quantified and used as an environmental indicator. Common strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of packaging are optimizing the volume (and therefore reducing the transportation requirements), using renewable materials, and optimizing the end-of-life management.World agriculture is facing a great joint challenge of ensuring food security and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions under climate change. Characterizing the carbon footprints of crop production by life cycle analysis is be critical for identifying the key measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emission while sustaining crop productivity in the near future. In this chapter, the carbon footprints of bulk crop production; individual staple crops of rice, wheat, and maize; as well as vegetable crops from China were analyzed using data from either statistical archive or of questionnaire survey for quantification of all carbon costs in a whole life cycle. Although the overall carbon footprint of crop production sector of China is much higher than that of the UK and USA, rice and wheat have significantly higher carbon footprints than maize. The nitrogen-fertilizer-induced footprint was shown to be the biggest contributor to the total carbon footprint for all the crops (more than 60 %), leaving a big space for mitigation of luxury emissions of N2O with nitrogen use in excess. Although the carbon footprint has quickly increased since 1970s, crop production did not show a positive response to increasing carbon cost. While reducing nitrogen chemical fertilizer use is apparently a key option to cut down the highly carbon-intensive agriculture, substitution of rice or wheat with maize would offer a final option to ensure both high cereal production and low carbon cost in China's crop production sector. There is an urgent need to depict the variation of carbon footprints for different cropping and farming systems, climate conditions, and the threshold of nitrogen luxury emissions for a certain crop.This chapter spans the time from the early days of Life Cycle Assessment-LCA (the time of the so-called 'proto-LCAs' between about 1970 and 1990), until recent trends of simplified/streamlined LCAs, the footprint specifications (carbon footprint, water footprint) and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment-LCSA. Important benchmarks along this span are the harmonisation of LCA by SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) and the standardisation of LCA by ISO (International Standardisation Organisation). The basic discussions within SETAC occurred between 1990 and 1993. The first attempt to develop a suitable LCA-structure was achieved during the SETAC workshop 'A Technical Framework for Life Cycle Assessments' in August 1990, held in Smugglers Notch, Vermont, USA. The LCA-structure, the famous 'SETAC triangle', consisted of three components: Inventory-Impact Analysis-Improvement Analysis. SETAC revised the framework during the Sesimbra workshop in 1993. It was the merit of SETAC to initiate a standardisation process which culminated in the 'Guidelines for Life-Cycle Assessment: A Code of Practice'. The LCA-structure, again a triangle, now included four components: Goal Definition and Scoping-Inventory Analysis-Impact Assessment-Improvement Assessment. This structure was only slightly modified by the ISO standardisation process: The fourth phase 'Improvement Assessment' (formerly 'Improvement Analysis') was replaced by 'Interpretation'. After the harmonisation of LCA by SETAC, the International Standardisation Process was soon initiated (Autumn 1993 in Paris), but it took seven years for the first series of LCA standards to be published (ISO 14040, ISO 14041, ISO 14042, ISO 14043). The successful first series of ISO LCA standards superseded the SETAC 'Code of Practice', the Nordic guidelines and several national standards and became the uncontested model of an environmental life cycle standard. The series 14040 ff was revised once and condensed into two standards 14040 and 14044 (2006). The four-phase structure was not altered This chapter discusses the four phases of the LCA-structure by SETAC and ISO which are the subject of four volumes-Goal and Scope Definition in LCA; Life Cycle Inventory Analysis; Life Cycle Impact Assessment; Interpretation, Critical Review and Reporting. The remaining volumes follow a structure outside the ISOframework: Applications of LCA, Special Types of LCA, Life Cycle Management, and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment.Although there was a demand for environmental health data on chemicals, there was no global scientific organization able to talk about the science behind the regulations being developed. The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) was founded in 1979. SETAC has three strengths: its global scale, its tripartite membership and governance, and its scientific base. Because SETAC was developed on an international scale, it has been able to address global environmental issues. The SETAC North American LCA Advisory Group is a formally recognized group within SETAC that has been in existence since June 1991. Similarly, SETAC Europe established an LCA Steering Committee. Both the LCA Advisory and Steering Committee are referred to as the SETAC LCA Groups. The LCA Groups report to the Board of Directors of both SETAC and SETAC Europe. Specific activities such as workshops, conferences, or educational material development, including 'position papers', are approved by the Board of Directors. During the 1990s these SETAC LCA Groups were instrumental in driving the scientific progress to codify the professional practice of LCA. During this time period, several major workshops were successfully organized and over a dozen key publications produced. The SETAC LCA Groups also broadly supported the initial preparation of the ISO 14040 series of voluntary international standards as well as their subsequent revisions. The general mission of the SETAC LCA Groups is to proactively advance the science and application of LCAs to reduce the resource consumption and environmental burdens associated with products, packaging, processes or activities. Although life cycle assessment promised to be a valuable tool in evaluating the environmental consequences of a product, process, or activity, the concept was relatively new and required a framework for further development. The workshop, 'A Technical Framework for Life Cycle Assessments', held August 18-23, 1990, at Smugglers Notch, Vermont, was organized by SETAC to develop a framework and consensus on the current state of LCA and research needs for conducting life cycle assessments. Although life cycle assessments have been used, in one form or another, before the name was coined, this workshop report is the first document which presented the name of the method. The four SETAC LCA workshops in Smugglers Notch (1990), Leiden (1991), Sandestin (1992) and Wintergreen (1992) formed a tiered process to culminate in the Code of Practice workshop of Sesimbra, Portugal, March 31-April 3, 1993. Developing international consensus on harmonized methods has been a goal of the SETAC LCA workshops. The 'Code of Practice' completed the harmonization process. Shortly after the workshop, during the autumn of 1993, the ISO standardization process was initiated. In 1994, as a result of the SETAC LCA workshops, the LCA Advisory Group of SETAC and the LCA Steering committee of SETAC Europe established individual work groups to address specific LCA issues. SETAC's working groups and workshops have advanced both the application and reputation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by authoring LCA publications, supporting the development of LCA standardization, partnering with United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and advancing the use of LCA in various sectors. As SETAC grows and expands on its own and with its supporters and partners, it will continue to advance the understanding and use of LCA while ensuring that science is kept at the forefront of LCA development.The establishment of the international standards of Life Cycle Assessment-LCA (ISO 14040 series) led to worldwide acceptance of LCA. The ISO standards of LCA (ISO 14040 and ISO 14044) are the only globally relevant international standard documents on LCA which are broadly referenced by users and other standardization processes. Thus, they represent the constitution of LCA. This chapter opens with an outline of the historical development of the international LCA standardization process and ends with an outlook on the future. The main part deals with the core standards and the spin-off standards of LCA. The core standards are ISO 14040-Environmental Management-Life Cycle Assessment-Principles and Framework and ISO 14044-Environmental Management-Life Cycle Assessment-Requirements and Guidelines. Based on these classical LCA standards, 'new' approaches have recently been developed which have led to several spin-off-standards. They cover issues such as: 'Single-issue-LCAs' like carbon footprinting (ISO 14067) or water footprinting (ISO 14046), 'Beyond environment-LCAs' like life cycle costing, social LCA and eco-efficiency assessments (ISO 14045) or even life cycle sustainability assessments, 'Beyond product-LCAs' like Organizational LCAs (ISO 14072) or sector-based IO-LCAs and 'Beyond quantification-LCAs' like type III environmental product declarations (ISO 14025) or other types of environmental labels and claims.The activities of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative have been crucial for the dissemination of LCA worldwide and the creation of a global life cycle community, since 2002, after the ISO 14040 series had been established. The Life Cycle Initiative not only contributed to capability development and the set up of national and regional life cycle networks in different parts of the world but also to enhancing and building global consensus on life cycle methodologies in areas such as life cycle inventory (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), social life cycle assessment as well as carbon and water footprinting. Moreover, the Life Cycle Initiative has successfully promoted the way leading companies are doing life cycle management (LCM) and the integration of the three dimensions of sustainable development in life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). The chapter opens with an introduction on how the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative came to life and developed over the years. Then the special relationship of the Life Cycle Initiative to The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment is highlighted. This section is followed by a description of the main contributions of the Life Cycle Initiative to the international community. In the subsequent section the key messages based on the work conducted during the last 10 years are described. The chapter finishes with some thoughts on the future of life cycle thinking and an introduction to the Phase 3 of the Life Cycle Initiative. The chapter includes the list of key achievements of the Life Cycle Initiative's Phase 1 and 2 activities that are the creation of a global life cycle community, the LCI Registry, the LCIA Midpoint-damage Framework, the USEtox model, the LCM guide and capability maturity framework, the social LCA guidelines, the LCSA framework and the global guidance principles for LCA databases.Six 'milestones' in the life of the journal (until 2013) are identified in this chapter and the accompanying literature is discussed: 1. Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)-impact factor 2. Online publications 3. National societies and other organisations and networks 4. New topics and subject areas 5. Special issues and supplements 6. ISO standardisation of LCA These 'milestones' have significantly impacted the development of Int J Life Cycle Assess and, thereby, that of the field of LCA. The sections of this chapter demonstrate that Int J Life Cycle Assess has been a truly international journal from the beginning, addresses the global LCA community, offers a unique spectrum of LCA-related information, applies to scientists, practitioners, consultants, governments and administration, responds to the growing awareness that life cycle-based assessment methods are unique achieving sustainability, the field of LCA and Int J Life Cycle Assess have interacted and mutually benefited.This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of current gaps of and challenges for LCA structured into inventory, impact assessment, generic and evolving aspects. A total of 34 gaps and challenges were identified. These include challenges like 'allocation', 'uncertainty' or 'biodiversity', as well as issues like 'littering', 'animal well-being' or 'positive impacts' which are not covered as often in the existing LCA literature. Each of these gaps is described by a high-level overview of the topic and its relevance to LCA, and the state of the art in terms of literature and potential solutions, if any, is presented. The motivation for such an overview is two-fold: First, robust, sustainable and credible use of LCA should avoid the over-interpretation of LCA results without proper consideration of its gaps and limitations. Second, these gaps and challenges represent research needs for the scientific LCA community and hopefully inspire further progress in method development.Bio-based succinic acid has the potential to become a platform chemical, i.e. a key building block for deriving both commodity and high-value chemicals, which makes it an attractive compound in a bio-based economy. A few companies and industrial consortia have begun to develop its industrial production on a large scale. A life cycle assessment of different bio-based succinic acid production processes, based on dextrose from corn, was performed to investigate their non-renewable energy use (NREU) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, from cradle-to-factory gate in Europe. Three processes were studied, i.e. (i) low pH yeast fermentation with downstream processing (DSP) by direct crystallization, (ii) anaerobic fermentation to succinate salt at neutral pH (pH7) and subsequent DSP by electrodialysis, and (iii) a similar process producing ammonium sulfate as co-product in DSP. These processes are compared to the production of petrochemical maleic anhydride, succinic acid, and adipic acid. Low pH yeast fermentation to succinic acid with direct crystallization was found to have significantly lower GHG emissions and NREU, compared to other fermentation routes and three petrochemical routes. However, the disparity in GHG emissions between this process and the electrodialysis process becomes less prominent if one considers a cleaner electricity mix than the current European production mix. Moreover, this study highlights that the allocation approach in corn wet milling and the succinic acid plant location strongly influence the results. Overall, the results suggest that low pH yeast fermentation with direct crystallization is the most beneficial process to bio-based succinic acid from an environmental perspective. (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis work presents a detailed analysis of the production design and economics of the cellulosic isobutanol conversion processes and compares cellulosic isobutanol with cellulosic ethanol and n-butanol in the areas of fuel properties and engine compatibility, fermentation technology, product purification process design and energy consumption, overall process economics, and life cycle assessment. Techno-economic analysis is used to understand the current stage of isobutanol process development and the impact of key parameters on the overall process economics in a consistent way (i.e. using the same financial assumptions, plant scale, and cost basis). The calculated minimum isobutanol selling price is $3.62/gasoline gallon equivalent ($/GGE) - similar to $3.66/GGE from the n-butanol process and higher than $3.26/GGE from the cellulosic ethanol conversion process. At the conversion stage, the n-butanol process emits the most direct CO2, at 26.42 kg CO2/GGE. Isobutanol and ethanol plants have relatively similar CO2 emissions, at 21.91 kg CO2/GGE and 21.01 kg CO2/GGE, respectively. The consumptive water use of the biorefineries increases in the following order: ethanol (8.19 gal/GGE)<isobutanol (8.98 gal/GGE)<n-butanol (10.84 gal/GGE). Field-to-wheel life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the ethanol and n-butanol conversion processes are similar at 4.3 and 4.5 kg CO2-eq/GGE, respectively. The life cycle GHG emissions result for the isobutanol conversion process is 5.0 kg CO2-eq/GGE, approximately 17% higher than that of ethanol. The life cycle fossil fuel consumption is 39 MJ/GGE for n-butanol, 43 MJ/GGE for ethanol and 51 MJ/GGE for isobutanol. The energy return on investment for each biofuel is also determined and compared: isobutanol (2.2:1)<ethanol (2.7:1)<n-butanol (2.8:1). (c) 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdCultivation of microalgae for applications such as fuel, food, pharmaceuticals and farming is a rapidly developing area of research and investment. Whilst microalgae promises to deliver many environmental benefits compared with existing biofuel technology, there are also issues to overcome in relation to wastewater management, emissions control, land use change and responsible development of genetically modified organisms. This review seeks to highlight both the positive and negative impacts of microalgae cultivation, focusing on impacts to the aquatic, atmospheric and terrestrial biospheres that may occur and would need to be managed should the microalgae cultivation industry continue to grow.A consequence of the rapidly increasing demand for bioenergy is an increasing demand for land for growing energy crops. Therefore, the utilization of arable land for this production is believed to increase. Meanwhile, larger areas of arable land are also needed to ensure the supply of food to the growing world population. Growing energy crops in areas that are not suitable for food production such as brownfields, this controversy can partly be solved and several other environmental benefits can be achieved at the same time. The total environmental impact of bioenergy cultivation on contaminated land depends on the full cultivation chain including the handling of bioenergy residues and the full chain is important in the risk-and environmental assessments.The potential of forests and the forest sector to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is widely recognized, but challenging to quantify at a national scale. Forests and their carbon (C) sequestration potential are affected by management practices, where wood harvesting transfers C out of the forest into products, and subsequent regrowth allows further C sequestration. Here we determine the mitigation potential of the 2.3 x 10(6) km(2) of Canada's managed forests from 2015 to 2050 using the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3), a harvested wood products (HWP) model that estimates emissions based on product half-life decay times, and an account of emission substitution benefits from the use of wood products and bioenergy. We examine several mitigation scenarios with different assumptions about forest management activity levels relative to a base case scenario, including improved growth from silvicultural activities, increased harvest and residue management for bioenergy, and reduced harvest for conservation. We combine forest management options with two mitigation scenarios for harvested wood product use involving an increase in either long-lived products or bioenergy uses. Results demonstrate large differences among alternative scenarios, and we identify potential mitigation scenarios with increasing benefits to the atmosphere for many decades into the future, as well as scenarios with no net benefit over many decades. The greatest mitigation impact was achieved through a mix of strategies that varied across the country and had cumulative mitigation of 254 Tg CO(2)e in 2030, and 1180 Tg CO(2)e in 2050. There was a trade-off between short-term and long-term goals, in that maximizing short-term emissions reduction could reduce the forest sector's ability to contribute to longer-term objectives. We conclude that (i) national-scale forest sector mitigation options need to be assessed rigorously from a systems perspective to avoid the development of policies that deliver no net benefits to the atmosphere, (ii) a mix of strategies implemented across the country achieves the greatest mitigation impact, and (iii) because of the time delays in achieving carbon benefits for many forest-based mitigation activities, future contributions of the forest sector to climate mitigation can be maximized if implemented soon.The production of six regionally important cellulosic biomass feedstocks, including pine, eucalyptus, unmanaged hardwoods, forest residues, switchgrass, and sweet sorghum, was analyzed using consistent life cycle methodologies and system boundaries to identify feedstocks with the lowest cost and environmental impacts. Supply chain analysis was performed for each feedstock, calculating costs and supply requirements for the production of 453,592 dry tonnes of biomass per year. Cradle-togate environmental impacts from these modeled supply systems were quantified for nine mid-point indicators using SimaPro 7.2 LCA software. Conversion of grassland to managed forest for bioenergy resulted in large reductions in GHG emissions due to carbon uptake associated with direct land use change. By contrast, converting forests to cropland resulted in large increases in GHG emissions. Production of forest-based feedstocks for biofuels resulted in lower delivered cost, lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and lower overall environmental impacts than the agricultural feedstocks studied. Forest residues had the lowest environmental impact and delivered cost per dry tonne. Using forest-based biomass feedstocks instead of agricultural feedstocks would result in lower cradle-to-gate environmental impacts and delivered biomass costs for biofuel production in the southern U.S.Financial, environmental, and supply chain analyses of empty fruit bunch (EFB) biomass are needed for the development of a sustainable green chemicals industry in Malaysia. Herein, holistic analysis of the supply system and EFB life cycle cradle-to-gate are analyzed in an effort to make recommendations for the commercial-scale collection and delivery of EFB from crude palm oil (CPO) extraction facilities to biorefineries in Malaysia. Supply chain modeling tracked inputs and outputs for financial analysis. The openLCA software was used for life cycle assessment (LCA). Allocation scenarios were used to explore the impact of accounting methodologies on the competitiveness of EFB compared to other feedstocks. Sensitivity analysis on the effect of transportation distance, emission flows, and allocation methods on resulting environmental impacts were conducted. The No Burden, Economic, and Mass allocation scenarios resulted in -1629, -1619, and -1474 kg CO2-eq. BD tonne(-1) EFB global warming impacts (GW), respectively. Delivered cost for EFB was calculated to be approximately 45 US$ BD tonne(-1) Environmental burdens were sensitive to allocation scenario, covered area, and land use change. Delivered cost was sensitive to transport distance, covered area, and yield. It was shown that there is sufficient Malaysia EFB available for between 9 and 28 biorefineries, depending upon the scale of production.Capturing CO2 and using it as an alternative carbon feedstock for chemicals, fuels and materials has the potential to reduce both CO2 emissions and fossil resource depletion. To assess the actual environmental benefits of CO2 capture and utilization (CCU), life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered as suitable metric. To enhance the use of LCA of CCU, this tutorial review gives a jargon-free introduction of LCA of CCU directed at LCA novices. Nine particularly important aspects for conducting an LCA of CCU are identified and illustrated with CCU examples. These aspects, phrased as action items, can serve LCA novices as a checklist through all steps in LCA of CCU: from defining the LCA purpose and the system boundaries, over data collection and environmental impact computation, to interpretation and sensitivity analysis of the results. Finally, in the context of CCU, an outlook is given on recent developments in LCA that aim to cover all pillars of sustainability (people, planet, and profit).Efficient use of fuel and material resources, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and control of environmental impacts have become important to the construction industry, including pavement engineering. Life cycle assessment, including carbon footprinting, is one important way of estimating the scale and environmental impacts of resource use and emissions to the environment. LCA results can be used for product development, benchmarking and policy making (e.g. investment decisions). Decision makers need to have confidence in the results of LCA studies and this will require that they are conducted in compliance with standards, in a consistent and transparent way. This chapter provides a short introduction to LCA before describing typical inputs and outputs required for pavement LCA and discussion of LCA standards as applied to road pavements. Some existing pavement LCA studies and tools are introduced and briefly reviewed. Finally, a framework for pavement LCA is suggested along with a checklist for conducting these studies and a note on challenges for developing the method in this area.Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method developed in the 1960s for identifying environmental objectives, defining the system to be analyzed, quantifying environmentally important inputs and outputs to the system over a life cycle, and assessing the impacts. The application of LCA to pavements is a relatively new development. Pavement management systems (PMS) have been developed and implemented since the 1970s to manage pavement network asset inventories, collect condition data, predict performance for various management decisions and report the results to support decision-making needed to meet performance and cost objectives. This chapter discusses the relationship between LCA and PMS and benefits of integrating LCA into PMS. An example is provided for the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on a state highway network. Gaps in implementation are identified, and recommendations are made for future work.This chapter introduces readers to the Product Process Service (PPS) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework. This framework is founded in principals of pavement life cycle assessment and provides the basis for tools that can aid decision-makers in assessing pavement life cycle Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The chapter will discuss methodologies involved in the data collection process, emissions calculation and project inventory development that support the PPS framework.Sustainable pavement management as a business practice is about facilitating pavement investment trade-offs considering the triple bottom line of sustainability during the design, construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation of pavements. This chapter discusses the basic principles of pavement management and the changes necessary to help pavement manager make more sustainable decisions. It discusses the various levels of pavement management decisions, the importance of pavement management as a key asset management business process, and the data needed to support the various levels of analysis. A more sustainable decision-making pro-cess requires tools for analyzing the economic, environmental, and social impacts, as well as for comparing the pavement investment trade-offs. The chapter reviews some of these tools, provides guidelines for incorporating sustainability into the various levels pavement management decision making, and recommendations for making pavement management systems sustainable within an organization.In recent years, the use of flax fibres as reinforcement in composites has gained popularity due to an increasing requirement for developing sustainable materials. Flax fibres are cost-effective and offer specific mechanical properties comparable to those of glass fibres. Composites made of flax fibres with thermoplastic, thermoset, and biodegradable matrices have exhibited good mechanical properties. This review presents a summary of recent developments of flax fibre and its composites. Firstly, the fibre structure, mechanical properties, cost, the effect of various parameters (i.e. relative humidity, various physical/chemical treatments, gauge length, fibre diameter, fibre location in a stem, oleaginous, mechanical defects such as kink bands) on tensile properties of flax fibre have been reviewed. Secondly, the effect of fibre configuration (i.e. in forms of fabric, mat, yarn, roving and monofilament), manufacturing processes, fibre volume, and fibre/matrix interface parameters on the mechanical properties of flax fibre reinforced composites have been reviewed. Next, the studies of life cycle assessment and durability investigation of flax fibre reinforced composites have been reviewed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite considerable research concerning the manifestation of greenhouse gases in the usage of buildings, little has been done concerning emissions arising from the construction process itself. This paper specifically examines emissions arising from cut and fill excavation on residential construction sites. Even though such excavation is often seen as being economical in terms of providing a flat base for concrete raft slab construction, the environmental consequences of this approach need to be considered more fully in terms of impact on the environment. This is particularly important when steeply sloping sites are involved and for different soil types. The paper undertakes a study that quantitatively assesses the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions caused by cut and fill excavation on 52 residential projects in Australia for a range of slope and soil types. The paper presents results from the study and concludes that greenhouse gas emissions increase as site slope increases; the building footprint area (as distinct from Gross Floor Area), exposes the need to reduce the area of the building to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; excavation of rock soils creates higher emissions than other soil types; and cut and fill excavation on steeply slope sites increase emissions. Potential alternative construction includes suspended floor construction systems which involve less excavation.Currently, the construction industry is turning towards sustainability. Nevertheless, in order to achieve a sustainable performance, a balance between environmental, social and economic criteria has to be created. There are already different tools available which have the potential to reach this goal. It is necessary to identify them as such and find out how they can be integrated to obtain synergies and contribute to sustainable construction. These tools have to be implemented in early design phases so as to add value to the project. In the present paper, two powerful methods, namely BIM and LCA, will be highlighted. Such methods can be of great assistance in the context of sustainability. On the one hand, BIM supports integrated design and improves information management and cooperation between the different stakeholders throughout the different project life-cycle phases. On the other hand, LCA is a suitable method for assessing environmental performance. Both LCA and BIM should be integrated in the decision-making process at an early stage with a view to achieving a holistic overview of the project, including environmental criteria, from the beginning. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Ever-changing needs in the built environment create new incentives for enhancements in the process of building design. Increasing prices of building operations and utilities have a profound impact on the conceptual design and implementation of sustainable architecture. Green building certifications have been initially implemented as a tool for creating more sustainable buildings. However, the real impact of green certification systems on building operations remains unclear. This article focuses mainly on water and energy consumption assessment of LEED certified buildings and to what degree certification systems achieve cost savings in building operations when implemented during the design and construction process. The method of estimating these effects is based on hard costs and soft costs linked not only to the certification cost itself but also on the economic impact of the construction costs designated for achieving the required certification level. Furthermore, the building projects investigated, have been selected according to a specific paradigm in order to include buildings with a different type of operation. Each selected building has been holistically differentiated and assessed according to its performance in the following categories: water usage and energy efficiency. The aim of this paper is to objectively assess buildings that were certified under the LEED certification system and to determine the financial effectiveness of the invested resources in the construction process in relation to the operational and environmental benefits. Moreover, the research is focused on determining the operational costs at a point in time. Because of this, a relevant discount factor has been determined and applied for the life cycle assessment of each researched project. The outcome of this paper is an objective assessment of six LEED certified buildings based on water and energy consumption compared to a reference buildings. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In the context of temporary events, the use of structural systems suitable for short-term use is a key strategy in terms of organization. However, this type of ephemeral structure currently requires the implementation of significant resources, for which the characteristics of flexibility and economic efficiency most often prevail over considerations related to sustainability. This lack of sustainability exists due to several attributes of a temporary building. Firstly, the distance between the place of storage and the one of use requires transportation, which can sometimes represent a significant share of consumption and environmental impacts. Furthermore, heat energy required to achieve an acceptable level of indoor comfort in a building with little or no thermal isolation is disproportionate to the short time of use. Finally, the materials used, in most cases, have a significant life cycle in terms of embodied energy required for their manufacture and respectively their disposal. However, many parameters are not as yet subject to specific studies. Contributing to remedy this lack, the present paper aims to evaluate the environmental impacts and lack of performances of current temporary event structures. In order to compare them with the expected performances of an alternative proposition the On STAGE Project-, which refers to architectural quality and high level of comfort with an optimal use of resources and a minimization of environmental impacts. Firstly, a detailed analysis of a typical ephemeral structure system is presented, through an assessment process, that takes into account not only environmental criteria calculated on the whole life cycle, Non Renewable Energy (NRE) and Global Warming Potential (GWP), but also the thermal and acoustic comfort. Then the set of results will be compared to the simulated values for On STAGE Project, and show that it is possible, through an integrated design process based on the principles of bioclimatic architecture and the use of renewable energy sources, to design a temporary structure capable of high level of comfort, preserving resources and reducing environmental impacts, in order to meet sustainability goals, even in the case of a short lifespan. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper proposes a planning support concept (PSC) to implementation of sustainable parking development projects (SPDP) in ancient Mediterranean cities. It is conceptualized by the logic of decision support systems and a multicriteria analysis approach. The purpose of the concept is to support setting of implementation priorities for subprojects (construction of new and/or improvement of existing parking) within a SPDP. Analysing the existing and a planned state of parking within the city a goal tree is established. Subprojects are defined accordingly. Objectives from the last hierarchy level within the goal tree are used as criteria for assessment of defined subprojects. Representatives of stakeholders provided criteria weights by application of AHP and SAW methods. PROMETHEE II was used for priority ranking and PROMETHEE V ensured a definition of project's implementation phases. The result of the presented concept is the implementation plan for such projects. The concept is tested on the city of Trogir.This chapter analyses the state of depletion of the Earth's mineral resources. It first examines the production trend of the main mineral commodities produced in the world between 1900 and 2008. The scarcity of minerals is first assessed statically through the well-known reserves to production ratio. This approach is then complemented by a dynamic assessment of mineral resource depletion, using the Hubbert peak model applied to a selection of building materials. Finally, a methodology is presented that includes a material scarcity factor in common accounting practices used in assessing construction projects.Several environmental accounting methods exist to evaluate the rate of ecosystems resource exploitation and to strengthen the comparison among human production systems in terms of renewability and sustainable use of resources. However, their application rarely refers to the environmental work that is necessary to produce natural resources. The aim of this research is to advance the characterization of different wood biomass species by using the emergy principles and thus to estimate the geobiosphere work required to generate wood resources. The analysis has been conducted applying the classical emergy methodology and a recently developed life cycle-based embodied energy approach. This latter is implemented with the support of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles and tools to disclose as a result vectors of Unit Embodied Energy Value ((UEEV) over right arrow), composed by three components: the Embodied Solar, Tidal and Geothermal Energy. Differently from emergy evaluation, the life cycle-based embodied energy approach does not consider the baseline concept and the emergy algebra, but the Solar, Geothermal and Tidal sources are independently quantified, keeping them separated and not weighted. The present paper shows that the latter method can provide a consistent framework to trace and evaluate the primary provision of energy throughout the formation of resources. Regionalized UEVs (Unit Emergy Values) and ((UEEVs) over right arrow) have been obtained and compared with regard to Fagus spp., Quercus spp., Picea spp., Pinus spp., Pseudotsuga spp., Fraxinus spp., Populus spp., Castanea spp., and other grouped conifers (Larix spp., Cupressus spp. and Abies spp.) and other deciduous species (Carpinus spp., Betulus spp., Alnus spp. and Robinia spp.). The trend of output values per unit of resource species obtained by means of the two methods was very similar when looking at the Solar Embodied Energy contribution, meaning that this flow has the main direct (with the life cycle-based embodied energy approach) and indirect (with the emergy one) influence on the generation of wood biomass. Results obtained by means of both methods can fill out the life cycle of products based on wood biomass, providing the natural contribution to wood species formation and thus embedding this information in the technosphere processes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Upgrading of Russian economy claims special attention to long-term problems of its development in order to make it stable and purposeful. The necessity to improve social and economic parameters and comprehensive innovation development of territorial economic systems requires elaboration of sound policy and regions' strategies in relation to regional branches that form their potential. The article proposes an approach to reform national economic sectors on the basis of their life cycle analysis and allocation of functional features of a single mesoeconomic system. The research is aimed at selecting key parameters of sectors' development at the regional level. The evolutionary approach that serves as the basis for the methodology gives an opportunity to determine the factors that have the greatest impact on life cycle dynamics. The article singles out the following main groups of factors: resources, product, technology, market, banking sector, public policy. By analyzing life cycles of the Yaroslavl region's chemical industries (synthetic rubber and carbon black production) it is concluded that the only way to ensure sustainable development of branches lies in the continuous implementation of innovations, a process affected by cyclicity and determined by factors of exogenous and endogenous nature.Verification, Validation and Testing (VV&T) is an imperative procedure for life cycle analysis of safety critical embedded real-time (ERT) systems. It covers software engineering to system engineering with VV&T procedures for every stage of system design e.g. static testing, functional testing, unit testing, fault injection testing, consistency techniques, Software-In-The-Loop (SIL) testing, evolutionary testing, Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) testing, black box testing, white box testing, integration testing, system testing, system integration testing, etc. This chapter discusses some of the approaches to demonstrate the importance of model-based VV&T in safety critical embedded real-time system development. An industrial case study is used to demonstrate the implementation feasibility of the VV&T methods.The main objective of this paper was to study the performance, emissions and combustion characteristics of a diesel engine using rapeseed oil-diesel blends. The main fuel properties of rapeseed oil (RSO) were investigated and compared with that of diesel fuel. The experimental results showed that the viscosity and density of the blends were decreased and approached to that of diesel fuel when RSO volume fraction was less than 20%. At low engine loads, the start of combustion for the blends was almost similar to that for diesel fuel, but the peak cylinder pressure and heat release rate were higher. At high engine loads, the start of combustion for the blends was slightly earlier than that for diesel fuel, but the peak cylinder pressure and heat release rate were identical. For the blends, there was slightly higher brake specific fuel consumptions (BSFC) and brake specific energy consumptions (BSEC) at low engine loads. Smoke emission was higher at low engine loads, but lower at high engine loads. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission was observed slightly lower at low engine loads and almost identical at high engine loads. Carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbon (HC) emission were higher under all range of engine loads for the blends. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presented a biogas-solar hybrid system and investigated the feasibility of using biogas to increase the enthalpy of parabolic trough collector's steam so as to increase the cycle efficiency and power production. High temperature anaerobic digestion (AD) was adopted to produce biogas by using corn straw, manure and sewage. Biogas fraction and energy-to-electricity efficiency were used to evaluate the biogas contribution to the electricity generation and the energy utilization efficiency based on off-design performance analysis respectively. A comprehensive levelized electricity cost (LEC) and life cycle assessment (LCA) for the hybrid system power production were performed. The simulation calculation results show that biogas utilization plays an important role in the decrease in systemic LEC and greenhouse gas emissions. Improvement is achieved in both of generation cost and greenhouse emissions for biogas-solar hybrid plant compared to solar-only plant.The global demand for energy, particularly for transport fuels, will continue to increase significantly in the future. In addition to other options, like increased technological efficiencies, traffic reduction or modal shift, biofuels are promoted to contribute strongly to the transport sector in the years to come. Biofuels are also promoted as part of the EU strategy for decarbonising the transport sector with the aim of reducing associated GHG emissions. This paper considers some of the most important biofuels. A selection of biofuel options (biodiesel, bioethanol, biomethane, hydrotreated vegetable oils and fats, lignocellulosic-based fuels) were characterised by their conversion technologies and stage of development. They were analysed, concerning technical (overall efficiency), economic (investments and biofuel production costs) and environmental aspects (GHG performance). Additionally, GHG mitigation costs were calculated with regard to the GHG-based biofuel quota.In the last decade, society has been looking at sustainability of construction. The pressure for improved construction methods also leads to the search for new materials. One possible material with suitable technical properties based on renewable resources is hemp fibre concrete - hempcrete. Hempcrete is a construction material made from hemp fibres, lime and water. This composite breathes, as well as having good thermal and acoustic-insulation properties. The paper provides an overview of international literature and its relevance to New Zealand (where hempcrete has already been used) and the Czech Republic (where the first hempcrete house is under construction). A life cycle analysis of hempcrete will be used to examine its ecological footprint, especially in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The construction in 2014 of a New Zealand house provides data which can be used to model performance in both countries. The preliminary results suggest that hempcrete offers both environmental and construction opportunities which can help to deliver sustainable housing solutions.The negative energy balance of wastewater treatment could be reversed if anaerobic technologies were implemented for organic carbon oxidation and phototrophic technologies were utilized for nutrient recovery. To characterize the potential for energy positive wastewater treatment by anaerobic and phototrophic biotechnologies we performed a comprehensive literature review and analysis, focusing on energy production (as kJ per capita per day and as kJ m(-3) of wastewater treated), energy consumption, and treatment efficacy. Anaerobic technologies included in this review were the anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR), anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR), anaerobic fluidized bed reactor (AFB), upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB), anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR), microbial electrolysis cell (MEC), and microbial fuel cell (MFC). Phototrophic technologies included were the high rate algal pond (HRAP), photobioreactor (PBR), stirred tank reactor, waste stabilization pond (WSP), and algal turf scrubber (ATS). Average energy recovery efficiencies for anaerobic technologies ranged from 1.6% (MFC) to 47.5% (ABR). When including typical percent chemical oxygen demand (COD) removals by each technology, this range would equate to roughly 40-1200 kJ per capita per day or 110-3300 kJ m(-3) of treated wastewater. The average bioenergy feedstock production by phototrophic technologies ranged from 1200-4700 kJ per capita per day or 3400-13 000 kJ m(-3) (exceeding anaerobic technologies and, at times, the energetic content of the influent organic carbon), with usable energy production dependent upon downstream conversion to fuels. Energy consumption analysis showed that energy positive anaerobic wastewater treatment by emerging technologies would require significant reductions of parasitic losses from mechanical mixing and gas sparging. Technology targets and critical barriers for energy-producing technologies are identified, and the role of integrated anaerobic and phototrophic bioprocesses in energy positive wastewater management is discussed.Conventional biological wastewater treatment processes are energy-intensive endeavors that yield little or no recovered resources and often require significant external chemical inputs. However, with embedded energy in both organic carbon and nutrients (N, P), wastewater has the potential for substantial energy recovery from a low-value (or no-value) feedstock. A paradigm shift is thus now underway that is transforming our understanding of necessary energy inputs, and potential energy or resource outputs, from wastewater treatment, and energy neutral or even energy positive treatment is increasingly emphasized in practice. As two energy sources in domestic wastewater, we argue that the most suitable way to maximize energy recovery from wastewater treatment is to separate carbon and nutrient (particularly N) removal processes. Innovative anaerobic treatment technologies and bioelectrochemical processes are now being developed as high efficiency methods for energy recovery from waste COD. Recently, energy savings or even generation from N removal has become a hotspot of research and development activity, and nitritation-anammox, the newly developed CANDO process, and microalgae cultivation are considered promising techniques. In this paper, we critically review these five emerging low energy or energy positive bioprocesses for sustainable wastewater treatment, with a particular focus on energy optimization in management of nitrogenous oxygen demand. Taken together, these technologies are now charting a path towards to a new paradigm of resource and energy recovery from wastewater.In the European project Silicon-Light we developed concepts and technologies to increase conversion efficiencies of thin film silicon solar cells on foil. Main focus was put on improved light management, using NIL for creating light scattering textures, improved TCOs using sputtering, and improved silicon absorber material made by PECVD. On foil we achieved initial cell efficiencies of 11% and on rigid substrates stable efficiencies of 11.6% were achieved. Finally, the project demonstrated the industrial scale feasibility of the developed technologies and materials. Cost of ownership calculations showed that implementation of these technologies on large scale would enable the production of these high efficiency solar modules at manufacturing cost of 0.65 (sic)/Wp with encapsulation costs (0.20 (sic)/Wp) being the dominant costs. Life cycle analysis showed that large scale production of modules based on the technologies developed in Silicon-Light would have an energy payback time of 0.85 years in Central European countries.The present research aims to evaluate the usefulness of the application of Life Cycle Management in the agricultural sector focusing on the environmental and socio-economic aspects of decision making in the Colombian cocoa production. Such appraisal is based on the application of two methodological tools: Life Cycle Assessment, which considers environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of the cocoa production system, and Taguchi Loss Function, which measures the economic impact of a process' deviation from production targets. Results show that appropriate improvements in farming practices and supply consumption can enhance decision-making in the agricultural cocoa sector towards sustainability. In terms of agribusiness purposes, such qualitative shift allows not only meeting consumer demands for environmentally friendly products, but also increasing the productivity and competitiveness of cocoa production, all of which has helped Life Cycle Management gain global acceptance. Since farmers have an important role in improving social and economic indicators at the national level, more attention should be paid to the upgrading of their cropping practices. Finally, one fundamental aspect of national cocoa production is the institutional and governmental support available for farmers in face of socio-economic or technological needs.Wood products have many environmental advantages over nonwood alternatives. Documenting and publicizing these merits helps the future competitiveness of wood when climate change impacts are being considered. The manufacture of wood products requires less fossil fuel than nonwood alternative building materials such as concrete, metals, or plastics. By nature, wood is composed of carbon that is captured from the atmosphere during tree growth. These two effects-substitution and sequestration-are why the carbon impact of wood products is favorable. This article shows greenhouse gas emission savings for a range of wood products by comparing (1) net wood product carbon emissions from forest cradle-to-mill output gate minus carbon storage over product use life with (2) cradle-to-gate carbon emissions for substitute nonwood products. The study assumes sustainable forest management practices will be used for the duration of the time for the forest to regrow completely from when the wood was removed for product production during harvesting. The article describes how the carbon impact factors were developed for wood products such as framing lumber, flooring, moulding, and utility poles. Estimates of carbon emissions saved per unit of wood product used are based on the following: (1) gross carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from wood product production, (2) CO2 from biofuels combusted and used for energy during manufacturing, (3) carbon stored in the final product, and (4) fossil CO2 emissions from the production of nonwood alternatives. The results show notable carbon emissions savings when wood products are used in constructing buildings in place of nonwood alternatives.Rare-earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 elements with similar chemical properties, including 15 in the lanthanide group, yttrium, and scandium. Due to their unique physical and chemical properties, REEs gain increasing importance in many new energy technologies and systems that contribute to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel depletion (e.g., wind turbine, electric vehicles, high efficiency lighting, batteries, and hydrogen storage). However, it is well known that production of REEs is far from environmentally sustainable as it requires significant material and energy consumption while generating large amounts of air/water emissions and solid waste. Although life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been accepted as the most comprehensive approach to quantify the environmental sustainability of a product or process, to date, there have been only very limited LCA studies on the production of REEs. With the continual growth of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies, global production of REEs will increase. Therefore, reducing environmental footprints of REE production becomes critical and identifying environmental hotspots based on a holistic and comprehensive assessment on environmental impacts serves as an important starting point. After providing an overview of LCA methodology and a high-level description of the major REE production routes used from 1990s to today, this paper reviews the published LCA studies on the production of REEs. To date, almost all the LCA studies are based on process information collected from the operation of Mountain Pass facility in U.S. in 1990s and the operation of facilities in Bayan Obo, China. Knowledge gaps are identified and future research efforts are suggested to advance understanding on environmental impacts of REE production from the life-cycle perspective.In view of the extraction of liquid crystal from the wasted LCD panels, this paper aims to analyze the raw materials consumption, energy consumption and emissions to the environment in the extracting process based on the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The environmental impacts of the recycling procedure are assessed with the aid of LCIA (Life Cycle Inventory Assessment)method and CML2001 method provided by LCA analyzing software Gabi 4. Two ways of liquid crystal extraction mentioned in the paper are supercritical method and distilling method. The assessment results indicate: the supercritical method's LCIA result is 3 times higher than the distilling method, but the liquid crystal extracting rate can reach 95% with a lower raw materials consumption; the environmental impacts of distilling method is lower than supercritical method, but its extracting rate of liquid crystal can only get to 50%. For industrial applications, supercritical method has greater advantages and there are more crafts to perfect for distilling method in improving the recovery rate of liquid crystal.A number of new tools such as environmental management systems - EMAS and EMS, environmental accounting, environmental reporting, life cycle assessment (LCA) and many others are available now for the purpose of making companies more environmentally pro-active. The EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is a management instrument developed by the European Commission for companies and other organisations to improve their environmental performance. EMS is voluntary tool of the environmental management in the organization, established to manage its important environmental aspects and to achieve conformity with legal requirements. By benefits identification various aspects are monitored by means of a rather large number of indicators, but the most detailed ones mainly refer to aspects where performances improvement means cost reduction and profit increasing. The Paper aims at these benefits of environmnental management systems implementation in the conditions of the Slovak Republic.ECO-PROWINE is a pioneer initiative in which partners from Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain participate, with the purpose of reducing the environmental and cost impacts and increasing the visibility and competitiveness of more than 100 pilot wineries from these countries. The main goal of the ECO-PROWINE project is offering a unique frame (methods and tools) which permit the environmental impact reduction caused by the wine sector of the UE as well as reinforce and make their products more attractive under the base of a sustainable labelling. ECO-PROWINE delivers a Life Cycle and Cost Assessment (LCA - LCC) on-line tool, tailored to the wine-making sector, that enables wine makers (possessing no expertise in LCA methodologies) to perform a self-assessment of their wine-making process, in order to accurately detect environmental charges, impacts and costs through an user-friendly and appealing interface which allowing wine-makers to fill in the requested information and get detailed results about the environmental performance and the sustainability of their wine-making process. The online self-assessment tool identifies problematic areas in the wine-making process and suggests improvement actions in order to minimize the environmental impacts of the winery operation. The wine-maker will have to commit to performance improvement in order to certify his products with the ECO-PROWINE label. By committing to performance improvement the winery will acquire the ECO-PROWINE label. Keeping the label can be achieved upon periodic validation of improvement activities.The dynamic growth of many countries which have been underdeveloped so far and the increasing participation of industry in the economy produce specific consequences in the natural environment. This environment is the source of raw materials acquisition, necessary for processing and production of goods for people. The environment is also the recipient of by-products and waste. For our research we use a SimaPro v.7 method and other methods for LCA.This submission deals with an identifications od environmental aspects and their environmental assessment of gray cast iron foundry operations using the LCA method, with emphasis on the use of waste materials. Casting with its outputs has a significant impact on the environment. This type of industry is dependent on the amount of natural resources, raw materials and energy that are consumed and used. Method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), is one of the management techniques. For this method are created a series of standards ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006. Foundry is a typical ferrous metal foundry with a production capacity exceeding 20 tones/day. System boundaries shall be as set gate to gate. The overall results of the impact assessment gives an overview of the overall environmental impact of the production of 1 ton casting of gray and ductile iron. These results show that the greatest impact on the desired category and group impacts have processes associated with melting of metals on the opinion melting shop and 64.59%. This effect is mainly due to the intensity of the main extraction and processing of raw materials. Important role and contribution of foundry Hronec is its action-recovery of scrap metal. Recovery of scrap metal in the melting process 1 t casting represents mitigate smelter by 49.6%, thus foundry Hronec contributes significantly to saving so demanding entry, such as pig iron. With this contribution we are highlighting the factors that most contribute to the burden pos. Unit processes in the foundry production are the main contributors to the consumption of resources. This research may serve as the basis for further research on the impact of foundry industry on the environment.For globally significant products such as cement, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is a valuable tool for improving our understanding of the environmental hazards posed by a product's life stages. In addition, LCA allows cement producers to optimize the manufacturing process by reducing adverse environmental impacts. The paper points to the advantages of using fly ash in the road construction. It presents results obtained by optimization components of concrete mixture using 15 % wt. fly ash as cement replacement through the method LCA. The calculated LCA values were normalized to 1km (4m of width x 0.25m of thickness) of concrete road. Concluding results the optimized fly ash concrete road pavement were as follows: GWP values 16.7xE5 kg CO(2)eq/kg; PEI: 26.1xE5 MJ/kg; AP: 3.2 kg SO(2)eq/kg; ODP: 8.4E-3 kg CFC-11eq/kg; POCP: 1.9E2 kg C(2)H(2)eq/kg, and NP: 8.1xE2 kg (PO4)(-3)eq/kg. In comparison with standard concrete road, the results values were reduced by 6-10% on the average. The environmental impacts of 25 and 50% wt. of cement replacement by fly ash were also analyzed.Life-cycle assessment is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from-cradle-to-grave - from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling. It is fairly new approach, but till now many methodologies and tools have been developed on the basis of LCA. They usually compile an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental releases, evaluate the potential impacts associated with identified inputs and releases and finally they could be used to interpret the results in order to help decision makers to make a more informed decision. Different types of methodologies are discussed in the manuscript. Generally they could be divided into different types like midpoint impact assessment methods with or without normalization and weighting or endpoint impact assessment methods as well as mixed type ones. Methodologies BEES, CML 2002, ECO-INDICATOR 99, IMPACT 2002+, TRACI 2, AUSLCI, RECIPE are reviewed. Different evaluating impact categories, criteria for their selecting and general methodological structure is discussed in the manuscript as well.Biogas production by anaerobic digestion is one way how to use energy from organic substrates, obtain a natural fertiliser for agriculture and, at the same time, reduce waste flows from manufacturing processes. In assessing impacts in the case of biogas stations the main problems are usually seen in shipping the raw materials to the biogas stations and a subsequent transport of produced digastate from the biogas station to the fields. Therefore, the initial project focused on the specific case of a biogas station which has been part of a well run-in farm. As a feed the farm uses most of their own agricultural wastes and also they use the digestate as a fertiliser on their own fields. In this project the LCA method helps to define the key processes or used materials, which may have potentially negative environmental impacts. Based on LCA methodology, significant negative effects were identified as for one type of fermenter feedstock in the biogas station, i.e. grass harvested from the public area and incorporated into the silage. At the same time, there is a cardinal defect in the Czech legislation, this means neither new nor the existing biogas stations are forced to utilise their waste heat. Therefore, this leads to an increase in the potential negative impacts of the generated power.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is considered one of the most effective management tools for identifying and assessing the environmental impacts related with waste management options. The aim of this study is the environmental assessment of three scenarios of municipal waste management system in Krakow city (Poland), limited to residual (non-selectively collected) waste. Under the first scenario residual waste is transferred to be landfilled at the modern, well equipped facility. Landfill gas is collected and converted into heat and electricity. Under the second scenario residual waste, without any pre-treatment, will be transferred to a planned thermal treatment plant, with energy recovery. The third scenario covers the mechanical biological treatment of residual waste with the biological stabilization (composting) of organic fraction and the production of the Refused Derived Fuel (RDF). After biological stabilization the compost is sent to be landfilled and RDF is combusted in a cement kiln. Other elements of the system for three scenarios: separate collection of recyclables, recycling of separately collected waste, dismantling bulky waste, composting garden waste are the same for the three scenarios and they are excluded from the system boundary. The modeling of the environmental impact is carried out with EASETECH model, developed by Technical University of Denmark, with employing EDIP 2003 methodology. The final results of modeling are presented as a normalized impact potential in the unit of person equivalent (PE). Results of modeling show that the negative impact for incineration is much lower than for landfilling. For landfilling the significant impact categories are: photochemical ozone formation and global warming (due to landfill gas emission, treatment and combustion) and also eutrophication, human toxicity (due to leachate). For incineration significant impact categories include: eutrophication, photochemical zone formation, acidification and human toxicity, mainly due to emission of nitrogen oxides from a stack of an incinerator. The lowest environmental impact is indicated for the mechanical biological treatment (MBT) scenario. This scenario contributes negatively to photochemical ozone formation (on human health and on vegetation) and positively to acidification and global warming. The highest share in the negative effect has landfilling of the low quality compost. The process contributing mainly for positive effect is the RDF combustion.The post-consumer tyres represent an important environmental concern, due to their enormous quantities resulted every year, which require important landfill spaces for disposal. To reduce this pressure on the environment, construction materials industry aims to find new products and applications, which can benefit from the useful proprieties of the main components of tyres (rubber, steel, and textiles). The first component which has been valorized is the recycled rubber extracted from tyres, used at present in various products like rubberized asphalt, roofing, traffic safety, playground surfacing, etc. Besides rubber, the current research activity is also referring to the recycling of steel and textile fibres. An extended research program was undertaken at the "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi, concerning the use of the recycled steel tyre-cord fibres as reinforcement in conventional concrete and roller-compacted concrete for transport pavements. The different pavement alternatives have been tested using the accelerated loading test facilities at the Civil Engineering Faculty of Iasi. The environmental performances of these alternative pavements solutions were also evaluated by life-cycle analysis, using the GaBi software. The paper presents the main results obtained in these studies.The paperwork is approaching different aspects related to the environment dimensions within the life cycle assessment of a ship. This scientific endeavors take under consideration environment issues related to the commercial ships, seen as a complex systems, integrated in economic and technical cycles, in line with shipbuilding and repairing shipyards, naval transports (maritime and riverine), port activities and its correlative activities. Thus, ships life cycle has been decomposed in successive or overlapping stages, as designing, building, exploiting and scrapping phases. For our LCA purposes was used Solid works software was chosen a ship model and a route, defined as work hypothesis. The proposed solutions are to lead to the impact decreasing against the environment, by optimization raw materials and energy consumption and by recycling processes incentive as to the end of operating processes.The aim of the study is to choose the variant of design optimization of existing drinking water treatment plant by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool. This plant is located in the Chelyabinsk region of Russian Federation. In this LCA we compared two water treatment technologies: conventional system and ultrafiltration (UF) with ozonation - activated carbon pretreatment. The software Sima Pro 8.0.2 has been used as the LCA analysis tool. Eco-Indicator 99 method has been applied. The results show that the UF is characterized by the high consumption of electricity. In conventional technology the electricity consumption is seen as efficient, but its chemical usage is seen as the major contributor to the reduction of environmental quality and human health.This paper provides a broad strokes perspective on the evolution for the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) within the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. This focus is mainly on the challenges faced to produce the needed inventory data and using the resulting LCA output in decision making, which are the backbone of any LCA estimation and practical application in industry. It also provides some of the insights the authors have derived over the last two decades of work in this area, and proposes a series of development needs within life cycle assessment as it becomes more integrated into decision-making in industry.Biodegradable agricultural films made of poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) are interesting alternatives to the most commonly used low-density polyethylene (LDPE) films. Photodegradation of both types of polymers can be prevented by the addition of UV stabilizers. To prevent leaching of the additives from the films, the stabilizers can be intercalated in layered double hydroxides (LDH). When LDHs are exfoliated in the polymer a nanocomposite is formed with improved material properties. An ex-ante cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted on the application of nanoclays in agricultural mulching films. The PBAT/LDH nanocomposite is compared with PBAT and LDPE, both of which had been UV-stabilized with the conventionally used compound Irganox 1010. Being key ingredients of the nanocomposites we prepare an ex-ante cradle-to-factory gate LCA for different nanoclay compositions containing surfactants and the non-toxic UV stabilizer p-hydroxycinnamic acid intercalated in LDH sheets. Among the nanoclays, the lowest environmental impact is achieved by LDHs based on magnesium oxide/hydroxide and aluminum oxide/hydroxide, with the surfactant stearate as the intercalated anion. Our comparative analysis of mulching films shows that the lowest non-renewable energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are obtained by LDPE films, which are recycled and incinerated with energy recovery after the second life cycle. However, recycling and energy recovery are not always applied, which makes the biodegradable PBAT an interesting alternative. Further study on the UV stability, tensile strength and bio-based feedstock for PBAT indicates that PBAT containing LDH and p-hydroxycinnamic acid can be an environmentally friendly alternative to LDPE agricultural films containing the UV stabilizer Irganox 1010.Environmental studies require both incremental and novel technical solutions. Both incremental and novel solutions have to fit in with societal, environmental and economic contexts. Moreover, they have to be robust to meet future uncertainties. E-learning has the capability to deliver these novel design solutions. We have developed a teaching method with this purpose in mind. The success of any course delivery is the practical translation of the competences mentioned by the UNESCO learning for the twenty-first century [1]: knowledge, design methods, internalization of values and communication with all relevant stakeholders. The authors of the present article investigated the effectiveness of two forms of workshops: (i) in a class delivered course with an integrated workshop where stakeholders are all present and (ii) through an e-learning delivered course with workshops targeted to specific stakeholders. Student feedback scores show no significant preference for either of the forms. With these and other evaluation results, the authors conclude that effective, challenging courses require a 360 degrees and regular feedback, which is pivotal for increased student satisfaction.Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) has recently emerged to address environmental concerns in production and service operations. Existing research has investigated environmental sustainability issues at isolated stages of a supply chain. This paper aims to address the GSCM strategic decision making issues in a coherent manner. The paper proposes an integrated sustainability analysis (ISA) approach which seamlessly integrates Life Cycle Assessment into Multi-Criteria Decision Making process. Application of the integrated approach to an industrial decision case demonstrates that the proposed approach can provide concerted scientific backup to efficiently and effectively support strategic decision making in GSCM. The ISA approach has the potential to enable true integration of environmental management responsibility across multiple stages of supply chains.The paper presents a from-cradle-to-grave LCA (Eco-Indicator 99, Egalitarian Approach) study for two domestic solar hot water systems (DSHWS): a traditional one with glazed panels and a system with unglazed solar collectors. Both systems are coupled with a 300-liters storage tank. The performed LCA returns an EI99 equal to 198.19 for the traditional glazed DSHWS and equal to 18.28 for the unglazed one. For each DSHWS the energy, CO2 and economic pay-back times were calculated for three different locations (Rome, Madrid and Munich) in order to take into account the influence of local climate on the solar panels yields. The payback times took as basis of comparison two competitive technologies: the natural gas and the electrical boiler. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).The environmental impacts analyses for the production of microalgal biomass include four key performance indicators: energy, water, carbon and land footprints. This work presents a life cycle optimization (LCO) model for microalgae production, taking into account these criteria for assessing different cultivation methods and carbon sources. The LCO model is formulated as a multiple objective linear program (MOLP), which is then solved to determine the Pareto optimal solutions. A hybrid approach is then developed where the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is integrated for determining the weights of the environmental output criteria. This approach enables a unique optimum to be determined for the microalgae system. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).Climate change is becoming a pressing issue for industries worldwide. Pollution, toxic products and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the main issues related to the leather industry as perceived by the public. Life cycle assessment (LCA) method is a practical tool used to evaluate the life cycle environmental impacts of a product. The focus of this study is the GHG emissions of finished bovine leather in a cradle to gate scenario. The global warming contributors in the life cycle of finished bovine leather are quantified and expressed as a carbon footprint. The inputs of raw materials including the raw hides are measured by mass, yet the outputs of the finished bovine leather are measured by surface area. Due to this specific nature of leather, the study focuses on the correlation of life cycle GHG emissions with the thickness of finished bovine leather. The final results conclude that the thickness of finished bovine leather has significant impacts to the carbon footprints. This study raises awareness of the tanneries and downstream footwear manufacturers to take thickness into account as an important factor for future life cycle environmental impact studies. In addition, this study also lays the groundwork for further product carbon footprint studies for not only tannery houses but also supply chains of the leather industry in Taiwan or Asia. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Existing research shows that lifestyle changes and sustainable consumption play an important role in global warming mitigation. One way to alter consumer behavior and make it more environmentally responsible is to enhance communication between all stakeholders, that is, producers, retailers, and consumers. This paper evaluates the GHG reduction potential of changing daily shopping behavior through behavioral transformation. Behaviorally transformative actions in this context cover select foods and daily necessities, and are analyzed here from a life cycle assessment perspective. We developed multiple product selection scenarios to evaluate GHG emissions related to the purchase of daily commodities. Based on life cycle assessment, we estimated GHG emissions from production and distribution both in terms of current product selection and possible improved selection. Among other results, our study shows that due to seasonal consumption and energy conversion, greenhouse fruits and vegetables have high potential to reduce GHG emission. The GHG reduction potential of each individual commodity is not high because daily commodities consist of a number of goods. However, combinations of various actions can achieve a high reduction potential. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.We conducted a project entitled "Achieving Climate Change Abatement and Comfortable Life by a Partnership between Forestry and Natural Material Housing (NMH) in Urban Areas," which aims to achieve carbon neutral housing by 2050 by linking forest management to the use of domestic wood in environmentally friendly Natural Materials Housing. In this paper, we conduct long term Life Cycle Assessment of CO2 emissions from afforestation stage to ultimate demolition of the house, encompassing the following stages: afforestation work and log cutting, lumber production, house building, use of the house (with main emissions coming from energy consumption for space heating and cooling, cooking, hot water supply, lighting, and appliances), repair, demolition, and waste treatment. Analysis results indicate that Life Cycle CO2 emissions from Natural Materials Housing are low, when compared with standard cases. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Liquid vehicle fuel from biomass is an effective alternative to relieve the intensive pressure of fossil energy depletion and greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions. To ensure optimal biomass-derived liquid fuels production, the environmental effects is necessary to he taken into account in regard to the production system. This paper provides a review of analysis of vehicle fuel in terms of two types of primary biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel) in China via life cycle assessment (LCA) technique in China to ascertain material and energy flow. The methodology utilized was WTW (well to wheel) module and pathways including soybean, jatropha, waste oil, corn, cassava and sugar grass. Combined with energy utilization and GHG indicators, several recommendations of biofuel production and policy were proposed. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The cement industry is a significant CO2 emitter mainly due to the calcinations of raw materials and the combustions of fuels. Some measures have been considered to reduce the CO2 emissions in cement industry, of which alternative raw materials are the most efficient practicing way. In this study, a LCA-based CO2 accounting framework with alternative raw materials was constructed to analyze the CO2 emissions from concrete with different kinds of low carbon substitution, within which cement production process was divided into six stages associated with the environmental impacts. A better routine is expected to understand the environmental hazards of cement products and to optimize the design to reduce adverse environmental impacts. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Despite the rapid growth of the U.S. biofuels industry over the last two decades, the United States is struggling to meet Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) targets. In addition to the challenge of producing biofuels at cost that is competitive with petroleum gasoline, an additional expense for ethanol emanates from enabling its consumption as the US fuel market encounters the E10 'blend wall' - the maximum blend acceptable for use in existing gasoline infrastructure and vehicles. Without 1) rapid technological innovation in drop-in biofuel production, 2) increased tolerance of ethanol blends in existing infrastructure and vehicle standards, or 3) revision of the RFS2 to become production-focused instead of consumption-focused, options for increasing the average blend beyond E10 must come from a) increased consumption of mid- to high-level ethanol-gasoline blends such as E30 or E85, and/or b) increased E15 consumption among operators of vehicles manufactured in 2001 or later. We highlight research, deployment, and policy considerations to improve national and global alternative fuel system energy and GHG efficiency, and evaluate economic and emissions trade-offs associated with technically feasible strategies to increase ethanol consumption. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).The world-wide effort to reduce the environmental impact associated to the industrial sector is quickly producing an increasing feedback on national and international decision makers. In this context, the analy sis of life-cycle based assessments on the main impact categories associated to the pre-production, production, assembly, use, and end-of life phases represents a powerful tool towards a holistic interpretation of the footprint from industrial buildings. The Italian prefabricated building sector, characterized, on average, by local enterprises with regional coverage, has been investigated in order to study the Carbon and Energy Footprints. Data from a large company, miming several facilities spread on the national territory, have been collected and analyzed in order to provide a parameterized evaluation of the GHG emission and the energy consumption associated to the single phases of the building life cycle as a function of the sensible design requirements. The quantification of the Carbon and the Energy footprint, associated to the prefabricated industrial building sector, is presented. The assessment procedure is performed through a parametric modeling of the building properties bases on the analy sis of different sizes and designs. A detailed discussion of the outputs is presented, including the comparison of the environmental performance depending on different construction requirements.To achieve both water conservation and climate change mitigation benefits, photovoltaic water pumping (PVWP) system, which employs solar energy to fuel the water pumping system, has been a widely adopted solar energy technology in the last two decades. Although the PVWP system is driven by direct renewable flux, and has no onsite CO2 emissions, there must be energy consumed during the production of PV modules and the operation of water pumping system. Thus, we estimated the CO2 emissions of a PVWP system in Inner Mongolia, China in a life cycle perspective. A hybrid Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which combines process-sum and economic input-out analysis was employed to reduce uncertainty. Results show that PVWP is a good choice for carbon emission reduction with carbon sequestration benefit much higher than the lifetime carbon emissions. The largest emitters are PV module and engineering, which should be the focus of carbon management of PVWP system. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).The construction industry consumes a significant amount of resources annually, generates significant waste and produces a host of emissions. This study develops a framework and integrates three different approaches - Lean, Green and Six Sigma - in a systematic approach with the goal of improving the quality and environmental impacts of the construction process. A case study of pile cap installation was conducted to illustrate the application of the framework and associated results. The study highlights two issues within the pile cap construction process responsible for waste: delay and potential errors in material estimation and ordering. It describes the environmental impact arising from waste, and analyzes the root causes behind waste generation to enable improved process performance. A survey of construction professionals regarding the causal factors of waste in everyday construction activities identified 'design changes during construction' as responsible for 60% of waste occurrences during construction and thus confirm results from the literature. In conclusion, the Lean-Green-Six Sigma framework offers a comprehensive, multi-stage approach for process improvement and minimization of life cycle environmental impacts.A modal shift to cycling has the potential to reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector. However, the carbon footprint of constructing new cycling routes, particularly greenways, has not been previously considered and has the potential to negate carbon savings of the modal shift of many commuters. This paper, using a case study of a greenway in Ireland, describes a methodology for calculating the carbon costs and savings associated with cycle route construction. By carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA), the case study greenway was found to embody 67.6 tCO(2)e/km; the carbon savings of shifting one passenger kilometre travelled (PKT) from driving a car to cycling were found to average 134 gCO(2)e. In the case study, a shift of 115 commuters per year (253,000 PKT) is required to 'balance' or offset the carbon footprint of one 10 km asphalt greenway (assuming a 20 year life cycle). The methodology presented can be used to ensure the efficient and sustainable design of cycle networks internationally.Despite of significant contributions of urban road transport to global economy and society, it is one of the largest sources of local and global emission impact. In order to address the environmental concerns of urban road transport it is imperative to achieve a holistic understanding of contributory factors causing emissions, which requires a complete look onto its whole life cycle. Previous studies were mainly based on segmental views, which mostly studied environmental impacts of individual transport modes and very few considered impacts other than operational phase. This study develops an integrated life cycle inventory model for urban road transport emissions from a holistic modal perspective. The Singapore case was used to demonstrate the model. Results show that total life cycle greenhouse gas emission from Singapore's road transport sector is 7.8 million tons per year. The total amount of criteria air pollutants are also estimated in this study.A major portion of municipal solid waste (MSW) is dumped in unsanitary landfills in India. To protect the environment, there is an urgent need to develop a technology which could handle the increasing MSW quantities and enhance resource recovery. Mechanical biological treatment (MBT) is considered a potential method for dealing with heterogenous MSW. Proper mechanical sorting can make the post-treatment (biological as well as thermal processes) much effective. In the manuscript, MSW sorting options for the eight most populous cities in India are evaluated using simplified material flow analysis. The analysis highlights that similar to 45-97% of the total MSW can be diverted from landfills by using the proposed schemes. Some alterations in the current waste collection and segregation practices can maximise the benefits from MBT process. The reported study is beneficial for waste managers dealing with similar type of MSW.The promotion of biofuels as energy for transportation in the industrialised countries is mainly driven by the perspective of oil depletion, concerns about energy security and global warming. Nevertheless, the production of biofuels entails emissions to the environment coming from the different stages in the product life cycle. This paper evaluates the environmental impact of pure rapeseed biodiesel (B100) production and consumption in the public transport sector, in terms of GHG emissions released by every stage in the life cycle, in order to identify proper interventions to reduce the emissions. The methodology applied to this purpose is an Attributional Life Cycle Analysis (ALCA). The Agricultural phase results to be the process that produces the highest GHG emissions, mainly because of the production and the use of nitrogen fertiliser.Rice harvesting and production generates a residual biomass that does not possess an environmentally sustainable disposition route; however, it could be an important carbon source for energetic processes. In this paper the energetic potential via cogeneration that can be obtained from the biogas resulting from the anaerobic treatment of the rice-harvesting wastes (rice straw), for the case of the Cuban Enterprise "Sur del Jabaro", is estimated. Through a life cycle analysis, an assessment of the environmental profile, when using this treatment alternative, is carried out. The results prove that with the anaerobic treatment of the rice straw available, it could be profitably obtained a potential to generate 10 MW of electrical power and 15 MW of thermal power. This would also decrease the total greenhouse gas emissions in Cuba by 0.2% and the equivalent emissions of the Cuban energetic sector by 3.2%.Recently, using a long-run refinery simulation model, Bredeson et al. conclude that the light transportation fuels have roughly the same CO2 footprint. And, any allocation scheme which shows substantial difference between gasoline and diesel CO2 intensities must be seen with caution. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the inappropriate modeling assumptions which lead to these inapplicable conclusions into the current oil refining context. From an economic point of view, optimization models are more suitable than simulation tools for providing decision policies. Therefore, we used a calibrated refinery linear programming model to evaluate the impact of varying the gasoline-to-diesel production ratio on the refinery's CO2 emissions and the marginal CO2 intensity of the automotive fuels. Contrary to Bredeson et al.'s conclusions, our results reveal that, within a calibrated optimization framework, total and per-product CO2 emissions could be affected by the gasoline-to-diesel production ratio. More precisely, in a gasoline-oriented market, the marginal CO2 footprint of gasoline is significantly higher than diesel, while the opposite result is observed within a diesel-oriented market. These two scenarios could reflect to some extent the American and the European oil refining industry for which policy makers should adopt a different per-product taxation policy. Any relevant and economic ground CO2 policies for automotive fuels should be sensitive to the environmental consequences associated with their marginal productions. This is especially true in disequilibrium markets where the average and marginal reactions could significantly differ. Optimization models, whose optimal solution is fully driven by marginal signals, show that the refinery's global and/or per-product CO2 emissions could be affected by the gasoline-to-diesel production ratio.The environmentally friendly construction of agricultural infrastructure is much needed for sustainable development because construction is recognized as a cause of environmental degradation. The objective of this study was to estimate and characterize carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions during construction of agricultural reservoir embankments for the quantitative environmental assessment and management of CO2 emissions using life cycle assessment method. Two reservoirs with different foundation treatment and construction components were selected in this study and their characteristics in CO2 emissions were compared. And CO2 emissions were calculated separately for each of the following major components: construction materials, equipment, and transport. The basic unit of CO2 emissions for construction materials was calculated using the 2009 input-output tables in Korea and the basic unit of CO2 emissions for equipment of transport and construction was also calculated based on the amount of fuel used in a unit time. According to the study results, the construction of a water supply process appeared to generate the most emissions among all processes for the two sites. Emissions due to equipment were the highest in site A, while materials generated the most emissions in site B. Differences in emissions are due to differences in the construction process. While the operation time of the equipment in site A increased due to the cofferdam process and a large amount of cement was used in the foundation process in site B. Characteristic of CO2 emissions differs with different construction processes and thus construction processes need to be optimized for environmental friendly development of agricultural infrastructure through estimation and characterization of CO2 emissions.The livestock sector has a major impact on the environment. This environmental impact may be reduced by feeding agricultural co-products (e.g. beet tails) to livestock, as this transforms inedible products for humans into edible products, e.g. pork or beef. Nevertheless, co-products have different applications such as bioenergy production. Based on a framework we developed, we assessed environmental consequences of using co-products in diets of livestock, including the alternative application of that co-product. We performed a consequential life cycle assessment, regarding greenhouse gas emissions (including emissions related to land use change) and land use, for two case studies. Case 1 includes increasing the use of wheat middlings in diets of dairy cattle at the expense of using it in diets of pigs. The decreased use of wheat middlings in diets of pigs was substituted with barley, the marginal product. Case 2 includes increasing the use of beet tails in diets of dairy cattle at the expense of using it to produce bioenergy. During the production of biogas, electricity, heat and digestate (that is used as organic fertilizer) were produced. The decrease of electricity and heat was substituted with fossil fuel, and digestate was substituted with artificial fertilizer. Using wheat middlings in diets of dairy cattle instead of using it in diets of pigs resulted in a reduction of 329 kg CO2 eq per ton wheat middlings and a decrease of 169 m(2) land. Using beet tails in diets of dairy cattle instead of using it as a substrate for anaerobic digestion resulted in a decrease of 239 kg CO2 eq per ton beet tails and a decrease of 154 m(2) land. Emissions regarding land use change contributed significantly in both cases but had a high uncertainty factor, +/- 170 ton CO2 ha(-1). Excluding emissions from land use change resulted in a decrease of 9 kg CO2 eq for case 1 'wheat middlings' and an increase of 50 kg CO2 eq for case 2 'beet tails'. Assessing the use of co-products in the livestock sector is of importance because shifting its application can reduce the environmental impact of the livestock sector. A correct assessment of the environmental consequences of using co-products in animal feed should also include potential changes in impacts outside the livestock sector, such as the impact in the bioenergy sector.This article provides life cycle inventory data for electricity distribution networks and a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the Danish transmission and distribution networks. The aim of the study was to evaluate the potential importance of environmental impacts associated with distribution, in current and future electricity systems. The functional unit was delivery of 1 kWh of electricity in Denmark. The focus of the assessment was distribution of electricity, and the related impacts were compared to the generation and transmission of electricity, in order to evaluate the importance of electricity distribution in Denmark. The 2010 Danish electricity distribution network was modeled, including power lines (50, 10, 0.4 kV), transformers (50/10 and 10/0.4 kV), and relevant auxiliary infrastructure (e.g., cable ditches, poles, and substations). Two types of 50 kV power lines (underground and overhead) and 0.4 kV (copper and aluminum) were modeled. Electricity transmission and distribution provided nonnegligible impacts, related mainly to power losses. Impacts from electricity distribution were larger than those from transmission because of higher losses and higher complexity and material consumption. Infrastructure provided important contributions to metal depletion and freshwater eutrophication (copper and aluminum for manufacturing of the cables and associated recycling being the most important). Underground 50-kV lines had larger impacts than overhead lines, and 0.4-kV aluminum lines had lower impacts than comparable copper lines. A new specific dataset for infrastructure in the distribution network was provided and used to evaluate the role of electricity distribution in Denmark. Both transmission and distribution provided nonnegligible impacts. It was argued that the impacts from electricity distribution are likely to increase in the future, owing to more renewables and decentralized electricity generation, and that impacts from infrastructure may become significant compared to electricity generation itself. It was recommended that impacts from electricity distribution and related infrastructure are included in relevant LCA studies. The data provided here make this possible.The aim of this paper is to highlight the challenges that face the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) for the development of emerging technologies. LCA has great potential for driving the development of products and processes with improved environmental credentials when used at the early research stage, not only to compare novel processing with existing commercial alternatives but to help identify environmental hotspots. Its use in this way does however provide methodological and practical difficulties, often exacerbated by the speed of analysis required to enable development decisions to be made. Awareness and understanding of the difficulties in such cases is vital for all involved with the development cycle. This paper employs three case studies across the diverse sectors of nanotechnology, lignocellulosic ethanol (biofuel), and novel food processes demonstrating both the synergy of issues across different sectors and highlighting the challenges when applying LCA for early research. Whilst several researchers have previously highlighted some of the issues with use of LCA techniques at an early stage, most have focused on a specific product, process development, or sector. The use of the three case studies here is specifically designed to highlight conclusively that such issues are prevalent to use of LCA in early research irrespective of the technology being assessed. The four focus areas for the paper are system boundaries, scaling issues, data availability, and uncertainty. Whilst some of the issues identified will be familiar to all LCA practitioners as problems shared with standard LCAs, their importance and difficulty is compounded by factors distinct to novel processes as emerging technology is often associated with unknown future applications, unknown industrial scales, and wider data gaps that contribute to the level of LCA uncertainty. These issues, in addition with others that are distinct to novel applications, such as the challenges of comparing laboratory scale data with well-established commercial processing, are exacerbated by the requirement for rapid analysis to enable development decisions to be made. Based on the challenges and issues highlighted via illustration through the three case studies, it is clear that whilst transparency of information is paramount for standard LCAs, the sensitivities, complexities, and uncertainties surrounding LCAs for early research are critical. Full reporting and understanding of these must be established prior to utilising such data as part of the development cycle.Granite is a traditional high-quality material that is widely used in construction. A key strategy that is increasingly promoted to highlight the competitiveness of materials is life cycle environmental performance. Due to the lack of comprehensive life cycle inventories (LCIs), the environmental characterisation of granite products has received little attention in scientific literature. In this paper, a complete LCI of the production chain of intermediate and finished granite products is provided and analysed. The Spanish granite production industry, which is the second major European producer and the seventh worldwide, is examined. The reference unit is defined as 1 m(2) of finished granite tiles with dimensions 60 x 40 x 2 cm used for indoor and outdoor applications. Input and output data were collected through the distribution of technical data collection surveys to quarries and processing facilities and via on-site visits. During data calculation and validation, technical support was provided by technicians from the Spanish Cluster of Granite Producers. The LCI data describe the industrial activity in baseline year 2010 that corresponds to a total production volume of 48,052 m(3) of quarried granite and a net of 881,406 m(2) of processed granite. The production of 1 m(2) of polished granite tiles requires 28 kWh of electricity, 23 MJ of diesel, 103 l of water, and 7 kg of ancillary materials. Sandblasted, flamed or bush-hammered finishes applied to granite tiles have a minimal effect on their total energy and material requirements but significantly affect their water consumption. Electrical energy, cooling water and steel are the major industrial requirements in which granite sawing is the most demanding process. The resource efficiency of the production chain is 0.31. Approximately 117 kg of granite are wasted per square meter of granite tiles that are produced (53 kg). Seventy-four percent of granite waste is composed of granite scrap, which becomes a marketable by-product. The predominant source of granite waste is the sawdust that is generated during stone-cutting operations. LCIs provide the relevant information required to characterise the environmental performance of granite production and products. LCI data can be easily managed by users due to the disaggregation into unit processes. LCI data can be used to analyse the environmental burden associated with intermediary granite products, such as granite blocks, sawn granite slabs and finished granite slabs, and to analyse the environmental burden of finished granite tiles according to the corresponding net production volumes. LCI dataset of granite production should be extended to include alternative production technologies, such as diamond multiwire machines for sawing granite, which is an increasingly competitive production technology with interesting properties for cleaner production. Strong competitive granite industries, such as the industries in China, India and Brazil, should also provide LCIs of granite products to transparently compare different product chains, identify environmental strategies on the sector level, and promote the green procurement of granite products.The aim of the paper is to estimate life cycle costs (LCC) of the current housing stock in the UK as part of sustainability assessment of the residential construction sector. This is carried out by first estimating the life cycle costs of individual houses considering detached, semi-detached and terraced homes. These results are then extrapolated to the UK housing stock consisting of seven million each of semi-detached and terraced houses and four million of detached houses. A brief discussion of life cycle environmental impacts is also included to help identify improvement opportunities for both costs and impacts. The life cycle costing methodology followed in the study is congruent with the life cycle assessment methodology. The system boundary for the study is from 'cradle to grave', including all activities from extraction and manufacture of construction materials to construction and use of the house to its demolition. The functional unit is defined as the construction and occupation of a house in the UK over the lifetime of 50 years. The total life cycle costs are estimated at A 247,000 pound for the detached house, A 192,000 pound for the semi-detached and A 142,000 pound for the terraced house. The running costs in the use stage contribute 52 % to the total life cycle costs of which half is from energy use. The construction costs contribute 35 % to the total LCC with the walls and the roof being the most expensive items. The remaining 13 % of the costs are incurred at the end of life of the house which are largely (85 %) due to the cost of labour for demolition. Recovery of end-of-life materials has a limited potential to reduce the overall life cycle costs of a house. The life cycle costs of the whole housing stock are estimated at A 67 pound billion per year or A 3,360 pound billion over the 50-year lifetime. The existing housing stock in the UK is facing a number of challenges that will need to be addressed in the near future. These include improving energy efficiency and reducing the dependency on fossil fuels to reduce energy demand, fuel poverty and environmental impacts. Furthermore, the disparity between the construction costs and house market prices will need to be addressed to ensure that access to housing and house ownership do not become the privilege of a few.Wind energy installations in Greece are increasing rapidly as a means to achieve the national goal for increasing the renewables' share in the country's energy balance. However, wind farm installations are not impact free from the environmental standpoint. The present study examines the cradle-to-grave impacts of a wind farm in central Greece composed of four, 850 MW each, wind turbines. Life cycle inventory data were obtained from secondary sources and the CML 2 baseline 2000 ready-made method was utilized for the environmental assessment in nine impact categories. The results indicate an intensity index of 4.1 kg CO2 eq. per MWh along with an energy payback time of 7 months. Towers, nacelles and the foundations of the turbines are the wind farm components that cause the most environmental impacts. However, key impact categories associated with energy, such as alteration of local climate, killing of birds and bats, noise and visual impact are not assessed. Despite the limitation of the study, the major conclusion is that electricity generation from wind power is environmentally preferable compared to the current electricity generation mix in Greece.The purpose of this paper is to assess the environmental performance and burdens of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The RFID application involves additional environmental impacts to the life cycle of the product to which it is applied. Environmental burdens are caused, for instance, by the emissions and energy requirements that occur during the tag production, transportation and disposal. At the same time, when RFID technology is applied to tag fresh food products, some environmental benefits can be achieved. As an example, food waste can be reduced by optimizing the supply chain processes; therefore, the related environmental impacts can be avoided. The environmental sustainability of the RFID technology is evaluated through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, considering its application to a fresh product, namely fresh milk. The assessment was made exploiting the midpoint indicators recommended in the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, edited by the Joint Research Centre of European Commission. Results show that the RFID application reduces the environmental impacts in all the categories considered, and that, overall, the environmental benefits resulting from the food waste reduction significantly overcome the tag impacts (more than 5 times). Given the lack of studies focusing on the environmental impact of RFID technology, this work might represent an important addition to the literature.Assessing the sustainability of large public investment projects within the general framework of three-pillar thinking is a complex affair. Such ventures involve multiple actors - e.g. planners from various disciplines such as engineers, economists and social scientists, in addition to politicians, users and other people affected - each carrying with them particular agendas and priorities, and corresponding understandings of the concept of sustainability. In this paper, we propose to frame the concept of sustainability assessment within the context of investment projects, in order to enable communication between the multiple actors, to assess different impacts of an investment project against one another in a meaningful way and, ultimately, to enhance the commensurability of investment project alternatives. Our main idea is that there exist different levels according to which the assessment of sustainability ought to refer - operational, tactical and strategic - and that properly addressing these levels can permit the different actors to comprehend one another, and thereby allow for more clarity and positive action.The construction industry is a critical sector in relation to sustainable development as its optimisation in terms of the consumption of resources can provide significant environmental benefits. To achieve this, a number of tools and methodologies have been developed to assist decision making. Life cycle assessment is one of the most acknowledged and widely used methodologies to assess the sustainability of construction works. Its efficient use, however, requires environmental data that in some cases are not yet available. Especially for sectors such as steel construction in which the potential for sustainable development is increased due to the recycling and reuse potential of the material, the lack of such data slows sustainability-related progress down. The current research addresses this issue by collecting primary environmental data for cold-formed structural steel and compiling the required data-sets. The data-sets are used to assess the environmental impact of an existing steel building and identify how and to what extent the environment is burdened by its construction. The findings of the research include the aforementioned environmental data which can be used in environmental analyses related to construction projects, while additional conclusions concerning the environmental impact of steel buildings in terms of quantity and type were also drawn.Electronic and electric devices are now applied in most human activities: their diffusion is increasing worldwide; furthermore, most of them are characterized by a high replacement rate due to technological obsolescence. Consequently, environmental problems due to their diffusion are increasing; several aspects are involved from the energy consumption derived from their manufacturing processes and their use phases to their end-of-life (EOL) management. Such legislative (e.g. the European Energy Efficiency directive for household appliances) or voluntary interventions (e.g. based on the ISO standards) have been introduced for such devices: the aim is to incorporate environmental considerations in product design and manufacturing in order to benefit the environment. Some attempts are focusing on defining standardized models for the overall lifecycle including waste management. The aim of this paper is to introduce a reference model for comparing environmental product footprint of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE). All life cycles of EEE will be evaluated: a specific focus is on the EOL management process as their waste management represents a complex problem for developed and developing countries. A multi-criteria decision-making model will be developed based on the well-known analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method: differently from traditional AHP applications, an absolute model has been proposed in order to compare EEE effectively from an environmental point of view. A case study validation regarding large household appliances is proposed.This study reports on a detailed investigation into the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the construction process of multistory wooden buildings relative to the other life cycle stages: the material production and operation stages. The results showed that the construction stage accounts for 20-30% of the initial embodied emissions and 6-10% of the total emission of the included life cycle stages. Especially the transport process of building components seems to have higher potential to mitigate the emissions than the actual construction work. In addition, the emissions from different construction systems were studied based on the reference buildings. Although definitive conclusion would be difficult to be drawn from this study alone due to the small sample size and the assumptions made, prefabrication work seems to be a more efficient construction method compared to on-site work for wooden buildings.Guar (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L.) is a spring summer legume with a high drought tolerance, grown mainly in India, Pakistan, United States and South Africa, whose seeds contain galactomannans. These can be used as an emollient, softening or thickening agent. a flocculant, as well as in hydraulic fracturing, and as a stabiliser in a wide range of other industrial activities: the production of cosmetics, paper, textiles, paints and varnishes, detergents, in construction, and in food products (jams jellies, yogurt, mayonnaise, ketchup, diet foods, foods for coeliacs. etc.). In the light of a growing industrial demand for guar flour, in May 2012 a trial was carried out in southern Italy. Seeds from South Africa were sown in large plots on two farms with different soil characteristics. The crop showed yields varying between 1.8 and 22 t ha I. Agronomic results were then used to conduct an integrated sustainability analysis using the production cost analysis and the life cycle assessment, in order to assess, respectively, the cost-effectiveness and the environmental impact of the production process of guar in a Mediterranean environment. Compared to other competitive crops. guar, with less than 3000 kg of CO2 eq. emissions, can be considered as a low-emission crop. Given the above-mentioned yield, guar growing is economically sustainable when the purchase price of seeds is not less than 0.96 kg(-1).Like any other manufactured chemical compounds, explosives are produced using chemical reactants and other utilities (steam, heat, compressed air, feed water and electricity) and generate a set of environmental impacts (waste water, solid and water residue and waste heat, for example). On top of that, one can count the intrinsic hazard characteristic of explosives and the possibility of accidents involving these compounds. Within this framework, explosives present themselves as chemical compounds suitable for both LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment). This LCI study takes into account all the raw materials, utilities and wastes taking place during the production process. In this particular article, lead azide has its processed mapped and inventoried under the scope of ISO 14040. ISO 14040: 2006 describes the principles and framework for life cycle assessment (LCA), including: definition of the goal and scope of the LCA, the life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis phase, the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase, the life cycle interpretation phase, reporting and critical review of the LCA, limitations of the LCA, the relationship between the LCA phases and conditions for use of value choices and optional elements. The Lead azide was chosen due its singular explosive characteristics (very sensitive, which makes lead azide the explosive of choice as a primer in several applications. The results and conclusions of this study are drawn from the review of the process, its analysis, as well as from the application of life cycle inventory methods upon the manufactory of lead azide, a highly sensitive primer explosive, providing solid ground for the further studies, such as a full LCA assessment. Furthermore, for explosives, most LCA research works aims towards disposal, not addressing manufacturing, which is the main strength of this work.The aim of this work is to evaluate the sustainability, in terms of greenhouse gases emission saving, of a new potential bio-ethanol production chain in comparison with the most common ones. The innovation consists of producing bio-ethanol from different types of no-food grapes, while usually bio-ethanol is obtained from matrices taken away from crop for food destination: sugar cane, corn, wheat, sugar beet. In the past, breeding programs were conducted with the aim of improving grapevine characteristics, a large number of hybrid vine varieties were produced and are nowadays present in the Viticulture Research Centre (CRA-VIT) Germplasm Collection. Some of them are potentially interesting for bio-energy production because of their high production of sugar, good resistance to diseases, and ability to grow in marginal lands. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of grape ethanol energy chain was performed following two different methods: i) using the spreadsheet BioGrace, developed within the Intelligent Energy Europe program to support and to ease the Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC implementation; ii) using a dedicated LCA software. Emissions were expressed in CO2 equivalent (CO(2)eq). These two tools gave very similar results. The overall emissions impact of ethanol production from grapes on average is about 33 g CO(2)eq MJ(-1) of ethanol if prunings are used for steam production and 53 g CO(2)eq MJ(-1) of ethanol if methane is used. The comparison with other bio-energy chains points out that the production of ethanol using grapes represents an intermediate situation in terms of general emissions among the different production chains. The results showed that the sustainability limits provided by the normative are respected to this day. On the contrary, from 2017 this production will be sustainable only if the transformation processes will be performed using renewable sources of energy.Purpose - In this paper, of exploratory character, the purpose of this paper is to propose the analysis of the life cycle for assessing the environmental, economic, and social impact in the activity of recovery, restoration, and valorization of Cultural Heritage. Design/methodology/approach - The analysis protocol is applied to the case of recovery and restoration processes and then outlining the salient features of what may become a model of Cultural Heritage Life Cycle Management (CH-LCM). Findings - The authors propose the approach of the life cycle, normally used to assess the impact of materials, processes or products, to the management of cultural heritage as an innovative methodology with great potential. Originality/value - The methodology for this sector is highly innovative, especially in its interdisciplinary approach, through the use of different technical, historical, and economic skills which can provide the tools for the preparation of a management plan according to the logic of the life cycle.The following article is an analysis of designed process of manufacturing a mixture of 50% rapeseed oil and 50% alcohol and using it as a fuel. The analyzed eco-fuel is completely based on renewable sources, and can be a good alternative to diesel fuel. The analysis was made according to the assumptions of Life Cycle Assessment, which is a method that divides the whole life cycle of the product into the unit processes. It is used especially for measuring the environmental impact of the product. The life cycle of fuel mixture in an amount of 10 000 l was divided into six unit processes: the production of oilseed and biomass on the farm, transport of rapeseed to oil extraction works, oil production, the production of alcohol from biomass, the transport of mixture into a transport company and the use of total fuel delivered by the company. The use of energy and the amount of pollutants emitted were particularly important in the analysis. Fuel mixture, the same as the analyzed, was used during the whole designed process. In the production of rape on a farm the tractor and the harvester were used, and caused highest emissions of pollutants during all steps involved in the production of fuel. Alcohol, the component of the mixture, was produced through the fermentation of biomass that cames from waste from rapeseed processing, which caused no energy consumption or emissions. The analysis shows that total emissions of harmful gases is lower than that of conventional diesel, which proves that the tested fuel mixture is more environmentally friendly.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework to evaluate the sustainability of product at design and development phase in the modern manufacturing system. Design/methodology/approach - A detailed examination over the literatures reveals that the current frameworks that are available to measure overall product sustainability do not effectively address all aspects of sustainability to full extent. An integrated model encompassing the approaches such as environmentally conscious quality function deployment (ECQFD), life cycle assessment (LCA) and sustainability analysis has been proposed. Findings - The eco-friendly option as well as the component with high remanufacturing feasibility has been found. Also, the environmental impact of the component has been found. Research limitations/implications - The integrated model has been test implemented in a single manufacturing organisation. In future, more number of studies could be conducted to ensure the practical feasibility. Practical implications - The integrated model has been applied to an Indian organization manufacturing automotive assemblies. The case study also addresses the re-manufacturing feasibility of the product with validating the results at each step. Originality/value - The study is the outcome of deploying integrated sustainability framework model in a manufacturing organisation. Hence, the contributions and findings are original.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated technical and economic model to evaluate the reusability of products or components. Design/methodology/approach - Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied to obtain the product's environmental performance. Monte Carlo simulation is utilized for enabling sustainable product design. Findings - The results show that the model is capable of assessing the potential reusability of used products, while the usage of simulation significantly increases the effectiveness of the model in addressing uncertainties. Research limitations/implications - The case study has been conducted in a single manufacturing organization. The implications derived from the study are found to be practical and useful to the organization. Practical implications - The paper reports a case study carried out for an Indian rotary switches manufacturing organization. Hence, the model is practically feasible. Originality/value - The article presents a study that investigates LCA and simulation as enablers of sustainable product design. Hence, the contributions of this article are original and valuable.Purpose: The aim of this paper is to provide methods to find the emission source and estimate the amount of waste gas emissions in the electricity coal supply chain, establish the model of the environmental impact (burden) in the electricity coal supply chain, detect the critical factor which causes significant environmental impact, and then identify the key control direction and reduce amount of environmental pollution in the electricity coal supply chain. Design/methodology/approach: In this context, life cycle inventory and life cycle assessment of China's electricity coal were established in three difference stages: coal mining, coal transportation, and coal burning. Then the outcomes were analyzed with the aim to reduce waste gases emissions' environmental impact in the electricity coal supply chain from the perspective of sensitivity analysis. Findings: The results and conclusion are as follow: (1) In terms of total waste gas emissions in electricity coal supply chain, CO2 is emitted in the greatest quantity, accounting for 98- 99 wt% of the total waste gas emissions. The vast majority of the CO2, greater than 93%, is emitted from the power plant when the coal is combusted. (2) Other than CO2, the main waste gas is CH4, SO2 and so on. CH4 is mainly emitted from Coal Bed Methane (CBM), so the option is to consider capturing some of the CH4 from underground mines for an alternative use. SO2 is mainly emitted from power plant when the coal is combusted. (3) The environmental burden of coal burning subsystem is greatest, followed by the coal mining subsystem, and finally the coal transportation subsystem. Improving the coal- burning efficiency of coal- fired power plant in electricity coal supply chain is the most effective way to reduce the environmental impact of waste gas emissions. (4) Of the three subsystems examined (coal mining, coal transportation, and coal burning), transportation requires the fewest resources and has the lowest waste gas emissions. However, the energy consumption for this subsystem is significant (excluding the mine mouth case), and transportation distance is found to have a substantial effect on the oil consumption and non- coal energy consumption. (5) In electricity coal supply chain, the biggest environmental impact of waste gas emissions is GWP, followed by EP, AP, POCP and ODP, and regional impact is greater than the global impact. Practical implications: The model and methodology established in this paper could be used for environmental impact assessment of waste gas emissions in electricity coal supply chain and sensitivity analysis in China, and it could supply reference and example for similar researches. The data information on life cycle inventory, impact assessment and sensitivity analysis could supply theory and data reference for waste gas emissions control in electricity coal supply chain. Originality/value: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to study the environmental influence of electricity coal supply chain by employing a LCA approach from life cycle of electricity coal.Bacterial resistance to antimicrobials has become one of the greatest challenges for clinical microbiologists and health-care practitioners worldwide. Acquisition of resistance genes has proven to be difficult to characterize and is largely uncontrollable in the environment. Here we sought to characterize conjugal horizontal gene transfer of plasmid-encoded fluoroquinolone resistance genes from two strains of Enterobacteriaceae, one clinical and one from a municipal waste-water treatment plant environment. Conjugation was dissimilar between the two strains. Escherichia coli strain LR09, containing a plasmid with the aac(6 ')-lb-cr fluoroquinolone resistance gene, did not conjugate with any of the 15 strains tested, while Enterobacter aerogenes strain YS11 conjugated with two strains of E. coli. The resultant transconjugants were also dissimilar in their stability and potential persistence. The observations presented herein exemplify the difficulties in understanding and controlling the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Thus, it may be prudent to address drug disposal and destruction, incorporating a life-cycle assessment plan 'from cradle to grave', treating antimicrobials as chemical or environmental contaminants. (C) 2014 S. Karger AG, BaselEnvironmental mandates, energy security concerns, and societal demands place considerable pressure on automotive manufacturers to develop novel powertrain technologies that reduce energy consumption, and in turn, carbon emissions. The economic case for these novel technologies is far from clear, however, and firms often turn to the respective national governments for R&D aid and demand-side subsidies. Government on the other hand often feels unable to back any single technology for competition regulatory reasons, while at the same time being presented with conflicting messages from industry where to focus its support. This paper reports on an initiative by the U.K. Government that led to the establishment of a permanent forum for government-industry exchange, the Automotive Council U.K., in which the author has participated from the outset. In the course of the Council's work, two consensus roadmaps have been developed jointly by industry and the U.K. Government to guide national efforts in the transition for both passenger car and commercial vehicle powertrain technologies toward low-carbon alternatives. This paper discusses the key technological development stages and projections outlined in these technology roadmaps and comments on the general determinants of an effective interaction between government and industry in the light of a technological discontinuity.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present the prerequisites for a part-out-based spares provisioning (PBSP) programme during the phase-out of an aircraft fleet. Furthermore, associated key decision criteria are identified and a framework for the phase-out management process is presented. Design/methodology/approach - Once a decision has been taken to phase-out an aircraft fleet, a number of routines for operations, maintenance and storage are affected and new tasks and functions must be introduced before initiating the actual parting-out process. A decision-making system and a management framework is needed to manage spares planning during the end-of-life phase to ensure availability at minimum cost and to ensure a manageable risk of backorders. Findings - For PBSP programme during the phase-out of an aircraft fleet to succeed and be cost-effective, a number of linked processes, tasks and decisions are required, e.g., those included in the framework proposed in this paper (see Figure 3). A successful implementation of PBSP also requires that these processes and tasks are carried out in a timely manner and that the communications between the concerned parties are prompt, clear and direct. One experience from the studied case is that close and trustful contacts and cooperation between the operator and maintenance provider(s) will greatly facilitate the process. Originality/value - Although the PBSP method is fairly commonly applied within both the military and the civilian sector, somewhat surprisingly very literature has been published on the subject. Indeed, remarkably little has been published on any aspects of maintenance during the end-of-life period.The goal of guiding innovation toward beneficial social and environmental outcomes - referred to in the growing literature as responsible research and innovation (RRI) - is intuitively worthwhile but lacks practicable tools for implementation. One potentially useful tool is life-cycle assessment (LCA), which is a comprehensive framework used to evaluate the environmental impacts of products, processes, and technologies. However, LCA ineffectively promotes RRI for at least two reasons: (1) Codified approaches to LCA are largely retrospective, relying heavily on data collected from mature industries with existing supply chains and (2) LCA underemphasizes the importance of stakeholder engagement to inform critical modeling decisions which diminishes the social credibility and relevance of results. LCA researchers have made piecemeal advances that address these shortcomings, yet there is no consensus regarding how to advance LCA to support RRI of emerging technologies. This paper advocates for development of anticipatory LCA as non-predictive and inclusive of uncertainty, which can be used to explore both reasonable and extreme-case scenarios of future environmental burdens associated with an emerging technology. By identifying the most relevant uncertainties and engaging research and development decision-makers, such anticipatory methods can generate alternative research agenda and provide a practicable tool to promote environmental RRI.Although not without its critics, considerable recognition has been given to the climate cooling benefits provided by storing carbon from biomass in various storage pools. However, it has recently been found that depending on the storage pool/period and source of biomass, the associated climate impacts may be a burden or a benefit. It is important that carbon accounting schemes and life cycle assessment practitioners take these carbon/CO2 flux dynamics and the climate impacts that they create into consideration. In this work we illustrate these climate impacts with a Norwegian case study using a material flow analysis of the biogenic carbon in harvested wood products derived from a 2006 harvest year. We illustrate the dynamic carbon balance over time and show how the climate impacts can diverge greatly between two well-known climate impact metrics: global warming potential (GWP) and global temperature potential (GTP). We also show how these climate impacts can be attributed to contributing parties with an example of a glue laminated beam value chain which is stored in a long-lived building. We discuss the associated attribution issues that will inevitably arise and we offer recommendations on how best to minimize them.As population and water demand increase, there is a growing need for alternative water supplies from water reuse and desalination systems. These systems are beneficial to water augmentation; however, there are concerns related to their carbon footprint. This study compiles the reported carbon footprint of these systems from existing literature, recognizes general trends of carbon footprint of water reuse and desalination, and identifies challenges associated with comparing the carbon footprint. Furthermore, limitations, challenges, knowledge gaps, and recommendations associated with carbon footprint estimation tools are presented. Reverse osmosis (RO) technologies were found to have lower CO2 emissions than thermal desalination technologies and the estimated carbon footprint of seawater RO desalination (0.4-6.7 kg CO(2)eq/m(3)) is generally larger than brackish water RO desalination (0.4-2.5 kg CO(2)eq/m(3)) and water reuse systems (0.1-2.4 kg CO(2)eq/m(3)). The large range of reported values is due to variability in location, technologies, life cycle stages, parameters considered, and estimation tools, which were identified as major challenges to making accurate comparisons. Carbon footprint estimation tools could be improved by separating emissions by unit process, direct and indirect emissions, and considering the offset potential of various resource recovery strategies.Agriculture in Australia contributed 15.5% of total national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced in 2009, mainly as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). In this study, a new tool (Feedlot greenhouse gas accounting framework also known as F-GAF) incorporating all components of the GHG emissions produced from feedlot systems was demonstrated. The objective of developing the F-GAF was to create awareness of the various sources of GHG emissions from feedlots in order to stimulate thinking and action aimed at reducing these emissions while further improving farming efficiency. It was found that the main source of total GHG emissions was CH4 from enteric fermentation, contributing around 60% of the total emissions. The N2O emissions were mainly produced from manure and contributed 30% of the total emissions. The F-GAF can be used as a practical tool to calculate GHG emissions from feedlot systems. Further studies can be conducted to incorporate mitigation options into the tool.Shortage of fossil fuels and global oil crisis are leading many national energy authorities to switch from traditional fuels to other renewable ones. On the other hand, in several western countries - due to an increasing environmental awareness - public acceptance of traditional power plants (e.g., coal or fired oil) is steadily decreasing, mostly because of their significant environmental pressures. Decision makers' activities need to be supported by objective tools, which must be designed to be able to select the best alternative in order to achieve some prefixed goals. Therefore, in the present study, a tool is proposed to support decision makers: it is based on Life Cycle Assessment data from seven different power plants (coal, fired oil, fired gas, nuclear, wind, solar and hydroelectric), to understand what is taken into in terms of material fluxes, and how much it costs in a specific context. Consequently, an Analytic Hierarchy Process has been proposed to select which one might be the best alternative in function of the considered scale and ten environmental criteria. The proposed procedure aims to evaluate different power plants and identify the most environmentally sustainable one in function of plant construction and operation phases. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose - When comparing renewables with fossil fuels, emotional approaches are fuelled by the difficulties in defining a proper metric able to make consistent comparisons among energy sources. In literature several approaches have been proposed, all effective in some way but ineffective in others. Variables like energy density, prices, estimated resources, life time emissions, water use and waste, all come at the same time to form an unmanageable mix. This paper discuss the adoption of a shared metric to clarify the boundary conditions that limit the solutions can be operated and to define which scenarios are sustainable and which are not. Design/methodology/approach - Energy density and power density are the cornerstones of the physical limitations in the exploitation of the energy sources. On this basis, a novel classification of energy sources, volumetric and flowing, has been proposed and discussed in light of three parameters: abundance, power density and sustainability. Eventually, an extended definition of power density based on life-cycle assessment is adopted. Findings - Sustainable power density makes possible compare the different energy options and shows how limitation in land comes to be the root of all resources limitations. Originality/value - A definition of a unique parameter is proposed and pros and cons of all energy options are calculated and put in a single graphic providing new insights into the energy policy.Purpose - to ensure sustainable development of the territory and incentives to increase the "green" building by improving the competitiveness of the buildings that have higher environmental and economic performance at all stages of the life cycle. A systematic analysis of standards of "green" building and the existing methodologies for life cycle assessment back. Developed and studied environmental-economic model of the life cycle of the building effectively, by identifying and organizing the quantitative and qualitative characteristics and to calculate the total cost of the building. These issues are discussed in this article. Relevance of the topic. Buildings are used around the world about 40% of the primary energy consumption, 67% of all electricity, 40% of the total raw material and 14% of potable water, and produce 35% of carbon dioxide and about half of all municipal solid waste. If the entire area of the urban area of the Earth in 1980 was 4.69 mln.km2, it is projected in 2070 it will reach 19 mln.km2, or 12.8% of the total and more than 20% of the land area liveable. Russia, in spite of a significant area of its total land area is highly urbanized state where urban and peri-urban population of 109 million people, or 74% of the total population. The trend of increasing urban population persists because of political, social, economic and other reasons. For the vast majority of modern cities is an urgent problem crudely-designed urban spaces, poor-quality housing and facilities - poor lighting and ventilation, expensive maintenance and high energy consumption, poor landscaping, ill-conceived transport infrastructure as a result of water pollution of rivers, huge unorganized garbage dumps, decline of biological diversity, the burning of fossil fuels - is only a small part of the illiterate urban policy. The tasks that need to be addressed to achieve the goal justification of "green" building, as an effective tool for sustainable development of the territory on which the construction site is located; identify the benefits of certification of buildings and structures in accordance with "green" standards for investors, property owners, developers, designers and management companies, as well as for the environment, human health and society; exploration and development of international rating systems for the assessment of objects "green" building, the informational approach to the design and construction of buildings on the basis of the methodology of life cycle assessment; development of environmental-economic model of the life cycle performance of buildings, taking into account the total cost, determined by quantitative and qualitative indicators and characteristics of "green" building; study of ecological and economic model of the life cycle of the building, and writing effective algorithm for calculating the present value of owning an apartment building with the introduction of a score of "green" building - the coefficient of "greenness"; development of guidelines on the use of environmental-economic model for the State Corporation - Assistance Foundation and the reform of public utilities; testing and implementation of the model on real construction sites.In this article we expand the analysis previously proposed [L. d'Andrea, A. Declich, F. Feudo, Hidden societal implications of materials, Updating the awareness on what is at stake, Materiaux & Techniques, 102 (2014) 504] concerning the link between materials and modernity, particularly the role of materials in the process of construction of modernity. On the basis of this relationship, we will deal with two interconnected issues. In the first part, we discuss, albeit in general terms, the role played by sociological research in understanding science and technology. This allows us to highlight the deep transformations that the relationship between science and society has undergone in past decades. In the second part, we introduce both the current state and possible future developments of the sociological study of materials, considering trends emerging in the complex relationship between science, technology and society. This also lead us to reflect on some (more practical than theoretical) implications of a sociological approach to materials (relevant, for example, for Life Cycle Assessment).In a sociological perspective, materials are to be viewed as the focus of social relations. Actually, materials are activated by and even created within social relation systems and in turn they create and activate new social relation systems connected to i.e. their extraction, production, use, management, reuse, recycling and disposal. On the basis of various European research projects carried out by the authors, the paper will be aimed at analyzing such social relations in the framework of the innovation cycle which necessarily involves a large number of societal actors, including research institutions, technological developers, industries, financial institutions, political players, civil society organizations, professional groups and local communities. Since from beginning of the innovation cycle, two sets of societal relations can be identified. The first set can be referred to as the societal technological process. Any product and material, to be discovered or imagined and then developed, produced, marketed and managed, necessarily required the creation and development of social practices and interactions closely intertwined with the scientific and technological activities. In this sense, any product and material are the result of a socio-technical system, in which the boundaries between the social dimension and the technological dimension are blurred. The second set can be called the societal political process. This includes all dynamics of a political nature (local, national, transnational) connected with a product and material, such decision-making, adoption of standards, fund raising and management, or power relations between political and administrative levels. Both this components are necessary. In fact, they are the upstream factors allowing a material to actually exist in social, economic and technological terms (otherwise they should remain an inactive and unexploitable physical matter) and often in physical terms (in that case materials simply should not even exist at all). Taking into consideration such upstream dynamics allows to perceive under a different perspective the same nature and features of the life cycle of a material and product as well as to go beyond the presently adopted social life cycle assessment practices. As for the downstream aspects, they usually are referred to as social impacts. Certainly, any product and material has direct impacts on different aspects of social life (e.g. working environment, wages, quality of life, consumption patterns). However, materials are also part (and often the core) of social regimes aimed at turning uncontrolled and partially unknown dangers into at least partially managed and measurable risks. Dangers can be of physical nature (e.g. energy shortage, illness, water shortage, etc.) as well as of social nature (social conflicts, poverty, threatens to personal rights, etc.). As any regimes, materials and products in turn inevitably generate new dangers requiring further regimes to be managed. Viewing materials as part of this dynamics turning around the triadic relation between dangers, social regimes and risks could be helpful for going beyond the social life cycle assessment. In the final part of the paper, the issue of the co-evolution between science and society (and therefore between materials and human agency) will be deepened and some considerations will be made on what is at stake with a more aware understanding of the intertwined interactions between materials and social relations. In the last years a growing attention has been paid -also by European institutions -to the social dimension of materials and technologies. Yet with the 6th and 7th European Framework Research Programme and, with more emphasis, with the coming programme Horizon 2020, European institutions have developed policies that are more and more focused on the tight interaction between research and those society sectors (private sector, civil society, professional network, Local Authorities, etc.) that are more involved in innovation processes. The objective of these policies is to make Member States more competitive and able to valorize scientific and technological research, both at the economic and social levels. For a long time there has been a widespread impression that an effective control is lacking on the effects of new technologies and materials over, for example, climate, environment, health and also especially, after the exponential diffusion of the Internet - on the relations between individuals and on the governance of collective life. This impression contributed to strengthen the belief that technology is something that is exogenous to social life and that is able to affect -more or less strongly -the normal course of the events. We cannot avoid to notice, however, that this idea of "exogeneity" of technology tends, paradoxically, to reinforce in a moment in which, as never before, the presence of science and technology in society is strong and pervasive to the extent that some technologies -in sectors such as health, transport or information -have become an essential part of the framework in which modern life develops. As we will see below, materials are an integral part of this dynamics since they are both technological products (and particularly, those with more social pervasiveness) and the basis of further technologies. How indissoluble is this relation between materials and technology clearly emerges, for example, with the development of research sectors such as nanotechnology in which materials tend to incorporate the technologies with which they are produced. It is from the big difficulties emerging from the interaction between the technological (/materials) and the social dimensions that this reflection moves. In Sections 1-4 we critically analyze the way in which social sciences and, particularly, sociology have interpreted, so far, the relations between science, technology and materials, on the one hand, and society on the other hand. This analysis makes it possible to demonstrate the centrality of this relation for contemporary society and its development. In Sections 5-7 we focus the attention on new scenarios that have been emerging in the last years and that are characterized by a growing importance of the overlapping between artificial and natural dimensions and by the advent of what can be defined as a post-natural World. In this context, we propose some thoughts concerning a view of innovation able to account for this complex situation and the possibility to anticipate the changes produced by the interaction of technology and society. The conclusions (Sect. 8) summarize the main elements of the paper.In line with the growing concern about the environmental impact of materials in the building sector, Knauf Insulation, a glass wool producer, is performing environmental impact assessment of its products through LCA. Knauf Insulation has several glass wool factories in Europe that produce various products, and for a specific market, the same product can be produced in several factories. As the plants that produce glass wool work with similar processes, a generic model for LCA usable for every plant and every glass wool product has been designed. The model, implemented in GaBi 6, is made as generic as possible by including, for each step, all the raw materials that can be used in one of the factories as well as all the energy sources. Parameters allow to define the amount of each raw material consumed, therefore the model can be adapted to any factory simply by setting these parameters accordingly. Moreover, the transport distances are also parameters and the origin of the energies (electricity or heat) can also be selected. This simplifies the data collection, since the template is the same for all the factories, it can be supported by data collection tools already existing. A part of the model is dedicated to weighting between factories, so a combination of factories can also be studied. This allows to study products sold on a specific market. The model can also be adapted to almost all Knauf Insulation products by using parameters where necessary: for example, several products have different binder contents, so a parameter defines the amount of binder. As some materials can be recycled between several parts of the process, special attention has been paid to recycling loops inside the model. The model is flexible enough to be used for environmental product declaration (EPD) as well as for Eco-Design purposes. The model building is described in the present article as well as the outlines of the production process (necessary for well understand the model) and the results and advantages of this model.Sustainability of their products and practices provides companies with a competitive set of methods and tools to maintain, improve and expand customer and supplier relationships and to ensure access to strategic markets. Companies pay a lot of attention to produce more sustainable products and contribute to the overall sustainability. Most of the companies manage to use lighter materials or change the material with a recyclable one or try to decrease the energy used for manufacturing. However most of these attempts are related to only one part of the life cycle or one aspect of sustainability. In spite the fact that sustainability is thought to be related with the environmental aspects of the product, it is a broad concept and has economic and social dimensions. This makes the evaluation of sustainability a very complex matter. On top of that, to achieve a certain level of sustainability, it is necessary to take into account the whole life cycle of products (life cycle perspective) from material extraction and manufacturing to use and disposal when a decision has to be made about sustainability performance. Life cycle thinking or life cycle perspective takes into account the whole life cycle of the product. The main feature of life cycle thinking is to avoiding problem shifting. This helps not only to take into account all necessary aspects in evaluation of sustainability but also make a more accurate assessment. In order to evaluate the sustainability performance of the products it is necessary to combine a number of life cycle evaluation methodologies; life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental aspects, life cycle costing (LCC) for economic aspects, and social life cycle assessment for (S-LCA) for social aspects. It is necessary to attain and process a huge amount of data to evaluate these attributes of a product through its life cycle. Product lifecycle management system help to manage product related information through its life cycle. Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management uses PEIDs and enables to gather and distribute life cycle information through the life cycle of a product more precisely. This information may further be used for evaluation of the products sustainability performance. Closed-loop Lifecycle Management contains four main components, PEIDs' to collect data, middleware to combine different applications and collect and distribute life cycle data, a decision support system (DSS) to transform the collected data into usable information and a product knowledge and management system (PDKM) to manage the information and knowledge generated through the life cycle of the product. In automotive industry PLM systems are used to manage the life cycle data but these systems are somehow separate from each other. It is needed to develop a middleware to combine the separate PLM systems, a DSS to transform gathered data into necessary information and knowledge for specific applications and a PDKM to manage the information and knowledge. Holistic life cycle approach takes into account the whole life cycle of the product and generates performance characteristics, which might be configured in order to evaluate the sustainability performance of the product. A Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management system containing a DSS configured with the holistic life cycle approach will be an efficient tool to evaluate and improve the sustainability performance of products.Sustainability typically relies on the durable interaction between humans and the environment. Historically, modelling tools such as environmental-life cycle assessment (E-LCA) have been developed to address the mitigation of environmental impacts generated by human activities. More recently, social-life cycle assessment (S-LCA) methods have been proposed to investigate the social sustainability sphere, looking at the life cycle effects generated by positive or negative pressures on social endpoints (i.e. wellbeing of stakeholders). Despite this promising added value, however, S-LCA methods still show limitations and challenges to be faced, e.g. regarding the lack of high quality datasets and the implementation of consensual social impact assessment indicators. This paper discusses on the complementarity between SLCA and E-LCA towards the definition of prospective life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA) approaches. To this aim, a case study is presented comparing (i) E-LCA results of business- as-usual (BAU) scenarios of energy supply and demand technology changes in Luxembourg, up to 2025, based on economic equilibrium modeling and hybrid life cycle inventories, with (ii) a monetary-based input-output estimation of the related changes in the societal sphere. The results show that environmental and social issues do not follow the same impact trends. While E-LCA outputs highlight contrasting patterns, they do generally underlie a relatively low decrease in the aggregated environmental burdens curve (around 20% of decrease over the single-score impact trend over time). In contrast, social hotspots (identified in S-LCA by specific risk indicators of human rights, worker treatment, poverty, etc.) are typically increasing over time according to the growth of the final energy demand. Overall, the case study allowed identifying possible synergies and tradeoffs related to the impact of projected energy demands in Luxembourg. Despite the studied approach does not fully adopt a consequential perspective, it can be considered as a basis to develop a prospective LCSA approach, combining consequential E-LCA and S-LCA. Accordingly, we introduced the concept of "anticipatory experiences" on energy transition towards a low carbon society as drivers for change, observing that societal phenomena characterizing the transition of the energy systems towards lower carbon- related emissions seem to facilitate the identification of actual and potential changes that may take place within these upcoming transition processes. Such phenomena, which are somehow typical, may be used as inputs for S-LCA, so as to better defining the most likely developments of certain intervention/policies in the energy sector and eventually contribute to the definition of prospective and consequential LCSA modelling tools.The European Commission's Europe 2020 strategy is about delivering smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The steel industry is striving to adapt to this new business model. The first part of this article will demonstrate how the steel industry can address the environmental constraints of the future, and explain the methodological challenges that tools such as Life Cycle Assessment are facing in developing reliable indicators. The second part will touch on the social dimension of sustainability that is often neglected in the debate because it is difficult to demonstrate its contribution in a company value chain. Two approaches will be presented. The first one derives from the well-being indicators proposed by the OECD and the second one is on the growth of an inclusive business model that targets low-income populations. Finally, the article concludes by explaining the ambition of the Sovamat initiative, which seeks to identify the role of structural materials in society and to analyse the sustainable value of materials.Lightweight steel-framed (LSF) structural elements in building construction provide a way of increasing building sustainability. These structural elements present great potential for recycling and reuse, allowing the conservation of natural resources and the environment. When compared with other materials, these construction components also provide other advantages: reduced weight with simultaneous high mechanical strength; easier prefabrication, allowing modular elements and higher quality control; shorter periods for assembling the building on-site; no dimensional variations caused by moisture; and low cost. The high thermal conductivity of steel could be a drawback, leading to thermal bridges if not well designed and executed. In the case of LSF components (e.g. walls and slabs) it is necessary to take special care with the elements' design optimisation, with it being essential to use continuous thermal insulation. The building envelope thermal performance is crucial to provide good thermal behaviour and energy efficiency, allowing a reduction of operational energy. In this paper, the LSF construction system is analysed in order to show its main advantages and drawbacks. The assessment of embodied and operational energy is essential to perform a life cycle analysis. The reduction of both energies' consumption is crucial to increase the sustainability label. Special focus will be given to the mitigation strategies of operational energy in LSF construction.In this study, we propose a marine biomass utilization system and describe anaerobic digestion system using marine biomass and food waste. Anaerobic digestion system includes collecting biomass, anaerobic digestion, and growing vegetables. Four scenarios are presented varying the amount and the suppliers of biomass. We apply life cycle exergy analysis, which combine life cycle assessment and exergy concept, to investigate the feasibility of the system from the viewpoint of energy. We present exergy balance of the system and evaluate total exergy efficiency and the exergy ratio of fossil fuel consumption to biomass.Eggs are an increasingly significant source of protein for human consumption, and the global poultry industry is the single fastest-growing livestock sector. In the context of international concern for food security and feeding an increasingly affluent human population, the contribution to global greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from animal protein production is of critical interest. We calculated the GHG emissions footprint for the fastest-growing sector of the UK egg market: free-range production in small commercial units on mixed farms. Emissions are calculated to current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and UK standards (PAS2050): including direct, indirect, and embodied emissions from cradle to farm gate compatible with a full product life-cycle assessment. We present a methodology for the allocation of emissions between ruminant and poultry enterprises on mixed farms. Greenhouse gas emissions averaged a global warming potential of 2.2 kg of CO(2)e/dozen eggs, or 1.6 kg of CO2 equivalent (e)/kg (assuming average egg weight of 60 g). one kilogram of protein from free-range eggs produces 0.2 kg of CO(2)e, lower than the emissions from white or red meat (based on both kg of meat and kg of protein). of these emissions, 63% represent embodied carbon in poultry feed. A detailed GHG emissions footprint represents a baseline for comparison with other egg production systems and sources of protein for human consumption. Eggs represent a relatively low-carbon supply of animal protein, but their production is heavily dependent on cereals and soy, with associated high emissions from industrial nitrogen production, land-use change, and transport. Alternative sources of digestible protein for poultry diets are available, may be produced from waste processing, and would be an effective tool for reducing the industry's GHG emissions and dependence on imported raw materials.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been introduced in the evaluation of chemical processes and or products in order to take into account the Supply Chain and its environmental constraints and burdens. Regarding to the environmental assessment of chemical processes and/or products two main variables need to be taken into account: Natural Resources Sustainability (NRS) and Environmental Burdens Sustainability (EBS). NRS includes the use of energy, water and materials whereas EBS is given by the environmental sustainability metrics developed by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). The main components of EBS have been classified in 5 environmental impacts to the atmosphere (acidification, global warming, human health effects, stratospheric ozone depletion and photochemical ozone formation), 5 aquatic media impacts (aquatic acidification, aquatic oxygen demand, ecotoxicity (metals), ecotoxicity (others) and eutrophication) and 2 land impacts (hazardous and non-hazardous waste disposal). To reduce the number of variables and thus, the complexity, the development of a normalisation and weighting procedure is required. This work proposes the normalization of EB based on the threshold values of the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) and a similar procedure based on the values given by the BREF document on waste incineration for the NRS normalisation. This procedure will help in the decision making process in the waste management field and in the particular, in Municipal Solid Waste Incineration (MSWI).The ever-increasing power consumption and the associated consumption of non-renewable natural resources lead to an overall environmental degradation. Efforts to increase the energy efficiency, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the sustainable use of natural resources have a significant potential for improving the environment and its preservation for future generations. To realize this potential, it is however necessary to manage the assessment of the environmental impact of product design on the environment. Mechatronic systems (e.g. machinery, manipulators, actuators, and manufacturing machines ...) form significant industrial facilities and at the same time they also represent major appliances consuming the electrical energy, and during their entire life cycle they have a considerable impact on the environment. The most demanding industry sectors are: production of iron and steel, which are materials that are often used in the construction of mechatronic systems. The present article is devoted to the methodology of assessment of the effects of general mechatronic system on the environment. The environmental burden is presented in the form of carbon dioxide emissions caused by the production of selected construction materials.Thailand, with its abundant agricultural resources, is a well positioned to deploy biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. To enhance the self-dependence on the energy and economy in rural areas, the government has implemented the "Alternative Energy Development Plan: AEDP 2012-2021", aiming to increase the amount of alternative and renewable energy utilization. To ensure the sustainability of the biodiesel production not only research on high efficient production technology improvement is need, but also studies on the impacts from promoting the non-food feedstock such as Jatropha. This study aims to evaluate environmental and social impacts of Jatropha-based biodiesel production by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) concept. The scope of this study is defined as "cradle-to-gate" which includesJatropha cultivation, harvesting, oil extraction and biodiesel production. Inventory data used in this study was developed byan on-site interview and consultation with Jatropha farmers and experts throughout the three provinces in the northern part of Thailand. The environmental impacts were analyzed by the modified LCA methodology called Environmental Load Point (ELP), formulated by the Nagata Laboratory of Waseda University. The weighting factor used in ELP developed by taking Thailand as a case study. The assessment of social impacts of Jatropha biodiesel systems referred to criteria indicated in the Global Bioenergy Partnership Sustainability Indicator for Bioenergy. The results show the environmental impacts of the Jatropha biodiesel production from a localized environmental viewpoint. The social impacts are focused on results of the change in income and job creation in the local community due to the establishment of biodiesel production system. These can be useful for the policy maker to promote the advantages of non-food biodiesel and enhance the cultivation areas and production plant to the rural in further.Towards reducing the CO2 emissions associated with the transportation sector, we investigate the design of carbon and energy efficient processes for integrated biomass and natural gas (NG) conversion to liquid fuel. A process superstructure considering biomass conversion via gasification/Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis and fast-hydropyrolsis/hydrodeoxygenation, and NG conversion via reforming followed by FT synthesis is established. Subsequently, a mixed integer nonlinear programming model (MINLP) is formulated to identify the process configurations that maximize the energy output as liquid fuel for different ratios of NG to biomass carbon feeds (delta(ng)). For 1 % <= delta(ng) <= 150 %, the optimal process configurations are capable of producing similar to 5-14 % more liquid fuel output than the combined fuel output of individual standalone processes converting the same amount of biomass and NG. This synergy originates from synthesizing additional liquid fuel by combining the residual biomass carbon with the excess hydrogen per carbon available from the NG feed. These integrated processes are also estimated to achieve up to 80 % reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to petroleum-based fuels.In this article we aim to present a case study related to the environmental management accounting (EMA) for a Romanian company acting as a morocco goods (shoes, bags, belts, wallets and other leather accessories) producer. We selected this company because of the impact that this activity has on the environment. The study relies on the EMA framework designed by Burritt, Hahn and Schaltegger (2002). We make a material life-cycle assessment for one type of product. We argue that EMA can help companies act in an integrated manner, improving their production process and their performance.A sustainable solution should holistically optimize all objectives related to the environment and a product's cost and performance. As such, it should explicitly address material selection, which significantly affects environmental impacts and other objectives of a product design. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides credible methods to account for environmental impacts, current methods are not efficient enough for use at the early design stages to prune the entire design space without requiring execution of costly LCA analysis for each design scenario. Alternatively, surrogate modeling approaches can facilitate efficient concept selection during early design stages. However, material properties consist of discrete data sets, thus posing a significant challenge in the construction of surrogate models for numerical optimization. In this work, we address the unique challenges of material selection in sustainable product design in some important ways. Salient features of the robust surrogate modeling approach include achieving manageable dimensionality of LCA with a minimal loss of the important information by the consolidation of significant factors into categorized groups, as well as subsequent efficiency enhancement by a streamlined process that avoids the construction of full LCA. This novel approach combines efficiency of use with a mathematically rigorous representation of any pertinent objectives across an entire design space. To this end, we introduce an adapted two stage sampling approach in surrogate model construction based on a feasible approximation of a Latin Hypercube design at the first stage. The development and implementation of the method are illustrated with the aid of an automotive disc brake design, and the results are discussed in the context of robust optimal material selection in early sustainable product design.Industries often employ heterogeneous computer aided tools (CAD/CAE/CAM) to carry out complex product designs and simulations resulting in a need for data sharing, data exchange, and computational activities. Nowadays the concept of "Design for Sustainability (DfS)" heightens this challenge, as most DfS approaches especially the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) involve large amounts of data collection, sharing and computation tasks throughout the product life cycle. ISO 10303, also known as STEP (STandard for the Exchange of Product model data), has evolved for several decades and provides a set of standards for industrial automation systems and integration. In this paper, we propose a STEP-based collaborative framework to integrate heterogeneous CAD tools, LCA tools and other necessary computational tools to support cooperative product design for sustainability. The geometric information from CAD tools and the material/process information from material/process databases are formally represented in suitable STEP application protocols (APs). An agent is implemented to parse the geometric and non-geometric information encoded in STEP data format, and compose them into a complete product tree represented with a NIST CPM (Core Product Model) based information model. The information in the product tree is then evaluated by a LCA tool to obtain environmental impact score. The feasibility and benefits of the proposed methodology have been illustrated with a typical stapler product.The research context is about eco-design improvement that focuses on modifying an existing product for reducing its environmental impacts. In this context, engineers may propose various design concepts that can potentially make the product more environmentally friendly. At this point, the research problem is how to assess environmental impacts of each concept given the uncertainty of design information at the conceptual design stage. To address this research problem, the trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are first applied to capture imprecise design information. Then, the centroid concept is applied to model different views of imprecision (i.e., pessimistic, balanced and optimistic) associated in fuzzy impact,assessment. Accordingly, a decision scheme is developed for assessing different design concepts and suggesting the potential areas of a design concept to reduce environmental impacts. In an application, a coffee maker has been decomposed and analyzed to propose three possible concepts for eco-design improvements. These three concepts are then assessed by the proposed method of this paper to demonstrate the methodical workflow and utility that assists engineers to make eco-design decisions at the early design stage.While environmental impact analysis is standard in accordance with ISO 14040:2006 using life cycle assessment software, such as GaBi and SimaPro, software tools supporting broader sustainability assessment are limited. Recent research has developed methods for sustainable manufacturing assessment and has led to unit manufacturing process models that can be used to quantify sustainability metrics. In spite of these advances, engineering designers must apply such methods in an ad hoc manner, which increases engineering analysis time and limits the utility of sustainability assessment in early design. Thus, manufacturing process models and supporting software tool are developed to assist design for manufacturing efforts pursuing sustainability performance improvement. The software is constructed using Visual Basic to create a graphical user interface for an MS Excel calculation engine. Using unit manufacturing process models, a product sustainability assessment can be generated by chaining together a sequential manufacturing process flow. In this way, cradle-to-gate assessments can support decisions. made during product, process, and supply chain design. The method combines upstream inventory analysis and in-house unit process modeling to perform cradle-to-gate sustainability assessment. The utility of the approach is demonstrated for the assessment of an aircraft-like metal product assembly.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology to assess environmental performances of products throughout their life cycles. Traditionally, LCA-based decision-making focuses on environmental impacts, excluding customer expectations and economic considerations. Moreover, it usually uses generic data while environmental performances of industrial systems often depend on local contexts. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive framework to identify the solution most adapted to a specific context, considering environmental, economic and commercial aspects. First, environmental performances of competing products are compared thanks to LCA. A sensitivity analysis highlights influential parameters on which operational scenarios are built. Costs are then incorporated into a set of exploitation scenarios. Second, matrix-based approach is used. Products are ranked according to several client profiles. The most suitable solution for a given context is identified This framework is applied on three burners for forge furnaces. Results show that client profiles and operational contexts (namely client expectations, location and resources availability and costs) affect choices.A new perspective of dynamic LCA (life cycle assessment) is proposed with the predictive usage mining for sustainability (PUMS) algorithm. By defining usage patterns as trend, seasonality, and level from a time series of usage information, predictive LCA can be conducted in a real time horizon. Large-scale sensor data of product operation is analyzed in order to mine usage patterns and build a usage model for LCA. The PUMS algorithm consists of handling missing and abnormal values, seasonal period analysis, segmentation analysis, time series analysis, and predictive LCA. A newly developed segmentation algorithm can distinguish low activity periods and help to capture patterns more clearly. Furthermore, a predictive LCA method is formulated using a time series usage model. Finally, generated data is used to do predictive LCA of agricultural machinery as a case study.The motivation behind this work is to integrate economic and environmental sustainability into decision making at the early phases of design through the development of a hierarchical concept selection method. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a frequently implemented technique used to assess the environmental impacts of products, but it does not provide a simple means for including preference at different levels that can be used for comparison across design alternatives. A method is proposed to accommodate this issue expanding the Hypothetical Equivalents and Inequivalents Method (HEIM) to handle multi-level and multi-attribute trade-offs. The selection of a coffee maker design is used as an example to illustrate the implementation of the method with actual LCA results. The example provides valuable insights into how preferences may be elicited at different hierarchical levels and then combined to create a single utility score that represents to what extent each design alternative is preferred by the decision maker.Descriptions of a product's usage context are easily understood and often provide useful information for reducing energy consumption of products. Such descriptions help inspire concept generation, explore operational issues, and evaluate prototypes. Nevertheless, characterizing the usage context as a concise but comprehensive set of factors is not a trivial task. This paper presents a taxonomy and method for characterizing the usage context and its various scenarios as sets of factors relevant to energy consumption. The taxonomy defines a general usage context as a set of human, product and situational factors that can be specified individually to create unique scenarios. The method for identifying relevant factors is grounded by first assessing variables in the fundamental physical equations that govern product operation. Then, activity diagrams reveal the elements influencing user habits and procedures. The method is demonstrated through the example of an automobile and the results are compared with existing automobile studies.Despite significant interest from consumers, sustainable products often struggle to find success in the marketplace. This failure is often attributed to the perception that consumers remain unwilling to sacrifice product attributes such as form, function, or price in order to adopt a product whose environmental impact is less than that of a competing product. This work aims to better understand how knowing a product's environmental impact affects preference for that product's disparate attributes. Three products of various complexities are explored through a conjoint analysis experiment that uncovers consumer preference for discrete form, function and price attributes. In this work, single use spoons, reusable water bottles, and home washing machines were used for analysis. These three products were decomposed into form, function, and price attributes that were varied at discrete levels. After a form only ratings-based conjoint analysis study was conducted to find high, medium, and low preference form designs for each participant, two separate form-function-price discrete choice studies were conducted for each of the three products. These two discrete choice trials were identical in all aspects except in the second trial participants were provided with calculated environmental impact values for all design configurations; the presented environmental impact information was a dependent variable based on a Life Cycle Analysis calculation using the current product configuration being shown to the participant. Results show that when participants are provided with this additional piece of information, their preference for form, function, and price attributes of a product is greatly impacted. In particular we find that the importance of functional attributes increases in the context of environmental impact metrics, while the importance of form decreases and the importance of price decreases modestly.This work presents results of a survey of case studies to quantify the potential energy production and GHG emission changes of anaerobically digesting (AD) cattle manure in three Guatemalan dairy farms. Livestock inventory and energy consumption data were collected and used to define three scenarios for each farm: baseline, AD with condensing boiler (AD-boiler) and AD with combined heat and power unit (AD-CHP). The estimated emissions account for enteric fermentation, manure/digestate handling, import/export of thermal energy and electricity and use of fossil fuels for transport. The AD systems result in a production of 100 +/- 37 kg(CH4).head(-1) . yr(-1). If this CH4 is combusted in the AD-boiler scenarios, 5.00 +/- 1.59 GJ.head-(1) . yr(-1) of thermal energy is generated and emissions from baseline scenarios are offset by 600 +/- 280 kg(CO2e).head(-1) . yr(-1). The generated heat is sufficient to operate digesters (308 K) and export 2.90 +/- 0.62 GJ . head(-1) . yr(-1). Challenges are found to use that thermal power because domestic heating is inessential. ADCHP is found to be more suitable because it produces sufficient thermal energy for the digesters (2.50 +/- 0.80 GJ . head(-1) . yr(-1)) while generating electric power (1.80 +/- 0.57 GJ . head(-1) . yr(-1)). This scenario could promote the welfare of neighboring communities by making sustainable electricity available. AD-CHP could offset 400 +/- 320 kg(CO2e) . head(-1) . yr(-1) from the baselines.The journey towards sustainability requires sustainable production and consumption and also requires social responsibility of organizations. Improvements of social performance of companies along with sustained economic profitability and environmental responsibility contribute notably to sustainable development. Company stakeholders - mostly consumers, local communities and society, but many others as well, are more and more asking themselves questions about social impacts of products and production processes. Under pressure of stakeholders' interest, many companies solve environmental tasks of company's production processes and alongside the social circumstances under which a product is made to ensure the products are produced in a sustainable way. Social impacts of production processes on the workers, the consumers, the local communities, the society, and other shareholders are under close supervision of management and social impacts assessment methods are developed and improved. Local communities represent an important group of stakeholders, therefore social impacts related to local communities must be adequately considered. Production and consumption of chemicals represent actual or at least potential risk for local communities. Social impacts like Delocalization and Migration, Community Engagement, Cultural Heritage, Respect of Indigenous Rights, Local Employment, Access to Immaterial and Material Resources, Safe and Healthy Living Conditions or Secure Living Conditions must be identified and fairly evaluated by chemical companies. The quality of life for communities surrounding chemical companies must be monitored and continuously improved. The standard of living and community health and security must be supported by systematically managed assessment of social impacts of chemical products along the whole product life cycle. The contribution deals with the perceived importance of social impacts of chemical products or chemical production processes on local communities. The main objective is to determine industry-specific social impacts for chemicals and discuss whether suitable indicators for their measurements on corporate level can be found. Application of indicators offered by the Social Life Cycle Assessment method will be closely tested and discussed.The production of biodiesel can be accomplished using a variety of feedstock sources. Plant and microalgae based feedstocks are prominent and are studied extensively. Plant based feedstocks cultivated as monoculture on wastelands and trees in forests can cater towards partial fulfillment of feedstock requirements for biodiesel industry. Synthesis of biodiesel from microalgal oil has gathered immense interest and has potential to cater to the increasing feedstocks demands of the biodiesel industry. The major advantage offered by microalgal oil, as compared to plant based oils, is its potential for culture on non-arable land. Despite of the advantages of microalgal oil as a feedstock for biodiesel, there are constraints that have to be overcome in order to make it economical and sustainable. Sustainable approaches for both the plant and microalgae as feedstocks have been drawn. Despite there being several plant species, few have been found to be desirable as feedstocks for biodiesel production based on their lipid profiles. Among the microalgae, there are thousands of species and several of these have been cultured for extracting the oil to explore their feasibility in utilization as biodiesel feedstocks. Though, several of the microalgal species have shown potential for high biomass growth and lipid productivity, only a few have been found to provide a high biodiesel yield and conversion. Due to the several steps involved in the extraction of oil which are energy intensive, the cost of biodiesel from microalgal oil is high as compared with that obtained from the plant oils. A sustainable approach for utilizing plant and microalgal oils as feedstocks for biodiesel have been discussed. The emerging cost effective methods in production of biodiesel have been described. The energy return and greenhouse gas emissions from biodiesel have been outlined. Together, the plant oil and microalgal oil can offer potential source of feedstocks for the production of biodiesel. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper assesses greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of forest bioenergy supply and utilization in Finland. Each step in the supply chains of harvesting residues (HR), small-diameter energy wood (EW) and stumps (ST) is assessed separately, with geography-related differences between Northern and Southern Finland (NF and SF) taken into consideration. Furthermore, the GHG performance of five distinct bioenergy options-(1) combined heat and power production, (2) condensing power production, (3) torrefied pellets, (4) gasification, and (5) pyrolysis oil production-is assessed and compared with that of current reference systems in Finland and also the European Union (EU) sustainability criteria. If soil carbon stock (SCS) changes and possible storage emissions are omitted, the GHG emissions deriving from the supply chain of comminuted forest biomass to plants are 2.4, 3.0, and 2.6 gCO(2)eq MJ(-1) for HR, EW, and ST in SF, respectively. In NE, the corresponding values are 2.9, 3.6, and 3.2 gCO(2)eq MJ(-1), respectively. If SCS changes and possible emissions from storage are accounted for, the emissions for HR, EW, and ST are in the ranges 9.2-49.2, 24.4-64.4, and 33.1-73.1 gCO(2)eq MJ(-1) in SF and 12.7-52.7, 29.4-69.4, and 39.5-79.5 gCO(2)eq MJ(-1) in NF. Most supply-chain GHG emissions arise from SCS changes and possible emissions from storage of comminuted biomass, both of which may involve significant uncertainty factors. In comparison to local reference systems, significant GHG savings can be achieved through energy utilization of forest biomass, but if SCS changes and, in particular, storage emissions are taken into account, fulfillment of the EU sustainability criteria is not guaranteed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This review summarizes and organizes the literature on life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle energy analysis (LCEA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) studies carried out for environmental evaluation of buildings and building related industry and sector (including construction products, construction systems, buildings, and civil engineering constructions). The review shows that most LCA and LCEA are carried out in what is shown as "exemplary buildings", that is, buildings that have been designed and constructed as low energy buildings, but there are very few studies on "traditional buildings", that is, buildings such as those mostly found in our cities. Similarly, most studies are carried out in urban areas, while rural areas are not well represented in the literature. Finally, studies are not equally distributed around the world. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To respond to the call of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, an efficient carbon accounting framework should be proposed. Traditional narrowly defined estimation protocols that consider the direct emissions from native energy consumption may generally lead to underestimates of the carbon emissions derived from providing products and services. To comprehensively evaluate the supply-chain carbon performance in all economic sectors of China, the Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) based carbon footprint accounting framework should be employed. Because carbon emissions also occur in non-energy production processes, carbon emissions from the non-energy industrial process should also be incorporated into the accounting framework. This paper assessed 3 scopes of carbon emissions of Chinese economic sectors, including (1) direct emissions from energy consumption, and the industrial process, (2) emissions from purchased energy, (3) supply chain emissions combining both fuel combustion and industrial processes. The results shown that there is a huge underestimation of the carbon emission from various sectors using traditional carbon protocols compared with the tier 3 supply-chain CO2 emission. The emissions from industrial processes also constitute a large proportion, which cannot be ignored. In addition, we find that embodied CO2 emissions in exports concentrated on primary energy intensive sectors, indicating the importance of restructuring of export goods and services. It is proved that the three tier model provides a tool for decision makers to identify the national high carbon emission sectors and make effective carbon mitigation strategies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential to obtain bioethanol from bamboo using three different pretreatment technologies (liquid hot water (LHW), dilute acid (DA) and soaking in aqueous ammonia (SAA)) is assessed via techno-economic and environmental analyses. The minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) is used to compare the economic potential of the pretreatment processes, and these are 0.554, 0.484 and 1.014 $ per litre for DA, LHW and SAA pretreatments, respectively. The bioethanol pump price under current and future policy scenarios in China is compared with petrol and reveals that bioethanol produced via DA and LHW pretreatments could be economically competitive even without government support. From an environmental perspective, a life cycle assessment approach is used to evaluate bamboo-derived bioethanol for full environmental impact categories, and this is compared with petrol on a 'well-to-wheel' basis. It was found that all three bioethanol pathways would be environmentally better than petrol with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduced by 45-93%. A comparison of bamboo-based bioethanol with other cellulosic feedstocks not only suggests that bamboo could be a viable and competitive feedstock for bioethanol production, but also demonstrates that amongst the pretreatment technologies tested, LHW has the most potential for achieving favourable economic and environmental outcomes.Industrial solid waste refers to all solid waste derived from industrial processes. Industrial solid waste, on the one hand, may lead to environmental risk and safety issue; on the other hand, contains valuable recyclable resources. Taking copper slag as a case study, the life cycle environmental and economic performance of recycling process were analyzed by using life cycle assessment and life cycle costing approaches. The functional unit was defined as the recycling of 1 ton of copper slag. The results showed that the process of "production of cement after floatation" was the optimal scenario for copper slag recycling, and its life cycle impact and life cycle cost were -67.22 Pt and -479.28 yuan, respectively. Specifically, the dominant environmental impact category of copper recycling process was respiratory (inorganic). In addition, raw material, fuel and power, equipment depreciation and transportation contributed to the life cycle cost in descending order of their proportion.This paper gets two inventories of environmental load of two kinds of gypsum plasterboards by studying the production processes of the natural gypsum board and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) gypsum through life cycle assessment. The results show that the total life cycle environment load of the natural gypsum boardis 6% higher than the FGD gypsum board. Human toxicity effect increases by 72% and the consumption of non-renewable resources is 76% higher than the total life cycle environment load of natural gypsum board.The environmental impact of lightweight aggregate concrete block, using fly ash ceramic, was analyzed. The results show that acidification potential and global warming potential are the most significant environmental impact categories accounting for 30% and 25% of the total environmental impact respectively. Meanwhile, in different life cycle phases, the environmental load of the lightweight aggregate concrete block is mainly caused by the production of cement, which accounts for 42% of the total environmental impact.The environmental impacts of cement production using two pre-drying processes, i.e., coal-fired pre-drying process and pre-drying process by waste heat from kiln tail process were analyzed and compared through life cycle assessment (LCA). The results show that the energy consumption, global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), photochemical creation potential (POCP), human toxicity (HT) and eutrophication potential (EP) of pre-drying process by waste heat from kiln tail are about 1%, 2%, 5.2%, 5%, 3.5% and 3.8% lower than coal-fired process; therefore the application of pre-drying process by waste heat from kiln tail has obvious environmental benefits.Embodied carbon can be defined as the "CO2 emissions produced during the extraction of resources, transportation, manufacture, assembly, disassembly and end-of-life disposal of a product". Calculation of the carbon footprint of buildings is important to promote the construction of low-carbon buildings that release significantly less CO2 compared to conventional buildings. However, researchers and practitioners in this area tend to disregard the embodied carbon and pay more attention to the operational carbon when calculating the carbon footprint of buildings. This paper reviews the current state and trend of research on the embodied carbon of buildings with focus on the tools, methods and strategies employed and makes recommendations for future research direction.As public-private partnership (PPP) to address a significant funding shortage for transportation gains momentum in the United States, public agencies are also under pressure to demonstrate value for money and to deliver more for less on PPP deals. One critical challenge is how to optimize the concession length and amount of public subsidies so that a successful partnership can be established without undue sacrifice of the public interest. This paper presents an option game model for optimizing the concession length and public subsidy on a PPP project. The model integrates the flexibility of project expansion into the life-cycle analysis of project value, in addition to considering key factors, including subsidies, toll rate, and traffic uncertainty. The First Coast Outer Beltway project is used as an example to illustrate the process and merit of the option game model. In particular, by analyzing the trade-off between concession length and public subsidy, the paper provides new insights and implications for better PPP deal design.Biogas or landfill gas can be converted to a high-grade gas rich in methane with the use of municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash as a reactant for fixation of CO2 and H2S. In order to verify results previously obtained at a laboratory scale with 65-90 kg of bottom ash (BA), several test runs were performed at a pilot scale, using 500-1000 kg of bottom ash and up to 9.2 N m(3)/h real landfill gas from a landfill in the Tuscany region (Italy). The input flow rate was altered. The best process performance was observed at a input flow rate of 3.7 N m(3)/(h t(BA)). At this flow rate, the removal efficiencies for H2S were approximately 99.5-99%. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The UK Water Industry currently generates approximately 800 GW h pa of electrical energy from sewage sludge. Traditionally energy recovery from sewage sludge features Anaerobic Digestion (AD) with biogas utilisation in combined heat and power (CHP) systems. However, the industry is evolving and a number of developments that extract more energy from sludge are either being implemented or are nearing full scale demonstration. This study compared five technology configurations: I - conventional AD with CHP, 2 - Thermal Hydrolysis Process (THP) AD with CHP, 3 - THP AD with bio-methane grid injection, 4- THP AD with CHP followed by drying of digested sludge for solid fuel production, 5- THP AD followed by drying, pyrolysis of the digested sludge and use of the both the biogas and the pyrolysis gas in a CHP. The economic and environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) found that both the post AD drying options performed well but the option used to create a solid fuel to displace coal (configuration 4) was the most sustainable solution economically and environmentally, closely followed by the pyrolysis configuration (5). Application of THP improves the financial and environmental performance compared with conventional AD. Producing bio-methane for grid injection (configuration 3) is attractive financially but has the worst environmental impact of all the scenarios, suggesting that the current UK financial incentive policy for bio-methane is not driving best environmental practice. It is clear that new and improving processes and technologies are enabling significant opportunities for further energy recovery from sludge: LCA provides tools for determining the best overall options for particular situations and allows innovation resources and investment to be focused accordingly. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A review of the literature published in 2013 on topics relating to water reclamation and reuse is presented. This review is divided into the following sections: (1) General: extent of reuse, research needs, guidelines and monitoring, and health effects (2) Treatment technologies: integrated process design, membrane treatment, membrane bioreactors, electrocoagulation, ion exchange and adsorption, wetlands, managed aquifer recharge, and (3) Planning and management: public acceptance and education, economics/pricing, water quality planning and management and project/case studies. It can be seen from this review that much of the treatment technology research has mainly focused on integrated process design, membrane and other innovative technologies.Sewage sludge is an important contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the carbon budget of organic solid waste treatment and disposal. In this case study, total GHG emissions from an auto-control sludge compost system, including direct and indirect emissions and replaceable reduction due to sludge compost being reused as fertilizer, were quantified. The results indicated that no methane generation needed to be considered in the carbon debit because of the advantages of auto-control for monitoring and maintenance of appropriate conditions during the composting process. Indirect emissions were mainly from electricity and fossil fuel consumption, including sludge transportation and mechanical equipment use. Overall, the total carbon replaceable emission reduction owing to sludge being treated by composting rather than landfill, and reuse of its compost as fertilizer instead of chemical fertilizer, were calculated to be 0.6204 tCO(2)e t(-1) relative to baseline. Auto-control compost can facilitate obtaining certified emission reduction warrants, which are essential to accessing financial support with the authentication by the Clean Development Mechanism.The outer facade constitutes a substantial volume of the total consumption of materials used in a building and the need for maintenance of the facade makes it especially interesting from a life cycle perspective. The range of wooden materials and products used for facades has different impacts over the life cycle, but the analyses so far have not included a time-adjusted global warming potential (GWP). Wooden facade materials were assessed with respect to their life cycle carbon footprint based on the environmental product declarations (EPD) and adjusted according to EN15804. The results showed low impacts of untreated Scots pine heartwood (approximate to 1 kg CO2-eq. per square meter [m(2)]), medium for thermally modified Scots pine, coated Norway spruce and oil/copper- organic preservative-treated Scots pine (1-5 kg CO2-eq. per m(2)) and high for furfurylated Scots pine and acetylated Radiata pine (5-10 kg CO2-eq. per m(2)). The results with time-adjustment showed that these methods have a potential large effect on the carbon footprint of wooden claddings. The inclusion of biogenic carbon flows and timing seems to be more important than the difference between the product when biogenic carbon is not included. This fact highlights the importance time-adjusted GWP would have for wood products EPDs.In recent years, the interest in environmental issues has increased, along with the idea that consumer choices can actually improve the performance of the production system. A large number of eco-labelling schemes have been introduced, both at private and public levels. In this study, we apply a life-cycle methodology to assess the environmental impacts associated with extra-virgin olive oil production. The results of LCA were used to set the environmental requirements of a local product qualification scheme defined according to the National Protocol (QUAM - Qualita Ambientale), signed by two Italian Ministries and four Regional Governments, on the environmental qualification of cluster products. Using the three performance indicators taken from the LCA study and two input indicators, we defined a set of entry level requirements which each local producer must comply with in order to achieve the qualification.This chapter evaluates the economic and environmental implications of MBR using Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A brief introduction to these methodologies and the main developments and achievements when applied to MBR is given before the presentation of two case studies. In the first case study, CBA and LCA were applied for the assessment of seven wastewater treatment plants using MBR and other membrane technologies. The results highlighted the benefits of removal of substances responsible for eutrophication and the relevance of the scale factor regarding electricity use, one of the main environmental and economic costs. In the second case study, LCA alone was applied for the environmental assessment of four novel MBR configurations at pilot-plant scale focusing on the removal of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), of which only hormones were found to be relevant in terms of toxicity due to their higher concentrations in the influent.A model to calculate the farm-to-customer carbon footprint (CF) for different dairy product groups is presented. As the largest share of the CF of dairy products occurs at farm level, it is decisive how the emissions from raw milk production are allocated between different products. Impacts associated with raw milk are allocated based on a weighted fat and protein content (1:1.4). Data from the dairy company Arla Foods give 1.1, 8.1, 6.5, 7.4 and 1.2 kg carbon dioxide equivalents per kg of fresh dairy product, butter and butter blend, cheese, milk powder and whey based product, and other, respectively. One critical aspect is how the by-product 'whey' is dealt with. No emissions are allocated to the milk solid whey, which is why products containing whey have an apparent low impact. Underlying methodological assumptions are open to debate and further research is needed concerning the CF impact of different milk components. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study characterizes the environmental performances of large-scale ground-mounted PV installations by considering a life cycle approach. The methodology is based on the application of the existing international standards of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Four scenarios are compared, considering fixed-mounting structures with (1) primary aluminum supports or (2) wood supports, and mobile structures with (3) single-axis trackers or (4) dual-axis trackers. Life cycle inventories are based on manufacturers' data combined with additional calculations and assumptions. Fixed-mounting installations with primary aluminum supports show the largest environmental impact potential with respect to human health, climate change and energy consumption. The climate change impact potential ranges between 37.5 and 53.5 g CO2 eq/kWh depending on the scenario, assuming 1700 kWh/m(2) yr of irradiation on an inclined plane (30 degrees), and multi-crystalline silicon modules with 14% of energy production performance. Mobile PV installations with dual-axis trackers show the largest impact potential on ecosystem quality, with more than a factor 2 of difference with other considered installations. Supports mass and composition, power density (in MWp/acre of land) and energy production performances appear as key design parameters with respect to large-scale ground-mounted PV installations environmental performances, in addition to modules manufacturing process energy inputs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The optimal size and location of bioenergy plants with regards to environmental and economic performance are assessed with a spatially explicit value chain model of the production of synthetic natural gas (SNG) from wood. It consists of several individual models for the availability, harvest, transportation, conversion of wood to SNG, electricity and heat, and the use of these products to substitute nonrenewable energy services. An optimization strategy is used to choose the optimal technology configuration for plant sizes from 5 to 200 MW and different locations for any desired weighting between the environmental performance based on life cycle assessment (LCA) and the economic performance. While the economic optima are found at plant sizes between 100 and 200 MW, the environmental optima are found in the range of 5-40 MW. This trade-off can be minimized at plant sizes above 25 MW according to the presented model. The most important driver of the environmental performance is the efficient substitution of non-renewable energy, which is a site-specific factor. In comparison to this, spatial factors such as wood availability, harvest, and transportation, have a smaller influence on the environmental performance, at least for a country of the size of Switzerland. The main drivers of the economic performance are the revenues from the sale of the SNG plant's products and the SNG production costs, but transportation and wood costs also play a role. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An increasing number of rural municipalities wants to meet their entire energy demand with biomass. This article gives a system analytic view on these "bioenergy villages" by balancing pros (reduction of CO2 emissions) and cons (increasing costs, land use) using the example of a model municipality in Germany. The results indicate that a 100% energy supply based on biomass from within the boundaries of a rural municipality is technically possible but less reasonable with respect to land use competition and costs of energy supply. Whereas heat and power demand in bioenergy villages can be covered with relatively little land use and to relatively low costs, the production of transport fuel based on energy crops (rape seed) leads to significant negative impacts. For a cost-efficient decarbonization of rural areas it can therefore be recommended to particularly expand the utilization of biomass for heat and power production and to reconsider the transport fuel production. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the production of biofuels continues to expand worldwide, criticism about, e.g. the energy output versus input and the competition with food has been questioned. However, biofuels have the possibility to be optimized in order to improve the environmental performance. This could be accomplished through the use of concepts from industrial symbiosis. This paper provides a quantification of the environmental performance of industrial symbiosis in the biofuel industry through integration of biogas and ethanol processes using a life cycle approach. Results show that although increasing integration is assumed to produce environmental benefits, not all impact categories have achieved this and the results depend upon the allocation methods, energy system and assumptions chosen. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Integrated analysis on socio-economic metabolism could provide a basis for understanding and optimizing regional sustainability. The paper conducted socio-economic metabolism analysis by means of the emergy accounting method coupled with data envelopment analysis and decomposition analysis techniques to assess the sustainability of Qingyang city and its eight sub-region system, as well as to identify the major driving factors of performance change during 2000-2007, to serve as the basis for future policy scenarios. The results indicate that Qingyang greatly depended on non-renewable emergy flows and feedback (purchased) emergy flows, except the two sub-regions, named Huanxian and Huachi, which highly depended on renewable emergy flow. Zhenyuan, Huanxian and Qingcheng were identified as being relatively emergy efficient, and the other five sub-regions have potential to reduce natural resource inputs and waste output to achieve the goal of efficiency. The results of decomposition analysis show that the economic growth, as well as the increased emergy yield ratio and population not accompanied by a sufficient increase of resource utilization efficiency are the main drivers of the unsustainable economic model in Qingyang and call for polices to promote the efficiency of resource utilization and to optimize natural resource use.IUMAT (Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool) is a system-based sustainability analysis tool. It quantifies and aggregates the social, economic and environmental capitals of urban activity in an integrated framework focusing on the metabolic flows of urban development. This paper builds on previous work on urban metabolism and advances an analytical framework that defines how the consumption of resources and resulting environmental impacts are calculated as indices of sustainability in an urban region. The benefits of integrated urban modeling using the proposed framework as well as the data sources are detailed. The underlying analytical framework for the proposed tool applies the dynamics of choice, time, and scale towards dynamically interpreting demographic and economic factors. IUMAT's calculative modules for land cover, transportation, and energy/water/resource use are described as well as the modality of connections between the modules. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This synthesis article presents an overview of an urban metabolism (UM) approach using mixed methods and multiple sources of data for Los Angeles, California. We examine electric energy use in buildings and greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, and calculate embedded infrastructure life cycle effects, water use and solid waste streams in an attempt to better understand the urban flows and sinks in the Los Angeles region (city and county). This quantification is being conducted to help policy-makers better target energy conservation and efficiency programs, pinpoint best locations for distributed solar generation, and support the development of policies for greater environmental sustainability. It provides a framework to which many more UM flows can be added to create greater understanding of the study area's resource dependencies. Going forward, together with policy analysis, UM can help untangle the complex intertwined resource dependencies that cities must address as they attempt to increase their environmental sustainability.We introduce a new 'multi-layered' indicator set for urban metabolism (UM) studies in megacities. The indicator set is designed for gathering information on the definition (spatial boundaries, constituent cities, population, economy), biophysical characteristics (climate, population density, building floor area), and metabolic flows (water, waste, materials, and all types of energy) of megacities. In addition, it addresses the role of utilities in the provision of services and regulatory actions that, along with public governance, may influence (and/or control) the urban metabolism. In the article, we give background context to the growth and development of megacities, their overarching socio-economic issues, and the definition of their boundaries. Two methodologies to define megacity boundaries are compared, showing that the definition of 'megacity' is not trivial and that further investigation is needed to establish a baseline for comparison of urban metabolism data. Use of the standardized indicator set will ease inter-city comparisons of urban metabolism, whilst enhancing knowledge of megacities and their transformation into sustainable systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An evaluation of interlinkages and synergies among the different resources and performance patterns in the city of Rome (Italy) was accomplished by means of decomposition equations, in order to identify the major drivers of change in the investigated period as well as future low-resource scenarios. A half-a-century historical series (1962-2008) of energy and resource consumption in the city of Rome (Italy) was investigated in order to ascertain the links between resource use and complexity change. Environmental, material and energy inputs were firstly evaluated as actual energy and mass flows, then converted to emergy units to provide an assessment on a common ground. Results show that the sustainability of the urban system decreased steadily in the investigated period, as confirmed by both intensive and extensive parameters. The demand for abiotic matter, water, energy and emergy (environmental work) was accounted for over time and referred to the population (per-capita indicators) and current prices economic product generated by the city (GVA, Gross Value Added). Moreover, the effects associated with the emissions were evaluated, with a special focus on global warming and acidification potential. The changes in the urban metabolism occurred within the investigated period were analyzed considering the variation of different inputs necessary to drive the city (electricity, fuels, goods, machineries, etc.). Finally, a decomposition analysis was performed to identify the main causes and drivers associated with the changes in the city metabolism. Decomposition results show that the increased fraction of imports compared to local sources, of non-renewable resources compared to renewables, as well as of population and per capita income not accompanied by sufficient increase of energy and material efficiency are the major drivers of such unsustainability pattern and call for policies that focus on optimization of production and consumption patterns in times of unavoidable shrinking of resource basis. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Deciding upon optimum planning actions in terms of sustainable urban planning involves the consideration of multiple environmental and socio-economic criteria. The transformation of natural landscapes to urban areas affects energy and material fluxes. An important aspect of the urban environment is the urban metabolism, and changes in such metabolism need to be considered for sustainable planning decisions. A spatial Decision Support System (DSS) prototyped within the European FP7-funded project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban plannIng Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism), enables accounting for the urban metabolism of planning actions, by exploiting the current knowledge and technology of biophysical sciences. The main aim of the BRIDGE project was to bridge the knowledge and communication gap between urban planners and environmental scientists and to illustrate the advantages of considering detailed environmental information in urban planning processes. The developed DSS prototype integrates biophysical observations and simulation techniques with socio-economic aspects in five European cities, selected as case studies for the pilot application of the tool. This paper describes the design and implementation of the BRIDGE DSS prototype, illustrates some examples of use, and highlights the need for further research and development in the field.Urban areas are the primary habitat for a majority of the global population. The development of cities not only entails a fundamental change in human settlement patterns but also a dramatic transformation of the physical environment. Thus, urban areas and their development are at the centre of all discussions on sustainability and/or sustainable development. This review essay introduces the notion of Urban Metabolism (UM), a term that provides a conceptual framework to study how a city functions, and hence, a way to address the sustainability issue of a city. Due to the significance and scope of the subject, the notion of UM is interpreted and thus approached differently across diverse disciplines from both the natural and social science fields. In order to comprehend the commonalities and controversies between them, the present review also briefly introduces the historical roots of the term. This review reveals the increasing significance of a rich and rapidly evolving field of research on the metabolism of urban areas.The present work aimed at defining an urban efficiency index taking into account the relationships among urban structure, energy consumption, emissions of pollutants and depletion of resources. Core of the work is the analysis of the most significant energy and mass flows characterizing urban metabolism and their representation through hierarchically organized system of variables and their fuzzy evaluations using a cascade of Takagi-Sugeno models. The performance of the urban system is evaluated splitting it in defined subsystems about transportation, built environment and the socioeconomic sector. A chain of Takagi-Sugeno models starts from a fuzzy evaluation of urban data, evaluates the efficiency of these subsystems and eventually recursively obtains the final evaluation of the whole system. This structure and the use of fuzzy methods permit the definition of an index which is very clear from the point of view of interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, this kind of index can support policy makers, public utilities, urban designers and other stake holders in defining strategies for improving the performance of the different urban areas looking at their features, weaknesses and potentialities. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban water services are challenged from many perspectives and different stakeholders demand performance improvements along economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. In response, urban water utilities systematically give more attention to criteria such as water safety, climate change adaptation and mitigation, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), total cost efficiency, and on how to improve their operations within the water-energy-carbon nexus. The authors of this paper collaborated in the development of a 'Dynamic Metabolism Model' (DMM). The model is developed for generic use in the sustainability assessment of urban water services, and it has been initially tested for the city of Oslo, Norway. The purpose has been to adopt a holistic systemic perspective to the analysis of metabolism and environmental impacts of resource flows in urban water and wastewater systems, in order to offer a tool for the examination of future strategies and intervention options in such systems. This paper describes the model and its application to the city of Oslo for the analysis time period 2013-2040. The external factors impacting decision-making and interventions are introduced along with realistic scenarios developed for the testing, after consultation with officials at the Oslo Water and Wastewater Works (Norway). Possible interventions that the utility intends to set in motion are defined and numerically interpreted for incorporation into the model, and changes in the indicator values over the time period are determined. This paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the DMM, as a decision-support tool for water-wastewater utilities. The scenarios considered and interventions identified do not include all possible scenarios and interventions that can be relevant for water-wastewater utilities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban ecosystems are unique in the sense that human activities are the major drivers of biogeochemical processes. Along with the demographic movement into cities, nutrients flow towards the urban zone (nutrient urbanization), causing the degradation of environmental quality and ecosystem health. In this paper, we summarize the characteristics of nutrient cycling within the urban ecosystem compared to natural ecosystems. The dynamic process of nutrient urbanization is then explored taking Xiamen city, China, as an example to examine the influence of rapid urbanization on food sourced nitrogen and phosphorus metabolism. Subsequently, the concept of a nutrient footprint and calculation method is introduced from a lifecycle perspective. Finally, we propose three system approaches to mend the broken biogeochemical cycling. Our study will contribute to a holistic solution which achieves synergies between environmental quality and food security, by integrating technologies for nutrient recovery and waste reduction. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It has been over 15 years since the term 'urban political ecology' (UPE) was coined. While still often not incorporated into larger discussion of political ecology, its growing visibility in the published literature suggests that it has gone beyond an emerging theoretical lens to one that has fully emerged. This report characterizes the current literature that explicitly utilizes the language of UPE, discusses its theoretical evolution that is now seeing a second wave, as well as catalogs some of the new arenas through which the sub-field has offered novel insights into the socionatural unevenness of cities. A central contribution of this survey is to illustrate the myriad articulations of how urban environmental and social change co-determine each other and how these metabolic processes offer insights into creative pathways toward more democratic urban environmental politics.Chinese cities are plagued by the rise in resource and energy input and output over the last decade. At the same time, the scale and pace of economic development sweeping across Chinese cities have revived the debate about urban metabolisms, which could be simply seen as the ratio of output to resource and energy input in urban systems. In this study, an emergy (meaning the equivalent solar energy) accounting, sustainable indices of urban metabolisms, and an urban metabolic system dynamics model, are developed in support of the research task on Chinese cities 'metabolisms and their related policies. The dynamic simulation model used in the paper is capable of synthesizing component-level knowledge into system behavior simulation at an integrated level, which is directly useful for simulating and evaluating a variety of decision actions and their dynamic consequences. For the study case, interactions among a number of Beijing's urban emergy components within a time frame of 20 years (from 2010 to 2030) are examined dynamically. Six alternative policy scenarios are implemented into the system simulation. Our results indicate that Beijing's current model of urban metabolism-tertiary industry oriented development mode-would deliver prosperity to the city. However, the analysis also shows that this mode of urban metabolism would weaken urban self-support capacity due primarily to the large share of imported and exported emergy in the urban metabolic system. The keys of improving the efficiency of urban metabolism include the priority on the renewable resource and energy, increase in environmental investment and encouragement on innovative technologies of resource and energy utilization, et al.Urban areas are considered net consumers of materials and energy, attracting these from the surrounding hinterland and other parts of the planet. The way these flows are transformed and returned to the environment by the city is important for addressing questions of sustainability and the effect of human behavior on the metabolism of the city. The present work explores these questions with the use of systems analysis, specifically in the form of a Multi-sectoral Systems Analysis (MSA), a tool for research and for supporting decision-making for policy and investment. The application of MSA is illustrated in the context of Greater London, with these three objectives: (a) estimating resource fluxes (nutrients, water and energy) entering, leaving and circulating within the city-watershed system; (b) revealing the synergies and antagonisms resulting from various combinations of water-sector innovations; and (c) estimating the economic benefits associated with implementing these technologies, from the point of view of production of fertilizer and energy, and the reduction of greenhouse gases. Results show that the selection of the best technological innovation depends on which resource is the focus for improvement. Urine separation can potentially recover 47% of the nitrogen in the food consumed in London, with revenue of $33 M per annum from fertilizer production. Collecting food waste in sewers together with growing algae in wastewater treatment plants could beneficially increase the amount of carbon release from renewable energy by 66%, with potential annual revenues of $58 M from fuel production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Accurate and detailed accounting of energy-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is crucial to the evaluation of pressures on natural resources and the environment, as well as to the assignment of responsibility for emission reductions. However, previous emission inventories were usually production- or consumption-based accounting, and few studies have comprehensively documented the linkages among socio-economic activities and external transaction in urban areas. Therefore, we address this gap in proposing an analytical framework and accounting system with three dimensions of boundaries to comprehensively assess urban energy use and related CO2 emissions. The analytical framework depicted the input, transformation, transfer and discharge process of the carbon-based (fossil) energy flows through the complex urban ecosystems, and defined the accounting scopes and boundaries on the strength of 'carbon footprint' and 'urban metabolism'. The accounting system highlighted the assessment for the transfer and discharge of socio-economic subsystems with different spatial boundaries. Three kinds methods applied to Beijing City explicitly exhibited the accounting characteristics. Our research firstly suggests that urban carbon-based energy metabolism can be used to analyze the process and structure of urban energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Secondly, three kinds of accounting methods use different benchmarks to estimate urban energy use and CO2 emissions with their distinct strength and weakness. Thirdly, the empirical analysis in Beijing City demonstrate that the three kinds of methods are complementary and give different insights to discuss urban energy-induced CO2 emissions reduction. We deduce a conclusion that carbon reductions responsibility can be assigned in the light of production, consumption and shared responsibility based principles. Overall, from perspective of the industrial and energy restructuring and the residential lifestyle changes, our results shed new light on the analysis on the evolutionary mechanism and pattern of urban energy-induced CO2 emissions with the combination of three kinds of methods. And the spatial structure adjustment and technical progress provides further elements for consideration about the scenarios of change in urban energy use and CO2 emissions.This study evaluates direct and indirect environmental impacts associated with the consumption of goods and services by the households living in the municipality of Aveiro (Portugal) using environmentally extended input output (IO) analysis. The environmental impacts addressed are greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil fuel consumption. A methodology adapted to the specificities of the data available is proposed. This methodology relies on the Portuguese economic IO table, on GHG emission and fossil fuel consumption intensities, and on national household expenditure data downscaled to the urban level. This methodology could also be applied to other municipalities or cities for which data on local household expenditures are missing. This study also identifies the sectors with the largest impacts in order to prioritise strategies for reducing the impacts to move the municipality towards more sustainable consumption. The estimated total GHG emissions in 2005 amounted to 26 kg CO2-eq./cap/day and the total fossil fuel consumption was 7.3 koe/cap/day. The sectors that contributed most for both indicators are "land transport and transport by pipelines", "food, beverages and tobacco", "construction" and "production, collection and distribution of electricity". Therefore, improvement measures are proposed for these sectors in order to more effectively decrease the environmental impacts related with GHG emissions and fossil energy consumption of the municipality. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the complexities of producing fish for the city and substituting wild with farmed fish. Using the urban metabolism framework and commodity biographies approach, it takes the case of pen-urban aquaculture in Laguna Lake, Philippines and focuses on the metabolic transformations of bighead carp, an introduced lake fish primarily consumed in nearby Metro Manila. Increased lake production of cheap fish like bighead carp did not immediately result in greater urban consumption, which remained limited owing to consumer unfamiliarity and the material characteristics of the fish tied to its production in the lake. By following the fish, the paper tells the story of how bighead carp has been and is being made amenable for urban consumption in Metro Manila's wet markets, kitchens and fish processing sites. It discusses the material practices associated with the transformation of fish in their displacement through the metaphors of distancing, entanglement, frictions and flows. It argues that particular relations between fish and the aquatic environment materially produce fish that is in turn metabolized in the city through everyday practices that reconstitute fish commodities. These practices show that despite the production of more cheap fish, the substitution of capture fisheries by aquaculture is a messy process that reflects metabolic contradictions that fish materially embody and that have material effects on fish production and consumption. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cities are complex systems of accumulated matter. The continuous process of matter accumulation in urban systems differs in intensity across the globe according to specific urban features, such as location and age of the urban tissue, and as a physical manifestation of metabolic lineaments, material accumulation should differ amongst cities. In this paper, a new indicator to measure this process of material accumulation is proposed, namely, the Technomass. Emulating ecology, which measures biomass in natural ecosystems, a sample of different urban tissues in a given city - Bogota - was measured in terms of volume and rates of matter accumulation. Technomass is able to indicate overall asymptotic behaviour, specific spatial profiles and intensification of rates in time. In metabolic terms, the indicator looks into the black box, providing the possibility to link metabolic behaviours with urban form and attempting to fill the gap between urban planning, urban metabolism (UM) and Material Flow Analysis (MFA). This new indicator offers a broad scope of applications. Further possibilities and links to urban research and policy making are explored in the discussion section. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China's rapid urbanization has led to increasing steel consumption for buildings and civil engineering infrastructure. The in-use steel stock in the same is considered to be closely related to social welfare and urban metabolism. Traditional approaches for determining the in-use steel stock are labor-intensive and time-consuming processes and always hindered by the availability of statistical data. To address this issue, this study proposed the use of long-term nighttime lights as a proxy to effectively estimate in-use steel stock for buildings (IUSSB) and civil engineering infrastructure (IUSSCE) at the provincial level in China. Significant relationships between nighttime lights versus IUSSB and IUSSCE were observed for provincial variables in a single year, as well as for time series variables of a single province. However, these relationships were found to differ among provinces (referred to as. inter-individual differences.) and with time (referred to as. temporal differences.). Panel regression models were therefore proposed to estimate IUSSB and IUSSCE in consideration of the temporal and inter-individual differences based on a dataset covering 1992-2007. These models were validated using data for 2008, and the results showed good estimation for both IUSSB and IUSSCE. The proposed approach can be used to easily monitor the dynamic of IUSSB and IUSSCE in China. This should be critical in providing valuable information for policy making regarding regional development of buildings and infrastructure, sustainable urban resource management, and cross-boundary material recycling.Material management faces a dual challenge: on the one hand satisfying large and increasing demands for goods and on the other hand accommodating wastes and emissions in sinks. Hence, the characterization of material flows and stocks is relevant for both improving resource efficiency and environmental protection. This article focuses on the urban scale, a dimension rarely investigated in past metal flow studies. We compare the copper (Cu) metabolism of two cities in different economic states, namely, Vienna (Europe) and Taipei (Asia). Substance flow analysis is used to calculate urban Cu balances in a comprehensive and transparent form. The main difference between Cu in the two cities appears to be the stock: Vienna seems close to saturation with 180 kilograms per capita (kg/cap) and a growth rate of 2% per year. In contrast, the Taipei stock of 30 kg/cap grows rapidly by 26% per year. Even though most Cu is recycled in both cities, bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration represents an unused Cu potential accounting for 1% to 5% of annual demand. Nonpoint emissions are predominant; up to 50% of the loadings into the sewer system are from nonpoint sources. The results of this research are instrumental for the design of the Cu metabolism in each city. The outcomes serve as a base for identification and recovery of recyclables as well as for directing nonrecyclables to appropriate sinks, avoiding sensitive environmental pathways. The methodology applied is well suited for city benchmarking if sufficient data are available.When we use the urban metabolism model for urban development, the input in the model is often valuable landscape, being the resource of the development, and output in the form of urban sprawl, as a result of city transformations. The resilience of these "output" areas is low. The lack of resilience is mainly caused by the inflexibility in these areas where existing buildings, infrastructure, and public space cannot be moved when deemed necessary. In this article, a new vision for the city is proposed in which the locations of these objects are flexible and, as a result, the resilience is higher: a Dismantable City. Currently, the development of this sort of city is constrained by technical, social, and regulatory practice. However, the perspective of a Dismantable City is worthwhile because it is able to deal with sudden, surprising, and unprecedented climate impacts. Through self-organizing processes the city becomes adjustable and its objects mobile. This allows the city to configure itself according to environmental demands. The city is then able to withstand or even anticipate floods, heat waves, droughts, or bushfires. Adjustability can be found in several directions: creating multiple layers for urban activities (multi-layer urbanism), easing the way objects are constructed (light urbanism), or re-using abandoned spaces (transformable urbanism).The Distributed Energy Resource (DER) systems represent a possible option for the implementation of the Low Carbon Cities development scenario, consistently with EU orientations. Many surveys, especially of engineering and information technology origin, are contributing to DER systems spread through testing the Virtual Power Plan (VVP): a technological system aimed at synchronously managing the information and energy fluxes, and able to have an effect on the urban metabolism balance and on the energy chain organizational model. In the event of a wider VVP spread, consequences for the urban structure social and technical conversion process might be envisioned. Such systems gain importance in terms of starting urban renewal processes, introducing new rules for the local energy and environmental infrastructures. In this way, it is envisioned the need for a deeper comprehension of the VVP innovative functionalities, this comprehension being significant for all the branches of knowledge which are interested in developing methods and tools for the Environmental Technology Management and Planning of the settlement processes. The author, who is interested in producing and organizing an energy, distributed, renewable and interactive model, shows, through a critical analysis of the Electricity Networks Europe program study cases, the operating potential of the new system, emphasizing the consequences on the settlement process development, thus providing a first definition of the strategic features for the VVP technical and social implementation.Discovering ways in which to increase the sustainability of the metabolic processes involved in urbanization has become an urgent task for urban design and management in China. As cities are analogous to living organisms, the disorders of their metabolic processes can be regarded as the cause of "urban disease". Therefore, identification of these causes through metabolic process analysis and ecological element distribution through the urban ecosystem's compartments will be helpful. By using Beijing as an example, we have compiled monetary input-output tables from 1997, 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2007 and calculated the intensities of the embodied ecological elements to compile the corresponding implied physical input-output tables. We then divided Beijing's economy into 32 compartments and analyzed the direct and indirect ecological intensities embodied in the flows of ecological elements through urban metabolic processes. Based on the combination of input-output tables and ecological network analysis, the description of multiple ecological elements transferred among Beijing's industrial compartments and their distribution has been refined. This hybrid approach can provide a more scientific basis for management of urban resource flows. In addition, the data obtained from distribution characteristics of ecological elements may provide a basic data platform for exploring the metabolic mechanism of Beijing.This article describes a new methodological framework to account for urban material flows and stocks, using material flow accounting (MFA) as the underlying method. The proposed model, urban metabolism analyst (UMAn), bridges seven major gaps in previous urban metabolism studies: lack of a unified methodology; lack of material flows data at the urban level; limited categorizations of material types; limited results about material flows as they are related to economic activities; limited understanding of the origin and destination of flows; lack of understanding about the dynamics of added stock; and lack of knowledge about the magnitude of the flow of materials that are imported and then, to a great extent, exported. To explore and validate the UMAn model, a case study of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area was used. An annual time series of material flows from 2003 to 2009 is disaggregated by the model into 28 material types, 55 economic activity categories, and 18 municipalities. Additionally, an annual projection of the obsolescence of materials for 2010-2050 was performed. The results of the case study validate the proposed methodology, which broadens the contribution of existing urban MFA studies and presents pioneering information in the field of urban metabolism. In particular, the model associates material flows with economic activities and their spatial location within the urban area.Rapid urbanization has greatly altered the urban metabolism of material and energy. As a significant part of the infrastructure, urban roads are being rapidly developed worldwide. Quantitative analysis of metabolic processes on urban road systems, especially the scale, composition and spatial distribution of their stocks, could help to assess the resource appropriation and potential environmental impacts, as well as improve urban metabolism models. In this paper, an integrated model, which covered all types of roads, intersection structures and ancillary facilities, was built for calculating the material stocks of urban road systems. Based on a bottom-up method, the total stocks were disassembled into a number of stock parts rather than obtained by input output data, which provided an approach promoting data availability and inner structure understanding. The combination with GIS enabled the model to tackle the complex structures of road networks and avoid double counting. In the case study of Beijing, the following results are shown: 1) The total stocks for the entire road system reached 159 million tons, of which nearly 80% was stored in roads, and 20% in ancillary facilities. 2) Macadam was the largest stock (111 million tons), while stone mastic asphalt, polyurethane plastics, and atactic polypropylene accounted for smaller components of the overall system. 3) The stock per unit area of pedestrian overcrossing was higher than that of the other stock units in the entire system, and its steel stocks reached 0.49 t/m(2), which was 10 times as high as that in interchanges. 4) The high stock areas were mainly distributed in ring-shaped and radial expressways, as well as in major interchanges. 5) Expressways and arterials were excessively emphasized, while minor roads were relatively ignored. However, the variation of cross-sectional thickness in branches and neighborhood roads will have a significant impact on the scale of material stocks in the entire road system. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Patterns of urban development influence flows of material and energy within urban settlements and exchanges with its surrounding. In recent years the quantitative estimation of the components of the so-called urban metabolism has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers from different fields. To contribute to this effort we developed a modelling framework for estimating the carbon exchanges together with sensible and latent heat fluxes and air temperature in relation to alternative land-use scenarios. The framework bundles three components: (i) a Cellular Automata model for the simulation of the urban land-use dynamics; (ii) a transportation model for estimating the variation of the transportation network load and (iii) the Advanced Canopy-Atmosphere-Soil Algorithm (ACASA) model tightly coupled with the mesoscale weather forecasting model WRF. We present and discuss the results of an example application on the City of Florence. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The need to create sustainable cities has led to increasing concern on achieving healthy spatial metabolic interactions and system sustainability. Based on emergy synthesis and an urban spatial conceptual framework, we employ a set of seven emergy-based indicators to evaluate the sustainability of spatiotemporal metabolism for Xiamen, southeast China, using 1987-2007 land use and socio-economic statistic data. The results show a general improvement in socio-economic performance (emergy intensity, GDP emergy ratio, and emergy turnover ratio), but a steady deterioration in environmental performance (emergy self-support ratio, emergy density, and waste density) during the period 1987-2007. An increasing environmental and socio-economic metabolic gap exists between the built-up urban sprawl region (USR) and urban footprint regions (UFRs) due to resource privation and environmental space occupation, potentially undermining system sustainability. Compared to other Chinese cities and provinces, Xiamen still exhibited relatively weaker sustainability in 2002 due to increasing pressure on ecosystem health. Environment-oriented, society-oriented and cross-boundary-oriented metabolic strategies should be incorporated into future city development to foster urban system sustainability. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The efficiency of urban metabolic processes depends on the degree of mutualism of these processes throughout the metabolic system and on the value gained by each compartment within the system. This can be assessed by means of ecological network-based synergism analysis. In this paper, we used material-flow accounting methods to account for the exchanges of resources and wastes among the compartments of an urban system. Using a seven-compartment urban metabolic network model of Beijing, China, as a case study, we examined the degree of synergism of the compartments, determined the nature of the resulting ecological relationships, and determined the flow of utility to each compartment within the system. The results revealed which types of ecological relationship contributed most to the system (here, exploitation) and identified the key compartments that decreased the system's degree of synergism. The results provide theoretical and empirical support for the development of policies designed to promote healthy development of Beijing's urban metabolic system. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.If cities are considered as "superorganisms", then disorders of their metabolic processes cause something analogous to an "urban disease". It is therefore helpful to identify the causes of such disorders by analyzing the inner mechanisms that control urban metabolic processes. Combining input-output analysis with ecological network analysis lets researchers study the functional relationships and hierarchy of the urban metabolic processes, thereby providing direct support for the analysis of urban disease. In this paper, using Beijing as an example, we develop a model of an urban metabolic system that accounts for the intensity of the embodied ecological elements using monetary input-output tables from 1997, 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2007, and use this data to compile the corresponding physical input-output tables. This approach described the various flows of ecological elements through urban metabolic processes and let us build an ecological network model with 32 components. Then, using two methods from ecological network analysis (flow analysis and utility analysis), we quantitatively analyzed the physical input-output relationships among urban components, determined the ecological hierarchy of the components of the metabolic system, and determined the distribution of advantage-dominated and disadvantage-dominated relationships, thereby providing scientific support to guide restructuring of the urban metabolic system in an effort to prevent or cure urban "diseases". (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The determinant share of cities in global primary energy use and greenhouse gas emissions highlights the importance of dissemination and development of reliable urban planning and policy tools. To reach sustainable urban development, having a comprehensive understanding of the concept of urban metabolism is critical. This work is the first step toward the development of an Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool (IUMAT) that seeks to consider all three social, economic and environmental capitals of an urban region in a multidisciplinary context. This tool is intended to provide a quantitative approach to assessing the sustainability indicators in a city. A literature review on the urban metabolism and urban-scale simulation tools is carried out to highlight the achievements as well as scientific gaps in the existing research, and to determine the objectives and functionalities that are expected from IUMAT.?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????;??IUMAT)??????????????????????????????????????, ????, ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????IUMAT ??????????????????This paper presents a method for urban resilience quantification from the energy metabolism perspective, taking into account different sustainability dimensions and introducing such aspects as environmental, social, economic, technical and risk aspects. The aim is to develop a methodology for resilience index quantification for urban thermal energy system taking into account different levels of urban energy metabolism - production, supply and use, and approbate it on the real Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian cities examples. The proposed approach includes a set of indicators to be used within the scope of thermal energy metabolism. The analysis is supposed to end with identification of the "weak points" of each studied energy system in order to help stakeholders develop the strategy for resilience enhancement in future. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. VThe reduction of risks bound to a possible disaster, to which a specific territorial unit could be involved, is a component strictly connected to the concept of sustainable development on its fundamental environmental, economic, political and social facets. Moreover, the evaluation of such reduction, depends not only accumulated resilience, but in particular on realized campaigns for a larger involvement of the people in the matter and on politics addressed to absorb eventual criticalities, concerning both at infrastructural and human components. All this implies that the capacity to absorb a risk is conceived as a hyper-complex system, whose management can be realized by mathematical models that can include a set of criteria, most of times conflicting each other and on which stakeholders are waiting for patchy expectations. Such models, properly of Group Decision Support Systems, able to conciliate qualitative and quantitative points of view by a participated process, can introduce in resilience a concept of measuring such as to point out "if and how much my city is ready". A case study, related to the communalities near the Italian Ombrone river, is proposed and solved using . problematic, that means giving a ranking from the most virtuous communality to the less one. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The paper, draws the attention of the debate a reflection on the possibility of developing, in some urban areas, strategies and actions for the regeneration and redevelopment of the city; bringing to the attention not only the improvement of the spatial and functional dimension of the rundown neighborhoods, but also of the social and environmental dimensions. The valorisation of these areas may benefit from the theory of Ecosystem Services [1], which appears to be able to renew the traditional approaches, to land use planning from the perspective of urban metabolism(1) [2]; in this regard are of great interest those forms of planning of degraded urban fringes that take into account the minimal standard of space and/or rural services by to each inhabitant in order to make an area sustainable. The contribution starts from careful analysis of the rural peri-urban areas of Tuscany, polarized between two apparently conflicting dynamics between them (use of land abandonment and agricultural soils), to develop a reflection about the possibility of experiencing urban regeneration processes that include in inside them, innovative forms for the design of open spaces, with the aim both to recover a portion of depressed urban areas both to create new public spaces, modeled according to the forms of multifunctional agriculture and identitarian landscape [3]. An urban regeneration directed not only to the built space, but also to the open space and to the promotion of effective projectuality through proper analysis of services, which could be offered by rural areas and serve needs expressed by residents.This paper reports on research in the area of 'Green Urbanism' and new models for urban growth and neighborhoods, as cities need to transform from a fossil-based model to a model based on sustainable energy sources. The paper deals with cross-cutting issues in architecture, landscape architecture and urban design and addresses the question of how we can best cohesively integrate all aspects of energy systems, transport systems, waste and water management, passive and active strategies, natural ventilation and so on, into contemporary urban design of 'Eco-Cities' with an improved environmental performance of cities. This text reflects upon practical strategies focused on increasing sustainability beyond and within the scope of individual buildings and provides a context for a general discourse about the regeneration of the city centre, its transformation to a sustainable model, and discusses how urbanism is affected (and can be expected to be even more affected in future) by the paradigms of ecology. Recent examples for the application of such urban design principles are the two proposals for the Australian city of Newcastle: the 'City Campus' and 'Port City' projects. These case studies illustrate that it is less environmentally damaging to stimulate growth within the established city centre rather than sprawling into new, formerly un-built areas. Three steps from passive building design to active mechanical equipment. The designer needs to take full advantage of basic, passive building strategies first, before adding mechanical active equipment. Motto: 'More with less'. The entire urban metabolism is based on energy supply. However, a new symbiosis between countryside and city is emerging: The century-old tension between 'rural' and 'urban' might finally get resolved, where the city stops to grow at the expense of its rural hinterland.Current study represents an analysis of urban metabolism and urban dynamics theory binding it with the resilience concept. This research aims to find links and interdependencies between these notions, identify gaps in the existing studies and formulate the problem to be solved at the further steps of research through the implementation of System Dynamics modeling. The initial insight in causal-loop diagram construction in order to illustrate the given dynamic problem has been made.The necessity of managing water in an integral way is currently not argued. It is considered unavoidable. This comes forth from the scarcity and intense concurrence for good quality fresh water in many areas of the world and the important political and social stresses this generates inside a country and between different territories. Integrated management is linked to the concept of considering the river basin as a unit for management, or exceptionally the aquifer system. Human beings cannot change this physical reality except by performing major works to link distinctive basins, but even in these cases physical boundaries do exist. Due to the relatively small fraction of water resources humans use directly to attend their needs, a preliminary analysis of water resources quantity problems-water quality is a different point of view-tend to ignore urban water as an essential part of a water resources planning when compared to the much larger water volumes required to produce food, fibers, and energy, and to sustain important ecological services, especially in semi-arid countries. However, the situation is very different when an analysis is made taking into account the real value of water for human supply and the different urban cycles the water passes through in a river basin or linked river basins. This is due to the strategic importance of adequate water supply for the human being to attain desirable standards of health, sanitation, life, and economic activity, as well as due to the important impacts and conditioning that urban cycles impose on the river basin. From a quantity point of view, water scarcity is mostly linked to agricultural demand since in general water supply can easily meet the water demand for direct human in a wide territorial context, although quality problems may become a limiting factor in areas that have limited financial resources. Important urban problems may be solved through making adjustments in the agricultural water use domain. Only an integrated analysis of all the involved factors, giving the due weight to urban water, may minimize problems and provide reasonable solutions to current stresses. This integrated analysis has to consider both quantity and quality aspects, and also the involved energy, ecological and territorial implications. Although the discussion has a general scope, comments are largely based on the experience in Spain.In recent decades, better data and methods have become available for understanding the complex functioning of cities and their impacts on sustainability. This review synthesizes the recent developments in concepts and methods being used to measure the impacts of cities on environmental sustainability. It differentiates between a dominant trend in research literature that concentrates on the accounting and allocation of greenhouse gas emissions and energy use to cities and a reemergence of studies that focus on the direct and indirect material and resource flows in cities. The methodological approaches reviewed may consider cities as either producers or consumers, and all recognize that urban environmental impacts can be local, regional, or global. As well as giving an overview of the methodological debates, we examine the implications of the different approaches for policy and the challenges these approaches face in their application in the field.This paper quantifies the effect of three policy levels on the water and energy futures of Melbourne, Australia. During a time of severe water shortages attributed to climate change, water strategies lacked consideration of energy consequences. Modeling, guided by urban metabolism theory, demonstrated that a compact urban form, reduced water consumption by 90 GL/a, compared with a sprawling city, and had greater water conservation impact than simulated demand management measures. Household water conservation, coupled with increased use of solar hot water systems, reduced grid energy use by some 30 PJ/a. Desalination, tripled water supply energy demand, growing to a total of 4.5 PJ/a, by 2045. While the increase is less than 1% of total Melbourne urban energy use, it contributes to a substantial increase in the energy bill for urban water provision. Importantly, the energy impact could be offset through demand management measures. Recommendations for the combined management of water and energy include improving energy characterization of the urban water cycle; impact-evaluation of regional plans; using total urban water and energy balances in analysis to provide context; and developing reporting mechanisms and indicators to help improve baseline data across the water and energy systems.Drawing on megapolitan geographies, urban political ecology, and urban metabolism as theoretical frameworks, this article theoretically and empirically explores megapolitan political ecology. First, we elucidate a theoretical framework in the context of southern Appalachia and, in particular, the Piedmont megapolitan region, suggesting that the megapolitan region is a useful scale through which to understand urban metabolic connections that constitute this rapidly urbanizing area. We also push the environmental history and geography literature of the U. S. South and southern Appalachia to consider the central role urban metabolic connections play in the region's pressing social and environmental crises. Second, we empirically illuminate these human and nonhuman urban metabolisms across the Piedmont megapolitan region using data from the Coweeta Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, especially highlighting a growing "ring of asphalt" that epitomizes several developing changes to patterns of metabolism. The conclusion suggests that changing urban metabolisms indicated by Coweeta LTER data, ranging from flows of people to flows of water, pose a complicated problem for regional governance and vitality in the future.Sustainable water management may strongly benefit from an integrated approach. Additionally, an integrated urban water management policy considering the various urban water flows and the possible interactions between the water sector and the remaining urban activities can benefit if based on an urban metabolism based analysis. This article assesses water flows of Lisbon Metropolitan Area considering the conventional water supply system and wastewater treatment system flows and also the hydrological cycle flows, and proposes a global set of indicators to perform a benchmarking analysis of the 18 municipalities of the region. Results highlighted the heterogeneous nature of the Metropolitan area in terms of water management - either in terms of management entities (predominantly public or municipalized), water consumption (varying from 227.4l/hab.day in Palmela to 402.7l/hab.day in Seixal), wastewater treatment (10 out of 18 municipalities already undergo secondary or tertiary wastewater treatments), runoff indices (depending on the municipality's level of urbanization), among other. Through the output volumes it was also assessed the potential of the municipalities to reuse wastewater for potable or non-potable urban uses, as well as the potential to harvest and harness rainwater. The main constraints to an integrated water management were identified and some potential solutions were measured and proposed even though they need further assessment, particularly in a cost-benefit perspective. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Our "News in Brief" series takes a look at recent emerging research, examining alternately various areas and topics in the earth sciences. This article contains a selection of research papers in urban geochemistry, an evolving discipline targeting the fluxes and transformation processes of chemical elements in urban systems. Global urbanization causes immensely increasing impacts on the system earth and many anthropogenic chemical element fluxes already exceed the geogenic ones. This results in specific element ratios that never existed before the rise of cities on planet earth, in the development of new mineral deposits and in negative environmental and health impacts due to the accumulation of toxic elements and chemical compounds. A comprehensive understanding of geochemical processes is key to element flux management and design of mitigation and remediation measures for environmental pollution in urban systems. In this issue, Stefan Norra at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and guest professor at the Technische Universitat Bergakademie Freiberg in Germany provides a brief look at the recent advances in urban geochemistry with respect its meaning and contributions to urban metabolism, urban mining and urban health (and links to the published papers).The paper presents, first, the 'Dynamic Metabolism Model' (DMM), developed by the authors, followed by an application to the city of Oslo, capital city of Norway. The time period considered for the analysis is 2013-2043. The external factors impacting decision-making and interventions are talked about in brief, and some realistic scenarios revolving around these factors are drawn up for testing, after consultation with officials at the Oslo Water and Wastewater Works. Possible interventions that the utility intends to set in motion on the upstream are defined and numerically interpreted for incorporation into the DMM. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Appraising the social-ecological processes influencing the inflow, transformation, and storage of materials and energy in urban ecosystems requires scientific attention. This appraisal can provide an important tool for assessing the sustainability of cities. Socioeconomic activities are mostly responsible for these fluxes, which are well manifested in the household unit. Human behavior associated with cultural traditions, belief systems, knowledge, and lifestyles are important drivers controlling the transfer of materials throughout the urban environment. Within this context, we explored three aspects of household consumption and waste disposal activities along the Rio Piedras Watershed in the San Juan metropolitan area of Puerto Rico. These included: the source of food consumed by residents, recycling activities, and trends in connection to the municipality's sewerage system. We randomly interviewed 440 households at 6 sites along the watershed. We also conducted analysis to estimate accessibility to commercial food services for residents in the study areas. Our surveys revealed that nearly all interviewed households (similar to 97%) consumed products from supermarkets. In neighborhoods of the upper portion of the watershed, where residential density is low with large areas of vegetative cover, more than 60% of residents consumed food items cultivated in their yards. Less than 36% of residents in the in densely urbanized parts of the lower portion of the watershed consumed items from their yards. Accessibility to commercial stores for food consumption contrasted among study sites. Recycling activities were mostly carried out by residents in the lower portion of the watershed, with better access to recycling programs provided by the municipality. The surveys also revealed that only 4 to 17% of residences in the upper watershed are connected to the sewerage system whereas the large majority uses septic tanks for septic water disposal. For these residents wastewater from house maintenance is disposed of directly into the environment. In the lower portion of the watershed all residents were connected to the sewerage system. Our study suggests there is a need to understand human behavioral attitudes in the acquirement and processing of resources, as a tool to generate informed-based strategies promoting sustainable consumption and disposal patterns.The resource and environmental issues that are emerging as a result of rapid urban development have made the study of urban metabolism increasingly important. However, past studies on urban metabolism have focused primarily on the system's external characteristics rather than on the internal production and consumption processes. To better understand the underlying mechanisms of urban metabolic processes, we present a method through which one can examine and characterize the production and consumption flows intrinsic to an urban metabolic system. Drawing upon several analytical procedures from ecological network analysis, we applied the method to a case study in Beijing, China. We collected a large body of statistical data and used it to account for the material flows inside Beijing's system from 1998 to 2007, thereby providing a quantitative network model of the system. We found that the paths between different components of Beijing's urban metabolic system remain simple, that there is insufficient cycling, and that the city's lack of internal environmental support capacity forces it to depend heavily on inputs from the external environment. These results suggest that the city needs to develop the reducer (recycling) component of its hierarchy to reduce the double pressure on its internal environment created by demands for resource supply and for absorption and recycling of wastes and other materials. This will help Beijing to achieve more sustainable development. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental justice studies that focus on the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) typically examine the unequal distribution of associated health and environmental risks in minority social groups and the political processes that generate these inequalities. With the aim to complement current views on the field, in this work, we explore whether there is an issue of environmental justice in municipal systems' grade of self-sufficiency in treating the MSW that they generate and in their effort to close their material cycles. The methodology used is based on the concept of urban metabolism and is applied to 12 coastal municipalities of Barcelona's Metropolitan Region in Spain. The metabolism of the MSW flows of each system is analysed to examine (i) the system's efficiency to close its MSW cycles, corresponding to an indicator of environmental sustainability, and (ii) the MSW export and import flows, as an indicator of social sustainability. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and the externalisation of MSW treatment-related hazards. The proposed indicator proves to be an excellent tool for the evaluation of both the environmental and social performance of a system considering MSW management.The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate ways in which the urban territory, including urban-rural areas and suburbs, can be transformed into a social, economic and environmental opportunity to transform its current unsustainable urban metabolism into a sustainable one. Moreover, it aims to reflect on solutions regarding new urban configurations that such metabolic transformations provide. In order to do so, this paper is organized in two parts. The first part addresses the issue of sustainability through a critical review of the available body of knowledge that encompasses the field of urban form analysis and its contribution to sustainability. The second part reflects on urban metabolism and analyses the specific case of Vrin, located in Switzerland, exhibiting the results of a successful urban-rural transformation that has coped with processes of economic, social and environmental changes, but that has also proved to provide a new urban-rural configuration imposed by a change of urban metabolism likely to guaranty Vrin's survival and sustainable transformation.Through this paper we present the first results of a research combining the management problem of Municipal Solid Waste to the requalification of built environment. The goal of this research is to mitigate the vulnerability of territory and urban heritage and to transform a problem into opportunities. Above all, we have paid attention to several exemplifying cases of Italian territory: suburbs of large towns, historical centres, small centres (and, in particular, those with a strong historical connotation). Their features are, at the same time, restrictions and challenges for designing new compatible systems that can contribute to the requalification of urban landscape recovering spaces with demolition products and residual materials and comparing with managerial needs.

 A dynamical downscaling method for probabilistic regional-scale climate change projections was developed to cover the inherent uncertainty associated with multiple general circulation model (GCM) climate simulations. The climatological increments estimated by GCM results were statistically analyzed using the singular vector decomposition. Both positive and negative perturbations from the ensemble mean with the magnitudes of their standard deviations were extracted and added to the ensemble mean of the climatological increments. The analyzed multiple modal increments were utilized to create multiple modal lateral boundary conditions for the future climate regional climate model (RCM) simulations by adding them to reanalysis data. The incremental handling of GCM simulations realized approximated probabilistic climate change projections with the smaller number of RCM simulations. For the probabilistic analysis, three values of a climatological variable simulated by RCMs for a mode were analyzed under an assumption of linear response to the multiple modal perturbations.Zero-tillage, residue management and precision nutrient management techniques are being promoted in the rice-wheat (RW) production system of Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGPs) to enhance climate change adaptation and increase food production. These management practices may also influence greenhouse gas emissions through their effects on various soil processes such as oxidation-reduction and nitrification-denitrification. We measured soil fluxes of CH4 and N2O in RW system under three tillage and residue management systems layered with four nitrogen (N) management treatments. The tillage and residue management systems comprised: conventional tillage (CT), zero-tillage without residue retention (ZT-R) and ZT with full residue retention (ZT+R) for both the crops. The four N management treatments for rice were: (a) basmati cultivar with recommended dose of nitrogen (RDN) applied in three splits, (b) basmati cultivar with 80% RDN as basal dose followed by Green Seeker (GS) guided N application, (c) hybrid cultivar with RDN applied in three splits and (d) hybrid with 80% RDN as basal dose followed by GS guided N application. The four N management treatments for wheat comprised combinations of RDN with and without relay green gram (GG), and 80% of RDN as basal dose followed by GS guided N application with and without relay GG. We employed the static chamber method to collect gas samples from the experimental plots which were subsequently analysed using gas chromatograph. Significant CH4 emissions were detected only in the CT rice system during the initial phase of continuous flooding, irrespective of N management strategies. N fertilization management affected the pattern of N2O emission with higher emission rates during crop establishment phase under 80% RDN as basal followed by GS guided N application than conventional RDN. In case of wheat, 80% RDN as basal followed by GS guided N application also induced higher cumulative N2O emissions than applying RDN at three regular splits. In rice, ZT-based RW system emitted more N2O than CT-based system. Overall ZT-based RW system reduced CH4 emission but this benefit is counterbalanced by higher N2O production compared to CT-based RW system.This paper addresses the importance of the cognitive dimension in urban sustainability transition policy practice. Many and diverse actors with contrasting interests interact in urban sustainability transitions. Their perceptions and values impact the potential uptake of transition strategies in urban systems. It is thus important to understand how actors view themselves involved in such processes. A case study on low carbon transitions for the city of Bilbao (Basque Country) is presented to explore the barriers and opportunities for an energy transition using Q methodology. Results suggest that stakeholders' motivation and perceived capacity for change are mainly related to four main discourses: follower, visionary, pragmatist and sceptic. Results also indicate that information exchange, communication and participation in decision-making processes, bridging visionaries and pragmatists with decision-makers, are key for bringing about effective transition processes. This study contributes to identifying attitudes of actors who can negotiate urban low-carbon transitions and stresses the need to build a common shared cognitive vision of whether and how sustainable urban transformation can take place. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change has significantly impacted tropical ecosystems critical for sustaining local economies and community livelihoods at global scales. Coastal ecosystems have largely declined, threatening the principal source of protein, building materials, tourism-based revenue, and the first line of defense against storm swells and sea level rise (SLR) for small tropical islands. Climate change has also impacted public health (i.e., altered distribution and increased prevalence of allergies, water-borne, and vector-borne diseases). Rapid human population growth has exacerbated pressure over coupled social-ecological systems, with concomitant non-sustainable impacts on natural resources, water availability, food security and sovereignty, public health, and quality of life, which should increase vulnerability and erode adaptation and mitigation capacity. This paper examines cumulative and synergistic impacts of climate change in the challenging context of highly vulnerable small tropical islands. Multiple adaptive strategies of coupled social-ecological ecosystems are discussed. Multi-level, multi-sectorial responses are necessary for adaptation to be successful. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Making good use of existing water infrastructure by adding organic wastes to anaerobic digesters improves the energy balance of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) substantially. This paper explores co-digestion load limits targeting a good trade-off for boosting methane production, and limiting process-drawbacks on nitrogen-return loads, cake-production, solids-viscosity and polymer demand. Bio-methane potential tests using whey as a model co-substrate showed diversification and intensification of the anaerobic digestion process resulting in a synergistical enhancement in sewage sludge methanization. Full-scale case-studies demonstrate organic co-substrate addition of up to 94% of the organic sludge load resulted in tripling of the biogas production. At organic co-substrate addition of up to 25% no significant increase in cake production and only a minor increase in ammonia release of ca. 20% have been observed. Similar impacts were measured at a high-solids digester pilot with up-stream thermal hydrolyses where the organic loading rate was increased by 25% using co-substrate. Dynamic simulations were used to validate the synergistic impact of co-substrate addition on sludge methanization, and an increase in hydrolysis rate from 1.5 d(-1) to 2.5 d(-1) was identified for simulating measured gas production rate. This study demonstrates co-digestion for maximizing synergy as a step towards energy efficiency and ultimately towards carbon neutrality. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Co-digestion has been used to improve biogas yields and the long-term stability of anaerobic digesters compared to mono-digestion; however, less is known about the ultimate inhibition from co-substrates at their maximum loading rates and mixing ratios because these limits cannot be practically tested by existing facilities. Here, we performed a controlled experiment with long operating periods to ensure sufficient acclimation with the goal to observe ultimate inhibition and the full benefit that can be gained from co-digestion. The three substrates: 1) food waste (FW); 2) alkaline hydrolysate (AH); and 3) crude glycerol (GY) were individually co-digested with dairy manure (MN) for more than 900 days using continuously stirred anaerobic reactors at mesophilic temperatures. Food waste caused no reduction in performance or stability when co-digested with manure up to a total organic loading rate (OLR) of 3.9 g volatile solids (VS)-L-1.Day(-1) (MN:FW = 51:49; VS basis), resulting in a specific methane yield (SMY) of 297 +/- 3 mL CH4.g VS-1 for the combined wastes. Alkaline hydrolysate was co-digested with manure up to a total OLR of 2.7 g VS.L-1.Day(-1) (MN:AH = 75:25) with a corresponding SMY of 299 +/- 6 mL CH4.g VS-1. However, the free ammonia concentration reached levels previously reported as inhibitory, and may have led to the observed accumulation of volatile fatty acids at higher loading rates. Crude glycerol co-digestion resulted in an optimum SMY of 549 +/- 25 mL CH4.g VS-1 at a total OLR of 3.2 g VS.L-1.Day(-1) (MN:GY = 62:38). Stable digestion beyond this level was prohibited by an accumulation of long-chain fatty acids and foaming. These results can be used to implement effective co-digestion strategies. Co-substrates that possess similar inhibiting characteristics should be monitored to prevent severe instability at high loading rates and mixing ratios. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Here, we studied the microbiome succession and time-scale variability of four mesophilic anaerobic reactors in a co-digestion study with the objective to find links between changing environmental conditions and the microbiome composition. The changing environmental conditions were ensured by gradual increases in loading rates and mixing ratios of three co-substrates with a constant manure-feeding scheme during an operating period longer than 900 days. Each co-substrate (i.e., alkaline hydrolysate, food waste, and glycerol) was co-digested separately. High throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to examine the microbiome succession. The alkaline hydrolysate reactor microbiome shifted and adapted to high, concentrations of free ammonia, total volatile fatty acids, and potassium to maintain its function. The addition of food waste and glycerol as co-substrates also led to microbiome changes, but to a lesser extent, especially in the case of the glycerol reactor microbiome. The divergence of the food waste reactor microbiome was primarily linked to increasing free ammonia levels in the reactor; though, these levels remained below previously reported inhibitory levels for acclimated biomass. The glycerol reactor microbiome succession included an increase in Syntrophomonadaceae family members, which have previously been linked to long-chain fatty acid degradation. The glycerol reactor exhibited rapid failure and limited adaptation at the end of the study. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Decision making in climate change adaptation planning depends on the quantification and broad understanding of uncertainties in projected climate impacts. In a case study, we estimated impacts of climate change on potential grain maize yield up to the time horizon 2036-2065 for three climatic regions in Switzerland using - for the first time - three fundamentally different impact modelling approaches: a process-based, a statistical and an expert-based approach. The aim was to quantify uncertainties originating from climate model chains, downscaling weather generator choice, and impact model parameterization. We find that while estimated climate impacts on yields are subject to large uncertainties originating from both climate model chains and impact model approaches, estimates of changes in cropspecific climate limitations are less ambiguous. We conclude that by subtracting the layer of uncertainty related to the aggregation of different climate influences on yield estimates and by focusing on estimated changes in climate limitations, more decision-relevant information can be provided to support crop-specific adaptation planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An accurate understanding of flood risk and its drivers is crucial for effective risk management. Detailed risk projections, including uncertainties, are however rarely available, particularly in developing countries. This paper presents a method that integrates recent advances in global-scale modeling of flood hazard and land change, which enables the probabilistic analysis of future trends in national-scale flood risk. We demonstrate its application to Indonesia. We develop 1000 spatially-explicit projections of urban expansion from 2000 to 2030 that account for uncertainty associated with population and economic growth projections, as well as uncertainty in where urban land change may occur. The projections show that the urban extent increases by 215%-357% (5th and 95th percentiles). Urban expansion is particularly rapid on Java, which accounts for 79% of the national increase. From 2000 to 2030, increases in exposure will elevate flood risk by, on average, 76% and 120% for river and coastal floods. While sea level rise will further increase the exposure-induced trend by 19%-37%, the response of river floods to climate change is highly uncertain. However, as urban expansion is the main driver of future risk, the implementation of adaptation measures is increasingly urgent, regardless of the wide uncertainty in climate projections. Using probabilistic urban projections, we show that spatial planning can be a very effective adaptation strategy. Our study emphasizes that global data can be used successfully for probabilistic risk assessment in data-scarce countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines the gender differences in farmers' responses to climate change adaption in Yongqiao District, China. A random sampling technique was used to select 220 household heads, while descriptive statistics and binary logit models were used to analyze the data obtained from the households. We determine that male and female respondents are not significantly different in their knowledge and perceptions of climate change, but there is a gender difference in adopting climate change adaptation measures. Male-headed households are more likely to adopt new technology for water conservation and to increase investment in irrigation infrastructure. The research also indicates that the adaptation decisions of male and female heads are influenced by different sets of factors. The findings of this research help to elucidate the determinants of climate change adaptation decisions for male and female-headed households and the strategic interventions necessary for effective adaptation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Wheat is one of the main grains produced across the globe and wheat yields are sensitive to changes in climate. Australia is a major exporter of wheat, and variations in its national production influence trade supplies and global markets. We evaluated the effect of climate change in 2030 compared to a baseline period (1980-1999) by upscaling from farm to the national level. Wheat yields and gross margins under current and projected climates were assessed using current technology and management practices and then compared with 'best adapted' yield achieved by adjustments to planting date, nitrogen fertilizer, and available cultivars for each region. For the baseline climate (1980-1999), there was a potential yield gap modelled as optimized adaptation gave potential up scaled yields (tonne/ha) and gross margins (AUD $/ha) of 17% and 33% above the baseline, respectively. In 2030 and at Australian wheatbelt level, climate change impact projected to decline wheat yield by 1%. For 2030, national wheat yields were simulated to decrease yields by 1% when using existing technology and practices but increase them by 18% assuming optimal adaptation. Hence, nationally at 2030 for a fully-adapted wheat system, yield increased by 1% and gross margin by 0.3% compared to the fully adapted current climate baseline. However, there was substantial regional variation with median yields and gross margins decreasing in 55% of sites. Full adaptation of farm systems under current climate is not expected, and so this will remain an on-going challenge. However, by 2030 there will be a greater opportunity to increase the overall water use and nitrogen efficiencies of the Australian wheat belt, mostly resulting from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate change adaptation and mitigation require understanding of vegetation response to climate change. Using the MC2 dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) we simulate vegetation for the Northwest United States using results from 20 different Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models downscaled using the MACA algorithm. Results were generated for representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5 under vegetation modeling scenarios with and without fire suppression for a total of 80 model runs for future projections. For analysis, results were aggregated by three subregions: the Western Northwest (WNW), from the crest of the Cascade Mountains west; Northwest Plains and Plateau (NWPP), the non-mountainous areas east of the Cascade Mountains; and Eastern Northwest Mountains (ENWM), the mountainous areas east of the Cascade Mountains. In the WNW, mean fire interval (MFI) averaged over all climate projections decreases by up to 48%, and potential vegetation shifts from conifer to mixed forest under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 with and without fire suppression. In the NWPP MFI averaged over all climate projections decreases by up to 82% without fire suppression and increases by up to 14% with fire suppression resulting in woodier vegetation cover. In the ENWM, MFI averaged across all climate projections decreases by up to 81%, subalpine communities are lost, but conifer forests continue to dominate the subregion in the future. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Key to understanding the implications of climate and land use change on biodiversity and natural resources is to incorporate the physiographic platform on which changes in ecological systems unfold. Here, we advance a detailed classification and high-resolution map of physiography, built by combining landforms and lithology (soil parent material) at multiple spatial scales. We used only relatively static abiotic variables (i.e., excluded climatic and biotic factors) to prevent confounding current ecological patterns and processes with enduring landscape features, and to make the physiographic classification more interpretable for climate adaptation planning. We generated novel spatial databases for 15 landform and 269 physiographic types across the conterminous United States of America. We examined their potential use by natural resource managers by placing them within a contemporary climate change adaptation framework, and found our physiographic databases could play key roles in four of seven general adaptation strategies. We also calculated correlations with common empirical measures of biodiversity to examine the degree to which the physiographic setting explains various aspects of current biodiversity patterns. Additionally, we evaluated the relationship between landform diversity and measures of climate change to explore how changes may unfold across a geophysical template. We found landform types are particularly sensitive to spatial scale, and so we recommend using high-resolution datasets when possible, as well as generating metrics using multiple neighborhood sizes to both minimize and characterize potential unknown biases. We illustrate how our work can inform current strategies for climate change adaptation. The analytical framework and classification of landforms and parent material are easily extendable to other geographies and may be used to promote climate change adaptation in other settings.To better accomplish their mission of an informed public, environmental education organizations often exchange ideas, share financing, and distribute overhead through collaboration. Yet it remains to be seen whether benefits of these collaborations extend to the public. We examine two possible benefits: the ability of the organizations to act as representatives of the public interest, and equitable access to environmental educational materials. We model patterns of public access to water-related education across organizations using two surveys in metropolitan Phoenix, AZ. This enables the study of interorganizational social networks and public outcomes. Results support the idea that environmental education organizations could provide a credible proxy for direct citizen participation. However, not all organizations are equivalently engaged with historically underrepresented groups like women, minority racial and ethnic groups, and those who rent their home. The implications for more inclusive environmental policy decisions are discussed.This study explores the role of geographic visualization for supporting the implementation of climate change adaptation. Interviews and group discussions with planners and decision makers indicate that geographic visualization bears primary potential for communicative purposes. In order to respond to analytical needs a high level of interactivity including the exploration of background data and the ability to link the tools with own databases were some of the key requirements made by the participants. The study concludes that more than better climate predictions, awareness and involvement may be precisely what is needed to narrow the implementation gap in climate change adaptation.The need to integrate climate change adaptation (CCA) considerations into disaster risk management (DRM) systems is widely recognised. However, successful integration, and thus the implementation of integrated planning measures, is difficult in practice. To understand and reduce the problems encountered, it is important to investigate systemic challenges. These challenges are rooted in the interaction between various stakeholders that affect DRM and the integration of CCA, directly or indirectly. This study explores the degree of integration in on-the-ground measures by studying systemic challenges, using the Nicaraguan DRM system as a case study. A theoretical framework for investigating systemic challenges in DRM systems was developed. It was then used in a retrospective analysis of the different functions of the systems in order to identify fragmentation in knowledge, information and coordination flows at local and national levels of governance. The results revealed several fragmented processes and functions in the Nicaraguan DRM system. These lead to difficulties in consolidating relevant information produced by multiple governmental authorities at different levels, and transferring this information to the local level. Fragmentation also leads, in turn, to little integration of CCA aspects into DRM in both local planning and practice. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides a report of climate risk management for the city of Brisbane between 1976 and 2011. Using the evidence presented by the Commission of Inquiry established to investigate extreme flooding events across Queensland in 2010-2011, this paper describes Brisbane City Council's ongoing attempts to derive a 'Q100' flood risk management metric as a means to determine urban planning policy. The evidence presented by the Commission demonstrates how the normative decisions that underpinned the Council's derivation of Q100 and which sought to maximise urban development in the Brisbane River floodplain were in direct conflict with State government's concurrent priorities relating to water resources supply and flood risk management. This account of conflicting climate risk management strategies by local and state government demonstrates how the derivation of technical expert evidence can become politicised to align with conflicting priorities, and are then used in a 'scientised' environmental planning process. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.By using a four-dimensional variational data assimilation system capable of estimating physical and biogeochemical variables for the global ocean, we investigated multidecadal changes in the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the ocean. The system was newly constructed with a pelagic ecosystem model and an oceanic general circulation model to integrate available ocean observations obtained with a wide range of observation tools. The distribution of estimated DIC was by and large consistent with previous reports. We validated the changes in DIC along the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) Hydrographic Program sections. The correlation coefficients of the modeled versus observed decadal difference patterns of DIC ranged from 0.25 to 0.51 in the Pacific Ocean, from 0.36 to 0.62 in the Atlantic Ocean, and from 0.23 to 0.57 in the Indian Ocean, and were significant at the 95% confidence level. Thus, at basin scale, the reproducibility of long-term climate change was similar. Estimation of vertical DIC fluxes in each basin showed that the fluxes changed on a multidecadal time scale in our system. These changes were possibly due to changes in the dynamical state of CO2 absorption and to changes in ocean circulation. Our integrated data set on the basis of a dynamically self-consistent ocean state is a promising tool for examining long-term changes in the ocean carbon cycle.Agriculture is a particularly sensitive sector to the potential impacts of climate change. Thus, irrigation infrastructure is required to be robust to cope with these potential threats. The objective of this research is designing more robust irrigation networks, considering cost and stakeholder contribution. To that end, the investigation was addressed in three phases: a sensitivity analysis to understand the effectiveness of the distinct variables, a cost-effectiveness analysis assessing their efficiency, and a global study of the most efficient variables to provide an insight into their function. The sensitivity analysis indicates that the networks oversized by means of the coefficient of utilisation or the factor of safety, behave better than those oversized via the continuous specific discharge; moreover, the degree of freedom has been shown ineffective. The cost-effectiveness analysis shows that the coefficient of utilisation and the factor of safety are the most efficient variables, as they introduced safety margin oversizing fewer network elements and to a lesser extent than the continuous specific discharge. It also shows that stakeholder contribution, conveyed as a reduction of the degree of freedom, plays an important role in the network's adaptive capacity to change. The global study of these variables reveals the subtlety of the coefficient of utilisation, which is the variable that better reproduces the farmer behaviour during demand increase scenarios. In conclusion, the results identify the coefficient of utilisation as the variable which provides the safest margins and reveal the importance of stakeholder contribution in absorb the demand increase in a better manner.Adaptation and mitigation measures are important in dealing with climate change impacts on agriculture, forestry and water management. Stakeholders have an important role to play in coping with climate change at the regional scale, so it is important to identify which measures they are aware of and which they have implemented. This paper describes the regional adaptation and mitigation measures taken by stakeholders in northern Germany and the connections between the sectoral measures and the spatial scales involved. The study finds that adaptation measures have either been implemented or chosen at the regional scale; that adaptation plays an important role at the regional scale whilst mitigation measures are almost non-existent; that water-related issues link the land use sectors examined; and that experts clearly view the national level as the appropriate level for policy makers to exert political influence on measures relating to climate change.The temporal dynamics of stream networks are vitally important for understanding hydrologic processes including surface water and groundwater interaction and hydrograph recession. However, observations of wet channel networks are limited, especially in headwater catchments. Near-infrared LiDAR data provide an opportunity to map wet channel networks owing to the fine spatial resolution and strong absorption of light energy by water surfaces. A systematic method is developed to map wet channel networks by integrating elevation and signal intensity of ground returns. The signal intensity thresholds for identifying wet pixels are extracted from frequency distributions of intensity return within the convergent topography extent using a Gaussian mixture model. Moreover, the concept of edge in digital image processing, defined based on the intensity gradient, is utilized to enhance detection of small wet channels. The developed method is applied to the Lake Tahoe area based on eight LiDAR snapshots during recession periods in five watersheds. A power law relationship between streamflow and wetted channel length during recession periods is derived, and the scaling exponent (L proportional to Q(0.44)) is within the range of reported values from fieldwork in other regions.This article compares migration options in Shishmaref, Alaska and Nanumea, Tuvalu as responses to increasing risk of disaster. In both communities, increasing hazards and risks are associated with climate change-making the communities some of the first to be identified as environmental migrants or "climate refugees." In both cases, what residents, researchers, and other stakeholders fear is that a large disaster will take lives and destroy critical infrastructure, causing communities to be displaced. However, we argue that migration pressures as a result of habitual disasters and increasing hazards interact with other migration pressures on the ground. In the lived experiences of residents, forced displacements and voluntary migrations are not so easily separated but are complex decisions made by individuals, families, and communities in response to discourses of risk, deteriorating infrastructure, and other economic and social pressures. Ultimately, residents make choices under constrained inventories of possibility and climate change adaptation and disaster mitigation strategies must consider these complex lived experiences in order to be successful.Decision making for the conservation and management of coral reef biodiversity requires an understanding of spatial variability and distribution of reef habitat types. Despite the existence of very high-resolution remote sensing technology for nearly two decades, comprehensive assessment of coral reef habitats at national to regional spatial scales and at very high spatial resolution is still scarce. Here, we develop benthic habitat maps at a sub-national scale by analyzing large multispectral QuickBird imagery dataset covering similar to 686 km(2) of the main shallow coral fringing reef along the southern border with Tanzania (4.68 degrees S, 39.18 degrees E) to the reef end at Malindi, Kenya (3.2 degrees S, 40.1 degrees E). Mapping was conducted with a user approach constrained by ground-truth data, with detailed transect lines from the shore to the fore reef. First, maps were used to evaluate the present management system's effectiveness at representing habitat diversity. Then, we developed three spatial prioritization scenarios based on differing objectives: (i) minimize lost fishing opportunity; (ii) redistribute fisheries away from currently overfished reefs; and (iii) minimize resource use conflicts. We further constrained the priority area in each prioritization selection scenario based on optionally protecting the least or the most climate exposed locations using a model of exposure to climate stress. We discovered that spatial priorities were very different based on the different objectives and on whether the aim was to protect the least or most climate-exposed habitats. Our analyses provide a spatially explicit foundation for large-scale conservation and management strategies that can account for ecosystem service benefits.Largely because water resource planning in the U.S. has been separated from land-use planning, opportunities for explicitly linking planning policies to water availability remain unexamined. The pressing need for better coordination between land-use planning and water management is amplified by changes in the global climate, which will place even greater importance on managing water supplies and demands than in the past. By surveying land and water managers in two urbanizing regions of the western United StatesPortland, Oregon and Phoenix Arizonawe assessed the extent to which their perspectives regarding municipal water resource management align or differ. We specifically focus on characterizing how they perceive water scarcity problems (i.e., stressors) and solutions (i.e., strategies). Overall, the results show a general agreement across both regions and professions that long-term drought, population growth, and outdoor water use are the most important stressors to urban water systems. The results of the survey indicated more agreement across cities than across professions with regard to effective strategies, reinforcing the idea that land-use planners and water managers remain divided in their conception of the solutions to urban water management. To conclude, we recommend potential pathways for coordinating the fields of land and water management for urban sustainability.In this work we analyse the evolution of the vulnerability concept in the research streams of climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). We combine a traditional literature review with data mining procedures applied to bibliographic databases to reconstruct the history of the concept within various research topics, showing its evolution and convergences over time. To do that, we integrate different methods combining machine learning algorithms with network and cluster analyses to examine a set of 3757 articles, analysing their distinctive features and similarities on the basis of their contents as well as co-authorships. Bibliometric analyses enable the identification of different communities of articles, pinpointing key papers and authors, while literature review makes it possible to assess the concept of vulnerability evolved within and beyond research communities and scientific networks. Moreover, this work examines the role played by documents published by UN institutions (UNDRO, UNISDR, IPCC) in contributing to the evolution of vulnerability and related concepts. Results show that signs of convergence are evident between the two research streams, and that the IPCC reports have played a major role in proposing solutions for unifying definitions of vulnerability. We observe that the phases of preparation of the IPCC reports are very rich in methodological and terminological developments, while after publication, the literature shows evident signs of propagation of the proposed concepts. The DRR research stream developed before the research stream on CCA, but the latter flourished rapidly and became much larger in terms of number of publications. Nevertheless, in terms of contents, adaptation studies and the IPCC have shown increasing adoption of the concepts developed within the disaster research stream, in particular with regard to the interpretation of vulnerability as one of the dimensions of risk.One could argue that the nature of our housing stock is a key determining factor in the ability of our citizens to manage risk, be resilient to various natural and human events, and to recover from these events. Recent research has been examining current challenges posed by our housing stock and exploring potential solutions from a range of perspectives. The aim of this paper is to discuss key findings from recent built environment research in Australia to initiate cross-sectorial discussion and debate about the implications and opportunities for other sectors such as emergency management and insurance. Three recent building research projects are discussed: Heat waves: The impact of heat waves on houses and occupants, and proposed changes to building regulations, air conditioning standards and building design, to reduce risks associated with heat waves. Net zero energy homes: Exploration of the potential benefits of a strategic optimization of building quality, energy and water efficiency, and household or community level distributed energy and water services for disaster management and recovery. Building information: Mapping of the flow of information about residential buildings, and the potential for national or regional building files (in a similar manner to personal medical records) to assist all parties to make more informed decisions that impact on housing sustainability and community resilience. The paper discusses how sustainability, environmental performance and resilience are inter-related, and can be supported by building files. It concludes with a call for increased cross-sectorial collaboration to explore opportunities for a whole-of-systems approach to our built environment that addresses a range of economic and environmental challenges as well as disaster and emergency management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The possibility of a huge earthquake and the following disasters, such as tsunami and ground liquefaction, in the near future has been pointed out in the third largest metropolitan area (Nagoya metropolitan area) in Japan. In the region including the Nagoya metropolitan area, a huge earthquake of magnitude 8 class has occurred every 100-150 years. The last huge earthquake in the region happened in 1944. Therefore, the viewpoint of disaster mitigation/prevention against an expected huge earthquake is crucial for future urban planning in the Nagoya metropolitan area. On the other hand, the population in the Nagoya metropolitan area is expected to decrease in the future. Such a decrease in population usually leads to a reduction of the urban area. In this study, three disaster mitigation/prevention urban structure models were designed for future urban planning of the 2050s (the target period in which about 100 years will have passed since the last huge earthquake) in the Nagoya metropolitan area considering a reduction in the urban area according to a projected decrease in population. Subsequently, the impacts of the introduction of the three disaster mitigation/prevention models, i.e., (1) a tsunami damage mitigation/prevention model, (2) a strong motion damage mitigation/prevention model, and (3) a ground liquefaction damage mitigation/prevention model, on the future (the 2050s) thermal environment were quantitatively investigated using a regional atmospheric model, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Moreover, an urban structure model that combined the three disaster mitigation/prevention models was constructed, and the effect of the combined model on the future thermal environment was also evaluated. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study demonstrates that long-term climate model solutions can be efficiently converted to storm surge time series at points of interest (POIs) for the future. The all-source Green's function (ASGF) regression model is used for this conversion. In addition to being data assimilative, the ASGF regression model can also simulate storm surges at a POI faster than the traditional modelling approach by orders of magnitude. This is demonstrated using the tidal gauge at Sept-iles (Quebec, Canada) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as the POI. First the ASGF regression model is used to assimilate 32 years of tidal gauge data, producing a continuous hindcast of storm surges and a set of best-estimate regression parameters. Second, the ASGF regression model with the best-estimate parameters is used to convert a Canadian Regional Climate Model solution (CRCM/AHJ) to an hourly time series of storm surges from 1961 to 2100. Gumbel's extreme value analysis (EVA) is then applied to the time series as a whole and also to tri-decadal segments. The tri-decadal approach is used to investigate whether there is any progressive shortening or lengthening of storm surge return periods as a result of future climate change. A method for correcting for bias due to the forcing field at the EVA level is also demonstrated.Sea-level allowances at 22 tide-gauge sites along the east coast of Canada are determined based on projections of regional sea-level rise for the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) from the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5) and on the statistics of historical tides and storm surges (storm tides). The allowances, which may be used for coastal infrastructure planning, increase with time during the twenty-first century through a combination of mean sea-level rise and the increased uncertainty of future projections with time. The allowances show significant spatial variation, mainly a consequence of strong regionally varying relative sea-level change as a result of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). A methodology is described for replacement of the GIA component of the AR5 projection with global positioning system (GPS) measurements of vertical crustal motion; this significantly decreases allowances in regions where the uncertainty of the GIA models is large. For RCP8.5 with GPS data incorporated and for the 1995-2100 period, the sea-level allowances range from about 0.5m along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to more than 1m along the coast of Nova Scotia and southern Newfoundland.The impacts of climate change on surface air temperature (SAT) and winds in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (GSL) are investigated by performing simulations from 1970 to 2099 with the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM), driven by a five-member ensemble. Three members are from Canadian Global Climate Model (CGCM3) simulations following scenario A1B from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); one member is from the Community Climate System Model, version 3 (CCSM3) simulation, also following the A1B scenario; and one member is from the CCSM4 (version 4) simulation following the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5) scenario. Compared with North America Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data, it is shown that CRCM can reproduce the observed SAT spatial patterns; for example, both CRCM simulations and NARR data show a warm SAT tongue along the eastern Gulf; CRCM simulations also capture the dominant northwesterly winds in January and the southwesterly winds in July. In terms of future climate scenarios, the spatial patterns of SAT show plausible seasonal variations. In January, the warming is 3 degrees-3.5 degrees C in the northern Gulf and 2.5 degrees-3 degrees C near Cabot Strait during 2040-2069, whereas the warming is more uniform during 2070-2099, with SAT increases of 4 degrees-5 degrees C. In summer, the warming gradually decreases from the western side of the GSL to the eastern side because of the different heat capacities between land and water. Moreover, the January winds increase by 0.2-0.4ms(-1) during 2040-2069, related to weakening stability in the atmospheric planetary boundary layer. However, during 2070-2099, the winds decrease by 0.2-0.4ms(-1) over the western Gulf, reflecting the northeastward shift in northwest Atlantic storm tracks. In July, enhanced baroclinicity along the east coast of North America dominates the wind changes, with increases of 0.2-0.4ms(-1). On average, the variance for the SAT changes is about 10% of the SAT increase, and the variance for projected wind changes is the same magnitude as the projected changes, suggesting uncertainty in the latter.Seasonal time series of sea-ice area or extent in several regions along the east coast of Canada were compiled from several sources for the period 1901 to 2013 and compared with an index of ice extent off southwest Greenland, iceberg season length south of 48 degrees N, air temperature, and other climate indices. Trends in winter ice area and iceberg season length are significant over the past 100 years and 30 years. Variability of winter ice area and iceberg season length is associated with a combination of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) indices superimposed on a negative trend. Thus, large declines in ice area and iceberg season length in the 1920s and 1990s can be attributed to a decreasing NAO index and a shift to the positive phase of the AMO at the end of these decades. Ice extent in southern areas such as the Scotian Shelf is more strongly correlated with the Western Atlantic index than with the NAO. Ice area trends (in percent per decade) are larger in magnitude and account for twice as much of the variance in ice area for summer than for winter, with summer trends significant over 30-, 60- and 100-year periods. Sea-ice variability is generally consistent with air temperature variability in the various regions; in the 1930s, during the early twentieth-century warming period, ice anomalies were higher and temperature anomalies were lower along the coast of eastern Canada than along the coast of southwestern Greenland.The evaluation of a new method for forecasting freeze-up at the eastern end of the Northwest Passage, a principal gateway into the Canadian High Arctic, is presented. The technique uses real-time data from a novel ocean observatory that combines acoustic, cable, and satellite communications technology to provide year-round bihourly data. The basis for the predictive capability comes from a previous analysis of a decade-long time series of instrumented mooring data collected in the area, which demonstrated a strong link between late summer upper ocean salinity and the timing of freeze-up there. Using real-time data from the observatory and this previously established relationship, accurate predictions of the timing of freeze-up in 2012 and 2013 with lead times of four weeks and two weeks, respectively, are presented. This unique forecasting capability points to the enhanced value of real-time data systems when these systems are located where previously collected long time series monitoring has revealed key relationships in the marine environment.This article shows the construction details of an industrialized standard building called "Mehrzweckgeschossbau Typ Leipzig", which was developed during the late 1960s in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). One main challenge of the 21st century is the adaptation of the built environment to climate change. Therefore, the industrialized standard building is investigated concerning the consequences of elevated summer temperatures due to climate change. The climate data used to deal with climate change between 1950 and 2100 are presented. Despite of climate change heating demand remains the main challenge in preserving buildings of the 1960s and 1970s, although the cooling demand rises significantly. We present several strategies for the refurbishment of this industrialized standard building. If the emission of well mixed greenhouse gases meets the upper bounds of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) it will be very difficult to meet the actual German requirements for the protection against summer overheating.We present a social-ecological framework to provide insight into climate adaptation strategies and diverse perspectives on interventions in protected areas for species experiencing climate-induced impacts. To develop this framework, we examined the current ecological condition of a culturally and commercially valuable species, considered the predicted future effects of climate change on that species in a protected area, and assessed the perspectives held by forest users and managers on future adaptive practices. We mapped the distribution of yellow-cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis) and examined its health status in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve by comparing forest structure, tree stress-indicators, and associated thermal regimes between forests inside the park and forests at the current latitudinal limit of the species dieback. Yellow-cedar trees inside the park were healthy and relatively unstressed compared to trees outside the park that exhibited reduced crown fullness and increased foliar damage. Considering risk factors for mortality under future climate scenarios, our vulnerability model indicated future expected dieback occurring within park boundaries. Interviews with forest users and managers revealed strong support for increasing monitoring to inform interventions outside protected areas, improving management collaboration across land designations, and using a portfolio of interventions on actively managed lands. Study participants who perceived humans as separate from nature were more opposed to interventions in protected areas. Linking social and ecological analyses, our study provides an interdisciplinary approach to identify system-specific metrics (e.g., stress indicators) that can better connect monitoring with management, and adaptation strategies for species impacted by climate change. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The influence of framing on approaches to climate change adaptation is receiving increased attention. Using case study data, this paper proposes that appreciating how a policy sector currently frames itself can not only facilitate insights into how that sector may frame adaptation but also into a sector's adaptive capacity. From a new institutional perspective, this paper argues therefore that a frame reflective practice can aid policy sectors in building their capacity for adaptive, robust approaches to adaptation planning. A frame reflexive practice could enable policy sectors to appreciate how their current framing directs action towards particular policy options, potentially ignoring others, and how exploring the sector's issues through different frames could reveal a greater array of policy options than currently considered.Action for adaptation is needed in the face of anthropogenic climate change. The record of adaptation in the field of freshwater governance is poor to date, as it is apparently constrained by operational frameworks. Analyses based on the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor can reveal underlying, often institutionally reified, operational frameworks. We present a desktop metaphor mapping study of one UK and one Australian water management planning document. This mapping demonstrates the potential of metaphor analysis, with further methodological and praxis development, to support the new ways of thinking and acting that are needed to challenge deeply held social and cultural norms of linear, rather than systemic, causality. We suggest that metaphor has the potential to help practitioners expose and examine reified operational frameworks and practices, and to change those that hinder adaptive and systemic praxis.In the Mekong Delta coastal zone, decision makers must weigh trade-offs between sustaining the shrimp sector and thus ensuring economic development, while also promoting sustainable, environmentally friendly practices and planning for climate change adaptation. This study investigates future scenarios for development of shrimp aquaculture using a spatially explicit, agent-based model (ABM) simulating farmers' production system choices. A role playing game (RPG) with farmers was used to calibrate and validate the model. Four scenarios, representing different visions of aquaculture in the next 15 years, were elaborated with decision makers before discussing the different outputs of the model. Iterative consultation with farmers helped to fine-tune the model and identify key parameters and drivers in farmers' decision-making. The recursive process allowed us to construct a model that validly represents reality. Participants stated that use of the RPG improved their insight for planning. Results of the scenarios indicate that (i) intensification of production is unsustainable, (ii) market-based incentives are too limited to stimulate development of an integrated mangrove-shrimp production system and (iii) climate change will cause rapid decline of production in the absence of adaptation measures. RPG appeared to be a valuable method for formalizing local farmers' knowledge and integrating it into the planning approaches used by decision makers. The ABM, thus, can also be considered a medium or communication tool facilitating knowledge-sharing between farmers and decision makers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changes in climate, technology, policy and prices affect agricultural and rural development. To evaluate whether this development is sustainable, impacts of these multiple drivers need to be assessed for multiple indicators. In a case study area in the Netherlands, a bio-economic farm model, an agent-based land-use change model, and a regional emission model have been used to simulate rural development under two plausible global change scenarios at both farm and landscape level. Results show that in this area, climate change will have mainly negative economic impacts (dairy gross margin, arable gross margin, economic efficiency, milk production) in the warmer and drier W+ scenario, while impacts are slightly positive in the G scenario with moderate climate change. Dairy farmers are worse off than arable farmers in both scenarios. Conversely, when the W+ scenario is embedded in the socio-economic Global Economy (GE) scenario, changes in technology, prices, and policy are projected to have a positive economic impact, more than offsetting the negative climate impacts. Important is, however, that environmental impacts (global warming, terrestrial and aquatic eutrophication) are largely negative and social impacts (farm size, number of farms, nature area, odour) are mixed. In the G scenario combined with the socio-economic Regional Communities (RC) scenario the average dairy gross margin in particular is negatively affected. Social impacts are similarly mixed as in the GE scenario, while environmental impacts are less severe. Our results suggest that integrated assessments at farm and landscape level can be used to guide decision-makers in spatial planning policies and climate change adaptation. As there will always be trade-offs between economic, social, and environmental impacts stakeholders need to interact and decide upon most important directions for policies. This implies a choice between production and income on the one hand and social and environmental services on the other hand. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation options in response to climate impact scenarios for marine mammals and seabirds were developed based on the IPCC vulnerability framework. Under this framework, vulnerability to the physical effects of climate change can be reduced by adaptation options that reduce exposure of individuals, reduce the sensitivity of individuals, and increase the adaptive capacity of individual/species to cope with climate change. We evaluated options in each vulnerability category with three screening tools collectively forming an approach we term sequential adaptation prioritization for species. These tools were designed to evaluate (i) technical aspects (cost-benefit-risk, CBR), (ii) institutional barriers, and (iii) potential social acceptability. The CBR tool identified which adaptation options were high cost and low benefit, might be discarded, and which were high benefit and low cost, might be rapidly implemented (depending on risk). Low cost and low benefit options might not be pursued, while those that are high cost, but high benefit deserve further attention. Even with technical merit, adaptation options can fail because of institutional problems with implementation. The second evaluation tool, based on the conceptual framework on barriers to effective climate adaptation, identifies where barriers may exist, and leads to strategies for overcoming them. Finally, adaptation options may not be acceptable to society at large, or resisted by vocal opponents or groups. The social acceptability tool identifies potentially contested options, which may be useful to managers charged with implementing adaptation options. Social acceptability, as scored by experts, differed from acceptability scored by the public, indicating the need to involve the public in assessing this aspect. Scores from each tool for each scenario can be combined to rank the suite of adaptation options. This approach provides useful tools to assist conservation managers in selecting from a wide range of adaptation strategies; the methodology is also applicable to other conservation sectors.The City of Los Angeles, with a population reaching 4 million people in 2013, imports nearly 90% of its water from sources outside the city. However, climate change, population growth, competing demands, water quality concerns, and environmental restoration projects all have a large impact on Los Angeles' dependency on future water importation. In this study, a system characterization was performed to assess each of the water sources that supply Los Angeles and the factors affecting them under present and potential future conditions. Additionally, water demand and conservation methods in Los Angeles were examined to understand their impact on the overall water supply system. Of the five main water sources that supply Los Angeles-Los Angeles Aqueduct, Colorado River, California Aqueduct, local groundwater, and reclaimed water-a majority will be impacted by climate change, water quality, energy, and cost constraints. While the expansion of water demand management and agricultural water transfers can help address the challenge of increasing demand, the impacts of climate variability and competing demands are likely to constrain their potential. The characteristics of the Los Angeles water supply system provide the basis for a system sustainability assessment that bounds the options for solutions to meet both a growing demand and the need for climate change adaptation. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.To compare the provision of ecosystem services in plantation forests under alternative climate change adaptation management trajectories, we interpolated climatic variables from the UK 11-member regional climate models to use at high resolution in forest management situations. We used expert opinion to derive the links between coarse-scaled UK National Ecosystem Assessment scenarios and forest management alternatives (FMA) in a simulation of forest planning and management under climate change uncertainty. Nine indicators were used to compare the provision of forest ecosystem services from four alternative management trajectories based on FMA types under a changing climate. These show that by 2080 a 'business as usual' form of forest management at both Clocaenog and Gwydyr forests will become unsuitable under the two warmest and driest climate variants, marginal under four variants, and borderline suitable under the remaining five variants. This implies that if future forest policy requires the continued delivery of a wide range of ecosystem services, including, home grown timber, biodiversity, and the carbon mitigation benefit from woodlands, then there is 20-50 % chance of failing to deliver on some of these services, unless some adaptation measures to climatic impacts occurs, such as transformation to more diverse species forests managed using low-impact silviculture systems. We show that the benefits of achieving this will be to minimise most of the impacts that climate change would otherwise have on the delivery of ecosystem services from forests.This article adopts a holistic approach to explore and quantify interactions between water and energy in the context of climate change in North Africa. We bring together results from different research areas to describe the physical interactions and to shortly discuss governance issues in the sectors of water and energy. We highlight the fact that water demand management options combined with a sustainable energy model is a priority action to answer the challenge of climate change adaptation in North African countries. We use the IPAT formula approach to compute scenarios for quantifying the magnitudes of advantages to expect from water demand side management actions coupled with energy efficiency options. According to our results, water demand management is a very appropriate adaptation option with significant benefits in terms of water saving, energy use and energy bill. Overall, in 2050, the water saved thanks to demand management actions could be around 68 billion of cubic meters, which is the magnitude of the total water demand of Egypt in 2005. Depending on the scenario and assumptions, the expected cumulated benefit in terms of energy bill over the period 2005-2025 could range between 30 and 48 billion US Dollar, which is comparable to the GDP of Tunisia in 2011 (46 billion US Dollar). Nevertheless, up to 2050, regardless the scenario, additional options will be needed to cover the water deficit of the region. This leads us to consider virtual water as an additional option to reduce the local water demand. Finally, we discuss the political implications and the reforms to be implemented for integrating water and energy demand side policies in North Africa.Damage from weather-related events is expected to increase in the future due to socio-economic growth that increases exposure to natural disasters and anticipated climate change. This paper studies the long-term impacts of climate change and land-use planning on flood risk, with a particular focus on flood risk insurance in the Netherlands. This study estimates the full probability distributions of flood damage under four different scenarios of climate change and socio-economic development for the year 2040. Subsequently, the risk-based (re)insurance premiums for flood coverage are estimated for each of the 53 dyke-ring areas in the Netherlands, using a method that takes into account the insurer's risk aversion to covering uncertain catastrophe risk. On the basis of the results, we can draw four main lessons. First, extreme climate change with a high sea level rise has a higher impact on flood (re)insurance premiums compared with future socio-economic development. Second, (re)insuring large flood losses may become very expensive in the future. Third, a public-private insurance system in which the government acts as a risk-neutral reinsurer of last resort, accompanied by comprehensive adaptation and risk reduction measures, could be a good solution for making flood risk insurance available at an affordable price. Fourth, given the projected increase in flood risk, it is especially important that flood insurance contributes to climate change adaptation.Although tree-based farming systems are often assumed to be "resilient" or "climate-smart" options, adoption is limited. It could be that the sensitivity of individual tree species to extreme weather events is poorly documented or new systems include unfamiliar species and technologies. This paper reports on initial results of an evaluation of farmers' experiences with trees and crops for responding to major climatic exposures in 21 villages in northern and north-central Viet Nam. Our study assessed the suitability and roles of trees by analyzing data gathered through focus group discussions, workshops and a survey of 661 households. The results showed that a majority of households were exposed annually to what they perceived as natural hazards. Experiences with using trees for coping and adaptation depended on household income status, awareness and policies. In particular, farms with trees had shorter recovery time after most types of natural disasters, except for cold spells, demonstrating economic and environmental buffers. Many leaders were unfamiliar with agroforestry and mainly looking for economies of scale, hence oriented to land use rather than landscape planning. This indicates disconnects between farmers' needs and policymakers' priorities with respect to climate change adaptation strategies. Existing agroforestry systems reflected a transition from indigenous or current farming systems via changing to either new species or technologies rather than changing both at the same time. Gaps in current adaptation strategies and key areas for policy and research interventions are finally discussed.Aim Forecasting potential patterns in species' distributions and diversity under climate change is crucial for biodiversity conservation. Although high-latitude regions are expected to experience some of the greatest increases in temperature due to global warming, little is known on how individual responses in species will affect patterns in phylogenetic diversity (PD). Location Alberta, Canada. Method sWe used 160,589 occurrence records for 1541 species of seed plants in Alberta (nearly 90% of the province's seed flora) and ensemble niche models to project current and future suitable habitats. We then examined climate change vulnerability of individual species and the potential impacts of climate change on species richness, PD and both taxonomic and phylogenetic endemism (PE). We also assessed whether predicted losses of PD were distributed randomly across the plant tree of life. Results We found that 368 species (24%) may lose on average >80% of their current suitable climates (habitats), while 539 species (35%) were projected to more than double their current suitable range. Both species richness and PD were predicted to increase in most areas, except for the species-rich Rocky Mountains, which are predicted to experience future declines. Maps of taxonomic and PE identified several regions with high conservation value and climate change threat suggesting priorities for conservation and climate change adaptation. Overall, a non-random extinction risk was found for Alberta's flora, demonstrating potential future impacts of climate change on the loss of evolutionary history. Main conclusions Our analyses suggest that climate change will have asymmetrical effects on the distribution of Alberta's plant diversity and endemism and a non-random extinction risk of the current state of species evolutionary history. Our results provide practical guidance for biodiversity conservation and management in this region by prioritizing species' vulnerabilities and places with higher taxonomic or evolutionary risk due to future climate change.The poor performance of biodiversity institutions has prompted calls for reform. Adaptive governance has been promoted as a means of supporting improved biodiversity outcomes. However, incorporating adaptive elements into biodiversity governance has been a challenge. In particular, efforts to make institutions more "adaptive" often fail to account for existing capacity and context-specific factors. Clear guidance on how to move from general, ambitious adaptive governance prescriptions to specific, context-dependent recommendations is needed. This paper demonstrates how insights from pragmatism can inform an approach for designing institutional reforms that address current shortcomings in adaptive governance approaches. This design scaffolds reform options on a platform of existing competency and institutional legacy. Informed by the results of a prior institutional diagnosis, reform development followed a three-stage process: defining plausible reform spaces; identifying reform possibilities within these spaces; and elaborating reform options. Two very different landscapes provided the case studies: (1) a highly modified agricultural landscape, where private landholders are responsible for managing biodiversity as a public good; (2) a group of national parks, where the state holds primary responsibility. The reforms in the agricultural landscape build on successful landholder and organizational efforts to self-organize and pursue innovative solutions, while those for the protected area enable greater managerial discretion and address the challenges of working across multiple government jurisdictions. This context-driven approach draws on insights from pragmatism to provide guidance on the design of institutional reforms that meet the demands of adaptive governance in a way that is both systematic and realistic.Research on barriers to climate change adaptation has, hitherto, disproportionately focused on institutional barriers. Despite the critical importance of personal barriers in shaping the adaptive response of humanity to climate change and variability, the literature on the subject is rather nascent. This study is premised on the hypothesis that place-specific characteristics (where you live) and compositional (both biosocial and sociocultural) factors may be salient to differentials in adaptation to climate change in coastal areas of developing countries. This is because adaptation to climate change is inherently local. Using cross-sectional survey data on 1,253 individuals (606 males and 647 females), barriers to adaptation to climate change were observed to vary with place, indicating that there is inequality in barriers to adaptation. In the multivariate models, the place-specific differences in barriers to adaptation were robust and remained statistically significant even when socio-demographic (compositional) variables were controlled. Observed differences in barriers to adaptation to climate change in coastal Tanzania mainly reflect strong place-specific disparities among groups indicating the need for adaptation policies that are responsive to processes of socio-institutional learning in a specific context, involving multiple people that have a stake in the present and the future of that place. These people are making complex, multifaceted choices about managing and adapting to climate-related risks and opportunities, often in the face of resource constraints and competing agendas.Rapid climatic and environmental changes experienced throughout the Canadian North are having significant impacts on the lives of Inuit, with implications for the future of the large Inuit youth population. Within the adaptation research and practitioner community, youth voices, perspectives, and involvement are essential in ensuring representative and sustainable adaptation strategies. This paper examines the potential of youth-led participatory video (PV) as a strategy to foster known protective factors that underpin the resilience of youth and their capacity to adapt to various stresses, including impacts of climate change. The work draws on a case study from the Inuit community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada, where a two-week PV workshop was conducted with seven youth and followed by in-depth interviews with participants and community members. The findings show that PV may be a pathway to greater adaptive capacities because the process connects to known protective factors that enhance resilience of circumpolar indigenous youth. PV also shows promise as a strategy to engage youth in sharing insights and knowledge, connect generations, and involve young Inuit in planning and decision making in general.In order to buffer the risks climate change poses to biodiversity, managers need to develop new strategies to cope with an increasingly dynamic environment. Supplementary feeding (SF) is a commonly-used form of conservation management that may help buffer the impacts of climate change. However, the role of SF as an adaptation tool is yet to be fully understood. Here we used the programme MARK to quantify the relationship between weather (average temperature and total precipitation) and vital rates (survival and recruitment) of an island bird population, the hihi Notiomystis cincta, for which long term demographic data are available under periods of little and ad libitum SF. We then used predictive population modelling to project this population's dynamics under each management strategy and several climate change scenarios in accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions. Our stochastic population projections revealed that ad libitum SF likely buffers the population against heavier rainfall and more stochastic precipitation patterns; no buffering effect on temperature was detected. While the current SF approach is unlikely to prevent local extinction of the population under increasing temperatures, SF still presents itself as a valuable climate change adaptation tool by delaying extinction. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to quantify the interaction between climate and SF intensity of a threatened population. We call for on-going critical evaluation of management measures, and suggest that novel adaptation solutions that combine current approaches are required for conserving species with limited opportunity for dispersal. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biodiversity offset trades usually aim to achieve 'no net loss' of biodiversity. But the question remains: no net loss compared to what? Determining whether an offset can compensate for a given impact requires assumptions about the counterfactual scenario that which would have happened without the offset against which the gain at an offset site can be estimated. Where this counterfactual scenario, or 'crediting baseline', assumes a future trajectory of biodiversity decline, the intended net outcome of the offset trade is maintenance of that declining trajectory. If the rate of decline of the crediting baseline is implausibly steep, biodiversity offset trades can exacerbate biodiversity decline. We examined crediting baselines used in offset policies across Australia, and compared them with recent estimates of decline in woody vegetation extent. All jurisdictions permitted offset credit generated using averted loss implying an assumption of background decline but few were explicit about their crediting baseline. The credit calculation approaches implied assumed crediting baselines of up to 4.2% loss (of vegetation extent and/or condition) per annum; on average, the crediting baselines were >5 times steeper than recent rates of vegetation loss. For these crediting baselines to be plausible, declines in vegetation condition must be rapid, but this was not reflected in the approaches for which assumptions about decline in extent and condition could be separated. We conclude that crediting baselines in Australian offset schemes risk exacerbating biodiversity loss. The near-ubiquitous use of declining crediting baselines risks 'locking in' biodiversity decline across impact and offset sites, with implications for biodiversity conservation more broadly. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The interdecadal changes in typhoon (categories 1-3) frequency and its genesis condition over the western North Pacific during the period of 1979-2011 are investigated with consideration for discrepancies among best track datasets. To tide over data uncertainty, a detection-produced dataset is utilized as a homogeneous dataset with five available best track datasets. Typhoon experienced interdecadal changes around the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s in their genesis conditions. Even under the oceanic warm state, typhoon frequency has decreased since the mid-1990s, showing a northwestward movement of its genesis location over the main formation region. The eastward gradient of vertical wind shear is the most significant factor for the change in typhoon genesis condition in recent decades. The vertical wind shear behavior is strongly linked with zonal asymmetry of local SST. We demonstrate that a westward gradient of local SST is the most important modulator of the recent typhoon behavior through the movement of favorable genesis location. The present results indicate that the horizontal distribution, not magnitude, of local SST can be a key factor for prediction of future typhoon activity, thus contributing to natural disaster mitigation and climate change adaptation strategies.Small island developing states (SIDS) are among the first and worst affected by climate change. SIDS are thus also among the first to adapt, and as 'early adaptors' can provide key lessons for adaptation efforts elsewhere. This article reviews the growing literature on climate change, adaptation and small island states. It first discusses migration - which increasingly is seen as part of adaptation rather than a failure to adapt. Mobility has long been part of island life, and remittances can for example fund adaptation measures back home. Yet, adaptation in situ is not as forthcoming as would be necessary. The article identifies different barriers to effective adaptation, and discusses them under three distinct but interrelated categories: perceptions and awareness, institutions, and (lack of) resources. For effective, sustainable and successful adaptation, we need to overcome these barriers, and in particular provide information and resources to the local level. With appropriate information and resources, island communities can take and implement informed decisions and successfully adapt to a changing climate - as they have adjusted to social and environmental changes in the past.Rice production is threatened by climate change and the productivity of rainfed rice is increasingly challenged. A better understanding of the future trends of rice production associated with climate change is important for improving food security. Rice production under irrigated and rainfed conditions was simulated using the rice crop model ORYZA2000. Simulated rice yield representing crop and environment interaction was used to evaluate the drought impact of climate change on rainfed rice in South Asia. If rainfed rice system was applied in all current rice cultivating areas in South Asia, drought stress could result to yield losses of more than 80 in 22 %, but crop failure was lower than 40 in 73 % of the areas under mild and severe SRES A1B and A2. The spatial patterns of drought stress on rainfed rice were similar under both A1B and A2, and the yield loss and crop failure decreased slightly in the far future (2045 to 2074) in areas where drought risk was high in the near future (2015 to 2044), but the impacts would gradually increase over initially low-impact areas. Both A1B and A2 would shift the best sowing season of rainfed rice to be earlier or later by up to 90 days in 30 years. Appropriate adjustment of sowing season is a major adaptation strategy for rainfed rice production in South Asia to benefit from climate change. In this case, rainfed rice yield could potentially increase by about 10 % in most areas of South Asia associated with 10 to 50 % lower inter-annual variation and slightly higher risk for crop failure.There is growing evidence that projected climate change has the potential to significantly affect public health. In the UK, much of this impact is likely to arise by amplifying existing risks related to heat exposure, flooding, and chemical and biological contamination in buildings. Identifying the health effects of climate change on the indoor environment, and risks and opportunities related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, can help protect public health. We explored a range of health risks in the domestic indoor environment related to climate change, as well as the potential health benefits and unintended harmful effects of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies in the UK housing sector. We reviewed relevant scientific literature, focusing on housing-related health effects in the UK likely to arise through either direct or indirect mechanisms of climate change or mitigation and adaptation measures in the built environment. We considered the following categories of effect: (i)indoor temperatures, (ii) indoor air quality, (iii) indoor allergens and infections, and (iv) flood damage and water contamination. Climate change may exacerbate health risks and inequalities across these categories and in a variety of ways, if adequate adaptation measures are not taken. Certain changes to the indoor environment can affect indoor air quality or promote the growth and propagation of pathogenic organisms. Measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have the potential for ancillary public health benefits including reductions in health burdens related heat and cold, indoor exposure to air pollution derived from outdoor sources, and mould growth. However, increasing airtightness of dwellings in pursuit of energy efficiency could also have negative effects by increasing concentrations of pollutants (such as PM2.5, CO and radon) derived from indoor or ground sources, and biological contamination. These effects can largely be ameliorated by mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) and air filtration, where such solution is feasible and when the system is properly installed, operated and maintained. Groups at high risk of these adverse health effects include the elderly (especially those living on their own), individuals with pre-existing illnesses, people living in overcrowded accommodation, and the socio-economically deprived. A better understanding of how current and emerging building infrastructure design, construction, and materials may affect health in the context of climate change and mitigation and adaptation measures is needed in the UK and other high income countries. Long-term, energy efficient building design interventions, ensuring adequate ventilation, need to be promoted. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Environmental offsetting involves compensating for the residual adverse impacts of an action on the environment by generating an equivalent benefit elsewhere. As the prevalence of environmental offsetting grows, so does the challenge of translating no-net-loss goals to workable policy. From 2011-2012, the Australian Government developed an Environmental Offsets Policy and an accompanying metric (the Offsets Assessment Guide) to support decision making about offset requirements under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Through extensive stakeholder consultation and in collaboration with academic researchers, the Guide was developed with the aim of accounting appropriately for ecological equivalence in a transparent and flexible manner. This paper outlines the Australian Government's environmental offset policy development process, and describes the approach adopted for evaluating the suitability of proposed offsets in meeting the policy goals. The Guide explicitly estimates the extent to which an offset will improve the target biota and/or avert future losses, the degree of confidence that the offset will be implemented successfully, and the time it will take to deliver a conservation benefit. Since implementation of the Environmental Offsets Policy and the Guide, there has been a shift in focus from estimating offset requirements based on simplistic area ratios, toward directly evaluating the components of an offset action that determine its environmental performance. Achieving a balance between scientific robustness and policy workability is an ongoing challenge. The Environmental Offsets Policy and Guide represent an important step towards consistency and transparency in environmental offset decision-making.The gendered dimensions of climate change have received increasing interest in climate change adaptation, resilience, and vulnerability (ARV) research. Yet concerns have been expressed that engagement with 'gender' in this work has been tokenistic. In this context, we ask: how is climate change ARV research engaging with gender? To answer this question, we develop an assessment framework capturing key attributes of engagement and use it to evaluate peer reviewed ARV articles with a focus on gender published since 2006 (n = 123). Results indicate an increase in ARV studies with a gender focus over this period, with the level of gender engagement also increasing. There are a relatively equal numbers of studies categorized as engaging gender at a high, medium, and low level, with studies from Sub-Saharan Africa consistently exhibiting high levels of gender engagement. Gender focused ARV has a strong focus on examining female experiences, with few studies explicitly focusing on men, and no work accounting for those identifying outside the gender binary.Assessing the impacts of land use and land cover change (LUCC) on regional climate is essential for understanding land-atmosphere interactions and for designing climate adaptation andmitigation strategies. Using the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model, we examined how different land use and land cover patterns affect regional climate in the agro-pastoral transitional zone of North China, whose environmental and socioeconomic conditions are sensitive to climate change. We parameterized WRF using land use and land cover maps corresponding to 2001 and 2010 conditions, which differ in the representation of four land surface biophysical parameters: vegetation fraction, leaf area index (LAI), albedo, and emissivity. From 2001 to 2010, vegetation fraction and LAI increased in summer, emissivity increased and albedo decreased in winter. Our WRF simulations show that differences in land use and land cover patterns led to widespread reduction in summer temperature with local cooling on the order of 1 degrees C, and extensive increase in winter temperature with local warming exceeding 0.8 degrees C. By contrast, simulations using the default landscape representation, provided by WRF itself, show only minor and random changes in temperature. Model evaluation further reveals that our simulations with appropriate land surface properties improve the performance of the WRF model. Our findings demonstrate that LUCC in Northern China has altered the regional climate over the past decade. The magnitude and spatial patterns of temperature changes quantified by our simulations provide useful information for understanding the impacts of LUCC on climate and for developing mitigation and adaptation strategies in arid and semiarid regions.In this article we critically examine the 'integration imperative' in transdisciplinary environmental science and build on social constructivist and political theories to suggest alternative approaches of knowledge co-production in transdisciplinary settings. Our argument builds upon a body of literature in social studies of science to cull insights about knowledge co-production, social learning, and the ecology of team science, particularly as it relates to climate change adaptation. Couched in this transdisciplinary literature, we demonstrate, is the assumption that integration necessarily can and should be a regulative ideal. We critique this assumption by examining the 'messy' politics of achieving consensus among radically different, and sometimes irreconcilable, ways of knowing. We argue that the integration imperative conceals the friction, antagonism, and power inherent in knowledge co-production, which in turn can exclude innovative and experimental ways of understanding and adapting to climate change. By way of conclusion, the final section explores three alternative models of knowledge co-production triangulation, the multiple evidence-based approach, and scenario building - and illustrates their application in the context of transdisciplinary research in climate change adaptation in the arctic, focusing on alternative means of cross-boundary engagement with indigenous ways of knowing. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global environmental degradation creates and exacerbates social injustices. Using relative deprivation (RD) theory, we investigate whether people perceive environmental degradation in Australia, and extend RD theory by connecting it to the construct of place attachment (PA) at multiple scales. We surveyed 5163 Australians, measuring RD, PA, personal and collective environmental behaviours, and policy support. About one-third believed environmental quality is worsening and felt angry about it. We regressed each of the behaviour and policy-support measures onto the RD and PA measures. Collective environmental behaviours and policy support were more strongly predicted, in each case by RD and just one of the PA measures. RD partially mediated the association between PA and each of the behavioural measures. Responses to global environmental degradation are an admixture of injustice and place attachments at multiple scales. Efforts to promote environmentally relevant behaviours require attention to local and global attachments and identities.There is concern that food insecurity will increase in southern Africa due to climate change. We quantified the response of maize yield to projected climate change and to three key management options - planting date, fertilizer use and cultivar choice - using the crop simulation model, agricultural production systems simulator (APSIM), at two contrasting sites in Zimbabwe. Three climate periods up to 2100 were selected to cover both near- and long-term climates. Future climate data under two radiative forcing scenarios were generated from five global circulation models. The temperature is projected to increase significantly in Zimbabwe by 2100 with no significant change in mean annual total rainfall. When planting before mid-December with a high fertilizer rate, the simulated average grain yield for all three maize cultivars declined by 13% for the periods 2010-2039 and 2040-2069 and by 20% for 2070-2099 compared with the baseline climate, under low radiative forcing. Larger declines in yield of up to 32% were predicted for 2070-2099 with high radiative forcing. Despite differences in annual rainfall, similar trends in yield changes were observed for the two sites studied, Hwedza and Makoni. The yield response to delay in planting was nonlinear. Fertilizer increased yield significantly under both baseline and future climates. The response of maize to mineral nitrogen decreased with progressing climate change, implying a decrease in the optimal fertilizer rate in the future. Our results suggest that in the near future, improved crop and soil fertility management will remain important for enhanced maize yield. Towards the end of the 21st century, however, none of the farm management options tested in the study can avoid large yield losses in southern Africa due to climate change. There is a need to transform the current cropping systems of southern Africa to offset the negative impacts of climate change.Chestnut forests in the Belasitsa Mountain region of southwest Bulgaria were traditionally intensively managed as orchard-like stands for nut production. More recently, management intensity has been sharply reduced as a result of rural abandonment, which combined with the effects of chestnut blight has led to marked structural changes in these forests. The focus of this paper is on the seed-based regeneration potential and seedling survival of chestnut in mixed stands managed over the past 15 years. Results suggest that management of stands under a high-forest system is appropriate, and regeneration from seed has advantages over coppicing if competing species can be controlled. An investigation into "sanitation cutting" performed since the 1990s shows that this had not a successful response to blight infestations.Climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) have similar targets and goals in relation to climate change and related risks. The integration of CCA in core DRR operations is crucial to provide simultaneous benefits for social systems coping with challenges posed by climate extremes and climate change. Although state actors are generally responsible for governing a public issue such as CCA and DRR integration, the reform of top-down governing modes in neoliberal societies has enlarged the range of potential actors to include non state actors from economic and social communities. These new intervening actors require in-depth investigation. To achieve this goal, the article investigates the set of actors and their bridging arrangements that create and shape governance in CCA and DRR integration. The article conducts a comprehensive literature review in order to retrieve main actors and arrangements. The article summarizes actors and arrangements into a conceptual governance framework that can be used as a backdrop for future research on the topic. However, this framework has an explorative form, which must be refined according to site- and context-specific variables, norms, or networks. Accordingly, this article promotes an initial application of the framework to different contexts. Scholars may adopt the framework as a roadmap with which to corroborate the existence of a theoretical and empirical body of knowledge on governance of CCA and DRR integration.Global environmental challenges create risks and opportunities for companies in different sectors. In dealing with those challenges, companies are driven to actions by different forces. Furthermore, some companies lead in their actions while others lag behind. This study presents empirical findings on what drives the actions of Nordic non-life insurance companies. The companies are divided into two case groups based on size and location. The Island group includes small and medium-sized companies operating in Aland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The Mainland group includes large companies operating in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Eight drivers are identified: four are external, three are internal and one is indirect, caused by pressure on insurers' corporate clients. In the case of Island companies, regulatory pressure imposes action and a lack of such pressure is evident, but the Mainland companies are influenced by a more diverse set of drivers. The study also emphasizes the type of stakeholders insurance companies are in a position to influence, including customers, suppliers and authorities. The results have a theoretical implication, as the body of literature has not covered this subject matter in the context of insurers driving forces behind proactive environmental actions, lack of drivers, and the role of insurers as a driving force of proactive environmental actions of others.,A practical implication for the insurance sector includes increased awareness about drivers influencing proactive environmental behavior, knowledge about lack of drivers in the Island companies, knowledge about what stakeholder's insurers are in position to influence. The study suggest that the drivers behind actions of financial companies do not necessarily follow the same pattern as most of the companies of sectors covered in the literature: drivers may therefore be sector-specific and they may also differ within a single industry setting. The institutional environment plays an important role, even in countries with similar characteristics and a similar national institutional context. The findings of this study serve as a reference for new studies, particularly where research gaps are identified, for instance in the case of different types of finance institutions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many migratory species depend on staging sites at which they refuel while on migration, and effective protection of such habitats is crucial to their conservation. Here we investigate the extent to which protected areas cover and ameliorate loss of tidal flats in East Asia, the key staging habitat for threatened and declining shorebirds migrating through the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. We discover rapid losses of the tidal flat ecosystem both inside (-0.42 % year(-1)) and outside (-0.89 % year(-1)) protected areas. In China, tidal flats are well represented within protected areas (22.9 % of current tidal flats occur within protected areas), but habitat loss continued despite protection (-0.55 % year(-1) inside, -0.97 % year(-1) outside). By contrast, in South Korea, where 12.1 % of remaining tidal flat is in protected areas, the rate of habitat loss outside protected areas was the highest in our study region (-1.83 % year(-1)), yet inside protected areas there was tidal flat aggradation (+1.13 % year(-1)), indicating either that protected area placement is biased away from vulnerable habitats, or protected areas are highly effective in South Korea. Tidal flats across our study area were lost most rapidly in internationally important sites for migratory shorebirds (-1.66 % year(-1)), suggesting that transformative land use change of coastal areas is occurring disproportionately in regions that are important for migratory birds. We urge (1) improved management of existing protected areas in East Asia, particularly in China, (2) targeted designation of new protected areas in sites crucial for supporting migratory birds and (3) integrated decision-making that simultaneously plans for coastal development and coastal conservation.Climate change and variability continue to adversely impact the livelihoods of many agriculture-dependent households in dryland sub-Saharan Africa. Climate vulnerability is shaped by institutions and socioeconomic processes including land tenure arrangements and infrastructural development. This paper employs a participatory mixed-method approach including household questionnaire surveys, key informant interviews, oral narratives and focus group discussions to understand the dynamics of livelihood challenges in 6 dryland farming communities of different vulnerability status in Ghana. Acknowledging the importance of agronomic practices as well as economic and environmental processes in influencing climate vulnerability in dryland farming systems, this paper demonstrates how the complex land tenure system is implicitly involved in shaping the vulnerability of two groups of farmers (migrant farmers in the Ejura Selcyedumase district and female farmers in the Bongo district) by limiting the adaptation options available to these groups. Our results suggest that women's rights regarding land ownership should be formalized in land policy in order to reduce cultural discriminations against them. Opportunities for women to own and formalize land registration titles should be pursued by the Government of Ghana. This will help women to secure property rights over land and land use via mechanisms such as collateral to access credit, which could be used to implement climate adaptation practices. The rights of migrant workers should also be recognized in Ghana's land policy to provide them with opportunities for adaptation in a similar manner to non-migrants. Climate change adaptation policies should also consider the broader socioeconomic and environmental factors that hinder smallholder farmers' ability to implement adaptation measures. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban planners and stakeholders require knowledge about the effectiveness of city-scale climate adaptation measures in order to develop climate resilient cities and to push forward the political process for the implementation of climate adaptation strategies in cities. This study examines the impact of modifications in urban surface fractions of buildings, impervious and pervious surfaces on summer air temperatures using urban climate modelling of idealised cities. Sensitivity tests are performed for nine typical settlement types in Germany. The results for minimum and maximum temperatures are analysed and plotted in a ternary diagram. The novel approach of using ternary diagrams for the aggregation and visualisation of modelling results clearly identifies thermally unfavourable ranges of urban surface partitioning that should be avoided for urban settlements. Furthermore, the diagrams are used to derive quantitative recommendations for the most effective reduction of summer heat intensity. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).It is commonly asserted that human communities in the Arctic are highly vulnerable to climate change, with the magnitude of projected impacts limiting their ability to adapt. At the same time, an increasing number of field studies demonstrate significant adaptive capacity. Given this paradox, we review climate change adaptation, resilience and vulnerability research to identify and characterize the nature and magnitude of the adaptation challenge facing the Arctic. We find that the challenge of adaptation in the Arctic is formidable, but suggest that drivers of vulnerability and barriers to adaptation can be overcome, avoided or reduced by individual and collective efforts across scales for many, if not all, climate change risks.As climate policies change through the legislative process, public attitudes towards them may change as well. Therefore, it is important to assess how people accept and support controversial climate policies as the policies change over time. Policy acceptance is a positive evaluation of, or attitude towards, an existing policy(1-3); policy support adds an active behavioural component(1,3). Acceptance does not necessarily lead to support. We conducted a national survey of Australian residents to investigate acceptance of, and support for, the Australian carbon pricing policy before and after the 2013 federal election, and how perceptions of the policy, economic ideology, and voting behaviour affect acceptance and support. We found acceptance and support were stable across the election period, which was surprising given that climate policy was highly contentious during the election. Policy acceptance was higher than policy support at both times and acceptance was a necessary but insufficient condition of support. We conclude that acceptance is an important process through which perceptions of the policy and economic ideology influence support. Therefore, future climate policy research needs to distinguish between acceptance and support to better understand this process, and to better measure these concepts.Mangroves provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including nutrient cycling, soil formation, wood production, fish spawning grounds, ecotourism and carbon (C) storage(1). High rates of tree and plant growth, coupled with anaerobic, water-logged soils that slow decomposition, result in large long-term C storage. Given their global significance as large sinks of C, preventing mangrove loss would be an effective climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy. It has been reported that C stocks in the Indo-Pacific region contain on average 1,023MgC ha(-1) (ref. 2). Here, we estimate that Indonesian mangrove C stocks are 1,083 +/- 378MgC ha(-1). Scaled up to the country-level mangrove extent of 2.9 Mha (ref. 3), Indonesia's mangroves contained on average 3.14 PgC. In three decades Indonesia has lost 40% of its mangroves(4), mainly as a result of aquaculture development(5). This has resulted in annual emissions of 0.07-0.21 Pg CO(2)e. Annual mangrove deforestation in Indonesia is only 6% of its total forest loss(6); however, if this were halted, total emissions would be reduced by an amount equal to 10-31% of estimated annual emissions from land-use sectors at present. Conservation of carbon-rich mangroves in the Indonesian archipelago should be a high-priority component of strategies to mitigate climate change.This study examined the impact of climate change on pastoral livestock in Boulgou Province located in the sub-humid zone of Burkina Faso. We analysed the annual rainfall and temperature data from 1980 to 2012 using both Mann-Kendall's statistical test to show the long-term annual trends and Standardised Anomaly Index (SAI) to evaluate inter-annual rainfall fluctuations. We also conducted household interviews with 248 respondents to analyse agro-pastoralists' perceptions of climate change and variability, its impacts on livestock production and their acceptance of adaptation measures. A binary regression model was employed to identify the most important factors affecting agro-pastoralists' decisions to adopt specific adaptation measures. Within the period of study, the annual rainfall showed an upward trend, with high inter-annual variability and 818.9 mm of mean annual rainfall. Additionally, the annual minimum and maximum temperatures showed a statistically significant upward trend, with a rate of change of 0.20 degrees C and 0.27 degrees C per decade. The results of the household interviews indicated that most of the respondents (73.4 %) observed temperature changes compared with rainfall amount (1.2 %). To adapt to these changes, they have already adopted some adaptation measures that include the use of crop residue and herd destocking. Other less popular but innovative adaptation measures such as haymaking and use of concentrate livestock feeds could be promoted effectively under a comprehensive climate change adaptation action plan within a reviewed National Policy for Sustainable Livestock Development. This case study is one of the platforms through which poor agro-pastoralists' perception and recommendations can be accommodated in this proposed multi-stakeholder policy review.Despite the fact that the institutional environment is acknowledged to influence the implementation of regional adaptations of forest management to climate change, there are few empirical studies addressing the institutional factors and opportunities of adaptation. Using Ostrom's institutional analysis and development framework, we aimed to identify : (1) the critical and distinctive characteristics of the forest resource and institutional context that may determine how climate change-adaptive forest management measures are implemented and (2) the opportunities for implementing the planned adaptation measures. The analysis is performed on ten European case study regions which differed in many resource-dependent factors, policy arena factors and incentives for changes. The main factors influencing the adaptation are the ownership pattern, the level of policy formation and the nature of forest goods and services. Opportunities for adaptation are driven by the openness of the forest management planning processes to the stakeholders participation, the degree to which business as usual management is projected to be non-satisfactory in the future, and by the number and nature of obstacles to adaptation. Promoting local self-governance mechanisms and the participation of the external stakeholders in forest management planning or in the regional forest or climate change policy adaptation may be a way of overcoming path dependency, behavioural obstacles and potential policy failures in implementing adaptation. The study argues that both climate change belief systems and political participation are important to explain adaptation to climate change when multiple decision-making levels are at stake.There has been a growing movement within the environmental industry to develop more sustainable approaches in environmental remediation. These have generally included carbon footprint analysis, life cycle assessment, and best management practices to reduce the overall net environmental, social, and economic impacts of investigation and remediation activities. One of the foundational reasons net environmental impacts are currently evaluated is to identify and, subsequently, reduce contributions to climate change, primarily greenhouse gas emissions. While this trend toward sustainability and reduction in impact to the global environment is both important and admirable, the approach to remediation design and long-term planning now needs to evolve further to better incorporate climate resilience into sustainable remediation design and implementation: designing remediation solutions that account for the projected impacts of climate change, as well as have the capacity to adapt to changing conditions. As a global population, we are now beyond the point of being able to prevent climate change and instead need to plan for adapting to it. In remediation, the effects of climate change create both risks and opportunities which should be considered during remedial design and long-term planning. Responsible parties may see the push for-and management of-these considerations through their internal corporate risk management. The authors of this paper propose a simple framework for climate adaptation and resilience evaluations and plan development for remediation projects. (C) 2015Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Background and Purpose: Climate change has an impact on economic and natural systems as well as human health. These impacts are particularly visible in urbanised areas. Urban forests, which are one of the main natural features of the cities, are threatened by climate change. Generally, the role of forests in combating climate change is widely recognised and its significance is recognised also in urban areas. However, appropriate responses to climate change are usually lacking in their management. Climate change adaptation in relation to urban forests has been studied less often in comparison to climate change mitigation. Adaptive capacity of forests to climate change consists of adaptive capacity of forests as an ecological system and adaptive capacity of related socio-economic factors. The latter determines the capacity of a system and its actors to implement planned actions. This paper studies social and policy aspects of adaptation processes in urban forests of Belgrade. Materials and Methods: For the purpose of this study content analysis of urban forest policy and management documents was applied. Furthermore, in-depth interviews with urban forest managers and Q-methodology surveys with urban forestry stakeholders were conducted. Triangulation of these data is used to assure validity of results. Results: The results show weak integration of climate change issues in urban forest policy and management documents, as well as weak responses by managers. A comprehensive and systematic approach to this challenge does not exist. Three perspectives towards climate change are distinguished: (I) 'sceptics' - do not perceive climate change as a challenge, (II) 'general-awareness perspective' - aware of climate change issues but without concrete concerns toward urban forests, (III) 'managementoriented perspective' - highlights specific challenges related to urban forest management. Awareness of urban forest managers and stakeholders towards climate change adaptation is characterized by assumptions and uncertainties, which are the result of poor knowledge, lack of data of local impacts and weak communication. Conclusions: The results indicate the need for building urban forestry institutional and human capacities for creating effective climate change adaptation responses, which will lead to better understanding of challenges posed by climate change and ability to make the trade-offs between possible decisions.Three hundred and fifty municipalities across five continents participated in the Urban Climate Change Governance Survey (UCGS). Conducted at MIT in partnership with ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, the UCGS provides a first of its kind look at the governance networks that municipalities are creating to address climate change. Drawing from these results, this paper analyses the institutional governance structures that surround local government work on climate change adaptation. Results show an integration of adaptation and mitigation planning, and a mainstreaming of adaptation planning into other long-range and sectoral plans. Seventy-three percent of respondents stated that their local government's are engaging with both adaptation and mitigation, and 75% are integrating adaptation into long-range or sectoral plans. However, many critical municipal agencies - including those responsible for water, waste water, health, and building codes - remain on the margins of urban adaptation efforts. Internal institutional networks of governance are inextricably linked to efforts to address a problem like adaptation, which does not fit neatly into individual institutional silos. The results of the UCGS show where these networks have so far been made, how they have been created, and which local government actors have yet to be effectively engaged. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V.The concentration of people, infrastructure, and ecosystem services in urban areas make them prime sites for climate change adaptation. While advances have been made in the development of frameworks for adaptation planning and in identifying both real and potential barriers to action, empirical work evaluating urban adaptation planning processes has been relatively piecemeal. Existing assessments of current experience with urban adaptation provide necessarily broad generalizations based on the available peer-reviewed literature. This paper uses a meta-analysis of U.S. cities' current experience with urban adaptation planning drawing from 54 sources that include peer-reviewed literature, government reports, white papers, and reports published by non-governmental organizations. The analysis specifically evaluates the institutional support structures being developed for urban climate change adaptation. The results demonstrate that adaptation planning is driven by a desire to reduce vulnerability and often catalyzes new collaborations and coordination mechanisms in urban governance. As a result, building capacity for urban climate change adaptation planning requires a focus not only on city governments themselves but also on the complex horizontal and vertical networks that have arisen around such efforts. Existing adaptation planning often lacks attention to equity issues, social vulnerability, and the influence of non-climatic factors on vulnerability. Engaging city governments and communities in adaptation planning - whether to initiate or expand such efforts - may require that adaptation planning is framed to capitalize on their motivation to protect assets and reduce vulnerability. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a critical review of multi-level climate governance and adaptive capacity building in the context of Melbourne, Australia. The role of local government is highlighted as significant within the Victorian Climate Change Adaptation Plan (2013) and it is recognised that the state government must work in partnership with local municipalities and communities to effectively respond to the impacts of climate change. This paper reflects on the characteristics of institutional responses to climate change and the extent to which local government 'climate change alliances' constitute an emergent and effective form of adaptive and integrative governance. The analysis draws on a review of recent literature and government reports focusing on local scale adaptation in Victoria as well as qualitative data from interviews with local government alliances. The traditionally weak institutional architecture at the local scale in Australia creates a significant challenge in adaptive governance for climate change. The research highlights the current and potential role of regional alliances to overcome structural, institutional and political obduracies as evidence of progress in building adaptive capacity at the local government and community scale. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cities are increasingly involved in planning for climate change adaptation, although the extent and role of public participation in such efforts remains poorly theorized and understudied. This paper employs a case survey methodology to systematically review the recent literature on urban climate change adaptation with respect to public participation, stake-holder engagement, and civic capacity. Six forms of participation in urban adaptation are identified from the literature and the distinguishing characteristics and use of each type are examined across the cases. Few cases illustrate robust and sustained civic capacity in the governance of urban climate adaptation, although several cases reveal budding capacity that could emerge with further efforts to engage businesses and citizens in articulating priorities and strategies for future adaptation efforts. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation - to be politically feasible and socially acceptable - will not happen without broad public support. Yet, to date, the public has been barely engaged in finding effective solutions. Municipal and county staff, as well as community organizations that have taken the lead to date with climate planning, list building political and public support as one of the greatest barriers they face. As climate change impacts increase, and as adaptation measures move from the planning to the implementation stage, those affected by climate risks and adaptation strategies cannot be ignored. The community level is where climate change impacts manifest, where appropriate solutions are needed, and where synergies and trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation, and between climate and nonclimate-policy choices play out. It is in specific locales where people live with the consequences of adaptation choices, and where a sense of place can be a motivation or hindrance to action. Local adaptation experts face a growing need to build capacity in effective stakeholder engagement in responding to climate impacts yet opportunities for doing so have been limited to date. This critical gap must be filled and training programs rapidly brought to scale for adaptation efforts to advance successfully. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban areas are key sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and also are vulnerable to climate change. The recent IPCC Fifth Assessment Report illustrates a clear need for more research on urban strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, missing from the current literature on climate change and urban areas is a conceptual framework that integrates mitigation and adaptation perspectives and strategies. Because cities vary with respect to development histories, economic structure, urban form, institutional and financial capacities among other factors, it is critical to develop a framework that permits cross-city comparisons beyond simple single measures like population size. The primary purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for a multi-dimensional urbanization climate change typology that considers the underlying and proximate causes of GHG emissions and climate change vulnerabilities. The paper reviews some of the basic steps required to build such a typology and associated challenges that must be overcome via a demonstration of a pilot typology with nine case study cities. The paper shows how the proposed framework can be used to evaluate and compare the conditions of GHG emissions and climate change vulnerability across cities at different phases in the urbanization process. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Given the current need for a comprehensive understanding of the consequences of urban development to achieve the goal of sustainable cities, knowledge of urban microclimates is essential to control the UHI effect, conduct urban amenity studies and monitor energy consumption. Modeling offers a way for enhancing this knowledge and it also constitutes a decision-making support system for establishing effective urban environmental policies. We present the SOLENE-microclimat model dedicated to modeling urban microclimate and building thermal behavior. We first explain the modeling approach, based on the coupling of radiative, thermal and CFD models and show how it has been enhanced to handle a large range of cases now encountered in urban projects: modeling of vegetation, water ponds, bare ground, building energy simulation, and technics such as surface water aspersion. Several illustrations are given to show how this tool has been used to assess and compare climate adaptation and/or mitigation measures based on vegetation: trees, lawns, green walls and roofs. Having both the building and the district scales, as well as the detailed description of all the fluxes, we distinguish the direct and indirect effects of theses measures on building energy consumption and highlight the dominant effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change will lead to more warm and hot days in the Netherlands. Climate adaptation measures are needed to reduce the vulnerability of urban areas. Moreover, proven adaptation measures, such as increased vegetated areas or water surfaces, are not always possible due to a lack of space or undesired aesthetic effects. An alternative option is to make use of coloured facades to create drafts and accelerate wind speed in a street canyon or on a square to attract fresh air from cooler places. Differences in colour and material types already influence the air flow in street canyons in an uncontrolled manner. If this thermal comfort principle can be implemented, it will potentially have a significant impact on many cities throughout the world. This paper presents the results of a first exploratory research based on measurements on scale models and at full scale. This pilot study indicates success of the intended draft principle, advocating further research. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Some uncertainty in mobile microclimate observations stems from sensor lags. This is especially critical in mobile transect campaigns conducted in urban areas, where observations have to be related to the quickly varying complex surroundings of the sensor, which becomes difficult if the sensor has a high time constant relative to environmental scale and sensor velocity. We present an optimized method for sensor lag correction using a transfer function, based on the optimization of three correction parameters: moving average window size, transfer function setup, and linear time shift. We evaluate the method by comparing the corrected temperatures measured with "slow" Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTD) to a ground truth provided by synchronous measurements with thermocouples that have a time constant of less than one second. Theoretical assumptions about the correction procedure design are substantiated by the optimization procedure, which yields consistent results for mobile transect data sets recorded at different times of day and in different seasons. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Pavement-watering is currently viewed as a potential climate change adaptation and urban heat island mitigation technique. The effects of pavement-watering on pavement temperature measured 5 cm deep are presented and discussed. Subsurface temperature measurements could not be used to improve or optimize pavement-watering methods as was seen in previous work on surface temperatures or subsurface pavement heat flux measurements. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The development of water storage schemes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is considered a major aid for those regions with unequal water distribution, limited accessibility and anticipated climate change impacts. Great attention is given by many SSA countries to set up different water storage schemes that may improve rural and urban development on a national level. The funding for the water storage schemes is often derived from foreign agencies which conduct feasibility studies for the financing of potential investments. Often however, the feasibility studies rely on a single monetary criterion which may not identify the most appropriate water storage in each case. In addition, limited data availability in many SSA countries increases the difficulty of identifying the most suitable storage option. This paper develops a multicriteria framework for the integrated evaluation of water storage strategies in Sub-Saharan African countries. A set of economic, agronomic and opinion-based criteria are assessed through the PROMETHEE II outranking approach. The introduction of crop modeling complements the limited field data available in agronomic criteria and enhances the scientific rigor of the method. Ethiopia is adopted as a representative case of SSA countries where a diverse set of water storage options is currently under construction, often financed by foreign agencies.In 2025 the majority of the world population will live in flood prone delta cities. Delta City Rotterdam, with one of the biggest ports in the world, is dealing with the consequences of climate change in a very pro-active and smart way, turning challenges into opportunities. The RCP Rotterdam Climate Proof program aims at making the city completely climate resilient by 2025, by building multifunctional flood protection and innovative water storage for urban drain water. But also by kicking-off a Rotterdam Adaptation Strategy RAS, by using new smart technologies like Apps and serious gaming, and by redeveloping and revitalizing its old city ports areas with attractive waterfronts. At these waterfronts, where education of future generations is combined with innovative and sustainable development of businesses, best practices are showcased to make the city more attractive, to add economic value and to create resilient communities. This knowledge and experience is shared with other delta and coastal cities in the world, in the 'Connecting Delta Cities' global network, and with the Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities initiative. This article explains that dealing with climate change in a pro-active and smart way creates opportunities for attractive, resilient and economically strong delta cities of the future.Field observations reveal that very long members such as railway tracks and pipelines which are subjected to axial compression, induced usually by temperature and/or pressure increases, experience localized buckling. This paper presents a solution for the antisymmetric post-buckling of such members when restrained by a nonlinear foundation that includes softening effects. The principle of minimum total potential is invoked in order to develop the governing differential equations of buckling, as well as the non-linear equations of equilibrium in the post-buckled range of structural response. In order to solve these equations, a semi-analytical solution is proposed based on a perturbation technique, as well as a numerical technique based on a single shooting procedure for the solution of boundary value problems. The results of the analysis show that the post-buckling configuration of the column changes from a lengthwise periodic mode at the initial stages of loading to an isolated sinusoidal mode at the later stages of post-buckling, which represents a localization in the post-buckling range. This response is typical of that observed often in practice. Comparisons between the results of the perturbation technique and those of the numerical approach indicate that the semi-analytical perturbation solution predicts the initial post-buckling response of a column on a nonlinear foundation quite accurately.Functional traits reflect plant responses to disturbance, including from visitor impacts. The impacts of mountain biking and hiking on functional composition were compared using a common experimental protocol in a subalpine grassland in the Australian Alps. The overlapping cover of all species was recorded two weeks after different intensities of hiking (200 and 500 passes) and mountain biking (none, 25, 75, 200 and 500 passes). Species' functional trait data were combined with their relative cover to calculate community trait weighted means for plant height, leaf area, percentage leaf dry matter content and Specific Leaf Area (SLA). Species such as Poe fawcettiae with larger leaves and SLA but lower dry weight content of leaves were more resistant to use, with differences between bikers and hikers only apparent at the highest levels of use tested. This differs from some vegetation communities in Europe where plants with smaller leaves were more resistant to hiking. More research using functional traits may account for differences in species responses to trampling. Managers of conservation areas used for hiking and biking need to minimise off trail use by both user groups. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban trees are a dominant natural element in cities; they provide important ecosystem services to urban citizens and help urban areas adapt to climate change. Many rationales have been proposed to provide a purpose for urban forest management, some of which have been ineffective in addressing important ecological and social management themes. Among these rationales we find a values-based perspective, which sees management as a process where the desires of urban dwellers are met. Another perspective is climate change adaptation, which sees management as a process where urban forest vulnerability to climate change is reduced and resilience enhanced. Both these rationales have the advantage of complementing, enhancing, and broadening urban forest management objectives. A critical analysis of the literature on public values related to urban forests and climate change adaptation in the context of urban forests is undertaken to discuss what it means to adopt these two issues in urban forest management. The analysis suggests that by seeing urban forest management as a process by which public values are satisfied and urban-forest vulnerabilities to climate change are reduced, we can place issues such as naturalization, adaptive management, and engaging people in management at the centre of urban forest management. Focusing urban forest management on these issues may help ensure the success of programs focused on planting more trees and increasing citizen participation in urban forest management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We used a participatory approach and a rural livelihoods framework to explore the knowledge and capacity of southeast Queensland graziers to adapt to climate change. After being presented with information on climate change projections, participants identified biophysical and socio-economic opportunities and challenges to adaptation. Graziers identified key opportunities as components of resilience (incremental change), and in many cases were options that they had some knowledge of either from their own region or elsewhere in the grazing industry. The major constraint to adaptation was the lack of financial capital: with low profitability of the industry and high land costs restricting their capacity to diversify and exploit economies of scale. These constraints were exacerbated by the pressure many graziers experienced from the demand for land as a result of urban expansion. While the focus of the workshop was on the impact of climate change and capacity to adapt, many of the issues raised by graziers were pressures not solely related to climate change. Adaptation needs to be considered in light of the appropriate level (resilience-transition-transformation) and spatial scale (field to region) required to tackle the issues identified. Policy needs to support good natural resource management, rural amenity, and food and fibre production close to urban population and markets in the face of urban encroachment.Particular visions of urban development are often codified in multi-year resource management policies. These policies, and the negotiations leading to them, are based in specific problem frames and narratives with long legacies. As conditions change and knowledge improves, there is often a need to revisit how problems, opportunities, and development pathways were defined historically, and to consider the viability of alternative pathways for development. In this article, we examine the case of agriculture near Metropolitan Phoenix, in the Central Arizona region, to highlight how frames and narratives embedded in policy can reinforce particular development pathways, even as information, conditions, and values evolve. Using expert interviews and secondary data, we document alternative frames and narratives that may offer different pathways for development and sustainability in the region. By highlighting alternative narratives, we demonstrate the uncertainties and limitations associated with all narratives about development pathways, and explore the possibilities that narrative shifts can alter future outcomes.This study explores how Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) can guide investment decisions in integrated water resources management (IWRM) and climate change adaptation under uncertainty. The objectives of the paper are to: (i) explain the concept of diversification to reduce risk, as formulated in MPT; (ii) discuss the conditions for applying MPT to IWRM, and provide examples of these; and (iii) analyze the opportunities and limitations of applying MPT to the design of IWRM and adaptation policies. It is shown that MPT can be applied when a case meets four conditions: (1) there is more than one possible investment at a given time; (2) these investments are subject to risk; (3) there is information about the historical and/or expected return of these investments; and (4) the same conditions do not affect all investments equally, meaning that their returns are imperfectly correlated. Analysis of a case study Noorderkwartier in the Netherlands concludes that MPT can contribute to designing portfolios of combinations of investments in flood risk management-technical measures, spatial planning and insurance-which are robust to uncertainty in long-term projections such as present in climate change scenarios.The Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model with newly-developed biochar algorithms was used to determine the impacts of biochar amendments on corn (Zea mays L.) yields, soil cation exchange capacity (CEC), pH, bulk density (D-b) and soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. The objectives were (1) to determine biochar impacts on crop yields and soil properties of a tropical soil and (2) to evaluate biochar's potential as a climate change adaptation tool. EPIC was validated using results of a 4-yr experiment performed on an Amazonian Oxisol amended with biochar at rates of 0, 8, and 20 Mg ha(-1). Simulated yields of corn on biochar amended soil were significantly greater than control yields (p < 0.05). Simulated soil pH increased from original 3.9 to 4.19, CEC increased from 9.76 to 11.5 cmol(c) kg(-1), and SOC also increased. After validation, EPIC was used to simulate the impacts of the same biochar rates applied at 4 year intervals on corn yields and soil properties over the next 20 years. Soil CEC increased from 11.1 cmol(c) kg(-1) to 20.2 cmol(c) kg(-1) for the highest biochar application rate. Soil pH increased from 3.9 to 5.64. SOC increased up to 2.59 % for the highest biochar application rate with decreased topsoil D-b from 1.11 Mg m(-3) to 0.97 Mg m(-3). Long-term corn yields were slightly decreased. Although the results are biochar-, dose-, and soil-specific, biochar additions to tropical soils hold promise as a climate change adaptation tool resulting in increased soil carbon sequestration and improved soil properties.This paper investigates how a requirement for regional government to coordinate adaptation planning has been interpreted and implemented. Using the theory of boundary organization applied to a multi-level context, and using four counties in Western Norway as a case, the paper develops a framework for assessing how regional level governance actors can support local level implementation of climate change adaptation through boundary work. Even though adaptation is not treated as a salient issue in most of the municipalities studied, regional level coordination efforts are creating a hybrid management space that aids mediation between local knowledge and expert adaptation knowledge. They thus hold the potential for better local level adaptation planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Given predicted increases associated with human-induced climate change, stream temperatures are likely to approach upper tolerance limits of aquatic biota within the coming decades. Little information is available regarding thermal tolerance limits of lotic fauna or mechanisms allowing fauna to persist following high temperature events (e.g. use of thermal refuges). Cold-water refuges can facilitate survival of fish in the Northern Hemisphere, but little evidence of similar refuges exists elsewhere. Planned releases of hypolimnetic, or a mixture of top and bottom, waters from reservoirs have recently been touted as a novel method to potentially ameliorate extreme temperature events. However, the feasibility of this technique has not been fully discussed in the published literature. Therefore, we present a literature review, an analysis of thermal data for some large dams in southern Australia in relation to known thermal tolerances of native fauna, and an assessment of current management practices regarding the technique. We show that hypolimnetic releases have variable impacts on water temperatures downstream of a dam, depending on size, off-take infrastructure and management practices but, even where there is an effect, knowledge gaps are too numerous for this technique to be currently feasible. Furthermore, hypolimnetic releases generally evoke negative connotations among natural resource managers, due to the occurrence of cold-water shock in some species. If knowledge gaps and limitations can be addressed, it is possible that the technique may be considered in future, so we present potential tools for future assessment, capacities and limitations and discuss potential scenarios where environmental managers might consider this technique. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The most common response to change by societies is either to take incremental steps and maintain the current system or accept gradual partial change. Yet, given the current and future complex large-scale challenges like climate change, such responses are increasingly inadequate. Calls are now made for societies to implement transformative approaches in order to manage complex problems in a more sustainable and adaptive manner. However, the discussion around transformative change is still emerging and it is not clear as to what transformation means, how it can be evaluated, and how the conceptions of transformation fit within the current understanding of dealing with policy problems in practice. This paper explores the range of current understandings on transformation and its characteristics, and uses Handmer and Dovers' (2007, 2009, 2013) three-staged typology to investigate different approaches to identifying and managing policy problems and the potential scope for transformation. Examples from policy and practice within disaster risk management are used to demonstrate how different management approaches attempt to deal with particular problems and to investigate to what extent these could be transformative. It is argued that not all transformation is positive and welcome, and that greater focus needs to be placed on how complex problems are managed in a manner that enables long-term positive transformation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Questions of equity, justice, and fairness in the international agricultural adaptation regime have emerged in recent years, prompting interest in regime power dynamics. Here, a three-dimensional conceptual framework of 'power as domination' is applied to the UNFCCC adaptation regime. We argue that this 'power-over' framing is an important lens through which to view adaptation, a field dominated by 'power-to', capacity-based constructs. The framework distinguishes between power-over manifesting through decision-making, agenda setting and preference shaping. Through a literature review we demonstrate that first and second dimension behavioral views of power-over fail to account for the subtle ways in which the interests and preferences of smallholder farmers are unknowingly shaped and restricted within the regime. Potential sources of third dimension preference shaping power are explored in a survey with high-level decision makers involved in National Adaptation Plans (NAP) development in seven countries. The results suggest that several inter-related features of the international agriculture adaptation regime collectively contribute to the shaping of interests and preferences of smallholders: prevailing discourses of uncertainty and the perceived limited capacity of smallholders; the resulting privileged status of 'expert' decision makers; the predominance of neoliberal development rationalities; and systemic biases resulting from the nation state as the principle unit of UNFCCC negotiation. These forces lie beyond the explanatory scope of first and second dimensions of power-over and help to explain why stakeholder engagement in adaptation decision making remains superficial in nature and why adaptation responses in agriculture can be considered 'common and non-differentiated'. We argue for increased awareness of third dimension manifestations and impacts of power in adaptation literature to facilitate the improved participation of marginalized stakeholders in UNFCCC and domestic adaptation decision making forums, to increase the diversity of adaptation options available to smallholders, and ultimately, to improve the attribution of responsibility for adaptation outcomes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate science initially aspired to improve understanding of what the future would bring, and thereby produce appropriate public policies and effective international climate agreements. If that hope is dashed, as now seems probable, effective policies for adapting to climate change become critical. Climate science assumes new responsibilities by helping to foster more appropriate adaptation measures, which might include shifting modes or locales of production. This theoretical article focuses on two broader tools: consumption smoothing in response to the risk of future losses, and physical adaptation measures to reduce potential damages. It shows that informative signals on the effects of climate change facilitate better decisions on the use of each tool, thereby increasing social welfare.Visualizations are widely used in the communication of climate projections. However, their effectiveness has rarely been assessed among their target audience. Given recent calls to increase the usability of climate information through the tailoring of climate projections, it is imperative to assess the effectiveness of different visualizations. This paper explores the complexities of tailoring through an online survey conducted with 162 local adaptation practitioners in Germany and the UK. The survey examined respondents' assessed and perceived comprehension (PC) of visual representations of climate projections as well as preferences for using different visualizations in communicating and planning for a changing climate. Comprehension and use are tested using four different graph formats, which are split into two pairs. Within each pair the information content is the same but is visualized differently. We show that even within a fairly homogeneous user group, such as local adaptation practitioners, there are clear differences in respondents' comprehension of and preference for visualizations. We do not find a consistent association between assessed comprehension and PC or use within the two pairs of visualizations that we analysed. There is, however, a clear link between PC and use of graph format. This suggests that respondents use what they think they understand the best, rather than what they actually understand the best. These findings highlight that audience-specific targeted communication may be more complex and challenging than previously recognized.The enormous societal importance of accurate El Nino forecasts has long been recognized. Nonetheless, our predictive capabilities were once more shown to be inadequate in 2014 when an El Nino event was widely predicted by international climate centers but failed to materialize. This result highlighted the problem of the opaque spring persistence barrier, which severely restricts longer-term, accurate forecasting beyond boreal spring. Here we show that the role played by tropical seasonality in the evolution of the El Nino is changing on pentadal (five-year) to decadal timescales and thus that El Nino predictions beyond boreal spring will inevitably be uncertain if this change is neglected. To address this problem, our new coupled climate simulation incorporates these long-term influences directly and generates accurate hindcasts for the 7 major historical El Ninos. The error value between predicted and observed sea surface temperature (SST) in a specific tropical region (5 degrees N-5 degrees S and 170 degrees-120 degrees W) can consequently be reduced by 0.6 Kelvin for one-year predictions. This correction is substantial since an "El Nino" is confirmed when the SST anomaly becomes greater than +0.5 Kelvin. Our 2014 forecast is in line with the observed development of the tropical climate.Forest trees generally show high levels of local adaptation and efforts focusing on understanding adaptation to climate will be crucial for species survival and management. Here, we address fundamental questions regarding the molecular basis of adaptation in undomesticated forest tree populations to past climatic environments by employing an integrative quantitative genetics and landscape genomics approach. Using this comprehensive approach, we studied the molecular basis of climate adaptation in 433 Populus trichocarpa (black cottonwood) genotypes originating across western North America. Variation in 74 field-assessed traits (growth, ecophysiology, phenology, leaf stomata, wood, and disease resistance) was investigated for signatures of selection (comparing Q(ST)-F-ST) using clustering of individuals by climate of origin (temperature and precipitation). 29,354 SNPs were investigated employing three different outlier detection methods and marker-inferred relatedness was estimated to obtain the narrow-sense estimate of population differentiation in wild populations. In addition, we compared our results with previously assessed selection of candidate SNPs using the 25 topographical units (drainages) across the P. trichocarpa sampling range as population groupings. Narrow-sense QST for 53% of distinct field traits was significantly divergent from expectations of neutrality (indicating adaptive trait variation); 2,855 SNPs showed signals of diversifying selection and of these, 118 SNPs (within 81 genes) were associated with adaptive traits (based on significant QST). Many SNPs were putatively pleiotropic for functionally uncorrelated adaptive traits, such as autumn phenology, height, and disease resistance. Evolutionary quantitative genomics in P. trichocarpa provides an enhanced understanding regarding the molecular basis of climate-driven selection in forest trees and we highlight that important loci underlying adaptive trait variation also show relationship to climate of origin. We consider our approach the most comprehensive, as it uncovers the molecular mechanisms of adaptation using multiple methods and tests. We also provide a detailed outline of the required analyses for studying adaptation to the environment in a population genomics context to better understand the species' potential adaptive capacity to future climatic scenarios.This article explores the use of a dialogue process to approach complex issues related to forest management. An interdisciplinary research team set up an experimental dialogue process concerning the use of introduced tree species in Southern Sweden for the purposes of climate change adaptation. The process involved stakeholders at a regional level, including those with divergent opinions regarding introduced tree species and their use in forestry. Through a process of repeated meetings and exchanges with researchers, the participant's knowledge was deepened and group relationships developed such that the group was able to jointly formulate a set of policy recommendations. The investigation revealed that dialogue processes may improve decision-making by identifying priorities for action or further research. However, when a collaborative process targets complex environmental issues on larger geographical and temporal scales, as matters about forests typically do, a collaborative process must be integrated with external actors and institutions in order to attain tangible outcomes. Consequently, to fully access the benefits of using collaborative processes to handle complex challenges in forest policy and management, the connections between political sphere, the private sector, authorities and research institutions must be concretely established.We identified the pelagic habitat hotspots of the neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii) in the central North Pacific from May to July and characterized the spatial patterns of squid aggregations in relation to oceanographic features such as mesoscale oceanic eddies and the Transition Zone Chlorophyll-a Front (TZCF). The data used for the habitat model construction and analyses were squid fishery information, remotely-sensed and numerical model-derived environmental data from May to July 1999-2010. Squid habitat hotspots were deduced from the monthly Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) models and were identified as regions of persistent high suitable habitat across the 12-year period. The distribution of predicted squid habitat hotspots in central North Pacific revealed interesting spatial and temporal patterns likely linked with the presence and dynamics of oceanographic features in squid's putative foraging grounds from late spring to summer. From May to June, the inferred patches of squid habitat hotspots developed within the Kuroshio-Oyashio transition zone (KOTZ; 37-40 degrees N) and further expanded north towards the subarctic frontal zone (SAFZ; 40-44 degrees N) in July. The squid habitat hotspots within the KOTZ and areas west of the dateline (160 degrees W-180 degrees) were likely influenced and associated with the highly dynamic and transient oceanic eddies and could possibly account for lower squid suitable habitat persistence obtained from these regions. However, predicted squid habitat hotspots located in regions east of the dateline (180 degrees-160 degrees W) from June to July, showed predominantly higher squid habitat persistence presumably due to their proximity to the mean position of the seasonally-shifting TZCF and consequent utilization of the highly productive waters of the SAFZ.Intensification of the use of natural resources is a world-wide trend driven by the increasing demand for water, food, fibre, minerals and energy. These demands are the result of a rising world population, increasing wealth and greater global focus on economic growth. Land use intensification, together with climate change, is also driving intensification of the global hydrological cycle. Both processes will have major socio-economic and ecological implications for global water availability. In this paper we focus on the implications of land use intensification for the conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems using Australia as an example. We consider this in the light of intensification of the hydrologic cycle due to climate change, and associated hydrological scenarios that include the occurrence of more intense hydrological events (extreme storms, larger floods and longer droughts). We highlight the importance of managing water quality, the value of providing environmental flows within a watershed framework and the critical role that innovative science and adaptive management must play in developing proactive and robust responses to intensification. We also suggest research priorities to support improved systemic governance, including adaptation planning and management to maximise freshwater biodiversity outcomes while supporting the socioeconomic objectives driving land use intensification. Further research priorities include: i) determining the relative contributions of surface water and groundwater in supporting freshwater ecosystems; ii) identifying and protecting freshwater biodiversity hotspots and refugia; iii) improving our capacity to model hydro-ecological relationships and predict ecological outcomes from land use intensification and climate change; iv) developing an understanding of long term ecosystem behaviour; and v) exploring systemic approaches to enhancing governance systems, including planning and management systems affecting freshwater outcomes. A major policy challenge will be the integration of land and water management, which increasingly are being considered within different policy frameworks. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The comprehensive assessment of climatic and hydrological droughts in terms of their temporal and spatial evolutions is very important for water resources management and social development in the basin scale. To study the spatial and temporal changes of climatic and hydrological droughts and the relationships between them, the SPEI and SDI are adopted to assess the changes and the correlations of climatic and hydrological droughts by selecting the Jialing River basin, China as the research area. The SPEI and SDI at different time scales are assessed both at the entire Jialing River basin and at the regional levels of the three sub basins. The results show that the SPEI and SDI are very suitable for assessing the changes and relationships of climatic and hydrological droughts in large basins. Based on the assessment, for the Jialing River basin, climatic and hydrological droughts have the increasing tendency during recent several decades, and the increasing trend of climatic droughts is significant or extremely significant in the western and northern basin, while hydrological drought has a less significant increasing trend. Additionally, climatic and hydrological droughts tend to increase in the next few years. The results also show that on short time scales, climatic droughts have one or two months lag impact on hydrological droughts in the north-west area of the basin, and have one month lag impact in south-east area of the basin. The assessment of climatic and hydrological droughts based on the SPEI and SDI could be very useful for water resources management and climate change adaptation at large basin scale.Regional and coastal mean sea level projections in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) account only for vertical land motion (VLM) associated with glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which may significantly under-or over-estimate sea level rise. Here we adjust AR5-like regional projections with the VLM from Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) measurements and/or from a combination of altimetry and tide-gauge data, which include both GIA and non-GIA VLM. Our results at selected tide-gauge locations on the North American and East Asian coasts show drastically different projections with and without non-GIA VLM being accounted for. The present study points to the importance of correcting IPCC AR5 coastal projections for the non-GIA VLM in making adaptation decisions.Complexities and uncertainties surrounding urbanization and climate change complicate water resource sustainability. Although research has examined various aspects of complex water systems, including uncertainties, relatively few attempts have been made to synthesize research findings in particular contexts. We fill this gap by examining the complexities, uncertainties, and decision processes for water sustainability and urban adaptation to climate change in the case study region of Phoenix, Arizona. In doing so, we integrate over a decade of research conducted by Arizona State University's Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC). DCDC is a boundary organization that conducts research in collaboration with policy makers, with the goal of informing decision-making under uncertainty. Our results highlight: the counterintuitive, non-linear, and competing relationships in human-environment dynamics; the myriad uncertainties in climatic, scientific, political, and other domains of knowledge and practice; and, the social learning that has occurred across science and policy spheres. Finally, we reflect on how our interdisciplinary research and boundary organization has evolved over time to enhance adaptive and sustainable governance in the face of complex system dynamics.The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NX region) of Northwestern China is threatened by increased meteorological drought induced by climate change (CC) and constraints on water supply from the Yellow River. Thus, the NX region is representative of attempts to adapt to CC and variability in China's arid regions. Field visits, a questionnaire and in situ inspections were conducted in 2012-2014 to understand people's perception and awareness of drought and its impact, particularly with respect to adaptation strategies. We mainly focused on drought adaptation actions and planning implemented at the government level under the double pressures of drought and allocation. We described a suitable adaptation pathway for socio-economic sustainable development and discussed existing adaptation barriers. Construction of modern efficient water-saving agriculture lies at the core of drought adaptation, with socio-economic sustainable development being the ultimate goal. To achieve this, policies and institutional, engineering, technological, structural and social initiatives and measures-classified into macro adaptation strategies and specific coping measures-are implemented. Adaptation often encounters obstacles, e.g., policy issues from household contract responsibility systems, funding difficulties of low-income farmers, traditional behavioral habits and low education and literacy levels among farmers. The adaptation pathway involves the construction of modern efficient water-saving agriculture. Agricultural water savings are then transferred to developed industries, which back-feed socio-economic sustainable development in the NX region.In countries like Bolivia and Colombia, increased pressures on freshwater supplies are putting millions at risk, and effective adaptation strategies will be critical to mitigating the worst impacts in these regions. Transdisciplinary knowledge production frameworks can account for the interactions of natural and human-made environments, and provide a potential solution for those in developing regions. Recent scholarship has reconciled common perceptions of transdisciplinary knowledge within the literature; however, little is known about how practitioners define transdisciplinary knowledge, and whether this type of knowledge production is favored. Using the Q-methodology, this study examines the role of transdisciplinary knowledge among 22 practitioners from non-governmental organizations working on climate change adaptation projects in Bolivia and Colombia. Four statistically different perspectives emerged: 1) Engaged Multi-Dimensional Problem-Solver, 2) User-Focused Advocate, 3) Ivory Tower Producer, and 4) Development Traditionalist. These results and recommendations for using a transdisciplinary knowledge production framework to address climate change adaptation in developing regions will be discussed. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentInfrastructure systems, including public lands managed by park authorities, are central to the economic, environmental, and cultural functioning of our society. Understanding the likelihood and impacts to system components from extreme weather events can be fundamental to prudent strategic, operational and financial decision making. This article describes the development and implementation of a methodology for evaluating the vulnerability of various types of critically identified infrastructure located within the Tennessee State Parks system to future extreme weather events. The methodology calculates a vulnerability score for each combination of type of infrastructure and weather event based on historical and anticipated weather events, and infrastructure performance when exposed to these events. It was found that hydrologic events, strong thunderstorm winds, and winter storms are the extreme weather events that pose the greatest risk to critical infrastructure within Tennessee State Parks. Locations that are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events include Shelby, Wilson, Dickson, Pickett, Carter, Putnam, Hamilton, Sullivan and Union counties. The approach described in this article is applicable to other park systems as well as public sector assets in general.Identifying signals of climate change and increased meteorological variability requires analytical tools suited to explore large data sets based on multidimensional measures. By focusing primarily on thermometric and precipitation regimes, the present study develops a multivariate classification of 12 climate variables recorded over a period of 32 years (1981-2012) in Castelporziano forest (Rome, central Italy). A moderate reduction in annual rainfall together with a marked increase in maximum and minimum air temperature was observed in Castelporziano along the study period. Principal component analysis distinguished 'dry' and 'hot' years (concentrated in the last decade) from 'wet' and 'cold' years, more common in the 1980s and the 1990s. Our results underline the increased unpredictability of Mediterranean dry spells possibly due to the higher climate variability in the drier season. Policies for climate change adaptation and mitigation are increasingly requested to integrate short- and medium-term strategies aimed at the most effective use of natural resources and the conservation of relict natural ecosystems surrounding urban areas.Anticipating the ecological effects of climate change to inform natural resource climate adaptation planning represents one of the primary challenges of contemporary conservation science. Species distribution models have become a widely used tool to generate first-pass estimates of climate change impacts to species probabilities of occurrence. There are a number of technical challenges to constructing species distribution models that can be alleviated by the use of scientific workflow software. These challenges include data integration, visualization of modeled predictor-response relationships, and ensuring that models are reproducible and transferable in an adaptive natural resource management framework. We used freely available software called VisTrails Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling (VisTrails:SAHM) along with a novel ecohydrological predictor dataset and the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 future climate projections to construct species distribution models for eight forest and shrub species in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the Northern Rocky Mountains USA. The species considered included multiple species of sagebrush and juniper, Aims flexilis, Pinus contorta, Pseudotsuga menziesii, Populus tremuloides, Abies lasciocarpa, Picea engelmannii, and Pinus albicaulis. Current and future species probabilities of occurrence were mapped in a GIS by land ownership category to assess the feasibility of undertaking present and future management action. Results suggested that decreasing spring snowpack and increasing late-season soil moisture deficit will lead to deteriorating habitat area for mountain forest species and expansion of habitat area for sagebrush and juniper communities. Results were consistent across nine global climate models and two representative concentration pathway scenarios. For most forest species their projected future distributions moved up in elevation from general federal to federally restricted lands where active management is currently prohibited by agency policy. Though not yet fully mature, custom scientific workflow software shows considerable promise to ease many of the technical challenges inherent in modeling the potential ecological impacts of climate change to support climate adaptation planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Extreme climatic events, including droughts and heatwaves, can trigger outbreaks of woodboring beetles by compromising host defenses and creating habitat conducive for beetle development. As the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts are likely to increase in the future, beetle outbreaks are expected to become more common. The combination of drought and beetle outbreaks has the potential to alter ecosystem structure, composition, and function. Our aim was to investigate a potential outbreak of the native Eucalyptus longhorned borer, Phoracantha semipunctata (P. semipunctata), following one of the most severe droughts on record in the Northern Jarrah Forest of Southwestern Australia. Beetle damage and tissue moisture were examined in trees ranging from healthy to recently killed. Additionally, beetle population levels were examined in adjacent forest areas exhibiting severe and minimal canopy dieback. Severely drought-affected forest was associated with an unprecedented outbreak of P. semipunctata, with densities 80 times higher than those observed in surrounding healthier forest. Trees recently killed by drought had significantly lower tissue moisture and higher feeding damage and infestation levels than those trees considered healthy or in the process of dying. These results confirm the outbreak potential of P. semipunctata in its native Mediterranean-climate Eucalyptus forest under severe water stress, and indicate that continued drying will increase the likelihood of outbreaks.The literature on migration and climate change has become increasingly attuned to the role of climatic factors in already complex migration dynamics, and amid different kinds of mobility. However, to date little evidence has been provided of the relationship between resettlement and climate change, including the degree to which resettlement may shape the vulnerability of households or communities. In this article we ask: is there any evidence that resettlement may be a driver of vulnerability and if so, what factors make resettled households more vulnerable when compared to non-resettled households? These questions are considered with reference to new evidence drawn from a livelihoods-based vulnerability analysis in a drought-prone, poverty county in China's Shanxi Province, which encompassed households involved in local poverty resettlement programs. Evidence of the characteristics of resettled households compared to non-resettled households shows that resettlement adversely impacts on the household asset base, particularly in terms of financial and natural capital. It may therefore be a driver of vulnerability. At a time when the Chinese government is repackaging resettlement as a climate change adaptation measure, this article provides evidence that resettlement as it is currently practiced has the potential to amplify rather than alleviate household vulnerability to climate change. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.How social networks support or constrain the transition to co-management of small-scale fisheries and marine reserves is poorly understood. In this paper, we undertake a comparative analysis of the social network structures associated with the transition to co-management in three Jamaican marine reserves. Data from quantitative social relational surveys (n = 380) are integrated with data from semi-structured interviews (n = 63) and focus groups (n = 10) to assess how patterns of relational ties and interactions between and among fishermen and other local level actors (e.g., managers, wardens, NGO staff) support and constrain the transition to co-management. Our research suggests that the transitions to co-management were supported by a combination of three network structure and relational attributes: (i) the presence and position of institutional entrepreneurs; (ii) a dense central core of network actors; and (iii) the prevalence of horizontal ties and vertical linkages held by the community-based organizations formally responsible for the management of the marine reserves. Our findings also show that overall low network cohesion in the three reserves and limited social influence among the wardens may be problematic for sustained collective action that extends beyond the core set of network actors. These findings suggest the importance of strategies to enhance collective action, specifically through attention to the attributes of the corresponding social networks, as a means to contribute to successful transitions to co-management of marine reserves and small-scale fisheries. Our results provide more precise guidance, through social network analysis, on where in the respective networks social capital and leadership may require support or enhancement, and thus on how to target interventions for greatest effect. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation, which has previously been seen as a national and local matter, is today systematically addressed by international institutions such as the UNFCCC, the FAO and the WTO. Research has focused on the overarching institutional architecture of global adaptation, particularly how it relates to development, political economy, efficiency and equity. In contrast to the transnational dimension of climate mitigation, the transnationalization of adaptation governance has received scant attention. By creating a dataset of adaptation projects, we examine transnational adaptation governance in terms of its scope, institutionalization and main functions. We find transnational adaptation governance to be firmly anchored within the UNFCCC, but a recent change towards adaptation governed by a transnational constituency can be identified. When non-state actors become integral to the project of governing adaptation, a 'fourth era' of adaption seems to be emerging. This new era is not replacing other forms of governing, but is emerging alongside and in a complementary fashion. In the 'fourth era', adaptation is increasingly governed globally and transnationally, and the attention is turned toward 'softer' forms of governance such as agenda setting, information sharing and capacity building. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing rates of climate migration may be of economic and national concern to sending and destination countries. It has been argued that social networks the ties connecting an origin and destination may operate as "migration corridors" with the potential to strongly facilitate climate change-related migration. This study investigates whether social networks at the household and community levels amplify or suppress the impact of climate change on international migration from rural Mexico. A novel set of 15 climate change indices was generated based on daily temperature and precipitation data for 214 weather stations across Mexico. Employing geostatistical interpolation techniques, the climate change values were linked to 68 rural municipalities for which sociodemographic data and detailed migration histories were available from the Mexican Migration Project. Multi-level discrete-time event-history models were used to investigate the effect of climate change on international migration between 1986 and 1999. At the household level, the effect of social networks was approximated by comparing the first to the last move, assuming that through the first move a household establishes internal social capital. At the community level, the impact of social capital was explored through interactions with a measure of the proportion of adults with migration experience. The results show that rather than amplifying, social capital may suppress the sensitivity of migration to climate triggers, suggesting that social networks could facilitate climate change adaptation in place. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities - and thus the potential for transformational adaptation - can be supported. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptation is a main response to climate change that involves adaptive, but also developmental and transformative, soda-ecological change. From this perspective the politics of climate adaptation cannot be understood without considering their intersection, in particular contexts, with politics of development and transformation. These three types of politics differ in the pattern of socio-ecological change that each one promotes. We discuss the operations of power associated with each pattern of change, including the forms of authority and subjectivities that each one entails. Developmental authority achieves consent (or consensus) on a trajectory of improvement, and promotes subjectivities based on individuals' positions and their progress along that trajectory. Adaptation authority sets clearcut boundaries between the adapting systems and their changing environments, and promotes subjectivities of belonging (or not) to the system's identity. Transformational authority seeks to transgress established authority, be it developmental or adaptive, and promotes emancipatory subjectivities. We analyze life-story narratives of local tourism entrepreneurs and workers in Akumal, a coastal enclave in Mexico doubly exposed to hurricanes and tourism globalization. This analysis shows how the operations of power in this enclave are variously linked to discourses and practices of development, adaptation, and transformation. The case of Akumal illustrates the complex interplay between risk and inequality in coastal communities exposed to growing climatic variability. Our analysis of deliberate transformations takes adaptation to climate change, and its transformative and emancipatory potential, into development. Understanding how authority and subjectivities evolve in particular locales, and the types of politics of change that they entail, is key for simultaneously reducing inequalities and risk. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In most urban and agricultural landscapes, remnants of native vegetation are surrounded by an inhospitable matrix. Although vagile species come and go, many reptiles, amphibians and small mammals are effectively stranded and declining towards local extinction. In the same landscapes, other areas where these species are absent are improving in habitat quality, both through natural regeneration and active restoration efforts. So, for many species in many domesticated landscapes, there are too many individuals in some patches of decreasing quality and no individuals in patches of increasing quality. One solution to this situation is to move animals from those areas where there are plenty to suitable areas where there are none. These targeted translocations apply lessons learned from revegetation to dispersal-limited animals to in-fill distributional ranges, increase population size and improve both demographic and genetic connectivity, pushing nonequilibrial metapopulations away from extinction via an imposed mass effect. In contrast to conventional reintroduction schemes expensive, reactive interventions involving highly-trained specialists and captive-raised endangered species these inexpensive, proactive, community-driven initiatives aim to avert future declines by keeping common species common. Having introduced the wildlife restoration vision, we use two scenarios to illustrate the benefits of the approach to species, ecosystem function, ecological understanding, restoration practise and public engagement. As well as adhering to best-practise reintroduction techniques to ensure animal welfare is not compromised and avoid detrimental effects to source populations or release sites, we emphasize community participation, data quality and long-term accessibility as paramount to maximize learning opportunities. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we undertake a choice experiment in order to identify differences in local demand for watershed services in the Koshi basin of Nepal. We first examine the possibility of using a non-monetary numeraire to estimate household willingness-to-pay for watershed services. Survey results indicate that while some 50% of the population is willing to pay in monetary terms for environmental services, this number increases to 72% when asked to contribute in labor time. Social benefits from environmental services are 1.4 to 2.2 times higher in labor hours relative to benefits estimated in monetary terms. Our findings suggest that cash constrained rural households in developing countries are more likely to express their demand for local environmental services by offering their time, rather than making a monetary payment. Our results also suggest that locational differences matter. Downstream community members, who practice commercial vegetable farming, have a higher demand for watershed services and are willing to pay a third more than upstream farmers for these services. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper describes a new set of energy demand forecasts for the Republic of Cyprus up to the year 2040, which have been developed in support of the renewable energy roadmap that was prepared for national authorities by the International Renewable Energy Agency. The analysis takes into account national end-use data from the residential and tertiary sector that had not been exploited up to now. Four final energy demand scenarios with diverging assumptions were defined in this study, offering a wide range of possible outcomes up to 2040; in addition, four alternative scenarios were applied for sensitivity analysis. Two of these scenarios can be regarded as those continuing the trends of the recent past in Cyprus (prior to the economic and financial downturn of years 2011-2014). However, a more rigorous implementation of energy efficiency measures in buildings and transport, as defined in the fourth scenario of this study, is also realistic; despite its potential costs, it might allow Cyprus both to decrease its carbon emissions in line with the long-term EU decarbonisation targets, and to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, thereby promoting energy efficiency as an important climate change adaptation measure. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Resilience to nonstationarity and deep uncertainty is a prerequisite for decadal to century scale water security. Adaptation is urgent at decadal ("near-term") horizons, when projections of stressors and vulnerability are typically more reliable but climate internal variability may preclude actionable insights. A case study of at-risk power production suggests that informed decisions are still possible.This study investigated the potential of harvesting rainwater from the roofs of nonresidential buildings in populated urban areas in Amman, Jordan, using geographic information system (GIS) techniques. Amman has a mean annual rainfall of 378 mm, which makes rainwater harvesting viable and feasible. The rainfall data recorded at seven different weather stations were processed statistically to produce reliable averaging surface and isohyetal maps for rainfall over Amman. The GIS layer was generated for roofs and catchments to identify the suitable rainwater harvesting sites. Results show that the potential water collected by rainwater harvesting is five times less expensive than that collected via the conventional water supply system. The net total water savings by rainwater harvesting is 3.45 x 10(6) m(3)/year, and this could reduce the nonrevenue water and other losses by -1%. Furthermore, rainwater harvesting has a potential positive environmental impact by reducing CO2 emissions by about 6.57 tons.The assessments of observed, attributed, and projected changes in extremes in two recent reports, the Intergovernmental Panel (IPCC) on Climate Change Fourth Assessment of Climate Change (AR4) and the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) are compared. This comparison focuses on global-scale changes in extremes as summarized in two "summary" tables from the AR4 and SREX, respectively. Many of the compared SREX and AR4 assessments of changes in extremes are essentially identical or in partial agreement, once the different language and different approaches to estimating uncertainty are taken into account. Two main exceptions are tropical cyclones and droughts. In the case of tropical cyclones, a less confident SREX assessment of past changes reflects post-AR4 studies that have improved our understanding of "the uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change, and the degree of tropical cyclone variability". In the case of droughts, "(d)efinitional issues and lack of dataaEuro broken vertical bar plus the inability of models to include all the factors likely to influence droughts" have led to overall weaker SREX assessments than was the case in AR4, both for observed and projected changes, although differences in the statements being assessed also explain some of the differences. Increased consistency of approach between assessments would simplify future attempts to compare the assessed uncertainties associated with changes in extremes, although changes in the wording of such assessments also needs to be considered. For instance, some aspects of the SREX assessments were the consequence of the revised IPCC uncertainty guidance, which was prepared mid-way through the SREX process.The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for a new balance between reducing the risks from climate extremes and transferring them (for example, through insurance) as means for effectively preparing for and managing disaster impacts in a changing climate. This paper elaborates on this balance with an overview of disaster risk financing mechanisms and how they contribute to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in developing countries. We suggest a risk management approach that targets risk reduction and risk financing to different layers of risk, including a layer that represents a possible limit to adaptation. By reviewing traditional post-disaster financial arrangements, such as government compensation, and non-traditional pre-disaster instruments, such as index-based insurance, we show how risk financing can complement and stimulate risk reduction. We discuss the benefits of financial instruments, including the provision of post-disaster finances for recovery and pre-disaster security necessary for climate adaptation and poverty reduction. These benefits come at a cost, and we discuss the risks, challenges, and future prospects of risk financing in developing countries.Resilience of crops to climate change is extremely critical for global food security in coming decades. Decrease in productivity of certain crops as a consequence of changing climate has already been observed. In West Africa, a region extremely vulnerable to climate change, various studies predicted significant reduction in productivity of the major crops because of future warming and shift in precipitation patterns. However, most studies either follow statistical approaches or involve only specific sites. Here, using a process-based crop model at a regional scale, we project the future changes in cereal crop yields as a result of climate change for West African countries in the absence of agricultural intensification for climate adaptation. Without adaptation, the long-term mean of crop yield is projected to decrease in most of the countries (despite some projected increase of precipitation) by the middle of the century, while the inter-annual variability of yield increases significantly. This increase of yield variability is attributed to an increase of inter-annual variability of growing season temperature and/or precipitation in future climate scenarios. The lower mean yield and larger year-to-year variation together make the regional food security extremely volatile. For a comprehensive understanding of climate change impact on crop yield, the distribution of temperature and precipitation over specific growth stages, in addition to growing season averages, should be accounted for. Although uncertainties are rife in calibrating and running a process-based crop model at regional scale, the present study offers insight into potential vulnerabilities of the agricultural system in specific countries or West Africa as a whole because of regional climate change.One approach to compensating for rapid climate change and protecting biodiversity is assisted migration (AM) of key tree species. However, tools for evaluating the sensitivity of target sites and identifying potential sources have not yet been developed. We used the National Forest Inventories of Spain and France to design scenarios for AM between and within both countries. We characterized sensitivity to climate change as the expected changes in volume and mortality of Pinus halepensis Miller and Pinus pinaster Aiton between the present and 2050. Target zones were selected from provenances with high sensitivity and seed zones from provenances with low sensitivity to climate change; the latter can be considered "seed refugia" as the climate changes. Three plausible scenarios for translocation to the target zone were developed on the basis of volume simulations calibrated with different planting strategies: (1) seeds only from foreign provenances; (2) foreign provenances plus local seeds; and (3) only local seeds. The results for both species show that models based on foreign "top-three" provenances always increased the standing volume of the target zone. Models run with only local seeds predicted increased volume for P. halepensis but not for P. pinaster. Our results suggest that volume and mortality trends are not always correlated with seed sources and targets, that projected provenances mortality do not follow always a southern-northern pattern and that seed refugia, if any, may be useful for compensating for the effects of climate change only in a subset of provenances.Both mitigation and adaptation can reduce the risks of climate change. This study reviews the complementarity and comparability between the two, looking first at the global level and then at the national-to-local domain. At the global level, the review finds differing definitions and viewpoints exist in the literature. Much of the economic literature reports that global mitigation and adaptation are substitutes (in economic terms). In contrast, the scientific literature considers them to be complementary (in policy terms), as they address different risks that vary temporally and spatially. The degree of complementarity and comparability therefore depends on the perspective taken, although there is a policy space where the two can overlap. However, the governance, institutional, and policy-based literature identifies that even if a global mitigation and adaptation mix could be defined, it would be highly contentious and extremely difficult to deliver in practice. The review then considers the complementarity and comparability of mitigation and adaptation at the national-to-local domain, in national policy and at sector level. The review finds there is greater potential for complementarity at this scale, although possible conflicts can also exist. However, the institutional, governance, and policy literature identifies a number of barriers to practical implementation, and as a result, complementary mitigation and adaptation action is unlikely to happen autonomously. Finally, the lessons from the review are drawn together to highlight policy relevant issues and identify research gaps. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Climate risk assessment in cropping is generally undertaken in a top-down approach using climate records while critical farmer experience is often not accounted for. In the present study, set in south India, farmer experience of climate risk is integrated in a bottom-up participatory approach with climate data analysis. Crop calendars are used as a boundary object to identify and rank climate and weather risks faced by smallhold farmers. A semi-structured survey was conducted with experienced farmers whose income is predominantly from farming. Interviews were based on a crop calendar to indicate the timing of key weather and climate risks. The simple definition of risk as consequence x likelihood was used to establish the impact on yield as consequence and chance of occurrence in a 10-year period as likelihood. Farmers' risk experience matches well with climate records and risk analysis. Farmers' rankings of 'good' and 'poor' seasons also matched up well with their independently reported yield data. On average, a 'good' season yield was 1.5-1.65 times higher than a 'poor' season. The main risks for paddy rice were excess rains at harvesting and flowering and deficit rains at transplanting. For cotton, farmers identified excess rain at harvest, delayed rains at sowing and excess rain at flowering stages as events that impacted crop yield and quality. The risk assessment elicited from farmers complements climate analysis and provides some indication of thresholds for studies on climate change and seasonal forecasts. The methods and analysis presented in the present study provide an experiential bottom-up perspective and a methodology on farming in a risky rainfed climate. The methods developed in the present study provide a model for end-user engagement by meteorological agencies that strive to better target their climate information delivery.The distribution of water masses has become one of the most important topics in recent oceanic research. Water masses flow dynamically and have interannual variability, and hence the distribution can change dramatically even over short time periods and may differ from year to year. In this paper, we use a high-resolution ocean dataset, which contains multiple ocean variables, to visualize the details of the water mass. Because water mass can be defined by multiple ocean variables (e.g., temperature and salinity), we develop a multi-variate visualization system, which allows us to extract the time-varying distributions of water masses from multiple variables. The visualization is then adjusted by multiple ocean specialists because directly applying the existing definition to extract the water mass would result in incorrect rendering results. This leads to another problem that different ocean specialists may have different perspectives on the distribution of water masses, so that the adjustments would also be different. To solve this problem, an ensemble average process is performed for the adjusted rendering results from multiple ocean specialists. To increase the authenticity, we also add a voting scheme to the system, so that a majority rule can be applied to the ensemble-averaging result. As the application of the proposed voting-based ensemble-averaging visualization system, we first show the interannual variability of the significant water mass and then visualize the dynamic behavior for the period of interest in different years. We also highlight a mixing phenomenon that has a strong influence on the distribution of the water mass. As a result, we can obtain a clear and accurate visualization of the water mass distribution.In this study, a novel thermal energy storage composite was developed by impregnating paraffin into hydrophobic coated expanded perlite (EPO) granules. A paraffin/uncoated expanded perlite (EPW) phase change composite was also prepared to study and compare the stability when integrated into cementitious composites. Paraffin/EPW, containing 35% by weight of paraffin, showed significant leakage of phase change material (PCM) during integration into concrete. However, no PCM leakage was observed for novel paraffin/EPO containing 50% by weight of paraffin in the composite. Microstructural and mechanical properties were studied for the compatibility of hydrophobic coated PCM composite in concrete. The thermal behaviour of a concrete panel incorporating PCM was studied and compared with the reference panel. The results revealed that incorporation of the developed PCM composite into concrete significantly improved the thermal inertia and thermal energy storage. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most scientific assessments for climate change adaptation and risk reduction are based on scenarios for climatic change. Scenarios for socio-economic development, particularly in terms of vulnerability and adaptive capacity, are largely lacking. This paper focuses on the utility of socio-economic scenarios for vulnerability, risk and adaptation research. The paper introduces the goals and functions of scenarios in general and reflects on the current global debate around shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). It examines the options and constraints of scenario methods for risk and vulnerability assessments in the context of climate change and natural hazards. Two case studies are used to contrast the opportunities and current constraints in scenario methods at different scales: the global WorldRiskIndex, based on quantitative data and indicators; and a local participatory scenario development process in Jakarta, showing a qualitative approach. The juxtaposition of a quantitative approach with global data and a qualitative-participatory local approach provides new insights on how different methods and scenario techniques can be applied in vulnerability and risk research.Transformation as an adaptive response to climate change opens a range of novel policy options. Used to describe responses that produce non-linear changes in systems or their host social and ecological environments, transformation also raises distinct ethical and procedural questions for decision-makers. Expanding adaptation to include transformation foregrounds questions of power and preference that have so far been underdeveloped in adaptation theory and practice. We build on David Harvey's notion of activity space to derive a framework and research agenda for climate change adaptation seen as a political decision-point and as an opportunity for transformation, incremental adjustment or resistance to change in development pathway. Decision-making is unpacked through the notion of the activity space into seven coevolving sites: the individual, technology, livelihoods, discourse, behaviour, the environment and institutions. The framework is tested against practitioner priorities to define an agenda that can make coherent advances in research and practice on climate change adaptation.Forecasting the variability of dwellings and residential land is important for estimating the future potential of environmental technologies. This paper presents an innovative method of converting average residential density into a set of one-hectare 3D tiles to represent the dwelling stock. These generic tiles include residential land as well as the dwelling characteristics. The method was based on a detailed analysis of the English House Condition Survey data and density was calculated as the inverse of the plot area per dwelling. This found that when disaggregated by age band, urban morphology and area type, the frequency distribution of plot density per dwelling type can be represented by the gamma distribution. The shape parameter revealed interesting characteristics about the dwelling stock and how this has changed overtime. It showed a consistent trend that older dwellings have greater variability in plot density than newer dwellings, and also that apartments and detached dwellings have greater variability in plot density than terraced and semi-detached dwellings, Once calibrated, the shape parameter of the gamma distribution was used to convert the average density per housing type into a frequency distribution of plot density. These were then approximated by systematically selecting a set of generic tiles. These tiles are particularly useful as a medium for multidisciplinary research on decentralized environmental technologies or climate adaptation, which requires this understanding of the variability of dwellings, occupancies and urban space. It thereby links the socioeconomic modeling of city regions with the physical modeling of dwellings and associated infrastructure across the spatial scales. The tiles method has been validated by comparing results against English regional housing survey data and dwelling footprint area data. The next step would be to explore the possibility of generating generic residential area types and adapt the method to other countries that have similar housing survey data. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Green and grey stormwater management infrastructures, such as the filter, swale and infiltration trench (FST), can be used to prevent flooding events. The aim of this paper was to determine the environmental and economic impacts of a pilot FST that was built in Sao Carlos (Brazil) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). As a result, the components with the greatest contributions to the total impacts of the FST were the infiltration trench and the grass cover. The system has a carbon footprint of 0.13 kg CO2 eq./m(3) of infiltrated stormwater and an eco-efficiency ratio of 0.35 kg CO2 eq./USD. Moreover, the FST prevented up to 95% of the runoff in the area. Compared to a grey infrastructure, this system is a good solution with respect to PVC stormwater pipes, which require a long pipe length (1070 m) and have a shorter lifespan. In contrast, concrete pipes are a better solution, and their impacts are similar to those of the FST. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the changes in the impacts with the varying lifespan of the system components. Thus, the proper management of the FST can reduce the economic and environmental impacts of the system by increasing its durability. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.An individual-based model of animal dispersal and population dynamics was used to test the effects of different climate change adaptation strategies on species range shifting ability, namely the improvement of existing habitat, restoration of low quality habitat and creation of new habitat. These strategies were implemented on a landscape typical of fragmentation in the United Kingdom using spatial rules to differentiate between the allocation of strategies adjacent to or away from existing habitat patches. The total area being managed in the landscape was set at realistic levels based on recent habitat management trends. Eight species were parameterised to broadly represent different stage structure, population densities and modes of dispersal. Simulations were initialised with the species occupying 20% of the landscape and run for 100 years. As would be expected for a range of real taxa, range shifting abilities were dramatically different. This translated into large differences in their responses to the adaptation strategies. With conservative (0.5%) estimates of the area prescribed for climate change adaptation, few species display noticeable improvements in their range shifting, demonstrating the need for greater investment in future adaptation. With a larger (1%) prescribed area, greater range shifting improvements were found, although results were still species-specific. It was found that increasing the size of small existing habitat patches was the best way to promote range shifting, and that the creation of new stepping stone features, whilst beneficial to some species, did not have such broad effect across different species. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With the rising costs of fossil fuels and recognition of their environmental and human health impacts, wind energy projects have expanded throughout the world. Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, wind developers must avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts to listed species. With assistance from the Conservation Fund, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sought to address potential wind energy impacts in the Midwest USA. To provide ecosystem and landscape contexts for mitigation, we identified key habitat ("core areas") important to the full suite of native species and ecosystems, and corridors that would allow species dispersal, migration, recolonization, genetic exchange, and climate change adaptation. We identified core areas based on landscape types, focal/surrogate species requirements, and ecoregional differences. Corridors depend on both the composition and spatial arrangement of the landscape, and the movement abilities and landscape preferences of target organisms. We created a Terrestrial Movement Analysis tool to model connectivity for four different ecotypes, each with their own core areas and movement permeabilities. The tool generated random sets of starting locations (each location corresponding to an individual organism) and calculated optimal paths to all other habitat within the organism's dispersal range. This process was executed iteratively; then it summed the random iterations to derive overall landscape connectivity, showing pathway usage, the cost of moving through a corridor (broader than single paths), and overall landscape movement potential. The resulting data can be used for multiple applications. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change communication on anticipated impacts and adaptive responses is frequently presented as an effective means to facilitate implementation of adaptation to mitigate risks to residential buildings. However, it requires that communication is developed in a way that resonates with the context of the target audience, provides intelligible information and addresses perceived barriers to adaptation. In this paper we reflect upon criteria for useful climate change communication gained over a three year development process of a web-based tool - VisAdapt (TM) -aimed at increasing the adaptive capacity among Nordic homeowners. Based on the results from continuous user-testing and focus group interviews we outline lessons learned and key aspects to consider in the design of tools for communicating complex issues such as climate change effects and adaptive response measures. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increased concern with the impacts that changing coastal environments can have on coastal fishing communities led to a recent effort by NOAA Fisheries social scientists to develop a set of indicators of social vulnerability and resilience for the U.S. Southeast and Northeast coastal communities. A goal of the NOAA Fisheries social vulnerability and resilience indicator program is to support time and cost effective use of readily available data in furtherance of both social impact assessments of proposed changes to fishery management regulations and climate change adaptation planning. The use of the indicators to predict the response to change in coastal communities would be enhanced if community level analyses could be grouped effectively. This study examines the usefulness of combining 1130 communities into 35 relevant subgroups by comparing results of a numerical taxonomy with data collected by interview methods, a process herein referred to as "ground-truthing." The validation of the taxonomic method by the method of ground-truthing indicates that the clusters are adequate to be used to select communities for in-depth research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity, and its impacts can act synergistically to heighten the severity of other threats. Most research on projecting species range shifts under climate change has not been translated to informing priority management strategies on the ground. We develop a prioritization framework to assess strategies for managing threats to biodiversity under climate change and apply it to the management of invasive animal species across one-sixth of the Australian continent, the Lake Eyre Basin. We collected information from key stakeholders and experts on the impacts of invasive animals on 148 of the region's most threatened species and 11 potential strategies. Assisted by models of current distributions of threatened species and their projected distributions, experts estimated the cost, feasibility, and potential benefits of each strategy for improving the persistence of threatened species with and without climate change. We discover that the relative cost-effectiveness of invasive animal control strategies is robust to climate change, with the management of feral pigs being the highest priority for conserving threatened species overall. Complementary sets of strategies to protect as many threatened species as possible under limited budgets change when climate change is considered, with additional strategies required to avoid impending extinctions from the region. Overall, we find that the ranking of strategies by cost-effectiveness was relatively unaffected by including climate change into decision-making, even though the benefits of the strategies were lower. Future climate conditions and impacts on range shifts become most important to consider when designing comprehensive management plans for the control of invasive animals under limited budgets to maximize the number of threatened species that can be protected.Studies that model the effect of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems often use climate projections from downscaled global climate models (GCMs). These simulations are generally too coarse to capture patterns of fine-scale climate variation, such as the sharp coastal energy and moisture gradients associated with wind-driven upwelling of cold water. Coastal upwelling may limit future increases in coastal temperatures, compromising GCMs' ability to provide realistic scenarios of future climate in these coastal ecosystems. Taking advantage of naturally occurring variability in the high-resolution historic climatic record, we developed multiple fine-scale scenarios of California climate that maintain coherent relationships between regional climate and coastal upwelling. We compared these scenarios against coarse resolution GCM projections at a regional scale to evaluate their temporal equivalency. We used these historically based scenarios to estimate potential suitable habitat for coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens D. Don) under 'normal' combinations of temperature and precipitation, and under anomalous combinations representative of potential future climates. We found that a scenario of warmer temperature with historically normal precipitation is equivalent to climate projected by GCMs for California by 2020-2030 and that under these conditions, climatically suitable habitat for coast redwood significantly contracts at the southern end of its current range. Our results suggest that historical climate data provide a high-resolution alternative to downscaled GCM outputs for near-term ecological forecasts. This method may be particularly useful in other regions where local climate is strongly influenced by ocean-atmosphere dynamics that are not represented by coarse-scale GCMs.Gender-disaggregated, household survey data for Uganda are used to examine how gendered roles and responsibilities influence adoption of drought-tolerant (DT) maize, a new technology that can help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa adapt to drought risk. Multinomial logit (MNL) regression results indicate that, compared to men farmers, women farmers have much lower adoption of DT maize, mainly due to differences in resource access, notably land, agricultural information, and credit. Differentiation of women and men farmers by various characteristics reveals that whether a male farmer was younger or older, or poor or non-poor has no significant influence on DT maize adoption; but important differences among different categories of women farmers are identified. For example, the farmer group found least likely to adopt DT maize is young, poor women household heads. MNL results also show that wives strongly influence adoption of DT maize on plots controlled by their husbands. We discuss the implications of study findings for the development of well-targeted and socially-inclusive adaptation policies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change and extreme weather events are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in the United States. The social factors that drive cities to adapt to and/or prepare for these impacts are largely unknown. Sixty-five qualitative interviews were conducted with multi-sectoral decision-makers to assess factors driving adaptation in six cities across the United States: Tucson, Arizona; Tampa, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; and Los Angeles, California. We find that there are three type of factors that affect adaptation: (1) swing characteristics of or events within localities that can lead toward or away from action; (2) inhibitors ways of thinking and framing climate change available to decision-makers that slow, but do not necessarily stop change; and (3) resource catalysts types of information and moral grounding that provide a rationale for change. These factors often intersect such that swing factors are only influential in cities with some political acceptance of climate change. In cities where public acceptance of climate change is slowly shifting, resource catalysts are more influential. This is the first qualitative study of climate change adaptation in American cities. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Local government has a crucial role to play in climate change adaptation, both delivering adaptation strategies devised from above and coordinating bottom-up action. This paper draws on a unique longitudinal dataset to measure progress in adaptation by local authorities in Britain, comparing results from a national-scale survey and follow-up interviews conducted in 2003 with a second wave of research completed a decade later. Whereas a decade ago local authority staff were unable to find scientific information that they could understand and use, we find that these technical-cognitive barriers to adaptation are no longer a major problem for local authority respondents. Thanks to considerable Government investment in research and science brokerage to improve the quality and accessibility of climate information, local authorities have developed their adaptive capacity, and their staff are now engaging with the 'right' kind of information in assessing climate change risks and opportunities. However, better knowledge has not translated into tangible adaptation actions. Local authorities face substantial difficulties in implementing adaptation plans. Budget cuts and a lack of political support from central government have sapped institutional capacity and political appetite to address long-term climate vulnerabilities, as local authorities in Britain now struggle even to deliver their immediate statutory responsibilities. Local authority adaptation has progressed farthest where it has been rebranded as resiliency to extreme weather so as to fit with the focus on immediate risks to delivering statutory duties. In the current political environment, adaptation officers need information about the economic costs of weather impacts to local authority services if they are to build the business case for adaptation and gain the leverage to secure resources and institutional license to implement tangible action. Unless these institutional barriers are addressed, local government is likely to struggle to adapt to a changing climate. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY licenseThe study investigates whether Nepal's Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) policies represent new conceptualizations and approach to address local vulnerability, compared to the country's food security policy and local level perceptions of vulnerability in four villages in the region of Humla, northwestern Nepal. The study finds that Nepal's National Adaptation Programme of Action, NAPA, and Local Adaptation Plans, LAPA, consistently address "outcome vulnerability" at the expense of "contextual vulnerability", and that they offer little new in terms of challenging the sructural root causes of vulnerability compared with "development as usual" approaches. Because these CCA policies build on an apolitical analysis of vulnerability, they not only promote one-dimensional technocratic solutions that ignore the drivers of local vulnerability, they also run the risk of reinforcing existing vulnerability patterns and even reducing the adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable. This article argues that - in order to effectively respond to the impacts of climate change on local vulnerability - adaptation policies need to integrate a contextual vulnerability analysis and promote responses that contribute to change the conditions that create vulnerability in the first place. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Like many issues in environmental law and governance, climate change adaptation planning involves difficult policy trade-offs. Decision-makers must balance competing public and private interests and short-and long-term concerns against a background of considerable uncertainty and complexity. One of the classic challenges of environmental governance is to establish laws and other institutions which support long-term decision-making in the public interest and this is equally a challenge for adaptation planning. This article explores Australian approaches to such policy trade-offs in the context of spatial planning for bushfire and coastal hazards. These examples illustrate the difficulties of considering cumulative, longer term environmental impacts of adaptation measures in the face of immediate and known risks to existing private property and infrastructure, and the way in which current decision-making downplays these public values. The authors identify institutional factors that help to explain this bias and propose strategies to improve protection of public interest environmental values in adaptation planning.Understanding the capacity of organisms to cope with projected global warming through acclimation and adaptation is critical to predicting their likely future persistence. The vast majority of research on tropical species suggests they will be substantially negatively affected by future warming and have limited capacity to acclimate to changes. This study tested whether the spine cheek anemonefish, Premnas biaculeatus, has the capacity for developmental thermal acclimation of metabolic attributes and critical thermal maximum (CTmax) to increasing sea water temperature. Juveniles of P. biaculeatus exhibited high capacity for developmental thermal acclimation of aerobic physiology. Fish reared at + 1.5 degrees C and + 3.0 degrees C above present-day mean temperatures possessed enhanced performance across all testing temperatures (28.5 degrees C to 31.5 degrees C), i.e. overcompensation. Specifically, this occurred through increases in maximum oxygen consumption (MO2Maximum) that resulted in elevations in both net and factorial aerobic scope. In addition, fish reared at +1.5 degrees C also exhibited a partial increase in critical thermal maximum (CTmax) by 0.5 degrees C, however no increase was observed in fish reared at +3.0 degrees C. Fish reared at +3.0 degrees C were significantly longer, heavier and in better condition than + 0.0 degrees C present-day fish, suggesting that alterations to aerobic physiology correspond to enhancement of growth and condition as would be predicted with the oxygen and capacity limited thermal tolerance hypothesis. These results indicate that the acclimation to future warming may produce overall enhanced performance in some species. It also suggests that the developmental acclimation ability varies substantially between species within the same family and a greater understanding of promoted or reduced acclimation capacity will be critically important to predicting the impacts of climate change on coral reef systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation initiatives need better planning to meet their targets.Extreme sea levels and floods are a widespread threat to coastal communities, and sea-level rise is increasing the probability of such events. This paper describes how inundation modelling was used to engage local stakeholders about climate change and adaptation, for a town (Yarmouth) on the UK south coast. This included a participatory visualisation exercise using three extreme sea level scenarios, informed by a recent flood event. Further analysis, informed by the repeated floods during the 2013/14 storm surge season, placed these scenarios in a broader perspective across a range of events. Results indicate that coastal flooding may become a significant issue during this century due to sea-level rise, unless there is adaptation. These methods engaged the interest of the community, and this paper presents practical considerations for future studies. A similar approach could be applied widely at the community level and form an important component of coastal flood management, including planning responses to sea-level rise. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coastal areas in South East Queensland (SEQ) are exposed to coastal hazards and climate change and Local Governments are responding to these threats by developing a range of strategies for adaptation. Here we show the results of a spatial vulnerability assessment for SEQ's coastal region and use them as the basis to assess progress in adaptation in five coastal Local Government areas. An integrated framework based on external (exposure) and internal (sensitivity and adaptive capacity) dimensions is used to produce one single index to provide a measure of SEQ's vulnerability to coastal hazards. Coastal Local Governments' progress in adaptation is evaluated based on a semi-quantitative assessment of pre-determined Adaptation Functions adapted to the SEQ context. The assessment reveals information specifically relevant for adaptation investment at the local government level. It is concluded that the five coastal Local Governments analysed have considerable capacity to deal with coastal hazards. However, there are numerous coastal suburbs that are highly vulnerable and this is mainly, due to the fact that the majority of the SEQ coastal region is intrinsically highly exposed and sensitive to climatic drivers. We argue that this vulnerability can be reduced if Local Governments continue to further their progress in adaptation through coastal planning and management frameworks. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study employs a diverse set of variables to explain slope stabilization on stable versus failure-prone revegetated cut-slopes in Korea. A field survey was conducted at potential unstable sites and stable sites using 23 variables. Through a non-parametric test of the field survey results, 15 variables were identified as primary determinants of slope failure. Of these variables, one described physical characteristics (elapsed year); four variables described vegetation properties (plant community, vegetation coverage rate, number of trees, and number of herbs); and 10 variables represented soil properties (porosity, soil hardness, water content, sand ratio and silt ratio of soil texture, tensile strength, permeability coefficient, soil depth, soil acidity, salt concentration, and organic matter). Slope angle, which was mainly considered in previous studies, of variables in physical characteristics was not statistically selected as one of the 15 variables because most of sites were located on steep slopes. The vegetation community, vegetation coverage, and number of trees influence slope stabilization. Vegetation coverage is highly correlated with other soil and vegetation variables, making it a major indicator of slope stabilization. All soil variables were related to slope failure such that subsequent slope failure was related to the method of slope revegetation rather than the environmental condition of the slope. Slope failure did not occur in revegetated slopes that matched the characteristics of the surrounding landscape and contained a large number of native trees. Most soil and vegetation variables showed differing values for whether a revegetated slope is potentially unstable or stable.Ongoing coastal development and the prospect of severe climate change impacts present pressing estuary management and governance challenges. Robust approaches must recognise the intertwined social and ecological vulnerabilities of estuaries. Here, a new governance and management framework is proposed that recognises the integrated social-ecological systems of estuaries so as to permit transformative adaptation to climate change within these systems. The framework lists stakeholders and identifies estuarine uses and values. Goals are categorised that are specific to ecosystems, private property, public infrastructure, and human communities. Systematic adaptation management strategies are proposed with conceptual examples and associated governance approaches. Contrasting case studies are used to illustrate the practical application of these ideas. The framework will assist estuary managers worldwide to achieve their goals, minimise maladaptative responses, better identify competing interests, reduce stakeholder conflict and exploit opportunities for appropriate ecosystem restoration and sustainable development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In less-developed countries, the major global pressures of rapid urbanization and climate change are resulting in increased vulnerability for urban dwellers. Much of the climate impact is concentrated in urban and coastal areas, as urban development spreads into areas that are hazard-prone. Often this development is dominated by poor quality homes in informal settlements or slums on informal or illegally occupied or subdivided land. Urban development needs to be more climate-resilient to meet the post millennium development goals (MDGs) agenda. One of the elements in achieving climate-resilient urban development is the degree to which climate change adaptation and risk management are mainstreamed into two major elements of land governance, viz, securing and safeguarding of land rights, and planning and control of land-use. This paper proposes ways in which the growth of human settlements can be better managed through responsible governance of land tenure rights, and effective land-use planning to reduce vulnerability, provide adequate access to safe land and shelter, and improve environmental sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper critically examines how public policy makers limit policy and other institutional design choices by a failure to appreciate (i) how situations may be characterised or framed; (ii) how practices that generate neologisms (invented terms or concepts) or reify (make into a thing) abstract concepts can displace understandings, and (iii) the epistemological bases of governance mechanism choices. An inquiry into the coining of the neologisms 'wicked' and 'tame' problems is reported and the implications for research and policy practice explored. As practices, neologising, reifying, categorising and typologising have unintended consequences - they remove us from the primary experiences and underlying emotions that provided the motivation for formulating these concepts in the first place. The failure to institutionalise the understandings and experiences that sit behind the invention of the terms 'wicked' and 'tame' problems (or similar framing choices such as 'problematique', 'messes', 'lowland real-life swamps', 'resource dilemmas' or 'complex adaptive systems') present systemic constraints to institutionalising social learning as an alternative yet complementary governance mechanism within an overall systemic and adaptive governance framework. Ultimately situations usefully framed as `wicked',' such as water managing and climate change are problems of relationship - of human beings with the biosphere. Re-framings, such as institutions as social technologies and other research and praxis traditions concerned with the breakdown of relationships may offer ways forward in the purposeful designing and crafting of more effective institutions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides the first comprehensive review of peer-reviewed journal articles on Local Agenda 21 processes worldwide between 1992 (Rio Summit) and 2012 (Rio+20 Summit). An in-depth analysis is carried out on 90 articles selected from an initial sample of 420, in order to determine their profile in terms of time, geography, authors' field and methodological approach, and analyze their content to: (1) proxy the gap between the ideal Local Agenda 21 model and real-world Local Agenda 21 practices in terms of participation, and long-term orientation and monitoring; and (2) identify the causes of this gap and ways to overcome it. Our findings show that real-world Local Agenda 21 practices are far from fitting the ideal Local Agenda 21 model. Progress in terms of participation is very limited and many of the reported processes fail in terms of long-term orientation and monitoring. This gap between purposes and real-world practices seems to be related with limited and decreasing resources and decision-making powers of local governments, a hierarchically oriented political-administrative system, and the top-down mind-set of many local representatives. However, even though a lot remains to be done and there is plenty of room for theoretical and operational development, Local Agenda 21 processes have made a lasting impact, deeply changing the way we understand and implement sustainable development today. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The northern boreal forest in Ontario, Canada, in the sub-Arctic above the 51st parallel, is the territorial homeland of the Cree, Ojibwe, and Ojicree Nations. These Nations are represented by the political organization Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN). January 6-March 31, 2011 the researchers and NAN collaborated in a study to record observations of changes in the forest environment attributed to climate change and share and exchange information and perspectives about climate change. Data were collected from 10 First Nation communities across a geographic area of approximate to 110,800 km(2) (43,000 mi(2)). We explore climate change impacts through the lens of blue-ice, a term embedded in their languages across the fieldwork area and reframe adaptation in the First Nations' perspective and worldview. Changes in blue-ice on the landscape are affecting transportation in traditional activities such as hunting and fishing, as well as the delivery of essential community supplies. The word adaptation linked to climate change does not exist in their languages and the term is associated with European colonization. We propose the term continuity to reflect the First Nation worldview. Our recommendation is giving First Nations' perspectives and knowledge of their territorial landscape a foundational role in the development of climate change policy for Ontario's northern boreal forest.The capacity of actors and institutions to learn and reorganize is central to the resilience of complex systems, particularly in the context of rapidly urbanizing cities. A process of qualitative, reflective research among practitioners within the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) showed that development projects and programmes can contribute meaningfully to this capacity when they introduce projects as experiments. While projects did provide desired tangible benefits to certain groups of actors, many of the most significant contributions to resilience were related to knowledge, networks, information, and greater engagement of citizens with the state. This emphasis on the capacity to learn and reorganize provides a counterpoint to ideas around implementation and mainstreaming normally promoted within climate change adaptation practice - and, importantly, can help enrich these practices to maximize their effectiveness. This paper focuses on international development projects in particular, although findings have implications for other types of adaptation and resilience initiatives supported by governments, private sector, or community-based organizations.The low prices in the European Emission Trading System (EU ETS) have triggered discussions of various possible reforms. One option is to decouple the CO2 prices from renewable energy policy by adjusting the emission cap to renewable energy investment overshoots. We introduce two ways of reducing the CO2 cap in response to overshoots of renewable policy investment over previously announced targets. We investigate these options with the agent-based model EMLab-generation. We find that both policy implementations are successful in restoring prices. They also ensure that making public investments that exceed policy targets contribute to carbon emission reduction, and that renewable policy does not benefit the most emission-intensive power plants. However, neither policy is suitable for achieving specifc levels of prices or price volatility. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A generalized linear model was fitted to stochastically downscaled multi-site daily rainfall projections from CMIP5 General Circulation Models (GCMs) for the Onkaparinga catchment in South Australia to assess future changes to hydrologically relevantmetrics. For this purpose three GCMs, two multi-model ensembles (one by averaging the predictors of GCMs and the other by regressing the predictors of GCMs against reanalysis datasets) and two scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) were considered. The downscaling model was able to reasonably reproduce the observed historical rainfall statistics when the model was driven by NCEP reanalysis datasets. Significant bias was observed in the rainfall when downscaled from historical outputs of GCMs. Bias was corrected using the Frequency Adapted Quantile Mapping technique. Future changes in rainfall were computed from the bias corrected downscaled rainfall forced by GCM outputs for the period 2041-2060 and these were then compared to the base period 1961-2000. The results show that annual and seasonal rainfalls are likely to significantly decrease for all models and scenarios in the future. The number of dry days and maximum consecutive dry days will increase whereas the number of wet days and maximum consecutive wet days will decrease. Future changes of daily rainfall occurrence sequences combined with a reduction in rainfall amounts will lead to a drier catchment, thereby reducing the runoff potential. Because this is a catchment that is a significant source of Adelaide's water supply, irrigation water and water for maintaining environmental flows, an effective climate change adaptation strategy is needed in order to face future potential water shortages. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Microbes such as fungi and bacteria play fundamental roles in litter-decay and nutrient-cycling; however, their communities may respond differently than plants to climate change. The structure (diversity, richness, and evenness) and composition of microbial communities in climate transects of mature Douglas-fir stands of coastal British Columbia rainshadow forests was analyzed, in order to assess in situ variability due to different temperature and moisture regimes. We compared denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis profiles of fungi (18S-FF390/FR1), nitrogen-fixing bacteria (NifHuniversal) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AmoA) polymerase chain reaction amplicons in forest floor and mineral soil samples from three transects located at different latitudes, each transect spanning the Coastal Western Hemlock and Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zones. Composition of microbial communities in both soil layers was related to degree days above 0 degrees C (2725-3489), while pH (3.8-5.5) best explained shifts in community structure. At this spatial scale, climatic conditions were likely to directly or indirectly select for different microbial species while local site heterogeneity influenced community structure. Significant changes in microbial community composition and structure were related to differences as small as 2.47% and 2.55 degrees C in mean annual moisture and temperature variables, respectively. The climatic variables best describing microbial composition changed from one functional group to the next; in general they did not alter community structure. Spatial distance, especially associated with latitude, was also important in accounting for community variability (4-23%); but to a lesser extent than the combined influence of climate and soil characteristics (14-25%). Results suggest that in situ climate can independently account for some patterns of microbial biogeography in coastal Douglas-fir forests. The distribution of up to 43% of nutrientcycling microorganisms detected in forest soils responded to smaller abiotic gradients than host trees.Climate change is likely to affect the tourism sector, particularly areas, such as snow-based tourism, that are directly dependent on climate and weather conditions. Especially vulnerable are low-lying ski areas. This study identifies the climatic factors that are crucial for economically successful operation of low-lying ski areas in Southern and Middle Finland and contemplates how these factors are seen to change with climate change. The study then analyses the preferences for and perceptions of adaptation strategies of downhill ski operators in terms of the adaptation measures they can implement or are willing to take. The findings indicate that climatic conditions set preconditions for the operation of the ski areas, but short-term operational prospects and inter-annual variability in weather conditions rather than foreseen changes in climatic conditions guide the operational decisions of the ski area operators. A key adaptation strategy to respond to uncertain snow conditions is artificial snowmaking, which lowers the vulnerability of the areas to the impacts of climate change too.Changes in climate and land cover are among the principal variables affecting watershed hydrology. This paper uses a cell-based model to examine the hydrologic impacts of climate and land-cover changes in the semi-arid Lower Virgin River (LVR) watershed located upstream of Lake Mead, Nevada, USA. The cell-based model is developed by considering direct runoff based on the Soil Conservation Service - Curve Number (SCS-CN) method and surplus runoff based on the Thornthwaite water balance theory. After calibration and validation, the model is used to predict LVR discharge under future climate and land-cover changes. The hydrologic simulation results reveal climate change as the dominant factor and land-cover change as a secondary factor in regulating future river discharge. The combined effects of climate and land-cover changes will slightly increase river discharge in summer but substantially decrease discharge in winter. This impact on water resources deserves attention in climate change adaptation planning.Government agencies in cities across Asia recognise that municipalities must take steps to adapt to projected climate changes if people and places are to be kept above water. This paper focuses on planning for climate change in Bangkok because it ranks among the top 10 port cities vulnerable to climate change related flooding. It is also understood that the most devastating impacts of climate change will be suffered by the city's most vulnerable residents: the poor. Not only do impoverished people occupy physically vulnerable space, such as riverbanks, but they are also the least equipped to recover from the disruption of their livelihoods.Several scholars have identified institutional traps that prevent the Thai government from successfully aiding poor and marginalised flood victims in the past. These include poor coordination, lack of monitoring and evaluation, rigidity, crisis management and elite capture. Lebel, Manuta, and Garden (2011, 56) pose the crucial question: How have individuals - from local community leaders through to national level politicians and bureaucrats - successfully influenced policy and programmes to avoid institutional traps and improve adaptive capacities to climate change?In this paper, we begin to address this question through examining emergent methods of community based adaptation and reviewing case studies of adaptation action from other vulnerable communities in the Global South. These lessons - such as overcoming institutional rigidity and avoiding elite capture - are important for Bangkok and other cities in the Global South that face many different challenges by global environmental change.The South West of Western Australia has experienced an enormous water resources challenge from a drying climate in recent decades. Increased groundwater extraction has helped meet water demand, but has tested the capacity of groundwater laws to keep extraction within sustainable limits. This article draws from Western Australia's experience to explore an important question facing a number of regions of the world due to climate change: how can groundwater use be maintained within sustainable limits in a drying climate? This article suggests that there is a better chance of achieving this goal with a regulatory framework that covers all significant extraction activities, takes climate change projections into account, has flexible water entitlements and saves some of the groundwater as a drought reserve'.This paper analyses key contributors to sustainable livelihoods in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), Cambodia, by focusing upon villagers' access to assets, adaptation to shock and stress, and their degree of resilience to declines in natural resources. The study reveals that their access to the five assets for sustainable livelihoods is limited; that their capacity to adapt to shock and stress is low due to floods, drought and high food prices; and that their resilience to declines in natural resources is weak. Improvement in their capacity to adapt and in their resilience will be influenced by the degree to which they can access human, physical and social assets.Rapid climate change in the Himalaya threatens the traditional livelihoods of remote mountain communities, challenges traditional systems of knowledge, and stresses existing socio-ecological systems. Through semi-structured interviews, participatory photography, and repeat photography focused on climate change and its impacts on traditional livelihoods, we aim to shed light on some of the socio-cultural implications of climate related change in Manang, a remote village in the Annapurna Conservation Area of Western Nepal. Observed changes in temperature, precipitation, permanent snow cover, and glacial extent directly inform villagers' perceptions of and adaptations to Himalayan climate change. Adaptation strategies include a shift from traditional agropastoral practices to a more diversified blend of agropastoralism, tourism services, and cash-crop production. Climate change has tipped the scales in favor of the production of fruits and vegetables, cash crops previously unsuitable to the local climate. Diversification of livelihood strategies signifies transformation within the socio-ecological system of Manang and may enable greater resiliency to long-term climatic change. Continued development of relevant, place-based adaptations to rapid Himalayan climate change depends on local peoples' ability to understand the potential impacts of climate change and to adjust within complex, traditional socio-ecological systems.Warnings about climate change invariably stress water-related effects. Such effects are typically framed as both unpredictable and disruptive, and are thus said to create large new risks to the water sector demanding adaptive responses. This article examines how such responses are mediated by, and also compromised by, two dominant trends in the evolution of water governance institutions: (1) the rise of an "integrated" paradigm of water resources management, which has encouraged the development of more complex and interconnected water institutions, and (2) the rapidly changing political economy of water financing and investment. Each of these trends carries its own strong presumptions about what constitutes water-related risk and how such risk is properly managed. The article uses the specific example of large dam projects to illustrate how these ongoing trends in water governance shape and complicate the prospect of managing climate-water risks.The beauty of cities is that every city is different. From the homogenizing perspective of global environmental change that speaks trouble. Weneed an understanding of which kind of cities can contribute what kind of measures to mitigate and adapt to global environmental change. Typologies of cities offer a bridge between the idiosyncratic and the global. Bounoua et al (2015 Environ. Res. Lett. 10 084010) analyse the impact of urbanization on surface climate. Wediscuss their results and suggest avenues for further systematic analysis.Climate scenarios are used to explore impacts of possible future climates and to assess the robustness of adaptation actions across a range of futures. Time-dependent climate scenarios are commonly used in mitigation studies. However, despite the dynamic nature of adaptation, most scenarios for local or regional decision making on climate adaptation are static 'endpoint' projections. This paper describes the development and use of transient (time-dependent) scenarios by means of a case on water management in the Netherlands. Relevant boundary conditions (sea level, precipitation and evaporation) were constructed by generating an ensemble of synthetic time-series with a rainfall generator and a transient delta change method. Climate change impacted river flows were then generated with a hydrological simulation model for the Rhine basin. The transient scenarios were applied in model simulations and game experiments. We argue that there are at least three important assets of using transient scenarios for supporting robust climate adaptation: (1) raise awareness about (a) the implications of climate variability and climate change for decision making and (b) the difficulty of finding proof of climate change in relevant variables for water management; (2) assessment of when to adapt by identifying adaptation tipping points which can then be used to explore adaptation pathways, and (3) identification of triggers for climate adaptation.Research of future climate tendencies is a precondition for appropriate climate change adaptation strategies in forestry and agriculture. The aim of this paper is to investigate the expected probability and magnitude of threatening climate conditions that are of primary importance in terms of forest management. Until 2100, precipitation and temperature results of an ensemble of 12 regional climate model simulations as well as derived indicators (e.g., Forestry Aridity Index and Ellenberg's climate quotient) have been analyzed for the A1B emission scenario. For the case study area in Southwest Hungary (Zala County), projections indicate an increasing tendency of warming and drying of summers towards the end of the 21st century. In the period 2071-2100, decrease of summer precipitation sum may exceed 25% compared to 1981-2010. Both extreme droughts and heavy precipitation events are expected to be more frequent. Consequently, the already observed climate change impacts and damages in forestry are very likely to occur with higher probability and severity. Including these results, a GIS-based "Agroclimate" decision support system is under development that contains a coherent data chain from climate change simulations, through impact assessments to adaptation support in order to provide quantified information on the possible yield potential and production risk for sustainable forest management.Social capital can enhance community resilience to environmental change. Productive and trusted relations among social actors and effectual social norms can help local residents share resources, information and risks. The main objective of our study is to understand the ways in which social attributes and risk considerations influence adoption of resilient economic measures by individuals for reducing potential losses due to catastrophic rainstorm and flooding. This article provides evidence from China on how social capital contributes to anticipatory adaptation to environmental change. The inquiry is based on structured interviews with local residents of Tianjin, a flood-prone port city in China, and a standard regression analysis. Findings show that the intention to make preparation increases with the levels of social expectation, social relationship, and institutional trust. Perceived risk and damage experience, however, have no significant impacts. This suggests that building social capacity and trust will be more effective in enhancing community resilience than merely increasing awareness of hazard risks. We call for greater efforts on strengthening the capacity of formal and informal communal institutions. The structural changes required, however, are challenging. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper conveys the findings of the first phase of a longitudinal study into climate change adaptation in Atlantic Canada. Men and women from 10 coastal communities in three provinces (Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) were interviewed to better understand how both sexes perceived and reacted to extreme weather events. Their responses were recorded based on their experiences, personal and community levels of preparedness, as well as help received and effects on their lives. Most importantly, the findings denote that more men were personally prepared and more active in the community than women. More men recognized a deficiency in help at the community level, and were critical of government in particular, addressing a lack of financial interventions and support. Women were forthcoming with their emotions, admitting to feeling fear and worry, and their perceptions in terms of impacts and actions were closer to home. The results support what others have shown that in rural and coastal communities the traditional division of labor may influence and lead to a gender bias in terms of actions and gradual adaptation in communities. There is a need to better understand how these sometimes subtle differences may affect decisions that do not always consider women's roles and experiences in the face of extreme events.The performance of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA)-3B42 version 7 product is assessed over north-eastern Iberia, a region with considerable topographical gradients and complexity. Precipitation characteristics from a dense network of 656 rain gauges, spanning the period from 1998 to 2009, are used to evaluate TMPA-3B42 estimates on a daily scale. A set of accuracy estimators, including the relative bias, mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE) and Spearman coefficient was used to evaluate the results. The assessment indicates that TMPA-3B42 product is capable of describing the seasonal characteristics of the observed precipitation over most of the study domain. In particular, TMPA-3B42 precipitation agrees well with in situ measurements, with 1VIAE less than 2.5 mm.day(-1), RMSE of 6.4 mm.day(-1) and Spearman correlation coefficients generally above 0.6. TMPA-3B42 provides improved accuracies in winter and summer, whereas it performs much worse in spring and autumn. Spatially, the retrieval errors show a consistent trend, with a general overestimation in regions of low altitude and underestimation in regions of heterogeneous terrain. TMPA-3B42 generally performs well over inland areas, while showing less skill in the coastal regions. A set of skill metrics, including a false alarm ratio [FAR], frequency bias index [FBI], the probability of detection [POD] and threat score [TS], is also used to evaluate TMPA performance under different precipitation thresholds (1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 mm.day(-1)). The results suggest that TMPA-3B42 retrievals perform well in specifying moderate rain events (5-25 mm.day(-1)), but show noticeably less skill in producing both light (<1 mm.day(-1)) and heavy rainfall thresholds (more than 50 mm.day(-1)). Given the complexity of the terrain and the associated high spatial variability of precipitation in north-eastern Iberia, the results reveal that TMPA-3B42 data provide an informative addition to the spatial and temporal coverage of rain gauges in the domain, offering insights into characteristics of average precipitation and their spatial patterns. However, the satellite-based precipitation data should be used cautiously for monitoring extreme precipitation events, particularly over complex terrain. An improvement in precipitation algorithms is still needed to more accurately reproduce high precipitation events in areas of heterogeneous topography over this region. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper we argue that effective climate adaptation depends on the ability of actors on various levels to achieve a multilevel governance process in which their distinct activities result in a coherent adaptation strategy. The classic government's capacity to coordinate such complex processes has proved limited. Therefore we explore the notion of synchronisation - the ability of actors to connect governance processes that all have their own development, logic and self-organising dynamics. With a theoretical conceptualisation and a case study, we analyse whether and how the concept of synchronisation helps to understand the self-organising coordinative capacity within multilevel governance processes.Society at large must find technological pathways capable of mitigating climate change. But small regions - where private and public sector decision makers take actions whose aggregated effects shape those broader pathways - are faced with the need to adapt to climate impacts over which they have little control. Such impacts already include not only direct climatological ones, but also related systemic shifts in technologies, markets, and policies. Firms and policymakers can widen the range of adaptation opportunities by exploring regional resources applicable to emergent clusters, through which technologically related inter-organizational dynamics may permit more effective climate responses. As in the resource-based view of the firm underlying cluster theory, key decision fields are chosen based on existing capabilities internal to the region in relation to the threats and opportunities transmitted by external climate change impacts. Adaptive strategy options at the regional level can be identified and assessed using a scenario-building methodology that incorporates the interactions among multiple variables and decision-makers' actions over time. Stakeholder input and engagement during the research process can facilitate realism and traction. This methodology is applied to northwestern Pennsylvania, on Lake Erie, projecting a scenario based on a set of complementary, lower-carbon energy and transportation technologies. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc.One way to achieve more sustainable spatial development and deal with pressures on space is through integrated or multifunctional land use. Achieving effective integration, although attractive, presents governance challenges. One challenge is how to deal with boundaries. Actors from different backgrounds need to coordinate across and manage their boundaries to realise effective integration of land-use functions. We develop a framework to analyse how actors construct, maintain, challenge, and reconstruct boundaries in their (inter) actions, and we apply the framework to a case analysis of a multifunctional development. The analysis shows that, although integration seems to suggest only boundary crossing, actors also actively defend and reconstruct boundaries. We reflect on how the process of achieving effective integration is not only about overcoming boundaries but also about reconstructing and respecting joint boundary demarcations. These demarcations help to create a sense of order and clarity in terms of responsibility and accountability, and hence enable implementation.Climate change will result in large challenges that require societies to adapt to and manage increased risks. Regional practices of climate adaptation often take shape within multilevel governance networks in which representatives of different levels of government, policy sectors, public and private parties may discuss and negotiate potential measures. This paper aims to explore the role of leadership in enhancing the adaptive capacity of multilevel governance networks and in supporting regional practices of climate adaptation. The paper reviews two initiatives toward climate adaptation, the WaalWeelde initiative in the Netherlands and the Manhood Peninsula Partnership in the UK, based on policy documentation and analysis of in total 17 semistructured interviews with public and private actors. The study illustrates both the large differences in organization of water management, spatial planning, and flood risk policies, as well as strong similarities in the way in which leadership may contribute to the development of initiatives.For over two decades, municipal climate progress has been inventoried and analysed using a common reporting framework. While useful for highlighting the extent of municipal engagement in greenhouse gas mitigation efforts, we know little about how comprehensive this reporting framework is. Are municipal governments engaging in mitigation activities outside this framework? And what about climate adaptation activity for which no long-standing milestone reporting framework has existed? Based on results from a national survey of municipal governments in Canada, the paper reveals that municipal governments are engaged in many climate activities and processes that common inventories and reporting systems do not capture. The paper argues that these 'in between activities' - the not-yet counted climate actions that take place between and outside of milestone initiation and completion - have practical importance for future climate action and theoretical importance by complementing growing evidence about the nature of municipal climate activities and climate governance.Institutional responses to climate change stresses through planning will require new and amended forms of governance. Institutional framing of change imperatives can significantly condition associated governance responses. This paper builds on scholarly conversations concerning the conceptual role of 'storylines' in shaping institutional responses to climate change through governance. I draw on conceptual perspectives of climate change as a 'transformative stressor', which can compel institutional transformation within planning. The concepts of storylines and transformative stressors are conceptually linked. The conceptual approach is applied to an empirical enquiry focused on the regional planning regime of South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia. In this paper I report on and examine three institutional storylines of responding to climate change through planning governance in SEQ. I conclude that the manifestation of climate change as a transformative stressor in SEQ prompted institutional transformation, leading to a dominant storyline focused on climate adaptation as an important facet of regional planning governance.Extreme hydrologic conditions, such as floods, droughts, and elevated stream temperatures, significantly impact the societal fabric and ecosystems, and there is rising concern about increases in the frequency of extreme conditions with projected climate changes. Here we ask what changes in the occurrence of extreme hydrologic conditions can be expected by the end of the century for the important water-generating, mountainous basins of the Southwestern United States, namely the Sierra Nevada and Upper Colorado River Basins. The extreme conditions considered are very high flows, low flows, and elevated stream temperature as derived from historic and future simulations using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) hydrologic model and downscaled output from a General Circulation Model ensemble. Results indicate noteworthy differences in the frequency changes of extremes based on geographic region, season, elevation, and stream size. We found wide-spread increases in the occurrence of stream flows exceeding 150% of historic monthly averages for winter by the end of the century, and extensive increases in the occurrence of both extreme low flows (representing <50% of historic monthly averages), and elevated stream temperatures (>3 degrees C of monthly averages) during the summer months, with some basins expecting extreme conditions 90-100% of the time by the end of the century. Understanding the differences in the changes of extreme conditions can identify climate-sensitive regions and assist in targeted planning for climate change adaptation and mitigation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The impact of using sea surface salinity (SSS) data derived from the Aquarius satellite within a global ocean data assimilation system is investigated. In the central-eastern North Pacific, the more realistic SSS structures introduced by the Aquarius data also influence the salinity, temperature and potential vorticity fields obtained in the subsurface layer via enhanced mode-water formation. Around the Indonesian maritime continent, the Aquarius data assimilation leads to salinity distributions which are closer to buoy observations, while in the region of the Amazon River plume, subsurface temperatures are improved following a better reproduction of the low-salinity plume in the surface layer. The SSS model biases are also reduced in the eastern equatorial Pacific and in the Arctic Ocean, although our data are limited in number and accuracy at high latitudes. These results indicate the importance of Aquarius data in deriving improved representations of the global ocean from dynamical models.Drawing on the dynamic capability view, we analyse how insurers adapt to climate change impacts and how adaptation relates to corporate financial performance. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we deduce seven categories of adaptation measures associated with three dynamic capability dimensions of climate change adaptation (i.e. climate knowledge absorption, climate-related operational flexibility and strategic climate integration). Using this framework, we conduct a content analysis of insurers' adaptation efforts as reported to the Carbon Disclosure Project. Regression analysis reveals positive relationships between climate knowledge absorption and return on assets (ROA), climate-related operational flexibility and ROA, and between the total number of adaptation measures and ROA.This study synthesizes two evaluations of a local climate change planning process in a rural town in British Columbia (Canada), which was supported through landscape visualizations. First, the impact of the visualizations, based on scientific environmental modeling and presented in three different presentation formats, verbal/visual presentation, posters and a virtual globe, was evaluated with regard to immediate impacts during the process. Second, the long-term impacts on decision-making and actual outcomes were evaluated in a retrospective evaluation 22 months after the end of the initial planning process. Two results are highlighted: according to the quantitative pre-/post-questionnaires, the visualizations contributed to increased awareness and understanding. Most importantly, the retrospective evaluation indicated that the process informed policy, operational and built changes in Kimberley, in which the landscape visualizations played a role. The post interviews with key decision-makers showed that they remembered most of the visualizations and some decision-makers were further using them, particularly the posters. The virtual globe seemed to be not a "sustainable" display format suitable for formal decision-making processes such as council meetings though. That may change with the further mainstreaming of visualization technologies or mobile devices. Until then, we recommend using display formats that can be re-used following a specific planning event such as an Open House, to ensure on-going support for effective decision-making over the longer-term. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Adaptive governance is the use of novel approaches within policy to support experimentation and learning. Social learning reflects the engagement of interdependent stakeholders within this learning. Much attention has focused on these concepts as a solution for resilience in governing institutions in an uncertain climate; resilience representing the ability of a system to absorb shock and to retain its function and form through reorganisation. However, there are still many questions to how these concepts enable resilience, particularly in vulnerable, developing contexts. A case study from Uganda presents how these concepts promote resilient livelihood outcomes among rural subsistence farmers within a decentralised governing framework. This approach has the potential to highlight the dynamics and characteristics of a governance system which may manage change. The paper draws from the enabling characteristics of adaptive governance, including lower scale dynamics of bonding and bridging ties and strong leadership. Central to these processes were learning platforms promoting knowledge transfer leading to improved self-efficacy, innovation and livelihood skills. However even though aspects of adaptive governance were identified as contributing to resilience in livelihoods, some barriers were identified. Reflexivity and multi-stakeholder collaboration were evident in governing institutions; however, limited self-organisation and vertical communication demonstrated few opportunities for shifts in governance, which was severely challenged by inequity, politicisation and elite capture. The paper concludes by outlining implications for climate adaptation policy through promoting the importance of mainstreaming adaptation alongside existing policy trajectories; highlighting the significance of collaborative spaces for stakeholders and the tackling of inequality and corruption. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water fulfills multiple functions and is instilled with numerous meanings: it is concurrently an economic input, an aesthetic reference, a religious symbol, a public good, a fundamental resource for public health, and a biophysical need for humans and ecosystems. Hence, water has multiple ontologies embedded within diverse social, cultural, spiritual, and political domains. For this paper, we reviewed 78 pieces of water legislation across the European Union, critically analysing the different ways in which water has been defined; subsequently we contrasted these definitions against the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD). We argue that the act of defining water is not only a deeply social and political process, but that it often privileges specific worldviews; and that the impetus of the WFD reveals a neoliberal approach to water governance: an emphasis on water as a commercial product that should be subjected to market influences. Subsequently, we conclude that the emerging concept of the 'hydrosocial cycle,' which emphasises the inherent links between water and society, could be a useful heuristic tool to promote a broader conception of water based on diverse understandings, that challenge hegemonic definitions of water. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).This paper describes initiatives in two Indonesian cities to reduce flood risks for those living in informal riverbank settlements. In Solo, the mayor encouraged dialogue with riverbank households, which evolved into government grants available to households prepared to relocate so that they could choose and purchase land sites in safer locations and build their homes. The government provided services and, where needed, official identity cards to those who moved. As a result of this process 993 households relocated - another 578 with legal tenure of their riverbank plots have not moved and are seeking higher compensation. In Surabaya, the mayor also encouraged dialogue with riverbank communities but no agreement was reached on tenure or alternative accommodation and compensation for those who were to move. Although neither initiative was a response to climate change, both highlight the importance of development solutions that increase resilience and that work with those most at risk from flooding and other risks that climate change is likely to create or exacerbate in Indonesia.This study proposes a robust prioritization framework for climate change adaptation strategies under uncertain climate change scenarios, using the VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method, a multi-criteria decision-making approach, together with the Shannon entropy-based weights. The VIKOR method allows us to find a compromise solution between two decision strategies of maximizing group utility and minimizing individual regret, and the Shannon entropy is used to determine objective weights among multiple climate change scenarios. The proposed methodology was applied to the problem of selecting locations of subwatersheds for reusing treated wastewater (TWW) in a Korean urban watershed. Selected based on the sustainability concept, hydro-environmental and socioeconomic indicators were used to evaluate the sustainability of TWW reuse under multiple climate change scenarios, using the hydrologic simulation model results and statistical data. Finally, sustainability scores under multiple scenarios were aggregated using the VIKOR together with the Shannon entropy-based weights for the robust prioritization of adaptation strategies. According to the different levels of regret aversion or affinity, our results for water quality showed different sets of adaptation strategies as the best options, suggesting that our framework would help stakeholders seeking the robust options considering both the utility and regret.The authors have developed an assimilation system toward coastal data assimilation around Japan, which consists of a four-dimensional variational (4DVAR) assimilation scheme with an eddy-resolving model in the western North Pacific (MOVE-4DVAR-WNP) and a fine-resolution coastal model covering the western part of the Japanese coastal region around the Seto Inland Sea (MOVE-Seto). The 4DVAR scheme is developed as a natural extension of the 3DVAR scheme used in the Meteorological Research Institute Multivariate Ocean Variational Estimation (MOVE) system. An initialization scheme of incremental analysis update (IAU) is incorporated into MOVE-4DVAR-WNP to filter out high-frequency noises. During the backward integration of the adjoint model, it works as an incremental digital filtering. MOVE-Seto, which is nested within MOVE-4DVAR-WNP, also employs IAU to initialize the interior of the coastal model using MOVE-4DVAR-WNP analysis fields. The authors conducted an assimilation experiment using MOVE-4DVAR-WNP, and results were compared with an additional experiment using the 3DVAR scheme. The comparison reveals that MOVE-4DVAR-WNP improves mesoscale variability. In particular, short-term variability such as small-scale Kuroshio fluctuations is much enhanced. Using MOVE-Seto and MOVE-4DVAR-WNP, the authors also performed a case study focused on an unusual tide event that occurred at the south coast of Japan in September 2011. MOVE-Seto succeeds in reproducing a significant sea level rise associated with this event, indicating the effectiveness of the newly developed system for coastal sea level variability.Understanding the genetic basis of adaptation to contemporary environments is fundamental to predicting the evolutionary responses of tree species to future climates. Using seedlings grown in a glasshouse from 275 open-pollinated families collected from 37 Tasmanian populations, we studied quantitative genetic variation and adaptation in Eucalyptus pauciflora, a species that is widespread in Tasmania and the alpine regions of mainland Australia. Most traits exhibited significant quantitative genetic variation both within and between populations. While there was little association of the trait-derived Mahalanobis distance among populations with geographic distance or divergence in putatively neutral markers (F-ST), there was strong evidence of climate adaptation for several genetically independent, functional traits associated with ontogenetic maturation, biomass allocation, and biotic interactions. This evidence comprised the following: (i) significantly more differentiation among populations (Q(ST)) than expected through drift (F-ST); (ii) little association of pairwise population divergence due to drift (F-ST) and trait divergence (Q(ST)); and (iii) strong correlations of functional traits with Q(ST)>F-ST with potential environmental drivers of population divergence. Correlates with population divergence in quantitative traits include altitude and associated climatic factors, especially maximum temperature of the warmest period and moisture indices. It is argued that small changes in climate, such as a long-term 1 degrees C increase in the maximum temperature of the warmest period, are likely to affect the adaptation of local populations of the species. However, since there appears to be significant quantitative genetic variation within populations for many key adaptive traits, we argue that populations are likely to maintain significant evolutionary potential.The phenolic composition (by HPLC-DAD-MS) and color characteristics (by Imaging Tristimulus Colorimetry) of four strawberry cultivars that have shown good climate adaptation to subtropical area (Nikte, Zamorana, Jacona and Pakal) have been assessed. 24 monomeric phenolics were identified, including 15 anthocyanins, 5 phenolic acids, 1 flavanol and 4 flavonols. Nikte and Zamorana showed the highest phenolic potential mainly due to their higher content of anthocyanins, while Pakal was richer in phenolic acids. Regarding color, Nikte and Zamorana were the more similar cultivars having the lowest values of lightness and hue. On the contrary, the color of Pakal was quite different from all the rest, due to the specific distribution between pelargonidin and cyanidin. The inclusion of both phenolic and colorimetric information in the Linear Discriminant Analysis allowed reaching very good discriminations among cultivars. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Understanding and quantitatively evaluating the regional impacts of climate change and variability (e.g., droughts) on forest ecosystem functions (i.e., water yield, evapotranspiration, and productivity) and services (e.g., fresh water supply and carbon sequestration) is of great importance for developing climate change adaptation strategies for National Forests and Grasslands (NFs) in the United States. However, few reliable continental-scale modeling tools are available to account for both water and carbon dynamics. The objective of this study was to test a monthly water and carbon balance model, the Water Supply Stress Index (WaSSI) model, for potential application in addressing the influences of drought on NFs ecosystem services across the conterminous United States (CONUS). The performance of the WaSSI model was comprehensively assessed with measured streamflow (Q) at 72 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) gauging stations, and satellite-based estimates of watershed evapotranspiration (ET) and gross primary productivity (GPP) for 170 National Forest and Grassland (NFs). Across the 72 USGS watersheds, the WaSSI model generally captured the spatial variability of multi-year mean annual and monthly Q and annual ET as evaluated by Correlation Coefficient (R = 0.71-1.0), Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency (NS = 0.31-1.00), and normalized Root Mean Squared Error (0.06-0.48). The modeled ET and GPP by WaSSI agreed well with the remote sensing-based estimates for multi-year annual and monthly means for all the NFs. However, there were systemic discrepancies in GPP between our simulations and the satellite-based estimates on a yearly and monthly scale, suggesting uncertainties in GPP estimates in all methods (i.e., remote sensing and modeling). Overall, our assessments suggested that the WaSSI model had the capability to reconstruct the long-term forest watershed water and carbon balances at a broad scale. This model evaluation study provides a foundation for model applications in understanding the impacts of climate change and variability (e.g., droughts) on NFs ecosystem service functions. Published by Elsevier B.V.Uncertainty is a debated issue in climate research, in research on the governance of climate adaptation, and in research on the social limits to adaptation. As a contribution to this debate, a constructivist discourse research approach is chosen to analyse and interpret how stakeholders handle uncertainty related to climate change knowledge. Four diverse conceptualisations of how uncertainty is handled serve as the discourse analysis framework: rational discourse, no-regret discourse, blissful discourse, and formative discourse. This framework is applied to analyse and interpret interviews of diverse stakeholder groups from a local governance adaptation network. In this network, conflicts between irrigation farmers, water authorities and nature conservation are negotiated. For most interviewees, uncertainty about climate change knowledge is not judged as problematic. This paper elaborates on why this is so and provides tentative assessments for each discourse type.Conventional forecast driven approaches to climate change adaptation create a cascade of uncertainties that can overwhelm decision makers and delay proactive adaptation responses. Robust Decision Making inverts the analytical steps associated with forecast-led methodologies, reframing adaptation in the context of a specific decision maker's capacities and vulnerabilities. In adopting this bottom-up approach, the aim is to determine adaptation solutions which are insensitive to uncertainty. Yet despite the increased use of the approach in large-scale adaptation projects in developed countries, there is little empirical evidence to test whether or not it can be successfully applied in developing countries. The complex realities of decision making processes, the need to combine quantitative data with qualitative understanding and competing environmental, socio-economic and political factors all pose significant obstacles to adaptation. In developing countries, these considerations are particularly relevant and additional pressures exist which may limit the uptake and utility of the Robust Decision Making approach. In this paper, we investigate the claim that the approach can be deemed valuable in developing countries. Challenges and opportunities associated with Robust Decision Making, as a heuristic decision framework, are discussed with insights from a case study of adapting coastal infrastructure to changing environmental risks in South Africa. Lessons are extracted about the ability of this framework to improve the handling of uncertainty in adaptation decisions in developing countries.Weather variability affects many parts of the Philippines, can threaten human health and well-being, and may become more frequent and intense due to climate change. Compared to more visible extreme weather events (e.g., typhoons), seasonal and inter-annual weather variations (e.g., in precipitation, wind, temperature) associated with otherwise normal weather systems are less often incorporated into adaptation planning. To better inform such planning, this study examines self-reported household impacts of atypical rainy and dry seasons, with a focus on gender. By collecting data from women and men in the same randomly sampled households, this study contributes an innovative intrahousehold analysis to the growing body of work at the nexus of gender, weather, and climate. The study finds gendered differences in reported impacts for rainier than usual rainy seasons but few differences for drier or longer than usual dry seasons. Climate adaptation plans should further incorporate seasonal and inter-annual weather variability and seek participatory input from both women and men so that a diversity of concerns is addressed.This study analyses the potential impact of climate change on tourism demand in the European Union (EU) and provides long-term (2100) projections accounting for climate adaptation in terms of holiday duration and frequency. Our analysis is based on hedonic valuation of climatic conditions combining accommodation and travel cost estimations. Our results suggest that climatic change is likely to affect the relative attractiveness of EU regions for tourism activities. In certain regions, most notably the Southern EU Mediterranean regions, climate condition in 2100 could under current economic conditions, lower tourism revenues for up to -0.45 % of GDP per year. On the contrary, other areas of the EU, most notably Northern European regions would gain from altered climatic conditions, although these gains would be relatively more modest, reaching up to 0.32 % of GDP on an annual basis. Our results also suggest that the change in holiday duration would be more beneficial than the change in holiday frequency in view of mitigating the cost of climate change. These two time dimensions of adaptation are likely to be conditioned by broader societal and institutional factors, however.Climate change is expected to have impacts on the power sector, leading to, among others, a need for adaptation measures in the sector in the near future. This paper analyses the need to adapt to climate change impacts for power generation technologies in Europe until 2100. Europe is broadly divided into four geographic climate zones, for which regional climate change impacts are quantified with the help of the ENSEMBLES RT2b data. The European future technology mix is based on two Eurelectric energy scenarios: 'Baseline 2009' and 'Power Choices'. A Risk Assessment Model is formulated which assesses the cost to power plants for adapting to climate change. The analysis shows that thermal generation units most urgently need adaptation measures against floods, whereas off-shore wind power plants would need to take adaptation investments against sea level rise. Furthermore, electricity grids need to adapt to the increased incidence of storms. Finally, hydro generation in the Mediterranean regions needs to adapt to lower levels of precipitation. (C) 2015 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Changes in climate trends and extreme climatic events are increasingly impacting on forests around the world. In order to better understand how and where major ecological and climatic changes will affect our forested ecosystems, tools based on landscape sensitivity analysis need to be developed to help inform sustainable forest management. This study was undertaken in the Northern Jarrah Forest (NJF) region in the Mediterranean climate of southwest Western Australia. Extreme drought and multiple heatwaves in 2010/2011 resulted in large-scale tree canopy dieback in the NJF. In this study, we used Landsat satellite imagery to (1) accurately map the damaged areas, (2) produce a damage probability model and (3) compare the model with a probability model derived from data collected through an airborne flight survey. We found that the Landsat-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was a good indicator of drought/heat induced damage in the NJF region. Both probability models identified the same set of topography and climate-related factors for determining the probability of drought/heat damage within the landscape. Extrapolation of the Landsat satellite method-based model, however, produced a more deterministic and useful drought/heat damage sensitivity map for the NJF region. The techniques and tools developed, and applied, in this study can readily be transferred to other regions around the world and can assist in the sustainable management and timely climate adaptation efforts to accommodate our future forests.An in-depth understanding of the multiple layers of factors that shape farmers' knowledge and perception of climatic risks and their adaptive responses is a prerequisite for well-targeted agricultural adaptation planning. However, while farmers' perception is increasingly understood as being a key determinant, a conceptual framework that includes this focus of analyses is currently not available. Against this background, this study analyzes the agricultural adaptation context in two Tanzanian villages building on a newly developed agricultural adaptation and perception model (AAP). The AAP contains five dimensions as a frame of reference for empirical adaptation models: non-climatic determinants of vulnerability (1), general trends in livelihood strategies (2), perception of climatic trends (3), climate impacts in agriculture (4) and potentials and obstacles for adaptation (5). Empirical data were collected by applying various tools of rapid rural appraisal, a stakeholder workshop and supplementary interviews. The qualitative data were coded along the dimensions of the AAP and analyzed by means of qualitative content analysis. The results show that adaptation levels, sensitivities of the farming systems as well as perception and narratives about climatic and yield dynamics differ considerably among the two farming communities. Furthermore, farmers' adaptation responses are influenced by both their framing of climatic trends as well as the multiple benefits that the local agricultural systems provide. Thus, for improving food security in the face of climate change, farmers' perceptions and the multi-functionality of agricultural systems need to be explicitly recognized by agronomic adaptation research, and adaptation policy making should involve detailed vulnerability assessments.Climate change adaptation is one of the many development challenges impacting livelihoods in developing countries. Scenario approaches are useful in adaptation planning by putting together projected climate change and socioeconomic trends with broader development needs when identifying associated priorities-and using them to develop appropriate strategies, plans and initiatives. To date, explorative scenario approaches have been largely adopted in adaptation planning. In this paper, we determine the benefits of using normative scenario approaches. They include a process known as "backcasting," which is particularly useful for areas where adaptation planning and actions are strongly intertwined with development planning, and considerable efforts are needed to improve the well-being of the people living in those areas. We show the relevance of backcasting by presenting three case study applications in the following developing countries: Ghana, Honduras and Tajikistan. The results of these case studies indicate that backcasting has specific relevance for adaptation planning, including capacity building and awareness raising to contextualize information on climate impacts with stakeholders' development needs. Our results also indicate that the developed scenarios provided benefits in promoting horizontal and vertical integration, thus bringing together diverse sectorial and sub-national priorities-adaptation options can thereby be aligned with these needs. Finally, use of the scenarios advances countries' participation in national and multi-country adaptation projects by targeting actions that provide multiple benefits.This paper examines whether crop choice is affected by climate change.! have used a sample of 11,389 farmers across Bangladesh from the years 2000, 2005 and 2010 and 30 years moving average of rainfall and temperature against each year. Using multinomial logit model, I regress climate variables and other household level socioeconomic factors on crop choice. This regression result implies that crop choice is climate-sensitive. Households in the high rainfall areas choose rain-fed Aman rice as their dominant crop while farmers of low rainfall areas select irrigation based Boro rice. Using the estimated results,! simulate the impact of different climate change scenarios on crop choice and find that a shift in crop choices will take place in Bangladesh. Especially, temperature increase will upset rainfed Aman rice crop choice and make the farmers to choose irrigation based Boro, Aus and other crops. Unlike temperature, rainfall scenarios are not damaging for rain-fed rice crop choice. This paper also unveils a shortcoming of structural stability between different single cross-sectional models to simulate the effect of climate change scenarios on crop choice. Changes in future rice cropping pattern in Bangladesh come up as findings of this research, which indicate important policy implications for climate vulnerable developing countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper looks at climate adaptation from the perspective of institutional economics, focusing on local administrations and exploring their role as bureaucratic organizations dealing with nature-related systems where climate change is creating new interdependencies. The central aim is to reveal under what circumstances such adaptation takes place in a coordinated fashion, as opposed to adaptation by individual administrative units within their respective competences. Applying the concept of integrative vs. segregative institutions, the paper draws upon evidence from fourteen climate-sensitive municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The analysis, based on set-theoretic methods, finds that integrative institutions constitute a sufficient but not necessary condition for "integrative adaptation". State administrations may thus avoid additional climate-related burdens for citizens and conflicts among resource users by providing local administrations with means for additional coordination. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ecosystem-based adaptation can reduce social vulnerability to climate hazards and can be more sustainable in the long term than hard technical solutions to adaptation. Thus, it can provide a strong argument for the conservation of natural ecosystems. As the entities most directly responsible for local-level planning and management, municipalities represent a potentially key site for implementing ecosystem-based climate adaptation. This paper presents the results of a study that investigated the extent of eight local municipalities' knowledge and mainstreaming of ecosystem-based adaptation issues in the Western Cape, South Africa. Most municipalities had little understanding of ecosystem-based adaptation issues and limited implementation of relevant actions. Our findings suggest that ecosystem-based adaptation mainstreaming in local governments will be assisted by increasing learning and networking opportunities for municipalities and by increasing the "profile" of the concept of ecosystem-based adaptation, as well as by conducting research on barriers and enablers to collaborative governance.Adaptation has assumed centre stage in current climate change discourse, yet there has been minimal attention to the explicit exploration of epistemological and ontological concerns in the area. This paper focuses on these critical dimensions by exploring the contributions of a postmodernist perspective to climate adaptation research and analysis. Based on the ideas of three leading postmodern thinkers, Jean-Fran double dagger ois Lyotard, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, the paper presents postmodernism as an integrative research paradigm which acknowledges the complexity of the adaptation discourse by embracing the diversity of meanings and narratives around climate adaptation and the utilization of a plurality of methodologies and approaches in research with a potential to drive rigorous and contextually relevant climate adaptation research.Relocation from vulnerability hotspots to alternative safer locations is being increasingly proposed as one of the climate change response options. Yet, its consistent adoption in the rhetoric and more importantly policy remains elusive. This paper evaluates the extent to which different actors in policy and planning arenas consider relocation as a viable response to climate change as inferred from the extent to which relocation rhetoric permeates documents designed to inform and guide adaptation. The study examines 56 local, state, and national climate change adaptation texts to determine how many are considering and/or referring to relocation, what language they employ, and in which context. The content analysis was performed to measure the occurrence and frequency of keywords relocation, retreat, migration, and abandonment, as well as their frequency. The results show a significant inconsistency and lack of coherence in the use of relocation rhetoric among examined contemporary adaptation documents that are impeding a more comprehensive consideration and the development of relocation policy and planning. To address this barrier, the author proposes a unifying definition of the term relocation within the context of climate change.The premise that global warming changes the conditions for crop production was investigated throughout Switzerland on the basis of a climate suitability for grain maize cultivation. Gridded projections' of temperature changes for three time periods (2020-49, 2045-74, 2070-99) available from twenty climate-model chains for the A2 emissions scenario (i.e. the business as usual scenario) were used. It was found that with climate warming, the suitable production area increases at higher altitudes but decreases at lower altitudes in the longer term. In a second part of the study, we investigated the influence of individual climatic factors on climate suitability using combined temperature and precipitation scenarios from ten model chains for the Zurich-Reckenholz and Changins sites. Results suggest that heat stress and accelerated plant development are increasingly limiting climate suitability at both sites, whilst water shortage during maturation is only increasing significantly at the Changins site in western Switzerland. The shortening of growth phases also plays a role here, since the temporal shift in crop development can reduce the risk of drought stress if drought sensitive phenological periods are shifted away from periods of most intense stress. Despite uncertainties with regard to long-term climate change, the results of this study can provide advice for the planning of possible climate change adaptation measures (i.e. future cultivar choice, shifts in production areas).This paper examines whether the application of spatially-distributed versus static friction in hydrodynamic modelling increases the accuracy of predicted coastal flood extent using Pigeon Point, southwest Tobago, as a case in point. A two-dimensional hydrodynamic flood model is created from acquired and surveyed bathymetric, topographic and tidal data via the LISFLOOD-FP model code. Using a Landsat 8 image of the study area, a Maximum Likelihood (ML) supervised classification was performed to distinguish different land cover classes within the study site. The classified Landsat 8 image was further processed by assigning friction values to each land cover class to create a spatially-distributed friction file in ASCII format for use in LISFLOOD-FP. Using the flood model developed, simultaneous simulations were performed to assess the impact of storm surges (varying levels) on coastal flood extent at Pigeon Point utilising a static friction value, which broadly defined the area (i.e., 0.02), and the spatially-distributed friction file generated. Model outputs were compared to determine the extent of difference in flood prediction obtained from the application of static versus spatially-distributed friction through a Geographic Information System (GIS) based analysis. The flood model developed was subsequently applied to simulate an observed spring tide event using both static and spatially-distributed friction value(s) defined and model performance in each case was evaluated using the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) approach. Collated results indicated that using spatially-distributed over static friction do not increase accuracy of predicted coastal inundation extent, nor improve model performance. However, it appears to provide more insight on flood timings, which can be useful for coastal management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extreme weather events are a significant cause of loss of life and livelihoods, particularly in vulnerable countries and communities in Africa. Such events or their probability of occurring may be, or are, changing due to climate change with consequent changes in the associated risks. To adapt to, or to address loss and damage from, this changing risk we need to understand the effects of climate change on extreme weather events and their impacts. The emerging science of probabilistic event attribution can provide scientific evidence about the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to changes in risk of extreme events. This research has the potential to be useful for climate change adaptation, but there is a need to explore its application in vulnerable developing countries, particularly those in Africa, since the majority of existing event attribution studies have focused on mid-latitude events. Here we explain the methods of, and implications of, different approaches to attributing extreme weather events in an African context. The analysis demonstrates that different ways of framing attribution questions can lead to very different assessments of change in risk. Crucially, defining the most appropriate attribution question to ask is not a science decision but one that needs to be made in dialogue with those stakeholders who will use the answers. This is true of all attribution studies but may be particularly relevant in a tropical context, suggesting that collaboration between scientists and policy-makers is a priority for Africa.AimTo understand how environmental conditions and landscape structure interact at different spatial scales to shape the community composition of arid zone aquatic invertebrates with different dispersal abilities. LocationAustralia. MethodsFor each of five drainage basins and for their encompassing region (Pilbara), we built matrices of dissimilarities in presence-absence patterns of aquatic invertebrate community composition. This was carried out for all taxa collectively and separately for five dispersal trait groups: obligate aquatics, passive aerial dispersers, animals moving by aerial phoresy, weak and strong fliers. We analysed correlations between community dissimilarities and (1) dissimilarities in local environmental conditions, (2) geographic distances and (3) landscape resistance distances among the sites from which invertebrates were sampled. Calculation of landscape resistances accounted for longitudinal connectivity along the river channels (least-cost-path), lateral connectivity between streams and the potential effects of rugged topography on invertebrate dispersal. ResultsLocal environmental factors and landscape resistances explained differences in community composition at the regional scale. In basins with complex topography, local environmental conditions were the main factor explaining community dissimilarities in most dispersal groups. Conversely, in basins where flatter topography meant that moderate to high lateral connectivity between streams is possible, the spatial configuration of the dendritic network determined the community composition of most dispersal trait groups. Geographic and least-cost-path distances were poor predictors of community composition. None of the groups showed a consistent correlation with environmental factors alone, or just landscape resistances, across all basins. Main conclusionsLocal environmental conditions, hydrological connectivity and landscape resistance to dispersal are all important influences on community composition of arid zone aquatic invertebrates. The impact of each of these factors varies with dispersal trait group and spatial configuration of basins: the importance of lateral connectivity for explaining a substantial proportion of community composition points to a major role of flooding regimes in maintaining biological communities.Species are often observed to occur in restricted patches of particularly warm microclimate at their high latitude/altitude geographic range margin. In these areas, global warming is expected to cause small-scale expansion of the occupied area, but most previous studies of range expansion have used very coarse scale data. Using high resolution microclimate models together with detailed field surveys, we tested whether the butterfly Plebejus argus, occurring on limestone grassland in north Wales, was responding as might be expected due to climate change in the last 30-40 yr. The abundance of adult Plebejus argus at 100 m resolution in 2011 was strongly affected by elevation and near-ground temperatures in May. A statistical model including microclimate, fitted to 2011 data, was successful (67% correct) at hindcasting the occurrence of Plebejus argus in 1983 when the average May air temperature was 1.4 degrees C cooler. However, the model was less accurate at hindcasting occurrences in 1972 (50% correct). Given the distribution of micro-sites in this landscape, we predict that further warming of approximately 1 degrees C would make the majority of sites highly microclimatically suitable for this species. There are a growing number of long-term studies of range change, and investigations into the mechanisms driving them, but still surprisingly few that explicitly make and test predictions with independent data. Our tests are a valuable example of how accurate predictions of distribution change can be, but also of the inevitable uncertainties. Improved understanding of how well models predict will be very important to plan robust climate change adaptation measures.Landscape-scale vulnerability assessment from multiple sources, including paleoecological site histories, can inform climate change adaptation. We used an array of lake sediment pollen and charcoal records to determine how soils and landscape factors influenced the variability of forest composition change over the past 2000 years. The forests in this study are located in northwestern Wisconsin on a sandy glacial outwash plain. Soils and local climate vary across the study area. We used the Natural Resource Conservation Service's Soil Survey Geographic soil database and published fire histories to characterize differences in soils and fire history around each lake site. Individual site histories differed in two metrics of past vegetation dynamics: the extent to which white pine (Pinus strobus) increased during the Little Ice Age (LIA) climate period and the volatility in the rate of change between samples at 50-120 yr intervals. Greater increases of white pine during the LIA occurred on sites with less sandy soils (R-2 = 0.45, P < 0.0163) and on sites with relatively warmer and drier local climate (R-2 = 0.55, P < 0.0056). Volatility in the rate of change between samples was positively associated with LIA fire frequency (R-2 = 0.41, P < 0.0256). Over multi-decadal to centennial timescales, forest compositional change and rate-of-change volatility were associated with higher fire frequency. Over longer (multi-centennial) time frames, forest composition change, especially increased white pine, shifted most in sites with more soil moisture. Our results show that responsiveness of forest composition to climate change was influenced by soils, local climate, and fire. The anticipated climatic changes in the next century will not produce the same community dynamics on the same soil types as in the past, but understanding past dynamics and relationships can help us assess how novel factors and combinations of factors in the future may influence various site types. Our results support climate change adaptation efforts to monitor and conserve the landscape's full range of geophysical features.Background: As heatwaves are expected to be more frequent, longer, and more intense in the future, it is imperative to understand how heatwaves affect health. However, it is intensely debated about how a heatwave should be defined. Objectives: This study explored the possibility of developing a health risk-based definition for heatwave, and assessed the heat-related mortality in the three largest Australian cities. Methods: Daily data on climatic variables and non-accidental deaths for Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney during the period 1988-2009 were obtained from relevant government agencies. Several local heatwave definitions were tested by using percentiles (e.g., from the 75th to 99th centile) of mean temperature with duration >= 2 days across these cities. We examined the relative risks of mortality associated with heatwaves in each city using Poisson generalised additive model, after controlling for long-term trend, within-season variation, day of the week, and relative humidity. Then, Bayesian hierarchical model with segment-spline was used to examine the threshold for the heatwave-related impacts. Results: A consistent and significant increase in mortality during heatwaves was observed in all three cities. The pooled data show that the relative risk of mortality started to increase around the 95th centile of temperature, increased sharply at the 97th centile and rose alarmingly at the 99th centile. Based on research findings, we proposed tiered health risk-based metrics to define a heatwave. Conclusions: Our findings provide supportive evidence for developing health risk-based metrics to assess the impacts of heatwave. These findings may have important implications for assessing and reducing the burden of heat-related mortality. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Agricultural production in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of west Africa is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and climate change. The present study aimed to understand farmers' perceptions of climate variability and change and to evaluate adaptation options together with farmers, including tactical management of planting date in combination with the use of mineral fertilizer. Farmers perceived an increase in annual rainfall variability, an increase in the occurrence of dry spells during the rainy season, and an increase in temperature. Overall, this is in line with the observed meteorological data. Drought tolerant, short maturing crop varieties and appropriate planting dates were the commonly preferred adaptation strategies to deal with climate variability. On-farm trials confirmed that planting delays significantly reduce crop yields. The use of mineral fertilizer is often promoted, but risky for smallholders: although larger fertilizer applications increased the yield of maize (Zea mays) and millet (Pennisetum glaucum) significantly, a gross margin analysis indicated that it did not lead to more profit for all farmers. We conclude that integrating management of nutrients and planting time with improved farmer access to timely weather information, especially on the onset of the rains, is critical to enhancing adaptive capacity to increased climate variability and change.In West Africa, the channels for information flow from meteorological services to end-users, such as pastoralists, are relatively limited. As meteorological information is key to improving productivity for pastoralists, it represents a challenge at both local and national level to develop an efficient information dissemination system. However, few studies have focused specifically on pastoralists as end-users, and the best mode of delivering meteorological information to pastoralists remains unknown. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Burkina Faso using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper examines 1) the principal modes used by pastoralists to receive information, and 2) in what form and by which type of media pastoralists actually prefer to receive information. It was found that mobile phones have replaced traditional forecasting methods as these were becoming unreliable with increased climate variability. The phone was used to acquire updated informal information on, for example, the arrival of the rain from friends and family staying in other areas. The findings illuminate how mobile phones have a huge potential to deliver more formal information to pastoralists, and we propose that forecasts should be available as voice messages in local languages rather than text messages. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing research highlights the vulnerability of the alpine ski sector to climatic variability and change. The literature has focused predominantly on supply-side vulnerability, with limited insight into tourists' behavioural response to marginal snow conditions and ski resort closures. Using an in-situ survey (n=2448), this study examines how skiers in Ontario (Canada) would change their participation patterns if their preferred ski resort were closed due to a lack of snow. The survey focuses on current behavioural responses, rather than decisions based on future scenarios of climate change. Results show that substitution behaviours (i.e., spatial, temporal, activity) differ pending whether the resort is closed for the day, closed until mid-season or closed permanently, with differences (p < 0.05) recorded based on skier market segments. The results also indicate that beginner and infrequent skiers, as well as parents with children enroled in ski lessons, are more likely to either ski less and/or stop skiing altogether, while experienced and core skiers are more likely to engage in spatial substitution. Season pass holders and those at large resorts were also more likely to engage in spatial substitution. Managerial implications as a result of a likely shift in ski demand patterns in Ontario are discussed, with future research needs identified to appraise the differential community-level consequences and future climate adaptation strategies of ski tourism. MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS The behavioural response of skiers to changing climatic conditions will be a decisive factor in the vulnerability and sustainability of ski tourism. Fundamental to assessing the contemporary climate risk of the multi-billion dollar ski industry, as well as to estimate how future climate change could alter demand patterns in regional ski tourism marketplaces, is to understand skiers' behavioural adaptation to inter annual climate variability. As skiers engage in behavioural substitution (temporal, spatial, activity), a shift in ski demand patterus is likely. Skiers will concentrate at resorts that remain climatically operable, which will have important management implications with respect to individual resort capacity, visitor experience (e.g., crowding), and consequent impacts on surrounding ski area businesses and communities. Climatically advantaged ski areas and communities will need to prepare for development pressures, including investments in ski terrain expansion and infrastructure to increase snowmaking capacity (including water access and storage), as well as ease increased crowding on trails, in parking lots, inside chalets and lift lines. The results from this study offer decision support to ski resort operators and local tourism officials concerned about how their visitors will respond to changing climatic conditions and the implications for local economic development and real-estate. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We examine the effects of crop management adaptation and climate mitigation strategies on land use and land management, plus on related environmental and economic outcomes. We find that crop management adaptation (e.g. crop mix, new species) increases Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 1.7 % under a more severe climate projection while a carbon price reduces total forest and agriculture GHG annual flux by 15 % and 9 %, respectively. This shows that trade-offs are likely between mitigation and adaptation. Climate change coupled with crop management adaptation has small and mostly negative effects on welfare; mitigation, which is implemented as a carbon price starting at $15 per metric ton carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent with a 5 % annual increase rate, bolsters welfare carbon payments. When both crop management adaptation and carbon price are implemented the effects of the latter dominates.Variations in stable carbon and oxygen isotope compositions of co-occurring plant species reflect their different water use strategies and indicate the importance of screening species' WUE (i) to plan climate change adaptation strategies. The different abilities of plant species to cope with drought have been associated with structural and ecophysiological constraints. In this paper, we evaluate interspecific differences in intrinsic water use efficiency (WUE (i) ) and the ratio of photosynthesis (A) to stomatal conductance (g(s)) in three co-occurring Mediterranean shrubs: two broad-leaved evergreen (Pistacia lentiscus and Phillyrea angustifolia) and one needle-like-leaved evergreen (Juniperus phoenicea). We used delta C-13 in rings to assess inter-annual changes in WUE (i) while the influence of the stomatal conductance was explored through delta O-18. Our results indicate consistent differences in WUE (i) in the three species, largely determined by leaf traits and differences in stomatal conductance control. Juniperus phoenicea could be the most threatened by the current trend of increasing temperature and summers drought. Phillyrea angustifolia and P. lentiscus seem to be less affected by drought stress because of their tighter stomatal control and high survival rate under field conditions. Our study shows that shrubs with different leaf traits employ different plant ecophysiological strategies under drought stress.Stabilizing smallholder crop yields under changing climatic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa will require adaptation strategies focused on soil and water management. Impact studies of climate change on crop yields often ignore the potential of adaptation strategies such as rainwater harvesting (RWH). While RWH is bringing benefits to agricultural systems today, it is still unclear which regions could increasingly benefit from RWH under changing climatic conditions. Here we employ a continental scale modelling strategy using the latest CMIP5 data and explicitly take into account design factors of RWH to show that it is a valuable adaptation strategy to climate change in Africa for maize (Zea mays L.). We find that RWH can bridge up to 40 % of the yield gaps attributable to water deficits under current conditions and 31 % under future (2050s) climatic conditions during the main growing season for maize, hence providing an alternative to irrigation from scarce or inaccessible groundwater resources. RWH could increase maize yields by 14-50 % on average for the 2050s across Africa, by bridging water deficits. While in situ RWH strategies show great biophysical potential as an adaptation strategy to climate change, there remain locally specific barriers to their adoption, which will need to be addressed to ensure their successful implementation at a larger scale.Rapid urbanization, water pollution, climate change and inadequate maintenance of water and wastewater infrastructures in cities may lead to flooding, water scarcity, adverse health effects, and rehabilitation costs that may overwhelm the resilience of cities. Furthermore, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is hindered by water governance gaps. We have analyzed IWRM in 45 municipalities and regions divided over 27 countries using the improved City BlueprintA (R) Framework (CBF). The CBF incorporates solely performance-oriented indicators that more accurately measure the city's own efforts and performances to improve its IWRM. We have also analyzed the trends and pressures (on which the city's IWRM has a negligible influence). The Trends and Pressure Framework (TPF) creates awareness of the most stressing topics that either hamper or, on the contrary, pose opportunity windows for IWRM. The improved Blue City Index (BCI*) and the Trends and Pressures Index (TPI; the arithmetic mean of all TPF indicators) have been compared with other city descriptors. The BCI* and TPI showed a significant and negative Pearson correlation (r = -0.83). This implies that cities with pressing needs to improve their IWRM also face the highest environmental, financial and/or social limitations. The BCI* and TPI correlate significantly with the ND-GAIN climate readiness index (r = 0.86; r = -0.94), the environmental awareness index (r = 0.85; r = -0.85), the European green city index (r = 0.86; r = -0.85) and various World Bank governance indicators. Based on a hierarchical clustering of the 45 municipalities and regions, 5 different levels of sustainability of urban IWRM could be distinguished, i.e., (1) cities lacking basic water services, (2) wasteful cities, (3) water efficient cities, (4) resource efficient and adaptive cities, and (5) water wise cities. This categorization, as well as the CBF and TPF are heuristic approaches to speed up the transition towards water wise cities.Urban green roofs are discussed as a local climate adaptation measure to limit surface warming and increase evaporative cooling by vegetation in urban environments. A five month measurement campaign was conducted to observe surface and air temperatures as well as dewfall dynamics and amounts on an urban green and co-located bitumen roof. Measurements were performed in the period from August to December 2012. Surface temperatures indicated differences of up to 17.4 K, which lead to measurable air temperature differences (Delta T-A) at a height of 0.5 m above roof level. During August afternoons (3 pm) the green roof air temperature (T-A) drops below T-A of the bitumen roof by up to 0.7 K on average. By using a linear regression based approach differences in sensible turbulent heat flux densities (Q(H)) between green and bitumen roof of 200 W m(-2) on a hot day with 30 degrees C and wind velocities of 2 m s(-1) were estimated. During the measurement campaign a total of 60 and 52 dew events were observed on the bitumen roof and the green roof, respectively. At both urban sites the number of dewfall events was distinctly smaller compared to the rural site (94 events). Roof dewfall turned out to be a negligible source in the green roof water balance compared to precipitation amounts. Inhibited dewfall on roofs could be one important factor for the phenomenon of urban moisture excess since roofs represent a high fraction of urban surfaces. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ethanol and biogas are energy carriers that could contribute to a future energy system independent of fossil fuels. Straw is a favorable bioenergy substrate as it does not compete with food or feed production. As straw is very resistant to microbial degradation, it requires a pretreatment to insure efficient conversion to ethanol and/or methane. This study investigates the effect of combining biological pretreatment and steam explosion on ethanol and methane yields in order to improve the coupled generation process. Results show that the temperature of the steam explosion pretreatment has a particularly strong effect on possible ethanol yields, whereas combination with the biological pretreatment showed no difference in overall energy yield. The highest overall energy output was found to be 10.86 MJ kg VS-1 using a combined biological and steam explosion pretreatment at a temperature of 200 degrees C. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy supply is a global hot topic. The social and political pressure forces a higher percentage of energy supplied by renewable resources. The production of renewable energy in form of biomethane can be increased by co-substrates such as municipal biowaste. However, a demand-driven energy production or its storage needs optimisation, the option to store the substrate with its inherent energy is investigated in this study. The calorific content of biowaste was found unchanged after 45 d of storage (19.9 +/- 0.19 kJ g(-1) total solids), and the methane yield obtained from stored biowaste was comparable to fresh biowaste or even higher (approx. 400 m(3) Mg-1 volatile solids). Our results show that the storage supports the hydrolysis of the co-substrate via acidification and production of volatile fatty acids. The data indicate that storage of biowaste is an efficient way to produce bioenergy on demand. This could in strengthen the role of biomethane plants for electricity supply the future. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recently the importance of addressing values in discussions of risk perception and adaptation to climate change has become manifest. Values-based approaches to climate change adaptation and the cultural cognition thesis both illustrate this trend. We argue that in the wake of this development it is necessary to take the dynamic relationship between values and beliefs seriously, to acknowledge the possibility of bi-directional relationships between values and beliefs, and to address the variety of values involved (e.g. personal, epistemic and cultural values). The dynamic relationship between values and beliefs, we claim, highlights the need to bring ethical considerations to bear on climate change communication. In particular, we must ask whether it is acceptable to tailor information about the risks of climate change in an effort to maximize communicative effectiveness given the values of the target group. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.To understand and guide present and future adaptation to climate change, in-depth field studies are required in many sectors. The forestry sector, with its long time laps between decisions to plant and harvesting stands, is among the most relevant to investigate in this respect. This contribution analyzes the results of a survey conducted in Wallonia (Belgium) among private forest owners (PFO) and an array of organizations, both public and private, that influence these owners' actions. The objective of our research is to investigate already implemented or envisaged practices of climate change adaptation as well as the adaptive capacity of these PFOs. In this respect, adaptive capacity is defined as "the ability of systems, institutions, humans and other organisms to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequences (of climate change)" (IPCC, 2014, p. 2). The results show that different ways of (not) integrating climate change in forest management are visible in the sample of PFOs that can be divided into different profiles of (non) adapters. Analyzing these profiles reveals the influence of multiple objective and sociocognitive factors contributing to the PFOs adaptive capacity. The way climate change adaptation is conceived and implemented by other forest and timber actors has also repercussions on adaptive capacity as some adaptive measures are promoted and facilitated while others are hindered. These results bring fruitful aspects for understanding concrete adaptive processes and are relevant for decision-making as they point out some strengths or weaknesses in terms of adaptive capacity. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The indigenous people of Greenland, the Inuit, have lived for a long time in the extreme conditions of the Arctic, including low annual temperatures, and with a specialized diet rich in protein and fatty acids, particularly omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). A scan of Inuit genomes for signatures of adaptation revealed signals at several loci, with the strongest signal located in a cluster of fatty acid desaturases that determine PUFA levels. The selected alleles are associated with multiple metabolic and anthropometric phenotypes and have large effect sizes for weight and height, with the effect on height replicated in Europeans. By analyzing membrane lipids, we found that the selected alleles modulate fatty acid composition, which may affect the regulation of growth hormones. Thus, the Inuit have genetic and physiological adaptations to a diet rich in PUFAs.Concerns about mitigating and adapting to climate change resulted in renewing the incentive for agricultural research investments and developing further innovation priorities around the world particularly in developing countries. In the near future, development of new agricultural measures and proper diffusion of technologies will greatly influence the ability of farmers in adaptation and mitigation to climate change. Using bibliometric approaches through output of academic journal publications and patent-based data, we assess the impact of research and development (R&D) for new and existing technologies within the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation. We show that many developing countries invest limited resources for R&D in relevant technologies that have great potential for mitigation and adaption in agricultural production. We also discuss constraints including weak infrastructure, limited research capacity, lack of credit facilities and technology transfer that may hinder the application of innovation in tackling the challenges of climate change. A range of policy measures is also suggested to overcome identified constraints and to ensure that potentials of innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation are realized. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on an analysis of planted forests data from the 2015 Forests Resources Assessment of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FRA 2015). It forms one of a series of papers in the FRA 2015 special issue of this journal. While total forest area decreased from 4.28 billion hectares to 3.99 billion hectares from 1990 to 2015, with percent global forest cover dropping from 31.85% to 30.85%, the area of planted forests increased from 167.5 to 277.9 million hectares or 4.06% to 6.95% of total forest area. Increase was most rapid in the temperate zone, and regionally in East Asia, followed by Europe, North America, and Southern and Southeast Asia. However the annualised rate of increase in area of planted forests slowed in the 2010-2015 period to 1.2%, below the 2.4% rate suggested is needed to supply all of the world's timber and fibre needs. The majority of planted forests comprised native species with only 18-19% of the total area being of introduced species. Introduced species were dominant in the southern hemisphere countries of South America, Oceania and Eastern and Southern Africa where industrial forestry is dominant. Twenty countries accounted for 85% of planted forest area and a different 20 countries for 87% of planted forest roundwood supply. As with forest area, roundwood supply from planted forests also showed an increasing trend although this was based on minimal data. There was a mismatch in composition and rankings of the top 20 countries with top forest area and roundwood production suggesting that there are substantial opportunities to increase roundwood production in the future, especially in China which has the largest area but is currently ranked 3rd in roundwood production. Outlook statements were developed for the FAO sub regions based on past changes in planted forest area, population growth, and climate and forest health risks to identify key issues for the future. The overall view from this study suggests that climate impacts, especially from extreme climatic events will affect planted forests in the future and that forest health impacts can also be expected to increase. Outlooks vary regionally. Europe and North America are likely to be most concerned with climate and health risks; Asia will experience population pressure that will impact on land availability for new forests and risks from extreme weather events, and will need to make the most of its existing forests; Africa will need to increase planted forest area to offset continuing deforestation and rapid population growth; and Oceania, the Caribbean, Central and South America are likely to be most concerned with climate impacts. To ensure the continued contribution of planted forests, a number of responses will be required to both maintain existing and also to develop new forests. Intensification of production in existing forests will lessen the need for greater forest areas and offset any land use conflicts related to food security; climate adaptation strategies will need to be developed as a matter of urgency, and forest health focus must remain a priority for research. Establishment of new forests will be eased through greater community and stakeholder engagement. Application of models such as WWF's New Generation Plantations, which recognises the importance of society and the need to consider the full range of forest products and services within the wider landscape and spectrum of land uses, will be important. We recommend that to enable deeper analysis related to planted forests future FRA Assessments consider ways to better gather data specific to planted forests such as productivity so that this important component of global forests can be better understood. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.The role of the private sector in climate finance is increasingly emphasized in international political debates. Knowledge of private engagement in mitigating climate change and in more advanced economies is growing, but the evidence base for private-sector engagement in climate change adaptation in developing countries remains weak. Starting from the premise that the private sector's role in adaptation is often inevitable and potentially significant, this article first analyses the potential of private-sector engagement in adaptation and adaptation financing in developing countries by conceptualizing the private sector's roles and motivation therein. For further inquiry, and for a discussion based on a developing-country context, interviews were conducted with key stakeholders for adaptation of Zambia's agricultural sector, including on ways in which the government can incentivize private-sector engagement in adaptation.How much private-sector adaptation and adaptation finance can be identified depends on the interpretation of the concept of adaptation. Under a broad interpretation, the domestic private sector in particular can contribute substantially to adaptation, both directly and indirectly, through its investments and activities. However, the international private sector's role in financing adaptation should be analysed under a strict interpretation of adaptation and appears limited.Policy relevanceInternational political debates increasingly stress the importance of private climate finance, yet are constrained by vagueness around the private sector's role in adaptation finance. This article conceptualizes and scrutinizes private-sector engagement in adaptation and adaptation finance in developing countries. It concludes that the domestic private sector in particular can contribute substantially to adaptation in direct and indirect ways, and that domestic policies incentivize such contributions. However, international private financing of adaptation is more limited and its analysis requires a stricter interpretation of adaptation. Private-sector engagement in adaptation and adaptation finance can supplement, but not substitute for, public investments in adaptation. These limitations are particularly important when discussing private adaptation finance as part of the developed countries' pledge to mobilize US$100 billion of climate finance per annum from 2020 onwards.We present and test a conceptual and methodological approach for interdisciplinary sustainability assessments of water governance systems based on what we call the sustainability wheel. The approach combines transparent identification of sustainability principles, their regional contextualization through sub-principles (indicators), and the scoring of these indicators through deliberative dialogue within an interdisciplinary team of researchers, taking into account their various qualitative and quantitative research results. The approach was applied to a sustainability assessment of a complex water governance system in the Swiss Alps. We conclude that the applied approach is advantageous for structuring complex and heterogeneous knowledge, gaining a holistic and comprehensive perspective on water sustainability, and communicating this perspective to stakeholders.Human-induced climate change is increasingly recognized as a fundamental driver of biological processes and patterns. Historic climate change is known to have caused shifts in the geographic ranges of many taxa and future climate change is expected to result in even greater redistributions of species. As a result, predicting the impact of climate change on future patterns of biodiversity will greatly aid conservation planning. Using the North American Breeding Bird Survey and Audubon Christmas Bird Count, two of the most comprehensive continental datasets of vertebrates in the world, and correlative distribution modeling, we assessed geographic range shifts for 588 North American bird species during both the breeding and non-breeding seasons under a range of future emission scenarios (SRES A2, A1B, B2) through the end of the century. Here we show that 314 species (53%) are projected to lose more than half of their current geographic range across three scenarios of climate change through the end of the century. For 126 species, loss occurs without concomitant range expansion; whereas for 188 species, loss is coupled with potential to colonize new replacement range. We found no strong associations between projected climate sensitivities and existing conservation prioritizations. Moreover, species responses were not clearly associated with habitat affinities, migration strategies, or climate change scenarios. Our results demonstrate the need to include climate sensitivity into current conservation planning and to develop adaptive management strategies that accommodate shrinking and shifting geographic ranges. The persistence of many North American birds will depend on their ability to colonize climatically suitable areas outside of current ranges and management actions that target climate adaptation.Around the globe, the impacts of climate change are increasing the risk of catastrophic events and the resulting loss of human life and communities. Until now, responses to these events and planning for future occurrences have focused on ecological and social impacts, to the almost total exclusion of the impacts on heritage. Cultural heritage includes archaeological sites, historic buildings, and artifacts, but-more importantly-it also includes the meanings, values, and contemporary social behavior associated with these tangible forms of heritage. Thus, place attachment, sense of place, and associated forms of intangible heritage are major societal factors that must be integrated into climate change adaptation and risk management models. Communities, towns, and governments typically disassociate cultural/historical resources from natural resources in issues of planning and development. A transdisciplinary approach to cultural heritage is necessary in times of risk. There is critical need for this approach, since climate change will result in accelerated changes for human communities-from dislocation to a change in the physical manifestations of place. In this paper, we explore approaches to disaster, adaptation, and resilience through the lens of cultural heritage using two case studies: the Gullah Communities of South Carolina and the diverse communities of Eleuthera, Bahamas.Within the context of disaster risk reduction, including climate change adaptation, significant thematic discourse has been dedicated to the difficulty of implementing research-based knowledge in policy and practise. Not only has the discussion focused on the causes of this issue, but many recommendations for enhancing the use of information and knowledge have also been made. The authors first frame the knowledge challenges and, second, introduce a systematic means to identify the factors hindering the use of information and knowledge. The approach proposed allows determining core barriers in the co-production, exchange, and use of knowledge. Subsequently, we illustrate where further advancement is needed in the field of knowledge development, means of transmission and use for disaster risk reduction. We suggest a method that analyses cases considering the success or failure of information flows from and to different stakeholder groups. The aim is to identify causes for knowledge fragmentation at different phases in the disaster management continuum, and, subsequently, to strengthen both individual and institutional learning, as well as to determine social and Functional changes required to address pressing issues of disaster risk reduction, including climate change adaptation, in a competent manner. (c) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Small islands and coastal communities around the world are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, mainly from storm surge attributed to more frequent and severe coastal storms, and mounting sea-level rise. Coastal hazards including inundation, salinisation of the water supply, and land erosion all threaten vital infrastructure that support coastal communities. This research, part of the International Community-University Research Alliance (ICURA) C-Change project "Managing Adaptation to Environmental Change in Coastal Communities: Canada and the Caribbean", develops and applies a multicriteria decision evaluation and support system for evaluating adaptation options for coastal communities. The paper estimates vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity measures associated with adaptation strategies in coastal communities with respect to their environmental, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. Results are determined using a multi-participant formulation of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for identifying multicriteria decisions as adaptation strategies in a specific coastal context. The application of the framework is conducted for the coastal community of Little Anse on Isle Madame, Nova Scotia. Specifically, the state of the Little Anse breakwater is analysed and adaptation options for protecting, accommodating, and retreating are presented and evaluated in the face of predicted storm scenarios. The results indicate that, in the case of Little Anse, the strategic decision to protect the community by a new breakwater arm provides preferred measures for resilience and adaptive capacity. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soil loss is not limited to change from forest or woodland to other land uses/covers. It may occur when there is agricultural land-use/cover modification or conversion. Soil loss may influence loss of carbon from the soil, hence implication on greenhouse gas emission. Changing land use could be considered actually or potentially successful in adapting to climate change, or may be considered maladaptation if it creates environmental degradation. In semi-arid northern Ghana, changing agricultural practices have been identified amongst other climate variability and climate change adaptation measures. Similarly, some of the policies aimed at improving farm household resilience toward climate change impact might necessitate land use change. The heterogeneity of farm household (agents) cannot be ignored when addressing land use/cover change issues, especially when livelihood is dependent on land. This paper therefore presents an approach for simulating soil loss from an agro-ecosystem using multi-agent simulation (MAS). We adapted a universal soil loss equation as a soil loss sub-model in the Vea-LUDAS model (a MAS model). Furthermore, for a 20-year simulation period, we presented the impact of agricultural land-use adaptation strategy (maize cultivation credit i.e., maize credit scenario) on soil loss and compared it with the baseline scenario i.e., business-as-usual. Adoption of maize as influenced by maize cultivation credit significantly influenced agricultural land-use change in the study area. Although there was no significant difference in the soil loss under the tested scenarios, the incorporation of human decision-making in a temporal manner allowed us to view patterns that cannot be seen in single step modeling. The study shows that opening up cropland on soil with a high erosion risk has implications for soil loss. Hence, effective measures should be put in place to prevent the opening up of lands that have high erosion risk.Grasslands in the upper Indus basin provide a resource base for nomadic livestock grazing which is one of the major traditional livelihood practices in the area. The study presents climate patterns, grassland phenology, productivity and spatio-temporal climate controls on grassland growth using satellite data over the upper Indus basin of the Himalayan region, Pakistan. Phenology and productivity metrics of the grasses were estimated using a combination of derivative and threshold methods applied on fitted seasonal vegetation indices data over the period of 2001-2011. Satellite based rainfall and land surface temperature data are considered as representative explanatory variables to climate variability. The results showed distinct phenology and productivity patterns across four bioclimatic regions: (i) humid subtropical region (HSR)late start and early end of season with short length of season and low productivity (ii) temperate region (TR)early start and late end of season with higher length of season and moderate productivity (iii) sub alpine region (SAR)late start and late end of season with very high length of season and the most productive grasses, and (iv) alpine region (AR)late start and early end of season with small length of season and least productive grasses. Grassland productivity is constrained by temperature in the alpine region and by rainfall in the humid sub-tropical region. Spring temperature, winter and summer rainfall has shown significant and varied impact on phenology across different altitudes. The productivity is being influenced by summer and annual rainfall in humid subtropical regions, spring temperature in alpine and sub-alpine regions and both temperature and rainfall are contributing in temperate regions. The results revealing a strong relationship between grassland dynamics and climate variability put forth strong signals for drawing more scientific management of rangelands in the area.Replacing a rainfed cropping system with an irrigated one is widely assumed to be an effective measure for climate change adaptation. However, many agricultural impact studies have not necessarily accounted for the space-time variations in the water availability under changing climate and land use. Moreover, many hydrologic and agricultural assessments of climate change impacts are not fully integrated. To overcome this shortcoming, a tool that can simultaneously simulate the dynamic interactions between crop production and water resources in a watershed is essential. Here we propose the regional production and circulation coupled model (CROVER) by embedding the PRYSBI-2 (Process-based Regional Yield Simulator with Bayesian Inference version 2) large-area crop model into the global water resources model (called H08), and apply this model to the Songhua River watershed in Northeast China. The evaluation reveals that the model's performance in capturing the major characteristics of historical change in surface soil moisture, river discharge, actual crop evapotranspiration, and soybean yield relative to the reference data during the interval 1979-2010 is satisfactory accurate. The simulation experiments using the model demonstrated that subregional irrigation management, such as designating the area to which irrigation is primarily applied, has measurable influences on the regional crop production in a drought year. This finding suggests that reassessing climate change risk in agriculture using this type of modeling is crucial not to overestimate potential of irrigation-based adaptation.Defining the oceanic habitats of migratory marine species is important for both single species and ecosystem-based fisheries management, particularly when the distribution of these habitats vary temporally. This can be achieved using species distribution models that include physical environmental predictors. In the present study, species distribution models that describe the seasonal habitats of two pelagic fish (dolphinfish, Coryphaena hippurus and yellowtail kingfish, Seriola lalandi), are developed using 19 yr of presence-only data from a recreational angler-based catch-and-release fishing programme. A Poisson point process model within a generalized additive modelling framework was used to determine the species distributions off the east coast of Australia as a function of several oceanographic covariates. This modelling framework uses presence-only data to determine the intensity of fish (fish km(-2)), rather than a probability of fish presence. Sea surface temperature (SST), sea level anomaly, SST frontal index and eddy kinetic energy were significant environmental predictors for both dolphinfish and kingfish distributions. Models for both species indicate a greater fish intensity off the east Australian coast during summer and autumn in response to the regional oceanography, namely shelf incursions by the East Australian Current. This study provides a framework for using presence-only recreational fisheries data to create species distribution models that can contribute to the future dynamic spatial management of pelagic fisheries.Emission trading scheme was devised to lower the cost of achieving greenhouse gas emission reductions: emissions are reduced where it is cheapest and emission certificates are then traded to meet the nominal targets for each participant. However, carbon markets, like other commodity markets, are volatile. They react to stochastic "disequilibrium" spot prices, which may be affected by inadequate policies, speculations and bubbles. The market-based emission trading, therefore, does not necessarily minimize abatement costs and achieve emission reduction goals. We introduce a basic stochastic trading model allowing analysis of the robustness of emission reduction policies under irreversibility, asymmetric information and other multiple anthropogenic and natural uncertainties. We illustrate functioning of the robust market with numerical results involving such countries as US, Australia, Canada, Japan, EU27, Russia, Ukraine, China. In particular, we analyze if knowledge about uncertainties may affect portfolios of technological and trade policies and how uncertainty characteristics may influence market prices and change the market structure. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Accelerated sea level rise (SLR) constitutes one of the main consequences of anthropogenic climate change. This may have serious implications for structure and functions of Wadden Sea tidal basins. If the rate of SLR becomes higher than sediment accumulation rates on the inter-tidal flats, they start to submerge. Drowning of these flats has negative consequences from a nature conservation viewpoint as well as for coastal flood risk management. Hence, anticipation measures may become expedient. Knowledge about the drowning processes and pathways supports the development, timing and localization of sustainable adaptation measures in the Wadden Sea. Based upon a description of hydro-morphological steady states in Wadden Sea tidal basins and a discussion of possible drowning processes and pathways, some general hypotheses and conclusions are formulated. Drowning of inter-tidal flats may generally start from the sea and continue in a landward direction. Smaller sub-basins in the inner parts of the basin may have a higher adaptive capacity to SLR than the more central and seaward parts of the tidal basin. Larger mean tidal range (MTR) as well as increasing tidal range may improve the capacity of tidal basins to balance SLR. In consequence, the process of drowning will probably start earlier and proceed faster in basins with lower MTR as in basins with higher MTR. As a (final) consequence of drowning of the inter-tidal flats, sub-tidal channels may, with the exception of the tidal inlet channels, progressively silt up. Although SLR-rates in the early Holocene were (at least) as high as those predicted for the end of this century, the early Holocene development in the former Wadden Sea area cannot be used for morphological projections. In an outlook, sand replenishment, dike-relocation (under specific conditions) and brushwood groin fields are mentioned as possible sustainable measures to increase the resilience of the Wadden Sea to SLR.Declining grassland management in the Austrian Alps demands alternative usage strategies for unused biomass. This case study suggests biogas production as a suitable solution. The study employs a novel calculation scheme to calculate the biogas potentials of grassland and agro-municipal wastes in two model regions. In economic terms, model region one relies heavily on winter and summer tourism with few agricultural operations. Model region two has less intensive tourism and a more prevalent agricultural sector. Using a linear regression model, changes in animal stocks, biogas yields, and energy production were calculated for 2010, 2020, and 2030. Results showed that in 2010, model region one had 1186 t dry matter (DM) a(-1) unused grassland biomass, which, combined with other agro-municipal wastes, could have produced 524,580 Nm(3) a(-1) of methane. Combusting this amount of methane in a CHP would result in 2 GWh(el) a(-1) and 2.2 GWh(th) a(-1). Similarly, including wastes and 557 t DM a(-1) unused grassland biomass, model region two could have produced 1,305,892 Nm(3) a(-1) methane and 4.9 GWh(el) a(-1) and 5.5 GWh(th) a(-1). By 2030, unused grassland biomass is predicted to increase in both regions. Including other organic and agricultural residues, the total methane potential for region one will be 575,784 Nm(3) a(-1) (+9 %) and 1,769,471 Nm(3) a(-1) (+36 %) in region two by 2030.Atmospheric structure changes in response to the urban form, land use, and the type of land cover (LULC). This interaction controls thermal and air pollutant transport and distribution. The interrelationships among LULC, ambient temperature, and air quality were analyzed and found to be significant in a case study in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A. Within the urban canopy layer (UCL), traffic-origin PM2.5 and black carbon followed Gaussian dispersion in the near road area in the daytime, while higher concentrations, over 1 order of magnitude, were correlated to the lapse rate under nocturnal inversions. In the overlying urban boundary layer (UBL), ambient temperature and PM2.5 variations were correlated among urban-wide locations indicating effective thermal and mass communications. Beyond the spatial correlation, LULC-related local urban heat island effects are noteworthy. The high-density urbanized zone along a narrow highway-following corridor is marked by higher nighttime temperature by similar to 1.6 degrees C with a long-term increase by 2.0 degrees C/decade, and by a higher PM2.5 concentration, than in the low-density residential LULC. These results indicate that the urban LULC may have contributed to the nocturnal thermal inversion affecting urban air circulation and air quality in UCL and UBL. Such relationships point to the potentials of climate adaptation through urban planning.Fundamental changes in the hydrological cycle are to be expected in a future warmer climate. For Switzerland, recent climate change assessments based on the ENSEMBLES regional climate models project for the A1B emission scenario summer mean precipitation to significantly decrease by the end of this century, whereas winter mean precipitation tend to rise in Southern Switzerland. From an end-user perspective, projected changes in seasonal means are often insufficient to adequately address the multifaceted challenges of climate change adaptation. In this study, we investigate the projected changes in seasonal precipitation by considering changes in frequency and intensity, precipitation type (convective vs stratiform) and temporal structure (wet and dry spells) over Switzerland. As proxies for rain-type changes, we rely on the parameterized convective and large-scale precipitation components simulated by the models. The study reveals that the projected summer drying over Switzerland at the end of the century is mainly driven by a widespread reduction in the number of precipitation days. Thereby, the drying evolves altitude-specific: over low-land regions it is associated with a decrease in both convective and large-scale precipitation. Over elevated regions it is primarily associated with a decline in large-scale precipitation only, whereas convective precipitation remains at current levels. As a consequence, almost all the models project an increase in convective fraction at elevated altitudes. The decrease in the number of wet days during summer is accompanied by decreases (increases) in the number of multi-day wet (dry) spells. This future shift in multi-day episodes also lowers down the likelihood of short dry spell occurrence in all of the models. The models further project a higher mean precipitation intensity in spring and autumn north of the Alps, whereas a similar tendency is expected for the winter season over most of Switzerland.This study used a 4-km resolution regional climate model to examine the sensitivity of surface air temperature on the Pacific coast of Japan to sea surface temperature (SST) south of the Pacific coast of Japan during summer. The authors performed a control simulation (CTL) driven by reanalysis and observational SST datasets. A series of sensitivity experiments using climatological values from the CTL SST datasets over a 31-yr period was conducted. The interannual variation in surface air temperature over the Pacific coast was well simulated in CTL. The interannual variation in SST over the Kuroshio region amplified the interannual variation in surface air temperature over the Pacific coast. It was found that 30% of the total variance of interannual variation in surface air temperature can be controlled by interannual variation in SST. The calculated surface air temperature on the Pacific coast increased by 0.4 K per 1-K SST warming in the Kuroshio region. Note that this sensitivity was considerably greater during nighttime than during daytime. Concurrent with the warming in surface air temperature, downward longwave radiation at the surface was also increased. In summer, the increase in latent heat flux was considerably larger than that in sensible heat flux over the ocean because of SST warming, according to the temperature dependence of the Bowen ratio. This implies that the primary factor for the increase in surface air temperature in summer is increased moisture in the lower troposphere, indicating that the regional warming was caused by an increase in H2O greenhouse gas.Through assessment of forest structure, biomass of mangrove plantations in the Thanh Phu Nature Reserve, Mekong Delta, Vietnam was analyzed in correlation with diameter at breast height (DBH, i.e. at 1.3 m height). Study plots were set up in 7, 11-22, and 26-year-old planted Rhizophora apiculata Blume plantations. There is a significant inverse correlation between DBH and tree density (R-2 = 0.73; p < 0.01). To derive an allometric relation to estimate aboveground biomass, 32 trees representing all ages were chosen randomly and harvested at ground level to examine allometric relations. We measured the fresh and dry weight of stems (W-S), branches (W-B), leaves (W-L), and aboveground stilt roots (W-R) in situ. Allometric relationships were satisfied best with DBH as an independent variable (R-2 = 0.72, 0.89, 0.87, 0.98, and 0.97 for leaves, branches, stilt roots, stem, and total aboveground biomass, respectively; p < 0.001). The total aboveground biomass was estimated in the plantations to vary between 76 and 320 tons/ha. Of this, more than 50% of total aboveground biomass was represented by stems. The estimated biomass value of this study is consistent with that of other mangroves in the world. Total biomass of R. apiculata plantation in Thanh Phu Nature Reserve accounted for about 170,057 tons dry weight or 8056 tons C.AimSpecies and ecosystems may be unable to keep pace with rapid climate change projected for the 21st century. We evaluated an underexplored dimension of the mismatch between climate and biota: limitations to forest growth and succession affecting habitat suitability. Our objective was to inform continental-scale conservation for boreal songbirds under disequilibria between climate, vegetation and fauna. LocationBoreal and southern arctic ecoregions of North America. MethodsWe used forest inventory and avian survey data to classify 53 species by seral-stage affinity and applied these to generate alternative projections of changes in species' core habitat distributions based on different vegetation lag-time assumptions. We used our seral stage-modified refugia approach and the Zonation algorithm to identify multispecies boreal conservation priorities over the 21st century. We evaluated the sensitivity of land rankings to seral-stage affinity and species' weights and assessed the conservation value of the existing protected areas network compared to Zonation results. ResultsEnd-of-century projected changes in songbird distribution were reduced by up to 169% when vegetation lags were considered. Zonation land rankings based on unconstrained climate projections were concentrated at high latitudes, whereas those based on strict and modified refugia scenarios were concentrated in coastal and high-elevation areas, as well as biome transition zones, which were fairly consistent over time and species weights. The existing protected areas network covering 14% of the study area was estimated to conserve 12-14% of baseline avian biodiversity across time periods and scenarios, compared to 16-25% for top-ranked Zonation areas. Main conclusionsFor some boreal songbirds, limits to forest growth and succession may result in dramatic reductions in suitable habitat over the next century. Our seral stage-adjusted approach provides conservative and efficient boreal conservation priorities anchored around climatic macrorefugia that are robust to century-long climate change and complement the current protected areas network.The potential for social learning to address complex, interconnected social and environmental challenges, such as climate change adaptation, is receiving increasing attention in research and practice. Social learning approaches vary, but commonly include cycles of knowledge sharing and joint action to co-create knowledge, relationships, and practices among diverse stakeholders. This results in learning and change that goes beyond the individual into communities, networks, or systems. Many authors have focused on analysis of case studies to better understand the contexts in which such learning occurs. In this paper, we look across this literature to draw out lessons for international development practice. To support those looking to purposively design social learning interventions for adaptation, we focus on four areas: lessons learned and the principles adopted when using a social learning approach, examples of tools and methods used, approaches to evaluating social learning, and examples of its impact. While we identify important lessons for practice within each of these areas, three cross-cutting themes emerge. These are: the importance of developing a shared view among those initiating learning processes of how change might happen and of how social learning fits within it, linking this locus of desired change to the tools employed; the centrality of skilled facilitation and in particular how practitioners may shift toward being participants in the collective learning process; and the need to attend to social difference, recognizing the complexity of social relations and the potential for less powerful actors to be co-opted in shared decision making. (C) 2015 The Authors. WIREs Climate Change published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.We experimentally assessed the interaction between a globally invasive snail (Potamopyrgus antipodarum) and an Australian native snail (Austropyrgus angasi) under temperatures based on current (1990-2000, mean = 17.94-19.02 degrees C) and future (2100, mean = 19.42-21.65 degrees C) predicted conditions. Temperature treatments were scenarios identified from down-scaled global circulation models. Growth rates (mm/d) for juveniles and adults were measured at low (1000 individuals [ind]/m(2)) and high (20,000 ind/m(2)) densities in intraspecific and interspecific interaction trials under the 2 temperature regimes. Juveniles of both species grew at similar rates regardless of temperature and density. On the other hand, adults had dissimilar growth rates among treatments. Under current temperatures, P. antipodarum adults grew significantly faster than A. angasi adults when both species were kept at high densities in the interspecific treatment (interspecific-high) and faster than when they were kept at high densities but with conspecifics in the intraspecific treatment (intraspecific-high). However, we did not detect intra-or interspecific competition effects on either species. Thus, our results suggest that under current conditions, P. antipodarum gained from foraging with A. angasi (unidirectional facilitation effect). Under 2100 temperatures, the facilitative effect of A. angasi on P. antipodarum growth was not apparent, a result suggesting that the facilitation was directly related to the temperature conditions. Our research shows the importance of considering future temperature conditions as a factor that could alter species interactions and potentially influence the ecological effects of invasive species.The Mekong Delta is vulnerable to changes in climate and hydrological events which alter environmental conditions, resulting in increased risk of waterborne diseases. Research exploring the association between climate factors and diarrhoea, the most frequent waterborne disease in Mekong Delta region, is sparse. This study evaluated the climate-diarrhoea association in Can Tho city, a typical Mekong Delta area in Vietnam. Climate data (temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall) were obtained from the Southern Regional Hydro-Meteorological Centre, and weekly counts of diarrhoea visits were obtained from Can Tho Preventive Medicine Centre from 2004 to 2011. Analysis of climate and health variables was carried out using spline function to adjust for seasonal and long-term trends of variables. A distributed lag model was used to investigate possible delayed effects of climate variables on diarrhoea (considering 0-4 week lag periods), then the multivariate Poisson regression was used to examine any potential association between climate factors and diarrhoea. The results indicated that the diarrhoea incidence peaked within the period August-October annually. Significant positive associations were found between increased diarrhoea and high temperature at 4 weeks prior to the date of hospital visits (IRR = 1.07; 95 % CI = 1.04-1.08), high relative humidity (IRR = 1.13; 95 % CI = 1.12-1.15) and high (> 90th percentile) cumulative rainfall (IRR = 1.05; 95 % CI = 1.05-1.08). The association between climate factors and diarrhoea was stronger in rural than urban areas. These findings in the context of the projected changes of climate conditions suggest that climate change will have important implications for residential health in Mekong Delta region.Uncertainty about the scale of future demand presents a challenge for infrastructure design. The attraction of flexible strategies, incorporating upgrade options that can be exercised when and if required, has been recognized for a long time. The techniques of real options allowed the benefits of flexible strategies to be quantified for the first time. A new and simplified methodology for real options analysis has been developed and implemented in software. It performs evaluation in both cost and environmental impact terms. A case study of a real highway in Spain was evaluated using the new methodology and software. Seven alternative strategies for the roadway (subgrade, base course, and surface course) were evaluated, six with upgrade options that are exercised if the traffic demand crosses specified thresholds. The rate of traffic growth, and also the discount rate for financial evaluation, were treated as uncertain variables. The highway was designed when the Spanish economy was growing strongly and a high roadway specification performed best. Before the highway was built the economy crashed and construction was canceled. Recalculation for the posteconomic shock conditions with lower traffic growth and a higher interest rate favored a lower highway specification with upgrade options. Sensitivity analysis shows how the specification choice varies with the values taken by the uncertain variables. A novel specification was proposed to maximize flexibility when there is high uncertainty about traffic growth, and evaluation showed that it performed better in many conditions. The methodology of evaluating flexible strategies could be used in many applications, including infrastructure for climate change adaptation.European Union countries provide substantial subsidies for farmland afforestation. Most of the research so far has focused on contribution of afforestation to carbon sequestration, afforestation schemes' uptake, social and economic efficiency and their impact on local biodiversity. Less attention has been given so far to the relevant performance of subsidy schemes' specific design in climate change adaptation, an emerging policy objective. This paper investigates adaptive capacity of subsidised afforestation projects in a Central European country. Subsidies are found to be concentrated primarily to highland regions that already have got high forest cover, with Norway spruce as the preferred tree species and a deficit of European beech, an arrangement that may undermine the payment scheme's contribution to land use adaptation to climate change. Lack of clear policy objectives and related technical subsidy design, rather than appropriation towards competing policy goals, appear to be the ultimate reason behind spatial distribution and structure of subsidised projects. Subsidy spending seems to follow recipients' choices instead of any deliberate policy priorities. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Farmers' risk preferences play an important role in agricultural production decisions. This study characterizes risk preferences among farmers in Yongqiao and determines how these risk preferences are related to their choices regarding climate change adaptation strategies. We find that most farmers in the study area were aware of climate change. They were taking measures to protect their livelihoods against perceived changes to the local climate. The risk experiment result shows that the representative subject was risk averse, and women were more risk averse than men. The relationships between farmers' risk preferences and different climate change adaptation choices were different. Farmers' risk aversion was negatively and significantly related with adaptation strategies on planting new crop varieties and adopting new technology, but it had a significantly positive effect on purchasing weather index crop insurance. The results also indicate that the level of education, farming experience, farm size, household income and perception of climate change impacts influence farmers' adaptation decisions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study is one of the first concerned with the topic of accounting and climate change adaptation. It proposes that the accounting role can support organisational climate change adaptation by performing the following functions: (i) a risk assessment function (assessing vulnerability and adaptive capacity), (ii) a valuation function (valuing adaptation costs and benefits) and (iii) a disclosure function (disclosure of risk associated with climate change impacts). This study synthesises and expands on existing research and practice in environmental accounting and sets the scene for future research and practice in the emerging area of accounting for climate risk.Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast of the United States on October 29, 2012, devastating communities in its path. In the aftermath, New York implemented a home buyout program designed to facilitate the permanent relocation of residents out of areas considered to be at risk for future hazards. While home buyout programs are becoming popular as policy tools for disaster mitigation, little is known about what factors influence homeowners to participate in or reject these programs. This study used mixed methods to assess the relationship between community resilience and the relocation decision in two heavily damaged communities in which the majority of residents made different decisions regarding whether or not to pursue a buyout. The sample was composed of residents from Oakwood Beach and Rockaway Park, both working-class communities in New York City, who participated via a community survey (N = 133) and/or in-depth interviews (N = 28). Results suggested that community resilience moderated the relationship between community of residence and the buyout decision, leading to opposite responses on the buyout decision. Contextual community factors, including the history of natural disasters, local cultural norms, and sense of place, were instrumental in explaining these different responses. Implications for disaster policy are discussed.Biodiversity hotspots are among some of the habitats most threatened by climate change, and the Brazilian Atlantic forest is no exception. Only 11.6 % of the natural vegetation cover remains in an intensely fragmented state, which results in high vulnerability of this biome to climate change. Since >60 % of the Brazilian people live within the Atlantic forest domain, societies both in rural and urban areas are also highly vulnerable to climate change. This review examines the vulnerabilities of biodiversity and society in the Atlantic forest to climate change, as well as impacts of land use and climate change, particularly on recent biological evidence of strong synergies and feedback between them. We then discuss the crucial role ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change might play in increasing the resilience of local society to future climate scenarios and provide some ongoing examples of good adaptive practices, especially related to ecosystem restoration and conservation incentive schemes such as payment for ecosystem services. Finally, we list a set of arguments about why we trust that the Atlantic forest can turn from a "shrinking biodiversity hotspot'' to a climate adaptation "hope spot'' whereby society's vulnerability to climate change is reduced by protecting and restoring nature and improving human life standards.Climate change has many impacts on environmental allergens and allergic diseases such as asthma and hay fever. Our knowledge of these impacts has grown considerably over the last 2 decades or so, and the last two and a half years in particular have seen a surge in research published on this topic. This report reviews the work published on climate change, allergens and allergic diseases since 1 January 2013. The review focusses on literature published in the peer-review journal literature, although a number of other prominent sources are also examined. Research of particular significance over the past two and a half years or so includes experimental studies that have quantified changes in allergenicity of pollen under combinations of elevated carbon dioxide and drought stress (for ragweed) and ozone (for Timothy grass). Other extensions of the research on this topic include a number of studies that are considering the impacts of climate change on allergic diseases with increasing sophistication and power. The review also considers recent research related to climate change adaptation in the context of impacts on allergens and allergic diseases. In conclusion, the latest research overall reaffirms this impact as one of the most important impacts of climate change on human health.AimWe conduct the first assessment of likely future climate change impacts for biodiversity across the West African protected area (PA) network using climate projections that capture important climate regimes (e.g. West African Monsoon) and mesoscale processes that are often poorly simulated in general circulation models (GCMs). LocationWest Africa. MethodsWe use correlative species distribution models to relate species (amphibians, birds, mammals) distributions to modelled contemporary climates, and projected future distributions across the PA network. Climate data were simulated using a physically based regional climate model to dynamically downscale GCMs. GCMs were selected because they accurately reproduce important regional climate regimes and generate a range of regional climate change responses. We quantify uncertainty arising from projected climate change, modelling methodology and spatial dependency, and assess the spatial and temporal patterns of climate change impacts for biodiversity across the PA network. ResultsSubstantial species turnover across the network is projected for all three taxonomic groups by 2100 (amphibians=42.5% (median); birds=35.2%; mammals=37.9%), although uncertainty is high, particularly for amphibians and mammals, and, importantly, increases across the century. However, consistent patterns of impacts across taxa emerge by early to mid-century, suggesting high impacts across the Lower Guinea forest. Main conclusionsReducing (e.g. using appropriate climate projections) and quantifying uncertainty in climate change impact assessments helps clarify likely impacts. Consistent patterns of high biodiversity impacts emerge in the early and mid-century projections, while end-of-century projections are too uncertain for reliable assessments. We recommend that climate change adaptation should focus on earlier projections, where we have most confidence in species responses, rather than on end-of-century projections that are frequently used. In addition, our work suggests climate impact should consider a broad range of species, as we simulate divergent responses across taxonomic groups.Human activity is having multiple, inter-related effects on ecosystems. Greenhouse gas emissions persisting along current trajectories threaten to significantly alter human society. At 0.85 degrees C of anthropogenic warming, deleterious human impacts are acutely evident. Additional warming of 0.5 degrees C-1.0 degrees C from already emitted CO2 will further intensify extreme heat and damaging storm events. Failing to sufficiently address this trend will have a heavy human toll directly and indirectly on health. Along with mitigation efforts, societal adaptation to a warmer world is imperative. Adaptation efforts need to be significantly upscaled to prepare society to lessen the public health effects of rising temperatures. Modifying societal behaviour is inherently complex and presents a major policy challenge. We propose a social systems framework for conceptualizing adaptation that maps out three domains within the adaptation policy landscape: acclimatisation, behavioural adaptation and technological adaptation, which operate at societal and personal levels. We propose that overlaying this framework on a systems approach to societal change planning methods will enhance governments' capacity and efficacy in strategic planning for adaptation. This conceptual framework provides a policy oriented planning assessment tool that will help planners match interventions to the behaviours being targeted for change. We provide illustrative examples to demonstrate the framework's application as a planning tool.Changing climates and growing populations have prompted policy makers to shift to more climate resilient, technology-driven water sources, such as seawater desalination. Desalination is a prominent water resource in the Middle East but countries in other parts of the world with similar scarcity issues and good access to sea water, such as Australia, have been comparatively slow to adopt it. This paper explores attitudes to desalination in Perth, Western Australia, and the factors that influence its acceptance. We compared individuals' acceptance of desalination over two time periods by using identical surveys administered in 2007 and 2012. We then examined the attitudinal factors - attitudes towards desalination and attitudes towards the environment - that influence acceptance. Acceptance of desalination was reasonably high and stable at both times (74% and 73% in 2007 and 2012 respectively). We found that respondents' attitudes to perceived outcomes and benefits, fairness, environmental obligation and risk were important predictors of their acceptance of desalination in both surveys. However the weight given to these aspects varied over time. The findings show that there is still mixed community sentiment towards desalination, which helps to explain why acceptance has not increased since desalination was introduced in 2006. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Study region: The Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany. Study focus: On behalf of the Federal State Agency for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (LANUV) the mGROWA model is applied, in order to simulate the water balance components actual evapotranspiration, total runoff, direct runoff and groundwater recharge at Federal State level. mGROWA-simulations were performed in daily time steps for the hydrological reference period 1971-2000 and in a spatial resolution of 100 by 100 m. mGROWA results for groundwater recharge and State-wide recorded groundwater withdrawal rates have been used to assess the extent of groundwater exploitation in NRW. New hydrological insights: Simulated groundwater recharge levels are presented as long-term annual averages and as long-term monthly values in order to indicate the seasonal fluctuation of groundwater recharge rates. Quantitative statistics indicate that mGROWA enables the simulation of total runoff and groundwater recharge without significant tendency of over- or underestimation. Against this background mGROWA simulation results are used by LANUV to support regional water resources management, e.g. for determining the status of groundwater exploitation in NRW. The majority of groundwater bodies in NRW are at present not at risk of unsustainable groundwater usage. A small number of groundwater bodies along the river Rhine, however, have been assessed as being close to unsustainable groundwater exploitation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Study Region: The Wami River sub-basin is among the river sub-basins with a vital ecosystem in Tanzania. It comprises the Saadani National park and it has the very great potential of irrigation and rain fed agriculture. Study Focus: The objective of this study was to evaluate the uncertainty of future streamflow in respect of increasing water demands and uncertain projected climate inputs, General Circulation Models (GCMs). The water demands were projected to the year 2039 and GCM precipitation was selected as the changing climatic variable. The CMIP5-GCMs were evaluated fortheir skills and those with the minimum skill scores above 75% were downscaled and used in projection of scenario RCP 8.5 precipitation. Then uncertainties of RCP 8.5 precipitation were estimated using a fuzzy extension principle and finally used to simulate uncertainties of future runoff using a rainfall-runoff model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). New Hydrological Insights for the Region: The results of projected stream flow shows that the baseline annual climatology flow (ACF) is 98 m(3)/s and for the future, the median ACF is projected to be 81 m(3)/s. At 100% uncertainty of skilled projections, the ACF from the sub-basin is projected to range between -47% and +36% from the baseline ACF. However, the midstream of the sub-basin shows reliable water availability for foreseen water uses expansion up to the year 2039. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Human beings have used fire as an ecosystem management tool for thousands of years. In the context of the scientific and policy debate surrounding potential climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, the importance of the impact of relatively recent state fire-exclusion policies on fire regimes has been debated. To provide empirical evidence to this ongoing debate we examine the impacts of state fire-exclusion policies in the chestnut forest ecosystems of two geographically neighbouring municipalities in central Spain, Casillas and Rozas de Puerto Real. Extending the concept of 'Traditional Ecological Knowledge' to include the use of fire as a management tool as 'Traditional Fire Knowledge' (TFK), we take a mixed-methods and interdisciplinary approach to argue that currently observed differences between the municipalities are useful for considering the characteristics of "pre-industrial anthropogenic fire regimes" and their impact on chestnut forest ecosystems. We do this by examining how responses from interviews and questionnaire surveys of local inhabitants about TFK in the past and present correspond to the current biophysical landscape state and recent fire activity (based on data from dendrochronological analysis, aerial photography and official fire statistics). We then discuss the broader implications of TFK decline for future fire management policies across Europe particularly in light of the published results of the EU sponsored Fire Paradox research project. In locations where TFK-based "pre-industrial anthropogenic fire regimes" still exist, ecosystem management strategies for adaptation and mitigation to climate change could be conceivably implemented at a minimal economic and political cost to the state by local communities that have both the TFK and the adequate social, economic and cultural incentives to use it. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Studies reporting agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emission data from tropical upland crops or the climate adaptation and mitigation potential of farming practices that involve nutrient management and/or organic farming are very limited in number. We developed alternate groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) farming practices for rainfed kharif (South-west monsoon) and irrigated rabi (winter) cropping seasons for agro-ecological region 3.0 in semi-arid peninsular India; and compared their yields, farm income as well as nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions with current baseline practices among regional small scale farm-holders. At the study farm, alternate practices including application of locally prepared fermented manures along with a 40-60 % reduction in application of total N increased pod yield by 50 and 35 % and net profit by similar to 120 and similar to 70 % in a drought-hit kharif and an irrigated rabi, respectively. High resolution field measurements of N2O flux indicate that the seasonal emission factors for groundnut cultivation using baseline and alternate practices were 1.7-2.0 % of applied N. Thus, the average IPCC and Indian national emissions factors of 1 and 0.58 %, respectively, underestimate GHG emissions during groundnut cultivation. Crucially, alternate practices led to (1) a reduction of 0.13 +/- A 0.07 and 0.24 +/- A 0.1 tCO(2)e ha(-1) season(-1) through decreases in direct N2O emissions along with a 50 % reduction in GHG emission intensity (per unit yield) in both seasons; (2) a concomitant average reduction of similar to 0.1 and 0.24 tCO(2)e ha(-1) season(-1) through decreased demand for manufactured fertilizers in kharif and rabi seasons, respectively. The positive implications for climate resilience, mitigation and ecosystem services are discussed.Land-use change (LUC) has fundamentally altered the form and function of the terrestrial biosphere. Increasing human population, the drive for higher living standards and the potential challenges of mitigating and adapting to global environmental change mean that further changes in LUC are unavoidable. LUC has direct consequences on climate not only via emissions of greenhouse gases and changing the surface energy balance but also by affecting the emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs). Isoprenoids, which dominate global BVOC emissions, are highly reactive and strongly modify atmospheric composition. The effects of LUC on BVOC emissions and related atmospheric chemistry have been largely ignored so far. However, compared with natural ecosystems, most tree species used in bioenergy plantations are strong BVOC emitters, whereas intensively cultivated crops typically emit less BVOCs. Here, we summarize the current knowledge on LUC-driven BVOC emissions and how these might affect atmospheric composition and climate. We further discuss land management and plant-breeding strategies, which could be taken to move towards climate-friendly BVOC emissions while simultaneously maintaining or improving key ecosystem functions such as crop yield under a changing environment. Land-use change (LUC) has altered and will continuously change the form and function of the terrestrial biosphere. In this review we give an overview on the interplay of LUC, climate change and biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission potential and discuss the regional effects of LUC on BVOC emission potential and, consequently, on atmospheric chemistry. We further discuss how the BVOC emission potential from crops and bioenergy plants can be optimized by classical-, molecular biological and chemical tools for maximal plant protection and, eventually, for minimizing possible negative consequences of BVOCs on atmospheric chemistry.Africa is one of the regions that bear the harshest effects of climate change, yet its efforts to combat climate change through environmental education are not strongly linked to its ecological conditions. The encounter of Africa with colonialism in the past and the current impacts of globalisation and neoliberalism have kept African indigenous knowledge in the margins of its educational systems, thereby impeding its environmental education efforts for effective climate change adaptation. This paper presents the argument that, a development education discourse on indigenous knowledge in the lens of critical theories of education such as critical pedagogy and postcolonial theory can create spaces for the revitalisation and inclusion of indigenous knowledge in African educational systems for combating climate change. Based on a literature analysis of papers by some African postcolonial scholars, the author weaves the usefulness of African indigenous knowledge into a development education discourse, not only for combating climate change, but also for challenging hegemonic knowledge forms.The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon is a significant worldwide problem caused by rapid population growth and associated urbanization. The UHI effect exacerbates heat waves during the summer, increases energy and water consumption, and causes the high risk of heat-related morbidity and mortality. UHI mitigation efforts have increasingly relied on wisely designing the urban residential environment such as using high albedo rooftops, green rooftops, and planting trees and shrubs to provide canopy coverage and shading. Thus, strategically designed residential rooftops and their surrounding landscaping have the potential to translate into significant energy, long-term cost savings, and health benefits. Rooftop albedo, material, color, area, slope, height, aspect and nearby landscaping are factors that potentially contribute. To extract, derive, and analyze these rooftop parameters and outdoor landscaping information, high resolution optical satellite imagery, LIDAR (light detection and ranging) point clouds and thermal imagery are necessary. Using data from the City of Tempe AZ (a 2010 population of 160,000 people), we extracted residential rooftop footprints and rooftop configuration parameters from airborne LIDAR point clouds and QuickBird satellite imagery (2.4 m spatial resolution imagery). Those parameters were analyzed against surface temperature data from the MODIS/ASTER airborne simulator (MASTER). MASTER images provided fine resolution (7 m) surface temperature data for residential areas during daytime and night time. Utilizing these data, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to evaluate the relationships between residential building rooftops and their surface temperature in urban environment. The results showed that daytime rooftop temperature was closely related to rooftop spectral attributes, aspect, slope, and surrounding trees. Night time temperature was only influenced by rooftop spectral attributes and slope.The Canadian Arctic is experiencing rapid changes in climatic conditions, with implications for Inuit communities widely documented. Youth have been identified as an at-risk population, with likely impacts on mental health and well-being. This study identifies and characterizes youth-specific protective factors that enhance well-being in light of a rapidly changing climate, and examines how climatic and environmental change challenges these. In-depth conversational interviews were conducted with youth aged 15-25 from the five communities of the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador, Canada: Nain, Hopedale, Postville, Makkovik, and Rigolet. Five key protective factors were identified as enhancing their mental health and well-being: being on the land; connecting to Inuit culture; strong communities; relationships with family and friends; and staying busy. Changing sea ice and weather conditions were widely reported to be compromising these protective factors by reducing access to the land, and increasing the danger of land-based activities. This study contributes to existing work on Northern climate change adaptation by identifying factors that enhance youth resilience and, if incorporated into adaptation strategies, may contribute to creating successful and effective adaptation responses. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Large irrigation systems consist of a complex series of infrastructure to supply irrigation services. The flow of water, or the system flow, running through this infrastructure is a hydraulic variable required to satisfy water demand for crops. The majority of general ocean-atmospheric circulation models indicate warmer and dryer environments in most of Mexico, with significant effects on evapotranspiration of crops, a basic agronomic variable for determining the capacity of hydro-agricultural infrastructure. The present work presents the development of a methodology to evaluate the integrated evapotranspiration of crops in large irrigation areas containing diversified crop patterns with different planting dates and agricultural cycles. This serves as a basis to analyze the resulting changes in infrastructure given projected climate change scenarios assuming two possible agricultural adaptation actions. The Santa Rosa Irrigation Users Association is analyzed as a case study, located in "Rio Fuerte" Irrigation District 075, Sinaloa, Mexico. The results indicate an increase of 5% in the design flow capacity of large irrigation areas for the climate change adaptation measures analyzed for the middle of the century with an A1B emissions scenario. Likewise, an increase of 5% in the design capacity will also occur for small irrigation areas with and without adaptation measures. In terms of the annual volume requirement given the same A1B emissions scenario and the adaptation measurements studied, there would be an increase of 8.5%. It is concluded that the methodology developed can be applied to any irrigation district in Mexico to analyze the impact of climate change on irrigation infrastructure.Climate change poses governance challenges at diverse scales and across the dimensions of risk and responsibility. Local governments are central to the delivery of action on both decarbonisation and adapting to the risks of climate change. Yet there are likely to be significant differences across local governments in terms of their capacity to act on climate change. This research documents and explains differences in the capacity to act within response spaces to risks to transport infrastructure and systems. We examine 80 Transport Plans across local governments in England, specifically their efforts to incorporate climate change adaptation. Data are generated from content analysis of the 80 documents and key informant interviews in a sample of 15% of authorities. The results show significant disparities across authorities. We explain differential outcomes as dependent on internal coordination, local prioritisation processes and political opposition. The results highlight that there are significant governance barriers associated with differential response capacity in the face of climate change risks.The Boreal Plains Ecozone (BPE) in Western Canada is expected to be an area of maximum ecological sensitivity in the 21st century. Successful climate adaptation and sustainable forest management require a better understanding of the interactions between hydrology, climate, and vegetation. This paper provides a perspective on the changing water cycle in the BPE from an interdisciplinary team of researchers, seeking to identify the critical knowledge gaps. Our review suggests the BPE will likely become drier and undergo more frequent disturbance and shifts in vegetation. The forest will contract to the north, though the southern boundary of the ecotone will remain in place. We expect detrimental impacts on carbon sequestration, water quality, wildlife, and water supplies. Ecosystem interactions are complex, and many processes are affected differently by warming and drying, thus the degree and direction of change is often uncertain. However, in the short term at least, human activities are the dominant source of change and are unpredictable but likely decisive. Current climate, hydrological, and ecological monitoring in the BPE are limited and inadequate to understand and predict the complex responses of the BPE to human activities and climate change. This paper provides a case study of how hydrological processes critically determine ecosystem functioning, and how our ability to predict system response is limited by our ability to predict changing hydrology. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Water temperature is a key driver of aquatic processes. Monitoring stream water temperature is key to understanding current species distributions and future climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems. However, a very small fraction of streams are continuously monitored for water temperature throughout North America, due to prohibitive logistical costs. We develop a framework that aids in developing cost-effective stream temperature monitoring by using stream habitat features to inform strategic site selection of temperature monitoring sites. We test this framework using sockeye salmon spawning streams as a model, which included 19 streams in the northern-most watershed of the Fraser River Basin, British Columbia, Canada. The objective of this framework is to evaluate the trade-off between cost (i.e., the number of streams monitored) and the effectiveness of monitoring scenarios at meeting different monitoring objectives. We compared monitoring scenarios that were informed by well-established relationships between variables and that are commonly collected or available as part of other monitoring activities (stream length, magnitude, order, gradient, wetted width, and spot temperatures) and water temperature metrics (maximum, mean, and variance during August) derived from continuously monitored streams to monitoring scenarios where streams were randomly selected. Informed scenarios included streams that were selected in order of watershed level and stream habitat characteristics (e.g., longest to shortest); ordering was based on the relationship between each habitat variable and temperature metrics. Informed monitoring scenarios were then compared to random selection of monitoring sites with regard to how well monitoring scenarios met two management objectives during the critical salmon spawning period: (1) identifying streams that exceed a temperature threshold and (2) identifying streams that represent the temperature regime of a complex of streams (e.g., mean and variance of streams within an aggregate of streams). Management objectives were met by monitoring fewer streams using the informed monitoring scenarios rather than the average of the random scenarios. This highlights how common inexpensive watershed level variables that relate to stream temperature can inform the strategic selection of sites and lead to more cost-effective stream temperature monitoring.Cities are recognised as key players in global adaptation and mitigation efforts because the majority of people live in cities. However, in Europe, which is highly urbanized and one of the most advanced regions in terms of environmental policies, there is considerable diversity in the regional distribution, ambition and scope of climate change responses. This paper explores potential factors contributing to such diversity in 200 large and medium-sized cities across 11 European countries. We statistically investigate institutional, socioeconomic, environmental and vulnerability characteristics of cities as potential drivers of or barriers to the development of urban climate change plans. Our results show that factors such as membership of climate networks, population size, GDP per capita and adaptive capacity act as drivers of mitigation and adaptation plans. By contrast, factors such as the unemployment rate, warmer summers, proximity to the coast and projected exposure to future climate impacts act as barriers. We see that, overall, it is predominantly large and prosperous cities that engage in climate planning, while vulnerable cities and those at risk of severe climate impacts in the future are less active. Our analysis suggests that climate change planning in European cities is not proactive, i.e. not significantly influenced by anticipated future impacts. Instead, we found that the current adaptive capacity of a city significantly relates to climate planning. Along with the need to further explore these relations, we see a need for more economic and institutional support for smaller and less resourceful cities and those at high risk from climate change impacts in the future.Infectious diseases form a group of health problems highly susceptible to the influences of climate. Adaptation to protect human population health from the changes in infectious disease epidemiology expected to occur as a consequence of climate change involve actions in the health systems as well as in other non-health sectors. In the health sector strategies such as enhanced and targeted epidemiological and entomological surveillance and the development of epidemic early warning systems informed by climate scenarios are needed. Measures in other sectors such as meteorology, civil defense and environmental sanitation will also contribute to a reduction in the risk of infection under climate change.Anthropogenic climate change will have significant impacts on both human migration and population health, including infectious disease. It will amplify and alter migration pathways, and will contribute to the changing ecology and transmission dynamics of infectious disease. However there has been limited consideration of the intersections between migration and health in the context of a changing climate. This article argues that climate-change related migration - in conjunction with other drivers of migration - will contribute to changing profiles of infectious disease. It considers infectious disease risks for different climate-related migration pathways, including: forced displacement, slow-onset migration particularly to urban-poor areas, planned resettlement, and labor migration associated with climate change adaptation initiatives. Migration can reduce vulnerability to climate change, but it is critical to better understand and respond to health impacts - including infectious diseases - for migrant populations and host communities.Predicting the influence of climate change on the potential distribution of naturalised alien plant species is an important and challenging task. While prioritisation of management actions for alien plants under current climatic conditions has been widely adopted, very few systems explicitly incorporate the potential of future changes in climate conditions to influence the distribution of alien plant species. Here, we develop an Australia-wide screening tool to assess the potential of naturalised alien plants to establish and spread under both current and future climatic conditions. The screening tool developed uses five spatially explicit criteria to establish the likelihood of alien plant population establishment and expansion under baseline climate conditions and future climates for the decades 2035 and 2065. Alien plants are then given a threat rating according to current and future threat to enable natural resource managers to focus on those species that pose the largest potential threat now and in the future. To demonstrate the screening tool, we present results for a representative sample of approximately 10% (n = 292) of Australia's known, naturalised alien plant species. Overall, most alien plant species showed decreases in area of habitat suitability under future conditions compared to current conditions and therefore the threat rating of most alien plant species declined between current and future conditions. Use of the screening tool is intended to assist natural resource managers in assessing the threat of alien plant establishment and spread under current and future conditions and thus prioritise detailed weed risk assessments for those species that pose the greatest threat. The screening tool is associated with a searchable database for all 292 alien plant species across a range of spatial scales, available through an interactive web-based portal at http://weedfutures.net/. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Future climate in the Nordic countries is expected to become warmer, wetter, and wilder', and this will probably cause more extreme weather events. Therefore, local authorities need to improve their ability to assess weather-related hazards such as floods, landslides, and storms, as well as people's sensitivity and capacity to cope with or adjust to such events. In this article, we present an integrated assessment of vulnerability to natural hazards, which incorporates both exposure and social vulnerability. In our assessment, we screen places and rank them by their relative scores on exposure and vulnerability indices. We also design a web-based visualization tool - ViewExposed - that shows maps that reveal a considerable geographic variation in integrated vulnerability. ViewExposed makes it easy to identify the places with the highest integrated vulnerability, and it facilitates the understanding of the factors that make these places exposed and/or vulnerable. For empirical validation, we correlate the exposure indices with insurance claims due to natural damage. However, we also emphasize the importance of a dialog with relevant stakeholders to ensure a participatory validation. Our top-down exposure and vulnerability assessment benefits from a participatory bottom-up assessment. This is crucial to support decisions about where to implement adaptive and preventive measures against hazards related to climate change.Despite the international significance attached to climate change adaptation, there remains a lack of understanding of the barriers that impede the effective implementation of adaptation strategies by households across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Better understanding of the vulnerability of agriculture-dependent households to climate variability requires exploration of the barriers that constrain the implementation of adaptation strategies. This paper uses case studies from northeast Ghana and a systematic literature review to assess the barriers that restrict effective implementation of climate adaptations in SSA. Results suggest that households are constrained by financial barriers, socio-cultural barriers, institutional barriers, technological barriers and a lack of information on climate change characteristics. We examine how the various barriers interact at different levels to influence the adaptation process. Findings highlight that the development of early warning systems, effective communication of climate information and an understanding of the local context within which adaptations take place, are necessary pre-requisites to enhance climate adaptations and rural livelihoods. Households need to be supported through the provision of micro-credit schemes, community empowerment and extension initiatives aimed at enhancing social networks within farming communities in order to reduce their vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change and variability.The vulnerability of coastal communities to climate change risks is an important development issue for Africa's low-lying coastal zones. Frequent floods resulting from climate change, sea-level rise and other human-induced environmental stressors have become a major concern in the coastal zone of Nigeria. This article draws upon conceptual issues in vulnerability and livelihoods to examine the multi-scale causes of current vulnerability of artisanal fishing communities in the Ogun coastal area of southwest Nigeria to flood risks. Fisher folk in the study area are highly vulnerable to the increasing incidence of floods as virtually all aspects of their livelihoods are impacted. Adaptive capacity which is influenced by existing socio-economic and institutional contexts at different scales is examined. Projected changes in climate for Nigeria's coastal zone and future socio-economic conditions of artisanal fishers suggest higher vulnerability in the future.Research on South Goulburn Island aimed to improve understanding of Indigenous perspectives on climate change and options for adaptation within the scope of the local coastal, marine environment and resources utilized by the community. We also aimed to promote awareness among community members of western scientific concepts of climate change. Workshops and interviews with participants emphasized the use of participatory, visual techniques to encourage discussion and visioning of the future. Participants indicated very limited understanding of western concepts and English language terms associated with climate change and why change was occurring. However, in deeper conversations, many reported observing unusual patterns of environmental change they could not explain by other means. These observations, combined with changes in customary practices and loss of local knowledge in recent years, worried participants, particularly the elderly. The idea that climate change was resulting from human impacts on the environment was an easy concept for most participants to grasp. The demonstrated worldviews of participants was dominated by social and cultural links to the past and present, but had weaker links to western concepts of 'the future'. Thus, discussions around planning adaptation did not generally fit easily into peoples' framings of their worlds. People's preferences for adaptation included building general community capacity, drawing from customary knowledge, being more involved in decision-making and learning more about scientific knowledge on climate change. Enabling collection of plant and animal foods and associated interaction with the landscape was also considered important for improving community independence, resilience and well-being for adaptation.There are gaps in the existing climate change adaptation literature concerning the design of spatial planning instruments and the relationship between policy instruments and the sociopolitical barriers to adaptation reform. To help address this gap, this article presents a typology of spatial planning instruments for adaptation and analyses the pattern of instrument choice in Australian planning processes in order to shed light on contextual factors that can impede adaptation. The analysis highlights how policy design can amplify the barriers to adaptation by arranging policy actors in ways inimical to reform and stripping decision makers of the instruments necessary to make and sustain desired policy changes.Climate change challenges traditional strategies to conserve native biological diversity while sustaining ecosystem services. Several key climate adaptation frameworks call for adoption of experimental management whereby different strategies are viewed as experimental treatments requiring untreated controls by which to compare alternative approaches. At the same time, a variety of traditional conservation approaches (e.g., protecting land as connected network of reserves) continue to be emphasized as critical climate adaptation strategies, assuming that reserves are sufficiently representative of ecological diversity. Lands within the National Wilderness Preservation System could be used as untreated control landscapes while also serving as cores within protected area networks. The value of NWPS lands to serve as both untreated controls and representative ecological reserves will require maximizing ecological diversity within protected areas. Here, we assessed ecological representation across wilderness, potential wilderness, and other lands located on the Flathead National Forest (FNF). Our aim was to quantify and map ecological cover types currently underrepresented in wilderness. Underrepresented land cover types included diverse low-elevation mixed-conifer forests. These cover types were well-distributed within potential wilderness, suggesting opportunities to expand untreated controls while diversifying ecological reserves. Investigating the proportion of potential wilderness composed of underrepresented ecosystems provides a means to prioritize areas for future wilderness recommendations. However, on the FNF large potential wilderness areas provide opportunities for significantly increasing the representation of individual ecosystems from minimal representation in wilderness. The method demonstrated here could be used in other national forest planning efforts to prioritize recommended wilderness based on increasing ecosystem representation at national and forest-wide scales.An analysis of observed trends in African annual-average near-surface temperatures over the last five decades reveals drastic increases, particularly over parts of the subtropics and central tropical Africa. Over these regions, temperatures have been rising at more than twice the global rate of temperature increase. An ensemble of high-resolution downscalings, obtained using a single regional climate model forced with the sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice fields of an ensemble of global circulation model (GCM) simulations, is shown to realistically represent the relatively strong temperature increases observed in subtropical southern and northern Africa. The amplitudes of warming are generally underestimated, however. Further warming is projected to occur during the 21st century, with plausible increases of 4-6 degrees Cover the subtropics and 3-5 degrees Cover the tropics by the end of the century relative to present-day climate under the A2 (a low mitigation) scenario of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios. High impact climate events such as heat-wave days and high fire-danger days are consistently projected to increase drastically in their frequency of occurrence. General decreases in soil-moisture availability are projected, even for regions where increases in rainfall are plausible, due to enhanced levels of evaporation. The regional dowscalings presented here, and recent GCM projections obtained for Africa, indicate that African annual-averaged temperatures may plausibly rise at about 1.5 times the global rate of temperature increase in the subtropics, and at a somewhat lower rate in the tropics. These projected increases although drastic, may be conservative given the model underestimations of observed temperature trends. The relatively strong rate of warming over Africa, in combination with the associated increases in extreme temperature events, may be key factors to consider when interpreting the suitability of global mitigation targets in terms of African climate change and climate change adaptation in Africa.The EU parliament has accepted a proposal of the EU commission on the backloading of EU emission allowances (EUA), where the auctioning of EUAs is postponed to future time periods. The EU commission has also proposed a market stability reserve (MSR), which is a quantity-based stabilisation policy that is aimed at controlling the volume of EUAs in circulation. Using an agent-based electricity market simulation with endogenous investment and a CO2 market (including banking), we analyse the backloading reform and the proposed MSR. We find backloading to only have a short-term impact of CO2 prices; regardless, there is a significant risk of high CO2 prices and volatility in the EU ETS. Our simulations indicate that the triggers of the proposed MSR appear to be set too low for the hedging need of power producers, effectively leading to a stricter cap in its initial 10-15 years of operation. While the current proposal may be improved by choosing different triggers, a reserve that is based on volume triggers is likely to increase price volatility, contrary to its purpose. Additional problems are the two-year delay in the response time and the abruptness of the response function, combined with the difficulty of estimating future hedging behaviour. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Concern about the effects of climate change have set in motion a search for flood protection measures to adapt coastlines to the foreseen accelerated sea level rise. In this context, the potential role of salt marshes to adapt the Wadden Sea's flood defences was explored in the Netherlands Wadden Region Delta Programme. This paper provides an overview of the steps taken by the programme in developing a climate change adaptation strategy so that others might learn from its experiences. The second aim is to summarize the knowledge generated by the programme on the potential role of salt marshes as part of a climate change adaption strategy. Explorative modelling results indicate that Wadden Sea salt marshes affect wave heights, even under extreme conditions. Therefore, a salt-marsh zone in front of the Wadden Sea dikes that could keep pace with sea level rise may result in a reduced dike reinforcement task. A salt marsh potential map gives a rough impression of locations that are potentially interesting for salt marsh conservation and development, based on the current situation, on available information about abiotic conditions for salt marsh formation and the habitats present in the coastal zone. Besides elongated stretches were seminatural salt marshes are already present or developing, several stretches along the Dutch Wadden Sea coast have favourable abiotic conditions for salt marsh development. However, the prospects for integrating salt marshes into flood defences depend also on other aspects. Various nature conservation agreements are in effect with their associated obligations. Furthermore, the foreseen value of salt marsh development compared to traditional reinforcements, in terms of both costs and benefits, must be considered.Damage due to floods has increased during the last few decades, and further increases are expected in several regions due to climate change and growing vulnerability. To address the projected increase in flood risk, a combination of structural and non-structural flood risk mitigation measures is considered as a promising adaptation strategy. Such a combination takes into account that flood defence systems may fail, and prepares for unexpected crisis situations via land-use planning and private damage reduction, e.g. via building precautionary measures, and disaster response. However, knowledge about damage-reducing measures is scarce and often fragmented since based on case studies. For instance, it is believed that private precautionary measures, like shielding with water shutters or building fortification, are especially effective in areas with frequent flood events and low flood water levels. However, some of these measures showed a significant damage-reducing effect also during the extreme flood event in 2002 in Germany. This review analyses potentials of land-use planning and private flood precautionary measures as components of adaptation strategies for global change. Focus is on their implementation, their damage-reducing effects and their potential contribution to address projected changes in flood risk, particularly in developed countries.There is growing evidence of climate change affecting infectious disease risk in Western Europe. The call for effective adaptation to this challenge becomes increasingly stronger. This paper presents the results of a survey exploring Dutch expert perspectives on adaptation responses to climate change impacts on infectious disease risk in Western Europe. Additionally, the survey explores the expert sample's prioritization of mitigation and adaptation, and expert views on the willingness and capacity of relevant actors to respond to climate change. An integrated view on the causation of infectious disease risk is employed, including multiple (climatic and non-climatic) factors. The results show that the experts consider some adaptation responses as relatively more cost-effective, like fostering interagency and community partnerships, or beneficial to health, such as outbreak investigation and response. Expert opinions converge and diverge for different adaptation responses. Regarding the prioritization of mitigation and adaptation responses expert perspectives converge towards a 50/50 budgetary allocation. The experts consider the national government/health authority as the most capable actor to respond to climate change-induced infectious disease risk. Divergence and consensus among expert opinions can influence adaptation policy processes. Further research is necessary to uncover prevailing expert perspectives and their roots, and compare these.In the UK, a disparity exists between modelled future weather/climatic patterns and the assessment of climate change impact on flood risk in the UK statutory planning process. Specifically, the impacts of climate change on the physical characteristics of a river catchment (e.g. land-use change, vegetation cover, soil moisture) are not considered when generating climate change weighted design flood events to assess the potential impact of flooding on a development in the future. Instead, a UK-wide averaged perturbation factor is applied. In this paper, a method is tested to integrate climate change data from UK climate projections 2009 (UKCP09) into design flood estimation methods (ReFH) as part of the current planning process. Scenarios are developed for a single, critical duration, 1% probability (1-in-100 year) design flood event that reflects plausible changes in catchment physical parameters in the 2080s. Initial results suggest that a 1-in-100 year storm in the 2080s may be greater in magnitude, rise and recede faster, and be associated with greater depths of flooding than predicted using current flood risk assessment frameworks in the UK. This information could provide new information to help developers choose more sustainable, flood-resistant and resilient designs.There is a growing need to implement anticipatory climate change adaptation measures, particularly in vulnerable sectors, such as in agriculture. However, setting goals to adapt is wrought with several challenges. This paper discusses two sets of challenges to goals of anticipatory adaptation, of (1) empirical and (2) normative character. The first set of challenges concern issues such as the extent to which the climate will change, the local impacts of such changes, and available adaptive responses. In the second set of uncertainties are issues such as the distribution of burdens to enhance adaptive capacities in vulnerable agents with a legitimate claim to such resources, and what anticipatory adaptation ideally should result in. While previous discussions have been limited to either discuss the first or second set of uncertainties, this paper suggests that both dimensions should be considered when setting goals in social planning with long time frames. A taxonomy will be suggested that combines both dimensions. Furthermore, strategies for managing situations in which there are either empirical, or normative, uncertainties will be proposed which could be used in social decision-making with long planning time-frames in which goals must be set.The proportionality hypothesis, originating from the curve number method at the event scale, is extended for modeling runoff in the water-limited and energy-limited seasons, respectively. The proposed seasonal runoff model includes three parameters for two separate seasons, which are wetting capacity, initial wetting and initial evaporation. The parameters for 203 watersheds from the United States are estimated, and the empirical relationships between the parameters and watershed properties, which include duration of the season, duration, intensity and frequency of rainfall events, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and soil saturated hydraulic properties, are obtained for applications in ungauged watersheds. These empirical equations present physical controls on runoff at the seasonal scale besides climate seasonality. The Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency coefficient of the seasonal runoff simulation for total runoff is higher than 0.5 in 86% (77%) of the study watersheds; while the surface runoff is 38% (46%) and the base flow is 92% (78%) in the energy-limited seasons (water-limited seasons). This paper shows the potential application of the proportionality hypothesis for estimating seasonal runoff, which is valuable for water resources planning and management. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In delivering public policy, governments worldwide increasingly partner with diverse sets of stakeholders. This spreads commercial risk, but particularly where agendas diverge, introduces new risks related to trust in relationships. The risk hypothesis distinguishes between networks for cooperation problems, where partners have high individual payoffs for uncooperative behaviors, and coordination problems, where partners subscribe to a common goal and uncooperative behaviors are less rewarding. We used mixed-methods to study networks of local and state government, developers, and consultants that center on joint-venture partnerships for developing new urban, residential projects. Statistical network methods showed that within the mix of partners involved in development projects, only state governments displayed structural patterns associated with solving cooperation problems (rather than coordination). In other words, the patterns of state government interactions showed they are most exposed to risky relationships. In contrast to the state governments' apparent exposure to risk, qualitative data showed they are not only well trusted but also overall the partnership networks reported very low levels of conflict. By exploring the distribution of cooperation and coordination, we identified which stakeholders perceived most risk. In our case, how the state governments' structure interactions in response to risky relationships leads to an overall network characterized by trust.The EU Structural and Cohesion Funds (SCF) are potentially important instruments for supporting climate policy-related efforts and addressing unevenly distributed capacities for successful mitigation and adaptation across the EU. This paper reports on the level of climate mainstreaming in EU regional development policy in the 2007-2013 programming period: first, we explore the normative commitment to climate change concerns through an analysis of the National Strategic Reference Frameworks (NSRFs) in which all 27 Member States specify their development and funding priorities. Second, we analyze the substantive commitments by mapping financial allocations from the SCF related to climate mitigation and adaptation. Based on this, we gain five main insights, which are relevant to future mainstreaming efforts and which may have important implications for the wider debate on the purpose of European regional policy: (1) mitigation appears well mainstreamed in EU cohesion policies, both in normative and financial terms, whereas adaptation is hardly considered. (2) Rhetorical commitment to climate concerns in the strategy documents does not necessarily match financial allocations to respective priorities. (3) Neither mitigation nor adaptation-relevant priorities and allocations in the NSRFs can be linked to the ambitious mitigation targets and low adaptive capacity, respectively. (4) There is ample potential to improve climate-relevant SCF support in the area of adaptation, particularly given that several existing priority areas for funding coincide with the climate adaptation agenda. (5) By conditioning a minimum percentage of funds to be spent on priority areas (earmarking), cohesion policy also gains meaning as a burden sharing instrument for adaptation to climate change.In the European Union's (EU) targets for the year 2020, climate change is recognised as a key challenge for biodiversity conservation. Meeting this challenge requires insight at three levels: the climate change impacts on biodiversity in the EU; the adaptation options put forward to alleviate these impacts; and how current EU policy can accommodate the adaptation options. These three topics have all been discussed in the peer-reviewed literature, but typically in isolation and with potential bias in attention for specific aspects such as species distribution shifts and network connectivity. Here, we bring these three levels together to identify matches and gaps between them, to guide policy development. In particular, we assess key concerns on the degree to which EU biodiversity policy facilitates climate change adaptation. Our findings indicate that, firstly, available adaptation options do not cover all impacts of climate change. Options are biased towards shifts and contractions in species distributions, while, e.g., disruption of species interactions is not addressed yet. Second, proposed adaptation options are often generic and lack spatial specificity, revealing an urgent need for guidance on identifying appropriate, albeit adaptive responses to the range of climate change impacts. Third, while EU biodiversity policy requires and supports adaptation in several ways, its narrow interpretation hinders its potential to conserve biodiversity under climate change. Remaining policy gaps include: (1) conservation targets need to better match conservation needs; (2) targets need to be set in a spatially coherent manner across national scales; (3) current monitoring appears insufficient to address these gaps.Spatial planning is increasingly expected to address climate change adaptation. In a Swedish context, this has meant a predominant focus on risks of flooding, erosion and sea-level rise. Gradually, regulatory mechanisms and concrete strategies are evolving to support practical mainstreaming. The aim of this paper was to analyze how frontline planners approach climate change adaptation in an urban context, emphasizing the process of settling and enacting strategic guidelines in spatial planning. The study suggests that municipalities are being preactive, i.e., preparing to act by settling guidelines rather than proactively implementing change when planning for new settlements. Further, the process of accommodating climate risks involves problems. Settling strategic guidelines and determining appropriate levels for what to adapt to are but the start of approaching climate change. Guidelines represent more of an endeavor than settling absolute limits and actually applying the guidelines involves challenges of accessibility and esthetics where the new waterfront limits meets older city structures. Further, guidelines are seen as negotiable since an overarching principle is to maintain flexibility in planning to allow for continued waterfront planning. Pursuing this path is motivated by current demand and previous urban settlement patterns. Also, as future protective measures are needed to secure existing urban areas at risk of flooding and erosion, planners see no use in preventing further waterfront development. Although settling guidelines are important in preparing to act, their practical effectiveness all fall back to how they are actually implemented in daily planning. This leads us to problematize the role of strategic guidelines to secure a climate-proof spatial planning.Climate scenarios predict that an effect of climate change will be more areas at risk of extensive flooding. This article builds on a qualitative case study of homeowners in the flood-prone area of Lolland in Denmark and uses the theories of Tim Ingold and Bruno Latour to rethink the way we understand homeowners' perception of climate change and local flood risk. Ingold argues that those perceptions are shaped by people's experiences with and connections to their local landscape. People experience the local variability of the weather, and not global climate change as presented in statistical data and models. This influences the way they understand the future risks of climate change. Concurrently, with the theory of Latour, we can understand how those experiences with the local landscape are mediated by the existing water-managing technologies such as pumps and dikes. These technologies prevent the residents in Lolland from experiencing many of the changes that are already occurring and, at the same time, give them a feeling of being able to control the water to the extent that it is prevented from flooding their homes, both now and in the future. The combination of these two theoretical approaches gives new insights as to why people living in flood-prone areas are not very concerned about climate change.Climate change is a likely addition to the unpredictable challenges urban communities will face. Enhancing urban forests has gained prominence as a climate adaptation tool in cities. The fact that urban forests are also vulnerable is now starting to emerge. Many urban forest management professionals do not know how to take climate change into account and what aspects of urban forest vulnerability to climate change to prioritize. Bringing climate change to the forefront of the decision-making process in urban forest management, and urban forests to the forefront of urban climate issues, is important to urban forest success. This paper presents an exploratory assessment of vulnerability to climate change in the Canadian urban forests of Halifax, London, and Saskatoon. The objectives of the assessment were to: 1) identify the elements of urban forest exposure and sensitivity to climate change, the nature of the expected impact, and the adaptive capacities that exist in these three urban forests; 2) assess which of these elements contributes more to urban forest vulnerability to climate change; and, 3) elicit adaptive strategies based on this information. The method used was participatory and expert-based and allowed for a systematic evaluation of vulnerability. Exposures related to drought, heat stress, and wind, susceptibility of urban trees to insects and diseases, and the sensitivity of young trees and tree species with specific temperature and moisture requirements, are the main concerns regarding the vulnerability of urban forests to climate change in these three cities.Size-specific sediment retention by diatom biofilms was measured by eroding intertidal muds at increasing shear stresses (0.01-.0.60 Pa) using a Gust microcosm. The grain sizes eroded from biofilm-covered sediment were compared to those from control cores from which the biofilms were destroyed using bleach. Biofilms were quantified using carbohydrate measurements. Cores from an intertidal mud flat in the Minas Basin of the Bay of Fundy (Canada) showed biofilms preferentially retained clays and very fine silts relative to fine and medium silts. In contrast, prior field observations on an intertidal sand flat indicated that fine and medium silts were preferentially retained by biofilms relative to clays and very fine silts. These contrasting results suggest a link between size-specific sediment retention and sediment texture, where sand biofilms retain coarser, non-cohesive sediment grains, while mud biofilms retain finer, cohesive sediment grains. This relationship implies that biofilms could contribute to a positive feedback that would preserve existing sediment texture. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The considerable gap between the individuals level of concern about climate change and the degree to which they act on these concerns is a major impediment to achieving more sustainable consumption patterns. We empirically investigate how the amount of discretionary time that individuals have at their disposal influences both what type of sustainable consumption practices they adopt and the size of this value-action gap. We contend that discretionary time has a twofold effect. Given fixed preferences, time-poor individuals tend to satisfy their preferences by adopting sustainable consumption practices that require relatively less time. Moreover, a lack of discretionary time also inhibits agents from developing preferences that actually reflect their underlying environmental concerns. Our findings support both of these hypotheses and suggest that increasing discretionary time is associated with significant reductions in the value-action gap. This suggest that policies which increase discretionary time, such as measures to improve the work-life balance, may thus help in fostering the emergence of pro-environmental preferences among consumers in the long run. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Morphology-based studies have suggested a very depauperate bee fauna for islands in the South West Pacific, and recent genetic studies since have indicated an even smaller endemic fauna with many bee species in this region resulting from human-aided dispersal. These introduced species have the potential to both disrupt native pollinator suites as well as augment crop pollination, but for most species the timings of introduction are unknown. We examined the distribution and nesting biology of the long-tongued bee Braunsapis puangensis that was first recorded from Fiji in 2007. This bee has now become widespread in Fiji and both its local abundance and geographical range are likely to increase dramatically. The impacts of this invasion are potentially enormous for agriculture and native ecosystems, but they also provide opportunities for understanding how social insect species adapt to new environments. We outline the major issues associated with this recent invasion and argue that a long-term monitoring study is needed.Where power lies and how it is conceived in studies of governance and institutions is often not discussed. This is due to the ubiquitous nature of the topic. Power is shaped by a variety of institutional factors, including the architecture of governing structures, questions of scale and level, and access to key resources including knowledge and capital, among other factors. To date, there are relatively few tools available that allow policy makers, researchers, and development practitioners to render these power dynamics explicit and thus take steps to mitigate the potentially deleterious effects of power orientations. This paper proposes a methodology, multi-level stakeholder influence mapping (MSIM), for elucidating power dynamics between actors in complex system regimes. MSIM departs from existing power mapping techniques in that it relies on individual interviews conducted across multiple actor levels and utilizes a participatory mapping process for shared system boundary critique. MSIM was piloted in Nepal's agricultural climate change adaptation regime with actors from the central, regional, and local operational levels. The results suggest that without proper consideration of the role of power in agricultural adaptation regimes, the resulting interventions will likely be insufficient in catalyzing adaptation pathways and moderating the negative impacts of climate change. Furthermore, power analyses produced from the perspective of a single actor level or respondent type can risk sub optimization of adaptation outcomes and can misdirect the lobbying efforts of those agencies utilizing mapping outputs.Habitat fragmentation has been shown to disrupt ecosystem processes such as plant-pollinator mutualisms. Consequently, mating patterns in remnant tree populations are expected to shift towards increased inbreeding and reduced pollen diversity, with fitness consequences for future generations. However, mating patterns and phenotypic assessments of open-pollinated progeny have rarely been combined in a single study. Here, we collected seeds from 37 Eucalyptus incrassata trees from contrasting stand densities following recent clearance in a single South Australian population (intact woodland = 12.6 trees ha(-1); isolated pasture = 1.7 trees ha(-1); population area = 10 km(2)). 649 progeny from these trees were genotyped at eight microsatellite loci. We estimated genetic diversity, spatial genetic structure, indirect contemporary pollen flow and mating patterns for adults older than the clearance events and open-pollinated progeny sired post-clearance. A proxy of early stage progeny viability was assessed in a common garden experiment. Density had no impact on mating patterns, adult and progeny genetic diversity or progeny growth, but was associated with increased mean pollen dispersal. Weak spatial genetic structure among adults suggests high historical gene flow. We observed preliminary evidence for inbreeding depression related to stress caused by fungal infection, but which was not associated with density. Higher observed heterozygosities in adults compared with progeny may relate to weak selection on progeny and lifetime-accumulated mortality of inbred adults. E. incrassata appears to be resistant to the negative mating pattern and fitness changes expected within fragmented landscapes. This pattern is likely explained by strong outcrossing and regular long-distance pollen flow.Floods account for more than half of the global hydrometeorological risks. Severe floods cause significant economic shocks and loss of lives, particularly for developing countries such as Jamaica. There is need for more information on the present and projected flood risks to justify macro-scale planning for climate change adaptation and facilitate the decision-making processes. In this study, a catalogue of 198 flood events occurring between 1678 and 2010 is compiled for Jamaica and used to examine the climatology, occurrence, trends, causes and duration of the island's severe events. The annual flood risk is estimated to be a loss of life rate of 4 persons and estimated annual damage of USD96.3 million per annum in 2010 values and approximately 0.84 % of GDP per annum. Macro-scale models for flood risks (deaths and damages) are also developed using data from the flood catalogue and maximum precipitation at the town and parish level. The models examine the relationship between flood risks (death and damages) and extreme rainfall depths and intensities. Future climate risks of loss of lives and damages are predicted to increase 11 and 9 %, respectively, to 4.4 persons and USD105.2 million per annum.The sustainable use of environmental resources is an important tenet guiding future governance and management in the Anthropocene. However, the concept of sustainability is based on underlying assumptions of how sustainable development policies are formulated and applied. This commentary describes some of the flaws of 'sustainability' which are that (1) it requires full knowledge of the workings of Earth's multiple physical systems and their sensitivities; and (2) the structures and management tools used by societal actors have low adaptive capacity to address ongoing changes to the physical environment. This commentary considers that societal actors and their future roles are likely to emerge from changing economic patterns, community structures and geopolitical contexts over coming decades. This providing an alternative Anthropocene future to that which is commonly posited, and emphasizes the use and limitations of sustainable development and the societal actors that are concerned with it.The widespread concern that research into and potential implementation of climate engineering would reduce mitigation and adaptation is critically examined. First, empirical evidence of such moral hazard or risk compensation in general is inconclusive, and the empirical evidence to date in the case of climate engineering indicates that the reverse may occur. Second, basic economics of substitutes shows that reducing mitigation in response to climate engineering implementation could provide net benefits to humans and the environment, and that climate engineering might theoretically increase mitigation through strong income effects. Third, existing policies strive to promote other technologies and measures, including climate adaptation, which induce analogous risk-compensating behaviours. If the goal of climate policy is to minimize climate risks, this concern should not be grounds for restricting or prohibiting climate engineering research. Three potential means for this concern to manifest in genuinely deleterious ways, as well as policy options to reduce these effects, are identified.The rapid growth and expansion of urbanized landscapes in cities has resulted in an increase in air temperature and has lowered the bioclimatic comfort levels in urban landscapes. Recent studies to estimate the climatic response of urban landscape conversion have mostly examined the relationship between land use/land cover (LULC) change and land surface temperature (LST) data collected using advanced remote sensing (RS) techniques instead of atmospheric temperature. In this respect, four decadal Landsat images from the 1980s were used to investigate the impact of landscape transformation on atmospheric temperature. The mean and average minimum and maximum monthly air temperature datasets were used in the analysis. The CORINE (Coordination of Information on Environment) index was used to determine LULC diversity in an urban development boundary and urban periphery. Consequently, clustered LULC change values for the last three decades were integrated with decadal air temperature anomalies. The findings revealed an important relationship between monthly mean air temperature and land changes over recent decades, which resulted in an increase in urban fabric land use, deforestation land cover changes and conversion of permanent crop fields to artificial green houses for earlier vegetable production; the R-sqr values for these regressions were 97.7%, 88.5% and 90.6% respectively. On the other hand, the most important increasing temperature trends were obtained for the average monthly minimum air temperature, which supports the global warming concerns of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and related studies, which have concluded that an increased nighttime temperature results in urban heat islands (UHIs). The results should be used to support better urban landscape plans and architectural designs to improve human thermal comfort for sustainable urban life in Mediterranean cities. Street geometry and orientation to wind breeze, the Height/Width H/W ratio of buildings, and sizes of open and green spaces should be examined carefully in urban planning and design for climate adaptation.Based on a systematic literature review method that consists of a bibliometric and a content analysis, we examine the current state of research on climate change adaptation and mitigation inter-relationships. Although systematic literature reviews have been applied in other research fields such as health sciences, there are only a few examples in social and environmental sciences. First, we investigate in which research fields the inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation have been studied and how they have been conceptualised. Second, we analyse what kinds of synergies, trade-offs or conflicts between adaptation and mitigation policies and practices can be identified particularly in urban studies. Third, based on selected urban studies, we examine how inter-relationships between the two policy objectives or practical measures have been studied, in which context, and what is the main outcome of these studies. We also present what suggestions there are for solving conflicts, and how synergies can be enhanced in urban areas. The results indicate that there is value in examining the two together since urban areas are balancing between adaptation and mitigation and have to negotiate trade-offs at different scales.Concepts from behavioral economics can be used to make predictions concerning how climate change will impact the economy. Six new predictions from behavioral economics are compared to their rational expectations counterparts.Adaptation is a highly malleable concept and people may use various framings of adaptation to support what they are already doing and limit their need to change. By analysing organizations' different, strategic constructions of climate change, this malleability becomes clear. Our paper focuses on two Australian wine companies' approaches to climate change. Using an analysis of interviews with 18 company staff we uncovered two divergent business logics underlying the same climate change responses. Our analysis extends beyond simply identifying dominant frames of climate change to examining what motivates different organizations to create different frames. This has implications for the climate change responses that organizations might implement (or not) and more broadly, for how climate change 'adaptation' (and 'mitigation') is understood and applied. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is expected to have numerous and complex impacts on water resources, with consequences for agricultural production through changes in crop water requirements; the availability and quality of water; and increases in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods. Although there is substantial uncertainty about the magnitude of impacts, especially at the local level, this does not call for inaction. On the basis of the recent work undertaken by OECD in this area, we identify and discuss three main dimensions for a comprehensive adaptation strategy for agricultural water management: i) creating an enabling environment to foster on-farm adaptive capacities through policies targeted at innovation, education, and advisory and extension services; ii) improving agricultural water management through the development of flexible and robust instruments, such as water pricing and water markets, to deal with both short-run water shortages and long-run water stress; iii) developing and improving risk management tools for droughts and floods to ensure that the true cost of risks is signalled to farmers while at the same time improving the efficiency of risk allocation. We highlight the importance of policy coherence in recognising the linkages between climate change adaptation and mitigation.The aboveground biomass and carbon stock of less commercialized Eucalyptus open forests of south-eastern Australia are not well-known due to a lack of accurate biomass equations for even the prevalent species in these forests. To improve biomass and carbon estimates of these forests, a total of 245 trees of 11 eucalypt species with DBH (diameter overbark at the breast height of 1.3 m above ground level) up to 139 cm and height up to 39 m were destructively sampled across three broad study sites in north-central Victoria. Trees were sampled as the four aboveground components of lower stem, upper stem, crown, and dead attached stem and branch materials. All four components were weighed completely in the field. To determine the dry to fresh weight ratio for each of the four components, 90 of these trees were further subsampled for moisture content. General linear models were used to relate dry to fresh weight ratio to site, species and tree size and the parameters of the models were estimated through generalized estimating equations. The model-estimated dry to fresh weight ratios were used to convert fresh weight to dry weight for all biomass components of fresh weight sample trees. Using the derived dry weight data, two systems of nonlinear additive biomass equations for stem, crown and total tree biomass were developed for each of the 11 species, with DBH as the independent variable in one system and the combined variable of DBH and tree height in another. Residual error variances and approximate confidence bands containing about 90% of the observed data about the mean curve of predicted biomass were estimated and derived for all biomass components of each species. In addition to the species-specific equations, two sets of site-specific biomass equations were developed using pooled biomass data from each site regardless of species. These systems of additive biomass equations will improve the accuracy of biomass and carbon estimation of open eucalypt forests in south-eastern Australia. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global warming poses a threat to organisms with temperature-dependent sex determination because it can affect operational sex ratios. Using a multigenerational experiment with a marine fish, we provide the first evidence that parents developing from early life at elevated temperatures can adjust their offspring gender through nongenetic and nonbehavioural means. However, this adjustment was not possible when parents reproduced, but did not develop, at elevated temperatures. Complete restoration of the offspring sex ratio occurred when parents developed at 1.5 degrees C above the present-day average temperature for one generation. However, only partial improvement in the sex ratio occurred at 3.0 degrees C above average conditions, even after two generations, suggesting a limitation to transgenerational plasticity when developmental temperature is substantially increased. This study highlights the potential for transgenerational plasticity to ameliorate some impacts of climate change and that development from early life may be essential for expression of transgenerational plasticity in some traits.Climate projections are used as input for impact models to simulate the effects of a changing climate for various applications. Assessing the reliability of these results is important because of their use for climate change adaptation. A first step to identify possible uncertainties is the validation of the climate model data. In this study, a simple approach is presented which uses statistical methods to estimate the accuracy of climate model data and provides a measure to assess the adequacy of the data for hydrological impact modelling. As an example the data of three regional climate models - including the statistical model WETTREG2006 and the dynamical models REMO and CLM, all driven by the global climate model ECHAM5/MPI-OM - are evaluated with respect to their ability to reproduce observed temperature and precipitation. The validation is carried out for interpolated areal means for the period from 1961-2000 based on daily values using different indices and efficiency criteria. The study area is the whole catchment of the rivers Aller and Leine (Lower Saxony, Germany), including nine subbasins of the catchment. The results show deviations for the dynamical climate models according to the observed temperatures as well as the drought indices. As regards WETTREG, however, all indices were in more or less good agreement. The hydrological model was able to adequately simulate discharge when driven by meteorological data and climate model data from the 20th century control run. However, the bandwidth of the goodness-of-fit of simulated historical high and low discharge was, however, larger than the bandwidth obtained for the corresponding extreme climate conditions. For a significance level of 95 % it could be evidenced by means of the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test that the examined model chains are suitable for performing climate impact assessment. Albeit extreme conditions, especially low flows, should invariably be evaluated depending on the model chain in order to provide a more reliable basis for decisions and adaptation measures.In this study, the spatio-temporal variability and trends of droughts across Bolivia between 1955 and 2012 were investigated using two climate drought indices: the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), which is based on precipitation data, and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), which is based on the difference between the precipitation and the reference evapotranspiration (ETo). We found that the average drought conditions across the country showed a temporal behaviour mainly characterized by decadal variations. The spatial pattern of drought evolution showed marked differences between the Amazonian region and the Bolivian Altiplano. Both regions showed different drought periods, a lower frequency of drought variability in the Amazon region and trends towards drier conditions in the Altiplano, mainly due to a higher atmospheric water demand as a consequence of increased ETo. We also showed that inclusion of ETo, obtained from maximum and minimum temperature records, increased the spatial heterogeneity of the drought evolution in relation to the evolution observed when only precipitation droughts were considered. The SPEI, the calculation of which includes precipitation and ETo, indicated intensification in drought severity in the last years analysed relative to the pattern found when precipitation droughts alone were considered, and also indicated an increase in the magnitude and duration of drought events. The potential for increasing drought conditions under various climate change scenarios is discussed.The urban dimension of ecosystem services (ES) is underexposed, while the importance of ES for human well-being is nowhere as evident as in cities. Urban challenges such as air pollution, noise and heat can be moderated by urban green space (UGS), simultaneously providing multiple other services. However, available methods to quantify ES cannot typically deal with the high spatial and thematic resolution land cover data that are needed to better understand ES supply in the urban context. This study derives methods to quantify and map a bundle of six ES as supplied by UGS, using land cover data with high spatial and thematic resolution, and applies these to the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Land cover data comprise eight classes of UGS. Methods are derived from an evidence base on the importance of UGS types for the supply of each of the six ES that was built using literature review. The evidence base reveals that UGS types differ in their contribution to various ES, although the strength of the evidence varies. However, existing indicators for urban ES often do not discriminate between UGS types. To derive UGS-specific indicators, we combined methods and evidence from different research contexts (ES, non-ES, urban, non-urban). Rotterdam shows high spatial variation in the amount of UGS present, and accounting for this in ES supply reveals that ES bundles depend on UGS composition and configuration. While the contribution of UGS types to ES supply differed markedly with UGS type and ES considered, we demonstrate that synergies rather than trade-offs exist among the ES analysed.Synthesis and applications. Our findings underline the importance of a careful design of urban green space (UGS) in city planning for ecosystem services (ES) provision. Based on the latest insights on how different UGS provide ES, the methods presented in this study enable a more detailed quantification and mapping of the supply of ES in cities, allowing assessments of current supply of key urban ES and alternative urban designs. Such knowledge is indispensable in the quest for designing healthier and climate-resilient cities. Our findings underline the importance of a careful design of urban green space (UGS) in city planning for ecosystem services (ES) provision. Based on the latest insights on how different UGS provide ES, the methods presented in this study enable a more detailed quantification and mapping of the supply of ES in cities, allowing assessments of current supply of key urban ES and alternative urban designs. Such knowledge is indispensable in the quest for designing healthier and climate-resilient cities.Runoff and sediment loads from river basin are largely affected by the interplay of climate variability and human activities within the basin. However, distinguishing the impacts of climate variability and human activities would vastly improve our knowledge of water resources, climate variability and climate adaptation, and watershed management. We propose a new and simple method to determine the impact of human activities within paired datasets under the same or similar weather conditions (SWC). These weather conditions cover one or more meteorological elements such as precipitation, temperature, or evaporation. If there are two or more periods with similar weather conditions but different runoff, the relative runoff and sediment load changes can be considered a consequence of human-induced land surface changes. This study will report on the application of this new method, using the Yan River Basin in China as a case study. We found 10 sets PPs (paired periods) in 1 year intervals and 12 sets of PPs in intervals of 3 years when (1) there was a 2.0% and 1.0% difference of annual precipitation and annual ETO, respectively, (2) the relationship between monthly precipitation and ETO of PPs was significant (P < 0.05) and, (3) there was no overlap of years for the PPs with intervals of 1 and 3 years. We found that the impact of human activities varied greatly between PPs, with the main trend of declining PPs, matched the trends evident from statistical analysis and land use and land cover (LULC) change evaluation. The method is simple and easily applicable to selected periods in most areas and could be extended when more detailed data are available. The result of this method is the impact of all human activities, allowing for further discussion on the contributions of each kind of human activity over time in determining the range which links the research results at different scales, e.g. to define the sediment delivery ratio (SDR) describing soil erosion on catchment slopes and sediment load in the river. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Objective: To determine key points of intervention in urban food systems to improve the climate resilience, equity and healthfulness of the whole system. Design: The paper brings together evidence from a 3-year, Australia-based mixed-methods research project focused on climate change adaptation, cities, food systems and health. In an integrated analysis of the three research domains encompassing the production, distribution and consumption sectors of the food chain - the paper examines the efficacy of various food subsystems (industrial, alternative commercial and civic) in achieving climate resilience and good nutrition. Setting: Greater Western Sydney, Australia. Subjects: Primary producers, retailers and consumers in Western Sydney. Results: This overarching analysis of the tripartite study found that: (i) industrial food production systems can be more environmentally sustainable than alternative systems, indicating the importance of multiple food subsystems for food security; (ii) a variety of food distributors stocking healthy and sustainable items is required to ensure that these items are accessible, affordable and available to all; and (iii) it is not enough that healthy and sustainable foods are produced or sold, consumers must also want to consume them. In summary, a resilient urban food system requires that healthy and sustainable food items are produced, that consumers can attain them and that they actually wish to purchase them. Conclusions: This capstone paper found that the interconnected nature of the different sectors in the food system means that to improve environmental sustainability, equity and population health outcomes, action should focus on the system as a whole and not just on any one sector.This paper discusses four challenges for mainstreaming climate change into European flood and drought risk management policies within the water and agriculture sectors: the climate change impact challenge; the robust policy challenge; the EU policy maze challenge; and the implementation challenge. We illustrate with examples from the Warta River Basin in Poland. The challenge of reliably estimating the impact of climate change on flood and drought risk at the local and regional scales has led to the pursuit of robust policy solutions. Robust policy solutions, as we demonstrate by comparing reservoirs and small ponds, can be equally intractable given the lack of information on their costs, benefits, and co-benefits, particularly if climate change is taken into account. The mainstreaming challenge is further complicated by the myriad of EU policies targeting flood and drought risks. While the European Commission is working towards a coherent policy picture, we demonstrate contradictions regarding reservoir and other water retention policies. Finally, mainstreaming climate change in flood and drought policy is further challenged by the web of responsible institutions at local, regional, and national scales.This article explores the emergence and co-production of 'connectivity conservation' in Australia. Connectivity conservation seeks to restore ecological connectivity at a landscape scale through collaborative conservation. Claims that connectivity conservation will connect landscapes and communities resonate powerfully throughout the Australian conservation community. This metaphor is part of a broader science narrative that shifts connectivity from a descriptive ecological concept to one imbued with normative claims about the inherent value of collaboration and large intact landscapes. In a relatively short period, this narrative has taken hold. The Federal Government developed a National Wildlife Corridors Plan and there are now connectivity initiatives in every Australian state. When stabilized in the Australian landscape, the concept of connectivity as come to embody much more than the original scientific interpretation of the terminology. This expanded focus has been core to the popularization of the practice of connectivity conservation, however it has raised concerns within certain academic communities about the scientific rigor underpinning these new efforts. This article analyses 'connectivity' as a boundary object, and an emergent science narrative that has united diverse and conflicting perspectives. In this case, the interplay between science, policy, and practice produced significant policy outcomes despite a somewhat contested debate about the relationship between connectivity science and the practice of connectivity conservation. As connectivity science and practice co-evolve, there are growing calls to support collaborative knowledge production. This paper draws on Jasanoff's critical analytical understanding of co-production to highlight the importance of understanding the social and normative dimensions in instrumental efforts to co-produce knowledge. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article applies a 'knowledge brokering' approach to contextualise the development of an integrated computer modelling tool into the real world policy context of adaptation of agriculture to climate change at the EU level. In particular, the article tests a number of knowledge brokering strategies described and theorised in the literature, but seldom empirically tested. The article finds that while the policy context can be used to identify a theoretically informed knowledge brokering strategy, in practice a strategy's 'success' is more informed by practical considerations, such as whether the tool development process is knowledge or demand driven. In addition, in practice the knowledge brokering process is found to be dynamic and messy, which is not always apparent in the literature. The article goes on to question the perception that there is always a need (or a desire) to bridge the gap between researchers and policy makers in the tool development process. Rather than a problem of design and communication, the science policy interface may be characterised more by a high level of competition between researchers and research organisations to have their tool legitimised by its use in the policy making process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The science-based management of natural resources requires knowledge exchange between scientists and environmental decision-makers, however, this exchange remains a significant challenge. Rather, evidence suggests that decision-makers rely on individual experience or other secondary sources of knowledge in isolation from scientific evidence when formulating decisions, potentially compromising the effectiveness of their decisions. As a result a new field of research broadly characterised as 'knowledge exchange' has emerged, focused largely on identifying and overcoming the barriers to knowledge exchange among scientists and decision-makers. More recently knowledge exchange research has also begun to explore the relationship between science and decision-making specifically in relation to marine ecosystems and resources. The aim of this paper is to review the literature in relation to knowledge exchange for natural resource management, with a focus on recent evidence in relation to the management of marine resources. This review identifies critical barriers inhibiting knowledge exchange among marine scientists and decisions-makers, such as the inaccessibility of science to decision-makers as well as institutional barriers that limit the extent to which scientists and decision-makers can prioritise knowledge exchange activities. Options for overcoming these barriers, such as novel approaches to knowledge exchange (e.g. knowledge co-production, knowledge brokers and boundary organisations) and the enabling environments and institutional reforms needed to complement efforts to improve knowledge exchange, are also identified. This review concludes by articulating the gaps in our understanding of knowledge exchange, to help guide future research in this field and improve the sustainable management of marine resources. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Small islands are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than most continental regions. However, islands also feature a high degree of resilience through resources from dense social networks, such as collective action, norms of reciprocity, and relations of trust. Therefore, we argue that these resources generally defined as social capital are particularly relevant for climate change adaptation on small islands. Current research on the role of social capital for communities covers many different aspects, such as local knowledge, economic development, and political capacity. But effective adaptation relies on understanding the role of social capital for these aspects in connection to the specific impacts of climate change a holistic approach is needed. Based on empirical case studies we developed an analytical framework that provides a step-by-step approach to help analyse the potential of social capital for the adaptation to climate change in island-specific case studies. These steps, among others, include an assessment of social capital, hazard mapping, and the analysis of political and economic capacity. Moreover, the framework suggests methods on how to analyse these steps. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The impacts of climate change and decreasing local resources are increasingly threatening the resilience and sustainable management of urban areas and infrastructures worldwide. To cope with such threads and vulnerabilities, urban sustainability and resilience oriented plans have been developed. Accordingly, policy makers need to learn how to properly integrate urban sustainability with urban resilience principles and practices in the re-shaping of urban agendas. In order to highlight the future potential of integrating transformative resilience principles into the general sustainability approach, this paper provides a critical review of a recent and successful urban regeneration and development plan, the "Mexico City Green Plan". This paper also discusses a feasibility study for urban redevelopment and transition towards resilience in Mexico City, in order to illustrate the necessity and potential of urban resilience for the improvement of the life prospects of disadvantaged inhabitant groups. The Valle del Chalco neighborhood in Mexico City is presented as an example, whereby resilient and sustainable urban transformation was achieved through an integrated and sustainable decentralized water management and infrastructure plan. In practice, the terms 'Sustainability' and 'Resilience' can be exploited to justify conventional, non-sustainable urban development practices. The results discussed in this paper demonstrate the necessity of the integration of transformative resilience principles within sustainable urban redevelopment and regeneration. The main findings are i) Policy makers underestimate the potential of urban resilience in shaping more sustainable urban futures, since they only understand resilience as the flipside of specific vulnerabilities, ii) The building of urban resilience within sustainable urban transitions and redevelopment can effectively foster people empowerment, particularly in combination with the decentralization of resources management systems, and iii) The main challenge for the implementation and execution of transitions processes towards urban resilience and sustainability is the elimination of political barriers. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background Different locations and study periods were used in the assessment of the relationships between heatwaves and mortality. However, little is known about the comparability and consistency of the previous effect estimates in the literature. This study assessed the heatwave-mortality relationship using different study periods in the three largest Australian cities (Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney). Methods Daily data on climatic variables and mortality for the three cities were obtained from relevant government agencies between 1988 and 2011. A consistent definition of heatwaves was used for these cities. Poisson generalised additive model was fitted to assess the impact of heatwaves on mortality. Results Non-accidental and circulatory mortality significantly increased during heatwaves across the three cities even with different heatwave definitions and study periods. Using the summer data resulted in the largest increase in effect estimates compared to those using the warm season or the whole year data. Conclusion The findings may have implications for developing standard approaches to evaluating the heatwave-mortality relationship and advancing heat health warning systems. It also provides an impetus to methodological advance for assessing climate change-related health consequences.Despite projections of biodiversity loss and proposed adaptations to climate change, few data exist on the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptation strategies in minimizing biodiversity loss. Given the urgent need for action, scientific experts can fill critical information gaps by providing rapid and discerning risk assessment. A survey of 2,329 biodiversity experts projects, on average, that 9.5% of species will become extinct due to climate change within the next 100 years. This average projection is low relative to previously published values but substantial in absolute terms, because it amounts to a loss of hundreds of thousands of species over the next century. The average projection increases to 21% when experts are asked to estimate the percentage of species that will become extinct within the next 100 years due to climate change in combination with other causes. More than three-quarters of respondents reported being uncertain about their extinction estimates. A majority of experts preferred protected areas or corridors to reduce extinction risk but identified ex situ conservation and no intervention as the most feasible strategies. Experts also suggest that managed relocation of species, a particular adaptation strategy, is justifiable and effective in some situations but not others. Justifiable circumstances include the prevention of species extinction and overcoming human-made barriers to dispersal, and while experts are divided on the potential effectiveness of managed relocation for most taxonomic groups, higher percentages predict it effective for woody plants, terrestrial insects, and mammals. Most experts are open to the potential benefits of managed relocation but are concerned about unintended harmful consequences, particularly putting non-target species at risk of extinction. On balance, published biodiversity scientists feel that managed relocation, despite controversy about it, can be part of the conservation adaptation portfolio.Involving a wide-range of stakeholders at different moments in the planning of urban adaptation to climate change can help to overcome different barriers to adaptation, such as a lack of common perception, or control over options. This Article argues for an approach that involves a wide range of actors throughout the planning process in order to confront the challenges of urban adaptation to climate change. It builds on the results of a three-year participatory action research project to identify the catalysts with which local administrations can overcome the lack of data, the low level of engagement around the climate issue, and the cause-and-effect linkages of climate change impacts on the urban environment. Significant factors include territorial rootedness, leveraging actors' experience, interaction between actors, as well as the valuing of local actors as experts of territorial management rather than as novices with regard to climate change adaptation. In addition to contributing towards the engagement of a large number of stakeholders around adaptation issues, a planning process that involves representatives from various sectors and during several stages contributes to a greater understanding of these issues and their linkages. It follows that such a process will bring changes to urban practices by better articulating local concerns about climatic issues. Policy relevance Although participation is commonly advocated in policy responses to climate change, only few empirical studies have investigated the ways in which local actors' knowledge can be integrated into climate change adaptation planning processes. The article builds on the results of an action research project carried out in Quebec City, Canada, to address the relevance of involving a progressively broader range of actors as the adaptation process moves through its various phases. Given that a multitude of barriers to adaptation are at play at different times in a municipality, collaborations between local stakeholders emerge as a key factor. These collaborations provide greater insight into the linkages between climate change impacts and the urban environment and, in doing so, bring into question ordinary urban management and design practices.Traditional knowledge of disasters has been found to save lives. On remote islands where telecommunications to the mainland are unreliable, unless there are always working batteries in the radio, signs from the environment may be the only warning of an oncoming cyclone. But this knowledge is in danger of being lost, as it is an oral history not well documented, and younger people increasingly rely on technology. This article presents the results of fieldwork on remote islands in Fiji and Tonga in the South Pacific, documenting natural warning signs on islands in two different countries. The results show that there are numerous known signs, with remarkable similarities and consistencies between the two islands. This provides evidence that not only is traditional knowledge of warning signs for cyclones alive and well, the consistency in the signs suggests support for this knowledge as being just as important as western scientific knowledge. The integration of traditional knowledge and western scientific knowledge into a comprehensive warning system may help to overcome some of the limitations of the existing system and the reasons why warnings are sometimes ignored.Climate change is contributing to the severity and rate of stream degradation by changing the timing of peak flows, altering flow regimes, creating more frequent and intense disturbances, and increasing stream temperatures. Herein we describe three case studies of trout stream adaptation that address existing and climate-driven causes of degradation through habitat restoration. The case studies vary in geography and complexity, but all include restoration efforts intended to address multiple causes of stream degradation and improve the resilience of these streams to floods, droughts, and wildfires. Four elements of successful climate adaptation projects emerge: (1) habitat assessments that help drive project location and design, (2) projects that directly address climate change impacts and increase habitat resilience, (3) projects that combine to achieve watershed-scale impacts, and (4) projects that include sufficient monitoring to determine their effectiveness. We describe solutions to common challenges in conducting climate change adaptation, including how to balance scientific assessments with opportunities when choosing projects, how smaller projects can be aggregated to achieve watershed-scale benefits, and how citizen science efforts can augment monitoring programs. El cambio climatico esta contribuyendo a incrementar la severidad y la tasa de degradacion de los rios a traves de la alteracion en la estacionalidad del flujo maximo, modificacion del regimen de flujos, generacion de perturbaciones mas frecuentes e intensas e incremento de la temperatura de los rios. Aqui se describen tres casos de estudio de la adaptacion de rios en donde habita la trucha, en los que se abordan las causas de la degradacion que son provocadas por el cambio climatico, mediante la restauracion del habitat. Los casos de estudio varian en cuanto a ubicacion geografica y complejidad, pero en todos se contemplan esfuerzos de restauracion enfocados a abordar multiples causas de degradacion de rios y mejoramiento de la resiliencia de estos ante inundaciones, sequias e incendios naturales. Se consideraron cuatro elementos para lograr una adaptacion exitosa al cambio climatico: 1) evaluaciones del habitat que ayuden a disenar y establecer donde llevar a cabo los proyectos; 2) proyectos que aborden directamente los impactos del cambio climatico y el incremento en la resiliencia del habitat; 3) proyectos que, al combinarse, logren resultados a nivel de cuenca hidrologica; y 4) proyectos que incluyan un monitoreo suficiente como para que se pueda determinar su efectividad. Tambien se describen soluciones a los clasicos retos que implica la adaptacion al cambio climatico, incluyendo como encontrar un balance entre evaluaciones cientificas y eleccion de proyectos, como se pueden integrar varios proyectos pequenos para conseguir beneficios a escala de cuenca y como se puede incrementar el monitoreo mediante esfuerzos ciudadanos.Public participation in decision making is a central component of the planning process; however, implementing effective engagement initiatives to resolve complex planning and policy problems, such as climate change, is challenging for planners. These challenges are particularly acute in coastal communities throughout Australia, where many settlements are at risk of future climate perturbations. Using the International Association for Public Participation framework for public participation, we analyse three local government led public participation initiatives in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, Australia. Our analysis suggests there are three critical factors that can influence the level of public participation in the context of climate change adaptation: the technocratic approach to decision making; absent high order government support; and the lack of evaluation mechanisms for public participation.Problem, research strategy, and findings: Cities are increasingly experiencing the effects of climate change and taking steps to adapt to current and future natural hazard risks. Research on these efforts has identified numerous barriers to climate adaptation planning, but has not yet systematically evaluated the relative importance of different constraints for a large number of diverse cities. We draw on responses from 156 U.S. cities that participated in a 2011 global survey on local adaptation planning, 60% of which are planning for climate change. We use logistic regression analysis to assess the significance of 13 indicators measuring political leadership, fiscal and administrative resources, ability to obtain and communicate climate information, and state policies in predicting the status of adaptation planning. In keeping with the literature, we find that greater local elected officials' commitment, higher municipal expenditures per capita, and an awareness that the climate is already changing are associated with cities engaging in adaptation planning. The presence of state policies on climate adaptation is surprisingly not a statistically significant predictor, suggesting that current policies are not yet strong enough to increase local adaptation planning. However, the model's sampling bias toward larger and more environmentally progressive cities may mask the predictive power of state policies and other indicators.Takeaway for practice: State governments have an opportunity to increase local political commitment by integrating requirements for climate-risk evaluations into existing funding streams and investment plans. Regional planning entities also can help overcome the lack of local fiscal capacity and political support by facilitating the exchange of information, pooling and channeling resources, and providing technical assistance to local planners.This article draws on three case studies of drip irrigation adoption in Morocco to consider the water-energy-food nexus concept from a bottom-up perspective. Findings indicate that small farmers' adoption of drip irrigation is conditional, that water and energy efficiency does not necessarily reduce overall consumption, and that adoption of drip irrigation (and policies supporting it) can create winners and losers. The article concludes that, although the water-energy-food WEF nexus concept may offer useful insights, its use in policy formulation should be tempered with caution. Technical options that appear beneficial at the conceptual level can have unintended consequences in practice, and policies focused on issues of scarcity and efficiency may exacerbate other dimensions of poverty and inequality.Public participation of the Inuit concerning climate change adaptation in the Canadian Arctic is essential, given the extensive knowledge they possess about their traditional territories, especially as it relates to resources management. Unfortunately, much of this knowledge is not incorporated into the tertiary educational system and hence not part of the knowledge set of the people most likely to engage in public policy discussions and decisions. This article adopts a transdisciplinary approach, using an analysis of historic fish and marine mammal catch with the marine ecological footprint calculated for the year 2000. This scientific data, supported by the principle of free and prior informed consent as defined in United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as well as the Tsilhqot'in case in Canada, demonstrates the need for inclusive education. We conclude that indigenous participation in climate change adaptation policies would benefit immensely from the offering of university programmes that incorporate, in a meaningful way, Inuit traditional knowledge and indigenous rights.A record-breaking high temperature of 39.8 degrees C for June in Japan was observed at 1420 Japan Standard Time on 24 June 2011 60 km northwest of central Tokyo. In this extreme high-temperature (EHT) event, surface air temperatures above 37.0 degrees C were recorded in and around Kumagaya, an area just north of the convergence line between westerly winds from the Chubu Mountains and a southwesterly wind from the Pacific Ocean. To determine the mechanism of this EHT event, we applied various analyses using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and observational data. According to the heat budget analysis obtained from the WRF model, during the morning most of the sensible heat supply to the mixed layer came from the net heat input, due to surface sensible heat transported by subgrid-scale turbulent diffusion. However, most of the net heat input came from advective heat transport after noon, when the westerly wind penetrated the EHT area. This westerly wind, according to backward trajectory, Lagrangian energy budget and Eulerian forward tracer analyses, arose from a combination of two kinds of foehn flow (hybrid'-type foehn wind). Specifically, the westerly wind became a foehn wind that was caused by dry-adiabatic heating and wet-diabatic heating with water vapour condensation. This hybrid' foehn wind was an important factor in causing the present EHT event.Climate changes, incidents like nuclear disasters, and associated political objectives call for significant changes to the current energy system. Despite these far-reaching transformation processes, within the intended changes security of supply and precautions against the possible consequences of climate change must be ensured. Consequently, the question arises how to direct energy systems. In this context the processes of guiding orientations with the help of the guiding concept of resilient systems and feasible and addressee-oriented guiding design principles can be an option to provide guidance in transformation processes. However, it is questionable whether and how such processes are effective in the long term and if they are able to give direction by doing so. Within the framework of empirical studies of a regional guiding orientation process for the energy system of Northwestern Germany, the long-term effectiveness of the process and its spread resilient guiding design principles of low-exergy solutions and climate-adapted and energy-efficient refrigeration has been confirmed. Such effectiveness requires the implementation of a four-phase guiding orientation process which takes content-related and process-related effectiveness factors into account. Therefore, the study shows how regional energy systems can be designed toward the major challenges of ensuring security and precaution.Rain barrels can be technically shared through social practices or mutual agreement between individual households. This study proposes the evaluation system for a rain barrel sharing network (RBSN) considering three performance criteria of reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability, under plausible climate change scenarios. First, this study shows how the system can be improved in terms of the performance criteria using historical daily rainfall data based on the storage-reliability-yield relationship. This study then examined how the benefits from RBSN are affected by climate change after 100 years. Three climate change scenarios (A1B, A2 and B2) and three global circulation models were used for this purpose. The results showed that the reliability and vulnerability are improved due to sharing and their improvements become larger under climate change conditions. In contrast, the resiliency reduces slightly due to sharing and its reduction is attenuated under climate change conditions. In particular, vulnerability will be reduced significantly under climate change. These results suggest that the sharing of various water resources systems can be an effective climate change adaptation strategy that reduces vulnerability and increases the reliability of the system.Resource managers need climate adaptation tools. We build on a popular tool, the climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA), to identify vulnerable marine species. Only warming was considered, as warming is expected to have earlier impacts in the offshore than other climate drivers, and projections of other climate drivers are not well developed. For this reason, we coin our generalized, semi-quantitative method the "Vulnerability to Projected Warming Assessment" (VPWA) as opposed to using the broader term, CCVA. We refine the typical "exposure" component to be a function of gain/loss of thermal habitat at multiple life stages. We also build on the traditional logic approach of CCVAs. We produce scores for each species, and use a null distribution through Monte Carlo simulations to identify the most vulnerable species. We evaluate the vulnerability of 33 fish and invertebrate species, on the scale of the Scotian Shelf, Canada, to two warming scenarios, mild and severe, based on regional trends and projections. At smaller spatial scales, we evaluate populations of a subset of these species. Populations in the southwest portion of the domain are found to be more vulnerable than those in the northeast. Overall, our results indicate that 45% of populations may be vulnerable under a severe (+38 degrees C) warming scenario, including currently endangered, threatened, and commercial populations (e.g. southwestern Atlantic cod, Smooth skate, Snow crab), while only one species has a relatively high vulnerability score under the mild (+0.78 degrees C) scenario (Moustache sculpin). Populations triaged by relative vulnerability to regional warming should help managers prioritize resources and identify knowledge gaps. For this reason, and for its biological and ecological underpinnings, our method has broad relevance within the marine science and management field. As more information become available, our VPWA can be used as a stepping-stone in the continued development of CCVA methods.Human thermoregulation and acclimatization are core components of the human coping mechanism for withstanding variations in environmental heat exposure. Amidst growing recognition that curtailing global warming to less than two degrees is becoming increasing improbable, human survival will require increasing reliance on these mechanisms. The projected several fold increase in extreme heat events suggests we need to recalibrate health protection policies and ratchet up adaptation efforts. Climate researchers, epidemiologists, and policy makers engaged in climate change adaptation and health protection are not commonly drawn from heat physiology backgrounds. Injecting a scholarly consideration of physiological limitations to human heat tolerance into the adaptation and policy literature allows for a broader understanding of heat health risks to support effective human adaptation and adaptation planning. This paper details the physiological and external environmental factors that determine human thermoregulation and acclimatization. We present a model to illustrate the interrelationship between elements that modulate the physiological process of thermoregulation. Limitations inherent in these processes, and the constraints imposed by differing exposure levels, and thermal comfort seeking on achieving acclimatization, are then described. Combined, these limitations will restrict the likely contribution that acclimatization can play in future human adaptation to global warming. We postulate that behavioral and technological adaptations will need to become the dominant means for human individual and societal adaptations as global warming progresses.The authors explore possible temperature modifications of the Atlantic Water Layer (AWL) induced by climate change, performing simulations for 1970 to 2099 with a coupled ice-ocean Arctic model (CIOM). Surface fields to drive the CIOM were provided by the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM), driven by outputs from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) Coupled Global Climate Model, version 3 (CGCM3) following the A1B climate change scenario. In the present climate, represented as 1990-2009, the CIOM can reliably reproduce the AWL compared to Polar Science Center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC) data. For the future climate, assuming the A1B climate change scenario, there is a significant increase in water volume transport into the central Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait due to the weakened atmospheric high pressure system over the western Arctic and an intensified atmospheric low pressure system over the Nordic seas. The AWL temperature tends to decrease from 0.36 degrees C in the 2010s to 0.26 degrees C in the 2060s. In the vertical, the warm Atlantic water core slightly expands before the 2030s, significantly shrinks after the 2050s, and essentially disappears by 2070-99, in the southern Beaufort Sea. The temperature decrease after 2030 is mainly due to the reduced heat fluxes in the Kara and Barents Seas. In the northeastern Barents and Kara Seas, the loss of sea ice increases the heat loss from the Atlantic water and reduces the water temperature near the bottom, contributing to decreased heat fluxes into the central Arctic Ocean, as well as decreased AWL temperature at central Arctic Ocean intermediate layers. In addition, the vertically integrated heat loss also plays an important role in the AWL cooling process.There is a paucity of research that evaluates climate change adaptation actions. Academics partnered with the City of Prince George, in Northern British Columbia, Canada, for over five years to explore and address adaptation. After an adaptation strategy was created, eight initiatives oriented towards implementation were pursued. These initiatives focused on incorporating adaptation into local plans, and in-depth explorations of impacts related to forests, river flooding and effects to transportation infrastructure. This article summarizes the initiatives pursued and assesses their effectiveness through semi-structured interviews with local planners, engineers, managers, community champions and politicians. The initiatives deemed to be most successful-and most likely to continue after the project has ended-focus on topics that: are of high public concern; have clear cost implications; incorporate adaptation into policy; and/or promote tangible outcomes. Results highlight both benefits and drawbacks associated with 'mainstreaming' adaptation into existing plans and strategies, and the importance of building and maintaining internal capacity.Climate change and associated changes in streamflow may alter riparian habitats substantially in coming decades. Riparian restoration provides opportunities to respond proactively to projected climate change effects, increase riparian ecosystem resilience to climate change, and simultaneously address effects of both climate change and other human disturbances. However, climate change may alter which restoration methods are most effective and which restoration goals can be achieved. Incorporating climate change into riparian restoration planning and design is critical to long-term restoration of desired community composition and ecosystem services. In this review, we discuss and provide examples of how climate change might be incorporated into restoration planning at the key stages of assessing the project context, establishing restoration goals and design criteria, evaluating design alternatives, and monitoring restoration outcomes. Restoration planners have access to numerous tools to predict future climate, streamflow, and riparian ecology at restoration sites. Planners can use those predictions to assess which species or ecosystem services will be most vulnerable under future conditions, and which sites will be most suitable for restoration. To accommodate future climate and streamflow change, planners may need to adjust methods for planting, invasive species control, channel and floodplain reconstruction, and water management. Given the considerable uncertainty in future climate and streamflow projections, riparian ecological responses, and effects on restoration outcomes, planners will need to consider multiple potential future scenarios, implement a variety of restoration methods, design projects with flexibility to adjust to future conditions, and plan to respond adaptively to unexpected change. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.A growing body of research indicates that climate change is having and will continue to have a range of negative impacts on social environmental systems. Reducing the vulnerability and increasing the resilience of these systems has thus becomes a focus of research, disaster planning, and policy-making. Seaports, located in environmentally sensitive, high-risk locations, are particularly vulnerable to severe storms and the increased sea levels resulting from such climate changes. Planning and policy making for seaports must therefore consider the human factor, that is the population potentially vulnerable to climate change induced events and also the complex network of stakeholders that depend on their functionality. An increasing body of literature suggests that, for planners to be effective in increasing resiliency of social-environmental systems to climate change-related events and other hazards, they must understand and incorporate the perceptions and concerns of the stakeholders in their assessment and planning processes. This study uses empirical evidence collected through case studies of two particularly exposed ports in the US: Gulfport (Mississippi) and Providence (Rhode Island), in order to examine how port stakeholders such as port operators, municipal planners, port tenants, and coastal managers, perceive storm impacts and the seaport's vulnerability, and how their planning and policy making address these perceived concerns. Results suggest the following: (1) Port stakeholders of Gulfport (MS) and Providence (RI) identified a wide range of direct damages, indirect costs, and intangible consequences of a hurricane hitting the port; (2) these impacts would result in costs that would be borne by all port stakeholders as well as society as a whole; and (3) in Providence and Gulfport, plans and policies that address storm resilience for the ports did not include the concerns of many stakeholders. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study the structure and seasonal variations of deep mean circulation in the East/Japan Sea (EJS) were numerically simulated using a mid-resolution ocean general circulation model with two different parameterizations for the eddy-topography interaction (ETI). The strong deep mean circulations observed in the EJS are well reproduced when using the ETI parameterizations. The seasonal variability in the EJS deep layer is shown by using ETI parameterization based on the potential vorticity approach, while it is not shown in the statistical dynamical parameterization. The driving mechanism of the strong deep mean currents in the EJS are discussed by investigating the effects of model grids and parameterizations. The deep mean circulation is more closely related to the baroclinic process and potential vorticity than it is to the wind driven circulation.Eigenvector-based spatial filtering is one of the often used approaches to model spatial autocorrelation among the observations or errors in a regression model. In this approach, a subset of eigenvectors extracted from a modified spatial weight matrix is added to the model as explanatory variables. The subset is typically specified via the selection procedure of the forward stepwise model, but it is disappointingly slow when the observations n take a large number. Hence, as a complement or alternative, the present article proposes the use of the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) to select the eigenvectors. The LASSO model selection procedure was applied to the well-known Boston housing data set and simulation data set, and its performance was compared with the stepwise procedure. The obtained results suggest that the LASSO procedure is fairly fast compared with the stepwise procedure, and can select eigenvectors effectively even if the data set is relatively large (n = 10(4)), to which the forward stepwise procedure is not easy to apply.Extreme weather events can cause severe disruption to transport systems, greatly reducing the ability to maintain important social and economic functions such as the delivery of goods and materials within the supply chain. There is a need for greater qualitative and quantitative understanding of how transport systems respond under adverse conditions, to inform event management and to aid adaptation actions. The present study uses the intense storms of 28 June 2012 as a case study to present a novel exploration of the impacts of an extreme event using high spatial and temporal resolution transport data for the UK road and rail networks, as well as weather data from the UK Meteorological Office's MIDAS surface station network and NIMROD weather radar. This event caused widespread disruption, severing the main rail links between England and Scotland and causing 10000 delay minutes to train services throughout the country, as well as causing reduced speeds on local roads and motorways. The present study describes the meteorological situation in the build-up to and during the event, and uses Network Rail train delay data to visualize the way in which the failure of several sections of critical transport infrastructure caused disruption that propagated quickly through the rail network of Great Britain. Highway Agency motorway speed data are used to quantify the impact of this event on the M6 motorway in the West Midlands. Ways in which the insights gained from these data can be used to aid the transport sector in the prioritization of adaptation actions are discussed.The experiments with three general circulation models (GCMs) by three regional atmospheric models (RAMs) for the dynamical downscaling (DDS) have been performed to evaluate the uncertainty in the global warming response during summertime in Hokkaido, Japan. The results of a 10-year RAM integration nested into GCM under present or future climate conditions were synthesized after applying bias correction. For the target decades during which the global-mean temperature increases by 2 K in each GCM, the DDS results indicate that surface air temperature and precipitation mostly depend on the GCM imposed as the lateral boundary condition.Vested interests and political agents have long opposed political or regulatory action in response to climate change by appealing to scientific uncertainty. Here we examine the effect of such contrarian talking points on the scientific community itself. We show that although scientists are trained in dealing with uncertainty, there are several psychological reasons why scientists may nevertheless be susceptible to uncertainty-based argumentation, even when scientists recognize those arguments as false and are actively rebutting them. Specifically, we show that prolonged stereotype threat, pluralistic ignorance, and a form of projection (the third-person effect) may cause scientists to take positions that they would be less likely to take in the absence of outspoken public opposition. We illustrate the consequences of seepage from public debate into the scientific process with a case study involving the interpretation of temperature trends from the last 15 years. We offer ways in which the scientific community can detect and avoid such inadvertent seepage. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Changes in extreme precipitation are expected to be one of the most important impacts of climate change in cities. Urban floods are mainly caused by short duration extreme events. Hence, robust information on changes in extreme precipitation at high-temporal resolution is required for the design of climate change adaptation measures. However, the quantification of these changes is challenging and subject to numerous uncertainties. This study assesses the changes and uncertainties in extreme precipitation at hourly scale over Denmark. It explores three statistical downscaling approaches: a delta change method for extreme events, a weather generator combined with a disaggregation method and a climate analogue method. All three methods rely on different assumptions and use different outputs from the regional climate models (RCMs). The results of the three methods point towards an increase in extreme precipitation but the magnitude of the change varies depending on the RCM used and the spatial location. In general, a similar mean change is obtained for the three methods. This adds confidence in the results as each method uses different information from the RCMs. The results of this study highlight the need of using a range of statistical downscaling methods as well as RCMs to assess changes in extreme precipitation.A physical vegetation model [the Two-Layer Model (2LM)] was applied to estimate the climate change impacts on rice leaf wetness (LW) as a potential indicator of rice blast occurrence. Japan was used as an example. Dynamically downscaled data at 20-km-mesh resolution from three global climate models (CCSM4, MIROC5, and MRI-CGCM3) were utilized for present (1981-2000) and future (2081-2100) climates under the representative concentration pathway 4.5 scenario. To evaluate the performance of the 2LM, the LW and other meteorological variables were observed for 108 days during the summer of 2013 at three sites on the Pacific Ocean side of Japan. The derived correct estimation rate was 77.4%, which is similar to that observed in previous studies. Using the downscaled dataset, the changes in several precipitation indices were calculated. The regionally averaged ensemble mean precipitation increased by 6%, although large intermodel differences were found. By defining a wet day as any day in which the daily precipitation was >= 1 mm day(-1), it was found that the precipitation frequency decreased by 6% and the precipitation intensity increased by 11% for the entire area. The leaf surface environment was estimated to be dry; leaf wetness, wet frequency, and wet times all decreased. It was found that a decrease in water trap opportunities due to reduced precipitation frequency was the primary contributor to the LW decrease. For blast fungus, an increased precipitation intensity was expected to enhance the washout effect on the leaf surface. In the present case, the infection risk was estimated to decrease for Japan.Coastal inundation as a result of global sea-level rise and storm surge events is expected to affect many coastal regions and settlements. Adaptation is widely accepted as necessary for managing inundation risk. However, managing inundation risk is inherently contentious because of many uncertainties and because a large number of stakeholder interests and values are mobilised. For these reasons, among others, adaptation progress in many countries has been slow. Despite progress in adaptation research, a critical knowledge gap remains regarding the appropriateness and applicability of various adaptation options, including their transferability between different coastal settings. We review the international literature on coastal adaptation options (including options to defend, accommodate, or retreat) to manage inundation risk, focusing on developed, liberal economies of Western Europe, North America, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. In doing so, we identify the favoured strategies adopted by these nations, probe the influence of physical and institutional context on the selection of these options, and identify what lessons might be exchanged or future directions inferred. The review places particular emphasis on the Australian experience as a comparative device to highlight some important distinctions. These distinctions focus on how government responsibility is exercised, including the degree of centralisation; the "fit" of options to local coastal environments and social values (i.e. their suitability and acceptability); and the transferability of different adaptation options in international contexts.Based on a cross-national social survey, this paper ascertains how perception of climate change is related to national wealth and adaptive capacity across 33 countries. Results indicate that citizens of wealthier countries tend to see climate change as the most important problem, but are less likely to rank it as a highly dangerous threat. We find that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita correlates positively with perceived importance of climate change, but negatively with perceived risk. Also, climate change is less likely to be seen as highly dangerous in those countries that are better prepared for climate change. These findings have important implications for climate adaptation. The relatively weaker sense of danger among the wealthiest societies may eventually lead to maladaptation to climate change. Adequate economic resources provide people collective security and protection from impending crises, but could elevate a self-assuring attitude that might prematurely reduce their caution toward the impending threat and capacity for dealing with climate uncertainties.Initiatives to adapt to the effects of climate change are growing in number but may fail to achieve the desired outcomes unless critical competing interests are taken into account during the planning process.A focus on African American communities on the Eastern Shore of Maryland highlights the ways that local cultural knowledge differs from place to place, developing understanding of local climate risks and resources for adaptation.The deep sea hosts some of the world's largest, oldest, and most sensitive ecosystems. Climate change and ocean acidification are likely to have severe implications for many deep-sea ecosystems and communities, but what, if anything, can be done to mitigate these threats is poorly understood. To begin to bridge this gap, we convened a stakeholder workshop to assess and prioritize options for conserving legislatively protected deep-sea coral reefs off southeast Australia that, without management intervention, are likely to be severely degraded within decades as a result of climate change. Seventeen possible options were explored that span biological, engineering and regulatory domains and that differed widely in their perceived costs, benefits, time to implementation, and risks. In the short term, the highest priority identified is the need to urgently locate and protect sites globally that are, or will become, refugia areas for the coral and its associated community as climate change progresses.Urban bulk water systems supply water with high reliability and, in the event of extreme drought, must avoid catastrophic economic and social collapse. In view of the deep uncertainty about future climate change, it is vital that robust solutions be found that secure urban bulk water systems against extreme drought. To tackle this challenge an approach was developed integrating; 1) a stochastic model of multisite streamflow conditioned on future climate change scenarios; 2) Monte Carlo simulation of the urban bulk water system incorporated into a robust optimization framework and solved using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm; and 3) a comprehensive decision space including operating rules, investment in new sources and source substitution and a drought contingency plan with multiple actions with increasingly severe economic and social impact. A case study demonstrated the feasibility of this approach for a complex urban bulk water supply system. The primary objective was to minimize the expected present worth cost arising from infrastructure investment, system operation and the social cost of "normal" and emergency restrictions. By introducing a second objective which minimizes either the difference in present worth cost between the driest and wettest future climate change scenarios or the present worth cost for driest climate scenario, the trade-off between efficiency and robustness was identified. The results show that a significant change in investment and operating strategy can occur when the decision maker expresses a stronger preference for robustness and that this depends on the adopted robustness measure. Moreover, solutions are not only impacted by the degree of uncertainty about future climate change but also by the stress imposed on the system and the range of available options. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Both climate change and habitat modification exert serious pressure on biodiversity. Although climate change mitigation has been identified as an important strategy for biodiversity conservation, bioenergy remains a controversial mitigation action due to its potential negative ecological and socio-economic impacts which arise through habitat modification by land use change. While the debate continues, the separate or simultaneous impacts of both climate change and bioenergy on biodiversity have not yet been compared. We assess projected range shifts of 156 European bird species by 2050 under two alternative climate change trajectories: a baseline scenario, where the global mean temperature increases by 4 degrees C by the end of the century, and a 2 degrees scenario, where global concerted effort limits the temperature increase to below 2 degrees C. For the latter scenario, we also quantify the pressure exerted by increased cultivation of energy biomass as modelled by IMAGE2.4, an integrated land use model. The global bioenergy use in this scenario is in the lower end of the range of previously estimated sustainable potential. Under the assumptions of these scenarios, we find that the magnitude of range shifts due to climate change is far greater than the impact of land conversion to woody bioenergy plantations within the European Union, and that mitigation of climate change reduces the exposure experienced by species. However, we identified potential for local conservation conflict between priority areas for conservation and bioenergy production. These conflicts must be addressed by strict bioenergy sustainability criteria that acknowledge biodiversity conservation needs beyond existing protected areas and apply also to biomass imported from outside the European Union.Conservation of geophysical diversity has been proposed as a strategy for conserving species diversity and facilitating adaptive capacity of species in the face of changing climate. Existing protected areas may not correspond to the most geophysically diverse places because they have typically not been selected on this basis. My objectives were to characterize geophysical diversity in the southwestern United States, assess the sensitivity of my results to methodological choices, and assess the degree to which the existing protected areas network in this region captures geophysically diverse places. I classified the region into geophysically distinct units (land facets) on the basis of topographic and edaphic variables. I calculated land facet diversity on the basis of multiple classification methods, thematic resolutions, and spatial scales (i.e., spatial grain and neighborhood size), assessed the sensitivity of land-facet diversity estimates to these methods, and integrated the results to provide a multi-scaled estimate of geophysical diversity. I used gap analysis to assess the proportion of lands with high land-facet diversity that is protected. Land facet diversity estimates were more sensitive to spatial scale than to methods, but results based on different methods or spatial scales typically were highly correlated. Gaps in the protected areas network include geophysically diverse lands in the Central Basin and Range, Chihuahuan Desert, and Wasatch and Uinta Mountains. The analytical approach and results from this study can provide perspectives and guidance for identifying and prioritizing locations that may facilitate species' capacity to adapt to climate change.Recent reports and scholarship suggest that adapting to current climate variability may represent a no regrets' strategy for adapting to climate change. Addressing adaptation deficits' and other approaches that target existing vulnerabilities are helpful for responding to current climate variability, but we argue that they may not be sufficient for adapting to climate change. Through a review and unique synthesis of the natural hazards and climate adaptation literatures, we identify why the dynamics of vulnerability matter for adaptation efforts. We draw on vulnerability theory and the natural hazards and climate adaptation literatures to outline how adaptation to climate variability, combined with the shifting societal landscape can sometimes lead to unintended consequences and increased vulnerability. Moreover, we argue that public perceptions of risk associated with current climate variability do not necessarily position communities to adapt to the impacts from climate change. We suggest that decision makers faced with adapting to climate change must consider the dynamics of vulnerability in a connected systemhow choices made in one part of the system might impact other valued outcomes or even create new vulnerabilities. We conclude by suggesting the need for greater engagement with various publics on the tradeoffs involved in adaptation action and for improving communication about the complicated nature of the dynamics of vulnerability. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:413-425. doi: 10.1002/wcc.341 For further resources related to this article, please visit the . Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article.Climate change and land-cover change will have major impacts on biodiversity persistence worldwide. These two stressors are likely to interact, but how climate change will mediate the effects of land-cover change remains poorly understood. Here we use an empirically-derived model of the interaction between habitat loss and climate to predict the implications of this for biodiversity loss and conservation priorities at a global scale. Risk analysis was used to estimate the risk of biodiversity loss due to alternative future land-cover change scenarios and to quantify how climate change mediates this risk. We demonstrate that the interaction of climate change with land-cover change could increase the impact of land-cover change on birds and mammals by up to 43% and 24% respectively and alter the spatial distribution of threats. Additionally, we show that the ranking of global biodiversity hotspots by threat depends critically on the interaction between climate change and habitat loss. Our study suggests that the investment of conservation resources will likely change once the interaction between climate change and land-cover change is taken into account. We argue that global conservation efforts must take this into account if we are to develop cost-effective conservation policies and strategies under global change. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Metal use and modern society are intrinsically linked and it is no surprise that global processes of industrialization and urbanization have led to ever increasing amounts of metal use. In recent decades, global supply and demand networks for metals have become increasingly complex. Industrial Ecology research is well placed to unpack this complexity and to explore potential resource efficiencies for metals. This is especially important during the current period of rising ore prices. We examine patterns of supply and demand for iron ore and bauxite, and recent trends in resource productivity of these two important metal ores. We introduce a consumption perspective and compare the material footprint of metal ores to the GDP of countries to look at how much economic benefit countries achieve per unit of metal footprint. We find that for the past two decades global amounts of iron ore and bauxite extractions have risen faster than global GDP, that both supply and demand of iron ore and bauxite have been concentrated in a handful of countries and that resource productivity from a consumption perspective has fallen in developed nations, as well as globally. The research shows no saturation of metal ore consumption at any level of income. Policies will be required to enhance both the productivity of metal production and the economic productivity of consumption (GDP per metal footprint) through more efficient mining, product design, reuse and recycling.The objective of this study was to assess the effect ofenvironmental variability on the dynamics of theAtlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus L.) stock in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (GSL). We first described the dominant modes of physical and biological (zooplankton) variability using Principal Components Analyses of 40 variables. Two principal modes of variability were identified, a long-term mode (15-20yr) associated with a warming of the GSL and a second mode describing alternating cold and warm periods at a higher frequency (5-10yr). A strong link between physical forcing and the dynamics of zooplankton species known to be important for mackerel was shown. Second, a set of Generalized Additive Models (GAM) was developed to explore how these environmental variations could influence mackerel condition (Fulton's K) and recruitment success (R-s). Optimal GAMs including variations in abundance, species composition and phenology of key copepods improved model performance by 40-50% relative to those considering only physical environmental conditions. The results are consistent with the match-mismatch hypothesis and illustrate the key role of zooplankton dynamics in modulating variations in mackerel K and R-s. Finally, this study showed that large variations in R-s could be caused by varying environmental conditions independently of the influence of stock biomass. Our results strongly indicate that the effect of environmental variability should be considered in the implementation of an ecosystem-based approach to Atlantic mackerel stock management.Intensification of food production in Nepal has been found to acidify the soils and hence increase their apparent propensity to emit N2O as measured by the N2O/(N-2 + N2O) product ratio of denitrification during standardized anoxic incubations (Raut et al., 2012). We hypothesized that this would lead to high N2O emission factors (EF), and tested this by measuring N2O emissions from fields on which intensified crop production (IC) had been practiced for the last 20 years, and adjacent fields having traditional crop production (TC) practices. The measurements were done every one to two weeks over a period of 12 months covering two to three cropping periods. On the sites with periodically flooded soils, the cumulated emissions for IC and TC were 15.41 and 7.23 kgN(2)O/ha, respectively. On the sites with permanently drained soils, the cumulated emissions were 5.43 and 1.46 kg N2O/ha (IC and TC). We used the available data on fertilizer levels to calculate an emission factor for the transition from TC to IC (EFI); i.e.Delta N2O - N/Delta N-fertilizer, where Delta N2O-N is the cumulated emission in IC minus that in TC, Delta N-fertilizer is the annual N input to IC minus that in TC. The EF values were 0.08 and 0.02 for the sites with permanently drained and periodically flooded soils, respectively. These factors are 2 to 8 times higher than the EF values used by IPCC to calculate emission as a function of fertilizer level. The high EFI appear to confirm our hypothesis that intensification will lead to higher emission of N2O than that predicted by the increase in nitrogen inputs, and that this is due to the soil acidification. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Potential climate change impacts on summer precipitation and subsequent hydrologic responses in the southwestern U.S. are poorly constrained at present due to a lack of studies accounting for high resolution processes. In this investigation, we apply a distributed hydrologic model to the Beaver Creek watershed of central Arizona to explore its utility for climate change assessments. Manual model calibration and model validation were performed using radar-based precipitation data during three summers and compared to two alternative meteorological products to illustrate the sensitivity of the streamflow response. Using the calibrated and validated model, we investigated the watershed response during historical (1990-2000) and future (2031-2040) summer projections derived from a single realization of a mesoscale model forced with boundary conditions from a general circulation model under a high emissions scenario. Results indicate spatially-averaged changes across the two projections: an increase in air temperature of 1.2 degrees C, a 2.4-fold increase in precipitation amount and a 3-fold increase in variability, and a 3.1-fold increase in streamflow amount and a 5.1-fold increase in variability. Nevertheless, relatively minor changes were obtained in spatially-averaged evapotranspiration. To explain this, we used the simulated hydroclimatological mechanisms to identify that higher precipitation limits radiation through cloud cover leading to lower evapotranspiration in regions with orographic effects. This challenges conventional wisdom on evapotranspiration trends and suggest that a more nuanced approach is needed to communicate hydrologic vulnerability to stakeholders and decision-makers in this semiarid region. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adaptive governance has been recognized as an integrative approach for analyzing the social, institutional, ecologic, and economic aspects of decision-making to build resilience against climate change. Although closely aligned with adaptive co-management and ecosystem management, adaptive governance is a distinct framework that explicitly focuses on decentralized decision-making through social processes such as collaborative learning, networking, and the promotion of cross-sectoral partnerships to enhance adaptive capacity. In this paper, we explore an ongoing engagement process for climate change adaptation planning in Exeter, New Hampshire, and its alignment with key principles of adaptive governance. Climate change poses multiple challenges to Exeter, including increased flooding, reduced low flows, water quality degradation, and associated threats to estuarine ecosystems and public health. Engagement strategies include community conversations, workshops, experiential activities, and a community advisory board comprised of different stakeholder representatives (Citizens' Working Group) collaborating with the scientific team on water resources modeling and scenario analysis. We present important lessons about conveying expectations and timeframes of technical modeling to participants, developing multiple forums for interaction between researchers and other stakeholders, and making climate change locally relevant to residents by drawing connections to the community's experiences, cultural memory, values, and upcoming decisions. This study contributes to the literature on adaptive governance and climate change adaptation by evaluating stakeholder involvement in a local institutional setting, an important arena where adaptation decisions must be deliberated. It is also among the first studies to evaluate the ways in which a climate change adaptation stakeholder engagement process aligns with adaptive governance principles, particularly through boundary objects and experiences.The new EU strategy on adaptation to climate change suggests flexible and participatory approaches. Face-to-face contact, although it involves time-consuming procedures with a limited audience, has often been considered the most effective participatory approach. In recent years, however, there has been an increase in the visibility of different citizens' initiatives in the online world, which strengthens the possibility of greater citizen agency. This paper investigates whether the Internet can ensure efficient public participation with meaningful engagement in climate change adaptation. In elucidating issues regarding climate change adaptation, we developed an eParticipation framework to explore adaptation capacity of agriculture to climate change in Northern Italy. Farmers were mobilised using a pre-existing online network. First they took part in an online questionnaire for revealing their perceptions of and reactions to the impacts of ongoing changes in agriculture. We used these results to suggest a portfolio of policy measures and to set evaluation criteria. Farmers then evaluated these policy options, using a multi criteria analysis tool with a simple user-friendly interface. Our results showed that eParticipation is efficient; it supports a rapid data collection, while involving high number of participants. Moreover, we demonstrated that the digital divide is decreasingly an obstacle for using online spaces for public engagement. This research does not present eParticipation as a panacea. Rather, eParticipation was implemented with well-established participatory approaches to both validate the results and, consequently, communicate meaningful messages on local agricultural adaptation practices to regional decision-makers. Feedbacks from the regional decision-makers showed their interest in using eParticipation to improve communication with farmers in the future. We expect that, with further Internet proliferation, eParticipation may allow the inclusion of more representative samples, which would contribute to an informed and legitimate decision-making process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we analyzed the sensitivity of four drought indices to precipitation (P) and reference evapotranspiration (ETo) inputs. The four drought indices are the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI), the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the Standardized Palmer Drought Index (SPDI). The analysis uses long-term simulated series with varying averages and variances, as well as global observational data to assess the sensitivity to real climatic conditions in different regions of the World. The results show differences in the sensitivity to ETo and P among the four drought indices. The PDSI shows the lowest sensitivity to variation in their climate inputs, probably as a consequence of the standardization procedure of soil water budget anomalies. The RDI is only sensitive to the variance but not to the average of P and ETo. The SPEI shows the largest sensitivity to ETo variation, with clear geographic patterns mainly controlled by aridity. The low sensitivity of the PDSI to ETo makes the PDSI perhaps less apt as the suitable drought index in applications in which the changes in ETo are most relevant. On the contrary, the SPEI shows equal sensitivity to P and ETo. It works as a perfect supply and demand system modulated by the average and standard deviation of each series and combines the sensitivity of the series to changes in magnitude and variance. Our results are a robust assessment of the sensitivity of drought indices to P and ETo variation, and provide advice on the use of drought indices to detect climate change impacts on drought severity under a wide variety of climatic conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study analyzes change in carbon storage by applying forest growth models and final cutting age to actual and potential forest cover for six major tree species in South Korea. Using National Forest Inventory data, the growth models were developed to estimate mean diameter at breast height, tree height, and number of trees for Pinus densiflora, Pinus koraiensis, Pinus rigida, Larix kaempferi, Castanea crenata and Quercus spp. stands. We assumed that actual forest cover in a forest type map will change into potential forest covers according to the Hydrological and Thermal Analogy Groups model. When actual forest cover reaches the final cutting age, forest volume and carbon storage are estimated by changed forest cover and its growth model. Forest volume between 2010 and 2110 would increase from 126.73 to 157.33 m(3) hm(-2). Our results also show that forest cover, volume, and carbon storage could abruptly change by 2060. This is attributed to the fact that most forests are presumed to reach final cutting age. To avoid such dramatic change, a regeneration and yield control scheme should be prepared and implemented in a way that ensures balance in forest practice and yield.Water shortages have become one of the most severe problems in semi-arid regions throughout the world. Although semi-arid regions have always been dry, human activities and climate change are acerbating the problem. In Chinese Yellow River basin, the river is the major source of freshwater for those living there, and they have long suffered from serious water shortages. However, increasing population and decreasing streamflow are making these shortages more acute. This study seeks to quantify changes in available water in the Yellow River basin over the last 100 years and attempts to determine causes for these changes. To do this, the study evaluated changing trends and regime shifts of streamflow using long term historical records at different hydrological stations in the Yellow River basin over the past century. The results show that annual streamflow has a significant decreasing trends (P < 0.01) in the mid-lower reaches of the basin. Streamflow decomposition by the breaks for additive seasonal and trend approach suggest that this trend can be decomposed into four distinct annual stages (1919-1933, 1934-1969, 1970-1986 and 1987-2011), while the seasonal component demonstrated an evident regime shift in 1986. This regime shift is mainly related to the construction of large reservoirs in the basin. The flow duration curves illustrate a decrease in the magnitude of streamflow over the last century with a relatively uniform flow regime at all stations. The reconstructed streamflow at Toudaoguai station suggests that agricultural irrigation is predominantly responsible for streamflow reductions between Lanzhou and Toudaoguai stations with approximately 9.1 km(3)/a of water extracted between 1997 and 2006. Meanwhile, a decrease of incoming water from upper reaches and soil and water conservation measures were responsible for the significant decline in annual streamflow at mid-lower reaches station. The result of this paper should be of use for water resources planning, watershed management and climate adaptation as they demonstrate how natural and anthropogenic drivers influence water availability in semi-arid regions.Average horizontal wind velocity in an urban canopy is mainly determined by a balance between flow deceleration caused by the drag force of buildings and flow acceleration from the momentum flux gradient in the canopy. To express the transport of momentum in an urban canopy, mixing length is often used to calculate diffusivity there. A new parametrization for mixing length is introduced for a one-dimensional multilayer urban canopy model (UCM). A database from large-eddy simulations using actual urban morphology for Tokyo is used for this parametrization. The derived mixing length is described as a function of the non-dimensional height raised to the power of , where . The value and constants of the function also depend on the selection of canopy height. The mixing length profile is closely related to that of the average plane area index of the buildings in the study area. Recalculation of mean horizontal wind velocity using the new parametrization of mixing length for Tokyo slightly improved the multilayer UCM results.The prospect of climate change has revived both fears of food insecurity and its corollary, market opportunities for agricultural production. In Australia, with its long history of state-sponsored agricultural development, there is renewed interest in the agricultural development of tropical and sub-tropical northern regions. Climate projections suggest that there will be less water available to the main irrigation systems of the eastern central and southern regions of Australia, while net rainfall could be sustained or even increase in the northern areas. Hence, there could be more intensive use of northern agricultural areas, with the relocation of some production of economically important commodities such as vegetables, rice and cotton. The problem is that the expansion of cropping in northern Australia has been constrained by agronomic and economic considerations. The present paper examines the economics, at both farm and regional level, of relocating some cotton production from the east-central irrigation areas to the north where there is an existing irrigation scheme together with some industry and individual interest in such relocation. Integrated modelling and expert knowledge are used to examine this example of prospective climate change adaptation. Farm-level simulations show that without adaptation, overall gross margins will decrease under a combination of climate change and reduction in water availability. A dynamic regional Computable General Equilibrium model is used to explore two scenarios of relocating cotton production from south east Queensland, to sugar-dominated areas in northern Queensland. Overall, an increase in real economic output and real income was realized when some cotton production was relocated to sugar cane fallow land/new land. There were, however, large negative effects on regional economies where cotton production displaced sugar cane. It is concluded that even excluding the agronomic uncertainties, which are not examined here, there is unlikely to be significant market-driven relocation of cotton production.Climate change adaptation is a pressing need. However, local level stakeholders often find themselves overwhelmed with climate change information presented at both small temporal and spatial scales. To address this gap, and using a case study from New Zealand's Southern Lakes region, this research links tourism operators' information requirements with climate change projections. Interviews with 42 stakeholders provided exemplary storylines and insights into the climate parameters that would be useful for their planning (mean precipitation, extreme wind conditions, mean temperature, and frost days). These findings were then used to generate sector-relevant maps. Climate change maps were produced based on global and regional models to generate detailed climate projection information for the A2 emission scenario in the form of regional scale, color-coded maps. A final stakeholder workshop confirmed the usefulness of the maps as a planning tool but also highlighted a number of future challenges for climate change communication.An improved spectroscopy is used to implement and optimize the retrieval strategy of ethane (C2H6) from ground-based Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) solar spectra recorded at the high-altitude station of Jungfraujoch (Swiss Alps, 46.5 degrees N, 8.0 degrees E, 3580 m a.s.l.). The improved spectroscopic parameters include C2H6 pseudo-lines in the 2720-3100 cm(-1) range and updated line parameters for methyl chloride and ozone. These improved spectroscopic parameters allow for substantial reduction of the fitting residuals as well as enhanced information content. They also contribute to limiting oscillations responsible for ungeophysical negative mixing ratio profiles. This strategy has been successfully applied to the Jungfraujoch solar spectra available from 1994 onwards. The resulting time series is compared with C2H6 total columns simulated by the state-of-the-art chemical transport model GEOS-Chem. Despite very consistent seasonal cycles between both data sets, a negative systematic bias relative to the FTIR observations suggests that C2H6 emissions are underestimated in the current inventories implemented in GEOS-Chem. Finally, C2H6 trends are derived from the FTIR time series, revealing a statistically-significant sharp increase of the C2H6 burden in the remote atmosphere above Jungfraujoch since 2009. Evaluating cause of this change in the C2H6 burden, which may be related to the recent massive growth of shale gas exploitation in North America, is of primary importance for atmospheric composition and air quality in the Northern Hemisphere. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We investigate the space-time structure of extreme precipitation in Europe over the last century, using daily rainfall data from the European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) archive. The database includes 267 stations with records longer than 100 years. In the winter season (October to March), for each station, two classes of daily rainfall amount values are selected that, respectively, exceed the 90th and 95th percentile of daily rainfall amount over all the 100 years. For each class, and at each location, an annual time series of the frequency of exceedance and of the total precipitation, defined respectively as the number of days the rainfall threshold (90th and 95th percentiles) is exceeded and total precipitation on days when the percentile is exceeded, are developed. Space-time structure of the frequency and total precipitation time series at the different locations are then pursued using multivariate time and frequency domain methods. The identified key trends and organized spectral modes are linked to well-known climate indices, as North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The spectra of the leading principal component of frequency of exceedance and of total precipitation have a peak with a 5-year period that is significant at the 5% level. These are also significantly correlated with ENSO series with this period. The spectrum of total rainfall is significant at the 10% level with a period of similar to 8 years. This appears to be significantly correlated to the NAO index at this period. Thus, a decomposition of both secular trends and quasi-periodic behaviour in extreme daily rainfall is provided.Sulfate aerosols simulated by an aerosol module coupled to the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM) at a spatial resolution (220km) widely used by global climate models were evaluated by a comparison with in situ observations and the same aerosol module coupled to the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC) over East Asia for January, April, July, and October 2006. The results indicated that a horizontal gradient of sulfate from the source over China to the outflow over Korea-Japan was present in both the simulations and the observations. At the observation sites, the correlation coefficients of the sulfate concentrations between the simulations and the observations were high (NICAM: 0.49-0.89, MIROC: 0.61-0.77), whereas the simulated sulfate concentrations were lower than those obtained by the observation with the normalized mean bias of NICAM being -68 to -54% (all), -77 to -63% (source), and -67 to -30% (outflow) and that of MIROC being -61 to -28% (all), -77 to -63% (source), and -60 to +2% (outflow). Both NICAM and MIROC strongly underpredict surface SO2 over China source regions and Korea-Japan outflow regions, but the MIROC SO2 is much higher than NICAM SO2 over both regions. These differences between the models were mainly explained by differences in the sulfate formation within clouds and the dry deposition of SO2. These results indicated that the uncertainty of the meteorological and cloud fields as well as the vertical transport patterns between the different host climate models has a substantial impact on the simulated sulfate distribution.To conserve a declining species we first need to diagnose the causes of decline. This is one of the most challenging tasks faced by conservation practitioners. In this study, we used temporally explicit species distribution models (SDMs) to test whether shifting weather can explain the recent decline of a marsupial carnivore, the eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus). We developed an SDM using weather variables matched to occurrence records of the eastern quoll over the last 60 years, and used the model to reconstruct variation through time in the distribution of climatically suitable range for the species. The weather model produced a meaningful prediction of the known distribution of the species. Abundance of quolls, indexed by transect counts, was positively related to the modelled area of suitable habitat between 1990 and 2004. In particular, a sharp decline in abundance from 2001 to 2003 coincided with a sustained period of unsuitable weather over much of the species' distribution. Since 2004, abundance has not recovered despite a return to suitable weather conditions, and abundance and area of suitable habitat have been uncorrelated. We suggest that fluctuations in weather account for the species' recent decline, but other unrelated factors have suppressed recovery.The influence of historical urbanization on warming trends observed on Hokkaido Island (Japan) is discussed with an emphasis on seasonally and diurnally differential responses of air temperature to urban effects. Two numerical experiments using past and current land use scenarios successfully simulated the observed temperature trends, showing a greater rate of warming in winter than in summer and a greater increase in daily minimum than daily maximum temperatures. The results suggest that seasonal and diurnal variations in the thermal structure of the planetary boundary layer play a leading role in determining the warming rate of surface air. Under strongly stable stratification, anomalous heating within the urban canopy dissipates into a near-surface shallow layer, resulting in increased daily minimum temperatures during winter. In summer, however, anomalous urban heating due to increased Bowen ratios is attenuated by vertical mixing in the convective daytime boundary layer, suppressing the impact of urban heating on surface warming.Early warning information on crop yield and production are very crucial for both farmers and decision-makers. In this study, we assess the skill and the reliability of the Integrated Canadian Crop Yield Forecaster (ICCYF), a regional crop yield forecasting tool, at different temporal (i.e. 1-3 months before harvest) and spatial (i.e. census agricultural region - CAR, provincial and national) scales across Canada. A distinct feature of the ICCYF is that it generates in-season yield forecasts well before the end of the growing season and provides a probability distribution of the forecasted yields. The ICCYF integrates climate, remote sensing derived vegetation indices, soil and crop information through a physical process-based soil water budget model and statistical algorithms. The model was evaluated against yield survey data of spring wheat, barley and canola during the 1987-2012 period. Our results showed that the ICCYF performance exhibited a strong spatial pattern at both CAR and provincial scales. Model performance was better from regions with a good coverage of climate stations and a high percentage of cropped area. On average, the model coefficient of determination at CAR level was 66%, 51% and 67%, for spring wheat, barley and canola, respectively. Skilful forecasts (i.e. model efficiency index >0) were achieved in 70% of the CARs for spring wheat and canola, and 43% for barley (low values observed in CAR with small harvested area). At the provincial scale, the mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) of the September forecasts ranged from 7% to 16%, 7% to 14%, and 6% to 14% for spring wheat, barley and canola, respectively. For forecasts at the national scale, MAPE values (i.e. 8%, 5% and 9% for the three respective crops) were considerably smaller than the corresponding historical coefficients of variation (i.e. 17%, 10% and 17% for the three crops). Overall, the ICCYF performed better for spring wheat than for canola and barley at all the three spatial scales. Skilful forecasts were achieved by mid-August, giving a lead time of about 1 month before harvest and about 3-4 months before the final release of official survey results. As such, the ICCYF could be used as a complementary tool for the traditional survey method, especially in areas where it is not practical to conduct such surveys. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Warming-induced drought stress has been hypothesized as a major driver of forest net primary production (NPP) reduction, but we lack reliable field data to assess if higher temperatures lead to forest NPP reduction, particularly in humid sites and at basin to landscape spatial scales. The use of a landscape approach would allow considering the feedbacks operating between climate, topography, soil vegetation and water resources. Here we follow that approach by simulating NPP using the regional hydro-ecologic simulation system (RHESSys) model and by comparing the results with radial growth data (tree-ring widths and intrinsic water-use efficiency - iWUE). We evaluate the relationships between climate, growth, NPP, atmospheric CO2 concentrations (C-a) and iWUE in xeric and mesic silver fir forests subjected to contrasting water balances. The growth data successfully validated the 11-month NPP cumulated until spring. The main negative climatic driver of growth and NPP was the summer evapotranspiration deficit, which shows a negative association with tree-ring width indices. Sensitivity analyses indicate that rising C-a do not compensate the severe NPP reduction associated to warmer and drier conditions. The positive effect of rising C-a on NPP is mediated by climatic site conditions being detected only in mesic sites, whereas the negative effects of drought on NPP override any C-a-related enhancement of NPP in xeric sites. Future warmer and drier conditions causing a higher evaporative demand by the atmosphere could lead to a NPP decline in temperate conifer forests subjected to episodic droughts. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The impacts of climate change on marine species are often compounded by other stressors that make direct attribution and prediction difficult. Shy albatrosses (Thalassarche cauta) breeding on Albatross Island, Tasmania, show an unusually restricted foraging range, allowing easier discrimination between the influence of non-climate stressors (fisheries bycatch) and environmental variation. Local environmental conditions (rainfall, air temperature, and sea-surface height, an indicator of upwelling) during the vulnerable chick-rearing stage, have been correlated with breeding success of shy albatrosses. We use an age-, stage- and sex-structured population model to explore potential relationships between local environmental factors and albatross breeding success while accounting for fisheries bycatch by trawl and longline fisheries. The model uses time-series of observed breeding population counts, breeding success, adult and juvenile survival rates and a bycatch mortality observation for trawl fishing to estimate fisheries catchability, environmental influence, natural mortality rate, density dependence, and productivity. Observed at-sea distributions for adult and juvenile birds were coupled with reported fishing effort to estimate vulnerability to incidental bycatch. The inclusion of rainfall, temperature and sea-surface height as explanatory variables for annual chick mortality rate was statistically significant. Global climate models predict little change in future local average rainfall, however, increases are forecast in both temperatures and upwelling, which are predicted to have detrimental and beneficial effects, respectively, on breeding success. The model shows that mitigation of at least 50% of present bycatch is required to offset losses due to future temperature changes, even if upwelling increases substantially. Our results highlight the benefits of using an integrated modeling approach, which uses available demographic as well as environmental data within a single estimation framework, to provide future predictions. Such predictions inform the development of management options in the face of climate change.Studies on the relationships between the early life stages of the neon flying squid Ommastrephes bartramii and oceanographic conditions are essential for understanding the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of this ecologically and economically important species. In this study, O. bartramii eggs were artificially fertilized and incubated at temperatures found in its known distribution range (16-26 degrees C). Complete organogenesis with normal successive cleavage and the distinct continuity of morphological features was limited to between 18 and 25 degrees C. Experimental rearing, cruise-collected specimens, and oceanographic data confirmed that the optimal temperature range for paralarval survival around Hawaii is 18 to 25 degrees C. Embryos reared at 16 degrees C showed abnormal organogenesis; however, normal development resumed when the embryos were transferred to 22 or 24 degrees C after blastoderm formation. Hatchlings showed a variety of swimming behaviors, which may allow squid to regulate their thermal distribution in the wild. Furthermore, ball formation and associated chromatophore expansion might represent an apo sematic adaptation to imitate unpalatable prey. This study highlights the flexible strategy of O. bartramii embryo development and illustrates how information on paralarval behavior and oceanographic data (sea surface temperature) may be combined to improve our understanding of the factors that influence the survival of this species.Implementation of adaptation actions to protect biodiversity is limited by uncertainty about the future. One reason for this is the fear of making the wrong decisions caused by the myriad future scenarios presented to decision-makers. We propose an adaptive management (AM) method for optimally managing a population under uncertain and changing habitat conditions. Our approach incorporates multiple future scenarios and continually learns the best management strategy from observations, even as conditions change. We demonstrate the performance of our AM approach by applying it to the spatial management of migratory shorebird habitats on the East Asian-Australasian flyway, predicted to be severely impacted by future sea-level rise. By accounting for non-stationary dynamics, our solution protects 25 000 more birds per year than the current best stationary approach. Our approach can be applied to many ecological systems that require efficient adaptation strategies for an uncertain future.Adaptation to climate change in the European Union (EU) has been late and scarcely developed. Many Member States are reluctant to adopt national adaptation plans (NAP) and some even oppose to the EU's adopting binding norms. The EU tries to counter these limitations through the integration of adaptation measures in other policies of its competence. The local entities' greater activism of sustainability also permits to compensate the states' inertia. In contrast to its domestic action, the EU has become the main promoter of NAP in third countries through its development aid policy. This international cooperation is a potentially valuable tool to generate multilateral effects that may facilitate the adoption of a new post-2020 global climate order.Climate adaptation research is expanding rapidly within an increasingly reflexive society where the relationship between academia and other social institutions is in a state of flux. Tensions exist between the two dominant research orientations of research about and research for adaptation. In particular, the research community is challenged to develop processes for successfully executing transdisciplinary research for adaptation when academic institutions and researchers are largely structured around traditional, disciplinary expertise and funding models. One tool for helping to manage this tension is a third, more reflexive, orientation toward adaptation research that is emerging in the literature. This new 'research on adaptation research' promises to help enhance understanding of the research enterprise itself and how it can become more adaptive.Global warming increases the frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves, particularly endangering urban populations. However, the health risks of heat waves are distributed unequally between people because of intrinsic person-specific characteristics and extrinsic factors. The confluence of forecasted urbanisation and projected heat wave increase necessitates the identification of strategies that both lower the overall health impact and narrow the gap in risk distribution within urban populations. Here, we review the literature on vulnerability to heat, highlighting the factors that affect such distribution. As a key lesson we find that the literature strands on public health, risk reduction and urban planning all contribute to the identification of alleviation options for urban heat wave health impacts, but that they are rarely jointly evaluated. On the basis of the literature review, we suggest a common framework. We also evaluate response measures in addressing total and distributed risks. We find that person-specific risk is effectively addressed by public health and risk reduction intervention, while intra-urban variations of extrinsic factors can be efficiently tackled with urban planning, both in scale and scope.This paper examines the onset and cessation dates of the rainy season over Ghana using rain gauge data from the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) over the period of 1970-2012. The onset and cessation dates were determined from cumulative curves using the number of rainy days and rainfall amount. In addition, the inter-annual variability of the onset and cessation dates for each climatic zone was assessed using wavelet analysis. A clear distinction between the rainfall characteristics and the length of the rainy season in the various climatic zones is discussed. The forest and coastal zones in the south had their rainfall onset from the second and third dekads of March. The onset dates of the transition zone were from the second dekad of March to the third dekad of April. Late onset, which starts from the second dekad of April to the first dekad of May, was associated with the savannah zone. The rainfall cessation dates in the forest zone were in the third dekad of October to the first dekad of November, and the length of the rainy season was within 225-240 days. The cessation dates of the coastal zone were within the second and third dekad of October, and the length of rainy season was within 210-220 days. Furthermore, the transition zone had cessation dates in the second to third dekad of October, and the length of the rainy season was within 170-225 days. Lastly, the savannah zone had cessation dates within the third dekad of September to the first dekad of October, and the length of rainy season was within 140-180 days. The bias in the rainfall onset, cessation and length of the rainy season was less than 10 days across the entire country, and the root mean square error (RMSE) was in the range of 5-25 days. These findings demonstrate that the onset derived from the cumulative rainfall amount and the rainy days are in consistent agreement. The wavelet power spectrum and its significant peaks showed evidence of variability in the rainfall onset and cessation dates across the country. The coastal and forest zones showed 2-8- and 2-4-year band variability in the onsets and cessations, whereas the onset and cessation variability of the transition and savannah zones were within 2-4 and 4-8 years. This result has adverse effects on rain-fed agricultural practices, disease control, water resource management, socio-economic activities and food security in Ghana.This study evaluates capability of the Argo observation network for monitoring ocean variation, especially for eddy-scale variation, by using an optimum interpolation (OI) procedure. Sea surface dynamic height anomalies (DHAs) are derived from Argo temperature and salinity profile data, and DHA fields are obtained by the OI based on the space-time correlation scales estimated from along-track sea level anomaly (SLA) data by satellite altimetry. The DHA fields are compared with the SLA fields derived from the same OI applied to the along-track SLA data. The results show that the equatorial Kelvin waves and tropical instability waves are well captured by Argo floats. Eddies are also monitored effectively in the subtropical western North Pacific. The OI results of DHA do not agree well with those of SLA in the high latitudes. A simple test of the space-time OI analysis shows that more than six data in the e-folding domain, where the correlation coefficient of ocean variation is above e(-1), are required for the reliable analysis with 99% confidence level. Argo floats provide sufficient number of observations for the reliable analysis in the low latitudes and some areas in the North Pacific. Two to three times more Argo data would be required in most of midlatitudes and much more in high latitudes for capturing eddy-scale variation.Understanding farmer behaviour is needed for local agricultural systems to produce food sustainably while facing multiple pressures. We synthesize existing literature to identify three fundamental questions that correspond to three distinct areas of knowledge necessary to understand farmer behaviour: 1) decision-making model; 2) cross-scale and cross-level pressures; and 3) temporal dynamics. We use this framework to compare five interdisciplinary case studies of agricultural systems in distinct geographical contexts across the globe. We find that these three areas of knowledge are important to understanding farmer behaviour, and can be used to guide the interdisciplinary design and interpretation of studies in the future. Most importantly, we find that these three areas need to be addressed simultaneously in order to understand farmer behaviour. We also identify three methodological challenges hindering this understanding: the suitability of theoretical frameworks, the trade-offs among methods and the limited timeframe of typical research projects. We propose that a triangulation research strategy that makes use of mixed methods, or collaborations between researchers across mixed disciplines, can be used to successfully address all three areas simultaneously and show how this strategy has been achieved in the case studies. The framework facilitates interdisciplinary research on farmer behaviour by opening up spaces of structured dialogue on assumptions, research questions and methods employed in investigation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the determinants and implied economic impacts of climate change adaptation strategies in the context of traditional pastoralism. It is based on econometric analysis of survey data generated from household level interviews in southern Ethiopian rangelands. Pastoralists' perception of climate change in the region is found to be very consistent with the actually recorded trends of increased temperature and the evident secular declines in precipitation. Not only long-term declines, trends in the region's rainfall also appear to have taken a shift towards the direction of more unpredictability. Pastoralist adaptation response strategies broadly involve adjustments in pastoral practices and shifts to non-pastoral livelihoods. Results of the estimated models confirm that pastoral mobility is still quite essential in the present context of climate-induced household vulnerabilities. Increased mobility and diversification of pastoral herd portfolios in favor of a drought-tolerant species (camel) are found to be positively associated with pastoral household net income. A policy stance that ignores the detrimental impacts of the currently pervasive private rangeland enclosures or intends to hasten pastoralist sedentarization in the area is simply untenable in the present context of climate-induced risks and pastoral livelihood vulnerability.BACKGROUND: Vulnerability mapping based on vulnerability indices is a pragmatic approach for highlighting the areas in a city where people are at the greatest risk of harm from heat, but the manner in which vulnerability is conceptualized influences the results. OBJECTIVES: We tested a generic national heat-vulnerability index, based on a 10-variable indicator framework, using data on heat-related hospitalizations in Phoenix, Arizona. We also identified potential local risk factors not included in the generic indicators. METHODS: To evaluate the accuracy of the generic index in a city-specific context, we used factor scores, derived from a factor analysis using census tract-level characteristics, as independent variables, and heat hospitalizations (with census tracts categorized as zero-, moderate-, or high-incidence) as dependent variables in a multinomial logistic regression model. We also compared the geographical differences between a vulnerability map derived from the generic index and one derived from actual heat-related hospitalizations at the census-tract scale. RESULTS: We found that the national-indicator framework correctly classified just over half (54%) of census tracts in Phoenix. Compared with all census tracts, high-vulnerability tracts that were misclassified by the index as zero-vulnerability tracts had higher average income and higher proportions of residents with a duration of residency < 5 years. CONCLUSION: The generic indicators of vulnerability are useful, but they are sensitive to scale, measurement, and context. Decision makers need to consider the characteristics of their cities to determine how closely vulnerability maps based on generic indicators reflect actual risk of harm.Repeated loss of fine soil particles by dust emission from arable fields caused by tillage operations, decline soil fertility and reduce air quality. The objective of this study was to quantify the diurnal dynamic of topsoil moisture and the connected PM10-emission of 15 different soils from arable fields around Berlin. As typical for the young moraine landscape in NE Germany, soils from glacial (sand and loam dominated), aeolian (silt loam), and fluvial (organic) sediments were selected. Soil samples were placed outside under hot summer and clear sky conditions for 24 h to reproduce the natural dynamic of soil surface moisture, including dew uptake during the night and evaporation during the day. Dynamic of PM10 emissions of all soils were then measured nine times per day in a stationary wind tunnel. Glacial and fluvial sands showed lowest fine dust emission potential (PM10pot) between 89 and 41514 PM10 g(-1) soil, while PM10pot of loess soils were higher (369-1215 mu g PM10 g(-1) soil). During the night, the moisture of all samples increased slightly by dew uptake, and fine dust emissions of soil samples were reduced up to 51% directly after sunrise. Highest average reductions in PM10 emissions were found for glacial and fluvial barns. Some hours after sunrise, all soil samples heated up and quickly dried again. Under minimal moisture conditions, highest fine dust emissions were measured between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Coastal climate change in the form of rising sea levels and more frequent and extreme weather events can threaten community assets, residences, and infrastructure. This presents a particular concern for vulnerable residents such as seniors aged 75 years and older. Our spatial study combines census area cohort population model projections, community asset mapping, and a municipal policy review with coastal sea rise scenarios to the year 2025-2026. This integrated information provides the basis to assess the vulnerability of our case study communities in Nova Scotia, Canada. Nova Scotia has the oldest population of any Canadian province, the majority of whom reside in coastal communities on the Atlantic, making it an ideal site for such analysis. Through this work we forward a useful decision-making support tool for policy and planning one that can help coastal communities respond to the particular needs of seniors in rural areas and adapt to impacts of coastal climate change. Throughout we argue that social vulnerability must be considered alongside place vulnerability in the design of climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. This is not just an issue for coastal communities, but for all communities facing the effects of extreme weather events.Genotypic adaptation involves the incorporation of novel traits in crop varieties so as to enhance food productivity and stability and is expected to be one of the most important adaptation strategies to future climate change. Simulation modelling can provide the basis for evaluating the biophysical potential of crop traits for genotypic adaptation. This review focuses on the use of models for assessing the potential benefits of genotypic adaptation as a response strategy to projected climate change impacts. Some key crop responses to the environment, as well as the role of models and model ensembles for assessing impacts and adaptation, are first reviewed. Next, the review describes crop-climate models can help focus the development of future-adapted crop germplasm in breeding programmes. While recently published modelling studies have demonstrated the potential of genotypic adaptation strategies and ideotype design, it is argued that, for model-based studies of genotypic adaptation to be used in crop breeding, it is critical that modelled traits are better grounded in genetic and physiological knowledge. To this aim, two main goals need to be pursued in future studies: (i) a better understanding of plant processes that limit productivity under future climate change; and (ii) a coupling between genetic and crop growth models-perhaps at the expense of the number of traits analysed. Importantly, the latter may imply additional complexity (and likely uncertainty) in crop modelling studies. Hence, appropriately constraining processes and parameters in models and a shift from simply quantifying uncertainty to actually quantifying robustness towards modelling choices are two key aspects that need to be included into future crop model-based analyses of genotypic adaptation.Genome-wide DArTseq scans of 268 individuals of Eucalyptus salubris, distributed along an aridity gradient in southwestern Australia, revealed cryptic population structure that appears to signal hitherto unappreciated ecotypic differentiation and barriers to gene flow. Genome-wide scans were undertaken on 30 wild-sampled individuals from each of nine populations; 10 individuals per population were measured for habit and functional traits. DArTseq generated 16,122 high-quality markers, of which 56.3 % located to E. grandis chromosomes. Genetic affinities of the nine populations were only weakly correlated with geographic distances. Rather, populations appeared to form two distinct molecular lineages that maintained their distinctiveness in an area of geographic overlap. Twenty-four outlier markers signalled divergent selection and differentiation of the two putative lineages. Populations from the two lineages were phenotypically differentiated in leaf thickness, specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf nitrogen per unit mass (Nmass). The more northerly lineage (with thinner leaves) occurred in hotter, drier conditions with higher radiation. Populations of the more southerly lineage occurred on soils that were relatively low in phosphorus; the trees had thicker leaves, lower SLA and lower leaf Nmass, consistent with general responses to low nutrient levels. While historic isolation and drift may have contributed to the cryptic population structure observed, there is evidence of ecotypic adaptation, which may provide an exogenous barrier to gene flow. This study highlights the power of new molecular technologies to provide novel insights into the genetic architecture of wild populations.Past trends and future projections of key atmospheric, oceanic, sea ice, and biogeochemical variables were assessed to increase our understanding of climate change impacts on Canadian Arctic marine ecosystems. Four subbasins are evaluated: Beaufort Sea, Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Baffin Bay/Davis Strait, and Hudson Bay Complex. Limited observations, especially for ecosystem variables, compromise the trend analyses. Future projections are predominately from global models with few contributions from available marine basin scale models. The assessment indicates a significant increase in air temperature, slight increases in precipitation and snow depth, and appreciable changes in atmospheric circulation patterns. Projections suggest an increase in storm strength and size, leading to enhanced storm surges and coastal erosion, a slight increase in wave heights, increases in gustiness, and small changes in mean wind speed. An Arctic-wide decrease in the extent of multiyear ice and a spatial and temporal increase in ice-free waters in summer have been observed and are projected to continue into the future. Limited observations of ocean properties show local freshening (Beaufort Sea) and summer warming (Baffin Bay). These trends are projected to continue along with localized strengthening in stratification. Increased ocean acidification has been observed and is projected to continue throughout the Canadian Arctic, leading to severely decreased saturation states of calcium carbonate (aragonite and calcite). Qualitative analysis of biological observations indicate large regional differences. Increased primary production and double bloom development is seen in areas of sea ice retreat where nutrient supply is sufficient, and unchanged or reduced production is seen where nutrients are low or suppressed in response to enhanced stratification. Future primary production projections show inconsistent results, with light-dependent increase or nutrient-limited decrease dominating, dependent on the model. For the next decade, natural intradecadal variability is expected to be of similar importance as longer-term trends. To improve our capacity to assess and project climate change adaptation in marine ecosystems, more consistent observations are needed, especially over marine areas and for biogeochemical variables. Higher resolution basin-scale models are also required to provide locally applicable projections relevant for Arctic communities and management units.Many nations rely on dykes and levees to mitigate flood risk. However, a myriad of problems has prompted views that levees are ultimately maladaptive and should be used as a measure of last resort. This leads to questions not only about the place of levees in future flood risk management, but also whether anything can be done to reduce their impacts. A detailed review of flood events from Australia, China, the Netherlands, and the USA was used to develop a case study for each country. Case studies present existing levee problems, future flood threats, and national strategies to address them. These were used as a basis to analyse the transferability of adaptive flood approaches. While many countries are attempting to restore floodplain storage, thereby reducing their reliance on levees, others are increasing their investment in levee construction. This review explores factors that affect the transferability of adaptive approaches, including issues, such as problem recognition, affordability, and program delivery. It was found that countries vary in their ability to recognise levee problems, and the level at which decisions are made influences the likelihood of adaptive solutions being adopted. Analysis suggests that federal systems face particular challenges and their capacity to adopt adaptive approaches may be impaired if institutional barriers are not addressed. Regardless of the overall approach to manage flood risk, the experiences of all case study countries offer some broadly applicable lessons for improving the use and management of levees, reducing their adverse impacts, and improving the integration of natural flood mitigation.The ecological consequences of climate change are predicted to vary greatly throughout US rangelands. Projections show warming and drying in the southern Great Plains and the Southwest, warmer and drier summers with reduced winter snowpack in the Northwest, and warmer and wetter conditions in the northern Great Plains. Primarily through their combined effects on soil water availability, these climatic changes will modify plant production and community composition, which will, in turn, affect the livelihoods of humans who rely upon livestock grazing. The ability of rangeland managers to assess risk and prepare for climate change varies greatly and reflects their different adaptive capacities. Geographically specific exposure to climate change and a diverse adaptive capacity to counteract these changes will require development of varied adaptation strategies that can accommodate the various needs and abilities of livestock managers.Projected effects of climate change across many ecosystems globally include more frequent disturbance by fire and reduced plant growth due to warmer (and especially drier) conditions. Such changes affect species - particularly fire-intolerant woody plants - by simultaneously reducing recruitment, growth, and survival. Collectively, these mechanisms may narrow the fire interval window compatible with population persistence, driving species to extirpation or extinction. We present a conceptual model of these combined effects, based on synthesis of the known impacts of climate change and altered fire regimes on plant demography, and describe a syndrome we term interval squeeze. This model predicts that interval squeeze will increase woody plant extinction risk and change ecosystem structure, composition, and carbon storage, especially in regions projected to become both warmer and drier. These predicted changes demand new approaches to fire management that will maximize the in situ adaptive capacity of species to respond to climate change and fire regime change.Background and AimsWhich characteristics make future climate change information valuable for on-ground decision making for adaptation in the winegrape sector? And at what spatial and temporal scales will it be needed by Users? Methods and ResultsThis paper presents the results of a two-stage mixed methods study conducted with viticulturists, winemakers and industry representatives in the winegrape sector in Australia. For long-term decision making, participants focus on the concept of future climate analogues as being the most useful form of future climate information. Information provided at spatial scales the size of growing regions adequately meets the needs of most of these Users; and is wanted over time frames of five to 20 years into the future. Importantly, almost three quarters of the participants indicated that the uncertainty surrounding future climate change would not stop them from considering climate change when making decisions about adapting their practices. ConclusionsThis research suggests that the outputs of future climate models are typically presented at the wrong spatial and temporal scales and in a format which is not appropriate for Users in viticulture in Australia. Significance of the StudyThis study broadens the research on the perspectives of end Users concerning information needs for long-term decision making for climate change adaptation to include the viticulture sector.A common way of quantifying and communicating climate vulnerability is to calculate composite indices from indicators, visualizing these as maps. Inherent methodological uncertainties in vulnerability assessments, however, require greater attention. This study examines Swedish agricultural vulnerability to climate change, the aim being to review various indicator approaches for assessing agricultural vulnerability to climate change and to evaluate differences in climate vulnerability depending on the weighting and summarizing methods. The reviewed methods are evaluated by being tested at the municipal level. Three weighting and summarizing methods, representative of climate vulnerability indices in general, are analysed. The results indicate that 34 of 36 method combinations differ significantly from each other. We argue that representing agricultural vulnerability in a single composite index might be insufficient to guide climate adaptation. We emphasize the need for further research into how to measure and visualize agricultural vulnerability and into how to communicate uncertainties in both data and methods. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Trees behave in different ways on microclimate due to mainly distinct features of each species and planting strategies especially in the tropics. This paper quantifies the daily and seasonal microclimate behavior of various tree species with different planting design either individual or in clusters. This specific knowledge is an important step in the development of urban design guidelines based on the shading of trees and climate adaptation in urban areas in the tropics. It focuses on human thermal comfort based on the physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) for different species. Twelve species were analyzed: Handroanthus chrysotrichus (Mart. ex A.DC.) Mattos, Jacaranda mimosaefolia D. Don., Syzygium cumini L, Mangifera indica L, Pinus palustris L, Pinus coulteri L.; Lafoensia glyptocarpa L, Caesalpinia pluviosa F., Spathodea campanulata P. Beauv., Tipuana tipu F., Delonix indica F. and Senna siamea L. The results show that shading of trees can influence significantly human thermal comfort expressed by (PET). The species C. pluviosa F. presents the best possibility in terms of PET because it can reduce between 12 and 16 C for individual trees cluster can reduce between 12.5 and 14.5 degrees C. Appropriate vegetation used for shading public and private areas is essential to mitigate heat stress and can create better human thermal comfort especially in cities. The results can be seen as a possibility of improvement of outdoor thermal comfort conditions and as an important step in order to achieve sustainability in cities. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Hangzhou is a rapidly growing Chinese coastal metropolis that is facing climate change impacts, including intense heat waves, flooding and increased severity of storms (e.g. typhoons and thunderstorms). This paper examines whether green infrastructure (GI), specifically increased tree planting, could help Hangzhou City adapt to some of these impacts. The paper reports the results of a survey of Hangzhou green-space users and their disposition toward tree planting in public and communal green-spaces as a climate change adaptive response. Results show that surveyed green-space users tended to favor tree planting as an adaptive strategy if they were older, believed that individual actions could reduce climate change impacts, and believed that future climate change impacts would be economically disruptive. Few respondents reported tree costs (disservices). While the perceived benefits of urban trees were unrelated to support for urban greening, results suggest that under some conditions, residents may be willing to support increased tree cover within urban public and communal open spaces. Findings suggest land use planners and environmental managers in China would do well to cultivate support for green infrastructure interventions among older green-space users and residents who perceive personal costs associated with climate change. Additional research across a range of Chinese cities, and internationally, could further assist in evaluating the efficacy of green infrastructure for climate change adaptation from a green-space user perspective. Particular attention will need to be given to the potential costs of large-scale tree planting (e.g. health impacts) and to the utility of GI for macro-scale climate change response. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cultural ecosystem services are not easily integrated into planning decisions when rehabilitating urban rivers. Methods exist to characterize the value of these cultural services, but there are methodological challenges to obtaining this information and fitting it to a decision context, particularly when weighed against monetary costs and benefits. In a developing country, these challenges can be magnified and thus the value of cultural services is seldom considered. We illustrate this through a case study of a river in Jakarta, Indonesia, where plans call for widening the river channel, stabilizing the banks with concrete, and restrictingaccess to the river. We employ a mixed-method approach of household surveys, a discrete choice experiment and ethnographic interviews, to ascertain historical and present uses of the river, and residents' preferences for future change to the river. We demonstrate that low-income residents value non- or indirect-use cultural services that the river corridor provides services that would be lost under the current rehabilitation plan. By assessing residents' willingness to pay for cultural services, we can more easily compare these scenarios to the current plan. We also show how our mixed-methods approach to valuation can help frame and interpret quantitative results, so that decision makers have additional contextual information. We demonstrate that such approaches are feasible and sometimes necessary in complex, data-poor urban environments. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Predicted climate change may significantly affect drinking water supply in urban areas. Local water stakeholders facing climate change will have to deal with uncertain information and unexpected events. To address this lack of data, the knowledge and experience of practitioners might be used to assess the potential impacts of climate change on different issues, including drinking water supply. This paper proposes a participatory approach to identify local issues associated with drinking water supply (from source to tap) in a climate change context. This approach relies on the experience and knowledge of local practitioners. The proposed approach was applied to the Qu,bec City metropolitan area (Province of Quebec, Canada). It is based on assignment examples (in this case, a selected set of districts from the study territory) in order to generalize application to the entire territory. This approach helps stakeholders to rationally consider different dimensions and the complexity of drinking water supply.Conservation of representative facets of geophysical diversity may help conserve biological diversity as the climate changes. We conducted a global classification of terrestrial geophysical diversity and analyzed how land protection varies across geophysical diversity types. Geophysical diversity was classified in terms of soil type, elevation, and biogeographic realm and then compared to the global distribution of protected areas in 2012. We found that 300 (45%) of 672 broad geophysical diversity types currently meet the Convention on Biological Diversity's Aichi Target 11 of 17% terrestrial areal protection, which suggested that efforts to implement geophysical diversity conservation have a substantive basis on which to build. However, current protected areas were heavily biased toward high elevation and low fertility soils. We assessed 3 scenarios of protected area expansion and found that protection focused on threatened species, if fully implemented, would also protect an additional 29% of geophysical diversity types, ecoregional-focused protection would protect an additional 24%, and a combined scenario would protect an additional 42%. Future efforts need to specifically target low-elevation sites with productive soils for protection and manage for connectivity among geophysical diversity types. These efforts may be hampered by the sheer number of geophysical diversity facets that the world contains, which makes clear target setting and prioritization an important next step. Condicion Mundial y Perspectivas para la Proteccion de la Diversidad Geofisica Terrestre La conservacion de las facetas representativas de la diversidad geofisica puede ayudar a conservar la diversidad biologica conforme cambia el clima. Llevamos a cabo una clasificacion mundial de la diversidad geofisica terrestre y analizamos la variacion de la proteccion del suelo a lo largo de los tipos de diversidad geofisica. La diversidad geofisica se clasifico en terminos de tipo de suelo, elevacion y reino biogeografico y despues se comparo con la distribucion global de las areas protegidas en 2012. Encontramos que 300 (45%) de los 627 tipos generales de diversidad geofisica actualmente cumplen con el Objetivo Aichi 11 de la Convencion sobre la Diversidad Biologica de 17% de proteccion de area terrestre, lo que sugiere que los esfuerzos por implementar la conservacion de la diversidad geofisica tienen una base sustancial sobre la cual fundamentarse. Sin embargo, las areas protegidas actuales fueron fuertemente parciales hacia los suelos de alta elevacion y baja fertilidad. Evaluamos tres escenarios de la expansion de areas protegidas y encontramos que la proteccion enfocada en especies amenazadas, si se implementa de lleno, tambien protegeria a un 29% adicional de tipos de diversidad geofisica; la proteccion enfocada en eco-regiones protegeria a un 24% adicional, y un escenario combinado protegeria a un 42% adicional. Los esfuerzos futuros necesitan enfocarse especificamente en sitios de poca elevacion con suelos productivos para la proteccion y manejarse para la conectividad entre los tipos de diversidad geofisica. Estos esfuerzos pueden dificultarse simplemente por el numero de facetas de diversidad geofisica que existen en el mundo, lo cual hace que el establecimiento claro de objetivos y la priorizacion sean un siguiente paso importante. ResumenFloodplain vegetation states (communities) exhibit spatiotemporal dynamics in vegetation structure and composition, which reflect unique hydrological and connectivity patterns. Shifts in inundation regimes can drive succession and establish new stable states, determined by the magnitude and duration of the hydrological perturbation. We aimed to develop a modelling approach that is able to capture ecosystem dynamics, identify and quantify the main drivers of change, and provide a tool for conservation decision-making. We developed state and transition models for floodplain vegetation states based on surveys in 1991 and 2008 in the Macquarie Marshes (Australia), a Ramsar wetland of international importance. We used a Bayesian logistic regression approach to model state and transitions between vegetation states and investigated how flood frequency, distance to stream and fire frequency were associated with vegetation dynamics during this period. During 1991-2008, significant transitions have occurred towards drier states. Semi-permanent wetland vegetation had the lowest persistence probability (p(psis)=0456) and a significant threshold response of transitioning to terrestrial vegetation (p(tran)=0505). Transition to drier states was driven by lower inundation probabilities followed by increased fire probability, and distance to nearest stream. Using developed models, we predicted persistence probabilities of vegetation states under an unregulated (i.e. no dams or diversions) and regulated water availability system. Under a regulated system, semi-permanent wetland vegetation had an average persistence of p(psis)=0. 67 and 008 in the northern and southern sections of the nature reserve, respectively. Under an unregulated system, the predicted persistence of semi-permanent wetland vegetation was considerably higher: p(psis)=087 and 038, respectively.Synthesis and applications. Developing quantitative models of state transitions significantly improved our understanding of ecosystem dynamics, identifying sensitive indicators for monitoring and thus supporting conservation decision-making. This helps managers understand potential trajectories of change in ecosystems in response to management options. For example, increasing environmental flows in the Macquarie Marshes is predicted to shift the community towards more of a wetland than the terrestrial state, resulting from river regulation. State and transition models identified how key ecological assets respond to drivers of change, particularly where these can be managed. This is critical for ensuring that all ecosystem components are managed and that these do not shift into undesirable states. Developing quantitative models of state transitions significantly improved our understanding of ecosystem dynamics, identifying sensitive indicators for monitoring and thus supporting conservation decision-making. This helps managers understand potential trajectories of change in ecosystems in response to management options. For example, increasing environmental flows in the Macquarie Marshes is predicted to shift the community towards more of a wetland than the terrestrial state, resulting from river regulation. State and transition models identified how key ecological assets respond to drivers of change, particularly where these can be managed. This is critical for ensuring that all ecosystem components are managed and that these do not shift into undesirable states.The present study attempts to determine how some physiological and reproductive functions of olive tree (Olea europaea L., cv. Koroneiki) respond to enhanced UV-B radiation or heat. Enhanced UV-B radiation was applied to (1) three-year-old potted plants in an open nursery (corresponded to ca. 16% ozone depletion), and (2) in vitro cultured pollen samples (220 mu mol m(-2) s(-1), PAR = 400-700 nm + UV-B at 7.5, 15.0, or 22.5 kJ m(-2) d(-1)). Potted olive plants were also subjected to high temperature (38 +/- 4A degrees C) for 28 h to mimic heat levels regularly measured in olive growing areas. A significant effect of UV-B on photosynthetic rate was observed. However, enhanced UV-B radiation did affect neither chlorophyll nor carotenoid content, supporting previous reports on hardiness of the photosynthetic apparatus in olive. Increased superoxide dismutase activity was observed in UV-B-treated olive plants (+ 225%), whereas no effect was found in the plants under heat stress. Neither UV-B and nor heat did affect H2O2 accumulation in the plant tissues. However, the same treatments resulted in enhanced lipid peroxidation (+ 18% for UV-B and + 15% for heat), which is likely linked to other reactive oxygen species. The increased guaiacol peroxidase activity observed in both treatments (+ 32% for UV-B and + 49% for heat) is related to the defense against oxidative membrane damage. The observed reduction in pollen germination (20-39%) and tube length (11-44%) could have serious implications on olive yields, especially for low fruit-setting cultivars or in years and environments with additional unfavorable conditions. UV-B and heat effects described here support the hypothesis that plant response to a given stressor is affected by the overall context and that a holistic approach is necessary to determine plant strategies for climate change adaptation.Climate change will affect regeneration. Assisted migration is a climate change adaptation strategy that is associated with risks regarding transfer distance. Thermal time models can provide information about the synchronization of regeneration with seasons and the implications for assisted migration. Climate change may prevent trees from adapting or migrating fast enough to track their climatic envelopes. Assisted migration facilitates gene flow by sourcing pre-adapted provenances usually from southerly regions representative of future climates. The aims were to develop thermal time models for the germination and shoot emergence of two provenances of Quercus robur and to predict the impact of assisted migration on the synchronization of regeneration with seasons. Using cumulative germination (radicle emergence) and shoot emergence data from a laboratory experiment, thermal time models were developed for the seedling emergence of Q. robur. Thermal time parameters were then used with climatic data to predict the timing of germination and shoot emergence for English and Italian provenances in southern England. The thermal time parameters were lower for germination than shoot emergence, resulting in their temporal separation. For Italian acorns, base temperature was lower, but thermal time required was higher for germination and shoot emergence compared to English acorns indicating local adaptation. Predictions suggest little difference in the timing of germination and shoot emergence for the two provenances in the future climate of southern England (2080s). Q. robur has a robust regeneration mechanism where the thermal time parameters constrain germination and shoot emergence to safe windows and thereby ensure synchronization with seasons.In disaster science, policy and practice, the transition of resilience from a descriptive concept to a normative agenda provides challenges and opportunities. This paper argues that both are needed to increase resilience. We briefly outline the concept and several recent international resilience-building efforts to elucidate critical questions and less-discussed issues. We highlight the need to move resilience thinking forward by emphasizing structural social-political processes, acknowledging and acting on differences between ecosystems and societies, and looking beyond the quantitative streamlining of resilience into one index. Instead of imposing a technical-reductionist framework, we suggest a starting basis of integrating different knowledge types and experiences to generate scientifically reliable, context-appropriate and socially robust resilience-building activities.A systematic review was conducted of biological and physical climate change impacts in three hotspot regions in Africa and Asia. Specifically, the review focused on identifying the nature and extent of biophysical impacts in semi-arid zones, mega-deltas and glacial-fed river basins. In total 139, peer-reviewed articles were reviewed, with a steady increase in relevant articles reported since 2006. Publications on the South Asian glacial-fed river basins were the most numerous followed by semi-arid areas and then deltas, with Central Asia and some African countries being the most under represented. The nature and extent of impacts varied for each hotspot area and were largely determined by the geographical context and intrinsic characteristics of each region. River basin publications were dominated by impacts concerning hydrology, highlighting the importance of glacial-fed water resources to downstream populations. Semi-arid regions were dominated by impacts to climate processes and impacts to livestock and vegetation highlighting the importance of rainfall to the ecosystems and the livelihoods of communities in these regions. In contrast, delta studies were dominated by a focus on hazards, predominantly coastal inundation, reflecting the concentration of populations and assets in these areas. Uncertainties associated with the biophysical impacts on these regions under a changing climate are documented and represent key knowledge gaps. Common information gaps for all hotspot regions were the need for improved hydro-meteorological monitoring systems. The development of climate change adaptation strategies and policies should be supported by a sound knowledge and understanding of the full range of biophysical impacts, which are characteristic to each geographical location.Rivers are the cultural, social and economic backbone of South Asia, and therefore, the focus of public, political and scientific debate. Himalayan glaciers are the source of numerous large Asian river systems, which support rich ecosystems and irrigate millions of hectares of fields, thereby supporting about a billion people who live in their catchments. Impacts of climate change in river systems are likely to have considerable social, economic, ecological and political implications. This paper reviews literature for three major glacier-fed river systems of South Asia-Brahmaputra, Ganga and Indus-to understand governance mechanisms for climate adaptation in the region. A systematic review methodology is applied to examine adaptation responses in the riparian countries of these Himalayan river basins in three different levels-policy objectives, institutions and practice. Using the "fit for purpose" governance framework, we try to examine how far or near is the region for operationalizing principles of adaptive governance.Semi-arid areas are found in a large number of countries and regions of Africa and South and Central Asia. They display high vulnerability to climate change with considerable adaptation needs. In this paper, we review country-level and multi-country projects supported by international agencies. We examine the priorities and goals presented in national adaptation planning documents and in sectorial planning documents. Through this analysis, we seek to compare adaptation needs with current trends in national, regional and global projects and collaborations. Our results suggest that initiatives supported by international agencies play a considerable role in achieving national adaptation priorities, especially in areas such as agriculture and water management. However, compared with specific adaptation options such as drought-resistant species and irrigation (which tend to be the scope of the projects), the analyzed documents tend to see challenges in agriculture more in the contexts of food security, livestock and rural development. They emphasize the strong connection between rural livelihoods and sustainable land and ecosystem management. Priorities listed in the national documents but not captured in current initiatives include human health, pastoralism, security and migration. Our results also show high levels of mainstreaming adaptation into sectorial planning documents, especially those on poverty reduction; however, compared with the focus on the project level, they here emphasize adaptations focused on institutional development and governance. Finally, the outcomes indicate that global, regional and national initiatives are distributed unequally and that countries in Central and West Africa and Central Asia currently exhibit low participation, especially in national projects.Farmers' behavioural attitudes towards climate change are complex and poorly understood, making difficult the development of mitigation and adaptation policies that would be accepted and implemented. So far, the scientific literature has not clearly framed behavioural barriers related to the uptake of mitigation and adaptation strategies. Therefore behavioural barriers are frequently not considered in the modelling framework for climate change policy assessments. This paper presents a method that frames farmers' behavioural barriers and analyses their main determinants in order to incorporate behavioural constraints in the modelling frameworks. Three focus group discussions and a household survey were carried out in order to assess farmers' behavioural barriers taking into account the perspectives of both farmers and agricultural technical advisors. The analytical framework includes Principal Component Analysis to identify behavioural barriers and a binary Logit model to analyse the marginal effects of their main determinants. Farming experience, educational attainment and receiving climate information seem to be the key factors that determine the probability of displaying or not displaying most behavioural barriers. This work presents a method to model behavioural barriers in the context of the adoption of climate change adaptation and mitigation practices. Since a better understanding of behavioural barriers can help to enhance the support of mitigation and adaptation policies to farmers, this study could provide a valuable contribution to the deliberation of climate change policies in Kenya.The necessity of mainstreaming climate adaptation strategies or policies into natural resource management plans has been recognized by the UNFCCC. The IPCC AR5 report suggests a growing demand for research to provide information for a deeper and more useful understanding of climate adaptation options, and indicates a lack of effective methods to meet this increasing demand of policymakers. In this respect, a participatory integrated assessment (PIA) approach is presented in this paper to provide an effective means to mainstream wetland climate change adaptation in rural sustainable development strategies, and thus to reduce climate vulnerability and to enhance rural community livelihood. The PIA approach includes a series of research activities required to assess climate impacts on wetland ecosystems, and to prioritize adaptation responses. A range of adaptation options that address key aspects of the wetland ecosystem resilience and concerns are evaluated against community based on sustainable development indicators. The PIA approach is able to identify desirable adaptation options which can then be implemented to improve wetland ecosystem health and to enhance regional sustainable development in a changing climate. For illustration purpose, the PIA was applied in a case study in Poyang Lake (PYL) region, a critical wetland and water ecosystem in central China with important international biodiversity linkages, and a locale for key policy experiments with ecosystem rehabilitation. The PIA was used to facilitate the integration of wetland climate change adaptation in rural sustainable development actions with multi-stakeholders participation. In particular, the case shows how the PIA can be designed and implemented to select effective and practical climate change adaptation options to enhance ecosystem services management and to reduce resource use conflicts and rural poverty. Worked in partnership with multi-stakeholders and assisted with a multi-criteria decision making tool, the case identified alternative desirable adaptation measures which could be used to deal with climate risks. Several desirable adaptation options were implemented as pilot projects to showcase the effectiveness of these measures which resulted in benefits to the well-being and productivity of all people living in the region. It should be noted that while the case study evaluated adaptation policies or options to climate change, it was not completed in terms of discussing in detail all the key components of the PIA approach. However, the case study represents the state-of-the-arts research in climate change impact assessment and adaptation option evaluation, particularly in linking with wetland ecosystem sustainability. Findings of the case study have indicated that the potential effects of climate change on wetland sustainability are quite significant. The case has also identified adaptation measures considered by stakeholders to be potentially effective for reducing vulnerability of wetland ecosystems. It is clear that wetland ecosystem sustainability goals will be unachievable without mainstreaming adaptation measures into wetland conservation and health programs under a changing climate.The high intra-seasonal rainfall variability and the lack of adaptive capacities are the major limiting factors for rainfed agricultural production in smallholder farming systems across Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the crop planting date, a low-cost agricultural management strategy aiming to alleviate crop water stress can contribute to enhance agricultural decision-making, particularly as a climate change adaptation strategy. By considering the crop water requirements throughout the crop growing cycle using a process-based crop model in conjunction with a fuzzy rule-based planting date approach, location-specific planting rules were derived for maize cropping in Burkina Faso (BF). Then, they were applied to regional future climate projections to derive optimized planting dates (OPDs) for the 2020s(2011-2030) and the 2040s (2031-2050), respectively. Based on potential maize yield simulations driven by climate change projections and planting dates, the OPD approach was compared with a well-established planting date method for West Africa and evaluated as a potential adaptation strategy for climate change. On average, the OPD approach achieved approximately +15% higher potential maize yield regardless of the regional climate model (RCM) and the period. However, the potential yield surpluses strongly decreased from the North to the South. Regarding climate change adaptation, the combined impact of climate change and the OPD approach has shown on average, a mean maize yield deviation between -23% and 34% in comparison to the 1989-2008 baseline period. Yield deviation is found to depend strongly on the RCM and location. The RCM ensemble mean yield for the period 2011-2050 revealed a maximum decrease of 8% compared to the baseline period. On the one hand, these findings highlight the potential of the OPDs as a crop management strategy but, on the other hand, it is apparent that farmers need to combine the OPDs with others suited farming practices to adequately respond to climate change. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.After nearly three years of intensive consultations, 2015 has been declared the International Year of Soils by the 68th UN General Assembly (A/RES/68/232). The International Years of Soil is to be a major platform for raising awareness of the importance of soils for food security and nutrition and essential eco-system functions. Key objectives of the International Years of Soil have been identified as follows: to create full awareness of all stakeholders about the fundamental roles of soils for human life; to achieve full recognition of the prominent contributions of soils to food security and nutrition, climate change adaptation and mitigation, essential ecosystem services, poverty alleviation and sustainable development; to promote effective policies and actions for the sustainable management and protection of soil resources; to sensitize decision-makers about the need for robust investment in sustainable soil management activities, to ensure healthy soils for different land users and population groups; to catalyze initiatives in connection with the Sustainable Development Goal process and Post-2015 agenda; to advocate rapid enhancement of capacities and systems for soil information collection and monitoring at all levels (global, regional and national) (http://www.fao.org/soils-2015). Applying a proper management of the recovery and conservation of soil resources is a major goal for every nation. The development of a country depends on the production potential of own soil resources. Soil degradation is a serious problem in Europe an also in Romania. It is caused or exacerbated by human activity such as inadequate agricultural and forestry practices, industrial activities, tourism, urban and industrial expansion etc. Soil Quality Monitoring in Romania revealed a number of problems concerning land use in Romania following the manifestation of one or more limiting factors such as: moisture deficit, salinization and alkalization, soil erosion, waterlogging, reduced organic matter content soil acidity, compaction, pollution, reduced edaphic volume etc.This paper examines the role of Inuit traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in adaptation to climate change in the Canadian Arctic. It focuses on Inuit relationships with the Arctic environment, including hunting knowledge and land skills, and examines their roles in adaptation to biophysical changes that affect subsistence hunting. In several instances, TEK underpins competency in subsistence and adaptations to changing conditions, which includes flexibility with regard to seasonal cycles of hunting and resource use, hazard avoidance through detailed knowledge of the environment and understanding of ecosystem processes, and emergency preparedness, e.g., knowing what supplies to take when traveling and how to respond in emergency situations. Despite the documented importance of TEK in adaptation and in maintaining a level of competency in subsistence, the relationships between TEK and adaptation to climate change are not well defined in the scholarly literature. This paper aims to conceptualize the relationships between TEK and adaptation to climate change by di-awing on case study research with Inuit in the Canadian Arctic. TEK is considered an element of adaptive capacity (or resilience) that is expressed as adaptation if TEK is drawn upon to adapt to changing conditions. This capacity depends on the development, accumulation, and transmission of TEK within and among generations.Tidal flats provide ecosystem services to billions of people worldwide, yet their changing status is largely unknown. In the Yellow Sea region of East Asia, tidal flats are the principal coastal ecosystem fringing more than 4000km of the coastlines of China, North Korea and South Korea. However, widespread loss of areal extent, increasing frequency of algal blooms, hypoxic dead zones and jellyfish blooms, and declines of commercial fisheries and migratory bird populations suggest that this ecosystem is degraded and declining. Here, we apply the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Ecosystems criteria to the Yellow Sea tidal flat ecosystem and determine that its status is endangered. Comparison of standardized remotely sensed habitat data and historic topographic map data indicated that in the last 50 years, a decline of more than 50% but less than 80% of tidal flat extent has occurred (criterion A1). Although restricted to a narrow band along the coastline, Yellow Sea tidal flats are sufficiently broadly distributed to be classified as least concern under criterion B. However, widespread pollution, algal blooms and declines of invertebrate and vertebrate fauna across the region result in a classification of endangered (C1, D1). Owing to the lack of long-term monitoring data and the unknown impacts of severe biotic and abiotic change, the ecosystem was scored as data deficient for Criterion E and several subcriteria. Our assessment demonstrates an urgent need to arrest the decline of the Yellow Sea tidal flat ecosystem, which could be achieved by (i) improved coastal planning and management at regional and national levels, (ii) expansion of the coastal protected area network, and (iii) improved managed of existing protected areas to reduce illegal land reclamation and coastal exploitation.China is under great pressure to make a legally binding commitment to reduce GHGs emissions under the upcoming agreement to be reached through UNFCCC talks in 2015. China will move toward a new era in addressing climate change. Against this background, the new regime for international climate governance is undergoing profound changes, manifested in economic development, GHGs emissions, and international cooperation. In the meantime, the domestic response to climate change will get deeper and more closely linked with environmental protection and ecological governance, covering the fog and haze control, GHGs reduction in industrial sectors, and short-lived climate pollutants control. In the view that climate change adaptation and mitigation, to some extent, facilitates environmental protection, and vice versa, adequate attention and recognition should be given to co-control of GHGs and local pollutants.Arguments that fairness should be a guiding principle of climate change adaptation have been primarily concerned with distributive and procedural aspects of fairness, with far less attention paid to the temporal, spatial and interactional dimensions of fairness. This paper presents the results of a study that sought to understand the multiple dimensions of fairness of adaptation strategies that exist or can be developed to deal with sea-level rise. The study focused on five small communities along the south-east coast of Australia-Lakes Entrance, Seaspray, Port Albert, McLoughlins Beach and Manns Beach. Interviews were conducted with residents of the local communities to examine perceptions of current adaptation policies and their social impacts. A questionnaire was used to develop a nuanced understanding of the types of people living in these communities and their everyday lives, practices, and relationships. This enabled us to identify a range of non-material social impacts that may occur as a result of sea-level rise. Finally, focus groups were used to obtain community perspectives on the fairness of a range of potential future adaptation strategies. Together, these methods revealed that adaptation to sea-level rise is likely to affect some groups in the community significantly more than others, and in ways that will fundamentally change the nature of living in these communities. Understanding nuances in the social values of communities reveals how policies can be adapted to provide fairer outcomes for all community members through processes that create the time and space required to establish long-term working relationships between communities and government.Although yield and total biomass produced by annual legumes remain major objectives for breeders, other issues such as environment-friendly, resource use efficiency including symbiotic performance, resilient production in the context of climate change, adaptation to sustainable cropping systems (reducing leaching, greenhouse gas emissions and pesticide residues), adaptation to diverse uses (seeds for feed, food, non-food, forage or green manure) and finally new ecological services such as pollinator protection, imply the need for definition of new ideotypes and development of innovative genotypes to enhance their commercialization. Taken as a whole, this means more complex and integrated objectives for breeders. Several illustrations will be given of breeding such complex traits for different annual legume species. Genetic diversity for root development and for the ability to establish efficient symbioses with rhizobia and mycorrhiza can contribute to better resource management (N, P, water). Shoot architectures and phenologies can contribute to yield and biotic constraint protection (parasitic weeds, diseases or insects) reducing pesticide use. Variable maturity periods and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses are key features for the introduction of annual legumes to low input cropping systems and for enlarging cultivated area. Adaptation to intercropping requires adapted genotypes. Improved health and nutritional value for humans are key objectives for developing new markets. Modifying product composition often requires the development of specific cultivars and sometimes the need to break negative genetic correlations with yield. A holistic approach in legume breeding is important for defining objectives with farmers, processors and consumers. The cultivar structures are likely to be more complex, combining genotypes, plant species and associated symbionts. New tools to build and evaluate them are important if legumes are to deliver their exciting potential in terms of agricultural productivity and sustainability as well as for feed and food.Recent extreme weather events worldwide have highlighted the vulnerability of many urban settlements to future climatic change. These events are expected to increase in frequency and intensity under climate change scenarios. Although the climatic change may be unavoidable, effective planning and response can reduce its impacts. Drawing on empirical data from a 3-year multi-sectoral study of climate change adaptation for human settlements in the South East Queensland region, Australia, this paper draws on multi-sectoral perspectives to propose enablers for maximising synergies between disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation to achieve improved planning outcomes. Multi-sectoral perspectives are discussed under four groups of identified enablers: spatial planning; cross-sectoral planning; social/community planning; and strategic/long term planning. Based on the findings, a framework is proposed to guide planning systems to maximise synergies between the fields of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation to minimise the vulnerability of communities to extreme weather events in highly urbanised areas. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon farming in agricultural landscapes may provide a Cost-effective mechanism for offsetting carbon emissions while delivering co-benefits for biodiversity through ecosystem restoration. Reforestation of landscapes using native tree and shrub species, termed environmental plantings, has been recognized as a carbon offset methodology which can contribute to biodiversity conservation as well as climate mitigation. However, far less attention has been paid to the potential for assisted natural regeneration in areas of low to intermediate levels of degradation, where regenerative capacity still remains and little intervention would be required to restore native vegetation. In this study, we considered the economics of carbon farming in the state of Queensland, Australia, where 30.6 million hectares of relatively recently deforested agricultural landscapes may be suitable for carbon farming. Using spatially explicit estimates of the rate of carbon sequestration and the opportunity cost of agricultural production, we used a discounted cash flow analysis to examine the economic viability of assisted natural regeneration relative to environmental plantings. We found that the average minimum carbon price required to make assisted natural regeneration viable was 60% lower than what was required to make environmental plantings viable ($65.8 t CO(2)e(-1) compared to $108.8 t CO(2)e(-1)). Assisted natural regeneration could sequester 1.6 to 2.2 times the amount of carbon possible compared to environmental plantings alone over a range of hypothetical carbon prices and assuming a moderate 5% discount rate. Using a combination of methodologies, carbon farming was a viable land use in over 2.3% of our study extent with a low $5 t CO(2)e(-1) carbon price, and up to 10.5 million hectares (34%) with a carbon price of $50 t CO(2)e(-1). Carbon sequestration supply and economic returns generated by assisted natural regeneration were relatively robust to variation in establishment costs and discount rates due to the utilization of low-cost techniques to reestablish native vegetation. Our study highlights the potential utility of assisted natural regeneration as a reforestation approach which can cost-effectively deliver both carbon and biodiversity benefits. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article reviews climate change within the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR), analyzing how climate change is mentioned in the framework's text and the potential implications for dealing with climate change within the context of disaster risk reduction. Three main categories are examined. First, climate change affecting disaster risk and disasters, demonstrating too much emphasis on the single hazard driver and diminisher of climate change. Second, cross-sectoral approaches, for which the SFDRR treads carefully, thereby unfortunately entrenching artificial differences and divisions, although appropriately offering plenty of support to other sectors from disaster risk reduction. Third, implementation, for which climate change plays a suitable role without being overbearing, but for which other hazard influencers should have been treated similarly. Overall, the mentions of climate change within the SFDRR put too much emphasis on the hazard part of disaster risk. Instead, within the context of the three global sustainable development processes that seek agreements in 2015, climate change could have been used to further support an all-vulnerabilities and all-resiliences approach. That could be achieved by placing climate change adaptation as one subset within disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation as one subset within sustainable development.Unanticipated events can cause considerable economic hardship for poor rural households. Some types of negative shocks, for example weather-related agricultural losses and vector-borne diseases, are expected to occur more frequently as a result of climate change. In this paper we measure the role of household- and location-specific characteristics in conditioning behavioural responses to a wide range of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks. We use data from 8,000 rural households in 25 developing countries, compiled in the global database of the Poverty Environment Network. We employ a hierarchical multinomial logit model to identify the importance of characteristics observed at different levels of aggregation on a set of strategies aimed at coping with economic shocks. Results indicate that in response to idiosyncratic shocks, households tend to deplete financial and durable assets, whereas covariate and thus often climate-related shocks predominantly result in reduced consumption. Households in sites characterised by high asset wealth tend to cope with shocks in a more proactive way than those in sites with average or below average asset wealth, but the role of asset types in conditioning shock responses varies across regions. Our findings have implications for rural development and climate change adaptation strategies.Local governments are expected to play a significant role in making cities resilient, especially in reducing disaster risks and adapting to climate change. To obtain the relevant actors' understanding and cooperation in implementing adaptation measures, it is essential that the potential framing gaps which may arise between them in terms of the impacts and risks of climate change be filled in. In this study, we have identified the framing gaps between stakeholders and the general public. We analyzed the questionnaire data obtained from the general public and the stakeholder data obtained by means of a case study carried out in Tokyo. We then integrated the results and derived three implications: i) it is effective to implement climate change adaptation policy that local governments obtain an understanding of multibenefit of the the policy as well as climate change risk from the public through community-based groups, avocational groups and other organizations in the local community. ii) as for a firmly locked-in view of climate change policy that the policy means just reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, communication strategies for accurately explaining the relationship between adaptation measures and mitigation measures is required, and iii) as for the challenges of agenda setting for incorporating climate change risk into administrative plans, the department of the environment who is in charge of climate change policy is required to take a leadership in a coordinating function, for example, raising the awareness of other departments in terms of adaptation measures and providing them with scientific knowledge of climate change risk.Additional adaptation measures such as "basic improvement of sensitivity" and "adaptive governance against mid and long term impacts" are set as ideal directions for local governments. The study of the situations for implementing additional adaptation measures by local governments were determined by using checklists. It is clarified as a result that additional adaptation measures have not been considered enough. The following problems in implementing measures from the "Japan local Forum for Climate Change Adaptation Society" were found: (1) Prediction and evaluation of climate change impacts, (2) Concretization and evaluation of adaptation measures, (3) Communication and subject formation and (4) Implementation of the measures and preparation of conditions. In the future, it is necessary to concretize additional adaptation measures at the research level, to share these additional adaptation measures with concerned parties and to promote the exchange of opinions.Studies reveal that the more efficacious people feel in their ability to combat climate change, the more threatened they feel by it. This positive correlation deserves unpacking, given that classic theories position efficacy beliefs as coping appraisals that help manage threats. First, we tested whether the relationship is an artifact of overlap with a latent variable that is implicated in both threat and efficacy: "green" identity. Second, we tested whether efficacy perceptions are (partly) motivated cognitions designed to ameliorate helplessness in the face of threat. Study 1 (N = 4345 Australians) replicated the positive correlation between threat and efficacy, and showed that the relationships remained after controlling for green identity. Direct evidence for motivated control was found in Study 2 (N = 212 Americans): Participants who read a high-threat message reported more (collective) efficacy than did those who read a climate change message that downplayed threat. Implications for theoretical models of control are discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During the early part of the 21st century, an unprecedented change in the status of vector-borne disease in Europe has occurred. Invasive mosquitoes have become widely established across Europe, with subsequent transmission and outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya virus. Malaria has re-emerged in Greece, and West Nile virus has emerged throughout parts of eastern Europe. Tick-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease, continue to increase, or, in the case of tick-borne encephalitis and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever viruses, have changed their geographical distribution. From a veterinary perspective, the emergence of Bluetongue and Schmallenberg viruses show that northern Europe is equally susceptible to transmission of vector-borne disease. These changes are in part due to increased globalisation, with intercontinental air travel and global shipping transport creating new opportunities for invasive vectors and pathogens. However, changes in vector distributions are being driven by climatic changes and changes in land use, infrastructure, and the environment. In this Review, we summarise the risks posed by vector-borne diseases in the present and the future from a UK perspective, and assess the likely effects of climate change and, where appropriate, climate-change adaptation strategies on vector-borne disease risk in the UK. Lessons from the outbreaks of West Nile virus in North America and chikungunya in the Caribbean emphasise the need to assess future vector-borne disease risks and prepare contingencies for future outbreaks. Ensuring that adaptation strategies for climate change do not inadvertently exacerbate risks should be a primary focus for decision makers.Many cities have inadequate green infrastructures and cannot benefit from ecosystem services brought by greenspaces. Global warming and urban heat island (UHI) effect impose a dual warming impact on cities, especially compact ones. Green roofs offer a plausible solution for climate adaptation. In compact humid-tropical Hong Kong, two green-roof and a control bare-roof plots were installed on a high-rise building. Precision sensors were installed along a holistic vertical temperature profile extending from outdoor air to roof surface, green-roof material layers, and indoor ceiling and air. Three apartments under the plots were kept vacant to monitor air-conditioning energy consumption. The comprehensive-systematic data allowed in-depth analysis of thermal performance of vegetation (Sedum and Perennial Peanut) and weather (sunny, cloudy and rainy) in summer. Intense solar radiation at Control plot triggered significant material heating, which in turn warmed near-ground air to intensify UHI effect and indoor space to lift energy consumption. Sedum plot with incomplete plant cover, sluggish transpiration and limited substrate moisture storage had feeble evapotranspiration cooling. The warmed roof passed heat to near-ground air and subsurface layers to impose a small indoor cooling load. Peanut plot with high transpiration rate can significantly cool foliage surface and near-ground air to ameliorate UHI. Its high moisture-holding capacity, however, can generate an appreciable heat-sink to push heat downwards and increase indoor cooling load. Practical hints on green roof design and management were distilled from the findings for application in Hong Kong and beyond and to contribute to climate-resilient cities. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban green infrastructure can help cities adapt to climate change. Spatial planning can play an important role in utilizing green infrastructure for adaptation. Yet climate change risks represent a different sort of challenge for planning institutions. This paper aims to address two issues arising from this challenge. First, it defines the concept of green infrastructure within the context of climate adaptation. Second, it identifies and puts into perspective institutional barriers to adopting green infrastructure for climate adaptation, including path dependence. We begin by arguing that there is growing confusion among planners and policy makers about what constitutes green infrastructure. Definitional ambiguity may contribute to inaction on climate change adaptation, because it muddies existing programs and initiatives that are to do with green-space more broadly, which in turn feeds path dependency. We then report empirical findings about how planners perceive the institutional challenge arising from climate change and the adoption of green infrastructure as an adaptive response. The paper concludes that spatial planners generally recognize multiple rationales associated with green infrastructure. However they are not particularly keen on institutional innovation and there is a tendency for path dependence. We propose a conceptual model that explicitly recognizes such institutional factors. This paper contributes to the literature by showing that agency and institutional dimensions are a limiting factor in advancing the concept of green infrastructure within the context of climate change adaptation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ecotourism, beyond the widely agreed definitions, creates change in the perception of the tourism product, in consumer attitudes, but especially in shaping and developing strategies for biodiversity conservation, as well of cultural values and the way of life of the communities in areas protected. Currently, this form of tourism can be the chance to adapt to climate change and to mitigate its effects. This paper aims to highlight the steps in developing a sustainable management in protected areas, where ecotourism is a tool for climate change adaptation.Recent controversy has led to calls for increased standardization and transparency in the methods used to synthesize climate change research. Though these debates have focused largely on the biophysical dimensions of climate change, human dimensions research is equally in need of improved methodological approaches for research synthesis. Systematic review approaches, and more recently realist review methods, have been used within the health sciences for decades to guide research synthesis. Despite this, penetration of these approaches into the social and environmental sciences has been limited. Here, we present an analysis of approaches for systematic review and research synthesis and examine their applicability in an adaptation context. Customized review frameworks informed by systematic approaches to research synthesis provide a conceptually appropriate and practical opportunity for increasing methodological transparency and rigor in synthesizing and tracking adaptation research. This review highlights innovative applications of systematic approaches, with a focus on the unique challenges of integrating multiple data sources and formats in reviewing climate change adaptation policy and practice. We present guidelines, key considerations, and recommendations for systematic review in the social sciences in general and adaptation research in particular. We conclude by calling for increased conceptual and methodological development of systematic review approaches to address the methodological challenges of synthesizing and tracking adaptation to climate change.Adaptation is a key component of climate policy, yet we have limited and fragmented understanding of if and how adaptation is currently taking place. In this paper, we document and characterize the current status of adaptation in 47 vulnerable 'hotspot' nations in Asia and Africa, based on a systematic review of the peer-reviewed and grey literature, as well as policy documents, to extract evidence of adaptation initiatives. In total, 100 peer-reviewed articles, 161 grey literature documents, and 27 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change National Communications were reviewed, constituting 760 adaptation initiatives. Results indicate a significant increase in reported adaptations since 2006. Adaptations are primarily being reported from African and low-income countries, particularly those nations receiving adaptation funds, involve a combination of groundwork and more concrete adaptations to reduce vulnerability, and are primarily being driven by national governments, NGOs, and international institutions, with minimal involvement of lower levels of government or collaboration across nations. Gaps in our knowledge of adaptation policy and practice are particularly notable in North Africa and Central Asia, and there is limited evidence of adaptation initiatives being targeted at vulnerable populations including socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, children, indigenous peoples, and the elderly.Recent years have witnessed a rapid increase in scholarship on adaptation to climate change. Peer-reviewed literature, governmental communiqu,s and reports are increasingly reporting formulated and implemented climate change adaptation policies, strategies and plans of action. A large part of this literature describes general policy strategies, while there is limited published work on adaptation interventions at the local scale. The generality of adaptation is not only limited to strategies but also in terms of coverage of regions believed to be highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Among such climate change "hotspots" where understanding on adaptation is limited are river deltas. Herein, this paper synthesizes selected literature on adaptation policy and practice in river deltas located in Africa and South Asia. A systematic review methodology was used to scan online knowledge portals for published papers and also unpublished government documents. The review characterizes the state of adaptation policy in African and South Asian deltas and identifies future research priorities targeting climate change adaptation in large delta regions.We use the case of the macroeconomic impact of natural disasters to analyze strengths and weaknesses of meta-analysis in an emerging research field. Macroeconomists have published on this issue since 2002 (we identified 60 studies to date). The results of the studies are contradictory and therefore the need to synthesize the available research is evident. Meta-analysis is a useful method in this field. An important aim of our article is to show how one can use the identified methodological characteristics to better understand the robustness and importance of new findings. To provide a comparative perspective, we contrast our meta-analysis and its findings with the major influential research synthesis in the field: the IPCC's 2012 special report Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. We show that the IPCC could have been more confident about the negative economic impact of disasters and more transparent on inclusion and qualification of studies, if it had been complemented by a meta-analysis. Our meta-analysis shows that, controlling for modeling strategies and data set, the impact of disasters is significantly negative. The evidence is strongest for direct costs studies where we see no difference between our larger sample and the studies included in the IPCC report. Direct cost studies and indirect cost studies differ significantly, both in terms of the confidence that can be attached to a negative impact of natural disasters and in terms of the sources of heterogeneity of the findings reported in the primary studies.Climate change is likely to adversely affect population health through its impacts on diseases already of concern. How cities respond will largely determine its impact on the community. Results of 42 interviews with urban planners in Australia show that while they are aware of climate change as a general concern, they are not aware of the various ways in which it may impact on human health. Planning for climate change tends to focus on impacts on infrastructure (i.e. sea level rise) with little or no planning aimed at human health adaptation for city residents. Australia risks overlooking key public health opportunities that would address both contemporary health concerns and future health risks from climate change. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is increasingly being promoted as a multi-focal strategy for enhancing urban food security and advancing climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts in cities. The extent to which this potential can be realized is circumscribed by access to adequate land and water resources, the degree of recognition of UPA within the urban policy domain, and the ability of producers to effectively navigate the myriad risks associated with food production in urban and peri-urban environments. This paper argues that UPA faces significant interlocking stresses stemming from marginalization of land and water resources, increasing exposure to climate risks, and ineffective policies and poor governance that undermine its long-term potential to address urban food security and climate change adaptation concerns. This paper examines key environmental and governance dimensions of UPA in the context of rapidly growing cities in Africa and Asia, and advances understanding of how increasing urban pressures on land and water resources, and intensifying climate risks, are undermining the resilience of UPA in the face of rapid change. The paper's findings are drawn from a series of assessments on UPA that were recently conducted in nine cities spanning West and East Africa, and South Asia. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.India has committed large investments to energy infrastructure assets-power plants, refineries, energy ports, pipelines, roads, railways, etc. The coastal infrastructure being developed to meet the rising energy imports is vulnerable to climate extremes. This paper provides an overview of climate risks to energy infrastructures in India and details two case studies - a crude oil importing port and. a western coast railway transporting coal. The climate vulnerability of the port has been mapped using an index while that of the railway has been done through a damage function for RCP 4.5.0 and 8.5 scenarios. Our analysis shows that risk management through adaptation is likely to be very expensive. The system risks can be even greater and might adversely affect energy security and access objectives. Aligning, sustainable development and climate adaptation measures can deliver substantial co-benefits. The key policy recommendations include: i) mandatory vulnerability assessment to future climate risks for energy infrastructures; ii) project and systemic risks in the vulnerability index; iii) adaptation funds for unmitigated climate risks; iv) continuous monitoring of climatic parameters and implementation of adaptation measures, and iv) sustainability actions along energy infrastructures that enhance climate resilience and simultaneously deliver co-benefits to local agents. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Empirical studies of residential flood vulnerability have generally concentrated on either the geophysical characteristics or the socio-economic characteristics of a given region, rather than a combination of the two. In addition, studies using subjective assessments of flood vulnerability are not very common. However, due to the fact that people's perceptions influence their risk behaviour, and therefore their vulnerability, understanding perceptions about a phenomenon is very significant for the design of effective communication as well as mitigation, coping, and adaptation strategies. This study uses a digital map (to calculate mean elevation, slope, proximity to lagoon, sea, and drain length by area) and the EDULINK Round II Household Survey (for socio-demographic characteristics of households) for the analysis. Perception of flood vulnerability is derived from responses from heads of households to the question, "Do you perceive your household to be vulnerable to floods?" The responses are either in the affirmative or negative. Results show that even when a subjective assessment of vulnerability is undertaken, it is geophysical characteristics that have significant associations with perceptions of flood vulnerability.Climate change adaptation is a rising global issue and has become the primary issue for transnational organisations and EU institutions. Particularly in developing and dynamic cities like Istanbul, the pressure of rapid urbanisation, institutional and legislative uncertainties are expected to create new vulnerabilities in ecosystems and their services. Climate change can cause new vulnerabilities in ecosystem services (ESs) through events such as floods, heat-waves, and droughts brought on by rises in temperatures and changes in precipitation. These vulnerabilities may affect the well-being of inhabitants and interfere with the reaching of sustainable development goals in the future. Istanbul has a unique geographical location for biological diversity when compared with other settlements in the region, and the urban development dynamics of the region play a significant role in the well-being of ecological units and biological diversity of the Istanbul Metropolitan Area (Ozhatay, Byfield, & Atay, 2003; Tezer, 2005; Tezer et al., 2008). This paper aims to define which ESs are vulnerable due to both LCLU change caused by urbanisation and potential impacts of climate change. Particular importance is given to the result of the survey done with related stakeholders as it is used to define and to verify the existing and future vulnerabilities of ESs in Istanbul. Regarding the close relationship between ESs and LCLU, the impact of changes in LCLU on key ESs are evaluated by developing LCLU scenarios. Climate change scenarios are used in this paper to understand the possible future climatic conditions of Istanbul and their impact on LCLU and ESs. These two sub-results are prepared according to scenario analyses and are evaluated together to address the future vulnerabilities of ESs. Integration of ESs and climate change adaptation strategies into spatial planning (EEA, 2010) seems to be both necessary and urgent. Therefore, a spatial planning framework that is climate change adapted and ESs oriented is proposed as a key tool to achieve a climate resilient, sustainable development in Istanbul. The framework used in this paper can be used to develop relevant strategies and planning tools by considering climate change adaptive policies for other rapidly developing settlements. In brief, this paper aims to integrate ecosystems and their services into spatial planning by using relevant mapping of ESs, which will be utilised for the climate adaptive spatial policy development process for the Istanbul case. This paper has been prepared under the auspices of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) Project No. 110K350. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Governance has long been identified as a crucial part of solving environmental problems. Effective governance supports and encourages adaptive capacity to maintain or improve the conditions of socioecological systems. As coastal zones are among the most vulnerable systems to climate change impacts (e.g. sea-level rise), the adaptive capacity of coastal communities to climate change threats will be critical. Human populations will respond both directly and indirectly to these threats and impacts; for instance by adapting resource use and practices (e.g. changing fish targets). In this paper, we apply definitions of resilience, adaptive capacity and vulnerability to the coastal zone socio-ecological system. We focus on organizations and management aspects of governance in coastal Australia. Our approach combines a literature review that highlights key organizational drivers that supports adaptive capacity with interview data from senior resource managers from organizations from across Australia to test the validity of such drivers. The key drivers related to organizational and management issues that are required to build and strengthen the adaptive capacity of Australian coastal communities are: (a) Leadership; (b) Clear responsibilities and flexible organizational framework; (c) Effective integration of knowledge and insights; (d) Learning approach to natural resource management; and (e) Human capacity and coordinated participation in decision-making. Our study showed that natural resource management organizations are clearly concerned about future changes and uncertainties and recognize the need for cooperation and good organizational drivers. However, integration of knowledge and long-term planning to deal with predicted changes in climate is largely lacking; and mismatches between management, organizational and ecosystem boundaries and processes also exist. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The climate change risk to biodiversity operates alongside a range of anthropogenic pressures. These include habitat loss and fragmentation, which may prevent species from migrating between isolated habitat patches in order to track their suitable climate space. Predictive modelling has advanced in scope and complexity to integrate: (i) projected shifts in climate suitability, with (ii) spatial patterns of landscape habitat quality and rates of dispersal. This improved ecological realism is suited to data-rich model species, though its broader generalisation comes with accumulated uncertainties, e.g. incomplete knowledge of species response to variable habitat quality, parameterisation of dispersal kernels etc. This study adopts ancient woodland indicator species (lichen epiphytes) as a guild that couples relative simplicity with biological rigour. Subjectively-assigned indicator species were statistically tested against a binary habitat map of woodlands of known continuity (>250 yr), and bioclimatic models were used to demonstrate trends in their increased/decreased environmental suitability under conditions of 'no dispersal'. Given the expectation of rapid climate change on ecological time-scales, no dispersal for ancient woodland indicators becomes a plausible assumption. The risk to ancient woodland indicators is spatially structured (greater in a relative continental compared to an oceanic climatic zone), though regional differences are weakened by significant variation (within regions) in woodland extent. As a corollary, ancient woodland indicators that are sensitive to projected climate change scenarios may be excellent targets for monitoring climate change impacts for biodiversity at a site-scale, including the outcome of strategic habitat management (climate change adaptation) designed to offset risk for dispersal-limited species. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Numerous coastal and estuarine management programs around the world are developing strategies for climate change and priorities for climate change adaptation. A multi-state work group collaborated with scientists, researchers, resource managers and non-governmental organizations to develop a monitoring program that would provide warning of climate change impacts to the Long Island Sound estuarine and coastal ecosystems. The goal of this program was to facilitate timely management decisions and adaptation responses to climate change impacts. A novel approach is described for strategic planning that combines available regional-scale predictions and climate drivers (top down) with local monitoring information (bottom up) to identify candidate sentinels of climate change. Using this approach, 37 candidate sentinels of climate change were identified as well as a suite of core abiotic parameters that are drivers of environmental change. A process for prioritizing sentinels was developed and identified six of high priority for inclusion in pilot-scale monitoring programs. A monitoring strategy and an online sentinel data clearinghouse were developed. The work and processes presented here are meant to serve as a guide to other coastal and estuarine management programs seeking to establish a targeted monitoring program for climate change and to provide a set of "lessons learned." (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change challenges communities to visualize spatial patterns of risk, assess their vulnerability to those risks, and prepare adaptation plans to lower vulnerability. This paper outlines the design and implementation of a prototype web-based spatial decision support system (SDSS), referred to as the Community Adaptation Viewer (CAV), to assist adaptation planning. Thin-client, Javascript enabled web-SDSS software was constructed to allow interaction with urban infrastructure, and support "on-the-fly" assessment of social and economic vulnerability. Facilitated, decision-making workshops were conducted with small groups of stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of the prototype. The test case illustrates that high levels of information integration are practical to achieve, and that the SDSS can significantly enhance the ability of communities to conduct elaborate, geographically-specific climate change adaptation planning. Given the long time frame required to fulfil some adaptation plans, it is crucial that communities begin to develop and invest in adaptation strategies as soon as possible. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents the local gender contract of a smallholder irrigation farming community in Sibou, Kenya. Women's role in subsistence farming in Africa has mostly been analyzed through the lens of gender division of labor. In addition to this, we used the concept of 'local gender contract' to analyze cultural and material preconditions shaping gender-specific tasks in agricultural production, and consequently, men's and women's different strategies for adapting to climate variability. We show that the introduction of cash crops, as a trigger for negotiating women's and men's roles in the agricultural production, results in a process of gender contract renegotiation, and that families engaged in cash cropping are in the process of shifting from a 'local resource contract' to a 'household income contract.' Based on our analysis, we argue that a transformation of the local gender contract will have a direct impact on the community's adaptive capacity climate variability. It is, therefore, important to take the negotiation of local gender contracts into account in assessments of farming communities' adaptive capacity.Effective conservation management for climate adaptation rests on understanding the factors driving species' vulnerability in a spatially explicit manner so as to direct on-ground action. However, there have been only few attempts to map the spatial distribution of the factors driving vulnerability to climate change. Here we conduct a species-level assessment of climate change vulnerability for a sample of Australia's threatened species and map the distribution of species affected by each factor driving climate change vulnerability across the continent. Almost half of the threatened species assessed were considered vulnerable to the impacts of climate change: amphibians being the most vulnerable group, followed by plants, reptiles, mammals and birds. Species with more restricted distributions were more likely to show high climate change vulnerability than widespread species. The main factors driving climate change vulnerability were low genetic variation, dependence on a particular disturbance regime and reliance on a particular moisture regime or habitat. The geographic distribution of the species impacted by each driver varies markedly across the continent, for example species impacted by low genetic variation are prevalent across the human-dominated south-east of the country, while reliance on particular moisture regimes is prevalent across northern Australia. Our results show that actions to address climate adaptation will need to be spatially appropriate, and that in some regions a complex suite of factors driving climate change vulnerability will need to be addressed. Taxonomic and geographic variation in the factors driving climate change vulnerability highlights an urgent need for a spatial prioritisation of climate adaptation actions for threatened species.Despite ongoing interest in deploying information and communication technologies (ICTs) for sustainable development, their use in climate change adaptation remains understudied. Based on the integration of adaptation theory and the existing literature on the use of ICTs in development, we present an analytical model for conceptualizing the contribution of existing ICTs to adaptation, and a framework for evaluating ICT success. We apply the framework to four case studies of ICTs in use for early warning systems and managing extreme events in the Latin American and the Caribbean countries. We propose that existing ICTs can support adaptation through enabling access to critical information for decision-making, coordinating actors and building social capital. ICTs also allow actors to communicate and disseminate their decision experience, thus enhancing opportunities for collective learning and continual improvements in adaptation processes. In this way, ICTs can both communicate the current and potential impacts of climate change, as well as engage populations in the development of viable adaptation strategies.The description and analysis of climate change adaptation programmes in low- and middle-income countries rarely examines the political conditions and contexts in which these take place, or the way in which these activities may themselves shape local and national politics. This paper uses a case study of Zimbabwe to examine how the discourse and practice of climate change has been incorporated in, and has the potential to influence, national politics in a context marked by high levels of contestation. It identifies the ways in which climate change is framed within national political discourses, and describes the structures for governing climate change adaptation and how these are influenced by global priorities and policies. The paper then raises specific questions that are fundamental to understanding the broader political implications of work related to climate change in low-income countries, and argues that these must be engaged with if climate change adaptation is to generate sustainable long-term improvements in livelihoods and well-being for citizens in these contexts.Loss and damage (L&D) of climate change is a relatively new work stream of the international climate change regime. Lacking a clear official definition, L&D has triggered a debate about framing the topic, incorporating technical aspects of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation as well as political considerations such as the idea of compensation for vulnerable countries. This paper reviews the implications of L&D for decision-making with a special focus on the role of climate science. We identify three broad policy goals embedded in the discussion: creating awareness about the sensitivity of human and natural systems to climate change; developing risk reduction and risk management approaches to enhance adaptation, reduce vulnerability and build resilience and informing compensation mechanisms. For all of these, an understanding of the current and future climate-related L&D is needed. Existing decision-making frameworks can help deal with uncertainties and avoid a 'wait and see' mentality for most L&D decisions. The compensation component of L&D, however, offers a different dimension to the climate change discussion. While recognizing the political and moral reasons driving the debate around compensation, an increased focus on the complex and possibly unsolvable attribution question might put on hold efforts to integrate adaptation to climate change with wider development aims and DRR, blocking necessary action.Metrics on resource productivity currently used by governments suggest that some developed countries have increased the use of natural resources at a slower rate than economic growth (relative decoupling) or have even managed to use fewer resources over time (absolute decoupling). Using the material footprint (MF), a consumption-based indicator of resource use, we find the contrary: Achievements in decoupling in advanced economies are smaller than reported or even nonexistent. We present a time series analysis of the MF of 186 countries and identify material flows associated with global production and consumption networks in unprecedented specificity. By calculating raw material equivalents of international trade, we demonstrate that countries' use of nondomestic resources is, on average, about threefold larger than the physical quantity of traded goods. As wealth grows, countries tend to reduce their domestic portion of materials extraction through international trade, whereas the overall mass of material consumption generally increases. With every 10% increase in gross domestic product, the average national MF increases by 6%. Our findings call into question the sole use of current resource productivity indicators in policy making and suggest the necessity of an additional focus on consumption-based accounting for natural resource use.Paleoclimate records indicate a series of severe droughts was associated with societal collapse of the Classic Maya during the Terminal Classic period (similar to 800-950 C.E.). Evidence for drought largely derives from the drier, less populated northern Maya Lowlands but does not explain more pronounced and earlier societal disruption in the relatively humid southern Maya Lowlands. Here we apply hydrogen and carbon isotope compositions of plant wax lipids in two lake sediment cores to assess changes in water availability and land use in both the northern and southern Maya lowlands. We show that relatively more intense drying occurred in the southern lowlands than in the northern lowlands during the Terminal Classic period, consistent with earlier and more persistent societal decline in the south. Our results also indicate a period of substantial drying in the southern Maya Lowlands from similar to 200 C.E. to 500 C.E., during the Terminal Preclassic and Early Classic periods. Plant wax carbon isotope records indicate a decline in C-4 plants in both lake catchments during the Early Classic period, interpreted to reflect a shift from extensive agriculture to intensive, water-conservative maize cultivation that was motivated by a drying climate. Our results imply that agricultural adaptations developed in response to earlier droughts were initially successful, but failed under the more severe droughts of the Terminal Classic period.Young people regularly face great hurdles to get their voices heard, while research and practice in the disaster and climate change community commonly represent young people as passive victims requiring protection. Consequently, their capacities to inform decision-making processes, communicate risks to their communities and take direct action to reduce risks have been neglected. This paper presents empirical data from participatory video (PV) methods with groups of young people in three communities in Eastern Samar, the Philippines. Producing these videos enabled groups to research, document and raise awareness of disaster risk, and use screening events to mobilise and advocate for risk reduction measures in their communities. The results suggest that the PV process was an effective tool for empowering young people to raise important issues with decision-makers and advocate change on behalf of their communities.Institutional capacity is an important element for climate change adaptation (CCA) and the development of such capacity is a great challenge in a Least Developed Country like Cambodia where resources are limited. An important first step to increasing capacity is via an understanding of the level of existing capacity; future priorities can then be subsequently identified. This study aimed to assess the capacity of organizations to implement climate change activities in Cambodia in order to provide such a basis for building capacity. Four elements of capacity were investigated in this research: (1) financial resources, (2) cooperation and coordination of stakeholders, (3) availability and quality of information on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, and (4) the level of understanding of climate change vulnerability and adaptation. The data were collected through semistructured interviews with a wide range of government and non-government informants across a number of sectors. Results of the study showed that informants perceived capacity for CCA to be very constrained, especially in terms of financial resources and cooperation, and addressing these factors was ranked as the highest climate change capacity priority. Institutional capacity constraints were considered to relate more generally to weak governance of CCA. In light of our research findings, the absence of local higher education institutions in CCA activities should be addressed. The support of such institutions would provide an important mechanism to progress both capacity development as well as partnerships and coordination between different types of organizations and relevant sectors. Policy relevance Capacity for CCA within Cambodian health and water sectors was perceived to be very constrained across a range of interdependent factors. Increasing funding was ranked as the highest priority for building capacity for CCA; however, governance factors such as 'improved cooperation' were also ranked highly. Improving stakeholders' awareness of the availability of adaptation funds and resources, and their responsiveness to funding criteria, is an important implication of our research, as is improving the mobilization of local resources and the private sector. To address the issue of weak cooperation among stakeholders, improving the coordination function of the National Climate Change Committee (NCCC) regarding stakeholder engagement and capacity building is crucial. Ensuring that CCA activities are based on sound information and knowledge from across different disciplines and, importantly, include the perspectives of vulnerable people themselves, ultimately underpins and supports the realization of the above priorities.Major disasters, such as bushfires or floods, place significant stress on scarce public resources. Climate change is likely to exacerbate this stress. An integrated approach to disaster risk management (DRM) and climate change adaptation (CCA) could reduce the stress by encouraging the more efficient use of pooled resources and expertise. A comparative analysis of three extreme climate-related events that occurred in Australia between 2009 and 2011 indicated that a strategy to improve interagency communication and collaboration would be a key factor in this type of policy/planning integration. These findings are in accord with the concepts of Joined-up Government and Network Governance. Five key reforms are proposed: developing a shared policy vision; adopting multi-level planning; integrating legislation; networking organisations; and establishing cooperative funding. These reforms are examined with reference to the related research literature in order to identify potential problems associated with their implementation. The findings are relevant for public policy generally but are particularly useful for CCA and DRM.The present study has been carried out for the trans-boundary Subansiri sub-basin of Brahmaputra river basin. Subansiri is the largest tributary of Brahmaputra within India and the river system has its practical importance as it holds a high water resources as well as hydropower potential for the country, which still remains highly under-developed. The probable impact of climate change has been analyzed using hypothetical climate scenarios to understand the behavior of total streamflow as well as snowmelt runoff under the changing conditions. Based on the simulations of a daily snowmelt runoff model (SNOWMOD) using six years of data, it has been observed that the total stream flow as well as the snowmelt runoff increase with temperature. Snowmelt runoff was found to increase by about 5% and 12% for the increase of 1 degrees C and 2 degrees C in temperature respectively. However, not much change in snowmelt runoff was observed with changed precipitation scenarios. It has been found from this study that total stream flow changes in all scenarios of temperature (T) and precipitation (P). The observed maximum % increase in mean annual stream flow was about 6% for the T+2 degrees C & P+10% scenario and the minimum % decrease in mean annual stream flow observed was about 11% for T+1 degrees C & P-10% scenario. The present study aims to provide information for planning of climate change adaptation strategies for the Subansiri sub-basin of the Brahmaputra River.For species that are increasingly threatened by the combined impacts of habitat loss and climate change, the identification of priority regions for conservation planning efforts is urgently required. In the case of specialist folivores, consideration of the effects of climate change on the distributions of their essential food resources should be a key component of conservation planning. The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) was listed in 2012 as vulnerable under Australian Commonwealth Government law. Here, we incorporate species distribution models for the koala, an arboreal marsupial, and its specialized food resources, to identify broad-scale priority conservation regions. We demonstrate a spatial prioritization approach that informs conservation planning and that links the shifting distribution of this declining species and its critical food resources under climate change. We find that the inclusion of food plants affected the identification of priority regions for conserving koalas, and that priority regions for the conservation of this species are predicted to shift considerably, often outside the current range of this species, posing additional challenges for its conservation.To better understand injustice in our cities, and to understand how vulnerability to impacts of climate change is constructed, scholars have noted that we need to incorporate multiple factors that shape identity and power in our analyses, including race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Less widely acknowledged is the intersectionality of these factors; that specific combinations of factors shape their own social position and thus affect experiences of power, oppression and vulnerability. To address emerging issues like climate change, it is vital to find a way to understand and approach multiple, intersecting axes of identity that shape how impacts will be distributed and experienced. This article introduces intersectionality, a concept for understanding multiple, co-constituting axes of difference and identity, and kyriarchy, a theory of power that describes the power structures intersectionality produces, and offers researchers a fresh way of approaching the interactions of power in planning research and practice.Climate change is a potential threat to Vietnam's development as current and future infrastructure will be vulnerable to climate change impacts. This paper focuses on the physical asset of road infrastructure in Vietnam by evaluating the potential impact of changes from stressors, including: sea level rise, precipitation, temperature and flooding. Across 56 climate scenarios, the mean additional cost of maintaining the same road network through 2050 amount to US$10.5 billion. The potential scale of these impacts establishes climate change adaptation as an important component of planning and policy in the current and near future.This paper examines the dissemination of climate knowledge among Great Lakes decision-makers, especially focusing on cross-scale processes to tailor knowledge to better fit decision contexts. It employs both network analysis of those involved with documents and events intended to integrate climate change information into policy production or practice and qualitative research to understand how climate information flows among stakeholders in the water quality sector, a policy area of great importance in the Great Lakes region. It finds that the network consists of centralized regional-scale work surrounded by more dispersed specialized and local work that has developed over time. Our interviews reveal that overlaps between these scales produce more usable knowledge as potential users form their own specialized networks which operate as communities of practice that further tailor information to match particular application needs. We propose a model of this process that describes how the development of usable information works in a continuum, with each step furthering usability at the regional level. This model outlines the potential for knowledge networks and communities of practice to not only drive the use of information in particular decision contexts, but also provide a critical means to inform regional work and scale up the production of usable information about climate change. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Successful adaptation to environmental change and variability is closely connected with social groups' ability to act collectively, but many social-ecological challenges exceed local adaptive capacity which necessitate assistance from governmental institutions. Few studies have investigated how local collective action can be used to enrol external support for adaptation. This paper reduces this research gap by analysing a locally driven adaptation process in response to coastal erosion in Monkey River Village, Belize. Drawing on literature on adaptation and political ecology, we examine the different strategies Me local residents have used over time to influence government authorities to support them in curbing the coastal erosion. Our findings show that the local mobilisation generated government support for a temporary sea defence and that collective strategies emerge as a response to threats to a place specific way of life. Our case illustrates that it was essential that the villagers could ally with journalists, researchers and local NGOs to make their claims for protection heard by the government. The paper contributes to adaptation research by arguing that local collective action, seen as contestation over rights to protection from environmental change, can be a means for places and communities not prioritised by formal policies to enrol external support for adaptation. Our study supports and adds to the perspective that attention to formal arrangements such as adaptation policy alone has limited explanatory power to understand collective responses to change. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Given the significant and irreversible impacts of climate change on communities and the environment, there is increasing focus on how to best support decision-makers to adapt to climate change. Generally, the research on this tends to focus on assessing how decision-makers navigate elements of risk and uncertainty in deciding to what extent they should adapt their practice if at all, however, scientific researchers also have a key role to play in supporting these adaptation decisions. Given the applied nature of adaptation research, we argue that an examination of the roles and responsibilities of researchers is critical to understanding the ethical aspects of professional research practice in the adaptation context. This includes identifying how researchers can best support adaptation, and exploring the responsibilities that researchers have, not only to decision-makers but also to the broader membership of the adaptation community. In this paper we examine the ethical responsibility of researchers in supporting decision-makers to adapt to climate change, using agricultural producers as a case-study and focal group. Specifically, in undertaking this examination of risk and responsibility in adaptation research and decision-making, we use the lens of professional ethics to outline how research might better contribute to informed adaptation. We argue that clarifying the distinction between the research and operational aspects of agricultural adaptation, and how the interface between the two is disclosed, is critical. We also describe and explore the ethical considerations of researchers associated with stakeholder engagement in relation to adaptation science, and identify the need for institutional innovation for more effective engagement. In doing so, we seek to demonstrate how ethical research practice can support greater alignment of science and public values in agricultural adaptation, thus increasing the likely success of decisions. (c) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Our examination of the neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii) winter-spring cohort catch per unit effort (CPUE, an index of stock) revealed significant positive correlations with the interannual variations of observed chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration and autumn-winter mixed layer depth (MLD) in the winter-spring feeding grounds of paralarvae and juveniles (130-170 degrees E, 20-27 degrees N). These correlations suggest the importance of integrated bottom-up effects by the autumn-winter MLD for the neon flying squid stocks. However, the influence of autumn-winter MLD interannual variation in the forage availability for paralarvae and juveniles, i.e., particulate organic matter and zooplankton, has still been unclear. In this study, we use the lower trophic ecosystem model NEMURO, which uses the physical environmental data from the ocean reanalysis dataset obtained by the four-dimensional variational (4DVAR) data assimilation method. The model-based investigation enables us to clarify how the autumn-winter MLD controls the particulate organic matter and zooplankton abundance in the feeding grounds. Further, our investigation of the autumn-winter MLD interannual variation demonstrates that the stronger autumn wind in the feeding grounds develops a deeper mixed layer. Therefore, the deep mixed layer entrains nutrient-rich water and enhances photosynthesis, which results in good feeding conditions for paralarvae and juveniles. Our results underline that the wind system interannual variation has critical roles on the winter-spring cohort of the neon flying squid stock.An outdoor summer study on thermal physiology along subjects' pathways was conducted in a Japanese city using a unique wearable measurement system that measures all the relevant thermal variables: ambient temperature, humidity, wind speed (U) and short/long-wave radiation (S and L), along with some physio-psychological parameters: skin temperature (Tskin), pulse rate, subjective thermal sensation and state of body motion. U, S and L were measured using a globe anemo-radiometer adapted use with pedestrian subjects. The subjects were 26 healthy Japanese adults (14 males, 12 females) ranging from 23 to 74 years in age. Each subject wore a set of instruments that recorded individual microclimate and physiological responses along a designated pedestrian route that traversed various urban textures. The subjects experienced varying thermal environments that could not be represented by fixed-point routine observational data. S fluctuated significantly reflecting the mixture of sunlit/shade distributions within complex urban morphology. U was generally low within urban canyons due to drag by urban obstacles such as buildings but the subjects' movements enhanced convective heat exchanges with the atmosphere, leading to a drop in T-skin. The amount of sweating increased as standard effective temperature (SET*) increased. A clear dependence of sweating on gender and body size was found; males sweated more standard/underweight subjects. T-skin had a linear relationship with SET* and a similarly clear dependence on gender and body size differences. T-skin of the higher-sweating groups was lower than that of the lower-sweating groups, reflecting differences in evaporative cooling by perspiration.When attendant to the agency of models and the general context in which they perform, climate models can be seen as instrumental policy tools that may be evaluated in terms of their adequacy for purpose. In contrast, when analysed independently of their real-world usage for informing decision-making, the tendency can be to prioritise their representative role rather than their instrumental role. This paper takes as a case study the development of the UK Climate Projections 2009 in relation to its probabilistic treatment of uncertainties and the implications of this approach for adaptation decision-making. It is considered that the move towards ensemble-based probabilistic climate projections has the benefit of encouraging organisations to reshape their adaptation strategies and decisions towards a risk-based approach, where they are confronted definitively with climate modelling uncertainties and drawn towards a more nuanced understanding of how climate impacts could affect their operations. This is further illustrated through the example of the built environment sector, where it can be seen that the probabilistic approach may be of limited salience for the urban heat island in the absence of a corresponding effort towards a more place-based analysis of climate vulnerabilities. Therefore, further assessment of the adequacy-for-purpose of climate models might also consider the usability of climate projections at the urban scale.Climate change research requires integrative and collaborative research from multiple disciplines because of its complexity and sizeable consequences. Eco-social work has an important role to play. Relatively new, scholarship on eco-social work is growing and identifying ways in which the discipline's unique values, theories, perspectives and practices can contribute to this body of research. The aim of this article is twofold: (a) to contribute to this emerging scholarship by identifying climate change adaptation as an area of research for international social work and (b) to examine the utility of applying an integrated theoretical lens of eco-social work and feminist gerontology within this area.Understanding the genetic mechanisms that contribute to range expansion and colonization success within novel environments is important for both invasion biology and predicting species-level responses to changing environments. If populations are adapted to local climates across a species' native range, then climate matching may predict which genotypes will successfully establish in novel environments. We examine evidence for climate adaptation and its role in colonization of novel environments in the model species, Arabidopsis thaliana. We review phenotypic and genomic evidence for climate adaptation within the native range and describe new analyses of fitness data from European accessions introduced to Rhode Island, USA, in spring and fall plantings. Accessions from climates similar to the Rhode Island site had higher fitness indicating a potential role for climate pre-adaptation in colonization success. A genomewide association study (GWAS), and genotypic mean correlations of fitness across plantings suggest the genetic basis of fitness in Rhode Island differs between spring and autumn cohorts, and from previous fitness measurements in European field sites. In general, these observations suggest a scenario of conditional neutrality for loci contributing to colonization success, although there was evidence of a fitness trade-off between fall plantings in Norwich, UK, and Rhode Island. GWAS suggested that antagonistic pleiotropy at a few specific loci may contribute to this trade-off, but this conclusion depended upon the accessions included in the analysis. Increased genomic information and phenotypic information make A.thaliana a model system to test for the genetic basis of colonization success in novel environments.Climate change may hamper the preservation of nature targets, but may create new potential hotspots of biodiversity as well. To timely design adequate measures, information is needed about the feasibility of nature targets under a future climate. Habitat distribution models may provide this, but current models have certain drawbacks: they apply indirect empirical relationships between habitat and vegetation, they often disregard spatially explicit information about groundwater, and they are designed for too coarse spatial scales. We introduce a model that explicitly takes into account spatial effects through groundwater and that can easily be adapted to new scientific approaches and the needs of end-users. It combines (spatially explicit) data sources, transfer functions derived from mechanistic models, and robust relationships between habitat factors and plant characteristics. Outputs are maps showing the occurrence probabilities of vegetation types and their associated conservation values, both on a spatial scale that fits the needs of nature managers and spatial planners. The model was applied to a catchment of 270 km(2) to forecast, on a 25 m resolution, the effects of a national climate scenario (related to IPCC A2 and A1B). Computation time was a couple of minutes on a standard PC. Severe loss was predicted for wet and mesotrophic species-rich grasslands, while vegetation of dry and acidic soils appeared to profit. The results were not univocal though, and could probably not have been foreseen on the basis of expert judgement and logic alone, especially because of edaphic factors and spatial hydrological relationships.Chromosomal inversion polymorphisms are common in animals and plants, and recent models suggest that alternative arrangements spread by capturing different combinations of alleles acting additively or epistatically to favour local adaptation. It is also thought that inversions typically maintain favoured combinations for a long time by suppressing recombination between alternative chromosomal arrangements. Here, we consider patterns of linkage disequilibrium and genetic divergence in an old inversion polymorphism in Drosophila melanogaster (In(3R)Payne) known to be associated with climate change adaptation and a recent invasion event into Australia. We extracted, karyotyped and sequenced whole chromosomes from two Australian populations, so that changes in the arrangement of the alleles between geographically separated tropical and temperate areas could be compared. Chromosome-wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis revealed strong LD within the region spanned by In(3R)Payne. This genomic region also showed strong differentiation between the tropical and the temperate populations, but no differentiation between different karyotypes from the same population, after controlling for chromosomal arrangement. Patterns of differentiation across the chromosome arm and in gene ontologies were enhanced by the presence of the inversion. These data support the notion that inversions are strongly selected by bringing together combinations of genes, but it is still not clear if such combinations act additively or epistatically. Our data suggest that climatic adaptation through inversions can be dynamic, reflecting changes in the relative abundance of different forms of an inversion and ongoing evolution of allelic content within an inversion.The cropping sector in Australia contributes 2.5% of national greenhouse gas emissions, not accounting for the historical loss of soil carbon. The Australian Government is developing policy initiatives targeted at farmers to encourage changes in management practices that aim to reduce emissions from the agricultural sector. The main policy proposal being developed is a market-based mechanism to pay farmers from an Emissions Reduction Fund using methodologies specified under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative. The adoption of conservation agriculture practices in the dryland grain sector in Australia shows the potential to achieve emissions reductions in the order of three million tCO(2)e annually. This paper presents a series of systems models that describe the process of how Australian dryland grain farmers decide to change and adopt conservation agriculture practices. Results indicate that a number of economic and social factors drive the rate of practice change, and change seems to be motivated mostly by the pursuit of productivity benefits rather than environmental benefits. We postulate that it may be more effective for climate policy to directly target the adoption of conservation agriculture practices amongst Australian dryland grain farmers by promoting the crop productivity benefits likely to be achieved by such practices, rather than attempting to develop a market-based mechanism for carbon payments. Under this approach, emissions reduction outcomes and carbon payments would not be the primary driver for changing farming practices, but rather a concurrent benefit. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The U.S. Cooperative Extension Service was created 100 years ago to serve as a boundary or interface organization between science generated at the nation's land grant universities and rural communities. Production agriculture in the US is becoming increasingly complex and challenging in the face of a rapidly changing climate and the need to balance growing crop productivity with environmental protection. Simultaneously, extension budgets are diminishing and extension personnel are stretched thin with numerous, diverse stakeholders and decreasing budgets. Evidence from surveys of farmers suggests that they are more likely to go to private retailers and consultants for information than extension. This paper explores the role that extension can play in facilitating climate change adaptation in agriculture using data from a survey of agricultural advisors in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Nebraska and a survey of extension educators in the 12 state North Central Region. Evidence from these surveys shows that a majority of extension educators believe that climate change is happening and that they should help farmers prepare. It also shows that private agricultural advisors trust extension as a source of information about climate change. This suggests that extension needs to continue to foster its relationship with private information providers because working through them will be the best way to ultimately reach farmers with climate change information. However extension educators must be better informed and trained about climate change; university specialists and researchers can play a critical role in this training process.The visualization for the large-scale volume dataset obtained from blood flow simulations needs to be performed to help researchers to confirm the detailed positional information of the red blood cells, platelets and vascular walls. However, such a large-scale dataset is difficult to be visualized with an interactive frame rate on a normal computer. Nevertheless, the fusion of different objects, such as red blood cell volumes, platelet volumes and vascular wall surfaces, is also needed in the visualization, which makes it even more challenging. To solve this problem, we propose a system for visualizing such data by applying the particle-based rendering (PBR) (Sakamoto et al. Comput Graph 34(1):34-42, 2010); (Sakamoto and Koyamada Ultra Vis 176-185, 2012) method. This rendering method does not require any visibility sorting; thus, it can handle large-scale volume dataset, and the fusion of different objects is also easy to be implemented. To achieve an interactive frame rate analysis while maintaining good image quality, we combine two types of PBR in the system: object-space PBR (O-PBR) (Sakamoto et al. Comput Graph 34(1):34-42, 2010) and image-space PBR (I-PBR) (Sakamoto and Koyamada Ultra Vis 176-185, 2012). O-PBR method can handle large-scale data at high rendering speed but the image quality is not adequate when the view is enlarged. I-PBR method can provide high-quality rendering but have a limitation for the renderable data size. To obtain a best performance for blood flow visualization, our system adaptively switches O-PBR and I-PBR based on the data size within the view frustum and the computer resources. With this proposed adaptive visualization approach, the large-scale blood flow dataset can be efficiently visualized with the fusion of different objects while maintaining an interactive frame rate and good image quality.Critical to effective urban climate adaptation is a clearer understanding of the sensitivities of resource demand to changing climatic conditions and land cover situations. We used Bayesian Maximum Entropy (BME) stochastic procedures to estimate temperature and precipitation at the very small scale of urban Census Block Groups (CBGs) in Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon, and then compared average household water use patterns by climate conditions and land cover characteristics between and within the two cities. Summer household water use was positively related to maximum temperatures and dense vegetation cover in terms of grass cover and trees and shrubs; it was negatively related to precipitation amounts in both cities. Water use was more sensitive to maximum temperature, precipitation levels, and vegetation cover in Phoenix than in Portland. There was substantial intra-city variation with greater sensitivity in urban water use associated with higher densities of trees and shrubs in both cities, but in Phoenix, the highest sensitivities to maximum temperatures occurred in CBGs with the most grass cover while in Portland, high sensitivity was associated with CBGs with the least grass cover. Many of the latter are in highly built-up downtown areas of Portland where artificial irrigation is required to maintain landscapes during the hot summer season. Take-home messages are: (1) BME space/time statistics provide efficient estimates of missing precipitation and temperature data to create continuous high resolution meteorological data that improve water demand analysis and (2) use of landscaping for urban climate adaptation will have differing impacts on water use, depending on local climate conditions, urban layout, and the type of vegetation cover.Stormwater drainage and other water systems are vulnerable to changes in rainfall and runoff and need to be adapted to climate change. This paper studies impacts of rainfall variability and changing return periods of rainfall extremes on cost-effective adaptation of water systems to climate change given a predefined system performance target, for example a flood risk standard. Rainfall variability causes system performance estimates to be volatile. These estimates may be used to recurrently evaluate system performance. This paper presents a model for this setting, and develops a solution method to identify cost-effective investments in stormwater drainage adaptations. Runoff and water levels are simulated with rainfall from stationary rainfall distributions, and time series of annual rainfall maxima are simulated for a climate scenario. Cost-effective investment strategies are determined by dynamic programming. The method is applied to study the choice of volume for a storage basin in a Dutch polder. We find that 'white noise', i.e. trend-free variability of rainfall, might cause earlier re-investment than expected under projected changes in rainfall. The risk of early re-investment may be reduced by increasing initial investment. This can be cost-effective if the investment involves fixed costs. Increasing initial investments, therefore, not only increases water system robustness to structural changes in rainfall, but could also offer insurance against additional costs that would occur if system performance is underestimated and re-investment becomes inevitable. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.LaPO4 nanopowders doped with 1, 2... 10, 11, 15 and 20 mol% Tb3+ have been prepared by the microwave-assisted method. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) images indicated that the nanopowders are composed of nanorods. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that the prepared nanorods exhibit hexagonal crystal structure and the diffraction peaks were shifted towards the higher 2 theta angle side with increasing Tb3+ dopant concentration. Raman scattering measurement found out that some of scattering lines were shifted and broadened to higher wavenumber side with increasing Tb3+ concentration. It is discovered that the photoluminescence (PL) of Tb3+ ions results from the radiative intra-configurational f-f transitions that occur from the D-5(4) exited state to the F-7(J) (J=0,1-6) ground states; the photoluminescence excitation (PLE) of Tb3+ ions takes place from the F-7(6) ground state to the D-5(J) (J=0,1-4), L-5(10), (5)G(J) (J=2-4), H-5(J) and I-5(J) exited states. It was observed that the photoluminescence intensity reached a maximum in the samples doped with 15 mol% Tb3+. Double-exponential decay of the D-5(4)-> F-7(6) emission was observed with lifetimes of similar to 5 ns and 6.35 ms. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Both global change and policy reform will affect the implementation of the National Ecological Network (NEN) in the Netherlands. Global change refers to a combination of changing groundwater tables arising from climate change and improved economic prospects for farming. Policy reform refers to the abolition of an intermediary organization that organizes land trades with the support of a national land bank. In this paper we evaluate the effects of these factors on future land acquisition for the NEN. We applied an agent-based model of the land market based on sales and purchases between farmers and nature-conservation organizations (establishing the NEN) within a case study area. Our results demonstrate that future land acquisitions for the NEN are constrained by strong competition for land from farmers due to improved economic prospects for farming. Effects of climate change are that fewer parcels will be sold from farmers to nature-conservation organizations in a dry scenario as compared to a wet scenario. An important constraint for land acquisitions is the low willingness to pay (WTP) for land by nature-conservation organizations. We demonstrate that higher WTP increases land purchases considerably. However, the spatial pattern of land acquisition is fragmented, which may undermine its effectiveness from a restoration perspective. The combination of these processes leads to land acquisitions for the NEN that do not meet the initially-stated policy objectives by far. In addition, the abolition of a land-trade organization supported by a land bank leads to more fragmented pattern of nature reserves.In temperate Europe, warming, summer droughts, and increased winter precipitation are predicted to have profound effects on vegetation performance and composition. Especially groundwater dependent vegetation will be affected. These impacts within the landscape may negatively affect the connectivity within ecological networks. With an integrated surface- and groundwater model and a climate robust traits-based vegetation model, we simulated the implementation of water conservation measures in a stream valley catchment in the Netherlands. We assessed the impacts of conservation measures on groundwater levels, seepage flux, and vegetation composition for the current climate and two climate scenarios, with a global temperature increase of 2 A degrees C and an increase (+6 %) or decrease (-2 %) in annual precipitation. Our model showed that water conservation measures on average increased groundwater levels, although there were large spatial differences. At the same time, water conservation decreased the seepage flux in the stream valley, thereby decreasing the supply of nutrient-poor groundwater. These negative impacts on seepage flux will be amplified in a future climate. Semi-terrestrial vegetation along the streams will benefit from water conservation measures and increasingly so in a future climate. Other vegetation types showed a wide array of responses depending on spatially-differentiated changes in groundwater level and seepage fluxes. Our results highlight the importance of integrating spatially-explicit hydrology-vegetation interactions into models that evaluate climate adaptation measures. Customized water conservation measures can contribute to minimize negative effects of climate change on groundwater dependent vegetation and ensure the robustness of ecological networks.This paper describes the environmental consequences of agricultural adaptation on eutrophication of the nearby ecological network for a study area in the Netherlands. More specifically, we explored (i) likely responses of farmers to changes in climate, technology, policy, and markets; (ii) subsequent changes in nitrogen (N) emissions in responses to farmer adaptations; and (iii) to what extent the emitted N was deposited in nearby nature reserves, in view of the potential impacts on plant species diversity and desired nature targets. For this purpose, a spatially-explicit study at landscape level was performed by integrating the environmental model INITIATOR, the farm model FSSIM, and the land-use model RULEX. We evaluated two alternative scenarios of change in climate, technology, policy, and markets for 2050: one in line with a 'global economy' (GE) storyline and the other in line with a 'regional communities' (RC) storyline. Results show that the GE storyline resulted in a relatively strong increase in agricultural production compared to the RC storyline. Despite the projected conversions of agricultural land to nature (as part of the implementation of the National Ecological Network), we project an increase in N losses and N deposition due to N emissions in the study area of about 20 %. Even in the RC storyline, with a relatively modest increase in agricultural production and a larger expansion of the nature reserve, the N losses and deposition remain at the current level, whereas a reduction is required. We conclude that more ambitious green policies are needed in view of nature protection.Increasing the amount of green infrastructure, defined as small-scale natural landscape elements, has been named as a climate adaptation measure for biodiversity. While green infrastructure strengthened ecological networks in some studies, it is not known whether this effect also holds under climate change, and how it compares to other landscape adaptation options. We assessed landscape adaptation options under scenarios of climate change for a dispersal-limited and climate-sensitive species: great crested newt, Triturus cristatus. A spatially-explicit modelling framework was used to simulate newt metapopulation dynamics in a case study area in the Netherlands, under alternative spatial configurations of 500 ha to-be-restored habitat. The framework incorporated weather-related effects on newt recruitment, following current and changing climate conditions. Mild climate change resulted in slightly higher metapopulation viability, while more severe climate change (i.e. more frequent mild winters and summer droughts) had detrimental effects on metapopulation viability. The modelling framework revealed interactions between climate and landscape configuration on newt viability. Restoration of ponds and terrestrial habitat may reduce the negative effects of climate change, but only when certain spatial requirements (habitat density, connectivity) as well as abiotic requirements (high ground water level) are met. Landscape scenarios where habitat was added in the form of green infrastructure were not able to meet these multiple conditions, as was the case for a scenario that enlarged core areas. The approach allowed a deduction of landscape design rules that incorporated both spatial and abiotic requirements resulting in more effective climate adaptation options.Urban landscapes are spatially constrained, and vegetative land uses that provide beneficial ecosystem services are difficult to maintain. Urban agricultural (UA) systems appear in many forms - from community farms and rooftop gardens to edible landscaping and urban orchards - and can be productive features of cities and provide important environmental services. As highly managed plant communities, UA can exhibit high levels of biodiversity, often exceeding that of other green space areas within the city. Additionally, it is likely that variation in vegetation cover, diversity, and structure influence not only the biodiversity in UA, but also the quantity and quality of ecosystem services supported by such systems. The biodiversity and ecosystem services (B&ES) of UA can have potentially large societal and environmental benefits for cities, such as enhanced food security, air quality, and water regulation. Yet few studies have synthesized knowledge regarding UA vegetation management impacts on the quantity, quality, and stability of B&ES provided. This article presents the first survey of the existing research on the characteristics of UA management and their potential to support ecosystem service delivery. Specifically, we examine: (1) biodiversity patterns in UA, (2) ecosystem services provided by UA, and (3) the challenges of promoting UA systems that support B&ES. Overall, our review reveals that varied vegetative structure, increased native plant diversity, and reduction of urban impervious surface are key features of UA systems that contribute significantly to urban biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services such as pollination, pest control, and climate resilience. We conclude with a discussion of critical gaps in current research and strategies to better understand and support UA and ecosystem services.Over 30 years of research has shown that urban nature is a promising tool for enhancing the physical, psychological, and social well-being of the world's growing urban population. However, little is known about the type and amount of nature people require in order to receive different health benefits, preventing the development of recommendations for minimum levels of exposure and targeted city planning guidelines for public health outcomes. Dose-response modelling, when a dose of nature is modeled against a health response, could provide a key method for addressing this knowledge gap. In this overview, we explore how "nature dose" and health response have been conceptualized and examine the evidence for different shapes of dose-response curves. We highlight the crucial need to move beyond simplistic measures of nature dose to understand how urban nature can be manipulated to enhance human health.A hot spell is an extreme weather event with one or more consecutive days with daily maximum temperature exceeding a certain threshold of high temperature. Statistical modeling of summer hot spells in China during 1960-2005 and their simulations in the historical experiment of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) are investigated in this study. A technique called the hot spell model (HSM), introduced by Furrer et al. (Clim Res 43:191-205, 2010) for modeling hot spells by extending the point process approach to extreme value theory, is applied. Specifically, the frequency of summer hot spells is modeled by a Poisson distribution, their intensity is modeled by a generalized Pareto distribution, and their duration is modeled by a geometric distribution. Results show that the HSM permits realistic modeling of summer hot spells in China. Trends in the frequency, duration, and intensity of hot spells were estimated based on the HSM for the observed period from 1960 to 2005. Furthermore, the performance in simulating hot spell characteristics and trends from the CMIP5 historical run were assessed based on the HSM. Climate models with good performance were selected to conduct an ensemble projection of hot spell intensity, frequency, and duration and their trends in future decades.AimSpecies are responding to climate change by changing their distributions, creating debate about the effectiveness of existing networks of protected areas. As a contribution to this debate, we assess whether regional winter abundances and distribution of the Smew Mergellus albellus, a migratory waterbird species listed on Annex I (EU Birds Directive) that overwinters exclusively in European wetlands, changed during 1990-2011, the role of global warming in driving distributional changes and the effectiveness of the network of Special Protection Areas (SPAs, EU Birds Directive) in the context of climate change. LocationEurope. MethodsWe used site-specific counts (6,883 sites) from 16 countries covering the entire flyway to estimate annual abundance indices and trends at country, region (north-eastern, central and south-western) and flyway scales, inside and outside SPAs. We fitted autoregressive models to assess the effect of winter temperature on the annual abundance indices whilst accounting for autocorrelation. ResultsThe Smew wintering distribution shifted north-eastwards in Europe in accordance with the predictions of global warming, with increasing numbers in the north-eastern region and declines in the central region. Trends in wintering numbers were more positive in SPAs on the north-eastern and south-western part of the flyway. However, a large proportion of the wintering population remains unprotected in north-eastern areas outside of the existing SPA network. Main conclusionsSPAs accommodated climate-driven abundance changes in the north-eastern region of the wintering distribution by supporting increasing numbers of Smew in traditional and newly colonized areas. However, we highlight gaps in the current network, suggesting that urgent policy responses are needed. Given rapid changes in species distributions, we urge regular national and international assessments of the adequacy of the EU Natura 2000 network to ensure coherence in site-safeguard networks for this and other species.Protected areas are a fundamental component of many conservation strategies. They safeguard some of the best examples of unfragmented natural landscapes in many regions, provide important habitat for rare and threatened species, and serve as a refuge from a human-dominated world. As climates continue to change, species distributions, ecological communities, and ecosystems will be altered. An understanding of the trends in these changes can allow protected area managers to develop more effective climate-adaptation strategies. Here, we quantify the relative amount of projected potential climate-driven ecological change across a protected area network by calculating three metrics. We assessed future projected changes in temperature and precipitation, shifts in major vegetation types, and vertebrate species turnover for the protected areas of the Pacific Northwestern region of North America. In general, the degree of projected change in the three metrics followed a longitudinal gradient from the Pacific coast inland toward the continental interior. Protected areas expected to experience the least change are at low elevations near the coast and throughout the Coastal Mountains, whereas areas expected to experience the most change are found at higher elevations in the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin regions. The resulting spatial variation in these impact measures underscores the importance of developing appropriate, location-specific, climate-adaptation strategies in response to disparate trends in future environmental change.Climate change can directly affect habitats within ecological networks, but may also have indirect effects on network quality by inducing land use change. The relative impact of indirect effects of climate change on the quality of ecological networks currently remains largely unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the relative impact of direct and indirect effects of climate change on a network of breeding habitat of four meadow bird species (Black-tailed godwit, Common redshank, Eurasian oystercatcher and Northern lapwing) in the Netherlands. Habitat models were developed that link meadow bird breeding densities to three habitat characteristics that are sensitive to environmental change (landscape openness, land use and groundwater level). These models were used to assess the impact of scenarios of landscape change with and without climate change on meadow bird breeding habitat quality for a case study area in the peat meadow district of the Netherlands. All scenarios led to significantly reduced habitat quality for all species, mainly as a result of conversion of grassland to bioenergy crops, which reduces landscape openness. Direct effects of climate change on habitat quality were largely absent, indicating that especially human adaptation to climate change rather than direct effects of climate change was decisive for the degradation of ecological network quality for breeding meadow birds. We conclude that scenario studies exploring impacts of climate change on ecological networks should incorporate both land use change resulting from human responses to climate change and direct effects of climate change on landscapes.Effective parasite management can be achieved through strategically timed treatments that break the life cycle. We examined the effects of temperature (2 A degrees C increments from 22 to 34 A degrees C) and salinity (0, 11, 22, 35, 40 aEuro degrees) on the life cycle (embryonation period, hatching success, oncomiracidia (larvae) longevity, infection success, and time to sexual maturity) of Neobenedenia sp. (Monogenea: Capsalidae), a harmful ectoparasite of farmed marine fishes. Experiments were conducted in controlled conditions in the laboratory. The life cycle was faster in warm, high saline conditions compared to cooler conditions (10-13 days between 26-32 A degrees C, 40 aEuro degrees; 15-16 days between 22-24 A degrees C at 40 aEuro degrees). Warm seawater and high saline conditions (24-32 A degrees C, 35-40 aEuro degrees) improved egg hatching success, reduced time to sexual maturity, and resulted in parasites reaching sexual maturity at a larger size (at 30-32 A degrees C) compared to cooler conditions (22 A degrees C). In contrast, cool, hypersaline conditions (22 A degrees C, 40 aEuro degrees) increased oncomiracidia longevity and infection success. Linear and quantile regression models were used to construct an interactive, online parasite management interface to enable strategic treatment of parasites in aquaculture corresponding to observed temperature and salinity variation on farms in the tropics. It was recommended that farmers treat their stock more frequently during summer (27-31 A degrees C) when parasites can complete their life cycle more quickly. Nevertheless, farmers should be aware of the potential for increased Neobenedenia sp. infections during winter months (21-26 A degrees C) due to increased infection success.Purpose - This paper reviews published English literature on tourism adaptation to climate change. Climate change remains a challenge in the 21 st centaury and beyond. Climate sensitive industries like tourism are vulnerable to climate change. It is for this reason that tourism researchers have continued to explore the relationship between tourism and climate change and further explored response strategies among tourism stakeholders. Tourism research on climate change adaptation may be traces way back in the 1960s. However, focused research on climate change and tourism has emerged in the last 15 years. Design - This review maps tourism adaptation knowledge domains between early1960s and 2014. Methodology - This paper rely on secondary English published tourism literature to aid the review Findings - Findings indicate that tourism adaptation literature have advanced under five thematic areas prior 2010 to include: Business adaptation; Consumer adaptation, Destination Adaptation; adaptation Policy and; Frameworks for adaptation. However, after 2010 a new theme on 'sustainable adaptation' is tourism has emerged and it is gaining attention among tourism researchers Originality - The originality of this paper is that the paper is the first paper in tourism that has identified sustainable adaptation as a new emerging thematic area in tourism and climate change adaptation research. The paper notes an emergence of interest on sustainable adaptation knowledge domain despite lack of clarity on what is sustainable adaptation within tourism research. It is therefore important for researchers to amicably define the term sustainable adaptation to enable comparative studies and discourse in the area.Green Infrastructure is the network of green spaces and water systems that delivers multiple environmental, social and economic values and services to urban communities. This living network strengthens the resilience of urban environments to respond to the major current and future challenges of climate change, growth, health and biodiversity loss, as well as water, energy and food security. With the rapid expansion of towns and cities around the world, the far-reaching value of Green Infrastructure is increasingly recognised by scientific, planning and design communities. A key strategy area of the South Australian Green Infrastructure Project has been development of a sound and credible evidence base to demonstrate the multiple benefits and make the case for investment in Green Infrastructure. A review of local and global literature, with an emphasis on the most recent peer-reviewed research, was carried out between 2012 and 2014. The body of evidence firmly establishes the many and diverse benefits of Green Infrastructure. These include modification of temperatures and climatic conditions, improved human health and well-being, enhanced community liveability, more effective water management, increased economic prosperity, greater opportunity for biodiversity conservation and more extensive urban food production. The primary focus of this paper is the contribution of Green Infrastructure to climate adaptation and protection.Climate change information is essential for water resources management planning, and the majority of research available uses the global circulation model (GCM) data to project future water balance. Despite the fact that the results of various GCMs are still heterogeneous, it is common to utilize GCM values directly in climate change impact assessment models. To mitigate these limitations, this study provides an alternative methodology, which uses GCM-based data to assign weights on historical scenarios rather than to directly input their values into the assessment models, thereby reducing the uncertainty involved in the direct use of GCMs. Therefore, the real innovation of this study is placed on the use of a new probability weighting scheme with multiple GCMs rather than on the direct input of GCM-driven data. Applied to make future projections of the water shortage in the Han River basin of Korea, the proposed methodology produced conservative but realistic projection results (15% increase) compared to the existing methodologies, which projected a dramatic increase (144%) in water shortage over 10 years. As a result, it was anticipated that the amount of water shortages in the Han River basin would gradually increase in the next 90 years, including a 57% increase in the 2080s.To enhance understanding of the process of climate change adaptation and to facilitate the planning and implementation of socially-just adaptation strategies, deeper consideration of the factors that impede adaptation is required. In response, scholars have increasingly identified barriers to adaptation in the literature. But, despite this progress, knowledge of barriers that hamper adaptation in developing countries remains limited, especially in relation to underlying causes of vulnerability and low adaptive capacity. To further improve understanding of barriers to adaptation and identify gaps in the state-of-the-art knowledge, we undertook a synthesis of empirical literature from sub-Saharan Africa focusing on vulnerable, natural resource-dependent communities and livelihoods. Our review illustrates that: (1) local-level studies that reveal barriers to adaptation are diverse, although there is a propensity for studies on small-holder farmers; (2) many of the studies identify several barriers to adaptation, but appreciation of their interactions and compounded impacts remains scarce; and (3) most of the barriers uncovered relate broadly to biophysical, knowledge, and financial constraints on agricultural production and rural development. More hidden and under-acknowledged political, social, and psychological barriers are rarely mentioned, unless captured in studies that specifically set out to investigate these. We finish our review by highlighting gaps in understanding and by suggesting future research directions, focusing on issues of social justice. We argue that research on barriers needs to start asking why these barriers emerge, how they work together to shape adaptation processes, who they affect most, and what is needed to overcome them. (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.We report on a new sensing technology for wind speed and shortwave and longwave radiation fluxes ( and , respectively) known as a "globe anemo-radiometer" (GAR). The GAR is intended for portable use in mobile observations along individual human pathways. The device was carefully designed to be compact, light, and omnidirectional, with low power consumption. The GAR evaluates the heat transfer coefficient , and by solving the simultaneous heat balance equations of three globe thermometers with different surface properties. The optimal combination of the three globe thermometers, namely a black globe thermometer, a white globe thermometer, and a black globe thermometer with a heat source inside the sphere, was determined experimentally. was evaluated using the empirical regression of against , with the relationship between the Nusselt number and Reynolds number experimentally regressed for the conversion from to , and the result compared with previous values from the literature. The performance of the GAR as a stationary sensor was evaluated in both field and wind-tunnel experiments and compared with that of reference meteorological sensors. The accuracy of determining obtained by the GAR was averaged over a 1-min time frame, and that of and , applying a 5-min moving average, 19 and 15 W m respectively. Both the accuracy and response delay of the globe thermometers were possible sources of error.Vertical greening can contribute to urban green infrastructure, urban heat-island amelioration and climate adaptation. Tropical greenwall practice, hindered by inadequate scientific knowledge and experience, can benefit from objective assessment of species performance and growth deficiency. Comprehensive survey of critical climber-plant traits shortlisted 20 potentially suitable species. A climber-selection matrix was established to facilitate species selection and greenwall design. Perennial woody climbers with ornamental flower or foliage and biological potential to reach 13-m height were preferred. They represented two attachment modes, namely mesh-climber and concrete-(bare-wall)climber groups. A field study was designed to monitor their growth from seedlings in experimental plots. Growth conditions were optimized by providing high-quality soil mix and irrigation. The 32-month study period included three active-growing seasons with two interspersed slow-growing seasons. Field assessment methods were developed to acquire systematic data on plant performance indicators and deficiency symptoms. Key attributes were selected to compute climber performance index (CPI) and climber deficiency index (CDI) as synoptic representation of greenwall-application suitability. Mesh-climbers performed much better than concrete-climbers across all key performance indicators, and with notably better CPI. They demonstrated faster establishment and growth rates and more ornamental flowers. The two groups had similar CDI mainly due to insufficient foliage density and foliage loss. For mesh-climbers, Quisqualis indica, Wisteria sinensis and Lonicera japonica had excellent performance, and the remaining species were good to fair. For concrete-climbers, only Parthenocissus dalzielii was rated good and Campsis grandiflora fair, with the rest poor to very poor. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Vulnerability is expected to differ based on climatic conditions as well as socio-economic attributes of farming households. In this regard, attention toward vulnerability assessments is increasing within policy-making processes, to assist in selecting suitable coping strategies and policies to reduce farmers' vulnerability. Through identifying the main vulnerability indicators from a sustainability perspective (including social, economic, and environmental dimensions) among wheat farmers, this study is seeking an inclusive conceptual framework to assess their vulnerability to both socio-economic and environmental changes. Taking the main elements (i.e., sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity) of vulnerability into account, this paper tried to develop an inclusive systemic framework to understand the most important indicators of vulnerability for wheat farmers at various spatial and temporal scales. It is supposed that the framework is a useful guide for policymakers in identifying the vulnerable groups of wheat farmers and zones so that they can decide about proper coping strategies to effectively deal with adverse effects of climate and undesired socioeconomic changes in the wheat farming system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With expectations for resource efficiency and climate change adaptation in the construction industry, there is an increasing need for contractors to implement sustainable practices. Such action will burden contractors with additional costs that will lower their economic performance. There are few research studies on how sustainability relates to a firm's competitiveness. This paper represents an empirical study of the relationship between sustainability performance and business competitiveness of international construction contractors. An inverse U-shape relationship between contractors' sustainability performance and their international revenue, and a U-shape relationship between contractors' sustainability performance and their international revenue growth was discovered. The findings can help international contractors have a better understanding of the relationship between sustainability performance and business competitiveness, evaluate their current position in the relationship, optimize their resource allocation on sustainable development and integrate sustainability into their strategic planning. Therefore, contractors with high sustainability performance can expect higher international revenue growth, and sustainability performance is likely to become an opportunity for competitive advantage in the international construction market. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Development times of eggs, larvae and pupae of vectors of onchocerciasis (Simulium spp.) and of Onchocerca volvulus larvae within the adult females of the vectors decrease with increasing temperature. At and above 25 degrees C, the parasite could reach its infective stage in less than 7 days when vectors could transmit after only two gonotrophic cycles. After incorporating exponential functions for vector development into a novel blackfly population model, it was predicted that fly numbers in Liberia and Ghana would peak at air temperatures of 29 degrees C and 34 degrees C, about 3 degrees C and 7 degrees C above current monthly averages, respectively; parous rates of forest flies (Liberia) would peak at 29 degrees C and of savannah flies (Ghana) at 30 degrees C. Small temperature increases (less than 2 degrees C) might lead to changes in geographical distributions of different vector taxa. When the new model was linked to an existing framework for the population dynamics of onchocerciasis in humans and vectors, transmission rates and worm loads were projected to increase with temperature to at least 33 degrees C. By contrast, analyses of field data on forest flies in Liberia and savannah flies in Ghana, in relation to regional climate change predictions, suggested, on the basis of simple regressions, that 13-41% decreases in fly numbers would be expected between the present and before 2040. Further research is needed to reconcile these conflicting conclusions.Adaptation is necessary if we are to minimize risks associated with climate change impacts. Vulnerability and resilience are two important concepts in the literature on hazards and climate change but have been used in a variety of ways to investigate human interaction with a hazardous environment. The result is widespread adoption of the terms but confusion about their relationship and how best they can advance work on climate change adaptation. This paper critically reviews the different understandings of the concepts and how they relate, and then proposes a framework that integrates vulnerability and resilience in order to advance adaptation thinking, planning and implementation. The paper concludes with a description of how the framework will apply findings on unequal social vulnerability to inform adaptation options that increase resilience in coastal cities.The paper considers climate change from a hazard to economic development and public security perspective. Integration of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction policies is substantiated, building upon resilience concept as a unique methodological basis and civil protection measures as a common practice. Specific recommendations to implement this integration are introduced.It has been argued that regional collaboration can facilitate adaptation to climate change impacts through integrated planning and management. In an attempt to understand the underlying institutional factors that either support or contest this assumption, this paper explores the institutional factors influencing adaptation to climate change at the regional scale, where multiple public land and natural resource management jurisdictions are involved. Insights from two mid-western US case studies reveal that several challenges to collaboration persist and prevent fully integrative multi-jurisdictional adaptation planning at a regional scale. We propose that some of these challenges, such as lack of adequate time, funding and communication channels, be reframed as opportunities to build interdependence, identify issue-linkages and collaboratively explore the nature and extent of organisational trade-offs with respect to regional climate change adaptation efforts. Such a reframing can better facilitate multi-jurisdictional adaptation planning and management of shared biophysical resources generally while simultaneously enhancing organisational capacity to mitigate negative effects and take advantage of potentially favourable future conditions in an era characterised by rapid climate change.Climate change is expected to significantly affect forestry in the coming decades. Thus, it is important to raise awareness of climate-related risks - and opportunities - among forest stakeholders, and engage them in adaptation. However, many social barriers have been shown to hinder adaptation, including perceptions of climate change as irrelevant or not urgent, underestimates of adaptive capacity and lack of trust in climate science. This study looks into how science-based learning experiences can help overcome social barriers to adaptation, and how learning in itself may be hindered by those barriers. The study examines the role of learning in engagement with climate change adaptation with the help of the theory of transformative learning. Our analysis is based on follow-up interviews conducted with 24 Swedish forestry stakeholders who had participated in a series of focus group discussions about climate change impacts and adaptation measures. We find that many stakeholders struggled to form an opinion based on what they perceived as uncertain and contested scientific knowledge. The study concludes that engagement with climate change adaptation can be increased if the scientific knowledge addresses the needs, objectives and aspirations of stakeholders and relates to their previous experiences with climate change and extreme weather events.Based on a case study of the Stadshaven port redevelopment in Rotterdam, this paper explores whether existing spatial planning mechanisms and processes can be used to facilitate local-level investment in climate-resilient public infrastructure and/or whether new processes and mechanisms are required to encourage investment in climate adaptation. The study reveals several key findings. First, a lack of conventional funding sources or formalised regulatory framework allowed room for experimentation with existing mechanisms and flexible strategies. Second, project planners are currently ambivalent towards introducing new mechanisms as a means to overcome implementation challenges. The case provides evidence about the role of the governance process, not simply as a means of system coordination that exists in isolation from institutional norms and values, but rather as a space for innovation, which can contribute towards reducing the financial gap associated with climate adaptation.Climate change is expected to place biological diversity under increasing stress and threaten several species with extinction. To combat the threats caused by a changing climate, several policy documents and items of literature on conservation biology have proposed a number of proactive measures to help species and habitats to adapt to climate change. This article presents the results of an analysis of the capacity of the Finnish regulatory system to provide an effective framework for the measures proposed and the capacity of the regulatory system to enhance adaptive management, which is considered important in the era of climate change. The analysis reveals several weaknesses in the Finnish regulatory system. Legislative changes are likely to be needed to harness the existing conservation tools to support climate change adaptation measures.Climate change is considered one of the main environmental issues challenging contemporary cities. Meanwhile, urban development patterns and the growth of urban population represent the main contributors to climate change, affecting the total energy consumptions and the related greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a breakthrough in current urban development patterns is required to counterbalance the climate-related issues. This study focuses on the Smart City and Resilient City concepts that, according to current scientific literature, seem to play a leading role in enhancing cities' capacities to cope with climate change. In detail, based on the review of existing literature, this study analyzes the synergies between the two concepts, highlighting how the Smart City concept is more and more widely interpreted as a process addressed to make cities "more livable and resilient and, hence, able to respond quicker to new challenges" (Kunzmann, 2014). Nevertheless, current initiatives to improve cities' smartness and resilience in the European cities are very fragmented and operational tools capable to support multi-objective strategies are still at an early stage. To fill this gap, embracing a systemic perspective, the main characteristics of a smart and resilient urban system have been identified and framed into a conceptual model. The latter represents a preliminary step for the development of an operational tool capable to guide planners and decision-makers in carrying out multi-objective strategies addressed to enhance the response capacities of complex urban systems in the face of climate change.EU policy and projects have an increasing influence on policymaking for climate adaptation. This is especially evident in the development of new climate adaptation policies in transnational city networks. Until now, climate adaptation literature has paid little attention to the influence that these EU networks have on the adaptive capacity in cities. This paper uses two Dutch cities as an empirical base to evaluate the influence of two EU climate adaptation projects on both the experience of local public officials and the adaptive capacity in the respective cities. The main conclusion is that EU climate adaptation projects do not automatically lead to an increased adaptive capacity in the cities involved. This is due to the political opportunistic use of EU funding, which hampers the implementation of climate adaptation policies. Furthermore, these EU projects draw attention away from local network building focused on the development and implementation of climate adaptation policies. These factors have a negative cumulative impact on the performance of these transnational policy networks at the adaptive capacity level in the cities involved. Therefore, in order to strengthen the adaptive capacity in today's European cities, a context-specific, integrative approach in urban planning is needed at all spatial levels. Hence, policy entrepreneurs should aim to create linkage between the issues in the transnational city network and the concerns in local politics and local networks.Urban vegetation and green spaces play a crucial role in dealing with the impacts of climate change: urban green spaces regulate the micro-climate in densely built-up and overheated settlement areas, and support the percolation of rain water and the retention of flood events. According to these findings, manifold measures of green space development are discussed, supporting an urban development which is appropriate to the challenges of climate change. Thus, retaining and enhancing the provision of settlement areas with green spaces in terms of green infrastructure is a central element of urban and regional climate adaptation strategies. In this paper the question is raised, how green infrastructure and its different potentials to adapt to climate change can be considered in the urban fabric and measures to enhance the green infrastructure can be implemented. As a part of the "Integrated Regional Climate Adaptation Programme for the Region of Dresden" a number of measures for the development and planning of green infrastructure have been developed. Based on these experiences, basic planning approaches to implement and realise green infrastructure, addressing climate adaptation both on city and site scale, are presented.South Africa, being a semi-arid country, faces water resource constraints. The projected impacts of climate change in the Keiskamma River Catchment, Eastern Cape Province, are, for example, changes in rainfall with effects on streamflow, salt water intrusion, decreasing water quality due to runoff and erosion, and droughts. This paper uses an existing framework, the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW), complemented by two additional dimensions: adaptation motivation and adaptation belief. The objectives were, first, to assess the adaptive capacity of water governance in the study region, and, second, to show how the ACW can be used as an approach and a communication tool with stakeholders to identify strengths and weaknesses. Based on this, recommendations can be drawn that could help water experts and stakeholders in the future. The results depict a 'medium' score for adaptive capacity. However, it is important to look closely at each dimension assessed by the ACW. The key recommendations are: to overcome the implementation gap, to ensure better coordination across and within governmental levels; to raise awareness, capacity and skill among decision makers and the public; and to increase the political will to overcome adaptation barriers.Long-term (1982 - 2012) advanced very-high-resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data collected at a resolution of 0.04 degrees clearly indicated sea surface temperature (SST) warming and variations associated with El Nino and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Taiwan Strait (TS) during the summer. From 1982 - 2012 the spatially averaged warming trend in the TS was 0.057 degrees C y(-1). However, during the last 10 years the warming phenomenon appears to have halted and a slight cooling rate (0.03 degrees C y(-1)) was observed. The monthly SST transition from June - July became increasingly sharp. The first mode (70%) of the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis indicated an SST warming trend. The warming occurred primarily in the eastern strait. The warming slowed down and considerable inter-annual variation occurred in the period after 1994. EOF results applied to the data between 1994 - 2012 showed that the first EOF mode (55%) revealed a warming pattern, whereas the second EOF mode (12%) revealed a pattern that explained the inter-annual variation in the SST, which was strongly correlated with the wind speed. Strong winds enhanced the upwelling along the China coast, eastern Taiwan Banks (TWB) and southern Peng-Hu Islands, whereas the SST in eastern TS increased because of increased warm water transport from the South China Sea. The inter-annual variation in the southwesterly wind could be affected by both ENSO and the background Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) phase. The strongest upwelling in the TS tended to occur when ENSO and PDO were in phase associated with the southwesterly wind.In this study, we investigated the effects of ocean subsurface data (Argo data) on climate state estimation and forecasting, focusing on the reproduction of North Pacific subtropical mode water (STMW) using a four-dimensional variational data assimilation system with a coupled model. We produced two reanalysis plus forecast data sets for the ocean and atmosphere in 2010 using a 3 month assimilation period: the first including Argo data (Argo case) and the second did not include Argo data (control case). In the control case, the Kuroshio, Kuroshio Extension front, and recirculation gyres along the front were not adequately reproduced. Consequently, there were large biases in temperature and salinity in the western North Pacific. The assimilation of Argo data effectively corrected these biases and significantly improved reproduction of the Kuroshio fronts and recirculation gyres, resulting in a more realistic reproduction of the winter mixed layer and STMW. The correction of these biases is critical to the 1-3 year predictions of the STMW core properties, and the assimilation of Argo data enables prediction of these properties for more than a year. We showed that assimilation of Argo data affects the surface atmospheric temperature above the STMW formation region.The spatial variability of flow and turbulence properties above an outdoor scale model of regular cube roughness under neutral stability is investigated using eight simultaneously employed sonic anemometers which are characterized by an extra short transducer span (0.05 m) and high sampling rate (50 Hz). Measurements are conducted in a layer between the top of the cubes with a plan area density of 0.25 and two times the height of the roughness, H. Large spatial variability (horizontal and vertical) is observed at the two lowest measurement levels (z = H and 1.25H) for all variables considered which include mean wind, Reynolds stress, integral statistics, (co)spectra, budget of turbulent kinetic energy and a spatial quadrant analysis of the momentum transfer. The spatial inhomogeneity almost disappears at z = 1.5H where normalized variables attain homogeneous surface layer values for neutral stratification. The present results support a new conceptual framework to explain the turbulence behavior just above the canopy consisting of two sublayers which develop in response to the strongly varying surface. Although an individual measurement location below z = 1.5H is unable to produce representative turbulence statistics above the present bluff body roughness, averaging across a sufficient number of measurement locations to achieve complete spatial sampling of all surface characteristics (canyon spaces, rooftops, etc.), produces representative statistics even at heights which are probably still within the roughness sublayer with values close to the respective inertial subrange predictions.Climate change will most likely confront agricultural producers with natural, economic, and political conditions that have not previously been observed and are largely uncertain. As a consequence, extrapolation from past data reaches its limits, and a process-based analysis of farmer adaptation is required. Simulation of changes in crop yields using crop growth models is a first step in that direction. However, changes in crop yields are only one pathway through which climate change affects agricultural production. A meaningful process-based analysis of farmer adaptation requires a whole-farm analysis at the farm level. We use a highly disaggregated mathematical programming model to analyze farm-level climate change adaptation for a mountainous area in southwest Germany. Regional-level results are obtained by simulating each full-time farm holding in the study area. We address parameter uncertainty and model underdetermination using a cautious calibration approach and a comprehensive uncertainty analysis. We deal with the resulting computational burden using efficient experimental designs and high-performance computing. We show that in our study area, shifted crop management time slots can have potentially significant effects on agricultural supply, incomes, and various policy objectives promoted under German and European environmental policy schemes. The simulated effects are robust against model uncertainty and underline the importance of a comprehensive assessment of climate change impacts beyond merely looking at crop yield changes. Our simulations demonstrate how farm-level models can contribute to a process-based analysis of climate change adaptation if they are embedded into a systematic framework for treating inherent model uncertainty.This paper proposes a rights-based approach for participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in urban areas. Participatory urban planning ties climate change adaptation to local development opportunities. Previous discussions suggest that participatory urban planning may help to understand structural inequalities, to gain, even if temporally, institutional support and to deliver a planning process in constant negotiation with local actors. Building upon an action research project which implemented a process of participatory urban planning for climate change in Maputo, Mozambique, this paper reflects upon the practical lessons that emerged from these experiences, in relation to the incorporation of climate change information, the difficulties to secure continued support from local governments and the opportunities for local impacts through the implementation of the proposals emerging from this process.Climate change adaptation and mitigation interventions have traditionally been planned at the national and policy levels, but their implementation is done predominantly at the local government authority level. The general mandate of local governments is to work for their communities. At these levels, in both rural and urban contexts, local government technical cadres are required to be equipped with knowledge and skills to address existing problems effectively, including climate change-induced impacts. A study conducted in the urban local government authorities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, revealed low levels of knowledge and skills related to policies, plans and strategies pertinent to climate change and vulnerability assessments. As an entry point for climate change adaptation and mitigation interventions to be included in the local authority plans and budgets, there is a need to build capacity of the technical cadres. Short courses, workshops and seminars, training workshops, on-job training, conferences and postgraduate training are recommended to ensure that capacity of the local government authorities regarding climate change aspects is improved.The paper focuses on the role of multilevel governance in climate change adaptation and risk management, and draws out lessons from the implementation of the UN Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiatives (CCCI) in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. It describes the process for the formulation of a participatory risk management framework for local actors drawing from empirical investigations undertaken in Bobo-Dioulasso. The paper argues that adaptation needs to be mainstreamed and implemented at local level and to include risk management. Moreover, regulatory capacity of public authorities and balance of power and resources play a major role in this process. After presenting the specific knowledge on climate and environmental challenges and CCCI implementation in Bobo-Dioulasso, the paper describes challenges and opportunities in the implementation of the participatory risk and management framework.The city of Algiers in Algeria is particularly exposed to disaster risks, and its vulnerability is likely to increase with climate change. In the Wilaya of Algiers, a risk assessment study has been undertaken by the consulting firm Egis EAU in partnership with the Algerian Ministry of Regional Development and Environment. Financed by the French Caisse des Depots, jointly supervised by the World Bank, and hosted by the Center for Mediterranean Integration, the program on cities and climate change is based on a risk methodology, which can be easily customized based on the local context. The study was based on the collection of past studies on recent disasters, aerial photographs and satellite images, digital terrain models, databases as well as Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The study area consists mostly of dense residential and industrial spaces. Overall, the study assesses the vulnerabilities of Algiers when dealing with climate change and natural disasters up to 2030, and proposes a set of recommendations to improve risk management capacities of the Wilaya of Algiers.This paper describes how the city of Bandar Lampung began to incorporate climate change adaptation goals into its budget and some of its plans. A series of Shared Learning Dialogues supported by the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) involved staff from city government, NGOs and universities. This led to the formation of a multi-stakeholder City Team that was charged by the mayor with assessing climate risks and vulnerability, prioritizing problems and programmes, supporting small-scale adaptation projects and functioning as climate change adaptation advocates within the city. The paper describes some of these projects and how a range of factors underpinned better solid waste management and flood risk reduction, including fiscal reform that brought a large increase in the city's budget, strong leadership and better planning. Challenges and barriers are also discussed, including what is needed to ensure that local government continues to incorporate climate change adaptation into its work and investments.This paper describes how the University of Ibadan has sought to build greater resilience to flooding, through its response to the devastating flood in 2011. This included both structural and non-structural components, as well as measures to address the increased risk levels that climate change is bringing or may bring in the future. The paper also draws out some lessons that have wide relevance for other universities.Adaptation is now firmly embedded in the societal discourse regarding the management of climate risk. In this discourse, adaptation planning and implementation at the local level are seen as particularly important for developing robust responses to climate change. However, it is not clear whether the mantra that adaptation is local holds true given the multi-level nature of climate risk governance. Using a multi-method approach, this paper examines the extent to which adaptation should be framed as a local issue and, specifically, the role of local government in adaptation relative to other actors. In so doing, the paper first explores the extent to which the local framing of adaptation is embedded in the international adaptation literature. This is followed by a specific case study from Southeast Queensland, Australia, which focuses on the critical examination of the processes of responsibility shifting and taking among actors involved in coastal adaptation planning. Results indicate the assumption that adaptation is local remains widely held in adaptation science, although counter arguments can be readily identified. Interviews with adaptation actors revealed unclear divisions of responsibility for climate change adaptation as a significant constraint on actors' willingness to implement adaptation. Furthermore, attributing responsibility for adaptation to local actors might not necessarily be a robust strategy, due to the existence of particularly strong constraints and value conflicts at local levels of governance. Greater appreciation by researchers and practitioners for the interactions between local actors and those at higher levels of governance in shaping response capacity may contribute to more equitable and effective allocations of responsibilities for adaptation action. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Institutional feasibility defined as the ability of institutions to support adaptive capacity, is an important aspect of climate adaptation, through its influence on the implementation of adaptation measures to climate change. The objective of this study is to create a framework for assessing institutional preconditions that enable or constrain climate change adaptation measures in agriculture and to apply the framework to a case study in agriculture. We adopted and modified the Procedure for Institutional Compatibility Assessment (PICA). Institutions in our framework are characterized by a set of crucial institutional preconditions (CIPs) and indicators linked to each CIP. CIPs refer to both institutional incentives and constraints for implementation of adaptation measures (here to climate change). We applied a combination of ranking and scoring techniques based on information from workshops, interviews and a literature review to assess institutional incentives and constraints for adaptation measures, together indicating the institutional feasibility of implementation of adaptation measures. We selected and assessed three adaptation measures relevant to agriculture in Flevoland, a province in the Netherlands: (1) improvement of water management and irrigation facilities; (2) relocation of farms; and (3) development of new crop varieties. The two main constraining CIPs for the implementation of the measures were found to be (1) heterogeneity of actors' interests and (2) availability of resources. Based on the institutional feasibility analysis, the implementation of water management and improvement of irrigation facilities will potentially face fewer institutional constraints compared to the other two measures. We conclude that our approach proves applicable for institutional analyses of adaptation measures for current and future (climate) challenges at different levels of implementation, but that more applications are needed to test its validity and robustness. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Freshwater scarcity is a pivotal challenge for many cities, as resources are threatened by increasing demand, water quality concerns, and climate change impacts. Current governance approaches appear unable to respond effectively to these challenges, prompting calls for transitions to sustainable water governance. Scenarios are often used to explore narrow aspects of water systems, which is not a full realization of their potential to guide transitions in water governance. A transition-oriented approach to scenario construction needs to generate scenarios that (i) are governance focused, including the institutions, actors, and actions that will guide transitions; (ii) are normative, incorporating the values and preferences of those responsible for carrying out transition actions; (iii) are presented as a small set of distinct and identifiable scenarios, which stakeholders can comprehend and compare; and (iv) allow for interfacing with dynamic models to demonstrate the systemic impacts of different approaches to water governance. This research utilizes a participatory, mixedmethod approach, including survey, scenario analysis, and simulation modeling to construct distinct, coherent, plausible, and normative governance scenarios of metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona in 2030. Four scenarios provide residents and policy makers with distinct options for future water governance regimes, indicating the future impacts of normative values and preferences that might or might not be aligned with ideas of sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conservation organizations must adapt to respond to the ecological impacts of global change. Numerous changes to conservation actions (eg facilitated ecological transitions, managed relocations, or increased corridor development) have been recommended, but some institutional restructuring within organizations may also be needed. Here we discuss the capacity of conservation organizations to adapt to changing environmental conditions, focusing primarily on public agencies and nonprofits active in land protection and management in the US. After first reviewing how these organizations anticipate and detect impacts affecting target species and ecosystems, we then discuss whether they are sufficiently flexible to prepare and respond by reallocating funding, staff, or other resources. We raise new hypotheses about how the configuration of different organizations enables them to protect particular conservation targets and manage for particular biophysical changes that require coordinated management actions over different spatial and temporal scales. Finally, we provide a discussion resource to help conservation organizations assess their capacity to adapt.The summer western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) has intensified during the past three decades. However, the underlying mechanism is not yet well understood. Here, it is shown that baiu rainband activity in midsummer, which is part of the East Asian summer monsoon, plays an important role in recent intensification in the WPSH along the baiu rainband. In contrast with the WPSH, the summer Okhotsk high, which is located to the north of the baiu rainband, has weakened during the past three decades. The north-south contrasting changes between the two highs reflect a response to northward-moved and enhanced baiu heating, which intensifies the upper-tropospheric ridge, resulting in the baroclinic intensification of the WPSH. Regional climate model experiments also support the observational analysis. Therefore, baiu convective activity in midsummer can act as a major driver for the WPSH intensification. The results here suggest that the mechanism intensifying the summer North Pacific subtropical high clearly differs between the western and eastern Pacific.greenwall research can promote wider applications in cities to contribute to climate-change adaptation and ameliorate the urban heat island effect. The accumulated knowledge and experience can be organized and assessed to foster further research and better practise. Two greenwall types provide the analytic framework based on plant growth form as the overarching criterion, namely the mechanically-dependent climber (CGW) and mechanically-independent herb-shrub (HGW). The intrinsic and extrinsic wall factors, subsumed under structural, surface, dimension, geometry, location, and ambience, determine the vertical-habitat foundation to receive vegetation. The comprehensive greenwall design factors provide a structured assessment. CGW has four design factors, including climbing, air gap, substrate, and vegetation. The more elaborate HGW has five design factors, including substrate, container, air gap, water-nutrient, and vegetation. With justifications related to existing state of classification and terminology, a triple-criteria greenwall classification scheme is proposed. Adopting the key criteria of training-system and wall toe substrate, CGW are split into 16 subtypes. For HGW, the substrate-system and elevated-substrate criteria identify 8 subtypes. The representative CGW and HGW subtypes are depicted in concise diagrams. The systematic classification can inform greenwall designers to determine and plan for the preferred subtype. The pros and cons of CGW and HGW are compared based on 35 key designs and management issues to optimize matching greenwall choice with expectation, preference, and site potentials and limitations. The findings provide practical hints to enhance greenwall management. The greenwall nomenclature package is recommended to facilitate scientific communication. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Steel produced using coal generates 7% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions annually(1). Opportunities exist to substitute this coal with carbon-neutral charcoal sourced from plantation forests to mitigate project-scale emissions(2) and obtain certified emission reduction credits under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism(3). This mitigation strategy has been implemented in Brazil(4,5) and is one mechanism among many used globally to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions(6); however, its potential adverse impacts have been overlooked to date. Here, we report that total CO2 emitted from Brazilian steel production doubled (91 to 182 MtCO(2)) and specific emissions increased (3.3 to 5.2 MtCO(2) per Mt steel) between 2000 and 2007, even though the proportion of coal used declined. Infrastructure upgrades and a national plantation shortage increased industry reliance on charcoal sourced from native forests, which emits up to nine times more CO2 per tonne of steel than coal. Preventing use of native forest charcoal could have avoided 79% of the CO2 emitted from steel production between 2000 and 2007; however, doing so by increasing plantation charcoal supply is limited by socio-economic costs and risks further indirect deforestation pressures and emissions. Effective climate change mitigation in Brazil's steel industry must therefore minimize all direct and indirect carbon emissions generated from steel manufacture.In recent years, climate impact assessments of relevance to the agricultural and forestry sectors have received considerable attention. Current ecosystem models commonly capture the effect of a warmer climate on biomass production, but they rarely sufficiently capture potential losses caused by pests, pathogens and extreme weather events. In addition, alternative management regimes may not be integrated in the models. A way to improve the quality of climate impact assessments is to increase the science-stakeholder collaboration, and in a two-way dialog link empirical experience and impact modelling with policy and strategies for sustainable management. In this paper we give a brief overview of different ecosystem modelling methods, discuss how to include ecological and management aspects, and highlight the importance of science-stakeholder communication. By this, we hope to stimulate a discussion among the science-stakeholder communities on how to quantify the potential for climate change adaptation by improving the realism in the models.This study investigates the sensitivity of the one-way nested PRECIS regional climate model (RCM) to domain size for the Caribbean region. Simulated regional rainfall patterns from experiments using three domains with horizontal resolution of 50 km are compared with ERA reanalysis and observed datasets to determine if there is an optimal RCM configuration with respect to domain size and the ability to reproduce important observed climate features in the Caribbean. Results are presented for the early wet season (May-July) and late wet season (August-October). There is a relative insensitivity to domain size for simulating some important features of the regional circulation and key rainfall characteristics e.g. the Caribbean low level jet and the mid summer drought (MSD). The downscaled precipitation has a systematically negative precipitation bias, even when the domain was extended to the African coast to better represent circulation associated with easterly waves and tropical cyclones. The implications for optimizing modelling efforts within resource-limited regions like the Caribbean are discussed especially in the context of the region's participation in global initiatives such as CORDEX.Based on an N-S-oriented crustal-scale cross section running east of the Rhine Valley in Vorarlberg, western Austria, we address the Alpine nappe stack and discuss the boundary between Central and Eastern Alps. For our cross section, we used surface geology, drillings and reinterpreted seismic lines, together with published sections. The general architecture of the examined area can be described as a typical foreland fold-and-thrust belt, comprising the tectonic units of the Subalpine Molasse, (Ultra-)Helvetic, Penninic and Austroalpine nappes. These units overthrusted the autochthonous Molasse along the south-dipping listric Alpine basal thrust. The European Basement, together with its autochthonous cover, dips gently towards the south and is dissected by normal faults and trough structures. The seismic data clearly show an offset not only of the top of the European Basement, but also of the Mesozoic cover and the Lower Marine Molasse. This indicates an activity of the structures as normal faults after the sedimentation of the Lower Marine Molasse. The Subalpine Molasse is multiply stacked, forming a triangle zone at the boundary with the foreland Molasse. The shortening within the Subalpine Molasse amounts to approximately 45 km (similar to 67 %), as deduced from our cross section with the Lower Marine Molasse as a reference. The hinterland-dipping duplex structure of the Helvetic nappes is deduced from surface and borehole data. There are at least two Helvetic nappes needed to fill the available space between the Molasse below and the Northpenninic above. This is in line with the westerly located NRP20-East transect (Schmid et al., Tectonics 15(5):1047-1048, 1996; Schmid et al., The TRANSMED Atlas: the Mediterranean Region from Crust to Mantle, 2004), where the two Helvetic nappes are separated by the Santis thrust. Yet in contrast to the Helvetic nappes in the NRP20-East transect, both of our Helvetic nappes comprise Cretaceous and Jurassic strata. This change is explained by an eastward down-stepping of the Santis thrust along a pre-existing, approximately N-S striking lateral ramp bounding an inverted Jurassic graben structure below the Rhine Valley. This causes the Santis thrust to detach the base Cretaceous west of the Rhine Valley and the base Jurassic units east of it. This graben-controlled change in detachment level leads to the formation of quite different nappe stacks on either side of the Rhine Valley and a "fault-controlled" appearance of the boundary between the Central and Eastern Alps.Heat waves have significant impacts on both ecosystems and human beings. This is compounded by future climate scenarios which indicate more frequent and severe heat waves in certain locations. There are members of communities that are more vulnerable to the effects of heat waves such as the elderly and infants and this presents particular challenges for the future. Hence it is timely to undertake a critical and systematic review of the effects of heat waves and mechanisms.to mitigate their effects. There are significant implications associated with heat waves such as extra power consumption, community health, water consumption and quality, and additional costs within the natural and built environments. One of the critical issues is peak electricity demand which is closely linked with factors such as building occupant health and costs to consumers. Utilization of renewable and sustainable energy helps to mitigate this specific issue. Common policy instruments to deal with risks associated with heat waves include heat impact assessment and heat warning system. Similarly, building design should take impacts of heat waves into consideration such as dwelling adaptation. This review provides useful inputs to both policy making and industry practice on improving the resilience of urban and regional areas in the event of extreme weather conditions such as heat waves in the future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change impacts may manifest via multiple pathways, often leading to a shortage of resources, reduction in production capacities, or reduction in available labor inputs that are vital for economic activities. Effective climate change adaptation strategies are needed to determine the optimal allocation of scarce resources, commodities or capital under crisis conditions to minimize the economic consequences. In such cases, it is necessary to account for structural properties of economic systems to ensure that rational distribution policies are implemented. Input output models are used to illustrate interdependencies among economic sectors and to assess both direct and indirect effects of disruptive events. Alternatively, these interdependencies may be exploited for developing effective recovery efforts to minimize the ripple effects of a crisis. In this paper, a process graph representation of the input output model is developed to generate a rational procedure for the allocation of scarce resources, commodities or capital during crisis conditions. The process graph model is a graph-theoretic approach originally developed for chemical process design applications. The analogous problem structure allows it to be used for the input-output system. The method is demonstrated through several case studies to identify allocation policies geared towards reducing the impact of disruptions attributed to critical resources, commodities, or capital. Results show that depending on the economic structure, the optimal allocation of scarce resources, commodities or capital will satisfy the final demands of some economic sectors and reduce the production capacity of others in order to minimize the reduction of total gross domestic product. Though similar results can be obtained through traditional mathematical programming models, the process graph platform has the advantage to visually present the distribution of scarce resources, commodities or capital within the system. This work is a first attempt to implement the process graph approach in the fields of economics and climate change adaptation. In conclusion, the process graph based approach developed in this work can be used to provide policymakers with insights in developing appropriate risk mitigation plans associated with climate change-induced crisis conditions. Potential applications include both the development of disaster preparedness measures for anticipated disruptions, as well as the implementation of real-time emergency response in the midst of a crisis. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Future changes in New Zealand's climate are expected to be less than in many other countries, and New Zealand has well-established governance structures for dealing with environmental risks. While this might imply that adaptation would be straightforward, extensive public and private investments, as well as many traditional MAori assets and cultural values, are in areas increasingly at risk of flooding and sea level rise. In order to consider the country's adaptive capacity in more detail, we have used an empirical research approach, working with government practitioners at three levels and with MAori communities. Very different perceptions of risk, and structural inertia in planning processes have emerged as key issues for implementing adaptation responses. In particular, the use of static frameworks biases responses towards retrospective, rather than anticipatory analysis. Ongoing socioeconomic changes in New Zealand also raise the risk of structural effects caused by climate change impacts becoming unevenly distributed across society. Our analysis indicates that a national and regional strategic approach, centred on a dynamic view of climate risk, is necessary for effective decisions at the local government and community level. In addition, effective adaptation requires better identification of barriers and opportunities for addressing changing risk, together with more effective and continuous social engagement.Adaptation is situated within multiple, interacting social, political, and economic forces. Adaptation pathways envision adaptation as a continual pathway of change and response embedded within this broader sociopolitical context. Pathways emphasize that current decisions are both informed by past actions and shape the landscape of future options. This research examines how adaptation actors in Grand County, Colorado perceive adaptation in the context of environmental change and uncertainty. Grand County residents drew on experiences of past change to suggest they had a high capacity to respond to future change, in particular a significant outbreak of mountain pine beetle. While residents and land managers characterized adaptation as gradual and incremental, they also recognized the ways that powerful cross-scale processes related to federal land management and water diversions challenged local adaptation. Further, Grand County residents identified multiple uncertainties in addition to those associated with climate projections, suggesting that addressing uncertainty extends beyond developing strategies robust across different climate scenarios. The challenges of uncertainty and cross-scale governance require more than increased adaptive capacity; they demand that we understand how local and extra-local structures shape the adaptation envelope that enables and constrains local decisions and implementation. Within this envelope, local actors pursue particular adaptation pathways and exercise agency to influence the structures shaping their options. Drawing on empirical insights, we argue that the concepts of pathways and envelopes together provide theoretical space for understanding the dynamic interplay between structure and agency in the context of adaptation.Representations of climate change have been a recurrent motif in media and political domains spanning over 20 years. However, relatively scant scholarly work has addressed how laypeople make sense of this phenomenon in talk. The current study, employing a discursive approach, demonstrates how the salience of climate change, as a social issue, is accounted for and made contingent on social, financial, and political factors. Moreover, the issue of climate change was accounted for as an intergenerational issue, and moral considerations were mobilized in arguing for why the issue should be provided increased attention. We argue that science communication research could fruitfully examine the discursive building blocks underpinning taken-for-granted ways of talking about climate change, informing the design of alternative discourses.A changing climate and higher wind speeds means that residential construction is likely to receive more damage in the future if design standards are maintained at the current level. The vulnerability of residential construction may be reduced by an adaptation strategy that increases design wind speeds specified by Australian standards. The paper applies break-even analysis to compare the risks, costs and benefits of climate adaptation strategies for new housing in the three largest cities in Australia: Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. These cities are located in southeast Australia where wind hazard is dominated by synoptic winds (thunderstorms and east-coast lows). Break-even estimates of risk reduction and adaptation cost for designing new housing to enhanced standards were calculated for three synoptic wind pattern scenarios to 2070: (1) no change, (2) B1 and (3) A1FI emission scenarios. If the actual cost of adaptation exceeds the predicted break-even value, then adaptation is not cost-effective. It was found that this adaptation strategy can lead to risk reductions of 50-80 % at a cost of approximately 1 % of house replacement value. If risk reduction is over 50 %, discount rate is 4 %, and there is no change of climate, the break-even analysis shows that adaptation is cost-effective for Sydney if the adaptation cost is less than 5-9 % of house replacement cost. Designing new housing to enhance wind classifications is also likely to be a cost-effective adaptation strategy for Brisbane and Melbourne.This paper assesses the effect of climate change on water availability for consumptive use for a river basin taking into account the regulation capacity of its water supply systems and a set of management standards (restrictions, demands, reliability). A specific sensitivity index to climate change defined by the relation between the unitary variation of water availability and the unitary variation of the average annual inflow is studied. The analysis is conducted by constructing climate projections taking into consideration changes only in mean annual streamflow and changes in both the mean and the coefficient of variation of the annual streamflow. The study area includes 567 basins which cover practically the entire territory of continental Spain. The results show a significant sensitivity to changes in the coefficient of variation for regulated systems.A price on carbon is driving land-use changes globally, including the establishment of biodiverse carbon plantings to sequester carbon. The biodiversity benefits of these plantings depend on many factors, including their spatial locations. We provide an approach for assessing the opportunities and spatial priorities for carbon sequestration and biodiversity restoration through biodiverse carbon plantings. Using Australia as a case study, we show how carbon market conditions affect the potential for achieving biodiversity benefits through restoring heavily cleared vegetation types to 30% of their original extent. Using a midrange carbon price, AU$20 per ton, we discovered that the top 25% of priority areas for biodiverse carbon plantings could sequester 132 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalents annually-more than 5% of Australia's emissions. Lower carbon prices limit biodiversity outcomes. Spatial priorities for sequestering carbon are different from those for restoring biodiversity; therefore, accounting for both factors maximizes efficiency and opportunities.Conservation decision tools based on cost-effectiveness analysis are used to assess threat management strategies for improving species persistence. These approaches rank alternative strategies by their benefit to cost ratio but may fail to identify the optimal sets of strategies to implement under limited budgets because they do not account for redundancies. We devised a multiobjective optimization approach in which the complementarity principle is applied to identify the sets of threat management strategies that protect the most species for any budget. We used our approach to prioritize threat management strategies for 53 species of conservation concern in the Pilbara, Australia. We followed a structured elicitation approach to collect information on the benefits and costs of implementing 17 different conservation strategies during a 3-day workshop with 49 stakeholders and experts in the biodiversity, conservation, and management of the Pilbara. We compared the performance of our complementarity priority threat management approach with a current cost-effectiveness ranking approach. A complementary set of 3 strategies: domestic herbivore management, fire management and research, and sanctuaries provided all species with >50% chance of persistence for $4.7 million/year over 20 years. Achieving the same result cost almost twice as much ($9.71 million/year) when strategies were selected by their cost-effectiveness ranks alone. Our results show that complementarity of management benefits has the potential to double the impact of priority threat management approaches.This critical assessment of climate adaptation and transformation challenges, agendas and actions across Africa draws on the principal findings and analyses of the papers in this special issue of COSUST. Situated in the context of the broader conceptual and comparative literature, we structure our analysis around three themes, namely conceptual and analytical approaches; the research environment; and challenges of implementation. African climate change research reflects diverse mixtures of local priorities and international trends, often with some time lag. The research reviewed and represented in this special issue reveals clear gaps and weaknesses in relation to gendered understandings, approaches to environmental valuation, and climate and environmental justice. Implementational challenges range from resource constraints and perceived conflicts between meeting immediate development needs and longer term climate change action to lack of policy integration and effective governance. The potential importance of socio-ecological and technological transformations remains very largely unexplored and a sea change in attitudes and attention is required if the adaptation challenges are to be met.Climate change is raising challenging concerns for systematic conservation planning. Are methods based on the current spatial patterns of biodiversity effective given long-term climate change? Some conservation scientists argue that planning should focus on protecting the abiotic diversity in the landscape, which drives patterns of biological diversity, rather than focusing on the distribution of focal species, which shift in response to climate change. Climate is one important abiotic driver of biodiversity patterns, as different climates host different biological communities and genetic pools. We propose conservation networks that capture the full range of climatic diversity in a region will improve the resilience of biotic communities to climate change compared to networks that do not. In this study we used historical and future hydro-climate projections from the high resolution Basin Characterization Model to explore the utility of directly targeting climatic diversity in planning. Using the spatial planning tool, Marxan, we designed conservation networks to capture the diversity of climate types, at the regional and sub-regional scale, and compared them to networks we designed to capture the diversity of vegetation types. By focusing on the Conservation Lands Network (CLN) of the San Francisco Bay Area as a real-world case study, we compared the potential resilience of networks by examining two factors: the range of climate space captured, and climatic stability to 18 future climates, reflecting different emission scenarios and global climate models. We found that the climate-based network planned at the sub-regional scale captured a greater range of climate space and showed higher climatic stability than the vegetation and regional based-networks. At the same time, differences among network scenarios are small relative to the variance in climate stability across global climate models. Across different projected futures, topographically heterogeneous areas consistently show greater climate stability than homogenous areas. The analysis suggests that utilizing high-resolution climate and hydrological data in conservation planning improves the likely resilience of biodiversity to climate change. We used these analyses to suggest new conservation priorities for the San Francisco Bay Area.Cities and urban areas are critical components of global sustainability as loci of sustainability progress and drivers of global transformation, especially in terms of energy efficiency, climate change adaptation, and social innovation. However, urban ecosystems have not been incorporated adequately into urban governance and planning for resilience despite mounting evidence that urban resident health and wellbeing is closely tied to the quality, quantity, and diversity of urban ecosystem services. We suggest that urban ecosystem services provide key links for bridging planning, management and governance practices seeking transitions to more sustainable cities, and serve an important role in building resilience in urban systems. Emerging city goals for resilience should explicitly incorporate the value of urban ES in city planning and governance. We argue that cities need to prioritize safeguarding of a resilient supply of ecosystem services to ensure livable, sustainable cities, especially given the dynamic nature of urban systems continually responding to global environmental change. Building urban resilience of and through ecosystem services, both in research and in practice, will require dealing with the dynamic nature of urban social-ecological systems and incorporating multiple ways of knowing into governance approaches to resilience including from scientists, practitioners, designers and planners. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The concept of urban resilience has so far been related mainly to climate change adaptation and disaster management perspectives. Here we aim to broaden the discussion by showing how the framework of urban resilience should be related to wider sustainability challenges, including i) climate change and natural hazard threats, ii) unsustainable urban metabolism patterns and iii) increasing social inequalities in cities. Using three case studies (flood risk management in the Dutch polders, urban-rural teleconnections driving the Bolivian quinoa market, and spatial diversity in the adaptive capacity of Kampala slums),((1)) we draw out significant insights related to scales and sustainability, which will push urban resilience research forward. The key move is to consider both spatial and temporal interactions, in order to shift from the mainstreaming of the resilience-building paradigm toward a critical understanding and management of resilience trade-offs. While urban resilience emerges not necessarily as a normatively positive concept anymore, we argue that addressing multi-scale and temporal aspects of urban resilience will allow greater understanding of global sustainability challenges.The severity and timing of seasonal malaria epidemics is strongly linked with temperature and rainfall. Advance warning of meteorological conditions from seasonal climate models can therefore potentially anticipate unusually strong epidemic events, building resilience and adapting to possible changes in the frequency of such events. Here we present validation of a process-based, dynamic malaria model driven by hindcasts from a state-of-the-art seasonal climate model from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. We validate the climate and malaria models against observed meteorological and incidence data for Botswana over the period 1982-2006; the longest record of observed incidence data which has been used to validate a modeling system of this kind. We consider the impact of climate model biases, the relationship between climate and epidemiological predictability and the potential for skillful malaria forecasts. Forecast skill is demonstrated for upper tercile malaria incidence for the Botswana malaria season (January-May), using forecasts issued at the start of November; the forecast system anticipates six out of the seven upper tercile malaria seasons in the observational period. The length of the validation time series gives confidence in the conclusion that it is possible to make reliable forecasts of seasonal malaria risk, forming a key part of a health early warning system for Botswana and contributing to efforts to adapt to climate change.Rather than on crop modelling only, climate change impact assessments in agriculture need to be based on integrated assessment and farming systems analysis, and account for adaptation at different levels. With a case study for Flevoland, the Netherlands, we illustrate that (1) crop models cannot account for all relevant climate change impacts and adaptation options, and (2) changes in technology, policy and prices have had and are likely to have larger impacts on farms than climate change. While crop modelling indicates positive impacts of climate change on yields of major crops in 2050, a semiquantitative and participatory method assessing impacts of extreme events shows that there are nevertheless several climate risks. A range of adaptation measures are, however, available to reduce possible negative effects at crop level. In addition, at farm level farmers can change cropping patterns, and adjust inputs and outputs. Also farm structural change will influence impacts and adaptation. While the 5th IPCC report is more negative regarding impacts of climate change on agriculture compared to the previous report, also for temperate regions, our results show that when putting climate change in context of other drivers, and when explicitly accounting for adaptation at crop and farm level, impacts may be less negative in some regions and opportunities are revealed. These results refer to a temperate region, but an integrated assessment may also change perspectives on climate change for other parts of the world.The portrayal of climate change in the news has been a major focus of research over the last decade, reflecting the importance of the media in affecting public opinion and policy. This work has primarily focused on the science of climate change, impacts, and mitigation, yet our understanding on how adaptation is being profiled in the media is limited. In response to this gap, this paper quantitatively examines the coverage and framing of climate change adaptation in four influential North American newspapers between 1993 and 2013. Over the observation period, the total number of articles focusing on adaptation published each year increases, with peaks in reporting in 2007, 2012, and 2013. While adaptation has permeated news coverage, it still remains overshadowed by stories on impacts and mitigation, with increased reporting consistent with increased media attention to climate change over the last two decades. Of the newspaper articles with adaptation content (n = 271), the majority (53%) focus primarily on stating the need to adapt, as opposed to documenting actual preparations being undertaken for adaptation or profiling actual adaptations that have taken place. The types of adaptation being reported on are predominantly 'hard' in nature, profiling techno-engineering based responses to reduce potential climate change impacts, in contrast to 'soft' responses that seek to enhance resilience. This representation is particularly evident in reporting in 2012 and 2013. Adaptations being described in the selected newspaper articles are primarily anticipatory in nature up until 2011, after which adaptations are primarily discussed in terms of responding to extreme weather events, specifically in the context of a surge in reporting documented in response to Hurricane Sandy (2012) and flooding in Canada in 2013. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.International trade plays an important role in facilitating global food security in the face of a changing climate. In considering this issue, it is useful to distinguish between two different time scales: inter-annual and inter-decadal. Inter-annual adjustments in international trade can play an important role in shifting supplies from food surplus regions to regions facing food deficits which emerge as a consequence of extreme weather events, civil strife, and/or other disruptions The first section of the paper explores the evidence on increased inter-annual supply side volatility, as well as historical and prospective analyses of adaptation to such volatility and the role international trade can play in mitigating the adverse impacts on food security. In the long run, we expect that the fundamental patterns of comparative advantage will be altered by the changing climate as well as availability of technology and endowments (water for irrigation, labor force, capital stock). In a freely functioning global economy, long run trade patterns will respond to this evolving comparative advantage. However, historical food trade has not been free of obstacles, with both tariff and non-tariff barriers often limiting the adjustment of trade to the changing economic landscape. This section of the paper capitalizes on a newly available library of climate impact results in order to characterize the tails (both optimistic and pessimistic) of this distribution. We then explore the potential for a more freely functioning global trading system to deliver improved long run food security in 2050.Forest managers around the world face the problem of coping with current climatic variability as well as developing strategies for future climate change adaptation. Using Australia as an example, we describe past forest management responses to climatic variability and discuss these in the context of future adaptation strategies to deal with increasingly variable and more extreme climatic events. We propose that while climatic changes remain within the bounds of those experienced historically for a particular species across its commercial distribution, the past 'will' provide an indication of management that will work in the future. If climatic conditions at particular forest locations move outside that range, more extreme measures may be required for which there is less or no historical precedent. We link this concept to previous research that is applicable to any species at any location in the world. This has analysed suitable conditions for particular species under current conditions, as well as analysing where and when climate change is likely to place particular species and forest locations outside the range of conditions known to be suitable for current climate. Responding to more extreme climatic changes will require policy and infrastructure support and greater planning at regional and national levels that will inform and re-direct adaptation strategies in the future. This analysis provides insights into adaptation strategies that may be effective in the future, revolving around incremental (e.g. small changes in current management) and more transformational (e.g. altered species choice) management changes. It points to areas where knowledge is limiting and where existing trials and research may be exploited to advance our understanding of plantation management in more variable climates. It discusses the role of adaptive management in improving the decision-making capacity of the forest industry in the face of uncertainties associated with changing climate.Island case studies have contributed significantly to disaster research theory and application, including more recent work on climate change adaptation. Island-related work in development and disasters has been particularly adept at building on the past in order to create a better development future through disaster risk reduction, one subset of which is climate change adaptation. However, recent emphasis on climate change has to a large degree bypassed previous and deeper understandings of island contributions to disaster research as well as the importance of island situations. This paper details key elements from the literature on island-based development and disaster research - especially regarding the themes of vulnerability and resilience theory as then applied in practice for island migration - linking this material with a critiquing analysis of ongoing work emerging from climate change. Despite the importance of dealing with climate change, especially for islands and islanders, it must always be placed within wider disaster and development tasks. This includes embracing previous work in order to learn from, without becoming mired in, the past.This paper introduces a technology sharing platform for the global network on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). The platform defines a foundation that provides various products or services and its objective is to allow demanders, suppliers and experts to share DRR technology. The platform is divided into architecture and governance. The fundamental component of architecture relies on detailed technology information which includes structured technology such as technology, systems, tools, analytical models, and non-structured technology such as standards, codes, process, and consulting. The architecture also includes a case study of the application and evaluation for the DRR technology to determine its performance level. Finally, architecture will include a function that enables stakeholders to provide their opinions, experience, and judgements related to the case study. The primary function of the platform's governance is to exchange the opinions and prepare incentives for sharing information among demanders like the UN organizations and Asia-Pacific nations, as well as suppliers of private sectors and institutions. In addition, subject matter experts can provide input on DRR technology as gatekeepers and participate in the community by presenting their opinions to technology applications. The expert survey from multiple Asian-Pacific countries reached the conclusion that the even distribution of DRR technology through a web based platform among the countries is necessary. In addition, the case studies from technology in practice were deemed as more critical than the DRR technology content itself due to their practical applications.The uncontrolled sprawl of urban development exerts environmental impact in rural areas. The aim of this study is to identify areas vulnerable to climate change in the context of implementation of policies adapting to climate change at the local level. Such areas can be defined as those where the negative implication of flesh flood overlapping with soil sealing is observed. The study areas composed of municipalities which are influenced by the urban sprawl process of the city of Wroclaw, Poland. The analyses were performed using publicly available spatial data from aerial orthophotomaps from 2004-2012, the satellite images; archival and current land use maps. The database CORINE 1990, 2000, 2006; Urban Atlas and geodatabase of the European Environment Agency were also of an important usage for this study.We analyzed the spatio-temporal evolution of evaporation observations from Piche atmometers (1961-2011; 56 stations) and Pan evaporimeters (1984-2011; 21 stations) across Spain, and compared both measurements with evaporation estimates obtained by four physical models: i.e., Food and Agricultural Organization-56 Penman-Monteith, Food and Agricultural Organization-Pan, PenPan and Penman, based on climate data. In this study we observed a positive and statistically significant correlation between Piche and Pan evaporation measurements during the common period (1984-2011; 19 stations), mainly in summer. When evaporation observations and estimates were compared, we detected positive and statistically significant correlations with the four methods, except for winter. Among the four physical models, the FAO-Pan showed the best fitting to both Piche and Pan evaporation measurements; the PenPan model overestimated evaporation rates; and the FAO-Penman-Monteith and Penman methods underestimated evaporation observations. We also observed a better spatial agreement between Pan evaporation and estimates than that obtained by Piche measurements. Annual and seasonal trends of evaporation estimates show a statistically significant increase for 1961-2011, which do not agree with long-term Fiche evaporation trends; e.g. a discontinuity was found around the 1980s. Radiative and aerodynamic driving factors suggest that this discontinuity, and the observed evaporation trends across Spain could be associated with the abrupt increase in air temperature observed during last few decades (i.e., global warming). Further investigations using available Fiche evaporation observations for other regions are needed to better understand physical components influencing long-term trends of evaporation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Indonesia is among the most vulnerable countries to climate change due to its coastlines, high concentration of population and economic activity in coastal areas. In addition, the impacts of climate change have had severe environmental and socio-economic consequences. Adaptation measures are required to minimize the impacts. Some climate change adaptation measures have been practiced in the coastal cities of Indonesia. This article aims to examine the current practices and performance of local adaptation measures in the coastal city of Semarang City. The current adaptation practices include an integration of climate resilience strategy into city planning and a physical adaptation strategy for the tidal flood hazard. It is found that the performance of each adaptation measures has different outcomes depending on the typology of adaptation. Cooperation and a strong commitment amongst stakeholders as well as building adaptive capacity of local people and authority are significantly required.Cowpea Bean belongs to the Vigna unguiculata species and arouses interest because it has great climate adaptation and nutritional qualities. It is frequently found in the African continent and in Brazilian North and Northeast regions. It is a legume that needs to be cooked for its usual consumption. The main purpose of this study was the investigation of the lipid profile and thermal behavior of the oil from raw and cooked cowpea beans. The fatty acid composition of this oil indicates that there is a predominance of polyunsaturated fatty acids with 37 % linoleic acid and 24 % alpha-linolenic acid, against 25 % of saturated fatty acids (mostly palmitic). Details concerning the thermal behavior of these oils were evaluated by thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), under nitrogen and synthetic air atmospheres. The kinetic parameters were evaluated from several heating rates with sample mass of 5 and 20 mg in open crucibles under synthetic air and nitrogen atmospheres. The obtained data were evaluated with the iso-conversional kinetic method, where the values of activation energy (E (a)/kJ mol(-1)) were evaluated in function of the conversion degree (a). The results indicate that the kinetic behavior of the cooked oil under nitrogen and synthetic air atmospheres are different, which was attributed to the several sample masses used. In addition, this oil also was evaluated by DSC from 25 to -60 A degrees C, where it was verified a phase transition behavior.Context In addition to biodiversity conservation, California rangelands generate multiple ecosystem services including livestock production, drinking and irrigation water, and carbon sequestration. California rangeland ecosystems have experienced substantial conversion to residential land use and more intensive agriculture. Objectives To understand the potential impacts to rangeland ecosystem services, we developed six spatially explicit (250 m) climate/land use change scenarios for the Central Valley of California and surrounding foothills consistent with three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission scenario narratives. Methods We quantified baseline and projected change in wildlife habitat, soil organic carbon (SOC), and water supply (recharge and runoff). For six case study watersheds we quantified the interactions of future development and changing climate on recharge, runoff and streamflow, and precipitation thresholds where dominant watershed hydrological processes shift through analysis of covariance. Results The scenarios show that across the region, habitat loss is expected to occur predominantly in grasslands, primarily due to future development (up to a 37 % decline by 2100), however habitat loss in priority conservation errors will likely be due to cropland and hay/pasture expansion (up to 40 % by 2100). Grasslands in the region contain approximately 100 teragrams SOC in the top 20 cm, and up to 39% of this SOC is subject to conversion by 2100. In dryer periods recharge processes typically dominate runoff. Future development lowers the precipitation value at which recharge processes dominate runoff, and combined with periods of drought, reduces the opportunity for recharge, especially on deep soils. Conclusion Results support the need for climate-smart land use planning that takes recharge areas into account, which will provide opportunities for water storage in dry years. Given projections for agriculture, more modeling is needed on feedbacks between agricultural expansion on rangelands and water supply.Adaptation readiness is proposed as a complimentary concept to adaptive capacity that captures the strength and existence of governance structures and policy processes which determine whether adaptation takes place. As such, adaptation readiness is concerned with examining actual experiences with planning for adaptation and seeks to characterize whether human systems are prepared and ready to 'do adaptation.' We propose a framework for evaluating readiness, identifying 6 overarching factors essential for adaptation taking place: political leadership, institutional organization, adaptation decision making and stakeholder engagement, availability of usable science, funding for adaptation, and public support for adaptation. For each readiness factor we identify potential indicators, data sources, and considerations for analysis, outlining approaches for quantitative scoring and qualitative examination. We briefly illustrate application of the framework using an example from the territory of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic, a region projected to experience some of the most dramatic changes in climate globally this century. The framework provides a systematic approach for assessing adaptation readiness, and can be used - in combination with other approaches - to inform the identification and prioritization of adaptation support, guide resources to areas where need is greatest, and serve as a proxy for adaptation tracking.Urban forestry is an important component of the urban ecosystem that can effectively ameliorate temperatures by providing shade and through evapotranspiration. While it is well known that vegetation abundance is negatively correlated to land surface temperature, the impacts of the spatial arrangement (e.g. clustered or dispersed) of vegetation cover on the urban thermal environment requires further investigation. In this study, we coupled remote sensing techniques with spatial statistics to quantify the configuration of vegetation cover and its variable influences on seasonal surface temperatures in central Phoenix. The objectives of this study are to: (1) determine spatial arrangement of green vegetation cover using continuous spatial autocorrelation indices combined with high-resolution remotely-sensed data; (2) examine the role of grass and trees, especially their spatial patterns on seasonal and diurnal land surface temperatures by controlling the effects of vegetation abundance; (3) investigate the sensitivity of the vegetation-temperature relationship at varying geographical scales. The spatial pattern of urban vegetation was measured using a local spatial autocorrelation indexthe local Moran's I-v . Results show that clustered or less fragmented patterns of green vegetation lower surface temperature more effectively than dispersed patterns. The relationships between the local Moran's I-v and surface temperature are evidenced to be strongest during summer daytime and lowest during winter nighttime. Results of multiple regression analyses demonstrate significant impacts of spatial arrangement of vegetation on seasonal surface temperatures. Our analyses of vegetation spatial patterns at varying geographical scales suggest that an area extent of 200 m is optimal for examining the vegetation-temperature relationship. We provide a methodological framework to quantify the spatial pattern of urban features and to examine their impacts on the biophysical characteristics of the urban environment. The insights gained from our study results have significant implications for sustainable urban development and resource management.Climate change is one of the most important issues confronting the sustainable supply of seafood, with projections suggesting major effects on wild and farmed fisheries worldwide. While climate change has been a consideration for Australian fisheries and aquaculture management, emphasis in both research and adaptation effort has been at the production end of supply chains-impacts further along the chain have been overlooked to date. A holistic biophysical and socio-economic system view of seafood industries, as represented by end-to-end supply chains, may lead to an additional set of options in the face of climate change, thus maximizing opportunities for improved fishery profitability, while also reducing the potential for maladaptation. In this paper, we explore Australian seafood industry stakeholder perspectives on potential options for adaptation along seafood supply chains based on future potential scenarios. Stakeholders, representing wild capture and aquaculture industries, provided a range of actions targeting different stages of the supply chain. Overall, proposed strategies were predominantly related to the production end of the supply chain, suggesting that greater attention in developing adaptation options is needed at post-production stages. However, there are chain-wide adaptation strategies that can present win-win scenarios, where commercial objectives beyond adaptation can also be addressed alongside direct or indirect impacts of climate. Likewise, certain adaptation strategies in place at one stage of the chain may have varying implications on other stages of the chain. These findings represent an important step in understanding the role of supply chains in effective adaptation of fisheries and aquaculture industries to climate change.We analyzed potential land degradation processes in semiarid regions worldwide using long time series of remote sensing images and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for the period 1981 to 2011. The objectives of the study were to identify semiarid regions showing a marked decrease in potential vegetation activity, indicative of the occurrence of land degradation processes, and to assess the possible influence of the observed drought trends quantified using the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). We found that the NDVI values recorded during the period of maximum vegetation activity (NDVImax) predominantly showed a positive evolution in the majority of the semiarid regions assessed, but NDVImax was highly correlated with drought variability, and the trends of drought events influenced trends in NDVImax at the global scale. The semiarid regions that showed most increase in NDVImax (the Sahel, northern Australia, South Africa) were characterized by a clear positive trend in the SPEI values, indicative of conditions of greater humidity and lesser drought conditions. While changes in drought severity may be an important driver of NDVI trends and land degradation processes in semiarid regions worldwide, drought did not apparently explain some of the observed changes in NDVImax. This reflects the complexity of vegetation activity processes in the world's semiarid regions, and the difficulty of defining a universal response to drought in these regions, where a number of factors (natural and anthropogenic) may also affect on land degradation.The paper forms part of the search for a thermodynamic explanation for the empirical Budyko Curve, addressing a long-standing research question in hydrology. Here this issue is pursued by invoking the Proportionality Hypothesis underpinning the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) curve number method widely used for estimating direct runoff at the event scale. In this case, the Proportionality Hypothesis posits that the ratio of continuing abstraction to its potential value is equal to the ratio of direct runoff to its potential value. Recently, the validity of the Proportionality Hypothesis has been extended to the partitioning of precipitation into runoff and evaporation at the annual time scale as well. In this case, the Proportionality Hypothesis dictates that the ratio of continuing evaporation to its potential value is equal to the ratio of runoff to its potential value. The Budyko Curve could then be seen as the straightforward outcome of the application of the Proportionality Hypothesis to estimate mean annual water balance. In this paper, we go further and demonstrate that the Proportionality Hypothesis itself can be seen as a result of the application of the thermodynamic principle of Maximum Entropy Production (MEP). In this way, we demonstrate a possible thermodynamic basis for the Proportionality Hypothesis, and consequently for the Budyko Curve. As a further extension, the L'vovich formulation for the two-stage partitioning of annual precipitation is also demonstrated to be a result of MEP: one for the competition between soil wetting and fast flow during the first stage; another for the competition between evaporation and base flow during the second stage.Bayesian networks (BNs) are a popular tool in natural resource management but are limited when dealing with ecological assemblage data and when discretizing continuous variables. We present a method that addresses these challenges using a BN model developed for the Upper Murrumbidgee River Catchment (south-eastern Australia). A selection process was conducted to choose the taxa from the whole macroinvertebrate assemblage that were incorporated in the BN as endpoints. Furthermore, two different approaches to the discretization of continuous predictor variables for the BN were compared. One approach used Threshold Indicator Taxa Analysis (TITAN) which estimates the thresholds based on the biological community. The other approach used was the expert opinion. The TITAN-based discretizations provided comparable predictions to expert opinion-based discretizations but in combining statistical rigor and ecological relevance, offer a novel and objective approach to the discretization. The TITAN-based method may be used together with expert opinion. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change (CC) may have substantial impacts on the distribution of current tourist flows by changing patterns of seasonal volumes of tourist demand. Such impacts are of potential importance for the Spanish coastal tourism destinations. In a context where the implementation of adaptation measures becomes relevant to counteract the expected CC-induced travel market share losses, this paper examines the role of preference analysis in the design of CC adaptation policies. Using data from the 2005 Familitur Survey on summer domestic tourist flows, a destination choice model is implemented to: I) highlight the role of temperature and its relationship with other destination-specific attributes, 2) estimate CC-induced changes in travel market shares, and 3) compute the economic value tourists assign to a set of destination assets as a way to better permit the recovery the expected market share losses by regional tourism authorities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since the Middle Ages the Dutch have reclaimed many lakes and parts of the sea, creating polders. Drainage is required to use the land: for the inhabitants, for agriculture and for nature. Traditionally drainage was by gravity: through open (and later pipe) drains excess rainfall was transferred into open collector drains, from where the water was pumped out to a river, lake or the sea. Since the 1950s, land use has been changing towards a more diverse and intensive agriculture, more attention for nature, recreation and continuing urbanization. On top of this, the climate is changing: significant increases in precipitation, both average and extreme. Until recently, the solution to more excess water was to increase pump capacity. Yet the combined problems of climate change, sea level rise, subsidence and urbanization require more structural changes in water management. Drainage systems have to be modified to enable the shift from a strategy of rapid removal of all excess water to one that continuously controls water levels individually in each agricultural plot. A new approach of 'retention, storage and controlled removal' is being used to develop climate adaptation scenarios for the three hydro-ecological zones in the Netherlands, i.e.: (1) the man-made polder areas with marine clay soils along the North Sea coast and the former Zuider Sea; (2) the low-lying peat lands in the west and north; and (3) the sandy and loamy soils areas in the centre, south and east. New approaches for tailor-made drainage solutions following this strategy are being tested in various pilot areas in the three zones. Although the research is still ongoing, this paper presents the lessons learned to date related to the challenges, risks and limitations associated with the introduction of these new drainage strategies for coping with climate change in the Netherlands.Sulfide-bearing anoxic sediments are found in coastal regions around the world including Australia and the Baltic. Upon lowering of the groundwater by drainage, they are oxidized and form acid sulfate soils (pH < 4) that mobilize plenty of potentially toxic metals into watercourses with serious environmental consequences. Being highly valued for their excellent crop yields, there is an urgent need to find management solutions that minimize the oxidation. In this study, possibilities to manage the groundwater with controlled subsurface drainage (CD) and subsurface irrigation (CDI), which included a vertical plastic sheet to prevent by-pass flow into the main drain, was examined on a Boreal farmland in Western Finland. During a 3-year study, the groundwater in the reference field (Ref) with conventional subsurface drainage pipes at 1.1-1.4 m depth typically dropped down to almost 2 m in the end of summers (September) due to evapotranspiration exceeding precipitation. CD delayed the groundwater drop, shortening the time of oxidation. In CDI system, the groundwater could be kept at c. 1 m or shallower throughout the summers, thereby preventing oxidation of critical sulfide horizons in the lower subsoil. Differences in total discharge and soil geochemistry features were small during the course of the study period. Salt accumulation seemed to be a small risk for crop growth but the capillary rise of acidity to the surface horizon may be increased in CDI, possibly increasing the need for surface liming. A floating groundwater antenna, indicating groundwater fluctuations, proved to be an easy and reliable tool to farmers for proper management of controlled drainage.This study derived two regimes of cloud water with a dipole structure between over the Okhotsk Sea and over the adjacent regions around Japan in summer by using a climate index for cool summer. When the Okhotsk high develops, clouds are confined to a thin low-level layer owing to the enhanced stability in the lower atmosphere induced by the downward motion associated with the Okhotsk high. The resulting optically thin clouds allow more downward shortwave radiation to reach the surface of the Okhotsk Sea. In contrast, the low-level easterly winds blowing toward the Japanese Islands and the Eurasian continent enhance cloud formation. This is due to the convergence of the water vapor flux induced by the easterly winds associated with the Okhotsk high and the southerly winds associated with the Baiu frontal zone and the Pacific high and due to the orographic uplift of air mass. When a cyclonic circulation occurs over the Okhotsk Sea, a thick layer of low-level clouds extending close to the sea surface is formed. The convergence of the water vapor flux over the subarctic sea surface temperature (SST) frontal zone and the cool SST promote fog formation, and upward motion associated with the cyclonic circulation supports the high cloud water content from the lower to the upper troposphere. The resulting optically thick clouds reduce the downward shortwave radiation at the surface of the Okhotsk Sea. Over the regions around Japan, water vapor flux diverges owing to dry air originating from land and cloud water decreases.Human population density in the coastal zone and potential impacts of climate change underscore a growing conflict between coastal development and an encroaching shoreline. Rising sea-levels and increased storminess threaten to accelerate coastal erosion, while growing demand for coastal real estate encourages more spending to hold back the sea in spite of the shrinking federal budget for beach nourishment. As climatic drivers and federal policies for beach nourishment change, the evolution of coastline mitigation and property values is uncertain. We develop an empirically grounded, stochastic dynamic model coupling coastal property markets and shoreline evolution, including beach nourishment, and show that a large share of coastal property value reflects capitalized erosion control. The model is parameterized for coastal properties and physical forcing in North Carolina, U.S.A. and we conduct sensitivity analyses using property values spanning a wide range of sandy coastlines along the U.S. East Coast. The model shows that a sudden removal of federal nourishment subsidies, as has been proposed, could trigger a dramatic downward adjustment in coastal real estate, analogous to the bursting of a bubble. We find that the policy-induced inflation of property value grows with increased erosion from sea level rise or increased storminess, but the effect of background erosion is larger due to human behavioral feedbacks. Our results suggest that if nourishment is not a long-run strategy to manage eroding coastlines, a gradual removal is more likely to smooth the transition to more climate-resilient coastal communities.California's energy and water systems are interconnected and have evolved in recent decades in response to changing conditions and policy, goals. For this analysis, we use a water footprint Methodology to examine water requirements of energy products consumed in California between 1990 and 2012. We combine energy production, trade; and consumption data with estimates of the blue and green water footprints of energy products. We find that while California's total annual energy consumption increased by just 2:6%-during the analysis period, the amount of water required to produce that energy grew by 260%. Neatly all of the increase in California's energy-related water footprint was associated with water use in locations outside of California, where energy products that the state consumes were, and continue to be, produced. We discuss these trends and the implications for,California's future energy system as it relates to climate change and expected water management challenges inside and outside the state. Our analysis shows that while California's energy policies, have supported climate mitigation efforts, they have increased vulnerability to climate impacts) especially greater hydrologic uncertainty: More integrated analysis and planning are needed to ensure that climate, adaptation and mitigation strategies do not work at cross purposes.Estuarine fish live in a highly dynamic environment where recruitment variability is a key determinant of population trajectory. Environmental requirements for successful recruitment may differ between co-occurring species, and therefore species may be advantaged or disadvantaged under climate change. Recruitment variability in black bream Acanthopagrus butcheri and estuary perch Macquaria colonorum in estuaries along the coast of western Victoria, south-eastern Australia, was determined from the age structure of the populations. Recruitment was found to be episodic in both species, with the populations dominated by a few year classes; however, abundant year classes differed between species. Historical freshwater flows were found to be similar across estuaries, reflecting broad-scale rainfall. In contrast, water column stratification (difference between surface and bottom salinity) over a 7 yr period varied widely amongst estuaries. In general, recruitment of black bream was negatively correlated with freshwater flow and positively correlated with the level of stratification. In contrast to black bream, significant correlations for recruitment of estuary perch were negatively related to stratification and positively related to flows. Thus, although both species spawn in the spring and early summer, they have different environmental requirements in terms of flow and stratification for successful recruitment. This means that high inter-annual variability in flow is required for both species to experience favourable environmental conditions over time. Furthermore, the climate change scenario of significantly reduced flows in the Victorian region may mean that in many estuaries the conditions will be more favourable for the recruitment of black bream than for estuary perch.Rainfall is the key hydroclimatic variable that plays a vital role in the development of regional water management policies. Assessment of observed rainfall behaviour and its spatial and temporal variations are therefore important for climate change adaptation measures. This study assessed trends and step changes in observed annual and seasonal rainfalls across the South Australian region. More than 100 years of high-quality rainfall data from 53 rainfall stations were analyzed using robust statistical techniques. The results are presented according to the eight South Australian natural resource management regions. Increasing annual rainfall trends were observed for the Arid Lands, Alinytjara Wilinara and Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges regions whereas decreasing trends were found for the Murray Darling Basin, Eyre Peninsula and South East regions. Both upward and downward trends were identified in the Northern and Yorke region. Seasonally, austral spring and summer rainfalls exhibited increasing trends in most of the regions whereas autumn and winter rainfalls showed decreasing trends. Most of the rainfall step changes were observed to happen in the 1960s and 1970s. The study also includes a discussion on possible mechanisms of South Australian rainfall variability and changes that may have links to the observed trends and step changes.Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is commonly used in a variety of applications because of its features of light weight, good thermal insulation, moisture resistance, durability, acoustic absorption and low thermal conductivity. It has been increasingly used in building constructions as core material of structural insulated panels (SIP). Some of those structures during their service life may be subjected to dynamic loads such as accidental or hostile explosion loads and windborne debris impacts. Understanding the dynamic material properties of EPS is essential for reliable predictions of the performances of the structural insulated panels with EPS foam core material. This paper presents static and dynamic compressive and tensile test data of EPS with density 13.5 kg/m(3) and 28 kg/m(3) at different strain rates. The dynamic strength, Young's modulus and energy absorption capacities of the two EPS foams at different strain rates are obtained and presented in the paper. Based on the testing data, some empirical relations are derived, which can be used to model EPS properties in numerical simulations of dynamic responses of structural insulated panels with EPS foam core subjected to impact and blast loads. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We employ a suite of regional climate models (RCMs) to assess future changes in summer (JJA) maximum temperature (T-max) over the Ebro basin, the largest hydrological division in the Iberian Peninsula. Under the A1B emission scenario, future changes in both mean values and their corresponding time varying percentiles were examined by comparing the control period (1971-2000) with two future time slices: 2021-2050 and 2071-2100. Here, the rationale is to assess how lower/upper tails of temperature distributions will change in the future and whether these changes will be consistent with those of the mean. The model validation results demonstrate significant differences among the models in terms of their capability to representing the statistical characteristics (e.g., mean, skewness and asymmetry) of the observed climate. The results also indicate that the current substantial warming observed in the Ebro basin is expected to continue during the 21st century, with more intense warming occurring at higher altitudes and in areas with greater distance from coastlines. All models suggest that the region will experience significant positive changes in both the cold and warm tails of temperature distributions. However, the results emphasize that future changes in the lower and upper tails of the summer T-max distribution may not follow the same warming rate as the mean condition. In particular, the projected changes in the warm tail of the summer Tmax are shown to be significantly larger than changes in both mean values and the cold tail, especially at the end of the 21st century. The finding suggests that much of the changes in the summer T-max percentiles will be driven by a shift in the entire distribution of temperature rather than only changes in the central tendency. Better understanding of the possible implications of future climate systems provides information useful for vulnerability assessments and the development of local adaptation strategies for multi-disciplinary investigations. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There has been increasing examination of resilience as a concept applicable to climate adaptation. In this paper, resilience is used to explore the layers of responses to past and present climate stress. It examines the factors and circumstances that may hinder or enhance resilience, providing insights into past and present adaptation processes that may be relevant for adaptation to future climate change. Specifically, this paper tests the value of social capital in influencing resilience to climate stress. While there are many examples where social capital influences resilience to climate stress, this paper aims to determine the relative importance of different types of social capital for enhancing resilience, by exploring how relationships of exchange and reciprocity influence responses to climate stress. This study involved case studies of specific communities in the southwest coastal region of Bangladesh. This case study highlights a complex rather than a uniformly positive relationship between social capital and enhancing resilience to climate stress. Specifically, it identifies four types of social capital-based support (with monetary support as a subset) and the interlinkages among the types (and processes) of social capital with diverse effects on resilience. It emphasizes the moral and ethical importance of reconceptualizing resilience with an emphasis on the most vulnerable, as resilience approaches that fail to recognize the differentiated nature of resilience, risk reinforcing vulnerability. Westernized concepts have important benefits, but crucial limitations when applied to the particular conditions, value sets and modes of community working in the south. The uncritical importation of social capital needs to be treated with caution, especially in the context of climate adaptation.Climate change adaptation has become increasingly recognized as a development policy imperative for the twenty-first century. Still, actionable policy that meets ambitious goals of equitable, efficient and efficacious action has fallen woefully short of requirements. Mainstreaming of climate policy into existing development planning has been suggested as a way out of this impasse. India's central anti-poverty scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has become part of the 'mainstreamed' policy agenda. It is the largest Public Works Programme in the world today but has not been subjected to sufficient research scrutiny for its climate role. The paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap. It locates the climate-development role of the MGNREGA before subjecting it to a critical evaluation. It argues that conceptually, the MGNREGA meets basic normative requirements for mainstreamed adaptation action but that functional and methodological limitations prevent it from taking on a more purposeful role. Though the scheme is not transformative in nature, it can become part of a multi-pronged strategy to reduce vulnerability to climate change in India and possibly other developing countries.This article focuses on collaborative governance and the challenge of participatory processes in order to form integrated adaptation responses to climate change. The case of Santiago de Chile, where the creation of a Regional Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the Metropolitan Region was undertaken in collaboration with the Regional Government and the Regional Ministerial Secretariat of the Environment, provides the experience of such a participatory process being part of a larger inter- and transdisciplinary project. The article highlights the complexities involved in this process and knowledge transfer in the context of collaborative governance. The principal challenges identified are: to 'make the case' with respect to climate change adaptation planning; to be able to communicate scientific data effectively and to be clear about methodologies and uncertainties; and to ensure an integrated, coordinated response rather than sectoral fragmentation. The paper concludes that despite the complexities involved, participatory planning processes are preferable for urban climate change adaptation, as such processes are more legitimate and generate the social capacity building and inter-sectoral cooperation needed in the context of the current governance models in large Latin American cities, as exemplified by the case of Santiago.Pavement-watering as a technique of cooling dense urban areas and reducing the urban heat island effect has been studied since the 1990's. The method is currently considered as a potential tool for and climate change adaptation against increasing heat wave intensity and frequency. However, although water consumption necessary to implement this technique is an important aspect for decision makers, optimization of possible watering methods has only rarely been conducted. An analysis of pavement heat flux at a depth of 5 cm and solar irradiance measurements is proposed to attempt to optimize the watering period, cycle frequency and water consumption rate of a pavement-watering method applied in Paris over the summer of 2013. While fine-tuning of the frequency can be conducted on the basis of pavement heat flux observations, the watering rate requires a heat transfer analysis based on a relation established between pavement heat flux and solar irradiance during pavement insolation. From this, it was found that watering conducted during pavement insolation could be optimized to 30-min cycles and water consumption could be reduced by more than 80% while reducing the cooling effect by less than 13%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) by urbanization will likely replace agricultural expansion as the dominant source of transformation of the terrestrial biosphere. Properly managed urban soils can offset some of the associated carbon (C) losses from urban soils and vegetation by retaining stabilized soil organic carbon (SOC) or soil inorganic carbon (SIC) such as mineral-associated C, black carbon (BC), and stable carbonate minerals. For example, SOC stocks of up to 810 Mg C ha(-1) to 1.5 m depth (Serebryanye Prudy, Russia) and SIC stocks of up to 300 Mg C ha(-1) to 2.5 m depth (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK) have been reported, but data on urban soil C storage are scanty. Aside from contributing to climate change mitigation, protecting and increasing SOC stocks support critically important soil-derived ecosystem services. Thus, C-friendly soil and land-use management practices must be developed and implemented to enhance soil-derived ecosystem services in urban areas, and the resilience of urban ecosystems to climate change. A collective management approach for urban soil C is needed. The principal actors involved should be urban land users (e.g., urban dwellers, property owners, developers) as the immediate users and managers of soil C, local professionals, local government and NGOs.Rangeland degradation endangers livelihoods of many rural communities in Uzbekistan. Despite the threat of land deterioration from climate change, there are many reasons that land users do not take action to prevent or reduce land degradation. The described project uses a low-cost approach to mobilize stakeholders and initiate collective action. Based on a social learning process focusing on development of local climate-change scenarios, villagers from Qiziltepa district identified adaptation options and agreed on a common purpose to restore rangelands through collective governance systems. They formed pastoral user groups, established seed isles to ensure seeding of forage shrubs, and agreed on seasonal grazing. This case study shows the critical importance of scenarios in social learning processes for building awareness concerning climate change adaptation; they led to changes in perceptions and agreement on collective action and governance. We compare the potential of this integrated approach with large-scale seeding.This article examines the translation of key terms about climate change from English into Inuktitut, considering not only their literal translation but also the broader context within which words make sense. We argue that notions of resilience, adaptation, and climate change itself mean something fundamentally different in Inuktitut than English and that this has implications for climate policy and politics. To the extent that climate change is translated into Inuktitut as a wholly environmental phenomenon over which humans have no control, both adaptation and resilience come to be seen as appropriate and distinctly Inuit modes of relating to shifting climatic conditions, calling on practices of patience, observation, creativity, forbearance, and discretion. If translated as a matter of unethical harm of sila, however, Inuit frameworks of justice, relationality, and healing would be activated. In the context of a broader global shift away from mitigation and toward enhancing the adaptive capacities and resilience of particular populations, current modes of translating climate change, we argue, are deeply political.Local residents, businesspeople, and policymakers engaged in climate change adaptation often think differently of the time available for action. Their understandings of time, and their practices that invoke time, form the complex and sometimes conflicting temporalities of adaptation to environmental change. They link the conditions of the past to those of the present and the future in a variety of ways, and their contemporary practices rest on such linking explicitly or implicitly. Yet the temporal connections between the present and distant future of places are undertheorized and poorly considered in the science and policy of adaptation to environmental change. In this article we address this theoretical and practical challenge by weaving together arguments from social and environmental geography with evidence from small coastal communities in southeastern Australia. We show that the past conditions residents' imagined futures and that these local, imagined futures are incongruent with scientific, popular, and policy accounts of the future. Thus we argue that the temporalities of adaptation include incommensurate and unacknowledged ways of knowing and that these affect adaptation practices. We propose that strategies devised by governments for adapting to environmental change need to make visible-and calibrate policies with-the diverse temporalities of adaptation. On this basis, the times between the present and the long-term future can be better navigated as a series of short and negotiated policy steps.Households within affluent countries are increasingly prominent in climate change adaptation research; meanwhile, social and cultural research has sought to render more complex the dynamics of domesticity and home spaces. Both bodies of work are nevertheless framed within a view of the future that is recognizable from the present, a future reached via socioecological change that is gradual rather than transformative or catastrophic. In this article, we acknowledge the agency of extreme biophysical forces and ask what everyday household life might be like in an unstable future significantly different from the present. We revisit our own longitudinal empirical research examining household sustainability and reinterpret key results in a more volatile frame influenced by political ecological work on disasters. We seek to move beyond incremental to transformative conceptions of change and invert vulnerability as capacity. Vulnerability and capacity are contingent temporally and spatially and experienced intersubjectively. The resources for survival are ultimately social and therefore compel closer scrutiny of, among other things, household life.For mid-latitude cities, higher summer temperatures due to climate change are a cause for concern because they aggravate the urban heat island phenomenon and reduce thermal comfort inside buildings. By acquiring the appropriate knowledge and skills, architects and urban designers can become key actors in adaptation to climate change. Two workshops bringing together architects and urban designers provided evidence of deficiencies in this area. We hypothesize that a design support tool (DST) focused on the issue of adaptation of mid-latitude cities to rising summer temperatures could help improve knowledge and skills of professionals in the field. The first section presents the results taken from a review and classification of DSTs, which highlight the tools' features that are likely to reach this goal. Tools of the "hybrid" category seem most appropriate. To verify this, seven DSTs were selected and tested by fourteen students enrolled in a graduate-level architecture design studio. The second section presents the results from this test, including an analysis of the final projects, a web-based questionnaire and two focus groups. The relevance of hybrid approaches is established, but the results bring into question the capacity of a single DST to meet the individual and multiple needs of professionals. (C) 2015. Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The rising of adaptation policies, connected to the buzzword resiliency, does it modify the understanding of risk issues as it has been developed in the continuity of the analysis of risk society, proposed by Beck and Giddens? Following these authors, risk issues are the consequences of the control obsession of the Moderns. Therefore, the emancipation of this imaginary, through the increasing of reflexivity, appeared as the first step for a risk policy. How far does the rising of resilience sign a return to an ideology of control or a temptation for new principles of action ? How far does the enthusiasm for resilience correspond to a backlash in comparison to the late modernity or not ? This question was in the core of the communications about the framing of urban spaces and buildings to face climate changes, which have taken place at the congress of Acfas in may 2014 at the University of Concordia in Montreal.Whilst it is increasingly recognised that socio-political contexts shape climate change adaptation decisions and actions at all scales, current modes of development typically fail to recognise or adequately challenge these contexts where they constrain capacity to adapt. To address this failing, we consider how a rights-based approach broadens understanding of adaptive capacity while directing attention towards causes of exclusion and marginalisation. Drawing on human rights principles and lessons from rights-based practice, we develop a novel analytical tool for use with communities that considers adaptive capacity through examination of equality, transparency, accountability and empowerment. We apply this to the illustrative case of aquatic agricultural systems in Timor-Leste. This approach yields a qualitative analysis that unpacks the formal and informal institutions and actors that structure opportunities and barriers to adaptive actions. The rights framing exposes the processes of marginalisation and exclusion that lead to differentiation in adaptive capacity, but at the same time helps identify concrete actions that can be taken as part of a rights-based approach to development support for adaptive capacity. The tool and empirical illustration support an emerging body of thought that adaptive capacity requires development actors to engage not only with the technical challenges of responding to climate change, but also with the social and political context that determines the distribution of costs and benefits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent destructive flood events and projected increases in flood risks as a result of climate change in many regions around the world demonstrate the importance of improving flood risk management. Flood-proofing of buildings is often advocated as an effective strategy for limiting damage caused by floods. However, few empirical studies have estimated the damage that can be avoided by implementing such flood damage mitigation measures. This study estimates potential damage savings and the cost-effectiveness of specific flood damage mitigation measures that were implemented by households during major flood events in France. For this purpose, data about flood damage experienced and household flood preparedness were collected using a survey of 885 French households in three flood-prone regions that face different flood hazards. Four main conclusions can be drawn from this study. First, using regression analysis results in improved estimates of the effectiveness of mitigation measures than methods used by earlier studies that compare mean damage suffered between households who have, and who have not, taken these measures. Second, this study has provided empirical insights showing that some mitigation measures can substantially reduce damage during floods. Third, the effectiveness of the mitigation measures is very regional dependent, which can be explained by the different characteristics of the flood hazard in our sample areas that experience either slow onset river flooding or more rapid flash and coastal flooding. Fourth, the cost-efficiency of the flood damage mitigation measures depends strongly on the flood probability faced by households. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Farmers in developing countries are among the most vulnerable to climate change effects, particularly drought. However, little research has focused on the psychological mechanisms that facilitate or constrain agricultural adaptation behavior. Drawing on the protection motivation theory from health promotion research, we propose a risk, coping, and social appraisal (RCSA) model of adaptation decisions. To test the model, we assessed drought risk perceptions, efficacy beliefs, village identification, and perceived descriptive norms among a sample of 192 paddy farmers from five villages in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. Results revealed that the RCSA model was a better predictor of agricultural adaptaticin intention than a strictly demographic model. Efficacy beliefs were the strongest predictor of behavioral intentions, with descriptive norms also consistently relating to intentions. Drought risk perceptions related only to intention to adopt one of the behaviors, while village identification related only to a very communal behavior. The results have implications for agricultural extension officers, irrigation officers, and water management officials in their efforts to assist farmers in adapting to limited water resources. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The ecosystem approach, broadly understood as a legal and governance 'strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources' is being increasingly adopted within a wide variety of international environmental legal regimes. From freshwater to oceans, from biodiversity to fisheries, from Antarctica to climate adaptation, the approach provides a narrative, a policy approach and in some cases legally binding obligations for States to implement what has been called a 'new paradigm' of environmental management. Responding to hopes of arresting, and reversing, the increasingly negative trends of resource depletion and ecological degradation affecting most ecosystems in the world, the ecosystem approach promises to 'protect the environment, maintain healthy ecosystems, preserve biological diversity, and achieve sustainable development', all at once. This article problematises the ecosystem approach in order to highlight its complex genealogies, and its contested and slippery character, which makes it susceptible to discursive capture by competing narratives.This paper examines the likely impact of extreme weather events and rising sea levels on key port logistics operations and infrastructure. It develops a 3D model to assess the vulnerability of seaports vis-a-vis operational assets to sea-level rise. Key operational assets were first identified and geo-referenced on a high-resolution digital terrain model. In addition, perceptions of threat of extreme weather events on port operations were also evaluated. The spatial model provides an innovative, flexible and visual representation of sea-level rise under different climate scenarios with the capability of mapping vulnerability of port assets relative to their location. The visual outputs provide the capacity to develop evidence-based adaptation strategies to adjust or retreat to respond to the risk of sea-level rise and related flooding. It is recommended that new infrastructure development should revisit design standards, specifications and procurement of assets that are more resilient and climate proof.The exchange of coherent arguments about methods applied in the field of climate change adaptation is challenging due to the growing diversity of analytical methods applied from natural science and social science. This is further complicated by the abstract and ambiguous terms, such as vulnerability and adaptive capacity, employed in the literature and the inadequate consideration given to the wider array of social science methods that are being applied now that adaptation has become a practical necessity. To address these limitations, a review and novel classification of vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation methods is presented. Methods are classified based on goals addressed, thematic clusters of variables involved, and underlying theoretical assumptions. On the top-level, methods are distinguished into impact analysis, behavior analysis, institutional analysis, and decision analysis methods. The first three branches are further classified according to descriptive, explanatory, and predictive goals, as well as theoretical assumptions. For each type, empirical conditions of applicability and examples from the literature are presented. While this classification can only be partial due to the ever growing methodological diversity in the field of climate change adaptation, we provide a more rigorous basis for the coherent exchange of methodological arguments and thereby hope to foster the interdisciplinary dialog needed to advance the field. (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In the context of climate change, the forest sector must consider the extent to which sustainable forest management enables or constrains climate change adaptation and mitigation; it may be that existing values and principles, policies and decision-making processes, and institutions are no longer appropriate. Forest certification has emerged as an important arena for setting international and regional standards for forest management, but it is unclear to what extent it supports or helps develop adaptive capacity for climate change in the forest sector. This paper, therefore, combines a review of the literature on forests and climate adaptation with a systematic assessment of the Forest Stewardship Council Criteria and Indicators (in detail) and other forest and carbon certification schemes (in brief) to shed light on the role of certification standards in mediating forest and climate adaptation strategies. (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.One of major limitations in getting unbiased and balanced approach towards current climate change problem is inadequate participation of scientists from developing countries in IPCC assessment process. Current shortcomings in involving an adequate number of scientists from developing countries and to propose approaches to address this issue have been addressed in this paper. Implications of the involvement to climate change adaptation and mitigation research have been discussed at length. Scientific output of scientists is an important indicator of their career growth and also significant motivator for enhancing participation in IPCC assessment process. Impact of involvement of scientists in IPCC in terms of their scientific output has been assessed. We have made a statistical analysis of the origin of experts in the past assessment reports to reflect the participation. Scientific output in the form of number of peer reviewed papers published has been obtained and statistical t-test carried out for the significant change. The paper describes the results from these analyses and proposes appropriate recommendations for participation and capacity building.In Kota, the third largest city of Rajasthan, poverty levels are high in many areas and there is a great need to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of different societal groups and sectors to the impacts of climatic variability and change, and to formulate sustainable planning strategies. The city is a large rapidly growing centre (but not a megacity), facing a varied and challenging water situation and anticipated harmful effects of climate change. The methodological approach involves participatory workshops with key stakeholders in urban administration to identify vulnerabilities, and discuss concrete strategies for increasing the adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable areas and sectors. The paper focuses on water resource planning (storm, potable, and wastewater), since it is already a challenging societal issue and one which will become even more critical in the future with climate change. We aim to contribute to improved urban water management for sustainable climate change adaptation in developing countries through an improved methodology of vulnerability assessments, capacity building and social learning, and a deeper empirical understanding of an urban context in Central India.New tools and approaches are becoming available for wildlife conservation managers to help support climate adaptation activities, but few studies have documented how practitioners have applied these tools and perceive their utility. We surveyed the literature and users of the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI), a tool that is widely used in North America to assess species' vulnerability to climate change, to characterize 1) how the tool has been used; 2) the objectives addressed by projects using the tool; 3) novel approaches that might be useful to other users; 4) how the results contributed to climate change adaptation planning; and 5) needed improvements recognized by users of the tool. Responses from 25 CCVI users, representing state agencies and natural heritage programs, conservation organizations, and universities, combined with published reports from 20 CCVI assessments, indicated that the CCVI has been applied to large numbers of species from diverse taxonomic groups. Results from these assessments have been used to communicate about climate change vulnerability, select species to be prioritized for management, inform management decisions, identify monitoring needs, and inform land-acquisition decisions. Users of the CCVI have developed novel ways to address uncertainty in climate and species natural-history data, involve stakeholders, evaluate migratory species, address specific management questions, and combine outputs with the results of parallel spatial analyses. To address user needs, future iterations of the tool should address climate exposure in the full life cycle of migratory species; better examine species dependent on specific vegetation microhabitats; and improve treatment of the effects of climate on diseases, parasites, and natural enemies. (c) 2015 The Authors. The Wildlife Society Bulletin published by The Wildlife Society.The Western Pacific Warm Pool is a region of high tuna catch, and how future climate change might impact the tuna fisheries is an important regional issue. By using a high-resolution ocean model forced by the simulated climate of the 2060s, we investigate whether enhanced spatial resolution and bias correction of the mean state could alter the climate change projection for the western tropical Pacific and examine the consequences this might have for tropical tuna distributions. For most of the physical environmental variables, enhanced resolution and bias correction had only a minor impact on the projected changes. The climate projections showed a maximum surface warming east of the Warm Pool, a shoaling of the thermocline in the Warm Pool, and an eastward expansion of the Warm Pool. In the Warm Pool, the shoaling of the thermocline raises the nutricline into the photic zone and increases phytoplankton and primary productivity, a feature that is most evident in the high-resolution model projection but also weakly present in the coarse-resolution projection. The phytoplankton and primary productivity response to climate change was where ocean model resolution produced a clear difference. With enhanced resolution, the simulation had stronger and better-defined zonal currents, which were more consistent with observations. Along the equator, the high-resolution model enabled vertical current shear mixing to generate a sub-surface phytoplankton maximum both inside and outside the Warm Pool, which is an observed phenomenon. With climate change, the enhanced-resolution model projected enhanced vertical shear mixing, increased vertical supply of nutrients to the photic zone, and increased sub-surface phytoplankton concentrations. The increase in sub-surface phytoplankton concentrations helps to offset the decline in surface phytoplankton concentrations and results in a projection of almost no change in the western tropical Pacific primary productivity. In contrast, the low-resolution model projected a substantial reduction in phytoplankton concentrations and primary productivity; such a response is typical of climate change projections for the region. Importantly, enhanced resolution dramatically altered the projected response of phytoplankton and primary productivity to climate change. Using the enhanced-resolution model, the projected increase in the size of the Warm Pool with little change in primary productivity and in suitable habitat for skipjack tuna suggest that by the 2060s climate change will not have a large impact on skipjack tuna fisheries. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is mounting evidence to suggest that many species are shifting their ranges in concordance with the climate velocity of their preferred environmental conditions/habitat While accelerated rates in species' range shifts have been noted in areas of intense warming, due to climate change, few studies have considered the influence that both spatial temperature gradients and rates of warming (i.e., the two components of climate velocity) could have on rates of movement in species habitats. We compared projected shifts in the core habitat of nine large pelagic fish species (five tuna, two billfish and two shark species) off the east coast of Australia at different spatial points (centre, leading and trailing edges of the core habitat), during different seasons (summer and winter), in the near-(2030) and long-term (2070), using independent species distribution models and habitat suitability models. Model projections incorporated depth integrated temperature data from 11 climate models with a focus on the IPCC SRES A2 general emission scenario. Projections showed a number of consistent patterns: southern (poleward) shifts in all species' core habitats; trailing edges shifted faster than leading edges; shifts were faster by 2070 than 2030; and there was little difference in shifts among species and between seasons. Averaging across all species and climate models, rates of habitat shifts for 2030 were 45-60 km decade(-1) at the trailing edge, 40-45 km decade(-1) at the centre, and 20-30 km decade(-1) at the leading edge. Habitat shifts for 2070 were 60-70 km decade(-1) at the trailing edge, 50-55 km decade(-1) at the centre, and 30-40 km decade(-1) at the leading edge. It is often assumed that the leading edge of a species range will shift faster than the trailing edge, but there are few projections or observations in large pelagic fish to validate this assumption. We found that projected shifts at the trailing edge were greater than at the centre and leading of core habitats in all large pelagic fish included in our study. Faster shifts at species trailing edges were due to weaker spatial gradients in temperature in the north than in the south of the study region, in conjunction with relatively constant rates of warming across latitudes. Rather than assuming that leading edges will always move faster, this study suggests that spatial gradients of temperature could be important in determining differences in shifts at different points in species core habitats. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forestry is one of Europe's largest land uses, for which adaptation to climate change will require coordinated action among multiple actors. However, so far, adaptation has been less placed in focus than has mitigation, and adaptation in the forest sector has mainly been reactive. This paper explores and reviews the integration of forestry in the development of planned adaptation policy in different countries. Sweden, Germany and France are taken as examples of countries with different developments of their adaptation policies as well as different requirements of their forest systems and actors. Italy is utilised as an example of how adaptation actions for forestry have been defined in a country where no national adaptation policy currently exists; in general, the results illustrate the seemingly large role of extreme events in driving adaptation policy forward in different policy systems.Using temporal or spatial analogues is a well developed technique for comparative studies that can shed light on past environments or inform changes in practice by reference to analogue locations. Recently, studies have begun to employ analogue techniques to inform on future conditions under climate change. This paper explores the breadth of application of analogue approaches and seeks to question whether there are the limits to the way in which the technique can be applied. We consider the case of policy in a wide range of land use relevant factors, using case studies of three Australian states. The analysis examines whether existing policy in land use planning, housing, infrastructure, health and ecological services in analogue communities can inform future policy in target communities, so as to fast track their policy development as climate changes. We highlight a number of situations where evidence supports the argument but we conclude that, over the full spectrum of policy, there is insufficient evidence to suggest that analogue approaches are valuable as a policy development tool. The paper outlines the reasons why the approach is limited in the case of land use policy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores how climate change adaptation concerns were integrated into the Swedish forestry debate and policy process during the period of 1990-2012, and draws lessons on barriers and opportunities identified in this process. Using a framework focusing on "advocacy coalitions", we analyze how the adaptation debate in the forestry sector evolved over the period; who the main advocates for and against adaptation were; and which main arguments and processes affected the debate and policy. The results show that academics advocating climate change adaptation, aided by outside influences, such as political pressure for adaptation responses and the negative impacts of the 2005 storm Gudrun, contributed to an increased general awareness and understanding of adaptation issues amongst forestry stakeholders. Nonetheless, the strong dominance of actors arguing for increased forest production and the limited number and relatively poor organization of adaptation advocates have acted as barriers to mainstreaming adaptation concerns into forestry policy and practice. The dominant coalitions and their values have also determined the direction of debate and policy. The main conclusions for policymakers aiming to further this integration process are the importance of stimulating adaptation coalitions and the value of creating arenas for multiple stakeholder learning about adaptation.Encouraging adaptation is an essential aspect of the policy response to climate change(1). Adaptation seeks to reduce the harmful consequences and harness any beneficial opportunities arising from the changing climate. However, given that human activities are the main cause of environmental transformations worldwide(2), it follows that adaptation itself also has the potential to generate further pressures, creating new threats for both local and global ecosystems. From this perspective, policies designed to encourage adaptation may conflict with regulation aimed at preserving or enhancing environmental quality. This aspect of adaptation has received relatively little consideration in either policy design or academic debate. To highlight this issue, we analyse the trade-offs between two fundamental ecosystem services that will be impacted by climate change: provisioning services derived from agriculture and regulating services in the form of freshwater quality. Results indicate that climate adaptation in the farming sector will generate fundamental changes in river water quality. In some areas, policies that encourage adaptation are expected to be in conflict with existing regulations aimed at improving freshwater ecosystems. These findings illustrate the importance of anticipating the wider impacts of human adaptation to climate change when designing environmental policies.Much knowledge is emerging about the past and potential effects of climate change on the unique and complex marine ecosystems of Canada's Pacific, including variations in the resilience, sensitivities, responsiveness, and non-stationarity of the biota. Such knowledge, however, is rarely synthesized or summarized with any overall integrated analyses that could guide the development of proactive planning for the effects of climate change. Regional and local planning of climate adaptation strategies, for example, requires an examination of ecological sensitivities and vulnerabilities at relevant spatial resolutions. We developed an illustrative example of a habitat-based ecological vulnerability assessment for the whole of Canada's Pacific marine area using existing spatial information from this region and from the California Current ecosystem. Potential climate impacts were calculated as the product of estimated exposure (E) of habitats to multiple dimensions of changing climate variables and expert-derived sensitivity (S) ratings of those habitats to changes in those climate variables. Vulnerability was then derived as the product of the estimated potential climate impacts in a location and the estimated cumulative impacts (Cl) of non-climate stressors there, which we considered to be an inverse proxy of the adaptive capacity (AC) of the biota in those habitats. We found considerable spatial variability of potential climate impacts and vulnerability on the scales of the 12 Ecosections of Canada's Pacific, 25 habitat categories, and at finer scales. We produced maps of ecological vulnerability to climate change as an example output for use in spatially-oriented adaptation planning. Our initial assessment indicated that the Strait of Georgia in particular followed by Queen Charlotte Strait, Juan de Fuca Strait, Vancouver Island Shelf, and Johnstone Strait have relatively high vulnerabilities to climate change, in part due to concentrations of local stressors there. On a coast wide basis the habitats that were indicated as most vulnerable are shallow rocky reefs, seagrass habitats, kelp habitats, and deep rocky reefs. This approach for mapping vulnerability to climate change could be improved with finer scale climate data, additional climate variables, and stressor-habitat sensitivity estimates derived specifically for this system. We provide a stepwise manual for policy-makers, managers, or other practitioners to map ecological vulnerability to climate change in other marine settings. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We identify four issues in the decision framework for species conservation management under climate change proposed by Shoo et al. (2013) Clim Chan 119:239-246 and suggest ways to address them. First, binary-decision flow charts require Yes/No answers, which are not appropriate in most conservation decisions. A quantitative framework is preferable and action-guidance should be obtained even when the realistic answer to some questions remains "we simply do not know". Second, the proposed flow chart imposes an a priori order of precedence and does not explicitly allow simultaneous actions. A workable framework should enable optimal allocation between multiple kinds of conservation efforts and permit complementary actions. Third, the probability of success, co-benefit to non-target species, and cost are unlikely to have a simple, consistent relationship across taxa. These variables need to be assessed case-by-case for each conservation measure and species. Finally, the decision framework disregards the legal, social, and ethical aspects pertaining to decision-making.Climate change will further exacerbate wetland deterioration, especially in the Mediterranean region. On the one side, it will accelerate the decline in the populations and species of plants and animals, this resulting in an impoverishment of biological abundance. On the other one, it will also promote biotic homogenization, resulting in a loss of species' diversity. In this context, different climate change adaptation policies can be designed: those oriented to recovering species' abundance and those aimed at restoring species' diversity. Based on the awareness that knowledge about visitors' preferences is crucial to better inform policy makers and secure wetlands' public use and conservation, this paper assesses the recreational benefits of different adaptation options through a choice experiment study carried out in S'Albufera wetland (Mallorca). Results show that visitors display positive preferences for an increase in both species' abundance and diversity, although they assign a higher value to the latter, thus suggesting a higher social acceptability of policies pursuing wetlands' differentiation. This finding acquires special relevance not only for adaptation management in wetlands but also for tourism planning, as most visitors to S'Albufera are tourists. Thus, given the growing competition to attract visitors and the increasing demand for high environmental quality and unique experiences, promoting wetlands' differentiation could be a good strategy to gain competitive advantage over other wetland areas and tourism destinations.We explored the seasonal potential fishing grounds of neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii) in the western and central North Pacific using maximum entropy (MaxEnt) models fitted with squid fishery data as response and environmental factors from remotely sensed [sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface height (SSH), eddy kinetic energy (EKE), wind stress curl (WSC) and numerical model-derived sea surface salinity (SSS)] covariates. The potential squid fishing grounds from January-February (winter) and June-July (summer) 2001-2004 were simulated separately and covered the near-coast (winter) and offshore (summer) forage areas off the Kuroshio-Oyashio transition and subarctic frontal zones. The oceanographic conditions differed between regions and were regulated by the inherent seasonal variability and prevailing basin dynamics. The seasonal and spatial extents of potential squid fishing grounds were largely explained by SST (7-17 degrees C in the winter and 11-18 degrees C in the summer) and SSS (33.8-34.8 in the winter and 33.7-34.3 in the summer). These ocean properties are water mass tracers and define the boundaries of the North Pacific hydrographic provinces. Mesoscale variability in the upper ocean inferred from SSH and EKE were also influential to squid potential fishing grounds and are presumably linked to the augmented primary productivity from nutrient enhancement and entrainment of passive plankton. WSC, however, has the least model contribution to squid potential fishing habitat relative to the other environmental factors examined. Findings of this work underpin the importance of SST and SSS as robust predictors of the seasonal squid potential fishing grounds in the western and central North Pacific and highlight MaxEnt's potential for operational fishery application.Climate adaptation policies increasingly incorporate sustainability principles into their design and implementation. Since successful adaptation by means of adaptive capacity is recognized as being dependent upon progress toward sustainable development, policy design is increasingly characterized by the inclusion of state and non-state actors (horizontal actor integration), cross-sectoral collaboration, and inter-generational planning perspectives. Comparing four case studies in Swiss mountain regions, three located in the Upper Rhone region and one case from western Switzerland, we investigate how sustainability is put into practice. We argue that collaboration networks and sustainability perceptions matter when assessing the implementation of sustainability in local climate change adaptation. In other words, we suggest that adaptation is successful where sustainability perceptions translate into cross-sectoral integration and collaboration on the ground. Data about perceptions and network relations are assessed through surveys and treated via cluster and social network analysis.Biochar application to agricultural soils has proved to substantially modify the plant-soil-water relationship and lead mostly to a quantitative increase in agricultural production through physical, chemical and biological mechanisms. Nevertheless, the impact of biochar on qualitative traits of agricultural production needs to be further assessed. The effect of biochar application on vine yield and grape quality parameters is here investigated in a non-irrigated vineyard in Tuscany (central Italy). Results from four harvest-years showed a higher productivity, up to 66%, of treated plots with respect to their controls, while no significant differences were observed in grape quality parameters. The observed increase in productivity was inversely correlated with rainfall in the vegetative period, confirming the key role of biochar in regulating plant water availability. These findings support the feasibility of a biochar-based strategy as an effective adaptation measure to reduce the impact of water stress periods with no negative effects on grape quality. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With advances in the ability to model complex geothermal conditions, the aspect of soil structure interaction as it relates to long-term changes in the geothermal regime can be considered. Traditional geothermal modeling relied on the so-called n-factor approach where the ground surface temperature was represented as the air temperature multiplied by some factor to account for ground surface effects. The application of surface energy balance formulations where the effects of the building including long wave radiation can be incorporated, allows for a more accurate representation of the geothermal regime under the structure. In considering the impact of climate warming on the performance of raised buildings in permafrost terrain, the use of a surface energy balance in the geothermal model is considered to be a more rigorous and technically preferable approach to addressing this problem. This paper addresses the use of a surface energy balance formulation in the geothermal analysis of raised buildings construction in permafrost terrain and its impact on the long-term geothermal regime. Specifically, the impact of building construction on the underlying geothermal regime have direct implication to the ongoing discussion regarding the need for climate change adaptation to address potential foundation capacity degradation in light of climate warming. Both existing field data and geothermal modeling results presented in this paper demonstrate that ground temperatures under a raised building cool over time and become colder than the ground remote from the building. When long-term climate warming is considered, the ground temperatures at depth do warm, but after 20years of climate warming the ground temperatures under the building are still not warmer than the initial ground temperatures remote from the building.Many have speculated that increased attention to climate change adaptation will reduce support for mitigation. The Risk Compensation Hypothesis suggests that remedies to reduce the impacts of risky behaviors can unintentionally increase those behaviors. The Risk Salience Hypothesis suggests that information about adaptation may increase the salience of impacts, and therefore increase mitigation support. Experiment 1 presented participants with a news article about an irrigation technology described as a way to improve efficiency (Pure Control), reduce emissions (Mitigation Control), or reduce drought vulnerability (Adaptation). Political moderates in the adaptation condition rated climate change as a higher political priority and were more supportive of a policy to subsidize the technology than those in both controls. Results were not replicated in Experiment 2. These results partially support the Risk Salience Hypothesis. There was no evidence to justify the concern that discussing adaptation will reduce support for mitigation or concern about climate change. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As significant impacts of climate change are increasingly considered unavoidable, adaptation has become a policy priority. It is generally agreed that science is important for the adaptation process but specific guidance on how and to what degree science should contribute and be embedded in this process is still limited which is at odds with the high demand for science contributions to climate adaptation by international organizations, national governments and others. Here we present and analyze experiences from the tropical Andes based on a recent science-policy process on the national and supra-national government level. During this process a framework for the science contribution in climate adaptation has been developed; it consists of three stages, including (1) the framing and problem definition, (2) the scientific assessment of climate, impacts, vulnerabilitis and risks, and (3) the evaluation of adaptation options and their implementation. A large amount of methods has been analyzed for stage (2), and a number of major climate adaptation projects in the region assessed for (3). Our study underlines the importance of joint problem framing among various scientific and non-scientific actors, definition of socio-environmental systems, time frames, and a more intense interaction of social and physical climate and impact sciences. Scientifically, the scarcity of environmental, social and economic data in regions like the Andes continue to represent a limitation to adaptation, and further investments into coordinated socio-environmental monitoring, data availability and sharing are essential. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.We consider the effects of detailed urban roughness parameters on a sea-breeze simulation. An urban roughness database, constructed using a new aerodynamic parametrization derived from large-eddy simulations, was incorporated as a surface boundary condition in the advanced Weather Research and Forecasting model. The zero-plane displacement and aerodynamic roughness length at several densely built-up urban grids were three times larger than conventional values due to the consideration of building-height variability. A comparison between simulations from the modified model and its default version, which uses uniform roughness parameters within a conventional method, was conducted for a 2-month period during summer. Results showed a significant improvement in the simulation of surface wind speed but not with temperature. From the 2-month study period, a day with an evident sea-breeze penetration was selected and simulated at higher temporal resolution. Sea-breeze penetration weakened and was more delayed over urbanized areas. The slow sea-breeze penetration also lessened heat advection downwind allowing stronger turbulent mixing and a deeper boundary layer above urban areas. Horizontal wind-speed reduction due to the increased urban surface drag reached heights of several hundreds of metres due to the strong convection.Coastal environment systems are always exposed to natural phenomena such as erosion and submersion, and climate change is likely to increase these phenomena and their related vulnerability. The decision whether or not to protect the coast from an extreme weather event is not only based on technical data, but must also take into account its social acceptability. The involvement of stakeholders thus appears as a risk governance option. By using a scenario (both physical and socio-economic) and workshop methodology, we compare the deliberations and recommendations made by stakeholders facing a storm scenario in two different locations on the French Atlantic coast in the future (2030): Truc Vert and La Tresson-Noirmoutier. Group deliberations were content-analyzed in order to reveal the main directions taken by the debate. A conservative 'wait and see' option was favored in the less occupied region (Truc Vert), and a more protective option was preferred in the polderised and more intensively inhabited region of La Tresson-Noirmoutier. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changes in hydrometeorological characteristics and risks have been observed and are projected to increase under climate change. These considerations are scientifically well studied and led to the development of a complex policy framework for adaptation and mitigation for hydrometeorological risks. Awareness for policy actions is growing worldwide but no legal framework is in place to tackle climate change impacts on water at a global scale. With the example of international frameworks and the legislation on EU-level, this article elaborates that hydrometeorological risks are not considered in the framework of one single policy. However, various policy instruments are directly or indirectly considering these risks at different operational levels. It is discussed that a tailor-made framework for hydrometeorological risks would improve coordination at international or national level. A major drawback for a single operational framework is that hydrometeorological risks are scientifically tackled in two large communities: the disaster risk reduction community and the climate change adaptation community, both of which are bound to different research and operational funding budgets. In future, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation will need been seen as a complementary set of actions that requires collaboration.Adaptation of forest management to climate change requires an understanding of the effects of climate on forests, industries and communities; prediction of how these effects might change over time; and incorporation of this knowledge into management decisions. This requires multiple forms of knowledge and new approaches to forest management decisions. Partnerships that integrate researchers from multiple disciplines with forest managers and local actors can build a shared understanding of future challenges and facilitate improved decision making in the face of climate change. Climate change presents significant potential risks to forests and challenges for forest managers. Adaptation to climate change involves monitoring and anticipating change and undertaking actions to avoid the negative consequences and to take advantage of potential benefits of those changes. This paper aimed to review recent research on climate change impacts and management options for adaptation to climate change and to identify key themes for researchers and for forest managers. The study is based on a review of literature on climate change impacts on forests and adaptation options for forest management identified in the Web of Science database, focusing on papers and reports published between 1945 and 2013. One thousand one hundred seventy-two papers were identified in the search, with the vast majority of papers published from 1986 to 2013. Seventy-six percent of papers involved assessment of climate change impacts or the sensitivity or vulnerability of forests to climate change and 11 % (130) considered adaptation. Important themes from the analysis included (i) predicting species and ecosystem responses to future climate, (ii) adaptation actions in forest management, (iii) new approaches and tools for decision making under uncertainty and stronger partnerships between researchers and practitioners and (iv) policy arrangements for adaptation in forest management. Research to support adaptation to climate change is still heavily focused on assessing impacts and vulnerability. However, more refined impact assessments are not necessarily leading to better management decisions. Multi-disciplinary research approaches are emerging that integrate traditional forest ecosystem sciences with social, economic and behavioural sciences to improve decision making. Implementing adaptation options is best achieved by building a shared understanding of future challenges among different institutions, agencies, forest owners and stakeholders. Research-policy-practice partnerships that recognise local management needs and indigenous knowledge and integrate these with climate and ecosystem science can facilitate improved decision making.During the last ten years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a prominent new paradigm in environmental politics in developing countries in general and in Africa in particular. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in Rwanda presented in this paper indicates. The paper analyses why forced resettlement of farmers is considered an innovative action among the climate change adaptation efforts and argues that the concept of adaptation to climate change is a travelling idea that is constantly translated and used politically to frame environmental and developmental interventions in concrete places that heavily impact the everyday lives of rural dwellers. Drawing on actor-network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by providing a critical assessment of the linkages between global climate change governance and concrete local adaptation measures, revealing that adaptation to climate change does not always have positive effects on people's livelihoods.A changing climate may increase the frequency or intensity of natural hazards, resulting in increased infrastructure damage. The paper will describe how risk-based approaches are well suited to optimising climate adaptation strategies related to the construction, design, operation, and maintenance of built infrastructure. Climate adaptation engineering involves estimating the risks, costs, and benefits of climate adaptation strategies and assessing at what point in time climate adaptation becomes economically viable. Stochastic methods are used to model infrastructure performance, risk reduction, and effectiveness of adaptation strategies, exposure, and costs. These concepts will be illustrated with recent research on risk-based life-cycle assessments of climate adaptation strategies for Australian housing subject to extreme wind events. This will pave the way for more efficient and resilient infrastructure, and help future proof new and existing infrastructure to a changing climate.Emerging literature on climate adaptation suggests the need for effective ways of engaging or activating communities and supporting community roles, coupled with whole-of-system approaches to understanding climate change and adaptation needs. We have developed and evaluated a participatory approach to elicit community and stakeholder understanding of climate change adaptation needs, and connect diverse community members and local office bearers towards potential action. The approach was trialed in a series of connected social-ecological systems along a transect from a rural area to the coast and islands of ecologically sensitive Moreton Bay in Queensland, Australia. We conducted 'climate roundtables' in each of three areas along the transect, then a fourth roundtable reviewed and extended the results to the region as a whole. Influence diagrams produced through the process show how each climate variable forecast to affect this region (heat, storm, flood, sea-level rise, fire, drought) affects the natural environment, infrastructure, economic and social behaviour patterns, and psychosocial responses, and how sets of people, species and ecosystems are affected, and act, differentially. The participatory process proved effective as a way of building local empathy, a local knowledge base and empowering participants to join towards future climate adaptation action. Key principles are highlighted to assist in adapting the process for use elsewhere.Understanding adaptive genetic responses to climate change is a main challenge for preserving biological diversity. Successful predictive models for climate-driven range shifts of species depend on the integration of information on adaptation, including that derived from genomic studies. Long-lived forest trees can experience substantial environmental change across generations, which results in a much more prominent adaptation lag than in annual species. Here, we show that candidate-gene SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) can be used as predictors of maladaptation to climate in maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton), an outcrossing long-lived keystone tree. A set of 18 SNPs potentially associated with climate, 5 of them involving amino acid-changing variants, were retained after performing logistic regression, latent factor mixed models, and Bayesian analyses of SNP-climate correlations. These relationships identified temperature as an important adaptive driver in maritime pine and highlighted that selective forces are operating differentially in geographically discrete gene pools. The frequency of the locally advantageous alleles at these selected loci was strongly correlated with survival in a common garden under extreme (hot and dry) climate conditions, which suggests that candidate-gene SNPs can be used to forecast the likely destiny of natural forest ecosystems under climate change scenarios. Differential levels of forest decline are anticipated for distinct maritime pine gene pools. Geographically defined molecular proxies for climate adaptation will thus critically enhance the predictive power of range-shift models and help establish mitigation measures for long-lived keystone forest trees in the face of impending climate change.Climate change poses a significant risk for communities, and local governments around the world have begun responding by developing climate adaptation policies. Scholarship on local adaptation policy has proliferated in recent years, but insufficient attention has been paid to operationalization of the unit of analysis, and methods employed are typically inadequate to draw inferences about variation across cases. This article seeks to contribute to the conceptual and methodological foundations of a research agenda for comparative analysis of local adaptation policies and policy-making. Synthesizing insights from policy studies literature and existing adaptation research, the article identifies and operationalizes two aspects of public policy policy content and policy process which are salient objects of comparative analysis that typically vary from one community to another. The article also addresses research design, outlining a comparative case study methodology that incorporates various qualitative analytical techniques as the vehicle to examine these policy elements in empirical settings. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a growing interest in the connection between climate change and migration, but literature so far has mostly focused on climate refugees, permanent migrants, and the implications for destination countries. Seasonal workers, one of the most vulnerable groups in the agricultural sector, have received scant attention. Nonetheless, several governments are already planning action to ensure the adaptation of seasonal workers to a changed climate. This article focuses on two recent social and climate change policies adopted by the Turkish government targeting seasonal workers. Based on a discourse analysis of the two policies and fieldwork carried out on a site of intervention, the article argues that such policies, although employed in the name of adaptation, are in fact biopolitical interventions. Their main purpose is to secure the uninterrupted circulation of commodities and workers rather than reduce root causes of vulnerability. As a result the responsibility to adapt is individualized. We contribute to an incipient literature on biopolitics and climate change by showing how the spectre of climate change and the pretext of adaptation serve to expand the state's control of populations rather than reduce core vulnerabilities. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rajasthan, with its climate ranging from arid to semi-arid to sub-humid, and rapidly depleting natural resources, is already experiencing the effects of climate change. The region's climate is projected to become harsher, with increased average temperatures, intensity of rainfall events, and increased variability in space & time of monsoon rains being consistently projected for the region. Without action in the form of adaptation of social, human, economic, and natural resource management systems, these weather changes are predicted to result in decreasing surface and ground water availability, flash floods, degradation of soil resources, decrease in crop yields, greater vulnerability to crop pest outbreaks, and declines in forest and pastureland ecosystem goods and services, thus rendering agricultural and herding communities extremely vulnerable to weather related losses of life, livelihood, and food security. In Rajasthan, government is focussing for sustainable development and climate change adaptation by finding and administering alternative methods to deal with issues of poverty and environmental degradation in context of linkage between livelihood and the immediate environment of the people. The livelihoods of the rural poor are directly dependent on environmental resources like land, water, forests and are vulnerable to weather and climate variability. Climate change affects every aspect of society, environment and economy requiring adjustments in behaviour, livelihoods, infrastructure, laws, policies and institutions in response to experienced based expected climatic events. However, it was found that local coping strategies and traditional knowledge need to be used in synergy with government and local interventions. Solutions must be integrated to address the interrelationships between water, agriculture, forests and pastures, livestock. Finally, there is great potential for existing policies and schemes to be employed synergistically towards building true adaptive capacity for the rural communities. However, adapting to climate change will entail adjustments and implementation at every level from community to national and international.At the local level, where the most adaptation to climate impacts takes place, adaptation decision making and planning are closely tied to how people perceive climate risks. In Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation, ways of perceiving climate risks encompass both understandings about potential hazards wrought by a changing climate as well as culturally informed understandings about appropriate responses to the threats born from those hazards. An analysis of risk perception that combines the Cultural Theory of Risk with an examination of traditional environmental knowledge is used to understand how climate impacts are perceived in Nanumea, Tuvalu. The argument is made that adaptive decisions which reflect community risk priorities and cultural worldviews are more likely to be successful than efforts that may claim community engagement but do not reflect community members' perceptions and worldviews.The evolution in knowledge and application of disaster risk reduction in the 25 years of global cooperation on this issue has been uneven. While advances in knowledge have improved our understanding of the full nature of risk-the combination of hazards meeting vulnerabilitythe application of such knowledge has not been conducive to the development of institutional and technical mechanisms to address the full range of risk elements. Governance of risk (policies, legislation, and organizational arrangements) still focuses largely on preparing to respond to the hazards and planning for recovery. This leaves largely unattended the vulnerability component of risk, which is the only component on which change can be effected. Governance arrangements, risk assessments, early warning systems, and other institutional and technical capacities still concentrate on natural hazards and this is the main change that remains to be substantively addressed.A seminal policy year for development and sustainability occurs in 2015 due to three parallel processes that seek long-term agreements for climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals, and disaster risk reduction. Little reason exists to separate them, since all three examine and aim to deal with many similar processes, including vulnerability and resilience. This article uses vulnerability and resilience to explore the intersections and overlaps amongst climate change, disaster risk reduction, and sustainability. Critiquing concepts such as "return to normal" and "double exposure" demonstrate how separating climate change from wider contexts is counterproductive. Climate change is one contributor to disaster risk and one creeping environmental change amongst many, and not necessarily the most prominent or fundamental contributor. Yet climate change has become politically important, yielding an opportunity to highlight and tackle the deep-rooted vulnerability processes that cause "multiple exposure" to multiple threats. To enhance resilience processes that deal with the challenges, a prudent place for climate change would be as a subset within disaster risk reduction. Climate change adaptation therefore becomes one of many processes within disaster risk reduction. In turn, disaster risk reduction should sit within development and sustainability to avoid isolation from topics wider than disaster risk. Integration of the topics in this way moves beyond expressions of vulnerability and resilience towards a vision of disaster risk reduction's future that ends tribalism and separation in order to work together to achieve common goals for humanity.Despite the reality of climate change, no international agreement or protection framework exists to plan for or address the expected dramatic increase in migration. Current international refugee, environmental, and human rights law does not account for climate change-induced displacement and migration, creating legal gaps in protection. This article explores why these gaps persist and seeks to understand the barriers to a protection framework for climate change migrants. If improved protection is to be achieved, then a typology and assessment of the obstacles such an effort faces is a necessary first step. Accordingly, the analytical focus of this article is on the impediments to protection, including whether and how to define a category of 'climate change migrants', a lack of political will to create new protection obligations or to expand existing legal regimes, and the national security focus that dominates current climate change and migration discourse. Institutional capacity issues, the difficulty of linking climate change directly to migration, the causal complexity of climate change, and the limitations of civil society in its climate change advocacy further hinder protection efforts. To advance protection for those displaced or induced to migrate by the effects of climate change, however, the emphasis cannot remain exclusively on obstacles. Climate change presents an opportunity for local decision makers and the international community to plan for impacts, fulfil human rights obligations, and take action on behalf of those who are and will continue to be harmed by climate change. This article concludes by proposing a shift in primary focus from the national security of developed countries to the particular needs of migrant populations, which allows migration to be included in climate change adaptation strategies.Mangroves are widely distributed along the coastline of Vietnam, where they provide protection against sea waves caused by extreme weather. Impacts of climate change, together with population growth and economic development, are expected to exert pressure on these vulnerable systems. In this study the numerical wave-propagation model SWAN-VEG (Simulating Waves Nearshore-Vegetation) was used to simulate the possible impacts of climate change on the wave-dissipation capacity of different types of mangrove vegetation. Vegetation characteristics were assessed in planted plots (Rhizophora apiculata and a mix of R. mucronata, Sonneratia caseolaris, Avicennia alba, and Nypa fructicans) and in natural regenerated areas (A. alba and S. caseolaris) in Thanh Phu Natural Reserve, Mekong Delta, Vietnam; these assessments were used as model input. Different sea levels and mangrove vegetation characteristics were used to simulate the potential impacts of climate change. Planted plots with a cover of 70% reduced the height of incoming waves by 60%, compared with 40% for natural regenerated forest. Reducing the vegetation cover in planted plots from 70% to 50%, 35%, and 0% resulted in wave-height reductions of 51%, 42%, and -4%, respectively. A sea level rise (SLR) up to 0.96 m did not change the wave-dissipation potential of R. apiculata planted in the plots. However, an assumed decline in the width of vegetation from 1.5 km to 0.5 km, e. g. as a consequence of coastal erosion, reduced the height of incoming waves 21% (no SLR) and 29% (0.96 m SLR), as compared to 60% and 59%, respectively, without erosion.The Paris region (Ile-de-France) was amongst the hardest hit by the August 2003 heat wave, due in part to subsequent amplification of its urban heat island. This has created high heat-wave awareness in climate change adaptation studies for the city of Paris. Over the summer of 2013, pavement watering was studied experimentally in two locations as a climate change adaptation method. Pavement watering was found to lower pavement surface temperatures by several degrees for several hours after watering, while also strongly reducing its cooling rate a few hours before and after sunset. Heat flux and storage at a depth of 5 cm in the pavement were also found to have been significantly reduced, especially during direct sunlight exposure, but also when the pavement was in the shade. Uninterrupted watering appears necessary during direct sunlight exposure of the pavement to maximize efficiency.The adaptation science enterprise has expanded rapidly in recent years, presumably in response to growth in demand for knowledge that can facilitate adaptation policy and practice. However, evidence suggests such investments in adaptation science have not necessarily translated into adaptation implementation. One potential constraint on adaptation may be the underlying heuristics that are used as the foundation for both adaptation research and practice. Here, we explore the adaptation academic literature with the objective of identifying adaptation heuristics, assessing the extent to which they have become entrenched within the adaptation discourse, and discussing potential weaknesses in their framing that could undermine adaptation efforts. This investigation is supported by a multi-method analysis that includes both a quantitative content analysis of the adaptation literature that evidences the use of adaptation heuristics and a qualitative analysis of the implications of such heuristics for enhancing or hindering the implementation of adaptation. Results demonstrate that a number of heuristic devices are commonly used in both the peer-reviewed adaptation literature as well as within grey literature designed to inform adaptation practitioners. Furthermore, the apparent lack of critical reflection upon the robustness of these heuristics for diverse contexts may contribute to potential cognitive bias with respect to the framing of adaptation by both researchers and practitioners. We discuss this phenomenon by drawing upon heuristic-analytic theory, which has explanatory utility in understanding both the origins of such heuristics as well as the measures that can be pursued toward the co-generation of more robust approaches to adaptation problem-solving.Agriculture is the largest water user in the West, and it will play a central role in balancing water supplies with competing water demands in light of climate change. Water resources that are already over allocated face competing demands from growing urban populations, unresolved tribal water claims, and for maintenance of riparian habitats. While many believe we can meet these demands by reallocating water from agriculture, climate change complicates this calculus. Warmer temperatures and longer droughts will reduce regional water supplies and increase agricultural water demands, making transfers more costly. Hydrological-economic modeling studies suggest agricultural water use will decline, leaving urban use relatively unchanged. Although this agriculture-to-urban reallocation of water is often treated primarily as an engineering problem, many legal and institutional barriers exist to large-scale water transfers. Technological fixes to conserve and transfer agricultural water to other uses will likely fail to facilitate climate adaptation unless changes in water management institutions, policies, and economic incentives accompany those technological fixes.The paradigm of integrated water resources management requires coupled analysis of hydrology and water resources in a river basin. Population growth and uncertainties due to climate change make historic data not a reliable source of information for future planning of water resources, hence necessitating climate and landuse change impact studies. This work presents an integrated modeling approach by linking Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and MODSIM. While SWAT produces hydrologic and water resources information, MODSIM provides a decision support system for water allocation. We used the coupled SWAT-MODSIM to analyze the effects of climate and cropping pattern changes on agricultural and hydroenergy production in the Karkheh River Basin, a semiarid region in south-west of Iran. Cropping patterns were considered by limiting the cereal production to 50 % (S1, near to historic), 17 % (S2), and 83 % (S3) of total agricultural areas. The future climate was provided by the Canadian Global Coupled Model (CGCM 3.1 version T63) for A1B, A2, and B1 scenarios. The results showed that based on future climate changes and landuse scenarios, wheat production had a large variation in five economically important agricultural regions ranging from 33,000 ton year(-1) (S2-A1B) to 74,000 ton year(-1) (S3-A2). Similarly, energy production, while increasing from 614 to 1,100 GWH in A2, decreased from 614 to 464 GWH in B1 climate scenario. Our analyses indicate that cropping pattern change can be used as an effective tool to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change.Public participation in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation program is acknowledged by researchers and practitioners, yet its actualization largely remains a dream. In principle, there have been several claims in favor of adopting community participation, albeit these remain anecdotal without empirical substance. The few apparent success stories are seldom scaled up or replicated, compelling most enthusiastic practitioners and planners become skeptical about the use of public participation concept in disaster management strategies. This calls for a comprehensive and systematic evaluation of participatory approaches to guide practitioners in their quest for meaningful local community participation in disaster risk management. Based on our case study in disaster prone villages in Northern Ghana, our research contributes to these emerging literature on risks by examining the process and outcome-based factors that ensure effective public participation. The inimitability of our study does not only lie in its pioneering attempt to systematically identify effective public participation factors for climate change, but unlike other participatory approaches where success is defined by the researchers and policy makers, ours relies on local community themselves to define the desired processes for and outcomes of effective public participation.Economically optimal groundwater extraction allocates water over space and time to its highest and best social use. But optimal management of water resources also requires optimal investment in watershed capital, even as the climate is changing. We augment a standard coastal groundwater management model with stock-dependent extraction costs to include recharge-enhancing natural and produced capital whose depreciation can be offset by investment in each period. In some parts of the world, including Hawaii, results from climate models suggest that mean annual rainfall will decrease but that the frequency of storms may increase. In the case of coastal aquifers, the implication is that runoff to the ocean will increase and groundwater recharge will decrease. Accordingly, the groundwater-extraction/watershed-investment problem is further extended to allow natural recharge to decline in response to climate change. The tendency of falling recharge is partially offset by increasing investment in watershed capital. If precipitation decreases sufficiently, however, it may be that optimal conservation eventually declines as the cost of increasing groundwater recharge correspondingly increases. Thus adaptation to climate change may involve an initial stage of increased conservation investment followed by controlled depreciation of natural capital. That is, instruments of adaptation may become increasingly ineffective as climate change progresses.Small Island Developing States (SIDS) classified as Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are particularly vulnerable to the projected impacts of climate change. Given their particular vulnerabilities, climate adaptation investments are being made through both national and international efforts to build the capacity of various sectors and communities to reduce climate risks and associated disasters. Despite these efforts, reducing climate risks is not free of various challenges and barriers. This paper aims to synthesise a set of critical socio-economic barriers present at various spatial scales that are specific to Least Developed Country SIDS. It also aims to identify the processes that give rise to these barriers. Drawing on theories from natural hazards, a systematic literature review method was adopted to identify and organise the set of barriers by focussing on both academic papers and grey literature. The data revealed a notable lack of studies on adaptation within African and Caribbean LDC-SIDS. In general, there was a paucity of academic as well as grey literature being produced by authors from LDC-SIDS to challenge existing discourses related to adaptation barriers. The most common barriers identified included those related to governance, technical, cognitive and cultural. Three key findings can be drawn from this study in relation to formal adaptation initiatives. Firstly, the lack of focus on the adaptive capacity needs of Local Government or Island Councils and communities was a key barrier to ensure success of adaptation interventions. Secondly, international adaptation funding modalities did little to address root causes of vulnerability or support system transformations. These funds were geared at supporting sectoral level adaptation initiatives for vulnerable natural resource sectors such as water, biodiversity and coastal zones. Thirdly, there is a need to recognise the significance of cultural knowledge and practices in shaping adaptive choices of communities in SIDS. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Determining the level of confidence in regional climate model projections could be very useful for designing climate change adaptation, particularly for vulnerable regions. The majority of previous research to evaluate models has been based on the mean state, but for confidence in projections the plausibility of the mechanisms for change is just as, if not more, important. In this study we demonstrate a methodology for process-based assessment of projections, whereby circulation changes accompanying future responses are examined and then compared to atmospheric dynamics during historical years in models and reanalyses. We apply this methodology to an ensemble of five global and regional model experiments and focus on West Africa, where these models project a strong drying trend. The analysis reveals that this drying is associated with anomalous subsidence in the upper atmosphere, and large warming of the Saharan heat low region, with potential feedback effects via the African easterly jet and West African monsoon. This mode occurs during dry years in the historical period, and dominates in the future experiments. However, the same mode is not found in dry years in reanalysis data, which casts doubt on the reasons for strong drying in these models. The regional models show a very similar response to their driving global models, and are therefore no more trustworthy in this case. This result underlines the importance of assessing model credibility on a case-by-case basis and implies that process-based methodologies should be applied to other model projections before their outputs are used to inform decision making.The cause for low maize yields in rain-fed production systems is usually associated with water stress due to perceived suboptimal seasonal precipitation. A modeling study using Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project modeling framework was conducted to determine the magnitude of rain-fed potential yield and yield gap of maize in the Wami River sub-basin, Tanzania. Primary and secondary data on soils, weather, management, and crop yields and cultivars were used. Data matrix search technique was used to calibrate CERES-Maize Crop System model against reported yield for each of 168 farms involved in this study. Then the individual farms' simulated yields, actual reported yields, and the resultant yield gaps were aggregated into ward-level averages. Model calibration was robust as there was a very close agreement between reported and simulated yield (R-2 = 0.9). Actual yields reported from farm survey ranged from 50 kg ha(-1) to 3600 kg ha(-1) with an average of 860 kg ha(-1). Simulated rain-fed potential yield was between 2073 kg ha(-1) and 5443 kg ha(-1) and a mean of 4033 kg ha(-1). It is apparent therefore that there exists a wide maize yield gap of 79% with current management under rain-fed conditions. This suggests that there is a large scope of improving maize yields under rain-fed conditions. Narrowing the yield gaps would require an intensive soil fertility improvement in the study area.Structural insulated panels (SIPs) are high-performance building materials used as building envelope for residential, industrial and light commercial construction. When the building envelope is impacted by windborne debris in cyclonic area, the debris might perforate the panel resulting in dominant openings. Dominant openings in the building envelope might cause differential internal pressurization and result in the damage to the whole building structure. In the present study, the dynamic response of SIPs With Extended Polystyrene (i.e., EPS) foam core sandwiched by two rigid skins of Oriented Strand Board (i.e., OSB) or fiber cement board were experimentally investigated by using a pneumatic cannon system for windbome debris impact. The failure and damage modes under various projectile impact scenarios were observed and compared. The performances of the SIPs were examined quantitatively in terms of the projectile penetration length, and deformation and strain time histories of the back skin. The effects of various specimen configurations, impact locations, projectile impact velocities and boundary conditions on their performance were studied. The penetration resistance capacity of the SIPs against windborne debris impact was analyzed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The goal of this study was to assess components of vulnerability of tree species and biome types to projected future climate within the Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GNLCC) in the US Northern Rockies and the ecosystems surrounding Glacier and Yellowstone/Grand Teton National Parks. We drew on the results of five published studies and analyzed current and projected. future climate suitability for 11 tree species and 8 biome types under two IPCC emissions scenarios. We assessed components of vulnerability based on four metrics of current and projected future climate suitability. Results for biome types indicated largely a shift from climates suitable for alpine and subalpine conifer to climates suitable for desert scrub and grassland types. Results from the four studies of tree species indicated substantial loss of area of climate suitability for the four subalpine species by 2100. This was especially true for Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis). Suitable climate for this species dropped from just over 20% of the study area in the reference period to 0.5-7.0% by 2070-2100 under the A2 scenario. The studies agreed in projecting expansion of climate suitability for some montane tree species but disagreed on expansion of climate suitability of west-side mesic tree species to eastside locations such as Yellowstone National park. Importantly, the rankings of tree species vulnerability were similar among studies, scenarios, and geographic areas and indicated highest vulnerability for Whitebark pine and Mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana). The results should help federal managers in the GNLCC prioritize tree species for climate adaptation strategies. Moreover, our methods for using published data as a basis for climate vulnerability assessment can be applied within other LCCs across the US and other management units internationally. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Flowering (spikelet anthesis) is one of the most important phenotypic characteristics of paddy rice, and researchers expend efforts to observe flowering timing. Observing flowering is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, because it is still visually performed by humans. An image-based method that automatically detects the flowering of paddy rice is highly desirable. However, varying illumination, diversity of appearance of the flowering parts of the panicles, shape deformation, partial occlusion, and complex background make the development of such a method challenging. Results: We developed a method for detecting flowering panicles of rice in RGB images using scale-invariant feature transform descriptors, bag of visual words, and a machine learning method, support vector machine. Applying the method to time-series images, we estimated the number of flowering panicles and the diurnal peak of flowering on each day. The method accurately detected the flowering parts of panicles during the flowering period and quantified the daily and diurnal flowering pattern. Conclusions: A powerful method for automatically detecting flowering panicles of paddy rice in time-series RGB images taken under natural field conditions is described. The method can automatically count flowering panicles. In application to time-series images, the proposed method can well quantify the daily amount and the diurnal changes of flowering during the flowering period and identify daily peaks of flowering.Drought in fruit-growing. Survey among farmers in Northeast and Northwest Switzerland According to current climate scenarios, drought could become a major challenge for agriculture in Switzerland. To better understand the practitioner's perspective, we surveyed fruit-growers in Northeast and Northwest Switzerland to investigate the previous impact of drought and the countermeasures taken, as well as the information requirements and the willingness to act on the part of farmers in case of more frequent drought events in the future. Our results show that in the last ten years, drought-induced damage has been limited for most farmers. Nevertheless, most respondents believe that in the future they will be affected more often and more intensely by drought. Thus, many are willing to implement countermeasures in the future. A detailed analysis shows that farmers who generate most of their income through fruit-growing are affected by drought differently than farmers for whom fruit-growing is of less commercial relevance. These two groups also differ in their willingness to realize countermeasures and in their information needs. We conclude that adaptation, professional training, and consultation are necessary and must adequately consider these differences.There is a concerning fallacy at the heart of the debate on climate change adaptation-that adaptation will involve re-adjustments primarily on the periphery of functioning socio-ecological systems. Yet, dominant modern systems are already in crisis. Case study examples from research across global, continental and regional scales are used to argue that gaps between sustainability goals and outcomes are already significant. Analyses of global food security and lost diversity; human migration in Asia; and natural resource management systems in core and remote regions of Australia indicate that climate change forms only part of a failing relationship between people and the environment. There is a need to transform socio-ecosystems so that they become resilient in the context of broader learning on environmental uncertainty, variability, change and risk. Such transformations will occur both in situ, to ensure that local environments are not further degraded or people entrenched in failing systems, and ex situ, as people, systems and infrastructure become increasingly mobile to deal with changing circumstances.More than half the global population are already urban, and the UN and other organisations expect this share to rise in future. However, some researchers argue that the future of cities is far from assured. Cities are not only responsible for 70% or more of the world's CO2 emissions, but because of their dense concentration of physical assets and populations, are also more vulnerable than other areas to climate change. This paper attempts to resolve this controversy by first looking at how cities would fare in a world with average global surface temperatures 4 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. It then looks at possible responses, either by mitigation or adaptation, to the threat such increases would entail. Regardless of the mix of adaptation and mitigation cities adopt in response to climate change, the paper argues that peak urbanism will occur over the next few decades. This fall in the urban share of global population will be driven by the rise in biophysical hazards in cities if the response is mainly adaptation, and by the declining attraction of cities (and possibly the rising attraction of rural areas) if serious mitigation is implemented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this article, the role of water markets in helping farmers manage the risk of water shortage is studied. Using farm survey data from Australia's southern Murray-Darling Basin, one of the most active water markets in the world, we tested the relationship between farmers' exposure to risk and their decisions to purchase and sell water allocations (temporary water) on the market. Farmers experiencing higher variability in profit and facing more downside risk purchased greater volumes of water allocations in general. Purchasing water allocations on the market is found to be a risk-reducing strategy, in particular for farmers in the horticultural sector. There is only very weak evidence to support the notion that selling water allocations is associated with reduced risk exposure.At present 4 of 10 dedicated rainfall observing satellite systems have exceeded their design life, some by more than a decade. Here, we show operational implications for flood management of a 'collapse' of space-based rainfall observing infrastructure as well as the high-value opportunities for a globally coordinated portfolio of satellite missions and data services. Results show that the current portfolio of rainfall missions fails to meet operational data needs for flood management, even when assuming a perfectly coordinated data product from all current rainfall-focused missions (i.e., the full portfolio). In the full portfolio, satellite-based rainfall data deficits vary across the globe and may preclude climate adaptation in locations vulnerable to increasing flood risks. Moreover, removing satellites that are currently beyond their design life (i.e., the reduced portfolio) dramatically increases data deficits globally and could cause entire high intensity flood events to be unobserved. Recovery from the reduced portfolio is possible with internationally coordinated replenishment of as few as 2 of the 4 satellite systems beyond their design life, yielding rainfall data coverages that outperform the current full portfolio (i.e., an optimized portfolio of eight satellites can outperform ten satellites). This work demonstrates the potential for internationally coordinated satellite replenishment and data services to substantially enhance the cost-effectiveness, sustainability and operational value of space-based rainfall observations in managing evolving flood risks.Climate change may be a factor leading to increased risks of food- and waterborne illnesses from consumption of existing and emerging biological hazards. It is beneficial to develop integrated approaches to evaluate, and provide scientific assessments of, potential climate change adaptation measures to inform risk management related to climate and weather events. To this end, a risk modeling framework was created to facilitate estimations of the impact of weather and climate change on public health risks from biological hazards in food and water and to compare potential adaptation and risk mitigation strategies. The framework integrates knowledge synthesis methods, data storage and maintenance, and stochastic modeling. Risk assessment models were developed for food and water safety case studies for demonstrative purposes. Scenario analyses indicated that implementing intervention measures to adapt to changing climate impacts might mitigate future public health risks from pathogens to varying degrees. The framework brings a generic approach to allow for comparison of relative public health risks and potential adaptation strategies across hazards, exposure pathways, and regions to assist with preventive efforts and decision-making. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public flood protection cannot eliminate totally the risk of flooding. Hence, private mitigation measures which proactively protect homes from being flooded or reduce flood damage are an essential part of modern flood risk management. This study analyses private flood mitigation measures among German households. The final data set covers more than 4200 households from all parts of the country, including flood plains as well as areas which are typically not at a high risk of riverine flooding. The results suggest that the propensity to mitigate flood damage increases i.a. with past damage experience and damage expectations for the future. The latter effect can be interpreted as a 'climate adaptation signal' in the flood mitigation behaviour. All other factors remaining equal, a strong belief in a climate-change-induced increase of personal flood damage in the next decades correlates with an increase of the probability of flood mitigation by more than 10 percentage points. Moreover, empirical evidence for moral hazard in the flood mitigation behaviour cannot be observed. Households expecting insurance coverage do not reduce their mitigation efforts. Likewise, the expectation of government relief payments hinders mitigation only for some groups of households. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article engages with the recent geographical literature on policy mobilities in order to examine how the World Bank mobilizes climate change adaptation 'best practices'. Drawing from the relational case study of the Kiribati Adaptation Project and the Community Resilience to Climate Change and Disaster Risk in Solomon Islands Project, the article explores the complex and intensive work required for mobilizing lessons and practices. The analytical work required in building the Kiribati Adaptation Project as a World Bank success story and policy model worthy of replication in new sites is demonstrated. However, heeding calls within the policy mobilities literature to avoid fetishizing mobility and attending to the contradictions between global flows and local institutional specificity, the article finds limited evidence of replication in noted sites of emulation. Instead, there is compulsive citation, publication, and circulation of experiences and successes within the World Bank, which operates to build internal and external legitimacy.This paper interrogates the framings and priorities of adaptation in Tanzania's climate policy and examines the implications for the role of local institutions and differentiated rural populations in climate change adaptation. Although Tanzania lacks a "stand alone" climate policy, Tanzania's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) and National Climate Change Strategy (NCCS) provide the most comprehensive statements of the central government's framing of adaptation and its priorities with regard to adaptation. In assessing discursive framings of adaptation, we find that the dominant policy discourse constructs an anti-politics of adaptation through its framing of climate change as an urgent and generalized threat to development while failing sufficiently to address the complex governance and social equity dimensions of climate change adaptation. The technocratic prescriptions of Tanzania's NAPA and NCSS converge with similar prescriptions found in Tanzania's national development policies, such as the major agricultural development initiative Kilimo Kwanza. Adaptation challenges identified by communities in Mwanga District demonstrate complex local institutional and resource tenure questions that are not addressed in climate policy but which require policy attention if social equity in climate change adaptation is to be achieved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Historically, innovation in industrialised agricultural landscapes has been slow. Likewise, future climate change adaptation (CCA) will also be slow if complex interactions highlighted in the innovation and adoption literature are ignored. The aim of this review is to collate and conceptualise this multidisciplinary literature into a nested multi-scale spatial hierarchy to understand the complexity of the CCA decision making process, highlighting the influential factors across the nested scales. Seven nested hierarchical scales were identified under an overarching level of governance. The outer boundary is the Hazardscape a spatially defined climatic region where potential impacts of climate change (CC) and suitable CCA strategies are defined. Differing socio-economic and demographic profiles (Community Typologies) under this scale mean that these strategies need to be tailored to enhance community adoption and bolster their resilience to CC. The strength and type of social interaction within and between Community will also influence CCA. Central to the hierarchy is the variation in Individuals' beliefs and risk perceptions. Greater CC risk perception within the Household can enhance or constrain CCA at the Farm scale. In turn, the Farm scale attributes can influence CCA. Differing Farm and Farmer characteristics provide a further layer of complexity when considering CCA capability. Greater knowledge and evaluation of the circumstances and factors involved in CCA decision making highlighted by the use of the hierarchy will create an evidence base which will allow a more targeted approach to CCA. Adoption can be increased through a targeted range of CCA strategies and tailored plans of communication and dissemination of CC and CCA information across the nested scales. This approach will build much needed momentum for CCA in a rural setting. While the interaction between scales is discussed, future research is required to understand the cross-scale interactions, feedback loops and temporal dynamics within the hierarchy. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Ensuring active participation of stakeholders in scientific projects faces many challenges. These range from adequately selecting stakeholders, overcoming stakeholder fatigue, and dealing with the limited time available for stakeholder engagement, to interacting with, and integrating, the research itself. At the same time, stakeholder participation is seen as a key component in developing research results that are conclusive to political and societal decision-making, and conducive to practical application. This article puts forward the Stakeholder Integrated Research (STIR) approach, designed to address these challenges by proving a structured method for stakeholder engagement in research. An assessment of the stakeholder engagement process within the CLIMSAVE project, including evaluations by participating stakeholders, is used to illustrate the STIR approach, highlighting its value for improving stakeholder involvement within two case studies of a highly complex climate change adaptation project. In comparison to other approaches, STIR directly addresses major stakeholder engagement challenges and simultaneously covers new ground to provide an encompassing and structured approach for integrating stakeholder engagement in research. Further attention needs to be given to involving stakeholder in project set-up and over the course of multiple years, as well as to improving stakeholder-science data translation.Future renewable water resources are likely to be insufficient to meet water demand for human use and minimum environmental flow requirements in many European regions. Hence, fair and equitable water allocation to different water use sectors and environmental needs is important for climate change adaptation in order to reduce negative effects on human well-being and aquatic ecosystems. We applied a system of coupled sectoral metamodels of water availability and water use in the domestic, manufacturing industry, electricity generation, and agricultural sectors to simulate the effects of generic water allocation schemes (WAS) at the European level. The relative performance of WAS in balancing adverse impacts on the water use sectors and aquatic ecosystems was analysed for an ensemble of 16 scenarios for the 2050s, which were built from the combination of four socio-economic scenarios, developed in the CLIMSAVE project, and four climate projections based on IPCC A1. The results indicate that significant physical water shortages may result from climate and socio-economic change in many regions of Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean. In the energy sector, average annual water demand can largely be met even in water allocation schemes that deprioritise the sector. However, prioritisation of agricultural water demand has significant adverse impacts on the domestic and manufacturing industry sectors. Cross-sectoral impacts were found to be lowest if at least one of the domestic and manufacturing sectors is assigned higher priority than agriculture. We conclude that adapting spatial patterns of water-intensive activities to renewable water availability across Europe, such as shifting irrigated agriculture to less water-stressed basins, could be an effective demand-side adaptation measure, and thus a candidate for support through EU policy.By their sheer size, adaptation investments are processes addressing multiple climate impacts at the same time. Nevertheless, cross-sectoral effects of adaptation measures are rarely taken into consideration in adaptation costing and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). We explicitly address joint adaptation processes by focusing on inter- or intra-sectoral adaptation synergies within a cost-effectiveness framework. A software tool - CrossAdapt - has been developed in order to quantify cross-sectoral adaptation impacts based on expert judgement. Our research shows that the calculation of cross-sectoral impacts and their integration into cost-effectiveness analysis can significantly affect the cost-effectiveness ranking of adaptation measures. Future European adaptation strategies can benefit from the analytical possibility of estimating net adaptation costs based on CrossAdapt.Recent research has increasingly focussed on whether long-term policies for adaptation to climate change are robust given uncertainties about future climate change, technological advances and alternative socio-economic development pathways. The aim of this study was to examine whether adaptation responses are 'robust', by looking at whether they reduce vulnerability to climate and socio-economic changes for a selection of ecosystem services across scenarios and two spatial scales: Europe (EU27 plus Norway and Switzerland) and a case study in Scotland. Outputs of the CLIMSAVE Integrated Assessment Platform (IAP) for multiple land-based sectors were used to test whether clusters of adaptation options referred to as policy archetypes reduced vulnerability to climate and socio-economic change for ecosystem service indicators related to biodiversity, flooding, water exploitation, land use diversity, land use intensity and food provision. The results show that the People-based Adaptation archetype is the most robust. This is because it reduces vulnerability by increasing coping capacity (people learn and build networks) and not only by reducing the impacts of climate and socio-economic change. By allowing comparative levels of vulnerability to be explored across sectors and scenarios, the CLIMSAVE approach provides a flexible tool for decision-makers and other stakeholders to increase understanding of which mixes of adaptation measures are robust responses to climate change.Climate change may impact forest management activities with important implications for forest ecosystems. However, most climate change research on forests has focused on climate-driven shifts in species ranges, forest carbon, and hydrology. To examine how climate change may alter timber harvesting and forest operations in north temperate forests, we asked: 1) How have winter conditions changed over the past 60 years? 2) Have changes in winter weather altered timber harvest patterns on public forestlands? 3) What are the implications of changes in winter weather conditions for timber harvest operations in the context of the economic, ecological, and social goals of forest management? Using meteorological information from Climate Data Online and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models we document substantial changes in winter conditions in Wisconsin, including a two- to three-week shortening of frozen ground conditions from 1948 to 2012. Increases in minimum and mean soil temperatures were spatially heterogeneous. Analysis of timber harvest records identified a shift toward greater harvest of jack pine and red pine and less harvest of aspen, black spruce, hemlock, red maple, and white spruce in years with less frozen ground or snow duration. Interviews suggested that frozen ground is a mediating condition that enables low-impact timber harvesting. Climate change may alter frozen ground conditions with complex implications for forest management. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The dynamics and predictability of stratospheric low-frequency variability in the Northern Hemisphere winter are examined using a two-dimensional (2D) phase space spanned by the leading empirical orthogonal functions of the 10-hPa geopotential height field. The 2D phase space represents the variation of the strength of the polar night jet and the amplitude of zonal wavenumber-1 eddy components. A linearized nonstationary fluctuation dissipation relation (NFDR) is developed based on the deterministic drift vector and the stochastic diffusion tensor estimated from a reanalysis dataset. The authors find that the solution of the linearized NFDR with an optimal data sampling time interval for estimating the drift vector and the diffusion tensor provides a good representation in the phase space of the inhomogeneous distribution of the forecast spread of the operational ensemble forecast conducted by the Japan Meteorological Agency. In particular, the linearized NFDR captures the local maximum of the forecast spread during the onset period of the major stratospheric sudden warming events.Investment in woody vegetation to counter land degradation and improve livelihoods is increasing, primarily revitalized by efforts to enhance carbon sequestration and climate change adaptation. Sudano-Sahelian West Africa is in focus for several interventions to increase woody vegetation for improved livelihoods. However, the knowledge on how woody vegetation maintains landscape productivity and contributes to livelihoods is widely scattered across different scientific fields. Here we review different bodies of literature including a total of 30 species of woody vegetation. We use ecosystem services as a lens to integrate knowledge about how woody vegetation affect ecosystem processes and contribute to livelihoods. We find that the majority of the species generate multiple provisioning ecosystem services. Medicinal uses, contribution to fodder for livestock and importance for human nutrition are reported for almost all species. Regulating ecosystem services are studied for a more narrow set of species. There are mainly positive or no effects on soil nutrients, soil carbon and soil water content. The overall effect of woody vegetation on crop yields is mediated through multiple processes and shows both positive and negative effects. The majority of studies are focused on effects of individual elements of woody vegetation, with very limited landscape scale analyses. Differences between beneficiaries of ecosystem services are only discussed in a few studies, and only in relation provisioning services. Therefore, future studies need to address landscape scale effects and how the benefits of ecosystem services are distributed among beneficiaries, to provide knowledge that is even more relevant for interventions that aim to enhance climate mitigation and adaptation, ecosystem restoration, as well as poverty alleviation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is now a broad agreement that the majority of climate change adaptation efforts will need to take place at the local scale, making local government an important player in this field. In many developed countries, local governments have been leading local adaptation efforts and innovation. In the local government sector, transnational municipal networks (TMNs) have been particularly instrumental in advancing knowledge and methods for climate change mitigation at the local scale, but less is known about their catalytic potential for local adaptation planning and implementation. This paper reviews recent studies on the role of TMNs and discusses their potential for adaptation in light of experiences with TMN-driven mitigation programs.Cooperation amongst public, private and civil society actors in the design and implementation of sustainability policies and practices are not new. Many characteristics of urban partnerships, as a diverse set of governance instruments, show potential to address the inherent risks and impacts associated with a changing climate. This review identifies and describes a number of existing and emergent urban partnerships from traditional infrastructure Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and urban regeneration through to cross-scalar policy networks. It examines the key challenges, and gaps, specific to adaptation that partnerships must embrace if they are to provide a valuable policy instrument for climate adaptation.Partnerships for sustainability governance loosely refer to cooperation for the purpose of designing and implementing sustainability policies. To achieve better cooperation between private, public and civil society actors, partnership design needs more critical evaluation of their costs and benefits. We provide a synthesis of a special issue exploring sustainability governance through partnerships (this issue). Two overarching conclusions are that (a) instead of entirely transforming governance arrangements, partnerships incrementally nudge governance towards greater inclusion of diverse stakeholders, and (b) while more inclusive governance enhances the capacity to resolve contested and complex problems at scale, it can also obscure accountability and generate conflict with other institutional objectives.This paper estimates Malaysian farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for a planned adaptation programme for addressing climate issues in the Malaysian agricultural sector. We used the contingent valuation method (CVM) for a monetary valuation of farmers' preferences for a planned adaptation programme by ascertaining the value attached to address climatic issues in the Malaysian agricultural sector. Structured questionnaires were distributed among the sampled farmers. The study found that 74 % of respondents were willing to pay for a planned adaptation programme and that several socioeconomic and motivation factors have greater influence on their WTP. This paper clearly specifies the steps needed for all institutional bodies to better address issues in climate change. The outcomes of this paper will support policy makers to better design an efficient adaptation framework for adapting to the adverse impacts of climate change.Conservation strategies are often established without consideration of the impact of climate change. However, this impact is expected to threaten species and ecosystem persistence and to have dramatic effects towards the end of the 21st century. Landscape suitability for species under climate change is determined by several interacting factors including dispersal and human land use. Designing effective conservation strategies at regional scales to improve landscape suitability requires measuring the vulnerabilities of specific regions to climate change and determining their conservation capacities. Although methods for defining vulnerability categories are available, methods for doing this in a systematic, cost-effective way have not been identified. Here, we use an ecosystem model to define the potential resilience of the Finnish forest landscape by relating its current conservation capacity to its vulnerability to climate change. In applying this framework, we take into account the responses to climate change of a broad range of red-listed species with different niche requirements. This framework allowed us to identify four categories in which representation in the landscape varies among three IPCC emission scenarios (B1, low; A1B, intermediate; A2, high emissions): (i) susceptible (B1=24.7%, A1B=26.4%, A2=26.2%), the most intact forest landscapes vulnerable to climate change, requiring management for heterogeneity and resilience; (ii) resilient (B1=2.2%, A1B=0.5%, A2=0.6%), intact areas with low vulnerability that represent potential climate refugia and require conservation capacity maintenance; (iii) resistant (B1=6.7%, A1B=0.8%, A2=1.1%), landscapes with low current conservation capacity and low vulnerability that are suitable for restoration projects; (iv) sensitive (B1=66.4%, A1B=72.3%, A2=72.0%), low conservation capacity landscapes that are vulnerable and for which alternative conservation measures are required depending on the intensity of climate change. Our results indicate that the Finnish landscape is likely to be dominated by a very high proportion of sensitive and susceptible forest patches, thereby increasing uncertainty for landscape managers in the choice of conservation strategies.The velocity of climate change is an elegant analytical concept that can be used to evaluate the exposure of organisms to climate change. In essence, one divides the rate of climate change by the rate of spatial climate variability to obtain a speed at which species must migrate over the surface of the earth to maintain constant climate conditions. However, to apply the algorithm for conservation and management purposes, additional information is needed to improve realism at local scales. For example, destination information is needed to ensure that vectors describing speed and direction of required migration do not point toward a climatic cul-de-sac by pointing beyond mountain tops. Here, we present an analytical approach that conforms to standard velocity algorithms if climate equivalents are nearby. Otherwise, the algorithm extends the search for climate refugia, which can be expanded to search for multivariate climate matches. With source and destination information available, forward and backward velocities can be calculated allowing useful inferences about conservation of species (present-to-future velocities) and management of species populations (future-to-present velocities).The vulnerability of coastal areas to associated hazards is increasing due to population growth, development pressure and climate change. It is incumbent on coastal governance regimes to address the vulnerability of coastal inhabitants to these hazards. This is especially so at the local level where development planning and control has a direct impact on the vulnerability of coastal communities. To reduce the vulnerability of coastal populations, risk mitigation and adaptation strategies need to be built into local spatial planning processes. Local government, however, operates within a complex hierarchal governance framework which may promote or limit particular actions. It is important, therefore, to understand how local coastal planning practices are shaped by national and supranational entities. Local governments also have to respond to the demands of local populations. Consequently, it is important to understand local populations' perceptions of coastal risk and its management. Adopting an in-depth study of coastal planning in County Mayo, Ireland, this paper evaluates: (a) how European and national policies and legislation shape coastal risk management at local level; (b) the incorporation of risk management strategies into local plans; and (c) local perception of coastal risks and risk management. Despite a strong steer from supranational and national legislation and policy, statutory local plans are found to be lacking in appropriate risk mitigation or adaptation strategies. Local residents appear to be lulled into a sense of complacency towards these risks because of the low level of attention afforded to them by the local planning authorities. To avoid potentially disastrous consequences for local residents and businesses, it is imperative that this situation is redressed urgently. Based on our analysis, we recommend: the development and implementation of a national ICZM strategy, supported by detailed local ICZM plans; and obliging local government to address known risks in their plans rather than defer them to project level decision making. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Traditional methods for assessing coastal hazards have not typically incorporated a rigorous treatment of uncertainty. Such treatment is necessary to enable risk assessments which are now required by emerging risk based coastal zone management/planning frameworks. While unresolved issues remain, relating to the availability of sufficient data for comprehensive uncertainty assessments, this will hopefully improve in coming decades. Here, we present a modelling framework which integrates geological, engineering and economic approaches for assessing the climate change driven economic risk to coastal developments. The framework incorporates means for combining results from models that focus on the decadal to century time scales at which coasts evolve, and those that focus on the short term and seasonal time scales (storm bite and recovery). This paper demonstrates the functionality of the framework in deriving probabilistic coastal hazard lines and their subsequent use to establish an economically optimal setback line for development at a case study site; the Narrabeen-Collaroy embayment in Sydney, New South Wales. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Land exchange can be a major factor driving land-use change in regions with high pressure on land, but is generally not incorporated in land-use change models. Here we present an agent-based model to simulate land-use change arising from land exchange between multiple agent types representing farmers, nature organizations, and estate owners. The RULEX model (Rural Land EXchange) was calibrated and applied to a 300 km(2) case study area in the east of the Netherlands. Decision rules about which actor will sell and buy land, as well as which specific land to buy or sell are based on historical observations, interviews, and choice experiments. A reconstruction of land-use change for the period 2001-2009 demonstrates that RULEX reproduces most observed land-use trends and patterns. Given that RULEX simulates only one mechanism of land-use change, i.e. land exchange, it is conservative in simulating change. With this model, we demonstrate the potential of incorporating land market processes in an agent-based, land-use change model. This supports understanding of land-use change that is brought about by ownership change, which is an important process in areas where pressure on land is high. The soundness of the process representation was corroborated by stakeholders within the study area. Land exchange models can be used to assess the impact of changes in climate, markets, and policy on land use change, and help to increase effectiveness of alternative land purchasing strategies by stakeholders or spatial planning policy.Assisted colonization is a form of conservation translocation which introduces species at risk from extinction to new habitats, beyond their current range, in anticipation of more suitable conditions. Identifying which species, communities and ecosystems may benefit most from assisted colonization in coming decades is a key goal for conservation. Climate change is expected to lead to the loss or movement of suitable habitat for a range of species and anticipating which can be effectively conserved through assisted colonization is critical. Here, we identify a series of scenarios that may predispose terrestrial species to the need for assisted colonization in order to reduce extinction risk resulting from anthropogenic climate change and assemble a list of traits commonly associated with at-risk species. These traits may help to provide broad-scale guidance on how to select species to target for assisted colonization as a conservation management response to climate change. We also identify six key themes associated with successful conservation translocations including recipient site selection and preparation, a clear understanding of species biology and ecology, and taking lessons from invasive species research.Here, the authors propose the concept of a local electricity-sharing system as a complement or alternative to a feed-in tariff to achieve CO2-neutral transportation in cities. In the authors' proposed system, electricity generated from widely introduced solar photovoltaic panels (PVs) is stored in the cars not in use' in a city. In Japan, almost half of the cars in the central Tokyo metropolitan area are used only on weekends and thus are kept parked during weekdays. These cars represent a huge new potential storage depot if they were replaced by electric vehicles (EVs), that is, they could be used as storage batteries in a vehicle-to-grid system. Using an agent-based transportation simulator (MATSim), the authors modelled the effects of a large-scale introduction of EVs and PVs on the hourly regional power demand-supply for Yokohama city, Japan. The results of our simulation suggest that CO2-neutral EV trips can be achieved only during periods with current average solar irradiance.Over the past decade, governments in many countries began to integrate or mainstream climate change adaptation into a range of sectors. Comprehensive multi-sectoral adaptation strategies have emerged as the preferred approach across Europe. The German Adaptation Strategy is a prominent example for such a comprehensive strategy. It addresses 14 sectors with national key issues and measures, and it provides orientation for other (mainly sub-national) actors. Against this trend, the Netherlands has pursued climate change adaptation mainly through a sectorally focused approach: the Dutch Delta Programme. Building on existing programmes,Governments in many it facilitates analysis and strategy development for long-term water management at a national scale with a strong regional focus. The present paper compares the two dissimilar governance approaches mainly with regard to how and to what degree they mainstream adaptation into water and coastal zone management in selected regions. After discussing strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches, we conclude that the more common multi-sectoral approach applied in Germany and most other OECD countries is not necessarily superior to sectorally focused approaches. Although the Dutch and the German cases appear to resemble alternatives, we highlight that their combination holds the promise to compensate for each other's weaknesses. Overall, we argue that diversity in the governance of climate change adaptation is desirable because it can help to prevent that several countries fail in similar ways.Aquatic ecosystems in arid environments provide important refugia and 'stepping-stones' of connectivity for aquatic fauna. Aquatic ecosystems in central Australia are vulnerable to degradation due to the impacts of invasive herbivores such as camels, which degrade small desert waterbodies through drinking, trampling, and fouling with dung. In this study we assessed the impacts of camel dung on the water quality and macroinvertebrate colonization and community composition of small arid zone freshwater pools using experimental mesocosms. Camel dung (2 kg) was added to half the mesocosms (the treatment), the remaining mesocosms (without camel dung) acted as the controls. All mesocosms were sampled weekly for water quality, nutrients, chlorophyll a and macroinvertebrate richness and abundance, over an eight week period during summer. Macroinvertebrate abundance was higher in the control mesocosms in comparison to the treatment mesocosms. Pollution tolerant taxa such as mosquito larvae were common in treatment mesocosms, while sensitive fauna, such as larval mayflies and dragonflies were more common in the controls. The latter are predators and appeared to have a major influence on community composition. Our results reinforce the need for active management of invasive herbivores to protect aquatic biodiversity and to manage potential disease-vector species in central Australia waterbodies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Consensus is growing that agriculture is vulnerable to climate change and adaptation responses are necessary to minimize impacts. Nonetheless, the diversity of potential impacts, agro-ecological contexts and regional capacity for change make understanding adaptation behaviors challenging and ensure that climate change adaptation will not be the same across all contexts. Considering this heterogeneity, this paper aims to develop a theoretical approach to connect agro-ecosystem diversity with farmer decisionmaking in the context of agricultural adaptation to climate change. We combine the ecological principle of Liebig's Law of the Minimum with the Psychological Distance Theory to suggest how adaptation behaviors vary across regional contexts. We argue with our limiting factors hypothesis that limiting factors within a farm system (water or temperature impacts) influence the adoption of adaptation practices differently across regions and farm systems. Limiting factors varied across farm systems and regions, based on historical climate changes, agro-ecological contexts, infrastructure and adaptation capacity. Using farmer survey data from New Zealand we show that limiting factors mediate the effect of past climate experiences on the adoption of adaptation strategies differently in two regions with water acting as a limiting factor in Hawke's Bay and water and temperature as a limiting factor in Marlborough. This suggests that farmers perceive and respond to climate change in part due to their personal experiences with climate change and the limiting factors within their system. Such results are relevant for the development of regional adaptation strategies, effective policies and targeted climate change communication. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper highlights the challenges of distilling generalizable principles and guidelines for sustainable co-management arrangements and demonstrating the practical impact of the underlying research. We explore the complexities of multicountry, socio-ecological research and address the challenges of moving beyond pure research to engage with the science-policy- practice interfaces. Growing demand for such applied research by official funding agencies is linked to the requirements of policy relevance and ` research impact'. Successful applied research requires ongoing user engagement throughout a project, which is often hard to achieve, especially when diverse stakeholders have sharply different power, knowledge and interests. The arguments are exemplified by our personal experience on such a complex project. Clear impact agendas could be useful for strengthening efforts to achieve transdisciplinarity but research applications should not be penalised on account of inherent potential uncertainties and risks.Site fidelity is an important evolutionary trait to understand, as misinterpretation of philopatric behavior could lead to confusion over the key drivers of population dynamics and the environmental or anthropogenic factors influencing populations. Our objective was to explore the hypothesis that emperor penguins are strictly philopatric using satellite imagery, counts from aerial photography, and literature reports on emperor penguin distributions. We found six instances over three years in which emperor penguins did not return to the same location to breed. We also report on one newly-discovered colony on the Antarctic Peninsula that may represent the relocation of penguins from the Dion Islands, recently confirmed as having been abandoned. Using evidence from aerial surveys and the historical literature, we suggest that emigration may have been partly responsible for the population decline at Pointe Geologie during the 1970s. Our study is the first to use remote sensing imagery to suggest that emperor penguins can and do move between, and establish new, colonies. Metapopulation dynamics of emperor penguins have not been previously considered and represent an exciting, and important, avenue for future research. Life history plasticity is increasingly being recognized as an important aspect of climate change adaptation, and in this regard our study offers new insight for the long-term future of emperor penguins.This paper presents the results from a modelling study that assessed the effectiveness of retrofitted green and cool roofs at reducing energy use for a typical office in Central London. These technologies were compared to application of retrofitting traditional insulation. Initial microclimatic modelling of the impact of the roofs showed that both green and cool roofs can reduce air temperatures directly above their surfaces, with maximum air temperature reductions of 1 degrees C. The results of the microclimatic modelling were then used as input into a whole building thermal simulation model, in order to assess the direct and indirect effects of the roofs. The building modelling results indicate that in the current climate, green roofs reduce annual energy use within the building. The level of savings are reduced when green roofs are dry in the summer. Cool roofs are more effective in the summer, but result in an annual energy penalty due to their performance in winter. In a 2050 climate scenario, both green and cool roofs result in a reduction in annual energy use. The application of traditional insulation is the most effective technology at reducing annual energy use. Adding insulation and a green or cool roof reduces the relative effectiveness of the roofs. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Agriculture is vulnerable to climate change and a source of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Farmers face pressures to adjust agricultural systems to make them more resilient in the face of increasingly variable weather (adaptation) and reduce GHG production (mitigation). This research examines relationships between Iowa farmers' trust in environmental or agricultural interest groups as sources of climate information, climate change beliefs, perceived climate risks to agriculture, and support for adaptation and mitigation responses. Results indicate that beliefs varied with trust, and beliefs in turn had a significant direct effect on perceived risks from climate change. Support for adaptation varied with perceived risks, while attitudes toward GHG reduction (mitigation) were associated predominantly with variation in beliefs. Most farmers were supportive of adaptation responses, but few endorsed GHG reduction, suggesting that outreach should focus on interventions that have adaptive and mitigative properties (e.g., reduced tillage, improved fertilizer management).Recently, extreme meteorological events have occurred frequently owing to climate change and its influence. Impacts of concentrated precipitation events include the damage caused by landslides. Many areas in Gangwondo (Korea) are located at high elevation and have large elevation differences; these areas are thus at high risk of landslides. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the landslide hazard of the province using representative concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 and to compare results. This study produced an optimal landslide model for the province through analysis of variables and points of landslide origin. Estimates indicate that the landslide hazard area will increase to 154 km(2). The RCP 8.5 scenario showed a larger (by about 59 km 2) landslide hazard area than the RCP 4.5 scenario. The uncertainty of climate change scenarios was also explored using statistical values of each scenario period. An overlay analysis (overlay of landslide hazard areas and land cover map) showed that 40.6 % of farmlands would be susceptible to landslides in 2070-2099 (RCP 8.5). Additionally, damage to the alpine agriculture due to landslides was also identified as a critical area. In the RCP 8.5 scenario, the land-use types that occupy more than 20 % of the landslide hazard area are transportation, recreational facilities, and vinyl house for farming. This suggests that casualties from landslides will increase in future. It also highlights a lack of policies to manage development. Therefore, the local government of Gangwondo should consider landslide hazard areas when planning future land uses.Background: Previous studies examining temperature-mortality associations in China focused on a single city or a small number of cities. A multi-city study covering different climatic zones is necessary to better understand regional differences in temperature risk on mortality in China. Methods: Sixty-six communities from 7 regions across China were included in this study. We first used a Distributed Lag Non-linear Model (DLNM) to estimate community-specific effects of temperature on non-accidental mortality during 2006-2011. A multivariate meta-analysis was then applied to pool the estimates of community-specific effects. Results: A U-shaped curve was observed between temperature and mortality at the national level in China, indicating both low and high temperatures were associated with increased mortality risk. The overall threshold was at about the 75th percentile of the pooled temperature distribution. The relative risk was 1.61 (95% CI: 1.48-1.74) for extremely cold temperature (1st percentile of temperature), and 1.21 (95% CI: 1.10-1.34) for extreme hot temperature (99th percentile of temperature) at lag 0-21 days. The temperature-mortality relationship is different for different regions. Compared with north China, south China had a higher minimum mortality temperature (MMT), and there was a larger cold effect in the more southern parts of China and a more pronounced hot effect in more northern parts. Conclusions: Both cold and hot temperatures increase mortality risk in China, and the relationship varies geographically. Our findings suggest that public health policies for climate change adaptation should be tailored to the local climate conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.In adapting US agriculture to the climate of the 21st century, a key unknown is whether cropping frequency may increase, helping to offset projected negative yield impacts in major production regions. Combining daily weather data and crop phenology models, we find that cultivated area in the US suited to dryland winter wheat-soybeans, the most common double crop ( DC) system, increased by up to 28% from 1988 to 2012. Changes in the observed distribution of DC area over the same period agree well with this suitability increase, evidence consistent with climate change playing a role in recent DC expansion in phenologically constrained states. We then apply the model to projections of future climate under the RCP45 and RCP85 scenarios and estimate an additional 126-239% increase, respectively, in DC area. Sensitivity tests reveal that in most instances, increases in mean temperature are more important than delays in fall freeze in driving increased DC suitability. The results suggest that climate change will relieve phenological constraints on wheat-soy DC systems over much of the United States, though it should be recognized that impacts on corn and soybean yields in this region are expected to be negative and larger in magnitude than the 0.4-0.75% per decade benefits we estimate here for double cropping.There is two main purposes for the description of ayurveda as swasthya rakshan (to live healthy) and roga prashamana (to treat diseases) and the description of ritusandhi comes under swasthya rakshan (to live healthy) purpose. Ritusandhi is an environmental term as described in ayurveda. Basically it is numerical term which signifies about the total number of days before starting a season (ritu) and after starting a season. Ritusandhi has been described by approximately all ayurvedic acharyas under the concept of ritucharya (which lifestyle should be followed in various seasons). Ritusandhi kala is very sensitive in relation to health so ayurvedic acharyas have given maximum stress to follow regimens described under ritucharya in ritusandhi. Seasonable diseases are very effective in persons who do not follow ritusandhi ritucharya. Ritusandhi is a time period of fourteen days or two weeks. Acharya Sarangdhar has said yamadrastha instead of ritusandhi and the time period is of sixteen days. Ayurvedic acharyas have great knowledge about the effects of season variation over body thats why they described how we can live healthy life in seasonal variationThe Farmer Perspectives on Agriculture and Weather Variability in the Corn Belt: A Statistical Atlas is a new publication available online at<http://www.sustainablecorn.org>. The atlas includes maps and tables that make it easy for readers to gauge farmer perspectives within the US Corn Belt. Topics covered include farmer beliefs about climate change, attitudes toward actions in response to increased weather variability, risk perceptions, and experiences with weather extremes. This region-specific information on farmers' climate change and risk beliefs is designed to help Extension personnel tailor the climate adaptation and education programming they offer in their region.Warming associated with urban development will be exacerbated in future years by temperature increases due to climate change. The strategic implementation of urban green infrastructure (UGI) e.g. street trees, parks, green roofs and facades can help achieve temperature reductions in urban areas while delivering diverse additional benefits such as pollution reduction and biodiversity habitat. Although the greatest thermal benefits of UGI are achieved in climates with hot, dry summers, there is comparatively little information available for land managers to determine an appropriate strategy for UGI implementation under these climatic conditions. We present a framework for prioritisation and selection of UGI for cooling. The framework is supported by a review of the scientific literature examining the relationships between urban geometry, UGI and temperature mitigation which we used to develop guidelines for UGI implementation that maximises urban surface temperature cooling. We focus particularly on quantifying the cooling benefits of four types of UGI: green open spaces (primarily public parks), shade trees, green roofs, and vertical greening systems (green walls and facades) and demonstrate how the framework can be applied using a case study from Melbourne, Australia. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study explores the integration of ecosystem services and climate change adaptation in development plans for coastal wetlands in Bangladesh. A new response framework for adaptation is proposed, based on an empirical analysis and consultations with stakeholders, using a modified version of the DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response) framework. The framework is tested in the Narail district of Bangladesh, where temperature has increased by about 1 A degrees C in the summer in combination with an increase in rainfall of 0.70 mm day(-1) yr(-1) in the last decade. Calibrated model (MAGICC/SENGEN) projections forecast, on average, a temperature increase of up to 5 A degrees C and an increase in rainfall of 25 % by the end of this century. Water diversion in the upstream regions of the Ganges River delta contributes to increase water scarcity in the dry season. Enhanced rainfall and the immense pressure of water discharges from upstream water sources are increasing the risk of floods and river erosion in the dry season. An increase in the water holding capacity of rivers, wetlands and canals by dredging is urgently required. The empirical model of this study is intended to support adaptation planning and monitoring in Bangladesh and can be used in other data-poor areas which will suffer from climate change.The expansion of woody plants into grasslands has been observed worldwide and is likely to have widespread ecological consequences. One proposal is that woody plant expansion into grasslands is driven in part by the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. We have examined the effect of CO2 concentration on the competitive interactions between established C-4 grasses and woody plant seedlings in a model grassland system. Woody plant seedlings were grown in mesocosms together with established C-4 grasses in three competition treatments (root competition, shoot competition and root + shoot competition) under ambient and elevated CO2 levels. We found that the growth of the woody plant seedlings was suppressed by competition from grasses, with root and shoot competition having similar competitive effects on growth. In contrast to expectations, woody plant seedling growth was reduced at elevated CO2 levels compared to that at the ambient CO2 level across all competition treatments, with the most plausible explanation being reduced light and soil water availability in the elevated CO2 mesocosms. Reduced light and soil water availability in the elevated CO2 mesocosms was associated with an increased leaf area index of the grasses which offset the reductions in stomatal conductance and increased rainfall interception. The woody plant seedlings also had reduced 'escapability' (stem biomass and stem height) under elevated compared to ambient CO2 levels. Our results suggest that the expansion of woody plants into grasslands in the future will likely be context-dependent, with the establishment success of woody plant seedlings being strongly coupled to the CO2 response of competing grasses and to soil water availability.Temperature and moisture impact strongly on the early stages of a plant's life cycle. Global climate change is altering the environmental cues that seeds receive resulting in compromised seedling emergence and changes to seedling performance. Here, we investigate how temperature and moisture affect these early stages of plant development in four Banksia species collected from a longitudinal climate gradient in southwest Western Australia. A common garden was used to examine the between-species and among-population variation in seedling emergence, growth and leaf traits under two soil temperature regimes and three levels of precipitation. We predicted that reduced moisture and increased temperature would delay and reduce total seedling emergence and negatively affect seedling performance. Furthermore, we expected that within species there would be geographically structured variation in response to the treatments. Species differed significantly in all measured traits. Soil warming resulted in strong impacts on regenerative traits, significantly slowing seedling emergence in two species and reducing total seedling emergence in three species. In addition, warming altered seedling performance with significant reductions to the above-ground leaf biomass ratio of three species. In contrast, response to soil moisture manipulation was minimal across all species but possibly due to issues regarding implementation of an effective moisture treatment. The species that showed the greatest decline in emergence under warmed conditions (B. quercifolia) also showed the smallest vegetative shift; the species with the smallest decline in emergence (B. coccinea) showed a relatively large vegetative shift. Among-population differences were significant for many traits, however, trait differentiation was inconsistent across species and, contrary to our hypothesis, the variation we observed was not clearly associated with the climate gradient. As these among-population differences in traits are not easy to predict, we caution the use of simple rules for choosing seed populations for conservation and restoration.Structural columns in engineering practice may weaken over time as a result of corrosion, erosion, impact, fatigue cracking or similar effects that reduce their effective cross-section. The effect of the degradation of the crosssection may then lead to premature flexural buckling. This paper presents a solution for the buckling and post-buckling behaviours of such weakened columns under thermal loading. The method of minimum total potential is employed to derive the differential equations for the buckling, as well as those for the post-buckling response, and the boundary value equations with variable coefficients that govern the behaviour are solved using a shooting procedure. The buckling and post-buckling responses of weakened columns are investigated parametrically, and it is found that the weakening of the column may affect the buckling temperature significantly. Comparisons between the solutions of the problem that account for, and do not account for, the axial deformation are also given, and the results indicate that the effects of axial deformation need to be considered under thermal loading. A Rayleigh-Ritz solution for weakened columns is also presented, and it is found that the proposed simplified formulation can predict the buckling and post-buckling responses of weakened columns under thermal loading quite accurately. (C) 2015 The Institution of Structural Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines the science-practice interface in the process of adapting to climate change in society. This paper analyses science-based stakeholder dialogues with climate scientists, municipal officers and private individual forest owners in Sweden, and examines how local experts both share scientific knowledge and experience and integrate it into their work strategies and practices. The results demonstrate how local experts jointly conceptualise climate adaptation, how scientific knowledge is domesticated among local experts in dialogue with scientific experts, the emergence of anchoring devices, and the boundary-spanning functions that are at work in the respective sectors.This paper describes a participatory and collaborative process for formalising qualitative data, using research from southeast Cameroon, how these results can provide input to an social simulation model, and what insights they can provide in better understanding decision-making in the region. Knowledge Elicitation Tools (KnETs) have been used to support a body of existing research on local strategies that build community adaptive capacity and support sustainable forest management under a range of socio-environmental and climatic stressors. The output of this approach is a set of decision rules which complements previous analysis of differentiated vulnerability of forest communities. Improvements to the KnETs methodology, such as new statistical measurements, make it easier to generate inputs for a social simulation model, such as agent attributes and heterogeneity, as well as informing which scenarios to prioritise during model development and testing. The KnETs process served as a vehicle to structure a large volume of empirical data, to identify the most salient drivers of decision-making amongst different actors, to uncover tacit knowledge and to make recommendations about which strategic interventions should be further explored in a social simulation and by local organizations planning interventions. It was notable that there were many common rule drivers for men and women from the same households, though they participated in the game-interviews separately. At the same time, though strategies were common to both poor and better-off farmers, differences lay in the package of strategies chosen - the number and type of strategies as well the drivers factors - and how they were prioritised with respect to each farmer's goal.Water scarcity and droughts pose serious threats to the livelihood of farming communities and the economy in many parts of the world. Using a survey of 546 farming households and employing multinomial logit regression, this study investigates rice farmers' adaptation to water scarcity in a semi-arid climate in Bangladesh. It identified factors determining farmers' adaptation responses to addressing water scarcity. The analysis shows that farmers with more experience of farming, better schooling, more secure tenure rights, better access to electricity and institutional facilities and an awareness of climatic effects are more likely to adopt alternative adaptation strategies. Farmers' alternative adaptation choices are examined in comparison to the traditional approach of groundwater irrigation. This study raises issues of sustainability of agricultural adaptation practices in the context of an increasing dependence on groundwater irrigation. The results provide an insight to sustainable irrigation practices and an understanding of the characteristics of farms and farming households to frame better strategies to cope with water-stressed regimes in drought-prone environments. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Nicaragua has already experienced substantial climate change, in part due to a loss of one half of its forest cover in the last half-century. In this study, we assess the extent to which historical climate trends have contributed to stagnating yields for maize (Zen mays) and bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), the two main staple crops in the country. We first analyze 40 years of historical weather data throughout Nicaragua to estimate trends, and assess the extent to which these trends correlate with spatial deforestation patterns. Then, we create a regression model linking department-level maize and bean yields with seasonal weather conditions, and use the model to estimate the impact of historical climate trends on yields. Regressions are run for yields on both harvested and sown area, with the latter accounting for the effect of complete crop losses. Results confirm strong warming trends throughout the country, with daytime temperatures in deforested areas warming at more than double the rate of global averages in the tropics. Decreases in rainfall frequency are also seen almost everywhere, along with an earlier end to the rainy season. Regression model results show, as expected, that red bean is a highly temperature-sensitive crop, and that maize is more water-limited than bean due to its longer seasonal duration. Warming temperatures and less frequent rainfall have led to drought-related losses for both crops in the main commercial production areas, while heavier rains at planting and harvest have also negatively affected yields, especially for bean. Moreover, reduced precipitation in December and January has negatively impacted production for bean in the commercially important apante, or dry season, on the humid Atlantic side of the country. In these areas, however, substantial model uncertainty remains for maize, with an alternative model formulation showing substantial benefits from drier and sunnier conditions. At an annual, national scale, beans have been more affected by climate trends since 1970 than maize, with -5% yield declines per decade on harvested area for bean and -4% for maize, and -12% and -7% yield declines respectively on sown area (with the alternative model showing gains for maize). Climate adaptation responses include government efforts to limit bean exports to control consumer prices, a switch from red to black bean for commercial sales and export, and area expansion and migration for bean in order to maintain production levels. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.One of the primary challenges of our time is to feed a growing and more demanding world population with reduced external inputs and minimal environmental impacts, all under more variable and extreme climate conditions in the future(1-4). Conservation agriculture represents a set of three crop management principles that has received strong international support to help address this challenge(5,6), with recent conservation agriculture efforts focusing on smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia(7). However, conservation agriculture is highly debated, with respect to both its effects on crop yields(8-10) and its applicability in different farming contexts(7,11-13). Here we conduct a global meta-analysis using 5,463 paired yield observations from 610 studies to compare no-till, the original and central concept of conservation agriculture, with conventional tillage practices across 48 crops and 63 countries. Overall, our results show that no-till reduces yields, yet this response is variable and under certain conditions no-till can produce equivalent or greater yields than conventional tillage. Importantly, when no-till is combined with the other two conservation agriculture principles of residue retention and crop rotation, its negative impacts are minimized. Moreover, no-till in combination with the other two principles significantly increases rainfed crop productivity in dry climates, suggesting that it may become an important climate-change adaptation strategy for ever-drier regions of the world. However, any expansion of conservation agriculture should be done with caution in these areas, as implementation of the other two principles is often challenging in resource-poor and vulnerable smallholder farming systems, thereby increasing the likelihood of yield losses rather than gains. Although farming systems are multifunctional, and environmental and socio-economic factors need to be considered(14-16), our analysis indicates that the potential contribution of no-till to the sustainable intensification of agriculture is more limited than often assumed.This article revisits four Australian framework policies with implications for ecologically sustainable development to consider lessons for climate change adaptation. The competition, disaster resilience, sustainable development and water policies examined underline the difficulty in developing and implementing effective policy frameworks. We find that to succeed, a national policy in this federation needs: a coalition of stakeholders advocating for their implementation; medium to long-term bipartisan support; a focus on a perceived urgent national issue; significant socio-economic benefits; a focus on a limited number of core principles and systemic legislative reform with incremental implementation over many years; the allocation by the federal government of substantial funds for state implementation; requirements to report to the Council of Australian Governments; and support from central government agencies rather than marginalisation in the environment portfolio. These qualities are not inherent in the 1992 National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development and this explains why it is now moribund. These findings suggest that it will be particularly hard to develop and difficult to implement an effective national climate change adaptation policy.Climate change adaptation is now a core theme of Australian geographical research. Climatic risks to socio-ecosystems are unbounded and highly uncertain and as a result require learning-based approaches to generate appropriate adaptation responses. Geographical research can effectively integrate knowledge developed through the mutual learning of researchers and stakeholders within a place to help guide adaptation planning. The roles of the geographer as a social learning researcher are critically analysed within the context of climate change adaptation research undertaken to support regional natural resource management adaptation planning in South Australia. Three research roles from the social learning literature are used to frame the analysis: the organic intellectual; the advocate for social justice; and the contemporary professional academic. While the social learning helped to develop a range of experimental adaptation policies and actions, the research would have proceeded more effectively if the challenges of the approach had been initially understood. The problems which emerge from social learning research, including inevitable tensions between real-world and academic outcomes, need to be acknowledged along with any successes to prepare future geographers to facilitate learning about socio-ecological risk.Cities are increasingly recognised as places in which climate change risks coalesce and from which climate change adaptation efforts are most likely to be mobilised. In an effort to reduce damages from storm surges and sea-level rise, the City of Cape Town municipal government set out to establish a coastal set-back line. This paper describes the process and highlights the potential for unanticipated conflict and resistance when notions of 'best practice' fail to consider local institutional interests and pre-existing legislation. This insight is important as coastal municipalities in South Africa look to implement set-back lines in compliance with the Integrated Coastal Management Act (Act 24 of 2008). McKenna et al. [McKenna, J., Cooper, A., & O'Hagan, A.M., Managing by principle: A critical analysis of the european principles of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). Marine Policy, 32, 941-955. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2008.02.005] elucidate the potential for conflicts and contradictions when applying the principles of Integrated Coastal Zone Management in Europe. Developing and a applying a set-back line for Cape Town's coastline was anticipated to be difficult given that the city remains socio-economically unequal and spatially segregated and that the coastline provides multiple different communities with amenities, resources and opportunities at the same time. What was not anticipated was the encountered resistance from within public sector directorates operating under the same policies. The paper suggests that differences in mentalities, technologies and resources (following Wood, J., and Shearing, C., (2007) Imagining security. Devon: Willan Publishing) make for subjective policy interpretations and applications by local officials. Recognising and managing these differences is critical if notions of 'best practice' prescribed at higher governance levels are to prove useful to climate change adaptation measures at the local scale.There is a need for an integrated approach for all involved stakeholders to adapt urban infrastructures to climate change effects and to take into account uncertainties of future developments. By integrating all relevant planning disciplines, a first step towards implementation of resilient technical and social infrastructures can be achieved. With the major goal of optimizing area-management as part of water sensitive urban design, the water sector and its area requirements build the main focus of this study. After identifying local flood hazards and potential surficial retention areas, the additional usage of decentralized stormwater management facilities for flood protection is tested in selected sectors. The results of the study confirm that the combined usage of decentralized facilities for pluvial flooding is a first step to protect urban infrastructure. It shows that decentralized facilities are more flexible than centralized facilities and, thus, have a higher adaptation capacity which is needed considering the various effects of climate change.Most smallholder farming areas of Zimbabwe have low soil fertility and low rainfall, which has continually decreased over the past years. In recent years, most of the smallholder farming areas have experienced perennial droughts, poor rainfall distribution and crop failures and these have been attributed to climate change and variability. Cultivation of dambos, which are seasonal wetlands, presents a climate change and variability adaptation option for smallholder farmers. This synthesis analyses the role of dambo cultivation in climate change and variability adaptation and discusses future directions for sustainable dambo utilization. The data on current dambo farming practices were collected from literature, surveys and field observations. The results showed that farmers grow crops in dambos as an adaptive strategy to climate change and variability and have largely abandoned upland fields where yields are <1 t ha(-1) in preference of dambos where yields average 2-3 t ha(-1). Dambo cultivation offers a buffer against crop failures and has resulted in improved household food security. We conclude that dambo cultivation is a potentially beneficial farmer-driven climate change and variability adaptation strategy. However, if not properly designed and managed, dambo cultivation may result in their degradation hence there is need for further research to evaluate options for sustainable dambo utilization as intensification of dambo agriculture is important for food security.Eco-Art has recently emerged as a potential means to place emphasis on environmental issues such as climate change, recycling and the metabolism of the city experienced both materially and conceptually within local, regional and global contexts. Such art presents the possibility of shaping civic practices in arenas beyond those of traditional planning domains. Adopting a pragmatic approach, which recognises the contextual pluralism that exists in debates regarding climate change, this paper is interested in how Eco-Art projects encourage the re-imagining of urban spaces within the context of sustainability, and flows of materials and the recycling of plastic in art specifically.For better policy planning of adaptation under the influence of climate change, a good process design which engages experts with technical and local knowledge is vital for the success of adaptation since the complexity and uncertainty of the climate change impacts and the inter-disciplinary cooperation necessity for responding to these impacts. The theme of this study is about "adaptation issue of water resource management in Southern Taiwan" and the aim is to integrate upstream climate change related scientific knowledge into downstream policy-making process, whereas different perspectives for the adaptation options from stakeholders can be explored by incorporating a participatory process during the adaptation assessment and then be taken into consideration by policy makers. The participatory process is designed by using a stakeholder workshop. For the preliminary arrangement of the stakeholder workshop, a mapping of resources needed for operating the workshop is conducted, including selection of the workshop participants by identification of the key stakeholders, the collection of state-of-the-art scientific knowledge for climate change in water resource area and the historical and local socio-political context and the related conflicting issues for the problems. Extraction and interpretation of the scientific knowledge are also performed and tested by introducing a training workshop and co-learning activities of core group of stakeholders. An assessment tool named "water diamond" is designed for the stakeholder workshop by integration of policy implementation assessment and outcome assessment dimensions while balances short term view with long term view, to facilitate the different perspective interactions and knowledge exchange among stakeholders. This process and tool could be useful not only in the phase of adaptation assessment to envision different options for the future but also help in the dialogue among stakeholders to explore the most effective adaptation actions.Climate change is one of the greatest environmental challenges that we face today. A certain level of climate change is now unavoidable. Along with mitigation efforts to curb further global warming, we have to take actions to adapt to the changing climatic conditions. Cities are on the front lines of climate change impacts. Therefore, the role of cities in climate change adaptation has been widely acknowledged in the last two decades. There are various obstacles that prevent city governments to develop adaptation policies. While some of these obstacles are universal, some of them are context-specific. Based on the review of key policy documents and interviews with public officials, this paper focuses on analyzing the main barriers that prevent Turkish cities to develop and implement effective adaptation policies. The research results indicate that cities in Turkey face very similar barriers with their international counterparts in adaptation policymaking. Among the main barriers in the Turkish local context are lack of institutional and technical capacity as well as awareness and coordination problems among actors of climate policy. Due to such barriers, "municipal voluntarism", which mostly leads to voluntary and spontaneous actions, is the prevailing approach to climate policy development in Turkish cities. A series of reforms should be enacted by the central government to help cities overcome the barriers to climate change adaptation.Women form a disproportionately large share of poor in countries all over the world. Climate change brings with it drought, floods, deforestation and scarcity of natural resources making the lives of poor women in developing countries much harder since they have to struggle much more to fulfill their roles and responsibilities. It is therefore imperative that efforts be made for the adjustment in systems to minimize the negative effects of climate change and enhance the adaptive capacity of the poor especially women, to climate change. The present study has been conducted to raise the level of awareness and knowledge of urban poor women, change their attitude and behavior to deal with climate change and thereby enhance their adaptive capacity, through the use of systematic and strategic communication, on a statistically defined sample from five major regions of Delhi, India. A Communication for Development (C4D) module was administered to 150 women, each group comprising of 15-20 women, in selected slums across the five regions of Delhi. The impact assessment of the 2-day communication intervention revealed that there was maximum change in awareness and knowledge followed by change in attitude of women to various aspects of climate change. The change in behavioral intent of women was however limited and not statistically significant due to the lack of reinforcing and enabling factors. Overall, there were significant gains in the scores of awareness, knowledge, attitude and behavioral intent (AKAB) of women towards climate change adaptation and mitigation. Our study has conclusively shown that C4D approaches when effectively planned and delivered can be used to enhance significantly the climate literacy as well as the adaptive capacity of urban poor women to climate change.Effective communication and strong collaboration amongst organisations are essential tools for disaster management responses and climate change adaptation. Complex situations such as disaster preparation and response require trust-based and collaborative networks. Given that mutual trust and willingness to share information are central to successful disaster management, it is crucial to increase our understanding of how to build and sustain network trust and collaboration. Based on a comprehensive literature review, including both theoretical and empirical studies, we explore the role and impact of trust on facilitating improved network co-ordination in emergency responses to climate-driven events. Social identity theory and cultural cognition theory are applied as a framework for understanding trust development, particularly in the context of the Asia-Pacific region. The paper identifies obstacles to trust development, and then outlines key methods by which trust can be established and enhanced to improve communication and network effectiveness in disaster management. These findings provide critical information for policy makers and network participants with regard to building network trust to better underpin disaster management and climate change adaptation in the Asia-Pacific region.Each winter, tens of thousands of destitute Mongolian herders move to the insalubrious suburbs that surround Ulaanbaatar ("ger districts"). This migration can partly be attributed to climate change, as a rapid warming and a slight change in the precipitation patterns (decrease in summer precipitations) reduce the yield of the grassland. On the other hand, the resilience of nomadic animal husbandry declined markedly since the collapse of the communist regime in 1990: the "Age of the Market" and the imposition of a radical neoliberal ideology led to the interruption of the services indispensable to the traditional Mongolian way of life (e.g. boarding schools, mobile health brigades, but also veterinary services and a centralized system of fodder production and distribution that mutualizes environmental risks). Thus, this chapter shows that, in the context of Mongolia's internal migration, climate change adaptation is inseparable from domestic development policies that, it is argued, need urgently to be rectified.Nepal is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, due to its geographical fragility and socio-political circumstances. The effects of climate change are observed across regions, society and villages, mostly impacting the wellbeing of poor and marginalized households. This research explores the existing challenges of managing climate change adaptation in Nepal. The research is based on a case study of three different locations of Nepal, representing different landscapes. The findings show that the impact of climate change differs based on the socio-economic characteristics of households and communities. Poor and marginalized households seem to be more affected by the impacts of climate change than the rich and well off, because of their resource limitations. The findings also show that responses to and management of climate change at the local level are constrained by limited information and knowledge on climate change, inadequate access to technology and services and other governance challenges. The findings imply that local, national, regional and international collaboration is needed, to address the knowledge gap and issues related to financing and technology transfer in Nepal.There is wide recognition of the urgent need for climate change adaptation in developing countries. Tuvalu is a Least Developed Country, and a low-lying small island state and climate change adaptation has been at the center of its national interest for several years. This has resulted in a number of national plans, reports and funding schemes. Soil pollution, rapid urbanization and water table salinization caused by sea-level rise makes the population on Tuvalu solely reliant on rainwater catchment and storage for domestic water use. Moreover, current variability in rainfall patterns makes access to freshwater one of the most critical issues for Tuvalu, as highlighted by the historically long drought in 2011. According to most recent rainfall precipitation projections in the Pacific over the next decades, the current household water stress situation is expected to be further exacerbated in the face of climate change. Data from a governmental household survey (2006) on rainwater catchment and storage facilities on Funafuti, in addition to a thorough analysis of funding schemes for water catchment between 2006 and 2010, is used to analyze the inventories of private and public rainwater catchment and storage equipment available in Funafuti in 2006 and in 2010. Moreover, a survey was conducted in one of the informal settlements to map freshwater access in some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities on the island. Despite a high volume of investment and a number of larger projects in water catchment and storage equipment on Tuvalu since the 1980s, the analysis of the surveys and funding schemes, combined with historical meteorological data, show that up to 70 % of inhabitants still lack access to adequate catchment and storage capacity to face historically long dry spells. This paper shows that: (1) On Funafuti, the lack of socioeconomic contextualization of projects has led to an inequitable allocation of equipment. Inequitable allocation is constraining effective climate change adaptation, especially for the poorest populations, and (2) Pre-existing and contextual vulnerabilities should be taken into account in national and international planning as well as in the design and execution of projects to ensure that adaptation to climate change will be effective. In a context of an increasing need for climate change adaptation, especially in Small Island Developing States and other developing countries, this study highlights the current barriers to effective adaptation for the 5,000 inhabitants of Funafuti. It thus contributes to the wider debate of how international organizations, national governments and development planners can ensure equitable climate change adaptation on a global scale.The Asia-Pacific region accounts for significant level of greenhouse gas emissions globally. The recent abrupt drastic changes in the general climate are highly relevant for the Asia-Pacific than other regions owing to its highly vulnerable societies. However, the region has significant potential to contribute to both mitigation and adaptation efforts in the context of climate change. The regional scenario which is already experiencing multiple socio-economic problems is further worsened due to climate change. Nevertheless, it is pertinent to note that several countries in the region have initiated and implemented large-scale mitigation and adaptation programs. However, there is an urgent need to augment regional capacity, strengthen institutional coordination and knowledge sharing on mitigation and adaptation policies, strategies as well as programs. These interventions can potentially influence the extent to which countries integrate climate change policies within their broader development frameworks. In the current review we describe the climate change related threats and associated developmental risks in the Asia-Pacific region as well as analyze the sensitivity, potential resilience strategies, various adaptation and mitigation initiatives in the region in the broad context of the role to be played by the region to deal with climate change. In specifics, we attempt to develop a general typology for adaptation strategies framed upon emissions reduction technologies, practices, measures, national policies adopted in the countries in the region. The key economic sectors such as energy, buildings, and water supply systems are covered as part of this assessment through a comprehensive methodology to position the climate change threats in the backdrop of resilient economy. This framework makes use of nested flowcharts to demonstrate how, social and environmental forces interact to create situations vulnerable to sudden changes. Our work is expected to contribute the initiatives in developing climate change adaptation toolkit for Asia-Pacific countries which will be crucial in undertaking vulnerability assessments as well as in identification and prioritization of appropriate actions required to build resilience in the context of changing climate in the region.Dragon is a cooperation Programme between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of the P.R. China. The Programme, initiated in 2004, focuses on the exploitation of ESA, Third Party Missions (TPM) and Chinese Earth Observation (EO) data for geo-science and applications development in land, ocean and atmospheric applications. In particular, the Programme brings together joint Sino-European teams to investigate 50 thematic projects. In this paper, the results of the research projects(1) in the thematic field "Land and Environment" will be briefly presented, whereas emphasis will be given in the assessment of the usefulness of the results for an integrated assessment of the state of the environment in the respective study areas. Furthermore new knowledge gained in such fields as desertification assessment, drought and epidemics' monitoring, forest modeling, cropwatch monitoring, climate change vulnerability (including climate change adaptation and mitigation plans), urbanization monitoring and land use/cover change assessment and monitoring, will be presented. Such knowledge will be also linked to the capacities of Earth Observation systems (and of the respective EO data) to support the temporal, spatial and spectral requirements of the research studies. The potential of DRAGON to support such targets as "technology and knowledge transfer at the bilateral level", "common EO database for exploitation" and "data sharing and open access data policy" will be also presented. Finally special consideration will be given in highlighting the replication potential of the techniques as developed in the course of the projects, as well as on the importance of the scientific results for environmental policy drafting and decision making.The PetaJakarta.org project aims at advancing our capacity to understand and promote the resilience of cities to both extreme weather events as a result of climate change and to long-term infrastructure transformation as a process of climate adaptation. PetaJakarta.org is a pioneering web-based platform that harnesses the power of social media by gathering, sorting, and displaying information about flooding for Jakarta residents and governmental agencies in real time. It allows situational information to be collected and disseminated by community members through their location enabled mobile devices, and shared with emergency response agencies. We argue that PetaJakarta.org is, in essence, a self-organizing socio-technical system that couples people, mobile technology and autonomous sensors in a complex network of information. As a consequence, we need to explore the various dimensions of computational justice that characterize this system in order to identify its opportunities and challenges.Cereals are key foods providing a significant part of the energy (calories) and protein in human diets globally. Cereals are consumed as intact grain products, such as rice, or as ground ingredients, such as wheat in breads, noodles or pasta. The dominance of cereals in human foods makes nutritional attributes of cereals important to the health of human populations. Functional traits influencing the processing or end use quality attributes of cereal based foods are key to human preferences and consumption. Adaptation of cereal crops to variable or changing climates requires that essential quality attributes are retained. Advances in cereal genomics are delivering insights into the molecular basis of nutritional and functional quality traits in cereals that will be critical to retaining essential quality traits. New genetic resources are emerging within the gene pools of the domesticated species. New species(1) adapted to new or different environments may also be options for accelerated domestication to satisfy food demand. Genomic analysis of the diversity of rice genetic resource(2) will provide more options for rice adaptation. New insights into the molecular genetic basis of wheat quality(3) and the influence of the environment on expression of these traits will support the retention of the essential functional properties of wheat during climate adaptation. New cereals for use as whole grain or ground to flour for other food products may be based upon the traditional species such as rice and wheat but may also include new options exploiting genomics tools to allow accelerated domestication of new species. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseSpatial crop suitability models are important planning tools for agricultural development, especially regarding climate change adaptation. The original version of the EcoCrop model predicts crop suitability based on monthly temperature and precipitation, without taking into account soil constraints. Recently, continuous soil property maps of Tanzania were produced (Vagen et al, submitted) based on data from systematic surveys across sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of incorporating information on soil fertility constraints, such as low soil organic carbon content (SOC) into the EcoCrop model. Crop suitability maps derived with and without consideration of low SOC were compared. SOC values were extracted for 1036 locations of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) presence and the 2-percentile (0.9% SOC) was taken as a lower limit for suitability. The EcoCrop model was then run with current climate data, with and without SOC as a limiting factor, to create suitability maps. An independent spatial point dataset of registered bean presence/absence (n= 1113), and regional production statistics were used for validation. The agreement between bean presence and bean suitability was higher (Cohen's unweighted kappa= 0.06) when low SOC was included in the model compared to when only climate was considered (kappa= 0.02). The regional statistics showed that the proportion of the area where low SOC restricted the suitability was negatively correlated with the proportion of the area planted with beans (r =-0.42, p=0.07). In summary, we identified a lower limit of SOC for the soil to be suitable for common beans production and investigated the importance of taking this soil fertility constraint into account for accurate suitability modelling. It was concluded that for more accurate suitability modelling, e.g. for decision support for adaptation to climate change, low SOC should be considered as a constraining factor. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Organic farming systems present unique challenges that include limitations in available soil nutrients and interference from weeds. They are also vulnerable to environmental fluctuations resulting from climate change. The generation of adapted cultivars with the capacity to evolve under changing conditions may help to meet these challenges. Previous work by our research group demonstrated that directed selection under organic production produces wheat varieties better suited than conventionally selected varieties to organic production. A further step in developing crop varieties adapted to organic production is to directly involve farmers in the selection process through participatory plant breeding (PPB). PPB is particularly effective in stressful or unique growing environments that are underserved by the traditional plant breeding sector. Crop variety development typically takes place under conventional production and organic farmers can likely derive benefits from PPB. We report on a pilot project where 11 organic farmers in Manitoba, Canada were provided with F3 populations of spring wheat. A plant breeder distributed seeds of 3 populations (5000 seeds per population) to the participating farmers, who planted them under their normal cultivation conditions. Farmers identified selection priorities and made selections each year based on their evaluation of the population. After three years of on-farm selection, the performance of wheat populations selected by farmers was compared with registered cultivars in a replicated experiment under organic growing conditions on a research farm. Results from the initial year of testing showed that as a group, the farmer selected populations yielded 107% of conventionally selected cultivars, displayed greater early vigour, were taller and reduced weed biomass compared to the conventional cultivars. By selecting directly in the target environment, farmers are selecting for wheat that is able to thrive under organic production systems. We discuss the implications of this work for organic wheat breeding, functional diversity, and climate adaptation. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.IPCC predicts increasing temperatures in Sub-Saharan Africa which will negatively impact crop productivity and lead to a reduction in crop yields. Crops need to adapt to higher temperatures, water stress and pest incidence. Genetic improvement and the evaluation of cultivars in field conditions allow for the development of more tolerant varieties with traits that are better suited to adapt to climate change. In tropical regions there is a higher diversity of climate patterns and management practices which affects the evaluation of varieties [1] in field testing. The interaction of genotype by environment is the biggest challenge that plant breeders face [1] and with high costs associated with releasing a new cultivar only a limited number are released. To identify climate smart varieties materials need to be tested in the conditions in which the crops will be grown. A broad genetic base is needed to select strong varieties which are able to adapt to drought, biotic stress and salinity. It is only possible to evaluate varieties in a large number of possible environments. Using a crowdsourcing approach to crop improvement we are identifying climate smart varieties while at the same time speeding up the processes of variety development [2]. We asked a large group of farmers to test and evaluate different varieties. We combined farmers' and morphological evaluation data of a set of 20 varieties of cowpea and sorghum to research the performance of varieties in dissimilar climatic conditions. Data on current crop diversity allows us to compare local varieties with landraces from other areas. Results specify the variation between trials in different sites in terms of performance and environmental adaption potential. We are able to identify varieties that display a diversity of traits that enhance resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses and considering farmer-preferred/ market traits. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Rather than on crop modelling only, climate change impact assessments in agriculture need to be based on farming systems analysis and integrated assessment. With a case study for arable farming in Flevoland, the Netherlands (Reidsma et al., 2015), we illustrate that 1) crop models cannot account for all relevant climate change impacts and adaptation options, and 2) changes in technology, policy and prices have had and are likely to have larger impacts on farms than climate change. While crop modelling indicates positive impacts of climate change on yields of major crops in 2050, a semi-quantitative and participatory method assessing impacts of extreme events, shows that there are nevertheless several climate risks (Schaap et al., 2013). A range of adaptation measures are however available to reduce possible negative effects at crop level. In addition, at farm level, farmers can change cropping patterns, and adjust inputs and outputs (Kanellopoulos et al., 2014). Also farm structural change will influence impacts and adaptation (Mandryk et al., 2012). While the 5th IPCC report is more negative regarding impacts of climate change on agriculture compared to the previous report, also for temperate regions, our results show that when putting climate change in context of other drivers, and when explicitly accounting for adaptation at farm level, impacts may be less negative and opportunities are revealed. These results refer to a temperate region, but an integrated assessment may also change perspectives on climate change for other parts of the world. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.In preliminary sizing, wing loading, power loading, and maximum lift coefficient are commonly determined through an informal optimization process using statistical equations based on existing aircraft data in conjunction with a matching chart from which the best design point is picked. Presented here is an alternative method where these pivotal design parameters are computed using non-statistical flight dynamics equations immersed within a fuzzy multi-objective non-linear programming framework. A fixed-wing surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation is designed to illustrate the method. The mission specification of the UAV sets the constraints on six chosen performance parameters. Two types of membership function - ramp and triangular - that capture the tolerability of constraint violation are studied. Derived from the results are the wing area and power necessary for the UAV to satisfy the performance requirements and fulfill its mission. Together with the maximum lift coefficient, these parameters are critical inputs of the next phase of the design process which is configuration design.Climate change and its effects present rather complex and acute problems that we face nowadays. In the light of globalization, this paper will present that the climate change and its effects, as well as possible adaptation and/or mitigation, cannot be regarded as an isolated problem and that it has to be researched through the wider social, cultural, economic and political context. The paper is focused on the present state of climate change research within Serbia, with references to regional and global research, presenting in the first part general remarks regarding the issues of climate change, and in the subsequent two researches relevant mainly to the context of Serbia. While present existing strategies and policies which are intended to deal with the process of climate change adaptation are not as successful as expected, this paper will try to give explanations and answers to further actions to be taken. In the final part of the paper, a formulation of a course of action and new educational methods as an integral part of adaptation to climate change will be presented. Having in mind the role of the built environment in these changes and the role of the architect as well, through this paper new ideas regarding framework and models of university curriculum development in correspondence with the issue of climate change and its influence on planning and architectural design will be presented, following the idea that the education of architects is aimed at creating professionals who, by definition, act directly on the transformation of the built environment within the city and territory.In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in public awareness in regard to the issues related to climate change. This increase in awareness has led to the formation of the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative, with the primary objective to adapt the region for the impacts of climate change. As part of this initiative, this paper aims to select the best design alternatives for constructed wetland design for treatment of storm-water runoff in order to effectively treat storm-water runoff and subsequently to prepare the South East Queensland, Australia for the expected impacts of climate change. In this context, to identify and evaluate preferred adaptation alternatives, the authors have undertaken a multi-criteria analysis by using the AHP technique. The combined results of this exploratory study, display that across the three stakeholder groups; Public Health and Safety, Flooding and Drainage Control of highest priority respectively.The Piano Key (PK) spillway constructed at Giritale in 2013, is the first of its kind in Sri Lanka. A capacity enhancement of the Giritale reservoir was required to overcome the frequent water shortages during cropping seasons and droughts. A decision was taken to enhance the capacity by increasing the crest level of the spillway and a new spillway of the PK type was introduced to satisfy this requirement. In this research, a model study was done to improve the discharge efficiency of such a PK spillway. Two models with different sectional arrangements were fabricated and later these were modified basically in crest shape. A total of four different models were tested to simulate the flow behavior over the spillway and the results were analyzed in order to find the head discharge relationship. The research focused on how to obtain a suitable PK model, among the models tested. The conclusion was that model 1b (among the models 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b) was the optimum model for the Giritale project.The occurrence rates of extremes of the natural forces, wave heights and sea levels, are one of the important factors in the design of coastal structures. Especially detecting the difference between the past and future rates is becoming recently an issue remarked in the discussions of climate change adaptation. However the difference is often so faint that the significance has not been examined appropriately nor even discussed in many previous studies of statistical methods of extreme value analysis. One might wonder if the significance is well shown in selecting the non-stationary model in comparison with the stationary one. However the difference of those models should be considered to be checked in the region where the frequently observed values are concentrated, while it will not always hold true in the outer region where the observed values are sparse. It is the same point of arguments as existing the limitation of extrapolation even if the parameters of distribution function are estimated. In the previous research, a criterion of possible extrapolation is given by the degree of experience for one sample. This research discusses to compare two populations of sea extremes by extending the Poisson test for two-sample. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Knowledge of coastal communities on climate change will help communities to adapt that environmental condition. The purpose of this study is to investigate community knowledge level to climate change in the management of mangrove ecosystems in Kotania Bay. This study used a Guttman scale and descriptive analysis. The results showed the average level of community knowledge on climate change was 26.67%, while the average level of community knowledge on climate change adaptation was found only14.67%. Coastal community need some strategies to increase their knowledge on climate change. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.The main objective of this paper is to study the resilience of current Spanish residential building stock to climate change impacts. Results showed that 72% of current residential building stock in Spain is not performing properly according to current climate conditions. During the 1981-2010 period, mean annual degree days based at 15 degrees C diminished in 74% of Spanish provincial capitals, with an average rate decrease of 10.1% in relation to the 1950-1979 period. Significant accelerating positive trends in cooling degree days and important decreases in heating degree days were found in the twenty-first century. Strategies and measures to support climate change adaptation of existing and future built environments through building codes and standards have also been explored.The specific climate of Nordic and Baltic countries allows profitable and sustainable growing of various fruit and berry crops including rare and novel ones, but demands climate adapted cultivars. Fruit breeding in the region is targeted mostly at the local fruit market and has reached notable results in apple, pear, plum, cherry, blackcurrant and other crops. Modern pre-breeding research and breeding methods have been used with good results, first of all marker assisted selection (MAS). At the same time, the high competition from more southern regions has resulted in decrease or zero growth of fruit production in some countries and subsequent closing or temporarily stopping of breeding programs. The situation looks more promising with berry crops, especially these adapted exclusively to Northern climate, like Vaccinium and Rubus species. Novel crops include, first of all, Japanese quince (Chaenomeles japonica) and seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides). Significant differences exist between Scandinavia with a long and uninterrupted history of fruit growing and the Baltic countries which started to develop modern fruit production only since 1990ties. Changes in consumer attitudes create increased demand for locally grown and organic fruits, as well as for more variety in cultivars, and hopefully may lead to increase in funding for breeding in future.Although the synergy between port and city is usually perceived as a fact, the two elements of the port city have been developing separately, both spatially and functionally. Economic development, a vital component of the urban socio-economic system, can be considered one of the sectors where port-city synergy is crucial. However, at the same time port cities need to build climate resilience because of their high exposure to climate extremes. The value of assets at risk and the economic importance of port cities, influencing their extended hinterlands and the global economic networks, highlight the need for adaptation to climate change. Following this rationale, this research studies 40 port cities in 16 countries around the world. By collecting the separate climate change adaptation actions of the ports and the cities, and correlating them with Relative Concentration Index (RCI), the study explores how the port-city relationship is linked to the adoption of distinct types of adaptation actions by the port authorities and local governments, in some of the most exposed port cities globally. The results reveal the dependence of the city's adaptation response on the port-city relationship, as well as opportunities for multi-level and multi-scale collaborations between ports and cities. The benefits of synergies extend from the local to the global level, starting from climate change and aiming to build infrastructural, social and economic resilience.Aiming at the current situation in China with vast territory, diverse climate, and a big difference on thermal adaptation of the indoor thermal environment among the people in different regions, the paper analyzes the typical model research of thermal adaptation, and points out the features of three representative models and the ignored reason of physiological thermal adaptation, summarizes some results on field studies of thermal adaptation in China, induces three research directions about physiological indexes selection research, physiological thermal adaptation research and multivariate evaluation model research of thermal comfort based on the physical, psychological and behavioral adjustments. The paper proposes to explain the differences of physiological thermal adaptation in these different climatic regions and to further finds out the relations between all these differences and the physiological indexes. The goal is to establish physiological index to evaluate thermal comfort and to perfect the climate adaptation model which can give some advises to the architecture designers on how to realize the comfortable and energy-saving thermal environment. (C) The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISHVAC-COBEE 2015The economic value of adaptation to climate impact on renewable resources is examined using the UniSyD_IS model of Iceland's energy system. The model captures the entire energy system including interactions among supply sectors, energy markets, infrastructure and fuel demand. In this framework, climate adaptation options are evaluated in the context of a rational decision making process. Comparison of two scenarios with and without climate impact on hydro and biomass resources reflects the direct and indirect economic effects of adaptation strategies and provides insights for generation and energy supply investment planning. The simulation results show that the adaptation to climate change in Iceland leads to higher installed capacities for hydro, biodiesel, and bioethanol plants with lower supply costs. The findings indicate that the adaptation of energy supply to climate change could provide net benefits from an energy supply perspective.Climate change is now more visible in the form of frequent changes in the weather patterns leading to severe drought or floods. It endangers the food security, especially shrinking of cultivable land and increasing population. Agricultural Research Institutes are working on new cropping patterns, new heat and flood tolerant varieties and cultivation practices. However in the absence of sound knowledge extension system the results of such massive and costly research do not reach its end users, in this case farmers, on time. This research paper talks about the, National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) pilot conducted to develop strategies to enhance Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change in vulnerable regions in India. As part of this research, extensive field demonstrations and data analysis were done to demonstrate how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can play a crucial role in establishing a two way connect between the Research Lab and the end users of research. While Agricultural research can focus on identification of current and future risks to livelihoods due to climatic variability and development or identification of regional climate specific crop varieties and crop practices, the IT and ICT can work jointly to use the outcome of such research to spread awareness and promote the use of such varieties and practices in adaptation by farmers and other stakeholders through an ICT platform.From 2011 to 2014, the CALESA project was a research-for-development project which coupled integrated climate risk analyses, crop growth simulation modelling and field-based research both on-station and on-the-ground with participatory research with farmers. It comprised research-oriented activities for knowledge and technology creation, and development-oriented activities for information sharing and capacity building. The main purpose of the CALESA project was to develop sound adaptation strategies for future temperature increases associated with greenhouse gas emissions using "analogue locations", both as learning- and technology-testing sites. This was meant to improve the ability of rainfed farmers in the semi-arid tropics of sub-Saharan Africa, in particular Kenya and Zimbabwe, to adapt to progressive climate change through crop, soil and water management innovation, and appropriate crop genotype choices. Another key feature of the CALESA project was the development and implementation of tailor-made capacity-building activities specifically designed to fulfil the needs of local scientists in the field of climate change adaptation and climate-smart agriculture. To achieve its objectives, the CALESA project used a combination of model-based ex ante analyses and iterative field-based research on station and in farmers' fields. This facilitated the evaluation of potential agricultural adaptation strategies for rainfed agriculture in the semi-arid and dry sub-humid tropics. In this line, four important crop production zones (two in Kenya and two in Zimbabwe) were identified. Subsequently, the corresponding 'spatial analogue locations' for each production zone, providing eight study locations in all, were identified. A strong element of participatory research with small-scale farmers ensured that the perceptions of current and future climate risk and their preferred climate change adaptation strategies was effectively taken into account. In addition, this also ensured that the project activities and outputs remained relevant to their needs and expectations. The main outputs of the CALESA project are as it follows. Firstly, the identification and fully characterisation of four important crop growing areas in Kenya and Zimbabwe which comprise cool/dry, cool/wet, warm/dry and warm/wet growing conditions, and their temperature analogue locations. Secondly, through the combined use of long-term daily climate data, crop growth simulation models and participatory surveys with farmers, the identification and quantification of the implications of both current and future climate change production risk at the study locations. Thirdly, through iterative field research both on station and in farmers' fields over more than 2 years, the evaluation of potential crop, soil and water management, and crop genotype adaptation options. This was followed by the formulation of adaptation strategies for the target locations. Finally, through the overall implementation of the project activities, the institutional capacity in understanding climate change impacts and the development of effective adaptation responses in Kenya and Zimbabwe was fostered.Climate change is expected to be one of the major threats to sustained economic growth leading to extended poverty in semi-arid regions of sub Saharan Africa (SSA). The areas of highest vulnerability are the health sector, food production, biodiversity, water resources, and rangelands. Climate change will likely create increasingly high temperatures and dry conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years, especially along large parts of Eurasia, Africa and Australia. Many of the world's most densely populated regions will be threatened with severe drought conditions. It will likely have a profound and negative impact on livelihoods of many rural and urban communities, which could lead to changes in land use. It is estimated that the Eastern regions of Africa will experience reduced average rainfall (although some areas may experience increased average rainfall) exposing agriculture to drought stress and a rise in temperature. The situation will be worsened by the interaction of multiple stresses factors occurring at various levels, which will negatively impact agricultural productivity.The aim of this study is to assess the extent to which scientific information has been used to inform climate change adaptation policies, plans and strategies in Kenya; and also to assess the effectiveness of existing platforms for sharing climate change information in the country. Two major policy documents guiding climate change adaptation planning in Kenya, the National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS) and the National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP), were analysed for use of scientific information in their formulation through literature review; and interviewing policy makers using an open-ended questionnaire to determine the extent to which they accessed and applied scientific-based evidence of climate change impacts in development planning. Both documents, the NCCRS and NCCAP, made fairly good use of evidence contained in technical reports, especially the UNFCC, World Bank and FAO reports. However, they made very minimal, less than 20 %, reference to the hard scientific facts offered by journals, books and workshop proceedings. Similarly, only about 6 % of the respondents used the climate change information to develop mitigation and adaptation plans, training curricula, and Research and Development programs. The rest, over 76 %, rarely used it for planning purposes. This could be attributed to limited knowledge of appropriate methodology to distil relevant decision-relevant information from the spectrum of available information on climate change projections, availability of the information in user-unfriendly formats, and lack of information sharing protocols. There is need to reverse this trend. Most respondents (42 %) preferred the agricultural extension system in delivering climate change information. This was followed by stakeholders meetings with 29 % of the respondents' preference, conferences and workshops with 5 %, media (4 %), and climate change networks and internet with less than 1 % each. However, the national agricultural system is severely constrained by staff and facilities, and is therefore very limited in its reach. There is therefore need to strengthen it and also take full advantage of recent advances in ICT if the war against climate change is to be won. Meanwhile, majority of the respondents (50 %) were ignorant of the existence of any climate change databases. But about 17 % of the respondents were aware of and accessed databases hosted by Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and other international research centres. Another 10 % of the respondents relied on databases managed by donor agencies whilst about 8 % of the respondents each accessed databases established by Government Departments and National Agricultural Research Institutions (NARIs). Finally, about 7 % of the respondents relied solely on the FAO-based databases. The preference by respondents for databases managed by CGIAR centres may be attributed to the richness and accessibility of these databases due to very active participation of these centres in climate change research. There is need to enrich NARIs databases and those of Government Departments and make them more accessible to enhance sharing and application of climate change information by policy makers and other stakeholders.Given that climate change and variability have become one of the greatest threats to food security and livelihoods, a baseline study and some literature synthesis were conducted to understand the current situation of CC scenarios in Kenya. The study sought to determine the current status of CC projects that have been undertaken in Kenya in the past five years. Major CC themes and sensitive productive sectors to CC were conceptualized in which the study was based. The baseline survey targeted key informants in academic, research and policy arenas. It was observed that adaptation, mitigation and capacity building accounted for 60, 17 and 23 % of the projects sampled. Agricultural sector (crops) accounted for most of CC projects, accounting for 36 % as well as 40 % of all projects on adaptation. Agriculture, livestock and environment sectors accounted for 30 % each of the mitigation projects. It is established that most projects undertaken in Kenya on CC arena have been on adaptation, capacity building and mitigation. CC projects undertaken in Kenya were in agriculture and livestock sectors. Although considerable efforts appear to have been put in adaptation to CC, more needs to be done, especially in agriculture and water sectors, which are important in Kenya's economy.Drier parts of Embu County, Eastern Kenya, endure persistent crop failure and declining agricultural productivity which have been attributed, in part, to prolonged dry-spells and erratic rainfall. Nonetheless, understanding spatial-temporal variability of rainfall especially at seasonal level, is an imperative facet to rain-fed agricultural productivity and natural resource management (NRM). This study evaluated the extent of seasonal rainfall variability and the drought characteristics as the first step of combating declining agricultural productivity in the region. Cumulative Departure Index (CDI), Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) and Coefficients-of-Variance (CV) and probabilistic statistics were utilized in the analyses of rainfall variability. Analyses showed 90 % chance of below cropping-threshold rainfall (500 mm) exceeding 213.5 mm (Machanga) and 258.1 mm (Embu) during SRs for one year return-period. Rainfall variability was found to be high in seasonal amounts (CV = 0.56 and 0.38) and in number of rainy-days (CV = 0.88 and 0.27) at Machang'a and Embu, respectively. Monthly rainfall variability was found to be equally high even during April (peak) and November (CV = 0.42 and 0.48 and 0.76 and 0.43) with high probabilities (0.40 and 0.67) of droughts exceeding 15 days in Embu and Machang'a, respectively. Dry-spell probabilities within growing months were high (81 %) and (60 %) in Machang'a and Embu respectively. To optimize yield in the area, use of soil-water conservation and supplementary irrigation, crop selection and timely accurate rainfall forecasting should be prioritized.The objective of the current study is to address the possible potential impacts of climate change and variability on agricultural crops and water resources in Pennar river basin, of Southern India. As part of the study Integrated Modelling Assessment (IMS) was developed by establishing functional links between hydrological model Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), agricultural crop simulation model Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) and regional climate model Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS). Database pertaining to climatic parameters, hydrological and agro-meteorological inputs to run integrated assessment systems are synthesized to run the model for study area. The model in general aim at major driver of this study is HadRM3 (Hadley Centre third generation regional climate model)-The Hadley Center Regional Climate Models resolution, which is 0.44 degrees x 0.44 degrees (approx. 50 km cell-size) on ground covering an average size of typical Indian districts/sub-basins. For regional levels the results are obtained by aggregating from the sub-basin/district level. The assessment will include the following components: (1) Baseline climatology, (2) Under global warning HadRM3 derived climate change scenarios, (3) Water Resources (Hydrological) analysis including irrigation water, and (4) agro-meteorological analysis including soil-water regime, plant growth and cropping pattern. Overall in Pennar region results revealed that the mean annual flows in the river system would increase by 8 % in A2 and 4 % in B2 whereas, increase in evapotranspiration losses were found to be about 10 % in A2 and 12 % in B2. Impacts on crop yields is the combined effect of increased surface temperatures, decreased rainfall and higher ambient atmospheric CO2. Three rain-fed crops (Groundnut, Sorghum, Sunflower) show decreased yields under A2, whereas B2 seemed to be relatively better than A2. The decrease is significant for groundnut (-38 % for A2 and -20 % for B2), but compared to groundnut impact were less detrimental for other two rain-fed crops (Sorghum and Sunflower). Rice being an irrigated crop in the region showed decrease in yield by -15 and -7 % for A2 and B2 scenarios respectively. Negative simulated crop yields in the region are predominantly due to increased surface temperatures in the future climate change scenarios.Climate analogues, based on 30 years meteorological data, were identified in smallholder areas of Zimbabwe. The sites were Kadoma (722 mm annual mean rainfall; 21.8 degrees C annual mean temperature) which was the higher temperature analogue site for Mazowe (842 mm annual mean rainfall; 18.2 degrees C annual mean temperature) for wetter areas, and Chiredzi (541 mm annual mean rainfall; 21.3 degrees C annual mean temperature) which was the higher temperature analogue site for Matobo (567 mm annual mean rainfall: 18.4 degrees C annual mean temperature) for drier areas. At each site and for each crop, three varieties were laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The trials were conducted for two seasons (2011/2012 and 2012/2013). Maize and groundnut yields were higher at the cooler and wet sites and decreased significantly at the warmer and dry sites. In case of sorghum and cowpea, yields at the hotter site remained high implying that these crops are more tolerant to warmer temperatures predicted for 2050. At the drier sites, yields for all crops were significantly lower at the hotter site implying that crop production in the 2050s climate of the cooler site will be more difficult. The hypothesis that with increasing surface temperatures in a climate change scenario short duration genotypes can perform better compared with long duration was not confirmed.Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of maize, sorghum, common bean and pigeon pea varieties under different water management in a cool and wet region of Central Kenya, as a part of the studies at analogue sites. The first experiment evaluated the growth and performance of three varieties (early maturing: EM, medium maturing: MM and late maturing: LM) of maize (Zea mays L), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.), pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) and common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). The second experiment evaluated maize and sorghum response to water conservation and three fertiliser rates (0, 20 and 40 kg N/ha). The third experiment assessed the effect of water conservation measures on crop yields of common bean and pigeon pea grown under three plant densities (low, medium and high). Tied ridge tillage was used as the water conservation measure and disc plough as the control in the second and third experiments. Maize, sorghum, pigeon pea and common bean took more than 180, 245, 217 and 95 days respectively, to reach physiological maturity. The MM maize variety (DK8031), EM pigeon pea variety (ICPL 84091) and LM common bean variety (GLP 24) yielded the greatest grain of 4,938, 881 and 620 kg/ha respectively, among the respective crop varieties. The sorghum varieties were attacked by fungal and rust diseases leading to yield losses in all seasons. Soil water conservation in general did not have a significant effect on crop yield though there were yield improvements. In the plant density trial, the medium plant densities of pigeon pea (33,333 pl/ha) and common bean (148,148 pl/ha) resulted in the greatest grain yields. The highest grain yield of maize (4,184 kg/ha) and sorghum (47 kg/ha) was obtained in plots with 20 kg/ha of nitrogen fertilizer. Based on the results of this study, pigeon pea and common bean can be introduced in the farming systems to improve crop diversity. The production of the tested sorghum varieties should be discouraged in this region because they are prone to fungal and rust diseases due to the cold and wet weather conditions.Climate analogues can be used to assess climate-induced risks and adaptation options for smallholder farmers. Surveys were carried out in smallholder areas at two 2050s climate analogue sites to assess smallholder climate-induced risks, farmers' perceptions, and adaptation options, with a gender perspective. Pairs of sites selected had similar annual rainfall totals but differed in mean annual temperature by 2-4 degrees C. For drier areas Chiredzi was hypothesised to represent Matobo, and for wetter areas Kadoma was hypothesized to represent Mazowe/Goromonzi 2050s climates. Differences in crop management strategies and gender issues vary across sites. At the drier analogue pair, higher proportions of households grew small grains in Chiredzi compared to Matobo. Implications are for increased uptake of small grains, in 2050s climates for Matobo farmers. Gender issues include labour for production and processing of the small grains, against a background of male labour migration. For wetter climates, soil and water management strategies are important options for smallholders. Accesses to draft power, labour, agricultural assets, social and financial capital in differently managed households are important for increasing adoption of effective crop management strategies.This paper presents the results from a study conducted to examine adaptation measures initiated by farmers in response to variability and changes in climate and develop a model for climate change adaptation. Drop in rainy days and amount of rainfall concomitant with raise in daily temperature after the year 2000 has been acknowledged widely by farmers. This is corroborated by the actual rainfall and temperatures recorded in the local meteorological observatory. These factors exacerbated groundwater extraction for irrigation and domestic needs. In order to cope with the predicament, farmers shifted to late sowing varieties, dairying and adopted soil and water conservation measures such as farm ponds, ridges and dead-furrows and mulching. Those using conventional irrigation, shifted to drip irrigation, cultivating horticulture crops. Case study of a vulnerable woman farmers indicated that by participating in the groundwater market, the farmer purchased groundwater to cultivate vegetables and keeping three local cows which provided them with steady flow of income from milk. Thus, coping mechanisms were to sustain incomes and resilient due to climate change crisis. To create awareness and understanding of climate change and the challenges for social scientists an integrated model has been proposed by using synergies from program development, program delivery and program impact.The salient results of in situ soil water conservation technologies that have been extensively tested and found suitable for increasing soil moisture for increased land productivity in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) of eastern Kenya are reviewed in this paper. The technologies reviewed are fanya juu terraces, contour bunds, negarims, trapezoidal bunds, on-farm micro-catchments, Zai pits, tumbukiza, tied ridges, deep tillage and sub-soiling and ripping. These technologies hold rainwater on the soil surface thereby allowing it more infiltration time leading to enhanced soil moisture status, which would not be attained in the absence of these interventions. Zai pits, tumbukiza and deep tillage when used together with soil fertility improvement can increase crop yields by 4-10 times when compared to other similar fields cultivated conventionally. When tied-ridging tillage is used together with fertilizer, manure or their combination it can increase crop yields by 100-300 %. Sub-soiling and ripping increases crop yields by 50-100 % when used together with soil fertility improvement. Micro-catchment technology at 1: 1 and 2: 1 catchment to cultivated land ratio can increase crop yields, but is not practised due to land limitation. Use of fertilizers and or manures with in situ soil moisture conservation leads to improved water use efficiency by crops planted in the semi-arid eastern Kenya. It is, therefore, proposed that in situ rainwater conservation technologies should be an integral part of the farming systems for increased soil moisture conservation, crop production and food security in the semi-arid Eastern Kenya.Two studies were conducted during the long rains of 2010 and 2011 and short rains of 2011 and 2012 to evaluate the performance of drought tolerant maize varieties under different water harvesting technologies (zai pits, tied ridges and conventional). The treatments were laid out in a split plot design with water harvesting methods as the main plots and maize varieties as the sub-plots. Four maize varieties (DK8031, DUMA 43, KDV1 and PH4) were evaluated under the three water harvesting technologies for the first experiment. For the second experiment, four maize plant population treatments of 3, 5, 7 and 9 plants per pit were used. Maize variety DUMA 43 was used alongside the four plant populations. The results for both experiments indicated that the maize yields in zai pits and tied ridges treatments were significantly (P < 0.05) higher than conventional treatment and the population of 5 plants per pit had significantly (P < 0.05) higher grain yield than the rest of treatments.Scenario analysis using data generated from APSIM model was conducted to investigate the effect of soil and water conservation practices (tied ridges and mulching) on grain yield of improved maize varieties (Katumani and Makueni) generated with and without N fertilizers under below normal (<250 mm), normal (>= 250 <350 mm) and above normal seasons (>= 350 mm) in two sites, Katumani and Makindu in Machakos and Makueni counties Eastern Kenya. Results indicate that the yields were significant (<0.01) under the different seasons and treatments with the magnitude of the yields response varied. Highest yields in Katumani (3,370 kg/ha) were obtained during below normal seasons and when both fertilizer and tied ridges were used. In Makindu, however, under all treatments, highest yields were obtained during above normal seasons with 3,708 kg/ha yield when 40 kg N/ha fertilizer was applied. Lowest yields on the other hand, were obtained during normal seasons in both sites with 507 kg/ha in Katumani and 552 kg/ha under tied ridges and mulching + fertilizers in Makindu. Compared with farmers practice (control), the yield increment obtained was 4 kg/ha (0.6 %) and 5 kg/ha (0.7 %) in Katumani; 32 kg/ha (4.6 %) and 33 kg/ha (4.7 %) in Makindu under mulching and tied ridges respectively during below normal seasons otherwise the yield decreased during normal and above normal seasons with up to 19 % in Makindu when tied ridges was practised. Fertilization increased the yields of maize by as high as 2,552 kg/ha (433 %) and 2,319 kg/ha (166 %) in Katumani and Makindu respectively during above normal seasons. However, during normal seasons, there was yield decrease in Makindu by 42 %. When both fertilization and soil and water conservation practices was done, yield increase was 2,335 kg/ha (456 %) and 2,382 kg/ha (465 %) in Katumani during normal seasons under mulching +40 kg N/ha and tied ridges +40 kg N/ha respectively. In Makindu, yields declined during normal seasons, however, increase was by 2,229 kg/ha (160 %) and 2,108 kg/ha (152 %) during above normal seasons under mulching +40 kg N/ha and tied ridges +40 kg N/ha respectively. The results indicate that the use of fertilizers and soil and water conservation are indispensable for ensuring food security in semi-arids where rainfall is very variable.A study was carried out to understand the adoption levels of water conservation practices in Meru County. The influence of water resource accessibility on adoption of water conservation (WC) practices and constraints were assessed. Tree planting, roof catchment and bench terraces were the major WC practices in use. Multiple regression analysis revealed that lack of technical know how could explain 83.5 % variations of adoption level of WC practices. One sample t-test comparing the means of WC practices among respondents' was significant at P < 0.01. Spearman's rank test revealed a decreasing trend during the long rains (March-May) for the period 1986-2008 at P < 0.05. The disparity between the levels of adoption among water users coupled with the decreasing seasonal rainfall calls for urgent and better management of water resources in the study area.Inorganic fertilizers have become extremely important in correcting declining soil fertility in seed potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) production in Kenya. Unreliable rainfall has also limited seed production. Knowledge on water and nutrient use efficiencies in potato grown under different irrigation regimes with different nitrogen and phosphorus levels will help predict the best application rates for optimal seed potato production and yield. A study was conducted at Egerton University, Horticultural Research and Teaching Farm to determine the effect of integrated application of irrigation water, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) use efficiencies of water, N and P. In a split-split plot design, the irrigation water was applied to maintain soil water at 40, 65 and 100 % field capacity in the main plots, N (0, 75, 112.5 and 150 kg N/ha) to subplots and P (0, 115, 172.5 and 230 kg P2O5/ha), which translated into 0, 50.6, 75.9, 101.2 kg P/ha) to sub-subplots, with each treatment replicated three times and the trial repeated once. The irrigation water was applied throughout the potato growth period through drip tube lines, with N supplied as urea (46% N) in two splits, and P as triple superphosphate (46 % P2O5) at planting time. Data on seed potato yield was collected from each treatment at harvest and used to calculate water, N and P use efficiencies. High irrigation water at 100 % compared to 65 and 40 % rate resulted in relatively high N and P use efficiencies, but decreased water use efficiency. Application of intermediate to high N and P nutrient increased the water, N and P use efficiencies. It is recommended to apply low to intermediate irrigation water, intermediate to high N and P to increase their use efficiencies during seed potato production.Potential for promoting sorghum crop as a climate change adaptation strategy for rain-fed agriculture in Embu County, Kenya was evaluated using farmer perceptions and scientific methods. Three hundred and sixty six smallholder farmers participated in the evaluation. The treatments which were overall rated as 'good' are tied ridges with a mean score of 2.9 and mean rank (2,873.87). Under this treatment sorghum grain yield of 3.7 t ha(-1) was recorded with application of 40 kg P ha(-1) + 20 kg N ha(-1) + Manure 2.5 t ha(-1). This was closely followed by tied ridges and contour furrows overall rated 'good' best three under the same soil fertility management options with a mean score ranging from 2.65 to 2.8 and yielding 2.7-3.7 t ha(-1). However, the treatments which were rated as 'poor' were experiment controls with a mean score below (1.43), mean rank (1,101.24) and yielding as low as (0.7 t ha(-1)). Therefore, integration of organic and inorganic inputs under various water harvesting technologies could be considered as an alternative option towards food security under climate change for semi-arid areas of Embu County.Evaluation of six maize varieties under four different water harvesting and tillage technologies was undertaken with the aim of determining their effect on the performance of maize genotypes and their effectiveness in improving nutrient and water use efficiency. The work was carried out at Mariakani site (one of the KARI centres) representing the arid and semi-arid lands of coastal Kenya in the long rains and short rains seasons of 2005 and 2006 respectively. The results indicate that rainwater harvesting is not critical when the season is wetter than normal in the arid and semi-arid environments. This was demonstrated by the high yields that were recorded from the maize varieties (Pwani Hybrid 4-PH4, Coast Composite Maize-CCM and the local check-Mdzihana) which usually require relatively high rainfall amounts in order for them to produce better yields. Despite the excellent performance of PH4, CCM and Mdzihana, these maize varieties cannot be recommended for the semi-arid areas since the high yields were realized under above normal rainfall. There is need for further research to identify the maize varieties that would be appropriate for the areas that normally receive low rainfall.Tomato growing is an adaptation strategy to rainfall variability and droughts that frequently result into loss of the maize crop during the rainy season. This study assesses yield performances of tomato genotypes under elevated dry season air temperatures in semi-arid environments as a climate change adaptive practice. Tomato is mostly grown in June through August months. The dry season is characterized by maximum daily temperatures (34.2 degrees C), low night temperatures (14.8 degrees C) and monthly evaporation of 168.2-226.6 mm between July and October. The atmospheric humidity is between 46 and 52 % in the same period. Highly significant yield at (P = 0.01) differences were found between the tested genotypes; Oxyl, Tanya Mkulima and Tengeru. Tomato planted in the month of August gave very low yields compared to the June planted crop. Low tomato yields were recorded on smallholders' farms. Infestation by red spider mites (Tetranychus evansi) increased with increasing temperatures and reduced irrigation. Application of NPK with secondary nutrients Ca, Mg, S, and Zn improved tomato yield under elevated air temperatures.Farmers in Mukuyuni can easily adopt drought mitigating technologies like cassava and sweetpotato. They are mainly propagated through stem cuttings or vines to produce starchy tuberous roots, which would provide the much needed carbohydrates if promoted properly. The results showed that about 90 % of the farmers put between 0.125 and 0.25 acres under cassava cultivation. The number of years under cassava and sweetpotato production ranged between 1 and 20 years with only a few farmers indicating to have been growing cassava for a period above 20 years. The majority of farmers were growing local cultivars of the two crops. The main method of utilizing cassava was boiling and eating as a snack (45 %). Over 77.8 % of the respondents indicated the origin of their cassava and sweetpotato cultivars as other farmers. The main method of utilizing sweetpotato was boiling and eating as a snack (56.3 %). About 3.1% of the farmers mixed sweetpotato with beans and maize and consumed it as a stew while another 3.1 % have not utilized sweetpotato at all. Only 3.1 % fed sweetpotato to livestock. The rest, 28.1 % sold sweetpotato in the local market. This study established that there is a lot of room for commercializing cassava and sweetpotato production in Mukuyuni Division Makueni County through processing and promoting their utilization as a meal.The study established that climate change is real and has negatively affected smallholder farmer families in Mutomo and as such it was prudent to introduce drought tolerant crops like cassava in order to improve food security as a climate change adaptation technology. It was evident that the elite cassava varieties from KARI were supplying the much needed carbohydrates in an affordable form. The assessment also established water scarcity is a major development-limiting factor in Mutomo that needed urgent attention. The Mutomo community had shed "Mwolyo" the hand-out mentality through adoption of appropriate technologies for this place like growing, processing, marketing, and consumption of cassava. Cassava roots were mainly marketed as fresh roots for chewing and boiling. Cassava cuttings and cakes on sale in the Mutomo market suggested that demand for cassava was rising and only need upscaling. Being dominated by agro-pastoralists, it was obvious that cassava and other crops that take more than four months before being harvested do not fit well into the system and this is an area that has to be addressed to pre-empt potential conflicts.The cultivation of peaches in regions of subtropical and tropical climate is currently achieved through a set of practices such as using less demanding cultivars in cold conditions, applying plant growth regulators to break dormancy, and performing specific pruning, like production and renewal pruning. Research on the climate adaptation of cultivars is of great importance in establishing a crop in a given region. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the agronomic performance of three cultivars subjected to different production pruning times in Botucatu/SP, where 2-year old peach trees were evaluated, grown at a spacing of 6.0 x 4.0 meters. The experimental design was a split plot design with four blocks, using the cultivars Douradao, BRS Kampai and BRS Rubimel, and the subplots corresponded to pruning times in May, June, July and August. Ten plants were used per plot, with the four central plants considered useful and the remaining considered as margins. Pruning in June and July showed the best results in terms of percentage of fruit set and production. The cultivar BRS Rubimel showed the best percentage of fruit set when pruned in June (44.96%), and best fruit production when pruned in July (18.7 kg plant(-1)). Pruning in May anticipated the harvest of cultivar BRS Rubimel by 13 days whereas pruning carried out in July and August provided late harvests for cultivars Douradao and BRS Kampai.Genetic stability of mutant cultivars is menaced if imported from far geographic locations. Different cultivars have different degrees of climate adaptation that is influenced by genetic variation. Some mutant cultivars lose their characteristics during adaptation trials in new climate. To assess probable genetic regression of fruit traits in apple mutants, 'Gala schniga' and 'Fuji kiku 8', pomology of fruit samples was studied for physical, biochemical characteristics and the sensorial analyzes were compared with main mother cultivars 'Gala' and 'Fuji'. The samples were evaluated in the Post-Harvest Laboratory of Horticulture Research Department of SPII. The plants were compared also for fruit set percent based on more biological growth stages. Field investigations were made on morphologies and growth traits in a new geographical condition, Karaj-Iran, characterized by semi-arid climate, high solar radiation and low relative humidity, so different climatic conditions from origin points of the mutants and or the main cultivars that could affect genetic stability of the mutants in particular. The results showed that fruit weight and diameter, eye and stalk cavity width, stalk length and diameter, flesh firmness, total soluble solids (TSS) and pH prevailed in the new mutants related to the mother cultivars, while the mutants presented minor values for fruit diameter, fruit weigh and titrable acidity (TA). Although chlorophyll content, leaf width and length, internode number, lenticels number and diameter of annual shoots resulted higher in the mother cultivars, high rates of sensorial analyzes were achieved for the important features of aroma, sweetness, juiciness, flesh firmness, peel thickness, flesh color and total acceptance in both 'Fuji kiku' and 'Gala schniga'.The assessment of the capacity for climate change adaptation (CCA) in Hubei province has been investigated to understand the level of existing capacity and identify future priorities. Five elements of capacity were investigated in this study: (1) Knowledge of vulnerability and adaptation; (2) technical competences; (3) financial resources; (4) policy and planning; (5) management and operations. The data were collected from interviews with informants among many fields such as agriculture, water resources and ecosystem. Results showed that the informants noticed adaptive capacity was restricted, especially in terms of financial resources, policy and planning, management and operations, and addressing these factors was ranked as the highest priority.This chapter will present some case studies of collaborative action research projects on adaptation to climate change, erosion and sea level rise in coastal communities in New Brunswick. Those communities are Bathurst/Bayshore, Shippagan, Le Goulet, Cocagne, Grand-Digue and Shediac. The projects mainly involved researchers from the university of Moncton, in collaboration with other establishments. Through the case studies presented here, it will be possible for the reader to get a better idea of how the adaptation process unfolds in the chosen approach of progresses through various stages of deliberation, risk evaluation, scientific analysis, public debate, prioritisation, legislation and implementation. It will be interesting to observe how this process differs from place to place and how often very different solutions emerge from the collective deliberation process as the ideal answer depending on the geographical, socio-economic, political or historical context.This chapter assesses the characteristics of current and future agricultural systems, land use, agricultural output, output price, cost of production, and farm and household size in response to climate change. This analysis also compared both current and projected future climate (2030), with and without adaptation, and for different socioeconomic scenarios (Representative Agricultural Pathways, RAPs) in two study areas in Kenya. A new approach to impact assessment, the Tradeoff Analysis Model for Multi-Dimensional Impact Assessment (TOA-MD) was adopted for this analysis, which simulated technology adoption and associated economic, environmental and social outcomes in a heterogeneous farm population for a regional impact assessment. These case studies yield new insights into the way that adaptation strategies could improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers operating in the mixed crop-livestock systems in East Africa.The multi-functional flood defences are one of the many solutions proposed for climate adaptation in deltaic areas. Similar concepts flood management structures such as Delta-dikes, un-breachable dikes or super-levees can also be found in literature. Yet all of them have two key design requirements in common. The first one is to improve their reliability given the uncertainty in future projections of water level change. The second one is the optimization of their dimensions in order to make them safe enough. In the case of the Netherlands, the failure mechanism of piping is one of the main concerns of the designers and flood risk managers. The large uncertainties that come from the heterogeneity of the soil properties are coped by moving towards a more complete probabilistic design. However correlation between input parameters is one of the sources of uncertainty that must be solved. In the present study, the effect of possible correlation between grain size and hydraulic conductivity is investigated. A straight forward approach is implemented by the inclusion of joint bivariate distributions generated from copulas. This random sampling method allows to induce not only the degree of correlation of two variables but their different tail dependence behavior as well. The generated random samples are propagated with a Monte Carlo algorithm using the piping Sellmeijer limit state function in order to estimate the reliability of the analyzed flood defence. The present study showed that correlation has an important effect in the design of this kind of structures which is even more severe when implemented according to the actual Dutch legislation. Therefore a robust soil investigation can be more cost effective than the actual over dimensioning of the structures.It is expected that climate change will affect important natural inland waterways in Europe, among others, the Rhine River. Inland waterway transport is one of the main economic activities developed in the Rhine, and the effects of climate change on this activity are of great concern for skippers, the industry and policy-makers. This paper aims to identify whether longer and more frequent dry periods projected in the Rhine River will turn into a physical limitation that prevent inland waterway transport companies from guaranteeing reliable transportation to their customers, and - if so - when such a situation might take place. Based on the adaptation turning point approach, we propose a four step method to identify critical time periods for future climate change adaptation. According to our results, the inland waterway transport sector will start facing insurmountable problems associated with low water levels within the time span 2081-2095. The adaptation turning point approach provides analysts with a dynamic appraisal method that allows options to be ranked with timing of period of effectiveness and the time span needed for implementation as criteria. This increases flexibility of planning and allows for uncertainty about changing future conditions.Due to the long term character of the policy issue, the associated uncertainties and the large variety of affected stakeholders, adapting densely populated delta areas to the impacts of climate change is an important governance challenge and a wicked problem. In this paper, we analyse adaptive delta management (ADM), a policy development approach that relies on adaptation tipping points and adaptation pathways, used by the Dutch Delta Programme to climate proof the Dutch delta. ADM operationalizes adaptive management ideas for the long term governance of river deltas. Taking a governance perspective, we assess the potential of ADM to contribute to each of the five governance capabilities required to deal with wicked problems: reflexivity, responsiveness, resilience, revitalization and rescaling. We conclude that ADM can contribute substantially to the governance capabilities of resilience (through robustness and flexibility) and rescaling (through addressing the time scale mismatch). ADM has the potential to contribute to the governance capabilities of reflexivity and responsiveness, but also has some characteristics that could result in non-reflexivity and non-responsiveness. Enabling ADM as a policy development approach for long term issues requires a long term commitment to iterative policy revision, flexibility and learning in the broader governance system.Research was conducted to identify the influences on change decisions in Victorian irrigated dairy farms. This qualitative research included the development of a conceptual model that draws on farm control, value chain, image theory and path dependence. An important finding was the influence that the family and personal domains of the farmer could have over farm decisions, even when the issue at hand did not relate to the farm (such as when a farmer directs limited family resources to a child's school fees rather than a farm development plan). this finding has relevance to the way extension, research and development and policy should seek to influence farm change decisions. Key Learning: The family and personal domains of the farmer can influence the capacity of the farmer to make changes to the farm, even where the family or personal issues are not related directly to the farm.Climate change will affect all aspects of hydrological cycle. Frequent and severe flood, cyclone and drought are already apparent in all over the world. Climate change impact on natural disasters and agricultural system are the most critical, since these two aspects are intimately associated with life, livelihood and food security of both rural and urban community. Frequent climate induced disasters, like floods, cyclone, storm surges, disruption of agricultural system and shortage of food for growing population would have decisive impact on human health. Bangladesh, which is one of the most vulnerable countries due to climate change, suffers from floods almost every year. However, 70 % of its population depends on agriculture and lives at the risk of flood. Food security and health of this large segment of population are critical issues of development in present climate change context. To face these critical issues climate change, flood, food security and human health are the four associated vital issues that should be dealt together. This paper is an approach to address these four issues with an interconnected dimension. It would help to formulate comprehensive policy strategies and leading action plans for climate change adaptation.Globally, food security problem is identified that there is enough food in the world, but the distribution is deficient. Food security is not only about having enough production; it is also about having an equal chance of access to food for all. The problem is similar in case of Bangladesh. Food security is hindered by various climatic and anthropogenic causes. Taking account these issues, this chapter attempts to incorporate climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the field of food security. It further gives its focus on sustainable food security; therefore, it describes the concept, strategies and priority action areas of sustainable food security. In conclusion, it provides an integrated approach to sustain food security that not only secure the food for populations but also build resilience towards disaster and climate change risk.From the French National Adaptation to Climate Change Plan, the "Drias, les futurs du climat" service has been developed to provide easy access to French regional climate projections. This is a major step for the implementation of French Climate Services. The usefulness of this service for the end-users and decision makers involved with adaptation planning at a local scale is investigated. As such, the VIADUC project is: to evaluate and enhance Drias, as well as to imagine future development in support of adaptation. Climate scientists work together with end-users and a service designer. The designer's role is to propose an innovative approach based on the interaction between scientists and citizens. The chosen end-users are three Natural Regional Parks located in the South West of France. The latter parks are administrative entities which gather municipalities having a common natural and cultural heritage. They are also rural areas in which specific economic activities take place, and therefore are concerned and involved in both protecting their environment and setting-up sustainable economic development. The first year of the project has been dedicated to investigation including the questioning of relevant representatives. Three key local economic sectors have been selected: i.e. forestry, pastoral farming and building activities. Working groups were composed of technicians, administrative and maintenance staff, policy makers and climate researchers. The sectors' needs for climate information have been assessed. The lessons learned led to actions which are presented hereinafter.The floods of the past decade were caused by multiple factors represented natural climatic conditions that generated large amounts of precipitation, storms, imbalances evident in the general nature of each season separately. Floods as natural phenomenon, can be enhanced as a result of environmental deterioration, alteration water collection systems by urbanization, poor agricultural practices, deforestation unprecedented. Floods have become increasingly common, it was found that they had an impact on life and health, the relief, with implicit economic losses. European and international legislation contain a lot of involving climate causes an increase in levels or flows of water than normal. As noted, the rains and snows have fallen in the last decade were actually large amounts of rainfall in a very short time. At the same time, the infiltration capacity of the soil was completely overcome, as the carrying capacity of the minor beds. As a result, water discharges occurred in flood plains with flood production. Fall rains and snowmelt represents another factor of floods in temperate and cold zones. Rapid snow melting process due to sudden rise in temperature generates these vast amounts of water. Massive and aggressive deforestation led to the destruction of several links of fluid circuit and hence there was a water leak on the slopes energetic. Hydraulic structures imposed by increased energy needs in recent years, have been made without a thorough knowledge of the causes that can lead these maximum flows of water, which have produced some of the greatest human and material damage. The management of flood risks is an important component of climate change adaptation. By 2015 flood risk management plans must be drawn up for these zones. These plans are to include measures to reduce the probability of flooding and its potential consequences. Flood management strategy implies the existence of an important framework document, which is required for: knowledge of flood risk; monitoring of flood; informing people; consideration of flood risk in all activities of landscaping; preventive measures; for proper preparation and emergency situations; reconstruction and learning from previous experience. Strategy is the starting point for central and local government in the implementation and application of specific measures of flood protection and regional development.Environmental law scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have wrestled for some time with the implications of climate change for environmental law. There is widespread, although not universal, agreement that climate change requires greater flexibility in environmental legal systems. Flexibility reduced procedural requirements for administrative agency decision making and less rigid substantive standards would allow the agencies that implement environmental law to adapt to a future world characterized by dynamic, uncertain changes in natural resource systems. According to its proponents, flexibility would make it easier for agencies to more frequently update their management or regulatory decisions to respond to changed conditions, and also to facilitate adaptive management. However, there has been little exploration of the conditions under which flexibility improves or undermines the effectiveness of environmental law. This Article examines two areas of environmental law that have historically had a great deal of flexibility: hunting law and marine fisheries law. In both areas, management and regulatory decisions are updated on a regular basis by the relevant agencies, often annually. Procedural requirements for making decisions are often streamlined. And the substantive standards that apply to agency decisions are often quite broad and flexible, leaving substantial discretion to the agency. Yet these two areas of environmental law have experienced very different outcomes in terms of implementation: fisheries management in the United States is often perceived as failing, while hunting law is seen as quite successful in achieving its goals. This Article concludes that these different outcomes are the result of the interaction of legal flexibility with two other factors: the level of uncertainty about the condition or status of the natural resource being managed and the political context for regulatory or management decisions. Fisheries management is characterized by much greater levels of uncertainty about population levels than hunting management. Moreover, fisheries are the one area in the U.S. economy where there is still a substantial commercial industry based on the capture of wildlife for human use. The combination of scientific uncertainty and flexible law creates a substantial discretionary space in which decision makers can operate. In other words, decision makers have a wide range of legally defensible management choices. The fishing industry is able to exploit this fact to argue for weaker, but still legally defensible, regulation. The industry has every incentive to organize in pursuit of this goal. In contrast, commercial hunting was eliminated in the United States in the nineteenth century. Thus, there are no major interest groups with a stake in increasing hunting quotas, and therefore there is no substantial effort to manipulate a flexible legal system to weaken regulatory standards. Whether flexibility will be successful in a regulatory or management system will depend in part on the scientific and political context for the resource being protected or managed Flexibility is not a panacea that can be applied uniformly throughout environmental law.As global climate mitigation actions increasingly appear to be unable to curb global emissions, there has been a corresponding increase in climate adaptation planning undertaken by governments and communities. Along with an increasing number of adaptation studies, there has been an increasing complexity of adaptation studies as practitioners attempt to plan the adaptation of whole communities, cities and in some cases nations. These studies are commonly underpinned by increasingly complex climate change vulnerability studies that also attempt to encompass concepts such as resilience and adaptive capacity. Owners and operators of infrastructure assets and networks also need to consider climate change. This need has been met by an increasing number of climate change risk and adaptation studies of major infrastructure. The approaches used for these assessments are commonly derived from assessments of whole communities and policy development studies, and apply terminology that is often inconsistent with established engineering asset management methods and approaches. As a result the uptake of these studies has been less than desirable in many cases. To this end, the work presented here proposes a set of principles for undertaking the assessment of climate changes impacts on assets and infrastructure.Monitoring severe weather, including wind shear and clear air turbulence, is important for aviation safety. To provide accurate information for nowcasts and very short-range forecasts up to an hour, a rapid-update prediction system has been developed, with a particular focus on lateral boundary adjustment (LBA) using the local ensemble transform Kalman filter (LETKF). Due to the small forecast domain, limited-area forecasts are dominated by the lateral boundary conditions from coarse-resolution global forecasts. To effectively extend the forecast lead time for the small domain, a new LBA scheme using the LETKF has been developed and assessed with three sea-breeze front cases. Observing system simulation experiments for high-resolution winds from a simulated Doppler lidar were performed with the Japan Meteorological Agency Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model at a horizontal resolution of 400 m and 15-minute update cycle. The results indicate that the LBA improved the forecast significantly. In particular, the 1-hour wind-speed forecast with the LBA is as accurate as the 15-minute forecast without the LBA. The assimilation of Doppler lidar high-resolution wind data with the LBA is a promising approach for very short-range forecasts up to an hour with a small domain, such as for aviation weather.An awareness of the ecological theory relating to the colonization, early successional stages and persistence of ruderal communities and their role within a matrix of other plant communities and plant types on green roofs provides an important basis for increased understanding of the long-term resilience of dynamic green roof vegetation assemblages. This chapter discusses the concept of the ruderal green roof, with its highly dynamic nature and inclusion of colonization, succession and change as core functioning elements. The theoretical background of a trait-based or functional type approach to working with green roof vegetation will be explored, and the wider role of 'ruderal' or disturbance-tolerant plant species in creating resilient and climate-adapted green roofs will be reviewed. Dynamic colonization processes have wide applications across typical extensive, semi-intensive and intensive green roof types where designers and users desire greater biodiversity, a more sustainable approach to long-term management, increased local distinctiveness, climate adaptation, and greater aesthetic and visual interest.Both in literature and in practice, it is claimed that joint knowledge production (JKP) by researchers, policy makers, and other societal actors is necessary to make science relevant for addressing climate adaptation. Although recent assessments of JKP projects have provided some arguments in favor of their societal merit, much less is known about their scientific merit. We explored the latter by developing a conceptual framework addressing characteristics of doing JKP as well as hypotheses on potential merits and pitfalls in terms of its process, output, and impact for science. Semistructured interviews with six environmental science research leaders as well as discussions with five researchers involved in past JKP projects were used to start operationalizing the framework into criteria and compiling a survey. This survey was filled out by 144 researchers involved in Knowledge for Climate, a large Dutch multiactor research program. The findings suggest that, at least in the context of recently carried out Dutch climate adaptation projects, JKP contributes to a broader empirical knowledge base; more reflexivity on the part of researchers; and more publications for policy makers. We conclude this paper by formulating next research steps, including evaluating what would be a proper balance between more versus less participatory forms of scientific knowledge production.Adaptation to climate change is a rapidly emerging policy domain. Over the last decade we have witnessed many attempts to enhance the climate robustness of agriculture, urban development, water systems, and nature to an increase in flood and drought risks due to a higher variability in rainfall patterns and sea level rise. In the vulnerable Dutch delta, regional authorities have developed adaptation measures that deal with flood risk, the availability of fresh water, subsidence, and salt water intrusion. In view of all the uncertainties that surround climate change, scientists emphasize that it should be possible to make changes when conditions change or insights evolve. The concept of adaptive governance has been introduced to facilitate the process of climate adaptation. Adaptive governance requires the availability of governance arrangements that facilitate adaptiveness by being flexible to enable adjustment. Although flexible arrangements for adaptation to climate change make sense from an adaptive governance perspective, from a more bureaucratic, political, and legal perspective, there might be good reasons to make arrangements as solid and robust as possible. In this article we answer the question to what extent the arrangements used to implement various adaptation measures are really adaptive and what mechanisms play a role in obstructing the accomplishment of adaptive arrangements. By analyzing and comparing nine adaptation cases, dealing with different climate issues, and the arrangements used to implement them from both a governance and a legal perspective, we are able to get more detailed insight into the main characteristics of the selected arrangements, their degree of adaptiveness, and the main hampering mechanisms for the creation or functioning of adaptive arrangements.Concerned decision makers increasingly pose questions as to whether current management practices are able to cope with climate change and increased climate variability. This signifies a shift in the framing of climate change from asking what its potential impacts are to asking whether it induces policy failure and unacceptable change. In this paper, we explore the background, feasibility, and consequences of this new framing. We focus on the specific situation in which a social-political threshold of concern is likely to be exceeded as a result of climate change, requiring consideration of alternative strategies. Action is imperative when such a situation is conceivable, and at this point climate change becomes particularly relevant to decision makers. We call this situation an "adaptation turning point." The assessment of adaptation turning points converts uncertainty surrounding the extent of a climate impact into a time range over which it is likely that specific thresholds will be exceeded. This can then be used to take adaptive action. Despite the difficulty in identifying adaptation turning points and the relative newness of the approach, experience so far suggests that the assessment generates a meaningful dialogue between stakeholders and scientists. Discussion revolves around the amount of change that is acceptable; how likely it is that unacceptable, or more favorable, conditions will be reached; and the adaptation pathways that need to be considered under these circumstances. Defining and renegotiating policy objectives under climate change are important topics in the governance of adaptation.The agriculture sector is one of the major areas much affected by the current climate change risk. The Higher Education Institution (HEIs) specifically the SUCs centers of excellence in agriculture plays significant role to limit or lessen the impacts of climate change by promoting leadership in developing effective climate change adaptation strategies and creating public awareness. This study was conducted to assess the level of integration of climate change adaptation (CCA) in teaching courses under the Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (BSA) curriculum; determine the extent of influence of individual, organizational, external factors in the integration; and develop strategies how to mainstream CCA in the BSA curriculum program. Descriptive research utilizing survey and key informants interview (KII) of the deans and administrators were used to gather necessary data. A total of 103 faculties and 8 college administrators including deans from the four selected university became the respondents. The overall perceived knowledge, student needs to mainstream CCA in BSA is high. Majority of the respondents agreed that climate change adaptation principle is reflected to their organization mission. Minimal level of (CCA) integration observed among the agricultural colleges CHED Centers of Excellence. There is minimum integration of CCA in fundamental agriculture courses offered under BSA curriculum across the participating SUC-CA. Since there are existing legal basis such as; RA 9512 or the National Environmental Awareness and Education Act of 2008, section (3) which focus integration of environmental education in school curricula at all levels, whether public or private. RA 9729 or Climate Change ACT 2010. The respondents of this study from participating SUC-CA centers of excellence in agriculture believed that the specific policy from CHED through a circular memorandum order CM mandating the SUC's to reexamine the existing BSA curriculum under CMO#14 and develop strategies on how CCA will be integrated /mainstream on the course program is effective approach in support to the result of this study.Climate monitoring in urban areas is important because climate change in densely populated areas has a strong influence on society. The rate of long-term temperature increase in high-latitude snowy urban areas is relatively large due to global warming and urban heat islands. However, the influence of snow cover on urban heat islands is unclear. The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of snow cover in urban canopy layer on winter heat islands using a mesoscale atmospheric model coupled with an urban canopy model. Numerical experiments indicate that snow cover in urban areas serves to decrease surface air temperature, with a stronger decrease in daily maximum temperatures (0.4-0.6 degrees C) than daily minimum temperatures (0.1-0.3 degrees C). The increase in surface albedo is primarily responsible for the decrease in net shortwave radiation and sensible heat flux. In addition, increased evaporation causes a weakened sensible heat flux. The estimated snow cover effect during the day is comparable with the typical magnitude of anthropogenic heat release. In urban canopy layer, snow cover on roofs plays a significant role in reducing surface air temperature. Snow clearing on roads tends to increase nocturnal surface air temperature, especially in suburban areas because decreased snow depth increases ground heat transfer. These results indicate that snow cover in urban canopy layer reduces surface air temperature, resulting in weakened urban heat islands.Both the public and policy-makers are concerned about the observed impacts and anticipated future consequences of climate change. Attention to adaptation focuses on reduction of climate change vulnerability and increase of adaptive capacity. In order to better understand the role of decision-making in urban forestry, this paper assesses the perceptions of urban forestry stakeholders towards climate change adaptation, in the city of Belgrade (Serbia), based on Q-method interviews. The views of respondents were clustered into three distinct perspectives: (a) 'Management-oriented perspective', (b) 'Sceptics', (c) 'General-awareness perspective'. Overall, a majority of interviewees (50%) are allocated to group (a), about a third to group (c), and only a minority (15%) to group (b). The sceptics' perspective holds the opinion that climate variations are normal and there is insufficient evidence to prove the existence of climate change. Representatives of the two other perspectives recognize climate change as a challenge, but adopt different opinions to communication and coordination of the adaptation process. While the 'Management-oriented perspective' is advocating for more bottom-up initiatives and improvement of dialogue between stakeholders, the 'General-awareness perspective' opine that climate change is an issue to be governed by the national level organizations. Through these three varied perspectives, the main factors for the current lack of responses to climate change adaptation and related needs in urban forestry are identified: lack of coordination and communication between stakeholders, lack of scale-relevant technical and scientific data, lack of specific regulations and financial means. To move forward, we recommend empowering various stakeholders, improving organizational relations and introducing various means of education and information-sharing mechanisms. (C) 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.This paper presents an overview of research that has recently been conducted on the northern Australian rangelands. The research has focussed on conceptualising and measuring the current capacity of cattle producers to adopt new strategies so as to better adapt to the impacts of climate change. The capacity to adapt is defined as comprising four essential elements: (i) managing risk and uncertainty, (ii) possessing strategic skill sets such as planning, experimenting, refining and learning, (iii) psychological and financial buffers, and (iv) an interest in change. However, there appears to be a lack of sufficient capacity currently existing within the industry to meet the challenges of the future: only 16% of producers are regarded to be sufficiently adaptive. Research also highlights that adaptive capacity can be enhanced, and here we highlight those factors that are known to influence adaptive capacity either positively or negatively. Producers with strong networks and trust in informal and formal connections, a strong locus of control, larger properties, a focus on profitability, and use technology, are more likely to persist within the industry through time. We propose that investing in the capacity of producers to better cope and adapt to change is a most logical approach to ensuring both the sustainability of the industry and of the rangelands. A range of strategies are proposed that may enhance adaptive capacity.Purpose - The number of poor and informal urban settlers in the world is rapidly growing, and they are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate. Therefore, understanding the nature and sustainability of locally adopted coping and adaptation strategies are key, yet still under-researched areas. Design/methodology/approach - Based on ethnographic research conducted in two poor, flood-prone municipalities in Pikine/Dakar, this paper identifies such coping and adaptation strategies and examines their prospects for maladaptation. Findings - The paper shows that poor urban dwellers are not mere passive spectators of climate change. With the very limited resources they have at their disposal, it is found that local actors respond to perennial flooding with very diverse strategies, which have varying degrees of success and sustainability. A key finding is that local coping and adaptation strategies are mainly maladaptive because they divert risks and impacts in time and space and have detrimental effects on the most vulnerable. Unless there is a broad assimilation of all groups in decision-making processes locally, individual and even collective coping and adaptation strategies may easily put the most vulnerable households at greater risk. The findings reveal that community-based adaptation is not a panacea per se, as it may not, by itself, compensate for the lack of basic services and infrastructure that is forcing the urban poor to cope with disproportionate levels of risk. Originality/value - The paper, hence, contributes to address a central question in scholarly debates on climate adaptation, vulnerability and disaster risk management: Are local coping strategies a stepping stone towards adaptation or are they on the contrary likely to lead to maladaptation?In fruit crop production, rainfall, water stress, temperature, and wind are key variables for success, and the present changes in rainfall patterns could affect the flowering and yield of the rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum L). Other fruit species like macopa (Syzygium samarangense), siniguelas (Spondias purpurea), and native santol or cotton fruit (Sandoricum koetjape) remain productive despite extreme climatic changes. This study assessed the influence of rainfall on rambutan yield and evaluated and selected tree genotypes of known drought-tolerant fruit species. Rambutan yield in a selected farm in Calauan, Laguna, Philippines, dropped remarkably from 152.2 kg/tree in 2008 to 8.6 kg/tree in 2009. This reduction could be attributed to the high rainfall in April 2009 at 334.4 mm, and possibly other environmental factors like temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, and strong wind. Furthermore, wet months in 2009 also inhibited the flowering of rambutan. However, a low yield obtained in 2010 at 45.5 kg/tree could be partly attributed to the very low rainfall in May 2010 at only 9.1 mm. On the other hand, in relation to changing climate, selection of tree genotypes for use as varieties in known drought-and flood-tolerant fruit species based on important fruit qualities like sweetness, juiciness, and high edible portion was done. Among 103 macopa genotypes, Mc-13, 43, and 91 were selected and the best (i.e., Mc-13) had sweet (7.15 degrees Brix) and crispy fruits weighing 49.44 g, creamy white (RHCC 155 A), and had high edible portion (EP, 93.22%). Among 114 siniguelas genotypes, Sg-41, 42 and 105 were selected and the best selection (i.e., Sg-41), had sweet (12.50 degrees Brix) and juicy fruit weighing 20.42 g, ruby red (RHCC 59 A), and had high EP (83.27%). Among 101 native santol genotypes, Sn-47, 59, and 74 were selected and the best selection (i.e., Sn-59) had relatively sweet (5.56 degrees Brix) and juicy fruits weighing 51.96 g, maize yellow (RHCC 21 B), and had high EP (82.20%). These selections are recommended for planting in marginal and drought-prone areas for climate change adaptation. In addition, they can fare better in flooded areas in the face of climate change since they are very hardy, and have woody and strong roots that can resist strong wind and increasing amount of rainfall brought about by climate change.We investigated the seasonal variation of snow cover at different altitudes using station data, satellite data, and a high-resolution numerical model around the Japan's Northern Alps during three winters (2011/12, 2012/13, and 2013/14). The satellite data showed that the snow cover fraction was largest in 2012/13 before late December, which indicates that much of snowfall occurs at higher elevations in the early winter. In midwinter, the snow cover fraction was over 90% in 2011/12, while it was approximately 70% and 60% in 2012/13 and 2013/14, respectively. The station data also showed the greatest snow depth at lower elevations in 2011/12 among the three winters. The numerical model well simulates the year-to-year and monthly variations of the snow cover fraction, although the threshold of snow depth are larger than that of the satellite data. The numerical simulations indicate that the total amount of snowfall is controlled by spring snowfall as much as by winter snowfall at higher elevations. The year-to-year variations of spring snowfall are relatively larger than those of winter snowfall, resulting in different year-to-year variations of snow cover at lower and higher elevations.With the aim of increasing peanut production in Australia, the Australian peanut industry has recently considered growing peanuts in rotation with maize at Katherine in the Northern Territory-a location with a semi-arid tropical climate and surplus irrigation capacity. We used the well-validated APSIM model to examine potential agronomic benefits and long-term risks of this strategy under the current and warmer climates of the new region. Yield of the two crops, irrigation requirement, total soil organic carbon (SOC), nitrogen (N) losses and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were simulated. Sixteen climate stressors were used; these were generated by using global climate models ECHAM5, GFDL2.1, GFDL2.0 and MRIGCM232 with a median sensitivity under two Special Report of Emissions Scenarios over the 2030 and 2050 timeframes plus current climate (baseline) for Katherine. Effects were compared at three levels of irrigation and three levels of N fertiliser applied to maize grown in rotations of wet-season peanut and dry-season maize (WPDM), and wet-season maize and dry-season peanut (WMDP). The climate stressors projected average temperature increases of 1 degrees C to 2.8 degrees C in the dry (baseline 24.4 degrees C) and wet (baseline 29.5 degrees C) seasons for the 2030 and 2050 timeframes, respectively. Increased temperature caused a reduction in yield of both crops in both rotations. However, the overall yield advantage of WPDM increased from 41% to up to 53% compared with the industry-preferred sequence of WMDP under the worst climate projection. Increased temperature increased the irrigation requirement by up to 11% in WPDM, but caused a smaller reduction in total SOC accumulation and smaller increases in N losses and GHG emission compared with WMDP. We conclude that although increased temperature will reduce productivity and total SOC accumulation, and increase N losses and GHG emissions in Katherine or similar northern Australian environments, the WPDM sequence should be preferable over the industry-preferred sequence because of its overall yield and sustainability advantages in warmer climates. Any limitations of irrigation resulting from climate change could, however, limit these advantages.Climate change is predicted to affect water resources infrastructure due to its effect on rainfall, temperature and evapotranspiration. However, there are huge uncertainties on both the magnitude and direction of these effects. The Pong reservoir on the Beas River in northern India serves irrigation and hydropower needs. The hydrology of the catchment is highly influenced by Himalayan seasonal snow and glaciers, and Monsoon rainfall; the changing pattern of the latter and the predicted disappearance of the former will have profound effects on the performance of the reservoir. This study employed a Monte-Carlo simulation approach to characterise the uncertainties in the future storage requirements and performance of the reservoir. Using a calibrated rainfall-runoff (R-R) model, the baseline runoff scenario was first simulated. The R-R inputs (rainfall and temperature) were then perturbed using plausible delta-changes to produce simulated climate change runoff scenarios. Stochastic models of the runoff were developed and used to generate ensembles of both the current and climate-change perturbed future scenarios. The resulting runoff ensembles were used to simulate the behaviour of the reservoir and determine "populations" of reservoir storage capacity and performance characteristics. Comparing these parameters between the current and the perturbed provided the population of climate change effects which was then analysed to determine the uncertainties. The results show that contrary to the usual practice of using single records, there is wide variability in the assessed impacts. This variability or uncertainty will, no doubt, complicate the development of climate change adaptation measures; however, knowledge of its sheer magnitude as demonstrated in this study will help in the formulation of appropriate policy and technical interventions for sustaining and possibly enhancing water security for irrigation and other uses served by Pong reservoir.Coastal and inland dunes provide various ecosystem services that are related to groundwater, such as drinking water production and biodiversity. To manage groundwater in a sustainable manner, knowledge of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) for the various land covers in dunes is essential. Aiming at improving the parameterization of dune vegetation in hydrometeorological models, this study explores the magnitude of energy and water fluxes in an inland dune ecosystem in the Netherlands. Hydrometeorological measurements were used to parameterize the Penman-Monteith evapotranspiration model for four different surfaces: bare sand, moss, grass and heather. We found that the net longwave radiation (R-nl) was the largest energy flux for most surfaces during daytime. However, modeling this flux by a calibrated FAO-56 R-nl model for each surface and for hourly time steps was unsuccessful. Our R-nl model, with a novel submodel using solar elevation angle and air temperature to describe the diurnal pattern in radiative surface temperature, improved R-nl simulations considerably. Model simulations of evaporation from moss surfaces showed that the modulating effect of mosses on the water balance is species-dependent. We demonstrate that dense moss carpets (Campylopus introflexus) evaporate more (5%, +14 mm) than bare sand (total of 258 mm in 2013), while more open-structured mosses (Hypnum cupressiforme) evaporate less (30 %, 76 mm) than bare sand. Additionally, we found that a drought event in the summer of 2013 showed a pronounced delayed signal on lysimeter measurements of ETa for the grass and heather surfaces, respectively. Due to the desiccation of leaves after the drought event, and their feedback on the surface resistance, the potential evapotranspiration in the year 2013 dropped by 9% (37 mm) and 10% (61 mm) for the grass and heather surfaces, respectively, which subsequently led to lowered ETa of 8% (29 mm) and 7% (29 mm). These feedbacks are of importance for water resources, especially during a changing climate with an increasing number of drought days. Therefore, such feedbacks need to be integrated into a coupled plant physiological and hydrometeorological model to accurately simulate ETa. In addition, our study showed that groundwater recharge in dunes can be increased considerably by promoting moss vegetation, especially of open-structured moss species.In the space of a few short years, the UNFCCC process has given birth to a new policy regime, the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage, to prepare for the adverse consequences of climate change to vulnerable societies. The justification for this policy is that a residual domain exists wherein climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and public/private risk transfer mechanisms are insufficient for peoples and places overwhelmed by climate impacts. We link this domain conceptually to scientific research on climate change impacts, and specifically to research on limits to adaptation. The normative position of this academic debate is generally oriented toward the need for transformative adaptation. This paper aims to anticipate the challenges that the Warsaw mechanism will encounter achieving transformation in practice. Both policy design (as it is taking shape) and implementation face a set of interrelated conceptual and operational problems that challenge whether resources can and will address adverse consequences among the most vulnerable. In the end, loss and damage policy may suffer from the same limitations as adaptation policy: it is concerned with the reconstitution of vulnerable states of being, rather than their transformation into something more fundamentally conducive of wellbeing and development.Quantitative assessment of the vulnerability and adaptation options of road infrastructure and economic impacts of climate change is essential to building a more robust and resilient transportation network. To date, most research has focused on qualitative statements and broad findings or on location-specific case studies. This study details a quantitative, engineering-based analysis of the impacts of specific climate stressors on types of road infrastructure. The results are designed to be utilized by transportation planners to understand the vulnerability, risk, and adaptation options for creating a climate-resilient road network by providing specific design changes and fiscal cost analysis. The current study aims to build on previous work and addresses several gaps: use of all climate models approved by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to provide guidance despite uncertainty, provision of results similar to existing risk and vulnerability analyses to allow for implementation in existing planning processes, and introduction of a methodology requiring only routinely available road network information to allow for replicability across the United States. California is used as an illustrative case study that helps identify the existing vulnerabilities of the road network to climate change and the fiscal savings possible through pro-active adaptation strategies. Findings show that for the higher-impact model (95th percentile), California could save $1.9 billion between 2015 and 2050 by proactive adaptation. The contribution of this research is to move beyond the identification of vulnerabilities to a quantitative assessment of specific adaptation options that reduce a community's or region's vulnerability to climate change.Disruptive events caused by weather extremes are imposing significant and rising costs on transportation agencies. In response, federal and state transportation agencies and other organizations are exploring adaptation measures to reduce the adverse consequences of these events. Several existing adaptation frameworks are synthesized here into a simplified, core adaptation framework, and the study seeks to delineate the current barriers to the widespread implementation of adaptation programs by state departments of transportation in the United States. From interviews with transportation practitioners and a review of the results from FHWA pilot projects, it is found that uncertainty about future climate conditions, the need for additional vulnerability-modeling tools, conceptual uncertainty about evaluating asset criticality, and limited funding all inhibit implementation of adaptation measures.Research on the barriers and limits to climate change adaptation identifies many factors, but describes few processes whereby adaptation is constrained or may indeed fail to avoid catastrophic losses. It often assumes that barriers are by and large distinct from limits to adaptation. We respond to recent calls for comparative studies that are able to further knowledge about the underlying drivers of barriers and limits to adaptation. We compare six cases from across Australia, including those in alpine areas, rivers, reefs, wetlands, small inland communities, and islands, with the aim of identifying common underlying drivers of barriers and limits to adaptation. We find that the path-dependent nature of the institutions that govern natural resources and public goods is a deep driver of barriers and limits to adaptation. Path-dependent institutions are resistant to change. When this resistance causes the changes necessary for adaptation to be slower than changes in climate, then it becomes a limit to adaptation.Accelerating environmental change is perhaps the greatest challenge for natural resource management; successful strategies need to be effective for decades to come. Our objective is to identify opportunities that new environmental conditions may provide for conservation, restoration, and resource use in a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot in southwestern Australia. We describe a variety of changes to key taxonomic groups and system-scale characteristics as a consequence of environmental change (climate and land use), and outline strategies for conserving and restoring important ecological and agricultural characteristics. Opportunities for conservation and economic adaptation are substantial because of gradients in rainfall, temperature, and land use, extensive areas of remnant native vegetation, the ability to reduce and ameliorate areas affected by secondary salinization, and the existence of large national parks and an extensive network of nature reserves. Opportunities presented by the predicted environmental changes encompass agricultural as well as natural ecosystems. These may include expansion of aquaculture, transformation of agricultural systems to adapt to drier autumns and winters, and potential increases in spring and summer rain, carbon-offset plantings, and improving the network of conservation reserves. A central management dilemma is whether restoration/preservation efforts should have a commercial or biodiversity focus, and how they could be integrated. Although the grand challenge is conserving, protecting, restoring, and managing for a future environment, one that balances economic, social, and environmental values, the ultimate goal is to establish a regional culture that values the unique regional environment and balances the utilization of natural resources against protecting remaining natural ecosystems.Despite the important role of supraglacial debris in ablation, knowledge of debris thickness on Himalayan glaciers is sparse. A recently developed method based on reanalysis data and thermal band satellite imagery has proved to be potentially suitable for debris thickness estimation without the need for detailed field data. In this study, we further develop the method and discuss possibilities and limitations arising from its application to a glacier in the Himalaya with scarce in situ data. Surface temperature patterns are consistent for 13 scenes of Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Landsat 7 imagery and correlate well with incoming shortwave radiation and air temperature. We use an energy-balance approach to subtract these radiation or air temperature effects, in order to estimate debris thickness patterns as a function of surface temperature. Both incoming shortwave and longwave radiation are estimated with reasonable accuracy when applying parameterizations and reanalysis data. However, the model likely underestimates debris thickness, probably due to incorrect representation of vertical debris temperature profiles, the rate of heat storage and turbulent sensible heat flux. Moreover, the uncertainty of the result was found to increase significantly with thicker debris, a promising result since ablation is enhanced by thin debris of 1-2 cm.Financing for climate adaptation is governed by an unusual arrangement whereby the GEF channels funds through other IGOs - including the World Bank, UNEP and UNDP - which in turn develop and implement projects on the ground. The concept and techniques of orchestration outlined by the framework authors help us understand this complicated governance arrangement. The GEF, as orchestrator, supports and steers various intermediaries (the "implementing agencies") to effect change in target states (developing-country recipients). In our explanation of this outcome, we find support for four of the volume's hypotheses: intermediary availability, orchestrator focality, goal divergence and state oversight. We also explore whether the relationship between the GEF and its implementing agencies is efficient and complementary. We find that this is generally the case and that the orchestrator capabilities and intermediary availability hypotheses capture this arrangement quite well. While the climate adaptation case offers considerable support for the theoretical framework, recent developments raise concerns about the robustness of orchestration as a governance equilibrium, which may evolve over time toward harder and direct modes of governance.Climate change is a global environmental threat to all economic sectors, particularly the agricultural sector. Pakistan is one of the countries negatively affected by climate change due to its high exposure to extreme events and low adaptive capacity. In Pakistan, farmers are the primary stakeholders in agriculture and are more at risk due to climate vulnerability. Based on farm household data from 450 households collected from three districts in three agroecological zones in the Punjab province of Pakistan, this study examines how farmers perceive climate change and how they adapt their farming in response to perceived changes in climate. The results demonstrate that awareness of climate change is widespread throughout the area, and farm households make adjustments to adapt their agriculture in response to climatic change. Overall 58% of the farm households adapted their farming to climate change. Changing crop varieties, changing planting dates, planting of shade trees and changing fertilizers were the main adaptation methods implemented by farm households in the study area. The results from the binary logistic model reveal that education, farm experience, household size, land area, tenancy status, ownership of a tube well, access to market information, information on weather forecasting and agricultural extension services all influence farmers' choices of adaptation measures. The results also indicate that adaptation to climate change is constrained by several factors such as lack of information, lack of money, resource constraints and shortage of irrigation water in the study area. Findings of the study suggest the need for greater investment in farmer education and improved institutional setup for climate change adaptation to improve farmers' wellbeing.Fire is a common process that shapes the structure of grasslands globally. Rising atmospheric CO2 concentration may have a profound influence on grassland fire regimes. In this study, we asked (1) does CO2 and soil P availability alter leaf flammability (ignitibility and fire sustainability); (2) are leaf tissue chemistry traits drivers of leaf flammability, and are they modified by CO2 and soil P availability?; (3) does CO2 and soil P availability alter fuel load accumulation in grasslands; and (4) does CO2 and soil P availability alter the resprouting ability of grassland species? We found that leaf flammability increased under elevated CO2 levels owing to decreased leaf moisture content and foliar N, whereas fuel load accumulation increased owing to decreased foliar N (slower decomposition rates) and increased aboveground biomass production. These plant responses to elevated CO2 levels were not modified by soil P availability. The increase in leaf flammability and fuel load accumulation under elevated CO2 levels may alter grassland fire regimes by facilitating fire ignition as well as shorter fire intervals. However, the increased root biomass of grasses under elevated CO2 levels may enhance their resprouting capacity relative to woody plants, resulting in a shift in the vegetation structure of grasslands.This article examines the adaptive capacities of real estate firms in New York City in light of the increased risks of urban flooding. This exploratory research attempts to shed light on how and why firms of varying risk profiles are strategically adapting to these risks - if at all. Through the lens of a qualitative multi-criteria adaptive capacity framework, the results of six case studies are analyzed to identify what influences are shaping the actions and strategies of firms. The article examines the propositions that: (A) firms with observable strategies have undertaken ex post strategies which are principally driven by the firms' financial bottom line; (B) firm strategies attribute little to no influence in their decisions to external or delayed costs and/or impacts relating to social and environmental influences; and, (C) firms with the comparatively most robust adaptive capacities will be those who: (i) are most aware of their vulnerabilities; and (ii) are themselves comparatively more vulnerable to the immediate risks associated with urban flooding. While the evidence largely supports the propositions, the results of this research can help shape the development of intelligence and strategic units within firms as they develop a capacity to adapt to ever changing conditions.Federal fire management plans are essential implementation guides for the management of wildland fire on federal lands. Recent changes in federal fire policy implementation guidance and fire science information suggest the need for substantial changes in federal fire management plans of the United States. Federal land management agencies are also undergoing land management planning efforts that will initiate revision of fire management plans across the country. Using the southern Sierra Nevada as a case study, we briefly describe the underlying framework of fire management plans, assess their consistency with guiding principles based on current science information and federal policy guidance, and provide recommendations for the development of future fire management plans. Based on our review, we recommend that future fire management plans be: (1) consistent and compatible, (2) collaborative, (3) clear and comprehensive, (4) spatially and temporally scalable, (5) informed by the best available science, and (6) flexible and adaptive. In addition, we identify and describe several strategic guides or "tools" that can enhance these core principles and benefit future fire management plans in the following areas: planning and prioritization, science integration, climate change adaptation, partnerships, monitoring, education and communication, and applied fire management. These principles and tools are essential to successfully realize fire management goals and objectives in a rapidly changing world.The energy sector is considered a critical infrastructure. Important questions to be answered are, how climate change will affect the security of energy provision in the future. Based on an analysis of the available relevant literature the major vulnerabilities of the German energy sector are identified. Focusing on power generation and grid infrastructure we analyze whether adaptation measures, if necessary, are taken voluntarily or if governmental interventions are needed and justifiable. We show that governmental interventions are justifiable regarding measures to adapt the grid infrastructure. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate adaptation planning provides an opportunity to enhance the adaptive capacity of stakeholders across multiple levels. However, reviews of standard top-down and bottom-up approaches indicate that the value of multistakeholder involvement is not fully recognized or incorporated into guidelines. Focusing on provinces in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea within the Coral Triangle region, we present a novel integrated top-down and bottom-up planning approach. Based on Participatory Systemic Inquiry the process involves three stages of workshops intentionally designed to promote social learning, knowledge exchange, empowerment and social networks among multilevel stakeholders. Stage 1 workshops engage government, nongovernment and science stakeholders at the provincial level to analyze sub-districts' vulnerability and design appropriate adaptation strategies. Stage 2 engages local government, non-government and community stakeholders within vulnerable sub-districts identified in Stage 1. Stage 3 combines Stage 1 and 2 stakeholders to refine adaptation strategies and design action plans for sub-districts. Evaluation demonstrated that different stakeholder groups' perceptions of community adaptation needs varied significantly, justifying the approach. In terms of adaptive capacity, the primary outcome for all stakeholder groups was innovative ideas, suggesting that social learning and knowledge exchange had occurred. Empowerment was a secondary outcome. We discuss how the approach could be further refined.This case study describes the climate adaptation planning efforts that were undertaken on the island of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. This effort focused on establishing a multi-agency Climate Change Working Group. The adaptation planning efforts on Saipan used two main sources of guidance: one document written for application to coastal jurisdictions throughout the United States and a set of tools designed for small island communities in the Pacific. These sources were combined with inspiration from adaptation processes in other jurisdictions and adjustments were made to fit Saipan's situation. Modifications were based on available knowledge or expertise, technical capacities, and local needs. Several themes that are common to adaptation processes elsewhere were important in Saipan: leadership and political will, stakeholder involvement, level of climate knowledge, building on existing collaborations, and technical capacity. These themes are examined, with an emphasis on how we adjusted to meet the challenges that arose in the context of Saipan's social, political, and economic landscape.The rapidly growing demand for food, feed and fuel requires further improvements of land and water management, crop productivity and resource-use efficiencies. Combined field experimentation and crop growth modelling during the past five decades made a great leap forward in the understanding of factors that determine actual and potential yields of monocrops. The research field of production ecology developed concepts to integrate biological and biophysical processes with the aim to explore crop growth potential in contrasting environments. To understand the potential of more complex systems (multi-cropping and intercropping) we need an agro-ecosystem approach that integrates knowledge derived from various disciplines: agronomy, crop physiology, crop ecology, and environmental sciences (soil, water and climate). Adaptation of cropping systems to climate change and a better tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses by genetic improvement and by managing diverse cropping systems in a sustainable way will be of key importance in food security. To accelerate sustainable intensification of agricultural production, it is required to develop intercropping systems that are highly productive and stable under conditions with abiotic constraints (water, nutrients and weather). Strategies to achieve sustainable intensification include developing tools to evaluate crop growth potential under more extreme climatic conditions and introducing new crops and cropping systems that are more productive and robust under conditions with abiotic stress. This paper presents some examples of sustainable intensification management of intercropping systems that proved to be tolerant to extreme climate conditions.Expert knowledge using high-resolution projection is a growing need and is particularly useful for local climate change adaptation. However, the inability to access and apply these scientifically-based climate data becomes a significant hurdle, especially in the poorest and most marginalized communities. Poor countries and depopulated communities in developed countries are more vulnerable to climate change because they tend to be in geographically weather-sensitive areas. This paper aims to: (1) develop an approach based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to cost-effectively and easily integrate observed and projected data into decision-making processes; (2) document how to adjust bias of projections, to provide accurate climate predictions for local decision makers; and (3) assist local decision makers in clarifying regional complex priorities for marginalized communities, with a wide array of adaptation options through efficient use of a GIS database. Kurihara (population 74,149; area 804.93 km(2)) in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan was chosen for a pilot study. The city comprises 10 depopulated communities within an active volcanic mountain and seismogenic area that is topographically complex, with the highest peak at 1,627.4 m. Post-disaster power shortages have renewed attention toward territorial planning and infrastructure, particularly in extreme climate regions. Our discussion focuses on how to transform the most recent regional climate projections (5 km resolution) into understandable and useful form for local policy makers to meet regional demands and to produce new forms of collective action via GIS. This method can be transferred to developing countries for potential climate change adaptation and mitigation plans.This research analysed contemporary publications concerning climate change adaptation in the agricultural systems of the Western Australian rangelands. The term 'systems' refers to the supportive economic and social systems as well as agricultural industries. The aim of the study was to evaluate how the adaptive capacity of agricultural systems is supported given the anticipated challenges of climatic changes. The conceptual framework of adaptive capacity was employed to evaluate progress towards improving adaptation and resilience. Eight key indicators of adaptive capacity formed the evaluative criteria, and were applied to a wide range of publicly available documents relevant to the Western Australian rangelands. Progress towards building adaptive capacity was also evaluated by classifying the documents as 'aspirational', 'in action' or 'assessed'. The institutional support for adaptive capacity was found to be adequate, as there was sufficient evidence that relevant institutions were providing mechanisms for social, economic and environmental adaptation in the face of climate change. The viability of the agricultural systems of the Western Australian rangelands has been in decline for some time and, therefore, the degree to which efforts to improve adaptive capacity have been successful was difficult to assess. There were methodological limitations of this research due to the limited breadth of available data and subjectivity within the data analysis process, which may have inhibited the accuracy of the findings and recommendations. Also difficulties inherent in quantifying social, economic and environmental processes at differing geographic and temporal scales, were apparent. This raises important questions regarding the extent to which the literature is able to appropriately reflect actual adaptation within the rangelands, and the extent to which stakeholders (community, pastoralists and regional organisations) perceive that adequate institutional support is being provided.Sporades islands are often affected by catastrophic natural phenomena. This study aimed to identify the information provided to residents of the islands concerning natural disasters. Residents were asked to evaluate risk of natural disasters, the role stakeholders and particularly the role of Civil Protection Service, mass media and scientific community. Residents consider the risk of forest fires, earthquakes, tsunami, floods and volcanic eruptions to be highly significant. Perception of risk was proportional to the expected damage than to the probability of occurrence. The majority considered that information about the real size of a disaster should be immediate and without exaggeration, so as to avoid confusion, stress and fear in the community. The internet, education, broadcast media and scientific community were the most important sources of information, although the latter two were probed for risk amplification due to self-interest. These findings have implications for future natural hazard management and communication.The greatly enhanced oxidation ability of dilute aqueous nitric acid (0.10-2.0 mol L-1) containing bromide and iodide salts as well as chloride salts has been examined based on the dissolution kinetics of pure gold at 30-60 degrees C. It has been found that bromide salts are more effective than chloride salts in gaining the ability of dissolving gold in dilute aqueous nitric acid solution. At 60 degrees C, a piece of gold-wire (ca. 20 mg) is dissolved in 20 mL of as low as 0.10 mol L-1 HNO3 solution containing 1.0-5.0 mol L-1 NaBr and the dissolution rate constant, log(k/s(-1)), increases linearly (from -5.78 to -4.52) with the increasing NaBr concentration. The addition of organic solvents, such as acetonitrile and acetic acid, causes acceleration of gold dissolution in LiBr and NaBr solutions. With increasing MeCN contents, for instance, the log(k/s(-1)) value of 0.10 mol L-1 HNO3 solution containing 2.0 mol L-1 NaBr increases linearly from -5.30 to -4.61 at 30% (v/v) MeCN. The bromide salts affect the gold dissolution rate constant in the order of KBr < NaBr < LiBr < CaBr2. With increasing NaI concentration (0.20-3.0 mol L-1), some acceleration in log(k/s(-1)) of 0.50 or 1.0 mol L-1 HNO3 solution has been observed; however, the slope of acceleration as the function of NaI concentration is much smaller than that of NaCl or NaBr. The gold dissolution ability has been examined also for nitrous acid containing chloride and bromide ions at 35 degrees C. The NaNO2 solution containing twice or more amounts of HX (X = Cl, Br) gives the maximum efficiency for gold dissolution, according to the log(k/s(-1)) values of the mixed solutions of NaNO2 (0.10-2.0 mol L-1) and HX of various concentrations. The influence of oxidation by dilute nitric and nitrous acids on the gold dissolution is discussed from the standpoint of the redox potentials in "modified'' aqueous solutions and not of the changes in the activity coefficients of ions.Reducing the vulnerability of coastal communities to marine climate change requires that communities have some intrinsic capacity to adapt. To assist adaptation planning and the implementation of adaptation strategies, identifying barriers and enablers to adaptation is important. Adaptive capacity, resource dependence, local climate change exposure and biological sensitivity were used to assess socioeconomic vulnerability to climate change in three Australian coastal communities: St Helens, Tasmania; Bowen, Queensland; and Geraldton, Western Australia. Higher adaptive capacity was associated with larger population size (i.e., Geraldton) whereas greater resource dependence, and lower human and natural capital were associated with smaller populations (St Helens and Bowen). Socioeconomic vulnerability was greatly influenced by climate exposure and sensitivity with the moderately sized Bowen having the highest socioeconomic vulnerability to climate change. Adaptation strategies that utilized available assets, improved adaptive capacity, or reduced socioeconomic vulnerability were identified in partnership with local communities, including increased and diversified employment opportunities, the re-establishment of local fish markets, and improved education and communication. The level of resources, or "capitals," available to communities can indicate where barriers and enablers to adaptation exist. Identified barriers to adaptation included a heavy reliance on one sector for employment and a lack of physical capital. We demonstrate that knowledge of intrinsic community characteristics can be beneficial for prioritizing adaptation actions to reduce socioeconomic vulnerability to marine climate change.Policy and investment decisions in highly connected, developing regions can have implications that extend beyond their initial objectives of national development and poverty reduction. Local level decisions that aim to promote trajectories toward desirable futures are often transformative, unexpectedly altering factors that are determined at higher regional levels. The converse also applies. The ability to realize desirable local futures diminishes if decision-making processes are not coordinated with other influential governance and decision levels. Providing effective support across multiple levels of decision making in a connected, transformative environment requires (a) identification and articulation of desired outcomes at the relevant levels of decision making, (b) improved understanding of complex cross-scale interactions that link to potentially transforming decisions, and (c) learning among decision makers and decision influencers. Research implemented through multiple participatory modalities can facilitate such relevant system learning to contribute to sustainable adaptation pathways. We test application of a systematic policy engagement framework, the Challenge and Reconstruct Learning or ChaRL framework, on a set of interdependent development decisions in the Mekong region. The analysis presented here is focused on the implementations of the ChaRL process in the Nam Ngum River Basin, Lao People's Democratic Republic and the Tonle Sap Lake and environs, Cambodia to exemplify what cross-scale and cross-sectoral insights were generated to inform decision-making processes in the wider Mekong region. The participatory process described aligns the facilitated development of scenarios articulating shared future visions at local and regional levels with agent-based simulations and facilitates learning by contrasting desired outcomes with likely, potentially maladaptive outcomes.Rapid climate change poses complex challenges for conservation, especially in tropical developing countries where biodiversity is high while financial and technical resources are limited. The complexity is heightened by uncertainty in predicted effects, both for ecological systems and human communities that depend heavily on natural resource extraction and use. Effective conservation plans and measures must be inexpensive, fast-acting, and able to increase the resilience of both the ecosystem and the social-ecological system. We present conservation practitioners with a framework that strategically integrates climate change planning into connectivity measures for tropical mountain ecosystems in Costa Rica. We propose a strategy for doubling the amount of habitat currently protected in riparian corridors using measures that are relatively low cost and fast-acting, and will employ and expand human capital. We argue that habitat connectivity must be enhanced along latitudinal gradients, but also within the same elevational bands, via a lattice-work corridor system. This is needed to facilitate range shifts for mobile species and evolutionary adaptation for less mobile species. We think that conservation measures within the elevational bands must include conservation-friendly land uses that improve current and future human livelihoods under dynamic conditions. Key components include community involvement, habitat priority-setting, forest landscape restoration, and environmental services payments. Our approach is fundamentally adaptive in that the conservation measures employed are informed by on-the-ground successes and failures and modified accordingly, but are relatively low risk and fast-acting. Our proposal, if implemented, would satisfy tenets of climate-smart conservation, improve the resilience of human and ecological communities, and be a model for other locations facing similar challenges.Pacific Islanders have been exposed to risks associated with climate change. Samoa, as one of the Pacific Islands, is prone to climatic hazards that will likely increase in the coming decades, affecting coastal communities and infrastructure around the islands. Climate models do not predict a reduction of such disaster events in the future in Samoa; indeed, most predict an increase. This paper identifies key infrastructure and their functions and status in order to provide an overall picture of relative vulnerability to climate-related stresses of such infrastructure on the island. By reviewing existing reports as well as holding a series of consultation meetings, a list of critical infrastructure was developed and shared with stakeholders for their consideration. An indicator-based vulnerability model (SIVM) was developed in collaboration with stakeholders to assess the vulnerability of selected infrastructure systems on the Samoan Islands. Damage costs were extracted from the Cyclone Evan recovery needs document. Additionally, data on criticality and capacity to repair damage were collected from stakeholders. Having stakeholder perspectives on these two issues was important because (a) criticality of a given infrastructure could be viewed differently among different stakeholders, and (b) stakeholders were the best available source (in this study) to estimate the capacity to repair non-physical damage to such infrastructure. Analysis of the results suggested a ranking of sectors from the most vulnerable to least vulnerable are: the transportation sector, the power sector, the water supply sector and the sewerage system.Many factors will shape global food security over the next few decades, including changes in rates of human population growth, income growth and distribution, dietary preferences, disease incidence, increased demand for land and water resources for other uses (i.e. bioenergy production, carbon sequestration and urban development) and rates of improvement in agricultural productivity. This latter factor, which we define here simply as crop yield (i.e. metric tons of grain production per hectare of land), is a particular emphasis of the plant science community, as researchers and farmers seek to sustain the impressive historical gains associated with improved genetics and agronomic management of major food crops. Much of what is known about the process of technological innovation in agriculture has yet to be captured in the discussions of climate change adaptation. The development of technological solutions to minimise risks of current climate can lead to two possible outcomes: increase in agricultural productivity and insights about adaptation to future climate change. Research efforts about the role of technological change, driven by climatic constraints, are pivotal in making any assertion about the likely adaptation of agriculture to climate change.The effect of historical land-use change on winter precipitation in Hokkaido, Japan is evaluated by sensitivity experiments using a regional climate model and past and current land-use maps. The regional climate model successfully simulates winter precipitation characteristics, such as heavy precipitation in central mountain areas and around the Japan Sea coast, and a gradual decrease in precipitation from west to east. A comparison of model simulations using 1850 and 1985 land-use maps shows that precipitation has decreased approximately 1.7 mm mon(-1), especially over deforested areas. This decrease is mainly a result of reduced evapotranspiration (approximately 2.4 mm mon(-1)) from lower net radiation associated with increased snow cover and higher surface albedo. Meanwhile, precipitation has increased in mountainous areas and on leeward slopes as a result of intensified upward air motion, which is attributed to a decrease in surface roughness caused by deforestation and the strengthening of horizontal wind speeds.Using a high-resolution regional climate model coupled with urban canopy model, the present study provides the first attempt in quantifying the impact of metropolitan-scale urban planning scenarios on moist thermal environment under global warming. Tokyo metropolitan area is selected as a test case. Three urban planning scenarios are considered: status quo, dispersed city, and compact city. Their impact on the moist thermal environment is assessed using wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT). Future projections for the 2070s show a 2-4 degrees C increase in daytime mean WBGT relative to the current climate. The urban scenario impacts are shown to be small, with a -0.4 to +0.4 degrees C range. Relative changes in temperature and humidity as the result of a given urban scenario are shown to be critical in determining the sign of the WBGT changes; however, such changes are not necessarily determined by local changes in urban land surface parameters. These findings indicate that urban land surface changes may improve or worsen the local moist thermal environment and that metropolitan-scale urban planning is inefficient in mitigating heat-related health risks for mature cities like Tokyo.As farmers continue to face increasingly uncertain and often rapidly changing conditions related to markets, climate or the policy environment, people involved in agricultural research, development and extension (RD&E) are also challenged to consider how their work can contribute to supporting farmer resilience. Research from the social sciences conducted in the past decade has focussed on adaptability or adaptive capacity as a key attribute for individuals and groups to possess for managing resilience. It is, therefore, timely to ask the following: do current ways of doing and organising RD&E in the dairy sector in New Zealand and Australia contribute to supporting farm adaptability? This paper reports on results from an examination of case studies of challenges to resilience in the dairy sector in Australia and New Zealand (i.e. dairy farm conversion, climate-change adaptation, consent to farm) and the contribution of dairy RD&E in enhancing resilience of farmers, their farms and the broader industry. Drawing on concepts from resilience studies and considering an empowerment perspective, the analysis of these cases suggest that, currently, agricultural RD&E supports adaptability in general, but varies in the strength of its presence and level of activity in the areas known to enhance adaptability. This analysis is used to generate principles for dairy scientists and others in the RD&E system to consider in (1) research designs, (2) engaging different farmers in research and (3) presenting research results differently. This represents a significant shift for the science and advisory communities to move to methods that acknowledge uncertainty and facilitate learning.In this Climate Research (CR) Special, the Centre for Regional Change in the Earth System (CRES) brings together scientific expertise (ranging from climate to social sciences) with practitioners and stakeholders to present thematic research addressing gaps in (1) our understanding of climate-system behaviour at a regional scale and in particular at the upper fringes of current climate scenarios; (2) what the effects of such changes might be; and (3) potential adaptations. CRES has developed a broad set of tools related to climate adaptation; this includes improved regional climate and hydrological models, impact models, integrated assessment models, economic models, decision support tools and spatial planning tools. Through a coordinated research effort these tools were applied to provide new information on climate, hydrology, nutrient dynamics, ecosystem responses and economic risks. The studies in this CR Special highlight potential effects of extreme global warming with a focus on Denmark and northern Europe.Climate change adaptation studies on urban flooding are often based on a model chain approach from climate forcing scenarios to analysis of adaptation measures. Previous analyses of climate change impacts in Copenhagen, Denmark, were supplemented by 2 high-end scenario simulations. These include a regional climate model projection forced to a global temperature increase of 6 degrees C in 2100 as well as a projection based on a high radiative forcing scenario (RCP8.5). With these scenarios, projected impacts of extreme precipitation increase significantly. For extreme sea surges, the impacts do not seem to change substantially compared to currently applied projections. The flood risk (in terms of expected annual damage, EAD) from sea surge is likely to increase by more than 2 orders of magnitude in 2100 compared to the present cost. The risk from pluvial flooding in 2000 is likely to increase by almost 4 and 8 times the current EAD for the RCP8.5 and 6 degrees C scenario, respectively. For both hazards, business-as-usual is not a possible scenario, since even in the absence of policy-driven changes, significant autonomous adaptation is likely to occur. Copenhagen has developed an adaptation plan to pluvial flooding that makes the urban areas more robust and reduces the risk of flooding under the current climate to a very low level. The reduction in flood risk for the A1B scenario is substantial (corresponding to 0.2-0.3 times the current EAD in 2100), and even in the high-end scenarios, the risk is significantly reduced (corresponding to 0.6-1.0 and 1.2-2.1 times the current EAD for the RCP8.5 and 6 degrees C scenario, respectively).Purpose - This paper aims to explore the influence of wildfire events on community perceptions of climate change and the risk of future wildfire disasters in southern Australia. Design/methodology/approach - The study was located around Beechworth in northeast Victoria, where wildfires occurred in 2003 and 2009. Semi-structured qualitative interviews and focus group interviews were conducted in 2010, involving 40 people from local businesses, government and property owners. Findings - The authors conclude that people's experiences of recent consecutive wildfire events did not necessarily influence their views on climate change in general or as a causal agent of wildfire events. However, there was general agreement that weather conditions had been extreme in recent times. Some attributed the increase in wildfires to factors other than climate change that were more easily observed. Research limitations/implications - Further research is needed into the relationship between wildfire experiences, climate change views and adaptive behaviours across a wider range of social contexts. Research needs to determine if views and behaviours change over time or with frequency or severity of fires. Practical implications - Understanding the nature of potential wildfires, and being able to prepare and respond to such events, is more important than believing in climate change, as views may not change in response to fire events. Strategies need to focus on supporting people to prepare, respond and recover from wildfires, regardless of their climate change perceptions. Social implications - Paying attention to people's local social context and how it influences their beliefs about climate change will allow sensitive and adaptive strategies to evolve over time. Originality/value - There is limited research into relationships between disaster experiences and perceptions of climate change, particularly the influence of wildfire experiences.Climate predictions indicate that growing conditions may become unfavourable for certain tree species in parts of Britain. Guidelines suggest some planting of seed sources from regions between 2 degrees and 5 degrees south of those currently used as part of a climate change adaptation strategy. However, there has been little research on the benefits and risks associated with the use of planting stock from more southerly seed sources. Seeds of five provenances of the relatively' dormant Betula pendula were germinated over a range of temperatures both with and without a pre-chill. Subsequently, a thermal time model was used to predict the impact of migrating these provenances to southern England. Results identified geographical differences in germination response; those from higher latitude were more sensitive to pre-chill.Combating illegal and destructive resource exploitation in the Coral Triangle is central to ensuring the long-term effective management of fisheries, marine protected areas, and climate change adaptation efforts. This article presents results of an investigation of the perceived level of local compliance and enforcement with marine resource rules and regulations and evaluates the effectiveness or potential for community-supported enforcement efforts in the Coral Triangle region. The findings are consistent with those of the literature on compliance and enforcement that any compliance and enforcement system must not only use deterrence, but also be perceived by fishers as being legitimate, fair, accountable and equitable and the need for developing a personal morality and a social environment that supports compliance. There is an opportunity to strategically build on shared value and cultural norms that can promote collaborative fisheries management as a mechanism to increase compliance through non-coercive efforts. Strengthening the long-term capacity for consistent delivery of local support to marine management and enforcement will increase local compliance rates through time.Malaysia has been experiencing an unusual harsh mixture of droughts and extreme rainfall events at present. As consequence, significant fall in crop production will be caused in the coming years. Current agriculture adaptation strategies are not significantly enough to cope with this issue. Therefore, this study aims to capture the scenarios in the field of climate change adaptation. The main focus of this study is to chalk out the adaptation efforts that the government and local stakeholders should consider. This study identifies the challenges associated with the implementation of adaptation options for the agricultural sector in response to climate change. Furthermore, this study presents some insight on the possible future strategies for adaptation that legislators may consider in designing and formulating the policy which may ultimately help the agricultural sector of Malaysia to be effective. Such adaptation framework actions and measures are adjudicated to assure cohesive participation of all concerned development bodies including government and non-government organisations along with local communities towards achieving the appropriate climate change response.There are growing concerns, especially from farmers in rural mid-east Nepal, about main-streaming locally-led climate adaptation strategies. Using a bottom-up approach, we analysed the bio-physical and socio-economic impacts on Nepalese agriculture from three focus group discussions and a survey of 60 peasant farmers to identify the relevant climate change impacts which were used to investigate how farmers' practices overcome any climate-based barriers. The results suggest that farmers are partially able to minimise the impacts of climate-based barriers whereas they have difficulty in coping with non-climatic barriers. The results emphasise the role of government and other stakeholders in locally-led adaptation (not only in mitigation) as an avenue to combat the negative impacts of climate-based variability.This paper is intended as a brief introduction to climate adaptation in a conference devoted otherwise to the physics of sustainable energy. Whereas mitigation involves measures to reduce the probability of a potential event, such as climate change, adaptation refers to actions that lessen the impact of climate change. Mitigation and adaptation differ in other ways as well. Adaptation does not necessarily have to be implemented immediately to be effective; it only needs to be in place before the threat arrives. Also, adaptation does not necessarily require global, coordinated action; many effective adaptation actions can be local. Some urban communities, because of land-use change and the urban heat-island effect, currently face changes similar to some expected under climate change, such as changes in water availability, heat-related morbidity, or changes in disease patterns. Concern over those impacts might motivate the implementation of measures that would also help in climate adaptation, despite skepticism among some policy makers about anthropogenic global warming. Studies of ancient civilizations in the southwestern US lends some insight into factors that may or may not be important to successful adaptation.We investigate the formation mechanism of the summer Okhotsk High (OH) in terms of the land-atmosphere coupling in Siberia. A reanalysis data indicates that the formation mechanism of the OH clearly differs between early and late summer because it changes from a nearly barotropic to a baroclinic structure with seasonal changes. Then, we assess the influence of springtime snow cover on the formation of the late summer OH with the baroclinicity using a regional climate model. The model performs well in reproducing the land-atmosphere coupling in eastern Siberia and the OH in August 2008, when abnormal weather prevails in Japan, in conjunction with the intensively developed OH. The August OH develops with a distinct baroclinic structure owing to increased surface heating, which is related to land-atmosphere coupling in response to reduced spring snow cover in eastern Siberia. The land-atmosphere coupling can help to reinforce and maintain the baroclinic structure through surface heating, forming strong surface anticyclone to the southeast over the Sea of Okhotsk. Our results suggest that the late summer OH is a regional climate system that involves coupling among the atmosphere, the cool ocean, and the warm land surface.This article identifies the impacts of climate change on the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Caribbean and the Pacific, which, through their geography and location, are amongst the most vulnerable countries in the world to natural hazards and the impacts of climate change. It explores how, in the main, the lack of recognition of the economic imperatives and importance of well-managed cities and urban centres in the SIDS has resulted in national urban planning systems and internationally-funded climate change adaptation and natural risk resilience mitigation 'best practice' interventions that largely ignore the needs of the urban poor living in urban centres - in particular, those in extra-legal settlements. It goes on to posit a different set of interrelated measures based on successful lessons from the field that might circumscribe a more targeted approach to climate change adaptation and to strengthening risk resilience in these small, vulnerable countries, so as to be more inclusive of the poor.Our intent was to provide a methodological overview of the primary data collection process in support of the other articles in this special issue. We documented and illustrated the use of a data collection and analysis suite, SenseMaker, that was designed to collect and work with narrative fragments. The approach presented adds a new and inherently mixed tool to the mixed methods toolbox. Despite its novelty and potential utility, little has been written in the academic literature on the application of SenseMaker to complex problems. To the best of our knowledge, the approach has not been used in relation to climate change or climate change adaptation and has not been presented in the mixed methods literature. We sought to contribute to filling this gap through describing the approach used to generate the data that underpin the articles in this special feature. Our purpose was to illustrate some of the potential and most notable challenges of using the SenseMaker data collection and analysis process in a complex domain through examining adaptation to climate change. Our overview was not exhaustive but rather sought to highlight capabilities and challenges through examining experiences of adaptation from a stages of change perspective. SenseMaker provides a remarkably powerful tool for the capture of micronarratives of complex phenomena such as climate change. The capacity to have respondents interpret, i.e., make sense of, their own narratives is an important innovation that provides one plausible solution to the problem of analysts coding narratives. Analytically, however, SenseMaker is relatively weak for those seeking strong statistical support for analyses and provides no capability for analyzing the narratives themselves.As governments struggle to find solutions to complex problems like climate change, policy makers look for tools that can capture complexity and elicit insight. I explored the application of one such tool, known as "SenseMaker," in helping Canadian policy makers understand the factors that enable or hinder climate change adaptation in Canada. I have reflected on the usefulness of SenseMaker and of a multiperspective, multimethod approach to investigating perceptions and experiences of adaptation. The challenges and advantages of applying this analysis in government were explored, and data findings assessed for their impact on policy. Findings showed that although the approach has promise, further work and testing are needed before sense-making approaches support adaptation policy.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess the potential effects of climate change on the habitat and human settlements in Mexico, through an analysis of three regions that are vulnerable to hydrometeorological hazards such as droughts, floods and hurricanes. Design/methodology/approach - The research process included fieldwork in the states of Oaxaca, Tabasco and Yucatan, and a historical study of hydrometeorological events in each region. The authors sought to identify a means of interpreting these events linked to climate variability, on the basis of the history of disasters, the environment and the habitat. The local climatic indications were compared to the IPCC's global successes, to show that contradictions do not exist but that it is difficult to apply the IPCC's findings at a local level, given the considerable margin of uncertainty. Findings - The indications of the effects of climate change make it possible to foresee that the most vulnerable populations will be the ones facing the strongest impact in the future. Practical implications - The research has direct implications on urban and housing policies, offering a roadmap to design climate change adaptation strategies; adaptive capacity not only requires political commitment. Social implications - It is also related to social and economic development and an "integral risk management" approach rather than a "civil protection" strategy. Originality/value - The main interest of this research is to show that a multidisciplinary approach is essential in order to understand the local implications of climate change.The authors examine partnerships as a policy strategy for climate change governance in cities in the Global South. Partnerships offer the opportunity to link the actions of diverse actors operating at different scales and, thus, they may be flexible enough to deal with uncertain futures and changing development demands. However, simultaneously, partnerships may lack effectiveness in delivering action at the local level, and may constitute a strategy for some actors to legitimate their objectives in spite of the interests of other partners. Engaging with the specific example of urban governance in Maputo, Mozambique, the authors present an analysis of potential partnerships in this context, in relation to the actors that are willing and able to intervene to deliver climate change action. What, they ask, are the challenges to achieving common objectives in partnerships from the perspective of local residents in informal settlements? The analysis describes a changing context of climate change governance in the city, in which the prospects of access to international finance for climate change adaptation are moving institutional actors towards engaging with participatory processes at the local level. However, the analysis suggests a question about the extent to which local communities are actually perceived as actors with legitimate interests who can intervene in partnerships, and whether their interests are recognised.The paper studies processes of adaptation to a changing climate in the water supply and wastewater sector in five Norwegian municipalities. Our case illustrates that the combination of characteristics of climate adaptation as a policy issue, institutional characteristics related to the vertical organization of the water sector in Norway, and characteristics of the professional network between local and national levels of governance seem to have been conducive to problem awareness and proactive approaches to problem solving. Our findings contradict the general picture drawn in the literature concluding that adaptation efforts are mainly reactive and internally related to the sector. We identify important mechanisms related to the production of policy solutions in governance networks mediating knowledge between different institutional levels. By these observations, the paper should contribute to the debate about the working of governance networks, and in particular to the knowledge about factors that are conducive to effective network governance.There is broad consensus that adaptation to climate change is necessary and urgent. Numerous documents and guidelines are available that provide advice on how to incorporate climate hazards and risks into spatial policies on the global, European and national scale. The experiences of less developed countries have shown that, rather than simply cascading uniform procedures, methods and techniques of adaptation down from higher to lower levels of governance, a realistic approach calls for innovative procedures, tailored to specific circumstances. The authors argue that the climate change adaptation (CCA) process in developing countries, especially post-socialist transition countries with underdeveloped institutions and procedures, differs from that seen in developed nations, which calls for taking these diverse (multiple) experiences into account when adaptation responses to particular local impacts are formulated. In that sense, adaptation is not necessarily guided by effective strategies that take into consideration overall economic, social and environmental goals, but is, rather, primarily intertwined with local spatial planning in an effort to reduce vulnerability to climate change and variability. This is mainly a reactive endeavour, as it lacks an anticipatory approach, but there are nonetheless some innovative qualities in each case that deserve to be closely inspected. This argument is illustrated by an example from Belgrade, Serbia. The Heron Island Project on the Danube River, developed between 2006 and 2009, aimed to reduce vulnerability to flooding. In the absence of climate change adaptation policies and strategies in Serbia, the project sought to balance nature preservation with construction and CCA action. This demonstrative project can be analysed as an illustration of how climate change can be integrated into the planning system, as well as what different opportunities are available to incorporate adaptation into new and existing developments.Purpose - Researchers and policymakers are figuring out the adaptation technologies to cope with the changing climate. Adaptation strategies for crop production followed by the farmers at selected study locations had ranged from 6-30 per cent only, and this was mainly due to lack of awareness about the actual cost associated with adaptation and non-adaptation of these strategies. Design/methodology/approach - Hence, this study aims to address the cost of adaptation for rice using joint probability distribution of rainfall and crop prices. Findings - Cost of adaptation varied from INR2,389 to 4,395/ha for System of Rice Intensification (SRI); INR646 to 1,121/ha for alternate wetting and drying (AWD) and INR8,144 to 8,677/ha for well irrigation (WI), whereas expected cost for not using these technologies has ranged from INR6,976 to 9,172/ha for SRI; INR4,123 7,764/ha for AWD and INR10,825 to 17,270/ha for WI. Hence, promotion of the adaptation technologies itself will minimize the income losses to the farmers. Research limitations/implications - Even though, there are many ways for farmers (other than technology), to adapt to climate change (such as out-migration to cities, selling farm assets, focus on children's education, etc.), this report, given the framework of the major research study undertaken, addresses only farm-level adaptation of the technologies to enhance farm income. Originality/value - Public-private partnership in providing the technologies at cheaper costs, capacity building in handling the technologies and creating awareness about the technologies to minimize the expected cost of adaptation are suggested to improve the adoption level.Attention is increasing in academia towards the governance of adaptation, specifically how state and non-state actors are defining the adaptation 'problematique' and crafting public policies to address it. Adaptation is the 'adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities'. The challenge for governments is taking this rather vague concept and turning it into viable and implementable public policies. This implies that they have to make choices as to the types of polices to create, the sectors they should cover, ministerial jurisdictions and funding. This article contributes to the discussion on the adaptation governance by presenting a conceptual framework that outlines policy choices governors need to make, by applying this framework to a number of countries, and starting the debate on which choice or choices were particularly instrumental in shaping adaptation policy in particular countries as a whole. It focuses on four countries traditionally seen to be adaptation leaders: Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.This paper aims to better understand the role of leadership in regional climate change adaptation. We first present a framework, which distinguishes five functions of leadership within inter-organizational networks: the connective, enabling, adaptive, political-administrative and dissemination functions. Next, we compare the role of leadership in two examples of regional adaptation practices which were initiated by governmental actors with two examples which were initiated by non-governmental actors. The case studies are located in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. Our research question is twofold: to what extent can the five functions of leadership be identified in practices of climate change adaptation, and are there differences in the patterns of leadership between adaptation practices which are initiated by governmental and by non-governmental actors? The study shows that although all leadership functions were fulfilled in all four cases, patterns of leadership were different and the fulfilment of leadership functions posed different challenges to non-governmental actors and governmental actors.Belgium and the Netherlands together form the Low Countries. Empirical research in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) and the Netherlands proves that there are substantive differences in the organization of governance processes regarding flood management in response to climate change. This article answers the question of how Flanders and the Netherlands, confronted with universal challenges and dilemmas in the governance of adaptation to climate change - integration versus differentiation (multi-sector versus sector-based governance), the problem of scaling (multilevel governance) and the division of public and private responsibilities (multi-actor governance) - are designing and structuring their approaches. More specifically, we look at how differences in the framing of climate adaptation can explain why organizational practices differ. For this purpose, a distinction is made between diagnostic framing (what is the problem?), prognostic framing (what could be possible solutions?) and action framing (how to act?). By referring to existing policy frames, the article explains recent policy choices on climate change adaptation in flood management.In the emerging field of climate adaptation, deliberative governance initiatives are proposed to yield better adaptation strategies. However, introducing these network-centred deliberations between public and private players may contrast with institutionalized traditions of interest intermediation between state and society. This paper shows how these so-called state traditions affect the processes and outcomes of newly set up deliberative governance initiatives. Because of the similarities in geographical characteristics and the differences in state tradition we conducted a qualitative case study comparison of Dutch and British water management. Our comparison is two-fold. First, we compare deliberative governance initiatives in the different state traditions of the Netherlands and UK. Second, we compare the newly set up deliberative governance initiative to an existing policy regime mainstreaming climate adaptation in a similar state tradition, in our case the Netherlands. We find that: (1) deliberative governance initiatives in the corporatist state tradition of the Netherlands yields learning but shows apathy among politically elected decision-makers compared to deliberative governance initiatives in the pluralist state tradition of the UK where clearly defined rules and responsibilities yields negotiation and action; and (2) a typical corporatist policy regime mainstreaming climate adaption in a corporatist state tradition yields effective and legitimate policy formation but lacks learning.As species' geographic ranges and ecosystem functions are altered in response to climate change, there is a need to integrate biodiversity conservation approaches that promote natural adaptation into land use planning. Successful conservation will need to embrace multiple climate adaptation approaches. but to date they have not been conveyed in an integrated way to help support immediate conservation planning and action in the face of inherent spatial uncertainty about future conditions. Instead, these multiple approaches are often conveyed as competing or contradictory alternatives, when in fact, they are complementary. We present a framework that synthesizes six promising spatially explicit adaptation approaches for conserving biodiversity. We provide guidance on implementing these adaptation approaches and include case studies that highlight how biodiversity conservation can be used in planning. We conclude with general guidance on choosing appropriate climate adaptation approaches to amend for conservation planning.Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) comprises only a small fraction of western USA forests, yet contributes significant biological diversity and is considered by many to be the most important deciduous forest type in western North America. There is currently a high level of concern in the western United States as many seral aspen populations are declining in vigor due to drought, ungulate browsing, and lack of disturbance. It is also highly uncertain if aspen will successfully accommodate future climate warming via migration through seedling establishment, which has been assumed to be extremely rare. In recent years, fundamental assumptions concerning aspen clonal age, regeneration, and genetic diversity have been challenged, and these findings have important implications for management and persistence of aspen in western USA forests. In this study, we compared regeneration dynamics of aspen revitalization strategies (conifer removal and prescribed fire) to unplanned wildfires of low, moderate, and high severity in the Sierra Nevada, and related multiple components of pre-fire stand composition to post-fire aspen regeneration. To better understand the viability of aspen migration to accommodate future climate warming, we examined recent events of aspen seedling establishment. We found substantial evidence that greater disturbance severity yields increased aspen sprout density and growth rates, and that live conifer and/or dead aspen basal area in a stand before a fire reduces post fire sprout density. Additionally, we found evidence that aspen seedling establishment is more common than has been assumed, and represents a viable means for aspen migration. Future climate changes will present both challenges and opportunities for aspen. Increased temperatures and drought will stress existing populations, but increased high severity fire in forested areas, may provide opportunity for successful aspen migration and genet establishment. In addition to revitalizing existing aspen stands, future management goals should include the establishment of new stands in more suitable habitat.The threat of climate change demands that human settlements adapt to unavoidable impacts. Climate change is a complex problem that requires traditional disciplines to work together to facilitate an integrated and coordinated response to its impacts. Transdisciplinary research approaches have been recognised for being well placed to aid responses to complex problems such as climate change. This paper draws on the experience of the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQCARI), Australia, to reflect upon the challenges involved in undertaking transdisciplinary research aimed at developing and improving a range of adaptation options for specific sectors as well as across sectors. Challenges and learning's are discussed based on the three phases of transdisciplinary research processes: problem framing and team building, co-creation of solution-oriented transferable knowledge, and (re)integration and application of created knowledge. Four key insights are then discussed to advance transdisciplinary research approaches for climate change adaptation: adoption of a dynamic learning approach such as learning-by-doing/ doing-by-learning to provide sufficient flexibility and scope to navigate potential barriers and conflicts; selection of social sciences to drive integration; choice of one sector as a platform for integration; and acknowledgement of existing barriers and limitations associated with the political context in which the research takes place. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study was to investigate the climate change adaptation opportunities of six companies from different sectors through resource efficiency and sustainable production. A total of 77 sustainable production options were developed for the companies based on the audits conducted. After screening these opportunities with each company's staff, 19 options were selected and implemented. Significant water savings (849,668 m(3)/year) were achieved as a result of the applications that targeted reduction of water use. In addition to water savings, the energy consumption was reduced by 3,607 MWh, which decreased the CO2 emissions by 904.1 tons/year. Moreover, the consumption of 278.4 tons/year of chemicals (e.g., NaCl, CdO, NaCN) was avoided, thus the corresponding pollution load to the wastewater treatment plant was reduced. Besides the tangible improvements, other gains were achieved, such as improved product quality, improved health and safety conditions, reduced maintenance requirements, and ensured compliance with national and EU regulations. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first ever activity in Turkey devoted to climate change adaptation in the private sector. This study may serve as a building block in Turkey for the integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation approach in the industry, since water efficiency (adaptation) and carbon reduction (mitigation) are achieved simultaneously.Climate change is having and will continue to have a range of negative impacts on social-environmental systems. Many ports, with their coastal locations and essential roles in regional and national economies, face particular exposure to storm impacts that may worsen with climate change. Currently in the United States port resilience planning falls primarily on port operators. Engaging a wider range of stakeholders in long-term seaport functioning may reduce risks from disruptive and potentially irreversible impacts of climate change. This study uses empirical data gathered through two case studies of highly exposed U.S. ports, Gulfport (MS) and Providence (RI), to identify strategies that port planners and external stakeholders consider feasible for enhancing their port's resilience. This article categorizes these resilience strategies and suggests the potential role that different stakeholders could play in facilitation and implementation.Perpetual conservation easements (CEs) are popular for restricting development and land use, but their fixed terms create challenges for adaptation to climate change. The increasing pace of environmental and social change demands adaptive conservation instruments. To examine the adaptive potential of CEs, we surveyed 269 CEs and interviewed 73 conservation organization employees. Although only 2% of CEs mentioned climate change, the majority of employees were concerned about climate change impacts. CEs share the fixed-boundary limits typical of protected areas with additional adaptation constraints due to permanent terms on private lands. CEs often have multiple, potentially conflicting purposes that protect against termination but complicate decisions about principled, conservation-oriented adaptation. Monitoring is critical for shaping adaptive responses, but only 35% of CEs allowed organizations to conduct ecological monitoring. In addition, CEs provided few requirements or incentives for active stewardship of private lands. We found four primary options for changing land use restrictions, each with advantages and risks: CE amendment, management plan revisions, approval of changes through discretionary consent, and updating laws or policies codified in the CE. Conservation organizations, funders, and the Internal Revenue Service should promote processes for principled adaptation in CE terms, provide more active stewardship of CE lands, and consider alternatives to the CE tool.Purpose - The change management literature on strategy implementation identifies different dimensions of resistance to change. The contrary view - that of dimensions of acceptance of change when implementing strategy - has received less attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation of environmental sustainability strategies by Nordic insurers, the role of leadership in implementing these changes, and employee acceptance of change. Design/methodology/approach - For achieving this purpose, this paper reports on an explanatory case study of Nordic non-life insurers, where interviews with insurance executives and specialists were the primary source of data. Findings - The authors have developed simple strategy maps, focusing on insurers' own operations, product offerings, loss prevention and claims settlements, investments and influence on stakeholders, to show how common elements of environmental strategies are implemented within the insurance industry. The importance of leadership in organizational change is evident in the data, as well as in employees' positive attitudes towards implementation of environmental sustainability strategies. Originality/value - The scientific contribution of this paper is the empirical mapping of a hitherto unexplored area of the implementation of environmental sustainability strategies within the Nordic insurance industry, highlighting the leadership role in implementing environmental sustainability strategies and the elements shaping employee acceptance of change when implementing environmental sustainability strategies.Decadal variability of the Pacific Subtropical Cells (STCs) and associated sea surface height (SSH) in the western tropical Pacific during recent decades are examined by using an historical OGCM simulation. The model represents decadal variations of the STCs concurrent with tropical Pacific thermal anomalies: the eastern tropical Pacific is warmer when the STCs are weaker and cooler when they are stronger. The spatial patterns of the SSH in the western tropical Pacific show different features, depending on events associated with decadal variability. During the warm phase (1977-1987), the SSH anomalies exhibit deviations from a meridionally symmetric distribution, with weakly positive (strongly negative) anomalies in the western tropical North (South) Pacific. Analysis of the heat budget in the upper tropical Pacific indicates that the termination of the warm phase around 1985 results from a poleward heat transport anomaly that is induced by a horizontal gyre associated with the SSH anomalies. During the cold phase (1996-2006), in contrast, the SSH anomalies are nearly meridionally symmetric, with positive anomalies in both hemispheres. Enhanced easterly wind anomalies contribute to the development of the cold phase after the late 1990s.Many of today's societal problems are wicked problems that require a new, transdisciplinary approach in which knowledge of scientists and stakeholders from different disciplines is integrated. The evaluation of transdisciplinary science requires a multi-method approach. Bibliometric analysis is consistently among the methods in multi-method evaluations. We analyse the accuracy of bibliometric evidence for the evaluation of transdisciplinary research by examining two large climate adaptation research programmes in the Netherlands. The assessment of accuracy involves a comparison of different approaches to defining and measuring involvement, output, and quality. We draw three conclusions with regard to accuracy. First, scientific output covers a fairly high amount of the scientific activities of the programmes, though information on funding agencies is not yet sufficiently accurate to reconstruct a programme's output through the Web of Science (WoS). Second, scientific output does not accurately reflect the nature and design of the programmes. The WoS appears to underestimate locally oriented and practically oriented research, non-academic actors rarely co-author scientific publications, and the contributions of non-academic organizations to projects could not be recognized from author affiliations. Third, our exploration of two alternative reproducible metrics (non-scientific output and download statistics) shows that it is too early to introduce such metrics into evaluation practices. The research agenda for transdisciplinary output metrics should focus on the development of a common definition of transdisciplinary research output and a typology of non-scientific outputs, as well as a discussion and assessment of the relative value of such outputs for the integration of knowledge.Purpose - Contributing to the global dialogue on disaster risk reduction (DRR), the purpose of this paper is to address a key priority for the Post-2015 Framework for DRR (HFA2) by analysing initiatives used by one local government to increase local-level engagement in DRR. Design/methodology/approach - A review of literature from the multidisciplinary areas of communication, social and political theory examines the role that communication theory and practice can play in facilitating public participation to build community resilience. Building on these insights, the authors introduce a research methodology to examine modes of communication, the quality of dialogue and opportunities for "voice" and "listening" between decision makers and local-level stakeholders during DRR planning A qualitative, case study is undertaken with data sourced from observation, document analysis and interviews to provide insights into public engagement events, policies and procedures that enhance or impede local engagement in DRR. Findings - Communication between the DRR campaign team and publics are analysed according to the range of communication practices used and opportunities provided for dialogue between parties. Findings differentiate between public information, consultation and participation events. Factors that enable and conversely, constrain local-level engagement to build community resilience, and conditions associated with each factor, are identified. Research limitations/implications - A unique analytical framework adapted from the duel lenses of participatory communication and information flow models, is used to differentiate events using one-way information from those offering opportunities for dialogue and participation. The framework provides a method for DRR practitioners to plan and evaluate local-level engagement events to meet the communication needs of particular situations. Practical implications - The framework provides a method for DRR practitioners to plan and evaluate local-level engagement events to meet the communication needs of particular situations. Originality/value - Co-authored by an Australian academic and a member of Amadora's campaign team, the paper is a combination of one city's experience in developing strategies to build community resilience, analysed using communication, social and political theory. Findings have implications for standard command-and-control management systems and styles of leadership and crisis management. Results will assist practitioners' advance their understanding of different ways that publics may be engaged to build community resilience.In recent years increasing attention has been focused on understanding the different resources that can support decision makers at all levels in responding to climate variability and change. This article focuses on the role that access to information and other potential constraints may play in the context of water decision making across three U.S. regions (the Intermountain West, the Great Lakes, and the Carolinas). The authors report on the degree to which climate-related needs or constraints pertinent to water resources are regionally specific. They also find that stakeholder-identified constraints or needs extended beyond the need for data/information to enabling factors such as governance arrangements and how to improve collaboration and communication. As climate information networks expand and emphasis is placed on encouraging adaptation more broadly, these constraints have implications not only for how information dissemination efforts are organized but for how those efforts need to be informed by the larger regional context in a resource-limited and fragmented landscape.In light of global climate change, adaptation will be necessary at all levels of social organization. However, the adaptation literature emphasizes that because the impacts of climate change and vulnerability are locally specific, adaptation is inevitably local. In this paper, in order to inform the design of institutions that can encourage and support effective local-level adaptation, the authors derive principles for their design theoretically and use a case study to explore how these principles could be practically implemented. Ten design principles are synthesized from principles derived from reviews of the literatures on local-level adaptation, usable science, and boundary organizations. Bringing these three literatures together highlights the characteristics of boundary organizations that make them particularly valuable for addressing the challenges of local-level adaptation. The case study then illustrates how an existing boundary organization, The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, of the U.S. Cooperative Extension System (CES), implements these principles in its organizational structure and in the daily practice of Extension professionals. It also highlights the significance of the CES's existing social networks and social capital for facilitating their implementation. From the case study it is concluded that the CES is uniquely positioned to serve an important role in a national adaptation strategy for the United States in supporting local-level adaptation in urban and rural communities across the country.The characteristics of the polar cold air mass (PCAM) below a threshold potential temperature (T) are quantitatively compared between two hemispheric winters and analyzed with a zonal-mean two-box model. This model estimates a residence time in a genesis box, a life time in a loss box, and PCAM flux between them. The hemispheric total PCAM amount below (T) =280K in the Northern Hemispheric winter is approximately 40% greater than that in the Southern Hemispheric winter. This difference is attributed to the residence time enhanced due to the land-sea distribution and mountain barriers, while the PCAM flux is almost equivalent between the two winters.Estimating the expected annual damage (EAD) due to flooding in an urban area is of great interest for urban water managers and other stakeholders. It is a strong indicator for a given area showing how vulnerable it is to flood risk and how much can be gained by implementing e. g., climate change adaptation measures. This study identifies and compares three different methods for estimating the EAD based on unit costs of flooding of urban assets. One of these methods was used in previous studies and calculates the EAD based on a few extreme events by assuming a log-linear relationship between cost of an event and the corresponding return period. This method is compared to methods that are either more complicated or require more calculations. The choice of method by which the EAD is calculated appears to be of minor importance. At all three case study areas it seems more important that there is a shift in the damage costs as a function of the return period. The shift occurs approximately at the 10 year return period and can perhaps be related to the design criteria for sewer systems. Further, it was tested if the EAD estimation could be simplified by assuming a single unit cost per flooded area. The results indicate that within each catchment this may be a feasible approach. However the unit costs varies substantially between different case study areas. Hence it is not feasible to develop unit costs that can be used to calculate EAD, most likely because the urban landscape is too heterogeneous.In a changing outdoor climate, new buildings as well as the existing building stock need to adapt in order to keep providing their inhabitants and users a comfortable and healthy indoor environment, with a minimum or - preferably - no increase in energy consumption. In this paper, the effectiveness of six passive climate change adaptation measures applied at the level of building components is assessed using building energy simulations for three generic residential buildings as commonly built in - among others - the Netherlands: (1) detached house; (2) terraced house; (3) apartment. The study involves both residential buildings that are built according to the regulations and common practice in 2012, and residential buildings that were constructed in the 1970s, with a lower thermal resistance of the opaque and transparent parts of the building envelope. The climate change adaptation measures investigated are: (i) increased thermal resistance; (ii) changed thermal capacity; (iii) increased short-wave reflectivity (albedo); (iv) vegetation roofs; (v) solar shading; and (vi) additional natural ventilation. This paper quantifies the effectiveness of these climate change adaptation measures for new residential buildings as well as for renovation of the current building stock. The performance indicator is the number of overheating hours during a year. It is shown that exterior solar shading and additional natural ventilation are most effective for this performance indicator. Furthermore, increasing thermal insulation to reduce energy use for heating demands additional measures to prevent overheating. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Housing providers have to keep adapting their building stock to keep pace with the dynamic changes in the urban environment. One of the main drivers of adaptation is climate change, caused primarily by man-made greenhouse gases. Climate change is impacting on urban areas largely through drought, flooding from extreme precipitation, and heat stress. Climate change not only threatens the building stock, but also the quality of life of people living and working in urban environments. In the Netherlands, housing associations have strong interests in and responsibilities for managing the social housing stock and maintaining quality of life, but they seem scarcely aware of the challenge that lies ahead in terms of adapting their stock to the impacts of climate change. This paper focuses on physical adaptations to the housing stock and discusses the likelihood of the adoption of five implementation strategies for climate adaptation measures as assessed by decision-makers in Dutch housing associations in an online survey. The strategies combine conceptual approaches in policymaking, involvement of external players, and the execution of construction projects in a partnering approach, with the addition of one extra strategy that assigns a central position to the tenants. There was no strategy that stood out clearly as the one most likely to guide the implementation of measures. Many housing associations do, however, see opportunities in this area and might be persuaded to take action if they were provided with a wide palette of implementation strategies from which they could select the most suitable combination. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Based on the experience acquired in the Bergpolder Zuid district in the city of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, this paper presents lessons learned so far on science-policy interactions supporting the adaptation to climate change in an urban district Two types of integration issues were considered: (1) Integration within science including integration of disciplines, methods, models and data, and (2) integration between science and the local stakeholders' society, involving a synthesis of scientific and practical knowledge, linking sectors, governance arrangements and organisations. At first sight, the issues around integration within science and beyond the science of climate change adaptation in cities resemble those generally observed in science-policy integration. However, the relative newness of urban adaptation to climate change poses specific challenges for both the scientists and the stakeholders involved in the process. The Rotterdam example discusses the use of multiple means of integration for enhancing integration between scientific disciplines and integration between scientific and stakeholder knowledge. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A regional climate modelling system, the Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies developed by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, has been used to study future climate change scenarios over Indus basin for the impact assessment. In this paper we have examined the three Quantifying Uncertainty in Model Predictions simulations selected from 17-member perturbed physics ensemble generated using Hadley Centre Coupled Module. The climate projections based on IPCC SRES A1B scenario are analysed over three time slices, near future (2011-2040), middle of the twenty first century (2041-2070), and distant future (2071-2098). The baseline simulation (1961-1990) was evaluated with observed data for seasonal and spatial patterns and biases. The model was able to resolve features on finer spatial scales and depict seasonal variations reasonably well, although there were quantitative biases. The model simulations suggest a non-uniform change in precipitation overall, with an increase in precipitation over the upper Indus basin and decrease over the lower Indus basin, and little change in the border area between the upper and lower Indus basins. A decrease in winter precipitation is projected, particularly over the southern part of the basin. Projections indicate greater warming in the upper than the lower Indus, and greater warming in winter than in the other seasons. The simulations suggest an overall increase in the number of rainy days over the basin, but a decrease in the number of rainy days accompanied by an increase in rainfall intensity in the border area between the upper and lower basins, where the rainfall amount is highest.Climate change vulnerability assessment is a complex form of risk assessment which accounts for both geophysical and socio-economic components of risk. In indicator-based vulnerability assessment (IBVA), indicators are used to rank the vulnerabilities of socio-ecological systems (SESs). The predominant aggregation approach in the literature, sometimes based on multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), typically builds a global-scale, utility function based on weighted summation, to generate rankings. However, the corresponding requirement for additive independence and complete knowledge of system interactions by analyst are rarely if ever satisfied in IBVA. We build an analogy between the structures of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and IBVA problems and show that a set of techniques called Outranking Methods, developed in MCDA to deal with criteria incommensurability, data uncertainty and preference imprecision, offer IBVA a sound alternative to additive or multiplicative aggregation. We reformulate IBVA problems within an outranking framework, define thresholds of difference and use an outranking method, ELECTRE III, to assess the relative vulnerability to heat stress of 15 local government areas in metropolitan Sydney. We find that the ranking outcomes are robust and argue that an outranking approach is better suited for assessments characterized by a mix of qualitative, semi-quantitative and quantitative indicators, threshold effects and uncertainties about the exact relationships between indicators and vulnerability. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tropical forests are at the center of any global debate on climate change and sustainable forest management because of their twin roles in climate change adaptation and mitigation and for resilient development. However, in the countries of the Congo Basin forests receive very little attention in national planning and policies. Climate change is not currently considered in decisions and long-term forest management plans in these countries. This paper demonstrates that: (1) Congo Basin forests are needed for adaptation because they can help to decrease human vulnerability to climate change; and (2) Congo Basin forest management practices need to be adapted to accommodate climate change because these forests are vulnerable to climate change. A framework for facilitating adaptation in forestry is discussed and a review of adaptive actions presented. The paper recommends the adoption of sustainable forest management approach that includes a climate change focus. Such management should not only avoid any adverse effects on the forest resources and conservation of biodiversity, but also provides opportunities for greater, more sustainable rural development and poverty alleviation through income generation and employment opportunities. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Adaptive governance focuses our attention on the relationships between science and management, whereby the so-called 'gaps' between these groups are seen to hinder effective adaptive responses to biophysical change. Yet the relationships between science and governance, knowledge and action, remain under theorized in discussions of adaptive governance, which largely focuses on abstract design principles or preferred institutional arrangements. In contrast, the metaphor of co-production highlights the social and political processes through which science, policy, and practice co-evolve. Co-production is invoked as a normative goal (Mitchell et al., 2004) and analytical lens (jasanoff, 2004a,b), both of which provide useful insight into the processes underpinning adaptive governance. This paper builds on and integrates these disparate views to reconceptualize adaptive governance as a process of co-production. I outline an alternative conceptual framing, 'co-productive governance', that articulates the context, knowledge, process, and vision of governance. I explore these ideas through two cases of connectivity conservation, which draws on conservation science to promote collaborative cross-scale governance. This analysis highlights the ways in which the different contexts of these cases produced very different framings and responses to the same propositions of science and governance. Drawing on theoretical and empirical material, co-productive governance moves beyond long standing debates that institutions can be rationally crafted or must emerge from context resituate adaptive governance in a more critical and contextualized space. This reframing focuses on the process of governance through an explicit consideration of how normative considerations shape the interactions between knowledge and power, science and governance. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Research on people-place relations, specifically place attachment and place identity, is beginning to make an important contribution to understanding human responses to climate change. However, to date there has been a dearth of research on how place attachments at multiple scales, particularly the global, and individual level ideological beliefs combine to influence climate change attitudes and opinions. To address these gaps, survey data was collected from a representative sample of Australian citizens (N = 1147), capturing attachments at neighbourhood, city/town, state/territory, country and global scales, as well as a range of climate change belief and individual difference measures. Results show the importance of the interplay between national and global place attachments. Individuals expressing stronger global than national attachments were more likely to attribute climate change to anthropogenic causes, to oppose hierarchy-enhancing myths that legitimize climate inaction, and to perceive positive economic impacts arising from climate change responses, in comparison to individuals indicating stronger national over global place attachments. Individuals with stronger global than national attachments were more likely to be female, younger, and self-identify as having no religion, to be more likely to vote Green and to be characterized by significantly lower levels of right wing authoritarian and social dominance beliefs. Right wing authoritarian and social dominance beliefs mediated the effects of place attachments upon climate change skepticism. Explanations for the findings and implications for future research are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biochar is perceived as a promising amendment to reclaim degraded, metal-contaminated lands. The objective of this study was to compare the potential of biochar and wood ash amendments to reduce metal(loid) leaching in mine tailings. A 2-mo leaching experiment was conducted in duplicate on acidic and alkaline tailings, each mixed with 5 wt.% of one of the following amendments: three wood-derived, fast-pyrolysis biochars (OC > 57 wt.%) and two wood ash materials (organic carbon [OC] <= 16 wt.%); a control test with no carbon input was also added. The columns were leached with water after 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 d, and the leachates were monitored for dissolved metals, OC, and pH. For the acidic and alkaline tailings, the most significant impact on metal mobility was observed with wood ash materials due to their greater neutralization potential (> 15% CaCO3 eq.) compared with biochar (<= 3.3% CaCO3 eq.). An increase of 1 pH unit in the wood ash-treated alkaline tailings led to an undesirable mobilization of As and Se. The addition of biochar did not significantly reduce the leaching of the main contaminants (Cu and Ni in the acidic tailings and As in the alkaline tailings) over 2 mo. The Se attenuation noted in some biochar-treated acid tailings may be mainly due to a slight alkaline effect rather than Se removal by biochar, given the low capacity for the fresh biochars to retain Se under acidic conditions (pH 4.5). The increased loss of dissolved OC in the biochar-amended systems was of short duration and was not associated with metal(loid) mobilization.Economic intensification continues to increase along many of the world's coastlines. This intensification, which includes asset and infrastructure intensification, along with the increasing likelihood of inundation associated with sea level rise, implies an increasing risk profile for many coastal communities. In response, many cities and owners of major civil infrastructure have commissioned climate risk and adaptation studies in order to develop adaptation strategies. In many cases the same methods, terminology and approaches have been applied in studies of adaptation options for entire communities as for individual structures and assets. It is argued here that as a result of the different scales and complexity between whole communities and individual assets or structures, it is desirable that tailored approaches to identifying adaptation options need to be applied. In particular, it is recommended that categorising settlement and infrastructure studies into either community-scale, or infrastructure-scale problems will help to ensure that the most appropriate methodological approaches are be used. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reinforced concrete (RC) structures are subject to environmental actions affecting their performance, serviceability and safety. Among these actions, chloride ingress leads to corrosion initiation and its interaction with service loading could reduce its operational life. Experimental evidence indicates that chloride ingress is highly influenced by weather conditions in the surrounding environment and therefore by climate change. Consequently, both structural design and maintenance should be adapted to these new environmental conditions. This work focuses on the assessment of the costs and benefits of two climate adaptation strategies for new RC structures placed in chloride-contaminated environments under various climate change scenarios. Their cost-effectiveness is measured in terms of the benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) and the probability that BCR exceeds unity -i.e., Pr(BCR > 1). It was found that increasing concrete strength grade is more cost-effective than increasing design cover. The results also indicate that the cost-effectiveness of a given adaptation strategy depends mainly on the type of structural component, exposure conditions and climate change scenarios. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integrated modelling and assessment can facilitate exploration of complex social ecological interactions and quantify trade-offs in regional policy, planning, and management options. However, there have been challenges in its acceptance and adoption for supporting decisions. Here we overcome this implementation gap through the development of an interactive online tool called the Landscape Futures Analysis Tool (LFAT) (http://www.lfat.org.au/). Identifying four high priority regional management issues; agricultural production, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation and weed management, we developed a series of simple models to explore them through a range of environmental and economic scenarios including climate change, carbon price, agricultural commodity price, and production costs. These models were implemented within the LFAT to allow users to select, query and explore combinations of key variables and examine their impact on each of the management issues through a range of interactive maps and summary statistics. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public parks commonly contain important habitat for urban biodiversity, and they also provide recreation opportunities for urban residents. However, the extent to which dual outcomes for recreation and conservation can be achieved in the same spaces remains unclear. We examine whether greater levels of (i) tree cover (i.e. park 'greenness') and (ii) native remnant vegetation cover (i.e. vegetation with high ecological value) attract or deter park visitors. This study is based on the park visitation behaviour of 670 survey respondents in Brisbane, Australia, detailing 1,090 individual visits to 324 urban parks. We first examined the presence of any clear revealed preferences for visiting parks with higher or lower levels of tree cover or remnant vegetation cover. We then examined the differences between each park visited by respondents and the park closest to their home, and used linear mixed models to identify socio-demographic groups who are more likely to travel further to visit parks with greater tree cover or remnant vegetation cover. Park visitation rates reflected the availability of parks, suggesting that people do not preferentially visit parks with greater vegetation cover despite the potential for improved nature-based experiences and greater wellbeing benefits. However, we discovered that people with a greater orientation towards nature (measured using the nature relatedness scale) tend to travel further for more vegetated parks. Our results suggest that to enhance recreational benefits from ecologically valuable spaces a range of social or educational interventions are required to enhance people's connection to nature.Social network analysis (SNA) is well recognized as a tool for informing climate change adaptation; however, this methodology is limited by a focus on quantitative structural analyses (how many nodes and ties exist, and between whom), rather than accessing richer information about their meaning (value content of ties). One way to improve the usefulness of SNA is to purposefully complement the structural analysis with cultural elements that can be drawn from field datasets. In this network-governance case study from Queensland, Australia, research on organizations involved in water management and flood responses events showed that cultural values were important in influencing network connections and preferred approaches to flood pre-planning and response. For example, there were differences in organizational preferences for the numbers and types of links that are rooted in different values. From this, Mary Douglas' Cultural Theory categories of individualists, hierarchists, and egalitarians were extended to analyze the types of ties between network nodes, the preferred approaches of different types of organization, and the problematic links and missing links among network nodes. This work illustrates that analyses of both structural SNA and cultural values can be used to improve regional-level adaptation activities such as disaster management. Here, increased knowledge about social networks, network ties, and cultural values can facilitate a process of social learning that will help societies adapt to climate change impacts.Climate is one of many factors to be considered in adapting systems to environmental and societal change and often it is not the most important factor. Moreover, given considerable model inadequacies, irreducible uncertainties, and poor accessibility to model output, we may legitimately ask whether or not regional climate projections ought to have a central role in guiding climate change adaptation decisions. This question is addressed by analysing the value of regional downscaled climate model output in the management of complex socio-ecological systems (SESs) vulnerable to climate change. We demonstrate, using the example of the Dwesa-Cwebe region in South Africa, that the management of such systems under changing environmental and socio-economic conditions requires a nuanced and holistic approach that addresses cross-scale system interdependencies and incorporates "complexity thinking". We argue that the persistent focus on increasing precision and skill in regional climate projections is misguided and does not adequately address the needs of society. However, this does not imply that decision makers should exclude current and future generations of regional climate projections in their management processes. On the contrary, ignoring such information, however uncertain and incomplete, risks the implementation of maladaptive policies and practices. By using regional climate projections to further explore uncertainties and investigate cross-scale system dependencies, such information can be used to aid understanding of how SESs might evolve under alternative future societal and environmental scenarios.Climate is a major driver of agricultural production potentials. To make the best use of these potentials, agricultural management should be adjusted to local climatic conditions. As these conditions change over time, understanding climatic limitations and their trends in time and space is essential for the planning of suitable adaptation measures. In this study, we provide a detailed spatio-temporal analysis of climatic yield potentials for grain maize and winter wheat in Switzerland. We find that current climatic suitability for grain maize is mostly limited by sub-optimal temperatures, radiation and water scarcity, while climatic suitability for winter wheat is mostly limited through excess water, insufficient radiation, as well as frost and heat stress. Over the investigated period from 1983 to 2010, few regional trends in climate suitability were identified for the two crops, indicating that grain maize has benefitted slightly from increasing growth temperatures with recent warming (0.5 degrees C/decade), while winter wheat suitability decreased slightly due to suboptimal radiation/temperature ratios with warming. Despite only small trends in climate suitabilities, which are restricted to particular regions, future climatic changes could lead to more pronounced shifts. The tendencies of climate limitations identified in this study are mostly consistent with findings from other studies, and it can thus be anticipated that maize may continue to benefit from increasing temperatures on the short term, but may also be increasingly limited by water scarcity as summer precipitation decreases. For winter wheat, the relevance of heat stress is likely to increase with increasing temperatures. These results may help to support short-term adaptation planning. However, more detailed analyses of climate projections will be necessary to investigate "critical transitions" and provide more specific information to support long-term climate change adaptation planning (e.g. for irrigation and breeding programmes).The mechanisms acting on near-surface winds over the Gulf Stream are diagnosed using 5-yr outputs of a regional atmospheric model. The diagnostics for the surface-layer momentum vector, its curl, and its convergence are developed with a clear separation of pressure adjustment from downward momentum inputs from aloft in the surface-layer system. The results suggest that the downward momentum mixing mechanism plays a dominant role in contributing to the annual-mean climatological momentum curl, whereas the pressure adjustment mechanism plays a minor role. In contrast, the wind convergence is mainly due to the pressure adjustment mechanism. This can be explained by the orientation of background wind to the sea surface temperature front. The diagnostics also explain the relatively strong seasonal variation in surface-layer momentum convergence and the small seasonal variation in curl. Finally, the surface-layer response to other western boundary currents is examined using a reanalysis dataset.Climate science is characterized by large uncertainties about the direction, extent and time frame of climate change. Communicating these uncertainties is important for decision making on robust adaptation strategies, but proves to be a challenge for scientists particularly because of the complexity of uncertainties that are part of natural variability and of human induced climate change. The aim of this paper is to assess the role of a simulation game, as intermediate, to the communication of climate change uncertainties to water managers. In three workshops with water managers, the simulation game 'Sustainable Delta' was played to test the influence of the game on their understanding of climate change uncertainty using ex ante and ex post surveys. In each workshop an experimental- and control group were given different assignments to measure the influence of the game. The results show that although the differences between groups were not statistically significant, a change in their understanding of uncertainties was observed. The paper concludes that the learning effect of the game is inconclusive, but that the game does fosters a broader understanding of the concept climate change uncertainty. In doing so, simulation games are a promising approach to support the communication of climate change uncertainties meaningfully and support the process of adaptation to an uncertain future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mountains are important global reservoirs of water resources. However they are highly vulnerable to climate change as limited alterations in temperature and precipitation may cause harmful effects to water systems. Southern Europe and especially Greece are expected to undergo a drought trend over the next decades, resulting in less recharge for the aquifers and water services reduction. Thus, climate change may distort both natural and socioeconomic characteristics of freshwater ecosystem services deteriorating the general social welfare related to them. This paper examines the economic impacts of climate change on river uses of the Aoos basin in Greece. In this regard, a choice experiment is conducted to estimate the value changes in different ecological and economic services in a mountain community. The econometric simulations using conditional logit, random parameters logit and latent class models reveal that despite existing preference heterogeneity, respondents on average derive positive and significant welfare effects from climate change adaptation measures. The findings of the survey may assist in adaptation planning for the Aoos River basin, with possible extensions to other river systems enduring similar climate change indications. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Natural World Heritage (WH) sites are globally recognized as having universal value, providing society with critical ecosystem services like biodiversity, clean water, and recreational opportunity. Every natural WH site is at risk from climate change, but the scope and nature of that risk varies widely. Climate change adaptation is a wicked problem; that is, there are no clear-cut solutions and stakeholders at each site disagree on values, norms and first steps, making adaptation difficult. Yet, delaying action poses more risks than taking action under uncertainty. I synthesize the refereed literature relevant to climate adaptation for natural WH sites. I argue that adaptation should be ecosystem based. It should begin by understanding linkages among site attributes and the surrounding landscape, and asking how off-site and on-site practices might reduce risk of negative effects of climate change on those attributes. Adaptation responses are tiered. Fine-scale, on-site responses are less expensive and easier but will have less impact than coarse-scale responses involving the surrounding community. We cannot precisely predict future conditions so we must act adaptively, designing responses, acting, evaluating results, re-designing and trying again. Action is constrained by institutional mandates focused on preserving existing conditions rather than recognizing a dynamic future. Climate change adaptation at natural WH sites should be Adaptive, Participatory and Transformative, deployed through clumsy solutions. Such solutions will require strong leadership and excellent communication, drawing together widely disparate views and iterative practices focusing on resilience. That requirement establishes the need for capacity development for climate change adaptation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Jakarta, as the capital of the Republic of Indonesia, has long been known to be at risk from flood hazard. It is increasingly recognized that community responses and adaptation strategies are essential for planning future mitigation action. In order to investigate the community responses and adaptation strategies employed in Jakarta, in-depth interviews were performed in the flood-prone areas. The results reveal that vulnerability to flooding is increasing, and it is linked to several factors: (1) stakeholders, (2) environment, (3) communities, and (4) infrastructure and its maintenance. Various physical adaptation strategies have been adopted by the local communities, which include raising the housing level, building terraced housing, and building small dikes to prevent water entering the settlements. Several non-physical adaptations were also identified from the fieldwork. These adaptations tend to be conducted through communal work and the reuse of resources and materials left undamaged by flooding. However, uncoordinated responses during flood events produce greater exposure to the hazard, and it can be inferred that community responses remain below the ideal. This study highlights the need for urgent attention to be given to improving the institutional links between stakeholders, especially at the municipal level, which could provide more efficient disaster response.The resilience concept requires greater attention to human livelihoods if it is to address the limits to adaptation strategies and the development needs of the planet's poorest and most vulnerable people. Although the concept of resilience is increasingly informing research and policy, its transfer from ecological theory to social systems leads to weak engagement with normative, social and political dimensions of climate change adaptation. A livelihood perspective helps to strengthen resilience thinking by placing greater emphasis on human needs and their agency, empowerment and human rights, and considering adaptive livelihood systems in the context of wider transformational changes.The Amsterwarm project investigates the urban heat island of Amsterdam, the vulnerability of its population, the energy efficiency of its buildings and landuse. A novel mapping approach provides insights into the questions of what causes the urban heat island and who will be affected by it. Landuse does affect the surface temperature. The difference between the areas in the city with the least and the greatest impervious surface coverage accounts for an average land surface temperature difference of 11.6? per hectare. The study demonstrates furthermore that the vulnerability of people and buildings to the urban heat island effect is a local condition in which the energy efficiency of buildings, quality of life and demographic factors should all be considered in an approach that is sensitive to place. Practical application: The typological maps will allow local authorities to prioritise adaptive actions in urban planning in response to the urban heat island, an emerging climate-related challenge that has a significant impact on the comfort and health of its citizens and on the (future) energy use required for cooling buildings. Raising the albedo in those areas of the city that are dominated by impervious surface cover seems an effective adaptation strategy, suitable to a city such as Amsterdam that no longer builds on green field sites but only builds as possible within the envelope of the existing city. Improving the quality of life in neighbourhoods and the energy efficiency/climate proofing of the building stock could also be prioritised in the identified neighbourhoods.Municipalities represent a key opportunity for implementing local adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Most research has focused on the barriers to climate change adaptation, and little research exists that considers the conditions under which a municipality is able to initiate the process of mainstreaming climate adaptation. Through a case study of two municipalities in the Western Cape of South Africa, this paper identifies the factors that enable action to be taken at the local government level. The presence of dedicated environmental champions is key, particularly within political leadership. Experiencing the costs of climate change often provides the strongest initial catalyst for action and is aided by the recognition that the local environment has value. Access to a knowledge base, the availability of resources, political stability and the presence of dense social networks all positively affect adaptation mainstreaming. It is these enabling factors that other government levels and stakeholders need to support with different interventions. We draw attention to two under-researched topics, the effect of political instability on municipal functioning and the effects of social network characteristics on facilitating institutional change.If scarce community resources for emergency services are to be allocated efficiently from a social perspective, decision-makers should be informed by social cost-benefit analysis (CBA). However, this is rarely, if ever, the case in Australia. One reason may be the challenge of estimating benefits that are not provided fully by private markets. In a case study of post-cyclone emergency services in Cairns, Australia, we employ Choice Modelling to estimate the willingness to pay of households for a set of publicly supplied emergency services. Accelerated reconnection of utilities like sewerage and electricity is the most highly valued, about three times as much as faster resupply of fresh food, while additional police patrols are far less valued and accommodation for pets negatively so. These results are reflected in a standard, deterministic CBA that suggests that all but pet accommodation should be publicly provided. However, Monte Carlo analysis incorporating variability in estimates of costs and benefits resulted in lower mean expected levels of Net Present Values, a salutary reminder that deterministic estimates may not be appropriate in circumstances of uncertainty about costs and benefits.Across Northern Australia Tropical Cyclones (TC) present a major hazard for coastal communities. Improvements to building codes and investments in disaster planning have had demonstrable impact on the resilience of exposed communities however the hazard to life posed by Storm Tide inundation remains a major concern. Projected sea level rise due to climate change over the course of this century suggests that the impact of Storm Tide events will be more significant in the future as higher sea levels expose a wider area to inundation. While knowledge of climate change impacts on the frequency and intensity of Tropical Cyclones has implications for storm tide impacts Climate Change damage assessments frequently assume the relationship between storm tide impacts and sea level rise to be linear. During Tropical Cyclone events, Storm Tide continues to increase in height in relatively shallow waters. This suggests that the nature of the relationship between sea level rise and Storm Tide impact may not be linear which has significant implications for climate change damage assessments and subsequent adaptation strategies proposed. To examine the effect of sea level rise on Storm Tide impacts this paper presents the results of a storm tide inundation model of Cyclone Yasi run over varying water levels to simulate sea level rise. TC Yasi was a very destructive and powerful tropical cyclone that made landfall with a category 5 intensity on the southern tropical coast near Mission Beach, Australia between midnight and 1am early on Thrusday 3rd February, 2011. ArcGIS is used to assess the impact of inundation across various indicators such as area of land, population impacted and lengths of roads inundated. By comparing the impact of the inundation for the model runs at various water depths the relationship between Storm Tide Impact and sea level rise is identified. Our study provides insight into the future behavior of Storm Surge events as sea levels rise that can inform climate change adaptation planning and vulnerability assessments. This comparison of the modelled storm surge inundation depth for Cyclone Yasi considers cyclone wind and pressure fields generated with parametric techniques such as Holland et al. (2010) wind field profile. The storm tide was simulated using Mike 21 hydrodynamic software with offshore bathymetry obtained from multiple local, state and federal agencies and adjusted to AHD and the land elevation was obtained from 1-m LiDAR data supplied by the Queensland State government.Mollymook, Collingwood and Callala beaches and the communities living near them were identified as especially vulnerable to sea level rise by the Shoalhaven City Council. A number of possible engineering and management solutions have been identified for mitigating or eliminating the effects of expected flooding and erosion (e.g., sea wall, groyne, beach nourishment), based on guidelines developed by Engineers Australia. However, the question remains as to how to assess and compare the benefits (and not just the costs) of each option. While the cost of designing and implementing these options are reasonably easy to estimate, other environmental and aesthetic costs are more difficult to valuate. Even more challenging is quantifying in monetary terms the benefits of each option. Methods are available in the economic literature for estimating some of these parameters, however, their application requires data and resources that are not always available to local government. In this study, we propose a pragmatic approach (relatively simple yet detailed) which combines a monetarybased probabilistic flood-damage estimation technique with an estimate of non-monetary consequences of an adaptation option using local knowledge and stakeholder consultation. These two types of information (monetary and non-monetary) are combined using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods in order to generate a ranking of engineering adaptation options and assist in decision-making. We illustrate the method by applying to Callala beach in Shoalhaven. First, we calculate respective cost-benefit ratios of each option by simulating the likely effects of a flood event (with multiple probabilities of occurrence or return period) with and without proposed adaptation options, for different scenarios of sea level rise. Specifically, a flood model of Callala is developed using high resolution LiDAR Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data and tested for impacts under different sea level rise scenarios (using IPCC AR5 projections) and their corresponding exceedance probabilities (using Canute sea level rise calculator). Second, we estimate the potential damage to properties and infrastructures (cumulative over time) through flood damage function curves (quantifying the relationship between flood depth and potential damage cost of private properties and public infrastructure). Third, we estimate the non-monetary benefits of each option using a simplified approach, based on stakeholder consultation. Finally, we use two different multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approaches (simple additive weight and outranking methods) for comparison of a number of engineering adaptation options (both hard and soft measures). Results show that, in general, a combination of beach nourishment & groynes is the most preferred option for Callala beach, across all decision analysis methods. Our analyses also show that hard measures such as sea walls tend to perform better in cost-benefit analyses where non-monetary factors such as community preferences, aesthetics and environmental factors are omitted. On the other hand, including these factors through MCDA methods seems to push sea walls down the rank.NARCliM (NSW/ACT Regional Climate Modelling project) is a regional climate modelling project for the Australian area. It provides a dynamically downscaled climate dataset for the CORDEX-AustralAsia region at 50km, and South-East Australia at a resolution of 10km. NARCliM data is being used by the NSW and ACT governments to design their climate change adaptation plans. Data is available through the AdaptNSW website (http://climatechange. environment. nsw.gov.au/). NARCliM uses version 3.3 of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model (RCM) to perform an ensemble of simulations for the present and the projected future climate. WRF is run in three different model configurations (different combinations of physical parametrizations) that have been shown to perform well in the South-East Australia and were chosen based on performance and independence. These three RCMs are used to simulate three different periods: 1990-2009, 2020-2039 and 2060-2079. Four different Global Climate Models (GCMs: MIROC-medres 3.2, ECHAM5, CCCMA 3.1 and CSIRO mk3.0) from CMIP3 are used as initial and boundary conditions for the WRF simulations. These GCMs were chosen through a process that considered model performance, independence and projected future changes. Thus a RCM ensemble of 12 simulations for each period is obtained. Additionally to the GCM-driven simulations, 3 control run simulations driven by the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for the entire period of 1950-2009 are also performed in order to evaluate the RCMs performance in the area. The NARCliM ensemble is found to have a consistent cold bias throughout the year with many areas showing the ensemble members significantly agreeing on the bias. This bias is significant over most of southeast Australia in winter and summer. The ensemble also displays a consistent wet bias with most of southeast Australia showing significant agreement amongst ensemble members on this bias in summer and autumn. A dry bias is present on the southeast coast in winter The regional models are found to do a reasonably good job at capturing the teleconnections with large scale climate modes such as El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO), when compared to the driving global data. Each regional model displays differing strengths and weaknesses in this respect.Agriculture is particularly sensitive to climate variability and change. In Australia, agricultural production spans the tropics, sub-tropics, Mediterranean and temperate climatic zones, and operates under conditions of high climatic variability compared with other countries (Stokes & Howden, 2010). In response to operating under these conditions good risk managers have been actively using climate variability information to support operational management decisions. Increasingly these producers are now considering the longer term implications of anthropogenic climate change in their strategic farm planning (Meinke & Stone, 2005). To meet these longer term requirements, the Queensland Government through its Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence (QCCCE, now the Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation (DSITI)), started delivering climate change projection data in 2010 via the Consistent Climate Scenarios (CCS) data portal (Burgess et al., 2012). Since mid-2012, CCS projections data have been more widely available via the CCS web-portal on DSITI's Long Paddock website, providing representative point-referenced daily data for periods centred on 2030 and 2050. Currently, registered users can access projected daily climate data free of charge as patched-point data (for any of the 4,759 SILO weather stations), or as individual points from a 0.05 degree grid across Australia. The future projections are based in part on observed trends as well as from Global Climate Models (GCM) and emission scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). CCS data are available in formats suitable for most biophysical models, enabling various stakeholders to undertake climate change adaptation studies for various primary industries across Australia, in particular within the grazing, cropping and horticultural sectors. To generate plausible and weather-like point-referenced future daily data from coarse-scale GCM outputs (typically monthly values on a 100-200km spatial grid), two downscaling approaches were developed, change factors and quantile matching. The quantile matching employs regression on monthly quantiles from daily observations to project future quantiles; and spatial pattern scaling to adjust quantile means based on GCM outputs. Quantile matching is used to simulate future daily climate based on historical observations, which incorporates quantile forecast bias correction, auto-correlation and cross-variable correlations. The CCS system has recently been refined to incorporate new GCM outputs from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), as outcome from a DSITI and CSIRO collaboration. Improvements on the quantile projection method are described in this paper. We use a multivariate Linear Mixed Effect State Space (LMESS) model for all the possible historical data to replace simple linear regression on data from each single month (Kokic et al., 2011). We model 12 months of data and three quantiles together to handle missing data issues in the historical observations. We select the same set of covariates from time and seasonality terms in order to maintain the consistent cross-variable correlations among the climate elements. We allow time-varying coefficients for some covariates. The model parameters are estimated via an Expectation-Maximisation algorithm. It is implemented in the statistical computing language R, and is called by the CCS from Python via the package rpy2. The model was tested and validated on dozens of representative SILO stations across the Australian continent. The hindcast results show that LMESS improves the hindcast accuracy and maintains the quantile spread, over the monthly regression used in the CCS system, linear regression (LR) and multivariate LR. Whilst the improvements are not statistically significant, the results are sizeable enough to support a move to this revised modelling approach.There are considerable seasonal and inter-annual changes in rainfall amount and intensity in South-East Australia (SEA), particularly in coastal New South Wales (NSW). Consequently, soil erosion rates may be expected to change in response to changes in the erosive power of rainfall or rainfall erosivity. Recently, the downscaled 10 km rainfall projections from New South Wales (NSW) and Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Regional Climate Modelling (NARCliM) project have become available for the SEA region for the baseline (1990-2009), near future (2020-2039) and far future (2060-2079) periods. The aim of this study was to model and assess the impacts of climate (rainfall) change on rainfall erosivity and hillslope erosion risk in SEA based on the NARCliM projections from all the 12 model member ensembles. Outcomes from this study are to assist the long-term climate change adaptation and regional planning such as NSW state planning regions (SPR). A daily rainfall erosivity model has been specifically developed and applied to calculate monthly and annual rainfall erosivity values from the NARCliM projected daily rainfall data for the baseline and future periods. Monthly and annual hillslope erosion risks for the same periods were estimated using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). Finer scale (100 m) surfaces of rainfall erosivity and hillslope erosion have been produced using spatial interpolation techniques. Automated scripts in a geographic information system (GIS) have been developed to calculate the time-series rainfall erosivity and hillslope erosion so that the processes of large quantity NARCliM data are realistic, repeatable and portable. Adequate random sampling points (4991) were used to sample and assess the accuracy of the modelled rainfall erosivity from the NARCliM projections. The GIS modelled mean annual rainfall erosivity values from the NARCliM projected daily rainfall were compared with those calculated using the gridded daily rainfall data from Bureau of Meteorology for the baseline period (1990-2009). The overall coefficient of efficiency (E-c) is 0.9753 (R-2 = 0.9762), and RMSE 13.2% or 143 (MJ. mm. ha(-1). hr(-1). year(-1)) indicating the relative size of the error bars from the 1: 1 line. The modelled baseline rainfall erosivity in NSW varies from less than 300 on parts of western NSW to over 15,000 on parts of the North Coast, with a mean of 1112 (MJ. mm. ha(-1). hr(-1). year(-1)). Both rainfall erosivity and hillslope erosion risk are predicted to increase about 7% in the near future, and about 19% increase in the far future compared with the baseline period. The change is highly uneven in space and time, with the highest increase occurring in the Far-west SPR in autumn, with an increase about 22% in the near future and about 29% in the far future. The rainfall erosivity is generally higher in summer and lower in winter, with about 10 times difference between February (highest) and July (lowest). Overall, the risk of soil erosion on NSW agricultural and plantation lands is expected to be steady, largely due to the flat topographic factor. The lands with "Intensive uses" will have high erosion risk due to the combined effect of terrain and rainfall erosivity. These 'hot-spot' erosion risk areas have been identified and mapped to assist decision makers to develop the best management practices.Within New South Wales, the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) supports climate-change adaptation by working with communities, agencies and other stakeholders to identify and understand regional vulnerabilities. Scientific impact assessments for bushfires, biodiversity, sea level and coasts, floods, soil, human health and water resources have been undertaken. In this study, impacts of climate change on the water cycle and hydrology is investigated. Assessing the impacts of climate change on hydrology is important because changes to the water cycle influence water security, water quality, salinity and groundwater availability. We use the NARCliM (NSW / ACT Regional Climate Modelling) ensemble of climate projections for southeast Australia. This ensemble is designed to provide robust projections that span the range of likely near and future changes in climate (Evans et. al. 2014). The water balance was simulated using the PERFECT model (Littleboy et al. 1992) which is a daily time-step model that predicts surface runoff, infiltration, soil evaporation, transpiration, profile drainage and recharge. PERFECT was applied at a 10km resolution across NSW to predict surface flows and groundwater recharge. Maps and graphs from this modelling form part of the NSW Climate Impact Profile which provides an assessment of projected biophysical changes across the State. Maps presented show central estimates or arithmetic means of future projections. Bar graphs are used to present projections as ranges of plausible change, illustrating the projections from the twelve individual simulations as well as the central estimate. In the near future, less recharge is predicted across much of NSW, especially in the south east of the State. Considerably less recharge is likely in alpine areas. Some areas of western NSW do show a slight increase in recharge but these increases are considered relatively small. In the far future, recharge is expected to increase across many parts of NSW. Some areas along the Great Dividing Range are likely to experience less recharge to groundwater. The largest impact is the dramatic reduction in recharge in alpine areas. Across much of NSW, surface runoff is projected to increase in both the near and far future. Largest increases are evident in the central west through to the northern tablelands. Largest reductions in surface runoff are projected in both the near and far future for alpine areas in the south of the State. More complex analyses at a resolution on 100m are underway for the ACT and coast catchments of NSW. This analysis will permit allow spatial variability in land use and soils to be taken into consideration in the climate impact assessments. This is not represented in this paper.Shifts in rainfall and rising temperatures due to climate change pose a formidable challenge to the sustainability of broadacre crop yields in Western and South-Eastern Australia. Output from18 Global Climate Models (GCMs) for the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A2 scenario was statistically downscaled to four contrasting locations. For the first time in these regions, bias corrected statistically downscaled climate data were employed to drive the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) crop model that integrates the effects of soil, crop phenotype, and management options for a quantitative comparison of crop yields and phenology under an historical and a plausible projected climate. The dynamic APSIM simulation model explore the implications of climate change across multiple locations and multiple time periods (1961-2010,2030, 2060 and 2090) for multiple key crops (wheat, barley, lupin, canola, field pea) grown in three different types of soil. On average, the ensemble of downscaled GCM projections show a decrease in rainfall in the future at the four locations considered, with increased variability at two locations. At all locations and for five crops, future changes in both crop biomass and grain yield are strongly associated with changes in rainfall (P = 0.05 to P = 0.001). The overall rainfall amount is critical in determining yields but, equally, higher future temperatures can contribute to reducing crop productivity primarily due to advanced crop phenology. For example, for wheat cropping at Hamilton (a higher rainfall site), there is a significant advancement in median flowering date for 2030, 2060, and 2090 of 10, 18, and 29 days respectively with a significant 0.50% grain yield changes for each percentage change in rainfall compared to significant 0.90% grain yield changes in Cunderdin (a lower rainfall site). At all sites except Hamilton, the change in crop grain yield is significantly correlated (P = 0.001) with the percentage change in the future rainfall and the impact increased progressively from higher rainfall to lower rainfall sites. However, the magnitude of the change in crop phenology and yield were not significantly different between soil types. These results help to define regions of concern and their relative importance in the coming years. In this future climate the negative consequences for crop yields and advancement of phenology relative to baseline are not uniform across crops and locations. Of the crops studied - wheat, barley, lupin, canola and field pea - field pea is the most sensitive to the projected future climate changes, and the ensemble median changes in field pea yield range from a decrease of 12% to a decrease of 45%, depending on location. These results highlight the importance of research and policy to support strategies for adapting to climate change, such as advances in agronomy, soil moisture conservation, seasonal climate forecasting and breeding new crop varieties. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A key strategy for climate change adaptation in the rain-fed northern Corn Belt is to decrease cropping system vulnerability to changes in precipitation patterns by building resilience. Using 50-year of county level yield and environmental data from Iowa and Ontario, we first demonstrate that sensitivity of corn yield to precipitation, particularly in July and August, has increased over the past five decades despite no changes in precipitation patterns. This can be attributed to steady improvement in corn yield potential and so plant water demand since the mid-20th century and removal of non-water constraints to crop production. Such vulnerability of corn-based cropping systems to water limitations is of increasing concern as climate change models predict higher summer temperatures and year-to-year variations in precipitations in this region. As suggested in the ecology literature, increasing agroecosystem temporal and spacial diversity is one of the key management strategies to deal with impending weather variability. Using yield and environmental data from a 30-year long-term rotation and tillage trial in Ontario, we show that diversification of short corn-based rotations using small grains and forage crops increases corn yield stability and resilience to both limiting and excess soil moisture(1). We also demonstrate the importance of conservation tillage and measured the impact of rotation and tillage history on plants ability to access water resources, plant available soil water and their combined effects on timing of physiological water stress and grain yield when drought occurs at reproductive stages. Our results emphasize the growing importance of developing strategies for managing soil moisture in rain-fed regions and the significance of agroecological approaches to develop hardy agricultural systems and protect food and feed production against the upcoming extreme weather events. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licensePlant survival and fitness are dependent on root system architecture (RSA). In Australia, root systems of major agricultural crops are poorly adapted to soils that mostly have poor water holding capacity and nutrient deficiencies. Decreasing water availability due to drying and variable climate in the Australia's grain-belt exacerbates these soil-related stresses. Development of future crop genotypes with efficient root system for enhanced abiotic stress tolerance is essential for improved crop adaptation. Root traits that overcome abiotic constraints are critical to maintaining structural and functional properties, and are considered first order targets in breeding programmes for rainfed environments. Root traits, such as deep root systems, increased root density in subsoil, increased root hair length and density and / or xylem diameters, may contribute to enhanced water and nutrient uptake. Narrow-leafed lupin genotypes with increased capacity to take up water from deep soil horizons were linked to increased yield potential; similar relationship exists in wheat, soybean and upland rice. Modification of RSA could contribute to improvements of desirable agronomic traits such as yield, drought tolerance, and resistance to nutrient deficiencies. Wide-scale use of root-related genetic information in breeding programs relies on accurate phenotyping of relatively large mapping populations. Such large-scale phenotyping of root-related traits remain the most important issue in translating recent physiological and genetic advances in understanding the role of root systems in improved adaptation to abiotic stress and enhanced productivity of agricultural crops. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Crop production in the Caribbean is dominated by small open field holdings that are almost totally reliant on rainfall. Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L. Lam. [Convolvulaceae]) has been identified as an important commodity to attain food and nutrition security goals of the region, particularly in light of a changing climate. The crop has high nutritional value, innate drought-tolerant properties, and can be grown with relatively low inputs. The routine use of crop models for yield optimization is largely absent in the Caribbean. In this study, an attempt was made to parameterize the FAO AquaCrop model for sweet potato for the first time. AquaCrop is a simulation model for crop water productivity, designed primarily for use in irrigation management. Parameters were developed using data from three sweet potato cultivars grown in two agroecological zones in Jamaica under rainfed and irrigated conditions. Digital photography was combined with an automated canopy estimator to track canopy development, and sample harvesting was done throughout the crop season. The overall simulation of biomass was good, with deviations of <28% for four out of six simulations, and season-long performance of the model was commendable. The simulation of yield presented more challenges, especially given the nonlinear rate of tuber development. The results, however, indicate that AquaCrop could be a useful tool for Caribbean agriculture in predicting the productivity of sweet potato under varying water availability.The summer cooling potential of urban vegetation is investigated using an urban climate model for the current and future climates in the Melbourne central business district (CBD) area with various urban forms and vegetation schemes. Simulation results suggest that the average seasonal summer temperatures can be reduced in the range of around 0.5 and 2 degrees C if the Melbourne CBD were replaced by vegetated suburbs and planted parklands, respectively, benefiting a reduction in the number of hot days. It was also found that despite the projected warming in the future and variations in the climate projections among different climate models, the average seasonal cooling potential due to various urban vegetation schemes may not change significantly in comparison with those predicted for the current climate, indicating little dependency on climate change. This finding suggests that the average seasonal cooling potential as a result of urban vegetation in future climates may be empirically quantified in similar amounts to those under the current climate. When urban climate models are used, the cooling potential of urban vegetation in future climates may be quantified by modeling several selected years with one or a few climate models.Urban agriculture presents an opportunity to extend food production to cities. This could enhance food security, particularly in developing countries, and allow for adaptation to growing urbanization. This review paper examines current trends in urban agriculture from a global perspective as a mitigation-adaptation approach to climate change adaptation in the midst of a growing world population. Employing vegetation as a carbon capture and storage system encapsulates a soft-engineering strategy that can be easily deployed by planners and environmental managers. In this review, urban agriculture is presented as a land-use solution to counteract the effects of urbanization, and as a means to establish a continuum between cities and the countryside. It espouses the usefulness of urban agriculture to enhance food security while sequestering carbon. As part of urban greening (including newer approaches, such as green roofs and gardens as well as more established forms of greening, such as forests and parks), urban agriculture offers traditionally rural services in cities, thereby contributing to food resources as well as working to alleviate pressing social issues like poverty. It also provides a way to reduce stress on farmland, and creates opportunities for employment and community-building. As part of greening, urban agriculture provides a buffer for pollution and improves environmental (and well as human) health and well-being. This review begins by addressing the physical factors of adopting urban agriculture, such as climate change and development, land use and degradation, technology and management, and experimental findings as well as human factors investigated in the published literature. As such, it presents an integrated approach to urban agriculture that is part of a social-ecological perspective.Anticipation is increasingly central to urgent contemporary debates, from climate change to the global economic crisis. Anticipatory practices are coming to the forefront of political, organizational, and citizens' society. Research into anticipation, however, has not kept pace with public demand for insights into anticipatory practices, their risks and uses. Where research exists, it is deeply fragmented. This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. We use a resilience lens to examine these questions. We illustrate how varying forms of anticipatory governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies and by the agency of individuals, drawing from an empirical case study on regional water governance of Malaren, Sweden. Finally, we discuss how an anticipatory approach can inform adaptive institutions, decision making, strategy formation, and societal resilience.The livestock and environment nexus has been the subject of considerable research in the past decade. With a more prosperous and urbanized population projected to grow significantly in the coming decades comes a gargantuan appetite for livestock products. There is growing concern about how to accommodate this increase in demand with a low environmental footprint and without eroding the economic, social, and cultural benefits that livestock provide. Most of the effort has focused on sustainably intensifying livestock systems. Two things have characterized the research on livestock and the environment in the past decade: the development of increasingly disaggregated and sophisticated methods for assessing different types of environmental impacts (climate, water, nutrient cycles, biodiversity, land degradation, deforestation, etc.) and a focus on examining the technical potential of many options for reducing the environmental footprint of livestock systems. However, the economic or sociocultural feasibility of these options is seldom considered. Now is the time to move this agenda from knowledge to action, toward realizable goals. This will require a better understanding of incentives and constraints for farmers to adopt new practices and the design of novel policies to support transformative changes in the livestock sector. It will also require novel forms of engagement, interaction, and consensus building among stakeholders with enormously diverse objectives. Additionally, we have come to realize that managing the demand trajectories of livestock products must be part of the solution space, and this is an increasingly important research area for simultaneously achieving positive health and environmental outcomes.This article critically examines claims that "local community" and "local/traditional knowledge" are vital contributions to safeguarding socio-economic stability and securing sustainable resource uses in times of stress. The empirical focus is on Central Vietnam, but the argument is relevant in a broader context. The article specifically questions approaches to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation that see "local community knowledge" as a vital means to achieving resilience in socio-ecological systems. We argue that rural villages in Central Vietnam are characterised by highly dynamic local actors who eagerly exploit new income opportunities arising both from internal and external sources. Although a wide range of knowledge is available about how to cope with adverse climate and environmental conditions, this knowledge is hardly "resilience" and "equilibrium" oriented. Rather, it is found to be anthropocentric, externally oriented, sometimes opportunistic, and ultimately oriented towards an urban lifestyle-traits that are strongly rewarded by the Vietnamese state. We conclude that, at present, local aspirations may not necessarily be part of the solution, but may form part of a social and political complex that exacerbates risk, particularly for weaker population segments. Instead, new and non-state actors should play a larger role.This article presents an analysis of the efficiency of Climate Change adaptation planning for the climatically vulnerable sectors in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Specifically, the article argues that Climate Change adaptation in Palestine is not merely a technical challenge; rather, it is a socio-political mission that is highly linked to region-specific social and geopolitical vulnerabilities. In this article, we argue that successful Climate Change adaptation planning in Palestine must critically address Israel's hydrological and geopolitical domination in the region. Informed by discourse and political analyses, this article argues that in regions scarred by illegal military occupations, as in Palestine, existing political and economic vulnerabilities eliminate the prospect of effective adaptation planning and implementation, and are likely to magnify the social, economic and environmental impacts of Climate Change. Challenges associated with the Israeli occupation, donor dependency, access to Climate Change adaptation funds, and internal institutional weaknesses are found to be fueled by existing political inequalities and are identified and analyzed in relation to unsuccessful Climate Change adaptation outcomes.This research is a novel knowledge about the library contribution because it proposes to create a new branch discipline the "green library". Analysis is a proposal from the college to address before the society and academia collective experience accumulated by the Costa Rican specialized libraries in these areas throughout their years of service and information management practices using front to the country's needs. Costa Rica is a country with a broad global recognition in the ecological theme and ecotourism, for the vast territories are protected areas for the preservation of ecological diversity, among others. The objective of this research was to demonstrate the importance of information management environment in libraries, proposing a new discipline: the ecological library. In addition, the contributions of the documentation centers and libraries specializing in this subject, in Costa Rica "were identified. The environmental management concept chosen for this research considering the importance of science librarianship as expand its disciplinary areas, to study specialties linked to national development. Currently, the document management aimed at providing information services on the current reality and aimed towards priority areas such as environmental management, climate change adaptation, and housing, employment, transparency and risk reduction. The role of documentation centers and libraries and information professionals is important, because they must be instances advice in making political, economic, social decisions that guarantee safeguarding the short and long term of our environmental history, and accessibility of information on this subject. In addition, they have to be able to create ecological culture, implement procedures to ecological literacy and "dating" communities for all human beings, we protect the environment. This research considered unique in its kind and a pioneer in this field in Costa Rica; it is a study of mixed approach and three sources of information consulted: 1. The library staff consists of 24 officials of 24 specialized libraries and documentation centers selected for their functions and the contents of their collections. 2. The virtual visibility projecting these 24 libraries in national and international networks. 3. Public opinion on the contribution of these libraries to the environment. The first population was applied descriptive research, to gather information from the survey and a questionnaire consisting of 15 variables. Qualitative research used in the second source of information about the virtual visibility of libraries and public opinion gathered using an exploratory study, another survey conducted by social networks.Despite all international, national and local initiatives to mitigate climate change, a certain degree of climate change is unavoidable. Urban environments in particular seem vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. How can cities, which are dynamic systems where most people live and work, prepare for such changes in climate? In the Netherlands, the Climate Proof Cities (CPC) research program (2010 -2014) was established, aimed at: "strengthening the adaptive capacity and reducing the vulnerability of the urban system against climate change and to develop strategies and policy instruments for adapting our cities and buildings". The program has contributed to the knowledge on assessing vulnerability of cities, on adaptation options and their effectiveness, and on governance of adaptation. Important features are the role of green infrastructures in combination with available water, improved building designs and collaboration between urban planners and water managers. Nonetheless, in spite of this effort and many other national and international efforts, research in these fields is still in its infancy, and much remains to be done. The broad scope of the CPC research program incited the establishment of this Special Issue. In addition, also papers from other researchers have been added to this Special Issue, in an attempt to provide a valuable - albeit inexhaustive - view on the challenges and achievements in adaptation of cities to climate change. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The transpirational cooling of vegetation as a measure to mitigate outdoor air temperatures was investigated for a street canyon in the city center of Arnhem, the Netherlands for the meteorological conditions of an afternoon hour on a hot summer day during a heat wave with wind of speed 5.1 m s(-1) at 10 m above ground and direction along the canyon. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations with locally applied vegetation in the street, i.e. avenue-trees, facade greening, roof greening and all three combined, were performed. The 3D steady-state Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations were closed by the realizable k-epsilon turbulence model extended with source and sink terms to represent the effects of vegetation on air flow. By specifying a cooling power term in the energy equation, the transpirational cooling by vegetation was accounted for. The strongest cooling by a single vegetative measure was obtained with the avenue-trees with mean and maximum temperature reductions at pedestrian level of 0.43 degrees C and 1.6 degrees C, respectively. Facade greening resulted in rather small changes with mean and maximum reductions of 0.04 degrees C and 0.3 degrees C, respectively. For roof greening no noticeable reductions inside the canyon were found. In the case of a combination of all vegetative measures, cooling in terms of spatial distribution and intensity overall resembled a linear superposition of those of the vegetative measures solely applied with 0.52 degrees C mean and 2.0 degrees C maximum temperature reduction. Overall, the cooling was restricted to the vicinity of the vegetative measures, i.e. up to a distance of a few meters. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Considering climate change and the rapid trend towards urbanization, the analysis of urban microclimate is gaining importance. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and summer-time heat waves can significantly affect urban microclimate with negative consequences for human mortality and morbidity and building energy demand. So far, most studies on urban microclimate employed observational approaches with field measurements. However, in order to provide more information towards the design of climate adaptive urban areas, deterministic analyses are required. In this study, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed to predict urban temperatures in the Bergpolder Zuid region in Rotterdam, which is planned to be renovated to increase its climate resilience. 3D unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) simulations with the realizable k-epsilon turbulence model are performed on a high-resolution computational grid. The simulations include wind flow and heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation. The resulting surface temperatures are validated using experimental data from high-resolution thermal infrared satellite imagery performed during the heat wave of July 2006. The results show that the CFD simulations are able to predict urban surface temperatures with an average deviation of 7.9% from the experimental data. It is concluded that CFD has the potential of accurately predicting urban microclimate. Results from CFD simulations can therefore be used to identify problem areas and to evaluate the effect of climate adaptation measures in these areas such as urban greening and evaporative cooling. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The risk of pluvial flooding, heat stress and drought is increasing due to climate change. To increase urban resilience to extreme weather events, it is essential to combine green and blue infrastructure and link enhanced storage capacity in periods of water surplus with moments of water shortage as well as water availability with heat stress. 'Blue-green measures' is a collective term for sustainable green and blue infrastructure that utilises underlying ecosystem functions to deliver multiple benefits: for example, cooling via evapotranspiration, water storage for heavy rainfall events, discharge peak attenuation, seasonal water storage, and groundwater recharge. Measures contribute most to climate adaptation when implemented in combinations. Such packages of blue-green measures capitalize upon the synergistic interactions between ecosystem functions and hence enhance multiple vulnerability reduction capacities. Moreover, combining blue-green measures enables using their unique potential at different spatial scales and establishing hydrologic connectivity. This paper proposes a framework for a planning support system and a tool to select adaptation measures to support urban planners in collaboratively finding site-specific sets of blue-green measures for a particular urban reconstruction project. With the proposed framework users can evaluate appropriateness of specific adaptation measures for a particular location and compose effective packages of blue-green measures to handle flooding, drought and heat stress. It is concluded that the framework: 1) enables incorporating knowledge on urban climate adaptation and ecosystem services in a communicative urban planning process, 2) guides the selection of a coherent and effective package of blue-green adaptation measures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reviews the progress in climate change adaptation (CCA) policies both under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in major regions and countries, including the EU and its major member countries, the influential developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the emerging economies and the least developed countries (LDCs). The progress made in China in CCA policies is also reviewed and compared with that in other countries. Finally, good international practices are proposed for China's policy development. It is found that adaptation has been given the same priority as mitigation since the twenty-first century with regard to climate change-related actions. The topics related to adaptation in the international climate change negotiations under the UNFCCC have evolved from mechanisms for finance and technology development and transfer exclusively in the early stages to implementation of practical adaptation programs and actions. Since 2006, major developed and developing countries have frequently set forward specific CCA policies or general climate change policies involving adaptation in the form of laws, frameworks, strategies, and plans. The LDCs have also been working on National Adaptation Programmes of Action and subsequent National Adaptation Plans with the support from the financial mechanisms under the UNFCCC. Therefore, globally, it has become a common practice to develop national or regional policies to plan and guide CCA actions. China has established climate change policies involving adaptation at the national, regional, and sectorial levels since 2007. However, these policies have strong limitations in their knowledge base, strategic positioning, contents, and implementation mechanisms, e. g. lack of a sound knowledge base, an international perspective, clear responsibilities for policy implementation, and appropriate monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. It is recommended that China should further strengthen its technical capabilities in climate change projections as well as impact, vulnerability, and risk assessment, and develop methodologies and techniques for the preparation, impact assessment and implementation of CCA policies. Furthermore, future CCA strategies or plans should be developed with an emphasis on China's vision and strategic position on the world stage.Farmers use a variety of local indicators for weather forecasting and climate prediction, in order to adapt to climate variability and change. Integrating indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) with the efforts of climate scientists can contribute to effective on-farm adaptation initiatives. The objective of this research was to identify IKS used by Zimbabwean farmers to predict seasonal weather patterns, and their adaptation strategies in response to these predictions. The information was collected using focus group discussions, household surveys, and ethnographic interviews. Most farmers (72.2%) indicated that low rainfall is the major limitation to agricultural production. Without access to reliable local scientific weather forecasts, the farmers use tree phenology, animal behaviour and atmospheric circulation as sources of local knowledge to predict the onset and 'quality' of the season. These forecasts are then used for designing crop choices, planting dates and agronomic practices. Our results show that the use of IKS in local farming communities is an effective way of building coping and adaptation strategies. The results also revealed that indigenous knowledge is being eroded and is becoming less accurate in seasonal weather prediction. Therefore, future studies on IKS could explore the use of multiple methods that combine indigenous knowledge and scientific weather data in order to obtain more complete and accurate information for the prediction of local area seasonal characteristics.As surface warming threatens rice production in temperate climates, the importance of cool regions is increasing. Cultivar choice is an important adaptation option for coping with climate change but is generally evaluated with a single metric for a few hypothetical cultivars. Here, we evaluate adaptation to climate change based on multiple metrics and cultivars in presently cool climates in Japan. We applied the outputs of a global climate model (MIROC5) with a Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 scenario, dynamically downscaled to a 10 km mesh for the present (1981-2000) and future (2081-2099) climate conditions. The data were input into a rice-growth model, and the performances of 10 major cultivars were compared in each mesh. With the present-day leading cultivars, the model predicted reduced low-temperature stress, a regional average yield increase of 17%, and several occurrences of high-temperature stress. The most suitable cultivars in each grid cell changed dramatically because of climate change when a single metric was used as a criterion, and the yield advantage increased to 26%. When yield, cold, and heat stress were taken into account, however, the currently leading cultivars maintained superiority in 64% of the grid cells, with an average regional yield gain of 22%, suggesting a requirement for developing new cultivars by pyramiding useful traits. A trait such as low sensitivity to temperature for phenology helps in ensuring stable growth under variable temperatures. Increasing photoperiod sensitivity can be an option under future climates in relatively warmer regions.The appropriate development of graphical visualisations to communicate climate data is fundamental to the provision of climate services to guide climate change adaptation decisions. However, at present there is a lack of empirical evidence, particularly in Africa, to help climate information providers determine how best to communicate and display climate data. To help address this issue, an online survey, primarily targeted at the African vulnerability, impacts and adaptation community, was designed and disseminated widely. The survey examines the interpretation of climate data as a function of the style and information content of graphical visualisations. It is shown that choices made when constructing the visualisations, such as presenting percentile information versus showing the range, significantly impact on interpretation. Results also show that respondents who interpret a higher likelihood of future changes to climate, based on the visualisation of climate model projections, express greater confidence in their interpretations. The findings have relevance to the climate risk community in Africa and elsewhere across the world, and imply that a naive approach to visualising climate data risks misinterpretation and unjustified levels of trust, with the potential to misinform adaptation and policy decisions. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Boundary organizations play a critical role at the interface between science and decision making. They create, protect and sustain an interactive space for co-production of science and decision-making while simultaneously bridging the two domains. In this special issue we advance the concept of boundary chains, whereby two or more boundary organizations link together synergistically to influence one another and to leverage each other's resources and strengths to achieve shared goals. In this process both the level of complementary and embeddedness between these organizations is critical for achieving these goals. Through a series of case studies focusing primarily but not exclusively on climate information use in the United States, we aim to advance scholarship in the field by examining innovation among boundary organizations and testing the boundary chain concept. In doing so, we focus on boundary chains both as a theoretical construct to re-think the structure, function, and adaptability of boundary organizations and as a practical strategy to further increase the usability of climate knowledge for adaptation action across a wider range of users. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.For many cities throughout the world, climate change not only presents challenges in the form of new risks and expenses, but also opportunities to connect work around climate change to other development and environmental initiatives. This study presents the City of Toledo in the heart of America's Rust Belt as a case study of the policy process that gives rise to proactive action on climate change. Using thick description, we trace Toledo's adaptation policy process through the lens of Kingdon's "multiple streams'' model to identify factors that have shaped the emergence of climate adaptation work around water management in Toledo. Through doing so, we give particular attention to the knowledge resources that those in the City have relied on, especially its boundary chain connection with two supporting boundary organizations: GLAA-C and GLISA. Policy entrepreneurs pushing for climate adaptation around water policy in Toledo emerged around two separate pieces of the policy process. The first entrepreneur was involved with raising general awareness about sustainability and climate change in the City's problem stream, and the other was specifically involved with integrating climate change information into a particular aspect of the City's policy stream, water management. While these relationships were important for mainstreaming climate change adaptation into efforts to address existing challenges, they were also representative of the City's ability to cultivate broader partnerships around climate adaptation. Toledo's polycentric climate change network ultimately helped the City sustain its adaptation work as it weathered its own period of internal transition. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments program (GLISA) has led the co-development of usable climate information for decision-making in several case study projects. Although each case study is with a unique partnering organization made up of different stakeholders with varying information needs and capabilities, several patterns have emerged that GLISA has identified and overcome to advance the practice of applied climate information. There are three main barriers that GLISA encounters at the onset of many of the case studies: (1) mismatched terminology used by scientists and stakeholders to describe the types of information that are available and needed for problem solving (translation); (2) unrealistic expectations regarding the development of climate information products for problem solving; and (3) disordered integration of when stakeholders want to bring climate information into decision-making processes. Although some or all of these barriers are likely to exist at the onset of any new climate information partnership, GLISA has developed methods for overcoming them more quickly so that the process of co-developing usable climate information is more efficient and effective. In this paper we describe in detail GLISA's experiences that have led to the realization of these barriers and the steps GLISA has taken to overcome them. We also relate these barriers to literature on the `` usability gap'' between climate science and information use in decision-making as well as uncertainty cascades in climate change adaptation. These experiences demonstrate that climate scientists performing outreach experience similar struggles as the stakeholders they interact with. However, they also reveal the potential for climate-centered boundary organizations to cultivate their own capacities to overcome these challenges in their partnerships. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The vulnerabilities and health burdens of climate change fall disproportionately upon lower income communities and communities of color. Yet the very groups who are most affected by climate change impacts are least likely to be involved in climate adaptation discussions. These communities face critical barriers to involvement including historical disenfranchisement, as well as a sense that climate change is distant and not personally relevant. Boundary organizations are increasingly playing an important role in bringing science to bear on policy decision-making with respect to climate change adaptation, an issue fraught with political and ideological tensions. Our project aimed to engage underrepresented communities in climate change adaptation decision-making using a neighborhood consensus conference model developed and tested in several diverse districts of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Our partnership, a "linked chain'' of boundary organizations, devised a neighborhood consensus conference model to present best-available climate data as tangible, place-based scenarios. In so doing, we made climate change "personal'' for those who remain outside of climate change planning discourses and opened an opportunity for them to assess their community's vulnerabilities and communicate their priorities for public investment. Our neighborhood-based model built trust and social capital with local residents and allowed us to bring new voices into conversations around climate change adaptation concerns and priorities. We believe this work will have a long term impact on local climate adaptation planning decisions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseBoundary organizations facilitate and negotiate the interface between science production and use to improve information usability particularly for climate adaptation. To support the increasing demand for usable climate information and enable adaptation, boundary organizations themselves must innovate to foster more efficient production of usable science and more effective networks of producers and users. A recent innovation centers on the idea of boundary chains, whereby boundary organizations work together to increase efficiencies such as leveraging human and social resources. While this idea holds promise, more work is needed to better understand how and why boundary organizations work together to improve information usability and other beneficial outcomes. In this perspective for the special issue, we propose a new conceptual framework for exploring why and how boundary chains form and for evaluating whether or not they are successful. We then apply the framework to case studies that are discussed in more detail in this special issue. Our framework hinges on the notion that boundary chains that are successful are those that create synergy. In turn, synergy depends on a combination of complementarity, putting two kinds of inputs together results in greater output than either each engaging partner could deliver on their own, and embeddedness, the choices and actions on one side are at least partially influenced by and dependent upon the choices and actions of the other side and vice versa. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Increasing awareness of the risks to coastal communities and infrastructure posed by sea level rise and possible climate-induced changes to the frequency and intensity of catchment flooding events have triggered a large number of studies that have assessed the risk, and developed a prioritisation of actions. These prioritised action recommendations are typically encapsulated in climate adaptation plans and pathways documents, risk reduction strategies, and climate action plans. These studies typically involve a vulnerability assessment task and an action prioritisation task, often performed in the same study. Most of the focus on research and method development over recent decades has been on the first task that aims to quantify the vulnerability of coastal communities and infrastructure. It is argued here that as a result of this emphasis on assessing vulnerability, at the cost of adequate consideration of response actions, along with the linear ` fix and forget' management approach to climate adaptation, has led to a lack of uptake in coastal climate adaptation studies and strategies. To this end the aim of the work presented here is to highlight common shortfalls in this fix and forget approach and in particular in the response prioritisation task. Ways that these shortfalls can be avoided, based on knowledge from decision theory, are presented. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate adaptation requires large capital investments that could be provided not only by traditional sources like governments and banks, but also by derivatives markets. Such markets would allow two parties with different tolerances and expectations about climate risks to transact for their mutual benefit and, in so doing, finance climate adaptation. Here we calculate the price of a derivative called a European put option, based on future sea surface temperature (SST) in Tasmania, Australia, with an 18 degrees C strike threshold. This price represents a quantifiable indicator of climate risk, and forms the basis for aquaculture industries exposed to the risk of higher SST to finance adaptation strategies through the sale of derivative contracts. Such contracts provide a real incentive to parties with different climate outlooks, or risk exposure to take a market assessment of climate change. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.This mini-review outlines the emergence and benefit of applying a structurally explicit, social relational network perspective to inform the establishment and governance of marine protected area (MPAs) and MPA networks. This is an important conservation research and policy frontier. We draw on concepts from relational sociology and social network analysis to highlight the theoretical foundations of a social relational network perspective. Selected examples are used to: (1) illustrate the analytical utility and application of this network perspective to systematically examine attributes recognized as important for MPA establishment and governance; and (2) provide new insights on crucial practices and processes (e.g., knowledge exchange), core social attributes (e.g., social capital), and the roles and positions of diverse MPA actors.Climate change will have a big impact on our infrastructure assets. Asset managers need decision support tools that can consider climate change impacts on these infrastructures. Infrastructures have very long life spans and climate change is also a long-term phenomenon. Climate change is also associated with a lot of uncertainty, making it more challenging for asset managers to make investment plans on these infrastructures. Unfortunately, existing tools for asset management are based on short-term operational and financial aspects of maintenance rather than strategic long-term assessments. These tools also treat infrastructure in silos, often ignoring the impact of other interconnected infrastructure on them. In this paper, we present a simulation framework that can help asset managers in assessing long term strategic plans for their assets along with the possibilities to include the uncertain behavior of climate impacts and the impact from other interconnected infrastructure. We use agent-based modelling approach to represent assets, asset owners and asset users as agents and study their interactions and the evolving behavior based on the decisions the agents make to maintain or to use the assets. This approach helps in understanding: the consequences of long-term strategic plans of asset managers and of user behavior, in identifying vulnerable areas in a transportation network, and in estimating the impact from other assets. In our case study on a transportation network, we observed an underestimation of damages from climate events when infrastructures were treated in silos. The framework has a potential to answer wide range of questions for asset managers in the context of climate change and its impact on interconnected infrastructure. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.For climate change projections to be useful, the magnitude of change must be understood relative to the magnitude of uncertainty in model predictions. We quantified the signal-to-noise ratio in projected distributional responses of boreal birds to climate change, and compared sources of uncertainty. Boosted regression tree models of abundance were generated for 80 boreal-breeding bird species using a comprehensive data set of standardized avian point counts (349 629 surveys at 122 202 unique locations) and 4-km climate, land use, and topographic data. For projected changes in abundance, we calculated signal-to-noise ratios and examined variance components related to choice of global climatemodel (GCM) and two sources of species distribution model (SDM) uncertainty: sampling error and variable selection. We also evaluated spatial, temporal, and interspecific variation in these sources of uncertainty. The mean signal-to-noise ratio across species increased over time to 2.87 by the end of the 21st century, with the signal greater than the noise for 88% of species. Across species, climate change represented the largest component (0.44) of variance in projected abundance change. Among sources of uncertainty evaluated, choice of GCM (mean variance component = 0.17) was most important for 66% of species, sampling error (mean = 0.12) for 29% of species, and variable selection (mean = 0.05) for 5% of species. Increasing the number of GCMs from four to 19 had minor effects on these results. The range of projected changes and uncertainty characteristics across species differed markedly, reinforcing the individuality of species' responses to climate change and the challenges of one-size-fits-all approaches to climate change adaptation. We discuss the usefulness of different conservation approaches depending on the strength of the climate change signal relative to the noise, as well as the dominant source of prediction uncertainty.Multiple active partnerships in the health and water sectors in Cambodia exist to address climate change adaptation, operating beyond typical sectoral and organizational divides. Decisions around national adaptation policy are made predominantly by the relevant lead ministry, contrasting with where funding originates from (i.e., major donors, multilaterals, United Nation agencies). Adaptation policy is thus the result of a process of coproduction by state and nonstate actors. The research we present sought to understand the relationships that exist between knowledge-and decision-makers with respect to climate change adaptation in the health and water sectors in Cambodia, and the factors that enabled or constrained these relationships. Forty-four interviews were conducted with representatives of 32 organizations. We found that coproductive relationships were most effective when there were clearly defined roles and responsibilities, coordination of technical and financial resources, and trust. The two key factors of coproductive capacity that enabled and supported these partnerships were scientific resources and governance capability. Ultimately, the roles and responsibilities given to various actors requires commensurate funding and greater consideration of existing relationships and power dynamics. The reliance on international scientific expertise also needs to be challenged so that local research capabilities can be developed and locally relevant, problem-specific information can be provided. The ongoing funding, codevelopment, and sharing of such knowledge would significantly enhance trust and cooperation.Surveys and interviews were used to understand community resilience in forest-dependent communities facing climate change in Cameroon. Surveys of 232 individuals showed a diversity of formal and informal institutions that relate to most aspects of rural life. Although direct activities related to climate change adaptation were limited, the activities and density of membership in rural local institutions could increase the community's adaptive capacity. Twenty-six semistructured interviews were also conducted with representatives of diverse local institutions who had some responsibility for agriculture, forests, conservation, or development. Local governmental institutions had not received any information from the national level and were limited in their knowledge of how to help communities respond to climate change. Although limited in their direct action on climate change, local nongovernmental organizations and international institutions act as bridging institutions with rural communities and could facilitate sharing of knowledge and innovation, thereby fostering resilience. Planning for climate change adaptation in Cameroon needs to build the capacity of diverse local institutions and improve the relationships between local and national-level adaptation planning.Ecologists have used the concept of resilience since the 1970s. Resilience also features in many of the social and economic sciences, though in a less central role and with a variety of interpretations. Developing a fuller understanding of the concept of social-ecological resilience promises advances in how science can contribute to achieving better environmental outcomes, locally and globally. Such a development requires articulation of different perspectives on resilience and critical engagement across those perspectives. We present, in some detail, a particular perspective on resilience developed by the pioneering social psychologist Kurt Lewin. We suggest that Lewin's explicit use of social-ecological systems in his framework presaged much of the current social-ecological understanding of resilience. We set out some key details of his framework, notably the characteristics of his field theory, his use of group dynamics as a vehicle for social change, his introduction and development of the principles of action research, and his three-step change model. We conclude by mentioning some areas of the framework that are under-theorized or not theorized at all.The concept of ecosystem-based adaptation is advocated at international, national, and regional levels. The concept is thought to foster sustainability transitions and is receiving increasing interest from academic and governmental bodies alike. However, there is little theory regarding the pathways for its systematic implementation. It furthermore remains unclear to what degree the concept is already applied in urban planning practice, how it is integrated into existing planning structures and processes, and what drivers exist for further integration. Against this background, this study examines potential ways to sustainably mainstream ecosystem-based adaptation into urban planning. Eight municipalities in Southern Germany were investigated to analyze the processes of mainstreaming ecosystem-based adaptation into current planning practice. Although the mainstreaming entry points for ecosystem-based adaptation were identified to be appreciably different, the results of the study show how mainstreaming has generally led to patterns of change in: (1) on-the-ground measures, (2) organizational structures and assets, (3) formal and informal policies and instruments, (4) external cooperation and networking, and (5) the general working language. In all these areas, ecosystem-based adaptation to heat and flood risk is highly compartmentalized. Furthermore, although scholars have drawn attention to the risk of "mainstreaming overload," the results suggest that at the local level, the integration of ecosystem-based adaptation is strongly driven by departments' experience in mainstreaming other cross-cutting issues, namely environmental planning, climate change mitigation, and disaster risk management. Based on the findings, ways to leverage sustainability transitions via mainstreaming are discussed. It is concluded that systematic mainstreaming is a promising avenue for initiating and promoting local transitions and transformative adaptation. The study demonstrates the applicability of the presented mainstreaming framework for assessing and driving the mainstreaming capacity of local governments, thus also addressing the lack of related indicators highlighted in the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Effective adaptive governance will emerge from strong relationships between science, governance, and practice. However, these relationships receive scant critical attention among adaptive governance scholarship. To address this lacuna, Jasanoff's "idiom of coproduction" provides a lens to view the dialectical relationships between science and society. This view sees science and governance as coevolving through iterative relationships between the material, cognitive, social, and normative dimensions of a problem. This coevolution is precisely the aspiration of adaptive governance; however, the abstract notion of coproduction must be grounded to provide practical guidance for groups aspiring to "govern adaptively." I have drawn on three concepts, namely coproduction, bridging/boundary organizations, and adaptive capacity, to present a conceptual framework of "coproductive capacities." Coproductive capacities are the material, cognitive, social, and normative capacities that enable groups of actors to connect knowledge with action in a cross-scale governance context. This framework was applied to two cases of connectivity conservation. Inspired by the science of conservation biology, connectivity conservation promotes collaborative, cross-scale governance to conserve biodiversity at a landscape scale. This tight coupling of science and governance in a cross-scale context makes connectivity conservation a classic case of both coproduction and adaptive governance. However, the inability of the initiatives in the cases examined to turn their visions into action highlights a critical absence of key capacities. In particular, challenges faced in connecting knowledge with action at various scales points to the importance of building relationships between actors across scales. The structures and mechanisms of governance have dominated adaptive governance scholarship, yet coproductive capacity and adaptive governance emerge from the relationships between actors seeking to connect knowledge with action. Building capacity to negotiate these relationships is a more fruitful focus for adaptive governance than design principles and diagnostics.Adaptive governance aspires to support learning and experimentation through polycentric and collaborative approaches. Collaborative decision-making focused around a particular problem or region, the ideal suggests, enables actors to have greater flexibility to experiment, learn and respond to the particularities of their landscape. This paper examines the theoretical promise of adaptive governance through an in-depth case study of a connectivity conservation initiative in Australia. Habitat 141 degrees is a network of public, private and civil society actors seeking to align conservation actions dispersed across large spatial scales. In addition to well-established challenges to collaborative practice, sustaining the complex governance arrangements intended to connect local-to-regional scales undermined Habitat 141 degrees's capacity to provide vertical and horizontal connections between scales of decision-making. Without these linkages, Habitat 141 degrees's envisaged governance structure was unable to support the necessary functions of coordination and self-organization critical to polycentric governance. This paper highlights challenges to collective action in spatially distributed networks, providing critical empirical insight into the practical challenges of adaptive governance in nested, collaborative, polycentric networks. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentPurpose - The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative approach to facilities and built asset management adaptation planning to climate change based on a hybrid backcasting/forecasting model. Backcasting envisions a future state and examines alternative "pathways of approach" by looking backwards from the future state to the present day. Each pathway is examined in turn to identify interventions required for that pathway to achieve the future state. Each pathway is reviewed using forecasting tools and the most appropriate is selected. This paper describes the application of this approach to the integration of climate change adaptation plans into facilities and built asset management. Design/methodology/approach - The researchers worked with various stakeholders as part of a participatory research team to identify climate change adaptations that may be required to ensure the continued performance of a new educational building over its life cycle. The team identified 2020, 2040 and 2080 year end-goals and assessed alternative pathways of approach. The most appropriate pathways were integrated into the facilities and built asset management plan. Findings - The paper outlines a conceptual framework for formulating long term facilities and built asset management strategies to address adaptation to climate change. Research limitations/implications - The conceptual framework is validated by a single research case study, and further examples are needed to ensure validity of the approach in different facilities management contexts. Originality/value - This is the first paper to explore backcasting principles as part of facilities and built asset management planning.The societal value, ecological importance and thermal sensitivity of stream-dwelling salmonids have prompted interest in adaptive management strategies to limit the effects of climate change on their habitats. Additionally, in northern temperate regions, the management and restoration of riparian broadleaf forest is advocated increasingly to dampen variations in stream water temperature and discharge, but might have collateral effects on salmonids by changing allochthonous subsidies. Here, in a cross-sectional analysis of 18 temperate headwaters with different riparian and catchment land use, we use classical fisheries data alongside stable isotope ratios in salmonids and their macroinvertebrate prey to examine whether increasing catchment cover of broadleaf trees could (i) increase the density, biomass and size of salmonids, (ii) increase brown trout (Salmo trutta) dietary reliance on production of terrestrial origin and (iii) mediate allochthonous energy flux between aquatic macroinvertebrates and brown trout. Contrary to expectation, catchment broadleaf cover had no systematic effect on salmonid density or individual size, although salmonid biomass was lowest in streams draining non-native conifers. Moreover, there was no major effect of land use on the dependence of S.trutta on terrestrial production: averaged across all sites, trout used more production from in-stream (623%: mean +/- 1 SE) than terrestrial (38 +/- 3%) sources. Dependence on terrestrial production varied more substantially among individual streams than with riparian land use, mirroring site-specific patterns observed in macroinvertebrates. Although increased broadleaf cover could benefit salmonids by offsetting the impacts of warming related to climate change, these results imply that broadleaf restoration along temperate, upland headwaters is neutral with respect to salmonid biomass, density and terrestrial subsidies. In contrast, the use of non-native conifers for stream shading could have negative effects on salmonid production. Knowledge of the ecological implications of climate change adaptation remains rudimentary, and we advocate further evaluations like ours not only for fresh waters, but for ecosystems more generally.An aerosol-coupled global nonhydrostatic model with a stretched-grid system has been developed. Circulations over the global and target domains are simulated with a single model, which includes fine meshes covering the target region to calculate meso-scale circulations. The stretched global model involves lower computational costs to simulate atmospheric aerosols with fine horizontal resolutions compared with a global uniform nonhydrostatic model, whereas it may require higher computational costs compared with the general regional models, because the stretched-grid system calculates inside and outside the target domain As opposed to general regional models, the stretched-grid system requires neither a nesting technique nor lateral boundary conditions. In this study, we developed a new-type regional model for the simulation of aerosols over Japan, especially in the Kanto areas surrounding Tokyo, with a maximum horizontal resolution of approximately 10 km. This model usually reproduces temporal variations and their averages of the observed weather around Japan. This model generally reproduces monthly mean distributions of the observed sulfate and SO2 over East Asia, with high correlations (R > 0.6), but the underestimation of the simulated concentrations by 40% (sulfate) and 50% (SO2). Their underestimation of the simulated sulfate and SO2 concentrations over East Asia are strongly affected by their underestimation in China and possibly by the uncertainty of the simulated precipitation around Japan. In the Kanto area, this model succeeds in simulating the wind patterns and the diurnal transitions around the center of the Kanto area, although it is inadequate to simulate the wind patterns and the diurnal transitions at some sites located at the edge of the Kanto area and surrounded on three sides by mountains, e.g., Maebashi, mainly due to the insufficient horizontal resolution. This model also generally reproduces both diurnal and synoptic variations of the observed and/or a regional aerosol-transport model, WRF-CMAQ, simulated EC, sulfate, and SO2 concentrations in the Kanto area, especially with their high correlation (R > 0.5) at Komae/Tokyo. Although the aerosol module used in this study is relatively simplified compared to the general regional aerosol models, this study reveals that our proposed model with the stretchedgrid system can be applicable for the regional aerosol simulation.Ecosystem services are typically valued for their immediate material or cultural benefits to human wellbeing, supported by regulating and supporting services. Under climate change, with more frequent stresses and novel shocks, 'climate adaptation services', are defined as the benefits to people from increased social ability to respond to change, provided by the capability of ecosystems to moderate and adapt to climate change and variability. They broaden the ecosystem services framework to assist decision makers in planning for an uncertain future with new choices and options. We present a generic framework for operationalising the adaptation services concept. Four steps guide the identification of intrinsic ecological mechanisms that facilitate the maintenance and emergence of ecosystem services during periods of change, and so materialise as adaptation services. We applied this framework for four contrasted Australian ecosystems. Comparative analyses enabled by the operational framework suggest that adaptation services that emerge during trajectories of ecological change are supported by common mechanisms: vegetation structural diversity, the role of keystone species or functional groups, response diversity and landscape connectivity, which underpin the persistence of function and the reassembly of ecological communities under severe climate change and variability. Such understanding should guide ecosystem management towards adaptation planning.We investigated climate change in the annual snow cover period in mountainous areas of central Japan by downscaling simulations of four climate change projections based on a Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A1B emission scenario using a regional climate model. Our numerical simulation reproduced well the observed snow depths and areas of snow cover. The projected snow disappearance date in all areas occurred earlier in the future climate due to global warming and were substantially earlier in areas of both light and heavy snowpacks in the present climate. The time shift was smaller at areas where the present-day maximum snow depth is around 100 cm and the snow disappearance date is in mid-April. These projected changes in the duration of snow cover were associated with decreasing snowfall and accelerated snowmelt due to increasing surface air temperatures. The effect was interpreted using an idealized model of temporal variation in surface air temperature. Earlier snowmelt causes local enhancement of surface air temperature increases that will have considerable impact on mountain ecosystems.This chapter provides an overview of the changing environment and the increased pest pressure that are projected to occur due to climate change and variability. Protected agriculture is introduced as an adaptation strategy to address these conditions and assist with food and nutrition security targets. The scope of the technology and the benefits of producing crops using protected systems as well as the use of protected systems in SIDS, with some emphasis on the Caribbean region, are outlined. The chapter outlines: (1) the specific features of the technology that assist with reducing the impacts of climate change and (2) some possible considerations for the successful development of a sustainable protected agriculture industry under climate change and variability.Populations and assets, in African cities, small and large, are among the most vulnerable to disaster risk globally. Climate change and demographic shifts add urgency and uncertainty. This paper outlines priorities for research responding to this challenge. We argue for integrative approaches that can capture multi-hazard risk and include hazards from across the spectrum of everyday to catastrophic, and their interactions. For such approaches to shape policy, new efforts are needed to develop political support, technical capacity and methodologies to enable systematic data collection and analysis, including socially and spatially disaggregated data. We also argue for the interdependence of risk and urban development policy, and a focus on institutions as objects and partners for co-produced research, including local government as the focal point for risk reduction and new roles for civil society and the private sector. This emerging research agenda also needs to ask what it is that makes African cities distinctive globally, and yet diverse across the continent, in their experiences of risk production.Land use, transport, energy consumption and air quality issues in a city are interconnected and therefore form a nexus. This study attempts to analyze this nexus by identifying the magnitude and quality of the links among the elements. The study was undertaken in Bandung City, Indonesia by analyzing the concentricity of land use of the city, computing traffic loads at some primary radial trunk roads towards city center, assessing transport energy and air quality in the study area. Analysis on the present linearity of the nexus was also conducted by acquiring relevant secondary data as well as information from the separate study by the first authors in the same city. A quantitative analysis was undertaken to corroborate the relationships among linear connections of the elements. The result exhibits that the interconnections among elements in the nexus do exist. It also shows that the interconnection of the nexus i.e. land use, transport, energy consumption and air quality is linear and it requires a synergistic efforts to enhance the strategies towards climate change co-benefits. By looking at the nexus as a policy arena, the study proposes prospective policy directions that could lead to synergize co-benefits of climate change and accordingly contribute to climate change adaptation of the city and the reduction of climate change impacts.To identify factors associated with farm-level variability, to understand farmers' perception on climate change impacts, and to assess livestock climate change adaptation, a full-fledged household survey was launched in May 2012 in the Thulokhola watershed of Nuwakot district in Nepal. Factors identified for farm-level variation included land holding size and land types (irrigated, non-irrigated), male and female labours in a household, number of goats and cattle owned, fodder and forages, forest products utilised, number of animal grazing days, and income diversification. Drought conditions, erratic rain events, livestock diseases and parasites, decreasing pregnancy rate in animals, fodder and water shortages, and forest degradation were major climate change impacts in this watershed. To cope with these impacts, farmers have practiced introducing new animal breeds, stall feeding, planting grasses, storing feed for feed shortage months, purchasing feed, constructing ponds, and installing pipelines for water supply. However, they are limited and lacking scientific rigors.Climate change poses numerous risks to the health of Canadians. Extreme weather events, poor air quality, and food insecurity in northern regions are likely to increase along with the increasing incidence and range of infectious diseases. In this study we identify and characterize Canadian federal, provincial, territorial and municipal adaptation to these health risks based on publically available information. Federal health adaptation initiatives emphasize capacity building and gathering information to address general health, infectious disease and heat-related risks. Provincial and territorial adaptation is varied. Quebec is a leader in climate change adaptation, having a notably higher number of adaptation initiatives reported, addressing almost all risks posed by climate change in the province, and having implemented various adaptation types. Meanwhile, all other Canadian provinces and territories are in the early stages of health adaptation. Based on publically available information, reported adaptation also varies greatly by municipality. The six sampled Canadian regional health authorities (or equivalent) are not reporting any adaptation initiatives. We also find little relationship between the number of initiatives reported in the six sampled municipalities and their provinces, suggesting that municipalities are adapting (or not adapting) autonomously.Private sector engagement, particularly in times of public budget constraints, has become a buzz word in most policy areas, yet roles and responsibilities between public and private sectors remain indistinct. We investigate this for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) work stream on addressing loss and damage (L&D). This paper presents evidence of current engagement and expectations, from official submissions to the UNFCCC, L&D literature, and relates this to experiences from the fields of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). Results show a degree of 'vagueness' in outlining the role of the private sector with unclear conceptual boundaries of L&D, DRR and CCA posing challenges for stakeholders. Expectation that the private sector will support the emerging L&D framework through knowledge, skills and resource, particularly in developed countries, is apparent. Further clarity on expectations and the ability to deliver by the private sector is required.Estimating the distribution of impervious surfaces and vegetation is important for analysing urban landscapes and their thermal environment. The application of a crisp classification of land-cover types to analyse urban landscape patterns and land surface temperature (LST) in detail presents a challenge, mainly due to the complex characteristics of urban landscapes. In this article, sub-pixel percentage impervious surface areas (ISAs) and fractional vegetation cover (FVC) were extracted from bitemporal Thematic Mapper/Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (TM/ETM+) data by linear spectral mixture analysis (LSMA). Their accuracy was assessed with proportional area estimates of the impervious surface and vegetation extracted from high-resolution data. A range approach was used to classify percentage ISA into different categories by setting thresholds of fractional values and these were compared for their LST patterns. For each ISA category, FVC, LST, and percentage ISA were used to quantify the urban thermal characteristics of different developed areas in the city of Fuzhou, China. Urban LST scenarios in different seasons and ISA categories were simulated to analyse the seasonal variations and the impact of urban landscape pattern changes on the thermal environment. The results show that FVC and LST based on percentage ISA can be used to quantitatively analyse the process of urban expansion and its impacts on the spatial-temporal distribution patterns of the urban thermal environment. This analysis can support urban planning by providing knowledge on the climate adaptation potential of specific urban spatial patterns.Variability of streamflow has far-reaching impacts especially in developing countries. This is aggravated by climate change which has adversely affected the water resources and food security. This paper presents the characterization trends in extreme streamflow regimes with a view to providing information for planning local coping mechanisms to climate variability and change using streamflow data recorded from 1959 to 2008 in the Lake Naivasha basin in Kenya. The maxima and percentiles of streamflow distributions were investigated to identify changes in extreme intensity and frequency, respectively, using the Mann-Kendall test. The results indicate significant increases in annual maxima at all gauging stations. The flows in the month of November increased significantly at gauging stations 2GB4 and 2GC4. Flow percentile exceedance revealed that the annual 95th percentile exceedance increased significantly at gauging stations 2GB1 and 2GB5 with a decrease in annual 90th and 97th percentile exceedance at gauging stations 2GB4 and 2GC4. The results presented in this paper are useful for climate change adaptation planning and management especially in water supply, hydropower generation and agriculture.Climate change is the largest and most complicated interdependent issue the world has confronted. Yet there is little negotiation and conflict management knowledge within the climate change context. To address this gap, this theoretical article reviews the sparse extant literature and provides a brief overview of the science of climate change public policy. This review establishes a foundation for examining negotiation and conflict management research questions that emanate from current and future climate change negotiations. Such questions are considered for climate change mitigation negotiations and climate change adaptation negotiations. This article demonstrates how the negotiation and conflict management field can make important contributions to the study of interdependency in a context of climate change.In this paper, we propose a visualization development framework that is a C++ class library for easily and efficiently rendering three-dimensional datasets, such as numerical simulation results, medical image datasets, and measurement datasets. Our framework provides a modular programming environment that supports the construction and execution of a visualization pipeline and allows the user to readily implement custom visualization algorithms using our simple module-based execution model. In addition, we also provide a simple implementation of a visualization environment that can handle multiple volumes and semi-transparent polygons in a single scene, which we call a fused visualization environment. Although many visualization software packages have been proposed thus far, such an environment has not previously been supported because of the visibility ordering problem. To confirm the effectiveness of our proposed visualization framework, we demonstrate several visualization applications implemented using this framework.Purpose: The fact that highly vulnerable countries like Ethiopia face far greater challenges from climate change makes agricultural adaptation a top priority. Even though the public agriculture extension system in Ethiopia plays a central role in facilitating and supporting adaptation, very limited information is available on how aware the actual extension agents (EAs) are regarding the issue. Therefore, this research attempts to provide a specific insight on the current level of awareness and understanding of EAs regarding climate change. Methodology: Survey questionnaires and semi-structured key-informant interviews were used to collect primary data from extension agents and decision-makers. Findings: Results indicated that generally EAs had a good perception of climate change as well as its impact on agriculture & natural resource use and availability. Also, there was a consensus among EAs regarding certain changes in weather patterns and the frequency of extreme events. Weaknesses and challenges concerning the level of priority given to climate change and adaptation, capacity-building efforts and access to resources were identified as well. Practical implications: Identified challenges imply the need for a synchronized approach towards climate change adaptation and capacity-building to enhance EAs awareness on the issue. Also, the findings highlight the urgent necessity to prioritize climate change as an extension programming issue and to develop clear mitigation and adaptation approaches. Originality/value: This research is original and highly valuable to identify weaknesses and strengths regarding EAs' awareness of climate change adaptation.Threats to migratory animals can occur at multiple periods of the annual cycle that are separated by thousands of kilometres and span international borders. Populations of the iconic monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) of eastern North America have declined over the last 21years. Three hypotheses have been posed to explain the decline: habitat loss on the overwintering grounds in Mexico, habitat loss on the breeding grounds in the United States and Canada, and extreme weather events. Our objectives were to assess population viability, determine which life stage, season and geographical region are contributing the most to population dynamics and test the three hypotheses that explain the observed population decline. We developed a spatially structured, stochastic and density-dependent periodic projection matrix model that integrates patterns of migratory connectivity and demographic vital rates across the annual cycle. We used perturbation analysis to determine the sensitivity of population abundance to changes in vital rate among life stages, seasons and geographical regions. Next, we compared the singular effects of each threat to the full model where all factors operate concurrently. Finally, we generated predictions to assess the risk of host plant loss as a result of genetically modified crops on current and future monarch butterfly population size and extinction probability. Our year-round population model predicted population declines of 14% and a quasi-extinction probability (<1000 individuals) >5% within a century. Monarch abundance was more than four times more sensitive to perturbations of vital rates on the breeding grounds than on the wintering grounds. Simulations that considered only forest loss or climate change in Mexico predicted higher population sizes compared to milkweed declines on the breeding grounds. Our model predictions also suggest that mitigating the negative effects of genetically modified crops results in higher population size and lower extinction risk. Recent population declines stem from reduction in milkweed host plants in the United States that arise from increasing adoption of genetically modified crops and land-use change, not from climate change or degradation of forest habitats in Mexico. Therefore, reducing the negative effects of host plant loss on the breeding grounds is the top conservation priority to slow or halt future population declines of monarch butterflies in North America.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for developing climate adaptation strategies to reduce climate risk for cultural heritage. Cultural heritage has an important role in human well-being. This paper posits that cultural heritage requires an approach that recognises the uniqueness of cultural heritage. The paper draws from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) Making My City Resilient campaign and the Heart of the City Partnership in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and proposes a Cultural Heritage Adaptation Forum. The role of the forum is to develop adaptation strategies in a sustainable development context. This is an original attempt to link cultural heritage to climate risk. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws from two initiatives and uses good practice established from the disaster management and climate communities and proposes a Cultural Heritage Adaptation Forum that can be used to formulate adaptation interventions for cultural heritage. The approach builds on active participation in a global overview of cultural heritage and climate risk led by UNISDR together with personal experience of implementing such strategies in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Findings - The paper finds that a model can be developed that incorporates good practice from the climate and disaster management communities. Practical implications - The paper presents a model that can be used by those stakeholders that have an interest in protecting cultural heritage form climate driven hazards. Social implications - Cultural heritage has a value for all and protecting it from climate driven hazards can impact human well-being Originality/value - The paper brings together concepts from different academic and practitioner communities. The concept outlined in the paper will be of interest to all those interested in protecting cultural heritage for climate driven hazards.Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore Australian Indigenous women's customary use of marine resources and views on aquaculture as a development opportunity. The value participants placed on economic, social and cultural outcomes were explored, as were benefit sharing, governance and business considerations. Design/methodology/approach - Using a form of action research, workshops were conducted with a focus group of Indigenous women and interviews with men and women living on a remote island off northern Australia. Multimedia materials and a game were used to elicit a deeper understanding and facilitate discussion. Findings - Women preferred aquaculture options respectful of culture and accommodating cultural and family obligations, that engage young adults in meaningful work, improve access to sea country and provide local foods and support economic development. Participants placed significant dependence on their governance body to support businesses and expressed disparate views on profit sharing. Women continue to engage in customary harvesting and fishing but various limitations impact on this. Research limitations/implications - Conclusions based on one case study need to be confirmed in other communities. Future research should include a broader representation of youth and strategies to improve people's understanding of aquaculture operations and business management. Social implications - This research improves our understanding of Indigenous women's preferred economic development pathways and their advocacy role within the community. These findings are relevant for policy-makers, businesses, other Indigenous communities and researchers. Originality/value - This paper seeks to recognise and integrate Indigenous women's economic and cultural aspirations within development policy. Such a place-based, gender-based consultative process is generally lacking in the Australian Indigenous policy arena.In contrast to the national-level policies found in most developed nations, in the USA, sub-national governments have emerged as leaders in formulating climate change policy. Yet participation is uneven, and little is understood about why some act and others do not. This paper examines two sets of factors for their influence on climate change adaptation planning in communities of the Great Plains. Using survey data collected from a range of natural resources managers in 900+ jurisdictions in 12 states, the study examines the impact of perceived barriers to climate change planning and the natural environment on the probability that jurisdictions will engage in adaptation planning. The findings show that most jurisdictions remain sceptical of climate change and see no need to engage in adaptation planning. Among those that have begun to plan or have a plan in place already, the strongest influence comes from changes in the physical environment itself.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to consider how to couple and quantify resilience and sustainability, where sustainability refers to not only environmental impact, but also economic and social impacts. The way a particular function of a building is provisioned may have significant repercussions beyond just resilience. The goal is to develop a decision support tool for facilities managers. Design/methodology/approach - A risk framework is used to quantify both resilience and sustainability in monetary terms. The risk framework allows to couple resilience and sustainability, so that the provisioning of a particular building can be investigated with consideration of functional, environmental, economic and, possibly, social dimensions. Findings - The method of coupling and quantifying resilience and sustainability (CQRS) is illustrated with a simple example that highlights how very different conclusions can be drawn when considering only resilience or resilience and sustainability. Research limitations/implications - The paper is based on a hypothetical example. The example also illustrates the difficulty in deriving the costs and probabilities associated with particular indicators. Practical implications - The method is generic, allowing the method to be customized for different user communities. Further research is needed to translate this theoretical framework to a practical tool for practitioners and to evaluate the CQRS method in practice. Originality/value - The intention of this research is to fill the gap between the need for increasing sustainability and resilience of the built environment and the current practices in property maintenance and operation.In this future, citizens of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin recognize their dependence upon and became united around a common vision for a thriving Great Lakes basin. However, in 2063 the environment and economy are out of balance; citizens are constantly forced to make difficult trade-offs. Climate warming, geopolitical pressures such as environmental refugees, an aging population, and a sluggish economy have overwhelmed the region's efforts to find a balance that would have ensured human prosperity without diminishing the integrity of the Great Lakes basin. This narrative illustrates the time period 2013 to 2063, depicting how the collision of multiple drivers of change cause declining social and environmental conditions, and force a gradual transformation in societal values. While society was initially complacent, the groundwork for social transformation was laid over three decades. Impacts of education programs, opposition to environmentally degrading natural resource extraction, and widespread effects of both failing social services and physical infrastructure galvanize grassroots mobilization of communities around "iceless hockey rink" meetings. These meetings act as a catalyst, translating this social movement into governance that works towards a common vision based on shared values. However, despite innovative technologies and cohesive efforts, it becomes obvious that attempts to oppose the complex and interrelated forces driving changes in the Great Lakes region are limited. These efforts come at huge economic costs, and the harsh reality forces people in the region to make difficult decisions that threaten some facets of economic, social and environmental well-being while protecting others. (C) 2014 International Association for Great Lakes Research. Published by Elsevier BY. All rights reserved.Achieving sustainability of the cereal system in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) of India under progressive climate change and variability necessitates adoption of practices and technologies that increase food production, adaptation and mitigation in a sustainable way. This paper examines conservation agriculture (CA) from the perspective of: (i) increased yield and farm income, (ii) adaptation to heat and water stresses, and (iii) reduction in greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions. The analyses and conclusions are based on the literature and evidences from a large number of on-station as well as farmers' field trials on CA in the cereal systems of IGP. Our analyses show that CA-based system substantially reduces the production cost (up to 23%) but produces equal or even higher than conventional system; thereby increasing economic profitability of production system. CA-based production systems also moderated the effect of high temperature (reduced canopy temperature by 1-4 degrees C) and increased irrigation water productivity by 66-100% compared to traditional production systems thus well adapting to water and heat stress situations of IGP. Our continuous monitoring of soil flux of CO2, N2O and CH4 revealed that CA-based rice-wheat systems emit 10-15% less GHGs than conventional systems. This is the first time that CA and its components are synthesized and analyzed from food security-climate change nexus. From this holistic analysis, we suggest that wide-scale promotion of suitable CA practices by integrating into national agriculture development strategy is a way forward to address food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation challenges faced by present agriculture.Urban stormwater runoff management systems are usually designed to meet performance standards based on historical climate data, which are assumed to be stationary. Based on the evidence from climate change impact studies, in the near future, stormwater management systems, within the built environment, may need to meet performance expectations under climatic conditions different from historical climate. Considering the impacts of climate change on rainfall intensities and stormwater runoff peak flow and volumes, and in turn the effectiveness of mitigation, practices for urban stormwater management are desirable. This paper presents the results of a climate change impact study on urban stormwater runoff in the Bronx River watershed, New York City. Considering the impacts of climate change on watershed runoff, the potential for low-impact development (LID) controls to mitigate the impacts was investigated. Stormwater runoff and LID controls were modeled using the U.S. EPA Storm Water Management Model version 5 (EPA SWMM5). The simulations were driven by historical precipitation modified to represent future projections using a change factor methodology based on precipitation from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Using the change factor method, historical precipitation was perturbed to obtain future data, based on three climate scenarios projecting maximum, mean, and minimum values for rainfall. Results of frequency analysis performed on the simulated peak flow rates, with different recurrence intervals, showed a noticeable increase in the frequency of occurrence of extreme storm events and their peak values, under future extreme climate conditions. An LID control scenario consisting of rainwater harvesting, porous pavement, and bioretention was designed and evaluated using the SWMM model. The results showed that, while average increase in historical annual runoff volume under climate change impacts was approximately 48%, the LID controls could provide an average reduction of 41% in annual runoff volume. Application of the LID controls also reduced peak flow rates by an average of 8 to 13%. LID implementation decreased watershed runoff corresponding to 2-year and 50-year return periods, by 28 and 14%, respectively. In conclusion, retrofits with LID controls may provide not only their inherent benefits (e.g., runoff volume and water quality), but also additional climate impact mitigation benefits for stormwater runoff. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.The average maize yield of 2.5 t/ha in sub-tropical terai and inner terai of Nepal has been very less than its potential yield of about 5.0 t/ha, for which changing climatic scenarios have been reported the critical factors. Cropping system Model (CSM)-Crop Estimation through Resource and Environment Synthesis (CERES)-Maize, embedded under Decision Support System for Agro-technology Transfer (DSSAT) ver. 4.2 was evaluated from a datasets of field experimentation by growing four diverse maize genotypes viz. full season OPV (Rampur Composite), Quality Protein Maize (Posilo Makai-1), Hybrid (Gaurav) and Pop corn (Pool-12) under three different planting dates (September 1, October 1 and November 1) in 2009-10 at Rampur Campus, Chitwan. The experiment was laid out in two factor factorial randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications in slightly acidic (pH 6.7) sandy loam soil having low soil available N(0.49%) and K (148 kg/ha) and medium P (16.3 kg/ha) status. The ancillary and yield data obtaining from field experiment was analyzed from the M-Stat C software and recorded that Gaurav hybrid produced significantly higher yield under September 1 planting (5.86 t/ha) followed by Posilo Makai 1 (5.55 t/ha), Rampur Composite (5.1t/ha) and the least with Pool-12 (3.45 t/ha). Further, the heat use efficiency of diverse maize genotypes were also calculated by using the mean temperature based accumulative heat unit system and found the stable yields only with Rampur Composite for all planting dates and the rest genotypes were suitable only to the early winter plantings. Model calibration was done by using September 1 planting date for all 4 maize genotypes while validation was accomplished by using the remaining treatments for predicting growth and yield of different maize genotypes. The year 2006-07 was found 13, 18, 23 and 7% higher in producing the maize yield than the standard year 2009-10 for Rampur Composite, Posilo Makai-1, Gaurav and Pool-12, respectively. Further, the different climate change scenarios as advocated by IPCC (2007) for 2020, 2050 and 2080 from base line of 2009-10 was studied to simulate the growth and yield performance of diverse maize genotypes with September 1 planting date and found that there would be increment in winter maize yield up to 2020 scenario of climate change and the drastic yield loss would be on 2050 to 2080 scenarios under the present levels of agronomic management options and urged for the new climate change adaptation and mitigation production technologies.Impacts of TAO/TRITON (TT) and Argo data in the tropical Pacific on the accuracy of temperature and salinity fields generated by a data-assimilation system for operational seasonal forecasts are examined through a series of observing system experiments. This study demonstrates positive impacts of both TT and Argo data, and that these observation types are complementary to each other. Data assimilation has relatively large impacts around the thermocline in the NINO3 region and the far western equatorial Pacific. A close relationship between the impacts of data assimilation and oceanic inherent uncertainty is suggested.Uncertainty in ocean analysis methods and deficiencies in the observing system are major obstacles for the reliable reconstruction of the past ocean climate. The variety of existing ocean reanalyses is exploited in a multi-reanalysis ensemble to improve the ocean state estimation and to gauge uncertainty levels. The ensemble-based analysis of signal-to-noise ratio allows the identification of ocean characteristics for which the estimation is robust (such as tropical mixedlayer-depth, upper ocean heat content), and where large uncertainty exists (deep ocean, Southern Ocean, sea ice thickness, salinity), providing guidance for future enhancement of the observing and data assimilation systems.Municipalities of the Languedoc-Roussillon region (South-eastern France) are highly vulnerable to climate-change-induced sea-level rise (SLR) due to their low altitude and the great attractiveness of the region for tourism. This attractiveness has resulted in a very significant development of second homes, which represent half of the housing stock and three quarters of the total capacity for tourism hospitality. In the context of climate change adaptation measures related to SLR, it is imperative to consider the perceptions of second-home owners and their place in local governance arrangements. Scientists advocate the implementation of managed retreat policies to reduce vulnerability by reducing the exposure of buildings, but both the social acceptability and the economic feasibility of these policies are very low. We assume that second-home owners have different perceptions of the risk of inundation and are less involved in the governance mechanisms. It is very difficult to mobilise a large number of owners of small flats who are less concerned with, and less likely to contribute to, policy development, due to their less frequent presence. We studied these issues through a survey in three municipalities, based on a sample of 318 residents and 163 second-home owners faced with inundation risk. We observed a lower sensitivity to risk and a stronger attachment to homes on the part of secondhome owners (compared to residents). We also discuss, in terms of equity and efficiency, the impact of their low level of engagement in governance mechanisms.The cloud top height of marine boundary layer clouds (MBLCs) in the mid-latitudes has received less attention than that of subtropical MBLCs and is investigated here using cloud mask data, which were based on observations from the cloud-aerosol lidar and infrared pathfinder satellite observation (CALIPSO) satellite. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the observational characteristics of variations in cloud top height of MBLCs and fog frequency over the mid-latitudes. Seasonal variations in the cloud top height of mid-latitude MBLCs as well as the differences in these seasonal variations between the Northern and Southern hemispheres were determined. For example, over the North Pacific, the cloud top height is high in winter (up to 1800 m) but low in summer (down to 800 m), whereas in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasonal variation is not well defined, with heights ranging from 1300 to 1500 m. While clear seasonal variations in the frequency of fog occurrence are found over the North Pacific and the northwest Atlantic, the fog frequency over the Southern Ocean is almost constant irrespective of the season. High correlations were found between the MBLC top height and stability indexes and between the fog frequency and some surface parameters such as temperature difference between the surface air and the sea surface. The latitudinal variations in the cloud top height of MBLCs in summer and winter over the Southern Ocean were compared with those over the North Pacific. The difference in cloud top heights between nighttime and daytime is also presented.A changing climate may result in more intense tropical cyclones and storms, more intense rain events and flooding, and other natural hazards. Moreover, increases in CO2 atmospheric concentrations, and changes in temperature and humidity, may reduce the durability of concrete, steel and timber structures. There is increasing research that takes into account the changing climate risks and life-cycle costs in engineering to reduce the vulnerability or increase the resiliency of infrastructure - we define this as 'climate adaptation engineering'. The paper will describe how risk-based approaches are well suited to optimising climate adaptation strategies related to the construction, design, operation and maintenance of built infrastructure. Stochastic methods are used to model infrastructure performance, risk reduction and effectiveness of adaptation strategies, exposure, and costs. These concepts will be illustrated with state-of-the-art research on risk-based life-cycle assessment of climate adaptation strategies. Uncertainties of climate projections are also discussed. This will pave the way for more efficient and resilient infrastructure, and help 'future proof' new and existing infrastructure to a changing climate.Changes in a range of interlinked factors, in social, economic, environmental and climatic conditions, require adaptation in many communities. This paper explores how place attachment affects adaptive responses to a changing social context through analysing adaptation in two coastal municipalities in Northern Norway. The main challenge in these municipalities is declining populations and the consequences accompanying this trend, including livelihood uncertainties and decreased provision of public services. This paper discusses the role of place attachment in motivating adaptation to these changes to contribute to a growing body of literature within climate change adaptation on "subjective" (values, culture and place) dimensions. The findings suggest that people are motivated to act based on their emotional connection with place, and the paper argues that place attachment may offer a better starting point for climate change adaptation than an emphasis on climate change impacts.National authorities in many countries aim at having climate change adaptation mainstreamed into existing policy domains in order to achieve coherence and synergies, and to avoid mal-adaptation. Because of local variations in climate change impacts, the lion's share of climate adaptation work will have to take place at the local level. This means also that the mainstreaming process needs to occur locally. This article examines the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation into existing sectors in five Norwegian municipalities. Applying theories of mainstreaming and policy integration we find that policy development is slower, but perhaps more robust in the municipalities that have chosen a horizontal, cross-sectoral approach to mainstreaming than in the municipalities that have chosen a vertical sector approach to mainstreaming.A warmer climate leads to rising sea levels. Despite uncertainties about how rapid and substantial future sea-level rise (SLR) will be, society needs to prepare and adapt. This study examines the state of planning for future SLR in Sweden by surveying 33 coastal municipalities in southern Sweden and interviewing local, regional and national authorities with relevant accountability. The results reveal that there are considerable gaps in current planning for SLR. Almost one-third of municipalities lack guiding planning documents for SLR, and more than two-thirds do not discuss SLR beyond 2100. We argue that the prevailing uncertainty and ambiguity in assessments of future SLR is problematic within a traditional "predict-then-act" paradigm, and that robust approaches, such as scenario planning, can reduce many of these problems.This paper assesses the communication and the use of climate scenarios at the sciencescience and science-policy interface in Finland, Sweden and Norway. It is based on document analysis and stakeholder questionnaires. The questionnaires targeted three stakeholder groups, all engaged in the communication and the use of climate scenario information: climate scenario producers; impact, adaptation and vulnerability (IAV) experts; and policy-makers. The respondents were asked to identify issues associated with the communication of scenarios and other needs pertaining to the usefulness and availability of such information. Despite the relatively long history of climate change adaptation in the three countries, climate scenarios are not utilised to their full potential. Climate scenarios have been used in awareness raising, problem understanding and strategy development. However, far less examples can be found on adaptation actions, particularly on harnessing the benefits of climate change. The communication between climate scenario producers and IAV experts functions well; however, communication between climate researchers and policy-makers is less efficient. Each country has developed boundary services to enhance dissemination of the climate scenario information to policy-makers. They are cost-efficient but do not necessarily enhance the comprehension of the information and encourage the actual dialogue between scenario producers and the end-users. Further translation of scenario information to impact and vulnerability estimates together with established boundary work could improve the use of climate research information. As adaptation policy in these countries further progresses towards implementation, there are increasing expectations of support from research, further challenging the communication of climate scenarios.Quantitative estimates of future climate change and its various impacts are often based on complex climate models which incorporate a number of physical processes. As these models continue to become more sophisticated, it is commonly assumed that the latest generation of climate models will provide us with better estimates of climate change. Here, we quantify the uncertainty in future climate change projections using two multi-model ensembles of climate model simulations and divide it into different components: internal, scenario and model. The contributions of these sources of uncertainty changes as a function of variable, temporal and spatial scale and especially lead time in the future. In the new models, uncertainty intervals for each of the components have increased. For temperature, importance of scenario uncertainty is the largest over low latitudes and increases nonlinearly after the mid-century. It has a small importance for precipitation simulations on all time scales, which hampers estimating the effect which any mitigation efforts might have. In line with current state-of-the-art adaptation approaches, we argue that despite these uncertainties climate models can provide useful information to support adaptation decision-making. Moreover, adaptation decisions should not be postponed in the hope that future improved scientific understanding will result in more accurate predictions of future climate change. Such simulations might not become available. On the contrary, while planning adaptation initiatives, a rational framework for decision-making under uncertainty should be employed. We suggest that there is an urgent need for continued development and use of improved risk analysis methods for climate change adaptation.Local government is attributed a vital role in climate-change adaptation. Previous studies contend that conflicting priorities, insufficient institutional incentives and knowledge of risks, and inadequate resources all impede local climate adaptation. Though the importance of local political support in enabling climate adaptation is widely acknowledged, the views of local politicians have rarely been analysed. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with local politicians in Sweden, we explore what affects their engagement in climate adaptation. The study claims that climate adaptation contrary to mitigation is not viewed as political beyond directing attention and sanctioning guidelines set by officials. A limited number of interviewees claim a more strategic political role in adaptation. The combined effect of institutional incentives (e.g. fragmented national guidelines, unappealing goals, and lack of funding), relative weight in local politics, and ability to exercise political leadership (e.g. campaign value, public and media pressure, and lack of ideology) is perceived as too insignificant to trigger strong political engagement. In less-populous municipalities, adaptive measures were highly valued for demonstrating political action.While there is ample -though partially contradictory - evidence regarding the effects climate change will have on various regions of the world, there is only very limited work dedicated to the analysis of different governance structures, and how these structures are likely to influence the resilience of alpine tourism systems in the face of climate change. We present an analytical framework based on network theory, and apply this to the Swiss case study destination of Engelberg, in order to deduct a number of insights for the future assessment of resilience based on the cooperation of local actors. The main aim of the paper is to come up with comparable resilience metrics based on social network analysis in order to assess the structural strengths and weaknesses of a geographically delimited tourism system in the face of climate change. Together with the action potential of the individual actors these structural properties influence the adaptive capacity of both individual actors, and the tourism system as a whole. In line with comparable studies, we identify structural strengths and weaknesses around the core-periphery distribution (centrality), subgroups (modularity) and information flows (path length). We find that the Engelberg network follows an almost ideal-typical scale-free structure and the overall cooperation rate (density) is comparable to other tourism networks. The main weaknesses of the network with regard to climate change resilience are the lacking integration of public sector actors and the relatively high number of actors in the periphery of the network.The shift towards social, government and corporate ethics which value environmental sustainability has also embraced householders in a plethora of educational guides, policies, regulations and consumer information about green home improvements, purchasing choices and household practices. In this paper, we make the claim that the rental housing sector, and in particular the private rental sector, has yet to participate, structurally, culturally and materially, in this shift to an ethics of sustainability. We argue, however, that even on such otherwise arid ground, an alternative ethic is developing, a sustainability ethic practiced by green tenants whose activities inside and outside their homes go beyond the considerable material constraints of their dwellings and incomes, and beyond the purely transactional utility of the rental contract. These activities, relational, interconnected and resilient, offer both glimpses of a greening rental housing sector, and a clearer picture of the areas where work remains to be done. Based on a research study, we conducted of the rental sector in regional Australia, and in particular of the everyday sustainability practices of tenants, we suggest that these activities are a practice-based form of care for the world, in many ways similar to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's practice-based, humandecentred ethics which she suggests is exemplified in the permaculture movement. The stories of the tenants we interviewed for our study also point the way to other changes which are needed to enable a practice-based sustainability ethic to flourish across the rental housing sector as a whole.There is a dearth of research focusing on the role that urban residential open space plays in climate change adaptation, despite evidence suggesting that environmental benefits accrue when even small pockets of open space are made permeable and vegetated. In densely built New York City, there are 21,448 ha (53,000 acres) of such land. One city block with adjoining contiguous open space was investigated to quantify its existing environmental value and also its potential to provide enhanced services through redesign. The study block's open space was found to be 35% permeable and planted with 96 trees, storing 45,359 kg (100,000 lb) of carbon. Simulations conducted using the United States Environmental Protection Agency Stormwater Management Model contrasting normal, light, and heavy precipitation years suggested that increases in annual precipitation could be fully mitigated by reducing impervious surface cover by 25%. The preservation of the existing vegetated residential urban open space and the conversion of paved surfaces to a pervious condition both appear to be effective strategies for enhancing the city's ability to adapt to and mitigate for climate change.In Lesotho, climate change adaptation funding is being managed and distributed by the same mechanisms which have traditionally operationalised humanitarian aid and international development assistance in the country. Lessons from the HIV/AIDS disaster, along with insights into the value of participatory approaches foregrounding the expertise of indigenous communities, must be heeded in order to ensure that those most affected by climate change have a say in how adaptation is carried out. This paper proposes that indigenous people have developed and actively maintained resilience strategies, encoded in social practices and farming techniques, designed out of long experience with climatic variability. Through case studies, indigenous resilience strategies are explored, with emphasis on the anarchistic, improvisational nature of traditional ecological knowledge. Future directions for policy-makers and practitioners dealing with climate change adaptation are suggested, namely the need to foreground indigenous knowledge and the experiences of frontlines experts in key policy arenas.This paper analyzes barriers and opportunities for effective adaptation planning in cities. In particular, we focus on the preparation and adoption of adaptation strategies and action plans by urban planners. For this purpose, we develop a two-tier framework of variables influencing decision-making. The framework emphasizes interaction between different commonly discussed categories of barriers (or opportunities) and their sources. We argue that whether or not urban planners take action to foster adaptation to climate change depends on three first-tier variables: information, resources, and incentives. In addition, we point out that each of these variables may itself be a function of a set of underlying second-tier variables, including actor-specific characteristics of the decision-maker, the institutional environment, and the natural and socio-economic environment. Within this framework, we specify barriers and opportunities for effective adaptation planning as hampering or promoting characteristics of these first- and second-tier variables. We apply and test the framework within the context of four case studies carried out in Lima (Peru), Santiago (Chile), Berlin and Sangerhausen (both Germany). We present anecdotal evidence, which we have gained from expert interviews in the cities. Our results indicate that the relevant categories of barriers are mainly the same across developing and developed countries. What differs is their severity. Moreover, we confirm the importance of the institutional context, including barriers and opportunities associated mainstreaming adaptation, multi-level governance and participation. Finally, our analysis reveals barriers that are specific for local or urban adaptation action, such as the strong dependency on the national regulatory framework.The assessment of regional vulnerability to climate change has become an important issue in climate change adaptation. In order to aid decision making in terms of prioritising adaptation action or allocating resources for adaptation measures, both scholars and policy makers emphasise the need for comprehensive and spatially explicit vulnerability studies. Adaptive capacity is not only an important part of vulnerability assessments, it also underlies and enables the governing of adaptation activities, thus making it an issue relevant to policy. Hence, the assessment of adaptive capacity gives decision makers on international, national and regional level important information to develop adaptation policy. Drawing on current vulnerability and adaptive capacity studies, the objective of this paper is to present a framework that structures adaptive capacity assessments based on science-policy interaction, discussing the objectives of the assessment, the methodology and the use of results. The framework is applied to two examples: a pan-European assessment of adaptive capacity and an assessment of the adaptive capacity of the tourism sector in the European Alps, both on the regional level. The main findings show how decisions related to methodology can influence the use of results in decision making. In conclusion, this paper contributes to the literature by arguing that more attention needs to be paid to assessment design in order to better support the mobilisation of adaptive capacity for adaptation.Jakarta has suffered major floods in 2002, 2007, and 2013. To cope with and adapt to both the current and future flood problem, the city requires quantitative assessments of flood risk. In this study, we develop a flood risk assessment model for Jakarta. The model is based on the Damagescanner model, adapted for Jakarta using local information on hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. The model was first set up using existing estimates of economic exposure of different land use classes to represent exposure and depth-damage functions (vulnerability curves) from several existing studies in south-east Asia to represent vulnerability. Using these data to simulate damage led to an overestimation by several orders of magnitude. Hence, we held a series of expert meetings and workshops with local stakeholders to develop specific estimates of economic exposure per land use class and to derive vulnerability curves specific for Jakarta. We compare the resulting simulated damages to reported damages and found them to be in good agreement, giving confidence in the use of the model for flood risk assessment. Under current conditions, we found the annual expected damage due to river flooding in Jakarta to be approximately USD 321 million per year. We also examined the sensitivity of flood risk assessments to the use of different vulnerability curves. The sensitivity is high: using the six curves described in this study to simulate risk led to a factor eight difference between the lowest and highest values. Our findings demonstrate that flood risk assessments need to pay close attention to the selection, development, and testing of vulnerability curves.Damage caused by weather-and climate-related disasters have increased over the past decades, and growing exposure and wealth have been identified as main drivers of this increase. Disaster databases are a primary tool for the analysis of disaster characteristics and trends at global or national scales, and they support disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. However, the quality, consistency and completeness of different disaster databases are highly variable. Even though such variation critically influences the outcome of any study, comparative analyses of different databases are still rare to date. Furthermore, there is an unequal geographic distribution of current disaster trend studies, with developing countries being underrepresented. Here, we analyze three different disaster databases in the developing-country context of Peru: a global database (Emergency Events Database: EM-DAT), a multinational Latin American database (DesInventar) and a national database (Peruvian National Information System for the Prevention of Disasters: SINPAD). The analysis is performed across three dimensions: (1) spatial scales, from local to regional (provincial) and national scale; (2) timescales, from single events to decadal trends; and (3) disaster categories and metrics, including the number of single disaster event occurrence, or people killed and affected. Results show limited changes in disaster occurrence in the Cusco and Apurimac regions in southern Peru over the past four decades but strong positive trends in people affected at the national scale. We furthermore found large variations of the disaster metrics studied over different spatial and temporal scales, depending on the disaster database analyzed. We conclude and recommend that the type, method and source of documentation should be carefully evaluated for any analysis of disaster databases; reporting criteria should be improved and documentation efforts strengthened.A pressing problem facing coastal decision makers is the conversion of "high-level" but plausible climate change assessments into an effective basis for climate change adaptation at the local scale. Here, we describe a web-based, geospatial decision support tool (DST) that provides an assessment of the potential flood risk for populated coastal lowlands arising from future sea-level rise, coastal storms, and high river flows. This DST has been developed to support operational and strategic decision making by enabling the user to explore the flood hazard from extreme events, changes in the extent of the flood-prone areas with sea-level rise, and thresholds of sea-level rise where current policy and resource options are no longer viable. The DST is built in an open-source GIS that uses freely available geospatial data. Flood risk assessments from a combination of LISFLOOD-FP and SWAB (Shallow Water And Boussinesq) models are embedded within the tool; the user interface enables interrogation of different combinations of coastal and river events under rising-sea-level scenarios. Users can readily vary the input parameters (sea level, storms, wave height and river flow) relative to the present-day topography and infrastructure to identify combinations where significant regime shifts or "tipping points" occur. Two case studies demonstrate the attributes of the DST with respect to the wider coastal community and the UK energy sector. Examples report on the assets at risk and illustrate the extent of flooding in relation to infrastructure access. This informs an economic assessment of potential losses due to climate change and thus provides local authorities and energy operators with essential information on the feasibility of investment for building resilience into vulnerable components of their area of responsibility.This paper asserts that three principal frameworks for climate change adaptation can be recognised in the literature: scenarioled (SL), vulnerability-led (VL) and decision-centric (DC) frameworks. A criterion is developed to differentiate these frameworks in recent adaptation projects. The criterion features six key hallmarks as follows: (1) use of climate model information; (2) analysis of metrics/units; (3) socio-economic knowledge; (4) stakeholder engagement; (5) adaptation of implementation mechanisms; (6) tier of adaptation implementation. The paper then tests the validity of this approach using adaptation projects on the Suffolk coast, UK. Fourteen adaptation plans were identified in an online survey. They were analysed in relation to the hallmarks outlined above and assigned to an adaptation framework. The results show that while some adaptation plans are primarily SL, VL or DC, the majority are hybrid, showing a mixture of DC/VL and DC/SL characteristics. Interestingly, the SL/VL combination is not observed, perhaps because the DC framework is intermediate and attempts to overcome weaknesses of both SL and VL approaches. The majority (57 %) of adaptation projects generated a risk assessment or advice notes. Further development of this type of framework analysis would allow better guidance on approaches for organisations when implementing climate change adaptation initiatives, and other similar proactive long-term planning.Adaptation to climate change is key to reduce associated risks and develop climate resilient communities. Adaptation measures should be designed for both current and future impacts of climate change. Nevertheless, the inherent uncertainty in climate change and its impacts, and also the intrinsic complexity in climate change adaptation process present challenges in developing, planning, and effective implementation of appropriate adaptation strategies in many countries. Despite the improvements, it is due to these challenges that the planned adaptation to climate change still has not reached the desired levels. In particular, there are key issues and knowledge gaps associated with climate change related decision-making. For example, although generic frameworks for the assessment of climate change risks and vulnerability are available in certain EU member countries (e.g., United Kingdom, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Norway), there is a gap in developing a common methodology for the prioritization and selection of adaptation measures. The methods which are most widely used for prioritizing (and selecting) adaption measures are Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA), Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA), Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA), and expert judgment. While each method has its advantages and disadvantages, their applicability in inter-regional, cross-sectoral, cross-border, multilevel, and multi-actor cases are rather limited. At present, a systematic and comprehensive methodology which is capable of taking into account the characteristics of the case-of-concern in terms of the constraints at hand such as insufficient local resources or site-specific vulnerabilities is absent. The principles of no-regret, low-regret, and win-win are often employed in identification of appropriate adaptation measures as a first step. The purpose of this study is to provide a critical review of the current primary approaches and methods for prioritization and selection of climate change adaptation measures.A two-dimensional, in the horizontal plane, high order Boussinesq-type model is presented to simulate wave propagation in the nearshore zone. The model is extended to the surf zone by applying a wave breaking module of the eddy viscosity type and to the swash zone by applying a modified narrow slot technique. Bottom friction and subgrid turbulent mixing are also incorporated. The numerical model relies on a generalized multi-step predictor-corrector scheme. Both the one-and two-dimensional model versions are verified with a number of experimental cases involving regular and irregular wave propagation in the nearshore. A comparison with a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) model is also included. In general, the agreement is satisfactory and most of the nearshore phenomena are accurately reproduced.The importance and potential of involving citizens in gathering data about the environment and also higher levels of participation in environmental governance and decision making are on the increase. In parallel, the diffusion of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) that are interactive and easy to use have provided new horizons for facing extreme weather events and the threatening hazards resulted from those. Nevertheless, the success of citizen observatories hinges on the continued involvement of citizens as central actors of these initiatives. Developing strategies to (further) engage citizens requires an in-depth understanding of the behavioral determinants that encourage or impede individuals to collect and share environment-related data. In this paper, the behavioral determinants of sharing personally-collected weather data via web-platforms are analyzed by using the Theory of Planned Behavior from the behavioral sciences. The findings and analysis are based on a qualitative empirical research carried out in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Italy. These results were complemented by a review of secondary literature. Consequently, a model was developed that identifies the main drivers and barriers for participation in citizen weather observatories. This model can be utilized as a tool to develop strategies for further enhancing ICT-enabled citizen participation in climate change adaptation.The significant shifts in climate variables projected for the 21st century, coupled with the observed impacts of ongoing extreme weather and climate events, ensures that adaptation to climate change is set to remain a pressing issue for urban areas over the coming decades. This volume of Progress in Planning seeks to contribute to the widening debate about how the transformation of cities to respond to the changing climate is being understood, managed and achieved. We focus particularly on spatial planning, and building the capacity of this key mechanism for responding to the adaptation imperative in urban areas. The core focus is the outcomes of a collaborative research project, EcoCities, undertaken at the University of Manchester's School of Environment and Development. EcoCities drew upon inter-disciplinary research on climate science, environmental planning and urban design working within a socio-technical framework to investigate climate change hazards, vulnerabilities and adaptation responses in the conurbation of Greater Manchester, UK. Emerging transferable learning with potential relevance for adaptation planning in other cities and urban areas is drawn out to inform this rapidly emerging international agenda. Approaches to build adaptive capacity challenge traditional approaches to environmental and spatial planning, and the role of researchers in this process, raising questions over whether appropriate governance structures are in place to develop effective responses. The cross-cutting nature of the adaptation agenda exposes the silo based approaches that drive many organisations. The development of a collaborative, sociotechnical agenda is vital if we are to meet the climate change adaptation challenge in cities. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to advance a set of recommendations concerned with enhancing residential strata title (ST) communities' preparation for property management in a world of climate change (CC) and second, to examine the Australian ST community's perceptions of the recommendations advanced. Design/methodology/approach - The study comprised three empirical phases: three meetings with an 11 person industry reference group, conduct of 18 exploratory interviews and also an on-line questionnaire survey. The survey was designed to gauge the relative merit of sixteen recommendations developed during the study's exploratory interview phase. The survey was completed by 450 individuals representing a broad cross-section of ST stakeholders. Findings - The study's findings are extensive. Amongst them it is notable that the survey respondents ranked procedures taken prior and during a ST building's construction as more important CC management opportunities than steps and procedures implemented post-building construction. Research limitations/implications - While considerable care was taken to approach the analysis of interview data in an objective manner, it should be acknowledged that, like any research based on qualitative data, a researcher's background is bound to introduce some biases in the way that themes in the collected data are determined and interpreted. Practical implications - The range of practical implications arising from the study are very evident from the range of issues addressed in the 16 recommendations advanced by the study. These implications range widely frominternalmanagement suggestions such as identifying a CC champion in ST complexes, to insurance issues such as creating a low insurance or "uninsurable" ST building category. Social implications - The survey findings reveal the extent to which expressed opinions concerning how best to adapt ST buildings and communities for CC are affected by the stakeholder group that is expressing the opinion. This highlights the likelihood that any new ST policy making relating to CC is likely to become highly politicised due to conflicting lobbying interests represented by these distinct ST stakeholders. Originality/value - The study is believed to embody an exceedingly high level of originality. It is the first to: provide an examination of the vulnerability of ST complexes to CC, and advance recommendations concerned with changes that should be made to the building and management of ST complexes in order to address the CC challenge.Australian rangelands are rich in Indigenous cultural heritage sites and Indigenous rangers increasingly manage them. It is well documented that climate-change adaptation planning on a local scale benefits from a stakeholder-led or bottom-up process. However, to date, few bottom-up, practical adaptation pathways exist for Indigenous Australians. This paper describes the development of a planning tool that supports Indigenous rangers' plan for climate-change impacts on cultural heritage sites. To date, a limited number of methodologies for managing climate-change impacts on heritage sites have been developed internationally. Importantly these are not geared to a bottom-up planning process. By contrast, many generic adaptation decision-support tools exist that support bottom-up planning. These tools commonly begin with a scoping phase. The scoping phase of a tool that supports Indigenous rangers manage climate-change impacts on heritage sites is described. A validation model, consisting of central assumptions behind each element of the scoping phase, is then set out. Future testing in the field would involve assessment of the tool through confirmation or otherwise of these assumptions. The first two assumptions in the validation model are then addressed: that Indigenous rangers perceive climate-change impacts on heritage sites and that planning for them is a priority need. Previous literature has not addressed these questions in detail. Only if positive responses are gained for these foundational assumptions can future testing of the tool be justified. Results from preliminary fieldwork undertaken in northern Australia found Indigenous rangers in two out of three case studies perceive impacts on heritage sites, and regard addressing these impacts as a priority.Understanding the nature and magnitude of the regional climatic variations is a key factor for the development of adaptation and mitigation policies. Because of this, the present paper analyzes the minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation records made by meteorological stations located at the State of Mexico between 1978 and 2000. To do so, we evaluate the means and coefficients of the variation of temperature and precipitation records in 92 stations located in the State of Mexico. We look for linear trends of behavior within these series. On each meteorological station, we calculated the coefficient of variation for all their registrations to find out which of them had the most variability. We cartographically represent the same variability in order to evaluate its spatial distribution and search for spatial relationships. We found a statistically robust pattern of increasing variability on the records of temperature of maximum temperature for January, April and May and a minimum temperature for May, June and September; and a possible relation of the station with the most variability of maximum temperature and the presence of deforestation fronts.The wine industry in southern Australia faces potential threats from climate change. This article examines how grape growers in this region perceive and prioritize climate change adaptation as an issue for their industry. Analysis of a survey of 50 growers reveals themes contributing to stress and worry overshadow planning for climate change. Growers are constrained by current economic, social and environmental stresses, not climate change. We relate these findings and the literature on stress to the adaptive capacity and general wellbeing of individual farmers. Projected future climate change means stress in the farming community is likely to worsen and practitioners working with farmers need to recognize the complex causes of stress, in addition to the practical need to facilitate climate change adaptation. A useful approach is to understand both the types and causes of stress, and the way individuals cope.We introduce a dataset of biological, ecological, conservation and legal information for every species and subspecies of Australian bird, 2056 taxa or populations in total. Version 1 contains 230 fields grouped under the following headings: Taxonomy & nomenclature, Phylogeny, Australian population status, Conservation status, Legal status, Distribution, Morphology, Habitat, Food, Behaviour, Breeding, Mobility and Climate metrics. It is envisaged that the dataset will be updated periodically with new data for existing fields and the addition of new fields. The dataset has already had, and will continue to have applications in Australian and international ornithology, especially those that require standard information for a large number of taxa.The Australian Drosophila Ecology and Evolution Resource (ADEER) collates Australian datasets on drosophilid flies, which are aimed at investigating questions around climate adaptation, species distribution limits and population genetics. Australian drosophilid species are diverse in climatic tolerance, geographic distribution and behaviour. Many species are restricted to the tropics, a few are temperate specialists, and some have broad distributions across climatic regions. Whereas some species show adaptability to climate changes through genetic and plastic changes, other species have limited adaptive capacity. This knowledge has been used to identify traits and genetic polymorphisms involved in climate change adaptation and build predictive models of responses to climate change. ADEER brings together 103 datasets from 39 studies published between 1982-2013 in a single online resource. All datasets can be downloaded freely in full, along with maps and other visualisations. These historical datasets are preserved for future studies, which will be especially useful for assessing climate-related changes over time.Purpose - Due to the predicted global temperature rise and local expansion and densification of cities, Urban Heat Islands (UHI) are likely to increase in the Netherlands. As spatial characteristics of a city influence its climate, urban design could be deployed to mitigate the combined effects of climate change and UHIs. Although cities are already experiencing problems during warm-weather periods, no clear spatial means or strategies are available for urban designers to alleviate heat stress. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - There is a lack of knowledge on cooling effects that can be achieved through urban design in Dutch neighbourhoods. In this paper, the cooling effects of various design measures are compared on the level of urban blocks and neighbourhoods, with a focus on a 1960s neighbourhood in Amsterdam-West. The cooling effects are simulated by means of the microclimate model ENVI-met, here the effects on air temperature and physiological equivalent temperature will be evaluated. Findings - The use of green, and a higher roof albedo in particular, seem to perform well as cooling measures. Combinations of cooling measures do not necessarily result in better performance and might even counteract other cooling effects. However, combinations of measures that lead to an increase in the environmental temperature show the largest heating. Research limitations/implications - Effects of green roofs and facades are beyond the scope of this study, though future suggestions for this research will be included. Originality/value - The results add to the body of knowledge in the area of climate design enabling policy makers and designers to estimate the effect of simulated measures in comparable neighbourhoods and thus improve thermal comfort in outdoor spaces.Pakistani planners are increasingly prone to recognize the many links between water, food, and energy security. The construction of new large dams is seen by many as a concrete measure to achieve resource security for Pakistani for a future marked by climactic variability and unpredictability. This article explores the geopolitical and political geographic implications of Pakistan's strategic vision of building dams as a way to prepare for climate change. The author argues that far from being politically neutral tools for development with predictable effects, large dams create new political and spatial arenas of conflict and contradiction at the international, regional, and local scales.In an urbanizing world economy featuring thousands of cities, households and firms have strong incentives to make locational investments and self protection choices to reduce their exposure to new climate change induced risks. This pursuit of self interest reduces the costs imposed by climate change. This paper develops a dynamic compensating differentials model to explore how the "menu" offered by a system of cities insures us against emerging risks. Insights from urban economics offer a series of testable hypotheses concerning the economic incidence of spatially tied climate change risk.This study examines tourist attitudes towards various climate change adaptations for regional tourism destinations. This research took a single case-study approach, which involved a survey of visitors to the Surf Coast region of Australia. Analysis was carried out to determine visitor preferences for various adaptation options. In addition, knowledge of climate change and adaptation, as well as demographic information such as age, gender and nationality were collected. Psychographic segmentation using the New Ecological Paradigm was also used to enable researchers to identify ecocentric respondents, who were more likely to be classified as "green" consumers. The results show that visitors to the Surf Coast felt that they had only average knowledge of climate change and even less knowledge of climate change adaptation. Interestingly, the self-reported knowledge of climate change issues was significantly lower for ecocentric respondents, when compared to anthropocentric respondents. This may indicate that ecocentric respondents acknowledge the shortcomings in both their knowledge and understanding of climate change issues. When presented with potential adaptation options the overall results showed a positive opinion for five of the seven options presented, with the provision of early warning systems for extreme events receiving the most positive overall response.No strangers to the phenomenon of climate change, transport-related authorities responsible for managing its impacts have lately turned their attention to exploring ways to address the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and natural hazards, often referred to as "the face of climate change:" In the quest to identify optimal alternatives that will reduce the effects of climate change on human ecosystems, these authorities find themselves presented with a series of options. Nonetheless, transportation authorities have no assurances that their choices will best deal with the challenges and therefore substantially contribute to the minimization of negative climate change impacts. Following a detailed literature review of both research efforts and actual case-study experience, adaptation measures for road, rail, air, and water transportation are consolidated and related to the extreme weather events, natural hazards, or both that they mostly address. The review is concluded in the form of a measure and policy database, which is then evaluated through a series of performance indicators. These indicators include the extent to which each measure contributes to the enhancement of transport system resilience as well as the temporal and financial resources required for its implementation. The evaluation is conducted by using an expert group survey covering multiple sectors and disciplines (academia, research, industry, and government). Findings are formulated in the form of roadmaps for climate change adaptation measures for the transport sector; these roadmaps can serve as a useful tool and basis for an improved decision-making approach for different end users to address climate change.The concept of urban forestry is addressed from a discursive perspective, with focus on identifying and describing various scientific discourses, their strength and development over time and on different continents. This work can help obtain a deeper understanding of the scientific discourses in terms of identifying research trends and reasons behind these trends, as a possible way forward for research. Scientific publications (N = 519) issued during the period 1988-2014 (and as listed in the SCOPUS database) were analysed with the aims to 1) systematically identify and describe scientific urban forestry discourses, 2) discuss implications of these findings for scientific practice, and 3) propose ways forward. Six discourses of various strength and geographical distribution were identified. Scientific production was found to be dominated by North American and European authors with modest contributions from authors from other continents. Scientific discourses proved mostly expert driven and reflecting the positivist scientific paradigm. Prevailingly managerial orientation and absence of qualitative approaches indicate a lack of deeper understanding of human-environment relations. Studies related to active participation of citizens and partnerships in urban forestry have been missing. More emphasis should be placed on the testing of existing, and developing new methods and modalities of public participation, and on the value of civic involvement for the decision making. Moreover, a more solid evidence base is needed for benefits from urban forests, while economic aspects of biodiversity and other ecosystem services are still insufficiently explored. Study findings also call for more research on urban forest governance and relation between urban forest benefits and existing policies (e.g. climate change adaptation, energy policy or health). (C) 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.The City of Phoenix (Arizona, USA) developed a Tree and Shade Master Plan and a Cool Roofs initiative to ameliorate extreme heat during the summer months in their arid city. This study investigates the impact of the City's heat mitigation strategies on daytime microclimate for a pre-monsoon summer day under current climate conditions and two climate change scenarios. We assessed the cooling effect of trees and cool roofs in a Phoenix residential neighborhood using the microclimate model ENVI-met. First, using xeric landscaping as a base, we created eight tree planting scenarios (from 0% canopy cover to 30% canopy cover) for the neighborhood to characterize the relationship between canopy cover and daytime cooling benefit of trees. In a second set of simulations, we ran ENVI-met for nine combined tree planting and landscaping scenarios (mesic, oasis, and xeric) with regular roofs and cool roofs under current climate conditions and two climate change projections. For each of the 54 scenarios, we compared average neighborhood mid-afternoon air temperatures and assessed the benefits of each heat mitigation measure under current and projected climate conditions. Findings suggest that the relationship between percent canopy cover and air temperature reduction is linear, with 0.14 degrees C cooling per percent increase in tree cover for the neighborhood under investigation. An increase in tree canopy cover from the current 10% to a targeted 25% resulted in an average daytime cooling benefit of up to 2.0 degrees C in residential neighborhoods at the local scale. Cool roofs reduced neighborhood air temperatures by 0.3 degrees C when implemented on residential homes. The results from this city-specific mitigation project will inform messaging campaigns aimed at engaging the city decision makers, industry, and the public in the green building and urban forestry initiatives. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseWe argue that the question of how to explain differences in the responses of cities to perceived challenges of climate change can be answered on the basis of a knowledge order derived from local processes that generate meaning. With respect to its content, such a knowledge order consists of cognitive as well as normative components. While the normative dimension covers accepted values of right or wrong providing compelling ethical and moral motivations for action, the cognitive component expresses cause-effect relationships about the state of the world and how it functions, and can thus guide decisions on what has to be done how. Moreover, specific mechanisms will be elaborated which are decisive for the formation, reproduction and transformation of a knowledge order.Measures for climate adaptation and mitigation at the local level result in profound changes for the daily routines of municipal administrative staff. New agencies are created, new organisational relationships are established and the development of new competencies is needed. In particular, urban planning and environmental planning departments claim leading roles in cities' socio-technical transitions. This article seeks to describe how knowledge is generated and used in this transition process in three German cities. The results show the combination of climate adaptation and mitigation is the dominant 'narrative' in large parts of the municipal administrations (as is the case in most other German and European cities). All three cities developed sophisticated strategies for ambitious goals to reduce CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the governance of local knowledge shares distinct characteristics and organisational aspects in the cities. However, internally competing epistemologies - in the sense of the infrastructure for the interpretation of reality and determination of what is known and how - can be identified and discussed.Total world kiwifruit production outside China is currently 1,412,455 t, the total planted area is 98,656 ha, and the production area is increasing each year (FAO, 2012). Cultivation of kiwifruit started in Europe in the 1960s. Towards the end of last century, kiwifruit were introduced to Turkey by the Ataturk Central Horticultural Research Institute in Yalova. Since then, each year has seen increasing interest. Today, Turkey, in terms of kiwifruit plantings, is amongst the more important producers. But productivity is low as most orchards in Turkey are still young; total yields will increase rapidly in the next few years. Commercial orchards are generally A. deliciosa 'Hayward' and cultivation of other species or cultivars is very limited. Especially in the northern part of Turkey, climatic conditions are suitable for kiwifruit. The two most common support systems are the T-bar and the pergola and these are used, with some modifications. Psa (Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae) is so far not a serious problem in Turkey but root rots and water-logging problems in heavy soils are very common, so ridge planting is widely used. Frost protection in the form of fogging is also beginning to be used at higher altitudes. In contrast to New Zealand, irrigation of kiwifruit in Turkey is essential and is commonly done by mini-sprinkler systems in the Marmara and the Central Black Sea Regions. In the past, there was little irrigation of orchards in the Eastern Black Sea Region, but more recently irrigation systems have been installed. Consumption of fresh kiwifruit is likely to increase as the Turkish kiwifruit industry develops. Kiwifruit producers in Turkey are organized into small producer associations. However, these have not yet combined to form a national association. Such a combined national organization would make it much easier to solve problems of production, storage, packaging and marketing of Turkish kiwifruit. Kiwifruit research in Turkey first began in the 1990s at the Yalova Ataturk Horticultural Central Research Institute. The number of kiwifruit-related research programmes is increasing each year. The studies so far have concentrated on rooting of cuttings, climate change-adaptation, packaging, cold storage and fruit quality issues.This paper presents an analysis of water resources management under climate change in Southern European River Basin Districts. The analysis is based on the Water Availability and Adaptation Policy Analysis (WAAPA) model, which focuses on the quantitative evaluation of maximum potential water withdrawal for different types of demands. The Water Availability and Adaptation Policy Analysis model performs the simulation of water resources systems at the monthly time scale and allows the estimation of the demand-reliability curve in every subbasin of the river network. Over sixty River Basin Districts of Southern Europe have been analyzed, taking basic information from publicly available databases: basin topology from the Hydro1K database, average runoff from the University of New Hampshire Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) composite runoff field, population from the Global Rural-urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) and irrigation area from the Global Map of Irrigated Area dataset. Streamflow monthly time series were obtained from the results of the ENSEMBLES project in four climate scenarios for time horizon 2070-2100. Climate change vulnerability of irrigation demands is estimated from changes in maximum potential water withdrawals for irrigation in current and future scenarios. Maximum potential water withdrawal for irrigation was computed as the largest value of irrigation demand that could be supplied with a given reliability requirement once the existing urban demand is adequately satisfied. The results show significant regional disparities in vulnerability to climate change in the irrigation sector across Europe. The greatest vulnerabilities have been obtained for Southwest Europe (Iberian Peninsula) and some basins in Italy and Greece.The water-energy-food nexus is receiving increased attention worldwide due to climate change and rising population. According to a projection of the United Nations, the global population is expected to increase by a factor of 1.3 by 2050- from 7.2 billion to 9.6-billion with corresponding demands for energy and food. Climate in the future is predicted to be warmer, with more frequent and intense rainfall as well as decreased rainfall reliability for agriculture in water-stressed regions. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) has been used to meet water demands for millennia. The historical context of RWH is still meaningful today and provides a more informed use of RWH as a climate change adaptation strategy. Our objective is to trace the development of RWH by comparing long-term use of hitis (water-spouts) in Nepal to five modern case studies from the U.S. in NY, FL, TX, IL, and CA.The impact of climate change on biodiversity is now evident, with the direct impacts of changing temperature and rainfall patterns and increases in the magnitude and frequency of extreme events on species distribution, populations, and overall ecosystem function being increasingly publicized. Changes in the climate system are also affecting human communities, and a range of human responses across terrestrial and marine realms have been witnessed, including altered agricultural activities, shifting fishing efforts, and human migration. Failing to account for the human responses to climate change is likely to compromise climate-smart conservation efforts. Here, we use a well-established conservation planning framework to show how integrating human responses to climate change into both species-and site-based vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans is possible. By explicitly taking into account human responses, conservation practitioners will improve their evaluation of species and ecosystem vulnerability, and will be better able to deliver win-wins for human-and biodiversity-focused climate adaptation.With more than half of the world's population living in urban areas and the rate of urbanization on the increase, there is a continuous and increasing demand for infrastructure and services in these areas. In addition to this growing demand, climate change adds a whole new dimension that compels a relook at our asset management procedures for the critical urban infrastructure. For a considerable time now, mitigation strategies have played an important role in various policy decisions. There is a recent trend in the scientific, geographic, institutional, and business domains that mitigation alone cannot be seen as an effective strategy to limit our vulnerability to the causes and consequences of climate change. Adaptation strategies must also form a part of our efforts, policies, discussions, and planning procedures. In this paper, we present a discussion on how an equal importance to adaptation strategies is being advocated, in conjunction with mitigation strategies, for infrastructure. We review some relevant literature that promotes both these strategies either individually or collectively in relation to infrastructure and services.As dangerous climate change looms, decision-makers are increasingly realising that societies will need to adapt to this threat as well as mitigate against it. Green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly seen as an ideal climate change adaptation policy response. However, with this research the authors identify a number of crucial knowledge gaps within GI and, consequently, call for caution and for a concerted effort to understand the concept and what it can really deliver. GI has risen to prominence in a range of policy areas in large part due to its perceived ability to produce multiple benefits simultaneously, termed 'multifunctionality'. This characteristic strengthens the political appeal of the policy in question at a time when environmental issues have slipped down political agendas. Multifunctionality, however, brings its own set of new challenges that should be evaluated fully before the policy is implemented. This research takes important first steps to developing a critical understanding of what is achievable within GI's capacity. It focuses on one of GI's single objectives, namely climate change adaptation, to focus the analysis of how current obstacles in applying GI's multifunctionality could lead to the ineffective delivery of its objective. By drawing on expert opinion from government officials and representatives from the private, non-government organisation (NGO) and academic sectors, this research questions GI's ability to be effectively 'multifunctional' with an inconsistent definition at its core, deficiencies in its understanding and conflicts within its governance. In light of these observations, the authors then reflect on the judiciousness of applying GI to achieve the other objectives it has also been charged with delivering. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A climatological study is carried out to understand the characteristics of fog in Japan. This study uniquely focuses on fog density and fog type using atmospheric visibility data from surface observations. The main results are summarized below, within the following three contexts: 1) the characteristics of fog and dense fog, 2) fog type, and 3) long-term change in the number of foggy days. 1) Most of the foggy and densely foggy regions in Japan are inland mountainous areas, basin areas, and the Pacific coast of eastern and northern Japan. Fog density varies seasonally. Although the warmer seasons have the highest frequency of fog occurrence in Japan, the density of fog tends to be higher in the colder seasons. Land cover also affects the density of fog. In the urban area, fog rarely forms, with dense mist sometimes forming. 2) The most common type of fog in Japan is radiation fog, which accounts for half of all fog events. The dominant fog types of the inland areas, the Pacific coast, and the western part of Japan are radiation fog, advection fog and rain fog, respectively. 3) The numbers of foggy days decrease at many of the observation sites during a 40-year period from 1966 to 2005. Inland and basin sites showed the largest decrease. Urban areas were once affected by fogs, but now experience mist instead. In contrast, most coastal sites showed no clear trend of decrease and some sites even showed an increase in the numbers of foggy days. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Soil carbon is often cited as having potential to provide both climate change mitigation and adaptation benefits. Given the extensive ecosystem service benefits of soil organic matter (SOM), including increasing N supply and plant-available water-holding capacity (PAWHC), we hypothesized that on-farm benefits provide ample justification for maintaining high levels of SOM, separate to its carbon sequestration potential. To investigate this we used whole-farm system modelling to simulate pastures with high SOM (initial carbon amount similar to long-term pasture) and low SOM (initial carbon condition similar to long-term cropping). These scenarios are deliberately confounded with land use change, as this allowed for comparison of the mineralization, PAWHC, and associated productivity benefits on high and low carbon soils with the same management. Low-carbon soils were modelled with two amounts of PAWHC to investigate the importance of this effect in isolation. These three scenarios (one high carbon and two low carbon with differing PAWHC) were run for two climatic zones each with two soil types. Across both climatic zones and soil types, soil C accumulated at a rate of 0.30 0.48 t C ha(-1) year(-1) (0-30 cm) over the first 20 years in soils with low initial carbon amounts. On soils in a high-rainfall climate, annual pasture production in low-SOM soil was 590-900 kg DM ha(-1) less than for high-SOM soil, attributable primarily to increased N mineralization (68-77 kg N ha(-1) year(-1)) overcoming an N limitation in spring. On low-rainfall sites, a reduction in annual pasture production of 290-810 kg DM ha(-1) on low carbon soils compared to high carbon soils was attributable to reduced PAWHC. The increased pasture production associated with higher SOM was valued between AUD 26 and 95 ha(-1), across the soils and sites. The entire value on low-rainfall sites (AUD 26-85) was attributable to differences in PAWHC, while on high-rainfall sites, increased pasture production was attributed to N mineralization valued from AUD 85-105 ha(-1). These results indicate that soil carbon sequestration, through increased SOM, can provide substantial on-farm benefits that contribute to future productivity. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Grassland degradation is a major issue in many parts of the world. Rehabilitation of areas that have been degraded by overgrazing can potentially accumulate soil carbon, but there have been few studies in the vast grasslands of Mongolia. Here, we calibrated and validated Century model with 618 measurements from a soil inventory covering four grassland types in a forest steppe region of Mongolia. Soil organic carbon (SOC) simulated by Century largely agreed with the observational dataset and the sign of SOC response to intensive grazing. We employed the calibrated model to assess SOC accumulation under reduced grazing intensity scenarios, and the projected accumulation rates were 22.0-36.9 g C m(-2) yr(-1) in the near term (2012-2035). These results imply that reducing the intensity of grazing may be an effective strategy for restoration of degraded grasslands, which can be implemented by reducing livestock numbers and/or by changing the timing and duration of grazing events. Moreover, the simulated SOC accumulation was mainly determined by a conceptual slow pool, which was not supported by experimental observations in similar soils. Therefore, evaluating the long-term climate mitigation through soil carbon accumulation in degraded grasslands still warrants further attention. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).By 2020, different European Directives on the energy performance of buildings (EPBD) aim to reduce energy consumption by 20%, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and endorse a target of a 20% share of energy from renewable sources. These Directives have led EU Member States to develop systems, following their corresponding transposition into national law, to evaluate the energy efficiency of buildings, and create different Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). This has led to different energy efficiency measurement systems in the EU and a CO2 emissions scale has not been included by some Member States. Just as EPC is aimed at influencing the demand for energy-efficient buildings, this study is aimed at developing a straightforward procedure to obtain the environmental impact in the use phase of a building in kgCO(2)/m(2) year in order to influence the demand for buildings with a low impact on climate change. By applying this methodology to different case studies, we can conclude that obtaining the formula drastically simplifies the calculation of CO2 emissions in KgCO(2)/m(2) year. The results obtained from applying this methodology will serve to record CO2 emission rates in single-family houses on a yearly basis, thus contributing to the study of applications that address climate change mitigation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It is recognized that agriculture is the fourth largest contributor to global greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions by sector (14%) and the wine industry is one of the most important economic sectors in terms of production and distribution worldwide. However, agriculture can also contribute to sequester carbon, so it is important to understand the double role of such systems. Even if the agricultural phase is recognized by several authors to have a strong environmental impact during the wine production, only a few studies estimate GHG emissions related to this stage. In addition, the determination of the carbon footprint (CF) (i.e. the amount of direct and indirect CO2 emissions caused by a production process) of the agricultural phase is not a simple task due to the large uncertainty related to local characteristics, climate, land, agricultural practices, grape type, and to a general lack of experimental data. The main goal of this work was to determine the CF of a mature vineyard during the grape production process. The CF analysis was conducted in a typical Mediterranean vineyard located in the South of Sardinia (Italy) using 1 kg of grape yield as functional unit. The system boundary was "from cradle to gate" excluding winemaking processes, distribution, and consumption. In addition, the study was addressed to assess the role of the vineyard to offset carbon emissions at the end of the productive year. The Eddy Covariance technique was used to directly measure the CO2 exchange over the vineyard and the net CO2 budget was computed by combining the measured fluxes and the GHG emissions estimated by the CF analysis. Results showed that the production of 1 kg of grape determined a total amount of GHG emissions of 0.39 kg CO2-eq and most of them derived from external inputs such as fossil fuel combustion and soil management. In addition, ecophysiological processes could contribute to offset the CO2 emissions released during the agronomic practices. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Public health is often affected by societal decisions that are not primarily about health. Climate change mitigation requires intensive actions to minimise greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Many of these actions take place in cities due to their traffic, buildings, and energy consumption. Active climate mitigation policies will also, aside of their long term global impacts, have short term local impacts, both positive and negative, on public health. Our main objective was to develop a generic open impact model to estimate health impacts of emissions due to heat and power consumption of buildings. In addition, the model should be usable for policy comparisons by non-health experts on city level with city-specific data, it should give guidance on the particular climate mitigation questions but at the same time increase understanding on the related health impacts and the model should follow the building stock in time, make comparisons between scenarios, propagate uncertainties, and scale to different levels of detail. We tested The functionalities of the model in two case cities, namely Kuopio and Basel. We estimated the health and climate impacts of two actual policies planned or implemented in the cities. The assessed policies were replacement of peat with wood chips in co-generation of district heat and power, and improved energy efficiency of buildings achieved by renovations. Results: Health impacts were not large in the two cities, but also clear differences in implementation and predictability between the two tested policies were seen. Renovation policies can improve the energy efficiency of buildings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, but this requires systematic policy sustained for decades. In contrast, fuel changes in large district heating facilities may have rapid and large impacts on emissions. However, the life cycle impacts of different fuels is somewhat an open question. Conclusions: In conclusion, we were able to develop a practical model for city-level assessments promoting evidence-based policy in general and health aspects in particular. Although all data and code is freely available, implementation of the current model version in a new city requires some modelling skills.This study investigates how energy structure and energy security in China will change in the future under climate mitigation policy scenarios using Representative Concentration Pathways in a computable general equilibrium model. The findings suggest that to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, China needs to shift its energy structure from fossil fuel dominance to renewables and nuclear. The lower the allowable emissions, the larger the shifts required. Among fossil fuels, coal use particularly must significantly decrease. Such structural shifts will improve energy self-sufficiency, thus enhancing energy security. Under the policy scenarios, energy-source diversity as measured by the Herfindahl Index improves until 2050, after which diversity declines because of high dependence on a specific energy source (nuclear and biomass). Overall, however, it is revealed that energy security improves along with progress in climate mitigation. These improvements will also contribute to the economy by reducing energy procurement risks.Carbon markets afford potentially useful opportunities for supporting socially and environmentally sustainable land management programs but, to date, have been little applied in globally significant fire-prone savanna settings. While fire is intrinsic to regulating the composition, structure and dynamics of savanna systems, in north Australian savannas frequent and extensive late dry season wildfires incur significant environmental, production and social impacts. Here we assess the potential of market-based savanna burning greenhouse gas emissions abatement and allied carbon biosequestration projects to deliver compatible environmental and broader socio-economic benefits in a highly biodiverse north Australian setting. Drawing on extensive regional ecological knowledge of fire regime effects on fire-vulnerable taxa and communities, we compare three fire regime metrics (seasonal fire frequency, proportion of long-unburnt vegetation, fire patch-size distribution) over a 15-year period for three national parks with an indigenously (Aboriginal) owned and managed market-based emissions abatement enterprise. Our assessment indicates improved fire management outcomes under the emissions abatement program, and mostly little change or declining outcomes on the parks. We attribute improved outcomes and putative biodiversity benefits under the abatement program to enhanced strategic management made possible by the market-based mitigation arrangement. For these same sites we estimate quanta of carbon credits that could be delivered under realistic enhanced fire management practice, using currently available and developing accredited Australian savanna burning accounting methods. We conclude that, in appropriate situations, market-based savanna burning activities can provide transformative climate change mitigation, ecosystem health, and community benefits in northern Australia, and, despite significant challenges, potentially in other fire-prone savanna settings.In this study, the effect of solar zenith angle (theta(s)) on enhanced vegetation index ( EVI) of a Guyanese tropical rainforest was studied. For this sub-crown resolution, hyperspectral data have been collected with an unmanned aerial vehicle ( UAV) at five different solar zenith angles in a 1-day period. The hyperspectral data were used to simulate Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ( MODIS) spectral bands and generate EVI. The linear trend of EVI with solar zenith angle at nadir viewing conditions was found to be 0.00285 1/degrees ( p < 0: 001). The direction of this trend was in agreement with earlier studies, but with a differing magnitude. Analysis of EVI images with sub-crown resolution pointed to strong influence of canopy shadows on EVI, which is supported by other studies. Additionally, the EVI-solar zenith angle trend was investigated in the semiempirical RossThick- LiSparse- Reciprocal ( RTLSR) model implemented in the MODIS MCD43 product suite. A database of model parameters has been created and the EVI-solar zenith angle trend was modelled with each set of parameters. The linear approximated trend was found to be -0.00219 1/degrees on average, only slightly weaker compared to the trend derived from the UAV. Further analysis of the relationship between the single RTLSR model parameters and the EVI- solar zenith angle trend showed that the RTLSR produces the trend for the right reason, namely canopy shadowing expressed by the near-infrared geometric kernel. In total, this study delivers further evidence that EVI is dependent on solar zenith angle and this effect is mediated through EVI's sensitivity to within-canopy shadows.This article examines the legal dimensions of energy development and environmental protection in respect of the oil pipeline approval process in Canada. More specifically, focusing on TransCanada's controversial "Energy East" oil pipeline proposal, this article argues that the oil pipeline approval process in Canada is on a collision course with the core principles of sustainable development law, the constitutional protection of free speech and democratic self-government, and administrative independence in Canada. The article concludes by exploring the relationship between oil pipelines and energy development more generally - and fundamental democratic values. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article undertakes a systematic study of press articles on climate change in the rich West (Norway), the emerging East (China) and the developing South (Ghana) to explore the cognitive basis for collective climate policy action. Newspapers depict Ghana moving out of a climate-victimhood towards a more active climate policy for development; China figures as spearheading energy efficiency and clean technologies for growth; while Norway is described as exporting its climate action. Our analysis finds little common ground for climate mitigation through binding climate emission limits and carbon pricing. A pluralistic 'green growth' strategy would have greater chances of success. The article also highlights differences in sources and story types: Norway features much enterprising journalism, and academics are the dominant source. In China and Ghana most articles are routinized, with politicians and public officials dominating in China, whilst the press makes heavy use of international sources in Ghana.We report results from a comparison of numerically calibrated game theoretic integrated assessment models that explore the stability and performance of international coalitions for climate change mitigation. We identify robust results concerning the incentives of different nations to commit themselves to a climate agreement and estimate the extent of greenhouse gas mitigation that can be achieved by stable agreements. We also assess the potential of transfers that redistribute the surplus of cooperation to foster the stability of climate coalitions. In contrast to much of the existing analytical game theoretical literature, we find substantial scope for self-enforcing climate coalitions in most models that close much of the abatement and welfare gap between complete absence of cooperation and full cooperation. This more positive message follows from the use of appropriate transfer schemes that are designed to counteract free riding incentives.Sea ports are very complex systems related to a wide variety of issues, the most important being waste production as well as water, air and soil releases. Furthermore, in port areas, several activities are carried out that may cause significant environmental impacts such as fisheries, industrial activities and storage of hazardous materials. Setting objectives and goals in terms of a comprehensive environmental management plan is of a great importance for sea ports. The main scope of this study is to introduce a novel approach to rationalize the environmental management strategies of sea ports based on the reduction of their ecological footprint. The object of the study is the Limassol sea port, a main cargo and cruise home port of the Mediterranean that serves one of the largest shipping fleets worldwide. In terms of this study, the most significant environmental aspects of the Limassol sea port are identified. An analysis of the main results of the calculation of the ecological footprint and carbon footprint is presented, by applying the Ecological Footprint analysis methodology. This study aims to deliver a comprehensive methodology that links the results of ecological footprint analysis with the environmental objectives of an ISO 14000 environmental management system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the impact pathway approach for estimating an economic value of pollution effects of acetaldehyde (CH3CHO) associated with bioethanol vehicle transport in Oslo as a climate policy. The approach rests on results obtained in an innovative measurement campaign and by means of air pollution dispersion-models, followed by an impact assessment and economic valuation of the potential externalities. This makes a state-of-the-art methodological technique to reach greater knowledge on the economic costs of urban air quality impacts resulting as a side effect of climate change policy. The social economic costs estimated in this paper are then compared to likely social economic benefits (i.e. avoided social economic damage cost) of reduced nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon dioxide-(CO2) emissions. The carcinogenic risk from long-term inhalation exposure to acetaldehyde emissions, leads in this paper to a moderate cost estimate associated with the combustion of bioethanol in vehicles in Oslo. Productivity and welfare loss is the dominant cost component, whereas the direct medical costs constitutes only a small part of the total social economic costs. The costs however, expect to be significantly lower than the combined economic benefits from reduced emissions of target compounds, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many societies are spoiled for choice when they purchase meat and other livestock products, and around the globe food choice has grown dramatically in the last two decades. What is more, besides the cost and obvious health concerns influencing commodity section, an increasing proportion of choices is made to contribute to the achievement of certain ideals, such as natural resource management, climate change mitigation, animal welfare concerns and personal lifestyle. At the same time, human health considerations are becoming more important for consumption choices as richer societies, and increasingly the urban poor in low- and middle-income countries, face an unprecedented epidemic of over-consumption and associated diet-related non-communicable diseases. Animal source foods are considered significant contributors to this trend. This paper reviews this complicated arena, and explores the range of considerations that influence consumers' preferences for meat and other animal source foods. This paper also argues that deeper drivers of consumption behaviour of many foods may act in opposition to the articulated preferences for choices around animal source food consumption. We review how the returns to different causes are being valued, how emerging metrics are helping to manage and influence consumption behaviours, and draw conclusions regarding options which influence food choice.Mangroves are recognized for their valued ecosystem services provision while having the highest carbon density among forested ecosystems. Yet they are increasingly threatened by deforestation, conversion to agriculture and development, reducing the benefits they provide for local livelihoods, coastal protection and climate change mitigation. Accordingly, accurate estimates of mangrove area and change are fundamental for developing strategies for sustainable use, conservation and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+). The Zambezi River Delta in Mozambique contains one of the largest mangrove forests in Africa, and deforestation has been reported to be substantial, however these estimates vary widely. We used Landsat imagery from 1994, 2000 and 2013, to estimate a total current mangrove area of 37,034 ha, which is a net increase of 3723 ha over 19 years. The land cover change assessment was also used to provide perspective on ecosystem carbon stocks, showing that the Zambezi Delta mangrove ecosystem acts as a large carbon sink. Our findings reinforce the importance of conducting land cover change assessments using coherent data and analytical models, coupled with field validation. Broader application of our approach could help quantify the rates of natural change from erosion and land aggradation contrasted with anthropogenic causes.Lithuania has developed several important climate change mitigation policy documents however there are no attempts in Lithuania to develop local climate change mitigation policies or to decentralize climate change mitigation policy. The aim of the paper is to analyse climate change mitigation policies in households. The paper presents the framework for the assessment of reasonably achievable GHG emission reduction (RAER) potential in households based on behavioral changes related to energy consumption. The paper presents the results of empirical application of developed framework in Lithuanian households. Community based social marketing approach was implemented and GHG emission reduction potential was assessed in focus groups of Kaunas region county during preparation of sustainable development strategy and long-term strategic development plan for Kaunas region county. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Developing energy solutions that positively impact issues related to economic growth, the environment and social equity in cities is important. A better understanding of urban energy use, particularly in developing countries, can strengthen energy security, climate change mitigation and local pollution abatement. This study seeks to evaluate the trends in energy use and CO2 emissions in Bogota by determining energy flows through input and output analyses. The study establishes a relationship between energy and sustainable development by applying correlation analyses. Bogota consumes 24% of the electricity produced in the country, generates 96010.1 TJ of the gross energy, and emits CO2, NOx and CO (carbon monoxide). Correlation analyses indicate a strong and direct relationship between energy, economic variables and social variables, with the majority of the correlation coefficients exceeding 0.8. Strong positive correlations are particularly observed between energy consumption, the gross domestic product, the human development index and CO2 emissions. Energy per capita and CO2 emissions per capita also strongly correlate with the human development index and GINI coefficients. These results demonstrate that energy increasingly influences the development, economic growth and welfare of the city population. Thus, formulating strategies that will improve energy use in cities is important. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) agroforestry has widespread implications for the earnings and food security for a large fraction of population in NorthEast India. It also has immense potentiality to act as a considerable reservoir of biomass carbon providing climate change mitigation options. In the present study an attempt was made to develop allometric equations for above-and belowground biomass estimation specific to Tea [C. sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze] in Barak Valley of northeast India. Relationships were developed through destructive sampling and regressing diameter alone and along height, wood density, crown area, branch count with biomass. Allometric power function equation and linear equivalents have been developed. Diameter singly could predict significantly aboveground biomass (AGB) root biomass (BGB) and total Tea biomass (TB) with over 95% accuracy. Whereas incorporation of height, crown area, wood density, branch count with diameter influenced the model in terms of modified coefficient of determination and minimized estimation errors. Branches, stem and leaves accounted 50, 21 and 6% of AGB respectively. Root biomass (BGB) contributed 23% of the total Tea bush biomass. The samples exhibited overall BGB/AGB ratio of 0.30 +/- 0.08 and biomass expansion factor (BEF) by 4.23 +/- 1.6. Biomass of different components significantly differs in varied diameter sizes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent research has demonstrated the multidimensional and multi-scalar nature of climate change, evidencing the need to develop integrated tools for the analysis of impacts and adaptation. This research presents a hydro-economic model of the Middle-Guadiana basin, Spain, to assess potential effects of climate change on irrigated agriculture and options for adaptation. It combines a farm-based economic optimisation model with the hydrologic model WEAP, and represents the socio-economic, agronomic and hydrologic systems in a spatially-explicit manner covering all dimensions and scales relevant to climate change. Simulated scenarios include a severe A2 climate change scenario up to 2070, two policy-based adaptation scenarios, and autonomous adaptation. Results show that climate change may impact severely irrigation systems reducing water availability and crop yields, and increasing irrigation water requirements. The risk faced by farmers is determined by technology and water use efficiency but also by spatial location and decisions made in neighbouring irrigation areas. The analysis of adaptation strategies underscores the role of current EU water policy in facilitating adaptation. Overall, the applied framework proved to be a useful tool for supporting water and climate change policy-making. It contributes to improve understanding about potential impacts of climate change, multi-scale vulnerability and the scope for adaptation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Carbon markets have gained traction worldwide as an ostensibly win-win solution to climate change, providing low-cost emission reductions in the Global North and sustainable development in the Global South. However, sustainable development and livelihood co-benefits have largely failed to materialize in a range of carbon offset projects, particularly those in forest communities. While some scholars explain this failure as an outcome of fundamental tradeoffs between market efficiency and sustainable development, others argue that institutions of common property land tenure can resolve tradeoffs and generate important co-benefits for local communities. Using a political ecology approach, integrating insights of Karl Polanyi and Noel Castree on the commodification of nature and evidence from a carbon forestry project in Chiapas, Mexico, this article grapples with the ways in which carbon market requirements shape forest governance within common property tenure arrangements. I argue that the centralization of forest governance and decision making into the hands of project implementers and brokers, the necessity for legible land rights and boundaries, and the technical requirements for measurement, calculation, and monitoring of carbon have reshaped forest governance in ways that have undermined the social and ecological benefits often associated with common property management schemes. This research therefore demonstrates that so-called tradeoffs between market efficiency and equitable sustainable development goals may not be inherent to carbon forestry and calls into question the reliance on disembedding market mechanisms for climate change mitigation in forest ecosystems. As such, this work has important implications for REDD+. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tropical forests potentially contribute to global climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration, hence a global carbon pool. In order to mitigate the global climate change impact, the Kyoto protocol developed the clean development mechanism (CDM) which supports carbon credits for plantation activities in developing countries. Unfortunately, none of the CDM forestry projects included bamboo as a carbon reservoir. Although bamboo is an integrating part of tropical forest ecosystems, it was overlooked in the initial negotiating process. The present study, therefore, investigated the carbon storage potential of a common bamboo species, Bambusa vulgaris at Lawachara forest reserve of Bangladesh. Results showed that five-year-old B. vulgaris stand stored in total 77.67 t C ha(-1) of which 50.44 t C ha(-1) were stored in the above ground biomass (culms, branches and leaves), 2.52 t C ha(-1) in the below ground biomass and 24.71 t C ha(-1) in the soils. This amount of carbon storage is much more promising than the carbon storage of many other tree species considered in the CDM projects. These findings demonstrate the potential of B. vulgaris to be considered in CDM projects as a plantation species and thereby mitigate climate change impact more efficiently. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the parameters to assess the environmental sustainability of the bioethanol industry is to conduct carbon analysis and determine its effectiveness in terms of mitigating climate change. By comparing the carbon savings and carbon debt payback periods of two bioethanol feedstocks (sugarcane and sweet sorghum), not only the more environmentally sustainable bioethanol was revealed but also the potential complementary nature of these two feedstocks to significantly reduce the GHG emissions of the transportation sector was assessed. Carbon savings of a typical Philippine bioethanol production scenario for sugarcane was determined to be equal to 218.99% with a carbon footprint of -110,045.29 t CO(2)e yr(-1); while for sweet sorghum, the calculated carbon savings was 154.32% with a carbon footprint of -34,629.57 t CO(2)e yr(-1) at equivalent fuel energy basis. Meanwhile, the carbon payback periods of 2-4 mo for sugarcane and 3-5 mo for sweet sorghum were derived from the calculated carbon debt incurred from construction equal to 65,730.39 t CO(2)e for sugarcane and 66,226.14 t CO(2)e for sweet sorghum. Taking into account the percent carbon savings calculated, the following combinations revealed to be able to meet the global climate mitigation target by 2030: 20% biodiesel and 35% sugarcane bioethanol, 20% biodiesel and 45% sweet sorghum bioethanol. Although carbon savings of sugarcane bioethanol is higher than sweet sorghum bioethanol, both carbon savings were significant to payback carbon debts from constructing new bioethanol plants and to meet the global climate mitigation target.Over the past decade, Australia's approach to climate change policy could be described as erratic. In 2007, both major political parties announced support for a domestic emissions trading scheme (ETS) but bipartisan agreement evaporated in 2009. An ETS was established in 2011 but then repealed in 2014. The Commonwealth Government has subsequently introduced a Direct Action climate change policy, but there is little political agreement about the best long-term policy approach. This is unfortunate given climate science is indicating that relatively significant cuts to emissions may be required to avoid dangerous climate change. This article provides some insights for future Australian climate change policy suggested by an analysis of the realities of electricity generation costs, international policy settings and Australian policy history. Enlightened and effective policy cannot ignore how comparative generation costs affect incentives to replace existing assets and how different policy instruments impact on electricity prices. As a significant exporter of emitting fuels, Australia would also be wise to consider how to manage the economic risks of reduced international demand for these fuels in the absence of technological development that eliminates externality costs. Such consideration could be focused on both reductions in domestic emissions and Australia's strategic negotiating position ahead of international climate change mitigation negotiations in late 2015.This study examines the risks and returns associated with payments for ecosystem services (PES) for private forestland using modern portfolio theory. PES schemes for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation were considered. Pricing data for European carbon emissions offsets and the Finnish biodiversity conservation scheme Trading in Natural Values', and Finnish forest inventory data were used to model ex-post empirical results. The forest owner's portfolio could be comprised of either current forest management or a PES scheme with postponed harvesting; considerations for investing harvest income in equities and bonds were included. The correlation between a PES scheme's return series and timber returns was higher for the biodiversity scheme leading to relatively limited financial diversification benefits under current prices. Increasing the biodiversity conservation price level reduced this effect. For the climate scheme, removing the declining linear trend from the pricing data did not reduce the relatively greater diversification benefits. Overall these benefits were also greater on fertile forest site types than lower quality sites. These results indicate that the policy implications of designing socially efficient PES pricing include an important trade-off between increasing price risks for private landowners and decreasing marginal costs for society. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forest conservation policies could potentially become a centerpiece for climate change mitigation. Incentive-based conservation policies, such as payments for environmental services (PES), are seen as promising approaches to reduce deforestation. Yet, arguably the adoption of upscaled PES programs has remained slow, and when implemented their design often diverges from the principles laid out in the theory-based PES literature. In this article, we concentrate on some political economy forces that could help explaining the gap between PES theory and practice, with respect to policy adoption, including opportunities and challenges in this process. Public policy theories grasp the adoption determinants of three large, government-led incentive programs for forest conservation in the Amazon, in Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil. We use Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework to analyze decision-making regarding program initiation, including key stakeholder interviews, to understand policy choices. We find that environmental concerns are not always the prime motives for PES programs, as political and institutional contexts limit environmental policy-makers' actions. Yet, policy choice processes become less constrained when environmental issues are closer to a government's priorities. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cities form the key context within which social, economic and environmental challenges for sustainable development will manifest in the years to come. As they face the grand societal challenges of climate change and the greening of energy systems, city governments are confronted with the challenge of designing and implementing workable policy strategies. We find that although much attention has been paid to low carbon energy transition in cities, there is surprisingly little attention to the dimension of governance, policy and politics in the scholarly literature. The main question in this guest editorial of the thematic issue, entitled 'Governing the Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Transition Challenges in Cities', is: How can effective policy strategies be designed and implemented to govern the challenges of climate change and energy transition in cities? We develop some preliminary answers to this question based on seven research papers that form the contribution to the thematic series. In particular, the various roles that cities play in governing the climate change challenges and energy transition require further description and analysis, specifying the different governing roles of urban actors and how the city-socially, institutionally or geophysically-forms the context within which governance initiatives and arrangements are formed and implemented, while cities themselves are in turn part of larger physical, infrastructural and institutional networks that influence and condition the local governance opportunities. A research agenda to explore the topic further must include particularly the following areas: the role of local government in the interplay between governance initiatives at multiple levels, the influence and the confluence of current (sectoral) policies, learning from a variation of practices of local low carbon policy, mapping the institutional dimension, mapping design and implementation practices of urban low carbon policy, assessing the effects and legitimacy of urban low carbon policies, further understanding of strategic action fields and lines of conflicts between (coalitions of) actors and identifying workable governance frameworks and policies supporting community-led energy initiatives.Carbon markets are considered a key policy tool to achieve cost-effective climate mitigation(1,2). Project-based carbon market mechanisms allow private sector entities to earn tradable emissions reduction credits from mitigation projects. The environmental integrity of project-based mechanisms has been subject to controversial debate and extensive research(1,3-9), in particular for projects abating industrial waste gases with a high global warming potential (GWP). For such projects, revenues from credits can significantly exceed abatement costs, creating perverse incentives to increase production or generation of waste gases as a means to increase credit revenues from waste gas abatement(10-14). Here we show that all projects abating HFC-23 and SF6 under the Kyoto Protocol's Joint Implementation mechanism in Russia increased waste gas generation to unprecedented levels once they could generate credits from producing more waste gas. Our results suggest that perverse incentives can substantially undermine the environmental integrity of project-based mechanisms and that adequate regulatory oversight is crucial. Our findings are critical for mechanisms in both national jurisdictions and under international agreements.China's dependence on coal is a major contributor to local and global environmental problems. In this paper we estimate the price elasticity of demand for coal in China using a panel of province-level data for 1998-2012. We find that provincial coal demand has become increasingly price elastic As of 2012 we estimate that this elasticity was in the range -0.3 to -0.7 in point estimate terms when responses over two years are considered. The results imply that China's coal market is becoming more suited to price-based approaches to reducing emissions. The elimination of coal consumption subsidies could reduce national coal use and related emissions by around 2%. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.Among the growing number of studies describing and evaluating municipal-scale programs to mitigate global climate change, relatively little attention has been given to municipalities that are not leading such efforts or to municipalities in politically conservative regions. Our research examines climate-relevant municipal planning in a structured sample of communities across the largely conservative Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Using data from planning documents and staff interviews, we evaluate the prevalence and vigor of numerous mitigation-relevant activities. We characterize the target municipalities according to a new typology addressing the maturation of local climate action. We find that in this politically conservative region communities are clustered toward the laggard end of the typologyaway from the advanced endand for the first time in the climate planning literature we identify several faltering emergent communities, whose nascent climate protection initiatives appear to have stalled.Cities worldwide have taken the lead in addressing climate change; however, this does not tell the full story in understanding the puzzle of local climate action. Rather than in isolation, city actions occur in the context of a complex of other government arrangements. Whereas the majority of the literature concerning subnational responses to climate change in the US is addressed in the literatures of federalism and diffusion, we offer an explanation of climate actions through a multilevel governance approach. Multilevel governance allows us to consider the horizontal city-to-city influences on climate action while also considering the vertical influences of state-to-local action. We conduct a large quantitative study of climate actions in all US cities with populations greater than 50,000 people. We find that cities' and states' climate action efforts are complementary, rather than attenuating; however, we note that horizontal influences are generally stronger than vertical influences in motivating climate action at the local level. We conclude that, in spite of the potential for an increased role of federal and state governments in climate action in the United States, city-to-city networks are likely to remain important in motivating cities to mitigate climate change.A significant number of countries classified as "developing" during the negotiation of the UNFCCC in the early 1990s have experienced rapid economic growth and increase of greenhouse gas emissions since then. We assess whether governments of such countries are considering taking up responsibility for emissions mitigation in the context of the UNFCCC's principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR). While an expansion of mitigation responsibility to Non-Annex I countries has been strongly opposed by overarching groups such as the G 77, we find countries such as South Africa and Indonesia that have clearly supported binding commitments. Other countries like China and Singapore oppose binding commitments but increasingly engage in domestic mitigation action. Moreover, China has pledged a significant amount of climate finance. Even in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which adamantly refuse mitigation commitments, some mitigation action seems to emerge. We thus foresee that countries will increasingly adopt differentiated positions regarding their responsibility for mitigation. This could provide new dynamics in international climate negotiations.The abatement of ammonia (NH3) and particulate matter (PM) emissions in agriculture reduces damages to human health and biodiversity and provides benefits for society, but also imposes costs on farmers. As NH3 and PM emissions partly originate from the same activities as greenhouse gases, interactions may exist between NH3 and PM emission abatement and greenhouse gas emissions. This study is aimed at estimating the costs and benefits of NH3 and PM emission abatement measures, considering interactions with agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in Germany. We combined an economic-ecological farm model for estimating emission reductions and abatement costs with an integrated environmental impact assessment model for estimating the benefits for human health and biodiversity, with applications to three Federal States in Germany. We reasoned that benefits exceed costs and that synergies with greenhouse gas reduction exist. All NH3 and PM emission abatement measures affected greenhouse gases. In crop production, conservation tillage increased farmers' gross margins and reduced both PM emissions and, via soil carbon sequestration, also greenhouse gas emissions. The benefits depended on the soil type and its carbon sequestration potential, which differ across regions. The substitution of urea fertiliser for calcium ammonium nitrate reduced both NH3 and greenhouse gas emissions. In livestock production, the measures with the highest net benefits were chemical washers for exhaust-air purification, injection or cultivator manure application and concrete manure storage cover. Low-protein pig feeding increased farmers' gross margins and also achieved high net benefits, with the benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction exceeding those of NH3 emission reduction. Low-protein poultry feeding and biofilters for air purification yielded negative net benefits and were therefore not recommended for implementation. The results confirm interactions of NH3 and PM emission abatement measures with greenhouse gas emissions and suggest that all relevant emission types be integrated in an analysis. Air pollution abatement and climate change mitigation have mainly been addressed in separate policies. Our results suggest that these policies are better integrated so as to stimulate synergies and to define the appropriate ambition level of emission reduction targets. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The climate mitigation potential of using logging residues (tree tops and branches) for bioenergy has been debated. In this study, a time-dependent life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed using a single-stand perspective. Three forest stands located in different Swedish climate zones were studied in order to assess the global temperature change when using logging residues for producing district heating. These systems were compared with two fossil reference systems in which the logging residues were assumed to remain in the forest to decompose over time, while coal or natural gas was used for energy. The results showed that replacing coal with logging residues gave a direct climate benefit from a single-stand perspective, while replacing natural gas gave a delayed climate benefit of around 8-12 years depending on climate zone. A sensitivity analysis showed that the time was strongly dependent on the assumptions for extraction and combustion of natural gas. The LCA showed that from a single-stand perspective, harvesting logging residues for bioenergy in the south of Sweden would give the highest temperature change mitigation potential per energy unit. However, the differences between the three climate zones studied per energy unit were relatively small. On a hectare basis, the southern forest stand would generate more biomass compared to the central and northern locations, which thereby could replace more fossil fuel and give larger climate benefits.Despite the long-recognized interlinkages between global energy consumption and climate change, there has historically been only limited policy interaction, let alone integration, between the two fields. This compartmentalization is mirrored in scholarship, where much research has focused on the fragmentation of, respectively, global energy and global climate governance, but only little has been said about how these fields might be integrated. Our analysis of the International Energy Agency's (IEA) changing activities in recent years shows that governance integration - both within global energy governance and between global energy and climate governance - is now happening. The IEA has broadened its portfolio to embrace the full spectrum of energy issues, including renewable energy and climate change; it has built and is expanding key partnerships with both the UN climate convention and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA); and it has become an authoritative advocate for the inter-related goals of a low-carbon transition and climate change mitigation. We show that these developments are not the result of a top-down plan, but have rather emerged through the Agency's various efforts to pursue its energy-centric mandate in a fast-changing global policy environment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The extensive clearing of tropical forests throughout past decades has been partly assigned to increased trade in agricultural goods. Since further trade liberalisation can be expected, remaining rainforests are likely to face additional threats with negative implications for climate mitigation and the local environment. We apply a spatially explicit economic land-use model coupled to a biophysical vegetation model to examine linkages and associated policies between trade and tropical deforestation in the future. Results indicate that further trade liberalisation leads to an expansion of deforestation in Amazonia due to comparative advantages of agriculture in South America. Globally, between 30 and 60 million ha (5-10 %) of tropical rainforests would be cleared additionally, leading to 20-40 Gt additional emissions by 2050. By applying different forest protection policies, those values could be reduced substantially. Most effective would be the inclusion of avoided deforestation into a global emissions trading scheme. Carbon prices corresponding to the concentration target of 550 ppm would prevent deforestation after 2020. Investing in agricultural productivity reduces pressure on tropical forests without the necessity of direct protection. In general, additional trade-induced demand from developed and emerging countries should be compensated by international efforts to protect natural resources in tropical regions.Livestock manure is applied to rangelands as an organic fertilizer to stimulate forage production, but the long-term impacts of this practice on soil carbon (C) and greenhouse gas (GHG) dynamics are poorly known. We collected soil samples from manured and nonmanured fields on commercial dairies and found that manure amendments increased soil C stocks by 19.0 +/- 7.3MgCha(-1) and N stocks by 1.94 +/- 0.63MgNha(-1) compared to nonmanured fields (0-20cm depth). Long-term historical (1700-present) and future (present-2100) impacts of management on soil C and N dynamics, net primary productivity (NPP), and GHG emissions were modeled with DayCent. Modeled total soil C and N stocks increased with the onset of dairying. Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions also increased by similar to 2kg N2O-Nha(-1)yr(-1). These emissions were proportional to total N additions and offset 75-100% of soil C sequestration. All fields were small net methane (CH4) sinks, averaging -4.7 +/- 1.2kg CH4-Cha(-1)yr(-1). Overall, manured fields were net GHG sinks between 1954 and 2011 (-0.74 +/- 0.73Mg CO2 eha(-1)yr(-1), CO(2)e are carbon dioxide equivalents), whereas nonmanured fields varied around zero. Future soil C pools stabilized 40-60years faster in manured fields than nonmanured fields, at which point manured fields were significantly larger sources than nonmanured fields (1.45 +/- 0.52Mg CO(2)eha(-1)yr(-1) and 0.51 +/- 0.60Mg CO(2)eha(-1)yr(-1), respectively). Modeling also revealed a large background loss of soil C from the passive soil pool associated with the shift from perennial to annual grasses, equivalent to 29.4 +/- 1.47 Tg CO(2)e in California between 1820 and 2011. Manure applications increased NPP and soil C storage, but plant community changes and GHG emissions decreased, and eventually eliminated, the net climate benefit of this practice.Key message We compiled 2,458 biomass equations from 168 destructive sampling studies in Indonesia. Unpublished academic theses contributed the largest share of the biomass equations. The availability of the biomass equations was skewed to certain regions, forest types, and species. Further research is necessary to fill the data gaps in emission factors and to enhance the implementation of climate change mitigation projects and programs. Context Locally derived allometric equations contribute to reducing the uncertainty in the estimation of biomass, which may be useful in the implementation of climate change mitigation projects and programs in the forestry sector. Many regional and global efforts are underway to compile allometric equations. Aims The present study compiles the available allometric equations in Indonesia and evaluates their adequacy in estimating biomass in the different types of forest across the archipelago. Methods A systematic survey of the scientific literature was conducted to compile the biomass equations, including ISI publications, national journals, conference proceedings, scientific reports, and academic theses. The data collected were overlaid on a land use/land cover map to assess the spatial distribution with respect to different regions and land cover types. The validation of the equations for selected forest types was carried out using independent destructive sampling data. Results A total of 2,458 biomass equations from 168 destructive sampling studies were compiled. Unpublished academic theses contributed the majority of the biomass equations. Twenty-one habitat types and 65 species were studied in detail. Diameter was the most widely used single predictor in all allometric equations. The cumulative number of individual trees cut was 5,207. The islands of Java, Kalimantan, and Sumatra were the most studied, while other regions were underexplored or unexplored. More than half of the biomass equations were for just seven species. The majority of the studies were carried out in plantation forests and secondary forests, while primary forests remain largely understudied. Validation using independent data showed that the allometric models for peat swamp forest had lower error departure, while the models for lowland dipterocarp forest had higher error departure. Conclusion Although biomass studies are a major research activity in Indonesia due to its high forest cover, the majority of such activities are limited to certain regions, forest types, and species. More research is required to cover underrepresented regions, forest types, particular growth forms, and very large tree diameter classes.Agricultural systems in the Mediterranean region are increasingly getting under pressure due to both global warming and the aggravating competition for agricultural land. Perennial grasses have the potential to tackle both challenges: they are drought-resistant crops and considered not to compete for high-productivity agricultural land because they can be grown on marginal land. This paper presents the outcome of a screening life cycle assessment (LCA) conducted as part of an integrated sustainability assessment within the EU-funded project 'Optimization of Perennial Grasses for Biomass Production' (OPTIMA). The project aims at optimised production of Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus), giant reed (Arundo donax L.), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) and cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L.) on marginal land in the Mediterranean region. Different cultivation and use options were investigated by comparing the entire life cycles of bioenergy and bio-based products to equivalent conventional products. The LCA results show that the cultivation of perennial grasses on marginal land and their use for stationary heat and power generation can achieve substantial greenhouse gas emission and non-renewable energy savings, with Miscanthus allowing for savings ranging up to 13 t CO2 eq./(ha center dot year) and 230 GJ/(ha center dot year), respectively. Negative environmental impacts are less pronounced. Significant parameters include irrigation needs and moisture content at harvest, which determines energy demand for technical drying. We conclude that the cultivation of perennial grasses on marginal land in the Mediterranean region provides potentials for climate change mitigation together with comparatively low other environmental impacts, if several boundary conditions and recommendations are met.Tropical forests host the highest levels of biodiversity and maintain some of the largest carbon stocks of all terrestrial ecosystems. Policies resulting from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) for forest-based climate change mitigation (e.g., Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD +)) have been considered win-win solutions for both C storage and biodiversity conservation. Win-win solutions are indeed apparent when there is geographical overlap of high carbon density forests with high biodiversity, as suggested by many global studies. However, strong congruence between high carbon storage and biodiversity at the national and subnational levels is less obvious. To improve national policies and expectations of REDO + outcomes, it is necessary to account for the potential risks of relocating deforestation activities from high-carbon areas to low-carbon areas, as such relocation may negatively affect high-biodiversity habitats. Using a combined dataset of global and national biodiversity and C storage, we examined whether the optimization of carbon and biodiversity is, as suggested, a win-win situation. We identified hotspots of C storage and of biodiversity within Colombia and the demographic and land use factors that affect the spatial distribution of the current patterns of biodiversity and C. We also identified and mapped two additional forest carbon and biodiversity relationships (areas with high carbon and low biodiversity and areas with low carbon and high biodiversity) that represented relevant conservation trade-offs at national and subnational levels. Our results suggest that, although C storage and biodiversity hotspots still overlap nationally and subnationally, the relationship between these two types of hotspots is weaker than that at the global level. Additionally, areas where high carbon and high biodiversity do not overlap are more extensive than potential win-win areas. Simultaneous carbon and biodiversity conservation is not as straightforward as it appears to be at the global level. Countries must swiftly identify areas where unintentional negative biodiversity consequences may result from national REDD + strategies, and future research should identify the factors that affect C storage and biodiversity both at the national and subnational levels. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building construction is a leading industry in China's economy and is also important in the fight against climate change mitigation. This paper fills the research gap by investigating the relationship between CO2 mitigation potential and energy performance in the building construction industry using a counterfactual analysis approach. A commonly used method is adopted to calculate energy-related CO2 emissions in the building construction industry and a newly proposed total-factor non-radial directional distance function is conducted to calculate energy performance. Further, they are connected through a logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition analysis. The empirical results show that: (i) CO2 emissions in China's building construction industry are increasing rapidly and electricity consumption has become the main source of emissions. (ii) Energy intensity decline is the major contributor to CO2 mitigation. (iii) There exists a large room for energy intensity decline and more than 10% of the CO2 emissions could be reduced if the average energy intensity could achieve the level of the best performing provinces. (iv) The coastal regions show better energy performance than the interior regions and there is a significant tendency towards divergence of energy performance among provinces. It is thus necessary to encourage technology diffusion and mandate minimum energy performance standards. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Of the carbon dioxide that we emit, a substantial fraction remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Combined with the slow response of the climate system, this results in the global temperature increase resulting from CO2 being nearly proportional to the total emitted amount of CO2 since preindustrial times. This has a number of simple but far-reaching consequences that raise important questions for climate change mitigation, policy and ethics. Even if anthropogenic emissions of CO2 were stopped, most of the realized climate change would persist for centuries and thus be irreversible on human timescales, yet standard economic thinking largely discounts these long-term intergenerational effects. Countries and generations to first order contribute to both past and future climate change in proportion to their total emissions. A global temperature target implies a CO2 "budget" or "quota", a finite amount of CO2 that society is allowed to emit to stay below the target. Distributing that budget over time and between countries is an ethical challenge that our world has so far failed to address. Despite the simple relationship between CO2 emissions and temperature, the consequences for climate policy and for sharing the responsibility of reducing global CO2 emissions can only be drawn in combination with judgments about equity, fairness, the value of future generations and our attitude towards risk.Border tax adjustment is a second-best solution for improving climate mitigation measures as long as international cooperation does not function to a satisfactory degree. However, the implementation of such measures can legally be problematic under the angle of the legal framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which aims at liberalizing international trade and at avoiding trade barriers. In particular, border tax adjustment might come into conflict with the National Treatment principle and the discipline on subsidies. These legal problems can only be overcome if the specific legal justification reasons provided for in WTO law for the promotion of climate sustainability (such as conservation of exhaustible resources and protection of human, animal or plant health) are interpreted in a broad way.How best to improve climate mitigation measures while we wait for an international consensus on climate policy? This is a practical problem raising important normative issues. The problem is the urgent need for better climate mitigation measures that is time-sensitive: conditions can only deteriorate over time rendering the problem and the relevant stakes even more pressing. The normative issues raised include whether a second-best solution is compelling given these non-ideal conditions and what form such a solution ought to take. This article responds to issues raised in Rolf H. Weber's insightful piece in this special issue, such as the balancing of mitigation policies and securing market competitiveness leading to Weber's defence of border tax adjustment. This article critically examines Weber's position on competitiveness and its connection to border tax adjustment as a second-best option from a justice-based perspective. It is argued that strategies based around taxation-such as the Global Resources Dividend, the polluter pays principle and border tax adjustment-are problematic and unconvincing alternatives.Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) conservation is a possible success story in the making. If extinction of this iconic endangered species can be avoided, the species will become a showcase program for the Chinese government and its collaborators. We reviewed the major advancements in ecological science for the giant panda, examining how these advancements have contributed to panda conservation. Pandas' morphological and behavioral adaptations to a diet of bamboo, which bear strong influence on movement ecology, have been well studied, providing knowledge to guide management actions ranging from reserve design to climate change mitigation. Foraging ecology has also provided essential information used in the creation of landscape models of panda habitat. Because habitat loss and fragmentation are major drivers of the panda population decline, efforts have been made to help identify core habitat areas, establish where habitat corridors are needed, and prioritize areas for protection and restoration. Thus, habitat models have provided guidance for the Chinese governments' creation of 67 protected areas. Behavioral research has revealed a complex and efficient communication system and documented the need for protection of habitat that serves as a communication platform for bringing the sexes together for mating. Further research shows that den sites in old-growth forests may be a limiting resource, indicating potential value in providing alternative den sites for rearing offspring. Advancements in molecular ecology have been revolutionary and have been applied to population census, determining population structure and genetic diversity, evaluating connectivity following habitat fragmentation, and understanding dispersal patterns. These advancements form a foundation for increasing the application of adaptive management approaches to move panda conservation forward more rapidly. Although the Chinese government has made great progress in setting aside protected areas, future emphasis will be improved management of pandas and their habitat.Fossil fuels are the main source of space heating in the UK, and therefore climate mitigation implies a systemic change in space heating systems. The challenge is difficult because of an inefficient building stock and high penetration of natural gas. We present new quantified scenarios for residential energy use in the UK to 2050. With minimal policy intervention the UK will remain locked into a gas based heating system, which would conflict with the policy goal of decarbonisation. However, there is a range of scenarios in which this is avoided. A system heavily reliant on heat pumps powered by low carbon electricity is UK policy makers' currently preferred alternative. We conclude that some shift in this direction is likely to be required, but complete reliance on this solution raises a number of problems. Greater use of energy efficiency and biomass can also play a significant role. These options have different risks, but a more diversified strategy would be more prudent. We conclude that the future of UK residential space heating is very uncertain, but meeting low carbon heating goals is better conceptualised as reducing reliance on gas rather than necessarily mass electrification. Our analysis has implications for any country with high use of fossil fuels in space heating and ambitious decarbonisation goals. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is growing evidence that projected climate change has the potential to significantly affect public health. In the UK, much of this impact is likely to arise by amplifying existing risks related to heat exposure, flooding, and chemical and biological contamination in buildings. Identifying the health effects of climate change on the indoor environment, and risks and opportunities related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, can help protect public health. We explored a range of health risks in the domestic indoor environment related to climate change, as well as the potential health benefits and unintended harmful effects of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies in the UK housing sector. We reviewed relevant scientific literature, focusing on housing-related health effects in the UK likely to arise through either direct or indirect mechanisms of climate change or mitigation and adaptation measures in the built environment. We considered the following categories of effect: (i)indoor temperatures, (ii) indoor air quality, (iii) indoor allergens and infections, and (iv) flood damage and water contamination. Climate change may exacerbate health risks and inequalities across these categories and in a variety of ways, if adequate adaptation measures are not taken. Certain changes to the indoor environment can affect indoor air quality or promote the growth and propagation of pathogenic organisms. Measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have the potential for ancillary public health benefits including reductions in health burdens related heat and cold, indoor exposure to air pollution derived from outdoor sources, and mould growth. However, increasing airtightness of dwellings in pursuit of energy efficiency could also have negative effects by increasing concentrations of pollutants (such as PM2.5, CO and radon) derived from indoor or ground sources, and biological contamination. These effects can largely be ameliorated by mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) and air filtration, where such solution is feasible and when the system is properly installed, operated and maintained. Groups at high risk of these adverse health effects include the elderly (especially those living on their own), individuals with pre-existing illnesses, people living in overcrowded accommodation, and the socio-economically deprived. A better understanding of how current and emerging building infrastructure design, construction, and materials may affect health in the context of climate change and mitigation and adaptation measures is needed in the UK and other high income countries. Long-term, energy efficient building design interventions, ensuring adequate ventilation, need to be promoted. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.There is presently overwhelming scientific consensus that global climate change is indeed occurring, and that human activities are the primary driver. An increasingly resource and carbon constrained world will continue to pose formidable challenges to major industries, including mining. Understanding the implications of climate change mitigation for the mining industry, however, remains limited. This paper presents the results of a feasibility study on the implementation of a clean development mechanism and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission reductions in the gold mining industry. It draws upon and extends the analysis of a case study conducted on gold mining operations in Thailand. The results from the case study indicated that total GHGs emissions by company A were approximately 36,886 tons carbon dioxide equivalents (tCO(2)e) per annual gold production capacity that meet the eligibility criteria for small-scaled clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. The electrostatic separation process was found to release the lowest amount of GHGs, whereas comminution (i.e. crushing and grinding) generated the highest GHGs emissions. By scope, the emission from purchased electricity (scope 2) is the most significant source. Opportunities for CDM projects implementation in the gold mining sector can be found in employing energy efficiency measures. Through innovation, some technical efficiency and technological development in gold processing (i. e. high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR), vertical roller mills (VRM), gravity pre-concentration and microwave heating technologies) that have the potential to reduce energy use and also lower carbon footprint of the gold mining were further discussed. The evidence reviews found that HPGR and VRM abatement technologies have shown energy and climate benefits as electricity savings and CO2 reduction of about 8-25.93 kWh/ton ore processed and 1.8-26.66 kgCO(2)/ton ore processed, respectively. Implications for further research and practice were finally raised.Land use change in South America, mainly deforestation, is a large source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Identifying and addressing the causes or drivers of anthropogenic forest change is considered crucial for global climate change mitigation. Few countries however, monitor deforestation drivers in a systematic manner. National-level quantitative spatially explicit information on drivers is often lacking. This study quantifies proximate drivers of deforestation and related carbon losses in South America based on remote sensing time series in a systematic, spatially explicit manner. Deforestation areas were derived from the 2010 global remote sensing survey of the Food and Agricultural Organisation Forest Resource Assessment. To assess proximate drivers, land use following deforestation was assigned by visual interpretation of high-resolution satellite imagery. To estimate gross carbon losses from deforestation, default Tier 1 biomass levels per country and eco-zone were used. Pasture was the dominant driver of forest area (71.2%) and related carbon loss (71.6%) in South America, followed by commercial cropland (14% and 12.1% respectively). Hotspots of deforestation due to pasture occurred in Northern Argentina, Western Paraguay, and along the arc of deforestation in Brazil where they gradually moved into higher biomass forests causing additional carbon losses. Deforestation driven by commercial cropland increased in time, with hotspots occurring in Brazil (Mato Grosso State), Northern Argentina, Eastern Paraguay and Central Bolivia. Infrastructure, such as urban expansion and roads, contributed little as proximate drivers of forest area loss (1.7%). Our findings contribute to the understanding of drivers of deforestation and related carbon losses in South America, and are comparable at the national, regional and continental level. In addition, they support the development of national REDD+ interventions and forest monitoring systems, and provide valuable input for statistical analysis and modelling of underlying drivers of deforestation.Climate change is projected to negatively impact biophysical agricultural productivity in much of the world. Actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate future climate changes, are thus of central importance for agricultural production. Climate impacts are, however, not unidirectional; some crops in some regions (primarily higher latitudes) are projected to benefit, particularly if increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is assumed to strongly increase crop productivity at large spatial and temporal scales. Climate mitigation measures that are implemented by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations lead to reductions both in the strength of climate change and in the benefits of carbon dioxide fertilization. Consequently, analysis of the effects of climate mitigation on agricultural productivity must address not only regions for which mitigation is likely to reduce or even reverse climate damages. There are also regions that are likely to see increased crop yields due to climate change, which may lose these added potentials under mitigation action. Comparing data from the most comprehensive archive of crop yield projections publicly available, we find that climate mitigation leads to overall benefits from avoided damages at the global scale and especially in many regions that are already at risk of food insecurity today. Ignoring controversial carbon dioxide fertilization effects on crop productivity, we find that for the median projection aggressive mitigation could eliminate similar to 81% of the negative impacts of climate change on biophysical agricultural productivity globally by the end of the century. In this case, the benefits of mitigation typically extend well into temperate regions, but vary by crop and underlying climate model projections. Should large benefits to crop yields from carbon dioxide fertilization be realized, the effects of mitigation become much more mixed, though still positive globally and beneficial in many food insecure countries.REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and related forest activities) is a climate change mitigation mechanism currently being negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It calls for developed countries to financially support developing countries for their actions to reduce forest-sector carbon emissions. In this paper, we undertake a meta-analysis of the links, if any, between multiple and diverse drivers of deforestation operating at different levels and the benefits accruing from and being shared through REDD+ projects. We do so by assessing the nature of this link in (a) scholarly analysis, through an in-depth analysis of the posited relationship between drivers and REDD+ benefit-sharing, as examined in the peer-reviewed literature; and (b) in policy practice, through analysing how this link is being conceptualised and operationalised, if at all, in REDD+ project design documents. Our meta-analysis suggests that while some local, direct drivers and a few regional indirect drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are being targeted by specific REDD+ interventions and associated benefit-sharing mechanisms at the project-level, most national and international indirect drivers are not. We conclude that the growing academic analyses of REDD+ projects do not (as yet) advance viable theories of change, i.e. there is currently little focus on how REDD+ benefits could play a transformative role in catalysing action on drivers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agroforestry systems, i.e., agroecosystems combining trees with farming practices, are of particular interest as they combine the potential to increase biomass and soil carbon (C) storage while maintaining an agricultural production. However, most present knowledge on the impact of agroforestry systems on soil organic carbon (SOC) storage comes from tropical systems. This study was conducted in southern France, in an 18-year-old agroforestry plot, where hybrid walnuts (Juglans regia x nigra L) are intercropped with durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L subsp. durum), and in an adjacent agricultural control plot, where durum wheat is the sole crop. We quantified SOC stocks to 2.0 m depth and their spatial variability in relation to the distance to the trees and to the tree rows. The distribution of additional SOC storage in different soil particle-size fractions was also characterized. SOC accumulation rates between the agroforestry and the agricultural plots were 248 +/- 31 kg C ha(-1) yr(-1) for an equivalent soil mass (ESM) of 4000 Mg ha(-1) (to 26-29 cm depth) and 350 +/- 41 kg C ha(-1) yr(-1) for an ESM of 15,700 Mg ha(-1) (to 93-98 cm depth). SOC stocks were higher in the tree rows where herbaceous vegetation grew and where the soil was not tilled, but no effect of the distance to the trees (0 to 10 m) on SOC stocks was observed. Most of the additional SOC storage was found in coarse organic fractions (50-200 and 200-2000 mu m), which may be rather labile fractions. All together our study demonstrated the potential of alley cropping agroforestry systems under Mediterranean conditions to store SOC, and questioned the stability of this storage. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.This commentary critically engages with the argument that climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the twenty-first century. A review of climate-health examples suggests that although it is important to be aware of the risk that climate change presents, health status is caused and mediated by multiple exposures. The current evidence suggests the impact of climate change over the next 30 years is not going to be catastrophic for health, and positioning it as the greatest threat - instead of other important factors such as poverty and health inequalities - could obscure the potential of current global health measures and reduce focus on other health risks such as non-communicable diseases and HIV/AIDS. Although climate change mitigation is vitally important to reduce far-future harm, the policymaking community should focus on current interventions that reduce populations' exposure to climate change, boost populations' ability to adapt, and reduce health inequalities.Biochar and hydrochar application to soil holds promise for climate change mitigation. This study provides first insights into the nutrient concentration and removal of grassland vegetation after addition of various carbon compounds together with pig slurry. Four treatments: control (no carbon application), feedstock, hydrochar and biochar from Miscanthusxgiganteus were applied at a permanent grassland site near Giessen, Germany. Changes in plant functional groups, biomass production and nutrition status were monitored over 2 years. Total biomass production was not affected by the carbon amendments. However, biochar favoured growth of forbs over grasses, while legume growth was increased by all carbon amendments. The initial nutrient concentrations of the carbon compounds were enriched according to their degree of carbonization, potentially providing nutrients to plants. The plant biomass from hydro- and biochar amended plots, added up over 2 years, exhibited higher potassium concentrations compared to biomass from feedstock and control plots. All carbon amendments led to lower sodium concentrations in total biomass, compared to the control. Uncarbonized feedstock led to increased manganese concentrations in total biomass, while the concentrations of all other heavy metals were not influenced by any carbon amendment, compared to the control. From a plant and animal nutritional point of view, none of the carbon amendments reduced grassland yield or fodder quality. The study suggests that hydrochar and, even more so, biochar may provide a source of potassium to plants.Global environmental challenges create risks and opportunities for companies in different sectors. In dealing with those challenges, companies are driven to actions by different forces. Furthermore, some companies lead in their actions while others lag behind. This study presents empirical findings on what drives the actions of Nordic non-life insurance companies. The companies are divided into two case groups based on size and location. The Island group includes small and medium-sized companies operating in Aland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The Mainland group includes large companies operating in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Eight drivers are identified: four are external, three are internal and one is indirect, caused by pressure on insurers' corporate clients. In the case of Island companies, regulatory pressure imposes action and a lack of such pressure is evident, but the Mainland companies are influenced by a more diverse set of drivers. The study also emphasizes the type of stakeholders insurance companies are in a position to influence, including customers, suppliers and authorities. The results have a theoretical implication, as the body of literature has not covered this subject matter in the context of insurers driving forces behind proactive environmental actions, lack of drivers, and the role of insurers as a driving force of proactive environmental actions of others.,A practical implication for the insurance sector includes increased awareness about drivers influencing proactive environmental behavior, knowledge about lack of drivers in the Island companies, knowledge about what stakeholder's insurers are in position to influence. The study suggest that the drivers behind actions of financial companies do not necessarily follow the same pattern as most of the companies of sectors covered in the literature: drivers may therefore be sector-specific and they may also differ within a single industry setting. The institutional environment plays an important role, even in countries with similar characteristics and a similar national institutional context. The findings of this study serve as a reference for new studies, particularly where research gaps are identified, for instance in the case of different types of finance institutions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The pollution haven hypothesis suggests that unilateral domestic climate change mitigation policy would impose significant economic costs on carbon-intensive industries, resulting in declining output and increasing net imports. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, we undertake a two-step empirical analysis. First, we estimate how production and net imports change in response to energy prices using a 35-year panel of approximately 450 US manufacturing industries. Second, we use these estimated relationships to simulate the impacts of changes in energy prices resulting from a $15 per ton carbon price. We find that energy-intensive manufacturing industries are more likely to experience decreases in production and increases in net imports than less-intensive industries. Our best estimate is that competitiveness effects-measured by the increase in net imports-are as large as 0.8% for the most energy-intensive industries and represent no more than about one-sixth of the estimated decrease in production.Predators continue to be harvested unsustainably throughout most of the Earth's ecosystems. Recent research demonstrates that the functional loss of predators could have far-reaching consequences on carbon cycling and, by implication, our ability to ameliorate climate change impacts. Yet the influence of predators on carbon accumulation and preservation in vegetated coastal habitats (that is, salt marshes, seagrass meadows and mangroves) is poorly understood, despite these being some of the Earth's most vulnerable and carbon-rich ecosystems. Here we discuss potential pathways by which trophic downgrading affects carbon capture, accumulation and preservation in vegetated coastal habitats. We identify an urgent need for further research on the influence of predators on carbon cycling in vegetated coastal habitats, and ultimately the role that these systems play in climate change mitigation. There is, however, sufficient evidence to suggest that intact predator populations are critical to maintaining or growing reserves of 'blue carbon' (carbon stored in coastal or marine ecosystems), and policy and management need to be improved to reflect these realities.Mangroves provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including nutrient cycling, soil formation, wood production, fish spawning grounds, ecotourism and carbon (C) storage(1). High rates of tree and plant growth, coupled with anaerobic, water-logged soils that slow decomposition, result in large long-term C storage. Given their global significance as large sinks of C, preventing mangrove loss would be an effective climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy. It has been reported that C stocks in the Indo-Pacific region contain on average 1,023MgC ha(-1) (ref. 2). Here, we estimate that Indonesian mangrove C stocks are 1,083 +/- 378MgC ha(-1). Scaled up to the country-level mangrove extent of 2.9 Mha (ref. 3), Indonesia's mangroves contained on average 3.14 PgC. In three decades Indonesia has lost 40% of its mangroves(4), mainly as a result of aquaculture development(5). This has resulted in annual emissions of 0.07-0.21 Pg CO(2)e. Annual mangrove deforestation in Indonesia is only 6% of its total forest loss(6); however, if this were halted, total emissions would be reduced by an amount equal to 10-31% of estimated annual emissions from land-use sectors at present. Conservation of carbon-rich mangroves in the Indonesian archipelago should be a high-priority component of strategies to mitigate climate change.Ambitious climate change mitigation plans call for a significant increase in the use of renewables, which could, however, make the supply system more vulnerable to climate variability and changes. Here we evaluate climate change impacts on solar photovoltaic (PV) power in Europe using the recent EURO-CORDEX ensemble of high-resolution climate projections together with a PV power production model and assuming a well-developed European PV power fleet. Results indicate that the alteration of solar PV supply by the end of this century compared with the estimations made under current climate conditions should be in the range (-14%; +2%), with the largest decreases in Northern countries. Temporal stability of power generation does not appear as strongly affected in future climate scenarios either, even showing a slight positive trend in Southern countries. Therefore, despite small decreases in production expected in some parts of Europe, climate change is unlikely to threaten the European PV sector.Natural gas plays an important role in the global energy system as an input to power generation, heating, and industry. This article identifies key drivers and uncertainties for natural gas markets in the coming decades. These include the availability of natural gas from conventional and unconventional sources, the role of international trade, and the impact of climate policies. We build on model-based research as well as an up-to-date survey of natural gas resource availability. We find that natural gas is an abundant fossil fuel and that the Asia-Pacific region will be most important in future global natural gas markets, especially under stringent international climate change mitigation. This means that an increasingly large share of future natural gas trade flows and infrastructure expansions will be directed to the Asia-Pacific region and that the role of liquefied natural gas will continue to increase globally. (JEL: C61, L71, Q33, Q37, Q54).This article analyses discourses on climate change and mitigation through the deconstruction of European Union (EU) rhetoric and practices on climate benchmarking. It critically examines the motivations behind climate benchmarking, the methods used to construct international benchmarks, and the reasons for variety in domestic compliance. Germany and the United Kingdom are analysed as cases where domestic politics drive very different reactions to the practice of climate mitigation, differences that have been largely hidden by the type of quantification that EU benchmarking involves. Through an exploration of the methods used to formulate climate benchmarks, the article demonstrates that these commitments have privileged certain responses over others, and thus helped to paint a picture of EU benchmarks as reformist' but not radical'. EU climate benchmarks often end up concealing more than they reveal, making it difficult to fully engage with the scale and complexity of the far-reaching domestic changes that are required in order to comply with agreed international benchmarks. The deficiencies of benchmarks as a mechanism for driving long-term sustainable change, and importantly discouraging harmful policies, may ultimately undermine their credibility as a means for governing climate change at a distance in the EU.Biochar incorporation in agricultural soils has been proposed as a climate change mitigation strategy and has proved to substantially increase crop productivity via physical, chemical and biological mechanisms. The changes induced in soil properties are known to have a direct impact on soil ecosystem with consequences for soil biota community that, in turn, can influence biochar aging in soil. Despite several studies investigated in the interplay between biochar and soil microbiology, there is a clear lack of information on groups that live in the most superficial ground layers: soil meso and macro fauna. These groups are of great importance if we consider that biochar application should ideally be located in the soil's surface layer (0-30 cm). Our study is the first attempt to investigate the interactions between biochar soil amendments and aboveground soil macro-meso fauna in a field crop. This was made setting-up a randomized-block experiment on a processing tomato crop in northern Italy, using three different biochar types and periodically monitoring soil parameters and fauna abundances along the crop growing cycle in summer 2013. Results show that the impact of biochar application on soil fauna as a whole is small when compared to that of agricultural management, suggesting that this amendment does not have short-term ecological interferences. Nevertheless, ants exhibited variations in abundances and distribution connected to properties of amended soils such as temperature, pH and humidity, proving that they can be effectively used as a target group in the study of interactions between biochar and soil biota. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background and Purpose: Climate change has an impact on economic and natural systems as well as human health. These impacts are particularly visible in urbanised areas. Urban forests, which are one of the main natural features of the cities, are threatened by climate change. Generally, the role of forests in combating climate change is widely recognised and its significance is recognised also in urban areas. However, appropriate responses to climate change are usually lacking in their management. Climate change adaptation in relation to urban forests has been studied less often in comparison to climate change mitigation. Adaptive capacity of forests to climate change consists of adaptive capacity of forests as an ecological system and adaptive capacity of related socio-economic factors. The latter determines the capacity of a system and its actors to implement planned actions. This paper studies social and policy aspects of adaptation processes in urban forests of Belgrade. Materials and Methods: For the purpose of this study content analysis of urban forest policy and management documents was applied. Furthermore, in-depth interviews with urban forest managers and Q-methodology surveys with urban forestry stakeholders were conducted. Triangulation of these data is used to assure validity of results. Results: The results show weak integration of climate change issues in urban forest policy and management documents, as well as weak responses by managers. A comprehensive and systematic approach to this challenge does not exist. Three perspectives towards climate change are distinguished: (I) 'sceptics' - do not perceive climate change as a challenge, (II) 'general-awareness perspective' - aware of climate change issues but without concrete concerns toward urban forests, (III) 'managementoriented perspective' - highlights specific challenges related to urban forest management. Awareness of urban forest managers and stakeholders towards climate change adaptation is characterized by assumptions and uncertainties, which are the result of poor knowledge, lack of data of local impacts and weak communication. Conclusions: The results indicate the need for building urban forestry institutional and human capacities for creating effective climate change adaptation responses, which will lead to better understanding of challenges posed by climate change and ability to make the trade-offs between possible decisions.Urban areas are key sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and also are vulnerable to climate change. The recent IPCC Fifth Assessment Report illustrates a clear need for more research on urban strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, missing from the current literature on climate change and urban areas is a conceptual framework that integrates mitigation and adaptation perspectives and strategies. Because cities vary with respect to development histories, economic structure, urban form, institutional and financial capacities among other factors, it is critical to develop a framework that permits cross-city comparisons beyond simple single measures like population size. The primary purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for a multi-dimensional urbanization climate change typology that considers the underlying and proximate causes of GHG emissions and climate change vulnerabilities. The paper reviews some of the basic steps required to build such a typology and associated challenges that must be overcome via a demonstration of a pilot typology with nine case study cities. The paper shows how the proposed framework can be used to evaluate and compare the conditions of GHG emissions and climate change vulnerability across cities at different phases in the urbanization process. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Given that climate change is a complicated collective action problem, local governments need a comprehensive approach to tackle climate change issues. Comprehensive climate policies concern an integrated approach in planning and implementing of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. Yet, not all local governments are actively engaged in global climate issues in a comprehensive manner. Why does local government's commitment on comprehensive climate change policy vary? This study analyzes the influences of urban climate change governance arrangements on the level of comprehensiveness in city-level climate change policies, using case studies of four cities. Urban climate change governance arrangement that includes researchers, NGO (Nongovernmental Organization) s along with public officials is a necessary factor for a city government to develop comprehensive climate policy. The case studies illustrate that cities with well-developed climate change governing organizations (Seattle and Seoul) present comprehensive climate change policy. Urban climate governance arrangements set the climate action agenda and promote implementation schemes. However, Anaheim and Busan have neither well developed urban governance arrangements nor comprehensive climate policies. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Hydropower has lately been advocated by a multi-scalar public private policy nexus for marrying objectives of green growth and climate mitigation. Such discursive constructions are reminiscent of a consensual development politics, which contradicts and overlooks long-standing socio-environmental controversies surrounding large dams. Here we argue that anti-political hydropower governance also risks fueling inherent societal antagonisms, with unexpected outcomes. Drawing on qualitative empirical research in Sikkim, Northeast India, we illustrate how attempts by state and private actors to restrict contestation of hydropower projects were countered with unprecedented voice and agency of affected communities, indicating nascent processes of politicization and democratization "from below". (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Committed action to deal with climate change requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions, i.e., mitigation, as well as dealing with its ensuing consequences, i.e., adaptation. To date, most policies and projects have promoted mitigation and adaptation separately, and they-have very rarely considered integrating these two objectives. In this article, we develop a multi-dimensional framework to explore the extent to which climate mitigation forestry projects bring adaptation concerns into their design and implementation phases, using three Belizean projects as case-study material. We demonstrate that linking mitigation and adaptation has not been possible, because the mandate of forest carbon markets does not incorporate adaptation concerns. The projects' contribution to forest ecosystems' adaptation, for instance, by reducing human encroachments and by increasing ecosystem connectivity, has been limited. The projects' contribution to improve local livelihoods has also been limited, and projects have even been contested by neighboring communities on the grounds of tenure conflicts and food security concerns. Furthermore, the projects' mitigation potential is constrained by their poor additionality and lack of rigorous enforcement. We then conclude that the integration of mitigation and adaptation in Belize's carbon forestry projects remains a laudable but elusive goal. Consequently, we request climate change donors to refrain from providing support to narrowly designed projects and we urge them instead to promote more holistic and territorial-based approaches targeting both mitigation and adaptation goals. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Bangladesh, 53 % of domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were generated in the agriculture and other land use sectors in 2005. However, no specified measures for climate change mitigation have thus far been designated nationally in these sectors. In this paper, we quantified future greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation potentials through 2025 by using the Agriculture Forestry and Other Land Use Bottom-up model to clarify cost-effective technological options under different mitigation cost scenarios. We found that (1) GHG emissions of 69.1 MtCO(2)eq (Million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equilivalent)/year will be generated from the agriculture and land use sectors in 2025 in a baseline scenario, (2) a reduction of 32 MtCO(2)-eq/year (a 47 % reduction from baseline emissions) is possible at a cost of as much as US$10/tCO(2)-eq in 2025, (3) in agriculture, an emissions reduction of 10 MtCO(2)-eq/year could be achieved by implementing midseason drainage in rice cultivation, generating bioenergy from livestock manure, and replacing roughage with concentrated feed at mitigation cost of US$10/tCO(2)-eq in 2025, and (4) in the other land use sector, a mean annual mitigation potential of 6.5 MtCO(2)-eq/year can be achieved with a total mitigation cost of less than US$10 million (52 % of baseline land use emissions in 2025).Guinea-Bissau includes large extensions of mangroves (Avicennia germinans (L.) L., Rhizophora mangle L., Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C.F. Gaertn, Conocarpus erectus L., Rhizophora racemosa G. Mey, Rhizophora harrisonii Leechm, and Machaerium lunatum (L.f.) Ducke). These wetland forests are among the most carbon (C)-rich ecosystems in the tropics, but deforestation processes may be contributing by as much as 10 % of carbon emissions from the global forest sector. Therefore, avoiding mangrove deforestation can contribute to mitigation of climate change in addition to preserving the many other vital services that these ecosystems provide. The main objective of this study is to analyze the extent to which the revenues generated by the C retained in standing mangroves can cover the cost of avoiding their clearance in Guinea-Bissau. Moreover, this study aims at demonstrating the feasibility of producing a spatially explicit national emissions baseline in a country where data, technology, and capacity are still mostly absent. It also discusses the requirements and costs of implementing the measuring, reporting and verification system needed to make C payments a reality. The analysis relies on both the quantification of C stock dynamics in mangroves and the calculation of expected returns from avoiding their clearance, given necessary investment and C prices in the market. Methodologies based on science and Earth observation technology are used to fulfil the first requirement and economic projections are applied to fulfil the second. In this paper, previously unavailable quantitative data on the deforestation trends and the biomass content of the mangroves of Guinea-Bissau are provided at national and local levels, and compared to values presented for other regions. Additionally, a national mangrove C reference emissions level (REL) is established and an assessment of the mitigation potential of mangroves, nationally and locally, is performed. The main conclusion of the analysis presented is that, if the price of avoided carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is above the United State Dollars (USD) 6.69 to USD 7.20/t range, and governance risk can be contained, it is possible to delineate cost-effective activities to avoid deforestation of mangroves and promote climate change mitigation activities in Guinea-Bissau using C revenues alone.Experiments were carried out to determine how the incorporation of biomass from the bioenergy crop Jatropha curcas into a tropical vertisol affects the biogeochemical processes important for greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes, specifically methane (CH4) production, carbon dioxide (CO2) production, and CH4 consumption. Leaf biomass of J. curcas was incorporated at 0.1, 0.5, and 1 % (w/w) into soil maintained under 60 % of moisture-holding capacity (MHC). Biomass addition significantly stimulated potential CH4 and CO2 production while inhibiting potential CH4 consumption. When 1 % of J. curcas biomass was added to soil, potential CH4 production increased nearly 50-fold over 60 days, from 2.45 mu g CH4 g(-1) soil day(-1) in unamended soil to 115 mu g g(-1) day(-1) in soil containing leaf biomass. Soil CO2 production also doubled when the J. curcas biomass was added. The potential CH4 consumption rate of soil was inhibited almost completely by 1 % of added biomass. The culturable methanotroph population was positively correlated with the CH4 consumption rate (r = 0.961, p < 0.0001) and was inhibited 20-fold by 1 % of biomass addition. In contrast, the total population of aerobic heterotrophs culturable on a complex medium increased from 11 to 59 x 10(6) of colony-forming units (CFU) g(-1) of soil after biomass addition. Significant positive correlation was observed between the total heterotroph population and both CH4 production (r = 0.861, p = 0.0003) and CO2 production (r = 0.863, p = 0.0002). Our study shows that biomass from the bioenergy crop J. curcas can affect soil biogeochemical processes that control GHG emissions. We propose that a high incorporation of J. curcas biomass could dramatically change the CH4 flux in tropical soil by simultaneously increasing CH4 production and decreasing CH4 consumption, and we therefore recommend that biomass incorporation to soil be minimized (< 0.1 %) as a strategy to mitigate GHG emission.Emission trading schemes (ETS) have emerged as a popular climate policy measure and are increasingly advocated as policy instruments to support the transition to a green economy. Using complementary analytical methods, this research investigated the institutional developments and complexities of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS). It focuses on (1) institutional experience and administrative capacity, and (2) political acceptance during formation, design, implementation, and review. The research answer questions concerning critical conditions that have affected the institutional feasibility of the NZ ETS and the trade-offs in achieving and maintaining institutional feasibility. The experience in New Zealand has demonstrated that bipartisan political support and obliged participant acceptance for an ETS can be achieved and the administrative burden can be kept low through an inclusive consultation process and particular aspects of design to provide more certainty about costs. However, this institutional feasibility has also been a trade-off with other important aspects such as environmental effectiveness, predictability, and legitimacy, posing risks to maintaining political acceptance of the policy design and achieving the longer term objectives of transitioning to a green economy.Since the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March 2011, safety concerns have escalated and policies toward nuclear power are being reconsidered in several countries. This article presents a study of the upward pressure on regional electricity prices from nuclear power phase out in four scenarios with various levels of ambition to scale down the nuclear power industry. We use a global general equilibrium model to calculate regional electricity prices that are matching demand with the constrained power supply after the nuclear power phase out. Nuclear power exit in Germany and Switzerland might increase electricity prices in Europe moderately by 2-3 % early on to 4-5 % by 2035 if transmission capacity within the region is sufficient. In a gradual and comprehensive phase out of plants built before 2011, North America, Europe, and Japan face an upward pressure on electricity prices in the range of 23-28 % towards 2035, representing the incentives for further investments in any kind of electricity.This paper addresses the use of impact indicators with respect to climate change in the 2007-2013 Rural Development Programme (RDP) of the European Union, with particular reference to the Scotland Rural Development Programme (SRDP). It concludes that the policy context has highlighted the need for the rural land use sector to respond to climate change but that the associated Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (CMEF) did not develop suitable indicators to assess the impact of SDRP measures on GHG emission mitigation. It suggests improved impact indicators based on the relationship between rural land use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: first, an indicator based on net GHG emissions per holding; and a second based on net GHG emissions per unit volume of output. The paper points out the challenges in measuring land-based emissions accurately. It further proposes screening of RDP measures to ensure that climate change mitigation impacts are properly appraised. It is recognised that climate change policy in relation to rural land use is still at an early stage of development but greater sophistication of policy instrument design and evaluation will be required if the RDP is to contribute significantly to climate change policy objectives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soils are important sources of CO2 and N2O emissions to the atmosphere. Introducing cover crop and conservation tillage are among the strategies to improve soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (N) sequestration potentials with potential to reduce the amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted from soil. The objectives of the study were to evaluate CO2 and N2O emissions in rye cover crop and tillage system treatments in contrasting topographical positions. Two replicated field experiments were established in 2011 at Kellogg Biological Station and Mason Research Farm sites, located in Southwest and Central Michigan, respectively. At each site, two replications of three contrasting topographical positions, namely depression, slope and summit were used. The two studied factors were tillage system (chisel plow and ridge tillage) and winter rye cover crop (present and absent). Topographical positions significantly affected the performance of rye cover crop with above ground biomass ranged from 80 to 200 kg ha(-1) and 120 to >500 kg ha(-1) in depressions and summits, respectively. The presence of rye cover tended to increase CO2 emissions across all topographical positions. However, the amount of increases in the CO2 emissions was similar to 15 mg m(2) h(-1) and <5 mg m(2) h(-1) in depressions and summits, respectively, which were inversely proportional to the amount of rye biomass inputs. Ridge tillage had significantly higher CO2 emissions than chisel tillage in depressions and showed increasing trends at the slopes and summits. Neither the effect of cover crop nor tillage system was found to be statistically significant across the whole study period on N2O emissions. Regression analysis indicated that both CO2 and N2O emissions were positively associated with soil temperature. The effect of temperature on CO2 emissions was most pronounced in management treatments with cover crops and in topographical depressions. Per a unit increase in the soil temperature was a greater increase in the CO2 emission in depression areas than other parts of the landscape. The results of the present study highlight existence of complex interactive influences among cover crop presence, tillage, and topography driven variations in soil properties on the resulting soil GHG emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The goal of this study was to test the sensitivity of water yield to forest thinning and other forest management/disturbances and climate across the conterminous United States (CONUS). Leaf area index (LAI) was selected as a key parameter linking changes in forest ecosystem structure and functions. We used the Water Supply Stress Index model to examine water yield response under 18 scenarios that combine hypothetical LAI changes (+10%, +/- 20%, -50%, and -80%), uniform increases in temperature (+1 degrees C and +2 degrees C) and precipitation change (+/- 10%), and four climate change scenarios projected by general circulation models (GCMs) for the year 2050. Approximately 2100 large basins produced approximately 2003 billion cubic metres of water annually from 2002 to 2007. Forest lands covered 23% of the land surface area, but contributed 43% of the total water yield for the CONUS. As a whole, water yield increased by 3%, 8%, and 13% when LAI was reduced 20%, 50%, and 80%, respectively, while water yield decreased by 3% when LAI increased by 20%. Temperature increases of 2 degrees C alone could decrease water yield by 11%. A reduction of precipitation by 10% and 20% could result in a decrease of water yield by 20% and 39%, respectively. The direction and magnitude of water yield response to the combinations of LAI (+10%), climate warming (+1 degrees C), and precipitation change (+/- 10%) were dominated by the change in precipitation. Climate change projected by the four GCMs (CSIROMK2 B2, CSIROMK3.5 A1B, HADCM3 B2, and MIROC32 A1B) resulted in a large change in water yield (+18% to -64%) by 2045-2055 when compared with the baseline. A 50% reduction in forest LAI under the four GCMs scenarios could greatly mitigate or exacerbate future climate change impacts on water yield in forest-dominated watersheds with high precipitation. This study provides the first quantitative estimate of the effects of forest thinning options on water yield under future climate across the CONUS. Effective forest water management for climate mitigation should focus on those watersheds identified. Published 2015. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.This issue of Philosophical Transactions examines the relationship between scientific uncertainty about climate change and knowledge. Uncertainty is an inherent feature of the climate system. Considerable effort has therefore been devoted to understanding how to effectively respond to a changing, yet uncertain climate. Politicians and the public often appeal to uncertainty as an argument to delay mitigative action. We argue that the appropriate response to uncertainty is exactly the opposite: uncertainty provides an impetus to be concerned about climate change, because greater uncertainty increases the risks associated with climate change. We therefore suggest that uncertainty can be a source of actionable knowledge. We survey the papers in this issue, which address the relationship between uncertainty and knowledge from physical, economic and social perspectives. We also summarize the pervasive psychological effects of uncertainty, some of which may militate against a meaningful response to climate change, and we provide pointers to how those difficulties may be ameliorated.Supplying adequate amounts of soil N for plant growth during the growing season and across large agricultural fields is a challenge for conservational agricultural systems with cover crops. Knowledge about cover crop effects on N comes mostly from small, flat research plots and performance of cover crops across topographically diverse agricultural land is poorly understood. Our objective was to assess effects of both leguminous (red clover) and non-leguminous (winter rye) cover crops on potentially mineralizable N (PMN) and NO3- -N levels across a topographically diverse landscape. We studied conventional, low-input, and organic managements in corn-soybean-wheat rotation. The rotations of low-input and organic managements included rye and red clover cover crops. The managements were implemented in twenty large undulating fields in Southwest Michigan starting from 2006. The data collection and analysis were conducted during three growing seasons of 2011, 2012 and 2013. Observational micro-plots with and without cover crops were laid within each field on three contrasting topographical positions of depression, slope and summit. Soil samples were collected 4-5 times during each growing season and analyzed for NO3- -N and PMN. The results showed that all three managements were similar in their temporal and spatial distributions of NO3- -N. Red clover cover crop increased NO3- -N by 35% on depression, 20% on slope and 32% on summit positions. Rye cover crop had a significant 15% negative effect on NO3- -N in topographical depressions but not in slope and summit positions. The magnitude of the cover crop effects on soil mineral nitrogen across topographically diverse fields was associated with the amount of cover crop growth and residue production. The results emphasize the potential environmental and economic benefits that can be generated by implementing site-specific topography-driven cover crop management in row-crop agricultural systems.The Earth's climate evolves because of both internal variability and external forcings. Using Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models, here we quantify the ratio of externally forced variance to total variance on interannual and longer time scales for regional surface air temperature (SAT) and sea level, which depends on the relative strength of externally forced signal compared to internal variability. The highest ratios are found in tropical areas for SAT but at high latitudes for sea level over the historical period when ocean dynamics and global mean thermosteric contributions are considered. Averaged globally, the ratios over a fixed time interval (e.g., 30 years) are projected to increase during the 21st century under the business-as-usual scenario (RCP8.5). In contrast, under two mitigation scenarios (RCP2.6 and RCP4.5), the ratio declines sharply by the end of the 21st century for SAT, but only declines slightly or stabilizes for sea level, indicating a slower response of sea level to climate mitigation.Policy instruments and measures already target the global warming impacts of housing and transport in many countries, although many of those instruments were not originally developed for the purpose. However, the challenge of curbing climate change calls not only for innovative and improved instruments, but for integrated policy packages that address consumption across the entire product life cycle, recognize links between different consumption sectors, and identify and harness synergies between instruments. To this end, we first evaluate the effectiveness of existing policy instruments targeted at housing, passenger transport and food in Finland. The results show large impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. Second, we integrate instruments into packages, which minimize potential negative interferences, while strengthening synergies and complementarities between instruments. We estimate the potential of the consequent emission reductions to be considerable. By 2020, housing and passenger transport emissions are estimated to decline by 4.2 million tons (Mt). Integrated food related policy packages are estimated to reduce emissions 0.3 Mt in Finland and life-cycle based emissions by 0.5 Mt. Altogether the emission reduction would be 4.5 Mt in Finland, which is over 6% of Finland's average emissions 68 Mt for years 2008-2012. In conclusion, though greenhouse gas emissions of household consumption have already been affected by policy instruments, it is better to develop policy packages by which the synergies between measures can be reinforced and hence overall effectiveness can be improved. We found acceptability of policy instruments to be a key issue, necessitating careful implementation, long-term consistency and research showing evidence of their effectiveness. The full realization of the policy package potential requires improved co-operation across relevant ministries and public authorities, which can be facilitated by common policy programs and objectives for all related public authorities. The project results were used in the preparation of a revision of Finland's program for sustainable consumption and production. We propose that similar policy package development processes in other countries would increase further our understanding about effective policy packages, reinforce each other, and speed up the changes for more sustainable consumption. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Technology transfers through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol is one of the most important catalysts in the cooperation between developed (Annex I) and developing (non-Annex I) countries for climate change mitigation. With the large-scale implementation of CDM projects in recent years, it is important to timely and comprehensively analyze the effectiveness of technology transfers in these implemented projects on the level of individual countries. In this context, China is of particular significance as it is the biggest host country of CDM projects in the world; 50% of total CDM projects implemented from 2007 to 2012 have issued Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) to 60% of all of the CDM projects. In this study, we evaluated the performance of technology transfers in an exclusive database of 754 CDM projects hosted by China between 2007 and 2012 with issued CERs since CERs were first issued in China. In addition, we developed a logistic regression approach using 11-variables that include a series of extended technology transfer-based indicators from the perspectives of project design, economic level, and technology capability that have not been studied in detail in the past. The results show that technology transfers are more likely to occur in large-sized projects with higher CER incomes, in projects with international participants, and in projects involving types such as HFC-23 reduction, fuel substitute, and N2O decomposition, in comparison to projects involving renewable energy. We observed that over 90% of the technology transfer projects only include importation of equipment or training to China. In our findings of the regression results, it shows that technology transfers occurred more often in regions with lower technology capabilities, less energy consumption, and a lower GDP growth rate. Supported by high local technology capability and the governmental strategy with independent innovation, the advantages of introducing technology from other countries are offset by local technology diffusion. In a market view, financial incentives hinder CDM host parties from introducing new equipment or trainings for the high marginal cost, unless the high marginal cost of technology transfer can be offset by a large CDM with a high CER income. Technology transfer is more income-driven than sustainability-driven at the present stage in China. In our analysis, the drive out effect between HFC-23 and renewable projects in CDM suggests China government to publish more effective incentives to attract more sustainable types of CDM projects with a higher level of technology innovation. The results are also discussed in the context of policy issues, which can be helpful for the decision makers when formulating future sustainable strategic plans and policy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The deep ocean absorbs vast amounts of heat and carbon dioxide, providing a critical buffer to climate change but exposing vulnerable ecosystems to combined stresses of warming, ocean acidification, deoxygenation, and altered food inputs. Resulting changes may threaten biodiversity and compromise key ocean services that maintain a healthy planet and human livelihoods. There exist large gaps in understanding of the physical and ecological feedbacks that will occur. Explicit recognition of deep-ocean climate mitigation and inclusion in adaptation planning by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) could help to expand deep-ocean research and observation and to protect the integrity and functions of deep-ocean ecosystems.Decision makers facing emission-reduction targets need to decide which abatement measures to implement, and in which order. This article investigates how marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves can inform such a decision. We re-analyse a MAC curve built for Brazil by 2030, and show that misinterpreting MAC curves as abatement supply curves can lead to suboptimal strategies. It would lead to (1) under-investment in expensive, long-to-implement and large-potential options, such as clean transportation infrastructure, and (2) over-investment in cheap but limited-potential options such as energy-efficiency improvement in refineries. To mitigate this issue, the article proposes a new graphical representation of MAC curves that explicitly renders the time required to implement each measure.Policy relevanceIn addition to the cost and potential of available options, designing optimal short-term policies requires information on long-term targets (e.g. halving emissions by 2050) and on the speed at which measures can deliver emission reductions. Mitigation policies are thus best investigated in a dynamic framework, building on sector-scale pathways to long-term targets. Climate policies should seek both quantity and quality of abatement, by combining two approaches: a synergy approach' that focuses on the cheapest mitigation options and maximizes co-benefits, and an urgency approach' that starts from a long-term objective and works backward to identify actions that need to be implemented early. Accordingly, sector-specific policies may be used (1) to remove implementation barriers on negative- and low-cost options and (2) to ensure short-term targets are met with abatement of sufficient quality. Indeed, such policies can avoid under-investment in the long-to-implement options required to reach long-term targets, which are otherwise difficult to enforce.In the context of the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its accompanying Kyoto Protocol, participating nations have recognized the need for formulating Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). These NAMAs allow countries to take into account their national circumstances and to construct measures to mitigate GHG emissions across economic sectors. Israel has declared to the UN that it would strive to reduce its GHG emissions by 20% in the year 2020 relative to a business as usual' scenario. With its growing population and an expanding economy, the national GHG mitigation plan was developed to draw a course for steering the Israeli economy into a low-carbon future while accommodating continued economic growth. The article describes relevant policy measures, designed to aid in the implementation of the plan and compares them with measures being undertaken by different countries. Emphasis is placed on analysing the progress to date, opportunities and barriers to attaining the ultimate GHG emissions reduction goals. The objective of this article is to contribute to the knowledge base of effective approaches for GHG emissions reduction. We emphasize the integrated approach of planning and implementation that could be especially useful for developing countries or countries with economies in transition, as well as for developed countries. Yet, in the article we argue that NAMAs' success hinges on structured tracking of progress according to emerging global consensus standards such as the GHG Protocol Mitigation Goals Standard.Policy relevance:The study is consistent with the NAMA concept, enabling a country to adopt a climate action plan' that contributes to its sustainable development, while enabled by technology and being fiscally sound.The analysis shows that although NAMAs have been framed in terms of projects, policies, and goals, current methodologies allow only the calculation of emission reductions that can be attributed to distinct projects. Currently, no international guidance exists for quantifying emissions reduction from policy-based NAMAs, making it difficult to track and validate progress. This gap could be addressed by an assessment framework that we have tested, as part of a World Resources Institute pilot study for an emerging voluntary global standard.All sectors face decarbonization for a 2 degrees C temperature increase to be avoided. Nevertheless, meaningful policy measures that address rising CO2 from international aviation and shipping remain woefully inadequate. Treated with a similar approach within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), they are often debated as if facing comparable challenges, and even influence each others' mitigation policies. Yet their strengths and weaknesses have important distinctions. This article sheds light on these differences so that they can be built upon to improve the quality of debate and ensuing policy development. The article quantifies 2 degrees C' pathways for these sectors, highlighting the need for mitigation measures to be urgently accelerated. It reviews recent developments, drawing attention to one example where a change in aviation mitigation policy had a direct impact on measures to cut CO2 from shipping. Finally, the article contrasts opportunities and barriers towards mitigation. The article concludes that there is a portfolio of opportunities for short- to medium-term decarbonization for shipping, but its complexity is its greatest barrier to change. In contrast, the more simply structured aviation sector is pinning too much hope on emissions trading to deliver CO2 cuts in line with 2 degrees C. Instead, the solution remains controversial and unpopular - avoiding 2 degrees C requires demand management.Policy relevanceThe governance arrangements around the CO2 produced by international aviation and shipping are different from other sectors because their emissions are released in international airspace and waters. Instead, through the Kyoto Protocol, the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) were charged with developing policies towards mitigating their emissions. Slow progress to date, coupled with strong connections with rapidly growing economies, has led to the CO2 from international transport growing at a higher rate than the average rate from all other sectors. This article considers this rapid growth, and the potential for future CO2 growth in the context of avoiding a 2 degrees C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels. It explores similarities and differences between these two sectors, highlighting that a reliance on global market-based measures to deliver required CO2 cuts will likely leave both at odds with the overarching climate goal.A successful carbon capture and storage (CCS) policy and programme is widely considered essential to curbing carbon dioxide emissions. What explains the strikingly different policy outcomes in two key European Union political heavyweights and coal economies, the UK and Germany? The UK has decided to contract two specific CCS projects, with explicit timelines for realisation; Germany has made no such decisions. From scrutiny of official documents and in-depth high-level interviews, it was found that the UK has more favourable structural capacity, including offshore storage capacity (which evokes less conflict) and significant oil-industry expertise, and thus an easier task. Moreover, this structural capacity has interacted with a solid political commitment to bring CCS forward in the UK, including specific, multistage funding and a high-level drive to develop CCS, especially after 2009. In Germany, by contrast, CCS has encountered increasing local and central opposition since 2009, with the Energiewende and renewables being accorded priority.The transformation from natural to impervious surfaces in an urbanization process and the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon is known to significantly compromise urban environmental quality and has been linked to climate change and associated impacts. Whereas the existence of UHI is common knowledge, the implication of urban land use land cover (LULC) gradient on intra-urban thermal characteristics is often poorly understood. A recent proliferation of remotely sensed datasets offer great potential in understanding the relationship between urban LULCs and their respective thermal characteristics, a critical basis for urban environmental management and designing climate change mitigation measures. This study explores the potential of multispectral remotely sensed dataset in determining the influence of rural/urban LULC gradient on urban thermal characteristics. A rectangular eleven band Landsat 8 image subset was delineated from the central business district to the rural periphery and classified into most dominant LULCs and a corresponding Landsat 8 thermal layer used to determine the LULCs thermal characteristics. Digitized point data was used to determine differences in land surface temperature (LST) over gradient's LULC types. Results showed that there was varied contribution of LULCs to the LST. As expected, the density of built up surfaces and LST decreased towards the city's periphery while a decline in vegetation density from the periphery led to an increase in LST. These results provide valuable insights into the value of remotely sensed datasets in understanding the implication of intra-urban LULC gradient on LST characteristics. Specifically, the study demonstrates the value of remotely sensed data as aids to sustainable urban environmental planning.Dividing the burden for greenhouse gas abatement among the provinces has proven challenging in Canada and contributes to Canada's failure to limit emissions. This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to compare a number of rules for sharing the burden of emission reductions among Canadian provinces. Because of the substantial heterogeneity among Canadian provinces, these different rules imply significantly different relative abatement effort among provinces, and also significantly different welfare implications. We compare these archetypal burden sharing rules to existing provincial emission reduction commitments and find that none of the standard burden sharing rules comes close to existing commitments.The demands of energy consumption have been projected as a key factor that affects an economy at the city, national, and international level. Contributions to total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2012 by various urban sectors include electricity (31%), transportation (28%), industry (20%), agriculture (10%), and commercial and residential (10%). Yet the heavy demands of energy consumption in the cities by residents, commercial businesses, industries, and transportation are important for maintaining and sustaining sufficient economic growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between population trends, historical energy consumptions, the changes of average electricity price, average annual temperature, and extreme weather events for three selected cities: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. These cities are exemplary of, metropolitan areas in the East, Middle, and the Western regions of the U.S. We find that the total energy consumptions of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are influenced to various degrees by changes in population, temperature and the average price of electricity and that only one city, Los Angeles, does price significantly affect electricity use. This finding has implications for policy making, suggesting that each city's climate, size and general economic priorities must be considered in developing climate change mitigation strategies and incentives.Objective. This article compares the effects of various climate change issue frames (deontological-moral, empirical-scientific, and economic) on support for climate change mitigation policies. Methods. Using an issue-framing survey experiment conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we assess framing effects on climate change policy support using ordinary least squares regression. Results. We find mixed evidence regarding frame effectiveness. Religious moral frames and economic efficiency frames are ineffective, whereas scientific frames, secular moral frames, and economic equity frames are effective at increasing overall policy support. Additionally, the positive science frame and economic equity frame reduce the ideological divide in climate policy support. Conclusion. The effects of issue framing on climate policy support are mixed. Frames that we expected conservatives to be responsive to (religious morality; economic efficiency) fail to change support for climate policy. Frames that emphasize science, secular morality, and economy equity have the potential to increase public support for climate change policies.Understanding the potential of soil to store soil organic carbon (SOC) is important for potential climate change mitigation strategies and assessing soil health issues. We examined the factors controlling SOC storage in eastern Australian soils and how these vary with depth. Models were developed using a set of readily interpreted covariates to represent key soil forming factors together with multiple linear regression (MLR) and Cubist piecewise decision tree techniques. Independent validation demonstrated concordance correlation coefficients up to 0.68 for SOC density in near surface layers but progressively decreasing with depth. The results demonstrate the key role of climate (rainfall and maximum temperatures) in controlling SOC stocks, with parent material (lithology) and vegetation cover also being key drivers, while topography and aspect are of lesser influence, at least at this sub-continental scale. The relative influence of temperature and land use/vegetation cover decreases with depth, while that of parent material increases. The necessity of considering a combination of factors when deriving meaningful estimates of current or projected SOC storage is demonstrated with quantitative estimates of SOC stocks in 45 different climate-parent material-vegetation cover regimes. Average SOC stocks in the 0- to 30-cm depth interval range from 16.3 Mg ha(-1) in dry, highly siliceous parent material environments with low vegetation cover, up to over 145.0 Mg ha(-1) in wet, mafic parent material environments with high vegetation cover. Results suggest that the proportion of SOC stock in the 30- to 100-cm interval as a proportion of the top 100 cm varies from a low of 41% in wet climates up to a high of 59% in dry climates. Climate appears to be the dominant controller of subsoil SOC storage proportion, with parent material and vegetation cover also having restricted influence.Energy technologies emitting differing proportions of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) vary significantly in their relative climate impacts over time, due to the distinct atmospheric lifetimes and radiative efficiencies of the two gases. Standard technology comparisons using the global warming potential (GWP) with a fixed time horizon do not account for the timing of emissions in relation to climate policy goals. Here we develop a portfolio optimization model that incorporates changes in technology impacts based on the temporal proximity of emissions to a radiative forcing (RF) stabilization target. An optimal portfolio, maximizing allowed energy consumption while meeting the RF target, is obtained by year-wise minimization of the marginal RF impact in an intended stabilization year. The optimal portfolio calls for using certain higher-CH4-emitting technologies prior to an optimal switching year, followed by CH4-light technologies as the stabilization year approaches. We apply the model to evaluate transportation technology pairs and find that accounting for dynamic emissions impacts, in place of using the static GWP, can result in CH4 mitigation timelines and technology transitions that allow for significantly greater energy consumption while meeting a climate policy target. The results can inform the forward-looking evaluation of energy technologies by engineers, private investors, and policy makers.CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is widely recognized as a climate-change mitigation technology that can significantly sequestrate human-induced CO2 emission. However, there are two main issues that affect the development and deployment of CCS in a region/country: one is the shortage of planning tool for supporting effective decision making regarding timing, sitting and scaling of CCS capture, transport and storage facilities as well as dynamic sink-source matching between capture and storage. The other is uncertainty in technical, economic, political and other dimensions of CCS as the technology is still in early stage of commercialization. Therefore, the objective of this study is to develop an inexact CCS optimization model (ICCSM) for supporting regional carbon capture, transportation and storage planning under interval-format uncertainty with a least-cost strategy. It could address issues related to optimal sink-source matching in a region with multiple capture and storage options. The developed model was then applied to a case study of long term regional CCS planning under uncertainty. To demonstrate its applicability and capability, further scenario analysis indicated that high concentration CO2 from coal-to-chemical/liquids/gas for EOR storage would be early opportunity for CCS in China. In addition, carbon price would be an effective policy instrument for encouraging deployment of CCS. Without sufficient carbon price, it could be difficult for moving CCS from demonstration stage to deployment stage in a short term. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water management has recently become a major concern for many countries. During the last century consumption of water and energy has been increased in the world. This trend is anticipated to continue in the decades to come. One of the greatest reasons is the unplanned industrial activities deteriorating environment in the name of rising standard of life. What is needed is the avoidance of environmental pollution and maintenance of natural balance, in the context of sustainable development. However, Turkey's geographical location has several advantages for extensive use of most of the renewable energy resources. There is a large variation in annual precipitation, evaporation and surface run-off parameters, in Turkey. Precipitation is not evenly distributed in time and space throughout the country. There are 25 hydrological basins in Turkey. But the rivers often have irregular regimes. In this situation the main aim is to manage and use the water resources for renewable, sustainable and clean energy. This paper deals with water management for renewable, sustainable and clean energy in Turkey. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Changes in soil organic carbon stocks depend on the management regime and a variety of environmental factors including climatic conditions and soil properties. So far, the dynamics of soil organic carbon have not been explicitly represented in global economic land use optimization models. Here, we apply an approach to represent soil organic carbon dynamics explicitly in a global bottom-up recursive dynamic partial equilibrium model using carbon response functions simulated with a biophysical process-based model. We project soil organic carbon emissions from European cropland to decrease by 40% from 64 MtCO(2) in 2010 to about 39 MtCO(2) in 2050 mainly due to saturation effect when soils converge toward their equilibrium after management, crop rotation, or land use change. Moreover, we estimate a soil organic carbon mitigation potential for European cropland between 9 and 38 MtCO(2) per year until 2050 for carbon prices between 10 and 100 USD/tCO(2). The total European mitigation potential including co-benefits from the crop and livestock sector due to the carbon price is even higher with 60 MtCO(2) equivalents (eq) per year. Thus carbon sequestration in soils could compensate 7% of total emissions from agriculture within the EU, 10% when including co-benefits from the crop and livestock sector. However, as production is reallocated outside Europe with increasing carbon prices, emissions decrease in Europe but increase in the rest of the world (20 MtCO(2) eq). Preventing GHG emission leakage to the rest of the world would decrease the European soil organic carbon mitigation potential by around 9% and the total European mitigation potential including co-benefits by 16%. Nevertheless, the net global mitigation potential would still increase. We conclude that no significant contributions to emission reduction targets should be expected from the European cropland carbon sequestration options considered in this study. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation, which has previously been seen as a national and local matter, is today systematically addressed by international institutions such as the UNFCCC, the FAO and the WTO. Research has focused on the overarching institutional architecture of global adaptation, particularly how it relates to development, political economy, efficiency and equity. In contrast to the transnational dimension of climate mitigation, the transnationalization of adaptation governance has received scant attention. By creating a dataset of adaptation projects, we examine transnational adaptation governance in terms of its scope, institutionalization and main functions. We find transnational adaptation governance to be firmly anchored within the UNFCCC, but a recent change towards adaptation governed by a transnational constituency can be identified. When non-state actors become integral to the project of governing adaptation, a 'fourth era' of adaption seems to be emerging. This new era is not replacing other forms of governing, but is emerging alongside and in a complementary fashion. In the 'fourth era', adaptation is increasingly governed globally and transnationally, and the attention is turned toward 'softer' forms of governance such as agenda setting, information sharing and capacity building. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Production and consumption of goods and services are interlinked through complex global supplychain networks; so are the greenhouse gas emissions associated with them. Using a model that represents global supply-chain networks, we identified supply-chain clusters with high CO2 emissions within more than 300 million individual supply chains. We distinguished 4756 significant CO2 clusters and found that in 2008, global supply-chain networks associated with U.S. transport equipment and construction demand included relatively large CO2 clusters in China, accounting for 17% and 10%, respectively, of the U.S. CO2 footprint. Of added importance is the fact that these two clusters in China had annual growth rates of 42% and 58%, respectively, during the period 1995-2008. Our results show the importance for climate policy of monitoring these CO2 clusters that dominate CO2 emissions in global supply chains, and they offer insights on where climate policy can be effectively directed. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Access to energy can significantly contribute to the development of the living standards of the energy poor. Also if the provision of access to energy is sustainable, i.e. via renewable energy sources, there is an added benefit of contributing to mitigation of climate change. Currently, the percentage of population with access to energy varies significantly between countries and across regions. This is due to the nature of national socio-economic situations and energy resource availability in differing settings. This article addresses issues and hindrances to energy access in regional contexts and also examines, in particular, the prospects of how regional cooperation initiatives linked with climate change mitigation objectives could assist in widening energy access. Existing relevant regional cooperation initiatives that may be upscaled or used as models to widen access to modern energy services are evaluated. Findings are that regional cooperation initiatives linked with climate change mitigation can potentially facilitate widening energy access. However, in order to realise such potential, synergies from regional cooperation that are indirectly linked to energy and wider climate change mitigation programs should be harnessed. Recommendations are made for development of sustainable energy programs in energy deprived regions that will also mitigate climate change impacts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cover crops are widely viewed by the soil and water conservation community to be an effective means for reducing soil erosion and nutrient loss and increasing soil health, yet relatively few farmers have adopted the practice. Despite the widespread recognition of cover crops' benefits and increased promotional efforts, there have been very few peer-reviewed studies focused on farmer perspectives on or adoption of cover crops. This study, which analyzed data from a survey and in-depth interviews with Iowa farmers, examined the roles that perceived practice characteristics, perspectives on potential facilitating factors, and crop and livestock diversity play in cover crop adoption among Iowa farmers. As expected, perceived benefits were strongly associated with cover crop use. Measures of crop and livestock diversity were also positive predictors of adoption. In addition, farmers who endorsed strengthening of facilitating factors such as educational and technological infrastructure to support cover crop use were more likely to have adopted cover crops. Farmers who perceived higher levels of risks associated with cover crop use, on the other hand, were less likely to use them. Results suggest that research and promotional efforts should focus on both raising awareness of potential benefits and quantifying and communicating potential risks and risk abatement strategies. Helping farmers to better understand (1) the benefits of cover crops and how they can be enhanced, and (2) the potential risks and ways that they can be minimized might allow farmers to more effectively weigh the probable benefits and costs of cover crop use. The findings further suggest that farmers believe that better facilitating infrastructure, in the form of technical assistance (e.g., agricultural retailers and custom operators) and education, is needed to support the widespread adoption of cover crops.The potential of exergy analysis for environment, ecology and sustainable development implications are reviewed in this study. There is perfect relationship between environment, ecology and sustainable development. If a proper balance is maintained among these three aspects then exergy for the welfare of human being is obtained. Efficient energy use which requires exergy analysis is a key solution to the environmental problems. A primary aim of minimizing the environmental impact is to increase the efficiency and decrease the related overall environmental impacts such as global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain. This study has been written with a view to draw attention and to examine the range of views for integration of exergy for environment, ecology and sustainable development. Much of the information presented in this study is basically to acquire an understanding of exergy relations with environment, ecology and sustainable development. This study will be useful for those involved in exergy activities and planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Economists and environmental policymakers have recently begun advocating a bottom-up approach to climate change mitigation, focusing on reduction targets for groups of nations, rather than large scale global policies. We advance this discussion by conducting a rigorous empirical analysis of the global distribution of carbon emissions along several important dimensions: groupings, polarization, mobility, and volatility. In contrast to previous work, our empirical analysis is both comprehensive and data-driven. We discuss how robust empirical evidence may aid policymakers in forging a heterogeneous carbon abatement policy. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.There is growing concern that the way that soils are used often results in their degradation, giving rise to significant costs, both to direct users of soils and to society as a whole. This paper develops and uses an approach to derive the total economic cost of soil degradation in England and Wales. An estimate was made of degradation costs at the national scale for dominant combinations of land cover and soils, defined as 'soilscapes'. An ecosystem services framework was used to assess how degradation affects the capacity of soils to support a range of 'final goods', distinguishing between on-site and off-site costs, and market and non-market effects. Quantifiable soil degradation costs ranged between 0.9 pound bn and 1.4 pound bn per year, with a central estimate of 1.2 pound bn, mainly linked to loss of organic content of soils (47% of total cost), compaction (39%) and erosion (12%). Eighty percent of costs occur off-site and, as such, are often of limited concern to those whose actions may be causing soil degradation. The findings confirm that control of soil degradation has implications for a number of key policy areas such as flood risk management and climate change mitigation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper, state electricity portfolio standards in the U.S. are analyzed to examine how energy efficiency is being created as a particular kind of resource through this type of climate change governance. Such policies can incentivize energy efficiency by requiring or encouraging electricity providers to meet a certain percentage of their demand through energy efficiency measures. North Carolina's portfolio standard is used as an in-depth case study to identify factors that are then compared across all 36 states that include energy efficiency as part of a portfolio requirement or goal. The main finding of this study is that state portfolio standards tend to emphasize demand-side energy efficiency, or energy efficiency on the customer's side of the electricity meter, and only rarely incentivize a full range of both demand-side and supply-side efficiency changes. As a result, the amount of energy efficiency and climate change mitigation benefits that are likely to result from this type of portfolio standard policy tool are limited. From this analysis, lessons are drawn out for crafting stronger portfolio standards that incentivize a wider range of efficiency changes across electricity networks. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although Africa's share in the global energy system is only small today, ongoing population growth and economic development imply that this can change significantly. Here, we discuss long-term energy-system developments in Africa using results of a recent model inter-comparison study on global climate policy. We focus on Africa's role in the wider global energy system and in global climate mitigation. The results show a considerable spread in model outcomes, emphasizing the large uncertainty regarding Africa's energy future. Without climate policy, Africa's share in global energy-related CO2 emissions is projected to increase to 3-23% by 2100. Emissions become significant on a global scale only after 2050. In none of the model projections the international ambition to provide universal modern energy access by 2030 is achieved. Furthermore, although the continent is currently a large net exporter of oil and natural gas, towards 2050 the model projections emphasize that Africa needs most of its resources for its rapidly growing domestic demand. However, the projected rapid expansion of their energy system also implies that Africa gains importance in global mitigation action. An important challenge is to align the increasing investments in the energy system with climate policy and potential revenues from international carbon trading. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Growing biomass feedstocks from marginal lands is becoming an increasingly attractive choice for producing biofuel as an alternative energy to fossil fuels. Here, we used a biogeochemical model at ecosystem scale to estimate crop productivity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from bioenergy crops grown on marginal lands in the United States. Two broadly tested cellulosic crops, switchgrass, and Miscanthus, were assumed to be grown on the abandoned land and mixed crop-vegetation land with marginal productivity. Production of biomass and biofuel as well as net carbon exchange and nitrous oxide emissions were estimated in a spatially explicit manner. We found that, cellulosic crops, especially Miscanthus could produce a considerable amount of biomass, and the effective ethanol yield is high on these marginal lands. For every hectare of marginal land, switchgrass and Miscanthus could produce 1.0-2.3kl and 2.9-6.9kl ethanol, respectively, depending on nitrogen fertilization rate and biofuel conversion efficiency. Nationally, both crop systems act as net GHG sources. Switchgrass has high global warming intensity (100-390g CO(2)eql(-1) ethanol), in terms of GHG emissions per unit ethanol produced. Miscanthus, however, emits only 21-36g CO(2)eq to produce every liter of ethanol. To reach the mandated cellulosic ethanol target in the United States, growing Miscanthus on the marginal lands could potentially save land and reduce GHG emissions in comparison to growing switchgrass. However, the ecosystem modeling is still limited by data availability and model deficiencies, further efforts should be made to classify crop-specific marginal land availability, improve model structure, and better integrate ecosystem modeling into life cycle assessment.There is a growing interest in producing biofuels and bio-chemicals from lignocellulosic feedstocks in integrated biorefi neries. However, the sustainability implications of integrated biorefi neries are still poorly understood. Using a life cycle approach, this paper examines environmental impacts of second-generation ethanol produced in thermo-chemical refi neries together with chemicals and energy. Four feedstocks are considered: wheat straw, poplar, Miscanthus and forest residue. The results suggest that the production of ethanol from these feedstocks offers signifi cant savings in eight out of 12 environmental impacts when the system is credited for the avoided impacts from producing the co-products from fossil resources. Ethanol from forest residue is the best and wheat straw the worst option for most impacts. Land use change has a signifi cant effect on the global warming potential (GWP) of ethanol. For example, conversion of forest to grow Miscanthus increases the GWP from -234 to 6685 g CO2 eq./l of ethanol. The effect is opposite when grassland is converted to grow poplar: the GWP is reduced by two times because of carbon sequestration by poplar. The thermo-chemical route for producing ethanol from poplar and forest residue is more sustainable for most impacts than the bio-chemical conversion with the same feedstocks. Although ethanol saves up to 83% of GHG emissions per MJ of fuel compared to petrol, the savings are much smaller (similar to 3%) for current ethanol blends of 5%. Therefore, unless a much higher proportion of ethanol was used, the contribution of second-generation ethanol to climate change mitigation would be small. (C) 2015 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts, Biorefining published by Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Wood biomass forms the basis for a variety of products and it represents an important source of technical energy. Woodfuels and forests play an important role for climate change mitigation, by their ability to replace fossil fuel and sequester atmospheric carbon. At the same time, wood extraction is an important driver for deforestation. However, large uncertainties relate to the amount and spatio-temporal pattern of wood use. We here present a comprehensive assessment of wood biomass flows in 11 world regions from 1990 to 2010. We found that global total biomass appropriation (TBA) amounts to 1.81 GtC/year in 1990 and 1.94 GtC/year in 2010 (+7%). In 2010, TBA represents 4% of the global forest net primary production. Only 54% of TBA enters socioeconomic systems while 46% remain in forests or represent waste flows. About 56% of economically used wood biomass enters the energy sector. There are considerable regional variations in wood biomass flows among world regions, owing to differences in population, affluence, and area. Global demand for wood is expected to increase in the near future, putting additional pressure to forest ecosystems. We discuss the potential of cascading use of wood as a means to reduce impacts related to resource use. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities coupled to coal-fired power plants provide a climate change mitigation strategy that potentially permits the continued use of coal whilst reducing the carbon dioxide emissions. However, the still-high cost of CCS is one of the major obstacles, especially for developing countries. In this paper, we will assess techno-economic aspect of various carbon capture and storage technology in coal-fired power plants, including pre-combustion capture, post-combustion capture, oxy-combustion capture, as well as carbon storage. For various coal-fired power plants, integrated gasification combined cycle with pre-combustion capture has the highest potential to capture carbon dioxide with the lowest energy penalties and capital & operational costs, post-combustion capture can be retrofitted at relatively low cost to existing pulverized coal power plants and allows the combustion process to be kept relatively unchanged, and oxy-combustion capture is relatively immature at present. Although CCS has been accepted as clean development mechanism (CDM) project activities under the Kyoto Protocol, current carbon trading mechanism is inadequate to strongly promote investments on CCS facilities coupled to coal-fired power plants.Cookstove use is globally one of the largest unregulated anthropogenic sources of primary carbonaceous aerosol. While reducing cookstove emissions through national-scale mitigation efforts has clear benefits for improving indoor and ambient air quality, and significant climate benefits from reduced green-house gas emissions, climate impacts associated with reductions to co-emitted black (BC) and organic carbonaceous aerosol are not well characterized. Here we attribute direct, indirect, semi-direct, and snow/ice albedo radiative forcing (RF) and associated global surface temperature changes to national-scale carbonaceous aerosol cookstove emissions. These results are made possible through the use of adjoint sensitivity modeling to relate direct RF and BC deposition to emissions. Semi-and indirect effects are included via global scaling factors, and bounds on these estimates are drawn from current literature ranges for aerosol RF along with a range of solid fuel emissions characterizations. Absolute regional temperature potentials are used to estimate global surface temperature changes. Bounds are placed on these estimates, drawing from current literature ranges for aerosol RF along with a range of solid fuel emissions characterizations. We estimate a range of 0.16 K warming to 0.28 K cooling with a central estimate of 0.06 K cooling from the removal of cookstove aerosol emissions. At the national emissions scale, countries' impacts on global climate range from net warming (e.g., Mexico and Brazil) to net cooling, although the range of estimated impacts for all countries span zero given uncertainties in RF estimates and fuel characterization. We identify similarities and differences in the sets of countries with the highest emissions and largest cookstove temperature impacts (China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal), those with the largest temperature impact per carbon emitted (Kazakhstan, Estonia, and Mongolia), and those that would provide the most efficient cooling from a switch to fuel with a lower BC emission factor (Kazakhstan, Estonia, and Latvia). The results presented here thus provide valuable information for climate impact assessments across a wide range of cookstove initiatives.Climate change has already begun to impact the structure and function of forest ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest by altering the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts and heat stress, with implications for widespread environmental and socio-economic change. A major realization is that accumulated physiological stress can ultimately lead to tree mortality and changes in species distributions, particularly in areas away from maritime influences. To ameliorate the effects of drought, insect outbreaks, and reduce the risk of crown fires, various strategies are being tested. To make some of these strategies economical, biomass is proposed as an alternative energy source. At the same time that an increase in harvesting is being considered, there is a desire to increase carbon sequestration by forests to offset, at least in part, greenhouse gas emissions. Assessments are needed to determine current and future impacts of climate change, and to evaluate management options while considering carbon storage benefits and sustainability of ecosystem structure and function. Here we provide an overview of research results from the Pacific Northwest region where forests dominate the landscape and contain among the highest biomass on earth. In this review, we present findings that challenge common assumptions, and suggest a way to predict outcomes of changes in climate and land management in the future. The approach includes the use of observation-driven land system models that integrate the extent that forests are vulnerable to climate change, management practices, and economic considerations. It also requires increased emphasis on in situ and remotely sensed observations and experiments to initialize and test the model, and to track trends in forest condition. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With an increasing fraction of the world's forests being intensively managed for meeting humanity's need for wood, fiber and ecosystem services, quantitative understanding of the functional changes in these ecosystems in comparison with natural forests is needed. In particular, the role of managed forests as long-term carbon (C) sinks and for mitigating climate change require a detailed assessment of their carbon cycle on different temporal scales. In the current review we assess available data on the structure and function of the world's forests, explore the main differences in the C exchange between managed and unmanaged stands, and explore potential physiological mechanisms behind both observed and expected changes. Two global databases that include classification for management indicate that managed forests are about 50 years younger, include 25% more coniferous stands, and have about 50% lower C stocks than unmanaged forests. The gross primary productivity (GPP) and total net primary productivity (NPP) are the similar, but relatively more of the assimilated carbon is allocated to aboveground pools in managed than in unmanaged forests, whereas allocation to fine roots and rhizosymbionts is lower. This shift in allocation patterns is promoted by increasing plant size, and by increased nutrient availability. Long-term carbon sequestration potential in soils is assessed through the ratio of heterotrophic respiration to total detritus production, which indicates that (i) the forest soils may be losing more carbon on an annual basis than they regain in detritus, and (ii) the deficit appears to be greater in managed forests. While climate change and management factors (esp. fertilization) both contribute to greater carbon accumulation potential in the soil, the harvest-related increase in decomposition affects the C budget over the entire harvest cycle. Although the findings do not preclude the use of forests for climate mitigation, maximizing merchantable productivity may have significant carbon costs for the soil pool. We conclude that optimal management strategies for maximizing multiple benefits from ecosystem services require better understanding of the dynamics of belowground allocation, carbohydrate availability, heterotrophic respiration, and carbon stabilization in the soil. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Oilseed rape is one of the leading feedstocks for biofuel production in Europe. The climate change mitigation effect of rape methyl ester (RME) is particularly challenged by the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during crop production, mainly as nitrous oxide (N2O) from soils. Oilseed rape requires high nitrogen fertilization and crop residues are rich in nitrogen, both potentially causing enhanced N2O emissions. However, GHG emissions of oilseed rape production are often estimated using emission factors that account for crop-type specifics only with respect to crop residues. This meta-analysis therefore aimed to assess annual N2O emissions from winter oilseed rape, to compare them to those of cereals and to explore the underlying reasons for differences. For the identification of the most important factors, linear mixed effects models were fitted with 43 N2O emission data points deriving from 12 different field sites. N2O emissions increased exponentially with N-fertilization rates, but interyear and site-specific variability were high and climate variables or soil parameters did not improve the prediction model. Annual N2O emissions from winter oilseed rape were 22% higher than those from winter cereals fertilized at the same rate. At a common fertilization rate of 200kg Nha(-1)yr(-1), the mean fraction of fertilizer N that was lost as N2O-N was 1.27% for oilseed rape compared to 1.04% for cereals. The risk of high yield-scaled N2O emissions increased after a critical N surplus of about 80kg Nha(-1)yr(-1). The difference in N2O emissions between oilseed rape and cereal cultivation was especially high after harvest due to the high N contents in oilseed rape's crop residues. However, annual N2O emissions of winter oilseed rape were still lower than predicted by the Stehfest and Bouwman model. Hence, the assignment of oilseed rape to the crop-type classes of cereals or other crops should be reconsidered.Aim Tropical forests store 25% of global carbon and harbour 96% of the world's tree species, but it is not clear whether this high biodiversity matters for carbon storage. Few studies have teased apart the relative importance of forest attributes and environmental drivers for ecosystem functioning, and no such study exists for the tropics. Location Neotropics. Methods We relate aboveground biomass (AGB) to forest attributes (diversity and structure) and environmental drivers (annual rainfall and soil fertility) using data from 144,000 trees, 2050 forest plots and 59 forest sites. The sites span the complete latitudinal and climatic gradients in the lowland Neotropics, with rainfall ranging from 750 to 4350mmyear(-1). Relationships were analysed within forest sites at scales of 0.1 and 1 ha and across forest sites along large-scale environmental gradients. We used a structural equation model to test the hypothesis that species richness, forest structural attributes and environmental drivers have independent, positive effects on AGB. Results Across sites, AGB was most strongly driven by rainfall, followed by average tree stem diameter and rarefied species richness, which all had positive effects on AGB. Our indicator of soil fertility (cation exchange capacity) had a negligible effect on AGB, perhaps because we used a global soil database. Taxonomic forest attributes (i.e. species richness, rarefied richness and Shannon diversity) had the strongest relationships with AGB at small spatial scales, where an additional species can still make a difference in terms of niche complementarity, while structural forest attributes (i.e. tree density and tree size) had strong relationships with AGB at all spatial scales. Main conclusions Biodiversity has an independent, positive effect on AGB and ecosystem functioning, not only in relatively simple temperate systems but also in structurally complex hyperdiverse tropical forests. Biodiversity conservation should therefore be a key component of the UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation strategy.There is increasing interest in the potential of cities to contribute to climate mitigation. Multiple assessments have evaluated the scale and composition of urban GHG emissions, while others have evaluated some aspects of urban mitigation potential. However, assessments of mitigation potential tend to be broadly focused, few if any have evaluated urban mitigation potential on a measure-by-measure basis, and fewer still have considered the economic case for investing in these measures. This is a significant knowledge gap as an economic case for action could be critical in building political commitment, strengthening institutional capacities, securing large-scale finance and targeting investment and implementation in cities. In this paper, we conduct a comparative analysis of the results of five recently completed studies that examined the economic case for investing in low-carbon measures in five cities: Leeds in the UK, Kolkata in India, Lima in Peru, Johor Bahru in Malaysia and Palembang in Indonesia. The results demonstrate that there is a compelling economic case for cities in both developed and developing country contexts to invest, at scale, in cost-effective low-carbon measures. The results suggest that these investments could generate significant reductions (in the range of 15-24% relative to business-as-usual trends) in urban carbon emissions over the next 10 years. Securing these savings would require an average investment of $3.2 billion per city, which if spread over 10 years equates to 0.4-0.9% of city GDP per year. However, the savings generated in the form of reduced energy bills would be equivalent to between 1.7% and 9.5% of annual city-scale GDP, and the average payback period of investments would be approximately 2 years at commercial interest rates. We provisionally estimate that if these findings were replicated and similar investments were made in cities globally, then they could generate reductions equivalent to 10-18% of global energy-related GHG emissions in 2025. While the studies offer some grounds for optimism, they also raise important questions about the barriers to change that prevent these economically attractive options from being exploited and about the scope for mitigation based on the exploitation of only the economically attractive options. We therefore discuss the institutional capacities, policy environments and financing arrangements that need to be developed before even these economically attractive opportunities can be exploited. We also demonstrate that, in rapidly growing cities, the carbon savings from such investments could be quickly overwhelmed - in as little as 7 years - by the impacts of sustained population and economic growth. We conclude by highlighting the need to build capacities that enable the exploitation not only of the economically attractive options in the short term but also of those deeper and more structural changes that are likely to be needed in the longer term. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY licenseThe use of underground geological repositories, such as in radioactive waste disposal (RWD) and in carbon capture (widely known as Carbon Capture and Storage; CCS), constitutes a key environmental priority for the 21st century. Based on the identification of key scientific questions relating to the geophysics, geochemistry and geobiology of geodisposal of wastes, this paper describes the possibility of technology transfer from high-technology areas of the space exploration sector, including astrobiology, planetary sciences, astronomy, and also particle and nuclear physics, into geodisposal. Synergies exist between high technology used in the space sector and in the characterization of underground environments such as repositories, because of common objectives with respect to instrument miniaturization, low power requirements, durability under extreme conditions (in temperature and mechanical loads) and operation in remote or otherwise difficult to access environments.Energy conservation in the real estate sector is claimed to possess significant possibilities for viable climate mitigation actions. Adopting the property investor's perspective, this paper focuses on financial performance of energy audit investments of existing office buildings. The study uses four property investment methods for assessing the financial performance of these investments. First, the paper adopts the traditional approach for assessing the profitability of an energy conservation investment: payback period, internal rates of returns and returns on investments of energy efficiency investments. Secondly, the scope is moved from energy investment to the property level and discounted cash flow (DCF) method is used to analyze the influence of the investments on the actual property value, something that has not been studied enough. The results reveal genuine financial advantages of energy efficiency investments at the building portfolio level, highlighting positive impacts on the property values of ca. 2.5 percent on average. Yet, the benefits of energy efficiency investments are currently not easily reached nor realized by investors. This is at least partly due to the mechanisms of distributing the potential returns of the investments between stakeholders, the lack of qualified service providers and poor understanding of overall value of energy conservation investments. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although many activities can jointly contribute to the climate change strategies of adaptation and mitigation, climate policies have generally treated these strategies separately. In recent years, there has been a growing interest shown by practitioners in agriculture, forestry, and landscape management in the links between the two strategies. This review explores the opportunities and trade-offs when managing landscapes for both climate change mitigation and adaptation; different conceptualizations of the links between adaptation and mitigation are highlighted. Under a first conceptualization of joint outcomes,' several reviewed studies analyze how activities without climatic objectives deliver joint adaptation and mitigation outcomes. In a second conceptualization of unintended side effects,' the focus is on how activities aimed at only one climate objectiveeither adaptation or mitigationcan deliver outcomes for the other objective. A third conceptualization of joint objectives' highlights that associating both adaptation and mitigation objectives in a climate-related activity can influence its outcomes because of multiple possible interactions. The review reveals a diversity of reasons for mainstreaming adaptation and mitigation separately or jointly in landscape management. The three broad conceptualizations of the links between adaptation and mitigation suggest different implications for climate policy mainstreaming and integration. (C) 2015 The Authors. WIREs Climate Change published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Conservation agriculture (CA) has been promoted as a method of sustainable intensification and climate change mitigation and is being widely practiced and implemented globally. However, no-till (NT), a fundamental component of CA, has been shown to reduce yields in many cases. In order to maintain yields following adoption of CA, it has been recently suggested that fertilizer application should be an integral component of CA. To determine the contribution of nitrogen (N) fertilizer in minimizing yield declines following NT implementation, we assessed 2759 paired comparisons of NT and conventional tillage (CT) systems from 325 studies reported in the peer-reviewed literature between 1980 and 2013. Overall, we found that NT yields decreased -10.7% (-14.8% to -6.5%) and -3.7% (-5.3% to -2.2%) relative to CT in tropical/subtropical and temperate regions, respectively. Among management and environmental variables that included: the rate of N fertilization; the duration of the NT/CT comparison; residue, rotation, and irrigation practices; the crop type; and the site aridity, N rate was the most important explanatory variable for NT yield declines in tropical/subtropical regions. In temperate regions, N fertilization rates were relatively less important. NT yield declines were most consistently observed at low rates of N fertilization during the first 2 years of NT adoption in tropical/subtropical regions. Applications of N fertilizer at rates of up to 85 12 kg N ha(-1) yr(-1) significantly reduced NT yield declines in these scenarios. While this result should not be viewed as a rate recommendation, it does suggest that farmers applying rates of N fertilizer that are low for their specific system will, on average, see higher NT yields if they increase application rates. In addition, when crop rotation was not practiced or residues were removed from the field, NT yield declines were magnified by low rates of N fertilization in tropical/subtropical regions. These results, based on a global data set and across a broad range of crops, highlight the importance of N fertilization in counteracting yield declines in NT systems, particularly in tropical/subtropical regions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Eco innovations (EI) that address climate change mitigation require pressures and knowledge from outside the firm's and sector's boundaries, due to the radicalness and variety of techno-organisational knowledge the economy needs to curb emissions by 90 % in the long run and 40 % in the medium run, at least according to EU targets. The role of policy as a tool that potentially tackles two externalities-innovation and environmental market failures-has been studied over the past decade. Sector integration, which is increasingly relevant for understanding the economic, environmental and innovation performances of countries, might additionally influence innovations, and it is relatively overlooked. We integrate these two perspectives to provide evidence on the adoption of EI in EU sectors over 2006-2008. Using past CO2 emission intensity as a proxy of policy stringency we find that emission intensive sectors are more likely to adopt CO2-related eco-innovations. The aforementioned results are valid for both the economy as a whole and for industrial sectors specifically. We additionally show that inter sector integration and knowledge sources matter: we do observe that sectors with more emission intensive upstream 'partners' eco-innovate more to reduce their CO2 footprints. The positive and significant effect of upstream emission intensity (supplier's emission intensity) on EI is actually stronger than the effect of 'direct' CO2 emission intensity (policy effect).Extending previous research, we examined whether the relation between social dominance orientation (SDO) and climate change denial reflects group-based dominance (SDO and nature dominance) or general system justification. Moreover, we examined whether the relation between personality (domineering and empathy) and denial is mediated by group-based dominance variables. The results showed that the group-based dominance variables reduce the effect of system justification on denial to nonsignificant. Also, social dominance and nature dominance explain unique parts of the variance in denial. Moreover, path analyses showed that the relations between empathy and system justification with denial are mediated by both of the group-based dominance variables, while the relation between domineering and denial is mediated only by SDO. Together, these results suggest that denial is driven partly by dominant personality and low empathy, and partly by motivation to justify and promote existing social and human-nature hierarchies. We conclude by suggesting that climate change mitigation efforts could be more successful if framed as being clearly beneficial for everybody and nonthreatening to existing social order. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potentially devastating impacts of climate change on crop production and food security are now widely acknowledged. An important component of efforts to mitigate these impacts is the production of new varieties of crops which will be able to thrive in more extreme and changeable environmental conditions. There is therefore an urgent need to find new sources of genetic diversity for crop improvement. Wild plant species closely related to crops (crop wild relatives) contain vital sources of such genes, yet these resources themselves are threatened by the effects of climate change, as well as by a range of other human-induced pressures and socio-economic changes. The flora of China comprises more than 20,000 native higher plant species, a proportion of which have known or potential value as gene donors for crop improvement. However, until now, the full range of these valuable crop wild relative species had not been identified. In this paper we present a methodology for creating a checklist of, and prioritizing China's crop wild relatives, and reveal that 871 native species are related to crops that are of particularly high socio-economic importance in China including rice, wheat, soybean, potato, sweet potato, millet and yam crops which are also of notably high value for food and economic security in other parts of the world. Within this list we have identified species that are in particular need of conservation assessment based on their relative Red List status and potential for use in crop improvement programs. Endemic species that have particularly high economic value potential in China and that are under severe threat of genetic erosion and thus in need of urgent conservation action include wild relatives of tea (Camellia fangchengensis S. Yun Liang et Y.C. Zhong and C. grandibracteata H.T. Chang et F.L. Yu), apple (e.g., Malus honanensis Rehder, M. ombrophila Hand.-Mazz. and M. toringoides (Rehder) Hughes), and pear (Pyrus pseudopashia T.T. Yu). We provide recommendations for developing a systematic and comprehensive national CWR conservation strategy for China, highlighting the challenges and requirements of taking the strategy forward to the implementation phase. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) stocks in cropland soils play important roles in soil quality and climate change mitigation. Farming management have great impacts on SOC and TN dynamics, and thus affecting soil quality. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of tillage systems on the changes in SOC and TN pools under a double rice (Oryza sativa L.) cropping system in Southern China. A field experiment was conducted during 2005 in Ningxiang, Hunan Province. It comprised of four tillage treatments including no-till with residue retention (NT), rotary tillage with residue incorporation (RT), plow tillage with residue incorporation (PT), and plow tillage with residue removed (PTO). The results showed that NT increased soil bulk density (rho(b)) in the 0-20 cm soil layer. Adoption of NT increased the concentrations of SOC and TN at 0-5 cm depth but decreased the concentrations in deeper soil. The greatest SOC and TN concentrations were observed under RT at 5-10 cm depth and under PT at 10-20 cm depth. Tillage practice had small effect on the soil C:N ratio in the soil profile. Adoption of NT farming enhanced the SOC and TN stocks in the 0-10 cm layer, whereas PT increased SOC and TN stocks in the 0-50 cm profile. The stratification ratio (SR) of the SOC and TN concentrations were larger under NT compared with RT and PT. Thus, the adoption of short-term (7-8 years) NT practices is beneficial for the enhancement of SOC and TN stocks in the 0-10 cm soil profile, and rotational tillage may be an appropriate farming practice for paddy rice system. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mangroves are well-known for their numerous ecosystem services, including storing a globally significant C pool. There is increasing interest in the inclusion of mangroves in national climate change mitigation and adaptation plans in developing nations as they become involved with incentive programs for climate change mitigation. The quality and precision of data required by these programs necessitates the use of an inventory approach that allows for quantification, rather than general characterization, of C stocks. In this study, we quantified the ecosystem C stock of the Zambezi River Delta mangroves utilizing a rigorous, yet operationally feasible approach. We applied a stratified random sampling inventory design, based on five forest canopy height classes, derived from Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite/Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (ICE Sat/GLAS) and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, and a Spatial Decision Support System to allocate inventory plots. Carbon content in above- and below-ground biomass pools in addition to soils to a depth of 200 cm was measured. The average biomass C density for the height classes ranged from 99.2 Mg C ha(-1) to 341.3 Mg C ha(-1). Soil C density was the largest measured C pool, containing 274.6 Mg C ha(-1) to 314.1 Mg C ha(-1) and accounting for 45-73% of the height class ecosystem C densities, which ranged from 373.8 Mg C ha(-1) to 620.8 Mg C ha(-1). The ecosystem C density estimates for the five strata were weighted based on their spatial distribution across the landscape to yield a total C stock for the Zambezi River Delta mangroves of 1.4 x 10(7) Mg C. The error bounds from the 95% confidence interval are +/- 6% of our ecosystem C stock estimate, well within acceptable levels of uncertainty. Published by Elsevier B.V.The expansion of Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) practices is mainly driven by the viability of SRC wood as an alternative to other renewable and non-renewable fuels in energy production, but also to the capacity of increasing biodiversity and the supply of ecosystem services locally. To delve into these environmental synergies and possible trade-offs, the Life Cycle Assessment method was applied to seven SRC experimental sites recently implemented in Flanders (Belgium). These have differing land use objectives and, thus, present different species proportions and plantation density. For instance, most sites are either planted with willow and poplar clones, or with a mix of the two with local tree species in order to activate temporary unused industrial lands or enhance the local ecosystem functionality. A regular 3 to 7-year rotation was simulated up to year 2033 using CO2FIX given that trees were yet to be harvested at the time of the assessment. Yields were first estimated over time: SRC systems composed by mixed species presented the highest productivity and also the best environmental performance profiles. Overall, the highest environmental impacts were due to consumption of diesel during the cyclic harvests, but also to fertilization activities. Uncertainty distribution ranges were determined for the most critical parameters and a Monte Carlo analysis was performed to obtain average impact scores with variability ranges. While replacing hardwood with wood from SRC chips was not found to be advantageous because of e.g. larger metal, fossil and ozone depletion potentials, benefits were observed for land use reduction and climate change mitigation. Due to frequent rotations, the beneficial trends for the latter seem sufficient to compensate the negative effects of the other impacts on human health and ecosystems quality. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Because industrial agriculture keeps expanding in Southeast Asia at the expense of natural forests and traditional swidden systems, comparing biodiversity and ecosystem services in the traditional forest-swidden agriculture system vs. monocultures is needed to guide decision making on land-use planning. Focusing on tree diversity, soil erosion control, and climate change mitigation through carbon storage, we surveyed vegetation and monitored soil loss in various land-use areas in a northern Bornean agricultural landscape shaped by swidden agriculture, rubber tapping, and logging, where various levels and types of disturbance have created a fine mosaic of vegetation from food crop fields to natural forest. Tree species diversity and ecosystem service production were highest in natural forests. Logged-over forests produced services similar to those of natural forests. Land uses related to the swidden agriculture system largely outperformed oil palm or rubber monocultures in terms of tree species diversity and service production. Natural and logged-over forests should be maintained or managed as integral parts of the swidden system, and landscape multifunctionality should be sustained. Because natural forests host a unique diversity of trees and produce high levels of ecosystem services, targeting carbon stock protection, e.g. through financial mechanisms such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), will synergistically provide benefits for biodiversity and a wide range of other services. However, the way such mechanisms could benefit communities must be carefully evaluated to counter the high opportunity cost of conversion to monocultures that might generate greater income, but would be detrimental to the production of multiple ecosystem services.High grazing intensity and wide-spread woody encroachment may strongly alter soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) pools. However, the direction and quantity of these changes have rarely been quantified in East African savanna ecosystem. As shifts in soil C and N pools might further potentially influence climate change mitigation, we quantified and compared soil organic carbon (SOC) and total soil nitrogen (TSN) content in enclosures and communal grazing lands across varying woody cover i.e. woody encroachment levels. Estimated mean SOC and TSN stocks at 0-40 cm depth varied across grazing regimes and among woody encroachment levels. The open grazing land at the heavily encroached site on sandy loam soil contained the least SOC (30 +/- 2.1 Mg ha(-1)) and TSN (5 +/- 0.57 Mg ha(-1)) while the enclosure at the least encroached site on sandy clay soil had the greatest mean SOC (81.0 +/- 10.6 Mg ha(-1)) and TSN (9.2 +/- 1.48 Mg ha(-1)). Soil OC and TSN did not differ with grazing exclusion at heavily encroached sites, but were twice as high inside enclosure compared to open grazing soils at low encroached sites. Mean SOC and TSN in soils of 0-20 cm depth were up to 120% higher than that of the 21-40 cm soil layer. Soil OC was positively related to TSN, cation exchange capacity (CEC), but negatively related to sand content. Our results show that soil OC and TSN stocks are affected by grazing, but the magnitude is largely influenced by woody encroachment and soil texture. We suggest that improving the herbaceous layer cover through a reduction in grazing and woody encroachment restriction are the key strategies for reducing SOC and TSN losses and, hence, for climate change mitigation in semi-arid rangelands.Climate change mitigation benefits from the land sector are not being fully realised because of uncertainty and controversy about the role of native forest management. The dominant policy view, as stated in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, is that sustainable forest harvesting yielding wood products, generates the largest mitigation benefit. We demonstrate that changing native forest management from commercial harvesting to conservation can make an important contribution to mitigation. Conservation of native forests results in an immediate and substantial reduction in net emissions relative to a reference case of commercial harvesting. We calibrated models to simulate scenarios of native forest management for two Australian case studies: mixed-eucalypt in New South Wales and Mountain Ash in Victoria. Carbon stocks in the harvested forest included forest biomass, wood and paper products, waste in landfill, and bioenergy that substituted for fossil fuel energy. The conservation forest included forest biomass, and subtracted stocks for the foregone products that were substituted by non-wood products or plantation products. Total carbon stocks were lower in harvested forest than in conservation forest in both case studies over the 100-year simulation period. We tested a range of potential parameter values reported in the literature: none could increase the combined carbon stock in products, slash, landfill and substitution sufficiently to exceed the increase in carbon stock due to changing management of native forest to conservation. The key parameters determining carbon stock change under different forest management scenarios are those affecting accumulation of carbon in forest biomass, rather than parameters affecting transfers among wood products. This analysis helps prioritise mitigation activities to focus on maximising forest biomass. International forest-related policies, including negotiations under the UNFCCC, have failed to recognize fully the mitigation value of native forest conservation. Our analyses provide evidence for decision-making about the circumstances under which forest management provides mitigation benefits.Retrofitting existing housing stock to improve energy efficiency is often required to meet climate mitigation, public health and fuel poverty targets. Increasing uptake and effectiveness of retrofit schemes requires understanding of their impacts on householder attitudes and behaviours. This paper reports results of a survey of 500 Kirklees householders in the UK, where the Kirklees Warm Zone scheme took place. This was a local government led city scale domestic retrofit programme that installed energy efficiency measures at no charge in over 50,000 houses. The results highlight key design features of the scheme, socio-economic and attitudinal factors that affected take-up of energy efficiency measures and impacts on behaviour and energy use after adoption. The results emphasise the role that positive feedback plays in reinforcing pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours of participants and in addressing concerns of non-participants. Our findings have implications for the design and operation of future domestic energy efficiency retrofit schemes.The beauty of cities is that every city is different. From the homogenizing perspective of global environmental change that speaks trouble. Weneed an understanding of which kind of cities can contribute what kind of measures to mitigate and adapt to global environmental change. Typologies of cities offer a bridge between the idiosyncratic and the global. Bounoua et al (2015 Environ. Res. Lett. 10 084010) analyse the impact of urbanization on surface climate. Wediscuss their results and suggest avenues for further systematic analysis.Transdisciplinary research teams offer an appropriate alternative to traditional research methods to address today's complex research problems. However, a lack of common technical language and differing attitudes on collaborative research can create challenges. This paper reports results of an evaluative survey on changes of collaborative capacity within a large transdisciplinary project. Our survey data, collected through pre-assessment (2011) and mid-assessment (2013) evaluation surveys of project participants, measured participants' attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs regarding transdisciplinary research. Paired samples t-tests were employed to compare measures from the same individuals at two points in time. The key variables were transdisciplinary attitudes, transdisciplinary behaviors, satisfaction with collaboration, perceived impacts of collaboration, and trust and respect. Changes over time were evaluated for the overall project team and by project role subgrouping that included principal investigators, professional and technical staff, graduate students, advisory board members, and extension educators. The analysis examined the following research questions: (1) Do participants' attitudes and behaviors toward the transdisciplinary process change over the course of the project? (2) Do these changes vary by participant role? Results indicate that while transdisciplinary behaviors did not significantly change for most of the role subgroups, advisory board members showed a decrease in transdisciplinary behaviors from the pre-assessment to the mid-assessment evaluation. Analysis of the other measures consistently showed a positive increase in mean scores from the pre- to the mid-assessment with one exception. Graduate student scores on the transdisciplinary attitude scale decreased over time. Understanding how participant perceptions may change over the course of a project and how project roles may influence these changes is important to managing effective long-term transdisciplinary projects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Given the high expectations for lignocellulosic biomass as one of the potential solutions for energy security and climate change mitigation, commercial scale studies over several rotations are crucial to assess the potential and the sustainability of short rotation coppice (SRC) cultures for bioenergy. The first and the second rotation of the SRC poplar (Populus) plantation of the present study differed significantly in biomass yield and in productivity determinants and their relationships. Coppicing enhanced leaf area development, radiation interception and woody biomass productivity. High total leaf area and radiation use efficiency (RUE) equally contributed to the high biomass yield during the establishment rotation, while RUE became the most important determinant of biomass yield after coppice. The study confirmed the significant genotypic variation in biomass productivity and its underlying determinants, also among more recently selected poplar genotypes. The absence of a correlation between intercepted radiation and RUE suggests the potential of selecting for genotypes combining high total leaf area and photosynthetic carbon uptake in future breeding programs for yield maximization towards sustainable bioenergy cultivation.The paper addresses the evaluation of climate models and gives an overview of epistemic uncertainties in climate modeling; the uncertainties concern the data situation as well as the causal behavior of the climate system. In order to achieve reasonable results nonetheless, multimodel ensemble studies are employed in which diverse models simulate the future climate under different emission scenarios. The models jointly deliver a robust range of climate prognoses due to a broad plurality of theories, techniques, and methods in climate research; the range reliably indicates the future development of the global climate. Nevertheless, the uncertainties are widely used by skeptics to challenge the IPCC's prognoses. Such skeptical allegations can well be distinguished from points of fruitful epistemological criticism: in spite of the enduring range of prognoses, the epistemic uncertainties should not play a role in finding agreements on climate change mitigation.The world population of humans isforecastto exceed 9 billion by 2050 (Nations U 2012). Most growth is expected in developing countries alongside a trend for increased wealth and urbanisation, leading to unprecedented consumer demand for foods of animal origin (Nations U 2012). However, livestock are responsible for around 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions worldwide (FAO 2006), and increased agricultural production must be sustainable against a background of climate change and limitations on land availability (Foresight 2011). Without complete reliance on potentially human-edible food, dairy production can be energetically efficient compared to farming non-ruminants (Wilkinson 2011). However microbial ruminal fermentation of cellulosic feeds releases methane, a greenhouse gas with at least 25 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide (Herrero and others 2011). Methane has been identified as an important target for short term climate change mitigation strategies, and thus dairy producers will be required to reduce emissions (Knapp and others 2014). However this must occur alongside an increase in productivity and economic efficiency. Oestrus detection efficacy is a common limiting factor in dairy herd reproductive management, and synchronisation programmes allowing pre-set (fixed time) artificial insemination have become popular, particularly for large herds with limited labour (Caraviello and others 2006). However routine use of hormonal therapy has been highlighted as an ethical dilemma, and some veterinarians may be reluctant to recommend this approach (Higgins and others 2013). As demand for dairy products on the world market increases, milk prices tend to become more volatile (Lips and Relder 2005). To remain profitable and competitive, farmers may need to both adopt new technologies, and make optimal use of existing ones to reduce the cost of producing milk. Importantly, this should also be achieved with minimal adverse environmental impact. As farming develops in the face of future demands, it is important that common practices can be justified to all interested parties. Despite potentially adverse public perception, hormonal interventions for dairy herds could have benefits to society through reduction in methane emissions in addition to financial benefit for the farmer, and this has not previously been considered. This study predicts the magnitude and between herd variation in changes of methane emissions and production efficiency associated with interventions to improve reproductive efficiency in dairy cows. Data for 10,000 herds of 200 cows were simulated. Probability of conception was predicted daily from the start of the study (parturition) for each cow up to day 300 of lactation. Four scenarios of differing first insemination management were simulated for each herd using the same theoretical cows: A baseline scenario based on breeding from observed oestrus only, synchronisation of oestrus for pre-set first insemination using Ovsynch, both with and without progesterone supplementation, and a regime using prostaglandin treatments followed by first insemination to observed oestrus. Cows that did not conceive to first insemination were re-inseminated following detection of oestrus. For cows that conceived, gestation length was 280 days with cessation of milking 60 days before calving. Those cows not pregnant after 300 days of lactation were culled and replaced by a heifer after a 60 day lag period. Daily milk yield was calculated for 730 days from the start of the study for each cow. Change in mean reproductive and economic outputs were summarised for each herd following the 3 interventions. For each scenario, methane emissions were determined by daily forage dry matter intake, forage quality, and cow replacement risk. Linear regression was used to summarise relationships. In some circumstances improvement in reproductive efficiency using the programmes investigated was associated with reduced cost and methane emissions compared to reliance on detection of oestrus. Efficiency of oestrus detection and the time to commencement of breeding after calving influenced variability in changes in cost and methane emissions. For an average UK herd (DairyCo 2014) this was a saving of at least 50 per cow and a 3.6% reduction in methane emissions per L of milk when timing of first insemination was pre-set using Ovsynch. The global warming potential of this change is equivalent to that from 2 cars, a family home, or 21 barrels of oil. Work is in progress to adapt the simulation model described as an excel based tool for field use. This will enable decision making based on the likely cost effectiveness of these intervention for specific herds.Carbon market projects have focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, often at the expense of achieving sustainable development goals. A central pillar in sustainable development is equity, yet most projects pay little attention to equity implications for underrepresented farmers, especially women. Agricultural carbon market projects that explicitly seek to promote sustainable agricultural land management practices are quickly gaining attention worldwide for their promise to deliver the triple-win': adaptation, food security, and mitigation. Previous experience with other payment for ecosystem services projects indicate that women often are marginalized and their needs ignored. To address this gap, this case study examined the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project with a focus on gender equity in access, decision making, and outcomes. Results show that women had less access to joining the project than men, because they did not have the same level of influence in decision making at a household level. At the project level, both men and women had little influence in establishing project requirements and potential benefits, as these were decided upon prior to farmer recruitment. Regarding outcomes, women tended to participate in more project activities, and would in return reap more nonmonetary benefits than men. However, the costs involved in achieving these benefits was nontrivial: women's farm labor time increased significantly due to the substantial time and effort required to implement sustainable agricultural land management practices. If agricultural soil carbon market projects are to achieve better outcomes by addressing equity issues, they need to pay special attention to gender and the differing needs of farmersmale, female, young, old, poor, and less poorby involving them at the project design stage. Our findings show the importance of additional project benefits unrelated to carbon income for addressing the requirements of equity perceived by both the implementing agency and women themselves.The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is home to one of the most important industrial regions in Europe, and is the first German state to have adopted its own Climate Protection Law (CPL). This paper describes the long-term (up to 2050) mitigation scenarios for NRW's main energy-intensive industrial sub-sectors which served to support the implementation of the CPL. It also describes the process of scenario development, as these scenarios were developed through stakeholder participation. The scenarios considered three different pathways (best-available technologies, break-through technologies, and CO2 capture and storage). All pathways had optimistic assumptions on the rate of industrial growth and availability of low-carbon electricity. We find that a policy of re-industrialisation for NRW based on the current industrial structures (assumed here to represent an average growth of NRWs industrial gross value added (GVA) of 1.6% per year until 2030 and 0.6% per year from 2030 to 2050), would pose a significant challenge for the achievement of overall energy demand and German greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets, in particular as remaining efficiency potentials in NRW are limited. In the best-available technology (BAT) scenario CO2 emission reductions of only 16% are achieved, whereas the low carbon (LC) and the carbon capture and storage (CCS) scenario achieve 50% and 79% reduction respectively. Our results indicate the importance of successful development and implementation of a decarbonised electricity supply and breakthrough technologies in industrysuch as electrification, hydrogen-based processes for steel, alternative cements or CCSif significant growth is to be achieved in combination with climate mitigation. They, however, also show that technological solutions alone, together with unmitigated growth in consumption of material goods, could be insufficient to meet GHG reduction targets in industry.The main objective of this article is to assess the priorities of local governments (LGs) in Europe regarding climate change mitigation technologies evaluation in the electricity sector and to provide important insights for energy policy design. The study applies a hybrid weighting methodology to elicit LGs' preferences in a constructive and iterative way regarding the evaluation criteria of low-carbon energy technologies. Furthermore, the study employs three data collection and preference elicitation methods, namely: survey, workshop, and webinar. The study was conducted across thirty one (31) European LGs that were categorized according to three variables: population size, geographical region and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The analysis shows that CO2 emissions is the most important criterion among European LGs, followed by mortality and morbidity and ecosystem damages. The results illustrate the potential synergies of climate and energy policies for addressing both CO2 emissions and air pollution. It was also found, based on a correlation analysis, that LGs with higher GDP per capita tend to provide higher weights to criteria related to security of energy supply and technological innovation. The current study provides insights on the actual LGs' priorities that are important to consider during low-carbon energy technologies evaluation and energy policy design. Interestingly, the results of the European LGs' preferences clearly show that the EU climate policy objectives have reached different levels of governanceand at this particular case, the local level. Furthermore, the developed methodology could be applied at different geographical regions to map other regions' LG priorities, but also at a group decision making context to elicit relevant stakeholders' preferences regarding low-carbon energy technologies and policy objectives.We calculate values of forest carbon sequestration and nutrient recycling applying the replacement cost method. The value is then determined as the savings in costs by the replacement of more expensive abatement measures with these ecosystem services in cost-effective climate and nutrient programs. To this end, a dynamic optimization model is constructed, which accounts for uncertainty in sequestration. It is applied to the Stockholm-Malar region in southeast Sweden where the EU 2050 climate policy for carbon emissions and the Baltic Sea action plan for nutrient discharges are applied. The results show that the value of carbon and nutrient sequestration can correspond to approximately 0.5% of the region's gross domestic product, or 40% of the value of productive forest. The largest part of this value is attributed to carbon sequestration because of the relative stringency in targets and expensive alternative abatement measures. However, sequestration is uncertain because of stochastic weather conditions, and when society has a large risk aversion for not attaining climate and nutrient targets, the values of the forest carbon and nutrient sequestration can approach zero.Planted forest plays a significant role in carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation; however, little information has been available on the distribution patterns of carbon pools with stand ages in Pinus massoniana Plantations. We investigated the biomass stock and carbon sequestration across a chronosequence ( 3-, 5-, 7-, 9-, 12-, 15-, 19-, 29-, 35- and 42- year) of stands with the main objectives: ( 1) to determine the biomass and carbon stock of the forest ecosystem; and ( 2) to identify factors influencing their distribution across the age series. Simple random sampling was used for collecting field data in the ten ( 10) stand ages. Three 20 x 20 m standard plots were laid out in February 2015 across the chronosequence. The diameter at breast height ( DBH) and tree height ( H) of each tree within each plot were measured using calipers and height indicator. Sub- plots of 2 x 2 m were established in each main plot for collecting soil samples at a 0- 30- and 30- 60- cm depth. Plantation biomass increased with increasing stand ages, ranging from 0.84 tonnes per hectare ( t . ha- 1) in the three- year stand to 252.35 t . ha- 1 in the 42- year stand. The aboveground biomass ( AGB) contributed 86.51%; the maximum value is 300- times the minimum value. Carbon concentrations and storage in mineral soil decreased with increasing soil depth, but were controlled by the management history of the ecosystem. The total ecosystem carbon storage varies with stand ages, ranging from 169.90 t . ha- 1 in the five-year plantation to 326.46 t . ha- 1 in the 42- year plantation, of which 80.29% comes from the mineral soil carbon and 19.71% from the vegetation. The ratio of the total carbon sequestration by the 42- year to the three-year stand was 1.70, implying substantial amounts of carbon accumulation during the transition period from young to mature- aged trees. The forest ecosystem had the capacity of storing up to 263.16 t . ha- 1 carbon, assisting in mitigating climate change by sequestrating 965.83 t . ha- 1 of CO2 equivalents, indicating that the forest is an important carbon sink.Wastewater heat recovery via heat exchangers and heat pumps constitutes an environmentally friendly, approved and economically competitive, but often underestimated technology. By introducing the spatial dimension in feasibility studies, the results of calculations change considerably. This paper presents a methodology to estimate thermal energy resource potentials of wastewater treatment plants taking spatial contexts into account. In close proximity to settlement areas, wastewater energy can ideally be applied for heating in mixed-function areas, which very likely have a continuous heat demand and allow for an increased amount of full-load hours compared to most single-use areas. For the Austrian case, it is demonstrated that the proposed methodology leads to feasible results and that the suggested technology might reduce up to 17% of the Austrian global warming potential of room heating. The method is transferrable to other countries as the input data and calculation formula are made available. A broad application of wastewater energy with regard to spatial structures and spatial development potentials can lead to (1) increasing energy efficiency by using a maximum of waste heat and (2) a significant reduction of (fossil) energy consumption which results in a considerable reduction of the global warming potential of the heat supply (GWP) if electricity from renewables is used for the operation of heat pumps.Planting forests is an important practice for climate change mitigation, especially in the tropics where the carbon (C) sequestration potential is high. Successful implementation of this mitigation practice requires knowledge of the role of species identity and diversity on carbon accrual of plantations. Despite this need, solid data on the long-term development of forest plantations are still very scarce. Monospecific and two species mixture plots of a 77-year-old tree diversity experiment in Yangambi in the Congo basin were fully inventoried. We calculated above-ground C stocks using allometric equations, and soil C stocks by analyzing soil samples at multiple depths. Linear mixed effects models were used to analyze the effect of taxonomic and functional identity and diversity on the aboveground and soil carbon stocks. A high variability in aboveground C stocks across tree species combinations was observed. Apart from a species identity effect, the proportion of planted species in the total stand basal area (BA(pl)) and effective species richness were identified as compositional parameters with a significant effect on the aboveground carbon (AGC), with BApl being more important. Both AGC and BA(pl) were coupled to the functional identity of the planted species; the planting of short-lived pioneers led to low AGC. We found no clear benefits, but also no drawbacks, for AGC of two species mixture plots over monospecific plots or including nitrogen fixing species in the plantation scheme. However, the latter was the only compositional parameter with a significant positive effect on the soil carbon stock up to 1 m depth. We conclude that the different plantation configurations gave rise to a wide range in carbon stocks. This was predominantly caused by large differences in AGC sequestration over the past 77 years. Altogether, short-lived pioneer species had a low BApl resulting in low carbon sequestration, while partial shade tolerant species achieved the highest AGC stocks. Tolerating spontaneous ingrowth during the plantation development can further increase the AGC stock, given that the appropriate functional type is planted.Studies indicate that medicinal plants are threatened by climate change impacts. In Kenya, this sector is further threatened by lack of formal recognition and neglect of indigenous curative knowledge by the allopathic healthcare and education sectors. Though a significant reduction of medicinal plants and knowledge could increase vulnerability in rural areas, few studies have analysed governance of this important ecosystem service. Therefore, I use the ecosystem service governance approach that incorporates monetary valuation, climate governance and social network analysis to holistically assess the herbal medicinal sector in Loitoktok district. Findings reveal the lucrative income earned by herbalists, diverse coping measures implemented to sustain local supply of medicinal plants and the disassociated social network structure that hinders capacity development, promotes illegal medicinal plants' trade and perpetuates negative view of herbal medicine. To resolve these structural hindrances, my suggestion is to use the network weaving process to optimally position the medicinal plants sector in enhancing carbon sequestration, poverty alleviation, medical tourism, plant conservation and the Maasai culture. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.We assess the regional and global integrated radiative forcing on 20- and 100-year time horizons caused by a one-year pulse of present day pollution emissions from 10 megacity areas: Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Sao Paulo, Lagos, Cairo, New Delhi, Beijing, Shanghai and Manila. The assessment includes well-mixed greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4); and short-lived climate forcers: tropospheric ozone (O-3 and fine mode aerosol particles (sulfate, nitrate, black carbon, primary and secondary organic aerosol). All megacities contribute net global warming on both time horizons. Most of the 10 megacity areas exert a net negative effect on their own regional radiation budget that is 10-100 times larger in magnitude than their global radiative effects. Of the cities examined, Beijing, New Delhi, Shanghai and New York contribute most to global warming with values ranging from +0.03 to 0.05 Wm(-2)yr on short timescales and +0.07-0.10 Wm(-2)yr on long timescales. Regional net 20-year radiative effects are largest for Mexico City (-0.84 Wm(-2)yr) and Beijing (-0.78 Wm(-2)yr). Megacity reduction of non-CH4 O-3 precursors to improve air quality offers zero co-benefits to global climate. Megacity reduction of aerosols to improve air quality offers co-benefits to the regional radiative budget but minimal or no co-benefits to global climate with the exception of black carbon reductions in a few cities, especially Beijing and New Delhi. Results suggest that air pollution and global climate change mitigation can be treated as separate environmental issues in policy at the megacity level with the exception of CH4 action. Individual megacity reduction of CO2 and CH4 emissions can mitigate global warming and therefore offers climate safety improvements to the entire planet. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Liability for causing or failing to mitigate climate change has long been proposed as an alternative, or backstop, to lagging international cooperation. Thus far, there has been very limited success in holding governments or individuals responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are considered the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change. The recent landmark decision in Urgenda Foundation v. Government of the Netherlands (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) breaks with this tradition. In June 2015, the Dutch District Court (The Hague) held that the current climate policies of the government are not sufficiently ambitious for it to fulfil its duty of care towards Dutch society. The judgment, and the accompanying order for the government to adopt stricter GHG reduction policies, raises important questions about the future of climate change liability litigation, the separation of powers between the judiciary and the legislature, and the effect of litigation on international climate change negotiation and cooperation.This article assesses monetary and non-monetary benefits from the Bimbia-Bonadikombo community forest in the Mt. Cameroon region, South West Cameroon. The assessment is carried out through a financial audit of revenues and expenditures of the Bimbia-Bonadikombo Natural Resources Management Council which manages the community forest, and through semi-structured interviews of community forest users, waged employees, and local elites involved in managing the community forest. The article finds that monetary benefits from the community forest is meagre, but this has not discouraged a group of elites motivated by a desire for land control from taking an active interest in managing the community forest. This article contributes to an understanding of non-monetary incentives behind the establishment of community forests. The article uses its findings to draw the attention of advocates for the inclusion of community forestry in climate change mitigation programmes, to not only focus on the financial benefits of such programmes, but to also vigorously promote the non-monetary benefits of such programmes, especially the possible resolution of communal land tenure issues.Young adults in the Global North occupy a contradictory environmental identity: they are purportedly more environmentally concerned than older generations, but are also labelled hedonistic consumers. Most studies have focused on young adults still residing in parental homes, neglecting that Generation Y (born between 1975 and 1991) has 'grown up'. The consumption patterns and environmental implications of their newly established households demand scholarly attention. Through a large-scale household sustainability survey, conducted in Australia, we have uncovered important inter-generational differences in environmental attitudes and everyday domestic practices. We found that generational cohorts hold distinct environmental attitudes. Younger households were most concerned with climate change, and least optimistic about future mitigation. However, generational differences influenced everyday domestic practices in more complex ways. All households engaged extensively with those 'pro-environ mental' practices that reflected established cultural norms, government regulations and residential urban form. For other pro-environmental practices there were clear differences, with Generation Y households being the least engaged. A widening 'value-action gap' was apparent across our sample population, from oldest to youngest. However, rather than reflecting Generation Y's supposed hedonism, we argue that this gap reflects generational geographies: how lifecourse intersects with housing and labour markets and norms of cleanliness to shape everyday domestic practices. Our research illuminates the shortcomings of a one-size-fits-all approach to household sustainability. The young adult stage is a time of transition during which homes and independent lifestyles are established, and practices are altered or become entrenched, for better or worse. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Harrington (J Public Econ 37: 29-53, 1988) shows that a suitable strategy for regulators to make enforcement more efficient is to target surveillance resources according to past compliance records. Such scheme generates enforcement leverage as non-compliance triggers greater future scrutiny increasing the expected costs of non-compliance beyond the avoidance of immediate fines. In this paper, we propose an improved transition structure for the audit framework, in which targeting is based not only on firms' past compliance record but also on adoption of environmentally superior technologies. We show that this transition structure would not only foster the adoption of new technology but also increase deterrence by changing the composition of firms in the industry toward an increased fraction of cleaner firms that pollute and violate less.This study aims to quantify the environmentally sustainable and economically feasible potentials of agricultural and agro-industrial residues to generate electricity via direct combustion in centralised power plants in Brazil. Further, the energy savings and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction potential of replacing natural gas-based electricity by bioenergy have been assessed. To this end, a methodology has been developed based on an integrated evaluation, incorporating statistical and geographical information system (GIS)-based analysis, and a life-cycle-assessment approach. Results reveal that the environmentally sustainable generation potential is nearly 141 TWh/year, mainly concentrated in the South, Southeast, and Midwest regions of the country. Sugarcane, soybean and maize crop residues are the major feedstocks for available bioenergy. On the other hand, the economic potential is far lower, accounting to 39 TWh/year. The total GHG mitigation is nearly 18 million tonne CO(2)e and could reach 64 million tonne CO(2)e yearly, if the technical potential is considered. The gap between technical and economic potentials implies that constraints to bioenergy are not related to a lack of resources, but rather associated to economic, logistical, regulatory and political barriers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass equations are essential for evaluating the climate change mitigation potential of forests through biomass accumulation and carbon sequestration. In northern Iran's Hyrcanian forests, topographic relief is so extreme that developing biomass equations from destructive sampling of trees is physically challenging. In this paper, allometric biomass and leaf area equations were developed for three common Hyrcanian tree species: Oriental beech (Fagus orientalis Lipsky), chestnut-leaved oak (Quercus castaneifolia C.A. Mey.), and common hornbeam (Carpinus betulus L.). A total of 30 trees, ranging in diameter at breast height (DBH) from 21 to 90 cm, were felled and stems, branches, twigs, and leaves from each tree were measured and weighed. Allometric equations for estimating biomass from DBH and height and their combinations were derived. Model comparison and selection were based on R-2, Akaike's information criterion (AIC), prediction error sums of squares, model standard error estimate (SEE), Delta AIC, and correction factor. The best-fit equations had adjusted R-2 values between 0.81 to 0.98 and SEE values between 0.351 and 0.681. The allometric equations provide improved methods for predicting forest biomass and carbon storage in Hyrcanian forests from standard forestry measurements, which means these equations may be applied to historical and new forest data.This study assesses the value of enhanced spatial resolution in the agriculture and land use component of an integrated assessment (IA) model. IA models typically represent land use decisions at finer resolution than the energy and economic components, to account for spatial heterogeneity of land productivity and use. However, increasing spatial resolution incurs costs, from additional input data processing, run time, and complexity of results. This study uses the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) to analyze land use in the Midwestern United States in three levels of spatial aggregation, and three climate change mitigation scenarios. For visualization and simplification of higher resolution model output, we use nonmetric multidimensional scaling. We find that the level of spatial aggregation influences the magnitude but not the direction of land use change in response to the modeled drivers, and in the examples analyzed, increasing spatial resolution reduces the extent of land use change. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During the past decade, the application of agricultural production systems modelling has rapidly expanded while there has been less emphasis on model improvement. Cropping systems modelling has become agricultural modelling, incorporating new capabilities enabling analyses in the domains of greenhouse gas emissions, soil carbon changes, ecosystem services, environmental performance, food security, pests and disease losses, livestock and pasture production, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. New science has been added to the models to support this broadening application domain, and new consortia of modellers have been formed that span the multiple disciplines. There has not, however, been a significant and sustained focus on software platforms to increase efficiency in agricultural production systems research in the interaction between the software industry and the agricultural modelling community. This paper describes the changing agricultural modelling landscape since 2002, largely from a software perspective, and makes a case for a focussed effort on the software implementations of the major models. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing the energy and carbon efficiency of homes has been at the forefront of international climate change mitigation policy. In Australia, recent policy action led to the introduction of minimum energy efficiency standards for new homes within the Building Code of Australia in 2003, with subsequent stringency increases in 2006 and 2010. Although not yet reflecting international best regulatory practice, these standards represent substantial progress in addressing the energy and carbon emission impact of new homes, yet there are a number of energy policy challenges that highlight the need for further change. This paper documents the history of house energy standards in Australia and examines the post-occupancy evidence of that policy outcome. The paper examines international and domestic issues pointing to a possible future direction for Australian house energy regulation, highlighting the key drivers for change. In particular, we investigate the concepts of net zero carbon and net zero energy homes which have recently been adopted internationally, examining the technical and economic evidence that would support such a policy position in Australia.For several decades the leading wind energy nations were European, while China and India were mainly the recipients of technology transfer. This paper aims to explore the role technology transfer/cooperation from Europe played in shaping firm-level wind energy technologies in China and India and to discuss whether the recent technology cooperation between the Chinese, Indian, and European wind firms challenges the classical North-South technology cooperation paradigm. The research finds that firm-level technology transfer/cooperation shaped the leading wind energy technologies in China and to a lesser extent in India. The paper also finds that several trends towards South-North technology cooperation have been observed between China, India and Europe, such as South-North flows of capital, drivers for market access, and R&D leadership, while the origins of innovation (e.g. patents) seem to remain predominantly in the global North. The paper concludes that the technology cooperation between China, India, and Europe has become more multi-faceted and increasingly Southern-led. (C) 2015 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Biochar has potentials for soil fertility improvement, climate change mitigation and environmental reclamation, and charred biomass can be deliberately incorporated into soil for long-term carbon stabilization and soil amendment. Many different methods have been used for biochar production ranging from laboratory to industrial scales. However, in countryside of developing countries, biomass is generally used for cooking but not charred. Biochar production techniques at farmer scale have remained poorly developed. We developed and tested biochar production kilns for farmers with a dimension of 50.8 cm x 38.1 cm (height x diameter), using three different setups for optimizing oxygen (O-2) limitation and syngas circulation: airtight with no syngas circulation (Model I), semi-airtight with external syngas circulation (Model II) and semi-airtight with internal syngas circulation (Model III). A comparative assessment of these biochar production kiln models was made considering biochar pyrolysis time, fuel to biomass ratio, biochar to feedstock ratio and thermogravimetric index (TGI). Among the models, the best quality biochar (TGI = 0.15) was obtained from Model I kiln taking the longest time for pyrolysis (12.5 h) and the highest amount of fuel wood (1.22 kg kg(-1) biomass). Model III kiln produced comparatively good quality biochar (TGI = 0.11), but with less fuel wood requirement (0.33 kg kg(-1) biomass) and shorter pyrolysis time (8.5 h). We also tested Model III kiln in a three times larger size under two situations (steel kiln and pit kiln). The biochar to feedstock ratio (0.38) and quality (TGI = 0.14) increased slightly for the larger kilns. Quality of biochar was found to be mainly related to pyrolysis time. The costs for the biochar stove and pit kiln were US$ 65-77, while it was US$ 154 for the large size steel kiln. Model III kiln can potentially be used for both cooking and biochar production at farmer scale.The objective of this research is to conduct a quantitative analysis of China's sub-national Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) performance as a case study of unbalanced CDM performance within a CDM host country. Key results are as follows: First, investment climate is the most decisive factor, which can explain about 48 % (adjusted R-squared) of China's sub-national CDM performance at significance level 0.1 %. Second, general economic and investment conditions have a collective determination effect, which together explain about 50 % (adjusted R-squared) of sub-nationall CDM performance. Third, when compared with previous research in which the economic and investment conditions explain about 55 % (adjusted R-squared) of unbalanced CDM performance on the international level, it becomes clear that the impact of the economic and investment conditions on China's sub-national unbalanced CDM performance resembles the unbalanced performance at the international level. Hence, we conclude that the sub-national unbalanced CDM performance in China is similar to that of the international level, and is influenced by similar determining factors. This finding casts doubt on the previous policy suggestion to fix the geographically unbalanced CDM performance simply by national discrimination, such as by revoking CDM eligibility of an entire host country. Consequently, a more tailored approach is advisable to manage that eligibility on the sub-national level. This is a more precise response to geographically unbalanced CDM performance and is less likely to discourage participation of the dominant CDM host countries in international climate mitigation.This study examines pyrolysis-based electricity generation and ethanol production using various crops and agricultural residuals in Taiwan. It analyzes the net economic and environmental effects within the framework of the Extended Taiwanese Agricultural Sector Model by incorporating ongoing and potential gasoline, coal and GHG (greenhouse gas) prices. The study discusses the effects of agricultural shifts, which have several important implications for the Taiwanese bioenergy development. First, the cost of collecting rice straw is much lower than the production cost of other energy crops, implying that the efficient use of agricultural waste may eventually result in positive social effects in terms of farmers' revenue, the renewable energy supply and GHG emissions offset. Second, farmers with idle land usually suffer a lower steady income. Encouraging the development of the renewable energy industry increases the demand of raw feedstocks, which involves converting the idle land into cultivation and increasing farmers' revenue. Third, agricultural waste is usually burned and emits CO2, which accelerates the global climate shift. Approximately one third of emissions could be offset by rice straw-based bioenergy in certain cases. Turning this waste into bioenergy, which offsets net GHG emissions, has positive effects on the climate change mitigation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We introduce a new method for incorporating short-term temporal variability of both power demand and VRE (variable renewables) into long-term energy-economy models: the RLDC approach. The core of the implementation is a representation of RLDCs (residual load duration curves), which change endogenously depending on the share and mix of VRE. The approach captures major VRE integration challenges and the energy system's response to growing VRE shares without a considerable increase of numerical complexity. The approach also allows for an endogenous representation of power-to-gas storage and the simultaneous optimization of long-term investment and short-term dispatch decisions of non-VRE plants. As an example, we apply the RLDC approach to REMIND-D, a long-term energy-economy model of Germany, which was based on the global model REMIND-R 1.2. Representing variability results in significantly more non-VRE capacity and reduces the generation of VRE in 2050 by about one-third in baseline and ambitious mitigation scenarios. Explicit modeling of variability increases mitigation costs by about one fifth, but power-to-gas storage can alleviate this increase by one third. Implementing the RLDC approach in a long-term energy-economy model would allow improving the robustness and credibility of scenarios results, such as mitigation costs estimates and the role of VRE. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents economic benefit estimates of air quality improvements in Europe that occur as a side effect of GHG emission reductions. We consider two climate policy scenarios from two representative concentration pathways (RCPs), in which radiative forcing levels are reached in 2100. The policy tool is a global uniform tax on all GHG emissions in the integrated assessment model WITCH. The resulting consumption patterns of fossil fuels are used to estimate the physical impacts and the economic benefits of pollution reductions on human health and on key assets by implementing the most advanced version of the ExternE methodology with its impact pathway analysis. The mitigation scenario compatible with + 2 degrees C (RCP 2.6) reduces total pollution costs in Europe by 84%. Discounted cumulative ancillary benefits are equal to about (sic)1.7 trillion between 2015 and 2100, or (sic)17 per abated tonne of CO2 in Europe. The less strict climate policy scenario (RCP 4.5) generates benefits equal to (sic)15.5 per abated tonne of CO2. Without discounting, the ancillary benefits are equal to (sic)46 (RCP 2.6) and (sic)51 (RCP 4.5) per tonne of CO2 abated. For both scenarios, the local benefits per tonne of CO2 decline over time and vary significantly across countries.Organic carbon (OC) sequestration in degraded semi-arid environments by improved soil management is assumed to contribute substantially to climate change mitigation. However, information about the soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration potential in steppe soils and their current saturation status remains unknown. In this study, we estimated the OC storage capacity of semi-arid grassland soils on the basis of remote, natural steppe fragments in northern China. Based on the maximum OC saturation of silt and clay particles <20m, OC sequestration potentials of degraded steppe soils (grazing land, arable land, eroded areas) were estimated. The analysis of natural grassland soils revealed a strong linear regression between the proportion of the fine fraction and its OC content, confirming the importance of silt and clay particles for OC stabilization in steppe soils. This relationship was similar to derived regressions in temperate and tropical soils but on a lower level, probably due to a lower C input and different clay mineralogy. In relation to the estimated OC storage capacity, degraded steppe soils showed a high OC saturation of 78-85% despite massive SOC losses due to unsustainable land use. As a result, the potential of degraded grassland soils to sequester additional OC was generally low. This can be related to a relatively high contribution of labile SOC, which is preferentially lost in the course of soil degradation. Moreover, wind erosion leads to substantial loss of silt and clay particles and consequently results in a direct loss of the ability to stabilize additional OC. Our findings indicate that the SOC loss in semi-arid environments induced by intensive land use is largely irreversible. Observed SOC increases after improved land management mainly result in an accumulation of labile SOC prone to land use/climate changes and therefore cannot be regarded as contribution to long-term OC sequestration.The projected growth in global food demand has resulted in increased attention towards underutilized crops with the potential to improve global food security and ability to mitigate adverse effects of climate changes. Changing consumer demands in favour of more nutritiously balanced and organically grown crops have added to the interest in species such as amaranth. Promoting the consumption and cultivation of amaranth could be valuable due to its unique nutrient composition and inherent tolerance of drought and other stress factors. Due to current and predicted effects of climate changes, these attributes are becoming increasingly important. Amaranth is a source of high quality protein, as well as dietary fibre and lipids rich in unsaturated fatty acids. The seeds contain desirable levels of minerals, vitamins for human diets, in addition to other bioactive components such as phytosterols, squalene, fagopyritols, saponins and polyphenols. Amaranth is currently in demand by specific consumer groups, such as high-performance athletes, malnourished children, and people suffering from diabetes and coeliac disease. Even so, there are few detailed analyses available concerning the potential for using amaranth to improve and support agricultural productivity in developing countries. The present review has assessed the promotion and improvement of amaranth production in East Africa to hold subtstantial potential for benefitting small-holder farmers in Africa, by providing a stable source of income and food for subsistence farmers, while also mitigating the impact of climate change through the prospect of supporting the establishment of food and nutritional security.Peatland rewetting aims to restore biomass accumulation from peat-forming plants for climate change mitigation, biotope conservation and water purification purposes. Boreal spruce swamp forests in Europe have suffered heavily from drainage for forestry and are now a focus of restoration efforts. We measured Sphagnum height and biomass increment by allowing Sphagnum to grow through mesh nets located in nine undrained, nine drained and 18 rewetted boreal spruce swamp forests. At the moss patch level, rewetting led to a recovery of Sphagnum growth: height increment and biomass increment at the rewetted sites (5907cmyear(-1) and 14715gm(-2)year(-1), meanSE) were similar to increment at the undrained sites (49 +/- 05cmyear(-1) and 128 +/- 12gm(-2)year(-1)), while remnant patches of Sphagnum at the drained sites showed smaller increment (28 +/- 08cmyear(-1) and 76 +/- 19gm(-2)year(-1)). Sphagnum in the ditches at the drained sites showed similar increment as the moss at the undrained and rewetted sites, while ditches at the rewetted sites had the greatest increment (87 +/- 07cmyear(-1) and 183 +/- 16gm(-2)year(-1)). A higher water-table increased Sphagnum growth, and Sphagnum riparium grew more rapidly than the other species. At the ecosystem level, where information on moss cover was utilized, rewetting had increased Sphagnum production to values close to the undrained sites. At the drained sites, biomass production was 8 +/- 17g (mean +/- SE) m(-2)year(-1), at the rewetted sites 42 +/- 15gm(-2)year(-1) and at the undrained sites 66 +/- 12gm(-2)year(-1). Sphagnum cover was the most important variable that determined Sphagnum production in the ecosystem.Synthesis and applications. Drained spruce swamp forests appear to be a suitable target for restoration as they respond readily to rather inexpensive rewetting. The result points out that even in boreal conditions, restoration results can be achieved in a time-scale of years rather than decades. At the ecosystem level, rewetting had resulted in a biomass gain of 34gm(-2)year(-1) when compared to drained sites. Drained spruce swamp forests appear to be a suitable target for restoration as they respond readily to rather inexpensive rewetting. The result points out that even in boreal conditions, restoration results can be achieved in a time-scale of years rather than decades. At the ecosystem level, rewetting had resulted in a biomass gain of 34gm(-2)year(-1) when compared to drained sites.We examine the effects of crop management adaptation and climate mitigation strategies on land use and land management, plus on related environmental and economic outcomes. We find that crop management adaptation (e.g. crop mix, new species) increases Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 1.7 % under a more severe climate projection while a carbon price reduces total forest and agriculture GHG annual flux by 15 % and 9 %, respectively. This shows that trade-offs are likely between mitigation and adaptation. Climate change coupled with crop management adaptation has small and mostly negative effects on welfare; mitigation, which is implemented as a carbon price starting at $15 per metric ton carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent with a 5 % annual increase rate, bolsters welfare carbon payments. When both crop management adaptation and carbon price are implemented the effects of the latter dominates.While many studies have measured the carbon (C) stocks of traditional agroforests at the plot level, their contribution to overall landscape C storage has rarely been quantified. Here we demonstrate the significant contribution that traditional agroforests with shaded tree crops can make to landscape C storage, and thus climate change mitigation, focusing on the cocoa (Theobroma cacao) agroforests (locally known as cabrucas) of southern Bahia, Brazil. Using published allometric relationships and tree inventories of 55 shaded cocoa farms, 6 mature forests, 8 disturbed forests and 7 fallows, we calculate average aboveground C stocks of 87 and 46 Mg ha(-1) in traditional and intensified cocoa agroforests, respectively, 183 Mg ha(-1) in old-growth forests, 102 Mg ha(-1) in disturbed forests and 33 Mg ha(-1) in fallows. Based on the most recent land cover data available, we estimate that cocoa agroforests hold 59 % of the total aboveground C stocks of the tree dominated vegetation in this landscape, while forests hold 32 % and fallows hold 9 %. Carbon stocks of intensified cocoa agroforestry systems were only little over one-half of those of traditional agroforests, indicating a threat to landscape C stocks from current land use trends. We show that in agroforests as in natural forests, C stocks are highly concentrated in the largest trees. This suggests that the intensification of traditional agroforests, which generally involves increasing the density of cocoa and other tree crops and reducing the density of shade trees, is possible without greatly affecting their C storage if large trees are conserved. In order to conserve the climate stabilizing effect of traditional agroforests and steer necessary intensification measures towards climate-friendly solutions, we suggest that biodiversity and C-rich traditional agroforests should be included in current discussions about Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and/or their owners be rewarded for their environmental services through other incentive mechanisms.Previous research findings display that after having seen popular climate change films, people became more concerned, more motivated and more aware of climate change, but changes in behaviors were short-term. This article performs a meta-analysis of three popular climate change films, The Day after Tomorrow (2005), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and The Age of Stupid (2009), drawing on research in social psychology, human agency, and media effect theory in order to formulate a rationale about how mass media communication shapes our everyday life experience. This article highlights the factors with which science blends in the reception of the three climate change films and expands the range of options considered in order to encourage people to engage in climate change mitigation actions.Biofuels are promoted in a wide-scale as a means of achieving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Biofuels derived from lignocellulosic biomass, particularly from agricultural crops are being massively supported worldwide for meeting multiple strategy objectives such as climate change mitigation, energy security and development of the rural economy. Recently, the negative implications of using food crops for fuel have been realized to possess a significant threat towards global food security and competition for arable land. In contrast, lignocellulosic biomass in the form of waste residues from agriculture, forestry and energy crop systems are geographically abundant worldwide and have the potential to support the sustainable production of liquid transportation fuels. This paper encompasses the improvement in biofuels sector in relation to revitalizing and restraining the rural economies across the globe along with the global statistics for lignocellulosic biomass availability. In addition, the socio-environmental impacts of energy and greenhouse gas emissions from biomass conversion technologies have been addressed through highlights on life-cycle assessment of several biomasses. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Thermal regulation is a key ecosystem service provided by urban plants. In addition to summer cooling, plants can insulate buildings against heat loss in winter. Research was conducted over two winters using replicated small-scale physical models to simulate heat loss from a built structure and to investigate the insulation properties of plants during cold weather. Brick cuboids were constructed around a water tank maintained at 16 degrees C and energy use monitored. Covering cuboids with ivy (Hedera helix) reduced mean energy consumption by 21% compared to bare cuboids during the first winter (means of 4.3 and 5.4 kWh per week, respectively). During the second winter, when foliage was more extensive a 37% mean saving was achieved (3.7 compared to 5.9 kWh per week). The presence of Hedera enhanced brick temperatures significantly compared to bare walls. Temperature differences were affected by weather parameters, aspect, diurnal time and canopy density. Largest savings in energy due to vegetation were associated with more extreme weather, such as cold temperatures, strong wind or rain. Under such scenarios green facades could increase energy efficiency by 40-50% and enhance wall surface temperatures by 3 degrees C. These empirical studies with replicated treatments augment previous research based on urban modelling and data from non-replicated individual buildings in situ. They indicate that planting design requires more attention to ensure the heat saving aspects associated with green facades and shelter belts are optimised. These aspects are discussed within the context of wider urban ecosystem services provided by vegetation, and implications for climate change mitigation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Soil carbon sequestration, a climate change mitigation option for agriculture, can either increase or decrease as a result of land management change (LMC) and land use change (LUC). To estimate all greenhouse gas (GHG) exchanges associated with various agricultural systems, life cycle assessments (LCAs) are frequently undertaken. To date LCA practitioners have not had a well-defined procedure to account for soil C in their assessments and as a consequence it is often not included. In this study, various methods used to estimate soil C changes due to (i) LMC and (ii) LUC are examined to assess soil C accounting methodologies in the life cycle inventory (LCI) of agricultural LCAs. A compromise between accuracy and completeness in LCA methods is necessary. A ranking of the preference of soil C accounting methods is suggested based on user expertise and data quality. For large scale assessment, the timing of soil CO2 emissions should be taken into account. If indirect LUC is relevant, a sensitivity analysis of assessment methods should be conducted because the methods highly affect assessment results. A common soil C accounting method that can be easily applied in agricultural LCA needs to be established and an agreement on indirect LUC methods will facilitate the assessment of LMC and LUC within agricultural LCAs. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The link between climate change and livestock production has made carbon footprint based on life cycle assessment a world-wide indicator to assess and communicate the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of product. Nevertheless, the majority of studies have not included soil carbon sequestration in the carbon footprint calculations. Especially in grasslands, soil carbon sequestration might be a potential sink to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the livestock sector. However, there is no commonly accepted methodology on how to include soil carbon sequestration in carbon footprint calculations. In this study, the carbon footprint of sheep milk was estimated from 12 farms in Northern Spain. Before taken into account contribution from soil carbon sequestration in the calculation, the carbon footprint values varied from 2.0 to 5.2 kg CO2 eq. per kg Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM). Milk from semi-intensive systems with foreign breeds kept indoors had significantly lower carbon footprint than milk from semi-extensive systems with local breeds and grazing in mountain uplands during summer. However, no difference was found in the carbon footprint of sheep milk from different systems and breeds when soil carbon sequestration was included in the calculations. Four different approaches to estimate and include soil carbon sequestration in the carbon footprint calculations were tested. This study highlights the importance of including soil carbon sequestration in the carbon footprint calculations. Furthermore, it highlights the climate mitigation potential of the grazing systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) is an important technological option for climate change mitigation. Utilization (U) of this captured CO2 as raw material for Electrochemical Reduction (ER) has been suggested as a valorization option to produce organics such as formate-based products. Previous work has focused on the influence of operating conditions or the selected cathodic material on the faradaic efficiency and distribution of products. The environmental sustainability of formate production through the ER of CO2 has been assumed rather than investigated. In this study, we perform a life cycle assessment, focusing on resources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Even though the processes reported in the literature result in a wide range of GHG emissions for the ER of CO2 to formate-based products from 32 to 519 kg CO2-eq center dot(kg HCOO-)(-1), this is higher than the current commercial production processes (3.1 kg CO2-eq center dot(kg HCOO-)(-1)). The consumption of chemicals by the electrolysis and of steam in the purification of the final formate products are found to be the dominant causes of environmental burdens of the integrated process. A future scenario under very optimistic conditions suggests 0.33 kg CO2-eq center dot(kg HCOO-)(-1) thus presenting a potential pathway to an environmentally sustainable CO2 utilization option. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.International political negotiations and national policy for climate change mitigation are increasingly focussed on the mobilisation and scale up of investments in clean energy infrastructure. This paper aims to develop the understanding of how institutional investors in the private sector perceive barriers to scaling up investment into clean energy infrastructure and what policy solutions to those barriers they advocate. This paper adds to existing scientific knowledge through a clear focus on private sector perceptions. Through the analysis of previous public statements from organisations and coalitions in the finance sector a number of investment barriers were identified. These initial barriers fed into a Delphi process. The outputs of the Delphi process were categorized into five sets of barriers and a number of policy solutions associated with investing into clean energy solutions. We conclude that there is a need for better engagement with the institutional investment community to ensure further effort on policy development that underpins investments at scale is effective and efficient. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Subsurface power grids constitute one of the largest copper stocks in many industrialized cities. Over time, parts and zones of these systems have been continuously disconnected and abandoned, resulting in the emergence of urban infrastructure ores. This study aims to assess how current conditions and practices influence economic and environmental motives of cable recovery from such power grids. By applying an infrastructure manager's perspective and evaluating 16 scenarios involving different extraction technologies and procedures, surface materials, urban locations and types of cables, we identify key areas where solutions or changes to increase incentives for cable recovery are needed. The assessed scenarios display significantly different cable extraction costs, where excavation in city centers with asphalt or cobblestone pavements generates the highest costs while greenbelts offer the best conditions. In most cases, cable revenues are not even close to outweighing the extraction costs. This is especially true for paper-coated cables or cables with aluminum conductors, for which the revenues are much lower than for plastic-insulated copper cables. Although economic conditions could be improved by integrating cable recovery to regular system upgrade projects or by applying non-digging technologies, clear incentives rely on the cable in question being especially valuable. Most of the cable recovery scenarios display environmental motives in terms of net savings in GHG emissions due to metal recycling. In contrast to the economic results, recycling of aluminum power cables is here more awarding than that of corresponding copper cables. We conclude that under current conditions urban mining does not make economic sense to infrastructure managers unless it is integrated as an added value to system upgrade projects. Apart from such re-arrangements in infrastructure provision, several other practice-related changes to cut cable extraction costs are possibly within reach for the managers. Still, an economically motivated practice relies on several external performance drivers such as market diffusion of non-digging technologies, improved cable recycling processes, and increased scrap metal prices. Our conclusion that the arguments for urban mining are currently more environmental than financial, points towards changed perspectives where such activities are seen as a way for infrastructure managers to contribute to societal goals such as climate change mitigation and reduced mineral resource dependence. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the southern Pyrenees, human population and therefore land uses have changed from forests to pastures, then crops, and back to pastures and secondary forests during the last two centuries. To understand what such rapid land use changes have meant for carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) stocks, we used data from two forest sites in the western Pyrenees, combined with regional data on pastures and crop production (potato, cereal), to calibrate the ecosystem-level model FORECAST. Then, we simulated 150 years of land use for each site, emulating historical changes. Our estimates show that the conversion from forests into pastures and crops created C and N deficits (378-427 Mg C ha(-1), 4.0-4.6 Mg N ha(-1)) from which these sites are still recovering. The main ecological process behind the creation of these deficits was the loss of the ecological legacy of soil organic matter (SUM) created by the forest, particularly during conversion to farming. Pastures were able to reverse, stop or at least slow down the loss of such legacy. In conclusion, our work shows the deep impact of historical land use in ecosystem attributes, both in magnitude of removed C and N stocks and in duration of such impact. Also, the usefulness of ecological modeling in absence of historical data to estimate such changes is showcased, providing a framework for potential C and N stocks to be reached by climate change mitigation measures such as forest restoration. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change mitigation demands large-scale technological change on a global level and, if successfully implemented, will significantly affect how products and services are produced and consumed. In order to anticipate the life cycle environmental impacts of products under climate mitigation scenarios, we present the modeling framework of an integrated hybrid life cycle assessment model covering nine world regions. Life cycle assessment databases and multiregional input output tables are adapted using forecasted changes in technology and resources up to 2050 under a 2 degrees C scenario. We call the result of this modeling "technology hybridized environmental-economic model with integrated scenarios" (THEMIS). As a case study, we apply THEMIS in an integrated environmental assessment of concentrating solar power. Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for this plant range from 33 to 95 g CO2 eq./kWh across different world regions in 2010, falling to 30-87 g CO2 eq./kWh in 2050. Using regional life cycle data yields insightful results. More generally, these results also highlight the need for systematic life cycle frameworks that capture the actual consequences and feedback effects of large-scale policies in the long term.Urban areas play a key role in climate change mitigation. We investigate here energy systems design to increase the use of renewable electricity (RE) such as photovoltaics and wind power in cities. We analyzed the hourly temporal and spatiotemporal energy demand and supply patterns in Delhi, Shanghai and Helsinki to understand how energy systems respond to high RE shares, and to determine realizable levels of RE power. The results indicate that if limiting the RE output to the instantaneous power demand, a 20% yearly share of electricity could be reached. Increasing the RE beyond this limit without a smart design adds only limited benefit. Adding short-term electrical storage could increase the RE share of power in Shanghai to 50-70%, in Delhi to 40-60%, and in Helsinki to 25-35%. An electricity-to-thermal conversion strategy in which surplus RE power is utilized for heating, enables to increase the wind power use in Helsinki up to 64% of the yearly electricity demand, but in addition, to cover 30% of the yearly heat demand. Such a scheme would add ca 10% to the overall wind power investment. A high RE share affects the existing power mix and the plant capacity factors, which need to be re-optimized. In the above cases, RE replaces fossil fuel and coal power plants and therefore the CO2 emission reductions from smart design are proportional to the RE shares shown. Smart energy system design could help mainstreaming renewable electricity as part of the cities' carbon reduction strategies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concerns about mitigating and adapting to climate change resulted in renewing the incentive for agricultural research investments and developing further innovation priorities around the world particularly in developing countries. In the near future, development of new agricultural measures and proper diffusion of technologies will greatly influence the ability of farmers in adaptation and mitigation to climate change. Using bibliometric approaches through output of academic journal publications and patent-based data, we assess the impact of research and development (R&D) for new and existing technologies within the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation. We show that many developing countries invest limited resources for R&D in relevant technologies that have great potential for mitigation and adaption in agricultural production. We also discuss constraints including weak infrastructure, limited research capacity, lack of credit facilities and technology transfer that may hinder the application of innovation in tackling the challenges of climate change. A range of policy measures is also suggested to overcome identified constraints and to ensure that potentials of innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation are realized. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper suggests a novel model for analysing carbon sequestration activities in dry land agriculture considering the water-food-energy-climate nexus. The paper is based on our on-going studies on photovoltaic water pumping (PVWP) systems for irrigation of grasslands in China. Two carbon sequestration projects are analysed in terms of their water productivity and carbon sequestration potential. It is concluded that the economic water productivity, i.e. how much water that is needed to produce an amount of grass, of grassland restoration is low and that there is a need to include several of the other co-benefits to justify the use of water for climate change mitigation. The co-benefits are illustrated in a nexus model including (1) climate change mitigation, (2) water availability, (3) downstream water impact, (4) energy security, (5) food security and (6) moisture recycling. We argue for a broad approach when analysing water for carbon sequestration. The model includes energy security and food security together with local and global water concerns. This makes analyses of dry land carbon sequestration activities more relevant and accurate. Without the nexus approach, the co-benefits of grassland restoration tend to be diminished. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gases are the prime cause of climate change, to which India is a significant party. Globally the issue of sub-national or local emissions is increasingly gaining relevance, particularly post-2009, when greater-half of the world has become urbanized for the first time in the human history. International Energy Agency, in its World Energy Outlook report estimates that 70% of the greenhouse gases are produced within the cities. But, there is limited empirical evidence to substantiate such claims in the Indian context. It being a developing country with a large rural population base, the carbon footprint of cities goes unnoticed. On the other hand, unreeling economic growth and rapid urbanization during the last two decades, coupled with limited data in the subject pressingly seeks a systematic determination of urban emission baseline. This research analyzes historic trends of urbanization, thermal power generation and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, and evaluates their growth trajectories for the imminent future. This paper is also a first time investigation of urban India's (covering over 7000 Indian towns and cities) contribution of GHG emissions. In absence of any international protocol or a standard methodology to estimate urban GHG burdens of a nation, this paper deals with theoretical issues evident while allocating city emissions like methodological differences, defining 'urban' and its boundary and the need to consider downscaling of nationally reported emissions using spatial analysis based on production or location perspective of the most significantly contributing sector namely, energy. Dataset of 454 thermal units reported by Central Electricity Authority for 2011-12 from over hundred coal, diesel, gas and liquid fuel based gas turbine plants has been assessed. The individual plants are verified for their name, capacity, generation and local address from their respective state generation corporations or electricity boards, as applicable. They are then spatially located real time, using universally available (and verifiable) web-based mapping tool of Google Earth and Wikimapia. The information has been assessed on the urban-rural gradient, using population based Census definition for class/hierarchy of towns and their location with respect to the urban boundary. The thermal power plants have eventually been classified within the urban area, on the periphery, transitional or rurban and absolutely rural. The results present an array of emissions, across the urban hierarchy and location in space, underpinning how substantial GHG emissions are attributable to urban and urbanizing areas. The research puts forth, with strong evidence, that in contrast to the general postulation, urban settlements radically contribute to national carbon footprint, which is further bound to increase with urbanization. The findings bear significance to influence research, policy and action in energy and urban sectors and greater cross-sector integration for co-benefits in climate change mitigation at the local city level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.According to the recent IPCC reports, the effects from anthropogenic climate change effects are becoming more serious and actions more urgent. The global mean concentration of CO2, the most important Greenhouse Gas (GHG), in the atmosphere is now close to 400 ppm. The most comprehensive research efforts concerning safe levels propose that we should strive to keep the atmospheric concentration of CO2 below 350 ppm. This is also a more transparent global goal than using effects in the components of the climate system. Most scenarios show that the combustion of fossil fuels will increase in the future, while the development of renewables is still too marginal to stop this growth. The possibility that countries will leave fossil resources underground does not seem realistic. The only options in the short run to halt emissions of CO2 are the large-scale application of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in combination with increased energy efficiency. In the long run, we have to radically transform our societal metabolism towards greater resource efficiency, where renewables can play a more important role. The main barriers for implementation of CCS on a large scale are not technical, but economic and social. As long as the costs for emitting CO2 are much lower than implementing CCS technology, there will not be a market-driven development of CCS. A major challenge for CCS will be to achieve wide public acceptance, since this will also affect the future political attitude to it. This will require an open communication about safety aspects early in the planning phase, where it can be shown that safety issues can be handled, even in the event of major leaks of CO2. To assume a low probability of accidents is not a feasible way forward in the communication process. The future concerning CO2 emissions will be determined very much by actions of the biggest emitters. The developed countries have already emitted a large amount of CO2 and must now take a step forward to show that they are willing to invest in CCS technology. At this stage, it is reasonable to expect developed countries to take a leading role in developing the CCS technology on a large-scale. It is highly probable that developing countries like China will follow this path in the near future, since they have a clear ambition to take a lead in climate change mitigation in the long run and to avoid blame for a deteriorating environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 shows that deforestation has slowed and afforestation has increased globally during 1990-2015. Planted forests have increasingly provided goods and services hitherto derived from natural forests, and mosaic forests in agricultural landscapes are increasing. Forest gain is occurring at higher latitudes and in richer countries whilst forest loss continues in poor countries in the tropics. Some middle income tropical countries are now also transitioning to forest gain. These transition countries are characterised by reforms to forest management and improvements in agricultural practices but also by significant expansions of planted forest, which account for similar to 25-100% of gains. Forest-area estimates of the FRA align with satellite-derived estimates, with deviations of <=+/- 7% globally and <=+/- 17% for the tropics. Mosaics comprised of trees outside forests, remnant forest patches, and young regenerating forests constitute a modest proportion of the tropical forest estate and are seemingly well inventoried by the FRA. Extensive areas of forest experienced partial canopy cover reduction since 2000, particularly in the tropics where their area is similar to 6.5 times that deforested since 1990. The likelihood of the eventual loss of these forests and a decline in their capacity to provide goods and services is a matter of concern. Demand for industrial wood and fuelwood increased 35% in the tropics since 1990, principally in poorer countries, and growth in demand will accelerate into the future, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Notwithstanding significant increases in forests within protected areas since 1990 to 517 Mha (16.3%) globally and 379 Mha (26.6%) in the tropics, increasing demands for ecological services, forest products, and climate change mitigation is likely to be met from an expanding area of planted forests more than from the declining area of natural forests, particularly in Africa. The global rate of planted-forest expansion since 1990 is close to a target rate of 2.4% per annum necessary to replace wood supplied from natural forests in the medium term, though the expansion rate has declined to 1.5% since 2005. Multiple-use forests permitting both production and conservation account for 26% of the global forest area and 17% of the tropical forest area, and have increased by 81.8 Mha or 8.5% globally since 1990, with most gains in the tropics. Sustainable forest management in low-income and tropical countries remains modest, with only 37% low-income country forests covered by forest inventories. International support has proven effective at increasing this coverage since 2010. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.There is under way a worldwide greening of industry, driven by the huge demand generated by China and India as emerging industrial giants whose growth cannot be accommodated by business as usual' fossil-fuelled developmentfor reasons having as much to do with energy security as concerns over global warming and climate change. While the role played in this process by fiscal and industry policies (e.g. carbon taxes and other market-based incentives) is well understood (even if not pursued currently in Australia), the potentially powerful leverage to be exercised by trade policy is under-recognised. There are some positive developments such as a proposed Environmental Goods Agreement being discussed in Geneva, while there are negative developments embodied in various bilateral and regional trade agreements such as the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, to which Australia has committed itself. There are rising levels of conflict over trade and climate change mitigation measures, in actions brought at the WTO against countries looking to promote green industries through measures like local content requirements being attached to foreign direct investment, or by countries imposing border tax adjustments against exporters who allegedly fail to implement carbon taxes. The issues involved are discussed in this paper and possible ways forward are proposed, along with some implications for Australia.A large portion of foreign assistance for climate change mitigation in developing countries is directed to clean energy facilities. To support international mitigation goals, however, donors must make investments that have effects beyond individual facilities. They must reduce barriers to private-sector investment by generating information for developers, improving relevant infrastructure, or changing policies. We examine whether donor agencies target financing for commercial-scale wind and solar facilities to countries where private investment in clean energy is limited and whether donor investments lead to more private investments. On average, we find no positive evidence for these patterns of targeting and impact. Coupled with model results that show feed-in tariffs increase private investment, we argue that donor agencies should reallocate resources to improve policies that promote private investment in developing countries, rather than finance individual clean energy facilities.Policy relevanceWe suggest that international negotiations could usefully shift the focus of climate change finance towards adaptation in exchange for mitigation-improving policy reforms in developing countries. There is little evidence that mitigation-related financing is having broader effects on energy production, so new financial arrangements should be the focus of future negotiations. Additionally, international donors should focus efforts on reforming policies to attract private investment.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to dramatically reduce GHG emissions in energy supply and industry. However, its high costs mean that uncertainty about the stringency of future climate policy may dissuade firms from investing in this technology. This article explores the relationship between firms expectations of government policy and investment in CCS. First, it synthesizes recent cost estimates for CCS applications in electricity generation and oil sands extraction in Canada. Second, it uses these estimates to investigate the potential impact of policy stringency and uncertainty on CCS adoption in Alberta, a Canadian province with near-ideal CCS potential. The results suggest investment in CCS, and by extension other costly abatement actions, will not occur unless governments create a more stringent and durable climate policy environment than currently exists.Policy relevanceThis paper has two novel and linked objectives, the first of significant utility to researchers and energy modellers in particular, the second to climate policy analysts and decision makers. First, it synthesizes publicly available carbon capture and storage literature and develops cost estimates for key applications related to thermal electricity generation and oil sands extraction in Canada. Second, it uses these cost estimates to investigate the potential impact of policy stringency and uncertainty on carbon capture and storage adoption in Alberta, Canada. Alberta is a test case for CCS due to its fossil resources and high CO2 storage potential, and the technology's success or failure in this jurisdiction should be of interest to policy makers elsewhere.With market-mechanisms likely to achieve emission reductions at lower cost than alternative approaches, there is a presumption that they will be embraced by those who are serious about achieving ambitious reductions. Two broad messages exist; there is already considerable activity and some ambition in many parts of the world - a fragmented but embryonic global' trading landscape is emerging - and there are efforts at UN level to provide a unifying framework for these bottom-up developments. The topography of interest and response varies considerably across groups of countries, and there have been delays in making progress on a unifying framework. This article analyses the current carbon market landscape in terms of market dynamics and market-mechanism developments whilst undertaking an examination of how climate change negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is shaping the future carbon market landscape. This work shows that the combination of existing, emerging, and potential carbon market-mechanisms can be regarded as an emerging pre-2020 fragmented global' carbon market landscape based on differing bottom-up market based approaches. One outcome of a 2015 Climate Agreement could be a post-2020 global carbon market which would include new domestic and international market initiatives such as the Framework for Various Approaches and New Market Mechanism, together with reformed Kyoto mechanisms.Policy relevanceWith the 2015 Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) expected to see Parties commit to ambitious mitigation commitments, post-2020 could see significant Party (& industry) investment in market-mechanisms and associated emissions units in an effort to achieve some of the abatement cost minimization offered by market approaches. This article is written for those who have an interest in understanding what is happening - and what is not happening - as regards the emergence of market-related approaches to GHG mitigation globally in the run up to the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC which meets in Paris in December 2015, and what could be the shape of things to come post-2020.International climate mitigation efforts are focused on limiting increase in global mean temperature, which has been shown to be proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions. However, the ability of natural and human systems to successfully adapt to climatic changes depends on both the magnitude and rate of change, the latter of which will depend on how quickly a given level of cumulative emissions occurs. We show that cumulative CO2 emissions of 4620 GtCO(2) (reached in 2100 in RCP4.5 and 2057 in RCP8.5) produce globally averaged warming rates that are nearly twice as fast in RCP8.5 than RCP4.5 (0.34 +/- 0.08 degrees C per decade versus 0.19 +/- 0.05 degrees C per decade, respectively). Similarly, the globally averaged velocity of climate change calculated according to the 'nearest equivalent climate' is greater by a factor of similar to 2 in RCP8.5 than in RCP4.5 (2.51 +/- 0.67 km yr(-1) versus 1.32 +/- 0.39 km yr(-1), respectively), despite equivalent cumulative emissions. These differences in the projected velocity of climate change represent uncertainty for ecosystems that may be unable to adapt to the faster changes. Particularly at risk are boreal forests, of which 48% are projected to experience rates of change beyond their expected adaptive capacity (i.e. >0.3 degrees C per decade) in RCP4.5, compared with 95% in RCP8.5. Thus, the same budget of cumulative carbon emissions may result in critically different impacts on natural and human systems, depending on the amount of time over which that budget is expended.Development and climate goals together constrain the carbon intensity of production. Using a simple and transparent model that represents committed CO2 emissions (future emissions expected to come from existing capital), we explore the carbon intensity of production related to new capital required for different temperature targets across several thousand scenarios. Future pathways consistent with the 2 degrees C target which allow for continued gross domestic product growth require early action to reduce carbon intensity of new production, and either (i) a short lifetime of energy and industry capital (e.g. early retrofit of coal power plants), or (ii) large negative emissions after 2050 (i.e. rapid development and dissemination of carbon capture and sequestration). To achieve the 2 degrees C target, half of the scenarios indicate a carbon intensity of new production between 33 and 73 gCO(2)/$-much lower than the global average today, at 360 gCO(2)/$. The average lifespan of energy capital (especially power plants), and industry capital, are critical because they commit emissions far into the future and reduce the budget for new capital emissions. Each year of lifetime added to existing, carbon intensive capital, decreases the carbon intensity of new production required to meet a 2 degrees C carbon budget by 1.0-1.5 gCO(2)/$, and each year of delaying the start of mitigation decreases the required CO2 intensity of new production by 20-50 gCO(2)/$. Constraints on the carbon intensity of new production under a 3 degrees C target are considerably relaxed relative to the 2 degrees C target, but remain daunting in comparison to the carbon intensity of the global economy today.BACKGROUND: the reduction in red meat consumption has been proposed as one of the climate change mitigation policies associated to health benefits. In the developed world, red meat consumption is above the recommended intake level. OBJECTIVES: the aim is to evaluate health benefits, in term of mortality decline, associated to different bovinemeat consumption reduction scenarios and the potential reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. DESIGN: meat consumption in Italy has been estimated using the Italian National Food Consumption Survey INRAN-SCAI (2005-2006) and the Multipurpose survey on household (2012) of the Italian National Institute for Statistics. Colorectal cancer and stoke mortality data are derived from the national survey on causes of death in 2012. Bovine meat consumption risk function has been retrieved from systematic literature reviews. Mean meat consumption in Italy is equal to 770 grams/week; gender and geographical variations exist: 69 per cent of the adult population are habitual bovinemeat consumers; males have an average intake of over 400 grams/week in all areas of Italy (with the exception of the south), while females have lower intakes (360 grams per week), with higher consumption in the North-West (427 gr) and lower in the South of Italy. Four scenarios of reduction of bovine meat consumption (20%, 40%, 50% e 70%, respectively) have been evaluated and the number of avoidable deaths by gender and area of residence have been estimated. GHG emissions attributed to bovine meat adult consumption have been estimated to be to 10 gigagrams CO2-eq. RESULTS: from low to high reduction scenario, the percentage of avoidable deaths ranged from 2.1% to 6.5% for colorectal cancer and from 1.6% to 5.6% for stroke. Health benefits were greatest for males and for people living in the North-Western regions of Italy. CONCLUSIONS: in Italy, in order to adhere to bovine meat consumption recommendations and to respect EU GHG emission reductionWinter rye (Secale cereale L.) cover crop (RC) has potential to reduce NO3-N loss from corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] fields. However, RC effects on annual crop productivity and corn optimal N fertilization requirement are unclear. The objectives were to evaluate corn and soybean yield response to RC and corn optimal N rate. Treatments were no-RC and RC with six fertilizer N rates (0-225 kg N ha(-1)) applied to corn in a no-till corn-soybean (CS) rotation at four Iowa sites in 2009 through 2011. The RC biomass and N uptake was low, with a maximum of 1280 kg dry matter (DM) ha(-1) and 26 kg N ha(-1), respectively. In the no-N control, the RC reduced soil profile NO3-N by 15 kg N ha(-1) only at time of RC control before corn planting. Corn canopy sensing, plant height, and plant population indicated more N stress, reduced plant stand, and slower growth with RC. The RC reduced corn grain yield by 6% at the economic optimum N rate (EONR). The EONR was the same with no-RC and RC, but plant N uptake efficiency (PUE) was reduced at low N rates with RC, but not above the EONR. Soybean yield was not affected by RC. Results indicate N fertilization rate should be the same with or without RC. Improvement in RC systems and management could make RC a more viable practice within no-till corn and soybean production.Subsurface drainage systems in Iowa increase the productivity of annual row crops, such as corn and soybeans, but also contribute to alterations in the hydrological balance of the region and leaching of nutrient pollutants, such as NO3-N. This study's objective was to determine whether perennial forage orchardgrass can reduce the volume and change the timing of subsurface drainage in tiled fields in Iowa, thereby contributing to reductions in NO3-N leaching and moderating changes in the hydrology. Research was conducted at Iowa State University's Agricultural Drainage Water Research Site, located in northwest Iowa. Six 0.05 ha plots (three control and three treatment plots), each including subsurface drainage with continuous flow monitoring, were planted to row crops (RC) consisting of either a corn-soybean rotation or continuous corn from 1990-2004 (the pretreatment period). During the treatment period (2006-2011), control plots remained in RC while treatment plots were planted to perennial forage (PF), a mixture of orchardgrass, red clover, and ladino clover, succeeding to a monoculture of orchardgrass. During the pretreatment period, control and treatment plots showed no difference in subsurface drainage. During the treatment period, over the entire drainage season (March to November), PF did not decrease subsurface drainage; however, during the month of May, PF decreased subsurface drainage by 32% (p < 0.05). Early spring, including May, is a critical period for drainage in Iowa, as wet field conditions and a lack of vegetative cover contribute to a majority of the drainage and leaching of NO3-N from row crop fields during this period. Further research including different perennial species is needed, and investigations in different geographical regions are needed, as differences in precipitation and weather will affect the timing and volume of subsurface drainage.Soil water potential () controls the dynamics of water in soils and can therefore affect greenhouse gas fluxes. We examined the relationship between soil moisture content () at five different levels of water potential ( = 0, -0.05, -0.1, -0.33 and -15 bar) and greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, CO2; nitrous oxide, N2O and methane, CH4) fluxes. The study was conducted in 2011 in a silt loam soil at Freeman farm of Lincoln University. Soil samples were collected at two depths: 0-10 and 10-20 cm and their bulk densities were measured. Samples were later saturated then brought into a pressure plate for measurements of and . Soil air samples for greenhouse gas flux analyses were collected using static and vented chambers, 30 cm in height and 20 cm in diameter. Determination of CO2, CH4 and N2O concentrations from soil air samples were done using a Shimadzu Gas Chromatograph (GC-14). Results showed that there were significant correlations between greenhouse gas fluxes and held at various in the 0-10 cm depth of soil group. For instance, at = 0 positively correlated with measured CO2 (p = 0.0043, r = 0.49), N2O (p = 0.0020, r = 0.64) and negatively correlated with CH4 (p = 0.0125, r = -0.44) fluxes. Regression analysis showed that 24%, 41% and 19% of changes in CO2, N2O and CH4 fluxes, respectively, were due to at = 0 (p < 0.05). This study stresses the need to monitor soil water potential when monitoring greenhouse gas fluxes.Urban areas play a very important role in global climate change. There is increasing need to understand global urban areas with sufficient spatial details for global climate change mitigation. Remote sensing imagery, such as medium resolution Landsat daytime multispectral imagery and coarse resolution Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) nighttime light imagery, has provided a powerful tool for characterizing and mapping cities, with advantages and disadvantages. Here we propose a framework to merge cloud and cloud shadow-free Landsat Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) composite and DMSP/OLS Night Time Light (NTL) to characterize global urban areas at a 30 m resolution, through a Normalized Difference Urban Index (NDUI) to make full use of them while minimizing their limitations. We modify the maximum NDVI value multi-date image compositing method to generate the cloud and cloud shadow-free Landsat NDVI composite, which is critical for generating a global NDUI. Evaluation results show the NDUI can effectively increase the separability between urban areas and bare lands as well as farmland, capturing large scale urban extents and, at the same time, providing sufficient spatial details inside urban areas. With advanced cloud computing facilities and the open Landsat data archives available, NDUI has the potential for global studies at the 30 m scale.In the latest projections of future greenhouse gas emissions for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), few Earth System Models included the effect of nitrogen limitation, a key process limiting forest regrowth. Few included forest management (wood harvest). We estimate the impacts of nitrogen limitation on the CO2 emissions from land use and land use change (LULUC), including wood harvest, for the period 1900-2100. We use a land surface model that includes a fully coupled carbon and nitrogen cycle and accounts for forest regrowth processes following agricultural abandonment and wood harvest. Future projections are based on the four Representation Concentration Pathways used in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, and we account for uncertainty in future climate for each scenario based on ensembles of climate model outputs. Results show that excluding nitrogen limitation will underestimate global LULUC emissions by 34-52PgC (20-30%) during the 20th century (range across three different historical LULUC reconstructions) and by 128-187PgC (90-150%) during the 21st century (range across the four IPCC scenarios). The full range for estimated LULUC emissions during the 21st century including climate model uncertainty is 91 to 227PgC (with nitrogen limitation included). The underestimation increases with time because (1) projected annual wood harvest rates from forests summed over the 21st century are 380-1080% higher compared to those of the 20th century, resulting in more regrowing secondary forests; (2) nitrogen limitation reduces the CO2 fertilization effect on net primary production of regrowing secondary forests following wood harvest and agricultural abandonment; and (3) nitrogen limitation effect is aggravated by the gradual loss of soil nitrogen from LULUC disturbance. Our study implies that (1) nitrogen limitation of CO2 uptake is substantial and sensitive to nitrogen inputs; (2) if LULUC emissions are larger than previously estimated in studies without nitrogen limitation, then meeting the same climate mitigation target would require an equivalent additional reduction of fossil fuel emissions; (3) the effectiveness of land-based mitigation strategies will critically depend on the interactions between nutrient limitations and secondary forests resulting from LULUC; and (4) it is important for terrestrial biosphere models to consider nitrogen constraint in estimates of the strength of future land carbon uptake.Climate mitigation is both a pressing and complex task, and one that frequently requires both participation, to involve stakeholders, and capacity building to enable them to change their practices. This paper considers whether the provision of climate advice to affected parties could be an effective policy activity in both respects. The article investigates the feasibility and potential influence of providing climate advice by examining the role that such advice has played in the discursive activities of agriculture extension consultants in Sweden. This case demonstrates that rather than promoting substantial change in practices, the climate issue is used to support conventional efficiency-increasing measures and to change the descriptions of prevailing agricultural activities. We find that the embedding of climate-related discourse within agricultural extension, and the lack of clear climate mitigation goals for the agricultural sector, reduced and adapted the climate issue, accommodating it to the narratives prevailing among farmers, which are well aligned with conventional economic rather than climate policy goals. This lock-in could be addressed by establishing clear and radical reduction targets and through the broader involvement of a wider range of stakeholders. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentThe European Union has set ambitious targets for deployment of renewable energy sources to reach goals of climate change mitigation and energy security policies. However, the current state of electricity transmission infrastructure is a major bottleneck for further scaling up of renewable energy in the EU. Several thousands of kilometers of new lines have to be constructed and upgraded to accommodate growing volumes of intermittent renewable electricity. In many countries, construction of electricity transmission projects has been delayed for several years due to concerns of local stakeholders. The innovative BESTGRID approach, reported here, brings together transmission system operators (TSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to discuss and understand the nature of stakeholder concerns. This paper has three objectives: (1) to understand stakeholder concerns about the deployment of electricity transmission grids in four pilot projects according to five guiding principles: need, transparency, engagement, environment, and impacts on human health as well as benefits; (2) to understand how these principles can be addressed to provide a basis for better decision-making outcomes; and (3) to evaluate the BESTGRID process based on feedback received from stakeholders and the level of participation achieved according to the ladder of Arnstein. This paper goes beyond a discussion of measures to mitigate opposition to understand how dialogue between TSOs and the publicrepresented mainly by NGOs and policy-makersmight lead to a better decision-making process and more sustainable electricity transmission infrastructure deployment.Gas hydrates in sub-seabed sediments is an unexploited source of energy with estimated reserves larger than those of conventional oil. One of the methods for recovering methane from gas hydrates involves injection of Carbon Dioxide (CO2), causing the dissociation of methane and storing CO2. The occurrence of gas hydrates offshore Portugal is well known associated to mud volcanoes in the Gulf of Cadiz. This article presents a determination of the areas with conditions for the formation of biogenic gas hydrates in Portugal's mainland geological continental margin and assesses their overlap with CO2 hydrates stability zones defined in previous studies. The gas hydrates stability areas are defined using a transfer function recently published by other authors and takes into account the sedimentation rate, the particulate organic carbon content and the thickness of the gas hydrate stability zone. An equilibrium equation for gas hydrates, function of temperature and pressure, was adjusted using non-linear regression and the maximum stability zone thickness was found to be 798 m. The gas hydrates inventory was conducted in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment and a full compaction scenario was adopted, with localized vertical flow assumed in the accrecionary wedge where mud volcanoes occur. Four areas where temperature and pressure conditions may exist for formation of gas hydrates were defined at an average of 60 km from Portugal's mainland coastline. Two of those areas coincide with CO2 hydrates stability areas previously defined and should be the subject of further research to evaluate the occurrence of gas hydrate and the possibility of its recovery coupled with CO2 storage in sub-seabed sediments.This paper applies probabilistic risk assessment in quantifying risks from cumulative and aggregate risk pathways for selected goitrogens in water and food. Results show that the percentages of individuals with a Hazard Index (HI) value above 1 ranges between 30% and 50% both with and without serum half-life correction when a traditional regulatory assessment approach based on establishment of a No Observed Effects Level (NOEL) is used. When an exposure-response curve is instead used and a threshold of 50% inhibition is assumed, 1.1% or less of the population exceeds an HI value of 1 with no serum half-life correction, rising to as high as 11% when serum half-life correction is applied. If 0% to 5% threshold for iodide uptake inhibition is assumed for production of adverse effects, the percentage of the population with an HI above 1 is 46.2% or less with no serum half-life correction, and 47.2% or less when serum half-life correction is applied. The probabilistic analysis shows that while there are exposed groups for whom perchlorate exposures are the primary cause of individuals having HI values above 1, these constitute significantly less than 1% of the population. Instead, the potential risk from exposure to goitrogens is dominated by nitrates without serum half-life correction and thiocyanates with serum half-life correction, suggesting public health protection is better accomplished by a focus on these and other goitrogens expect in highly limited cases where waterborne perchlorate is at unusually high concentrations.Encouraging sustainable water use is a critical endeavor in addressing issues associated with short- and long-term droughts. Toilets account for up to 26.7% of indoor household water use. Therefore substantial opportunity exists to conserve water via reduced flushing after urination at home. Here, we use an online survey (N = 1008) to identify barriers to reduced flushing. The majority of participants reported they always flush (63%) and believed that others should always flush. Social norms surrounding cleanliness are the most prevalent reasons for flushing. Results suggest four main barriers to reducing flushing: disgust sensitivity, habitual nature of flushing, norms regarding cleanliness, and lack of pro-environmental motivations. Participants who always flush are less likely to sacrifice for the environment than occasional flushers. Participants tended to underestimate average American water use and their own water use. Targeted interventions to decrease urine-related disgust and increase pro-environmental motivations may help achieve water conservation goals. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study investigates how the physical proximity of university-sponsored climate mitigation projects may moderate the relationship between affect and project support and impact public support for the respective projects. Using a mail survey (N = 667) of residents near a major university in New York State, we find that positive and negative affective responses to proposed climate mitigation projects have a stronger association with project support when the project will be implemented in close, as opposed to distant, physical proximity. In contrast, we do not find that the physical distance of project implementation moderates the relationship between affective responses to climate change in general and project support. In addition, we find no evidence of a NIMBY effect in public support/opposition to the particular projects, but do find that public support varies depending on the type of project that is being proposed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With growing pressure on primary forests from destructive land uses, increasing the diversity of native species plantations can increase ecosystem service provision, such as timber production or carbon sequestration, thus better supporting sustainable livelihoods. Understanding the effects of tree species composition on productivity can inform plantation design and ecological restoration strategies. However, tree species composition effects have been neglected in experimental biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) research. This study uses a 10-yr data set from one of the first tropical planted forest experiments established with native species and designed for BEF research at scales relevant to forest management. At our site in Sardinilla, Panama, we established plots containing 6 species from a pool of 18, in four combinations, to investigate how composition affects species and plot productivity. We used basal area as a proxy for productivity through time, measured annually, and summed this at species and plot levels for analysis. We found that plots that differed in species composition appeared to differ in temporal rate of basal area increase, but did not differ in BA after 10yr. Species were generally consistent in size between compositions, and composition performance was correlated with the size of component species, suggesting that species identities were most important in determining plot productivity. Our results suggest that species choice can be based on preferences for individual species, as species performance was consistent across composition contexts. We make recommendations for the use of particularly productive species that also provide multiple services such as Guazuma ulmifolia, Spondias mombin, and Anacardium excelsum. Resumen Con la presion cada vez mayor sobre los bosques primarios proveniente de utilizaciones del suelo destructivas, el aumento de la diversidad de plantaciones de especies nativas puede aumentar la prestacion de servicios de los ecosistemas, tales como la produccion de madera o la captura de carbono, y por lo tanto, aumentar el apoyo a medios de vida sostenibles. La comprension de los efectos de la composicion de las especies de arboles en la productividad, puede informar sobre el diseno de plantacion y las estrategias de restauracion ecologica. Sin embargo, los efectos de la composicion de especies de arboles se han descuidado en las investigaciones de funcion experimental de la biodiversidad en los ecosistemas o BEF por sus siglas en ingles. Este estudio utiliza un conjunto de datos de 10 anos de uno de los primeros experimentos establecido en bosques tropicales con especies nativas y disenado para la investigacion BEF a escalas relevantes para la gestion forestal. En nuestro sitio en Sardinilla, Panama, establecimos parcelas que contienen seis especies de un grupo de dieciocho anos, en cuatro combinaciones, para investigar como la composicion afecta las especies y la productividad en las parcelas. Utilizamos el area basal como proxy de la productividad a traves del tiempo, medido anualmente, y esto lo sumamos al nivel de las especies y las parcelas para el analisis. Se encontro que las parcelas que diferian en la composicion de especies parecian diferir en la tasa de incremento temporal de la zona basal pero no difirieron en el area basal despues de 10 anos. Las especies fueron generalmente consistentes en tamano entre las composiciones, y el rendimiento de la composicion se correlaciono con el tamano de las especies que lo componen, lo que sugiere que la identidad de las especies fue mas importante para determinar la productividad en la parcela. Nuestros resultados sugieren que la eleccion de las especies puede estar basada en las preferencias por las distintas especies, ya que el rendimiento de especies fue consistente en contextos de composicion. Hacemos recomendaciones para el uso de especies particularmente productivas que tambien ofrecen multiples servicios como Guazuma ulmifolia, Spondias mombin y Anacardium excelsum.By altering fluxes of heat, momentum, and moisture exchanges between the land surface and atmosphere, forestry and other land-use activities affect climate. Although long recognized scientifically as being important, these so-called biogeophysical forcings are rarely included in climate policies for forestry and other land management projects due to the many challenges associated with their quantification. Here, we review the scientific literature in the fields of atmospheric science and terrestrial ecology in light of three main objectives: (i) to elucidate the challenges associated with quantifying biogeophysical climate forcings connected to land use and land management, with a focus on the forestry sector; (ii) to identify and describe scientific approaches and/or metrics facilitating the quantification and interpretation of direct biogeophysical climate forcings; and (iii) to identify and recommend research priorities that can help overcome the challenges of their attribution to specific land-use activities, bridging the knowledge gap between the climate modeling, forest ecology, and resource management communities. We find that ignoring surface biogeophysics may mislead climate mitigation policies, yet existing metrics are unlikely to be sufficient. Successful metrics ought to (i) include both radiative and nonradiative climate forcings; (ii) reconcile disparities between biogeophysical and biogeochemical forcings, and (iii) acknowledge trade-offs between global and local climate benefits. We call for more coordinated research among terrestrial ecologists, resource managers, and coupled climate modelers to harmonize datasets, refine analytical techniques, and corroborate and validate metrics that are more amenable to analyses at the scale of an individual site or region.Forests provide many and large benefits, including cost-efficient climate change mitigation. However international carbon markets have not stimulated the demand for forestry offsets. Domestic market-mechanisms are emerging in many countries and forests could be highly valued through these policies as most of the benefits produced by forests are enjoyed locally. Here, a choice experiment explores drivers of valuation and willingness to pay for forest carbon services in voluntary markets in Mexico by comparing the valuation of citizens from four regions to test geographical preference for projects (n = 645). Findings from multinomial-logit models show valuation of forest carbon services is transferable and citizens would pay more for offsets from projects closer to their homes. Proximate forests provide a range of co-benefits to local users, including environmental services and opportunities for recreation. Factors related to valuation include sense of responsibility, previous knowledge of carbon emissions, previous visits to the sites, regional identification and the valuation of local environmental services (e.g. improvements in local air quality). Knowledge of spatial heterogeneity in valuation of the use of forest services can help to design market-based instruments by identifying highly valued areas for environmental services programs and carbon markets. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Motivating individuals to choose energy from sustainable sources over conventionally produced power constitutes one of the biggest policy challenges for societies(1,2). Here we present the results of a randomized controlled trial in Germany that tested the impact of default rules (that is, a type of 'nudging') on voluntary purchases of 'green' energy contracts that entirely stem from renewable resources. Setting the default choice to more expensive 'green' energy (that is, where consumers have to actively opt out if they do not want it) increased purchases of such nearly tenfold. Furthermore, county-level political preference for the green party uniquely predicted behaviour in the absence of the nudge, suggesting that default setting potentially overrules motivational aspects of green energy purchases. In follow-up experiments, we provide further evidence that the effect does not seem to be driven by unawareness. Summarizing, the present research provides an example of using behavioural science(3-9) for climate change mitigation and shows alternatives to the use of subsidies or other economic incentives.Geoengineering (also called climate engineering), which refers to large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system to counteract greenhouse gas-induced warming, has been one of the most rapidly growing areas of climate research as a potential option for tackling global warming. Here, we provide an overview of the scientific background and research progress of proposed geoengineering schemes. Geoengineering can be broadly divided into two categories: solar geoengineering (also called solar radiation management, or SRM), which aims to reflect more sunlight to space, and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which aims to reduce the CO2 content in the atmosphere. First, we review different proposed geoengineering methods involved in the solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal schemes. Then, we discuss the fundamental science underlying the climate response to the carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management schemes. We focus on two basic issues: 1) climate response to the reduction in solar irradiance and 2) climate response to the reduction in atmospheric CO2. Next, we introduce an ongoing geoengineering research project in China that is supported by National Key Basic Research Program. This research project, being the first coordinated geoengineering research program in China, will systematically investigate the physical mechanisms, climate impacts, and risk and governance of a few targeted geoengineering schemes. It is expected that this research program will help us gain a deep understanding of the physical science underlying geoengineering schemes and the impacts of geoengineering on global climate, in particular, on the Asia monsoon region.Biochar addition to soil is a promising option for climate change mitigation and is recognized to exert beneficial effects on soil fertility. However, recent meta-analysis documented controversial effects on soil plant interactions and on crop yields response. The data presented in this paper are the results of a field experiment on a processing tomato crop aiming to enhance the knowledge on the real applicability of biochar at farm scale in a high fertility alkaline soil. The effects of two biochar types on soil properties and on quantitative and qualitative parameters of processing tomato were evaluated. Biochar application significantly increased the soil carbon content, the soil cation exchange capacity and the availability of NH4(+), P and K. Moreover, it stimulated plant growth and N, P and base cation contents at harvest, reducing the leaf water potential in the warmer period. These results demonstrate that also intensive cultivations in fertile soil can benefit from biochar amendment. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It has recently been highlighted that the economic value of climate change mitigation depends sensitively on the slim possibility of extreme warming. This insight has been obtained through a focus on the fat upper tail of the climate sensitivity probability distribution. However, while climate sensitivity is undoubtedly important, what ultimately matters is transient temperature change. A focus on transient temperature change stresses the interplay of climate sensitivity with other physical uncertainties, notably effective heat capacity. In this paper we present a conceptual analysis of the physical uncertainties in economic models of climate mitigation, leading to an empirical application of the DICE model, which investigates the interaction of uncertainty in climate sensitivity and the effective heat capacity. We expand on previous results exploring the sensitivity of economic evaluations to the tail of the climate sensitivity distribution alone, and demonstrate that uncertainty about the system's effective heat capacity also plays a very important role. We go on to discuss complementary avenues of economic and scientific research that may help provide a better combined understanding of the physical and economic processes associated with a rapidly warming world.The purpose of this paper is to compare, from an urban planning perspective, the choice between combined heat and power (CHP) and a ground-source heat pump (HP) as the energy systems of a new residential area in the light of the uncertainty related to the assessments. There has been a strong push globally for CHP due to its climate mitigation potential compared to separate production, and consequently it is often prioritized in planning without questioning. However, the uncertainties in assessing the emissions from CHP and alternative options in a certain planning situation make it very difficult to give robust decision guidelines. In addition, even the order of magnitude of the climate impact of a certain plan is actually difficult to assess robustly. With a case study of the new residential development of Harmalanranta in Tampere, Finland, we show how strongly the uncertainties related to (1) utilizing average or marginal electricity as the reference; (2) assigning emissions intensities for the production; and (3) allocating the emissions from CHP to heat and electricity affect the results and lead to varying decision guidelines. We also depict how a rather rarely utilized method in assigning the emissions from CHP is the most robust for planning support.This study explores short and long-term drivers of alternative decarbonization pathways in four major economies (China, India, Europe and USA), using a multi-model decomposition analysis. The paper focuses on determining the energy system transformations that drive the changes in carbon emissions and identifying the model characteristics that lead to differences in the decarbonization strategies. First, we compare the decomposition over time of near-past carbon emissions and near-future model projections as a methodology to validate baseline scenarios. We show that a no-policy baseline scenario is in line with historical trends for all regions except China, where all models project higher improvements in energy and carbon intensity than the near-past historical development. Second, we compare regional decarbonization drivers across models in a scenario with moderate policy targets that represent the current fragmented international climate policy landscape. The results from the different models show that energy efficiency improvements represent the main strategy in achieving the moderate climate targets. Finally, we develop an LMDI decomposition analysis to determine the additional energy system changes needed to achieve a global GHG concentration target of 450 ppm compared to the moderate policy case. In all models, reducing regional carbon intensity of energy is the major decarbonization strategy after 2030. In the long-term (after 2050), most of the models find that negative carbon emissions are critical in such scenario, emphasizing the key role of biomass with CCS. However, the level of contribution of the decarbonization factor varies significantly across models, due to the large uncertainty in the availability of renewables and the development of CCS technologies. Overall, we find that the main differences in the decomposition results across models are due to assumptions concerning availability of natural resources and variety of backstop technologies. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.China's CO2 emissions and those embodied in its exports have been extensively studied. One often neglected aspect is the prevalence of foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) in China's exports, for which a substantial portion of benefits return to the investing countries. In this paper, we revisit China's export-related CO2 emission responsibilities by viewing them from a "new", gross national income perspective. Using a recently developed environmental input output framework, one which distinguishes firms by ownership and trade mode, we find that China's CO2 emissions responsibility for each Yuan of national income from FIE exports, is actually higher than that attributable to Chinese owned enterprise (COE) exports. The result has a somewhat surprising implication: it suggests another source of conflict between China's and global interest in reducing CO2 emissions. From a purely Chinese (as opposed to global) standpoint, a higher share of exports by COEs rather than FIEs is favorable, even though COEs emit more CO2 when producing each unit of exports. This finding should sound an additional warning to those who still think that global climate change mitigation can be effectively pursued by allocating country-by-country emissions responsibility. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this article, we ask the question as to whether urban poverty is more challenging than rural poverty. We review the conceptual arguments and the existing literature examining the intensity of urban versus that of rural poverty, urban and rural inequality, and whether urban poverty lines should be higher than those for rural areas. The review of the existing research finds that the urban share of the poor is rising and that the ratio of urban poverty to total poverty incidence has risen with urbanization. Based on the review, we find that in many countries including India, urban inequality worsened during early 1990s to the late 2000s. We also find that there are several reasons why the defined poverty line must be higher in urban areas when compared with that in rural areas. Further, based on the survey, we find urban poverty can impose significant challenges to human capital for climate change mitigation; we summarize based on other studies why urban rather than rural poverty can be a challenge for donors and governments. Finally, we summarize the contribution made by the urban poor to the city economies, based on existing studies.Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, higher temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and other climate change impacts have already begun to affect US agriculture and forestry, with impacts expected to become more substantial in the future. There have been numerous studies of climate change impacts on agriculture or forestry, but relatively little research examining the long-term net impacts of a stabilization scenario relative to a case with unabated climate change. We provide an analysis of the potential benefits of global climate change mitigation for US agriculture and forestry through 2100, accounting for landowner decisions regarding land use, crop mix, and management practices. The analytic approach involves a combination of climate models, a crop process model (EPIC), a dynamic vegetation model used for forests (MC1), and an economic model of the US forestry and agricultural sector (FASOM-GHG). We find substantial impacts on productivity, commodity markets, and consumer and producer welfare for the stabilization scenario relative to unabated climate change, though the magnitude and direction of impacts vary across regions and commodities. Although there is variability in welfare impacts across climate simulations, we find positive net benefits from stabilization in all cases, with cumulative impacts ranging from $32.7 billion to $54.5 billion over the period 2015-2100. Our estimates contribute to the literature on potential benefits of GHG mitigation and can help inform policy decisions weighing alternative mitigation and adaptation actions.Restoring the functions of disturbed forest to mitigation climate change is a main topic of policy makers. Better understanding of factors that directly influence post-disturbance forest biomass recovery is urgently needed to guide forest restoration and management. In this study, we examine changes in forest stand structure, wood density and biomass of forests recovering from different anthropogenic disturbances that represent forest land-use types in subtropical China: plantation, twice-logged and once-logged secondary forests, and compare them with undisturbed old-growth forest. Stand structure and wood density in all disturbed forests were evidently different from that of old-growth forest, even after 50-year regrowth. Forest biomass increased along plantation, twice-logged, once-logged and old-growth forests, with total living biomass (TLB) ranging from 150.8 +/- A 4.6 to 278.4 +/- A 1.5 Mg ha(-1), aboveground biomass from 111.8 +/- A 4.2 to 204.1 +/- A 1.5 Mg ha(-1) and coarse-root biomass from 33.0 +/- A 0.9 to 71.0 +/- A 0.8 Mg ha(-1). However, fine-root biomass was highest in plantation (5.99 +/- A 0.52 Mg ha(-1)) and lowest in once-logged forest (3.35 +/- A 0.19 Mg ha(-1)). Both changes in stand structure and functional trait (wood density) directly determine forest biomass recovery according to the result that 10.6, 35.5 and 8.2 % of variation in TLB over the disturbance gradient were independently explained by basal area (< 20 cm diameter), basal area (a parts per thousand yen20 cm diameter) and wood density, respectively. Our results suggest that recovery forest structure to the state associated with undisturbed forests will lead to large carbon sink in disturbed forests. In addition, trait-based managing approach should not be overlooked when maximizing carbon storage is a major management objective.Bioenergy deployment offers significant potential for climate change mitigation, but also carries considerable risks. In this review, we bring together perspectives of various communities involved in the research and regulation of bioenergy deployment in the context of climate change mitigation: Land-use and energy experts, land-use and integrated assessment modelers, human geographers, ecosystem researchers, climate scientists and two different strands of life-cycle assessment experts. We summarize technological options, outline the state-of-the-art knowledge on various climate effects, provide an update on estimates of technical resource potential and comprehensively identify sustainability effects. Cellulosic feedstocks, increased end-use efficiency, improved land carbon-stock management and residue use, and, when fully developed, BECCS appear as the most promising options, depending on development costs, implementation, learning, and risk management. Combined heat and power, efficient biomass cookstoves and small-scale power generation for rural areas can help to promote energy access and sustainable development, along with reduced emissions. We estimate the sustainable technical potential as up to 100EJ: high agreement; 100-300EJ: medium agreement; above 300EJ: low agreement. Stabilization scenarios indicate that bioenergy may supply from 10 to 245EJyr(-1) to global primary energy supply by 2050. Models indicate that, if technological and governance preconditions are met, large-scale deployment (>200EJ), together with BECCS, could help to keep global warming below 2 degrees degrees of preindustrial levels; but such high deployment of land-intensive bioenergy feedstocks could also lead to detrimental climate effects, negatively impact ecosystems, biodiversity and livelihoods. The integration of bioenergy systems into agriculture and forest landscapes can improve land and water use efficiency and help address concerns about environmental impacts. We conclude that the high variability in pathways, uncertainties in technological development and ambiguity in political decision render forecasts on deployment levels and climate effects very difficult. However, uncertainty about projections should not preclude pursuing beneficial bioenergy options.There is an apparent convention within both consequential and attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) to assume a 1:1 substitution ratio between functionally equivalent product systems. However, this convention may not be compatible with the purpose of consequential LCA, which is to model the actual consequences of the decision at hand. This paper explores the implications of the convention using the illustrative example of a 1 % tax on whole milk. A consequential LCA which assumes a 1:1 substitution ratio between two functionally equivalent product systems is compared with the results of an analysis that estimates the actual substitution ratio based on empirical data. Cross-price elasticities of demand for possible competitor products are modelled using a linear approximated almost ideal demand system (LA-AIDS). The results show a 1:0.52 substitution ratio between whole and low fat milk, rather than a 1:1 substitution ratio. Depending on the consequential LCA values for whole and low fat milk, the 1:1 convention could underestimate the greenhouse gas emission reductions from the tax by over 400 %. The results suggest that it is highly important to model actual substitution ratios between competing product systems in order to capture the consequences of the decision at hand. As a subsidiary contribution, the paper also shows the importance of modelling the displacement effects of milk fat co-products, which are generally not considered in the existing LCA literature on milk.Automatically detecting forest disturbances as they occur can be extremely challenging for certain types of environments, particularly those presenting strong natural variations. Here, we use a generic structural break detection framework (BFAST) to improve the monitoring of forest cover loss by combining multiple data streams. Forest change monitoring is performed using Landsat data in combination with MODIS or rainfall data to further improve the modelling and monitoring. We tested the use of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) with varying spatial aggregation window sizes as well as a rainfall derived index as external regressors. The method was evaluated on a dry tropical forest area in lowland Bolivia where forest cover loss is known to occur, and we validated the results against a set of ground truth samples manually interpreted using the TimeSync environment. We found that the addition of an external regressor allows to take advantage of the difference in spatial extent between human induced and naturally induced variations and only detect the processes of interest. Of all configurations, we found the 13 by 13 km MODIS NDVI window to be the most successful, with an overall accuracy of 87%. Compared with a single pixel approach, the proposed method produced better time-series model fits resulting in increases of overall accuracy (from 82% to 87%), and decrease in omission and commission errors (from 33% to 24% and from 3% to 0% respectively). The presented approach seems particularly relevant for areas with high inter-annual natural variability, such as forests regularly experiencing exceptional drought events. (C) 2015 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The benefits of reduced and zero-tillage systems have been presented as reducing runoff, enhancing water retention and preventing soil erosion. There is also general agreement that the practice can conserve and enhance soil organic carbon (C) levels to some extent. However, their applicability in mitigating climate change has been debated extensively, especially when the whole profile of C in the soil is considered, along with a reported risk of enhanced nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. The current paper presents a meta-analysis of existing literature to ascertain the climate change mitigation opportunities offered by minimizing tillage operations. Research suggests zero tillage is effective in sequestering C in both soil surface and sub-soil layers in tropical and temperate conditions. The C sequestration rate in tropical soils can be about five times higher than in temperate soils. In tropical soils, C accumulation is generally correlated with the duration of tillage. Reduced N2O emissions under long-term zero tillage have been reported in the literature but significant variability exists in the N2O flux information. Long-term, location-specific studies are needed urgently to determine the precise role of zero tillage in driving N2O fluxes. Considering the wide variety of crops utilized in zero-tillage studies, for example maize, barley, soybean and winter wheat, only soybean has been reported to show an increase in yield with zero tillage (77% over 10 years). In several cases yield reductions have been recorded e.g. c. 1-8% over 10 years under winter wheat and barley, respectively, suggesting zero tillage does not bring appreciable changes in yield but that the difference between the two approaches may be small. A key question that remains to be answered is: are any potential reductions in yield acceptable in the quest to mitigate climate change, given the importance of global food security?Mangroves are found throughout the tropics, providing critical ecosystem goods and services to coastal communities and supporting rich biodiversity. Globally, mangroves are being rapidly degraded and deforested at rates exceeding loss in many tropical inland forests. Madagascar contains around 2% of the global distribution, >20% of which has been deforested since 1990, primarily from over-harvest for forest products and conversion for agriculture and aquaculture. While historically not prominent, mangrove loss in Madagascar's Mahajamba Bay is increasing. Here, we focus on Mahajamba Bay, presenting long-term dynamics calculated using United States Geological Survey (USGS) national-level mangrove maps contextualized with socio-economic research and ground observations, and the results of contemporary (circa 2011) mapping of dominant mangrove types. The analysis of the USGS data indicated 1050 hectares (3.8%) lost from 2000 to 2010, which socio-economic research suggests is increasingly driven by commercial timber extraction. Contemporary mapping results permitted stratified sampling based on spectrally distinct and ecologically meaningful mangrove types, allowing for the first-ever vegetation carbon stock estimates for Mahajamba Bay. The overall mean carbon stock across all mangrove classes was estimated to be 100.97 +/- 10.49 Mg C ha(-1). High stature closed-canopy mangroves had the highest average carbon stock estimate (i.e., 166.82 +/- 15.28 Mg C ha(-1)). These estimates are comparable to other published values in Madagascar and elsewhere in the Western Indian Ocean and demonstrate the ecological variability of Mahajamba Bay's mangroves and their value towards climate change mitigation.Living in Iceland, a highly volcanically active island with a historical eruption frequency of 20-25 events per 100 years, involves risks from lava, pyroclastic flows, tephra-fall, and floods from glacier/snow-covered volcanoes. Volcanic eruptions can have detrimental effects on human health, societies, and ecosystems. Eruptions in 2010-2011 proved the value of pre-event planning for some natural hazards. An additional focus is needed on pre-disaster mitigation responses for the effects of tephra-fall on vegetation: As outlined under the UNISDR Hyogo/Sendai Framework for Action, healthy ecosystems and environmental management are key actions in disaster risk reduction (DRR). Iceland's most serious environmental problem is the degraded state of common rangeland in the highlands, where tephra-fall has been catastrophic. Tephra (airborne volcanic material) affects hydrology, air quality, and ecosystems by direct burial or post-eruptive transport, extending its influence far beyond the initial eruption area. Resilience to tephra-related disturbances depends on an ecosystem's overall health. Tall, vigorous vegetation has greater endurance; its initial survival is more likely, while sheltering minimizes secondary transport and hastens recovery. Areas that are sparsely vegetated and already stressed are more vulnerable; there, tephra remains unstable and can cause further damage. Reclaiming vulnerable land and building healthy ecosystems, as represented by the Hekluskogar project, improve the ability of these areas to endure tephra-fall, increasing their resilience and reducing the associated costs to society. Successful DRR for tephra-fall, through the revegetation of degraded land, will require effective governance, multi-sector coordination, and the alignment of policies on land use, agriculture, natural resource management, and climate change mitigation.Studies reporting agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emission data from tropical upland crops or the climate adaptation and mitigation potential of farming practices that involve nutrient management and/or organic farming are very limited in number. We developed alternate groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) farming practices for rainfed kharif (South-west monsoon) and irrigated rabi (winter) cropping seasons for agro-ecological region 3.0 in semi-arid peninsular India; and compared their yields, farm income as well as nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions with current baseline practices among regional small scale farm-holders. At the study farm, alternate practices including application of locally prepared fermented manures along with a 40-60 % reduction in application of total N increased pod yield by 50 and 35 % and net profit by similar to 120 and similar to 70 % in a drought-hit kharif and an irrigated rabi, respectively. High resolution field measurements of N2O flux indicate that the seasonal emission factors for groundnut cultivation using baseline and alternate practices were 1.7-2.0 % of applied N. Thus, the average IPCC and Indian national emissions factors of 1 and 0.58 %, respectively, underestimate GHG emissions during groundnut cultivation. Crucially, alternate practices led to (1) a reduction of 0.13 +/- A 0.07 and 0.24 +/- A 0.1 tCO(2)e ha(-1) season(-1) through decreases in direct N2O emissions along with a 50 % reduction in GHG emission intensity (per unit yield) in both seasons; (2) a concomitant average reduction of similar to 0.1 and 0.24 tCO(2)e ha(-1) season(-1) through decreased demand for manufactured fertilizers in kharif and rabi seasons, respectively. The positive implications for climate resilience, mitigation and ecosystem services are discussed.Saline and sodic soils that cannot be used for agriculture occur worldwide. Cultivating stress-tolerant trees to obtain biomass from salinized areas has been suggested. Various tree species of economic importance for fruit, fibre and timber production exhibit high salinity tolerance. Little is known about the mechanisms enabling tree crops to cope with high salinity for extended periods. Here, the molecular, physiological and anatomical adjustments underlying salt tolerance in glycophytic and halophytic model tree species, such as Populus euphratica in terrestrial habitats, and mangrove species along coastlines are reviewed. Key mechanisms that have been identified as mediating salt tolerance are discussed at scales from the genetic to the morphological level, including leaf succulence and structural adjustments of wood anatomy. The genetic and transcriptomic bases for physiological salt acclimation are salt sensing and signalling networks that activate target genes; the target genes keep reactive oxygen species under control, maintain the ion balance and restore water status. Evolutionary adaptation includes gene duplication in these pathways. Strategies for and limitations to tree improvement, particularly transgenic approaches for increasing salt tolerance by transforming trees with single and multiple candidate genes, are discussed. The molecular, physiological and anatomical adjustments underlying salt tolerance in glycophytic and halophytic tree species are reviewed. Tolerance mechanisms include salt sensing and signalling, activation of transport processes to maintain the ion balance, restoration of the water status and removal of excess reactive oxygen species. Forest tree breeding to increased salinity tolerance can be accelerated by use of novel genomic resources and gene stacking. Cultivation of salt tolerant trees may generate economic revenues on degraded, saline farmland and contribute to climate mitigation.Land-use change (LUC) has fundamentally altered the form and function of the terrestrial biosphere. Increasing human population, the drive for higher living standards and the potential challenges of mitigating and adapting to global environmental change mean that further changes in LUC are unavoidable. LUC has direct consequences on climate not only via emissions of greenhouse gases and changing the surface energy balance but also by affecting the emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs). Isoprenoids, which dominate global BVOC emissions, are highly reactive and strongly modify atmospheric composition. The effects of LUC on BVOC emissions and related atmospheric chemistry have been largely ignored so far. However, compared with natural ecosystems, most tree species used in bioenergy plantations are strong BVOC emitters, whereas intensively cultivated crops typically emit less BVOCs. Here, we summarize the current knowledge on LUC-driven BVOC emissions and how these might affect atmospheric composition and climate. We further discuss land management and plant-breeding strategies, which could be taken to move towards climate-friendly BVOC emissions while simultaneously maintaining or improving key ecosystem functions such as crop yield under a changing environment. Land-use change (LUC) has altered and will continuously change the form and function of the terrestrial biosphere. In this review we give an overview on the interplay of LUC, climate change and biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission potential and discuss the regional effects of LUC on BVOC emission potential and, consequently, on atmospheric chemistry. We further discuss how the BVOC emission potential from crops and bioenergy plants can be optimized by classical-, molecular biological and chemical tools for maximal plant protection and, eventually, for minimizing possible negative consequences of BVOCs on atmospheric chemistry.Land-use changes since the start of the industrial era account for nearly one-third of the cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions. In addition to the greenhouse effect of CO2 emissions, changes in land use also affect climate via changes in surface physical properties such as albedo, evapotranspiration and roughness length. Recent modelling studies suggest that these biophysical components may be comparable with biochemical effects. In regard to climate change, the effects of these two distinct processes may counterbalance one another both regionally and, possibly, globally. In this article, through hypothetical large-scale deforestation simulations using a global climate model, we contrast the implications of afforestation on ameliorating or enhancing anthropogenic contributions from previously converted (agricultural) land surfaces. Based on our review of past studies on this subject, we conclude that the sum of both biophysical and biochemical effects should be assessed when large-scale afforestation is used for countering global warming, and the net effect on global mean temperature change depends on the location of deforestation/afforestation. Further, although biochemical effects trigger global climate change, biophysical effects often cause strong local and regional climate change. The implication of the biophysical effects for adaptation and mitigation of climate change in agriculture and agroforestry sectors is discussed. center dot Land-use changes affect global and regional climates through both biochemical and biophysical process. center dot Climate effect from biophysical process depends on the location of land-use change. center dot Climate mitigation strategies such as afforestation/reforestation should consider the net effect of biochemical and biophysical processes for effective mitigation. center dot Climate-smart agriculture could use bio-geoengineering techniques that consider plant biophysical characteristics such as reflectivity and water use efficiency.This paper argues that the development of energy systems rests on a combination of three different domains of socio-economic processes and associated modes of decision-making. For shorthand these are termed 'satisficing', 'optimising', and 'transforming' domains, with corresponding underpinnings found in behavioural, neoclassical, and evolutionary economics respectively. Each domain operates at different scales of time and personal/organisational/societal decision-making, and explains different characteristics of how energy systems develop. At least since the industrial revolution, the nature of energy systems has depended on government policy, and each domain implies a need for different policy instruments; the combination of all three lays the foundations for far more coherent, effective, and mutually reinforcing policies, including those required to transform energy systems in the light of environmental constraints. The approach also provides a coherent theoretical framework for understanding the conditions under which co-benefits and 'green growth' may emerge from environmental policy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Biofuel mandates are being widely used by countries to achieve multiple objectives of energy security and climate change mitigation. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in the US specifies arbitrarily chosen volumetric targets for different types of biofuels in the US based on their greenhouse gas intensity only. Cellulosic biofuels from high yielding energy crops like miscanthus have the potential to co-generate multiple environmental impacts, including reducing nitrate runoff, being a sink for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and providing a given volume of biofuel with less diversion of land from food crop production than corn ethanol, but at a significantly higher cost. This paper quantifies the tradeoffs between profitability, food and fuel production, GHG emissions and nitrate runoff reduction with different types of biofuels in the Sangamon watershed in Illinois and analyzes the optimal mix of biofuels as well as the policies that should supplement the mandate to achieve multiple environmental outcomes. We find that a two-thirds share of cellulosic biofuel in the mandated level could reduce nitrate run-off by 20% while reducing GHG emissions by 88-100% but would reduce profits by 15-27% depending on whether a GHG policy or a Nitrate policy is used relative to the case where the mandate is met by corn ethanol alone. Additionally, the ratio of corn stover to miscanthus used to produce cellulosic biofuels is higher under a GHG policy compared to a Nitrate policy that achieves the same level of nitrate reduction. Our results show that the optimal mix of different types of biofuels and the policy to induce it depend on the environmental objectives and the tradeoffs that society is willing to make between low cost energy security, food production and various environmental benefits.Three options are proposed to improve the accuracy of national forest biomass estimates and decrease the uncertainty related to tree model selection depending on available data and national contexts. Different tree volume and biomass equations result in different estimates. At national scale, differences of estimates can be important while they constitute the basis to guide policies and measures, particularly in the context of climate change mitigation. Few countries have developed national tree volume and biomass equation databases and have explored its potential to decrease uncertainty of volume and biomasttags estimates. With the launch of the GlobAllomeTree webplatform, most countries in the world could have access to country-specific databases. The aim of this article is to recommend approaches for assessing tree and forest volume and biomass at national level with the lowest uncertainty. The article highlights the crucial need to link allometric equation development with national forest inventory planning efforts. Models must represent the tree population considered. Data availability; technical, financial, and human capacities; and biophysical context, among other factors, will influence the calculation process. Three options are proposed to improve accuracy of national forest assessment depending on identified contexts. Further improvements could be obtained through improved forest stratification and additional non-destructive field campaigns.Sustainable development requires analytical tools to assess through a comprehensive approach the effectiveness of energy-environmental policies on medium-long term and their impact on the different macroeconomic sectors. Among the available tools, partial equilibrium models are particularly suited to represent and analyze complex energy systems with a high technology detail as well as to individuate the optimal energy-technology roadmaps that allows to fulfil multiple objectives (e.g. energy supply security, climate change mitigation and air quality improvement). In fact these models enable the users to perform a scenario analysis in order to explore the behaviour of energy system to boundary conditions variations. They are typically characterized by a huge amount of data which informative content is often not fully exploited. In this framework, multivariate statistical techniques (Cluster Analysis-CA and Principal Component Analysis-PCA) can represent a key tool to characterize data correlation structure and to point out the variables with the highest information content. The paper shows the methodological procedure utilized to characterize the NEEDS-TIMES Pan European model results, describing its usefulness to individuate homogeneous areas for the application of suited targets and to characterize from a statistical point of view energy systems behaviour in different scenario hypothesis. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The co-benefits approach is a concept that aims to align the climate change issue with the local development goals. The premise of this approach is that the mainstreaming of the climate mitigation issue within the local level polices will result in various local environmental and non-environmental co-benefits in addition to a reduction of GHG emissions. The implementation of the co-benefits approach aims to strengthen the policy making process, which is identified as being especially important in context of developing cities. This paper attempts to confirm this by analyzing a planning process of and global and local benefits generated by an innovative project related to provision of bicycle parking. The paper firstly overviews recent co-benefits literature related to urban transport in general and active travel in particular, as well as evaluated benefits related to bicycle infrastructure provision. Then, taking the case of the Serbian city of Novi Sad, this paper examines local drivers behind the bicycle project implementation, the reduction of CO2 emission generated by the increase of cycle commuters, the project impact on individual commute behavior as well as potential for income generation. The results support arguments towards relevance of implementation of the co-benefits approach within processes of cycling planning and popularization, particularly highlighting the role and possibilities for implementation of co-benefits projects related to bicycle parking facilities. This case study is relevant as it identifies and analyses a real-life action to respond to both, global and local sustainability challenges, but also, as it points to an action at the city level that has potential for diffusing desirable changes into wider society. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.International low-carbon technology (LCT) transfer has emerged as a key focus of research and policy for global climate change mitigation efforts. While the benefits of international LCT transfer are widely understood, the processes associated with international LCT transfer are more complicated than is portrayed in the often-polarized discussions around LCT transfer. In order to effectively incentivize innovation and diffusion of LCTs globally, it is important to synthesize the emerging integrated concept of LCT transfer with due consideration to the dynamics of the processes underpinning it. A robust view of international LCT transfer requires a holistic understanding of the various economic, political, institutional, and legal factors that impact widespread transfer of LCTs. Focusing on these factors, the primary objective of this paper is to place the recent empirical literature in LCT transfer within the framework of key theoretical and conceptual ideas in the broader innovation and technology transfer literature. We organize our synthesis of this literature under three overarching themes: intellectual property rights; recipient country characteristics; and the role of international partnerships. By focusing on the dynamics of LCT transfer, this paper provides structured insights from the existing body of work, while also outlining fruitful directions to take in future research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In a world constrained by climate change, it is of utmost relevance that energy technologies offer a low level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at a comparatively low cost level. A literature overview is presented, which shows that the common view of PV systems contradicts its position as an economically viable key solution in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, most of the found research is outdated and instead of being a region-oriented specific analysis, most of the research has focused on general cost level calculations. A simple methodology is introduced for estimating the climate change mitigation relevance of PV systems by calculating the avoided GHG emissions for specific representative PV applications in respective regions. The potential of GHG mitigation by PV systems is combined with the related economics based on discounted cash flow calculus. PV applications ranging from small PV systems in rural off-grid regions up to large scale PV power plants and commercial PV rooftop systems show financial benefits for avoided GHG emissions. Even in Germany, the costs of avoiding GHG emissions using residential rooftop systems are 17-70 [SIC]/tCO(2eq) depending on the applied assumptions. These costs are distinctly lower than the 80 [SIC]/tCO(2eq) threshold for the cost of climate change impacts. PV power plants in Germany show financial benefits of 19-93 [SIC]/tCO(2eq) for avoiding GHG emissions. Summing up, PV systems are a highly attractive climate change mitigation option.(C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy challenge is a complex issue that EU is facing. A sustainable, safe and competitive energy supply and climate change mitigation are nowadays key priorities of EU energy policy and a need for each EU Member State. Sustainable energy development at the regional level is a multiple and complex activity, involving various stakeholders and different measures. Three main thematic pillars, policy making, energy market and community involvement, have been identified as crucial in order to implement effective and feasible policy and measures at the regional scale. In this framework, the initial assessment of regional energy systems is an essential step to set up customized sustainable energy strategies. In the framework of the INTERREG IVC RENERGY project a structured methodology for the initial assessment of local communities (Self-Assessment -SAA) was defined and applied to the analysis of the partners' communities located in nine European Countries (Lithuania, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Romania) in order to outline the status of local energy infrastructures, renewable and energy efficiency potentials and to highlight the key issues to be exploited in the local implementation plans. The holistic approach of the SAA methodology is aimed at characterising the energy systems in terms of policy background, energy uses and infrastructures as well as market behaviour and community attitude for sustainable development, valorising the interrelationships among the project thematic pillars. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Characterizing and quantifying the carbon footprint (CF) of livestock production would offer insights into how livestock production contributes to climate change and help to establish potential greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation options. In Sichuan, one of the largest provinces for livestock production in China, a questionnaire farm survey was performed in 2012. CFs of livestock and poultry production were quantified using a dataset encompassing 20 farms for egg production, 25 farms for milk production, 20 farms for chicken production, and 32 farms for pork production, including both household and aggregated farms. The results revealed that over both farm types, emissions from manure treatment accounted for 70% and 74% of the total CFs in egg and chicken production, respectively. On average, 39% of the total CF in milk production was contributed by enteric fermentation; meanwhile, emissions by fodder production contributed on average 75% to the total CF of pork production. In general, egg, milk, chicken and pork production in Sichuan were associated with CFs of 3.70, 1.01, 20.02 and 5.42 kg CO2-eq/kg production for household farms, and 3.46, 1.13, 7.86 and 4.29 kg CO2-eq/kg for aggregated farm, respectively. Statistically, egg, chicken and pork production on household farms was characterized by higher CFs than that on aggregated farms. This study highlights that aggregated farm management could be an efficient option to mitigate the GHG emission in China's livestock production. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Globally, the sustainable development agenda is undergoing a process of climatisation. This means that climate change mitigation and adaptation are influencing the design and delivery of development initiatives. This paper explores the extent to which climate governance influences the role and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in development. We draw on case study evidence from copper mining concessions in Northwestern Zambia in order to examine how CSR activities are adopting norms of climatised development. Our results show that the extractive industries are increasingly initiating CSR activities to align with local livelihoods, and therefore play a key role in climate compatible development (CCD). In addition, they act as context changers through for example, in-migration, which increases pressure on local forest resources. However, these roles go unacknowledged by both industry and government as CSR activities are disconnected from broader CCD priorities. We discuss the positive and negative implications of drawing the extractive industries into the CCD arena. We link to critiques of politicized CSR and consider practical implications, both for the sector and the achievement of climate development goals. We conclude that CSR activities should be seen as a local manifestation of multilevel engagement between the extractive industries and broader development sectors. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is evidence that warming leads to greater evapotranspiration and surface drying, thus contributing to increasing intensity and duration of drought and implying that mitigation would reduce water stresses. However, understanding the overall impact of climate change mitigation on water resources requires accounting for the second part of the equation, i.e., the impact of mitigation-induced changes in water demands from human activities. By using integrated, high-resolution models of human and natural system processes to understand potential synergies and/or constraints within the climate-energy-water nexus, we show that in the United States, over the course of the 21st century and under one set of consistent socioeconomics, the reductions in water stress from slower rates of climate change resulting from emission mitigation are overwhelmed by the increased water stress from the emissions mitigation itself. The finding that the human dimension outpaces the benefits from mitigating climate change is contradictory to the general perception that climate change mitigation improves water conditions. This research shows the potential for unintended and negative consequences of climate change mitigation.Urban areas are expanding, changing the structure and productivity of landscapes. While some urban areas have been shown to hold substantial biomass, the productivity of these systems is largely unknown. We assessed how conversion from forest to urban land uses affected both biomass structure and productivity across eastern Massachusetts. We found that urban land uses held less than half the biomass of adjacent forest expanses with a plot level mean biomass density of 33.5 +/- 8.0 Mg C ha(-1). As the intensity of urban development increased, the canopy cover, stem density, and biomass decreased. Analysis of Quercus rubra tree cores showed that tree-level basal area increment nearly doubled following development, increasing from 17.1 +/- 3.0 to 35.8 +/- 4.7 cm(2) yr(-1). Scaling the observed stem densities and growth rates within developed areas suggests an aboveground biomass growth rate of 1.8 +/- 0.4 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1), a growth rate comparable to nearby, intact forests. The contrasting high growth rates and lower biomass pools within urban areas suggest a highly dynamic ecosystem with rapid turnover. As global urban extent continues to grow, cities consider climate mitigation options, and as the verification of net greenhouse gas emissions emerges as critical for policy, quantifying the role of urban vegetation in regional-to-global carbon budgets will become ever more important.The climate change is an example of the biggest social dilemma in the human history. Climate change mitigation can be successful only if the whole world will undertake an internationally coordinated collective action. Costs to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases can be easily calculated for each individual, but benefits of the successful reduction will be distributed among all the "players", independently from theft actual contributions to sustainable development. Evolutionary games provide a suitable theoretical framework for studying the challenges of climate change, and we will build on this fact in the present paper to study the evolution of cooperation and discuss its implications for offsetting the temptations to pollute. It has namely become painfully clear that tackling the climate change will be costly, and accordingly, the temptations to pollute will always be present. Can the element of unpredictability that is inherently present in social interactions and the environment increase the probability of adopting the cleaner strategy? We employ the spatial prisoner's dilemma game where the cooperative behaviour is challenged by defection that promises individuals a higher fitness and is thus more likely to prevail. Obtained results are contrasted with real data and indicators of climate change. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.As the use of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) further increases in the coming decades, a growing stream of batteries will reach the end of their service lives. Here we study the potential of those batteries to be used in second-life applications to enable the expansion of intermittent renewable electricity Supply in California through the year 2050. We develop and apply a parametric life-cycle system model integrating battery supply, degradation, logistics, and second-life use. We calculate and compare several metrics of second-life system performance, including cumulative electricity delivered, energy balance, greenhouse gas (GHG) balance, and energy stored on invested. We find that second-life use of retired PEV batteries may play a modest, though not insignificant, role in California's future energy system. The electricity delivered by second-life batteries in 2050 under base-case modeling conditions is 15 TWh per year, about 5% of total current and projected electricity use in California. If used instead of natural gas-fired electricity generation, this electricity would reduce GHG emissions by about 7 million metric tons of CO(2)e per year in 2050. Published by Elsevier B.V.Soil respiration, resulting in decomposition of soil organic carbon (SOC), emits CO2 to the atmosphere and increases under climate warming. However, the impact of heavy metal pollution on soil respiration in croplands is not well understood. Here we show significantly increased soil respiration and efflux of both CO2 and CH4 with a concomitant reduction in SOC storage from a metal polluted rice soil in China. This change is linked to a decline in soil aggregation, in microbial abundance and in fungal dominance. The carbon release is presumably driven by changes in carbon cycling occurring in the stressed soil microbial community with heavy metal pollution in the soil. The pollution-induced increase in soil respiration and loss of SOC storage will likely counteract efforts to increase SOC sequestration in rice paddies for climate change mitigation.The direct and indirect health effects of increasingly warmer temperatures are likely to further burden the already overcrowded hospital emergency departments (EDs). Using current trends and estimates in conjunction with future population growth and climate change scenarios, we show that the increased number of hot days in the future can have a considerable impact on EDs, adding to their workload and costs. The excess number of visits in 2030 is projected to range between 98-336 and 42-127 for younger and older groups, respectively. The excess costs in 2012-13 prices are estimated to range between AU$51,000-184,000 (0-64) and AU$27,000-84,000 (65+). By 2060, these estimates will increase to 229-2300 and 145-1188 at a cost of between AU$120,000-1,200,000 and AU$96,000-786,000 for the respective age groups. Improvements in climate change mitigation and adaptation measures are likely to generate synergistic health co-benefits and reduce the impact on frontline health services.This study estimated a series of indicators to assess the energy security of supply and global and local environmental impacts under different mitigation scenarios through 2050 in Brazil, designed with the integrated optimization energy system model MESSAGE-BRAZIL. The assessment of interactions between environmental impacts and energy security dimensions was complemented through the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Overall results imply energy security establishes more synergies than trade-offs in increasingly stringent mitigation scenarios, especially patent within the sustainability dimension, which increases energy security and provides additional benefits regarding climate change mitigation and air pollution emissions. It is still necessary to extend analysis to other energy sectors in addition to the power supply sector and to promote a better understanding of repercussions of energy scenario expansion in energy security.Incorporation of charcoal produced by biomass pyrolysis (biochar) in agricultural soils is a potentially sustainable strategy for climate change mitigation. However, some side effects of large-scale biochar application need to be investigated. In particular a massive use of a low-reflecting material on large cropland areas may impact the climate via changes in surface albedo. Twelve years of MODIS-derived albedo data were analysed for three pairs of selected agricultural sites in central Italy. In each pair bright and dark coloured soil were identified, mimicking the effect of biochar application on the land surface albedo of complex agricultural landscapes. Over this period vegetation canopies never completely masked differences in background soil colour. This soil signal, expressed as an albedo difference, induced a local instantaneous radiative forcing of up to 4.7 W m(-2) during periods of high solar irradiance. Biochar mitigation potential might therefore be reduced up to similar to 30%. This study proves the importance of accounting for crop phenology and crop management when assessing biochar mitigation potential and provides more insights into the analysis of its environmental feedback.In this article, we argue that democratic land control is inseparable from human rights. It is important to understand demands for democratic land control in the context of broadly distinct political conditions that in turn each requires distinct political intervention, namely, respect/protect, promote, and/or restore democratic land control. In addition, we also argue that broader institutional instruments carried out simultaneously at different levels, ranging from conventional land reforms to the recently passed UN Committee on Food Security (CFS) 'Tenure Guidelines' remain relevant or become necessary and urgent because the scope of democratic land control is far wider, and in the contemporary context land resources have become a wildly coveted by corporate and state elites worldwide. Finally, we argue that it is theoretically and politically important not to separate the question of democratic land control from the broader idea of an alternative (food) system, and so, linking it to the idea of 'food sovereignty' as the latter's 'land pillar' becomes strategically important.This paper develops the FOR-DICE model to explore the potential role of the global forest in reducing climate change. It presents a basic framework for assessing the boreal, tropical, and temperate forests as both a source of renewable energy and a resource to sequester and store carbon. The focus of the paper is to explore whether climate policies should focus on increasing the forest biomass, to sequester and store carbon, or on increasing the use of the forest biomass as a source of energy, to substitute fossil fuels. The paper shows that the global forest can play an important role in reducing atmospheric carbon. The main finding at the global level is that it is better to increase the forest biomass rather than increase the use of forest bioenergy. The reason for this is that the decrease in forest carbon stock created by increased bioenergy harvests is not offset by avoided fossil fuel emissions. This finding suggests that setting high bioenergy targets, without considering the dynamics of the forest stock and the efficiency of bioenergy, will be detrimental to climate change mitigation.We make use of a panel dataset of 22 donor countries from 1998 to 2009 to examine the links between donor characteristics and the share of overseas development assistance allocated to climate mitigation finance. We find that donors with a larger green domestic budget tend to allocate a smaller portion of overseas aid to mitigation finance (possibly as a result of a competing interest between spending on domestic environmental projects and international climate projects). The opposite holds for donor countries with better institutions (governance) that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. We also find important discrepancies when comparing the effects of donor characteristics on committed versus disbursed mitigation finance (as a share of aid). For the latter, only commitment to the Kyoto Protocol appears to be of high statistical significance.The purpose of this study was to evaluate the full-chain carbon cycle of oil palm to determine the CE (carbon equivalences), starting from plantation until production of end-user products including RBD (refined, bleached, and deodorized) Palm Olein as a cooking oil and PME (palm methyl ester) as biodiesel fuel. Based on the carbon categorization, the equivalent carbon emissions from RBD Palm Olein and PME productions were found to be 159 and 153 kg CE/ton product, respectively. The major emissions in the RBD Palm Olein production chain are attributed to the use of natural gas for energy spent in the industrial process and Poly Ethylene Terephthalate for product containers; whereas, those in the PME production are from methanol used in the transesterification. After identification of the carbon pathway, RBD Palm Olein exhibited a net emission of 116 kg CE/ha-y, but PME shows a net reduction of 2328 kg CE/ha-y. From energy balances and economic performances, PME is found to have higher net energy ratio, with 40% lower production cost per kg CE, than does RBD Palm Olein. Therefore, increasing the use of palm oil for biodiesel production rather than as use for cooking oil is justified as a useful tool for climate change mitigation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.While mitigation efforts in developed and emerging economies are necessary in order to meet ambitious climate targets, the international community strives to explore strategies to help the most vulnerable populations to cope with the short-term and long-term impacts of climate change. In the perspective of the 21st COP of the UNFCCC (Paris, December 2015), this Special Issue on 'Climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing and transition countries' addresses two complementary topical issues. On the one hand, migration - international and internal - and remittances are analyzed as adaptation strategies for vulnerable households and individuals. On the other hand, climate policies in emerging economies are examined in light of their distributional impacts for households and of the strategic issues they may raise. This special issue introduces five papers with a diversity of approaches, e.g., game theory, econometric modeling and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling.Forest inventories based on field sample surveys, supported by auxiliary remotely sensed data, have the potential to provide transparent and confident estimates of forest carbon stocks required in climate change mitigation schemes such as the REDD+ mechanism. The field plot size is of importance for the precision of carbon stock estimates, and better information of the relationship between plot size and precision can be useful in designing future inventories. Precision estimates of forest biomass estimates developed from 30 concentric field plots with sizes of 700, 900, horizontal ellipsis , 1900 m(2), sampled in a Tanzanian rainforest, were assessed in a model-based inference framework. Remotely sensed data from airborne laser scanning (ALS) and interferometric synthetic aperture radio detection and ranging (InSAR) were used as auxiliary information. The findings indicate that larger field plots are relatively more efficient for inventories supported by remotely sensed ALS and InSAR data. A simulation showed that a pure field-based inventory would have to comprise 3.5-6.0 times as many observations for plot sizes of 700-1900 m(2) to achieve the same precision as an inventory supported by ALS data.Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is considered a promising strategy to slow down deforestation rates, promote sustainable forest use, and support rural livelihoods under the umbrella of climate change mitigation. However, so far there is only little field-based knowledge on how REDD+ can go along with subsistence-based production systems and livelihoods of forest-dependent communities. We addressed this research gap by analyzing the income generation of three widespread ethnic groups (Colonists, Shuar, Kichwa) in the buffer zone of the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador to better understand their livelihoods and possible engagement in REDD+. We selected two communities of each ethnic group (close-to and far-from markets) and used household surveys to (a) calculate household incomes, (b) assess the degree of forest-dependency, and (c) discuss how REDD+ schemes can be designed along with traditional subsistence-based production systems. We found that the studied indigenous communities have a higher degree of forest-dependency and higher environmental income compared to Colonists. However, our assumption that close-to-market communities have a lower degree of forest dependency and higher cash income due to better market access and labor opportunities applies only to the Colonists and Shuar, but must be rejected for the Kichwas who gain income from timber sale. Despite these differences, all communities receive high off-farm revenues from unskilled labor provided by oil-companies and external aid. Therefore, dependency on agriculture and forestry is temporarily reduced. Under these circumstances, REDD+ provides only weak financial incentives so that the willingness to participate in REDD+ is low. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The forecast consequences of climate change on human health are profound, especially in low- and middle-income countries and among the most disadvantaged populations. Innovative policy tools are needed to address the adverse health effects of climate change. Cash transfers are established policy tools for protecting population health before, during and after climate-related disasters. For example, the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Programme provides cash transfers to reduce food insecurity resulting from droughts. We propose extending cash transfer interventions to more proactive measures to improve health in the context of climate change. We identify promising cash transfer schemes that could be used to prevent the adverse health consequences of climatic hazards. Cash transfers for using emission-free, active modes of transport e.g. cash for cycling to work could prevent future adverse health consequences by contributing to climate change mitigation and, at the same time, improving current population health. Another example is cash transfers provided to communities that decide to move to areas in which their lives and health are not threatened by climatic disasters. More research on such interventions is needed to ensure that they are effective, ethical, equitable and cost effective.Intertidal habitats provide numerous ecosystem services, including the sequestration and storage of carbon, a topic of great recent interest owing to land-cover transitions and climate change. Mangrove forests and seagrass meadows form a continuum of intertidal habitats, alongside unvegetated mudflats and sandbars, however, studies that consider carbon stocks across these spatially-linked, threatened ecosystems are limited world-wide. This paper presents the results of a field-based carbon stock assessment of aboveground, belowground and sediment organic carbon stock to a depth of 1m at Chek Jawa, Singapore. It is the first study of ecosystem carbon stocks of both vegetated and unvegetated intertidal habitats in the tropics. Ecosystem carbon stocks were 497Mg C ha(-1) in the mangrove forest and 138Mg C ha(-1) in the seagrass meadow. Sediment organic carbon stock dominated the total storage in both habitats, constituting 62% and >99% in the mangrove forest and seagrass meadow, respectively. In the adjacent mudflat and sandbars, which had no vegetative components, sediment organic carbon stock ranged from 124-143Mg C ha(-1), suggesting that unvegetated habitats have a carbon storage role on the same order of importance as seagrass meadows. This study reinforces the importance of sediment in carbon storage within the intertidal ecosystem, and demonstrates the need to consider unvegetated habitats in intertidal blue carbon' stock assessments. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Brazilian merchant pig iron (MPI) mills, even those relying exclusively on charcoal, are at least as harmful to the global climate as the coal-based competitors they confront in international trade. However, when timber from deforestation is replaced by sustainably managed forest plantations, a carbon neutral process emerges. Yet the cost of growing trees can be large enough to discourage mills from pursuing such a climate change mitigation route. The paper shows that the impasse can be overcome by the improvement of pyrolysis kilns coupled with a multilateral agreement in which (1) Brazil supplies attested carbon-neutral MPI and (2) importers of Brazilian MPI take environmental concerns to the field of MPI trade, paying a premium of 19% of MPI price or of US$3 per ton of avoided emissions. (C) 2015 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The Ten-Thousand Enterprises Program is China's keystone energy conservation and climate change program. The program has effectively created a class of energy-intensive enterprises that are regulated by the government for energy conservation purposes. Through an empirical study conducted in Changchun, this paper shows that the adoption of energy efficiency technologies and practices has been highly uneven in this class of enterprises because of two reasons. First, a de facto two-tier regulatory system has emerged within the framework of the Ten-Thousand Enterprises Program. Central state-owned enterprises are closely regulated by the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) which is a central government apparatus, whereas local state-owned enterprises and privately owned enterprises are regulated by the local government, which has fewer resources and incentives to implement the program rigorously. Second, the Ten-Thousand Enterprises Program bundles together different types of enterprises. This approach places smaller enterprises at a disadvantage and limits their ability to conserve energy. (C) 2015 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The role of bioenergy in climate change mitigation is a topic of heated debate, as the demand for land may result in social and ecological conflicts. Biodiversity impacts are a key controversy, given that biodiversity conservation is a globally agreed goal under pressure due to both climate change and land use. Impact assessment of bioenergy in various socio-economic and policy scenarios is a crucial basis for planning sound climate mitigation policy. Empirical studies have identified positive and negative local impacts of different bioenergy types on biodiversity, but ignored indirect impacts caused by displacement of other human activities. Integrated assessment models (IAMs) provide land-use scenarios based on socio-economic and policy storylines. Global scenarios capture both direct and indirect land-use change, and are therefore an appealing tool for assessing the impacts of bioenergy on biodiversity. However, IAMs have been originally designed to address questions of a different nature. Here, we illustrate the properties of IAMs from the biodiversity conservation perspective and discuss the set of questions they could answer. We find IAMs are a useful starting point for more detailed regional planning and assessment. However, they have important limitations that should not be overlooked. Global scenarios may not capture all impacts, such as changes in forest habitat quality or small-scale landscape structure, identified as key factors in empirical studies. We recommend increasing spatial accuracy of IAMs through region-specific, complementary modelling, including climate change into predictive assessments, and considering future biodiversity conservation needs in assessments of impacts and sustainable potentials of bioenergy.The EU Structural and Cohesion Funds (SCF) are potentially important instruments for supporting climate policy-related efforts and addressing unevenly distributed capacities for successful mitigation and adaptation across the EU. This paper reports on the level of climate mainstreaming in EU regional development policy in the 2007-2013 programming period: first, we explore the normative commitment to climate change concerns through an analysis of the National Strategic Reference Frameworks (NSRFs) in which all 27 Member States specify their development and funding priorities. Second, we analyze the substantive commitments by mapping financial allocations from the SCF related to climate mitigation and adaptation. Based on this, we gain five main insights, which are relevant to future mainstreaming efforts and which may have important implications for the wider debate on the purpose of European regional policy: (1) mitigation appears well mainstreamed in EU cohesion policies, both in normative and financial terms, whereas adaptation is hardly considered. (2) Rhetorical commitment to climate concerns in the strategy documents does not necessarily match financial allocations to respective priorities. (3) Neither mitigation nor adaptation-relevant priorities and allocations in the NSRFs can be linked to the ambitious mitigation targets and low adaptive capacity, respectively. (4) There is ample potential to improve climate-relevant SCF support in the area of adaptation, particularly given that several existing priority areas for funding coincide with the climate adaptation agenda. (5) By conditioning a minimum percentage of funds to be spent on priority areas (earmarking), cohesion policy also gains meaning as a burden sharing instrument for adaptation to climate change.This paper shows the importance of including region-specific circumstances in long-term climate change mitigation strategies, by example of a modeling exercise of the transport sector. Important emission reduction options in the transport sector include biofuels, electric vehicles and efficiency standards. The most effective combination of these options depends, among others, on the availability of biofuels, the effectiveness of efficiency standards, and the (expected) emission intensity of the power sector-all of which differ between regions. Differences in climate policies between regions influence these factors. For instance, fuel efficiency standards slowdown the long-term transition in regions where plugin hybrid electric cars compete with gasoline cars (such as the USA or Europe) by decreasing the costs for driving gasoline costs and therefore in fact increase long-term emissions. Another example is that promoting electric vehicles is less effective in regions which are expected to rely heavily on fossil fuels for power generation, such as South Africa, China and India. Based on these findings from the TIMER energy model, we introduce an indicative region-specific framework for assessing mitigation strategies for the transport sector up to 2050, for different ambition levels of climate policy.Accelerating the international use of climate mitigation technologies is key if efforts to curb climate change are to succeed, especially in developing countries, where weak domestic technological innovation systems constrain the uptake of climate change mitigation technologies. Several intergovernmental agencies have set up specific programmes to support the diffusion of climate mitigation technologies. Using a simplified technological innovation system-based framework, this paper aims to systematically review these programmes, with the dual aim of assessing their collective success in promoting technological innovation, and identifying opportunities for the newly formed UNFCCC Technology Mechanism. We conclude that, while all programmes reviewed have promoted technology transfer, they have given limited attention to innovation capabilities with users, government and universities. Functions that could be further developed include knowledge development, legitimation and market formation. These could be focal areas for the UNFCCC Technology Mechanism. We recommend that, in future programmes, part of the funding is dedicated to programmes doing research and development as well as capability development.This paper studies how different NOx abatement technologies have diffused under the Swedish system of refunded emission payments (REP) and analyzes the determinants of the time to adoption. The policy, under which the charge revenues are refunded back to the regulated firms in proportion to energy output, was explicitly designed to affect investment in NOx-reducing technologies. The main finding is that REP had a significant effect on the adoption of post-combustion technologies. Moreover, we also find some indications that the effects of REP have been enhanced by the existing system of individual emission standards. In particular, the effect of REP speeding up the pace of adoption of post-combustion technologies is considerably larger in those counties where stringent standards are in place. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.AimThe aim of this study was to explore nurses' perceptions of climate and environmental issues and examine how nurses perceive their role in contributing to the process of sustainable development. BackgroundClimate change and its implications for human health represent an increasingly important issue for the healthcare sector. According to the International Council of Nurses Code of Ethics, nurses have a responsibility to be involved and support climate change mitigation and adaptation to protect human health. DesignThis is a descriptive, explorative qualitative study. MethodsNurses (n=18) were recruited from hospitals, primary care and emergency medical services; eight participated in semi-structured, in-depth individual interviews and 10 participated in two focus groups. Data were collected from April-October 2013 in Sweden; interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using content analysis. ResultsTwo main themes were identified from the interviews: (i) an incongruence between climate and environmental issues and nurses' daily work; and (ii) public health work is regarded as a health co-benefit of climate change mitigation. While being green is not the primary task in a lifesaving, hectic and economically challenging context, nurses' perceived their profession as entailing responsibility, opportunities and a sense of individual commitment to influence the environment in a positive direction. ConclusionsThis study argues there is a need for increased awareness of issues and methods that are crucial for the healthcare sector to respond to climate change. Efforts to develop interventions should explore how nurses should be able to contribute to the healthcare sector's preparedness for and contributions to sustainable development.A large proportion of the world's biodiversity is reportedly threatened by habitat loss and climate change. However, there are few studies that investigate the interaction between these two threats using empirical data. Here, we investigate interactions between climate change and land-use change in the future distribution of 23 dominant tree species in mainland Spain. We simulated changes up to year 2100 using a climate-dependent Stochastic Patch Occupancy Model, parameterized with colonization and extinction events recorded in 46596 survey plots. We estimated that the distribution of 17 out of 23 tree species are expanding and hence not at equilibrium with the climate. However, climate change will make the future occupancy of 15 species to be lower than expected if climate, and habitat, remained stable (baseline scenario). Climate change, when combined with the loss of 20% of the habitat, was estimated to reduce species occupancies (relative to baseline projections) by an average of 23% if habitat loss was spatially clumped, and by 35% if it was scattered. If habitat loss occurred in areas already impacted by human activities, species occupancies would be reduced by 26%. Land-use changes leading to habitat gain (i.e. creation through reforestation) could slightly mitigate the effects of climate change, but a 20% increment in habitat would reduce climate change-driven losses in species occupancies by only approximate to 3%.Synthesis and applications. The distributions of the most common tree species in mainland Spain are expanding, but climate change threatens to reduce this expansion by approximate to 18% for 15 of the 23 studied species. Moreover, if the habitat of these species is simultaneously lost, the occupancies of all of them will be reduced further, with variation depending on the spatial pattern of the lost habitats. However, we did not detect synergies between climate change and habitat loss. The combined effect (with 20% habitat loss) was 5-13% less than what it would be if the effects were additive. Importantly, reforestation could partially offset the negative effects of climate change, but complete mitigation would require an increase in forested land of approximate to 80%, and the prioritization of territories that are less impacted by human activities. The distributions of the most common tree species in mainland Spain are expanding, but climate change threatens to reduce this expansion by approximate to 18% for 15 of the 23 studied species. Moreover, if the habitat of these species is simultaneously lost, the occupancies of all of them will be reduced further, with variation depending on the spatial pattern of the lost habitats. However, we did not detect synergies between climate change and habitat loss. The combined effect (with 20% habitat loss) was 5-13% less than what it would be if the effects were additive. Importantly, reforestation could partially offset the negative effects of climate change, but complete mitigation would require an increase in forested land of approximate to 80%, and the prioritization of territories that are less impacted by human activities.We demonstrate the effectiveness of a new method for quantifying radiative forcing from land use and land cover change (LULCC) within an integrated assessment model, the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). The method relies on geographically differentiated estimates of radiative forcing from albedo change associated with major land cover transitions derived from the Community Earth System Model. We find that conversion of 1 km(2) of woody vegetation (forest and shrublands) to non-woody vegetation (crops and grassland) yields between 0 and -0.71 nW/m(2) of globally averaged radiative forcing determined by the vegetation characteristics, snow dynamics, and atmospheric radiation environment characteristic within each of 151 regions we consider globally. Across a set of scenarios designed to span a range of potential future LULCC, we find LULCC forcing ranging from -0.06 to -0.29 W/m(2) by 2070 depending on assumptions regarding future crop yield growth and whether climate policy favors afforestation or bioenergy crops. Inclusion of this previously uncounted forcing in the policy targets driving future climate mitigation efforts leads to changes in fossil fuel emissions on the order of 1.5 PgC/yr by 2070 for a climate forcing limit of 4.5 Wm(-2), corresponding to a 12-67 % change in fossil fuel emissions depending on the scenario. Scenarios with significant afforestation must compensate for albedo-induced warming through additional emissions reductions, and scenarios with significant deforestation need not mitigate as aggressively due to albedo-induced cooling. In all scenarios considered, inclusion of albedo forcing in policy targets increases forest and shrub cover globally.What role, if any, do incidental emotions play in people's beliefs about climate change and support for climate mitigation policies? This question has received surprisingly little attention, despite a growing recognition that reactions to climate change information are shaped by various contextual factors beyond the information itself. Drawing on recent perspectives in psychology and communication, we conducted an experiment (N = 719) in which participants were randomly assigned to one of two emotion-induction treatments (guilt or anger) or to a no-emotion (neutral) control condition immediately before reading a news story about negative climate impacts and reporting on related policy preferences (e.g., support for taxing carbon polluters). Results revealed a number of significant effects, some of which emerged for the sample overall (e.g., guilt increased support for particular climate mitigation policies) and some that depended on personal and message factors suggested by prior research (e.g., political affiliation and social distance). Overall, these findings suggest that emotions may play an important role in guiding how the public processes and reacts to information about climate change.Numerous species have been pushed into extinction as an increasing portion of Earth's land surface has been appropriated for human enterprise. In the future, global biodiversity will be affected by both climate change and land-use change, the latter of which is currently the primary driver of species extinctions. How societies address climate change will critically affect biodiversity because climate-change mitigation policies will reduce direct climate-change impacts; however, these policies will influence land-use decisions, which could have negative impacts on habitat for a substantial number of species. We assessed the potential impact future climate policy could have on the loss of habitable area in biodiversity hotspots due to associated land-use changes. We estimated past extinctions from historical land-use changes (1500-2005) based on the global gridded land-use data used for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report and habitat extent and species data for each hotspot. We then estimated potential extinctions due to future land-use changes under alternative climate-change scenarios (2005-2100). Future land-use changes are projected to reduce natural vegetative cover by 26-58% in the hotspots. As a consequence, the number of additional species extinctions, relative to those already incurred between 1500 and 2005, due to land-use change by 2100 across all hotspots ranged from about 220 to 21000 (0.2% to 16%), depending on the climate-change mitigation scenario and biological factors such as the slope of the species-area relationship and the contribution of wood harvest to extinctions. These estimates of potential future extinctions were driven by land-use change only and likely would have been higher if the direct effects of climate change had been considered. Future extinctions could potentially be reduced by incorporating habitat preservation into scenario development to reduce projected future land-use changes in hotspots or by lessening the impact of future land-use activities on biodiversity within hotspots. La Futura Perdida de Habitat y Extinciones Causados por el Cambio en el Uso de Suelo en los Puntos Clave de Biodiversidad bajo Cuatro Escenarios de Mitigacion de Cambio Climatico Se ha llevado a numerosas especies a la extincion conforme una porcion creciente de la superficie terrestre ha sido aduenada por actividades humanas. En el futuro, la biodiversidad global se vera afectada tanto por el cambio climatico como por el cambio en el uso de suelo, de los cuales el ultimo es actualmente el principal conductor de la extincion de especies. La manera en que las sociedades aborden el cambio climatico afectara criticamente a la biodiversidad ya que las politicas de mitigacion de cambio climatico reduciran directamente los impactos del cambio climatico; sin embargo, estas politicas influenciaran las decisiones de uso de suelo, lo que podria tener impactos negativos sobre el habitat de numerosas especies. Evaluamos el impacto potencial que podrian tener las futuras politicas de clima sobre la perdida del area habitable en los puntos clave de biodiversidad debido al cambio asociado en el uso de suelo. Estimamos las extinciones pasadas a partir de cambios historicos en el uso de suelo (1500 - 2005) con base en la extension del habitat, los datos de especies para cada punto clave, y la cuadricula global de datos sobre uso de suelo, la cual fue utilizada para el Reporte de la Quinta Evaluacion del Panel Intergubernamental sobre Cambio Climatico. Despues estimamos las extinciones potenciales causadas por futuros cambios en el uso de suelo bajo escenarios alternativos de cambio climatico (2005 - 2100). El numero de extinciones de especies adicionales, en relacion con aquellas ya provocadas entre 1500 y 2005, causadas por el cambio en el uso de suelo para 2100 en todos los puntos clave, vario aproximadamente de 220 a 21, 000 (0.2% a 16%), dependiendo del escenario de mitigacion de cambio climatico y factores biologicos, como la pendiente de la relacion especies-area y la contribucion de la tala a las extinciones. Estas estimaciones de las extinciones potenciales en el futuro fueron causadas solamente por el cambio en el uso de suelo y probablemente habrian sido mas altas si se hubiesen considerado los efectos directos del cambio climatico. Las extinciones futuras podrian reducirse potencialmente al incorporar la preservacion del habitat al desarrollo del escenario para reducir los futuros cambios en el uso de suelo en los puntos clave o al disminuir el impacto de las futuras actividades de uso de suelo sobre la biodiversidad dentro de los puntos clave. ResumenOzone air pollution is identified as one of the main threats bearing upon human health and ecosystems, with 25 000 deaths in 2005 attributed to surface ozone in Europe (IIASA 2013 TSAP Report #10). In addition, there is a concern that climate change could negate ozone pollution mitigation strategies, making them insufficient over the long run and jeopardising chances to meet the long term objective set by the European Union Directive of 2008 (Directive 2008/50/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2008) (60 ppbv, daily maximum). This effect has been termed the ozone climate penalty. One way of assessing this climate penalty is by driving chemistry-transport models with future climate projections while holding the ozone precursor emissions constant (although the climate penalty may also be influenced by changes in emission of precursors). Here we present an analysis of the robustness of the climate penalty in Europe across time periods and scenarios by analysing the databases underlying 11 articles published on the topic since 2007, i.e. a total of 25 model projections. This substantial body of literature has never been explored to assess the uncertainty and robustness of the climate ozone penalty because of the use of different scenarios, time periods and ozone metrics. Despite the variability of model design and setup in this database of 25 model projection, the present meta-analysis demonstrates the significance and robustness of the impact of climate change on European surface ozone with a latitudinal gradient from a penalty bearing upon large parts of continental Europe and a benefit over the North Atlantic region of the domain. Future climate scenarios present a penalty for summertime (JJA) surface ozone by the end of the century (2071-2100) of at most 5 ppbv. Over European land surfaces, the 95% confidence interval of JJA ozone change is [0.44; 0.64] and [0.99; 1.50] ppbv for the 2041-2070 and 2071-2100 time windows, respectively.How can assessments of environmental policy issues be policy-relevant without being policy-prescriptive? The predominant technocratic and decisionist responses to this question misleadingly assume that value-neutral scientific recommendations for public policy means, or even objectives, are possible. On the other end of the spectrum, the literature on democratic and pragmatic models of expertise in policy often does not satisfactorily explain what researchers can contribute to public discourses surrounding disputed, value-laden policy objectives and means. Building on John Dewey's philosophy, this article develops the "pragmatic-enlightened model" (PEM) of assessment making, which refines the existing pragmatic models. It is used to some extent by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to the PEM's policy assessment methodology, policy objectives and their means can only be evaluated in light of the practical consequences of the means. Learning about the secondary effects, side effects and synergies of the best means may require a revaluation of the policy objectives, for instance, regarding the use of bioenergy for climate mitigation. Following the PEM, assessments would based on a thorough problem analysis explore alternative policy pathways, including their diverse practical consequences, overlaps and trade-offs, in cooperation with stakeholders. Such an arduous interdisciplinary cartography of multiple objectives, multi-functional policy means and the broad range of their quantitative and qualitative practical consequences may face considerable practical challenges and uncertainty. Yet, it could make assessments more policy-relevant and less prescriptive, and could effectively support a learning process about the political solution space. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With increasing global demand for animal protein, strategies for mitigating climate change are paramount to policymakers as well as the dairy and livestock industries. This article examines the role of technology and innovation in animal production as a strategy towards climate change mitigation and feeding a growing and wealthier world population. It focuses on the ability to produce more food with fewer resources as a means of reducing the environmental impact of the dairy and livestock industries. Environmental sustainability can be maintained and increased through an agricultural system that is highly productive through efficient use of natural resources. But the key to harnessing the societal and environmental benefits of an efficient and sustainable agri-food sector is addressing political and media impediments, often advanced on the basis of inaccurate information and data. Safe, regulated and proven innovations in the form of products, practices and genetics are currently available to farmers to produce livestock foods more sustainably. The main policy challenge is the enabling of this innovation, so as to expand choices in the adoption of agricultural technology. This will involve the public and private sector confronting and correcting the misleading biases that persist in the media on agricultural and food technology.The increase in energy demand due to economic and population growth necessitates the expansion of the Brazilian energy supply. Hydropower energy, a renewable energy source, arguably clean, presents an energy solution for many countries such as Brazil, with large hydric reservoirs, which help them reduce energy dependence on fossil and imported fuel sources. However, it must be emphasized that without careful planning, the creation of hydropower plants will cause severe social and environmental damage due to the large areas that need to be flooded for the implementation of these plants. The installation of hydropower plants floods vast forest areas, causing loss of biodiversity, displacement of native Brazilian people and riverside populations, and changes to the water acid levels and the natural course of rivers. To mitigate these effects, authorities must first conduct a study on installation possibilities and potential socio-environmental consequences, to be interpreted and used by the agents involved. Aiming to analyze the social-environmental impacts of the hydropower plants, this research seeks to investigate the capacity of mitigation of the negative effects of the implementation of the hydropower plants, specifically with regard to the Belo Monte plant, Brazil.Elevated sea surface temperatures have been shown to cause mass coral bleaching(1-3). Widespread bleaching, affecting >90% of global coral reefs and causing coral degradation, has been projected to occur by 2050 under all climate forcing pathways adopted by the IPCC for use within the Fifth Assessment Report4,5. These pathways include an extremely ambitious pathway aimed to limit global mean temperature rise to 2 degrees C (ref. 6; Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6-RCP2.6), which assumes full participation in emissions reductions by all countries, and even the possibility of negative emissions(7). The conclusions drawn from this body of work, which applied widely used algorithms to estimate coral bleaching(8), are that we must either accept that the loss of a large percentage of the world's coral reefs is inevitable, or consider technological solutions to buy those reefs time until atmospheric CO2 concentrations can be reduced. Here we analyse the potential for geoengineering, through stratospheric aerosol-based solar radiation management (SRM), to reduce the extent of global coral bleaching relative to ambitious climate mitigation. Exploring the common criticism of geoengineering-that ocean acidification and its impacts will continue unabated-we focus on the sensitivity of results to the aragonite saturation state dependence of bleaching. We do not, however, address the additional detrimental impacts of ocean acidification on processes such as coral calcification(9,10) that will further determine the benefit to corals of any SRM-based scenario. Despite the sensitivity of thermal bleaching thresholds to ocean acidification being uncertain(11,12), stabilizing radiative forcing at 2020 levels through SRM reduces the risk of global bleaching relative to RCP2.6 under all acidification-bleaching relationships analysed.Improving aspects of the built environment, such as retrofitting housing and designing transport options that encourage active journeys (cycling and walking), can have significant and demonstrable impacts on health and well-being. Policies that have primary goals such as improving energy efficiency can have important measureable co-benefits for health and well-being, as well as climate change mitigation. The authors carried out two community housing trials to measure the benefits of installing insulation and effective heating on households' health and wellbeing. These trials have shown that these energy efficiency projects increase health and well-being, reduce hospitalisations and excess winter mortality, and at the same time reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In a third trial, they remediated injury hazards in houses, significantly reducing the household injury rate. Using a quasiexperimental study, the authors evaluated the impact of retrofitting infrastructure to increase cycling and walking. This showed that the distance from housing to the new infrastructure was an important explanatory factor for positive changes in choice of modes of travel. Distance of housing from school was also an important factor in whether children walked or cycled to school. In conclusion, retrofitting urban and suburban infrastructure can increase health and well-being, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.Researchers recently have begun to examine how hostile media perceptions may promote discursive activities aimed at correcting the media's perceived negative influence. We use nationally representative survey data to test a moderated-mediation model that finds that hostile media perceptions significantly affect support for climate mitigation policies through the mediator of discussion and that the link between discussion and policy support is moderated in a three-way interaction with social network heterogeneity and political ideology. Discussion in homogeneous social networks increases opinion polarization between liberals and conservatives by intensifying conservatives' opinions, whereas discussion in heterogeneous social networks decreases polarization by moderating liberals' opinions.Climate change has serious implications for the agricultural industry-both in terms of the need to adapt to a changing climate and to modify practices to mitigate for the impacts of climate change. In high-income countries where farming tends to be very intensive and large scale, it is important to understand farmers' beliefs and concerns about climate change in order to develop appropriate policies and communication strategies. Looking across six study sites-Scotland, Midwestern United States, California, Australia, and two locations in New Zealand-this paper finds that over half of farmers in each location believe that climate change is occurring. However, there is a wide range of beliefs regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change; only in Australia do a majority of farmers believe that climate change is anthropogenic. In all locations, a majority of farmers believe that climate change is not a threat to local agriculture. The different policy contexts and existing impacts from climate change are discussed as possible reasons for the variation in beliefs. This study compared varying surveys from the different locations and concludes that survey research on farmers and climate change in diverse locations should strive to include common questions to facilitate comparisons.Biochar, the solid product of pyrolysis, has emerged as a new technology and policy tool to address various environmental challenges (climate change, food production and agricultural waste management). The concept of biochar drew its inspiration from Amazonian practices that had led to the creation of Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE): fertile soils rich in (bio)char and human artefacts. In this article, we conceptualize biochar as an emerging policy arrangement, and examine it along the four dimensions of the Policy Arrangement Approach (FAA), which are actors, discourse, power and rules. We focus on Brazil as an important player in the international biochar debate. Our analysis shows that science experts are the predominant players in the network, while policy-makers, businessmen and farmers are marginally positioned. Experts from Embrapa occupy central positions and thus exercise most power in the network. Moreover, experts linked to ADE have lost prominence in the network. The reason for this is to be found in the shift from the ADE/ biochar to the biochar/technology discourse. The latter discourse includes different coalitions such as 'climate change mitigation', the 'improvement of soil fertility' and 'improving crop residue management'. Although the biochar/climate coalition is dominant at the international level, it is far less prominent in Brazil. Nationally, it is particularly the discourses of 'improvement of soil fertility' and 'improving crop residue management' which have prompted actors' relationships and practices. However, the biochar/technology discourse has not (yet) been formally institutionalized in Brazil. As a consequence, the country lacks an established biochar policy field. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integrative mitigation and adaptation strategies are needed to counter climate change. Indicators can be valuable that focus on the specific relevance of cities' socioeconomic and spatial properties. While previous analyses have identified socioeconomic influences on urban greenhouse gas emissions, information about the role of spatial urban structures and land use and land cover patterns is sparse. This study advances the use of spatial metrics for analyzing the linkages between the spatial properties of a city and its greenhouse gas emissions. The relationship between nine types of spatial structure, four land use and land cover-based indicators, and the emissions of 52 European cities is investigated by spatially and statistically analyzing high resolution data from European Union's "Urban Atlas". Spatial determinants of urban greenhouse gas emissions are identified, indicating a strong connection between urban sprawl and increasing emissions. In particular, high amounts of sparsity in the urban fabric within large distances to the city center relate to increased per capita emissions. Thus, a 10 % reduction of very low density urban fabrics is correlated with 9 % fewer emissions per capita. In contrast, high amounts of fragmented, dense urban patches relate with lower emissions. This study links urban spatial properties and land use and land cover compositions to greenhouse gas emissions and advances the understanding of urban sprawl. Future research needs to combine knowledge about socioeconomic drivers with information about the identified spatial influences of urban greenhouse gas emissions to help cities realize their climate change mitigation potential.This paper examines the extent to which innovative Spanish firms pursue improvements in energy efficiency (EE) as an objective of innovation. The increase in energy consumption and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions justifies the greater attention being paid to energy efficiency and especially to industrial EE. The ability of manufacturing companies to innovate and improve their EE has a substantial influence on attaining objectives regarding climate change mitigation. Despite the effort to design more efficient energy policies, the EE determinants in manufacturing firms have been little studied in the empirical literature. From an exhaustive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms and using a logit model, we examine the energy efficiency determinants for those firms that have innovated. To carry out the econometric analysis, we use panel data from the Community Innovation Survey for the period 2008-2011. Our empirical results underline the role of size among the characteristics of firms that facilitate energy efficiency innovation. Regarding company behaviour, firms that consider the reduction of environmental impacts to be an important objective of innovation and that have introduced organisational innovations are more likely to innovate with the objective of increasing energy efficiency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass easily can replace fossil fuels in the use of modern biomass energy due to the environmental benefits and the renewable. Biomass energy in Turkey is one of the most important renewable energy sources in terms of energy potential. Traditional biomass (wood and dung) in Turkey has a significant energy production rate. This ratio has been decreased with the decline of forests and the reduction seen in animal husbandry, recently. Traditional biomass is usually used in the form of non-commercial fuel and meets a quarter of the domestic energy production. Traditional biomass energy production has been planned 7530 Btep in 2020. In Turkey, the use of modern biomass energy is important in terms of the country's economy, and the environment pollution. Turkey has the potential to provide an alternative source of energy from the most appropriate and most cost-effective agricultural products according to its ecological conditions. Modern biomass started with 17 Btep in 2000. However, there has not been the foresight to future production. Whereas traditional biomass energy production should increasingly be reduced and modern biomass energy production should be increased. This situation will offer new investment fields to investors. This study shows that biomass energy continues to be the main source of energy for climate change mitigation and energy sustainability in Turkey, particularly in its traditional forms. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Expansion of renewable energies (=RE) is a key measure in climate change mitigation. For this expansion mountainous areas are regarded as specifically suitable because of their high-energy potential. However, mountains also are biodiversity hot-spots and provide scenic landscapes and therefore offer high natural and cultural value. Preserving this natural and cultural value whilst intensifying RE, is expected to increase land use conflicts. This is of great concern in particular for vulnerable areas such as the Alps. Reconciling RE expansion with the preservation of natural and cultural values and thus minimizing environmental impacts represents one of the most important challenges now. For this a systematic assessment of the wide range of impacts is needed. This literature review scrutinizes RE resources which are relevant in the Alpine region and their effects on the environment by applying the Ecosystem Service approach. Thereby, we identified possible environmental constraints when exploiting Alpine RE potentials and generated recommendations for future strategies on expanding RE. The outcomes highlight the strong need for interdisciplinary research on RE and environmental conflicts. Interdisciplinary approaches such as the concept of Ecosystem Services can help to cover the wide range of aspects associated with these particular human-environment interrelations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Quality of agricultural soils is influenced by different management practices. The purpose of conducting on-farm field research is to come up with fact-based answers to farming's challenging questions and this type of research targets "real world" data that are typically more variable than smaller fields used for small-plot/small-scale research. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the immediate (one year) impacts of pea (Pisum sativum) and turnip (Brassica rapa rapa) as cover crops on properties of a Kokomo silty clay loam soil (Fine, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Argiaquolls) in Central Ohio under on-farm conditions. A range of soil parameters were tested for soil sampled from four depths (0-10, 10-20, 20-40 and 40-60 cm) after the first season of cover cropping and before seeding of soybean (Glycine max) in 2013. Data indicate that only few soil parameters were significantly affected by the cover crop treatment. For 0-10 cm depth, cover crops significantly decreased pH from 6.7 to 5.7 and increased soil organic C (SOC) concentrations from 23 to 2.5% (g 100 g(-1)). Although cover crops did not have any significant effects on other soil properties, however, there were trends of lower field dry bulk density (BD) and water stable aggregates (WSA) in 0-10 cm depth under the cover cropping system (BD: 13 Mg m(-3), WSA: 72%) than those of control (BD: 1.5 Mg m(-3), WSA: 80% in 0-10 cm), and similar observations were found for deeper soil layers. The lack of significant effects on other soil properties may be due to high field variability and short duration under cover cropping. Similarly, soybean grain yield was not significantly impacted by the treatment but yield was slightly higher under cover crop (4.6 Mg ha(-1)) than under control (4.3 Mg ha(-1)). These data suggest that some improvements in soil characteristics are likely even over a short period under an appropriate cover crop, however, longer-term data are needed to see whether or not these trends are transient. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Coal was central to the industrial revolution, but in the 20th century it increasingly was superseded by oil and gas. However, in recent years coal again has become the predominant source of global carbon emissions. We show that this trend of rapidly increasing coal-based emissions is not restricted to a few individual countries such as China. Rather, we are witnessing a global renaissance of coal majorly driven by poor, fast-growing countries that increasingly rely on coal to satisfy their growing energy demand. The low price of coal relative to gas and oil has played an important role in accelerating coal consumption since the end of the 1990s. In this article, we show that in the increasingly integrated global coal market the availability of a domestic coal resource does not have a statistically significant impact on the use of coal and related emissions. These findings have important implications for climate change mitigation: If future economic growth of poor countries is fueled mainly by coal, ambitious mitigation targets very likely will become infeasible. Building new coal power plant capacities will lead to lock-in effects for the next few decades. If that lock-in is to be avoided, international climate policy must find ways to offer viable alternatives to coal for developing countries.The European Union (EU) relies largely on bioenergy to achieve its climate and energy targets for 2020 and beyond. Special focus is placed on utilization of biomass residues, which are considered to cause low environmental impacts. We used the dataset from the latest European Commission document on the sustainability of solid and gaseous biomass (SWD2014 259), complementing those results by: i) designing three pathways for domestic-heat production using forest logging residues, with different combustion technologies; ii) expanding the analysis to include forest carbon stock development with and without bioenergy; iii) using absolute climate metrics to assess the surface temperature response by the end of the century to a bioenergy and a reference fossil system; iv) including multiple climate forcers (well-mixed GHG, near term climate forcers and surface albedo change); iv) quantifying life cycle impacts on acidification, particulate matter emissions and photochemical ozone formation; v) reviewing potential risks for forest ecosystem degradation due to increased removal of residues. Supply-chain GHG savings of the three pathways analysed ranged between 80% and 96% compared to a natural gas system, above the 70% threshold suggested by the EU. However, the climate impact of bioenergy should be assessed by considering also the non-bioenergy uses of the biomass and by including all climate forcers. We calculate the Surface Temperature Response to bioenergy and fossil systems by means of Absolute Global surface Temperature Potential (AGTP) metric. Domestic heating from logging residues is generally beneficial to mitigate the surface temperature increase by 2100 compared to the use of natural gas and other fossil sources. As long as residues with a decay rate in the forest higher than 2.7%*yr(-1) are considered as feedstock, investing now in the mobilization of residues for heat production can reduce the temperature increase by 2100 compared to all the fossil sources analysed, both in case of bioenergy as a systemic change or in case of bioenergy as a transitory option. Furthermore, several environmental risks are associated with the removal and use of forest logging residues for bioenergy. These issues concern mostly local air pollution, biodiversity loss and, mainly for stumps removal, physical damage to forest soils. Forest logging residues are not free of environmental risks. Actions promoting their use should consider: (i) that climate change mitigation depends mainly on the decay rate of biomass under natural decomposition and time and rate of technology deployment, (ii) whether management guidelines aimed at protecting long-term forest productivity are in place and (iii) whether proper actions for the management of adverse effects on local air pollution are in place. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Top-down economic approaches theoretically show that placing a price on carbon can reduce emissions. Responses by firms to these policies, however, are less well understood and are critical for understanding the effectiveness of price-based carbon policy. This article provides an analysis of firm-level responses to the carbon tax in British Columbia (BC) through empirical research of grey literature, industry participation, and interviews with executives of major emitting firms in BC. The article highlights the empirical responses to the tax by firms, who experience difficulty in making low-carbon changes in response to fluctuating commodity prices, the low certainty of climate policy over temporal and spatial scales, and the political economy of implementing regional climate policy. It also highlights the importance of understanding firm-level responses as a complementary approach to macro-economic policy making on carbon pricing. The article shows the importance of engaging decision makers in corporations to understand how carbon is governed in light of emerging climate policy. Policy relevance This article is relevant to policy makers implementing carbon-pricing initiatives by illustrating the need to complement macroeconomic models with firm-level response analysis. It also demonstrates the key concerns of executives in a resource extractive economy and the ability of a carbon price, and the need for complementary technology funds and policy, to affect change in industrial emissions.This article deals with newly emerging international collaborative initiatives around two issues connected to climate change: removal of fossil fuel subsidies and improving climate information disclosure practices in the business sector. While networked initiatives on the gradual removal of fossil fuel subsidies and a multi-actor network on disclosure of climate change information do not explicitly mobilize collective actions around climate change, they supplement and reinforce a wide array of other transnational initiatives and partnerships around climate change mitigation efforts. Analysed networks equip transnational policy processes around the climate change issue, initially formed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) member states, with new policy tools to mitigate human-induced climate change and hugely expand the membership of policy-making at the international level. Newly emerging transnational networks in the area of fossil fuel subsidies removal and improving climate change information disclosure practices in the corporate world also strive for harmonization of policy methods and instruments across international boundaries. The experience of the European Union (EU) in promoting climate change actions among its member states and in sustaining collaboration with private actors can serve as an exemplary and learning tool for transnational policy networks across continents. And the size of the EU's market together with its governance structure provides it with a common legitimate voice at the international arena for climate change decision-making.The energy sector, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, is a major focus of government climate change mitigation policies. To this end, lower-carbon infrastructure (LCI) developments are likely to increase. However, oppositional local social networks regularly slow or halt LCI proposals during the public participation processes conducted during planning. Using social capital as a conceptual lens, an analytical framework is developed with the aim of improving current understanding of local resistance. Specifically, the framework analyses the lifecycle of social networks through two case studies that explore resistance to a wind farm and a gas-fired power plant. The analysis identifies reasons for the formation, operation, dissipation, and endurance of the social networks. The article is relevant to public participation processes in natural resource management and infrastructure proposals in the rural and outer urban fringe.To investigate the complex relationships among the energy-related challenges faced by humanity, we marry a large-scale energy systems model, MESSAGE, with a multi-criteria model analysis tool. Such an approach is applicable to other modelling frameworks and can significantly improve the analysis of multiple goals. We focus our study on nuclear power - a technology viewed differently by different stakeholders. We find that nuclear power plays an important role in global climate change mitigation efforts where energy security and affordability goals take precedence, but that the total amount of nuclear in the system is highly dependent on stakeholders' preferences. We also find synergies among climate mitigation and energy security goals, and also between these two goals and the reduced need for underground carbon storage. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Discussions of failure in public policy have been hampered by a lack of consensus on a definition of the term 'failure'. It can be shown that arguments relating to policy failure tend to conflate forms of failure that are actually discrete, such as failure to meet objectives, claims of negative distributional outcomes and negative electoral outcomes attributed to specific policy decisions. This article attempts to unify and clarify the discourse on policy failure by presenting a multi-dimensional approach that can identify separate aspects of failure within a single policy or program. This multi- dimensional approach to policy failure is then be applied to climate change policy in Australia, in order to demonstrate how some aspects of a policy can be interpreted as failed while others can simultaneously be interpreted as successful, even by the same observer. As this example illustrates, global pronouncements of a public policy as a 'success' or 'failure' should be avoided in favour of more precise evaluations of what kind of failure occurred, and who was affected and in what ways.Recent estimates of the global carbon budget, or allowable cumulative CO2 emissions consistent with a given level of climate warming, have the potential to inform climate mitigation policy discussions aimed at maintaining global temperatures below 2 degrees C. This raises difficult questions, however, about how best to share this carbon budget amongst nations in a way that both respects the need for a finite cap on total allowable emissions, and also addresses the fundamental disparities amongst nations with respect to their historical and potential future emissions. Here we show how the contraction and convergence (C&C) framework can be applied to the division of a global carbon budget among nations, in a manner that both maintains total emissions below a level consistent with 2 degrees C, and also adheres to the principle of attaining equal per capita CO2 emissions within the coming decades. We show further that historical differences in responsibility for climate warming can be quantified via a cumulative carbon debt (or credit), which represents the amount by which a given country's historical emissions have exceeded (or fallen short of) the emissions that would have been consistent with their share of world population over time. This carbon debt/credit calculation enhances the potential utility of C&C, therefore providing a simple method to frame national climate mitigation targets in a way that both accounts for historical responsibility, and also respects the principle of international equity in determining future emissions allowances.Climate physics indicates that warming climate is a likely cause of extreme weather and more frequent and intense climate events. These extreme events can disrupt terrestrial carbon dynamics dramatically by triggering ecological disturbances and potentially forcing climate-carbon feedbacks. In this paper we synthesize the findings of 26 papers that focus on collecting evidence and developing knowledge of how extreme events disturb terrestrial carbon dynamics.It is widely recognized that achieving water security will take substantive investments in hydrology, engineering, soil science, agronomy, and a wide variety of physical and natural sciences and technologies. Less understood is the human aspect, the social science of beliefs, values, human perceptions and decision-making, social relationships, and social organization that intentionally and unintentionally construct, destroy, and reconstruct the water and land resources to which society is intimately linked. Addressing the complex issues of water security will require humans to acknowledge the threats to security and a willingness to give priority to assuring water quality, water availability, and water access to meet the needs of a growing world population and their economic engines. Soil-water-vegetation-climate-human relationships are central to maintaining and repairing the hydrological cycle necessary for fresh, safe, and abundant water supply. The current and future condition of our earth ecosystem is substantively dependent on individual and social decisions and policies associated with water. There is a need for (i) more coupled human-natural science to understand these relationships, (ii) greater public participation in connecting scientific facts and social values, and (iii) a willingness to innovate and adapt water and land use decisions and policies as scientific understanding and values evolve.With increasing urgency for global action toward climate change mitigation, this study is undertaken to evaluate integration options for post-combustion CO2 capture (PCC) on gas-fired power plants. High-fidelity models of a natural gas combined cycle power plant, a PCC plant, and a CO2 compression train are integrated for a 90% CO2 capture level. Three options to provide steam for solvent regeneration are explored: extracting steam from the intermediate-pressure (IP)/low-pressure (LP) crossover, using a gas-fired package boiler, and extracting steam from the LP drum. The effect of pressure losses because of steam extraction, a factor ignored in previous analyses, is also considered. The integrated plant net efficiency is 47.8, 40.4, and 44.9%, respectively, for the aforementioned scenarios. Next, supplementary firing of gas turbine exhaust is employed to generate an ample amount of steam to preserve plant net output under a sliding pressure scenario and meet solvent regeneration requirements. It is observed that the net plant efficiency converges to a value of 43.5% for the options considered.There is a substantial gap between the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change and the human response to this evidence. Perceptions of and responses to climate change can differ among regions of the world, as well as within countries. Therefore, information about the public's attitudes and perceptions related to climate change is essential to the development of relevant educational resources. In the present study, zoo visitors in four South American countries responded to a questionnaire regarding their attitudes and perceptions toward global climate change. Results indicated that most respondents are already highly concerned about global climate change and are interested in greater engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. Visitors also perceive various obstacles to engagement in climate change mitigation behaviors. We discuss the results of our study in terms of addressing visitors' climate change attitudes and perceptions within the social and emotional context of zoo settings. Zoo Biol. 34:393-393, 2015. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals Inc.Many rural communities in British Columbia (western Canada) are at risk from wildfire. This risk will increase over time as a result of climate change because of higher average temperatures, longer growing seasons, and more intense droughts. On the other hand, these communities are also faced with rising fuel costs and a growing demand for heat as suburban population increases. The fact these communities are surrounded by forests presents an opportunity to combine community wildfire risk abatement with bioenergy development. Additional co-benefits include: (1) reduced community energy expenditures; (2) the creation of local jobs; (3) climate change mitigation; and (4) increased community energy security. Here, we present results from three pilot rural communities (Burns Lake, Invermere, and Sicamous, all of them in British Columbia) designed to evaluate the feasibility of wildfire risk abatement in conjunction with bioenergy production. Maps were created showing each community's forest-urban interface area with quantified estimates of its sustainable woody biomass resource potential under different management scenarios while monitoring ecosystem and soil health. The results and experience gained through this work has been synthesized in a calculator tool to help other communities make their own screening-level assessments. This calculator is a freely available on-line tool: FIRST Heat. (C) 2015 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Hedgerows (also known as field margins, shelterbelts, or windbreaks) have the potential to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural activities through carbon (C) sequestration in the woody biomass of trees and shrubs as well as in the soil. A first step to understanding the sequestration potential is to quantify the biomass C and soil C storage. In the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada, a hedgerow stewardship program incentivizes farmers to plant hedgerows to create habitat for biodiversity conservation and to improve ecosystem services such as climate change mitigation. This study evaluated the efficacy of hedgerows to store C in woody biomass and soil relative to remnant. hedgerows (RH) and neighboring production fields with annual crops. We measured soil C (equivalent soil mass) and soil aggregate stability in both hedgerows and production fields, while biomass C and species diversity were calculated for the trees and shrubs in the two hedgerow types. There was no significant difference in the biomass C in the two hedgerow types; despite Age differences with planted hedgerows (PH) having a mean total above- and belowground biomass of 76 +/- 32 t C ha(-1) (33.8 +/- 14.2 tn C ac(-1)) and RH 124 +/- 21 t C ha(-1) (55.3 +/- 9.3 tn C ac(-1)). Aggregate stability was similar in both hedgerow types, and was significantly greater than neighboring production fields. Woody vegetation biodiversity was significantly greater in PH than RH for richness, Shannon, and Simpson measures. Planted hedgerows stored significantly greater soil C than RH to 1.2 t m(-2) (1.1 tn yd(-2)) standard soil mass with values being 175.9 +/- 13.2 t C ha(-1) (78.4 +/- 5.8 tn C ac(-1)) and 132.7 +/- 7.3 t C ha(-1) (5.9.1 +/- 3.2 tn C ac(-1)) respectively. Soil C in PH was 40% greater than that of their neighboring production fields. Soil C was significantly correlated with the Shannon and Simpson diversity of the hedgerow shrubs and trees indicating that planting hedgerows, with improved woody vegetation biodiversity, may have a positive effect on their greenhouse gas mitigation potential on farmland.An increasing number of Danish local governments use green web applications, which are websites intended to convince users to reduce energy consumption in order to mitigate climate change. However, to date, no empirical evidence has been published that demonstrates whether green web applications have this intended effect. This paper, based on a survey of 329 Danish small and medium enterprises (SMEs), examines the perceived effects of a green web application named klimabevidst.dk (which can be translated as climateawareness.dk) and explores the motivation of SMEs to use the application. As 29-56 % of SMEs declare that the application has had a medium or large energy reduction effect on their businesses, the paper concludes that klimebevidst.dk can be a relevant component in local government climate change mitigation campaigns aimed at small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper also shows that the perceived effects of using the web application correlate strongly with the extent to which the web application is used (i.e. with the number of the application's energy reduction guides read). Moreover, the perceived effect is larger in smaller SMEs, in SMEs that prioritise climate change and the health of their employees, and in SMEs that do not prioritise economic benefits. The present study is, however, unable to quantify the reduction; further study is needed to produce a more refined picture of the role played by the web application in increasing energy efficiency.This paper analyzes the effect of skilled migration on two measures of innovation, patenting and bibliometric data, in a panel of 20 European countries between 1995 and 2008. The empirical findings show that a larger pool of migrants in the skilled professions is associated with higher levels of knowledge creation. Skilled migrants contribute both to the creation of "private" knowledge, measured by the number of patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and to more "public" basic research, measured by the number of citations to published articles. This finding is robust, in that it uses both an occupation-based and an education-based index of skilled migration, as well as an instrumental variable estimation accounting for the endogeneity of the skilled migrants indicator and to a number of robustness checks. Our results suggest that policy efforts aiming at attracting skilled migrants to Europe and employing them in skilled professions, such as those put forward in the Europe 2020 Strategy, will indeed foster EU competitiveness in innovation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The positive role of hydropower in climate change adaption is well accepted by the international community and has been highlighted many times, while the understanding of its impacts on socioeconomic development remains at the stage of rough estimation and qualitative description. The application of a multi-regional CGE model in this paper provides an effective tool for quantitatively assessing the socioeconomic impacts of hydropower development, reflecting its positive functions. This case study on the Upper Chuan River details the steps of model development, including impact mechanism analysis, regional delimitation, macro closure setting, shock selection, and database preparation. The results show the enormous economic benefits of hydropower development using various indicators such as consumption, investment, GDP, employment, and income. The study indicates that hydropower development is a win-win energy development mode which can help to realize the integration of sustainable development and climate change mitigation. Finally, potential improvements to the model are discussed.Assessment of management-induced changes in soil quality is important for sustaining crop yield. The purpose of conducting on-farm field research is to come up with fact-based answers to farming's challenging questions and this type of research targets "real-world" data. However, research information on impacts of tillage on organic (muck) soils is scanty, and underlying processes of management-induced changes in soil characteristics are poorly understood. In addition, data are scarce on impacts of immediate short-term tillage on historically no-tilled mineral soils. Thus, the objectives of this research are to evaluate impacts of (1) long-term conventional tillage (CT) on organic or muck (Mc) soil compared to non-cropped no-till (NT) condition and (2) short-term CT on mineral (CrB) soil, which has been under NT management under corn. All monitored soil properties were significantly affected by soil type. Compared to CrB, Mc had 6.4 and 5 times higher soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (N) concentrations, respectively for all sampling depths. Long-term tillage had no impact on Mc probably due to its porous nature, weak structure and high organic matter content. In the mineral soil, short-term CT significantly affected bulk density (BD), water-stable aggregates (WSA), and available water capacity (AWC), especially, in the surface (0-10 cm) layer. The BD was reduced by CT for CrB by up to 14 % (NT 1.6 Mg m(-3)), compared to NT. Residue incorporation in the plow layer under CT (similar to 20 cm) may have increased aggregation by up to 19 % (70-83 %) and SOC by up to 15 % (2-2.3 %) in CrB compared with that under NT (total aggregation 70 %, SOC 2 %). The data of this study demonstrate that (1) selected muck soil had significantly improved soil properties (higher WSA, AWC, SOC and N, and lower BD and penetration resistance) than those of the studied mineral soil, (2) long-term tillage did not affect the properties of the native muck soil, and (3) surface layer of the long-term no-tilled mineral soil was significantly affected by introduction of only 1 year of CT management.Forest bioenergy can contribute to climate change mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with energy production. We assessed changes in GHG emissions resulting from displacement of coal with wood pellets for the Atikokan Generating Station located in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. Two contrasting biomass sources were considered for continuous wood pellet production: harvest residue from current harvest operations (residue scenario) and fibre from expanded harvest of standing live trees (stemwood scenario). For the stemwood scenario, two metrics were used to assess the effects of displacing coal with forest biomass on GHG emissions: (i) time to carbon sequestration parity, defined as the time from the beginning of harvest to when the combined GHG benefit of displacing coal with biomass and the amount of carbon in regenerating forest equalled the amount of forest carbon without harvest for energy production; and (ii) time to carbon debt repayment, defined as the time from the beginning of harvest to when the combined GHG benefit of displacing coal with biomass and the amount of carbon in the regenerating forest equalled forest carbon at the time of harvest. Only time to carbon sequestration parity was used for the residue scenario. In the residue scenario, carbon sequestration parity was achieved within 1year. In the stemwood scenario, times to carbon sequestration parity and carbon debt repayment were 91 and 112years, respectively. Sensitivity analysis showed that estimates were robust when parameter values were varied. Modelling experiments showed that increasing growth rates for regenerating stands in the stemwood scenario could substantially reduce time to carbon sequestration parity. We discuss the use of the two metrics (time to carbon sequestration parity and time to carbon debt repayment) for assessing the effects of forest bioenergy projects on GHG emissions and make recommendations on terminology and methodologies for forest bioenergy studies.Wood from short rotation coppices (SRCs) is discussed as bioenergy feedstock with good climate mitigation potential inter alia because soil organic carbon (SOC) might be sequestered by a land-use change (LUC) from cropland to SRC. To test if SOC is generally enhanced by SRC over the long term, we selected the oldest Central European SRC plantations for this study. Following the paired plot approach soils of the 21 SRCs were sampled to 80cm depth and SOC stocks, C/N ratios, pH and bulk densities were compared to those of adjacent croplands or grasslands. There was no general trend to SOC stock change by SRC establishment on cropland or grassland, but differences were very site specific. The depth distribution of SOC did change. Compared to cropland soils, the SOC density in 0-10cm was significantly higher under SRC (17 +/- 2 in cropland and 21 +/- 2kgCm(-3) in SRC). Under SRC established on grassland SOC density in 0-10cm was significantly lower than under grassland. The change rates of total SOC stocks by LUC from cropland to SRC ranged from -1.3 to 1.4 MgCha(-1)yr(-1) and -0.6MgCha(-1)yr(-1) to +0.1MgCha(-1)yr(-1) for LUC from grassland to SRC, respectively. The accumulation of organic carbon in the litter layer was low (0.14 +/- 0.08 MgCha(-1)yr(-1)). SOC stocks of both cropland and SRC soils were correlated with the clay content. No correlation could be detected between SOC stock change and soil texture or other abiotic factors. In summary, we found no evidence of any general SOC stock change when cropland is converted to SRC and the identification of the factors determining whether carbon may be sequestered under SRC remains a major challenge.Both climate change and habitat modification exert serious pressure on biodiversity. Although climate change mitigation has been identified as an important strategy for biodiversity conservation, bioenergy remains a controversial mitigation action due to its potential negative ecological and socio-economic impacts which arise through habitat modification by land use change. While the debate continues, the separate or simultaneous impacts of both climate change and bioenergy on biodiversity have not yet been compared. We assess projected range shifts of 156 European bird species by 2050 under two alternative climate change trajectories: a baseline scenario, where the global mean temperature increases by 4 degrees C by the end of the century, and a 2 degrees scenario, where global concerted effort limits the temperature increase to below 2 degrees C. For the latter scenario, we also quantify the pressure exerted by increased cultivation of energy biomass as modelled by IMAGE2.4, an integrated land use model. The global bioenergy use in this scenario is in the lower end of the range of previously estimated sustainable potential. Under the assumptions of these scenarios, we find that the magnitude of range shifts due to climate change is far greater than the impact of land conversion to woody bioenergy plantations within the European Union, and that mitigation of climate change reduces the exposure experienced by species. However, we identified potential for local conservation conflict between priority areas for conservation and bioenergy production. These conflicts must be addressed by strict bioenergy sustainability criteria that acknowledge biodiversity conservation needs beyond existing protected areas and apply also to biomass imported from outside the European Union.Environmental regulation of companies is sometimes in the literature characterised as a successive broadening of focus and policy instruments: from applying command-and-control mechanism to get companies to clean and/or dilute local pollutants through end-of-pipe solutions; towards applying various means to influence and facilitate companies to act proactively in preventing pollution through cleaner production, waste prevention and resource efficiency. This understanding is contested in this article. The article documents instead a gap in respect to the local authorities actual execution of the direct regulation of companies in Denmark. The practice of the local competent authorities is found to primarily still target local environmental concerns by command-and-control means. The objective of the article is to analyse this discrepancy between the overall representation of regulatory trends and the actual practices of local authorities in Denmark. The overall constraints that local authorities encounter are investigated in respect to: 1) Addressing energy efficiency and reduction of GHG emissions through juridical requirements in permits and injunctions, and 2) Facilitating and promoting reductions of energy consumption and GHG emissions during inspections. The assessment is based on the triangulation of different data: a) qualitative interviews with environmental officers from seven local authorities taking part in a EU life + project, Carbon 20; b) a documentary review of political documents and evaluations of the Danish regulations; as well as c) an interview and subsequent correspondence with an employee at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Changing aspen distribution in response to climate change and fire is a major focus of biodiversity conservation, yet little is known about the potential response of aspen to these two driving forces along topoclimatic gradients. This study is set to evaluate how aspen distribution might shift in response to different climate-fire scenarios in a semi-arid montane landscape, and quantify the influence of fire regime along topoclimatic gradients. We used a novel integration of a forest landscape succession and disturbance model (LANDIS-II) with a fine-scale climatic water deficit approach to simulate dynamics of aspen and associated conifer and shrub species over the next 150 years under various climate-fire scenarios. Simulations suggest that many aspen stands could persist without fire for centuries under current climate conditions. However, a simulated 2-5 A degrees C increase in temperature caused a substantial reduction of aspen coverage at lower elevations and a modest increase at upper elevations, leading to an overall reduction of aspen range at the landscape level. Increasing fire activity may favor aspen increase at its upper elevation limits adjacent to coniferous forest, but may also favor reduction of aspen at lower elevation limits adjacent to xeric shrubland. Our study highlights the importance of incorporating fine-scale terrain effects on climatic water deficit and ecohydrology when modeling species distribution response to climate change. This modeling study suggests that climate mitigation and adaptation strategies that use fire would benefit from consideration of spatial context at landscape scales.This article aims to examine whether the formulation of specific low carbon policy such as the feed-in tariff for wind energy in Germany can partly be a barrier to a comprehensive energy transition (Energiewende). Despite their short and medium-term success, these policies could create a long-term lock-in if they are formulated in a way that leads to a stagnation of systems innovation. The research finds that while the share of wind energy has increased rapidly over time, the feed-in-tariff and other low carbon policies and incentives have not been sufficient to achieve a socio-technical regime transition in Germany yet. We suggest that the German feed-in-tariff has incorporated wind energy (a niche-innovation) and wind energy actors (pathway newcomers) into a slightly modified socio-technical regime that is rather similar to the earlier 'fossil fuel dominant' socio-technical regime. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy security has become a key priority in the European Union's (EU) policy. However, climate change mitigation commitments run in parallel. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent to which the EU's climate change mitigation and energy security policies are coherent. The relationship is far from clear-cut, as both areas are complex and wide-ranging. We use a simple assessment framework, which juxtaposes the main components of the two policy domains and characterizes the interactions between them. Our assessment shows that there is general coherence between several policy subfields, but a number of policy interactions require policy-makers' attention. The coherence between energy security and climate mitigation policies will depend on ancillary policy measures and the evolution of external drivers, such as global gas markets. Furthermore, the future outlook of how the EU's energy policy will affect climate change mitigation and vice versa will depend on how the future energy security agenda is framed. A move to a nationally fragmented energy security frame would lead to greater policy conflicts, while a coordinated European energy security frame could increase policy coherence. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Functional diversity is critical for ecosystem dynamics, stability and productivity. However, dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) which are increasingly used to simulate ecosystem functions under global change, condense functional diversity to plant functional types (PFTs) with constant parameters. Here, we develop an individual- and trait-based version of the DGVM LPJmL (Lund-Potsdam-Jena managed Land) called LPJmL- flexible individual traits (LPJmL-FIT) with flexible individual traits) which we apply to generate plant trait maps for the Amazon basin. LPJmL-FIT incorporates empirical ranges of five traits of tropical trees extracted from the TRY global plant trait database, namely specific leaf area (SLA), leaf longevity (LL), leaf nitrogen content (N-area), the maximum carboxylation rate of Rubisco per leaf area (vcmaxarea), and wood density (WD). To scale the individual growth performance of trees, the leaf traits are linked by trade-offs based on the leaf economics spectrum, whereas wood density is linked to tree mortality. No preselection of growth strategies is taking place, because individuals with unique trait combinations are uniformly distributed at tree establishment. We validate the modeled trait distributions by empirical trait data and the modeled biomass by a remote sensing product along a climatic gradient. Including trait variability and trade-offs successfully predicts natural trait distributions and achieves a more realistic representation of functional diversity at the local to regional scale. As sites of high climatic variability, the fringes of the Amazon promote trait divergence and the coexistence of multiple tree growth strategies, while lower plant trait diversity is found in the species-rich center of the region with relatively low climatic variability. LPJmL-FIT enables to test hypotheses on the effects of functional biodiversity on ecosystem functioning and to apply the DGVM to current challenges in ecosystem management from local to global scales, that is, deforestation and climate change effects.Carbon capture and storage is a mitigation strategy that can be used to aid the reduction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This process aims to capture CO2 from large point-source emitters and transport it to a long-term storage site. For much of Europe, these deep storage sites are anticipated to be sited below the sea bed on continental shelves. A key operational requirement is an understanding of best practice of monitoring for potential leakage and of the environmental impact that could result from a diffusive leak from a storage complex. Here we describe a controlled CO2 release experiment beneath the seabed, which overcomes the limitations of laboratory simulations and natural analogues. The complex processes involved in setting up the experimental facility and ensuring its successful operation are discussed, including site selection, permissions, communications and facility construction. The experimental design and observational strategy are reviewed with respect to scientific outcomes along with lessons learnt in order to facilitate any similar future. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a key technology to potentially mitigate global warming by reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial facilities and power generation that escape into the atmosphere. To broaden the usage of geological storage as a viable climate mitigation option, it is vital to understand CO2 behaviour after its injection within a storage reservoir, including its potential migration through overlying sediments, as well as biogeochemical and ecological impacts in the event of leakage. The impacts of a CO2 release were investigated by a controlled release experiment that injected CO2 at a known flux into shallow, under-consolidated marine sediments for 37 days. Repeated high-resolution 2D seismic reflection surveying, both pre-release and syn-release, allows the detection of CO2-related anomalies, including: seismic chimneys; enhanced reflectors within the subsurface; and bubbles within the water column. In addition, reflection coefficient and seismic attenuation values calculated for each repeat survey, allow the impact of CO2 flux on sediment acoustic properties to be comparatively monitored throughout the gas release. CO2 migration is interpreted as being predominantly controlled by sediment stratigraphy in the early stages of the experiment. However, either the increasing flow rate, or the total injected volume become the dominant factors determining CO2 migration later in the experiment. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Whilst sub-seabed Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has the potential to remove a significant proportion of anthropogenic CO2 emissions at source, research is necessary to constrain the environmental impacts of potential future gas leaks from storage reservoirs. The QICS project (Quantifying and Monitoring Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Geological Carbons Storage) was established to improve our understanding of these potential impacts and to develop tools and best practice for monitoring sub-seabed CCS reservoirs. Exposure to increased environmental CO2 has been shown to raise the tissue pCO(2) of many marine invertebrate species, leading to tissue acidosis and perturbations in both ion transport and bicarbonate buffering. These disturbances can cause downstream effects, seen as metabolic depression in susceptible organisms, compromising the role of particular species within an ecosystem and even causing the local extinction of species groups. To monitor the potential impact to surficial benthic megafauna, cages of bivalves (the common mussel Mytilus edulis Linnaeus, 1758 and the king scallop Pecten maximus (Linnaeus, 1758)) were deployed at the gas release site and at a reference site both within Ardmucknish Bay, Oban, Scotland. Replicate individuals were sampled at six time points over a 125-day period, which spanned both the 37-day injection and recovery phases of the experiment, in order to establish impacts to molecular physiology. Samples of bivalves were also simultaneously sampled from a reference site within the bay in order to contrast changes in physiology induced by the gas release with naturally variability in the physiological performance of both species. We present data on changes in the transcription of genes coding for key ionic and carbon dioxide regulatory proteins. There was no evidence of gene regulation of either selected carbonic anhydrases (CAx genes) or the alpha subunit of sodium potassium ATPAses (ATP1A genes) in individual bivalves collected from the CO2 gas release site, in either species. In the common mussel M. edulis there was only evidence for changes with time in the expression of genes coding for different classes of carbonic anhydrase. It was therefore concluded that the effects of the plume of elevated pCO(2) on ion-regulatory gene transcription were negligible in both species. Whilst the analysed data from this current study do not constitute an impediment to the continued development of sub-seabed CCS as a climate mitigation strategy, further modelling is necessary to predict the consequences of larger or longer term leaks. Further analysis is also required in order to constrain the potential physiological impacts of gas leaks to benthic infaunal species and understand the mechanism of possible avoidance behaviour recorded in burrowing heart urchins Echinocardium cordatum (Pennant, 1777). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The largest global source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions comes from the burning of fossil fuel and approximately 30% of total net emissions come from land use and land use change. Forestation and reforestation are regarded worldwide as effective options of sequestering carbon to mitigate climate change with relatively low costs compared with industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction efforts. Cash trees with a steady augmentation in size are recognized as a multiple-beneficial solution to climate change in China. The reporting of C changes and GHG emissions for sustainable land management (SLM) practices such as afforestation is required for a variety of reasons, such as devising land management options and making policy. The Carbon Benefit Project (CBP) Simple Assessment Tool was employed to estimate changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and GHG emissions for wolfberry (Lycium barbarum L) planting on secondary salinized land over a 10 year period (2004-2014) in the Jingtai oasis in Gansu with salinized barren land as baseline scenario. Results show that wolfberry plantation, an intensively managed ecosystem, served as a carbon sink with a large potential for climate change mitigation, a restorative practice for saline land and income stream generator for farmers in soil salinized regions in Gansu province. However, an increase in wolfberry production, driven by economic demands, would bring environmental pressures associated with the use of N fertilizer and irrigation. With an understanding of all of the components of an ecosystem and their interconnections using the Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework there comes a need for strategies to respond to them such as capacity building, judicious irrigation and institutional strengthening. Cost benefit analysis (CBA) suggests that wolfberry cultivation was economically profitable and socially beneficial and thus well-accepted locally in the context of carbon sequestration. This study has important implications for Gansu as it helps to understand the role cash trees can play in carbon emission reductions. Such information is necessary in devising management options for sustainable land management (SLM). (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the coming decades the energy sector will have to face three major transformations concerned with climate change, security of supply and energy poverty. The first two have been extensively analysed, but less attention has been paid to the third, even though it has a great influence on the lives of millions of people. This paper presents an overview on energy poverty, different ways of measuring it and its implications. According to the WHO, indoor pollution causes an estimated 1.3 million deaths per annum in low income countries associated with the use of biomass in inadequate cookstoves. Although energy poverty cannot be delinked from the broader, more complex problem of poverty in general, access to energy infrastructures would avoid its most serious consequences and would help to encourage autonomous development. According to the IEA, the cost of providing universal access to energy by 2030 would require annual investment of $35 billion, i.e. much less than the amount provided annually in subsidies to fossil fuels. Finally, the paper argues that energy and energy poverty need to be incorporated into the design of development strategies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tropical reforestation (TR) has been highlighted as an important intervention for climate change mitigation because of its carbon storage potential. TR can also play other frequently overlooked, but significant, roles in helping society and ecosystems adapt to climate variability and change. For example, reforestation can ameliorate climate-associated impacts of altered hydrological cycles in watersheds, protect coastal areas from increased storms, and provide habitat to reduce the probability of species' extinctions under a changing climate. Consequently, reforestation should be managed with both adaptation and mitigation objectives in mind, so as to maximize synergies among these diverse roles, and to avoid trade-offs in which the achievement of one goal is detrimental to another. Management of increased forest cover must also incorporate measures for reducing the direct and indirect impacts of changing climate on reforestation itself. Here we advocate a focus on climate-smart reforestation, defined as reforesting for climate change mitigation and adaptation, while ensuring that the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on reforestation are anticipated and minimized.A high-quality carbon dioxide (CO2) inventory is the cornerstone of climate change mitigation. Most of the previously reported embodied CO2 inventories in China have no more than 42 sectors, and this limitation may introduce apparent inaccuracy into the analysis at the sector level. To improve the quality of input-output (IO)-based CO2 inventories for China, we propose a practical energy allocation approach to link the energy statistics to the 135-sector IO tables for China and compiled a detailed embodied CO2 intensity and inventory for 2007 using a single-region IO model. Interpretation of embodied CO2 intensities by fuel category, direct requirement, and total requirement in the sectors were conducted to identify, from different perspectives, the significant contributors. The total embodied CO2 emissions in 2007 was estimated to be 7.1 Gt and was separated into the industrial sector and final demand sector. Although the total CO2 estimations by the 42-sector and 135-sector analyses are equivalent, the allocations in certain groups of sectors differ significantly. Our compilation methodologies address indirect environmental impacts from industrial sectors, including the public utility and tertiary sectors. This method of interpretation could be utilized for better communication with stakeholders.Large dams have been controversially debated for decades due to their large-scale and often irreversible social and environmental impacts. In the pursuit of low-carbon energy and climate change mitigation, hydropower is experiencing a new renaissance. At the forefront of this renaissance are Chinese actors as the world's largest hydropower dam-builders. This paper aims to discuss the role of South-South technology transfer of low-carbon energy innovation and its opportunities and barriers by using a case study of the first large Chinese-funded and Chinese-built dam in Cambodia. Using the Kamchay Dam as an example, the paper finds that technology transfer can only be fully successful when host governments and organizations have the capacity to absorb new technologies. The paper also finds that technology transfer in the dam sector needs to go beyond hardware and focus more on the transfer of expertise, skills and knowledge to enable long-term sustainable development. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentSubstantive and concerted action is needed to mitigate climate change. However, international negotiations struggle to adopt ambitious legislation and to anticipate more climate-friendly developments. Thus, stronger actions are needed from other players. Cities, being greenhouse gas emission centers, play a key role in promoting the climate change mitigation movement by becoming hubs for smart and low-carbon lifestyles. In this context, a stronger linkage between greenhouse gas emissions and urban development and policy-making seems promising. Therefore, simple approaches are needed to objectively identify crucial emission drivers for deriving appropriate emission reduction strategies. In analyzing 44 European cities, the authors investigate possible socioeconomic and spatial determinants of urban greenhouse gas emissions. Multiple statistical analyses reveal that the average household size and the edge density of discontinuous dense urban fabric explain up to 86% of the total variance of greenhouse gas emissions of EU cities (when controlled for varying electricity carbon intensities). Finally, based on these findings, a multiple regression model is presented to determine greenhouse gas emissions. It is independently evaluated with ten further EU cities. The reliance on only two indicators shows that the model can be easily applied in addressing important greenhouse gas emission sources of European urbanites, when varying power generations are considered. This knowledge can help cities develop adequate climate change mitigation strategies and promote respective policies on the EU or the regional level. The results can further be used to derive first estimates of urban greenhouse gas emissions, if no other analyses are available. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Imperata grasslands, among the oldest forms of managed village land use, provide rural people with subsistence and monitory benefits. Yet, little is known about their role in global carbon (C) budget under the scenario of changing climate. The present study was carried out in managed Imperata grassland in Cachar district, Assam, North East India. The study was designed to understand whether Imperata grasslands are C source or sink, because they are managed through annual fire practice. We studied (i) organic carbon accumulation rate in the soil, (ii) C input from aboveground biomass (CIAB), C input from below-ground biomass (CIBB) and (iv) Soil CO2 efflux/soil respiration (R-s) on monthly intervals from October 2013 to September 2014 following standard methods. Later monthly data were merged into four distinct seasons, viz, autumn, winter, summer and rainy season to have a clear vision of seasonal influence on C source/sink status. The study showed highest (2.52 g C m(-2) month(-1)) soil organic carbon accumulation during summer season. Highest values for CIAB (14.31 g C m(-2) month(-1)), CIBB (30.98 g C m(-2) month(-1)) and R-s (31.85 g C m(-2) month(-1)) were observed during rainy, autumn and summer seasons respectively. C budget analysis with respect to seasons showed Imperata grasslands act as C source during winter and summer, whereas they serve as sink during autumn and rainy seasons. However, annual C budget (across all the months) showed Imperata grasslands as a net sink of 38.45 g C m(-2) year(-1) (0.40 Mg C ha(-1) year(-1)). Further research is needed to develop better management systems to enhance sink capacity of Imperata grasslands.A dynamic model simulating carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration by plants embedded in a vertical greenery system (VGS) was developed. The aim of the model was to demonstrate the advantages, in terms of CO2 sequestration, obtained by installation of large vegetated wall surfaces in urban areas. The ability of various plants, tested separately or in a mixed-species set, to accumulate carbon in different compartments and moments of their life (plants, compost, soil and microbial biomass in soil) was quantified. The model simulates a series of processes, from planting and growth of herbaceous plants in the VGS to the end of their lives, when compost is produced from green residues and is added to agricultural soil. The amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere is the portion finally stocked in the soil in the form of microbial biomass. The plants considered are commonly used in VGS because they are perennial and suitable for hydroponic culture. Typical Mediterranean climate was assumed for the VGS model. The herbaceous species selected were the perennial grass Zoysia matrella, the succulent Sedum spurium, Mediterranean shrubs Salvia nemorosa and Rosmarinus officinalis and flowering ornamental plants Geranium sanguineum, Carex brunnea and Facia japonica. As estimated by the model, the mean yearly CO2 flow absorbed by plant biomass of these species (expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents, CO2eq) was 0.44-3.18 kg CO2eq m(-2) of vertical garden. Green residues from plant replacement and trimming/pruning were treated to produce compost and added to agricultural soil. We estimated that a 98 m(2) VGS can capture an average carbon dioxide flow of 13.41-97.03 kg CO2eq per year. The model predicts increasing long-lasting carbon dioxide accumulation in the VGS over time, indicating a feasible solution for climate change mitigation in urban areas. The model can be adapted to different plant species and different geographical, climatic and biological conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Decarbonizing the transportation sector is critical to achieving global climate change mitigation. Although biofuels will play an important role in conventional gasoline and diesel applications, bioderived solutions are particularly important in jet fuels and lubricants, for which no other viable renewable alternatives exist. Producing compounds for jet fuel and lubricant base oil applications often requires upgrading fermentation products, such as alcohols and ketones, to reach the appropriate molecular-weight range. Ketones possess both electrophilic and nucleophilic functionality, which allows them to be used as building blocks similar to alkenes and aromatics in a petroleum refining complex. Here, we develop a method for selectively upgrading biomass-derived alkyl methyl ketones with > 95% yields into trimer condensates, which can then be hydrodeoxygenated in near-quantitative yields to give a new class of cycloalkane compounds. The basic chemistry developed here can be tailored for aviation fuels as well as lubricants by changing the production strategy. We also demonstrate that a sugarcane biorefinery could use natural synergies between various routes to produce a mixture of lubricant base oils and jet fuels that achieve net life-cycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 80%.Mountain waters, glaciers, hazards, and biodiversity are vulnerable to the impacts of global warming. Warming is projected to amplify over mountains by global climate models, yet meteorological records do not show a uniform acceleration of warming with elevation. Here we explore warming-elevation relationships using records from 2660 meteorological stations and determine that the vertical gradient of warming rate varies with location. The warming is faster at higher altitudes in Asia and western North America, but the opposite is observed over Central Europe and eastern North America which have received more short-wave radiation (brightening) associated with a decrease of aerosols and clouds since the 1980s. We found that altitudinal differences in air pollution (brightening), with observations showing more short-wave radiation received at low altitudes than at mountains, modulate the warming-elevation relationships. The advance in understanding of the drivers of regional climate change will contribute to the formulation of strategies for climate change mitigation at high elevations.Climate change and mitigation measures have three major impacts on food consumption and the risk of hunger: (1) changes in crop yields caused by climate change; (2) competition for land between food crops and energy crops driven by the use of bioenergy; and (3) costs associated with mitigation measures taken to meet an emissions reduction target that keeps the global average temperature increase to 2 degrees C. In this study, we combined a global computable general equilibrium model and a crop model (M-GAEZ), and we quantified the three impacts on risk of hunger through 2050 based on the uncertainty range associated with 12 climate models and one economic and demographic scenario. The strong mitigation measures aimed at attaining the 2 degrees C target reduce the negative effects of climate change on yields but have large negative impacts on the risk of hunger due to mitigation costs in the low-income countries. We also found that in a strongly carbon-constrained world, the change in food consumption resulting from mitigation measures depends more strongly on the change in incomes than the change in food prices.Abstract-India is faced with the major challenges of (a) providing energy access to all its citizens, (b) heavy dependence on fuel imports for energy security, and (c) complying with international protocols on climate change mitigation, although the economic and social development is the foremost priority. The increase in energy demand due to growing population and industrialization in the face of depleting fossil fuel resources has stimulated the country's efforts in adopting power generation from renewable energy sources. Starting with 0.34 GW (2%) out of 17 GW of the country's total installed capacity in the year 2002, the share of renewable power generation has reached 31.7 GW (12.5%) of 250 GW as of 2014. In the aspect of total installed renewable power generation, India occupies the fifth position in the world today. While the governmental policies have steadily encouraged the adoption of renewable power generation, there is need and potential for more vigorous engagement in pursuit of achieving power for all citizens along with economic development. This article presents a brief review of emergence and growth of renewable power generation in India, wind and solar sectors in particular.CO2 capture in a calcium looping (CaL) system is one of the most promising technologies for climate change mitigation. The main reactors in these systems (carbonator and calciner) operate in conditions where the reaction of CaO with the SO2 resulting from the combustion of coal is inevitable. This work reports on the sulphation of CaO under a range of variables that are typical of reactors in CaL systems. Furthermore it is demonstrated that the number of calcination carbonation cycles changes the sulphation patterns of the CaO from heterogeneous to homogeneous in all the limestones tested. For 50 carbonation calcination cycles and for particle sizes below 200 mu m, the sulphation pattern is in all cases homogeneous. The sulphation rates were found to be first order with respect to SO2, and zero with respect to CO2. Steam was observed to have a positive effect only in the diffusion through the product layer controlled regime, as it leads to an improvement in the sulphation rates and effectiveness of the sorbent. Most of the experimental results of sulphation of highly cycled sorbents under all conditions can be fitted by means of the Random Pore Model (RPM) assuming that the kinetics and diffusion through the product layer of the CaSO4 are the controlling regimes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water application systems under wells extracting groundwater are one of the major factors influencing climate change in the agricultural sector. In the context of growing demand for adaption of pressurized irrigation with electric pumps in South Central India, the present study was undertaken to assess the carbon dioxide emission (CO2 e) for different irrigation systems. The crop water requirements and pumpsets prevailing in the area were considered for estimation of CO2 e. The estimation includes operational energy consumption, well digging, installation and manufacturing of the irrigation system as well as the pumpsets. The irrigation systems used in major crops under wells include surface (rice, maize, groundnut, vegetables and sugarcane), raingun (maize, groundnut, vegetables and sugarcane), sprinkler (maize, groundnut and vegetables) and drip (vegetable and sugarcane). The analysis indicated that the energy used in pumping irrigation water made the highest contribution to total CO2 e footprint, which ranged from 2.52 to 15.72 t/ha depending on the irrigation system. Sugarcane crop showed maximum energy requirement (17.27 MWh/ha) under surface irrigation system, contributing 15.72 t/ha CO2 e. Maximum reduction in energy requirement and CO2 e was recorded in the case of drip (11.52 MWh/ha; 10.48 t/ha) system followed by sprinkler (12.58 MWh/ha; 11.52 t/ha) and raingun (14.81 MWh/ha; 13.47 t/ha) under tube wells. It was observed that among all the irrigation systems, the drip system gave the lowest CO2 e indicating the maximum climate change mitigation potential in the irrigation sector of selected region under wells.Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation+ (REDD+) has been accepted as a new paradigm for climate change mitigation. A country like Nepal could benefit from REDD+ and make a difference to the livelihoods of communities, including poor and marginalised families, from the positive incentives realized by establishing a MRV inclusive REDD+ framework that assures net GHG emission reductions at the local, landscape or sub-national levels. This paper presents a MRV inclusive REDD+ framework for Community Based Forest Management System and guides all stakeholders to accelerate REDD+ initiatives. This proposed REDD+ framework with MRV System draws on Nepal's in-country institutional structures and technical capabilities, and thus enables Nepal to participate early in the REDD+ mechanism.The overall context of Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon has changed dramatically since the 1980s. After the adoption of the 1988 constitution, large tracts of Indigenous lands have been recognized, which now cover more than 21% of the Brazilian Amazon. Well conserved for the most part, they play a key role in deterring deforestation and in climate change mitigation, while also undergoing drastic economic and social changes. There are many factors challenging the sustainability of Indigenous territories today, including the deficient enforcement of Indigenous rights. The injunction that Indigenous peoples should protect the environment is complicating the definition of which economic activities they are entitled to develop inside their territories. The focus of this paper is to review the current situation of Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon, providing historical context and pointing out current challenges and the debates surrounding their sustainability.The Obama Administration attracted significant attention in June 2014 when it proposed widely varying greenhouse gas emission-reduction targets for each state's electricity sector. This article examines the bases for these varying targets, concluding that they may present a new model of cooperative federalism, in two senses. Under cooperative federalism's traditional structure, the federal government is the standard-setting body and states are the implementers of those standards. Under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Power Plan, however, the federal government uses state policies to provide the content for the federal standards, essentially "federalizing'' state environmental policies. The Plan also pegs state emissions targets to a state's capacity to reduce emissions, as opposed to a state's contribution to greenhouse gas concentrations. EPA's approach unquestionably enhances states as laboratories of democracy and addresses collective active problems. It also facilitates the economic and political feasibility of climate-change mitigation efforts. Nevertheless, for states and environmental policymaking going forward, it may also present issues of fairness and perverse incentives.In this paper, we explore how local promoters framed the development of the ethanol industry in Kansas, in the Midwestern U.S, by attaching it to locally salient discourses related to the environment, economic development, energy independence, and the cultural importance of agricultural production. We use a framing analysis to examine the discourse and cultural politics of the promotion of ethanol production in four regional and one state level newspaper, supplemented by data from key informant interviews conducted to understand how both the promises and the impacts of the ethanol industry are reframed at the local level. We argue that by linking ethanol production to localized economic and environmental benefits, and to national security and energy independence agendas, the discourse promoting biofuels development in the local media sidelined any discussion of climate mitigation or conservation agendas associated with biofuels production, and reframed natural resource issues to justify local claims for continued water mining for agricultural production. In particular, water use in biofuels production is naturalized as an entitlement for agriculture and ethanol producers. Our research adds to the rural studies literature that examines how powerful discourses and ideologies interact to advance an agenda that may actually be counter to economic and environmental futures in rural communities. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pasture practices have affected Mediterranean forest ecosystems for millennia, and they are still quite widespread in mountainous areas. Nevertheless, in the last decades, the stability of forest ecosystems has been jeopardized due to the abandonment of traditional agro-pastoral practices, so that the gradual reduction of open areas due to progressive succession processes has caused a high increase of grazing pressure by livestock and wild ungulates feeding on forest areas. This paper aims at showing a methodological approach for evaluating the effect of applying measures in order to improve the grazing value of grasslands and ecotonal patches and lower the grazing impact on native woodlands. A protected area in Sicily (Italy) is considered as a representative case study. The analysis of remotely sensed imagery and several field surveys enabled to identify and map six different land use units subject to grazing, i.e., (1) forests; (2) grasslands (pastures dominated by palatable herbs and grasses); (3) overgrazed grasslands (dominated by poisonous and/or thorny herbs and forbs, not palatable); (4) encroached pastures; (5) roadside firebreaks (dominated by palatable herbs) with no shrubs; and (6) wooded/encroached roadside firebreaks. Several data were collected through sample plots selected within each land use unit, in order to assess their pastoral value. These data have been used to define current and optimal animal stock rates aiming at addressing pasture management planning towards a sustainable use of forestland and shrubland.The electricity generation sector needs to reduce its environmental impact and dependence on fossil fuel, mainly from coal. Biomass is one of the most promising future options to produce electricity, given its potential contribution to climate change mitigation. Even though biomass is an old source of energy, it is not yet a well-established commodity. The use of biomass in large centralised systems requires the establishment of delivery channels to provide the desired feedstock with the necessary attributes, at the right time and place. In terms of time to deployment and cost of the solution, co-combustion/co-gasification of biomass and coal are presented as transition and short-medium term alternatives towards a carbon-neutral energy sector. Hence, there is a need to assess an effective introduction of co-combustion/co-gasification projects in the current electricity production share. The purpose of this work is to review recent steps in Process Systems Engineering towards bringing into reality individualised and ad-hoc solutions, by building a common but adjustable design platform to tailored approaches of biomass-based supply chains. Current solutions and the latest developments are presented and future needs under study are also identified.Improved industrial energy efficiency is a cornerstone in climate change mitigation. Research results suggest that there is still major untapped potential for improved industrial energy efficiency. The major model used to explain the discrepancy between optimal level of energy efficiency and the current level is the barrier model, e.g., different barriers to energy efficiency inhibit adoption of cost-effective measures. The measures outlined in research and policy action plans are almost exclusively technology-oriented, but great potential for energy efficiency improvements is also found in operational measures. Both technology and operational measures are combined in successful energy management practices. Most research in the field of energy management is grounded in engineering science, and theoretical models on how energy management in industry is carried out are scarce. One way to further develop and improve energy management, both theoretically as well as practically, is to explore how a socio-technical perspective can contribute to this understanding. In this article we will further elaborate this potential of cross-pollinating these fields. The aim of this paper is to relate energy management to two theoretical models, situated action and transaction analysis. We conclude that the current model for energy management systems, the input-output model, is insufficient for understanding in-house industrial energy management practices. By the incorporation of situated action and transaction analysis to the currently used input-output model, an enhanced understanding of the complexity of energy management is gained. It is not possible to find a single energy management solution suitable for any industrial company, but rather the idea is to find a reflexive model that can be adjusted from time to time. An idea for such a reflexive model would contain the structural elements from energy management models with consideration for decisions being situated and impossible to predict.Nonpoint source pollution from agriculture is the main source of nitrogen and phosphorus in the stream systems of the Corn Belt region in the Midwestern US. The eastern part of this region is comprised of the Ohio-Tennessee River Basin (OTRB), which is considered a key contributing area for water pollution and the Northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone. A point of crucial importance in this basin is therefore how intensive corn-based cropping systems for food and fuel production can be sustainable and coexist with a healthy water environment, not only under existing climate but also under climate change conditions in the future. To address this issue, a OTRB integrated modeling system has been built with a greatly refined 12-digit subbasin structure based on the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) water quality model, which is capable of estimating landscape and in-stream water and pollutant yields in response to a wide array of alternative cropping and/or management strategies and climatic conditions. The effects of three agricultural management scenarios on crop production and pollutant loads exported from the crop land of the OTRB to streams and rivers were evaluated: (1) expansion of continuous corn across the entire basin, (2) adoption of no-till on all corn and soybean fields in the region, (3) implementation of a winter cover crop within the baseline rotations. The effects of each management scenario were evaluated both for current climate and projected mid-century (2046-2065) climates from seven global circulation models (GCMs). In both present and future climates each management scenario resulted in reduced erosion and nutrient loadings to surface water bodies compared to the baseline agricultural management, with cover crops causing the highest water pollution reduction. Corn and soybean yields in the region were negligibly influenced from the agricultural management scenarios. On the other hand, both water quality and crop yield numbers under climate change deviated considerably for all seven GCMs compared to the baseline climate. Future climates from all GCMs led to decreased corn and soybean yields by up to 20% on a mean annual basis, while water quality alterations were either positive or negative depending on the GCM. The study highlights the loss of productivity in the eastern Corn Belt under climate change, the need to consider a range of GCMs when assessing impacts of climate change, and the value of SWAT as a tool to analyze the effects of climate change on parameters of interest at the basin scale.Several climate frameworks have included the role of carbon storage in natural landscapes as a potential mechanism for climate change mitigation. This has resulted in an incentive to grow and maintain intact long-lived forest ecosystems. However, recent research has suggested that the influence of albedo-related radiative forcing can impart equal and in some cases greater magnitudes of climate mitigation compared to carbon storage in forests where snowfall is common and biomass is slow-growing. While several methodologies exist for relating albedo-associated radiative forcing to carbon storage for the analysis of the tradeoffs of these ecosystem services, they are varied, and they have yet to be contrasted in a case study with implications for future forest management. Here we utilize four methodologies for calculating a shadow price for albedo radiative forcing and apply the resulting eight prices to an ecological and economic forest model to examine the effects on optimal rotation periods on two different forest stands in the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, USA. These pricing methodologies produce distinctly different shadow prices of albedo, varying from a high of 9.36 x 10(-4) and a low of 1.75 x 10(-5) $w(-1) yr(-1) in the initial year, to a high of 0.019 and a low of 3.55 x 10(-4) $w(-1) yr(-1) in year 200 of the simulation. When implemented in the forest model, optimal rotation periods also varied considerably, from a low of 2 to a high of 107 years for a spruce-fir stand and from 35 to 80 years for a maple-beech-birch stand. Our results suggest that the choice of climate metrics and pricing methodologies for use with forest albedo alter albedo prices considerably, may substantially adjust optimal rotation period length, and therefore may have consequences with respect to forest land cover change.Increasing sand temperatures resulting from climate change may negatively impact sea turtle nests by altering sex ratios and decreasing reproductive output. We analyzed the effect of nest shading and watering on sand temperatures as climate mitigation strategies in a beach hatchery at Playa Grande, Costa Rica. We set up plots and placed thermocouples at depths of 45cm and 75cm. Half of the plots were shaded and half were exposed to the sun. Within these exposure treatments, we applied three watering treatments over one month, replicating local climatic conditions experienced in this area. We also examined gravimetric water content of sand by collecting sand samples the day before watering began, the day after watering was complete, and one month after completion. Shading had the largest impact on sand temperature, followed by watering and depth. All watering treatments lowered sand temperature, but the effect varied with depth. Temperatures in plots that received water returned to control levels within 10 days after watering stopped. Water content increased at both depths in the two highest water treatments, and 30 days after the end of water application remained higher than plots with low water. While the impacts of watering on sand temperature dissipate rapidly after the end of application, the impacts on water content are much more lasting. Although less effective at lowering sand temperatures than shading, watering may benefit sea turtle clutches by offsetting negative impacts of low levels of rain in particularly dry areas. Prior to implementing such strategies, the natural conditions at the location of interest (e.g. clutch depth, environmental conditions, and beach characteristics) and natural hatchling sex ratios should be taken into consideration. These results provide insight into the effectiveness of nest shading and watering as climate mitigation techniques and illustrate important points of consideration in the crafting of such strategies.Acquiring multi-temporal spatial information on vegetation condition at scales appropriate for site-specific agricultural management is often complicated by the need for meticulous field measurements. Understanding spatial/temporal crop cover heterogeneity within irrigated croplands may support sustainable land use, specifically in areas affected by land degradation due to secondary soil salinization. This study demonstrates the use of multi-temporal, high spatial resolution (10 m) SPOT-4/5 image data in an integrated change vector analysis and spectral mixture analysis (CVA-SMA) procedure. This procedure was implemented with the principal objective of mapping sub-field vegetation cover dynamics in irrigated lowland areas within the lowerlands of the Amu Darya River. CVA intensity and direction were calculated separately for the periods of 1998-2006 and 2006-2010. Cumulative change intensity and the overall directional trend were also derived for the entire observation period of 1998-2010. Results show that most of the vector changes were observed between 1998 and 2006; persistent conditions were seen within the study region during the 2006-2010 period. A decreasing vegetation cover trend was identified within 38% of arable land. Areas of decreasing vegetation cover were located principally in the irrigation system periphery where deficient water supply and low soil quality lead to substandard crop development. During the 2006-2010 timeframe, degraded crop cover conditions persisted in 37% of arable land. Vegetation cover increased in 25% of the arable land where irrigation water supply was adequate. This high sub-field crop performance spatial heterogeneity clearly indicates that current land management practices are inefficient. Such information can provide the basis for implementing and adapting irrigation applications and salt leaching techniques to site-specific conditions and thereby make a significant contribution to sustainable regional land management.In this paper, we emphasize the importance of accurate initial conditions in predicting high-impact ocean-atmospheric environmental events, such as El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), tropical cyclone (TC), and Kuroshio large meander (KLM), by reviewing recent progresses toward target observations for improving the initialization of these events forecasting. Since field observations are costly and will never be dense enough to fully cover the vast space of these events, it is necessary to develop methodologies that guide the design of efficient and effective observation strategy. Of particular interest is a method called conditional non-linear optimal perturbation (CNOP), which has been shown to be very useful in determining the sensitive areas for target observations applicable to the predictions of ENSO, IOD, TC, and KLM. Further studies are needed to understand the predictability of these events under the influence of climate change, and to explore the possibility of implementing field programs of target observations. These studies are challenging but are crucially important for improving our forecast skill of the high-impact ocean-atmospheric environmental events, and thus for disaster prevention, climate change mitigation, and sustainable socio-economic development.Mitigation actions proposed by most developing countries include reductions from a business as usual baseline or reductions in emission intensities. Here we evaluate the implications of such mitigation targets in developing countries, using India as a case study. The analysis shows that for developing countries, the construction of a baseline is subject to substantial uncertainty due to a range of potential structural mixes in the future. Mitigation commitments based on such a baseline are then likely to result either in high costs of mitigation or constraints on the development choices available in the future. Results for India indicate that by 2030 an additional mitigation effort of 19% to 38% would be necessary if the contribution of industry to the GDP was higher than anticipated. Instead of a single baseline with an implicit assumption of structural composition, we propose that for developing countries, a set of alternative baselines should be considered. (C) 2015 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Quantifying the carbon footprint (CF) for crop production can help identify key options to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in agriculture. In the present study, both household and aggregated farm scales were surveyed to obtain the data of rice production and farming management practices in a typical rice cultivation area of Northern Jiangxi, China. The CFs of the different rice systems including early rice, late rice, and single rice under household and aggregated farm scale were calculated. In general, early rice had the lower CF in terms of land use and grain production being 4.54 +/- 0.44 t CO2-eq./ha and 0.62 +/- 0.1 t CO2-eq./t grain than single rice (6.84 +/- 0.79 t CO2-eq./ha and 0.80 +/- 0.13 t CO2-eq./t grain) and late rice (8.72 +/- 0.54 t CO2-eq./ha and 1.1 +/- 0.17 t CO2-eq./t grain). The emissions from nitrogen fertilizer use accounted for 33 % of the total CF on average and the direct CH4 emissions for 57 %. The results indicated that the CF of double rice cropping under aggregated farm being 0.86 +/- 0.11 t CO2-eq./t grain was lower by 25 % than that being 1.14 +/- 0.25 t CO2-eq./t grain under household farm, mainly due to high nitrogen use efficiency and low methane emissions. Therefore, developing the aggregated farm scale with efficient use of agro-chemicals and farming operation for greater profitability could offer a strategy for reducing GHG emissions in China's agriculture.The stakes are high for tropical forestlands in multi-actor power relations because of their interdependence (climate change mitigation), their above-and below-ground resources (wood, mines) and their arable lands. In tropical countries, where the State owns most of the forestlands, many governments feel that any external initiative to change their forestland use policies infringes on their sovereignty. The governments' reactions to pressure for forestland governance reforms advocated by the international community may reflect the level of their national strength, international credibility and the attractiveness of offsets for forestland use conversion. Governments either use a tactic based on strength or on cunning, in the Machiavellian sense of the term, to impose their domestic agenda. Referring to the two last decades of forestland use policy reforms in Cameroon, this article seeks to understand why and how some governments of developing countries like Cameroon use cunning strategies to circumvent the implementation of undesired forest policy reforms while avoiding blame from the international community.Population exposures to ambient outdoor particulate matter (PM) air pollution have been assessed to represent a major burden on global health. Ambient PM is a diverse class of air pollution, with characteristics and health implications that can vary depending on a host of factors, including a particle's original source of emission or formation. The penetration of inhaled particles into the thorax is dependent on their deposition in the upper respiratory tract during inspiration, which varies with particle size, flow rate and tidal volume, and in vivo airway dimensions. All of these factors can be quite variable from person to person, depending on age, transient illness, cigarette smoke and other short-term toxicant exposures that cause transient bronchoconstriction, and occupational history associated with loss Of lung function or cumulative injury. The adverse effects of inhaled PM can result from both short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) exposures to PM, and can range from relatively minor, such as increased symptoms, to very severe effects, including increased risk of premature mortality and decreased life expectancy from long-term exposure. Control of the most toxic PM components can therefore provide major health benefits, and can help guide the selection of the most human health optimal air quality control and climate change mitigation policy measures. As Such, a continued improvement in our understanding of the nature and types of PM that are most dangerous to health, and the mechanism(s) of their respective health effects, is an important public health goal.Tradeoffs are examined between mitigating black carbon (BC) and carbon dioxide (CO2) for limiting peak global mean warming, using the following set of methods. A two-box climate model is used to simulate temperatures of the atmosphere and ocean for different rates of mitigation. Mitigation rates for BC and CO2 are characterized by respective timescales for e-folding reduction in emissions intensity of gross global product. There are respective emissions models that force the box model. Lastly there is a simple economics model, with cost of mitigation varying inversely with emission intensity. Constant mitigation timescale corresponds to mitigation at a constant annual rate, for example an e-folding timescale of 40 years corresponds to 2.5% reduction each year. Discounted present cost depends only on respective mitigation timescale and respective mitigation cost at present levels of emission intensity. Least-cost mitigation is posed as choosing respective e-folding timescales, to minimize total mitigation cost under a temperature constraint (e.g. within 2 degrees C above preindustrial). Peak warming is more sensitive to mitigation timescale for CO2 than for BC. Therefore rapid mitigation of CO2 emission intensity is essential to limiting peak warming, but simultaneous mitigation of BC can reduce total mitigation expenditure. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines empirically climate change related vulnerability impacts, and remedial options as an optimal and applicable strategy by prioritizing needs in climate change mitigation over 95 years. An Empirical Downscaling Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (EDDICE) is deployed using an optimal scenario for Malaysia against a baseline scenario of existing conditions following the top-down disaggregation strategy recommended by other studies. The model takes account of various climatic variables, including, temperature, carbon cycle, carbon emission, climatic damage, carbon control, and carbon concentration, which was adapted from observational records of climatic changes caused by global warming from 2010 to 2105. The results are interesting in prioritizing climate change mitigation for the future. Whereas the cumulative cost of climatic damage over the period 2010-2105 will amount to MYR40,128.1 billion under the present climatic regime in Malaysia, it will fall to MYR5263.7 billion under the optimal regime. In addition, the government would have collected revenue from carbon taxes amounting to MYR9535.4 billion over the 95 years. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Homegarden agroforestry systems are suggested to hold a large potential for climate change mitigation and adaptation. This is due to their multifunctional role in providing income, food and ecosystem services while decreasing pressure on natural forests and hence saving and storing carbon. In this paper, above-ground biomass carbon and tree species diversity of trees was quantified in homegardens around two villages in the dry south-eastern part of Moneragala district of Sri Lanka. A total of 45 dry zone homegardens were sampled on size, diameter at breast height, tree height and species diversity. Using allometric equations, we find a mean above-ground biomass stock of 13 mega grams of carbon per hectare (Mg C ha(-1)) with a large range among homegardens (1-56 Mg C ha(-1), n = 45) due to a variation of tree diversity and composition between individual homegardens. Mean above-ground carbon stock per unit area was higher in small homegardens (0.2 ha, 26 Mg C ha(-1), n = 11) and statistically different compared to medium (0.4-0.8 ha, 9 Mg C ha(-1), n = 27) and large (1.0-1.2 ha, 8 Mg C ha(-1), n = 7) homegardens. In total, 4,278 trees were sampled and 70 tree species identified and recorded. The Shannon Wiener index were used to evaluate diversity per homegarden and ranged from 0.76 to 3.01 with a mean value of 2.05 +/- A 0.07 indicating a medium evenly distributed diversity of sampled tree species. The results show a vast heterogeneity in terms of carbon stock and tree diversity within the less studied dry zone homegardens; results that contribute to more knowledge of their expansion potential as well as climate mitigation and adaptation potential. The results are also useful for whether homegardens should be considered to be included as an activity to enhance natural forest cover within Sri Lanka's newly commenced UN-REDD National Programme.The objective was to study repeatability and sources of variation in feed conversion efficiency [FCE, milk kg/kg dry matter intake (DMI)] of lactating cows in mid to late lactation. Trials 1 and 2 used 16 cows (106 to 368 d in milk) grouped in 8 pairs of 1 high- and 1 low-FCE cow less than 16 d in milk apart. Trial 1 determined the repeatability of FCE during a 12-wk period. Trial 2 quantified the digestive and metabolic partitioning of energy and N with a 3-d total fecal and urine collection and measurement of CH4 and CO2 emission. Trial 3 studied selected ruminal methanogens in 2 pairs of cows fitted with rumen cannulas. Cows received a single diet including 28% corn silage, 27% alfalfa silage, 17% crude protein, and 28% neutral detergent fiber (dry matter basis). In trial 1, mean FCE remained repeatedly different and averaged 1.83 and 1.03 for high- and low-FCE cows, respectively. In trial 2, high- FCE cows consumed 21% more DMI, produced 98% more fat- and protein-corrected milk, excreted 42% less manure per kilogram of fat-and protein-corrected milk, but emitted the same daily amount of CH4 and CO2 compared with low-FCE cows. Percentage of gross energy intake lost in feces was higher (28.6 vs. 25.9%), but urinary (2.76 vs. 3.40%) and CH4 (5.23 vs. 6.99%) losses were lower in high-than low-FCE cows. Furthermore, high-FCE cows partitioned 15% more of gross energy intake toward net energy for maintenance, body gain, and lactation (37.5 vs. 32.6%) than low-FCE cows. Lower metabolic efficiency and greater heat loss in low-FCE cows might have been associated in part with greater energy demand for immune function related to subclinical mastitis, as somatic cell count was 3.8 fold greater in low-than high-FCE cows. As a percentage of N intake, high-FCE cows tended to have greater fecal N (32.4 vs. 30.3%) and had lower urinary N (32.2 vs. 41.7%) and greater milk N (30.3 vs. 19.1%) than low-FCE cows. In trial 3, Methanobrevibacter spp. strain AbM4 was less prevalent in ruminal content of high-FCE cows, which emitted less CH4 per unit of DMI and per unit of neutral detergent fiber digested than low-FCE cows. Thus lower digestive efficiency was more than compensated by greater metabolic efficiencies in high-compared with low-FCE cows. There was not a single factor, but rather a series of mechanisms involved in the observed differences in efficiency of energy utilization of the lactating cows in this study.The concept of Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) dominates international debates on the role of forests in climate change mitigation, but concrete implementation remains a challenge. In contrast to this general trend, Brazil emerged as a noteworthy exception due to the widespread implementation of major REDD+ initiatives. This research paper aims at understanding the implementation of REDD+ in Brazil from a discursive perspective. The analysis identifies two discourses that are guiding the implementation of REDD+ in different ways. On the one hand, advocates of a sustainable development discourse conceive REDD+ as a centralized mechanism to foster pre-existing deforestation control and sustainable economic activities through centralized mechanisms such as the Amazon Fund. On the other hand, a number of disconnected actors follow a carbon commodification discourse inspired by the idea of neoliberal conservation and create REDD+ projects to provide carbon offset to voluntary markets. The analysis of these discourses reveal that implementation processes do not rely on discursive convergence, but rather culminate in the parallel development and implementation of distinct REDD+ discourses that are at the same time competing, coexisting and collaborating on different levels. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Control of atmospheric black carbon (BC) and brown carbon (BrC) has been proposed as an important pathway to climate change mitigation, but sources of BC and BrC are still not well understood. In order to better identify the role of modern heavy-duty diesel engines on the production of BC and BrC, emissions from a heavy-duty diesel engine operating with different emission control strategies were examined using a source dilution sampling system. The effect of a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and diesel particulate filter (DPF) on light-absorbing carbon (LAC) was evaluated at three steady-state engine operation modes: idle, 50% speed and load, and 100% speed and load. LAC was measured with four different engine configurations: engine out, DOC out, DPF out, and engine out with an altered combustion calibration. BC and BrC emission rates were measured with the Aethalometer (AE-31). EC and BC emission rates normalized to the mass of CO2 emitted increased with increasing engine speed and load. Emission rates normalized to brake-specific work did not exhibit similar trends with speed and load, but rather the highest emission rate was measured at idle. EC and OC emissions were reduced by 99% when the DOC and DPF architecture was applied. The application of a DPF was equally effective at removing 99% of the BC fraction of PM, proving to be an important control strategy for both LAC and PM. BC emissions were unexpectedly increased across the DOC, seemingly due to a change aerosol optical properties. Removal of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) flow due to simulated EGR cooler failure caused a large increase in OC and BrC emission rates at idle, but had limited influence during high load operation. LAC emissions proved to be sensitive to the same control strategies effective at controlling the total mass of diesel PM.Implications:In the context of black carbon emissions, very small emission rates of brown carbon were measured over a range of control technologies and engine operating conditions. During specific idle engine operation without EGR and adjusted fueling conditions, brown carbon can be formed in significant amounts, requiring careful management tactics. Control technologies for particulate matter are very effective for light-absorbing carbon, reducing black carbon emissions to near zero for modern engines equipped with a DPF. Efforts to control atmospheric brown carbon need to focus on other sources other than modern diesel engines, such as biomass burning.Global climate change mitigation and CO2 emission reduction have promoted the revolutionary transformation in energy system. The core content of energy system revolutionary transformation is to replace the high-carbon energy system dominated by fossil energy with low-carbon energy system dominated by new and renewable energy and finally realize the near-zero emission of CO2. The new energy system transformation has also led to a reform in global economic and social development patterns. Developing low-carbon economy becomes the fundamental strategy of sustainable development under climate risk management and the only solution to getting on the road from industrial civilization to ecological civilization. China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. Guided by the targets, China directs its economy development to a low-carbon pattern. Therefore, new and renewable power capacity need to reach 1300 GW, and the electricity generated should be 4 times of that in 2013 with a continuous increase rate of 6%-8% around 2030. The pace of energy substitution need to be accelerated and efficient, safe, clean, and low-carbon energy supply and consumption systems should be established besides strengthened energy conservation and improved energy efficient. Therefore, reform need be deepened, favorable policy system and market mechanism for energy revolution and low-carbon development need be established, energy pricing mechanism should be reformed, and national carbon market should be formed to provide a favorable policy and market environment for low-carbon technology innovation and industry development.The ecosystems of China seas and coasts are undergoing rapid changes under the strong influences of both global climate change and anthropogenic activities. To understand the scope of these changes and the mechanisms behind them is of paramount importance for the sustainable development of China, and for the establishment of national policies on environment protection and climate change mitigation. Here we provide a brief review of the impacts of global climate change and human activities on the oceans in general, and on the ecosystems of China seas and coasts in particular. More importantly, we discuss the challenges we are facing and propose several research foci for China seas/coasts ecosystem studies, including long-term time series observations on multiple scales, facilities for simulation study, blue carbon, coastal ecological security, prediction of ecosystem evolution and ecosystem-based management. We also establish a link to the Future Earth program from the perspectives of two newly formed national alliances, the China Future Ocean Alliance and the Pan-China Ocean Carbon Alliance.Simple Summary: Climate change is probably the most important environmental issue of our time. Raising animals for food contributes to the production of greenhouse gases implicated in the global warming that is causing climate change. To combat this ecological disaster, a number of mitigation strategies involving changes to agricultural practices have been proposed. However, some of these changes will impact the welfare of farmed animals. This paper reviews selected climate change mitigation strategies and explains how different approaches could have negative or positive effects. Abstract: The objective of this review is to point out that the global dialog on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in animal agriculture has, thus far, not adequately considered animal welfare in proposed climate change mitigation strategies. Many suggested approaches for reducing emissions, most of which could generally be described as calls for the intensification of production, can have substantial effects on the animals. Given the growing world-wide awareness and concern for animal welfare, many of these approaches are not socially sustainable. This review identifies the main emission abatement strategies in the climate change literature that would negatively affect animal welfare and details the associated problems. Alternative strategies are also identified as possible solutions for animal welfare and climate change, and it is suggested that more attention be focused on these types of options when allocating resources, researching mitigation strategies, and making policy decisions on reducing emissions from animal agriculture.Due to its significant carbon footprint and cost-effectiveness for upgrades, the commercial property sector is important for climate change mitigation. Although barriers to energy system changes, such as funding, financing and information, are well recognized, Energy Star property owners and managers are successfully overcoming these barriers and instigating energy efficiency upgrades, renewable energy installations, and behavior and management programs. To examine the decision-making process that leads to energy performance improvements, a national survey of property owners and management organizations of buildings that earned an Energy Star score of 75 or higher was conducted. The extent to which energy upgrades were considered strategic investments motivated by environmental sustainability or corporate social responsibility, or financial investments motivated by payback period or return-on-investment criteria, was contingent upon the property type and type of energy project. Environmental sustainability was found to be an important motivation for energy projects in office spaces in general, but in the case of smaller office spaces was often combined with motivations for corporate social responsibility. Energy projects on education properties were motivated by financial investment. Building envelope and mechanical efficiency upgrades were considered financial investments, while renewable energy, green roofs, and water conservation technologies were considered environmental sustainability initiatives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is well known that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of countries resides at or close to the top of the global table of CO2 emissions per capita and its economy relies heavily on its fossil fuels. This provides a context for green building programs that initially aim to create an understanding of emission pathways within the GCC and hence develop approaches to their reduction in the built environment. A set of criteria will allow specific analysis to be undertaken linked to the spatial dimensions of the sector under study. In this paper, approaches to modelling energy consumption and CO2 emissions are presented. As investment in the built environment continues, natural resources dwindle and the cost of energy increases, delivering low-energy buildings will become mandatory. In this study, a hybrid modelling approach (bottom-top & top-bottom) is presented. Energy benchmarks are developed for different buildings' uses and compared with international standards. The main goals are to establish design benchmarks and develop a modelling tool that contains specific information for all buildings types (existing and new), as well as planned and projected growths within the various city districts, then integrate this database within a geospatial information system that will allow us to answer a range of "what-if"-type questions about various intervention strategies, emissions savings, and acceptability of pre-defined course of actions in the city sector under consideration. The spatial carbon intensity may be adjusted over a certain period, (e.g., through local generation (microgeneration)) or due to an increasing proportion of lower carbon-energy in the generation mix and this can be related to the sector and city overall consumption.Climate change may endanger not only yield and fulfilling the social functions of European forests, but even the survival of several tree species. The study emphasises the complexity of climatic factors and physiological mechanisms, which may potentially endanger the persistence of tree populations and which cannot be reduced to problems of drought and temperature increase. A substantial inter-population variation in traits associated with the response to climatic stress, observed in provenance experiments, is a prerequisite for the choice of proper forest reproductive material (FRM) in reforestation as a strategy of climate-change mitigation. Assisted migration, i.e., transfer of FRM from source regions, currently characterised by such climate characteristics, which are expected in the target regions in the future, requires knowledge of key stress factors (depending on the climate scenario), physiological processes associated with the adaptation to this stress, identification of genes and eventually epigenetic mechanisms, controlling adaptation processes, and finally mapping of genetic and/or epigenetic variation in key genes. For most tree species, such information is not yet available. Therefore, assisted migration under such information uncertainty needs to be complemented by in situ gene conservation measures to preserve the possibility of reversing the effects of eventual erroneous decisions on FRM transfer.Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an important parameter in the climate change mitigation strategies and it is crucial for the function of ecosystems and agriculture. Particle size fractions affect strongly the physical and chemical properties of soil and thus also SOC. Conventional analyses of SOC and particle sizes are costly limiting the detailed characterization of soil spatial variability and fine resolution mapping. Mobile sensors provide an alternative approach to soil analysis. They offer densely spaced georeferenced data in a cost-effective manner. In this study, two agricultural fields (Voulundl and Voulund2) in Denmark were mapped with the Veris mobile sensor platform (MSP). MSP collected simultaneously visible near infrared spectra (vis-NIR; 350-2200 nm), electrical conductivity (EC: shallow; 0-30 cm, deep; 0-90 cm), and temperature measurements. Fuzzy k-means clustering was applied to the obtained spectra to partition the fields and to select representative samples for calibration purposes. Calibration samples were analyzed for SOC and particle sizes (clay, silt and sand) using conventional wet chemistry analysis. The objectives of this study were to determine whether it is the single sensors or the fusion of sensor data that provides the best predictive ability of the soil properties in question. Using partial least square regression (PLS) excellent calibration results were generated for all soil properties with a ratio of performance to deviation (RPD) values above 2. The best predictive ability for SOC was obtained using a fusion of sensor data. The calibration models based on vis-NIR spectra and temperature resulted in RMSECV = 0.14% and R-2 = 0.94 in Voulund1. In Voulund2, the combination of EC, temperature and spectral data generated a SOC model with RMSECV = 0.17% and R-2 = 0.93. The highest predictive ability for clay was obtained using spectral data only in Voulundl (RMSECV = 0.34% and R-2 = 0.76). Whereas in Voulund2, improved results were obtained after combining spectral and temperature data RMSECV = 0.20% and R-2 = 0.92. The best predictions of silt and sand were obtained when using spectral data only and resulted in RMSECV = 0.35%, R-2 = 0.82 and RMSECV = 0.85%, R-2 = 0.81, respectively, in Voulundl and RMSECV = 0.31%, R-2 = 0.86 and RMSECV = 0.74%, R-2 = 0.92, respectively, in Voulund2. The best models were used to predict soil properties from the field spectra collected by the MSP. Maps of predicted soil properties were generated using ordinary kriging. Results from this study indicate that robust calibration models can be developed on the basis of the MSP and that high resolution field maps of soil properties can be compiled in a cost-effective manner. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Successful climate change mitigation will involve not only technological innovation, but also innovation in how we understand the societal and individual behaviors that shape the demand for energy services. Traditionally, individual energy behaviors have been described as a function of utility optimization and behavioral economics, with price restructuring as the dominant policy lever. Previous research at the macro-level has identified economic activity, power generation and technology, and economic role as significant factors that shape energy use. However, most demand models lack basic contextual information on how dominant social phenomenon, the changing demographics of cities, and the sociocultural setting within which people operate, affect energy decisions and use patterns. Here we use high-quality Suomi-NPP VIIRS nighttime environmental products to: (1) observe aggregate human behavior through variations in energy service demand patterns during the Christmas and New Year's season and the Holy Month of Ramadan and (2) demonstrate that patterns in energy behaviors closely track sociocultural boundaries at the country, city, and district level. These findings indicate that energy decision making and demand is a sociocultural process as well as an economic process, often involving a combination of individual price-based incentives and societal-level factors. While nighttime satellite imagery has been used to map regional energy infrastructure distribution, tracking daily dynamic lighting demand at three major scales of urbanization is novel. This methodology can enrich research on the relative importance of drivers of energy demand and conservation behaviors at fine scales. Our initial results demonstrate the importance of seating energy demand frameworks in a social context.Agricultural production is a complex interaction between human and natural environment, making agriculture both significantly responsible and vulnerable to climate change. China, whose socioeconomy is fundamentally dependent on agriculture, is already experiencing climate-change-related issues that threaten food security and sustainable development. Climate change mitigation and adaptation are of great concern to ensure food security for the growing population and improve the livelihoods of poor smallholder producers. A questionnaire survey was conducted in Henan Province, China to assess agronomic practices of smallholder farmers, adaptation strategies and how climate change awareness and perceptions influence the farmers' choice of agronomic practices. The results showed that the vast majority of farmers owned < 10 Chinese Mu (0.7 ha) and nearly all farmers' relied on intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to increase yield at the detriment of environment. However, farmers who were aware of climate change had adopted agronomic practices that reduce impacts of climate change. Information about climate change, lack of incentives, lack of credit facilities and small farm sizes were major hindrance to adaptation and adoption of farming practices that can reduce impacts of climate change. This study recommends that research findings should be disseminated to farmers in timely and appropriate ways. The central government should formulate policies to include subsidies and incentives for farmers to motivate adoption of eco-friendly agronomic practices.Carbon farming in agricultural landscapes may provide a Cost-effective mechanism for offsetting carbon emissions while delivering co-benefits for biodiversity through ecosystem restoration. Reforestation of landscapes using native tree and shrub species, termed environmental plantings, has been recognized as a carbon offset methodology which can contribute to biodiversity conservation as well as climate mitigation. However, far less attention has been paid to the potential for assisted natural regeneration in areas of low to intermediate levels of degradation, where regenerative capacity still remains and little intervention would be required to restore native vegetation. In this study, we considered the economics of carbon farming in the state of Queensland, Australia, where 30.6 million hectares of relatively recently deforested agricultural landscapes may be suitable for carbon farming. Using spatially explicit estimates of the rate of carbon sequestration and the opportunity cost of agricultural production, we used a discounted cash flow analysis to examine the economic viability of assisted natural regeneration relative to environmental plantings. We found that the average minimum carbon price required to make assisted natural regeneration viable was 60% lower than what was required to make environmental plantings viable ($65.8 t CO(2)e(-1) compared to $108.8 t CO(2)e(-1)). Assisted natural regeneration could sequester 1.6 to 2.2 times the amount of carbon possible compared to environmental plantings alone over a range of hypothetical carbon prices and assuming a moderate 5% discount rate. Using a combination of methodologies, carbon farming was a viable land use in over 2.3% of our study extent with a low $5 t CO(2)e(-1) carbon price, and up to 10.5 million hectares (34%) with a carbon price of $50 t CO(2)e(-1). Carbon sequestration supply and economic returns generated by assisted natural regeneration were relatively robust to variation in establishment costs and discount rates due to the utilization of low-cost techniques to reestablish native vegetation. Our study highlights the potential utility of assisted natural regeneration as a reforestation approach which can cost-effectively deliver both carbon and biodiversity benefits. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tropical hydroelectric emissions are undercounted in national inventories of greenhouse gases under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), giving them a role in undermining the effectiveness of as-yet undecided emission limits. These emissions are also largely left out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation, and have been excluded from a revision of the IPCC guidelines on wetlands. The role of hydroelectric dams in emissions inventories and in mitigation has been systematically ignored. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Air quality and related health effects are not only affected by policies directly addressed at air pollution but also by other environmental strategies such as climate mitigation. This study addresses how different climate policy pathways indirectly bear upon air pollution in terms of improved human health in Europe. To this end, we put in perspective mitigation costs and monetised health benefits of reducing PM2.5 (particles less than 2.5 mu m in diameter) and ozone concentrations. Air quality in Europe and related health impacts were assessed using a comprehensive modelling chain, based on global and regional climate and chemistry-transport models together with a health impact assessment tool. This allows capturing both the impact of climate policy on emissions of air pollutants and the geophysical impact of climate change on air quality. Results are presented for projections at the 2050 horizon, for a set of consistent air pollution and climate policy scenarios, combined with population data from the UN's World Population Prospects, and are expressed in terms of morbidity and mortality impacts of PM2.5 and ozone pollution and their monetised damage equivalent. The analysis shows that enforcement of current European air quality policies would effectively reduce health impacts from PM2.5 in Europe even in the absence of climate policies (life years lost from the exposure to PM2.5 decrease by 78% between 2005 and 2050 in the reference scenario), while impacts for ozone depend on the ambition level of international climate policies. A move towards stringent climate policies on a global scale, in addition to limiting global warming, creates co-benefits in terms of reduced health impacts (68% decrease in life years lost from the exposure to PM2.5 and 85% decrease in premature deaths from ozone in 2050 in the mitigation scenario relative to the reference scenario) and air pollution cost savings (77%) in Europe. These co-benefits are found to offset at least 85% of the additional cost of climate policy in this region. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current challenges to global food security require sustainable intensification of agriculture through initiatives that include more efficient use of nitrogen (N), increased protein self-sufficiency through homegrown crops, and reduced N losses to the environment. Such challenges were addressed in a continental-scale field experiment conducted over 3years, in which the amount of total nitrogen yield (N-tot) and the gain of N yield in mixtures as compared to grass monocultures (N-gainmix) was quantified from four-species grass-legume stands with greatly varying legume proportions. Stands consisted of monocultures and mixtures of two N-2-fixing legumes and two nonfixing grasses. The amount of N-tot of mixtures was significantly greater (P0.05) than that of grass monocultures at the majority of evaluated sites in all 3years. N-tot and thus N-gainmix increased with increasing legume proportion up to one-third of legumes. With higher legume percentages, N-tot and N-gainmix did not continue to increase. Thus, across sites and years, mixtures with one-third proportion of legumes attained similar to 95% of the maximum N-tot acquired by any stand and had 57% higher N-tot than grass monocultures. Realized legume proportion in stands and the relative N gain in mixture (N-gainmix/N-tot in mixture) were most severely impaired by minimum site temperature (R=0.70, P=0.003 for legume proportion; R=0.64, P=0.010 for N-gainmix/N-tot in mixture). Nevertheless, the relative N gain in mixture was not correlated to site productivity (P=0.500), suggesting that, within climatic restrictions, balanced grass-legume mixtures can benefit from comparable relative gains in N yield across largely differing productivity levels. We conclude that the use of grass-legume mixtures can substantially contribute to resource-efficient agricultural grassland systems over a wide range of productivity levels, implying important savings in N fertilizers and thus greenhouse gas emissions and a considerable potential for climate change mitigation.This article reviews climate change within the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR), analyzing how climate change is mentioned in the framework's text and the potential implications for dealing with climate change within the context of disaster risk reduction. Three main categories are examined. First, climate change affecting disaster risk and disasters, demonstrating too much emphasis on the single hazard driver and diminisher of climate change. Second, cross-sectoral approaches, for which the SFDRR treads carefully, thereby unfortunately entrenching artificial differences and divisions, although appropriately offering plenty of support to other sectors from disaster risk reduction. Third, implementation, for which climate change plays a suitable role without being overbearing, but for which other hazard influencers should have been treated similarly. Overall, the mentions of climate change within the SFDRR put too much emphasis on the hazard part of disaster risk. Instead, within the context of the three global sustainable development processes that seek agreements in 2015, climate change could have been used to further support an all-vulnerabilities and all-resiliences approach. That could be achieved by placing climate change adaptation as one subset within disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation as one subset within sustainable development.This study investigates the evolutionary trends of the international collaborations among the research community of carbon capture and storage (CCS) by looking at the collaboration network of countries publishing on CCS. The study also examines the evolution of major research topics in this field by exploring the co-occurrence network of keywords associated with CCS publications. The analysis is carried out based on the CCS related publications extracted from Scopus.com from 1980 to 2013. From the number of annual CCS publications, it seems that CCS research has closely followed the trend of international negotiations on climate change mitigation. The study elaborates how both international collaboration network and knowledge structure of the field have notably developed and interlinked over the years especially after 2005 during which almost 94% of the publications appeared. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is an urgent need to match food production with increasing world population through identification of sustainable land management strategies. However, the struggle to achieve food security should he carried out keeping in mind the soil where the crops are grown and the environment in which the living things survive. Conservation agriculture (CA), practising agriculture in such a way so as to cause minimum damage to the environment, is being advocated at a large scale world-wide. Conservation tillage, the most important aspect of CA, is thought to take care of the soil health, plant growth and the environment. This paper aims to review the work done on conservation tillage in different agro-ecological regions so as to understand its impact from the perspectives of the soil, the crop and the environment. Research reports have identified several benefits of conservation tillage over conventional tillage (CT) with respect to soil physical, chemical and biological properties as well as crop yields. Not less than 25% of the greenhouse gas effluxes to the atmosphere are attributed to agriculture. Processes of climate change mitigation and adaptation found zero tillage (ZT) to be the most environmental friendly among different tillage techniques. Therefore, conservation tillage involving ZT and minimum tillage which has potential to break the surface compact zone in soil with reduced soil disturbance offers to lead to a better soil environment and crop yield with minimal impact on the environtnent. (C) 2015 International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation and China Water and Power Press. Production and Hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseGlobal production chains carry environmental and socioeconomic impacts embodied in each traded good and service. Even though labor and energy productivities tend to be higher for domestic production in high-income countries than those in emerging economies, this difference is significantly reduced for consumption, when including imported products to satisfy national demand. The analysis of socioeconomic and environmental aspects embodied in consumption can shed a light on the real level of productivity of an economy, as well as the effects of rising imports and offshoring. This research introduces a consumption-based metric for productivity, in which we evaluate the loss of productivity of developed nations resulting from imports from less-developed economies and offshoring of labor-intensive production. We measure the labor, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions footprints in the European Union's trade with the rest of the world through a multiregional input-output model. We confirm that the labor footprint of European imports is significantly higher than the one of exports, mainly from low-skilled, labor-intensive primary sectors. A high share of labor embodied in exports is commonly associated with low energy productivities in domestic industries. Hence, this reconfirms that the offshoring of production to cheaper and low-skilled, labor-abundant countries offsets, or even reverts, energy efficiency gains and climate-change mitigation actions in developed countries.Recent research on climate change mitigation has emphasized decision-making within tourism businesses is vital for sustainable futures. However, there has been little consideration of how the age of buildings and (historic) property frames, modifies or constrains the sector's response to climate change. Through surveys of accommodation providers in South-West England, this paper explores relationships between property age, energy performance and pro-environmental innovations requiring adjustment to the fabric of buildings. Findings are presented from empirical research with small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises occupying properties often well over a century old. This paper's large-scale data-set and series of intensive case histories demonstrate that property age does not play a straightforward role in encouraging or hindering efforts among accommodation providers to tackle climate change. Some (but not all) businesses with the oldest buildings performed and responded strongest, successfully introducing the latest renewable energy technologies, although adapting older buildings was not without complications and cost implications. Conceptually, this research points to the limits of calls for greater pro-environmental behaviour change without clearer understanding of the contexts and settings in which such behaviour takes place. Its findings are important to heritage-based destinations worldwide: accommodation in heritage buildings can be a unique selling point.This paper develops and explains an input-output model to quantify the carbon footprint linked to residents' and visitors' tourist consumption in the Spanish economy between 1995 and 2007, thus offering a rare longitudinal review of a national carbon footprint. Two measures are calculated: a domestic one similar to the producer responsibility criterion and a total measure that includes imported intermediate and final goods, similar to the consumer responsibility measure. The important role of tourism in Spain explains why its domestic carbon footprint represented 10.6% of total CO2 emissions in 2007. Visiting tourists represented 47% of this figure, households 36%, business tourism represented 14% and public administration expenditures 3%. By industry, transport (26%) was positioned as the highest emitter in 2007, with hotels and restaurants the second (21%) (benefitting indirectly from energy and environmental efficiency improvements over the period). The Spanish reliance on imported oil products and the growing importance of foreign-based air services has caused the total carbon footprint of tourism to increase by more than 100%. Therefore, climate change mitigation plans must include imports, and action must take place through the whole global production chain and in the transport sector, particularly air transport. Future mitigation policies are discussed.Multiple linkages connect air quality and climate change. Many air pollutant sources also emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the dominant anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG). The two main contributors to non-attainment of U.S. ambient air quality standards, ozone (O-3) and particulate matter (PM), interact with radiation, forcing climate change. PM warms by absorbing sunlight (e.g., black carbon) or cools by scattering sunlight (e.g., sulfates) and interacts with clouds; these radiative and microphysical interactions can induce changes in precipitation and regional circulation patterns. Climate change is expected to degrade air quality in many polluted regions by changing air pollution meteorology (ventilation and dilution), precipitation and other removal processes, and by triggering some amplifying responses in atmospheric chemistry and in anthropogenic and natural sources. Together, these processes shape distributions and extreme episodes of O-3 and PM. Global modeling indicates that as air pollution programs reduce SO2 to meet health and other air quality goals, near-term warming accelerates due to unmasking of warming induced by rising CO2. Air pollutant controls on CH4, a potent GHG and precursor to global O-3 levels, and on sources with high black carbon (BC) to organic carbon (OC) ratios could offset near-term warming induced by SO2 emission reductions, while reducing global background O-3 and regionally high levels of PM. Lowering peak warming requires decreasing atmospheric CO2, which for some source categories would also reduce co-emitted air pollutants or their precursors. Model projections for alternative climate and air quality scenarios indicate a wide range for U.S. surface O-3 and fine PM, although regional projections may be confounded by interannual to decadal natural climate variability. Continued implementation of U.S. NOx emission controls guards against rising pollution levels triggered either by climate change or by global emission growth. Improved accuracy and trends in emission inventories are critical for accountability analyses of historical and projected air pollution and climate mitigation policies.Implications: The expansion of U.S. air pollution policy to protect climate provides an opportunity for joint mitigation, with CH4 a prime target. BC reductions in developing nations would lower the global health burden, and for BC-rich sources (e.g., diesel) may lessen warming. Controls on these emissions could offset near-term warming induced by health-motivated reductions of sulfate (cooling). Wildfires, dust, and other natural PM and O-3 sources may increase with climate warming, posing challenges to implementing and attaining air quality standards. Accountability analyses for recent and projected air pollution and climate control strategies should underpin estimated benefits and trade-offs of future policies.We examine how attention to science and political news may influence public knowledge, perceived harm, and support for climate mitigation policies. Previous research examining these relationships(1,2) has not fully accounted for how political ideology shapes the mental processes through which the public interprets media discourses about climate change. We incorporate political ideology and the concept of motivated cognition into our analysis to compare and contrast two prominent models of opinion formation, the scientific literacy model(3-5), which posits that disseminating scientific information will move public opinion towards the scientific consensus, and the motivated reasoning model(6,7), which posits that individuals will interpret information in a biased manner. Our analysis finds support for both models of opinion formation with key differences across ideological groups. Attention to science news was associated with greater perceptions of harm and knowledge for conservatives, but only additional knowledge for liberals. Supporting the literacy model, greater knowledge was associated with more support for climate mitigation for liberals. In contrast, consistent with motivated reasoning, more knowledgeable conservatives were less supportive of mitigation policy. In addition, attention to political news had a negative association with perceived harm for conservatives but not for liberals.The UN Sustainable Development Goals ("SDGs") aim to create a more peaceful, just, and environmentally sustainable global community. The SDGs target seventeen areas that demand immediate action by the international community, including the eradication of poverty, gender equality, climate change mitigation, and resilience building. Unfortunately, the world's most powerful nation-state actors are unlikely to make the costly investments required to achieve the goals laid out in this ambitious UN document. In fact, this article argues that nation-state actors have powerful disincentives to play a leadership role in advancing the SDGs. The question then becomes: if nation-states are unable or unwilling to make these investments, who will? This article shows that Multinational Corporations ("MNCs") have a unique capacity to address critical global challenges-not because they are more efficient, agile, or altruistic than other kinds of institutional actors. Rather, MNCs have the potential to make an impact on issues from gender equality to sustainable development because they have a different incentive structure than nation-state actors. Unlike nation-states that answer to constituencies that are fundamentally parochial in their outlook, MNCs answer to stakeholders who are disposed toward more-rather than less-global engagement. More specifically, this article analyzes the incentives that MNCs have to invest in the SDGs. It does not attempt to resolve political and ethical questions raised by the privatization of the intergovernmental responsibility to protect human and natural resources on a global scale. It does argue that in the face of critical global challenges, this private sector intervention is preferable to government inaction.Energy conservation is expected to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and energy security. Traditionally, energy companies have had strong role in providing Demand Side Management (DSM) measures. However, after energy market liberalization in Europe, energy companies' DSM activities declined. In response, the EU issued Directive (2006/32/EC) on energy end-use efficiency and energy services (ESD) to motivate energy companies to promote energy efficiency and conservation, closely followed by Directive (2012/27/EU) on energy efficiency (EED), requiring the setting up energy efficiency obligation schemes. Despite strong political and economic motivation, energy companies struggle to develop energy efficiency services in liberalised energy markets due to conflicting institutional demands, which arise from contradicting policy requirements and customer relations. The main challenges in developing new innovative energy efficiency services, evidenced by an in-depth case study, were (1) the unbundling of energy company operations, which makes it difficult to develop services when the contribution of several business units is required and (2) the distrust among energy end-users, which renders the business logic of energy saving contract models self-contradictory. On the basis of the research, avenues out of these dilemmas are suggested. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to achieve the long-term CO2 emission reduction target in Japan, diffusion of low emission vehicles can contribute by integration of intermittent renewable energy by demand side management using low emission vehicles, such as smart charging battery electric vehicle (BEV), in addition to improvement of energy efficiency and carbon intensity. In this study, impact of the low emission vehicles is assessed using AIM/Enduse model with 10 regions in Japan. The model is revised to integrate power generation sector and to separate the transportation demand into small, medium and large size vehicles in order to reflect the availability of BEV and fuel-cell electric vehicle (FCEV) in each vehicle size. In the Reference case, hybrid vehicle accounts for more than a half of transport demand in 2050. However, by introducing the carbon tax to achieve the 2 degree target, the share of both BEV and FCEV in 2050 reaches around 90% and 60% in passenger and freight transport, respectively. In addition, electricity demand pattern is transformed by demand side management in 2050 while integrating more intermittent renewable energy into electricity system. As a result, the CO2 emissions from transport sector in 2050 decreases by approximately 81% compared to the 1990 level. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The success of eco-innovations in sustainable supply chains aiming a low-carbon economy is related to a broad range of human critical success factors. Thus, the goal of this research was to analyse how certain human critical success factors are related to specific low-carbon eco-innovation projects in leading companies in Brazil operating in some of the most sustainable supply chains in the country. As a consequence, this study qualitatively analysed three cases of low carbon eco-innovation discussing the necessary human critical success factors (HCSF). The results show that the companies in this study are at different stages of maturity with respect to climate change mitigation practices. It was found that the role of HCSF in the process of developing low-carbon products tends to intensify as corporations respond to advances in climate change mitigation. In organisations adopting a sustainable supply chain perspective (for example, adopting Life Cycle Assessment approach) and with a more evolved response to climate change, the product development process tended to be supported by all of the HCSF in the area of product innovation. In contrast, organisations whose practices for mitigating climate change were in the early stages tended not to show evidence of support from HCSF. This is the first study relating eco-innovation, sustainable supply chain, climate change and cases from leading Brazilian companies. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.To show the relationship between socioeconomic development and wood consumption for the investigation of future changes in wood demand in countries where socioeconomic development is expected, we analyzed panel data on per capita GDP, the human development index (HDI), and other factors in relation to per capita wood consumption for 33 OECD and 6 BRIICS countries. An increasing linear trend was found between per capita GDP and per capita consumption for sawn wood. However, the consumption declined over time when the same economic level was attained. In the case of plywood, reconstituted panels, and paper/paperboard, the results suggest that an environmental Kuznets curve, represented as an inverted-U curve, exists between per capita GDP and per capita consumption, confirming a tendency for consumption to reach saturation and then decline as economic development progresses. For wood fuel, an increasing linear trend was confirmed between economic level and per capita consumption, indicating the recent promotion of biofuel in developed countries. However, economic level alone might not be sufficient for explaining the demand for wood. The consumption of sawn wood, plywood, reconstituted panels, and paper/paperboard declined over time for a given HDI level. Rising population density and urbanization can contribute to a decrease in per capita wood consumption, whereas the larger the country's forest area, the greater per capita wood consumption. In particular, there is an increasing tendency to use the latest forms of wood fuel under sustainable forest management.Heavy-duty vehicles contribute a significant and increasing portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. The objective of this study is to provide an overview of heavy-duty vehicle efficiency policies in major markets to better inform the global evolution of climate mitigation measures. The paper compiles information from those four nations that have adopted some form of heavy-duty vehicle fuel economy standards-China Japan, United States of America (USA), and Canada-plus the European Union. Despite widespread differences, the study finds that each jurisdiction used simulation modeling to some extent to minimize the cost of chassis-based compliance testing. Further, the study identified several common elements under development for the next round of policies, including (1) how to incorporate trailer manufacturers into existing regulatory structures, (2) how to add new test procedures to fully account for potential benefits from hybrids and advanced transmissions, and (3) how to address the tension between separate test procedures for fuel economy and conventional pollutants. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities and challenges for aligning national policies in the future.Farming is a risky business. Climate science information can assist agriculture in formulating management decisions that hedge against uncertainty and risks. Climatologists are key actors in communicating historical trends and forecast information. Interviews and surveys of climatologists in the North Central Region reveal that they are providing accurate and objective information but are likely to let the science speak for itself. This suggests missed opportunities to communicate climate science in ways that make science relevant to decision maker beliefs, values, and practical applications. Furthermore, more active engagement with agriculture could increase colearning necessary for effective adaptive management under increasingly variable climate conditions.Our society faces the pressing challenge of increasing agricultural production while minimizing negative consequences on ecosystems and the global climate. Indonesia, which has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from deforestation while doubling production of several major agricultural commodities, exemplifies this challenge. Here we focus on palm oil, the world's most abundant vegetable oil and a commodity that has contributed significantly to Indonesia's economy. Most oil palm expansion in the country has occurred at the expense of forests, resulting in significant GHG emissions. We examine the extent to which land management policies can resolve the apparently conflicting goals of oil palm expansion and GHG mitigation in Kalimantan, a major oil palm growing region of Indonesia. Using a logistic regression model to predict the locations of new oil palm between 2010 and 2020 we evaluate the impacts of six alternative policy scenarios on future emissions. We estimate net emissions of 128.4-211.4 MtCO(2) yr(-1) under business as usual expansion of oil palm plantations. The impact of diverting new plantations to low carbon stock land depends on the design of the policy. We estimate that emissions can be reduced by 9-10% by extending the current moratorium on new concessions in primary forests and peat lands, 35% by limiting expansion on all peat and forestlands, 46% by limiting expansion to areas with moderate carbon stocks, and 55-60% by limiting expansion to areas with low carbon stocks. Our results suggest that these policies would reduce oil palm profits only moderately but would vary greatly in terms of cost-effectiveness of emissions reductions. We conclude that a carefully designed and implemented oil palm expansion plan can contribute significantly towards Indonesia's national emissions mitigation goal, while allowing oil palm area to double.Decarbonization of electricity generation can support climate-change mitigation and presents an opportunity to address pollution resulting from fossil-fuel combustion. Generally, renewable technologies require higher initial investments in infrastructure than fossil-based power systems. To assess the tradeoffs of increased up-front emissions and reduced operational emissions, we present, to our knowledge, the first global, integrated life-cycle assessment (LCA) of long-term, wide-scale implementation of electricity generation from renewable sources (i.e., photovoltaic and solar thermal, wind, and hydropower) and of carbon dioxide capture and storage for fossil power generation. We compare emissions causing particulate matter exposure, freshwater ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and climate change for the climate-change-mitigation (BLUE Map) and business-as-usual (Baseline) scenarios of the International Energy Agency up to 2050. We use a vintage stock model to conduct an LCA of newly installed capacity year-by-year for each region, thus accounting for changes in the energy mix used to manufacture future power plants. Under the Baseline scenario, emissions of air and water pollutants more than double whereas the low-carbon technologies introduced in the BLUE Map scenario allow a doubling of electricity supply while stabilizing or even reducing pollution. Material requirements per unit generation for low-carbon technologies can be higher than for conventional fossil generation: 11-40 times more copper for photovoltaic systems and 6-14 times more iron for wind power plants. However, only two years of current global copper and one year of iron production will suffice to build a low-carbon energy system capable of supplying the world's electricity needs in 2050.The aggregate potential for urban mitigation of global climate change is insufficiently understood. Our analysis, using a dataset of 274 cities representing all city sizes and regions worldwide, demonstrates that economic activity, transport costs, geographic factors, and urban form explain 37% of urban direct energy use and 88% of urban transport energy use. If current trends in urban expansion continue, urban energy use will increase more than threefold, from 240 EJ in 2005 to 730 EJ in 2050. Our model shows that urban planning and transport policies can limit the future increase in urban energy use to 540 EJ in 2050 and contribute to mitigating climate change. However, effective policies for reducing urban greenhouse gas emissions differ with city type. The results show that, for affluent and mature cities, higher gasoline prices combined with compact urban form can result in savings in both residential and transport energy use. In contrast, for developing-country cities with emerging or nascent infrastructures, compact urban form, and transport planning can encourage higher population densities and subsequently avoid lock-in of high carbon emission patterns for travel. The results underscore a significant potential urbanization wedge for reducing energy use in rapidly urbanizing Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.Extreme climatic events such as droughts are likely to result in huge and long-lasting effects on regional ecosystem health if large numbers of foundation tree species continue to die. Although deforestation is severe in the Ethiopian highlands, some remnants of dry afromontane forests still exist. However, the resilience of these forests under climate change scenarios is unknown. Therefore, we studied (1) the extent and spatial patterns of standing dead stems along an elevational gradient and (2) the effects of dieback on forest carbon sequestration potential and aboveground carbon stocks, in Juniperus procera and Olea europaea dominated dry afromontane forest in northern Ethiopia, using allometric models combined with tree ring analysis. Juniperus procera and Olea europaea constitute 67% of the total tree population. Tree dieback affected a quarter of the total population. This loss is critical because 92.2% of snags belong to J. procera and O. europaea, which are the foundation species of the study forest. The total estimated mean aboveground C-stock was 19.3 (+/- 3.9) Mg C ha(-1). Of this estimate, snags contributed 34.5% of total C-stock. The estimated annual C-sequestration potential of the study forest was 0.33 (+/- 0.03) Mg C ha(-1) year(-1), which is 27% less when compared to the pre-tree dieback C-sequestration potential. We found a decreasing trend in tree dieback with increasing elevation, which implies that the aboveground C-stocks and climate change mitigation potentials of the forest, was highly affected at lower elevations which is the drier part of the landscape. Tree ring analysis showed that trees reach medium-sized stem diameter (i.e., 20-25 cm) after no less than 100 years, indicating that the effect of forest dieback on C-sequestration potential and ecosystem function is long-lasting. Our results provide information on the magnitude of tree dieback and its long-lasting impact on forest carbon fluxes and forest ecosystem services. Evidently, the results substantiate the importance of protecting such forest to maintain the quality of the environment and to reduce efforts and cost for forest restoration after major loss. Finally, the information gained by this study provides baseline information for comparison of future carbon sequestration estimates. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This Profile analyses the challenges of interregional coordination for the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean regarding climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mediterranean climate governance is structured around complex governance arrangements, where multiple actors attempt to integrate the issue of climate change. Two key projects offer several opportunities for integrated climate governance in the Mediterranean: the Mediterranean Solar Plan and the Depollution for the Mediterranean. However, the lack of financial commitments for long-term infrastructure investments and bilateral differentiation under the EU's Neighbourhood Policy undermine region-wide cooperation. As a result, fragmentation challenges the Secretariat's efforts to govern each climate sector.Energy saving and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction policies at local level need to be investigated and new tools for climate change mitigation are necessary seeking to achieve GHG emission targets in Lithuania. Most Lithuanian municipalities have signed Covenant of Mayors and have prepared local energy action plans. However, all these plans include just energy saving measures on supply side and renovation of buildings. Nevertheless, the significant energy savings and GHG emission reductions can be achieved through behavioural changes. The aim of the paper is to apply community based social marketing approach in assessment of achievable energy saving and GHG emission reduction targets set by local energy action plans. The paper presents the results of case study implemented in Kaunas region municipality. The case study was conducted by creating focus groups and applying two scenarios: baseline or doing nothing and climate change mitigation scenario including intervention measures. The results of case study revealed that the total energy consumption reduction target set in Sustainable energy development strategy of Kaunas region county - 11% - can be achieved by combining results of energy consumption reduction in both focus groups. The survey conducted after study finalization revealed that respondents were provided with a lot of additional knowledge during the study and achieved real money savings. The major barriers of energy savings in households are related with the lack of information on energy savings and GHG emission reduction.Protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement (PADDD) is a global phenomenon that has not received formal attention in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policies designed to reduce forest carbon emissions and conserve biodiversity. Here, we examine how PADDD affects deforestation and forest carbon emissions. We documented 174 enacted and 8 proposed PADDD events affecting more than 48,000 km(2) in three REDD+ priority countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, and Peru. Where sufficient data were available, we estimated deforestation rates and the quantity and economic value of forest carbon already lost and at risk in three land tenure classes: PADDDed, protected, and never-protected. PADDDed forests experienced deforestation and forest carbon emissions greatly exceeding rates in protected areas and slightly exceeding rates in never-protected forests. PADDD represents business-as-usual for protected areas, posing substantial risk to forests and forest carbon stocks. REDD+ policies have substantive implications for protected area biodiversity and forest carbon emissions; the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ provides new, but insufficient, guidance for nations to address these issues.One of the challenges of applying greenhouse gas emission accounting approaches in poor communities is that the current consumption of many household services (e.g. heating and cooking, lighting and potable water) may not reflect the real demand for those services. This could be the result of lack of infrastructure, lack of natural resources or poverty, particularly the high costs of these services relative to household incomes. The situation of 'suppressed demand' creates a problem for setting emissions baselines against which to compare project performance, and has negatively affected CDM project development in Africa, Least Developed Countries and other regions with very few CDM projects. Ironically, although new large-scale power plants do not have to show that they actually displace other plants (existing or new), many small-scale energy projects can only claim credit for displacing historical (very low level) emissions from households. While the CDM rules are evolving to consider suppressed demand, much more can be done to catalyse investment in these types of climate change mitigation projects in poor communities. Furthermore, making progress will require significant expert and stakeholder input to ensure that simplification is balanced with maintaining overall environmental integrity.To assess the global production costs of shale gas, we combine global top-down data with detailed bottom-up information. Studies solely based on top-down approaches do not adequately account for the heterogeneity of shale gas deposits and hence, are unlikely to appropriately capture the extraction costs of shale gas. We design and provide an expedient bottom-up method based on publicly available US data to compute the levelized costs of shale gas extraction. Our results indicate the existence of economically attractive areas but also reveal a dramatic cost increase as lower-quality reservoirs are exploited. At the global level, our best estimate suggests that, at a cost of 6 US$/GJ, only 39% of the technically recoverable resources reported in top-down studies should be considered economically recoverable. This estimate increases to about 77% when considering an optimistic recovery of resources but could be lower than 12% when considering pessimistic ones. The current lack of information on the heterogeneity of shale gas deposits as well as on the development of future production technologies leads to significant uncertainties regarding recovery rates and production costs. Much of this uncertainty may be inherent, but for energy-system planning purposes, with or without climate change mitigation policies, it is crucial to recognize the full ranges of recoverable quantities and costs. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Equity is frequently cited as one of the key design aspects of environmental governance regimes. In the context of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), a forest-based climate change mitigation instrument, the manner in which equity' is understood will be of critical importance for the impacts and acceptance of REDD+policies and initiatives. Whereas the concept has been extensively studied in the academic literature, references to equity in REDD+policy debates and documents are often vague, leaving room for various interpretations and modes of implementation. In our case study of the Tanzanian national REDD+policy domain, we provide a conceptual framework based on an institutional logics approach for analysing the various underlying rationalities in the equity in REDD+' debate. We apply it to demonstrate how the involved policy actors draw from heterogeneous equity logics in their support for and opposition to different governance models, highlighting the importance of precise contextualization and operationalization of broad international principles in national REDD+initiatives. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.Over the last 20years the intergovernmental panel on climate change has produced a number of assessments on global climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. In 2009, the Australian government conducted its own assessment of climate change risks to the Australian coast. In South Australia, there has been progress in actions to address issues for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Of particular note are the South Australian policies on coast protection and new coastal development (1991), and coastal erosion, flooding and sea-level rise (1992). These state policies remain in place despite recent debate in the literature over global and regional rates and potential impacts of sea-level rise, which show sea-level rise is tracking at the upper end of projections. An increasing coastal population and a growing amount of coastal property and related infrastructure deemed at risk', is also creating pressure to review coastal policies nationwide. This paper presents an assessment of the vulnerability of the South Australian coast to the impacts of climate change from a biophysical perspective and incorporates primary research conducted into the public perceptions of risk, using data from sea change communities in regional South Australia. It investigates the social implications of, and potential for, adaptation beyond the existing policy framework. This paper argues that research into climate change-risk perceptions can offer insight into the development of more suitable adaptation policy at local and regional scales by considering the attitudes and perceptions of multiple and varied groups of coastal stakeholders. The paper concludes that perceptions of risk and opportunities for adaptation play an important role in the assessment of vulnerability, and are an important tool for informing policy decisions.Public participation in climate change policy requires a clear understanding of the issues. This is essential if an informed society is to achieve the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. Women, due to the type of activities they perform in the household, may have a prominent and leading role in this sphere and thus constitute a group holding great potential to support policies to deal with adaptation to climate change. The purpose of the present study is to assess gender-related awareness of climate change issues and the engagement of citizens in climate change mitigation based on eco-feminism theory to the socio-cultural features of citizen households in Iran. To this end, 310 residents of Quemshahr in Mazandaran province (Iran) were selected with a random sampling method. The results show that while women's behavioral engagement in tackling climate change is high, men exhibit a high level of cognitive dimension of engagement in tackling climate change. Furthermore, the results show that the level of citizens' engagement varies by education and age. Based on the research findings, activities to promote environmental education and understanding of climate change mitigation policies are proposed to increase the level of knowledge of the target group. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Active fractions of soil C such as particulate organic C (POC) and short-term mineralizable C (SMC) respond faster than total organic C (TOC) to management induced changes in soil C. However, the active fractions of organic C can possibly have larger variability that decreases the detectability of management effects on soil C. The objectives of this study were to (i) assess the relative usefulness of TOC, POC, and SMC as criteria of management induced changes on soil C and (ii) investigate if using auxiliary soil and topographical information can aid in increasing the usefulness of these criteria in studies conducted across large spatial scales. Data were collected at locations with two contrasting topographical positions ( slope and depression) within 10 agricultural fields in conventional and cover crop based row crop managements at the 0- to 20-, 35- to 50-, and 70- to 90-cm depths. The results showed that to detect differences between the management systems with an acceptable type II error of 0.20, an 80% difference in TOC and a 50% difference in SMC were needed. The statistical power for POC was never in an acceptable range. The use of auxiliary soil and topography information via analysis of covariance decreased the sizes of the minimal detectable differences. Given the faster reaction to management of SMC as compared with TOC, and its lower variability as compared with POC, we recommend SMC as the preferred C fraction for detecting treatment induced differences in organic C stocks in agricultural field experiments, especially in deeper soil layers.Studies performed in a southern taiga pine bog forest under different temperature and moisture conditions have shown that the dependence of sphagnum CO2 exchange on environmental factors is largely regulated by near-surface groundwater level (GWL). When the GWL is at a depth of 4-7 cm, CO2 uptake by sphagnum increases with rise in temperature; at a GWL depth of 21 cm, CO2 emission (instead of uptake) takes place, decreasing at higher temperatures. As the GWL descends and air temperature rises, CO2 becomes higher. At a GWL depth of more than 43 cm, the influence of temperature decreases and CO2 emission drops by more than half. The dependence of sphagnum CO2 exchange on solar radiation is also ambiguous. This dependence is logarithmic at a GWL depth of 4 to 21 cm, but at the latter level sphagnum mosses release CO2 rather than absorb it, with CO2 emission decreasing significantly at an irradiance of more than 200 W/m(2). Sphagnum CO2 exchange at GWL below 30 cm is independent of solar irradiance, and further increase in GWL depth leads to reduction in CO2 emission.Water withdrawal for electricity generation in the United States accounts for approximately half the total freshwater withdrawal. With steadily growing electricity demands, a changing climate, and limited water supplies in many water-scarce states, meeting future energy and water demands poses a significant socioeconomic challenge. Employing an integrated modeling approach that captures the energy-water interactions at regional and national scales can improve our understanding of the key drivers that govern those interactions and the role of national policies. In this study, the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), a technologically-detailed integrated model of the economy, energy, agriculture and land use, water, and climate systems, was extended to model the electricity and water systems at the state level in the US. (GCAM-USA). GCAM-USA was employed to estimate future state-level electricity generation and consumption, and their associated water withdrawals and consumption under a set of seven scenarios with extensive detail on the generation fuel portfolio, cooling technology mix, and their associated water use intensities. These seven scenarios were explored to investigate the implications of socioeconomic development and growing electricity demands, cooling system transitions, adoption of water-saving technologies, climate mitigation policy and electricity trading options on future water demands of the U.S. electric-sector. Our findings include: 1) decreasing water withdrawals and increasing water consumption from the conversion from open-loop to closed-loop cooling systems; 2) different energy-sector water demand behaviors with alternative pathways to the mitigation goal; 3) open trading of electricity benefiting energy-scarce yet demand-intensive states; 4) across-state homogeneity under certain driving forces (e.g., climate mitigation and water-saving technologies) and mixed effects under other drivers (e.g. electricity trade); and 5) a clear trade-off between water consumption and withdrawal for the electricity sector in the U.S. The paper discusses this withdrawal-consumption trade-off in the context of current national policies and regulations that favor decreasing withdrawals (and increasing consumptive use), and the role of water-saving technologies. The study also clearly shows that climate mitigation strategies focusing on CCS and nuclear power will have less favorable water consumption effects than strategies that support renewable energy and water-saving technologies. The highly-resolved nature of this study, both geographically and technologically, provides a useful platform to address scientific and policy-relevant and emerging issues at the heart of the water-energy nexus in the U.S. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Nonpoint source pollution from agriculture is the main source of nitrogen and phosphorus in the stream systems of the Corn Belt region in the Midwestern US. This region is comprised of two large river basins, the intensely row-cropped Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) and Ohio-Tennessee River Basin (OTRB), which are considered the key contributing areas for the Northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Thus, in this area it is of utmost importance to ensure that intensive agriculture for food, feed and biofuel production can coexist with a healthy water environment. To address these objectives within a river basin management context, an integrated modeling system has been constructed with the hydrologic Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, capable of estimating river basin responses to alternative cropping and/or management strategies. To improve modeling performance compared to previous studies and provide a spatially detailed basis for scenario development, this SWAT Corn Belt application incorporates a greatly refined subwatershed structure based on 12-digit hydrologic units or 'subwatersheds' as defined by the US Geological Service. The model setup, calibration and validation are time-demanding and challenging tasks for these large systems, given the scale intensive data requirements, and the need to ensure the reliability of flow and pollutant load predictions at multiple locations. Thus, the objectives of this study are both to comprehensively describe this large-scale modeling approach, providing estimates of pollution and crop production in the region as well as to present strengths and weaknesses of integrated modeling at such a large scale along with how it can be improved on the basis of the current modeling structure and results. The predictions were based on a semi-automatic hydrologic calibration approach for large-scale and spatially detailed modeling studies, with the use of the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting algorithm (SUFI-2) and the SWAT-CUP interface, followed by a manual water quality calibration on a monthly basis. The refined modeling approach developed in this study led to successful predictions across most parts of the Corn Belt region and can be used for testing pollution mitigation measures and agricultural economic scenarios, providing useful information to policy makers and recommendations on similar efforts at the regional scale. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recent increases in corn (Zea mays L.) production in the U.S. Corn Belt have necessitated the conversion of rotations to continuous corn, and an increase in the frequency of tillage. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of rotation and tillage on soil physical and chemical properties in soils typical of Illinois. Sequences of continuous corn (CCC), 2-yr corn-soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] (CS) rotation, 3-yr corn-soybean-wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) (CSW) rotation, and continuous soybean (SSS) were split into conventional tillage (CT) and no-till (NT) subplots at two Illinois sites. After 15 yr, bulk density (BD) under NT was 2.4% greater than under CT. Water aggregate stability (WAS) was 0.84 kg kg(-1) under NT compared to 0.81 kg kg(-1) under CT. Similarly, soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) were greater under NT than under CT with SOC values for 0 to 60 cm of 96.0 and 91.0 Mg ha(-1) and TN values of 8.87 and 8.40 Mg ha(-1) for NT and CT, respectively. Rotations affected WAS, TN, and K levels with WAS being greatest for the CSW rotation at 0.87 kg kg(-1), decreasing with more soybean years (CS, 0.82 kg kg(-1) and SSS, 0.79 kg kg(-1)). A similar pattern was detected for TN and exchangeable K. Results indicated that while the use of NT improved soil quality, long-term implementation of continuous corn had similar soil quality parameters to those found under a corn-soybean rotation.This paper investigates the relationships between the scores of 109 Japanese corporations found in the NIKKEI environmental management ranking survey and the corporate culture of each firm. Corporate culture is measured with the instrument developed by Cameron and Quinn (2006). The instrument measures corporate culture in terms of four categories: clan culture, adhocracy culture, hierarchy culture, and market culture. The results indicate that adhocracy culture has statistically significant positive relationships with the management system, product development, and climate change mitigation aspects of environmental management or sustainability management. Excessive hierarchy culture has a negative relationship with the overall score of environmental management. An appropriate combination of hierarchy culture and adhocracy culture enhances the overall score. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentThis article revisits a number of familiar debates about climate change mitigation yet draws some unorthodox conclusions. First, that progress towards a renewable small-scale energy future in environmentally conscious countries such as Germany and Sweden may take the world as a whole further away from climate stability by reducing the political pressure to finance breakthrough innovation. Second, that without such game-changing innovations, developing countries will continue to deploy whatever technologies are domestically available, scalable and affordable, including thermal coal power in most instances. Third and finally, that as any realistic hope of achieving climate stability hinges on the innovation of breakthrough technologies, the urgency of climate change calls not so much for the domestic deployment of existing energy technologies but rather a concentrated effort to develop technologies that will be adopted globally. These arguments imply that national innovation policy, and an international treaty establishing a Low-Emissions Technology Commitment' should be the central focus of climate policy.Little information exists on the potential for N fertilizer application to corn (Zea mays L.) to affect N2O emissions during subsequent unfertilized crops in a rotation. To determine if N fertilizer application to corn affects N2O emissions during subsequent crops in rotation, we measured N2O emissions for 3 yr (2011-2013) in an Iowa, corn-soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] rotation with three N fertilizer rates applied to corn (0 kg N ha(-1), the recommended rate of 135 kg N ha(-1), and a high rate of 225 kg N ha(-1)); soybean received no N fertilizer. We further investigated the potential for a winter cereal rye (Secale cereale L.) cover crop to interact with N fertilizer rate to affect N2O emissions from both crops. The cover crop did not consistently affect N2O emissions. Across all years and irrespective of cover crop, N fertilizer application above the recommended rate resulted in a 16% increase in mean N2O flux rate during the corn phase of the rotation. In 2 of the 3 yr, N fertilizer application to corn (0-225 kg N ha(-1)) did not affect mean N2O flux rates from the subsequent unfertilized soybean crop. However, in 1 yr after a drought, mean N2O flux rates from the soybean crops that received 135 and 225 kg N ha(-1) N application in the corn year were 35 and 70% higher than those from the soybean crop that received no N application in the corn year. Our results are consistent with previous studies demonstrating that cover crop effects on N2O emissions are not easily generalizable. When N fertilizer affects N2O emissions during a subsequent unfertilized crop, it will be important to determine if total fertilizer-induced N2O emissions are altered or only spread across a greater period of time.Persistent above average precipitation and runoff and associated increased sediment transfers from cultivated ecosystems to rivers and oceans are due to changes in climate and human action. The US Upper Midwest has experienced a 37% increase in precipitation (1958-2012), leading to increased crop damage from excess water and off-farm loss of soil and nutrients. Farmer adaptive management responses to changing weather patterns have potential to reduce crop losses and address degrading soil and water resources. This research used farmer survey (n = 4778) and climate data (1971-2011) to model influences of geophysical context, past weather, on-farm flood and saturated soils experiences, and risk and vulnerability perceptions on management practices. Seasonal precipitation varied across six Upper Midwest subregions and was significantly associated with variations in management. Increased warm-season precipitation (2007-2011) relative to the past 40 yr was positively associated with no-till, drainage, and increased planting on highly erodible land (HEL). Experience with saturated soils was significantly associated with increased use of drainage and less use of no-till, cover crops, and planting on HEL. Farmers in counties with a higher percentage of soils considered marginal for row crops were more likely to use no-till, cover crops, and plant on HEL. Respondents who sell corn through multiple markets were more likely to have planted cover crops and planted on HEL in 2011. This suggests that regional climate conditions may not well represent individual farmers' actual and perceived experiences with changing climate conditions. Accurate climate information downscaled to localized conditions has potential to influence specific adaptation strategies.The cropping sector in Australia contributes 2.5% of national greenhouse gas emissions, not accounting for the historical loss of soil carbon. The Australian Government is developing policy initiatives targeted at farmers to encourage changes in management practices that aim to reduce emissions from the agricultural sector. The main policy proposal being developed is a market-based mechanism to pay farmers from an Emissions Reduction Fund using methodologies specified under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative. The adoption of conservation agriculture practices in the dryland grain sector in Australia shows the potential to achieve emissions reductions in the order of three million tCO(2)e annually. This paper presents a series of systems models that describe the process of how Australian dryland grain farmers decide to change and adopt conservation agriculture practices. Results indicate that a number of economic and social factors drive the rate of practice change, and change seems to be motivated mostly by the pursuit of productivity benefits rather than environmental benefits. We postulate that it may be more effective for climate policy to directly target the adoption of conservation agriculture practices amongst Australian dryland grain farmers by promoting the crop productivity benefits likely to be achieved by such practices, rather than attempting to develop a market-based mechanism for carbon payments. Under this approach, emissions reduction outcomes and carbon payments would not be the primary driver for changing farming practices, but rather a concurrent benefit. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Key message We forecasted the effects of climate change and forest conversion options on common forest bird species by employing nation-wide high-resolution models. The results give details on how, where, and for which species forest conversion can mitigate climate change effects. Context To mitigate effects of climate change on forests, alterations are required to convert forests into less vulnerable forest types. Coniferous forest that has been cultivated extensively outside its natural range has been identified as being more vulnerable to climate change effects than deciduous forest. Aims The aim is to evaluate the effect of climate change mitigation measures on biodiversity due to forest conversion. Methods We generated five forest scenarios for Germany in which we systematically replaced coniferous with deciduous forest types. We forecasted the effects of climate change and forest conversion options on 25 forest bird species by employing high-resolution models to predict their current and future ranges and population size. Results Our simulations and modeling approach clearly predicted that climate change has a stronger impact on populations compared to distribution areas of common forest bird species. Forest conversion was predicted to amplify (15 species) and to weaken (10 species) the predicted gains and losses of species' population size due to climate change. Using the total bird population size to evaluate the mitigation effect of the different forest scenarios, forest conversion below an elevation of 500 m a. s. l. was predicted to mitigate climate change effects by 0.3 million breeding pairs (-0 %). The relatively weak mitigation effect was mainly due to few generalist species that inhabit coniferous forests in large abundances and did not profit from a conversion to deciduous forests. Conclusion The results of the study give details on how, where, and for which species forest conversion can mitigate the anticipated effects of climate change.Projections of regional changes in surface-air temperature and precipitation, in response to unconstrained emissions as well as a climate mitigation policy, for the Zambezi River Basin (ZRB) are presented. These projections are cast in a probabilistic context through a hybrid technique that combines the projections of the MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) to pattern-change kernels from climate-model results of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). Distributional changes of precipitation and surface-air temperature averaged over the western and eastern ZRB are considered. Overall, the most significant response to climate policy is seen in the spring. Frequency distributions of precipitation change for the unconstrained emission scenario indicate a majority of the outcomes to be drier by 2050, although the distribution spans both increased and decreased precipitation. Through climate policy, the distributions' total range of outcomes collapses considerably, and perhaps more importantly, the mode of the distribution aligns with zero precipitation change. For surface-air temperature, climate policy consistently reduces the modal value of warming, and this reduction is strongest for the western ZRB. Climate policy also considerably abates the occurrence of the most extreme temperature increases, but the minimum warming in the distributions is less affected.The long-term greenhouse gas emissions implications of wood biomass (bioenergy') harvests are highly uncertain yet of great significance for climate change mitigation and renewable energy policies. Particularly uncertain are the net carbon (C) effects of multiple harvests staggered spatially and temporally across landscapes where bioenergy is only one of many products. We used field data to formulate bioenergy harvest scenarios, applied them to 362 sites from the Forest Inventory and Analysis database, and projected growth and harvests over 160years using the Forest Vegetation Simulator. We compared the net cumulative C fluxes, relative to a non-bioenergy baseline, between scenarios when various proportions of the landscape are harvested for bioenergy: 0% (non-bioenergy); 25% (BIO25); 50% (BIO50); or 100% (BIO100), with three levels of intensification. We accounted for C stored in aboveground forest pools and wood products, direct and indirect emissions from wood products and bioenergy, and avoided direct and indirect emissions from fossil fuels. At the end of the simulation period, although 82% of stands were projected to maintain net positive C benefit, net flux remained negative (i.e., net emissions) compared to non-bioenergy harvests for the entire 160-year simulation period. BIO25, BIO50, and BIO100 scenarios resulted in average annual emissions of 2.47, 5.02, and 9.83Mg Cha(-1), respectively. Using bioenergy for heating decreased the emissions relative to electricity generation as did removing additional slash from thinnings between regeneration harvests. However, all bioenergy scenarios resulted in increased net emissions compared to the non-bioenergy harvests. Stands with high initial aboveground live biomass may have higher net emissions from bioenergy harvest. Silvicultural practices such as increasing rotation length and structural retention may result in lower C fluxes from bioenergy harvests. Finally, since passive management resulted in the greatest net C storage, we recommend designation of unharvested reserves to offset emissions from harvested stands.Nowadays, many countries adopt an active agenda to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions by moving towards less polluting energy generation technologies. The environmental costs, directly or indirectly generated to achieve such a challenging objective, remain however largely underexplored. Until now, research has focused either on pure economic approaches such as Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) and partial equilibrium (PE) models, or on (physical) energy supply scenarios. These latter could be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of various energy saving or cleaner technologies via Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. These modelling efforts have, however, been pursued in isolation, without exploring the possible complementarities and synergies. In this study, we have undertaken a practical combination of these approaches into a common framework: on the one hand, by coupling a CGE with a PE model, and, on the other hand, by linking the outcomes from the coupling with a hybrid input-output process based life cycle inventory. The methodological framework aimed at assessing the environmental consequences of two energy policy scenarios in Luxembourg between 2010 and 2025. The study highlights the potential of coupling CGE and PE models but also the related methodological difficulties (e.g. small number of available technologies in Luxembourg, intrinsic limitations of the two approaches, etc.). The assessment shows both environmental synergies and trade-offs due to the implementation of energy policies. For example, despite the changes in technologies towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, only marginal improvements are observed in the climate change mitigation scenario as compared to the Business-As-Usual. The energy related production and imports are indeed expected to increase over time and represent a large contribution to the country's impacts. Interestingly, side effects on other impacts than climate change or fossil resource depletion (e.g. ionising radiation and water depletion) may also occur mainly due to the use of nuclear energy in neighbouring countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Interest in northern forests is increasing worldwide for both timber production and climate change mitigation. Studies exploring forest productivity at an early age after fire and its determining factors are greatly needed. We studied forest productivity, defined as the combined quality of stocking and growth, of 116 10- to 30-year-old postfire sites. The sites were spread over a 90 000 km(2) area north of the Quebec commercial forestry limit and were dominated by Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P. and Pinus banksiana Lamb. Seventy-two percent of our sites were classified as unproductive, mainly because of poor growth. Because growth was mostly determined by climatic factors, afforestation alone may not be sufficient to increase stand productivity in our study area. In addition, our results suggest that P. banksiana on dry sites may be less resilient to fire than previously thought, presumably because of poor site quality and climate. Overall, this is one of the first studies to explore productivity issues at an early age in natural northern forests, and the analysis scheme that defines forest productivity as the result of growth and stocking could provide a useful tool to identify similar issues elsewhere.Over half of the world's forests are disturbed, and the rate at which ecosystem processes recover after disturbance is important for the services these forests can provide. We analyze the drivers' underlying changes in rates of key ecosystem processes (biomass productivity, litter productivity, actual litter decomposition, and potential litter decomposition) during secondary succession after shifting cultivation in wet tropical forest of Mexico. We test the importance of three alternative drivers of ecosystem processes: vegetation biomass (vegetation quantity hypothesis), community-weighted trait mean (mass ratio hypothesis), and functional diversity (niche complementarity hypothesis) using structural equation modeling. This allows us to infer the relative importance of different mechanisms underlying ecosystem process recovery. Ecosystem process rates changed during succession, and the strongest driver was aboveground biomass for each of the processes. Productivity of aboveground stem biomass and leaf litter as well as actual litter decomposition increased with initial standing vegetation biomass, whereas potential litter decomposition decreased with standing biomass. Additionally, biomass productivity was positively affected by community-weighted mean of specific leaf area, and potential decomposition was positively affected by functional divergence, and negatively by community-weighted mean of leaf dry matter content. Our empirical results show that functional diversity and community-weighted means are of secondary importance for explaining changes in ecosystem process rates during tropical forest succession. Instead, simply, the amount of vegetation in a site is the major driver of changes, perhaps because there is a steep biomass buildup during succession that overrides more subtle effects of community functional properties on ecosystem processes. We recommend future studies in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning to separate the effects of vegetation quality (community-weighted mean trait values and functional diversity) from those of vegetation quantity (biomass) on ecosystem processes and services.Where costs or risks are higher, evidence is lacking or supporting institutions are less developed, policymakers can struggle to make the case for low-carbon investment. This is especially the case in developing world cities where decision-makers struggle to keep up with the pace and scale of change. Focusing on Palembang in Indonesia, this paper considers the economic case for proactive investment in low-carbon development. We find that a rapidly growing industrial city in a developing country can reduce emissions by 24.1% in 2025, relative to business as usual levels, with investments of USD405.6 million that would reduce energy expenditure in the city by USD436.8 million. Emissions from the regional grid could be reduced by 12.2% in 2025, relative to business as usual trends, with investments of USD2.9 billion that would generate annual savings of USD175 million. These estimates understate the savings from reduced expenditure on energy subsidies and energy infrastructure. The compelling economic case for mainstreaming climate mitigation in this developing country city suggests that the constraints on climate action can be political and institutional rather than economic. There is therefore a need for more effective energy governance to drive the transition to a low-carbon economy. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).The public's willingness to engage in mitigation actions has not received as much attention as the level of belief in Global Warming (GW), especially on the international stage. Research in Western nations indicates that people systematically misunderstand GW and the actions required for mitigation. Important factors that influence judgments about mitigation actions include personal experiences, beliefs, knowledge, values, and worldviews. We present results of an international survey (25 samples from 24 countries) measuring general intentions to act and willingness to engage in specific actions. Our analysis reveals that endorsement of specific actions is (a) lower than general endorsement of mitigation, (b) accompanied by higher intra-individual variance, and (c) more strongly related to personal experiences with GW. This pattern can be attributed to the compatibility between the proximal construal of specific actions and the nature of the personal experience. Lastly we provide recommendations on how these findings can be used to encourage mitigation action. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Geologic carbon sequestration (GCS) is being considered as a climate change mitigation option in many future energy scenarios. Mathematical modeling is routinely used to predict subsurface CO2 and resident brine migration for the design of injection operations, to demonstrate the permanence of CO2 storage, and to show that other subsurface resources will not be degraded. Many processes impact the migration of CO2 and brine, including multiphase flow dynamics, geochemistry, and geomechanics, along with the spatial distribution of parameters such as porosity and permeability. In this article, we review a set of multiphase modeling approaches with different levels of conceptual complexity that have been used to model GCS. Model complexity ranges from coupled multiprocess models to simplified vertical equilibrium (VE) models and macroscopic invasion percolation models. The goal of this article is to give a framework of conceptual model complexity, and to show the types of modeling approaches that have been used to address specific GCS questions. Application of the modeling approaches is shown using five ongoing or proposed CO2 injection sites. For the selected sites, the majority of GCS models follow a simplified multiphase approach, especially for questions related to injection and local-scale heterogeneity. Coupled multiprocess models are only applied in one case where geomechanics have a strong impact on the flow. Owing to their computational efficiency, VE models tend to be applied at large scales. A macroscopic invasion percolation approach was used to predict the CO2 migration at one site to examine details of CO2 migration under the caprock.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is expected to significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for climate change mitigation purposes. Currently, the EU CCS Directive contains only geological storage as the storage option for CO2 - excluding CO2 mineralization as a storage option. Since all CCS technologies are currently in a relatively early stage of development, this exclusion seems unreasonable. Opportunities for the use of CO2 mineralization and the main uncertainties that can potentially prevent the use of these opportunities are investigated in this paper. The analysis is done by means of framing methodology that enables the extraction of CCS experts' mental models concerning CO2 mineralization from the interview data. Four of the six frames found hold a quite pessimistic future for CO2 mineralization. In addition, these frames were clearly strengthened when viewed within the global context. The way experts discuss CCS largely frames it in terms of carbon capture and geological storage (CCGS) and pushes CO2 mineralization to the margins. Thus CO2 mineralization is becoming even less likely to be included in policy making. At the same time, the slow progress of CCGS together with low public trust for the safety and sustainability of geological storage could strengthen the optimism found in two expert frames. Eventually this could weaken the pessimistic views and thus lead towards a more optimistic future for CO2 mineralization. However, this would require significant progress in CO2 mineralization technologies and especially increased publicity for such progress. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessments of emissions mitigation patterns have largely ignored the huge variation in real-world factors-in particular, institutions-that affect where, how and at what costs firms deploy capital(1-5). We investigate one such factor-how national institutions affect investment risks and thus the cost of financing(6-8). We use an integrated assessment model (IAM; ref. 9) to represent the variation in investment risks across technologies and regions in the electricity generation sector-a pivotally important sector in most assessments of climate change mitigation(10)-and compute the impact on the magnitude and distribution of mitigation costs. This modified representation of investment risks has two major effects. First, achieving an emissions mitigation goal is more expensive than it would be in a world with uniform investment risks. Second, industrialized countries mitigate more, and developing countries mitigate less. Here, we introduce a new front in the research on how real-world factors influence climate mitigation. We also suggest that institutional reforms aimed at lowering investment risks could be an important element of cost-effective climate mitigation strategies.The fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) estimated that by 2040 agroforestry would offer high potential of carbon (C) sequestration in developing countries. However, the role of tropical agroforestry in C sequestration and in climate change mitigation has only recently been recognized by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This is partly due to the lack of reliable estimates on the sequestration potential in biomass and soil carbon pools over time. The aim of this study was to analyze the changes in the biomass and soil carbon pools of three indigenous agroforestry systems in south-eastern Rift Valley escrapment of Ethiopia using CO2FIX (v.3.2) model. The agroforestry systems studied were Enset (Ensete ventricosum)-tree, Enset-coffee-tree, and Tree-coffee systems. To run the model, empirical data collected from 60 farms (20 farms for each agroforestry system) and literature were used as inputs to parameterize the model. Simulations were run over a period of 50 years. Average simulated total biomass C stocks was the highest for Tree-coffee system (122 Mg C ha(-1)), followed by the Enset-coffee-tree (114 Mg C ha(-1)) and Enset-tree system (76 Mg C ha(-1)). The tree cohort accounted for 89-97% of the total biomass C stocks in all the studied systems, and the reminder was shared by Enset and coffee cohorts. The total average simulated total C stocks (biomass and soil) were 209, 286 and 301 Mg C ha(-1) for Enset-tree, Enset-coffee-tree and Tree-coffee systems, respectively. The soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks accounted for 60-64% of the total carbon in the studied systems. Model validation results showed that long-term (10-40 years) simulated biomass C stocks were within the range of measured biomass C stocks for Enset-tree and Enset-coffee-tree systems, but significantly differed for the Tree-coffee system. The simulated soil and total C stocks were within the range of measured values for all the three systems. The CO2FIX model accurately predicted the SOC and total C stocks in the studied indigenous agroforestry systems, but the prediction of the biomass C stocks could be improved by acquiring more accurate input parameter values for running the model. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper we standardize, compare, and aggregate results from thirteen surveys of technology experts, performed over a period of five years using a range of different methodologies, but all aiming at eliciting expert judgment on the future cost of five key energy technologies and how future costs might be influenced by public R&D investments. To enable researchers and policy makers to use the wealth of collective knowledge obtained through these expert elicitations we develop and present a set of assumptions to harmonize them. We also aggregate expert estimates within each study and across studies to facilitate the comparison. The analysis showed that, as expected, technology costs are expected to go down by 2030 with increasing levels of R&D investments, but that there is not a high level of agreement between individual experts or between studies regarding the technology areas that would benefit the most from R&D investments. This indicates that further study of prospective cost data may be useful to further inform R&D investments. We also found that the contributions of additional studies to the variance of costs in one technology area differed by technology area, suggesting that (barring new information about the downsides of particular forms of elicitations) there may be value in not only including a diverse and relatively large group of experts, but also in using different methods to collect estimates. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the present paper we use the output of multiple expert elicitation surveys on the future cost of key low-carbon technologies and use it as input of three Integrated Assessment models, GCAM, MARKAL_US and WITCH. By means of a large set of simulations we aim to assess the implications of these subjective distributions of technological costs over key model outputs. We are able to detect what sources of technology uncertainty are more influential, how this differs across models, and whether and how results are affected by the time horizon, the metric considered or the stringency of the climate policy. In unconstrained emission scenarios, within the range of future technology performances considered in the present analysis, the cost of nuclear energy is shown to dominate all others in affecting future emissions. Climate-constrained scenarios, stress the relevance, in addition to that of nuclear energy, of biofuels, as they represent the main source of decarbonization of the transportation sector and bioenergy, since the latter can be coupled with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to produce negative emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers the effect of several key parameters of low carbon energy technologies on the cost of abatement. A methodology for determining the minimum level of performance required for a parameter to have a statistically significant impact on CO2 abatement cost is developed and used to evaluate the impact of eight key parameters of low carbon energy supply technologies on the cost of CO2 abatement. The capital cost of nuclear technology is found to have the greatest impact of the parameters studied. The cost of biomass and CCS technologies also have impacts, while their efficiencies have little, if any. Sensitivity analysis of the results with respect to population, GDP, and CO2 emission constraint show that the minimum performance level and impact of nuclear technologies is consistent across the socioeconomic scenarios studied, while the other technology parameters show different performance under higher population, lower GDP scenarios. Solar technology was found to have a small impact, and then only at very low costs. These results indicate that the cost of nuclear is the single most important driver of abatement cost, and that trading efficiency for cost may make biomass and CCS technologies more competitive. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Restoration of composition, structure, and function in oak dominated ecosystems is the focus of management in temperate forests around the world. Land managers focused on oak ecosystem restoration are challenged by the legacy effects of complex land-use histories, urbanization, climate change, and potential stakeholder response to management. Trade-offs may exist between managing forests for climate mitigation (e.g., maximizing C storage or sequestration) and promoting shade-intolerant species historically associated with frequent or high-severity disturbances. This study assessed the potentially conflicting goals of sustained live biomass accrual and increased oak regeneration in the East Woods Natural Area at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL, USA. We evaluated how biomass trends and oak regeneration were related to management regimes, land-use history, current stand structure and composition, and topoedaphic factors. Our results indicated no significant trade-off between sustained live biomass accrual and oak regeneration. Live biomass was increasing across the landscape (biomass increment averaged 18,186 kg ha(-1) yr(-1)) and was not strongly related to differences in management or land-use history. Oak regeneration was rare, especially beyond the seedling stage (similar to 226 seedlings and 9 saplings ha(-1)) and was also not strongly related to recent management. Our results indicate that even 20+ years of annual prescribed burning combined with understory thinning has failed to produce the open canopy conditions and high light availability that are necessary for successful oak recruitment. The absence of any trade-offs between biomass accrual and oak regeneration may, therefore, be largely related to the ineffectiveness of current management for promoting oak regeneration. More intensive management utilizing canopy manipulations could produce greater trade-offs, but is likely necessary to establish and release oak regeneration. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reforestation of landscapes is being used as a method for tackling climate change through carbon sequestration and land restoration, as well as increasing biodiversity and improving the provision of ecosystem services. The success of reforestation activities can be reduced by adverse field conditions, including those that reduce germination and survival of plants. One method for improving success is biochar addition to soil, which is not only known to improve soil carbon sequestration, but is also known to improve growth, health, germination and survival of plants. In this study, biochar was applied to soil at rates of 0, 1,3 and 6 t ha(-1) along with a direct-seed forest species mix at three sites in western Victoria, Australia. Changes in soil chemistry, including total carbon, and germination and survival of species were measured over an 18 month period. Biochar was found to significandy increase total carbon by up to 15.6% on soils low in carbon, as well as alter electrical conductivity, Colwell phosphorous and nitrate- and ammonium-nitrogen. Biochar also increased the number of species present, and stem counts of Eucalyptus species whilst decreasing stem counts of Acacia species. Biochar has the potential to positively benefit reforestation activities, but site specific and plant-soil-biochar responses require targeted research. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forest plays a vital role in regulating climate through carbon sequestration in its biomass. Biomass reflects the health and environmental conditions of a forest ecosystem. In context to the climate change mitigation mechanisms like REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), an extensive forest monitoring campaign is especially important. Remote sensing of forest structure and biomass with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) bears significant potential for mapping and understanding forest ecological processes. Limitations of the conventional forest inventory procedures, like the extensive cost, labor and time, can be overcome through integrated geospatial techniques. Optical sensor or SAR data are suitable for extracting information about simple and homogeneous forest stand sites. However, optical sensors face serious limitations, specifically in tropical regions, like the cloud cover that SAR can overcome along with targeting saturation and penetration aspects. Simultaneous use of spectral information and image texture parameters improves the biomass assessment over undulating terrain and in radical conditions. Also, synergic use of multi-sensor optical and SAR has better potential than single sensor. Interferometric (InSAR) and polarimetric (PolSAR) SAR or a combination of the both (PolInSAR) serves as effective alternatives. These techniques could serve as valuable methods for biomass assessment of heterogeneous complex biophysical environments. However, SAR data have its own limitations and complexities. Identifying, understanding and solving major uncertainties in different stages of the biomass estimation procedure are critical. In this regard, the current study provides a review of radar remote sensing-based studies in forest biomass estimation.This paper addresses the contribution of changes in population size and structures to greenhouse gas emissions and to the capacity to adapt to climate change. The paper goes beyond the conventional focus on the changing composition by age and sex. It does so by addressing explicitly the changing composition of the population by level of educational attainment, taking into account new evidence about the effect of educational attainment in reducing significantly the vulnerability of populations to climatic challenges. This evidence, which has inspired a new generation of socio-economic climate change scenarios, is summarized. While the earlier IPCC-SRES (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) scenarios only included alternative trajectories for total population size (treating population essentially as a scaling parameter), the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) in the new scenarios were designed to capture the socio-economic challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and include full age, sex, and education details for all countries.This research investigated how an individual's endorsements of mitigation and adaptation relate to each other, and how well each of these can be accounted for by relevant social psychological factors. Based on survey data from two European convenience samples (N = 616/309) we found that public endorsements of mitigation and adaptation are strongly associated: Someone who is willing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) is also willing to prepare for climate change impacts (adaptation). Moreover, people endorsed the two response strategies for similar reasons: People who believe that climate change is real and dangerous, who have positive attitudes about protecting the environment and the climate, and who perceive climate change as a risk, are willing to respond to climate change. Furthermore, distinguishing between (spatially) proximal and distant risk perceptions suggested that the idea of portraying climate change as a proximal (i.e., local) threat might indeed be effective in promoting personal actions. However, to gain endorsement of broader societal initiatives such as policy support, it seems advisable to turn to the distant risks of climate change. The notion that "localising" climate change might not be the panacea for engaging people in this domain is discussed in regard to previous theory and research.We investigate the projected impact of six climate mitigation scenarios on U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen oxides (NOX) associated with energy use in major sectors of the U.S. economy (commercial, residential, industrial, electricity generation, and transportation). We use the EPA U.S. 9-region national database with the MARKet Allocation energy system Model to project emissions changes over the 2005 to 2050 time frank. The modeled scenarios are two carbon tax, two low carbon transportation, and two biomass fuel choice scenarios. In the lower carbon tax and both biomass fuel choke scenarios, SO2 and NOX achieve reductions largely through pre-existing rules and policies, with only relatively modest additional changes occurring from the climate;mitigation measures. The higher carbon tax scenario projects greater declines in CO2 and SO2 relative to the 2050 reference case, but electricity sector NOX increases. This is a result of reduced investments in power plant NOX controls in earlier years in anticipation of accelerated coal power plant retirements, energy penalties associated with carbon capture systems, and shifting of NOX emissions in later years from power plants subject to a regional NOX cap to those in regions not subject to the cap.Emissions of CO2 from road vehicles were 1.57 billion metric tons in 2012, accounting for 28% of US fossil fuel CO2 emissions, but the spatial distributions of these emissions are highly uncertain. We develop a new emissions inventory, the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (DARTE), which estimates CO2 emitted by US road transport at a resolution of 1 km annually for 1980-2012. DARTE reveals that urban areas are responsible for 80% of on-road emissions growth since 1980 and for 63% of total 2012 emissions. We observe nonlinearities between CO2 emissions and population density at broad spatial/temporal scales, with total on-road CO2 increasing nonlinearly with population density, rapidly up to 1,650 persons per square kilometer and slowly thereafter. Per capita emissions decline as density rises, but at markedly varying rates depending on existing densities. We make use of DARTE's bottom-up construction to highlight the biases associated with the common practice of using population as a linear proxy for disaggregating national-or state-scale emissions. Comparing DARTE with existing downscaled inventories, we find biases of 100% or more in the spatial distribution of urban and rural emissions, largely driven by mismatches between inventory downscaling proxies and the actual spatial patterns of vehicle activity at urban scales. Given cities' dual importance as sources of CO2 and an emerging nexus of climate mitigation initiatives, high-resolution estimates such as DARTE are critical both for accurately quantifying surface carbon fluxes and for verifying the effectiveness of emissions mitigation efforts at urban scales.Sommer and Bossio (2014) model the potential soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration in agricultural soils (croplands and grasslands) during the next 87 years, concluding that this process cannot be considered as a climate stabilization wedge. We argue, however, that the amounts of SOC potentially sequestered in both scenarios (pessimistic and optimistic) fulfil the requirements for being considered as wedge because in both cases at least 25 GtC would be sequestered during the next 50 years. We consider that it is precisely in the near future, and meanwhile other solutions are developed, when this stabilization effort is most urgent even if after some decades the sequestration rate is significantly reduced. Indirect effects of SOC sequestration on mitigation could reinforce the potential of this solution. We conclude that the sequestration of organic carbon in agricultural soils as a climate change mitigation tool still deserves important attention for scientists, managers and policy makers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forests are a renewable resource and wood is a valuable and sustainably useable product that contributes to national economies. This value from the forests can be realised in harmony with the functions of forests in the global carbon cycle and as long-term carbon repositories as well as providing other environmental values. This important understanding is missed or ignored in many global forestry forums. After more than two decades of so-called 'pro-poor' forestry policies backed by large amounts of research preferentially targeted to advance non-timber forest products and payment for ecosystem services including Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, it is difficult to find evidence to back any contention that in any tropical region they have advanced the economic status of forest-dependent or rural communities enabling them to come out of poverty in an enduring way. It is argued here that the sustainable management of native and planted forests, including wood production and processing in rural regions, and greater use of wood products by all of us, can play a much greater role than has been recognised so far for dealing with two major interrelated global challenges. These are poverty reduction in rural forest landscapes, notably in the subtropics and tropics, and to make modest contributions to climate change mitigation globally, especially by recognising the roles of both forests and wood products in the carbon cycle. It is time for a revised narration in the global agenda to raise the potential role of forests as a sustainably manageable resource, free from overzealous calls for forest conservation, but with a more balanced and holistic recognition of the contributions that forests, forestry and the wood-products sector can make to economic and social development. This should be brought effectively into the deliberations of the forthcoming UN Sustainable Development Goals. This would require efforts by the UN and other bodies to bring the private and public sectors into symbiotic partnerships, not as opposing forces as has often been the case.An increasing complexity is seen in global governance systems for forests, with multiple policy processes providing binding and non-binding commitments and partly conflicting objectives. This paper intends to contribute to clarifying domestic influences of global initiatives, by an exploratory contrasting of two alternative analytical perspectives. For the first perspective, regime effects, two cases of policy changes in Norway revealed variation in effects depending on the scope of analysis and reference points used for measurement. Compared to a situation with no regime, an effect is revealed for the climate regime, while for biodiversity, the effect is uncertain. For problem-solving achievements, both cases of policy change indicate difficulties in determining effects, due to ambiguity in regime objectives. The initial contrasting of regime effects with global governance influences, the second perspective, find that these are incompatible concepts, with the governance influences encompassing broader sources of influences and their dynamic interactions. The explorations point to the need for clarity in what is the topic under study (effect of one or more regimes, or governance influences) and to the analytical delimitations (regime obligations, process-generated effects of regime, broader regime consequences, or governance influences). Finally, promising topics for extending our understanding of national-global interactions are identified.Defining carbon emission allocation standards is becoming increasingly important for China to achieve its emission reduction targets, and support global climate change mitigation and energy constraints. This paper defines and adopts the principle of equal historical cumulative emissions per capita, and uses Shanghai as a case study to build an allocation standard for carbon emissions. First, using China's emission reduction targets, we established the carbon emission space for 2020, then constructed an allocation standard for Shanghai carbon emissions for 2020. We found that Shanghai's total carbon emissions between 2000 and 2013 had exceeded China's average carbon emissions, driven by a traditional economic development model. These results point to the necessity of reducing carbon emissions from 2011 levels effectively. The carbon emission per capita has become increasingly faster since 2012. Finally, we provide policy suggestions for low-carbon development, from the perspectives of industry structure, institutional innovation, low-carbon technology, incentive mechanisms, and new energy supplies. This study's methods can be applied to other regions to build an allocation standard for carbon emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change scepticism is a familiar concept in popular and scholarly discourse and generally refers to a family of arguments and individuals that reject, dispute, or question the orthodox view of the climate issue. At close range though, it is evident that the concept is often used casually, without consideration of the complexity of the category it represents. Scholars have varied interpretations of the concept and sometimes actively dispute its meaning and reach. The article proposes that the sceptic phenomenon can be variegated according to the types of sceptic critiques and, additionally, according to sceptics' attitudinal characteristics. Taxonomies are proposed for each. The types of sceptic arguments are organised in a conceptual hierarchy consisting of two classes of critiques ("core" and "concomitant"), three centers of scepticism ("evidence," " process," and " response"), and seven specific objects of scepticism. For the attitudinal characteristics of sceptics, the article takes stock of the different motives, modes, and certainties of belief among sceptics. It proposes some relabeling of the category and subcategories to more accurately describe nuances in sceptic positions, as well as to dispose of unproductive labels. The article suggests how the refined conceptualisation might help observers and policy practitioners to manage the sceptic challenge in a more discerning and constructive fashion.The relevant role of spatial planning in the enforcement of climate change mitigation, managing the development of new low-carbon infrastructures and increasing system-wide efficiencies across sectors, has been addressed at global level (IPCC, 2014 WGIII). In this context, local GHG inventories appear a relevant tool toward the definition of a coherent, inter-sectorial background for local planning, mitigation, and adaptation policies. Taking advantage of consistent GHG emissions data availability in the Lombard context, local maps of direct GHG emissions have been linked with geographic data - produced and organized within the research PRIN 2007 From metropolitan city to metropolitan corridor: the case of the Po Valley Corridor - including municipal boundaries, population data, and land-use information. The results of this mapping exercise have been evaluated on the background of consolidated knowledge about northern Italy urban patterns, including the Linear Metropolitan System - LiMeS - and preliminary observations about characteristics, potential, and limits of the tool are proposed.Intensive maize production in Lombardy region (northern Italy) is widespread and requires big amounts of input, especially nitrogen (N), thus leading to potential environmental risks. Starting from farm survey data the current work aims to evaluate how alternative N management options for reducing losses can be effective in climate change mitigation. Under current management (ACT) of typical continuous maize cropping systems across the region, the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from the production of inorganic fertilisers and from direct and indirect N2O released after N application accounted for, on average, 67% of the total GHG emissions. The adoption of the best N management plans (FERT scenario), reduced GHG emissions and C-footprint (expressed per unit of agricultural product) by 27 and 26%, respectively. Furthermore, the double cropping system (two crops harvested in 12 months - ROT scenario) strongly increased GHG emissions in comparison with the only cultivation of a summer crop. However, the high productivity of this system, led to a C-footprint lower than the ACT one and still higher than the FERT one. The current work highlights the opportunities for carbon mitigation offered by changes on field N management, without significantly impact the yield.Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) may promote plant invasion by enhancing plant performance and competitiveness. However, only a small number of studies have considered the interactions between local soil microbial communities and invasive plants, and even fewer have focused on alien trees. Ailanthus altissima (Mill.) Swingle is a serious problem in the Mediterranean Basin, where it has invaded many habitats. We investigated the symbiosis between A. altissima and indigenous AMF in two invaded, ecologically different Mediterranean woodlands. Mycorrhizal infection was high at both sites (> 60% of the root fragments were mycorrhizal), indicating that A. altissima roots may be infected by AMF under different ecological conditions. In a greenhouse experiment, A. altissima seedling growth was evaluated in untreated soil (natural soil containing the entire microbial community except AMF propagules), in sterilized soil, and in sterilized soil containing the entire microbial community except AMF. Seedling growth was greater in the natural soil than in the other two soils. Seedlings in natural soil but not in the other two soils were extensively colonized by AMF, indicating that AMF may have been responsible for the greater growth in the natural soil. Growth was poorer in the sterile soil that had been inoculated with a soil suspension lacking AMF propagules than in the sterile soil, suggesting that the natural soil also contained pathogens and that the AMF countered the effects of these pathogens. Overall, the results indicate that AMF are an important biotic component of Mediterranean woodlands invaded by A. altissima and AMF may facilitate A. altissima's invasion in these woodlands.In the US, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has received most of its attention when coupled with the fossil fuel industry as a mitigation strategy for climate change. CCS, which is constituted as a broad suite of capture and sequestration technologies and techniques, does not preclude coupling with other energy industries such as bioenergy (bioenergy and CCS or BECCS). In this paper, we examined news media coverage of CCS and biomass individually in locations throughout the US where these technologies are being explored to determine how they are perceived and what possibilities lay in their coupling for climate change mitigation. From our analyses, we found that individually, both CCS and biomass are perceived generally as beneficial for energy development by the news media, though they are not often mentioned in combination. Combined references do, however, speak to their value for climate change mitigation and as an alternative to fossil fuels.Soil and crop management practices can affect the physical properties and have a direct impact on soil sustainability and crop performance. The objective of this study was to investigate how soil physical properties were affected by three years of tillage, cover crop and crop rotation treatments in a corn and soybean field. The study was conducted on a Waldron silty-loam soil at Lincoln University of Missouri. Soil physical properties studied were soil bulk density, volumetric and gravimetric water contents, volumetric air content, total pore space, air-filled and water-filled pore space, gas diffusion coefficient and pore tortuosity factor. Results showed significant interactions (p<0.05) between cover crop and crop rotation for bulk density, gravimetric and total pore space in 2013. In addition, cover crop also significantly interacted (p<0.05) with tillage for bulk density and total pore space. All soil physical properties studied were significantly affected by the depth of sampling (p<0.0001), except for bulk density, the pore tortuosity factor and total pore space in 2012, and gravimetric and volumetric in 2013. Overall, soil physical properties were significantly affected by the treatments, with the effects changing from one year to another. Addition of a cover crop improved soil physical properties better in rotation than in monoculture.The loss of organic matter from agricultural lands constrains our ability to sustainably feed a growing population and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Addressing these challenges requires land use activities that accumulate soil carbon (C) while contributing to food production. In a region of extensive soil degradation in the southeastern United States, we evaluated soil C accumulation for 3 years across a 7-year chronosequence of three farms converted to management-intensive grazing. Here we show that these farms accumulated C at 8.0 Mg ha(-1) yr(-1), increasing cation exchange and water holding capacity by 95% and 34%, respectively. Thus, within a decade of management-intensive grazing practices soil C levels returned to those of native forest soils, and likely decreased fertilizer and irrigation demands. Emerging land uses, such as management-intensive grazing, may offer a rare win-win strategy combining profitable food production with rapid improvement of soil quality and short-term climate mitigation through soil C-accumulation.Peatlands play a crucial role in Indonesia's economic development, and in its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Improved peatland management - including a national moratorium on the granting of any new conversion licenses - forms a cornerstone of Indonesia's climate change mitigation commitment. At the same time, rapid expansion of the plantation sector is driving wide-scale drainage and conversion of peat swamp ecosystems. The province of Riau, in central Sumatra, finds itself at the crossroads of these conflicting agendas. This essay presents a case study of three islands on Riau's east coast affected by industrial timber plantation concessions. It examines the divergent experiences, perceptions and responses of communities on the islands. A mix of dramatic protests, localised everyday actions and constructive dialogue has succeeded in delaying or perhaps halting one of the concessions, while negotiations and contestation with the other two continue. With the support of regional and national non-governmental organisations and local government, communities are pursuing alternative development strategies, including the cultivation of sago, which requires no peat drainage. While a powerful political economy of state and corporate actors shapes the contours of socio-environmental change, local social movements can alter trajectories of change, promoting incremental improvements and alternative pathways.While lasting mitigation solutions are needed to avoid climate change in the long term, temporary solutions may play a positive role in terms of avoiding certain climatic target levels, for preventing the crossing of critical and perhaps irreversible climatic tipping points. While the potential value of temporary carbon storage in terms of climate change mitigation has been widely discussed, this has not yet been directly coupled to avoiding climatic target levels representing predicted climatic tipping points. This paper provides recommendations on how to model temporary carbon storage in products in life cycle assessment (LCA), in order to include the potential mitigation value relative to crossing critical climatic target levels. Further, estimates are made on potential magnitude of this value, highlighting the importance of including this aspect in climate change impact assessment of biomaterials. The recently developed approach for quantifying the climate tipping potential (CTP) of emissions is used, with some adaption, to account for the value of temporary carbon storage. CTP values for short-, medium- and long-term carbon storage in chosen biomaterials are calculated for two possible future atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration development scenarios. The potential magnitude of the temporary carbon storage in biomaterials is estimated by considering the global polymer production being biobased in the future. Both sets of CTP values show the same trend; storage which releases the carbon again before the climatic target level is reached increases the CTP value of the product compared to a situation with no storage of the product, whereas storage extending beyond the time where the climatic target level is predicted to be crossed according to the GHG concentration scenarios contributes with negative CTP values, which means mitigation. The longer the duration of the storage, the larger the mitigation potential. Temporary carbon storage in biomaterials has a potential for contributing to avoid or postpone the crossing of a climatic target level of 450 ppm CO(2)e, depending on GHG concentration development scenario. The potential mitigation value depends on the timing of sequestration and re-emission of CO2. The suggested CTP approach enables inclusion of the potential benefit from temporary carbon storage in the environmental profile of biomaterials. This should be seen as supplement to the long-term climate change impacts given by the global warming potential which does not account for temporary aspects like benefits from non-permanent storage in terms of avoiding a critical climatic target level.Numerous empirical and simulation-based studies have documented or estimated variable impacts to the economic growth of nation states due to the adoption of domestic climate change mitigation policies. However, few studies have been able to empirically link projected changes in economic growth to the provision of public goods and services. In this research, we couple projected changes in economic growth to US states brought about by the adoption of a domestic climate change mitigation policy with a longitudinal panel dataset detailing the production of outdoor recreation opportunities on lands managed in the public interest. Joining empirical data and simulation-based estimates allow us to better understand how the adoption of a domestic climate change mitigation policy would affect the provision of public goods in the future. We first employ a technical efficiency model and metrics to provide decision makers with evidence of specific areas where operational efficiencies within the nation's state park systems can be improved. We then augment the empirical analysis with simulation-based changes in gross state product (GSP) to estimate changes to the states' ability to provide outdoor recreation opportunities from 2014 to 2020; the results reveal substantial variability across states. Finally, we explore two potential solutions (increasing GSP or increasing technical efficiency) for addressing the negative impacts on the states' park systems operating budgets brought about by the adoption of a domestic climate change mitigation policy; the analyses suggest increasing technical efficiency would be the most viable solution if/when the US adopts a greenhouse gas reduction policy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chile needs to diversify its energy supply, and should establish policies that encourage the production and use of biofuels. The demand for energy resources increases with population growth and industrial development, making it urgent to find green alternatives to minimize the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of traditional fuels. However, it is required that sophisticated strategies consider all externalities from the production of biofuels and should be established on the basis of protecting the environment, reducing GHG emissions and to avoid violating human rights. This article presents the Chilean reality, based on ethical principles that should be guarded to regulate the bioenergy market. These principles are: (1) human rights, (2) environmental sustainability, (3) climate change mitigation, (4) right to a fair reward, and (5) equitable distribution. It is concluded that in Chile the concentration of land and water for the development of extractive industries; and for agricultural and forestry purposes, contradicts the principle of human rights. The unequal distribution of income is also highlighted as part of a cycle of social injustice, with a high Gini coefficient (0.52). However, the policy of biofuels can be strengthened with the early use of second generation feedstock, the introduction of fair trade and regulation by the state to encourage participation of small farmers, and allows a position for Chile at the forefront of bioenergy production.Exposure to surface ozone has detrimental impacts on vegetation and crop yields. In this study, we estimate ozone impacts on crop production and subsequent impacts on land use in the 2005-2050 period using results of the TM5 atmospheric chemistry and IMAGE integrated assessment model. For the crops represented in IMAGE, we compute relative yield losses based on published exposure-response functions. We examine scenarios with either constant or declining emission factors in a weak climate policy future (radiative forcing target of 6.0 W/m(2) at the end of the century), as well as co-benefits of stringent climate policy (targeted at 2.6 W/m(2)). Without a large decrease in air pollutant emissions, higher ozone concentrations could lead to an increase in crop damage of up to 20% locally in 2050 compared to the situation in which the changes in ozone are not accounted for. This may lead to a 2.5% global increase in crop area, and a regional increase of 8.9% in Asia. Implementation of air pollution policies could limit crop yield losses due to ozone to maximally 10% in 2050 in the most affected regions. Similar effects can be obtained as a result of co-benefits from climate policy (reducing ozone precursor emissions). We also evaluated the impact of the corresponding land-use changes on the carbon cycle. Under the worst-case scenario analysed in this study, future ozone increases are estimated to increase the cumulative net CO2 emissions between 2005 and 2050 by about 3.7 Pg C, which corresponds to about 10% of baseline land use emissions over the same period. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sown biodiverse permanent pastures rich in legumes (SBPPRL) were developed in Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s as a strategy to increase grassland productivity by sowing mixtures of up to 20 species/cultivars of legumes and grasses. Compared to semi-natural pastures, the resulting engineered system provides higher yields of better quality pasture, significantly increasing sustainable stocking rates, with multiple environmental co-benefits. Here, we propose a conceptual framework for the sustainability assessment of SBPPRL and apply it with existing data. Our objective is to inquire if this system is an example of sustainable intensification of livestock production, i.e., an economic and ecological win-win solution that can answer many of the causes for ecosystem degradation in semi-arid and sub-humid climate zones, such as in the Mediterranean basin. We build on experimental results from previous studies, which suggest that SBPPRL replenish soil organic matter pools and improve soil structure. The high increase in stable soil organic matter acts as a carbon sink, turning the system into an optimum tool for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Portugal made use of this fact by supporting the expansion of SBPPRL areas and abating the corresponding carbon from Kyoto Protocol emissions calculations. We resorted to the literature to evaluate other environmental effects due to the absence of data specifically for SBPPRL. Surface water runoff decreases and pirophyte shrub vegetation is eliminated or much reduced. Nitrogen accumulates in stable forms in the soil after being fixed by Rhizobium/legume symbiotic associations. Legumes depend on phosphorus fertilization; as such the nitrogen cycle in SBPPRL relies on a potentially non-renewable resource (required during the first years after installation of the pasture), which may be a potential limiting factor in the future. The effects on wild biodiversity are unclear. The methodology laid out in this article provides an innovative framework to assess these effects as additional experimental data becomes available. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) source emissions provides data for validation of GHG inventories, which provide the foundation for climate change mitigation. Two Toyota RAV4 electric vehicles were outfitted with high-precision instrumentation to determine spatial and temporal resolution of GHGs (e.g., nitrous oxide, methane [CH4], and carbon dioxide [CO2]), and other gaseous species and particulate metrics found near emission sources. Mobile measurement platform (MMP) analytical performance was determined over relevant measurement time scales. Pollutant residence times through the sampling configuration were measured, ranging from 3 to 11 sec, enabling proper time alignment for spatial measurement of each respective analyte. Linear response range for GHG analytes was assessed across expected mixing ratio ranges, showing minimal regression and standard error differences between 5, 10, 30, and 60 sec sampling intervals and negligible differences between the two MMPs. GHG instrument drift shows deviation of less than 0.8% over a 24-hr measurement period. These MMPs were utilized in tracer-dilution experiments at a California landfill and natural gas compressor station (NGCS) to quantify CH4 emissions. Replicate landfill measurements during October 2009 yielded annual CH4 emissions estimates of 0.10 0.01, 0.11 +/- 0.01, and 0.12 +/- 0.02 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MTCO2E). These values compare favorably to California GHG Emissions Inventory figures for 2007, 2008, and 2009 of 0.123, 0.125, and 0.126 MTCO2E/yr, respectively, for this facility. Measurements to quantify NGCS boosting facility-wide emissions, during June 2010 yielded an equivalent of 5400 +/- 100 TCO2E/yr under steady-state operation. However, measurements during condensate transfer without operational vapor recovery yield an instantaneous emission rate of 2-4 times greater, but was estimated to only add 12 TCO2E/yr overall. This work displays the utility for mobile GHG measurements to validate existing measurement and modeling approaches, so emission inventory values can be confirmed and associated uncertainties reduced.Implications:Measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) source emissions provides data and validation for GHG inventories, the foundation for climate change mitigation. Mobile measurement platforms with robust analytical instrumentation completed tracer-dilution experiments in California at a landfill and natural gas compressor station (NGCS) to quantify CH4 emissions. Data collected for landfill CH4 agree with the current California emissions inventory, while NGCS data show the possible variability from this type of facility. This work displays the utility of mobile GHG measurements to validate existing measurement and modeling approaches, such that emission inventory values can be confirmed, associated uncertainties reduced, and mitigation efforts quantified.Steel produced using coal generates 7% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions annually(1). Opportunities exist to substitute this coal with carbon-neutral charcoal sourced from plantation forests to mitigate project-scale emissions(2) and obtain certified emission reduction credits under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism(3). This mitigation strategy has been implemented in Brazil(4,5) and is one mechanism among many used globally to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions(6); however, its potential adverse impacts have been overlooked to date. Here, we report that total CO2 emitted from Brazilian steel production doubled (91 to 182 MtCO(2)) and specific emissions increased (3.3 to 5.2 MtCO(2) per Mt steel) between 2000 and 2007, even though the proportion of coal used declined. Infrastructure upgrades and a national plantation shortage increased industry reliance on charcoal sourced from native forests, which emits up to nine times more CO2 per tonne of steel than coal. Preventing use of native forest charcoal could have avoided 79% of the CO2 emitted from steel production between 2000 and 2007; however, doing so by increasing plantation charcoal supply is limited by socio-economic costs and risks further indirect deforestation pressures and emissions. Effective climate change mitigation in Brazil's steel industry must therefore minimize all direct and indirect carbon emissions generated from steel manufacture.Landscape approaches are widely applied in attempts to reconcile tradeoffs amongst different actors with conflicting demands on land and water resources. Key principles for landscape approaches have been endorsed by inter-governmental processes dealing with climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity conservation. We review experiences from seven landscapes located in the Congo Basin, Eastern Indonesia and Northern Australia. Landscape initiatives were applied in situations where large-scale extractive industries, local peoples' livelihoods and global biodiversity objectives were in conflict. We found that common published principles for landscape approaches are not applied systematically in the areas studied. Practitioners draw upon landscape approach principles selectively and adapt them to deal with local conditions. We consider that landscape approaches do not provide silver bullet solutions to these situations nor do they provide an operational framework for large-scale land management. Landscape approaches do, however, provide an organising framework for disentangling the complexity of the landscape and facilitating the investigation of impacts of different courses of action. They enable alternative scenarios for what future landscapes might look like to be investigated and they create the space for multi-stakeholder negotiations. Outcomes from landscape scale approaches are determined by the power differentials amongst stakeholders and the existence, or otherwise, of functional institutions to take decisions and enforce agreements. Landscape approaches cannot overcome disparities in power or entrenched interests nor can they substitute for institutions with authority to establish and legitimise property and resource rights. They can, however, provide a mechanism around which civil society can be mobilised to achieve better land use outcomes. Landscape approaches are successful when they have strong leadership, sustained long-term and facilitated processes, good governance, adequate budgets and adequate metrics for assessing progress. Private sector engagement is necessary and all parties must have sufficient shared interest in outcomes to motivate their participation.Many countries are considering policy instruments such as a carbon tax and economic discounting to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in key sectors like the water sector. This paper examines the impact of economic discounting and a carbon tax on the optimization of water main rehabilitation. A new pipe rehabilitation optimization algorithm that accounts for GHGs was developed and applied to the Fairfield water distribution system in Amherstview, Ontario, Canada. GHG intensity factors for the provinces of Ontario (low-carbon) and Alberta (high-carbon) were applied to the Fairfield network. In both cases, adopting a low discount rate and levying a carbon tax had a weak effect in reducing energy use, GHG emissions, pipe breaks, and leakage. Further, a low discount rate and a carbon tax encouraged the search process to invest in rehabilitation early in the planning period to reduce continuing leakage, pipe repair, energy, and GHG costs. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.What are the most viable global pathways for a major expansion of zero-carbon emissions electricity sources given the diversity of regional technical, socio-political and economic constraints? We modelled a range of zero-emissions energy scenarios across nations that were designed to meet projected final energy demand in 2060, and optimised to derive the best globally aggregated results in terms of minimising costs and land use (a surrogate for environmental impacts). We found that a delayed energy transition to a zero-emissions pathway will decrease investment costs (-$3,431 billion), but increase cumulative CO2 emissions (additional 696 Gt). A renewable-only scenario would convert >7.4% of the global land area to energy production, whereas a maximum nuclear scenario would affect <0.4% of land area, including mining, spent-fuel storage, and buffer zones. Moreover, a nuclear-free pathway would involve up to a 50% greater cumulative capital investment compared to a high nuclear penetration scenario ($73.7 trillion). However, for some nations with a high current share of renewables and a low projected future energy demand (e.g., Norway), pursuit of a higher nuclear share is suboptimal. In terms of the time frame for replacement of fossil fuels, achieving a global nuclear share of about 50% by 2060 would be a technically and economically plausible target if progressing at a pace of the average historical growth of nuclear power penetration in France from 1970 to 1986 (0.28 MWh person(-1) year(-1)). For effective climate-change mitigation, a high penetration of nuclear in association with a nationally appropriate mix of renewables achieves far superior cost and land effectiveness compared to a renewables-only future to reduce emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon balance in urban areas has become a major research challenge and a principal policy concern in efforts to address anthropogenic climate change. Rapid urbanization and industrialization in China urge the search for integrated strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change, which not only limit to traditional infrastructure sectors, but also cover urban green infrastructure, because plants and soils function as carbon sinks through biotic sequestration. This study presents a nationwide study about how urban green infrastructure could contribute to the carbon balance in 35 major Chinese cities. By the end of 2010, the total area of urban green spaces (the dominant components of urban green infrastructure) accounts for 6.38% of the total land area of these cities and represented 51.7% of the total urban green spaces of all 657 cities in China. Based on empirical data from the literature, the total amount of carbon stored in the vegetation of the urban green infrastructure of 35 cities was estimated at 18.7 million tons, with an average carbon density of 21.34 t/ha. In 2010, the amount of carbon sequestration totaled 1.90 million tons with an average carbon sequestration rate of 2.16 t/ha/year. Collectively, only 0.33% of the carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion can be offset, ranging from 0.01% in Hohhot to 22.45% in Haikou. Nevertheless, the dominance of young vegetation stands in Chinese urban green infrastructure suggests this small carbon sequestration efficiency could become substantial in the near future, given that appropriate policies and management practices are adopted to promote urban green infrastructure for climate change mitigation and adaptation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Platform for Regional Integrated Modeling and Analysis (PRIMA) is an innovative modeling system developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to simulate interactions among natural and human systems at scales relevant to regional decision making. PRIMA brings together state-of-the-art models of regional climate, hydrology, agriculture and land use, socioeconomics, and energy systems using a flexible coupling approach. Stakeholder decision support needs underpin the application of the platform to regional issues, and an uncertainty characterization process is used to identify robust decisions. The platform can be customized to inform a variety of complex questions, such as how a policy in one sector might affect the ability to meet climate mitigation targets or adaptation goals in another sector. Current numerical experiments focus on the eastern United States, but the framework is designed to be regionally flexible. This paper provides a high-level overview of PRIMA's functional capabilities and describes some key challenges and opportunities associated with integrated regional modeling.Lignocellulosic crop residue biomass, in surplus, is of vital importance due to its multifaceted utilization potential on- and off-site to agricultural systems; therefore, its management is essential for sustainable agriculture. The malpractice of open crop residue burning leading to the brown cloud phenomenon and contributing significantly to atmospheric heterogeneity through enhanced gaseous and particulate emissions is of greater off-late concern. Available traditional crop residue management (CRM) technologies have not achieved wider adaptation; therefore, recently thermochemical conversion has been foreseen as an interesting tool for potential CRM under changing climate scenario. Biochar, a by-product of thermochemical processes, has been evaluated as a potential soil ameliorant and C sequestration agent. As soil ameliorant, it improves soil basic properties directly along with subdued release of greenhouse gases from agroecosystems, provides adsorption surface to agrochemicals and improves essential nutrient dynamics. Since the potential benefits of biochar in soil are governed by initial pyrolysis conditions and soil types; therefore, its wider utilization potential as suitable tool in sustainable agriculture and climate change mitigation needs to be critically analyzed before its specific recommendation to an agroecosystem. The present review provides a critical insight on current research on various aspects, particularly ecological, of crop residue biochar starting from the feedstock sources, pyrolysis conditions and changes after application. Additionally, a brief account is given on the agronomic relevance and major constraints of biochar amendment as an ecological engineering tool for sustainable agriculture. After reviewing various aspects of crop residue as feedstock, we recommend its use as a blend, rather than sole use, along with several other lignocellulosic materials under pyrolysis process as well as ameliorating agent. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is one of the key challenges for the future of agriculture and food. Agriculture both contributes to and suffers from climate change. The interaction between both is of substantial complexity; the need for action is urgent and sometimes stakeholders lack scientific evidence or political will to agree on solutions. There are different lenses through which to address the interface between agriculture and climate change: mitigation, adaptation, resilience, sustainable intensification and civic response. However none of these directions of desirable action would provide the only right answer on their own. There is a need for multiple solutions and aligned action at every governance level involving all actors in the food system: farmers, food industry, consumers and regulatory institutions. Every actor needs to take certain responsibilities. We have to be innovative, responsive and practice solidarity, looking for transition pathways. Recent EU Framework projects and foresight exercises on agriculture provide policymakers with relevant insights and recommendations. This article considers four directions in which responses and shared responsibilities could be enabled to address the climate challenge in agriculture: recognise multiple modernisation pathways; support learning and innovation networks; harness local resources and solutions; and acknowledge 'quiet' sustainability. There is reflection on the policy implications at EU, Member State and more local levels.During the last decade the European Union has shown a firm determination to move to a low carbon economy. Since 2008 the agricultural sector has been part of this strategy and is included in the EU effort sharing decision. Introducing specific GHG mitigation obligations for agriculture could be one option to achieve an overall GHG emission reduction target. One argument for this strategy would be that the agricultural sector is the main contributor of non-CO2 greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, a comprehensive EU mitigation policy would most likely have to take into account the particularities of its diverse agricultural sector, reflected by different trends in historical GHG emission reductions, and a varied mitigation cost structure between farming systems. Consequently, using targeted but flexible policy instruments may more equitably distribute the mitigation efforts across Member States and reduce cost inefficiencies. The increased uptake of technological and management emission mitigation measures would be crucial to keep mitigation costs for EU farmers at a minimum. However, while unilateral action would initially signal the EU's commitment to serious GHG mitigation effort in the sector, ultimately a multilateral agreement is needed to minimise emission leakage and to reduce global GHG emissions effectively.According to official figures, estimated using the UNFCCC methodology, the agricultural sector is responsible for around 10 per cent of EU-15 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, these figures rise substantially if we consider the lifecycle of a product, from the cradle to the farm gate. This study investigates six livestock products in Italy, in order to estimate their carbon footprint and to explore their mitigation potential. The products analysed were fresh milk, milk for Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, beef, pork, eggs and poultry. Their carbon footprint was estimated using a Life Cycle Assessment approach. Although mitigation measures on the supply side are the focus of European agricultural and climate policies, the study shows that the potential of each individual action is quite limited, due to technical constraints. Nevertheless, some mitigation options can also reduce production costs, generating a win-win situation between public and private benefits. Dissemination programmes, which will be examined in 2015, are important to raise awareness among farmers about climate change scenarios in the agricultural sector and to build capacity for cost-saving mitigation options. The demand side is also being explored in 2015 to evaluate the mitigation potential, through experimental auctions, of consumer willingness to pay for livestock products with a carbon footprint label.While geopolitics used to be about the context of global politics, now in the Anthropocene, it has become a matter of remaking that context rather than taking it as a given. What kind of planet is being made for what kind of civilization is now an unavoidable question of the global economy, as is the related political question of contemporary globalization concerning who decides the future planetary configuration. The discussion of geoengineering proceeds apace as the limited success of climate mitigation focuses attention on what comes next. Thinking about how to govern geoengineering before major experiments are tried unilaterally might be the key to preventing future conflicts over such practical issues as what temperature the planet ought to be. Such questions are the key to the new geopolitics of the Anthropocene, a debate to which geography in general and political geography in particular could have much to contribute.Climate change impacts are increasingly becoming more evident e.g. through heavy rainfall episodes and subsequent flooding. Methane is a significant greenhouse gas that has been linked to these impacts and the oil and gas industry is a major source of anthropogenic methane emission. Recent studies have suggested that the tropical region hold some unexpectedly high methane concentration and that the recent changes in the global methane burden are poorly understood. To address this research gap, we present a first effort to quantify methane emissions from one of the most vulnerable oil and gas infrastructures in Nigeria (a tropical country). A combination of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tier-1 approach and an adapted Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation model was used to estimate methane emissions from the system 2C transport pipeline. We then tested the hypothesis of no significant change in methane emissions trend from the pipeline using the between group t-test inferential analysis. Key findings include: (a) a crude oil throughput of 55,143 to 1,500,500 barrels (8767 to 238,561 m(3)) emitted methane ranging from 0.04734 to 1.288MT (+/- 50 to 200%) respectively, and (b) surprisingly, methane emissions along the system 2C pipeline seem to have continued without significant change between 2005, and 2008 to 2012 despite the low crude oil throughput in 2009. This indicates the likelihood of continuous but rising methane emissions from the pipeline network over a six-year period; and only further research can ascertain if similar trend can be observed elsewhere in the tropical region. These findings are unique and contribute to the current global debate on methane emissions from the largely unmonitored tropical region. Therefore, we recommend that stakeholders should set up a study plan for the identification and continuous monitoring of methane emissions from the key oil and gas infrastructure and explore opportunities for geoengineering applications as part of climate change mitigation. Coordinated engagement in international schemes such as the Natural Gas STAR program, Climate and Clean Air Coalition, Global Methane Initiative amongst others would promote strategic and measurable methane reduction plans in Nigeria and other countries within/outside the tropical region. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is recognized that anthropogenic factors have had a major impact on carbon fluxes from land to the ocean during the past two centuries. However, little is known about how future changes in climate, atmospheric CO2, and land use may affect riverine carbon fluxes over the 21st century. Using a coupled hydrological-biogeochemical model, the Dynamic Land Ecosystem Model, this study examines potential changes in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) export from the Mississippi River basin to the Gulf of Mexico during 2010-2099 attributable to climate-related conditions (temperature and precipitation), atmospheric CO2, and land use change. Rates of annual DIC export are projected to increase by 65% under the high emission scenario (A2) and 35% under the low emission scenario (B1) between the 2000s and the 2090s. Climate-related changes along with rising atmospheric CO2 together would account for over 90% of the total increase in DIC export throughout the 21st century. The predicted increase in DIC export from the Mississippi River basin would alter chemistry of the coastal ocean unless appropriate climate mitigation actions are taken in the near future.Tropical forests are important in worldwide carbon (C) storage and sequestration. C sequestration of these forests may especially be determined by the growth of canopy trees. However, the factors driving variation in growth among such large individuals remain largely unclear. We evaluate how crown traits [total leaf area, specific leaf area and leaf nitrogen (N) concentration] and stem traits [sapwood area (SA) and sapwood N concentration] measured for individual trees affect absolute biomass growth for 43 tropical canopy trees belonging to four species, in a moist forest in Bolivia. Biomass growth varied strongly among trees, between 17.3 and 367.3 kg year(-1), with an average of 105.4 kg year(-1). We found that variation in biomass growth was chiefly explained by a positive effect of SA, and not by tree size or other traits examined. SA itself was positively associated with sapwood growth, sapwood lifespan and basal area. We speculate that SA positively affects the growth of individual trees mainly by increasing water storage, thus securing water supply to the crown. These positive roles of sapwood on growth apparently offset the increased respiration costs incurred by more sapwood. This is one of the first individual-based studies to show that variation in sapwood traits-and not crown traits-explains variation in growth among tropical canopy trees. Accurate predictions of C dynamics in tropical forests require similar studies on biomass growth of individual trees as well as studies evaluating the dual effect of sapwood (water provision vs. respiratory costs) on tropical tree growth.The built environment is responsible for significant use of final energy (62%) and is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions (55%). Achieving environmental goals, including climate change mitigation, requires comprehensive methodologies to accurately assess the impacts from this sector. Research to date focuses on either individual buildings or on the urban level (e.g., metropolitan regions). Robust and accurate methodologies have been developed to quantify environmental impacts at both scales. While methodologies overlap between the building and urban levels, assessment remains largely confined within each scale. At the building level, research focuses on materials, architectural design, operational systems, structural systems, construction, and analysis methods. At the urban scale, urban form, density, transportation, infrastructure, consumption, and analysis methods are the main research focuses. The paper presents the major findings at each scale. The work then argues for an expanded analysis framework to account for the interplay between the building and city level captured through a new impact category: induced impacts. This new framework is necessary to address actual patterns of construction (new buildings or retrofits within existing cities) and to quantify currently missing impacts. Based on the findings, a new methodology to capture induced impacts in the built environment is outlined. Finally, practical and policy implications are discussed. Inclusion of induced impacts is critical to achieve environmental objectives within the building sector and beyond. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The ability of biogeochemical ecosystem models to represent agro-ecosystems depends on their correct integration with field observations. We report simultaneous calibration of 67 DayCent model parameters using multiple observation types through inverse modeling using the PEST parameter estimation software. Parameter estimation reduced the total sum of weighted squared residuals by 56% and improved model fit to crop productivity, soil carbon, volumetric soil water content, soil temperature, N2O, and soil NO3- compared to the default simulation. Inverse modeling substantially reduced predictive model error relative to the default model for all model predictions, except for soil NO3- and NH4+. Post-processing analyses provided insights into parameter-observation relationships based on parameter correlations, sensitivity and identifiability. Inverse modeling tools are shown to be a powerful way to systematize and accelerate the process of biogeochemical model interrogation, improving our understanding of model function and the underlying ecosystem biogeochemical processes that they represent. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).This paper develops a framework for analysing intergovernmental relationships around greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies along a cooperation-conflict spectrum that affects the probability of their enactment. Cooperative policies, such as federal fiscal transfers to sub-national governments, facilitate enactment. Coordination policies, including enabling and funding mechanisms, promote interdependence between jurisdictions. Competitive policies, such as federal performance standards and price mechanisms, increase political conflict over authority. We categorise 23 policies developed by over 1,500 state stakeholders into the cooperation/coordination/conflict taxonomy. If scaled to the national level, these policies could reduce GHG emissions by over 3 billion tonnes by 2020 and generate nearly 2.2 million jobs (1.19 per cent above baseline projections). Nearly two-thirds of the job gains are from coordinated and cooperative policy options that are unlikely to occur under the status quo policy process. We recommend a national climate action planning process to reduce GHG emissions while increasing aggregate economic efficiency.California's energy and water systems are interconnected and have evolved in recent decades in response to changing conditions and policy, goals. For this analysis, we use a water footprint Methodology to examine water requirements of energy products consumed in California between 1990 and 2012. We combine energy production, trade; and consumption data with estimates of the blue and green water footprints of energy products. We find that while California's total annual energy consumption increased by just 2:6%-during the analysis period, the amount of water required to produce that energy grew by 260%. Neatly all of the increase in California's energy-related water footprint was associated with water use in locations outside of California, where energy products that the state consumes were, and continue to be, produced. We discuss these trends and the implications for,California's future energy system as it relates to climate change and expected water management challenges inside and outside the state. Our analysis shows that while California's energy policies, have supported climate mitigation efforts, they have increased vulnerability to climate impacts) especially greater hydrologic uncertainty: More integrated analysis and planning are needed to ensure that climate, adaptation and mitigation strategies do not work at cross purposes.In this paper, using idealized climate model simulations, we investigate the biogeophysical effects of large-scale deforestation on monsoon regions. We find that the remote forcing from large-scale deforestation in the northern middle and high latitudes shifts the Intertropical Convergence Zone southward. This results in a significant decrease in precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere monsoon regions (East Asia, North America, North Africa, and South Asia) and moderate precipitation increases in the Southern Hemisphere monsoon regions (South Africa, South America, and Australia). The magnitude of the monsoonal precipitation changes depends on the location of deforestation, with remote effects showing a larger influence than local effects. The South Asian Monsoon region is affected the most, with 18% decline in precipitation over India. Our results indicate that any comprehensive assessment of afforestation/reforestation as climate change mitigation strategies should carefully evaluate the remote effects on monsoonal precipitation alongside the large local impacts on temperatures.Recent years have witnessed renewed interest in nuclear power in large extent due to the need to reduce carbon emissions to mitigate climate change. Most studies of cost and feasibility of stringent climate targets that include nuclear power focus on the currently available light water reactor (LWR) technology. Since climate mitigation requires a long-term commitment, the inclusion of other nuclear technologies such as mixed oxide-fuelled LWRs and fast breeder reactors may better describe the future energy supply options. These different options also entail different nuclear weapon proliferation risks stemming from uranium enrichment or reprocessing of spent fuel. To investigate this relation, we perform a scenario analysis using the global energy transition model. Our results indicate that meeting a scenario with a 430 ppm CO2 target for 2100 is feasible without the involvement of nuclear power; however the mitigation costs increase by around 20%. Furthermore, a lasting contribution by nuclear power to climate change mitigation can only be achieved by alternative fissile material production methods and global diffusion of nuclear technologies. This in turn bears important implications for the risk of nuclear proliferation for several reasons. First, knowledge and competence in nuclear technology becomes more accessible, leading to the risk of nuclear programmes emerging in states with weaker institutional capacity. Additionally, even if the reprocessing step in a fast breeder cycle proves to be essentially proliferation resistant, the build-up of breeder reactor systems necessitates a long transition period with large-scale use of enrichment technology and its related proliferation risks. Our study does not include the costs posed on society by nuclear accident risk and by the need to upscale safeguards and regulatory capacity to deal with increased proliferation risk.The influence of riparian woodland on stream temperature, micro-climate and energy exchange was investigated over seven calendar years. Continuous data were collected from two reaches of the Girnock Burn (a tributary of the Aberdeenshire Dee, Scotland) with contrasting land use characteristics: (1) semi-natural riparian forest and (2) open moorland. In the moorland reach, wind speed and energy fluxes (especially net radiation, latent heat and sensible heat) varied considerably between years because of variable riparian micro-climate coupled strongly to prevailing meteorological conditions. In the forested reach, riparian vegetation sheltered the stream from meteorological conditions that produced a moderated micro-climate and thus energy exchange conditions, which were relatively stable between years. Net energy gains (losses) in spring and summer (autumn and winter) were typically greater in the moorland than the forest. However, when particularly high latent heat loss or low net radiation gain occurred in the moorland, net energy gain (loss) was less than that in the forest during the spring and summer (autumn and winter) months. Spring and summer water temperature was typically cooler in the forest and characterised by less inter-annual variability due to reduced, more inter-annually stable energy gain in the forested reach. The effect of riparian vegetation on autumn and winter water temperature dynamics was less clear because of the confounding effects of reach-scale inflows of thermally stable groundwater in the moorland reach, which strongly influenced the local heat budget. These findings provide new insights as to the hydrometeorological conditions under which semi-natural riparian forest may be effective in mitigating river thermal variability, notably peaks, under present and future climates. (c) 2014 The Authors. Hydrological Processes published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Agri-environmental measures differ in their capacity to simultaneously enhance the provision of multiple ecosystem services. Multifunctional approaches are hampered by funding schemes that are usually administered by individual administrative sectors that each predominantly focus on one single environmental objective. Developing integrative management strategies that exploit synergies from implementing multifunctional measures is challenged by the need to quantify expected management effects on different ecosystem services. The objective of this paper is to compare uncoordinated versus coordinated management strategies in their contribution to multiple environmental objectives. We developed and applied a method for quantifying effectiveness, as well as spatial and cost efficiency with respect to four key landscape functions: erosion prevention, water quality conservation, climate change mitigation and safeguarding biodiversity. The case study area was the county of Verden, Germany. The following findings can be drawn: Measures for safeguarding biodiversity and climate change mitigation have generally high multifunctional effects, which makes them suitable for integrative management strategies. To make use of the added value of potential multifunctional measures, a spatially targeted allocation of agri-environmental measures is necessary. Compared to uncoordinated strategies, coordinated integrative management strategies either allow the optimization, of the ratio of costs to environmental effects or an increase in the effects that can be achieved within an area unit. This is however, usually not simultaneous. Future research should seek to refine the assessment and valuation indicators. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessment of the ability of climate policies to produce desired improvements in public health through co-benefits of air pollution reduction can consume resources in both time and research funds. These resources increase significantly as the spatial resolution of models increases. In addition, the level of spatial detail available in macroeconomic models at the heart of climate policy assessments is much lower than that available in traditional human health risk modeling. It is therefore important to determine whether increasing spatial resolution considerably affects risk-based decisions; which kinds of decisions might be affected; and under what conditions they will be affected. Human health risk co-benefits from carbon emissions reductions that bring about concurrent reductions in Particulate Matter (PM10) emissions is therefore examined here at four levels of spatial resolution (Uniform Nation, Uniform Region, Uniform County/city, Health Risk Assessment) in a case study of Taiwan as one of the geographic regions of a global macroeceonomic model, with results that are representative of small, industrialized nations within that global model. A metric of human health risk mortality (TOLL, years of life lost in life expectancy) is compared under assessments ranging from a "uniform simulation" in which there is no spatial resolution of changes in ambient air concentration under a policy to a "highly spatially resolved simulation" (called here Health Risk Assessment). PM10 is chosen in this study as the indicator of air pollution for which risks are assessed due to its significance as a co-benefit of carbon emissions reductions within climate mitigation policy. For the policy examined, the four estimates of mortality in the entirety of Taiwan are 747 TOLL, 834 YOLL, 984 TOLL and 916 YOLL, under Uniform Taiwan, Uniform Region, Uniform County and Health Risk Assessment respectively; or differences of 18%, 9%, 7% if the HRA methodology is taken as the baseline. While these differences are small compared to uncertainties in health risk assessment more generally, the ranks of different regions and of emissions categories as the focus of regulatory efforts estimated at these four levels of spatial resolution are quite different. The results suggest that issues of risk equity within a nation might be missed by the lower levels of spatial resolution, suggesting that low resolution models are suited to calculating national cost-benefit ratios but not as suited to assessing co-benefits of climate policies reflecting intersubject variability in risk, or in identifying sub-national regions and emissions sectors on which to focus attention (although even here, the errors introduced by low spatial resolution are generally less than 40%). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) by urbanization will likely replace agricultural expansion as the dominant source of transformation of the terrestrial biosphere. Properly managed urban soils can offset some of the associated carbon (C) losses from urban soils and vegetation by retaining stabilized soil organic carbon (SOC) or soil inorganic carbon (SIC) such as mineral-associated C, black carbon (BC), and stable carbonate minerals. For example, SOC stocks of up to 810 Mg C ha(-1) to 1.5 m depth (Serebryanye Prudy, Russia) and SIC stocks of up to 300 Mg C ha(-1) to 2.5 m depth (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK) have been reported, but data on urban soil C storage are scanty. Aside from contributing to climate change mitigation, protecting and increasing SOC stocks support critically important soil-derived ecosystem services. Thus, C-friendly soil and land-use management practices must be developed and implemented to enhance soil-derived ecosystem services in urban areas, and the resilience of urban ecosystems to climate change. A collective management approach for urban soil C is needed. The principal actors involved should be urban land users (e.g., urban dwellers, property owners, developers) as the immediate users and managers of soil C, local professionals, local government and NGOs.The photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy multi-gas monitor (PAS) method is a promising technique for in situ monitoring of gaseous emissions in agricultural soils. However, few studies have been done to evaluate its accuracy and precision under different management practices, soil and environmental conditions. Thus, the objectives of this study were to provide information regarding the PAS method, and compare it to the gas chromatograph (GC) method's results for GHG emission, and to discuss the PAS and GC methods in terms of operation simplicity and time, precision, cost and efficiency of gaseous flux measurements. Emissions of CO2 by PAS and GC methods were within 1.4 to 7.5% and 0.3 to 5.1% of each other in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Similarly emissions of N2O measured by PAS and GC methods for 2012 and 2013 were within 18.4 to 30.7%, and 3.4 to 10.6% of each other, respectively. The accuracy and precision of GHG emissions with the PAS and GC methods are similar and comparable. For field measurement of GHG emission, the PAS method is better than the GC method in terms of ease of operation, time required, cost and sample variation.Since the onset of the global economic crisis, financiers and the institutions regulating their behavior have been subject to far-reaching criticism. At the same time, leading geo-scientists have been insisting that future environmental change might be far more profound than previously anticipated. Finance capital has long been a crucial mechanism for melting present solidities into air to create different futures. This article asks what the prospects are for the switching of credit money into green infrastructures-a switching increasingly recognized as necessary for climate change mitigation and (especially) adaptation. Most research into geographies of finance has ignored ecological questions and few contemporary society-nature researchers examine major fixed-capital investments. Unlike those geographers who criticize capitalism without offering feasible alternatives, we take a pragmatic view underpinned by democratic socioenvironmental values and attempt to identify leverage points for meaningful change. This programmatic article identifies reasons and examples to be cautiously hopeful that liquidity can be fixed in less ecologically harmful future infrastructures, thereby addressing crucial extraeconomic challenges for the century ahead.This empirical study assesses the relationship between the characteristics of developing countries and the amount of official climate mitigation finance inflow. A two-part model and robustness checks were used to analyse 1998-2010 Rio Marker data on 180 developing countries. The results show that developing countries with higher CO2 intensity, larger carbon sinks, lower per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and good governance tend to be selected as recipients of climate mitigation finance, and receive more of it. CO2 emission is not used as a determinant of mitigation finance until the actual financial disbursement. Poverty aid tends to be allocated to countries with low CO2 emissions, possibly to avoid diverting aid from poorer developing countries. However, such a diversion is unavoidable if the share of mitigation finance in climate finance and in overall official development assistance (ODA) continues to escalate. This study calls for an equitable allocation of total ODA mitigation and adaptation finance in addition to the 0.7% ODA/gross national income target, and for transparent criteria and the verification of reporting on the allocation of mitigation finance.Most studies that explore deep GHG emission reduction scenarios assume that climate goals are reached by implementing least-cost emission mitigation options, typically by implementing a global carbon tax. Although such a method provides insight into total mitigation costs, it does not provide much information about how to achieve a transition towards a low-carbon energy system, which is of critical importance to achieving ambitious climate targets. To enable sensible deep emission reduction strategies, this study analysed the effectiveness of 16 specific mitigation measures on a global level up to 2050, by using an energy-system simulation model called TIMER. The measures range from specific energy efficiency measures, like banning traditional light bulbs and subsidizing electric vehicles, to broader policies like introducing a carbon tax in the electricity sector. All measures combined lead to global CO2 emission reductions ranging between 39% and 73% compared to baseline by 2050, depending on the inclusion of sectoral carbon taxes and the availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear power. Although the effectiveness of the measures differs largely across regions, this study indicates that measures aimed at stimulating low-carbon electricity production result in the highest reductions in all regions.Policy relevanceThe results of the calculations can be used to evaluate the effects of individual climate change mitigation measures and identify priorities in discussions on global and regional policies. The type of fragmented policy scenarios presented here could provide a relevant bottom-up alternative to cost-optimal implementation of policies driven by a carbon tax. We identify overlapping and even counter-productive climate policy measures through an analysis that presents the policy effectiveness by region, and by sector. The set of 16 policy measures addresses the largest emitting sectors and represents options that are often discussed as part of planned policies.The National REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation-Plus) Strategy in Indonesia highlights the importance of local participation and the reform of land tenure in the success of forest conservation. National parks are a main target area for REDD+. National parks in Indonesia have been suffering from forest destruction and conflicts between governments and local communities. This study investigated: (1) the historical process of developing the REDD+ project in collaboration with multiple stakeholders including government authorities, local NGOs, and local people; (2) the social and economic impacts of the REDD+ project on local people; and (3) the local awareness of and motivations to participate in the REDD+ project in Meru Betiri National Park in Indonesia. Interviews of stakeholders including village leaders, NGO staff, and park staff were conducted to obtain an overview of the REDD+ project in the national park. Interviews with a questionnaire were also conducted among randomly selected heads of households who participated or did not participate in the REDD+ project and lived adjacent to the national park. Our analysis revealed that participants in the project obtained the right to use illegally harvested bared lands for intercropping while planting trees to recover forest ecosystems inside the national park. This opportunity could have contributed to a drastic increase in income, particularly for economically disadvantaged people, and to the recovery of forest ecosystems. Although local people did not fully recognize the meaning of REDD+ or carbon credits, they were enthusiastic to join in managing and patrolling forests because of their satisfaction with the income generated by the national park. However, the challenge is how both the recovery of forests and income generation from the project can be maintained in a situation of insufficient funding from donors and unsettled arguments about the benefit of sharing carbon credits with local people.Anthropogenic climate change is a global process affecting the lives and well-being of millions of people now and countless number of people in the future. For humans, the consequences may include significant threats to food security globally and regionally, increased risks of from food-borne and water-borne as well as vector-borne diseases, increased displacement of people due migrations, increased risks of violent conflicts, slowed economic growth and poverty eradication, and the creation of new poverty traps. Principles of justice are statements of what persons are owed either by others or by institutions and policies. Climate change gives rise to many concern of justice. This article briefly summarizes some of the most important of these, including claims to have climate change mitigated, claims regarding the sharing of the costs of climate change mitigation, claims for investment into adaptation, and claims to be compensated.Even without internationally concerted action on climate change mitigation, there are important incentives for countries to put a price on their domestic emissions, including public finance considerations, internalizing the climate impacts of their own emissions, and co-benefits, such as clean air or energy security. Whereas these arguments have been mostly discussed in separate strands of literature, this article carries out a synthesis that exemplifies how policies to put a price on emissions can be conceptualized in a multi-objective framework. Despite considerable uncertainty, empirical evidence suggests that different countries may face quite different incentives for emission pricing. For instance, avoided climate damages and co-benefits of reduced air pollution appear to be the main motivation for emission pricing in China, while for the US generating public revenue dominates and for the EU all three motivations are of intermediate importance. We finally argue that such unilateral incentives could form the basis for incremental progress in international climate negotiations toward a realistic climate treaty based on national interest and differentiated emission pricing and describe how such an agreement could be put into practice. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The G20, a grouping of the largest developed and developing economies in the world, accounts for almost 86% of global Gross Domestic Product and 76% of global CO2 emissions. In recent years, the G20 global summit has not only aimed to support an economic agenda, but also to coordinate actions towards a cleaner energy and low-carbon future. However, in different countries driving forces for the change in CO2 emissions may vary due to being at different stages in their development and being on different development pathways. Due to their increasing share in global greenhouse gas emissions, emerging economies are likely to play a more important role in the future to promote multi-level cooperation on key issues, especially in mitigating climate change. Therefore, a better understanding of driving forces of each country's change in CO2 emissions is essential to tackle global climate change and to develop a broadly acceptable agenda for climate change mitigation. Using index decomposition analysis, this study aims to identify the main driving forces of CO2 emissions in the G20 countries. The results show that the driving forces of CO2 emissions are significantly different in advanced economies versus emerging economies. In general, economic growth was the main factor for increasing CO2 emissions. Apart from economic growth, population growth shows the strongest effect on CO2 emission growth in the emerging economies such as Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina. This growth in emissions was partly compensated by improved energy efficiency and reduced carbon intensity in most advanced economies and some emerging economies, whereas in other G20 countries, such as France, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia, energy intensity was increasing. Our results imply that different countries require different policies to do justice to the differences in trajectories and factors influencing CO2 emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The technology transfer for rural livelihood development had greater impact to protect microclimatic conditions which further affects the microflora and microbial activities to larger extent in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR). The technological interventions were made by the Himalayan Research Group organization which helped in economic upliftment of rural poor, women empowerment and in environment protection in hill region. The major activities are Passive Solar Retrofitting (namely, Thermosyphoning Air heat Panel (TAP), Trombe Wall (TW), and Sun Spaces (SS)) fodder development, vermicompost biotechnology, button mushroom cultivation and protected cultivation for climate change mitigation and adaptations. The solar retrofits reduced estimated 4.97 tones carbon emission per household during six winter months which helped in reducing the fuel wood consumption. Improved varieties of different fodder spp. were introduced for year round green fodder availability and reduce soil erosion and reduction in tree lopping. Fodder choppers and silage preparation was popularized to contain the fodder wastage. Vermicompost biotechnology was popularized among farmers to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers for improving the quality of soil. The button mushroom cultivation was used for conversion of agriculture residue into compost making by reducing crop residue burning which increases carbon emission. Protected cultivation in local made polyhouse was popularized to generate maximum returns from small piece of land through cut flower and vegetable cultivation and by raising plant nurseries.In the global climate change scenario, application of biochar in soil has become one of the important management practices for carbon sequestration, soil health improvement and climate change mitigation. In this study, an attempt was made to see the effect of biochar prepared from weed biomass on soil properties in subtropical northeast India. Biochar were prepared from seven locally available weed biomass viz. Ageratum conyzoides, Lantana camera, Gynura sp., Setaria sp., Avena fatua, Maize stalk, Pine needles and were characterised. A pot experiment was conducted with maize, where biochar was applied alone and in combination with fertilizers. Results revealed that biochar had significant impact on soil pH, SOC, and available nutrients like N, P and K. It also had significant impact on maize biomass yield. All biochar contained more than 50% stable carbon. Increase in soil pH was in the range of 0.26 to 0.3 and that of SOC from 1.62% in control to 1.74% in biochar added treatments. Biochars alone improved the available nitrogen ranging from 4.5 to 21.3 mg kg(-1), available P from 3.32 to 3.68 mg kg(-1) and increased K content by 20% above control. Weed biomass can be potential alternative to enhance soil and crop productivity through conversion into biochar.Compost amendments to grasslands have been proposed as a strategy to mitigate climate change through carbon (C) sequestration, yet little research exists exploring the net mitigation potential or the long-term impacts of this strategy. We used field data and the DAYCENT biogeochemical model to investigate the climate change mitigation potential of compost amendments to grasslands in California, USA. The model was used to test ecosystem C and greenhouse gas responses to a range of compost qualities (carbon to nitrogen [C:N] ratios of 11.1, 20, or 30) and application rates (single addition of 14 Mg C/ha or 10 annual additions of 1.4 Mg C.ha(-1)yr(-1)). The model was parameterized using site-specific weather, vegetation, and edaphic characteristics and was validated by comparing simulated soil C, nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes, and net primary production (NPP) with three years of field data. All compost amendment scenarios led to net greenhouse gas sinks that persisted for several decades. Rates of climate change mitigation potential ranged from 130 +/- 3 g to 158 +/- 8 g CO2-eqm(-2)yr(-1) (where eq stands for equivalents) when assessed over a 10-year time period and 63 +/- 2 g to 84 +/- 10 g CO2-eqm(-2)yr(-1) over a 30-year time period. Both C storage and greenhouse gas emissions increased rapidly following amendments. Compost amendments with lower C:N led to higher C sequestration rates over time. However, these soils also experienced greater N2O fluxes. Multiple smaller compost additions resulted in similar cumulative C sequestration rates, albeit with a time lag, and lower cumulative N2O emissions. These results identify a trade-off between maximizing C sequestration and minimizing N2O emissions following amendments, and suggest that compost additions to grassland soils can have a long-term impact on C and greenhouse gas dynamics that contributes to climate change mitigation.To evaluate the benefits of application of biochar to coastal saline soil for climate change mitigation, the effects on soil organic carbon (SOC), greenhouse gases (GHGs) and crop yields were investigated. Biochar was applied at 16tha(-1) to study its effects on crop growth (Experiment I). The effects of biochar (0, 3.2, 16 and 32tha(-1)) and corn stalk (7.8tha(-1)) on SOC and GHGs were studied using C-13 stable isotope technology and a static chamber method, respectively (Experiment II). Biochar increased grain mass per plant of the wheat by 27.7% and increased SOC without influencing non-biochar SOC. On average, 92.3% of the biochar carbon and 16.8% of corn-stalk carbon were sequestered into the soil within 1year. The cumulative emissions of CO2, CH4 and N2O were not affected significantly by biochar but cornstalk application increased N2O emissions by 17.5%. The global warming mitigation potential of the biochar treatments (-3.84 to -3.17t CO2-eq. ha(-1)t(-1) C) was greater than that of the corn stalk treatment (-0.11t CO2-eqha(-1)t(-1) C). These results suggest that biochar application improves saline soil productivity and soil carbon sequestration without increasing GHG emissions.CO2 capture and storage (CCS) represents an important option to mitigate climate change. However, the implementation of CCS is slow. We analysed one of the unsuccessful projects in the Netherlands that is referred to as the Barendrecht CO2 storage project, with an emphasis on the role of the national government. We performed an event analysis based on debates in the Dutch Parliament, interviews with the relevant stakeholders and published literature. We show that the opinion of the national government regarding this project changed over time. Consensus on the necessity of CCS was assumed at the start of the project. However, over time, the local opposition intensified, and both CCS as a climate mitigation strategy and its implementation, including its location, were contested. An important contributor was the lack of solid outside support, whereas the views of opponents were strongly represented. Additionally, due to multiple delays, the momentum was lost, which ended the enthusiasm of initial supporters. To ensure implementation of future CCS projects, overall national support should therefore be guaranteed prior to the start of the project. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Homestead forests in the Teknaf Peninsula ecologically critical area of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh have not been widely studied. This paper explores floristic diversity of homestead forests together with their contribution to the household economy and climate change mitigation. Data were collected from a survey of 140 households and a vegetation survey of 70 homesteads in three sites. Villagers allocated 70 % of their homestead area for homestead forestry and altogether 73 plant species were recorded from the study sites. The average density was 4,000 plants/ha. The above-ground biomass was estimated 235.45 Mg/ha, equivalent to 117.73 Mg C/ha. Villagers maintain sustainability of homestead forests by planting seedlings every year and thus ensure several diameter and height classes. Homestead forests contribute substantially to household income, provide fuelwood and timber for own consumption and sale, and protect villagers during cyclones. Homestead forests thus meet the conditions to be a clean development mechanism forestry project which would provide a win-win strategy for involving small-scale farmers in climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives, and biodiversity conservation.Tropical agroforestry systems have immense potential to sequester carbon both in aboveground and belowground biomass and soil. Homegarden agroforestry is a popular land-use system in the tropics, sequestrating more organic carbon in soil than crops, monoculture plantations and even than other agroforestry systems. Tree diversity and density are reported to affect soil organic carbon content in many of tropical agroforestry systems. Little evidence, however, exists for tropical homegardens. The present study has been conducted to investigate soil organic carbon content in relation to tree species diversity in the homegarden agroforestry system of north-eastern Bangladesh, to test the hypothesis that homegardens with high species diversity contain more organic carbon in soil than those with low species diversity. A multistage random sample of homegardens was selected and observations made in sample plots of tree density, species richness, soil pH and soil organic carbon content. Soil samples were collected at two depths (0-25, 26-50 cm) from each plot. Soil organic carbon content was found to be positively correlated with both tree density (r = 0.93, p < 0.01) and species richness (r = 0.79, p < 0.01). Soil pH was not found to differ significantly across soil depth (p = 0.67), except that more organic carbon content was found in the deeper soil layer than the upper layer (p < 0.05). The study demonstrates that species-rich homegarden with high tree density can sequester more carbon in soil than species-poor homegardens and thereby contribute more to climate change mitigation.The rapid re-establishment of forests following large disturbances is being seen as one option to increase the contribution of forests to climate change mitigation. The temporary inclusion of pioneer trees as nurse crops on disturbed sites can facilitate the establishment of target tree species and may additionally benefit productivity and soil fertility. In this study we compared productivity and nutrient cycling between stands of oak target species (Quercus robur and Quercus petraea) that were established with and without widely spaced Betula ssp. or Populus ssp. nurse crops. Simulation results for a full rotation of oaks (180 years) indicated that both types of forests, with and without nurse crops, have a comparable total productivity. However, stands with nurse crops supplied 59-96 Mg ha(-1) harvestable biomass after 20 years, whereas the first harvest of biomass from stands without nurse crops would occur at least 30 years later. Nutrient element costs associated with the removal of Betula ssp. wood were low compared to Populus ssp. Also, nurse crop stands had up to 2.5 times larger pools of exchangeable base cations in top mineral soils (0-30 cm) compared to mono-specific oak stands. The high soil cation pools may have resulted from reduced leaching under nurse crops or the increased recycling of cations, also from deeper soil depth, via litter fall and fine-root turnover. Our results show that forest reestablishment with pioneer tree species may be a suitable tool for the rapid recovery of forest productivity and mitigation potential following disturbances while simultaneously helping to maintain or increase soil fertility. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The major goals of forest governance arrangements are sustainable forest management (SFM), poverty alleviation, and enhancement of forest biodiversity. However, in recent years, climate change mitigation, through reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD +(1)) has emerged as one of the most important aspects of forest governance arrangements. This is due to the fact that REDD + has the potential to provide a framework for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while addressing rural poverty and conserving forest biodiversity at the same time. In other words, the REDO + scheme provides co-benefits beyond its main goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, REDD + is seen by many forest governance experts as a scheme that has the potential to slow down deforestation in a country like Cameroon, which arguably, has the highest rate of deforestation in the Congo Basin. However, this will depend on the effectiveness of Cameroon's REDD + policy strategy, its efficiency in meeting its objectives at the lowest cost, and its ability to equitably distribute costs and benefits associated with the scheme. This paper assesses the effectiveness of REDD + policy design in Cameroon within the context of the climate change regime. The paper employs the policy design approach to analyze four components of Cameroon's REDD+ policy design framework governance and institutional arrangement; emissions baseline; leakage and scale; and technical issues. An economic-based assessment of the forest transition curve and the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) reveals limitations that could render the REDO + scheme cost ineffective for Cameroon. The paper suggests that Cameroon would have to focus on strengthening its existing governance structures and nurturing its forest related international agreements, if it is to design a REDD + policy strategy that is consistent with the "nested" climate change regime approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.This paper addresses two related puzzles. The first puzzle is that parts of the environmental federalism literature suggest that federal states are ill-equipped to solve nation-wide or global environmental problems such as climate change, but climate policy scholars usually emphasise the opposite. The second puzzle is that Austria (a federal EU Member State) is regularly praised as an environmental policy leader but has missed its Kyoto target by about 19 %. The paper addresses both puzzles by analysing to what degree federalism is responsible for Austria's poor mitigation performance. Since the nine Austrian provinces are mainly responsible for regulating the building sector that accounts for about 25 % of total energy consumption and 13 % of the greenhouse gas emissions, the analysis focuses on the integration of climate change mitigation in building policies. The empirical core of the paper analyses all major EU, federal and provincial policies that aimed to green the building sector since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. After showing that these policy outputs cannot explain considerable sectoral emission reductions, we conclude that Austrian federalism did not facilitate but hinder climate change mitigation because it added a vertical dimension to an already complex horizontal integration challenge. However, since federalism can by far not explain Austria's failure to reach its Kyoto target domestically, we also conclude that it is only one of many independent variables that shape climate change mitigation. Finally, we argue that Austria is neither an environmental policy leader nor a laggard, but an opportunist.The Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) drains an area of 492,000 km(2) primarily from five states in the central US. Alterations in climate variability and change will lead to changes in hydrologic behavior of the region with implications in the fate and transport of nutrient loadings. This impact assessment study evaluated the long-term changes in annual water yield and nitrogen loadings in the UMRB using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), with mid-century (2046-2065) climate change projections as predicted by the ensemble of ten general circulation models. Predicted precipitation change ranged from -1.6 to 6.3 % at the subwatershed level while the mean temperature was found to be more consistent over the entire basin with an average increase of 2.8 A degrees C. The SWAT-predicted streamflow decreased by 5 % on an average annual basis at the watershed outlet (Grafton, Illinois) with significant monthly variation. Streamflow increased during the winter months of December, January, and February and decreased during the summer with up to a 41 % reduction in July. The nitrogen loading pattern was found to vary widely from a decrease of 3 kg/ha to an increase of 8 kg/ha at the subwatershed level, with an average increase of 1 kg/ha over the entire basin. Portions of the UMRB in Illinois are expected to shift toward adverse conditions for nitrogen loading (and thus greater potential for exporting), whereas portions of the UMRB in Iowa are expected to experience a decrease in nitrogen loads under predicted mid-century climatic conditions for the existing land and nutrient management.As an important policy instrument for climate mitigation, the carbon tax policy design and its consequent social-economic impact calls for more research. In this paper, a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model - CASIPM-GE model is applied to explore the impact of a carbon tax and different tax revenue recycling schemes on China's economy. Simulation results show that the carbon tax is effective to reduce carbon emissions with mild impact on China's macro economy. In particular, a production tax deduction can be used to recycle the carbon tax revenue if the government wants to reduce the cost of a carbon tax; however, a consumption tax deduction may help the economy to restructure and may benefit the long-run emissions reduction. In terms of industrial output, most industries are negatively affected; sectors with large share of exports are subjected to negative shocks if there is consumption tax deduction financed by the carbon tax revenue. The study suggests that carbon revenue recycling scheme is important in designing the carbon tax policy: a well-designed scheme can help reduce the cost of a carbon tax. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent studies have introduced the metric GWP(bio), an indicator of the potential global warming impact of CO2 emissions from biofuels. When a time horizon of 100 years was applied, the studies found the GWP(bio) of bioenergy from slow-growing forests to be significantly lower than the traditionally calculated GWP of CO2 from fossil fuels. This result means that bioenergy is an attractive energy source from a climate mitigation perspective. The present paper provides an improved method for quantifying GWP(bio). The method is based on a model of a forest stand that includes basic dynamics and interactions of the forest's multiple carbon pools, including harvest residues, other dead organic matter, and soil carbon. Moreover, the baseline scenario (with no harvest) takes into account that a mature stand will usually continue to capture carbon if not harvested. With these methodological adjustments, the resulting GWP(bio) estimates are found to be two to three times as high as the estimates of GWP(bio) found in other studies, and also significantly higher than the GWP of fossil CO2, when a 100-year time horizon is applied. Hence, the climate impact per unit of CO2 emitted seems to be even higher for the combustion of slow-growing biomass than for the combustion of fossil carbon in a 100-year time frame.Many have speculated that increased attention to climate change adaptation will reduce support for mitigation. The Risk Compensation Hypothesis suggests that remedies to reduce the impacts of risky behaviors can unintentionally increase those behaviors. The Risk Salience Hypothesis suggests that information about adaptation may increase the salience of impacts, and therefore increase mitigation support. Experiment 1 presented participants with a news article about an irrigation technology described as a way to improve efficiency (Pure Control), reduce emissions (Mitigation Control), or reduce drought vulnerability (Adaptation). Political moderates in the adaptation condition rated climate change as a higher political priority and were more supportive of a policy to subsidize the technology than those in both controls. Results were not replicated in Experiment 2. These results partially support the Risk Salience Hypothesis. There was no evidence to justify the concern that discussing adaptation will reduce support for mitigation or concern about climate change. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We report on preparatory work to develop a virtual laboratory for ecosystem services, ESLab, and demonstrate its pilot application in southern Finland. The themes included in the pilot are related to biodiversity conservation, climate mitigation and eutrophication mitigation. ESLab is a research environment for ecosystem services (ES), which considers ES indicators at different landscape scales: habitats, catchments and municipalities and shares the results by a service that utilizes machine readable interfaces. The study area of the pilot application is situated in the boreal region of southern Finland and covers 14 municipalities and ten catchments including forested, agricultural and nature conservation areas. We present case studies including: present carbon budgets of natural ecosystems; future carbon budgets with and without the removal of harvest residues for bioenergy production; and total phosphorus and nitrogen future loads under climate and agricultural yield and price scenarios. The ESLab allows researchers to present and share the results as visual maps, statistics and graphs. Our further aim is to provide a toolbox of easily accessible virtual services for ES researchers, to illustrate the comprehensive societal consequences of multiple decisions (e.g. concerning land use, fertilisation or harvesting) in a changing environment (climate, deposition).Measures to limit greenhouse gas concentrations will result in dramatic changes to energy and land systems and in turn alter the character of human requirements for water. We employ the global change assessment model (GCAM), an integrated assessment model, to explore the interactions of energy, land, and water systems under combinations of three alternative radiative forcing stabilization levels and two carbon tax regimes. The paper analyzes two important research questions: i) how large may global irrigation water demands become over the next century, and ii) what are the potential impacts of emissions mitigation policies on global irrigation-water withdrawals. We find that increasing population and economic growth could more than double the demand for water for agricultural systems in the absence of climate policy, and policies to mitigate climate change further increase agricultural demands for water. The largest increases in agricultural irrigation water demand occur in scenarios where only fossil fuel emissions are priced (but not land use change emissions) and are primarily driven by rapid expansion in bio-energy production. Regions such as China, India, and other countries in South and East Asia are likely to experience the greatest increases in water demands. Finally, we test the sensitivity of water withdrawal demands to the share of bio-energy crops under irrigation and conclude that many regions have insufficient space for heavy bio-energy crop irrigation in the future-a result that calls into question the physical possibility of producing the associated biomass energy, especially under climate policy scenarios.We quantitatively evaluated mitigation potentials of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use sectors in Indonesia. We also determined for the land use sector 1) how much time is needed to plan the mitigation strategy, and 2) how much time is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation measures? We used a bottom-up type model on emission mitigation named Agriculture Forestry and Other Land Use Bottom-up model (AFOLU-B model) to consider a characteristics time sequence of actions, effects and costs of mitigation countermeasures. To input to the model, we developed future scenarios on human activities in these sectors based on data from Indonesian government. We found that i) evaluation on effects and costs of mitigation measures from a long-term viewpoint and their continuing implementation are required to increase future mitigation potentials under a limited budget. ii) a long-term reduction target will also play an important role for cost-effective countermeasure selection. iii) reforestation of slow glowing species and enhanced natural regeneration will cause great increase in mitigation potential in the country.We examined opportunities for avoided loss of wetland carbon stocks in the Great Plains of the United States in the context of future agricultural expansion through analysis of land-use land-cover (LULC) change scenarios, baseline carbon datasets and biogeochemical model outputs. A wetland map that classifies wetlands according to carbon pools was created to describe future patterns of carbon loss and potential carbon savings. Wetland avoided loss scenarios, superimposed upon LULC change scenarios, quantified carbon stocks preserved under criteria of carbon densities or land value plus cropland suitability. Up to 3420 km(2) of wetlands may be lost in the region by 2050, mainly due to conversion of herbaceous wetlands in the Temperate Prairies where soil organic carbon (SOC) is highest. SOC loss would be approximately 0.20 +/- 0.15 megagrams of carbon per hectare per year (MgC ha(-1) yr(-1)), depending upon tillage practices on converted wetlands, and total ecosystem carbon loss in woody wetlands would be approximately 0.81 +/- 0.41 MgC ha(-1) yr(-1), based on biogeochemical model results. Among wetlands vulnerable to conversion, wetlands in the Northern Glaciated Plains and Lake Agassiz Plains ecoregions exhibit very high mean SOC and on average, relatively low land values, potentially creating economically competitive opportunities for avoided carbon loss. This mitigation scenarios approach may be adapted by managers using their own preferred criteria to select sites that best meet their objectives. Results can help prioritize field-based assessments, where site-level investigations of carbon stocks, land value, and consideration of local priorities for climate change mitigation programs are needed.Biomass gasification-solid oxide fuel cell (BG-SOFC) combined heat and power (CHP) systems are of major interest in the context of climate change mitigation, energy security and increasing energy efficiency. Aspen Plus is employed to simulate various BG-SOFC CHP systems. The aim of the research work is to investigate the technical feasibility of these systems and to study the influence of important operating parameters and examine integration options. Systems based on dual fluidised bed steam gasification and tubular SOFC technologies are modelled. The cathode recycle and electric heater integration options are not attractive in comparison to the base case anode recycle system. Thermal integration, i.e. using SOFC flue gas as gasifier oxidant, is desirable. Lowering the syngas preheat temperature (prior to SOFC anodes) is highly recommended and is more practical than lowering the cathode air preheat temperature. Results of the parametric study indicate that: steam to carbon ratio and biomass moisture content should be as low as possible; fuel utilisation factor can change the mode of operation of the plant (focus on electricity or heat); high temperature syngas cleaning is very attractive; gasification air preheating is more attractive than gasification steam superheating. High efficiencies are predicted, proving the technical feasibility of BG-SOFC CHP systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.After the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit, it still remains to be explained why the participating states chose irreconcilable negotiation positions that reflected very diverse domestic interests in spite of a publicly displayed desire for cooperation. While environmental studies have intensely investigated national climate policies and their determinants over the last few decades, little attention has been paid to the bargaining positions the same governments assume in climate negotiations. We argue that their bargaining positions reflect structural, economic, and domestic factors, but less so strategic factors. A country's vulnerability to climate change, its power and its democratic status are among the best predictors of its choice of negotiation position; its international interconnectedness, on the other hand, does not seem to have an influence. By comparing two negotiation issues - reducing emissions and financing climate mitigation - we can show that democracies choose very different negotiation positions, depending on the issue. When it comes to compensation mechanisms, serious climate reduction measures democracies do not commit to substantial emission reduction targets due to pressure from industry at home. They are, however, more prepared than other states to pay for projects that help to reduce emissions in the sense of a compensation mechanism. By understanding the choice of negotiation positions we can thus explain why the more or less cooperative bargaining positions adopted by states led to a breakdown of the Copenhagen negotiations. We investigated this question using a novel dataset on the UNFCCC negotiations, in which the positions of all participating governments were collected by hand-coding protocols from the negotiations as well as expert interviews with negotiators.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest research Working Group III Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (WGIII AR5) on April 2014. This report is designated to provide approaches to limit temperature rise below 2 degrees C based upon reviews of latest literatures in this terrain. It offers comprehensive review on principles and conceptual frameworks of climate change mitigation, trends in stocks and flows of greenhouse gases and their drivers, mitigation targets and pathways, sectoral reduction potential and costs, international institutions on climate change mitigation, national and sub-national policies, climate finance, and other related issues. The report, contributed by WGIII, systematically analyzes these questions and assesses principals, framework problems, historic trajectories, future emission budgets and pathways, sectoral reduction targets and feasibilities, and national, sub-national, and international policies, and finance demands upon which to achieve the target to limit temperature rise within 2 degrees C. These contents make the report a critical venue of international society to vie for political influences through social sciences, natural sciences, and other disciplines. This paper provides preliminary analysis upon main conclusions of the report and their policy interpretations, in order to deliver better technical support for climate negotiations in next stage and advancing relevant domestic works.This study quantified the effectiveness of emission trading by considering multiple technological constraints, burden sharing schemes, and climate stabilization targets. We used a global computable general equilibrium model, and evaluated the effectiveness of emission trading using welfare losses associated with climate mitigation for scenarios with and without emission trading, as measured by the Hicksian Equivalent Variation (HEV). We found that emission trading contributed to a reduction in the economic losses associated with climate mitigation for all technological assumptions, burden sharing schemes, and stabilization targets. The net global welfare losses in scenarios without emission trading ranged between 0.7% and 1.9%, whereas emission trading reduced the losses by 0.1% to 0.5%. The range depended on the assumptions in the burden sharing schemes, technological constraints, and stabilization targets. The percentage change in welfare gain from emission trading varied regionally, and was relatively high in low-income or middle-income countries (0.2% to 1.0% and -0.1% to 1.2%, respectively) compared to high-income countries (-0.1% to 03%). Some regions displayed negative values with regard to the effectiveness of emission trading, which might be due to the change in goods and service trades associated with emission trading. If the usage of carbon capture and storage was constrained, welfare loss became large and the effectiveness of emission trading ultimately increased. The use of a burden sharing scheme was a significant factor in changing the effectiveness of emission trading, and the per capita emission convergence in 2050 was more effective for emission trading than a per income convergence. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In order to understand how carbon storage and allocation patterns vary among plantation types, we estimated carbon allocation between above- and below-ground compartments in four subtropical plantations and a naturally recovered shrubland (as a control). Results indicated that the carbon storage and allocation pattern varied greatly among forest types and was highly dependent on specific traits of trees and understory vegetation. The fast-growing species, such as Eucalyptus urophylla, accumulated more carbon in plant biomass. The biomass carbon was about 1.9- and 2.2-times greater than the 10-species mixed plantation and Castanopsis hystrix plantations, respectively. Meanwhile, the plantations sequestered 1.5- to 3-times more carbon in biomass than naturally recovered shrubland. The carbon allocation pattern between above- and below-ground compartments also varied with plantation type and stand age. The ratio of tree root carbon to tree aboveground carbon decreased with stand age for Eucalyptus urophylla and the 10-species mixed plantation. In contrast, the ratio increased for Acacia crassicarpa. Our data suggested that planting the fast-growing species in the degraded land of subtropical China was an effective choice in terms of carbon sequestration. The information about carbon allocation patterns was also valuable for decision making in sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation.Many climate change mitigation strategies rely on strong projected growth in biomass energy, supported by literature estimating high future bioenergy potential. However, expectations to 2050 are highly divergent. Examining the most widely cited studies finds that some assumptions in these models are inconsistent with the best available evidence. By identifying literature-supported, up-to-date assumptions for parameters including crop yields, land availability, and costs, we revise upper-end estimates of potential biomass availability from dedicated energy crops. Even allowing for the conversion of virtually all 'unused' grassland and savannah, we find that the maximum plausible limit to sustainable energy crop production in 2050 would be 40-110 EJ yr(-1). Combined with forestry, crop residues, and wastes, the maximum limit to long-term total biomass availability is 60-120 EJ yr(-1) in primary energy. After accounting for current trends in bioenergy allocation and conversion losses, we estimate maximum potentials of 10-20 EJ yr(-1) of biofuel, 20-40 EJ yr(-1) of electricity, and 10-30 EJ yr(-1) of heating in 2050. These findings suggest that many technical projections and aspirational goals for future bioenergy use could be difficult or impossible to achieve sustainably.This article is concerned with a comprehensive analysis of building energy efficiency policies in light of improvements in energy performance, living standards and climate change mitigation in China's built environment. In recent years, China has added about 1.7 billion square meters of new floor space in both urban and rural areas on an annual basis. In 2010, the total area of existing buildings in China was approximately 48.6 billion square meters, nearly twice the total of existing buildings areas in the European Union. How to improve energy efficiency in the soaring number of new buildings and accelerate the retrofit of the huge number of existing buildings are two daunting challenges currently facing China in terms of energy security and climate change mitigation at a global level. China has gradually altered the building energy efficiency policy portfolio, from a purely regulatory approach with a mandatory building code at the initial stage to voluntary green buildings initiatives. This paper is structured as a critical assessment of building energy efficiency policies for new and existing buildings. Both strengths and weaknesses of the implemented energy efficiency policies are detailed in each of the studied areas. It also discusses the dilemma of public games in green and sustainable buildings production in the context of Chinese economic development and societal transition. The analysis emphasises the importance of guaranteeing the consistency between policies in the current regulatory framework to maximise the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies in the built environment in China. For this, it is necessary to articulate building energy efficiency policies implementation and broader energy and climate policies. This integrative study provides both a retrospective assessment and prospective direction of building energy efficiency policy development in China. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Seagrass meadows are sites of high rates of carbon sequestration and they potentially support blue carbon' strategies to mitigate anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Current uncertainties on the fate of carbon stocks following the loss or revegetation of seagrass meadows prevent the deployment of blue carbon' strategies. Here, we reconstruct the trajectories of carbon stocks associated with one of the longest monitored seagrass restoration projects globally. We demonstrate that sediment carbon stocks erode following seagrass loss and that revegetation projects effectively restore seagrass carbon sequestration capacity. We combine carbon chronosequences with Pb-210 dating of seagrass sediments in a meadow that experienced losses until the end of 1980s and subsequent serial revegetation efforts. Inventories of excess Pb-210 in seagrass sediments revealed that its accumulation, and thus sediments, coincided with the presence of seagrass vegetation. They also showed that the upper sediments eroded in areas that remained devoid of vegetation after seagrass loss. Seagrass revegetation enhanced autochthonous and allochthonous carbon deposition and burial. Carbon burial rates increased with the age of the restored sites, and 18years after planting, they were similar to that in continuously vegetated meadows (26.40.8 gC(org) m(-2)year(-1)).Synthesis. The results presented here demonstrate that loss of seagrass triggers the erosion of historic carbon deposits and that revegetation effectively restores seagrass carbon sequestration capacity. Thus, conservation and restoration of seagrass meadows are effective strategies for climate change mitigation.In dairy production systems, tradeoffs can occur between fertilizer N applications and crop N use, feed N consumption and manure N excretion, and environmental impacts. This paper examines (i) how stocking rates affect N imports and management on dairy farms, N use efficiency (NUE; i. e., the amount of applied N incorporated into product N), and N loss; (ii) how reductions in fertilizer N and feed N may affect crop and milk production, NUE, and N loss; and (iii) why tradeoffs in N use outcomes should be considered when attempting to enhance overall NUE and reduce N loss. The Integrated Farm Simulation Model simulations of two representative dairy farm types and analyses of regional studies, long-term field experiments, and cow nutrition trials were used to demonstrate that (i) stocking rate affects cropping patterns, fertilizer and feed imports, and N loss; (ii) although fertilizer N reductions of 20 kg N ha(-1) may reduce slightly the crude protein (CP) content of corn silage (which would require purchase of additional CP supplements), this practice should not affect long-term corn yield but would reduce nitrate (NO3) and nitrous oxide (N2O) losses by 13 to 38%; (iii) dietary CP could be reduced on many dairy farms, which would not affect milk production but would reduce ammonia (NH3) and N2O emissions by 15 to 43%; and (iv) greater recognition of the tradeoffs in N use and N loss are needed to provide a better understanding of the potentials to enhance overall NUE and reduce environmental N loss from dairy production systems.Sustainable biomass can play a transformative role in the transition to a decarbonized economy, with potential applications in electricity, heat, chemicals and transportation fuels(1-3). Deploying bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) results in a net reduction in atmospheric carbon. BECCS may be one of the few cost-effective carbon-negative opportunities available should anthropogenic climate change be worse than anticipated or emissions reductions in other sectors prove particularly difficult(4,5). Previous work, primarily using integrated assessment models, has identified the critical role of BECCS in long-term (pre- or post-2100 time frames) climate change mitigation, but has not investigated the role of BECCS in power systems in detail, or in aggressive time frames(6,7), even though commercial-scale facilities are starting to be deployed in the transportation sector(8). Here, we explore the economic and deployment implications for BECCS in the electricity system of western North America under aggressive (pre-2050) time frames and carbon emissions limitations, with rich technology representation and physical constraints. We show that BECCS, combined with aggressive renewable deployment and fossil-fuel emission reductions, can enable a carbon-negative power system in western North America by 2050 with up to 145% emissions reduction from 1990 levels. In most scenarios, the offsets produced by BECCS are found to be more valuable to the power system than the electricity it provides. Advanced biomass power generation employs similar system design to advanced coal technology, enabling a transition strategy to low-carbon energy.Over half of all wood harvested worldwide is used as fuel, supplying similar to 9% of global primary energy. By depleting stocks of woody biomass, unsustainable harvesting can contribute to forest degradation, deforestation and climate change. However, past efforts to quantify woodfuel sustainability failed to provide credible results. We present a spatially explicit assessment of pan-tropical woodfuel supply and demand, calculate the degree to which woodfuel demand exceeds regrowth, and estimate woodfuel-related greenhouse-gas emissions for the year 2009. We estimate 27-34% of woodfuel harvested was unsustainable, with large geographic variations. Our estimates are lower than estimates from carbon offset projects, which are probably overstating the climate benefits of improved stoves. Approximately 275 million people live in woodfuel depletion 'hotspots'-concentrated in South Asia and East Africa-where most demand is unsustainable. Emissions from woodfuels are 1.0-1.2 Gt CO(2)e yr(-1) (1.9-2.3% of global emissions). Successful deployment and utilization of 100 million improved stoves could reduce this by 11-17%. At US$11 per tCO(2)e, these reductions would be worth over US$1 billion yr(-1) in avoided greenhouse-gas emissions if black carbon were integrated into carbon markets. By identifying potential areas of woodfuel-driven degradation or deforestation, we inform the ongoing discussion about REDD-based approaches to climate change mitigation.Biodiversity fosters the functioning and stability of forest ecosystems and, consequently, the provision of crucial ecosystem services that support human well-being and quality of life. In particular, it has been suggested that tree species diversity buffers ecosystems against the impacts of disturbances, a relationship known as the "insurance hypothesis". Natural disturbances have increased across Europe in recent decades and climate change is expected to amplify the frequency and severity of disturbance events. In this context, mitigating disturbance impacts and increasing the resilience of forest ecosystems is of growing importance. We have tested how tree species diversity modulates the impact of disturbance on net primary production and the total carbon stored in living biomass for a temperate forest landscape in Central Europe. Using the simulation model iLand to study the effect of different disturbance regimes on landscapes with varying levels of tree species richness, we found that increasing diversity generally reduces the disturbance impact on carbon storage and uptake, but that this effect weakens or even reverses with successional development. Our simulations indicate a clear positive relationship between diversity and resilience, with more diverse systems experiencing lower disturbance-induced variability in their trajectories of ecosystem functioning. We found that positive effects of tree species diversity are mainly driven by an increase in functional diversity and a modulation of traits related to recolonization and resource usage. The results of our study suggest that increasing tree species diversity could mitigate the effects of intensifying disturbance regimes on ecosystem functioning and improve the robustness of forest carbon storage and the role of forests in climate change mitigation.Soil quality index (SQI) assessment is an important tool for evaluating land use and soil management practices in agroecosystems. Thus, the objectives of this research were to assess SQI using the scoring function analysis for different agricultural management practices, and to evaluate the effects of tillage and drainage systems on SQI of a crosby silt loam in central Ohio. Treatments included two tillage: no-till (NT), chisel tillage (CT), and two drainage factors: drainage (D) and no-drainage (ND). Three main steps were followed for the SQL assessment: (1) identification of the minimum data set of indicators, (2) indicator interpretation, and (3) integration of all indicator scores into one SQI value. The data showed that saturated hydraulic conductivity (K-sat) and soil organic carbon (SOC) concentration were the most discriminating and key indicator for SQI assessment. The SO was not significantly affected by subsurface drainage treatment (D = 0.69 and ND = 0.70, P = 0.763). The results imply that long-term NT and subsurface drainage may not significantly alter the SQI because of the effects of weather condition, crop rotation, and weed-control. The SQI was significantly correlated with corn yield (R = 0.62, P < 0.05; n = 12), suggesting that the SQL is an effective and useful tool for assessing the agronomic productivity. The SQI computed by the method described is a useful tool to synthesize the soil and agronomic information. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate change mitigation remains a contested political and policy issue nationally in Australia. Nevertheless, Australian cities have been actively engaging with low carbon policy for well over a decade and numerous actions and programs have resulted. A question arises as to whether such initiatives can amount to a transition; a systemic change from one dominant fossil-fuel based socio-technical regime, to another, fossil-free based socio-technical regime. In this paper, we review the critical literature on low carbon governance and socio-technical transitions and present a set of criteria by which we propose it is possible to assess the emergence of and/or progress towards low carbon urban transition. We then apply this approach to a case study. The paper presents findings from a review of low carbon initiatives in Australia with a particular focus on Melbourne, Victoria exploring the policy context in which these initiatives and responses have emerged, the typical approaches adopted and the implications for urban change and governance. We examine the roles of, and relationships between, different levels of government, climate change alliances, community/environmental organisations and other actors, and assess progress of the urban low carbon transition. In so doing, we identify significant shortcomings and policy disconnects which we argue are limiting progress towards a low carbon future in Victoria.Climatologists have a unique role in providing various stakeholders and public data users with weather and climate information. In the north central region (NCR) of the United States, farmers, the agricultural sector, and policy makers are important audiences for climate science. As local and global climate conditions continue to shift and affect agricultural productivity, it is useful to understand how climatologists view their role as scientists, and how this influences their communication of climate science to agricultural stakeholders. In this study, data from interviews (N = 13) and surveys (N = 19) of state and extension climatologists in the NCR are analyzed to identify perceived roles and responsibilities as scientists and communicators. Pielke's (The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007) framework of the idealized roles of scientists and their communication patterns are used to develop a typology of climate science communication. Findings reveal that more than half of climatologists perceive their role to provide information as pure scientists, while some engage in an arbiter role when requested. Fewer climatologists view their role as not only producing new knowledge, but also relating it to society and providing an expanded variety of alternative applications. Climatologists who perceive their role as simply providing information and letting data users interpret its application are missing an opportunity to reduce the gap between what scientists know and farmers believe. This suggests that if climatologists would frame their climate science message in terms of agricultural impacts, hazard mitigation and risk management alternatives they could help the agricultural sector adapt to and mitigate environmental risks from a changing climate.Both scientists and policy-makers emphasize the importance of education for influencing pro-environmental behavior and minimizing the effects of climate change on biological and physical systems. Education has the potential to impact students' system knowledge - their understanding of the variables that affect the climate system - and action knowledge - their understanding of behaviors that can impact the system. Research on climate change education has largely focused on system and action knowledge that address mitigation while overlooking equally necessary adaptive responses. This study used a pre/post-test format to identify aspects of middle and high school students' climate system knowledge and action knowledge of both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Results indicate that adolescents currently conflate climate change mitigation strategies with unrelated environmental problems far less than in previous surveys. However, students demonstrated limited understanding of adaptive responses to climate change. After engaging in an instructional unit on climate change, students expressed stronger system and action knowledge, but significant misconceptions remained that conflated mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.New energy policies in many forest rich countries have promoted the utilization of industrial and logging residues for energy purposes. This practice is, however, questioned from a climate change mitigation point of view, particularly when it comes to the harvest of coarse woody biomass like stem wood and stumps. Stump harvest removes slowly decomposing biomass with its carbon (C) and nutrients. The harvest operations also cause soil disturbance that may stimulate mineralization of the soil organic pool, and thereby further increase the C and nutrient loss from the site. However, increased mineralization and expected decrease in amount of competing vegetation could make more nutrients available that stimulates growth of the new tree generation and thereby compensates for the soil C loss. Based on two field experiments, located in southern and northern Sweden, we present C and nitrogen (N) pool data in soil (0-70 cm depth) and tree biomass 22 and 24 years after stem and stump harvest and deep soil cultivation (SS-DSC) in comparison to conventional stem-only harvest and a manual patch scarification (S-PS). The SS-DSC management practice represents a "worst case" in terms of potential C and N loss. We tested the hypotheses that SS-DSC (i) will reduce C and N pools in the soil; (ii) will increase C and N pools in the planted trees; (iii) will not have any effect on the total C and N pools (soil and tree biomass) as compared to S-PS. Soil C and N pools were lower following SS-DSC in line with hypothesis (i) but only statistically different for C at the northern site. Tree biomass C and N pools were significantly increased by the SS-DSC treatment in line with hypothesis (ii). As a result, the total C and N pools were not significantly affected by SS-DSC in line with hypothesis (iii). The main conclusion from these results is that judgments on the effects of silvicultural measures on the forest C and N balances or net greenhouse gas emissions cannot be based on measurements of single C or N pool changes (i.e. in the soil or in the trees only) it has to be based on changes in the total C or N pool. The trade-off between soil and tree biomass C and N pools is discussed in terms of possible causes, current forestry practices, and the climate change mitigation potential of soil vs. tree, biomass C. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper adds to a limited literature eliciting willingness to pay (WTP) for mitigation measures against natural hazards caused by climate change, on coastal and marine environments. Our case study is Santander, a coastal region in Northern Spain. The case-study specific natural hazards concern (a) sea-level rise, high tides and extreme wave events that lead to floods and beach erosion, (b) rise in sea temperature that leads to invasive jellyfish blooms and changes in native biodiversity. In particular, we employ a choice experiment (CE) to elicit the value locals place on improvements, through the implementation of appropriate mitigation measures, in biodiversity, recreational opportunities and on decreases in health risks associated with jellyfish blooms. Results suggest that people value positively benefits in terms of increased biodiversity and recreation opportunities, as well as health risk reductions, and point to interesting policy implications. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.More than half the global population are already urban, and the UN and other organisations expect this share to rise in future. However, some researchers argue that the future of cities is far from assured. Cities are not only responsible for 70% or more of the world's CO2 emissions, but because of their dense concentration of physical assets and populations, are also more vulnerable than other areas to climate change. This paper attempts to resolve this controversy by first looking at how cities would fare in a world with average global surface temperatures 4 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. It then looks at possible responses, either by mitigation or adaptation, to the threat such increases would entail. Regardless of the mix of adaptation and mitigation cities adopt in response to climate change, the paper argues that peak urbanism will occur over the next few decades. This fall in the urban share of global population will be driven by the rise in biophysical hazards in cities if the response is mainly adaptation, and by the declining attraction of cities (and possibly the rising attraction of rural areas) if serious mitigation is implemented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the past three years, Indonesia has tasked provincial governments with defining sub-national actions to help implement the nationally appropriate mitigation action (NAMA) it pledged to the United Nations Framework Convention (UNFCCC) in 2009. This paper assesses provincial plans in Indonesia's Sustainable Urban Transport Initiative (SUTI) a set of transport plans that developed in parallel to its NAMA focusing on three key questions distilled from sustainable low carbon transport and multi-level governance literature. The questions seek to shed light into whether provincial governments: (1) prioritize actions that avoid unnecessary travel and shift passengers to more efficient modes; (2) carefully consider funding and costs estimates; and (3) clearly define institutional roles and responsibilities. The assessment suggests that most provincial governments prioritize measures designed to improve vehicle efficiencies and shift to more efficient modes (rather than avoid and shift). Furthermore, there is little evidence of due diligence being performed in relation to estimating costs and seeking creative financing. Lastly, observations point toward low levels of cross-agency collaboration and weakly defined institutional responsibilities at sub-provincial levels. The results imply that Indonesia may encounter some of the same problems confronting developed countries such as the United Kingdom as they translate national climate targets into local transport actions. Three focused case studies suggest that provinces with greater population density, economic diversity, and experience with international organizations outperform other provinces. They may therefore serve as a useful model for sharing with other provinces that are further behind the learning curve.Focusing on a timber check dam, this study evaluated the carbon balance in the life cycle of wood, taking into account both carbon emissions and reductions associated with fossil fuel use and carbon stocks in wood and forests. A significant difference can occur because the net carbon balance may be either on the emission side or on the reduction side, depending on the implementation of reforestation after harvesting, the use of forest-residue- and sawmill-residue-based energy, and the difference in the evaluation period. Thus, it is necessary to examine which framework should be used to conduct an evaluation. Post-harvesting reforestation is essential to achieve net carbon emission reduction effects by substituting the concrete check dam with the timber check dam. Then, with the energy use of forest and sawmill residues, the net carbon emission reduction effects per dam can be expected after an evaluation period of 35 years, and 28 t-C/dam of those can be obtained during an evaluation period of 100 years. From mid- to long-term perspectives, carbon emission will be reduced more if the carbon balance of wood and forests is taken into account rather than focusing only on fossil fuel consumption.Pacific salmon provide critical sustenance for millions of people worldwide and have far-reaching impacts on the productivity of ecosystems. Rising temperatures now threaten the persistence of these important fishes(1,2), yet it remains unknown whether populations can adapt. Here, we provide the first evidence that a Pacific salmon has both physiological and genetic capacities to increase its thermal tolerance in response to rising temperatures. In juvenile chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), a 4 degrees C increase in developmental temperature was associated with a 2 degrees C increase in key measures of the thermal performance of cardiac function(3,4). Moreover, additive genetic effects significantly influenced several measures of cardiac capacity, indicative of heritable variation on which selection can act. However, a lack of both plasticity and genetic variation was found for the arrhythmic temperature of the heart, constraining this upper thermal limit to a maximum of 24.5 +/- 2.2 degrees C. Linking this constraint on thermal tolerance with present-day river temperatures and projected warming scenarios(5), we predict a 17% chance of catastrophic loss in the population by 2100 based on the average warming projection, with this chance increasing to 98% in the maximum warming scenario. Climate change mitigation is thus necessary to ensure the future viability of Pacific salmon populations.This paper investigates sweat to deepen theoretical understandings of how gender is lived. To do so we adopt a visceral approach that opens possibilities of thinking geographically about the affective ties and emotional bonds of sweat to engage with feminist logics of embodiment. Our interest is in what sweaty bodies can 'do'. Attention is given to the way that affects, emotions and sensations associated with being sweaty, smelling sweat, as well as touching one's own sweat, and that of others, provides insights into the gendered lives of people as they move through different context. Our analysis of how gendered is lived through sweaty bodies draws on 'Summer Living' narratives of 17 participants who understand themselves as men and live in Wollongong, a city of around 280,000 people on the east coast of New South Wales, Australia. We illustrate the theoretical significance of thinking about sweat for gender and geography by discussing the ambiguity, proximity and collectivity of sweaty bodies; and, the fragility, multiplicity and vitality of sweaty bodies. To conclude we outline how a visceral approach provides possibilities to improve household sustainability policies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon forestry has become a cornerstone of attempted climate change mitigation in developing countries. As such, dozens of projects have been developed to supply carbon offsets to both voluntary and regulated carbon markets. In this paper we shed further light on the effects of such projects on communities and households by studying the implementation of a carbon forestry project in four communities in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. The project pays farmers to carry out a number of tree-planting activities depending on the local agro-ecological systems. We investigate how such activities have been promoted in and adopted by communities and we identify a series of community-based, institutional, resource management and asset-related factors that explain farmers' willingness to participate in the projects. Our analysis highlights a number of shared motivations for joining the project but varied levels of understanding about the project rationale. We also show how community norms, access to land tenure, financial and physical assets differ among participants and non-participants which translates in increasing inequalities in access to income and to other development projects. However, we also demonstrate that project activities, as currently designed, motivate some farmers to participate because of the potential of the project to act as a mechanism to bridge existing social divides through cooperation in the project and therefore financially and politically benefit from participation. Overall, the paper demonstrates that the project contributes to transforming local livelihoods and institutions, unfortunately not always as originally designed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite climate change mitigation and sustainability agendas, road transport systems in Germany and the resulting environmental burden are growing. Road transport is a significant source of emissions in urban areas and the infrastructure has a significant impact on the urban form. Nevertheless, mobility is a fundamental requirement for the satisfaction of the human desire to socially and economically engage in society. Considering these realities and the desire for sustainable development in a growing city (Potsdam, Germany), an integrated assessment methodology was co-developed among scientists and practitioners to prioritize a suite of transport-related measures. The methodology reflects the city's qualitative and quantitative goals to improve public transport and promote sustainability, capturing synergies in categories that include environmental considerations as well as road safety, eco-mobility, and quality of life. This approach applies a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) to derive a practically relevant solution for the local traffic and mobility problems that fosters ownership and accountability of all involved. This paper reflects on the process of developing the MCA, and the different aspects that were found important and required consideration during the process. Recommendations on specific traffic-related measures and the assessment of their effectiveness are not given. The aim is that such process information could foster greater collaboration within city departments and similar transdisciplinary efforts.Robust and cost effective methods for estimating aboveground biomass of trees on farms are necessary to understand the significance of this carbon pool, identify climate change mitigation opportunities and support smallholder farmers' ability to capitalize on the emerging green economy. Using a dataset of 72 destructively sampled trees and 855 non-destructively sampled trees, we identified methodologically and economically efficient strategies to construct allometric equations and measure on-farm tree biomass. We found that robust biomass estimates can be obtained from measuring diameter at breast height (DBH) alone. Inclusion of tree height, specific wood density, and/or crown area in the allometric equation changed the biomass estimates by only 1.3 %, though these additional variables improved precision by reducing the error from 7.8 % to between 4.8 and 7.0 %. Research accuracy-to-cost trade-offs can be optimized by building equations based on destructive measurements of trees that span stem diameters found in the landscape; equations based on only small or large diameter trees result in poor estimates. Given (1) the resources required to measure additional dendrometric parameters in the field (2) the potential to introduce measurement errors that can propagate through estimates at farm and landscape scales, and (3) the need to quickly increase the amount of data available at low cost, we recommend that allometric equations for trees on farms be based solely on DBH and that the sampling strategy capture the range of tree sizes found in the landscape and future indirect quantification should focus on diameter at breast height as a predictor of biomass to save resources.One central aim of climate change mitigation in the European Union is to reduce energy consumption in the housing sector. In order to ensure effectiveness of policies targeting household energy conservation, it is important to investigate existing energy practices of different social groups. This article describes and explains energy practices in three leading states in environmental politics, technological innovation, and support for renewable energy production: Denmark, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Based on a longitudinal analysis of housing utility costs from the European Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions we show that income plays a central role in households' energy practices. While high-income households have higher overall energy consumption, low-income groups spend a larger share of their income on utility costs. The variation of energy consumption across income groups is related to household characteristics, characteristics of the dwellings, and cross-national differences in the housing sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.According to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the mitigation potential of waste sector in developing countries is three times higher than the one of developed countries, which highlights the role of this sector for mitigation action in the developing world. In this paper, the analytical framework for assessment of climate change mitigation potential of waste sector, which is based on GHG Costing Model (GACMO), is adapted in order to incorporate the specifics of developing countries regarding waste generation, waste disposal and population growth. The methodology is further modified to generate marginal abatement cost curves based on achievable cumulative GHG emissions reduction (over the whole period), thus taking into account the timing of mitigation measure implementation. The adapted analytical framework is applied for the case of Macedonia's waste sector, evaluating the following four mitigation scenarios: Mechanical biological treatment (MBT) with an aerobic treatment (composting), MBT with an anaerobic treatment (anaerobic digesters with energy production), MBT with an anaerobic treatment-anaerobic digesters with energy production and refused derived fuel (RDF) utilization and MBT with an aerobic treatment (composting with RDF utilization). Each mitigation scenario includes also a gas extraction with flaring for the existing non-compliant landfills. The resulting marginal cost curve indicates a total achievable reduction of cumulative emissions for the period 2013-2030 of around 20 Mt, or nearly 80% lower than Business-As-Usual (BAU) waste sector cumulative emissions, at average specific reduction cost in the range 8.9-12.44 US$/t. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Investment in woody vegetation to counter land degradation and improve livelihoods is increasing, primarily revitalized by efforts to enhance carbon sequestration and climate change adaptation. Sudano-Sahelian West Africa is in focus for several interventions to increase woody vegetation for improved livelihoods. However, the knowledge on how woody vegetation maintains landscape productivity and contributes to livelihoods is widely scattered across different scientific fields. Here we review different bodies of literature including a total of 30 species of woody vegetation. We use ecosystem services as a lens to integrate knowledge about how woody vegetation affect ecosystem processes and contribute to livelihoods. We find that the majority of the species generate multiple provisioning ecosystem services. Medicinal uses, contribution to fodder for livestock and importance for human nutrition are reported for almost all species. Regulating ecosystem services are studied for a more narrow set of species. There are mainly positive or no effects on soil nutrients, soil carbon and soil water content. The overall effect of woody vegetation on crop yields is mediated through multiple processes and shows both positive and negative effects. The majority of studies are focused on effects of individual elements of woody vegetation, with very limited landscape scale analyses. Differences between beneficiaries of ecosystem services are only discussed in a few studies, and only in relation provisioning services. Therefore, future studies need to address landscape scale effects and how the benefits of ecosystem services are distributed among beneficiaries, to provide knowledge that is even more relevant for interventions that aim to enhance climate mitigation and adaptation, ecosystem restoration, as well as poverty alleviation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Managing boreal forests for effective climate change mitigation requires comprehension of the full spectrum of climate regulation services that they provide, which includes both the storage of carbon and exchanges of heat and moisture with the atmosphere. It is increasingly recognized that surface albedo is the most important biogeophysical mechanism by which the boreal forest directly influences the global energy balance. Forest management decisions that influence age class and species distributions affect not only the carbon sink capacity, but also the albedo (and hence climate services) of the forested landscape. Disregarding albedo and how it is influenced by management decisions can have profound implications for the effectiveness of any climate change mitigation policy involving active forest management. Here, we explore, analyze, and compare the albedo predicted by simple empirical models with in situ and remotely sensed albedo observations in regions outside the region in which the models were originally developed (southeastern Norway), including boreal Canada and Europe. We find that the models are robust in their ability to predict the longer term interannual trends in the mean winter-summer albedo amplitude, the rapid albedo evolution in young stands, and the timing of seasonal transitions and weak with respect to capturing interannual albedo changes linked to seasonal climate variability and phenology.There is now a broad agreement that the majority of climate change adaptation efforts will need to take place at the local scale, making local government an important player in this field. In many developed countries, local governments have been leading local adaptation efforts and innovation. In the local government sector, transnational municipal networks (TMNs) have been particularly instrumental in advancing knowledge and methods for climate change mitigation at the local scale, but less is known about their catalytic potential for local adaptation planning and implementation. This paper reviews recent studies on the role of TMNs and discusses their potential for adaptation in light of experiences with TMN-driven mitigation programs.Humans are now the most important geomorphic agent on the planet and accelerated erosion in agricultural landscapes results in high magnitude lateral organic carbon (OC) fluxes and significant perturbation of the land-ocean carbon flux. Nevertheless, the net effect of these lateral carbon fluxes on the C cycle is poorly constrained and there is no consensus as to whether they drive a net source or net sink of atmospheric CO2. Here, we test the hypothesis that, under sustained erosional forcing, soil carbon stocks on hillslopes reach a new equilibrium state in which all carbon exported with erosion is replaced; and, therefore, erosion results in a net sink for atmospheric CO2 at the scale of eroding hillslopes. The evidence from our study site, in the Loess Plateau of China, is consistent with this hypothesis. Despite net export of OC equivalent to ca. 10% NPP, we found that all of the eroded OC was replaced and, therefore, that the sink strength was equal to the C export rate. This sets the upper limit of the erosion-induced sink term at the scale of whole watershed. The fate of the exported carbon in reservoirs, floodplains, riverbeds and the ocean ultimately controls the watershed-scale sink strength. Nevertheless, the full replacement observed here suggests that erosion does not induce a C source, irrespective of the fate of the exported carbon, at least for high-input agricultural systems. Finally, we propose that assessment of the C cycle perturbation associated with erosion-induced lateral C fluxes must be made an integral part of accounting mechanisms for climate change mitigation strategies that are based on land use change and C sequestration in terrestrial environments. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Though climate change is an urgent problem especially for vulnerable developing countries, international negotiations are in a gridlock. Standard game-theoretic models that describe climate change mitigation as a public good problem predict few incentives for individual countries to act. Nevertheless - despite the absence of a globally binding agreement - we can observe some developing countries launching unilateral climate policies. Being one of those, Vietnam has recently announced to strive for a low-carbon economy. Based on interviews with Vietnamese policy makers and other stakeholders, this explorative case study examines Vietnam's motivation for a policy change that has shifted from emphasizing the responsibilities of developed countries for climate change towards accepting responsibility of developing countries to also reduce their emissions. While Vietnam's high vulnerability has contributed to put climate on the political agenda, the policy shift from a pure adaptation towards a mitigation focus was mainly driven by expected multiple climate policy benefits other than climate change abatement (so-called co-benefits). These include restructuring of the economy, addressing energy security concerns and accessing international finance to counteract a phase-out of conventional development assistance. Air quality considerations, by contrast, do not seem to play a major role for Vietnam's shift in climate policy. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Being persistent, toxic, and bio-accumulative, Mercury (Hg) seriously affects the environment and human health. Due to Hg's attribute of long-range environmental transport across national borders, especially through atmospheric transport, no country can fully protect its environment and human health with its own efforts, without global cooperation. The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which was formally adopted and opened for signature in October 2013, is the only global environmental regime on the control of Hg pollution. Its main substantive control measures are source-specific: its phasing-out, phasing-down, and other main substantive requirements all direct to specific categories of pollution sources through the regulation of specific sectors of the economy and social life. This Convention does not take a national quota approach to quantify the Parties' nationwide total allowable consumption or discharge of Hg or Hg compounds, nor does it quantify their nationwide total reduction requirements. This paper attempts to find the underlying reasons for this source-specific approach and offers two interpretations. One possible interpretation is that Hg might be a non-threshold pollutant, i.e., a pollutant without a risk-free value of concentration. The existence of a reference dose (RfD), reference concentration (RfC), provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI), minimal risk level (MRL) or other similar reference values of Hg does not necessarily mean that Hg cannot be regarded as non-threshold because such reference values have scientific uncertainties and may also involve policy considerations. Another interpretation is that Hg lacks a feasibly determinable total allowable quantity. There is evidence that negotiators might have treated Hg as non-threshold, or at least accepted that Hg lacks a feasibly determinable total allowable quantity: (1) The negotiators were informed about the serious situations of the current emissions, releases, and legacy deposition; (2) the UNEP Secretariat took the position that Hg is non-threshold and should be eliminated to the maximum; (3) European countries, the USA and other western countries were in a better position to regard Hg as non-threshold and push forward a global reduction of Hg emissions and releases to the minimum; (4) the negotiators took the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) as a model; and (5) a fairly large number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were organized under umbrella NGO networks such as the Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG) and the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) and made a significant contribution to the negotiation process. The interpretations for the Minamata Convention might similarly be used to interpret the source-specific approach of the Stockholm Convention on POPs and the national quota approach of global environmental regimes on stratospheric ozone and climate mitigation. These two interpretations focus on the features of the pollutants and for this reason may be useful for future negotiators of other international environmental treaties to select appropriate models. They also suggest that the source-specific approach may be adopted in the future for pollutants with similar features of being possibly non-threshold and without a feasibly determinable total allowable quantity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has recently been greatly impacted by anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One of the main contributing sectors to GHG emissions is the energy sector, due to its high dependency on fossil fuels. Renewable energy systems, notably solar energy, can be an effective climate change mitigation alternative. Photovoltaic (PV) technology provides an interesting method to produce electricity through a virtually infinite renewable resource at the human time scale: solar radiation. This study evaluates the current and future solar energy potential through the use of grid-connected PV power plants at the scale of countries within the Black Sea catchment. Simulated data are used to determine potential change in climate and land-use according to two different development scenarios. Incident solar radiation flux from re-analyses, spatial interpolation, and the application of the Delta change method are used to assess the current and future solar resource potential within this catchment. Potential sites suitable for PV power plants are selected following a Fuzzy logic approach, and thus the total potential solar energy through PV power generation can be determined. Results show that climate change will have little impact on the solar radiation resource, while land-use change induces more variability. However, regardless of the scenario followed, the solar energy potential is sufficient to provide an interesting contribution to the electricity generation mix of most countries within the Black Sea region. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Models for optimal management of forests and woodlands are important for designing climate change mitigation strategies. Biomass measurements from eight plots in Kitulangalo Forest Reserve, Tanzania, were used to estimate a Verhulst growth model for miombo woodland. After incorporating the effect of fire, a non-linear programming model was used to determine economically optimal harvest of such woodland for charcoal production. Optimization was done with and without payment for reduced emissions from forest degradation under the assumption that the woodland was not reserved for environmental protection. It helped testing strategies for management of public land. At the current charcoal price and discount rates above 7.3%, immediate harvest of present stock was found optimal. At 10% interest rate, carbon sequestration payments and emission taxes of 15 USD MgCO(2)e(-1) were required so as to avoid woodland degradation. If emissions were not taxed, sequestration payments of more than 40 USD MgCO(2)e(-1) would not prevent harvest when biomass density is high (60-100 MgCO(2)e ha(-1)). The farm-gate price discussed here will be lower than the price found in international agreements due to transaction costs. Unless affluent societies are prepared to pay more than 10-20 USD MgCO(2)e(-1), degradation of miombo woodlands in Tanzania and other sub-Saharan countries is likely to continue in the absence of some alternate measures. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recently the impact of climate change has been an increasingly important policy issue to the Indonesian government. It makes serious programs to support the global climate change mitigation action. This article is aimed at analyzing the application of Indonesia's climate change policy. The focus is on crucial problems that constrain its effectiveness both at international and domestic levels. The discussions indicate that Indonesia's multilateral diplomacy to protect the environment is affected by the rise of global power politics as the consequence of the contestation between China and the United States. Meanwhile, internal actions are hindered by the complex social, economic, and cultural barriers. The efficacy of the policy is considerably weakened. To conclude, however, this author tries to offer some potential solutions for strategic planning and policy improvementCountries participating in climate change mitigation via the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation mechanism are required to establish national forest monitoring systems. The design of national forest monitoring system includes provision of transparent, consistent and accurate estimates of emissions and removals from forests, while also taking into account national circumstances and capabilities. One key component of these systems lies in satellite remote sensing approaches and techniques to determine baseline data on forest loss against which future rates of change can be evaluated. Advances in approaches meeting these criteria for measuring, reporting and verification purposes are therefore of tremendous interest. A robust example advancing such approaches, focused on Peru, is provided in the recent paper of Potapov et al (2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 124012).To close the gap between existing country pledges and the necessary ambition level to limit anthropogenic climate change to not more than 2 degrees C average global temperature increase above pre-industrial levels, decision makers from both the public and private domain have started to explore a number of complementary approaches to the top-down targets-and-timetables approach of international climate change policy. Referred to as International Cooperative Initiatives (ICI), these governance arrangements are now also officially acknowledged under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. While proponents see ICIs as important bridging devices towards more ambitious climate policy, in particular up to 2020, critical observers note that the voluntary nature of ICIs makes it difficult to assess their contribution to climate change mitigation. This article scrutinizes the potential of ICIs to meaningfully contribute to closing the emissions gap along the criteria of effectiveness, legitimacy and institutional fit. As means of illustration, the analytical framework is applied to a random sample of nine ICIs (out of a total of 45 listed on the UNFCCC Secretariat's website). We find that while potential technical effectiveness is high, legitimacy and institutional fit should be improved with a view towards integrating ICIs into the emerging post-2015 climate governance architecture.The Farmer Perspectives on Agriculture and Weather Variability in the Corn Belt: A Statistical Atlas is a new publication available online at<http://www.sustainablecorn.org>. The atlas includes maps and tables that make it easy for readers to gauge farmer perspectives within the US Corn Belt. Topics covered include farmer beliefs about climate change, attitudes toward actions in response to increased weather variability, risk perceptions, and experiences with weather extremes. This region-specific information on farmers' climate change and risk beliefs is designed to help Extension personnel tailor the climate adaptation and education programming they offer in their region.When considering adaptation measures and global climate mitigation goals, stakeholders need regional-scale climate projections, including the range of plausible warming rates. To assist these stakeholders, it is important to understand whether some locations may see disproportionately high or low warming from additional forcing above targets such as 2 K (ref. 1). There is a need to narrow uncertainty(2) in this nonlinear warming, which requires understanding how climate changes as forcings increase from medium to high levels. However, quantifying and understanding regional nonlinear processes is challenging. Here we show that regional-scale warming can be strongly superlinear to successive CO2 doublings, using five different climate models. Ensemble-mean warming is superlinear over most land locations. Further, the inter-model spread tends to be amplified at higher forcing levels, as nonlinearities grow-especially when considering changes per kelvin of global warming. Regional nonlinearities in surface warming arise from nonlinearities in global-mean radiative balance, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, surface snow/ice cover and evapotranspiration. For robust adaptation and mitigation advice, therefore, potentially avoidable climate change (the difference between business-as-usual and mitigation scenarios) and unavoidable climate change (change under strong mitigation scenarios) may need different analysis methods.Nitrous oxide (N2O) from agricultural soil is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Biochar amendment can contribute to climate change mitigation by suppressing emissions of N2O from soil, although the mechanisms underlying this effect are poorly understood. We investigated the effect of biochar on soil N2O emissions and N cycling processes by quantifying soil N immobilisation, denitrification, nitrification and mineralisation rates using N-15 pool dilution techniques and the FLUAZ numerical calculation model. We then examined whether biochar amendment affected N2O emissions and the availability and transformations of N in soils. Our results show that biochar suppressed cumulative soil N2O production by 91% in near-saturated, fertilised soils. Cumulative denitrification was reduced by 37%, which accounted for 85-95 % of soil N2O emissions. We also found that physical/chemical and biological ammonium (NH4+) immobilisation increased with biochar amendment but that nitrate (NOT) immobilisation decreased. We concluded that this immobilisation was insignificant compared to total soil inorganic N content. In contrast, soil N mineralisation significantly increased by 269% and nitrification by 34% in biochar-amended soil. These findings demonstrate that biochar amendment did not limit inorganic N availability to nitrifiers and denitrifiers, therefore limitations in soil NH4+ and NO3- supply cannot explain the suppression of N2O emissions. These results support the concept that biochar application to soil could significantly mitigate agricultural N2O emissions through altering N transformations, and underpin efforts to develop climate-friendly agricultural management techniques. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Investigating the energy use of an economy in a resource-constrained world requires an understanding of the relationships of its economic, social, and energy-use elements. We introduce a novel whole-economy analytical framework which harmonises multiple national accounting procedures. The economic elements align with the International System of National Accounts. In a modular fashion, our framework curates and maintains disparate accounts (economic stocks and flows, energy use, employment, transport) in parallel, but retains each of their unique measurement unit and accounting requirements. We present the UK as a case study to demonstrate how the data organisation and conditioning procedures are generic and will allow model development for other countries. The framework is capable of exploiting time-series ratios between different measurement units to give key functional relationships that vary gradually over time, are robust and thus useful for analysing national policy complexities such as decarbonisation, employment, investment and balance of payments. We use novel Sankey diagrams to visualise snapshots of the whole system. The framework is neither an exclusively economic, physical, nor social model. It upholds the integrity of each world-view through retaining their unique time-series datasets. As this framework is agnostic to the way in which a nation organises its economy, it has the potential to reduce tension between competing models and philosophies of economic development, environmental refurbishment, and climate change mitigation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The long-term economics of mitigating climate change over the long run has played a high profile role in the most important analyses of climate change in the last decade, namely the Stern Report and the IPCC's Fourth Assessment. However, the various kinds of uncertainties that affect these economic results raise serious questions about whether or not the net costs and benefits of mitigating climate change over periods as long as 50 to 100 years can be known to such a level of accuracy that they should be reported to policymakers and the public. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the derivation of these estimates of the long-term economic costs and benefits of mitigation. It particularly focuses on the role of technological change, especially for energy efficiency technologies, in making the net economic results of mitigating climate change unknowable over the long run. Because of these serious technical problems, policymakers should not base climate change mitigation policy on the estimated net economic impacts computed by integrated assessment models. Rather, mitigation policies must be forcefully implemented anyway given the actual physical climate change crisis, in spite of the many uncertainties involved in trying to predict the net economics of doing so. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseThe development of scenarios to explore energy and low carbon futures has been widely applied. Although some studies combine qualitative scenarios with quantitative outcomes from modeling exercises, the two approaches have been extensively and separately used. Many energy scenarios are sustained only by the results of the models, which allow great technological details but neglect the interaction with social and economic factors. Using Portugal as a case study, this paper presents a framework to link socio-economic storylines, sustained by national stakeholders' workshops, with the development of quantitative energy scenarios through 2050, generated by the technology-based TIMES_PT model. The storylines highlight different visions of the country's development, including the energy system. A comparison between the energy profile from the storylines and the energy modeling outcomes was performed to assess the extent of their differences. This analysis revealed generally similar visions, with the exception of the importance of some technologies, which may affect future energy planning. We conclude that a combined method that links socio-economic storylines and energy modeling increases the robustness of energy scenario development because providing a coherent context for modeling assumptions allows better reasoning, which is most valued for the decision-making process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The UN-led discussion about the post-2015 sustainable development agenda provides an opportunity to develop indicators and targets that show the importance of health as a precondition for and an outcome of policies to promote sustainable development. Health as a precondition for development has received considerable attention in terms of achievement of health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), addressing growing challenges of non-communicable diseases, and ensuring universal health coverage. Much less attention has been devoted to health as an outcome of sustainable development and to indicators that show both changes in exposure to health-related risks and progress towards environmental sustainability. We present a rationale and methods for the selection of health-related indicators to measure progress of post-2015 development goals in non-health sectors. The proposed indicators show the ancillary benefits to health and health equity (co-benefits) of sustainable development policies, particularly those to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase resilience to environmental change. We use illustrative examples from four thematic areas: cities, food and agriculture, energy, and water and sanitation. Embedding of a range of health-related indicators in the post-2015 goals can help to raise awareness of the probable health gains from sustainable development policies, thus making them more attractive to decision makers and more likely to be implemented than before.Forest residues can be left at the harvest site to gradually decompose, or can be collected for energy purposes. This study analyzes the primary energy and climate impacts of bioenergy systems where forest residues are collected and used for electricity, heat and transportation, compared to fossil-based energy systems where fossil fuels provide the same services while forest residues are left on site to decompose. Time profiles are elaborated of primary energy use and carbon dioxide emissions from various energy applications fulfilled by bioenergy or fossil energy systems. Different biological decay functions are considered based on process-based modeling and inventory data across various climate zones. For all scenarios, the changes in cumulative radiative forcing (CRF) are calculated over a 300-year period, to evaluate the short- and long-term contributions of forest residue to climate change mitigation. A life cycle perspective along the full energy chains is used to evaluate the overall effectiveness of each system. The results show largest primary energy and climate benefits when forest residues are collected and used efficiently for energy services. Using biomass to substitute fossil coal provides greater climate change mitigation benefits than substituting oil or fossil gas. Some bioenergy substitutions result in positive CRF, i.e. increased global warming, during an initial period. This occurs for relatively inefficient bioenergy conversion pathways to substitute less carbon intensive fossil fuels, e.g. biomotor fuel used to replace diesel. More beneficial bioenergy substitutions, such as efficiently replacing coal, result immediately in reduced CRF. Biomass decay rates and transportation distance have less influence on climate benefits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Population growth and the consequent increase in food demand will certainly intensify the threat to the environment. Brazil, the fourth largest producer and exporter of swine meat, has an important role to ensure the fulfillment of the goals of food security and climate change mitigation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the environmental impact of swine production in Brazil based on life cycle assessment, comparing four manure management systems: liquid manure storage in slurry tanks; the biodigestor by flare; the biodigestor for energy purposes; and composting. Additionally, we performed a Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the uncertainty due to different emissions factors to estimate nitrogen-related emissions from the manure-handling stage. The functional unit considered was 1000 kg of swine carcass in the equalization chamber for cutting or further distribution. The results indicated an environmental profile of swine production in Brazil of 3503.29 kg of CO2 eq. for climate change, 76.13 kg of SO2 eq. for terrestrial acidification, 2.15 kg of P eq. for freshwater eutrophication, 12.33 kg of N eq. for marine eutrophication, 21,521.12 MJ for cumulative energy demand, 1.63 kg of 1.4-DB eq. for terrestrial ecotoxicity, 1706.26 BDP for biodiversity damage potential and 14.99 m(2) for natural land transformation. Feed production had a significant contribution with a range of 17.6-99.5% for all environmental impact categories. Deforestation represented 9.5 and 31.3% of the total impacts for cumulative energy demand and climate change, respectively. Therefore, avoiding the use of grain from deforested areas can significantly decrease the impacts for these impact categories. Regarding the uncertainty analysis, we observed greater variations for terrestrial acidification in slurry tanks, biodigestor by flare and for energy purposes, while for the case of composting, major uncertainties were observed for climate change. For manure management systems, efforts should be made to reduce the emissions of methane in the storage and ammonia in the field application. In this sense, the comparative life cycle assessment indicated that the biodigestor for energy purposes had the best environmental performance for almost all the environmental impacts, mainly due to the biogas capture and the potential of energy saves. Nevertheless, if the goal is to decrease the impacts for terrestrial acidification and marine eutrophication, the slurry tanks is the most preferable scenario compared to all alternative options. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Forest sector models are widely used for policy and economic analyses. Basic assumptions vary considerably between models, but little attention has been paid to the impacts these differences may have on model results. Norway provides a great opportunity to fill this void as it has two forest sector models currently in use based on different modeling assumptions, but sharing the same data source. In one model, agents are assumed to be myopic in the meaning that they rely only on the current market conditions. Harvest behavior is in this model based on econometric relations and exogenous forest growth rates. The second model approach employs extensive forest data and assumes that agents have perfect information over the model time horizon. We discuss the differences between the two modeling approaches and compare quantitatively the model results of two case studies. However, both types of models are rather sensitive to changes in assumptions and data. The strengths and weaknesses of the two model approaches and their appropriateness for responding to the study questions should be considered when choosing modeling methodology. Using both models in parallel removes the uncertainty caused by the foresight assumption/optimization routine and thus provides in total more information.Technological capability and technology transfer both play important roles in achieving low-carbon development targets and the concepts of both have appeared in national development and climate policy debates. Yet, they differ. Improving capabilities and transfer mechanisms are two differing approaches to technological development. Technology transfer is associated with a key political dynamic within international climate policy, in that developing countries request support from industrialised countries. Whereas technological capability focuses on building internal capabilities and is often framed in the context of national industrial policy plans rather than relying on external support. We argue that technology development, a combination of these approaches, can contribute to South Africa's low-carbon development through innovation and technology-based mitigation actions that increase domestic technological capabilities. Technological capability needs to become a determinant of mitigation action to effectively contribute to achieving South Africa's low-carbon development goals. International technology transfer and cooperation should contribute to boosting domestic capabilities to advance technological development. Technology transfer based on pure sales will not contribute to achieving long-term low-carbon development goals.It is clear that developing countries will have to be part of the global mitigation effort to avoid 'dangerous climate change', and, indeed, many of them are already undertaking significant actions on multiple fronts to help address this problem, even if they have not yet taken on legally binding commitment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Since the deployment of GHG-mitigating technologies is already a significant part of this effort and likely to be even more so in the future, drawing lessons from existing programmes can help accelerate and enhance the effectiveness of this deployment process. Accordingly, this article aims to examine the deployment of wind and solar power in India, paying specific attention to the role of public policy in incentivizing and facilitating this deployment, how these policies have evolved over time, what has shaped this evolution, and what the learning has been over this period. Through this analysis, the intention is to draw out key lessons from India's experience with deployment policies and programmes in these two sectors and highlight the issues that will need to be given particular consideration in the design of future domestic policies and international cooperation programmes to enhance the move towards climate-compatible development in India. Many of these lessons should also be relevant for other developing countries that are attempting to balance their climate and developmental priorities through the deployment of renewable energy technologies.Increasing the rate of climate technology transfer is a critical concern. The international community facilitates the development and deployment of climate technologies for the needs of the South in two primary ways: first, through the use of multilateral frameworks for technology transfer and, second, through in-country capacity building for research, development, and deployment in developing countries. However, scant attention is given to whether national-level frameworks in industrialized countries can support technology transfer. This issue may be of particular relevance to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developed countries, due to their relative lack of experience in international markets. The barriers that prevent SMEs from developing and exporting more technologies to the South are identified, by using Israel as a case study. Although Israel is an important global source of climate technology innovation, it currently does not engage much with the developing world. Four principle barriers to greater involvement of OECD SMEs in technology transfer for climate mitigation in developing countries are: (1) lack of knowledge of market needs in developing economies, (2) lack of financial mechanisms to support R&D, (3) lack of opportunities for partnership building, and (4) lack of support for demonstration sites in developing countries.The United States of America and the People's Republic of China are responsible for over 40% of the world's CO2 emissions annually and they will be able to effectively reduce global emissions if they fulfil their commitments jointly in climate change mitigation. Here we briefly summarize past climate collaborations between the two countries and compare their national climate policies. The major problems are the mutual distrust between the two countries and the priority of economic development over climate change mitigation within each of them. As atmospheric CO2 levels are still increasing at an accelerating rate, it is essential for the largest two emitters to turn ongoing bilateral dialogue into prompt mitigation action and maintain long-term joint efforts in reducing emissions. We suggest that the two countries should recognize and take advantage of their differences in socioeconomic, political, and technological conditions. Furthermore, the two countries need to share their experiences and technologies for safely utilizing relatively clean energy resources, especially shale gas. The success in climate cooperation between the USA and China is critical to sustainable development around the world.This article focuses on the role of local institutions in mitigation and adaptation to climate change, considering learning experiences in promoting public-private partnerships in resilient actions. It does so in the belief that climate impacts will affect disadvantaged social groups and small communities more disproportionately, and that local institutions centrally influence how different social groups gain access to, and are able to, use assets and resources. Considering that the increasing awareness that global temperatures will rise, a "Climate-smart" mentality must be adopted at all levels of decision-making. This approach involves finding synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation, wherever this is possible. We consider similar pre-conditions for adaptation as for mediation. Based on these pre-conditions, we identify Public Private Partnerships as a challenging possibility to finance decentralized renewable energies and green infrastructure for resilient communities. The article aims to demonstrate two main unclear topics in the existing understanding about institutions and climate change responses: the correlation between Public Private Partnerships and the participatory process and how it leads to win-win climate response funding, a learning experience from the Sustainable Energy Action Plan within the MED Programme ZeroCO2 Project - and the Local Adaptation Plan development within the BLUE AP LIFE+ projectFiji's National Climate Change Policy (FNCCP), established in 2012, encourages the government to take up climate change mitigation initiatives, as part of Fiji's contribution to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Energy use is one of the largest contributors to global warming, and the substitution of fossil fuel with renewable energy, coupled with energy efficiency measures, provide the most effective way for mitigating climate change. It would therefore be expected that the country's energy development plans would bear strong synergies with the objectives of the National Climate Change Policy. This chapter presents a brief overview of Fiji's National Climate Change Policy, followed by a review of the recent energy developments in the country and its new National Energy Policy (NEP). It is found that there is a clear mismatch between the NEP and the NCCP on the issue of energy considerations with regard to climate change mitigation. Indeed there is no mention in the NEP of the existence of the nation's National Climate Change Policy and its commitments to the global climate change mitigation efforts through energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy. Plausible reasons for the absence of a linkage between the two policies are put forward, and possible methods to redress the problem are suggested.Cirrus ice clouds formed normally in the upper troposphere and contrails, shed by aircraft, impact climate and global warming due to prevailing cirrus clouds ice water content and crystal size. Contrail cirrus impact on climate change also comprises their influence on water vapor in the higher troposphere layer, which alter the infrared heat emission. The effect of commercial flights to climate change is of serious concern to the environmental conservation and climate change mitigation efforts. Therefore, it is imperative that the physical characteristics of cirrus clouds, contrails and their interactions be understood to devise anthropogenic solutions.Climate change has become a main driver for institutional change, prompting the need for comprehensive adaptation strategies and impacts assessment (Biesbroek et al. 2010; Elasha 2010). The agriculture sector is affected simultaneously by intertwined challenges that comprise ensuring food security, adaptation to changes in environmental conditions and contributing to climate change mitigation (FAO 2013; Parry et al. 2004). Berman et al. (2012) propose a framework for assessing institutional adaptation capacity by linking the two concepts of vulnerability and resilience. The objective of this study was to understand and describe defining elements of resilience in crop adaptation and agro-environmental management. Three case studies were conducted on local farmers' adaptation strategies across two regions identified with production systems subject to very different institutional and agro-ecological settings, but equally considered highly vulnerable to climate change. Complex implications are expected for the maintenance of food production in the traditionally agriculture based regions, with subsequent socio-economic effects. 1. Horticultural production: Due to strict regulations regarding chemical treatment, conventional and organic farmers who generally have limited possibilities to avoid infested sites are dependent on innovative measures for crop adaptation and soil treatment. 2. Large-scale organic farms: Production sites are facing decreased crop yields due to deficiencies in nitrogen supply due to low of farmyard manure and decrease of microbial nitrogen mineralization exacerbated by increasing pre summer droughts. 3. Agro-pastoral systems: Small ruminants production systems are managing environmental constraints by reducing overall flock size, reducing the movement to grazing sites and decreasing feed supplements. Herders are also diversifying their sources of income. Comparative analysis is conducted across case studies. Research questions address the role of local farmers' knowledge in contributing to requisite variety in local food production systems, existing measures for diversification at the farm level and provisions in case of failure in existing regional and national strategies. (C) 2015 the Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate change is one of the greatest challenges worldwide. Its most severe impacts may still be avoided if efforts are made to transform current energy systems. The notion of climate change mitigation refers to the reduction of the rate of climate change via management of its causal factors such as the emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion, agriculture, land use changes, cement and steel production etc. [4]. This paper gives results of a survey carried out on the steel industry in Zimbabwe. This gives a clearer indication on how much work is yet to be done in the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in this industry.The lack of sustainable public transport, heavy traffic, and floods are some of the major problems that the Philippines are experiencing throughout the years. Fossil fuel is a limited source of energy and it contributes to the destruction of the ecosystem, which is why more sustainable alternatives are needed. In addition, heavy traffic makes it difficult for people to travel around the metro that eventually affects productivity, efficiency and causes unnecessary stress and sickness. Flooding has also claimed the lives of many people; some have died because they have drowned or because of the strong current of the flood, while some died due to slow response of rescuers because of extremely inaccessible paths. The research revolves around conceptualizing a three-wheeled electric vehicle with amphibious characteristics (waterproof electric motor, sealed body) to tackle the problems discussed earlier. A vehicle that will not be heavy on the budget which will make it accessible to most people; the problem with most amphibious or electric vehicles that exists today is that the features or specifications, or simply the build, is extremely high-tech and thus expensive and scarce. It will serve as a multi-purpose vehicle for public utility/transportation, recreation, and or for emergency and rescue operations. The group believes that electricity is a better alternative than fossil fuels n consideration to climate change mitigation and adaptation. In addition, focusing on public transport that will carry multiple passengers would hopefully reduce current traffic and emissions.The pipeline quality natural gas of Titas Gas (TG) contains approximately 96.12% (mol/mol) methane. Fugitive emissions are unintentional leaks emitted from sealed surfaces or leaks from underground pipelines resulting from corrosion or faulty connections. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas effect next to carbon dioxide. Reducing methane emission is an essential step toward reducing global warming. Inventory data on methane emission from natural gas transmission and distribution system of TG is absent in open literature. The objective of this paper is to explore the problems generated by gas leaks and to quantify the leaked methane gas from the above-ground facilities of the existing system of TG. Economic and environmental impacts for such fugitive emissions are also critically examined. In this study, leaks were detected using soap screening techniques and the Gasurveyor 500 series instrument. Leaked gas was quantified using either the Hi-Flow gas sampler or a bagging measurements system. The results show that approximately 2.1% of the purchased gas is leaked from the above-ground facilities of TG. Total estimated emission is approximately 4.214 MMTCO(2)e per year that is approximately 4.74% of the total amount of methane emission from human activities and industrial methane production in Bangladesh during the year 2000. TG can save approximately USD 14.67 million per year by stopping these emissions. It is now a vital issue for TG to seize gas leakages for attaining the international standard of climate mitigation as well as upholding the image of TG.The use of fossil fuels for energy leads to emission of carbon dioxide, thus causing global warming which may lead to drastic climatic changes, extinction of living species, rising sea level and extreme natural disasters. The new non-conventional renewable energy resources such as solar energy, wind energy etc. are increasingly relevant energy sources in today's times to the limited fossil fuel based energy. In India, the energy requirement is increasing day by day and among many energy consuming sectors, the transport sector poses a high demand. Utilizing the free space available on rooftops of terrestrial vehicles in India for solar power harvesting could be a significant move in reducing dependence on fossil fuels and reduce global warming. Since the type of terrain, weather, and other environmental conditions can have a significant impact on the design, performance and reliability of a solar rooftop energy harvesting system for terrestrial vehicles, a prototype implementation providing adequate field data would be a valuable asset for the feasibility study and design of such a system. As a case study, this paper discusses the implementation of a data acquisition, monitoring and analysis control system for a Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coach of a train in India. This pilot project serves as a proof of concept for a roof-top solar energy harvesting system with an objective to contribute to the electrical power requirement of LHB coaches of a train. Data collected by this system will be used to design a low cost, commercial version of this technology and can also be considered for various other ground based transportation.Sustainable solutions for energy saving in buildings are assuming increasing interest both in the research and the industrial community. In this view, cool roof systems demonstrated to be interesting and effective solutions which role in energy saving for cooling and mitigating local and global warming is already acknowledged. In these recent years, several studies were carried out in order to quantify their thermal-energy effect with varying boundary conditions, while global climate analytical models were proposed with the purpose to evaluate the effect of high albedo solutions in terms of radiative forcing and CO2eq offset. This work concerns the combined analysis of thermal-energy and environmental effect of cool roof (high albedo) clay tiles with low visual impact, specifically optimized in order to preserve traditional residential buildings. In particular, dynamic simulation models and field monitoring of a real residential village were developed and the effect of such tiles is analyzed in terms of energy saving for cooling and of CO2eq avoided emissions due to the energy efficient intervention, coupled with the effect in climate change mitigation. This aspect is specifically considered by applying an analytical method elaborated in previous works, where the effect of high albedo surfaces in terms of CO2eq offset is quantified with varying orientation, inclination, solar reflectance and geographical details. The combined analysis showed how an overall annual CO2 emissions' offset is achievable by coupling single-building and global assessment methodologies. In particular, the energy saving contribution saved around 141 tonnes of CO2eq per year, and the global warming analytical model showed that the albedo increase allowed to offset about 772 tonnes of CO2eq per year. This prototypical study showed how local energy analysis should be coupled to global analysis in order to have an exhaustive view of building retrofit strategies' sustainability.A significant amount of Carbon (C) on global soils consists of black carbon or charred organic matter. Biochar amendment in soils is therefore seen as a potential geoengineering method for climate change mitigation and adaptation. We tested the effects of biochar amendment (10 t.ha(-1)) on soil respiration trace a potential priming effect until 15 months after amendment. Our results indicate that after a short period of initially weak positive priming, there was no significant difference between control and biochar plots during the entire project duration. From a carbon sequestration point of view, it can be concluded, that biochar amendment leads to higher stable C stocks in the organic horizon. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecomons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Bioenergy crops may be an important contributor to mitigating global warming risks. A comparison between willow and poplar Short Rotation Forestry and rapeseed cultivation was designed to evaluate the ratio between soil respiration and the combustion heat obtained from the extracted products per hectare. A manual dynamic closed chamber system was applied to measure CO2 emissions at the SRF and rapeseed sites during the growing season. Our results show that poplar and willow SRF has a very low ratio compared to rapeseed. We thus recommend poplar and willow SRF as renewable sources for bioenergy over the currently prevalent rapeseed production. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecomons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).The IPCC Report 2014 strengthens the need for CO2 storage as part of climate change mitigation options. The further expansion of electricity generation by solar and wind and its preferential usage in Germany is leading to strong fluctuations in the CO2 output from former base load coal fired power plants. This study takes a look at the feasibility of large scale industrial CO2 injection into a saline aquifer structure with the main focus on varying injection rates. By means of simulation the influence of the most important parameters is analyzed. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecomons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Carbon sequestration is one of the most important ecosystem services of forested landscapes. They have an outstanding role in climate change mitigation, and, as a quantifiable service, carbon sequestration can be incorporated in decision-making processes. Floodplain forests should have an outstanding role in fulfilling green infrastructure development goals. These ecosystems are characterized by a number of land use conflicts, between the local actors with different interests (forestry, water management and nature conservation). Ecosystem service assessments can help to resolve such environmental management issues. Our work was carried out with a targeted model (CO2Fix3.2.), with the aim to compare the potential of the main forest types of the area (native and non-native willow-poplar stands, managed and non-managed hardwood forests). Calculations were based on a combined dataset of detailed forest structure measurements and the management plans provided by the local forestry directorate. The biggest amount of carbon is stored in hardwood forests with long rotation cycle and in the unmanaged forest reserve. The carbon content of the soil and the wood products should also be taken into account in these complex environmental systems. These types of results can form a basis for incorporating ecosystem services in decision-making, e.g. through payments for ecosystem services schemes.Climate change brings in itself challenges and changes that are urgent for agricultural production both in Latvia and in the entire world. In this context agriculture plays a large role in causing the greenhouse effect and holds a large potential for climate change mitigation. This article aims to evaluate Latvia's progress towards agricultural GHG emissions mitigation. In order to meet the set aim, the research focuses on two key aspects: an evaluation of the present situation in Latvia regarding GHG emissions in agriculture; and analysis of agricultural sector policy in the field of GHG emissions mitigation. Research results shows that agricultural emissions (mainly from crop and livestock production) in Latvia are the second largest emitter of the total greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 22%. This is a quite alarming indicator as Latvia ranks third in the EU in terms of proportion of agriculture in total GHG emissions. According to statistical data, the crop sector is presently the largest GHG emitter However, in order to meet international commitments, management practices for reducing these emissions are required. The research results showed that Latvian agricultural policy envisages number of activities which aims to reduce GHG emissions from agricultural practices.The assimilation of the Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) theory in the Urban Waste management process is an expanding body of planning knowledge that attempts to provide explanations and approaches for effective waste recovery, reduction and management in many cities. Recent studies have shown that the applications of the ISWM approach in developing countries encounters myriad challenges despite the fact that these regions are in dire need of stimulating the waste sector as a form of industry diversification due to the vast potentials it offers emerging urban economies. The study explored the potentials in embracing ISWM and the benefits in terms of an increasing collaboration between municipal governments, community stakeholders, the private sector and planners, as well as research institutions (Universities) who can provide the platform for its adoption in Nigeria. Although there is extensive literature on ISWM process in climate change mitigation strategies, the potentials it bears for resource recovery and energy production in the context of the Nigerian economy, are underexplored. The study examined the key factors militating against the adoption of ISWM in policy initiatives in Port Harcourt. It evaluated the extent to which ISWM can serve as a meaningful planning policy tool for solid waste management and environmental protection and concludes that ISWM can be used as a tool to trigger job creation, source raw materials for industry and generate energy to support the current unsustainable energy generation sector. It can also be used as a tool to mitigate against climate change impacts resulting from municipal waste in Nigeria. The paper further assessed cases where the ISWM approach has been successfully established as a policy tool for guiding the management of solid waste in medium income countries, with the view of imbibing practices that would be achievable, considering the available technology and financing options; furthermore, global partnership schemes were assessed to determine likely collaborations that should be established to enable its successful integration into policy structures and the economy of Port Harcourt.Considering the world's growing energy demand, the nuclear energy is an option to meet this demand in a sustainable and reliable manner. The share of nuclear in the global energy mix is continuously rising. This increase in share of nuclear is due to the factors such as population growth, energy supply security, increased electricity demand, climate mitigation and price volatility of fuels used for other sources of energy. In order to meet this growing demand, large scale deployment of advanced nuclear reactors is envisaged. This paper describes the advanced nuclear reactor technologies available for immediate, near, and long term deployment. It also describes their innovative features that make them safer, simpler and economically competitive with other technologies. At the end, the author discusses their potential role within the context of Pakistan.Potential for promoting sorghum crop as a climate change adaptation strategy for rain-fed agriculture in Embu County, Kenya was evaluated using farmer perceptions and scientific methods. Three hundred and sixty six smallholder farmers participated in the evaluation. The treatments which were overall rated as 'good' are tied ridges with a mean score of 2.9 and mean rank (2,873.87). Under this treatment sorghum grain yield of 3.7 t ha(-1) was recorded with application of 40 kg P ha(-1) + 20 kg N ha(-1) + Manure 2.5 t ha(-1). This was closely followed by tied ridges and contour furrows overall rated 'good' best three under the same soil fertility management options with a mean score ranging from 2.65 to 2.8 and yielding 2.7-3.7 t ha(-1). However, the treatments which were rated as 'poor' were experiment controls with a mean score below (1.43), mean rank (1,101.24) and yielding as low as (0.7 t ha(-1)). Therefore, integration of organic and inorganic inputs under various water harvesting technologies could be considered as an alternative option towards food security under climate change for semi-arid areas of Embu County.Climate change has a dual implication on the built environment: on the one hand human settlements and urban buildings are vulnerable to the effects of changing climate, and on the other hand the building sector has a significant climate change mitigation potential. Urban downtown areas are densely built busy hubs of life, and are seriously affected by the negative aspects of microclimate as density also equals to higher rate of anthropogenic emissions. When considering the application of energy efficiency measures for buildings, focus should be on the energy efficient refurbishment of the ageing buildings of historical city centres. Is there a relevant common typology for the building stock of historical city centres for the comparable definition of their energy demand? This paper presents a bottom-up methodology to develop and compare a generalized building typology of the urban building stock of European historical downtown areas from different climate zones. The typology is developed with the consideration of the cities' climate data, economical characteristics, furthermore building construction dates and energy consumption patterns; data were collected and compared for Amsterdam, Barcelona and Budapest. Based on the typology the energy demand of the surveyed building types is calculated for each city and energy density of the analysed areas were defined. The study outlines future policy making directions which should address historical building stock. This typology will be the basis for further research for the calculation of energy saving potential of historical city centres of Europe.This work seeks to evaluate the implications of a life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas (LCA-GHG) emissions in the optimisation of the power generation mix of Brazil through 2050, under baseline and low-carbon scenarios. Furthermore, this work assesses the impacts of enacting a tax on LCA-GHG emissions as a strategy to mitigate climate change. To this end, a model that integrates regional life cycle data with optimised energy scenarios was developed using the MESSAGE-Brazil integrated model. Following a baseline trend, the power sector in Brazil would increasingly rely on conventional coal technologies. GHG emissions in 2050 are expected to increase 15-fold. When enacting a tax on direct-carbon emissions, advanced coal and onshore wind technologies become competitive, GHG emissions peak at 2025 and decrease afterwards, reaching an emission level 40% lower in 2050 than that of 2010. However, if impacts were evaluated through the entire life cycle of power supply systems, LCA-GHG emissions increase to a level 50% higher in 2050 than 2010 emissions under the same tax. This is due to loads associated with the construction of plant infrastructures and extraction and processing of fossil fuel resources. Thus, this study suggests that taxes might not be as effective in tackling GHG emissions as predicted in past studies if they are only applied to direct emissions.Market and system operators face new challenges as more renewable energy sources are added. The driving factors in this trend are mainly associated with environmental benefits of the renewable generation and climate change mitigation, as well as the reduction of the dependency of conventional and external energy source. If integrated in large scale, the nondispatchable nature of intermittent resources imposes some technical and economic challenges on the operation of power systems. Particularly, market dynamics and prices could be influenced by such integrations. Over the last years, the generation mix of Spain and Portugal has undergone a dramatic change, driven by new environmental policies and financial incentives. In this regard, wind has become one of the most popular alternative sources of energy, bringing new challenges from the operational and structural point of view. This trend has gone hand in hand with integration of both markets into the Iberian Electricity Market in 2007. This paper presents a simple methodology based on linear regression and variance decomposition in order to quantify the impact of wind generation on specific segments of the Iberian Electricity Market (MIBEL).This chapter summarizes the full content of this book where contributors have addressed various aspects of livestock production vis-a-vis climate change. Improving livestock production and productivity is the need of the hour to accomplish the ever increasing demand of the populace. Climate change appears to be a major constraint in this endeavour as it severely affects livestock directly or indirectly. Further, livestock itself is accountable for the climatic variations and negative environmental complications of climate change by dispensing large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The implications of climate change on livestock, the involvement of livestock in climate change, mitigation approaches and adaptation strategies for minimizing the adverse impact and reducing enteric methane (CH4) emissions debated in the various chapters of this book are summarized here.In recent years, rapid development of renewable energy, especially in form of photovoltaic cells and wind turbines, is resulting in significant energy security, climate change mitigation and economic benefits. Since the volatile character of wind and solar radiation leads to a fluctuating power production, these renewables are incapable of providing reliable base load power. Due to the order of energy storage magnitude involved, this can best be achieved by converting electricity into hydrogen via electrolysis, a process that is also called power to gas. This paper presents the process chains of different power to gas paths, including the development of power to gas pilot plants in China and in the worldwide. Finally, the use of hydrogen in transportation, chemical industry and reconversion to power are compared.Climate change is increasingly recognized as a worldwide phenomenon that impacts people's livelihoods in many ways. This is especially important in rural areas where households are heavily dependent on rainfed agriculture and natural resources in general for their livelihoods. Farmers' perception and the household level data were collected and analysed to understand the determinants of adaptation to climate change and the impacts of sustainable land and water management practices on agricultural productivity and climate change vulnerability. Rainfall has been showing a decreasing trend and increased variability so there have been new practices adopted by farmers to minimize the impact. Using the case study of Niger, this chapter explores the question of what drives adaptation to climate change in the region, including the adoption of land and water management practices using econometric analysis. Context-specific policy recommendations were drawn from the results that enhance the adaptation to climate change and reduce vulnerability through integrated land, water and soil management practices.Deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics may substantially alter soil N-oxide emissions. It is particularly relevant to accurately quantify those changes to properly account for them in a REDD+ climate change mitigation scheme that provides financial incentives to reduce the emissions. With this study we provide updated land use (LU)-based emission rates (104 studies, 392 N2O and 111 NO case studies), we determine the trend and magnitude of flux changes with land-use change (LUC) using a meta-analysis approach (44 studies, 135 N2O and 37 NO cases) and evaluate biophysical drivers of N2O and NO emissions and emission changes for the tropics. The average N2O and NO emissions in intact upland tropical forest amounted to 2.0 +/- 0.2 (n = 90) and 1.7 +/- 0.5 (n = 36) kg N ha(-1) yr(-1), respectively. In agricultural soils annual N2O emissions were exponentially related to N fertilization rates and average water-filled pore space (WFPS) whereas in non-agricultural sites a Gaussian response to WFPS fit better with the observed NO and N2O emissions. The sum of soil N2O and NO fluxes and the ratio of N2O to NO increased exponentially and significantly with increasing nitrogen availability (expressed as NO3-/[NO3- + NH4+]) and WFPS, respectively; following the conceptual Hole-In-the-Pipe model. Nitrous and nitric oxide fluxes did not increase significantly overall as a result of LUC (Hedges's d of 0.11 +/- 0.11 and 0.16 +/- 0.19, respectively), however individual LUC trajectories or practices did. Nitrous oxide fluxes increased significantly after intact upland forest conversion to croplands (Hedges's d = 0.78 +/- 0.24) and NO increased significantly following the conversion of low forest cover (secondary forest younger than 30 years, woodlands, shrublands) (Hedges's d of 0.44 +/- 0.13). Forest conversion to fertilized systems significantly and highly raised both N2O and NO emission rates (Hedges's d of 1.03 +/- 0.23 and 0.52 +/- 0.09, respectively). Changes in nitrogen availability and WFPS were the main factors explaining changes in N2O emissions following LUC, therefore it is important that experimental designs monitor their spatio-temporal variation. Gaps in the literature on N oxide fluxes included geographical gaps (Africa, Oceania) and LU gaps (degraded forest, wetland (notably peat) forest, oil palm plantation and soy cultivation).Although large scale nuclear power deployment can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, potential for nuclear power to reduce climate mitigation cost is not well understood. We use an energy system model to estimate the relative savings in mitigation costs enabled by nuclear power as well as their robustness via scenario and Monte Carlo analysis. Nuclear power reduces mitigation costs in all explored scenarios, but the extent varies considerably. Nuclear power reduces costs significantly if carbon storage capacity is low but is replaceable if the capacity is abundant and technology available. The same holds for the cost of renewables. However, providing a full cost benefit analysis of nuclear power is beyond the scope of this paper. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Energy security has gained increasing prominence on the EU political agenda, but is often framed narrowly, in terms of import dependency or security of supply. In this paper we screen and scope out a more comprehensive suite of energy security aspects to be considered when assessing low-carbon energy scenarios and apply it using the EU Energy Roadmap as an example. Availability and affordability issues as well as security of demand matters and geopolitical security aspects are identified and discussed. External factors, e. g., future international climate treaties and international relations, are important for some energy security outcomes. A broader framing of energy security together with structured assessments on the security implications of energy transitions would benefit future EU energy policy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change but is also heavily impacted by it. Sustainable land and water management plays an important role in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Some key elements of sustainable land and water management are represented by land reclamation and improvement arrangements (irrigation and drainage mainly). The main goal of land reclamation and improvement arrangements (irrigation and drainage) is to improve agricultural production. Irrigated agro-ecosystems maximize agricultural production but they can also provide and other services such as: erosion control, flood retention, sediment retention, groundwater recharge and habitat for birds. The economic value of ecosystem services provided by land reclamation and improvement works may be substantial larger than the crops' value. This paper will explore and analyze the ecosystem services provided by land reclamation and improvement works from western Romania (Timis County).Purpose - Successful marketing communication campaigns require a thorough assessment of the public's current perceptions and attitudes toward the topic of the campaign. Such insights are most likely attained if a range of research methods are employed. However, in the area of pro-environmental campaigns, there has been an over-reliance on quantitative surveys. To illustrate the benefits of complementary, qualitative approaches, this paper reports a qualitative investigation of perceptions of climate change among young South Koreans. Design/methodology/approach - The study employed a variant of the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), a hybrid protocol which combines photo elicitation with metaphor analysis of subsequent in-depth individual interviews. Unlike survey research, ZMET uncovers the emotional, interpretive and sensory mental structures which, along with factual knowledge, make up the public mindset about climate change. Findings - The analysis revealed a multifaceted mental model of climate change, whereby factual, interpretive and emotional knowledge is organized around themes of loss, human greed, affective distress and iconic representations of tragic endings. The causal dynamics of climate change are construed along a continuum of psychological distance, with antecedents placed in proximity and effects assigned to distant temporal, geographical and psychological spaces. Practical implications - Four message strategies for climate change mitigation campaigns are identified based on the findings. Originality/value - The study makes a methodological argument for supplementing survey research with image-based qualitative investigations in the formative stages of pro-environmental campaigns. More specifically, the article demonstrates the applicability of ZMET to social marketing communication. Apart from the methodological implications, this appears to be the first in-depth qualitative investigation of public perceptions of climate change in East Asia, a populous and fast developing region which has become a major contributor to the world's carbon emissions, and an important player in the global effort toward mitigation.Climate change is a growing threat to biodiversity, particularly in biodiversity-rich places such as tropical forests and coral reefs. At the same time, tropical deforestation is a major source of carbon emissions. Climate change mitigation measures may have positive impacts on deforestation, usually by design, or negative impacts, such as the destruction of tropical forests as an indirect result of American corn ethanol production. More generally, biodiversity and climate change both raise issues about the legality and effectiveness of bottom-up actions in the absence of global agreement. The typical approach to reducing undesirable activities such as deforestation or overfishing is to regulate the actors who produce them (the "suppliers" of these destructive activities). But another approach is to reduce the demand that drives these activities. These methods can be considered demand side because they attempt to reduce the demand for deforestation or overfishing, rather than regulating the farmers, developers, and fishers who produce these activities. Climate change and biodiversity threats both have links to the global food system. Conversion of land to agricultural use is a major threat to wild lands that store large amounts of carbon and harbor immense biodiversity. Increased crop yields, dietary changes, and population control can reduce these pressures, benefitting both biodiversity and the climate. The ocean's fish are also heavily over-utilized, and sustainable aquaculture can reduce pressures on wild fish stocks.Subsidies within the renewable energy (RE) sector are rife. Active government support is now advocated as a part of 'green industrial policy' to stimulate growth within the sector. While providing the positive externality of climate change mitigation, these policies leave certain government support measures vulnerable to countermeasures under WTO law. The same products are also often subject to simultaneous anti-dumping duties. This article aims to investigate the interaction between these trade remedies in the RE sector. It examines what lessons can be taken from recent reports of the WTO Panel and Appellate Body, and examines the 2012 US and 2013 EU investigations into the dumping of photovoltaic products from China. It concludes by reviewing outstanding issues for trade remedies in the RE sector; namely, the appropriate choice of surrogate third country and sampling technique, the accurate calculation of dumping and subsidy effects, and the burden of proof for double remedies.This chapter starts by introducing the complex nature of atmospheric aerosols, their sources, formation and properties and describes how they interact with clouds. This is important background information for discussing how aerosols affect climate, both directly and indirectly by affecting the radiative properties of clouds. The complexity of the aerosol-cloud-climate interaction causes large uncertainty in the projections of future climate. Results from different modelling studies on the European region are presented, and these show that the large spatial and temporal variations in atmospheric aerosol concentrations and properties have large regional differences in their effect on climate. This chapter concludes with an example of a co-beneficial global air quality and climate change mitigation scenario.In 2007, REDD+ emerged as the leading option for early climate change mitigation. In 2010, after the failure of negotiations at the Copenhagen COP, observers cited REDD+ projects and other subnational initiatives as examples of the polycentric governance (based on multiple independent actors operating at multiple levels) necessary to move climate change mitigation forward in the absence of a binding international agreement. This paper examines the ways subnational initiatives can and cannot play this role, based on the experiences and opinions of 23 REDD+ proponent organizations in six countries. These proponents have tested various approaches to climate change mitigation, demonstrating the value of a polycentric approach for promoting innovation and learning. However, from our sample, six initiatives have closed, four no longer label themselves as REDD+, only four are selling carbon credits, and less than half view conditional incentives (initially the core innovation of REDD+) as their most important intervention. While polycentric governance in REDD+ has benefits, it will not enable implementation of REDD+ as originally conceived unless accompanied by a binding international agreement.Planning for climate change mitigation/adaptation for enhancing urban resilience against natural disaster risks is an important issue in Japan. For such planning to be effective, studies suggest that it is important to consider the interaction (co-benefits and trade-offs) between adaptation and mitigation measures. For example, climate change mitigation and adaptation measures could be compatible if our government got people to move from flood prone areas with considering urban structure (e.g., compact city). In order to simulate the effectiveness of such interactions, we propose an integrated assessment model for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions under several urban land-use scenarios considering (i) urban form (dispersion/compact city) (ii) urban resilience (adaptation to flood risks) and (iii) diffusion of electric vehicles (EVs) and photovoltaic (PV) panels at a local town level in Tokyo. The developed model can be used to evaluate the co-benefits of both mitigation and adaptation measures from the viewpoint of CO2 emissions. Indirect emissions based on households' expenditure are also estimated in addition to direct emissions. The obtained results suggest that climate change mitigation and adaptation can generate a synergistic effect from the viewpoint of CO2 emissions.As global climate mitigation actions increasingly appear to be unable to curb global emissions, there has been a corresponding increase in climate adaptation planning undertaken by governments and communities. Along with an increasing number of adaptation studies, there has been an increasing complexity of adaptation studies as practitioners attempt to plan the adaptation of whole communities, cities and in some cases nations. These studies are commonly underpinned by increasingly complex climate change vulnerability studies that also attempt to encompass concepts such as resilience and adaptive capacity. Owners and operators of infrastructure assets and networks also need to consider climate change. This need has been met by an increasing number of climate change risk and adaptation studies of major infrastructure. The approaches used for these assessments are commonly derived from assessments of whole communities and policy development studies, and apply terminology that is often inconsistent with established engineering asset management methods and approaches. As a result the uptake of these studies has been less than desirable in many cases. To this end, the work presented here proposes a set of principles for undertaking the assessment of climate changes impacts on assets and infrastructure.Cities are facing ever greater challenges regarding climate change. Urban governments and policymakers have taken such challenges into account when maintaining urban development momentum. Although the city government of Jakarta has implemented several initiatives to reduce emissions, assessments of the impact of these strategies on the sustainability of the urban system remain limited. This paper investigates the evaluation of two mitigation scenarios for reducing Jakarta's greenhouse gases that differ in the authority level of the local government, using a policy analysis approach. The method emphasizes the use of the system dynamics model to gain insights into each option. The results reveal that the city's development goals would be best achieved through joint partnership with the national government. Such cooperation would have a more significant effect on economic, social, and environmental sustainability than would be in the case in other scenarios.Arctostaphylos pungens HBK is a dominant species with increasing abundance and distribution in chaparral ecosystems as a result of range management and, possibly, changes in climate. The value of this species for carbon (C) sequestration is unknown, and the standard 50% C out of total tree biomass is used as an approximate value. In this study, we aim to determine the C concentration of the primary components of A. pungens. The total C expressed as a percentage of biomass was determined with a Solids TOC Analyzer. We found the C concentration to vary among components. Leaves exhibited the highest C concentration (51.70%). Roots (46.11%), stems (47.30%), fruits (47.89%) and twigs (48.40%) had similar C concentration. These results provided superior estimates of C concentration, and reliable information concerning the potential use of A. pungens in climate-change mitigation programs.Although it is widely acknowledged that the replacement of conventional 'grey' energy with renewable 'green' energy is an important pillar of climate change mitigation, the question of how governments can support this development remains highly contested. In Canada - Renewable Energy, a domestic support measure for renewable energy generation has been subject if dispute settlement proceedings before the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the first time. In this ruling, the concept of 'relevant market' which forms part of the subsidy analysis proved to be highly controversial. By looking at the delineation of the relevant market and the conditions justifying subsidies, this article takes up this debate and examines the degree of policy space that is conferred to WTO Members in supporting their renewable energy sector. It discusses possible solutions to overcome the legal insecurity emanating from the blurry concept of 'relevant market' by arguing that a comparison between the WTO law and antitrust law can yield valuable insights to establish a more consistent approach for assessing the relevant market.Collaborations to address complex societal problems associated with managing human-natural systems often require large teams comprised of scientists from multiple disciplines. For many such problems, large-scale, transdisciplinary projects whose members include scientists, stakeholders, and other professionals are necessary. The success of very large, transdisciplinary projects can be facilitated by attending to the diversity of types of collaboration that inevitably occur within them. As projects progress and evolve, the resulting dynamic collaborative heterogeneity within them constitutes architectures of adaptive integration (AAI). Management that acknowledges this dynamic and fosters and promotes awareness of it within a project can better facilitate the creativity and innovation required to address problems from a systems perspective. In successful large projects, AAI (1) functionally meets objectives and goals, (2) uses disciplinary expertise and concurrently bridges many disciplines, (3) has mechanisms to enable connection, (4) delineates boundaries to keep focus but retain flexibility, (5) continuously monitors and adapts, and (6) encourages project-wide awareness. These principles are illustrated using as case studies three large climate change and agriculture projects funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture.This paper presents the historical changes in temperature, precipitation, evaporation and its possible effects on runoff of Qiantang River Basin, and estimated their possible future regional variations using Bias Correction and Spatial Disaggregation (BCSD) downscaled Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) projections under RCPs 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5, respectively. The results confirm the increase of annual mean temperature and evaporation in the historical dataset, this upward trend is expected to continue and accelerate in the CMIP5 projections. The historical annual average precipitation fluctuates with decreasing trend, whereas CMIP5 projections indicate an opposite rise in the future. The drought-flood cycle is relatively robust before 1970, but exhibits shorter transition time, stronger magnitude and higher occurrence frequency of extremes then, especially in the CMIP5 projections. The fluctuation is also indicated in the runoff with an upward trend during 1961-2005. As for the future, the potential impacts assessment shows that the streamflow would possibly experience the reduction in the first half of 21st century, and then a positive variation in the second half. Furthermore, the spatial variation pattern of these four variables was also discussed, those large sub-basin and important areas with the high possibility to experience notable climate change or extreme events were also pointed out. In addition, the uncertainty stemming from climate mitigation scenario and the inter-model variability was identified and explored. Generally, statistical positive changes are indicated for temperature, precipitation and evaporation ordered by the amount of radiative forcing under three RCP scenarios, and the inter-model uncertainty grows with both time and variation magnitude.We conducted a literature review of the basic density of diverse species focused on timber species in Mexico by vegetation cover type. Ecosystems and species included are based on the classification of the vegetation of Mexico prepared by J. Rzedowski (1978) that even tough it is still considered the primary source of information on vegetation types, it is necessary to take into account that there are new developments in the taxonomic identification and/or reclassification. Whereupon, we list here the wood density values for 611 species and 785 species are identified as without information at the time. Also, we provide data of minimum and maximum values of density by ecosystem type, and the list corresponding to density by specie (sp.), and by ecosystem type. The knowledge of wood density, not only allows the better use of wood as a natural resource, but it becomes important in the conversion of real stock volume (m(3)) to biomass (t) and in particular to estimate the content, capture or carbon sequestration, where, by having the value of wood density, allows more accurate estimates (biomass and carbon concentrations). This fact has gained importance to the carbon sequestration market as a conservation measure of plant cover, payment for environmental services, in particular as a strategy for climate change mitigation and especially for greenhouse gases emission inventories and MRV of REDD's projects.Rice cropping innovations for high yield with high N use efficiency (NUE) and low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are significant in ensuring food security and coping with climate change. The objective of this study was to investigate the comprehensive effects of dense planting with less basal N application (DR) on rice yield, NUE and GHG emissions. Field experiments were conducted at three sites in China. Shenyang, Danyang and Jinxian representing annual single rice cropping system, wheat-rice cropping system and double rice cropping system, respectively. Four planting densities with 25, 50, 75 and 100% higher each time correspondingly with about 25, 50, 75 and 100% less in basal N rate (i.e., DR1, DR2, DR3 and DR4 correspondingly) relative to traditional cropping for high yield (CK). Across three tested sites, the DR1 mode showed a large potential of NUE enhancement by 19.6% and GHG emissions mitigation by 12.2% at area-and yield-scaled with similar rice yield compared to the CK. However, further increase in planting density and decrease in basal N application caused a significant reduction in rice yield with a large increase in GHG emissions. Our results will provide important reference to rice cropping innovations for the integrated goals of food security, environmental health and climate change mitigation in China (C) 2015 Friends Science PublishersIn the area of environmental comfort, there are more and more tools to help the architect to create spaces using passive technologies in the search for user comfort, initially knowing the local climate. In this respect, the study of natural ventilation air as a means of climate mitigation, it is emphasized that they are moving properly allows air exchange in the environment, and reduce the internal temperature and participate in the improvement of thermal comfort and can reduce energy consumption. Thus, for the preparation of this work a literature review was performed, and then analyzed briefly the flow of natural ventilation and stagnation points in a residence located in the city of Panambi / RS. It is felt that the potential and versatility of natural ventilation become an advantage in any project and should be applied whenever possible.Cocoa production in the Ecuadorian Amazon is an important source of income for the local population. There is a wide variety of cocoa production systems, from enriched primary forests to traditional agroforestry systems and monoculture. This study assesses the relationship between tree diversity, carbon stocks, agricultural productivity and forest use potential under three land use systems in the Ecuadorian Amazon: cocoa-based agroforestry (Cocoa AFS), cocoa monoculture (Monoculture) and primary forest (PF). Understanding and quantifying the tradeoffs between different ecosystem services related to cocoa production systems can contribute to the conservation of primary forests and help to optimize income for local people. Species richness, beta-diversity, carbon stocks (above-and below-ground biomass, necromass and soil), and cocoa and timber production were determined for each system in 1,600 m(2) study plots (n=28). The results show that beta diversity, species richness and carbon stocks were significantly higher in PF and Cocoa AFS, whereas cocoa production was 1.5 times higher in the Monoculture than in Cocoa AFS. In both cocoa systems, species richness, beta diversity and total C were negatively correlated with cocoa productivity. Although our results show that cocoa monoculture was more profitable than Cocoa AFS for the farmers, a monetary payment based on carbon credits for avoided deforestation could be a viable strategy to support the implementation of Cocoa AFS, which would help conservation efforts and climate change mitigation while sustaining commercial cocoa production in the area.Climate change mitigation is the most important driving force for bioenergy development. Consequently, the environmental design of bioenergy value chains should address the actual savings of both primary energy demand and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. According to the EU Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC), no direct impacts and no GHG emissions should be attributed to crop residues (like cereal straws) when they are removed from agricultural land for the purpose of bioenergy utilisation. The carbon neutral assumption applied to crop residues is, however, a rough simplification. Crop residues, indeed, should not be viewed simply as a waste to be disposed, because they play a critical role in sustaining soil organic matter and therefore have an inherent C-capturing value. Moreover, considering straws as an energy feedstock, its status of co-product is clearly recognised and its availability could be obtained according to different cropping systems, corresponding to different primary energy costs and GHG emissions. This paper highlights some hidden features in the assessment of agricultural energy and carbon balance, still very difficult to be detected and accounted for. Although they are frequently disregarded, these features (such as long term dynamic trend of soil organic carbon and annual nitrous oxide emissions from the soil) should be carefully considered in assembling the energy and emission balance. By using a crop simulation model, the long-term soil organic matter and annual N2O soil emissions were estimated. Consequently, a comprehensive energy and GHG balance was determined in accordance with the life cycle assessment methodology. Contrasting methods of straw management and wheat cultivation were compared: straw retention vs removal from the soil; conventional vs conservation tillage; wheat cropping system as a single-crop or in rotation. The resulting carbon footprint of straws has different magnitudes with respect to the several experimental conditions. By selecting the best agricultural practices, energy from straw can be optimally coupled with grain productions, without detrimental effects on soil fertility. An improved and specifically tailored cropping system is designed to obtain an optimal trade-off.Assisted colonisation - the translocation of organisms with release in areas outside their indigenous range in response to threats such as climate change - was presented in the scientific literature only a few years ago as a new tool for species conservation. The idea of planned introductions for conservation is a controversial issue, prompting vigorous, and sometimes ill-informed, debate in the scientific literature. The broad consensus was that this represented a bold new direction that had merit but carried great risk. Unacknowledged by most commentators, assisted colonisation (by other names) was already taking place, and in Australia and New Zealand was even a long-accepted part of the conservation management tool kit. In 2013, the IUCN recognised assisted colonisation as a legitimate, if inherently risky, conservation translocation, and set out a comprehensive set of guidelines for its application. We review the history of assisted colonisation, with a focus on Australian and New Zealand projects moving species in response to threats within the indigenous range. We review the current status of assisted colonisation in Australia and New Zealand and present two case studies to illustrate the application of new approaches for assisted colonisation planning: Australia's western swamp tortoise (Pseudemydura umbrina), and New Zealand's hihi (Notiomystis cincta). We conclude by considering future directions in the specific application of translocations for climate change mitigation in the region.The quantification of CO2 emissions from anthropogenic land use and land use change (eLUC) is essential to understand the drivers of the atmospheric CO2 increase and to inform climate change mitigation policy. Reported values in synthesis reports are commonly derived from different approaches (observation-driven bookkeeping and process-modelling) but recent work has emphasized that inconsistencies between methods may imply substantial differences in eLUC estimates. However, a consistent quantification is lacking and no concise modelling protocol for the separation of primary and secondary components of eLUC has been established. Here, we review differences of eLUC quantification methods and apply an Earth System Model (ESM) of Intermediate Complexity to quantify them. We find that the magnitude of effects due to merely conceptual differences between ESM and offline vegetation model-based quantifications is similar to 20% for today. Under a future business-as-usual scenario, differences tend to increase further due to slowing land conversion rates and an increasing impact of altered environmental conditions on land-atmosphere fluxes. We establish how coupled Earth System Models may be applied to separate secondary component fluxes of eLUC arising from the replacement of potential C sinks/sources and the land use feedback and show that secondary fluxes derived from offline vegetation models are conceptually and quantitatively not identical to either, nor their sum. Therefore, we argue that synthesis studies should resort to the "least common denominator" of different methods, following the bookkeeping approach where only primary land use emissions are quantified under the assumption of constant environmental boundary conditions.Achieving a truly sustainable energy transition requires progress across multiple dimensions beyond climate change mitigation goals. This article reviews and synthesizes results from disparate strands of literature on the coeffects of mitigation to inform climate policy choices at different governance levels. The literature documents many potential cobenefits of mitigation for nonclimate objectives, such as human health and energy security, but little is known about their overall welfare implications. Integrated model studies highlight that climate policies as part of well-designed policy packages reduce the overall cost of achieving multiple sustainability objectives. The incommensurability and uncertainties around the quantification of coeffects become, however, increasingly pervasive the more the perspective shifts from sectoral and local to economy wide and global, the more objectives are analyzed, and the more the results are expressed in economic rather than nonmonetary terms. Different strings of evidence highlight the role and importance of energy demand reductions for realizing synergies across multiple sustainability objectives.This paper gives ideal policy instruments for climate change mitigation concerning the power generation sector in China. In order to make a comparison of different categories of policy tools, general policy instruments for mitigation were reviewed. This paper examined each existing and potential national mitigation instrument when applied in power generation sector's emission reduction, in terms of their effects, efficiency and feasibility. An applicable portfolio of policy instruments for Chinese electricity generation sector was identified.Open ecosystems in Mexico are under increasing pressure, due particularly to the expansion of cities and agricultural activities. These developments occur without integrating biodiversity concerns in land use planning and result in extensive fragmentation and transformation of the landscapes. The semiarid region of Mesa Central was characterized using ten precipitation-based indices. Using multivariate statistical and geostatistical spatial analysis techniques, the influence of those indices on five land use strata was explored. Land use analysis indicated that the maximum values of the five significant precipitation-based indices were found in Grasslands, Agricultural Use, and Shrubs; minimum values were characteristic of substrates Secondary Desert Vegetation and Other Use. Our results suggest that the greatest number of extreme precipitation events is likely to occur in open ecosystems and consequently will have a strong influence on landscaping and land use. The semivariogram analysis and geostatistical layers demand attention from research institutions, policy makers, researchers, and food producers to take the appropriate and coordinated actions to propose scenarios to deal with climate change. Perhaps this study can stimulate thought concerning research endeavours aimed at promoting initiatives for biodiversity conservation and planning programs for climate change mitigation.Forest inventory data are important for adaptive forest ecosystem management especially in the context of a changing climate. This paper aimed to establish a baseline to understand the present carbon stock of protected forest ecosystems in Mindanao, which is also critical in the long-term monitoring of carbon sequestration potential of these protected ecosystems. Initial and current inventory data for trees and shrubs were used to present the carbon storage potential of four LTER sites in Mindanao, namely: Mt. Kitanglad in Bukidnon, Mt. Hamiguitan in Davao Oriental, Mt. Malindang in Misamis Occidental and Mt. Apo in North Cotabato. A one-hectare permanent plot divided into 20 x 20 m subplots was established in each LTER site and a 100% enumeration of all trees and shrubs with at least 1.0 cm diameter at breast height was conducted for each subplot. Representative subplots totalling 30% sampling intensity for each LTER site were covered in the assessment. Since the four areas are long-term monitoring sites, standard allometric equation for tropical forest with 1500-4000 mm annual rainfall was used in lieu of destructive sampling. Using the biomass estimates, the LTER sites showed slight differences in carbon sequestration potential with Mt. Kitanglad obtaining the highest carbon density with 28.65 ton ha(-1) followed by Mt. Malindang with 27.24 ton ha(-1), Mt. Apo with 22.79 ton ha(-1) and Mt. Hamiguitan with 18.77 ton ha(-1). These findings are comparable to carbon storage potentials of managed tree plantations suggesting the importance of forest protection in enhancing land-based carbon stocks as well as the role of the country in climate change mitigation.The use of renewable energy sources to increase electricity access, especially in remote areas as high mountains, is a possible contribution to poverty reduction, climate change mitigation and improved resilience. In this paper an evaluation of the wind potential of a remote area in Nepal is performed, using CFD methods and the simulation of a micro wind turbine projected by Perugia University. With an accurate analysis of wind data and air density effects it is possible to test energy production potential in areas with high average wind speed. The overall estimated production for each turbine is an interesting result and an easily exportable contribution to the perspective of sustainable development at very high altitudes and remote areas. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study investigated various zero emissions scenarios under A1T of IPCC-SRES (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Special Report of Emissions Scenarios) that allowed economic growth in particularly technological progress. We used our global modeling including a simplified climate model, whose supply costs of sectors in energies, materials, biomass and foods were minimized by linear programming from 2010 to 2150 in order to draw various zero emissions scenarios. In this study, we focused on various scenarios of CO2 zero emissions from the sectors and their climate change mitigations and their costs. Inclusion of Non CO2 greenhouse gases (NCGHG) can be chosen. We set following four scenarios. First one is Business As Usual (BAU) without any climate policy intervention. Second one is denoted as "350ppm zero", whose emissions trajectories are zero in the latter half of this century, which can be achieved by giving cumulative emissions of WRE 350 (Wigley Richels Edmonds) from 2010 to 2150 as emissions constraint. Caveating that this scenario add on the allowed WRE 350 emissions after 2010. Third one is denoted as "net zero", whose cumulative emissions from 2010 to 2150 is zero. This does not mean keep the emissions level zero in the time horizon; allowing positive emissions in several decades while negative emissions achieved by large deployment of BECCS (biomass energy carbon capture and storage). Fourth one is keeping the emissions level after 2100 is zero emissions, which is denoted as "2100 zero". We considered several patterns of carbon accounting for BECCS, such as carbon neutral, gross accounting, and net accounting. We also considered that two patterns of storage options for BECCS, one is only forest sink, the other one is allowing the captured CO2 into both the forest sink and geological storage. Following results when adding NCGHG emissions are obtained. Global mean temperature rise up to 2150 below 2 degree Celsius (DC) can be achieved in the "net zero" scenario, while "350ppm zero" scenario leached 2.3 DC. The "2010 zero" scenario leached 4 DC while BAU about 5 DC. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The continuous rising of anthropogenic emission into the atmosphere as a consequence of industrial growth is becoming uncontrollable, which causes heating up of the atmosphere and changes in global climate. The complexity in the structure of geological formations and the processes involved in this method necessitates the use of revealing the potential problems, determining feasibility, storage capacity, and life span credibility. The development and commercialization of carbon dioxide capture and storage technology would have positive impacts in certain regions of Turkey. Many domestic industries utilize CO2-intensive processes in their activities and many regions throughout the country have storage potential in close proximity to the sources. Being independent from the location carbon capture technology (CCT) can be applicable to all the existing and new coal, natural gas, fuel oil, and biomass-fueled power plants in Turkey.Identifying and quantifying the sources of climate impacts from land use and land cover change (LULCC) is necessary to optimize policies regarding LULCC for climate change mitigation. These climate impacts are typically defined relative to emissions of CO2, or sometimes emissions of other long-lived greenhouse gases. Here we use previously published estimates of the radiative forcing (RF) of LULCC that include the short-lived forcing agents O-3 and aerosols, in addition to long-lived greenhouse gases and land albedo change, for six projections of LULCC as a metric for quantifying climate impacts. The LULCC RF is attributed to three categories of LULCC activities: direct modifications to land cover, agriculture, and wildfire response, and sources of the forcing are ascribed to individual grid points for each sector. Results for the year 2010 show substantial positive forcings from the direct modifications and agriculture sectors, particularly from south and southeast Asia, and a smaller magnitude negative forcing response from wildfires. The spatial distribution of future sources of LULCC RF is highly scenario-dependent, but we show that future forest area change can be used as a predictor of the future RF from direct modification activities, especially in the tropics, suggesting that deforestation-prevention policies that value land based on its C-content may be particularly effective at mitigating climate forcing originating in the tropics from this sector. However, the response of wildfire RF to tropical land cover changes is not as easily scalable and yet imposes a non-trivial feedback onto the total LULCC RF.Purpose - The purpose of this study is to put forward a methodological framework to provide a comparative assessment of available mitigation and adaptation strategies against climate change. Mitigation options aim at minimizing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, in an effort to reduce the rate of increase in global temperature. On the other hand, adaptation options relate to the ability of the natural or human systems to handle the impact of the climate change and to adjust to its effects, seeking to eliminate the adverse consequences and take advantage of any beneficial outcomes. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology focuses on specific parameters, leading to the most efficient package of alternatives for the area of Greece. The selection of the "optimal" ranking of alternatives in a defined strategy is a sophisticated procedure, and a multi-criteria decision-making process was established. A questionnaire was designed and used as input to the overall framework, based on specific decision criteria. Climate change experts gave their feedback via a face-to-face interview. ELECTRE III multi-criteria decision analysis was adopted for the comparative evaluation, as it fits best to complex environmental problems. An "optimal" sequence of mitigation and adaptation strategies was provided for Greece. Findings - The use of renewable energy sources, increase of energy efficiency and improved forest management - tree planting and rational water management - are among the most promising options to strategically plan climate change mitigation and adaptation for Greece. Originality/value - The presented study provides an insight into alternative mitigation and adaptation strategies against climate change. The use of the multi-criteria analysis is an innovative approach to outline the optimal bundle of strategies. The methodology focuses on specific parameters, leading to the most efficient package of measures for the area of Greece. Such an approach is implemented for the first time in Greece, at least up to the authors' knowledge, and provides a basis for strategic governance and policy modeling for the area under consideration.The literature illustrates how media research on the energy question is characterized by a limited focus on separate energy options, resulting in a lack of research into the diversity of and mutual relations between various energy options. This paper reports on a quantitative content analysis of eight Belgian newspapers (N=1181), focusing on whether certain energy options are systematically more covered in certain regions, types of newspapers and/or types of newspaper sections. The results show that five energy options dominate the debate and that there are minimal differences per region, but remarkable differences between types of newspapers and newspaper sections.Adaptation, together with mitigation, is one of the two complementary actions that preferably must be undertaken jointly to cope with the problem of climate change. As stated by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), mitigation aims at avoiding the unmanageable impacts, while adaptation aims at managing the unavoidable impacts and increasing the resilience of natural and human systems to current and future impacts of climate change. Starting from this idea, the scope of the present work is to describe the methodological approach adopted to run a geological (quantitative) risk assessment, including an economic valuation, for slow landslide and develop a cost-benefit analysis of adaptation measures at local level in the urban area of Ancona municipality (Marche Region, Italy). Such activity has being carried out within the framework of the Life Project "ACT" (Adapting to Climate change in Time), that deals with the development of Local Adaptation Plans based on predictable climate scenarios and environmental, social and economic impact assessment of climate change on some of the most vulnerable urban areas in the Mediterranean basin.Climate change is putting infrastructure, food supply, water resources, ecosystems, and human health at risk. These risks will be exacerbated depending on the degree of additional greenhouse gas emissions. Urgent action is needed to limit the severity of impacts associated with further warming. British Columbia (BC) has taken action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from carbon-based fuels by introducing a carbon tax in 2008. As an innovative approach to climate change mitigation, especially in North America, studies evaluating its effectiveness are valuable. We assessed the long-term viability potential of the BC carbon tax using common pool resource design principles, a novel application of the design principles to environmental policy. We found that the design principles can be applied productively to environmental policy and larger scale air pollution problems. With regard to the BC carbon tax, our findings suggest that closer monitoring of user behavior, further increases of the tax over time, and pursuing efforts for a more elaborate system of nested enterprises and interjurisdictional cooperation could increase the long-term success of the BC carbon tax. We also found that the design principles allowed us to more comprehensively reach conclusions regarding the broader effectiveness of the tax when compared to existing policy analysis. Traditionally, climate policy evaluation has focused on the end goal without considering broader constraints and issues of resource allocation. We suggest that common pool resource theory, which is based on strong theoretical principles and encourages reflexivity, will be able to address those limitations.Purpose - We test whether demand-pull environmental measures, introduced with the 1997 Commission White Paper and following Directives, had an impact on the fragmentation of EU research and innovation effort in the strategic field of renewable energy. By focusing on knowledge spillovers, we study the pattern and evolution of knowledge flows within the EU and between the EU and two frontier innovators: the United States and Japan. This research question is motivated by increased concern that the fragmentation of EU renewable energy research and innovation systems may hamper the ability to address climate challenges at socially acceptable costs. Design/methodology/approach - Following a well-established tradition, we measure the intensity and the direction of knowledge flows by looking at patent citations. We use the EP_CRIOS database to collect information on EPO patent applications in renewable energy technologies by inventors residing in the US, Japan and the EU15, between 1985 and 2010. Since the number of citations depends on countries' characteristics and on the total number of patents, the analysis focuses on the probability of citations, estimated with a double exponential lag model, as proposed in Jaffe and Trajtenberg (1999), which allows to control for several factors affecting the likelihood of citation. Originality/value - This is the first work studying the fragmentation of EU technological space in the renewable energy sector and examining whether environmental policies can contribute to a strengthening of knowledge networks in this area. Our results suggest that after 1997 Member States' national innovation systems have evolved towards a more integrated innovation space at the EU level. Environmental policies seem to have pushed the EU to become a frontier innovator, since the EU15's role as a source of knowledge for the US increased. However, innovative activity at EU level is still poorly integrated if compared to the American and Japanese systems. Practical implications - The redesign of EU renewable energy policy will benefit from a clearer understanding of the links between research and innovative activities across Member States and of their evolution over time. Grasping whether environmental policy can contribute to a strengthening of knowledge networks, lowering the costs of climate mitigation and the burden for firm's competitiveness, is hence a relevant question for both researchers and policy makers. This study also offers insights for the design and the implementation of specific technology-push initiatives for the renewable energy sector, such as those envisaged by the 2008 SET-PLAN and the 2015 Energy Union package.Climate change is one of the defining challenges facing the planet. Voluntary forest carbon offset project which has the potential to boost forest carbon storage and mitigate global warming has aroused the global concern. The objective of this paper is to model the game situation and analyze the game behaviors of stakeholders of voluntary forest carbon offset projects in China. A stakeholder model and a Power-Benefit Matrix are constructed to analyze the roles, behaviors, and conflicts of stakeholders including farmers, planting entities, communities, government, and China Green Carbon Foundation. The empirical analysis results show that although the stakeholders have diverse interests and different goals, a win-win solution is still possible through their joint participation and compromise in the voluntary forest carbon offset project. A wide governance structure laying emphasis on benefit balance, equality, and information exchanges and being regulated by all stakeholders has been constructed. It facilitates the agreement among the stakeholders with conflicting or different interests. The joint participation of stakeholders in voluntary forest carbon offset projects might change the government-dominated afforestation/reforestation into a market, where all participators including government are encouraged to cooperate with each other to improve the condition of fund shortage and low efficiency.Currently residential wood combustion (RWC) is increasing in Europe because of rising fossil fuel prices but also due to climate change mitigation policies. However, especially in small-scale applications, RWC may cause high emissions of particulate matter (PM). Recently we have developed a new high-resolution (7 x 7 km) anthropogenic carbonaceous aerosol emission inventory for Europe. The inventory indicated that about half of the total PM2.5 emission in Europe is carbonaceous aerosol and identified RWC as the largest organic aerosol source in Europe. The inventory was partly based on national reported PM emissions. Use of this organic aerosol inventory as input for two chemical transport models (CTMs), PMCAMx and EMEP MSC-W, revealed major underestimations of organic aerosol in winter time, especially for regions dominated by RWC. Interestingly, this was not universal but appeared to differ by country. In the present study we constructed a revised bottom-up emission inventory for RWC accounting for the semivolatile components of the emissions. The revised RWC emissions are higher than those in the previous inventory by a factor of 2-3 but with substantial inter-country variation. The new emission inventory served as input for the CTMs and a substantially improved agreement between measured and predicted organic aerosol was found. The revised RWC inven-tory improves the model-calculated organic aerosol significantly. Comparisons to Scandinavian source apportionment studies also indicate substantial improvements in the modelled wood-burning component of organic aerosol. This suggests that primary organic aerosol emission inventories need to be revised to include the semivolatile organic aerosol that is formed almost instantaneously due to dilution and cooling of the flue gas or exhaust. Since RWC is a key source of fine PM in Europe, a major revision of the emission estimates as proposed here is likely to influence source-receptor matrices and modelled source apportionment. Since usage of biofuels in small combustion units is a globally significant source, the findings presented here are also relevant for regions outside of Europe.Global discussion on climate change and strengthening environmental protection has been launched, especially in the last three decades. As climate change is a result of greenhouse gas emissions, different mechanisms were introduced in order to reduce this impact, surely the most significant was set by the Kyoto Protocol. The Republic of Serbia considers a proper policy on environmental protection as one of its priorities. As the switch from traditional to renewable energy sources carries valuable improvements in environmental protection and economic efficacy, the Government encourages the use of renewable energy sources for the production of energy. This paper provides analysis of the potential of renewable energy sources in Serbia, carbon potential and their possible role in mitigation of climate changes. Results presented in the paper can be useful for the improvement of the strategic planning on the national level with the final aim to contribute to the increase in importance of use of renewable energy sources in that planning.Land-use changes (LUC) are one of most significant global change processes of the current era, with noticeable consequences on habitat loss, due mainly to agricultural expansion and urbanization. The carbon cycle dynamics can be affected significantly by LUC, with impacts on carbon sequestration and emission rates. Considering the direct effect of carbon gases enrichment of the atmosphere on climate change, it is of utmost importance to improve the knowledge base on the impacts of agricultural-based LUC on carbon sinks, such as soils. This chapter reviews the available data on the effects of LUC on soil carbon stocks in three major biomes of the southern portion of the South American continent (the Cerrado, the Southern Grasslands and the Atlantic Forest). The area of soybean crops has expanded almost four times in the La Plata Basin Grasslands of Argentina over the past decade, and near ten times in the Brazilian Cerrado since the mid-1980s. The area under sugarcane crops in Brazil has almost doubled since the mid-1990s, occupying approximately 8.5 million ha (Mha) in 2009. In 2011, forestry plantations occupied 28% more land in Brazil than in 2005, with a total area of 6.5 Mha (75% with Eucalyptus and 25% with Pinus). In general, all conversions of natural vegetation to agricultural land-use systems in the different biomes have resulted in significant losses of soil carbon stocks. The conversion of pastures and grasslands to annual croplands in the Rolling Pampas grasslands has decreased C stocks by 50% over the last century. This represents a much faster loss rate than the loss triggered by the introduction of domestic herbivores over the course of the previous nearly four centuries (22%). These results imply that soil degradation caused by annual crops is very rapid and results in a strong decrease in carbon stocks. However, adopting soil and water conservation management strategies and increasing the complexity of the cropping systems through adoption of no-tillage (NT) agriculture, well-managed pasture systems, integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems, multiple cropping and crop rotation with legume cover species, for example, can improve soil carbon sequestration rates by up to nearly 2.0 Mg C ha(-1) year(-1). The elimination of preharvest burning practices in sugarcane crops alone can result in gains of up to 0.93 t C year(-1) ha(-1). Improving soil and crop management to boost carbon sequestration in agricultural systems, while at the same time increasing resilience by improving soil quality, is a potential climate change mitigation option for farmers in South America.This paper is intended as a brief introduction to climate adaptation in a conference devoted otherwise to the physics of sustainable energy. Whereas mitigation involves measures to reduce the probability of a potential event, such as climate change, adaptation refers to actions that lessen the impact of climate change. Mitigation and adaptation differ in other ways as well. Adaptation does not necessarily have to be implemented immediately to be effective; it only needs to be in place before the threat arrives. Also, adaptation does not necessarily require global, coordinated action; many effective adaptation actions can be local. Some urban communities, because of land-use change and the urban heat-island effect, currently face changes similar to some expected under climate change, such as changes in water availability, heat-related morbidity, or changes in disease patterns. Concern over those impacts might motivate the implementation of measures that would also help in climate adaptation, despite skepticism among some policy makers about anthropogenic global warming. Studies of ancient civilizations in the southwestern US lends some insight into factors that may or may not be important to successful adaptation.Diversification of land use in the cultivation of various crops provides an alternative way to moderate the climate risk. By choosing alternative crops that are resilient to various weather parameters, farmers can reduce the crop damage and achieve optimum output from their limited land resources. Apart from other adaptation measures, crop diversity can reflect farmers' response towards changing climate uncertainty. This paper tries to examine the changing climatic condition through spatio-temporal variation of two important weather variables (precipitation and temperature) in the largest North-East Indian state, Assam, since 1950. It is examined by the variation in crop diversification index. We have used (1) Herfindahl Index for measuring degree of diversification and (2) locational quotient for measuring the changes in the regional crop concentration. The results show that, in almost all the districts, crop specialization has been taking place slowly and that happened mostly in the last phase of our study. The hilly and backward districts recorded more diversification but towards lower value crops. It goes against the normal feature of crop diversification where farmers diversify in favour of high value crops. Employing ordinary least squares method and/or Fixed Effect model, irrigation is found to have significant impact on crop diversification; while the flood plain zones and hill zones are found to have better progress in this regard, which has been due to the survival necessity of poor farmers living the zone. Thus crop diversity does not reflect very significant response from the farmers' side towards changing weather factors (except rainfall) though they have significant impact on the productivity of various crops, and thus profitability. The study thus suggests the necessity for rapid and suitable diversification as alternative climate change mitigation in the long run.This Article explores whether a private governance initiative can harness legacy concerns to address climate change. The socio-temporal trap is an important barrier to climate change mitigation: The costs of reducing carbon emissions will be incurred by this generation, but most of the benefits will accrue to future generations. Research suggests that social influences including concerns about legacy can induce individuals to overcome collective action problems, but individuals know that future generations will not have information about who acted today in ways meriting social sanctions or rewards. Insufficient information may undermine three aspects of legacy-driven behavior: the concern about how one's actions today will be viewed by future generations, the concern about how these actions will affect the social status of progeny, and the alignment of these actions with moral beliefs regarding the treatment of future generations. Making legacy-related information public today may also influence social sanctions and rewards from contemporaries. The Article examines the nature of legacy concerns, their effects on behavior, and the feasibility of a private legacy registry designed to record individuals' responses to climate change in ways that will not only be disclosed today, but will also be easily accessible for many generations.Simple climate models play an integral role in the policy and scientific communities. They are used for climate mitigation scenarios within integrated assessment models, complex climate model emulation, and uncertainty analyses. Here we describe Hector v1.0, an open source, object-oriented, simple global climate carbon-cycle model. This model runs essentially instantaneously while still representing the most critical global-scale earth system processes. Hector has a three-part main carbon cycle: a one-pool atmosphere, land, and ocean. The model's terrestrial carbon cycle includes primary production and respiration fluxes, accommodating arbitrary geographic divisions into, e.g., ecological biomes or political units. Hector actively solves the inorganic carbon system in the surface ocean, directly calculating air-sea fluxes of carbon and ocean pH. Hector reproduces the global historical trends of atmospheric [CO2], radiative forcing, and surface temperatures. The model simulates all four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) with equivalent rates of change of key variables over time compared to current observations, MAGICC (a well-known simple climate model), and models from the 5th Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project. Hector's flexibility, open-source nature, and modular design will facilitate a broad range of research in various areas.Field studies demonstrate increased ammonia (NH3) abatement efficiencies (up to 90%) of subsurface application and incorporation of animal manures compared to conventional surface application methods. However, a portion of the nitrogen (N) conserved may come at the expense of increased nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions produced during denitrification and nitrification processes in the soil. Research of N2O emissions subsequent to subsurface manure application is limited (particularly in the U.S.) and results are variable. Cumulative N2O emissions typically range from 0.1% to 3% of the total N applied following manure injection; however, only a few studies indicate a statistical difference in N2O emissions when compared to surface application methods. Circumstances attributed to increased emissions vary among studies and include the concentration of readily metabolizable water-soluble carbon (C) in manure slurry compared to background levels in the soil, soil moisture conditions pre- and post-subsurface application that drive nitrification and denitrification processes, localized N form and oxygen (O-2) concentration at the injection site, and injection depth, which can dictate the length of the diffusion path of N2O to the atmosphere. Research also draws correlations of N2O emission rates with subsurface application method, atmospheric conditions during and subsequent to application, and solids separation and dilution of manure slurry. Results thus far suggest that increased N2O emission is not an inevitable consequence of NH3 abatement strategies and should not dissuade subsurface manure application practices. Furthermore, potential reductions in indirect N2O emissions may be realized with subsurface application methods when compared to high NH3 volatilization and N deposition associated with surface application methods. Considering these tradeoffs and the ongoing debate on the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases such as N2O and their role in climate change warrants more investigation of the factors that contribute to N2O emissions. This review synthesizes the available research on N2O emissions following subsurface application of animal manure to both grassland and arable land, compares results from different application techniques, and examines the conditions and circumstances that lead to N2O emissions.As one of the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have drawn great academic and scientific attention over the last decades. With the economic development and fossil energy consumption growth in especially developing countries, such as Turkey, efforts controlling the CO2 emissions are required for both planning the countries' energy policy and maintaining the international agreement on climate change mitigation. Therefore, forecasting the CO2 emissions is a key factor in adjusting related policies. This article aims at presenting a grey prediction model to forecast the energy-related CO2 emissions in Turkey. Energy-related CO2 emissions for the period of 1965-2012 were considered as the case of this study. Then, emissions in Turkey were forecasted in the upcoming years, up to year 2025. Additionally, the forecasting accuracy was examined by calculating three different evaluation statistics. The results indicated that future energy-related CO2 emissions of Turkey can be successfully forecasted by application of the grey prediction model, and this technique can be used as a potential forecasting tool for CO2 emission.In this paper we explore the potential of a framework of ethical governance for low-carbon energy. Developing mainly in the field of information and communications technology, ethical governance is concerned with the marginalisation of ethical and moral issues during development and deployment of new technologies. Focusing on early carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) projects, we argue that a focus on technical arguments in the governance of low-carbon energy similarly risks sidelining deeper issues such as fairness, justice, and values. We believe an ethical governance approach does have potential for low-carbon energy technologies like CCS, but also that climate change mitigation technologies pose particular challenges for the implementation of ethical governance.The input-output model and social accounting matrix (SAM) models have been widely used in building multisectoral, economy-wide models for development planning and policy analysis (Miller 1985). Models of this type assume an economy that is linear in costs with exogenous demands and fixed prices. These models might be appropriate for short-run policy analysis, but their assumptions do not appear to apply to most real-world economies, which are either pure market economies or market-based economies with an overarching governmental presence. Even in the latter type of mixed economies, for example, India, a great deal of economic activity is not under direct control of the government, but is governed by price signals of the market. In such a decentralized system, myriad intersectoral and intrasectoral substitutions, mostly nonlinear, take place in production, consumption, and distribution in response to price changes. Moreover, there are important feedbacks arising out of interactions among the various commodity and factor markets. A computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is especially designed to capture these essential features of the market. CGE analysis, in comparison to other available techniques, thus captures a wider set of economic impacts from a shock or the implementation of a policy reform, typically, by building and then comparing alternative policy scenarios. Therefore, in this study, we have used a CGE model to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions abatement policies. This model is a single-country model interacting with the rest-of-the-world (ROW). We use this to address the primary concern of our policy makers to formulate national climate change mitigation policies which protect national interest without harming global concerns on climate-related issues.Typically, a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is employed to develop, first and foremost, what could be called the "no-policy" or "benchmark" scenario, but is conventionally alluded to as the baseline or business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, or simply reference scenario. Subsequently, it is usually run to generate counterfactual policy scenarios, which are then compared with respect to the reference scenario to derive policy lessons. In accordance with this convention in CGE analysis, we have set a twofold objective for this chapter: 1. To build a reference scenario in the absence of a market-based climate change mitigation policy such as carbon tax 2. To develop policy scenarios when carbon tax is instituted to motivate producers to switch to less carbon-intensive fuel inputs It needs to be stressed that confining the second objective to an analysis of carbon tax only is not because of any limitation of the model. Our CGE model is generic enough to simulate the impact of a variety of market-based climate policy instruments. A fuller utilization of the potential of our model which would include an investigation of many more market-based climate policy instruments could not be achieved in this study, but is part of our larger comprehensive plan already underway. At this point, therefore, it is pertinent to remind the reader that the present study is best perceived as work in progress rather than a conclusive piece of research. Finally, it may be noted that the reasonable assumptions of annual growth rates of 3 % and 1.5 % for total-factor productivity (TFP) and American Environmental Energy Inc. autonomous energy efficiency improvement (AEEI), respectively mentioned in the previous chapter apply to both the reference and policy scenarios developed in this chapter.Ridge tillage (RT) can promote increases in soil C and aggregation at greater rates than conventional tillage, but few studies have investigated how RT may affect soil N distributions across the row/inter-row space. Using a spatially intensive sampling design, we monitored soil potentially mineralizable N (PMN), inorganic N, and plant tissue N in a field study comparing RT and chisel plow (CP) systems. Experiments were fully replicated at two sites in Urbana, IL and Mason, MI during the 2012 growing season. At both sites, a strong interaction effect of tillage x row position was observed for PMN (Illinois, p = 0.005; Michigan, p = 0.02) with higher levels of PMN in the in-row (IR) position than off-row (OR) and between-row (BR) positions of RT treatments following re-ridging. Plant tissue analyses indicated a significant RT advantage at both sites (Illinois, p = 0.04; Michigan, p = 0.02), and a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indicated that PMN at the 0- to 5-cm depth in the IR position following re-ridging had a significant effect on inorganic N at the same position and, in turn, a strong influence on plant tissue N (comparative fit index = 0.86, standardized root mean square residual = 0.11, Akaike wt. = 1). Overall, our results suggest that RT can establish soil functional zones (SFZ) with distinct N profiles and that the relocation of PMN in-row may increase the spatial efficiency of N provisioning relative to conventional tillage.Inclusion of perennial vegetation filter strips (PFSs) in the toeslope of annual cropland watersheds can decrease NO3--N losses to ground and surface waters. Although PFSs are similar to riparian buffers, the processes responsible for NO3--N removal from PFSs are not well understood. Our objectives were to (i) determine the importance of denitrification as a sink for NO3--N loss from PFSs and (ii) evaluate how PFSs alter the biophysical processes that affect the relative importance of N2O and N-2 emissions. To address our objectives, we used a coupled field laboratory approach with experimental watersheds that included the following treatments: (i) PFSs covering the bottom 10% of the watershed and an annual corn-soybean crop rotation covering the remaining upslope 90% (PFS); (ii) 100% corn-soybean rotation (CORN); and (iii) 19-yr-old 100% restored native grassland (RNG). In situ N2O flux rates and laboratory N2O/(N-2 + N2O) ratios were highest in CORN watersheds followed by PFS and RNG watersheds. In contrast, potentially mineralizable C and denitrification enzyme activity (DEA) were highest in PFS and RNG watersheds and lowest in CORN watersheds. Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between N2O/(N-2 + N2O) ratio and DEA. In the laboratory, N-2 fluxes were highest in PFS followed by RNG and CORN. These results indicate that PFS watersheds support greater total denitrification while emitting less N2O than croplands. Greater potentially mineralizable C in PFS and RNG suggest C availability is an important factor affecting more complete denitrification. These results suggest PFSs function similar to riparian buffers and have potential to reduce NO3--N losses from annual croplands by denitrification to N-2.1. Tropical forests are globally important, but it is not clear whether biodiversity enhances carbon storage and sequestration in them. We tested this relationship focusing on components of functional trait biodiversity as predictors. 2. Data are presented for three rain forests in Bolivia, Brazil and Costa Rica. Initial above-ground biomass and biomass increments of survivors, recruits and survivors + recruits (total) were estimated for trees >= 10 cm d.b.h. in 62 and 21 1.0-ha plots, respectively. We determined relationships of biomass increments to initial standing biomass (AGB(i)), biomass-weighted community mean values (CWM) of eight functional traits and four functional trait variety indices (functional richness, functional evenness, functional diversity and functional dispersion). 3. The forest continuum sampled ranged from 'slow' stands dominated by trees with tough tissues and high AGB(i), to 'fast' stands dominated by trees with soft, nutrient-rich leaves, lighter woods and lower AGB(i). 4. We tested whether AGB(i) and biomass increments were related to the CWM trait values of the dominant species in the system (the biomass ratio hypothesis), to the variety of functional trait values (the niche complementarity hypothesis), or in the case of biomass increments, simply to initial standing biomass (the green soup hypothesis). 5. CWMs were reasonable bivariate predictors of AGB(i) and biomass increments, with CWM specific leaf area SLA, CWM leaf nitrogen content, CWM force to tear the leaf, CWM maximum adult height H-max and CWM wood specific gravity the most important. AGB(i) was also a reasonable predictor of the three measures of biomass increment. In best-fit multiple regression models, CWM H-max was the most important predictor of initial standing biomass AGB(i). Only leaf traits were selected in the best models for biomass increment; CWM SLA was the most important predictor, with the expected positive relationship. There were no relationships of functional variety indices to biomass increments, and AGB(i) was the only predictor for biomass increments from recruits. 6. Synthesis. We found no support for the niche complementarity hypothesis and support for the green soup hypothesis only for biomass increments of recruits. We have strong support for the biomass ratio hypothesis. CWM H-max is a strong driver of ecosystem biomass and carbon storage and CWM SLA, and other CWM leaf traits are especially important for biomass increments and carbon sequestration.Purpose - The change management literature on strategy implementation identifies different dimensions of resistance to change. The contrary view - that of dimensions of acceptance of change when implementing strategy - has received less attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation of environmental sustainability strategies by Nordic insurers, the role of leadership in implementing these changes, and employee acceptance of change. Design/methodology/approach - For achieving this purpose, this paper reports on an explanatory case study of Nordic non-life insurers, where interviews with insurance executives and specialists were the primary source of data. Findings - The authors have developed simple strategy maps, focusing on insurers' own operations, product offerings, loss prevention and claims settlements, investments and influence on stakeholders, to show how common elements of environmental strategies are implemented within the insurance industry. The importance of leadership in organizational change is evident in the data, as well as in employees' positive attitudes towards implementation of environmental sustainability strategies. Originality/value - The scientific contribution of this paper is the empirical mapping of a hitherto unexplored area of the implementation of environmental sustainability strategies within the Nordic insurance industry, highlighting the leadership role in implementing environmental sustainability strategies and the elements shaping employee acceptance of change when implementing environmental sustainability strategies.This study empirically investigates the relationship between an individual's concern about climate change and one's actions reducing the effects of climate change and intentions to pay for mitigating such effects. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of economic factors that may serve as a contextual factor influencing these relationships. Based on data from the Life in Transition Survey covering individuals from 35 countries in 2010, this study uses information regarding the financial crisis of 2008 to inform about economic factors. The results suggest that respondents exhibiting higher climate change concerns are not only more likely to intend to pay for mitigating the effects of climate change, but they are also more likely to take actions in order to minimize such effects. The results also indicate that economic factors only have a moderating effect on the relationship between higher climate change concerns and actions. Furthermore, the results also point to the relevance of a country's state of economic development. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Forests provide many and large benefits, including cost-efficient climate change mitigation. However international carbon markets have not stimulated the demand for forestry offsets. Domestic market-mechanisms are emerging in many countries and forests could be highly valued through these policies as most of the benefits produced by forests are enjoyed locally. Here, a choice experiment explores drivers of valuation and willingness to pay for forest carbon services in voluntary markets in Mexico by comparing the valuation of citizens from four regions to test geographical preference for projects (n = 645). Findings from multinomial-logit models show valuation of forest carbon services is transferable and citizens would pay more for offsets from projects closer to their homes. Proximate forests provide a range of co-benefits to local users, including environmental services and opportunities for recreation. Factors related to valuation include sense of responsibility, previous knowledge of carbon emissions, previous visits to the sites, regional identification and the valuation of local environmental services (e.g. improvements in local air quality). Knowledge of spatial heterogeneity in valuation of the use of forest services can help to design market-based instruments by identifying highly valued areas for environmental services programs and carbon markets. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Since the early design of activities to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the need to engage local communities and indigenous groups in monitoring and reporting has been recognized. REDD+ has advanced under the UNFCCC negotiations, but most countries still need to define formally what the role of communities in their national monitoring systems will be. Previous research and experiences have shown that local communities can effectively contribute in the monitoring of natural resources. This editorial introduces a Special Issue of Forests which discusses the implications of and potential for including community based monitoring (CBM) in monitoring and benefit-sharing systems in REDD+. It outlines the main points of the nine contributions to the Special Issue which cover a wide geographical area and report on projects and research which engages more than 150 communities from eight different countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The editorial summarizes how the articles and reports build further understanding of the potential of CBM to contribute to the implementation, monitoring and distribution of benefits in REDD+. It also discusses the results of an on-going opinion survey on issues related to CBM and its relation to benefit sharing, which indicates that there is still disagreement on a number of key elements.In this study, we assess the climate mitigation potential from afforestation in a mountainous snow-rich region (Switzerland) with strongly varying environmental conditions. Using radiative forcing calculations, we quantify both the carbon sequestration potential and the effect of albedo change at high resolution. We calculate the albedo radiative forcing based on remotely sensed data sets of albedo, global radiation and snow cover. Carbon sequestration is estimated from changes in carbon stocks based on national inventories. We first estimate the spatial pattern of radiative forcing (RF) across Switzerland assuming homogeneous transitions from open land to forest. This highlights where forest expansion still exhibits climatic benefits when including the radiative forcing of albedo change. Second, given that forest expansion is currently the dominant land-use change process in the Swiss Alps, we calculate the radiative forcing that occurred between 1985 and 1997. Our results show that the net RF of forest expansion ranges from -24Wm(-2) at low elevations of the northern Prealps to 2Wm(-2) at high elevations of the Central Alps. The albedo RF increases with increasing altitude, which offsets the CO2 RF at high elevations with long snow-covered periods, high global radiation and low carbon sequestration. Albedo RF is particularly relevant during transitions from open land to open forest but not in later stages of forest development. Between 1985 and 1997, when overall forest expansion in Switzerland was approximately 4 %, the albedo RF offset the CO2 RF by an average of 40 %. We conclude that the albedo RF should be considered at an appropriately high resolution when estimating the climatic effect of forestation in temperate mountainous regions.This article discusses the conclusions of four national Technology Needs Assessment (TNA) processes in Latin America (2011-2013), as applied to the electricity sector. The primary focus is on the financial and economic barriers identified by countries to the transfer of prioritized low-carbon energy technologies. While many electricity markets in Latin America were liberalized during the 1990s and 2000s, such market-driven reform policies were far from uniform and in reality there exist a diversity of governance frameworks for national electricity markets, exemplified here by Argentina, Cuba, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. As such, we compare the identified barriers against the key characteristics of the national electricity sectors and natural resource base, in order to evaluate the relative significance of these barriers. In doing so, we make an indicative contribution to the debate about the relationship between financial and economic barriers to technology transfer and electricity market structures, based on a new round of country-driven priorities and analysis, in support of the UNFCCC process on climate change mitigation.The physiographic region of the Central Russian Upland, situated in the Central part of Eastern Europe, is characterized by very fertile grassland soils-Chernozems (Mollisols in the USDA taxonomy). However, over the last several centuries this region has experienced intense land-use conversion. The most widespread and significant land-use change is the extensive cultivation of these soils. As a result, Chernozems of the region that were some of the most naturally fertile soils in the world with thick A horizons had become, by the second half of the 19th century, weakly productive, with decreased stocks of organic matter. When not protected by plant cover, water and wind erosion degraded the open fields. The investigation of methods for rehabilitation and restoration of Chernozems resulted in the practice of afforestation of agricultural lands (mainly by windbreak planting). Preferences of agroforestry practices were initially connected with protection of cropland from wind and water erosion, improvement of microclimate for crop growth, and providing new refugia for wild animal and plant habitats. During the last several decades, tree windbreaks have begun to be viewed as ecosystems with great potential for atmospheric carbon sequestration, which plays a positive role in climate change mitigation. For the evaluation of windbreak influence on Chernozem soils, a study was developed with three field study areas across a climatic gradient from cool and wet in the north of the region to warm and dry in the south. Windbreak age ranged from 55-57 years. At each site, soil pits were prepared within the windbreak, the adjacent crop fields of 150 years of cultivation, and nearby undisturbed grassland. Profile descriptions were completed to a depth of 1.5 m. A linear relationship was detected between the difference in organic-rich surface layer (A + AB horizon) thickness of soils beneath windbreaks and undisturbed grasslands and a climate index, the hydrothermal coefficient (HTC). These results indicate that windbreaks under relatively cooler and wetter climate conditions are more favorable for organic matter accumulation in the surface soil. For the 0-100 cm layer of the Chernozems beneath windbreaks, an increase in organic C stocks comparable with undisturbed grassland soils (15-63 Mg.ha(-1)) was detected. Significant growth of soil organic matter stocks was identified not only for the upper 30 cm, but also for the deeper layer (30-100 cm) of afforested Chernozems. These findings illustrate that, in the central part of Eastern Europe, tree windbreaks improve soil quality by enhancing soil organic matter while providing a sink for atmospheric carbon in tree biomass and soil organic matter.Integrated assessments of how climate policy interacts with energy-economy systems can be performed by a variety of models with different functional structures. In order to provide insights into why results differ between models, this article proposes a diagnostic scheme that can be applied to a wide range of models. Diagnostics can uncover patterns of model behavior and indicate how results differ between model types. Such insights are informative since model behavior can have a significant impact on projections of climate change mitigation costs and other policy-relevant information. The authors propose diagnostic indicators to characterize model responses to carbon price signals and test these in a diagnostic study of 11 global models. Indicators describe the magnitude of emission abatement and the associated costs relative to a harmonized baseline, the relative changes in carbon intensity and energy intensity, and the extent of transformation in the energy system. This study shows a correlation among indicators suggesting that models can be classified into groups based on common patterns of behavior in response to carbon pricing. Such a classification can help to explain variations among policy-relevant model results. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.Stringent long-term climate targets necessitate a limit on cumulative emissions in this century for which sufficient policy signals are lacking. Using nine energy-economy models, we explore how policies pursued during the next two decades impact long-term transformation pathways towards stringent long-term climate targets. Less stringent near-term policies (i.e., those with larger emissions) consume more of the long-term cumulative emissions budget in the 2010-2030 period, which increases the likelihood of overshooting the budget and the urgency of reducing GHG emissions after 2030. Furthermore, the larger near-term GHG emissions associated with less stringent policies are generated primarily by additional coal-based electricity generation. Therefore, to be successful in meeting the long-term target despite near-term emissions reductions that are weaker than those implied by cost-optimal mitigation pathways, models must prematurely retire significant coal capacity while rapidly ramping up low-carbon technologies between 2030 and 2050 and remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere in the latter half of the century. While increased energy efficiency lowers mitigation costs considerably, even with weak near-term policies, it does not substantially reduce the short-term reliance on coal electricity. However, increased energy efficiency does allow the energy system more flexibility in mitigating emissions and, thus, facilitates the post-2030 transition. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.This paper assesses the sensitivity of climate change mitigation costs to energy efficiency policies, and gives policy insights for the timing of climate action. A hybrid general equilibrium model (Imitcum-R) is used to investigate numerically the interaction between technical change and economic growth. Energy efficiency in productive sectors lowers energy prices. Lower energy prices increase demand due to lower prices of non-energy goods and higher household revenues. Energy efficiency lowers the carbon price, shifting the emission constraint away from household energy consumption. Energy efficiency policies drive economic growth and reduce policy costs, but only if energy efficiency policies in industrialised regions are combined with measures to accelerate technology transfers towards other regions. The timing of efforts reveals a trade-off between short and long term costs. Early action triggers energy efficiency but shows high short-term costs and should be considered in combination with policies to accelerate technology diffusion. Late action shows high long-term costs, even when combined with policies to enhance innovation and accelerate diffusion. Early action could reduce the cost uncertainty induced by the controversy surrounding the appropriate discount rate for policy assessment, while late action would require additional measures to reduce long term costs, notably in sectors with significant inertia. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Macro- and sectoral-decomposition analyses were conducted using emission reduction scenarios from a global energy-system model. Emission reduction scenarios with targets of 550 ppm CO(2)eq and 450 ppm CO(2)eq, which consider variations in short-term emission fixes, up until 2030, based on extensions of the Copenhagen pledges, were selected from the AMPERE scenarios. All of the assessed emission reduction scenarios are technologically feasible through radical transformations in energy systems. Within the power sector, improvement of CO2 intensity requires wide deployment of carbon-dioxide capture and storage, nuclear power, and renewable energies. In end-use sectors, not only energy intensity improvements but also CO2 intensity improvements must be achieved by switching from fossil fuels to decarbonized energy by means of CO2 intensity improvements on the energy supply side. The feasibility of improvements in CO2 and energy intensities differs between sectors according to the types of mitigation options employed. The required carbon prices are $183/tCO(2) for the 550 ppm CO(2)eq target and $645/tCO(2) for the 450 ppm CO(2)eq target. When the short-term emission reduction is fixed at the level set by extensions of the Copenhagen pledges, long-term emission reductions by 2050 are more difficult to achieve because rapid and radical transformation of energy systems is required between 2030 and 2050. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Climate change mitigation efforts are currently characterized by a lack of globally coordinated measures and predominantly moderate regional action. This paper compares the results from different Integrated Assessment Models to analyze the impact of such moderate climate change mitigation actions on electricity technology deployment and development, along with the impact of first movers taking stringent unilateral action-specifically, the EU and an EU-plus-China coalition. We find that a fragmented regime with moderate climate and technology targets produces significant emission reductions and changes in the adoption of electricity technologies towards low-carbon alternatives, promoting global technology change. The adoption of more stringent policies by the first movers implies a further transformation of their electricity sectors, but technology deployment outside the coalition is not significantly affected. Furthermore, the results in some models show (1) that first movers can benefit from early action by increased access to low-carbon energy carriers and (2) that delayed action implies the lock-in of carbon-intensive technologies leading to a slower transformation of the electricity sector later. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper explores a multi-model scenario ensemble to assess the impacts of idealized and non-idealized climate change stabilization policies on fossil fuel markets. Under idealized conditions climate policies significantly reduce coal use in the short- and long-term. Reductions in oil and gas use are much smaller, particularly until 2030, but revenues decrease much more because oil and gas prices are higher than coal prices. A first deviation from optimal transition pathways is delayed action that relaxes global emission targets until 2030 in accordance with the Copenhagen pledges. Fossil fuel markets revert back to the no-policy case: though coal use increases strongest, revenue gains are higher for oil and gas. To balance the carbon budget over the 21st century, the long-term reallocation of fossil fuels is significantly larger twice and more than the short-term distortion. This amplifying effect results from coal lock-in and inter-fuel substitution effects to balance the full-century carbon budget. The second deviation from the optimal transition pathway relaxes the global participation assumption. The result here is less clear-cut across models, as we find carbon leakage effects ranging from positive to negative because trade and substitution patterns of coal, oil, and gas differ across models. In summary, distortions of fossil fuel markets resulting from relaxed short-term global emission targets are more important and less uncertain than the issue of carbon leakage from early mover action. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Destocking degraded rangeland can potentially help climate change mitigation by re-sequestering emitted carbon. Broad-scale implementation has been limited by uncertainties in the magnitude, duration and location of sequestration and the profitability relative to the existing grazing land use. This paper employs a novel methodology to assess potential rangeland sequestration and its profitability, using 31 Mha of rangeland in New South Wales, Australia as a case-study. This approach combines remotely sensed data and modelled estimates of various components. Remotely sensed, synthetic aperture radar data were used to determine woody biomass of minimally degraded forest (benchmarks) and neighbouring more-degraded forest, followed by sequestration modelling using non-linear growth rates based on woody thickening and slow-growing plantations, scaled to the benchmarks. Livestock concentration and livestock-based farm profits were modelled. We compared sequestration and grazing net profits, for a carbon price of AUD$10 Mg-1 CO2-e, at different growth stages for different levels of forest attrition. We found that broad-scale destocking with subsequent C re-sequestration was initially unprofitable compared with grazing. However, after 50 years, with full costing of C emissions, the returns were similar for the two alternatives of continued grazing or re-sequestration, for areas with biomass below benchmark levels. Reforestation of recently deforested land represents the most profitable option with profitability increasing with growth rate. Emissions of soil organic carbon, set in motion by climate change over the next century, were calculated to be the largest of all sources. Emissions from biomass, induced by climate change, will be higher where vegetation cannot adapt. The secondary effects of climate change will reduce re-sequestration and grazing profits, possibly limiting the carbon stored by re-sequestration projects. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present study illustrates a framework to analyze changes in climate aridity and soil degradation on a country scale in Italy. The spatial distribution of an indicator of soil vulnerability to degradation (the SQL soil quality index) was compared with an aridity index (the ratio of annual rainfall to annual reference evapotranspiration) estimated on a decadal basis during 1951-2010. The aridity index decreased by 0.38% per year indicating increased aridity and a non-uniform spatial distribution of soil vulnerability to degradation. Changes in the aridity index were found associated with the lowest SQI classes, suggesting that the largest increase in climate aridity affects land with high-quality soils. Territorial disparities in the aridity index between high-quality and low-quality soils decreased over time indicating a more homogeneous and dry climate regime prevailing in the more recent decades. Results may inform sustainable land management policies and National Action Plans to combat desertification in the Mediterranean region. Areas classified at increased aridity and high vulnerability to soil degradation should be identified as a key target for climate change mitigation policies. Sustainable land management strategies are required to address the dependency between climate variations, land-use changes and soil degradation processes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integration of perennial filter strips (PFS) into the toeslopes of agricultural watersheds may decrease downstream nitrate (NO3) losses. However, long-term NO3 removal depends on the relative importance of several NO3 sinks in the PFS. Plant biomass and labile soil organic matter (SOM) are temporary NO3 sinks, while stable SOM is a long-term, but potentially finite, NO3 sink. In contrast, denitrification is a permanent NO3 sink. We investigated the relative importance of these NO3 sinks in PFS at the toeslope of row crop watersheds in Iowa. Using 25- x 30-cm in situ mesocosms, we added (NO3)-N-15 to PFS soils and quantified (NO3)-N-15-N recovery in plant biomass and SOM after one growing season. Further, we compared (NO3)-N-15 -N recovery in particulate (relatively labile) and mineral-associated (relatively stable) SOM in mesocosms with and without growing perennial vegetation. To determine the potential importance of denitrification, we compared denitrification enzyme activity in soils from paired watersheds with and without PFS. Transfer of (NO3)-N-15 -N into labile and stable SOM pools was rapid and initially independent of growing vegetation. However, SOM and plant biomass were both relatively minor NO3 sinks, accounting for <30% of (NO3)-N-15-N inputs. Denitrification enzyme activity data indicated that dissolved organic carbon derived from perennial vegetation increased potential denitrifier activity in PFS soils compared with row crop soils. Together, these results constrain SOM and plant biomass as NO3 sinks and indicate that denitrification was the most important NO3 sink in perennial filter strips over one growing season.Soil organic carbon (SOC) is subject to relatively rapid changes. In grasslands soils, the management system influences these changes. Therefore, these soils play a crucial role in climate change mitigation. Current research has developed strategies and methodologies to help us understand their role as a carbon sink. In this study, the SOC and total nitrogen contents and stocks (SOC-S) and their variation with depth were evaluated in annual crop rotations (cereal-fallow). Fifty soil profiles were sampled in the Los Pedroches Valley (southern Spain). This area consists of Mediterranean open rangelandstreeless grasslands with cereal-fallow rotation, under two management systems: long-term (20 years) organic farming (OF) and conventional tillage (CT). The studied soils were Cambisols (CM), Leptosols (LP) and Luvisols (LV). The objective of this research was to determine any management system effects (OF vs CT) on SOC and total nitrogen contents and stocks and their variation with profile depth. It was observed that SOC concentration decreased with depth (Ah-Ap>Bw>C). The SOC concentration was higher in the top soil for all studied soils in OF compared with CT. The highest totals of SOC-S were found in LV-OF (6601Mgha(-1)) and the lowest in LP-CT (2133Mgha(-1)). Significant differences (p<005) between soils types and management practices were found in carbon stocks, increasing the SOC-S in OF compared with that in CT in all studied soils; this increase was 7525%, 8573% and 23488% for CM, LV and LP, respectively. The results indicated that management practices significantly influence SOC-S in the Los Pedroches Valley and, consequently, OF in annual crop rotations (cereal-fallow) is an excellent alternative to CT that increases the SOC content in Mediterranean open rangelandstreeless grasslands environments. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Conservation actions need to account for global climate change and adapt to it. The body of the literature on adaptation options is growing rapidly, but their feasibility and current state of implementation are rarely assessed. We discussed the practicability of adaptation options with conservation managers analysing three fields of action: reducing the vulnerability of conservation management, reducing the vulnerability of conservation targets (i.e. biodiversity) and climate change mitigation. For all options, feasibility, current state of implementation and existing obstacles to implementation were analysed, using the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany, as a case study. Practitioners considered a large number of options useful, most of which have already been implemented at least in part. Those options considered broadly implemented resemble mainly conventional measures of conservation without direct relation to climate change. Managers are facing several obstacles for adapting to climate change, including political reluctance to change, financial and staff shortages in conservation administrations and conflictive EU funding schemes in agriculture. A certain reluctance to act, due to the high degree of uncertainty with regard to climate change scenarios and impacts, is widespread. A lack of knowledge of appropriate methods such as adaptive management often inhibits the implementation of adaptation options in the field of planning and management. Based on the findings for Brandenburg, we generally conclude that it is necessary to focus in particular on options that help to reduce vulnerability of conservation management itself, i.e. those that enhance management effectiveness. For instance, adaptive and proactive risk management can be applied as a no-regrets option, independently from specific climate change scenarios or impacts, strengthening action under uncertainty.We propose a simple heuristic that uses open-access models and government data on agricultural activities to estimate total carbon emissions from agriculture, the gross carbon benefit and the opportunity cost per tonne CO2-e from revegetating to environmental plantings or plantation forestry. We test this across ten areas of mixed land-use that represent diverse Australian agricultural systems along a rainfall transect. The local value of agricultural production was obtained from government statistics and used to estimate the current economic opportunity cost of converting cleared agricultural land to mixed environmental plantings for carbon sequestration. Gross carbon benefit from revegetation was closely related to current agricultural use, as was financial opportunity cost. These were not related simply to site productivity potential or rainfall. The proportion of land cleared for agriculture that would need to be re-vegetated to achieve a localised zero-carbon land-use scenario was calculated by the ratio of current agricultural emissions to gross carbon benefit from revegetation; this ranged from 13% to 66% for groups of agricultural industries across Australian rainfall transects. While the heuristic does not capture the detail of models built specifically for local research questions it does provide a different lens on the questions policy makers and land managers may ask about the costs and benefits of revegetating agricultural land, and provides open-access methods to guide them. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper takes the 'policy failure' in establishing a global carbon price for efficient emissions reduction as a starting point and analyzes to what extent technology policies can be a reasonable second-best approach. From a supply-side perspective, carbon capture and storage (CCS) policies differ substantially from renewable energy policies: they increase fossil resource demand and simultaneously lower emissions. We analyze CCS and renewable energy policies in a numerical dynamic general equilibrium model for settings of imperfect or missing carbon prices. We find that in contrast to renewable energy policies, CCS policies are not always capable of reducing emissions in the long run. If feasible, CCS policies can carry lower social costs compared to renewable energy policies, in particular when second-best policies are only employed temporally. In case fossil resources are abundant and renewable energy costs low, renewable energy policies perform better. Our results indicate that a pure CCS policy or a pure renewable energy policy carry their own specific risks of missing the environmental target. A smart combination of both, however, can be a robust and low-cost temporary second-best policy.The impact of global warming and an increase in the indoor cooling equipments using energy sources other than conventional energy have become very attractive because they can reduce consumption of fossil fuels as well as harmful emissions in to the environment. The solar energy is one of the readily available forms of renewable energy which can be used to operate the cooling equipments depending on the geographical location of the area where solar cooling system needs to be installed. The effectiveness of solar cooling also needs to be evaluated based on various performance indicating parameters. However, different types of solar collectors also need to be evaluated in order to find out their feasibility for cooling applications. Thus in this article review of different types of solar cooling technologies have been carried out. The study reveals that evacuated tube collectors are best option for solar cooling where as desiccant cooling helps in improving the indoor air quality. Also, thermal energy storage and ejector based solar cooling efficiently improves the performance besides energy saving. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.New research using data spanning centuries reveals the presence of very large energy efficiency rebound magnitudes, calling into question the energy use forecasts relied on by international bodies investigating climate change mitigation policy. This article uses those recent results to highlight and explain the key drivers that future energy modelers need to incorporate.Conducting farmers participatory field trials at 40 sites for 3 consecutive years in four rice-wheat system dominated districts of Haryana state of India, this paper tested the hypothesis that zero tillage (ZT) based crop production emits less greenhouse gases and yet provide adequate economic benefits to farmers compared to the conventional tillage (CT). In each farmer's field, ZT and CT based wheat production were compared side by side for three consecutive years from 2009-10 to 2011-12. In assessing the mitigation potential of ZT, we examined the differences in input use and crop management, especially those contributing to GHGs emissions, between ZT wheat and CT wheat. We employed Cool Farm Tool (CFT) to estimate emission of GHGs from various wheat production activities. In order to assess economic benefits, we examined the difference in input costs, net returns and cost-benefit analysis of wheat production under CT and ZT. Results show that farmers can save approximately USD 79 ha(-1) in terms of total production costs and increase net revenue of about USD 97.5 ha(-1) under ZT compared to CT. Similarly, benefit-cost ratio under ZT is 1.43 against 1.31 under CT. Our estimate shows that shifting from CT to ZT based wheat production reduces GHG emission by 1.5 Mg CO2-eq ha(-1) season(-1). Overall, ZT has both climate change mitigation and economic benefits, implying the win-win outcome of better agricultural practices.Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, industrialized countries have agreed to cover the incremental costs of climate change mitigation in developing countries and recent climate negotiations have reaffirmed the central role of climate finance for global mitigation efforts. We use an integrated energy-economy-climate model to assess the potential magnitude of financial transfers to developing countries that can be expected under non-market transfer mechanisms as well as international emission trading with several allocation schemes. Our results indicate that for the latter, depending on international permit allocation rules financial transfers to developing countries could reach almost USD bln 400 per year in 2020, with Sub-Saharan Africa receiving financial inflows of as much as 14.5% of its GDP. Reviewing the literature on natural resource revenues, official development assistance and foreign direct investment, we identify three major channels through which such sizable financial inflows may induce harmful effects for recipients: volatility, Dutch disease, and rent-seeking and corruption. We discuss the relevance of these mechanisms for climate finance and identify institutional arrangements which could help to avoid a climate finance curse'. We conclude that there is no deterministic relationship between financial inflows and adverse consequences, as the most serious problems could be prevented or at least alleviated by appropriately designed policies and governance provisions.Agriculture is the source of 16 percent of Australia's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Research has shown that changes in agricultural practices can increase carbon sequestration in soils and/or vegetation and reduce GHG emissions. Given worldwide commitments to reduce GHG emissions, there is a need to better understand the potential for Australian agriculture to contribute to GHG mitigation. GHG abatement practices will only be adopted if profitable to farmers. Without strong evidence for increased profitability, there is no incentive for farmers to move away from their current practices. Therefore, it is necessary to incorporate economics in any assessment of the potential for Australian farms to contribute to GHG mitigation. We performed an integrated modelling exercise to predict the GHG mitigation potential and whole-farm economic implications of different mitigation practices that can be implemented on Australian grain farms. This exercise was undertaken in two stages. In the first stage, a range of potential management practices that could provide GHG abatement were identified; these involved adding extra organic matter to the soil or altering nitrogen fertiliser use. The Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) was used to estimate the effects of abatement practices on productivity, soil carbon sequestration, nitrous oxide emissions and net GHG emissions over time. In the second stage, we develop an economic model that predicts annual revenues at a paddock scale, as well as whole-farm costs and benefits. Taking a whole-farm approach ensures that the full costs of different practices, such as investment in new capital equipment, is included. We present results for a 6,000 hectare dryland cropping farm in the north-central wheatbelt of Western Australia. This area is representative of the typical Mediterranean climate found in some of Australia's major grain growing regions. We predict that stubble retention and other organic matter additions increase soil carbon, which is important for greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Productivity gains are possible under some of the GHG abatement practices, i.e. GHG abatement and productivity gains can be achieved simultaneously. Increasing nitrogen fertiliser application or replacing volunteer, weedy pastures with improved, legume pastures are predicted to increase earnings and operating profits. However, when accounting for interest and tax, there was no economic advantage or disadvantage of adopting any of the GHG abatement practices. While gross margins per hectare are positive in almost every season, the whole-farm annual profits were negative for 30-40 percent of years. This study demonstrates the benefits of comprehensive economic analyses to accompany any biophysical analyses of the GHG mitigation potential of the Australian agricultural industry, and outlines a framework in which economic and biophysical analyses can be combined.Sustainable management of agroecosystems is required in order to produce more food to feed the growing global population with less environmental costs. The management strategies have to be developed based on local soil and climatic conditions and for specific stakeholders' interests. In this study, we developed a framework to analyse optimal nitrogen (N) requirement for targeting different levels of crop yield and/or climate change mitigation. The Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) was applied at near-uniformly distributed multiple sites to simulate wheat yield in response to N applications, with the aggregated results tested against the national-level data in Australia. The calibrated model was applied to identify the optimal N management for different targets. Thereafter, correlation analysis was performed to quantify the relationships between N demand, yield and climate change mitigation potential (CCMP) and soil and climate variables. The CCMP was defined as the net soil carbon (C) change minus nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in CO2 equivalents (Mg CO2-eq ha(-1) yr(-1)). At the national scale, the aggregated modelling results could well predict the average wheat yield and soil C change under the current N fertilizer input level. Simulation results with different N application rates indicated that wheat yield could be considerably increased by up to 70% (from 1.8 to 3.0 Mg ha-1) by increasing N fertilizer input comparing to the current practice. To achieve 90% of the maximum yield, an average N input of 110 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) was required across the wheat growing regions, which was similar to 80 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) higher than the current N fertilizer application rates. If we targeted the maximum CCMP per unit area and per unit yield, the simulation results also showed a requirement of increased N input compared to the current level, which could result in a wheat yield level similar to or higher than 90% of the maximum yield. Importantly, such increased N input also led to a substantial decrease in net GHG emissions as compared to the current N management. The crop N demand, yield increase and climate change mitigation potential correlated strongly with site-specific precipitation, temperature, soil water holding capacity, and antecedent soil carbon content. Across the study area, the N demand, yield and CCMP varied widely under all four targets (maintaining current crop production, targeting the 90% of the maximum crop production, targeting the minimum net emissions, targeting the minimum net emissions per unit production). In general, rainfall had significant positive effect on simulated N demand and yield, and the degree of the effect varied across targets. The plant available water capacity (PAWC) also had significant positive effect on N demand and yield. However, rainfall had negative effect on CCMP. Compared with rainfall, the effects of temperature on N demand and yield were relatively neutral. Soil organic C content had significant positive effect on yield. For CCMP, soil organic C content had a negative effect. The effects of time period on N demand, yield and CCMP were negligible under current N management The results highlight the opportunity with well-managed intensification to simultaneously increase crop production and mitigate climate change by reducing net GHG emissions in Australian wheat systems. The same opportunity may be present in other low-input dryland cropping systems. The 'win-win' N management recommendations should and can be specified according to local climate and soil conditions by considering the target crop yield and/or climate change mitigation objectives.Climate change is one of the biggest sustainability challenges of our time. In the context of the built environment, the emphasis is on increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, whereas other building life cycle phases are generally considered less important. However, in recent research it has been suggested that more attention should be given to construction phases, including emissions embodied in materials. They occur in early life cycle stages whereas a large share of use-phase related emissions occur outside the existing climate change mitigation target years, and, due to development in energy sector, might significantly deviate from what is projected today. In this study, by using the life cycle assessment (LCA), we assess the greenhouse gas emissions related to the materials and construction of a low-energy multi-storey residential building in Finland. We depict how the emissions are allocated to the different building systems and look for opportunities to reduce the emissions from this perspective. The novelty of the study arises from two factors: (1) we utilize the wide assessment scope that enables depicting the importance of the boundary decision and (2) not many construction-phase LCA studies of modern low-energy residential buildings exist. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This study in northern Ethiopia investigated local people's perception of climate change and the role of indigenous silvopastoralism in adaptation to that change. Two hundred and forty respondents participated in a questionnaire survey and group discussions. Local communities perceive climate change in terms of biophysical and socioeconomic indicators. In selecting, evaluating and comparing fodder trees for a climate-resilient silvopastoral system, local farmers used 20 criteria of varying importance and belonging to three categories: animal-based, plant-based and multipurpose. In terms of suitability for climate-resilient silvopastoral system, Ficus thonningii was ranked first among the top 10 species of trees with a composite score of 8.7 out of 10, followed by Cordia africana, Eucalyptus cameldulensis and Rhus natalensis. Locally developed protocols for propagation and use of F. thonningii have enabled establishment of a climate-resilient, sustainable silvopastoral system. As this practice combines climate change mitigation and adaptation, silvopastoral practices using locally adaptable species are recommended.Global food security is currently challenged and requires sustainable intensification of agriculture through initiatives that include more efficient use of nitrogen (N) and increased protein self-sufficiency through home-grown crops. Such challenges were addressed in a continental-scale field experiment conducted over three years, in which the amount of total nitrogen yield (N-tot) and the gain in N yield in mixtures as compared to grass monocultures (N-gainmix) was quantified from four-species grass-legume stands with greatly varying legume proportions. Stands consisted of monocultures and mixtures of two N2 fixing legumes and two non-fixing grasses. The amount of N-tot of mixtures was significantly greater (P <= 0.05) than that of grass monocultures at the majority of evaluated sites in all three years. N-tot and thus N-gainmix increased with increasing legume proportion up to one third of legumes. With higher percentages of legumes, N-tot and N-gainmix did not further increase. Thus, across sites and years, mixtures with one third proportion of legumes had 57% higher Nto, than grass monocultures and attained similar to 95% of the maximum N-tot acquired by any stand. The relative N gain in mixture (N-gainmix /N-totmix) was most severely impaired by minimum site temperature (R = 0.64, P = 0.010). Nevertheless, N-gainmix /N-totmix was not correlated to site productivity (P = 0.500), suggesting that, within climatic restrictions, balanced grass-legume mixtures can benefit from comparable relative gains in N yield across largely differing productivity levels. We conclude that higher N output (N-tot or forage protein per unit area) can be achieved with grass-legume mixtures than with pure grass alone for a given amount of N fertilizer applied; conversely, the same N output can be achieved by mixed swards with less input of N. Therefore, the use of grass-legume mixtures can substantially contribute to resource-efficient agricultural grassland systems over a wide range of productivity levels, implying important savings in N fertilizers and greenhouse gas emissions. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Urban climate is the result of both atmospheric and geographic factors affecting a region, as well as the morphology, structures and human activities in a city. Urban vegetation in particular affects this climate at a local scale and provides many other social, economic and ecological benefits. Thus, it is important to explore the effects of different green areas used for urban and periurban agriculture and forestry activities (UPAF) on daily atmospheric temperature and the required degrees of cooling or refrigerating temperature. Comfort temperatures were defined using a range 18-24 degrees C and analyzed using actual measured as well as forecasted temperatures using a future scenario. Actual temperatures were recorded from September 2013 to August 2014 using digital sensors across eight sites in Rosario, Argentina: three in the central core with no vegetation, one in the central core with street trees, one in an urban agriculture site, one in a public park and two in periurban agricultural areas. Results show that air temperature in the central core with no vegetation were higher than those in other sites with vegetation during day and night, with the exception of the temperatures measured at the central core site with street trees. Findings also show that temperature effects in urban agricultural gardens of approximately 0.2 ha were similar to those of gardens and public parks 2-3 ha in size. Three UPAF types were classified according to cooling degree days, which decreased in order from (1) central core with no trees; (2) central core with street trees and public parks; and (3) urban and periurban agriculture areas. Conversely, the opposite trends for heating degree days were found. Results from this study can be used for integrating UPAF measures into climate change mitigation and urban planning policies in medium-sized cities in the developing world.Ozone holds a certain fascination in atmospheric science. It is ubiquitous in the atmosphere, central to tropospheric oxidation chemistry, yet harmful to human and ecosystem health as well as being an important greenhouse gas. It is not emitted into the atmosphere but is a byproduct of the very oxidation chemistry it largely initiates. Much effort is focused on the reduction of surface levels of ozone owing to its health and vegetation impacts, but recent efforts to achieve reductions in exposure at a country scale have proved difficult to achieve owing to increases in background ozone at the zonal hemispheric scale. There is also a growing realisation that the role of ozone as a short-lived climate pollutant could be important in integrated air quality climate change mitigation. This review examines current understanding of the processes regulating tropospheric ozone at global to local scales from both measurements and models. It takes the view that knowledge across the scales is important for dealing with air quality and climate change in a synergistic manner. The review shows that there remain a number of clear challenges for ozone such as explaining surface trends, incorporating new chemical understanding, ozone-climate coupling, and a better assessment of impacts. There is a clear and present need to treat ozone across the range of scales, a transboundary issue, but with an emphasis on the hemispheric scales. New observational opportunities are offered both by satellites and small sensors that bridge the scales.Natural peatlands are important carbon sinks and sources of methane (CH4). In contrast, drained peatlands turn from a carbon sink to a carbon source and potentially emit nitrous oxide (N2O). Rewetting of peatlands thus potentially implies climate change mitigation. However, data about the time span that is needed for the re-establishment of the carbon sink function by restoration are scarce. We therefore investigated the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) balances of three differently vegetated sites of a bog ecosystem 30 years after rewetting. All three vegetation communities turned out to be sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) ranging between 0.6 +/-1.43 tCO(2) ha(-2) yr(-1) (Sphagnum-dominated vegetation) and 3.09 +/- 3.86 tCO(2) ha(-2) yr(-1) (vegetation dominated by heath). While accounting for the different global warming potential (GWP) of CO2, CH4 and N2O, the annual GHG balance was calculated. Emissions ranged between 25 and 53 tCO(2)-eq ha(-1) yr(-1) and were dominated by large emissions of CH4 (22-51 tCO(2)-eq ha(-1) yr(-1)), with highest rates found at purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) stands. These are to our knowledge the highest CH4 emissions so far reported for bog ecosystems in temperate Europe. As the restored area was subject to large fluctuations in the water table, we assume that the high CH4 emission rates were caused by a combination of both the temporal inundation of the easily decomposable plant litter of purple moor grass and the plant-mediated transport through its tissues. In addition, as a result of the land use history, mixed soil material due to peat extraction and refilling can serve as an explanation. With regards to the long time span passed since rewetting, we note that the initial increase in CH4 emissions due to rewetting as described in the literature is not inevitably limited to a short-term period.International cooperation to address climate change now stands at a crossroads. With a new international regime for emissions reduction established by the Durban Platform, "New Climate Economics (NCE)" has become a research hotspot. The need for urgent action to combat climate change has prompted discussion on reforms of economic growth patterns and the energy system. The industrial civilization, therefore, now faces a transition towards a new pathway for ecological sustainability. NCE explores new economic concepts, theories, and analytical methods to design a balanced pathway for sustainable growth and emission reduction. Instead of getting trapped in discussions on allocation of emission reduction responsibilities and obligations among countries, NCE pays more attention to developing win-win multilateral cooperation mechanisms that facilitate collaborative R&D and knowledge sharing. In addition, NCE studies incentives for low-carbon transition, turning carbon emission reduction into a domestic need for countries to increase their international competitiveness. To achieve the 2 degrees C target, most countries around the world face challenges of insufficient emission allowances to cover expected emissions associated with their projected economic growth. As carbon emissions rights becomes an increasingly scarce resource, increasing the carbon productivity of the economy turns to be the critical path to address the dilemma of green or growth. NCE studies the historical evolution of carbon productivity for countries at different development stages as well as ways to enhance such carbon productivity. This type of study provides invaluable lessons for emerging economies to reach their own emission peaks without losing the momentum of growth. Replacing fossil fuels with new and renewable energy has proven to be an inevitable choice for reshaping the energy system and addressing climate change -it has already become a global trend. NCE studies incentives for new energy technology innovation and deployment provided by carbon pricing, and sheds light on the co-benefits of climate change mitigation, such as resource conservation, environmental protection, and energy security. The role of carbon pricing in promoting international R&D cooperation and technical transfer will also be studied. The shift in consumption patterns is another key factor enabling a low-carbon transformation. Therefore, NCE also explores the theoretical work on new values of wealth, welfare and consumption, new lifestyles in the context of ecological civilization, concepts and implementation of low-carbon urban planning in developing countries, and the impacts of consumption pattern changes on social development, material production, and urban infrastructure construction.In 2013, renewable energy accounted for only 8.9% of global commercial primary energy use, with fossil fuels supplying nearly all the rest. A number of official forecasts project such global energy growing by 50% or more by mid-century, and continuing to rise thereafter, in parallel with continued global economic growth. All energy sources of the future must meet three criteria: reserves or annual technical capacity must be adequate to meet projected demand; their climate change effects must be minimal; finally, they must be able to be widely deployed in the limited time available for climate mitigation. It is argued here that existing future energy scenarios generally fail to meet all three criteria. Most scenarios assume that adequate fossil/nuclear reserves are available, and that technical fixes can overcome greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. The few scenarios projecting that renewables will supply most of the world's energy by mid-century assume unrealistic technical potentials and implementation times. To meet all three criteria, global energy use will need to be reduced, through a combination of energy efficiency improvements and energy conservation efforts. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseClimate change and its impacts already pose considerable challenges for societies that will further increase with global warming (IPCC, 2014a, b). Uncertainties of the climatic response to greenhouse gas emissions include the potential passing of large-scale tipping points (e.g. Lenton et al., 2008; Levermann et al., 2012; Schellnhuber, 2010) and changes in extreme meteorological events (Field et al., 2012) with complex impacts on societies (Hallegatte et al., 2013). Thus climate change mitigation is considered a necessary societal response for avoiding uncontrollable impacts (Conference of the Parties, 2010). On the other hand, large-scale climate change mitigation itself implies fundamental changes in, for example, the global energy system. The associated challenges come on top of others that derive from equally important ethical imperatives like the fulfilment of increasing food demand that may draw on the same resources. For example, ensuring food security for a growing population may require an expansion of cropland, thereby reducing natural carbon sinks or the area available for bio-energy production. So far, available studies addressing this problem have relied on individual impact models, ignoring uncertainty in crop model and biome model projections. Here, we propose a probabilistic decision framework that allows for an evaluation of agricultural management and mitigation options in a multi-impact-model setting. Based on simulations generated within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), we outline how cross-sectorally consistent multi-model impact simulations could be used to generate the information required for robust decision making. Using an illustrative future land use pattern, we discuss the trade-off between potential gains in crop production and associated losses in natural carbon sinks in the new multiple crop-and biome-model setting. In addition, crop and water model simulations are combined to explore irrigation increases as one possible measure of agricultural intensification that could limit the expansion of cropland required in response to climate change and growing food demand. This example shows that current impact model uncertainties pose an important challenge to long-term mitigation planning and must not be ignored in long-term strategic decision making.This paper explores the emergence of a global climate change mitigation regime through an analysis of the language employed in international science-policy reports. We assume that a global climate regime can only operate effectively on the basis of a shared understanding of climate change which is itself based on a shared language of governance. We therefore carried out an in-depth thematic and metaphor analysis of 63 policy documents published between 1992 and 2012. Results show that global climate science-policy discourses universalise the myriad impacts of a changing climate into a single dichotomous impacted/not-impacted scenario and aim to govern this world according to economic principles of cost-benefit analysis. These discourses use metaphors that draw on narrative structures prevalent in the wider culture to produce and legitimate a reductionist representation of climate change. This representation undermines public understanding of and engagement with climate change by marginalising subordinate policy framings which do not align with the prevailing dichotomous framing. The types of documents we analyse in this paper represent important sources for journalists reporting on climate change. We therefore suggest that any attempt to improve public communication of climate change should include revisions to these organisational discourses. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.The concept of ecosystem-based adaptation is advocated at international, national, and regional levels. The concept is thought to foster sustainability transitions and is receiving increasing interest from academic and governmental bodies alike. However, there is little theory regarding the pathways for its systematic implementation. It furthermore remains unclear to what degree the concept is already applied in urban planning practice, how it is integrated into existing planning structures and processes, and what drivers exist for further integration. Against this background, this study examines potential ways to sustainably mainstream ecosystem-based adaptation into urban planning. Eight municipalities in Southern Germany were investigated to analyze the processes of mainstreaming ecosystem-based adaptation into current planning practice. Although the mainstreaming entry points for ecosystem-based adaptation were identified to be appreciably different, the results of the study show how mainstreaming has generally led to patterns of change in: (1) on-the-ground measures, (2) organizational structures and assets, (3) formal and informal policies and instruments, (4) external cooperation and networking, and (5) the general working language. In all these areas, ecosystem-based adaptation to heat and flood risk is highly compartmentalized. Furthermore, although scholars have drawn attention to the risk of "mainstreaming overload," the results suggest that at the local level, the integration of ecosystem-based adaptation is strongly driven by departments' experience in mainstreaming other cross-cutting issues, namely environmental planning, climate change mitigation, and disaster risk management. Based on the findings, ways to leverage sustainability transitions via mainstreaming are discussed. It is concluded that systematic mainstreaming is a promising avenue for initiating and promoting local transitions and transformative adaptation. The study demonstrates the applicability of the presented mainstreaming framework for assessing and driving the mainstreaming capacity of local governments, thus also addressing the lack of related indicators highlighted in the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Background: Soils contain the largest stock of organic carbon (C) in terrestrial ecosystems and changes in soil C stocks may significantly affect atmospheric CO2. A significant part of soil C is present in cultivated soils that occupy about 35 % of the global land surface. Agricultural intensification has led to practices that may decrease soil organic carbon (SOC), and agricultural management has the potential to be a powerful tool for climate change mitigation and increased soil fertility through SOC sequestration. Here, we systematically map evidence relating to the impacts of agricultural management on SOC in arable systems of the warm temperate and snow climate zones (subset of temperate and continental climates: Koppen-Geiger Classification). Methods: Seventeen academic citation databases, 3 search engines and 25 organisational websites were searched for literature (academic and grey) using search strings translated into a range of languages relevant to the included geographical scope of the topic. Stakeholders were also contacted with requests for evidence. Bibliographic checking of 127 relevant reviews was undertaken to check for missing articles. Screening for relevance against predefined inclusion criteria was undertaken at title, abstract and full text levels according to a published protocol. All relevant studies were coded in a meta-database describing the citation, study settings, methods and quantitative data available (without extraction of the study findings). A basic critical appraisal of included studies was also performed. A geographical information system (GIS) presenting the map database on a physical, online map was also produced. Results: A total of 735 studies from 553 articles was included in the systematic map database. Studies investigated one or more of five broad categories of interventions: amendments (286 studies), crop rotations (238), fertilisers (307), tillage (306), and multiple interventions (55). Studies were identified from across the includible climate zones, with the notable underrepresentation from Russia. The majority of studies employed only point sampling of SOC, low levels of true spatial replication and moderate study periods (i.e. 10-20 years). Missing key methodological information was found in 28 % of studies. Conclusions: Long-term study sites identified in this map provide a useful addition to existing databases of longterm experiments (LTEs). The identification of knowledge gaps, such as studies from Russia, also identify a need for improved cataloguing or reporting of existing and on-going research. This systematic map database represents a useful resource for decision-makers wishing to identify knowledge gaps warranting further primary research, knowledge gluts warranting further secondary research, and deficiencies and best practice in research methodology. In addition to the systematic map database, we have also produced two further resources: (1) a database of LTE sites investigating agricultural management and SOC, and (2) a database of reviews and meta-analyses. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review or map that utilises a GIS for presentation of an evidence base, which we believe substantially increases the utility of the map outputs.In contrast to forest trees, trees outside forests (TOF) often are not included in the national monitoring of tree resources. Consequently, data about this particular resource is rare, and available information is typically fragmented across the different institutions and stakeholders that deal with one or more of the various TOF types. Thus, even if information is available, it is difficult to aggregate data into overall national statistics. However, the National Forest Monitoring and Assessment (NFMA) programme of FAO offers a unique possibility to study TOF resources because TOF are integrated by default into the NFMA inventory design. We have analysed NFMA data from 11 countries across three continents. For six countries, we found that more than 10 % of the national above-ground tree biomass was actually accumulated outside forests. The highest value (73 %) was observed for Bangladesh (total forest cover 8.1 %, average biomass per hectare in forest 33.4 t ha(-1)) and the lowest (3 %) was observed for Zambia (total forest cover 63.9 %, average biomass per hectare in forest 32 t ha(-1)). Average TOF biomass stocks were estimated to be smaller than 10 t ha(-1). However, given the large extent of non-forest areas, these stocks sum up to considerable quantities in many countries. There are good reasons to overcome sectoral boundaries and to extend national forest monitoring programmes on a more systematic basis that includes TOF. Such an approach, for example, would generate a more complete picture of the national tree biomass. In the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation, international climate mitigation programmes (e. g. Clean Development Mechanism and Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Degradation) focus on forest trees without considering the impact of TOF, a consideration this study finds crucial if accurate measurements of national tree biomass and carbon pools are required.We used an Earth System Model that includes both nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycling to simulate the impacts of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) for two representative concentration pathways (RCPs): a reforestation scenario (RCP4.5) and a deforestation scenario (RCP8.5). For each RCP, we performed simulations with and without LULCC using the carbon (C only) mode or including the full C, Nand P cycles (CNP). We show, for the first time, that inclusion of N and P cycling reduces both the carbon uptake from reforestation in RCP4.5 and the carbon emission from deforestation in RCP8.5. Specifically, carbon-nutrient interaction reduces carbon uptake in RCP4.5 from 55 PgC(Conly) to 21 PgC(CNP), or the emissions in RCP8.5 from 72 PgC(Conly) to 56 PgC (CNP). Most of those reductions result from much weaker responses of net primary production to CO2 fertilization and climate change when carbon-nutrient interaction is taken into account, as compared to C only simulations. Our results highlight the importance of including nutrient-carbon interaction in estimating the carbon benefit from reforestation and carbon loss from deforestation in a future world with higher CO2 and a warmer climate. Because of the stronger nutrient limitation, carbon gain from reforestation in the temperate and boreal regions is much less than the carbon loss from deforestation in the subtropical and tropical regions from 2006 to 2100 for the two RCPs. Therefore protecting the existing subtropical and tropical forests is about twice as effective as planting new forests in the temperate and boreal regions for climate mitigation.Policies governing forest ecosystems can mitigate climate change in many ways, making use of various ecosystem services. Although identification of ecosystem service trade-offs has received increasing analytical attention, the policies and mixes of policies generating the trade-offs have remained outside the focus. To advance the policy relevance of ecosystem service trade-off analysis, we analyse the coherence of Finnish policies affecting forest bioenergy and carbon sequestration, two contrasting means to use forests for climate change mitigation. In particular, we focus on the interactions that different policy outputs have with respect to these two ecosystem services. The analysed policy outputs represent different foci and levels and rely on different mechanisms. We identify the direct and indirect impacts that the policy outputs have on the supply and demand of the services by utilizing natural science and policy assessment approaches. We find forest bioenergy, representing a tangible ecosystem service exchanged in the market, to be governed more positively and with more explicit instruments compared to carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration policies remain at a higher level of abstraction, stating merely strategic objectives, possibly because these markets are only emerging and remain political and highly uncertain. Our analysis shows that trade-offs between the two ecosystem services are generated by policies supporting bioenergy, whilst general policies advance both services. The entire mix of policy outputs and its differentiated impacts on ecosystem services should be thoroughly considered when assessing the strategies for mitigating climate change and designing new policy instruments. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Seagrass ecosystems provide numerous ecosystem services that support coastal communities around the world. They sustain abundant marine life as well as commercial and artisanal fisheries, and help protect shorelines from coastal erosion. Additionally, seagrass meadows are a globally significant sink for carbon and represent a key ecosystem for combating climate change. However, seagrass habitats are suffering rapid global decline. Despite recognition of the importance of "Blue Carbon," no functioning seagrass restoration or conservation projects supported by carbon finance currently operate, and the policies and frameworks to achieve this have not been developed. Yet, seagrass ecosystems could play a central role in addressing important international research questions regarding the natural mechanisms through which the ocean and the seabed can mitigate climate change, and how ecosystem structure links to service provision. The relative inattention that seagrass ecosystems have received represents both a serious oversight and a major missed opportunity. In this paper we review the prospects of further inclusion of seagrass ecosystems in climate policy frameworks, with a particular focus on carbon storage and sequestration, as well as the potential for developing payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes that are complementary to carbon management. Prospects for the inclusion of seagrass Blue Carbon in regulatory compliance markets are currently limited; yet despite the risks the voluntary carbon sector offers the most immediately attractive avenue for the development of carbon credits. Given the array of ecosystem services seagrass ecosystems provide the most viable route to combat climate change, ensure seagrass conservation and improve livelihoods may be to complement any carbon payments with seagrass PES schemes based on the provision of additional ecosystem services.Research on identifying cost-effective managed ecosystems that can substantially remove atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO2) while providing essential societal benefits has gained momentum since the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Carbon farming allows farmers and investors to generate tradable carbon offsets from farmlands and forestry projects through carbon trading. Carbon trading is pertinent to climate negotiations by decelerating the climate change phenomenon. Thus, the objective of this article is to describe the potential of woody bamboos in biomass carbon storage and as an option for carbon farming and carbon trading. Bamboo is an important agroforestry and forest plant managed and used by the rural communities in several countries of the Asia-Pacific region for generating diverse economic and socio-environmental needs. Mean carbon storage and sequestration rate in woody bamboos range from 30-121 Mg ha(-1) and 6-13 Mg ha(-1) yr(-1), respectively. Bamboo has vigorous growth, with completion of the growth cycle between 120 and 150 days. Because of its rapid biomass accumulation and effective fixation of CO2, it has a high carbon sequestration capacity. Over and above the high biomass carbon storage, bamboo also has a high net primary productivity (12-26 Mg ha(-1) yr(-1)) even with regular selective harvesting, thus making it a standing carbon stock and a living ecosystem that continues to grow. Despite its high potential in carbon storage and sequestration and its important role in livelihood of millions of rural poor's worldwide, prospects of bamboo ecosystems in CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) and REDD (Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) schemes remain to be explored. Thus, there is an urgent need to recognize ecosystem services that woody bamboo provides for well-being of rural communities and nature conservancy. Present synthesis suggests that bamboo offers tremendous opportunity for carbon farming and carbon trading. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).The gaseous composition of our earth's atmosphere has changed drastically in recent years. This has resulted in unprecedented global warming, hydrological variation, and various climate change impacts in different places of the world. Mitigation and adaptive strategies of climate change through soil carbon sequestration technique is emerged as an alternative option. Among the different types of soil, forest soil has the highest potential to sequester atmospheric carbon because of its rich ecology. However, human-induced deforestation activities and traditional methods of cultivation perturb the soil of organic carbon. Therefore, it is essential to understand the various influencing factors and subsequently the improvement of existing ecosystem for the mitigation of global climate change to some extent. Studies and innovative research on agroforestry, including soil carbon sequestration at regional level, will be a better choice for improvement of environment, food security, and climate change.The theoretical potential for renewable energy resources (RES) to meet the global demands of energy is generally high and the ambitions for introducing RES into energy systems are growing worldwide, which also can contribute to global climate change mitigation if it is produced in a sustainable manner. To address these issues, more and more governments are implementing various programs and energy policies to accelerate the deployment of RES. The aforementioned two reasons lead to an urgent need to add new generating capacity or reduce consumption during peak periods, or both. The first option for power generation is to use RES which can inject electric energy to the grid while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions. However, the capacities of RES are not enough to supply all the required power from the side of the load. Facts that are leading to the proposal of original ways to reduce the use of energy in many sectors, namely in commercial, residential, and industrial sectors, in order to reduce the total energy costs of the consumer, to reduce the energy demand specially during on-peak hours and the greenhouse gas emissions while safeguarding end-user preferences. The aim of this paper is to determine the impact of model predictive control (MPC) on energy savings of residential households. Furthermore, the value and impact of generated power by local power sources, such as roof-top-solar, will be determined during off-peak, mid-peak, and on-peak, providing simulations during 24 hours in a house.Climate change is the largest and most complicated interdependent issue the world has confronted. Yet there is little negotiation and conflict management knowledge within the climate change context. To address this gap, this theoretical article reviews the sparse extant literature and provides a brief overview of the science of climate change public policy. This review establishes a foundation for examining negotiation and conflict management research questions that emanate from current and future climate change negotiations. Such questions are considered for climate change mitigation negotiations and climate change adaptation negotiations. This article demonstrates how the negotiation and conflict management field can make important contributions to the study of interdependency in a context of climate change.As the threats of climate change grow, the need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel burning is increasingly acknowledged by governments around the world. The potential of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a set of technologies that offers a politically appealing vision of a 'cleaner' way to use fossil fuels, has provided powerful motivation for large public and private investments in CCS technology. But investing in CCS is controversial because, although some consider it a critical climate mitigation technology, others view it as an expensive fossil fuel subsidy that could inadvertently perpetuate, rather than reduce, fossil fuel reliance.Carbon storage in harvested wood products (HWPs) is seen as a measure to mitigate climate change. The increased use of long-life wood products, however, should be thoroughly analysed before being promoted as a climate mitigation strategy. The national carbon pool of HWPs is very dynamic, due to changing patterns of wood product consumption and trade. Carbon accounting models are a common tool for estimating and projecting carbon pools. The purpose of this study is to analyse and find the relevant features of existing models that are related to the carbon pool in HWPs. From the many existing models, we have selected several representative models. We have analysed these selected models in depth by looking at their features, components and application. The models have variable features, depending on their scope and the modelling objectives. Significant modelling components for assessing the climate change mitigation potential of wood products are often missing. For example, the material substitution effect in the construction sector is rarely quantified, even if it would result in a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we propose modelling components for a scenario-based model capable of using country-specific data for major groups of HWPs that would allow improved assessments of the climate change mitigation potential of alternative forest resource utilisation scenarios.Inherent in the concept of good agricultural practice (BMP) is that it improves resource use efficiency, mitigates environmental impact or increases farm profitability. However, it is usually impossible to achieve all the objectives, and trade-offs need to be accepted, such as a reduction in productivity together with a reduction in costs or an increase of soil organic matter. A European FP7 project, Catch-C (http://www.catch-c.eu) analyses the effects that different management practices have on productivity, mitigation of climate change and chemical, physical and biological soil fertility, based on simple indicators. Such indicators were collected from international literature, national scientific or technical journals, or grey literature that dealt with long-term field trials in Europe. We collected and analysed data from more than 350 experiments. This paper presents the overall results of the effects of a series of BMP have on crop productivity, soil nitrogen (N) uptake, N use efficiency end N balance. Important interactions with soil and climate types, crop and duration of the experiment were noticed for most BMPs. Rotations, also including double cropping, were among practices with more positive effects of productivity and N indicators. A slight reduction of yield counteracted benefits to soil quality and to climate change mitigation of minimum and no tillage, and of organic fertilisers.The climate mitigation target of the Netherlands violating the State's duty of care, it has to be elevated to reach at least -25% in 2020 compared to 1990. This ruling of the District Court of the Hague in the case opposing the NGO Urgenda to the Netherlands marks a turning point of climate justice. Although limited in its scope, it contributes to the subjectivization of climate justice actors but also to the objectivization of associated liability, opening the way for a "dialogue of judges" and influence on international negotiations.This article analyses certain parameters relevant to the effectiveness of the Finnish Climate Act (609/2015) which obliges state authorities to plan and monitor the national climate policy. The Act was enacted predominantly for the purpose of achieving emission reduction in societal sectors outside emissions trading. Although policy planning with legislative basis may be a necessary first step for all-encompassing emission reduction in the said sectors, the architecture of the Climate Act raises questions on, for example, the legal form and specific contents of the climate policy plans, and how the plans are addressed by sectoral legislation. The article discusses certain measures, such as sector-specific governance of policy planning and integration of climate concerns into sectoral legislation, which may be necessary for effective emission reduction. The interface between the Climate Act and sectoral legislation is exemplified through climate law in the Finnish transport sector.In the run-up to the Paris Climate Conference (2015), China has formally and confidently announced its commitments to achieve carbon peak by around 2030 or sooner, increase its non-fossil fuels to 20 percent of the primary energy mix by 2030, and cut carbon intensity by 60-65 percent by 2030 as compared to the 2005 level. This paper examines China's policy change and legal development since 1992 that has made its transformation to low-carbon economy an achievable goal. It analyses key mitigation strategies including control of total energy consumption, economic restructuring, demand-side management of energy conservation and energy efficiency, improvement of China's primary energy mix, and expansion of carbon sinks. It investigates the cap-and-trade local pilot schemes in preparation for the launch of a national carbon market in 2017. The paper concludes with cautious optimism that, given the actions taken by China so far, COP21 should conclude with significant breakthroughs for a more effective post-2020 climate regime.Stable The CO2 emissions by Saudi Arabia now stands at 446,000 Gigagrams. Most of it comes from fossil fuels based power and desalination plants. As a consequence of it the country is experiencing changes in the microclimate, indicated by an increase in the atmospheric temperature by about 0.76 degrees C over the last decade. Saudi Arabia has considerable geothermal energy sources represented by hydrothermal and hot dry rock (EGS) sources along the western shield margin. By using energy source mix the country can offset part of its domestic oil demand and reduce considerable amount of CO, emissions. By using geothermal energy for desalination alone can save about 13 million Gg of CO2. New energy policies have to be developed and adopted to mitigate CO2 related climate change scenario in the future.Land uses that replace tropical forests are important determinants of terrestrial carbon storage and biodiversity. This includes secondary forest growth after deforestation, which has been integrated into the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) concept as a means to enhance current forest carbon stocks. Incorporating secondary forest into climate change mitigation efforts requires both accurate measurements and a means to target interventions to achieve additionality. We demonstrate how remote sensing and household survey data can be combined to meet these requirements in 'old frontiers' of the Brazilian Amazon and introduce the idea that annual land-cover transitions - measured at the pixel level and over time - can serve as leading indicators of secondary forest regrowth. The patterns we observe are consistent with the suggested tension between equity and additionality in REDD+: the poorest households on the poorest quality lots already allow forest regeneration. Policy interventions to encourage regeneration are likely to have the greatest additional impact on higher quality lots owned by better capitalized households.The period leading to and immediately after the release of the IPCC's fifth series of climate change assessments saw substantial efforts by climate change denial interests to portray anthropogenic climate change (ACC) as either unproven theory or a negligible contribution to natural climate variability, including the relationship between tourism and climate change. This paper responds to those claims by stressing that the extent of scientific consensus suggests that human-induced warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Second, it responds in the context of tourism research and ACC, highlighting tourism's significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as climate change's potential impacts on tourism at different scales. The paper exposes the tactics used in ACC denial papers to question climate change science by referring to non-peer-reviewed literature, outlier studies, and misinterpretation of research, as well as potential links to think tanks and interest groups. The paper concludes that climate change science does need to improve its communication strategies but that the world-view of some individuals and interests likely precludes acceptance. The connection between ACC and sustainability illustrates the need for debate on adaptation and mitigation strategies, but that debate needs to be grounded in scientific principles not unsupported skepticism.Climate change mitigation is a challenge faced by most nations of the world. The task is even more challenging in Malaysia considering the occurrence of sequence of floods within the past and the need to be a part of the developed economy by 2020 which needs environment protection. This paper examines the state of climate change mitigation and the practice of voluntary carbon disclosure in sustainable development practice among listed Property companies in Malaysia. Consequently the paper analyses policies and programs on-going in Malaysia to create an enabling environment for the implementation of climate change mitigation. From the studies, it can argued that Malaysia has made significant progress in setting up legal framework for the implementation of climate change mitigation and voluntary environmental disclosure, but critical mass is yet to be achieved. This was achieved as a function of Malaysia's membership to United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and also participates in the Clean Development Mechanism; and further establishes nationwide ecological protection laws which are implemented in the government's Development Plans and development industry master plan. Lastly, the impetus given to the free market sector to be participants in mitigation through the Bursa Malaysia listing requirement that specifies corporate social responsibility reporting as part of the annual reports, with measurement, disclosure and management of emission integral part. The review allows us to infer that the Malaysia voluntary environmental disclosure and climate change mitigation practice in the property sector has made initial progress but there is need for more market driven motivation to be introduced so that more companies especially those in carbon-intensive practice would be involved.Although Dutch cities were among the forerunners in local climate policy, a systematic overview on climate mitigation and adaptation policy is still missing. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing 25 Dutch cities using indicators for the level of anchoring in policy, organisation and practical implementation as well as multi-level relations. Since Tilburg, Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam show a higher performance than other Dutch cities, these four cities are used as reference cities. The findings suggest that structural integration of climate mitigation and adaptation is limited in Dutch cities. The study points at three recent trends in local climate governance in the Netherlands: (i) decentralisation within municipal organisations, (ii) externalisation initiatives that place climate policy outside the municipal organisation and (iii) regionalisation with neighbouring municipalities and the provincial government.The Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) is taking significant steps towards climate change mitigation, including a carbon tax on fossil fuels and legislation that mandates greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions within public sector organisations and GHG reduction targets for municipalities. This paper carries out a preliminary scan of the GHG emissions of BC communities using the provincially mandated Community Energy and Emissions Inventory reports. We map trends in energy consumption and emissions per capita while uncovering correlations between these variables and land-use planning, geographic, and demographic variables. These data have shown that: (1) energy consumption in BC is an adequate proxy for GHG emissions; (2) transportation, more than buildings, is a strong driver of overall GHG emissions; (3) building emissions are not likely to be strongly influenced by dwelling type, but density of buildings is crucial; (4) geographic location influences emissions; and (5) population size and age do not appear to influence per capita emissions. These findings are particularly important as they suggest that the potentially intransigent factors of income and population size need not be barriers to achieving significant GHG reductions. The policy onus thus falls squarely on transportation planning, land-use, energy conservation, and fuel switching. This in turn highlights the importance of deeper underlying sociocultural and political preferences, which shape the behaviours that have a strong bearing on emissions profiles.Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to highlight how data from marine protected area (MPA) surveys can be used to facilitate the development of systematic approaches to monitoring biodiversity within local government development plans and across marine bioregions. Design/methodology/approach-The study focussed on coastal Barangays of the Municipality of San Luis, Aurora Philippines. A Participatory Coastal Resource Assessment (PCRA) was conducted to gather information on corals and reef fishery resources. Resultant Simpson's biodiversity indices were calculated and compared to other MPA sites. Linkages to enhanced marine curriculum in a San Luis high school were evaluated by utilizing cultural consensus theory (CCT) on previously reported local student perception surveys as a further effort on defining pathways for localized transformation. Findings-San Luis MPA biodiversity indices ranged from 0.56-0.8 on a scale of 0-1. This initial analysis demonstrates how local monitoring can be connected to resource assessment through biodiversity considerations and in developing local plans for site improvement linked to local economies. Results are used to demonstrate the potential for further development of an integrated approach to biodiversity monitoring across and between bioregions as a step forward in strengthening science for MPAs and biodiversity conservation for the Philippines. Practical implications-The study could be used to pilot study strengthening of coastal resource management (CRM) at Municipal and Barangay levels and as well through application of CCT to the topics. The results will be used to reinforce the formulation of San Luis local development plans to better consider marine resource assessment. Originality/value-This paper provides a new perspective on the use of quantitative measures of biodiversity to assist with local development plans. Projecting integrated biodiversity monitoring across and between bioregions is considered as a potential tool for facilitating climate change mitigation.The Texas maize (Zea mays L) breeding program at Texas A&M University has been unique among breeding programs for the incorporation of diverse germplasm from a wide range of origins into elite inbred lines. The Texas program, situated in a subtropical environment, has found beneficial traits in maize of tropical origin beyond what is available in the temperate material commonly used in the far more productive Midwestern region of the United States. To date, no molecular studies had been conducted to make any quantitative differentiations between the genetic diversity in the germplasm developed in the Texas program or comparisons to the germplasm available from the Midwest. In this study, a molecular characterization of genetic diversity was performed. A unique set of 266 elite Texas lines were genotyped using 766 single nucleotide polymorphism markers, this was then combined with data published in a previous study focusing on ex-PVP lines released by private companies. The two data sets combined had 380 genotypes with 635 markers. It was determined that there were five subpopulations of material in this combined set as demonstrated by population structure. The data suggested that the array markers, designed to cluster the Midwestern heterotic groups, did not discriminate this exotic material well and/or that the Texas heterotic pools were not well supported. We conclude that the majority of Texas program material is a novel population, genetically dissimilar to Midwest temperate material, and would be a useful source of unique genetics for other maize breeding programs.Algae are a promising source of renewable jet and diesel fuels and can play a significant role in climate change mitigation as a low-carbon fuel source. Currently, most industrial microalgae cultivation systems are open ponds because of their low capital and operating costs, but they suffer from low biomass productivity and high risk of contamination. We describe the development of a novel, cost-effective, and modular horizontal bioreactor (HBR) for algae cultivation. It was designed and engineered to keep costs low, while minimizing water and energy use and enhancing CO2 and nutrient uptake. The selected marine microalgal strain, Nannochloris oculata, has shown potential for biofuels production. Algal growth was first optimized indoors before testing the HBR performance outdoors under real-world conditions. The indoor study showed that urea and potassium nitrate yield comparable results, when used as nitrogen source, whereas ammonium chloride was less effective. Varying inoculum size from 10% to 15% to 20% (v/v) had no effect on lag time, so the lowest level was selected. The 150-L HBR prototype was tested outdoors with N. oculata using the indoor optimal conditions. High-density growth was consistently achieved in the HBR without contamination problems over extended periods of time outdoors in central Florida.Studies highlight the potential importance of biomass as a low carbon source for different energy or material options. In order to understand the possibilities of biomass use for climate mitigation its key uncertainties and possible feedbacks on the energy system have to be assessed. We use a recursive dynamic energy system model (TIMER) in order to evaluate which biomass options are most competitive, how different uses lead to changes elsewhere in the energy system (i.e. due to leakage of fossil fuels), and what the optimal use in order to reduce emissions. Furthermore, we investigate how these results may be affected with increasing climate policy (carbon tax). In the baseline approximately 18% of total secondary energy demand is projected to be supplied by bioenergy, used primarily in transport, buildings and chemicals. At high carbon taxes, bioenergy becomes more competitive for electricity generation. We find that electricity generation is the most effective option for biomass (especially at high carbon taxes due to the increased application of carbon capture and storage) however its use there is limited due to the competition for biofuels in the transport sector.Terrestrial ecosystems play a major role in regulating the concentrations of three greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4 and N2O), of which CO2 is the most important in terms of the impact on the global radiative balance. Soils play a major role in the global carbon (C) cycle and CO2 dynamics; thus, management of soil carbon appears essential and more and more inevitable. The capacity of natural and managed agroecosystems to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a manner that is not immediately re-emitted into the atmosphere is known as carbon sequestration: carbon dioxide is absorbed by vegetation through photosynthesis and stored as carbon in biomass and soils, and released through autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration. Forests, croplands and grasslands can store large amounts of carbon in soils for relatively long periods. Soils are the larger terrestrial pool of organic carbon. Moreover, soil carbon sequestration is beneficial for soil quality, both over the short term and long term, and can be achieved through land management practices adapted to the specific site characteristics. The ability of soils to sequester carbon depends on climate, soil type, vegetation cover and land management practices. According to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the total technical greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential of agriculture (considering all gases and sources) is estimated to be in the range 4.5-6 Gt CO2-equivalent year-1 by 2030. Estimates indicate that many of these options are of relatively low cost and generate significant co-benefits in the form of improved agricultural production systems, resilience and other ecosystem services. Moreover, many of the technical options are readily available and could be deployed immediately. About 90% of this potential can be achieved by soil C sequestration through cropland management, grazing land management, restoration of organic soils and degraded lands, and water management in rainfed and irrigated croplands. In most cases, such management practices include the management of organic residues produced on site or coming from outside the field or the farm. It has been estimated that the global world production of residues in the agriculture sector is about 3.8 Pg C and, to date, the use of this resource has not been optimized; a large part is still being burned. Over the past two decades, other practices have been tested and are still controversial, such as biochar or chipped ramial wood application in cultivated fields. Biochar is a stabile carbon amendment, produced from pyrolysis of biomass, which may increase biomass productivity as well as sequester C from the source biomass. The scientific validation of these practices is still incomplete. Full participation of the agricultural sector in GHG mitigation still faces some challenges and barriers related to measurement, monitoring and reporting requirements in C offset markets. Further improvements are needed in methodologies and approaches that would help project designers and policy makers to integrate significant mitigation effects in agriculture development projects.Eucalyptus stands in semi-arid areas may contribute to enhance carbon (C) stocks in both biomass and soil. However, the limited information available is mainly focused on short-rotation plantations. In this study, the above-and below-ground C pools in five 50-year-old Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. stands planted on Miocenic evaporitic deposits in Sicily, Italy, with a xeric and thermic pedoclimate, were measured. Above-ground biomass was determined by partitioning and weighing branches, stem and leaves. Below-ground C pools included the determination of litter, root biomass, and soil organic and inorganic C. In terms of the above-ground biomass, the E. camaldulensis stand accumulated on average 116 Mg ha(-1) corresponding to 55 Mg C ha(-1). Below-ground biomass consisted mainly of larger roots, followed by fine and medium roots (33 Mg ha(-1) corresponding to 14 Mg C ha(-1)). Litter accumulation on the soil surface accounted for 13 Mg ha(-1) corresponding to 5 Mg C ha(-1). The amount of C stored in soil was 554 Mg C ha(-1), of which 75% was in organic form. Although E. camaldulensis is planted extensively throughout the Southern Hemisphere and tropics where it is managed over short rotations (c. 2-4 years), the results obtained from this study make this species important in terms of future afforestation planning for longer rotations due to its potential to sequester C, particularly in the below-ground components.As nations face the need to decarbonise their energy supply, there is a risk that attention will be focused solely on carbon and climate change, potentially at the expense of other environmental impacts. To explore the trade-offs between climate change mitigation and other environmental impacts, this work focuses on electricity and considers a number of scenarios up to 2070 in a UK context with different carbon reduction targets and electricity demand to estimate the related life cycle environmental impacts. In total, 16 scenarios are discussed, incorporating fossil-fuel technologies with and without carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and a range of renewable options. A freely available model - Electricity Technologies Life Cycle Assessment (ETLCA) - developed by the authors has been used for these purposes. The results suggest that decarbonisation of electricity supply to meet carbon targets would lead to a reduction in the majority of the life cycle impacts by 2070. The exceptions to this are depletion of elements which would increase by 4-145 times and health impacts from radiation which would increase two- to four-fold if nuclear power were used. Ozone layer depletion would also go up in the short-term by between 2.5-3.7 times. If energy demand continued to grow, three other impacts would also increase while trying to meet the carbon targets: human toxicity (two times), photochemical smog (12%) and terrestrial eco-toxicity (2.3 times). These findings demonstrate the importance of considering a broader range of environmental impacts alongside climate change to avoid decarbonising the economy at the expense of other environmental impacts.This study explores a situation of staged accession to a global climate policy regime from the current situation of regionally fragmented and moderate climate action. The analysis is based on scenarios in which a front runner coalition - the EU or the EU and China - embarks on immediate ambitious climate action while the rest of the world makes a transition to a global climate regime between 2030 and 2050. We assume that the ensuing regime involves strong mitigation efforts but does not require late joiners to compensate for their initially higher emissions. Thus, climate targets are relaxed, and although staged accession can achieve significant reductions of global warming, the resulting climate outcome is unlikely to be consistent with the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees. The addition of China to the front runner coalition can reduce pre-2050 excess emissions by 20-30%, increasing the likelihood of staying below 2 degrees. Not accounting for potential co-benefits, the cost of front runner action is found to be lower for the EU than for China. Regions that delay their accession to the climate regime face a trade-off between reduced short term costs and higher transitional requirements due to larger carbon lock-ins and more rapidly increasing carbon prices during the accession period. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.Fragmented climate policies across parties of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change have led to the question of whether initiating significant and immediate climate change mitigation can support the achievement of other non-climate objectives. We analyze such potential co-benefits in connection with a range of mitigation efforts using results from eleven integrated assessment models. These model results suggest that an immediate mitigation of climate change coincide for Europe with an increase in energy security and a higher utilization of non-biomass renewable energy technologies. In addition, the importance of phasing out coal is highlighted with external cost estimates showing substantial health benefits consistent with the range of mitigation efforts. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper uses the computable general equilibrium model WorldScan to analyze the co-benefits of reduced emissions of air pollutants as a by-product of climate policies. WorldScan covers the entire world in five regions (two in the EU) and simulates economic growth in a multi-sector neoclassical recursive dynamic framework. It includes emissions and abatement of greenhouse gases (CO2, N2O, CH4) and air pollutants (SO2, NOx, NH3, PM2.5). Abatement includes end-of-pipe controls removing pollutants without affecting the emission-producing activity itself. This paper shows that climate mitigation will significantly reduce the emissions of air pollutants. It estimates the economic value of the avoided air pollution damages by the costs of the air policy that generates the reductions of air pollutant emissions resulting from climate policies. Although the estimates of the co-benefits are uncertain, trade may have a significant impact on the avoided costs of air policies. This also has consequences on the value of the co-benefits of climate policies. The paper also shows that the regional value of co-benefits can be substantial, and may provide an incentive to reduce GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Cities significantly contribute to climate change and at the same time have governance capacity to act efficiently in the fields of mitigation and adaptation. Their capacity is being increasingly recognized by international institutions and has been pointed out as crucial in the multi-level government scenario of the European Union (EU). Addressing the challenges of climate change at urban level is a complex issue which requires a holistic approach to strategic urban planning. Understanding why and how cities start action can help to identify the barriers they face when addressing climate change, and how national governments, regions and international bodies can support local authorities in their climate fight. This work aims to contribute to the provision of the knowledge needed to gain a better and deeper insight into urban climate action. The study investigates the state-of-the-art of urban climate plans in Spain and Italy, two countries which share similarities on many levels (i.e. cultural, geographical, climate vulnerabilities, urban configurations and institutional framework). The research analyses cities that are included in the Eurostat Urban Audit (UA), 26 in Spain and 32 in Italy, focusing on the actions taken by large and medium municipalities in reducing their contribution to climate change and becoming more resilient to changing weather patterns. The results of the analysis show a trend towards increasing awareness of climate mitigation (highly focused on energy efficiency and the promotion of cleaner energy sources), while adaptation remains a local policy area in its infancy in both countries. The study also identifies the beneficial influence of national and international climate city networks.We argue that the question of how to explain differences in the responses of cities to perceived challenges of climate change can be answered on the basis of a knowledge order derived from local processes that generate meaning. With respect to its content, such a knowledge order consists of cognitive as well as normative components. While the normative dimension covers accepted values of right or wrong providing compelling ethical and moral motivations for action, the cognitive component expresses cause-effect relationships about the state of the world and how it functions, and can thus guide decisions on what has to be done how. Moreover, specific mechanisms will be elaborated which are decisive for the formation, reproduction and transformation of a knowledge order.Local climate policy depends on a transformation of the built environment. In urban areas, the built environment is largely an integrated product of land management and real estate management. This paper examines the effects of sense-making on urban climate policies in the built environment. Three major German cities are analysed in a comparative case study. The structuring element for both qualitative and quantitative data analyses is the concept of knowledge orders (Heinelt and Lamping in this issue). This study demonstrates the important role that the selection of beliefs, ideas and knowledge play in the development of local strategies against climate change by identifying a strong relationship between local knowledge orders and climate policy. The paper contributes to the urban policy literature by improving the understanding of local differences, including how knowledge orders affect land management and real estate management.The aflaj system is a unique water resource for Omani society, culture and heritage and it is the most important for agriculture communities in Al Jabal Al Akhdar. In this paper, the Driving forces-Pressure-State-Impact-Responses (DPSIR) framework was applied as an assessment approach aiming to propose policies for sustainable aflaj water management in Al Jabal Al Akhdar, which has experienced rapid development over the last decades. The framework revealed that the main Driving forces are agriculture, tourism, socioeconomic development and urbanization, leading to Pressures including excessive use and mismanagement of aflaj for irrigation, compounded by climate change, with increasing temperatures and a decrease in rainfall. As a result, the State of the flows of the aflaj and their numbers has decreased, and their water quality has deteriorated and is no longer used for drinking. Consequently, this Impacts on human welfare due to the reduction in the cultivated area, and therefore losses in agricultural economic returns. Existing Responses included issuing laws and regulations, institutional development, and projects such as aflaj maintenance and dams construction. The DPSIR analysis concluded that the implementation of integrated aflaj water management through conservation practices and increased water use efficiency, in conjunction with climate change mitigation and adaptation, are a must when formulating and implementing policies to ensure the sustainability of the area's aflaj system and agricultural communities.Low Impact Development (LID) is a strategically sound approach to mitigate stormwater pollution and restore landscape hydrology in urbanized watersheds. Since it promotes preserving and enhancing vegetation, open spaces, and soil integrity to mimic natural processes, it provides a myriad of benefits including flood control, habitat protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation, greater livability, greater social connectivity, energy savings, smog reduction, enhanced community aesthetics, and many other ecosystem services. A great number of LID tools are available such as green roofs, raingardens, tree planters, bio swales, which are efficient, simple, and cost effective. Some pioneer cities are successfully implementing this technology in development and redevelopment projects. However, a wide spread adoption has not occurred. This paper explores the barriers prevailing in the U.S. cities, with a focus on legal and policy aspects. The analysis will focus on the city codes, ordinances, regulations, and other legal and policy documents related to stormwater and other land development activities of select cities. Finally a policy framework conducive to LID implementation will be presented. Dr. Alice Stewart conclusively demonstrated, in 1958, that pediatric X-rays doubled the risk of childhood leukemia. Nevertheless, doctors continued X-raying mothers-to-be until 1980. Margaret Heffernan's (2011) book, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, documents this and numerous other examples of our skill at ignoring information that points to something we don't want to know. Specifically, on the topic of climate change, Heffernan notes: [I]n failing to confront the greatest challenge of our age - climate change - all the forces of willful blindness come together, like synchronized swimmers in a spectacular water ballet. When it comes to corporate sustainability, we're seeing some recent efforts to get past willful blindness. In 2013, we saw examples such as Auden Schendler (co-author of this piece) and Michael Toffel's (2013) publication in Grist, Corporate Sustainability is Not Sustainable, which itself built upon Professor Robin Craig's (2012) article provocatively entitled Climate Change Means the Death of Sustainability. More recently, in Lima, Unilever's Paul Polman said that .. most CEOs...know that their companies cannot prosper in a world with runaway climate change.Perhaps, after years of corporate sustainability flag waving, it is no longer possible to ignore the fact that much of what companies classify as sustainability is, at best, green fluff that is fundamentally out of touch with the realities of anticipated climate change. Significantly, chief executive officers (CEOs) themselves are questioning the historic focus on corporate sustainability policies and targets. As summarized in the CEO Study on Sustainability, jointly published by the United Nations (UN) Global Compact and Accenture (2013): Business leaders [now] believe that only with greater government intervention at global, national and local levels can sustainability move from sporadic incremental advances to a collective and transformative impact.The commentary by Schendler and Trexler (2015) strikes us as an intriguing paradox. Schendler and Trexler see responses to the threat of global climate change beginning to move forward in the corporate world, but they fear these corporate initiatives will be a distraction from what is ultimately required. They emphasize the need for greater government intervention. An earlier text by Schendler and Toffel (2013) notes, and we agree, that we're failing to deal with the problem at anywhere near sufficient scale. But we feel that the article by Schendler and Trexler does not adequately acknowledge the importance of these corporate efforts as elements of initiation and leadership. Schendler and Trexler express the impatience that many of us feel regarding the continued failure of political progress at the national and international levels. But they do not embrace the thoughts attributed to the sixth century B.C. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. They fail to acknowledge that, in democratic governments, there is the need for grass-roots support in order to develop and implement effective policy. Rather than distractions, individual and corporate efforts are generally necessary prerequisites for implementation of and receptiveness to government action. We agree that society is not dealing with climate change at anything approaching the needed scale and that, ultimately, a meaningful government and international response to climate change is required. The challenge is finding the way forward to achieve this outcome. In a first-best scenario, the global community would simply negotiate an effective international climate agreement. For more than 35 years, individual countries have collaborated to pursue this first-best scenario, starting with the first World Climate Conference in 1979 and continuing with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. But this top-down approach has yielded little success and even less hope, with global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increasing by more than 50% since adoption of the UNFCCC in 1992. While countries agree on the need for an international agreement, there is disagreement on almost every aspect of the climate change problem. Countries approach the problem in different stages of development and from different development paths, and thus with different perspectives (Cherry etal. 2014, 23).Industrial ecology (IE) is a maturing scientific discipline. The field is becoming more data and computation intensive, which requires IE researchers to develop scientific software to tackle novel research questions. We review the current state of software programming and use in our field and find challenges regarding transparency, reproducibility, reusability, and ease of collaboration. Our response to that problem is fourfold: First, we propose how existing general principles for the development of good scientific software could be implemented in IE and related fields. Second, we argue that collaborating on open source software could make IE research more productive and increase its quality, and we present guidelines for the development and distribution of such software. Third, we call for stricter requirements regarding general access to the source code used to produce research results and scientific claims published in the IE literature. Fourth, we describe a set of open source modules for standard IE modeling tasks that represent our first attempt at turning our recommendations into practice. We introduce a Python toolbox for IE that includes the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework Brightway2, the ecospold2matrix module that parses unallocated data in ecospold format, the pySUT and pymrio modules for building and analyzing multiregion input-output models and supply and use tables, and the dynamic_stock_model class for dynamic stock modeling. Widespread use of open access software can, at the same time, increase quality, transparency, and reproducibility of IE research.The identification of potential by-product exchanges is important for fostering industrial symbiosis. To discover these potential exchanges, this article extends the analysis of local industrial symbiosis to a national scale. A waste input-output table, which is a material flow accounting tool, was compiled and used as a database to examine the existing exchanges of by-products. The supplies and demands of industrial wastes or by-products were compared to highlight their potential use for promoting higher exchange flows. The analysis of the linkages indicated that the majority of each of the by-products were reused by the few industries that had the technology and operational capacity for reuse. This finding is useful for determining which industries are good candidates for promoting further industrial symbiosis (IS). Based on a nation-wide analysis that considered the industrial characteristics of Taiwan comprehensively, 23 types of major by-products with greater reuse flows and 216 potential exchange patterns were identified between the industries. In addition, three types of eco-industrial networks were characterized as follows according to their dominant types: (1) fossil fuel, metal, and mineral-dominated; (2) agricultural and synthetic material-dominated; and (3) information and communications technology (ICT) and chemical industry-dominated eco-industrial networks. This analysis highlights the resource exchange potentials and provides information to new firms for networking with existing businesses.Methods for carbon footprinting typically combine all emissions into a single result, representing the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) over the life cycle. The timing of GHG impacts, however, has become a matter of significant interest. In this study, two approaches are used to characterize the timing of GHG emission impacts associated with the production of energy from various biomass residues produced by the forest products industry. The first approach accounts for the timing of emissions and characterizes the impact using Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 100-year global warming potentials (GWPs). The second is a dynamic carbon footprint approach that considers the timing of the GHG emissions, their fate in the atmosphere, and the associated radiative forcing as a function of time. The two approaches generally yield estimates of cumulative impacts over 100years that differ by less than 5%. The timing of impacts, however, can be significantly affected by the approach used to characterize radiative forcing. For instance, the time required to see net benefits from a system using woody mill residues (e.g., bark and sawdust) is estimated to be 1.2years when using a fully dynamic approach, compared to 7.5years when using 100-year GWPs, with the differences being primarily attributable to methane (CH4). The results obtained for a number of different biomass residue types from forest products manufacturing highlight the importance of using a fully dynamic approach when studying the timing of emissions impacts in cases where emissions are distributed over time or where CH4 is a significant contributor to the emissions.The present study addresses the topic of recycling materials from construction and demolition (C&D) wastes by proposing an environmental comparison between two recycling schemes for gravel wastes. The first scheme is the baseline process, and leads to direct most of the gravel to road construction. The second scheme relies on an innovative technology for the processing of gravel, based on electrical fragmentation, which leads to a clear separation between the aggregate contained in the gravel and the cement paste. The purity of the obtained materials opens new recycling outletsas part of high-quality structural concrete for the aggregate and as a substitute to natural minerals in clinker kilns for the cement paste. This shift towards more-specific outlets for the materials found in reclaimed gravel carries significant modifications in the overall handling of C&D wastes and in the supply of natural and non-natural materials for road construction and concrete formulation. The environmental implications of these modifications are evaluated according to a life cycle assessment methodology, which specifically addresses the influence of the distances and modalities of transportation of wastes to the crushing processes, as well as of natural and recycled aggregate to construction and demolition sites. The results point out significant environmental gains for the alternative recycling scheme, in all the considered impact categories and whatever the implemented scenarios. These gains are modulated by the various transport distances of the heavy materials heeded in the global system.In pursuit of more sustainable development of industry, China has been actively developing eco-industrial parks (EIPs) for more than a decade. However, the environmental value of these EIPs remains largely unverified. This study aimed to evaluate the environmental performance of national EIPs in China using data envelopment analysis. Eco-efficiency and environmental performance indices were used to represent the static and dynamic environmental performance of EIPs, respectively. An environmental performance index was formed by combining measures of eco-efficiency in a dynamic setting with the sequential Malmquist index approach. We obtained three main empirical findings. First, 34 national EIPs exhibited a cumulative environmental performance improvement of 89.4% from 2007 to 2010, which is primarily the result of eco-efficiency change rather than environmental technical change. Second, compared with the trial EIPs, the demonstration EIPs had a higher average eco-efficiency (0.611 vs. 0.446 in 2010) and experienced greater average environmental performance improvement (129% vs. 60%). Third, the EIPs retrofitted from high-tech industrial development zones exhibited much higher average eco-efficiency (0.798 vs. 0.440 in 2010) than those retrofitted from economic and technical development zones. The key measures supporting the performance improvement and policy implications for the development of EIPs are also discussed.China's mineral resource consumption has gone through multiple increases since 1980, resulting in the inadequacy of important strategic resources and a high level of external dependence. Some developed countries have already reduced primary resources consumption through urban mining. Can China also break through the bottleneck of the resource shortage and continue its economic and social development through strengthening of urban mining? This article selected copper (Cu), aluminum (Al), lead (Pb), and iron (Fe) as case studies and established predictive models for metal demand, recycling, and stock, based on stock analysis, material flow analysis, and a life distribution model, and then analyzed the metabolism of the four resources and compared the environmental effects of three scenarios. The study indicates that the urban mining potential of Cu, Fe, Al, and Pb will attain 8.1, 711.6, 37.0, and 12.1million tonnes, respectively, in 2040. Compared with 2010, the substitution rate (secondary metals substituting primary metals) of Cu and Fe increase by 25.4% and 59.9%, whereas external dependence decreases by 30.8% and 25.7%. However, substitution is not obvious regarding Al and Pb. The low resource scenario decreases resources use, which will reduce external dependence in the short term, whereas the strengthened recovery scenario increases resource recovery and has a larger effect in reducing external dependence in the long term. So, in line with urban mining in the future, China should change its environment and resource strategy, further strengthen layout and construction of urban mining demonstration bases, and encourage the use of recyclable resources to provide a better foundation for urban mining.Carbon dioxide emissions from anthropic activities have accumulated in the atmosphere in excess of 800 Gigatons since preindustrial times, and are continuously increasing. Among other strategies, CO2 capture and storage is one option to mitigate the emissions from large point sources. In addition, carbon dioxide extraction from ambient air is assessed to reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Both direct and indirect (through photosynthesis) pathways are possible. Geological sequestration has significant disadvantages (high cost, low public acceptance, long term uncertainty) whereas carbon dioxide recycling (or utilization) is more consistent with the basic principle of industrial ecology, almost closing material cycles. In this article, a series of technologies for CO2 capture and valorization is described as integrated and optimized pathways. This integration increases the environmental and economic benefits of each technology. Depending on the source of carbon dioxide, appropriate capture and valorization processes are evaluated based on material and energy constraints. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The sustainable production and supply of raw materials (nonenergy raw materials) and primary energy carriers (energy raw materials) is a core element of many policies. The natural resource base for their production and supply, and the access thereto, are limited. Moreover, raw material supply is high on environmental and social impact agendas as well. A broad, quantitative framework that supports decision makers is recommended so as to make use of raw materials and primary energy carriers more sustainably. First, this article proposes a holistic classification of raw materials and primary energy carriers. This is an essential prerequisite for developing an integrated sustainability assessment framework (ISAF). Indeed, frequently, only a subset of raw materials and primary energy carriers are considered in terms of their source, sector, or final application. Here, 85 raw materials and 30 primary energy carriers overall are identified and grouped into seven and five subgroups, respectively. Next, this article proposes a quantitative ISAF for the production and supply of raw materials and primary energy carriers, covering all the sustainability pillars. With the goal of comprehensiveness, the proposed ISAF integrates sustainability issues that have been covered and modeled in quite different quantitative frameworks: ecosystem services; classical life cycle assessment (LCA); social LCA; resource criticality assessment; and particular international concerns (e.g., conflict minerals assessment). The resulting four areas of concerns (i.e., environmental, technical, economic, and social/societal) are grouped into ten specific sustainability concerns. Finally, these concerns are quantified through 15 indicators, enabling the quantitative sustainability assessment of the production and supply of raw materials and primary energy carriers.The aim of this article is to develop a methodological approach allowing to assess the influence of parameters of one or more elementary processes in the foreground system, on the outcomes of a life cycle assessment (LCA) study. From this perspective, the method must be able to: (1) include foreground process modeling in order to avoid the assumption of proportionality between inventory data and reference flows; (2) quantify influences of foreground processes' parameters (and, possibly, interactions between parameters); and (3) identify trends (either increasing or decreasing) for each parameter on each indicator in order to determine the most favorable direction for parametric variation. These objectives can be reached by combining foreground system modeling, a set of two different sensitivity analysis methods (each one providing different and complementary information), and LCA. The proposed method is applied to a case study of hemp-based insulation materials for buildings. The present study will focus on the agricultural stage as a foreground system and as a first step encompassing the entire life cycle. A set of technological recommendations were identified for hemp farmers in order to reduce the crop's environmental impacts (from -11% to -89% according to the considered impact category). One of the main limitations of the approach is the need for a detailed model of the foreground process. Further, the method is, at present, rather time-consuming. However, it offers long-term advantages given that the higher level of model detail adds robustness to the LCA results.This first article of a two-article series describes a framework and life cycle-based model for typical almond orchard production systems for California, where more than 80% of commercial almonds on the world market are produced. The comprehensive, multiyear, life cycle-based model includes orchard establishment and removal; field operations and inputs; emissions from orchard soils; and transport and utilization of co-products. These processes are analyzed to yield a life cycle inventory of energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, criteria air pollutants, and direct water use from field to factory gate. Results show that 1 kilogram (kg) of raw almonds and associated co-products of hulls, shells, and woody biomass require 35 megajoules (MJ) of energy and result in 1.6 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) of GHG emissions. Nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation water are the dominant causes of both energy use and GHG emissions. Co-product credits play an important role in estimating the life cycle environmental impacts attributable to almonds alone; using displacement methods results in net energy and emissions of 29 MJ and 0.9 kg CO2-eq/kg. The largest sources of credits are from orchard biomass and shells used in electricity generation, which are modeled as displacing average California electricity. Using economic allocation methods produces significantly different results; 1 kg of almonds is responsible for 33 MJ of energy and 1.5 kg CO2-eq emissions. Uncertainty analysis of important parameters and assumptions, as well as temporary carbon storage in orchard trees and soils, are explored in the second article of this two-part article series.This is the second part of a two-article series examining California almond production. The part I article describes development of the analytical framework and life cycle-based model and presents typical energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for California almonds. This part II article builds on this by exploring uncertainty in the life cycle model through sensitivity and scenario analysis, and by examining temporary carbon storage in the orchard. Sensitivity analysis shows life cycle GHG emissions are most affected by biomass fate and utilization, followed by nitrous oxide emissions rates from orchard soils. Model sensitivity for net energy consumption is highest for irrigation system parameters, followed by biomass fate and utilization. Scenario analysis shows utilization of orchard biomass for electricity production has the greatest potential effect, assuming displacement methods are used for co-product allocation. Results of the scenario analysis show that 1 kilogram (kg) of almond kernel and associated co-products are estimated to cause between -3.12 to 2.67 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) emissions and consume between 27.6 to 52.5 megajoules (MJ) of energy. Co-product displacement credits lead to avoided emissions of between -1.33 to 2.45 kg CO2-eq and between -0.08 to 13.7 MJ of avoided energy use, leading to net results of -1.39 to 3.99kg CO2-eq and 15.3 to 52.6MJ per kg kernel (net results are calculated by subtracting co-product credits from the results for almonds and co-products). Temporary carbon storage in orchard biomass and soils is accounted for by using alternative global warming characterization factors and leads to a 14% to 18% reduction in CO2-eq emissions. Future studies of orchards and other perennial cropping systems should likely consider temporary carbon storage.Recent constraints on supplies of the rare earth elements (REEs) have led to concerns about their long-term availability as well as the consequences that shortages would pose for modern technology. To assess this situation, we apply a comprehensive criticality methodology to the REE: lanthanum (La); cerium (Ce); praseodymium (Pr); neodymium (Nd); samarium (Sm); europium (Eu); gadolinium (Gd); terbium (Tb); dysprosium (Dy); holmium (Ho); erbium (Er); thulium (Tm); ytterbium (Yb); lutetium (Lu); and yttrium (Y). Assessments are made on national (U.S. and China) and global levels for the year 2008. Evaluations of each indicator are presented and the results plotted in criticality space on a 0 to 100 scale. Over the medium term (5 to 10years), supply risk (SR) for all REEs is moderate with minimal variation (62.8 to 65.1). Over the long term (10 to 100years), SR is low (42.1 to 49.2). Environmental implications scores, reflecting the economic allocation of environmental burdens, range from 4.2 for La to 34.4 for Lu. Eu, Er, and Dy have the highest vulnerability to supply restriction (VSR) at the global level (50.6, 49.2, and 47.4, respectively), whereas Sm has the lowest (15.1). This is mainly a reflection of their substitution potential. Similarly, at the national level for the United States and China, Eu and Sm have the highest and lowest VSR scores, respectively, although there are notable differences in scores among the REEs and between countries. Although China's export restrictions render REE supplies inadequate to meet demand at present, our analysis indicates a lower criticality for REEs over the longer term than for a number of other industrially used metals.Material flow analysis (MFA) is a widely applied tool to investigate resource and recycling systems of metals and minerals. Owing to data limitations and restricted system understanding, MFA results are inherently uncertain. To demonstrate the systematic implementation of uncertainty analysis in MFA, two mathematical concepts for the quantification of uncertainties were applied to Austrian palladium (Pd) resource flows and evaluated: (1) uncertainty ranges expressed by fuzzy sets and (2) uncertainty ranges defined by normal distributions given as mean values and standard deviations. Whereas normal distributions represent the traditional approach for quantifying uncertainties in MFA, fuzzy sets may offer additional benefits in relation to uncertainty quantification in cases of scarce information. With respect to the Pd case study, the fuzzy representation of uncertain quantities is more consistent with the actual data availability in cases of incomplete databases, and fuzzy sets serve to highlight the effect of uncertainty on resource efficiency indicators derived from the MFA results. For both approaches, data reconciliation procedures offer the potential to reduce uncertainty and evaluate the plausibility of the model results. With respect to Pd resource management, improved formal collection of end-of-life (EOL) consumer products is identified as a key factor in increasing the recycling efficiency. In particular, the partial export of EOL vehicles represents a substantial loss of Pd from the Austrian resource system, whereas approximately 70% of the Pd in the EOL consumer products is recovered in waste management. In conclusion, systematic uncertainty analysis is an integral part of MFA required to provide robust decision support in resource management.The resource-development trajectory of developed countries after the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be portrayed as an environmental mountain (EM). It is important for developing countries to decouple their resource use from economic growth and tunnel through the EM. In this study, we embedded the decoupling indicators for resource use and waste emissions into EM curves to quantify China's progress in tunneling through the EM over a specific time period. Five case studies regarding the conditions required for decoupling energy consumption, crude steel production, cement production, CO2 emissions, and SO2 emissions from economic growth in China were conducted. The results indicated that during 1985-2010 the trajectories of energy consumption, and CO2 and SO2 emissions in China met the requirements for tunneling through the EM, but the trajectories of cement and steel production did not. Based on these results, suggestions regarding China's environmental policies are provided to enable the country to tunnel through the EM.This paper considers the limits and potential of urban metabolism' to conceptualize city processes. Three ecologies' of urban metabolism have emerged. Each privileges a particular dimension of urban space, shaped by epistemology, politics, and model-making. Marxist ecologies theorize urban metabolism as hybridized socio-natures that (re)produce uneven outcomes; industrial ecology, as stocks and flows of materials and energy; and urban ecology, as complex socio-ecological systems. We demarcate these scholarly islands through bibliometric analysis and literature review, and draw on cross-domain mapping theory to unveil how the metaphor has become stagnant in each. To reinvigorate this research, the paper proposes the development of political-industrial ecology, using urban metabolism as a boundary metaphor.Mining legacies are often dominated by large waste facilities and their associated environmental impacts. The most serious environmental problem associated with mine waste is heavy metals and acid leakage through a phenomenon called acid mine drainage (AMD). Interestingly, the toxicity of this leakage is partly due to the presence of valuable metals in the waste stream as a result of a diversity of factors influencing mining operations. A more preventive and recovery-oriented approach to waste management, integrated into mine planning and operations, could be both economically attractive and environmentally beneficial since it would: mitigate environmental impacts related to mine waste disposal (and consequently reduce the remediation costs); and increase the resource recovery at the mine site level. The authors argue that eco-efficiency and resilience and the resulting increase in a mine's lifetime) are both critical-yet overlooked-characteristics of sustainable mining operations. Based on these arguments, this paper proposes a framework to assist with identification of opportunities for improvement and to measure this improvement in terms of its contribution to a mine's sustainability performance.Industrial clusters play an important role in the development of cities and regions. Industrial Ecology is an emerging research area in science for sustainable regional development and in solutions of development of production and society. This study aimed to verify the central scientific publication of Industrial Ecology and Industrial Clusters in academic society provided on web bases Capes and Scielo, aiming to identify the evolution of these themes and the relationship between them. Therefore identifies the evolution of the theme in the social and scientific spheres. To achieve the goal it was held a methodological procedure of literature review based on bibliometrics. For the application of the study we used steps of the instrument ProKnow-C. The keywords were surveyed in English and Portuguese, between the years 2000 to 2011. The results obtained through the methodological procedures indicated that the field of Industrial Ecology and its relationship with Industrial Clusters is still fruitful of studies. However, there was a descent of studies correlating themes. Given the initial checks, it is clear that publications and researchers are interest to deepen their research questions in this area. This study also identified new keywords and research opportunities to be enhanced, enabling the continuation of studies aimed at social, sustainable and regional development.The aim of the paper is a reconstruction of the national distribution and estimation of the arithmetic average indoor radon concentration in Russia using the data of official annual 4-DOZ reports. Annual 4-DOZ reports summarize results of radiation measurements in 83 regions of Russian Federation. Information on more than 400 000 indoor radon measurements includes the average indoor radon isotopes equilibrium equivalent concentration (EEC) and number of measurements by regions and by three main types of houses: wooden, one-storey non-wooden, and multi-storey non-wooden houses. To reconstruct the national distribution, all-Russian model sample was generated by integration of sub-samples created using the results of each annual regional program of indoor radon measurements in each type of buildings. According to indoor radon concentration distribution reconstruction, all-Russian average indoor radon concentration is 48 Bq/m(3). Average indoor radon concentration by region ranges from 12 to 207 Bq/m(3). The 95-th percentile of the distribution is reached at indoor radon concentration 160 Bq/m(3). (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.H.T.Odum originally defined transformity as the amount of energy of one type required to generate a unit of energy of another type with the caveat that the energy production system was operating under competition at optimum loading for maximum power. The caveat has been mostly ignored in emergy evaluations, often because it is difficult to identify when or whether a transformity was produced at maximum empower. We developed the model TechnoPulse to explore the temporally dynamic relationship between transformity and empower. As TechnoPulse cycled through four distinct phases of birth, growth, decline and recovery, maximum empower was accompanied by minimum transformity for the production flow. Conversely, the period of minimum empower corresponded to maximum transformity. After the "birth" of the new energy form, the period of growth saw empower increase as tranformity declined. Since transformity is the reciprocal of efficiency, maximizing empower also increased efficiency. We found that the non-pulsing situation had higher empower than pulsing, but that pulsing maximized power and minimized tranformity (maximized efficiency). We found that the national production of electricity in the US followed the pattern observed from the growth portion of the TechnPulse simulation by maximizing empower and minimizing transformity over the period 1995-2006. A contrast of two methods for estimating the emergy yield of systems (emergy summation based on common practices and transformity multiplication based on using minimum transformity at maximum empower) applied to PV electricity production revealed starkly different interpretations for PV's role and viability as a primary source of electricity, but more importantly suggested that there is a easy rationale for employing each method. Finally, emergy evaluations can be improved by heeding Odum's original definition of tranformity and using the minimum tranformity corresponding to maximum empower. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Light-weight magnesium metal is used to displace heavy-weight steel and iron in automobiles and decrease CO2 emissions in the vehicle operation stage. This benefit is, however, significantly offset by CO2 emissions from high energy consumption in the magnesium production process. Thus, this study presents and assesses CO2 reduction strategies to mitigate the drawbacks of magnesium metal, based on the concepts of industrial ecology: industrial symbiosis with cement plant to utilize waste slag from magnesium production; industrial and urban symbiosis to utilize waste energy from urban area; and environmental supply chain management to purchase a feedstock with lower carbon footprint. These strategies can be used to reduce the embodied CO2 of magnesium metal by 5%, 31%, and 9%, respectively, compared to that of an existing magnesium metal. The industrial ecology-based strategies can be applied to produce low-carbon products and mitigate climate change. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste (MSW) can be viewed as a feedstock for industrial ecology inspired conversions of wastes to valuable products and energy. The industrial ecology principle of symbiotic processes using waste streams for creating value-added products is applied to MSW, with examples suggested for various residual streams. A methodology is presented to consider individual waste-to-energy or waste-to-product system synergies, evaluating the economic and environmental issues associated with each system. Steps included in the methodology include identifying waste streams, specific waste components of interest, and conversion technologies, plus steps for determining the economic and environmental effects of using wastes and changes due to transport, administrative handling, and processing. In addition to presenting the methodology, technologies for various MSW input streams are categorized as commercialized or demonstrated to provide organizations that are considering processes for MSW with summarized information. The organization can also follow the methodology to analyze interesting processes. Published by Elsevier B.V.The organic fraction of municipal solid waste provides abundant opportunities for industrial ecology-based symbiotic use. Energy production, economics, and environmental aspects are analyzed for four alternatives based on different technologies: incineration with energy recovery, gasification, anaerobic digestion, and fermentation. In these cases electricity and ethanol are the products considered, but other products and attempts at symbiosis can be made. The four technologies are in various states of commercial development. To highlight their relative complexities some adjustable parameters which are important for the operability of each process are discussed. While these technologies need to be considered for specific locations and circumstances, generalized economic and environmental information suggests relative comparisons for newly conceptualized processes. The results of industrial ecology-based analysis suggest that anaerobic digestion may improve seven emission categories, while fermentation, gasification, and incineration successively improve fewer emissions. A conceptual level analysis indicates that gasification, anaerobic digestion, and fermentation alternatives lead to positive economic results. In each case the alternatives and their assumptions need further analysis for any particular community. Published by Elsevier B.V.A wide spectrum of quantitative systems approaches such as life cycle assessment or integrated assessment models are available to assess sustainable development strategies. These methods describe certain aspects of the biophysical basis of society, which comprises in-use stocks and the processes and flows that maintain and operate these stocks. Despite this commonality, the methods are often developed and applied in isolation, which dampens scientific progress and complicates communication between scientists and decision makers. As research on socioecological systems matures, more structure and classification are needed. We argue that the concept of socioeconomic metabolism (SEM), which was developed in material flow analysis and material flow accounting, is a powerful boundary object that can serve as paradigm for studying the biophysical basis of human society. A common paradigm can facilitate model combination and integration, which can lead to more robust and comprehensive interdisciplinary assessments of sustainable development strategies. We refine the notion of SEM, clarify the relation between SEM and the economy, and provide a list of features that we believe qualifies SEM as research paradigm. We argue that SEM as paradigm can help to justify alternative economic concepts, suggest analogies that make the concept more accessible, and discuss its limitations. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The supply chain management literature indicates that limited research has explored the roles of Industrial Ecology and Industrial Symbiosis in relation to supply chain environmental sustainability development. Studies have explored supply chain environmental sustainability development and provided different approaches for developing environmentally sustainable supply chains. These include environmental management, design for environment, product stewardship, green purchasing, reverse logistics, recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing. These approaches have often been considered independently. Industrial Ecology and Industrial Symbiosis offer systematic thinking for companies to integrate key elements of these approaches into their supply chain environmental sustainability development. This study aims to develop a conceptual framework to embrace the integration and identify opportunities for companies to work collaboratively. The initial framework was proposed based on the review of the literature associated with environmentally sustainability supply chain management, Industrial Ecology, and Industrial Symbiosis. The initial framework is improved by corroborating the case study company's experience, a large UK distributor. Different hierarchies in waste management have also been considered when developing the framework. The paper emphasises the importance of prevention and reduction methods. The developed framework illustrates the areas and opportunities for supply chain parties to work collaboratively towards environmentally friendly activities. The developed framework contributes to the environmentally sustainable supply chain management literature and encourages companies to apply Industrial Ecology and Industrial Symbiosis to develop their environmentally sustainable supply chains. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The alpha-Fe2O3/In2O3 composite hollow microspheres were first synthesized through a well-designed two-step hydrothermal approach with an aim to promote the photocatalytic activity of the pure In2O3. The morphologies, phase structures, and optical properties of the resultant samples were systematically characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV-vis diffuse-reflectance, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The alpha-Fe2O3 nanoparticles acted as visible-light sensitizer, which were well-decorated on the surface of the In2O3 hollow microspheres. Meanwhile, the investigation of photocatalytic performance confirmed that the visible-light induced photocatalytic degradation rate of gaseous toluene was improved after the introduction of alpha-Fe2O3 component, which was about 1.6 times higher than that of pure In2O3 sample under identical conditions. Furthermore, some intermediates formed during the photocatalytic oxidation process were also indentified by in situ FTIR spectroscopy. The enhanced photocatalytic performance of the alpha-Fe2O3/In2O3 composites mainly stemmed from the strong visible-light-harvesting ability and the efficient spatial separation of photo-generated electron-hole pairs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The uncontrolled mixing of metals and their alloys during the different life cycle phases, combined with the melt purification constraints during remelting, pose great challenges during their end-of-life (EoL) treatment. In practice, open-loop recycling is typical and more common for metals than closed-loop recycling; especially in the case of aluminium, the industry operates in a cascade recycling approach. Associated with open-loop recycling are various types of material losses; loss of original functional quality, dissipation of scarce resources and the final need for dilution of the resulting metal impurities with primary materials. Thus, an environmental assessment tool is presented within this paper, aiming to support decision making related to the sustainable management of metal resources during secondary aluminium production. A material blending model aims at the minimization of the above mentioned losses in order to meet the product quality requirements. The goal of the study is threefold: i) to assess the environmental impact calculation of aluminium recycling, ii) to express, quantify and integrate dilution and quality losses into Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies, and iii) to determine the optimum material input for the recycling process from an environmental perspective. Different recycling options or strategies can be evaluated and compared based on avoided environmental impact. Case studies focusing on major post-consumer scrap streams are used to illustrate application areas and highlight the importance of altering and optimizing the raw material input. Finally, policy issues and opportunities for environmentally conscious metal management are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Studies of urban metabolism provide important insights for environmental management of cities, but are not widely used in planning practice due to a mismatch of data scale and coverage. This paper introduces the Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA) model as a potential decision support tool aimed as a contribution to overcome some of these difficulties and describes its pilot use at the county level in the Republic of Ireland. The results suggest that SAMFA is capable of identifying hotspots of higher material and energy use to support targeted planning initiatives, while its ability to visualise different policy scenarios supports more effective multi-stakeholder engagement. The paper evaluates this pilot use and sets out how this model can act as an analytical platform for the industrial ecology-spatial planning nexus.A discussion between researchers in the field of industrial ecology led to the question of whether Wolman's work on the urban metabolism (UM) of cities in 1965 was the first to quantify material flows of urban societies. This forum communication retrieves an apparently lost, but remarkable, work in the development of material flow analysis (MFA). That work is known as the Essay on the metabolism of Berlin, published in 1894 by the renowned German chemist and medical doctor, Theodor Weyl. To investigate the nutrition situation among the population in the city of Berlin, Weyl investigated the nutrient flows discharged from the city and compared these values to the nutrient consumption through food intake. The title, approach, and wording make his work a forerunner of UM studies today. This forum contribution aims to introduce Weyl's work to an interdisciplinary international readership. Therefore, we (1) give a brief overview of Weyl's professional life, (2) summarize his study based on the German article, and (3) conclude with a discussion of the relevance of his study for the tool, MFA, and the concept of UM today. A major difference between his work and contemporary studies on UM is the motivation of the author. Weyl's aim was not to highlight the problems associated with excessive human consumption of resources and pollution of the environment, but to investigate the nutrition situation of a society with a significant degree of malnutrition. The existence of the latter, particularly in developing countries, makes Weyl's study still relevant.Metabolism is a key concept in industrial ecology (IE). Industrial metabolism (IM) is widely used but seldom discussed, and the rare contributions discussing the concept show divergent views, so the debate is still open. Building on recent contributions that broaden the scope of the epistemological debate, the goal of the present discussion is to go beyond the general statement of IM as a biological analogy in IE. The aim is to infer a definition by a thorough deduction so as to further the debate or even federate the community. An etymological analysis demonstrates the eligibility of standpoints other than biological analogy. Moreover, an analysis of the biological characteristics of a metabolism to be emulated may question the pertinence of the currently employed biological analogy. Here, I propose an alternative view based on the present analysis results and in line with modern ecological precepts, whereby IM is considered as an actual phenomenon. According to the definition derived from the analysishuman-mediated matter change for sustaining a productive system's economic activityIM should be considered as a subset of a complex system of interconnected transformative processes across all scales of life: the metabolic network. The consequences and promising future orientations that may result from adopting such a shift in definition are succinctly explored.A wide spectrum of accounting frameworks and models is available to describe socioeconomic metabolism (SEM). Despite the common system of study, a large variety of terms and representations of that system are used by different models. This makes it difficult for practitioners to compare and choose a model or model combination that is fit for purpose. To facilitate model comparison, we analyze the system structure of material flow analysis (MFA); life cycle assessment (LCA); supply and use tables (SUTs); Leontief, Ghosh, and waste input-output analysis; integrated assessment models; and computable general equilibrium models. We show that the typical system structure of MFA and LCA is a directed graph. For the other models and some MFA and LCA studies, the system structure is a bipartite directed graph. We demonstrate that bipartite directed graphs and SUTs are equivalent representations of SEM. We show that the system structures of the models above are special cases of a general system structure, which models SEM as a bipartite graph. The general system structure includes industries, markets, the final use phase, products, waste, production factors, resources, and emissions. From the general system structure, we derive an accounting framework in the form of a generalized SUT. The general system structure facilitates the development of clear and unambiguous terminology across models. It helps to identify rules for the correct accounting of waste flows and stock changes. It facilitates model comparison and can serve as a blueprint for a model-independent database of SEM.Material flow analysis (MFA) has been an effective tool to identify the scale of physical activity, the allocation of materials across economic sectors for different purposes, and to identify inefficiencies in production systems or in urban contexts. However, MFA relies on ignoring the social drivers of those flows to be able to perform its calculations. In many cases therefore, it remains detached from the processes (e.g., urban) that underpin them. This becomes a problem when the purpose of research is to inform the design of detailed recycling schemes, for which micro-level practice knowledge on how material flows are mediated by human agency is needed. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how a particular social science approach, namely, infrastructure studies (IS), can be combined with MFA to enhance the latter's potential as a decision support tool. To achieve a successful combination between IS and MFA, the object of inquiry must be carefully defined to function as a boundary object,' which allows academic approaches to work together without the need for consensus. This approach is illustrated with a case study example in urban mining research that assesses the hibernating stock of subsurface urban infrastructure in Norrkoping, Sweden. It provides an example of how a well-calibrated MFA and a complementary social science approach can provide hands-on advice for private as well as public actors in a local and place-specific context. The article aims to advance the integration of social science and the study of the physical economy to contribute to the emerging field of social industrial ecology.The growth in Austria's raw material consumption (RMC) or material footprint is driven by changes in consumption and production. In using the tool of structural decomposition analysis and applying it to Austrian RMC between 1995 and 2007, three specific drivers (technology, composition, and volume of final demand) are identified and quantified. The overall growth of Austrian RMC across the period of time under investigation shows that neither improved production or consumption efficiency nor reduction of consumption alone can lead to absolute material savings. The rebound effect has been used to describe how efficiency gains can be offset by growth in overall consumption, putting degrowth on the agenda of sustainability sciences and political movements. Absolute decoupling, that is, simultaneous growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and reduction of RMC, can only be achieved if reductions in final demand volume as a driver of material use are not offset by increases as a result of the changing final demand mix and/or technology effect (and vice versa). The Austrian case study provides very little evidence for such developments having occurred simultaneously during the period of time under investigation. In order for economic degrowth to contribute to lower material use and thus greater environmental protection, it must occur not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively in production and consumption structures.Material flow analysis (MFA) is a tool for research and decision support in environmental policy and management. In order to promote the use of MFA at different spatial scales, a quantification of the uncertainty in nationwide, regional, and urban MFA methodologies is provided. In particular, the impact of the input data quality on the main MFA indicators is analyzed and the sources and extent of uncertainties for different spatial scales are listed. The types, origin, and extent of the errors are described in detail and several imputation methods are explained and evaluated. By introducing a novel approach to account measurement errors in data sets with very few details on the measurement errors, this article aims at contributing to the development of a standardized method to account for the uncertainty in MFA studies. This study uses the time series of MFA data for 1996-2011 at three spatial scalesnationwide (Sweden), regional (the Stockholm Region), and metropolitan (Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo)to determine how propagation of measurement errors affects the MFA results. The following MFA indicators were studied: direct material input; domestic processed output; and domestic material consumption. Generally, availability decreased as the spatial scale was lowered, whereas data errors increased. In the specific case of Sweden, the data on freight transport by rail and on waste produced by economic activities at the regional and metropolitan level should be improved.The aim of this work is to reconstruct the main economy-wide/material flow accounting indicators for the Spanish economy between 1860 and 2010. The main results indicate that from 1960 onward, the country saw a very rapid industrial transition based on the domestic extraction of quarry products and the import of fossil fuels and manufactured goods. Direct material consumption rose from 58.7million tonnes (Mt) in 1860 to 570.2Mt in 2010. In per capita terms, it rose from 2.76tonnes per capita per year (t/cap/yr) to 11.61t/cap/year. Of the decennial years studied in this article, a peak of 15.23t/cap/yr occurs in the year 2000; the subsequent fall is explained by the crisis of 2008. Until 1930, Spain was a net exporter of resources, but since that year, and especially since 1960, it began to depend heavily on overseas resources. The physical trade balance per inhabitant in Spain was -0.01t/cap/year in 1860 and today it is 2.45t/cap/year. This process also reveals the change in consumption patterns, which became increasingly dependent on abiotic resources. In 1860, 98.1% of resources consumed was biomass, whereas today the figure is 16.2%. In all events, this article shows how, although the great transformation did not occur until 1960, before that date the country saw significant qualitative transformation, which did not involve relevant changes in the mobilization of resources.A detailed understanding of material stocks in use is essential for anticipating future scrap availability, identifying critical drivers for material use, and developing strategies for resource efficiency. Here, we present a bottom-up assessment of iron and steel stocks in use in urban and rural China for the years 2000 and 2010, including >250 subcategories of products and components, and grouping them into five main end-use categories (i.e., buildings, infrastructure, domestic appliances, machinery, and transport equipment). The uncertainty range of the steel content per type of stock, a determinant of the accuracy and usefulness of the stock accounting, is probed by multiple means, including sample analysis. Important findings are that (1) iron and steel stocks in China have climbed to 2.4 tonnes/capita (t/cap) in 2010, up from 0.9 t/cap in 2000. The use of reinforced concrete in construction of the urban built environment was the major driver for stock growth; (2) a rural-urban difference was uncovered, with rural iron and steel stocks of approximately 1.1 t/cap and the urban iron and steel stocks of approximately 3.7 t/cap in 2010. Both are, nevertheless, far below the level of 10 to 16 t/cap observed in highly industrialized and urbanized countries. For this reason, further stock increase is foreseeable as urbanization and industrialization proceeds and quality of life improves; (3) nearly half of the steel stocks were embedded in concrete structures, and 23% were located in the countryside. Only a fraction of these stocks are currently recovered at end of life.The focus when analyzing the environmental requirements and impacts of the economic system is usually placed on production activities. But all production is associated with final consumption, and recently many studies have also been dedicated to final consumption. This article comprehensively reviews the biophysical assessment of households from the point of view of materials and energy required and emissions and wastes resulting from household consumption patterns. Although the aggregation bias and methodological variability make comparisons difficult, some patterns can be recognized. Results show that for many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a few developing countries, household metabolism has been mainly assessed from the energetic perspective, stressing household responsibility for emissions of greenhouse effect gases and climate change. Few studies deal with other emissions and wastes. There is a lack of information about material requirements, too. Environmental input-output (I-O) analysis and life cycle assessment are the methods usually employed, together with the use of economic, environmental, and expenditure information. Information about direct inputs and outputs is complemented with data on the environmental requirements associated with the consumption of goods and services. Multiregional I-O techniques have been used to capture upstream requirements in an attempt to avoid errors owing to truncation and domestic technology assumptions. Housing, food, and mobility are the most important consumption categories, but the shares of these categories in the requirements are different according to environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic factors. Finally, challenges for further research are discussed based on the need for new methodological developments, as well as the potential of the metabolic narrative to elaborate information relevant to sustainable consumption policies.For half a century, system scientists have relied on urban metabolism (UM) as a pragmatic framework to support the needed transition toward sustainable urban development. It has been suggested that information and communication technology (ICT) and, more specifically, smart cities can be leveraged in this transition. Given the recent advances in smart cities, smart urban metabolism (SUM) is considered a technology-enabled evolution of the UM framework, overcoming some of its current limitations. Most significantly, the SUM framework works at high temporal (up to real-time) and spatial (down to household/individual) resolutions. This article presents the first implementation of SUM in the Smart City Stockholm Royal Seaport R&D project; it further analyzes barriers and discusses the potential long-term implications of the findings. Four key performance indicators (KPIs) are generated in real time based on the integration of heterogeneous, real-time data sources. These are kilowatt-hours per square meter, carbon dioxide equivalents per capita, kilowatt-hours of primary energy per capita, and share of renewables percentage. These KPIs are fed back on three levels (household, building, and district) on four interfaces, developed for different audiences. The most challenging barrier identified was accessing and integrating siloed data from the different data owners (utilities, building owners, and so forth). It is hard to overcome unless a significant value is perceived. A number of long-term opportunities were described in the SUM context; among those, it is envisioned that SUM could enable a new understanding of the causalities that govern urbanism and allow citizens and city officials to receive feedback on the system consequences of their choices.Analyses of sustainable design and commodity networks often make a priori assumptions about the capacity of markets to provide solutions to environmental problems; and have a tendency to celebrate local scales of action. This paper offers a contrasting account, in which the national state sought to carefully manage scarce natural resources arid to ensure equitable consumption at a time of deep crisis. We utilise the historical example of the British wartime Utility furniture scheme in order to draw out three lessons for sustainable and equitable environmental practice. First, we argue that national states do not simply provide an institutional backdrop to sustainable production but rather can act as important organising agents. Second, the paper emphasises that sustainability is best achieved through interventions across a commodity network, beyond simply modifications to a single node such as design. Finally, we underscore the value of 'pragmatic centralism' in environmental decision-making, calling attention to the collaborative practices that underpinned the scheme. The example of Utility's adaptive responses borne out of crisis, scarcity and shortage during wartime-offers much that is of intrinsic interest to current concerns about resource consumption and the drivers of sustainability in commodity networks. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability is a keyword commonly used by researchers and practitioners globally. However, even defining the goals of sustainability is fraught with difficulties and hence attaining it is nearly impossible. Since sustainability is a property of the entire system, engineering sustainability requires the boundaries of the system greatly expanded. The thinking of sustainability also brings in larger time scales. In this article, I present a perspective on journey toward sustainability using systems analysis approaches from various disciplines.The quantitative tools and methods that have been developed to identify and cultivate industrial symbiotic exchanges in existing industrial parks to minimize overall energy and material consumption are reviewed. The issues relevant to adapting an existing park differs from those associated with constructing a new park using eco-industrial principles. Published literature was surveyed for methodologies which identify and establish viable inter-company exchanges for water, heat, power and materials. Studies which address issues associated with infrastructure alterations are specifically highlighted, as well as methods to quantify and manipulate any potential financial and/or ecological benefits gained by adopting proposed eco-industrial measures. Additional topics, such as network analysis, company motivation, confidentiality issues and introduction of new industries or facilities are included. This review surveys current quantitative methodologies that can be applied to the process of adapting established industrial park networks into eco-industrial park systems and case studies which are pertinent to this type of adaptation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land use is recognized as a pervasive driver of environmental impacts, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Global trade leads to telecoupling between the land use of production and the consumption of biomass-based goods and services. Telecoupling is captured by accounts of the upstream land requirements associated with traded products, also commonly referred to as land footprints. These accounts face challenges in two main areas: (1) the allocation of land to products traded and consumed and (2) the metrics to account for differences in land quality and land-use intensity. For two main families of accounting approaches (biophysical, factor-based and environmentally extended input-output analysis), this review discusses conceptual differences and compares results for land footprints. Biophysical approaches are able to capture a large number of products and different land uses, but suffer from a truncation problem. Economic approaches solve the truncation problem, but are hampered by the limited disaggregation of sectors and products. In light of the conceptual differences, the overall similarity of results generated by both types of approaches is remarkable. Diametrically opposed results for some of the world's largest producers and consumers of biomass-based products, however, make interpretation difficult. This review aims to provide clarity on some of the underlying conceptual issues of accounting for land footprints.This article reviews, categorizes, and evaluates the objectives, means, and results of the application of material flow analysis (MFA) in waste management. It identifies those areas where MFA methodologies are most successful in supporting waste management decisions. The focus of this review is on the distinction between MFA on the level of goods and on the level of substances. Based on 83 reviewed studies, potentials, strengths, and weaknesses are investigated for the two levels of MFA when applied for analysis, evaluation, and improvement of waste management systems. The differences are discussed in view of effectiveness, applicability, and data availability. The results show that MFA on the level of goods are instrumental for understanding how waste management systems function, facilitating the connections of stakeholders, authorities, and waste management companies. The substance level is essential to assess qualitative aspects regarding resources and environment. Knowledge about the transformation, transport, and storage of valuable and hazardous substances forms the base for identifying both resource potentials and risks for human health and the environment. The results of this review encourage the application of MFA on both levels of goods and substances for decision making in waste management. Because of the mass balance principle, this combination has proven to be a powerful tool for comprehensively assessing if a chosen system reaches designated waste management goals.It is increasingly recognized that the growing metabolism of society is approaching limitations both with respect to sources for resource inputs and sinks for waste and emission outflows. The circular economy (CE) is a simple, but convincing, strategy, which aims at reducing both input of virgin materials and output of wastes by closing economic and ecological loops of resource flows. This article applies a sociometabolic approach to assess the circularity of global material flows. All societal material flows globally and in the European Union (EU-27) are traced from extraction to disposal and presented for main material groups for 2005. Our estimate shows that while globally roughly 4 gigatonnes per year (Gt/yr) of waste materials are recycled, this flow is of moderate size compared to 62Gt/yr of processed materials and outputs of 41Gt/yr. The low degree of circularity has two main reasons: First, 44% of processed materials are used to provide energy and are thus not available for recycling. Second, socioeconomic stocks are still growing at a high rate with net additions to stocks of 17Gt/yr. Despite having considerably higher end-of-life recycling rates in the EU, the overall degree of circularity is low for similar reasons. Our results indicate that strategies targeting the output side (end of pipe) are limited given present proportions of flows, whereas a shift to renewable energy, a significant reduction of societal stock growth, and decisive eco-design are required to advance toward a CE.In order to fully comprehend the socioeconomic metabolic (SEM) dynamics and material balance of nations, long-term accounting of economy-wide material stock is necessary in parallel to material flow accounts. Nevertheless, material stock accounts have been scarce, isolated, and mostly focused either on single materials, short time spans, or small regions. This study has two objectives: (1) review the state of the art of material stock research in the SEM discourse and (2) present a project to map, in a high level of detail, the in-use construction material stocks of Japan and its 47 prefectures from the 1940s until the present era. This project documents the two major depositories of material stock: buildings and infrastructure. We describe the challenges and benefits of utilizing a bottom-up approach, in order to promote its usage in material stock studies. The resulting database presents the accumulation of stock over time, as well as visually displaying the spatial distribution of the stock using geographical information systems (GIS), which, we argue, is an essential aspect of material stock analysis in the context of socioeconomic metabolism research.Material flow-based indicators play an important role in measuring green and resource-efficient growth. This article examines the global flows of materials and the amounts of materials directly and indirectly necessary to satisfy domestic final demand in different countries world-wide. We calculate the indicator Raw Material Consumption (RMC), also referred to as material footprint (MF), by applying a global, multiregional input-output model based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database and extended by material extraction data. We examine world-wide patterns of material extraction and materials embodied in trade and consumption, investigating changes between 1997 and 2007. We find that flows of materials related to international trade have increased by almost 60% between 1997 and 2007. We show that the differences in MFs per capita are huge, ranging from up to 100 tonnes in the rich, oil-exporting countries to values as low as 1.5 to 2.0 tonnes in some developing countries. We also quantify the differences between the indicators Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) and RMC, illustrating that net material exporters generally have a DMC larger than RMC, whereas the reverse is observed for net importers. Finally, we confirm the fact that most countries with stable or declining DMCs actually show increasing RMCs, indicating the occurrence of leakage effects, which are not fully captured by DMC. This challenges the world-wide use of DMC as a headline indicator for national material consumption and calls for the consideration of upstream material requirements of international trade flows.Commodity trade networks exhibit certain patterns in the configuration of material flows that are similar to natural ecological networks. This article develops and explores an ecological information-based approach to examine the ecology of commodity trade networks. We demonstrate that commodity trade networks show a pattern of commonality when viewed through the introduced ecological information-based metrics. Specifically, we show how the network metrics of effective connectivity and effective number of roles can convey boundaries where commodity trade networks are robust. Further, the temporal trends of these metrics suggest the existence of multiple basins of attractions and provide clues on the dynamics of resilience of these networks over time.The ongoing globalization process strengthens the connections between different geographic regions through trade. Biomass products, such as food, fiber, or bioenergy, are increasingly traded globally, thereby leading to telecouplings between distant, seemingly unrelated regions. For example, restrictions for agricultural production or changes in bioenergy demand in Europe or the United States might contribute to deforestation in Latin America or Sub-Saharan Africa. One approach to analyze trade-related land-use effects of the global socioeconomic biomass metabolism is the embodied human appropriation of net primary production or eHANPP. eHANPP accounts allocate to any product the entire amount of the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) that emerges throughout its supply chain. This allows consumption-based accounts to move beyond simple area-demand approaches by taking differences in natural productivity as well as in land-use intensity into account, both across land-use types as well as across world regions. In this article, we discuss the eHANPP related to the European Union's (EU) consumption of biomass products in the period 1986-2007, based on a consistent global trade data set derived from bilateral data. We find a considerable dependency of the EU on the appropriation of biological productivity outside its own boundaries, with increasing reliance on Latin America as a main supplier. By using the EU as an illustrative example, we demonstrate the usefulness of eHANPP for assessing land-use impacts caused by nations' socioeconomic activities and conclude that the eHANPP approach can provide useful information to better manage ecosystems globally in the face of an increasingly interconnected world.Water accounting is an unresolved issue in metabolism studies. Through epistemological analysis, we show that the problem resides in the conceptualization of social metabolism. Social metabolism has its origins in the analysis of societal energetics, which has led to an exclusive focus on society and a representation based on linear throughputs at a single scale. Whereas fossil energy resources constitute a mere stock flow for society, water constitutes a set of both funds and flows essential for the maintenance of the internal organization and stability of society and ecosystems. This means that societies and ecosystems need water for different reasons. Consequently, the analysis of water requires the simultaneous adoption of multiple narratives and scales. The development of hydrology toward a socio-eco-hydrology (SE-hydrology) deals with this multidimensionality, but lacks a conceptualization of the coupled human-water system useful to integrate the assessment of water processes at different rates and scales. We propose a conceptual framework, based on the multiscale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism approach, that combines the perspectives of SE-hydrology and social metabolism. This framework describes society and the embedding ecosystem as two distinct levels of the same hierarchical system (i.e., the socioecological system), expressing two distinct, but tightly interconnected, metabolic patterns (societal and ecosystem) at different spatiotemporal scales. Using food grain production in Punjab as an example, we show that this framework can accommodate the multiple interpretations of social metabolism found in different scientific fields.This study provides a global substance flow analysis for gallium (Ga), germanium (Ge), and indium (In) for 2011, quantifying the amount of metal lost during extraction, beneficiation/smelting/refining, manufacturing of intermediate products, and the amount embodied in end-use products. Thus far, studies illustrating their cradle to end-use life cycle on a global scale are either missing or outdated, and thus opportunities to increase their supply remain unknown and/or not quantified. The results illustrate the losses and inefficiencies stages, thereby identifying potential additional supply by process improvement, recovery, and recycling. Results show that there are significant opportunities to meet future demand of Ga and Ge by concentrating recovery efforts in the extraction and beneficiation/smelting/refining stages. Further, 1.4% Ga, 0.7% Ge, and 54% In of the theoretical available amount in the attractor ores are extracted to meet the primary refined demand in 2011. Of the 9,065tonnes (t) of Ga embodied in the Bayer liquor (from aluminum production), only 263t are refined. This is owing to low capacities of Ga refining, combined with a refining efficiency of 60%. Ge presents a similar case for the same reasons, in which only 43t of Ge of the 7,636t of Ge available from zinc leach residue are refined. Meeting future In demand, on the other hand, will require greater efforts in increasing end-of-life recycling. Process efficiencies for Ga (46%), Ge (56%), and In (78%) demonstrate further potential. We quantify the flows into use by distinguishing among dissipative and nondissipative end uses, as well as the recyclable fraction for each metal for 2011.Reverse logistics practices are gaining attention due to industrial ecology, enforced legislation and corporate citizenship but presence of barriers make reverse logistics (RL) implementation difficult and hence reduce the success rate. To increase RL adoption, robust and flexible strategies are required to overcome its barriers. This study focuses on identification and ranking the solutions of reverse logistics adoption in electronics industry to overcome its barriers. It aids firms to ponder on high rank solutions and develop strategies to implement them on priority. This paper proposes a methodology based on fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to identify and rank the solutions of RL adoption to overcome its barriers. Fuzzy AHP is applied to get weights of the barriers as criteria by pairwise comparison and final ranking of the solutions of RL adoption is obtained through fuzzy TOPSIS. The empirical case of Indian electronics industry is shown to illustrate the use of the proposed method. This proposed method offers a more precise, efficient and effective decision support tool for stepwise implementation of the solutions due to consideration of fuzzy environment. Finally sensitivity analysis is performed to illustrate the robustness of the method. (C) 2015 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study is about the urban economic service function characteristics and the regional economic contact from the perspectives of region and industries. This paper analyzes the location quotient (LQ), urban external function capability (UEFC), and the characteristics and distribution of urban economic flow intensity (UEFI) of cities in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of Guangdong Province, China. Results show: (1) the proportion of the UEFI of Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the PRD region decreased while the one of Foshan and Dongguan increased from 2005 to 2013; (2) the UEFI of Foshan gained the largest increase (532%) and Zhuhai showed the smallest increase (76%) from 2005 to 2013; (3) LQs of manufacturing in all cities were greater than one, indicating the overall external service capability of this sector was strong in the PRD region; (4) the numbers of cities whose LQs of tertiary sectors were greater than one reduced from 2005 to 2013, reflecting the urban external service capabilities of the tertiary sectors tended to be concentrated to fewer cities.Strategies for reducing food waste and developing sustainable diets require information about the impacts of consumption behavior and waste generation on climatic, water, and land resources. We quantified the carbon, water, and ecological footprints of 17,110 family members of Chinese households, covering 1935 types of foods, by combining survey data with available life-cycle assessment data sets. We also summarized the patterns of both food consumption and waste generation and analyzed the factors influencing the observed trends. The average person wasted (consumed) 16 (415) kg of food at home annually, equivalent to 40 (1080) kg CO(2)e, 18 (673) m(3), and 173 (4956) gm(2) for the carbon, water and ecological footprints, respectively. The generation of food waste was highly correlated with consumption for various food groups. For example, vegetables, rice, and wheat were consumed the most and accounted for the most waste. In addition to the three plant-derived food groups, pork and aquatic products also contributed greatly to embedded footprints. The data obtained in this study could be used for assessing national food security or the carrying capacity of resources. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Though adsorption is a promising method to treat anitibotics pollution, the complexity of many kinds of antibiotics molecules and the multiple roles of organic functional groups in organo-functionalized mesoporous silicas adsorbents cause diverse interactions between the antibiotics and the adsorbents. Here, we prepared SBA-15, SH-SBA-15 and SO3H-SBA-15 with comparable textural and structural property for the adsorption of ciprofloxain to elucidate the dual roles of organic functional groups. It is found that the beneficial electrostatic interaction of SO3H-SBA-15 precedes its disadvantageous hydrophilicity for adsorption, which is different from amine functionalized mesoporous materials as reported elsewhere. The potential antibiotics adsorbents, SO3H-SBA-15, could be reused 3 times without obvious decrease of adsorption property. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Mesoporous silica materials have attracted much attention because of their large surface area, uniform pore-size distribution, large pore size, and wide potential applications in the fields of separation, adsorption, and catalysis. The progress in the removal of volatile organic compounds (VOCs, mainly containing hydrocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, acetone, benzene, toluene, naphthalene, and ethyl acetate) by mesoporous silica materials and supported catalysts in recent years is reviewed. The effect of the structure of mesoporous silica materials on the adsorption of VOCs is discussed. We also discuss the catalytic performance and reaction mechanism for catalytic VOC oxidation over supported catalysts. The recent developments in catalytic combustion of toluene are examined in detail. We found that the surface environment, pore structure, and morphology of mesoporous silica materials are the main factors influencing adsorption of VOC molecules. The application of noble metal catalyst focuses on improving poison resistance and reducing cost. The research on non-noble metal catalysts focuses on developing supported mixed-metal oxide catalysts with high activity. Future developments of mesoporous silica materials and supported catalysts are highlighted. The design of the catalyst can be carried out from two aspects: the silica support and the mesoporous channel. This review will be helpful in choosing an appropriate catalyst for the removal of VOCs with high activity and stability.The core-nanoshell magnetic composite material was synthesized to remove Pb(II) from wastewater by adsorption method. The sample was characterized by XRD, SEM, VSM and FTIR. The results show that the sample was prepared successfully. Batch experiments were carried out to investigate the parameters affecting the Pb( II) adsorption as well as adsorption kinetics. The optimum parameters for Pb(II) removal were found to be: pH 7, 80 min, respectively. The removal rate reached about 99.7%. The kinetic data were found to follow the pseudo-second-order model closely, revealing chemisorption as the dominant mechanism. The results of FTIR characterization revealed that the adsorption mechanism might be the reactions of ion exchange or complexation between the Pb(II) and some functional groups on the corenanoshell magnetic composite material surface, and the adsorption is a both physical and chemical process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Consumer awareness is continuously increasing towards pro-environmental behavior. Thus, we developed a web-based environmental feedback tool EcoRunner, which is designed for Swedish households aiming at increasing the awareness in a more pro-environmental direction. The conceptual model of EcoRunner has been developed based on top-down and bottom-up approaches connecting economic activities within a household to environmental pressures (both direct and indirect). In addition, the development of the tool includes a multi-level model aiming at better tailor-made advice to consumers. In this paper, we examine the EcoRunner tool with average single Swedish household expenditures as well as explore options for reductions and systems effects. Analysis shows that food and non-alcoholic beverages, fuel for personal transport (e.g. car) and air transports have significant environmental pressures. In addition, this study suggests that EcoRunner could be used in education systems as an environmental feedback tool to enlighten consumers motivation and change consumption patterns. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.BACKGROUNDWet absorption via addition of Fe(II)EDTA combined with biological reduction for nitric oxide removal is a promising approach. Based on existing issues and related studies of NOx scrubber solution, a dual-chamber MFC system with a biocathode was utilized to perform simultaneous and continuous reduction of Fe(III)EDTA and Fe(II)EDTA-NO with energy recovery. RESULTSThe experimental results showed that in this system almost all of the Fe(II)EDTA-NO was removed and the spent NOx scrubber liquor (consisting of Fe(II)EDTA-NO and Fe(III)EDTA) was regenerated 50%, combined with electricity generation of 15.3 Am-3 NCC at the same time. Microorganisms utilized Fe(II)EDTA and cathodic electrodes as electron donor for Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction and, different from the complicated Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction process, the electrode was the sole electron donor for Fe(III)EDTA reduction. Additionally, Fe(II)EDTA-NO and Fe(III)EDTA mutually inhibits each other, mostly due to the competition for electrons. The microbial community of the biocathode was dominated by members of the Betaproteobacteria class. CONCLUSIONThis study first proposed and confirmed that microbial fuel cells could be utilized for the regeneration of NOx removal liquor which provided a novel pathway for NO removal combined with energy recovery. (c) 2014 Society of Chemical IndustryThe availability and sustainable supply of technology metals and valuable elements is critical to the global economy. There is a growing realization that the development and deployment of the clean energy technologies and sustainable products and manufacturing industries of the 21st century will require large amounts of critical metals and valuable elements including rare-earth elements (REEs), platinum group metals (PGMs), lithium, copper, cobalt, silver, and gold. Advances in industrial ecology, water purification, and resource recovery have established that seawater is an important and largely untapped source of technology metals and valuable elements. This feature article discusses the opportunities and challenges of mining critical metals and elements from seawater. We highlight recent advances and provide an outlook of the future of metal mining and resource recovery from seawater.Advances in industrial ecology, desalination, and resource recovery have established that industrial wastewater, seawater, and brines are important and largely untapped sources of critical metals and elements. A Grand Challenge in metal recovery from industrial wastewater is to design and synthesize high capacity, recyclable and robust chelating ligands with tunable metal ion selectivity that can be efficiently processed into low-energy separation materials and modules. In our efforts to develop high capacity chelating membranes for metal recovery from impaired water, we report a one-pot method for the preparation of a new family of mixed matrix polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes with in situ synthesized poly(amidoamine) [PAMAM] particles. The key feature of our new membrane preparation method is the in situ synthesis of PAMAM dendrimer-like particles in the dope solutions prior to membrane casting using low-generation dendrimers (GO and G1-NH2) with terminal primary amine groups as precursors and epichlorohydrin (ECH) as cross-linker. By using a combined thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) and nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPS) casting process, we successfully prepared a new family of asymmetric PVDF ultrafiltration membranes with (0 neutral and hydrophilic surface layers of average pore diameters of 22-45 nm, (ii) high loadings (similar to 48 wt %) of dendrimer-like PAMAM particles with average diameters of similar to 1.3-2.4 mu m, and (iii) matrices with sponge-like microstructures characteristics of membranes with strong mechanical integrity. Preliminary experiments show that these new mixed matrix PVDF membranes can serve as high capacity sorbents for Cu(II) recovery from aqueous solutions by ultrafiltration.Building stocks constitute enduring components of urban infrastructure systems, but little research exists on their residence time or changing environmental impacts. Using Los Angeles County, California, as a case study, a framework is developed for assessing the changes of building stocks in cities (i.e., a generalizable framework for estimating the construction and deconstruction rates), the residence time of buildings and their materials, and the associated embedded environmental impacts. In Los Angeles, previous land-use decisions prove not easily reversible, and past building stock investments may continue to constrain the energy performance of buildings. The average age of the building stock has increased steadily since 1920 and more rapidly after the post-World War II construction surge in the 1950s. Buildings will likely endure for 60 years or longer, making this infrastructure a quasi-permanent investment. The long residence time, combined with the physical limitations on outward growth, suggest that the Los Angeles building stock is unlikely to have substantial spatial expansion in the future. The construction of buildings requires a continuous investment in material, monetary, and energetic resources, resulting in environmental impacts. The long residence time of structures implies a commitment to use and maintain the infrastructure, potentially creating barriers to an urban area's ability to improve energy efficiency. The immotility of buildings, coupled with future environmental goals, indicates that urban areas will be best positioned by instituting strategies that ensure reductions in life cycle (construction, use, and demolition) environmental impacts.Material stocks are an important part of the social metabolism. Owing to long service lifetimes of stocks, they not only shape resource flows during construction, but also during use, maintenance, and at the end of their useful lifetime. This makes them an important topic for sustainable development. In this work, a model of stocks and flows for nonmetallic minerals in residential buildings, roads, and railways in the EU25, from 2004 to 2009 is presented. The changing material composition of the stock is modeled using a typology of 72 residential buildings, four road and two railway types, throughout the EU25. This allows for estimating the amounts of materials in in-use stocks of residential buildings and transportation networks, as well as input and output flows. We compare the magnitude of material demands for expansion versus those for maintenance of existing stock. Then, recycling potentials are quantitatively explored by comparing the magnitude of estimated input, waste, and recycling flows from 2004 to 2009 and in a business-as-usual scenario for 2020. Thereby, we assess the potential impacts of the European Waste Framework Directive, which strives for a significant increase in recycling. We find that in the EU25, consisting of highly industrialized countries, a large share of material inputs are directed at maintaining existing stocks. Proper management of existing transportation networks and residential buildings is therefore crucial for the future size of flows of nonmetallic minerals.Within this article, I investigate a number of the conceptual issues that arise when attempting to translate Herman Daly's definition of a steady-state economy (SSE) into a set of national biophysical indicators. Although Daly's definition gives a high-level view of what would be held steady in an SSE, it also leaves many questions unanswered. How should stocks and flows be aggregated? What is the role of international trade? How should nonrenewable resources be treated? And where does natural capital fit in? To help answer these questions, I relate Daly's definition to key concepts and terminology from material and energy flow accounting. I explore topics such as aggregation, international trade, the relevance of throughput, and hidden flows. I conclude that a set of biophysical accounts for an SSE should include three types of indicators (stocks, flows, and scale), track how stocks and flows are changing over a 5- to 10-year period, use aggregated data that measure the quantity of resource use (rather than its quality), measure both total and nonrenewable resource use, adopt a consumption-based approach, include hidden flows, and exclude indicators that measure characteristics of the stock of natural capital (with the notable exception of indicators that measure the regenerative and assimilative capacities of ecosystems).We investigate the extent to which Japanese people can change their consumption and the corresponding environmental impact. We propose a new analytical framework with a rebound matrix that captures the monetary flow from potential savings to their respending (referred to as rebound). A questionnaire is used to derive the matrix. On average, respondents spent 3.4 million Yen annually, resulting in 12.4 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in their daily lives. The survey results suggest that acceptable spending reductions would correspond to a CO2 emissions reduction of nearly 6%. However, the CO2 emissions would increase by nearly the same amount when the respondents respend their savable money (rebound CO2 emissions). The annual CO2 emissions and the annually reducible CO2 emissions both increase with the increase in annual expenditure. Consequently, the net CO2 emissions also increase with the increase in annual expenditure. The rebound spending is approximated using the rebound matrix. Finally, it is suggested that the net CO2 emissions can be reduced through lifestyle changes whereby spending on energy items is reduced and the resulting savings are spent on telecommunication, clothes, shoes, education, and housing.Information and communication technology (ICT) is providing new ways to access media content. ICT has environmental benefits and burdens. The overall goal of the present study was to assess the environmental impacts of production and consumption of magazines read on tablets from a life cycle perspective. Important goals were to identify the activities giving rise to the main impacts and the key factors influencing the overall environmental impacts. Data gaps and uncertainties were also addressed. The results are compared against those for the print edition of the magazine in a separate article (part 2). The methodology used in the study was life cycle assessment. The environmental impacts assessed included climate change, cumulative energy/exergy demand, metal depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater/marine eutrophication, fossil depletion, human toxicity, and ecotoxicity. The results indicate that content production can be the major contributor to environmental impacts if readers are few (as for the emerging version of the magazine studied). Assuming more readers (more mature version) or a larger file size for the tablet magazine, electronic storage and distribution may be the major contributor. Thus, in contrast to previous studies on electronic media, which reported a dominant impact of the use phase, this study found a higher impact for content production (emerging version) and electronic storage and distribution (mature version). However, with inefficient, low overall use of the tablet with a mature version of the tablet magazine, the greatest impact was shown to come from the reading activity (i.e., the use phase). In conclusion, the relative impacts of the tablet magazine would decrease considerably with high numbers of readers, their efficient use of the tablet (i.e., for many purposes over a long life of the device), and a smaller magazine file.The rapid development of information and communications technology (ICT) is providing new ways to access media content. Electronic media are sometimes more advantageous from an environmental perspective than paper-based media solutions, but ICT-based media can also bring environmental burdens. This study compared the potential environmental impacts in a life cycle perspective of a print edition of a magazine and that of its electronic edition read on a tablet device. Important objectives were to identify activities giving rise to the main environmental impacts for both the print and tablet editions, determine the key factors influencing these impacts, and address data gaps and uncertainties. A detailed assessment of the tablet edition is provided in a previous article (part 1), whereas this article compares it with the print edition. The methodology used was life cycle assessment and the environmental impacts assessed included climate change, cumulative energy/exergy demand, metal depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, and fossil depletion. Use of different functional units to compare the print and tablet editions of the magazine resulted in different relative environmental impacts. In addition, emerging (low number of readers and low reading time per copy) and mature (higher number of readers and higher reading time per copy) tablet editions yielded varying results. The emerging tablet edition resulted in higher potential environmental impacts per reader than the print edition, but the mature tablet edition yielded lower impacts per reader in half the impact categories assessed. This illustrates the importance of spreading the environmental impacts over a large number of readers. The electricity mix used in product system processes did not greatly affect the results of tablet/print comparisons, but overall number of readers for the tablet edition, number of readers per copy for the print edition, file size, and degree of use of the tablet device proved crucial for the comparison results.This study aims to assess the environmental impacts of canned sardines in olive oil, by considering fishing, processing, and packaging, using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The case study concerns a product of a canning factory based in Portugal and packed in aluminum cans. It is the first LCA of a processed seafood product made with the traditional canning method. The production of both cans and olive oil are the most important process in the considered impact categories. The production of olives contributes to the high environmental load of olive oil, related to cultivation and harvesting phases. The production of aluminum cans is the most significant process for all impact categories, except ozone depletion potential and eutrophication potential, resulting from the high energy demand and the extraction of raw materials. To compare to other sardine products consumed in Portugal, such as frozen and fresh sardines, transport to the wholesaler and store was added. The environmental cost of canned sardines is almost seven times higher per kilogram of edible product. The main action to optimize the environmental performance of canned sardines is therefore to replace the packaging and diminish the olive oil losses as much as possible. Greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by half when plastic packaging is considered rather than aluminum. Frozen and fresh sardines represent much lower environmental impacts than canned sardines. Nevertheless, when other sardine products are not possible, it becomes feasible to use sardines for human consumption, preventing them from being wasted or used suboptimally as feed.The study of the environmental footprints of various sectors and industries is increasingly demanded by institutions and by society. In this context, the regional perspective is becoming particularly important, and even more so in countries such as Spain, where the autonomous communities have the primary responsibility for implementing measures to combat environmental degradation and promote sustainable development, in coordination with national strategies. Taking as a case study a Spanish region, Aragon, and significant economic sectors, including agriculture and the food industry, the aim of this work is twofold. First, we calculate the associated environmental footprints (of emissions and water) from the dual perspectives of production (local impacts) and consumption (final destination of the goods produced by the agri-food industry). Second, through a scenarios analysis, based on a general equilibrium model designed and calibrated specifically for the region, we evaluate the environmental implications of changes in the agri-food industry (changes in the export and import pattern, as well as in consumer behavior). This model provides a flexible approximation to the environmental impacts, controlling for a wider range of behavioral and economic interactions. Our results indicate that the agri-food industry has a significant impact on the environment, especially on water resources, which must be responsibly managed in order to maintain the differential advantage that a regional economy can have, compared to other territories.Advanced high-strength steels may reduce the use of nonrenewable resources and energy given that the amount of material needed is smaller, compared to traditional steel grades. Still, advanced steel grades are not utilized to the extent that could be expected. This study examines stakeholders' preferences of steel characteristics and perceived barriers to the introduction of new materials. Focus group interviews were used to identify steel characteristics and perceived barriers. Stakeholder preferences of steel characteristics were evaluated through a conjoint analysis; the results showed that low weight was given the highest priority, followed by high impact strength and low price. Low chromium content was the steel characteristic of least interest. Perceived barriers to the introduction of high-strength steel were categorized as technical barriers, knowledge barriers, scrap management barriers, suitability barriers, and cost barriers.Using data from the water service area of the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Northern California, we develop and discuss a method for assessing, at a high resolution, the energy intensity of water treated and delivered to customers of a major metropolitan water district. This method extends previous efforts by integrating hourly data from supervisory control and data acquisition systems with calculations based on the actual structure of the engineered infrastructure to produce a detailed understanding of energy use in space and time within the territory of a large-scale urban water provider. We found significant variations in the energy intensity of delivered potable water resulting from seasonal and topographic effects. This method enhances our understanding of the energy inputs for potable water systems and can be applied to the entire delivery and postuse water life cycle. A nuanced understanding of water's energy intensity in an urban setting enables more intelligent, targeted efforts to jointly conserve water and energy resources that take seasonal, distance, and elevation effects into account.The electric power industry plays a critical role in the economy and the environment, and it is important to examine the economic, environmental, and policy implications of current and future power generation scenarios. However, the tools that exist to perform the life cycle assessments are either too complex or too aggregated to be useful for these types of activities. In this work, we build upon the framework of existing input-output (I-O) models by adding data about the electric power industry and disaggregating this single sector into additional sectors, each representing a specific portion of electric power industry operations. For each of these disaggregated sectors, we create a process-specific supply chain and a set of emission factors that allow calculation of the environmental effects of that sector's output. This new model allows a much better fit for scenarios requiring more specificity than is possible with the current I-O model.Global population growth and rising living standards are increasing apparel consumption. Consequently, consumption of resources and generation of textile waste are increasing. According to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, textile consumption increased by 40% between the years 2000 and 2009 in Sweden. Given that there is currently no textile recycling plant in Sweden, the aim of this article is to explore the potential environmental benefits of various textile recycling techniques and thereby direct textile waste management strategies toward more sustainable options. Three different recycling techniques for a model waste consisting of 50% cotton and 50% polyester were identified and a life cycle assessment (LCA) was made to assess the environmental performance of them. The recycling processes are: material reuse of textile waste of adequate quality; separation of cellulose from polyester using N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide as a solvent; and chemical recycling of polyester. These are compared to incineration, representing conventional textile waste treatment in Sweden. The results show that incineration has the highest global warming potential and primary energy usage. The material reuse process exhibits the best performance of the studied systems, with savings of 8 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) and 164 gigajoules (GJ) of primary energy per tonne of textile waste. Sensitivity analyses showed that results are particularly sensitive to the considered yields of the processes and to the choice of replaced products. An integration of these recycling technologies for optimal usage of their different features for treatment of 1 tonne of textile waste shows that 10 tonnes CO2-eq and 169 GJ of primary energy could be saved.The evolution of Eco Industrial Parks (EIPs) in Italy is a development opportunity for many territories and companies. Starting from the initial experiences in the 1980s, the Eco Industrial Parks model has spread throughout many of the central and northern regions of the country. The key element of Italian Eco Industrial Parks is the management body, an entity provided by national legislation to manage and coordinate companies and to develop more environmentally sustainable production practices. The survey results describe the role and activities of the management bodies concerning the actions implemented, the interaction with the main stakeholders and the resources and investments. The following research introduces an important environmental management experience implemented in Italy.Equipping power plants with carbon capture technology can affect cooling demand and water use. This study has explored the potential impact of large scale deployment of power plants with carbon capture technologies on future regional water stress in Europe. A database including 458 of European largest power plants with data on location, technology, age, fuel type, amount of electricity generation and cooling method has been developed. This data has been combined with literature data on water use rates and developed scenarios to calculate corresponding water use of these European power plants for 2030 and 2050 under different conditions, such as the penetration level of carbon capture technologies and installed technologies. Water stress methodology based on water withdrawal has been used to explore the impact of carbon capture and storage on future water stress levels. Our findings indicate that by 2030, no considerable increase in water stress is expected due to the instalment of carbon capture technologies. However, when assuming a high penetration level of carbon capture technologies, water stress in 2050 might substantially increase in many regions in Europe. The extent of the increase in water stress strongly depends on penetration level of carbon capture, installed power plant and cooling technologies and applied water stress methodology. When using water consumption to estimate water stress, the results do not indicate significant changes in water stress for the scenarios with carbon capture. Nevertheless, as water stress based on water withdrawal is currently the common method, the results of this study provide reasons for concern regarding the potential impact of carbon capture on future European water stress levels and indicate the need for future research to monitor and possibly prevent potential water stress increases from the instalment of carbon capture technologies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During May and June 2013 heavy rains caused disastrous floods in several countries in Europe. In this study we use a new high-resolution model of the German economy to simulate the post-disaster economic shock of the flood. Due to the heavy reliance of modern economies on inter regional supply chains, substantial economic impacts are felt in states and industries outside the flooded area. Cessation of export from one industry, for example in Bayern, in the wake of the flood affects many other industries and regions. Trade links are broken immediately and cause shortages. Supply restrictions from those industries spread further, reducing production possibilities in the national and global economy. Industry-and region specific direct impacts are estimated from time series data about compensations of lost working hours from social insurance schemes in the case of external events such as business cycles and natural disasters. We estimate the total indirect loss of production possibilities that affect in particular the motor vehicle and food industries in Baden-Wurttemberg, Nordrhein-Westfalen and Niedersachsen, but also foreign production, to be [SIC]6.2 billion. Regions and industries outside the flooded area experience around [SIC]400 million of the loss. We find the economic impact of the flood to be much higher as in previous studies and mitigation is more likely to be considered if this effect is taken into account. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Concerns about the future availability and continuity of metal supplies have triggered research efforts to define and assess metal criticality. In this study, we apply a comprehensive methodology to the elements of the geological zinc, tin, and lead family: zinc (Zn); germanium (Ge); cadmium (Cd); indium (In); tin (Sn); and lead (Pb). Zn, Sn, and Pb have played important roles in various technological sectors for centuries, whereas Ge, Cd, and In are by-product metals that are increasingly utilized in emerging and strategic technologies. Criticality assessments are made on national (i.e., the United States) and global levels for 2008. The results are presented with uncertainty estimates in three-dimensional "criticality space," comprised of supply risk (SR), environmental implications, and vulnerability to supply restriction (VSR) axes. SR is the highest for In for both the medium (i.e., five to ten years) and long term (i.e., a few decades). Pb and Zn have the lowest SR for the medium term and Pb the lowest SR for the long term. In and Ge production have the highest environmental burdens, mainly as a result of emissions from Zn smelting and subsequent metals purification and recovery from Zn leaching residues. VSR is highest for Pb at the global and national levels.Conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) have recently received extensive attention in oil/organic solvent-water separation field as a kind of ideal porous absorbents with tunable porosity, large surface areas, and super-hydrophobicity. However, reports on the application of CMPs in adsorption of hydrophilic contaminants from water are very few. In this work, we studied the adsorption of metronidazole (MNZ), a polar antibiotic, by two kinds of CMPs. The adsorption characteristics of MNZ by the CMPs, including adsorption kinetics, mechanism, and isotherm parameters were calculated. The adsorption kinetics of MNZ was well expressed by the pseudo-second-order model, and the adsorption process was found to be mainly controlled by film diffusion. The adsorption isotherm data agreed well with the Langmuir isotherm model, and the values of free energy E indicated that the adsorption nature of MNZ on the CMPs was physisorption. Increasing dispersion degree of the CMPs in MNZ solution resulted in greater adsorption. This work may provide fundamental guidance for the removal of antibiotics by CMPs.Major societal changes which challenge societal functions and actors' activities are needed to enhance sustainable development. Thus sustainable transitions research emphasizes co-evolutionary approaches involving a multitude of actors including the business sector, the government, and academia. Academic research can catalyse sustainable transitions by critically analyse current societal trends to develop and disseminate new knowledge. At research conferences, researchers and practitioners meet to network and discuss recent research findings providing arenas for testing and evaluating ideas to enhance sustainable transitions. This however requires some modifications of the standard design of a research conference. Here we report learning outcomes from experimenting at the 18th international Greening of Industry Network conference during 21-24 October 2012 in Linkoping, Sweden. The conference was a combination of a traditional conference structure with different interactive elements such as sustainability jam-sessions to discuss future challenges of six companies and clusters of companies at their site. The intention of doing so was to enhance learning outcomes both for visiting conference delegates and among actors in the host region. This was perceived by the participants as an innovative approach fostering both problem solving and creation of new ideas. Four out of the six companies continued dialogues about sustainable production fields or bio-refineries with Linkoping University. In addition we introduce and summarize research findings presented at the conference which were further developed into research articles. The essence of these articles covers sustainable industry management; cleaner production; industrial ecology; cooperation between industry, governments and academics; dissemination of concepts and technologies; methods and tools for modelling and measuring of industrial symbiosis, CO2 performance and eco-efficiency. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Cement production contributes to extensive CO2 emissions. However, the climate impact can vary significantly between different production systems and different types of cement products. The market is dominated by ordinary Portland cement, which is based on primary raw materials and commonly associated with combustion of vast amounts of fossil fuels. Therefore, the production of Portland cement can be described as a rather linear process. But there are alternative options, for example, involving large amounts of industrial byproducts and renewable energy which are more cyclic and thus can be characterized as relatively "synergistic". The main purpose of this article is to study how relevant the leading ideas of industrial symbiosis are for the cement industry based on a quantitative comparison of the CO2 emissions from different cement production systems and products, both existing and hypothetical. This has been done by studying a group of three cement plants in Germany, denoted as Cluster West, and the production of cement clinker and three selected cement products. Based on this analysis and literature, it is discussed to what extent industrial symbiosis options can lead to reduced CO2 emissions, for Cluster West and the cement industry in general. Utilizing a simplified LCA model ("cradle to gate"), it was shown that the CO2 emissions from Cluster West declined by 45% over the period 1997-2009, per tonne of average cement. This was mainly due to a large share of blended cement, i.e., incorporation of byproducts from local industries as supplementary cementitious materials. For producers of Portland cement to radically reduce the climate impact it is necessary to engage with new actors and find fruitful cooperation regarding byproducts, renewable energy and waste heat. Such a development is very much in line with the key ideas of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis, meaning that it appears highly relevant for the cement industry to move further in this direction. From a climate perspective, it is essential that actors influencing the cement market acknowledge the big difference between different types of cement, where an enlarged share of blended cement products (substituting clinker with byproducts such as slag and fly ash) offers a great scope for future reduction of CO2 emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Some countries rely heavily on exports as an essential component of their economic competitiveness. With the current trends in economic globalization, promoting exports has become a common strategy to boost economic growth. Exports of environmental technologies represent a new window of opportunity for economic growth and a contribution to global sustainability. With this in mind, national governments have designed initiatives that aim to promote exports within this sector. To address their objectives, governments provide initiatives to promote foreign commerce with their environmental technology sector. This article assesses the awareness, participation, and perceived effectiveness of such governmental initiatives to promote exports among Swedish environmental technology firms. An Internet survey was sent to 693 Swedish environmental technology companies, previously identified and classified, with a 25% response rate. The responses show a relatively high export orientation although a majority of the respondents claimed they were unaware of governmental initiatives that fit their particular export needs. The companies that did find appropriate governmental initiatives showed a high level of participation in such initiatives, but only a few of these participants could relate their participation to actual exports. The findings suggest there is a need to design support instruments based on the particular characteristics of the environmental technology sector rather than to offer generic solutions for such export promotion. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cement production is among the largest anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) and there is considerable pressure on the cement industry to reduce these emissions. In the effort to reduce CO2 emissions, there is a need for methods to systematically identify, classify and assess different improvement measures, to increase the knowledge about different options and prioritize between them. For this purpose a framework for assessment has been developed, inspired by common approaches within the fields of environmental systems analysis and industrial symbiosis. The aim is to apply a broad systems perspective and through the use of multiple criteria related to technologies and organization strategies facilitate informed decision-making regarding different CO2 performance measures in the cement industry. The integrated assessment framework consists of two parts: a generic and a case-specific part. It is applied to a cement production cluster in Germany called Cluster West, consisting of three cement plants owned by CEMEX. The framework can be used in different ways. It can be used as a tool to perform literature reviews and categorize the state-of-the-art knowledge about options to improve the CO2 performance. It can also be used to assess options for the cement industry in general as well as for individual plants. This paper describes the assessment framework, the ideas behind it, its components and the process of carrying out the assessment. The first part provides a structured overview of the options for improvement for the cement industry in general, while the second part is a case-specific application for Cluster West, providing information about the feasibility for different categories of measures that can reduce the CO2 emissions. The overall impression from the project is that the framework was successfully established and, when applied, facilitated strategic discussions and decision-making. Such frameworks can be utilized to systematically assess hundreds of different measures and identify the ones most feasible and applicable for implementation, within the cement industry but also possibly in other sectors. The results demonstrated that even in a relatively synergistic and efficient production system, like Cluster West, there are opportunities for improvement, especially if options beyond "production efficiency" are considered. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial symbiosis (IS) developments have been differentiated as self-organized, facilitated, and planned. This article introduces a tool, Looplocal, which has been built with objectives to support the strategic facilitation of IS. Looplocal is a visualization tool built to assist in 1) Simplifying the identification of regions susceptible to new industrial symbiosis facilitation activities 2) Enabling proactive and targeted marketing of potential exchanges to key actors in specific regions and 3) Assisting facilitators to assess the various strategies and consequential engagement and analysis methodologies suitable for additional IS development in specific regions. The tool compares industrial symbiosis data and estimated regional material and energy flows (on a facility level) to identify potential IS transfer information along with key stakeholder and network data. The authors have performed a proof of concept run of this tool on Sweden. In its early stages of application the method has given results seen as useful for identifying regions susceptible to the investment of symbiosis facilitators' time and resources. The material focus and customization possibilities for the tool show potential for a spectrum of potential facilitators: from waste management companies to national or regional authorities. In conjunction with long term business models, such a tool might be utilized throughout an adaptive chain of facilitation activities and aims. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Metal use and modern society are intrinsically linked and it is no surprise that global processes of industrialization and urbanization have led to ever increasing amounts of metal use. In recent decades, global supply and demand networks for metals have become increasingly complex. Industrial Ecology research is well placed to unpack this complexity and to explore potential resource efficiencies for metals. This is especially important during the current period of rising ore prices. We examine patterns of supply and demand for iron ore and bauxite, and recent trends in resource productivity of these two important metal ores. We introduce a consumption perspective and compare the material footprint of metal ores to the GDP of countries to look at how much economic benefit countries achieve per unit of metal footprint. We find that for the past two decades global amounts of iron ore and bauxite extractions have risen faster than global GDP, that both supply and demand of iron ore and bauxite have been concentrated in a handful of countries and that resource productivity from a consumption perspective has fallen in developed nations, as well as globally. The research shows no saturation of metal ore consumption at any level of income. Policies will be required to enhance both the productivity of metal production and the economic productivity of consumption (GDP per metal footprint) through more efficient mining, product design, reuse and recycling.The research "Training in industrial design: a consistent methodological approach to sustainable development" (Alvarado, Roa and Zuleta, 2015), whose core elements are presented in this article, had as its main purpose the analysis of current configuration methods of artifacts used in training in Industrial Design at the Academy of Professional Drawing Foundation of the city of Cali. This helps to the identification of sustainability criteria from the environmental, economic and social aspects, understanding that sustainability is the search for meeting the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future ones to meet their own needs (UN, 1987). On the other hand, the articulation of those criteria identified with other relevant issues from the theoretical framework, which took into account elements of industrial ecology, life-cycle assessment, sustainable consumption, eco-design and cyclicality, supported by the methodology of cradle-to-cradle, in a methodological proposal of configuration of artifacts containing greater potential to achieve sustainable results. Finally, the results of the development of a pilot application of different methods, product of research are presented. The project developed shows, among other findings, that the design method is relevant for obtaining sustainable artifacts. However, the results of its implementation will depend on variables such as joint cross-pedagogical processes around sustainability accompanying the product development process.This paper contributes to the understanding of the low occurrence of Industrial Symbiosis in Brazil. The importance of public policies in Brazil, the development of public policies is confirmed by the institution of the National Solid Waste Policy (NSWP). Note that companies seek symbiosis in response to regulatory pressure or to increase the efficiency of resource use, emissions reduction, or wastes. Further the importance of including social, cultural and business approaches in planning synergies between companies. Identifies environmental and cooperation regarding the responsibilities and capabilities of each aspect environmental management. Methodologically the study can be regarded as descriptive and exploratory purposes and in relation to the literature regarding methods. Finally, there are barriers which are raised on the relationship to the Industrial Symbiosis practices.In this article, the development of biogas for transport in the municipality of Linkoping, Sweden, is studied in order to contribute to a better understanding of the conditions for socio-technical transitions towards sustainability. Linkoping municipality, 1976 [kommunfullmaktige] Motion om utredning angaende eldrivna fordon. Dnr 1976.278. Using concepts from multi-level perspectives and sociotechnical perspectives on system builders, the study focuses on three time periods: During the first time period (1976-1994), a niche for biogas developed amongst dedicated actors in small networks representing energy and public transport within the municipality. That is, biogas was entirely connected to the vision of a 'green' public transport. Second, between the years of 1994 and 2001, the biogas producing company acted as a system builder and initiated a large-scale biogas production through close cooperation in networks with other actors. As a result, biogas reached a phase of technological maturity and also gained some support from national investment programs. Finally, from 2001 the expansion of biogas became clearer as the biogas production spread into a regional arena but also reached for new customers, like personal cars. Unforeseen spin-offs like the formation of new private companies and development of research were important results of the transition. Thereby, the transition is a move towards a new socio-technical regime. A conclusion from the study is that the development of biogas was highly influenced by national support and pressure, but was mainly driven by local actors system builders that could steer the processes and had endurance as well as capability to mobilize resources in order to fulfill their purposes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A novel in-tube solid-phase microextraction method based on a graphene oxide coated column was developed for the determination of triazines in waters. This column was prepared by the covalent modification of monolayer graphene oxide sheets onto the inner wall of a fused-silica capillary. Scanning electron microscopy showed that the thickness of the graphene oxide coating was similar to 30 nm, with a porous, wrinkled membrane-like structure. Its performance was evaluated through the extraction of triazines in water. Results showed that the coating was stable for at least 100 replicate extractions, and variety of multi-columns was less than 10%. Flow rate, loading volume, pH, and ionic strength of samples played an important effect on the extraction. The high extraction efficiency was mainly attributed to pi-pi stacking and hydrogen bonding interactions. The in-tube solid-phase microextraction was used in the determination of triazines with liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry, and the detection limits were 0.0005-0.005 mu g/L for five triazine compounds. Further, the method was applied to the analysis of triazine herbicides in real samples including tap water, sea water, and river water, and the recoveries were 82.8-112.0, 85.4-110.5, and 81.6-105.9%, respectively, with RSDs of 2.7-7.1%.Urban metabolism refers to the assessment of the amount of resources produced and consumed by urban ecosystems. It has become an important tool to understand how the development of one city causes impacts to the local and regional environment and to support a more sustainable urban design and planning. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to measure the changes in material and energy use occurred in the city of Curitiba (Brazil) between the years of 2000 and 2010. Results reveal better living conditions and socioeconomic improvements derived from higher resource throughput but without complete disregard to environmental issues. Food intake, water consumption and air emissions remained at similar levels; energy use, construction materials and recycled waste were increased. The paper helps illustrate why it seems more adequate to assess the contribution a city makes to sustainable development than to evaluate if one single city is sustainable or not. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the past few years, the eco-industrial park (EIP) concept has been emerging as a significant driving force for sustainable industrialisation. Accumulating evidence indicates that the transition of existing industries into eco-industrial networking through industrial ecology (IE) principles would provide an excellent opportunity for facilitating such innovative industrialisation. A SWOT analysis was carried out to identify the potential and constraints for the successful implementation of an eco-industrial park in the ecologically fragile coastal zone of Puducherry. The results indicated significant potential for EIP development with few challenges. The lessons learnt can be used to provide broad guidelines for facilitating EIP development in the Puducherry region and similar scenarios found elsewhere across the world, especially in developing countries.Information-based regulations (IBRs) are founded on the theoretical premise that public participation in accomplishing policy goals is empowered by open access to information. Since its inception in 1988, the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) has provided the framework and regulatory impetus for the compilation and distribution of data on toxic releases associated with industrial development, following the tenets of IBR. As TRI emissions are reputed to disproportionately affect low-income communities, we investigated how demographic characteristics are related to change in TRI emissions and toxicity risks between 1989 and 2002, and we sought to identify factors that predict these changes. We used local indicators of spatial association (LISA) maps and spatial regression techniques to study risk disparity in the Los Angeles urban area. We also surveyed 203 individuals in eight communities in the same region to measure the levels of awareness of TRI, attitudes towards air pollution, and general environmental risk. We discovered, through spatial lag models, that changes in gross and toxic emissions are related to community ethnic composition, poverty level, home ownership, and base 1989 emissions (R-square = 0.034-0.083). We generated a structural equation model to explain the determinants of social empowerment to act on the basis of environmental information. Hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis (HCFA) supports the theoretical model that individual empowerment is predicted by risk perception, worry, and awareness (Chi-square = 63.315, p = 0.022, df = 42). This study provides strong evidence that spatiotemporal changes in regional-scale environmental risks are influenced by individual-scale empowerment mediated by IBRs.The spot price for tantalum, a metal used in high-performance consumer electronics, spiked in 2000, triggering a boom in artisanal mining of surface deposits in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The profit from columbite-tantalite ore, or coltan, is alleged to have funded militants during that country's civil war. One warlord famously claimed that in 2000, coltan delivered a million dollars per month. While coltan mining was neither a necessary nor sufficient cause for the civil war, there is nevertheless a clear association between mining and conflict. In order to trace global flows of coltan out of the DRC, we used a high-resolution multiregion input-output (MRIO) table and a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to trace exports through international supply chains in order to estimate a coltan footprint for various products. In this case study, our aim is to highlight the power and utility of hybrid LCA analysis using high-resolution global MRIO accounts. We estimate which supply chains, nations, and consumer goods carry the largest loads of embodied coltan. This hybrid LCA case study provides estimates on illicit flows of coltan, estimates a coltan footprint of consumption, and highlights the advantages and challenges of using hybrid monetary-physical input-output/LCA approaches to study and quantify a negative social impact as an input to production. If successful, the hybrid LCA approach could be a useful and expedient measurement tool for understanding flows of conflict minerals embodied in supply chains.Carbon-based materials (CBMs) for energetic and material purposes combine biogenic and anthropogenic carbon cycles. In the latter, numerous manufactured products with various in-use lifespans accumulate as anthropogenic carbon stocks. Understanding the behavior of these stocks is an important requirement to estimate not only future waste amounts, source for secondary raw materials, but also the impacts and effects in carbon emissions and carbon management. Previous models have estimated material stock changes; however, a lack of research in carbon stocks is perceived. Moreover, studies follow in-use lifespan estimation approaches, such as decay functions, which do not coincide with observed consumption and waste treatment patterns. In the first part of this article, we present a carbon stock-flow model to analyze inter-relationships between carbon flows and stocks from raw materials to waste treatment processes considering a consumer perspective, where the dynamics of anthropogenic carbon stocks are completely described. In the second part, we study the pulp and paper industry in Germany under a scenario approach to analyze the behavior, development, and impacts of paper stocks and flows between 2010 and 2040. The model provided coherent results, with industrial data estimating 33.9 million metric tons in 2010 in paper stocks, equivalent to 410 kilograms per person. Consumption per capita and in-use lifespan of products were identified as the most significant variables in carbon stock building. Model simulations show a sustained growth in stocks for the next 30 years, with increase in waste and carbon emissions. But in combination with recycling and reuse mechanisms and consumption patterns, environmental impacts are reduced.Dietary behavioral choices have a strong effect on the environmental impact associated with the food system. Here, we consider the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with production of food that is lost at the retail and consumer level, as well as the potential effects on GHG emissions of a shift to dietary recommendations. Calculations are based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) food availability data set and literature meta-analysis of emission factors for various food types. Food losses contribute 1.4kilograms (kg) carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) capita(-1)day(-1) (28%) to the overall carbon footprint of the average U.S. diet; in total, this is equivalent to the emissions of 33million average passenger vehicles annually. Whereas beef accounts for only 4% of the retail food supply by weight, it represents 36% of the diet-related GHG emissions. An iso-caloric shift from the current average U.S. diet to USDA dietary recommendations could result in a 12% increase in diet-related GHG emissions, whereas a shift that includes a decrease in caloric intake, based on the needs of the population (assuming moderate activity), results in a small (1%) decrease in diet-related GHG emissions. These findings emphasize the need to consider environmental costs of food production in formulating recommended food patterns.This research investigates the carbon footprint of the lifecycle of console games, using the example of PlayStation (R) 3 distribution in the UK. We estimate total carbon equivalent emissions for an average 8.8-gigabyte(GB) game based on data for 2010. The bulk of emissions are accounted for by game play, followed by production and distribution. Two delivery scenarios are compared: The first examines Blu-ray discs (BDs) delivered by retail stores, and the second, games files downloaded over broadband Internet. Contrary to findings in previous research on music distribution, distribution of games by physical BDs results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than by Internet download. The estimated carbon emissions from downloading only fall definitively below that of BDs for games smaller than 1.3GB. Sensitivity analysis indicates that as average game file sizes increase, and the energy intensity of the Internet falls, the file size at which BDs would result in lower emissions than downloads could shift either up- or downward over the next few years. Overall, the results appear to be broadly applicable to title games within the European Union (EU), and for larger-than-average sized games in the United States. Further research would be needed to confirm whether similar findings would apply in future years with changes in game size and Internet efficiency. The study findings serve to illustrate why it is not always true that digital distribution of media will have lower carbon emissions than distribution by physical means when file sizes are large.Ecological footprint (EF) is a metric that estimates human consumption of biological resources and products, along with generation of waste greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in terms of appropriated productive land. There is an opportunity to better characterize land occupation and effects on the carbon cycle in life cycle assessment (LCA) models using EF concepts. Both LCA and EF may benefit from the merging of approaches commonly used separately by practitioners of these two methods. However, few studies have compared or integrated EF with LCA. The focus of this research was to explore methods for improving the characterization of land occupation within LCA by considering the EF method, either as a complementary tool or impact assessment method. Biofuels provide an interesting subject for application of EF in the LCA context because two of the most important issues surrounding biofuels are land occupation (changes, availability, and so on) and GHG balances, two of the impacts that EF is able to capture. We apply EF to existing fuel LCA land occupation and emissions data and project EF for future scenarios for U.S. transportation fuels. We find that LCA studies can benefit from lessons learned in EF about appropriately modeling productive land occupation and facilitating clear communication of meaningful results, but find limitations to the EF in the LCA context that demand refinement and recommend that EF always be used along with other indicators and metrics in product-level assessments.Increasingly, organizations are working to reduce the environmental footprint of their supply chains. The use of environmentally preferable purchasing criteria is one strategy organizations use to address this goal. However, evaluating the environmental performance of these criteria (e.g., recycled content, biodegradable, renewable, and so on) has remained elusive. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can measure the impact reduction potential of sourcing strategies. However, full process-based LCAs are time-consuming and costly across multiple criteria of thousands of products and inputs purchased in an organizational setting. A streamlined hotspot methodology is presented using a combination of environmentally extended economic input-output (EEIO) approaches and extant literature to identify hotspots in which to constrain a parameterized process-based LCA. A case study of breakfast cereal manufacturing is developed to (1) assess the efficiencies associated with the hotspotting approach and (2) demonstrate its applicability in generating comparable decision signals of environmentally preferable sourcing criteria for procurement and supply-chain managers along the dimensions of global warming potential and water use.This article focuses on the effects of policy instruments for developing viable eco-industrial parks (EIPs) in China. We analyzed the root of China's national EIP program and inventoried the general instruments available to local authorities to shape and promote eco-industrial development. Empirical research conducted in Tianjin Economic-technological Development Area and Dalian Development Area led to the activities and actions conducted by local authorities. A quantitative method, technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution, was adopted to reveal the effects of policy instruments for comparative analysis. We conclude that the planned EIP model is useful in the early stage of EIP development, and, subsequently, it should be combined with a facilitated model to achieve long-term goals for eco-transformation. To this end, the policy package of economic, regulatory, and voluntary instruments should be integrated and tailored in alignment with the local situation.Because of their recognition as a comprehensive tool of environmental assessments and their increasing use by governments and industries, life cycle assessments (LCAs) are positioned to be prominent sources of mass media information on new products and technologies. The LCA studies underlying media reports are often viewed by nonexperts after the initial reporting. However, uncertainty is rife in early assessments of emerging technologies, and LCA's ability to inform environmental opinions and decisions is limited without the accompanying communication on uncertainty. Though approaches to the technical aspects of uncertainty analysis in LCA are available in the literature, those on communicating that uncertainty, in ways that are cognitively accessible to the nonexperts, are still lacking despite their highlighted importance across various disciplines. With the focus on communication, this article uses the existing literature to derive five criteria for making uncertainty communication accessible to a nonexpert audience. Then, LCAs on engineered nanomaterial (ENM) and ENM-enabled products, as a case study of emerging technologies where uncertainties abound, are reviewed for whether they meet these five criteria. The study concludes with recommendations for communicating uncertainty in LCAs in order to enhance their role as decision- and public opinion-informing assessments.Consumption-accounted greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (GHGEs) vary considerably between households. Research originating from different traditions, including consumption research, urban planning, and environmental psychology, have studied different types of explanatory variables and provided different insights into this matter. This study integrates explanatory variables from different fields of research in the same empirical material, including socioeconomic variables (income, household size, sex, and age), motivational variables (proenvironmental attitudes and social norms), and physical variables (dwelling types and geographical distances). A survey was distributed to 2,500 Swedish households with a response rate of 40%. GHGEs were estimated for transport, residential energy, food, and other consumption, using data from both the survey and registers, such as odometer readings of cars and electricity consumption from utility providers. The results point toward the importance of explanatory variables that have to do with circumstances rather than motivations for proenvironmental behaviors. Net income was found to be the most important variable to explain GHGEs, followed by the physical variables, dwelling type, and the geographical distance index. The results also indicate that social norms around GHG-intensive activities, for example, transport, may have a larger impact on a subject's emission level than proenvironmental attitudes.Studies investigated the patient-care (in-hospital) and outside-the-hospital energy consumptions for delivering the hemodialysis (HD) service. A life cycle inventory methodology was used for this patient-based analysis for two hospitals located in Wichita, Kansas. It was found that, for both hospitals, the actual HD machines consumed approximately 3.5kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electrical energy per HD, only 8% to 16% of the total energy used for delivering the HD service (in hospital). This increases to 9.6 to 28.9kWh of hospital billable energy for the whole system of HD machine, auxiliaries, and dialysis water treatment. Converting these hospital direct electrical energy values to natural resource energy (nre) then adding the cradle-to-gate natural resource energy for the manufacturing and supply chain of all the HD consumables, the total is 78 to 149kWh nre/HD. The nre measures all the direct fuel burned to generate energy and is thus directly related to emissions to the air, water, and land and is a direct secondary impact on public health from HD. The ratio of outside-the-hospital energy to direct hospital HD electrical energy consumption is 4:1 to 7:1, so a broader base exists for improvement than just the hospital.The Danish island Sarno has since 1997 initiated a process through which the island should reach a state where it would be able to supply its own energy. Such a situation was reached since 2005 - after having established 21 windmills - and the island is now a net exporter of electricity to the Danish power network. At the same time the buildings in the more habituated areas were connected to 4 district heating plants which generate heat from combustion of straw in some cases combined with supplementary inputs from photo thermal devices. Meanwhile, certain activities on the island, such as running the ferries, cars, factories and heating in more distant areas are still dependent on significant input of fossil fuels. The inhabitants have recently stated a wish to move on towards being independent of fossil fuels in 2030 and carbon neutral during the next decades. As a consequence the idea came up to develop a method for the "sustainability analysis" of a society which would assist in governing the transitional process in the direction of increasing sustainability. Therefore, a framework has been developed based on the concept exergy that may reveal where large consumptions are taking places. Such areas are likely to be sensible targets for action or at least increased attention. Basic methods have been developed that allows to account for infrastructure, transfers, inputs and outputs, and consumption in terms of exergy, and taking into account whether the exergy storages or flows can be considered to be renewable or not. The framework has been developed for six societal sectors: the energy sector, the public sector, the private households, the agricultural sector, the industry, commerce and trade sector and nature. Nature is here considered an activity that provides the society with an exergy that may also be of value to our societies, often referred to as ecosystem services. Based on the estimated amount of infrastructure and transfers, inputs and outputs a number of "sustainability indicators" have been developed that may be monitored over time and which may serve to indicate whether potential measures undertaken also lead the society in the right direction. An attempt to evaluate the potential importance of wastes has also been carried out as in organic waste could play an important role in acquiring the amount of bio-diesel required to run the ferries in the future. The results demonstrate that the already existing overhead in production of electricity leaves the island with many options and a great opportunity to be independent of fossil fuels in near future. In fact, it might well be that socio-economical perspectives will turn out to be the more severe obstacles in the transition process. Adjacent to this work a carbon model has also been set up to reveal the consequence of proposed measures and strategies to the carbon budget of the island (Jorgensen and Nielsen, 2014). 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biotransformation of fluorotelomer (FT) compounds, such as 8:2 FT alcohol (FTOH) is now recognized to be a source of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) as well as other perfluoroalkyl acids. In this study, microbially mediated hydrolysis of FT industrial intermediates 8:2 FT acrylate (8:2 FTAC) and 8:2 FT methacrylate (8:2 FTMAC) was evaluated in aerobic soils for up to 105 d. At designated times, triplicate microcosms were sacrificed by sampling the headspace for volatile FTOHs followed by sequential extraction of soil for the parent monomers as well as transient and terminal degradation products. Both FTAC and FTMAC were hydrolyzed at the ester linkage as evidenced by 8:2 FTOH production. 8:2 FTAC and FTMAC degraded rapidly with half-lives <= 5 d and 15 d, respectively. Maximum 8:2 FTOH levels were 6-13 mol% within 3-6 d. Consistent with the known biotransformation pathway of 8:2 FTOH, FT carboxylic acids and perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids were subsequently generated including up to 10.3 mol% of PFOA (105 d). A total mass balance (parent plus metabolites) of 50-75 mol% was observed on the last sampling day. 7:2 sFTOH, a direct precursor to PFOA, unexpectedly increased throughout the incubation period. The likely, but unconfirmed, concomitant production of acrylic acids was proposed as altering expected degradation patterns. Biotransformation of 8:2 FTAC, 8:2 FTMAC, and previously reported 8:2 FT-stearate for the same soils revealed the effect of the non-fluorinated terminus group linked to the FT chain on the electronic differences that affect microbially-mediated ester cleavage rates. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Shandong Province's Lubei eco-industrial park was established early, developed well, and began earning high profits, and has been recognized around the world as a successful example of this type of park. Previous research on the metabolic processes for the elements that flow through eco-industrial parks has mainly accounted for the flows, stocks, and utilization efficiency of a few elements, but few studies have analyzed the complex internal characteristics of these metabolic processes by combining their structural and functional attributes. In this study, we analyzed the delivery and transformation processes and the internal characteristics of the industrial metabolic processes for sulfur in the Lubei eco-industrial park. By using network analysis, we were able to analyze the structural and functional characteristics of this network from the perspective of nodes (members of the network) and paths (flows between the nodes), and by combining an assessment of the characteristics of the nodes (degree, betweenness, closeness) and the paths (flow quantities and directions), we identified the key node (the cement clinker production), peripheral nodes (the ammonia and power plants), and key paths in the network (from the sulfuric acid plant to the ammonium phosphate plant, from the cement clinker production to the sulfuric acid plant, and from the ammonium phosphate plant to the cement clinker production). These results reveal the advantages and disadvantages of the Lubei eco-industrial park in terms of its structure and function, and suggest ways to improve the efficiency and the sustainable development of the park. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global production chains carry environmental and socioeconomic impacts embodied in each traded good and service. Even though labor and energy productivities tend to be higher for domestic production in high-income countries than those in emerging economies, this difference is significantly reduced for consumption, when including imported products to satisfy national demand. The analysis of socioeconomic and environmental aspects embodied in consumption can shed a light on the real level of productivity of an economy, as well as the effects of rising imports and offshoring. This research introduces a consumption-based metric for productivity, in which we evaluate the loss of productivity of developed nations resulting from imports from less-developed economies and offshoring of labor-intensive production. We measure the labor, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions footprints in the European Union's trade with the rest of the world through a multiregional input-output model. We confirm that the labor footprint of European imports is significantly higher than the one of exports, mainly from low-skilled, labor-intensive primary sectors. A high share of labor embodied in exports is commonly associated with low energy productivities in domestic industries. Hence, this reconfirms that the offshoring of production to cheaper and low-skilled, labor-abundant countries offsets, or even reverts, energy efficiency gains and climate-change mitigation actions in developed countries.For many companies, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with their purchased and consumed electricity form one of the largest contributions to the GHG emissions that result from their activities. Currently, hourly variations in electricity grid emissions are not considered by standard GHG accounting protocols, which apply a national grid emission factor (EF), potentially resulting in erred estimates for the GHG emissions. In this study, a method is developed that calculates GHG emissions based on real-time data, and it is shown that the use of hourly electricity grid EFs can significantly improve the accuracy of the GHG emissions that are attributed to the purchased and consumed electricity of a company. A model analysis for the electricity delivered to the Spanish grid in 2012 reveals that, for companies operating during the day, GHG emissions calculated by the real-time method are estimated to be up to 5% higher (and in some special cases up to 9% higher) than the emissions calculated by the conventional method in which a national grid EF is applied, whereas for companies operating during nightly hours, GHG emissions are estimated to be as low as 3% below the GHG emissions determined by the conventional method. A significant error can therefore occur in the organizational carbon footprint (CF) of a company and, consequently, also in the product CF. It is recommended that hourly EFs be developed for other countries and power grids.For at least the past two decades, eco-industrial parks (EIPs) have been promoted as policy and commercial instruments for achieving industrial sustainable development. Yet, few EIPs have seen successful operational implementation, especially if they begin as standard industrial parks. Rapid economic growth, commensurate with increasing environmental damage in China, has resulted in officials' further pursuing EIP policy as a significant element of the broader circular economy and ecological modernization efforts. This article examines the barriers for EIP development from industrial park senior manager perspectives. Using resource dependence theory and the resource-based view as theoretical lenses, we investigate the external and internal barriers for EIP development in 51 Chinese industrial parks. A number of barriers are identified and grouped through a factor analysis. Cluster analysis is utilized to help categorize and evaluate the perceived levels of barriers and hardships experienced by various senior officials that manage the EIPs. It is found that few respondents encounter no significant barriers. Barriers related to technological development and capacity building are the most prevalent. These results highlight the relative importance of various activities that may be necessary by policy makers and other stakeholders to overcome the barriers. For example, cooperation in developing technological solutions for EIPs seems to be a major thrust that should be pursued by EIP development stakeholders. Other policy and managerial insights based on the general findings of this study are also presented.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the most popular methods of technical-environmental assessment for informing environmental policies, as, for instance, in municipal solid waste (MSW) management. Because MSW management involves many stakeholders with possibly conflicting interests, the implementation of an LCA-based policy can, however, be blocked or delayed. A stakeholder assessment of future scenarios helps identify conflicting interests and anticipate barriers of sustainable MSW management systems. This article presents such an approach for Swiss waste glass-packaging disposal, currently undergoing a policy review. In an online survey, stakeholders (N=85) were asked to assess disposal scenarios showing different LCA-based eco-efficiencies with respect to their desirability and probability of occurrence. Scenarios with higher eco-efficiency than the current system are more desirable and considered more probable than those with lower eco-efficiency. A combination of inland recycling and downcycling to foam glass (insulation material) in Switzerland is desired by all stakeholders and is more eco-efficient than the current system. In contrast, institutions of MSW management, such as national and regional environmental protection agencies, judge a scenario in which nearly all cullet would be recycled in the only Swiss glass-packaging factory as more desirable than supply and demand stakeholders of waste glass-packaging. Such a scenario involves a monopsony rejected by many municipalities and scrap traders. Such an assessment procedure can provide vital information guiding the formulation of environmental policies.Planning for sustainability is high on many agendas, and tools to measure sustainability have been developed. Sustainable processes are those whose rates are maintained over time without exceeding the innate ability of its surroundings to support the process. We present the necessary conditions along with a new algorithm for measuring the sustainability of processes that integrates the laws of thermodynamics with laws for rate processes. The algorithm permits the assessment of the degree of sustainability of any process, whether ecological, economic, or social, as well as chemical or biological. It is a dynamic approach that applies at any scale and takes into consideration the spatial and temporal factors of processes, thus permitting empirical applications that correspond to real world (dynamic, complex, evolving) conditions across space and time. These characteristics make it especially suitable for applications in the field of spatial planning.Industrial ecology has revolutionized our understanding of material stocks and flows in our economy and society. For this important discipline to have even deeper impact, we must understand the inherent nature of these materials in terms of human health and the environment. This paper focuses on methods to design synthetic chemicals to reduce their intrinsic ability to cause adverse consequence to the biosphere. Advances in the fields of computational chemistry and molecular toxicology in recent decades allow the development of predictive models that inform the design of molecules with reduced potential to be toxic to humans or the environment. The approach presented herein builds on the important work in quantitative structure-activity relationships by linking toxicological and chemical mechanistic insights to the identification of critical physical-chemical properties needed to be modified. This in silico approach yields design guidelines using boundary values for physiochemical properties. Acute aquatic toxicity serves as a model endpoint in this study. Defining value ranges for properties related to bioavailability and reactivity eliminates 99% of the chemicals in the highest concern for acute aquatic toxicity category. This approach and its future implementations are expected to yield very powerful tools for life cycle assessment practitioners and molecular designers that allow rapid assessment of multiple environmental and human health endpoints and inform modifications to minimize hazard.In-use stock of a product is the amount of the product in active use. In-use product stocks provide various functions or services on which we rely in our daily work and lives, and the concept of in-use product stock for industrial ecologists is similar to the concept of net manufactured capital stock for economists. This study estimates historical physical in-use stocks of 91 products and 9 product groups and uses monetary data on net capital stocks of 56 products to either approximate or compare with in-use stocks of the corresponding products in the United States. Findings include the following: (i) The development of new products and the buildup of their in-use stocks result in the increase in variety of in-use product stocks and of manufactured capital; (ii) substitution among products providing similar or identical functions reflects the improvement in quality of in-use product stocks and of manufactured capital; and (iii) the historical evolution of stocks of the 156 products or product groups in absolute, per capita, or per-household terms shows that stocks of most products have reached or are approaching an upper limit. Because the buildup, renewal, renovation, maintenance, and operation of in-use product stocks drive the anthropogenic cycles of materials that are used to produce products and that originate from natural capital, the determination of in-use product stocks together with modeling of anthropogenic material cycles provides an analytic perspective on the material linkage between manufactured capital and natural capital.Australia's rich stocks of mineral resources have been the source of national wealth and competitive advantage in the past. However, the security of this wealth is not guaranteed into the future, and what were once considered waste materials from mining, infrastructure and products are now becoming accessible and valuable as 'above-ground' mineral resources. Globally there is growing capacity and innovation in recycling, closed-loop supply chains and Australia's role as a global leader in primary production must anticipate and adapt to the implications of a rise in the importance of recycling. However, both at a global level and in Australia, there are a broad range of factors and local influences affecting the successful application and implementation of industrial ecology beyond technical re-use solutions. This paper presents the initial outcomes from a major collaborative research project (Wealth from Waste Cluster), funded by the CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Fund and partner universities, focused on identifying viable options to 'mine' metals contained in discarded urban infrastructure, manufactured products and consumer goods. This paper presents initial estimates of the mass and current worth of metals in end-of-life products. Results from this analysis have identified that the value of metals in end-of-life products is more than AUD6 billion per year, and assuming existing recovery rates, the estimated potential for recovering metals from "waste" or end-of-life products is of the order of AUD2 billion per year. In addition a metal flow analysis of the Australian economy identified that approximately half the scrap metal collected in Australia (approximately 2.5 million tonnes per year) is currently being transported overseas which potentially could be recycled in Australia if suitable technology were available. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work, the body-centered cubic indium oxide (bcc-In2O3) hollow microspheres were prepared via a P123-assisted solvothermal process. The structural properties of samples were investigated by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, UV-visible diffusive reflectance spectroscopy, and nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms. The photocatalytic effects of degrading gaseous toluene were evaluated by gas chromatography and in situ Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra under a irradiation of a 500 W high pressure xenon lamp. The results indicated that the as-prepared bcc-In2O3 hollow microspheres exhibited a high degradation efficiency towards toluene within a short reaction time. Besides, the preliminary mechanism therein was inferred with the aid of in situ FTIR and electron spin-paramagnetic resonance techniques to understand the degradation process. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Understanding the drivers of energy and material flows of cities is important for addressing global environmental challenges. Accessing, sharing, and managing energy and material resources is particularly critical for megacities, which face enormous social stresses because of their sheer size and complexity. Here we quantify the energy and material flows through the world's 27 megacities with populations greater than 10 million people as of 2010. Collectively the resource flows through megacities are largely consistent with scaling laws established in the emerging science of cities. Correlations are established for electricity consumption, heating and industrial fuel use, ground transportation energy use, water consumption, waste generation, and steel production in terms of heating-degree-days, urban form, economic activity, and population growth. The results help identify megacities exhibiting high and low levels of consumption and those making efficient use of resources. The correlation between per capita electricity use and urbanized area per capita is shown to be a consequence of gross building floor area per capita, which is found to increase for lower-density cities. Many of the megacities are growing rapidly in population but are growing even faster in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and energy use. In the decade from 2001-2011, electricity use and ground transportation fuel use in megacities grew at approximately half the rate of GDP growth.The furniture industries use as raw inputs that come from renewable resources such as wood, natural fibers, leather and non-renewable materials such as metals, glass and polymers. All are directly related to the generation of post-production waste by industries, may cause contamination of soil, water or air pollutant generating sources. Using as premises the environmental concepts of eco-efficiency, Ecodesign and Environmental Management System, the literature review with the aim of knowing the strategies and tools relevant to industrial processes was performed by subsidizing conducting quantitative research with the productive sector furniture of the State of Goias.End of life tires require sound accounting of environmental performances to design sustainable procedures for material recovery. Their use in rubber modified asphalt provides could lead to the improvement of technical and environmental performances of asphalt roads, but the effectiveness of simplified procedures is to be proved. During LIFE+ project ROADTIRE, a rubber modified asphalt road prototype, with the upper surface layer containing 10% crumb rubber in the bituminous binder, was implemented in Lamia, Greece. The prototype was compared to a conventional asphalt road by Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate the environmental performances and the results were critically interpreted to highlight its benefits. The impact categories considered, assessed with the ReCiPe Midpoint (H) v1.06/Europe ReCiPe H method, were: Climate change, Ozone depletion, Human toxicity, Photochemical oxidant formation, Terrestrial acidification, Freshwater eutrophication, Freshwater ecotoxicity, Terrestrial ecotoxicity, Water depletion, Fossil depletion. Compared to the conventional asphalt road, the global environmental performances of the rubberized asphalt road are improved of 30-40%, depending on the impact category. For both scenarios, the road construction phase, with bitumen production, is the most impacting process, compared to maintenance and end-of-life. The global environmental advantages are proved to depend on the longer lifetime and the less maintenance required for the rubberized asphalt road, as indicated from laboratory tests. It is therefore important to monitor such parameters during the road lifecycle in order to validate this preliminary outcome. Based on these results, policy and management implications are discussed.Localism or regionalization has become a popular topic in urban design, but recent critics raise the question of whether the local or regional scale is most desirable for industrial ecosystems. As a way to explore the claim that localized metabolism is more sustainable, this study examines the costs and benefits of two differentially scaled strategies for the management of post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles originating in the city of Honolulu, Hawai'i: local incineration and transcontinental recycling. We first estimate total environmental impacts of two options using life cycle assessment, and then disaggregate them into local versus non-local impacts to examine the spatial distribution of costs and benefits. We further assess the environmental justification for localized waste management in relation to the broader socio-economic motivations that underlie the way that plastics are managed in Honolulu. In doing so we assess the scale at which waste management is optimized from an environmental standpoint as well as the non-environmental considerations such as security and safety that influence the politics of scale involved in urban metabolic design. By illustrating the trade-offs between a local versus global metabolic pathway for plastic waste, the results from our Honolulu case study are globally relevant for communities interested in sustainable urban design and in particular urban waste management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this work is to establish whether algal bio-crude production is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. To this end, an economic multi-regional input-output model of Australia was complemented with engineering process data on algal bio-crude production. This model was used to undertake hybrid life-cycle assessment for measuring the direct, as well as indirect impacts of producing bio-crude. Overall, the supply chain of bio-crude is more sustainable than that of conventional crude oil. The results indicate that producing 1 million tonnes of bio-crude will generate almost 13,000 new jobs and 4 billion dollars' worth of economic stimulus. Furthermore, bio-crude production will offer carbon sequestration opportunities as the production process is net carbon-negative. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a result of growing environmental consciousness, the issues of sustainability and industrial ecology are guiding the development of the next generation of materials and processes. Renewable resources such as hemp hurds in the field of green polymeric materials with their new range of applications represent an important basis in order to fulfil the ecological objective of creating eco-friendly materials. This work deals with the impact of several chemical treatments of hemp hurds on the properties of hemp-starch composite which is made of 100% of natural resources. Two compositions were manufactured, the first one with untreated hemp hurds in starch matrix and the second one with treated hemp hurds in starch matrix. A set of chemical treatments was performed to solubilize hemicelluloses and lignin seal surrounding the cellulose bundle in the first step and then a coupling agent was used to provide a stable bond between hemp hurds and starch matrix. The influence of the treatments on hemp hurds characteristics was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential thermal analysis (DTA), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and attenuated total reflectance spectroscopy (ATR). Moreover, the mechanical properties of green composites were studied and it seems that alkaline treatment followed by silane treatment improves the stiffness of composites according to the results of mechanical properties after treatments. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Antibiotics, which are hardly removed from polluted water by conventional water-treatment technologies, adsorption has been deemed as one of the efficient and promising method to resolve the problems of antibiotics pollution. Herein, we reported a synthesis of filtration separable hollow nanostructured silicas (HNSs) with efficient click functionalization property for antibiotics adsorption. The clickable HNSs were synthesized by the co-condensation and assembling of tetramethoxysilane (TMOS) and 3-azidopro-pyltrimethoxysilane (AzPTMS) around F127 single micelle template. Alkynyl compounds such as phenylacetylene (Ph), propargyl alcohol (PA), 1-heptyne (Hep), and 2-butyne-1,4-diol (BD) have been linked to the materials through click reaction with high efficiency. Antibiotic adsorption results reveal that functional groups play an important role in adsorption properties of adsorbents and phenyl was found to be the optimal functional group due to the pi-pi stacking effect. Excellent adsorption capacity and recyclability indicate that the clickable hollow nanostructured silicas exhibit potential application for antibiotics removal. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This research investigates how ecosystems are able to be robust, resilient and capable of adapting to constant change, in order to devise strategies and techniques that could be transferable to an architectural or urban design context. This is to aid the creation, or evolution of urban-built environments that may be better able to integrate with and contribute to ecosystem health. Specifically, this paper examines the processes of ecosystems and presents an integrated set of principles that could form the theoretical underpinnings of a practical ecosystem biomimicry approach to sustainable architectural design. This is significant because although using an understanding of how ecosystems work has been proposed in some biomimicry and industrial ecology literature, as well as in related fields, ecosystem processes suitable for use in a design context have not been thoroughly defined, or mapped to express how these processes may be related to each other. The possibility that employing ecosystem processes in architectural or urban design could lead to built environments able to mitigate the causes of climate change and adapt to the impacts of it is examined. Benefits and disadvantages of such an approach are elaborated upon.Although relatively under-studied, industrial symbiosis may be a particularly valuable type of interfirm action for creating value under economic constraints, such as increased environmental regulations, because it involves firms collaborating to find economical ways to "do more with less", by taking wastes and excess resources from one firm and processing them into valuable inputs for another. To better understand its value-creating potential, we analyzed firm- and policy-level environmental and economic outcomes for 313 industrial symbiosis exchanges across the United Kingdom, during a period of increasing environmental taxation and regulation. We found that, 1) exchanges involving larger volumes of material resources are more likely to create firm- and policy-level value; 2) firms with prior industrial symbiosis experience are more likely to create firm-level value; and, 3) exchanges involving dedicated waste firms are more likely to create policy-level value, although somewhat less likely to create firm-level value. Extending prior work on intra-firm action research, we show how firms can also create value through interfirm industrial symbiosis collaborations in response to regulatory constraints. We develop a deeper understanding of the types of outcomes likely to occur from industrial symbiosis exchanges, and detail firm- and policy-level implications and questions for future research. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The conflict among natural resources, environment and economic development is one of the major problems to be solved in the current world. Sustainable development is a powerful tool on the way toward seeking for harmonious development. Due to a lack of resources and fragility in ecosystems, the Inland River Basin of China is facing a serious problem that needs to be solved. In this paper, northwest China is chosen as the study area. Based on the interregional input-output table of China for the years 2002 and 2007 and the provincial input-output table of 2007, the I-O table analysis method was adopted to calculate the influence coefficient and response coefficient of the five provinces in northwest China. Through the analysis of the results, the intersectoral relation has been investigated, which could lend some credence for seeking effective ways for sustainable development in western China. The research findings indicate that the tertiary industry and construction sector are capable of greatly driving the national economic development in northwest China and, thus, should be developed preferentially.Many have witnessed the increasing popularity of big data in the past couple of years. Indeed, big data has been transforming how business is done in many industries. For example, online advertisements are increasingly customized for individual consumers based on their purchase history. Big data has also instigated many new areas of investigation, mostly in fields such as computer sciences and statistics. There are many areas in industrial ecology (IE) that can potentially benefit from big data. In this article, we try to explore what big data could bring to IE.This forum article explores thermodynamic understanding of the growth of cities, including theoretical foundations, observations, and analysis. The general theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics is reviewed, recognizing differences in interpretation between Prigogine and Schneider and Kay as well as discussing the hypothesis of maximum entropy production. Calculations of exergy gradients in a few cities and settlements, along with measures of anthropogenic heat loss in further cities, support the notion that cities are dissipative structures. The observation that primary energy use per capita increases in Singapore and Hong Kong as they grow is further evidence to support the thermodynamic understanding of the growth of cities, indicative of an increasing rate of entropy production. At the global scale, the strong linear relationship between global urban population and total global energy use, and the distribution of city sizes according to Zipf's law, can be understood as emergent results based on thermodynamics. Parallel results might be derived from models that represent underlying microscale processes, several of which are reviewed. Issues for future research include: development of nonequilibrium thermodynamic models specific to city growth; further study of exergy flows of cities with consistent methodology, including attention to solar energy exchanges in cities; and further exploration of links between thermodynamic and economic models of urban growth.Many scientific collaboration networks have been extensively studied from different perspectives, such as network degree analysis or centrality. However, there has been little study of the scientific collaboration network in the industrial ecology (IE) research domain and community. In this study therefore, we collected co-authorship keywords and related data from 1,032 publications between 1997 and 2012 from the most influential journal on the topic: the Journal of Industrial Ecology. An evaluation of publications in terms of network characteristics was conducted. Journal characteristics, such as publications by each author, number of co-authors per paper, and keywords, were identified. Further, we developed a co-authorship network and maps with network centrality analysis, components, and cluster analysis. The results of this study clearly show the main topics of the science, structure of scientific collaboration, and status of individual researchers within the IE research community.Many industrial ecology models may be classified as single-use products-constructed to address a specific problem and of little use beyond their original context. But a knowledge ecosystem based around single-use representations of reality wastes effort and resources and limits the impact of industrial ecology as a field. In recent years, tangible progress has been made in areas such as integrated modeling and multisimulation. However, this work tends to discount the evolutionary nature of models and their embeddedness within a changing sociotechnical environmentaspects which, we argue, are central to enabling the sustained usefulness of models in industrial ecology. We define a multimodel ecology as an interacting group of models coevolving with one another in a dynamic sociotechnical environment. A multimodel ecology perspective can facilitate model integration and reuse and highlight different ways in which modelsmental, conceptual, and computational-may interact and evolve. To demonstrate the use of this perspective, we introduce and analyze an existing multimodel ecologythe Energy Modeling Laboratory. We conclude with a set of guidelines for facilitating model reuse and integration. Among others, these include use open standards, build simple components, leverage the Web, borrow proudly, and enforce sharing.An industrial symbiosis (IS) network (ISN) is a typical complex system, and resilience is one of its core features. In this article, we investigated the relationship between resilience and interdependency within and between various IS systems. An interdependent network model was proposed based on complex network theory, which preserved the heterogeneity of exchange content and the diversity of symbiosis relationships. We used Yixing Economic and Technological Development Zone (YETDZ) in Jiangsu, China, as the case to construct a material exchange network and three infrastructure-sharing networks. The result implied that increased interdependency contributed to the vulnerability of the system, but it did not necessarily contribute to its resilience. In our model, we identified the significant companies, materials, and infrastructure pipes in YETDZ through centrality metrics and proved the fragility of the system when deliberate changes took place in these components. We also showed the consequence of cascading failures in a single network and distinguished the most vulnerable companies exposed to failures by simulations. The interdependency between material exchange and infrastructure systems were analyzed in two scenarios, and the results implied that more attention should be placed on the key components between different IS systems. In such cases, both managers and planners of ISNs should take proper actions to enhance the adaptability of ISNs, protect significant components, and control cascading failures. The awareness of interdependency should be an indispensable part in future planning and management.Industrial location theory has not emphasized environmental concerns, and research on industrial symbiosis has not emphasized workforce housing concerns. This article brings jobs, housing, and environmental considerations together in an agent-based model of industrial and household location. It shows that four classic outcomes emerge from the interplay of a relatively small number of explanatory factors: the isolated enterprise with commuters; the company town; the economic agglomeration; and the balanced city.Artificial lighting has allowed the decoupling of human activities from natural daylight hours. Electricity utilized for artificial lighting accounts for 18.8% of U.S. electricity consumption. Compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and light-emitting diode (LED) options are more efficient and have longer lifetimes than conventional incandescent bulbs, but the question remains about the actual energy savings likely to be realized through more efficient lighting delivery systems. This uncertainty influences the rate of adoption and use of efficient lighting technology (and thus the extent and time lags of efficiency gains). Once adopted, gains in efficiency can lead to rebound effects that eliminate these gains and, paradoxically, lock society into increased use of energy. In this study, an agent-based model and complex systems approach is used to understand how available information and perceptions of different lighting options influence adoption and use, and the potential impact of the rebound effect to reduce the energy savings of energy-efficient lighting options in a residential setting. Individual households and their decisions are modeled to create overall population-level consumption data. The multifunctionality of LED lighting may cause consumers to use significantly more light, creating the potential for both rebound and backfire to occur. The results indicate that the adoption of CFL and LED lighting will decrease residential energy consumption if consumers continue to use the same amount or slightly more light; however, when an expansion of lit spaces is included or a large increase in lighting usage occurs, energy consumption will increase and, over time, reduce or completely erode energy savings.Resilience is the capacity of systems to withstand and recover from disturbance. It depends on the structure and architecture of a system and plays a key role for the sustainability of complex systems. Despite its importance, resilience is not explicitly taken into account by studies of life cycle assessment (LCA), whose main objective is determining the eco-efficiency of a product system, with limited focus on its structure. The question is whether a product system whose structure is improved or designed to be more resilient will result in being not only inefficient, but also eco-inefficient, when assessed by means of LCA. This study proposes a theoretical modeling approach, consisting of assessment of disturbance and system expansion, to compare vulnerable and resilient product systems within the framework of LCA. Examples are provided where the theory is made operational. The structure of a vulnerable product system changes under disturbance: some processes are constrained and others are made necessary. In a resilient product system, the number and type of processes do not change under conditions of disturbance, because some redundant disturbance-preventing activities are included. If this modeling approach is applied, resilient product systems are not necessarily less eco-efficient than their vulnerable counterparts. This runs contrary to the intuitive idea that optimizing a system only for efficiency will necessarily allow achievement of eco-efficiency as well. This modeling approach is then critically discussed.Traditional production- and consumption-based accounting frameworks for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions focus on the two ends of supply chains, treating intermediate sectors as a black box. Particular intermediate sectors can potentially be important for global mitigation of CO2 emissions, through improving productivity to reduce inputs from upstream suppliers, thus emissions from upstream sectors, while still fulfilling downstream demands. Identifying those important intermediate sectors requires opening the black box and treating the economy as an integrated system. This study constructs a global virtual carbon network for 2009 and identifies key sectors for reducing global CO2 emissions through improving productivity using network analysis techniques. We also identify 73 communities in the network in which sectors are more closely connected with one another than with sectors outside the community. Identifying communities helps in the understanding of potential impacts of sector-specific policy interventions through supply chains. The results offer additional insights that are not obviously visible in traditional input-output analysis.Water is essential to life, and tracking trends in the withdrawal of water is paramount if we aspire to become more sustainable. Traditional statistical indicators, such as mean and standard deviation, are useful to track these trends, but they can sometimes fail to capture relevant and nontrivial properties. In this work, we first highlight the limits of these traditional statistical tools and we then offer a new network approach to study water withdrawals. Public supply water withdrawal data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for the years 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2005 were used in gallons of water per capita per day for all U.S. counties. Essentially, a network is formed between counties when they have withdrawal values within a certain range, +/- , of one another. A giant cluster rapidly emerges, containing more than 80% of the nodes for a of 1%. The counties with the highest number of connections are associated with the mode of distribution, and we found multimodal patterns for earlier years. Moreover, the average shortest-path length can be seen as the spread of a distribution. Overall, beyond a possible process of homogenization, water withdrawal patterns do not seem to have evolved much from 1985 to 2005, and no spatial correlation was detected. Though the methodology is yet to be formalized, it manages to give meaningful insights to supplement traditional statistical analyses.A bibliometric analysis of life cycle assessment (LCA)-related research literature is reported in this study. Based on databases of Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science (CPCI-S), and Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), this study aims to evaluate the research trends of LCA-related research literature from 1998 to 2013 by using bibliometric techniques. The documents were analyzed according to their type, language(s), subject(s), journal(s), citation analysis of articles, authors' address information, and keyword distribution, etc. H-index and impact factor (IF) were applied to characterize the LCA publications. Furthermore, co-word analysis and social network analysis (SNA) were employed to evaluate the interactions in this research field. The findings showed that the pace of publishing in this field increased exponentially over past 16 years. A total of 6616 records were obtained from the four databases. Journal articles are the most frequently used document type representing 74.33 % (4918) of the records, and English is the dominant language with 5914 records (97.53 %). The most common subject category is environmental sciences, and the most productive journal is International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. The USA, focusing on "energy," "industrial ecology," and "greenhouse gas emissions," is the most productive country in the research field of LCA. Technology University of Denmark is the most productive institute all over the world over the past 16 years. According to the ranking of keywords, "greenhouse gas," "energy", and "biofuel" are the hotspots of LCA research. The main purpose of LCA is sustainability assessment whereas climate change is one of the most outstanding environmental issues. By identifying global hotspots in the LCA research, this study provides a useful reference to researchers for the future research directions.A continuous reactor in microaerobic conditions was adopted for sulfide-oxidizing, nitrate-reducing and elemental sulfur (S-0) regenerating, simultaneously. The results showed that appropriate dissolved oxygen (DO) enhanced S-0 regeneration efficiency, sulfide oxidation efficiency, and nitrate reduction efficiency. When the DO concentration was 0.1-0.3 mg L-1, the microaerobic bioreactor simultaneously converted 8.16 kg-S m(-3) d(-1) of sulfide to S-0 and 2.48 kg-N m(-3)d(-1) of nitrate to nitrogen with the sulfide and nitrate removal efficiency of 100% and 90% respectively. Compared with anaerobic sulfide and nitrate removal process previously reported, the loading sulfide was higher and more S-0 was generated during the operation in microaerobic reactor. Analysis using the 16S rDNA gene clone library revealed that Azoarcus, Thauera, Paracoccus, Sulfurospirillum, Arcobacter and Clostridium were the dominant microorganisms in the sulfide and nitrate removal system. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Papermaking is regarded as an industry that consumes a great amount of energy and produces serious pollution. The papermaking industry in China, which has a large population and rapid economic development, is indispensable and presents a trend of rapid development. China and the rest of the world pay considerable attention to resource conservation and environmental protection. Therefore, determining how the papermaking industry can realize cleaner production and sustainable development is an urgent issue that should be addressed. This paper introduces Guangdong Silver Island Lake (GSIL) Papermaking Park, which realizes cleaner production and sustainable development by developing circular economy (CE). This park constructs a CE industrial mode by recycling energy, water, and materials. After 10 years of implementation, the CE plan of GSIL Papermaking Park has integrated the resources of the papermaking and power industries horizontally, thus forming the unique development mode of its CE. The resource consumption, resource comprehensive utilization, and pollutant emission indexes of the park have reached the advanced level in the papermaking industry of China. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extensive industrial development is a major challenge to ecological civilization construction. Industrial energy consumption and environmental pollution reduction are desperately needed. The Dongting Lake district, located in Wuhan and the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan (CZT) pilot zone, bears the responsibility to ensure national food security and watershed ecological security, and it is an urgent need for the Dongting Lake district to accept the ecological transition of industries. On the analysis of the industrial development status and problems of the Dongting Lake district, some proposals based on the characteristics and reality of the district are pointed out, such as industrial cooperation, proper space layout, ecological innovation, industrial structure upgrading, building of ecological parks, clean production, elimination of backward production capacity, heavy metals governance and so on, as to develop the industrial ecology of the Dongting Lake district.Resilience is an increasingly popular concept in academic research and public discourse and is closely connected to complex systems theory. This article reviews research on resilience and complexity in industrial ecology and the broader academy by conducting a bibliometric analysis of the academic literature over a 40-year period (1973-2014). The review revealed a large body of scholarship composed of five clearly identifiable intellectual communities, with resilience theory from ecology especially influential. Based on the study of ecosystems, these scholars conceptualize resilience as a dynamic and adaptive property of systems with multiple stable states that evolve over time. In comparison, resilience research in industrial ecology is limited and underdeveloped. Bibliometric analysis of this literature yielded just 37 publications and a scholarly network with no well-formulated research communities. This contrasts with industrial ecology scholarship on sustainability; a similar search yielded 1,581 publications. Given the emerging importance of the resilience concept and its relevance for sustainability issues, industrial ecology should expand research efforts in this area. The growing body of industrial ecology scholarship on complex systems provides a foundation to do so, as does the field's long-standing practice of using ecological principles to inform the study and design of industrial ecosystems. The article concludes by discussing how industrial ecology would benefit from incorporating principles of dynamic resilience and, conversely, how industrial ecology approaches could advance broader resilience scholarship.Industrial symbiosis principles, reprized in industrial ecology definition, are recently embraced by circular economy concept as the basis for characterization of cradle-to-cradle approach, with particular interest on global markets with growing environmental issues such as food sector. This paper investigates a potential innovative pattern of recycling food waste from cruise ships for use as feed in aquaculture, in terms of environmental sustainability. Comparative Life Cycle Assessment is used to evaluate the possible potential benefits of replacing conventional formulations of feed mix for salmon with food waste, generated and processed onboard a vessel where turbo-drying technology has been tested as a case study. A set of three indices, otherwise possible stand-alone indicators, is selected to measure global warming potential, non-renewable cumulative energy demand, and water scarcity index. The basis for comparison is represented by a typical commercial feed product for aquaculture in Norway and UK. A conventional feed formulation shows higher life cycle burdens for the whole set of indicators, with respect to the analysed case study. In particular, traditional feed product in UK shows the worst performance in terms of carbon footprint and non-renewable energy demand, whilst the Norwegian traditional mix is source of the highest impact for water scarcity. The investigation of supply chains results particularly relevant for highlighting that bottle-necks are not univocal for the different impact categories. For instance, when conventional mix in Norway is analysed from a water footprint perspective, crop-derived products result to be more influent than fish-derived ones, unlike for carbon and energy indicators.Sixty years of air pollution from two Cu-Ni smelting plants ("Pechenganikel" and "Severonikel") in the Kola region in northwest Russia have posed a severe threat for water quality, specifically acidification, in subarctic lakes. In the last two decades, emissions of SO2, Cu and Ni from the smelters have declined with 33 %, 40 % and 36 %, respectively. The 75 lakes in Kola Peninsula were sampled with 5-year intervals for the period 1990 to 2010. In addition, were analysed for major anions and cations, DOC and heavy metals. The lakes were grouped according to geology and distance to emission sources into 6 subregions. The most acid-sensitive lakes are located on granites, quartz sands or in highlands. Since 1990, AN. has increased, which is connected to the reduction of the contents strong acids in water (sulphate, chloride) while base cations concentrations have been almost unchanged. Despite the reduction of sulphate, concentrations of alkalinity have not increased in lake water. We have found an increase in concentration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nutrients in Kola lake waters over a 20-year period. We suggest this phenomenon can be explained by two mechanisms: a reduction in deposition of strong acids and warming climate. Concentrations of Ni and Cu have decreased 5-10-fold over the last 20 years. We conclude that reduced emissions from Cu-Ni smelting plants has led to improved water quality in the Kola region.Porous and rod-shaped nanostructure of BaAl2O4 was successfully synthesized by using a simple hydrothermal method. Ag-doped BaAl2O4 catalyst based on the porous BaAl2O4 was prepared by incipient wetness impregnation strategy, which showed excellent photoelectric property and catalytic activity. The structural properties of the samples were systematically investigated by XRD, BET, SEM, EDX, TEM, DRS, XPS and FT-IR techniques. The results revealed that the prepared Ag/BaAl2O4 nanorods were more active than BaAl2O4 and commercial TiO2 in photocatalytic oxidation of gaseous toluene. The photodegradation ratio of toluene over Ag/BaAl2O4 reaches to 88%. The toluene was not complete degradation over these catalysts which only partial oxidations were achieved under UV illumination. The weakly adsorbed benzaldehyde is formed during photocatalysis. Hydroxyl groups on the surface of the catalyst are able to react with benzaldehyde which played a key role in the photocatalytic process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The wine industry worldwide is undergoing a chronic surplus of production, estimated at more than 30 millions of hectoliters. This extra waste (unsold wines) have to be handled in order to not aggravate the wine environmental impacts. With the aim to reduce this surplus, the present research evaluates new grape uses: by blending them with other fruits in the formulation of a "100% fruit juice". The idea is to move from a linear model, in which grapes are grown only for wine production, to a complex one, in which grapes are grown for other uses too, in order to obtain a better use of raw materials, as opposed to waste production. This research apply a particular form of Industrial Ecology, integrating raw materials among farms. In order to evaluate the idea, a life cycle assessment was carried out, to make a comparison of two scenarios (the linear and the complex). Results show reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and a reduced amount of unsold wine to be treated. The wider market scenario provides healthy products to consumers: fruit juices. Regarding this last point, it should be emphasized that this fruit juice concept is already on the market since two years. This approach to wine surplus has demonstrated that transferring part of the must to the fruit juice production lightens the environmental load of a company (increased sustainability), lightens the unsold wine problem (increased efficiency in the resources use), and expands market opportunity by providing healthy products to consumers (increased competitiveness). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to the antiquated processes, fused magnesia (FM) production in China causes many problems such as high energy consumption and heavy greenhouse gas emissions, which have gradually become a barrier to the future sustainable development of the industry. These issues are creating pressure to find alternative processes that can reduce energy consumption and pollution in the industry, while guaranteeing the quality of products. We develop a transparent life cycle inventory of two conventional and two new FM processes from magnesite mining to FM production and apply the inventory to conduct a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of four scenarios, including: Scenario 1 (S1) - a Single Phase Process using natural magnesite as raw material; Scenario 2 (S2) - a Two Phase Process using caustic calcined magnesia as raw material; Scenario 3 (S3) - an alternative process based on raw material substitution; and, Scenario 4 (S4) - another alternative improving from the overall process. Results indicate that in two traditional processes, S1 is superior to S2 in terms of environmental impacts. However, the two alternatives show significant differences. S3 doesn't reduce the environmental impacts as a whole, but transfers them from the production phase to other raw material production phases. S4 has the best environmental performance with an effective reduction of each impact category, especially the global warming potential (GWP), which was reduced by 48% compared to S1. The study shows that promoting the sustainable development of the FM industry requires overall process improvement to ensure comprehensive utilization of resources and energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The location of agricultural activities in favourable geographic areas has led to the development of local agglomerations of companies, recognised as agri-food clusters (AFCs). AFCs are characterised by typical environmental problems such as changes in land use, CO2 emissions, energy and water consumption, and chemical pollution. Recent technological changes in the agri-food industry have influenced the economic and social development of AFCs towards progressive industrialization. Such changes have also been the source of new environmental problems, such as those related to the large-scale use and disposal of auxiliary materials. Industrial Ecology (IE) proposes approaches and applied solutions to reduce the environmental impacts and improve the competitiveness of production activities. Major applications of IE in AFCs currently involve the valorisation of animal and vegetable by-products and scraps. Further improvements can be achieved by adopting IE-based solutions focused on auxiliary material wastes. This article analyses the potential development of IE-based approaches in a representative Italian AFC. Empirical evidence shows that efficient solutions can be implemented through material substitution, repair, and recycling, and by exploiting collaborative strategies among the agri-food and industrial companies established in the area. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Information asymmetry between consumers and supply chain actors represents a major barrier to the expansion of sustainable consumption. Developing an interoperable data architecture that enables the integration of data regarding sustainability practices from disparate sources in sustainable supply chains is important for improving market transparency. This paper identifies main issues and requirements as perceived by the key stakeholders in the coffee supply chain for such development. The analysis reveals that building an interoperable data architecture necessitates awareness of several major challenges, including the difficulties of collecting accurate and creditable data, limited technological capabilities, complex data ownership and disclosure policy, issues of confidentiality, privacy and economic value of information, and cost of disclosing information. To deal with these challenges, we recommend that the development need to ensure data quality, integrity and security, design information policy balancing commercial interests and openness, and design appropriate governance mechanism to complement the technological design in order to ensure the fair and proper use of the system.A viable process concept, based on NO and SO2 absorption into an alkaline Fe(II)EDTA (EDTA: ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) solution in a scrubber combined with biological reduction of the absorbed SO2 utilizing sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) and regeneration of the scrubbing liquor in a single bioreactor, was developed. The SRB, Desulfovibrio sp. CMX, was used and its sulfate reduction performances in FeEDTA solutions and Fe(II)EDTA-NO had been investigated. In this study, the detailed regeneration process of Fe(II)EDTA solution, which contained Fe(III)EDTA and Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction processes in presence of D. sp. CMX and sulfate, was evaluated. Fe(III)EDTA and Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction processes were primarily biological, even if Fe(III)EDTA and Fe(II)EDTA-NO could also be chemically convert to Fe(II)EDTA by biogenic sulfide. Regardless presence or absence of sulfate, more than 87 % Fe(III)EDTA and 98 % Fe(II)EDTA-NO were reduced in 46 h, respectively. Sulfate and Fe(III)EDTA had no affection on Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction. Sulfate enhanced final Fe(III)EDTA reduction. Effect of Fe(III)EDTA on Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction rate was more obvious than effect of sulfate on Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction rate before 8 h. To overcome toxicity of Fe(II)EDTA-NO on SRB, Fe(II)EDTA-NO was reduced first and the reduction of Fe(III)EDTA and sulfate occurred after 2 h. First-order Fe(II)EDTA-NO reduction rate and zero-order Fe(III)EDTA reduction rate were detected respectively before 8 h.The theory, methodologies, and case studies in the field of industrial symbiosis have been developing for nearly 30 years. In this paper, we trace the development history of industrial symbiosis, and review its current theoretical and methodological bases, as well as trends in current research. Based on the research gaps that we identify, we provide suggestions to guide the future development of this approach to permit more comprehensive analyses. Our theoretical review includes key definitions, a classification system, and a description of the formation and development mechanisms. We discuss methodological studies from the perspective of individual industrial metabolic processes and network analysis. Analyzing specific metabolic processes can help to characterize the exchanges of materials and energy, and to reveal the ecological performance and economic benefits of the symbiosis. Network analysis methods are increasingly being used to analyze both the structural and functional characteristics of a system. Our suggestions for future research focus on three aspects: how to quantitatively classify industrial symbiosis systems, monitor the dynamics of a developing industrial symbiosis system, and analyze its internal attributes more deeply.Rooftop greenhouses (RTGs) are increasing as a new form of urban agriculture. Several environmental, economic, and social benefits have been attributed to the implementation of RTGs. However, the environmental burdens and economic costs of adapting greenhouse structures to the current building legislation were pointed out as a limitation of these systems in the literature. In this sense, this paper aims to analyse the environmental and economic performance of RTGs in Barcelona. A real RTG project is here analysed and compared to an industrial greenhouse system (i.e. multi-tunnel), from a life cycle perspective. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methods are followed in the assessment. The analysis is divided into three parts that progressively expand the system boundaries: greenhouse structure (cradle-to-grave), at the production point (cradle-to-farm gate), and at the consumption point (cradle-to-consumer). The applied LCIA methods are the ReCiPe (hierarchical, midpoint) and the cumulative energy demand. A cost-benefit analysis (CBA) approach is considered in the LCC. For the horticultural activity, a crop yield of 25 kg center dot m(-2) is assumed for the RTG reference scenario. However, sensitivity analyses regarding the crop yield are performed during the whole assessment. The greenhouse structure of an RTG has an environmental impact between 17 and 75 % higher and an economic cost 2.8 times higher than a multi-tunnel greenhouse. For the reference scenario (yield 25 kg center dot m(-2)), 1 kg of tomato produced in an RTG at the production point has a lower environmental impact (10-19 %) but a higher economic cost (24 %) than in a multi-tunnel system. At the consumption point, environmental savings are up to 42 % for local RTGs tomatoes, which are also 21 % cheaper than conventional tomatoes from multi-tunnel greenhouses in Almeria. However, the sensitivity assessment shows that the crop efficiency is determinant. Low yields can produce impacting and expensive vegetables, although integrated RTGs, which can take advantage from the residual energy from the building, can lead to low impacting and cheap local food products. RTGs face law limitations that make the greenhouse structure less environmentally friendly and less economically competitive than current industrial greenhouses. However, as horticultural systems and local production systems, RTGs can become an environmentally friendly option to further develop urban agriculture. Besides, attention is paid to the crop yield and, thus, further developments on integrated RTGs and their potential increase in crop yields (i.e. exchange of heat and CO2 with the building) are of great interest.One of the most important challenges facing our society is the efficient and economic use of energy, and with it the corresponding need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Due to growing concerns over global warming and climate change in recent years, warm mix asphalt (WMA) has become an important new research topic in the field of pavement materials, as it offers a potential solution for the reduction of energy consumption and GHG emissions during the production and placement of asphalt mixtures. While many studies have been conducted to demonstrate that the mechanical properties of such mixtures are not significantly affected, many questions and concerns regarding the environmental benefits they offer have yet to be addressed. In this study, a comprehensive hybrid life cycle assessment of WMA production was carried out to accurately evaluate and quantify the potential benefits of WMA technology by assessing the environmental impacts of its production associated with energy consumption and GHG emissions. The results of this study show that, for the WMA mixtures considered here, when the upstream supply chain related to the production of the materials composing such mixtures is taken into account, WMA technology is able to significantly save energy and reduce GHG emissions when compared to the control mixtures. However, it must be noted that in some cases, the manufacturing temperature at the asphalt plant must be reduced before the benefits of reduced emissions and fuel usage can be obtained. The results of a detailed production layer decomposition indicate that the fuel, mining and construction sectors are the main contributors to the environmental impacts of manufacturing the WMA mixtures studied. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concerns about the future balance between the supply and demand of metals have inspired research to define and assess metal criticality. Here we apply a comprehensive criticality methodology to four metals with uses in nuclear energy: zirconium (Zr), hafnium (Hf), thorium (Th), and uranium (U). 2008 criticality assessments for these metals were made on the national level for the United States and on the global level. The results and uncertainty estimates in three-dimensional "crificality space" are comprised of supply risk (SR), vulnerability to supply restriction (VSR), and environmental implications (El) axes. The SR score is the highest for zirconium over both the medium term (i.e., 5-10 years) and the long term (i.e., a few decades). The cradle-to-gate El score is highest for uranium, followed by hafnium and then thorium, with impacts due to a combination of on-site emissions and upstream burdens from the use of energy and materials during mineral processing and refining. Uranium has the highest VSR score at the national level, and the second highest at the global level. Zirconium is the most vulnerable at the global level. In general, SR for the four metals are reasonably high for the United States and more moderate for the planet, while El and VSR scores are low to moderate. Overall, the criticality of the metals analyzed appears not to be of high concern, either nationally or globally. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Unilateral tightening of environmental regulation is often considered to cause regulated industries to locate at places with lower compliance cost. The pollution haven effect may be offset, however, when endogenous technical change and factor reallocation can compensate increased compliance cost. This paper identifies the overall effects on industrial activities from provincially differentiated regulation of energy saving in China. Econometric specifications take into account the workings of different policy instruments, quantity and revenue-based measurement of output, policy-induced price effects, and alternative measurement of productivity and competitiveness. Results indicate that an introduction of energy-saving policies leads to loss of output and productivity in energy-intensive industries initially, which is passed on to other industries via markets of capital and energy-intensive goods. Under higher regulation, energy-intensive industries become more capital-intensive, regain productivity more quickly, and increase export rates; other industries become more labor-intensive, recover more slowly, and decrease export rates. Through capital investment and factor reallocation, China's policy has been effective in improving industrial energy efficiency without causing competitive loss or carbon leakage. An incentive-based instrument of differential electricity prices leads to similar effects on industries, implying the possibility for more efficient policy-making. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of this article is to propose a method for forecasting future secondary material flows by combining a product lifetime distribution analysis with a waste input-output analysis and present a simple case study of automobiles. The case study demonstrates that the proposed method enables us to estimate replacement demand of new vehicles, number of end-of-life (EOL) vehicles arising from the aging of vehicles, volume of shredder scraps recovered from EOL vehicles, and volume of shredder scraps required to meet final consumption in the future.The impact assessment methods Eco-Indicator 99 (H), Stepwise2006, and ReCiPe2008 (H) are compared with respect to the relative and absolute importance that they assign to the different mid-point impact categories. The comparison is done by a common monetary valuation of the three endpoints that are common to the three methods: human well-being, nature, and resources. Land use, global warming, and respiratory inorganic pollutants together make up between 86% and 97% of the overall impacts compared in all three methods. The overall monetarized impacts amount to 30%, 28%, and 165% of the gross domestic product (GDP), respectively. Resource depletion, land use, and global warming explain 99.5% of the positive deviation of ReCiPe2008, relative to the other two methods. The main causes for these differences are investigated and discussed, pointing to possibly questionable calculations and assumptions, for example, regarding the nonsubstitutability of resources and the very long relaxation time for transformed forestland in the relatively new ReCiPe2008 method, which leads us to recommend users to be cautious and critical when interpreting the results. Sensitivity analysis is made for other cultural perspectives and normalization references.Integrating occupational safety and health (OSH) into life cycle assessment (LCA) may provide decision makers with insights and opportunities to prevent burden shifting of human health impacts between the nonwork environment and the work environment. We propose an integration approach that uses industry-level work environment characterization factors (WE-CFs) to convert industry activity into damage to human health attributable to the work environment, assessed as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). WE-CFs are ratios of work-related fatal and nonfatal injuries and illnesses occurring in the U.S. worker population to the amount of physical output from U.S. industries; they represent workplace hazards and exposures and are compatible with the life cycle inventory (LCI) structure common to process-based LCA. A proof of concept demonstrates application of the WE-CFs in an LCA of municipal solid waste landfill and incineration systems. Results from the proof of concept indicate that estimates of DALYs attributable to the work environment are comparable in magnitude to DALYs attributable to environmental emissions. Construction and infrastructure-related work processes contributed the most to the work environment DALYs. A sensitivity analysis revealed that uncertainty in the physical output from industries had the most effect on the WE-CFs. The results encourage implementation of WE-CFs in future LCA studies, additional refinement of LCI processes to accurately capture industry outputs, and inclusion of infrastructure-related processes in LCAs that evaluate OSH impacts.Simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) is an attempt to expedite standard LCA methodology. One common simplification is to use secondary databases comprised of results, instead of inventories, from previous LCA studies to avoid data collection and speed up calculations. This article contains an assessment of the depth and variance in such databases, using descriptive analyses and clustering of 2,276 published global warming potential weighted emissions records for agri-food products. Tables with mean and standard deviation for each product were generated and can be used in the future by LCA practitioners. The analysis of the data sets shows that clustering emissions by product name explains 55% of the variance in the database, whereas geographic region and method of production of the material explain only 2%. Significant gaps in the richness and comprehensiveness of databases available are also identified; data unavailability is one of the main reasons for uncertainty. The conclusion is thus that the use of secondary databases looks promising, but there are still challenges to overcome regarding the depth of databases.This article compares climate impacts of two heat-pump systems for domestic heating, that is, energy consumption for space heating of a residential building. Using a life cycle approach, the study compared the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of direct electric heating, a conventional air-source heat pump, and a novel ground-source air heat pump innovated by a citizen user, to assess whether such user innovation holds benefit. The energy use of the heat pumps was modeled at six temperature intervals based on duration curves of outdoor temperature. Additionally, two heat pump end-of-life scenarios were analyzed. Probabilistic uncertainty analysis was applied using a Monte Carlo simulation. The results indicated that, in ideal conditions, that is, assuming perfect air mixing, the conventional air-source heat pump's emissions were over 40% lower and the ground-air heat pump's emissions over 70% lower than in the case of direct electric heating. Although proper handling of the refrigerant is important, total leakage from the retirement of the heat-pump appliance would increase GHG emissions by just 10%. According to the sensitivity analysis, the most influential input parameters are the emission factor related to electricity and the amount of electricity used for heating.At present, the production of cement contributes approximately 8% to global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, whereas a further increase in the future is expected. To reduce these emissions, a prominent measure of the cement industry is to use materials such as coal fly ash (CFA) as a cement substitute, but the availability of qualified ash is limited. The development of green cements with lower CO2 emissions attracts attention within the cement industry and politics. Recently, a new invention for a calcium carbonate (CaCO3)-based cement intends to use CFA as an alkaline resource during a manufacturing process based on CO2 mineralization converting anthropogenic CO2 into stable calcareous materials by using calcium-bearing brines. In our systems analysis, we demonstrate that the alkalinity of CFA usable for mass production of cements is poor. The alkalinity of CFA primarily depends on the dissolution of free lime. For CO2 mineralization, the resulting alkalinity is just sufficient to precipitate the calcium supplied by the CFA itself, and the capacity of CO2 mineralization is low. Thus, CFA could only be used as a supplementary resource. Even at locations where exceptional calcium-rich ash is available, very large amounts of ash must be processed. Globally, only a few million tonnes of calcium could be extracted in this way. Because qualified CFA is already used in the construction industry, the extraction of calcium from nonqualified, more polluted CFA is associated with a risk of unwanted environmental effects and implies an elaborated pollutant control.Hunter-gatherers are commonly seen as having a fundamentally different sociometabolic regime from agrarian and industrial societies because they are thought to directly appropriate the products of natural ecosystems without modifying those systems in order to enhance their productivity. However, ethnographic and archeological evidence reveals that many hunter-gatherers extensively employed fire to manage their ecosystems so as to increase production of desirable wild resources, thus engaging in colonization of nature that is not qualitatively different from that practiced by other types of society. They systematically burned wild vegetation in order to increase populations of edible wild plants consumed by humans and promote growth of forage for game animals. Deliberate ecosystem burning by Australian Aborigines represented an energy expenditure of 1,512 gigajoules per capita per year (GJ/capita/yr), a level of energy use that is more than three times higher than the United States (445GJ/capita/yr). It is their profligate consumption of biomass energy that explains why the quality of life of many hunter-gatherers was often better than that of traditional settled peasant farmers. Hence, the extent to which hunter-gatherers have a distinct type of sociometabiolic regime is called into question. It can be argued that in the course of social evolution, there have been only two sociometabolic regimes. In one type, which includes hunter-gatherers, swidden agriculturalists, and industrial societies, extrasomatic energy does most of the productive work, whereas in the other type, that of premodern settled agriculturalists, production is largely dependent on human muscle power.Wastewater treatment infrastructure (WWTI) construction in China has entered an accelerated stage of development in recent years as a result of rapid economic growth, urbanization, and the demand for improving water quality. As a result, a large amount of resources and materials will be allocated for the WWTI, and it is particularly important to find ways to reduce resource consumption effectively so that social dematerialization and sustainable development can be achieved. In this study, we employed the dynamic material flow model to estimate the material flows and stocks of WWTIs and the associated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through 2050, considering effects of a rise in water consumption, a longer lifetime, and an increased material recycling rate. Our results indicate that material consumption in WWTIs will increase rapidly through 2025 to meet the needs of the increased volume of discharged wastewater as well as to overcome the shortage of existing wastewater treatment plants. In contrast with the moderate effects of rise in water consumption, prolonging the lifetime will greatly reduce material consumption in WWTI construction during the period 2030-2050, and approximately 60% of the total material input will be saved in the medium-lifetime scenario, compared with the short-lifetime scenario. Material output and CO2 emissions associated with WWTIs will be reduced by 87% and 37%, respectively, in the medium-lifetime scenario, compared with the short-lifetime scenario, under high-water-consumption growth. Our results highlight the great importance of pipeline construction and cement consumption in resource consumption associated with WWTI construction in China. Moreover, this study also examined the potential ways to reduce material consumption in WWTI construction in the context of the demand chain, the design, construction, operation and management, and demolition.The concept of industrial symbiosis (IS) over the last 20years has become a well-recognized approach for environmental improvements at the regional level. Many technical solutions for waste and by-product material, water, and energy reuse between neighboring industries (so-called synergies) have been discovered and applied in the IS examples from all over the world. However, the potential for uptake of new synergies in the regions is often limited by a range of nontechnical barriers. These barriers include environmental regulation, lack of cooperation and trust between industries in the area, economic barriers, and lack of information sharing. Although several approaches to help identify and overcome some of the nontechnical barriers were examined, no methodology was found that systematically assessed and tracked the barriers to guide the progress of IS development. This article presents a new toolIS maturity gridto tackle this issue in the regional IS studies. The tool helps monitor and assess the level of regional industrial collaboration and also indicates a potential path for further improvements and development in an industrial region, depending on where that region currently lies in the grid. The application of the developed tool to the Gladstone industrial region of Queensland, Australia, is presented in the article. It showed that Gladstone is at the third (active) stage of five stages of maturity, with cooperation and trust among industries the strongest characteristic and information barriers the characteristic for greatest improvement.Representing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) in vehicle GHG emissions regulations is complex because of spatial and temporal variation in fueling sources and vehicle use. Previous work has shown that the environmental performance of PEVs significantly varies depending on the characteristics of the electricity grid and how the vehicle is driven. This article evaluates the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) GHG emissions accounting methodology in current and future standards for new electrified vehicles. The current approach employed by the EPA in their 2017-2025 model year light-duty vehicle GHG regulation is compared with an accounting mechanism where the actual regional sales of PEVs, and the regional electricity emission factor in the year sold, are used to determine vehicle compliance value. Changes to the electricity grid over time and regional vehicle sales are included in the modeling efforts. A projection of a future GHG regulation past the 2017-2025 rule is used to observe the effect of such a regional regulation. The results showed that the complexity involved in tracking and accounting for regional PEV sales will not dramatically increase the effectiveness of the regulations to capture PEV electricity-related GHG emissions in the absence of a major policy shift. A discussion of the feasibility and effectiveness of a regional standard for PEVs, and notable examples of region-specific regulations instated in past energy policies, is also addressed.Industrial ecology introduced a new paradigm of principles and tools useful to academic analysis and decision support activities for industry and policymakers. This paper presents a view of the state of the art of industrial ecology, encompassing the four major theoretical traditions comprising the field, and emphasizing the relevance to practice. The principles of industrial ecology offer a basis for integrating environmental perspectives into production and consumption strategies, though there are significant challenges to be addressed.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied for assessing emerging technologies, where large-scale production data are generally lacking. This study introduces a standardized scheme for technology and manufacturing readiness levels to contextualize a technology's development stage. We applied the scheme to a carbon nanotube (CNT) LCA and found that, regardless of synthesis technique, CNT manufacturing will become less energy intensive with increased levels of readiness. We examined the influence of production volume on LCA results using primary data from a commercial CNT manufacturer with approximately 100grams per day production volume and engineering design of a scaled-up process with 1 tonne per day production capacity. The results show that scaling up could reduce 84% to 94% of its cradle-to-gate impacts, mainly as a result of the recycling of feedstock that becomes economically viable only beyond certain minimum production volume. This study shows that LCAs on emerging technologies based on immature data should be interpreted in conjunction with their technology and manufacturing readiness levels and reinforces the need of standardizing and communicating information on these readiness levels and scale of production in life cycle inventory practices.Studies on urban metabolism have provided important insights in the material and sociopolitical issues associated with the flow of water. However, there is a dearth of studies that reveal how infrastructure, as a hybrid of social and material construct, facilitates disease emergence. The article brings together urban metabolism, political ecology, and anthropological studies to examine the social construction and reconstruction of the material flow through everyday practices for addressing the water problem and its health burden in Ahmedabad city. The article georeferences the water problems and occurrence of diseases and, through interviews, documents Ahmedabad's sociospatial characteristics of water problems and health burden in two case study wards. Through a situated understanding of the everyday practices, the infrastructure is exposed through leakages, reveals the citizens desire for better water quality, and struggle to gain access to water using diverse pressure' tactics. It is these social-material constructs of water that give structure and coherence to urban space, which spatially coincides with the occurrence of diseases. It reveals the sociopolitical drivers of the water problems and identifies different hypotheses of the hotspots of disease emergences. The methodology offers a way forward for researchers and development agencies to improve the surveillance and monitoring of water infrastructure and public health through an incremental approach that takes into consideration the diffuse interplay of power by diverse actors. It charts out avenues for building on the urban metabolism by emphasizing the importance of examining the sociospatiality of the everyday practices for improving resource use efficiencies in cities of rapidly growing economies.Industrial assets or fixed capital stocks are at the core of the transition to a low-carbon economy. They represent substantial accumulations of capital, bulk materials, and critical metals. Their lifetime determines the potential for material recycling and how fast they can be replaced by new, more efficient facilities. Their efficiency determines the coupling between useful output and energy and material throughput. A sound understanding of the economic and physical properties of fixed capital stocks is essential to anticipating the long-term environmental and economic consequences of the new energy future. We identify substantial overlap in the way stocks are modeled in national accounting, dynamic material flow analysis, dynamic input-output (I/O) analysis, and life cycle assessment (LCA) and we merge these concepts into a common framework for modeling fixed capital stocks. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework for simultaneous accounting of capital and material stocks and for consequential LCA. We apply the framework to design a demand-driven dynamic I/O model with dynamic capital stocks, and we synthesize both the marginal and attributional matrix of technical coefficients (A-matrix) from detailed process inventories of fixed assets of different age cohorts and technologies. The stock modeling framework allows researchers to identify and exploit synergies between different model families under the umbrella of socioeconomic metabolism.Population and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) projections are used to estimate total global municipal solid waste (MSW) generation over the twenty-first century. Some projections for global population suggest that it will peak this century. Waste generation rates per capita generally increase with affluence, although in the most affluent countries there is also a trend toward dematerialization. The confluence of these factors means that at some point in the future total global waste generation could possibly peak. To determine when peak waste might occur, we used the shared-socioeconomic pathway scenarios (used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] studies) combined with estimates of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation rates, extrapolated from our work for the World Bank. Despite the expectation that total MSW generation in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and high-income countries will peak mid-century, with current trajectories global peak waste is not expected before 2100. The peak could be moved forward to around 2075 and reduced in intensity by some 30% if a more aggressive sustainability growth scenario were followed, rather than the current business-as-usual scenario. Further, the magnitude of peak waste is sensitive to the intensity of waste generation; it could vary from 7.3 to 10.9 megatonnes per day under the sustainability scenario. The timing of peak waste will substantially depend on the development of cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, where population growth rates are more than double the rest of the world.Industrial symbiosis (IS) involves two or more companies interlinked through the exchange of materials, heat, water and by-products. In fact, the evolution of industrial symbiosis could be part of a dynamic process leading to the development of a regional industrial ecosystem. Based on a regional context, this paper investigates a three-level approach, i.e., individual firm level, inter-firm level, and regional level, which incorporates cleaner production (CP) and IS to seek potential opportunities for improvement in an operating industrial zone. It was applied in the symbiosis in the Hai Hua Group (HHG) of China. The information was collected through survey questionnaires, open-ended interviews and cleaner production reports from companies. Implementing the three-level approach mainly shows that: (1) all the companies that implemented a cleaner production audit achieved economic and environmental benefits, (2) an existing symbiotic network was discovered, and (3) some potential symbiotic links were identified both at the inter-firm level and the regional level. Integrating cleaner production with industrial symbiosis, the relationship between the industrial symbiosis and its surrounding region, and the role of the government of implementing the three-level approach are discussed. In addition, some barriers were identified and possible resolutions are suggested. It can be concluded that the three-level approach is helpful to integrate CP and IS within a region and provides a useful guidance for discovering industrial symbiosis and promoting its development. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Attracting and retaining companies is critical for successful development of eco-industrial parks. By examining and addressing the main business needs and sustainability challenges, policy makers, developers and other champions, can promote both business value and social value creation. This paper provides valuable lessons from Devens, Massachusetts, an eco-industrial park established in 1993. Based on 29 interviews with local organizations (30% participation rate) the study reports on key business needs and sustainability challenges of local organizations and how Devens Enterprise Commission has worked to address these as part of its vision for Sustainable Devens. The study found that access to infrastructure - such as rail, green buildings and roads - was the most important factor for companies to locate to Devens, followed by the lower cost of real estate (59%) and tax benefits (52%). Top two sustainability challenges for Devens companies included improving energy efficiency and improving materials efficiency. Eighty six percent of Devens organizations reported partnering with others locally, and 79% said their organizations could benefit from such partnerships in the future. Companies were most interested in partnering around joint sourcing, infrastructure and knowledge sharing. The study confirmed that local government efforts to develop Devens infrastructure and establish supportive sustainability policies and programs were in line with business needs and a key factor for Devens' success. It confirmed earlier research on the role of industrial ecology as a cluster development policy and the importance of diversity of firms, trust, sustainability policies, and supporting network development as key to creating both business and social value. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Union's Waste Framework Directive (2008) contains criteria for the legal definition of industrial by-products. The purpose of the criteria is to encourage the reuse of residual materials and to decrease the generation of waste by industry. This article studies how such by-product criteria affect the legal treatment of three different types of residual materials in heavy industrial companies in Finland. Particular interest is in the significance of the role of these by-product criteria in the commercialization of the materials. The results of the article point out that by-product criteria function as a feedback mechanism between the regulative and the operational environments of industries and - to some extent - it also encourages increased interplay between these two realities. By-product criteria evidently promote the utilization of such residues whose product potential is clear. At the same time, these criteria fail in facilitating collective learning related to the development of new kinds of residual-based products. The argument is made that appropriately functioning institutional feedback mechanisms may facilitate the development of industrial processes in environmentally sound directions. At the same time collective learning is urgently needed in the development of industrial systems because processes are often already optimized given existing knowledge. Based on the findings, the article discusses what is required from institutional feedback mechanisms to facilitate collective learning in different operational environments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With the growing environmental concern, there is evidence that increasing symbiotic relationship between plants in the same industrial area, highly contributes to a more sustainable development of industrial activities. The concept of industrial ecology extended to the terms of eco-industrial park (or ecopark) or industrial symbioses is the topic of extensive research since the five last years. More particularly, even if a lot of ecopark examples and realizations already exist throughout the world, a lot of ecopark proposals are in progress but not achieved. Recently, this vision leads the research community to focus on works proposing methods to optimize the exchanges of an ecopark prior to its design and construction. We find it especially interesting for the scientific community to propose a detailed paper review focused on optimization works devoted to the design of eco industrial parks. This paper is based on a comprehensive literature search in Web of Science database for publications that listed 'industrial symbiosis' (or 'eco industrial park', or 'inter plant integration') and 'optimization'. This study is segmented into different sections with first, a description of the different concepts evoked in the literature. Then, the several types of networking in an eco-industrial park are detailed in association with the optimization methods employed to solve each problem. The following sections reviews the different objective functions that are formulated to optimally design an eco-industrial park. The last part of the paper is devoted to a critical analysis of the state of the art by proposing several routes to improve the methodologies found in the literature. Another aim of this paper review consists in finding the gaps existing in previous studies. These major gaps are found to be: the lack of multiobjective optimization studies, the absence of social/societal objectives formulation also needs to be addressed and the lack of works taking into account flexibility of ecoparks in an operational point of view. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial park have been developed for decades and have significant economic and environmental effects in China. To research the evolution of industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial park construction, and summary the drivers and characteristics of industrial symbiosis development in China, this study,uses the National Demonstration Eco-Industrial Park, namely, the Rizhao Economic and Technology Development Area (REDA), as a case study to introduce the industrial symbiosis development process and to research the evolution of industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial park construction, and summarizes the drivers and characteristics of industrial symbiosis development in China. Based on in-depth investigation of enterprises and the government in REDA, three stages (1991 2002, 2003-2006, 2007-2011) of industrial symbiosis development are identified, 31 inter-firms symbiosis performances involving cereal oil and food, machinery, pulp and paper, textile and garment, wine refining, and biochemical industries were formed since REDA was founded in 1991. Results show the environmental benefits of industrial symbiosis performances in 2011, and argue that economic benefits, mainly resulted from stricter environmental standards, tax preference, benefits from material substitution, and financial subsidies, is the critical driver for the stakeholders to participate in industrial symbiosis. The action of governments in industrial symbiosis development is to constituting strict environmental standards, resource comprehensive utilization schemes, financial support and circular economy and eco-industrial park planning guidance. This article provides some unique characteristics of industrial symbiosis growth in a developing country from enterprises and government aspects. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The science of teaching innovations is becoming popular in our country today. Isolation of an independent branch of science began with the socio - pedagogical movement, with a conflict between the needs for rapid development of the school and the inability of teachers to implement it. Using of the new increased widespread. In this regard, there was escalated the need for new knowledge, in understanding new concepts of "innovation", "new", "innovative process", etc. The paper aims to show new production tendencies, trying to find out if they can be seen under a sustainable innovation perspective and if their logical action presents a connection to Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action. Considering the current innovation theories it is worth saying that specific approaches facing environmental sustainability are not common. Based on such scope, Industrial Ecology and Integrated Production Systems are highlighted. They are in the mainstream because they try to guide themselves not just by economic concerns, but also considering the articulation demand among different subjective and objective elements. The tendencies draw proposals to policies' transformations - regarding production methods -by placing economical, social and environmental dimensions in an inseparable way. (Berkaliev, 2007) (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Innovation with living organisms is strategic for several reasons. The search for sustainable solutions (with lower carbon footprint, waste recycling, circular economy, industrial ecology) leads to a massive use of biomass (animal or vegetal). This biobased economy, replacing "materials from oil" by "biobased material" contains the seeds of the best and the worst. If the natural resources, albeit renewable, are considered as stocks (however exhaustible) they may be gradually destroyed. Conversely, the natural capital can be recognized as a potential source of all regeneration. Primers of this recognition, new practices are inspired by organic life with internal tensions and show alternative ways to innovate. Researchers or engineers explore ecosystem strategies (symbioses for example) or biomimetics and test frugal or agile approaches building on users or makers. These practices "connected to the living" are now facing old postures focused on mastering processes or exceeding the living toward the posthuman. The biobased economy confronts us our deepest dilemmas: think progress as an exit from the biological condition or feed a new technical imaginary leveraging the symbolic power of the living.Degradation of bisphenol A (BPA) in aqueous solution using sulfate radicals was investigated using the Fe(II)-activated peroxydisulfate (PDS) process, electrochemical process, electrochemical process with 2.5 mmol/L Na2S2O8 without Fe(II), and electrochemical assistant Fe(II)activated PDS process. It was found that the electrochemical assistant Fe(II)-activated PDS process performed best in the degradation of BPA. The variables considered to influence the degradation efficiency of BPA were the initial concentration of Fe2+, the initial concentration of Na2S2O8, and the current density. More than 97% of the BPA removals were achieved within 120 min under the optimum operational condition. The degradation of BPA was accompanied by the formation of phenol, hydroquinone, and small-molecule compounds such as succinic acid. The electron transfer was the principal step in the oxidation of BPA. (c) 2015 Hohai University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.Green Virtual Enterprise Breeding Environments (GVBEs) are long-term strategic alliances of green enterprises and their related support institutions aimed at offering the necessary conditions to efficiently promote and establish common working and sharing principles with the intention of creating sustainable (shared) value in a collaborative way. The Sharing Economy (SE) is founded on the principle of maximising the utility of assets and other shareable resources by means of renting, lending, swapping, bartering and giving them away in order to avoid their idle existence, and is currently being facilitated by emerging collaborative business ICT infrastructures in the marketplace and society. The SE provides the ability to GVBE members to unlock the untapped social, economic and environmental value of their underutilised assets and other shareable resources towards higher resource efficiency. This paper explores the enabling role of the GVBE bag of assets as a virtual and physical warehouse, including collaborative procurement and shareable assets management strategies, in order to facilitate the sharing of tangible and intangible resources between GVBE members. The GVBE bag of assets is put forward as a novel internal sustainable business model, based on a conceptual framework, taking advantage of idle assets and other shareable resources within the breeding environment in order to save costs and generate new revenue streams (economic), make efficient use of resources (environment) and create deeper social connections - trust - among member enterprises (social).The recent increase in awareness of industrial ecology has inspired research in inter-plant water integration. Industrial water conservation and wastewater reduction are becoming increasingly important for sustainable water resource development in industrial parks. Water supply and pricing structures provide incentives to increase water recovery ratio. This work proposes a superstructural-based mathematical optimization method for total water networks with constrained freshwater supply. This work first explores the implications of differential price, minimum freshwater flowrate, and the number of regeneration units for different constrained water supplies. Considering minimum water-using cost as the optimization objective, the minimum freshwater flowrate and its corresponding total water network structural are determined.Process Integration (PI) techniques have been established as an effective means of reducing resource consumption and emissions in industrial operations. Insight-based, mathematical programming and hybrid approaches have been developed to enable integration schemes to be optimized rigorously. More recently, the use of PI tools in conjunction with Industrial Ecology (IE) concepts, particularly Industrial Symbiosis (IS), has been proven to unlock the possibility of even greater gains than from integration of process units within a single player/company site. Such integration is facilitated by the advent of EcoIndustrial Parks (EIPs) which uses geographic clustering to promote sustainable exchange of materials and energy streams among different plants and companies. On the other hand, such interplant integration is not easily dealt with using classical PI methods, since the ownership of each company by an independent entity introduces a complicating aspect to the system. Specifically, each potential partner company will participate in a symbiosis scheme specifically with the motivation of increasing its own profits. However, the self-interest of each partner company often results in a conflict of interest. If such conflict is not resolved, it may result in the failure of the symbiosis scheme. To address this problem, different approaches have been developed. One general approach based on cooperative game theory involves pooling the benefits, and then subsequently developing a rational and defensible scheme for sharing the incremental profits among the partners. Maali (2009) proposed an optimization-based cooperative game model that includes theorems in a linear programming model to solve multi-objective problems and it was proved that the solutions are always Pareto-optimal. In this work, we propose an application of Maali's method for interplant heat integration. The approach is demonstrated using a literature case study, and the results are compared with those determined via alternative cooperative game techniques.The establishment of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) has been regarded as a sustainable approach in solving environmental issues, including the energy crisis. Environmentalists have further recognised the formation of EIP as one of the effective solutions for waste minimization. In the context of industrial ecology, an EIP represents an urban industrial area where multiple industries cooperate together through the exchange of material and energy. The higher interchange of material and energy streams leads to a greater ownership over the process, resulting in greater fresh resource savings as compared to unilateral initiatives. Recent literature has reported various quantitative measures to design and implement an EIP. For instance, eco-connectance (CE) has been proposed to quantify the level of connectivity in an EIP. CE is defined as the ratio of the number of actual linkages over the maximum number of potential linkages in an EIP. In the previous works, high level of CE is desirable to maximise resource savings. However, the effect of CE on the economic performance in an EIP has not been well studied. In this work, an optimization approach is developed to analyse the relationship between eco-connectance against the economic performance of an EIP. A hypothetical EIP network is synthesized to illustrate the proposed approach. Based on the result, it is noted that with a high eco-connectance, the resulting payback period of the EIP would be higher. This is a result of a higher number of participating industries, thereby increasing the initial capital expenditure.To achieve sustainability goals, various strategies have been used which include symbiotic strategies with other companies. Such symbiotic strategies are based on the concept of industrial ecology (IE). IE emphasises on the importance of symbiotic interactions among various companies as it would reduce overall waste emission, raw material and energy consumption. Since symbiotic relationships normally occur among processes co-located within the same vicinity, the concept of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) emerged. Companies in an EIP engage in material and energy exchange programmes in a mutually beneficial manner, as a result of geographic proximity that facilitates cooperation among partners. As a result, the collective benefit will always be greater than the sum of individual benefits that could be achieved without establishing a symbiotic relationship in an EIP. However, since each company would have its own profit-oriented goals, it would be important to analyse the potential advantage (or disadvantage) each plant can experience when forming a partnership in EIP. Cooperative game theory provides a scientific basis for the analysis of such issues. In this respect, this work presents a cooperative game theory approach developed by Maali (2009) to fairly allocate cost savings among cooperative companies of an EIP based on their respective contributions.The current environmental context makes urgent the development of robust methodologies able to design innovative industries. Industrial ecology, and most particularly the concept of eco-industrial parks, aims at proposing at several companies to gather in a same geographical site to share several fluxes (water, energy, utilities.) in order to decrease environmental impacts of their industrial activities. A recent literature analysis has shown the emergence of new works devoted to the application of optimization methodologies to design greener and more efficient eco-industrial parks. In this work, the method of goal programming is applied for the first time to design optimal exchanges of water in an academic case of park. Goal programming is employed to deal with several conflicting objectives: the cost for each company included in the park. This method is proven to be reliable in this context because it proposes to obtain one solution instead of a set of optimal solutions that takes directly into account the preferences of the decision maker. Although the solution obtained in this study is quite interesting and is a good compromise, the main perspective of this work is to be extended by being coupled with a game theory approach so that an more equilibrate solution can be obtained.Possible treatment options of spent Merox caustic waste have been explored for the sake of recommending a neutralization scheme that is not only affordable but promises modest profit and provides an environmentally benign technique that meets criteria of industrial ecology. We concluded to recommend a system in which two waste streams are co-processed and in addition to efficient neutralization the potential of a renewable energy resource is also produced. Colloid chemical specifics of the waste in question have been shown to have influence on processing this hazardous and otherwise difficult to treat waste of petroleum refining.In this paper, based on the theory of industrial ecology, biological co evolution theory and automobile industry cluster innovation system characteristics, it is pointed out that automobile industry cluster innovation system is essentially an industrial ecosystem of mutual benefit and coexistence, co-evolution. The article has used Lojistic equation as a reference, which describing biology population growth law in biology, and established co evolution innovation mechanism mathematical model of innovation system in automobile industry cluster based on original collaboration, solved and analyzed the model. Based on the analysis results, this article puts forward some thinking and suggestions for the construction and development of innovation ecosystem of Chinese automobile industry cluster.In recent years, the field of environmental management of industrial activities has been causing a great interest among scientists. This paper discusses the notion of entropy and the relationship of entropy to environmental management of industrial activities. In the paper, two case studies of Eco-Industrial Networks are presented: the case of aluminium and that of copper. The analysis of case studies made clear, firstly, that the production of aluminium or copper by recycling new scrap generates significantly less specific entropy than the production of the same product from primary raw materials and, secondly, that the effort of closing the loops of material flows aiming at complete recycling leads to higher generation of specific entropy than those which correspond to the use of primary raw materials. It is proven that there exists an entropy limit of environmental effectiveness when recycling each product. The present paper comments on this limit.This paper explores the implications of combining an Integrated Product and Services Offering (IPSO) (also known as PSS) with Industrial Symbiosis (IS) in order to facilitate the increased utilization of Excess Heat (EH). To do so, five different EH cases originating from an IS perspective have been investigated. Based on an IPSO-focused literature review, those five EH cases are analyzed to identify potential pros and cons, if an IPSO perspective is applied, in order to further improve EH utilization. The results indicate that applying the IPSO concept, in combination with IS, has the potential to facilitate and improve EH utilization. However, also of importance is having a clear and well-formulated business agreement, as well as mutual trust and a well-functioning dialogue between the parties involved in the EH supply collaboration. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.VA novel nanocomposite electrode with tight and vertically aligned Zn0.5Mg0.5Fe2O4@TiO2 nanotube arrays (NTs) has been successfully synthesized via an ultrasonically assisted electrodeposition strategy. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) of the composite nanostructures indicated that the as-prepared electrodes were well-aligned TiO2 NTs with Zn0.5Mg0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles. The enhanced absorption of the nanocomposite electrode under simulated sun light and visible light regions were observed. The photoelectrochemical performance of the Zn0.5Mg0.5Fe2O4@TiO2 nanotube arrays showed excellent sensitive response to visible light. The surface-interface charge separation and transfer of photo-induced electrons and holes were also demonstrated by optical characterization. Meanwhile, the photoelectrochemical investigations clearly illustrated that the Zn0.5Mg0.5Fe2O4@TiO2 composite NTs had more effective photo-conversion capability than the unloaded TiO2 NTs. The saturated photocurrent density of the doped electrode was about 6.5 fold and 4 fold as high as that of the TiO2 NTs under the illumination of visible light and simulated sun light, respectively. In addition, the enhanced photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) ability of the as-prepared electrode was demonstrated in the degradation of toxic p-nitrophenol species. The much improved PEC activity can be attributed to both the visible-light photocatalytic activity of Zn0.5Mg0.5Fe2O4 and the heterostructure between Zn0.5Mg0.5Fe2O4 and TiO2.An ultrasound-assisted impregnation deposition technique was adopted to construct Mn0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles on TiO2 nanotube arrays (NTAs) which were prepared by electrochemical anodization in a hydrofluoric acid system. The Mn0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles were found to successfully deposit on the surface of the highly oriented TiO2 NTAs causing no damage to the ordered structure of the nanotubes. The as-prepared Mn0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4/TiO2 NTAs exhibited much improved photoelectrochemical capability. Compared with pure TiO2 NTAs, a more than 2.36-fold enhancement in photo-current density and a 2.17-fold enhancement in photo-conversion efficiency of the Mn0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4/TiO2 NTAs were achieved. The photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) activities of Mn0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4/TiO2 NTAs were evaluated by the degradation of toxic 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) in aqueous solution under simulated sun light irradiation. The experimental results indicated that the heterostructure photoelectrode showed much higher PEC activity than the pure TiO2 NTAs for the degradation of 2.4-DCP under simulated sun light irradiation. In addition, electron spin resonance examination confirmed that the photogenerated active species ((OH)-O-center dot and O-center dot(2)-) were involved in the PEC degradation of 2,4-DCP. A mechanism accounting for the enhanced PEC activity of the Mn0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4/TiO2 NTAs was proposed. The enhanced PEC activity of the nanocomposite electrode could be attributed to the synergistic effects between the lowered electron-hole recombination rate by the applied bias and the wider spectral response promoted by the Mn0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 component.Quantitative methods for environmental and cost analyses of energy, industrial, and infrastructure systems are briefly introduced and surveyed, with the aim of encouraging broader utilization and development of quantitative methods in sustainable energy research. Material and energy flow analyses can provide an overall system overview. The methods of engineering economics and cost benefit analysis, such as net present value, are the most straightforward approach for evaluating investment options, with the levelized cost of energy being a widely used metric in electricity analyses. Environmental lifecycle assessment has been extensively developed, with both detailed process-based and comprehensive input-output approaches available. Optimization methods provide an opportunity to go beyond engineering economics to develop detailed least-cost or least-impact combinations of many different choices.This study investigates the potential integration of a dairy farm and a greenhouse into an eco-industrial system to promote waste-to-energy and waste-to-material exchanges. Natural gas consumption is substituted by renewable biogas generated from anaerobic digestion (AD) of the dairy manure; CO2 for plant enrichment in greenhouses is supplied by biogas combustion and the digestate (digestion residue) from digesters is used as animal bedding, plant growing media and liquid fertilizers. A life cycle analysis (LCA) was conducted to quantify the environmental impacts of the eco-industrial system in comparison to the conventional agriculture practices. The results show that the integrated system reduces non-renewable energy consumption, climate change impact, acidification, respiratory effects from organic emissions, and human toxicity by more than 40%. If the digestate surplus is treated as a waste, the integrated system shows an increase in eutrophication and respiratory effects from inorganic emissions while all the analyzed impacts are reduced if the digestate can be used for substituting chemical fertilizers. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper develops a political-industrial ecology approach to explore the urban water metabolism of Los Angeles, which sprawls for thousands of miles across the American West. Conventional approaches to quantify urban carbon footprints rely on global, national, or regional averages and focus narrowly on improving the efficiency of flows of resources moving into and out of the city. These approaches tend to "black box" the methodologies that guide the carbon emissions calculus and the social, political, ecological, and economic processes that perpetually reshape nature-society metabolisms. To more fully delineate the water supply metabolism of Los Angeles, this paper combines theory and method from urban political ecology and industrial ecology. Specifically, we infuse spatiality into the traditional life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach by coupling it with GIS. By illustrating how decisions about system boundaries, emissions factors, and other building blocks fundamentally shape the end result, this intervention at once destabilizes and advances the LCA enterprise. Then, using interviews and historical analysis, we provide a critical analysis of how LA's various water supply infrastructures came to be and illustrate how a sustainable transition based on a narrow carbon calculus is problematized by historical circumstances and strategic (and often conflicting) new paradigms to secure water resources. The political-industrial ecology approach offers valuable insights into the spatiality of material metabolisms and the socio-political processes (re)shaping the relations between nature and society. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The concept of firms exchanging materials, energy, water, and/or by-products in a collective approach to competitive advantage is called Industrial Symbiosis (IS). It was first described by Frosch and Gallopoulos in 1989, and in the same year, scientists uncovered an extensively intertwined network of companies from different industries in Kalundborg, Denmark that was a realisation of Frosch and Gallopoulos' ideas. In IS, an unresolved research question relates to whether IS can be designed "ground up" into an industrial system (such as via planned eco-parks), or whether it can only occur "organically" through more serendipitous business interactions. Given data on a defined set of businesses, quantified amounts of input and raw materials, and material transformation opportunities, our interest is on the use of computation and optimisation techniques in order uncover the potential for IS amongst firms, and to suggest for a single business which potential partners the business should target in order to build a network that could realise this potential. The transformation opportunities are modelled as processes in which a business, consortium, or external agent (such as a local authority) could invest, to enable materials to be transformed from lower to higher value. Examples might include (re-) manufacturing processes, a shared space for materials aggregation, or compressing and baling machinery that could increase waste density and so reduce storage and transportation costs for a material. To formulate the problem, we consider the potential material flows between businesses and processes, using a linear distance model to describe transportation costs; market values to describe materials that are desirable inputs, and additional sourcing and sinking costs to obtain materials from outside of the network or dispose of surplus materials to landfill. The model is for a single time span, and as such we need to ensure that process investments do not lead to an amplification effect from the total investment cost not being amortized in the considered period. Results are then presented for each participating business in terms of the origins, destinations and investments that describe the subgraph of material flows that maximises their financial return. For the proposed overall network to be commercially viable, each participant must show a positive return; as such we can demonstrate the difference between the set of local optima and the potential global optimal decisions, thereby uncovering the ideal opportunities for social or government investment.This paper aims to propose a novel 'systems of systems engineering approach in order to achieve 'sustainability as a property.' for Green Virtual Enterprises and their Breeding Environments. The research work aims to support the engineering of sustainable and viable industrial systems that can support a transition to the Circular Economy by engineering them to act in productive harmony and with restorative purposes with the ecosphere (e.g. virtuous business value cycles). (C) 2015, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents the application of exergy analysis in assessing how effectively resources are utilised in construction material manufacturing. The role of exergy is discussed from several key perspectives such as quality, energy conservation and process improvement potentials. Both primary and secondary processes (recycling) of nine major non-renewable construction materials (steel, aluminium, copper, cement, concrete, ceramic, glass, polypropylene and polyvinylchloride (PVC)) have been evaluated in this study. The outlined theoretical exergy efficiency approach assesses the improvement potentials of the present manufacturing processes. The large difference between theoretical and industrial exergy demand suggests that exergy resources are utilised very inefficiently in current technologies. The study reveals that more than 55% of exergy is being lost in current technologies even though a significant amount of waste heat is recovered in different segments of the case study processes. Thus, attention is required to reduce the specific exergy losses through improved process design and introduction of new technology.This work aims to explore the mechanism of photocatalytic degradation of gaseous 1,2-dichlorobenzene (o-DCB) over vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) hollow spheres. To this end, flower-type V2O5 hollow microspheres with diameters of about 700-800 nm were obtained with the assistance of carbon-sphere templates, and then tested in the photodegradation of o-DCB under visible light (lambda > 400 nm). Due to its strong adsorption capacity and large specific surface area, the V2O5 hollow structure showed high photocatalytic activity in the degradation of gaseous o-DCB under visible light. Furthermore, the o-DCB degradation mechanism was investigated by using in situ Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and the intermediates, such as o-benzoquinone-type and organic acid species, and final products (CO2 and H2O) were also confirmed. Then, the reaction pathways over V2O5 were proposed. The outstanding performance indicated that the photocatalysts could be applied to air purification for Chlorinated Volatile Organic Compound (Cl-VOC) removal.In the strategic management field, the ecosystem concept is increasing significance. This paper provides an overview of 90 previous studies on the ecosystem concept published in leading academic journals in strategic management field and clarifies the four major research streams. The first perspective is the industrial ecosystem perspective, which is based on the concept of industrial ecology. The second perspective is the business ecosystem perspective. This perspective is based on the theory of organizational boundaries. In the business ecosystem perspective, some influential scholars emphasize platform management, which represents the third perspective, the platform management perspective. The fourth perspective is the multi-actor network perspective, which contributes to the dynamic behavioral relationship analysis based on social network theory. This perspective expands the range of analysis to include various actors in addition to private companies. As a result of the review, this study presented the integrated map of the previous works. Furthermore, this paper proposed original ecosystem concept, definition, and scheme for designing or re-designing coherent ecosystem. The coherency is the core concept for the evolution and expansion of the ecosystem.Objective - The key objective of this paper is to show the primary environmental influences exerted by the government, economic agents and society on companies for the implementation of the principles and tools of cleaner production (CP), and the attributes (power, legitimacy and urgency) used by stakeholders to coerce companies into adopting these principles. Design/methodology/approach - The research method employed was the application of an exploratory survey in 102 Brazilian companies and the multi-varied evaluation of data by means of multiple correspondent analysis. Findings - The study shows that some principles of CP are little used by companies in Brazil. Concerning the influences on the adoption of CP, the government, economic agents and society are singled out as the important influencers. The government influence is manifest through the adoption of environmental regulating measures (power) in conjunction with sincere actions in environmental education (influence). The economic agents possess the power, legitimacy and urgency to influence the adoption of CP. Society's influences are less relevant, in that Brazilian society has much less awareness of sustainable production and consumption as compared to other countries. Practical implications - This study shows that it is vital that Brazilian society learns more about sustainable production, because a society with no environmental conscience is a society with little means to demand the implementation of CP. Originality/value - The results of the study represent an important theoretical contribution in that, at present, there is little literature on the relationship between stakeholders and Cleaner Production. This is the first study in Brazil to address the subject.Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are widely employed in the study of topics related to industrial ecology. However, unlike this study, they are normally used separately rather than jointly. Educational institutions are among the most deeply rooted services in society, producing knowledge, research and culture. This paper reports on a case study conducted in the region of Catalonia, Spain, to evaluate the metabolism of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) based on a combined MFA and LCA approach on two levels: macro-level analysis using MFA, and micro-level analysis using LCA. The MFA results indicated that energy consumption represents more than 50.00% of all inputs, and its associated indirect flows are highly relevant for UAB's overall metabolism, accounting for 69.30% of all energy inputs. As for the LCA results, the ReCiPe2008 method was adopted and 92.00% of all normalized impacts were related to the category of Climate Change Potential (CCP), also attributed mainly to energy consumption. Thus, both MFA and LCA methodologies indicated energy consumption is the main hotspot. The results of MFA indicators, energy and water flows were compared with earlier literature, revealing a clear tendency for industrial areas in Catalonia to show higher results than service polygons, as an effect of population density. Finally, the newly erected building of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and the Catalan Institute of Paleontology (ICTA-ICP) is described as an innovative alternative to promote environmental sustainability at universities that focus on energy and water conservation and CCP impacts reduction. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, MFe2O4 (M = Zn, Cu, Co and Ni) nanoparticles were prepared by a modified chemical co-precipitation method followed by annealing. Then, Ag/MFe2O4 nanoparticles were synthesised via a wetness impregnation method. The structural properties of the samples were systematically investigated by XRD, SEM, TEM, EDX, DRS, BET, SPV and FT-IR techniques. The photocatalytic performances of the prepared MFe2O4 and Ag/MFe2O4 samples were comparatively studied by the photodegradation of 4-chlorophenol under xenon lamp illumination in a FTIR reaction cell. The photodegradation rate of 4-chlorophenol was 90% for the Ag/CoFe2O4 sample. The cheap cost and easy synthesis of the photocatalysts indicate the potential for a better thermal disposal of chlorophenol pollutants at lower temperatures.Paracoccus versutus LYM was characterized with the ability of simultaneous nitrification and denitrification (SND) in presence of NH4+-N and NO3--N (140 mg/L-N each). However, there was approximate 95.80 mg/L NO2--N left during SND process. Fe2+ was added in the SND medium and it benefited bacterial growth and further converted NO2--N a little. Besides, remaining NO2--N could be completely reduced by adding carbon donors in presence of NH4+-N and NO3--N, whose converting efficiencies also reached 97.09% and 96.34%, respectively. And N-2 stayed as the main product of SND process. While NO2--N and NH4+-N were present simultaneously, strain LYM could also remove nitrogen compounds thoroughly with sufficient carbon source. But there was no NO2--N reduced as sole nitrogen source in the medium even if C/N ratio reached as high as 30. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Odour pollution caused by municipal solid waste is a public concern. This study quantitatively evaluated the concentration, environmental impacts, and olfaction of volatile trace compounds released from a waste transfer station. Senventy-six compounds were detected, and ethanol presented the highest releasing rate and ratio of 14.76 kg/d and 12.30 g/t of waste, respectively. Life cycle assessment showed that trichlorofluoromethane and dichlorodifluoromethane accounted for more than 99% of impact potentials to global warming and approximately 70% to human toxicity (non-carcinogenic). The major contributor for both photochemical ozone formation and ecotoxicity was ethanol. A detection threshold method was also used to evaluate odour pollution. Five compounds including methane thiol, hydrogen sulphide, ethanol, dimethyl disulphide, and dimethyl sulphide, with dilution multiples above one, were considered the critical compounds. Methane thiol showed the highest contribution to odour pollution of more than 90%, as indicated by its low threshold. Comparison of the contributions of the compounds to different environmental aspects indicated that typical pollutants varied based on specific evaluation targets and therefore should be comprehensively considered. This study provides important information and scientific methodology to elucidate the impacts of odourant compounds to the environment and odour pollution. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Most energy conversion systems, and especially electricity generation plants, do not operate at nominal conditions throughout their useful life: periodic, semi-periodic and stochastic changes in the availability of the resource affect solar (thermal and PV), wind, hydraulic, and geothermal plants, which in reality operate at off-design conditions for most of their life. To a smaller extent, fossil-fuelled plants may also be plagued by fuel availability problems and no longer easily predictable demand oscillation. In spite of the ever growing net connectivity, since the demand curve in even larger geographic regions displays a typical quasi-sinusoidal shape, fleet load modulation is unavoidable. Naturally, off-design operation and load cycling affect the cost of the generated kWh. This paper presents a general thermoeconomic method to evaluate the economic and environmental effects of energy system integration, taking into account life cycle concerns (supply chains) and the effect of inefficiencies due to off-design operation of the systems. The method here is applied to a realistic case study of an Italian regional utility: an analysis of the implications of the variation of the productive mix between a photovoltaic power plant (PV) and a standard commercial, non-cogenerating gas turbine plant (GT) on the final cost of the electrical kWh. The demand curve is prescribed, and the effect of different mixes is assessed, both on the monetary and on the exergy cost of the electricity. The economic cost assessment is performed by standard thermoeconomic techniques, whereas the exergy costs are evaluated using both the Extended Exergy Accounting (EEA) and the Thermo-Ecological Cost (TEC) methods. The results show that a purely monetary cash flow accounting and thermoeconomics lead to contrasting results, and also that the EEA and TEC cost indicators generate different rankings among the studied alternative GT/PV mixes. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper compares existing livestock emissions and projections on three different spatial levels (global, European, national) and on two sets of system boundaries (inventory data and emission data considering the whole lifecycle). It aims to provide insight in the validity of scenario data of national Austrian livestock emissions. This entails the use of national greenhouse gas emission trends until 2030 - specifically for Austria - as well as EU-based assessments of country emissions up to 2050. In addition, global emission data was extracted from the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) database for the years 2000-2100. Extending national emission projections up to 2100 by combining different datasets connects national emission policies to international strategies. It becomes clear that the goal of keeping average global temperature rise under 2 degrees C (represented by RCP2.6), even in the medium term to 2030 and only looking at the livestock sector, is much more ambitious than any of the national projections. Furthermore, inventory emission data is set in contrast to emission data considering the whole lifecycle of meat products in Austria, with an overview of assessments from pork and beef production. Emissions reported in inventories represent roughly half of those assigned to the livestock sector in life cycle studies.The global demand for palm oil has been increasing during the past two decades. As a result, there has been an expansion of oil palm plantations and palm oil production, in particular in South East Asia. This contributes to a number of environmental problems. In this study, we focus on non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions from palm oil production in Thailand, the third largest palm oil producing country in the world. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is typically emitted during fuel combustion in production processes. In addition, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are emitted during palm oil production. We quantified current and future emissions of CH4 and N2O based on future projections for palm oil production in Thailand. Our analysis distinguishes between emissions from oil palm plantations and palm oil processing mills. Our study shows that nitrogen fertilizers are the main source of N2O emissions, while CH4 is emitted mainly from inappropriate management of empty fruit bunches and wastewater management. We also analysed the effect of possible options to reduce emissions of CH4 and N2O, illustrating the potential for emission reduction in the future.Due to climate issues and favourable energy market, biogas is spreading as a manure management technique. Digestate is rich in nutrient and has to be handled in order to respect the nitrate directive' that limits nitrogen field application in areas defined as vulnerable. In this study, we compared different nitrogen management scenarios: a non-treatment option, a biological short-cut nitrification, a complete autotrophic process (anammox) and ammonia stripping from membrane filtration concentrate. The environmental effect comparison was obtained with Cross media effects analysis' and life cycle assessment (LCA). The results were different in some aspects, especially the impacts on eutrophication. According to cross media, the best process is DENO 2, while LCA shows similar impacts for all techniques and the best solution would be the no-treatment option. The main reason to adopt a digestate treatment technique is the lack of area for a correct disposal. If LCA eutrophication results are multiplied with the hectares necessary for each technology, a result similar to that of cross media is obtained.Integrating environmental aspects into industrial practices has become a necessity. In fact, climate change and resource depletion have been established scientifically and can no more be neglected. Life Cycle Assessment is acknowledged to be an efficient tool to establish a product environmental profile and can be useful to businesses wishing to analyze their environmental record. Decreasing a building environmental footprint implies, among other considerations, a proper choice of building materials, both structural and architectural. A good avenue would be to select low environmental impact materials from cradle-to-grave. Architectural wooden doors are often specified in non-residential buildings in North America. However, only one Life Cycle Assessment has been carried out on wooden doors. This study explores the cradle-to-grave environmental profile of an interior wood door in a North American context. According to the results, the main contributor to the product impacts is the production of raw materials, especially the particleboard component, and their transportation to the manufacturing plant. The urea formaldehyde production is the main reason for particleboard impacts among the three damage categories, human health, climate change and resources, of IMPACT 2002+. The other life cycle stages that have a noticeable influence on the door environmental impacts are shipping and end-of-life. Transportation as a whole affected the system total environmental score. The current results could serve as a basis for ecodesign implementation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecodesign is a concept that emerged few decades ago as a response to the larger concept of sustainable development. Multiple tools exist to address ecodesign. Life Cycle Assessment, a comprehensive, robust and recognized evaluation tool, enables to identify the product environmental profile. Based on previous LCA results on interior wood doors, this paper aims at proposing an ecodesign strategy based on the generation and evaluation of alternative scenarios. The three selected targets for environmental improvement are particleboard components, transportation and end-of-life. For the particleboard manufacturing, the use of adhesives based on bio-sourced resources was not very conclusive, except for the use of pine tannins in panel manufacture that showed promising results. Concerning transportation issues, switching from road to rail transportation, as well as having a local supplier, decreased the overall. environmental impact of the door. The most notable alternative was the end-of-life recycling scenario. The reutilization of the door core in the door manufacturing process proved a great benefit due to the avoidance of new raw materials production. Developing services around door recovery and remanufacturing seems promising in reducing doors environmental impacts. This scenario would be readily viable and realistic. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Prefabrication technology has been heavily promoted by the Chinese government due to its potential to improve construction quality and productivity. However, there is an urgent need to assess the environmental performance of prefabrication technology to identify whether it is an effective method that is conducive to sustainable development. This study considered two typical residential projects using the two technologies to conduct a fair comparison between prefabrication technology and cast-in-situ technology. Various measuring methods, including content analysis, face-to-face interviews and on-site measurements, were used for data collection. Environmental impact (El) categories selected for the study included resource depletion, energy consumption and construction waste discharge. Two life cycle assessment (LCA)-based models, the construction environmental performance assessment system (CEPAS) and the building health impact assessment system (BHIAS), were integrated to measure the El of the two construction technologies based on three damage categories, namely, ecosystem damage, resource depletion and health damage. Finally, social willingness to pay (WTP) was applied to integrate the damage categories for comparisons. The results indicated that the sample prefabricated residential building (PRB) construction was more efficient in energy use, with a 20.49% reduction in total consumption compared to the sample traditional residential building (TRB) construction. The use of prefabrication demonstrated a certain degree of advantages in El, including a 35.82% reduction in resource depletion, a 6.61% reduction in health damage and a 3.47% reduction in ecosystem damage. Prefabrication technology was more environmentally friendly because of its advantages in reducing damage to the environment compared with traditional cast-in-situ construction technology. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public transportation is one of the most promising transportation modes to reduce the environmental emissions of the transportation sector in the U.S. In order to mitigate the environmental impacts brought by the transit bus system, new energy buses are introduced into the vehicle market. The goal of this study is to find an optimal bus fleet combination for different driving conditions to minimize life cycle cost, greenhouse gas emissions, and conventional air pollutant emission impacts. For this purpose, a Multi-Objective Linear Programming approach is used to select the optimum bus fleet combinations. Given different weight scenarios, this method could effectively provide solutions for decision makers with various budget constraints or emission reduction requirements. The results indicate that in heavily congested driving cycles such as the Manhattan area, the battery electric bus is the dominant vehicle type, while the hybrid bus has more balanced performances in most scenarios because of its lower initial investment comparing to battery electric buses. Petroleum powered buses have seldom been selected by the model. The trade-off analysis shows that the overall greenhouse gas impact performance is sensitive to the life cycle cost after certain points, which could provide valuable information for the bus fleet combination planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The vehicle-to-grid system is an approach utilizing the idle battery capacity of electric vehicles while they are parked to provide supplementary energy to the power grid. As electrification continues in light duty vehicle fleets, the application of vehicle-to-grid systems for commercial delivery truck fleets can provide extra revenue for fleet owners, and also has significant potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity generation sector. In this study, an economic input output based hybrid life cycle assessment is conducted to analyze the potential greenhouse gas emissions emission savings from the use of the vehicle-to-grid system, as well as the possible emission impacts caused by battery degradation. A Monte Carlo simulation was performed to address the uncertainties that lie in the electricity exchange amount of the vehicle-to-grid service as well as the battery life of the electric vehicles. The results of this study showed that extended range electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles are both viable regulation service providers for saving greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation if the battery wear-out from regulation services is assumed to be minimal, but the vehicle-to-grid system becomes less attractive at higher battery degradation levels. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study investigates and analyses the energy consumption of two museums in Hangzhou, China. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is used to calculate the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the life cycles of two museums, thereby determining both their potential and feasibility of energy-saving. Three strategies of using solid walls instead of curtain walls, adding shading to skylights and curtain Walls, and controlling air conditioning temperature have been proposed for Museum A which has higher greenhouse gas emissions. And it would help to reduce CO2 emissions in the life cycle to 30.58%, 4.81%, and 4.22% respectively according to the simulations. The study also offers guidance to the construction green museum architecture and its operation with low energy consumption. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In countries like the UK, the upkeep of existing buildings is where the greatest opportunities for achieving carbon reduction targets lie. Facades are the physical barriers between outdoors and indoors, and their upgrade can arguably be amongst the most effective interventions to improve the existing stock. Double Skin Facades (DSFs) represent a possible solution for low-carbon refurbishment due to their capability to reduce energy consumption, and the related carbon emissions, of the building they are applied to. Although much research exists on maximising the operational energy savings of DSFs, little is known about their life cycle performance. This article addresses such a knowledge gap through a comparative life cycle assessment between DSF refurbishments and an up-to-standard, single-skin alternative. This study adopts a parametric approach where 128 DSF configurations have been analysed through primary data. Energy and carbon (both operational and embodied) are the units assessed in this research. Results show that DSFs are more energy-efficient than single-skin in 98% of the cases, and more carbon-efficient in 85% of the cases. Not only does this study represent the first broad parametric approach to evaluating life cycle energy and carbon of DSFs within its given context, but it also informs environmentally-aware design and application of DSFs. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A large part of the energy consumption in the European Union member states is related to space heating, a significant share of which is due to transmission losses through the building envelope. Vacuum insulation panels (VIPs), with unique thermal insulation properties, do therefore provide an interesting alternative for the building industry. This paper presents the results of a life cycle analysis (LCA) study that compares the environmental impact of three hypothetical buildings, a standard residential building, a regular well-insulated building and a building insulated with VIPs. The environmental impact includes the global warming potential (GWP) and the primary energy (PE) use, from the material production stage to the building operational phase (50 years). The cradle-to-gate environmental impact categories of ozone depletion potential (ODP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP) of all building components are also assessed. The study shows a comparatively lower operational energy for the VIP insulated building and a relatively lower total greenhouse gas emission as well as the possibility to save significant living space. The results also show that the VIPs have measurable environmental impact during the product stage while the core material of the VIPs has considerable impact on the results. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Currently, climate change has become a research priority. In many countries, new regulations have emerged with the aim of reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In this work, 92 sub-scenarios were evaluated in a case study building. The final goal was to obtain the relationship between the thermal energy demand and the initial embodied energy (LEE) when a change was made in the building typology, taking into consideration ten different facades, three roofing systems, and three window frame types. The results showed that the use of injected polyurethane or extruded polystyrene in facades, and the replacement of timber in window frames by lacquered aluminium, provided increases of the primary IEE equivalent to the final heating energy requirements of a detached house for more than 5 and 10 years, respectively. The insulation of thermal bridges at the junction of external walls and concrete floor slabs caused increases in the primary IEE, which were observed to be within 1.17 and 12 times lower than the final annual heating requirements of the building when not insulated. Finally, an estimation of the primary thermal energy requirements was made, taking into account three different energy systems and a 50-year building lifetime. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We investigated aquaculture production of Asian tiger shrimp, whiteleg shrimp, giant river prawn, tilapia, and pangasius catfish in Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Vietnam by using life cycle assessments (LCAs), with the purpose of evaluating the comparative eco-efficiency of producing different aquatic food products. Our starting hypothesis was that different production systems are associated with significantly different environmental impacts, as the production of these aquatic species differs in intensity and management practices. In order to test this hypothesis, we estimated each system's global warming, eutrophication, and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts. The contribution to these impacts and the overall dispersions relative to results were propagated by Monte Carlo simulations and dependent sampling. Paired testing showed significant (p < 0.05) differences between the median impacts of most production systems in the intraspecies comparisons, even after a Bonferroni correction. For the full distributions instead of only the median, only for Asian tiger shrimp did more than 95% of the propagated Monte Carlo results favor certain farming systems. The major environmental hot-spots driving the differences in environmental performance among systems were fishmeal from mixed fisheries for global warming, pond runoff and sediment discards for eutrophication, and agricultural pesticides, metals, benzalkonium chloride, and other chlorine-releasing compounds for freshwater ecotoxicity. The Asian aquaculture industry should therefore strive toward farming systems relying upon pelleted species-specific feeds, where the fishmeal inclusion is limited and sourced sustainably. Also, excessive nutrients should be recycled in integrated organic agriculture together with efficient aeration solutions powered by renewable energy sources.This study investigates a novel strategy of reducing carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants through co-firing bio-oil and sequestering biochar in agricultural lands. The heavy end fraction of bio-oil recovered from corn stover fast pyrolysis is blended and co-fired with bituminous coal to form a bio-oil co-firing fuel (BCF). Life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per kWh electricity produced vary from 1.02 to 0.26 kg CO2-eq among different cases, with BCF heavy end fractions ranging from 10% to 60%, which corresponds to a GHG emissions reduction of 2.9% to 74.9% compared with that from traditional bituminous coal power plants. We found a heavy end fraction between 34.8% and 37.3% is required to meet the Clean Power Plan's emission regulation for new coal-fired power plants. The minimum electricity selling prices are predicted to increase from 8.8 to 14.9 cents/kWh, with heavy end fractions ranging from 30% to 60%. A minimum carbon price of $67.4 +/- 13 per metric ton of CO2-eq was estimated to make BCF power commercially viable for the base case. These results suggest that BCF co-firing is an attractive pathway for clean power generation in existing power plants with a potential for significant reductions in carbon emissions.It is recognized that agriculture is the fourth largest contributor to global greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions by sector (14%) and the wine industry is one of the most important economic sectors in terms of production and distribution worldwide. However, agriculture can also contribute to sequester carbon, so it is important to understand the double role of such systems. Even if the agricultural phase is recognized by several authors to have a strong environmental impact during the wine production, only a few studies estimate GHG emissions related to this stage. In addition, the determination of the carbon footprint (CF) (i.e. the amount of direct and indirect CO2 emissions caused by a production process) of the agricultural phase is not a simple task due to the large uncertainty related to local characteristics, climate, land, agricultural practices, grape type, and to a general lack of experimental data. The main goal of this work was to determine the CF of a mature vineyard during the grape production process. The CF analysis was conducted in a typical Mediterranean vineyard located in the South of Sardinia (Italy) using 1 kg of grape yield as functional unit. The system boundary was "from cradle to gate" excluding winemaking processes, distribution, and consumption. In addition, the study was addressed to assess the role of the vineyard to offset carbon emissions at the end of the productive year. The Eddy Covariance technique was used to directly measure the CO2 exchange over the vineyard and the net CO2 budget was computed by combining the measured fluxes and the GHG emissions estimated by the CF analysis. Results showed that the production of 1 kg of grape determined a total amount of GHG emissions of 0.39 kg CO2-eq and most of them derived from external inputs such as fossil fuel combustion and soil management. In addition, ecophysiological processes could contribute to offset the CO2 emissions released during the agronomic practices. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainability criteria for palm oil production guide new planting toward non-forest land cover on mineral soil, avoiding carbon debts caused by forest and peat conversion. Effects on soil carbon stock (soil C-stock) of land use change trajectories from forest and non-forest to oil palm on mineral soils include initial decline and subsequent recovery, however modeling efforts and life-cycle accounting are constrained by lack of comprehensive data sets; only few case studies underpin current debate. We analyzed soil C-stock (Mg ha(-1)), soil bulk density (BD, g cm(-3)) and soil organic carbon concentration (C-org, %) from 155 plots in 20 oil palm plantations across the major production areas of Indonesia, identifying trends during a production cycle on 6 plantations with sufficient spread in plot age. Plots were sampled in four management zones: weeded circle (WC), interrow (IR), frond stacks (FS), and harvest paths (HP); three depth intervals 0-5, 5-15 and 15-30 cm were sampled in each zone. Compared to the initial condition, increases in Core (16.2%) and reduction in BD (8.9%) in the FS zone, was compensated by decrease in C-org (21.4%) and increase in BD (6.6%) in the HP zone, with intermediate results elsewhere. For a weighted average of the four management zones and after correction for equal mineral soil basis, the net temporal trend in soil C-stock in the top 30 cm of soil across all data was not significantly different from zero in both forest- and non-forest-derived oil palm plantations. Individual plantations experienced net decline, net increase or U-shaped trajectories. The 2% difference in mean soil C-stock in forest and non-forest derived oil palm plantations was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Unless soil management changes strongly from current practice, it is appropriate for C footprint calculations to assume soil C-stock neutrality on mineral soils used for oil palm cultivation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.n-Butanol produced from renewable resources has attracted increasing interest, mostly for its potential use as liquid biofuel for transportation. Process currently used in the industry (Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol fermentation - ABE) faces major technical challenges, which could be overcome by an alternative production through ethanol catalysis. In this study, both routes are evaluated by means of their financial viabilities and environmental performance assessed through the Virtual Sugarcane Biorefinery methodological framework. Comparative financial analysis of the routes integrated to a first and second generation sugarcane biorefinery shows that, despite the drawbacks, ABE process for fermentation of the pentoses liquor is more attractive than the catalysis of ethanol to n-butanol and co-products. n-Butanol use as fuel demonstrated favorable environmental results for climate change as figures showed over 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emission compared with gasoline. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When removing biomass residues from the agriculture for bioenergy utilization, the nutrients and carbon stored within these "residual resources" are removed as-well. To mitigate these issues the energy industry must try to conserve and not destroy the nutrients. The paper analyses a novel integration between the agricultural system and the energy system through the Low Temperature Circulating Fluidized Bed (LT-CFB) gasifier from the perspective of wheat grain production and electricity generation using wheat straw, where the effects of removing the straw from the agricultural system are assessed along with the effects of recycling the nutrients and carbon back to the agricultural system. The methods used to assess the integration was Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with IPCC's 2013 100 year global warming potential (GWP) as impact assessment method. The boundary was set from cradle to gate with two different functional units, kg grain and kW h electricity produced in Zealand, Denmark. Two cases were used in the analysis: 1. nutrient balances are regulated by mineral fertilization and 2. the nutrient balances are regulated by yield. The analysis compare three scenarios of gasifier operation based on carbon conversion to two references, no straw removal and straw combustion. The results show that the climate effect of removing the straws are mitigated by the carbon soil sequestration with biochar, and electricity and district heat substitution. Maximum biochar production outperforms maximum heat and power generation for most substituted electricity and district heating scenarios. Irrespective of the substituted technologies, the carbon conversion needs to be 80-86% to fully mitigate the effects of removing the straws from the agricultural system. This concludes that compromising on energy efficiency for biochar production can be beneficial in terms of climate change effect of an integrated wheat production and bioenergy system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The electrification of road vehicles was introduced as a way to significantly reduce oil dependence, increase efficiency, and reduce pollutant emissions, especially in urban areas. The goal of this paper is to find the best alternative vehicle to replace a conventional diesel bus operating in urban environments, aiming to reduce the carbon footprint and still being financially advantageous. The multi-objective nondominated sorting genetic algorithm is used to perform the vehicle optimization, covering pure electric and fuel cell hybrid possibilities (with and without plug-in capability). The used multi-objective genetic algorithm optimizes the powertrain components (type and size) and the energy management strategy. Although multiple optimal solutions were successfully achieved, a decision method is implemented to select one unique solution. A global criterion approach, a pseudo-weight vector approach, and a new multiple criteria score approach are considered to choose a preferred optimal vehicle. Real and synthetic driving cycles are used to compare the optimized buses concerning their powertrain components, efficiency and life cycle of fuel and vehicle materials. The conflict between objectives and the importance of the decision considerations in the final solutions are discussed. Passengers load and air conditioning system influence in the solutions and its life cycle is addressed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs) enable energy recovery from wastewater while simultaneously achieving high levels of treatment. The objective of this study was to elucidate how detailed design and operational decisions of submerged AnMBRs influence the technological, environmental, and economic sustainability of the system across its life cycle. Specific design and operational decisions evaluated included: solids retention time (SRT), mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) concentration, sludge recycling ratio (r), flux (J), and specific gas demand per membrane area (SGD). The possibility of methane recovery (both as biogas and as soluble methane in reactor effluent) and bioenergy production, nutrient recovery, and final destination of the sludge (land application, landfill, or incineration) were also evaluated. The implications of these design and operational decisions were characterized by leveraging a quantitative sustainable design (QSD) framework which integrated steady-state performance modeling across seasonal temperatures (using pilot-scale experimental data and the simulating software DESASS), life cycle cost (LCC) analysis, and life cycle assessment (LCA). Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses were used to characterize the relative importance of individual design decisions, and to navigate trade-offs across environmental, economic, and technological criteria. Based on this analysis, there are design and operational conditions under which submerged AnMBRs could be net energy positive and contribute to the pursuit of carbon negative wastewater treatment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy efficiency and sustainability of an anaerobic green gas production pathway was evaluated, taking into account five biomass feedstocks, optimization of the green gas production pathway, replacement of current waste management pathways by mitigation, and transport of the feedstocks. Sustainability is expressed by three main factors: efficiency in (Process) Energy Returned On Invested (P)EROI, carbon footprint in Global Warming Potential GWP(100), and environmental impact in EcoPoints. The green gas production pathway operates on a mass fraction of 50% feedstock with 50% manure. The sustainability of the analyzed feedstocks differs substantially, favoring biomass waste flows over, the specially cultivated energy crop, maize. The use of optimization, in the shape of internal energy production, green gas powered trucks, and mitigation can significantly improve the sustainability for all feedstocks, but favors waste materials. Results indicate a possible improvement from an average (P) EROI for all feedstocks of 2.3 up to an average of 7.0 GJ/GJ The carbon footprint can potentially be reduced from an average of 40 down to 18 kgCO(2)eq/GJ. The environmental impact can potentially be reduced from an average of 5.6 down to 1.8 Pt/GJ. Internal energy production proved to be the most effective optimization. However, the use of optimization aforementioned will result in les green gas injected into the gas grid as it is partially consumed internally. Overall, the feedstock straw was the most energy efficient, where the feedstock harvest remains proved to be the most environmentally sustainable. Furthermore, transport distances of all feedstocks should not exceed 150 km or emissions and environmental impacts will surpass those of natural gas, used as a reference. Using green gas as a fuel can increase the acceptable transportation range to over 300 km. Within the context aforementioned and from an energy efficiency and sustainable point of view, the anaerobic digestion process should be utilized for processing locally available waste feedstocks with the added advantage of producing energy, which should first be used internally for powering the green gas production process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The study aims to evaluate the sugarcane biorefinery and molasses ethanol production in Thailand using the combined environmental and economic sustainability indicator, so called "Eco-efficiency". Four sugarcane biorefinery scenarios in Thailand are evaluated. The total output values (US$) and the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (kg CO(2)eq) are selected as the indicators for characterizing economic and environmental performance, respectively. The results show that the biorefinery system of mechanized farming along with cane trash utilization for power generation yields the highest eco-efficiency. The benefits come from the increased value added of the biorefinery together with the decreased GHG emissions of the biorefinery system. As compared to the base case scenario, the new systems proposed result in the eco-efficiency improvement by around 20-70%. The biorefinery concept induces reduction of GHG emissions attributed to molasses ethanol. Green cane production and harvesting results in further lowering of the GHG emissions. Integration of sugarcane biomass utilization across the entire sugarcane complex would enhance the sustainability of the sugarcane production system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The suitability of hydrogen as an energy management solution in a run-of-river hydropower plant in Central Italy is evaluated from a life-cycle perspective. Hydrogen production at off-peak hours via electrolysis is considered, as well as potential hydrogen storage in metal hydrides followed by hydrogen use at peak hours for power generation using fuel cell technology. Hydropower generation and hydrogen production are identified as the subsystems contributing most to the nine evaluated impact categories (e.g., global warming, abiotic depletion and cumulative energy demand). The renewable hydrogen produced shows a more favourable life-cycle environmental and energy performance than conventional hydrogen generated via steam methane reforming. Furthermore, when enlarging the system with hydrogen use for power generation, the renewable electricity product shows a better life-cycle profile than conventional electricity for the Italian electrical grid. Overall, under life-cycle aspects, hydrogen is found to be a suitable energy solution in hydropower plants both as a hydrogen product itself (e.g., for transportation) and as a feedstock for subsequent power generation at peak hours. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Material selection significantly affects environmental impacts and other objectives of a product design. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methods are not efficient enough for use at the early design stages to prune a design space. Material properties consist of discrete data sets, which are further complicated when LCA data are included, thus posing a significant challenge in the construction of surrogate models for prediction of all relevant behaviours and numerical optimisation. In this work, we address the unique challenges of material selection in sustainable product design in some important ways. Salient features of the robust surrogate modelling approach include achieving manageable dimensionality of LCA with a minimal loss of the important information by the consolidation of significant factors into categorised groups, as well as subsequent efficiency enhancement by a streamlined process that avoids the construction of full LCA. This approach combines efficiency of use with a mathematically rigorous representation of any pertinent objectives across a design space. To this end, we adapt a two-stage sampling approach in surrogate model construction for sustainability considerations based on a feasible approximation of a Latin Hypercube design at the first stage. The development and implementation of the method are illustrated with the aid of an automotive disc brake design, and the results are discussed in the context of robust optimal material selection in early sustainable product design.A prospective environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and financial cost assessment is performed to the application of bioaugmentation to sand filters in Danish waterworks, to remove 2,6-dichlorobenzamide (BAM) from drinking water resources. Based on pilot-scale and laboratory-scale data, we compare bioaugmentation to current alternative strategies, namely granular activated carbon (GAC) adsorption, and well re-location. Both assessments identified well re-location as the least preferred option, however, this result is very sensitive to the distance from the waterworks to the new well. When bioaugmentation is compared to GAC, the former has a lower impact in 13 impact categories, but if immobilized bacteria are used, the impacts are higher than for GAC in all impact categories. On the other hand, from a cost perspective bioaugmentation appears to be preferable to GAC only if immobilized bacteria are used.Although waste recycling has been promoted in response to increasing environmental awareness in Japan, its marketability is being questioned due to the recycling cost. The ultimate goal of waste recycling is to reduce the environmental load. In this paper, we examined the evaluation method for social environmental efficiency to socially evaluate waste recycling, by incorporating environmental load as an environmental cost in addition to the direct cost. The social environmental efficiency evaluation including consideration of uncertainties is conducted, because waste recycling involves various uncertain elements. As the results, the social environmental significance of construction sludge recycling can be evaluated quantitatively while focusing on the particular construction sludge with a lower recycling rate.Sewage treatment is an important issue in a country for public health and environmental protection. The treatment process not only consumes energy but also emits CO2. In this research, the idea of streamlined life cycle assessment was applied. The CO2 emission from sewage treatment was assessed from direct energy consumption of four major sewage treatment plants in Taiwan. The results showed that the CO2 emission at in-plant sewage treatment stage takes more than 95% of total CO2 emission for most plants. The results suggested that CO2 emission of sewage treatment can be calculated from energy consumption at in-plant sewage treatment stage to simplify the calculation. The CO2 emission of sewage treatment was then assessed from sewage plants in Taiwan using in-plant electricity consumption. The unit CO2 emission of sewage treatment in Taiwan is 0.216 kg-CO2/m(3). This database will be an important reference for water resource research and future government environmental policies.The study compares the environmental impacts of 500 mL water bottles produced from corn-based polylactide (PLA) and PET The results of cradle-to-bottle factory gate assessment revealed that the usage of PLA granules instead of PET granules would reduce the net global warming potential and cumulative non-renewable energy demand of bottles by 30.9% and 32%, respectively. However, if no credits are given for atmospheric CO2 fixed by corn, and the energy in corn-feedstock is accounted for, the advantages of PLA would be largely diminished.Conventional Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs) are static models not considering any mechanism of revenue maximization and price equilibrium under external constraints. The underlying assumption is that demand of a given commodity, irrespective of the amount, can always be supplied by the average supplier (fully elastic market). This constitutes a recognized limitation for the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to the evaluation of complex systems, like agro-systems. In the Consequential LCI, the relationships between the activities and processes of a life-cycle are no longer seen as essentially technical connections, based on average data; instead the relevant socio-economic mechanisms are considered via market information and economic models (partial or computable general equilibrium): The paper presents two partial equilibrium (PE) models of the agricultural sector of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, to calculate the LCI and the Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) effects related to the introduction of a given demand for biomass.(in partidular maize) for biogas generation. The model is market-based and has farmers' revenue maximization as the driver, represents the first step of a Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (CLCA) for biogas production in Luxembourg.Significant research has investigated environmental impacts from the built environment. However, current assessments tend to focus on one of two scales: the individual building or the larger urban context. Consequently, environmental impacts resulting from the interactions between individual buildings and their surround urban setting, termed induced impacts, are not presently captured. As the typical scale of construction is individual buildings within existing cities, determining induced impacts is central for achieving environmental goals. This paper conducts a streamlined life-cycle assessment to determine induced impacts using actual buildings, infrastructure, and travel data for the urban region of Munich. One building type is examined for each location. The results show that the city center has the lowest environmental impacts followed by the city periphery and then the outside districts. The work finds that transportation emissions make up 51, 50, and 47% of all emissions for households in the city center, city periphery, and outside districts, respectively. Household emissions include building embodied, building operational, transportation embodied, and transportation operational emissions. Induced impacts make up 50% of total impacts. The results show that embodied impacts, accounting for building materials, vehicles, and infrastructure, constitute over 20% of all impacts. The detailed analysis of the impact groups for each location reveals that different strategies should be applied to each location. The work illustrates the importance of expanding the environmental analysis framework of the building sector though the inclusion of induced impacts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper studies the environmental impact of the injection molding process by carrying out a life cycle assessment. A review of how EcoInvent's Life Cycle Inventory database characterizes this process has been conducted, and a new methodology based on that analysis has been carried out. Aspects such as the infrastructure of the factory or waste treatment are part of the environmental impact of the injection molding process, but the most significant factor is electricity consumption; therefore, electricity consumption measurements of the process have been performed. This environmental analysis has been applied to the processing of several parts made of high-density polyethylene, which have been characterized by measuring the electricity consumption. As a consequence of this work, it has been proven that electricity consumption can be used as an injection molding machine selection criteria, from an environmental standpoint, as it produces the highest environmental burden of the process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In spite of the growing awareness and significance of accounting for sustainability aspects in product development, design decision support is still immature in this end compared to other decision support areas, such as product performance and manufacturability. This paper proposes a novel decision support method that combines qualitative sustainability assessment techniques with a quantitative analysis, without losing transparency and still covering a full sustainability perspective. The aim is to contribute to an understanding for how to enable value assessment of sustainability issues already in early product development situations. The method, named Sustainability Assessment and Value Evaluation, combines two qualitative sustainability assessment techniques with a quantitative Net Present Value analysis based on alternative future scenarios. A case study, related to the development of a new high-temperature aero-engine component, illustrates both how the sustainability assessment identifies hotspots and clarifies potential sustainability consequences for a new product technology, and how Net Present Value is used to assess alternative solution strategies based on the hotspot, to facilitate early stage decision-making in design. The paper argues that the method serves two main purposes: i) to make sustainability consequences more concrete and understandable during design concept selection activities, rather than to have an exact measurement, and ii) to simplify and prioritize, systematically asking what is important in the sustainability analysis, rather than to reduce the sustainability problem. The method allows undertaking the sustainability assessment in a more structured way than what happens today in preliminary design, through scenario building based on socio-ecological assessments, including back-casting to cover the longer time perspective. In addition, the Sustainability Assessment and Value Evaluation-method provided the design team of a means for displaying sustainability consequences on an equal basis with other decision support tool results. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, due to global climate change, the imbalance between economic development and environmental protection has become a topical subject. The cause of such imbalance is that environmental protection is not included in the product design and research and design phase by enterprises. Through green quality function deployment, this study integrated life cycle analysis into green design during the product research and design process, and applied the fuzzy theory to reduce customers' subjective judgment in semantics. A research and design model for green design was developed. The fuzzy green quality function deployment showed that customers considerably concern about 'whether toxic materials are used in mobile design and production (15%)', 'whether there is excessive energy consumption in the circuit design (14%)', and 'whether the design of the battery can affect the environment (12%)'. This study developed a product research and design tool that considers the environment, quality, cost, and customer demand. Using fuzzy theory and quality planning, this study determined the importance of product design in technical attributes. It is expected that limited corporate resources can be applied in the key technical factor, thus developing a product research and design model to balance economic development and environmental protection. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability should encompass responsibility for unintended environmental consequences of modern developments. This study examined some pervasive challenges to sustainability by design of electronic products, namely: (i) product and consumption redundancies; (i) embodied environmental and social impacts occurring distant in time and space from the point of consumption; and (iii) production and consumption dynamics. This analysis identified essential developments in certain areas that can assist design practice in preventing unintended environmental consequences. These were: (1) complementing life cycle assessment studies with analyses of unintended environmental consequences; and (2) exploiting the vital role of product design in fostering a circular economy. Indicators that provide information about (a) the increasing spatial and decreasing temporal separation of production, consumption and waste management, (b) constraints in raw materials supply and (c) marginal changes in money and time spent should be available to product designers and consumers. Furthermore, information technology, namely computer-aided design (CAD) tools, should be refined to assist product designers in designing for effective circularity and end-of-waste and limiting hibernation of resources in the use phase. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Extended producer responsibility in the European Union has been shown to be incapable of promoting environmentally friendly packaging, mainly because of the economic instrument used: the producer fee. To make the producer fee capable of both reflecting and influencing how packaging is produced, we propose a mathematical model for calculating a differential fee (the sustainable producer fee or SPF). The development of the model involves the following steps: the selection of sustainability criteria, the aggregation of criteria using multi-criteria decision making, the formulation of the SPF calculation, and the generation of a web-based interface for packers and product importers to calculate the differential fee applying to their own packaging. The aspects of sustainability considered are environmental aspects resulting mostly from life cycle assessment (e.g., global warming and human toxicity), and social aspects related to environmental information present in/on the packaging (e.g., the recycling bin symbol and carbon footprint information). The mathematical model developed uses the sustainability results provided by the multi-criteria decision making. The fee is higher than the current fixed fee (200.8 (sic)/t) if the level of sustainability is low, that is, if environmental and social impacts are negative, and is lower if the level of sustainability is high. The lowest value of the fee in the sensitivity analysis, 191.89 (sic)/t, was calculated for polyethylene packaging containing 10% of incorporated recycled material, with this recycling information being present in the packaging along with carbon footprint information and the recycling symbol. The highest value, 218.69 (sic)/t, was calculated for polyvinyl chloride packaging without any recycled material and without any environmental information. The model is implemented in a web-based interface, where packers and product importers are able to simulate different types of packaging to reduce the fee. The success of the approach is discussed, as is the potential for changing the packaging behavior of packers and importers and for increasing the level of sustainability of packaging in the near future. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lithium batteries increasingly popular, but what is the associated environmental impact to their use? This paper focusses on the environmental impacts of two lithium battery chemistries used in electric vehicles and on the problematic around resource availability. A full life cycle perspective is important in order to avoid burden shifts from one life cycle stage to another. Using a life cycle assessment methodology, a cradle to grave analysis is performed where the 3 different product life stages are assessed, production, use stage and end-of-life. Alongside, an extensive literature review is performed on lithium availability. It is concluded that this issue will not pose an obstacle. However, certain conditions have to be met in order to guaranty this situation. The chemistries used in this assessment are Lithium Manganese Oxide (LMO) and a Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP). We conclude that the overall environmental performance of the battery is strongly dependent on its efficiency and directly tied to the energy mixes associated to its use stage. Lifetime energy, durability and efficiency are the key environmental performance indicators and are taken into account. The dominant differences between the two batteries are during the manufacturing and recycling stage. Depending on the impact category, the scores shift from both technologies. A production hotspot analysis is also performed in order to identify opportunities for eventual environmental damage reductions. During the manufacturing stage, key areas were found with issues related to manufacturing energy, manufacturing facilities, and raw material processing/assembly. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of blends of recycled agricultural plastic and post-consumer high-density polyethylene from municipal solid wastes, as matrices for sustainable eco-composites, was investigated with the aim of boosting the use of recycled materials and reducing the waste plastic environmental impact. It was proposed that proper selection of blends of different waste plastics will allow the production of composites with optimized properties. The two plastics and their blends were characterized by using different spectroscopic techniques and thermal analysis, and measuring the flow curves. The ecocomposites were obtained by compounding a selected blend of recycled agricultural plastic and post-consumer polyethylene with different proportions of coupling agent and waste cellulose fibers in a pilot-plant twin-screw extruder. The structure of the final materials and the role of the coupling agent were analyzed by using scanning electron microscopy. Finally, the novel eco-composites were compared to their counterparts without post-consumer polyethylene, revealing that the incorporation of polyethylene increases the strength and stiffness of the eco-composites, without compromising the impact strength. The incorporation of 40 wt% of polyethylene caused increases in moduli as high as 175% for the polymer and 47% for composites with 30% of fibers. The tensile strength increased up to 21% for the same composites. The decreases in processability caused by the incorporation of polyethylene can be corrected by increasing the coupling agent content. The improved balance between stiffness, strength and toughness without compromising processability can increase the recyclability of the polymer and cellulose wastes used in this work. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The textile and clothing industry is one of the world most global industries and constitutes an important source of income and employment for several EU countries. The textile manufacturing process is characterized by high consumption of resources such as water, fuel and a variety of chemicals in a long process sequence generating a significant load on the environment. Therefore, in order to meet the consumers demand of eco-friendly products, more sustainable production processes are under investigation in order to reduce the environmental burdens. The feasibility of these alternative solutions has been demonstrated during the EU BISCOL project proposing a new dyeing process as a global alternative for the conversion of raw materials into competitive eco-viable final products. This has been achieved through the integration of enzymatic synthesis of dyes at semi-industrial scale, textile pre-treatment based on plasma technology and synthesis of new auxiliaries at lower environmental impact. A life cycle assessment has been performed to evaluate the environmental impact associated with the development of new strategies for textile industry in comparison to classical dyeing processes. Results based on primary data from the consortium partners involved in the project show that relevant benefits are achievable with an innovative protocol in terms of reducing energy, water and raw materials consumption. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to an increased awareness of sustainable development and constructability, the construction industry is now facing challenges to reduce energy consumption, carbon emissions and other negative environmental impacts while maintaining high economic sustainability and constructability performance. This study investigates the performance of reinforced concrete framed (RC-framed) and structural steel framed (SS-framed) buildings on economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and constructability performance indicators in Singapore. The results suggest that economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and constructability performance are important in the decision making process for the selection of structural materials. While RC-framed buildings outperform SS-framed buildings in structural costs, maintenance costs and financial costs, SS-framed buildings outperform RC-framed buildings in increased area, flexibility of internal space, recycling rate, recyclability, waste rate, water consumption, labour saving, construction duration and construction quality. Both RC-framed buildings and SS-framed buildings performed on the same level in noise pollution and construction safety. The present study also provides a good guidance of selecting structural materials based on economic, environmental and constructable considerations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Resource, economic, and environmental impacts are three major factors in the evaluation of industrial processes. All of them might imply certain contributions of ecosystems services. A comprehensive accounting of these factors is critical to sustainability assessment of industrial activities at the ecological scale. Ecological Cumulative Exergy Consumption (ECEC) analysis is a promising approach to address these issues. However, the current knowledge on ECEC is incomplete, especially in economic investment and environmental impact. In this paper, ECEC analysis is extended to quantify purchased resources and pollutant emissions of industrial production. Accordingly, an extended ECEC framework is proposed, integrating the resource, economic, and environmental factors. Furthermore, for better understanding of sustainability, a concept of Ecological Life Cycle Cost (ELCC) is put forward, revealing the relationship between the ECEC and traditional economic evaluation. Finally, a case study of China's raw coal production is used to illustrate the features of these proposed frameworks. The ECEC and ELCC analyses indicate the great ecological influence of raw coal which has been underestimated by the traditional assessment approaches. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Inventory and characterization schemes play different roles in shaping a variety of footprint indicators. This paper performs a systematic and critical investigation of the hidden inventory aspect and characterization aspect of selected footprints with implications for classification and integration of those footprints. It shows that all of the carbon, water, land and material footprints have two fundamentally distinct versions, addressing the environmental exchange of substances in terms of emissions and/or extractions either at the inventory level or at the impact assessment level. We therefore differentiate two broad categories of footprints, namely the inventory-oriented footprints and the impact-oriented footprints. The former allow for a physical interpretation of human pressure by inventorying emissions and extractions and aggregating them with value-based weighting factors, whereas the latter assess and aggregate the inventory results according to their potential contributions to a specific environmental impact using science-based characterization factors, with the recognition that these contributing substances are too different to be compared by mass, volume or area. While both categories have individual strengths and weaknesses, the impact-oriented footprints have a better performance than the inventory-oriented footprints on the integration of footprints into a single-score metric in support of policy making. Resembling the general procedure for life cycle impact assessment, we formulate a three-step framework for characterization, normalization and weighting of a set of impact-oriented footprints to yield a composite footprint index, which would allow policy makers to better assess the overall environmental impacts of entities at multiple scales ranging from single products, organizations, nations, even to the whole economy. The main value added of this paper is the establishment of a unified framework for structuring, categorizing and integrating different footprints. It may serve as a starting point for clearing the footprint jungle and for facilitating the ongoing discourse on a truly integrated footprint family. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of mine tailings management strategy is to protect the environment and humans from risks associated with mine tailings. It seems inevitable that future production from lower grade ores in mines will increase, generating a higher tonnage of tailings. Approximately 14 billion tonnes of tailings were produced globally by the mining industry in 2010. The need for a comprehensive framework for mine tailings management (including dewatering) that promotes sustainable development is therefore becoming increasingly recognised by the mining industry. In this paper, we review existing frameworks for tailings management and propose an improved framework that considers key sustainable development pillars: technological, economic, environmental, policy, and social aspects. This framework will be able to guide the mining sector to choose its mine tailings management strategy based on sustainable development concepts. It incorporates a range of tools for determining trade-offs inherent in different tailings management methods during operation and throughout the Life of Mine (LOM); these include Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Net Present Value (NPV), Hierarchy System Model (HSM), and Decision. Analysis. In particular, this proposed recognises the highly case-specific of tailings management by explicitly integrating physicochemical characterisation of tailings properties as a first step. In future, the framework could be expanded through integration of reuse/recycle principles of industrial symbiosis. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper assessed the cradle-to-gate life cycle of an iron ore mining. The study was based on production data from an open pit mine located in the Iron Quadrangle/Brazil. The functional unit was defined as "one tonne of iron ore concentrate produced" and the data used were collected directly from the company's production reports covering the time of one year. The evaluation included the classification and characterization of life cycle impacts, not including normalization and weighting as well as sensitivity analysis of results. The evaluation of impacts used SimaPro-7, Ecoinvent 2.0, Eco indicator'99 and IPCC 2007. The results indicated that the use of grinding media in the processes is the main source of environmental impacts in the iron ore production chain, highlighting its contribution to life cycle impacts on human health and quality of ecosystems. Ore transportation by conveyor belts powered by electricity was more efficient in relation to the generation of impacts on the abiotic resources depletion and on climate changes than ore transportation by diesel trucks because the electricity generation matrix in Brazil has significant participation from hydroelectric plants. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electric bikes (e-bikes) have developed faster than any other mode of transport in China, which has stimulated the rapid growth of China's lead-acid battery (LAB) industry for more than a decade. This research undertook a life cycle assessment (LCA) for LABs used in e-bikes in China. Its purpose was to identify the key materials and processes that contribute most to impacts on the environment and public health within the life cycle of LABs, from materials extraction and processing, manufacture, transportation, use, and end-of-life. It also sought to find opportunities for improving the environmental profile of LABs. The results indicate that LABs use, as well as materials extraction and processing, have the largest environmental impacts within the life cycle of LABs. The former is responsible for 84% of the primary energy use and contributes the highest potentials to energy-related impacts, including global warming (86%) and acidification (69%). The latter, specifically the lead used in batteries, is the most important driver of impacts such as ozone depletion, photochemical smog, eutrophication, and carcinogenicity. Accordingly, battery reuse after refurbishment and recovery of materials in the end-of-life stage could significantly mitigate most of the overall life cycle impacts by reducing the consumption of virgin materials. However, currently, 95% of total lead emissions are released in the end-of-life stage due to improper management of the spent LABs recycling market in China, and these emissions causes 90% of total human toxicity potential. Battery manufacture only accounts for 3% of total lead emissions after the national cleanup action for heavy metal pollution. Moreover, sensitivity coefficients are employed to evaluate the reliability and uncertainty of the LCA results. Based on the findings, there are several substantial opportunities to further reduce the overall environmental impacts of LABs, such as prolonging the lifetime of LABs, reducing the consumption of metals in LABs, and improving the technology and management in the recovery of spent LABs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Oil and its derivatives are crucial components of economic growth and prosperity globally. The economic and social gains from producing, trading, and consuming oil are readily estimated and observed. However, during each of the phases of oil production and trade, beginning with exploration and extraction, physical damages, injuries and fatalities, and economic losses are frequently incurred from accidents such as pipeline explosions. Specifically, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries consume the majority of the oil produced annually yet most accidents occur in non-OECD countries. Drawing from the input output analysis literature, this paper uses a one-dimensional accounting method based on trade data to determine the crude oil consumption fatality rates of the OECD countries annually between 1978 and 2008. This analysis results in meaningful changes to production based fatality calculations. In particular, OECD countries import the majority of their annual fatality rates from non-OECD countries. Based on 5 patterns that emerge, the authors postulate that historical trade relationships, differential policies and regulations, as well as levels of technology adoption, may influence these outcomes. This fundamental analysis applies the now-popular consumption-based accounting method taken from multi-regional input output and life-cycle assessment to a risk assessment setting. The authors introduce the method in this setting such that, as in the case of embodied emissions, it can act as a basis for further econometric analyses, develop more awareness and a greater sense of shared, international responsibility, as well as instruct policy changes for best practices in the field of energy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Utilization of forest and wood residues as bioenergy feedstock in some remote communities could reduce environmental burdens and increase development opportunities. In a thorough bioenergy project planning, in addition to the economic performance, the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from investment alternatives should be considered. We present an economic assessment and a life cycle analysis of GHG emissions of alternative bioenergy systems, which include four combustion and gasification technologies with different capacities (0.5 MW, 2 MW and 5 MW), in two remote communities in British Columbia, Canada. In the analysis, all stages from harvesting to energy production are included, and the GHG emissions of the baseline system in each community (the current situation with all the products and services it provides) are used as the reference for comparison. Results of this study show that for small scale alternatives (0.5 MW and 2 MW), cogenerating plants using boiler/steam turbines generate the cheapest electricity, while for larger scale alternatives (5 MW), the most economical plant alternative is a gasification cogeneration system. In the community where all energy needs are currently satisfied using fossil fuels, and all biomass residues (forest and sawmill residues) are currently disposed by burning, net reductions of up to 40,909 t of CO2 equivalent GHG emissions could be achieved with the installation of a 5 MW boiler/steam turbine cogenerating heat and electricity. In the community where the current energy mix is mostly supplied from other renewable sources (i.e. hydro), and where forest residues are disposed by burning and sawmill residues are landfilled, the net GHG emission reductions that can be achieved with a bioenergy system are considerably lower (2535 t of CO2 equivalent emissions with a 5 MW cogenerating gasification system) or null, since the carbon capture of current biomass disposal in landfill outweighs the carbon emission reduction of most bioenergy alternatives. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ferronickel (FeNi) is predominantly produced from nickeliferous laterite ores which are converted into a product with a nickel content of around 20%. With increasing emphasis being put on energy efficiency and global climate change, it is important for the nickel industry to further explore energy saving issues and to evaluate a number of potential opportunities for reducing the greenhouse gas footprint of primary FeNi production. The present study adopted a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to assess energy consumption and greenhouse gas footprints of the main processing stages of a typical Greek nickel laterite ore for the production of ferronickel. In this context, a detailed life cycle directory was created based on facility-specific data and used for a holistic cradle-to-gate LCA analysis (including mining and the main ore processing routes). The following energy and environmental indicators were assessed: global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP) and primary energy demand (PED). Using current FeNi production as a baseline scenario (BL), two alternative scenarios, namely (i) the green energy (GE) scenario that involves 50% substitution of fossil fuels mix (lignite and coal) with biochar and 50% substitution of lignite with renewable resources for electricity production, and (ii) the waste utilization (WU) scenario that includes 65% utilization of slag in the construction sector, to improve energy and waste utilization, minimize the adverse environmental impacts and therefore achieve more sustainable FeNi production were investigated. Results showed that the best alternative scenario for energy savings and reduction of associated GHG emissions during FeNi production was the GE scenario. With this scenario energy savings and GHG emissions were about 17% and 35% lower compared to BL scenario, respectively. Lower reduction in energy consumption (7%) and GHG emissions (13%) compared to the BL scenario was attained when the WU scenario was considered. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A key challenge for the waste management sector is to maximise resource efficiency whilst simultaneously reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For stakeholders to better understand the GHG impacts of their waste management activities and identify emissions reduction opportunities, they need to be able to quantify the GHG impacts of material recycling. Whilst previous studies have been undertaken to develop GHG emission factors (EF) for materials recycling, they are generally insufficient to support decision-making due to a lack of transparency or comprehensiveness in the range of materials considered. In this study, we present for the first time a comprehensive, scientifically robust, fully transparent, and clearly documented series of GHG EFs for the recycling of a wide range of source-segregated materials. EFs were derived from a series of partial life cycle assessments (LCA) performed as far as possible in accordance with the ISO 14040 standard. With the exceptions of soil, plasterboard, and paint, the recycling of source-segregated materials resulted in net GHG savings. The majority of calculated GHG EFs were within the range of data presented in the literature. The quality of secondary data used was assessed, with the results highlighting the dearth of high quality life cycle inventory (LCI) data on material reprocessing and primary production currently available. Overall, the results highlight the important contribution that effective source-segregated materials recycling can have in reducing the GHG impacts of waste management. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate change is expected to have a significant impact on the wine industry, and as an industry, it is critical that practices are evaluated to ensure opportunities to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are identified. Data from Australian vineyards were examined and compared with international data to identify the sources of GHG emissions in viticulture. These were also compared with other annual and perennial agricultural crops to evaluate the relative emissions from viticulture. Fuel and electricity use are significant contributors to the total GHG emissions from viticulture (approximately 98%), with nitrous oxide emissions being low. The greatest opportunity to reduce GHG emissions from viticulture is the reduction of carbon-based energy sources. Nitrous oxide emissions may be further reduced by modifying the timing of nitrogen fertiliser application. Soil carbon sequestration opportunities also exist, namely compost and mulch application; however, increase in soil carbon is only expected after many years of treatment.In this paper, a new perspective of food packaging design is proposed by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, in which shelf life and food loss probability were taken into account. The study focused on twenty-four scenarios of packaging of a ripened cheese obtained from sheep milk, in order to analyze the environmental implications of different packaging systems in terms of potential food loss. The aim is to provide an eco-indicator able to quantify the environmental indirect effects related to the different choices in the food packaging. Results highlighted that, by considering only the direct inputs and outputs of the packaging system, thinner and recyclable packaging materials sealed in air are more sustainable from an environmental point of view. On the contrary, if indirect effects of food loss probability are also taken into account (e.g. production and transport of cheese in order to reconstruct the stockpile), multilayer systems under modified headspace conditions are preferred packaging solutions. This is consequence of the fact that cheese production brings about high environmental impacts if compared to the other phases of the life cycle, therefore, the environmental implications of the choices adopted for the packaging phase are more affected from the capacity of reducing food losses than from the production and disposing of packaging materials. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is the undisputed need for the coupling of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-the most common methods for the evaluation of the life cycle-wide economic and ecological effects of products and production systems in the context of sustainable decision making. However, in published studies both methods are often used in parallel or with little integration. This causes double work in data acquisition and a lack of consistency of the underlying analyses' scopes and, therefore, limits the significance of the analyses results. Further on, no mature theoretical approach for the integration of LCA and LCC exists. To overcome this problem, the paper presents a procedure model for the integrated use of the methods. More specifically, Material Flow Cost Accounting is suggested as a tie between both methods and is extended according to the requirements of life cycle-wide analyses. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a novel mathematical framework which incorporates the life cycle approach with the objective to provide a holistic assessment of air emissions for ocean going ships. For the development of the framework, important elements of the Life Cycle Assessment method have been applied which is a methodology that considers the full life cycle of the system it examines (i.e. from the extraction of row materials to the final disposal/recycling). The paper presents some illustrative results from a case study on a Panamax oil tanker. The life cycle emissions inventory for this ship has been developed using the life cycle framework and results are presented and discussed accordingly. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Multi-criteria decision-making methods have emerged as a very useful tool to find solutions under different criteria or conflicting points of view, also in energy planning. However, social and environmental criteria have not been fully integrated in rural electrification projects design and play often an opposing role to technical and economic criteria. We propose the combined application of two multi-criteria decision-making methods, namely, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Compromise Ranking method (VIKOR), to facilitate the selection of the best solution for electrical supply of remote rural locations, involving technical, economic, environmental and social criteria. A group of experts were consulted for weighting the preferences of the criteria, sub-criteria and category of deciders. Thirteen discrete alternatives were proposed; the first six were associated with optimal multi-objective solutions pertaining to dispersed decentralized generation and another six multi-objective options to compact decentralized generation (CDG), and last, extension of the public electric grid was considered. The results reveal that the combination of multi-criteria methods facilitates decision-making in a manner that is robust, comprehensive, transparent and coherent to sustainable development requirements. CDG resulted in the best model of electrical supply. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The harvested Jatropha fruits need to be cleaned, dehulled and stored properly as part of the production of Jatropha biodiesel. During processing, the oil yield and quality of the extracted crude oil can be further improved by removing the husks (outer coating) of the seeds before any necessary seed treatment. This report attempts to provide an insight into the major issues of the process from harvesting the Jatropha fruits to the final storage of the seeds and pretreatment of the Jatropha seeds prior to the oil extraction process in production. This report describes a few aspects of the processes including common methods, research and technologies involved so that some improving strategies can be devised. The final part of this report also describes current development trends and the future prospect of Jatropha as a biodiesel. The paper has determined that both the harvest and shelling processes are basically performed manually, especially in rural areas. These activities are time consuming and introduce a high labour cost (80% of the feedstock cost) that can potentially make the Jatropha oil economically uncompetitive. A solution consisting of process mechanisation and mechanical device development are proposed to improve the sustainability of the industry and to meet the increasing world demand. An improvement in oil yield can also be achieved by fruit/seed pretreatment such as drying, shelling and heating. However, improper control may lead to the formation of oxidation products such as free fatty acids which will affect the efficiency of biodiesel production. This is an important sustainability issue which is related to the future development of Jatropha biodiesel. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae have tremendous potential for producing liquid renewable fuel. Many methods for converting microalgae to biofuel have been proposed; however, an economical and energetically feasible route for algal fuel production is yet to be found. This paper presents a review on the comparison of the most promising conversion pathways of microalgae to liquid fuel: hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), wet extraction and non-destructive extraction. The comparison is based on important assessment parameters of product quality and yield, nutrient recovery, GHG emissions, energy and the cost associated with the production of fuel from microalgae, in order to better understand the pros and cons of each method. It was found that the HTL pathway produces more oil than the wet extraction pathway; however, higher concentrations of unwanted components are present in the HIT, oil produced. Less nutrients (N and P) can be recovered in HTL compared to wet extraction. HTL consumes more fossil energy and generates higher GHG emissions than wet extraction, while the production cost of fuel from HTL pathway is lower than wet extraction pathway. There is considerable uncertainty in the comparison of the energy consumption and economics of the HTL pathway and the wet extraction pathway due to different scenarios analysed in the assessment studies. To be able to appropriately compare methodologies, the conversion methods should be analysed from growth to upgradation of oil utilising sufficiently similar assumptions and scenarios. Based on the data in available literature, wet oil extraction is the more appropriate system for biofuel production than HTL. However, the potential of alternative extraction/conversion technologies, such as, non-destructive extraction, need to be further assessed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a case study based on a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) research program of the silicon foundry sand (SFS) due to the large quantity of produced waste foundry sand (WFS). The foundry waste is a high priority sector within the growing European foundry industry. It is necessary to understand the full life cycle of the foundry waste in order to correctly identify magnitude and types of impacts it has on the environment. System boundary includes the processes: mining, modification, packing, storage and transport to foundry. Inventory analysis data were analyzed and finally converted to the functional unit, which has been defined as one ton of SFS. The resulting environmental impact of SFS production in endpoint is: consumption of natural resources 70.9%, ecosystem quality 18.2% and human health 10.9%. The following portions, with respective percentages, have the greatest overall effect on these results: diesel fuel consumption 32.4% and natural gas consumption 28.7%, electricity usage 17.2%, transport 12.2%, devastation caused by the SFS 5.35% and oil (engine, gear and hydraulic) consumption 4.14%. The highest contributor to the diesel fuel consumption is the SFS exploitation. The overall effect of desiccation was 35.8% and was caused by high consumption of resources and electricity.Palm oil based biodiesel offers an alternative energy source that can reduce current dependence on conventional fossil fuels and may reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions depending on the type of feedstock and processes used. In the Malaysian context, the palm oil industry not only provides high-yield, renewable feedstock to the world, it brings socio-economic development to the Malaysian rural community and contributes to the national income. However, the sustainability of palm oil remains controversial, due to deforestation, pollution and social conflicts associated with its production. Sustainability assessment is vital for the palm oil industry to identify weaknesses, improve its sustainability performance and improve consumer confidence. This paper proposes a holistic sustainability assessment framework for palm oil production with the aim to address the weaknesses of existing palm oil sustainability assessment methods. It identifies environmental, social and economic Headline Performance Indicators, Key Performance Indicators and their Performance Measures in crude palm oil production in a structured framework. Each quantitative/semi-quantitative performance measure is translated into Likert Scale of 1-5, where 3 is the threshold value, 5 is the ideal condition, and 1 is the worst case scenario. Calculation methods were established for the framework to provide quantitative assessment results. The framework was tested using a hypothetical example with data from existing studies. The results suggest that crude palm oil production in Malaysia is below the sustainability threshold. Evaluations of this sustainability assessment framework also demonstrate that it is a comprehensive assessment method for assessing sustainability of feedstock for biofuel production.Carbon emissions calculation at the sub-provincial level has issues in limited data and non-unified measurements. This paper calculated the life cycle energy consumption and carbon emissions of the building industry in Wuhan, China. The findings showed that the proportion of carbon emissions in the construction operation phase was the largest, followed by the carbon emissions of the indirect energy consumption and the construction material preparation phase. With the purpose of analyzing the contributors of the construction carbon emissions, this paper conducted decomposition analysis using Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI). The results indicated that the increasing buidling area was the major driver of energy consumption and carbon emissions increase, followed by the behavior factor. Population growth and urbanization, to some extent, increased the carbon emissions as well. On the contrary, energy efficiency was the main inhibitory factor for reducing the carbon emissions. Policy implications in terms of low-carbon construction development were highlighted.Beijing is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world. Reducing agricultural water use has long been the basis of local policy for sustainable water use. In this article, the potential to reduce the life cycle (cradle to gate) water footprints of wheat and maize that contribute to 94% of the local cereal production was assessed. Following ISO 14046, consumptive and degradative water use for the wheat-maize rotation system was modeled under different irrigation and nitrogen (N) application options. Reducing irrigation water volume by 33.3% compared to current practice did not cause a significant yield decline, but the water scarcity footprint and water eutrophication footprint were decreased by 27.5% and 23.9%, respectively. Similarly, reducing the N application rate by 33.3% from current practice did not cause a significant yield decline, but led to a 52.3% reduction in water eutrophication footprint while maintaining a similar water scarcity footprint. These results demonstrate that improving water and fertilizer management has great potential for reducing the crop water footprints at the farm scale. This situation in Beijing is likely to be representative of the challenge facing many of the water-stressed regions in China, where a sustainable means of agricultural production must be found.The consumption of non-renewable primary energy resources results in their depletion, which is becoming absolutely crucial for the sustainable development of humankind. The production of electricity based on burning fossil fuels involves harmful emissions. Thus, the additional consumption of primary energy is required in order to make up for the environmental impact The of that consumption of primary exergy per unit of useful products is called the index of TEC (thermoecological cost). When the whole life cycle is considered, we have to do with the LC TEC (life-cycle thermoecological cost). The paper presents the concept of a life cycle assessment based on the thermoecological cost implemented in an integrated OFC (oxy-fuel combustion) power plant with CO2 capture, transport and storage. A mathematical model evaluating the LC TEC was applied and the example utilised Polish conditions. The obtained value of the LC TEC of the analyzed CCS (Carbon capture and storage) system (with 90% CO2 emission reduction) is about 22% higher than the average value for polish coal-fired power plants (without CCS). The results of sensitivity analysis concerning LC TEC allow to conclude that the operation phase dominates (over 99.5%), thus the construction, repairs and decommissioning phases for CCS systems could be neglected in further studies concerning the depletion of non-renewable natural resources. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fossil fuels are still the dominant source of energy in most economic sectors worldwide, particularly in the electric power sector. The transformation and usage of primary energy are connected with various unfavorable environmental effects. Mainly they are as follows depletion of constrained resources of non-renewable energy, emission of harmful wastes to the environment, emission of GHG (greenhouse gasses). To investigate these effects variety of methods have been developed, the LCA (Life-Cycle Assessment) is one of them. It has emerged as a valuable decision-support tool for both policy makers and industry in assessing the cradle-to-grave impacts of a product or process. Despite many advantages of LCA, it is unfortunately characterized by the lack of inclusion of thermodynamics law, especially second law, which is the basic physical law deciding on the resource economy in any production process. In the paper, the LCA methodology together with TEC (Thermo-Ecological Cost) is proposed to apply for exergo-ecological evaluation of fossil fuels. TEC expresses the cumulative consumption of non-renewable exergy connected with the fabrication of any useful product with additional inclusion of the consumption resulting from the necessity of compensation for environmental losses caused by the removal of harmful substances to the environment. The calculations of TEC of coal are based on the material balances of the whole chain of the production process from mine to the end-user. Within the chain in the coal mine the following sub-processes have been distinguished: preparation of the coal deposit layer for exploitation, exploitation of coal deposits, mechanical processing and enrichment of coal, ventilation of coal mine, transport, energy management of coal mines, compressed air management in coal mines and utilization of methane released during mine exploitation. Besides the processes in the mine, the end use is investigated. For this reason, the different types of coal are assigned for typical users. The potentially negative influence of utilization of coal with inclusion from cradle to grave assessment are examined on the basis of TEC evaluation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are seen as an effective means to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of energy production. However, the cultivation phase of agribiomass-based biofuel production in particular can cause significant GHG emissions and additional environmental problems, such as water pollution and biodiversity loss. In this study, the aim was to develop a comprehensive environmental sustainability framework for agribiomass chains. The chosen environmental impact categories (climate change, eutrophication, soil erosion, soil organic matter decline, ecotoxicity, biodiversity, use of non-renewable resources, water use, and production efficiency) were selected based on literature and the views of energy companies and interest groups. The framework was tested with two Finnish agribiomass chains: barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) straw (for combustion) and turnip rape (Brassica rapa ssp. oleifera DC.) (for biodiesel). Relevant improvement options were identified and their impact reduction potential was assessed. The GHG emissions of both selected bioenergy sources were less than those of their fossil fuel references. Critical challenges for both studied agribiomass chains currently include eutrophication, soil organic matter decline and the use of non-renewable natural resources. The indicator values could be markedly improved by the selected improvement options, of which the most important is optimal yield. Better distributions of manure and soil fertility improvement (carbon stock and pH) were identified as the most important long-term goals for improving sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioconversion production of ethanol from cellulosic feedstock is generally proposed to use direct fermentation of sugars to ethanol. Another potential route for ethanol production is fermentation of sugars to acetic acid followed by hydrogenation to convert the acetic acid into ethanol. The advantage of the acetogen pathway is an increased ethanol yield; however, using an acetogen requires the additional hydrogenation, which could substantially affect the life cycle global warming potential of the process. Assuming a poplar feedstock, a cradle to grave Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the environmental impacts of an acetogen based fermentation pathway. An LCA of a fermentation pathway that uses ethanologen fermentation is developed for comparison. It is found that the ethanologen and acetogen pathways have Global Warming Potentials (GWP) that are 92% and 46% lower than the GWP of gasoline, respectively. When the absolute GWP reduction compared to gasoline is calculated using a unit of land basis, the benefit of the higher ethanol yield using the acetogen is observed as the two pathways achieve similar GWP savings. The higher ethanol yield in the acetogen process plays a crucial role in choosing a lignocellulosic ethanol production method if land is a limited resource. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In producing cellulosic ethanol as a renewable biofuel from forest biomass, a tradeoff exists between the displacement of fossil fuel carbon (C) emissions by biofuels and the high rates of C storage in aggrading forest stands. To assess this tradeoff, the landscape area affected by feedstock harvest must be considered, which depends on numerous factors including forest productivity, the amount of forest in a fragmented landscape, and the willingness of forest landowners to sell timber as a bioenergy feedstock. We studied landscape scale net C balance by combining these considerations in a new, basic simulation model, CEBRAM, and applying it to a hypothetical landscape of short-rotation aspen forests in northern Michigan, USA. The model was parameterized for forest species, growth and ecosystem C storage, as well as landscape spatial patterns of forest cover in this region. To understand and parameterize forest owner decision making we surveyed 505 nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners in Michigan. Survey results indicated that 47% of these NIPF owners would willingly harvest forest biomass for bioenergy. Model results showed that at this rate the net C balance was 0.024 kg/m(2) for a cellulosic ethanol system without considering land use over a 40 year time horizon. When C storage in aggrading, nonparticipating NIPF land was included, net C balance was 1.09 kg/m(2) over 40 years. In this region, greater overall C gains can be realized through aspen forest aggradation than through the displacement of gasoline by cellulosic ethanol produced from forest biomass. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Perennial bioenergy crops provide biomass for renewable energy production, but also sequester atmospheric carbon (C) in the soil. Roots represent one of the most important soil C inputs-root length density (RLD, cm cm(-3)), root diameter and fine root biomass (FRB, Mg ha(-1)) in the top 1 m of soil were characterized for three woody (poplar, black locust, willow) and three herbaceous (giant reed, miscanthus, switchgrass) perennial crops in the same location. The vertical distribution of FRB and RLD was described by fitting the "beta" (beta) model to the experimental data. The herbaceous species had higher beta values for FRB and RLD than woody crops, suggesting that the former explore the deeper soil layers with a greater proportion of roots. In particular, 3.7 Mg ha(-1), or 43% of the whole root mass, was found below the ploughing soil layer (0.3 m) for the herbaceous species, while only 1.2 Mg ha(-1), or 26% of the whole root mass, was allocated by woody crops to the same soil layer. In all the species, the majority of the sampled roots (99.1%) had a diameter lower than 2 mm, and in the first 10 cm of the soil the woody species tended to produce roots with a smaller diameter than those of the herbaceous species. Overall, the herbaceous crops have a higher potential to contribute to C storage in the deep soil layers, while the woody species, have a greater potential to affect soil organic carbon in the top soil layer. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work compares the different methods of transport used to import pellets, through a case study of pellets imported into Italy. The objective was to evaluate the economic and environmental sustainability of the different transport methods, the former via a cost analysis, and the latter via an LCA analysis. In particular, the method of transport by sea from Virginia (USA) was compared to overland transport from some European locations. Industrial pellet markets strictly depend on the import of wood pellets from outside the EU-27. The analysis of transport phase is therefore crucial, for inspecting the consequences of transporting such a commodity along considerable distances and allowing decision makers to make strategic decisions about trade planning, optimize international routes, and choose the most sustainable transport methods. The economic analysis showed that road transport cost ranged from 18 to 112 (sic) t(-1), while sea cost from 68 to 82 (sic) t(-1). Concerning the environmental evaluation, the impact categories most involved were Fossil Fuels, Respiratory Inorganics and Land Use, showing that the critical points in the transport phase are the oil consumption per km and the production of high quantities of SO2 and NOx. Basically, transport by sea appeared to be better, from the economic viewpoint, and for what concerns one of the major environmental impacts involved (fossil fuels) and primary energy consumption, compared to road transport from some of the European locations normally supplying the Italian market. On the contrary, road transport was preferred if transporting pellets from locations nearest to Italy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The need for a unified appraisal framework for biomass and bioenergy has been extensively discussed in literature. It is emphasized that a working unified appraisal framework can essentially improve bioenergy policymaking by offering a structured and transparent approach to tackle the bioenergy trilemma and to work out whether or not a certain biomass conversion technology or system should be implemented (always in direct comparison to others). Further, such an approach could be used to better examine the interdependencies of the single elements of the triple bottom line of sustainability (economy, environment, society). This also would lead to the improvement of existing and future policies and would give bioenergy a better foundation within the ethical debate by transparently showing the trade-offs between economy, environment and society. This paper drafts a unified appraisal framework for biomass conversion systems that integrates different approaches on the data, impact and decision making level. On the bottom line the proposed architecture in total addresses all relevant requirements from literature and fits well into the valuable work that has been done previously. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A standard ISO Life Cycle Assessment study was carried out to evaluate the environmental sustainability of electricity production from an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant using a mixture of dedicated energy crops, agricultural residues and livestock effluents as input materials. The functional unit was 1 MJ of electricity. System boundaries were from cradle to grave and covered all the phases from energy crops cultivation to the production of biogas and its use in a Combined Heat and Power plant to produce electricity. Liquid and solid digestate storage and spreading on agricultural land were included. Primary data were collected from the AD plant for all the above phases. Since heat produced is used only internally, no allocation was applied in the study. As regards digestate management, CH4 emissions were calculated from literature, whereas four literature methods were applied for calculation of nitrogen emissions with the goal to perform a sensitivity analysis on LCA results. ILCD Handbook impact assessment methodologies were used. Results show that the main hotspots are energy crops cultivation and the management of digestate, mainly because of both nitrogen and methane emissions, affecting Global Warming, Acidification, Marine and Freshwater Eutrophication. Finally, a detailed Monte Carlo analysis, was carried out to evaluate the results uncertainty. The study represents the state of the art about the environmental performance of the AD plant with the use of sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, which both improve the reliability of results, and allows drawing general conclusions on how to mitigate the environmental impacts of AD process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Short rotation coppice (SRC) plantations are of interest as producers of biomass for fuel, but also as carbon (C) sinks to mitigate CO2 emissions. Carbon sequestration in biomass and soil was estimated in 5-year-old replicated SRC plantations with willows (Salix spp.) on former arable land at five sites in Sweden. Total standing C stocks, i.e. C stored in woody biomass above- and belowground, fine root standing crop, litter, and soil organic carbon (SOC) were estimated by repeated field sampling and C budget calculation. Overall, the SRC willow plantations represented a C sink after five years. Estimated increase of total standing C stock was 15% on average compared to pre-planting conditions. There was no change in SOC when including all sites. Analyses within sites revealed a decrease in SOC at one site, although the decrease was compensated for by C stored in willow biomass. After removal of stem biomass, C in other plant pools was sufficient to compensate for the SOC decrease. Remaining C in stumps, stool, and coarse roots was estimated at ca 20% of stem C. There was a discrepancy between SOC sequestration rates from soil sampling and C budget calculation, -2.1-1.0 and 0.15-0.45 Mg ha(-1) y(-1), respectively. Mineralization of old organic material from previous land-use and input to SOC from understory vegetation were not included in the calculations, which may explain part of the differences. The importance of understory litter in C budgets for young plantations was apparent, as it comprised 24-80% of aboveground litter C. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Land-use environmental impacts are gaining attention as global demand for land is increasing. Human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) is a useful measure to estimate how much of the net primary production (NPP) available for ecosystem processes is appropriated by humans annually. It accounts for the NPP extracted by biomass harvest, and the NPP losses due to land conversion. Finland is a forested country with good availability of detailed data for calculating HANPP. We estimated HANPP for Finland for a period from 1990 to 2010. Human appropriation of net primary production in Finland was on average 59% of the potential net primary production during the 1990' s and then decreased fairly steadily to 50% in 2010. Net primary production harvested by humans, HANPP(harv), remained fairly constant over the study period, on average 25 Mt carbon. HANPP due to land use change (HANPP(luc)) decreased from 50 Mt to 38 Mt carbon during the past 20 years. The difference between the actual NPP of forests and the potential NPP without any human intervention decreased, mainly due to the growth of wood biomass stock in forests yielding larger amounts of litter production and further larger NPP. Forest HANPP(luc), however contributed as much as 50% of the Finnish total HANPP in 2010. Our study shows for the first time the importance of calculating potential NPP for forests in detail. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the sectors of biofuel and renewable chemicals the big feedstock demand asks, first, to expand the spectrum of carbon sources beyond primary biomass, second, to establish circular processing chains and, third, to prioritize product sectors exclusively depending on carbon: chemicals and heavy-duty fuels. Large-volume production lines will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission significantly but also low-volume chemicals are indispensable in building low-carbon' industries. The foreseeable feedstock change initiates innovation, securing societal wealth in the industrialized world and creating employment in regions producing biomass. When raising the investments in rerouting to sustainable biofuel and chemicals today competitiveness with fossil-based fuel and chemicals is a strong issue. Many countries adopted comprehensive bioeconomy strategies to tackle this challenge. These public actions are mostly biased to biofuel but should give well-balanced attention to renewable chemicals as well.In an effort to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning, renewable energy policies incentivize use of forest biomass as an energy source. Many governments have assumed (legislated) the carbon flux from burning biomass to be neutral because biomass growth sequesters CO2. Yet, trees take decades to recover the CO2 released by burning, so assumed emissions neutrality (or near neutrality) implies that climate change is not considered an urgent matter. As biomass energy continues to be a significant strategy for transitioning away from fossil fuels, this paper asks the question: To what extent should we value future atmospheric carbon removals? To answer this, we examine the assumptions and pitfalls of biomass carbon sequestration in light of its increasing use as a fossil-fuel alternative. This study demonstrates that the assumed carbon neutrality of biomass for energy production hinges on the fact that we weakly discount future removals of carbon, and it is sensitive to tree species and the nature of the fuel for which biomass substitutes. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this article, the environmental impacts associated to cofiring coal with forest biomass for electricity production in Chile are analyzed for: (i) untreated pine pellets and (ii) torrefied-pretreated pine pellets. Results show that energy production from cofiring coal/untreated wood pellets or coal/torrefied pellets, featured significant reductions in environmental impacts, as compared with pure coal plants. Indeed, reductions in acidification (28-26%), abiotic depletion (15-7%), eutrophication potential (15-12%), global warming potential (16-6%), photochemical oxidation (28-23%), human toxicity (17-15%), terrestrial ecotoxicity (12-9%), and marine aquatic ecotoxicity (17-15%) were obtained when untreated or treated pellets were used as a substitute for coal. Moreover, the environmental profile of torrefied pine evidenced its low impact per energy unit, in most of the studied categories except for eutrophication and marine aquatic ecotoxicity, for which the harvesting, logistic chain and torrefaction processes were the most important contributors. (C) 2015 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Using corn stover as a raw material to produce fuel ethanol has good application prospects. The processes of ethanol synthesis from corn stover using direct and indirect thermochemical conversion methods have been developed. After the system boundaries were determined, a life cycle assessment was conducted to evaluate whether the two processes would be environmentally friendly. It was found that the energy efficiency of direct ethanol synthesis process (direct case) was lower (0.38) than that found for the indirect process (indirect case), which was 0.41. The same tendency was found with the alcohol yield. The alcohol yields in the direct case and indirect case were 23 and 30 wt %, respectively Then, the environmental impacts including global warming potential and acid potential of the two processes were compared and discussed. Finally, the distribution of the environmental impact values for the two ethanol synthesis processes was presented. With regard to the environmental impact, the indirect case was superior to the direct case, showing good promise in future applications.Industrial ecology (IE) is a maturing scientific discipline. The field is becoming more data and computation intensive, which requires IE researchers to develop scientific software to tackle novel research questions. We review the current state of software programming and use in our field and find challenges regarding transparency, reproducibility, reusability, and ease of collaboration. Our response to that problem is fourfold: First, we propose how existing general principles for the development of good scientific software could be implemented in IE and related fields. Second, we argue that collaborating on open source software could make IE research more productive and increase its quality, and we present guidelines for the development and distribution of such software. Third, we call for stricter requirements regarding general access to the source code used to produce research results and scientific claims published in the IE literature. Fourth, we describe a set of open source modules for standard IE modeling tasks that represent our first attempt at turning our recommendations into practice. We introduce a Python toolbox for IE that includes the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework Brightway2, the ecospold2matrix module that parses unallocated data in ecospold format, the pySUT and pymrio modules for building and analyzing multiregion input-output models and supply and use tables, and the dynamic_stock_model class for dynamic stock modeling. Widespread use of open access software can, at the same time, increase quality, transparency, and reproducibility of IE research.The present study addresses the topic of recycling materials from construction and demolition (C&D) wastes by proposing an environmental comparison between two recycling schemes for gravel wastes. The first scheme is the baseline process, and leads to direct most of the gravel to road construction. The second scheme relies on an innovative technology for the processing of gravel, based on electrical fragmentation, which leads to a clear separation between the aggregate contained in the gravel and the cement paste. The purity of the obtained materials opens new recycling outletsas part of high-quality structural concrete for the aggregate and as a substitute to natural minerals in clinker kilns for the cement paste. This shift towards more-specific outlets for the materials found in reclaimed gravel carries significant modifications in the overall handling of C&D wastes and in the supply of natural and non-natural materials for road construction and concrete formulation. The environmental implications of these modifications are evaluated according to a life cycle assessment methodology, which specifically addresses the influence of the distances and modalities of transportation of wastes to the crushing processes, as well as of natural and recycled aggregate to construction and demolition sites. The results point out significant environmental gains for the alternative recycling scheme, in all the considered impact categories and whatever the implemented scenarios. These gains are modulated by the various transport distances of the heavy materials heeded in the global system.Traditionally, asphalt pavement maintenance mainly considers pavement performance and cost and largely ignores the environment while substantial amount of environmental burdens are released in the process. In this study, a multi-objective optimization model was developed integrating the three elements in order to optimize the asphalt pavement maintenance plans at the project level. Pavement performance element was decided as the multiplier of pavement serviceability index and traffic volume. Cost element was represented by the net present value, including components of agency cost, vehicle operation cost and salvage value. Environmental element, integrating energy consumption, global warming potential, acidification potential and respiratory effects potential, was measured by the life cycle assessment model. A hypothetic asphalt pavement maintenance case study was conducted using the developed multi-objective optimization model and harvested 103 sets of feasible combinations of maintenance plans, each of which is non-dominated by the others. Trade-offs analysis was performed among the three objectives and visualized in both two- and three-dimension forms. It is found there is an opportunity of reducing the cost and environmental impacts to 80.3% and 77.8% and increasing the pavement performance to 146.6% compared to the base case. However, they are mutually compromised and cannot be reached simultaneously. The developed model reveals the quantitatively interactive relationship of the three objectives and helps optimize the asphalt pavement maintenance plans. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, Turkey's railway transport system has shown considerable improvement. Today, our country has 12,000 km total rail network; the High Speed Railway (HSR) accounts for 888 km, with the remainder being Conventional Railway (CR). This study aims to assess the railway passenger transportation system in Turkey, an integrated system of HSR/CR, from an environmental and economic point of view, via Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost (LCC) methodologies. The LCA analysis was realized using SimaPro 7.3.3 software and the CML2 baseline 2000 method for selected impact categories (abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, human toxicity and fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity). The LCC analysis was performed by developing a cost model for internal (energy, materials, transport) and external (pollutant, accident, noise) cost categories with this software. Our results show that, the total environmental load of HSR is shared by infrastructure and operations, with percentages of 58% and 42%, respectively. On the other hand, for CR, infrastructure created 39% of the total environmental load, while operations had 61%. Regarding cost, the impact in HSR resulted from infrastructure and operations, with percentages of 69% and 31%, respectively. In the CR system, infrastructure caused 21% of the total cost impact while operations led to 69%. The results are interpreted in the light of a Monte Carlo simulation analysis, performed to gauge the effects of data variation on the results. By providing insight through this study, evaluation of all railway transportation systems should be possible using only LCA/LCC methodologies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electrification of the transport sector is considered as a solution to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions and achieve sustainable mobility. Specifically in the case of electrification of passenger vehicles, various industrial and policy initiatives have been introduced. In this article, we present and assess three approaches - pro-technology, pro-simplicity and mix (of the aforementioned approaches) - to achieve target emission reductions in the Norwegian road transport sector. We also assess the influence of including 'Guarantee of Origin' certification for the electricity production in accounting for typical consumption electricity mix in Norway. Results show that for the same reductions in tail-pipe GHG emissions, pro-technology, pro-simplicity, and the mix scenario offer 22%, 29% and 28% reduction in the life cycle GHG emissions respectively, compared to the reference scenario in year 2020. However, the pro-simplicity scenario requires 25% reduction in vehicle-km driven compared to the pro-technology scenario, which provides the same passenger car mobility as in the reference case. When the GHG intensity of the electricity mix used to power EVs is corrected to account for actual consumption mix in Norway, a 13% reduction in the net GHG benefit of pro-technology scenario is observed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bituminous mixture is the premier material for road construction in Belgium. Innovative technologies to improve energy efficiency of pavement constructions are necessary. Warm mix asphalt may provide significant energy savings to the asphalt industry, but the environmental impact of the total life cycle has to be investigated. The use of additives may counteract the reduced environmental impact due to energy savings. This paper presents the results of an environmental impact assessment of four wearing course test sections. Using life cycle assessment, hot mix asphalt is compared to a cold asphalt mix with emulsion and warm mix asphalt with two types of additives: a synthetic zeolite and an organic Fischer-Tropsch wax. Neither hot nor warm mix asphalt could be preferred based on the results of this study, because the additive has a major influence on the environmental results. It was seen that the production of bitumen, the transport and energy in order to generate heat mainly contribute to the total environmental impact. The results from the sensitivity analyses show that the total environmental impact of the life of the pavement can vary significantly based on the choice of the specific data source and service life. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China has built the world's largest High Speed Rail (HSR) network. Its environmental impacts have been examined by the means of life cycle assessment (LCA) which describes the whole picture of the HSR system instead of single stages, with a case study for the highspeed railway that links Beijing and Shanghai. The research employs the China-specific life cycle inventory database Chinese Core Life Cycle Database (CLCD). Vehicle operation dominates most impact categories, while vehicle manufacturing/maintenance/disposal and infrastructure construction contribute mostly to mineral consumption (43% and 38%) and organic compounds in water (54% for infrastructure construction). Several scenarios are developed to explore effects of changes in HSR development, utilization, electricity mix, and infrastructure planning and construction. Suggestions are provided for improving the life cycle environmental performance of China's HSR systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Numerous Life Cycle Analysis of bread pointed out that wheat production and transportation have important impacts on the environment. But wheat is grown all around the world and it is not always consumed where it is produced. In this paper an analysis of the wheat movements around Europe is done, taking special attention on the Spanish situation. An optimization of wheat exchanges is done eliminating the import-export overlapping. This optimization entails a reduction of the number of trips by 34% and the CO2 emissions reduction due to transportation is calculated to be 121.175 tones. Consequently less trips, fewer trucks, less traffic and lower emissions that brings economic, social and environmental benefits. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reuse and valorisation of fish by-products is a key process for marine resources conservation. Usually, fishmeal and oil processing factories collect the by-products generated by fishing port and industry processing activities, producing an economical benefit to both parts. In the same way, different added-value products can be recovered by the valorisation industries whereas fishing companies save the costs associated with the management of those wastes. However, it is important to estimate the advantages of valorisation processes not only in terms of economic income, but also considering the environmental impacts. This would help to know if the valorisation of a residue provokes higher impact than other waste management options, which means that its advantages are probably not enough for guarantying a sustainable waste reuse. To that purpose, there are several methodologies to evaluate the environmental impacts of processes, including those of waste management, providing different indicators which give information on relevant environmental aspects. In the current study, a comparative environmental assessment between a valorisation process (fishmeal and oil production) and different waste management scenarios (composting, incineration and landfilling) was developed. This comparison is a necessary step for the development and industrial implementation of these processes as the best alternative treatment for fish by-products. The obtained results showed that both valorisation process and waste management treatments presented similar impacts. However, a significant benefit can be achieved through valorisation of fish by-products. Additionally, the implications of the possible presence of pollutants were discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy recovery from municipal solid waste plays a key role in sustainable waste management and energy security. However, there are numerous technologies that vary in suitability for different economic and social climates. This study sets out to develop and apply a multi-criteria decision making methodology that can be used to evaluate the trade-offs between the benefits, opportunities, costs and risks of alternative energy from waste technologies in both developed and developing countries. The technologies considered are mass burn incineration, refuse derived fuel incineration, gasification, anaerobic digestion and landfill gas recovery. By incorporating qualitative and quantitative assessments, a preference ranking of the alternative technologies is produced. The effect of variations in decision criteria weightings are analysed in a sensitivity analysis. The methodology is applied principally to compare and assess energy recovery from waste options in the UK and India. These two countries have been selected as they could both benefit from further development of their waste-to-energy strategies, but have different technical and socio-economic challenges to consider. It is concluded that gasification is the preferred technology for the UK, whereas anaerobic digestion is the preferred technology for India. We believe that the presented methodology will be of particular value for waste-to-energy decisionmakers in both developed and developing countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The quantity of leachate is crucial when assessing pollution emanating from municipal landfills. In most cases, existing leachate quantification measures only take into account one source - precipitation, which resulted in serious underestimation in China due to its waste properties: high moisture contents. To overcome this problem, a new estimation method was established considering two sources: (1) precipitation infiltrated throughout waste layers, which was simulated with the HELP model, (2) water squeezed out of the waste itself, which was theoretically calculated using actual data of Chinese waste. The two sources depended on climate conditions and waste characteristics, respectively, which both varied in different regions. In this study, 31 Chinese cities were investigated and classified into three geographic regions according to landfill leachate generation performance: northwestern China (China-NW) with semi-arid and temperate climate and waste moisture content of about 46.0%, northern China (China-N) with semi-humid and temperate climate and waste moisture content of about 58.2%, and southern China (China-S) with humid and sub-tropical/tropical climate and waste moisture content of about 58.2%. In China-NW, accumulated leachate amounts were very low and mainly the result of waste degradation, implying on-site spraying/irrigation or recirculation may be an economic approach to treatment. In China-N, water squeezed out of waste by compaction totaled 22-45% of overall leachate amounts in the first 40 years, so decreasing the initial moisture content of waste arriving at landfills could reduce leachate generation. In China-5, the leachate generated by infiltrated precipitation after HDPE geomembranes in top cover started failing, contributed more than 60% of the overall amounts over 100 years of landfilling. Therefore, the quality and placing of HDPE geomembranes in the top cover should be controlled strictly for the purpose of mitigation leachate generation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An important aspect of sustainable development is the implementation of effective and sustainable waste management strategies. The present study focuses on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to different waste management strategies for natural cork stoppers, namely incineration at a municipal solid waste incinerator, landfilling in a sanitary landfill, and recycling. In the literature, there are no LCA studies analyzing in detail the end-of-life stage of natural cork stoppers as well as other cork products. In addition, cork is usually treated as wood at the end-of-life stage. Thus, the outcome of this study can provide an important insight into this matter. The results showed that different management alternatives, namely incineration and recycling, could be chosen depending on the impact category considered. The former alternative presented the best environmental results in the impact categories of climate change, ozone depletion and acidification, while the latter for photochemical ozone formation and mineral and fossil resource depletion. The landfilling alternative did not present the best environmental performance in any of the impact categories. However, when the biogenic carbon dioxide emission was assessed for the climate change category, the landfilling alternative was found to be the most effective since most of the biogenic carbon would be permanently stored in the cork products and not emitted into the atmosphere. A sensitivity analysis was performed and the results showed that there are various parameters that can significantly influence the results (e.g., carbon content in cork and decay rate of cork in the landfill). Thus, LCA studies should include a detailed description concerning their assumptions when the end-of-life stage is included in the boundaries since they can influence the results, and furthermore, to facilitate the comparison of different end-of-life scenarios. The present study and the obtained results could be useful for the decision-making process concerning public solid waste policies and industrial strategies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) are widely used at laboratory scale in the treatment of different pollutants, and many references appear in the literature on this subject. However, there are not many works devoted to the study of the impact of these laboratory works from an environmental and economic point of view. For these reasons, this study is focused on the environmental impact evaluation, by LCA, of two AOPs (photo catalysis and pho-Fenton) in two different experimental setups (solarbox and CPCs), for the treatment of metoprolol. LCA has proved to be useful to compare the AOPs and the tested devices. In the same way, an economic assessment was made for the same AOPs and installations. Conclusions are very meaningful, pointing out that the cost of such experiments at laboratory level is not negligible and has to be seriously considered. As a consequence, laboratory work has to be accurately planned, and analysis techniques and proofs to be used must be carefully selected to avoid excessive increases in the costs of laboratory experiments.The global environmental impact of urban areas has greatly increased over the years, due to the growth of urbanisation and the associated increase in management costs. There are several measures aimed at mitigating this impact that affect in different ways the environmental, economic and societal spheres. This article has analysed a selection of different mitigation measures, related to the built environment, according to the life cycle approach, aimed at identifying the procedural features chosen by the different authors and defining a common way to deal with this issue. In particular, all the individual single steps of a Life Cycle Assessment/Life Cycle Costing of the different studies are analysed and the results of the individual measures are highlighted. The analysis has shown how the scientific literature is mainly focused on the evaluation of the impact of technological solutions related to individual buildings (cool/green roof). Less interest is shown in the solutions for urban areas, while, as far as the impact on greenhouse gas emissions is concerned, some studies are shifting the target to a global scale. Due to the accuracy whereby the calculation of the impact indicators deals with and structures the life cycle methods, opportunities to compare studies developed by different authors are quite rare and hard to find. Hence the need to find a simple, intuitive and flexible scheme to combine some of the most useful results of the bibliographical studies, in a comparative outline of different technological solutions, which can support the decision-making phase through a rough assessment.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is gaining interest as a significant global option to reduce emissions of CO2. CCS development requires an assessment of the potential risks associated with CO2 leakages from storage sites. Laboratory leaching tests have proved to be a useful tool to study the potential mobilization of metals from contaminated sediment in a decreased-pH environment that mimics such a leakage event. This work employs a self-organizing map (SOM) tool to interpret and analyze the release of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn from equilibrium, column, and pH-dependent leaching tests. In these tests, acidified seawater is used for simulating different CO2 leakage scenarios. Classification was carried out detailing the mobilization of contaminants for environments of varying pH, liquid-to-solid ratio, and type of contact of the laboratory leaching tests. Component planes in the SOMs allow visualization of the results and the determination of the worst case of element release. The pH-dependent leaching test with initial addition of either base or acid was found to mobilize the highest concentrations of metals.Embodied energy in barns is found to contribute to about 10-30% of total energy use on dairy farms. Nevertheless, research on sustainability of dairy farming has largely excluded consideration of embodied energy. The main objectives of this study were to apply an established model from the residential and commercial building sector and estimate the amount of embodied energy in the building envelopes on 20 dairy farms in Norway. Construction techniques varied across the buildings and our results showed that the variables which contributed most significantly to levels of embodied energy were the area per cow-place, use of concrete in walls and insulation in concrete walls. Our findings are in contrast to the assumption that buildings are similar and would show no significant differences. We conclude that the methodology is sufficiently flexible to accommodate different building design and use of materials, and allows for an efficient means of estimating embodied energy reducing the work compared to a mass material calculation. Choosing a design that requires less material or materials with a low amount of embodied energy, can significantly reduce the amount of embodied energy in buildings. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The objective of this study is to understand the role of life cycle analysis (LCA) in building system design process based on survey inputs from building system designers and a numerical sensitivity analysis. This paper first presents findings on the perceived importance of building life cycle assessment completed by 96 practicing designers from August 2012 to April 2013. The majority of respondents, approximately 70%, work as building system designers in the U.S. The building system designers are divided into three categories: (1) enclosure system designers, (2) mechanical system designers, and (3) designers working on both systems. One of the major survey findings is that life cycle assessments are much less used in building system design than energy simulations. The primary reason for performing a life cycle analysis for a building design project is a requirement from a building owner. Furthermore, Fisher's test shows that respondents' profession, company size, and work experience have significant correlations with the deployment of energy simulations and life cycle assessments in building design projects. ANOVA-based analyses demonstrate that there is no statically significant difference among the three categories of system designer responses on the importance of building components and design selection criteria. Interestingly, the sensitivity analyses performed for the medium size DOE (Department of Energy) reference building indicate that wall assemblies have a much larger impact on building life cycle costs than window properties. The comparison between sensitivity analysis and survey results indicates that the influence of window properties on life cycle cost is over estimated by most of the surveyed participants. Overall, this study revealed that LCA is still not widely used in the building industry even though it would help address design biases toward building systems that do not deliver the expected performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG: CO2, CH4, N2O) emissions for woodchip-paved walkways using tsunami salt-damaged wood was conducted in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture. The GHG emissions for woodchip-paved walkways from the raw material procurement process to the construction process were 2.62 kg-CO2-eq/m(2)/year. Of these, most were for the raw material procurement process (88 %), with the production process accounting for 7 %, the transportation process < 1 %, and the construction process 4 %. In the raw material procurement process, almost all of the GHG emissions were related to raw materials for adhesive. On the other hand, in the disposal process, use of disposed chips as energy (heat supply) in place of heavy oil obtained GHG emission reductions of 2.42 kg-CO2-eq/m(2)/year. With these taken into account, the net GHG emissions of the woodchip-paved walkway were reduced to 0.20 kg-CO2-eq/m(2)/year. We found that using a woodchip-paved walkway to replace an asphalt-paved walkway could reduce GHG emissions by 1.45 kg-CO2-eq/m(2)/year, and replacing an artificial turf walkway could reduce GHG emissions by 1.61 kg-CO2-eq/m(2)/year. However, achieving these reductions depends upon maintaining the woodchip pavement for at least 2 years and using the disposed chips as energy.Legumes have been proposed as biorefinery feedstock primarily due to their low nitrogen fertilizer demand, low fossil energy-related greenhouse gas emissions and high protein content, enabling efficient protein feed, food or amino acid production. Grain legumes (pulses) occupy approx. 1.2% of the arable land in Sweden, with faba bean, which is used as a protein feed, being one of the most common. Utilization of the whole crop, including the beans and the remaining aboveground biomass, can enable co-production of feed, food and/or fuel in high quantities, as faba bean has potentially high total biomass yield. In this study, Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (CLCA) was used to analyze a change from the current use of faba bean as protein feed for dairy cows (Reference scenario) to two alternative uses where the whole crop is harvested: whole crop processing in a green biorefinery producing ethanol, protein concentrate feed and fuel briquettes (Biorefinery scenario), or with the whole crop used as roughage feed (Roughage scenario). Impacts on climate change, arable land use and primary fossil energy use were considered. The changed use of faba bean resulted in changes in the feedstuff requirements for dairy cows, which were highly influential for the results. Whole drop harvesting as opposed to bean harvesting with return of crop residues resulted in increased climate impact and energy use during the agricultural and processing stages. On including substitution effects of the products, the Biorefinery scenario resulted in + 25, - 20% and - 100% change for climate impact, arable land use and energy use, respectively, in relation to the Reference situation. The increase in climate impact was primarily due to soil carbon changes and increased demand for marginal grain. When the whole faba bean crop was used as roughage (Roughage scenario), the corresponding changes were + 164%, - 130% and + 167% for climate change, arable land use and energy use, respectively. The increased impact was due to increased use of feed grain as a result of using the protein-rich roughage. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to combat the threat of climate change, countries have begun to implement policies which restrict GHG emissions in the electricity sector. However, the development of national electricity mixes should also be sensitive to resource availability, geo-political forces, human health impacts, and social equity concerns. Policy focused on GHG goals could potentially lead to adverse consequences in other areas. To explore the impact of "climate-centric" policy making on long-term electricity mix changes, we develop two cases for Peru and Spain analyzing their changing electricity grids in the period 1989-2013. We perform a Life Cycle Assessment of annual electricity production to catalogue the improvements in GHG emissions relative to other environmental impacts. We conclude that policies targeting GHG reductions might have the co-benefit of also reducing air pollution and toxicity at the expense of other important environmental performance indicators such as water depletion. Moreover, as of 2013, both countries generate approximately equal GHG emissions per kWh, and relatively low emission rates of other pollutants compared to nations of similar development levels. Although climate-centric policy can lead to some positive environmental outcomes in certain areas, energy policy-making should be holistic and include other aspects of sustainability and vulnerability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An increasing global awareness that the supply and security of petroleum-based materials is diminishing, coupled with environmental concerns related to climate change, water availability, and soil degradation, has increased demand for more renewable, diversified, and sustainable agricultural production systems. The objective of this work was to determine if a biogenic approach, focused on producing perennial grasses on marginal Mediterranean land as feedstock for bioenergy or bio-based products, could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions without depleting soil nutrients, water supplies, or negatively impacting biological and landscape diversity. This study, funded by European Union (EU), was conducted under project optimization of perennial grasses for biomass production (OPTIMA) using environmental impact assessment (EIA) protocols to quantify local environmental impacts of producing perennial grasses, in the Mediterranean region. Different end uses were investigated and biogenic products were compared with conventional ones. The EIA assessment indicated that the biogenic system had low erodibility potential, reduced disturbance of soil properties, and minimal hydrological impacts. Less tillage and high biomass production supported biological and landscape diversity, but site-specific factors should be used to appropriately match the specific crop and location. We conclude that producing perennial grasses on marginal Mediterranean land is feasible and if appropriately managed will have relatively few environmental side effects.We estimated emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from development of a large bioenergy industry in New York State, a humid continental region of 12.6 million hectares of mixed urban, agricultural, and forest land uses. Six representative feedstocks were considered: maize grain, maize stover, warm season grass, short rotation willow, and hardwood and softwood residues from existing mixed-species forests. We analyzed how variation in land quality and management affects feedstock yields and related GHG emissions. Emissions from existing forest harvest are only due to equipment use and emit 0.01-0.02 Mg CO(2)e/Mg hardwood and softwood, respectively. Development of purpose-grown biomass crops will require the use of lower quality lands (the extensive margin), resulting in higher GHG emissions per metric ton of biomass harvested. For example, projected grass yields for 2020 range from 7-16 Mg/ha Wightman et al (Bioenerg Res doi: with emissions ranging from 0.14 to 0.32 Mg CO(2)e/Mg grass. Average emissions from willow and grass across available land are 0.12 and 0.19 Mg CO(2)e/Mg dry biomass, respectively. Emissions from biomass crops are primarily due to nitrogen (61-75 %), lime (14-22 %), and equipment (6-11 %). Based on our analysis, production of these feedstocks emits 0.5 % (hardwood) to 37.8 % (maize grain) of the CO2-equivalents captured by photosynthesis in the biomass prior to conversion to usable energy. This analysis indicates that perennial systems (existing forest, woody crops, and grasses) provide the best yield on the lowest quality lands with lowest GHG emissions per metric ton of harvested biomass.The climate mitigation potential of using logging residues (tree tops and branches) for bioenergy has been debated. In this study, a time-dependent life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed using a single-stand perspective. Three forest stands located in different Swedish climate zones were studied in order to assess the global temperature change when using logging residues for producing district heating. These systems were compared with two fossil reference systems in which the logging residues were assumed to remain in the forest to decompose over time, while coal or natural gas was used for energy. The results showed that replacing coal with logging residues gave a direct climate benefit from a single-stand perspective, while replacing natural gas gave a delayed climate benefit of around 8-12 years depending on climate zone. A sensitivity analysis showed that the time was strongly dependent on the assumptions for extraction and combustion of natural gas. The LCA showed that from a single-stand perspective, harvesting logging residues for bioenergy in the south of Sweden would give the highest temperature change mitigation potential per energy unit. However, the differences between the three climate zones studied per energy unit were relatively small. On a hectare basis, the southern forest stand would generate more biomass compared to the central and northern locations, which thereby could replace more fossil fuel and give larger climate benefits.The majority of structures in seismic-prone areas worldwide are structures that have been designed either without seismic design considerations, or using codes of practice that are seriously inadequate in the light of current seismic design principles. In Cyprus, after a series of earthquakes that occurred between 1995 and 1999, it was decided to carry out an unprecedented internationally seismic retrofitting of all school buildings, taking into account the sensitivity of the society towards these structures. In this paper representative school buildings are analysed in both their pristine condition and after applying retrofitting schemes typical of those implemented in the aforementioned large-scale strengthening programme. Non-linear analysis is conducted on calibrated analytical models of the selected buildings and fragility curves are derived for typical reinforced concrete and unreinforced masonry structures. These curves are then used to carry out a feasibility study, including both benefit-cost and life-cycle analysis, and evaluate the effectiveness of the strengthening programme.The International Journal of LCA recently published two articles that highlight life cycle assessment (LCA) research worldwide: Chen et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 19(10):1674-1685, 2014) and Hou et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 20(4):541-555, 2015). Both research papers conducted a bibliometric analysis using the Web of Science (WoS) database and ranked scientific journals and research institutions according to publication performances based on article counts and citation analysis. The expected outcome of this work is to contribute to a better map of global scientific LCA research- a vital tool in the field. However, the methodology used to retrieve the publications showed that many key LCA research articles were not taken into account in the surveyed literature and revealed inconsistencies related to author affiliation. By studying their research outputs, significant insights have been gained into ways to improve the indexing of scientific papers and, in turn, help researchers better disseminate and communicate their findings and overcome ranking bias.This paper reviews the use of economic values in life cycle assessment (LCA) and the justification for environmental life cycle costing (ELCC) as the 'economic pillar' of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). A transdisciplinary review of economic values in LCA was undertaken and structured with a series of research questions. The review considered the philosophy of science and focussed on the concept of value as a point of synthesis among the disciplines of LCA, economics and ethics. An example from the ELCC Code of Practice was reviewed to highlight the challenges and alternative approaches explored. 'Value choices' and the role of decision makers have been a long-standing and largely unresolved discussion in LCA. Over the past two decades, LCA has been dominated by a utilitarian concept of ethics and valuation based on willingness to pay. This has a number of limitations which are further exacerbated in ELCC and its accounting definition of cost. ELCC struggles to address social costs, and the focus on the decision maker may define values that are not compatible with sustainability. John Rawls' 'justice as fairness' and Amartya Sen's capability approach were considered to reappraise the use of UN Conventions considered in early LCA literature on values. It was argued that there is an ethical basis to prioritise minimum standards in LCSA to address primary social goods as well as uncertainty in evaluations. This paper questioned the reliance of LCA on utilitarianism and valuation using willingness to pay and, in particular, the claim of ELCC as the economic pillar of LCSA. Concepts of fairness and capability may overcome some of these limitations and provide a basis for integration of social, economic and environmental pillars of sustainability. Although the ethical justification of prescriptive values may only reach agreement on minimum conditions for social and economic cooperation, it was argued that this may provide a reasonable starting point given the global sustainability challenges over the coming decades. A two-stage approach for the implementation of economic values in LCSA was suggested for further debate and discussion.In the process of developing Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR)-currently tested in various pilots in the Single Market for Green Products initiative of the European Commission-the definition of product category benchmarks and environmental performance classes is a crucial element of each PEFCR. Whilst life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology developed over the last 20 years can be used for many other topics to be tackled in the pilots, there is a clear lack of methodology for the determination of benchmarks and environmental performance classes. In this article, hence, we address this gap and develop a procedure for benchmarking and environmental performance classes in LCA. To do this, given requirements and definitions of the PEF guidelines on both subjects are taken as a basis and are refined by using common LCA techniques like hot spot and sensitivity analyses. The specific steps of the procedure are applied systematically in a case study using sports shoes as an example. The resulting procedure involves the definition of a scenario vector, which is composed of relevant life cycle phases as well as the lifetime of the product (i.e. sports shoes) as variables. On the basis of the hot spot and sensitivity analyses, these variables are quantified, first, to generate the benchmark and, second, to determine the environmental performance classes around the benchmark for each considered impact category individually. In addition, the influence of data uncertainty on the class distribution is assessed with the help of the Monte Carlo simulation. The results of the application in the case study demonstrate the high impact of the product's lifetime on the final environmental performance classes, and the importance of data quality. Limitations are identified regarding data availability and the harmonisation of the classes to potentially create a PEF label. A debate is induced on the validity of such a label when considering the fact that the characterisation methods and factors proposed in the PEF guidelines may not be complete or accurate enough.India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Energy is a critical input for socio-economic development, and its strategy aims at efficiency and security. To provide access to environmentally friendly energy resources, the national biofuel policy targets cellulosic feedstocks which necessitates analysing feedstocks using holistic approaches. This paper studies the life cycle impact of ethanol production from cellulosic agricultural feedstocks. The difficulty of finding appropriate life cycle inventory data for the analysed biofuels in the Indian context is overcome by combining data from diverse sources such as journal articles, government reports and personal contact with farmers. Variation in these numbers across studies is captured by means of error bars. These data are used to calculate environmental sustainability metrics such as energy return on investment, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and life cycle water use for each fuel. Biomass sources considered in this work include cellulose from wheat stalk, rice husk, sorghum stalk, sugarcane bagasse and cotton stalk. These results are compared with ethanol from molasses and sugarcane juice, which are the conventional approaches. Results of the analysis indicate that sorghum stalk is most attractive due to its high energy return on investment, low greenhouse gas emissions, and low water and land use. Ethanol from rice husk has relatively high water use and greenhouse gas emissions, but these are within the margin of variability of other fuels. Despite the attractiveness of sorghum stalk from the current analysis, it is not likely that this will become a major feedstock for cellulosic ethanol in India. This is because farmers value sorghum as an animal feed and may not be willing to convert it into ethanol. This is the first life cycle study of Indian cellulosic biofuel pathways. The inventory data collected in this work is a novel contribution that should be useful for other studies. Findings from the analysis can help guide the decision-making process in the biofuel sector for India.Life cycle inventory (LCI) databases provide information of fundamental importance to the mainstream practice of life cycle assessment (LCA). Development and management of LCI data resources is a tremendous task. This paper seeks to develop design principles for organizing efforts around distributed database management by considering the structure of inventory networks. A number of LCI databases in wide use are placed into a partial ordering using graph theoretic techniques. First, strongly connected components, which indicate cyclic dependencies, are identified in each network. Then, those components are collapsed to single nodes, rendering the graphs acyclic. The acyclic graphs are then ordered topologically. Large databases were found to contain a single large strongly connected component, designated the background, that satisfied dependencies of other processes in the database. Processes with a lower position in the ordering than the background, designated the foreground, depended on inputs from the background in order to operate, but no background processes required inputs from any foreground processes. Processes higher in the order than the background, designated the downstream, satisfied dependencies in the background but did not themselves require the background. Databases sharing a common set of product flows could be compared on the basis of their foreground, background, and downstream segments. Making a distinction between an acyclic foreground and a strongly connected background has computational utility because the foreground and background databases can be managed independently. Describing LCA studies on the basis of their dependence on background product flows would allow them to be easily moved among distinct databases that provide the same products and would also facilitate critical review. Background databases themselves can be broken up by scope into mutually dependent systems that can be independently maintained. LCI database maintainers should consider maintaining the foreground and background components of their databases separately because of the differing implications of modeling decisions made in each of the two cases. A framework for database-independent enumeration of intermediate flows would advance distributed data management.This paper explores the potential to simplify the life cycle assessment (LCA) process for a hydropower (HP) system, without significantly compromising the accurate representation of environmental burdens. Taking five HP case studies, two questions were addressed: (i) Does a 1 % materiality threshold capture at least 95 % of the key environmental burdens from cradle-to-operation? (ii) What is the effect of applying a materiality threshold based on the global warming potential (GWP) indicator for capturing other environmental impacts? A comprehensively detailed inventory database was developed for five modern small- and micro-HP case studies (50-650 kW), representing run-of-river and water supply infrastructure installations from the UK and Ireland. Following ISO 14040 standards, the environmental burdens were quantified for these HP projects. Normalised results were compared against a natural gas combined cycle power plant (NG-CCP) reference system for marginal grid electricity generation. The adoption of a 1 % materiality threshold as advised by some guidelines led to cumulative omissions of up to 7.5 % of the total project burdens for some HP installations, contravening the 95 % inclusion target. The number of project components differed between the two types of HP projects and target exceedances were more likely for projects with more components. Using a lower materiality threshold of 0.2 or 0.5 % ensured that the 95 % target was achieved for all HP projects. Considering GWP as an indicator burden for assessing materiality thresholds led to significant omissions for other environmental burdens, e.g. abiotic resource depletion potential (ARDP). Omitting a number of small components with low-carbon contributions (e.g. copper wiring) led to a 19 % underestimation for contributors to the resource-based (GWP) impact categories. A simplified methodology may not capture all environmental burdens for a hydropower system or fossil fuel-based power plant. Basing a 1 % materiality threshold on contribution to a single burden, such as GWP, can lead to omissions of significant contributory components for that burden, and larger omissions for other burdens. ARDP is a particularly important impact category for renewable energy systems and appears to be particularly sensitive to materiality thresholds. It is important that practitioners take care with materiality thresholds when evaluating the environmental performance of all types of renewable energy systems through LCA. Including a materiality threshold to draw practicable system boundaries is necessary; however, reducing the threshold contribution to 0.5 % would be more likely to ensure that at least 95 % of environmental burdens are accounted for.Electrified vehicles (EVs) couple transportation and electrical infrastructures, impacting vehicle sustainability, transportation resiliency, and electrical grid stability. These impacts occur across timescales; grid stability at the millisecond scale, resiliency at the daily scale, and sustainability over years and decades. Integrated models of these systems must share data to explore timescale dependencies, and reveal unanticipated outcomes. This paper examines EV adoption for sustainability, resiliency, and stability effects. Sustainability findings, consistent with previous studies, indicate that electrification generally reduces lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and increases SOx and NOx. Electrified vehicles enhance vehicle resiliency (ability of vehicle to complete typical trips during fuel outage). Coupled results enhance EV resilience research, finding that a 16-km (10-mi) all-electric range plug-in hybrid EV improves resiliency similar to 50% versus a gasoline-only vehicle. Increasing EV market share reduces grid stability. Stability depends upon charging profiles and background electrical demand. Stability-related grid outages increase with EV market penetration. This paper modeled these systems in their coupled form across timescales yielding results not obvious if the systems were modeled in isolation. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.Increasing variability in climate and environmental degradation call for an infrastructure design paradigm that considers both sustainability and resilience using performance-based metrics. This paper discusses recent progress in this direction, including recent and emerging infrastructure rating systems, design technologies and tools, and examples of sustainable and resilience infrastructure projects. Recommendations are made for new research, development of new technologies and tools, and policy changes needed to further advance progress towards integrating performance-based approaches across the entire design cycle. These include a call for improved models and tools to better evaluate the full suite of infrastructure costs and benefits, both internally and externally; multicriteria design to assess tradeoffs among all costs and benefits at multiple scales; and an iterative design cycle based on measurable performance criteria. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.There is a huge uncertainty in the GHG emissions reduction potential with transport electrification. The typical Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practice of modeling a pathway by reducing what is known about a model parameter to a single value to produce a single-point GHG emissions estimate has led to reports in literature on the GHG emissions differences between Electric Vehicles (EV) and conventional Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) to range significantly from below 10% to above 60%. In this study we performed a LCA, combined with a Monte Carlo stochastic simulation, to determine the uncertainty in GHG emission differences between EVs and gasoline ICEs, by taking into account of all the possible variations that may affect the lifecycle GHG emissions estimates for EVs and ICEs based on the technologies-already available in the market today. This study provides insights into the relative importance of the factors driving the lifecycle GHG emissions difference between the EVs and ICEs, and a measure of the probability for EVs providing benefits over ICEs globally today and projected to 2040. This paper offers critical perspective to inform the global debates on the role of transport electrification as means to a low carbon mobility future, and the implications for policy makers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides new knowledge about the life-cycle emissions of natural gas compared to traditional petroleum-based fuels in the marine sector. While natural gas will reduce local air pollutants, such as sulfur oxides and particulate matter, the implications for greenhouse gases depend on how the natural gas is extracted, processed, distributed, and used. Applying a "technology warming potential" (TWP) approach, natural gas as a marine fuel achieves climate parity within 30 years for diesel ignited engines, though could take up to 190 years to reach climate parity with conventional fuels in a spark ignited engine. Movement towards natural gas as a marine fuel continues to progress, and conditions exist in some regions to make a near-term transition to natural gas feasible. Liquefied natural gas in marine transportation is likely to be incentivized where economics favoring natural gas is coupled with air emissions public policy targets. To ensure that climate neutral conversion is achieved with the least delay, TWP results highlight the important role of energy policy for infrastructure development of upstream pathways and onboard ship systems technology innovation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Current transitions in the global chemical and petrochemical industries provide a unique opportunity to reduce the energy and emissions footprint per unit of production as more efficient technology is brought on-line. They also provide an opening for a revival in industrial R&D focused on improving processes as current technology competes with newer and revived options to address market needs. Over 90% of chemical processes depend on catalysts to efficiently convert raw materials to products. This presents a pivotal opportunity to apply a range of recently advanced capabilities to catalysis and related process improvements. It is also the time to drive emerging technology and game-changers where advances in fundamental science & engineering are needed to lower hurdles and pave the way for next generation technologies. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The life cycle assessment was employed to evaluate the environmental impacts of three farming systems (indoor intensive, semi-intensive and extensive systems) of sea cucumber living near Qingdao, China, which can effectively overcome the interference of inaccurate background parameters caused by the diversity of economic level and environment in different regions. Six indicators entailing global warming potential (1.86E + 04, 3.45E + 03, 2.36E + 02), eutrophication potential (6.65E + 01, -1.24E + 02, -1.65E + 02), acidification potential (1.93E + 02, 4.33E + 01, 1.30E + 00), photochemical oxidant formation potential (2.35E-01, 5.46E -02, 2.53E-03), human toxicity potential (2.47E + 00, 6.08E-01, 4.91E + 00) and energy use (3.36E + 05, 1.27E + 04, 1.48E + 03) were introduced in the current study. It was found that all environmental indicators in the indoor intensive farming system were much higher than those in semi-intensive and extensive farming systems because of the dominant role of energy input, while energy input also contributed as the leading cause factor for most of the indicators in the semi-intensive farming system. Yet in the extensive farming system, infrastructure materials played a major role. Through a comprehensive comparison of the three farming systems, it was concluded that income per unit area of indoor intensive farming system was much higher than those of semi-intensive and extensive farming systems. However, the extensive farming system was the most sustainable one. Moreover, adequate measures were proposed, respectively, to improve the environmental sustainability of each farming system in the present study.Pampas region grows more than 80% of Argentina's main crops, with maize (Zea maiz L.), soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) producing crop and landscape homogeneity that reduces biodiversity, agricultural system resilience and current and future regional welfare. With growing population and markets, there is a call for new agricultural patterns to meet increased food demand, together with concern for reducing environmental impact and improving social welfare. These challenges need rigorous approaches to measuring technological change costs and benefits as well as evaluating environmental impact of farmers' management practices. The objectives of this study are: [1] to evaluate resource use and environmental impact of current agricultural patterns in the northern part of Pampas region, [2] to contrast this with agricultural systems of previous decades, and [3] to analyze the incidence on space and time scales of the different proportions of land allocated to these three crops. Life cycle evaluations of cropping systems enlarge the scope of the analysis and help identify how problems might be solved. We utilize the SUMMA (SUstainability Multimethod Multiscale Assessment) framework for assessing the performance of integrated crop production in the northern Pampas in the years 1986-87, 1995-96, and 2009-10 based on actual land use data, compared to current systems with similar proportions of land distribution for the three crops, and to a wheat/soybean annual system. We also simulate other potential alternative land distribution scenarios. Results indicate a worsening of 9 to 12 out of 15 enVironmental indicators per unit of area (density of impacts), while there is an improvement per unit of product or income. The grain yield accounted in energy per hectare increased three times in relation to the year of-reference (1986), while the energy demand decreased by 32%, blue water demand increased 50%. Acidification increased more than twice (7.99 kg SO2 eq./ha), while carbon emissions (982 kg CO2 eq./ha in 2009) decreased. These results provide a benchmark for further studies where new alternatives of crop distribution may prove environmentally and economically desirable choices for farmers in the Pampas. (C)2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, bio-based chemicals have gained interest as a renewable alternative to petrochemicals. However, there is a significant need to assess the technological, biological, economic and environmental feasibility of bio-based chemicals, particularly during the early research phase. Recently, the Multi-scale framework for Sustainable Industrial Chemicals (MuSIC) was introduced to address this issue by integrating modelling approaches at different scales ranging from cellular to ecological scales. This framework can be further extended by incorporating modelling of the petrochemical value chain and the de novo prediction of metabolic pathways connecting existing host metabolism to desirable chemical products. This multi-scale, multi-disciplinary framework for quantitative assessment of bio-based chemicals will play a vital role in supporting engineering, strategy and policy decisions as we progress towards a sustainable chemical industry.Agricultural systems in the Mediterranean region are increasingly getting under pressure due to both global warming and the aggravating competition for agricultural land. Perennial grasses have the potential to tackle both challenges: they are drought-resistant crops and considered not to compete for high-productivity agricultural land because they can be grown on marginal land. This paper presents the outcome of a screening life cycle assessment (LCA) conducted as part of an integrated sustainability assessment within the EU-funded project 'Optimization of Perennial Grasses for Biomass Production' (OPTIMA). The project aims at optimised production of Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus), giant reed (Arundo donax L.), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) and cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L.) on marginal land in the Mediterranean region. Different cultivation and use options were investigated by comparing the entire life cycles of bioenergy and bio-based products to equivalent conventional products. The LCA results show that the cultivation of perennial grasses on marginal land and their use for stationary heat and power generation can achieve substantial greenhouse gas emission and non-renewable energy savings, with Miscanthus allowing for savings ranging up to 13 t CO2 eq./(ha center dot year) and 230 GJ/(ha center dot year), respectively. Negative environmental impacts are less pronounced. Significant parameters include irrigation needs and moisture content at harvest, which determines energy demand for technical drying. We conclude that the cultivation of perennial grasses on marginal land in the Mediterranean region provides potentials for climate change mitigation together with comparatively low other environmental impacts, if several boundary conditions and recommendations are met.Building construction is a leading industry in China's economy and is also important in the fight against climate change mitigation. This paper fills the research gap by investigating the relationship between CO2 mitigation potential and energy performance in the building construction industry using a counterfactual analysis approach. A commonly used method is adopted to calculate energy-related CO2 emissions in the building construction industry and a newly proposed total-factor non-radial directional distance function is conducted to calculate energy performance. Further, they are connected through a logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition analysis. The empirical results show that: (i) CO2 emissions in China's building construction industry are increasing rapidly and electricity consumption has become the main source of emissions. (ii) Energy intensity decline is the major contributor to CO2 mitigation. (iii) There exists a large room for energy intensity decline and more than 10% of the CO2 emissions could be reduced if the average energy intensity could achieve the level of the best performing provinces. (iv) The coastal regions show better energy performance than the interior regions and there is a significant tendency towards divergence of energy performance among provinces. It is thus necessary to encourage technology diffusion and mandate minimum energy performance standards. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this study is to analyze life cycle energy and CO2 emission profiles by employing an input- output analysis method for urban houses in major cities of Indonesia. Two surveys investigating building material inventory and household energy consumption within individual houses were conducted in Bandung in 2011 and 2012. The results show that, if reused and recycled materials were assumed to be zero, the averaged embodied energy for simple, medium and luxurious houses in Bandung was larger than that for their respective houses in Jakarta. Overall, the average annual energy consumption of all samples in Jakarta was approximately 20.6 GJ, which is 5.0 GJ larger than that in Bandung. In terms of life cycle energy, the operational energy accounted for 79%- 86% and 69%- 81% of the total for respective houses in Jakarta and Bandung. The profiles of life cycle CO2 emissions are similar to those of energy. The results of the scenario analysis prove that the promotion of reusing/recycling is important to reduce building material inputs/waste and their corresponding embodied energy. It is also important to reduce the use of air- conditioning for operational energy in the future by adopting passive cooling techniques wherever possible.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from construction processes are a serious concern globally. Of the several approaches taken to assess emissions, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based methods do not just take into account the construction phase, but consider all phases of the life cycle of the construction. However, many current LCA approaches make general assumptions regarding location and effects, which do not do justice to the inherent dynamics of normal construction projects. This study presents a model to assess the embodied energy and associated GHG emissions, which is specifically adapted to address the dynamics of infrastructure construction projects. The use of the model is demonstrated on the superstructure of a prefabricated bridge. The findings indicate that Building Information Models/Modeling (BIM) and Discrete Event Simulation (DES) can be used to efficiently generate project-specific data, which is needed for estimating the embodied energy and associated GHG emissions in construction settings. This study has implications for the advancement of LCA-based methods (as well as project management) as a way of assessing embodied energy and associated GHG emissions related to construction.Biomass sustainability criteria were introduced in the UK following the EU Renewable Energy Directive. Criteria are now applicable to solid biomass and biogas, however because it is not mandatory criteria can be adapted by member states with the risk of different interpretation. Operators are required to report greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for every MJ of energy produced. This paper provides a rigorous analysis of the current GHG emissions accounting methodology for biogas facilities to assess expected compliance for producers. This research uses data from operating CHP and biomethane facilities to calculate GHG emissions using the existing methodology and Government calculator. Results show that whilst many biogas facilities will meet GHG thresholds, as presently defined by Government, several operators may not comply due to methodological uncertainties and chosen operating practices. Several GHG accounting issues are identified which need to be addressed so the biogas industry achieves its reporting obligations and is represented objectively with other bioenergy technologies. Significant methodological issues are highlighted; including consignment definition, mass balance allocation, measurement of fugitive methane emissions, accounting for digestate co-products, fossil fuel comparators, and other accounting problems. Recommendations are made to help address the GHG accounting issues for policy makers and the biogas industry. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Faced with a changing climate, bioenergy has been promoted as a sustainable resource. However, while it is a renewable energy source, biofuel cultivation comes with several environmental problems such as land use change and water consumption, the environmental impacts of which often counterbalance the reduced global warming potential compared to fossil alternatives. Methods: This paper presents life cycle assessment (LCA) results for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (carbon footprints) and water consumption (water scarcity footprint) for different first-generation biofuels in comparison with their fossil alternatives. We employed standard (secondary) LCA data including uncertainties of process activities, resource consumption, and emissions throughout the value chain in order to compare different options under the influence of uncertainties and in order to identify the contribution to variance (CTV) of input data, giving insight into which environmental flows need to be better assessed. Furthermore, by also introducing uncertainties in the impact assessment for GHG emissions and water consumption, we were able to determine which LCA stage is more influenced by uncertainties, the accounting or impact assessment stage. Additionally, we analyzed the effect of choosing different time horizons GHGs (typically set to 100 years). Results: The analyzed fuels perform differently depending on the choice of impact category considered. For liquid fuels, we observed a tradeoff between resource depletion and water footprint, while biogas options have lower impacts in most categories. Biogas from waste has significantly lower carbon footprints than natural gas for long time horizons and a similar water footprint. However, with the 20-year Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) factors, methane emissions from biogas largely compensate the fossil CO2 emissions in our case and no robust difference is observed under uncertainty considerations. Both impact assessment and inventory uncertainties are important. Due to the very high number of parameters, the CTV analysis was not robust for assessing GHG emissions. Conclusions: This study shows that uncertainty is important in LCA and carbon or water footprint assessment of agricultural feedstock production. Integration of parameter uncertainties helps to evaluate the significance of the difference from two product options. For biogas, the choice of the time horizon in carbon footprint assessment is decisive and needs a strong justification.Several studies in swine feed composition have demonstrated that protein levels may be modified without significant changes in meat quality in terms of carcass, lean and back fat yield. However, this variation may change certain technical indicators, such as daily weight gain. The aim of this study was to calculate the carbon footprint of the finishing stage in swine production considering four scenarios of feed composition (P18, P16, P15 and P13). The life cycle assessment methodology was applied with a life cycle inventory based on reports in the literature. The feed composition used in P18 (no soybean hulls or maize starch) had the best environmental performance for global warming per kilogram of feed. However, when evaluating the life cycle of finishing swine, P16 (containing soybean hulls, maize starch and synthetic amino acids) exhibited better environmental results; the feed used in this scenario had better technical indicators (in terms of daily weight gain), thereby reducing the feed amount for finishing swine. Using the feed composition for swine P16, the impact may be reduced by an average of 12 % compared with P13 (a high level of soybean hulls, maize starch and synthetic amino acids).There is presently overwhelming scientific consensus that global climate change is indeed occurring, and that human activities are the primary driver. An increasingly resource and carbon constrained world will continue to pose formidable challenges to major industries, including mining. Understanding the implications of climate change mitigation for the mining industry, however, remains limited. This paper presents the results of a feasibility study on the implementation of a clean development mechanism and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission reductions in the gold mining industry. It draws upon and extends the analysis of a case study conducted on gold mining operations in Thailand. The results from the case study indicated that total GHGs emissions by company A were approximately 36,886 tons carbon dioxide equivalents (tCO(2)e) per annual gold production capacity that meet the eligibility criteria for small-scaled clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. The electrostatic separation process was found to release the lowest amount of GHGs, whereas comminution (i.e. crushing and grinding) generated the highest GHGs emissions. By scope, the emission from purchased electricity (scope 2) is the most significant source. Opportunities for CDM projects implementation in the gold mining sector can be found in employing energy efficiency measures. Through innovation, some technical efficiency and technological development in gold processing (i. e. high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR), vertical roller mills (VRM), gravity pre-concentration and microwave heating technologies) that have the potential to reduce energy use and also lower carbon footprint of the gold mining were further discussed. The evidence reviews found that HPGR and VRM abatement technologies have shown energy and climate benefits as electricity savings and CO2 reduction of about 8-25.93 kWh/ton ore processed and 1.8-26.66 kgCO(2)/ton ore processed, respectively. Implications for further research and practice were finally raised.The availability and accessibility of natural resources are fundamental for human well-being and the functioning of global economies. International policies have been developed with the aim to ensure resource efficiency and to respond to environmental and socio-economic concerns towards the sustainable management of natural resources. In fact, building effective resource policies requires solid methodologies and indicators for monitoring resource extraction and consumption by the economies as well as all its related environmental impacts. The present study focuses on the European context, assessing current methodologies for resources analysis towards identifying their strengths and weaknesses in supporting policies. The study analyses trends in material resource extraction within Europe and imports over the past 10 years. Three approaches are compared: (i) "mass"-based accounting (i.e. material flow analysis); (ii) "impact assessment"-based, founded on the life cycle assessment methodology, and (iii) "resource criticality"-based, building on assessment of critical raw materials for EU economy. The paper shows through some examples that this methodological choice has relevant repercussions in terms of resource prioritization. Hence, the choice of the accounting methodology and the setting of targets should be guided by the policy objective(s) (i.e. dematerialization, environmental impact reduction and security of resource supply), possibly complementing the different insights coming from the three approaches. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.orgflicenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Wind energy is the world's fastest growing energy source. Specifically in the recent decade, offshore wind energy is the technology that has developed the fastest due to the stronger and stable winds produced at sea and the huge areas where it can be employed. Electricity production from wind sources has seen high growth along with wind turbine capacity, foreseeing a linear evolution in the next decade. Additionally, it has been well demonstrated recently that the larger the power per wind turbine unit installed, the lower the levelized cost of energy. Second generation high-temperature superconductor synchronous generators with direct-drive technology (2GHTSDDSG) for offshore wind energy applications have recently emerged as an alternative to consider instead of permanent-magnet direct-drive synchronous generators (PMDDSG), due to their lower dimensions and low weight per megawatt. This paper contains a detailed "cradle-to-gate" life-cycle assessment of the 15-MW2GHTSDDSG and PMDDSG, using GaBi 6 commercial software and PE International Professional and Ecoinvent 2.2 databases, as a result of quantifying each component required for the production. After a detailed inspection of each component fabrication, conclusions and recommendations are obtained and presented.Soimakallio et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 20(10):1364-1375, 2015) establish the need for baselines in attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) and thereby provide an important milestone in the evolving conceptualisation of both attributional and consequential LCA. The purpose of this commentary is to acknowledge Soimakallio et al.'s contribution, identify its implications for a number previously published papers, critique the use of natural regeneration baselines, and offer some further thoughts on the conceptual nature of attributional and consequential approaches. The methods used in this study were comparative analysis with other forms of attributional inventory and an illustrative example of alternative 'natural' baselines for carbon sequestration. The commentary concurs that attributional LCA requires baselines and that attributional studies are not inventories of absolute emissions and removals, contrary to previous statements by the present author. Nevertheless, a number of previous statements on attributional and consequential methods remain largely unchanged: attributional studies can be aggregated to approximate total (anthropogenic) environmental impacts; substitution is conceptually inappropriate for attributional LCA; and the attributional-consequential distinction can be applied to other forms of environmental assessment such as national, corporate, and community greenhouse gas inventories (attributional), and project and policy-level greenhouse gas assessments (consequential). A further finding is that natural regeneration baselines may not be appropriate for attributional studies and that some arguments in their favour may be symptomatic of a misconception of attributional LCA. Soimakallio et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 20(10):1364-1375, 2015) make an extremely useful contribution to the evolving conceptualisation of attributional and consequential approaches, which is highly important for methodological development and choosing the appropriate method for a given purpose.Urban water cycle construction processes are an important element to consider when assessing the sustainability of urban areas. The present study focuses on a structural and environmental analysis of cylindrical water tanks. The goal is to optimise cylindrical water tanks from both an environmental (environmental impacts due of life cycle assessment (LCA)) and a geometric perspective (building material quantities for construction purposes depending on the tank characteristics). A sample of 147 cases was defined based on different positions (buried, superficial and partially buried), dimensions (combinations of heights and radii) and storage capacities (between 100 and 10,000 m(3)). A structural analysis was conducted for a defined set of cases to determine the quantities of steel and concrete required for its construction. The environmental impacts of the entire life cycle were assessed through a life cycle assessment (LCA). Additionally, environmental standards (the less impactful option for each dimension assessed: geometry, storage capacity and position) defined in the study were applied to realistic cases to evaluate potential environmental savings. The LCA shows that materials are the main contributor to environmental impacts (more than transport, installation and end of life cycle stages). For this reason, the results of the structural and environmental assessments coincide. Taller water tanks have shown to be less impactful (60 to 70 % less impact for a 10.000-m(3) tank). Regarding the position, superficial water tanks have shown to have between 15 and 35 % less impact than buried ones. The environmentally preferred water storage capacity is between 1000 and 2500 m(3), being between 20 and 40 % less impact. For instance, an 8000-m(3) tank would emit 1040 t of CO2 eq. Applying the environmental standards 170.5 t of CO2 eq could be saved (16 % of the total amount). The results of this study show that among the cases analysed, superficially positioned cylindrical water tanks of 8.5 m in height and of between 1000 and 2500 m(3) in storage capacity present fewer impacts. The use of these standards in municipal water tanks construction projects may significantly reduce environmental impacts (10 to 40 %) in all impact categories.The aim of this work is to analyse and minimise, using a life cycle approach, the environmental performances of apple powders' production. Fruit powders, with respect to fresh fruits' juices, are easier to handle and used as an ingredient for the production of baby foods, snacks, and other items. A detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis was made to compare and optimise the two production processes, based on two drying techniques (drum or multistage drying), made by an Italian firm. All the quantities related to materials, energy consumption and emissions to air, soil and water were reported to the chosen functional unit (one apple powders' package). Data were analysed using SimaPro 8.0.4 software, whereas the Ecoinvent 3.1 database was used for the life cycle inventory, according to the reference standard for LCA (i.e. ISO 14040-14044). The system boundaries were set from apples' transportation to the company up to apple powders' distribution; in this way, a "from gate to gate" approach was followed. The IMPACT 2002+ method was used to select the impact categories. The ones that are mainly influenced by the industrial stages of apple powders' production are carcinogens, non-carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, aquatic acidification, global warming potential and mineral extraction. Among the two processes under study (a drum drying-based process and a multistage drying one), the first one (that is also the simpler and cheaper one) generated the higher emissions on all the impact categories. An in-depth analysis regarding all the industrial stages was made, in order to select the industrial steps whose impacts have to be minimised. For the process based on drum drying, the midpoint considered categories are mainly affected by the drying operation, whereas for the multistage drying-based process, some categories are mainly affected by drying, some others by storage. Different improvement scenarios were proposed to minimise the emissions related to both the apple powders' productions. Global emissions related to the apple powders' production were lowered using improved industrial scenarios. In order just to compare different scenarios characterised by not summable parameters, a global index (calculated as the sum of normalised values) was used. For the drum drying-based process, the global saving was equal to 31 %, whereas for the multistage drying-based process, it is equal to 27 %. Also in the case of improved scenarios, the drum drying-based process generated higher emissions on all the impact categories with respect to the multistage drying-based process.The planetary boundaries (PBs) framework suggests global limits for environmental interventions which could be used to set global goals for reducing environmental impacts. This paper proposes a procedure for using such global goals for setting impact-reduction targets at the scale of products for use, for example, in life cycle assessment (LCA) contexts, e.g. as a basis for evaluating the potential of interventions to reduce the environmental impact of products. The procedure consists of four steps: (i) identifying the PBs quantified in literature that correspond to an impact category which is studied in the product assessment context in question; (ii) interpreting what the identified PBs imply in terms of global impact-reduction targets; (iii) translating the outcome of (ii) to reduction targets for the particular global market segment to which the studied product belongs; and (iv) translating the outcome of (iii) to reduction targets for the studied product. The procedure requires some assumptions and value-based choices-the influence of these is tested by applying the procedure in a specific LCA context: a study of Swedish clothing consumption. The application of the procedure in an LCA context suggested the need for eliminating all or nearly all impact of Swedish clothing consumption for most impact categories. Thus, it is improbable that a single type of impact-reduction intervention (e.g. technological development or changed user behaviour) is sufficient. The outcome's strong dependence on impact category suggests that the procedure can help in prioritising among impact categories. Furthermore, the outcome exhibited a strong dependence on the chosen method for allocating the globally allowed impact between regions-this was tested by applying different principles identified in a literature review on the allocation of emissions rights. The outcome also strongly depended on the geographical scope-this was tested by changing the geographical scope from Sweden to Nigeria. The proposed procedure is feasible to use for LCA practitioners and other environmental analysts, and data is available to apply the procedure in contexts with different geographical scopes. Value-based choices are, however, unavoidable and significantly influence the outcome, which accentuates the subjectivity and potentially controversial nature of allocating a finite impact space to certain regions, market segments and products. How to match PBs with appropriate LCA impact categories is an important area for future research.Growing public pressure, stricter environmental standards but also the awareness that greener supply chains can be more attractive for investors have made it more important than ever for firms to go "green." While scholars have investigated technological production options, recycling and logistics flows, there is no research that studies the interplay between emissions and the costs of the supply chain contingent upon the production volume allocation and the energy mix. The results, based on a case study in the German automotive industry, show that by optimizing the energy mix, the CO2 emissions of the supply chain can be reduced by 30% at almost zero variable cost increase. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.To achieve low-carbon buildings, or buildings with low greenhouse (GHG) emissions, planning must begin during the design phase of a building project. This paper evaluates the current methods as support for the design of low-carbon buildings and the significance of different design phases from the perspective of embodied carbon. Through evaluation of relevant literature, interviews with practicing architects, and a building case study, we recommend to proceed gradually across all design phases for achieving low-carbon building design. This should take place in a systematic way that describes the status, coverage, and accuracy of GHG assessments in each design stage. Furthermore, we outline the framework with the use of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) stages of design, and for each stage, we identified the objectives, typical deliverables, and milestones necessary for ensuring carbon efficiency. This will require integration of the roles and responsibilities of the relevant stakeholders, including the client, project manager, architect, structural engineer, and Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) engineer. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes the implementation of an integrated cost optimality and environmental assessment involving alternative energy efficiency retrofit packages for a building that dates from the beginning of the 20th century. A building typical of the building stock in the centre of Coimbra (located in the central region of Portugal and recently classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site) was used to illustrate the methodology presented. The results were also analysed for the same building in two other locations. A life-cycle (LC) model was implemented to assess different energy efficiency measures for an apartment. The economic assessment complied with European Directive 2010/31/EU. The results show that the lowest life-cycle environmental impacts were obtained for insulation thicknesses between 50 and 120 mm, which are also cost-optimal. It is also shown that insulation thicknesses of more than 80 mm do not improve energy efficiency or global cost reduction. This paper shows that, even though historic buildings in Portugal do not have to comply with building energy codes, significant energy savings can be achieved for them without changing their historic character. It was also concluded that economic and environmental costs can both be minimised by choosing the most suitable energy efficiency retrofit measures. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This stream of the special volume addresses advances being made towards, and challenges for sustainable production and consumption. The article presents a variety of papers that document leading examples of recent developments in understanding and knowledge, before assessing gaps within current progress and posing questions and challenges for future research and practice. An overview framework is constructed to categorise the papers, and to illustrate key actors and factors for sustainable production and consumption. The themes covered include specific examples of progress in areas such as sustainable production, covering topics such as eco-efficiency, waste management and the use of renewable resources, as well as sustainable consumption and the role of consumers. Supporting actions and themes are included, showing recent advances in design and innovation for sustainability and the role of assessment and benchmarking. Finally, contributions that consider how to connect production with consumption, and upscaling and bridging, are examined. The article concludes by proposing that continued progress is reliant on further connecting production and consumption, and ensuring that consumer and user perspectives are integrated into innovation and design processes so as to overcome hindering factors such as rebound effects. A call for further progress is issued on what needs to be done to go beyond 'good examples' and on what actions and strategies are able to share and spread success stories of sustainable production and consumptions to different contexts and settings. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied in evaluating environmental impacts of state-of-the-art welding technologies. Manual Metal Arc Welding (MMAW), Laser Arc-Hybrid Welding (LAHW) and two Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) variants are used to join a plate of 20 mm thick structural steel. The LCA results indicate that for 1 m weld seam, MMAW causes the highest environmental impacts in global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EP), acidification potential (AP), and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) among the selected processes, and the LAHW variant performances the least. Filler material and electricity consumptions generally dominate the impacts and reach shares of up to 80% and 61% in the respective impact categories. However, electrode coating consumption in MMAW remarkably contributes impacts on AP and EP, for instance 52% of AP and 76% of EP. Strategies for improvement of the applied welding technologies are discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although the food industry has a significant impact on the European economy and society, its contribution to energy consumption and global climate challenge is also considerably high compared to other manufacturing industries. However, the global energy and carbon impacts of European food production are not addressed sufficiently. With this motivation, this research aims to advance the body of knowledge on carbon and energy footprint analysis of food industries in the 27 member states of the European Union and Turkey. We employed a time series multi-region input output analysis to analyze the carbon and energy footprints of food manufacturing industries. As a global multi-region input output database, this research used the World Input Output Database, which provides a time-series of world input output tables for 40 countries worldwide covering 1440 economic sectors. The results from this study indicate that Germany, France and Spain have the largest food production-related energy footprint. All European countries have upstream suppliers as the dominant contributors of their total energy consumption, except for Romania, for which onsite impacts are dominant. Furthermore, the largest share of carbon emissions related to Turkish food manufacturing is found in Turkey's geographical boundary, whereas more than 50% of the total energy footprint of Turkey's food manufacturing industry is located in various regions outside of Turkey, including the rest of the world and particularly United States and the European Union. The findings show that upstream supply chains are responsible for over 90% of carbon emissions, while direct emissions and those from the first three-layers of food manufacturing supply chains are found to be responsible for approximately 80% of total carbon emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To simultaneously solve the dilemma of energy demand, waste management, and greenhouse gas emission for communities globally, the waste-to-energy (WTE) supply chain as district energy system should be a viable method towards circular industrial economy. Several essential state-of-the-art WTE technologies including combustion, gasification and anaerobic digestion were evaluated. Portfolio options of technologies for different types of WTE supply chains were illustrated for achieving circular economy system. Since policy makers have to address the public concerns prior to promulgate and implement relating regulations, the strategies on implementation of WTE supply chain were proposed to overcome the challenging barriers from the aspects of technology, finance, institution and regulation. A total of eight key task-forces were also proposed for effectively executing the strategies. Furthermore, several successful lessons on WTE supply chains such as green fuel pellet for heating supply and co-digestion of organic wastes for bio-gas production around the world were reviewed and illustrated. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainable development calls for holistic environmental performance evaluations, forcing industry to expand its responsibility towards the environment both locally and globally. The aim of this study is to review available methods that can potentially be applied by industries to support the assessment of their environmental sustainability. The paper offers a comprehensive overview of existing methods, discusses their adequacy, identifies critical future directions and provides further guidance to industrialists and researchers who wish to assess and improve the environmental sustainability of an industrial system. Forty eight methods were identified which were further classified into six categories to facilitate their analysis: individual/set of indicators, composite indices, socially responsible investment indices, material and energy flow analysis, life cycle analysis and environmental accounting. Key attributes of every method were extracted whereas five criteria were set to evaluate the selected categories: ability to promote actions of improvement, help decision making, potentiality for benchmarking, applicability and ease of use and integration of wider spatial and temporal characteristics. Results have indicated that there is still noteworthy potential in increasing the efficiency of environmental sustainability assessments of industrial systems. The scope of the evaluation varies considerably among different methods. Over 140 different environmental issues are addressed by the examined methods to assess environmental aspects of sustainability. Energy use, human toxicity, ozone depletion and resource consumption are the most utilized parameters. Composite indices and life cycle analysis based methods, exhibit the highest potential for satisfying all five criteria set. The key conclusion emerged from this study is that there is considerable margin of improvement especially regarding methods' ability to help decision making and ease of use. The most critical future direction in order to enhance the effectiveness of the assessment is the development of commonly accepted sustainability reference targets. The establishment of reference targets will enable the quantification of the distance between the existing situation and the truly environmentally sustainable performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper undertakes an environmental evaluation of phosphoric acid production, using industrial data from Prayon SA in Belgium. Phosphoric acid is produced using the wet di-hemihydrate process also called Central Prayon process. Both grades of phosphoric acid are evaluated: fertilizer and purified grades. Specificities of this plant are highlighted and improvements of the process in terms of energy and facilities integration through years are quantified as environmental benefits. The implementation on site of two sulphuric acid production facilities and their energetic integration allow a reduction of climate change impact of 80%. Results also show the importance of phosphogypsum valorisation which is sold for the main part in this case study. Concerning the purified grade, this specific process has been compared to the thermal process, using Best Available Techniques (BAT) values for the modelling. It shows a reduced environmental impact for the wet process in the majority of categories studies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Metals are a major concern in life cycle assessment (LCA): they dominate the ecotoxicological impacts due to the use of models that do not consider metal speciation. The objective of this study was to measure the influence of zinc (Zn) speciation on LCA results and evaluate the importance of including it in LCA. A case study in which ecosystem quality impacts are dominated by zinc (Zn) when using the current characterization factor (CF) for Zn was performed on the market for electricity, low voltage CA-QC (Canada-Quebec) ecoinvent data using the IMPACT 2002 + methodology. Different CFs for Zn were tested: IMPACT 2002 + CF and USEtox-derived terrestrial CF without speciation, generic default CF values for the world, and minimum and maximum regionalized CF values including speciation based on either soluble or true solution Zn. For each scenario, the following outcomes were determined and compared with those obtained using the other CFs for Zn: the contribution of Zn emitted to soil to the terrestrial ecotoxicity impact category and ecosystem quality damage category scores, the rank of Zn emitted to soil as a contributor to the terrestrial ecotoxicity impact category, and the total terrestrial ecotoxicity impact score. To our knowledge, this is the first study that includes zinc speciation in soil in a real LCA case study. In this case study, when including speciation, the contribution of Zn emitted to soil to the terrestrial ecotoxicity impact score falls from 26% to a maximum of 1.27%; the impact scores of Zn emitted to soil drop by 1.44-14.37 orders of magnitude; the total terrestrial ecotoxicity and ecosystem quality impact scores decrease by approximately 25% and 21%, respectively; and among the major contributors to terrestrial ecotoxicity, Zn falls from the 2nd to between the 9th and 255th position. Considering that the contribution of all metals emitted to soil represents between 56.2% and 75.7% of the total terrestrial ecotoxicity impact score for this case study, the results highlight the need to include metal speciation in LCA and the considerable influence it could have on ecotoxicological impacts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A complete and fully consistent LCA-based comparison of a range of lightweighting options for compact passenger vehicles is presented and discussed, using advanced lightweight materials (Al, Mg and carbon fibre composites), and including all life cycle stages and a number of alternative end-of-life scenarios. Results underline the importance of expanding the analysis beyond the use phase, and point to maximum achievable reductions of environmental impact of approximately 7% in most impact categories. In particular, lightweighting strategies based on the use of aluminium were found to be the most robust and consistent in terms of reducing the environmental impacts (with the notable exception of a relatively high potential toxicity). The benefits of using magnesium instead appear to be less clear-cut, and strongly depend on achieving the complete phase-out of SF6 in the metal production process, as well as the establishment of a separate closed-loop recycling scheme. Finally, the use of carbon fibre composites leads to similar environmental benefits to those achieved by using Al, albeit generally at a higher economic cost. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Power-to-gas, an excellent energy storage technology, is also useful for the role it can play in producing hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles. The replacement of the existing transportation infrastructure and the end of society's reliance on carbon-based fuels is dependent on the development of efficient, cleaner technologies as well as 'smart energy networks'. One of the most touted technological advances is the replacement of internal combustion engines with 'green' hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles do not emit any greenhouse gases or other emissions as such do not directly contribute to climate change or urban air pollution during their operation. With green hydrogen as the fuel, the emissions from the fuel production become dependent not on the vehicle type or electrolyzer technology, but on the sources of electricity being used to generate the hydrogen. In this study, the authors examine the use of electrolytic hydrogen to power vehicles and compare this with its internal combustion counterpoint. In this analysis a dynamic electrical grid emissions factor, based on the total grid mix of energy generation technologies at any given time, is determined. In this case study, the province of Ontario, Canada is used. Unique to this work is that the simulation of the generation of hydrogen is via electrolysis under different control strategies; the strategies considered, specifically, are continuous electrolyzer operation, price threshold operation, or operation based on an emission factor threshold based on the mix of energy generation technologies feeding the grid at any given hour. With the introduction of new policy tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon taxes and cap-andtrade, the monetization of emissions provides an even greater incentive for industry to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, it is illustrated that by using the dynamic emissions factor to control the production of hydrogen, emissions can be significantly reduced over the life of the vehicle. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The sustainable production and supply of raw materials (nonenergy raw materials) and primary energy carriers (energy raw materials) is a core element of many policies. The natural resource base for their production and supply, and the access thereto, are limited. Moreover, raw material supply is high on environmental and social impact agendas as well. A broad, quantitative framework that supports decision makers is recommended so as to make use of raw materials and primary energy carriers more sustainably. First, this article proposes a holistic classification of raw materials and primary energy carriers. This is an essential prerequisite for developing an integrated sustainability assessment framework (ISAF). Indeed, frequently, only a subset of raw materials and primary energy carriers are considered in terms of their source, sector, or final application. Here, 85 raw materials and 30 primary energy carriers overall are identified and grouped into seven and five subgroups, respectively. Next, this article proposes a quantitative ISAF for the production and supply of raw materials and primary energy carriers, covering all the sustainability pillars. With the goal of comprehensiveness, the proposed ISAF integrates sustainability issues that have been covered and modeled in quite different quantitative frameworks: ecosystem services; classical life cycle assessment (LCA); social LCA; resource criticality assessment; and particular international concerns (e.g., conflict minerals assessment). The resulting four areas of concerns (i.e., environmental, technical, economic, and social/societal) are grouped into ten specific sustainability concerns. Finally, these concerns are quantified through 15 indicators, enabling the quantitative sustainability assessment of the production and supply of raw materials and primary energy carriers.The aim of this article is to develop a methodological approach allowing to assess the influence of parameters of one or more elementary processes in the foreground system, on the outcomes of a life cycle assessment (LCA) study. From this perspective, the method must be able to: (1) include foreground process modeling in order to avoid the assumption of proportionality between inventory data and reference flows; (2) quantify influences of foreground processes' parameters (and, possibly, interactions between parameters); and (3) identify trends (either increasing or decreasing) for each parameter on each indicator in order to determine the most favorable direction for parametric variation. These objectives can be reached by combining foreground system modeling, a set of two different sensitivity analysis methods (each one providing different and complementary information), and LCA. The proposed method is applied to a case study of hemp-based insulation materials for buildings. The present study will focus on the agricultural stage as a foreground system and as a first step encompassing the entire life cycle. A set of technological recommendations were identified for hemp farmers in order to reduce the crop's environmental impacts (from -11% to -89% according to the considered impact category). One of the main limitations of the approach is the need for a detailed model of the foreground process. Further, the method is, at present, rather time-consuming. However, it offers long-term advantages given that the higher level of model detail adds robustness to the LCA results.This first article of a two-article series describes a framework and life cycle-based model for typical almond orchard production systems for California, where more than 80% of commercial almonds on the world market are produced. The comprehensive, multiyear, life cycle-based model includes orchard establishment and removal; field operations and inputs; emissions from orchard soils; and transport and utilization of co-products. These processes are analyzed to yield a life cycle inventory of energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, criteria air pollutants, and direct water use from field to factory gate. Results show that 1 kilogram (kg) of raw almonds and associated co-products of hulls, shells, and woody biomass require 35 megajoules (MJ) of energy and result in 1.6 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) of GHG emissions. Nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation water are the dominant causes of both energy use and GHG emissions. Co-product credits play an important role in estimating the life cycle environmental impacts attributable to almonds alone; using displacement methods results in net energy and emissions of 29 MJ and 0.9 kg CO2-eq/kg. The largest sources of credits are from orchard biomass and shells used in electricity generation, which are modeled as displacing average California electricity. Using economic allocation methods produces significantly different results; 1 kg of almonds is responsible for 33 MJ of energy and 1.5 kg CO2-eq emissions. Uncertainty analysis of important parameters and assumptions, as well as temporary carbon storage in orchard trees and soils, are explored in the second article of this two-part article series.This is the second part of a two-article series examining California almond production. The part I article describes development of the analytical framework and life cycle-based model and presents typical energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for California almonds. This part II article builds on this by exploring uncertainty in the life cycle model through sensitivity and scenario analysis, and by examining temporary carbon storage in the orchard. Sensitivity analysis shows life cycle GHG emissions are most affected by biomass fate and utilization, followed by nitrous oxide emissions rates from orchard soils. Model sensitivity for net energy consumption is highest for irrigation system parameters, followed by biomass fate and utilization. Scenario analysis shows utilization of orchard biomass for electricity production has the greatest potential effect, assuming displacement methods are used for co-product allocation. Results of the scenario analysis show that 1 kilogram (kg) of almond kernel and associated co-products are estimated to cause between -3.12 to 2.67 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) emissions and consume between 27.6 to 52.5 megajoules (MJ) of energy. Co-product displacement credits lead to avoided emissions of between -1.33 to 2.45 kg CO2-eq and between -0.08 to 13.7 MJ of avoided energy use, leading to net results of -1.39 to 3.99kg CO2-eq and 15.3 to 52.6MJ per kg kernel (net results are calculated by subtracting co-product credits from the results for almonds and co-products). Temporary carbon storage in orchard biomass and soils is accounted for by using alternative global warming characterization factors and leads to a 14% to 18% reduction in CO2-eq emissions. Future studies of orchards and other perennial cropping systems should likely consider temporary carbon storage.BACKGROUNDThe aim of the study was to quantify the effects of the use of a protease Ronozyme (R) ProAct in broiler feed on the environmental impacts of broiler and broiler feed production chains. This was done by using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) modelling approach with data from trials using both standard soya-based broiler diets and reduced-protein diets with added protease. RESULTSThe results for the feed production chain showed that there was a reduction in all environmental impact categories when protease was used in the diets. The biggest reduction occurred in the category of Global Warming Potential, mainly as a result of decreased carbon dioxide emissions from land use changes related to soya production. In the results for the broiler production chain, there were relatively bigger reductions in Eutrophication Potential and especially in Acidification Potential, mainly as a result of reduced feed protein content and subsequent nitrogen emissions from housing and manure management. CONCLUSIONThe use of protease in the broiler diets reduced the environmental impacts of both feed production and broiler production. The latter is mainly through reduced ammonia emissions, which has substantial benefit per se in the poultry industry. (c) 2015 Society of Chemical IndustryThis study attempts to contribute to the growing research on green supply chain management (GSCM) strategies by relying on the Natural Resource Based View (NRBV) and relational view. Specifically, this study investigates the role of collaborative capability in moderating the effects of GSCM practices on firm performance. Using hierarchical regression, this study analyzes data from a survey of 230 South Korean manufacturers. The results show that the implementation of GSCM practices can improve both environmental and financial performance of the firm. Also, the findings indicate that firms can expect improved financial performance when they seek a synergistic effect by involving their partners in the GSCM implementation process.Fibre-reinforced polymer composites have gained increasing popularity within the bridge engineering sector, mainly due to the financial benefits often associated with their use. As concerns grow over climate change and depletion of natural resources, it is important that the environmental - in addition to cost - implications of their use should be considered. This paper conducts, within the general framework of life cycle assessment, a review of the literature on various aspects of this topic. The environmental credentials of this relatively new class of materials are examined at the material level in terms of embodied impacts and based on two case studies, for bridge decking applications. Aspects such as end-of-life disposal and use of alternative, bio-based materials are also discussed. Based on the work in this paper, better understanding of the environmental impacts of fibre-reinforced polymer composites in construction can be gained and areas of further research identified.There has been a growing movement within the environmental industry to develop more sustainable approaches in environmental remediation. These have generally included carbon footprint analysis, life cycle assessment, and best management practices to reduce the overall net environmental, social, and economic impacts of investigation and remediation activities. One of the foundational reasons net environmental impacts are currently evaluated is to identify and, subsequently, reduce contributions to climate change, primarily greenhouse gas emissions. While this trend toward sustainability and reduction in impact to the global environment is both important and admirable, the approach to remediation design and long-term planning now needs to evolve further to better incorporate climate resilience into sustainable remediation design and implementation: designing remediation solutions that account for the projected impacts of climate change, as well as have the capacity to adapt to changing conditions. As a global population, we are now beyond the point of being able to prevent climate change and instead need to plan for adapting to it. In remediation, the effects of climate change create both risks and opportunities which should be considered during remedial design and long-term planning. Responsible parties may see the push for-and management of-these considerations through their internal corporate risk management. The authors of this paper propose a simple framework for climate adaptation and resilience evaluations and plan development for remediation projects. (C) 2015Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Energy storage can facilitate the transition process from the actual energetic model to a model based on renewable energies. A lot of attention has been put in such technology, being the use of phase change materials (PCM) of high interest. However, design methodologies for PCM storage systems are still a limiting factor for its deployment. This paper compiles and structures the most common and promising design methodologies and highlights their usefulness and limitations. These methodologies are classified in six types: (1) empirical correlations and characterizing parameters, (2) dimensional analysis and correlations, (3) effectiveness-NTU, (4) Log Mean Temperature Difference (LMTD), (5) Conduction Transfer Functions (CTF), and (6) numerical models. Dimensionless correlations and effectiveness-NTU are the most common and straight-forward methods as well as the ones that offer more possibilities for general solutions. Empirical correlations and numerical models are problem based and difficult to generalize. On the other hand, the adaptation of LMTD and CTF to PCM systems still requires detailed research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Anaerobic digestion (AD) of biomass has become a common technology used in many European nations and is receiving increased attention in other nations. The chief attraction of AD is it generates renewable energy. Yet it also manages and treats organic waste, recycles key nutrients to soil, and can create local jobs; making AD an attractive technology to governments. In this paper we review the role government policy has played in promoting AD use and driving its growth in five developed nations studied; Australia, Denmark, Germany, the UK and USA. These nations were chosen for review as they provide a breadth of AD use with the number of AD plants in the aforementioned nations totaling 78, 114, 9545, 265, and 1497. This review looks to demonstrate and discuss policy mechanisms introduced by each nation that has helped drive AD use, and identify areas where policy can help overcome enduring challenges that face the AD industry. Focused discussion is given to waste management, climate change and energy security policies, and to financial incentives made available to AD installations. Analysis shows that the impact of performance based incentives targeted at small-medium capacity AD plants, less than 500 kW, have a significant positive correlation with the growth of AD use in the UK and Germany. The relatively new AD industry faces a number of barriers, which are also discussed, but with the help of supportive government policy for the technology, that considers the wide-ranging benefits of AD across government portfolios; investors will be more likely to show interest in the developing AD industry. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy technologies have both local and global impacts on ecosystem services, with local impacts occurring where the energy is generated, and global impacts occurring where energy feedstock or raw materials for energy infrastructure are sourced. Assessing these impacts in both local and remote locations is important but challenging. In this paper we present a first attempt to quantify the impacts of onshore wind farms on ecosystem services for the UK at local and global scales, building on approaches used for life cycle analyses of energy technologies, that consider the provenance of materials used for energy infrastructure. We first identify the lifecycle processes of onshore wind farms, and then use a systematic literature review of local impacts of onshore wind farms on ecosystem services and a 'Broadbrush' approach for global impacts. Results show that onshore wind farms tend to have significant positive local impacts on primary production and air quality, and tend to have negative local impacts on soil, water and livestock which are mostly associated with the operational and decommissioning stages of wind turbines in the UK. At global scale, onshore wind farms tend to have negative impacts on a number of ecosystem services, due to the processes associated with the mining of steel and concrete in other parts of the world, but this is common to all energy infrastructures. These should help wind farm developers and researchers identify and avoid adverse impacts of onshore wind farms on ecosystem services. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable energy systems reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with energy generation. However, we live in a world with depleting reserves of natural resources, and significant quantities of raw materials are often embodied within renewable energy infrastructure. This paper examines the potential for ecodesign measures to improve the GHG and resource balance of five small-scale hydropower case studies (50-650 kW). A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach compares two specific environmental impact categories: global warming potential (GWP) and abiotic resource depletion potential (ARDP). A number of ecodesign measures were examined for each installation: powerhouse structure, concrete selection, roofing materials, excavation work and transportation. Ecodesign led to cumulative savings of between 2.1% and 10.4% for GWP, and ARDP savings of between 0.1% and 2.6%, for the hydropower installations. Small savings were made with each ecodesign measure applied in all case studies. Furthermore, applying a 1% materiality threshold as outlined by LCA standards was shown to under-estimate the total project burdens, and to neglect opportunities for burden savings through ecodesign. Ecodesign can promote the use of locally sourced materials and some measures can lead to time savings during the construction process. The findings demonstrate the potential for ecodesign to modestly improve the carbon and resource efficiency of hydropower projects. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The use of compostable biopolymers in the United States has grown over the past decade and is predicted to continue to grow over the coming years. Though many studies have been done to assess biopolymer environmental impacts, few have explored how they are actually being used and disposed of by consumers. Only with a thorough understanding of real world use will environmental assessments be able to provide meaningful results that can inform best practices for municipal waste management. This paper identifies and explores where consumers are most likely to come into contact with compostable biopolymers, actual disposal methods, and the motivation behind compostable biopolymer use and disposal. To assess where compostable biopolymers are being used, audits of local grocery stores were conducted, as well as semi-structured interviews with compostable biopolymer users in four different food service categories (cafeterias, catering companies, limited food service establishments, and recreational concessions) were completed. Findings suggest that consumers are most likely coming into contact with compostable biopolymers in a commercial food service setting.-The decision to purchase compostable biopolymers was based on a variety of factors, such as their perceived sustainability, but was not directly tied to the ability to compost them. One of the clearest distinctions between those who were able to compost biopolymers and those who sent these products to landfill was the type of sustainability goals each organization set. Measurable waste to landfill goals resulted in biopolymers being sent to compost facilities, in contrast to an amorphous goal to be sustainable, which was connected to biopolymers being sent to landfill. Yet for all food service categories, disposal decisions relied heavily on the regional waste infrastructure that was available. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Exposure to chemicals from different sources in everyday life is widespread; one such source is the wide range of products listed under the title "cosmetics", including the different types of popular and widely-advertised sunscreens. Women are encouraged through advertising to buy into the myth of everlasting youth, and one of the most alarming consequences is in utero exposure to chemicals. The main route of exposure is the skin, but the main endpoint of exposure is endocrine disruption. This is due to many substances in cosmetics and sunscreens that have endocrine active properties which affect reproductive health but which also have other endpoints, such as cancer. Reducing the exposure to endocrine disruptors is framed not only in the context of the reduction of health risks, but is also significant against the background and rise of ethical consumerism, and the responsibility of the cosmetics industry in this respect. Although some plants show endocrine-disrupting activity, the use of well-selected natural products might reduce the use of synthetic chemicals. Instruments dealing with this problem include life-cycle analysis, eco-design, and green labels; in combination with the committed use of environmental management systems, they contribute to "corporate social responsibility".The increased popularity of building information modeling (BIM) for application in the construction of eco-friendly green buildings has given rise to techniques for evaluating green buildings constructed using BIM features. Existing BIM-based green building evaluation techniques mostly rely on externally provided evaluation tools, which pose problems associated with interoperability, including a lack of data compatibility and the amount of time required for format conversion. To overcome these problems, this study sets out to develop a template (the green template) for evaluating the embodied environmental impact of using a BIM design tool as part of BIM-based building life-cycle assessment (LCA) technology development. Firstly, the BIM level of detail (LOD) was determined to evaluate the embodied environmental impact, and constructed a database of the impact factors of the embodied environmental impact of the major building materials, thereby adopting an LCA-based approach. The libraries of major building elements were developed by using the established databases and compiled evaluation table of the embodied environmental impact of the building materials. Finally, the green template was developed as an embodied environmental impact evaluation tool and a case study was performed to test its applicability. The results of the green template-based embodied environmental impact evaluation of a test building were validated against those of its actual quantity takeoff (2D takeoff), and its reliability was confirmed by an effective error rate of 5%. This study aims to develop a system for assessing the impact of the substances discharged from concrete production process on six environmental impact categories, i.e., global warming (GWP), acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), abiotic depletion (ADP), ozone depletion (ODP), and photochemical oxidant creation (POCP), using the life a cycle assessment (LCA) method. To achieve this, we proposed an LCA method specifically applicable to concrete and tailored to the Korean concrete industry by adapting the ISO standards to suit the Korean situations.This paper presents the results of a stepwise investigation of the quantity and quality of food losses along the Swiss potato supply chain. Quantitative data were collected from field trials, from structured interviews with wholesalers, processors and retailers, and from consumer surveys in combination with a 30-day diary study. The "Swiss trade customs for potatoes" pose the basis for the qualitative evaluation of losses. The influences of technological, institutional (business and economy; legislation and policy), and social drivers on the generation of fresh potato and processed potato products losses were assessed. Losses due to quality standards driven by food safety and consumer preferences for certain aesthetic standards have been evaluated too. Across the entire potato value chain, approximately 53-55% of the initial fresh potato production and 41-46% of the initial processing potato production are finally lost. Losses between organic and non-organic supply chains differ from 2% to 5%. From the total initial fresh potato production, 15-24% gets lost during agricultural production, a further 12-24% at wholesalers, 1-3% at retailers, and 15% at private households. In comparison, 5-11% of the initial production gets lost at wholesalers, a further 14-15% during processing, 0% at retailers, and 2% at private households. Losses during agricultural production do not vary much (13-25%) between fresh and processing potatoes. Approximately half of total potato losses occur because potatoes do not meet quality standards. 25-34% of these quality-driven losses are caused by food safety reasons, and the remainder are caused by consumer preferences or suitability for storage. In total, social drivers (e.g., consumer preferences, behavior, or socio-demographical factors) are responsible for two-thirds to three-fourths of all fresh potato losses and 40-45% of all processing potato losses. Technological drivers cause circa one-third of the total processing potato losses. The majority of the rejected potatoes are used as animal feed (67-90%) in Switzerland. Approximately 30% of all fresh potato losses are disposed while just 4-5% of all processing potato losses are thrown away. The interviewed experts stated that lower quality specifications might cause lower loss rates at the first stages of the supply chain but higher ones at the later stages due to worse storage or processing abilities of potatoes with defects, which also might affect proper tubers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is an enormous growth in mobile phone consumption worldwide which leads to generation of a large volume of mobile phone waste every year. The aim of this review is to give an insight on the articles on mobile phone waste management and recycling, published in scientific journals, major proceedings and books from 1999 to 2015. The major areas of research have been identified and discussed based on available literature in each research topic. It was observed that most of these articles were published during the recent years, with the number of articles increasing yearly. Material recovery and review on management options of waste are found to be the leading topics in this area. Researchers have proved that economically viable refurbishing or recycling of such waste is possible in an environmentally friendly manner. However, the literatures indicate that without proper consumer awareness, a recycling system cannot perform to its maximum efficiency. The methodologies followed and analytical techniques employed by the researchers to attain their objectives have been discussed. The graphical representations of available literature on current topic with respect to year of publication, topics and location have also been explored. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper concentrates on the quantification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of post-consumer plastic waste recovery (material or energy) by considering the influence of the plastic waste quality (high or low), the recycled plastic applications (virgin plastic substitution or non-plastic substitution) and the markets of recovered plastic (regional or global). The aim is to quantify the environmental consequences of different alternatives in order to evaluate opportunities and limitations to select the best and most feasible plastic waste recovery option to decrease the GHG emissions. The methodologies of material flow analysis (MFA) for a time period of thirteen years and consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) have been integrated. The study focuses on Spain as a representative country for Europe. The results show that to improve resource efficiency and avoid more GHG emissions, the options for plastic waste management are dependent on the quality of the recovered plastic. The results also show that there is an increasing trend of exporting plastic waste for recycling, mainly to China, that reduces the GHG benefits from recycling, suggesting that a new focus should be introduced to take into account the split between local recycling and exporting. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper analyses four strategies for managing the Mixed Municipal Solid Waste (MMSW) in terms of their environmental impacts and potential advantages by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. To this aim, both a multi-input and a multi-output approach are applied to evaluate the effect of these perspectives on selected impact categories. The analyzed management options include direct landfilling with energy recovery (S-1), Mechanical-Biological Treatment (MBT) followed by Waste-to-Energy (WtE) conversion (S-2), a combination of an innovative MBT/MARSS (Material Advanced Recovery Sustainable Systems) process and landfill disposal (S-3), and finally a combination of the MBT/MARSS process with WtE conversion (S-4). The MARSS technology, developed within an European LIFE PLUS framework and currently implemented at pilot plant scale, is an innovative MBT plant having the main goal to yield a Renewable Refined Biomass Fuel (RRBF) to be used for combined heat and power production (CHP) under the regulations enforced for biomass-based plants instead of Waste-to-Energy systems, for increased environmental performance. The four scenarios are characterized by different resource investment for plant and infrastructure construction and different quantities of matter, heat and electricity recovery and recycling. Results, calculated per unit mass of waste treated and per unit exergy delivered, under both multi-input and multi-output LCA perspectives, point out improved performance for scenarios characterized by increased matter and energy recovery. Although none of the investigated scenarios is capable to provide the best performance in all the analyzed impact categories, the scenario S-4 shows the best LCA results in the human toxicity and freshwater eutrophication categories, i.e. the ones with highest impacts in all waste management processes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Exergy is based on the Second Law of thermodynamics and can be used to express physical and chemical potential and provides a unified measure for resource accounting. In this study, exergy analysis was applied to four residual household waste management scenarios with focus on the achieved resource recovery efficiencies. The calculated exergy efficiencies were used to compare the scenarios and to evaluate the applicability of exergy-based measures for expressing resource quality and for optimizing resource recovery. Exergy efficiencies were determined based on two approaches: (i) exergy flow analysis of the waste treatment system under investigation and (ii) exergetic life cycle assessment (LCA) using the Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment (CEENE) as a method for resource accounting. Scenario efficiencies of around 17-27% were found based on the exergy flow analysis (higher efficiencies were associated with high levels of material recycling), while the scenario efficiencies based on the exergetic LCA lay in a narrow range around 14%. Metal recovery was beneficial in both types of analyses, but had more influence on the overall efficiency in the exergetic LCA approach, as avoided burdens associated with primary metal production were much more important than the exergy content of the recovered metals. On the other hand, plastic recovery was highly beneficial in the exergy flow analysis, but rather insignificant in exergetic LCA. The two approaches thereby offered different quantitative results as well as conclusions regarding material recovery. With respect to resource quality, the main challenge for the exergy flow analysis is the use of exergy content and exergy losses as a proxy for resource quality and resource losses, as exergy content is not per se correlated with the functionality of a material. In addition, the definition of appropriate waste system boundaries is critical for the exergy efficiencies derived from the flow analysis, as it is constrained by limited information available about the composition of flows in the system as well as about secondary production processes and their interaction with primary or traditional production chains. In the exergetic LCA, resource quality could be reflected by the savings achieved by product substitution and the consideration of the waste's upstream burden allowed for an evaluation of the waste's resource potential. For a comprehensive assessment of resource efficiency in waste LCA, the sensitivity of accounting for product substitution should be carefully analyzed and cumulative exergy consumption measures should be complimented by other impact categories. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This contribution presents the selected categories of environmental footprints related to the planetary boundaries and threats to human security. The analysis covers the footprint family of indicators that usually consists of ecological, carbon or more precisely greenhouse gas and water footprints and also sometimes the energy footprint. The other assessed footprints that are important for ecosystem health in regard to water, health, food, and land and species security are nitrogen, phosphorus, biodiversity and land footprints, which have already transgressed the planetary boundaries and are therefore outside the safe operating space. The importance of the various footprints is discussed and the simultaneous analysis of footprints is emphasised as a major direction of research and practice. The comprehensive set of environmental impacts, e.g. set of presented footprints in this contribution, should be considered and should incorporate the burdening and unburdening concept from the life cycle perspective. Some applications of the presented environmental footprints are offered, and conclusions and remarks provided for future observation.Rapid expansion in biomass production for biofuels and bioenergy in the Americas is increasing demand on the ecosystem resources required to sustain soil and site productivity. We review the current state of knowledge and highlight gaps in research on biogeochemical processes and ecosystem sustainability related to biomass production. Biomass production systems incrementally remove greater quantities of organic matter, which in turn affects soil organic matter and associated carbon and nutrient storage (and hence long-term soil productivity) and off-site impacts. While these consequences have been extensively studied for some crops and sites, the ongoing and impending impacts of biomass removal require management strategies for ensuring that soil properties and functions are sustained for all combinations of crops, soils, sites, climates, and management systems, and that impacts of biomass management (including off-site impacts) are environmentally acceptable. In a changing global environment, knowledge of cumulative impacts will also become increasingly important. Long-term experiments are essential for key crops, soils, and management systems because short-term results do not necessarily reflect long-term impacts, although improved modeling capability may help to predict these impacts. Identification and validation of soil sustainability indicators for both site prescriptions and spatial applications would better inform commercial and policy decisions. In an increasingly inter-related but constrained global context, researchers should engage across inter-disciplinary, inter-agency, and international lines to better ensure the long-term soil productivity across a range of scales, from site to landscape.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied to many biofuel and bioenergy systems to determine potential environmental impacts, but the conclusions have varied. Different methodologies and processes for conducting LCA of biofuels make the results difficult to compare, in-turn making it difficult to make the best possible and informed decision. Of particular importance are the wide variability in country-specific conditions, modeling assumptions, data quality, chosen impact categories and indicators, scale of production, system boundaries, and co-product allocation. This study has a double purpose: conducting a critical evaluation comparing environmental LCA of biofuels from several conversion pathways and in several countries in the Pan American region using both qualitative and quantitative analyses, and making recommendations for harmonization with respect to biofuel LCA study features, such as study assumptions, inventory data, impact indicators, and reporting practices. The environmental management implications are discussed within the context of different national and international regulatory environments using a case study. The results from this study highlight LCA methodology choices that cause high variability in results and limit comparability among different studies, even among the same biofuel pathway, and recommendations are provided for improvement.Compared to a century ago, the world's fishing fleets are larger and more powerful, are travelling further and are producing higher quality products. These developments come largely at a cost of high-fossil fuel energy inputs. Rising energy prices, climate change and consumer demand for green' products have placed energy use and emissions among the sustainability criteria of food production systems. We have compiled all available published and unpublished fuel use data for fisheries targeting all species, employing all gears and fishing in all regions of the world into a Fisheries and Energy Use Database (FEUD). Here, we present results of our analysis of the relative energy performance of fisheries since 1990 and provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on fuel inputs to diverse fishing fleets. The median fuel use intensity of global fishery records since 1990 is 639litres per tonne. Fuel inputs to fisheries vary by several orders of magnitude, with small pelagic fisheries ranking among the world's most efficient forms of animal protein production and crustaceans ranking among the least efficient. Trends in Europe and Australia since the beginning of the 21st century suggest fuel use efficiency is improving, although this has been countered by a more rapid increase in oil prices. Management decisions, technological improvements and behavioural changes can further reduce fuel consumption in the short term, although the most effective improvement to fisheries energy performance will come as a result of rebuilding stocks where they are depressed and reducing over-capacity.Biochar-based bioenergy production and subsequent land application of biochar can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by fixing atmospheric carbon into the soil for a long period of time. A thorough life cycle assessment of biochar-based bioenergy production and biochar land application in Northwestern Ontario is conducted using SimaPro(A (R)) Ver. 8.1. The results of energy consumption and potential environmental impact of biochar-based bioenergy production system are compared with those of conventional coal-based system. Results show that biochar land application consumes 4847.61 MJ per tonne dry feedstock more energy than conventional system, but reduces the GHG emissions by 68.19 kg CO(2)e per tonne of dry feedstock in its life cycle. Biochar land application improves ecosystem quality by 18 %, reduces climate change by 15 %, and resource use by 13 % but may adversely impact on human health by increasing disability adjusted life years by 1.7 % if biomass availability is low to medium. Replacing fossil fuel with woody biomass has a positive impact on the environment, as one tonne of dry biomass feedstock when converted to biochar reduces up to 38 kg CO(2)e with biochar land application despite using more energy. These results will help understand a comprehensive picture of the new interventions in forestry businesses, which are promoting biochar-based bioenergy production.In this study, multifunctional extracts from Dunaliella salina microalga and Daucus carota carrots have been suggested as food additives since they are rich in B-carotene, a widely used coloring and antioxidant agent. A comparative analysis between conventional solvent extraction and innovative green extraction methods, using microwaves and ultrasounds, has been conducted. The isolation of b-carotene, as well as, the environmental impact of each method, were the criteria for the processes evaluation. In order to evaluate the selected extraction processes' sustainability, a comparative life cycle analysis was carried out from farm/cultivation to recovery process, using proper databases and software. The comparative analysis for both matrices revealed that the cultivation and harvesting of D. salina in open ponds exhibits an overall environmental impact greater than of the carrots farming. Nonetheless, D. salina's high content in beta-carotene leads to higher extraction yields and therefore to extraction processes with lower impact. UAE is the indicated extraction technique for the sustainable recovery of beta-carotene from microalgae. This study is a laboratory-scale application with potential scale up practice for nutraceutical, cosmetic and food industries. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The distance between where food is produced and consumed is increasing, and is often taken as evidence of an unsustainable global food system. Seafood is a highly traded commodity yet seafood sustainability assessments do not typically consider the impacts of the movement of products beyond the fishery or farm. Here we use life cycle assessment to examine the carbon footprint of the production and distribution of select seafood products that are consumed in Australia and determine differences in the sustainability of imports and their domestically produced counterparts. We found that the distance food is transported is not the main determinant of food sustainability. Despite the increased distance between production and consumption, carbon footprints of meals from imported seafood are similar to meals consisting of domestically produced seafood, and sometimes lower, depending on the seafood consumed. In combining LCA with existing seafood sustainability criteria the trade-offs between sustainability targets become more apparent. Carbon 'footprinting' is one metric that can be incorporated in assessments of sustainability, thereby demonstrating a broader perspective of the environmental cost of food production and consumption. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Commercial fisheries contribute to a number of non-localized environmental and resource depletion problems, such as climate change, through the provision and use of fossil fuels, vessels, gear, refrigeration, and bait, and during post-capture processes. Here, we investigate the degree to which different management regimes may affect two fisheries' contributions to a suite of non-localized environmental concerns. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to quantify the contributions made by the 2006 Maine and 2005-2006 southwest Nova Scotia fisheries for American lobster (Homarus americanus) to a suite of global environmental problems. The lobster fishery phase was the primary driver of resource and environmental impacts as characterized in the selected impact categories. Direct diesel use by the lobster boat was the primary source of impacts at the fishery phase, but the provision and use of bait was also a substantial contributor, particularly in the Maine fishery. Post-capture transportation of live lobster by air was a major contributor in the LFA 34 model. Lobstermen in both fisheries reported using approximately one liter of fuel per kilogram of lobster landings, but Maine lobstermen reported using three kilograms of bait per kilogram of lobster landings, while LFA 34 lobstermen reported using only one kilogram of bait per kilogram landings. The difference in bait use per unit landings resulted in the Maine lobster fishery having slightly higher global environmental impacts, when measured by the chosen impact categories, than the Nova Scotia fishery. However, the two fisheries' contributions to the selected environmental impact categories were broadly similar, despite their different management regimes, and an obvious influence of management was not identified. The findings for the lobster fisheries are placed into context with other food production systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Energy consumption and its negative environmental impacts are of interesting topics in the recent centuries. Agricultural systems are both energy users and suppliers in the form of bio energy and play a key role in world economics as well as food security. A high amount of energy from different sources is used in this sector while researchers who investigated energy flow in crops production especially in developing countries, have reported a high degree of inefficiency. In order to differentiate between efficient and inefficient farms, a clustering model based on imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) has been developed and the surveyed watermelon farms have been clustered based on three features, i.e. greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, input energy and farm size. The results showed that of the three developed clusters, the best cluster performed 20 and 46 % better than the two other clusters in energy and 22 and 52 % in CO2 emissions. The average of total energy input and GHG emissions for the best cluster were calculated as 43,423 MJ per ha and 8,120 CO2eq. The results of this study demonstrate the successful application of ICA for better use of energy in cropping systems which can lead to a better environmental and energy performance.Several dairy farms in the Netherlands aim at reducing environmental impacts by improving the internal nutrient cycle (INC) on their farm by optimizing the use of available on-farm resources. This study evaluates the environmental performance of selected INC farms in the Northern Friesian Woodlands in comparison to regular benchmark farms using a Life Cycle Assessment. Regular farms were selected on the basis of comparability in terms of milk production per farm and per hectare, soil type and drainage conditions. In addition, the environmental impacts of INC farming at landscape level were evaluated with the integrated modelling system INITIATOR, using spatially explicit input data on animal numbers, land use, agricultural management, meteorology and soil, assuming that all farms practised the principle of INC farming. Impact categories used at both farm and landscape levels were global warming potential, acidification potential and eutrophication potential. Additional farm level indicators were land occupation and non-renewable energy use, and furthermore all farm level indicators were also expressed per kg fat and protein corrected milk. Results showed that both on-farm and off-farm non-renewable energy use was significantly lower at INC farms as compared with regular farms. Although nearly all other environmental impacts were numerically lower, both on-farm and off-farm, differences were not statistically significant. Nitrogen losses to air and water decreased by on average 5 to 10% when INC farming would be implemented for the whole region. The impact of INC farming on the global warming potential and eutrophication potential was, however, almost negligible (<2%) at regional level. This was due to a negligible impact on the methane emissions and on the surplus and thereby on the soil accumulation and losses of phosphorus to water at INC farms, illustrating the focus of these farms on closing the nitrogen cycle. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Engineered nanomaterials (ENM) offer enhanced or new functionalities and properties that are used in various products. This also entails potential environmental risks in terms of hazard and exposure. However, hazard and exposure assessment for ENM still suffer from insufficient knowledge particularly for product-related releases and environmental fate and behavior. This study therefore analyzes the multiple impacts of the product use, the properties of the matrix material, and the related waste management system (WMS) on the predicted environmental concentration (PEC) by applying nine prospective life cycle release scenarios based on reasonable assumptions. The products studied here are clothing textiles treated with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), since they constitute a controversial application. Surprisingly, the results show counter-intuitive increases by a factor of 2.6 in PEC values for the air compartment in minimal AgNP release scenarios. Also, air releases can shift from washing to wearing activity; their associated release points may shift accordingly, potentially altering release hot spots. Additionally, at end-of-life, the fraction of AgNP-residues contained on exported textiles can be increased by 350% when assuming short product lifespans and globalized WMS. It becomes evident that certain combinations of use activities, matrix material characteristics, and WMS can influence the regional PEC by several orders of magnitude. Thus, in the light of the findings and expected ENM market potential, future assessments should consider these aspects to derive precautionary design alternatives and to enable prospective global and regional risk assessments. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Building construction and maintenance is one of the major contributors to global warming and as a result has the potential to be a leader in sustainable development. Scaffolding systems are an important component of building construction, especially high-rise buildings. A scaffold consists of a modular system of metal or bamboo tubes or pipes. Scaffolding is a temporary construction structure created for reaching heights above a human's reach, with the purpose of helping in construction or maintenance of a structure. The scaffolding industry in the US is dominated by steel. In areas where bamboo is indigenous, like many East Asian cities, bamboo is the scaffolding material of choice, even when it comes to high-rise buildings. Our goal was to analyze bamboo and steel thoroughly and establish their environmental impacts using life cycle analysis (LCA). Consequently, this study explores the ecological viability in expanding the use of bamboo scaffolding where steel predominates. The functional units used in this study are bamboo and steel scaffolding systems that are 2.74 m high, 2.49 m wide, and 1.21 m deep. A cradle-to-gate LCA was performed to evaluate the environmental performance of the two scaffolding systems. Our results suggest that bamboo scaffolding has a lower carbon footprint than steel scaffolding, with an ability to sequester carbon during its growth phase being a significant contributing factor. This is an important advantage of bamboo over nonrenewable materials (steel). Additionally, bamboo functions as a buffer, delaying the release of CO2 after the use phase. The main challenge for any scaffolding system made from renewable materials in the western world is the demand for standardization. Therefore, an ideal future goal should be the design of standardized scaffolding systems using renewable materials that combines the durability and homogeneity of steel scaffolding with the sustainability and environmental performance of bamboo scaffolding.Products used during construction and operation of a building can contribute to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) problems that affect occupants' well-being. However, IAQ is conventionally not addressed in the life cycle assessments (LCAs) of buildings and building related products even though IAQ leads to one of the areas of protection under LCA -human health impacts. In this study, we proposed an overall framework for integrating IAQ into LCA using the standard steps of LCA. The framework focused on IAQ and LCA modeling from two categories of building related products: i) passive products that realize their function through initial installation and have long-term decayed emissions, and ii) active equipment that realize their function and cause emissions through daily operation. Dynamic and static life cycle inventory modeling approaches were proposed for passive products and active equipment, respectively. An indoor intake fraction equation and USEtox model effect factors were incorporated into the life cycle impact assessment. Three hypothetical examples were presented to illustrate the calculation procedure of the framework. We concluded that it was feasible to integrate IAQ into building related LCA studies. Development of IAQ related impact assessment methodologies can improve upon the limitations of this study. Further studies need to be carried out to compare the health impacts from IAQ related sources to other life cycle stages of building related products.Urban sinks accumulate phosphorus and other elements and may serve as sources of secondary raw materials. This paper evaluates phosphorus sources based on their environmental impact. In a life cycle assessment (LCA) the conventional production was used as a yardstick against which to measure the performance of two recycling options: spreading of sewage sludge and phosphorus recovery from municipal solid waste incineration fly ash (MSWA). When compared as three gate-to-gate processes, the sludge spreading had the lowest potential environmental impact, except in the impact categories eco- and human toxicity. In the future, the sludge spreading could potentially outperform the conventional process also with regard to toxicity, provided its Hg and Cu content can be reduced. Phosphorus extracted from the MSWA had the highest impact, except in relation to eutrophication. The benefits of avoiding the conventional production were greater than the sludge recycling impacts for all categories except toxicity. When conventional production is substituted by the MSWA recycling, the eutrophication and land-use impacts are avoided, while the impacts in other categories are considerable. The development needs identified for this method include substitution of HCl, reduced water consumption, and reduction of the product's metal content. Solutions to all of these challenges have been proposed and are currently being tested.Buildings are one of the primary contributors to carbon emissions. Given the small size of construction site and increasing housing demand in Hong Kong, precast concrete has been frequently adopted in not only public residential buildings, but also the private sector. This study compares the carbon emissions of precast and traditional cast-in-situ construction methods based on a case study of a private residential building in Hong Kong. Life cycle assessment (LCA) model is established to consider the system processes from cradle to end of construction. The comparison is conducted based on eight scenarios at four levels, i.e. cubic meter concrete, precast facade, group of facade elements, and an apartment. It is found that the carbon emission of the studied residential apartment is 669 kg carbon dioxide equivalent per one square meter floor area. Precasting can lead to 10% carbon reduction for one cubic meter concrete. Steel formwork for precasting performs better than timber formwork used in cast-in-situ concrete. Adopting more precast concrete can lead to less carbon emission. Based on the research findings, it is highly recommended to adopt precast concrete in building construction. The building industry should consider the carbon reduction as a benefit of implementing precast concrete. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The manufacturing industry is faced with the challenge to constantly improve its processes, e.g., due to lower profit margins, more strict environmental policies and increased societal awareness. These three aspects are considered as the pillars of sustainable development and typically give rise to multiple and conflicting objectives. Hence, any decision made will require trade-offs to be evaluated and compromises to be made. To support decision making an interactive multi-objective framework is presented to optimize dynamic processes based on mathematical models. The framework includes a numerically efficient strategy to account for parametric uncertainty in the models and it allows to directly minimize the operational risks arising from this uncertainty. Hence, for the first time expert knowledge on the trade-offs between traditional objective functions and operational risks is readily and interactively available for the practitioners in the field of dynamic systems. The introduced interactive framework for multi-objective dynamic optimization under uncertainty is successfully tested for a three and five-objective fed-batch reactor case study with uncertain feed temperature and heat transfer parameters. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Perovskite solar cells have attracted enormous attention in recent years due to their low cost and superior technical performance. However, the use of toxic metals, such as lead, in the perovskite dye and toxic chemicals in perovskite solar cell manufacturing causes grave concerns for its environmental performance. To understand and facilitate the sustainable development of perovskite solar cell technology from its design to manufacturing, a comprehensive environmental impact assessment has been conducted on titanium dioxide nanotube based perovskite solar cells by using an attributional life cycle assessment approach, from cradle to gate, with manufacturing data from our laboratory-scale experiments and upstream data collected from professional databases and the literature. The results indicate that the perovskite dye is the primary source of environmental impact, associated with 64.77% total embodied energy and 31.38% embodied materials consumption, contributing to more than 50% of the life cycle impact in almost all impact categories, although lead used in the perovskite dye only contributes to about 1.14% of the human toxicity potential. A comparison of perovskite solar cells with commercial silicon and cadmium-tellurium solar cells reveals that perovskite solar cells could be a promising alternative technology for future large-scale industrial applications.Risk assessment (RA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) are two analytical tools used to support decision making in environmental management. This study reviewed 30 environmental assessment case studies that claimed an integration, combination, hybridization, or complementary use of RA and LCA. The focus of the analysis was on how the respective case studies evaluated emissions of chemical pollutants and pathogens. The analysis revealed three clusters of similar case studies. Yet, there seemed to be little consensus as to what should be referred to as RA and LCA, and when to speak of combination, integration, hybridization, or complementary use of RA and LCA. This paper provides clear recommendations toward a more stringent and consistent use of terminology. Blending elements of RA and LCA offers multifaceted opportunities to adapt a given environmental assessment case study to a specific decision making context, but also requires awareness of several implications and potential pitfalls, of which six are discussed in this paper. To facilitate a better understanding and more transparent communication of the nature of a given case study, this paper proposes a "design space" (i.e., identification framework) for environmental assessment case studies blending elements of RA and LCA. Thinking in terms of a common design space, we postulate, can increase clarity and transparency when communicating the design and results of a given assessment together with its potential strengths and weaknesses.The importance of the sewage sludge treatment within the field of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) suggests new dimensions of analysis where the relevance of economic criteria combined with the associated environmental issues are increasing the sludge management complexity. For supporting the decision process and for comparative purposes, this study assesses five alternative configurations for sludge treatment, namely: mesophilic and termophilic anaerobic digestion plus composting, incineration, gasification, and supercritical water oxidation (SCWO). The global warming potential (GWP) and the annual cash flow of each alternative are used to estimate a composite indicator for each alternative. Stakeholders' preferences are integrated into the assessment through the development of five scenarios prioritizing economic or environmental aspects. A case study for a 1 million person equivalent WWTP proved that SCWO is the most adequate option if economic and environmental criteria are considered equally important However, if the economic assessment is prioritized over the environmental one, thermophilic anaerobic digestion followed by composting turned out to be the most appropriate option. The proposed approach contributes to the implementation of more suitable sewage sludge treatment lines since it provides an indicator for each alternative embracing economic and GWP issues. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite efforts to increase the selective collection of municipal solid waste (MSW) in developed countries, the amount of unsorted waste remains high, with the consequent difficulty of material recovery and recycling. In 2010, 61% of the MSW generated in the European Union (EU) ended up in landfill and incineration facilities. Autoclaving is a novel technology that can be used to treat unsorted MSW, producing organic fibers that can be composted. The life cycle analysis (LCA) was used to assess the effectiveness of autoclaving unsorted MSW and various alternative methods for treating organic fibers produced through this process. The alternative methods that were considered included composting in tunnels, composting in confined windrow and composting in turning windrow as well as anaerobic digestion. The environmental assessment results were compared to those associated with incineration and landfill. The results of this study showed that autoclaving with sorting, digesting anaerobically and composting had the lowest impact values for eutrophication and the global warming potential. It was also found that autoclaving is justified only if the products of the process, that is, polyethylene terephthalate, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, are recycled to avoid virgin material production and if the remaining mixed plastic wastes are incinerated for energy recovery. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been proved to act as a desirable tool to evaluate the environmental impacts of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, the application of LCA methodology in the field of wastewater treatment is still in progress. This paper has made a review of the LCA studies dealing with biological (activated sludge) WWTPs, with the aim to provide qualitative interpretation of the associated environmental impact categories: eutrophication potential, global warming potential, toxicity-related impacts, energy balance, water use, land use and other impact categories. Possible sources for each impact category of WWTPs are summarized in order to provide information about the critical aspects in WWTP systems that might influence LCA results. Moreover, recent development and the application status of characterization models for each impact category have been reviewed. The analysis indicates that it is important to carry out site-specific LCA studies on WWTPs. The specificity is most typical for the eutrophication potential and toxicity-related impact categories, which need implementation of spatial differentiated characterization methods, considering the emission location, spatial dimensions (transfer between environmental compartments) and even properties of pollutants. Although remarkable progresses have been obtained, their applications in the field of wastewater treatment are still limited. For the global warming potential impact category, it is most crucial to calculate accurately the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), as well as fossil origin carbon dioxide (CO2) in wastewater have the potential to make considerable contributions. In the end, prospective is made about which aspects in WWTPs are candidates for further LCA studies. Overall, there is still room for pursuing more accurate results when applying LCA to WWTPs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to provide insights on how to pursue future food demand, it faces the challenge to describe scenarios of the future in which the environmental impacts occur. In the case of future crop production, the effects of climate change should be considered. In this context, the objectives of this paper are two-fold: (i) to recommend an approach to deal with uncertainty in scenario analysis for LCA of crop production in a changed climate, when the goal of the study is to suggest strategies for adaptation of crop cultivation practices towards low environmental impacts, and (ii) to implement the suggested approach to spring barley cultivation in Denmark. First, the main implications of climate change for future crop cultivation are analyzed, and the factors which should be included when modeling the climate change effects on crops through LCA are introduced, namely climate, soil, water loss and production parameters. Secondly, the handling of these factors in the inventory modeling is discussed and finally implemented in the case study. Our approach follows a 3-step procedure consisting of: (1) definition of a baseline scenario at the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) level for the selected crop and performance of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) including normalization and contribution analysis, in order to identify the focus points in terms of impact categories, unit processes and substances; (2) identification of the main deviations from the baseline scenario for these key parameters in alternative future scenarios; (3) comparison of the different scenarios including quantification of the uncertainty at inventory level. The procedure presented was successfully implemented to assess the consequences of the changed climate on Danish spring barley cultivated under future climate conditions. The LCA results, obtained using mainly primary data from phytotron experiments mimicking a future Danish climate, emphasized that adaptation strategies should prioritize the development of resilient and stable cultivars, i.e. robust to the expected extremes of the future climate and offering a reasonable yield under different climatic conditions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The remanufacturing industry is one of the strategic emerging industries in China that are changing the traditional economic growth mode, developing a circular economy, as well as promoting development toward becoming a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society. Based on the current development of China's engine remanufacturing industry and government policy, this study analyzed the characteristics and development trend of the engine remanufacturing industry. Diesel engine remanufacturing is the earliest remanufacturing business in China and is the key to the development of the remanufacturing industry. Diesel remanufacturing mostly involves different stages of the vehicle exhaust emission standard implemented in China. A life-cycle assessment model was developed to investigate pollution prevention achieved in China by remanufacturing a China 2 standard heavy-duty diesel engine compared with a new one that has similar specifications and manufactured by the same OEM but meets the China 4 standard. Qualitative analysis indicates that a different remanufacturing strategy needs to be adopted for an engine in a different exhaust emission standard stage. The principle of remanufacturing is "Remanufacturing restores used automotive engines to like-new condition". However, remanufacturing a China 2 or 3 engine increases emissions. Therefore, the principle of remanufacturing does not always achieve the goal of remanufacturing development in China. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solutions towards sustainable cities are of vital importance for China's stakeholders due to the rapid urbanizations, serious resources depletion and environmental contaminations in China. China as the second largest economy is suffering from the dilemma of rapid industrialization and urbanization, and sustainable development. One of the most severe problems affecting China's sustainable urban development is the resource dependent city, in which resource mining and process industries dominate the local economy. With the depletion of natural resources and the degradation of environment, the concept of sustainability and economy transition solutions become more and more important. Under this condition, this study aims to conduct a comprehensive review on the major projects for a more sustainable future in China's national resource dependent cities and propose a countermeasure for the sustainability transition based on the industrial symbiosis concept. Firstly, an investigation on the panoramic view, challenges, transiting policies of China's resource dependent cities' project has been carried out. Subsequently, Guiyang city in Guizhou province of China, as a typical resource dependent city, has been chosen as example of industrial and regional symbiosis focusing on the integration and symbiosis of coal, electricity, aluminum, phosphor chemical, iron/steel industry and urban. Then, a quantitative assessment on the environmental benefits has been conducted based on material flow analysis approach. Results highlight a dramatic resource saving, solid waste reduction and carbon dioxide emission mitigation, as well as generating revenue for companies and local business opportunities. Finally, policy implications for promoting the industry symbiosis are discussed in details. Our research provides an efficacious solution for the transition of resource dependent cities, and it is revelatory for future sustainable urban planning and policy making in China. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper proposes an environmental assessment framework that integrates the conventional life cycle assessment (LCA) with risk assessment for the purpose of evaluating energy conservation systems in buildings from environmental and societal perspectives. The inclusion of the potential risks raised by the different stakeholders in this framework will help the LCA professionals to identify accurate system boundaries of their study. This research addresses some limitations of frameworks presented so far by providing process activity modeling, using Type-zero method of integrated definition language, IDEFO, as a tool to describe each phase of its application. The proposed framework considers the LCA risk-based analysis in three modules namely; (i) establish of the life cycle stages, (ii) identify risk indicators and perform risk assessment, and (iii) manage risks through applying the risk assessment results to the life cycle of building's energy system. The risk based life cycle assessment (RBLCA) framework proposed here is further explained in a case study of performing RBLCA for a hybrid energy supply system (HESS) that supplies power to a hotel building. This approach allows us to investigate unfavorable impacts and risks of using HESS as way for energy conservation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A growing amount of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) is produced in Europe each year. Increased recycling of C&DW is required by the EU Waste Framework Directive, targeting at 70% recycling of non-hazardous C&DW by 2020. The aim of the study was to assess the performance of the common Finnish C&DW management system against this target, thus identifying the environmental and economic impacts of the system and the effects brought about by changes in the waste composition. In this study, a combination of different methodologies was applied to evaluate holistically the performance of the C&DW management system: material flow analysis (MFA) was employed to assess material and energy recovery rates, life cycle assessment (LCA) was utilised to evaluate climate change impacts, and environmental life cycle costing (ELCC) was used for measuring the costs. In addition, the applicability of the best available technology (BAT) approach for developing the efficiency of the waste management system was scrutinised. Thus, aligned with the empirical aim of assessing the performance of Finnish C&DW in reference to the EU Waste Framework Directive, the theoretical aim of the study was to test how the employment of different assessment methodologies affects the performance results of the C&DW management system. According to the results, the overall system produced environmental benefits and was economically profitable, but was far behind the target of recycling 70%. Based on the assessments, the EU Waste Framework Directive target will not be achieved, even with the likely changes in waste composition. Thus, major changes will be needed to source separation and recovery within the system, e.g. by finding recycling concepts for waste wood without decreasing the environmental and economic benefits of the system. The employment of different methodologies gave a diversified view of the possibilities to develop the system. The metal treatment performed well in all assessments; hence improvements to it would not benefit the system notably. For wood the results were controversial, since the energy recovery generated environmental and economic benefits, but did not increase the recycling rate. Material recovery concepts should be developed, but simultaneously the environmental and economic benefits should be retained. Miscellaneous waste had the potential for increasing recycling and avoiding costs and emissions. Mixed waste was identified as the worst fraction in relation to climate change impacts, costs and material recycling. Applying the BAT approach showed that BAT for waste management needs to be based on system-level rather than installation-level assessments. This multi-methodological assessment of C&DW management showed the need for analysing the environmental performance of a system from different perspectives before decision-making. In general, the recycling of waste generates greater environmental benefits than energy recovery, but this may not always be the case. Regional differences in operations and waste composition may support arguments for differing recycling targets in different regions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent olive cultivation in Mediterranean Countries is characterised by the strong diffusion of high-density cropping systems and by the most environmentally conscious management regarding all the agronomic practices and the waste disposal as well. This research has investigated the possibility of the use of De-Oiled Pomace (DOP) as an eco-friendly tool for weed control in a high-density olive orchard providing an environmental comparison with other soil management techniques. Five methods of weed control have been compared in a two-year experimental orchard at the Bad University (Southern Italy): mulching with de-oiled olive pomace (DOP), nonwoven tissue (TNT) and polyethylene film (PEN), chemical (CHI) and mechanical (MEC) weeding, on the three most adapted to high-density orchards olive cultivars (Arbequina, Arbosana and Koroneiki). The data collected during the experimental test are submitted to an LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) analysis and five scenarios have been drafted based on DOP use and destinations. The results showed that the chemical wedding produced the greatest environmental burdens, and the higher environmental performances of DOP mulching scenarios for all environmental indexes, with burdens reductions and/or environmental credits. The presence in the following years of some bio-markers sensitive to macro and micro pollutants and heavy metals, in experimental plots mulched with DOP, confirmed the high environmental sustainability of this technique, excluding any kind of soil pollution in the medium-term period in the high-density olive orchard. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of a building are determined in the project planning phase, affecting the whole life cycle of the building. Thus, they should be assessed in the project planning phase so as to reduce the whole environment impacts of the building. This study aims to develop a model for predicting the environmental impacts of a building in the project planning phase, focused on educational facilities. This study was conducted in three steps: (i) collection of several information on educational facilities and cluster formation using the decision tree; (ii) development of the prediction model using the advanced case-based reasoning; and (iii) evaluation of the environmental impacts of educational facilities with six categories. The proposed model was verified compared to the actual data. The error rate for the resource depletion potential was determined to be at 14.14%; global warming potential, 6.80%; ozone-layer depletion potential, 27.29%; acidification potential, 12.94%; eutrophication potential, 18.73%; and photochemical oxidation potential, 43.23%. Due to the limitations of the available information in the project planning phase, it was shown that some impact categories might be estimated with relatively lower accuracy. The proposed model allows an architect or a facility manager to easily and accurately estimate the environmental impacts of the educational facilities. It could also be useful for establishing a national environmental policy such as a carbon emissions reduction target. In addition, it could be extended to any other building type or country in the global environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper presents a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of production of ammonia using wind power. The ammonia is intended to substitute for nitrogen fertilizer produced from fossil resources. The studied system is designed to supply a rural community with fertilizer based on renewable energy and is, therefore, smaller than industrial fossil ammonia production systems. Two contrasting cases examine the impact of the location of the system, investigating the dependence on the regional energy system (background system) to balance demand and supply of energy in the ammonia production system (foreground system). The results show that wind-based ammonia production can significantly decrease fossil energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional production, but that the use of energy from the background system severely impacts the environmental performance, especially in regions where fossil fuels dominate the energy system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper is to show the potential additional insight that results from adding indicators based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to the evaluation criteria of plant performance in the control strategies of wastewater treatment plants. Our assessment combines plant-performance evaluation criteria as effluent quality and operational cost defined by the Benchmark Simulation Model, jointly with a detailed environmental evaluation for impact category provided by LCA. Comparison of control strategies shows that the use of ammonia and carbon controllers provides best effluent quality index, whilst the control strategy that uses ammonia, carbon and storage tank controllers has the lowest values as regards operational cost (the storage tank decrease the operational cost index into a 15%). However, environmental analysis indicates that the control strategy using ammonia, carbon and storage tank controllers generates the lowest environmental impacts in all impact categories except eutrophication; whereas the control strategy using only the carbon controller has the lowest impact on eutrophication (6% lower than the higher control strategies), but the largest impact on the remaining categories (from a 9% higher for terrestrial Ecotoxicity to a 97% higher for the Photochemical oxidation). According to the multiple evaluation criteria results, the control strategy using ammonia, carbon and storage tank controllers is considered as most suitable to implement, highlighting the importance of environmental analysis as an additional source of information for decision makers. The results reported here underline the importance of taking into account integration of the plant performance criteria with environmental evaluation based on LCA for control strategies in wastewater treatment plants. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To reduce the environmental impacts caused by manufacturing processes science, and industry want to identify hotspots and to derive improvement measures. One of those contributing manufacturing processes is grinding using synthetically produced cubic boron nitride (cBN). CBN grains are broadly applied for super abrasive materials in the production of high-precision grinding wheels. The shape, size and volume concentration of the cBN grains have a major impact on the technological results (workpiece roughness, tool wear, temperature, etc.) of the grinding process and on the economic value of the grinding wheel. Despite the technological results and the economic value, the contribution of cBN grinding wheels to the overall environmental impact has not been fully investigated and understood. A key method to calculate the environmental impact is life cycle assessment. However, an essential requirement is the availability of the used material and energy data during the life cycle stages of grinding wheel material, production, application and disposal. This paper gives an overview regarding the needed materials and energy during the different life phases of a cBN grinding wheel. On this basis, the detailed environmental impact of the grinding process is presented in a case study. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study is to better elucidate the influence of surface-mount device (SMD) transistor material composition on the environmental impact of such transistors. A life cycle assessment (LCA) has been performed in which the EcoInvent dataset was updated with material compositions provided by several manufacturers. The influence of the material composition has been studied, providing a more precise understanding of the environmental impact. The software used to develop the LCA model was SimaPro 8.0.3.14, developed by Pre Consultants. The LCA was calculated with the CML methodology. In addition, a life cycle inventory was developed using EcoInvent v3. The EcoInvent methodology was used as a comparison tool for information provided by the manufacturers in terms of environmental impact, thus improving transistor selection in electronics design. The environmental impact of an SMD transistor can vary substantially with respect to material composition. Raw material acquisition represent between 20.3% and 99.9% of the total impact in most environmental categories. By contrast, the environmental impact of each transistor created due to part production is usually lower. The lowest environmental impact comes from the end of life treatments, values for which are approximately 0.1%. This environmental impact study demonstrates the large influence of transistor material composition for those analyzed herein. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comprehensive greenhouse gas (GHG) life-cycle assessment was conducted for a large highway reconstruction project in New Jersey. The GASCAP model was used to determine the total life-cycle GHG emissions associated with the materials used, construction equipment, mobilization of resources for the project, traffic disruption during construction, and materials used for life-cycle maintenance. The focus of the case study was to determine the relative share of these various components, as well as the importance of accounting for non-CO2 GHG emissions. Results suggest that non-CO2 emissions are substantial enough that they should be included and that various smaller material components, not just those associated with materials in the pavement should also be included. For this specific case-study, traffic disruption was a minor component of total emissions, though this result will differ depending on project and road network details. GHG emissions associated with this reconstruction project account for about 20% of the total emissions expected to be generated from traffic using the highway over a 50 year lifetime. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A growing population and a high level of consumption generate increasing municipal waste, which requires integral and environmentally efficient waste management systems. In contrast, the cement industry has an inherent need for fuel with a high heat of combustion. Thus, municipal solid wastes with high calorific value are desirable as Refuse-Derived Fuel for thermal processes in the cement industry, which is an opportunity for both the waste sector and cement industry. However, the environmental viability must be objectively, systematically and holistically evaluated. For the last trait, a comparative Life Cycle Assessment was developed to evaluate the environmental impact from clinker production for two fuel scenarios: one considering a 100% petroleum coke and the other a 20% Refuse-Derived Fuel and 80% petroleum coke co-process. This study considers real operating data from waste management systems and the cement industry in Mexico. Both scenarios considered the impact of the raw material extraction, manufacture and transport of fuels, electricity generation and use air emissions, discharge and wastewater generated during the life cycle of the analyzed fuels. The evaluated impact categories were the abiotic resource depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, photochemical smog and terrestrial toxicity based on the CML IO Baseline V3.01. The results indicate the co-processing scenario exhibited a lower environmental impact than using only petroleum coke as a fuel for all categories. Therefore, using Refuse-Derived Fuel from municipal waste in Mexican cement plants mitigates environmental impacts and could be a strategic alternative for waste management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents a methodology to classify light-duty vehicles according to their environmental impacts. The classification is based on Life-Cycle Impact Assessment indicators and vehicle operation indicators, which are aggregated using a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method. In contrast with most literature combining Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and MCDA, vehicles are not compared directly; they are compared to pre-established profiles defining a set of classes. These profiles are established relatively to the impacts of the country's light-duty fleet. The ELECTRE TRI method is chosen for MCDA classification, thus avoiding complete substitutability among criteria and allowing for imprecision in the data. MCDA typically incorporates the subjective values of decision makers, namely through criteria weighting. To obtain conclusions that are not contingent on a given weight vector, we consider a space of weight vectors defined by constraints with a clear rationale and obtain all the possible results compatible with those constraints. The methodology is applied to classify six vehicles available in Portugal with different powertrains: Gasoline and Diesel Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (10 and 40-mile battery range) and Battery Electric Vehicle. The discussion suggests how this methodology might be useful for a decision-making entity that wishes to classify vehicles according to their environmental impacts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents comparative life cycle assessments (LCAs) and levelised cost (LC) analyses of desalination supply systems, integrated with a spatial-temporal model at three geographical scales: a centralised scenario and two alternative decentralised scenarios. For the centralised scenario we focused on a proposed 320,000 m(3)/day SWRO desalination plant to support future urban expansion in the northern corridor of Perth, Western Australia. The alternative, decentralised scenarios each integrate several medium sized plants into the same geographical water demand area as the centralised scenario and also produce 320,000 m(3)/day in total. Results indicate that environmental impacts would be similar to 20% lower and LC 7% to 18% lower for the decentralised scenarios than for the centralised scenario. Contribution analysis revealed that, for the centralised scenario, although economies of scale resulted in lower environmental impacts from the desalination plant construction and operation phases, these savings were outweighed by the environmental impacts associated with the construction and operation of the water transfer mains required to connect the large plant to the network. Perth water stakeholders and policy makers can use our results to inform development decisions, and the proposed LCA method can be implemented in other metropolitan areas for desalination planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Several scenarios have been proposed recently for the future electricity generation approaches that include a substantial share of renewable technologies. The proposed increase in the market share of these technologies has led to increasing concern regarding the availability of the metals required for these technologies, as well as for the impacts associated with their production. In this regards, it is of interest that most of the metals that are essential for renewable technologies are coproduced with other metals: indium, germanium, and cadmium with zinc, and tellurium and selenium with copper, for example. An increase in the demand for the companion metals can be met either by increasing the recycling of these metals, the efficiency of their recovery, or their extraction from primary resources, the latter of which will lead to an increase in the production of the host metals with possible implications on their supply and demand. In this paper we develop a "green energy" scenario to investigate these metal-related issues in detail. Among the results of interest are the following: (1) More Se and Te may require mining more copper than can be used, while extracting more arsenic than can conveniently be sequestered; (2) more In and Ge may require mining more zinc than can be used, while extracting more cadmium than can conveniently be sequestered; (3) oversupply mining of copper and zinc will decrease their virgin metal prices, and thereby discourage end of life recycling of those metals; (4) the greenhouse gases produced by mining oversupplies of the host metals zinc and copper will, in some case, exceed the greenhouse gases savings produced by a fossil fuel to solar cell transition; (5) these challenges can be minimized, but probably not avoided, by increasing the recovery rates of Se, Te, In, and Ge from the host metal ores, and by more efficient end of life recycling. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to facilitate regional agricultural residue utilization for energy production through bioenergy technologies, a dynamic input-output model is developed to estimate and assess the energy, economic and environmental performances of industrialization of five bioenergy technologies within a 15-year time horizon. Electricity and solid, gaseous and liquid biofuels are energy products of bioenergy technologies. Bioenergy technologies are complemented into regional input-output framework and combined with socioeconomic activities aided by their bottom-up economic and energy parameters. The simulation results for the target area indicate that the agricultural residues available for bioenergy technologies could amount to 55.16 million t, facilitating to 8.38 million t coal-equivalent bioenergy production by 2025. A 3.1% net reduction in accumulative greenhouse gas emission compared with the "business as usual" case could be achieved owing to substitution of fossil energy with electricity and biofuels produced by bioenergy technologies. From energy production, economic benefits and greenhouse gas mitigation three aspects integratedly, direct-combustion power generation and briquette fuel are more advantageous in the target area. The quantified energy, economic and environmental performances of bioenergy technologies are expected to give recommendations for their industrial development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle analysis of a Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) for building-integrated applications is conducted. Two configurations (with and without reflective film) are examined: based on embodied energy/embodied carbon, multiple scenarios and databases. Several environmental indicators are calculated for Exeter, Barcelona, Madrid, Dublin and Paris. Among the studied cities, considering both configurations, Greenhouse-gas Payback Time (GPBT) has the highest values for Paris (27.2-33.1 years) and the lowest values for Dublin (33-4 years). Regarding Energy Payback Time (EPBT) (average based on two databases; CPV with reflective film), Barcelona and Madrid show the minimum values (about 2.4 years) while Paris, Exeter and Dublin show EPBTs 3.2-3.5 years. Reflective film results in 0.2% increase in system initial footprint (embodied energy and embodied carbon; material manufacturing of the modules) while on a long-term basis, this additional impact is compensated (since the CPV with reflective film has higher electrical output). By using the reflective film there is a reduction of about 11-12% in EPBT and GPBT, depending on the scenario. The energy return on the investment is also evaluated, showing the highest values for Madrid and Barcelona among the studied cities. Moreover, EPBT is calculated with an alternative way by considering replacement of the materials of a wall. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global energy consumption is expected to increase significantly due to the growth of the economy and population. The utilization of fossil resource, especially coal, will likely be constrained by carbon dioxide emissions, known to be the principal contributor to climate change. Therefore, the world is facing the challenge of how to utilize fossil resource without a large carbon footprint. In the present work, a nuclear coal hybrid energy system is proposed as a potential solution to the aforementioned challenge. A high-carbon energy such as coal is integrated effectively with a low-carbon energy such as nuclear in a flexible and optimized manner, which is able to generate the chemicals and fuels with low carbon dioxide emissions. The nuclear coal hybrid energy system is presented in this paper for the detailed analysis. In this case, the carbon resource required by the fuel syntheses and chemical production processes is mainly provided by coal while the hydrogen resource is derived from nuclear energy. Such integration can not only lead to a good balance between carbon and hydrogen, but also improve both energy and carbon efficiencies. More importantly, a significantly lower CO2 emission intensity is achieved. A systematic technoeconomic model is established, and a scenario analysis is carried out on the hybrid system to assess the economic competitiveness based on the considerations of various types of externalities. It is found that with the rising carbon tax and coal price as well as the decreasing cost of nuclear energy, the hybrid energy system will become more and more economically competitive with the conventional option, which make it a potential viable solution for the future carbon-constrained world. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The energy saving and the environmental impacts' reduction in the world building sector have gained great importance. Therefore, great efforts have been invested to create energy-saving green buildings. To do so, one of the many things to be done is the insulation of cylindrical pipes, canals and tanks. In the current study, the main focus is on the determination of the optimum insulation thickness of the pipes with varying diameters when different fuels are used. Therefore, through a new method combining exergy analysis and life cycle assessment, optimum insulation thickness of the pipes, total exergetic environmental impact, net saving and payback period were calculated. The effects of the insulation thickness on environmental and combustion parameters were analyzed in a detailed manner. The results revealed that optimum insulation thickness was affected by the temperature of the fuel when it enters into the combustion chamber, the temperature of the stack gas and the temperature of the combustion chamber. Under these optimum effects, the optimum insulation thickness of a 100 mm pipe was determined to be 55.7 cm, 57.2 cm and 59.3 cm for coal, natural gas and fuel-oil, respectively with the ratios of 7632%, 81.84% and 84.04% net savings in the exergetic environmental impact. As the environmental impacts of the fuels and their products are bigger than those of the insulation material, the values of the optimum insulation thickness of the method used this study was found greater. Moreover, in the pipes with greater diameters, through the use of optimum insulation thickness, very high net savings and low payback periods were to be obtained. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lignocellulosic ethanol is considered as a good alternative to increase the current amount of first generation ethanol produced, since it does not compete for land with food production. Biochemical technological routes have high potential to be adopted for lignocellulosic ethanol production, in which hydrolysis processes demand cellulase enzymes to convert cellulose and hemicellulose materials into fermentable sugars. Thus, an integral evaluation of lignocellulosic ethanol requires knowledge of the energetic-environmental costs of production of enzymes, which generally occurs off-site of biorefinery plants in specialized companies. The aims of this work are to assess the energetic-environmental costs of cellulase enzyme production and verify their influence on the lignocellulosic ethanol overall cost. For this, the production of industrial enzyme operating under submerged fermentation process was assessed by (i) emergy accounting, (ii) embodied energy analysis, (iii) and emission inventory. Monte Carlo simulation was used for uncertainty analysis. Results show that cellulase enzyme demands 4.06E14 seJ/kg(enzyme) and 1664 MJ/kg(enzyme) with a global warming potential of 21.90 kgCO(2-eq)/kg(enzyme). These values are equivalent to 0.41%, 0.49%, and 0.02%, respectively, of the emergy, embodied energy, and global warming potential of lignocellulosic ethanol production, making their contribution to the overall energetic-environmental costs negligible when compared to other input resources of the ethanol production chain such as limestone and diesel. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Emergy analysis is applied to closed-loop recycling processes. The emergy balance is written under the form of a discrete-time equation following a comparable approach to the Lagrangian particle tracking in fluid mechanics. Two material losses were taken into consideration, the first one at the level of treatment (collection, dismantling, recycling etc.) and the second one at the transformation level. As expected, the emergy of a product increases with the number of cycles (after the transformation processes). To assess the environmental stress at each recycling stage, relative emergy of the product Delta E-p(n) was used after discussing the limitation of others solutions like the environmental loading ratio (ELR) or the recycle benefit ratio (RBR) which are not suitable for use in the cases of multiple recycling analysis. The values obtained showed that the Delta E-p(n) has an increasing trend for successive recycles. Additionally, this approach allowed the study of different cases of theoretical closed-loop recycling and an application on aluminum. The results indicated that the several cycles in the first stage of recycling have a significant impact, and an asymptotic behavior of Delta E-p(n) can be noted. In any cases recycling remains a better option compared to raw material use to compensate the material losses. Furthermore, the presented equations illustrate the impact of the material recycle rate and the percentage of losses during the both recycling and transformation processes. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper considers the different approaches taken in dealing with waste products and flows in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Emergy Accounting (EMA), from a methodological point of view, and aims to develop more standardized and synergistic procedures. LCA deals with the waste issue from the point of view of the impact of their disposal, as well as the potential benefit ('environmental credit') afforded by the avoided extraction and processing of additional primary resources when waste is recycled or its energy content recovered. The 'environmental burden' associated to the entire production and consumption chain leading to the waste item is generally not included in LCAs of waste management systems, due to the boundary being placed - consistently with the intended goal - around the actual disposal processes (including recycling alternatives and associated environmental credits). Instead, Emergy Accounting, a donor-side approach with its implicit boundary set at the biosphere level, in principle keeps track of the entire supply-chain at all times, considering even waste flows as products (or co-products), and calculating their intensity factors and assessing their role within the ecosystem's web and hierarchy. However, when the focus is limited to evaluating processes under human control, within the narrower space and time boundary of human-dominated production and consumption processes, waste products can arguably be regarded as something to be recycled or disposed of to minimize the environmental burden. When this is the case, and particularly in comparative analyses, the emergy perspective thus becomes closer to the LCA perspective and interesting methodological synergies may emerge. A clearly defined set of emergy algebra rules for waste products and flows, and specifically for recycling, was found to be still lacking in the available emergy literature. We propose here that a better and more consistent methodological solution may be arrived at by leveraging the work done in LCA. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Solvents are widely recognized to be of great environmental concern. The reduction of their use is one of the most important aims of green chemistry. In addition to this, the appropriate selection of solvent for a process can greatly improve the sustainability of a chemical production process. There has also been extensive research into the application of so-called green solvents, such as ionic liquids and supercritical fluids. However, most examples of solvent technologies that give improved sustainability come from the application of well-established solvents. It is also apparent that the successful implementation of environmentally sustainable processes must be accompanied by improvements in commercial performance.Background: Corn oil recovery and conversion to biodiesel has been widely adopted at corn ethanol plants recently. The US EPA has projected 2.6 billion liters of biodiesel will be produced from corn oil in 2022. Corn oil biodiesel may qualify for federal renewable identification number (RIN) credits under the Renewable Fuel Standard, as well as for low greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity credits under California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Because multiple products [ethanol, biodiesel, and distiller's grain with solubles (DGS)] are produced from one feedstock (corn), however, a careful co-product treatment approach is required to accurately estimate GHG intensities of both ethanol and corn oil biodiesel and to avoid double counting of benefits associated with corn oil biodiesel production. Results: This study develops four co-product treatment methods: (1) displacement, (2) marginal, (3) hybrid allocation, and (4) process-level energy allocation. Life-cycle GHG emissions for corn oil biodiesel were more sensitive to the choice of co-product allocation method because significantly less corn oil biodiesel is produced than corn ethanol at a dry mill. Corn ethanol life-cycle GHG emissions with the displacement, marginal, and hybrid allocation approaches are similar (61, 62, and 59 g CO(2)e/MJ, respectively). Although corn ethanol and DGS share upstream farming and conversion burdens in both the hybrid and process-level energy allocation methods, DGS bears a higher burden in the latter because it has lower energy content per selling price as compared to corn ethanol. As a result, with the process-level allocation approach, ethanol's life-cycle GHG emissions are lower at 46 g CO(2)e/MJ. Corn oil biodiesel life-cycle GHG emissions from the marginal, hybrid allocation, and process-level energy allocation methods were 14, 59, and 45 g CO(2)e/MJ, respectively. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to investigate the influence corn oil yield, soy biodiesel, and defatted DGS displacement credits, and energy consumption for corn oil production and corn oil biodiesel production. Conclusions: This study's results demonstrate that co-product treatment methodology strongly influences corn oil biodiesel life-cycle GHG emissions and can affect how this fuel is treated under the Renewable Fuel and Low Carbon Fuel Standards.Smart textiles have progressed well beyond the laboratory stage. A growing community of smart textile designers utilises engineered materials and advanced manufacturing technologies to create marketable products. To implement an environmentally conscious way of product innovation, the environmental impact of such products needs to be taken into account already at the early design-stages. A life-cycle perspective on the consequences of design choices can guide the implementation of eco-design measures. However, not much literature is available thus far to empower designers in making sustainable design decisions. To meet this need, this article presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a wearable smart textile device for ambulant medical therapy. The case study focuses on material selection, since this aspect is one of the most relevant choices at the prototyping stage. The eco-cost approach was used to compare the LCA-results of the original prototype design against various eco-redesign options. The results suggest several priority areas for environmental improvement. One possibility is the replacement of silver based conductive yarns by copper based alternatives. Another finding suggests the use of acryl instead of wool. The case study results are the starting point for further discussion on the role of designers with respect to responsible eco-design. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the largest magnesium producer in the world, China is facing a great challenge of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction. In this paper, the variation trend and driving factors of GHG emissions from Chinese magnesium production were evaluated and the measures of technology and policy for effectively mitigating GHG emissions were provided. First, the energy-related and process-oriented GHG inventory is compiled for magnesium production in China. Then, the driving forces for the changes of the energy-related emission were analyzed by the method of Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition. Results demonstrated that Chinese magnesium output from 2003 to 2013 increased by 125%, whereas GHG emissions only increased by 16%. The emissions caused by the fuels consumption decline most significantly (from 28.4 to 6.6 t CO(2)eq/t Mg) among all the emission sources. The energy intensity and the energy structure were the main offsetting factors for the increase of GHG emissions, while the scale of production and the international market demand were the main contributors for the total increase. Considering the improvement of technology application and more stringent policy measures, the annual GHG emissions from Chinese primary magnesium production will be controlled within 22 million tons by 2020.China is undergoing rapid urbanization, enlarging the construction industry, greatly expanding built-up land, and generating substantial carbon emissions. We calculated both the direct and indirect carbon emissions from energy consumption (anthropogenic emissions) in the construction sector and analyzed built-up land expansion and carbon storage losses from the terrestrial ecosystem. According to our study, the total anthropogenic carbon emissions from the construction sector increased from 3,905 X 10(4) to 103,721.17 X 10(4) t from 1995 to 2010, representing 27.87%-34.31% of the total carbon emissions from energy consumption in China. Indirect carbon emissions from other industrial sectors induced by the construction sector represented approximately 97% of the total anthropogenic carbon emissions of the sector. These emissions were mainly concentrated in seven upstream industry sectors. Based on our assumptions, built-up land expansion caused 3704.84 x 10(4) t of carbon storage loss from vegetation between 1995 and 2010. Cropland was the main built-up land expansion type across all regions. The study shows great regional differences. Coastal regions showed dramatic built-up land expansion, greater carbon storage losses from vegetation, and greater anthropogenic carbon emissions. These regional differences were the most obvious in East China followed by Midsouth China. These regions are under pressure for strong carbon emissions reduction.Human exposure to indoor pollutant concentrations is receiving increasing interest in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). We address this issue by incorporating an indoor compartment into the USEtox model, as well as by providing recommended parameter values for households in four different regions of the world differing geographically, economically, and socially. With these parameter values, intake fractions and comparative toxicity potentials for indoor emissions of dwellings for different air tightness levels were calculated. The resulting intake fractions for indoor exposure vary by 2 orders of magnitude, due to the variability of ventilation rate, building occupation, and volume. To compare health impacts as a result of indoor exposure with those from outdoor exposure, the indoor exposure characterization factors determined with the modified USEtox model were applied in a case study on cooking in non-OECD countries. This study demonstrates the appropriateness and significance of integrating indoor environments into LCA, which ensures a more holistic account of all exposure environments and allows for a better accountability of health impacts. The model, intake fractions, and characterization factors are made available for use in standard LCA studies via www.usetox.org and in standard LCA software.Presently, climate metrics in life-cycle assessment (LCA) aggregate the emission of greenhouse gases in one impact-triggering instant, rather than accommodating its distribution along a timeline. There have been efforts to make the global warming potential (GWP) metric dynamic to study temporary carbon storage in wood products. In this article, we test the use of dynamic LCA on bioenergy production from Jatropha oil in Mali, which offers temporary carbon sequestration in biomass and soil. We built a life-cycle inventory for land conversion to jatropha after cropland and fallow land. The assessment was made for one and for 10 consecutive rotations, and yielded dynamic emission profiles over the years. We found that dynamic LCA is sensitive to variations in emission over time, and that it resulted in lower GWP compared to the conventional static approach following IPCC rules, except for early times of analysis. But the largest variation occurs within dynamic LCA between readings at different times of analysis. The choice of time of analysis in the dynamic LCA methodology has no theoretical grounds and is therefore subjective. In the particular case of this short-lived product, we did not find an added value for the provoked increase in complexity of LCA.A meta-analysis of 44 studies that conduct a private, external and/or total social cost comparison among conventional and electric vehicles shows that, independent of the studies' goals, the results are often misleading. This distortion occurs because of the omission of one or more relevant cost components and/or the impact of divergent and often unspecified assumptions, which is demonstrated through three detailed examples. Although 30 studies compared private costs, one-third only considered purchase and fuel costs and ignored other costs. Charging infrastructure and residual value were only considered in four and eight studies, respectively. Thirty-five authors performed an external cost evaluation, of which 12 were expressed in monetary terms. The majority of the non-monetary studies only consider one external polluting factor, which is generally CO2/GHG, whereas the monetary studies generally evaluate four or more polluting factors. Furthermore, this article drafts a methodological checklist that (1) defines the preferred evaluation methods according to the study goals, (2) includes all private and external costs in the production, acquisition, usage and disposal stages as well as the existing policy measures and (3) lists the general assumptions that should be specified. This checklist enhances consistent comparability among various social cost studies of different vehicle types, and it supports policy-makers in drafting evidence-based transportation policy conclusions.In an effort to achieve sustainable operations, green supply chain management has become an important area for firms to concentrate on due to its inherent involvement with all the processes that provide foundations to successful business. Modelling methodologies of product supply chain environmental assessment are usually guided by the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA). However, a review of the extant literature suggests that LCA techniques suffer from a wide range of limitations that prevent a wider application in real-world contexts; hence, they need to be incorporated within decision support frameworks to aid environmental sustainability strategies. Thus, this paper contributes in understanding and overcoming the dichotomy between LCA model development and the emerging practical implementation to inform carbon emissions mitigation strategies within supply chains. Therefore, the paper provides both theoretical insights and a practical application to inform the process of adopting a decision support framework based on a LCA methodology in a real-world scenario. The supply chain of a product from the steel industry is considered to evaluate its environmental impact and carbon 'hotspots'. The study helps understanding how operational strategies geared towards environmental sustainability can be informed using knowledge and information generated from supply chain environmental assessments, and for highlighting inherent challenges in this process.Green packaging is playing an increasingly important role in greening the supply chain. However, the issues that companies face when developing green packaging solutions for the transportation of products within supply chains are poorly understood. A case study of an automotive component manufacturer is presented that explores the complexity of the decisions that surround the decision of inter-organisational packaging design. Drawing upon the literature, legislation and the expert evaluation provided by the case organisation, it identifies the important criteria that influence packaging design and comprise customer requirements, legislation, operational and environmental concerns. This research finds that even though the company makes significant efforts to improve its environmental performance, operational concerns are most influential factors in the design of packaging. Initiatives that aim to improve the environmental performance of packaging are also constrained by external influences in the supply chain, such as customer pressure to adopt branded packaging systems and the inability to influence the design of incoming goods and material packaging.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become the prevalent approach for quantifying the environmental impact of products over their entire life cycle. Unfortunately, LCA studies require large amounts of data that are difficult to collect in practice, which makes them expensive and time consuming. This work introduces a method that simplifies standard LCA studies by using proxy metrics that are identified following a systematic approach. Our method, which combines multi-linear regression and mixed-integer linear programming, builds in an automatic manner simplified multi-linear regression models of impact that predict (with high accuracy) the damage in different environmental categories from a reduced number of proxy metrics. Our approach was applied to data retrieved from ecoinvent. Numerical results show that few indicators suffice to describe the environmental performance of a process with high accuracy. Our findings will help develop general guidelines for simplified LCA studies that will focus on quantifying a reduced number of key indicators. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Multi-objective constrained optimization problems which arise in many engineering fields often involve computationally expensive black-box model simulators of industrial processes which have to be solved with limited computational time budget, and hence limited number of simulator calls. This paper proposes two heuristic approaches aiming to build proxy problem models, solvable by computationally efficient optimization methods, in order to quickly provide a sufficiently accurate approximation of the Pareto front. The first approach builds a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MO-MILP) surrogate model of the optimization problem relying on piece-wise linear approximations of objectives and constraints obtained through brute-force sensitivity computation. The second approach builds a multi-objective nonlinear programming (MO-NLP) surrogate model using curve fitting of objectives and constraints. In both approaches the desired number of approximated solutions of the Pareto front are generated by applying the 6-constraint method to the multi-objective surrogate problems. The proposed approaches are tested for the cost vs. life cycle assessment (LCA)-based environmental optimization of drinking water production plants. The results obtained with both approaches show that a good quality approximation of Pareto front can be obtained with a significantly smaller computational time than with a state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithm. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings significantly contribute to global environmental pollution due to consumption of both natural and primary-energy resources as well as to emission of carbon dioxide in their life-cycles. Therefore, to enable construction of more sustainable buildings, it is important and urgent that new low environmental impact materials are developed, mainly by reducing the use of non-renewable resources. In this regard, the recent advances in the development of natural fibres represent a significant opportunity to produce improved-materials and energy from renewable resources. For this purpose, assessments of energy and environmental performances are needed to support both the design and the production of the aforementioned materials so as to identify solutions for enhanced contribution to global sustainability. In this context, this study presented a review of the papers published up to February 2015 that have been focussed upon the assessment of the environmental and energy impacts related to the use of hemp-based materials for building applications. The reviewed studies aimed at testing and improving hygro-thermal properties and eco-friendliness of these materials for reduction of both embodied and operational energy, whilst preserving both indoor air quality and comfort. Doing so would enable limiting the use of energy resources and, as a consequence, their impacts to human health and to the environment, so contributing to making buildings healthier and more environmentally sustainable throughout their life-cycles. Based upon the findings of the studies reviewed, these materials have strengths and weaknesses and their use is strictly dependent upon the given structural situation as well as upon specific requirements of thermal, moisture, fire and sound protection. In particular, all studies concluded that the main strength in the use of hemp-based materials comes from the production phase because of the "green" origin of these materials, mainly associated with the carbon sequestration during plantation growth. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the present study was to determine the most feasible experimental conditions for the dissolution of base metals (Cu, Ni, Zn, Pb, etc.) from waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) obtained from WMP. The leaching of WPCB samples was performed with FeCl3 in HCl solution which allowed the separation of a precious metal rich solid residue and a high base metal concentration solution adequate for base metal recovery. The most favorable conditions for the leaching process were identified on the basis of the defined technical key performance indicators at different HCl (0.1 M-0.3 M) and FeCl3 (0.2 M-0.4 M) concentrations. The highest performances for the dissolution process were obtained at 0.2 M HCl and 0.3 M FeCl3, in a 4 h period, while at a longer leaching period (24 h) at 0.3 M HCl and 0.3 M FeCl.Seaweeds are recognized as one of the important sources of plant biostimulants and are now being increasingly used to enhance crop productivity. Kappaphycus alvarezii is one such seaweed whose extract (pristine sap) has been reported to improve the yield and quality of several crops. In order to evaluate whether the sap obtained from this seaweed is environmentally sustainable, life cycle impact assessment was carried out for the production of 1 kL of seaweed extract, at factory gate, from the fresh biomass of K. alvarezii grown onshore in open sea conditions. Financial allocation was carried out to account for the production of carrageenan, a downstream product. Impacts were also assessed for different means of transportation necessary for the movement of liquid extract to the regional storage facility. Additionally, eight different scenarios that were hypothesized to effectively reduce the environmental impacts, especially under the category of climate change, were also assessed and compared with base case scenario. Pristine sap extracted from K. alvarezii was found to be environmentally sustainable having a low carbon foot print of 118.6 kg CO2 equivalents per kiloliter of its production at factory gate following price allocation. It was observed that rail, road and ship transport modes increased the impacts under the climate change category by 51.8%, 138.5% and 14.1%, respectively, when compared to base case, implying that transport through sea or rail is more environmental friendly. Unexpectedly, increase in net biomass production by 25% from 200 kg to 250 kg per raft did not have any significant impact on the reduction of carbon foot print at factory gate. The study for the first time enables to quantitatively compare the environmental benefits that can accrue following the use of this biostimulant on various crops, either by way of substitution of mineral fertilizers or by supplementation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The theory on the carbon footprint of agriculture can systematically evaluate the carbon emissions caused by artificial factors from the agricultural production process, which is the theoretical basis for constructing low-carbon agriculture and has important guiding significance for realizing low-carbon agriculture. Based on farm production survey data from Jilin Province in 2014, this paper aims to obtain a clear understanding of the carbon footprint of maize production through the following method: (1) one ton of maize production was evaluated systematically by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); (2) the carbon emissions of the whole system were estimated based on field measurement data, (3) using the emission factors we estimated Jilin's carbon footprint for the period 2006-2013, and forecasted it for the period from 2014 to 2020 using the grey system model GM (1, 1).While modern technology, knowledge, and organization have greatly increased agricultural productivity, there has been insufficient regard for sustainability and overall efficiency. Substantial changes need to be made to current agricultural systems to decrease their negative impacts on humans and natural resources while addressing the goal of meeting global food needs into the future. This paper outlines a framework to improve understanding of how to manage natural resources sustainably by bridging the gap between single-discipline, reductionist research and effective resource management. This framework entails combining small-scale reductionist research with complementary whole-systems research and working in collaboration with those farmers who excel in improving the environment and obtaining superior economic returns. Most current research does not generate knowledge that translates automatically into producing desirable and sustainable results from grazingland ecosystems, especially across managed landscapes or at watershed scales. Leading managers achieve their goals by the way they allocate resources, use different technologies and knowledge, and adaptively change these elements as circumstances warrant. To help managers achieve superior results, integrative and multidisciplinary research needs to be conducted to understand how to achieve ecological, economic, and social goals on managed landscapes. Improving sustainability entails developing and using regenerative agricultural systems to include (i) more efficient use of energy and other inputs, (ii) calculation of the full costs to society of farm practices and inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, (iii) routine life-cycle analysis and costing, (iv) high levels of management expertise, and (v) high ecosystem biodiversity, function, and resilience.Environmental performance is an important promotive factor in the future use of wood polymer composites. In this study, the environmental effects of replacing virgin glass fibers with recycled mineral wool fibers, as well as replacing virgin polypropylene with recycled polypropylene are investigated. Furthermore, the environmental performance of two different end-of-life options for composite waste, incineration for energy use and landfill deposition is evaluated. The recycled mineral wool was found to have better environmental performance compared to glass fiber in every impact category assessed: The utilization of recycled polypropylene proved to be advantageous in global warming potential and abiotic depletion categories. It was found that the end-of-life management of composite waste has an important role in the environmental performance of composites. Incineration of composite waste for energy use had better performance compared to landfill deposition in all the categories assessed, except for global warming potential. It is concluded that while the environmentally optimal recycling method for polypropylene waste must be evaluated case by case, recycled mineral wool seems to provide an environmentally superior option to glass fiber in wood polymer composite applications where properties obtainable by the use of a mineral filler are required. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reuse of structural steel can be more attractive than recycling in many cases, if associated costs and risks are lowered, and if externalities are considered. Geometric characterization is demonstrated in this article to have a key role to play in the decision process for each case of potential steel reuse, because it is necessary for identifying unknown in situ member sizes and assembly geometries, and for quantifying uncertainty when assessing the reliability of a structure. Without automation of this analysis, it is speculated that such a detailed decision making process would not be feasible. The key role of geometric characterization is demonstrated in this article through a series of remote, 3D imaging experiments and reliability analyses. The reliability analysis demonstrated that automated geometric identification using an algorithm developed for the current study results in a 56% reduction in capacity when compared to similar new steel members. Alternatively, more manual methods of remote geometry detection resulted in only a 2% reduction in capacity. It is concluded that semi-automated geometric characterization has the potential to support increased steel reuse through reduced identification costs and improved reliability. A new set of methods and an understanding of their utility in making reuse more attractive through reduced costs and improved reliability is thus contributed. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental footprint of bioproducts depends on the performance and implementation strategy of the biorefinery processes through which they are produced. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies are categorized into two general types: attributional and consequential. The consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) method illustrates the change of flows to and from environment, resulting from different potential decisions. Depending on the analysis goal, CLCA is known to be the proper approach to address the environmental analysis of integrated biorefineries with multiple bioproducts. In this study, an LCA of hot water extraction-based biorefinery strategy was performed, including five production pathways. Defined process options consisted of an extraction of hemicellulose to produce (i) biogas, (ii) hemicellulose for animal feed, (iii) hemicellulose for C5-sugars, (iv) C5-sugars, and (v) furfural. Except for the "biogas", acetate salt was the by-product of all the process options. Consequential LCA results proved that the bark consumption, chemicals, and bioproducts transportation have significant environmental impacts. 'Hemicellulose for C5-sugars' and 'C5-sugars' outperformed other alternative options with a greenhouse gas reduction of 80% and 68%, respectively. Also, normalized results of these two options presented remarkable improvement of more than three times in human health impacts in comparison to existing process at the case study mill. (C) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdAlgae are an attractive, alternative renewable source for biofuel production compared to biomass from food crops or cellulosic materials. Marine algae do not need fresh water or arable land and, thus, production of marine algae does not compete with food production. In contrast to biofuel production from microalgae, the use of macroalgal biomass as feedstock for biofuel production is still in its infancy. This study presents an environmental assessment of bioethanol from onshore grown green seaweed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The environmental assessment is based on data from literature and initial laboratory scale experiments, as industrial scale facilities for bioethanol production from macroalgae do not exist. Alternative systems are compared to the reference system and the limits of the LCA are discussed with respect to the co-product management (allocation vs. substitution) in the LCA model. Impact assessment results showed that nutrients for seaweed growth and electricity consumption by the culture system were the main contributors to the environmental burdens of the reference system. Bioethanol from onshore cultivated green seaweed turned out to be an environmentally efficient biofuel compared to fossil fuel and bioethanol from sugarcane. The type of co-product management selected in LCA largely affected the impact assessment results. (C) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdDue to climate change and ongoing drought, California and much of the American West face critical water supply challenges. California's water supply infrastructure sprawls for thousands of miles, from the Colorado River to the Sacramento Delta. Bringing water to growing urban centers in Southern California is especially energy intensive, pushing local utilities to balance water security with factors such as the cost and carbon footprint of the various supply sources. To enhance water security, cities are expanding efforts to increase local water supply. But do these local sources have a smaller carbon footprint than imported sources? To answer this question and others related to the urban water-energy nexus, this study uses spatially explicit life cycle assessment to estimate the energy and emissions intensity of water supply for two utilities in Southern California: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which serves Los Angeles, and the Inland Empire Utility Agency, which serves the San Bernardino region. This study differs from previous research in two significant ways: (1) emissions factors are based not on regional averages but on the specific electric utility and generation sources supplying energy throughout transport, treatment, and distribution phases of the water supply chain; (2) upstream (non-combustion) emissions associated with the energy sources are included. This approach reveals that in case of water supply to Los Angeles, local recycled water has a higher carbon footprint than water imported from the Colorado River. In addition, by excluding upstream emissions, the carbon footprint of water supply is potentially underestimated by up to 30%. These results have wide-ranging implications for how carbon footprints are traditionally calculated at local and regional levels. Reducing the emissions intensity of local water supply hinges on transitioning the energy used to treat and distribute water away from fossil fuel, sources such as coal.With increased awareness of the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the significant contribution from the cement industry, research efforts are being advanced to reduce the impacts associated with concrete production and consumption. A variety of methods have been proposed, one of the most common being the replacement of cement as a binder in concrete with supplementary cementitious materials, such as fly ash (FA), which can have lower environmental effects. The use of FA can change the kinetics of the hydration reactions and, consequently, modify the evolution of the concrete strength over time. Yet the influence of designing structural elements to obtain the required strength at later ages has not been examined in terms of their influence on global warming potential (GWP) of concrete. This research investigates the influence of design age, in addition to mix proportions and geometric aspects, on the GWP associated with making beams, columns, and a concrete building frame. Findings suggest that while the GWP for beams is not highly dependent on concrete mixture strength, the GWP for columns is dependent on strength, thus the influence of required strength at later ages influences GWP of making columns more so than beams. For the concrete frame analyzed, a potential 45% reduction in GWP, depending on mix proportions and design age, was found. Using the findings from this research, the GWP associated with production of concrete in California could be reduced by approximately 1.8 million metric tons of CO2-eq emissions, equivalent to approximately 2% of all industrial GHG emissions in California.Exports of pellets from the United States (US) are growing significantly to meet the demand for renewable energy in the European Union. This transatlantic trade in pellets has raised questions about the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of these pellets and their effects on conventional forest product markets in the US. This paper examines the GHG intensity of pellets exported from the US using either forest biomass only or forest and agricultural biomass combined. We develop an integrated dynamic, price-endogenous, partial equilibrium model of the forestry, agricultural, and transportation sectors in the US to investigate not only the direct life-cycle GHG intensity of pellets but also the accompanying indirect market and land use effects induced by changes in prices of forest and agricultural products over the 2007-2032 period. Across different scenarios of high and low pellet demand that can be met with either forest biomass only or with forest and agricultural biomass, we find that the GHG intensity of pellet based electricity is 74% to 85% lower than that of coal-based electricity. We also find that the GHG intensity of pellets produced using agricultural and forest biomass is 28% to 34% lower than that of pellets produced using forest biomass only. GHG effects due to induced direct and indirect changes in forest carbon stock caused by changes in harvest rotations, changes in land use and in conventional wood production account for 11% to 26% of the overall GHG intensity of pellets produced from forest biomass only; these effects are negative with the use of forest and agricultural biomass.The sawmilling sector is the backbone of the Malaysian wood-based industry. Sawn timber is used extensively for further manufacturing of secondary wood-based products. The conversion of saw-logs into sawn timber releases several gases into the atmosphere, and these may contribute to environmental burdens as well as environmental impacts. Thus, this study aims to determine the environmental performance from gate-to-gate in the sawmilling industry using the life cycle assessment technique. Data pertaining to the saw-logs and energy consumption was calculated, and the environmental performance was assessed. The study focused on two different size sawmills and two tropical hardwood species. The findings concluded that several types of gases namely, CO2, CH4, NOx, N2O, SO2, and CO were discharged to the environment as a result of sawmilling processes. The discharge of these gases impacted the environment in the form of global warming, acidification, human toxicity, eutrophication, and photo-oxidant formation potentials.Chemical production from crude oil represents a substantial percentage of the yearly fossil fuel use worldwide, and this could be partially offset by renewable feedstocks such as woody biomass and energy crops. Past techno-economic and environmental analyses have been conducted for isolated feedstocks on a regional or national scope. This study encompasses complete supply chain logistics analysis, delivered cost financial analysis, national availability, and environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) for 18 selected cellulosic feedstocks from around the world. A biochemical conversion route to monomeric sugars is assumed for estimated sugar yields and biosugar feedstock cost analysis. US corn grain was determined to have the highest delivered cost, while rice hulls in Indonesia resulted in the lowest cost of the feedstocks studied. Monomeric sugar yields from literature ranged from 358 kg BDMT-1 for US forest residues to 700 kg BDMT-1 for corn syrup. Environmental LCA was conducted in SimaPro using ecoinvent v2.2 data and the TRACI 2 impact assessment method for mid-point impacts cradle-to-incoming biorefinery gate. Carbon absorption during biomass growth contributed most substantially to the reduction of net global warming potential. Rice hulls and switchgrass resulted in the highest global warming potential, followed closely by corn and Thai sugarcane bagasse. Contribution analysis shows that chemical inputs such as fertilizer use contribute substantially to the net environmental impacts for these feedstocks.Carbon capture, use and geological storage (CCUS) could be feasible when fossil fuel-power plants are close to oil and gas reservoirs where CO2-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies are applicable. In this research, we used a novel "well-to-well" approach that included the operations from natural gas production at oil field to CO2 injection for EOR operations at depleted oil fields. This paper includes estimates for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from a hypothetical CCUS case with a natural gas combined cycle power plant (NGCC) and Global Warming Potential (GWP) impact, by using Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Our research comprises a comparison with other electricity-generation technologies, including super critical pulverized carbon (SCPC), NGCC without CO2 capture, geothermal, mini-hydro, wind and nuclear. The LCA stages that were undertaken in this study were natural gas supply system, electricity generation, CO2 capture, CO2 transport, EOR operations and environmental monitoring. Three different functional units were used in this study: MJ, kWh and produced oil barrel (bbl). Results indicate that the energy produced by the described CCUS system had an environmental impact on climate change (global warming potential) of 0.044 kg CO(2)e/MJ. The NGCC power plant with carbon capture unit would produce 0.177 kg CO(2)e/kWh, representing about 21% and 36% of the estimated values for the SCPC and NGCC (without CCS) cases respectively, and about 24% less greenhouse gas emissions than the geothermal scenario. The oil produced in the EOR stage had a greenhouse gas emission rate of 38 kg CO(2)e per oil barrel and 251 kg CO(2)e per oil barrel in the whole CCUS system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Marine litter is one of the descriptors in the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive, which aims to achieve a healthy marine environment and make ecosystems more resilient to climate change. Most experiences have been focused upon quantifying the abundance and distribution of marine litter, on beaches in particular. Nevertheless, the continuous impact of litter on marine species, commercial activities, i.e. shipping and fishing, and the local economy are prompting scientist and stakeholders to identify additional approaches required to face this challenge. This contribution addresses the aforementioned need, by assessing the possibility of fishing vessels shifting from fish to floating marine litter (FML), during low fishing activity periods. For this purpose, the technical, environmental, and socioeconomic feasibility of such a change is investigated. The technical assessment includes: the analysis of energy consumption; and the assessment of ocean surface current patterns as a tool to determine FML convergence hotspots. The environmental feasibility is analysed by a Life Cycle Assessment study of 3 FML management scenarios. The minimum subsidy required is analysed in the socio-economic assessment, in order to reach a profitable diversified activity. The results demonstrate fishing FML as a technically-, economically- and environmentally-viable activity. Nevertheless, Local Authorities need to encourage the prevention of FML arriving on shore where, in some environments, such as in rocky shores, cleaning is difficult. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A systematic analysis of green-house gases emission (carbon footprint) and primary energy consumption (energy footprint) of prefabricated industrial buildings during their entire life cycle is presented. The life cycle assessment (LCA) study was performed in a cradle-to grave approach: site-specific data from an Italian company, directly involved in all the phases from raw material manufacturing to in-situ assembly, were used to analyze the impacts as a function of different design choices. Four buildings were analyzed and results were used to setup a parameterized model that was used to study the impacts of industrial prefabricated buildings over the input parameter space. The model vs. data agreement is within 4% for both carbon and energy footprint. The functional unit is 1 m(3) of prefabricated building, considering a 50-year lifetime. The results of the four buildings decrease from 144.6 kgCO(2eq)/m(3) and 649.5 kWh/m(3) down to 123.5 kgCO(2eq)/m(3) and 556.8 kWh/m(3) as the building floor area increases from 1048 m(2) to 21,910 m(2). The use phase accounts for the major impact (approximate 76%). It is found that the carbon footprint is proportional to the energy footprint, the proportional factor being 0.222 kgCO(2eq)/kWh within 0.5% accuracy. Finally, a systematic study of the sensitivity of input parameters (insulation, lifetime, foundation type) is presented.We translate between biophysical and economic metrics that characterize the role of energy in the economy. Specifically, using data from the International Energy Agency, we estimate the energy intensity ratio (EIR), a price-based proxy for a power return ratio (PRR similar to P-out/P-invested). The EIR is a useful metric, because for most countries and energy commodities, it can indicate the biophysical trends of net energy when data are too scarce to perform an original net energy analysis. We calculate EIR for natural gas, coal, petroleum and electricity for forty-four countries from 1978 to 2010. Global EIR values generally rise from 1978 to 1998, decline from 1998 to 2008 and then slightly rebound. These trends indicate one interpretation of the net energy of the world economy. To add perspective to our recent, but short, time series, we perform the same calculations for historical England and United Kingdom energy prices to demonstrate that a given energy price translates to different PRRs (EIR in this case) depending on the structure of the economy and technology. We review the formulation of PRRs and energy return ratios (ERR similar to E-out/E-invested) to indicate why PRRs translate to (the inverse of) energy prices and ERRs translate to (the inverse of) energy costs. We show why for any given value of an ERR or PRR, there is not a single corresponding energy cost or price, and vice versa. These principles in turn provide the basis to perform better modeling of future energy scenarios (e.g., low-carbon transition) by considering the relationship between economic metrics (cost and price) and biophysical metrics (energy and power return ratios) based on energy, material and power flows.Among the various renewable energy sources, biohydrogen is gaining a lot of traction as it has very high efficiency of conversion to usable power with less pollutant generation. The various technologies available for the production of biohydrogen from lignocellulosic biomass such as direct biophotolysis, indirect biophotolysis, photo, and dark fermentations have some drawbacks (e.g., low yield and slower production rate, etc.), which limits their practical application. Among these, metabolic engineering is presently the most promising for the production of biohydrogen as it overcomes most of the limitations in other technologies. Microbial electrolysis is another recent technology that is progressing very rapidly. However, it is the dark fermentation approach, followed by photo fermentation, which seem closer to commercialization. Biohydrogen production from lignocellulosic biomass is particularly suitable for relatively small and decentralized systems and it can be considered as an important sustainable and renewable energy source. The comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of biohydrogen production from lignocellulosic biomass and its comparison with other biofuels can be a tool for policy decisions. In this paper, we discuss the various possible approaches for producing biohydrogen from lignocellulosic biomass which is an globally available abundant resource. The main technological challenges are discussed in detail, followed by potential solutions.There are concerns about the boiler efficiency and the secondary pollutants emissions during MSS (municipal sewage sludge) combustion. In the present work, the pellets made from the mixture of MSS and wood sawdust were combusted in a regular boiler. The boiler efficiencies of 10% and 30% (MSS content %) MSS pellet fuels were 76.6% and 75.9%, respectively. The emission, mass balance and distribution characteristics of PCDD/Fs (polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans) and heavy metals during the combustion of 10% and 30% MSS pellet fuels were also carried out in a traveling grate boiler. The international toxic equivalency quantities (I-TEQ) of the PCDD/Fs in the stack flue gas from the combustion of 10% and 30% pellet fuels were 0.191 and 0.157 ng I-TEQ Nm(-3), respectively. MSS exhibited a remarkable difference in ratios of PCDFs to PCDDs and congener profiles compared with stack flue gas, fly ash and slag. Ratio of PCDFs to PCDDs and congener profiles for slag also differed significantly from those of stack flue gas and fly ash. The emitted pollutants in the traveling grate boiler met the requirement of standards in China (GB 18485 -2001). (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lithium ion batteries are widely used to meet ever-growing energy demands. They are also considered as energy storage devices to decrease the concerns about limited energy sources and associated environmental issues by displacing a large fraction of gasoline use in HEV and PHEV. Due to these concerns, intensive research on alternative energy conversion and storage systems with high efficiency, low cost, and environmental benignity has been stimulated worldwide. Recently, nanostructured 3d-metal oxides MOx (M=Cu, Fe, Co, etc.) have been widely studied as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their high energy capacity. Electrodes synthesized by Fe, Co, or Cu have more lithium-ion storage capacity (over 600 mAh/g) compared to the commercial electrodes synthesized by graphite (about 372 mAh/g). The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is utilized in order to identify environmental hotspots and aid in directing design towards regenerative and environmentally sustainable product design and process development. The main aim of this study is to investigate environmental effects of different lithium-ion batteries with different metal oxides as anode active material. The life cycle assessment results showed that metal oxides like Iron oxide can be a promising anode material due to their much higher energy density. In the production phase, the most important stage is production of NMP (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, an organic solvent in electrode preparation), for batteries with graphite and anode active material production for batteries with copper oxides. (c) 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 1740-1747, 2015The household-scale biogas system gains its popularity in rural China, and is now playing a prominent role in relieving energy shortages and reducing environmental pollution. A comprehensive review is performed for related environmental and ecological assessment studies. For an overall assessment of the biogas system, especially for its renewability and sustainability, an updated exergy methodology in terms of cosmic exergy is introduced in this paper, and is concretely illustrated by a case study to an integrated biogas engineering in Hubei, China. Associated with the fundamental universal scale of the cosmic-solar-terrestrial ecosystem, this new approach aggregates natural resources, economic inputs and environmental contamination on a common basis. Furthermore, a series of cosmic exergy based indicators are established to quantify the renewability and sustainability of the system. The integrated biogas engineering is proved to be with remarkable positive net ecological benefits, around twice that of the corresponding conventional production system. Near half of resource inputs in the integrated biogas system are found to be renewable. The renewability and sustainability of the biogas system turn out to be respectively double and six times those of the conventional system. The findings are fully supportive for policy makers in their action towards further progress of biogas project for sustainable development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.On the basis of statistical data, approximately 6.5 million tons of ELVs were produced in Europe in 2011. ELVs are processed according to a treatment scheme comprising three main phases: depollution, dismantling and shredding. The ferrous fraction represents about 70-75% of the total shredded output, while nonferrous metals represent about 5%. The remaining 20-25% is referred to as automotive shredder residue (ASR). ASR is largely landfilled due to its heterogeneous and complex matrix. With a start date of January 1st 2015, the European Directive 2000/53/EC establishes the reuse and recovery of a minimum of 95% ELV total weight. To reach these targets various post-shredder technologies have been developed with the aim of improving recovery of materials and energy from ASR. In order to evaluate the environmental impacts of different management options of ELVs, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied taking into account the potential implication of sustainable design of vehicles and treatment of residues after shredding of ELVs. Findings obtained reveal that a combination of recycling and energy recovery is required to achieve European targets, with landfilling being viewed as the least preferred option. The aim of this work is to provide a general overview of the recent development of management of ELVs and treatment of ASR with a view to minimizing the amount of residues disposed of in landfill. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper addresses the environmental and economic performance of Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM). Based on life cycle assessment and life cycle costing, a detailed model is developed and is applied to a case study, i.e. the first ELFM project in Belgium. The environmental and economic analysis is performed in order to study the valorisation of different waste types in the landfill, such as municipal solid waste, industrial waste and total waste. We found that ELFM is promising for the case study landfill as greater environmental benefits are foreseen in several impact categories compared to the landfill's current situation (the 'Do-nothing' scenario). Among the considered processes, the thermal treatment process dominates both the environmental and economic performances of ELEM. Improvements in the electrical efficiency of thermal treatment process, the calorific value of refuse derived fuel and recovery efficiencies of different waste fractions lead the performance of ELFM towards an environmentally sustainable and economically feasible direction. Although the environmental and economic profiles of ELFM will differ from case to case, the results of this analysis can be used as a benchmark for future ELFM projects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes an environmental and economic assessment of plasma gasification, one of the viable candidates for the valorisation of refuse derived fuel from Enhanced Landfill Mining. The study is based on life cycle assessment and life cycle costing. Plasma gasification is benchmarked against conventional incineration, and the study indicates that the process could have significant impact on climate change, human toxicity, particulate matter formation, metal depletion and fossil depletion. Flue gas emission, oxygen usage and disposal of residues (plasmastone) are the major environmental burdens, while electricity production and metal recovery represent the major benefits. Reductions in burdens and improvements in benefits are found when the plasmastone is valorised in building materials instead of landfilling. The study indicates that the overall environmental performance of plasma gasification is better than incineration. The study confirms a trade-off between the environmental and economic performance of the discussed scenarios. Net electrical efficiency and investment cost of the plasma gasification process and the selling price of the products are the major economic drivers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A wide spectrum of quantitative systems approaches such as life cycle assessment or integrated assessment models are available to assess sustainable development strategies. These methods describe certain aspects of the biophysical basis of society, which comprises in-use stocks and the processes and flows that maintain and operate these stocks. Despite this commonality, the methods are often developed and applied in isolation, which dampens scientific progress and complicates communication between scientists and decision makers. As research on socioecological systems matures, more structure and classification are needed. We argue that the concept of socioeconomic metabolism (SEM), which was developed in material flow analysis and material flow accounting, is a powerful boundary object that can serve as paradigm for studying the biophysical basis of human society. A common paradigm can facilitate model combination and integration, which can lead to more robust and comprehensive interdisciplinary assessments of sustainable development strategies. We refine the notion of SEM, clarify the relation between SEM and the economy, and provide a list of features that we believe qualifies SEM as research paradigm. We argue that SEM as paradigm can help to justify alternative economic concepts, suggest analogies that make the concept more accessible, and discuss its limitations. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Providing carbon footprint labels for all food products is a daunting and potentially infeasible project.. Knowing how consumers substitute away from high carbon goods and what they choose as substitutes is essential for understanding which goods are likely to result in meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. This paper proposes a model to systematically estimate how consumers will respond to information from a carbon footprint label. Our model uses consumers' value of their individual carbon footprint with own- and cross-price elasticities of demand data on carbon emissions from life cycle analysis to simulate shifts in consumer demand for 42 food products and a non-food composite, and subsequent changes in carbon emissions from different labeling schemes. Our simulation results have several findings, including: (1) carbon labels can reduce emissions, but labeling only some items could lead to perverse impacts where consumers substitute away from labeled goods to unlabeled goods with a higher carbon footprint; (2) carbon labels can inform consumers such that their previous beliefs about carbon footprints matter; and (3) carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions among the 42 food products studied. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The theory of ecologically unequal exchange CEDE) posits that international trade is structurally organized in a manner that allows a net transfer of resources from peripheral developing to core industrialized countries. The consequence, it is argued, is under-development in the periphery and augmented productive capacity in the core. EUE thus challenges the neoliberal free-market argument that exchange at market prices is symmetric and fair. An LCA-based methodology for estimating EUE that holds constant the variable market price is introduced and tested on contemporary trade of Dutch cheese and Kenyan coffee and roses. Specifically, the exchange of embodied land, water, energy, global warming potential, and labor is assessed. The results confirm the theory's hypothesis. At a fixed market price, more embodied Kenyan resources are exchanged for less Dutch resources. However, Kenyan roses give different results from coffee. EUE between countries can only be conclusively determined by considering the total biophysical trade balance, but by calculating quantities of embodied resources per unit of exchange value, it is possible to detect unequal exchange even at the level of individual commodities. While integration of biophysical metrics alongside monetary valuation is recommended, ultimately, rethinking the structure, policies and politics of international trade is necessary. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper analyses the environmental impact of the process of cultivating Agaricus bisporus. Cultivation is the final phase of the mushroom production process. We seek to quantify the environmental impact of this process by means of a life-cycle analysis (LCA). This paper presents a cradle-to-gate LCA of the process of farming Agaricus bisporus mushrooms, based On actual data from a production plant gathered over the course of a year so as to provide accurate information on the environmental impact of the various activities that make up the production process. An overall analysis of the main phases of the production process reveals that the activity with the greatest impact in almost all categories is the climate control of the growing chambers, because of the considerable amount of energy required to power the system, which is running continuously. The only impact categories in which climate control is not the number one phase are global warming in the growing phase and ozone layer depletion and eutrophication in the covering soil preparation phase. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Fats and oils continue to be the main feedstock for alternative transport fuels, especially for FAME (biodiesel) production. Nevertheless, hydrotreated vegetable oils (HVO), which are mixtures of alkanes, are also established as a commercial fuel. This review describes recent developments in FAME and HVO production and utilization, including microbial oil use. However, the use of unmodified plant oil as fuel or their corresponding engine and emission tests are not discussed. Recent developed catalysts are described for FAME production, including heterogeneous catalysts, such as super acids, ion-exchange resins, and other green catalysts produced from biomass. Bio-catalytic approaches using soluble or immobilized enzymes are at the early commercialization stage. Since HVO production technology is based mainly on current mineral oil industry processing methods, the scientific literature is not as extensive as that of FAME production. The main reaction routes of HVO are a combination of hydrogenation, decarboxylation, decarbonylation, hydroisomerization, and cracking under high pressure and temperatures, using supported and unsupported heterogeneous metal catalysts. Recent reports have highlighted the potential use of non-food oils, such as microalgae lipids, but industrial significant progress has not occurred, leading to some disillusionment with this approach. Therefore, a clear strategy should be developed for upstream and downstream processes with parallel evaluation of life cycle assessment (LCA). In addition, energy intensive steps of biomass drying and solvent extraction should be avoided by using intelligent technologies, such as in situ processing of wet biomass.This study discusses the life-cycle analysis of wind turbines through the processing of operational data from three modern European wind farms. A methodology for supervisory control and data acquisition data processing has been developed combining previous research findings and experience from operational wind farms followed by statistical analysis of the results. The analysis was performed by dividing the wind turbine into assemblies and the failures events in severity categories. Depending on the failure severity category a different statistical methodology was applied, examining the reliability growth and the applicability of the bathtub curve' concept for wind turbine reliability analysis.Electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) plays a vital role in society by connecting electricity producers and consumers. We present a life cycle assessment case study of electricity delivery to consumers in Nord-Trondelag county in Norway. We use a coherent framework for assessing electricity transfer via all the main segments of the Norwegian T&D system (local distribution, regional transmission and main national transmission grids). The assessment covers impacts associated with production, transport, and installation of components, power grid losses, and losses of sulphur hexafluoride. The results indicate that for electricity that is transmitted through the three main T&D grid segments, and assuming a Norwegian electricity mix when modelling the effects of power losses, the total carbon footprint of electricity T&D is 7.8 kg CO2-eq/MW h. Local distribution holds the largest share of this total (-60%), while regional transmission and national transmission both make smaller but significant contributions (-20% each). When classifying impacts as being attributable to either power grid losses or to other processes (e.g., materials and component manufacturing), both power losses and other processes contribute significantly to total impact potentials. Power losses are responsible for 30-43% of the combined electricity T&D impact potentials for climate change, particulate matter, smog-creation and acidification, 21-28% for toxicity and eutrophication, and 14% for metal depletion. For all categories except metal depletion, the relative importance of power losses increases appreciably if Nordic or particularly European electricity is assumed, however. Finally, we compare the environmental impacts of electricity T&D with that of electricity generation. The results of the comparison show that electricity T&D causes fewer impacts than electricity generation, but T&D impacts are not negligible; this is true regardless of what electricity mix is assumed when modelling power losses. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The incorporation of Bio-CCS, which involves an increase in investment and operating costs, would not be of interest in thermochemical biorefineries unless some economic benefit were provided. The rewarding of extra-avoided emissions encourages larger savings of GHG emissions in thermochemical biorefineries incorporating Bio-CCS. Therefore, there is a need for policies which reward of Bio-CCS incorporation, and in a broader sense, all extra-avoided emissions. In this study, we analyze how the geological storage of already captured CO2 (i.e. the incorporation of Bio-CCS) could be rewarded, taking different policy scenarios in the EU into consideration. Since thermochemical biorefineries achieve a GHG saving above the minimum target in the EU, the sale of all extra-avoided GHG emissions (not only from the geological storage of captured CO2) from energy carriers and chemicals is analyzed. Two different configurations of thermochemical biorefineries are analyzed: a biorefinery producing an energy carrier and a biorefinery co-producing an energy carrier and chemicals. Considering the sale of CO2 allowances in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), current prices (5-15 (sic)/t) would not make Bio-CCS incorporation profitable. However, it would be profitable compare with current sequestration costs for conventional power plants (50-100 (sic)/t). If the sale of extra-avoided emissions from the production of energy carriers were included in the EU-ETS, the CO2 sequestration cost would be reduced, although not enough to enhance the process economy. If chemicals were included, the sequestration cost would decrease significantly. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to emerging markets for environmentally benign products there is an increasing need for reliable evaluation and transparent information. In this regard, products made of natural materials, like the wood polymer composites (WPC) examined in this study, have to meet particularly high performance levels. To be economically successful they have to prove themselves as products with lower environmental impact compared to alternatives. The required information can be provided by a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA). The purpose of the study at hand is to assess the competitiveness of WPC in environmental terms in its main market of terrace floorings. In this LCA study, two different types of WPC, differing in composition and geometry are compared to two wood decking materials, consisting either of bilinga (tropical wood) or of pressure-impregnated pine (regional wood) with an identical geometry. The functional unit is 1 m(2) covered terrace. Process steps identical in all products process chains are excluded. The impact assessment is done with a standardized method for different impact categories. Cumulated energy demand (CED) is shown as separate inventory. Under the assumption of identical lifespans, results show that for all impact categories the terrace made of pine is the most environmentally benign one. Compared to tropical wood WPC is mostly advantageous. WPC terraces may show in particular higher lifespans than wooden terraces and could furthermore be recycled as well. Both would lead to improvements which could result in comparable environmental impacts of WPC and pine wood.Greenhouse gas emission becomes a recent global concern for manufacturing. As product design has a profound effect on a product's carbon footprint in its life cycle, recent research efforts of low-carbon design provided valuable insights and contributions. Yet, most of the research is about detailed design instead of the conceptual stage. Conceptual design of a product determines over 70 % of its life cycle costs. The decisions made during the conceptual design also have extensive impacts on the environment. Therefore, it is important to estimate the carbon footprint of a product at its conceptual design stage. In this paper, we present a carbon footprint model and a low-carbon conceptual design framework where the environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a product can be assessed. In the carbon footprint model, the amount of carbon emission is estimated at the five stages of the entire product life cycle. The carbon footprint analysis is based on product life cycle assessment. Sensitivity analysis for design parameters is also performed to measure the effects of design parameters on the estimation of product carbon footprint quantitatively. The conceptual design of a cold heading machine is used to demonstrate the proposed methodology.The process synthesis, technoeconomic analysis, and life cycle assessment (LCA) of a novel route for phthalic anhydride (PAN) production from hemicellulose solutions are presented. The production contains six steps including dehydration of xylose to furfural, reductive decarbonylation of furfural to furan, oxidation of furfural to maleic anhydride (MA), Diels-Alder cycloaddition of furan, and MA to exo-4,10-dioxa-tricyclo[5.2.1.0]dec-8-ene-3,5-dione followed by dehydration to PAN in the presence of mixture of methanesulfonic acid and acetic anhydride (AAN) which is converted to acetyl methanesulfonate and acetic acid (AAD), and dehydration of AAD to AAN. The minimum selling price of PAN is determined to be $810/metric ton about half of oil-based PAN. The coproduction of high-value products is essential to improve the economics. Biomass feedstock contributes to the majority of cost. LCA results shows that biomass-based PAN has advantages over oil-based PAN to reduce climate change and fossil depletion however requires more water usage. (c) 2015 American Institute of Chemical EngineersFor the purpose of generating electricity, what leakage rate renders the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of natural gas equivalent to that of coal? This paper answers this question using a simple model, which assumes that the comprehensive GHG footprint is the sum of the carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions resulting from (1) electricity generation and (2) natural gas leakage. The emissions resulting from electricity generation are taken from published life-cycle assessments (LCAs), whereas the emissions from natural gas leakage are estimated assuming that natural gas is 80 % methane, whose global warming potential (GWP) is calculated using equations provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Results, presented on a straightforward plot of GHG footprint versus time horizon, show that natural gas leakage of 2.0 % or 4.8 % eliminates half of natural gas's GHG footprint advantage over coal at 20- or 100-year time horizons, respectively. Leakage of 3.9 % or 9.1 % completely eliminates the GHG footprint advantage at 20- and 100-year time horizons, respectively. A two-parameter power law approximation of the IPCC's equation for GWP is utilized and gives equivalent results. Results indicate that leakage control is essential for natural gas to deliver a smaller GHG footprint than coal.The goal of this study is to analyze the economic performance of an alternative system for waste management proposed by the European Integral-b project. Its aim is to treat both used cooking oil (UCO) and solid organic waste (SOW) from the hospitality sector by biodiesel production and anaerobic digestion, respectively. A cogeneration engine adapted to use glycerol as a fuel is implemented. These results complement others from a previous life cycle assessment (LCA). The system proposed (scenario A) is compared to a system consisting of average waste management options (scenario B) by means of life cycle costing (LCC). The functional unit (FU) is the amount of UCO and SOW from hospitality produced per person and year in Spain. The profits generated by the FU under the two scenarios are calculated from a financial point of view. It is assumed that co-products from both scenarios translate into revenues for waste managers. Scenario analysis assesses different rates for the electricity output, subject to market regulations, and different levels of UCO availability. Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to analyze parameter and price uncertainty. The profits in all the scenarios are negative, and those of scenario A are lower than those of scenario B under all the scenario formulations. Scenario A generates greater income than scenario B but also higher expenses, mainly due to SOW collection. The new electricity rates are detrimental for the financial performance of the Integral-b since the overall profits mostly depend on the sale of electricity. Readier UCO availability benefits both scenarios to a similar extent. The uncertainty analysis reinforces the comparative results, although there is some likelihood scenario A will generate greater profits. The sensitivity analysis allows for the key parameters to be identified in order to optimize the process further. Possible trade-offs between the LCC and LCA results have been evaluated. Results from the financial analysis show that the Integral-b process delivers greater losses as compared to a reference scenario. Both generate net costs, meaning that stakeholders have to finance the functions provided. Uncertainty in the electricity regulations constitutes an obstacle for such projects as these to be implemented. As in LCA, the definition of the system boundaries and FU is critical in LCC.As proposed by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)-Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative (MilA i Canals et al., Int J Life Cycle Assess 18:1265-1277, 2007 and Koellner et al., Int J Life Cycle Assess 18:1188-1202, 2013), the impacts of land occupation should be studied in comparison to a baseline. Regardless of these guidelines, a land use baseline is often ignored in agro-bioenergy life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. This paper tests the appropriateness and significance of applying natural regeneration as a land use baseline for assessing the greenhouse gas (GHG) balances of agro-bioenergy in Finland. In the land use baseline applied, the land is assumed to be left to regenerate toward its natural state, which, in Finland, would most probably be some sort of forest. The foregone carbon stock of the natural regeneration baseline was estimated based on the literature. The GHG balances were studied by comparing the cumulative warming impacts of the dynamic biomass carbon cycle of the agro-bioenergy production system and the defined baseline over a given time horizon varying from 0 to 100 years. The significance of the results is illustrated by comparing them to other GHG emissions related to bioenergy. The results depend significantly on the agro-bioenergy yields and the carbon sequestration rate assumed in the natural regeneration baseline scenario. The GHG balances may be of the same magnitude as GHG emissions due to indirect land use changes resulting from market-mediated impacts, life cycle emissions of fossil fuels, and relative reduction in carbon stocks due to forest harvesting for bioenergy. Ignoring a dynamic land use baseline results in misleading conclusions on the GHG balances of land occupation, including agro-bioenergy, due to ignorance of foregone carbon sequestration. Thus, the interpretation of the results and conclusions provided in the vast number of agro-bioenergy LCA studies relying on biomass carbon neutrality should be reassessed. Besides bioenergy, the issue of land use baseline is relevant for any provision service function of land occupation. The foregone carbon sequestration is, however, highly uncertain and thus speculative.The paper aims at testing and improving the BASF eco-efficiency analysis (EEA) with regard to the rationality axiom "independence from irrelevant alternatives" (IIA). If this axiom is violated, rankings could be biased or influenced subjectively by the choice of considered alternatives. We introduce an artificial yet realistic "irrelevant alternative" in an EEA case study and compare the ranking results. The different stages of the EEA are analysed to uncover the potential source(s) of the detected violation. The example proves the violation of the IIA rationality axiom in the EEA. It is shown at which stages and how the weights in the aggregation process have to be adjusted to avoid this shortcoming. In specific constellations, the EEA may violate the IIA rationality axiom. By adequately adjusting the weights at certain stages of the aggregation process, this shortcoming can be avoided. Also, the results account for the relevance of basic principles derived from decision theory in the life cycle assessment/sustainability context.Current product social life cycle assessment (SLCA) addresses social aspects from a life cycle perspective, but it is not yet broadly implemented in practice. We propose a new organizational perspective to boost SLCA-the social organizational LCA (SOLCA). The paper answers four guiding questions: Why do we need SOLCA? How can we apply it? How can its implementation benefit from existing experience? Which are the foreseen limitations? First, challenges of SLCA which may be overcome by an organizational perspective are identified, and potential solutions are described. An analysis of the indicators proposed by SLCA is conducted. Second, first ideas for a conceptual framework for SOLCA are developed. The two underlying methodologies: the guidelines for SLCA of products and the guidance on organizational LCA (OLCA)-which adapts product LCA to the organizational perspective-were reviewed, compared and adapted to a social organizational perspective. Third, different implementation pathways were identified, showing how SOLCA could be applied in practice by considering different levels of organizations' experiences with social and environmental assessments. Existing SLCA case studies do not really evaluate the social performance of products. From the 189 indicators proposed in SLCA, only eight refer to the product level, while 127 and 69 refer to the organizational and country level, respectively-including overlaps and according to the methodological sheets. This fact clearly favors an organizational approach to social LCA. SOLCA may streamline allocation, data collection, and application in practice. The conceptual framework for SOLCA is focused on scope and inventory, which were found to differ most from SLCA and OLCA; all relevant steps like definition of unit of analysis or multi-functionality are addressed. Three SOLCA implementation pathways are proposed. Existing experience of organizations in social organizational approaches -like Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) or product SLCA- and environmental approaches -like environmental management systems (EMS) or OLCA- can be used as starting points as they can provide useful information on the organizationA ' s structure, value chain, etc. SOLCA helps to overcome some major challenges of SLCA and thus is a promising approach for putting it into practice. The frameworks of SLCA and OLCA can be integrated into SOLCA, and existing experience from organizations can be used for implementing it. However, new challenges arise. This includes potential difficulties for primary data collection in complex organizations with many different sites or the difficulty to distribute or aggregate social aspects within the organization. Further development and testing of SOLCA is recommended.Sugarcane bagasse is one of the major resources of agricultural wastes in the Khuzestan Province of Iran. With the aim of maximum hydrogen production, supercritical water gasification of lignocellulosic feedstock was studied in a batch reactor at the constant pressure of 25 MPa. The effect of catalyst (five different alkali salts, Raney nickel, and activated carbon) and reaction temperature (400-800 degrees C) on gas yield and composition, gas heating value, carbon gasification efficiency (CGE), and hydrogen gasification efficiency (HGE) was investigated. An increase in reaction temperature led to significant improvement in hydrogen yield. The highest amount of hydrogen (75.6 mol kg(-1)) was achieved at 800 degrees C with the presence of KOH as catalyst where the complete gasification of bagasse took place. The annual potential of hydrogen production in the Khuzestan Province of Iran was roughly estimated to be 470 millions of Nm(3) and this calculation showed that this figure is capable of substituting the need of 6550 ha of sugarcane farms to chemical fertilizer. (C) 2014 Energy Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, a bibliometric approach is applied to identify global trends related to the waste management (WM). As a key topic for environmental protection and resource utilization, WM has received considerable attention in the scientific community over the past decades, reflecting by the vast peer-reviewed articles on WM can be retrieved by accessing the web of science database. The data retrieved covers the period from 1997 to 2014. Analyzed parameters included document type, and publication output as well as distribution of countries, institutions, source titles, subject category, and author keywords. The implications for current trends and recent hotspots were presented and discussed. Furthermore, a contrastive analysis between the topics of concern in the industrialized and developing countries was carried out. Results of this case could provide a reference to the decision-making and policy of WM for the government to some extent and help in bringing key elements on the theoretical and practical contributions so far as well as on the future challenges the field must face.The proposed study draws a novel framework to assess the sustainability of winter wheat under climate change conditions and irrigation as an adaption measure to reduce yield variability. The methodology combines outputs from a general circulation model (GCM), the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) crop growth model (AquaCrop), a life cycle assessment (LCA) model and economic modelling. Long-term observed climate data (1970-1991) collected in Cambridge (Cambridgeshire, UK) were used to downscale the projected climate data from the GCM for 2050. The structural characteristics of the case study are representative of a typical farm in this UK region. A six-year average wheat price (2007-2012) was considered and the irrigation costs for the economic model were calculated assuming the market prices in 2014. Sensitivity analysis assessed in the longer term included the expected variations due to the increase in world wheat prices and the energy costs. The direct impacts of climate change on winter wheat grown in the East of England, would be a reduction in the rainfed yield (between -5.4% and -32.9%), stronger under the low emission scenario (B1). The projected economic losses from rainfed winter wheat production are expected to range between -43.6% and -100.0%. Irrigation could in the future be an adaptation measure for yield increase (10.5% to 64.3%), lower under B1 and to improve the financial appraisal of irrigation investment which would raise between 41 and 429 ha(-1) pound. However, negative externalities are exacerbating pressures on air and water resources; an increase in irrigation water requirements between 25.0% and 39.1% increases global warming potential between 20.4% and 28.3%. Environmental indicators under scenario B1 performed better than the high emission scenario (A1). Finally, under future climate scenarios, the results confirmed that irrigated winter wheat grown on lighter soils using hose reel sprinkler systems fitted with a boom, is more sustainable than that grown on heavier soils using hose reel sprinkler systems fitted with a raingun. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Growing biomass feedstocks from marginal lands is becoming an increasingly attractive choice for producing biofuel as an alternative energy to fossil fuels. Here, we used a biogeochemical model at ecosystem scale to estimate crop productivity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from bioenergy crops grown on marginal lands in the United States. Two broadly tested cellulosic crops, switchgrass, and Miscanthus, were assumed to be grown on the abandoned land and mixed crop-vegetation land with marginal productivity. Production of biomass and biofuel as well as net carbon exchange and nitrous oxide emissions were estimated in a spatially explicit manner. We found that, cellulosic crops, especially Miscanthus could produce a considerable amount of biomass, and the effective ethanol yield is high on these marginal lands. For every hectare of marginal land, switchgrass and Miscanthus could produce 1.0-2.3kl and 2.9-6.9kl ethanol, respectively, depending on nitrogen fertilization rate and biofuel conversion efficiency. Nationally, both crop systems act as net GHG sources. Switchgrass has high global warming intensity (100-390g CO(2)eql(-1) ethanol), in terms of GHG emissions per unit ethanol produced. Miscanthus, however, emits only 21-36g CO(2)eq to produce every liter of ethanol. To reach the mandated cellulosic ethanol target in the United States, growing Miscanthus on the marginal lands could potentially save land and reduce GHG emissions in comparison to growing switchgrass. However, the ecosystem modeling is still limited by data availability and model deficiencies, further efforts should be made to classify crop-specific marginal land availability, improve model structure, and better integrate ecosystem modeling into life cycle assessment.This article presents mass balances and a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) for energy and greenhouse gases (GHGs) of a simulated microalgae biodiesel production system. Key parameters of the system include biomass productivity of 16 and 25gm(-2)day(-1) and lipid content of algae of 40% and 25% for low and normal nitrogen conditions respectively. Based on an oil extraction efficiency from wet biomass of 73.6% and methane yields from anaerobically digested lipid-extracted biomass of 0.31 to 0.34l per gram of volatile solids, the mass balance shows that recycling growth media and recovering nutrients from residual biomass through anaerobic digestion can reduce the total demand for nitrogen by 66% and phosphorus by 90%. Freshwater requirements can be reduced by 89% by recirculating growth media, and carbon requirements reduced by 40% by recycling CO2 from biogas combustion, for normal nitrogen conditions. A variety of technology options for each step of the production process and allocation methods for coproducts used outside the production system are evaluated using LCA. Extensive sensitivity and scenario analysis is also performed to provide better understanding of uncertainty associated with results. The best performing scenario consists of normal nitrogen cultivation conditions, bioflocculation and dissolved air flotation for harvesting, centrifugation for dewatering, wet extraction with hexane, transesterification for biodiesel production, and anaerobic digestion of biomass residual, which generates biogas used in a combined heat and power unit for energy recovery. This combination of technologies and operating conditions results in life cycle energy requirements and GHG emissions of 1.02 MJ and 71g CO2-equivalent per MJ of biodiesel, with cultivation and oil extraction dominating energy use and emissions. Thus, even under optimistic conditions, the near-term performance of this biofuel pathway does not achieve the significant reductions in life cycle GHG emissions hoped for from second-generation biofuel feedstocks.China is under pressure to improve its agricultural productivity to keep up with the demands of a growing population with increasingly resource-intensive diets. This productivity improvement must occur against a backdrop of carbon intensity reduction targets, and a highly fragmented, nutrient-inefficient farming system. Moreover, the Chinese government increasingly recognizes the need to rationalize the management of the 800 million tonnes of agricultural crop straw that China produces each year, up to 40% of which is burned in-field as a waste. Biochar produced from these residues and applied to land could contribute to China's agricultural productivity, resource use efficiency and carbon reduction goals. However competing uses for China's straw residues are rapidly emerging, particularly from bioenergy generation. Therefore it is important to understand the relative economic viability and carbon abatement potential of directing agricultural residues to biochar rather than bioenergy. Using cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and life-cycle analysis (LCA), this paper therefore compares the economic viability and carbon abatement potential of biochar production via pyrolysis, with that of bioenergy production via briquetting and gasification. Straw reincorporation and in-field straw burning are used as baseline scenarios. We find that briquetting straw for heat energy is the most cost-effective carbon abatement technology, requiring a subsidy of $7 MgCO(2)e(-1) abated. However China's current bioelectricity subsidy scheme makes gasification (NPV $12.6 million) more financially attractive for investors than both briquetting (NPV $7.34 million), and pyrolysis ($-1.84 million). The direct carbon abatement potential of pyrolysis (1.06 MgCO(2)e per odt straw) is also lower than that of briquetting (1.35 MgCO(2)e per odt straw) and gasification (1.16 MgCO(2)e per odt straw). However indirect carbon abatement processes arising from biochar application could significantly improve the carbon abatement potential of the pyrolysis scenario. Likewise, increasing the agronomic value of biochar is essential for the pyrolysis scenario to compete as an economically viable, cost-effective mitigation technology.The microalgae species Nannochloropsis gaditana (marine) and Scenedesmus almeriensis (freshwater) were subjected to hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) at 350 degrees C in small microautoclaves for 15 min to study the separation of the aqueous and biocrude oil products, either by gravity or assisted by an organic solvent (dichloromethane). The vast majority of the research available for microalgae HTL determines the product yields by separating the HTL phases with an organic solvent. This study shows that its utilization affects the product distribution, increasing the amount of biocrude oil produced and reducing the concentration of organic molecules in the aqueous phase. The increase in the biocrude oil yield comes at the expense of a higher nitrogen and oxygen content. This harms the quality of the biocrude oil in view of its application as biofuel, due to undesired emissions upon combustion. The results herewith presented indicate that the yields of the HTL products strongly depend on the separation method applied. As the use of large amounts of organic solvents for separating the products at industrial scales is unlikely, their use is also discouraged in laboratory experimentation in order to forestall creating false expectations about the biocrude oil yields obtained by means of microalgae HTL. (C) 2015 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.The major impact of the livestock sector on the environment may be reduced by feeding agricultural co-products to animals. Since the last decade, co-products from biodiesel production, such as rapeseed meal (RSM), became increasingly available in Europe. Consequently, an increase in RSM content in livestock diets was observed at the expense of soybean meal (SBM) content. Cultivation of SBM is associated with high environmental impacts, especially when emissions related to land use change (LUC) are included. This study aims to assess the environmental impact of replacing SBM with RSM in finishing pig diets. As RSM has a lower nutritional value, we assessed the environmental impact of replacing SBM with RSM using scenarios that differed in handling changes in nutritional level. Scenario 1 (S1) was the basic scenario containing SBM. In scenario 2 (S2), RSM replaced SBM based on CP content, resulting in reduced energy and amino acid content, and hence an increased feed intake to realize the same growth rate. The diet of scenario 3 (S3) was identical to S2; however, we assumed that pigs were not able to increase their feed intake, leading to reduced growth performance. In scenario 4 (S4), the energy and amino acid content were increased to the same level of S1. Pig performances were simulated using a growth model. We analyzed the environmental impact of each scenario using life-cycle assessment, including processes of feed production, manure management, piglet production, enteric fermentation and housing. Results show that, expressed as per kg of BW, replacing SBM with RSM in finishing pig diets marginally decreased global warming potential (GWP) and energy use (EU) but decreased land use (LU) up to 12%. Between scenarios, S3 had the maximum potential to reduce the environmental impact, due to a lower impact per kg of feed and an increased body protein-to-lipid ratio of the pigs, resulting in a better feed conversion ratio. Optimization of the body protein-to-lipid ratio, therefore, might result in a reduced environmental impact of pig production. Furthermore, the impact of replacing SBM with RSM changed only marginally when emissions related to direct (up to 2.9%) and indirect LUC (up to 2.5%) were included. When we evaluated environmental impacts of feed production only, which implies excluding other processes along the chain as is generally found in the literature, GWP decreased up to 10%, including LUC, EU up to 5% and LU up to 16%.The paper analyzes data about recharge of electric cars in Rome during 2013 as a part of a national research project (P.R.I.M.E.). The electric vehicles were recharged through the public Enel Distribuzione recharging infrastructure. For each recharge, the initial and final time were registered together with the electricity absorbed from the grid. The total number of recharges was about 7700. The first step of the investigation is the statistical analysis of the distribution of recharges in daily time slots in order to analyze the recharge behavior of Italian drivers. For each day and for each time slot, literature data from the Italian national grid operator (Terna) were used to retrieve the energy mix used to produce electricity in that day and in that time slot. In the third step, electricity generation mixes were used to obtain emission factors for greenhouse (CO2) and pollutant emissions (CO, NO, HC and particulate). Using information about the electric consumption of vehicles registered in Rome, the emission factors in g/km were obtained and compared with the limits set by European legislation for conventional (gasoline and diesel). (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper contains an evaluation of the environmental performance of a comprehensive set of current and future mid-size passenger vehicles. We present a comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based on a novel integrated vehicle simulation framework, which allows for consistency in vehicle parameter settings and consideration of future technological progress. Conventional and hybrid gasoline, diesel and natural gas cars as well as battery and fuel cell electric vehicles (BEV and FCV) are analyzed, taking into account electricity and hydrogen production chains from fossil, nuclear and renewable energy resources. Our results show that a substantial mitigation of climate change can be obtained with electric passenger vehicles, provided that non-fossil energy resources are used for electricity and hydrogen production. However, in terms of other environmental burdens such as acidification, particulate matter formation, and toxicity, BEV may in some cases and FCV are likely to perform worse than modern fossil fueled cars as a consequence of emissions along vehicle and fuel production chains. Therefore, the electrification of road transportation should be accompanied by an integration of life cycle management in vehicle manufacturing chains as well as energy and transport policies in order to counter potential environmental drawbacks. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production and end-of-life (EoL) processes for current and future proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) systems for road passenger vehicle applications were analysed and quantified in the form of life cycle inventories. The current PEMFC technology is characterised by highly sensitive operating conditions and a high system mass. For each core component of PEMFC there are a range of materials under development and the research aimed to identify those considered realistic for a 2020 future scenario and according to commercial goals of achieving higher performance, increased power density, greater stability and a marked reduction of costs. End-of-life scenarios were developed in consideration of the materials at the focus of recovery efforts. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) addressed the production and EoL of the fuel cell systems with inclusion of a sensitivity analysis to assess influences on the results from the key fuel cell parameters. The second part to the LCIA assessed the environmental and human health burdens from passenger transport in a fuel cell vehicle (FCV) with comparison between the 2012 and 2020 fuel cell scenarios and referenced to an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) of Euro5 emission standard. It was seen that whilst the drivetrain (and therefore the fuel cell system) is a major contributor to the emissions in all the indicators shown, the hydrogen use (and therefore the efficiency of the fuel cell system and the method of hydrogen production) can have a far greater influence on the environmental performance. Overall, the results show inconclusive environmental benefits for using FCV instead of modern ICEV: a substantial reduction of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions can only be achieved using hydrogen produced with non-fossil energy resources. However, even such "clean" hydrogen used in FCV will not lead to a reduction of several other environmental burdens from the life cycle perspective within the time frame considered. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a growing interest in producing biofuels and bio-chemicals from lignocellulosic feedstocks in integrated biorefi neries. However, the sustainability implications of integrated biorefi neries are still poorly understood. Using a life cycle approach, this paper examines environmental impacts of second-generation ethanol produced in thermo-chemical refi neries together with chemicals and energy. Four feedstocks are considered: wheat straw, poplar, Miscanthus and forest residue. The results suggest that the production of ethanol from these feedstocks offers signifi cant savings in eight out of 12 environmental impacts when the system is credited for the avoided impacts from producing the co-products from fossil resources. Ethanol from forest residue is the best and wheat straw the worst option for most impacts. Land use change has a signifi cant effect on the global warming potential (GWP) of ethanol. For example, conversion of forest to grow Miscanthus increases the GWP from -234 to 6685 g CO2 eq./l of ethanol. The effect is opposite when grassland is converted to grow poplar: the GWP is reduced by two times because of carbon sequestration by poplar. The thermo-chemical route for producing ethanol from poplar and forest residue is more sustainable for most impacts than the bio-chemical conversion with the same feedstocks. Although ethanol saves up to 83% of GHG emissions per MJ of fuel compared to petrol, the savings are much smaller (similar to 3%) for current ethanol blends of 5%. Therefore, unless a much higher proportion of ethanol was used, the contribution of second-generation ethanol to climate change mitigation would be small. (C) 2015 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts, Biorefining published by Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In response to the energy crisis, global warming and climate change, microalgae have received a lot of attention as a promising feedstock for the production of biofuels. However, microalgal biofuels are still unaffordable due to low productivity and their substantial requirements in capital investment and operation costs. Much original research regarding the various microalgal cultivation strategies has been reported, in an attempt to promote microalgal biofuel production. However, current literature indicates the fragmented nature of information available regarding the strategies for the improvement of microalgal production for biofuel conversion. From a systematic perspective, this review highlights the main microalgal cultivation strategies for the achievement of improved biomass and biofuel productivity. It first discloses the current state of microalgal production as a biofuel feedstock, giving general introduction to the topic. Subsequently, it summarizes the current microalgae cultivation technology. Microalgal cultivation strategies are then discussed systematically, including integration with wastewater treatment and CO2 mitigation, batch vs. semi-continuous vs. continuous culture, two-stage continuous cultivation, co-culture, stress culture, and microalgal cultivation with harvest water recycling. Finally, concluding remarks are put forward. (C) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdLCA has evolved fromits origins in energy analysis in the 1960s and 70s into a wide ranging tool used to determine impacts of products or systems over several environmental and resource issues. The approach has become more prevalent in research, industry and policy. Its use continues to expand as it seeks to encompass impacts as diverse as resource accounting and social well being. Carbon policy for bioenergy has driven many of these changes. Enabling assessment of complex issues over a life cycle basis is beneficial, but the process is sometimes difficult. LCA's use in framing is increasingly complex and more uncertain, and in some cases, irreconcilable. The charged environment surrounding biofuels and bioenergy exacerbates all of these. Reaching its full potential to help guide difficult policy discussions and emerging research involves successfully managing LCA's transition from attributional to consequential and from retrospective to prospective. This paper examines LCA's on-going evolution and its use within bioenergy deployment. The management of methodological growth in the context of the unique challenges associated with bioenergy and biofuels is explored. Changes seen in bioenergy LCA will bleed into other LCA arenas, especially where it is important that a sustainable solution is chosen. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY licenseMicrobial electrosynthesis (MES) is a process that uses electricity as an energy source for driving the production of chemicals and fuels using microorganisms and CO2 or organics as carbon sources. The development of this highly interdisciplinary technology on the interface between biotechnology and electrochemistry requires knowledge and expertise in a variety of scientific and technical areas. The rational development and commercialization of MES can be achieved at a faster pace if the research data and findings are reported in appropriate and uniformly accepted ways. Here we provide a framework for reporting on MES research and propose several pivotal performance indicators to describe these processes. Linked to this study is an online tool to perform necessary calculations and identify data gaps. A key consideration is the calculation of effective energy expenditure per unit product in a manner enabling cross comparison of studies irrespective of reactor design. We anticipate that the information provided here on different aspects of MES ranging from reactor and process parameters to chemical, electrochemical, and microbial functionality indicators will assist researchers in data presentation and ease data interpretation. Furthermore, a discussion on secondary MES aspects such as downstream processing, process economics and life cycle analysis is included. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.Green and grey stormwater management infrastructures, such as the filter, swale and infiltration trench (FST), can be used to prevent flooding events. The aim of this paper was to determine the environmental and economic impacts of a pilot FST that was built in Sao Carlos (Brazil) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). As a result, the components with the greatest contributions to the total impacts of the FST were the infiltration trench and the grass cover. The system has a carbon footprint of 0.13 kg CO2 eq./m(3) of infiltrated stormwater and an eco-efficiency ratio of 0.35 kg CO2 eq./USD. Moreover, the FST prevented up to 95% of the runoff in the area. Compared to a grey infrastructure, this system is a good solution with respect to PVC stormwater pipes, which require a long pipe length (1070 m) and have a shorter lifespan. In contrast, concrete pipes are a better solution, and their impacts are similar to those of the FST. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the changes in the impacts with the varying lifespan of the system components. Thus, the proper management of the FST can reduce the economic and environmental impacts of the system by increasing its durability. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Energy demand for heating and cooling of buildings can be minimized through usage of thermal energy storage (TES) systems in building materials. TES in microencapsulated phase change materials provides a new solution to thermally regulated energy efficient buildings. This study summarizes the investigations and analysis of microencapsulated PCMs for building applications. Microencapsulated phase change materials (MPCMs) can be incorporated with many materials that are commonly used in building construction. This paper provides overview of various encapsulation techniques, test methods for MPCMs as well as applications of MPCMs in buildings. There are several micro-encapsulation methods by which the microcapsules of a wide range of sizes between 0.05 mu m and 5000 mu m can be produced. The MPCM incorporated with concrete, mortar, plaster and other materials have a significant potential to increase the thermal capacity of the mixture. Several authors reported testing of building materials with MPCM. Though the increase of thermal capacity with addition of MPCM is significant the decrease of mechanical properties, such as compressive strength, is relatively small. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities coupled to coal-fired power plants provide a climate change mitigation strategy that potentially permits the continued use of coal whilst reducing the carbon dioxide emissions. However, the still-high cost of CCS is one of the major obstacles, especially for developing countries. In this paper, we will assess techno-economic aspect of various carbon capture and storage technology in coal-fired power plants, including pre-combustion capture, post-combustion capture, oxy-combustion capture, as well as carbon storage. For various coal-fired power plants, integrated gasification combined cycle with pre-combustion capture has the highest potential to capture carbon dioxide with the lowest energy penalties and capital & operational costs, post-combustion capture can be retrofitted at relatively low cost to existing pulverized coal power plants and allows the combustion process to be kept relatively unchanged, and oxy-combustion capture is relatively immature at present. Although CCS has been accepted as clean development mechanism (CDM) project activities under the Kyoto Protocol, current carbon trading mechanism is inadequate to strongly promote investments on CCS facilities coupled to coal-fired power plants.This paper analyses mass and energy balances of some Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Systems (IMSWS) focusing on MSW sorting, treatment and energy recovery conversion chains suitable for the last entries into the European Union (EU). In particular the Romanian case-study has been developed as reference scenario. In this context the actions timelines for the case-study are immediate (S-1A), midterm (S-1B) and long term (S2). In the scenarios S-1A, S-1B a poor selective collection (SC) is considered of 3.5% and 9.94% respectively from the total MSW stream. The Residual Municipal Solid Waste (RMSW) is always sent to a bio-drying process. Advanced mechanical sorting (AMS) treatments are applied in order to obtain Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF). A final industrial exploitation of SRF (S-1A) or a gasification option (S-1B) are considered as final treatments. Scenario S-2 includes a proficient SC implementation for paper and cardboard, plastics, glass, metals and wood, "Take back programs", RMSW bio-drying, and SRF gasification. For the development of the calculations, one million tons of MSW were considered. The results show that the combination of proficient SC and, Take back programs" leads to a significant decrease in the annual waste disposal. Moreover the combustible material designated to energy recovery (S-1A cement factory, S-1B and S-2 gasification) decreases by weight (S-1A (53.7%), S-1B (55.84%) and S-2 (65.45%). In particular, without any pre-treatment (SC, Take back programs, mechanical sorting) of the RMSW stream by applying the its direct incineration, the Non Volatile Solids (NVS) landfill flow would be higher in comparison with all scenarios considered.Agricultural production is critical for human survival and simultaneously contributes to ecosystem degradation. There is a need for transparent, rapid methods for evaluating the environmental impacts of agricultural production at the system-level in order to develop sustainable food supplies. We have developed a method for estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG), land use and reactive nitrogen inputs associated with the agricultural production phase of major crop and livestock commodities produced in the United States (US). Materials flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques were applied to national inventory datasets. The net anthropogenic nitrogen inputs (NANI) toolbox served as the primary accounting tool for LCA and MFA. NANI was updated to create links between nitrogen fertilizer and nitrogen fixation associated with feed crops and animal food commodities. Results for the functional units kilogram(kg) of product and kg of protein for 2002 data fall within ranges of published LCA results from farm-scale studies across most metrics. Exceptions include eutrophication potential for milk and GHGs for chicken and eggs, these exceptions arise due to differing methods and boundary assumptions; suggestions for increasing agreement are identified. Land use for livestock commodities are generally higher than reported by other LCA studies due to the inclusion of all land identified as pasture or grazing land in the US in this study and given that most of the estimates from other LCAs were completed in Europe where land is less abundant. The method provides a view of the entire US agricultural system and could be applied to any year using publically available data. Additionally, utilizing a top-down approach reduces data collection and processing time making it possible to develop environmental inventory metrics rapidly for system-level decision-making.Stabilized sewage sludge is applied to agricultural fields and farmland due to its high organic matter content. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two types of sludge stabilization, mesophilic anaerobic digestion (MAD) and thermophilic anaerobic digestion (TAD), on bacterial communities in sludge, including the presence of pathogenic microorganisms. Bacterial community structure and phylogenetic diversity were analyzed in four sewage sludge samples from the Czech Republic. Analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes showed that investigated sludge samples harbor diverse bacterial populations with only a few taxa present across all samples. Bacterial diversity was higher in sludge samples after MAD versus TAD treatment, and communities in MAD-treated sludge shared the highest genetic similarities. In all samples, the bacterial community was dominated by reads affiliated with Proteobacteria. The sludge after TAD treatment had considerably higher number of reads of thermotolerant/thermophilic taxa, such as the phyla Deinococcus-Thermus and Thermotogae or the genus Coprothermobacter. Only one operational taxonomic unit (OTU), which clustered with Rhodanobacter, was detected in all communities at a relative abundance > 1 %. All of the communities were screened for the presence of 16S rRNA gene sequences of pathogenic bacteria using a database of 122 pathogenic species and a parts per thousand yen98 % identity threshold. The abundance of such sequences ranged between 0.23 and 1.57 % of the total community, with lower numbers present after the TAD treatment, indicating its higher hygienization efficiency. Sequences clustering with nontuberculous mycobacteria were present in all samples. Other detected sequences of pathogenic bacteria included Streptomyces somaliensis, Acinetobacter calcoaceticus, Alcaligenes faecalis, Gordonia spp., Legionella anisa, Bordetella bronchiseptica, Enterobacter aerogenes, Brucella melitensis, and Staphylococcus aureus.Feed in tariffs (FiTs) and renewable heat incentives (RHIs) are driving a rapid expansion in anaerobic digestion (AD) coupled with combined heat and power (CHP) plants in the UK. Farm models were combined with consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) to assess the net environmental balance of representative biogas, biofuel and biomass scenarios on a large arable farm, capturing crop rotation and digestate nutrient cycling effects. All bioenergy options led to avoided fossil resource depletion. Global warming potential (GWP) balances ranged from -1732kgCO(2)eMg(-1) dry matter (DM) for pig slurry AD feedstock after accounting for avoided slurry storage to +2251kgCO(2)eMg(-1) DM for oilseed rape biodiesel feedstock after attributing indirect land use change (iLUC) to displaced food production. Maize monoculture for AD led to net GWP increases via iLUC, but optimized integration of maize into an arable rotation resulted in negligible food crop displacement and iLUC. However, even under best-case assumptions such as full use of heat output from AD-CHP, crop-biogas achieved low GWP reductions per hectare compared with Miscanthus heating pellets under default estimates of iLUC. Ecosystem services (ES) assessment highlighted soil and water quality risks for maize cultivation. All bioenergy crop options led to net increases in eutrophication after displaced food production was accounted for. The environmental balance of AD is sensitive to design and management factors such as digestate storage and application techniques, which are not well regulated in the UK. Currently, FiT payments are not dependent on compliance with sustainability criteria. We conclude that CLCA and ES effects should be integrated into sustainability criteria for FiTs and RHIs, to direct public money towards resource-efficient renewable energy options that achieve genuine climate protection without degrading soil, air or water quality.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been applied in the construction sector since the 1990s and is now more and more embedded in European public policies, e.g., for Environmental Product Declaration regulation or for building labeling schemes. As far as the authors know, these initiatives mainly rely on background impact data of building products provided by different databases' providers. The new product-specific and company-specific EPD data allow having more than one data for describing a building material. But are these new databases really displaying similar LCA results compared to generic databases? Does it depend on which impact category (e.g., global warming, acidification, toxicity) is considered? To answer these research questions, this paper assesses numerical and methodological differences of two existing LCA databases for building LCAs: the ecoinvent generic database and one Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) database developed in France. After reviewing the main assumptions of these databases, numerical values of environmental impact are compared for 28 building materials using Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) indicators of the EN 15804 standard calculated based on cradle-to-gate ecoinvent and EPD Life Cycle Inventories (LCI). Global results at the database level indicate deviations of different magnitudes depending on the LCIA indicators and the building materials. While indicators correlated to fossil fuel consumption, such as the ADP, the GWP, and the primary energy demand, exhibit a small deviation (approximately 25 %), other indicators, such as the photochemical ozone formation (POCP), radioactive waste, and ADP elements, are found to be more variable between EPD and generic data (sometimes by more than 100 %). Three indicators are found to be systematically different between EPD and generic data (i.e., the EPD value being either higher or lower for all materials). Similarly, five building materials show systematic differences for all LCIA indicators. Specific deviations for one indicator and one material are also reported. The application of the two databases on three building LCA case studies (brick, reinforced concrete, and timber frame structures) identifies deviations due to the most influential materials. Current generic and EPD databases can present very different values at the database scale which depend on the type of environmental indicator. For building LCA results, the situation is different as generally speaking a limited number of materials controlled the impacts. Finally, recommendations are presented for each environmental indicator to improve the consistency of the building assessment from generic to product- and country-specific information.As most of the impact categories modelled in Life Cycle (Impact) Assessment, land use is influenced by an immense number of different impacts forming a complex interaction network. At present, there is no common consensus on the best practice for quantification of land use in LCA. However, land use and its consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem services are currently subject to intense public debate. Here, we review relevant methodology proposed to date with special reference to the hemeroby concept to identify a consistent method that captures the complexity of land use without oversimplification and loss of crucial information. The definition of the safeguard subject is of vital importance and predetermines the framework of all methods and requirements for a reliable impact indicator. We selected naturalness as the safeguard subject and identified the hemeroby concept as the most appropriate approach for quantification. The hemeroby concept is particularly well suited for a nuanced assessment of different types of land use management. With the application of a system of seven ordinal classes, the diversity of naturalness in forestry and agricultural production systems can be adequately characterised. The applicability of the classification system of the hemeroby concept was reviewed and aspects in need of further development and method refinement were identified. Furthermore, the hemeroby concept was compared to other common concepts for the integration of land use into LCIA. The hemeroby concept was identified as an appropriate approach to quantify the safeguard subject naturalness as an LCIA indicator. In addition, it addresses subjects like biodiversity and intact ecosystems. Characterising the quality of utilised land by classes encompassing ranges on an ordinal scale offers considerable merits in comparison with single value systems on a cardinal scale. Such systems tend to oversimplify the highly complex variable land use by assuming a single quantifiable ecological indicator (e.g. soil carbon content or relative alpha-biodiversity) as representative proxy. In contrast to this, the hemeroby concept offers an approach that is able to retain sufficient complexity of the information available for a particular area, yet condense this information so that it may be modelled for LCA purposes without loss of crucial data. Among all the methods currently available for the quantification of land use, the hemeroby concept is the most promising in terms of practicality of the actual method and quality of the output data. The classification into hemeroby classes is superior at capturing the complexity of land use. The method has been applied successfully in the area of European forests and agriculture. However, global availability of spatial hemeroby data and their compatibility with the criteria stipulated here needs to be evaluated and further developed as necessary. Other approaches focus on a different safeguard subject, thus narrowing the scope of land use as an impact indicator.Consumption of high quantities of pesticides in viticulture emphasizes the importance of including pesticide emissions and impacts hereof in viticulture LCAs. This paper addresses the lack of inventory models and characterization factors suited for the quantification of emissions and ecotoxicological impacts of pesticides applied to viticulture. The paper presents (i) a tailored version of PestLCI 2.0, (ii) corresponding characterization factors for freshwater ecotoxicity characterization and (iii) result comparison with other inventory approaches. The purpose of this paper is hence to present a viticulture customized version of PestLCI 2.0 and illustrate the application of this customized version on a viticulture case study. The customization of the PestLCI 2.0 model for viticulture includes (i) addition of 29 pesticide active ingredients commonly used in vineyards, (ii) addition of 9 viticulture type specific spraying equipment and accounting the number of rows treated in one pass, and (iii) accounting for mixed canopy (vine/cover crop) pesticide interception. Applying USEtox (TM), the PestLCI 2.0 customization is further supported by the calculation of freshwater ecotoxicity characterization factors for active ingredients relevant for viticulture. Case studies on three different vineyard technical management routes illustrate the application of the inventory model. The inventory and freshwater ecotoxicity results are compared to two existing simplified emission modelling approaches. The assessment results show considerably different emission fractions, quantities emitted and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts between the different active ingredient applications. Three out of 21 active ingredients dominate the overall freshwater ecotoxicity: Aclonifen, Fluopicolide and Cymoxanil. The comparison with two simplified emission modelling approaches, considering field soil and air as part of the ecosphere, shows that PestLCI 2.0 yields considerable lower emissions and, consequently, lower freshwater ecotoxicity. The sensitivity analyses reveal the importance of soil and climate characteristics, canopies (vine and cover crop) development and sprayer type on the emission results. These parameters should therefore be obtained with site-specific data, while literature or generic data that are acceptable inputs for parameters whose uncertainties have less influence on the result. Important specificities of viticulture have been added to the state-of-the-art inventory model PestLCI 2.0. They cover vertically trained vineyards, the most common vineyard training form; they are relevant for other perennial or bush crops provided equipment, shape of the canopy and pesticide active ingredients stay in the range of available options. A similar and compatible model is needed for inorganic pesticide active ingredients emission quantification, especially for organic viticulture impacts accounting.Assessing comprehensively the overall environmental impacts of a region remains a major challenge. Within life cycle assessment (LCA), this evaluation is performed calculating normalisation factors (NFs) at different scales. Normalisation represents an optional step of LCA according to ISO 14040/44 which may help in understanding the relative magnitude of the impact associated to a product when compared to a reference value. In order to enhance the robustness and comprehensiveness of NFs, this paper presents a methodology for building an extended domestic inventory of emission and resources extraction. The domestic inventory refers to emissions and extractions due to the processes located within a geographical region, Europe (EU 27), in 2010. A robust regional inventory is a fundamental element for supporting the calculation of global factors, often resulting form extrapolation and upscaling from regional ones. The NFs for EU 27 in 2010 are based on extensive data collection and the application of extrapolation strategies for data gaps filling. The inventory is based on domestic emissions into air, water and soil and on resource extracted in EU, adopting a production-based approach. A hierarchy is developed for selection of data sources based on their robustness and quality. Data gap filling is based on several proxy indicators, specific for each impact category, capitalising existing statistics on pressure indicators (e.g. estimating ionising radiation emissions based on data of electricity production from nuclear power plants). To calculate NFs, the inventory is characterised using the International reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook (EC-JRC 2011a) midpoint indicators. The resulting NFs present several added values compared to earlier normalisation exercises based on domestic inventories, namely more complete inventory, based on wide variety of sources; more comprehensive coverage of the flows within each impact category; overall evaluation of the robustness of the final figures; and robustness evaluation of the data sources. Contribution analysis shows that few flows (NO (x) , SO (x) , NH4, etc.) are driving the impacts of several impact categories, and the choice of the data sources is particularly crucial, as this may lead to differences in the NFs. A qualitative uncertainty assessment is reported for each impact category. Besides, in order to test the robustness of the NFs, a sensitivity analysis on key choices and assumptions has been advocated. NFs may help identification of the relative magnitude of the impact. Nonetheless, several limitations still exist both at the inventory and at the impact assessment level, e.g., several inventory flows are not characterised as there is no characterisation factor available in current models. Those limitations should be clearly reported and understood by the users of normalisation factors in order to correctly interpret the results of their study as well as when regional NFs are used as basis for building global set of factor. The adoption of domestic NFs may, in fact, result in overestimating the relative magnitude of certain impacts, especially when those impacts are associated with traded goods from or outside the EU 27. Qualitative and quantitative assessment of uncertainties should be conducted from inventory to characterised results. Comprehensive testing is needed on the following: data sources, data mapping, regionalisation as well as models and system boundaries thereof. Strengths and limitations of the current study have implications also in other application contexts, as when indicators are needed to evaluate progress towards environmental policies goals. In fact, environmental impact indicators at regional scale often require data gap filling and estimation methodologies.Assessing the sustainability of orchards focuses on quantifying environmental impacts and resource consumption. Sustainable orchards also have to be profitable and socially responsible. We aimed to identify sustainable kiwifruit production in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, by considering orchards' environmental and economic performance. We conducted a survey of 40 orchards with different cultivars (Actinidia deliciosa 'Hayward' (green) v. Actinidia chinensis 'Hort16A' (gold)) and management (integrated v. BioGro certified organic). Assessment of environmental performance was restricted to greenhouse gas emissions (carbon footprint of the orchard phase). We defined eco-efficiency on an area basis as NZD net profit per kg greenhouse gas emissions (1 NZD = 0.83 USD, 31/10/2013). Carbon footprints for the cultivars and management systems were comparable. The choice of functional unit, namely land area and 1 kg of produce, did not affect the result. Our analysis revealed fertilizer use and the N-associated emissions as hot spots for greenhouse gas emissions. Opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions arise in the background system of fertilizer production, packaging, storage and transport, and the optimization of nutrient-use efficiency in the orchard. The integrated system had insignificantly higher greenhouse gas emissions than the organic system. Taking into account the profitability of the orchards, the eco-efficiency of organic orchards was significantly higher than that of integrated orchards. We demonstrated that the metric of eco-efficiency can enhance product differentiation for customers and can also assist orchardists to find the most sustainable management system. However, the volatility of commodity markets and changing consumer preferences remain challenges. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Online retailing can lower the environmental impact of shopping under specific circumstances. As a result of the numerous variables involved, most of the studies that have compared the carbon footprints of online and conventional retailing only take a partial view. To make a more holistic assessment, this study develops a framework that accounts for all the relevant environmental factors relating to retail/ecommerce activities. Variables related to consumer shopping behaviour such as basket size, transport mode, trip length and trip frequency are included in the analysis. This framework is used to build a Life Cycle Analysis model. The model is applied to different online retail methods for fast-moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom. We find that, within the "last mile" link to the home, the nature of the consumer's behaviour in terms of travel, choice of e-fulfilment method and basket size are critical factors in determining the environmental sustainability of e-commerce. The nature and routing of van deliveries, the amount and type of packaging used, and the energy efficiency of shop and e-fulfilment centre operations are also identified as significant contributors to climate change potential. The results of this study indicate ways in which e-commerce can be made more environmentally sustainable, encouraging consumers to reduce complementary shopping trips and maximise the number of items per delivery. This study identifies the strengths and weaknesses of a range of e-retail channels and provides a basis for future research on the environmental sustainability of online retailing of fast-moving consumer goods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The combined implementation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been identified as a suitable tool for the evaluation of the environmental and economic performance of multiple similar entities. In this study, a total of 82 rice paddy fields for spring and summer growing seasons in north of Iran were assessed using a combined LCA and DEA methodology to estimate the technical efficiency of each farmer. Furthermore, the environmental consequences of operational inefficiencies were quantified and target performance values benchmarked for inefficient units so that ecoefficiency criteria were verified. Results showed average reduction levels of up to 20% and 25% per material input for spring and summer systems, leading to impact reductions which ranged from 8% to 11% for spring farms and 19% to 25% for summer farms depending on the chosen impact category. Additionally, the potential economic savings from efficient farming operations were also determined. The economic results indicate that an added annual gross margin of 0.045 $ per 1 kg rice paddy could be achieved if inefficient units converted to an efficient operation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental Impact Assessment is a decision tool employed in identifying and evaluating probable environmental consequences of certain proposed development actions. Environmental Impact Assessment, since its establishment in the second half of the 20th century, was strongly criticized for assessing only a site-specific impact, for insufficient consideration of alternatives and for unclear methodology of impact evaluation. However, on the contrary, Life Cycle Assessment is an analytical tool that evaluates environmental effects of a product, process or activity throughout its life cycle or lifetime from the extraction of resources to production, consumption, recycling up to the final disposal. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how Life Cycle Assessment can complement Environmental Impact Assessment procedure in an industrial project. The article presents an integrated Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Impact Assessment framework, practical use of which is illustrated by a case study of an insulation materials plant. The application of the framework demonstrates that integration of Life Cycle Assessment elements enhances the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure by extending usual assessment boundaries and giving a broader scope of the overall environmental assessment of the planned project. The proposed framework has made it possible to identify the insulation materials production scenario with a 40% lower impact on human health and saving 20% of primary resources compared to the production of insulation materials prior the application of the proposed framework. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents for the first time the life cycle environmental impacts of electricity generation from fossil fuel power plants in Turkey which supply three quarters of national demand. There are 16 lignite, eight hard coal and 187 gas power plants in Turkey, all of which are considered in the study. The results suggest that electricity generation from gas has the lowest impacts for 10 out of 11 impacts considered. However, its ozone layer depletion is 48 times higher than for lignite and 12 times greater than for hard coal electricity. Lignite is the worst option overall, with eight impacts higher than for hard coal, ranging from 11% higher fossil fuel depletion to six times greater fresh water ecotoxicity. Conversely, its depletion of elements and ozone layer are four times lower than for hard coal; global warming is 6% lower. Most impacts are mainly caused by the operation of power plants and transportation of imported fuels. Annually, electricity generation from fossil fuels emits 109 Mt CO2-eq. and depletes 1660 PJ of primary fossil energy. These and the majority of other impacts are from lignite and hard coal power, despite the gas plants generating almost three and five times more electricity, respectively. Therefore, reducing the share of lignite and hard coal power and expanding the contribution of natural gas would lead to significant reductions of environmental impacts from the electricity sector in Turkey, including greenhouse gas emissions; however, ozone layer depletion would increase substantially. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Electricity demand in Mauritius is growing rapidly but its environmental implications are as yet unknown. This is the topic of the current paper which presents for the first time the life cycle environmental impacts of electricity generation in Mauritius aiming to inform electricity generators and policy makers on how the impacts could be reduced. The majority of country's electricity is generated from fossil fuels, with coal contributing 40% and fuel oil 37%; the rest is from sugarcane bagasse (19%) and hydro-power (4%). The results suggest that electricity from oil has the highest impacts for six out of ten categories considered compared to the other three sources: acidification, freshwater, terrestrial and human toxicity, ozone layer depletion and photochemical oxidants. The remaining four impacts (depletion of resources, global warming, eutrophication and marine toxicity) are highest for coal. The lowest impacts are found for electricity from hydro-power. For example, the global warming potential (GWP) of electricity from coal is estimated at 1444 kg CO2 eq./MWh and for oil 754 kg CO2 eq./MWh, while for bagasse and hydro-power this impact is several orders of magnitude lower (29 and 8.6 kg CO2 eq./MWh, respectively). Oil and coal are the main contributors to the overall impacts from electricity in Mauritius (88%-99%). The contribution of bagasse is small (<1%-12%) and that from hydro-power negligible (<0.1%). The GWP of the electricity mix is estimated at 868 kg CO2 eq./MWh. This is equivalent to the annual GWP of 2.22 Mt CO2 eq. in 2012, an increase of 16% since 2007. To reduce its carbon emissions, Mauritius should consider reducing the share of fossil fuels through increased use of renewables such as solar PV and wind as well as improving the efficiency of the fossil power plants and reducing energy demand. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing concerns regarding the environmental pollution derived from anthropogenic activities, such as the use of fossil fuels for power generation, has driven many interested parties to seek different alternatives, e.g. use of renewable energy sources, use of "cleaner" fuels and use of more effective technologies, in order to minimize and control the quantity of emissions that are produced during the life cycle of conventional energy sources. The work presented in this paper focuses on the examination of the possibilities of integrating the environmental aspects in the preliminary phase of the conventional design and planning of energy systems in conjunction with other parameters, such as financial cost, availability, capacity, location, etc. The integration of the environmental parameter to the design is carried out within a context where Eco-design concepts are applied. Due to the multi-parameter nature of the design procedure, the tools that are used are Life Cycle Analysis and Multi-criteria Analysis. The proposed optimization model examines and identifiesoptimum available options of the use of different energy sources and technologies for the production of electricity and/or heat by minimizing both the financial cost and the environmental impacts, with regard to a multiple objective optimization subject to a set of specific constraints. Implementation of the proposed model in the form of a case study for the island of Rhodes in Greece revealed that an optimized solution both cost and environmental-wise, would be an almost balanced participation of renewables and non-renewable energy sources in the energy mix. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is growing concern about the environmental impacts of construction activities, and green evaluation systems have been advocated as effective tools for reviewing, monitoring and checking project sustainability in the construction industry. This paper focuses on developing a set of criteria for green evaluation systems in measuring project sustainability in construction by proposing an innovative methodology, a power spectrum, for analysing dominant criteria in the system from questionnaire survey results. The results indicate that 'other measures for reducing waste pollution', 'top management support' and 'maintenance of equipment' are the top three criteria for green evaluation systems for improving overall environmental performance, while 'research and development', 'training' and 'monitoring water usage' were the three lowest criteria for improving environmental performance. This paper identifies several major measures for improving project sustainability in the Australian construction industry. Although the industry comprises unique projects, such measures can still help practitioners choose suitable methods for effective improvement in project sustainability. This paper provides a useful background for the development of project sustainability and provides an insight into effective implementation of green evaluation systems in construction activities.Currently there is no universal sustainability assessment methodology, which would be applicable by policy-makers for identification of regional development paths, policies' effectiveness and potential changes to sustainable development of regions. This paper reviews the best practices for sustainability assessment and identifies the needs of regional systems. Further, we propose the concept of regional sustainability assessment methodology (RSAM). It includes natural, social and economic capital transfer accounting through extended input-output tables and cyclicity analyses. RSAM reflects static and dynamic qualities of regional system for the assessment of development paths and policies effectiveness. Further methodological development of concept findings is needed.Two alternative approaches for an integrated municipal solid waste management system (MSW-MS) have been confronted in the province of Gipuzkoa, in the north of Spain, during the last decade. While one of them prioritizes energy recovery from mixed residual waste in an incineration plant, the other approach gives precedence to material recovery of separately collected waste. Which system would present a lower environmental impact and be more desirable from a sustainability perspective? Answering this question is hindered by the fact that recovered energy and materials are not directly comparable or directly substitutable with each other. Based on the powerful framework provided by life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, this work performs a comparative LCA of overall environmental impacts of these two alternative approaches, showing that comparisons of alternative systems in terms of direct energy recovery or direct material recovery should be avoided in favor of other indicators already proposed in the LCA framework, such as the Cumulative Energy Demand category from Ecoinvent, or the global warming potential and the Abiotic Resources Depletion categories from the CML 2001 method. Applying the LCA framework, this work shows that when a high share of waste is collected separately, and processes assumed in the background system are adequately characterized, especially the production of the electricity mix, then prioritizing material recovery provides better results even in environmental categories tightly related to fossil energy consumption, such as the global warming potential impact category. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing urbanization and industrialization have led to a phenomenal growth in transportation demand worldwide, coupled with a concentration of vehicles in metropolitan cities. With regard to increasingly stringent emission legislation natural gas is gaining interest as a transportation fuel with worldwide over 19 million natural gas vehicles in operation. This paper presents the worldwide background, prospects and challenges of natural gas fuel and natural gas fueled vehicles along with environmental and economic aspects of compressed natural gas as a transformation fuel. Technical aspects of compressed natural gas properties, storage, safety problems and its effect on engine performance, efficiency, emissions and barriers to natural gas vehicles adaptation are discussed in detail. The main indicators selected for the comparative assessment of natural gas as vehicular fuel are: economic, emission performance and safety aspect. The results showed that CNG has several advantages over both diesel and gasoline fuel, including considerable emission and cost reductions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Algal technology has potential to combat the global energy crisis, malnutrition, and production of several value added products useful for the mankind. The cost effective cultivation system is the basis to realize this goal. Microalgal production in raceway ponds seems to be most promising, especially in the large scale. Several environmental (location of the cultivation system, rainfall, solar radiation, etc.), engineering (pond depth, CO2 delivery system, methods of mixing, power consumption, etc.), and biological (light, pH, oxygen accumulation, salinity, Algal predators etc.) parameters affect the biomass productivity in the open pond system. Vertical mixing is an important criteria influencing the algal growth compared to axial mixing as it determines the frequency by which cell will travel from bottom (dark zone) to surface (light zone) of the open pond. Therefore, different research works on the various designs of raceway ponds were mostly focused towards enhancing the vertical mixing (e.g. Design of bend and surface geometry, engineering flow field, etc.) and CO2 residence time (e.g. Closed, sump, airlift driven raceway ponds etc.). The present study summarizes the current state of knowledge for the biomass production in raceway ponds. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The aim of this study was to review and assess the different municipal solid waste management (MSW) scenarios using a comparative life cycle assessment approach in Iran. For this purpose, the capital of Iran was selected and five different scenarios including: anaerobic digestion (AD, Sc-0), landfilling combined with composting (Sc-1), incineration (Sc-2), incineration combined with composting (Sc-3), and AD combined with incineration (Sc-4) were taken into consideration. The results obtained showed that the scenarios Sc-3 and Sc-1 led to the most adverse environmental impact in the Human Health and Ecosystem Quality damage categories. In the Climate Change damage category, the scenario Sc-1 resulted in the worst impact while the other scenarios showed improving impacts on this damage category. Also, the scenario Sc-1 had the least helpful effect on the Resources damage category. The overall analysis of different scenarios implied that the scenario Sc-1 was the worst scenario among the studied scenarios. The results also showed that the most eco-friendly scenario to be implemented in the future would be the combination of AD with incineration (Sc-4). (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electric and hybrid vehicles are associated with green technologies and a reduction in greenhouse emissions due to their low emissions of greenhouse gases and fuel-economic benefits over gasoline and diesel vehicles. Recent analyses show nevertheless that electric vehicles contribute to the increase in greenhouse emissions through their excessive need for power sources, particularly in countries with limited availability of renewable energy sources, and result in a net contribution and increase in greenhouse emissions across the European continent. The chemical and electronic components of car batteries and their waste management require also a major investment and development of recycling technologies, to limit the dispersion of electric waste materials in the environment. With an increase in fabrication and consumption of battery technologies and multiplied production of electric vehicles worldwide in recent years, a full review of the cradle-to-grave characteristics of the battery units in electric vehicles and hybrid cars is important. The inherent materials and chemicals for production and the resulting effect on waste-management policies across the European Union are therefore reported here for the scope of updating legislations in context with the rapidly growing sales of electric and hybrid vehicles across the continent. This study provides a cradle-to-grave analysis of the emerging technologies in the transport sector, with an assessment of green chemistries as novel green energy sources for the electric vehicle and microelectronics portable energy landscape. Additionally, this work envisions and surveys the future development of biological systems for energy production, in the view of biobatteries. This work is of critical importance to legislative groups in the European Union for evaluating the life-cycle impact of electric and hybrid vehicle batteries on the environment and for establishing new legislations in context with waste handling of electric and hybrid vehicles and sustain new innovations in the field of sustainable portable energy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The physico-chemical characteristics of two microalgae species (Scenedesmus sp and Nannochloropsis gaditana) and their extracted oils have been investigated. Microalgae oils had high calorific value, low ash content, high volatile content and low moisture. A comparison of the pyrolysis and combustion performance of microalgae and oils samples was carried out by performing simultaneous TGA (thermogravimetric analysis) and DSC (differential scanning calorimeter) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS). The thermochemical behavior of microalgae samples was a function of their biochemical composition (proteins, carbohydrates and lipids) and inorganic content (ash content). Thermal treatment of microalgae oils released lesser NOx and SOx emissions than those of the parent microalgae. Finally, the economic viability and environmental sustainability of pyrolysis and combustion technologies of microalgae and their oils was evaluated by means of life cycle assessment methodology. Four different scenarios were analyzed and compared in order to provide useful information from the industrial point of view. CO and CO2 were the main gases produced during the pyrolysis and combustion processes. Materials and energy requirements of the processes involved were calculated by process simulation. Microalgae oils were the best option in terms of energetic performance. Selling price of microalgae biomass and plant capacity are critical variables to be considered for establishing the financial feasibility of the thermochemical process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As roadway construction is a material and energy intensive activity with potential impacts on the environment, the pavement industry has been seeking for more sustainable construction practices in the past decades. The use of recycled materials such as reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and recycled asphalt shingle (RAS) is widely accepted as among the most commonly used sustainable strategies for asphalt concrete (AC) pavement due to its ability to partially substitute virgin asphalt binder and aggregate in AC mixtures. This study evaluated the environmental and economic benefits and trade-offs of including recycled materials in pavements using a life-cycle approach. Eleven AC mix designs from Illinois with various asphalt binder replacement (ABR) rates were evaluated in terms of environmental and economic impacts using life-cycle assessment (LCA) and an itemized cost analysis. The LCA was conducted in accordance to International Standard Organization ISO 14044:2006 guidelines. The life-cycle impacts of producing the AC mixtures were calculated in terms of energy, global warming potential, and cost. A general trend of reduction in these three sustainability metrics was observed for mix production with increasing ABR. However, without proper modification and engineering of mix designs (e.g. addition of a softer grade virgin asphalt binder), AC mixtures with high ABR can experience reduced fatigue life. Thus, the effect of pavement performance on the environmental impacts of using mixtures with various ABR was also considered, assuming that these mixtures are used in a 4-in. (102-mm) overlay over a four-lane-mile (1.6 km) roadway. A breakeven concept was used to find the decreased service life at which the energy savings from using recycled asphaltic materials in the overlay equal the additional energy consumption incurred from a potential reduced performance in the pavement use phase. The breakeven point was found to be very sensitive to the traffic level of the overlay, with the breakeven service life decreasing rapidly with increased traffic. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cotton textile and clothing industry is a complex and multi-tiered system that consists of cotton cultivation and harvesting, fiber production, yarn manufacturing, fabric preparation, fabric processing that includes bleaching and dying sub-processes among others and fabrication of the final product. An array of environmental concerns are associated with this sector, the most significant of which are issues related to use of agrochemicals in the cultivation of cotton and water, energy and chemical consumption in the fabric processing stage. Textile industry is a significant contributor to the Turkish economy constituting 18% of total export volume in 2013 according to Turkish Statistical Institute. In the study, environmental impacts of Eco T-shirts produced from organically grown cotton and processed with green dyeing recipe were compared to that of conventional T-shirts, in terms of their contributions to global warming, acidification, aquatic and terrestrial eutrophication and photochemical ozone formation using life cycle assessment methodology. The results reveal that Eco T-shirts have lower impact potentials across all inspected categories, with the most dramatic reduction in aquatic eutrophication potential (up to 97%) due to elimination of nitrogen and phosphorus containing chemical based fertilizers. The results also show that global warming potential is by far the largest environmental impact for both conventional and Eco T-shirts with the main impact coming from use phase, followed by cultivation and harvesting and fabric processing phases. The results of the analysis underline the importance of utilizing sustainable raw materials in all life cycle stages of cotton textile products and the necessity of focusing on the consumer behavior and sustainable practices in the use phase of the products as well. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this work the environmental sustainability of asphalt pavement is analyzed, from material production and maintenance strategy point of view. The work consists of an analysis of the life cycle of I km of road pavement and includes all stages of the life cycle: from extraction of virgin materials to end of life. Three types of pavements are compared, among which one produced with virgin materials and traditional technologies in plant, which is used as a reference, and two in which the use of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) and Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) technology are combined. Also the implementation of the practice of Cold In-Place Recycling (CIR) at the end of life is considered from an environmental point of view: after the first 15 years of life the comparison is made between traditional recycling in plant and CIR. The impacts are evaluated using different methods. Decrease in environmental impacts are found for the options that combine the use of RAP and WMA reaching up to a percentage of reduction of 12% for CO2eq, 15% for energy consumptions, 15% for water used during the lifecycle, and 10-15% for the three macro-categories of damage evaluated in the ReCiPe endpoint method. Additional reductions could be achieved by applying also CIR technology especially for greenhouse gas emissions (-9%). (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The global demand for polystyrene is supposed to reach an overall baseline of 23.5 million tons by 2020. The market has experienced the effects of such growth, especially regarding the environmental performance of the production processes. In Brazil, renewable assets have been used to overcome the adverse consequences of this expansion. This study evaluates this issue for the production of Brazilian polystyrene resins, general-purpose polystyrene (GPPS) and high-impact polystyrene (HIPS). The effects of replacing fossil ethylene with a biobased alternative are also investigated. Life Cycle Assessment is applied for ten scenarios, with different technological approaches for renewable ethylene production and an alternative for obtaining bioethanol, which considers the export of electricity. The fossil GPPS and HIPS show a better performance than the partially renewable sources in terms of Climate Change (CC), Terrestrial Acidification (TA), Photochemical Oxidant Formation (POF), and Water Depletion (WD). The exception is Fossil Depletion (FD), a somewhat predictable result. The main environmental loads associated with the renewable options are related to the sugarcane production. Polybutadiene fails to provide greater additional impact to HIPS when compared to GPPS. With regard to obtaining ethylene from ethanol, Adiabatic Dehydration (AD) technology consumes less sugarcane than Adiabatic Dehydration at High Pressure (ADHP), which leads to gains in TA and POF. In contrast, ADHP was more eco-friendly for WD because of its lower water losses and in terms of CC because of the advantageous balance of fossil CO2eq at the agricultural stage and the lower consumption of natural gas in ethylene production. The electricity export is an auspicious environmental opportunity because it can counterbalance some of the negative impacts associated with the renewable route. According to a "cradle-to-grave" perspective, the partially renewable resins show a more favorable balance of carbon. This difference increases when sequestration and biogenic carbon emissions are considered. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The treatment and disposal of tyres from vehicles has long been of considerable environmental importance. The main problem lies in the mixed composition of the tyres. Studies have been undertaken to modify the structure of the tyres, especially with reference to the percentage of granulated rubber incorporated, in order to improve their performance, and also to reduce their environmental impact during normal functioning (noise, particulates, etc.) and facilitate recycling and final disposal. The aim of the present study is to review and compare how used tyres are treated and. disposed of in two different EU countries. The first is Italy, which has been part of the European Union since its inception, and has important industrial traditions. The second is Romania, an emerging country which recently became part of the EU, and whose economic and industrial development has had a major boost in recent years, with a strong growth in waste production, together with consumption in urban areas. The occasion was useful to consider the situation concerning the evolution of the different aspects related to the management of the end-of-life tyres. In particular, the paper considers the properties of tyre waste and their potential reuse, the enhancement of end-of-life tires and the various types of recovery, such as the reconstruction of tyres and the material recovery. The aspects related to the energy recovery and the use of the life cycle analysis, as a tool to support the choices of the best management system, were also taken into consideration, not forgetting that an adequate end-of-life planning is important when developing a sustainable product, since it can affect considerably its overall life cycle. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A number of green concrete mixes having similar basic properties were evaluated from the environmental point of view by means of the Life Cycle Assessment method, and compared with a corresponding conventional concrete mix. The investigated green concrete mixes were prepared from three different types of industrial by-products, i.e. (1) foundry sand, and (2) steel slag, both of which were used as manufactured aggregates, and (3) fly ash, which was used as a mineral admixture. Some green concrete mixes were also prepared from a recycled aggregate, which was obtained from reinforced concrete waste. In some of the green concrete mixes the recycled aggregate was used in combination with the above-mentioned types of manufactured aggregate and fly ash. All of these materials are able, to some extent, to replace natural aggregate or Portland cement in concrete mixes, thus providing an environmental benefit from the point of view of the saving of natural resources. Taking into account consequential modelling, the credit related to the avoidance of the need to dispose of the waste materials is considered as a benefit. In case of the recycling of waste concrete into aggregate, credit is attributed to the recovery of scrap iron from the steel reinforcement. In the case of the use of steel slag, credit is attributed to the recovery of metals, which are extracted from the slag before being used as an alternative material. The disadvantage of using alternative materials and recycled aggregates can sometimes be their relatively long delivery distance. For this reason, a transport sensitivity analysis was carried out. The results indicate that the use of the discussed alternative and recycled materials is beneficial in the concrete production industry. Preference is given to the fly ash and foundry sand scenarios, and especially to those scenarios which are based on the combined use of recycled aggregate with these two alternative materials. It was found that longer delivery distances of the alternative materials do not necessarily affect the results significantly. However, variable delivery distances may have a greater effect when choosing between different alternative scenarios. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Phosphorus is an essential mineral resource for the growth of crops and thus necessary to feed the ever increasing global population. The essentiality and irreplaceability of phosphorus in food production has raised the concerns regarding the long-term phosphorus availability and the resulting food supply issues in the future. Hence, the recovery of phosphorus from waste activated sludge and other waste streams is getting huge attention as a viable solution to tackle the potential availability issues of phosphorus in the future. This study explores the environmental implications of phosphorus recovery from waste activated sludge in Denmark and further elaborates on the potential availability or scarcity issue of phosphorus today and 2050. Life cycle assessment is used to assess the possibility of phosphorus recovery with little or no environmental impacts compared to the conventional mining. The phosphorus recovery method assessed in this study consists of drying process, and thermal gasification of the waste activated sludge followed by extraction of phosphorus from the ashes. Our results indicate that the environmental impacts of phosphorus recovery in an energy efficient process are comparable to the environmental effects from the re-use of waste activated sludge applied directly on farmland. Moreover, our findings conclude that the general recommendation according to the waste hierarchy, where re-use of the waste sludge on farmland is preferable to material and energy recovery, is wrong in this case. Especially when phosphorus is a critical resource due to its life threatening necessity, lack of substitution options and potential future supply risk originating due to the high level of global supply concentration. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.With a view to quantifying the energy and environmental advantages of Urine Source-Separation (USS) combined with different treatment processes, five wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) scenarios were compared to a reference scenario using Dynamic Modelling (DM) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and an integrated DM-LCA framework was thus developed. Dynamic simulations were carried out in BioWin (R) in order to obtain a realistic evaluation of the dynamic behaviour and performance of plants under perturbation. LCA calculations were performed within Umberto (R) using the Ecoinvent database. A Pythorin (R) interface was used to integrate and convert simulation data and to introduce them into Umberto (R) to achieve a complete LCA evaluation comprising foreground and background processes. Comparisons between steady-state and dynamic simulations revealed the importance of considering dynamic aspects such as nutrient and flow peaks. The results of the evaluation highlighted the potential of the USS scenario for nutrient recovery whereas the Enhanced Primary Clarification (EPC) scenario gave increased biogas production and also notably decreased aeration consumption, leading to a positive energy balance. Both USS and EPC scenarios also showed increased stability of plant operation, with smaller daily averages of total nitrogen and phosphorus. In this context, USS and EPC results demonstrated that the coupled USS + EPC scenario and its combinations with agricultural spreading of N-rich effluent and nitritation/anaerobic deammonification could present an energy-positive balance with respectively 27% and 33% lower energy requirements and an increase in biogas production of 23%, compared to the reference scenario. The coupled scenarios also presented lesser environmental impacts (reduction of 31% and 39% in total endpoint impacts) along with effluent quality well within the specified limits. The marked environmental performance (reduction of global warming) when nitrogen is used in agriculture shows the importance of future research on sustainable solutions for nitrogen recovery. The contribution analysis of midpoint impacts also showed hotspots that it will be important to optimize further, such as plant infrastructure and direct N2O emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wastewater reclamation is an upcoming approach that will significantly affect wastewater treatment systems. Despite the fact that technology for treating wastewater to an effluent water quality that meets various quality standards for reuse is already available and applied, the reuse of water is not just a simple and straightforward road. Significant additional energy and civil infrastructure is required to treat the water to a standard that allows it to be safely reused. The total impact of treating and reusing water may be higher than the environmental benefits. Thus, it is crucial the life-cycle impacts from upstream and downstream processes of various reuse technologies, i.e. production of chemicals, energy use, eutrophication, sludge handling, etc. The present paper provides a comprehensive evaluation considering different reuse purposes, treatment technologies and plant size. The results of this study suggest that all these factors are highly significant for the environmental impact of wastewater treatment systems for non-potable applications.The environmental consequences of the decision to urbanise and displace pen-urban (PU) food production are not typically evaluated within a comprehensive, cross-sectoral approach. Using a novel application of life cycle assessment (LCA) within exploratory scenarios, a method for integrating housing and food production land uses in PU regions is proposed, based on relative environmental impacts. Using two housing types (greenfield and infill) and two types of food production (field and high-technology greenhouse (HTG) lettuce production), environmental impacts for five exploratory land-use scenarios are compared for PU land in a developed and growing city. Each scenario is able to house an equivalent residential population whilst delivering equal quantities of fresh food to a city market. The results clearly indicate that infill housing and food production has less environmental impact than greenfield development. The environmental impact categories of climate change, freshwater eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation and human toxicity are reduced by 25-43 percent under infill scenarios. Sparing PU land through infill housing development combined with sustainable food intensification using HTG production, enabled multifunctional PU land-use including food production, housing and afforestation while delivering lower relative environmental impacts. Urban afforestation on PU land made available by these measures reduces the effect of climate change by up to 5 percent per hectare per year. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work addresses the potential environmental effects of thermal energy storage using the life cycle assessment to perform an optimal system framework. The study assesses the recovery of waste thermal energy at medium temperatures through the application of phase change materials and the recovered heat use in other industrial processes avoiding the heat production from fossil fuel. To this end, twenty different situations were analysed in terms of energy and environmentally combining four thermal energy storage systems varying the type of phase change material incorporated (potassium nitrate, potassium hydroxide, potassium carbonate/sodium carbonate/lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide/potassium hydroxide) which were defined as cases and five scenarios were the heat can be released based on the type of fossil fuel consumed (coal, heavy fuel, light fuel, lignite and natural gas). Moreover, a net zero environmental metric time parameter was calculated to assess the time period in which the environmental impacts associated to the thermal energy system were equal to the avoided impacts by the use of the heat recovered. Values that were lower than the thermal energy system lifetime were obtained in more than 40% of the total study situations. Finally, an additional analysis was performed to identify the most significant parameters for the further development of a mathematical model to predict the net zero environmental metric time. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper presents the studies on the effect of three process parameters; temperature, pressure and reaction time on the subcritical and supercritical hydrothermal liquefaction of oil palm empty fruit bunch, palm mesocarp fiber and palm kernel shell. The effect of temperature (330-390 degrees C), pressure (25-35 MPa) and reaction time (30-240 min) on bio-oil yields were investigated using a Inconel batch reactor. The optimum liquefaction condition for empty fruit bunch, palm mesocarp fiber and palm kernel shell was at supercritical condition of water; 390 degrees C and 25 MPa. For the effect of reaction time, bio-oil from empty fruit bunch and palm mesocarp fiber attained maximum yields at 120 min, whereas bio-oil yield from palm kernel shell continued to increase at reaction time of 240 min. Lastly, a life cycle assessment based on a conceptual biomass hydrothermal liquefaction process for bio-oil production was constructed and presented. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) through its Technical Committee CEN/TC-350 is developing a series of standards for assessing the building sustainability, at both product and building levels. The practical application of the selection (decision making) of structural alternatives made by one-way slabs leads to an intermediate level between the product and the building. Thus the present study addresses this problem of decision making, following the CEN guidelines and incorporating relevant aspects of architectural design into residential construction. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is developed in order to obtain valid information for the decision making process (the LCA was developed applying CML methodology although Ecoindicator99 was used in order to facilitate the comparison of the values); this information (the carbon footprint values) is contrasted with other databases and with the information from the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) of one of the lightening materials (expanded polystyrene), in order to validate the results. Solutions of different column disposition and geometries are evaluated in the three pillars of sustainable construction on residential construction: social, economic and environmental. The quantitative analysis of the variables used in this study enables and facilitates an objective comparison in the design stage by a responsible technician; the application of the proposed methodology reduces the possible solutions to be evaluated by the expert to 1222% of the options in the case of low values of the column index and to 26.67% for the highest values. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The built environment is recognized as a major hotspot of resource use and environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used to assess the environmental impacts of construction products and buildings during the last 25 years. A new trend stems in the application of LCA to larger systems such as urban islets or neighborhoods. This review aims at compiling all papers related to LCA of the built environment at the neighborhood scale. A focus is carried out on 21 existing case studies which are analyzed according to criteria derived from the four phases of LCA international standards. It sums up current practices in terms of goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The results show that the case studies pursue different goals. They are either conducted on existing or model neighborhoods with an aim at building knowledge to feed urban policy making. Or they are conducted on actual urban development projects for eco-design purpose. Studies are based on different scopes, resulting in the selection of different functional units and system boundaries. A comparison of data collection strategies is provided as well as a comparison of LCIA results for cumulative energy demand and greenhouse gases emissions. Methodological challenges and research needs in the field of application of LCA to neighborhood scale assessment are identified, such as the definition of the functional unit and the need for contextualization methodologies aligned with data availability at the design stages of a neighborhood development project (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study evaluates the environmental profile of a PV-green roof (PV panels over a soil/plant layer) and other roofing systems (PV-bitumen, PV-gravel, gravel, extensive green and intensive green). The analysis is based on multiple life-cycle impact assessment methodologies (ReCiPe, etc), several scenarios (for example with and without recycling) and it provides a deeper analysis as well as additional results to authors' previous investigation about PV-green roofs. The evaluation of the PV-green system (in terms of material manufacturing phase) shows that PV laminates (multi-Si) and steel components (joist, decking, balance of system) are responsible for the greatest part of the total footprint, based on GWP (global warming potential) and ReCiPe. Among the roofs which do not produce electricity, material manufacturing phase reveals that intensive green configuration has considerably higher impact in comparison with gravel and extensive green systems. Concerning PV roofs, PV-green configuration on a long-term basis (by considering material manufacturing, use phase, transportation and disposal), after a critical point, pays back its additional environmental impact (related with the "green layer") and it becomes more eco-friendly than the other two PV roofs. Certainly, this is due to the benefits (cooling effect of evapotranspiration, etc) of the soil/plant layer which result in PV output increase. The above mentioned critical point is determined by means of ReCiPe payback time and greenhouse-gas payback time. Several environmental indicators are calculated and presented along with results from the literature. A critical discussion is also provided. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Data centres consume high levels of energy to power the IT equipment contained within them, and extract the heat they produce. Because of the industry's heavy reliance on power, data centre metrics have historically used operational efficiency as a proxy for sustainability. More recently the industry has begun to recognise that its focus needs to go beyond energy consumption, with the creation of metrics for issues such as carbon, water and compute efficiency. However, single-issue metrics often consider only the operational phase, omitting impacts from other issues, during other stages in a facility's lifetime. Further approaches exist to assess more holistically the impact of data centres, such as building environmental assessment methods, but none have the capacity to capture fully the interlinked nature of a system, where improvements in one area and to one impact, can adversely affect a totally different area and totally different impacts. The following review of literature summarises the approach of the data centre industry to environmental impact, and provides direction for future research. Part 2 describes the use of building environmental assessment methods and tools; and concludes the need to apply life cycle thinking to more holistically assess the environmental impact of data centres. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The challenge of a purposeful design addressed in this article is to align offshore energy systems not only with technical and economic values like efficiency and profitability, but also with moral and social values more generally. We elaborate a theoretical framework that allows us to make a systematic inventory of embedded values of offshore energy systems and relate them to their societal acceptability. By characterizing both objects and subjects of acceptability, we shed light on ways to identify areas of value conflicts that must be addressed in purposeful design. We suggest the capabilities approach as a normative theory to deal with the arising value conflicts. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The economic feasibility and environmental impact is investigated for the conversion of agricultural waste, delactosed whey permeate, through yeast fermentation to a renewable diesel via hydrothermal liquefaction. Process feasibility was demonstrated at laboratory-scale with data leveraged to validate systems models used to perform industrial-scale economic and environmental impact analyses. Results show a minimum fuel selling price of $4.78 per gallon of renewable diesel, a net energy ratio of 0.81, and greenhouse gas emissions of 30.0 g-CO2-eq MJ(-1). High production costs and greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to operational temperatures and durations of both fermentation and hydrothermal liquefaction. However, high lipid yields of the yeast counter these operational demands, resulting in a favorable net energy ratio. Results are presented on the optimization of the process based on economy of scale and a sensitivity analysis highlights improvements in conversion efficiency, yeast biomass productivity and hydrotreating efficiency can dramatically improve commercial feasibility. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, different sectors are using Life Cycle Assessment methods to manage risk, create regulation and well-considered policy ad to protect the brand and redesign processes, products and services. Despite their prevalence, Life Cycle Assessment concepts are still not well known in many academic and industrial contexts. In the past, the inability to see the full life cyde of our actions resulted in unexpected consequences in many fields such as increased cancer rates, species and habitat destruction and high levels of waste (both financial and material). This study aims at developing a new educational approach for learning Life Cycle Assessment concepts by applying them to the daily practice of the preparation of meals. The work has been accomplished through several learning games, called "Cook & Teach", in an engineering course at Universita Politecnica delle Marche (Ancona, Italy). This study intends to investigate three principal aspects. The first aspect is the change in the student's knowledge of sustainable development. The second is the change in the student's perception of his professional skill development following completion of the project. The last aspect is related to how the student's perception of his motivation and engagement in the project is related to the change in professional skill development. In addition, the game sessions analyzed and discussed in this work show the educational power and training value of the "Cook & Teach" to LCA topics and in particular how the new game facilitates product selection, as confirmed by all of the actors involved. The results obtained highlight that this new educational approach to teach LCA principles stimulated the students' attention and participation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The processing of natural resources involves many variations of uncertainties as the natural resources themselves vary in their composition. Since the weather influences harvest quality, natural products are strongly affected by weather conditions. Excessive rainfall increases the water content of products, while a lack of rain may cause the whole harvest to dry out. Due to the varying soil conditions also the quality of wheat, measured, for example, by its protein or starch content, varies from region to region. During the processing of natural products, as presented in this case study for animal feed, the produced compound feed can change its composition as well, for example by raising the starch content through the addition of hot steam to wheat grains. As the processing of natural raw materials as compound feed consumes a lot of energy, producers aim to decrease costs related to energy consumption without decreasing the product's quality. In addition, energy efficient production also leads to lower CO2 emissions. This paper highlights the energy efficiency challenges during the processing of natural resources in feed processing and gives advice on how to cope with uncertainties by reaching the goal of achieving a constant product quality. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a growing awareness of the climate impact of agricultural production, not least from cattle farms. Major sources of GHG emissions from milk production are enteric fermentation followed by fossil fuel use and manure/soil management systems. This study analyzes the potential to eliminate fossil fuel use from milk production farms in Sweden, by using residual farm resources of biomass to obtain self-sufficiency in fuel, heat and electricity. The change from a fossil-based energy system to a renewable system based on A) Biogas based on manure and straw and B) Biogas based on manure + RME were analyzed with consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) methodology. Focus was energy use and GHG emissions and the functional unit was 1 kg of energy-corrected milk (ECM). The results show that organic milk producers can become self-sufficient in energy and reduce total GHG emissions from milk production by 46% in the Biogas system, or 32% in the Biogas RME system compared to the Fossil system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In their quest for greater sustainability, firms need to deal with many variables that ultimately determine the selection of green technologies. Previous studies of the possible link between the application of green technology and firm performance have generally produced mixed results. Similarly, studies of the relationship between environmentally friendly strategies and firm performance have also been inconclusive. Based on an extensive empirical study, with 533 respondents from 98 firms in the Chinese manufacturing industry, we try to identify the essential factors and test the links among variables in the decision-making process for green technology selection. We use an integrated structure equation model to test the complexity of a firm's technology adoption. The relationships among the various variables are tested based on empirical data from our questionnaire. More specifically, we measure the influences on green technology selection imposed by task-oriented circumstances (direct stakeholders, market environment, financial and social dynamics) and macro-circumstances (legislation, social and technological development phases, etc.). The results show significant relationships between green technology selection and certain task-oriented circumstances and macro-circumstances, which may facilitate proper action on the part of firms with regard to green practices. Based on our findings, we present some managerial implications and insights that might be useful for adopters of green technologies and enhance environmental and overall performance. We also discuss the limitations of our methodology at the end of the paper. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing were carried out to identify the environmental and economic burdens of six lignite-based electricity generation scenarios. Coal-based electricity generation is used as control. Results showed that diesel consumption for road transport, energy (i.e., electricity and steam) consumption for lignite drying, and the use of coal/lignite had dominant contributions to overall environmental and economic burden. Direct heavy metal and dibenz(a, h)anthracene emissions form electricity generation represented an additional important role to the total environmental effect for all scenarios. Lignite drying with steam drum and steam fluid bed scenarios present higher economic benefits than the coal-based scenario, whereas their environmental burden is higher than that of the coal-based scenario. Results indicate that lignite drying with microwave, tube type, and rotary drum technologies are unsuitable for lignite utilization in terms of cost and environmental views. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ultrasound and microwave as green processes are investigated in this study, focusing on the extraction selectivity towards antioxidant extraction from rosemary leaves. Due to its richness in valuable compounds such as rosmarinic, carnosic and ursolic acids, rosemary is a reference matrix for extraction study. In this work, six alternative processes are compared: ultrasound (bath, reactor and probe), microwave (reflux under microwave, microwave under nitrogen pressure and microwave under vapor pressure). The main result of this study is that selective extraction can be achieved according to extraction techniques and therefore to the extraction process. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Large capacity wind turbines require sizeable foundations. Onshore turbines are commonly supported by massive spread foundations involving hundreds of cubic metres of concrete and tonnes of steel reinforcement. Concrete gravity base foundations for offshore wind turbines also employ significant quantities of concrete and reinforcement. The CO2 emissions associated with concrete foundations has been analysed to examine means of reducing the materials-related impact on the carbon footprint of wind power. The effects of strength class, cement content, partial replacement of cement and use of recycled concrete aggregate were investigated. It was determined that use of 32 MPa class concrete rather than 40 MPa can reduce the concrete generated emissions by at least 11%. The greatest decrease in emissions for the studied mixes was found, for concrete with 65% replacement of cement with blast furnace slag and the reductions were 42.7-44.8%, depending on strength class. The use of recycled concrete aggregate resulted in moderate reductions in emissions and would have other environmental benefits. The study has shown that selection of concrete constituents and appropriate mix design can be used to minimise CO2 emissions associated with large wind turbine foundations without compromising strength and performance requirements. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from-cradle-to-grave (i.e., from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling). Wind energy is one of clean energy forms during the operation phase of the project, but it includes some environmental pollution during other stages of its life cycle such as manufacturing and dismantling of the wind turbines. The aim of this study is to analyze and evaluate the LCA and real impact of the first wind farm to be installed in Libya considering the whole life cycle. This wind farm is located in Dernah, east coast of Libya. The analysis revealed that the energy payback period is 0.475 year (5.7 months), and the pay back ratio is 42.1, which confirms very well with other results in the literature. The electricity generated by one wind turbine 1.65 MW (model M. Torres (TWT 1.65/82)) land based in this wind farm is expected to emit approximately 10.42, 0.02713, 0.03823, 0.0001474, 0.0001065, 0.0003469 and 0.0112237 g m per kWh CO2, SO2, NOX, N2O, CH4, NMVOC and CO respectively. The results obtained in this study confirm that wind energy produces the lowest CO2 emissions per kWh of electricity (similar to 10 g m/kWh) compared to fossil fuel and other renewable energy sources. By recycling the wind turbine material the specific emissions of CO2 is 4.65 g m/kWh of energy generated. The amount of fuel savings is 85,700 m(3)/year or 79,013,800 kg(fuel)/year, which is equivalent to $2,804,900/year (more than fifty six million dollars over the life time of the wind farm) if the local subsidized price of HFO was considered. The savings could reach a value as high as $63,404,570/year ($1.3 x 10(9) over the entire life time of the wind farm) if the international prices of HFO were considered. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development of easier, cheaper, and more ecofriendly synthetic methods for mesoporous materials remains a challenging topic to commercialize them, and the transformation of waste glycerol, as a biodiesel byproduct, into something useful and salable is one of the pending issues to be resolved. Here we first report that mesoporous silica (KIE-6) and carbon (KIE-7) can be simultaneously synthesized by using cheap and ecofriendly crude-waste-glycerol of biodiesel with or without glycerol purification, and we demonstrated the excellent performance of the mesoporous material as a catalyst support for formic acid decomposition. As a result, Pd-MnOx catalysts supported on NH2-functionalized KIE-6 showed the highest catalytic activity (TOF: 540.6 h(-1)) ever reported for room-temperature formic acid decomposition without additives. Moreover, we conducted life-cycle assessment (LCA) from biomass cultivation through biodiesel production to KIE-6 and KIE-7 preparation, and it was confirmed that CO2 emission during synthesis of KIE-6 and KIE-7 could be reduced by 87.1% and 85.7%, respectively. We believe that our study suggested more ecofriendly and industry-friendly approaches for preparation of mesoporous materials, and utilization of waste glycerol.The research and development of nanocellulose-reinforced polymer composites have dramatically increased in recent years due to the possibility of exploiting the high tensile stiffness and strength of nanocellulose. In the work, the environmental impact of bacterial cellulose (BC)- and nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC)-reinforced epoxy composites were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). Neat polylactide (PLA) and 30 wt.-% randomly oriented glass fibre-reinforced polypropylene (GF/PP) composites were used as benchmark materials for comparison. Our cradle-to-gate LCA showed that BC- and NFC-reinforced epoxy composites have higher global warming potential (GWP) and abiotic depletion potential of fossil fuels (ADO compared to neat PLA and GF/PP even though the specific tensile moduli of the nanocellulose-reinforced epoxy composites were higher than neat PLA and GF/PP. However, when the use phase and the end-of-life of nanocellulose-reinforced epoxy composites were considered, the "green credentials" of nanocellulose-reinforced epoxy composites were comparable to that of neat PLA and GF/PP composites. Our life cycle scenario analysis further showed that the cradle-to-grave GWP and ADf of BC- and NFC-reinforced epoxy composites could be lower than neat PLA when the composites contains more than 60 vol.-% nanocellulose. This suggests that nanocellulose-reinforced epoxy composites with high nanocellulose loading is desirable to produce materials with "greener credentials" than the best performing commercially available bio-derived polymers. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Introduction: Predicting the household's ability to cope with adult illness and death can be complicated in low-income countries with high HIV prevalence and multiple other stressors and shocks. This study explored the link between stage of the household in the life cycle and the household's capacity to cope with illness and death of adults in rural Uganda. Methods: Interviews focusing on life histories were combined with observations during monthly visits to 22 households throughout 2009, and recorded livelihood activities and responses to illness and death events. For the analysis, households were categorised into three life cycle stages ('Young', 'Middle-aged' and 'Old') and the ability to cope and adapt to recorded events of prolonged illness or death was assessed. Results: In 16 of the 26 recorded events, a coping or struggling outcome was found to be related to household life cycle stage. 'Young' households usually had many dependants too young to contribute significantly to livelihoods, so were vulnerable to illness or death of the household head specifically. 'Middle-aged' households had adult children who participated in activities that contributed to livelihoods at home or sent remittances. More household members meant livelihood diversification, so these households usually coped best. Worst off were 'Old' households, where members were unable to work hard and often supported young grandchildren, while their adult children had stopped sending remittances as they had established households of their own. Conclusions: While households may adopt diverse coping mechanisms, the stage in the household life cycle when stressful events occur is important for coping outcomes. Households of the elderly and households with many young dependents are clearly vulnerable. These results demonstrate that household life cycle analysis can be useful in assessing ability to respond to stressors and shocks, including AIDS-related illness and death.In this study, we investigate the economic, environmental and social impacts of various hydrogen production methods, based on fossil fuel and renewable energy resources with a special emphasis on hybrid photoelectrochemical systems perform comparative assessments of these methods for applications. The sources considered for hydrogen production in this study are water, fossil hydrocarbons, and biomass. Furthermore, the primary energy sources considered in this study are natural gas, coal, biomass, wind and solar. In order to address sustainability, the relationship between efficiency and environmental impact is also investigated. The results show that solar based hydrogen production options (photocatalysis, photoelectrolysis, and photoelectrochemical methods) provide near zero global warming potentials and air pollutants, while coal gasification has the highest ones. In regards to the exergy efficiencies, biomass gasification gives the highest exergy efficiency, while photoelectrochemical method ends up with the lowest one. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The scope of this study is to investigate the effect of the direction of seismic excitation on the fragility of an already constructed, 99-m-long, three-span highway overpass. First, the investigation is performed at a component level, quantifying the sensitivity of local damage modes of individual bridge components (namely, piers, bearings, abutments, and footings) to the direction of earthquake excitation. The global vulnerability at the system level is then assessed for a given angle of incidence of the earthquake ground motion to provide a single-angle, multi-damage probabilistic estimate of the bridge overall performance. A multi-angle, multi-damage, vulnerability assessment methodology is then followed, assuming uniform distribution for the angle of incidence of seismic waves with respect to the bridge axis. The above three levels of investigation highlight that the directivity of ground motion excitation may have a significant impact on the fragility of the individual bridge components, which shall not be a priori neglected. Most importantly, depending on the assumptions made for the component to the system level transition, this local sensitivity is often suppressed. It may be therefore necessary, based on the ultimate purpose of the vulnerability or the life cycle analysis, to obtain a comprehensive insight on the multiple damage potential of all individual structural and foundation components under multi-angle excitation, to quantify the statistical correlation among the distinct damage modes and to identify the components that are both most critical and sensitive to the direction of ground motion and carefully define their limit states which control the predicted bridge fragility. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In recent years, there has been an unprecedented rise in the performance of metal halide perovskite solar cells. They are now in a position to compete on performance with traditional crystalline solar cells, and as such the most pressing questions concern the long term operational stability of this class of solar cell. Here, recent developments in understanding and overcoming stability concerns of metal halide perovskite solar cells are highlighted. An overview of possible instability issues due to electrical, atmospheric, heat, and light stresses is provided and the different implications to the most commonly used device architectures are discussed.This paper presents the study of the feasibility of incorporating lignocellulosic nanofibers (LCNF) to paper in order to maintain the relevant physical properties and increase the number of cycles that paper can be recycled in the technosphere in a more circular economy. For that purpose, the effect of mechanical refining in recycling processes was compared with that of the novel LCNF addition. In this sense, the behavior of a bleached kraft hardwood pulp when recycled was investigated, as well as the effects of each methodology. Since there are many issues to be considered when trying to replace a technology, the present paper analyses its feasibility from a technical and environmental point of view. Technically, LCNF present greater advantages against mechanical refining, such as higher mechanical properties and longer durability of the fibers. A preliminary life cycle assessment showed that the environmental impacts of both systems are very similar; however, changing the boundary conditions to some feasible future scenarios, led to demonstrate that the CNF technology may improve significantly those impacts.This paper examines thermal efficiency penalties and greenhouse gas as well as other pollutant emissions associated with pulverized coal (PC) power plants equipped with postcombustion CO2 capture for carbon sequestration. We find that, depending on the source of heat used to meet the steam requirements in the capture unit, retrofitting a PC power plant that maintains its gross power output (compared to a PC power plant without a capture unit) can cause a drop in plant thermal efficiency of 11.3-22.9%-points. This estimate for efficiency penalty is significantly higher than literature values and corresponds to an increase of about 5.3-7.7 US cent/kWh in the levelized cost of electricity (COE) over the 8.4 US cent/kWh COE value for PC plants without CO2 capture. The results follow from the inclusion of mass and energy feedbacks in PC power plants with CO2 capture into previous analyses, as well as including potential quality considerations for safe and reliable transportation and sequestration of CO2. We conclude that PC power plants with CO2 capture are likely to remain less competitive than natural gas combined cycle (without CO2 capture) and on-shore wind power plants, both from a levelized and marginal COE point of view.Greenhouse cultivation has significantly increased the production of vegetables and reduced dependence on environmental conditions. In Mediterranean areas, vegetable crops are nowadays one of the most important sources of organic waste generation. Anaerobic digestion is among the methods used to treat this type of biodegradable waste. However, the selection of the organic wastes to be subjected to this microbial treatment is a crucial aspect due to seasonality and simultaneity of the original crops. In this sense, as waste does not have frequently the proper nutrient balance, co-digestion with other substrates generated in the same geographical area is recommended to ensure the correct development of the process. This work studies the mesophilic co-digestion of tomato waste (TW) and cucumber waste (CW), which are common greenhouse wastes that do not contain an adequate ratio among nutrients (C/N/P) and are generated simultaneously. The influence of the percentage of both wastes in the mixture on the overall performance of the process was evaluated. The combination of TW and CW was found to be feasible in terms of stability, biodegradability and methane yield, which reached a value of 292mL(STP)CH(4)/gVS (STP: standard temperature and pressure, 0 degrees C and 760mmHg) for the percentage of tomato in the mixture, which is considered optimal at 55-75%. The most suitable organic load rate was determined for a percentage of 65% of TW, reaching a value of 1562kg(waste)m(-3)month(-1).This study has demonstrated the life cycle primary energy balance of the four residential building types (detached house, row house, townhouse and apartment block) based on current Finnish design. The differences in the energy balance arising from the geometrical characteristics of each housing type were investigated using hypothetical building models. In addition, the influence of structural frame material selection was observed in relation to the housing types. The results showed that there are clear differences between the housing types: the detached house is the highest energy consumer, the row house the second (about 20% less), the townhouse the third (about 30% less) and the apartment block the lowest (about 45% less), regardless of the frame materials selection. The differences appeared evenly among the building life cycle stages. A correlation has been observed between the geometrical factors and life cycle primary energy balance of the reference buildings. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A multi-objective fire safety and sustainability screening tool for specifying insulation materials has been developed. This paper discusses a methodology for balancing competing requirements by evaluating the thermal resistance, fire performance, sustainability, cost, acoustic damping, and durability objectives of various insulating materials through implementation of a weighted mean. Each variable is normalized and then weighted according to the emphasis placed on each objective, using experimental data for the relevant material property. Two control scenarios and four weighting scenarios are presented. The first control scenario excludes both the fire performance and sustainability objectives in the material evaluations. The second control scenario introduces sustainability as an objective, but still excludes fire performance. The four weighting scenarios each emphasize a different area of consideration: cost, thermal resistance, sustainability, or fire performance. Materials considered are cellulose, fiberglass, rockwool, polyurethane, and polystyrene. Results of this analysis rank the materials in order of desirability and provide a method to reorder this ranking based on the priority assigned to each objective. For the four weighting scenarios presented, rockwool was consistently ranked as the best performer, while extruded polystyrene was typically the weakest. However, in the first control scenario, closed-cell polyurethane performed best and cellulose performed worst. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A comprehensive life cycle assessment of hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicles (FCVs) is conducted based on relevant conditions for four major Canadian provinces. Results are provided for three alternative hydrogen production methods, namely electrolysis, thermochemical water splitting, and steam methane reforming of natural gas, and compared against conventional gasoline vehicles as a reference case. Significant reductions in greenhouse gas and criteria air contaminant emissions are predicted from all three hydrogen production methods in all four provinces, except for electrolysis in Alberta where most electricity is generated from fossil fuels. Thermochemical hydrogen production shows the most favorable results in all provinces due to the prospective use of renewable waste heat, followed by electrolysis from renewable hydroelectric power in Quebec and British Columbia. The sweet spot in terms of life cycle emission reductions is obtained when a renewable energy source for production is combined with a low-emission electricity source for compression and distribution, for example by utilizing waste heat and electricity from nuclear power in Ontario. The lowest fuel costs are predicted for hydrogen produced from natural gas, which is abundant in Canada and can provide a reasonable balance between emission reductions and economic benefits for FCV implementation across all provinces. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Costumers and governments are pressuring companies to become more sustainable. However, the lack of research on how to incorporate these issues makes this a challenging task. To fill this gap a generic multi-objective mathematical programming model for the design and planning of supply chains, integrating the three dimensions of sustainability is presented. The economic pillar of sustainability is addressed in this work considering the costs of the supply chain. Then ReCiPe, an environmental assessment methodology, indicated in the literature and by the European Commission as the most developed one currently available, is for the first time applied to supply chain design optimization. Finally, a social indicator appropriate to assess strategic decisions is proposed. This social indicator considers the impact of social and political concerns on company's performance. The relevance of this model as a decision support system is highlighted with its application to a real case study of a Portuguese battery producer and distributor. A set of strategies to select the best solution among the obtained optimal ones is presented. Results show that the model allows improvements in all the three dimensions of sustainability and offers important managerial insights. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, the environmental impacts were assessed for five municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment processes with energy recovery potential. The life cycle assessment (LCA) tool was used to quantify the environmental impacts. The five processes considered are incineration, gasification, anaerobic digestion, bio-landfills, and composting. In addition, these processes were compared to recycling where applicable. In addition to environmental impacts quantification, the energy production potentials for the five processes were compared to provide a thorough assessment. To maximize the future applicability of our findings, the analyses were based on the waste treatment technologies as they apply to individual waste streams, but not for a specific MSW mixture at a particular location. Six MSW streams were considered; food, yard, plastic, paper, wood and textile wastes. From an energy recovery viewpoint, it was found that it is best to recycle paper, wood and plastics; to anaerobically digest food and yard wastes; and to incinerate textile waste. On the other hand, the level of environmental impact for each process depends on the considered impact category. Generally, anaerobic digestion and gasification were found to perform better environmentally than the other processes, while composting had the least environmental benefit. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.LCA studies on waste management have been promoted as they can help policy makers choose the best environmental options. However, the increasing globalization of raw materials and waste makes the optimization of waste management strategies and policies quite challenging. Therefore, new approaches are needed in order to identify the consequences of markets on the waste management systems. This paper concentrates on the quantification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of recycling processes. The aim is to generate a comprehensive assessment of GHG emissions as a consequence of increasing the amount of material collected for recycling. Consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) is an effective methodological framework for addressing GHG quantifications within market, but to properly perform and assess all of the market links between raw materials and waste, it is necessary to determine the cause-effect chains made up of physical flows. Thus, we propose integrating the methodologies of material flow analysis (MFA) and CLCA. We applied these methodologies to the paper and cardboard recycling system in Spain. The GHG results varied between -36 kg CO2 eq. and -317 kg CO2 eq. per ton of waste paper collected, depending on the quantity of waste paper exported and the source of marginal pulp considered. The cumulative energy demand (CED) was also calculated as complementary indicator. Similar trends as for GHG emissions were obtained. The future GHG quantifications should be based on the flows described by MFA analysis and should be quantified using CLCA because methodologies that accurately account for GHG are necessary for decision-making. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Disability adjusted life years (DALYs) have been used to quantify endpoint indicators of the human burden of disease in life cycle assessment (LCA). The purpose of this paper was to examine the current use of DALYs in LCA, and also to consider whether DALYs as used in LCA have the potential to be compatible with DALYs as used in quantitative risk assessment (QRA) to facilitate direct comparison of the results of the two approaches. A literature review of current usage of DALYs in LCA was undertaken. Two prominent methods were identified: ReCiPe 2008 and LIME2. The methods and assumptions used in their calculations were then critically reviewed. The assumptions used for the derivation of characterization factors in DALYs were found to be considerably different between LCA methods. In many cases, transparency of these calculations and assumptions is lacking. Furthermore, global average DALY values are often used in these calculations, but may not be applicable for impact categories where the local factors play a significant role. The concept of DALYs seems beneficial since it enables direct comparison and aggregation of different health impacts. However, given the different assumptions used in each LCA method, it is important that LCA practitioners are aware of the differences and select the appropriate method for the focus of their study. When applying DALYs as a common metric between LCA and QRA, understanding the background information on how DALYs were derived is crucial to ensure the consistency of DALYs used in LCA and QRA for resulting DALYs to be comparable and to minimize any double counting of effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) is an extremely useful tool to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with all the stages of a crude oil's life from well-to-wheel (WTW). All of the WTW life cycle stages of crude oil consume energy and produce significant amounts of GHG emissions. The present study attempts to quantify the WTW life cycle GHG emissions for transportation fuels derived from five North American conventional crudes through the development of an LCA model called FUNNEL-GHG-CCO (FUNdamental Engineering PrinciplEs-based ModeL for Estimation of GreenHouse Gases in Conventional Crude Oils). This model estimates GHG emissions from all the life cycle stages from recovery of crude to the combustion of transportation fuels in vehicle engines. The contribution of recovery emissions in the total WTW GHG emissions ranges from 3.12% for Mars crude to 24.25% for California's Kern County heavy oil. The transportation of crude oil and refined fuel contributes only 0.44-1.73% of the total WTW life cycle GHG emissions, depending on the transportation methods and total distance transported. The GHG emissions for refining were calculated from the amount of energy use in the refining of crude oil to produce transportation fuels. All the upstream GHG emissions were allocated to gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Refining GHG emissions vary from 13.66-18.70 g-CO(2)eq/MJ-gasoline, 9.71-15.33 g-CO(2)eq/MJ-diesel, and 6.38-9.92 g-CO(2)eq/MJ-jet fuel derived from Alaska North Slope and California's Kern County heavy oil, respectively. The total WTW life cycle GHG emissions range from 97.55 g-CO(2)eq/MJ-gasoline derived from Mars crude to 127.74 g-CO(2)eq/MJ-gasoline derived from California's Kern County heavy oil. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The expansion of Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) practices is mainly driven by the viability of SRC wood as an alternative to other renewable and non-renewable fuels in energy production, but also to the capacity of increasing biodiversity and the supply of ecosystem services locally. To delve into these environmental synergies and possible trade-offs, the Life Cycle Assessment method was applied to seven SRC experimental sites recently implemented in Flanders (Belgium). These have differing land use objectives and, thus, present different species proportions and plantation density. For instance, most sites are either planted with willow and poplar clones, or with a mix of the two with local tree species in order to activate temporary unused industrial lands or enhance the local ecosystem functionality. A regular 3 to 7-year rotation was simulated up to year 2033 using CO2FIX given that trees were yet to be harvested at the time of the assessment. Yields were first estimated over time: SRC systems composed by mixed species presented the highest productivity and also the best environmental performance profiles. Overall, the highest environmental impacts were due to consumption of diesel during the cyclic harvests, but also to fertilization activities. Uncertainty distribution ranges were determined for the most critical parameters and a Monte Carlo analysis was performed to obtain average impact scores with variability ranges. While replacing hardwood with wood from SRC chips was not found to be advantageous because of e.g. larger metal, fossil and ozone depletion potentials, benefits were observed for land use reduction and climate change mitigation. Due to frequent rotations, the beneficial trends for the latter seem sufficient to compensate the negative effects of the other impacts on human health and ecosystems quality. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability has been the focus of intense discussions over the past two decades, with topics surrounding the entire product life cycle. In the manufacturing phase, research has often focused solely on environmental impact assessment or environmental impact and cost analysis in its assessment of sustainability. Few efforts have investigated sustainable production decision making that addresses the three pillars of sustainability concurrently; which requires engineers and managers to consider economic, environmental, and social impacts. An approach is developed to assess broader sustainability impacts by conducting economic assessment, environmental impact assessment, and social impact assessment at the work cell level. Assessment results are then integrated into a sustainable manufacturing assessment framework, along with a modified weighting method based on pairwise comparison and an outranking decision-making method. The approach is illustrated for a representative machining work cell producing stainless steel knives. Economic, environmental, and social impact results are compared for three production scenarios by applying the sustainable manufacturing assessment framework. The case study finds that cutting tool cost is the largest contributor to production costs for the investigated work cell. The level of environmental and social impact varies according to cycle time. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to examine the robustness of the results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the last decades, stringent regulations forced the manufacturing industry to take concrete steps towards greener production. Despite reduction in total emissions through implementation of best available techniques (BATs), industrial waste generators still need guidance to minimize environmental impacts of manufacturing processes. The metal industry remains one of the most important waste generating sector and therefore, this study focused on one specific process, iron casting and used a life-cycle approach (LCA) to evaluate the performance and cross-media effects of the BATs applicable for this industry. A streamlined LCA (raw material transformation to production of ductile iron casting piece) was performed to evaluate the impact of eleven BATs. The life cycle inventory was created using industrial average data for European iron casting industry from the literature. The avoided burdens originating from reduced raw material consumption and reuse of process residues were considered. Since economic factors largely influence methods to be implemented, the most preferable strategies towards cleaner production in iron foundries was determined using a combination of achieved benefits, environmental impacts and cost of implementation. Among the techniques evaluated, on-site recovery and external reuse of waste sand were capable of decreasing overall environmental impact of casting by 60-90%. Additionally, these techniques created revenues and savings for the manufacturers, which lead to the possibility of a step-wise implementation scheme to reduce financial burden of cleaner production programs in foundries. Overall environmental and economic evaluation suggested that planning towards cleaner production should adopt a holistic approach rather than being restricted to waste hierarchy principle. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The uncontrolled mixing of metals and their alloys during the different life cycle phases, combined with the melt purification constraints during remelting, pose great challenges during their end-of-life (EoL) treatment. In practice, open-loop recycling is typical and more common for metals than closed-loop recycling; especially in the case of aluminium, the industry operates in a cascade recycling approach. Associated with open-loop recycling are various types of material losses; loss of original functional quality, dissipation of scarce resources and the final need for dilution of the resulting metal impurities with primary materials. Thus, an environmental assessment tool is presented within this paper, aiming to support decision making related to the sustainable management of metal resources during secondary aluminium production. A material blending model aims at the minimization of the above mentioned losses in order to meet the product quality requirements. The goal of the study is threefold: i) to assess the environmental impact calculation of aluminium recycling, ii) to express, quantify and integrate dilution and quality losses into Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies, and iii) to determine the optimum material input for the recycling process from an environmental perspective. Different recycling options or strategies can be evaluated and compared based on avoided environmental impact. Case studies focusing on major post-consumer scrap streams are used to illustrate application areas and highlight the importance of altering and optimizing the raw material input. Finally, policy issues and opportunities for environmentally conscious metal management are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental sustainability is an everlasting concern of our modern society and has been gaining importance in practice and academia over the last decades. For being a major contributor to global environmental pollution, stakeholder pressure on manufacturing companies is increasing to reduce their environmental impacts, while simultaneously delivering high value goods and services at competitive prices, understood as increasing their eco-efficiency. However, complex interrelations between the economic and environmental performance dimensions in production systems create a non-transparency to decision makers, hindering them to translate this strategic target into improvement measures on a shop-floor level. Discrete-event simulation has been established as a promising method to solve this problem, although current approaches are insufficient for focusing only on energy aspects and being too complex in their application. This paper proposes a decision support consisting of two elements: 1) A novel discrete-event simulation approach that seamlessly integrates LCA with common economic evaluations by embedding the Ecoinvent LCI database, while considering all relevant eco-efficiency drivers within a production system; and 2) a system analysis and modelling procedure supporting its application and the identification of appropriate improvement measures. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Weight reduction is commonly adopted in vehicle design as a means for energy and emissions savings. However, selection of lightweight materials is often focused on performance characteristics, which may lead to sub optimizations of life cycle environmental impact. Therefore systematic material selection processes are needed that integrate weight optimization and environmental life cycle assessment. This paper presents such an approach and its application to design of an automotive component. Materials from the metal, hybrid and polymer families were assessed, along with a novel self-reinforced composite material that is a potential lightweight alternative to non-recyclable composites. It was shown that materials offering the highest weight saving potential offer limited life cycle environmental benefit due to energy demanding manufacturing. Selection of the preferable alternative is not a straightforward process since results may be sensitive to critical but uncertain aspects of the life cycle. Such aspects need to be evaluated to determine the actual benefits of lightweight design and to base material selection on more informed choices. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Oleaginous microorganisms are attractive feedstock for production of liquid biofuels. Direct hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is an efficient route that converts whole, wet biomass into an energy-dense liquid fuel precursor, called 'biocrude'. HTL represents a promising alternative to conventional lipid extraction methods as it does not require a dry feedstock or additional steps for lipid extraction. However, high operating pressure in HTL can pose challenges in reactor sizing and overall operating costs. Through the use of co-solvents the HTL operating pressure can be reduced. The present study investigates low-temperature co-solvent HTL of oleaginous yeast, Cryptococcus curvatus, using laboratory batch reactors. Results: In this study, we report the co-solvent HTL of microbial yeast biomass in an isopropanol-water binary system in the presence or absence of Na2CO3 catalyst. This novel approach proved to be effective and resulted in significantly higher yield of biocrude (56.4 +/- 0.1 %) than that of HTL performed without a co-solvent (49.1 +/- 0.4 %) (p = 0.001). Addition of Na2CO3 as a catalyst marginally improved the biocrude yield. The energy content of the resulting biocrude (similar to 37 MJ kg(-1)) was only slightly lower than that of petroleum crude (42 MJ kg(-1)). The HTL process was successful in removing carboxyl groups from fatty acids and creating their associated straight-chain alkanes (C-17-C-21). Experimental results were leveraged to inform techno-economic analysis (TEA) of the baseline HTL conversion pathway to evaluate the commercial feasibility of this process. TEA results showed a renewable diesel fuel price of $5.09 per gallon, with the HTL-processing step accounting for approximately 23 % of the total cost for the baseline pathway. Conclusions: This study shows the feasibility of co-solvent HTL of oleaginous yeast biomass in producing an energy-dense biocrude, and hence provides a platform for adding value to the current dairy industry. Co-solvents can be used to lower the HTL temperature and hence the operating pressure. This process results in a higher biocrude yield at a lower HTL temperature. A conceptual yeast HTL biofuel platform suggests the use of a dairy waste stream for increasing the productivity and sustainability of rural areas while providing a new feedstock (yeast) for generating biofuels.The environmental impacts of biomass harvesting can be quantified through the amount of net primary production required to produce one unit of harvested biomass (SPPR-specific primary production required). This paper presents a new calculation framework that explicitly takes into account full food web complexity and shows that the resulting SPPR for toothed whales in the Icelandic marine ecosystem is 2.8 times higher than the existing approach based on food web simplification. In addition, we show that our new framework can be coupled to food web modeling to examine how uncertainty on ecological data and processes can be accounted for while estimating SPPR. This approach reveals that an increase in the degree of heterotrophy by flagellates from 0% to 100% results in a two-fold increase in SPPR estimates in the Barents Sea. It also shows that the estimated SPPR is between 3.9 (herring) and 5.0 (capelin) times higher than that estimated when adopting food chain theory. SPPR resulting from our new approach is only valid for the given time period for which the food web is modeled and cannot be used to infer changes in SPPR when the food web is altered by changes in human exploitation or environmental changes.Cultured, or in vitro, meat consists of edible biomass grown from animal stem cells in a factory, or carnery. In the coming decades, in vitro biomass cultivation could enable the production of meat without the need to raise livestock. Using an anticipatory life cycle analysis framework, the study described herein examines the environmental implications of this emerging technology and compares the results with published impacts of beef, pork, poultry, and another speculative analysis of cultured biomass. While uncertainty ranges are large, the findings suggest that in vitro biomass cultivation could require smaller quantities of agricultural inputs and land than livestock; however, those benefits could come at the expense of more intensive energy use as biological functions such as digestion and nutrient circulation are replaced by industrial equivalents. From this perspective, large-scale cultivation of in vitro meat and other bioengineered products could represent a new phase of industrialization with inherently complex and challenging trade-offs.The objective of this study is to evaluate of the environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing process of a cork floating floor, produced in Portugal, in order to identify the most significant stages and processes (hotspots) with the aim of improving the manufacturing process and the sustainability of the product. Life Cycle Assessment methodology is used by applying a cradle-to-gate approach. The results show that the stage with the highest environmental impact is the assembling stage (where all the product's components are assembled) mainly due to the production of high density fiberboard. Additionally, the present study discusses the currently hot and controversial issue of biogenic carbon considering its storage in products and emission delay. For this part of the study a cradle-to-gate approach was adopted and three leading methodologies were compared, namely, Greenhouse Gas Protocol Product Standard, Publicly Available Specifications 2050 and the International Reference Life Cycle Data System. The results show that the choice of methodology has an important influence on the results obtained both for biogenic carbon dioxide emissions and carbon storage. This highlights the need for the establishment of a common methodology for the calculation of biogenic carbon, not only for the homogeneity of the guidelines but also for the ease of comparing results. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The assessment of corporate sustainability has become an increasingly important topic, both within academia and in industry. For manufacturing companies to conform to their commitments to sustainable development, a standard and reliable measurement framework is required. There is, however, a lack of sector-specific and empirical research in many areas, including the sugar industry. This paper presents an empirically developed framework for the assessment of corporate sustainability within the Thai sugar industry. Multiple case studies were conducted, and a survey using questionnaires was also employed to enhance the power of generalisation. The developed framework is an accurate and reliable measurement instrument of corporate sustainability, and guidelines to assess qualitative criteria are put forward. The proposed framework can be used for a company's self-assessment and for guiding practitioners in performance improvement and policy decision-making.This paper explores whether a mixture of centralised and decentralised urban water systems is preferable for sustainable urban water management. This is of importance for developing countries where there is continued demand for expanding urban water infrastructure. Processes for determining the combination of centralised and decentralised urban water solutions remain largely ad hoc. Using the South West Pacific as a case study, a multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology drawing on expert elicitation was employed to assess the technical, economic, environmental and resilience performance of urban water infrastructure alternatives; assessing water supply, sewage and stormwater systems. The MCDA analysis was then systematically contrasted with both a series of recommended infrastructural investment plans and the desires of local technocrats in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Results demonstrate a high level of agreement between the MCDA outcomes and local stakeholders, favouring hybrid infrastructure. Conversely, international consultants' infrastructure recommendations continue to reflect traditional engineering paradigms.Ecodesign is a proactive management approach that integrates environmental considerations in product development and related processes (such as purchasing, marketing and research & development). Ecodesign aims to improve environmental performance of products throughout their life cycle, from raw material extraction and manufacturing to use and end-of-life. Over the last three decades, an intense development of new ecodesign methods and tools could be observed, but uptake by the industry remains a challenge. The purpose of this research is to perform a review of existing ecodesign tools and methods through a systematic literature review linked to bibliometric analyses, in order to explore the state of the art of ecodesign methods and tools and identify trends and opportunities in the field for the next decade.We carried out an analytical summary and a systematization of the national and international methodological approaches in assessing impacts of agriculture on environment. The most noteworthy among them are the assessments of life cycle, ecological risks and threshold impacts as well as energy-ecological strategy (including Emergy). We give an outline of the most demanded (for practical purposes) foreign systems of indicators and analyze the features peculiar to them. We suggest our own technique for assessing the influence of agriculture to be used in strategic governance of nature management. It includes diagnosing the specific character and selecting the indicators, assessing the degree of impact and of its deviation from the optimal level, correlating the value of agricultural pressure with the landscape structure of the study area on the basis of landscape (geosystem) approach, and analyzing the positive and negative consequences for natural systems. A set of indicators is recommended for the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Western Siberia, which depends on the scope of research and the specialization of agriculture that takes into consideration the consequences of impacts on environment. This technique was tested for the agrarian-oriented and agrarian-recreational territories of Altai krai to show high performance in territorial planning for purposes of balanced agricultural nature management in so far as it can be used for strategic governance of any region.Western Australia's housing sector is growing rapidly and around half a million houses are expected to be built by 2030, which not only will result in increased energy and resources demand but will have socio-economic impacts. Majority of Western Australians live in detached houses made of energy intensive clay bricks, which have a high potential to generate construction and demolition (C&D) waste. Therefore, there is a need to look into the use of alternative materials and construction methods. Due to Western Australia's temperate climate, concrete could not only offer a comfortable living space but an operational energy saving also can be achieved. This paper has assessed the global warming implications of cast in-situ concrete sandwich wall system as an alternative to clay brick walls (CBW) with partial replacement of cement in concrete with by-products such as fly ash (FA) and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), natural aggregate (NA) with recycled crushed aggregate (RCA), natural sand (NS) with manufactured sand (MS) and, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) foam core as a replacement to polystyrene core for construction of a typical 4 x 2 x 2 detached house in Perth. Life cycle management (LCM) approach has been used to determine global warming reduction benefits due to the use of available by-products and recycled materials in Western Australian houses.U.S. programs subsidize electric vehicles (EVs) in part to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We model a suite of life cycle GHG emissions considerations to estimate the GHG abatement potential from switching from an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE) to an EV in the continental U.S. The GHG intensity of EVs hinges on the electricity and ambient temperature when charged and operated. Both have high spatial and temporal heterogeneity, yet are typically modeled inadequately or overlooked entirely. We calculate marginal emissions, including renewables, for electricity by region and test forecasted grid composition to estimate future performance. Location and timing of charging are important GHG determinants, but temperature effects on EV performance can be equally important. On average, EVs slightly reduce GHGs relative to ICEs, but there are many regions where EVs provide a decisive benefit and others where EVs are significantly worse. The forecasted grid shifts from coal towards renewables, improving EV performance; the GHG benefit per EV in western states is roughly $425 today and $2400 in 2040. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper described a comprehensive assessment of the pyrolysis process of 1 kg Desmodesmus sp. cultivated in BG11 medium at the optimum temperature by using life cycle assessment method. This assessment took 1 kg of Desmodesmus sp. as a functional unit, and chose energy efficiency analysis and potential environmental impact as assessment indices. The results showed that the energy conversion efficiency index of the pyrolysis process was above 1, which meant the pyrolysis process was beneficial. The primary impact of the pyrolysis process on the environment was eutrophication; which followed by photochemical ozone synthesis and acidification; and global warming impact was the last. The overall environmental impact during the whole life cycle was 1 347.63 mPE(T2000).The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with road construction activities are analyzed. The main focus of this analysis is on the vehicle emissions associated with alternative project staging approaches, specifically a full closure of the road during construction, versus an intermittent road closure. The analysis includes the direct and upstream emissions associated with materials, construction equipment, mobilization of resources to the work site, and maintenance activity associated with the project over its lifetime. The analysis is based on one case study of a road project in New Jersey. The assumptions underlying the staging analysis are based on hypothetical approaches. Results provide an assessment of the main sources of project related emissions and the ability to minimize total project emissions by minimizing traffic disruption. In the analysis with a full closure of the road, traffic disruption accounts for 26% of total emissions, while with an intermittent road closure, traffic disruption accounts for only 2% of total emissions. The other main sources are from materials and life-cycle maintenance. The analysis demonstrates the feasibility of minimizing project related GHG emissions during road construction activities. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A rising trend in state and federal transportation finance is to invest capital dollars into projects which reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, a key metric for comparing projects, the cost-effectiveness of GHG emissions reductions, is highly dependent on the cost-benefit methodology employed in the analysis. Our analysis comparing California High-Speed Rail and three urban transportation projects shows how four different accounting framings bring wide variations in cost per metric tonne of GHG emissions reduced. In our analysis, life-cycle GHG emissions are joined with full cost accounting to better understand the benefits of cap-and-trade investments. Considering only public subsidy for capital, none of the projects appear to be a cost-effective means to reduce GHG emissions (i.e., relative to the current price of GHG emissions in California's cap-and-trade program at $12.21 per tonne). However, after adjusting for the change in private costs users incur when switching from the counterfactual mode (automobile or aircraft) to the mode enabled by the project, all investments appear to reduce GHG emissions at a net savings to the public. Policy and decision-makers who consider only the capital cost of new transportation projects can be expected to incorrectly assess alternatives and indirect benefits (i.e., how travelers adapt to the new mass transit alternative) should be included in decision-making processes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The contribution of embodied energy (EE) and greenhouse gas emissions to building materials and structures has been recognized as significant, especially for nearly-zero energy-efficient buildings. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the composition of non-transparent structures of building envelopes from energy and environmental perspectives using the life-cycle assessment method. The study assesses environmental indicators such as EE from non-renewable resources and CO2eq and SO2eq emissions from proposed assemblies of building structures for nearly-zero energy wooden houses. Material compositions are also calculated in terms of selected thermal-physical aspects (U-value, phase shift of thermal oscillation, relaxation time) to ensure the reduction of energy consumption during building operation. All results are compared using a multi-dimensional evaluation approach through mathematical methods. The multi-criteria decision analysis demonstrates that material optimization of building structures is possible to ensure a marked reduction of the energy consumption and carbon footprint of buildings.In order to solve the energy crisis and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), renewable energy resources are exploited for power generation. Because lignocellulosic biomass resources are abundant and renewable, various technologies are applied to using lignocellulosic biomass to derive biofuel and electricity. This paper focuses on power generation from lignocellulosic biomass and comparison of the effects of different feedstocks, transportation, and power generation technologies evaluated through life cycle assessment (LCA). The inputs and boundaries of LCA vary with different feedstocks, such as forestry wood, agricultural residues, and fast-growing grass. For agricultural residues and fast-growing grass, the transportation cost from field to power plant is more critical. Three technologies for power generation are analyzed both with and without pelletization of lignocellulosic biomass. The GHG emissions also vary with different feedstocks and depend on burning technologies at different plant scales. The daily criteria pollutant emissions of power generation from different lignocellulosic biomass were evaluated with a life cycle assessment model of GREET.net 2014. It is concluded that bio-power generation is critical with the urgency of greenhouse effects.The possibility of reducing greenhouse gas ( GHG) emissions by ruminants using improved grazing is investigated by estimating GHG emissions for cow- calf farms under light continuous ( LC), heavy continuous ( HC) and rotational grazing, also known as multi-paddock ( MP), management strategies in Southern Great Plain ( SGP) using life cycle assessment ( LCA). Our results indicated a GHG emission with these grazing treatments of 8034.90 kg center dot CO2e center dot calf- 1 -year- 1 for cow- calf farms in SGP region, which is high, compared to that for other regions, due to the high percentage ( 79.6%) of enteric CH4 emissions caused by relatively lower feed quality on the unfertilized rangeland. Sensitivity analyses on MP grazing strategy showed that an increase in grass quality and digestibility could potentially reduce GHG emission by 30%. Despite higher GHG emissions on a per calf basis, net GHG emissions in SGP region are potentially negative when carbon ( C) sequestration is taken into account. With net C emission rates of - 2002.8, - 1731.6 and - 89.5 kg C ha- 1 year(-1) after converting from HC to MP, HC to LC and from LC to MP, our analysis indicated cow- calf farms converting from continuous to MP grazing in SGP region are likely net carbon sinks for decades.The Multifunctional Environmental Energy Tower (MEET) is a single, vertical, stand-alone renewable energy plant designed to decrease the primary energy consumption from fossil fuels, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to maximize the energy production from renewable sources available in place and to minimize land use. A feasibility case study was performed for the city of Rome, Italy. Several technologies are exploited and integrated in a single system, including a photovoltaic plant, a geothermal plant and a biomass digester for urban organic waste and sewage sludge. In the proposed configuration, the MEET could cover more than 11% of the electric power demand and up to 3% of the space heating demand of the surrounding urban area. An LCA analysis evaluates the environmental impact in a cradle-to-grave approach for two impact categories: global warming (carbon footprint) and land use (land occupation and land transformation). The functional unit is a mix of electric (49.1%) and thermal (50.9%) energy (kWh(mix)). The carbon footprint is 48.70 g CO2eq/kWh(mix); the land transformation is 4.058 m(2)/GWh(mix); and the land occupation is 969.3 m(2)y/GWh(mix). With respect to other energy production technologies, the carbon footprint is lower and similar to the best-performing ones (e.g., co-generation from wood chips); both of the land use indicators are considerably smaller than the least-impacting technologies. A systematic study was finally performed, and possible optimizations of the original design are proposed. Thanks to the modular design, the conceptual idea can be easily applied to other urban and non-urban scenarios.The aim of the study presented in this article is to assess, from an environmental standpoint, a set of eco-innovations applied to the production process of an automotive component. The eco-innovations were developed by a supply network of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the framework of a project named Hi-reach. The component considered is a motorcycle rear wheel spindle. The conventional version is obtained by machining a single forged steel part. The Hi-reach version is indeed manufactured by joining a shaft to a flange; in addition, conventional surface treatments are replaced by a plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) treatment and other machining steps are improved. This process was conceived with the aim of maintaining (or enhancing) the technical performance of the spindle and reducing production costs. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out to compare the two scenarios described. Those eco-innovations resulted in significant improvements of the environmental performance of the analysed component, ranging, on average, between 50% and 70% for the impact indicators considered. Our results also highlight the role of SMEs in promoting process eco-innovations and the increasing relevance of LCA as a tool to support decision making in manufacturing.This study analyses the impact on the GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of the raw material supply chain, the utilisation of excess heat and CO2 storage for a bio-SNG (biomass gasification-based synthetic natural gas) system by applying a consequential life cycle assessment approach. The impact of the biomass supply chain is analysed by assessing GHG emissions of locally produced woodchips and pellets with regional or transatlantic origin. Results show that the supply area for the gasification plant can be substantially increased with only modest increases in overall GHG emissions (3-5%) by using regionally produced pellets. The transatlantic pellet chains contribute to significantly higher GHG emissions. Utilising excess heat for power generation or steam delivery for industrial use contributes to lower emissions from the system, whereas delivery of district heating can contribute to either increased or decreased emissions. The production technology of the replaced heat and the carbon intensity of the reference power production were decisive for the benefits of the heat deliveries. Finally, the storage of CO2 separated from the syngas upgrading and from the flue gases of the gasifier can nearly double the GHG emission reduction potential of the bio-SNG system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The microalgae species Nannochloropsis gaditana (N. gaditana, marine) and Scenedesmus almeriensis (S. almeriensis, freshwater) were subjected to hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL; 350 degrees C; residence time of 15 min) in a continuous stirred-tank reactor (190 mL) at microalgae loadings of 9.1 and 18.2 wt % in the feed. The results indicate that the high loading of biomass in the feed promotes the formation of biocrude oil, with a maximum yield of 54.8 +/- 3.4 wt % for N. gaditana. A similar type of biocrude was obtained with both species. Its nitrogen and carbon contents increased at the high biomass loading, as well as the higher heating value. The HTL product yields varied from those reported for batch experiments carried out at the same reaction conditions. Most of the nutrients initially present in the feedstock were recovered to some extent in bioavailable forms in the aqueous phase, especially in the case of N. gaditana.Rio Grande do Sul (RS) State edaphoclimatic conditions are suitable only to produce ethanol in small scale. However, small scale ethanol production (SSEP) was not proven to be feasible because of its lower process efficiency compared to large scale, and its environmental impacts were not assessed. The objective of this study is to evaluate SSEP through life cycle assessment (LCA) and energy efficiency analysis (EEA), showing potential scenarios of improvement in SSEP efficiency. Eco-Indicator 99 and CML 2 Baseline 2000 were the assessment methods, and the results demonstrated that nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich fertilizers, along with herbicides and limestone, were responsible for the highest environmental impacts in the agricultural sector, while the use of equipment and electricity had the highest impacts in the industrial sector. In the overall analysis, the industrial sector showed the highest environmental impacts. The SSEP global warming potential is 0.128 kg CO2eq/MJ(ethanol), almost 20 times higher than in large scale ethanol production, demonstrating the negative impact of lower SSEP efficiency. The EEA results were given in terms of net energy balance (NEB) and net energy ratio (NER) considering four scenarios (Cases 1 to 4). The agricultural sector showed high NER (19.59), while the industrial stage showed an NER of 0.20 and 2.08 for the baseline scenario (Case 1) and for the improved scenario (Case 4), respectively. The overall process showed a NER of 0.69 for Case 1, in which the bagasse was not considered as coproduct. When bagasse energy was taken into account, the NER rose to 4.82 (Case 4), showing the importance of coproducts in the process energy efficiency. The higher environmental impact of the industrial stage is an incentive to develop and use more efficient technologies in SSEP.A wide spectrum of accounting frameworks and models is available to describe socioeconomic metabolism (SEM). Despite the common system of study, a large variety of terms and representations of that system are used by different models. This makes it difficult for practitioners to compare and choose a model or model combination that is fit for purpose. To facilitate model comparison, we analyze the system structure of material flow analysis (MFA); life cycle assessment (LCA); supply and use tables (SUTs); Leontief, Ghosh, and waste input-output analysis; integrated assessment models; and computable general equilibrium models. We show that the typical system structure of MFA and LCA is a directed graph. For the other models and some MFA and LCA studies, the system structure is a bipartite directed graph. We demonstrate that bipartite directed graphs and SUTs are equivalent representations of SEM. We show that the system structures of the models above are special cases of a general system structure, which models SEM as a bipartite graph. The general system structure includes industries, markets, the final use phase, products, waste, production factors, resources, and emissions. From the general system structure, we derive an accounting framework in the form of a generalized SUT. The general system structure facilitates the development of clear and unambiguous terminology across models. It helps to identify rules for the correct accounting of waste flows and stock changes. It facilitates model comparison and can serve as a blueprint for a model-independent database of SEM.The focus when analyzing the environmental requirements and impacts of the economic system is usually placed on production activities. But all production is associated with final consumption, and recently many studies have also been dedicated to final consumption. This article comprehensively reviews the biophysical assessment of households from the point of view of materials and energy required and emissions and wastes resulting from household consumption patterns. Although the aggregation bias and methodological variability make comparisons difficult, some patterns can be recognized. Results show that for many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a few developing countries, household metabolism has been mainly assessed from the energetic perspective, stressing household responsibility for emissions of greenhouse effect gases and climate change. Few studies deal with other emissions and wastes. There is a lack of information about material requirements, too. Environmental input-output (I-O) analysis and life cycle assessment are the methods usually employed, together with the use of economic, environmental, and expenditure information. Information about direct inputs and outputs is complemented with data on the environmental requirements associated with the consumption of goods and services. Multiregional I-O techniques have been used to capture upstream requirements in an attempt to avoid errors owing to truncation and domestic technology assumptions. Housing, food, and mobility are the most important consumption categories, but the shares of these categories in the requirements are different according to environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic factors. Finally, challenges for further research are discussed based on the need for new methodological developments, as well as the potential of the metabolic narrative to elaborate information relevant to sustainable consumption policies.Old concrete will be a future raw material source and is thereby resource-saving. The study underlines this with the results of the conducted life cycle assessment. For this purpose old concrete gets treated by an innovative recycling approach to ensure a high valuable recycling of the prepared fractions (recirculation into the concrete cycle). A vital prerequisite is the non-destructive separation of cement stone and aggregate. The methodology of the electrodynamic fragmentation guarantees this with ultrashort, underwater electrical discharges. The recycling of resources is generally desirable under the target of resource conservation, but the methodology of the electrodynamic fragmentation has to be investigated if it is advantageous under environmental aspects. Therefore the methodology of the life cycle assessment according ISO 14040/44 is used and the results are compared with the environmental impact of the primary provision. The results show that by using waste heat from another suitable location/site the impacts of the innovative approach are lower than the impacts of the primary production. The results are similar by using higher transport distances for the primary products than for the recycled materials.Currently, the majority of the construction waste (CW) has been collected without classification and simply disposed in China. To quantify the environmental impacts and provide reasonable policy recommendations, this paper conducted an assessment for the life cycle carbon emissions (CEs) for CW based on a streamlined life cycle assessment method. Three typical CW management approaches in Shenzhen City were selected to perform the case study and comparative analysis. The results show that scenario I with low recycling rate generates the largest CEs amount by 542.56 kg for 1 ton CW, followed by scenarios II and scenario III that generate 538.61 and 483.85 kg, respectively. In addition, the results show the material embody impact is the largest contributor to CEs for CW examined, accounting for 78 % of the total amount in the overall life cycle. Analysis results also show that wood, steel and concrete wastes are the top three contributors within nine materials, with proportions of 25, 23 and 13 %, respectively. Therefore, the most effective way to decrease the CEs of CW is minimizing the generation of CW, since the CEs of the majority of waste are not sensitive to alteration of treatment methods or recycling rate.Municipal solid waste (MSW) source-separated collection was started in Hangzhou since 2010. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted to evaluate its effect on the environment. Four MSW management (MSWM) systems are compared, and the functional unit is defined as the annual MSW generation in the city. Scenario 1 is the mixed collection system, where 50.77 % of the MSW is landfilled and 49.23 % incinerated. Scenario 2 represents the current system under source-separated collection. In addition, two future MSWM plans in the city are also modeled. A new incineration plant is planned to be built as the short-term plan (scenario 3); while food waste biological treatment techniques will be introduced according to the city's long-term plan (scenario 4). Results show that a total 30, 18, 28 and 29 % of global warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment and photochemical ozone formation has been saved after source separation, respectively. Meanwhile, both the short- and long-term MSWM plans provide positive effect to environmental improvements. Sensitivity analysis further reveals that food waste biological technique is essential with the continuous rise of source separation efficiency; and MSW destined for landfill should be controlled efficiently.Green infrastructure (GI) is quickly gaining ground as a less costly, greener alternative to traditional methods of stormwater management. One popular form of GI is the use of rain gardens to capture and treat stormwater. We used life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare environmental impacts of residential rain gardens constructed in the Shepherd's Creek watershed of Cincinnati, Ohio to those from a typical detain and treat system. LCA is an internationally standardized framework for analyzing the potential environmental performance of a product or service by including all stages in its life cycle, including material extraction, manufacturing, use, and disposal. Complementary to the life cycle environmental impact assessment, the life cycle costing approach was adopted to compare the equivalent annual costs of each of these systems. These analyses were supplemented by modeling alternative scenarios to capture the variability in implementing a GI strategy. Our LCA models suggest rain garden costs and impacts are determined by labor requirement; the traditional alternative's impacts are determined largely by the efficiency of wastewater treatment, while costs are determined by the expense of tunnel construction. Gardens were found to be the favorable option, both financially (similar to 42% cost reduction) and environmentally (62-98% impact reduction). Wastewater utilities may find significant life cycle cost and environmental impact reductions in implementing a rain garden plan.Switchgrass is a biomass crop with no established market. Its adoption will involve a wide range of socio-economic factors, making it a particularly difficult system to analyze for environmental impact estimates. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a methodology to quantify the environmental impacts of a product or process throughout its entire supply chain. However, traditional LCA approaches fail to account for the local variability in non-homogeneous systems. Because of the time component and other realm dynamics it is essential to visualize as the switchgrass adoption process as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS). Agent-based modeling (ABM) can be used to supplement life cycle information to account for these dynamics variances. Here, we present an Agent-Based Life Cycle Analysis (AB-LCA) model of farmers' potential adoption of switchgrass as a biomass. The chosen modeling approach aims to understand the main factors influencing landowner decision-making and how these adoption patterns can affect the LCA of switchgrass ethanol. To help address these challenges, we developed an Agent-Based Model aimed at: (1) understanding the main factors influencing landowner decision-making and how these adoption patterns can affect the LCA of switchgrass ethanol and (2) improving the LCA modeling methodology by overcoming the issues involved with analyzing emerging technologies with dynamic and evolving supply chains. Particularly, we built an agent-based model using LCA data of switchgrass-based ethanol production that simultaneously captures socioeconomic factors, such as age, level of risk aversion, education level, and level of profit, of farmers that lead to switchgrass adoption and the changes in environmental impact that result from this particular behavior. The results show that the most influential factors affecting farmers' decisions are their current economic situation and crop prices. Age and their level of knowledge of the new crop have some impact but with limited extent. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Changes in direct soil organic carbon (SOC) can have a major impact on overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from biofuels when using life-cycle assessment (LCA). Estimated changes in SOC, when accounted for in an LCA, are typically derived from near-surface soil depths (<30 cm). Changes in subsurface soil depths (>30 cm) could have a large positive or negative impact on overall GHG emissions from biofuels that are not always accounted for. Here, we evaluate how sub-surface SOC changes impact biofuel GHG emissions for corn (Zea mays L.) grain, corn stover, and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) using the (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in the Transportation) GREET model. Biofuel GHG emissions showed as much as a 154% difference between using near-surface SOC stocks changes only or when accounting for both near- and sub-surface SOC stock changes. Differences in GHG emissions highlight the importance of accounting for sub-surface SOC changes especially in bioenergy cropping systems with potential for soil C storage to deeper soil depths. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Wood energy use has strongly increased in Europe in the last decade entailing enhanced resource competition between the wood energy sector and the material-based wood sector. We applied the basket of benefit method for the forestry and wood cluster of the study area Bavaria to evaluate the impact of increased wood energy use and decreased material-based wood use on global warming potential, primary energy demand and particulate matter emissions. A baseline and a wood energy scenario were developed until 2035 and wood utilization in both scenarios was assessed via a Life Cycle Assessment of prevalent wood products, imported timber and conventional alternatives of use. The study reveals that, according to the modelled scenarios and the average substitution factors used, a demand shift towards more wood energy leads to a minor increase in global warming potential and to a reduction in primary energy demand. Increase in particulate matter emissions from wood energy use is strong, but definite conclusions cannot be drawn due to lack in data for material-based wood use. Moreover, the study results vary strongly depending on the products used for the comparative analysis. Through our approach, the ecological impact of increased wood energy use becomes visible for a whole region, taking into account the effect of a demand shift and of interdependent substitution effects. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to quantify the environmentally sustainable and economically feasible potentials of agricultural and agro-industrial residues to generate electricity via direct combustion in centralised power plants in Brazil. Further, the energy savings and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction potential of replacing natural gas-based electricity by bioenergy have been assessed. To this end, a methodology has been developed based on an integrated evaluation, incorporating statistical and geographical information system (GIS)-based analysis, and a life-cycle-assessment approach. Results reveal that the environmentally sustainable generation potential is nearly 141 TWh/year, mainly concentrated in the South, Southeast, and Midwest regions of the country. Sugarcane, soybean and maize crop residues are the major feedstocks for available bioenergy. On the other hand, the economic potential is far lower, accounting to 39 TWh/year. The total GHG mitigation is nearly 18 million tonne CO(2)e and could reach 64 million tonne CO(2)e yearly, if the technical potential is considered. The gap between technical and economic potentials implies that constraints to bioenergy are not related to a lack of resources, but rather associated to economic, logistical, regulatory and political barriers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The area used for bioenergy feedstock production is increasing because substitution of fossil fuels by bioenergy is promoted as an option to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, agriculture itself contributes to rising atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) concentrations. In this study we tested whether the net exchanges of N2O and CH4 between soil and atmosphere differ between annual fertilized and perennial unfertilized bioenergy crops. We measured N2O and CH4 soil fluxes from poplar short rotation coppice (SRC), perennial grass-clover and annual bioenergy crops (silage maize, oilseed rape, winter wheat) in two central German regions for two years. In the second year after establishment, the N2O emissions were significantly lower in SRC (<0.1 kg N2O-N ha(-1) yr(-1)) than grassland (0.8 kg N2O-N ha(-1) yr(-1)) and the annual crop (winter wheat; 1.5 kg N2O-N ha(-1) yr(-1)) at one regional site (Reiffenhausen). However, a different trend was observed in the first year when contents of mineral nitrogen were still higher in SRC due to former cropland use. At the other regional site (Gierstadt), N2O emissions were generally low (<0.5.kg N2O-N ha(-1) yr(-1)) and no crop-type effects were detected. Net uptake of atmospheric CH4 varied between 0.4 and 1.2 kg CH4-C ha(-1) yr(-1) with no consistent crop-type effect. The N2O emissions related to gross energy in the harvested biomass ranged from 0.07 to 6.22 kg CO2 equ GJ(-1). In both regions, Gierstadt (low N2O emissions) and more distinct Reiffenhausen (medium N2O emissions), this energy yield-related N2O emission was the lowest for SRC. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food packaging systems are designed to perform series of functions mainly aimed at containing and protecting foods during their shelf-lives. However, to perform those functions a package causes environmental impacts that affect food supply chains and that come from its life-cycle phases. Therefore, package design should be done based upon not only the issues of cost, food shelf-life and safety, as well as practicality, but also of environmental sustainability. For this purpose, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be applied in the packaging field with the aim of highlighting environmental hotspots and improvement potentials, thus enabling more eco-friendly products. In this context, an LCA of foamy polystyrene (PS) trays used for fresh meat packaging was performed here. The study highlighted that the highest environmental impacts come from PS-granule production and electricity consumption. In this regard, the authors underscored that there are no margins for improvement in the production of the granules and in the transport of the material inputs involved as well as of the trays to users. On the contrary, changing the energy source into a renewable one (by installing, for instance, a wind power plant) would enable a 14% damage reduction. In this way, the authors documented that alternative ways can be found for global environmental improvement of the system analysed and so for enhanced environmental sustainability of food packaging systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increasing production and use of carbonaceous nanomaterials (NMs) will increase their release to the sewer system and to municipal wastewater treatment plants. There is little quantitative knowledge on the removal of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), graphene oxide (GO), or few-layer graphene (FLG) from wastewater into the wastewater biomass. As such, we investigated the quantification of GO and MWCNTs by UV-Vis spectrophotometry, and FLG using programmable thermal analysis (PTA), respectively. We further explored the removal of pristine and oxidized MWCNTs (OMWCNTs), GO, and FLG in a biomass suspension. At least 96% of pristine and O-MWCNTs were removed from the water phase through aggregation and 30-min settling in presence or absence of biomass with an initial MWCNT concentration of 25 mga (TM) L-1. Only 65% of GO was removed with biomass concentration at or above 1,000 mga (TM) L-1 as total suspended solids (TSS) with the initial GO concentration of 25 mga (TM) L-1. As UV-Vis spectrophotometry does not work well on quantification of FLG, we studied the removal of FLG at a lower biomass concentration (50 mg TSSa (TM) L-1) using PTA, which showed a 16% removal of FLG with an initial concentration of 1 mga (TM) L-1. The removal data for GO and FLG were fitted using the Freundlich equation (R (2) = 0.55, 0.94, respectively). The data presented in this study for carbonaceous NM removal from wastewater provides quantitative information for environmental exposure modeling and life cycle assessment.Waste Cooking Oils (WCO) have been gaining prominence as an alternative feedstock for biodiesel production due to is potential to reduce the economic and environmental costs of biodiesel produced with biomass. However, there are various types of WCO collection with different collection efficiency and environmental impacts. The aim of this paper is to present an environmental assessment of biodiesel from WCO addressing different collection schemes in Portugal. The implications of alternative allocation approaches (no allocation, mass allocation, energy allocation and economic allocation) in the final results are also assessed. Life Cycle Impact Assessment was calculated (ReCiPe method) for: Climate Change; Terrestrial Acidification; Marine Eutrophication and Freshwater Eutrophication. WCO collection contribution for the overall impacts ranged significantly for the various collection system and impact categories. The application of different allocation approaches led to differences in the results up to 11 %. A comparison between the GHG emissions calculated for biodiesel from WCO and the typical and default values presented in the Renewable Energy Directive was performed. The GHG emission saving for biodiesel from WCO collected in Portugal ranged from 81 to 89 %.Starting from an existing waste management district without thermal treatment facilities, two different management scenarios for residual waste were compared by life cycle assessment (LCA). The adoption of a bioreactor landfill for managing the mechanically sorted organic fraction instead of bio-stabilization led to reduction of global warming and fresh water eutrophication by 50% and 10%, respectively. Extraction of recyclables from residual waste led to avoided emissions for particulate matter, acidification and resource depletion impact categories. Marginal energy and the amount of energy recovered from landfill gas marginally affected the LCA results. On the contrary the quality of the recyclables extracted can significantly modify the eco profile of the management schemes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The bioenergy production greatly runs around the controversial interconnections among food, energy and environment that have noteworthy implications in various spheres. Using a cropping system approach, this study aimed at evaluating environmental impact variations associated to switching from traditional cereal, forage and horticultural systems to food/energy ones under Mediterranean conditions. The alternative scenarios included the introduction of rapeseed as dedicated energy crop in the cereal cropping systems, the valorization of artichoke residuals for energy production in the horticultural system and the shift from forage to biomass for energy production in the forage systems. A "cradle to farm gate" consequential Life Cycle Assessment approach was used that allowed to identify the environmental "hot spots" of the agricultural practices. The introduction of rapeseed into cereal crop systems and, to a lesser extent the conversion of forage systems into energy systems, showed positive effects on the environmental farming sustainability, with a variation of 32% and 8% burdens on land basis, respectively. The harvesting of artichoke residues for energy production required additional energy inputs leading to an increased impact compared to the solely edible heads harvest (+88%) on land basis. These findings provide useful information for improving agricultural practices and designing land allocation options among crops of these Mediterranean cropping systems aiming to minimize food/energy competition and environmental burdens. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper proposes to use discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) methods to schedule grid-scale energy storage systems to mitigate wind power forecast error impacts while considering energy storage properties. This is accomplished by decomposing the wind forecast error signal to different time-varying periodic components to schedule sodium sulfur (NaS) batteries, compressed air energy storage (CAES), and conventional generators. The advantage of signal processing techniques is that the resultant decomposed components are appropriate for cycling of each energy storage technology. It is also beneficial for conventional generators, which are more efficient to operate close to rated capacity. The tradeoff between installing more energy storage units and decreasing the wind spillage, back-up energy, and the standard deviation of residual forecast error signal is analyzed. The NaS battery life cycle analysis and CAES contribution on increasing NaS battery lifetime are studied. The impact of considering the frequency bias constant to allow small frequency deviations is also investigated. To showcase the applicability of the proposed approach, a simulation case study based on a real-world 5-min interval wind data from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) in 2013 is presented.The methodology of life cycle assessment was applied for evaluating the environmental performance of a Saskatchewan lignite integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC)-based electricity generation plant with and without the pre-combustion CO2 capture process. A comparison between the IGCC systems (with and without CO2 capture) and the competing lignite pulverized coal electricity generating station was conducted to reveal which technology offers more positive environmental effects. The results showed significant reduction of GHG emissions where both post-and pre-combustion CO2 capture processes are applied. With the application of the CO2 removal technology, GHG emissions were reduced by 27-86%. The performances of the IGCC systems were superior to those of the pulverized coal systems. However, in terms of other environmental impacts, multiple environmental trade-offs are involved depending on the capture technology. For the post-combustion CO2 capture process system, it was observed that the environmental impact was shifted from the air compartment to the soil and water compartments. The IGCC systems showed the same tendency of shifting from air pollution to soil and water pollution, but the amount of pollution is less significant. This is likely because the IGCC system operates at higher efficiencies; hence, it requires less fuel and produces fewer emissions.The performance of a vibratory shear-enhanced membrane process for dewatering of freshwater microalgae, Chlorella vulgaris, has been studied. Chlorella vulgaris is a potential renewable feedstock for biofuel and bioproduct production. The efficient dewatering of the algal biomass is crucial for scale-up and sustainable design. This dynamic filtration system achieves high shear rates desirable for microfiltration by high-frequency torsional oscillations of the membrane unit. A 0.05 A mu m (nominal pore size) polyethersulfone microfiltration membrane was evaluated for the separation of suspended algae (0.5-100 g/L). The effect of process parameters such as trans-membrane pressure, surface shear rate, and solute concentration on permeate flux was evaluated and quantified. Algal biomass mixtures were dewatered with high algae rejections for all studies. The effect of trans-membrane pressure on permeate flux showed a classic pattern of a pressure-controlled region at lower pressures transforming to a mass transfer gel layer-controlled region at higher pressures, with quicker transitions at higher algae feed concentrations. The shear rate at the membrane surface was varied by changing the vibrational frequency of the unit. Permeate flux values observed in dynamic filtration mode, compared to those in cross-flow filtration (CFF) mode, were greater by a factor of 4.2-4.9. This process could provide a greener alternative to conventional mechanical and thermal separation systems, as high values of permeate flux and separation efficiency can be maintained with an energy consumption of 1.6 kWh/m(3) of water removed.Even though significant NO (x) and SO2 emissions reductions have been observed in Spain during last decade, there is a strong commitment to keep reducing the levels of pollution in order to improve air quality standards. This work has been carried out to ease the lack of National Emission Ceilings Directive (NECD) assessments at country level. The Spanish case has been used as illustrative of the European Union. The evolution of NO (x) and SO2 emissions has been analysed in depth using the TIMES-Spain energy optimisation model. The work has been structured into three parts. First, the implementation of the NECD and the consequences both on the evolution of NO (x) and SO2 emissions, and the electricity production mix; second, taxation on these pollutants has been modelled and discussed; and finally, the proposed "2013 EU Clean Air Package" ceilings to update NECD have been assessed. Results showed that meeting NECD targets would involve a high contribution of renewable sources to the electricity system, mainly wind and solar. In addition, NO (x) and SO2 taxation has been assessed. Results showed that taxes on pollutants led to lower emissions than using NECD. Hence, current ceilings are not strict enough to internalise all the environmental damages associated to those pollutants. In consequence, the suitability of the NECD has been discussed by means of the new ceilings included in the EU Clean Air Policy Package. Results showed that proposed reductions are insufficient to compensate the environmental damages especially in the short term.Management of animal manure in livestock and crop production is a major cause of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and carbon (C) loss. The losses of N, P. and C contribute to adverse environmental impacts, such as climate change, terrestrial acidification, and marine eutrophication. Manure management technologies to reduce losses and impacts have been developed, but often focus on a single compound only or a single stage in the management system and lead to trade-offs, such as pollution swapping. The aim of this study was to design strategies for integrated manure management (IS) which prevent pollution swapping and show that the environmental impact can be reduced throughout the manure management system. We used a structured design approach based on engineering design (ED) that consists of eight main steps: 1. define the goal of the design task and the system boundaries, 2. formulate a brief of requirements stating the needs for environmental reduction, 3. analyze the functions in the current manure management system, 4. list and describe emission processes and their process variables that lead to N, P, and C losses and resource use, 5. describe the functions needed in the manure management system to limit the emission processes or resource use, 6. generate principle-options that can fulfill the functions, 7. generate technical solutions for the principle-options, and 8. combine the principle-options and technical solutions into strategies for integrated manure management In the design of strategies we considered the management of liquid and solid dairy cattle manure applied to grass and maize, and liquid pig manure applied to wheat, all under North West European conditions. The IS included the segregation of pig and dairy cattle urine and feces to reduce CH4, NH3, and N2O emission, addition of zeolite to solid cattle manure to reduce NH3 emission, bio-energy production from biogas that avoids fossil-based electricity and heat, acidification of urine during storage and acidification of feces prior to application, sealed storages, and improved application timing, place, and method of application. It was concluded that we were able to successfully design IS with high potential to reduce environmental impact. The design approach adapted from ED proved to be useful to structure the design process to provide insight into interactions of emission processes and find principle-options and technical solutions to prevent pollution swapping. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In crop science, widely used theoretical concepts of production ecology comprise a hierarchy in growth defining, limiting, and reducing factors, which determine corresponding potential, limited, and actual production levels. These concepts give insight in theoretically achievable production, yield gaps, and yield gap mitigation. Concepts of production ecology have been demonstrated to be applicable to livestock science, but so far they have not been used quantitatively for livestock production. This paper aims to define theoretical concepts of production ecology for livestock systems in more detail, to express livestock production in suitable units, and to provide a framework to analyse production levels for livestock systems and combined crop-livestock systems. Growth defining (genotype and climate), growth limiting (feed quality and quantity), and growth reducing factors (diseases and stress) in livestock production are described analogous to the growth factors in crop production. Management practices, such as housing, feeding, culling, and slaughter are specified. From the perspective of a livestock system, production is expressed per animal, per unit of animal body mass, and per unit of feed intake, whereas from the perspective of a combined crop-livestock system, production is recommended to be expressed in kg livestock product ha(-1) year(-1). The quantitative framework is illustrated for Charolais cattle (Bos taurus subsp.) in two beef production systems in France, differing in feeding strategies. System A produces heavier calves than system B, whereas cattle in system B are fed a higher fraction of concentrates in the diet compared with system A. Potential beef production was similar for systems A and B, and estimated to be 152 kg beef animal(-1) year(-1) and 251 g beef kg(-1) live weight year(-1), while there was a minor difference when expressed per unit of feed intake (54.5 vs 54.8 g beef kg-1 DM). Actual production was lower for system A than for system B (24.9 vs 31.2 g beef kg(-1) DM). Potential production for combined crop-livestock systems was again similar for systems A and B (631 vs 634 kg beef ha(-1) year(-1)), while actual production was much lower for system A than for system B (133 vs 180 kg beef ha(-1) year(-1)). The yield gap for crop-livestock systems was 79% of potential production for system A and 72% for system B. We conclude that the framework is effective to reveal the scope to increase production and resource use efficiency in livestock production. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban rooftop farming favours local food production. Although rooftop farming is perceived as a sustainable system, there is a lack of quantitative studies. There, we set up experiments in the community rooftop garden of a public housing building in Bologna, Italy, between 2012 and 2014. We grew lettuce, a leafy vegetable, using three techniques: nutrient film, floating hydroponic and soil cultivation. We also grew tomato, chilli pepper, eggplant, melon, watermelon on soils. Data was analysed by life cycle assessment for environmental and economic performance. Results reveal that the best techniques of lettuce cultivation to address global warming were floating in the summer, with 65-85 % less environmental impact per kilogran than nutrient film; and soil production in the winter, with 85-95 % less environmental impact. Furthermore, floating production was 25 % cheaper in summer, and soil was 65 % cheaper in winter, compared to the nutrient film technique. For soil production, eggplants and tomatoes showed the best environmental performances of about 74 g CO2 per kg. Eggplant production in soil was cheapest at 0.13 (sic) per kg.Interactions between aquaculture and the environment remain a debated issue, especially in areas where the aquaculture sector is still expanding, such as in the Mekong delta in Vietnam. In response to environmental concerns, various eco-certification schemes have been introduced for seafood, aiming to improve production practices. In order to reflect upon the criteria of these certification schemes, life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to conventional and certified extensive organic mangrove-shrimp farms in the lower Mekong. In total, 21 organic and 20 non-organic farms were included in the study for evaluation of effects on global warming (including emissions from land transformation and occupation), eutrophication and acidification. Monte Carlo simulations and random sampling were applied to aggregate contributing processes into results. The emissions of greenhouse gasses per ton of shrimp produced were substantial for both groups, and almost solely caused by the release of carbon during mangrove land transformation. Differences in the land area needed to support shrimp production explain the discrepancy. Organic farms emitted less CO2-equivalents (eq.) than the non-organic farms in 75% of the Monte Carlo iterations. Acidification impacts were similar for the two groups, with higher emissions from the non-organic farms in 67% of the iterations. Meanwhile, most mangrove-integrated farms showed a net uptake of eutrophying substances, indicating that both types of mangrove-shrimp production systems are nutrient limited. In order to put the results into perspective, a comparison with intensive and semi-intensive shrimp farms was made. While the extensive mangrove-shrimp farms showed higher emissions of CO2-eq. per ton shrimp produced (20 tons in average for organic and non-organic farms compared to 10 tons from intensive/semi-intensive production), results indicated lower impacts in terms of both acidification and eutrophication. We recommend LCA to be used as a central tool for identifying practices relevant for eco-certification audits, including considerations for land use. However, a better understanding of the consequences of land quality change and linkages to impacts at the ecosystem level e.g. effects on ecosystem services, is needed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biomass can deliver significant greenhouse gas reductions in electricity, heat and transport fuel supply. However, our biomass resource is limited and should be used to deliver the most strategic and significant impacts. The relative greenhouse gas reduction merits of different bioenergy systems (for electricity, heat, chemical and biochar production) were examined on a common, scientific basis using consistent life cycle assessment methodology, scope of system and assumptions. The results show that bioenergy delivers substantial and cost-effective greenhouse gas reductions. Large scale electricity systems deliver the largest absolute reductions in greenhouse gases per unit of energy generated, while medium scale wood chip district heating boilers result in the highest level of greenhouse gas reductions per unit of harvested biomass. However, ammonia and biochar systems deliver the most cost effective carbon reductions, while biochar systems potentially deliver the highest greenhouse gas reductions per unit area of land. The system that achieves the largest reduction in greenhouse gases per unit of energy does not also deliver the highest greenhouse gas reduction per unit of biomass. So policy mechanisms that incentivize the reductions in the carbon intensity of energy may not result in the best use of the available resource. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a flexible tool that can be used to answer a wide variety of different policy-relevant, LCA "questions", but it is essential that care is taken to formulate the actual question being asked and adapt the LCA methodology to suit the context and objective. (c) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this work, the optimization of microalgae oil (MO) based biodiesel production process is carried out by waste heat recovery and process integration. The exergy analysis of each heat exchanger presented an efficient heat coupling between hot and cold streams, thus minimizing the total exergy destruction. Simulation results showed that the unit production cost of optimized process is 0.592 $/L biodiesel, and approximately 0.172 $/L biodiesel can be avoided by heat integration. Although the capital cost of the optimized biodiesel production process increased 32.5 % and 23.5 % compared to the reference cases, the operational cost can be reduced by approximately 22.5 % and 41.6 %. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle assessment of underground gravity and pressured pipeline networks are studied to quantitatively calculate the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The life cycle of a pipeline can be classified into four phases that are fabrication, transportation, installation, and operation. Three typical flexible underground pipe materials, namely, steel, ductile iron (DI), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) have been considered. The most dominant phase of the life cycle is pipe manufacturing and fabrication process, resulting in large amounts of CO2 emissions. The results indicate that PVC provides the best environmental savings compared to steel and DI pipes in terms of CO2 emission and emission mitigation cost. This methodology in estimating life cycle carbon footprint and cost could be used as managerial decision support tool for management of any underground pipeline networks.The concept of sustainability is critical for businesses and individuals to understand and apply. Although there are many ways to define sustainability, at The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) we say that sustainability requires making every decision with the future in mind. Sustainable innovation is driven by a clear corporate strategy, global accountability to goals, and a variety of tools to track and improve business performance. The ability to articulate aspirational goals for some areas and quantitative measurements for others is critical. Individual awareness of the four themes of sustainable chemistry and engineering (atom economy, energy efficiency, reduced hazard, and holistic design) is a firm foundation for sustainable innovation. The Dow Chemical Sustainability Footprint ToolA (c), life-cycle assessment, and a product-based Sustainable Chemistry Index are very useful in positioning and quantifying sustainability as a target for innovation-and a source of business growth. The development, application, and use of these tools in Dow are described.The number of electric and electronic products (e-products) owned by Chinese households has multiplied in the past decade. In this study, we analyz the GHG emissions from e-products in Chinese households in order to understand and determine how to mitigate their effects on climate change. The results show that the usage stage of e-products has become an important source of GHG emissions in China, with total GHG emissions of these household e-products reaching about 663 million tons CO2 eq., accounting for about 8.85 % of all Chinese GHG emissions in 2012. The average GHG emission per household per year in China was 1538 kg CO2 eq. in 2012, a little higher than that of Norwegian households (1200 kg CO2 eq.). The electricity mix plays a very important role in GHG emissions, and the 78 % coal-fired power consumption accounted for 99.69 % of the total GHG emissions. Our research also supports the view that GHG emissions from household e-products increased with economic level. To reduce the GHG emissions of household e-products, the development of energy-saving e-products and changes to the electricity mix would be very effective measures.The applicability of life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the textile industry is discussed with a special focus on environmental impact from chemicals. Together with issues of water depletion and energy use, the use of chemicals and their emissions are important environmental considerations for textile products. However, accounting for chemicals is a weak point in LCA methodology and practice. Two research questions were investigated in a case study of hospital garments: 1) whether LCA adds value to assessments of the chemical performance of textile products, and 2) whether inclusion of toxicity issues in LCA affects environmental performance rankings for textile products. It is concluded that the quantitative and holistic tool LCA is useful for environmental decision makers in the textile industry, and becomes more effective when chemical impacts are included. A flexible way forward is demonstrated to meet the challenge of accounting for chemicals in LCAs of textile products.The purposes of the study are to investigate the electricity and water consumption during the washing machine operations in Europe, China, the USA, and South Korea and to associate those quantitative data with the environmental and economic impacts in terms of CO2 equivalent emission (CO2 eq.) and monetary cost. The consumption data were collected for the washing machine of the first-grade energy efficiency in those regions. Drum washing machine operation in Europe consumed the most electricity because of the operations mostly included the temperature elevation of water. The machine operation in China produced relatively larger amount of kg CO2 eq./cycle/kg due to the primarily coal-sourced power generation. The relative cost of electricity over water during the washing operations in the USA was significantly smaller, due to the relatively lower cost of electricity in the USA. From the laboratory experiments that examined the optimal washing conditions in terms of washing efficiency and environmental favorability, the elongated mechanical action instead of temperature elevation during wash process was suggested to achieve the effective washing performance, while significantly saving the electricity. Also, two times of rinsing processes achieved the effective enough rinsing performance, suggesting that extra rinsing process from the hygiene concern deserves reconsideration for more sustainable laundering practice.The cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of thermochemical ethanol from loblolly pine, eucalyptus, unmanaged hardwoods, forest residues, and switchgrass biomass feedstocks were determined and compared to gasoline. The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Impacts (TRACI) method was implemented in SimaPro 7.3 to calculate midpoint environmental impacts. Two normalization value sets were used and weighting was performed to produce a single environmental score. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions of cellulosic ethanol as compared to gasoline were 65%-77%, depending on the biomass feedstock, qualifying these biofuels as cellulosic ethanol under the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS2). Effects of direct land-use change were significant (similar to 18%) and could increase the GHG emissions for switchgrass derived ethanol above the federal GHG reduction thresholds for cellulosic ethanol. The production and use of cellulosic ethanol reduced fossil fuel consumption by between 95% and 97% and by 81% for forest and switchgrass derived ethanol, respectively. Cellulosic ethanol, however, did not reduce all environmental impact categories (e.g., eutrophication, ozone depletion respiratory effects, acidification, and smog) compared to gasoline. The fuel scenario ranking from lowest impact to highest impact consistently remained the same for GHG emissions, fossil fuel use, and the two single weight score analysis methods and was, in ascending order, forest residues with no forest establishment burdens, forest residues with forest establishment burdens, natural hardwood, pine, switchgrass, and finally gasoline. The GHG emission reductions from the use of cellulosic ethanol at the renewable fuel standards mandated production volume of 16 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year by 2020 would result in 9-10 billion metric tonnes of GHG emissions avoided. Published by Elsevier B.V.Exergy and life cycle assessment analysis are the key issues in evaluation of the potential of energy resources. However, the results of exergy analysis of biodiesel production greatly depend on the methodological approaches to exergy calculation and the peculiarities of local environment. In the current paper, detailed exergy analysis of the production of canola-based biodiesel was performed on the basis of classical model of the environment, considering all manufacturing stages from sowing of canola seeds to receiving of final biodiesel ready for sale. The typical spring canola (Brassica napus L.), cultivated on soddy-podzolic and loamy sandy soils at the usual weather conditions in the central part of Belarus, was used in the exergy analysis. The values of standard chemical exergies of canola biomass and its derivatives were determined from bomb combustion and heat capacity calorimetry data. It was found that total input of exergies during synthesis of methyl and ethyl esters makes 30.97 and 33.28 GJ ha(-1).yr(-1), while output of chemical exergies with the target product and its concomitants (esters, glycerin and potassium dihydrogen phosphate) is equal to 27.82 and 29.19 GJ ha(-1).yr(-1) for methyl and ethyl esters respectively. Obtained results testify to the high exergetical effectiveness of biodiesel production from canola, especially when major by-products and wastes are further processed into valuable matter. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study applies life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques to evaluate the processes controling the environmental impacts of anaerobic digestion (AD) pathways on a modeled dairy farm setting representative of Wisconsin. Seven electricity-producing AD pathways are compared against a base-case (BC) pathway to understand the effect of management practices, co-digestion strategies, and energy conversion processes on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, ammonia (NH3) emissions, depletion of fossil fuels (DFF), and nutrient balances. The pathway selected has a substantial influence on the estimates of environmental impacts. GHG emissions range from 178 to 267 kg CO2-eq GJ(-1), NH3 emissions range from 11 to 18 kg GJ(-1), DFF range from 176 to 327 MJ GJ(-1), and N availability ranges from 7 to 15 kg GJ(-1) of produced energy. The results of this paper show that the environmental benefits and concerns of anaerobic digestion systems can be further improved with the adoption of management practices on-farm. Injection of digestate during land application is an effective management practice to reduce NH3 emissions, which at the same time increases N availability and reduces GHG emissions and DFF given that the manufacturing of purchased fertilizers is fossil energy intensive. Co-digesting manure with corn stover and switchgrass increases energy production. Recovering heat has proven to be an easy to adopt strategy that improves all sustainability indicators without implementing major operational changes. Finally, 100 kg CO2-eq GJ(-1), 4.2 kg NH3 GJ(-1) and 566 MJ GJ(-1) are determined for GHG emissions, NH3 emissions and DFF respectively for a compressed biogas pathway. (c) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThis study presents a life cycle assessment of a crop sequence of cauliflower and tomato that is subjected to three different fertilization treatments; the crops were cultivated in a Mediterranean region. The main objective of this study is the assessment of organic and mineral fertilizers that are applied to a crop sequence of tomato and cauliflower. Two allocation procedures that are based on the crop cultivation time and the degree of nitrogen mineralization were implemented to allocate the compost burden to the crops. The results indicated that the crops fertilized with home compost achieved the best environmental performance in all impact categories, regardless of the allocation methods, with the exception of marine eutrophication and terrestrial acidification. The comparison of the impact (kg eq. of pollutant/day) on the entire horticultural cycle with the individual crops indicates that cycle yielded the least amount of impact among the assessed categories. The crops that were fertilized with the home compost using the allocation method, which is based on the degree of nitrogen in the soil, exhibited the least impact value among all categories. However, the allocation procedure based on the cultivation duration was considered to be the better attributional method given the high degree of uncertainty in the nitrogen degradation. This uncertainty is related to the complex interactions among the variables to metabolize the following nutrients (i.e., nitrogen) of fertilizers: variety of crops, crop management, soil type, weather conditions and fertilizer.Integrated agriculture and aquaculture (IAA), as typified by the mulberry dike-pond system (DPS) of the Pearl River delta of southern China, is often cited as an example of sustainable intensified production due to its characteristic closed loop recycling of nutrients. In this study, we tackle two issues that have been hardly addressed in previous analyses of aquaculture production, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) from the pond and the role of labour. Previous assessments led us to revisit the sustainability of the DPS system as a model for a well-studied IAA system using a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Our study quantifies on-farm CH4 and N2O emissions and indirect emissions embedded in inputs, using the global warming potential (GWP) metric. To model the indirect impact of the high labour requirements of the system, a simple methodology based on metabolizable energy requirements is proposed. Our GHGe assessment suggests that using fish ponds to treat organic waste results in higher net emissions than alternative waste processing options (e.g. composting), even when the co-production of fish is accounted for. The majority of total system GWP(100) (97 %) can be attributed to methane from the fertilised ponds. Food required to meet labour requirements plays an important role, from 11 to 22 % of total environmental impact. Methane from semi-intensive ponds fertilised with organic waste appears to be a significant source of GWP, calling into question the environmental sustainability of IAA systems such as the mulberry DPS. Improving sustainability in such systems will require better understanding of GHGe from waste-fed aquaculture ponds, notably with respect to on-farm N2O and CH4..Bioenergy is increasingly used to help meet greenhouse gas (GHG) and renewable energy targets. However, bioenergy's sustainability has been questioned, resulting in increasing use of life cycle assessment (LCA). Bioenergy systems are global and complex, and market forces can result in significant changes, relevant to LCA and policy. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the complexities associated with LCA, with particular focus on bioenergy and associated policy development, so that its use can more effectively inform policymakers. The review is based on the results from a series of workshops focused on bioenergy life cycle assessment. Expert submissions were compiled and categorized within the first two workshops. Over 100 issues emerged. Accounting for redundancies and close similarities in the list, this reduced to around 60 challenges, many of which are deeply interrelated. Some of these issues were then explored further at a policy-facing workshop in London, UK. The authors applied a rigorous approach to categorize the challenges identified to be at the intersection of biofuels/bioenergy LCA and policy. The credibility of LCA is core to its use in policy. Even LCAs that comply with ISO standards and policy and regulatory instruments leave a great deal of scope for interpretation and flexibility. Within the bioenergy sector, this has led to frustration and at times a lack of obvious direction. This paper identifies the main challenge clusters: overarching issues, application and practice and value and ethical judgments. Many of these are reflective of the transition from application of LCA to assess individual products or systems to the wider approach that is becoming more common. Uncertainty in impact assessment strongly influences planning and compliance due to challenges in assigning accountability, and communicating the inherent complexity and uncertainty within bioenergy is becoming of greater importance. The emergence of LCA in bioenergy governance is particularly significant because other sectors are likely to transition to similar governance models. LCA is being stretched to accommodate complex and broad policy-relevant questions, seeking to incorporate externalities that have major implications for long-term sustainability. As policy increasingly relies on LCA, the strains placed on the methodology are becoming both clearer and impedimentary. The implications for energy policy, and in particular bioenergy, are large.Ecuador is an important player in the global tuna fishing and processing industry: The Ecuadorian industrial tuna fleet represents 17 % of the global tuna purse seiner fleet, and it is the second largest tuna processing country after Thailand. The fishing and processing operations of one of the largest vertically integrated tuna processing firms in Ecuador were evaluated regarding their environmental impacts and assumed representative of the Ecuadorian tuna processing industry. Results were compared with those of other international fish processing and other sources of animal protein for human consumption. Directions are finally identified toward reducing environmental impacts of both the tuna fishery and processing industry. Detailed operational fishery and processing data was collected from a representative Ecuadorian tuna processing firm, and the life cycle assessment framework applied to it for hotspot identification. Two functional units were used: 1 t of final product (for canned, pouched, vacuum bagged and mean products) and 1 t of "fish in product", which includes all process losses and normalises the final product/raw fish ratios among the different processing routes analysed. The ReCiPe impact assessment method was used. In the period 2012-2013, the studied sub-fleet featured a fuel use intensity of 835 L per landed tonne, which was 235 % higher than reported values for all tuna landings in the Pacific Ocean in 2009. Reasons for such underperformance may include inter-annual variations in tuna catchability and the fact that fuels are generally subsidised in Ecuador, and thus skippers perhaps do not apply sufficient fuel-saving strategies. The main contributors to impacts associated with tuna processing were the provision of tinplate cans (58.0 % of the ReCiPe single score) and fuel use by the fishery (22.6 %). Ecuadorian tuna products feature environmental impacts generally higher than those of other fish processing industries worldwide, yet lower than those of many alternative sources of fish and land animal protein. Efforts to reduce environmental impacts of Ecuadorian tuna processing should focus on the fuel performance of the providing fleet, and on the container technology. Increased use of larger tinplate cans, aluminium cans, or other non-metal container technologies (e.g. pouches and retort cups) would decrease environmental impacts of tuna processing. The sources of relative inefficiency observed for the Ecuadorian tuna fleet should be thoroughly investigated. Possible solutions could involve applying fuel-saving strategies.Currently, there is no meaningful methodology for the estimation of environmental impacts from long-term heavy metal emissions in a life cycle assessment (LCA) context, when an assessment of landfill and mining technologies is performed. In this paper, the aims are to investigate the main issues hindering the standardisation of a methodology to account for potential impacts from long-term metal emissions, and to describe the characteristics of a robust framework for an operational impact assessment methodology. In order to demonstrate the issues around potential impacts from long-term emissions in LCA and derive a scientific basis for developing an adequate LCA methodology to address these impacts, a two-part review on long-term metal emissions is performed that (a) identifies a suitable time-dependent life cycle inventory (LCI) while underlining the problems in existing emission prediction attempts and (b) describes the existing LCA approaches for accounting of toxic potential impacts from these emissions while explaining the reason that the identified proposals have not been adopted from the LCA community. These approaches are then compared upon the basis of a common LCI and their differences are highlighted. A suitable dynamic LCI is identified for landfill emissions, which calculates Ni, Zn, Cd and Pb emissions as a function of time, based on assumed developments of the leachate pH. The results of the application of the different impact assessment methods on that LCI differ by up to 8 orders of magnitude. Therefore, the decision-making process supported by an LCA becomes very confusing. None of the approaches consider future changes in the receiving environment and are accompanied with any uncertainty considerations. In order to move towards a robust environmental assessment of long-term emissions, it is necessary to (i) represent future potential impacts more accurately by estimating time-dependent characterisation factors (CFs) corresponding to changing environmental conditions, (ii) develop more robust estimations by addressing uncertainty and (iii) refer to actual potential impacts, by taking into account the current and future background concentrations.Quantifying the carbon footprint of crop production can help identify key options to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Using farm survey data from eastern China, the carbon footprints of three major grain crops (rice, wheat and maize) were assessed by quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions from individual inputs and farming operations with a full life cycle assessment methodology. The farm carbon footprint in terms of farm area was estimated to be 6.0 +/- 0.1, 3.0 +/- 0.2, and 2.3 +/- 0.1 t CO2-eq ha(-1), and the product carbon footprint in terms of grain produced was 0.80 +/- 0.02, 0.66 +/- 0.03, and 0.33 +/- 0.02 t CO2-eq t(-1) grain for rice, wheat and maize, respectively. Use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers contributed 44-79% and mechanical operations 8-15%, of the total carbon footprints. Irrigation and direct methane emission made a significant contribution by 19% and by 25%, on average respectively for rice production. However, irrigation was only responsible for 2-3% of the total carbon footprints in wheat and maize. The carbon footprints of wheat and maize production varied among climate regions, and this was explained largely by the differences in inputs of nitrogen fertilizers and mechanical operations to support crop management. Moreover, a significant decrease (22-28%) in the product carbon footprint both of wheat and maize was found in large sized farms, compared to smaller ones. This study demonstrated that carbon footprint of crop production could be affected by farm size and climate condition as well as crop management practices. Improving crop management practices by reducing nitrogen fertilizer use and developing large scaled farms with intensive farming could be strategic options to mitigate climate change in Chinese agriculture. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water treatment infrastructure faces numerous operational and financial challenges in most regions of the world. Ion exchange is a water treatment technology that can be used to remove various contaminants in drinking water and has shown increased adoption in recent years due to its operational advantages; however, limited research has been conducted on the environmental and economic sustainability of ion exchange systems. This study utilizes life cycle assessment and cost analysis to holistically evaluate environmental and economic impacts of ion exchange technology that is used for reduction of disinfection by-products via organics removal in eight drinking water treatment plants in Florida. A functional unit accounting for both water quantity and quality was used and showed to have a significant effect on the evaluation results. Impact assessment results show that the construction phase has negligible environmental impact in comparison to the operation phase. Systems that use fixed bed reactors with conventional resin were compared with systems using completely mixed flow reactors with magnetic ion exchange resin. Fixed bed systems evaluated have higher salt usage and brine waste production, but use less electricity, resin, and require less transport of materials. This tradeoff causes fixed bed systems to have a higher environmental impact in categories of eutrophication, carcinogenics, non-carcinogenics, and ecotoxicity but lower impact in other categories. Furthermore, it causes fixed bed systems to have a lower operation cost compared with completely mixed systems. Results also show that both environmental impacts and operation costs per functional unit decrease with scale, similar to economies of scale effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of milk or the carbon footprint (CF) of milk is a key issue for the European dairy sector given rising concerns over the potential adverse effects of climate change. Several strategies are available to mitigate GHG emissions, but producing milk with a low CF does not necessarily imply that a dairy farm is economically viable. Therefore, to understand the relationship between the CF of milk and dairy farm economic performance, the farm accountancy network database of a European Union nation (Ireland) was applied to a GHG emission model. The method used to quantify GHG emissions was life cycle assessment (LCA), which was independently certified to comply with the British standard for LCA. The model calculated annual on- and off-farm GHG emissions from imported inputs (e.g., electricity) up to the point milk was sold from the farm in CO2-equivalent (CO2-eq). Annual GHG emissions computed using LCA were allocated to milk based on the economic value of dairy farm products and expressed per kilogram of fat- and protein-corrected milk (FPCM). The results showed for a nationally representative sample of 221 grass-based Irish dairy farms in 2012 that gross profit averaged (sic)0.18/L of milk and (sic)1,758/ha and gross income was (sic)40,899/labor unit. Net profit averaged (sic)0.08/L of milk and (sic)750/ha and net income averaged (sic)18,125/labor unit. However, significant variability was noted in farm performance across each financial output measure. For instance, net margin per hectare of the top one-third of farms was 6.5 times higher than the bottom third. Financial performance measures were inversely correlated with the CF of milk, which averaged 1.20 kg of CO2-eq/kg of FPCM but ranged from 0.60 to 2.13 kg of CO2-eq/kg of FPCM. Partial least squares regression analysis of correlations between financial and environmental performance indicated that extending the length of the grazing season and increasing milk production per hectare or per cow reduced the CF of milk and increased farm profit. However, where higher milk production per hectare was associated with greater concentrate feeding, this adversely affected the CF of milk and economic performance by increasing both costs and off-farm emissions. Therefore, to mitigate the CF of milk and improve economic performance, grass-based dairy farms should not aim to only increase milk output, but instead target increasing milk production per hectare from grazed grass.There has been extensive debate about whether the sustainable use of forests (forest management aimed at producing a sustainable yield of timber or other products) results in superior climate outcomes to conservation (maintenance or enhancement of conservation values without commercial harvesting)(1-8). Most of the relevant research has relied on consequential life-cycle assessment (LCA), with the results tending to show that sustainable use has lower net greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions than conservation in the long term(1-5). However, the literature cautions that results are sensitive to forest-and market-related contextual factors: the carbon density of the forests, silvicultural and wood processing practices, and the extent to which wood products and forest bioenergy displace carbon-intensive alternatives. Depending on these issues, conservation can be better for the climate than sustainable use(1,6-8). Policy institutions are another key contextual factor but, so far, they have largely been ignored(1-6). Using a case study on the Southern Forestry Region (SFR) of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, we show how policy institutions can affect the assessed outcomes from alternative forest management strategies. Our results highlight the need for greater attention to be paid to policy institutions in forest carbon research.Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) cells offer high efficiencies and several advantages in the production process compared to conventional crystalline silicon solar cells. We performed a life-cycle assessment to identify the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint, energy payback time (EPBT) and cumulative energy demand of four different SHJ solar cell designs. We analyse these environmental impacts for cell processing and complete systems for both current and prospective designs. On the basis of in-plane irradiation of 1700 kWh/m(2), results for current designs show that life-cycle GHG emissions could be 32 gCO(2)-eq/kWh for complete SHJ photovoltaic (PV) systems (module efficiencies of 18.4%), compared with 38 gCO(2)-eq/kWh for conventional monocrystalline silicon systems (module efficiency of 16.1%). The EPBT of all SHJ designs was found to be 1.5 years, compared with 1.8 years for the monocrystalline PV system. Cell processing contributes little (<= 6%) to the overall environmental footprint of SHJ PV systems. Among cell processing steps, vacuum based deposition contributes substantially to the overall results, with 55-80%. Atomic layer deposition of thin films was found to have a significantly lower environmental footprint compared to plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition and sputtering. Copper-based compared with silver-based metallization was shown to reduce the impact of this processing step by 74-84%. Increases in cell efficiency, use of thin silicon wafers and replacement of silver-based with copper-based metallization could result in life-cycle GHG emissions for systems to be reduced to 20 gCO(2)-eq/kWh for SHJ systems and 25 gCO(2)-eq/kWh for monocrystalline system, while EPBT could drop to 0.9 and 1.2 years, respectively. Copyright (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Biofuels are promoted in a wide-scale as a means of achieving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Biofuels derived from lignocellulosic biomass, particularly from agricultural crops are being massively supported worldwide for meeting multiple strategy objectives such as climate change mitigation, energy security and development of the rural economy. Recently, the negative implications of using food crops for fuel have been realized to possess a significant threat towards global food security and competition for arable land. In contrast, lignocellulosic biomass in the form of waste residues from agriculture, forestry and energy crop systems are geographically abundant worldwide and have the potential to support the sustainable production of liquid transportation fuels. This paper encompasses the improvement in biofuels sector in relation to revitalizing and restraining the rural economies across the globe along with the global statistics for lignocellulosic biomass availability. In addition, the socio-environmental impacts of energy and greenhouse gas emissions from biomass conversion technologies have been addressed through highlights on life-cycle assessment of several biomasses. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cement is the most widely used material and contributes around 8% to the global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. In 2011 China produced 2.085 Gt cement (60% of the cement production of the world) but the carbon emission from cement industry still not accurately assessed. The LCA (life Cycle Assessment) method was employed to thoroughly estimate China's cement industry CO2 emissions, and results indicated that the carbon emissions of Portland cement clinker, Portland cement and average cement in China are lower than developed countries. In 2011, the direct CO2 emission factor and manufactured CO2 emission factor of China's average cement manufacture is just 0.4778 t/t and 0.5450 t/t, respectively, and the direct CO2 emission and manufacture CO2 emission from China's cement industry is 0.9983 and 1.1364 Gt, respectively, from the life cycle view, carbon emission of cement industry and the neat carbon emission from cement industry is just 0.8553 and 0.6386 Gt respectively, the share of six carbon emission sources is calculated. The RMCO2, FDCO2, EDCO2, total TDCO2 and CSCO2 counts 53.8%, 283%, 7.94% and 0.86%, respectively, 29.64% of those carbon emission can be sink by carbonization during 100 years after it cast. The policies to close down outdated facilities and improve recovery the waste heat significantly reduced carbon emission from cement industry, through public, industrial, and technological policies. As the biggest cement producer and consumer in the world, a holistic approach is proposed to slash the carbon emission of cement industry. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global production and consumption of textiles is increasing and as a result putting pressure on the environment. In the EU-25 countries for example, 2-10% of environmental impacts are associated with clothing consumption, with washing during the use phase as one of the most significant contributors. Antibacterial textiles, which prevent undesirable odours, may reduce the number of washing cycles, thus offering an opportunity to reduce environmental impacts. This article assess to what extent different antibacterial T-shirts offer opportunities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to assist the producer in making business decisions to create value during product development process. To this end, we conducted an LCA for an antibacterial T-shirt made in Europe from bio-based man-made cellulose fibres (modal). The antibacterial property is obtained by silver nanoparticles that are produced with colloidal techniques such as the sol gel process and in-situ formation. It was found that the T-shirt made of 50% antibacterial fibres with the in-situ process (50AB in-situ) caused 15-20% lower cradle-to-gate CO2 emissions than commercial antibacterial T-shirts. The cradle-to-grave comparison with non-antibacterial modal T-shirts showed that the 50AB in-situ T-shirt exhibited better environmental performance, resulting in 20-30% lower impacts in key categories such as climate change, freshwater toxicity and eutrophication. LCA demonstrated value creation opportunities such as lower environmental impacts, lower costs and risks. Moreover, the product's environmental performance can be transparently communicated to customers, which helps differentiating with competing products in the market, thus offering the producer a competitive advantage. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Plastics play an increasingly important role in reaching the recovery and recycling rates defined in the European WEEE Directive. In a recent study we have determined the life cycle environmental impacts of post-consumer plastics production from mixed, plastics-rich WEEE treatment residues in the Central European plant of a market-leading plastics recycler, both from the perspective of the customers delivering the residues and the customers buying the obtained post-consumer recycled plastics. The results of our life cycle assessments, which were extensively tested with sensitivity analyses, show that from both perspectives plastics recycling is clearly superior to the alternatives considered in this study (i.e. municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) and virgin plastics production). For the three ReCiPe endpoint damage categories, incineration in an MSWI plant results in an impact exceeding that of the examined plastics recycling facility each by about a factor of 4, and the production of virgin plastics has an impact exceeding that of the post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics production each by a factor of 6-10. On a midpoint indicator level the picture ismore differentiated, showing that the environmental impacts of the recycling options are lower by 50% and more for almost all impact factors. While this provides the necessary evidence for the environmental benefits of plastics recycling compared to existing alternatives, it can, however, not be taken as conclusive evidence. To be conclusive, future research will have to address the fate of hazardous substances in the outputs of such recycling systems in more detail. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Every year 120-140 million tonnes of bio-waste are generated in Europe, most of which is landfilled, incinerated or stabilized and used as covering material in landfill operation. None of these practices enables the recovery of essential nutrients such as phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), which are in great demand for agricultural production. Recovery of these nutrients is a matter of international concern considering the non-renewable nature of P sources and the energy intensive production process required for the synthesis of N fertilizers. The objective of this research is to understand the relation between the municipal solid waste management (MSWM) system, both its the physical components and governance aspects, and the recovery of nutrients in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country) as a benchmark for European medium-size cities. The analysis shows that the existing physical infrastructure and facilities for bio-waste have high potential for nutrient recovery, 49% for N and 83% for P contained in bio-waste. However, governance aspects of the MSWM system such as legislation and user inclusivity play an important role and decrease the actual nutrient recovery to 3.4% and 7.4% for N and P respectively. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) modelling of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) management was carried out. The functional unit was management of 1 Mg mineral, source separated C&DW, which is either utilised in road construction as a substitute for natural aggregates, or landfilled. The assessed environmental impacts included both non-toxic and toxic impact categories. The scenarios comprised all stages of the end-of-life management of C&DW, until final disposal of all residues. Leaching of inorganic contaminants was included, as was the production of natural aggregates, which was avoided because of the use of C&DW. Typical uncertainties related to contaminant leaching were addressed. For most impact categories, utilisation of C&DW in road construction was preferable to landfilling; however, for most categories, utilisation resulted in net environmental burdens. Transportation represented the most important contribution for most nontoxic impacts, accounting for 60-95 per cent of these impacts. Capital goods contributed with negligible impacts. Leaching played a critical role for the toxic categories, where landfilling had lower impacts than utilisation because of the lower levels of leachate per ton of C&DW reaching the groundwater over a 100-year perspective. Leaching of oxyanions (As, V and Sb) was critical with respect to leaching. Typical experimental uncertainties in leaching data did not have a pivotal influence on the results; however, accounting for Cr immobilisation in soils as part of the impact assessment was critical for modelling the leaching impacts. Compared with the overall life cycle of building and construction materials, leaching emissions were shown to be potentially significant for toxicity impacts, compared with contributions from production of the same materials, showing that end-of-life impacts and leaching should not be disregarded when assessing environmental impacts from construction products and materials. CO2 uptake in the C&DW corresponding to 15 per cent carbonation could out-balance global warming impacts from transportation; however, carbonation would also likely result in increased toxicity impacts due to higher leaching of oxyanions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study focuses on the environmental impact assessment through Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of two innovative 10 kW pellet boilers. In particular, the second boiler represents a technological evolution of the first one developed to improve its performance in terms of efficiency and environmental impact. For both boilers, emission factors measured during laboratory tests (full load tests and specific load cycle tests representative of real life boiler operation) have been used as input data in the life cycle analysis. The SimaPro software (v.8.0.4.30) was used for the LCA and the ReCiPe Midpoint method (European version H) was chosen to assess the environmental impact of all boilers (according to LCA ISO standards). In addition, the ReCiPe Endpoint method was used to compare the final results of all 5 boilers with literature data. The pelletisation process represented the most relevant share of the overall environmental impact followed by the operational phase, the manufacturing phase and the disposal phase. A sensitivity analysis performed on the most efficient pellet boiler evidenced the variation of the boiler's environmental impact as a function of PM10 and NOx emission factors with respect to emission factors monitored during boiler full load operation. Moreover, the reduction of the boiler's weight and the adoption of new electronic components led to a consistent reduction (-18%) of its environmental impact with respect to the previous technology. A second LCA has been carried on for a 15 kW oil boiler, a 15 kW natural gas boiler and a 15 kW pellet boiler, representative of the state of the art of EU technology, to finally compare all LCA results. Results showed the environmental impact reduction of BW10 and BW10 2 pellet boilers with respect to fossil fuelled boilers mainly due to their reduced impact on CC (reductions by 86-90% and 88-91% with respect to the NG and oil boilers respectively), NLT (reductions by 77-79% and 86-87% with respect to the NG and oil boilers respectively) and FD (reductions by 89-92% and 90-93% with respect to the NG and oil boilers respectively) ReCiPe Midpoint subcategories. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sicily has a long tradition in citrus fruit cultivation that, with vineyard and olive tree, represents the main Mediterranean tree crops. Since many Sicilian farmers in recent years have decided to abandon conventional lemon orchards, in this paper we have evaluated the financial sustainability of organic lemon production by comparing it with the conventional one. Financial analysis has been carried out in a case study on the northwestern coast of Sicily, considering a 50-year economic life of an orchard. The results, per hectare of area, showed a clear advantage of organic lemon orchard. This was due to fewer labor requirements and to greater market appreciation for organic products that better ensured a premium price. Moreover, financial indicators of organic lemon orchards and the deployment of environmental-friendly inputs in the production process render these farms competitive and eco-friendly. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper describes life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) analysis for typical Australian houses. It reports how different roofing (i.e. roof and ceiling) and floor designs affect the life cycle environmental impacts and cost (LCEI & LCC) over the various life stages of buildings (i.e. construction, operation, maintenance and final disposal). A case study house, called Base House, was modified with 8 alternative roofing and 4 floor designs to generate 12 variant houses. Specifically, one variable either from roofing or from floor was varied at a time while keeping wall and other components as in the Base House. The four life cycle environmental impacts were greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, cumulative energy demand (CED), water use, and solid waste generation, evaluated by LCA approach. The LCC was estimated based on life cycle costing approach. The results of LCEI & LCC of each house were evaluated on a whole of life cycle basis. A number of trades-off on the houses modified with roofing and floor designs were identified based on LCEI & LCC results. For the houses modified with roofing and floor designs, the high star skillion flat roofing and mixed floor houses were the attractive trades-off. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Toxicity characterization of chemical emissions in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a complex task which usually proceeds via multimedia (fate, exposure and effect) models attached to models of dose-response relationships to assess the effects on target. Different models and approaches do exist, but all require a vast amount of data on the properties of the chemical compounds being assessed, which are hard to collect or hardly publicly available (especially for thousands of less common or newly developed chemicals), therefore hampering in practice the assessment in LCA. An example is USEtox, a consensual model for the characterization of human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity. This paper places itself in a line of research aiming at providing a methodology to reduce the number of input parameters necessary to run multimedia fate models, focusing in particular to the application of the USEtox toxicity model. By focusing on USEtox, in this paper two main goals are pursued: 1) performing an extensive exploratory analysis (using dimensionality reduction techniques) of the input space constituted by the substance-specific properties at the aim of detecting particular patterns in the data manifold and estimating the dimension of the subspace in which the data manifold actually lies; and 2) exploring the application of a set of linear models, based on partial least squares (PLS) regression, as well as a nonlinear model (general regression neural network - GRNN) in the seek for an automatic selection strategy of the most informative variables according to the modelled output (USEtox factor). After extensive analysis, the intrinsic dimension of the input manifold has been identified between three and four. The variables selected as most informative may vary according to the output modelled and the model used, but for the toxicity factors modelled in this paper the input variables selected as most informative are coherent with prior expectations based on scientific knowledge of toxicity factors modelling. Thus the outcomes of the analysis are promising for the future application of the approach to other portions of the model, affected by important data gaps, e.g., to the calculation of human health effect factors. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The properties of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have led to a significant increase of civil engineering applications based on the usage of these materials. In the construction sector, FRP are mainly used for strengthening existing buildings, thus creating the possibility of avoiding the environmental problems resulting from demolishing these structures and constructing new ones. In the light of this new opportunity, the present paper aims at evaluating and comparing the environmental performances of an unstrengthened reinforced concrete (RC) beam with those of different carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) flexural strengthening techniques. The paper uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology in order to determine the most environmentally friendly solution in the case of an existing RC beam which does not properly satisfy the structural demands. The authors have decided to use the Cradle-to-Gate LCA type of study, considering that the primary goal of the paper is to establish whether strengthening and reusing an existing RC beam can be considered a more viable environmentally friendly proposal in contrast with demolishing the existing structural element and constructing a new one. The following impact categories are used with the purpose of achieving a clear understanding of the products' environmental influence: Climate Change, Human Toxicity, and Ozone Depletion. Their environmental performances are evaluated using the GaBi 6 software. The obtained results show that all the assessed CFRP strengthening solutions have a significantly lower environmental impact in comparison with those of the RC beam. In the case of the analysed RC structural element, the highest impact is attributed to the manufacturing stage of the cement and to the steel reinforcements. In most of the CFRP strengthening schemes, the environmental impact is mainly influenced by the amount of component materials (fibre and resin) used for manufacturing the considered composite elements. The resulted values for the environmental parameters in the assessed case studies encourage the authors to assert that the usage of composite materials in specific civil engineering applications can represent an environmentally friendly solution. The environmental aspect of sustainability can thus be achieved in this industry by using particular FRP strengthening applications. Moreover, the negative effects of modern society over Earth can be reduced. The paper concludes that the usage of composite materials can represent an important step towards the sustainable development of the construction sector.Existing computational methods for life cycle costing (LCC) are few and appeared inconsistent with the very definition of LCC. This article improves the common matrix-based approach in life cycle assessment as applied to LCC, correcting previous errors. Reusing a simple and hypothetical example, the authors derive the LCC from both the physical and monetary technology matrices. Accounting for the added value of all activities in the life cycle leads to a simplified computational structure for LCC. The results show that the definition of LCC and computational structure can be fully harmonized with life cycle assessments (LCAs) and simplified. In addition to eco-efficiency calculations, the vector of added values, if disaggregated over social groups, allows for distributional analysis. It is furthermore shown how LCC can account for costs shifting (economic externalities) in the same way as LCA highlights shifting of environmental externalities between different products, life cycle stages or actors. Life cycle costing as defined by the sum of the added value over the life cycle is consistent with LCA and cradle to gate assessments in particular. The authors simplified the computation of LCC with either the matrix-based approach or the added values of upstream activities as an elementary exchange vector or matrix.This paper aims to clarify the application of a land-use baseline in attributional life cycle assessment (ALCA) for product systems involving land use, through consideration of the fundamental purpose of ALCA. Currently, there is no clear view in the literature whether a baseline should be used when accounting for environmentally relevant physical flows related to land use. An extensive search of literature was carried out using the key terms 'attributional life cycle assessment' and 'attributional LCA' in the Google Scholar web search engine. Approximately 700 publications were reviewed and summarised according to their type and scope, relevance of land use, key statements and references given for ALCA, and arguments for and against using a baseline in ALCA. Based on the literature review and supplementary literature references, a critical discussion on the use of a baseline and determination of the most appropriate land-use baseline in ALCA is provided. A few studies clearly argued that only absolute (observable) flows without a baseline are to be inventoried in ALCA, while the majority of the studies did not make any clear statement for or against. On the other hand, a land-use baseline was explicitly applied or proposed in a minority of the studies only, despite the fact that we classified land use as highly relevant for the majority of the studies reviewed. Furthermore, the LCA guidelines reviewed give contradictory recommendations. The most cited studies for the definition of ALCA provide general rules for selecting processes based on observable flows but do not argue that observable flows necessarily describe the environmentally relevant physical flows. We conclude that a baseline is required to separate the studied parts of the technosphere from natural processes and to describe the impact of land use on ecosystem quality, such as carbon sequestration and biodiversity. The most coherent baseline for human-induced land-use in ALCA is natural regeneration. As the natural-regeneration baseline has typically been excluded, may vary bio-geographically and temporally, and is subject to uncertainties, case studies applying it should be performed so that implications can be studied and evaluated. This is particularly important for agricultural and forestry systems, such as food, feed, fibre, timber and biofuels.To address the non-renewable resource scarcity problem, vegetable oils have been used in many technical applications such as fuel and lubricants. In this context, cultivation of the oil-bearing plant Jatropha curcas is currently seen as one option. As renewable resources are limited as well due to their occupation of land, it is important to investigate which application of Jatropha oil provides the highest environmental saving potential compared to the current use of a non-renewable resource. This research investigated the potential environmental benefit of four technical applications of Jatropha oil by comparing them in a Life Cycle Assessment with the equivalent conventional products. Besides energy use (biodiesel), three examples of material use have been investigated: cold form oil (CFO), multifunctional oil (MFO), and a coolant emulsion. The service delivered by 1 kg of Jatropha oil was chosen as the functional unit resulting in specific reference flows for the different types of application. The centre of environmental science (CML) method was used to calculate the environmental impact results in six different impact categories (GWP, ADP, EP, AP, ODP, POCP). Furthermore, the influence of Jatropha cultivation on overall results was analyzed in a sensitivity analysis. First, absolute results for the Jatropha products are given indicating the contribution of Jatropha oil supply chain, supply of other ingredients and biodiesel and lubricant production, respectively, use, and EoL phase. Second, relative results in comparison to conventional products are shown. Finally, the environmental benefit is calculated in, e.g., kilograms of CO2-equivalent per kilogram of Jatropha oil. Results reflect that the environmental benefits gained from using Jatropha oil for lubricants are higher than using it for biodiesel. The study showed that twice the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be saved per kilogram of Jatropha oil when Jatropha oil is used in lubricants like CFO instead of using it as biodiesel feedstock. In addition to a sensitivity analysis addressing agricultural practice in the Jatropha supply chain, the critical GWP for Jatropha oil production was calculated that would negate any environmental benefit over the conventional lubricant. The choice of an application may strongly influence the environmental effectiveness of a renewable material. To identify the environmentally preferable application for a given renewable material, calculating the environmental benefit per kilogram of applied material can be a helpful indicator. Future work is suggested on matching applications and renewables in a way to efficiently combine reduction of fossil resource depletion with further environmental goals like reduction of GHG emissions.Nowadays, some engine components subjected to mechanical stress and high temperature are made of thermoplastic materials. The air intake manifold (AIM) is one of these parts. In the past, AIM was made of aluminium or magnesium alloy, while today, engine manufacturers prefer to use lighter materials such as nylon reinforced with glass fibre. The scope of this work is to assess from an environmental point of view the adoption of two alternative thermoplastic materials (polyamide reinforced with 30 % of glass fibre and polypropylene reinforced with 35 % of glass fibre) for the construction of a Magneti Marelli(A (R)) AIM and the introduction in the production stage of new additional design solutions (scraps recycling and brass inserts elimination). The outcome of the paper would contribute both to establish a baseline for comparison with other composite AIMs and to improve the knowledge of materials and manufacturing technologies related to the product. The study has been performed applying the LCA methods as described in the ISO standards 14040 and 14044. The life cycle inventory (LCI) captures the whole AIM life-cycle (LC) subdivided in four stages: materials supply, production, use and end-of-life (EoL). For the LCI data collection, primary data have been provided by the AIM manufacturer, while available databases have been used as source for secondary data. Unlike previous LCAs regarding AIM, the environmental profile is assessed through a broader range of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) impact categories as provided by the CML 2001 framework in its November 2010 release. The results show that for both the polyamide composite and the polypropylene composite, the AIM the most influential LC stages are use and materials supply. Such outcome is due to the considerable quantity of fuel consumed during the whole LC and the energy/resources consumption involved by the raw materials extraction and production processes. The substitution of polyamide composite with polypropylene composite reduces the potential environmental impacts for all the categories and for each stage of the AIM LC. Contribution analysis by LC stage of potential environmental impact evidences that the change of material involves a remarkable increase of the use stage quota with no notable mutation of production and EoL contributions. The introduction of scraps recycling and brass inserts elimination entails no significant impact reduction for all the categories with the only exception of abiotic depletion potential (ADP(e)). The substitution of polyamide composite with polypropylene composite involves considerable reduction of the AIM LC impact, while the introduction of scraps recycling and brass inserts elimination entails negligible effects.Water footprint is expected as a tool to identify critical and effective points for reducing the impact of water use through the entire life cycle of products, services, and organizations. The purpose of this study is to develop a water footprint inventory database that makes it possible to account the water intensities of all the Japanese goods and services with a differentiation for the types of water resources and the forms of water uses. An input-output analysis was applied to establish a comprehensive database covering all of the Japanese goods and services. The amount of water consumption in each sector was estimated by modeling (for agricultural goods) and determined based on the uses of input water according to the statistic reports and hearing survey results (for other sectors). The intensities of direct water input or consumption in each sector were calculated by dividing the amount of water input or consumption with the domestic production amount for each sector. Based on the input-output analysis by using Leontief's inverse matrix, the intensities of water use and consumption from cradle to gate were estimated for all goods and services in 403 sectors of Japan. The intensities of water input and consumption in the primary sectors of industry from cradle to gate showed large values and high dependency on rain water as the sources of input water. While the water input intensities in secondary sector of industry were relatively higher than those in tertiary sector of industry, the water consumption intensities generally showed larger reduction in secondary sectors in comparison with those in tertiary sectors due to the utilization of recycling water. The results of comparing the intensities in this study with previous studies showed some differences due to the consideration of site-specific conditions in production and the temporal resolution for the calculation of consumed amount in crop production. By considering the site-specific conditions, the intensities were developed as the datasets suitable for water footprint of products, services, and organizations in Japan. While this database would be expected to be applied to the implementation of water footprint, the reflection of the effects by imported goods and services through international trade needs to be conducted in the future study for improving the preciseness and reliability of the results of water footprint.Sustainable process design (SPD) problems combine a process design problem with life cycle assessment (LCA) to optimize process economics and life cycle environmental impacts. While SPD makes use of recent advances in process systems engineering and optimization, its use of LCA has stagnated. Currently, only process LCA is utilized in SPD, resulting in designs based on incomplete and potentially inaccurate life cycle information. To address these shortcomings, the multiscale process to planet (P2P) modeling framework is applied to formulate and solve the SPD problem. The P2P framework offers a more comprehensive analysis boundary than conventional SPD and greater modeling detail than advanced LCA methodologies. Benefits of applying this framework to SPD are demonstrated with an ethanol process design case study. Results show that current methods shift emissions outside the analysis boundary, while applying the P2P modeling framework results in environmentally superior process designs. Future extensions of the P2P framework are discussed. (c) 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 3320-3331, 2015To prevent the chance of unintended environmental harm, engineering decisions need to consider an expanded boundary that captures all relevant connected systems. Comprehensive models for sustainable engineering may be developed by combining models at multiple scales. Models at the finest equipment scale are engineering models based on fundamental knowledge. At the intermediate value chain scale, empirical models represent average production technologies, and at the coarsest economy scale, models represent monetary and environmental exchanges for industrial sectors in a national or global economy. However, existing methods for sustainable engineering design ignore the economy scale, while existing methods for life cycle assessment do not consider the equipment scale. This work proposes an integrated, multiscale modeling framework for connecting models from process to planet and using them for sustainable engineering applications. The proposed framework is demonstrated with a toy problem, and potential applications of the framework including current and future work are discussed. (c) 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 3332-3352, 2015Considering the capital intensive nature of the chemical industry, redesign of existing production plants is a strategic decision. In this study, retrofitting is performed using a systematic path flow decomposition method, enriching it with hazard assessment and life cycle analysis path flow indicators and proposing a classification scheme for coupling these new path flow indicators with relevant heuristics for process alternative generation. The developed methodology is applied in a batch production plant from the pharmaceutical industry. The method highlights solvent recovery or substitution as important retrofitting actions, generates diverse process layout structures to achieve this task and evaluates them from cost, hazard and life cycle assessment point of view. Extractive distillation using glycol as an entrainer is identified as the multiobjective optimal option for separating the THF/Water azeotrope with improvement up to 40% for the various objectives compared with a base case where the waste solvent is incinerated. (c) 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 3423-3440, 2015Blind application and extensive copy of building energy saving technologies have been found very common through investigation in China. Emphases should be put on the suitability assessment when selecting and optimizing building energy saving technologies. This paper created an assessment method, namely an assessment framework to assess the suitability level of building energy saving technologies from a holistic point of view. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was adopted. 3 factors and 8 sub-factors were included in the framework. The office buildings were classified into 3 types to calculate weights of factors and sub-factors. The assessment framework was established for each type of office buildings. 20 energy saving technologies from surveyed cases was selected as case study. Ranks of suitability level of the assessment objects were obtained for each type of office buildings. The assessment results could be referred when selecting building energy saving technologies in the design stage. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Malaysia is among the top most important palm oil producers in the world. The country is experiencing a robust development in new oil palm plantations and palm oil mills. This commodity plays a significant role in the Malaysia economic growth. As this industry becomes bigger and wider, a substantial amount of oil palm wastes is generated and create the problem of biomass waste overload. This problem tends to burden the operators with disposal difficulties and escalates the operating cost. Oil palm waste has significant potential in many applications. Traditionally, through mechanical conversion, some of the wastes are converted into organic fertilizers, animal feedstock or soil conditioner in oil palm plantations. Apart from mechanical conversion, thermochemical processes such as direct combustion, gasification, pyrolysis and liquefaction are the methods that are useful to transform the waste into value-added products. Recently, liquefaction has gained good attention in order to utilize the waste because of its simplicity and ability to yield a product that combine both of the useful functional groups present in liquefying solvents and the biomass. Within the scope, the objective of this paper is to review the current situation related to the oil palm industry in Malaysia, availability of the oil palm waste and its utilization through thermochemical conversion, with specific regards to the liquefaction process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Material selection is a key step in product design and typically aims at identifying the most suitable material that meets product performance goals at minimum cost. In recent years research has been driven for developing sustainable solutions at competitive costs. This work evaluates the sustainability of advanced sandwich-structured composites for novel housing solutions. Five polymer matrix composite sandwich materials have been selected and compared concerning mechanical, thermal, acoustic and fire performance as well as cost and environmental impact, in order to study both the technical viability and the sustainability of lightweight solutions for prefabricated structural wall panels as well as for new housing; this included mechanical and fire testing of the selected materials. Subsequently, the thermal and acoustic properties of the alternatives were obtained. After performing a cost analysis and environmental assessment, the results of the tests and analyses led to a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA); PROMETHEE II (preference ranking organizational method for enrichment evaluation) was used to identify the best alternative. Finally the proposed solution was compared with a typical brick house performance. Higher specific strength, better thermal insulation and lower environmental impacts arose as the main advantages of the proposed structures while acoustic properties and fire safety still need to be improved. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The building and construction sector is vital in Jordan. Over the past decade it witnessed rapid growth. Single-family housing is a popular option in Jordan. The construction sector consumes large amounts of energy and resources. Green and energy efficient buildings are growing in popularity and there are policies adopted to encourage energy efficient buildings. These buildings are often justified based on energy saving during the operation phase. Nevertheless, up to date, there is no study that analyses the efficiency of these buildings in Jordan from a life cycle perspective. In this study, the six most popular construction configurations for a single family house in Jordan are assessed using "cradle to grave" life cycle methodology. The alternatives included: single hollow concrete block (Economic), double layer hollow concrete blocks (improved economic), double layer hollow concrete blocks with insulation layer (insulated economic), typical limestone cladding, insulated limestone wall and multi-layer with limestone cladding and insulation (luxury). The results show that using the typical Jordanian family thermal comfort level and heating and cooling patterns, the economic house is the option that performs best in terms of energy resources (5050 UBP), climate change (727.85 Mg CO2 (eq)), acidification (2.91 Mg SO2 (eq)) and particulate matter formation (1.14 Mg PM10 (eq)). Limestone cladded houses show better results in terms of human toxicity and water depletion impact. The results further suggest that energy resource and water depletion impacts may be used as proxy indicators for the overall performance of the building. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The number and intensity of natural disasters is growing every year, with 394 major events affecting over 268 million people worldwide in the past decade. The objective of this study was to identify whether it is more appropriate to use local or global materials in post-disaster reconstruction projects. Twenty transitional shelters were identified over 11 different locations worldwide, and their environmental, economic, and mechanical/technical performances were compared. The environmental and economic assessments were based on life cycle cost and life cycle assessment. In the mechanical/technical assessments, the relationships between hazard zones and their performances were assessed for earthquakes, wind loads and floods. Sustainability was assessed using a benchmark system that incorporates the results from these three categories. The results show that shelters with high technical performance can be achieved with low price/low environmental impact per functional unit regardless of the type of material used. Local materials withhold higher potential for low environmental impacts and costs and global materials have higher potential to produce better technical performances. Although local constructive systems can provide the best compromise between environmental impacts and cost, their structural design requires more effort. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Europe, thanks to public subsidy, the production of electricity from anaerobic digestion (AD) of agricultural feedstock has considerably grown and several AD plants were built. When AD plants are concentrated in specific areas (e.g., Northern Italy), increases of feedstock' prices and transport distances can be observed. In this context, as regards low-energy density feedstock, the present research was designed to estimate the influence of the related long-distance transport on the environmental performances of the biogas-to-electricity process. For this purpose the following transport systems were considered: farm trailers and trucks. For small distances (<5 km), the whole plant silage shows the lowest impact; however, when distances increase, silages with higher energy density (even though characterised by lower methane production per hectare) become more environmentally sustainable. The transport by trucks achieves better environmental performances especially for distances greater than 25 km. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When is a specific activity, production process or final product sustainable? Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Footprint Assessment are two different methods to analyse natural resources use and emissions along product supply chains. It is argued that the two methods fundamentally differ in the way they address the question of product sustainability. Whereas the former method takes a comparative approach, comparing potential environmental impacts of alternative products, thus avoiding the question of sustainability at systems level, the latter method takes a holistic systems approach but has difficulty to attribute overall unsustainability to single processes or products. Both methods are useful, for Afferent purposes, and complementary. It remains a challenge to develop a consistent and coherent theoretical framework providing an umbrella for the two different methods. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Traceability is a tool used by regulators to manage risk in multiple supply chains, including supply chains of goods derived from genetically modified organisms, human blood, seafood products, toys and hazardous waste. This tool may help support a variety of claims that range from concern for nature to consumer satisfaction and health. This paper examines the consistency of European Union legislation with the declared objective of the law, i.e., to implement a traceability system through the entire supply chain. This analysis is undertaken by benchmarking 30 European Union laws that introduced traceability in the supply chain of 16 groups of products. The conclusion is that one-half of these norms lack basic effective principles of traceability. The approaches implemented were strongly correlated with the original driver for risk management (for example, concern for environmental sustainability), moderately correlated with the type of goods involved and uncorrelated with their trade value. The paper forecasts traceability approaches for new products, and indicates how traceability systems can become operative, regardless of product and driver. In addition, the importance that the legal provisions are consistent with the declared objective of the law is discussed. This integrated view is useful for regulators, industry and consumers in general and provides legislators and businesses with guidelines for consistent application of traceability, which facilitates other processes, such as life cycle analysis. Concurrently, it provides the public with an understanding of what lies behind the (often) inaccessible wording of legal norms. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soil carbon sequestration, a climate change mitigation option for agriculture, can either increase or decrease as a result of land management change (LMC) and land use change (LUC). To estimate all greenhouse gas (GHG) exchanges associated with various agricultural systems, life cycle assessments (LCAs) are frequently undertaken. To date LCA practitioners have not had a well-defined procedure to account for soil C in their assessments and as a consequence it is often not included. In this study, various methods used to estimate soil C changes due to (i) LMC and (ii) LUC are examined to assess soil C accounting methodologies in the life cycle inventory (LCI) of agricultural LCAs. A compromise between accuracy and completeness in LCA methods is necessary. A ranking of the preference of soil C accounting methods is suggested based on user expertise and data quality. For large scale assessment, the timing of soil CO2 emissions should be taken into account. If indirect LUC is relevant, a sensitivity analysis of assessment methods should be conducted because the methods highly affect assessment results. A common soil C accounting method that can be easily applied in agricultural LCA needs to be established and an agreement on indirect LUC methods will facilitate the assessment of LMC and LUC within agricultural LCAs. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to characterize the environmental performance and potential improvement opportunities related to conventional and organic apple systems in Nova Scotia, Canada. The goal was to quantify and evaluate resources and energy required for production, storage, and transportation, determining how each supply chain sub-system contributes to relevant global scale environmental burdens. Importantly, scenario models were constructed to explore performance improvement opportunities related to key supply chain inputs. Results indicate that up to point of harvest, the combustion of diesel fuel, production and associated field-level emissions of fertilizers (i.e. synthetic and manure), and inputs to pest and disease management were major contributors to environmental impacts on both conventional and organic orchards. Extending system boundaries to cradle-to-retail locations (both local and distal), revealed, somewhat surprisingly, that electricity needed for long-term storage resulted in substantial burdens, highlighting the problems of coal-based electricity generation in Nova Scotia. Consuming locally produced apples when in season was found to be environmentally preferable to those requiring year round storage, while transport by freight ship is more favorable than long distance transport truck delivery. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, interest in environmental issues has increased and, in particular, it has been firmly established the idea that consumer choices can actually affect the environmental performance of the different production systems. In the fruit and vegetables sector, retailers are among those who have been able to respond more quickly to this challenge, mainly using third-party certification and private eco-branding. However, there are other players in the sector that can have a pro-active role in the differentiation of their product, including producer groups, as stakeholder with direct experience of the product from the outset Associated groups of agricultural producers of food growers can be encouraged and supported to include in their marketing practices eco-friendly information regarding their production systems. Eco-labelling could support these coops in differentiating their products to better position themselves in the market. This paper presents how the use of LCA methodology combined with the calculation of the carbon dioxide offsetting of the same production system using the IPCC method, can help to integrate environmental content (green) into the Delizie di Bosco di Piemonte brand of cooperative Agrifrutta. At the aggregate level, the application of LCA methodology to the supply chains considered has been able to quantify the emissions from the strawberries and berry fruits marketed under the "Delizie di Bosco del Piemonte" brand. For the year 2013 the total emissions of brand products, according to the GWP impact category, amounted to 209 t CO2 eq. The results for the emissions calculated for 2013 have been fully offset within the cooperative, through the sequestration of CO2 performed by 21 ha of chestnut trees on the farms owned by the members of the Cooperative. It discusses the need of further investigation on the way to combine effectively an eco-label with a corporate brand and how to improve of the label credibility by an appropriate and balance communication. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Considering that peach is a significant fruit in the Mediterranean countries, and most publications on environmental impacts of fruit productions are based on one single productive year, this study attempts to perform an environmental analysis of peach production using Life Cycle Assessment, in order to provide new information on peaches, and also introduce a multiyear perspective analysis to identify the variability of the environmental impacts related to annual orchard yield and weather variations. The system studied is a peach orchard (Prunus persica L.) with integrated agricultural practices. The study analyses the cultivation period, as well as the impact of the initial orchard establishment tasks (soil preparation and planting). Data used have been collected directly from an orchard located in the North East of Spain, and covers 15 years of real production. The functional unit adopted was the cultivation of 1 kg of peach. Four scenarios have been considered according to the different yield periods of the peach fruit tree: Growth, Low, High and Multiyear. The results of the study reveals that, depending on production scenario considered, the results per kg of peach can vary between 7% and 69% depending on the environmental indicator. If the impact of initial orchard establishment tasks (soil preparation and planting) is not included in the quantification, then 5% of total emissions may be overlooked, but sometimes a lack of data makes it difficult to include these stages. Caution should be taken when the functional unit is related to mass and only when a single year of production is studied, because unproductive years increase impacts on value per functional unit, whereas over-productive years decrease them. According to variability of the results obtained, multiyear approach should be considered in crops with an average life time of twenty years or higher. The present study can be considered a useful methodological framework for providing a deeper understanding of the key environmental impact issues related to fruit production based on peach case study, and how to avoid multiple interpretation of results associated to reporting annual environmental impact variations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The link between climate change and livestock production has made carbon footprint based on life cycle assessment a world-wide indicator to assess and communicate the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of product. Nevertheless, the majority of studies have not included soil carbon sequestration in the carbon footprint calculations. Especially in grasslands, soil carbon sequestration might be a potential sink to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the livestock sector. However, there is no commonly accepted methodology on how to include soil carbon sequestration in carbon footprint calculations. In this study, the carbon footprint of sheep milk was estimated from 12 farms in Northern Spain. Before taken into account contribution from soil carbon sequestration in the calculation, the carbon footprint values varied from 2.0 to 5.2 kg CO2 eq. per kg Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM). Milk from semi-intensive systems with foreign breeds kept indoors had significantly lower carbon footprint than milk from semi-extensive systems with local breeds and grazing in mountain uplands during summer. However, no difference was found in the carbon footprint of sheep milk from different systems and breeds when soil carbon sequestration was included in the calculations. Four different approaches to estimate and include soil carbon sequestration in the carbon footprint calculations were tested. This study highlights the importance of including soil carbon sequestration in the carbon footprint calculations. Furthermore, it highlights the climate mitigation potential of the grazing systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) is an important technological option for climate change mitigation. Utilization (U) of this captured CO2 as raw material for Electrochemical Reduction (ER) has been suggested as a valorization option to produce organics such as formate-based products. Previous work has focused on the influence of operating conditions or the selected cathodic material on the faradaic efficiency and distribution of products. The environmental sustainability of formate production through the ER of CO2 has been assumed rather than investigated. In this study, we perform a life cycle assessment, focusing on resources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Even though the processes reported in the literature result in a wide range of GHG emissions for the ER of CO2 to formate-based products from 32 to 519 kg CO2-eq center dot(kg HCOO-)(-1), this is higher than the current commercial production processes (3.1 kg CO2-eq center dot(kg HCOO-)(-1)). The consumption of chemicals by the electrolysis and of steam in the purification of the final formate products are found to be the dominant causes of environmental burdens of the integrated process. A future scenario under very optimistic conditions suggests 0.33 kg CO2-eq center dot(kg HCOO-)(-1) thus presenting a potential pathway to an environmentally sustainable CO2 utilization option. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the road construction sector, a number of measures and alternatives have been proposed to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). While these measures can result in a notable abatement of this impact, when analyzed independently and in absolute terms, they are not equally relevant within a common context, such as a complete road transport infrastructure project. In this work, we analyze a broad range of scenarios for emission reduction combining plausible options given the current state of technology and involving those elements of road construction and maintenance with major contributions to the total balance of emissions. The selection of scenarios goes beyond the usual perspectives focused on pavements and materials, and includes other factors dealing with machinery, transport distance, energy sources, land-use change, as well as combined scenarios intended to find optimal alternatives. This has been achieved using the tool CO2NSTRUCT, which considers a life-cycle assessment approach for road transport infrastructure in evaluating GHG emission, thus providing an adequately comprehensive context for comparing relative contributions. This common reference enables to accomplish the ranking of the possible solutions. Results indicate that strategies involving the use of construction materials with lower emissions in their production process and recycled materials are the most effective, followed by those using lower-pollutant sources of energy in both off-road and transport machinery and lighting. This research also shows that the process of selection of suitable options should consider not only the construction stage but also the maintenance stage spanning road service life. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the importance of performing these analyses within a reference framework, enabling the identification of more efficient strategies amongst the universe of alternative solutions to mitigate GHG emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To address issues of poor sanitation and water scarcity in developing countries, innovative wastewater management systems should be proposed, based on considerations of life cycle and local environmental impacts. Source-separation separates urine, feces, and gray water, enhancing the reuse of nutrients, and is considered a promising wastewater treatment method. This study evaluates the life cycle and local environmental impacts of source-separation systems. Each system was set to achieve the same effluent quality as the functional unit. Four scenarios were examined: offsite treatment (B1), onsite treatment (B2), source-separation (A1), and pour-flush toilet use (A2). The study area was a hypothetical village in the municipality of Tianjin in China, which has experienced severe water shortages and poor sanitation. Life cycle impacts such as global warming, acidification, and eutrophication were evaluated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework, and direct water use was evaluated as the local impact. The scenarios enhancing nutrient recovery (B2 and A2) showed significant benefit by avoiding mineral fertilizer use; however, the source-separation system (A1) showed the best performance in terms of life cycle environmental impacts, which supports the findings of several previous LCA studies with similar system boundaries. Within the selected framework and assumptions, the results show that the source-separation system had the best environmental performance in terms of direct water use and the lifecycle impact categories. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper investigates the technical and environmental aspects of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) with/without Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The six cases evaluated use different carbon capture techniques (gas liquid absorption using physical or chemical solvents, chemical looping using calcium and iron oxygen carriers). The technical evaluation is made according to key performance indicators such as: net power, energy efficiency, carbon capture rate, specific CO2 emissions. Investigated case studies produce 430-610 MW net power, the net energy efficiencies are higher than 34%, the carbon capture rate is higher than 90% and the CO2 specific emissions vary in the range of 3-88 kg/MWe. The results of the technical evaluation are further used in the Waste Reduction (WAR) Algorithm integrated with CAPE OPEN (CO) methodology for the environmental impact assessment of the processes. Four environmental impact indicators have been calculated and compared: lout the total rate of impact output, varies in the range of 70.86-134.85 PEI/MWh, I-out_mp, the total impact output per mass of products, varies in the range of 79.73-113.8 PEI/(t(CO2) (captured)*MWe); I-gen the total rate of impact generation, varies in the range of 65.69-134.62 PEI/MWh and I-gen_mp, the total impact generated per mass of product, varies in the range of 73.9-113.8 PEI/(t(CO2), (captured) *MWe). The results of environmental assessment show that chemical looping cycles are very promising with respect to gas liquid absorption processes. A sensitivity analysis was performed in order to see the influence of carbon capture rate on the environmental impact indicators. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. rights reserved.Although cement production is a very energy-intensive industry which releases huge amounts of pollutants to the environment, there is a lack of environmental studies focused on applying CO2 capture technologies to mitigate global warming in this industry. Furthermore, other environmental and human health impacts are omitted or underestimated. This paper carries out a detailed Life Cycle Assessment of the Spanish cement production in order to analyse the effect of applying post-combustion CO2 capture technology using monoethanolamine as absorbent. Moreover, the work discusses the pros and cons of CO2 capture within the cement manufacture from an environmental point of view. On the basis of the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) 2011 midpoint method, results show improvements in global warming, ozone depletion and abiotic depletion potentials but acidification, photochemical ozone formation, eutrophication, human toxicities, ionising radiation, particulate matter, ecotoxicity, and land use potentials are increased by several times. Besides, the paper shows the decisive contribution of the cogeneration plant required to produce heat. It is necessary to carry out more research concerning how to face the energy penalty. Authors strongly recommend exploring natural gas or biomass CHP plants implementation as well as synergies between cement facilities and power plants. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Subsurface power grids constitute one of the largest copper stocks in many industrialized cities. Over time, parts and zones of these systems have been continuously disconnected and abandoned, resulting in the emergence of urban infrastructure ores. This study aims to assess how current conditions and practices influence economic and environmental motives of cable recovery from such power grids. By applying an infrastructure manager's perspective and evaluating 16 scenarios involving different extraction technologies and procedures, surface materials, urban locations and types of cables, we identify key areas where solutions or changes to increase incentives for cable recovery are needed. The assessed scenarios display significantly different cable extraction costs, where excavation in city centers with asphalt or cobblestone pavements generates the highest costs while greenbelts offer the best conditions. In most cases, cable revenues are not even close to outweighing the extraction costs. This is especially true for paper-coated cables or cables with aluminum conductors, for which the revenues are much lower than for plastic-insulated copper cables. Although economic conditions could be improved by integrating cable recovery to regular system upgrade projects or by applying non-digging technologies, clear incentives rely on the cable in question being especially valuable. Most of the cable recovery scenarios display environmental motives in terms of net savings in GHG emissions due to metal recycling. In contrast to the economic results, recycling of aluminum power cables is here more awarding than that of corresponding copper cables. We conclude that under current conditions urban mining does not make economic sense to infrastructure managers unless it is integrated as an added value to system upgrade projects. Apart from such re-arrangements in infrastructure provision, several other practice-related changes to cut cable extraction costs are possibly within reach for the managers. Still, an economically motivated practice relies on several external performance drivers such as market diffusion of non-digging technologies, improved cable recycling processes, and increased scrap metal prices. Our conclusion that the arguments for urban mining are currently more environmental than financial, points towards changed perspectives where such activities are seen as a way for infrastructure managers to contribute to societal goals such as climate change mitigation and reduced mineral resource dependence. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy production from the anaerobic digestion of organic waste is widely recognized as a social and environmental opportunity, since it allows reducing waste disposal and making waste management economically profitable. However, profitability of these plants is strongly affected by the quantity and the quality of wastes, as well as by the availability of local subsidies. The key role of incentive policies in the economic success of investments in biomass to energy plants is highly recognised and has led European Union (EU) governments to promote the deployment of these plants. Incentive policies adopted in EU countries differ significantly. In this paper, an evaluation model based on cost-benefit analysis is developed in order to identify the production-based incentive rates making investments in anaerobic digestion plant economically feasible without reducing social and environmental positive impacts. The model has been applied to the case of energy production plants from anaerobic digestion of cattle manure. In order to investigate the influence of the plant size on the investment profitability, different waste collection areas have been considered. Environmental performances of the plants have been evaluated by adopting a life cycle assessment approach. Results obtained confirm the environmental benefits achievable through the energy production from the anaerobic digestion of cattle manure. However, the current production-based incentive rates provided in most EU Countries revealed an inadequate balance between private and public interest, since they make profitable the investments only in case of small plants. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Strategies for reducing food waste and developing sustainable diets require information about the impacts of consumption behavior and waste generation on climatic, water, and land resources. We quantified the carbon, water, and ecological footprints of 17,110 family members of Chinese households, covering 1935 types of foods, by combining survey data with available life-cycle assessment data sets. We also summarized the patterns of both food consumption and waste generation and analyzed the factors influencing the observed trends. The average person wasted (consumed) 16 (415) kg of food at home annually, equivalent to 40 (1080) kg CO(2)e, 18 (673) m(3), and 173 (4956) gm(2) for the carbon, water and ecological footprints, respectively. The generation of food waste was highly correlated with consumption for various food groups. For example, vegetables, rice, and wheat were consumed the most and accounted for the most waste. In addition to the three plant-derived food groups, pork and aquatic products also contributed greatly to embedded footprints. The data obtained in this study could be used for assessing national food security or the carrying capacity of resources. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Because of increasing environmental and energy security concerns, a detailed understanding of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the petroleum refining industry is critical for fair and equitable energy and environmental policies. To date, this has proved challenging due in part to the complex nature and variability within refineries. In an effort to simplify energy and emissions refinery analysis, we delineated LP modeling results from 60 large refineries from the US and EU into broad categories based on crude density (API gravity) and heavy product (HP) yields. Product-specific efficiencies and process fuel shares derived from this study were incorporated in Argonne National Laboratory's GREET life-cycle model, along with regional upstream GHG intensities of crude, natural gas and electricity specific to the US and EU regions. The modeling results suggest that refineries that process relatively heavier crude inputs and have lower yields of HPs generally have lower energy efficiencies and higher GHG emissions than refineries that run lighter crudes with lower yields of HPs. The former types of refineries tend to utilize energy-intensive units which are significant consumers of utilities (heat and electricity) and hydrogen. Among the three groups of refineries studied, the major difference in the energy intensities is due to the amount of purchased natural gas for utilities and hydrogen, while the sum of refinery feed inputs are generally constant. These results highlight the GHG emissions cost a refiner pays to process deep into the barrel to produce more of the desirable fuels with low carbon to hydrogen ratio. (c) 2015 Argonne National Laboratory. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Dihydroxyacetone is a good candidate to valorize the excess glycerol obtained as byproduct in biodiesel production. Crystallization is likely the key unit operation to obtain a high quality and pure dihydroxyacetone. The selection of an appropriate solvent for crystallization is not trivial and depends on multiple factors. At the present work a new solvent selection methodology, based on solvents relative comparisons, is described and applied to dihydroxyacetone crystallization as a case study. The procedure accounts not only for process factors such as solubility and yield, but also for cost, recycling, disposal, environmental, health and safety issues. Solubility and theoretical yield data for dihydroxyacetone in methanol, ethanol and 2-propanol were experimentally determined, while cost, life-cycle assessment, environmental, health and safety data of solvents were gathered from different bibliographic sources, software and databases. Among the solvents assessed, methanol resulted as the best overall choice for DHA crystallization. The methodology proved to be a suitable, simple and flexible procedure for solvent selection at the initial stages of the crystallization operation design, being able to be upgraded for advanced stages of the crystallization process development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The fuel processor and a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) integrated process fueled by cassava based bio-ethanol and methane as co-reactant is theoretically investigated and compared with that run by dehydrated bio-ethanol in this work. The methane is added to bio-ethanol reformer as co-reactant to reduce dilution effect of crude bio-ethanol and adjust very high steam to carbon ratio of this system. The hydrogen fraction increases with the reformer temperature and methane to bio-ethanol ratio until reaching a maximum point. In addition, the optimal operating conditions of mixed bio-ethanol and methane reformer and dehydrated bio-ethanol reformer, which achieve the highest reformer efficiency, are presented. The results show that superior fuel processor efficiency, fuel cell efficiency and system efficiency are obtained when the mixed bio-ethanol and methane is used to generate hydrogen. The mixed bio-ethanol and methane reforming integrated with PEMFC system has the lower environmental impact, compared to the dehydrated bio-ethanol reforming integrated with PEMFC system. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The photovoltaic field is currently experiencing the "perovskite revolution". These materials have been known for decades, but only recently have they been applied in solid-state solar cells to obtain outstanding power conversion efficiencies. Given that the variety of perovskites used so far is limited, a lot of attention has been devoted to the development of suitable organic charge-transport materials to improve device performance. In this article, we will focus on the most promising materials able to transport electrons or holes from a structural point of view. Thereby, we focus on organic materials owing to their ease of preparation and manipulation, and this is nicely combined with the potential tuning of their properties through chemical synthesis.The focus on pathways to reduce the use of fossil fuels in the transport sector is intense in many countries worldwide. Considering that biofuels have a limited technical production potential and that battery electric vehicles suffer from technical limitations that put constraints on their general use in the transport sector, hydrogen-fuelled fuel cell vehicles may become a feasible alternative. Introduction of hydrogen in the transport sector will also transform the energy sector and create new interactions. The aim of this paper is to analyse the consequences and feasibility of such an integration in Sweden. Different pathways for hydrogen, electricity and methane to the transport sector are compared with regard to system energy efficiency. The well-to-wheel energy efficiencies for hydrogen and electricity are used for estimating the energy resources needed for hydrogen production and electric vehicles for a future Swedish transport sector based on renewable fuels. The analysis reveal that the well-to-wheel system efficiencies for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are comparable to those of methane gas vehicles, even when biomethane is the energy source. The results further indicate that an increased hydrogen demand may have a less than expected impact on the primary energy supply in Sweden. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Combining thermal solar energy and polymer materials allows seawater desalination while fossil fuels are saved and use of chemicals against fouling and corrosion is reduced. SOLar Multi-Effect Desalination (SOLMED) meets recommendations of the US National Research Council and Middle East Desalination Research Center of Oman regarding the future of water desalination. Water cost reduction and development of technologies with low environmental impact are the main guidelines of SOLMED. Thermal efficiency is at the heart of SOLMED. Process is based on low-temperature multi-effect distillation (LT-MED) powered by a thermal solar collector field, or better, by heat recovery at the outlet of a solar power plant. Heat transfer surfaces are made of thin wall polymer tubes to ensure a high thermal duty in spite of low thermal conductivity of polymers. Targeted capacities lie within 500-1,000 m(3)/d. The objective is to develop a LT-MED prototype made of polymers and to operate the system plugged to a solar heat source. To reach these objectives, SOLMED gathers a consortium of six partners, merging experts of thermal systems and components, experts in polymers and transformation, and engineering partners in the field of solar energy and processes. Social aspects are also taken into account through acceptability, sustainability, design, management of innovation, market, and life cycle assessment. SOLMED is a three years project funded by the French National Research Agency. The first step is to build a 10 m(3)/d prototype to bring a proof of concept. The prototype will be operated with a 100 kW peak solar heat source. Developments are related to the modeling of the process itself and its integration in a solar system including heat storage, thin-wall tubes fabrication, optimization of tubes fixing, investigations related to heat transfer, and hydraulic. Regarding polymer materials, the challenge is to combine high thermal rate with long lifetime. Commercial step has to consider new optimization approach, taking into consideration the whole process, including heat source.Climate change mitigation demands large-scale technological change on a global level and, if successfully implemented, will significantly affect how products and services are produced and consumed. In order to anticipate the life cycle environmental impacts of products under climate mitigation scenarios, we present the modeling framework of an integrated hybrid life cycle assessment model covering nine world regions. Life cycle assessment databases and multiregional input output tables are adapted using forecasted changes in technology and resources up to 2050 under a 2 degrees C scenario. We call the result of this modeling "technology hybridized environmental-economic model with integrated scenarios" (THEMIS). As a case study, we apply THEMIS in an integrated environmental assessment of concentrating solar power. Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for this plant range from 33 to 95 g CO2 eq./kWh across different world regions in 2010, falling to 30-87 g CO2 eq./kWh in 2050. Using regional life cycle data yields insightful results. More generally, these results also highlight the need for systematic life cycle frameworks that capture the actual consequences and feedback effects of large-scale policies in the long term.Bioenergy (i.e., bioheat and bioelectricity) could simultaneously address energy insecurity and climate change. However, bioenergy's impact on climate change remains incomplete when land use changes (LUC), soil organic carbon (SOC) changes, and the auxiliary energy consumption are not accounted for in the life cycle. Using data collected from Belgian farmers, combined heat and power (CHP) operators, and a life cycle approach, we compared 40 bioenergy pathways to a fossil-fuel CHP system. Bioenergy required between 0.024 and 0.204 MJ (0.86 MJ(th) + 0.14 MJ(el))(-1), and the estimated energy ratio (energy output-to-input ratio) ranged from 5 to 42. SOC loss increased the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of residue based bioenergy. On average, the iLUC represented similar to 67% of the total GHG emissions of bioenergy from perennial energy crops. However, the net LUC (i.e., dLUC + iLUC) effects substantially reduced the GHG emissions incurred during all phases of bioenergy production from perennial crops, turning most pathways based on energy crops to GHG sinks. Relative to fossil-fuel based CHP all bioenergy pathways reduced GHG emissions by 8-114%. Fluidized bed technologies maximize the energy and the GHG benefits of all pathways. The size and the power-to-heat ratio for a given CHP influenced the energy and GHG performance of these bioenergy pathways. Even with the inclusion of LUC, perennial crops had better GHG performance than agricultural and forest residues. Perennial crops have a high potential in the multidimensional approach to increase energy security and to mitigate climate change. The full impacts of bioenergy from these perennial energy crops must, however, be assessed before they can be deployed on a large scale. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.orgilicenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Hybrid and electric powertrains and alternative fuels (e.g., compressed natural gas (CNG), biodiesel, or hydrogen) can often reduce energy consumption and emissions from transit bus operations relative to conventional diesel. However, the magnitude of these energy and emissions savings can vary significantly, due to local conditions and transit operating characteristics. This paper introduces the transit Fuel and Emissions Calculator (FEC), a mode-based life-cycle emissions modeling tool for transit bus and rail technologies that compares the performance of multiple alternative fuels and powertrains across a range of operational characteristics and conditions. The purpose of the FEC is to provide a practical, yet technically sophisticated tool for regulatory agencies and policy analysts in assessing transit fleet options. The FEC's modal modeling approach estimates emissions as a function of engine load, which in turn is a function of transit service parameters, including duty cycle (idling and speed-acceleration profile), road grade, and passenger loading. This approach allows for customized assessments that account for local conditions. Direct emissions estimates are derived from the scaled tractive power (STP) operating mode bins and emissions factors employed in the U.S. EPA's MOVES (Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator) model. Life-cycle emissions estimates are calculated using emissions factors from the GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) model. The case study presented in this paper applies the FEC to second-by-second GPS position data collected from buses operating in metropolitan Atlanta, GA. These operations, from two different transit agencies, feature distinctly different transit service types: local transit bus operations and longer-distance express bus operations. The results illustrate that the decision as to which bus technology-fuel combination produces the least greenhouse gas emissions is a function of location and route characteristics. For the express bus operations monitored, the case study shows that CNG vehicles offer greater emissions reductions than Biodiesel (B20). For local bus services, battery electric buses show the greatest emissions savings in the fuel cycle, as long as range limitations can be met for the specific routes. The amount of these emissions savings is, however, highly dependent on the power generation mix. Among CNG, B20, parallel hybrid, series hybrid, and fuel cell buses, the least emitting option varies by location, due to complex interactions of factors such as duty cycle, meteorology, and terrain. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of renewable technologies will increase with the requirement to meet carbon reduction targets. However, this must be done in a sustainable manner. This paper compares the impact of the current Lebanese electricity system with production of electricity from PV. This is the first paper to look at how the addition of PV to this system, and explores the potential impact. As many electricity networks in the region suffer from similar issues and have similar climates this research will not only inform the Lebanese system, but can be used to influence and inform impacts of other systems. It evaluates the environmental impact, and therefore the actual sustainability, of a 1.8 kWp monocrystalline Photovoltaic (PV) system with and without Lead-Acid batteries (PbA) compared to the existing centralised electricity production mix and decentralised diesel neighbourhood gensets. The analysis is rigorous as it is conducted using the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA), using the SimaPro software (Ecoinvent 2.2 database) and ReCiPe 2008 method for impact assessment. The environmental impacts of the PV technology are compared to that of the existing fossil fuel electricity generation mix. Results, using the functional unit of 1 kW h, indicate that the PV system, even when equipped with PbA batteries, has a lower environmental burden per delivered output compared to the Lebanese electricity mix, and even more so when decentralised diesel neighbourhood gensets are taken into account. The results of the analysis allows to calculate a series of parameters such as Global Warming Potential (GWP) (0.0402 kg CO2eq/kW h and 0.0389 kg CO2eq/kW h), Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) (4.41 MJ/kW h and 439 MJ/kW h), Gross Energy Requirement (GER) (1.23 and 1.22), Energy Pay-Back Time (EPBT) (16.9 years and 16.1 years), Carbon Dioxide Pay-Back Time (CO2eqPBT) (3.52 years and 3.21 years), and Net Energy Ratio (NER) (1.48 and 1.55) for the PV system with and without PbA batteries. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rapid urbanisation has accelerated consumption of concrete making it the most consumed artificial material. Present day concrete is one of the largest sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission and is not sustainable. Microbial precipitation of CaCO3 is a promising way of emulating nature's sustainable ways. This paper reviews current progress and potential of this technology. Prior research on the modes of application of the technology and consequent gains in strength and durability of construction materials has been summarised. Imperatives for a quantitative estimate of sustainability are identified. Progress necessary for industrial adoption of the technology has been discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the major challenges in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of crop production is the nonlinearity between nitrogen (N) fertilizer inputs and onsite N emissions resulting from complex biogeochemical processes. A few studies have addressed this nonlinearity by combining process-based N simulation models with LCA, but none accounted for nitrate (NO3-) flows across fields. In this study, we present a new method, TNT2-LCA, that couples the topography-based simulation of nitrogen transfer and transformation (TNT2) model with LCA, and compare the new method with a current LCA method based on a French life cycle inventory database. Application of the two methods to a case study of crop production in a catchment in France showed that, compared to the current method, TNT2-LCA allows delineation of more appropriate temporal limits when developing data for on-site N emissions associated with specific crops in this catchment. It also improves estimates of NO3- emissions by better consideration of agricultural practices, soil-climatic conditions, and spatial interactions of NO3- flows across fields, and by providing predicted crop yield. The new method presented in this study provides improved LCA of crop production at the catchment scale.A hybrid life-cycle assessment method was performed on national and provincial statistics to study pollutants generated by the cement industry in China, the impacts of these pollutants, and the potential for environmental improvement. Results showed that the key factors that contribute to overall environmental burden are the direct emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulates, and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, as well as the use of coal during cement production. The amounts of CO2, sulfur dioxide (SO2), NOx, and particulates generated by the cement industry in China in 2009 were approximately 1.11 billion, 0.53 million, 2.10 million, and 3.60 million tons respectively, which accounted for approximately 14.8%, 2.4%, 12.3%, and 26.2% of the national CO2, SO2, NOx, and particulate emissions, respectively. Effective approaches to reduce the environmental impacts of the cement industry include optimizing the industrial structure in cement production, improving consumption efficiency of energy and raw materials in cement production, using industrial waste and by-products instead of limestone, decreasing cement export, and promoting electricity recovery technologies in the cement industry. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from the logistics sector were investigated using Hong Kong as an example. The data including cargo freight between Hong Kong and other places by different transport modes (i.e. aircraft, container ships, trucks, and trains) for the period of 2007-2012 were collected. Combining transport data with the GHG emitted from each mode of transport in terms of tonne CO2-eq per kilotonne-kilometer, GHG emissions for each transport mode and the total amount of GHG emissions were determined. In 2012, the total cargo freight between Hong Kong and other places via air freight was 4024 kilotonnes and produced 22,623 kilotonnes of CO2-eq. The total cargo freight via sea freight was 269,283 kilotonnes and produced 12,784 kilotonnes of CO2-eq. The total cargo freight via land freight was 26,215 kilotonnes and produced 463 kilotonnes of CO2-eq. The total amount of GHG emissions was 35,834 kilotonnes of CO2-eq. The environmental effectiveness of Hong Kong's logistics sector was obtained by normalizing the total amount of GHG emissions with respect to the value added. The calculated value was 534 tonnes of CO2-eq per million HKD value added. The results of scenario analysis showed that the amount of GHG emissions could be reduced at about 100 kilotonnes of CO2-eq. per 100 kilotonnes of cargo by switching a portion of air cargo movements to and from mainland China to land freight or sea freight. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Different types of hydropower schemes utilize different construction methods and have different carbon footprints. However, differences in carbon footprints between different schemes have been largely ignored when comparing environmental impacts for decision making. Thus, this paper aims to study and compare the carbon footprints of two types of Nuozhadu hydropower schemes with the same scale: an earth-core rockfill dam (ECRD) and a concrete gravity dam (CGD). The hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) method combines the completeness of economic input-output LCA (EIO-LCA) and the specificity of process-based LCA (PA-LCA). It was applied to quantify the carbon footprint over the whole life cycle of the hydropower system. The evaluation of the carbon footprint considered the emissions from material production, transportation, construction, and the operation and maintenance phases for a period of 44 years. All relevant materials and energy consumption were included. It was found that the ECRD reduced CO2 emissions by approximately 24.7% compared to the CGD. With respect to each stage of the life cycle, the ECRD decreased CO2 emissions by 46.1% for material production, 16.5% for transportation and 9.0% for operation and maintenance but increased emissions by 6.6% for construction due to the heavy workload. Operational maintenance was the greatest contributor to CO2 emissions, followed by the production, construction and transportation stages. These results indicate that ECRDs are more environmentally responsible throughout its life cycle. This knowledge could help decision makers in the design phase looking to choose the appropriate type of hydropower system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are simultaneously exhausting the world's supply of fossil fuels and threatening the global climate. In many developing countries, significant improvement in living standards in recent years due to the accelerating development of their economies has resulted in a disproportionate increase in household energy consumption. Therefore, a major reduction in household carbon emissions (HCEs) is essential if global carbon reduction targets are to be met. To do this, major Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states have already implemented policies to alleviate the negative environmental effects of household behaviors and less carbon-intensive technologies are also proposed to promote energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. However, before any further remedial actions can be contemplated, though, it is important to fully understand the actual causes of such large HCEs and help researchers both gain deep insights into the development of the research domain and identify valuable research topics for future study. This paper reviews existing literature focusing on the domain of HCEs. This critical review provides a systematic understanding of current work in the field, describing the factors influencing HCEs under the themes of household income, household size, age, education level, location, gender and rebound effects. The main quantification methodologies of input-output models, life cycle assessment and emission coefficient methods are also presented, and the proposed measures to mitigate HCEs at the policy, technology and consumer levels. Finally, the limitations of work done to date and further research directions are identified for the benefit of future studies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study examined some management strategies of wheat cultivation system and its sustainability in using straw as an energy feedstock. According to the EU regulatory framework on biofuels, no GHG emissions should be assigned to straws when they are used for energy. Given this relevance in the current energy policy, it is advisable to include all possible marginal effects related to land use, resource utilization and management changes in the comparison of different biomass options. Coherently, an expanded life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to include the upstream cultivation phase and to make a comparison between "straw to soil" and "straw to energy". Different crop management conditions in Southern Italy were simulated, by using the CropSyst model, to estimate the long-term soil organic carbon and annual N2O soil emissions. Three wheat cropping systems were considered: the conventional single wheat system without straw removal (WO) and with partial straw removal (W1), together with a no-tillage "wheat-wheat-herbage" rotation system with partial straw removal (W2). The results of the simulations were integrated in the LCA to compare fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of straw-to-electricity with respect to the fossil-based electricity system. The "improved" rotational wheat cropping system (W2) gave the best performance in terms both of GHG savings and fossil displacement, thus stressing that straw use for energy generation in parallel with the optimization of the cropping system are key factors in long-term environmental sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to provide more accurate results in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generation from wheat straw grown in Spain through the inclusion of parameter uncertainty and variability in the inventories. We fitted statistical distributions for the all the parameter that were relevant for the assessment to take into account their inherent uncertainty and variability. When we found enough data, goodness of fit tests were performed to choose the best distribution for each parameter and, when this was not possible, we adjusted triangular or uniform distributions according to data available and expert judge. To obtain a more complete and realistic LCA, we considered the consequences of straw exportation for the agricultural system, specially the loss of soil organic carbon and the decrease of future fertility. We also took into account all the inputs, transformations and transports needed to generate electricity in a 25 MWe power plant by straw burning. The inventory data for the agricultural, the transport and the transformation phases were collected considering their most common values and ranges of variability for the Spanish case. We used Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis to obtain global warming potential (GWP) and fossil energy (FOSE) consumption of the system. These results were compared with those of the electricity generated from natural gas in Spanish power plants, as fossil reference energy system. Our results showed that for the majority of the simulations electricity from wheat straw biomass combustion produced less greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and consumed less fossil energy than electricity from natural gas. However, only 58% of the simulations achieved the sustainability threshold of 60% GHG savings proposed by the European Union (EU). Our analysis showed that agricultural field works and the loss of soil organic carbon due to straw exportation were the most important phases for FOSE consumption and GWP respectively. According to parameters sensitivity analysis, the loss of soil organic carbon was completely dependent on the isohumic coefficient and the soil carbon content factor values. Due to this fact, local and specific estimates of these parameters are relevant tasks to be performed in order to reduce uncertainties and provide a definitive answer to the compliance of the EU sustainability criteria. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Algae Cluster is a group of three European Commission funded projects, each building a different demonstration algae biofuel facility up to 10 hectares in size. Each project is carrying out an independent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to understand the various environmental impacts of the biofuel production. A major issue with LCA is that there is a high flexibility on defining metrics such as the boundary conditions, functional unit and impact categories. The LCA practitioners for these three projects have agreed upon a harmonised approach, with the intention of ensuring the projects are comparable. This paper details the logic behind this approach, and shares it with the community. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the three algae demonstration projects and to present a harmonized methodology for LCA of algae biofuels. With this, work by different researchers may be compared more effectively, making it easier to measure the effectiveness of different strategies in algal biofuels with regard to sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae is being investigated as a renewable transportation fuel feedstock based on various advantages that include high annual yields, utilization of poor quality land, does not compete with food, and can be integrated with various waste streams. This study focuses on directly assessing the environmental impact of two different thermochemical conversion technologies for the microalgae-to-biofuel process through life cycle assessment. A system boundary of "well to pump" (WTP) is defined and includes sub-process models of the growth, dewatering, thermochemical bio-oil recovery, bio-oil stabilization, conversion to renewable diesel, and transport to the pump. Models were validated with experimental and literature data and are representative of an industrial-scale microalgae-to-biofuel process. Two different thermochemical bio-oil conversion systems are modeled and compared on a systems level, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and pyrolysis. The environmental impact of the two pathways were quantified on the metrics of net energy ratio (NER), defined here as energy consumed over energy produced, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results for WTP biofuel production through the HTL pathway were determined to be 1.23 for the NER and GHG emissions of -11.4 g CO2-eq (MJ renewable diesel)(-1). Biofuel production through the pyrolysis pathway results in a NER of 2.27 and GHG emissions of 210 g CO2-eq (MJ renewable diesel)-1. The large environmental impact associated with the pyrolysis pathway is attributed to feedstock drying requirements and combustion of co-products to improve system energetics. Discussion focuses on a detailed breakdown of the overall process energetics and GHGs, impact of modeling at laboratory-scale compared to industrial-scale, environmental impact sensitivity to systems engineering input parameters for future focused research and development, and a comparison of results to literature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Politics and industry increasingly request comprehensive ex-ante decision support from a sustainability perspective in complex strategic decision situations. Several approaches have been introduced in the last years to increase the comprehensiveness of life cycle based assessments from covering only environmental aspects towards covering all sustainability aspects. This way, (environmental) life cycle assessment (LCA) has been extended towards life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). However, a practical application in ex-ante decision support requires additional features and flexibility that do not exist in the newly devised frameworks. Our methodology of integrated life cycle sustainability assessment (ILCSA) builds upon existing frameworks, extends them with features for ex-ante assessments that increase the value for decision makers and introduces a structured discussion of results to derive concrete conclusions and recommendations. At the same time, the flexibility allows for focussing on those sustainability aspects relevant in the respective decision situation using the best available methodology for assessing each aspect within the overarching ILCSA. ILCSA has so far been successfully applied in five large EC-funded projects. We discuss our methodology based on a concrete application example from these projects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many studies have used the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to assess the environmental impacts and energetic suitability of microalgal biofuels. This paper presents a critical review focused on goal and scope, system boundaries, functional unit, Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) and environmental impacts of 41 LCA of algal biofuels. The comparison between these LCA has been made difficult by the heterogeneity of their underlying hypotheses and perimeters. Hence we propose to define methodological guidelines to harmonize results presentation in order to improve the validity of each new contribution and to ease its comparison to other studies. LCA allows detecting pollution transfers between production stages as well as between distinct environmental impacts. At the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) level, a special attention should be paid to the perimeter of the study (e.g. inclusion of infrastructures) and to the handling of the co-products (allocation or substitution). Moreover the inventory data have to be treated in a consistent way in order to guarantee the comparability of LCI between different studies. Hence we recommend that data of all the production steps should be given at a unit process level, i.e. the smallest element for which input and output data can be quantified. At the Life Cycle Impact Assessment level, other impacts than the greenhouse gases balance have to be taken into account, like impacts related to the use of fertilizers (acidification and eutrophication) and phytosanitary products (human toxicity and ecotoxicity), impacts of direct and indirect land use change, and water consumptions. Finally, as bio-fuel is aiming at replacing existing energy productions, an energy balance should always be carried out; the Cumulative Energy Demand Ratio offers a convenient framework in that regard. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The annual productivity of Tetraselmis suecica in a 1-ha Green Wall Panel-II (GWP-II) plant in Tuscany (Italy) is 36 t (dry weight) ha(-1) year(-1), which corresponds to an energy output of 799 GJ ha(-1) year(-1). The energy inputs necessary to attain that productivity amount to 1362 GJ ha(-1) year(-1), mainly given by the embodied energy of the reactor (about 30%), mixing (about 40%), fertilizers (11%) and harvesting (10%). The Net Energy Ratio (NER) of T. suecica production is thus 0.6. In a more suitable location (North Africa) productivity nearly doubles, reaching 66 t ha(-1) year(-1), but the NER increases only by 40% and the gain (difference between output and inputs) remains negative. In a GWP-II integrated with photovoltaics (PV), the NER becomes 1.7 and the gain surpasses 600 GJ ha(-1) year(-1). Marine microalgae cultivation in a GWP plant, in a suitable location, can attain high biomass productivities and protein yields 30 times higher than those achievable with traditional crops (soya). When the GWP reactor is integrated with PV, the process attains a positive energy balance, which substantially enhances its sustainability. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study estimated the potential of algal bioenergy production using nitrogen and phosphorus present in the dairy manure (produced in the US). State wise dairy manure production and energy mixes were used to estimate algal bioenergy production and associated life cycle nonrenewable primary energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions for the four scenarios. These scenarios were constructed using various combination of following processes (i) anaerobic digestion, (ii) algal biodiesel production using effluent from (i), (iii) pyrolysis, and (iv) enzymatic hydrolysis. Bioenergy production, nonrenewable primary energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions of each state were aggregated to estimate the total bioenergy production, nonrenewable primary energy requirement and greenhouse gas emissions for the US. Two different cases were simulated for each scenario, one without taking into account the nutrient values (N, P) of applied sludge generated from the bioenergy production (Case B) while in the other one, nutrient values of sludge were considered (Case A). For incorporation of nutrient values of sludge, system expansion approach was used. It was estimated that by using dairy manure, 0.56 billion GJ/yr bioenergy could be produced. Minimum "nonrenewable primary energy requirement (NRPER)" (GJ/GJ) [Total primary nonrenewable energy requirement/bioenergy produced] and GHG emissions (kg CO2 eq./GJ bioenergy produced) for the four scenarios (1-4) for case B were as follows (1) 0.37, 27 (2) 0.51, -30; (3) 0.55, 47 and (4) 0.70, 15 respectively. In case A, NRPER did not change as compared to case B. GHG emissions increased in case A scenarios as compared to case B scenarios. The increase in GHG emission was mostly due to incorporation of reference scenario (raw dairy manure was applied on the ground) and N2O emission from the sludge amended soil. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental impact is an essential aspect for the introduction of algae production systems. As information of large scale algae production is hardly available, process simulation is the only way to evaluate environmental sustainability in an early phase of process design. Simulation results allow the evaluation of production and design scenarios, and reveal the potential to improve the Life Cycle Performance of algae production systems. In this work, we discuss how choices in the process design of algae production systems (cultivation, biorefinery and the supply chain) advance LCA-results. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study analyses the circumstances of environmental advantage by benchmarking a novel Kraft pulp fibre reinforced polypropylene against its matrix material and two other composites with talcum and glass fibres. With one exception, all composites use less non-renewable energy (-1% to 29%), but only the Kraft pulp fibre reinforced polypropylene achieves a reduction in global warming potential (14% to 35%) considering different functional units compared to polypropylene. The comparisons on basis of function strength and stiffness in this case study show that the adequate application of specific material properties, are key to achieve environmental advantages. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this project is to evaluate the possibility of using ethanol as a foaming agent for low "emission asphalt technology via life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis. LCA analysis was conducted at two different stages. Firstly, the analysis was performed to estimate the energy consumption and CO2 emission in the cradle to gate stages incorporating the effects of various foaming agent contents. In the second assessment, the analysis attempts to incorporate the required information based on the available published papers to get a clear idea about the energy consumption and GHG emission involved in all stages from the raw materials production to the end of life of asphalt pavement. The scope and boundaries of this analysis have been set based on several assumptions made prior to performing the analysis. LCA software, SimaPro 7.3, was used to estimate the cumulative energy demand and global warming potential (GWP) of Ethanol-foamed Warm Mix Asphalt (EWMA) and compare these to the results of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) and Water-foamed Warm Mix Asphalt (WWMA). Eco-Indicator 95 analysis was also conducted to establish the weighting factors for the various environmental effects of each asphalt mixture. Based on the results, it was found that the EWMA performed better in terms of energy demand, and lowered GHG emissions compared to HMA and WWMA. EWMA has high potential to reduce the detrimental impacts from the asphalt pavement industry based on Eco-Indicator 95 analysis, which has a lower impact in terms of GHG emissions, ozone layer depletion, acidification, eutrophication, summer smog, and winter smog, as well as energy resources. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent years have seen an increase in the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to inform urban water systems research. The attraction of LCA is its capacity to identify trade-offs across a broad range of environmental issues and a broad range of technologies. However, without some additional perspective on the scale of the results, prioritisation of these concerns will remain difficult. LCA studies at the whole-of-system level are required to identify the diversity of life cycle environmental burdens associated with urban water systems, and the main contributors to these impacts. In this study, environmental impact profiles were generated for two city-scale urban water systems: one typical of many urban centres, with a high reliance on freshwater extraction and the majority of treated wastewater being discharged to the sea; and one that adopts a more diverse range of water supply and wastewater recycling technologies. The profiles were based on measured data for most system components, otherwise best available empirical data from the literature. Impact models were chosen considering the substantial methodological developments that have occurred in recent years. System operations, directly within the sphere of influence of water system managers, play the dominant role in all but one of the 14 life cycle impact categories considered. While energy use is the main cause of changes in the impact profiles when the alternative water supply technologies are included, it is not the only important driver of impacts associated with city-scale urban water systems. Also extremely important are process emissions related to wastewater treatment and dams (notably fugitive gases, wastewater discharges, and biosolids disposal). The results clearly indicate a diverse range of environmental impacts of relevance, extending beyond the traditional concerns of water use and nutrient discharge. Neither energy use, nor greenhouse gas footprints, are likely to be an adequate proxy for representing these additional concerns. However, methodological improvements will be required for certain LCA impact models to support future case study analysis, as will a comprehensive critique of the implications from selecting different impact models. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Many studies have been conducted on the contributions of the construction industry to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, these studies focused on the embodied GHG emissions of buildings and were restricted by limited system boundaries due to a lack of detailed on and off-site process data, especially data for assembly and miscellaneous works as well as construction related human activities. This study therefore analyzed GHG emissions during the construction phase of a case study building on the basis of an extended system boundary in the context of China by utilizing detailed onsite process data. The results show that indirect emissions accounted for 97% of all GHG emissions. On-site electricity use and building materials production were the two greatest contributors to direct and indirect emissions respectively. Recombining the construction activities revealed that construction related human activities generated significant GHG emissions (385 tCO(2)e), which have been ignored in previous research. The findings also reveal that although some materials used during the construction process are negligible in terms of weight, such as polyamide safety nets and aluminum (<0.1%), they have a considerable impact on GHG emissions (2-3%). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Purpose: The aim of this work is to quantify the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings potential in magazine paper production through the application of the innovative manufacturing strategies using advanced sheet structure design and fibre modifications. Methods: The study applies Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to two different magazine paper products: supercalendered (SC) paper and light-weight coated (LWC) paper. A cradle-to-gate approach is used aiming to assess the environmental benefits gained through the implementation of new manufacturing strategies in both products. The functional unit of the system was defined as the production of one square meter of finished paper for printing magazines. Conventional and new production processes have been compared. Results and discussion: The strategies applied to SC paper resulted in reduction of GHG emissions by 22.9%, with a total of 10.7 gCO(2)eq emissions saved per square meter of SC paper. In the case of LWC paper, GHG emissions are reduced by 20.3%, which are equal to a total of 19.7 gCO2eq saved per square meter of LWC paper. The influence of certain methodological approaches -functional unit, electricity mix and avoided impacts- in the final results is also discussed in the paper. Conclusions: The manufacturing strategies implemented show a remarkable potential for reducing GHG emissions. Taking into account that the pulp and paper industry is a very energy-intensive sector and one of the main GHG emitters, the potential of the strategies for the improvement of the environmental performance of the papermaking processes is significant. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the European Union, the share of renewable energy has increased significantly over the past few years. Among renewable energy options, bioenergy is considered to be the dominant energy source. Previous literature is inconclusive regarding the suitability of bioenergy to mitigate greenhouse gases. The goal of this paper is to address this research gap. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of biomass systems for electricity generation were gathered via a systematic literature review and form the empirical basis of this study. A quantitative exploratory analysis and a Qualitative Comparative Analysis were carried out to identify the greenhouse gas mitigation potential of different biomass systems used for electricity generation. Significant variations in LCA results are due to the heterogeneity of these systems; therefore, the transferability of LCA results to similar systems must be investigated on a case-by-case basis. Results show that electricity from biomass can be an appropriate measure for greenhouse gas mitigation in the European Union. To mitigate greenhouse gases, it is recommended to promote the employment of (1) non-dedicated lignocellulosic biomass with thermochemical conversion, (2) dedicated lignocellulosic biomass with thermochemical conversion, and (3) dedicated lignocellulosic biomass with direct combustion. For a more holistic assessment, future research should focus not only on greenhouse gas emissions, but also on other environmental, economic, and social impact categories. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Evaluations of the environmental sustainability of lifestyles and consumption practices have been taking centre stage in European research projects in recent years. Considerable work has been undertaken on the environmental assessment of food consumption patterns, and several analytical tools and methodologies have been proposed to quantify the environmental burden of production and consumption. Claims have been made in several international reports that the Mediterranean diet offers the best consumption pattern in terms of both the, environment and health, but there has never been a specific assessment of the Mediterranean diet in comparison with other food consumption behaviours. This paper explores the environmental burdens of the Mediterranean diet applied in the Italian context. The environmental performance of this diet is compared to the national average diet in Italy, as Well as to two empirical scenarios of healthy and vegetarian food consumption patterns. The environmental burdens of the different diets are assessed in terms of their energy consumption and their carbon footprint using a hybrid IOA-LCA method. This method considers the positive aspects of both bottom-up methodologies (e.g. life cycle assessment LCA) and top-down methodologies (e.g. input output analysis IOA). The results allow several comparisons to be made between the different diets. When compared with the national average diet, the Mediterranean diet reveals an improvement in environmental performance of 95.75 MJ (2.44%) and 27.46 kg CO2 equivalent (6.81%) per family. The best overall environmental performance can be found with the vegetarian diet in which energy consumption is 3.14% lower and the carbon footprint 12.7% lower than the national average diet. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Modern commercial fisheries are heavily dependent on the input of fossil fuels throughout their supply chains, particularly diesel inputs to fishing vessels. Fuel use intensity of fisheries varies with regard to target species, gears employed, region of fishing, technologies used, skipper behaviour, and other factors. Those fisheries that consume relatively less fuel not only have a lower carbon footprint, up to the point of landing, but are also in a favourable position to meet future fuel and emissions regulations, and may be more resilient to the effects of volatile fuel prices and limited oil resources. We measured fuel inputs to purse seining vessels targeting primarily skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis) and yellowfin (Thunnus albacores) tuna. Data reported represent 28% of worldwide landings of skipjack and yellowfin by purse seiners in 2009. These vessels burned, on average, 368 L of fuel per tonne of wet weight landings. This corresponds to a fuel-related carbon footprint of 1.1 kg CO2 per landed kg of tuna, lower than that of average marine capture fisheries as well as most forms of land-based animal protein production. Interestingly, the use of FADs in purse seine fisheries for tuna was found to be inversely correlated with efficiency, going against conventional logic that FAD use improves efficiency. This study is the largest snapshot of tuna fuel inputs to date, providing a baseline against which future performance can be measured, and an indicator for consumers concerned about the carbon footprint of their food choices. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) of greenhouse gas emissions is often used to compare products in the global crude market While Alberta's oil sands face particular pressure to improve performance, a lack of consensus on methods, data, and assumptions specific to the LCA of products derived from crude oil weaken such comparisons. This paper investigates the potential for a Canadian product category rules standard to enhance the credibility of life cycle emissions estimates of products derived from Alberta's oil sands. Increasing comparability of Canadian crudes to those of other countries in such a way would make this an attractive tool with the potential to be adopted internationally. The potential of the standard is investigated through a case study, based on in-depth expert interviews, focusing first on the potential of the standard to mitigate specific data and communication issues with respect to Alberta's oil sands, and second on strategies to mitigate predicted process issues in its development by a Canadian standards development organization. Findings indicate that while there is a consensus on the need to further standardize LCA methods and data quality requirements for crude oil products to make comparisons more accurate, participants in the standards-setting process may be unwilling to share the information that would make this possible. It was found that a credible standards-setting process may help to overcome this challenge, only if the ability to revise the standard can be anticipated in its initial development process, particularly with respect to its long-term effects on the development of new technologies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the present work is to propose an eco-design method for sustainable development of methanol production by implementing a multi-objective optimization model based on COs-efficiency. Two different approaches for the methanol production, i.e. a conventional reference methanol case (RMC) and proposed green integrated methanol case (GIMC) were compared from the view point of eco-design. Using life cycle assessment and process simulation, the environmental features as well as operational decision variables of the RMC and GIMC were assessed. Based on the inventory analysis of LCA, it was found that carbon dioxide is the major emitted pollutant from methanol production. Thus the multi-objective model in the proposed GIMC was formulated as maximizing methanol production (which refers to a classical objective in process design) and minimizing CO2 emission (which refers to an environmental objective in process design) and the set of Pareto frontier was obtained. In order to achieve single optimal solution, the multi-objective model is transformed to a single objective optimization problem by weighted product method and the single optimum point is found by using genetic algorithm. Comparing obtained results showed that the optimal condition of the RMC which is based on a classical objective is a local optima from the view point of environmental benign design, whereas by involving the environmental objective in the design stage, a lower CO2 emission with respect to the RMC could be achieved at the expense of a small decrease in the methanol production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Consideration of the impact of climate change has penetrated urban infrastructure planning worldwide, and the water sector is no exception. This paper provides an approach to incorporate a low-carbon consideration and climate externalities into an environmental economic analysis for an urban water treatment work planning with a case study from Ningbo, China. The discounted incremental costs are calculated with carbon footprint accounting. The analysis confirms that the inclusion of GHG emission costs as a component in the techno-economic criteria affects the priority ranking for the siting options, and may lead to an 'entirely different decision on the siting of the water supply facility. However, these criteria should be cross-examined with a sensitivity test during the decision making process, with the discounting rate and carbon pricing level being the main sensitivity factors. This study suggests that the benchmark discount rate for the water supply infrastructure average incremental economic cost accounting should be decreased from 6% to 4.5-4.0%. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Utilisation of supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) has been found as a suitable alternative to reduce CO2 emissions from cement production. Fly ash (FA) is the most well-known of these materials and has been used for decades in cement applications. Amongst these applications, the most significant is the replacement of clinker in cement blends, which reduces the consumption of resources and energy and at the same time, avoids the environmental burden associated with clinker production. Despite the existence of these opportunities, a large fraction of the FA produced worldwide is still unused and disposed as waste or stored in landfills. This occurs mostly because FA is unable to meet the quality requirements for replacing clinker in cement blends. Upgrading of FA to a suitable material that can effectively replace clinker is possible via upgrading processes (UP). These processes carry their own environmental impacts because in most of the cases, thermal and electric energy are used in them. Due to this fact, the use and implementation of upgraded fly ash involves additional environmental impacts to the life-cycle of the product. The most relevant of these impacts during the upgrading stage, is the generation of additional direct and indirect CO2 emissions from energy consumption. From a life-cycle perspective, the generation of these additional CO2 emissions decreases the net abatement achieved by using fly ash as a SCM. Therefore, it is necessary to account these emissions and calculate the net abatement achieved by replacing clinker and fossil fuel consumption. A system dynamics model is presented by simulating five different cement life-cycle scenarios in order to quantify the net CO2 reductions when using upgrading processes of fly ash. Ultra-fine grinding for the mechanical activation of FA is the UP modelled using published and direct data from the equipment manufacturer. A material flow analysis (MFA) was carried out to describe the scenarios and to simplify the life-cycle approach. It was found that the upgrading process modelled can have maximum value of 3.98 GJ/tonne of fly ash and still be able to produce net reductions. The same model also estimated that an 80% of the total reductions are avoided when ultra-fine grinding consumes 0.75 GJ/tonneFA of energy, compared to emissions from the baseline cement. The model is also complemented by reviewing the current use of FA as a SCM in the cement industry and by presenting a holistic systems thinking analysis. The model can also be further expanded to simulate other life-cycle scenarios which can include multiple upgrading processes and other materials. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As more municipalities and communities across developed world look towards implementing organic waste management programmes or upgrading existing ones, composting facilities are emerging as a popular choice. However, odour from these facilities continues to be one of the most important concerns in terms of cost & effective mitigation. This paper provides a technological and life cycle assessment of some of the different odour control technologies and treatment methods that can be implemented in organics processing facilities. The technological assessment compared biofilters, packed tower wet scrubbers, fine mist wet scrubbers, activated carbon adsorption, thermal oxidization, oxidization chemicals and masking agents. The technologies/treatment methods were evaluated and compared based on a variety of operational, usage and cost parameters. Based on the technological assessment it was found that, biofilters and packed bed wet scrubbers are the most applicable odour control technologies for use in organics processing faculties. A life cycle assessment was then done to compare the environmental impacts of the packed-bed wet scrubber system, organic (wood-chip media) bio-filter and inorganic (synthetic media) bio-filter systems. Twelve impact categories were assessed; cumulative energy demand (CED), climate change, human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, metal depletion, fossil depletion, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, terrestrial eco-toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity and marine eco-toxicity. The results showed that for all impact categories the synthetic media biofilter had the highest environmental impact, followed by the wood chip media bio-filter system. The packed-bed system had the lowest environmental impact for all categories. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a model to perform energy balances and estimate hydrogen conversion efficiency from UCG-based syngas. The model was developed for H-2 production from UCGbased syngas with and without CCS, along with the co-production of electricity and steam in a conventional combined cycle plant. In this paper, at base case conditions (H2O-to -O-2 injection ratio of 2 and a steam-to-carbon ratio of 3), the coal-to-H-2 conversion efficiency is estimated to be 58.1% for UCG with and without CCS. For the plant configuration involving no CCS, in addition to H-2 production, approximately 4.7% of coal energy is converted to electricity that is exported to the grid. In the case of UCG CCS, a minor energy penalty is incurred; wherein the electrical energy exported per unit coal energy is around 2.4%, with a CO2 capture efficiency of 91.6% being achieved. The H-2 conversion efficiency decreases with rise in H2O to -O-2 injection ratio, but increases with fall in steam-to-carbon ratio. Effect of ground water influx in UCG on the H-2 conversion efficiency is minor, whereas H-2 separation efficiency in the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit has a major effect. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Environmental issues, e.g. climate change, fossil resource depletion have triggered ambitious national/regional policies to develop biofuel and bioenergy roles within the overall energy portfolio to achieve decarbonising the global economy and increase energy security. With the 10 % binding target for the transport sector, the Renewable Energy Directive confirms the EU's commitment to renewable transport fuels especially advanced biofuels. Imola is an elite poplar clone crossed from Populus deltoides Bartr. and Populus nigra L. by Research Units for Intensive Wood Production, Agriculture Research Council in Italy. This study examines its suitability for plantation cultivation under short or very short rotation coppice regimes as a potential lignocellulosic feedstock for the production of ethanol as a transport biofuel. A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to model the cradle-to-gate environmental profile of Imola-derived biofuel benchmarked against conventional fossil gasoline. Specific attention was given to analysing the agroecosystem fluxes of carbon and nitrogen occurring in the cultivation of the Imola biomass in the biofuel life cycle using a process-oriented biogeochemistry model (DeNitrification-DeComposition) specifically modified for application to 2G perennial bioenergy crops and carbon and nitrogen cycling. Results: Our results demonstrate that carbon and nitrogen cycling in perennial crop-soil ecosystems such as this example can be expected to have significant effects on the overall environmental profiles of 2G biofuels. In particular, soil carbon accumulation in perennial biomass plantations is likely to be a significant component in the overall greenhouse gas balance of future biofuel and other biorefinery products and warrants ongoing research and data collection for LCA models. We conclude that bioethanol produced from Imola represents a promising alternative transport fuel offering some savings ranging from 35 to 100 % over petrol in global warming potential, ozone depletion and photochemical oxidation impact categories. Conclusions: Via comparative analyses for Imola-derived bioethanol across potential supply chains, we highlight priority issues for potential improvement in 2G biofuel profiling. Advanced clones of poplar such as Imola for 2G biofuel production in Italy as modelled here show potential to deliver an environmentally sustainable lignocellulosic biorefinery industry and accelerate advanced biofuel penetration in the transport sector.In the metal cutting industry, manufacturers have strived to increase energy efficiency and to reduce environmental burdens through the use of dust collectors and waste disposers. It is more beneficial and efficient to apply the front-of-pipe technology that prevents the sources of pollutants and minimises energy use through the redesign of products and the change of process planning and machining operations. In particular, process planning for the environment, called eco-process planning, is central to increasing energy efficiency and reducing environmental burdens because process planning decisions greatly influence machining performance. At present, greenability, a term used to indicate environmental friendliness, has been little considered as a major concern in the process planning stage because process planning decisions have focused on improving productivity aspects that include speed, cost and quality. Thus, it is essential to develop an eco-process planning approach that enables the harmonisation and enhancement of greenability performance while improving productivity performance, termed green productivity (GP). This paper presents the development of a GP-based process planning algorithm that enables the derivation of process parameters for improving GP in machining operations. The core mechanism of the algorithm is the realisation of the process improvement cycle that measures GP performance by the collection of machining data, quantifies this performance by categorical representation and predicts the performance through prediction models. To show the feasibility and applicability of the proposed algorithm, we have conducted an experiment and implemented a prototype system for a turning machining process.The environmental profile of milk production in Mexico was analysed for three manure management scenarios: fertilization (F), anaerobic digestion (AD) and enhanced anaerobic digestion (EAD). The study used the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique, considering a 'cradle-to-gate' approach. The assessment model was constructed using SimaPro LCA software, and the life cycle impact assessment was performed according to the ReCiPe method. Dairy farms with AD and EAD scenarios were found to exhibit, respectively, 12% and 27% less greenhouse gas emissions, 58% and 31% less terrestrial acidification, and 3% and 18% less freshwater eutrophication than the F scenario. A different trend was observed in the damage to resource availability indicator, as the F scenario presented 6% and 22% less damage than the EAD and AD scenarios, respectively. The magnitude of environmental damage from milk production in the three dairy manure management scenarios, using a general single score indicator, was 0.118, 0.107 and 0.081 Pt/L of milk for the F, AD and EAD scenarios, respectively. These results indicate that manure management systems with anaerobic digestion can improve the environmental profile of each litre of milk produced.The application of in-place recycling techniques has emerged as a practical and effective way to enhance the sustainability of agency pavement management decisions for asphalt-surfaced pavements. However, the potential environmental benefits resulting from applying in-place recycling techniques have not been fully documented in the literature. This paper presents a comprehensive pavement life cycle assessment (LCA) model that extends the typical pavement LCA's system boundaries to include the environmental impacts resulting from the usage phase and the production of the energy sources. The results of the application of the pavement LCA model to a specific highway rehabilitation project in the state of Virginia showed that in-place recycling practices and an effective control of the pavement roughness can improve significantly the life cycle environmental performance of a pavement system.Waste is a by-product of our daily activities, which poses a serious threat to societies all over the world. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to determine municipal solid waste (MSW) management strategy for Minna, Niger State, Nigeria. Three scenarios were modelled as alternatives to the current waste management system in Minna. The current waste management in Minna city was developed in this research work as baseline scenario. The baseline scenario was the existing open dumping waste management strategy operating in Minna presently and this was used as the reference and chosen as the benchmark in which all the three modeled scenarios were measured and compared. One tone of municipal solid waste of Minna was selected as the functional unit. The life cycle inventory analysis was carried out with the aid of SimaPro 7.2 educational software. The environmental impact parameters dealt with were: carcinogen, ecotoxicity, acidification, eutrophication and global warming. In the context of the five impact parameters considered, scenario 1 is the best and most favourable alternative in term of ecotoxicity, eutrophication, acidification, carcinogen and global warming potentials in Minna city. This research work showed that modeled scenario 1 had a greatest reduction in global warming, carcinogen, ecotoxicity and acidification potentials in Minna city.Daqing is situated in one of the severely cold regions of China. The living environment in this region is extremely poor because of the harsh climate and the backward economy. The external wall is an important component of the external envelope of buildings, and it greatly contributes to the indoor thermal environment. By taking the external wall as the research object, this study summarizes the characteristics of the external wall structure and analyzes the common materials used in existing rural residences. Specifically, we combine life cycle theory and ecological footprint (EF) theory and introduce the green external wall structure, as well as its application in practice, in accordance with the local ecosystem. Results show that anecological residence offers a better environment and greater economic benefits than a traditional residence. The annual energy consumption, CO2 consumption, and EF of the ecological residence in this study are lower than those of the traditional residence by 69.61%, 17.5 t, and 99.47%, respectively. (C) 2015 Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.The lignite pregasification for electricity prodn. was more convenient than direct lignite combustion from ecol. and economic points of view.The current methodological approach for developing sustainable biofuel processes and supply chains is flawed. Life cycle principles are often retrospectively incorporated in the design phase resulting in incremental environmental improvement rather than selection of fuel pathways that minimize environmental impacts across the life cycle. Further, designing sustainable biofuel supply chains requires joint consideration of economic, environmental, and social factors that span multiple spatial and temporal scales. However, traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) ignores economic aspects and the role of ecological goods and services in supply chains, and hence is limited in its ability for guiding decision-making among alternativesoften resulting in sub-optimal solutions. Simultaneously incorporating economic and environment objectives in the design and optimization of emerging biofuel supply chains requires a radical new paradigm. This work discusses key research opportunities and challenges in the design of emerging biofuel supply chains and provides a high-level overview of the current state of the art in environmental sustainability assessment of biofuel production. Additionally, a bibliometric analysis of over 20,000 biofuel research articles from 2000-to-present is performed to identify active topical areas of research in the biofuel literature, quantify the relative strength of connections between various biofuels research domains, and determine any potential research gaps.In Italy, more than 1150 agricultural anaerobic digestion (AD) plants are currently running. Their concentration in specific areas resulted in an increase in the biomass price and transport distances. For the AD plants located on farms with small area, often the feed-stock are purchased on the market. However, when transport distances increase, it can be less expensive to buy biomasses with high energy density. With this regard, maize experimental tests were carried out to evaluate the methane production by harvesting the whole plant, the plant cut at 0.75 m and only the ear. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the economic performances of biogas plants fed with different maize silages by considering increasing extra-farm transport distances. Two different scenarios were considered with regard to the subsidy framework and to the maize biomass yield. The results show that, for short distances (<3 km), the economic performances are similar for AD plants fed with the whole plant silage and with that from the plant cut at 0.75 m; however, they are substantially better than those of the plant fed with ear silage. Beyond 14 km ear silage becomes more interesting than the whole plant; up to 32 km the plant fed with silage from the high cut is the most profitable whereas, beyond this transport distance, the ear silage is the best solution. The achieved results are interesting for stakeholders and policymakers involved in the biogas agro-energy processes, because they can be useful to reduce the cost of feedstock supply. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current and future demand for food, feed, fiber, and energy require novel approaches to land management, which demands that multifunctional landscapes are created to integrate various ecosystem functions into a sustainable land use. We developed an approach to design such landscapes at a field scale to minimize concerns of land use change, water quality, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with production of food and bioenergy. This study leverages concepts of nutrient recovery and phytoremediation to place bioenergy crops on the landscape to recover nutrients released to watersheds by commodity crops. Crop placement is determined by evaluating spatial variability of: 1) soils, 2) surface flow pathways, 3) shallow groundwater flow gradients, 4) subsurface nitrate concentrations, and 5) primary crop yield. A 0.8 ha bioenergy buffer was designed within a 6.5 ha field to intercept concentrated surface flow, capture and use nitrate leachate, and minimize use of productive areas. Denitrification-Decomposition (DNDC) simulations show that on average, a switchgrass (Panicum Virgatum L.) or willow (Salix spp.) buffer within this catchment according to this design could reduce annual leached NO3 by 61 or 59% and N2O emission by 5.5 or 10.8%, respectively, produce 8.7 or 9.7 Mg ha(-1) of biomass respectively, and displace 6.7 Mg ha(-1) of corn (Zea mays L.) grain. Therefore, placement of bioenergy crops has the potential to increase environmental sustainability when the pairing of location and crop type result in minimal disruption of current food production systems and provides additional environmental benefits. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Low prices and abundant resources open new opportunities for using natural gas, one of which is the production of transportation fuels. In this study, we use a Monte Carlo analysis combined with a life cycle analysis framework to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of a transition to natural gas-powered vehicles. We consider six different natural gas fuel pathways in two representative light-duty vehicles: a passenger vehicle and a sport utility vehicle. We find that a battery electric vehicle (BEV) powered with natural gas-based electricity achieves around 40% life cycle emissions reductions when compared to conventional gasoline. Gaseous hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles have comparable life cycle emissions with conventional gasoline, offering limited reductions with 100-year global warming potential (GWP) yet leading to increases with 20-year GWP. Other liquid fuel pathways (methanol, ethanol, and Fischer-Tropsch liquids) have larger GHG emissions than conventional gasoline even when carbon capture and storage technologies are available. Life cycle GHG emissions of natural gas pathways are sensitive to the vehicle fuel efficiency, to the methane leakage rates of natural gas systems, and to the GWP assumed. With the current vehicle technologies, the break-even methane leakage rates of CNG, gaseous hydrogen FCEV, and BEV are 0.9%/2.3%, 1.2%/2.8%, and 4.5%/10.8% (20-year GVVP/100-year GWP). If the actual methane leakage rate is lower than the break-even rate of a specific natural gas pathway, that natural gas pathway reduces GHG emissions compared to conventional gasoline; otherwise, it leads to an increase in emissions.An increasing number of companies are expanding their environmental impact reduction targets and strategies to include their supply chains or whole product life cycles. In this paper, we demonstrate and evaluate an approach, where we used a hybrid Environmental Input-Output (EIO) database as a basis for corporate and product environmental footprint accounts, including the entire supply chain. We present three cases, where this approach was applied. Case study 1 describes the creation of total corporate carbon footprint accounts for three Danish regional healthcare organisations. In case study 2, the approach was used as basis for an Environmental Profit and Loss account for the healthcare company, Novo Nordisk A/S. Case study 3 used the approach for life cycle assessment of a tanker ship. We conclude that EIO-based analyses offer a holistic view of environmental performance, provide a foundation for decision-making within reasonable time and cost, and for companies with a large upstream environmental footprint, the analysis supports advancing their sustainability agenda to include supply chain impacts. However, there are implications when going from screening to implementing the results, including how to measure and monitor the effect of the different actions. Thus, future research should include more detailed models to support decision-making.The study implements the consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) to provide a market based perspective on how overall environmental impact will change when shifting glass fibres to flax fibres as reinforcements in composite fabrication. With certain assumptions, the marginal flax fibre supply is identified to be a combination of Chinese flax fibre (70%) and French flax fibre (30%). Due to inferior cultivars and coal-fired electricity in Chinese flax cultivation, the CLCA study reveals that flax mat-PP has 0.8-2 times higher environmental impact values than the glass mat-PP in most environmental impact categories over the production and end-of-life (EoL) phases. For purpose of providing potential trajectories of marginal flax fibre supply, additional scenarios: the "all French fibre", and "all Chinese fibre" are evaluated formulating the lower and upper boundaries in terms of environmental impact change, respectively. A "the attributional fibre supply mix" scenario is supplied as well. All of these scenarios are useful for policy analysis.An original methodology for the Water Footprint Assessment (WFA) of a Product for the wine-making industry sector is presented, with a particular focus on the evaluation procedure of the grey water. Results obtained with the proposed methodology are also presented for an Italian case study. The product was analyzed using a life-cycle approach, with the aim of studying the water volumes of each phase according to the newly-released ISO 14046 international standard. The functional unit chosen in this study is the common 0.75 liter wine bottle. An in-house software (V.I.V.A.) was implemented with the goal of accounting for all the contributions in a cradle-to-grave approach. At this stage, however, minor water volumes associated with some foreground and background processes are not assessed. The evaluation procedure was applied to a case study and green, blue, and grey water volumes were computed. Primary data were collected for a red wine produced by an Umbrian wine-making company. Results are in accordance with global average water footprint values from literature, showing a total WF of 632.2 L/bottle, with the major contribution (98.3%) given by green water, and minor contributions (1.2% and 0.5%) given by grey and blue water, respectively. A particular effort was dedicated to the definition of an improved methodology for the assessment of the virtual water volume required to dilute the load of pollutants on the environment below some reference level (Grey WF). The improved methodology was elaborated to assure the completeness of the water footprint assessment and to overcome some limitations of the reference approach. As a result, the overall WF can increase up to 3% in the most conservative hypotheses.A shrimp farmer in Taiwan practices innovation through trial-and-error for better income and a better environment, but such farmer-based innovation sometimes fails because the biological mechanism is unclear. Systematic field experimentation and laboratory research are often too costly, and simulating ground conditions is often too challenging. To solve this dilemma, we propose a decision support framework that explicitly utilizes farmer experiential knowledge through a participatory approach to alternatively estimate prospective change in shrimp farming productivity, and to co-design options for improvement. Data obtained from the farmer enable us to quantitatively analyze the production cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission with a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. We used semi-quantitative graphical representations of indifference curves and mixing triangles to compare and show better options for the farmer. Our results empower the farmer to make decisions more systematically and reliably based on the frequency of heterotrophic bacteria application and the revision of feed input. We argue that experiential knowledge may be less accurate due to its dependence on varying levels of farmer experience, but this knowledge is a reasonable alternative for immediate decision-making. More importantly, our developed framework advances the scope of LCA application to support practically important yet scientifically uncertain cases.Building owners are encouraged to reduce energy use in order to both contribute to national energy-saving goals and reduce the costs of heating and operation. It is important to choose the most optimal renovation measures available so as to achieve cost-effective energy use while maintaining excellent indoor environments, without sacrificing architectural quality or negatively affecting the environment. Building owners and managers often have neither the time nor the expertise required to properly evaluate the available renovation options before making a final decision. Renovation measures are often calculated to repay investments in a short time, rather than taking into account life-cycle costs (LCC), despite the fact that a thoughtful, comprehensive renovation is often more cost-effective in the long run. This paper presents a systematic approach for evaluating different renovation alternatives based on a number of sustainability criteria. The methodology has been verified using three multi-family apartment buildings in Sweden. The benefit of using the proposed methodology is made clear through a comparison between the different renovation alternatives from a sustainability perspective, and will hopefully serve as encouragement to choose renovation measures which involve marginally increased investments but lead to significant environmental and social benefits in the long-term.Thermal systems installed in museums should guarantee the maintenance of the optimal hygrothermal parameters ranges for the conservation of their collection materials. Considering the preservation of historic buildings, according to their historical and landscaping constraints, not all the thermal system typologies could be installed in these buildings' typologies. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to present some indications for the choice of the best thermal system solutions for a considered historic museum building, called Vittoriale degli Italiani, in the north of Italy, taking into account their installation feasibility and their related environmental impacts. The methodology includes a monitoring of the current hygrothermal parameters as well as the assessment of design heat and cooling loads related to the maintenance of the optimal hygrothermal parameters ranges for the conservation of collection materials. In addition, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of each selected system typology is considered for highlighting the most eco-friendly solution among the suitable ones. The obtained results highlights the feasible thermal system solutions able to maintain the hygrothermal parameters between the optimal ranges with a lower environmental impact in the Vittoriale degli Italiani historic museum building.The excessive use of fossil fuels has led to global warming and air pollution. To solve these problems, interest in new renewable energy system (NRE system) has increased in recent years. In particular, photovoltaic, solar thermal heating, fuel cell and ground source heating system are actively implemented for achieving the zero energy building. Since the initial investment cost of the NRE system is quite expensive, it is necessary to conduct a feasibility study from the life cycle perspective. Therefore, this study aimed to develop the process for the implementation of NRE system in a building for the optimal design. This study was conducted with four steps: (i) establishing the basic information for the system installation; (ii) selecting key factors affecting system performances; (iii) making possible alternatives of the system installation; and (iv) selecting optimal system by considering environmental and economic effect. The proposed process could enable the final decision-maker to easily and accurately determine the optimal design of the NRE systems from the economic and environmental efficiency in the early design phase. The process could also be applied to any other NRE system and could be extended to any other country in the global environment.The brown algae Fucus vesiculosus, Laminaria saccharina and Alaria esculenta were subjected to hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) for 15 min at 350 degrees C in batch microautoclaves. Further optimization was carried out in view of optimizing the biocrude oil yield, varying the temperature from 330 to 370 degrees C. The maximum conversion to biocrude was 29.4 +/- 1.1 wt.% at 360 degrees C for A. esculenta. The reaction pathways for macroalgae HTL and its capability for recycling nutrients were also investigated. The aqueous phase showed potential for a partial recovery of the nitrogen (21.2-28.6 wt.%) and sulfur (25.8-34.6 wt.%) from the initial biomass, and an almost total recovery of potassium and sodium. Results indicate that HTL as a sole conversion method to produce biofuel as single product is not recommended for macroalgae due to the low conversion to biocrude oil. At such conditions, its use as post-treatment for the remaining biomass after extracting valuable compounds (especially from the carbohydrate fraction) might be more interesting, and is suggested as the future direction for research. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Algae are considered an important sustainable feedstock for lipid extraction to produce food ingredients, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products and biofuels. Next to the costs for cultivation, this route is especially hindered by the energy intensity of drying algae prior to extraction and solvent recovery afterwards. Most commonly used lipid extraction methods that can be applied on wet algae biomass were reviewed in this paper. In this work the methods for wet extraction of algae lipids using traditional organic solvents, supercritical CO2 and CO2 switchable solvents are compared with dry extraction on an energy consumption basis. Conceptual process designs have been made to calculate and compare the energy flows. Results show that a significant positive energy balance for lipid extraction is only achieved using a switchable solvent extraction method, making this a very promising method for extracting lipids from algae for use in energy applications. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The life cycle (LC) of ethanol extracted from Miscanthus has been evaluated to identify the potential location for the Miscanthus-based ethanol industry in Ontario, Canada to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and minimize the production cost of ethanol. Four scenarios are established considering the land classes, land use, and cropping patterns in Ontario, Canada. The net energy consumption, emissions, and cost of ethanol are observed to be dependent on the processing plant location and scenarios. The net energy consumption, emissions, and cost vary from 12.9 MJ/L to 13.4 MJ/L, 0.79 $/L to 0.84 $/L, and 0.45 kg-CO(2)e/L to 1.32 kg-CO(2)e/L, respectively, which are reliant on the scenarios. Eastern Ontario has emerged as the best option. This study reveals that Miscanthus is a potential feedstock for the ethanol industries in Ontario, even if it is cultivated on marginal land. This study also highlights the contribution of energy crops (Miscanthus) to avoid the potential technical and economic constraints of lignocellulosic biomass for the renewable energy industry. Miscanthus may help avoid competition with food crops for prime land (higher quality land that is suitable for food crops), avoid the food versus fuel debate, help meet the ethanol demand, and achieve the GHG emissions abatement target of Canada.Stringent emissions regulations in cities and the high amount of daily miles driven by taxi vehicles enforce the need to renew these fleets with more efficient and cleaner technologies. Hybrid vehicles are potential candidates due to their enhanced powertrain, and slower battery depletion and fewer lifetime issues, relative to full electric vehicles. This paper proposes a methodology to analyze the best theoretical hybrid powertrain candidate with maximum in-use efficiency, minimum life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, and minimum additional cost, for a Lisbon taxi fleet case study. A multi-objective genetic algorithm integrated with a vehicle simulator is used to achieve several trade-off optimal solutions for different driving patterns. Potential improvements in taxi carbon footprint are discussed as a function of its lifetime, urban/extra-urban driving and maintenance/fuel life cycle uncertainty. Hybrid powertrains reveal to be advantageous comparatively to the conventional vehicle, especially in urban conditions. Specifically optimized solutions could reduce in-use energy consumption by 43%-47% in urban driving, and 27%-34% in extra-urban driving conditions, and reduce life cycle emissions by 47%-49% and 34%-36% respectively, relative to the conventional taxi. A financial gain of 50 $/km/fleet in extra-urban and 226 $/km/fleet in urban routes could be achieved by replacing the taxi fleet with the optimal solutions.Mandated Environmental Protection Agency biofuel qualifications focused on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil fuel use are limited in perspective and have the potential to encourage burden shifting. When a broader host of environmental impacts are examined, environmental trade-offs often exist when biofuels are compared to gasoline. Multivariate analysis methods examining a wide variety of weighting value systems and methodology assumptions were used to determine process design options with the lowest overall environmental impact. A multivariate environmental analysis was applied to the dilute acid pre-treatment process followed by enzymatic hydrolysis and the fermentation process for converting loblolly pine, eucalyptus, natural hardwood, switchgrass, and sweet sorghum biomass to ethanol. The influence of co-product treatment method choices, inclusion of direct land-use change, and electrical grid assumptions were examined using 16 different weighting methods to create a single score result. Biofuel system rankings based on GHG emissions following the Renewable Fuel Standards 2 (RFS2) methods were very sensitive to the co-product treatment method, inclusion of land-use change emissions, and energy grid assumptions. The multivariate analysis ranking was heavily influenced by other environmental impacts resulting from the production of process chemicals used in ethanol conversion. Weighting methods examined had no influence on the environmental preference ranking of the biofuel scenarios. Additionally, the biofuel ranking based on the RFS2 methodology was different than the ranking following the multivariate approach examining additional impacts. These findings demonstrate a robust approach to biofuel life cycle assessment (LCA) scenario analysis and suggest that the limited scope of the RFS2 environmental analysis could result in burden shifting. (C) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe need for sustainable production of food, feed, and fuel for a growing global population with minimum pressure on land use and other ecological impacts is a major challenge. The aim of the current study is to pre-screen available biomass types to prepare for a system-wide sustainability assessment in related biorefinery value chains. The study describes the use of multiple-criteria decision-making techniques as tools for assessing criteria and to draw preferences among the alternatives. Thirteen biomass types (classified as yellow, green, and woody) are evaluated with respect to 15 criteria. The criteria are classified under the three assessment parameters: supply potential, biomass properties, and potential environmental gain/losses. Pair-wise comparisons of the alternatives are carried out in an outranking method (PROMETHEE) on the basis of their ratings (on a 1-5 scale) and weights assigned to the criteria. Weighting factors of the criteria are calculated by using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The study shows that the net outranking flow for the most preferred biomass types are: grass-clover 2.8, wheat-straw 1.2 and willow 1, representing the biomass categories green, yellow and woody, respectively. The overall order of the preferred biomass types is grass-clover, pure grass, alfalfa from the green category; straw based on wheat and barley from the yellow category; and willow from the woody category. Furthermore, irrespective of whether or not the raw materials are processed in integrated biorefineries, preferences on biomass types are also important in the context of their sustainable conversions in related biorefinery platforms (e.g. straw in a sugar-based lignocellulosic biorefinery and grass-clover in a green biorefinery). (C) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe push to find alternatives to fossil fuels has driven research and consumption of biofuels. Recent actions in the United States have placed an emphasis on the use of renewable fuels for improved sustainability of government operations. In 2013, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) measured atmospheric emissions from two navigation vessels consuming three different fuel types and found that biofuels have the potential to lower atmospheric emissions. These fuels have widely different production processes, however, and a full life-cycle assessment is necessary to provide a complete picture of these biofuels. The goal of this study was to identify whether transitioning navigation vessels to operate on biodiesel would have the potential to lower human health and environmental impacts. This study focuses on the complete life cycle of these fuels in USACE marine vessels by employing a well-to-wheels life-cycle assessment comparing the impacts of a 100% soy-based biodiesel and an algal-based biodiesel blend to a conventional diesel. Overall, soybean-based biodiesel had lower impacts compared to algal-based biodiesel. Impacts from conventional diesel were generally lower than algal-based biodiesel, but impacts between conventional diesel and soybean-based biodiesel were mixed. While greenhouse gas emissions during the use phase were reduced for the biofuels (after considering only the non-biogenic fraction of carbon emission), a complete look at the life-cycle resulted in cases where emissions could be greater than conventional diesel. Biodiesel impacts depended greatly on modeling assumptions made in the life-cycle system boundaries and inventory such as allocation method and assumptions about feedstock growth and harvesting. Published 2015. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.The current trend in biomass conversion technologies is toward more efficient utilization of biomass feedstock in multiproduct biorefineries. Many life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies of biorefinery systems have been performed but differ in how they use the LCA methodology. Based on a review of existing LCA standards and guidelines, this paper provides recommendations on how to handle key methodological issues when performing LCA studies of biorefinery systems. Six key issues were identified: (i) goal definition, (ii) functional unit, (iii) allocation of biorefinery outputs, (iv) allocation of biomass feedstock, (v) land use, and (vi) biogenic carbon and timing of emissions. Many of the standards and guidelines reviewed here provide only general methodological recommendations. Some make more specific methodological recommendations, but these often differ between standards. In this paper we present some clarifications (e.g. examples of research questions and suitable functional units) and methodological recommendations (e.g. on allocation). (C) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe integration of agriculture and aquaculture with anaerobic digestion is a popular practice at small Asian farms as a way of producing energy and fish, i.e. providing a better nutrient balance and resource recycling. Concerns are raised whether the resource efficiency of such system is better or worse relative to the monoculture system. In this study, we focused on quantifying the resource demand of two integrated Pig-Biogas-Fish farms in Vietnam. The analysis was performed by using the exergy concept: exergy flow analysis (ExFA) at process level and Cumulative Exergy Extraction from Natural Environment (CEENE) at life cycle level. Results showed that such integrated systems considerably relied on land (68% farm A and 54% farm B, mainly for pig feed production) and water (28% farm A and 42% farm B, mainly for aquaculture). It can also be concluded that the intensive aquaculture practice had a higher feed input than the semi-intensive one integrated with pig and biogas production; however, the latter system had a higher CEENE value to deliver a similar mass (i.e. one kilogram) of product at farm gate. This is mainly caused by a dramatically low areal yield of the integrated aquaculture, corresponding to an inefficient water use (16 m(3) kg(-1) fingerlings and 10 m(3) kg(-1) fish) therefore identified as the resource hotspot. Improvements could be achieved through a better water management in aquaculture and an increased biogas utilization, preventing any leakages. Fertilizing the fish pond with manure-based digestate instead of fresh manure and/or rising the application rate might be a more efficient way to reduce pelleted fish feed consumption, although further research on such options are needed. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A need for improvement of food waste (FIAT) pre-treatment methods has been recognized, but few life cycle assessments (LCA) of FIN management systems have considered the pre-treatment with respect to input energy, loss of organic material and nutrients for anaerobic digestion (AD) and/or further treatment of the refuse. The objective of this study was to investigate how FW pre-treatment efficiency impacts the environmental performance of waste management, with respect to global warming potential (GWP). The modeling tool EASETECH was used to perform consequential LCA focusing on the impact of changes in mass distribution within framework conditions that were varied with respect to biogas utilization and energy system, representing different geographical regions and/or different time-frames. The variations of the GWP due to changes in pre-treatment efficiency were generally small, especially when biogas and refuse were substituting the same energy carriers, when energy conversion efficiencies were high and slurry quality good enough to enable digestate use on land. In these cases other environmental aspects, economy and practicality could be guiding when selecting pre-treatment system without large risk of sub-optimization with regards to GWP. However, the methane potential of the slurry is important for the net LCA results and must be included in the sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, when biogas is used as vehicle fuel the importance of pre-treatment is sensitive to assumptions and approach of modelling marginal energy which must be decided based on the focus and timeframe of the study in question. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a new life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to model life cycle impact of materials that integrates both Cradle-to-Grave (C2G) and Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) approaches. The new approach, also known as the resource loop, has the capability to capture both C2G and C2C lifecycles of most products, processes or policies. The C2C LCA model represents the footprint of a product, process or policy that never ends (i.e., recycled or reused). It reflects the footprint of a product, process or policy that terminates at the end of its useful life (i.e., disposed or landfilled). In this paper, Material and Energy Flow Analysis (MEFA) is integrated into the C2C LCA model to enhance the model's capability to capture and integrate material and energy information internal and external of LCA. The flows are relabeled "leaks" and "feeds", of which the material and energy could leak out of or feed into the life cycle system. The "leaks" and "feeds" reflect the flows of materials and energy in and out of the life cycle process. They can also be integrated with the life cycles of other product, process or policy. Such integration is a step closer toward a more comprehensive LCA model for a finished product that contains multiple material and energy flows (e.g., a building). Resource loop (RL) reflects the material and energy flows and loops of one or more complex systems more accurately. The RL incorporates leaks and feeds that reflect the reality of a product's lifecycle. Through data collected from selected sources, the paper illustrates the use of the construction steel RL. For every 1 kg of construction steel product made and disposed, 0.74 kg was found to remain in the loop through reuse or recycling. The remaining 0.26 kg ends up in landfills representing unrecoverable "leaks". (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment methodology along with water footprint analysis was used to assess the environmental impacts of a domestic rainwater harvesting system (RWH) in France. Firstly, the relevance of substituting drinking water (DW) with rainwater in a private individual household was studied. Secondly, the effect of several parameters namely construction of infrastructures, building scale and disinfection were evaluated. The quantification of environmental impacts was performed using Ecoinvent inventory data and Impact 2002+ evaluation method. The water footprint was assessed through the water stress indicator (WSI). From an environmental standpoint, the RWH system has only slightly higher impact than the DW system. The consumption of electricity for pumping generates the strongest impact. The analysis of the WSI showed that the RWH system can relieve a stress on water resources where it exists. Consideration of infrastructures and disinfection turns environmental impacts significantly higher in all impact categories. Setting up the RWH system at bigger scale, i.e., building scale, is a bit less favoured than the RWH system at household scale. This study aims at pointing out areas of improvement which need to be further studied to make RWH systems more sustainable. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Nevada has recently installed eight solar PV systems with a cumulative nameplate capacity of 2.4 MW that scale from 3 kW to 1145 kW. These systems supply approximately 40% of the total electricity used at DRI's Reno and Las Vegas campuses. This work explored greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts and economic performance of these PV systems by developing and applying comprehensive life cycle analysis (LCA) combined with economic analysis. The LCA model was built using data appropriate for each type of panel used in the DRI systems. Power output was estimated using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) model, called PVWatts (R). The performance of PVWatts (R) was verified by comparison with actual measurements from one of DRI's PV systems over an entire year. Lifecycle metrics quantified for the DRI systems include GHG intensity, energy payback time, cost payback time, and cost of avoided CO2. Manufacturing of PV modules is the major contributor to total lifecycle impacts of a solar PV system. The main benefits are solar electricity's lower GHG intensity and lifecycle energy use compared with typical grid electricity. Model results showed the 25-year GHG intensity of DRI's PV systems to be 35-58 g CO(2)e/kW h, and the lifecycle energy use to be 0.586-0.898 MJ/kW h. The cost payback times and return on investment (ROI) varied with system size. For the six systems larger than 50 kW, the cost payback times ranged from 14.4 to 26.7 years, and the 25-year ROI ranged from 0.95 to 2.0. The cost per tonne CO2e avoided by displacing grid electricity was between $100 and $180, which is 2-3 times as high as estimated costs for carbon capture from pulverized coal power plants. The modeled benefits of the PV systems are dependent upon the power mix of the grid electricity that is being displaced. As the grid becomes "cleaner" by elimination of coal and greater use of renewables, the CO2 reduction benefits are diminished. Changing from a "business as usual" scenario to cleaner grid scenarios was shown to reduce the GHG benefits of installed PV systems by up to 40%. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The establishment of perennial crops has emerged as a very viable option for biomass-based energy production mainly due to their comparative ecological advantages over annual energy crops. This study is based on data collected from a field trial between 2002 and 2012 and was carried out with the main objective of evaluating the yield and quality performance of miscanthus and switchgrass using different harvest dates and N fertilization regimes (0 kg, 40 kg, 80 kg). Over the whole plantation period (including three years of establishment period), the mean yield of miscanthus was 16.2 t DM ha(-1) a(-1), while switchgrass yielded 10.2 t DM ha(-1) a(-1). In miscanthus, each increase in fertilizer level increased the N content in the harvested biomass, whereas in switchgrass, no significant difference was recorded for 0 kg and 40 kg N levels. The effect of N fertilization on ash was significant but independent of the crop. Both miscanthus and switchgrass biomass samples from the late harvests had a significantly lower N content than those from the early harvests. A Life Cycle Assessment covering the conducted field work and inputs of this trial showed relatively low energy input and emissions connected to the cropping of miscanthus. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle cost and environmental impacts of electric vehicles are very uncertain, but extremely important for making policy decisions. This study presents a new model, called the Electric Vehicles Regional Optimizer, to model this uncertainty and predict the optimal combination of drivetrains in different U.S. regions for the year 2030. First, the life cycle cost and life cycle environmental emissions of internal combustion engine vehicles, gasoline hybrid electric vehicles, and three different Electric Vehicle types (gasoline plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, gasoline extended range electric vehicle, and all-electric vehicle) are evaluated considering their inherent uncertainties. Then, the environmental damage costs and the water footprint of the studied drivetrains are estimated. Additionally, using an Exploratory Modeling and Analysis method, the uncertainties in the life cycle cost, environmental damage cost, and water footprint of studied vehicle types are modeled for different U.S. electricity grid regions. Finally, an optimization model is coupled with Exploratory Modeling and Analysis to find the ideal combination of different vehicle types in each U.S. region for the year 2030. The findings of this research will help policy makers and transportation planners to prepare our nation's transportation system for the influx of electric vehicles. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study deals with the investigation into optimum insulation thickness of installed inside building pipe network of VRF (variable refrigerant flow) systems. Optimum insulation thickness, energy savings over a lifetime of 10 years and payback periods are determined for high pressure gas pipelines, low pressure gas pipelines and low pressure liquid pipelines under the heating-only and cooling-only modes of the three-pipe VRF system using R-410A as refrigerant. By using the P-1-P-2 method, the value of the amount of the net energy savings is calculated. Under heating mode of VRF system, while the optimum insulation thickness varies between 16 and 20 mm depending on the pipe sections of high pressure gas pipeline, it varies from 11 to 13 mm for the pipe sections of low pressure liquid pipeline. Under cooling mode of VRF system, the optimum insulation thickness varies between 7 and 8 mm for pipe sections of low pressure gas pipeline and low pressure liquid pipeline. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Spatial variability in yields and greenhouse gas emissions from soils has been identified as a key source of variability in life cycle assessments (LCAs) of agricultural products such as cellulosic ethanol. This study aims to conduct an LCA of cellulosic ethanol production from switchgrass in a way that captures this spatial variability and tests results for sensitivity to using spatially averaged results. The Environment Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model was used to calculate switchgrass yields, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from crop production in southern Wisconsin and Michigan at the watershed scale. These data were combined with cellulosic ethanol production data via ammonia fiber expansion and dilute acid pretreatment methods and region-specific electricity production data into an LCA model of eight ethanol production scenarios. Standard deviations from the spatial mean yields and soil emissions were used to test the sensitivity of net energy ratio, global warming potential intensity, and eutrophication and acidification potential metrics to spatial variability. Substantial variation in the eutrophication potential was also observed when nitrogen and phosphorus emissions from soils were varied. This work illustrates the need for spatially explicit agricultural production data in the LCA of biofuels and other agricultural products.Silicon carbide and gallium nitride, two leading wide band gap semiconductors with significant potential in electric vehicle power electronics, are examined from a life cycle energy perspective and compared with incumbent silicon in U.S. light-duty electric vehicle fleet. Cradle-to-gate, silicon carbide is estimated to require more than twice the energy as silicon. However, the magnitude of vehicle use phase fuel savings potential is comparatively several orders of magnitude higher than the marginal increase in cradle-to-gate energy. Gallium nitride cradle-to-gate energy requirements are estimated to be similar to silicon, with use phase savings potential similar to or exceeding that of silicon carbide. Potential energy reductions in the United States vehicle fleet are examined through several scenarios that consider the market adoption potential of electric vehicles themselves, as well as the market adoption potential of wide band gap semiconductors in electric vehicles. For the 2015-2050 time frame, cumulative energy savings associated with the deployment of wide band gap semiconductors are estimated to range from 2-20 billion GJ depending on market adoption dynamics.Treatment and water reuse in decentralized systems is envisioned to play a greater role in our future urban water infrastructure due to growing populations and uncertainty in quality and quantity of traditional water resources. In this study, we utilized life-cycle assessment (LCA) to analyze the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of an operating Living Machine (LM) wetland treatment system that recycles wastewater in an office building. The study also assessed the performance of the local utility's centralized wastewater treatment plant, which was found to be significantly more efficient than the LM (79% less energy, 98% less GHG emissions per volume treated). To create a functionally equivalent comparison, the study developed a hypothetical scenario in which the same LM design flow is recycled via centralized infrastructure. This comparison revealed that the current LM has energy consumption advantages (8% less), and a theoretically improved LM design could have GHG advantages (24% less) over the centralized reuse system. The methodology in this study can be applied to other case studies and scenarios to identify conditions under which decentralized water reuse can lower GHG emissions and energy use compared to centralized water reuse when selecting alternative approaches to meet growing water demands.The present study analyses the environmental impact of the process to produce mycelium seeds of the Agaricus bisporus variety. This study integrates the life cycle assessment (LCA) within models of production systems as a tool for decision making regarding the environmental impact of the process and subprocesses conducted. The present research shows the value of the environmental impacts of the product, according to the standards established in the identification and evaluation of impacts through the LCA. Each subprocess, including the overall process, has been deeply analysed. All entries involved in the process were considered, and all processes were simulated with the software SimaPro (R) using Leiden 2000 CML as the calculus methodology. The research identifies the subprocesses with a greater impact on the overall process. Thus, it is found that the rye preparation has the largest impact indicators, particularly the cooking and mixing phase due to the high demand of resources and energy sources. CO2 emissions produced in the seed preparation phase are remarkably high, specifically in the stage of germination. The activity with less impact is the creation of a culture medium, because it is a manual process with no machinery and with a low energy demand. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite large efforts there are still methodological challenges to bring life cycle modeling closer to agricultural reality. Here, we focus on the inclusion of the effects occurring between the crops grown in the same agricultural field in temporal succession. These so called crop-rotation effects are caused by changes in physical, chemical and biological properties of the agricultural land over time (presence and availability of different micro and macronutrients, soil structure, soil texture, phytosanitary conditions, presence of weeds, etc.) due to the rotation of crops. Since a huge number of parameters contribute to crop-rotation effects, they cannot be easily measured. Therefore, LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) studies with system boundaries containing only one vegetation period have a limited ability to include these effects unless explicit modeling measures have been taken to include individual crop-rotation effects. Existing approaches for the inclusion of crop-rotation effects are described, e.g. via transferring certain amounts of nutrients and their environmental burdens to subsequent crops. Still, many crop-rotation effects between crops are not covered in recent LCA methodology; corresponding gaps are identified and described. Examples include reduced input of agrochemicals via improved phytosanitary condition, stabilization of yields via reduction of harvest failures, improved yields via improved soil texture, soil structure and improved conditions for soil organisms. Overall, most crop-rotation effects are not properly addressed in current LCA practice. Thus, LCA results and the quality of derived recommendations are negatively affected for example incentives for the (unlimited) removal of crop residues are set based on LCA results without considering potential adverse effects on soil fertility. In other words, these gaps might lead to unintended free-rider problems. A new approach for the modeling of crop-rotation effects is suggested. It consists of six steps. First, align the system boundary during the inventory analysis to the level of the whole crop rotation system; second, determine all inputs of the whole crop rotation; third, do the same for the outputs; fourth, convert all outputs to a common agriculture-specific denominator, the so-called Cereal Unit; fifth, calculate an output-specific allocation share using the ratio of each individual output to the sum of all outputs of the crop rotation; and sixth, apply the allocation shares to the sum of each input-type resulting in the output-specific allocated input One major advantage of this approach is the integration of crop-rotation systems into LCA, including all relationships between the individual crops of the crop rotation. Using this approach, LCA practice becomes able to depict crop rotations more accurately and to avoid the current practice of ignoring the effects between individual crops. It might enable LCA to consider the fundamental agricultural principle of crop rotations and to include interactions between one crop and the subsequent crop. Since these crop-rotation effects influence soil fertility, yields and overall sustainability of agricultural systems, the reliability of the evaluation of environmental impacts might be affected. Thus, the ability to consider the entire spectrum of crop rotation effects should be integrated into agricultural LCAs. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The conversion from conventional to organic management of olive growing has many benefits, such as increase of biodiversity, reduction of soil erosion and lower environmental impact. Since olive represents a main crop in the Mediterranean area, from a social, economic as well as environmental point of view, the aim of this paper has been to determine if the conversion from conventional to organic olive growing can increase the profitability of the farmer in Sicilian farms. Economic analysis has been carried out by means of cost-benefit analysis and financial indicators (NPV, B-0/C-0, IRR) show that organic growing would allow a better profitability for organic olive farms respect to conventional ones. This is primarily due to CAP subsidy and to market price of organic olive oil, which is currently 21% higher than the conventional olive oil price. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reconfiguration is required in the adaptation of manufacturing systems for facing the constants and unexpected changes in the customer requirements or distinct requirement to face different use modes or life cycle phases with advantages. The modularity is the most important design principle in reconfiguration theory. In consequence, the selection and implementation of modular architecture principles (MAPs) are crucial in the design and manufacturing of the product portfolio architecture or of the manufacturing system. In this paper, a first basic characterization of 11 modular architecture principles is shown, 2 of these 11 are new principles. Life cycle analysis (LCA) and a functional characterization focused in the advantages and limitations of each principle are considered. The aim of this work is to provide indicators for an objective selection of the best modular architecture solution in the design stage. A robust selection conduces to a major cost-effectiveness in the product design process, adding benefits such as longer useful life, optimal material usage, and easy adaptability to market requirements as well.Anaerobic digestion of source separated organic fraction of municipal solid waste is an increasing waste valorization alternative instead of incineration or landfilling of untreated biodegradable wastes. Nevertheless, a significant portion of biodegradable wastes entering the plant is lost in pre-treatments and post-treatments of anaerobic digestion facilities together with other improper materials such as plastics, paper, textile materials and metals. The rejected materials lost in these stages have two main implications: (i) less organic material enters to digesters and, as a consequence, there is a loss of biogas production and (ii) the rejected materials end up in landfills or incinerators contributing to environmental impacts such as global warming or eutrophication. The main goals of this study are (i) to estimate potential losses of biogas in the rejected solid materials generated during the pre- and post-treatments of two full-scale anaerobic digestion facilities and (ii) to evaluate the environmental burdens associated to the final disposal (landfill or incineration) of these rejected materials by means of Life Cycle Assessment. This study shows that there is a lost of potential biogas production, ranging from 8% to 15%, due to the loss of organic matter during pre-treatment stages in anaerobic digestion facilities. From an environmental point of view, the Life Cycle Assessment shows that the incineration scenario is the most favorable alternative for eight out of nine impact categories compared with the landfill scenario. The studied impact categories are Climate Change, Fossil depletion, Freshwater eutrophication, Marine eutrophication, Ozone depletion, Particulate matter formation, Photochemical oxidant formation, Terrestrial acidification and Water depletion. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production of biogas from energy crops, organic waste and manure has augmented considerably the amounts of digestate available in Flanders. This has pushed authorities to steadily introduce legislative changes to promote its use as a fertilising agent. There is limited arable land in Flanders, which entails that digestate has to compete with animal manure to be spread. This forces many anaerobic digestion plants to further treat digestate in such a way that it can either be exported or the nitrogen be removed. Nevertheless, the environmental impact of these treatment options is still widely unknown, as well as the influence of these impacts on the sustainability of Flemish anaerobic digestion plants in comparison to other regions where spreading of raw digestate is allowed. Despite important economic aspects that must be considered, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is suggested in this study to identify the environmental impacts of spreading digestate directly as compared to four different treatment technologies. Results suggest relevant environmental gains when the digestate mix is treated using the examined conversion technologies prior to spreading, although important trade-offs between impact categories were observed and discussed. The promising results of digestate conversion technologies suggest that further LCA analyses should be performed to delve into, for instance, the appropriateness to shift to nutrient recovery technologies rather than digestate conversion treatments. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment was carried out to evaluate the effects of two packaging waste prevention activities on the overall environmental performance of the integrated municipal waste management system of Lombardia region, Italy. The activities are the use of refined tap water instead of bottled water for household consumption and the substitution of liquid detergents packaged in single-use containers by those distributed loose' through self-dispensing systems and refillable containers. A 2020 baseline scenario without waste prevention is compared with different waste prevention scenarios, where the two activities are either separately or contemporaneously implemented, by assuming a complete substitution of the traditional product(s). The results show that, when the prevention activities are carried out effectively, a reduction in total waste generation ranging from 0.14% to 0.66% is achieved, corresponding to a 1-4% reduction of the affected packaging waste fractions (plastics and glass). However, the improvements in the overall environmental performance of the waste management system can be far higher, especially when bottled water is substituted. In this case, a nearly 0.5% reduction of the total waste involves improvements ranging mostly between 5 and 23%. Conversely, for the substitution of single-use packaged liquid detergents (0.14% reduction of the total waste), the achieved improvements do not exceed 3% for nearly all impact categories.Anaerobic digestion residue represents a nutrient rich resource which, if applied back on land, can reduce the use of mineral fertilizers and improve soil fertility. However, dewatering and further thermal processing of digestate may be recommended in certain situations. Limited applicability of digestate as fertilizer may appear, especially in winter, during the vegetation period or in areas where advanced eutrophication of arable land and water bodies is developing. The use of digestate may be also governed by different laws depending on whether it is treated as fertilizer, sewage sludge or waste. The aim of this paper is to present the effects of thermal treatment of solid fraction of digestate by drying followed by pyrolysis and gasification. Pyrolysis was carried out at the temperature of about 500 degrees C. During this process the composition of flammable gases was checked and their calorific value was assessed. Then, a comparative analysis of energy parameters of the digestate and the carbonizate was performed. Gasification of digestate was carried out at the temperature of about 850 degrees C with use of CO2 as the gasification agent. Gasification produced gas with higher calorific value than pyrolysis, but carbonizate from pyrolysis had good properties to be used as a solid fuel.Climate change has become one of the most significant environmental issues, of which about 40% come from the building sector. In particular, complex building projects with various functions have increased, which should be managed from a program-level perspective. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a program-level management system for the life-cycle environmental and economic assessment of complex building projects. The developed system consists of three parts: (i) input part: database server and input data; (ii) analysis part: life cycle assessment and life cycle cost; and (iii) result part: microscopic analysis and macroscopic analysis. To analyze the applicability of the developed system, this study selected University, a complex building project consisting of research facility and residential facility. Through value engineering with experts, a total of 137 design alternatives were established. Based on these alternatives, the macroscopic analysis results were as follows: (i) at the program-level, the life-cycle environmental and economic cost in 'U' University were reduced by 6.22% and 2.11%, respectively; (ii) at the project-level, the life-cycle environmental and economic cost in research facility were reduced 6.01% and 1.87%, respectively; and those in residential facility, 12.01% and 3.83%, respective; and (iii) for the mechanical work at the work-type-level, the initial cost was increased 2.9%; but the operation and maintenance phase was reduced by 20.0%. As a result, the developed system can allow the facility managers to establish the operation and maintenance strategies for the environmental and economic aspects from a program-level perspective. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.It has been advocated that life cycle thinking (La) should be applied in impact assessment (IA) to a greater extent, since some development proposals pose a risk of significant impacts throughout the interconnected activities of product systems. Multiple authors have proposed the usage of life cycle assessment (LCA) for such analytical advancement, but little to no research on this tool application has been founded in IA practice sib far. The aim of this article is to elaborate further on the gains assigned to application of LCA. The research builds on a review of 85 Danish IA reports, which were analysed for analytical appropriateness and application of LCT. Through a focus on the non-technical summary, the conclusion and the use of specific search words, passages containing LCT were searched for in each IA report. These passages were then analysed with a generic framework. The results reveal that LCT is appropriate for most of the IAs, but that LCA is rarely applied to provide such a perspective. Without LCA, the IAs show mixed performance in regard to LCT. Most Less do consider the product provision of development proposals, but they rarely relate impacts to this function explicitly. Many IAs do consider downstream impacts, but assessments of upstream, distant impacts are generally absent. It is concluded that multiple analytical gains can be attributed to greater application of LCA in IA practice, though some level of La already exists. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.We combined economic and life-cycle analyses in an integrated framework to ascertain greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities, production costs, and abatement costs of GHG emissions for ethanol and electricity derived from three woody feedstocks (logging residues only, pulpwood only, and pulpwood and logging residues combined) across two forest management choices (intensive and nonintensive) and 31 harvest ages (year 10-year 40 in steps of 1year) on reforested and afforested lands at the production level for slash pine (Pinus elliottii) in the Southern United States. We assumed that wood chips and wood pellets will be used to produce ethanol and generate electricity, respectively. Production costs and GHG intensities of ethanol and electricity were lowest for logging residues at the optimal rotation age for both forest management choices. Opportunity cost related with the change in rotation age was a significant determinant of the variability in the overall production cost. GHG intensity of feedstocks obtained from afforested land was lower than reforested land. Relative savings in GHG emissions were higher for ethanol than electricity. Abatement cost of GHG emissions for ethanol was lower than electricity, especially when feedstocks were obtained from a plantation whose rotation age was close to the optimal rotation age. A carbon tax of at least $25 and $38 Mg-1 CO(2)e will be needed to promote production of ethanol from wood chips and electricity from wood pellets in the US, respectively.Traditionally, wood fuels, like other bioenergy sources, have been considered carbon neutral because the amount of CO2 released can be offset by CO2 sequestration due to the regrowth of the biomass. Thus, until recently, most studies assigned a global warming potential (GWP) of zero to CO2 generated by the combustion of biomass (biogenic CO2). Moreover, emissions of biogenic CO2 are usually not included in carbon tax and emissions trading schemes. However, there is now increasing awareness of the inadequacy of this way of treating bioenergy, especially bioenergy from boreal forests. Holtsmark (2014) recently quantified the GWP of biogenic CO2 from slow-growing forests (GWP(bio)), finding it to be significantly higher than the GWP of fossil CO2 when a 100year time horizon was applied. Hence, the climate impact seems to be even higher for the combustion of slow-growing biomass than for the combustion of fossil carbon in a 100year timeframe. The present study extends the analysis of Holtsmark (2014) in three ways. First, it includes the cooling effects of increased surface reflectivity after harvest (albedo). Second, it includes a comparison with the potential warming impact of fossil fuels, taking the CO2 emissions per unit of energy produced into account. Third, the study links the literature estimating GWP(bio) and the literature dealing with the carbon debt, and model simulations estimating the payback time of the carbon debt are presented. The conclusion is that, also after these extensions of the analysis, bioenergy from slow-growing forests usually has a larger climate impact in a 100year timeframe than fossil oil and gas. Whether bioenergy performs better or worse than coal depends on a number of conditions.Growing awareness of the environmental performance of construction products and buildings brings about the need for a suitable method to assess their environmental performance. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become a widely recognised and accepted method to assess the burdens and impacts throughout the life cycle. This LCA-based information may be in the form of environmental product declarations (EPD) or product environmental footprints (PEF), based on reliable and verifiable information. All of these use LCA to quantify and report several environmental impact categories and may also provide additional information. To better understand on the one hand existing EPD programmes (EN 15804) for each country and on the other the recent developments in terms of EU reference document (e.g. PEF), the authors decided to write this review paper based on the outcomes of the EPD workshop that was held prior to SB13 Graz conference. This paper presents the state of the art in LCA and an overview of the EPD programmes in five European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland) based on the workshop in the first part and a comprehensive description and comparison of the PEF method and EN 15804 in the second part. In the last part, a general conclusion will wrap up the findings and results will provide a further outlook on future activities. The high number of EPD programmes underlines the fact that there is obviously a demand for assessments of the environmental performance of construction materials. In the comparison between and experiences of the different countries, it can be seen that more similarities than differences exist. A comparison between PEF and EPD shows differences, e.g. LCIA impact categories and recycling methodology. Independent of raising awareness of the construction material environmental performance, the existence of so many environmental claims calls for clarification and harmonisation. Additionally, construction materials being assessed in the voluntary approaches have to follow the harmonised approach following the principles of the European Construction Products Regulation (regulated) not to foster barriers of trade. The authors therefore highly appreciate the most recent activities of the sustainability of construction works (CEN/TC 350 committee Http://portailgroupe.afnor.fr/public_espacenormalisation/CENTC350/index.html) currently working on these issues at the EU level. Finally, the LCA community is further encouraged to increase the background life cycle inventory data and life cycle inventory modelling as well as the meaningfulness of certain environmental impact categories, such as toxicity, land use, biodiversity and resource usage.Alternative fuel options are gaining popularity in the vehicle market. Adopting alternative fuel options for public transportation compared to passenger vehicles contributes exponentially to reductions in transportation-related environmental impacts. Therefore, this study aims to present total air pollutant emissions and water withdrawal impacts through the lifetime of a transit bus with different fuel options. In consideration of market share and future development trends, diesel, biodiesel, compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG), hybrid (diesel-electric), and battery electric (BE) transit buses are analyzed with an input-output (IO)-based hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) model. In order to accommodate the sensitivity of total impacts to fuel economy, three commonly used driving cycles are considered: Manhattan, Central Business District (CBD), and Orange County Transit Authority (OCTA). Fuel economy for each of these driving cycles varies over the year with other impacts, so a normal distribution of fuel economy is developed with a Monte Carlo simulation model for each driving cycle and corresponding fuel type. Impacts from a solar panel (photovoltaic, PV) charging scenario and different grid mix scenarios are evaluated and compared to the nation's average grid mix impacts from energy generation to accommodate the lifetime electricity needs for the BE transit bus. From these results, it was found that the BE transit bus causes significantly low CO2 emissions than diesel and other alternative fuel options, while some of the driving cycles of the hybrid-powered transit bus cause comparable emissions to BE transit bus. On the other hand, lifetime water withdrawal impacts of the diesel and hybrid options are more feasible compared to other options, since electricity generation and natural gas manufacturing are both heavily dependent on water withdrawal. In addition, the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation's (NERC) regional electricity grid mix impacts on CO2 emissions and water withdrawal are presented for the BE transit bus. As an addition of current literature, LCA of alternative fuel options was performed in this paper for transit buses with the consideration of a wide variety of environmental indicators. Although the results indicate that BE and hybrid-powered buses have less environmental emissions, the US's dependency on fossil fuel for electricity generation continues to yield significant lifetime impacts on BE transit bus operation. With respect to water withdrawal impacts, we believe that the adoption of BE transit buses will be faster and more environmentally feasible for some NREC regions than for others.High concentration of suspended solids (SS)-fine fraction of eroded soil particles-reaching lotic environments and remaining in suspension by turbulence can be a significant stressor affecting the biodiversity of these aquatic systems. However, a method to assess the potential effects caused by SS on freshwater species in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase still remains a gap. This study develops a method to derive endpoint characterisation factors, based on a fate and effect model, addressing the direct potential effects of SS in the potential loss of aquatic invertebrate or algae and macrophyte species. Characterisation factors for the assessment of the direct effects of SS in the potential disappearance of macroinvertebrates, algae and macrophytes in 22 different European river sections were derived by combining both fate and effect factors. Fate factors reflect the environmental residence time of SS in river sections per unit of water volume in this same section. Effect factors were calculated from an empirical relationship between the potentially disappeared fraction (PDF) of aquatic species and the concentration of SS. These factors were determined based on a concentration-response function, on gross soil erosion data and detrimental concentrations of SS for different taxa in river sections. The product of fate with effect factors constitutes the characterisation factors for both macroinvertebrates, algae and macrophytes. The estimated EFs are higher for macroinvertebrates in almost all river sections under study, showing that the potential effects caused by SS throughout the water column are higher for macroinvertebrates than for algae and macrophytes. For macroinvertebrates, characterisation factors range between 2.8 x 10(-aEuro parts per thousand 7) and 3.1 x 10(-aEuro parts per thousand 3) PDF m(3) day mg(-1), whereas for algae and macrophytes, they range between 1.6 x 10(-aEuro parts per thousand 7) and 4.7 x 10(-aEuro parts per thousand 4) PDF m(3) day mg(-1). The developed method and the derived characterisation factors enable a consistent assessment and comparison of the potential detrimental effects of SS on aquatic invertebrate and macrophyte communities at different locations. Long-term, on-site monitoring of SS levels in the water column should be performed to understand the magnitude of the effects of SS on aquatic biota and to determine the taxa that are more sensitive to the SS stressor. This monitoring will improve the robustness of the proposed LCA method, the reliability of the characterisation factors, as well as the development of characterisation factors for a wider range of rivers.This study assesses life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy use, and freshwater use in wine grape production across common vineyard management scenarios in two representative growing regions (Napa and Lodi) of the US state of California. California hosts 90 % of US grape growing area, and demand for GHG emissions estimates of crops has increased due to consumer interest and policies such as California's Global Warming Solutions Act. The study's scope includes the annual cycle for wine grape production, beginning at raw material extraction for production of vineyard inputs and ending at delivery of wine grapes to the winery gate, and excludes capital infrastructure. Two hundred forty production scenarios were modeled based on data collected from land owners, vineyard managers, and third-party vineyard management companies. Thirty additional in-person interviews with growers throughout Napa and Lodi were also conducted to identify the diversity of farming practices, site characteristics, and yields (among other factors) across 90 vineyards. These vineyards represent a cross-section of the regional variability in soil, climate, and landscape used for wine grape production. Energy use and global warming potential (GWP) per metric ton (t) across all 240 production scenarios range between 1669 and 8567 MJ and 87 and 548 kg CO(2)e. Twelve scenarios were selected for closer inspection to facilitate comparison of the two regions and grower practices. Comparison by region shows energy use, GWP, and water use for typical practices were more than twice as great in Napa (6529 MJ/t, 456 kg CO(2)e/t, and 265 m(3) H2O/t) than Lodi (2759 MJ/t, 203 kg CO(2)e/t, and 141 m(3) H2O/t), but approximately 16 % greater on a per hectare basis. Hand harvest (versus mechanical harvesting) and frost protection processes in Napa contributed to higher values per hectare, and lower yields in Napa account for the even larger difference per metric ton. Hand harvesting and lower yields reflect the higher value of Napa wine grapes. The findings underscore the regional distinctions in wine grape production, which include different management goals, soils, and climate. When vineyards are managed for lower yields, as they are in Napa, energy, water, and GWP will likely be higher on a per mass basis. Strategies to reduce emissions in these regions cannot rely on increasing yields (a common approach), and alternative strategies are required, for example developing high-value co-products.Various fluoride adsorbents have been studied for removal of excess fluoride from drinking water to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) Guideline value of 1.5 mg/L. Production of these adsorbents emits contaminants that can affect human health and the environment, but the extent of these impacts is currently unknown. This study evaluates the environmental impacts of four low-cost and easy to use adsorbents: activated alumina, aluminum oxide amended wood char, bone char, and treated alum waste. The environmental impacts of these adsorbents were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The life cycle stages considered were raw material acquisition, adsorbent manufacturing, and waste management. The functional unit was defined as the quantity of adsorbent necessary to reduce the fluoride concentration of 100,000 L of water from 10 mg/L to the World Health Organization recommended drinking water level of 1.5 mg/L. Eco-indicator and the Tool for Reduction and Assessment of Chemicals and other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) were used to interpret the environmental impacts. The results indicate that the environmental impacts of these adsorbents vary greatly using a common functional unit of treating 100,000 L (100 m(3)) of fluoride-impacted water. A key determining factor for the impacts is the fluoride adsorption capacity of the adsorbent material because this affects how much material is required to produce safe water. Aluminum oxide amended wood char had the highest overall negative environmental impact in all impact categories, and the lowest adsorption capacity. The two adsorbents that performed the best (lowest environmental impact) were the bone char and the treated alum waste. The environmental impacts of the adsorbents can be reduced by increasing their fluoride adsorption capacity and/or carefully selecting key process components, such as the distance and means of transportation, particularly for activated alumina. Regeneration and reuse of spent adsorbents has the potential to minimize impacts to ecosystem quality.Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector is the goal of several current policies and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are seen as one option to achieve this goal. However, the introduction of BEVs in the fleet is gradual and their benefits will depend on how they compare with increasingly more energy-efficient internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). The aim of this article is to assess whether displacing ICEVs by BEVs in the Portuguese light-duty fleet is environmentally beneficial (focusing on GHG emissions), taking into account the dynamic behavior of the fleet. A dynamic fleet-based life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the Portuguese light-duty fleet was performed, addressing life-cycle (LC) GHG emissions through 2030 across different scenarios. A model was developed, integrating: (i) a vehicle stock sub-model of the Portuguese light-duty fleet; and (ii) dynamic LC sub-models of three vehicle technologies (gasoline ICEV, diesel ICEV and BEV). Two metrics were analyzed: (i) Total fleet LC GHG emissions (in Mton CO2 eq); and (ii) Fleet LC GHG emissions per kilometer (in g CO2 eq/km). A sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the influence of different parameters in the results and ranking of scenarios. The model baseline projected a reduction of 30-39 % in the 2010-2030 fleet LC GHG emissions depending on the BEV fleet penetration rate and ICEV fuel consumption improvements. However, for BEV introduction in the fleet to be beneficial compared to an increasingly more efficient ICEV fleet, a high BEV market share and electricity emission factor similar or lower to the current mix (485 g CO2 eq/kWh) need to be realized; these conclusions hold for the different conditions analyzed. Results were also sensitive to parameters that affect the fleet composition, such as those that change the vehicle stock, the scrappage rate, and the activity level of the fleet (11-19 % variation in GHG emissions in 2030), which are seldom assessed in the LCA of vehicles. The influence of these parameters also varies over time, becoming more important as time passes. These effects can only be captured by assessing Total fleet GHG emissions over time as opposed to the GHG emissions per kilometer metric. These results emphasize the importance of taking into account the dynamic behavior of the fleet, technology improvements over time, and changes in vehicle operation and background processes during the vehicle service life when assessing the potential benefits of displacing ICEVs by BEVs.A large number of highway bridges have been constructed in China since 1980s. Most of the aging bridges are in need of strengthening, which will lead to consuming big amounts of material and energy resources, producing air emissions and solid waste. This paper made a life cycle assessment for a highway bridge with four different strengthening plans by using Eco-indicator 99 to figure a total environmental impact score of the bridge. Based on analyzing the life cycle assessment (LCA) investigations of bridges, the adopted LCA method for the highway bridge tracks materials and energy resources through the various stages of the bridge life cycle including production, transportation, construction, strengthening, and demolition, considering the impact of vehicle detours during strengthening construction, to calculate environmental impact for ecosystem quality, human health, energy, and resources. This is done for four strengthening schemes, which are traditionally compared based only on the basis of economic cost. In order to account for the variability of critical input variables, a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to estimate the variability of environmental scores associated with the transportation distance, the average fuel consumption for each vehicle, detouring distance, the structure closure period, and maintenance times. Ten thousand iterations were conducted based on previous studies. The analysis shows that the maintenance phase alone contributes about 66 % of the total environmental impact (including detouring stage 50 %, repaving bridge deck 12 %, strengthening 4 %), followed by material production stage (approximately 40 %). Of the four strengthening plans, plan 1 and plan 3 have relatively greater contributions in terms of environmental damage while the cost budgets are much lower. On the contrary, plan 2 and plan 4 have lower environmental burdens but cost much more. Sensitivity analysis shows that the damage to resources and ecosystem quality are more sensitive to the variation of parameters. A life cycle assessment for a highway bridge in China with four different strengthening plans is conducted by using Eco-indicator 99 to figure a total environmental impact score of the bridge. It determines that the maintenance phase contributes the most to the environment deterioration. This study also shows that the energy consumptions and pollutant emissions related to traffic disruption during maintenance operations should not be excluded. Regarding the strengthening plans, it can be concluded that the environmental impact of bonding carbon fiber-reinforced polymer is fewer than that of bonding steel plates.The social life cycle impact assessment (SLCIA) incorporates either a type I or type II characterization model. We improved both models by introducing explicit causality by using statistic modeling through development of (1) a quantitative approach to simultaneously identify impact pathways of type II models with multiple impact categories, targeting SLCIA method developers and (2) a new hybrid model to establish causality between inventory indicators and subcategories, targeting social life cycle assessment practitioners. Causality establishments for type II impact pathways and the new hybrid model are the core requirements for this study. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to identify the impact pathways for type II characterization models, therefore resolving the issues of unobservability and unvalidatibility in type II models. Using country-level data from the World Bank, the method was applied to an example impact pathway at macro-scale. We applied Bayesian networks in our hybrid model to address the issues of relevance and representativeness in type I models, assuming the unobservable social performances of an organization are the causes for observable inventory indicators. The method was applied to a hypothetical example for the stakeholder of the worker at company scale. Temporal precedence (i.e., lag effects) was incorporated into both models. The results from the confirmatory SEM supported our hypotheses that comprised the impact pathway from economic development to health outcomes, which were fully mediated by health expenditures and health access. A 1-year lag between each impact category resulted in the best model fit. Limitations on the data as well as subjective choice of indicators to represent impact categories are subject to criticism. The results from the hybrid model showed that, depending on the likelihood of the inventory indicators, the posterior probability of subcategories either deviated from their prior probability or behaved similarly. The construction of proper conditional probability tables and the choice of probability distribution for the likelihood are major challenges for the hybrid model. This study was the first attempt in using statistic causal models to quantitatively identify unobservable impact pathways of the type II model and to develop a hybrid model for SLCIA. A SEM that incorporates temporal precedence enables identification of impact pathways with multiple unobservable impact categories. The hybrid model using Bayesian networks represents the subcategories in posterior probabilities instead of absolute scores, helping companies to better develop instructions for future management practices.Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in the aquaculture sector have included marine fish, freshwater fish, and shellfish species within closed (CAS), semiclosed (SCAS), and open aquaculture systems (OAS). The absence of a physical boundary separating open aquaculture systems from natural ecosystems has caused complications in determining the actual environmental conditions of individual aquaculture systems and has resulted in questionable LCA impact analysis results. This paper reviews how natural and anthropogenic factors were managed in the previous LCA studies for aquaculture systems. Ten recent peer-reviewed documents on the LCA study of various aquaculture systems have been selected for content analysis. The disparities between OAS, SCAS, and CAS were outlined. Natural and anthropogenic factors were then identified and analyzed to ascertain their impact on the LCA process. Natural factors such as seasonal variations, biological interactions, and flooding were indicated in the OAS, SCAS, and CAS. For anthropogenic factors, industrial energy inputs and human activities were stated in SCAS and OAS. None of the anthropogenic factors were considered in CAS as these systems are isolated distinctly from natural ecosystems. LCA studies of the OAS have a few approaches: the development of the virtual boundary, a longer period of data collection, harmonization with other environmental management tools, and the need to diversify the LCA study in various regions. For SCAS and OAS, the interaction between the aquaculture system and flood hazards, temporal changes, dilution effects due to the seasonal variation, disease, and local anthropogenic activities can be studied further. An LCA study of OAS will be more reliable if natural and anthropogenic factors are seen as supportive variables in determining the life cycle impact analysis.Uncertainty about the scale of future demand presents a challenge for infrastructure design. The attraction of flexible strategies, incorporating upgrade options that can be exercised when and if required, has been recognized for a long time. The techniques of real options allowed the benefits of flexible strategies to be quantified for the first time. A new and simplified methodology for real options analysis has been developed and implemented in software. It performs evaluation in both cost and environmental impact terms. A case study of a real highway in Spain was evaluated using the new methodology and software. Seven alternative strategies for the roadway (subgrade, base course, and surface course) were evaluated, six with upgrade options that are exercised if the traffic demand crosses specified thresholds. The rate of traffic growth, and also the discount rate for financial evaluation, were treated as uncertain variables. The highway was designed when the Spanish economy was growing strongly and a high roadway specification performed best. Before the highway was built the economy crashed and construction was canceled. Recalculation for the posteconomic shock conditions with lower traffic growth and a higher interest rate favored a lower highway specification with upgrade options. Sensitivity analysis shows how the specification choice varies with the values taken by the uncertain variables. A novel specification was proposed to maximize flexibility when there is high uncertainty about traffic growth, and evaluation showed that it performed better in many conditions. The methodology of evaluating flexible strategies could be used in many applications, including infrastructure for climate change adaptation.Packaging plays an important role in ensuring food safety and quality, and the development of active packaging, especially antimicrobial packaging, enables actively inhibiting/killing the microorganisms causing food spoilage and thus extending the product's shelf life. A survey of the publications revealed that generally 50% shelf life extension is possible. The goal of this study is to assess the overall environmental performance of the food and packaging system considering the effect of food loss reduction by using active packaging. A comparative life cycle assessment has been carried out, focusing on a case study: essential oil component-enabled packaging for fresh beef. Different scenarios were set up to contrast the situations of food using conventional packaging (current situation) and food using novel active packaging (containing active coating). Additionally, a sensitivity analysis has been integrated, aiming to identify the breakeven point of the balance. In the scenarios using the best-performance active packaging, it was shown that a breakeven point can be achieved across the four impact categories evaluated, including global warming, fossil energy demand, acidification potential and eutrophication potential. It is expected that the obtained results would serve as guidelines for active packaging development striving for a positive eco-profile of the food and packaging system. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Manure management contributes to adverse environmental impacts through losses of nitrogen (N), phosphorus, and carbon (C). In this study, we aimed to assess the potential of newly designed strategies for integrated manure management (IS) to reduce environmental impact. An important aspect of the strategies was that they prevented pollution swapping. Life cycle assessment was used to compute climate change (CC), fossil fuel depletion (FFD), terrestrial acidification (TA), marine eutrophication (ME), particulate matter formation (PMF), N use efficiency (NUE), and phosphorus over application rate (POA), relative to the crop,demand for N. We applied the IS to North West European practice (Ref) and included the Dutch current situation of progressive manure management (NL) to illustrate the potential of the IS to reduce environmental impact. Manure management in Ref included production and management of liquid and solid dairy cattle manure applied to maize and grass, and liquid pig manure applied to wheat A Monte Carlo uncertainty simulation was done to assess the effect of variation in N and C losses and N uptake by crops on the comparison with Ref, IS, and NL. Results showed that the IS reduced all environmental impacts in all manure product and crop combinations and more than doubled the NUE (70% compared with maximum 33% in Ref). Main causes were: segregation of pig and dairy cattle urine and feces inside the housing system reduced methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) emissions; addition of zeolite to solid dairy cattle manure reduced NH3 emission; sealed storages in all IS reduced volatilization of N and C; bioenergy production from the feces reduced the production of fossil electricity and heat; and finally N emissions in the field were reduced by ammonia emission reducing application techniques and improved application management (tillage, field traffic en synchronization of manure product application with crop demand). Compared with the Ref, NL had lower TA, PMF, POA, and higher NUE, except for solid cattle manure applied to grass. This result indicates that the Dutch regulations to reduce NH3 emissions were successful, but that CC can be improved. Compared with NW EU practice, IS reduced environmental impact up to 185% for CC, up to >700% for FFD, up to 96% for TA, up to 99% for ME, up to 100% for PMF, up to 110% for POA and more than doubled the NUE. We concluded that the designed IS avoid pollution swapping in the entire manure management system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae dewatering is one of the major process bottlenecks in terms of energy and cost, hindering further development of microalgae biofuels. Membrane filtration has the potential to overcome many drawbacks of conventional dewatering technologies. The major focus of this review is to evaluate the current state-of-the-art of membrane filtration technologies as well as to identify the factors that affect efficiency. The major metrics pertaining to system performance have been identified and compared across four membrane system configurations - cross-flow, submerged, dynamic, and forward osmosis. Previous reported life cycle impacts of various algae dewatering technologies were also examined and compared. The review revealed that trade-offs exist between different membrane configurations, yet there is limited understanding on the mechanisms, performance, and environmental implications of these algae dewatering systems. Further experimental and life cycle assessment studies are necessary to draw conclusions as to the most preferable configurations. The field would also greatly benefit from consistency in research and reporting frameworks. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental concerns regarding natural resource depletion have led to the cultivation of more renewable resources such as seaweed biomass. As the cultivation in Europe is still in its early stages, an estimation of the environmental sustainability may boost further development of this sector by highlighting its competitiveness. A case study on the resource footprint of Saccharina latissima production near the West coast of Ireland (18 ha of floating longlines) and France (0.6 ha of raft systems) is performed. The Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment (CEENE) method is used to quantify the exergy deprived from 8 types of natural resources (incl. marine resources) to produce 1 MJ(ex) biomass. For Ireland and France, results of the Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA) are 1.7 MJ(ex) MJ(ex)(-1) and 8.7 MJ(ex) MJ(ex)(-1), respectively. Compared to the footprint of microalgae and several terrestrial plants (sugar beets, maize and potatoes), typically showing values in the range of 0.92-3.88 MJ(ex) MJ(ex)(-1), seaweed production in North West Europe (especially in Ireland) is relatively resource-efficient. Moreover, the potential to improve the resource footprint of seaweed production is investigated; in the short-term, seaweed can be cultivated with a comparable life cycle resource demand as several land plants. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global livestock production is going to be more and more sophisticated in order to improve efficiency needed to supply the rising demand for animal protein of a growing, more urban and affluent population. To cope with the rising public importance of sustainability is a big challenge for all animal farmers and more industrialized operations especially. Confined animal farming operations (CAFO) are seen very critical by many consumers with regard to their sustainability performance, however, the need to improve the sustainability performance especially in the ecological and social dimension exists at both ends of the intensity, i.e., also for the small holder and family owned animal farming models. As in livestock operations, feed and manure contribute the majority to the three most critical environmental impact categories global warming potential (GWP), acidification (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP) any effort for improvement should start there. Intelligent combination of nutrient-, emission- and waste management in an integrated low emission farm (LEF) concept not only significantly reduces the environmental footprint in the ecological dimension of sustainability, but by producing renewable energy (heat, electricity, biomethane) with animal manure as major feedstock in an anaerobic digester also the economic dimension can be improved. Model calculations using new software show the ecological improvement potential of low protein diets using more supplemented amino acids for the Chinese pig production. The ecological impact of producing biogas or upgraded biomethane, of further treatment of the digestate and producing defined fertilizers is discussed. Finally, the LEF concept allows the integration of an insect protein plant module which offers additional ecological and economical sustain ability improvement potential in the future. Active stakeholder communication about implementation steps of LEF examples improves also the social aspect of sustainability. (C) 2015 Chinese Association of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.It is commonly accepted that the concentration of people in high-density urban city centers, which are typically dominated by medium-and high-rise buildings located close to public transit systems, offers greater overall energy efficiency and lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than lower-density expanded suburbs, which are dominated by low-rise single-family buildings and larger per-person automobile travel requirements. However, few studies have combined quantitative analyses of the life-cycle energy use of both buildings and transportation in both urban and suburban areas, especially in American cities. This work uses a variety of data sources to provide a quantitative comparison of the life-cycle energy consumption associated with residential life (including buildings, transportation, and supporting infrastructure) in prototypical downtown high-rises and suburban low-rises in and around Chicago, IL. We estimate that downtown high-rise living in Chicago, IL accounts for approximately 25% more life-cycle energy per person per year than suburban low-rise living, on average, contrary to some common beliefs (best estimates were similar to 141 and similar to 113 GJ/person/year, respectively). Building operational energy use was found to be the largest contributor of the total life-cycle energy in both the downtown high-rise and suburban low-rise cases, followed by vehicle operational energy.In this article, we address the public issue of mandatory Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) retail food labeling in the U.S., first by reviewing the policy arguments both in support and against labeling food containing GMOs; second, by describing the existing U.S. federal regulatory system pertaining to GMO labeling, and why it does not presently require labeling of food containing GMOs; third, by reviewing and interpreting the results of studies of American consumer attitudes toward mandatory GMO retail food labeling; fourth, by evaluating, through the utilization of issue life cycle analysis in the nonmarket environment, where the issue of GMO retail food labeling stands in the national public policy process; fifth, summarizing the state of scientific evidence addressing the safety of GMO foods and the existing regulatory and public policy environment for this issue; and sixth, offering legislative and litigation strategies for the mainstream food nonmarket strategy framework to formally assess the GMO industry to protect their interests and those of American consumers not concerned with GMO food ingredients, while offering a voluntary labeling strategy for firms responding to and recognizing the "rights" of American consumers who "choose" to purchase non-GMO food products.The present study concerns the ecodesign of the application of an aqueous nano-TiO2 suspension on a porous limestone used in historical monuments with a spraying system through the LCA methodology, in order to define the most critical aspects of the process and to try to minimize the environmental burden during the implementation of the application process. Because of the limited knowledge currently available regarding the effects that nano-TiO2 may have on the environment or human health, a precautionary approach has been adopted in all life cycle steps, to assess the risk of having nanoparticle emissions from a nanocoating surface and for workers, who can come into contact with or inhale the nanoparticles released. The energy-intensive operations in the application stage greatly contribute to the total environmental damage, while the impact generated by nanoparticle emissions during the use phase contributes 2.9%. In addition, the self-cleaning and de-polluting transparent titania coating produces a benefit of -0.13%.Modern civilization is facing the dichotomy of rapid development of infrastructure that makes concrete as most traded material on the earth other than water. However, the production of cement, key ingredient of concrete, releases roughly a tonne of CO2 into the environment with each tonne of cement production. The environmental concerns and sustainability issues associated with cement and concrete necessitate alternative and better approach in the construction. Nature, on the other hand, has a plethora of examples of sustainable habitats such as coral reefs, silk webs and ant hills. Recent advances in biotechnology have great potential of emulating nature's way of building in modern days infrastructures at a scale that would sustain increasing population. Further, many of the biological materials of nature, be it ceramics or polymeric composites formed in the process of biomineralization, provides basis for sustainable construction. This paper elaborates nature's way of construction based on biomineralization and discusses the progress of different biological pathways for sustainable construction. Main milestones achieved have been identified and the effect of biological intervention on the properties of structural materials has been highlighted. Variety of applications of biomineralization based technology in the construction has been reported. The paper briefly documents the future directions of the technology. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this paper is to compare, from an urban planning perspective, the choice between combined heat and power (CHP) and a ground-source heat pump (HP) as the energy systems of a new residential area in the light of the uncertainty related to the assessments. There has been a strong push globally for CHP due to its climate mitigation potential compared to separate production, and consequently it is often prioritized in planning without questioning. However, the uncertainties in assessing the emissions from CHP and alternative options in a certain planning situation make it very difficult to give robust decision guidelines. In addition, even the order of magnitude of the climate impact of a certain plan is actually difficult to assess robustly. With a case study of the new residential development of Harmalanranta in Tampere, Finland, we show how strongly the uncertainties related to (1) utilizing average or marginal electricity as the reference; (2) assigning emissions intensities for the production; and (3) allocating the emissions from CHP to heat and electricity affect the results and lead to varying decision guidelines. We also depict how a rather rarely utilized method in assigning the emissions from CHP is the most robust for planning support.Today, buildings are responsible for more than 40% of global energy used, and as much as 33% of global greenhouse gas emissions, both in developed and developing countries. In this paper, a life cycle energy (LCEA) and carbon dioxide emissions (LCCO(2)A) analysis of two residential buildings has been conducted. The study includes the literature review, the data used for such a comprehensive analysis, and methodology and provides an application of the methodology that considers two actual residential buildings constructed in Gaziantep, Turkey. The proposed model focused on building construction, operation and demolition phases to estimate total energy use and carbon emissions over a 50 year lifespan. Energy efficiency and emissions parameters are defined for the buildings per square meter basis. It is found that the operation phase is dominant in both urban and rural residential buildings and contributes 76-73% of the primary energy requirements and 59-74% of CO2 emissions, respectively. The embodied energy (EE) of the buildings accounts for 24-27% of the overall life-cycle energy consumption. The results show that, because of the differences in building structures, living standards and air conditioning habits, the life cycle energy demand in rural residential buildings is 18% lower than in urban conditions. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Electricity generated from nuclear power plants is generally associated with low emissions per kWh generated, an aspect that feeds into the wider debate surrounding nuclear power. This paper seeks to investigate how life-cycle emissions would be affected by including thorium in the nuclear fuel cycle, and in particular its inclusion in technologies that could prospectively operate open Th-U-based nuclear fuel cycles. Three potential Th-U-based systems operating with open nuclear fuel cycles are considered: AREVA's European Pressurised Reactor; India's Advanced Heavy Water Reactor; and General Atomics' Gas-Turbine Modular Helium Reactor. These technologies are compared to a reference U-fuelled European Pressurised Reactor. A life-cycle analysis is performed that considers the construction, operation, and decommissioning of each of the reactor technologies and all of the other associated facilities in the open nuclear fuel cycle. This includes the development of life-cycle analysis models to describe the extraction of thorium from monazitic beach sands and for the production of heavy water. The results of the life-cycle impact analysis highlight that the reference U-fuelled system has the lowest overall emissions per kWh generated, predominantly due to having the second-lowest uranium ore requirement per kWh generated. The results highlight that the requirement for mined or recovered uranium (and thorium) ore is the greatest overall contributor to emissions, with the possible exception of nuclear energy systems that require heavy water. In terms of like-for-like comparison of mining and recovery techniques, thorium from monazitic beach sands has lower overall emissions than uranium that is either conventionally mined or recovered from in-situ leaching. Although monazitic beach sands (and equivalent placer deposits) only form 30% of the overall known thorium ore deposits, it is expected that such deposits would generally be utilised first if thorium becomes a viable nuclear fuel. Overall, for these four nuclear energy technologies, the range of CO2(eq) emissions pet kWh generated (6.60-13.2 gCO(2)(eq)/kWh) appears to be low in comparison to the majority of electricity-generating technologies. (C) 2015 The Authors.Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was used to investigate thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of waste plastics such as prescription bottles (polypropylene/PP), high density polyethylene, landfill liners (polyethylene/PE), packing materials (polystyrene/PS), and foams (polyurethane/PU) into crude plastic oils. In the first phase of this investigation, a statistical design experiments approach identified reaction temperature and time as the most important factors influencing product oil yield. Kinetic parameters including activation energy determined for both catalytic and noncatalytic processes showed a reduction in activation energy for the catalytic reactions. In the second phase, the interactions of reaction temperature and time with a number of catalysts were investigated to determine the effect on the yield of crude plastic oil. It was found that Y-zeolites increased conversion at reduced temperature for PP and PE while spent fluid catalytic cracking and sulfated zirconia catalysts supported pyrolytic decomposition of PS and PU foams. Response surface methodology (RSM) was utilized to optimize TGA conditions for pyrolytic decomposition of PP. The results were then validated through batch scale experiments, and the resulting crude oils were characterized and distilled into motor gasoline, diesel #1, diesel #2, and vacuum gas oil fractions. Catalysts enhanced cracking at lower temperatures and narrowed the molecular weight (hydrocarbon) distribution in the crude oils. Chemical characterization of the crude oils indicated an increased gasoline-range fraction in oils obtained in the presence of catalyst while the distillate fractions were more evenly distributed among gasoline-range and diesel-range hydrocarbons in the absence of catalyst. The distillates obtained were characterized for fuel properties, elemental composition, boiling point, and molecular weight distribution. The fuel properties of the diesel-range distillate (diesel fraction) were comparable to those of ultralow sulfur diesel (ULSD).There is actually a common consensus in using biological technologies for the treatment of organic wastes. For instance, composting is used for aerobic biological stabilisation of organic wastes. The amount of materials and the variety of wastes composted are increasing. However, composting is inherently a process generating gaseous emissions. Greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from compost are of special relevance for global warming. Although a part of these gases is inherent to the process, another important part can be abated by low-cost biological technologies such as biofiltration and its variations. This article reviews the emission of GHG from composting gases, from detection and measurement to minimisation and abatement. Special emphasis is given to the measurement of GHG to obtain reliable emission factors for the different composting technologies. These factors will help to compare different waste treatment options based on overall analysis tools such as life cycle assessment. A specific chapter is related to carbon and nitrogen dynamics in the composting matrix, and their consequences on the production of carbon and nitrogen gases. Finally, we present a review of the best available practices to minimise the GHG emissions from composting and the final treatment of composting off-gases.The worldwide use of chromium-based processes in tanneries generates increased concerns about their related environmental burdens. Cleaner production alternatives for leather production are being proposed, based on the optimization of specific aspects or criteria, for instance, reducing demand for specific materials and energy, or reducing local toxicological emissions. While improvement on individual characteristics of the process is certainly to be favored, a more comprehensive evaluation of alternatives is also needed to prevent the risk of shifting the burden to increase global load while addressing one specific critical factor of production. This work aims to discuss the importance of a multicriteria, multiscale approach to address cleaner production strategy costs and benefits. For this, materials balance, an economic approach, and emergy (with an "m") accounting methods are applied to selected unhairing/liming, pickling/tanning and wastewater treatment steps in a tannery process, which was chosen as a case study. Results show that the assessed recycling cleaner production strategies assessed allow the manufacturer to reduce by one half the amount of water used and the demand for chemicals up to 4% with respect to the business-as-usual process, at the expense of increasing electricity demand by 10%. Economic cost-to-benefit ratio was 25$ benefits per 1$ invested, as well as an emergy-based cost-to-benefit of 33Em$ per lEm$ invested, of course these improvements were limited to the three investigated process steps. The improvement in cost/benefit ratios indicates that converting scenario #0 into #1 is favorable under economic and emergy views. However, when the two scenarios are investigated from the point of view of the imbalance in local and renewable resource use versus imported and nonrenewable use, the emergy method shows a small overall increase in renewability (from 3.51% to 3.85%), a low, but expected, emergy yield ratio equal to 1, and a high environmental loading ratio (24.95 and 27.47). While the environmental cost benefit ratio shows that recycling is a favorable option, the emergy performance indicators highlight that the efficiency of recycling is still insufficient and improvements in the tanning processes are needed to ensure renewability and sustainability. A number of process chemicals were involved in the investigated tannery operations, which required emergy evaluations. As a side result of this study, the Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) of SO2, H2SO4 Na2SO4, HCL, Na2S, NaOH, CaO, Ca(OH)(2), Cr2O3, MnSO4, and Al(OH)(3), were also calculated thus adding to the emergy database about chemicals. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to assess, in a systematic way, the environmental aspects and its potential environmental impacts and resources used throughout a product's life cycle. It is widely accepted and considered as one of the most powerful tools to support decision-making processes used in ecodesign and sustainable production in order to learn about the most problematic parts and life cycle phases of a product and to have a projection for future improvements. However, since Life Cycle Assessment is a cost and time intensive method, companies do not intend to carry out a full version of it, except for large corporate ones. Especially for small and medium sized enterprises, which do not have enough budget for and knowledge on sustainable production and ecodesign approaches, focusing only on the most important possible environmental aspect is unavoidable. In this direction, finding the right environmental aspect to work on is crucial for the companies. In this study, a multi-criteria decision-making methodology, Analytic Network Process is proposed to select the most relevant environmental aspect. The proposed methodology aims at providing a simplified environmental assessment to producers. It is applied for a hand blender, which is a member of the Electrical and Electronic Equipment family. The decision criteria for the environmental aspects and relations of dependence are defined. The evaluation is made by the Analytic Network Process in order to create a realistic approach to inter-dependencies among the criteria. The results are computed via the Super Decisions software. Finally, it is observed that the procedure is completed in less time, with less data, with less cost and in a less subjective way than conventional approaches. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.As with life cycle assessment (LCA) studies in general, agricultural LCAs often rely on static and outdated inventory data, but literature suggests that agricultural systems may be highly dynamic. Here, we applied life cycle impact assessment methods to investigate the trends and underlying drivers of changes in non-global environmental impacts of major crops in the US. The results show that the impact per hectare corn and cotton generated on the ecological health of freshwater systems decreased by about 50% in the last decade. This change is mainly due to the use of genetically modified (GM) crops, which has reduced the application of insecticides and relatively toxic herbicides such as atrazine. However, the freshwater ecotoxicity impact per hectare soybean production increased by 3-fold, mainly because the spread of an invasive species, soybean aphid, has resulted in an increasing use of insecticides. In comparison, other impact categories remained relatively stable. By evaluating the relative ecotoxicity potential of a large number of pesticides, our analysis offers new insight into the benefits associated with GM crops. Our study also implies that because different impact categories show different degrees of changes, it is worthwhile focusing on the rapidly changing categories when updating agricultural LCA databases under time and resource constraints.Radical changes to current national energy systems including energy efficiency and the decarbonization of electricity will be required in order to meet challenging carbon emission reduction commitments. Technology explicit energy system optimization models (ESOMs) are widely used to define and assess such low-carbon pathways, but these models only account for the emissions associated with energy combustion and either do not account for or do not correctly allocate emissions arising from infrastructure, manufacturing, construction and transport associated with energy technologies and fuels. This paper addresses this shortcoming, through a hybrid approach that estimates the upstream CO2 emissions across current and future energy technologies for the UK using a multiregional environmentally extended input-output model, and explicitly models the direct and indirect CO2 emissions of energy supply and infrastructure technologies within a national ESOM (the UK TIMES model). Results indicate the large significance of nondomestic indirect emissions, particularly coming from fossil fuel imports, and finds that the marginal abatement cost of mitigating all emissions associated with UK energy supply is roughly double that of mitigating only direct emissions in 2050.Appropriate use of fertilizer in crop production to limit the environmental impact is essential for sustainable agriculture. While much is known about the environmental impact of fertilizer production only a limited amount of data is available covering the whole fertilizer supply chain. Up to now no comparison was done on the environmental impact of different fertilizer types (i.e., complex fertilizer, bulk blend fertilizer and single nutrient fertilizer). A cradle-to-field life cycle assessment (LCA) for the fertilizer supply chain in Germany, from extraction of raw materials, via fertilizer production, transportation and storage until final application in the field was carried out. Two different complex fertilizers were compared with single nutrient fertilizers (containing only one nutrient) and bulk blend fertilizers (containing more than one nutrient as a dry mixture). The five most relevant impact categories (i.e., climate change, acidification, eutrophication, fossil fuel depletion and resource depletion) were selected to cover different environmental impacts. Additionally, a scenario analysis was carried out focusing on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, as new catalytic reduction techniques for the manufacturing of nitrogen (N) containing fertilizers are available that can lead to drastic reductions of N2O emissions. Production of fertilizers causes high values in the impact categories climate change, fossil fuel depletion and acidification, whereas resource depletion is dominant for production and transportation. For the impact category eutrophication, the application of fertilizer is the most important factor. For a fertilizer strategy with low phosphorus application rate, a bulk blend or single nutrient fertilizer with calcium ammonium nitrate is the most sustainable choice, while for a fertilizer strategy with a balanced nutrient formula, a bulk blend or single nutrient fertilizer with calcium ammonium nitrate or a standard complex fertilizer are sustainable options. Scenario calculations with reduced N2O emission during the production process reveals that this reduction technique is not relevant for urea based fertilizers leading to the conclusion that products containing urea need different emission reduction techniques to keep up with the environmental improvements of other nitrogen fertilizers. With an optimized fertilization strategy the environmental burden can be reduced up to 15%. As nitrogen application rates strongly affect the LCA results it is essential that the right amounts of N are used and that for N fertilizer production the best available technique should be installed. Furthermore, a careful consideration concerning the fertilizer product type should be part of every LCA of food and agricultural products, as this has a great impact on LCA results. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bioenergy deployment offers significant potential for climate change mitigation, but also carries considerable risks. In this review, we bring together perspectives of various communities involved in the research and regulation of bioenergy deployment in the context of climate change mitigation: Land-use and energy experts, land-use and integrated assessment modelers, human geographers, ecosystem researchers, climate scientists and two different strands of life-cycle assessment experts. We summarize technological options, outline the state-of-the-art knowledge on various climate effects, provide an update on estimates of technical resource potential and comprehensively identify sustainability effects. Cellulosic feedstocks, increased end-use efficiency, improved land carbon-stock management and residue use, and, when fully developed, BECCS appear as the most promising options, depending on development costs, implementation, learning, and risk management. Combined heat and power, efficient biomass cookstoves and small-scale power generation for rural areas can help to promote energy access and sustainable development, along with reduced emissions. We estimate the sustainable technical potential as up to 100EJ: high agreement; 100-300EJ: medium agreement; above 300EJ: low agreement. Stabilization scenarios indicate that bioenergy may supply from 10 to 245EJyr(-1) to global primary energy supply by 2050. Models indicate that, if technological and governance preconditions are met, large-scale deployment (>200EJ), together with BECCS, could help to keep global warming below 2 degrees degrees of preindustrial levels; but such high deployment of land-intensive bioenergy feedstocks could also lead to detrimental climate effects, negatively impact ecosystems, biodiversity and livelihoods. The integration of bioenergy systems into agriculture and forest landscapes can improve land and water use efficiency and help address concerns about environmental impacts. We conclude that the high variability in pathways, uncertainties in technological development and ambiguity in political decision render forecasts on deployment levels and climate effects very difficult. However, uncertainty about projections should not preclude pursuing beneficial bioenergy options.Cellulosic ethanol is widely believed to offer substantial environmental advantages over petroleum fuels and grain-based ethanol, particularly in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. The environmental impacts of biofuels are largely caused by precombustion activities, feedstock production and conversion facility operations. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is required to understand these impacts. This article describes a field-to-blending terminal LCA of cellulosic ethanol produced by biochemical conversion (hydrolysis and fermentation) using corn stover or switchgrass as feedstock. This LCA develops unique models for most elements of the biofuel production process and assigns environmental impact to different phases of production. More than 30 scenarios are evaluated, reflecting a range of feedstock, technology and scale options for near-term and future facilities. Cellulosic ethanol, as modeled here, has the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to petroleum-based liquid transportation fuels, though substantial uncertainty exists. Most of the conservative scenarios estimate GHG emissions of approximately 45-60g carbon dioxide equivalent per MJ of delivered fuel (g CO(2)eMJ(-1)) without credit for coproducts, and 20-30g CO(2)eMJ(-1) when coproducts are considered. Under most scenarios, feedstock production, grinding and transport dominate the total GHG footprint. The most optimistic scenarios include sequestration of carbon in soil and have GHG emissions below zero g CO(2)eMJ(-1), while the most pessimistic have life-cycle GHG emissions higher than petroleum gasoline. Soil carbon changes are the greatest source of uncertainty, dominating all other sources of GHG emissions at the upper bound of their uncertainty. Many LCAs of biofuels are narrowly constrained to GHG emissions and energy; however, these narrow assessments may miss important environmental impacts. To ensure a more holistic assessment of environmental performance, a complete life cycle inventory, with over 1100 tracked material and energy flows for each scenario is provided in the online supplementary material for this article.On-farm anaerobic digestion (AD) of wastes and crops can potentially avoid greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but incurs extensive environmental effects via carbon and nitrogen cycles and substitution of multiple processes within and outside farm system boundaries. Farm models were combined with consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) to assess plausible biogas and miscanthus heating pellet scenarios on dairy farms. On the large dairy farm, the introduction of slurry-only AD led to reductions in global warming potential (GWP) and resource depletion burdens of 14% and 67%, respectively, but eutrophication and acidification burden increases of 9% and 10%, respectively, assuming open tank digestate storage. Marginal GWP burdens per Mg dry matter (DM) feedstock codigested with slurry ranged from -637kg CO(2)e for food waste to +509kg CO(2)e for maize. Codigestion of grass and maize led to increased imports of concentrate feed to the farm, negating the GWP benefits of grid electricity substitution. Attributing grass-to-arable land use change (LUC) to marginal wheat feed production led to net GWP burdens exceeding 900kg CO(2)e Mg-1 maize DM codigested. Converting the medium-sized dairy farm to a beef-plus-AD farm led to a minor reduction in GWP when grass-to-arable LUC was excluded, but a 38% GWP increase when such LUC was attributed to marginal maize and wheat feed required for intensive compensatory milk production. If marginal animal feed is derived from soybeans cultivated on recently converted cropland in South America, the net GWP burden increases to 4099kg CO(2)e Mg-1 maize DM codigested - equivalent to 55 Mg CO(2)e yr(-1) per hectare used for AD-maize cultivation. We conclude that AD of slurry and food waste on dairy farms is an effective GHG mitigation option, but that the quantity of codigested crops should be strictly limited to avoid potentially large international carbon leakage via animal feed displacement.This paper provides an overview of biomass with carbon capture and storage (Bio-CCS or BECCS) at the systems level. It summarises the relevant information from the recent 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describes the progress made since earlier reports and considers additional results recently published in literature. The focus is hereby not on the technical challenges but rather on the surrounding sustainability issues. Bio-CCS shows significant potential to achieve net CO2 removal from the atmosphere at a cost that is comparable to conventional CCS technologies. However, uncertainties remain due to the little experience with large-scale Bio-CCS demonstration plants, gaps in climate policies and accounting frameworks, missing financial instruments, unclear public acceptance and complex sustainability issues. A major conclusion is that the deployment of Bio-CCS cannot take place in isolation, thus will require an approach addressing the inextricable links within the food-water-energy-climate nexus. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food production is among the highest human environmental impacting activities. Agriculture itself accounts for 70-85 % of the water footprint and 30 % of world greenhouse gas emissions (2.5 times more than global transport). Food production's projected increase in 70 % by 2050 highlights the importance of environmental impacts connected with meat production. The production of various meat substitutes (plant-based, mycoprotein-based, dairy-based, and animal-based substitutes) aims to reduce the environmental impact caused by livestock. This article outlined the comparative analysis of meat substitutes' environmental performance in order to estimate the most promising options. The study considered "cradle-to-plate" meal life cycle with the application of ReCiPe and IMPACT 2002+ methods. Inventory was based on literature and field data. Functional unit (FU) was 1 kg of a ready-to-eat meal at a consumer. The study evaluated alternative FU (the equivalent of 3.75 MJ energy content of fried chicken lean meat and 0.3 kg of digested dry matter protein content) as a part of sensitivity analysis. Results showed the highest impacts for lab-grown meat and mycoprotein-based analogues (high demand for energy for medium cultivation), medium impacts for chicken (local feed), and dairy-based and gluten-based meat substitutes, and the lowest impact for insect-based and soy meal-based substitutes (by-products allocated). Alternative FU confirmed the worst performance of lab-grown and mycoprotein-based analogues. The best performing products were insect-based and soy meal-based substitutes and chicken. The other substitutes had medium level impacts. The results were very sensitive to the changes of FU. Midpoint impact category results were the same order of magnitude as a previously published work, although wide ranges of possible results and system boundaries made the comparison with literature data not reliable. The results of the comparison were highly dependable on selected FU. Therefore, the proposed comparison with different integrative FU indicated the lowest impact of soy meal-based and insect-based substitutes (with given technology level development). Insect-based meat substitute has a potential to be more sustainable with the use of more advanced cultivation and processing techniques. The same is applicable to lab-grown meat and in a minor degree to gluten, dairy, and mycoprotein-based substitutes.There is an apparent convention within both consequential and attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) to assume a 1:1 substitution ratio between functionally equivalent product systems. However, this convention may not be compatible with the purpose of consequential LCA, which is to model the actual consequences of the decision at hand. This paper explores the implications of the convention using the illustrative example of a 1 % tax on whole milk. A consequential LCA which assumes a 1:1 substitution ratio between two functionally equivalent product systems is compared with the results of an analysis that estimates the actual substitution ratio based on empirical data. Cross-price elasticities of demand for possible competitor products are modelled using a linear approximated almost ideal demand system (LA-AIDS). The results show a 1:0.52 substitution ratio between whole and low fat milk, rather than a 1:1 substitution ratio. Depending on the consequential LCA values for whole and low fat milk, the 1:1 convention could underestimate the greenhouse gas emission reductions from the tax by over 400 %. The results suggest that it is highly important to model actual substitution ratios between competing product systems in order to capture the consequences of the decision at hand. As a subsidiary contribution, the paper also shows the importance of modelling the displacement effects of milk fat co-products, which are generally not considered in the existing LCA literature on milk.Europe is a consolidated continent, characterized by a wide range of ancient buildings that urgently need refurbishments, especially in seismic zones such as Portugal, where structural reinforcement is imperative. However, demolishing and reconstructing also contributes to real estate renovation. In these cases it is simpler to build earthquake safe buildings that comply with current standards of comfort and quality. The question now is whether refurbishment (and what type) is environmentally and/or economically profitable or needed compared with new construction. To answer this question, this work used the life cycle approach in two complementary approaches: a literature review that theoretically compares different LCA works for refurbished and new buildings; and a real LCA and LCC case study for a classified ancient Portuguese building located in Lisbon, where real refurbishment is compared with hypothetical demolition, followed by complete reconstruction on the same site, respecting the same architecture, constraints and demands, and using reinforced concrete and clay brick walls. This issue is very urgent in Portugal, because of its extensive stock of ancient buildings needing refurbishment works. Moreover, there are few studies reporting whether the refurbishment can be economically and environmentally more efficient, according to the Portuguese economic environment. Thus, this study mostly contributes to this debate, first at a national level, and then as a new case study reporting this kind of benchmarking, and its significance is related to the actual results measured at the construction site for the traditional refurbishment works made in Portugal. This comparison showed that structural refurbishment seems to be environmentally more positive. Nevertheless, in the case-study gains were not as high as commonly suggested, mainly because of the massive use of structural steel and shotcrete required for the seismic and structural strengthening of the ancient building. Finally, as far as the economic approach is concerned, this paper concludes that in those conditions rebuilding would make more economic sense than refurbishing. These conclusions indicate that an integrated decision-making process is needed and also stress the development of new financial facilities for refurbishment and, especially, the development of less costly solutions that could save scarce resources and incentives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.At present, the final purpose of livestock production is not only to increase yields but also to improve sustainability. In this study, the characterized results of a life cycle assessment are integrated into an emergy evaluation in terms of potential environmental services to reflect the impact on the sustainability of livestock production systems due to harmful outputs. Concurrently, the life cycle thinking is introduced into the study to diagnose the key points that will improve the sustainability of the system. The assessment was performed through a case study on a large-scale pig farming system in North China. The results of traditional indices indicate that the unit emergy value, emergy yield ratio, emergy loading ratio and emergy sustainability index of the large-scale pig farming system are 5.44E+05 sej/J, 1.00, 3.23 and 0.31, respectively, and reflect the low sustainability of the system. The revised unit emergy value and environmental loading ratio are increased by 76.7% and by 100.3%, respectively, and the revised emergy sustainability index is reduced by 51.6% when the harmful outputs of the large-scale pig farming system are considered. It is clear that the harmful outputs affect the sustainability of the pig production system significantly. Newly designed indices, the resource use efficiency and the unit environmental impact are 8.32E+05 sej/J and 4.17E+05 sej/J, respectively, supporting the efficiency and sustainability from the inputted resource types and outputted perspectives. Furthermore, the case study also shows that from the perspective of the pig life cycle, the improvement of feed composition and labor productivity in the grow-finisher step and the rearing level of breeding pigs are the most important points for the optimization of the large-scale pig farming system. This study is a general supplement to the gap in the assessment of large-scale pig farming in China, and the evaluation results that propose the integration of emergy analysis and life cycle assessment enables a broader view of the sustainability of the production process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is generally assumed that industrial symbiosis creates economic and environmental benefits for all firms involved, though few quantifications have been produced in the literature. The environmental performance of an industrial symbiosis network of biofuel producers on the island of Handelo, Sweden will be quantified using an approach from previous literature. This method allows the benefits provided by exchanges to be partitioned to firms taking part in the industrial symbiosis network, which may have implications for tax incentives, marketing, expansion and environmental awareness. The current industrial symbiosis network has been found to have benefits compared to reference scenarios produced. However, methodological choices, such as the choice of reference scenario and allocation methods may significantly influence the results of the environmental performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The livestock sector is in urgent need for more sustainable feed sources, because of the increased demand for animal-source food and the already high environmental costs associated with it. Recent developments indicate environmental benefits of rearing insects for livestock feed, suggesting that insectbased feed might become an important alternative feed source in the coming years. So far, however, this potential environmental benefit of waste-fed insects is unknown. This study, therefore, explores the environmental impact of using larvae of the common housefly grown on poultry manure and food waste as livestock feed. Data were provided by a laboratory plant in the Netherlands aiming to design an industrial plant for rearing housefly larvae. Production of 1 ton dry matter of larvae meal directly resulted in a global warming potential of 770 kg CO2 equivalents, an energy use of 9329 MJ and a land use of 32 m(2), caused by use of water, electricity, and feed for flies, eggs and larvae. Production of larvae meal, however, also has indirect environmental consequences. Food waste, for example, was originally used for production of bio-energy. Accounting for these indirect consequences implies, e.g., including the environmental impact of production of energy needed to replace the original bio-energy function of food waste. Assuming, furthermore, that 1 ton of larvae meal replaced 0.5 ton of fishmeal and 0.5 ton of soybean meal, the production of 1 ton larvae meal reduced land use (1713 m(2)), but increased energy use (21,342 MJ) and consequently global warming potential (1959 kg CO2-eq). Results of this study will enhance a transparent societal and political debate about future options and limitations of larvae meal as livestock feed. Results of the indirect environmental impact, however, are situation specific, e.g. in this study food waste was used for anaerobic digestion. In case food waste would have been used for, e.g., composting, the energy use and related emission of greenhouse gases might decrease. Furthermore, the industrial process to acquire housefly larvae meal is still advancing, which also offers potential to reduce energy use and related emissions. Eventually, land scarcity will increase further, whereas opportunities exist to reduce energy use by, e.g., technical innovations or an increased use of solar or wind energy. Larvae meal production, therefore, has potential to reduce the environmental impact of the livestock sector. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Post-consumer cushioning packaging waste made from expanded polystyrene or other conventional polymers is rarely recycled because of technical and economic constraints. Expanded packaging can also be made from renewable and biodegradable raw materials. In this case, the use of a renewable feedstock, such as starch, can reduce the oil dependence and biodegradability can enable the organic recycling of the final product. In this study, a life cycle assessment was performed on a prototype (a port-hole spacer for washing machines) developed in a research project by applying a biodegradable plastic expanded by means of microwave technology. Port-hole spacers for washing machines are mainly made from expanded polystyrene. Life cycle assessment results indicate that the prototype is characterized by a lower consumption of non-renewable energy resources (-50%) and lower greenhouse gas emissions (-60%) compared to the benchmark (expanded polystyrene packaging). This was mainly due to the use of a renewable feedstock (starch). The photochemical ozone creation potential resulted significantly lower (-90%) thanks to the abolition of the expanding agent (i.e. pentane) used in the polystyrene expansion process. The robustness of the results was assessed through data quality checks and a Monte Carlo simulation. A sensitivity analysis showed that the environmental profile of the prototype is mainly affected by the Land Use Change for global warming potential and by the type of starch used for eutrophication and acidification. The type of electricity used (i.e. fossil-based or renewable) for the microwave expansion process also affects the results. The use of biodegradable packaging makes it possible to increase the level of recovery by means of organic recycling. Considering the organic recycling rate in the countries where the washing machines are supplied it has been estimated that the cushioning packaging waste that goes to landfill would go from 52% (current scenario with expanded polystyrene packaging) to 37%, whereas recycling would go from 0.5% (mechanical recycling of expanded polystyrene) to 40% (organic recycling of the prototype). This paper shows that the use of a packaging system potentially suitable for inclusion in the industrial composting process opens new routes for waste treatment, thus increasing diversion from landfill. It can be argued that the combination of the use of renewable resources, and the possibility to get a compostable packaging product give rise to interesting future outlook. On one site a reduction of oil dependence can be achieved and, on the other side, the diffusion of packaging products not easy to recycle as post-consume waste and characterized by a very long persistence in the environment is reduced. This paper contributes to the current discussion on the benefits of bio-based and bio-degradable materials, whose production volumes are steadily increasing. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the main environmental problems faced by the global community in the twenty-first century is unquestionably the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (Fuller and Crawford 2011). To face this challenge, the European Union (EU) has set the so-called 2020 Horizon as one of its main objectives: limiting the emission of greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, satisfying 20% of all energy needs through renewable sources, and improving energy efficiency by 20% (The European Union 2012). The last projection forecast in 2012 by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) established that Spain was one of the countries in the EU furthest from reaching these objectives (The European Union 2013). As a result, implementing measures devised to meet the 2020 objectives is currently a priority for the Spanish government. In recent decades, the housing sector has played a decisive role in increasing global energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions (Nejat et al. 2015). In 2014 Spain's housing sector's energy consumption needs represented 19% of total national consumption and 31% of the electricity demand (IDAE 2013). Starting from the design phase, reduction in energy consumption per square meter has become a prerequisite for the majority of buildings (Parameshwaran et al. 2012; Koo et al. 2014). The importance and urgency exhibited by the EU housing sector in achieving the government objectives outlined in the 2020 Horizon have led the energy market to show a clear trend towards buildings with higher energy performance in the future (Shimschar et al. 2011). Similarly, the success factor of energy efficiency initiatives will depend to a large degree on the method or the indicators used when measuring energy performance in each building (Abu Bakar et al. 2015; Day and Gunderson 2015). As a result, selecting one energy evaluation methodology over another can be decisive in the path taken by Spain, change the current perception of the country, and increase Spain's standing within the EU. Several studies (Feist et al. 2005; Schnieders and Hermelink 2006; Mahdavi and Doppelbauer 2010; Mlakar and Strancar 2011; Hatt et al. 2012; Dahlstrom et al. 2012; Dequaire 2012; Proietti et al. 2013; Ridley et al. 2013; Stoian et al. 2013; Moran et al. 2014; O'Kelly et al. 2014) indicate that the Passivhaus standard (PS) can be used as a highly effective tool in both limiting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing building energy efficiency. Other studies (Audenaert et al. 2008; Moeseke 2011; Allacker and De Troyer 2013; McLeod et al. 2013; Mlecnik 2013; Stephan et al. 2013) challenge the adoption of the PS because they consider other options within the energy market to be better from both environmental and financial perspectives. Nonetheless, the precursors to the PS claim that the benefits of the standard can be replicated in any part of the world through its use during the design phase (Feist 2014; Passive House Institute 2010, 2015; Passipedia 2015). The main objective of this study was to analyze the viability of using PS through the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) tool in the Spanish housing sector, focusing on its use in the Mediterranean climate in the Province of Barcelona. To that end, we selected an isolated semidetached home, that exhibits the typical characteristics of current Spanish housing so that any possible deficiencies or virtues of adopting the PS are easily observable. The study was conducted using 3 construction proposals (PC, P1, and P2); the initial proposal (PC) is defined by conventional construction technology, while the remaining 2 proposals (P1 and P2) offer different construction alternatives focused on optimization (window glass, the building envelope, and improved installations), enabling evaluation of the PS criteria compliance. To test the ease of obtaining PS compliance without the need for changing the architectural design of the project, the design and space distribution of the PC alternative remained the same for the P1 and P2 options.The last few decades have witnessed a rapid development of green buildings in China especially the office sector. The life cycle assessment (LCA) approach has potential to weigh the benefits and costs associated with green building developments. Essentially, the LCA method evaluates the costs and benefits across a building's life cycle with a system approach. In this study, a green office building in Beijing, China, was analyzed by life cycle assessment to quantify its energy use and evaluate the environmental impacts in each life cycle stage. The environmental impacts can be reduced by 7.3%, 1.6% and 0.8% by using 30% gas-fired electricity generation, increasing the summer indoor temperature by 1 degrees C, and switching off office equipment and lighting during lunchtime, respectively. Similarly, by reusing 80% of the selected materials when the building is finally demolished, the three major adverse environmental impacts on human health, ecosystem quality, and resource depletion can be reduced by 11.3% 12.7%, and 7.1% respectively. Sensitivity analysis shows that electricity conservation is more effective than materials efficiency in terms of a reduction in environmental impacts. These findings are useful to inform decision makers in different stages of the green building life cycle.Construction noise and vibration in urban areas are environmental impacts that cause damage to humans. A model for predicting the environmental costs of construction noise and vibration was developed in this study. The model uses noise- and vibration-level data of construction equipment to predict the construction noise and vibration levels and estimates the environmental costs based on the predicted noise and vibration levels. Monte Carlo simulation was used to develop the model, considering the uncertainty of the noise- and vibrationlevel data of construction equipment. As it is difficult to collect actual compensation cost data for noise and vibration, the validity of the model was verified by comparing the actual noise and vibration levels measured at six receiving nodes with the predicted noise and vibration levels. The results showed that the predicted noise and vibration levels differed by 2.76 dBA (4.28%) and -3.76 dBV (-5.35%) from the actual noise and vibration levels, respectively. The correlation coefficients of the predicted and measured results were 0.991 and 0.982, respectively, which show that the model was reasonably accurate. The case study showed that the environmental cost of noise and vibration was US $237,679.25 when the noise barrier was not installed. It is expected that the developed model can be used to establish a mitigation strategy for contractors to reduce damage due to construction noise and vibration in the preconstruction phase. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.The aim of this work is to compare the environmental impacts of two production processes of tissue paper using virgin pulp (virgin fiber) or waste paper pulp (recycled fiber). This comparison is based on the materials and energy used as well as emissions and waste resulting from the production of tissue paper. Life cycle assessment (LCA), ReCiPe method, was chosen as the analysis tool. The results of the research proved that electricity has the most considerable participation in the overall environmental impacts in both production processes, followed by either virgin pulp or heat. Consequently, these two production processes are the greatest contributors to the following midpoint environmental impact categories: human toxicity, climate change, human health and ecosystems, and fossil depletion. The analysis based on endpoint impact categories proved that the production process based on waste paper is more environmentally friendly than the one based on virgin pulp in all impact categories: human health, ecosystems, resources. This is largely because of its lower material and energy requirements in the entire life cycle. Due to the fact that the tissue paper is the final use of fiber, using recycled waste paper is strongly recommended. The obtained research results are a valuable source of management information for the decision makers at both company and national levels required to improve the environmental performance of tissue paper production.In recent years, bio-based chemicals have gained traction as a sustainable alternative to petrochemicals. However, despite rapid advances in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, there remain significant economic and environmental challenges. In order to maximize the impact of research investment in a new bio-based chemical industry, there is a need for assessing the technological, economic, and environmental potentials of combinations of biomass feedstocks, biochemical products, bioprocess technologies, and metabolic engineering approaches in the early phase of development of cell factories. To address this issue, we have developed a comprehensive Multi-scale framework for modeling Sustainable Industrial Chemicals production (MuSIC), which integrates modeling approaches for cellular metabolism, bioreactor design, upstream/downstream processes and economic impact assessment. We demonstrate the use of the MuSIC framework in a case study where two major polymer precursors (1,3-propanediol and 3-hydroxypropionic acid) are produced from two biomass feedstocks (corn-based glucose and soy-based glycerol) through 66 proposed biosynthetic pathways in two host organisms (Escherichia calf and Sacchuroinyces cerevisine). The MuSIC framework allows exploration of tradeoffs and interactions between economy-scale objectives (e.g. profit maximization, emission minimization), constraints (e.g. land-use constraints) and process- and cell-scale technology choices (e.g. strain design or oxygenation conditions). We demonstrate that economy-scale assessment can be used to guide specific strain design decisions in metabolic engineering, and that these design decisions can be affected by non intuitive dependencies across multiple scales. (C) 2015 International Metabolic Engineering Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Biomass is an important energy resource for producing bioenergy and growing the global economy whilst minimising greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries, like Australia have a huge amount of biomass with the potential for bioenergy, but non-edible feedstock resources are significantly under-exploited. Hence it is essential to map the availability of these feedstocks to identify the most appropriate bioenergy solution for each region and develop supply chains for biorefineries. Using Australia as a case study, we present the spatial availability and opportunities for second and third generation feedstocks. Considerations included current land use, the presence of existing biomass industries and climatic conditions. Detailed information on the regional availability of biomass was collected from government statistics, technical reports and energy assessments as well as from academic literature. Second generation biofuels have the largest opportunity in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria (NSW, QLD and VIC) and the regions with the highest potential for microalgae are Western Australia and Northern Territory (WA, NT), based on land use opportunity cost and climate. The approach can be used in other countries with a similar climate. More research is needed to overcome key technical and economic hurdles. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Open waste dumps in Sri Lanka generate adverse environmental and socio-economic impacts due to inadequate maintenance. In this study, a concept of 'open waste dump mining' is suggested in order to minimise the environmental and socio-economic impacts, together with resource recovery. A model based on life cycle assessment and life cycle costing has been used to assess the environmental and economic feasibility of the suggested open waste dump mining concept. Two scenarios have been defined for a hypothetical case, dependent on the destination of the refuse derived fuel fraction. Scenario 1 comprises direct selling of refuse derived fuel as an alternative fuel to replace coal usage in the cement industry, while Scenario 2 consists of thermal treatment of refuse derived fuel with the objective of producing electricity. The study shows that both scenarios are beneficial from an environmental point of view, but not from an economic view point. However, economic profits can be obtained by adjusting waste transport distances and the price of electricity. The environmental analysis further reveals that the higher global warming potential of open waste dumps can be eliminated to a large extent by applying suggested mining and waste valorisation scenarios. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bio-based products potentially decrease consumption of non-renewable fossil resources compared to their fossil-derived counterparts, but are more demanding for bio-productive land use. Although thermodynamics-based resource accounting methods are available for calculating overall resource efficiency from a life cycle perspective, their accounting for bio-productive land resources as an input during quantification of efficiencies is unclear. This paper aims to fill the gap in scientific literature about how to calculate a cumulative overall resource efficiency indicator by developing a framework, called Cumulative Overall Resource Efficiency Assessment (COREA). COREA (i) takes into account bio-productive land resources and (ii) addresses the non-renewable character of fossil resources. To account for bio-productive land resources, two methodological questions need to be addressed: (1) "how to define the system boundary of the solar energy input in the primary biomass production system?" and (2) "how to choose the temporal system boundary of this system?". Resource efficiencies are calculated for three cases at crop level and two cases at bio-based product level. To account for the non-renewable character of fossil resources, we propose an accounting approach that includes the ancient solar energy consumption of fossil resources. This methodological choice is illustrated through comparing the resource efficiencies of the two bio-based products with their fossil-based counterparts. The results showed that the bio-based products only had a higher resource efficiency than their fossil-derived counterparts if fossil resources were considered as ancient consumers of solar energy. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Open burning of straw in China has degraded agricultural environments and has become a contributor to air pollution. Development of efficient straw-reuse technologies not only can yield economic benefits but also can protect the environment and can provide greater benefit to society. Thus, the overall benefits of straw-reuse technologies must be considered when making regional development planning and enterprise technology decisions. In addition, agricultural areas in China cross several climatic zones and have different weather characteristics and cultural conditions. In the present study, we assessed five types of straw-reuse technologies (straw-biogas production, -briquetting, -based power generation, -gasification, and -bioethanol production), using emergy analysis, in northeast China. Within each type, five individual cases were investigated, and the highest-performing cases were used for comparison across technologies. Emergy indices for comprehensive benefits for each category, namely, EYR, ELR, and ESI were calculated. Calculated indices suggest that straw-briquetting and -biogas production are the most beneficial technologies in terms of economy, environmental impact, and sustainability compared to straw-based power generation, -gasification, and -bioethanol production technologies. These two technologies can thus be considered the most suitable for straw reuse in China.Urban development bestows a great opportunity to increase sustainability in the built environment as cities are responsible for the majority of environmental impacts. However, the urban development process is fragmented and sub-optimization leads to unsustainable life cycle outcomes. The purpose of this study is to examine the urban development process from a life cycle perspective and identify how different actors understand life cycle management. By utilizing an inductive qualitative research design, 38 in-depth thematic interviews were conducted within the Finnish urban development industry including a case study and independent interviews from different phases of the urban development life cycle. The theoretical perspective is a combination of the ecosystem construct and life cycle management. Results show that there is no clear responsible actor for life cycle management in urban development. All actors claim that there is value to be added, mostly in economic, but also environmental and social terms. This study reveals that investors should be the responsible actor in the urban development process. By claiming responsibility and focusing on life cycle leadership we can improve sustainability in urban development, and respond to the urban sustainability challenge, thus improving the quality of life and welfare in our urban society.A comprehensive investigation for life cycle climate performance (LCCP) and material life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed under various influencing factors for the packaged conditioners. The whole carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq.) emissions during an air conditioner's lifetime are evaluated from the LCCP aspect. Results indicate that the seasonal energy efficiency ratio (SEER) rating has a large influence on the emission variation, 13 SEER R410A has approximately a +3% CO2-eq. emission increase when compared with the 13 SEER R22 in the area of Richmond, which is mainly caused by the direct emission of annual leakage of high GWP R410A. The efficient 14 SEER R410A unit depicts a 9% reduction. In general, as the climate is varied from cold to hot, the emissions are increased. Among the emission contributors, the energy consumption accounts for more than 70% of the total emissions, followed by annual refrigerant leakage. Parameter analysis reveals that the refrigerant recovery rate has a larger effect on the LCCP results than the cycle degradation coefficient, especially in the cold areas. In addition, the two capacity air conditioner product has approximately a 13% emission reduction due to the better load matching. Material LCA investigation shows that, in general, most of the material phase environmental performance is decreased in 14 SEER air conditioners. This is because the addition of aluminum from employing of the micro-channel heat exchanger. For a sustainable future, minimizing material use and CO2-eq. emissions and maximizing energy efficiency should have been considered in its entirety. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although there are numerous studies suggesting hydrothermal carbonization is an environmentally advantageous process for transformation of wastes to value-added products, a systems level evaluation of the environmental impacts associated with hydrothermal carbonization and subsequent hydrochar combustion has not been conducted. The specific objectives of this work are to use a life cycle assessment approach to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the HTC of food wastes and the subsequent combustion of the generated solid product (hydrochar) for energy production, and to understand how parameters and/or components associated with food waste carbonization and subsequent hydrochar combustion influence system environmental impact. Results from this analysis indicate that HTC process water emissions and hydrochar combustion most significantly influence system environmental impact, with a net negative GWP impact resulting for all evaluated substituted energy-sources except biomass. These results illustrate the importance of electricity production from hydrochar particularly when it is used to offset coal-based energy sources. HTC process water emissions result in a net impact to the environment, indicating a need for developing appropriate management strategies. Results from this analysis also highlight a need for additional exploration of liquid and gas-phase composition, a better understanding of how changes in carbonization conditions (e.g., reaction time and temperature) influence metal and nutrient fate, and the exploration of liquid-phase treatment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The potential environmental impact of Landfilling, Incineration and Recycling of spent household alkaline batteries collected in continental Portugal was compared using LCA methodology and the Recipe Impact Assessment method. Major contributors and improvement opportunities for each system were identified and scenarios for 2012 and 2016 legislation targets were evaluated. For 13 out of the 18 impact categories, the Recycling system is the worst alternative, Incineration is the worst option for 4 and Landfill is the worst option only for one impact category. However if additionally in each system the recovery of materials and energy is taken into account there is a noticeable advantage of the Recycling system for all the impact categories. The environmental profiles for 2012 and 2016 scenarios (25% and 45% recycling rates, respectively) show the dominance of the Recycling system for most of the impact categories. Based on the results of this study, it is questioned whether there are environmental benefits of recycling abroad the household alkaline batteries collected in continental Portugal and, since the low environmental performance of the Recycling system is particularly due to the international transport of the batteries to the recycling plant, is foreseen that a recycling facility located in Portugal, could bring a positive contribution to the environmental impact of the legislation compliance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the past, almost all residual municipal waste in the UK was landfilled without treatment. Recent European waste management directives have promoted the uptake of more sustainable treatment technologies, especially for biodegradable waste. Local authorities have started considering other options for dealing with residual waste. In this study, a life cycle assessment of a future 20 MWe plant using an advanced two-stage gasification and plasma technology is undertaken. This plant can thermally treat waste feedstocks with different composition and heating value to produce electricity, steam and a vitrified product. The objective of the study is to analyse the environmental impacts of the process when fed with seven different feedstocks (including municipal solid waste, solid refuse fuel, reuse-derived fuel, wood biomass and commercial & industrial waste) and identify the process steps which contribute more to the environmental burden. A scenario analysis on key processes, such as oxygen production technology, metal recovery and the appropriate choice for the secondary market aggregate material, is performed. The influence of accounting for the biogenic carbon content in the waste from the calculations of the global warming potential is also shown. Results show that the treatment of the refuse-derived fuel has the lowest impact in terms of both global warming potential and acidification potential because of its high heating value. For all the other impact categories analysed, the two-stage gasification and plasma process shows a negative impact for all the waste streams considered, mainly due to the avoided burdens associated with the production of electricity from the plant. The plasma convertor, key characteristic of the thermal process investigated, although utilising electricity shows a relatively small contribution to the overall environmental impact of the plant. The results do not significantly vary in the scenario analysis. Accounting for biogenic carbon enhanced the performance of biomass and refuse-derived fuel in terms of global warming potential. The main analysis of this study has been performed from a waste management perspective, using 1 ton of waste as functional unit. A comparison of the results when 1 kWhe of electricity produced is used as functional unit shows similar trends for the environmental impact categories considered. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Salt used to make brines for regeneration of ion exchange (IX) resins is the dominant economic and environmental liability of IX treatment systems for nitrate-contaminated drinking water sources. To reduce salt usage, the applicability and environmental benefits of using a catalytic reduction technology to treat nitrate in spent IX brines and enable their reuse for IX resin regeneration were evaluated. Hybrid IX/catalyst systems were designed and life cycle assessment of process consumables are used to set performance targets for the catalyst reactor. Nitrate reduction was measured in a typical spent brine (i.e., 5000 mg/L NO3- and 70,000 mg/L NaCl) using bimetallic Pd In hydrogenation catalysts with variable Pd (0.2-2.5 wt%) and In (0.0125-0.25 wt%) loadings on pelletized activated carbon support (Pd In/C). The highest activity of 50 mgNO(3)(-)/(min gpd) was obtained with a 0.5 wt%Pd-0.1 wt%In/C catalyst. Catalyst longevity was demonstrated by observing no decrease in catalyst activity over more than 60 days in a packed-bed reactor. Based on catalyst activity measured in batch and packed-bed reactors, environmental impacts of hybrid IX/catalyst systems were evaluated for both sequencing-batch and continuous-flow packed-bed reactor designs and environmental impacts of the sequencing-batch hybrid system were found to be 38-81% of those of conventional IX. Major environmental impact contributors other than salt consumption include Pd metal, hydrogen (electron donor), and carbon dioxide (pH buffer). Sensitivity of environmental impacts of the sequencing-batch hybrid reactor system to sulfate and bicarbonate anions indicate the hybrid system is more sustainable than conventional IX when influent water contains <80 mg/L sulfate (at any bicarbonate level up to 100 mg/L) or <20 mg/L bicarbonate (at any sulfate level up to 100 mg/L) assuming 15 brine reuse cycles. The study showed that hybrid IX/catalyst reactor systems have potential to reduce resource consumption and improve environmental impacts associated with treating nitrate-contaminated water sources. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ways to produce metallic nanoparticles and the scale-up of these processes have seen increased interest as the industrial application of nanoparticles continues to grow. Their feasibility from an environmental point of view can be assessed by means of life cycle analysis (LCA). In this work two methods of metallic nanoparticle production, by evaporation/condensation of metal using electrical arc discharge reactors or by chemical reduction of metal salts in aqueous solutions or dry solid/solid mixtures, are evaluated based on the life cycle indicators. The evaporation of metal using electrical discharge reactors is a method studied in the European Commission 7th Framework Program "BUONAPART-E.'' The environmental impact of the two different nanoparticle production approaches is here compared for four metals: copper, silver, zinc and aluminum. The chemical routes of producing nanoparticles require several different chemicals and reactions, while the electrical discharge routes use electricity to evaporate metal in a reactor under inert atmosphere. The nanoparticle production processes were modeled using "SimaPro'' LCA software. Data for both the chemical production routes and the arc routes were taken from the literature. The choice of the best route for the production of each metal is strongly dependent on the final yield of the metallic nanoparticles. The yields for the chemical processes are not reported in the open literature, and therefore the comparisons have to be made with varying yields. At similar yields the electrical process has in general a lower environmental footprint than the studied chemical routes. The step or chemical with the greatest environmental impact varies significantly depending on process and metal being studied.With U.S. geothermal power production expected to more than triple by 2040, and the majority of this growth expected to occur in arid and water-constrained areas, it is imperative that decision-makers understand the potential long-term limitations to and tradeoffs of geothermal development due to water availability. To this end, water consumption data, including documentation triggered by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, production and injection data, and water permit data, were collected from state and federal environmental policy sources in an effort to determine water consumption across the lifecycle of geothermal power plants. Values extracted from these sources were analyzed to estimate water usage during well drilling; to identify sourcing of water for well drilling, well stimulation, and plant operations; and to estimate operational water usage at the plant level. Nevada data were also compared on a facility-by-facility basis with other publicly available water consumption data, to create a complete picture of water usage and consumption at these facilities. This analysis represents a unique method of capturing project-level water data for geothermal projects; however, a lack of statutory and legal requirements for such data and data quality result in significant data gaps, which are also explored. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To gain a better understanding of the options of biomass power generation in China, this study presented an integrated energy, environmental, and economic evaluation for Salix in China, and a typical Salix direct-fired power generation system (SDPGS) in Inner Mongolia was selected for case study. A tiered hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) model was developed to calculate the "planting-to-wire" (PTW) energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and economic cost and profit of the SDPGS, including feedstock cultivation, power plant construction and operation, and on-grid price with/without government subsidies. The results show that the PTW energy consumption and GHG emissions of Salix are 0.8 MJ/kWh and 114 g CO2-eq/kWh, respectively, indicating an energy payback time (EPBT) of 3.2 years. The SDPGS is not economically feasible without government subsidies. The PTW costs are dominated by feedstock cultivation. The energy saving and GHG mitigation benefits are still robust, even when the power plant runs at only 60% design capacity. For future development of biomass power in China, scientific planning is necessary to guarantee a sufficient feedstock supply. In addition, technology progress, mature industrial chains, and reasonable price setting policy are required to enable potential energy and environmental advantages of biomass power moving forward. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings consume 79% of Saudi electricity, of which 70% is consumed by air conditioning (AC) systems as a result of the high ambient temperatures during the long summer season and heavily subsidized cost of electricity. Fossil fuels are burned as the primary energy source in power plants causing environmental impacts. A cradle-to grave regional life cycle assessment (LCA) of residential building air conditioning has been performed to evaluate these impacts. The results show that the use phase is responsible for largest share of the environmental impacts, and that the type of primary fuel used influences the magnitude of the impacts in each region. Copper and steel production dominate the manufacturing phase impact and the end-of-life (EOL) phase results in environmental benefits by reduction in the need for virgin materials. The overall contribution of transportation is minor. Economic considerations influence decisions more than environmental concerns in a developing country like Saudi Arabia. To evaluate the relationship of economics to environmental effects, life cycle cost (LCC), and payback period (PBP) are included with the use of Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) to model the effect of the variability in input prices on the uncertainty associated with the final results. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper, the environmental performance of electricity storage technologies for grid applications is assessed. Using a life cycle assessment methodology we analyze the impacts of the construction, disposal/end of life, and usage of each of the systems. Pumped hydro and compressed air storage are studied as mechanical storage, and advanced lead acid, sodium sulfur, lithium-ion and nickel-sodium-chloride batteries are addressed as electrochemical storage systems. Hydrogen production from electrolysis and subsequent usage in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell are also analyzed. The selected electricity storage systems mimic real world installations in terms of capacity, power rating, life time, technology and application. The functional unit is one kWh of energy delivered back to the grid, from the storage system. The environmental impacts assessed are climate change, human toxicity, particulate matter formation, and fossil resource depletion. Different electricity mixes are used in order to exemplify scenarios where the selected technologies meet specific applications. Results indicate that the performance of the storage systems is tied to the electricity feedstocks used during use stage. Renewable energy sources have lower impacts throughout the use stage of the storage technologies. Using the Belgium electricity mix of 2011 as benchmark, the sodium sulfur battery is shown to be the best performer for all the impacts analyzed. Pumped hydro storage follows in second place. Regarding infrastructure and end of life, results indicate that battery systems have higher impacts than mechanical ones because of lower number of cycles and life time energy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy costs typically dominate the life-cycle costs of centrifugal compressors used in various industrial and municipal processes, making the compressor an attractive target for energy efficiency improvements. This study considers the achievable energy savings of using three different diffuser types in a centrifugal compressor supporting a typical end-use process in a waste water treatment plant. The effect of the energy efficiency improvements on the annual energy use and the environmental impacts are demonstrated with energy calculations and life-cycle assessment considering the selected compressor task in the waste water aeration. Besides the achievable energy saving benefits in the wastewater aeration process, the presented study shows the influence of the additional material needed in the diffuser manufacturing on the total greenhouse gas emissions of the compressor life-cycle. According to the calculations and assessment results, the studied diffuser types have a significant effect on the compressor energy use and environmental impacts when the compressor is operated in the aeration task. The achievable annual energy savings in this case were 2.5-4.9% in comparison with the baseline scenario. Also, the influence of the additional material and energy use for manufacturing the diffuser are insignificant compared with the avoided greenhouse gas reduction potential. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.BACKGROUNDLife cycle assessment (LCA) is a compilation and evaluation of the input energy and materials, output emissions and the potential environmental impacts of a product, service or system throughout its life cycle. While methodological issues of LCA are still being developed, much research is being conducted worldwide in order to improve them. One of the important advances in LCA is a regionalised LCA, i.e. the development of regionalised databases, inventories, and impact assessment methods and models. RESULTSRegional emission information (REI) was developed and integrated with the characterisation results in LCA of an agricultural product in the study area. Comparison of outcomes obtained with LCA characterisation results that did not include REI shows that the characterisation results taking REI into account are much higher as regards human toxicity, from 0.02% to 0.18%, freshwater ecotoxicity from 89% to 99% and terrestrial ecotoxicity from 8.006% to 26.177%. CONCLUSIONResults of current LCA studies on agricultural products and systems that do not include REI are under-estimating the life cycle environmental impact. For the LCA of agricultural products and systems, the REI as well as regionalised life cycle inventory data should be developed and integrated into the current LCA approach. (c) 2015 Society of Chemical IndustryLarge scale biomass utilisation in energy-related applications is of paramount importance to reduce the fossil CO2 emissions. At European level, about a third of energy consumption is expected to be covered by renewables in the next 15 years. In addition, the CO2 emissions need to be reduced by 40% compared to the 1990 level. Within this context, innovative energy-efficient low carbon technologies have to be developed. Chemical looping is a promising conversion option to deliver reduced energy and cost penalties for CO2 capture. This paper assesses biomass direct chemical looping (BDCL) concept for hydrogen and power co-production. The concept is illustrated using an ilmenite-based system to produce 400-500 MW net power with flexible hydrogen output (up to 200 MWth). The performances are assessed through computational methods, with the mass and energy balances being used for in-depth techno-economic analysis. The biomass direct chemical looping delivers both high energy efficiencies (similar to 42% net efficiency) with almost total carbon capture rate (>99%). compared to other CO2 capture options (e.g. gas-liquid absorption). The economic parameters show also a reduced CO2 capture cost penalty for biomass direct chemical looping technology compared to gas-liquid absorption (e.g. 7% reduction of specific capital investment). (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life cycle (LC) of ethanol has been evaluated to determine the environmental and economical viability of ethanol that was derived from biosyngas fermentation process (gasification-biosynthesis). Four scenarios [S-1: untreated (raw), S-2: treated (torrefied); S-3: untreated-chemical looping gasification (CLG), S-4: treated-CLG] were considered. The simulated biosyngas composition was used in this evaluation process. The GHG emissions and production cost varied from 1.19 to 1.32 kg-CO2 e/L and 0.78 to 0.90 $/L, respectively, which were found to be dependent on the scenarios. The environmental and economical viability was found be improved when untreated feedstock was used instead of treated feedstock. Although the GHG emissions slightly reduced in the case of CLG process, production cost was nominally increased because of the cost incurred by the use of CaO. This study revealed that miscanthus is a promising feedstock for the ethanol industry, even if it is grown on marginal land, which can help abate GHG emissions. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment was performed by using the ReCiPe model to estimate the environmental effects of three food waste (FW)-based biogas generation scenarios. Uncertainty analysis was also conducted to confirm and add credibility to the study. Results showed that the potential impacts of human toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, marine ecotoxicity, and fossil depletion had dominant contributions to the overall environmental impact. Electricity consumption during anaerobic digestion (AD) and the transportation of raw materials during landfill stage exhibited high potential impacts. The FW to landfill scenario with and without energy recovery had the highest environmental impact. Moreover, uncertainty analysis indicated that landfill was unsuitable for treating FW. Increasing biogas generation capacity, improving electricity generation efficiency, optimizing the energy structure of China, and decreasing electricity consumption during the AD stage are effective ways for reducing the adverse effects on the environment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Amongst energy crops for the production of biomass feedstock for biogas plants, giant reed (Arundo donax L) has been attracting attention in recent years in Italy. Undoubtedly, this is due to its potentially high yield in terms of biomass, low agronomic inputs, as well as for being eligible for European Union energy crop incentives. The aim of this study was to perform an analysis of plant costs considering three macro-categories (biomass, plant installation and transport). Also, we aimed to describe the economic performances of biogas plants, while progressively altering two key variables. Specifically, we considered electrical power capacity (in the 100-999 kW range) and several combinations of feeding mixtures of livestock waste and giant reed silage, so as to determine the most economically advantageous option for a given power capacity. The results showed, on the one hand, that plants having diverse power capacities entail costs that vary as a function of the feedstock used and, on the other, that the entrepreneur's options mainly revolve around two variables, i.e. biomass supply costs and plant size. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This is the first paper that econometrically estimates the impact of rising Bioenergy production on global CO2 emissions. We apply a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) approach to time series from 1961 to 2009 with annual observation for the world biofuel production and global CO2 emissions. We find that in the medium-to long-run biofuels significantly reduce global CO2 emissions: the CO2 emission elasticities with respect to biofuels range between -0.57 and -0.80. In the short-run, however, biofuels may increase CO2 emissions temporarily. Our findings complement those of life-cycle assessment and simulation models. However, by employing a more holistic approach and obtaining more robust estimates of environmental impact of biofuels, our results are particularly valuable for policy makers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The conversion of biomass to energy is a complex process whose environmental sustainability must be assessed. In the present work, global and local emissions of a biogas plant are evaluated considering two alternative end uses: combustion of biogas in a combined heat and power unit or upgrading of biogas to biomethane and subsequent injection to the gas grid or use in transports. Global emissions are estimated by using the carbon footprint methodology, comparing the scenarios on the basis of the same functional unit. The results show a CO2 reduction for biogas combustion equivalent to that of biomethane used as fuel in transports. If the thermal energy produced by the biogas cogenerator is not used, the greenhouse gas balance approaches to zero. A second part of the work considers the contribution of methane losses from the upgrading process. The equivalent CO2 saving raises considerably if methane slip is limited to 0.05%, while the process results no longer sustainable for a methane loss of 4%. The evaluation of local impacts considers the emission of NOx and particulate matter (PM) generated by biogas combustion and its alternative solution. A Gaussian model of dispersion is applied and ground level iso-concentration maps are generated. The results show a variable extension of the plume which may a cause non-negligible impact of these pollutants in the surroundings of the source. Adopting biomethane as the end use solution could partly or totally avoid these local impacts. In conclusion, this work points out that adopting the biomethane solution may result environmentally sustainable in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and reduction of NOx and PM local emission. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle sustainability assessment has been claimed to be one of the most common methods for assessing sustainability of products and processes. It consists of the three methods life cycle assessment, life cycle costing and social life cycle assessment. However, the life cycle sustainability assessment framework is still under development and its application is still limited. This is substantiated not only by the lack of data and experience, but also by the proliferation of indicators provided by different institutions. Although indicators are available for the three sustainability dimensions, guidance for the indicator selection is missing. The bottleneck is not the lack of good indicators, but rather the lack of a clear indicator selection process. This appears to be one of the most crucial aspects as data availability, method development and interpretation of results heavily depend on this issue. Another obstacle for the practical implementation of life cycle sustainability assessment arises with the relatively high entrance level. Whereas, for the environmental dimension sufficient data and simplified methods are usually available, e.g. carbon footprint, the social and economic dimension are lacking of similar simplifications. Within this study a Tiered approach has been developed providing an indicator hierarchy and proposing a stepwise implementation concept. An indicator review has been performed according to the three criteria practicality, relevance and method robustness. Afterwards the indicators have been ranked in three tiers. The first tier ('sustainability footprint') focuses on indicators, which are characterized as easily applicable indicators and as relevant for production processes and on global scales. The second tier reflects current best practice indicators already used in case studies and preferred by institutions. The last tier aims at giving a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators, even if this level may not be applicable immediately. The Tiered approach may not solve all challenges within life cycle sustainability assessment, e.g. the question of how to solve the interpretation dilemma still remains; however it does support the practical application and further development of the framework through the stepwise implementation of sustainability indicators. The application and science related benefits of the Tiered approach result from the undergone comprehensive indicator review, which seems essential as a basis for further developments within the life cycle sustainability assessment framework, and from the proposed indicator hierarchy, which provides directions for further research. The created sustainability footprint facilitates the practical implementation of life cycle sustainability assessment, as the entrance barrier was lowered without neglecting any dimension of sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A major part of global unsustainability is embedded in consumption and the processes involved in the lifecycle of products, but there is currently no comprehensive and objective method for product sustainability measurement, including both environmental and social issues. This requires a life cycle approach. Current life cycle assessment (LCA) systems, developed to compare environmental performance of products and production alternatives, have many shortcomings if used to comprehensively measure product sustainability. The most important shortcomings are: the lack of a measuring standard, the top-down approach, the weighting of different issues, the very laborious procedures of addressing specific supply chains, limitation to environmental aspects' the very complex nature of impact based data, and difficult database maintenance. This article presents a new type of "bottom-up" and "product-specific LCA" for the comprehensive measurement of the hidden environmental and social costs of products. Every supply chain actor collects the upstream supply chain hidden costs, calculates and adds its own contribution and transfers the result to the next link by means of a monetary unit, the "Eco Social Cost Unit" (ESCU). Every ESCU allocation is the product of a quantitative factor for an issue and a price factor. The uniform measurement of the quantitative factor, their transfer through the supply chain, and the creation of a self learning database of the price factors is achieved by means of a standard. The price factor represents the marginal preventative costs for the relative impact category of sustainability issues. For initial determination of the price factor this article extends the EcoCost/Value ratio system, developed by Vogtlander et al., to social issues, discusses implications of the system, its principles, advantages, research challenges and limitations and proposes system boundaries for application of the system and future research contributions to the project. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The purpose of this article is to present a life-cycle assessment of soybean methyl ester addressing three alternative pathways: biodiesel totally produced in Brazil and exported to Portugal; biodiesel produced in Portugal using soybean oil and soybean imported from Brazil. Soybean cultivation was assessed for four states in Brazil: Mato Grosso; Goias; Parana and Rio Grande do Sul. A life-cycle inventory and model of biodiesel was implemented, including land-use change, soybean cultivation, oil extraction and refining, transesterification and biodiesel transport. A sensitivity analysis of alternative multi-functionality procedures for dealing with co-products was performed. The lowest environmental impacts were calculated for mass allocation and the highest for price or energy allocation. Biodiesel produced in Portugal with imported soybean grain had the lowest impacts for all categories and soybean cultivation locations for mass allocation. For price or energy allocation, the pathway with the lowest environmental impacts was determined by the cultivation location. Land-use change had a high influence on the greenhouse gas intensity of biodiesel, while soybean cultivation and transport contributed most to the remaining impact categories. Soybean methyl ester (SME) used in Portugal has the lowest impacts when produced with oil or grain imported from Brazil, instead of importing directly SME. The environmental impacts of biodiesel can be reduced by avoiding land-use change, improving soybean yield and optimizing soybean transportation routes in Brazil. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Netherlands, like other European Union countries, is under intense pressure to increase its national share of energy from renewable sources in accordance with 2020 Kyoto Protocol obligations. Bioenergy in this context is especially interesting because it can replace liquid fuels so much in demand for transportation. In Europe, due to high population density, and intensive use of limited land resources, sources of biomass are quite limited. This study examines the potential of road verge for biomass production. In this case there is no conflict with agricultural production - "food for fuel" conflict - and very little problems with natural conservation, since we are focusing on already disturbed and heavily used and polluted areas. The road verge is also easily accessible and in most cases already has to be maintained and cultivated. We use GIS (Geographical information system) to identify the total area of land along the roads in the Netherlands that can potentially be used for bioenergy purposes. We then consider the opportunities and constraints of cultivating various types of biomass, mainly focusing on grasses and willow, short rotation coppice, as biomass sources on the road verge. Based on that, we distinguish between areas that are unavailable due to safety requirements, areas that are conditionally available provided that current regulations are revised and areas that are already unconditionally available. We assess the entire production chain in terms of Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI), and consider various combinations of grass and willow operations for bioenergy production. Looking at several roads in Eastern Overijssel, we have estimated that there is approximately 4.24-4.68 ha/km of road verge conditionally available along highways, A-roads, and some 0.80-2.67 ha/km available along local roads, N-roads. However, only 1.02-1.62 ha/km and 0.37-0.80 ha/km of A and N roads respectively are available unconditionally. The EROEI for some scenarios of both grass-based and willow-based production were quite high, 15-42, making such use of road verge quite promising. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays, several technologies and management strategies are proposed for upgrading wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in order to improve sludge stabilization or minimize sludge production. In order to make sure that this leads to overall improvements, their techno-economic and environmental performance has to be carefully evaluated. In response to this, the techno-economic and environmental performance was assessed for a considered model reference WWTP upgraded with separate treatment and disposal for primary and secondary sludge to provide guidance to research, policy and investment efforts. This paper departs in an experimental campaign carried out within the EU project "ROUTES" and describes an assessment of an upgrade of a WWTP, involving wet oxidation of primary sludge and thermophilic anaerobic digestion (integrated with thermal hydrolysis pre-treatment) for secondary sludge. The reference plant and the upgrade implied different disposal routes for the resulting sludges: incineration for the stabilized sludge deriving from the reference WWTP; agricultural land application for the secondary stabilized sludge from the upgraded plant and landfilling for the solid residue deriving from the wet oxidation process (as non-hazardous waste). The mass balance carried out for both reference and upgraded WWTPs showed a reduction of total sludge production (up to 45%) for the upgraded WWTP. The additional energy demand of the upgraded solution (+22.4 Wh/(PE d), PE: population equivalent) was partially balanced by the electric energy produced by combined heat and power unit installed in the upgraded WWTP (-18.08 Wh/(PE d)). The integrated assessment showed that the upgraded solution, although resulting in an increase of WWTP technical complexity, may contribute to environmental and economic advantages. The paper provides guidance in terms of which aspects need a more thorough evaluation when this upgrade is considered in real cases. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A hydrometallurgical method was employed for recycling waste pharmaceutical blisters (WPBs); leaching WPBs using hydrochloric acid solutions was conducted to separate aluminum from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. The effects of temperature, hydrochloric acid concentration, reaction time, liquid/solid ratio and agitation on leaching behavior were investigated under fixed conditions, and the recovery of aluminum increases with an increase of the factors. Kinetic mechanism demonstrates leaching aluminum is controlled by chemical reaction control model, and the activation energy of leaching aluminum from WPBs is 87.24 kJ mol(-1). Under optimal conditions, the recovery of aluminum is up to 100%, implying complete separation of aluminum and PVC is achieved. The purified PVC plastic was identified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. A flowsheet of recycling WPBs by hydrometallurgical method was designed, and economic analysis confirms the feasibility of recycling of WPBs using hydrometallurgical method that is a relatively environmentally friendly technique. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Understanding the mechanisms of the formation and emission of pollutants during iron and steel manufacturing is significantly important for improved control, collection, and recycling of the trace element impurities and particle emissions. The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution of trace elements and particle size formation behaviour of products during the thermal processing of iron ores. The effects of gas atmosphere (inert, oxidizing, and reducing) and temperature (850 and 950 degrees C) on trace element distribution in solid and liquid products were studied in a circulating fluidized bed reactor. The particle size distribution of the solid products was also assessed to determine the proportion of particulate matter formed with a diameter less than 2.5 microns. The study revealed the influence and importance of the gas atmosphere and processing temperature on the particle formation behaviour and deportment of certain trace elements from the input iron ore to the product streams during thermal processing of iron ore. The increase in temperature resulted in further migration of the elements from the iron ore to the particles formed and emitted during the processing. The relative risk assessment from the individual trace elements suggested that manganese and sulphur are the most important elements with highest risk scores in the particles and, in case of sulphur, also in the condensed phase. This paper provides a reference for risk assessment of the trace elements and particle emissions from iron ore processing to facilitate the control, collection, and recycling of trace element impurities and particle emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study the method of life cycle assessment is used to perform a comparison of two die-attach technologies of power modules: silver sintering and common soldering with a tin silver copper solder. The goal of the study is to indicate which die-attach technique is more environmentally friendly. This is important in order to design future electronics more environmentally friendly. Processing covers the manufacturing of the respective pastes, application of pastes, and mounting as well as the subsequent sintering or soldering, including cleaning of the soldered parts. The last step in the processing is a wire bonding process. The environmental impacts are expressed in COB-equivalents and ReCiPe points and different variants are discussed: comparisons are made between considered pastes and between a soldered and a sintered power module, including consideration of lifetime. Concerning sintering, the influence of using recycled silver is analyzed more closely. The types of stages included in this life cycle assessment best fit a cradle-to-gate assessment, because usage, recycling, and disposal are not included. The software used is OpenLCA version 1.33, created by GreenDelta, and the database used is Ecoinvent version 2.2. In order to fill data gaps, electronics manufacturing companies were contacted, and our own calculations and measurements were applied. The consideration of the wet film thicknesses of the soldering system and sintering system, respectively, results in very similar COB-equivalent emissions for sinter paste and solder paste. Comparing the soldered power module to the sintered one shows minor to significant differences between the two systems which could easily be changed when changing circumstances and assumptions. But when considering the respective lifetimes of the joining technologies, sintering technology is clearly preferable to the conventional soldering technology. Using solely recycled silver for manufacturing of silver sinter paste reduces the COB-equivalent emissions of one sintered power module by roughly 40%. The results clearly show the dependence of outcomes on the initial settings. Consideration of lifetime has an enormous impact on the comparison of soldering technology to sintering technology. But the benefit of this life extension through the use of sintering technology is only useful when a long lifetime is required. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tomato processing involves a significant production of residues, mainly constituted by discarded tomatoes, skins, seeds and pulp. Often, these residues are not valorized and represent an added cost for manufacturing companies because of disposal processes, with environmental issues due to the difficult management. The exploitation of these residual materials results complex as their availability is mainly concentrated in few months. A possible solution is the production of biogas employed in a Combine Heat and Power engine for energy production, in line with the 2020 targets of European Union in terms of promotion of energy from renewable resources and greenhouse gas emission reduction. The tomato by-product utilization for energy production as a strategy to reduce the environmental load of tomato puree was evaluated by means of Life Cycle Assessment. Two scenarios were considered: Baseline Scenario - tomato by-products are sent back to the tomato fields as organic fertilizers; Alternative Scenario - tomato by-products are employed in a nearby biogas plant for energy production. Methane production of tomato by-products was assessed by means of specific laboratory tests. The comparison between the two scenarios highlighted reductions for all the impact categories with the Alternative Scenario. The most important reductions are related to particulate matter (-5.3%), climate change (-6.4%) and ozone depletion (-13.4%). Although small, the reduction of the environmental impact cannot be neglected; for example for climate change, the anaerobic digestion of by-products allows a saving of GHG emissions that, over the whole year, is equal to 1.567 tons of CO2 eq. The results of this study could be up-scaled to the food industries with high heat demand producing considerable amounts of fermentable by-products employable as feedstock for biogas production. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Harnessing biomass-derived energy can improve environmental and economic sustainability of a Combined Heat and Power production. The paper presents a new decision making policy and its application in meeting the energy up-grading needs of the Bari airport (300 kWe), based on an economic-environmental analysis related to the use of different bioenergy from short chain (<70 km). The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a "Zero Kilometer Energy" design model in a CHP plant represents a more sustainable alternative to the conventional approach, in terms of impacts on the local socio-economic system. The study has been carried out in order to promote a synergistic and sustainable relationship between a territory and the infrastructures that service it, in terms of energy supply chain. For this purpose, three different bioenergy production systems (biomass from wood waste, vegetable oil/biodiesel and biogas from food waste) harnessing local agro-energy resources in Apulian region (Italy) were analyzed. The analysis has been integrated by a DCF (Discounted Cash Flow) Method, identifying the economic feasibility to make an informed choice. Finally the theoretical paybacks under different governmental incentive schemes, from 2012 to 2015, have been calculated along with estimated carbon savings to highlight the energy market trends for the different biomass resources. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The 2011 National Nanotechnology Initiative's Environmental Health and Safety Research Strategy stressed the need for research to integrate life cycle considerations into risk management and, then, to better integrate risk assessment into decisionmaking on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) dimensions of nanomanufacturing. This paper reviews scholarly articles published 2010-2015 that in some way apply life cycle analysis to nanotechnology to assess the extent to which current research reflects the priorities lain out in the NNI report. As the NNI's focus was primarily on the "responsible development of nanotechnology'' we also focus our examination on the ways in which LCA, in concert with other methodologies, can provide utility to decision makers facing the challenge of implementing that broad goal. We explore some of the challenges and opportunities inherent in using LCA, a tool built to optimize manufacturing decisions, as a guide for policy formulation or tool for policy implementation.This study focused on the evaluation of biosolids management systems (BMS) from a natural resource consumption point of view. Additionally, the environmental impact of the facilities was benchrnarked using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to provide a comprehensive assessment. This is the first study to apply a Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment (CEENE) method for an in-depth resource use assessment of BMS where two full-scale BMS and seven system variations were analyzed. CEENE allows better system evaluation and understanding of how much benefit is achievable from the products generated by BMS, which have valorization potential. LCA results showed that environmental burden is mostly from the intense electricity consumption. The CEENE analysis further revealed that the environmental burden is due to the high consumption of fossil and nuclear-based natural resources. Using Cumulative Degree of Perfection, higher resource-use efficiency, 53%, was observed in the PTA-2 where alkaline stabilization rather than anaerobic digestion is employed. However, an anaerobic digestion process is favorable over alkaline stabilization, with 35% lower overall natural resource use. The most significant reduction of the resource footprint occurred when the output biogas was valorized in a combined heat and power system.A well-to-wheel (WTW) life cycle assessment (LCA) model is developed to evaluate the environmental profile of producing liquid transportation fuels via fast pyrolysis of perennial grasses: switchgrass and miscanthus. The framework established in this study consists of (1) an agricultural model used to determine biomass growth rates, agrochemical application rates, and other key parameters in the production of miscanthus and switchgrass biofeedstock; (2) an ASPEN model utilized to simulate thermochemical conversion via fast pyrolysis and catalytic upgrading of bio-oil to renewable transportation fuel. Monte Carlo analysis is performed to determine statistical bounds for key sustainability and performance measures including life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and Energy Return on Investment (EROI). The results of this work reveal that the EROI and GHG emissions (gCO(2)e/MJ-fuel) for fast pyrolysis derived fuels range from 1.52 to 2.56 and 22.5 to 61.0 respectively, over the host of scenarios evaluated. Further analysis reveals that the energetic performance and GHG reduction potential of fast pyrolysis-derived fuels are highly sensitive to the choice of coproduct scenario and LCA allocation scheme, and in select cases can change the life cycle carbon balance from meeting to exceeding the renewable fuel standard emissions reduction threshold for cellulosic biofuels.Lightweighting is a key strategy to improve vehicle fuel economy. Assessing the life-cycle benefits of lightweighting requires a quantitative description of the use-phase fuel consumption reduction associated with mass reduction. We present novel methods of estimating mass-induced fuel consumption (MIF) and fuel reduction values (FRVs) from fuel economy and dynamometer test data in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) database. In the past, FRVs have been measured using experimental testing. We demonstrate that FRVs can be mathematically derived from coast down coefficients in the EPA vehicle test database avoiding additional testing. MIF and FRVs calculated for 83 different 2013 MY vehicles are in the ranges 0.22-0.43 and 0.15-0.26 L/(100 km 100 kg), respectively, and increase to 0.27-0.53 L/(100 km 100 kg) with powertrain resizing to retain equivalent vehicle performance. We show how use-phase fuel consumption can be estimated using MIF and FRVs in life cycle assessments (LCAs) of vehicle lightweighting from total vehicle and vehicle component perspectives with, and without, powertrain resizing. The mass-induced fuel consumption model is illustrated by estimating lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission benefits from lightweighting a grille opening reinforcement component using magnesium or carbon fiber composite for 83 different vehicle models.The goal of this study was to identify drivers of environmental impact and quantify their influence on the environmental performance of wooden and massive residential and office buildings. We performed a life cycle assessment and used thermal simulation to quantify operational energy demand and to account for differences in thermal inertia of building mass. Twenty-eight input parameters, affecting operation, design, material, and exogenic building properties were sampled in a Monte Carlo analysis. To determine sensitivity, we calculated the correlation between each parameter and the resulting life cycle inventory and impact assessment scores. Parameters affecting operational energy demand and energy conversion are the most influential for the building's total environmental performance. For climate change, electricity mix, ventilation rate, heating system, and construction material rank the highest. Thermal inertia results in an average 2-6% difference in heat demand. Nonrenewable cumulative energy demand of wooden buildings is 18% lower, compared to a massive variant. Total cumulative energy demand is comparable. The median climate change impact is 25% lower, including end-of-life material credits and 22% lower, when credits are excluded. The findings are valid for small offices and residential buildings in Switzerland and regions with similar building culture, construction material production, and climate.Habitat degradation and subsequent biodiversity damage often take place far from the place of consumption because of globalization and the increasing level of international trade. Informing consumers and policy makers about the biodiversity impacts "hidden" in the life cycle of imported products is an important step toward achieving sustainable consumption patterns. Spatially explicit methods are needed in life cycle assessment to accurately quantify biodiversity impacts of products and processes. We use the Countryside species area relationship (SAR) to quantify regional species loss due to land occupation and transformation for five taxa and six land use types in 804 terrestrial ecoregions. Further, we calculate vulnerability scores for each ecoregion based on the fraction of each species' geographic range (endemic richness) hosted by the ecoregion and the IUCN assigned threat level of each species. Vulnerability scores are multiplied with SAR-predicted regional species loss to estimate potential global extinctions per unit of land use. As a case study, we assess the land use biodiversity impacts of 1 kg of bioethanol produced using six different feed stocks in different parts of the world. Results show that the regions with highest biodiversity impacts differed markedly when the vulnerability of species was included.Mitigating climate change is driving the need to decarbonize the electricity sector, for which various possible technological options exist, alongside uncertainty over which options are preferable in terms of cost, emissions reductions, and energy security. To reduce this uncertainty, we here quantify two questions for the power system of Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland): First, when compared within the same high-resolution modeling framework, how much do different combinations of technologies differ in these three respects? Second, how strongly does the cost and availability of grid-scale storage affect overall system cost, and would it favor some technology combinations above others? We compare three main possible generation technologies: (1) renewables, (2) nuclear, and (3) fossil fuels (with/without carbon capture and storage). Our results show that across a wide range of these combinations, the overall costs remain similar, implying that different configurations are equally feasible both technically and economically. However, the most economically favorable scenarios are not necessarily favorable in terms of emissions or energy security. The availability of grid-scale storage in scenarios with little dispatchable generation can reduce overall levelized electricity cost by up to 50%, depending on storage capacity costs. The UK can rely on its domestic wind and solar PV generation at lower renewable shares, with levelized costs only rising more than 10% above the mean of 0.084 GBP/kWh for shares of 50% and below at a 70% share, which is 35% higher. However, for more than an 80% renewable generation share to be economically feasible, large-scale storage, significantly more power imports, or domestic dispatchable renewables like tidal range must be available. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The objective of the study was to assess the impact on emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) of cheese production based on milk from different types of hay and breeds of cows in Denmark. An integral part of the study involved estimating GHG emissions from production of hay in a climate less favourable for field drying. The GHG emission was estimated using life cycle assessment (LCA) with kg of milk and kg of energy-corrected milk (ECM) delivered to the dairy and kg of cheese at the retailer as functional units (FU). Allocation at farm gate, between milk and meat, was made according to the biological relation between energy requirement for milk and meat production or as an economic allocation. Allocation at the dairy, between cheese and whey, was made either as an economic allocation or by system expansion. Inventory data were based on farm, herd and crop production data from commercial farms participating in research activities with controlled production of hay, in combination with either production information from cheese processing or literature estimates, all built into a static model. There was no effect on GHG emission per kg cheese of the proportion of herbs in the hay, but an effect of breed was found. The carbon footprint (CF) per kg cheese was lowest - 9.88 kg CO2 eq. - for milk from the Jersey herd compared with 12.1 and 12.7 from the two Holstein herds, although the GHG emission per kg milk at farm gate was highest from Jersey, but this was more than offset by a higher utilisation of Jersey milk for cheese production. The GHG emission from farm to retailer contributed less than 10% to total emissions, with the largest contribution from the energy used for cheese manufacture at the dairy, including storage. Methane was the largest source at approximately 50%, followed by feed production and the rearing of heifers. Use of energy for hay-drying added 7-8% to emissions and soil carbon change on average 3%, with some variation between farms. The sensitivity analysis showed that higher herb content could potentially reduce methane emissions by 6-7%, while the herbs' larger roots had only a marginal effect on GHG emissions from soil carbon at product level. If the feed conversion in Holstein breeds was assumed the same as in Jersey, the difference in emission per kg cheese due to breed was reduced but still lower from Jersey, which illustrates the positive effect of Jersey milk composition on cheese production efficiency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biogas consisting mainly of methane and carbon dioxide can be utilized as renewable energy source in combined heat and power plant, vehicle fuel, or substitute for natural gas after upgrading process. In this work, biogas upgrading with pressure swing adsorption is studied with dynamic process simulation method using the modified Skarstrom cycle, which gives the variation of the pressure and stream concentration with cycle time in the column, while the variation of these variables with cycle time are difficult to be observed by experiments. Thus the simulation results would supply more dynamic information of the process. The pressure swing adsorption performance of the novel adsorbent metal-organic framework 508b is simulated and compared with the processes using traditional adsorbents such as zeolite 13X and carbon molecular sieve 3 K. A two-column six-step pressure swing adsorption simulation model involving parametric sensitivity analysis is established. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm models of the three adsorbents are built by fitting experiment data. The energy consumption of the pressure swing adsorption process with different adsorbents is calculated by fixing a 98% purity and 85% recovery ratio of methane product after investigating the key parameters, i.e., adsorption pressure, desorption pressure and purge to feed ratio. Simulation results reveal that the order of the energy consumption in the process is zeolite 13X > carbon molecular sieve 3 K> metal-organic framework 508b. For metal-organic framework 508b has linear carbon dioxide isotherm compared with zeolite 13X, which makes the desorption of the carbon dioxide easier, and its adsorption capacity is higher than with carbon molecular sieve 3 K under the same partial pressure. In conclusion, the energy consumption of pressure swing adsorption process using metal-organic framework 508b adsorbent is 56% lower than that using zeolite 13X, and the column packed with metal-organic framework 508b is estimated to be 13% smaller in diameter than that with zeolite 13X. The simulation results can help to provide guidelines for development of new adsorbents to meet higher product purity and recovery ratio along with lower process energy consumption. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water, energy and food have the common characteristic of being scarce natural resources. Their inextricable link is at the basis of the water, energy and food Nexus, meaning that actions in one area generally have impacts in one or both of the others. According to this observation, the need arises for an integrated approach to the management of these three pillars of our global system in order to achieve real environmental, economic and social development As a study case of the multiple interconnections between the three elements, the production of biogas from the anaerobic digestion of energy crops was analysed in this study. Similarly to other types of bioenergy, the increasing diffusion of biogas production from energy crops generates concerns about potential negative effects on the environment, on competition in the food market as well as about the progressive changes in land use. In particular the trade-offs between water use and bioenergy production have been investigated through the integration of Water Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment methodologies; this represents a decidedly innovative evaluation path, in particular with reference to biogas production. Three different geographical locations (northern, central and southern Italy) and three different crops (maize, sorghum and wheat) were considered. Water Footprint results show that the cultivation phase has the most impact on water resources along the entire life cycle. Sorghum results as being the crop with the lowest water requirements among the three. Biogas production from energy crops in southern Italy is unsustainable from a water management perspective. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment shows that biogas production from energy crops, in general, has negative impacts (i.e. beneficial environmental performances), due to the savings associated with the avoidance of conventional energy production, for all the considered indicators except water depletion, fresh water ecotoxicity and marine ecotoxicity. The results highlight crop cultivation as the main source of impacts, especially due to the fertilizing, ploughing and irrigation processes. WF and LCA results show the benefit of coupling the two methods. Since WF focuses on water use and LCA focuses on an extended range of environmental loads, creating synergies between these two approaches can help to give a comprehensive assessment and a better insight into the Nexus. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is one of the fastest growing waste streams in Europe, whose content of hazardous substances as well as of valuable materials makes the study of the different management options particularly interesting. The present study investigates the WEEE management system in Lombardia Region (Italy) in the year 2011 by applying the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. An extensive collection of primary data was carried out to describe the main outputs and the energy consumptions of the treatment plants. Afterwards, the benefits and burdens associated with the treatment and recovery of each of the five categories in which WEEE is classified according to the Italian legislation (heaters and refrigerators - R1, large household appliances - R2, TV and monitors - R3, small household appliances - R4 and lighting equipment - R5) were evaluated. The mass balance of the treatment and recovery system of each of the five WEEE categories showed that steel and glass are the predominant streams of materials arising from the treatment; a non-negligible amount of plastic is also recovered, together with small amounts of precious metals. The LCA of the regional WEEE management system showed that the benefits associated with materials and energy recovery balance the burdens of the treatment processes, with the sole exception of two impact categories (human toxicity-cancer effects and freshwater ecotoxicity). The WEEE categories whose treatment and recovery resulted more beneficial for the environment and the human health are R3 and R5. The contribution analysis showed that overall the main benefits are associated with the recovery of metals, as well as of plastic and glass. Some suggestions for improving the performance of the system are given, as well as an indication for a more-in-depth analysis for the toxicity categories and a proposal for a new characterisation method for WEEE. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Steel slag is a by-product of steelmaking and is usually disposed of in landfills. Recent development in sustainable concrete saw the use of steel slag as a replacement for sand in concrete mixture. This study applied attributional and consequential life cycle assessment to deduce the net environmental impacts measured in terms of global warming potential and embodied energy due to replacing sand with steel slag. It was found that, considering both mass and economic allocation methods, steel slag generally has more negative life cycle environmental impacts. However, by considering three likely consequences of this material replacement (resulting in changes in international trade in sand and steel Slag) and that certain sustainable steelmaking technology innovations were adopted, it was found that such a replacement may result in a net reduction in environmental impacts. To ensure that this material replacement results in lower global warming and also ensure resource security, a mathematical expression was derived that enables us to estimate how much Singapore's sand trade has to change. To apply lessons learnt from these assessments to integrated sustainability policymaking, the environmental, economic and social related challenges were discussed and possible solutions proposed. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The term eco-innovation has been coined to label those innovations expected to reduce the life cycle environmental burdens resulting from their use. Claims of environmental superiority are usually supported by technology-oriented analyses, such as product-level life cycle assessment. However, the environmental superiority of an innovation depends not only on its technical characteristics but also on technology demand interactions. In this article, such interactions are incorporated through the concept of the environmental rebound effect. Using the Dynamic IPAT-Life cycle assessment with Environmental Rebound effect or DILER model, environmental superiority claims of seven alleged transport eco-innovations were evaluated by comparing alternative macro-level scenarios (with and without innovation) for Europe. The results support the claims of environmental superiority of only three out of seven studied innovations. That is, a majority of innovations actually induced increases in various environmental pressures. Such increases can be attributed mostly to the influence of generally noteworthy environmental rebound effects. The magnitude of the rebound effect is found to be highly correlated with two variables: the total change in effective income resulting from the use of the innovation and the difference between the environmental pressures per monetary unit of the studied innovations and that of the rest of consumption. The article contributes to the literature by (a) applying a comprehensive approach to the rebound effect and its relationship with the eco-innovation concept, (b) by calculating original rebound estimates of specific transport innovations and assessing these in absolute terms, as well as by (c) obtaining novel insights into the drivers behind the rebound effect. The counterintuitive results of this study also invite to re-assess the use of technology-oriented tools for guiding environmental policy. Other policy implications of this study relate to the relevance of transport cost differences, the targeted promotion of actual eco-innovations and its combination with broader policies as well as the achievement of higher quality mobility. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Knowledge of product origin is an important factor in purchasing decisions and consumers demand relevant information. However, at the moment, and especially for food products, such information is often fragmentary or incomplete and thus sometimes more confusing than clarifying. Analysis reveals that a method for calculating and communicating origin along the overall life cycle of a product is clearly lacking. The aim of the present paper is to present a method for assessing and providing information on product origin, taking food products as an example. The method proposed here is termed "Life-Cycle-oriented Origin analysis" (or in short LCOA). Life-Cycle-oriented Origin analysis is based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, but it also incorporates information relating to the origin/location of raw materials, intermediary products, and processing. The present article outlines how the value of the referenced locations is assessed and how this may be used to depict the overall origin of a product. As consumers are particularly critical concerning questions of food origin, a pilot study on pre-packaged food is used here to illustrate how the concept of LCOA may be applied in practice. In principle, however, the concept may be applied to all types of consumer products. We suggest that Life-Cycle-oriented Origin analysis can be fruitfully employed in enhancing market communication and consumer research, and that it may also prove useful in matters concerning product (re-)design and optimization. Adoption of LCOA is likely to lead to improved supply chain communication for producers, and consumers may benefit by being able to assess, at a glance, the overall origin of a product. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Accounting for fixed assets in life cycle assessments is often ignored. Fixed assets represent machinery, equipment and constructions, which are utilized in the life cycle of products to enable their production and use. Subject matter is the set-up of an input-output model to implement fixed assets, followed by a methodological analysis of the approach and structural analysis of the determined coefficients. The study is based on an input-output model in hybrid units, which measures nine energetic transactions in energetic units and 64 other transactions in monetary units. An environmental extension takes renewable energies and greenhouse gases into account. Specific cumulative energy demands and emissions are determined. Fixed assets are implemented by either the augmentation method or the matrix flow method. Energetic and ecologic coefficients rise by 20-30 % on average, and in particular for services, if fixed assets are considered. Applying these coefficients to a life cycle assessment of an offshore wind farm indicates about 12% higher values for the energy demand and emissions. The augmentation method is easy to implement and delivers approximately the same energetic coefficients for fixed assets, compared to the matrix flow method. For a holistic analysis, the significant additional energy demand and emissions for fixed assets have to be included in life cycle assessments. In particular, the indirect share and especially machinery and equipment have to be considered. Recommendations on the modeling, as well as coefficients for fixed assets, to be implemented in future life cycle assessments, are delivered. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The latest life-cycle assessment methods account for land use, due to the production, use and disposal of products and services, in terms of ecosystem damage. The process of brownfield remediation converts otherwise idle urban space into productive space. The value to ecosystems in this context is of course limited since the brownfield site remains urban. When evaluating brownfield remediation technologies, the availability of space on-site is dependent on the duration of time required by the remediation technology to reach the remediation target. Remediation technology alternatives tend to vary largely in terms of duration. Comparative life-cycle assessments of remediation technologies, to date, present the large variations between alternatives in terms of remediation duration but do not translate this into an impact or parameter. The restored subsurface zone is often defined as a functional unit, when in fact the surface area is the resource restored by the remediation service. The economic benefits of making land resources available are particularly important considerations in the context of brownfield remediation. The research proposes an innovative impact assessment approach that allows land to be considered as a finite resource. The method is applied in a comparative life-cycle assessment of two potential remediation scenarios for an idle brownfield in the Brussels region of Belgium. The results show that there is a trade-off between greenhouse gas emissions and land availability and that both are largely dependent on the efficiency of the contaminant extraction mechanism. The results also raise the question as to whether the economic valuation of land, like precious metals and fossil fuels, provides an accurate reflection of the true value of the resource. Considering land as a resource at the midpoint level is also relevant in other urban contexts where competition exists between different land-uses, where urban sprawl is detrimental to undeveloped areas and where urban intensification is a policy objective. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment practitioners must gather data from a variety of sources. For modeling activities in the US, practitioners may wish to use life cycle inventory data from public databases and libraries provided by US government entities. An exercise was conducted to test if a practitioner could gather and use data from existing US federal sources together to build a life cycle assessment model in standard software. As a result, issues were identified that US federal agencies need to overcome in order to provide functionally interoperable life cycle inventory data to the public. These same challenges apply more broadly to using life cycle inventory data from different sources. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This study describes the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the comprehensive utilisation of vanadium titano-magnetite (VTM) through the integrated steel production and valuable element (V and Ti) extraction route. The major sources of environmental impacts are described and pollution prevention methods are proposed. The LCA methodology is based on the ISO 14044 standard, which uses GaBi 6.0 software and the Ecoinvent database, and the life cycle inventory (LCI) data (input and output) are from Pan. Steel. Impact assessment results indicate that production of pig iron in blast furnace (BF) exerts the most extensive impacts on global warming potential for the time horizon of 100 years (GWP(100)) and fossil fuel consumption. By contrast, iron ore mining dressing and sintering contribute the most to acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP) and photochemical ozone creation potential (PCOP) because of dust and pollutant gas emissions. When indicator contributions are considered, the observed impacts on AP (50.88%), GWP(100) (24.25%) and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) (19.51%) are higher than those on EP, human toxic potential (HIP) and abiotic depletion potential (ADP). Therefore, when processes with environmental impacts are taken into account, the iron mining and dressing, iron ore sintering and BF iron-making processes must be considered, when category indicators are taken into account, AP, GWP(100) and POCP must be considered. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful analysis tool to estimate the energy consumption and environmental emissions resulting from economic activities. This study provides a comparative LCA of remanufactured liquefied natural gas (LNG) and diesel engines. Furthermore, the paper identifies the processes that contribute most to energy consumption and environmental impacts during the life cycles of the two engines. Six environmental impacts were considered in this study: global warming potential (GWP); acidification potential (AP); eutrophication potential (EP); photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP); ozone depletion potential (ODP); and primary energy demand (PED). The results show that remanufacturing LNG engines reduces energy consumption by 41.91% compared with remanufacturing diesel engines. The greatest benefit related to the environmental impacts is EP, which is reduced by 73.69%, followed by AP, GWP and POCP, which are reduced by 71.49%, 47.14% and 43.90%, respectively. In addition, the cost benefit of the entire life cycle is also significant for LNG engines. In the life cycle of the two types of remanufactured engines, engine usage causes larger environmental impacts, especially with regard to PED and POCP, and component remanufacturing contributes most to ODP. However, it should be noted that in the remanufacturing stage, because more materials and energy are consumed for the LNG engine, the environmental impacts and costs are higher than those for the diesel engine. Nevertheless, the advantages of remanufacturing end-of-life diesel engines into LNG engines are obvious because of the significant benefits during LNG engine use. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The construction industry causes a number of complex environmental effects, particularly carbon dioxide emissions. In the past decade, decision makers in the construction industry have focused on economic costs rather than environmental habitat concerns. However, in recent years, companies have slowly realized the importance of the environmental effects of building life cycles, in addition to maximizing profit. Therefore, this study developed a carbon dioxide emissions evaluation system and an environmental cost calculation method. The simulations considered the consumption of fossil fuel, electricity, and water. A systematic approach was proposed for optimizing the balance of the carbon dioxide emissions and environmental cost during building life cycle. Particularly, this study demonstrated a simplified metric for converting carbon dioxide emissions into environmental costs. The proposed method can guide engineers and architects in evaluating the primary environmental risk for a building life cycle and selecting an appropriate construction method. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the present work is to evaluate a new sustainable continuous system for processing bovine leather. By means of a prototype described in the international patent WO, 2010/070571 (A2) of the technological centre AIICA, a dehydration process for bovine hides is carried out. What is obtained through this new process is a dehydrated leather with the optimal physical and chemical characteristics that will allow its subsequent tanning by immersion processes in aqueous solutions of chemical products. When compared to existing traditional processes, there are economic and environmental advantages resulting from the use of this new system. More specifically, the new process results in reductions of 30.6% in water use, 50.2% in chemical use and 16.4% in process time. In addition, a reduction of 27.3% in wastewater and a reduction of 47.5% of thermal energy consumption are obtained. However, this new system presents an increase in electricity consumption of 63.03% and an increase in gaseous emissions of 75% due to the use of acetone in the dehydration process and the 0.5% losses of acetone during the process. In order to better assess the environmental impact of this new tanning system, life cycle analysis methodology has been chosen to perform calculations on the Global Warming Potential (CO2 equivalent emissions) and the energy consumption comparing both traditional and new tanning processes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The treatment of oil and gas (O&G) exploration wastewaters by forward osmosis (FO) could make water management in the O&G industry more sustainable. Specifically, recovery of pit water from well drilling operations and hydraulic fracturing could reduce the impacts associated with wastewater transportation, deep well disposal, and fresh water procurement for subsequent hydraulic fracturing operations. This study evaluates the environmental and economic impacts of FO for treatment of O&G pit water through comparative life cycle impact and costing assessments; the FO technology is evaluated when operated as an engineered osmosis system and as a stand-alone osmotic dilution process. Cradle-to-grave life cycle inventories are developed for each FO process and evaluated using ten environmental impact categories. The relative environmental impacts of FO are found to be comparable to the transportation and pumping energy alone required for deep well injection. At the current state of the technology, the energy demand of the FO systems when operated with no upstream pretreatment is the single greatest contributor to the negative environmental impacts. At 75% water recovery, FO can potentially reduce pit water management costs by nearly 60% compared to deep well disposal, and pit water transportation requirements can be reduced as much as 63%. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Many metropolitan areas have a high dependency on Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants for bulk water supply. Location and scale decisions are important for SWRO desalination plants owing to the significant environmental costs associated with long distance water pumping. The aim of this study is to introduce a Geographical Information System (GIS)-based method to assist such site-specific decisions. The method has 3 stages. Stage 1 uses GIS to identify feasible plant locations and water demand areas. Stage 2 develops a range of scenarios that balance plant size and number with water demand. In stage 3, the preferred scenario is selected based on environmental life cycle assessment. The method's applicability was tested using data for the northern corridor of Perth, Western Australia (WA). Spatial water demand and suitable vacant land for accommodating SWRO plants in the case study are obtained in Stage 1. Based on these spatial data, two water planning options are designed in order to supply desalinated water to the demand area. The first option consists of a large SWRO desalination plant and its connected trunk main which supplies water into the demand centrally (centralized scenario). Second option consists of five medium-sized SWRO desalination plants integrated within the demand area (distributed scenario). The best scenario for environmental performance was found to be the distributed scenario which has 18% less GHG emission compared to centralized scenario. This method is adaptable to other case studies for identifying optimal SWRO plant sizes and locations based on environmental criteria.This study estimated a series of indicators to assess the energy security of supply and global and local environmental impacts under different mitigation scenarios through 2050 in Brazil, designed with the integrated optimization energy system model MESSAGE-BRAZIL. The assessment of interactions between environmental impacts and energy security dimensions was complemented through the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Overall results imply energy security establishes more synergies than trade-offs in increasingly stringent mitigation scenarios, especially patent within the sustainability dimension, which increases energy security and provides additional benefits regarding climate change mitigation and air pollution emissions. It is still necessary to extend analysis to other energy sectors in addition to the power supply sector and to promote a better understanding of repercussions of energy scenario expansion in energy security.Energy and environmental issues are increasingly important in existing building service and energy systems around the world. Despite great efforts to implement retrofit techniques in Sweden, no stringent evaluation of the benefits of these techniques or their systematic design has been completed. Traditional evaluations have not taken into account the embodied energy and greenhouse gases emissions of different retrofit options. This omission leads to underestimation of the potential environmental benefits of modern retrofit techniques. In this study a novel hybrid modeling approach to quantify the sustainability of retrofit options is developed to fill these knowledge gaps. The compatibility of environmental and energy saving modeling of various energy-saving techniques for future transition of Swedish residential building stock is analyzed. Consolis Retro and the life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques are employed and further coupled to simulate retrofit options. The model integrates both energy demand (net operational energy), primary energy (operational energy from energy mix to buildings) into evaluation criteria. Embodied energy (energy required to produce materials of retrofitting options) and embodied greenhouse gas emissions (upstream CO2 equivalent) are introduced as new measures in the evaluation criteria. The results showed that low-temperature heating retrofitting was the most effective option from both a primary and embodied energy perspective in the studied building types. Combining circulation pump renovations could further contribute to the efficiency of low-temperature heating for energy-demand savings. High operational energy-saving measures may not always lead to larger reduction in both embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for building envelope retrofitting. Neglecting the embodied energy of retrofit options will increase the risk of overrepresenting their energy-saving contributions. The sustainability improvements of retrofitting, particularly large-scale measures, should take into account the embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions from the material productions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The relative importance of embodied energy and operational energy on the environmental impact of construction are examined in this article. It highlights the fact that the targets set by the Kyoto Protocol are primarily being met by the reduction of in-use energy, and that the implications of that are that the energy embodied in buildings will increase in significance from its current 17% level to 50% by 2050. The article describes how the use of bio-based renewable materials can make a significant contribution to reducing not only the embodied energy of buildings by using the sequestration of CO2 through photosynthesis, but also in-use energy demand through passive environmental control. Case studies are presented showing ways in which this has been achieved.This article presents the sustainability assessment of a novel biocomposite material that is under investigation by NASA for use in construction in limited resource environments. The composite consists of soil particles solidified by a protein binding agent. Preliminary compressive strength data suggests the biocomposite could be used for numerous construction applications. To assess the biocomposite's potential for use in sustainable construction, a comparative process-based life cycle assessment between biocomposite and concrete pavers was performed to analyze the life cycle primary energy and IMPACT 2002+ points of both types of pavers. Results show that the concrete pavers outperform the biocomposite pavers in initial impact. However, biocomposite pavers can be more favorable when binder reclamation and reuse scenarios are taken into account at end-of-life. Based on these results, recommendations include switching to a mixture of lower grade proteins to reduce the biocomposite impact as well as further laboratory investigations into recycling scenarios.An empirical analysis was undertaken to quantify the utilization of the primary, first-generation agriculture and forestry feedstocks within the industrial bioeconomy. Institutional policies and incentives, and their role in driving the bioeconomy are also explored. In doing so, we present a detailed analysis of global agricultural and roundwood forestry production, including both intermediate and final uses. In addition to deciphering the internal flows of commodities within the bioeconomy, we present the spatial distribution of key industrial bioeconomy feedstock crops and their influence within the global economy, including flows in exportation and importation across ten geographical regions. Finally, along with the many advantages for industrial biofeedstocks, there are also environmental trade-offs. The results from this examination will equip researchers, industries, and governments with a superior ability to address the multi-dimensional feedbacks and synergies of the bioeconomy, as well as predict potential areas of risk and those that may prosper from future production increases.This paper explores the evolution in the tensile strength of orange pruning fiber-reinforced polypropylene composites. The exploitation of these pruning's can effectively avoid incineration, with the consequence of CO2 emissions and fire risk, while extending the value chain of the agricultural industry. This biomass was subjected to three different treatments yielding mechanical, thermomechanical, and chemi-thermomechanical pulps. It was found that 20 to 50% of these pulps, together with a coupling agent, were used as polypropylene reinforcement. The evolution in the tensile strength and morphological properties of the fibers, and the effect of treatments on these properties were analyzed. A modified rule of mixtures (mROM) was used to analyze the micromechanical properties of the interface. In addition, the mechanical properties were weighted against the fiber treatment yields. Finally, factors to compute the net contribution of the fibers to the final strength of the composite materials were proposed.The financial and environmental performance of the National Renewable Energy Lab's (NREL) thermochemical and biochemical biofuel conversion processes are examined herein with pine, eucalyptus, unmanaged hardwood, switchgrass, and sweet sorghum. The environmental impacts of the process scenarios were determined by quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and TRACI impacts. Integrated financial and environmental performance metrics were introduced and used to examine the biofuel production scenarios. The thermochemical and biochemical conversion processes produced the highest financial performance and lowest environmental impacts when paired with pine and sweet sorghum, respectively. The high ash content of switchgrass and high lignin content of loblolly pine lowered conversion yields, resulting in the highest environmental impacts and lowest financial performance for the thermochemical and biochemical conversion processes, respectively. Biofuel produced using the thermochemical conversion process resulted in lower TRACI single score impacts and somewhat lower GHG emissions per megajoule (MJ) of fuel than using the biochemical conversion pathway. The cost of carbon mitigation resulting from biofuel production and corresponding government subsidies was determined to be higher than the expected market carbon price. In some scenarios, the cost of carbon mitigation was several times higher than the market carbon price, indicating that there may be other more cost-effective methods of reducing carbon emissions.Water footprint (WF) is widely used as a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to assess the environmental impacts of water usage associated with forestry-based production. The calculations of WF are significantly influenced by the raw materials and the process. Some information is available on WF in the papermaking industry. However, there has been little consideration of the correlation between the VVF and the properties of paper. Technically, the WFand the properties of paper are impacted by the raw materials. Generally, the ideal formula of raw materials used to make paper could decrease the WF while maintaining the properties of the paper. In the current study, the extreme vertices mixture design was used to optimize the WF and properties of the handsheet by the raw materials. The new model indicated that the WF of the handsheet was decreased significantly while the properties was maintained through the adjustment of the raw materials.Many current and potential uses of cellulosic materials depend critically on the character of their surfaces. This review of the scientific literature considers both well-established and emerging strategies to change the outermost surfaces of cellulosic fibers or films not only in terms of chemical composition, but also in terms of outcomes such as wettability, friction, and adhesion. A key goal of surface modification has been to improve the performance of cellulosic fibers in the manufacture of composites through chemistries such as esterification that are enabled by the high density of hydroxyl groups at typical cellulosic surfaces. A wide variety of grafting methods, some developed recently, can be used with plant-derived fibers. The costs and environmental consequences of such treatments must be carefully weighed against the potential to achieve similar performances by approaches that use more sustainable methods and materials and involve less energy and processing steps. There is potential to change the practical performances of many cellulosic materials by heating, by enzymatic treatments, by use of surface-active agents, or by adsorption of polyelectrolytes. The lignin, hemicelluloses, and extractives naturally present in plant-based materials also can be expected to play critical roles in emerging strategies to modify the surfaces characteristics of cellulosic fibers with a minimum of adverse environmental impacts.The consideration of environmental losses in seismic design is discussed within the framework of cost optimization analysis. Within this context, the equivalent carbon emissions (CO2-e) are used as a proxy for the environmental cost related to seismic damage, and a model to assess the environmental cost in seismic loss estimation is introduced. The use of the model is illustrated through its application to the analysis of simple earthquake-resistant structural systems. It is concluded that under certain circumstances, the consideration of environmental issues in seismic design may be important, especially as the planning time horizon of the facility increases.Information and communication technology (ICT) is providing new ways to access media content. ICT has environmental benefits and burdens. The overall goal of the present study was to assess the environmental impacts of production and consumption of magazines read on tablets from a life cycle perspective. Important goals were to identify the activities giving rise to the main impacts and the key factors influencing the overall environmental impacts. Data gaps and uncertainties were also addressed. The results are compared against those for the print edition of the magazine in a separate article (part 2). The methodology used in the study was life cycle assessment. The environmental impacts assessed included climate change, cumulative energy/exergy demand, metal depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater/marine eutrophication, fossil depletion, human toxicity, and ecotoxicity. The results indicate that content production can be the major contributor to environmental impacts if readers are few (as for the emerging version of the magazine studied). Assuming more readers (more mature version) or a larger file size for the tablet magazine, electronic storage and distribution may be the major contributor. Thus, in contrast to previous studies on electronic media, which reported a dominant impact of the use phase, this study found a higher impact for content production (emerging version) and electronic storage and distribution (mature version). However, with inefficient, low overall use of the tablet with a mature version of the tablet magazine, the greatest impact was shown to come from the reading activity (i.e., the use phase). In conclusion, the relative impacts of the tablet magazine would decrease considerably with high numbers of readers, their efficient use of the tablet (i.e., for many purposes over a long life of the device), and a smaller magazine file.The rapid development of information and communications technology (ICT) is providing new ways to access media content. Electronic media are sometimes more advantageous from an environmental perspective than paper-based media solutions, but ICT-based media can also bring environmental burdens. This study compared the potential environmental impacts in a life cycle perspective of a print edition of a magazine and that of its electronic edition read on a tablet device. Important objectives were to identify activities giving rise to the main environmental impacts for both the print and tablet editions, determine the key factors influencing these impacts, and address data gaps and uncertainties. A detailed assessment of the tablet edition is provided in a previous article (part 1), whereas this article compares it with the print edition. The methodology used was life cycle assessment and the environmental impacts assessed included climate change, cumulative energy/exergy demand, metal depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, and fossil depletion. Use of different functional units to compare the print and tablet editions of the magazine resulted in different relative environmental impacts. In addition, emerging (low number of readers and low reading time per copy) and mature (higher number of readers and higher reading time per copy) tablet editions yielded varying results. The emerging tablet edition resulted in higher potential environmental impacts per reader than the print edition, but the mature tablet edition yielded lower impacts per reader in half the impact categories assessed. This illustrates the importance of spreading the environmental impacts over a large number of readers. The electricity mix used in product system processes did not greatly affect the results of tablet/print comparisons, but overall number of readers for the tablet edition, number of readers per copy for the print edition, file size, and degree of use of the tablet device proved crucial for the comparison results.This study aims to assess the environmental impacts of canned sardines in olive oil, by considering fishing, processing, and packaging, using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The case study concerns a product of a canning factory based in Portugal and packed in aluminum cans. It is the first LCA of a processed seafood product made with the traditional canning method. The production of both cans and olive oil are the most important process in the considered impact categories. The production of olives contributes to the high environmental load of olive oil, related to cultivation and harvesting phases. The production of aluminum cans is the most significant process for all impact categories, except ozone depletion potential and eutrophication potential, resulting from the high energy demand and the extraction of raw materials. To compare to other sardine products consumed in Portugal, such as frozen and fresh sardines, transport to the wholesaler and store was added. The environmental cost of canned sardines is almost seven times higher per kilogram of edible product. The main action to optimize the environmental performance of canned sardines is therefore to replace the packaging and diminish the olive oil losses as much as possible. Greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by half when plastic packaging is considered rather than aluminum. Frozen and fresh sardines represent much lower environmental impacts than canned sardines. Nevertheless, when other sardine products are not possible, it becomes feasible to use sardines for human consumption, preventing them from being wasted or used suboptimally as feed.The electric power industry plays a critical role in the economy and the environment, and it is important to examine the economic, environmental, and policy implications of current and future power generation scenarios. However, the tools that exist to perform the life cycle assessments are either too complex or too aggregated to be useful for these types of activities. In this work, we build upon the framework of existing input-output (I-O) models by adding data about the electric power industry and disaggregating this single sector into additional sectors, each representing a specific portion of electric power industry operations. For each of these disaggregated sectors, we create a process-specific supply chain and a set of emission factors that allow calculation of the environmental effects of that sector's output. This new model allows a much better fit for scenarios requiring more specificity than is possible with the current I-O model.Global population growth and rising living standards are increasing apparel consumption. Consequently, consumption of resources and generation of textile waste are increasing. According to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, textile consumption increased by 40% between the years 2000 and 2009 in Sweden. Given that there is currently no textile recycling plant in Sweden, the aim of this article is to explore the potential environmental benefits of various textile recycling techniques and thereby direct textile waste management strategies toward more sustainable options. Three different recycling techniques for a model waste consisting of 50% cotton and 50% polyester were identified and a life cycle assessment (LCA) was made to assess the environmental performance of them. The recycling processes are: material reuse of textile waste of adequate quality; separation of cellulose from polyester using N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide as a solvent; and chemical recycling of polyester. These are compared to incineration, representing conventional textile waste treatment in Sweden. The results show that incineration has the highest global warming potential and primary energy usage. The material reuse process exhibits the best performance of the studied systems, with savings of 8 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) and 164 gigajoules (GJ) of primary energy per tonne of textile waste. Sensitivity analyses showed that results are particularly sensitive to the considered yields of the processes and to the choice of replaced products. An integration of these recycling technologies for optimal usage of their different features for treatment of 1 tonne of textile waste shows that 10 tonnes CO2-eq and 169 GJ of primary energy could be saved.The development of electro-mobility, with electric vehicles (EVs) replacing conventional vehicles (CVs), raises issues relating to the environment, energy and industry. Within a given country, it would have an economic impact in many areas, in particular on governments. Our objective is to quantify the respective impacts on the public finances of an electrically powered or petrol fuelled private car. In order to do this, we establish an integrated method of valuation, covering both manufacture and use of the vehicle, with location of these two stages within or outside the country concerned. From a "depth" perspective, it incorporates the economic proceeds from the different activities and what they consume, and from a "breadth" perspective it incorporates the fiscal effects (VAT, fuel and energy taxes, tax on production, etc.) and the effects on social accounts (social contributions, unemployment benefits). The valuation method is based on an input output model of the productive economy within a country, combined with mechanisms of fiscal and social transfer. We hypothesize an additional type of activity for the Manufacture of electric vehicles, and we model it within the intersectorial matrix associated with production. Application of the method to France reveals first that the impact of a vehicle on the public finances is substantial: manufacture contributes approximately the purchase price excluding VAT, and usage adds an amount of the same order of magnitude. The vast majority of the revenues (approximately 70%) arise from the social contributions associated with production, including the opportunity value of employment; VAT accounts for almost 20%, tax on production around 5%, and energy taxes 9% for a CV vehicle or 1% for an EV. Then, four cases for substitution of EV to CV are set up and assessed, depending on the places either domestic or foreign in which the vehicle is manufactured and used, respectively. In the base case, where the vehicle is both manufactured and used inside the country, substituting an EV to a CV would be financially neutral for public finances at least before any purchase incentive bonus. The export case, where an EV is substituted to a CV in domestic production but then exported and hence used outside the country, yields an additional revenue of about 8000 to the domestic public finances (without bonus); the import case has an opposite effect. Lastly, the twofold substitution of an imported EV to a domestically manufactured CV for domestic use would entail a loss of about 20,000 (without bonus). Therefore, for France the purchase incentive bonus can be justified mainly by the stakes of energy independence and domestic industry at the national scale or of environmental quality at the urban scale. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comprehensive LCA (life cycle assessment) for transportation fuels (gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel) derived from Canada's oil sands was conducted, and all the current possible pathways from bitumen extraction to use in vehicles were explored. Authors, in earlier studies, have presented the energy consumption and GHG (greenhouse gas) emission results for individual unit operations-recovery, extraction, upgrading and refining. The LC (life cycle) inventory data for the current LCA study were obtained from theoretical model named FUNNEL-GHG-OS (FUNdamental ENgineering PrinciplEs- based ModeL for Estimation of GreenHouse Gases in the Oil Sands), developed from fundamental engineering principles. The impact of the cogeneration of electricity in oil sands recovery, extraction, and upgrading on the LC GHG emissions of gasoline was explored. LC WTW (well-to-wheel) GHG emissions range from 106.8 to 116 g-CO(2)equivalent/MJ of gasoline, 100.5 to 115.2 g-CO(2)equivalent/MJ of diesel, and 96.4 to 109.2 g-CO(2)equivalent/MJ of jet fuel, depending on the pathway. Combustion emissions (64.7%-70.3%) are the largest constituent of WTW emissions for gasoline production; recovery (through surface mining and steam assisted gravity drainage) forms 7.2%-16% depending on the LC production process of gasoline. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As power system requires huge assets investment and consumes massive fossil fuels, evaluating and increasing utilization efficiency of electrical equipment helps to improve the economy of power system, save energy, and reduce pollutant emissions. In this paper, the concept of electrical equipment utilization efficiency within LCA (life cycle assessment), which combines both supply-side and demand-side, is proposed to fully reflect actual utilization of electrical equipment. Based on this concept, the indexes for calculating electrical equipment utilization efficiency within LCA are proposed. The main factors that influence utilization efficiency are presented, and then the contributions of these influence factors to electrical equipment utilization efficiency within LCA are also analyzed. Furthermore, the electrical equipment utilization efficiency within LCA of the distribution network in Shaoguan, which is a typical case in China, is investigated. The results show that the electrical equipment utilization efficiency within LCA is mostly below 20%, indicating that there is a huge potential for improvement. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In part I of our two-part study, we compare the timing-adjusted GHG (greenhouse gas) balance and life cycle impacts of potentially using harvest residue (unmerchantable small-diameter roundwood) in an existing large (211 MWe) wood pellet-fired (formerly coal-fired) power plant in Ontario, Canada, versus a hypothetical small (250 kW(e)) wood chip gasification plant that recovers heat in addition to producing electricity. Although the large, retrofitted power plant has a higher electrical efficiency, the small plant has lower environmental impacts (TRACI 2.1), mainly due to the benefits of drying the biomass inputs with recovered heat, having a shorter fuel shipping distance, and reduced biomass processing. The small plant emits 38 g of fossil fuel-derived CO2 eq./kWh, versus 134 g/kWh from its large-scale counterpart. Although these GHG emissions are insignificant relative to the forest carbon emissions from gasification and combustion (13-1.4 kg CO2/kWh), the harvest residue would have decomposed over time had it been left on the forest floor. After 100 years, forest carbon storage decreases by 3.8-4.1 kg from the sustained production of 1 kWh of electricity per year. The decline in carbon storage delays net GHG mitigation by 4 (small-scale system) to 7 years (large-scale system) when displacing electricity from coal. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In order to solve environmental problems such as global warming and resource depletion in the construction industry, interest in new renewable energy (NRE) systems has increased. The ground source heat pump (GSHP) system is the most efficient system among NRE systems. However, since the initial investment cost of the GSHP is quite expensive, a feasibility study needs to be conducted from the life-cycle perspective. Meanwhile, the efficiency of GSHP depends most significantly on the entering water temperature (EWT) of the ground heat exchanger (GHE). Therefore, this study aims to assess the environmental and economic effects of the use of GHE for selecting the optimal GHE. This study was conducted in three steps: (i) establishing the basic information and selecting key factors affecting GHE performances; (ii) making possible alternatives of the GHE installation by considering EWT; and (iii) using life-cycle assessment and life-cycle cost, as well as comprehensive evaluation of the environmental and economic effects on the GHE. These techniques allow for easy and accurate determination of the optimal design of the GHE from the environmental and economic effects in the early design phase. In future research, a multi-objective decision support model for the GSHP will be developed.Objective: In life-cycle assessment, the functional unit defines the unit for calculation of environmental indicators. The objective of the present study was to assess the influence of two functional units, 100 g and 100 kcal (420 kJ), on the associations between three dimensions for identifying sustainable foods, namely environmental impact (via greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE)), nutritional quality (using two distinct nutrient profiling systems) and price. Design: GHGE and price data were collected for individual foods, and were each expressed per 100 g and per 100 kcal. Two nutrient profiling models, SAIN, LIM and UK Ofcom, were used to assess foods' nutritional quality. Spearman correlations were used to assess associations between variables. Sustainable foods were identified as those having more favourable values for all three dimensions. Setting: The French Individual and National Dietary Survey (INCA2), 2006-2007. Subjects: Three hundred and seventy-three foods highly consumed in INCA2, covering 65 % of total energy intake of adult participants. Results: When GHGE and price were expressed per 100 g, low-GHGE foods had a lower price and higher SAIN, LIM and Ofcom scores (r=0.59, -0.34 and -0.43, respectively), suggesting a compatibility between the three dimensions; 101 and 100 sustainable foods were identified with SAIN, LIM and Ofcom, respectively. When GHGE and price were expressed per 100 kcal, low-GHGE foods had a lower price but also lower SAIN, LIM and Ofcom scores (r=0.67, 0.51 and 0.47, respectively), suggesting that more environment-friendly foods were less expensive but also less healthy; thirty-four sustainable foods were identified with both SAIN, LIM and Ofcom. Conclusions: The choice of functional unit strongly influenced the compatibility between the sustainability dimensions and the identification of sustainable foods.Lean principles provide improvement to the efficiency of construction by synchronizing the process of building and eliminating waste, which in turn can have a positive impact on the environment. This is generating a growing interest in linking the relationship between lean and low carbon. The authors compare the carbon emission in the truss construction process of a steel structured building in China optimized by lean principles with the original process. A partial life cycle assessment (LCA) framework is used to calculate the embodied carbon of materials, energy consumption of transportation from cradle to site, energy consumption of construction equipment and disposal of construction waste. This confirms through case study and measurement what had previously been proposed and adds the aspect of site efficiency into the current method for life cycle assessment of carbon emission. The results show that the lean process had an embodied carbon of 5532.1t CO2e delivering a reduction of 43t compared to the original process, demonstrating lean interventions can have a positive impact on the environment. This study establishes the link between the efficiency of the construction process and low carbon using empirical evidence demonstrating that contractors can use lean principles in their construction processes to improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions as a result.The pyrolysis characteristics of two Chinese coals, two biomass materials, and their blends were investigated by both experimental and numerical methods. Single particles of the coal and biomass were prepared for the pyrolysis experiment through grinding and pressing, while the blended particles were made by mixing the coal and biomass powder with different ratios before the pressing. Sample particles pyrolyzed in a single-particle reactor system, with the time history of the particle temperature and mass recorded. The analysis of the measured pyrolysis data of the coal, biomass, and coal biomass blends indicate the absence of a synergistic effect between the coal and biomass pyrolysis. A numerical method coupling the chemical percolation devolatilization (CPD) model with a particle energy equation was employed to analyze the pyrolysis process. The model prediction agreed well with the experimental data for different particle diameters, fuel types, and blend mixing conditions. The fact that the co-pyrolysis of blended coal biomass particles is well-predicted by the simple addition of the individual pyrolysis characteristics of its components also corroborates the lack of synergistic interactions. These findings will be useful for the co-combustion modeling of coal biomass blends.The construction industry is a major consumer of natural resources and a major contributor to CO2 emissions. As increasing attention is paid to sustainability and resource preservation, current construction practices need to be assessed in terms of environmental performance as well. Currently, the decision making process for pavement construction in Greece is largely based on initial cost, excluding use and maintenance costs as well as environmental performance. Therefore, the use of concrete road pavements is very limited, despite possible technical and financial benefits. In the present paper, a comparative life cycle assessment was carried out for six different concrete road pavements. The parameters for the comparative LCA were three types of binders; a pozzolanic Portland cement, a new hydraulic road binder and a mixed-type binder consisting of Portland cement and fly ash, as well as two different aggregates; crushed limestone and steel slag. Construction, use and maintenance and end-of-life recycling for a period of 40 years were considered for the life cycle assessment. Results show that concrete road pavements with high volume of alternative materials can reduce CO2-eq emissions to a great extent compared to ordinary concrete pavements and, thus, significantly improve their environmental footprint. The transportation distance sensitivity analysis showed that substituting cement with fly ash is environmentally beneficial even when fly ash is transported over long distances, while the emissions from the use of alternative aggregates in concrete are reduced only in limited geographical areas. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Over the last few years, waste management strategies are shifting from waste disposal to recycling and recovery and are considering waste as a potential new resource. To monitor the progress in these waste management strategies, governmental policies have developed a wide range of indicators. In this study, we analyzed the concept of the recyclability benefit rate indicator, which expresses the potential environmental savings that can be achieved from recycling the product over the environmental burdens of virgin production followed by disposal. This indicator is therefore, based on estimated environmental impact values obtained through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practices. We quantify the environmental impact in terms of resource consumption using the Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment method. This research applied this indicator to two cases of plastic waste recycling in Flanders: closed-loop recycling (case A) and open-loop recycling (case B). Each case is compared to an incineration scenario and a landfilling scenario. The considered plastic waste originates from small domestic appliances and household waste other than plastic bottles. However, the existing recyclability benefit rate indicator does not consider the potential substitution of different materials occurring in open-loop recycling. To address this issue, we further developed the indicator for open-loop recycling and cascaded use. Overall, the results show that both closed-loop and open-loop recycling are more resource efficient than landfilling and incineration with energy recovery. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Sustainability in terms of the natural resource demands of protein-rich algal meal for livestock feed applications was examined. In The Netherlands, an integrated microalgal biorefinery delivered the following products: digestate, electricity, heat available for a nearby bio-ethanol facility and algae oil and meal. Pilot scale (500 m(2)) data were used to conduct an exergy analysis (EA), which revealed the process inefficiencies of energy-intensive processes such as drying (44.01%) and inoculum production (54.98%). An attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) using system expansion exposed the high contribution of biomass digestion to the total resource footprint of the biorefinery (72.74%) due to the high daily demand for biomass and electricity consumption of the dosage system. In this study, algal meal was compared with soybean meal, which is the most commonly used protein-rich animal feed ingredient; it is produced in Brazil and transported to The Netherlands. Because algae production is a young, small-scale technology, the resource footprint of the large-scale soy meal production was a factor of 102 lower, mainly as a result of the energy-intensive algae cultivation stages. A sensitivity analysis showed that the resource footprint of algal meal production could be comparable with soy meal when, overall, the areal biomass productivity increases, electricity production is based on more renewable sources (wind) and the energy consumption from mixing and blowing flue gases into the ponds decreases. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A review was performed of eight previously performed investigations of environmental impacts from end-consumer food waste prevention. The overall aim of the study was to investigate the state of the art in these assessments, identify key factors which could explain seen variations in GWP-emission savings, and suggest methodological improvements leading to increased potentials for cross-study comparisons. Avoided emissions of greenhouse gases can according to reviewed studies reach from 0.8 to 4.4 kg CO2-eq./kg prevented food waste. The review shows that differences in calculated environmental benefits largely can be explained by emissions from avoided food production and related services, rather than avoided management of generated food waste. This, variations in previous studies are largely explained by differences in system boundary delimitations and assumptions related to the avoided food supply system. The review supports that food production is the overall determining factor for benefits related to food waste prevention in reviewed studies. In addition, consumer transports and end-consumer preparation can have a large impact on overall results, mainly due to the relatively small amount of food transported/prepared per unit energy consumed. The importance of a specific process in the food supply chain on overall results will however depend on several different parameters, such as environmental profile of energy used for cooking. The present study also discusses food categories of relevance to differentiate between when addressing the composition of preventable food waste, with the general recommendation to differentiate between vegetables/fruit, bread, cheese, other dairy products, fish, meat (beef) and meat (other than beef). As the many assumptions necessarily made in assessment of prevented food production have a large impact on the overall results, it is recommended for the LCA-practitioner to clearly present made assumptions. In addition, use of sensitivity analyses, varying the composition of prevented food waste is useful for robustness check. Due to the current diversity in methodological approaches when assessing environmental benefits from food waste prevention, authors would welcome establishment of more detailed guidelines within this field in order to increase both the general quality in assessments as well as the potential for cross-study comparisons. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.For the last 10 years, engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) have raised interest to industrials due to their properties. They are present in a large variety of products from cosmetics to building materials through food additives, and their value on the market was estimated to reach $3 trillion in 2014 (Technology Strategy Board 2009). TiO2 NMs represent the second most important part of ENMs production worldwide (550-5500 t/year). However, a gap of knowledge remains regarding the fate and the effects of these, and consequently, impact and risk assessments are challenging. This is due to difficulties in not only characterizing NMs but also in selecting the NM properties which could contribute most to ecotoxicity and human toxicity. Characterizing NMs should thus rely on various analytical techniques in order to evaluate several properties and to crosscheck the results. The aims of this review are to understand the fate and effects of TiO2 NMs in water, sediment, and soil and to determine which of their properties need to be characterized, to assess the analytical techniques available for their characterization, and to discuss the integration of specific properties in the Life Cycle Assessment and Risk Assessment calculations. This study underlines the need to take into account nano-specific properties in the modeling of their fate and effects. Among them, crystallinity, size, aggregation state, surface area, and particle number are most significant. This highlights the need for adapting ecotoxicological studies to NP-specific properties via new methods of measurement and new metrics for ecotoxicity thresholds.Life cycle impact assessment indicators are integrated for studying the process integration of renewable resources and CO2 capture and storage (CCS) in power plants. Besides the expected reduction in global warming potential (GWP), CCS induces energy and cost penalties. This paper presents a systematic multi-objective optimisation framework for the optimal design of power plants with CO2 capture considering environomic criteria to systematically assess the trade-off between environmental impacts, efficiency and costs. Life cycle assessment is combined with flowsheeting, energy integration, economic evaluation and multi-objective optimisation techniques. Post- and pre-combustion CO2 capture options for electricity generation processes, using fossil and renewable resources, are assessed. Multi-objective optimisations are performed for various objectives to reveal the influence on the decision making. The calculated CO2 emissions, allow to assess the impact of the CO2 tax, considering not only the on-site emissions but taking into account the overall life cycle of the fuel supply, electricity generation and CO2 capture. The results show that the environomic optimal process design and competitiveness of CO2 capture highly depends on the considered environmental impact and on the introduction of a carbon tax. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Plasma torch gasification (PTG) is currently researched as a technology for solid waste recovery. However, scientific studies based on evaluating its environmental implications considering the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology are lacking. Therefore, this work is focused on comparing the environmental effect of the emissions of syngas combustion produced by refuse derived fuel (RDF) and PTG as alternative fuels, with that related to fossil fuel combustion in the cement industry. To obtain real data, a semi-industrial scale pilot plant was used to perform experimental trials on RDF-PTG. The results highlight that PTG for waste to energy recovery in the cement industry is environmentally feasible considering its current state of development. A reduction in every impact category was found when a total or partial substitution of alternative fuel for conventional fuel in the calciner firing (60 % of total thermal energy input) was performed. Furthermore, the results revealed that electrical energy consumption in PTG is also an important parameter from the LCA approach.In the United States, average household size decreased significantly over the past half century. From 1950 to 2010, the number of households increased 72% faster than population size. In this paper we consider how this drift toward more and smaller households, occurring alongside rising affluence, undermines efforts to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by eroding household scale economies of consumption and associated CO2 emissions. To estimate the household scaling of CO2 emissions, we link consumer expenditure data to an economic input-output life-cycle assessment model. We find that the CO2 scaling benefits of cohabitation are compellingly large, with the carbon footprint of a representative person cohabiting with others being 23% less, on average, than if that same person lived alone. Additionally, we find that household scale economies: 1) decrease in income, reflecting the rise in the percentage of household expenditures devoted to more rival goods and services; and 2) increase intuitively in household size, reflecting the direct expenditure sharing benefits of cohabitation. The combined downward pressure on scale economies from declining household size and rising incomes, typifying the trajectory of developing societies toward more and smaller households and rising affluence, places significant upward pressure on CO2 emissions globally. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sustainable development studies have recently begun to consider damage loss attributable to natural hazards. A sustainable perspective on building design entails an understanding of a structure's life-cycle environmental costs and consideration of the associated environmental impacts induced by natural hazards. Damage repair costs lead to additional material and energy consumption, creating harmful environmental impacts. Merging the results obtained from a natural hazard evaluation and related environmental impacts for buildings in seismically prone areas provides a novel outlook for sustainable design decisions. To evaluate the environmental impacts caused by buildings, the long-term effects accrued throughout a building's lifetime and the effects associated with damage repair need to be quantified. A literature review and a proposed method for this type of analysis have been developed and are discussed. Using Athena and HAZUS-MH software, this study evaluated the performance of steel and concrete buildings by considering their life-cycle assessments and earthquake resistance. This study determined that code design level greatly affects building repair and damage estimations. This study presented two case-study buildings and found specific results using several assumptions. Future research recommendations were provided to make this methodology more useful in real-world applications. Examining the cost and environmental impacts of a building using a cradle-to-grave analysis and seismic damage assessment assists in reducing material consumption and construction activities before and after an earthquake event occurs. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.A limitation of any reported environmental performance is the considerable uncertainties present in the analysis. A methodology based on design of experiments techniques, coupled with life cycle assessment, was implemented to investigate the influence of inventory uncertainties on the predicted environmental impact. A case study on nanomanufacturing is presented. Results showed that mass data variability does not have a significant effect on the predicted environmental impacts. Material profiles for input materials did have a highly significant effect on the overall impact. Energy consumption and material characterization were identified as two areas where additional research is needed in order to obtain more accurate and precise predictions of the overall impact of nanomaterials. The methodology facilitates impact assessment of material selection for life cycle assessment, allows the establishment of a predictive model, and makes possible the identification of significant process variables as well as their interdependency.The assessment methodology of soil remediation technologies including citizen's opinions about environmental policy was developed to enable direct comparison between the resident health risk reduction by carrying out remediation (decreased primary risk) and the potential impacts of chemicals emitted during the remediation on national health, social assets, and primary production (secondary risk). Both risks were quantified with an unified index, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), by employing life cycle costing (LCC), economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA), and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) database. Four remediation technologies were considered: excavation-disposal, high temperature thermal desorption (HTTD), biopile, and landfarming. There was almost no difference in the decreased primary risk among the four technologies, apart from landfarming, which had the smallest decreased primary risk. The secondary risk of the biological technologies (biopile, landfarming) was smaller than that of the physical and chemical technologies (excavation-disposal, HTTD). The ratio of the decreased primary risk to the secondary risk was largest in case of landfarming, which indicated that landfarming was most effective. The sum of the residual primary risks and secondary risk was small in the biological technologies, indicating that the biological technologies had smaller environmental impacts. Indexing both of decreased primary risk and secondary risk with DALYs enables non-experts who prioritize resident's health to assess the soil remediation technologies and would facilitate the decision making in the selection of remediation technologies.Life cycle assessment methodology was applied as a tool to evaluate the real environmental benefit of using recycled waste tyres in mixture with virgin rubber. Styrene-isoprene-styrene rubber was mixed with different amounts of ground tyre rubber and vulcanised. Thermomechanical analysis (i.e. differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis) and dynamic mechanical thermal analysis were carried out in order to evaluate the compatibility of the rubber mixture and the chemical-physical properties of the vulcanised products. Experimental analysis results show that the addition of ground tyre rubber up to 50 phr does not sensibly affect the vulcanisation reaction, the wet skid resistance and the rolling resistance. Life cycle assessment results show that the main environmental impacts of the ground tyre rubber are associated to the use of virgin rubber (47.1%) and carbon black (34.3%) while the tyre grinding process contributes only for 4%. Because ground tyre rubber contains carbon black in its formulation, the substitution of virgin rubber with ground tyre rubber has double environmental benefits: to reduce the need of both amounts of virgin rubber and fresh carbon black in the new formulation.A biofuels and bioproducts conversion network is optimized over unit cost and unit greenhouse gas emissions objectives. We use a multiobjective, functional unit approach based on the life cycle analysis methodology with simultaneous consideration of capital budget constraints. A novel functional unit of mass of input biogenic CO2-eq is proposed to capture common benefits of bioproducts and biofuels. A novel dimensionless net atmospheric carbon ratio (NACR) for bioconversion processes is defined that captures the life cycle carbon footprint of the process from feedstock cultivation to product end use. The model is formulated as a nonconvex multiobjective mixed integer nonlinear fractional programming problem. We address computational complexity by developing a novel global optimization algorithm that incorporates the parametric algorithm and successive piecewise linear approximations to estimate nonconvex terms, and we introduce nonlinear programming subproblems to ensure global convergence under capital cost budget constraints. We consider large-scale case studies of a bioconversion network of 200 technologies and 142 materials/compounds where fuels and chemicals can be made from biomass. Unit costs range from -$0.27 to -$0.43/kg input CO2-eq, and the NACRs range from 0.17 to 0.25. An optimal NACR that includes biofuel combustion emissions over a network where only biofuels are produced was found to be 1.90.The fishing industry is heavily reliant on the use of fossil fuel and emits large quantities of greenhouse gases and other atmospheric pollutants. Methods used to calculate fishing vessel emissions inventories have traditionally utilised estimates of fuel efficiency per unit of catch. These methods have weaknesses because they do not easily allow temporal and geographical allocation of emissions. A large proportion of fishing and other small commercial vessels are also omitted from global shipping emissions inventories such as the International Maritime Organisation's Greenhouse Gas Studies. This paper demonstrates an activity-based methodology for the production of temporally- and spatially-resolved emissions inventories using data produced by Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). The methodology addresses the issue of how to use AIS data for fleets where not all vessels use AIS technology and how to assign engine load when vessels are towing trawling or dredging gear. The results of this are compared to a fuel-based methodology using publicly available European Commission fisheries data on fuel efficiency and annual catch. The results show relatively good agreement between the two methodologies, with an estimate of 295.7 kilotons of fuel used and 914.4 kilotons of carbon dioxide emitted between May 2012 and May 2013 using the activity-based methodology. Different methods of calculating speed using AIS data are also compared. The results indicate that using the speed data contained directly in the AIS data is preferable to calculating speed from the distance and time interval between consecutive MS data points. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate change and energy policies often encourage bioenergy as a sustainable greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction option. Recent research has raised concerns about the climate change impacts of bioenergy as heterogeneous pathways of producing and converting biomass, indirect impacts, uncertainties within the bioenergy supply chains and evaluation methods generate large variation in emission profiles. This research examines the combustion of wood pellets from forest residues to generate electricity and considers uncertainties related to GHG emissions arising at different points within the supply chain. Different supply chain pathways were investigated by using life cycle assessment (LCA) to analyse the emissions and sensitivity analysis was used to identify the most significant factors influencing the overall GHG balance. The calculations showed in the best case results in GHG reductions of 83% compared to coal-fired electricity generation. When parameters such as different drying fuels, storage emission, dry matter losses and feedstock market changes were included the bioenergy emission profiles showed strong variation with up to 73% higher GHG emissions compared to coal. The impact of methane emissions during storage has shown to be particularly significant regarding uncertainty and increases in emissions. Investigation and management of losses and emissions during storage is therefore key to ensuring significant GHG reductions from biomass. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In designing policies to promote bioenergy, policy makers face challenges concerning uncertainties about the sustainability of bioenergy pathways (including greenhouse gas balances), technology and resource costs, or future energy market framework conditions. New information becomes available with time, but policy adjustments can involve high levels of adaptation costs. To enable an effective steering of technology choices and innovation, policies have to strike a balance between creating a consistent institutional framework, which establishes planning security for investors, and sufficient flexibility to adapt to new information. This paper examines implications of economic theory for handling cost and benefit uncertainty in bioelectricity policy design, focussing on choices between price and quantity instruments, technology differentiation, and policy adjustment. Findings are applied to two case studies, the UK's Renewables Obligation and the German feed-in tariff/feed-in premium scheme. Case study results show the trade-offs that are involved in instrument choice and design depending on political priorities and a country's specific context, different options can prove more adequate. Combining market-based remuneration with sustainability criteria results in strong incentives for bioenergy producers to search for low-cost solutions; whereas cost-based price instruments with centrally steered technology and feedstock choices offer higher planning security for investors and more direct control for policy makers over what pathways are implemented. Independent of the choice of instrument type and technology differentiation mechanism, findings emphasise the importance of a careful policy design, which determines the exact balance between performance criteria such as cost control, incentive intensity, planning security and adaptive efficiency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work, detailed cradle-to-grave life cycle analyses are performed for a current state-of-the art natural gas combined cycle and a bulk-scale solid fuel cell power plant fuelled by natural gas. Life cycle inventories are performed for multiple configurations of each plant, including designs with carbon capture capability. Consistent boundaries (including all supply chain and upstream processes) and unit bases for each process are defined for each process. The ReCiPe 2008 life cycle assessment method is used to quantify the impacts of each plant at both mid- and end-point levels. Three impact assessment perspectives (individualist, hierarchist, and egalitarian) are considered. The results of these life cycle analyses are compared in order to determine the environmental trade-offs between potential power generation pathways. Results indicate that power generation using solid oxide fuel cells has a smaller life cycle impact than the natural gas combined cycle when the entire life cycle of each option is considered.Research on carbon capture and storage has been focused on CO2 storage in geologic formations, with many potential risks. An alternative to conventional geologic storage is carbon mineralization, where CO2 is reacted with metal cations to form carbonate minerals. Mineralization methods can be broadly divided into two categories: in situ and ex situ. In situ mineralization, or mineral trapping, is a component of underground geologic sequestration, in which a portion of the injected CO2 reacts with alkaline rock present in the target formation to form solid carbonate species. In ex situ mineralization, the carbonation reaction occurs above ground, within a separate reactor or industrial process. This literature review is meant to provide an update on the current status of research on CO2 mineralization.In this work, a comparative exergy and environmental analysis of the vehicle fuel end use is presented. This analysis comprises petroleum and natural gas derivatives (including hydrogen), biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel), and their mixtures, besides of the electricity generated in the Brazilian electricity mix, intended to be used in plug in electric vehicles. The renewable and non-renewable unit exergy costs and CO2 emission cost are proposed as suitable indicators for assessing the renewable exergy consumption intensity and the environmental impact, and for quantifying the thermodynamic performance of the transportation sector. This allows ranking the energy conversion processes along the vehicle fuels production routes and their end use, so that the best options for the transportation sector can be determined and better energy policies may be issued. It is found that if a drastic CO2 emissions abatement of the sector is pursued, a more intensive utilization of ethanol in the Brazilian transportation sector mix is advisable. However, as the overall exergy conversion efficiency of the sugar cane industry is still very low, which increases the unit exergy cost of ethanol, better production and end use technologies are required. Nonetheless, with the current scenario of a predominantly renewable Brazilian electricity mix, based on more than 80% of renewable sources, this source consolidates as the most promising energy source to reduce the large amount of greenhouse gas emissions which transportation sector is responsible for. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The mobile e-waste recycling equipment was chosen as the object of this study, including manual dismantling, mechanical separation of cathode ray tubes (CRTs), and printed circuit boards (PCBs) in the two independent workshops. To determine the potential environmental contamination, the noise, the heavy metals (Cu, Cd, Pb), and the environmental impacts of the e-waste recycling processes in the two workshops of the mobile plant have been evaluated in this paper. This study determined that when control measures are employed, the noise within the two workshops (<80 dB) will meet the national standards. In the CRT workshop, Pb was the most polluting metal, with 2.3 mu g/m(3) and 10.53 mg/g in the air and floor dust, respectively. The result of a health risk assessment shows that noncancerous effects are possible for Pb (hazard index (HI)=3.54 in the CRT workshop and HI=1.27 in the PCB workshop). The carcinogenic risks to workers for Cd are relatively light in both the workshops. From the results of life cycle assessment (LCA), it can be seen that there was an environmental benefit from the e-waste recycling process as a whole.This study aims at qualifying air pollutants and environmental impacts generated from coal-based power plants and providing useful information for decision makers on the management of coal-based power plants in China. Results showed that approximately 9.03, 54.95, 62.08, and 12.12 % of the national carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emissions, respectively, in 2011 were generated from coal-based electricity generation. The air pollutants were mainly generated from east China because of the well-developed economy and energy-intensive industries in the region. Coal-washing technology can simply and significantly reduce the environmental burden because of the relativity low content of coal gangue and sulfur in washed coal. Optimizing the efficiency of raw materials and energy consumption is additional key factor to reduce the potential environmental impacts. In addition, improving the efficiency of air pollutants (e.g., dust, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides) control system and implementing the strict requirements on air pollutants for power plants are important ways for reducing the potential environmental impacts of coal-based electricity generation in China.Guayule (Parthenium argentatum Gray) is an arid-adapted, low-input perennial shrub native to Mexico and southern Texas that has received considerable attention as an alternative source of natural rubber. It has potential to replace the most common types of rubbers, including synthetic rubber derived from petroleum and natural rubber, which is tapped from Hevea (Hevea brasiliensis) trees grown in tropical regions, primarily Southeast Asia. The guayule plant produces natural rubber in its bark parenchyma cells and the shrub is processed to extract the latex. Guayule rubber is comparable in quality to Hevea natural rubber and the residual, non-latex guayule plant material can be transformed into valuable co-products, such as bioenergy. This review introduces the reader to guayule rubber production (agriculture, processing and products) and explores the sustainability implications of guayule rubber commercialization related to the three pillars of sustainability, including environmental impacts of rubber production, economic barriers and advantages, and social implications. The review highlights areas of focus that could be leveraged to help guayule become a more sustainable source of natural rubber. Guayule rubber provides an opportunity to lower the environmental impacts of a major commodity, to develop an industry to support the local U.S, economy, and to reduce U.S. dependence on non-renewable petroleum sources and rubber imports. Proposed recommendations to further support guayule sustainability include improving the efficiency of agricultural and processing activities, utilization of guayule co-products to improve economics of guayule cultivation, and the establishment of a secure guayule rubber supply at a production level that could consistently meet rubber demands. A better understanding of guayule rubber life-cycle impacts could be a way to reduce the environmental footprint of guayule rubber products and expedite its commercialization. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study aims at performing the first comprehensive well-to-wheel (WTW) analysis on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy uses of petroleum-based automotive fuels, i.e., gasoline and diesel, in Korea. Although the Korean Renewable Fuel Standard is supposed to take effect in 2015, there are very few WTW results available in Korea. In this study, all relevant processes in the whole fuel cycle are covered, which will provide Korea-specific results to policy makers and stakeholders in Korea. Input raw data were collected with the help of Korean petroleum industries and related association, as well as governmental institutions. Literature survey was carried out, especially for overseas processes in the crude oil recovery fields. The GREET model, developed by the U.S. Argonne National Laboratory, was adopted as a tool for WTW calculation, and most of the data were replaced by using the Korean specific information. Additional analysis was also performed for the refining process which was the most energy-intensive in the fuel life cycle. A process-level allocation method was used in calculating the refining energy use of individual petroleum products, which could reflect the detailed refining processes. The well-to-pump (WTP) GHG emissions of Korean gasoline and diesel are calculated as 12,047-12,677 and 11,025-11,643 g CO2 eq./GJ(Final_fuel), respectively. The main difference comes from the higher GHG emission in the refining process of gasoline than in diesel. As compared to other countries, the WTP results of Korean fuels are smaller than those of the USA and Europe mainly due to higher refining efficiency, while larger than those of Japan with a significant difference in GHG emissions regarding crude oil recovery. In the WTW results with all the Korean vehicle models in 2014 considered, similar weight of diesel models demonstrates overall lower WTW emissions than gasoline models, since the former has both lower WTP GHG emissions and better fuel economy than the latter. In this study, a comprehensive WTW GHG analysis on Korean gasoline and diesel was performed to provide Korea-specific results to policy makers and stakeholders. The analysis was based on the official data provided by Korean petroleum associations and companies as well as literature survey and our own analysis. There is a relatively large uncertainty from the refining process, which should be further investigated to improve the accuracy of the results.The aim of this study is to explore the literature surrounding the environmental impact of mobile phones and the implications of moving from the current business model of selling, using and discarding phones to a product service system based upon a cloud service. The exploration of the impacts relating to this shift and subsequent change in scope is explored in relation to the life cycle profile of a typical smartphone. A literature study is conducted into the existing literature in order to define the characteristics of a "typical" smartphone. Focus is given to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in different life cycle phases in line with that reported in the majority of literature. Usage patterns from literature are presented in order to show how a smartphone is increasingly responsible for not only data consumption but also data generation. The subsequent consequences of this for the balance of the life cycle phases are explored with the inclusion of wider elements in the potential expanded mobile infrastructure, such as servers and the network. From the available literature, the manufacturing phase is shown to dominate the life cycle of a "typical" smartphone for GHG emissions. Smartphone users are shown to be increasingly reliant upon the internet for provision of their communications. Adding a server into the scope of a smartphone is shown to increase the use phase impact from 8.5 to 18.0 kg CO2-eq, other phases are less affected. Addition of the network increases the use phase by another 24.7 kg CO2-eq. In addition, it is shown that take-back of mobile phones is not effective at present and that prompt return of the phones could result in reduction in impact by best reuse potential and further reduction in toxic emissions through inappropriate disposal. The way in which consumers interact with their phones is changing, leading to a system which is far more integrated with the internet. A product service system based upon a cloud service highlights the need for improved energy efficiency to make greatest reduction in GHG emissions in the use phase, and gives a mechanism to exploit residual value of the handsets by timely return of the phones, their components and recovery of materials.The EU landfill and Waste Framework directives are driving new approaches to waste management in the UK, away from landfilling and mass-burn incineration, which has been regarded as the main alternative to landfilling. The objective of this study is to compare the environmental impacts of three dual-stage advanced energy-from-waste technologies, i.e. gasification and plasma gas cleaning, fast pyrolysis and combustion and gasification with syngas combustion, with those associated with conventional treatments for municipal solid waste, i.e. landfill with electricity production and incineration with electricity production. Results show that the two-stage gasification and plasma process has a significantly better overall environmental performance than the conventional waste treatment technologies and somewhat better than a more modern incineration plant, exemplified by a plant under commissioning in Lincolnshire in the UK. The benefits of the gasification and plasma process arise primarily from its higher net electrical efficiency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Livestock production, and especially beef production, has a major impact on the environment. Environmental impacts, however, vary largely among beef systems. Understanding these differences is crucial to mitigate impacts of future global beef production. The objective of this research, therefore, was to compare cradle-to-farm-gate environmental impacts of beef produced in contrasting systems. We reviewed 14 studies that compared contrasting systems using life cycle assessment (LCA). Systems studied were classified by three main characteristics of beef production: origin of calves (bred by a dairy cow or a suckler cow), type of production (organic or non-organic) and type of diet fed to fattening calves (< 50% (roughage-based) or >= 50% (concentrate-based) concentrates). This review yielded lower global warming potential (GWP; on average 41% lower), acidification potential (41% lower), eutrophication potential (49% lower), energy use (23% lower) and land use (49% lower) per unit of beef for dairy-based compared with suckler-based systems. In suckler-based systems, maintaining the mother cow is the dominant contributor to all impacts, which is attributable to the low reproductive rate of cattle and the fact that all emissions are allocated to the production of beef. GWP was slightly lower (on average 7%) for organic compared with non-organic systems, whereas organic systems showed higher eutrophication potential, acidification potential and land use (36%, 56%, and 22% higher), and lower energy use (30% lower) per unit of beef produced. Except for GWP, however, these results should be interpreted with care because impacts were compared in few studies. Lower GWP (on average 28% lower), energy use (13% lower) and land use (41% lower) per unit of beef were found for concentrate-based compared with roughage-based systems, whereas no clear pattern was found for acidification and eutrophication potential. An LCA comparison of beef systems that differ in type of diet, however, is limited because current LCA methodology does not account for the competition for land between humans and animals. To enhance future food supply, grassland less suitable for crop production, therefore, might be preferred over high productive cropland for direct production of animal feed. Furthermore, studies included in our review did not include all relevant impact categories, such as loss of biodiversity or water use. We concluded that beef production from dual-purpose cows or dairy cows inseminated with beef breeds show largest potential to mitigate environmental impacts of beef. Marginal grasslands unsuitable for dairy farming may be used for production of suckler-based beef to contribute to availability and access to animal-source food. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Hydrogen produced from low-emission primary energy sources, particularly renewable energy, is a potential alternative transport fuel to gasoline and diesel that can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving global energy security. Hydrogen fuelling stations are one of the most important parts of the distribution infrastructure required to support the operation of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles and hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicles. If there is to be substantial market penetration of hydrogen vehicles in the transport sector, the introduction of commercial hydrogen vehicles and the network of fuelling stations to supply them with hydrogen must take place simultaneously. The present paper thus reviews the current state of the art and deployment of hydrogen fuelling stations. It is found that by 2013, there were 224 working hydrogen stations distributed over 28 countries. Some 43% of these stations were located in North and South America, 34% in Europe, 23% in Asia, and none in Australia. The state of the art in the range of hydrogen production processes is briefly reviewed. The importance of producing hydrogen using renewable energy sources is emphasised for a transition to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to contribute to greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. 2.3-5.8/H(2)kg for SMR A classification of hydrogen refuelling stations is introduced, based on the primary energy source used to produce the hydrogen, the production process, and whether the hydrogen is made on site or delivered to the site. The current state of deployment of hydrogen fuelling stations in each major region of the world is then reviewed in detail. The costs of producing hydrogen vary from $1.8 to 2.9/H-2 kg for Coal gasification, 2.3-5.8/H-2 kg for SMR, $6-7.4/H-2 kg for wind power and $6.3-25.4/H-2 kg depending on the cost of the PV system. The lowest cost of hydrogen is nearing competitiveness with petroleum fuels. Finally conclusions are drawn about the progress to date in establishing this crucial component of the infrastructure to enable hydrogen-powered vehicles to become a commercial reality. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we allocate Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of electricity transmission to the consumers. As an allocation basis, we introduce energy distance. Energy distance takes the transmission load on the electricity energy system into account in addition to the amount of electricity consumption. As a case study, we estimate regional GHG emissions of electricity transmission loss in Chile. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to estimate the total GHG emissions of the Chilean electric power system. The regional GHG emission of transmission loss is calculated from the total GHG emissions. We construct the network model of Chilean electric power grid as an undirected network with 466 nodes and 543 edges holding the topology of the power grid based on the statistical record. We analyze the total annual GHG emissions of the Chilean electricity energy system as 23.07 Mt CO2-eq. and 1.61 Mt CO2-eq. for the transmission loss, respectively. The total energy distance for the electricity transmission accounts for 12,842.10 TWh km based on network analysis. We argue that when the GHG emission of electricity transmission loss is estimated, the electricity transmission load should be separately considered. We propose network theory as a useful complement to LCA analysis for the complex allocation. Energy distance is especially useful on a very large-scale electric power grid such as an intercontinental transmission network.Heterogeneous catalysts are not only a venerable part of our chemical and industrial heritage, but they also occupy a pivotal, central role in the advancement of modern chemistry, chemical processes and chemical technologies. The broad field of catalysis has also emerged as a critical, enabling science and technology in the modern development of "Green Chemistry", with the avowed aim of achieving green and sustainable processes. Thus a widely utilized metric, the environmental E factor-characterizing the waste-to-product ratio for a chemical industrial process-permits one to assess the potential deleterious environmental impact of an entire chemical process in terms of excessive solvent usage. As the many (and entirely reasonable) societal pressures grow, requiring chemists and chemical engineers not only to develop manufacturing processes using new sources of energy, but also to decrease the energy/carbon footprint of existing chemical processes, these issues become ever more pressing. On that road to a green and more sustainable future for chemistry and energy, we note that, as far as we are aware, little effort has been directed towards a direct evaluation of the quantitative impacts that advances or improvements in a catalyst's performance or efficiency would have on the overall energy or carbon (CO2) footprint balance and corresponding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of chemical processes and manufacturing technologies. Therefore, this present research was motivated by the premise that the sustainability impact of advances in catalysis science and technology, especially heterogeneous catalysis-the core of large-scale manufacturing processes-must move from a qualitative to a more quantitative form of assessment. This, then, is the exciting challenge of developing a new paradigm for catalysis science which embodies-in a truly quantitative form-its impact on sustainability in chemical, industrial processes. Towards that goal, we present here the concept, definition, design and development of what we term the Catalyst Sensitivity Index (CSI) to provide a measurable index as to how efficiency or performance enhancements of a heterogeneous catalyst will directly impact upon the fossil energy consumption and GHG emissions balance across several prototypical fuel production and conversion technologies, e.g. hydrocarbon fuels synthesized using algae-to-biodiesel, algae-to-jet biofuel, coal-to-liquid and gas-to-liquid processes, together with fuel upgrading processes using fluidized catalytic cracking of heavy oil, hydrocracking of heavy oil and also the production of hydrogen from steam methane reforming. Traditionally, the performance of a catalyst is defined by a combination of its activity or efficiency (its turnover frequency), its selectivity and stability (its turnover number), all of which are direct manifestations of the intrinsic physicochemical properties of the heterogeneous catalyst itself under specific working conditions. We will, of course, retain these definitions of the catalytic process, but now attempt to place discussions about a catalyst's performance onto a new foundation by investigating the effect of improvements in the catalyst's efficiency or performance on the resulting total energy and total CO2 footprint for these prototypical fuel production and fuel conversion processes. The CSI should help the academic and industrial chemical communities, not only to highlight the current 'best practice catalysts', but also draw specific conclusions as to what energy and CO2 emissions saving one could anticipate with higher efficiency/higher performance from heterogeneous catalysts in a particular fuel synthesis or conversion process or technology. Our aim is to place discussions about advances in the science and technology of catalysis onto a firm foundation in the context of GHG emissions. We believe that thinking about (and attempting to quantify) total energy and CO2 emissions reductions associated with advances in catalysis science from a complete energy life cycle analysis perspective is extremely important. The CSI will help identify processes where the most critical advances in catalyst efficiency are needed in terms of their potential impact in the transition to a more sustainable future for fuel production and conversion technologies.This article analyzes the economic potential of integrating material separation and resource recovery into a landfill remediation project, and discusses the result and the largest impact factors. The analysis is done using a direct costs/revenues approach and the stochastic uncertainties are handled using Monte Carlo simulation. Two remediation scenarios are applied to a hypothetical landfill. One scenario includes only remediation, while the second scenario adds resource recovery to the remediation project. Moreover, the second scenario is divided into two cases, case A and B. In case A, the landfill tax needs to be paid for re-deposited material and the landfill holder does not own a combined heat and power plant (CHP), which leads to disposal costs in the form of gate fees. In case B, the landfill tax is waived on the re-deposited material and the landfill holder owns its own CHP. Results show that the remediation project in the first scenario costs about (sic)23/ton. Adding resource recovery as in case A worsens the result to -(sic)36/ton, while for case B the result improves to -(sic)14/ton. This shows the importance of landfill tax and the access to a CHP. Other important factors for the result are the material composition in the landfill, the efficiency of the separation technology used, and the price of the saleable material. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The ongoing trend in the public sector is to make more sustainable procurements by taking into account the impacts throughout the entire life cycle of the procurement. Despite the trend, the only deciding factor can still be the total costs. This article answers the question of how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should be taken into account in municipal solid waste (MSW) management when selecting an incineration plant for source separated mixed MSW. The aim is to guide the decision making of MSW management towards more environmentally friendly procurements. The study was carried out by calculating the global warming potentials (GWPs) and costs of mixed MSW management by using the waste composition from a case area in Finland. Scenarios of landfilling and combustion in three actual waste incineration plants were used to recognise the main processes that affect the results. GWP results show that the combustion of mixed MSW is a better alternative than landfilling the waste. The GHG results from combustion are greatly affected by emissions from the combustion and substituted energy production. The significance of collection and transportation is higher from the costs' perspective than from the point of view of GHG emissions. The main costs, in addition to collection and transportation costs, result from the energy utilization or landfilling of mixed MSW. When tenders are invited for the incineration location of mixed MSW, the main focus should be: What are the annual electricity and heat recovery efficiencies and which are the substituted fuels in the area? In addition, in the case of a fluidized bed combustor it is crucial to know the combusted share of mixed MSW after preparing solid recovered fuel (SRF) and the treatment of rejects. The environmental criteria for the waste incineration plant procurements should be made in order to obtain clear instructions for the procurement units. The results can also be utilized more widely. The substituted fuels in the area and the effect of the plant location on the utilization of the produced energy can already be identified when planning an appropriate site for the waste incineration plant. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and quantitative risk assessment (QRA) are commonly used to evaluate potential human health impacts associated with proposed or existing infrastructure and products. Each approach has a distinct objective and, consequently, their conclusions may be inconsistent or contradictory. It is proposed that the integration of elements of QRA and LCA may provide a more holistic approach to health impact assessment. Here we examine the possibility of merging LCA assessed human health impacts with quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) for waterborne pathogen impacts, expressed with the common health metric, disability adjusted life years (DALYs). The example of a recent large-scale water recycling project in Sydney, Australia was used to identify and demonstrate the potential advantages and current limitations of this approach. A comparative analysis of two scenarios with and without the development of this project - was undertaken for this purpose. LCA and QMRA were carried out independently for the two scenarios to compare human health impacts, as measured by DALYs lost per year. LCA results suggested that construction of the project would lead to an increased number of DALYs lost per year, while estimated disease burden resulting from microbial exposures indicated that it would result in the loss of fewer DALYs per year than the alternative scenario. By merging the results of the LCA and QMRA, we demonstrate the advantages in providing a more comprehensive assessment of human disease burden for the two scenarios, in particular, the importance of considering the results of both LCA and QRA in a comparative assessment of decision alternatives to avoid problem shifting. The application of DALYs as a common measure between the two approaches was found to be useful for this purpose. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purposes of this study are to quantify the natural resource consumption of primary aluminum production in China and to determine the resource-saving potential of aluminum in the transportation sector relative to steel. In this study, exergy, which expresses both the quantity and the quality of a resource, was adopted for natural resource accounting. The cumulative exergy demand (CExD) of primary aluminum was calculated by the process analysis method, which begins in the final link of the fabrication of the considered product and runs through the production of semifinished products. This method can provide detailed information about each process. The CExD value of 1 t of primary aluminum produced in China is 246,778 MJ(ex), and the largest contributor to the CExD is electricity, which is mainly consumed in the electrolytic process. Compared with the CExD derived from the national average resource consumption data of alumina production (three techniques), if alumina was only produced by the Bayer process, the CExD of primary aluminum would decrease by 10 %. Taking wheel hubs as a case study, although aluminum wheel hubs have a lower natural resource consumption rate during the use phase relative to steel wheel hubs, no natural resource savings are obtained before a certain driving distance (breakeven distance) is reached because of higher resource consumption in the production phase. The total amount of natural resources that aluminum wheel hubs could save (relative to steel wheel hubs) over its lifetime driving distance is 3,652 MJ(ex). In contrast, the breakeven distance derived from the CML model is approximately 80 % lower than that derived from the CExD model. A determination of the advantages of the Bayer process in terms of resource saving suggests that importing high-grade bauxite from abroad to promote the application of the Bayer process is an effective way to reduce primary aluminum's CExD, i.e., resource intensity, in China. A comparison of the characterization results between the CML model (China's own factors) and the CExD model shows that the CExD model assigns more weight to coal than to minerals, whereas the CML model assigns more weight to minerals.This study aims to compare crop rotation systems used in organic farming (organic rotation systems) with those of both conventional farming (conventional rotation systems) and continuous rice cropping systems. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed based on land- and product-based indicators. Seven crop rotation systems for rice, barley, and soybeans and continuous rice production systems were evaluated in this study. These systems are practiced by farmers in the study region and were constructed using production records, statistics, and guidelines. Comparisons were then made between organic and conventional crop rotation systems and between these crop rotation systems and a continuous rice production system. We used land-oriented expression to analyze tradeoffs between physical and monetary productivity and the environmental impact per area unit and product-oriented expression to analyze efficiency as measured by the environmental impact per product unit. Results are summarized as follows: (1) The product-oriented expression, which is equivalent to conducting product LCA, revealed that organic conversion tended to be efficient, irrespective of using physical productivity (the functional unit of product mass measured as averaged annual energy yield) or using monetary productivity (the functional unit of product mass measured as averaged annual income). (2) However, the land-oriented expression revealed that there were tradeoffs between physical productivity and environmental impacts, although these tradeoffs were converted to win-win relationships if monetary productivity was used instead of physical productivity, and (3) the alteration of a continuous rice production system into crop rotations tended to be efficient and enables a win-win relationship. Organic rotation systems have the potential of being recommended as sustainable agricultural practices in comparison with conventional rotation systems and continuous (organic and conventional) rice production systems. However, it was not clarified which productivity concepts should be used as evaluation criteria. It is considered that further studies using mechanistic modeling of crop rotations are required to improve LCA practices.In this paper, a first prototype of the innovative modular air-cooled condenser (MACC) proposed under the EU-funded MACCSol research project (Development and verification of a novel modular air cooled condenser for enhanced concentrated solar power generation) is compared with a water-cooled condenser (WCC) and an air-cooled condenser (ACC) in a reference concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. The aim is to evaluate the complete environmental profile of each cooling option and to highlight the differences in terms of impacts. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is being used in order to evaluate the life cycle impacts of the three condensers. Firstly, the life cycle impacts are evaluated through the most used methods International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 and Ecoindicator 99, using the SimaPro 7.3 software. Secondly, the Ecological Scarcity 2006 approach is used, since it takes into account the main issue of CSP plants: freshwater consumption. Results show that the impact of the MACC is comparable with the ACC one and, in particular, it results quite lower according to all the methods used. Evaluating the severity of local impact through the Ecological Scarcity 2006 method, since the site of operation of the condensers is characterized by medium water stress conditions, the WCC is the cooling option with the highest impact. The best cooling solution, instead, is represented by the MACC: its impact, in fact, results halved compared to WCC. The impact of MACC results significantly affected by the transport activity; therefore, the choice of the transport modes represents a key issue to optimize its life cycle impact. The LCA analysis carried out definitely shows that the MACC condenser represents a valid alternative to the conventional cooling solutions in regions suitable for CSP plants. In particular, the environmental benefits achievable with the MACC result more evident with the increase of the direct normal irradiance (DNI). The transport activity planning resulted a key issue to further optimize the MACC life cycle impact.The goal of this paper is to describe the life cycle inventory (LCI) approach to the cokemaking process in the Integrated Steel Plant's Coke Oven Battery (ISPCOB) in Krakw, Poland. The system boundaries were labeled as gate-to-gate, covering the full chain process of coke production. The background input and output data from the coke production process (CPP) has been inventoried. The functional unit (FU) was produced of 1 Mg of the coke in ISPCOB. The following inputs and outputs have been taken into account in the LCI study: product (coke), all intermediate products, by-products, and emissions. Raw fuel mining and means of external transportation of natural gas, manufacture of downstream products, their use, end of life, and infrastructure were not included. Time coverage is 2004, because since 2005, robust inventory data coverage of full ISP coke processes are lacking. Data used for inventory calculation are affected by uncertainty. With regard to 1 Mg of coke produced in ISPCOB in 2004, the consumption of coke coal and coke oven gas amounted to 1.35 Mg and 195 m(3), respectively. The main materials, fuels, and energy used for the coke production were electric energy, steam, air, heat, and industrial water. Emissions of SO2, NO2, CO, CO2, NH3, aliphatic hydrocarbons, HCN, H2S, CS2, benzene, xylene, toluene, phenol, pyridine, dust, tar matters, Cr, Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, and Mn have been considered. The data for the LCI have been based on the year 2004. Uncertainty assessment in LCI is discussed. The purpose of this study is to help ISP authorities to solve environmental and technical aspects, as well as to train steel industry people in the field of life cycle assessment. Finally, presented LCI study for ISPCOB can serve as a representative data for LCA analysis of coke production in coke plants. The impact assessment phase aims to present more understandable results from the inventory analysis, and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) will be the direction for future research.This study demonstrates an approach to assess human health and ecotoxicity impacts of pesticide use by including multiple environmental pathways and various exposure routes using the case of corn grown for bio-based fuel or chemical production in US Midwestern states. Multiple tools including an environmental emission model (PestLCI), an impact analysis tool (USEtox), and additional databases were utilized to estimate the state-specific pesticide releases and their associated spatially explicit toxicity in Midwest states. On average, chlorpyrifos and acetochlor exhibit the highest human toxicity potential (HTP) and the highest ecotoxicity potential (ETP) impact scores, respectively. The different ranking orders of pesticides for human health and ecosystem toxicity suggest that there are tradeoffs between these two impact categories. While the air pathway can account for 10-97 % of HTP, the water pathway is the dominating contributor for ETP for most of the pesticides. Moreover, while chlorpyrifos, fipronil, 2,4-d-2-ethylhexyl ester, simazine, and glufosinate-ammonium together account for more than 80 % of HTP per kilogram harvested corn, acetochlor is the dominating contributor in ETP due to its high ecotoxicity characterization factor and high application rates for corn. In addition, the spatial variation analysis shows that South Dakota and Missouri are the states that have the highest HTP (per kg corn), while Kansas exhibits the highest ETP (per kg corn) among Midwest states. HTP and ETP exhibit large variations across various pesticides, US states, and application times. While chemical properties and toxicity characteristics can result in up to five orders of magnitude of variation in HTP and ETP, the rest of the parameters (such as application times, soil properties, and climate conditions) can affect the results by up to two orders of magnitude.The purpose of the study is to compare the performances of two passenger cars: an electric vehicle (EV) and an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) paying particular attention to the production of electricity that will charge the EV. Even if many similar comparative life cycle assessments (LCAs) exist (Nordelof et al. J Life Cycle Assess 19(11):1866-18990, 2014), only few have focused their attention on evaluating which is the kind of electricity that will recharge EV batteries (Hawkins et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 17(8):997-1014, 2012). Despite its relevance, many EV LCA studies have used a ready-to-use dataset to evaluate the power mix that supplies electricity to EV. The present paper tries to better define the power mix that recharges EV batteries in Italy according to the national power system and the national electric market rules. A 2013 and a 2030 scenario have been developed in order to understand effects in short and middle term. Life cycle inventory of electricity for EV has been estimated modifying available datasets according to official Italian data on power plants' efficiency and emission rates. Finally, also for the ICEV use phase, existing dataset have been modified for fuel consumption and regulated emission according to the National Inventory Report results (ISPRA 2014) In both 2013 and 2030 scenarios, the power mix that in Italy supplies energy to EV is dominated by fossil fuel power plants. Nevertheless, due to the fact that more than the 60 % of this energy is produced in efficient combined cycle gas turbine power plants, EV performs better than ICEV in almost all the impact categories considered except for human toxicity and eutrophication, the only two impact categories in which the EV car, mainly due to battery manufactory, presents more relevant potential impacts. ICEV impacts are always dominated by well to wheel phases (use phase and fuel production). EV car and battery manufacturing have higher impacts for all categories than ICEV car manufacturing. The study demonstrates that electricity supplied in Italy to EV today is, and will probably be in 2030, mainly produced by fossil fuel power plants. Nevertheless, the EV proves to be able to reduce, with respect to ICEV, those impacts it is supposed to reduce: air acidification, photochemical oxidant formation, and also greenhouse gases. Trade-offs are, as foreseeable, eutrophication and human toxicity due to EV car and battery manufacturing.This paper integrates two complementary life cycle assessment (LCA) studies with the aim to advice facility managers on the sustainable use of cups, either disposable or reusable. Study 1 compares three disposable cups, i.e., made from fossil-based polystyrene (PS), biobased and compostable plastic (polylactic acid; PLA) and paper lined with PLA (biopaper). Study 2 compares the disposable PS cup with reusable cups that are handwashed or dishwashed. Existing LCA studies show inconsistent and sometimes conflicting results, due to differences in used data and modeling choices. The comparison of disposable cups, study 1, deliberately applied multiple inventory data sets for relevant life cycle processes and multiple crediting principles for recycling. Included waste treatment options in study 1 were incineration, recycling, composting, and anaerobic digestion (last two not for the disposable PS cup). The PS cup is next compared with handwashed and dishwashed reusable cups (study 2). LCAs for the reusable cups use single data sets, and explore the influence of an increasing number of reuses. Cup LCA results were only compared within, and not across impact categories. All data relate to cups used with hot beverage vending machines in Dutch office settings. Impact results for each disposable cup show large and overlapping spreads. This prevents identifying a preferable disposable cup material, though still allows cautious preferences about waste treatment processes. Composting biocups is less good than other waste treatment processes. Average impact results for anaerobic digestion perform in almost all impact categories better than incineration for the PLA cup. Average impact results for recycling perform slightly better than incinerating for both biocups, but not for the PS cup. This comparison is affected, however, by the relatively large credits for avoided Dutch electricity production. Impact results for reusable cups do not perform better than disposable cups if both are used once. Impact results for the reusable cups contain large uncertainty due to widely varying user behavior. Overall results do not allow any preference for one of the disposable cups or for disposable versus reusable cups. All cups can be used for more than one consumption. This gives a considerable environmental gain for the second and third hot beverage consumption with all cups. Facility managers can encourage a second or third serving with the same cup by financial incentives, only putting on dishwashers around noon and after working time, and/or consumer awareness activities.This literature review starts from the recognition of the importance of the social performance of sustainable products and the SLCA approach as a potential tool to measure this performance. The goal of this research is to analyze the bibliographies (papers and authors) that could be considered to be the basis to support the application of the SLCA concept in product performance. A bibliographical survey was conducted in two databases (Italian and Brazilian) covering the articles published from 2010 to 2013. The structure of the research consists of four steps: selection and analysis of recent scientific papers related to SLCA, selection and analysis of recent scientific papers related to the application of SLCA to a product, analysis of all of the references cited in recent scientific papers related to the application of SLCA to a product, and analysis of all of the scientific papers cited in recent scientific papers related to the application of SLCA to a product. In 99 articles derived from the first selection, 13 articles specifically discussed the use of SLCA to products related to five different sectors. The investigation of the references cited in these papers identified 524 references used in 56 different journals and 358 authors. To discover the most cited references, the 220 articles published in scientific journals were examined. The work of Dreyer et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 11(2):88-97, 2006) was utilized in 62 % of the 13 selected articles and by the all of the sectors. Other important studies are also BenoIt et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 15:156-163, 2010), Jorgensen et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 13(2):96-103, 2008), and Weidema (Int J Life Cycle Assess 11(1):89-96, 2006). Regarding an individual analysis of the authors, we highlight Hauschild, Jorgensen, Noris, and Dreyer. In summary, the results indicate that the article of Dreyer et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 11(2):88-97, 2006) was cited by several authors in the scientific studies over the last decade and that Hauschild, Jorgensen, Norris, and Dreyer were the most cited authors. However, regarding the frequency and distribution of the citations in all of the sectors, a deeper discussion regarding whether the effects are due to the sample or are based on the use of the SLCA being in its infancy is required. Note that a factor that differentiates a mature thematic area of a new field of study is the presence of shared references. Thus, the definition of a common approach among scientists applying SLCA would result in a bibliography with a shared basis.Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is a relatively new technique that is under rapid development. To further improve the reliability of S-LCA, more case studies and methodologies are of paramount importance. This study aims to develop a S-LCA model for building construction projects in Hong Kong, namely, the Social-impact Model of Construction (SMoC). In this paper, a social life cycle impact assessment (sLCIA) method is developed and a case study of a building construction project in Hong Kong is performed. The development of SMoC is composed of three stages. Stage one strives to establish the sLCIA method which includes the characterization, normalization and weighting. In stage two, a questionnaire survey is conducted to collect the weighting factors and to unveil the social impacts of on-site construction practices. Based on that, the SMoC model which consists of a set of functional worksheets is built. In stage three, a case study following the four-phase structure of S-LCA suggested by the UNEP/SETAC guidelines is conducted. Of the selected subcategories, local experts believed that health and safety (worker) is the most important social aspect. The questionnaire survey also suggests that the environmental-friendly on-site construction activities as identified in this research are beneficial to the society in general. However, adoption of precast concrete components can lead to negative impacts on fair salary and local employment, since the precast concrete is normally produced outside Hong Kong. The case study demonstrates that the studied project has positive social impacts in general, while the construction stage performs better than the material stage. The sensitivity analysis indicates that inclusion of environmental-friendly construction practices can significantly improve the social performance of the studied building construction project. The developed SMoC model and the case study should provide a comprehensive framework of S-LCA for building construction in Hong Kong. Despite being the first attempt of S-LCA in Hong Kong, the results help inform the local industry the social performance of their construction projects from a life cycle perspective.Despite significant interest from consumers, sustainable products often struggle to find success in the marketplace. This failure is frequently attributed to the perception that consumers remain unwilling to sacrifice product attributes such as form, function, or price in order to adopt a product whose environmental impact is less than that of a competing product. This work aims to better understand how knowing a product's environmental impact affects preference for that product's disparate attributes. Three products of various monetary investments and numbers of relevant features were explored through a conjoint analysis experiment that uncovers consumer preference for discrete form, function, and price attributes. In this work, single use spoons, reusable water bottles, and home washing machines were used for analysis. These three products were decomposed into form, function, and price attributes that were varied in discrete levels. After a form-only ratings-based conjoint analysis study was conducted to find high, medium, and low preference form designs for each participant, two separate form-function-price discrete choice studies were conducted for each of the three products. These two discrete choice trials were identical in all aspects except in the second trial participants were provided with calculated environmental impact values for all design configurations; the presented environmental impact information was a dependent variable based on a life cycle analysis calculation using the current product configuration being shown to the participant. Further, adding this information raises the decision to one of a social or moral choice. Results show that when participants are provided with this additional piece of information, their preference for form, function, and price attributes of a product is greatly impacted. In particular, we find that for the products chosen here, the importance of functional attributes increases in the context of environmental impact metrics, while the importance of form decreases and the importance of price decreases modestly. In other words, placing the preference judgment within a social or moral choice context changes decisions about product preferences.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool to assess the environmental impacts and resources used during the life cycle of a product, i.e., from raw material acquisition, via production and use phases, to waste management. The methods of development in LCA have been strong, and the paper is aimed at providing a review of recent developments of LCA methods employed in the production of bio-diesel from various vegetable sources like Jatropha, palm, soybean, sunflower, canola and rapeseed. The essential features of LCA methods like the goal, scope definition and system boundaries have been reviewed and authors have mainly focussed on impact categories on environment and energy. The review also covers impact categories like human health, ecosystem quality and resource depletion. The interpretation of results indicates that the implication of LCA is strong in energy analysis of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and there is less GHG emission in second generation bio-diesel as compared to first generation. Some uncertainties and gaps in the application of LCA are identified and discussed. The uncertainties are mainly due to inconsistent choices across different allocation, system boundaries, time period in impact assessment and scope of the analysis. The uncertainties are dealt by tools like Monte Carlo simulations, fuzzy set theory etc.This paper focuses on the comparison of waste-to-energy processes in terms of life cycle analysis. The processes compared are the municipal solid waste (MSW) direct combustion (known as mass burning) and the combustion of refused derived fuel (RDF) produced after separation of recyclable materials in a mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) facility. The basis of comparison for the two processes in this paper is their global warming potential (GWP). In specific, three European countries (Greece, Germany and France) were chosen as case studies. Their selection was based on their electricity mix characteristics and the general population culture toward waste management practices, as depicted in the waste composition. The waste composition applied for each country is the average estimated by local statistics and Eurostat data. The comparison between the two methods of incineration leads to the conclusion that the incineration of RDF has less impact on the greenhouse effect than the incineration of MSW. A sensitivity analysis based on different setup configurations for paper and plastic separation in the MBT plant was carried out. The results validate the priorities of waste management hierarchy, since the scenarios with high separation of valuable materials, such as paper and plastics, were environmentally friendlier in terms of GWP impact. The sensitivity analysis based on the change of the recovering rate shows an approximately linear relation of inverse proportion between recovering rate and total environmental impact. Furthermore, the increase in electricity efficiency plays a significant role in the greenhouse effect for the Greek scenario, while its respective effectiveness for the French scenario is lower. Since the final choice between the two processes relies solely upon the needs that should be met on specific occasions, the modeling has been carried out through life cycle analysis principles, in order to provide a decision-making tool for the selection of the most appropriate waste-to-energy technology according to the criteria that be set.Land use changes (LUCs) constitute a crucial source of environmental impact in production systems, which are mostly associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This circumstance is especially important for the agricultural sector, since these imply an important proportion of the total GHG emissions occurring worldwide. Wine and grape production is a key sector in Spain, representing the largest surface area at European level. In the past decades, important wine related LUCs have been observed due to changes in farming methods/type, number of Denominations of Origin, and the establishment of larger wineries that have enhanced exports. The current study presents a temporally based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of the Ribeiro appellation in NW Spain, in which the gradual changes in the land use, as well as the technological improvements are analyzed in detail in order to understand how the environmental profile of this specific wine producing area has shifted in the past two decades (i.e., from 1990 to 2009). On the one hand, phenomena such as afforestation and agricultural intensification are analyzed throughout the appellation to estimate the impact due to GHG emissions linked to LUCs, based on IPCC standards. On the other hand, trends linked to technological improvements, operational changes, such as changes in the use and management of plant protection agents or fertilizers or the change in the energy sources for machinery on the vineyards, were assessed in detail. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To reveal potential impacts to environment and human health quantitatively, co-composting and utilization of sludge and woodchips were investigated using a life-cycle-based model, EASETECH. Three scenarios were assessed through experiments using different material ratios. Emission amounts during co-composting were determined by monitoring data and mass balance. With 100 t sludge treatment, co-composting showed impacts to acidification (29.9 PE) and terrestrial eutrophication (57.7 PE) mainly for ammonia emission. Compost utilization presented savings on freshwater eutrophication (-1.5 PE) because of phosphorus substitution. With the application of fewer woodchips, impacts to acidification and terrestrial eutrophication decreased because more ammonium was reserved rather than released. All impacts to human toxicity were not significant (8.2 +/- 0.6 PE) because the compost was used for urban landscaping rather than farming. Trace gaseous compounds showed marginal impacts to global warming and toxicity categories. The results provide a new perspective and offer evidence for appropriate sludge treatment selection. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Through the combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in a dedicated tool-box, the aim of this paper is to evaluate both potential environmental impacts and potential costs of the operation of a 230 kW Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) system. LCA and LCC methodologies have been here applied for a comparison with a conventional technology, i.e. Micro Gas Turbine (MGT) for distributed power generation applications. A contribution analysis for the SOFC system fuelled with natural gas, reveals that the fuel supply is responsible of a relevant share of the environmental impact. The same system, fed with biogas, shows environmental benefits on global and regional impact categories, depending on the power energy mix used during the digestion process. For both SOFC and MGT systems, the life cycle hotspots are identifiable in the operation stage for the global warming category, and in the fuel supply stage for all the remaining impact categories. The LCA-LCC comparison between SOFC and MGT systems, based on a toolbox embedding a set of 8 sustainability indicators for decision making, shows that the SOFC system presents environmental and economic benefits in a life cycle perspective, particularly for household application. However, cost results to be the most sensitive bottle-neck for benchmarking with traditional energy systems. Therefore, the SOFC system is preferable to the conventional MGT technology when the sustainability of investment cost is demonstrated, whilst a wide advantage in environmental performance along the life cycle has been proved. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is necessary to minimize the environmental impact and utilize natural resources in a sustainable and efficient manner in the early design stage of developing an environmentally-conscious design for a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system. Energy supply options play a significant role in the total environmental load of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems. To assess the environmental impact of different energy options, a new method based on Emergy Analysis is proposed. Emergy Accounting, was first developed and widely used in the area of ecological engineering, but this is the first time it has been used in building service engineering. The environmental impacts due to the energy options are divided into four categories under the Emergy Framework: the depletion of natural resources, the greenhouse effect (carbon dioxide equivalents), the chemical rain effect (sulfur dioxide equivalents), and anthropogenic heat release. The depletion of non-renewable natural resources is indicated by the Environmental Load Ratio, and the environmental carrying capacity is developed to represent the environmental service to dilute the pollutants and anthropogenic heat released. This Emergy evaluation method provides a new way to integrate different environmental impacts under the same framework and thus facilitates better system choices. A case study of six different kinds of energy options consisting of renewable and non-renewable energy was performed by using Emergy Theory, and thus their relative environmental impacts were compared. The results show that the method of electricity generation in energy sources, especially for electricity-powered systems, is the most important factor to determine their overall environmental performance. The direct-fired lithium-bromide absorption type consumes more non-renewable energy, and contributes more to the urban heat island effect compared with other options having the same electricity supply. Using Emergy Analysis, designers and clients can make better-informed, environmentally-conscious selections of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper quantifies the main impacts that the adoption of the best recycling practices together with a reduction in the consumption of single-use plastic bags and the adoption of a kerbside collection system could have on the 27 Member States of the EU. The main consequences in terms of employment, waste management costs, emissions and energy use have been quantified for two scenarios of polyethylene (PE) waste production and recycling. That is to say, a "business as usual scenario", where the 2012 performances of PE waste production and recycling are extrapolated to 2020, is compared to a "best practice scenario", where the best available recycling practices are modelled together with the possible adoption of the amended Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive related to the consumption of single-use plastic bags and the implementation of a kerbside collection system. The main results show that socio-economic and environmental benefits can be generated across the EU by the implementation of the best practice scenario. In particular, estimations show a possible reduction of 4.4 million tonnes of non-recycled PE waste, together with a reduction of around 90 million in waste management costs in 2020 for the best practice scenario versus the business as usual scenario. An additional 35,622 jobs are also expected to be created. In environmental terms, the quantity of CO2 equivalent emissions could be reduced by around 1.46 million tonnes and the net energy requirements are expected to increase by 16.5 million GJ as a consequence of the reduction in the energy produced from waste. The main analysis provided in this paper, together with the data and the model presented, can be useful to identify the possible costs and benefits that the implementation of PE waste policies and Directives could generate for the EU. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wheat is considered as one of the most important strategic crops in Iran, and Iran agricultural ministry has some special plans to encourage farmers to cultivate this crop, so that farmers are willing to cultivate this crop through the country. The previous studies carried out by researchers in Iran showed that the energy consumption in cultivation of this crop is not efficient and there is a high degree of inefficiency in wheat cultivation in Iran. Also, wheat cultivation in Iran is responsible for a high amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In order to differentiate between efficient and inefficient farms, a c-means fuzzy clustering model has been developed and the surveyed wheat farms have been clustered based on three features, i.e. GHG emission, energy ratio and benefit cost ratio. The results showed that the farms which were selected as cluster 2 had the best performance where the total input energy and total GHG were calculated as 38,826.9 MJ per ha and 3185 kgCO(2,eq) per tonne of crop. In other words, the farms in cluster 2 outperformed cluster 1 and 3 where they performed 34 and 19% better than the two other clusters in terms of energy input and 9 and 27% in CO2 emission per tonne of produced crop. The higher output energy and lower input energy in farms of cluster 2 have caused a better economic performance where the benefit cost ratio was calculated as 1.9. The results of this study demonstrate the successful application of fuzzy clustering approach for better use of energy in cropping systems which can lead to a better environmental and economic performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - a post-2015 blueprint recently agreed upon by the United Nations, to address the energy poverty problem in the global community. This plan, coupled with the need to mitigate climate change and also find alternative energy options to fossil fuels, is expected to continuously lead to increased interests in the development of renewable energy systems, around the world. Such systems have the potential to address the energy deficit in the world's energy poor regions, e.g. sub-Saharan Africa, where about 50% of the 1.2 billion people in the world live without access to electricity. This paper first discusses the state-of-the-art of photovoltaic (PV) technologies worldwide. It then presents the development of solar panel plant, using the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) 7.5 MW solar panel plant in Nigeria as a case study, which is established to build local capacity in PV technologies and also promote their widespread applications. The plant layout design, materials, equipment and production line are discussed. A new technique called Fundamental PV Module Performance Analysis (FPVMPA) is employed to assess the performance of a single NASENI 190 W module in terms of power output, energy yield, capture losses, fill factor, and efficiency, allowing the prediction of the module performance pre-installation, based on IEC 61724 standards. Furthermore, emphasis is laid on the impact Of temperature on the module, which affects its efficiency and overall outputs. These analyses are then used to evaluate the performance of a 54.72 kW Photovoltaic Electric Power Generation Plant (PEPGP) that is proposed for a remote mini-estate in Kutunku, Nigeria. Future research directions are also provided on module life cycle analysis, end-of-life management and recycling. Results show the module performance under varying irradiance and temperature conditions, which can be useful for design, planning and application purposes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the building sector there is a new tendency to integrate solar thermal technologies into buildings. These systems are known as Building-Integrated Solar Thermal (BIST) and offer several advantages in comparison with the Building-Added (BA) installations. The present study is a critical review on modelling of BIST systems and also covers other types of BI solar configurations such as Photovoltaic (PV) and Photovoltaic/Thermal (PVT) in order to provide a better view of the literature. For some instances where the model and/or the system are interesting, BA systems are also cited. The studies are presented into groups, depending on the type of modelling (energetic, thermal, optical, etc.) and based on the technical characteristics of each system (solar collector, skin facade, etc.). The present article is the first part of an investigation about BIST modelling and it gives emphasis on the studies which focus on the interaction between BIST and building (coupled building/system configuration). The study reveals that majority of the modelling are about BIPV and skin facades while there are very few studies on BIST systems. Thereby, more investigations on energetic, thermal, optical simulations for BIST installations particularly for active systems (e.g. active solar thermal collectors) are necessary. On the other hand, innovative ideas such as systems with phase change materials, nanofluids, concentrating solar thermal could also be examined as a future prospect for modelling/simulation. The study also shows that further development of environmental models on BIST systems is required. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recycling food waste to produce biogas by anaerobic digestion (AD) is a promising process that can both provide renewable energy and dispose solid waste safely. However, this process affects the environment due to greenhouse gas emissions. By lifecycle assessment (LCA), we assessed the energy consumption (EC) and environmental impact (El) of an integrated food waste-based biogas system and its subsystems. Data were collected from an actual plant in China that adopted a combination of wet-heat treatment and wet AD process at thermophilic condition. The EC of the system for processing 1 ton of waste was 663.89 MJ, among which 47.76% was from the primary treatment process (including pretreatment and AD). The GWP(100) (100-year global warming potential) emission of the system reached 96.97 kgCO(2)-eq/t, and the AP (acidification potential), EP (eutrophication potential), HTPinf (human toxicity potential) and FAETP(inf) (fresh water ecotoxicity) emissions were low. The El was mainly generated by two subsystems, namely, the primary treatment and the secondary pollution control. Sensitivity analysis showed that a 40% increase of the feed fat content resulted in 38% increase in the net energy value output and 48% decrease in EP effect. The increase in oil content and biogas production rate could significantly reduce the EC and El of the system. It has been shown that improving the technology of the process and increasing the recycling rate of products will result in the reduction of EC and El of the biogas system. In addition, a quantitative assessment model of EC and El in integrated food waste-based biogas technology is established. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building stakeholders cannot easily quantify the environmental impacts of buildings as they accrue during construction. The goal of this work is to demonstrate a method to measure and manage the cradle-to-gate life cycle environmental impacts by linking environmental targets with modern construction management methods, to enable buildings to meet sustainable target values (STV). In this work, a construction activity-based computational framework was developed to enable stakeholders to reliably and efficiently construct cradle-to-gate life cycle models capturing environmental impacts including carbon and energy associated with material extraction, manufacture, transport to site, and construction. These models allow stakeholders to measure and manage impact accrual so as to not exceed STVs; without this framework, construction managers and other building stakeholders do not possess adequate environmental management tools to deliver projects consistently at or below STV. Specifically, the components developed are: (1) time dependent impact accrual budgets during construction and (2) impact measurement during construction. These benchmarks are used to determine whether a specific project is above or below target values, similar to methods for cost and schedule variance analysis. Two case studies were used to test this framework. This integration provides a life cycle assessment (LCA) modeling platform for management of environmental footprint during construction. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The eco-design of conventional potable water production processes is impeded by the high variability of operating conditions as a function of the inlet and the quality of outlet water, and by the large diversity of feasible technical solutions and treatment processes. Based on an already developed library of unit process modules which generates water treatment process inventories with integrated Life Cycle Assessment (EVALEAU tool), this work presents a new tool to combine Process Modelling, Life Cycle Assessment and MultiObjective Optimization (PM-LCA-MOO tool) for conventional potable water production processes, in order to solve the challenges of interconnecting LCA results and other conflicting process objectives. A hybrid (local-global) derivative-free algorithm was chosen for multiobjective optimization which includes: (1) the elitist Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGAII) for the first global search in the objective space to locate the most promising optimal zones; and (2) the COBYLA algorithm starting with final solutions of NSGAII, to improve accuracy within a reasonable calculation time. The PM-LCA-MOO tool was successfully applied to a test bed case of an existing drinking water plant located in the Paris region and resulted in a set of alternative solutions, known as the global Pareto-optimal front that trades different objectives against each other. Here, the objectives are the minimization of environmental impacts using the ReCiPe method (according to ISO 14040/44), the minimization of operation costs, and the maximization of produced water quality. According to conventional drinking water plants, the quality of water produced has to be optimized together with other environmental and economic objectives in order to grant fair design solutions. The quality of water produced incorporates multiple drinkability criteria that were aggregated in order to indicate water quality by way of a unique quality index the 'Average Water Quality Score'. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to provide a detailed environmental evaluation of pigmeat production (the second most widely eaten type of meat) in Portugal, using relevant and good quality data in order to obtain representative results for this production sector. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used for the evaluations from a cradle-to-slaughterhouse gate perspective. The system under study was divided in three subsystems: crop and feed production (S1), pigmeat production (S2) and slaughtering (S3). The production system under study considered the Best Available Techniques (BATs) for intensive rearing of pigs. According to the results and in line with other studies, S1 was the most influential subsystem in the environmental profile (ranging from 70% to 100% depending on the impact) mainly due to agricultural activities involved in the production of feed components. Activities carried out on the pig farms (S2) were remarkable in categories such as climate change due to background processes involved in the production of electricity requirements, e.g. emissions derived from slurry management (such as CH4 and N2O), and water depletion. Slaughtering-related contributions were negligible regardless of the category assessed. Different alternatives for the valorisation of animal by-products derived from the slaughterhouse were proposed for energy and feed production. A comparison with other related studies focused on pigmeat production was performed and no remarkable differences were identified. Thus, achievements and environniental hotspots identified in this specific case study for Portugal could be extended to the European production chain. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are several concerns related to the increasing production of palm oil in Southeast Asia, including pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and land conversion. The RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) certification standard provides an incentive for reducing environmental impacts of palm oil production but to date, only few producers have been certified and studies on environmental implications of RSPO certification in Thailand are scarce. The objective of this study is to assess environmental impacts of palm oil production in Thailand. A case study is conducted in the Tapi River basin, accounting for 60% of palm oil production in Thailand. We developed a model to quantify effects of different management practices in plantations and mills producing Crude-Palm-Oil (CPO) including non-RSPO, potential RSPO, and RSPO certified producers. Our study shows that five activities contribute most to environmental impacts of CPO production; 1) burning fibers in boilers,2) use of fertilizers, 3) wastewater treatment and empty-fruit-bunch disposal, 4) gasoline use in weed cutters and 5) glyphosate use for weed control. Together these activities cause environmental impacts associated with global warming, ozone formation, acidification, and human toxicity problems. RSPO certified producers cause the lowest environmental impacts due to better waste management such as biogas production from wastewater. We found that environmental performance of the most environmental friendly mills considerably exceeds the RSPO standards, which may be related to the interventions of an environmental project in the Tapi basin. Currently, only 11% of CPO in the Tapi River basin is produced by RSPO certified mills, and non-CPO certified mills produce around 60% of CPO. Most of environmental impacts of palm oil production in the basin are therefore caused by non-RSPO certified palm oil mills. We explored two alternative scenarios illustrating that if more mills in the basin would adopt best-practice CPO production processes in line with those group named "RSPO certified", environmental impacts generated in the basin will be considerably lower. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concerns have risen regarding the environmental sustainability of favourable aquaculture-based products, including Pangasius fillets in modified atmosphere packaging (MAP). This study examines issues stemming from resource consumption in a cradle-to-factory gate life cycle analysis of MAP Pangasius, which includes aquaculture, processing living fish to frozen fillets in Vietnam, oceanic transport and processing frozen fillets to MAP in Belgium (Europe). Analysis was performed at the process level using Exergy Flow Analysis (ExFA) and from a life cycle perspective through the Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment (CEENE). The CEENE of MAP equals 669 GJ per tonne of dry matter (DM) of MAP Pangasius. Aquaculture, which is addressed in Huysveld et al. (2013), contains the largest share of the CEENE value (76%), and the three subsequent phases contribute 13%, 5% and 6%, respectively. Consequently, MAP production requires significant amounts of land (42%, primarily for the cultivation of crop-based feed ingredients), water (31%, primarily for pond water renewal) and fossil fuels (21%, primarily for energy demand in processing and transport). Regarding processing and transport, further attention should be paid to the consumption of electricity, water and packaging materials. Improvements should focus on lowering the fillet weight gain due to glazing and/or soaking and on the use and disposal of packaging materials, particularly those used to ship the frozen fillets. Recycling in Belgium reduces 40 GJ per tonne of DM of MAP via replacement of virgin material. MAP Pangasius creates half the resource footprint compared to fresh chicken meat locally produced in Europe despite being imported from Vietnam; this is explained by the lower Feed Conversion Ratio of Pangasius and by the utilization of Pangasius by-products for animal feed in Vietnam, whereas chicken by-products are considered wastes and are incinerated in Europe. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Iron and steel processing is a complicated system in which various processing units and environmental boundaries exist. Mass and energy metabolize on those environmental boundaries. The morphology of an environmental boundary can shape how mass and energy interact in an iron and steel industrial system. Environmental boundaries in these situations couple all subsystems together to constitute an integrating system in the form of a hierarchical model. The metabolic behaviours are simulated and optimized by using the genetic algorithm of NSGA-II based on the energy intensity indicator under the conservation law of mass and energy. The hierarchical morphology and coupling styles of environmental boundaries in an iron and steel industrial system are fully demonstrated through the characterization of the metabolic behaviours of mass and energy. This study is based on a comparison of the computed values of metabolic behaviours with actual data from an iron and steel company located in the East of China. This investigation shows that the morphological and coupling model of environmental boundary is valid for a complex iron and steel industrial system. This will lead to better resource allocation and more environmental benefits. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Europe, low energy buildings become common for new constructions and life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to assess their environmental performance. The overall objective of this study is to investigate known challenges related to buildings LCA such as biogenic carbon accounting and dynamic and prospective aspects, and to discuss how they affect LCA results for low energy buildings and what developments are still needed. Three single family houses built respectively with timber frame, concrete blocks cavity wall, and cast concrete are used as a case study, focusing on the global warming impact category. When biogenic carbon is addressed, the timber house is the less impacting choice, whether it is landfilled or burned at the end-of-life. The cavity wall house is the second most favourable option, and the cast concrete house is the worst one. In the case of landfilling for the timber house, the biogenic carbon balance is not neutral and worth to be considered. When a dynamic approach and specific prospective scenarios are considered, the ranking between houses stays the same, but the gaps between options vary e.g. the gap between the landfilled timber house and the cast concrete house vary from 40 % to 60 % when optimistic changes in the electricity mix are considered. Dynamic LCA allows for a more consistent analysis of emissions flows and global warming impacts over time. Prospective LCA could provide more relevant LCA results but increases uncertainty and could be used as sensitivity analysis for long life span buildings. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Use of exterior shading systems is important to increase energy savings in residential sector, mainly in warmer climates exposed to direct sunlight. These types of shades can keep inside temperatures cooler and consequently reduce cooling loads and costs. This study employs Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare the effects of three different shading materials on building energy consumption and their impacts to the environment within five major climate zones defined by American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). To achieve this objective, A Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is used to quantify the energy and emissions of the exterior shading systems during the manufacturing process, in-service and end of life. The Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) model and SimaPro 8.0 software (Ecoinvent 3.0 database) were employed to develop the life cycle inventory of the shadings through all life cycle stages. The LCA framework used in this study was based on a life cycle methodology that follows the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 standard for Life Cycle Assessment and the ASTM standard for Multi-Attribute Decision Analysis. Based on the analysis conducted for wood, aluminum, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) shadings, it may be concluded that the use of external shadings on residential window panes, in most cases, carries a positive effect on fossil fuel depletion impact, while it increases environmental loads in other environmental impact categories. Among the three aforementioned materials, wood and PVC shadings are the most and the least environmentally-friendly materials, respectively. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Alternative approaches to wastewater management including urine source separation have the potential to simultaneously improve multiple aspects of wastewater treatment, including reduced use of potable water for waste conveyance and improved contaminant removal, especially nutrients. In order to pursue such radical changes, system-level evaluations of urine source separation in community contexts are required. The focus of this life cycle assessment (LCA) is managing nutrients from urine produced in a residential setting with urine source separation and struvite precipitation, as compared with a centralized wastewater treatment approach. The life cycle impacts evaluated in this study pertain to construction of the urine source separation system and operation of drinking water treatment, decentralized urine treatment, and centralized wastewater treatment. System boundaries include fertilizer offsets resulting from the production of urine based struvite fertilizer. As calculated by the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI), urine source separation with MgO addition for subsequent struvite precipitation with high P recovery (Scenario B) has the smallest environmental cost relative to existing centralized wastewater treatment (Scenario A) and urine source separation with MgO and Na3PO4 addition for subsequent struvite precipitation with concurrent high P and N recovery (Scenario C). Preliminary economic evaluations show that the three urine management scenarios are relatively equal on a monetary basis (<13% difference). The impacts of each urine management scenario are most sensitive to the assumed urine composition, the selected urine storage time, and the assumed electricity required to treat influent urine and toilet water used to convey urine at the centralized wastewater treatment plant. The importance of full nutrient recovery from urine in combination with the substantial chemical inputs required for N recovery via struvite precipitation indicate the need for alternative methods of N recovery. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental sustainability of aquaculture wastewater treatment by microalgal bacterial flocs (MaB-flocs) in an outdoor raceway pond was analyzed using life cycle assessment. Pikeperch aquaculture wastewater treated at pilot scale (Belgium; 28 m(2)) and industrial scale (hypothetical up-scaling; 41 ponds of 245 m(2)) were compared. The integration of the MaB-floc raceway pond in a broader aquaculture waste treatment system was studied, comparing the valorisation of MaB-flocs as shrimp feed and as biogas. Up-scaling improves the resource footprint of the plant (848 MJ(ex),(CEENE) kg(-1) MaB-floc TSS at pilot scale and 277 MJ(ex),(CEENE) kg(-1) MaB-floc TSS at industrial scale) as well as its carbon footprint and eutrophication potential. At industrial scale, the valorisation of MaB-flocs as shrimp feed is overall more sustainable than as biogas but improvements should be made to reduce the energy use of the MaB-floc raceway pond, especially by improving the energy-efficiency of the pond stirring system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work presents a comparison between an environmental impact assessment (EIA) and a life cycle assessment (LCA) using a case study: upgrading of biogas. The upgrading of biogas is studied using three solvents: water, physical solvent and amine. The EIA follows the requirements of the legislation of Santa Fe Province (Argentina), and the LCA follows ISO 14040. The LCA results showed that water produces a minor impact in most of the considered categories whereas the high impact in the process with amines is the result of its high energy consumptions. The positive results obtained in the EIA (mainly associated with the cultural and socioeconomic components) make the project feasible and all the negative impacts can be mitigated by preventive and remedial measures. From the strengths and weaknesses of each tool, it is inferred that the EIA is a procedure that can complement the LCA. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hybrid microgrid systems are an emerging tool for rural electrification due in part to their purported environmental benefits. This study uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental impacts of a diesel/PV/wind hybrid microgrid on the island of Koh Jig, Thailand with the electrification alternatives of grid extension and home diesel generators. The impact categories evaluated are: acidification potential (kg SO2 eq), global warming potential (kg CO2 eq), human toxicity potential (kg 1.4 DCB eq), and abiotic resource depletion potential (kg Sb eq). The results show that the microgrid system has the lowest global warming and abiotic resource depletion potentials of all three electrification scenarios. The use phase of the diesel generator and the extraction of copper are shown to significantly contribute to the microgrid's environmental impacts. The relative environmental impacts of the grid extension scenario are found to be proportional to the distance required for grid extension. Across all categories except acidification potential, the impacts from the home diesel generators are the largest. Sensitivity analyses show that maximizing the renewable energy fraction does not necessarily produce a more environmentally sustainable electrification scenario and that the diesel generator provides versatility to the system by allowing power production to be scaled significantly before more technology is needed to meet demand. While the environmental benefits of the microgrid increase as the installation community becomes more isolated, the choice of electrification scenario requires assigning relative importance to each impact category and considering social and economic factors. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Consumer preferences are changing, resulting in an increased demand for both organic milk and raw milk due to their perceived higher nutritional value and positive contribution to animal welfare. To compare the advantages and disadvantages of these products with conventional pasteurised milk, a sustainability assessment was performed incorporating social, environmental and economic factors. The assessment showed that raw organic milk gave the highest overall sustainability score. This is due to, for example, a high score for animal welfare and a high score for the environmental factors due to the omission of the pasteurisation step compared with conventional milk. The latter may pose human health risks due to the possible presence of pathogens in raw milk. As the approach followed is transparent, it allows policy makers to discuss the outcome of the sustainability assessment both with stakeholders and the general public, which will facilitate the decision making process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present article describes the production of oil from autotrophic microalgae grown in raceways in France, and presents the bench test results of a Diesel monocylinder engine with the derived biodiesel (methyl ester). The cultivation of Nannochloropsis has been performed under nitrogen limitation in order to increase the lipid content of the microalgae. After harvesting, a drying operation has been carried out so as to obtain a dry microalgae powder with controlled water content. Neutral lipids were then recovered using supercritical carbon dioxide extraction technology applied to the dry powder. One hundred kilograms of dry microalgae has been treated leading to about five kilograms of algal oil, free of polar lipids, that has been transesterified with methanol. The fuel obtained has been blended with a standard biofuel-free Diesel fuel (10% algal fuel/90% standard Diesel fuel B0) and engine tests have been carried out with the resulting blend (B10). In order to compare with well-known fuels similar engine tests were performed with B0 and with a B10 fuel made of ten percent vegetable oil methyl ester complying with the European 14214 fuel standard (B10 EU-type). The B10 quality was rather close to Diesel fuel except for oxidation stability, which was well below the minimum limit for Diesel fuel. The behavior of the B10 fuel appears to be very similar in terms of combustion efficiency and pollutant emissions to the one of the standard Diesel fuel B0. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Aggregating multi-criteria data is an important problem with many applications. Commonly-used additive aggregation methods, such as the weighted arithmetic mean, cannot account for the criteria interactions encountered in many practical multi-criteria decision problems. The Choquet integral is a suitable aggregation operator in the presence of interacting criteria. It replaces the weight vector with a fuzzy measure that models the importance of each subset or coalition of criteria, rather than just the importance of individual criteria. However, estimating the fuzzy measures in practice has been problematic. Conventional approaches are cognitively challenging for decision makers, while more recent approaches suffer from prohibitive data requirements. In this paper, we present a formulation for the weights of the Choquet integral that uses principal component analysis to account for criteria interaction. This novel unsupervised approach to estimating the required fuzzy measures overcomes the limitations of other methods. The approach is applied to two case studies in environmental and sustainability analysis, and the results are compared with those of the weighted arithmetic mean. The first case is a triple bottom line analysis of 135 Australian industry sectors evaluated against 11 criteria, while the second case is an environmental life cycle assessment of 8 alternative biosolids management options evaluated against 5 criteria. These examples demonstrate the ability of the proposed approach to account for criteria interaction in these and other decision contexts. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.To examine the national fuel and emissions impacts from increasingly electrified light-duty transportation, we reconstructed the vehicle technology portfolios from two national vehicle studies. Using these vehicle portfolios, we normalized assumptions and examined sensitivity around the rates of electrified vehicle penetration, travel demand growth, and electricity decarbonization. We further examined the impact of substituting low-carbon advanced,cellulosic biofuels in place of petroleum. Twenty-seven scenarios were benchmarked against a 50% petroleum-reduction target and an 80% GHG-reduction target. We found that with high rates of electrification (40% of miles traveled) the petroleum-reduction benchmark could be satisfied, even with high travel demand growth. The same highly electrified scenarios, however, could not satisfy 80% GHG-reduction targets, even assuming 80% decarbonized electricity and no growth in travel demand. Regardless of precise consumer vehicle preferences, emissions are a function of the total reliance on electricity versus liquid fuels and the corresponding greenhouse gas intensities of both. We found that at a relatively high rate of electrification (40% of miles and 26% by fuel), an 80% GHG reduction could only be achieved with significant quantities of low-carbon liquid fuel in cases with low or moderate travel demand growth.According to Lim et al., based on World Health Organization (WHO) data, hazardous chemicals in the workplace are responsible for over 370 000 premature deaths annually. Despite these high figures, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) does not yet include a fully operational method to consider occupational impacts in its scope over the entire supply chain. This paper describes a novel approach to account for occupational exposure to chemicals by inhalation in LCA. It combines labor statistics and measured occupational concentrations of chemicals from the OSHA database to calculate operational LCIA characterization factors (i.e., intakes per hour worked and impact intensities for 19 069 organic chemical/sector combinations with confidence intervals across the entire U.S. manufacturing industry). For the seven chemicals that most contribute to the global impact, measured workplace concentrations range between 5 x 10(-4) and 3 x 10(3) mg/m(3). Carcinogenic impacts range over 4 orders of magnitude, from 1.3 x 10(-3) and up to 3.4 x 10(-4) DALY per blue-collar worker labor hour. The innovative approach set out in this paper assesses health impacts from occupational exposure to chemicals with population exposure to outdoor emissions, making it possible to integrate occupational exposure within LCIA. It broadens the LCIA scope to analyze hotspots and avoid impact shifting.The robustness of a range of watershed-scale "green" and "gray" drainage strategies in the future is explored through comprehensive modeling of a fully integrated urban wastewater system case. Four socio-economic future scenarios, defined by parameters affecting the environmental performance of the system, are proposed to account for the uncertain variability of conditions in the year 2050. A regret-based approach is applied to assess the relative performance of strategies in multiple impact categories (environmental, economic, and social) as well as to evaluate their robustness across future scenarios. The concept of regret proves useful in identifying performance trade-offs and recognizing states of the world most critical to decisions. The study highlights the robustness of green strategies (particularly rain gardens, resulting in half the regret of most options) over end-of-pipe gray alternatives (surface water separation or sewer and storage rehabilitation), which may be costly (on average, 25% of the total regret of these options) and tend to focus on sewer flooding and CSO alleviation while compromising on downstream system performance (this accounts for around 50% of their total regret). Trade-offs and scenario regrets observed in the analysis suggest that the combination of green and gray strategies may still offer further potential for robustness.The environmental benefits and burdens of phosphorus recovery in four centralized and two decentralized municipal wastewater systems were compared using life cycle assessment (LCA). In centralized systems, phosphorus recovered as struvite from the solids dewatering liquid resulted in an environmental benefit except for the terrestrial ecotoxicity and freshwater eutrophication impact categories, with power and chemical use offset by operational savings and avoided fertilizer production. Chemical-based phosphorus recovery, however, generally required more resources than were offset by avoided fertilizers, resulting in a net environmental burden. In decentralized systems, phosphorus recovery via urine source separation reduced the global warming and ozone depletion potentials but increased terrestrial ecotoxicity and salinization potentials due to application of untreated urine to land. Overall, mineral depletion and eutrophication are well-documented arguments for phosphorus recovery; however, phosphorus recovery does not necessarily present a net environmental benefit. While avoided fertilizer production does reduce potential impacts, phosphorus recovery does not necessarily offset the resources consumed in the process. LCA results indicate that selection of an appropriate phosphorus recovery method should consider both local conditions and other environmental impacts, including global warming, ozone depletion, toxicity, and salinization, in addition to eutrophication and mineral depletion impacts.Electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are often considered as better options in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption compared to internal combustion vehicles. However, making any decision among these vehicle options is not a straightforward process due to temporal and spatial variations, such as the sources of the electricity used and regional driving patterns. In this study, we compared these vehicle options across 50 states, taking into account state-specific average and marginal electricity generation mixes, regional driving patterns, and vehicle and battery manufacturing impacts. Furthermore, a policy scenario proposing the widespread use of solar energy to charge EVs and PHEVs is evaluated. Based on the average electricity generation mix scenario, EVs are found to be least carbon-intensive vehicle option in 24 states, while HEVs are found to be the most energy-efficient option in 45 states. In the marginal electricity mix scenario, widespread adoption of EVs is found to be an unwise strategy given the existing and near-future marginal electricity generation mix. On the other hand, EVs can be superior to other alternatives in terms of energy-consumption, if the required energy to generate 1 kW h of electricity is below 1.25 kWh. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Detailed cradle-to-grave life cycle analyses are performed for bulk-scale solid oxide fuel cell power plants fueled by gasified coal. These results are compared to cradle-to-grave life cycle analyses of the supercritical pulverized coal and integrated gasification combined cycle power generation plants, which are also performed as a part of this study. Life cycle inventories for each plant including the inputs (resources and fuels) and outputs (emissions and waste) of the gate-to-gate plants and their associated up- and down-stream sub-processes are computed. The impact of carbon capture and sequestration on each plant is quantified and assessed using the ReCiPe 2008 life cycle inventory method for three socioeconomic perspectives. The results of each coal plant are compared to one another and to plants generating power from natural gas at the end-point level. Results indicate that not only do coal-fed SOFCs generate power with a significantly lower life cycle impact than the current state-of-the-art coal plants, but when carbon capture is enabled they can do so with a lower impact than the most modern plants utilizing natural gas, as well. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study aims to investigate the influence of various reaction parameters (temperatures, working pressures and reaction time) on biodiesel yields and environmental and economic performance of rapeseed oil transesterification in supercritical methanol. Experiments were carried out in a laboratory-scale batch reactor. Results were statistically analysed and multiple regression models which describe and predict biodiesel yields with high certainty at different reaction conditions were provided. The highest biodiesel yield (93 wt%) was achieved at 350 degrees C and 12 MPa after 15 min of reaction. The lowest direct costs and life cycle environmental impacts (in terms of GHG emissions and fossil energy demand) are achieved at the highest yield due to the lowest oil consumption per unit of biodiesel produced. The results of sensitivity analysis showed that even at significantly lower oil feedstock prices this observation stands firm. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Micro-hydropower (MHP) presents new opportunities to generate electricity from within existing water infrastructure. This paper quantifies the environmental impacts of electricity generation from three MHP case studies (15-140 kW) in the water industry, using a life cycle assessment approach. Environmental burdens were calculated per kWh electricity generated over nominal turbine operational lifespans. Compared with marginal UK grid electricity generation in combined cycle turbine natural gas power plants, normalised life cycle environmental burdens for MHP electricity were reduced by: >99% for global warming potential (GWP); >98% for fossil resource depletion potential; >93% for acidification potential; 50-62% for human toxicity potential. However, the burden for abiotic resource depletion potential was 251-353% higher for MHP than marginal grid-electricity. Different quantities of raw materials and installation practices led to a range in GWP burdens from 2.14 to 4.36 g CO2 eq./kWh. One case benefitted from very low site preparation requirements while others required substantial excavation works and material quantities. Carbon payback times ranged from 0.16 to 0.31 years, extending to 0.19-0.40 years for worst-case scenarios examined as part of a sensitivity analysis. The carbon payback period for future MHP installations was estimated to increase by 1% annually, as the carbon intensity of marginal grid electricity is predicted to decline. This study demonstrates that MHP installations in the water industry have a strongly positive environmental balance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Union (EU) relies largely on bioenergy to achieve its climate and energy targets for 2020 and beyond. Special focus is placed on utilization of biomass residues, which are considered to cause low environmental impacts. We used the dataset from the latest European Commission document on the sustainability of solid and gaseous biomass (SWD2014 259), complementing those results by: i) designing three pathways for domestic-heat production using forest logging residues, with different combustion technologies; ii) expanding the analysis to include forest carbon stock development with and without bioenergy; iii) using absolute climate metrics to assess the surface temperature response by the end of the century to a bioenergy and a reference fossil system; iv) including multiple climate forcers (well-mixed GHG, near term climate forcers and surface albedo change); iv) quantifying life cycle impacts on acidification, particulate matter emissions and photochemical ozone formation; v) reviewing potential risks for forest ecosystem degradation due to increased removal of residues. Supply-chain GHG savings of the three pathways analysed ranged between 80% and 96% compared to a natural gas system, above the 70% threshold suggested by the EU. However, the climate impact of bioenergy should be assessed by considering also the non-bioenergy uses of the biomass and by including all climate forcers. We calculate the Surface Temperature Response to bioenergy and fossil systems by means of Absolute Global surface Temperature Potential (AGTP) metric. Domestic heating from logging residues is generally beneficial to mitigate the surface temperature increase by 2100 compared to the use of natural gas and other fossil sources. As long as residues with a decay rate in the forest higher than 2.7%*yr(-1) are considered as feedstock, investing now in the mobilization of residues for heat production can reduce the temperature increase by 2100 compared to all the fossil sources analysed, both in case of bioenergy as a systemic change or in case of bioenergy as a transitory option. Furthermore, several environmental risks are associated with the removal and use of forest logging residues for bioenergy. These issues concern mostly local air pollution, biodiversity loss and, mainly for stumps removal, physical damage to forest soils. Forest logging residues are not free of environmental risks. Actions promoting their use should consider: (i) that climate change mitigation depends mainly on the decay rate of biomass under natural decomposition and time and rate of technology deployment, (ii) whether management guidelines aimed at protecting long-term forest productivity are in place and (iii) whether proper actions for the management of adverse effects on local air pollution are in place. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Around 9% of global CO2 emissions originate from land use changes. Often, these emissions are not appropriately addressed in Life Cycle Assessment. The link between demand for crops in one region and impacts in other regions is referred to here as indirect land use change (iLUC) and includes deforestation, intensification and reduced consumption. Existing models for iLUC tend to ignore intensification and reduced consumption, they most often operate with arbitrary amortisation periods to allocate deforestation emissions over time, and the causal link between land occupation and deforestation is generally weakly established. This paper presents the conceptual framework required for a consistent modelling of iLUC in Life Cycle Assessment. It reports on a novel and biophysical iLUC model, in which amortisation is avoided by using discounted Global Warming Potentials (GWPs). The causal link between demand for land and land use changes is established through markets for land's production capacity. The iLUC model presented is generally applicable to all land use types, crops and regions of the world in typical LCA decision-making contexts focusing on the long-term effects of small-scale changes. The model's strengths and weaknesses are discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Electrical Vehicle (EV) has become a potential solution for enhancing the sustainability of our road transportation, in view of the environmental impacts traditional vehicles have regarding emissions and use of fossil fuel dependence. However, the widespread use of EVs is still restrained by the energy storage technologies, and the electrification of road transportation is still in its early stages. This paper focuses on the technical aspects related to the 'electrification of roads' (called 'eRoads') infrastructure that aims to diminish the limitations for using EVs. A historical overview of the technology development towards the electrification of road transportation is presented, along with an overview of prospective technologies for implementing an eRoad charging infrastructure. Of these, the Inductive Power Transfer (IPT) technology is examined in further details. The main objective of this paper is to explore the potential knowledge gaps that need to be filled for a successful integration of IPT technology within actual road infrastructure. As such, this paper can be used as an overview of the current state-of-the-art of eRoad infrastructure and also as guidance towards future research directions in this domain. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The forestry sector is showing an increasing demand for documentation about its environmental performance. Concerning forest operations, many studies have revealed remarkable differences in environmental impact mainly due to differences in location, forestry practice and technologies. As a consequence, reliable information on environmental performance for forestry operations and wood supply chain is considered to be crucial. This work aims to evaluate the environmental impacts of the firewood supply chain from high stand beech forest in North-Eastern Italy. Two scenarios have been considered: the first scenario investigates the firewood supply chain based on the wood harvested from the local forest, while the second one investigates the supply chain based on wood imported from the Balkans' area. The differences between the two scenarios are assessed through a "gate to grave" life cycle assessment for the impact categories: Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP); Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP) and Human Toxicity Potential (HTP). The functional unit is 1 MJ of energy produced by firewood. The study has shown that there are different critical values of transportation distance for impact categories. Although most of the chemicals emitted in the life cycle of firewood cannot be offset, a sustainable forest management can completely offset the fossil CO2 emissions of the short and the long supply chain by saving less than 10% of the net increment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The working hypothesis of this study revolves around the lack of integration of sustainability and project management. Organisations, nowadays are increasingly keen on to include sustainability in their business. Project management can help make this process a success but little guidance is available on how to apply sustainability to specific projects. This work has analysed connections between the two disciplines by means of a comprehensive literature review covering more than 100 references. Sustainability has become a very important step, particularly in terms of environmental aspects. However, slightly less progress has been made socially. In any case, the ideal characteristics for a project and its management might be considered sustainable have still not been specified to this day. The main scientific contribution of this article is a new conceptual framework helping project managers deal with sustainable projects. This framework is based on the supposition that project products designed using sustainability criteria, sustainable project processes, organisations committed to sustainability that carry out projects, and project managers trained in sustainability are all necessary elements, although, maybe not enough, to attain sustainable projects. In addition, the article suggests a future research agenda that might specify how project management can help incorporate sustainability into organisations and their projects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The production of construction materials accounts for significant quantities of raw materials and respectively big amounts of energy. The fact that construction materials contribute in a most decisive way to sustainable building management has been proven by many studies; they are therefore rightly important elements for the energy conscious and bioclimatic design and construction of new buildings. Their exact and environmental features, however, have to be determined on a product specific base, as they depend on the raw material used, the manufacturing process applied and the energy sources used for the production. Furthermore, the determination of the materials' environmental impact can be carried out in many methodological ways. This paper presents the environmental impacts deriving from the environmental evaluation analysis of the most widely used construction materials, on the base of two environmental assessment methodologies: the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and the Carbon Footprint Analysis, also discussing their link with ecolabelling. The results drawn, verify the potential of those methodologies as effective tools towards sustainable constructions as well the role that efficient energy and raw materials use has in reducing the environmental impact of building materials' production. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ceramic panels are an emerging construction material and have become popular in China due to the regenerative character of the material and its conformation with Chinese culture. In this paper, we conducted a life cycle assessment (from "cradle" to "grave") of decorative ceramic facade panel products from a typical ceramic enterprise in South China. Both the sales aspect and material recycling were considered. Using Ebalance software and its Chinese parameters, we assessed seven environmental impacts of the ceramic panels, including depletion of abiotic resources, photochemical oxidant creation, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, ozone depletion and human toxicity. We also compared the environmental performance of ceramic facade panels with three other traditional curtain wall materials glass, marble and aluminum plate using data from the literature. The results from a consideration of the life cycle from "cradle" to "gate" showed that ceramic facade panels had better environmental performance than the others, in general, but was worse than glass on the depletion of abiotic resources performance and was worse than glass and aluminum on the human toxicity performance. Finally, we offer some suggestions for optimizing the life cycle process of ceramic facade panels for better environmental performance and some recommendations for better selection of facade materials. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It has been shown that silicate-derived geopolymers can be manufactured with lower greenhouse gas emissions than can Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). This is assuming that transport methods and distances are equal. In this paper, we have used published and newly-determined data, following closely with accepted life cycle assessment procedures, to evaluate the embodied energy of a new class of geopolymers, namely Bayer-derived geopolymers. These geopolymers utilise concentrated sodium aluminate solutions (Bayer liquor) with fly ash and other aluminosilicates to form geopolymers. Significantly, utilising this combination of industrial by-products can dramatically lower the embodied energy of Bayer-derived geopolymer. Under current industrial operations, Bayer liquor is recycled into the process after intensive treatment, in order to retain alumina and caustic soda however, under alternative configurations this impurity-laden stream could be removed, potentially enhancing environmental performance of both geopolymer and alumina production. In a reconfigured-system, with no allocation of embodied energy to the Bayer waste stream, this could reduce the embodied energy of the derived geopolymer concrete to as little as 0.33 GJ/t. Embodied energies of between 6 and 33% of those associated with OPC have been achieved depending on the process configuration and allocation assumptions used. Most importantly, such assessment indicates that for the first time, Bayer-derived geopolymer binders could be produced with embodied energy intensity at levels comparable to manufactured or recycled sand, gravel and stone. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Eco-industrial networks are a concept which has received study for almost 30 years as a strategy for improving economics of production facilities while reducing waste. This study focuses on developing a generalized modeling framework in terms of mixed-integer nonlinear programming of an eco-industrial network. The problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimization with the objective to reduce life-cycle emissions and maintaining favourable economics. This model lends itself as a developmental tool to assess environmental and economic feasibility of applying eco-park concepts to new construction projects. In addition, the model is formulated to determine feasible transportation distances between facilities, select the appropriate transportation technologies and is built with the intention of modification toward stochastic import/export pricing. The sensitivity of the network configuration to variances in the weighting factors placed on economics or environmental emissions is discussed and the results from multiple weighting scenarios are presented. These results show that the estimated reductions in cost and emissions are less significant than those from previously published work but are founded upon a more realistic network model. Based on our findings, the cost for the integrated set of facilities is shown to be reduced by 24% while the emission reduction is observed at 12.7% for the base scenario examined by the earlier models. These results show less promise than the earlier findings but represent a more realistic assessment of the proposed network. The tools developed by this research present a novel approach to facility planning and policy development for chemical industries. As such, the framework presented herein has the potential to impact facility construction/operation and public policy governing industrial producers; additionally, this research contributes an empirical approach for assessing the practicality of establishing eco-industrial networks and provides an approach for further analyses. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The first life cycle impact assessment for redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forest management activities (i.e. a cradle-to-sawmill gate input) including the growing, harvesting, and hauling of redwood sawlogs to a sawmill was completed. In the stump-to-truck timber harvesting analysis, primary transport activities such as skidding and yarding consumed the largest amount of fuel and consequently generated the greatest environmental impacts (50% of the total) compared with the other harvesting stages (felling, processing, and loading). Hauling sawlogs to the sawmill was also a major contributor to total greenhouse gas emissions, representing 20% of total emissions. The most efficient harvest method in terms of fuel consumption per m(3) of wood harvested was the manual ground-based system used in even-aged silvicultural operations, followed by the skyline harvesting methods. Relative to even-aged silvicultural systems, uneven-aged systems, often prescribed to meet environmental goals such as maintaining biodiversity and protecting wildlife habitats, used 20% more fuel per m(3) of redwood sawlogs harvested. This was because uneven-aged systems required an increased number of entries to harvest the same amount of wood as even-aged systems. The cradle-to-gate GHG emissions from redwood forest management activities including growing, harvesting and hauling the logs represent only 14% (17.13 kg CO(2)e/m(3)) of the total GHG emissions (i.e. cradle-to-grave) associated with redwood decking lumber. The study results showed substantial differences in environmental impacts for the various harvesting operations and silvicultural systems for redwood forest management and operations. Therefore, the life cycle impact assessment results for the various redwood harvesting and silvicultural systems should be carefully considered when evaluating environmental performance of forest management activities along with other objectives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Short rotation woody crops appear to be a promising option of biomass for bioethanol production. The traditional short rotation periods for Eucalyptus globulus vary between 8 and 12 years, however intensive forest management practices and genetic improvement have increased the productivity of plantations and reduced the rotation periods up to 5 years. This study aims to assess the potential environmental impacts associated with Chilean short rotation E. globulus plantations for bioenergy production from a Life Cycle Assessment perspective. Thus, for the first time it is presented a detailed life cycle inventory and environmental assessment of a forest system in Latin America. Forest operations carried out over a lifespan of 12 years, with rotation periods of 4 years, were divided into four phases: crop establishment, harvesting, hauling and logistics infrastructure. The managed life cycle inventory included forest site data from a representative plantation dedicated to Eucalyptus chips production for energy purposes, and the inventory of the fuels production in Chile was also determined to fulfil the information requirement. The environmental profile was analysed in terms of several impact categories: climate change, ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, freshwater y marine eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation, human toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, water depletion and fossil fuel depletion. The harvesting phase was the main contributor to almost all the impact categories with contributing ratios higher than 56%. Within the harvesting phase, fertilisation and forwarding were the main processes responsible for derived environmental impacts. The results in terms of climate change and terrestrial acidification were compared with those reported for Eucalyptus biomass production in European countries. The comparison was performed considering the same system boundaries and functional unit. Differences identified were related to different forest management activities carried out as well as different biomass yields. The LCA study remarked those stages where the researchers need to improve the environmental performance. The results suggested that both fertiliser dosage and fuel consumption in forest activities should be optimised in order to decrease most effectively the global environmental impacts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The cultivation of three different cereals wheat, triticale and maize (five classes: 300, 400, 500, 600 and 700) dedicated to grain production for feed purposes was assessed to quantify their environmental profiles and identify the most sustainable crop from an environmental perspective. The most critical processes throughout the life cycle of the cropping systems were also identified. These cereals were chosen because they are the most widespread cereal crops in the Po Valley (Lombardy region), the most important agricultural area in Italy. The standard framework of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was followed to assess the environmental performance of the different cropping systems. Several impact categories were evaluated, including climate change (CC), ozone depletion (OD), terrestrial acidification (TA), freshwater eutrophication (FE), marine eutrophication (ME), human toxicity (HT), photochemical oxidant formation (POF), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TEC), freshwater ecotoxicity (FEC), marine ecotoxicity (MEC), water depletion (WD), fossil depletion (FD) as well as land use as an indicator. The results showed that the maize class 300 was the cereal with the worst environmental profile in the base case, considering economic allocation and no environmental burdens related with digestate production. This scenario presented the most intensive agricultural practices and the lowest biomass yield in comparison with the other crops. In contrast, the maize classes 600 and 700 were the cereal crops with the best environmental profiles in most impact categories. The lower requirements of fertiliser (and thus, fertilisation activities) as well as the higher biomass yield were responsible of these favourable results. However, according to the environmental results, the selection of the best biomass source depends on several methodological assumptions such as the functional unit and the allocation criteria considered (between the grain and the straw) as base for the calculations. Thus, the results of a sensitivity analysis showed that the choice of a mass allocation instead of economic one caused lower environmental impacts in all the categories. Moreover, the consideration or not of the environmental burdens related to the digestate production (the main organic fertiliser used) was also a critical step in the environmental evaluations. The inclusion of environmental loads related to digestate production caused a notable increase in the impact of all the cropping systems regardless the cereal and the impact category. This conclusion could be extrapolated to other systems that exclude the additional burdens allocated to the production of organic fertilisers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of rapeseed produced in Central Europe (France, Germany and Poland), addressing different fertilization and management practices. Two alternative fertilization scenarios were compared (on the basis of the most common fertilizer types used in Europe, namely nitrogen, phosphate P2O5, and potash K2O fertilizers) and two different scenarios of soil management practices were assessed (taking into account climate and soil type prevalent in each region). Six environmental impact categories were investigated: abiotic depletion; global warming; acidification; eutrophication; ozone layer depletion; and photochemical oxidation. Results showed that the choice of fertilizer type had significant implications in the environmental impacts. Calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) manufacturing had considerably higher greenhouse gas emissions than urea production, due to the use of nitric acid in the former. In terms of field emissions, ammonia and nitrate released following the application of nitrogen fertilizers dominated the acidification and eutrophication impacts. Nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (NPK) compounds showed particularly high impacts in terms of photochemical oxidation, as a result of sulfur dioxide emissions from manufacturing. The remaining fertilizers (P2O5 and K2O) hardly contributed to the impacts. Soil carbon change associated with different agricultural management practices significantly contributed to the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of rapeseed production, but important soil carbon stock variations were calculated: between 938 (release) and 271 kg CO(2)eq/1000 kg dry seeds (sequestration) due to different standard soil organic carbon contents in the three rapeseed production systems and alternative tillage methods in the reference scenarios of land management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Enhanced Landfill Mining is an innovative concept which allows the recovery of land, re-introduction of materials to the material cycles and recovery of energy from a considerably large stock of resources held in landfills. Plasma gasification is a viable candidate for combined energy and material valorization in the framework of Enhanced landfill Mining. Besides energy production, plasma gasification also delivers an environmentally stable vitrified residue called plasmastone, which can be converted into building materials. This paper presents an environmental and economic evaluation of the valorization of thermal treatment residues (plasmastone) in the context of Enhanced Landfill Mining. The most common valorization route, that is, the treatment of plasmastone via production of aggregates, is compared with two other possible, higher added value applications, which are inorganic polymer production and blended cement production. The evaluation is based on life cycle assessment and life cycle costing. The study suggests that the environmental and economic performances of the valorization routes depend mainly on the quality and quantity of the final products produced from a certain amount of plasmastone. The materials with the greatest contribution to potential global warming and to the net present value of the valorization scenarios are the process input materials of sodium silicate, sodium hydroxide and cement. The study concludes that the plasmastone valorization via inorganic polymer production yields higher environmental benefits, while the blended cement production provides higher economic profits. Plasmastone valorization via aggregates production does not yield economic or environmental benefits. Given the trade-off between environmental and economic performances, we conclude that the decisions regarding the selection of appropriate valorization routes should be made cautiously to obtain optimal environmental benefits and economic profits. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is great need to express the impacts of chemicals found in the environment in terms of effects from alternative chemicals of interest. Methods currently employed in fields such as life-cycle assessment, risk assessment, mixtures toxicology, and pharmacology rely mostly on heuristic arguments to justify the use of linear relationships in the construction of "equivalency factors," which aim to model these concentration-concentration correlations. However, the use of linear models, even at low concentrations, oversimplifies the nonlinear nature of the concentration-response curve, therefore introducing error into calculations involving these factors. We address this problem by reporting a method to determine a concentration-concentration relationship between two chemicals based on the full extent of experimentally derived concentration-response curves. Although this method can be easily generalized, we develop and illustrate it from the perspective of toxicology, in which we provide equations relating the sigmoid and non-monotone, or "biphasic," responses typical of the field. The resulting concentration-concentration relationships are manifestly nonlinear for nearly any chemical level, even at the very low concentrations common to environmental measurements. We demonstrate the method using real-world examples of toxicological data which may exhibit sigmoid and biphasic mortality curves. Finally, we use our models to calculate equivalency factors, and show that traditional results are recovered only when the concentration-response curves are "parallel," which has been noted before, but we make formal here by providing mathematical conditions on the validity of this approach.The environmental costs and benefits of introducing a new technology depend not only on the technology itself, but also on the responses of the market where substitution or displacement of competing technologies may occur. An internationally accepted method taking both technological and market-mediated effects into account, however, is still lacking in life cycle assessment (LCA). For the introduction of a new technology, we here present a new approach for modeling the environmental impacts within the framework of LCA. Our approach is motivated by consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) and aims to contribute to the discussion on how to operationalize consequential thinking in LCA practice. In our approach, we focus on new technologies producing homogeneous products such as chemicals or raw materials. We employ the industry cost-curve (ICC) for modeling market-mediated effects. Thereby, we can determine substitution effects at a level of granularity sufficient to distinguish between competing technologies. In our approach, a new technology alters the ICC potentially replacing the highest-cost producer(s). The technologies that remain competitive after the new technology's introduction determine the new environmental impact profile of the product. We apply our approach in a case study on a new technology for chlor-alkali electrolysis to be introduced in Germany.Allocation is required when a life cycle contains multi-functional processes. One approach to allocation is to partition the embodied resources in proportion to a criterion, such as product mass or cost. Many practitioners apply multiple partitioning criteria to avoid choosing one arbitrarily. However, life cycle results from different allocation methods frequently contradict each other, making it difficult or impossible for the practitioner to draw any meaningful conclusions from the study. Using the matrix notation for life-cycle inventory data, we show that an inventory that requires allocation leads to an ill-posed problem: an inventory based on allocation is one of an infinite number of inventories that are highly dependent upon allocation methods. This insight is applied to comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA), in which products with the same function but different life cycles are compared. Recently, there have been several studies that applied multiple allocation methods and found that different products were preferred under different methods. We develop. the Comprehensive Allocation Investigation Strategy (CAIS) to examine any given inventory under all possible allocation decisions, enabling us to detect comparisons that are not robust to allocation, even when the comparison appears robust under conventional partitioning methods. While CATS does not solve the ill-posed problem, it provides a systematic way to parametrize and examine the effects of partitioning allocation. The practical usefulness of this approach is demonstrated with two case studies. The first compares ethanol produced from corn stover hydrolysis, corn stover gasification, and corn grain fermentation. This comparison was not robust to allocation. The second case study compares 1,3-propanediol (PDO) produced from fossil fuels and from biomass, which was found to be a robust comparison.The Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW), or biowaste, can be valorized using different treatment technologies, such as anaerobic digestion and composting or the combination of them. The use of the end products (biogas and/or compost) generates benefits over the alternative of sending waste to landfill. The European Union regulations (i.e. Landfill Directive) encourage the diversion of untreated biodegradable waste from landfilling. However, OFMSW treatment installations also produce environmental impacts that must be assessed. This paper presents different future scenarios at regional scale proposed to accomplish the Landfill Directive and their environmental assessment in terms of environmental impact categories. The geographical area under study is Catalonia (Spain). Field data obtained in previous studies undertaken in the same geographical area are used to determine the environmental burdens of the present situation in order to compare them with different future scenarios. A combined scenario to treat 921Gg of OFMSW source selected including the increase of the quantity of biowaste treated by anaerobic digestion (61.2% of the total biowaste), the modification of composting plants to ensure the treatment of all the gaseous emissions (25.3% and 8.1% of the total biowaste treated in in-vessel composting plants and in enclosed windrows composting plants respectively) and the incorporation of home composting as a waste treatment alternative (5.4% of total biowaste) results in the lowest impact scenario considered in the present study. Energy recovery through anaerobic digestion and benefits of gaseous emissions reduction are the key factors in the impact reduction of biowaste treatment.Desalination has now become one of the major water treatment processes in several countries around the world where shortage of water is a serious problem. Energy consumption is a vital economic factor in selecting the type of desalination processes because current desalination processes require large amount of energy which is costly. Multi-effect desalination system with thermal vapor compression (MED-TVC) is particularly more attractive than other thermal desalination systems due to its low energy consumption. MED-TVC is characterized by high performance ratio, easier operation, low maintenance requirements and simple geometry. These attractive features make MED-TVC highly competitive to other well-established desalination techniques that include the reverse osmosis and multi-stage flash desalination. The primary goal of this paper is to present a preview of some aspects related with the theory of the technology, parametric study of the MED-TVC systems and its development. It will analyze the current and future aspects of the MED-TVC technology in view of latest installed plants.In the last decades, the focus on waste and wastewater treatment systems has shifted towards increased recovery of energy and nutrients. Separation of urban food waste (FW) and domestic wastewaters using source control systems could aid this increase; however, their effect on overall sustainability is unknown. To obtain indicators for sustainability assessments, five urban systems for collection, transport, treatment and nutrient recovery from blackwater, greywater and FW were investigated using data from implementations in Sweden or northern Europe. The systems were evaluated against their potential for biogas production and nutrient recovery by the use of mass balances for organic material, nutrients and metals over the system components. The resulting indicators are presented in units suitable for use in future sustainability studies or life-cycle assessment of urban waste and wastewater systems. The indicators show that source control systems have the potential to increase biogas production by more than 70% compared with a conventional system and give a high recovery of phosphorus and nitrogen as biofertilizer. The total potential increase in gross energy equivalence for source control systems was 20-100%; the greatest increase shown is for vacuum-based systems.Construction and building industry is in dire need for developing sustainability assessment frameworks that can evaluate and integrate related environmental and socioeconomic impacts. This paper discusses an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based sustainability evaluation framework for mid-rise residential buildings based on a broad range of environmental and socioeconomic criteria. A cradle to grave life cycle assessment technique was applied to identify, classify, and assess triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability performance indicators of buildings. Then, the AHP was applied to aggregate the impacts into a unified sustainability index. The framework is demonstrated through a case study to investigate two six storey structural systems (i.e. concrete and wood) in Vancouver, Canada. The results of this paper show that the environmental performance of a building in Canada, even in regions with milder weather such as Vancouver, is highly dependent on service life energy, rather than structural materials.Sustainable development in construction is based on three fundamental pillars: economic, environmental and social. This type of approach aims to identify the best possible solutions for sustainably developing structures by conducting a joint evaluation of the impact on those three pillars. The proposed methodology incorporates metadata on the Spanish construction sector. First, a discrete database is generated with 360 alternatives covering a range of common solutions in residential building. A Pareto algorithm is utilized to select the optimal choices and the wide range of solutions is reduced to the 5 % of the initial group. The project manager is therefore provided with an objective assessment of suitable structural alternatives including the overall joint economic, social, and environmental impact. The results obtained demonstrate the importance and utility of the proposed methodology for sustainable construction.This paper presents the results of the sensitivity analysis performed for the sustainability assessment model of the Spanish Code on Structural Concrete, EHE-08. It also portrays the results of a life-cycle analysis (LCA) related to energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Comparisons are made between those findings, for suggesting improvements to the model. The main conclusion is that some weights and value functions employed in the EHE-08 are not consistent with the LCA. The new versions of the Spanish Code should include other weights and value functions to get closer to the LCA results.The present paper compared the potential environmental impact generated by two representative scenarios in two different ways of managing household waste: the first one considering a central sorting and sanitary landfill, and the second one considering a central sorting, composting and sanitary landfill. Data analysis was based on the phases of a Life Cycle Analysis: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, evaluation of potential environmental impacts, interpretation of results and critical evaluation. Flowchart of processes was developed, boundaries of systems were defined, and it was elaborated block diagrams and spreadsheets of the environmental aspects and impacts. It was noticed in the inventory that the data are in favor of Scenario 2 (composting before sanitary landfill) regarding waste generation and atmospheric emissions. The assessment of Environmental Aspects and Impacts (AEAI) of Scenario 1 (sorting of recyclables, in which all waste is sent to landfill) showed that 22.2% of environmental aspects and impacts were assessed as significant (i.e. ranked as "unacceptable" or "serious"). The result of AEAI from Scenario 2 was 17.6% of total assessed, which data is also favorable to this Scenario. In both scenarios, the more relevant significant aspect was related to atmospheric emissions identified in the processes of collection and transportation of waste, and final disposition of rejects.Building construction consumes large amount of energy and material. Despite that, not much effort has been directed to examine the environmental impact of the construction phase, and this is particularly relevant to Hong Kong where the demand for building construction is ever increasing. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) model namely the Environmental Model of Construction (EMoC) is developed to help decision-makers assess the environmental performance of building construction projects in Hong Kong from cradle to end of construction. The model provides comprehensive analyses of 18 environmental impact categories at the midpoint and endpoint levels. By inputting project specific data to EMoC, it can generate results of over two-hundred detailed processes. A public rental housing (PRH) project is fed into EMoC to examine the environmental performance of this type of projects. The results indicate that material is the major contributor to environmental impacts of the upstream stages of public housing construction. The carbon emissions of the studied project amount to 637 kg carbon dioxide equivalent per square meter of the gross floor area. Sensitivity analysis reveals that the environmental pollution can be significantly reduced by adopting a higher proportion of precast concrete components. The model should help support decision-makers identifying pragmatic solutions to reduce the environmental burden of a building project at the design, procurement and construction stages. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A building is a complex system consisting of many different materials. The material selection, therefore, has a significant role in sustainable building design. This study has demonstrated the influence of material selection on the life cycle energy balance of a building based on current building codes and common building service systems in Finland. The influences of the selection were investigated on a relative basis using a hypothetical building model and in the three building component categories (structural frame, surface components and inner components). The results showed that, in general, the differences between the alternative materials are rather visible in the production stage of the building and the energy benefit from material recycling. But it was also revealed that the influences of the selection appear differently in each life cycle stage of the building depending on the building component categories. The selection of the structural materials has larger effect than the other two component categories and a combination of different structural frame materials seems to be effective in some cases. The material selection for sheathing, exterior cladding and thermal insulation has a relatively greater influence than the others in the surface and inner components categories. The energy recovery benefits of wood and plastic products have a great influence on the life cycle energy balance of the building. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sugarcane has been used as feedstock for production of ethanol on a large scale basis in Brazil for over three decades, where most of the sugarcane mills produce sugar, ethanol and electricity. In this study the technologies usually employed in sugarcane mills in Brazil are briefly described, along with opportunities for process improvements and suggestions for the future of the sugarcane industry. These technologies and improvements can be improved, adapted and replicated to other countries using new technologies and alternative feedstock throughout the world. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.For the last years, several practical studies done in Romania presented Camelina sativa as a very promising source for oil for biofuels, with low input in agricultural stage, according with soil requirements which is particular for each location. Life Cycle Assessment for agricultural stage is mandatory and requires several studies for all regions of Romania, each one with different agricultural management applied. In order to increase the efficiency of Camelina sativa and to be aligned when we comparing it with Rapeseed meal and other oil crops, we need to take into consideration all the possibilities of using Camelina meal as a protein source for commercial livestock, targeted for most important animal protein sources in Romania: poultry, swine and big and small ruminants. In ruminants, there is a big potential for Camelina meal to replace up to 15% of the protein used in dairy cows ratio, which will provide a better utilisation of biofuels technology by-products. From financial and more important, from environmental point of view, this could means environmental protection due to reduction of Greenhouse gases resulted from biofuels whole chain production. Camelina ability to grow in polluted soils is also investigated, several strategic locations started already to test and first data will be available during this year.Biofuel policy changes in the United States have renewed interest in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] biodiesel. Past studies with varying methodologies and functional units can provide valuable information for future work. A meta-analysis of nine peer-reviewed soybean life cycle analysis (LCA) biodiesel studies was conducted on the northern Great Plains in the United States. Results of LCA studies were assimilated into a standardized system boundary and functional units for global warming (GWP), eutrophication (EP), and acidification (AP) potentials using biodiesel conversions from peer-reviewed and government documents. Factors not fully standardized included variations in N2O accounting, mid-or end-point impacts, land use change, allocation, and statistical sampling pools. A state-by-state comparison of GWP lower and higher heating values (LHV, HHV) showed differences attributable to variations in spatial sampling and agricultural practices (e.g., tillage, irrigation). The mean GWP of LHV was 21.1 g center dot CO2-eq MJ(-1) including outliers, and median EP LHV and AP LHV was 0.019 g center dot PO4-eq MJ(-1) and 0.17 g center dot SO2-eq MJ(-1), respectively, using the limited data available. An LCA case study of South Dakota soybean-based biodiesel production resulted in GWP estimates (29 or 31 g center dot CO2-eq MJ(-1); 100% mono alkyl esters [first generation] biodiesel or 100% fatty acid methyl ester [second generation] biodiesel) similar to meta-analysis results (30.1 g center dot CO2-eq MJ(-1)). Meta-analysis mean results, including outliers, resemble the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard for soybean biodiesel default value without land use change of 21.25 g center dot CO2-eq MJ(-1). Results were influenced by resource investment differences in water, fertilizer (e.g., type, application), and tillage. Future biofuel LCA studies should include these important factors to better define reasonable energy variations in regional agricultural management practices.Cradle-to-gate life cycle analysis surrounding five algae-to-fuel/fuel precursor scenarios was studied. The different processes modeled were: an open pond producing either triacylglycerides (TAG) or free fatty acid methyl ester (FAME); a solar-lit photobioreactor producing either FAME or free fatty acids; and a light emitting diode irradiated (LED-lit) photobioreactor-producing TAG. These processes were chosen from amongst the simplest to most sophisticated approaches available in literature. The scenarios of production with open ponds are close to being sustainable environmentally. On the other hand, the production scenarios with solar-lit and LED-lit photobioreactors are both far from being sustainable. The reason for this is the higher embedded and operating life-cycle impacts associated with the materials in the growth reactor (and some other equipment) in these two types of production facilities, as well as the artificial photon source used in the latter. Many difficult-to-achieve improvements are required to make these processes less energy intensive. Algae strains with higher lipid productivity as well as changes in the number, the complexity, and energy expenditures in operation steps are always required to reduce overall life-cycle impacts when production of commodity fuels is the focus. An important perspective to keep in mind with algae-based processes is that there are currently no significant economies-of-scale with the environmental impacts for growth systems, since they are additive above a baseline production level. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.In the context of biogas sustainability assessment, a promising way to reach greenhouse gases (GHG) reduction and fossil energy savings is the anaerobic digestion (AD) of both animal manure and energy crops. Nowadays, more than 1,100 AD plants are working in Italy, mostly located in Northern Regions. To those plants with an electrical power lower than 1 MW, strong public incentives were given, therefore, several of them have been put into operation; this entailed increasing cereal silage prices, feedstock transportation distance and issues about digestate management and heat valorization. In this study the Carbon Footprint (CF) of electricity production from biogas has been evaluated considering five AD plants located in Lombardy and Piedmont. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach and a cradle-to-grave perspective have been considered. Different plant sizes (100, 250, 300, 300 and 998 kW) and feeding rate (maize and pig slurry, only maize, only pig slurry and only cow slurry) have been studied. The CF was calculated for a 100-year time frame based on GHG emissions, indicated as mass of CO2 equivalents (kg CO(2)eq), according to IPCC. The Functional Unit (FU) is 1 kWh of electricity fed into the electric grid. The CF saving for electricity produced by the AD plants ranges from -0.208 to -1.07 kgCO(2)eq/kWh, being mainly related to the substitution of energy production from fossil fuel. Electricity from biogas has a big potential to reduce GHG emissions: valorization of surplus heat and reduction of transport distance can support the lower GHG emissions achievement of this bioenergy system.Sustainability issues have driven academic researchers towards the definition of methodological tools to assess the impacts derived from products and services and to make them more ecologically friendly, economically profitable and socially suitable, and whose results have to be clear and understandable to a broad public. In the evaluation of complex socio-environmental systems, like agricultural ones, uncertainty often arises and the quality of decision processes can be a high concern. This paper presents the conceptual and methodological framework of an Italian research project entitled "MIMeSMAS", i.e. Multidisciplinary and Innovative Methodologies for Sustainable Management in Agricultural Systems. Through a multidisciplinary, multi-methodological, systemic and participatory approach, the project attempts to define an integrated approach for the assessment of environmental, economic and social sustainability of innovative agricultural practices in Mediterranean areas. The project activities are carried out by four Italian research institutions in order to bring together agronomic, hydraulic and mechanical expertise and to conduct a combined implementation of Life Cycle methodologies (LCA, LCC and s-LCA) and multi-criteria analysis tools. The approach is applied to assess and rank alternative cropping systems scenarios; results are expected to help optimising the management of soil, water and energy macro-systems of perennial crops (olive), horticultural crops (artichoke) and dedicated energy crops (giant reed). In this paper the theoretical concept of the project, the preliminary results of project's activities linked to the identification of experimental trials scenarios and to the definition of specific indicators are presented.This paper discusses end-of-life (EoL) modeling issues in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), through the application to a domestic cooker hood. Two EoL approaches are applied and discussed, namely the avoided burden and the one recommended by the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guide, presently under testing. While no case studies on PEF application have been published yet, to the best of our knowledge, the scientific community is questioning the robustness and relevance of some methodological aspects, especially the EoL formula. The objective of the work is to provide a case study for supporting the scientific discussion on EoL modeling by: applying the avoided burden approach to the cooker hood EoL; testing the PEF EoL approach on a cooker hood component, the aluminum filter, and compare the results with those obtained from the avoided burden approach; evaluating how both the approaches affect the allocation of burdens/credits associated to recycling. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP) impact categories are investigated. The study points out that the PEF EoL approach delivers higher environmental impacts than the avoided burden one, due to a reduced contribution from the avoided impacts. Overall, the application of the PEF EoL approach is more complex, due to the additional and often not available information needed, such as the recycled content of the materials and the disposal treatments that are avoided when recycled materials are used in the product. Also the structure of the LCA datasets may limit the application of the PEF EoL.Cities are hotspots of commodity consumption, with implications for both local and systemic water resources. Water flows virtually into and out of cities through the extensive cross-boundary exchange of goods and services. Both virtual and real water flows are affected by water supply investments and urban planning decisions, which influence residential, commercial, and industrial development. This form of water teleconnection is being increasingly recognized as an important aspect of water decision-making. The role of trade and virtual water flows as an alternative to expanding a city's real water supply is rarely acknowledged, with an emphasis placed instead on monotonic expansion of engineering potable water supplies. We perform a literature review of water footprint studies to evaluate the potential and importance of taking virtual flows into account in urban planning and policy. We compare and contrast current methods to assess virtual water flows. We also identify and discuss priorities for future research in urban water footprint analysis.Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis are two prime tools that have been used to evaluate the sustainability of novel EU projects, which investigated new strategies to improve product yields and reduce costs, while ensuring a good ecological footprint and cost efficiency. These include EU projects focussed on developing modular, compact production platforms with intensified reactors-such as the F3 Factory, COPIRIDE (combining process intensification-driven manufacture of microstructured reactors and process design regarding to industrial dimensions and environment), POLYCAT (modern polymer-based catalysts and microflow conditions as key elements of innovations in fine chemical synthesis) and SYNFLOW (Innovative Synthesis in Continuous-flow Processes for Sustainable Chemical Production). New projects such as the MAPSYN (Microwave, Acoustic and Plasma assisted SYNtheses) and BIOGO (Catalytic Partial Oxidation of Bio Gas and Reforming of Pyrolysis Oil (Bio Oil) for an Autothermal Synthesis Gas Production and Conversion into Fuels) continue this, but by using alternative energy and a biomass-based, heat-integrated process, respectively. Thus, this paper is a review of EU projects that have carried out LCA and cost analyses and used the results to aid decision-making in the context of process intensification, flow chemistry and modular plants. Copyright (c) 2015 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Inappropriate diets constitute an important health risk and an increasing environmental burden. Healthy regional diets may contribute to meeting this dual challenge. A palatable, healthy and sustainable New Nordic diet (NND) based on organic products from the Nordic region has been developed. This study assesses whether a large-scale introduction of NND is a cost-effective health promotion strategy by combining an economic model for estimating the utility-maximizing composition of NND, a life cycle assessment model to assess environmental effects of the dietary change, and a health impact model to assess impacts on the disease burden. Consumer expenditure for food and beverages in the NND is about 16% higher than currently, with the largest relative difference in low-income households. Environmental loads from food consumption are 15%-25% lower, and more than 18,000 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) will be saved per year in Denmark. NND exhibits a cost-effectiveness ratio of about (sic)73,000-94,000 per DALY saved. This cost-effectiveness improves considerably, if the NND's emphasis on organic and Nordic-origin products is relaxed.Global climate change is predicted to increase heat, drought, and soil-drying conditions, and thereby increase crop sensitivity to water vapour pressure deficit, resulting in productivity losses. Increasing competition between agricultural freshwater use and municipal or industrial uses suggest that crops with greater heat and drought durability and greater water-use efficiency will be crucial for sustainable biomass production systems in the future. Agave (Agavaceae) and Opuntia (Cactaceae) represent highly water-use efficient bioenergy crops that could diversify bioenergy feedstock supply yet preserve or expand feedstock production into semi-arid, abandoned, or degraded agricultural lands, and reclaim drylands. Agave and Opuntia are crassulacean acid metabolism species that can achieve high water-use efficiencies and grow in water-limited areas with insufficient precipitation to support traditional C-3 or C-4 bioenergy crops. Both Agave and Opuntia have the potential to produce above-ground biomass rivalling that of C-3 and C-4 crops under optimal growing conditions. The low lignin and high amorphous cellulose contents of Agave and Opuntia lignocellulosic biomass will be less recalcitrant to deconstruction than traditional feedstocks, as confirmed by pretreatments that improve saccharification of Agave. Refined environmental productivity indices and geographical information systems modelling have provided estimates of Agave and Opuntia biomass productivity and terrestrial sequestration of atmospheric CO2; however, the accuracy of such modelling efforts can be improved through the expansion of field trials in diverse geographical settings. Lastly, life cycle analysis indicates that Agave would have productivity, life cycle energy, and greenhouse gas balances comparable or superior to those of traditional bioenergy feedstocks, but would be far more water-use efficient.An advanced raw sugar juice purification procedure, formed as a combination of several purification techniques is presented in this paper. The proposed purification procedure was implemented and tested in sugar plant JSC "Sajkaska", Serbia. The goal of this study was to evaluate an economic and environmental justification of the applied modifications on an existing raw sugar juice purification process. Material and energy flows before and after the implementation of the modified purification procedure were monitored and obtained results were compared in a 5-year period. Comparable economic and environmental assessment using Life Cycle Assessment method was carried out. Results indicate that modifications contributed to significant decrease in limestone, coke and natural gas consumption which lead to reduced production costs, carbon footprint and cumulative energy demand of raw sugar juice purification. Benefits due to modifications are more pronounced in the years of better sugar beet quality expressed in terms of quotient of purity. (C) 2015 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A Combined Approach for Inherent Safety and Environmental (CAISEN) assessment is presented. The methodology first describes the synergy between the information required for conducting both safety and life cycle assessment (LCA). The overlapping set of data needed for each method enables both safety and environmental impact assessment to be carried out effectively as one integrated tool. The LCA framework formed the basis of the CAISEN assessment methodology. The proposed CAISEN assessment tool was tested on methanol production from natural gas at different production scales. The changes in environmental impacts were apparent as the production scales were changed from kilogram to ton scales. However for safety, the degree of hazard associated with methanol production remained high regardless of the different production scales. From the case study results and sensitivity analysis, it was observed that CAISEN assessment can be used to short list/select processes where process information is limited. (C) 2015 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The usage modeling in life cycle assessment (LCA) is rarely discussed despite the magnitude of environmental impact from the usage stage. In this paper, the usage modeling technique, predictive usage mining for life cycle assessment (PUMLCA) algorithm, is proposed as an alternative of the conventional constant rate method. By modeling usage patterns as trend, seasonality, and level from a time series of usage information, predictive LCA can be conducted in a real time horizon, which can provide more accurate estimation of environmental impact. Large-scale sensor data of product operation is suggested as a source of data for the proposed method to mine usage patterns and build a usage model for LCA. The PUMLCA algorithm can provide a similar level of prediction accuracy to the constant rate method when data is constant, and the higher prediction accuracy when data has complex patterns. In order to mine important usage patterns more effectively, a new automatic segmentation algorithm is developed based on change point analysis. The PUMLCA algorithm can also handle missing and abnormal values from large-scale sensor data, identify seasonality, and formulate predictive LCA equations for current and new machines. Finally, the LCA of agricultural machinery demonstrates the proposed approach and highlights its benefits and limitations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Ulsan Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) in South Korea houses as many as 1,000 companies, which generate about 524,000 t/year of organic waste. Of this total, 34 % is recycled, 8 % is incinerated with energy recovery, and the rest (58 %) is disposed of by ocean dumping (45 %), landfilling (11 %), or incineration without energy recovery (2 %). Although 42 % of the total waste generated at Ulsan EIP is recycled for material and energy recovery, additional opportunities to recover energy from improperly disposed of or incompletely utilized waste are possible through existing waste-to-energy (WTE) networks. To find an optimal WTE network in the Ulsan EIP, a fuzzy mixed integer linear programming mathematical model was developed to meet energy supply and demand (in terms of both quantity and grade) while considering the satisfaction level of potential stakeholders (e.g., the EIP initiator and tenants). The developed model was applied to two different scenarios that considered the requirements of EIP tenants for waste treatment and energy recovery. Based on the satisfaction level of the stakeholders, the WTE networks were analyzed to establish an optimal WTE network with maximum energy production and a minimal payback period.Increased bioenergy demand has triggered a discussion on the sustainability of solid biomass-based fuels and a system for sustainability criteria has been discussed within the EU. This paper assesses the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for heat and electricity from selected wood pellet value chains for the Swedish market and the associated potential emissions reduction in relation to fossil fuels using a life cycle assessment (LCA) perspective, and in relation to the approach described in recent EU policy developments. Nine different wood pellet value chains for heat and/or power production in Sweden are assessed (including pellets from Sweden, Latvia, Russia, and Canada). Selected assumptions are varied in a sensitivity analysis. The total factory-gate GHG emissions at the conversion facility for the wood pellet value chains studied, range between 2 and 25 g CO2-eq/MJ pellets with Swedish pellets at the lower end, and Russian pellets using natural gas for drying the raw material at the higher end. Imported pellets from Latvia, Russia, and Canada that use biomass for drying may also reach relatively low levels of GHG emissions. The potential GHG reduction as compared to a certain fossil fuel default energy comparator is 64-98% for the electricity produced in the pellet value chains studied and 77-99% for the heat produced. Thus, many wood pellet value chains on the Swedish market will most likely be able to meet strict demands for sustainability from a GHG perspective. (C) 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe reliance on groundwater for irrigation is increasing in Australia and India, which is causing concerns to policy makers about energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, it is important to quantify the GHG emissions of all components of the groundwater-based irrigation systems, over the entire life cycle to develop more environmentally friendly groundwater management strategies. This study identified and analysed energy use and GHG emissions associated with different components in the supply chain of groundwater-based irrigation systems. An existing GHG emissions and energy-accounting framework was adapted to enhance its capabilities by considering drilling techniques, water distribution and irrigation application methods. The results of this study highlighted that embodied and direct GHG emissions from drilling tube wells were higher in the Musi catchment, India, compared to South Australia. The study also highlighted that GHG emissions associated with water conveyance were higher for concrete and plastic-lined channels than unlined channels. Drip irrigation systems in both countries were found to have more GHG emissions than gravity-fed systems. Centre pivot systems were found to be emitting more than the drip systems in South Australia. We conclude that different components of the system have an impact on total GHG emissions and energy consumption for both countries. Any change in the most commonly used methods of drilling bore wells, water distribution in channels, and the irrigation methods, will have distinct impacts on energy consumption rates and GHG emissions. The developed conceptual framework provided a systematic complete analysis of the energy-consuming and GHG-emitting components associated with groundwater-based irrigation systems. Policy makers and decision makers may use the developed framework to compare different system components to develop strategies that have minimal impact on the environment. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This article introduces the special series "LCA in Market Research and Policy: Harmonization beyond Standardization," which was generated from the 19th SETAC Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Case Study Symposium held November 2013, in Rome, Italy. This collection of invited articles reflects the purpose of symposium and focuses on how LCA can support the decision-making process at all levels (i.e., in industry and policy contexts) and how LCA results can be efficiently communicated and used to support market strategies.Recently, Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) has been developedunder the methodological framework of Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) to evaluate the social impacts that emerge during the overall life cycle of a product or service. There is not yet a standardized methodology for S-LCA as there is for environmental LCA (eLCA), due to the nature of social impacts that do not depend only on the processes themselves, but also on the behavior and context of actors (manufactures, consumers, local communitymembers, etc.). One of the most critical steps in the application of S-LCA concerns the choice of criteria for selecting affected actors, impact categories, subcategories, and the taxonomic relation among them. Moreover, the importance (in terms of weight) of these impacts may be felt differently by affected actors, confirming the importance of the context within which impacts arise. In this sense, the integration of participatory tools can be useful in making the S-LCA more locally relevant. The aim of the present study is twofold. First, we will outline a methodology that combines S-LCA with two research tools. The first is the focus group, adopted from qualitative research. The second is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), adopted from operational research, which belongs to the framework of Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). These have been used to make the S-LCA more locally relevant and to legitimate the criteria used. Second, we will test this methodology by applying it to a specific field, i.e., 3 production areas and 3 different crop systems of citrus growing in the Calabria region in Southern Italy. Citrus growing is one of the most important agricultural sectors at regional level, and it is also well known for issues of social concern, particularly in relation to immigrant workers. The results show a number of differences between cases and could offer useful insights to both local decision makers, such as agricultural entrepreneurs, and to those public decision makers that design and implement territorial planning strategies. Results have allowed the authors to rank the social performance of each case and to reflect on the most critical steps in conducting an S-LCA. (C) 2015 SETACDirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture accounted for approximately 10% of total European Union (EU) emissions in 2010. To reduce farming-related GHG emissions, appropriate policy measures and supporting tools for promoting low-C farming practices may be efficacious. This article presents the methodology and testing results of a new EU-wide, farm-level C footprint calculator. The Carbon Calculator quantifies GHG emissions based on international standards and technical specifications on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and C footprinting. The tool delivers its results both at the farm level and as allocated to up to 5 main products of the farm. In addition to the quantification of GHG emissions, the calculator proposes mitigation options and sequestration actions that may be suitable for individual farms. The results obtained during a survey made on 54 farms from 8 EU Member States are presented. These farms were selected in view of representing the diversity of farm types across different environmental zones in the EU. The results of the C footprint of products in the data set show wide range of variation between minimum and maximum values. The results of the mitigation actions showed that the tool can help identify practices that can lead to substantial emission reductions. To avoid burden-shifting from climate change to other environmental issues, the future improvements of the tool should include incorporation of other environmental impact categories in place of solely focusing on GHG emissions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC.In April 2013, the European Commission published the Product and Organisation Environmental Footprint (PEF/OEF) methodology-a life cycle-based multicriteria measure of the environmental performance of products, services, and organizations. With its approach of "comparability over flexibility," the PEF/OEF methodology aims at harmonizing existing methods, while decreasing the flexibility provided by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards regarding methodological choices. Currently, a 3-y pilot phase is running, aiming at testing the methodology and developing product category and organization sector rules (PEFCR/OEFSR). Although a harmonized method is in theory a good idea, the PEF/OEF methodology presents challenges, including a risk of confusion and limitations in applicability to practice. The paper discusses the main differences between the PEF and ISO methodologies and highlights challenges regarding PEF applicability, with a focus on impact assessment. Some methodological aspects of the PEF and PEFCR Guides are found to contradict the ISO 14044 (2006) and ISO 14025 (2006). Others, such as prohibition of inventory cutoffs, are impractical. The evaluation of the impact assessment methods proposed in the PEF/OEF Guide showed that the predefined methods for water consumption, land use, and abiotic resources are not adequate because of modeling artefacts, missing inventory data, or incomplete characterization factors. However, the methods for global warming and ozone depletion perform very well. The results of this study are relevant for the PEF (and OEF) pilot phase, which aims at testing the PEF (OEF) methodology (and potentially adapting it) as well as addressing challenges and coping with them. (C) 2015 SETACThe ongoing transition of the German electricity supply toward a higher share of renewable and sustainable energy sources, called Energiewende in German, has led to dynamic changes in the environmental impact of electricity over the last few years. Prominent scenario studies predict that comparable dynamics will continue in the coming decades, which will further improve the environmental performance of Germany's electricity supply. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the methodology commonly used to evaluate environmental performance. Previous LCA studies on electric vehicles have shown that the electricity supply for the vehicles' operation is responsible for the major part of their environmental impact. The core question of this study is how the prospective dynamic development of the German electricity mix will affect the impact of electric vehicles operated in Germany and how LCA can be adapted to analyze this impact in a more robust manner. The previously suggested approach of time-resolved LCA, which is located between static and dynamic LCA, is used in this study and compared with several static approaches. Furthermore, the uncertainty issue associated with scenario studies is addressed in general and in relation to time-resolved LCA. Two scenario studies relevant to policy making have been selected, but a moderate number of modifications have been necessary to adapt the data to the requirements of a life cycle inventory. A potential, fully electric vehicle powered by a supercapacitor energy storage system is used as a generic example. The results show that substantial improvements in the environmental repercussions of the electricity supply and, consequentially, of electric vehicles will be achieved between 2020 and 2031 on the basis of the energy mixes predicted in both studies. This study concludes that although scenarios might not be able to predict the future, they should nonetheless be used as data sources in prospective LCA studies, because in many cases historic data appears to be unsuitable for providing realistic information on the future. The time-resolved LCA approach improves the assessment's robustness substantially, especially when nonlinear developments are foreseen in the future scenarios. This allows for a reduction of bias in LCA-based decision making. However, a deeper integration of time-resolved data in the life cycle inventory and the implementation of a more suitable software framework are desirable. (C) 2015 SETACAutomotive Shredder Residue (ASR) is a problematic waste material remaining after shredding and recovery processes of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Its heterogeneous grain size and composition make difficult its recovery or disposal. Although ASR accounts for approximately 20% to 25% of the weight of an ELV, the European Union (EU)'s ELV Directive (2000/53/EC) requires that by 2015 a minimum 95% of the weight of an ELV must be reused or recovered, including a 10% weight energy recovery. The quantity of ASR is relevant: Approximately 2.4 million tons are generated in the EU each year and most of it is sent to landfills. This article describes a life cycle model of the "TEKNE-Fluff" process designed to make beneficial use of ASR that is based on the results of an experimental pilot plant for pyro-gasification, combustion, cogeneration, and emissions treatment of ASR. The goal of the research was the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to identify the environmental hot spots of the "TEKNE system" and use scenario analysis to check solutions to improve its environmental profile, supporting the design and industrialization process. The LCA was conducted based on data modeled from the experimental campaign. Moreover, different scenarios on shares of electricity and thermal energy produced by the cogeneration system and alternative treatment processes for the waste produced by the technology were compared. Despite the limitation of the research (results based on scaling up experimental data by modeling), impact assessment results are promising and sufficiently robust, as shown by Monte Carlo analysis. The TEKNE technology may become an interesting solution for the problem of ASR management: Besides representing an alternative to landfill disposal, the energy produced could avoid significant impacts on fossil resources depletion (a plant of 40 000 tons/y capacity could produce similar to 147 000 GJ/yr, covering the annual need of similar to 13 500 households). (C) 2015 SETACThe aim of this study was to assess the cradle-to-farm gate carbon footprint of indoor and outdoor dairy goat farming systems in New Zealand, identifying hotspots and discussing variability and methodology. Our study was based on the International Organization for Standardization standards for life cycle assessment, although only results for greenhouse gas emissions are presented. Two functional units were included: tonnes of CO2-equivalents (CO(2)e) per hectare (ha) and kilograms of CO(2)e per kilogram of fat- and proteincorrected milk (FPCM). The study covered 5 farms, 2 farming systems, and 3 yr. Two methods for the calculation of enteric methane emissions were assessed. The Lassey method, as used in the New Zealand greenhouse gas inventory, provided a more robust estimate of emissions from enteric fermentation and was used in the final calculations. The alternative dry matter intake method was shown to overestimate emissions due to use of anecdotal assumptions around actual consumption of feed. Economic allocation was applied to milk and co-products. Scenario analysis was performed on the allocation method, nitrogen content of manure, manure management, and supplementary feed choice. The average carbon footprint for the indoor farms (n = 3) was 11.05 t of CO(2)e/ha and 0.81 kg of CO(2)e/kg of FPCM. For the outdoor farms (n = 2), the average was 5.38 t of CO(2)e/ha and 1.03 kg of CO(2)e/kg of FPCM. The average for all 5 farms was 8.78 t of CO(2)e/ha and 0.90 kg of CO(2)e/kg of FPCM. The results showed relatively high variability due to differences in management practices between farms. The 5 farms covered 10% of the total dairy goat farms but may not be representative of an average farm. Methane from enteric fermentation was a major emission source. The use of supplementary feed was highly variable but an important contributor to the carbon footprint. Nitrous oxide can contribute up to 18% of emissions. Indoor goat farming systems produced milk with a significantly higher carbon footprint per area of land farmed compared with outdoor farming systems, although the 2 systems were not significantly different when results were expressed per kilogram of FPCM, at 0.81 kg CO(2)e and 1.03 kg CO(2)e per kg of FPCM, respectively. Both systems had footprints less than other reported dairy goat carbon footprints and on par with those for New Zealand dairy cows. The methodology used to determine enteric methane is important for an accurate and meaningful assessment. The choice of manure management system and supplementary feed can substantially affect the carbon footprint.The seafood industry has become increasingly interconnected a a global scale, with fish the most traded commodity worldwide. Travel to the farthest reaches of the oceans for capture is now common practice, and subsequent transport to market can require hundreds to thousands of miles of travel by sea and air. Refrigeration of seafood products is generally required at all stages of the journey from ocean to dinner plate, resulting in substantial energy expenditure. Energy input for aquaculture (including mariculture) products can also be high, namely due to the large amounts of feed required to support fish growth. As a result of these factors, the seafood industry has a substantial carbon footprint. Surprisingly, however, carbon footprints of seafood products are rarely integrated into assessments of their sustainability by eco-labels, sustainability certification, or consumer seafood sustainability guides. Suggestions are provided here for how carbon footprints could be incorporated within seafood sustainability schemes. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.There is increasing interest in assessing the environmental impacts of consumer electronics using methods such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and material flow analysis (MFA). Both assessment methods depend on quantifying the materials and parts contained in these products, i.e., the bill of Attributes (BOA). While there has been significant work to develop commercial and public databases detailing material and energy flows in production processes, there have been no comparable efforts to characterize BOA. Further, such assessment is complicated by rapidly evolving production processes and product design and consumption trends. This study was undertaken to assess the degree of change in product attributes commonly used as inputs for LCA for a common consumer electronic product: laptop computers. The analysis includes.(1) temporal evolution of BOA for a consistent product type over multiple generations (14.1 '' laptops) and (2) variability in a fixed year within a product type (laptops of different sizes). In total, eleven laptop computers were disassembled and characterized based on function, components, and materials. In addition, the study included measurement of silicon die area for all product motherboards and thirty dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cards produced over the period 1999-2011. Results reveal trends important for assessing and designing greener consumer electronics. The fundamental dynamic is the extent technological progress is used to improve functionality versus reduce material and energy footprint. For a variety of attributes, it was found that material footprint did not change significantly over the period 1999-2008, suggesting that improvements in functionality roughly balanced efficiency gains. In particular, total mass and material shares were roughly constant over the period studied. Battery mass, hard disk drive mass, and DRAM die area all decreased per unit of functionality (kWh, GB, MB) overtime, but showed roughly constant totals per year. Initial benchmarking to other electronics (netbook, tablet, smartphone) is included here, but further work is needed to determine if the observed pattern in material intensity and functionality is continued over time. This trend, if robust, is important because (1) the BOA inputs to LCA or MFA for an established form factor are surprisingly constant over time, improving temporal robustness of assessment results, and (2) one cannot assume that dematerialization will automatically lead to material and energy reductions for consumer electronics. There is a need for concerted effort from the LCA community to characterize and model BOAs. As collecting BOA data is labor intensive, heuristics can potentially play an important role to streamline analysis. The product attributes that were most consistent over time and across product class for the case study, like material composition, may be good candidates for streamlining data collection and product characterization. However, potential predictors of silicon die area tested here were highly variable and more sensitive to change overtime. The most promising estimation methods were those that focused on measuring the area of the five largest integrated circuits (for all motherboards, just five chips contained as much as 30-70% of all die area) and estimating the rest using an average die area per chip ratio. However, given the uncertainty in all tested heuristics, their application to an LCA or MFA should be used with caution. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Deconstruction is the process of disassembling a physical structure to its components in reverse order to that used during construction with minimum damage so that they maintain their original physical properties and structural integrity. In the United States single family houses are constructed of wood frames. Deconstruction is increasingly considered a viable option to demolition in the removal of such buildings. The study reported herein analysis the reduction in GHG emissions and energy savings of recovering the reusable material for the purpose of resale, as a whole and in increments, to that of terminal disposal (landfilling). The analysis examined the following scenarios: (a) current practice in the US, (b) current practice in the European Union, (c) maximum reuse (all recovered materials will be reused), (d) maximum recycling (all recovered materials will be recycled-no reuse), and (e) soft-stripping reuse (only the material that were collected during soft-stripping will be reused, all else will be recycled), using the Waste Reduction Model. The reduction in greenhouse gas emission in the maximum recycling scenario was the highest observed across all scenarios. Soft-stripped materials saved more energy than recycling and contributed to nearly half of the resale value of salvaged materials. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Understanding of life cycle material use from novel technologies can assist informed decision making on technology and material selection consistent with natural physical boundaries. Though an intermediate process in conventional life cycle assessment (LCA), the information on material use is only translated into environmental impact potentials. In this study, we present a procedure to extract the intermediate information on material evaluation and perform a systematic life cycle material use analysis. The approach is then used to analyze electricity systems including electricity generation and transmission, with and without post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Scenario analysis is then performed to understand the relations to the respective annual material production volumes. Results from the analysis of life cycle material use in the studied systems show that the implementation of CCS in a hard coal power plant results in the increased use of about 35% coal and limestone, 20% copper, 60% steel and 400% of the selected chemicals, as compared to the without CCS system. In addition to the complementary increase in specific resource use, the CCS technology uses over 35% and 70% increase in land and water requirement respectively. CCS scenario with coal power plant using CO2 capture (scenario S4) provides 83% reductions in the life cycle CO2 emissions and significant increase in the life cycle material use varying from 13% for coal to 168% for ammonia, as compared to the scenario with no CCS and with global average coal power plant efficiency (scenario Si). (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.European policy promotes increased use of excess heat as a means to increase the efficiency of resource use. By studying possible effects on greenhouse gases, this article aims to analyze and discuss system aspects of the use of industrial excess heat in district heating. Effects on greenhouse gas emissions are studied by applying different energy market conditions with different system boundaries in time and space. First, life cycle assessment is used to assess the introduction of excess heat in district heating in a contemporary system with different geographical system boundaries. Thereafter, future energy market scenarios for Europe are investigated to explore possible future outcomes. This study concludes that both the heat production system and the energy market conditions affect the system emission effects of using excess heat in district heating. Industrial excess heat in district heating can be beneficial even if it leads to reduced local electricity production when unused biomass can be used to replace fossil fuels. It is recommended that a strengthened EU policy should encourage the use of biomass where it has the most favorable effects from a systems perspective to ensure emission reductions when industrial excess heat is used in district heating. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global warming is a worldwide issue with its evident impacts across a wide range of systems and sectors. Global warming is caused by a number of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in which food systems contribute to a large part. The cooking stage releases a great deal of GHG emissions. For some foods, energy use for cooking is a large or dominating part in the life cycle. However, little attention is paid to this issue. In this review, the methods to reduce the carbon footprint of cooking units were discussed according to the principles of life cycle assessments. The types of food, fuels, and cookware, improved performance of cookware, and cooking waste were discussed. Choosing an environmental type of cooking method, fuel, and cookware are beneficial to reduce the carbon footprint of the cooking unit. In addition, correct use and improved performance of cookware could decrease emissions of all the pollutants per unit of useful heat. Moreover, improved pretreatment process and recycling could increase the environmental benefits of the cooking waste treatment. On the other hand, further investigations are needed to confirm the overall impacts of the methods described above on the global warming.The aim of this study was to assess the environmental profile of a bioenergy system based on a co-digestion plant using maize silage and pig slurry as substrates. All the processes involved in the production of bioenergy as well as the avoided processes accrued from the biogas production system were evaluated. The results evidenced the environmental importance of the cultivation step and the environmental credits associated to the avoided processes. In addition, this plant was compared with two different plants that digest both substrates separately. The results revealed the environmental benefits of the utilisation of pig slurry due to the absence of environmental burdens associated with its production as well as credits provided when avoiding its conventional management. The results also presented the environmental drawbacks of the utilisation of maize silage due to the environmental burdens related with its production. Accordingly, the anaerobic mono-digestion of maize silage achieved the worst results. The co-digestion of both substrates was ranked in an intermediate position. Additionally, three possible digestate management options were assessed. The results showed the beneficial effect of digestate application as an organic fertiliser, principally on account of environmental credits due to avoided mineral fertilisation. However, digestate application involves important acidifying and eutrophicating emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An attributional life cycle analysis (LCA) was developed to compare the environmental performances of two waste-to-energy (WtE) units, which utilize the predominant technologies among those available for combustion and gasification processes: a moving grate combustor and a vertical shaft gasifier coupled with direct melting. The two units were assumed to be fed with the same unsorted residual municipal waste, having a composition estimated as a European average. Data from several plants in operation were processed by means of mass and energy balances, and on the basis of the flows and stocks of materials and elements inside and throughout the two units, as provided by a specific substance flow analysis. The potential life cycle environmental impacts related to the operations of the two WtE units were estimated by means of the Impact 2002+ methodology. They indicate that both the technologies have sustainable environmental performances, but those of the moving grate combustion unit are better for most of the selected impact categories. The analysis of the contributions from all the stages of each specific technology suggests where improvements in technological solutions and management criteria should be focused to obtain further and remarkable environmental improvements. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are a potentially important source of energy for our society. Common practice in life cycle assessment (LCA) of bioenergy has been to assume that any carbon dioxide (CO2) emission related to biomass combustion equals the amount absorbed in biomass, thus assuming no climate change impacts. Recent developments show the significance of contributions of biogenic CO2 emissions during the time they stay in the atmosphere. The goal of this article is to develop a global, spatially explicit method to quantify the potential impact on human health and terrestrial ecosystems of biogenic carbon emissions coming from forest wood extraction for biofuel production. For this purpose, changes in aboveground carbon stock (C-forest) due to an increase in wood extraction via changes in rotation time are simulated worldwide with a 0.5 degrees x0.5 degrees grid resolution. Our results show that both impacts and benefits can be obtained. When the extraction increase is reached by creating a longer rotation time, new growth is allowed resulting in carbon benefits. In a case study, we assessed the life cycle impacts of heat production via wood to determine the significance of including biogenic CO2 emissions due to changes in forest management. Impacts of biogenic CO2 dominate the total climate change impacts from a wood stove. Depending on the wood source country, climate change impacts due to heat production from wood either have an important share in the overall impacts on human health and terrestrial ecosystems, or allow for a large additional CO2 sink.Wood from short rotation coppices (SRCs) is discussed as bioenergy feedstock with good climate mitigation potential inter alia because soil organic carbon (SOC) might be sequestered by a land-use change (LUC) from cropland to SRC. To test if SOC is generally enhanced by SRC over the long term, we selected the oldest Central European SRC plantations for this study. Following the paired plot approach soils of the 21 SRCs were sampled to 80cm depth and SOC stocks, C/N ratios, pH and bulk densities were compared to those of adjacent croplands or grasslands. There was no general trend to SOC stock change by SRC establishment on cropland or grassland, but differences were very site specific. The depth distribution of SOC did change. Compared to cropland soils, the SOC density in 0-10cm was significantly higher under SRC (17 +/- 2 in cropland and 21 +/- 2kgCm(-3) in SRC). Under SRC established on grassland SOC density in 0-10cm was significantly lower than under grassland. The change rates of total SOC stocks by LUC from cropland to SRC ranged from -1.3 to 1.4 MgCha(-1)yr(-1) and -0.6MgCha(-1)yr(-1) to +0.1MgCha(-1)yr(-1) for LUC from grassland to SRC, respectively. The accumulation of organic carbon in the litter layer was low (0.14 +/- 0.08 MgCha(-1)yr(-1)). SOC stocks of both cropland and SRC soils were correlated with the clay content. No correlation could be detected between SOC stock change and soil texture or other abiotic factors. In summary, we found no evidence of any general SOC stock change when cropland is converted to SRC and the identification of the factors determining whether carbon may be sequestered under SRC remains a major challenge.This study was conducted to evaluate the impacts of N fertilizer and landscape position on carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes from a US Northern Great Plains landscape seeded to switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). The experimental design included three N levels (low, 0kgNha(-1); medium, 56kgNha(-1); and high, 112kgNha(-1)) replicated four times. The experiment was repeated at shoulder and footslope positions. Soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes were monitored once every 2weeks from May 2010 to October 2012. The CO2 fluxes were 40% higher at the footslope than the shoulder landscape position, and CH4 fluxes were similar in both landscape positions. Soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes averaged over the sampling dates were not impacted by N rates. Seasonal variations showed highest CO2 release and CH4 uptake in summer and fall, likely due to warmer and moist soil conditions. Higher CH4 release was observed in winter possibly due to increased anaerobic conditions. However, year to year (2010-2012) variations in soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes were more pronounced than the variations due to the impact of landscape positions and N rates. Drought conditions reported in 2012, with higher annual temperature and lower soil moisture than long-term average, resulted in higher summer and fall CO2 fluxes (between 1.3 and 3 times) than in 2011 and 2010. These conditions also promoted a net CH4 uptake in 2012 in comparison to 2010 when there was net CH4 release. Results from this study conclude that landscape positions, air temperature, and soil moisture content strongly influenced soil CO2 fluxes, whereas soil moisture impacted the direction of CH4 fluxes (uptake or release). However, a comprehensive life cycle analysis would be appropriate to evaluate environmental impacts associated with switchgrass production under local environmental conditions.The European Commission's Integrated Product Policy Communication, 2003, defined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as the 'best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products'. Since then, the use of LCA and life cycle approaches has been developing in a wide range of European policies, and its use has also significantly grown in business. Increasing the availability of quality-assured Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data is the current challenge to ensure the development of LCA in various areas. One solution to increase availability is to use LCI data from multiple database sources but under the condition that such LCI data are fully interoperable. This paper presents original solutions and recent achievements towards increased availability, quality and interoperability of life cycle inventory data, developed through European Commission-led activities and based on wide stakeholder consultation and international dialogue. An overview of related activities, such as the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD), the European Reference Life Cycle Database (ELCD) and the ILCD Entry-Level quality requirements are presented. The focus is then on the Life Cycle Data Network (LCDN). A non-centralised data network of LCI datasets complying with minimum quality requirements that was politically launched in February 2014, already includes several database nodes from different worldwide sources and has the potential to contribute to the needs of the international community.Microemulsion-based biofuel (ME50) is considered a promising renewable transportation fuel as well as a feasible substitute for diesel fuel. This study investigated the life cycle environmental assessment (LCA) of ME50 production from palm oil-diesel blends with ethanol and compared it with alternative biofuels, neat biodiesel (B100) and biodiesel-diesel blends (B50). The LCA system boundary was separated into five stages: the oil palm cultivation stage, the palm oil production stage, the microemulsion production stage, the transportation stage, and the exhaust emissions in the use stage. Ten potential environmental impacts of the ME50 were evaluated, namely, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, land use, water depletion, and fossil depletion, by combining the CML 2000, IPCC 2007, Ecoindicator 99, and ReCipe methods in SimaPro (v. 7.1). Further, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the microemulsion fuel production stage were calculated following the product carbon footprint (CFP) methodology. It was estimated that 1.17 t or 45,800 MJ of microemulsion biofuel emits 3142 kg of CO(2)eq through its life cycle. Refined palm oil and co-surfactant are crucial materials for the environmental performance of the microemulsion-based biofuel. Based on the environmental impact analyses, palm oil production from cultivation through the oil refinery exhibited the greatest environmental impacts in terms of eutrophication and water depletion. Surfactant use-a key element in the microemulsion formation-has a significant impact on land use and ecotoxicity-related impact categories. In comparing the impacts among ME50, B100, and B50, it was found that microemulsion fuel production has lower environmental impact than B100 and B50, except in terms of land use and fossil depletion. Based on this analysis, the major environmental impact during the microemulsion biofuel production stage results from the raw materials used. The selection of appropriate materials and formula adjustment in the microemulsion fuel formulation are key in minimizing the potential impacts from biofuel production. Therefore, microemulsion biofuel is shown to be an environmentally sound technology for green production of biofuel.Thermal emissions from electric power generation plants can lead to environmental impacts. However, such emissions have neither been comprehensively integrated in life cycle assessment (LCA), a method to quantify environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a product, nor in water footprinting. This study presents a spatially explicit (0.5 arc degree resolution) fate and effect model for assessing the impact of thermal emissions from power production in the USA on freshwater ecosystems. We developed a two-step regionalized fate model to capture short-range and long-range thermal effects. Effect factors were derived as a function of ambient temperature and used in conjunction with the fate factor to calculate the impacts. The impacts are measured as the potentially disappeared fraction (PDF) of species in the affected freshwater ecosystem volume over time. The long-range freshwater ecosystem impacts are dependent on the distance to sea as well as the ambient temperature, while the short-range effects are mainly influenced by the induced temperature change at the point of mixing. Our analysis showed that 95 % of the modeled grid cells in the USA have an impact of 2.5 x 10(-6) to 2.5 x 10(-4) PDF m(3) years per MJ emitted heat. For natural gas power production, thermal pollution can have a significant contribution to total freshwater ecosystem quality. This study shows that thermal effects can be calculated on a spatially explicit level based on background data. It reveals the variability within a large region of the world, covering various geographic regions, and therefore helps generalizing the results for other regions.This paper studies the influence of the mechanical design of five different induction hob generations (G1 to G5), which are currently installed in several million homes, on the evolution of their environmental impact. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied using SimaPro 8.0.3.14 and EcoInvent v2.2 database. Samples of each design were obtained to generate a life cycle inventory. These induction hobs have been developed and produced in Zaragoza (Spain). The functional unit has been defined as all of the components influenced by the mechanical design of a cooktop with four induction hobs and a width of 60 cm, including every component except the electronic boards and the use phase, as they are not affected by the mechanical design. The limits of the LCA model include the production of the raw materials and energy, the manufacture and production processes, the distribution, and the end of life. This study has revealed that the differences in mechanical design highly affect the environmental impact, especially in the environmental categories of abiotic depletion and human toxicity due to the consumption of copper, steel, and plastics. The manufacturing phase highly affects human toxicity, mainly due to the variation in PPS use. There is a decreasing tendency in the environmental impact from the first (G1) to the last generation (G5), as G5 causes the lowest burden in 8 out of 11 analysed categories. The different generations analysed in this paper show that the compact designs of induction hobs help to decrease the environmental impact, especially thanks to the reduction in wiring lengths. It is also important to enhance the wiring separation at the end-of-life phase, avoiding designs that hinder recycling processes. Compact designs and reduced wiring lengths help to reduce the environmental impact. The consumption of copper, steel, aluminium, and polymers creates considerable impact, although the end-of-life phase reduces the burden created by metals, thanks to recycling. Manufacturing processes such as injection moulding also produce a noteworthy impact, especially in ozone layer depletion due to the inclusion of solvents in EcoInvent's injection moulding dataset. The impact caused by the distribution phase for this product is almost negligible in most categories.This paper aims to evaluate and quantify the energy consumption and environmental emissions of a refrigeration compressor produced by a Chinese factory throughout the entire compressor life cycle and try to determine the stage with the strongest environmental impact. The study covers all relevant life cycle stages, from raw material production to compressor use and final disposal. The research is conducted in accordance with ISO 14040/14044 standards. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied in this study, and Chinese Life Cycle Database is used for the assessment. The evaluation results are presented in terms of individual impact category according to the characterization model (CML 2001) and normalization references (Laurent et al. 16:401-409, 2011). The following seven impact categories are considered: global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical ozone formation potential, ozone depletion potential, ecotoxicity, and primary energy demand. All necessary energy and material flows are detailed for assessment purposes. LCA results show that the compressor use stage in the life cycle consumes the most energy and exerts the strongest environmental impact, followed by the stages of raw material production and component manufacturing. Meanwhile, primary energy demand, ecotoxicity, and global warming potential are three predominant impact categories along with the entire life cycle of the refrigeration compressor; which account for 36.2150, 34.4567, and 16.5862 % of total impacts, respectively. Results show that the compressor use stage may be improved given that environmental impact is largely influenced by electricity requirement. Further investigation must be conducted to improve compressor service efficiency.The impact of human activities on marine environments is poorly addressed by the scope of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The aim of this study is to provide characterization factors to assess impacts of sea use such as fishing activities or seafloor destruction and transformation on the life support functions of marine ecosystems. The consensual framework of land use for ecosystem services damage potential assessment was applied, according to the recent United Nations Environment Programme-Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (UNEP-SETAC) guidelines, using the free net primary production as a quality index of life support functions. The impact of shading, biomass removal, seafloor destruction, and artificial habitat creation on the available quantity of organic biomass for the ecosystem functioning was quantified at the midpoint level with a common unit (kg of organic carbon equivalent). It included effects of human interventions on both the ecosystem production potential and the stock of biomass present within the ecosystem. Characterization factors (CF) for biomass removal vary from 0.1 kg(Ceq) kg(-1) for seaweed to 111.1 kg(Ceq) kg(-1) for tunas, bonitos, and billfishes. CF for seafloor destruction range from 0.164 kg(Ceq) m(-2) for a temperate seagrass ecosystem to 0.342 kg(Ceq) m(-2) for an intertidal tropical rocky habitat. This study provides an operational method in order to compute sea use impact assessment.The aim of this paper is to analyse the potential green practices that can be adopted onboard a cruise ship in order to enhance the environmental performance of the cruise with particular attention to paper input and output flows in a waste minimization perspective. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of management scenarios of paper streams onboard a cruise ship is performed. The potential environmental impacts due to three strategic choices about paper and paper waste management onboard a case-study ship have been investigated through a so-called difference analysis, i.e. the digitalization of the daily information journal Today, the reduction of toilet paper and paper towels through the installation of auto-cut single extraction dispensers and the reduction of printing paper through dissemination of specific guidelines. In order to compare each scenario with the reference case in absence of the practice implementation, the functional unit in this study has been defined as 1 day of cruise. The implementation of the analysed green practices show comparable environmental benefits onboard a pilot ship, on the basis the set of assumptions and hypothesis identified in this simulation. In particular, when comparing the potential GHG emission reductions, it results that the two most realistically feasible scenarios in the communication area, i.e. digitalization of 25 and 50 % shares of Today journal, show environmental savings comparable to measures related to reduction of consumables and guidelines for personnel. Nevertheless, the addition of a reasonable number of touch-screen devices for this purpose would not significantly influence the environmental impacts. A set of reduction measures of paper items onboard a cruise ship is able to both avoid the impacts related to production and incineration stages. In the form of forecast scenarios, the results of such modelization may represent a set of indicators to be considered in a feasibility analysis prior to selection of the green practices to be introduced, as a support to decisions for cruise managers.There is currently a weak or no link between the indicator scores quantified in life cycle assessment (LCA) and the carrying capacity of the affected ecosystems. Such a link must be established if LCA is to support assessments of environmental sustainability and it may be done by developing carrying capacity-based normalisation references. The purpose of this article is to present a framework for normalisation against carrying capacity-based references and to develop average normalisation references (NR) for Europe and the world for all those midpoint impact categories commonly included in LCA that link to the natural environment area of protection. Carrying capacity was in this context defined as the maximum sustained environmental intervention a natural system can withstand without experiencing negative changes in structure or functioning that are difficult or impossible to revert. A literature review was carried out to identify scientifically sound thresholds for each impact category. Carrying capacities were then calculated from these thresholds and expressed in metrics identical to midpoint indicators giving priority to those recommended by ILCD. NR was expressed as the carrying capacity of a reference region divided by its population and thus describes the annual personal share of the carrying capacity. The developed references can be applied to indicator results obtained using commonly applied characterisation models in LCIA. The European NR are generally lower than the global NR, mainly due to a relatively high population density in Europe. The NR were compared to conventional normalisation references (NR') which represent the aggregated interventions for Europe or the world in a recent reference year. For both scales, the aggregated intervention for climate change, photochemical ozone formation and soil quality were found to exceed carrying capacities several times. The developed carrying capacity-based normalisation references offer relevant supplementary reference information to the currently applied references based on society's background interventions by supporting an evaluation of the environmental sustainability of product systems on an absolute scale. Challenges remain with respect to spatial variations to increase the relevance of the normalisation references for impact categories that function at the local or regional scale. The sensitivity of NR to different choices, e.g. threshold value, should be quantified with the aim of understanding and managing uncertainties of NR. For complete coverage of the midpoint impact categories, normalisation references based on sustainability preconditions should be developed for those categories that link to the areas of protection human health and natural resources.European pilchard captures constitute an important source of income for the Portuguese fishing sector. This raw material is used for a varied range of final seafood products, such as canning, fresh seafood consumption or bait for other fisheries. The Portuguese purse seining fleet, which concentrates most of the pilchard landings, has recently obtained the Marine Stewardship Council certification scheme, demonstrating the effort of the fleet to comply with sustainable fishing practices. However, this scheme does not consider the human inputs to the fishery, such as fuel consumption or the use of other materials and resources. Consequently, life-cycle methods, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), have arisen to provide a thorough assessment of the environmental profile of fishing fleets. In the current study, LCA is combined with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a management tool, in order to understand the eco-efficiency of the individual vessels that compose this fleet. A 5-step LCA + DEA method, previously used to assess resembling vessel samples, was used to examine the efficiency of 20 purse seiners in the northern Portugal for years 2011 and 2012. Individual Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs) were gathered for each vessel to perform, thereafter, the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). DEA matrices were generated based on the LCI in order to obtain the efficiency values for each unit. Finally, based on the efficiency projections provided by the DEA model, a new LCIA was performed for inefficient vessels in order to calculate the potential environmental benefits of operating at higher levels of efficiency. The average efficiency of the fleet in the two different years of assessment was slightly above 60 %. Moreover, individual vessels showed a fairly low standard deviation across the 2 years of assessment, demonstrating that units with higher levels of efficiency tend to maintain these values through the analysed window. In fact, this result, given its strong correlation with fuel use, appears to have relation with the existence of a certain level of "skipper effect". Important environmental benefits, mainly linked to the optimisation of fuel resources, could be attained if inefficient vessels were to operate efficiently, especially in terms of two main impact categories: climate change and fossil depletion. The results in this study confirm that fishing small-pelagic fish shows low energy intensity as compared to other fisheries. However, despite this worldwide tendency, the use of LCA + DEA confirms that substantial improvements in terms of optimising energy and material inputs, as well as in reducing environmental impacts, can be attained in these fishing fleets.This study compares transport performance of residual biomass using different pre-treatment options. Life cycle inventory data was obtained from forestry companies in southern Chile, databases, scientific and technological literature, as well as equipment operational manuals. Three different scenarios were evaluated: residual biomass transport without pre-treatment (scenario 1), chipped residual biomass (scenario 2), and compacted residual biomass (scenario 3) transport. The truck's loading capacity was considered as a function of the residual biomass density. Impact assessment was performed using software SimaPro 7.3.3 using the ReCiPe midpoint methodology. Moreover, an uncertainty analysis was performed using Monte Carlo simulation with a 95 % confidence. Transport costs evaluation variables considered were machine cost, machine residual value, amortization, personnel costs, fuel consumption, machine maintenance, and operational yield. All variables are based on local conditions of La Araucania Region in Chile. Regarding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, optimum transport distance ranges were identified for the different scenarios. For a distance up to 23 km, scenario 1 is the most favorable; for distances between 23 and 206 km, scenario 2 is the most favorable one; and for distances longer than 206 km, compacted residual biomass (scenario 3) presents the lowest GHG emissions balance. When looking the other impact categories, it was established that the benefits are not only related to GHG emission savings but also to other impact categories. Transport impacts are only relevant for large distances, while for short distances biomass pre-treatment and loading stages provoke a higher environmental load. In fact, for scenario 2 where chipped biomass is transported, only for distances longer than 120 km, the transport stage accounts for more than 50 % of the environmental load of all impact categories. For the case of scenario 3 (compacted biomass transport), this situation occurs for a distance of at least 150 km. Most probable optimal transport distances were determined for pre-treated and unpretreated biomass. In this sense, for determining the best transport option of residual biomass, transport distance, loading capacity, and pre-treatment processes efficiency, including chipping and compacting, as well as data uncertainty, should be taken into account. From these variables, biomass loading and pre-treatment stages account for a relevant percentage of the environmental impacts generated for transport distances of less than 100 km. In this sense, biomass loading and pre-treatment efficiency coupled with the effective supplies demand should be carefully studied in future research works.Thailand is currently the world's largest natural rubber producer. To maintain a leadership position of natural rubber producer, it has been challenging for Thai rubber entrepreneurs to seek appropriate measures towards producing environmentally friendly rubber products. The objective of this study is to assess the potential environmental impact of concentrated latex production by partial Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and to investigate the effects of the options to reduce the impact. The methodology is based on the ISO 14040 series, taking a "Gate-to-Gate" approach (Partial LCA). The activities taken into account include production of chemicals, production of diesel and electricity, diesel combustion, and wastewater treatment. The functional unit is 1 ton of concentrated latex, and the environmental impacts considered in this study include global warming, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, photochemical oxidation, and the total environmental impact. The results indicate that electricity use for centrifugation has the largest share, compared with other activities, in global warming (50%), acidification (58%), and photochemical oxidation (55%). Ammonia use for latex preservation accounts for 37% of human toxicity, whereas use of DAP (Diammonium phosphate) accounts for 46% of eutrophication. Based. on these results, the following reduction options are therefore identified: 1) electricity efficiency improvement (by installation of inverters to centrifugal machines); 2) improvement of ammonia preparation and storage (by chilling systems); 3) minimizing the use of DAP (by extending coagulation time); and 4) substitution of diesel by LPG. These four options were technically and practically feasible for concentrated latex production, and result in reductions of the total environmental impact by 12%, 8%, 3%, and 5%, respectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The release of the international standard for environmental management ISO 14001 in 1996, and the subsequent amendments (ISO 14001, 2004), including another due in 2015 (BSI, 2013; Briggs, 2012), have resulted in wider acceptance of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) across various industrial sectors. There is increasing interest amongst researchers and practitioners around the world in undertaking studies to identify the impact of EMS on construction operations. This paper adds to the growing body of literature by presenting a comprehensive review of environmental initiatives (including EMS) globally. Findings of the meta-analysis of sector-wide developments and initiatives in countries grouped into regions are presented. A key recommendation is that governments should have sector-specific, equally enforced EMS guidelines for firms tendering for construction projects, irrespective of the nationality of the parent company, to ensure an equitable competitive field. Further recommendations are that construction sector firms should undertake cost-benefit analyses to identify tangible and intangible costs and benefits from EMS implementation, as well as conduct life-cycle analysis on construction projects. Lastly, stakeholder involvement in successful initiation and completion of construction projects should not be overlooked. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cement production contributes to extensive CO2 emissions. However, the climate impact can vary significantly between different production systems and different types of cement products. The market is dominated by ordinary Portland cement, which is based on primary raw materials and commonly associated with combustion of vast amounts of fossil fuels. Therefore, the production of Portland cement can be described as a rather linear process. But there are alternative options, for example, involving large amounts of industrial byproducts and renewable energy which are more cyclic and thus can be characterized as relatively "synergistic". The main purpose of this article is to study how relevant the leading ideas of industrial symbiosis are for the cement industry based on a quantitative comparison of the CO2 emissions from different cement production systems and products, both existing and hypothetical. This has been done by studying a group of three cement plants in Germany, denoted as Cluster West, and the production of cement clinker and three selected cement products. Based on this analysis and literature, it is discussed to what extent industrial symbiosis options can lead to reduced CO2 emissions, for Cluster West and the cement industry in general. Utilizing a simplified LCA model ("cradle to gate"), it was shown that the CO2 emissions from Cluster West declined by 45% over the period 1997-2009, per tonne of average cement. This was mainly due to a large share of blended cement, i.e., incorporation of byproducts from local industries as supplementary cementitious materials. For producers of Portland cement to radically reduce the climate impact it is necessary to engage with new actors and find fruitful cooperation regarding byproducts, renewable energy and waste heat. Such a development is very much in line with the key ideas of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis, meaning that it appears highly relevant for the cement industry to move further in this direction. From a climate perspective, it is essential that actors influencing the cement market acknowledge the big difference between different types of cement, where an enlarged share of blended cement products (substituting clinker with byproducts such as slag and fly ash) offers a great scope for future reduction of CO2 emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar energy is a form of renewable energy that can be used to combat climate change through an environmentally accepted energy supply policy with support from both private and public consumers. There are numerous factors contributing to the definition of the economic and environmental performance of solar energy investments, such as average annual irradiation, consumers' consumption, Feed in Tariff incentive system, energy portfolio, emissions produced by the photovoltaic system, rated power of the individual modules, disposable income of the investor, availability of surface for the installation of the photovoltaic panels and mission, that characterise the project (environmental maximisation, economic maximisation or self-sufficiency of the system during the first year). Given the particular geographical position of Italy, the economic profitability and environmental impact of such system were estimated, first on the provincial scale and then on the regional scale, to delineate the general characteristics that are not caused by a single scenario. The indicators used include the following: net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), discounted payback period (DPbP), discounted aggregate cost-benefit ratio (BCr) and reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide (ERcd). The ultimate objective of the paper is to define the number of photovoltaic (PV) systems necessary to reach the target of renewable energy production in the above settings. A general scenario appropriate to achieve this goal, as well as implementing the total wealth generated by this framework and the reduction of CO2 emissions resulting from the implementation of that plan, will be examined. The indicators used are total net present value per capita and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions per capita. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cement is a vital and commonly used construction material that requires large amounts of resources and the manufacture of which causes significant environmental impact. However, there are many different types of cement products, roughly ranging from traditional products with rather linear resource flows to more synergistic alternatives where industrial byproducts are utilized to a large extent. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies indicate the synergistic products are favorable from an environmental perspective. In co-operation with the global cement producing company CEMEX a research project has been carried out to contribute to a better understanding of the CO2 performance of different ways of producing cement, and different cement products. The focus has been on Cluster West, which is a cement production cluster consisting of three plants in Germany. This paper is the first in a series of three, all of which are included in this special issue. It has two main aims. The first is to carry out an attributional LCA and compare three different cement products produced in both linear and synergistic production setups. This has been done for cradle to gate, focusing on CO2-eq emissions for Cluster West. The second aim of this part is to develop and test a simplified LCA model for this production cluster, with the intention to be able to compare different versions of the production system based on the information of a few parameters. The attributional LCA showed that cement products that contain alarge proportion of byproducts, in this case, ground granulated blast furnace slag, from the iron and steel industry, had the lowest unit emissions of CO2-eq. The difference between the lowest emission product (CEM III/B) and the highest (CEM I) was about 66% per tonne. A simplified LCA model based on six key performance indicators, instead of approximately 50 parameters for the attributional LCA, was established. It showed that Cluster West currently emits about 45% less CO2-eq per tonne of average product compared to 1997. The simplified LCA model can be used effectively to model future changes of both plants and products (which is further discussed in part II and part III). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The building construction industry is in need of sustainable materials and solutions. A novel building material, such as textile-reinforced concrete (TRC), could be used to meet this demand. Textile-reinforced concrete is a combination of fine-grained concrete and multiaxial textile fabrics that has been fundamentally researched over the past decade. TRC-based research has explored various facets of this composite material, such as its structural functionality, production, applicability, and design. One key aspect that is still missing, however, is a comprehensive review of the sustainable potential of this material in terms of its input-output and durability that suitably answers to requirement No. 7 of EU's Construction Products Regulation. This article provides qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the sustainable potential and prospective development of TRC particularly reinforced by alkali-resistant (AR) glass, carbon, or basalt fibers. Based on the outcome of this evaluation, carbon textile fibers were observed to hold the optimal potential mechanical behavior; additionally, it was revealed through the conducted life-cycle assessment (LCA) that basalt had the least cumulative energy demand, whereas carbon had the least environmental impact.A number of software packages are available that are designed to facilitate making environmental comparisons between different packaging options, to facilitate green' packaging design and assessment of the environmental aspect of sustainability. Some of these (e.g. SimaPro and GaBi) are full-fledged ISO 14040/14044-compliant programs for life cycle assessment (LCA). Others are more limited, but are designed to be much simpler to use (e.g. COMPASS and Package Modeling). A systematic comparison of the evaluation of several packaging systems using COMPASS, SimaPro, GaBi, and Package Modeling found significant discrepancies in LCA results from different software systems. Availability of common impact categories among the software limited comparisons to four categories: greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel/non-renewable energy, eutrophication, and water depletion. Given a common set of basic packaging containers as input, results from the LCA software systems being studied disagreed on which container had the greatest environmental impact, and in some cases results were more than an order of magnitude different between software. Discrepancies in results occurred in all four impact categories, and all four software systems disagreed with each other at multiple points in the comparisons. If there is to be increasing use of LCA analysis in guiding packaging design, this issue must be fully understood and resolved. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Understanding the spatial and temporal characteristics of solar resource variability is important because it helps inform the discussion surrounding the merits of geographic dispersion and subsequent electrical interconnection of photovoltaics as part of a portfolio of future solutions for coping with this variability. Unpredictable resource variability arising from the stochastic nature of meteorological phenomena (from the passage of clouds to the movement of weather systems) is of most concern for achieving high PV penetration because unlike the passage of seasons or the shift from day to night, the uncertainty makes planning a challenge. A suitable proxy for unpredictable solar resource variability at any given location is the series of variations in the clearness index from one time period to the next because the clearness index is largely independent of the predictable influence of solar geometry. At timescales shorter than one day, the correlation between these variations in clearness index at pairs of distinct geographic locations decreases with spatial extent and with timescale. As the aggregate variability across N decorrelated locations decreases as 1/root N, identifying the distance required to achieve this decorrelation is critical to quantifying the expected reduction in variability from geographic dispersion. Using 10 years of satellite-derived daily-interval solar resource data across the world, we demonstrate that the spatiotemporal behavior of unpredictable solar resource variability is mirrored at longer tirnescales. We do so by examining over 1.4 million unique pairs of sites across the Western hemisphere and quantifying the influence each pair's geographic separation and bearing has on the correlation between the variability of each pair's clearness indices at timescales of one, two, four, seven, fifteen and thirty days. Expected pair-decorrelation distances are estimated by fitting exponential trends to the data using nonlinear least-squares regression and are presented as a function of timescale and pair orientation. Reflecting the predominant direction in which meteorological phenomena propagate at each of these timescales, we find that pairs of sites require considerably shorter distances to decorrelate when they are oriented north to south versus when they are oriented east to west. As at shorter timescales, these decorrelation distances are shown to increase with both timescale and with geographic extent. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The economics in the U.S. of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems is changing rapidly as the cost per unit power of PV modules has dropped quickly. These costs reductions have two important results: marked decrease in levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) into ranges competitive or better than traditional electricity-generation technologies and the economic role of racking has been gaining prominence relative to that of modules. As the relative importance of costs of PV racking has been marginal historically, there has been relatively little progress on reducing the materials and costs associated with it, which has caused racking to contribute to a significant portion of costs of entire PV systems. In order to overcome this challenge this study investigates a novel low-weight PV racking system for commercial rooftops based on crossed cables (X-wires) and compares it to racking systems already available on the market on capital costs, labor costs for installation, and technical specifications such as adaptability and power packing factor. The results of over 80% cost reduction and 33% increase in power density are presented and conclusions are drawn about the potential for tension-based racking systems to further reduce total PV systems costs on commercial fiat roof tops resulting in LCOE savings of $0.01-$0.02/kW h. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the last few years, agro-biogas has been receiving great attention since it enables replacement of natural gas, thereby representing a tool which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. In this context, this paper is aimed at the application of the Carbon Footprint (CF) to an agro-biogas supply chain (SC) in Southern Italy, according to ISO/TS 14067:2013, so as to calculate the related 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP(100)). The topic was addressed because agro-biogas SCs, though being acknowledged worldwide as sustainable ways to produce both electricity and heat, can be source of GHG emissions and therefore environmental assessments and improvements are needed. Additionally, the performed literature review highlighted deficiencies in PCF assessments, so this study could contribute to enriching the international knowledge on the environmental burdens associated with agro-biogas SCs. The analysis was conducted using a life-cycle approach, thus including in the assessment: functional unit choice, system border definition and inventory analysis development. The primary data needed was provided by a farm located in the province of Foggia (Apulia region in Southern Italy), already equipped with anaerobic digestion and cogeneration plant for biogas production and utilisation. Results from this study are in agreement with those found by some of the most relevant studies in the sector. Indeed, it was possible to observe that GWP100 was almost entirely due to cropland farming and, in particular, to the production of ammonium nitrate in the amount required for fertilisation. Furthermore, environmental credits were observed thanks to: carbon sequestration enabled by no-tillage practice; and avoided production of chemical fertiliser thanks to 50% organic farming. Based upon the results obtained, a sensitivity analysis was carried out, thus highlighting reduced environmental impacts if ammonium nitrate was replaced with urea. Finally, thanks to this study, all the target stakeholders will learn more about the input/output flows involved in the system analysed, the related environmental impacts and the improvements needed to reduce them. In this way, it could be possible to compare the analysed agro-biogas SC with others of equal functionality, and so to enable considerations to be made on the resulting similarities and differences in terms of methodological approach, inventory flows and environmental impact. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rightsCompanies producing consumer goods are showing a greater interest in integrating the concept of 'environmental footprinting' into their management. Usually, one component of a footprint is road transport. While land use and greenhouse gas emissions are accounted for in life cycle assessment the focus often is on the latter. The additional impact by roads and vehicles - particularly regarding biological diversity - is seldom considered. One reason for this deficit is that findings from road ecology are not sufficiently quantifiable to integrate in life cycle or footprinting analyses. In this article, approaches for quantifying direct land use, degradation of adjunct area, and fragmentation are introduced. Methodologically, this is achieved through a literature analysis and the use of case studies. Four equations are presented that allow measuring spatial impacts of transport processes. Results can be used for more complete impact mitigation and reporting in the context of LCA. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste (MSW) management remains a challenge, even in Europe where several countries now possess capacity to treat all arising MSW, while others still rely on unsustainable disposal pathways. In the former, strategies to reach higher recycling levels are affecting existing waste-to-energy (WtE) treatment infrastructure, by inducing additional overcapacity and this in turn rebounds as pressure on the waste and recyclable materials markets. This study addresses such situations by documenting the effects, in terms of resource recovery, global warming potential (GWP) and cumulative energy demand (CED), of a transition from a self-sufficient waste management system based on minimal separate collection and efficient WtE, towards a system with extended separate collection of recyclable materials and biowaste. In doing so, it tackles key questions: (1) whether recycling and biological treatment are environmentally better compared to highly efficient WtE, and (2) what are the implications of overcapacity-related cascading effects, namely waste import, when included in the comparison of alternative waste management systems. System changes, such as the implementation of kerbside separate collection of recyclable materials were found to significantly increase material recovery, besides leading to substantial GWP and CED savings in comparison to the WtE-based system. Bio-waste separate collection contributed with additional savings when co-digested with manure, and even more significantly when considering future renewable energy background systems reflecting the benefits induced by the flexible use of biogas. Given the current liberalization of trade in combustible waste in Europe, waste landfilling was identified as a short-to-medium-term European-wide waste management marginal reacting to overcapacity effects induced by the implementation of increased recycling strategies. When waste import and, consequently, avoided landfilling were included in the system boundary, additional savings of up to 700 kg CO2 eq. and 16 GJ eq. of primary energy per tonne of imported waste were established. Conditions, such as energy recovery efficiency, and thresholds beyond which import-related savings potentially turn into GWP burdens were also determined. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.World population is projected to reach over nine billion by the year 2050, and ensuring food security while mitigating environmental impacts represents a major agricultural challenge. Thus, higher productivity must be reached through sustainable production by taking into account climate change, resources rarefaction like phosphorus and water, and losses of fertile lands. Enhancing crop diversity is increasingly recognized as a crucial lever for sustainable agro-ecological development. Growing legumes, a major biological nitrogen source, is also a powerful option to reduce synthetic nitrogen fertilizers use and associated fossil energy consumption. Organic farming, which does not allow the use of chemical, is also regarded as one prototype to enhance the sustainability of modern agriculture while decreasing environmental impacts. Here, we review the potential advantages of eco-functional intensification in organic farming by intercropping cereal and grain legume species sown and harvested together. Our review is based on a literature analysis reinforced with integration of an original dataset of 58 field experiments conducted since 2001 in contrasted pedo-climatic European conditions in order to generalize the findings and draw up common guidelines. The major points are that intercropping lead to: (i) higher and more stable grain yield than the mean sole crops (0.33 versus 0.27 kg m(-2)), (ii) higher cereal protein concentration than in sole crop (11.1 versus 9.8 %), (iii) higher and more stable gross margin than the mean sole crops (702 versus 577 a,not signaEuro parts per thousand ha(-1)) and (iv) improved use of abiotic resources according to species complementarities for light interception and use of both soil mineral nitrogen and atmospheric N-2. Intercropping is particularly suited for low-nitrogen availability systems but further mechanistic understanding is required to propose generic crop management procedures. Also, development of this practice must be achieved with the collaboration of value chain actors such as breeders to select cultivars suited to intercropping.We present the results from sustained tonne-quantity production of two novel strains of marine microalgae, the diatom Staurosira and the chlorophyte Desmodesmus, cultivated in a hybrid system of 25-m(3) photobioreactors and 400-m(2) open ponds at a large-scale demonstration facility, and then apply those results to evaluate the performance of a 100-ha Base Case commercial facility assuming it were built today. Nitrogen fertilization of 2-d batch cultures in open ponds led to the greatest yields - from both species - of similar to 75 MT ha(-1) yr(-1) biomass, and similar to 30 MT ha(-1) yr(-1) lipid, which are unprecedented in large scale open pond systems. The process described here uses only seawater, discharges no nitrogen or phosphorus in any form, and consumes CO2 at 78% efficiency. We estimate the capital cost of a 111-ha Base Case facility at $67 million in Hawaii, where actual production was performed, and $59 million on the Gulf Coast of Texas. We find that large-diameter, large-volume PBRs are an economical means to maintain a continuous supply of consistent inoculum for very short-period batch cultures in open ponds, and thus avoid biological system crashes that otherwise arise in longer-term pond cultures. We recommend certain improvements in cultivation methods that could realistically lead to yields of 100 MT ha(-1) yr(-1) biomass and >50,000 L ha(-1) yr(-1) algal oil. Comprehensive techno-economics and life cycle assessment of 20 end-to-end production lineups, based on the cultivation results in this paper, are presented in a companion paper by Beal et al. [1]. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This techno-economic analysis/life-cycle assessment is based on actual production by the Cornell Marine Algal Biofuels Consortium with biomass productivity > 23 g/m(2)-day. Ten distinct cases are presented for two locations, Texas and Hawaii, based on a 100-ha production facility with end-to-end processing that yields fungible co-products including biocrude, animal feed, and ethanol. Several processing technologies were evaluated: centrifugation and solvent extraction (POS Biosciences), thermochemical conversion (Valicor), hydrothermal liquefaction (PNNL), catalytic hydrothermal gasification (Genifuel), combined heat and power, wet extraction (OpenAlgae), and fermentation. The facility design was optimized by co-location with waste CO2, a terraced design for gravity flow, using renewable energy, and low cost materials. The case studies are used to determine the impact of design choices on the energy return on investment, minimum fuel and feed sale prices, discounted payback period, as well as water depletion potential, human health, ecosystem quality, non-renewable resources, and climate change environmental indicators. The most promising cases would be economically competitive at market prices around $2/L for crude oil, while also providing major environmental benefits and freshwater savings. As global demands for fuels and protein continue rising, these results are important steps towards economical and environmentally sustainable production at an industrial scale. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Organic farming is applied in olive groves in Lesvos Island the last 20 years. "Kolovi" and "Adramitiani", two dominant varieties are cultivated. Since there is limited research for energy inputs in olive groves, 62 conventional and 26 organic farms were selected during 2011-2013 in order to (a) determine the differences in energy flow among farming systems and varieties, (b) group olive groves based on energy flow indicators, (c) compare the CO2-equivalent emissions among farming systems and varieties. A combination of univariate and multivariate statistical methods was applied. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) revealed three farm groups, all consisted of conventional and/or organic olive groves and included both varieties. Group 1 had the lowest energy inputs, while Group 3 the highest. Fuels and transportation, as energy inputs, had the highest contribution in farms' grouping. A large number of external variables was studied, most of which (fruit production, olive oil production, pomace production, shoot production, olive oil energy production, pomace energy production, shoot energy production, total energy inputs, total energy outputs, intensity, energy efficiency, and energy productivity) had statistically significant differences among the three Groups. Management practices along with geographical location could be a reasonable explanation for the differences between the groups of studied olive groves. Group 3 had the highest non-renewable energy inputs (14,683.5 MJ ha(-1)) and consumption (2.4 MJ kg(-1)) and gas emissions (1.27 Mg ha(-1) CO2, 0.17 kg ha(-1) CH4, and 10.31 g ha(-1) N2O). Group 2 had the highest renewable energy inputs (7065.8 MJ ha(-1)) and consumption (0.9 MJ kg(-1)), and low CO2-equivalent per fruit production (0.12 kg kg(-1)). The above mentioned results show that best management farming practices introduce the use of renewable energy inputs and lead to lower gas emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An imperative step toward decarbonisation of current industrial processes is to substitute their petroleum-derived feedstocks with biomass and biomass-derived feedstocks. For decarbonisation of the petrochemical industry, integrated catalytic processing of biomass pyrolysis oil (also known as bio-oil) is an enabling technology. This is because, under certain conditions, the reaction products form a mixture consisting of olefins and aromatics, which are very similar to the products of naphtha hydro-cracking in the conventional olefin processes. These synergies suggest that the catalytic bio-oil upgrading reactors can be seamlessly integrated to the subsequent separation network with minimal retrofitting costs. In addition, the integrated catalytic processing provides a high degree of flexibility for optimization of different products in response to market fluctuations. With the aim of assessing the techno-economic viability of this pathway, five scenarios in which different fractions of bio-oil (water soluble/water insoluble) were processed with different degrees of hydrogenation were studied in the present research. The results showed that such a retrofit is not only economically viable, but also provides a high degree of flexibility to the process, and contributes to decarbonisation of olefin infrastructures. Up to 44% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were observed in several scenarios. In addition, it was shown that hydrogen prices lower than 6 $/kg will result in bio-based chemicals which are cheaper than equivalent petrochemicals. Alternatively, for higher hydrogen prices, it is possible to reform the water insoluble phase of bio-oil and produce bin-based chemicals, cheaper than petrochemical equivalents. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Concern about environmental impacts of aquaculture and its interaction with natural resources is increasing. Thus, it is important for new production systems to use practices that reduce environmental impacts, such as choosing to farm native species from a region's biological diversity and adopting better effluent management. This study aimed to estimate and compare environmental impacts of tropical freshwater prawn farming systems based either on the introduced species Macrobrachium rosenbergii (giant river prawn) or the native species Macrobrachium amazonicum (Amazon river prawn). The two hypothetical systems were compared using life cycle assessment (LCA) with the impact categories climate change, eutrophication, acidification, energy use, net primary production use, surface use and water dependence. Yields, species, feed conversation ratio (FCR) and feed processing were the factors with the most influence. The higher yield and lower FCR of giant river prawn induced lower impacts than native Amazon river prawn in all categories analyzed. Regardless of species, better effluent management in freshwater prawn farming, such as treating effluents with aquatic macrophytes or applying pond sediments to crops, significantly reduced eutrophication potential, making it extremely important to recommend using it in freshwater prawn farming. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive outline of the Value Chain (VC)1 of bio-coal in Finland, define the proper business models of bio-coal business, and investigate the interrelationships between VC activities. The major findings are: 1) the study found significant interrelationships between support and primary activities in the bio-coal VC which suggest that we should not emphasis only the core value/primary activities of the bio-coal business, but pay more attentions to the "side values"/support activities; 2) The study identified political and environmental factors as the effective drivers, while technology and cost-profit uncertainty as major restrictions for the Finnish bio-coal business. The authors would like to suggest that instead of purely "environmental concerns", the term "sustainability credentials" should be emphasized, which means value creating and adding items should not limit to monetary values, but consider social and environmental value propositions. 3) The study identified "low competition" in the current bio-coal business in Finland, which implies opportunities of market entrance for Finnish and international companies; 4) The study identified that the current Finnish bio-coal model is the decentralized model at the local level. However, the future Finnish bio-coal model will be a large scaled model, with a focus on export sales. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The process life-cycle assessment (LCA) method has a crucial problem such that the LCA system boundary is freely decided by LCA practitioners, which consequently leads to truncation error and underestimation of life-cycle emission. This paper focuses on clustering methods (eigenvalue decomposition of the normalized Laplacian matrix and nonnegative matrix factorization of the normalized affinity matrix) which are useful in determining the LCA system boundary and investigates the instability of the clustering methods. The results indicate that, in cases involving a relatively small number of K-means repetitions (approximately 10), choosing the nonnegative matrix factorization method over the eigenvalue decomposition method yields smaller values of "normalized cut'' value N-cut (an indicator showing the goodness of network partitions), the benchmark indicating optimal cluster assignment. On the other hand, for a larger number of K-means repetitions (100 or more), neither method is universally superior to the other.The supply chain for recycling plastic in Cuba has been presenting low performance for several years, so the objective of this paper is to perform a strategic diagnosis of its management that integrates the economic and environmental dimensions. To carry out this purpose we have used the thinking processes developed within the theory of constraints, which are reinforced with life cycle assessment, statistical techniques and discrete multicriteria methods. The results of the diagnosis demonstrate the necessity of redesigning strategic decisions taking economic and environmental criteria into account to achieve the sustainable performance of the studied supply chain. (C) 2015 Universidad ICESI. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U.The research "Training in industrial design: a consistent methodological approach to sustainable development" (Alvarado, Roa and Zuleta, 2015), whose core elements are presented in this article, had as its main purpose the analysis of current configuration methods of artifacts used in training in Industrial Design at the Academy of Professional Drawing Foundation of the city of Cali. This helps to the identification of sustainability criteria from the environmental, economic and social aspects, understanding that sustainability is the search for meeting the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future ones to meet their own needs (UN, 1987). On the other hand, the articulation of those criteria identified with other relevant issues from the theoretical framework, which took into account elements of industrial ecology, life-cycle assessment, sustainable consumption, eco-design and cyclicality, supported by the methodology of cradle-to-cradle, in a methodological proposal of configuration of artifacts containing greater potential to achieve sustainable results. Finally, the results of the development of a pilot application of different methods, product of research are presented. The project developed shows, among other findings, that the design method is relevant for obtaining sustainable artifacts. However, the results of its implementation will depend on variables such as joint cross-pedagogical processes around sustainability accompanying the product development process.This paper contributes to the understanding of the low occurrence of Industrial Symbiosis in Brazil. The importance of public policies in Brazil, the development of public policies is confirmed by the institution of the National Solid Waste Policy (NSWP). Note that companies seek symbiosis in response to regulatory pressure or to increase the efficiency of resource use, emissions reduction, or wastes. Further the importance of including social, cultural and business approaches in planning synergies between companies. Identifies environmental and cooperation regarding the responsibilities and capabilities of each aspect environmental management. Methodologically the study can be regarded as descriptive and exploratory purposes and in relation to the literature regarding methods. Finally, there are barriers which are raised on the relationship to the Industrial Symbiosis practices.In the context of a circular economy, sustainable consumption is often seen as the antithesis of current consumption patterns, which have led to the definition of the so-called throwaway society. Reuse may provide a preferred alternative to other waste management options, because it promotes resource efficiency and may significantly reduce environmental impacts. To appraise the environmental benefits related to reuse of goods, a methodology adopting life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed. A standardized procedure has been developed, identifying reference products within product category subject to reuse, and collecting reliable inventory data as a basis for calculating environmental impact through LCA. A case study on a second-hand shop is presented, and the avoided impacts are quantified. Inventory data were taken both from the literature and directly from sales and surveys submitted to customers. The results are presented, highlighting: 1) for each product category, the average avoided impacts for 1 unit of reused product considered; and 2) for the overall activities of the second-hand shop, the cumulative avoided impacts in 1 yr. In the case study, the higher contribution to avoided impacts comes from the apparel sector, due to the high amount of items sold, followed by the furniture sector, because of the high amount of environmental impacts avoided by the reuse of each single item. (C) 2015 SETACAnnual fiber sorghum (FS) and perennial giant reed (GR) cultivated in the Mediterranean area are interesting due to their high productivity under drought conditions and their potential use as lignocellulosic feedstock for biorefinery purposes. This study compares environmental constraints related to FS and GR produced on experimental farms (in the Campania region) using an attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) approach through appropriate modeling of the perennial cultivation. For both crops, primary data were available for agricultural management. Direct field emissions (DFEs) were computed, including the potential soil carbon storage (SCS). Giant reed showed the lowest burdens for all impact categories analyzed (most were in the range of 40%-80% of FS values). More apparent were the differences for climate change and freshwater eutrophication (respectively 80% and 81% lower for GR compared to FS). These results are due to the short-term SCS, experimentally detected in the perennial GR crop (about 0.25 ton C ha(-1) yr(-1), with a global warming offsetting potential of about 0.03 ton CO2/ton(GR dry biomass)). The results are also due to the annual application of triple superphosphate at the sowing fertilization phase for FS, which occurs differently than it does for GR. Phosphorous fertilization was performed only when crops were being established and therefore properly spread along the overall crop lifetime. For both crops, after normalization, terrestrial acidification and particulate matter formation were relevant impact categories, as a consequence of the NH3 DFE by volatilization after urea were spread superficially. Therefore, the results suggest higher environmental benefits of the perennial crop than the annual crop. (C) 2014 SETACThe use and emission of chemicals and the intrinsic toxic properties of some of these chemicals are an important topic in the textile industry. Quantitative evaluation of toxic impacts is a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, termed "toxic footprint" in this article. We ask whether calculation of toxic footprints is a useful method to steer the textile industry towards more sustainable use of chemicals. Three different methods by which strategic product toxicity assessment can be performed within the context of LCA are illustrated and compared using a wet treatment process for a cotton T-shirt as the basis of a case study. The methods are the USEtox model chosen for the European Product Environmental Footprint work, the Score System presented in the European Commission's Reference Document on Best Available Techniques for the Textiles Industry, and the Strategy Tool presented by Askham. The methods are compared in terms of their ease of use and whether the results give a consistent evaluation of a set of chemicals. New USEtox characterisation factors for textile chemicals were calculated and used for this article. The results show that the three methods do not give a consistent evaluation of the different wet treatment chemicals. Both the Score System and the Strategy Tool are very concerned with persistent contaminants such as the optical brightener in this case study, which is deemed to be less important by USEtox. The calculations also show how the results generated by the USEtox model depend on whether users apply (1) only the recommended characterisation factors or (2) these and the interim characterisation factors or (3) these and the new characterisation factors calculated for this article. With current policy initiatives such as the Product Environmental Footprint now being applied for textile products, toxicity assessment will by default be performed in the LCA of textiles. It is important that the results are relevant and representative as the intended users are supposed to take actions based on them. Confidence in the results is crucial for a scientific method, and therefore, this exploratory comparison exercise shows how benchmarking can be a tool to make the differences in background assumptions explicit, to better understand the differences in the results, and help create such confidence.Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is today an important methodology to quantify the life cycle based environmental impacts of products, services or organisations. Since the very first LCA studies, the cumulative energy demand CED (also called 'primary energy consumption') has been one of the key indicators being addressed. Despite its popularity, there is no harmonised approach yet and the standards and guidelines define the cumulative energy demand differently. In this paper, an overview of existing and applied life cycle based energy indicators and a unifying approach to establish characterisation factors for the cumulative energy demand indicator are provided. The CED approaches are illustrated in a building's LCA case study. The five approaches are classified into two main concepts, namely the energy harvested and the energy harvestable concepts. The two concepts differ by the conversion efficiency of the energy collecting facility. A unifying 'energy harvested' approach is proposed based on four theses, which ensure consistent accounting among renewable and non renewable energy resources. The indicator proposed is compared to four other CED indicators, differing in the characterisation factors of fossil and biomass resources (upper or lower heating value), the characterisation factor of uranium and the characterisation factors of renewable energy resources (amount harvested or amount harvestable). The comparison of the five approaches is based on the cumulative energy demand of a newly constructed building of the city of Zurich covering the whole life cycle, including manufacturing and construction, replacement and use phase, and end of life. The cumulative energy demand of the life cycle of the building differs between 336 MJ oil-eq/m(2)a ('CED uranium low') and 836 MJ oil-eq/m(2)a ('CED energy statistics'). The main differences occur in the use phase. The main reason for the large differences in the results are the different concepts to determine the characterisation factors for renewable and nuclear energy resources. The energy harvested approach 'CED standard' is a consistent approach, which quantifies the energy content of all different (renewable and non-renewable) energy resources. The 'CED standard' approach and the impact category indicator results computed with this approach reflect the safeguard subject 'energy resources' but not (no other) environmental impacts. The energy harvested approach proposed in this paper can readily be implemented in different contexts and applied to various data sets.Nowadays, environmental sustainability of textile has gained much attention from government and suppliers due to the resource consumption and pollutant emissions. Besides, different consumer behaviors can result in quite different environmental consequences mainly in terms of water and energy consumption. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically evaluate the environmental impacts of textiles from a life cycle perspective to improve the sustainability of textiles especially for China, the biggest producer, exporter, and consumer in the world. This study is conducted according to the International Organizations for Standardization's (ISO) 14040 standard series. The declared unit is a piece of 100 % cotton short-sleeved T-shirt. The production data mainly come from field investigations of representative mills in China. The use-phase data are mainly from 924 questionnaires of Chinese residents. The secondary data from databases, literatures, and authoritative statistical data are supplemented in case primary data are not available. The potential environmental impacts are evaluated using the CML2001 and USEtox methodologies built into the GaBi version 6.0 software. We determine hotspots throughout the life cycle of the cotton textile considering the impact categories of abiotic depletion, acidification potential, global warming potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, eutrophication potential, water use, and toxicity. The results of the study show that cotton cultivation, dyeing, making-up, and use-phases are the main contributors to the environmental impacts. In particular, fertilizer, pesticide, and water use in cotton cultivation, coal, dyes, and auxiliaries use in dyeing, electricity use in making-up, detergent and water use in washing, and electricity use in spinning are the hotspots based on the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results. The use-phase scenario analysis shows that compared with machine washing, electric drying, and ironing share the majority of electricity consumption. Compared with Americans, Chinese washing habits are much more environmental-friendly and bring much lower environmental impacts in the use stage. Energy consumption, chemical use, and water use are main contributors to most impact categories, which help us to find hotspots and potential improvements of sustainability.Industrial symbiosis networks are generally assumed to provide economic and environmental benefits for all firms involved, though few quantifications have been produced in the literature, and the methods for these quantifications have varied. This paper provides an approach to quantify the environmental performance of industrial symbiosis networks using guidance from the literature of life cycle assessment. Additionally, an approach to distribute credits due to exchanges for firms in the industrial symbiosis network is outlined. From the approach, influential methodological considerations used for the quantifications are discussed, including e.g. the production of reference systems, allocation methods, system boundaries and functional unit. The implications of such an approach may be beneficial for the industrial symbiosis community and provide information crucial for taxes, subsidies, business relations, expansion possibilities for the network, marketing and other issues related to the environmental performance of firms in the industrial symbiosis network. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Breeding has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dairy farming. Evaluating the effect of a 1-unit change (i.e., 1 genetic standard deviation improvement) in genetic traits on GHG emissions along the chain provides insight into the relative importance of genetic traits to reduce GHG emissions. Relative GHG values of genetic traits, however, might depend on feed-related farm characteristics. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of feed-related farm characteristics on GHG values by comparing the values of milk yield and longevity for an efficient farm and a less efficient farm. The less efficient farm did not apply precision feeding and had lower feed production per hectare than the efficient farm. Greenhouse gas values of milk yield and longevity were calculated by using a whole-farm model and 2 different optimization methods. Method 1 optimized farm management before and after a change in genetic trait by maximizing labor income; the effect on GHG emissions (i.e., from production of farm inputs up to the farm gate) was considered a side effect. Method 2 optimized farm management after a change in genetic trait by minimizing GHG emissions per kilogram of milk while maintaining labor income and milk production at least at the level before the change in trait; the effect on labor income was considered a side effect. Based on maximizing labor income (method 1), GHG values of milk yield and longevity were, respectively, 279 and 143 kg of CO2 equivalents (CO(2)e)/unit change per cow per year on the less efficient farm, and 247 and 210 kg of CO(2)e/unit change per cow per year on the efficient farm. Based on minimizing GHG emissions (method 2), GHG values of milk yield and longevity were, respectively, 538 and 563 kg of CO2(e)/unit change per cow per year on the less efficient farm, and 453 and 441 kg of CO2(e)/unit change per cow per year on the efficient farm. Sensitivity analysis showed that, for both methods, the absolute effect of a change in genetic trait depends on model inputs, including prices and emission factors. Substantial changes in relative importance between traits due to a change in model inputs occurred only in case of maximizing labor income. We concluded that assumptions regarding feed-related farm characteristics affect the absolute level of GHG values, as well as the relative importance of traits to reduce emissions when using a method based on maximizing labor income. This is because optimizing farm management based on maximizing labor income does not give any incentive for lowering GHG emissions. When using a method based on minimizing GHG emissions, feed-related farm characteristics affected the absolute level of the GHG values, but the relative importance of the traits scarcely changed: at each level of efficiency, milk yield and longevity were equally important.Supply chain network design (SCND) models and methods have been the subject of several recent literature review surveys, but none of them explicitly includes sustainable development as a main characteristic of the problem considered. The aim of this review is to bridge this gap. The paper analyzes 87 papers in the field of supply chain network design, covering mathematical models that include economic factors as well as environmental and/or social dimensions. The review is organized along four research questions asking (i) which environmental and social objectives are included, (ii) how are they integrated into the models, (iii) which methods and tool are used and finally (iv) which industrial applications and contexts are covered in these models. The review finds that there are a number of limitations to the current research in sustainable SCND. The narrow scope of environmental and social measures in current models should go beyond limited greenhouse gas indicators to broader life-cycle approaches including new social metrics. The more effective inclusion of uncertainty and risk in models with improved multi-objective approaches is also needed. There are also significant gaps in the sectors used to test models limiting more general applicability. The paper concludes with promising new avenues of research to more effectively include sustainability into SCND models. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A complete review of the different techniques that have been developed to recycle fibre reinforced polymers is presented. The review also focuses on the reuse of valuable products recovered by different techniques, in particular the way that fibres have been reincorporated into new materials or applications and the main technological issues encountered. Recycled glass fibres can replace small amounts of virgin fibres in products but not at high enough concentrations to make their recycling economically and environmentally viable, if for example, thermolysis or solvolysis is used. Reclaimed carbon fibres from high-technology applications cannot be reincorporated in the same applications from which they were recovered, so new appropriate applications have to be developed in order to reuse the fibres. Materials incorporating recycled fibres exhibit specific mechanical properties because of the particular characteristics imparted by the fibres. The development of specific standards is therefore necessary, as well as efforts in the development of solutions that enable reusers to benefit from their reinforcement potential. The recovery and reuse of valuable products from resins are also considered, but also the development of recyclable thermoset resins. Finally, the economic and environmental aspects of recycling composite materials, based on Life Cycle Assessment, are discussed. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Green real estate development is one of measures being implemented to reduce negative impacts of the building industry on the environment, society, and economy. However, there is lack of a systematic review of this large number of studies that is critical for the future endeavor. This paper reviews the existing body of knowledge related to green development. At first, the common research themes on green real estate development were identified, including concept, measure, business, and result. Then, the connotation and denotation of green real estate development was introduced in four dimensions. Third, the stakeholders of green real estate development and its benefits and costs were expatiated. Then, how to realize the green real estate development and its current weakness were analyzed in various aspects. It is found that the existing studies mainly focus on the environmental aspect of green building, other dimensions of sustainability of green building, especially the social sustainability is largely overlooked. Future research opportunities were identified such as the innovation of evaluation systems, integration of planning and design frameworks, management mechanisms and financing modes, and future proofing. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a fast growing interest in better understanding the energy performance of PV technologies as evidenced by a large number of recent studies published on this topic. The goal of this study was to do a systematic review and a meta-analysis of the embedded energy, energy payback time (EPBT), and energy return on energy invested (EROI) metrics for the crystalline Si and thin film PV technologies published in 2000-2013. A total of 232 references were collected of which 11 and 23 passed our screening for EPBT/EROI and embedded energy analysis, respectively. Several parameters were harmonized to the following values: Performance ratio (0.75), system lifetime (30 years), insolation (1700 kWh m(-2) yr(-1)), module efficiency (13.0% mono-Si; 123% poly-Si; 63% a:Si; 10.9% CdTe; 11.5% CIGS). The embedded energy had a more than 10-fold variation due to the variation in BOS embedded energy, geographical location and LCA data sources. The harmonization narrowed the range of the published EPBT values. The mean harmonized EPBT varied from 1.0 to 4.1 years; from lowest to highest, the module types ranked in the following order: cadmium telluride (CdTe), copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), amorphous silicon (a:Si), poly-crystalline silicon (poly-Si), and mono-crystalline silicon (mono-Si). The mean harmonized EROI varied from 8.7 to 342. Across different types of PV, the variation in embedded energy was greater than the variation in efficiency and performance ratio suggesting that the relative ranking of the EPBT of different PV technology today and in the future depends primarily on their embedded energy and not their efficiency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to the increasing recognition of global climate change, the building and construction industries are under pressure to reduce carbon emissions. A central issue in striving towards reduced carbon emissions is the need for a practicable and meaningful yardstick for assessing and communicating greenhouse gas (GHG) results. ISO 14067 was published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in May 2013. By providing specific requirements in the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, the standard clarifies the GHG assessment in the aspects of choosing system boundaries and simulating use and end-of-life phases when quantifying carbon footprint of products (CFPs). More importantly, the standard, for the first time, provides a step-to-step guide and standardized template for communicating CFPs in the form of CFP external communication report, CFP performance tracking report, CFP declaration and CFP label. ISO 14067 therefore makes a valuable contribution to GHG quantification and transparent communication and comparison of CFPs. In addition, as cradle-to-grave should be used as the system boundary and end-of-life phases can be simulated, ISO 14067 will hopefully promote the development and implementation of simulation technologies, with Building Information Modelling (BIM) in particular, in the building and construction industries. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biomass-derived fuels can contribute to energy sustainability through diversifying energy supply and mitigating carbon emissions. However, the biomass chemistry poses an important challenge, i.e., the effective hydrogen to carbon ratio is significantly lower for biomass compared to petroleum, and biomass conversion technologies produce a large amount of carbon dioxide by-product. Therefore, CO2 capture and utilization will be an indispensable element of future biorefineries. The present research explores the economic feasibility and environmental performance of utilizing CO2 from biomass pyrolysis for biodiesel production via microalgae. The results suggest that it is possible to increase biomass to fuel conversion from 55% to 73%. In addition, if subsidies and fuel taxes are included in the economic analysis, the extra produced fuel can compensate the cost of CO2 utilization, and is competitive with petroleum-derived fuels. Finally, the proposed integrated refinery shows promise as CO2 in the flue gas is reduced from 45% of total input carbon to 6% with another 19% in biomass residue waste streams. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, renewable energy and environmental efficiency have been interesting issues for both academics and industry actors when discussing sustainable development. Against this background, the present study examines the environmental efficiency of renewable energy from the static and the dynamic perspective in 31 OECD countries, a study conducted to understand the impact of renewable energy across countries. As a non-parametric methodology, data envelopment analysis is used to measure environmental efficiency through multiple inputs and outputs. Labor, capital, and renewable energy supply are the three inputs, while GDP is the desirable output and carbon emissions are the undesirable output. To measure the dynamic environmental efficiency of renewable energy, the Malmquist productivity index is applied to estimate the average efficiency change from 2004 to 2011. The results demonstrate geographical differences in environmental efficiency across the OECD. Countries in OECD America have the highest average environmental efficiency and those in OECD Europe have the largest standard deviation. We also find that dynamic efficiency is influenced by the global financial crisis triggered in the United States. Further, we show that OECD countries implement both catch-up and frontier shift strategies to improve environmental efficiency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Algae is a very promising source for renewable energy production since it can fix the greenhouse gas (CO2) by photosynthesis and does not compete with the production of food. Compared to microalgae, researches on biofuel production from macroalgae in both academia and industry are at infancy for economically efficient and technological solutions. This review provides up to-date knowledge and information on macroalgae-based biofuels, such as biogas, bioethanol, biodiesel and bio-oils respectively obtained from anaerobic digestion, fermentation, transesterification, liquefaction and pyrolysis technique methods. It is concluded that bioethanol and bio-oils from wet macroalgae are more competitive while biodiesel production seems less attractive compared to high lipid content microalgae biomass. Finally, a biorefinery concept based on macroalgae is given. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Membrane desalination does help at procuring an increasing freshwater (FW) global demand. Energy requirements of desalination technologies compromise the environmental sustainability of desalination. The integration of renewable energies with desalination technologies might improve the sustainability of desalinated water over other alternative RV sources. This paper discusses the sustainability of Electrodialysis (ED) powered by photovoltaic solar (PV) energy as one of the most promising configurations for the desalination of brackish water. Environmental, with special focus on energy consumption as a function of salinity, economic, and social issues have been considered and main figures for an ED-PV case study in the Canary Islands focused in FW production are given. Energetic considerations have also been deeply discussed in the section of environmental issues. Reverse Osmosis has been taken as the reference technology. The reference energy consumption for ED of brackish water (2500-5000 mg L-1) includes a range of 0.49-0.91 kW h m(-3). Due to this range and regarding to the environment, the use of ED-PV is in the range of 0.02-0.03 kgCO(2) m(-3) (only due to energy supply), which is a decrease of one order of magnitude compared to grid mix supply. A medium-term forecast for ED-PV is presented in which might be economical over conventional grid mix supplied ED before 2020 under the most optimistic scenario, leading to a production costs around 0.15-0.4 (sic) m(-3). With respect to social issues, renewable desalination contributes to a significant increase of local direct and indirect employment but under a wide range of 0.1-4 permanent positions per 1000 m(3) day(-1). Finally, the main identified barriers for ED-PV preventing a larger market penetration are the matching of the intermittent output of renewable energies with water demand, lifetime of membranes, efficiency of solar panels and the high production cost of freshwater compared to its low market price as commodity. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Building insulation is commonly realized using materials obtained from petrochemicals (mainly polystyrene) or from natural sources processed with high energy consumptions (glass and rock wools). These materials cause significant detrimental effects on the environment mainly due to the production stage, i.e. use of nonrenewable materials and fossil energy consumption, and to the disposal stage, i.e. problems in reusing or recycling the products at the end of their lives. The introduction of the concept of "sustainability" in building design process encouraged researches aimed at developing thermal and acoustic insulating materials using natural or recycled materials. Some of them, such as kenaf or wood fiber, are already commercialized but their diffusion could be further improved since their performance is similar to the synthetic ones. Others are currently under study and their development is only at an early stage. The goal of the paper is to report a state of the art of building insulation products made of natural or recycled materials that are not or scarcely commercialized. Comparative analyses were carried out considering in particular thermal characteristics in terms of thermal conductivity, specific heat and density. Data on the acoustic performance of the materials were also reported. Life Cycle Assessment data were finally collected, in order to put in evidence the environmental advantages of these materials. Particular attention was paid to researches focused to exploit local materials and even industrial byproducts, since these approaches respectively limit transportation and disposal impacts. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Food waste is becoming an increasingly significant global issue due to its economic, social and environmental implications. In addition, food waste relates to climate change since food originates from agriculture and ends up as waste while energy is consumed during its life cycle stages. The aim of this paper is the estimation of the GHG emissions associated with food waste generation in Greece. The scope of the research includes both the emissions associated with the production of food and those associated with the management of food waste. In order to assess the food waste generation from Greek households a field research with the use of food waste diaries was conducted. Based on the aforementioned measurement, the FAO food balance sheet of Greece for 2009, and relevant GHG emissions data found in international databases and literature sources, an estimation of the GHG emissions associated with food waste in Greece has been conducted. The results indicate that approximately 100 kg of food waste per person are generated annually, of which approximately 30 kg per person are avoidable. Moreover, the calculations of the present research reveal that emissions of 5672.5 Gg of CO2 eq. are associated with food waste in Greece.Natural gas is an important fuel and feedstock for many sectors of the Australian economy and is vital in Australia's plan to become one of the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters. Recent work aims to analyse the consequences of a natural gas scarcity in Australia using a resource depletion indicator that measures the environmental and economic impacts resulting from substitution of natural gas with black coal, diesel and coal seam gas (CSG) alternatives. The impacts are assessed for sectors which consume the bulk of Australia's natural gas, namely baseload and peaking grid electricity, off-grid electricity and heating in mining, ammonia production, alumina and nickel refining, and residential heating. From these results, the implications of a natural gas scarcity in Australia can be drawn. In the cases where black coal was chosen as the alternative and diesel is the alternative substitute where black coal was inappropriate such as in peaking power generation and remote mine applications, substitution of natural gas resulted in an overall increase in emissions and cost. Substitution of natural gas with CSG resulted in an apparent decrease in most environmental and economic impacts, but posed environmental concerns regarding underground water extraction and downstream saline water treatment; there are also potential conflicts between landowners and miners, and the use of land for agriculture or mining. Based on these results, sectors can be arranged according to priority of substitution and assessed according to the change in environmental and economic impacts. This makes the methodology a useful companion to existing LCA methodologies by providing additional depth to the impact assessment of resource depletion.Aquacultures of microalgae are frontrunners for photosynthetic capture of CO2 from flue gases. Expedient implementation mandates coupling of microalgal CO2 capture with synthesis of fuels and organic products, so as to derive value from biomass. An integrated biorefinery complex houses a biomass growth and harvesting area and a refining zone for conversion to product(s) and separation to desired purity levels. As growth and downstream options require energy and incur loss of carbon, put together, the loop must be energy positive, carbon negative, or add substantial value. Feasibility studies can, thus, aid the choice from among the rapidly evolving technological options, many of which are still in the early phases of development. We summarize basic engineering calculations for the key steps of a biorefining loop where flue gases from a thermal power station are captured using microalgal biomass along with subsequent options for conversion to fuel or value added products. An assimilation of findings from recent laboratory and pilot-scale experiments and life cycle analysis (LCA) studies is presented as carbon and energy yields for growth and harvesting of microalgal biomass and downstream options. Of the biorefining options, conversion to the widely studied biofuel, ethanol, and manufacture of the platform chemical, succinic acid are presented. Both processes yield specific products and do not demand high-energy input but entail 60-70% carbon loss through fermentative respiration. Thermochemical conversions, on the other hand, have smaller carbon and energy losses but yield a mixture of products. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2015;112: 1281-1296. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Today, it is difficult to integrate the use phase optimization of consumer products into eco-design methodologies. Current eco-design approaches are in fact mainly focused on improving the technological performance of products while it has been proven that users behavior plays an important role in the overall environmental performances of products. This paper deals with the need to address the notion of user experience and behavior in the design process of today's low-complexity consumer products in order to improve their environmental performance. The research protocol presented in this paper is a new eco-design approach in six steps that can be used by designers to support eco-design decisions and integrate user behavior parameters into design activities. The first step consists in the identification of critical environmental aspects in use and usage drifts potential of the product. Steps two, three, and four support designers in the analysis of the use phase for the selection of efficient design for sustainable behavior (DfSB) strategies to be implemented on the product. Finally, steps five and six aim to test the selected strategies with product-in-use observations. Life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is used for the evaluation of the environmental benefits of the strategies. To illustrate this work, a case study of a coffee maker is described together with the eco-design solutions chosen for this product. The solutions reflect strategies targeting DfSB.Life cycle assessment was conducted to evaluate the energy efficiency and environmental impacts of a bioethanol production system that uses sweet sorghum stem on saline-alkali land as feedstock. The system comprises a plant cultivation unit, a feedstock transport unit, and a bioethanol conversion unit, with 1000 L of bioethanol as a functional unit. The net energy ratio is 3.84, and the net energy gain is 17.21 MJ/L. Agrochemical production consumes 76.58% of the life cycle fossil energy. The category with the most significant impact on the environment is eutrophication, followed by acidification, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, human toxicity, and global warming. Allocation method, waste recycling approach, and soil salinity significantly influence the results. Using vinasse to produce pellet fuel for steam generation significantly improves energy efficiency and decreases negative environmental impacts. Promoting reasonable management practices to alleviate saline stress and increasing agrochemical utilization efficiency can further improve environmental sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since the 1960s the urgency to steer mankind towards a more sound environment has grown. Currently humanity is in a transition period between today's old paradigm - business as usual - and the new one, aiming at operationalise sustainable development goals. There is a growing understanding, that to move towards sustainable development, ecological sustainability is necessary but not sufficient. Steering society in this direction necessitates making decisions that at least do not counteract sustainability. Such decisions have to rest firmly on a natural scientific basis. Natural laws, such as thermodynamics, and conditions set by ecosystems can therefore not been ignored, when (a) searching for technical solutions to environmental problems and to fully understand the consequences of such solutions, and (b) improving steering instruments to guide human actions. Over the years a number of models/methods/systems have been developed to underpin sustainable decision-making, such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Ecological Footprints, and Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). Ecological modelling contributes or complements such methods. Emergy analysis, an environmental accounting and assessment method takes a wider grip embracing both ecology and economy. Less known is environmental legal modelling. This paper puts ecological models in the context of societal steering systems for sustainable development, and focuses on a legal model for implementing environmental policy goals. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Decarbonizing the transportation sector is critical to achieving global climate change mitigation. Although biofuels will play an important role in conventional gasoline and diesel applications, bioderived solutions are particularly important in jet fuels and lubricants, for which no other viable renewable alternatives exist. Producing compounds for jet fuel and lubricant base oil applications often requires upgrading fermentation products, such as alcohols and ketones, to reach the appropriate molecular-weight range. Ketones possess both electrophilic and nucleophilic functionality, which allows them to be used as building blocks similar to alkenes and aromatics in a petroleum refining complex. Here, we develop a method for selectively upgrading biomass-derived alkyl methyl ketones with > 95% yields into trimer condensates, which can then be hydrodeoxygenated in near-quantitative yields to give a new class of cycloalkane compounds. The basic chemistry developed here can be tailored for aviation fuels as well as lubricants by changing the production strategy. We also demonstrate that a sugarcane biorefinery could use natural synergies between various routes to produce a mixture of lubricant base oils and jet fuels that achieve net life-cycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 80%.This study uses life cycle analysis (LCA) to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance of carbon dioxide (CO2) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) systems. A detailed gate-to-gate LCA model of EOR was developed and incorporated into a cradle-to-grave boundary with a functional unit of 1 MJ of combusted gasoline. The cradle-to-grave model includes two sources of of CO2: natural domes and anthropogenic (fossil power equipped with carbon capture). A critical parameter is the crude recovery ratio, which describes how much crude is recovered for a fixed amount of purchased CO2. When CO2 is sourced from a natural dome, increasing the crude recovery ratio decreases emissions, the opposite is true for anthropogenic CO2. When the CO2 is sourced from a power plant, the electricity coproduct is assumed to displace existing power. With anthropogenic CO2, increasing the crude recovery ratio reduces the amount of CO2 required, thereby reducing the amount of power displaced and the corresponding credit. Only the anthropogenic EOR cases result in emissions lower than conventionally produced crude. This is not specific to EOR, rather the fact that carbon-intensive electricity is being displaced with captured electricity, and the fuel produced from that system receives a credit for this displacement.Energy production and industrial processes are crucial economic sectors accounting for about 62% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally in 2012. Ecoindustrial parks are practical attempts to mitigate GHG emissions through cooperation among businesses and the local community in order to reduce waste and pollution, efficiently share resources, and help With the pursuit of sustainable development. This work developed a framework based on ecological network analysis to trace carbon metabolic processes in eco-industrial parks and applied it to a typical eco-industrial park in Beijing. Our findings show that the entire metabolic system is dominated by supply of primary goods from the external environment and final demand. The more carbon flows through a sector; the More influence it would exert upon the whole system. External environment and energy providers are the most active and dominating part of the carbon metabolic system, which should be the first target to mitigate emissions by increasing efficiencies. The carbon metabolism of the eco-industrial park can be seen as an evolutionary system with high levels of efficiency, but this may come at the expense of larger levels of resilience. This work may provide a useful modeling framework for low-carbon design and management of industrial parks.China has the world's largest shale gas reserves, which might enable it to pursue a new pathway for electricity generation. This study employed hybrid LCI (life cycle inventory) models to quantify the ETW (extraction-to-wire) GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and water consumption per kWh of coal- and shale gas-fired electricity in China. Results suggest that a coal-to-shale gas shift and upgrading coal-fired power generation technologies could provide pathways to less GHG and water intensive power in China. Compared to different coal-fired generation technologies, the ETW GHG emissions intensity of gas-fired CC (combined cycle) technology is 530 g CO(2)e/kWh, which is 38-45% less than China's present coal-fired electricity. Gas-fired CT (combustion turbine) technology has the lowest ETW water consumption intensity at 960 g/kWh, which is 34-60% lower than China's present coal-fired electricity. The GHG-water tradeoff of the two gas-fired power generation technologies suggests that gas-fired power generation technologies should be selected based on regional-specific water resource availabilities and electricity demand fluctuations in China. However, the low price of coal-fired electricity, high cost of shale gas production, insufficient pipeline infrastructures, and multiple consumers of shale gas resources may serve as barriers to a coal-to-shale gas shift in China's power sector in the near term. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and the rising energy demand are currently seen as most crucial environmental concerns. With the exploration of renewable energy sources to meet the challenges of energy security and climate change, geothermal energy is expected to play an important role. In this study a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and an EMA (Emergy Assessment) of a 20 MW dry steam geothermal power plant located in the Tuscany Region (Italy) are performed and discussed. The plant is able to produce electricity by utilizing locally available renewable resources together with a moderate support by non-renewable resources. This makes the geothermal source eligible to produce renewable electricity. However, the direct utilization of the geothermal fluid generates the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, mercury, arsenic and other chemicals that highly contribute to climate change, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, human toxicity and photochemical oxidation. The study aims to understand to what extent the geothermal power plant is environmentally sound, in spite of claims by local populations, and if there are steps and/or components that require further attention. The application of the Emergy Synthesis method provides a complementary perspective to LCA, by highlighting the direct and indirect contribution in terms of natural capital and ecosystem services to the power plant construction and operation. The environmental impacts of the geothermal power plant are also compared to those of renewable and fossil-based power plants. The release of CO2-eq calculated for the investigated geothermal plant (248 g kWh(-1)) is lower than fossil fuel based power plants but still higher than renewable technologies like solar photovoltaic and hydropower plant. Moreover, the SO(2-)eq release associated to the geothermal power plant (3.37 g kWh(-1)) is comparable with fossil fuel based power plants. Results suggest the need for further investigation of other geothermal options (e.g. binary systems) in order to reduce the environmental impacts while taking the maximum advantage of the geothermal resource. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Phase change materials are used with various building materials in order to increase their thermal mass. This research is on the application of phase change material in the form of DuPont Energain (R) wallboards in combination with an underfloor heating system incorporating phase change materials. An experimental study was carried out using two identical test huts at the Tamaki Campus, University of Auckland. Results using a price-based method showed electricity sayings in both consumption and cost of up to 35% and 44.4% respectively. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There are significant resources of coal on the planet. It is likely that a lot of this coal will be combusted. A 1 GW(e) coal power plant operating at 35% electrical efficiency and a capacity factor of 75% produces 6.77 million tonnes of CO2 per annum. A closed cultivation system with a carbon capture efficiency of 80% allows production of 2.69 Mt of micro-algal (volatile solids), in a foot print of 19,200 ha for a tubular photo-bioreactor (PBR) and 34,000 ha for a Flat Plate PBR. An open system (raceway pond) at a carbon capture efficiency of 50% produces 1.68 Mt of micro-algal (volatile solids) and requires a footprint of 52,303 ha. Employing a three stage sequential process (combining dark fermentation, photo fermentation and anaerobic digestion) to produce bin-hydrogen and bio-methane from the micro-algae could potentially generate 35% of the primary energy in the coal in the form of renewable gaseous fuel if a closed system of cultivation is used. This is sufficient to fuel 600,000 cars per annum. In the cultivation of micro-algae, pumping and circulation is a considerable parasitic energy demand. The ratio of energy output (gaseous biofuel) to energy input (pumping and circulation) is less than 1 for all the three cultivation systems assessed, ranging from 0.71 for raceway ponds to 0.05 for a tubular PBR. If coal powered electricity is the source of this parasitic energy then a tubular PBR system produces more CO2 than the CO2 captured by the micro-algae. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this work, two options are investigated to enhance the economics of the catalytic production of bioethanol from biomass gasification by exploiting the excess of CO2 emission saving: (i) to import fossil energy, in the form of natural gas and electricity or (ii) to trade CO2 emissions. To this end, an integrated life cycle and economic assessment is carried out for four process configurations, each using a different light hydrocarbon reforming technology: partial oxidation, steam methane reforming, tar reforming and autothermal reforming. The results show that for all process configurations the production of bioethanol and other alcohols significantly increases when natural gas displaces biomass, maintaining the total energy content of the feedstock. The economic advantage of the partial substitution of biomass by natural gas depends on their prices and this is explored by carrying out a sensitivity analysis, taking historical prices into account. It is also concluded that the trade of CO2 emissions is not cost-competitive compared to the import of natural gas if the CO2 emission price remains within historical European prices. The CO2 emission price would have to double or even quadruple the highest CO2 historical price for CO2 emission trading to be a cost-competitive option. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the recent work entitled "Life cycle environmental impacts of UK shale gas" (Applied Energy, 134 (2014) 506-518) Stamford and Azapagic (2014) make a first attempt at quantifying a range of overall lifecycle impacts of shale gas production in the UK. Their analysis led to some very unfavourable comparisons with other energy technologies and concluded that, for three types of impact (depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, photochemical pollution, and terrestrial eco-toxicity), shale gas is 'worse' even than coal as an energy source for generating electricity; furthermore, uncertainties in input data mean that it might also be worse than coal for three additional impacts (on global warming, acidification, and human toxicity). One of their principal inferences is, therefore, that shale gas development in the UK should be subject to stringent environmental regulation, to ensure that it is only developed where it can be demonstrated to regulatory authorities on a well-by-well basis that these and other impacts can be minimized. The present commentary reassesses some of the conclusions reached by this published analysis. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) are considered to be a better alternative for conventional vehicles in the matter of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and urban air pollution reduction. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used methodology to quantify and compare the environmental impacts of vehicle technologies. In this study, we compare the life cycle environmental emissions of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matters (PM) of the BEV with the petrol and diesel vehicles. Unlike many other literatures, this study uses the real-world energy consumption data for the environmental assessment. In addition, this study explores the possible impact of the short term and long term fluctuations in the electricity mix and the vehicle charging profile, on the life cycle emissions performance of BEV. The influence of charging profile on the well-to-tank (WTT) emissions (i.e. emissions associated with electricity production) of BEV is discussed by using hourly emissions and different possible peak and off-peak charging time frames. The results of this study proves off-peak charging is a better option to reduce the life cycle emissions, compared to peak charging. When a BEV is charged during off-peak hours instead of peak hours, the well-to-tank CO2, SO2, NOx and PM emissions per km can be reduced significantly. Also, this study emphasizes the importance of taking driving behaviors of users and auxiliary energy consumption into account. This aspect is analyzed by comparing the empirical energy consumption and the corresponding WTT emissions of BEV, with the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) standard values. The results reveal that the auxiliary energy consumption is responsible for, nearly a third of the WIT emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global warming mitigation is used as a key to devise built environment strategies and sustainable policies in developed countries that aim to reduce the rate of carbon emissions. The goal of this research is to mitigate global warming from building construction by suggesting an alternative building scheme for Malaysia. A problem related to the building industry is releasing carbon dioxide emission. Use of timber for construction has less impact on the environment due to less carbon dioxide emissions, thus making wood the best material for wall construction. However, as the Malaysian climate is hot and humid, wood encounters many defects and deteriorates. Presently, most buildings in Malaysia are built from other materials such as concrete or brick. In the last 40 years, wood materials in building schemes in Malaysia have dropped from 60% to almost 5%. This research proposed a new approach to minimize the effect of CO2 emission for buildings as well as to improve their structural stability for a longer lifespan because these would encourage the Malaysian construction industry to use wood components in their building schemes. In this study, SIMAPRO Software was used to assess CO2 emissions caused by seven different types of building schemes in wall constructions. The results from a simulation of three time frames of twenty, one hundred and five hundred years showed that timber scheme is the best choice for construction. To promote the use of timber, a new building scheme that would solve the problem of timber wood structure in Malaysia were proposed. The alternative building scheme has combined precast concrete and timber (H8) to improve the timber scheme deficiency while releasing less CO2 emissions compared to other systems. Therefore (H8) could replace current building schemes. This research can facilitate decision-maker to choose the most flexible scheme for Malaysian housing. Thus, this system could be positively and widely used in the Malaysian construction industry. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We investigated ORCs (organic Rankine cycles) integrated with typical China cement production line. The dry air at the kiln cooler outlet with the temperature of 220 degrees C was the waste heat. The fluids of hexane, isohexane, R601, R123 and R245fa were selected for ORCs based on the critical temperature criterion. The developed ORC verified the thermodynamics analysis. The NPV (net present Value) and PBP (payback period) methods were applied to evaluate the economic performance. The LCA (life cycle assessment) was applied to evaluate the environment impacts. ORCs could generate 67,85,540-81,21,650 kWh electricity per year, equivalent to save 2035-2436 tons standard coal and reduce 7743-9268 tons CO2 emission, for a 4000 t/d cement production line. ORCs reduced gas emissions of CO2 by 0.62-0.74%, SO2 by 3.83-4.59% and NOX by 1.36-1.63%. The PBP (payback period) was 2.74-3.42 years. The ORCs had the reduction ratios of EIL (environment impact load) by 1.49-1.83%, GWP (global warming potential) by 0.74-0.92%, AP (acidification potential) by 2.34-2.84%, EP (eutrophication potential) by 0.96-1.22% and HIP (human toxicity potential) by 238-2.89%. The ORC with R601 as the fluid had the best economic performance and significant gas emission reductions. ORCs had good economic performance and reduce the gas emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper proposed a COSM (cost-optimization superstructure model) and derived the optimized oil-saving pathways for road freight transportation in China until 2030. The optimization target of the COSM was to minimize the accumulated energy and vehicle costs from 2010 to 2030 by choosing the most cost-effective fuel option for newly registered trucks each year. Based on the COSM, three scenarios were developed to evaluate the oil-saving pathway in terms of imported crude oil price, available alternative fuels and GHG emission reduction. The scenario analysis results indicate that: (1) for scenario A, the accumulated oil-saving potential was approximately about 13%, while the oil-saving potential of improving fuel consumption rate and load running rate was 17% and 16%; (2) for scenario B, the accumulated oil-saving potential increased to 82% in reference oil price and 23% in low oil price; (3) for scenario C, to reduce per ton of GHG emission, the increased cost will increase from 34 USD to 450 USD when the GHG emission target decreased from 15.4 billion tons to the turn point of 13.5 billion tons. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.According to recent studies, the manufacturing and construction of the structural elements of buildings (for example, columns, beams and load-bearing walls) represent the largest proportion of embodied impacts. Some of these reports highlight the need to analyse the materials and techniques used today in order to make the building sector more sustainable. This paper presents the results of embodied energy and global warming potential, using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, for load-bearing walls, being these one of the most common types of structures for buildings. This study analyses through an eco-design tool new options for materials used in the construction of structural load-bearing walls. The research aims to examine the environmental performance of each material alternative assessed; fired clay brick masonry (FC), concrete block masonry (CB), reinforced concrete-based wall (RC), and stabilized soil block masonry (SS); stabilized with natural fibers and alginates. These conventional and new materials especially those with a low level of embodied energy, such as earth blocks - are evaluated from the point of view of their environmental consequences. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study aims to propose a holistic, life cycle assessment (LCA) of urban wastewater systems (UWS) based on a comprehensive inventory including detailed construction and operation of sewer systems and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). For the first time, the inventory of sewers infrastructure construction includes piping materials and aggregates, manholes, connections, civil works and road rehabilitation. The operation stage comprises energy consumption in pumping stations together with air emissions of methane and hydrogen sulphide, and water emissions from sewer leaks. Using a real case study, this LCA aims to quantify the contributions of sewer systems to the total environmental impacts of the UWS. The results show that the construction of sewer infrastructures has an environmental impact (on half of the 18 studied impact categories) larger than both the construction and operation of the WWTP. This study highlights the importance of including the construction and operation of sewer systems in the environmental assessment of centralised versus decentralised options for UWS. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Planning for sustainable community water systems requires a comprehensive understanding and assessment of the integrated source-drinking-wastewater systems over their life-cycles. Although traditional life cycle assessment and similar tools (e.g. footprints and emergy) have been applied to elements of these water services (i.e. water resources, drinking water, stormwater or wastewater treatment alone), we argue for the importance of developing and combining the system-based tools and metrics in order to holistically evaluate the complete water service system based on the concept of integrated resource management. We analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of key system-based tools and metrics, and discuss future directions to identify more sustainable municipal water services. Such efforts may include the need for novel metrics that address system adaptability to future changes and infrastructure robustness. Caution is also necessary when coupling fundamentally different tools so to avoid misunderstanding and consequently misleading decision-making. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The impressive results achieved by several companies through the Six Sigma technique have motivated other organisations to follow their footsteps in search for competitiveness. As noticed in the literature, most Six Sigma projects in manufacturing have aimed to obtain process enhancements, focusing mostly on optimising product cycle times with almost none taking into consideration environmental aspects as part of their developments. Furthermore, organisations have been worrying worldwide about environmental issues, seeking to foster their eco-efficiency. As a result, the main objective of this paper is to formally introduce the environmental considerations into the Six Sigma technique by proposing a procedure to incorporate environmental variables into the DMAIC process as a way to increase the eco-efficiency level of the firms. Based on the literature review, a conceptual procedure to incorporate environmental variables into the Six Sigma DMAIC technique is proposed. To verify its possible application to real-life situations an action research was developed and could verify that the traditional Six Sigma approach (dealing only with the manufacturing process variables) was capable of improving the eco-efficiency level of the process area under study by 11%. The consideration of the environmental variables as part of the DMAIC technique as per the proposed approach allowed an additional 20% gain, which demonstrates its adequacy to increase the eco-efficiency level of the manufacturing area under evaluation.This study analyzes the environmental performance of two centralized clean coal technologies and localized biogas digester, biomass gasifier and a solar PV by joint use of life cycle assessment (LCA) and emergy analysis. We also calculate cost of electricity generation by each of these technologies. The resulting information is utilized to determine the optimum energy mix to meet the energy demand in Rampura Village, Uttar Pradesh, India by solving a linear programming (LP) problem. The LP problem is processed in two steps: first, it is solved for four scenarios involving different practical situations and constraints. After determining the suitable scenario, the optimum energy combination within this scenario is found. The scenario and energy combination analyses reveal that performing 70% of cooking by biogas cook stoves, 30% by improved biomass cook stoves in the traditional way, and converting rest of biogas to electricity to meet irrigation and lighting energy needs is the most environmentally benign, economically feasible and socially attractive option for the village. Direct utilization of biogas for cooking makes it possible to meet all the energy demand in Rampura with local resources. Importing energy from erratic and unreliable government grid is not needed, hence energy security and reliability are ensured. Additionally, the GHG and other emissions related to cooking with inefficient stoves are also significantly mitigated (88%) through the use of biogas and improved biomass cook stoves. Energy projection through 2031 to determine changing energy patterns in the project site shows that there will be enough biogas for cooking needs in Rampura until 2031. However, by 2016, the total energy demand (cooking + irrigation + lighting) will exceed what can be met with only biogas. Then either biogas potential will need to increase or electricity will have to come from biomass or solar resources. If these local sources of energy are not enough, importing energy from centralized energy options will be necessary. Thus, increasing energy demand in developing countries will necessitate utilization of centralized energy options even in rural areas. Utilizing centralized clean coal technologies to meet this demand could ease energy related environmental problems. Alternatively, if rural development can take place without rampant consumerism and energy-intensive lifestyles, then satisfying local needs with local resources with minimum environmental impact is much more likely. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this study, environmental impact analyses and comparisons of various hydrogen production methods are presented. The methods considered are categorized on the basis of various energy sources such as renewables and fossil fuels. For the fossil fuels based hydrogen production, steam methane reforming (SMR) of natural gas is studied. Renewable based hydrogen production includes electrolysis using sodium chlorine cycle. Electrolytic hydrogen production is also compared using different types of cells, such as the membrane, diaphragm and mercury. Wind and solar based electricity is also used in electrolytic hydrogen production. The environmental impacts results of the hydrogen production processes indicate that SMR of natural gas has the highest environmental impacts in terms of abiotic depletion, global warming potential, and other impact categories. The abiotic depletion for SMR is found to be 0.131 kg Sb eq. which is the highest among all methods including renewable based hydrogen production. The second highest abiotic depletion value comes from the electrolysis, using the mercury cell, which is 0.00786 kg Sb eq. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well-established method to evaluate impacts of chemicals on the environment and human health along the lifespan of products. However, the increasingly produced and applied nanomaterials (defined as one dimension <100 nm) show particular characteristics which are different from conventional chemicals or larger particles. As a consequence, LCA does not provide sufficient guidance on how to deal with synthetic nanomaterials, neither in the exposure, nor in the effect assessment. This is particularly true for the workplace, where significant exposure can be expected via the lung, the route of major concern. Therefore, we developed a concise method which allows the inclusion of indoor nanoparticle exposure into LCA. New nanospecific properties are included along the LCA stages with a particular focus on the workplace environment. We built upon existing LCA methods and nanoparticle fate and exposure studies. The impact assessment requires new approaches for nanoparticles, such as guidance on relevant endpoints, nanospecific properties that are relevant for the toxicity, and guidance on the chemical identity of nanomaterials, i.e., categorization and distinction of different forms of nanomaterials. We present a framework which goes beyond traditional approaches of LCA and includes nanospecific fate parameters in the indoor exposure assessment as well as guidance on the development of effect and characterization factors for inhaled nanoparticles. Specifically, the indoor one-box model is amended with new particle-specific parameters developed in the exposure literature. A concentration conversion and parameter estimation tool are presented. Finally, the modification of the traditional intake fraction to capture size-specific deposition and retention rate are discussed along with a strategy for a more robust effect assessment. The paper is a further step toward a fair comparison between conventional and nano-enabled products by integrating occupational exposure to synthetic nanomaterials into LCA.The two main paths to power vehicles with sunlight are to use photosynthesis to grow biomass, converting to a liquid fuel for an internal combustion engine or to generate photovoltaic electricity that powers the battery of an electric vehicle. While the environmental attributes of these two paths have been much analyzed, prior studies consider the current state of technology. Technologies for biofuel and photovoltaic paths are evolving; it is critical to consider how progress might improve environmental performance. We address this challenge by assessing the current and maximum theoretical exergy efficiencies of bioethanol and photovoltaic sun-to-wheels process chains. The maximum theoretical efficiency is an upper bound stipulated by physical laws. The current net efficiency to produce motive power from silicon photovoltaic modules is estimated at 5.4%, much higher than 0.03% efficiency for corn-based ethanol. Flat-plate photovoltaic panels also have a much higher theoretical maximum efficiency than a C4 crop plant, 48% versus 0.19%. Photovoltaic-based power will always be vastly more efficient than a terrestrial crop biofuel. Providing all mobility in the U.S. via crop biofuels would require 130% of arable land with current technology and 20% in the thermodynamic limit. Comparable values for photovoltaic-based power are 0.7% and 0.081%, respectively.Nanocellulose is a bionanomaterial with many promising applications, but high energy use in production has been described as a potential obstacle for future use. In fact, life cycle assessment studies have indicated high life cycle energy use for nanocellulose. In this study, we assess the cradle-to-gate environmental impacts of three production routes for a particular type of nanocellulose called cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) made from wood pulp. The three production routes are (1) the enzymatic production route, which includes an enzymatic pretreatment, (2) the carboxymethylation route, which includes a carboxymethylation pretreatment, and (3) one route without pretreatment, here called the no pretreatment route. The results show that CNF produced via the carboxymethylation route clearly has the highest environmental impacts due to large use of solvents made from crude oil. The enzymatic and no pretreatment routes both have lower environmental impacts, of similar magnitude. A sensitivity analysis showed that the no pretreatment route was sensitive to the electricity mix, and the carboxymethylation route to solvent recovery. When comparing the results to those of other carbon nanomaterials, it was shown that in particular CNF produced via the enzymatic and no pretreatment routes had comparatively low environmental impacts.In recent years, new composite geomaterials have been developed to reduce the weight of road construction materials in soft ground and mountainous areas in Japan that are prone to ground liquefaction and landslide. These new composite geomaterials have some problems, such as increased construction time, cost, and adverse impacts on the environment. As a result, conventional geomaterials are usually chosen over composite geomaterials in Japan. However, there are few researches that analyzed the environmental impacts (for example, CO2, NOx, and SOx emissions as well as total life-cycle cost) of traditional and composite geomaterials quantitatively from the perspective of LCA (life cycle assessment). Therefore, the purpose of this research is to apply a LCA to estimate the total emissions of CO2, NOx, and SOx as well as the total life cycle costs of three embankments-one constructed by the conventional method (cut and fill), one with lightweight geomaterial mixed with expanded polystyrene beads, and one by the expanded polystyrol construction method. All three embankments are located on a mountain road in Japan.Life-cycle assessment of Swiss agricultural products compared with imports In light of the growing dynamics of the trade in agricultural products, the environmental competitiveness of Swiss foods vis-a-vis imports is gaining in importance. Agroscope studied the environmental impacts of wheat bread, feed barley, table potatoes, cheese and beef from both Switzerland and major importing countries. Cheese and potatoes from Switzerland were rated as similar to, or more favourable than, imports. In the case of cheese, good grass growth and low use of concentrates in milk production played a role in this; with table potatoes, it was the shorter transport distances. The remaining Swiss products performed inconsistently. Within Switzerland, the production systems differed greatly in terms of their environmental impacts. Our results lead to the conclusion that mere adherence to the provisions of the Proof of Ecological Performance is no guarantee of more environmentally favourable production than that of importing countries. Measures should therefore be differentiated and supplemented by quantitative impact targets in order to achieve Swiss quality leadership in the environmental sphere.The paper presents the most economical and less polluting retaining wall system, calculated for the same site, having few different common heights used in design. The paper will highlight the importance of an environmentally friendly solution, but also the most economical solution, which should be the main criteria in the design. Two of the tools used in environmental life cycle assessments (LCA) are the carbon footprint and the energy footprint. The quantification of the carbon and the energy footprint associated to the two types of retaining walls for three different heights is presented. The assessment procedure is performed for the construction stage. The retaining walls are designed, using European norms embedded in Geo 5 software, in similar ground conditions, similar loads and weather conditions. Considering the computed cross sections, the materials quantities and on site assembly are calculated and also the CO2 footprint, the energy footprint and cost. Few different constructive solutions were compared, and the outcome of the paper is the most economic retaining wall in terms of emissions of carbon dioxide, energy consumption, and not the least, the cost.Waste management does not try to dispose waste anymore but is searching for the best solution to manage valuable and scarce resources and reduce the negative impact on the environment. Preoccupation in Germany with regard to optimization of waste recuperation and valorization increases and separate collection systems for different waste fractions are taken into consideration. Within this study a pilot project was set up and its results are presented below. The investigation evaluated the introduction in a small community in Germany of the source separation for wet fraction (including organic) and recyclables of similar material to packaging. Two scenarios were evaluated and compared. Scenario Status Quo represents the initial system and Scenario New stands for the modified system. The acceptance of the population was positive. The efficiency of saving raw materials and fossil fuels in the modified system proved to be higher than the one in the initial system. Savings of CO2 emissions in Scenario New were significant higher than in Scenario Status Quo.This paper presents the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) modelling used in the process of comparing the best technology for disposal municipal solid waste (MSW) in the Banjaluka region. Three scenarios were considered: unsanitary landfill, sanitary landfill with gas collection and burning on flare and sanitary landfill with energy recovery. The Banjaluka landfill is currently an unsanitary landfill because a system for collecting and treating gas has not yet been implemented. The environmental impact from the current waste management system is dominated by the landfill, which has no gas collection. The construction of the gas collecting system with flare is planned for 2015 (70% efficiency, during 30 year period) which will make the Banjaluka landfill a sanitary landfill. The long-term plan encompasses using the landfill gas for heat generation (39% efficiency) and electric energy (19% efficiency), as well as improvement of leachate collection system (from present 60% to 80%) and gas collection (from present 70% to 85%). Landfill with energy recovery leads to saved emission and avoided impact potential in several environmental categories. A sensitivity analysis is applied to the sanitary landfill with gas collection and burning on flare. The results of sensitivity analysis for sanitary landfill with flare indicate that the overall environmental impact is sensitive to the gas collection efficiency, bulk density and period of gas collection.Algal biofuel has become an attractive alternative of petroleum-based fuels in the past decade. Microalgae have been proposed as a feedstock to produce biodiesel, since they are capable of mitigating CO2 emission and accumulating lipids with high productivity. This article is an overview of the updated status of biofuels, especially biodiesel production from microalgae including fundamental research, culture selection and engineering process development; it summarizes research on mathematical and life cycle modeling on algae growth and biomass production; and it updates global efforts of research and development and commercialization attempts. The major challenges are also discussed.Presently, very few life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have been conducted and reported on the production of palm polyol. Previously, most of the LCA studies on the polyol production are limited to petroleum, soya or castor polyol. In this study, a LCA of a palm polyol was performed. The objective of this study is to identify any potential environmental impacts that could be associated with the production of palm polyol. The cradle-to-gate system boundary for the production of palm polyol shows that the most significant impact from the palm polyol production comes from the energy use at the polyol plant. This impact is mainly contributed by electricity, and production of hydrogen peroxide and formic acid that were used during the epoxidation process. The largest greenhouse gasses (GHG) contribution was from consumption of electricity from the national grid that was mainly used for pilot plant polyol process. However, from this study, about 29% reduction in the GHG emissions generated by the production of palm polyol could be achieved by using the best approach normally used in oil palm industry which is using continued land use and biogas capture scenario.The manufacturing organizations are adopting the environmentally friendlier practices to sustain in the competitive business environment. Automotive industries are adopting the environmental management standards to comply with government norms. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) enables the evaluation of environmental impacts associated with the processes. Life Cycle Costing (LCC) enables the attainment of economic aspect of sustainability. This article presents an integrated approach of LCA-Activity Based LCC to minimize the environmental impact across the life cycle as well as to identify the costs associated with life cycle activities. Different scenarios are being analyzed from the sustainability view point, and critical activities are also being identified so as to improve sustainability. (C) 2015 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.The combustion of peat for energy generation accounts for approximately 4.1% of Ireland's overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with current levels of combustion resulting in the emission of 2.8 Mt of CO2 per annum. The aim of this research is to evaluate the life cycle environmental impacts of peat use for energy generation in Ireland, from peatland drainage and industrial extraction, to transportation, combustion, and subsequent after-use of the cutaway area, utilising Irish-specific emission factors. The environmental impacts considered are global warming potential, acidification potential, and eutrophication potential. In addition, the cumulative energy demand of the system is evaluated. Previous studies on the environmental impact of peat for energy in Ireland relied on default Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emission factors (EFs). This research utilises Irish-specific EFs and input data to reduce uncertainty associated with the use of default IPCC EFs, and finds that using default IPCC EFs overestimates the global warming potential when compared to Irish-specific EFs by approximately 2%. The greatest contribution to each of the environmental impacts considered arises from emissions generated during peat combustion, which accounts for approximately 95% of each of the environmental impact categories considered. Other stages of the life-cycle, such as impacts emanating from the peat extraction area, fossil fuel usage in harvesting and transportation machinery, and after-use of the cutaway area have much smaller effects on overall results. The transformation of cutaway peatlands to different after-use alternatives has the potential to mitigate some of the effects of peatland degradation and peat combustion.Technological advances have allowed the development of new roof assembly typologies with higher efficiency and less waste. However, in the construction sector the focus is generally on reducing cost and not in sustainable development factors. Short-sighted building planning based only on economic criteria should be avoided improving decision support systems. In addition, the selection of an appropriate roof assembly in a building's design stage is a complex problem due to the existence of different tangible and intangible factors and the multiple alternatives available. The roof typologies under study involve prefabricated concrete, steel and laminated wood structures. This research work applies a multi-criteria hybrid model combining the Analytical Hierarchy Process with the Delphi method and the VIKOR technique for implementing sustainability criteria in the selection of a roof assembly in medium span buildings. The proposed decision support system enables the use of the triple bottom line that considers economic, social and environmental criteria. Under the criteria analyzed, the compromise solution found is the self-supporting curved system.During the last few years, Italian dairy farms, which gather, process and sell milk at the national level, have strengthened their leading market position at the detriment of dairy cooperatives, operating within regional borders. Moreover, decreasing milk prices and increasing production costs have recently induced many farmers to open automatic vending machines, dispensing raw milk for direct sale to local consumers. In order to contribute to the environmental assessment of alternative systems, this study estimated CO2 emissions related to the transport from production farms to point of sale, for three brands of fresh milk currently sold in the Umbria region (Italy), starting from the food miles indicator as a simple concept, easily understood by consumers. These brands differ in the origin of milk (national, regional and local) and distribution channels (large-scale retail channels for national and regional brands and vending machines for the local one). Thus, we estimated the emissions generated by the transport of the fresh milk consumed by regional households. In agreement with previous studies about CO2 emissions of foreign milk supply chains, the analysis showed that the production system of regional-branded milk, sold by retail channels, is the most efficient in terms of the environmental impact of transport.The social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is a technique for assessing social impact and potential impact that aims to evaluate the social and socio-economic aspects of products and their potential for both positive and negative impacts along their life cycle. The lack of a quantitative inventory data for social issues is a weakness of the S-LCA methodology to calculate social impacts. This study aims to establish a social inventory database in Thailand using input-output (IO) modeling. The 2005 economic IO table of Thailand is used in this study. The six different social issues are calculated for both direct and indirect social intensity. The social issues include employment, number of female employees, working hours, wages and salaries, and non-fatal and fatal occupational cases. The results indicate that the primary sector has the highest social intensity in terms of employment, female employment, and working hour intensity. Meanwhile, the secondary sector was higher in non-fatal occupational cases intensity than other sectors. For wages intensity, the results show that the government sector was higher than other sectors, it being labor intensive and of low economic value. In addition, the fatal occupational cases shows the highest intensity in the non-metallic mining, fertilizer and pesticides, and construction sectors. In terms of total social impacts or social footprints, the wholesale and retail trade sector had the highest impact for almost all social issues due to the higher final demand in this sector.Life Cycle Assessment is a methodology that investigates impacts linked to a product or service during its entire life cycle. Life Cycle Assessment studies investigate processes and sub-processes in a fragmented way to ascertain their inputs, outputs and emissions and get an overview of the generating sources of their environmental loads. The lifecycle concept involves all direct and indirect processes of the studied object. This article aims to model the material flows in the masonry and drywall systems and internal walls in a Brazilian scenario, and calculate the climate change impacts generated by the transport of the component materials of the systems. Internal walls of a residential dwelling in Rio de Janeiro are analyzed from a qualitative inventory of all life cycles with an analysis of material flows, based on technical and academic literature. All Life Cycle Impact Assessment of the systems is carried out with international data from the database, and using the IPCC2013 method for climate change impacts. This study disregards the refurbishment and possible extensions within the use phase. Thus, the inventory identifies weaknesses of the systems while the impact assessment validates the results. This study allows us a complete understanding about the inner walls systems in the Brazilian scenario, evidencing its main weaknesses and subsidizes decision-making for the industry and for planning of the new buildings.We analysed the environmental impacts of three biogas systems based on dairy manure, sorghum and maize. The geographical scope of the analysis is the Po valley, in Italy. The anaerobic digestion of manure guarantees high GHG (Green House Gases) savings thanks to the avoided emissions from the traditional storage and management of raw manure as organic fertiliser. GHG emissions for maize and sorghum-based systems, on the other hand, are similar to those of the Italian electricity mix. In crop-based systems, the plants with open-tank storage of digestate emit 50% more GHG than those with gas-tight tanks. In all the environmental impact categories analysed (acidification, particulate matter emissions, and eutrophication), energy crops based systems have much higher impacts than the Italian electricity mix. Maize-based systems cause higher impacts than sorghum, due to more intensive cultivation. Manure-based pathways have always lower impacts than the energy crops based pathways, however, all biogas systems cause much higher impacts than the current Italian electricity mix. We conclude that manure digestion is the most efficient way to reduce GHG emissions; although there are trade-offs with other local environmental impacts. Biogas production from crops; although not providing environmental benefits per se; may be regarded as an option to facilitate the deployment of manure digestion.The objective of the study was to develop a life cycle assessment (LCA) for pig farming systems that would account for uncertainty and variability in input data and allow systematic environmental impact comparisons between production systems. The environmental impacts of commercial pig production for 2 regions in Canada (Eastern and Western) were compared using a cradle-to-farm gate LCA. These systems had important contrasting characteristics such as typical feed ingredients used, herd performance, and expected emission factors from manure management. The study used detailed production data supplied by the industry and incorporated uncertainty/variation in all major aspects of the system including life cycle inventory data for feed ingredients, animal performance, energy inputs, and emission factors. The impacts were defined using 5 metrics-global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential (EP), abiotic resource use, and nonrenewable energy use-and were expressed per kilogram carcass weight at farm gate. Eutrophication potential was further separated into marine EP (MEP) and freshwater EP (FEP). Uncertainties in the model inputs were separated into 2 types: uncertainty in the data used to describe the system (alpha uncertainties) and uncertainty in impact calculations or background data that affects all systems equally (beta uncertainties). The impacts of pig production in the 2 regions were systematically compared based on the differences in the systems (alpha uncertainties). The method of ascribing uncertainty influenced the outcomes. In eastern systems, EP, MEP, and FEP were lower (P < 0.05) when assuming that all uncertainty in the emission factors for leaching from manure application was beta. This was mainly due to increased EP resulting from field emissions for typical ingredients in western diets. When uncertainty in these emission factors was assumed to be alpha, only FEP was lower in eastern systems (P < 0.05). The environmental impacts for the other impact categories were not significantly different between the 2 systems, despite their aforementioned differences. In conclusion, a probabilistic approach was used to develop an LCA that systematically dealt with uncertainty in the data when comparing multiple environmental impacts measures in pig farming systems for the first time. The method was used to identify differences between Canadian pig production systems but can also be applied for comparisons between other agricultural systems that include inherent variation.Iron ore sintering is an energy-intensive process associated with emission of pollutants in iron and steel industry. In order to comprehensively evaluate the environmental impacts of sintering, a detailed life cycle assessment of a sintering plant was conducted. Life cycle inventory showed that, in the production of 1 t sinter ore, 241. 53 kg CO2, 22. 68 kg CO, 0. 294 kg SO2, 0. 63 kg NOx, 1. 18 mu g dioxin and 0.48 kg dust were discharged. Global warming potentials, acidification potentials, photochemical ozone creation potentials and human toxicity potentials were selected as four impact categories, and the evaluation index for the sintering plant was calculated as 3. 45 X 10(-12). Finally, based on the environmental impact analysis, several measures of reducing environmental loadings of the sintering plant were provided, which included the utilization of denitrification equipment, recirculation of the hot waste gas and process improvement to reduce fuel consumption.A global increase in the demand for crop-based biofuels may be met by cropland expansion, and could require the sacrifice of natural vegetation. Such land transformation alters the carbon and nitrogen cycles of the original system, and causes significant greenhouse-gas emissions, which should be considered when assessing the global warming performance of crop-based biofuels. As an indicator of this performance we propose the use of greenhouse-gas payback time (GPBT), that is, the number of years it takes before the greenhouse-gas savings due to displacing fossil fuels with biofuels equal the initial losses of carbon and nitrogen stocks from the original ecosystem. Spatially explicit global GPBTs were derived for biofuel production systems using five different feedstocks (corn, rapeseed, soybean, sugarcane and winter wheat), cultivated under no-input and high-input farm management. Overall, GPBTs were found to range between 1 and 162 years (95% range, median: 19 years) with the longest GPBTs occurring in the tropics. Replacing no-input with high-input farming typically shortened the GPBTs by 45 to 79%. Location of crop cultivation was identified as the primary factor driving variation in GPBTs. This study underscores the importance of using spatially explicit impact assessments to guide biofuel policy.Racial and ethnic diversity in natural resource careers does not reflect U.S. population trends. To explore potential drivers of underrepresentation in this field, we used a life-cycle analysis to review 55 scholarly articles to identify barriers and supports influencing career choices (i.e., personal, contextual, self-efficacy, outcome expectations) across 4 age groups. The number of cited barriers differed significantly among age groups. Personal influences included race or ethnicity, gender, age, and perceptions or predispositions toward nature. The latter was the most cited barrier for youth. Contextual influences included social, familial, structural, and experiential, and varied significantly between age groups. Exposure to nature was the most cited contextual barrier for all groups: 59% for youth, 40% for high school, 43% for college, and 50% for career. Self-efficacy was emphasized in studies referencing youth, high school, and college age groups, and outcome expectations were only discussed in studies of the career group. After the literature analysis, we reviewed web sites, reports, and conducted personal interviews to explore how 21 federal natural-resource agency diversity programs address variables influencing minority recruitment. Participating agencies reported challenges recruiting individuals, ensuring funding, and creating welcoming environments for minority participants, many of whom have never experienced remote natural environments or nontraditional careers. Our analysis revealed the need for a modified Framework for Career Influences. The proposed framework combines existing theories on social career choice and minority involvement in natural resource activities, but identifies personal and contextual influences that are important for minority students, as endogenous variables that influence and are influenced by self-efficacy and outcome expectations. (C) 2015 The Wildlife Society.The amount of materials and energy resources is limited over the world. These issues lead to increasing interest in environmental impacts of buildings using various building materials and structural systems. Buildings play a significant role in energy consumption and emission production through all phases of their life cycle. Over the last decade, development toward sustainability has become an important issue in building design decisions. The relative contribution of embodied impacts of building materials and constructions has been recognised as being significant, especially for energy-efficient buildings. Life-cycle assessment as a widely used methodology helps make decisions in sustainable building design. The construction details of the foundation, wall and floor are by far the most significant contribution of embodied impacts associated with the construction phase. The goal of this paper is to assess alternative material solutions for the construction details of foundation, wall and floor to support decisions at the design phase of a project. The selection and combination of the materials influences the amount of energy consumption and associated production of emissions during the operation of the building. Therefore, the thermo-physical properties of designed variants of construction details are very significant. This study uses life-cycle analysis with system boundary from cradle to gate and focuses on the embodied energy and equivalent emissions of CO2 and SO2. Methods of multi-criteria decision analysis are used for interpretation of the results.The purpose of this study is to propose a method for reducing carbon emissions produced during the manufacture of output shafts by increasing productivity and reducing energy consumption. To this end, the existing machining process was redesigned as a multi-stage cold forging process, using a computer-aided engineering technique. The critical parameters considered for the redesigning were material deformation, metal flow, and load Rigid plastic finite element analysis software DEFORM-2D3D was utilized to identify and analyze these parameters. The derived multi-stage cold forging process was designed on the basis of the test results. It was also verified that the new process substantially increased productivity. A carbon life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to compare the amounts of carbon emission, material loss and energy consumption of the existing machining process and derived multi-stage cold forging processes. The comparison results indicated considerably lower carbon emissions, material loss and energy consumption in case of the latterMost of the waste collected in sub-Saharan African cities is biodegradable but it is usually dumped in landfills, creating environmental and health challenges for residents. However, there are biodegradable waste treatment methods that could mitigate these challenges. This study analysed anaerobic digestion, composting, vermicomposting and fly larvae waste treatments using life cycle assessment (LCA). The impact categories assessed were energy use, global warming and eutrophication potential. The results showed that anaerobic digestion performed best in all impact categories assessed. However, management of the anaerobic digestion process is critical and methane losses must be kept very small, as otherwise they will cause global warming. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As an alternative to current centralised energy generation systems, microgrids are adopted to provide local energy with lower energy expenses and gas emissions by utilising distributed energy resources (DER). Several micro combined heat and power technologies have been developed recently for applications at domestic scale. The optimal design of DERs within CHP-based microgrids plays an important role in promoting the penetration of microgrid systems. In this work, the optimal design of microgrids with CHP units is addressed by coupling environmental and economic sustainability in a multi-objective optimisation model which integrates the results of a life cycle assessment of the microgrids investigated. The results show that the installation of multiple CHP technologies has a lower cost with higher environmental saving compared with the case when only a single technology is installed in each site, meaning that the microgrid works in a more efficient way when multiple technologies are selected. In general, proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are chosen as the basic CHP technology for most solutions, which offers lower environmental impacts at low cost. However, internal combustions engines (ICE) and Stirling engines (SE) are preferred if the heat demand is high. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The demand for hydrogen is likely to increase in the next decade to satisfy the projected growth of the bitumen upgrading industry in western Canada. This paper presents GHG (greenhouse gas) abatement costs and the GHG abatement potential in producing hydrogen from UCG (underground coal gasification) along with CCS (carbon capture and sequestration). Seven hydrogen production scenarios are considered to assess the competitiveness of implementing UCG compared to SMR (steam methane reforming). The analysis is completed through a LCA (life cycle assessment) of large-scale hydrogen production from UCG and SMR with and without CCS. Considering SMR technology without CCS as the base case, the GHG abatement costs of implementing the UCG-CCS technology is calculated to be in the range of 41-109 $CAD/tonne-CO2-eq depending on the transportation distance to the CCS site from the UCG-H-2 production plant. Life cycle GHG emissions are higher in UCG than in SMR. The GHG abatement costs for SMR-CCS-based scenarios are higher than for UCG-CCS-based scenarios; they range from 87 to 158 $CAD/tonne-CO2-eq in a similar manner to UCG-CCS. Consideration of revenues for selling the CO2 captured for EOR (enhanced oil recovery) reduces the GHG abatement costs. An opportunity for revenue generation is realized in the UCG-CCS case. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.CO2 capture and storage involves technologies that separate, capture, and store CO2 from large facilities, such as fossil fuel power plants. Although it is a promising measure to meet environmental standards on carbon pollution, proposed technologies in power plants are energy demanding and decrease the energy generated per unit of input fuel when compared to business-as-usual scenarios. In this paper, we evaluate the environmental performance of two similarly structured combined-cycle power plants with pre-combustion capture. The first power plant performs methane steam reforming in an autothermal reformer, while the second plant uses a reactor that includes a hydrogen-separating membrane. The two plants are compared both to one another and to a business-as-usual scenario using six environmental impact potentials (abiotic depletion, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, acidification, and eutrophication). The goal is to pinpoint environmental weaknesses and strengths of the two capture technologies. We find that the two plants result in similar impacts, decreasing the contribution to global warming of conventional operation but, at the same time, increasing other impacts, such as ozone layer depletion and photochemical oxidant formation. Additionally, the two capture plants result in higher cumulative non-renewable and total energy demands, as well as in lower life-cycle energy balances and efficiencies. The most direct measure to decrease the environmental impacts of the examined techniques would be to increase their efficiency, by decreasing the requirements of the processes in natural and energy resources.(c) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdThe spot price for tantalum, a metal used in high-performance consumer electronics, spiked in 2000, triggering a boom in artisanal mining of surface deposits in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The profit from columbite-tantalite ore, or coltan, is alleged to have funded militants during that country's civil war. One warlord famously claimed that in 2000, coltan delivered a million dollars per month. While coltan mining was neither a necessary nor sufficient cause for the civil war, there is nevertheless a clear association between mining and conflict. In order to trace global flows of coltan out of the DRC, we used a high-resolution multiregion input-output (MRIO) table and a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to trace exports through international supply chains in order to estimate a coltan footprint for various products. In this case study, our aim is to highlight the power and utility of hybrid LCA analysis using high-resolution global MRIO accounts. We estimate which supply chains, nations, and consumer goods carry the largest loads of embodied coltan. This hybrid LCA case study provides estimates on illicit flows of coltan, estimates a coltan footprint of consumption, and highlights the advantages and challenges of using hybrid monetary-physical input-output/LCA approaches to study and quantify a negative social impact as an input to production. If successful, the hybrid LCA approach could be a useful and expedient measurement tool for understanding flows of conflict minerals embodied in supply chains.Dietary behavioral choices have a strong effect on the environmental impact associated with the food system. Here, we consider the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with production of food that is lost at the retail and consumer level, as well as the potential effects on GHG emissions of a shift to dietary recommendations. Calculations are based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) food availability data set and literature meta-analysis of emission factors for various food types. Food losses contribute 1.4kilograms (kg) carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) capita(-1)day(-1) (28%) to the overall carbon footprint of the average U.S. diet; in total, this is equivalent to the emissions of 33million average passenger vehicles annually. Whereas beef accounts for only 4% of the retail food supply by weight, it represents 36% of the diet-related GHG emissions. An iso-caloric shift from the current average U.S. diet to USDA dietary recommendations could result in a 12% increase in diet-related GHG emissions, whereas a shift that includes a decrease in caloric intake, based on the needs of the population (assuming moderate activity), results in a small (1%) decrease in diet-related GHG emissions. These findings emphasize the need to consider environmental costs of food production in formulating recommended food patterns.This research investigates the carbon footprint of the lifecycle of console games, using the example of PlayStation (R) 3 distribution in the UK. We estimate total carbon equivalent emissions for an average 8.8-gigabyte(GB) game based on data for 2010. The bulk of emissions are accounted for by game play, followed by production and distribution. Two delivery scenarios are compared: The first examines Blu-ray discs (BDs) delivered by retail stores, and the second, games files downloaded over broadband Internet. Contrary to findings in previous research on music distribution, distribution of games by physical BDs results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than by Internet download. The estimated carbon emissions from downloading only fall definitively below that of BDs for games smaller than 1.3GB. Sensitivity analysis indicates that as average game file sizes increase, and the energy intensity of the Internet falls, the file size at which BDs would result in lower emissions than downloads could shift either up- or downward over the next few years. Overall, the results appear to be broadly applicable to title games within the European Union (EU), and for larger-than-average sized games in the United States. Further research would be needed to confirm whether similar findings would apply in future years with changes in game size and Internet efficiency. The study findings serve to illustrate why it is not always true that digital distribution of media will have lower carbon emissions than distribution by physical means when file sizes are large.Ecological footprint (EF) is a metric that estimates human consumption of biological resources and products, along with generation of waste greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in terms of appropriated productive land. There is an opportunity to better characterize land occupation and effects on the carbon cycle in life cycle assessment (LCA) models using EF concepts. Both LCA and EF may benefit from the merging of approaches commonly used separately by practitioners of these two methods. However, few studies have compared or integrated EF with LCA. The focus of this research was to explore methods for improving the characterization of land occupation within LCA by considering the EF method, either as a complementary tool or impact assessment method. Biofuels provide an interesting subject for application of EF in the LCA context because two of the most important issues surrounding biofuels are land occupation (changes, availability, and so on) and GHG balances, two of the impacts that EF is able to capture. We apply EF to existing fuel LCA land occupation and emissions data and project EF for future scenarios for U.S. transportation fuels. We find that LCA studies can benefit from lessons learned in EF about appropriately modeling productive land occupation and facilitating clear communication of meaningful results, but find limitations to the EF in the LCA context that demand refinement and recommend that EF always be used along with other indicators and metrics in product-level assessments.Increasingly, organizations are working to reduce the environmental footprint of their supply chains. The use of environmentally preferable purchasing criteria is one strategy organizations use to address this goal. However, evaluating the environmental performance of these criteria (e.g., recycled content, biodegradable, renewable, and so on) has remained elusive. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can measure the impact reduction potential of sourcing strategies. However, full process-based LCAs are time-consuming and costly across multiple criteria of thousands of products and inputs purchased in an organizational setting. A streamlined hotspot methodology is presented using a combination of environmentally extended economic input-output (EEIO) approaches and extant literature to identify hotspots in which to constrain a parameterized process-based LCA. A case study of breakfast cereal manufacturing is developed to (1) assess the efficiencies associated with the hotspotting approach and (2) demonstrate its applicability in generating comparable decision signals of environmentally preferable sourcing criteria for procurement and supply-chain managers along the dimensions of global warming potential and water use.New health safety concerns may arise from the increasing production and use of Jatropha oil, a biodiesel feedstock that also contains toxic, pro-inflammatory, and co-carcinogenic phorbol esters. Based on the exceptional sensitivity of Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells to the model phorbol ester 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA), a robust bioassay was developed to quantify the biological activity of Jatropha phorbol esters directly in oil, without sample extraction. We first verified that the characteristic response of MDCK cells to TPA was also observed following direct exposure to phorbol esters in Jatropha oil. We further confirmed that similarly to TPA, Jatropha oil's phorbol esters can activate protein kinase C (PKC). We then assessed the transcriptional response of MDCK cells to Jatropha oil exposure by measuring the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), a gene involved in inflammatory processes which is strongly upregulated following PKC activation. Based on the parameterization of a TPA dose-response curve, the transcriptional response of MDCK cells to Jatropha oil exposure was expressed in term of TPA toxic equivalent (TEQ), a convenient metric to report the inflammatory potential of complex mixtures. The sensitive bioassay described in this manuscript may prove useful for risk assessment, as it provides a quantitative method and a convenient metric to report the inflammatory potential of phorbol esters in Jatropha oil. This bioassay may also be adapted for the detection of bioactive phorbol esters in other matrices.Crop residues are potentially significant sources of feedstock for biofuel production in the United States. However, there are concerns with maintaining the environmental functions of these residues while also serving as a feedstock for biofuel production. Maintaining soil organic carbon (SOC) along with its functional benefits is considered a greater constraint than maintaining soil erosion losses to an acceptable level. We used the biogeochemical model DayCent to evaluate the effect of residue removal, corn stover, and wheat and barley straw in three diverse locations in the USA. We evaluated residue removal with and without N replacement, along with application of a high-lignin fermentation byproduct (HLFB), the residue by-product comprised of lignin and small quantities of nutrients from cellulosic ethanol production. SOC always decreased with residue harvest, but the decrease was greater in colder climates when expressed on a life cycle basis. The effect of residue harvest on soil N2O emissions varied with N addition and climate. With N addition, N2O emissions always increased, but the increase was greater in colder climates. Without N addition, N2O emissions increased in Iowa, but decreased in Maryland and North Carolina with crop residue harvest. Although SOC was lower with residue harvest when HLFB was used for power production instead of being applied to land, the avoidance of fossil fuel emissions to the atmosphere by utilizing the cellulose and hemicellulose fractions of crop residue to produce ethanol (offsets) reduced the overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because most of this residue carbon would normally be lost during microbial respiration. Losses of SOC and reduced N mineralization could both be mitigated with the application of HLFB to the land. Therefore, by returning the high-lignin fraction of crop residue to the land after production of ethanol at the biorefinery, soil carbon levels could be maintained along with the functional benefit of increased mineralized N, and more GHG emissions could be offset compared to leaving the crop residues on the land.This paper presents the results of the life cycle assessment (LCA) of 10 integrated waste management systems (IWMSs) for 3 potential post-event site design scenarios of the London Olympic Park. The aim of the LCA study is to evaluate direct and indirect emissions resulting from various treatment options of municipal solid waste (MSW) annually generated on site together with avoided emissions resulting from energy, materials and nutrients recovery. IWMSs are modelled using GaBi v6.0 Product Sustainability software and results are presented based on the CML (v.Nov-10) characterisation method. The results show that IWMSs with advanced thermal treatment (ATT) and incineration with energy recovery have the lowest Global Warming Potential (GWP) than IWMSs where landfill is the primary waste treatment process. This is due to higher direct emissions and lower avoided emissions from the landfill process compared to the emissions from the thermal treatment processes. LCA results demonstrate that significant environmental savings are achieved through substitution of virgin materials with recycled ones. The results of the sensitivity analysis carried out for IWMS 1 shows that increasing recycling rate by 5%, 10% and 15% compared to the baseline scenario can reduce GWP by 8%, 17% and 25% respectively. Sensitivity analysis also shows how changes in waste composition affect the overall result of the system. The outcomes. of such assessments provide decision-makers with fundamental information regarding the environmental impacts of different waste treatment options necessary for sustainable waste management planning. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Life cycle assessment (LCA) frameworks are widely used to assess the sustainability of manufacturing processes. Although they have several advantages such as systematic estimation and efficiency, they have significant limitations due to a lack of functionality to perform sustainability analysis. Specifically, they do not fully support dynamic and diverse characteristics of manufacturing processes nor cover technical details for the further analysis, such as simulation, prediction, and optimization. In addition, they do not provide a unified modeling environment in which to perform various sustainability analysis tasks. In this paper, a decision-guidance framework has been presented to improve sustainability in manufacturing processes while addressing the deficiencies in existing LCA frameworks. The proposed framework consists of six phases: goal and scope definition, data collection, model generation, sustainability performance analysis, interpretation, and decision support and guidance, which is designed in terms of functionality, usability, flexibility/reusability, and interoperability. To demonstrate the use of the framework, a case study of a turning process has been performed.The UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has been promoting the development and dissemination of a life cycle management capability maturity model (LCM CMM) to fully operationalize and eventually mainstream LCA into all facets of business, including product development, marketing, and strategic decision-making business processes. The capability framework defines a logical sequence of skill building based on the experiences of sustainability leaders that can speed learning for companies with less mature programs. Business improvement projects are designed to incrementally expand the span of concern from company objectives, to value chain viability, and ultimately to societal needs, while broadening the base of information and engaging a wider set of stakeholder views. The UNEP/SETAC sponsored pilot tests of the LCM CMM in Cameroon, Uganda, South Africa, India, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. The results from the pilot conducted by Secretaria Distrital de Ambiente (SDA) and a network of 22 companies in Bogota, Colombia, are presented to illustrate how the capability approach can be applied and highlight lessons learned to promote further dissemination of life cycle practices. The companies were able to apply the concepts to develop accurate, representative assessments of organizational maturity and to identify reasonable improvement projects that delivered some financial value in the short term, addressed a management system gap identified in the maturity assessment, and could be completed within the schedule deadline of the contract (6 to 9 months). The projects included an LCA of cleaning products, collaboration among three companies to find a better solution for managing a waste stream of coffee "silver skins," a streamlined assessment of acrylic products, an LCA of disposable polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) cups, and a qualitative screening of operations of a transit company. The paper discusses how the results of the studies were used to identify specific improvement projects tailored to the specific needs and priorities of each company. The pilot projects showed that the capability maturity approach had intuitive appeal and the companies were able to apply the concepts to their organizations with limited technical support and identify an appropriate improvement project with LC relevance. This suggests there should be less emphasis on LCA as a tool to identify projects and more as a method to gain insights for effective implementation of business-relevant projects. One key question is how to sustain the energy and ongoing improvements fostered by this pilot program.Most existing methods for evaluating the national environmental impact of product manufacturing follow a top-down approach based on national annual statistical data. However, such approach fails to include many important data points and has a low level of quantification, which causes the difficulty in identifying insights on the location, causes, and characteristics of environmental problems. Hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA), which combines input-output data and process-based LCA, has recently been proposed and widely implemented for the collection of regional inventory. However, the limitation of using input-output data, which involves the adoption of averaging data associated with different inputs within various industry subsectors, has been highlighted. In this study, national and provincial statistical data combined with the bottom-up approach is used to solve the aforementioned problems and to assess the environmental effects of mechanical coke production at a national level. A bottom-up approach combined with national and regional statistical data on product yield is used in this study to estimate the environmental effects and improvement potential of mechanical coke production at the national level. The total mechanical coke production and environmental burden generated by global warming, respiratory inorganics, and nonrenewable energy in 2010 were approximately 3.31 x 10(8) t, 1.01 x 10(8) t-CO2 eq., 1.98 x 10(5) t PM2.5 eq., and 1.05 x 10(10) GJ Primary, respectively. The highest coke production fluxes were found in Shanghai, followed by Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan. The lowest coke production was observed in Hainan and Xizang. The difference can be attributed to coal mining and economic levels. From 2008 to 2012, the CO2, SO2, and NOx emissions as well as nonrenewable energy consumption for mechanical coke production accounted for 0.5 to 1.4, 1.5 to 2.2, 3.8 to 4.7, and 4.8 to 13.2 % of the total CO2, SO2, and NOx emissions and nonrenewable energy consumption in China, respectively. The following processes are highly important in reducing the environmental burden imposed by mechanical coke production in China: optimizing the transport distance and type, using underground coal washing technology, decreasing coke exports, and improving the efficiency of coking coal consumption, the average usage rate of seam gas drainage, the energy recovery rate of coke dry quenching technology, and the amount of imported coking coal. The most significant processes, substances, and potential environmental impact categories that contribute to the overall environmental burden in China can be easily evaluated. The combination of national information, provincial statistical data, and LCA results on mechanical coke production represents a large group of LCA products that can further determine the key improvement factors for reducing the national overall environmental burden imposed by the manufacturing of mechanical coke.Small hydropower (SHP) in China has experienced soring development in the past two decades and has been assigned ambitious development goals recently, while its environmental performance remains unclear. This study is intended to provide a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts of SHP plants in China, to compare the results with its counterparts in other countries, and to identify the key factors in the mitigation of negative consequences. A life cycle assessment of a SHP plant in Guizhou Province of China was conducted in a cradle-to-grave manner following the ISO 14040 guidelines. The functional unit is defined as 1 MWh of net electricity produced by the plant. The CML 2001 method was applied to characterize the environmental impacts. The environmental impact categories considered in this study included global warming (GWP), abiotic depletion (ADP), acidification (AP), freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity (FAETP), human toxicity (HTP), and photochemical ozone creation (POCP). Further contribution analyses and sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the key contributors to each impact category during the life cycle of the plant. For the case plant, the considered impacts are caused primarily by the construction stage. As for the materials and energy inputs, cement, steel, and electricity are the three dominating ones for the overall environmental impacts. Compared with SHP plants in other countries, the plant performs similar to the MW scale plants in Thailand and Japan but worse than the plant in Switzerland. Further comparison of life cycle inventories (LCIs) revealed that the quality of hydro-energy resources and acquisition of indigenous equipment technology is essential to their environmental performance. The results of the sensitivity analysis suggested that the amount of construction materials and energy consumption as well as the plant output influences its environmental performance significantly. The construction stage of the SHP plant is the most important source of environmental impacts. To minimize the impacts of this stage, optimization of the structural design and application of new construction materials and good construction practices is recommended. In addition, determining suitable installed capacity and advancing equipment technologies to ensure the optimal output is also crucial to improve the environmental performance of SHP plants in China, regarding the current serious problem of unstable operation.An organization has to consider the influence from an environmental change, such as climate change, to its business activities. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates an impact to the environment; however, there is no LCA method to evaluate an impact from the environment. This study aims to develop a method for evaluating a relative potential impact from climate change to a product system using an LCA framework and to support adaptation planning. This paper proposes LCA framework adaptation planning (LCA-AP) that can be applied to climate change. First, it identifies environmental drivers induced by climate change that impact human health and social assets. Second, an elementary flow from each environmental driver with potential impacts, such as freshwater use, is identified. Third, an activity requiring a large amount of the elementary flow is identified. The identified activity is a hotspot potentially impacted by climate change, and possible improvements are considered. LCA-AP is demonstrated by a case study of printing paper production. The current life-cycle impact assessment methods, such as water footprints and land use, evaluate impacts to the environment. In contrast, LCA-AP evaluates an impact from the environment, and the environmental mechanism is different. In LCA-AP, a practitioner has to calculate the impact for each country and has to do the same for the water footprint method. After hotspots are identified, the next step is to scrutinize an actual risk of climate change to a company's own product supply chain. Collaboration with a business partner may identify a risk and its countermeasure. Application of LCA-AP to climate change was proposed, and its effectiveness demonstrated through a case study. LCA-AP evaluates a relative potential impact from climate change to a product system in an LCA framework at the product design stage. Existing LCA databases and software can be used to implement LCA-AP. The author recommends expanding the method to other environmental impact categories and developing a way to prioritize impact categories through damage assessment and weighting.Although the largely used life cycle assessment (LCA) was initially targeted for products, it can also be adapted to the organizational level. The resulting methodology is the so-called organizational LCA (O-LCA), introduced by ISO/TS 14072 and being developed by several initiatives. O-LCA's object of study is the organization and its value chain; it adopts a life cycle approach and assesses a multi-set of environmental impacts. This paper introduces the methodological framework of O-LCA to researchers and practitioners and focuses particularly on the scoping phase. Here, we discuss the solutions adopted for each identified challenge when accommodating product LCA to organizations. Those critical elements are analyzed and contrasted with main baseline initiatives: primarily product LCA standards and also Organisation Environmental Footprint and GHG Protocol. Additionally, small deviations from ISO/TS 14072 that are proposed by the authors are pointed out and explained. An example was made up to illustrate and support the explanations. O-LCA also follows a four-phase approach, including goal and scope definition, inventory, impact assessment, and interpretation. Although product and O-LCA are comparable, main differences are mostly at the scope level, which is very relevant for the subsequent phases of O-LCA. Function is the main basis for the definition of the unit of analysis in product LCA, while in O-LCA, are the organization and its portfolio, which is unique for each organization. The reporting organization should be described in terms of subject of study, sites that are to be partially or totally considered, and period when the organization is depicted. Finally, as in product LCA, the boundary of the studied system is defined that includes direct and indirect activities along the value chain of the organization. Most principles, requirements, and guidelines of product LCA apply for O-LCA, and the major identified differences are at the unit of analysis and boundary definition level. A cross-divergence that affects the perspective of the two methods is that O-LCA is not foreseen for comparative assertions intended to be disclosed to the public.The integration of different water impact assessment methods within a water footprinting concept is still ongoing, and a limited number of case studies have been published presenting a comprehensive study of all water-related impacts. Although industries are increasingly interested in assessing their water footprint beyond a simple inventory assessment, they often lack guidance regarding the applicability and interpretation of the different methods available. This paper aims to illustrate how different water-related methods can be applied within a water footprint study of a laundry detergent and discuss their applicability. The concept of water footprinting, as defined by the recently published ISO Standard (ISO 2014), is illustrated through the case study of a load of laundry using water availability and water degradation impact categories. At the midpoint, it covers scarcity, availability, and pollution indicators such as eutrophication, acidification, human, and eco-toxicity. At the endpoint, impacts on human health and ecosystems are covered for water deprivation and degradation. Sensitivity analyses are performed on the most sensitive modeling choices identified in part A of this paper. The applicability of the different methodologies and their interpretation within a water footprint concept for decision making is presented. The discussion covers general applicability issues such as inventory flow definition, data availability, regionalization, and inclusion of wastewater treatment systems. Method-specific discussion covers the use of interim ecotoxicity factors, the interaction of scarcity and availability assessments and the limits of such methods, and the geographic coverage and availability of impact assessment methods. Lastly, possible double counting, databases, software, data quality, and integration of a water footprint within a life cycle assessment (LCA) are discussed. This study has shown that water footprinting as proposed in the ISO standard can be applied to a laundry detergent product but with caveats. The science and the data availability are rapidly evolving, but the results obtained with present methods enable companies to map where in the life cycle and in the world impacts might occur.The main goal of this study was to conduct a life cycle assessment (LCA) for the City of Atlanta's (CoA) centralized water system in order to understand the sources of the largest environmental impacts in the system. The boundaries of the water system we studied included the water supply system, the wastewater collection and treatment system, and the stormwater collection system. The CoA has separate wastewater and stormwater collection systems; therefore, they are considered separately. We defined the functional unit (FU) of our study to be 1 m(3) of water distributed to the point-of-use, and our scope includes infrastructure construction and decommissioning in addition to system operation. We used the US Life Cycle Inventory (USLCI) and ecoinvent databases to inventory all emissions and resource use. We determined the major impacts of the water system and the sources that create these impacts using TRACI v2.1, which is the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology developed for North America by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In addition, a method to evaluate the impact of freshwater consumption on ecosystem was used in this study because it is excluded in TRACI v2.1. The four major impacts of the CoA's centralized water system were carcinogenic effects, ecotoxicity, non-carcinogenic effects, and eutrophication; respectively, they contribute 62, 8, 6, and 5 % of the average impacts of a US resident per year (2008) for the annual water use of a single-family home resident. Notably, the input which causes 68 % of the carcinogenic effects, which has the largest normalized impact, was from infrastructure construction which is often ignored in the literature. Freshwater consumption had a relatively low impact, with an evaporative water loss of 0.23 m(3) per FU and a moderate level of water stress on the middle Chattahoochee River Basin; however, the impact of freshwater consumption would rapidly increase with population growth due to increased water consumption and expansion of the impervious area in the CoA. This study is distinctly different from other LCA studies because it includes infrastructure construction, which was a major contributor to the water system's environmental impacts. Our results suggest that infrastructure construction should be considered in LCA studies for centralized water systems. It is worth noting, however, that European datasets were used to determine emissions and resource use related to infrastructure. Results would be more accurate if inventory datasets for US infrastructure were available.Full-scale metal solar collectors and solar collectors fabricated from polymeric materials are studied in present research. Honeycomb multichannel plates made from polycarbonate were chosen to create a polymeric solar collector. Polymeric collector is 67.8% lighter than metal solar collector. It was experimentally shown that the efficiency of a polymeric collector is 7-14% lower than a traditional collector. An ecologically based Life Cycle Assessment showed the advantages of the application of polymeric materials in the construction of solar collectors.The paper has two main objectives: (i) to assess the eco-efficiency of spring barley cultivation for malting in Denmark in a future changed climate (700 ppm [CO2] and +5 degrees C) through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and (ii) to compare alternative future cultivation scenarios, both excluding and including earlier sowing and cultivar selection as measures of adaptation to a changed climate. A baseline scenario describing the current spring barley cultivation in Denmark was defined, and the expected main deviations were identified (differences in pesticide treatment index, modifications in nitrate leaching and change in crop yield). The main input data originate from experiments, where spring barley cultivars were cultivated in a climate phytotron under controlled and manipulated treatments. Effects of changed climate on both crop productivity and crop quality were represented, as well as impacts of predicted extreme events, simulated through a long heat-wave. LCA results showed that the changed climatic conditions will likely increase the negative impacts on the environment from Danish spring barley cultivation, since all environmental impact categories experienced increased impact for all investigated scenarios, except under the very optimistic assumption that the pace of yield improvement by breeding in the future will be the same as it was in the last decades. The main driver of the increased environmental impact was identified as the reduction in crop yield. Therefore, potential adaptation strategies should mainly focus on maintaining or improving crop productivity. The LCA also showed that selection of proper cultivars for future climate conditions including the challenge from extreme events is one of the most effective ways to reduce future environmental impacts of spring barley. Finally, if yield measurements are based on relative protein content, the negative effects of the future climate seem to be reduced. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A study was conducted to determine whether sorghum silage can be a valid alternative to corn silage in lactating cow rations in terms of enteric CH4 production and global warming potential (GWP) per milk unit. Diets containing corn (CS), whole plant grain sorghum (WPGS) or forage sorghum (FS) silages were fed to 6 primiparous Italian Friesian cows in a replicated 3 x 3 Latin square design. Diets were balanced to have 36.0 and 26.0% DM of NDF and starch, respectively. In each period cows were placed in individual respiration chambers to register CH4 production. The GWP of milk production in the three different forage systems was evaluated through a "cradle to farm-gate" Life Cycle Assessment. All the emissions related to on-farm activities (forage production, fuel and electricity consumptions, manure and livestock management), off-farm activities (production of fertilizers, pesticides, bedding materials, purchased forages, concentrate feed, replacement animals, electricity, fuel) and transportation were considered. The functional unit was 1 kg FPCM. Enteric emission of CH4 from cows was obtained with an in vivo experiment or predicted using an equation based on gross energy intake and on dietary NDF and ether extract. Dry matter intake (kg/day) tended to be higher for CS and WAGS (20.0 for both diets) than FS (18.2) (P = 0.07). Milk yield was 23.6, 24.6 and 25.4 kg/day for FS, WPGS and CS, respectively (P = 0.05 between CS and FS). On average, CH4 from enteric fermentation and manure storage was the major contributor (45.4%) to GHG emission of milk production and 71.1% of the CH4 was from enteric losses. Predicted CH4 emission was slightly lower than the emission measured from in vivo trials (323 vs 340 g/day per cow on average). In vivo CH4 production was not different among diets but intake energy lost as CH4 was higher (P = 0.04) for FS (5.8%) in comparison with CS and WPGS (5.1 and 5.2% for CS and WPGS, respectively). Contribution of on-farm crop production to GWP was lower for sorghum scenarios, particularly FS, due to the reduced use of water and fertilizers. On the contrary purchased concentrate feed showed a great load on GWP (30%), especially in the FS scenario, because of the greater amount of corn meal needed to compensate for the low starch content of the sorghum silages. In conclusion the CS forage system gave higher milk production, lower CH4 energy loss and lower GWP per kg FPCM than the sorghum forage systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nowadays, the integration of sustainability into supply chain management (SCM) is a key issue for ensuring corporate competitiveness in face of dynamic ecological and social environments. This paper reviews 185 journal publications of the last 20 years that formalize issues related to sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) in quantitative models. In a content analysis, modeling and SCM characteristics as well as sustainability and SSCM constructs are elaborated. The models are assessed numerically by counting frequencies of occurrence and by clustering the paper sample according to selected characteristics. The findings indicate that SSCM models predominantly focus on deterministic approaches and the integration of environmental aspects of sustainability while neglecting stochastic modeling techniques and the consideration of social factors. By now, comprehensive modeling approaches are most often employed on intra-organizational levels whereas broader application areas are assessed by less complex models. The integration of pressures and incentives of external stakeholders or the formalization of sustainable supplier management and sustainability risks are identified as future research perspectives. Furthermore, the interrelationships between the triple bottom line dimensions are to be scrutinized in greater detail in order to avoid focused optimization of selected sustainability criteria. Seven modeling guidelines are derived from the reviewed literature to facilitate future model-based SSCM research.The Danish island Sarno has since 1997 initiated a process through which the island should reach a state where it would be able to supply its own energy. Such a situation was reached since 2005 - after having established 21 windmills - and the island is now a net exporter of electricity to the Danish power network. At the same time the buildings in the more habituated areas were connected to 4 district heating plants which generate heat from combustion of straw in some cases combined with supplementary inputs from photo thermal devices. Meanwhile, certain activities on the island, such as running the ferries, cars, factories and heating in more distant areas are still dependent on significant input of fossil fuels. The inhabitants have recently stated a wish to move on towards being independent of fossil fuels in 2030 and carbon neutral during the next decades. As a consequence the idea came up to develop a method for the "sustainability analysis" of a society which would assist in governing the transitional process in the direction of increasing sustainability. Therefore, a framework has been developed based on the concept exergy that may reveal where large consumptions are taking places. Such areas are likely to be sensible targets for action or at least increased attention. Basic methods have been developed that allows to account for infrastructure, transfers, inputs and outputs, and consumption in terms of exergy, and taking into account whether the exergy storages or flows can be considered to be renewable or not. The framework has been developed for six societal sectors: the energy sector, the public sector, the private households, the agricultural sector, the industry, commerce and trade sector and nature. Nature is here considered an activity that provides the society with an exergy that may also be of value to our societies, often referred to as ecosystem services. Based on the estimated amount of infrastructure and transfers, inputs and outputs a number of "sustainability indicators" have been developed that may be monitored over time and which may serve to indicate whether potential measures undertaken also lead the society in the right direction. An attempt to evaluate the potential importance of wastes has also been carried out as in organic waste could play an important role in acquiring the amount of bio-diesel required to run the ferries in the future. The results demonstrate that the already existing overhead in production of electricity leaves the island with many options and a great opportunity to be independent of fossil fuels in near future. In fact, it might well be that socio-economical perspectives will turn out to be the more severe obstacles in the transition process. Adjacent to this work a carbon model has also been set up to reveal the consequence of proposed measures and strategies to the carbon budget of the island (Jorgensen and Nielsen, 2014). 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chinese automotive industry, the largest in the world since 2009, is one of the main drivers for the development of the nation's industrial economy. The annual output value of Chinese automotive industry accounted for >8.7% of China's Growth Domestic Product (GDP) in 2009. This massive development of automobiles, however, introduces environmental challenges. This study used a life cycle approach to assess the direct and indirect environmental impacts at the production and consumption stages of the industry. A four-quadrant matrix was developed to present key findings of overall environmental impacts of the industry, according to its constituent processes, in these two stages. The results suggest that the indirect impacts at the production stage and direct impacts at the consumption stage dominate the total environmental impacts. The rapid development of the automotive industry has indirectly stimulated the development of the steel, plastic, rubber and other raw material industries, which further increases the pressure on the environment. With respect to the potential alternatives in the next five years, a scenario analysis suggested that a controlled growth of the automotive industry is highly desirable to mitigate the increased environmental pressures. Advanced technologies to reduce the demands for materials and pollutant emissions are required at the production stage to diminish the direct and indirect impacts. At the consumption stage, improved new energy vehicle development, lightweight vehicle design, enhanced automobile-washing water reuse technologies and strict automobile emission standard implementations will be helpful to achieve the goals of energy and water saving as well as pollution reductions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, the debate about environmental impacts and the sustainability of agricultural products has increased. Environmental impact indicators are increasingly being demanded for policy and decision-making processes. Consumers are more and more concerned about the quality of food products and now looking for those with a low environmental impact, with a particular attention to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There are few studies regarding the GHG emissions associated with the Brazilian soybean production. The aim of this study was to evaluate the main sources of GHG in soybean production in the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Our analysis considered the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) from cradle to farm gate. We evaluated 55 farms in the crop years of 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10, accounting for 180,000 ha of soybean cultivation area and totaling 114 individual situations. The results indicated that the largest source of GHG in the soybean production is the decomposition of crop residues (36%), followed by fuel use (19%), fertilizer application (16%), liming (13%), pesticides (7%), seeds (8%) and electricity consumed at the farms (<1%). The average GHG emissions considering the three crop years were 0.186 kg of CO(2)eq kg(-1) of soybean produced. We also categorized the results based on land use intensity and production areas. This study contributed to identify the main sources of GHG in the soybean production and indicate mitigation priorities associated to the soybean cultivation in Brazil. Further studies, including field experiments, should contribute to a better understanding of the profile of emissions from crop residues in Brazil. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The carbon footprint (CF) of beef production is one of the most widely discussed environmental issues within the current agricultural community due to its association with climate change. Because of these relevant and serious concerns, the beef cattle industry is under increasing pressure to reduce production or implement technological changes with significant consequences in terms of beef marketing. The goals of this study were to evaluate the CF per 1 kg of live weight gain (LWG) at the farm gate for different beef production systems in the southern part of Brazil. Aberdeen Angus beef-bred cattle were assigned to one of seven categories; natural grass; improved natural grass; natural grass plus ryegrass; improved natural grass plus sorghum; cultivated ryegrass and sorghum; natural grass supplemented with protein mineralised salt; and natural grass supplemented with protein-energetic mineralised salt. Monte Carlo analysis was employed to analyse the effect of variations of dry matter intake digestibility (DMID), total digestible nutrients (TDN) and crude protein (CP) parameters in methane (CH4) enteric, CH4 manure, nitrous oxide (N2O) manure and N2O N-fertiliser. The method used was a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) centred on the CF. The CF varied from 18.3 kg CO2 equivalent/kg LWG for the ryegrass and sorghum pasture system to 42.6 kg CO2 equivalent/kg LWG for the natural grass system, including the contributions of cows, calves and steers. Among all grassland-based cattle farms, production systems with DMID from 52 to 59% achieved the lowest CO2 emissions and the highest feed conversion rate, thereby generating lower CH4 and N2O emissions per production system. Because the feed intake and feed conversion rate are one of the most important production parameters in beef cattle production with an obvious risk of data uncertainty, accurate feed data, which include quantity and quality, are important in estimates of CF for LWG. The choice of adequate feeding strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may result in better environmental advantages. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioenergy sources are promising alternatives for sustainable energy production. Nevertheless, significant research and detailed analysis are necessary to identify the circumstances under which such energy sources can contribute to sustainability. This paper reviews the literature of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of microalgae-to-energy technologies and focuses in two categories, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and Net Energy Ratios (NER). The analysis is illustrated with a case study of microalgae biomass combustion to produce heat and compares the influence of different electricity sources with respect to GHG emissions and NER along the supply chain. Selected fossil energy sources were used as reference conditions. The methodology was LCA based on ISO 14044 standard, and most of the data used were extracted from a review of relevant scientific publications. Heat production from microalgae showed higher GHG emissions than those from fossil fuels with United States' electricity grid, but lower than those with the Brazilian one. The NER of heat from microalgae combustion life cycle is still disadvantageous compared to most of fossil options. However, the observation that fossil fuel options performed slightly better than microalgae combustion, in the two categories analyzed, must be understood in the context of a mature fossil energy technology chain. The fossil technology has less potential for improvements, while microalgae technology is beginning and has significant potential for additional innovations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Butanol production by the sugarchemistry route (fermentation of sugarcane juice) was evaluated considering different arrangements for its process integration in sugarcane biorefineries: first and second generation butanol production using acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation with wild and genetically modified microorganisms. The whole production chain was investigated, from the agricultural stage, through transportation of sugarcane and vinasse, to the industrial process and butanol final use when applicable. Life cycle inventories and mass and energy balances for the industrial stage were taken from computer process simulation obtained from the literature. Butanol production from bagasse and straw pentoses using genetically modified microorganism presents the best environmental performance among the investigated technological scenarios. Comparison with the oil-based production route and use as liquid fuel for vehicles evidenced environmental advantages for bio-based butanol in terms of global environmental impacts, such as abiotic depletion, global warming and ozone layer depletion potentials. Additionally, the introduction of butanol and the by-product acetone to the product portfolio of biorefineries led to increased revenues in comparison to base scenarios, which can ultimately help to mitigate environmental impacts of the biorefinery in monetary terms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessing the life cycle of a specific sanitary pad, MakaPads, in Uganda defines unique and vital measurements of social equity, especially for women laborers. A combined approach of social life cycle assessment, SLCA, and environmental life cycle assessment, ELCA, has been utilized to determine sanitary pads' social equity and environmental impacts. The development of the MakaPads product is an example of a design by Africans for Africans; whereas Libresse is an example of a European-designed product used by Africans. The ELCA and SLCA of both Libresse pads and MakaPads include the stages of raw material extraction, energy production, assembly, transport to or within Uganda, and incineration; and the contextualized economic costs of sanitary pads and income generation from the MakaPads factories. Two SLCA quantifiable characteristics that distinguish MakaPads from imported pads developed here are affordability and manufacturing wage impacts. We conclude first from the ELCA that the majority of environmental impacts for MakaPads are at least half of those of the Librese product and second from the SLCA that there are significant social benefits to local design and manufacturing of products for girls and women. Our recommendation is that Sub-Saharan African countries should encourage policies that support local design and manufacturing of sustainable products rather than being reliant on imported products which can have higher environmental impacts and lower social equity benefits. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lack of access to adequate sanitation facilities has serious health implications for rural dwellers and can degrade the ecosystems. This study offers a systemantic and quantitative overview of historical data on rural domestic waste (RDW) production and past and current management practices in a prototype region in China, where rural areas are undergoing rapid urbanization and are confronted with great environmental challenges associated with poor RDW management practices. The results indicate that RDW is characterized with a large fraction of kitchen waste (42.9%) and high water content (53.4%). The RDW generation (RDWG) per capita between 2012 and 2020 is estimated to increase from 0.68 to 1.01 kg/d-cap. The Hill 1 model is able to adequately simulate/project the population growth in a rural area from 1993 to 2020. The annual RDWG in the region is estimated to double from 6,033,000 tons/year in 2008 to 12,030,000 tons/year by 2020. By comparing three RDW management scenarios based on the life-cycle inventory approach and cost-benefit analysis, it is strongly recommended that the present Scenario 2 (sanitary landfill treatment) be upgraded to Scenario 3 (source separation followed by composting and landfill of RDW) to significantly reduce the ecological footprint and to improve the cost-effectiveness and long-term sustainability.Implications:Rural domestic waste (RDW) is affecting 720 million people in China and more than 3221 million people worldwide. Consequently, handling and disposal of RDW have serious health implications to rural dwellers and the ecosystems. This study offers a systemantic and quantitative overview and analysis of historical data on RDW production and management practices in a prototype region in China, which is confronted with great environmental challenges associated with RDW. Then we predict future production of RDW and propose a sustainable RDW management strategy, which holds the promise of greatly mitigating the mounting environmental pressure associated with RDW and provides science-based guidance for decision makers and practitioners for assuring rapid yet green economic development.A sustainable and hydrolysis-free dyeing process was developed for polylactic acid (PLA) fibers. PLA is a biobased alternative to petroleum based polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is the most widely used textile fiber. However, the hydrolytic degradation of PLA fibers under the conventional aqueous dyeing conditions limited its applications in textile industry. A new solvent dyeing process was developed using liquid paraffin as a nonaqueous dyeing medium. High quality dyed PLA fabrics were obtained without consuming water and auxiliaries. Minimal strength loss of dyed fibers was achieved by postheat setting treatment. The 3R principle (reduce, reuse, and recycle) was implemented to ensure the environmental friendliness of solvent dyeing process. The result of a 9-cycle reuse sequence demonstrated excellent color consistency of dyed PLA fabrics. The sustainability of our new dyeing process was quantified in the framework of environmental-health-social impact. The dyeing process sustainability index indicated that the solvent dyeing process was preferred over the aqueous dyeing. The method developed in the present work enabled the practical applications of PLA as textile fibers. It represented an important step toward a sustainable textile industry.A new technology for the production of cellulose nanofibers from vegetable food waste has been developed. The fibers are liberated enzymatically, given a functionalized coating and oriented using spinning techniques. We performed a laboratory-scale life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the various routes of the entire production process from an environmental perspective. The results indicate that the electrospinning process has a higher impact than the alternative wet spinning process under the conditions described. Furthermore, to improve the liberation process of the microfibrillated cellulose, the enzymatic treatment step requires development; this could be through optimization of energy use in the heating process, mainly by reducing heat loss and water use. A comparative LCA with the results of other published studies, using different starting materials and chemical processes to obtain nanocellulose, provides a deeper understanding of our processes. From this comparison, we conclude that our technology has the potential to become a competitive alternative, outperforming other nanocellulose technologies from an environmental perspective.This paper represents the second part of a complex study regarding the possibilities to use reclaimed wood as a raw material in the furniture industry as replacement for new wood. The authors of this paper wish to highlight the issues related to the environmental costs of such an approach, by using Life Cycle Analysis. The study is based on two different versions of the same product - one using new materials vs. one using reclaimed materials - and seeks to determine the major sustainability issues at product level. These are translated into environmental costs generated by each version during their projected life cycle and the end of life scenarios, contributing to a more robust and forward thinking product design in the furniture industry.Livestock production has a major impact on the environment. Feed production is one of the major environmental hotspots of livestock production and its eco-assessment becomes a key issue of the whole cattle chain. Yearly about 150,000 tons of silage are produced worldwide and they are mainly used as animal feeding and for biogas production. The aim of this study is to evaluate, using the LCA methodology, the environmental impact of maize silage production using different ensiling techniques: bunkers silos and bag silos. The results highlight that the production of the chopped maize is responsible for the main part of the environmental burdens of maize silage (more than 88% for all the evaluated impact categories) while ensiling is responsible for a small share of the overall impact. However, maize silage stored in silobag, compared to the one stored in bunker silo, shows lower environmental impact for all the evaluated impact categories (from 5% to 9%). Such difference is mainly explained by lower dry matter losses occurring through the use of silobag. A sensitivity test has been performed in order to gauge the influence of the value of dry matter losses on the systems analyzed. Results of the sensitivity analysis highlight the pivotal role played by such parameter on the overall eco-profile of maize silage: the decrease of the impact of maize silage is in fact directly proportional to dry matter losses reduction. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.China is facing serious issues involving energy sufficiency, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and air pollution caused partly by the rapid growth of vehicles. In order to relieve those problems, new energy vehicles are introduced into the bus and car market. We adopt life cycle analysis to evaluate the well-to-wheels (WTW) energy consumption, CO2 emissions and pollutant emissions from the traditional diesel bus and new energy buses, including diesel hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), compressed natural gas vehicles (CNGVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). This study reports the current situation and projects future scenarios for the BEV bus for several regions in China due to significant regional differences in the power generation mix. Compared to the diesel bus, the HEV bus can reduce petroleum, fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions by about 20%, and, at the same time, produce stable reduction benefits for all air pollutants. The CNG bus achieves reductions of WTW primary PM2.5 emissions by 70% over its diesel counterpart and, of course, uses little petroleum; but increases fossil fuel consumption moderately and has no benefit in GHG emissions. The BEV bus can deliver a substantial petroleum consumption advantage and greatly reduce the WTW NOx, VOC and CO emissions; but, if the electricity is generated from burning coal, the BEV bus has no PM2.5 emission benefit compared to the conventional diesel bus. Currently, the BEV bus increases fossil energy use and CO2 emissions in the coal-dominated regions; but, in the future, it can achieve substantially lower fossil energy use and CO2 emissions with more penetration of clean electric energy. To reach the win-win strategy, a city's initial reliance on diesel buses for the public fleet has to give way to a mixture of these new energy buses; and the fleet mix should be diversified over the region and modified over time to accommodate changes in these energy and environmental parameters. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agricultural woody residues are available in massive quantities and provide a considerable potential for energy production. However, to encourage environmentally sustainable bioenergy strategies, it is necessary to assess the environmental performance of each specific bioenergy chain. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is recognized to be one of the best methodologies to evaluate the environmental burdens of bioenergy chains. The application of LCA to bioenergy from agricultural residues requires practitioners to make choices on how to interpret agricultural residues (i.e. by-products or co-products) and on how to allocate emissions among the different products generated along the bioenergy chain. These are among the most debated issues in the LCA community, given their potentially large influence on final LCA outcomes. A uniform consensus on these issues is still lacking, and no single method is equally suitable for all solutions. The aim of this paper is to assess how different ways of agricultural residue interpretation and different allocation methods (both of upstream and downstream emissions), affect the environmental performance of bioenergy production fed by agricultural residues. In order to address the issue, we perform a full attributional LCA of the electricity production in a combustion combined heat and power plant (CHP) fed with woody residues from apple orchards (AWRs), as a case study. Bioelectricity production from CHP fed with agricultural residues is a good example of a multifunctional process, since multiple products (e.g. grain, fruit, straw, wood, etc.) and energy (e.g. heat and power) are co-produced along the whole chain. We solve the bioenergy system into two different ways, depending on the interpretation of AWRs as by-products or co-products, and we apply different allocation methods, partitioning the impacts according to different features of the co-products (mass, energy, exergy and economic value). The study focuses on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cumulative energy demand, but other impact categories are investigated as well. The environmental impacts from two conventional fossil fuel systems are used to benchmark the environmental performance of the agricultural bio-energy chain. Our results show how different allocations, and especially allocation choices on upstream processes, can turn a benefit (i.e. a positive saving) to a disadvantage (i.e. an increased impact) and vice versa. Indeed, when AWRs are interpreted as a by-product or when upstream emissions are allocated on an economic base, the bioenergy chain guarantees significant GHG saving (up to 97%), primary energy demand reduction (up to 97%) and lower environmental impacts compared to the Italian non-renewable electricity grid mix. But, in the case of mass allocation of upstream emissions, the savings of GHG emissions and energy requirements drop to only 53% and 56%, respectively, and the figures of the bioenergy systems are similar or even worse than the fossil reference system for the majority of the other impact categories. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Western Canada is endowed with considerable reserves of deep un-mineable coal, which can be converted to syngas by means of a gasification process called underground coal gasification (UCG). The syngas can be transformed into hydrogen (H-2) through commercially available technologies employed in conventional fossil-fuel based H-2 production pathways. This paper presents a data-intensive model to evaluate life cycle GHG emissions in H-2 production from UCG with and without CCS. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) was considered as a sequestration method and included in the LCA. The life cycle GHG emissions are calculated to be 0.91 and 18.00 kg-CO2-eq/kg-H-2 in H-2 production from UCG with and without CCS, respectively. In addition, a detailed analysis of the influence of key UCG parameters, i.e., H2O-to-O-2 injection ratio, ground water influx, and steam-to-carbon ratio in syngas conversion, is completed on the results. The advantage of adopting UCG-CCS technology for H-2 production is realized over the predominant steam methane reforming (SMR) process; around 15.3 million tonnes of GHG emissions can be mitigated to achieve the projected SCO production rate from the bitumen upgrading in 2022. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis showed that the life cycle GHG emissions is sensitive to the heat exchanger efficiency and the separation efficiency of the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit, with increasing values of these parameters causing an increase and a decrease in the magnitude of life cycle GHG emissions, respectively. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an economic outlook of the ethanol industry in Brazil considering different biomass feedstocks and different industrial processing options. A spreadsheet model was designed to account for different feedstocks and industrial processes, and expected trends in biomass yield, sugar- and fibre content, industrial scale and efficiency. Sugarcane and energycane cultivation costs may be reduced from 35 US$(2010)/TC in 2010 to 27 US$(2010)/TC and 22 US$(2010)/TC in 2030 respectively. Eucalyptus and elephant grass cultivation costs could be reduced from 32 to 23 US$(2010)/tonne wet and 38 to 26 US$(2010)/tonne wet for eucalyptus and elephant grass. Total ethanol production costs of first generation processing may decrease from 700 US$(2010)/1113 in 2010, to 432 US$(2010)/m(3) in 2030. First generation ethanol production costs may decrease by reduced feedstock costs, increase in sugar content, utilization of cane trash, and use of sweet sorghum. Furthermore, the improvement in industrial efficiency of the first generation process, increasing industrial scale and change to an improved technology are other measures. For second generation technology utilizing eucalyptus, the total ethanol production costs could be strongly reduced to 424 US$(2010)/m(3) in 2030. Costs reduction measures for second generation industrial processing include reduced feedstock costs, increasing industrial efficiency and scale, and a change to more advanced industrial process. Overall, biomass yield, increase in sugar content of sugarcane, and improved industrial efficiency are important parameters in total ethanol production costs. Ongoing RD&D effort and commercialization of second generation industrial processing may result in the lowest ethanol production costs for second generation processing in the future. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The utilization of crop residues in the production of second-generation biofuels has the potential to boost the bioenergy sector without affecting food commodity prices. However, policies leading to large-scale biomass removal should carefully balance the consequences, both environmental and in terms of emissions, on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks depletion. Using a recently developed simulation platform, SOC changes were estimated at European level (EU + candidate and potential candidate countries) under two scenarios of low (R30) and high (R90) maize stover removal for cellulosic ethanol production (i.e. 30 and 90 % of stover removal, respectively). Additionally, mitigation practices for SOC preservation, namely the introduction of a ryegrass cover crop (R90_C) and biodigestate return to soil (R90_B), were explored under the highest rate of stover removal. The results showed that 15.3 to 50.6 Mt year(-1) of stover (dry matter) would be potentially available for ethanol production under the lower and high removal rates considered. However, large-scale exploitation of maize residues will lead to a SOC depletion corresponding to 39.7-135.4 Mt CO2 eq. by 2020 (under R30 and R90, respectively) with greater losses in the long term. In particular, every tonne of C residue converted to bioethanol was predicted to have an additional impact on SOC loss almost ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 CO2 eq. ha(-1) year(-1), considering a continuous biofuel scenario by 2050. The mitigation practices evaluated could more than halve SOC losses compared to R90, but not totally offsetting the negative soil C balance. There is a pressing need to design policies at EU level for optimum maize biofuel cultivations that will preserve the current SOC stock or even generate C credits.This work investigates the potential for polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) production from wastewater, from a techno-economic and an environmental perspective, examining scale-up opportunities and bottlenecks prior to commercialisation. Conceptual process design, economic, environmental impacts and sensitivity analysis are developed for one fermentation process and three downstream processing routes, based on alkali, surfactant-hypochlorite and solvent treatments. Environmentally and cost-wise, the alkali treatment is the most favourable with production costs of 1.40 (sic)/kg PHB, global warming potential of 2.4 kg CO2-eq/kg PHB and non-renewable energy use of 106 MJ/kg PHB. The solvent-based process yields the highest costs and environmental burdens: 1.95 (sic)/kg PHB, 4.30 kg CO2-eq/kg PHB and 156 MJ/kg PHB. The production of PHB from wastewater is identified as an interesting alternative to pure culture-polyhydroxyalkanoates production from sugars. However, these results are not yet competitive with those for the petrochemical counterparts. Additional performance improvements may be possible, through process integration and optimisation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The life cycle assessment (LCA) method is a powerful tool that can serve to aid decision making regarding the environmental benefits of refurbishment projects. However, due to the relative complexity of LCA studies, simplified LCA methodologies are frequently used, focusing on just some of the building life cycle phases or a reduced number of indicators. The most common and widespread simplification is to only evaluate the differences a refurbishment project makes on the operational energy use of the building. This paper compares the results of applying full LCA, simplified LCA and operational energy use assessment in a refurbishment case study. Results show that simplified LCA methodologies including building use phase and product manufacturing phase can generally be sufficiently accurate to aid decision making for building energy refurbishment, as other building life cycle phases related to transport of products, on site construction, deconstruction or end of life represent a generally negligible part of the total life cycle impacts, both in terms of resource use or environmental impacts. Barriers and benefits of applying simplified LCA approaches to building energy refurbishment projects are subsequently discussed.Over the past decades, the construction sector has focused strongly on reducing operational energy consumption. Other types of environmental impact that occur during the life span of construction works, however, have to be taken into account as well. This case study focuses on developing scenarios to improve the environmental profile of new buildings in the Flemish/Belgian context. The study takes into account current energy regulation and investigates the influence of energy scenarios and building type on the environmental profile. A life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) and a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) were carried out for all scenarios, supplemented by a screening life cycle costing (LCC). The results indicate the importance of the compactness of a building, with the best results identified for the terraced scenario. The results are due to the reduced use of materials and, to a smaller extent, a reduction in energy consumption (smaller exposed surface). The results of the energy scenarios show a discrepancy between the LCEA and LCIA. According to the LCEA, passive scenarios are always preferable, but the LCIA results suggest two ways to reach a similar environmental profile. Firstly, by providing a level of insulation based on current regulations complemented with advanced technical services, and, alternatively, by increasing the level of insulation along with standard services. The results of the LCC show a similar trend to those of the LCIA. The results therefore suggest that there are multiple ways to improve the environmental profile of new buildings. Nevertheless, the choice of impact assessment method can have a strong influence on the results.Because the student residences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel built in 1973 are not adapted to current comfort standards, the university decided to construct new accommodation facilities at the border of the campus. However, besides demolition, there was no strategy on how to deal with the existing ones. In the search for a more sustainable strategy, the university's administration assigned the TRANSFORM research team to define various design strategies and to assess the long-term environmental consequences in order to select the best strategy by the use of Life Cycle Environmental Assessment. Current Life Cycle Environmental Assessments generally include maintenance, repair, replacement and operational energy consumption during use, but do not include future refurbishments. However, it is likely that their impact cannot be neglected either. Therefore, this article offers a framework which takes future refurbishments into account, in addition to the standard use impacts: initial and end-of-life impact. We report on the construction assemblies, the results of the assessments conducted and the advice provided. The results confirm that the impact of future refurbishments cannot be neglected. In addition, we observed that there were significant environmental savings when transforming the residences compared to new construction, and long-term benefits of a design enabling the reuse of building elements.A considerable part of recent EU policies is currently addressed at developing effective measures to support the transition towards a low carbon society according to the principles and goals of Roadmap to 2050. In this general framework the links between the development of low-emission strategies and climate-resilient approaches to buildings play a key role. As most part of the existing building stock was built before the 1980s, retrofit and renovation actions are widely investigated. Despite progress in this field, relatively little attention has been given to the connections between the achievable energy savings and the energy investment needed to pursue the renovation process and to how technological choices can impact on the energy balance according to a multi-criteria perspective. The paper will explore how different technologies and design solutions to building envelopes cladding contribute to the reduction of the heat gains in urban environments and how appropriate adaptive strategies can further mitigate against accelerated greenhouse emissions. It will discuss the relationship between individual building performance and consequent effect on external environment. The effects of technological and material choices are evaluated for some design scenarios and conditions in order to develop an indicative impact mode.A major reason for the call to increasingly switch towards polymers based on renewable resources is their presumed advantage regarding ecological performance compared to fossil competitors. Usually, this argument is based on the assumption that products based on renewable sources hold an inherent ecological advantage over products derived from other sources, in particular fossil sources. This claim however must be substantiated by looking into the ecological impacts accrued by the production of a material along the whole life cycle, from the raw material generation to the provision of the final product. Only thorough life cycle assessments (LCA) can provide solid, comprehensive and quantifiable information about the ecological performance of products, and thus answer the question of any superiority of bio-polymers regarding their environmental impacts. The paper will review the ongoing discourse about environmental performance of PHA in literature. It will also analyse the most important factors that decide about the ecological performance of PHA derived from different raw materials as well as the potential for improvement that is still available for PHA production.This paper presents the characterization of ashes generated from different incineration processes, such as (a) coupled kilns, (b) conventional kiln, (c) wood, and (d) fly and bottom of Petacalco power plant, in order to set which is the best one for the purification of biogas from landfill. The techniques employed for the characterization were scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy. The ashes from these sources were analysed through their microstructural properties and features such as the efficiency of carbon dioxide reduction due to chemical reaction with the calcium oxide present in the ashes. Calcium carbonate mineral was obtained as a highly stable and insoluble salt. The results indicate that the ash from wood is the most appropriate to reduce the carbon dioxide due to its high calcium content. Dry fly ash from Petacalco power plant has the ability to carry out a process of carbonation according to the samples analyzed. It was noted that elements such as aluminium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium led to the formation of some other mineral species in the ash resulting from incineration processes.Incineration has become an attractive option for municipal solid waste (MSW) management, due to its several benefits. In fact, it allows volume and mass reduction of waste and energy recovery from MSW combustion. Nevertheless, MSW incineration (MSWI) produces three main types of residues: bottom ash (BA), fly ash (FA) and air pollution control (APC) residues, which require an adequate handling. BA is the most significant by-product from MSWI and is generally considered as non-hazardous waste. Instead, FAs are included as hazardous wastes because are characterised by high content of chlorides, heavy metals and organic compounds. The aim of this paper was to examine the characteristics of MSWI solid residues, the management and reuse of these wastes and their environmental assessment from a life cycle perspective. It was noted that the main components that make up the residues are lead and zinc as well as oxides, mainly CaO, SiO2 and Al2O3. Furthermore, it is necessary to take into account the presence of PCDD/F which characterised FA and APC residues, mainly due to chlorine content. Chemical and physical properties of those residues make possible their reuse as construction material, as adsorbent, as well as in geotechnical and agricultural applications. Nevertheless, several studies have demonstrated that a drawback of the reuse of MSWI residues is the existence of heavy metals in elevated concentrations which may affect the environmental quality. In this regard, many studies were aimed to assess the environmental impact related to the introduction of MSWI residues as secondary material in several fields of application.The conversion of microalgae lipids and cyanobacteria carbohydrates into biofuels appears to be a promising source of renewable energy. This requires a thorough understanding of their carbon metabolism, supported by mathematical models, in order to optimize biofuel production. However, unlike heterotrophic microorganisms that utilize the same substrate as sources of energy and carbon, photoautotrophic microorganisms require light for energy and CO2 as carbon source. Furthermore, they are submitted to permanent fluctuating light environments due to outdoor cultivation or mixing inducing a flashing effect. Although, modeling these nonstandard organisms is a major challenge for which classical tools are often inadequate, this step remains a prerequisite towards efficient optimization of outdoor biofuel production at an industrial scale.Two major environmental issues, air quality and climate change, are interlinked because of their large dependence on atmospheric emissions from human activities, especially from the burning of fossil fuels. Emission of air pollutants and heat trapping gases have greatly increased over the last five decades from our dependence throughout the world on conventional fossil fuel sources in production of electricity and in transportation systems, resulting in significant environmental issues with air quality and climate change throughout our planet. Future emissions of pollutants will depend on the choices made about our use of energy and transportation. The purpose of this study is to examine for now and into the future the relationship between energy production, the associated use of fossil fuels, and resulting effects on air pollution. In the process, we examine a clean energy future, imagined in this case for 2050, and then consider the resulting potential effects on air quality.Environmental assessment of municipal solid waste (MSW) management scenarios would help to select eco-friendly scenarios. In this study, the inventory data in support of life cycle assessment of different MSW are presented. The scenarios were defined as: anaerobic digestion (AD, Sc-0), landfilling combined with composting (Sc-1), incineration (Sc-2), incineration combined with composting (Sc-3), and AD combined with incineration (Sc-4). The current article contains flowcharts of the different scenarios. Additionally, six supplementary files including inventory data on the different scenarios, data on the different damage assessment categories, normalization, and single scores are presented (Supplement aly files 1-5). The analysis of the different scenarios revealed that the most eco-friendly scenario to be implemented in the future would be the combination of AD and incineration (Sc-4). (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.The production of biogas from six agricultural crops was analysed regarding energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) performance for vehicle fuel from a field-to-tank perspective, with focus on critical parameters and on calculation methods. The energy efficiency varied from 35% to 44%, expressed as primary energy input per energy unit vehicle gas produced. The GHG reduction varied from 70% to 120%, compared with fossil liquid fuels, when the GHG credit of the digestate produced was included through system expansion according to the calculation methodology in the ISO 14044 standard of life cycle assessment. Ley crop-based biogas systems led to the highest GHG reduction, due to the significant soil carbon accumulation, followed by maize, wheat, hemp, triticale and sugar beet. Critical parameters are biogenic nitrous oxide emissions from crop cultivation, for which specific emission factors for digestate are missing today, and methane leakage from biogas production. The GHG benefits were reduced and the interrelation between the crops changed, when the GHG calculations were instead based on the methodology stated in the EU Renewable Energy Directive, where crop contribution to soil carbon accumulation is disregarded. All systems could still reach a 60% GHG reduction, due to the improved agricultural management when digestate replaces mineral fertilisers.Remanufacturing used, end-of-life products is a complex problem involving multiple types of products that may share common parts. Recovery targets assigned by market demand and environmental legislation add more difficulty to the problem. Manufacturers now need to achieve specified take-back and recovery rates while fulfilling demands for remanufactured products. To assists in the demand-and legislation-driven remanufacturing of a family of products (i.e., multiple products that share common parts), this paper introduces a bi-objective mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for optimizing remanufacturing. The model identifies optimal remanufacturing plans for a product family, whereby, the remanufacturer can achieve demand and recovery targets more profitably and in an environmentally-friendly manner. The model can also be used to quantify and justify the economic and environmental benefits of a product family from a remanufacturing perspective. A case study is presented for remanufacturing an alternator-family of products.The work arises from the consideration that the environmental impact of a road cannot be limited to the analysis of its constituent materials, even if correctly analyzed in their life cycle. In fact, a given road not only consists of the pavement and subgrade, but also includes several different components and accessories (e.g., road marking, drainages, safety barriers, etc.) that contribute to set a road infrastructure in operative condition. As a matter of fact, only limited attention has been paid in the scientific literature to roadside components, unlike pavement and traffic flow. In the present work, the environmental burden of one of these components, i.e., the safety barrier has been investigated using the LCA methodology and critically compared with that exerted by pavement and traffic flow, in order to establish their relative contributions. To accomplish this task, an application referring to a segment of a typical Italian highway is proposed. This case study seems to confirm that the environmental burden of the guardrail cannot be neglected, because it is often even numerically comparable with that of the pavements. This paper concludes that, in order to obtain a more comprehensive environmental evaluation, this type of analysis should be extended to this component and also to all of the other components and activities that make a road transportation system ready to be used. Such an integrated approach may be useful for administrations to better comply with the current sustainability standards and guidelines.The aim of this paper is to propose guidelines for the selection of an accurate life cycle assessment (LCA) dataset of building products to be used as generic data for a national context. The guidelines are structured within a methodology, called NativeLCA. First, a review of available datasets for construction products is presented such as generic LCA and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) databases for both national (e.g. France, Germany, Spain etc.) and European context. Secondly, a method is proposed to choose appropriate generic datasets by means of a hybrid methodology. A meta-analysis is conducted in the first step on the sample of collected datasets from the literature. When relevant, product-specific data (EPD of the different producers) are averaged to represent an average data or existing generic data are adapted to be more suitable for the context. Then, a data quality assessment enables to rank the different datasets according to the goal and scope of the study. This study provides consistent guidelines that can be used by building LCA practitioners to select relevant datasets depending on their goal and scope. A full case study for stone wool boards illustrates and demonstrates the applicability and usefulness of the proposed methodology, namely in the selection of a coherent dataset as generic data for a national context. This work highlights the issues in terms of choice and adaptation of existing data for a national context. Industry data cannot be adapted due to confidentiality issues unlike unit process generic data. The use of data quality indicators then helps to select the relevant generic data for each context according to user needs. While further efforts are needed to develop regional and sector-specific LCA databases adapted for each national context, the proposed guidelines showed that the current use or adaptation of existing data, if consistently done, can lead practitioners to increase the reliability of building LCA studies according to their goal and scope definition.Pesticides are applied to agricultural fields to optimise crop yield and their global use is substantial. Their consideration in life cycle assessment (LCA) is affected by important inconsistencies between the emission inventory and impact assessment phases of LCA. A clear definition of the delineation between the product system model (life cycle inventory-LCI, technosphere) and the natural environment (life cycle impact assessment-LCIA, ecosphere) is missing and could be established via consensus building. A workshop held in 2013 in Glasgow, UK, had the goal of establishing consensus and creating clear guidelines in the following topics: (1) boundary between emission inventory and impact characterisation model, (2) spatial dimensions and the time periods assumed for the application of substances to open agricultural fields or in greenhouses and (3) emissions to the natural environment and their potential impacts. More than 30 specialists in agrifood LCI, LCIA, risk assessment and ecotoxicology, representing industry, government and academia from 15 countries and four continents, met to discuss and reach consensus. The resulting guidelines target LCA practitioners, data (base) and characterisation method developers, and decision makers. The focus was on defining a clear interface between LCI and LCIA, capable of supporting any goal and scope requirements while avoiding double counting or exclusion of important emission flows/impacts. Consensus was reached accordingly on distinct sets of recommendations for LCI and LCIA, respectively, recommending, for example, that buffer zones should be considered as part of the crop production system and the change in yield be considered. While the spatial dimensions of the field were not fixed, the temporal boundary between dynamic LCI fate modelling and steady-state LCIA fate modelling needs to be defined. For pesticide application, the inventory should report pesticide identification, crop, mass applied per active ingredient, application method or formulation type, presence of buffer zones, location/country, application time before harvest and crop growth stage during application, adherence with Good Agricultural Practice, and whether the field is considered part of the technosphere or the ecosphere. Additionally, emission fractions to environmental media on-field and off-field should be reported. For LCIA, the directly concerned impact categories and a list of relevant fate and exposure processes were identified. Next steps were identified: (1) establishing default emission fractions to environmental media for integration into LCI databases and (2) interaction among impact model developers to extend current methods with new elements/processes mentioned in the recommendations.Although, according to the ISO 14044 standard, economic allocation should be the solution of last resort, it is frequently used in LCA studies of agri-food systems because of the inadequacy of solutions preferred by ISO. We propose a new way of allocating impacts to plant co-products according to the underlying physical relationships between the co-products. We compare this method to two current allocation methods. (i) We surveyed 24 LCA studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals and scientific reports for the 2000-2013 period that attributed impacts to plant co-products used as animal feed to establish the prevalence of allocation methods in recent LCA studies. (ii) We calculated allocation factors for 21 plant co-products used as ingredients for animal feeds according to three methods: energy allocation based on lower heating values (En), economic allocation based on average prices for a 5-year period (Ec), and allocation based on plant physiological construction cost of plant compounds (Cc). (i) In the studies surveyed, Ec was used in 19 out of 24 cases. En was used in three studies, system expansion and mass allocation were used in two studies, while nitrogen content was used in one study. (ii) Compared to En and Ec, Cc yielded higher allocation factors for protein-rich co-products and lower factors for lipids. Whereas the difference between En and Cc was modest (up to 5 percentage points), the difference between Ec and Cc was more variable and sometimes large (up to 18 percentage points). Although, according to the ISO 14044 standard, Ec should be the solution of last resort, it is frequently used in LCA studies of agri-food systems because of the inadequacy of solutions preferred by ISO. For plant co-products, Cc is an attractive option, as it is based on the physiological mechanisms involved in plant growth rather than on a common property of the co-products.Excess phosphorus from fertilizer application and mobilised soil phosphorus from erosion are partially lost to the aquatic environment where they might cause eutrophication. Phosphorus emissions vary spatially and it is the goal of this study to broaden the scope of the existing inventory to the global scale and to increase the spatial resolution by accounting for relevant environmental processes. Phosphorus emissions were estimated globally at a resolution of 5 arc-minutes for 169 crops. Two models were coupled for that purpose. First, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) model was used to determine soil erosion which is the dominant process inducing phosphorus emissions. Second, the Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Analysis (SALCA) model was applied to estimate the phosphorus emissions from four different processes with erosion being one of them. The emissions as inventory were compared to the ecoinvent database and subsequently translated into environmental impacts on biodiversity via characterisation factors. Additionally, sensitivity and contribution to variance analyses were carried out. Our results suggest that the data in the ecoinvent database, which is widely used for life cycle assessments, underestimate phosphorus emissions by up to an order of magnitude. Furthermore, the contribution to variance analysis highlighted the importance of regionalising both, inventory results and characterisation factors. Since the ecoinvent database provides a poor representation of global conditions, we highly recommend using regionalised estimates of phosphorus emissions provided in this study.The rapid increase in production and usage of fluorescent lamps (FLs) has brought with it a rising concern about potential mercury risk from both FL production and disposal at the end-of-life (EoL) stage. Thus, there is an urgent need for the environmentally sound management of FLs. In order to provide useful information for the development of effective management tools, this study used the life cycle assessment methodology to investigate the environmental performance of FLs in China. This work compares the environmental performance of two types of FLs, linear (LFLs) and compact (CFLs), using the modular life cycle assessment (LCA) based on the international standards of the ISO 14040 series. The operational data applied to the inventory analysis and combined with the information in the Ecoinvent 3.0 databases was obtained by interviews with a local FL manufacturer and a licensed waste FL treatment facility. Results suggest that the chosen linear FL has a lower environmental impact than the compact one. The use stage accounted for the majority (> 94 %) of total environmental impacts, followed by the manufacturing stage. The ballast component was the largest contributor to the environmental impact of CFLs and largely accounted for the difference between CFLs and LFLs in the manufacturing stage. The end-of-life stage can be a benefit to the environment when waste FLs are processed through the proper, licensed disposal enterprises in China. Electricity consumption accounts for more than 94 % of the environmental impact of FLs over their entire life cycle. This can be reduced by 19 % when the electricity used is changed from the Beijing mix to the China mix. Results of the life cycle assessment can be used to compare relative environmental impacts of different waste FL treatment technologies and can help policy makers better understand the urgency of the issues calling for their attention.The study objectives are twofold: (i) combining the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework and the multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology for sustainability assessment and (ii) determining the most sustainable scenario for bioethanol production in China according to the preferences of the decision-makers/stakeholders. Life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), and social life cycle assessment (SLCA) are combined to collect the corresponding criteria data on environmental, economic, and social aspects, respectively. The study develops a novel SLCA method for quantifying the social criteria. The decision-makers/stakeholders can use linguistic terms to assess these criteria, and fuzzy theory is used to transform the linguistic variables into real numbers. Once the sustainability assessment criteria are determined, the study develops an MCDM method that combines the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the VIKOR method to prioritize the alternatives. The AHP is used to determine the criteria weights that are a prerequisite when using VIKOR; the VIKOR method is then used to determine the sustainability sequence of the scenarios. The study's proposed method investigates an illustrative case about three alternative bioethanol production scenarios (wheat-based, corn-based, and cassava-based): The prior sequence (based on the sustainability performances) in descending order is cassava-based, corn-based, and wheat-based. The proposed methodology results allow Chinese decision-makers/stakeholders to select the most sustainable scenario among many alternatives. The proposed methodology is generic, meaning that further alternatives can be studied and the most sustainable option can be ultimately determined. The main study contribution is to test the combination of an MCDM methodology and LCSA for sustainability decision-making by studying three alternative pathways for bioethanol production in China. The proposed method feasibly enables the decision-makers/stakeholders to find the most sustainable scenario to achieve their objectives among various alternatives.Electric vehicles (EVs) are promoted due to their potential for reducing fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA) between different technologies should account for variation in the scenarios under which vehicles are operated in order to facilitate decision-making regarding the adoption and promotion of EVs. In this study, we compare life-cycle GHG emissions, in terms of CO(2)eq, of EVs and conventional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) over a wide range of use-phase scenarios in the USA, aiming to identify the vehicles with lower GHG emissions and the key uncertainties regarding this impact. An LCA model is used to propagate the uncertainty in the use phase into the greenhouse gas emissions of different powertrains available today for compact and midsize vehicles in the US market. Monte Carlo simulation is used to explore the parameter space and gather statistics about GHG emissions of those powertrains. Spearman's partial rank correlation coefficient is used to assess the level of contribution of each input parameter to the variance of GHG intensity. Within the scenario space under study, battery electric vehicles are more likely to have the lowest GHG emissions when compared with other powertrains. The main drivers of variation in the GHG impact are driver aggressiveness (for all vehicles), charging location (for EVs), and fuel economy (for ICEVs). The probabilistic approach developed and applied in this study enables an understanding of the overall variation in GHG footprint for different technologies currently available in the US market and can be used for a comparative assessment. Results identify the main drivers of variation and shed light on scenarios under which the adoption of current EVs can be environmentally beneficial from a GHG emissions standpoint.This paper presents significant empirical evidence on the relationship between Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) practices and sustainable environmental initiatives with the manufacturing capabilities of automotive SMEs in Malaysia. A cross-sectional survey is adopted in this study, which involves 83 Malaysian automotive SMEs. Two hypotheses are proposed in this study, i.e. Hypothesis 1: There are positive effects of AMT practices on the manufacturing capabilities of SMEs and Hypothesis 2: There are positive effects of sustainable environmental initiatives on the manufacturing capabilities of SMEs. The results obtained from the pairwise correlation analysis indicate that both AMT practices and sustainable environmental initiatives have positive effects on manufacturing capabilities, which support both hypotheses. In addition, it is found that 50% of the SMEs implement AMT for flexibility and cost reduction in the past five years. It is also found that more than 80% sustainable practices are adopted in most of the SMEs with the exception of Life Cycle Assessment. Based on the findings, there is a need to move forward into the hybrid approach, which will consider both AMT practices and environmental initiatives to ensure that SMEs remain competitive and become the world player in the automotive industry.Melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF) resin is commonly used in the production of wood-based panels. It can replace urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin particularly to improve wood panel properties under high humidity conditions. This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) study of the production of MUF resin through a case study conducted in Brazil. The assessment of 1 kg of MUF resin included two main stages: raw material supply and MUF resin manufacturing. A detailed inventory of MUF resin was obtained from technical visits to a Brazilian producer (foreground system), as well as from literature reviews (mainly background systems). The potential environmental impact assessment phase was assessed by applying two methods and seven impact categories: CML (abiotic depletion, acidification, global warming, eutrophication and photochemical oxidation) and USEtox (ecotoxicity and human toxicity). The raw material supply stage was responsible for most of the impacts, except for the toxicological impact categories. Nearly all of the raw material supply hotspots are related to the production of melamine (9-61% of impacts) and urea (3-72% of impacts). The MUF manufacturing stage was significantly more important for ecotoxicity (84% of impacts) and human toxicity (72% of impacts) due to local formaldehyde emissions. Improvement scenarios were developed and the addition of up to 10% of melamine was suggested for the production of MUF resins. MUF resin was compared with UF resin and the results showed that MUF can replace UF resin because of its lower contribution to photochemical oxidation, ecotoxicity and human toxicity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article aims to analyze sustainable strategies by assessing the environmental performance of a wardrobe built from medium density particleboard. For this, the Life cycle assessment technique was used. The product life cycle studied was a cradle-to-gate type, including three main stages: raw materials supply, wardrobe manufacturing and distribution of the wardrobe. The functional unit was 40 kg of stored goods/5 years and the reference flow was one wardrobe unit. The LCA modeling process was undertaken using the GaBi software, Professional 4.4 version based on attributional modeling and the EDIP-97 method. The life cycle assessment results indicated that the most significant environmental impacts occur at the stages of raw materials supply and the distribution of the wardrobe, and the most relevant impact categories were human toxicity, global warming and acidification, totaling 68.0% of the overall life cycle impacts. Based on this results and a literature review of life cycle assessment studies of furniture products, two sustainable strategies were presented: to optimize transport system and the use of alternatives raw materials during the manufacturing of medium density particleboard. In addition, three scenarios for the production of the medium density particleboard were analyzed with focus on using recycled wood as raw material instead of virgin wood. The results showed that use of 100% wood waste was more sustainable because there was a global minimization of potential impacts. These conclusions can assist furniture and the wood-based panel industries in improving their environmental profile and encourage research about alternative options to promote cleaner production of furniture components in a life cycle perspective. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The importance of animal production in the overall context of human activity is undisputed and influences food supply, job security, income producing, as well as landscape and local ecosystems conservation. This relevance enhances the charges by society as the environmental impacts of various activities, especially in relation to ruminant production amid the current problems of climate changes. In this context, we analyzed the main environmental impacts of two typical beef cattle production systems from southern Brazil, namely the extensive system (ES) and the improved system (IS), and identified the components that have the greatest environmental impacts using the life cycle assessment method. The basis of the system construction was a cattle herd that originated from 100 weaned heifers, four weaned calves, and the progeny of these cattle during their productive life (12 years), and the land areas, external inputs, and other natural resources and technologies necessary to the operations. The functional unit was the production of 1 kg of live weight. The values of greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and freshwater depletion in the ES were higher compared with those values obtained for the IS (22.52 and 9.16 kg CO2 equivalents; 234.78 and 21.03 m(2)a; and 0.217 and 0.0949 m(3), respectively). These variations were attributed to the permanence time of the animals in each system and to the quality and production of the pastures. The ES presented lower potential impacts than the IS on metal depletion and soil acidification (0.000519 and 0.0536 kg Fe equivalents; and 0.0028 and 0.0038 kg SO2 equivalents, respectively) mainly due to the pasture improvement practices and the salt supply to the animals. Moreover, the values of freshwater eutrophication and fossil depletion were higher in the ES than in the IS (0.00383 and 0.00219 kg P equivalents and 0.0042 and 0.1255 kg oil equivalents, respectively). While the pasture nutrient loss from runoff and leaching defined the values of eutrophication, the introduction of legumes compensates the use of fossil fuels. The diversity of the results provides a better understanding of the environmental impacts of different production systems and of regional singularities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Large hydropower project (LHP) is now the most important renewable and low-carbon source for electricity generation, carbon footprint calculation is crucial for it. We established an embodied carbon budget accounting system for LHP to calculate its actual carbon footprint. In additional to traditional carbon emission from plant construction, the accounting system included two new items in the carbon footprint of a hydropower project: carbon reductions due to the provision of extra services, and carbon emissions due to the decrease in adjacent ecosystem services. We classified these three items into main products and by-products for LHP in its lifecycle, formed a carbon footprint inventory, then quantified the direct and indirect emissions and reductions embodied in these products. This approach leads to a relatively complete carbon footprint assessment. According to this approach, embodied carbon emissions and reductions for the Zhikong hydropower project (Tibet, China) were 3.98 x 10(12) and 6.89 x 10(9) g CO2 equivalents (CO2-e), respectively. Therefore, the total carbon footprint is 3.97 x 10(12) g CO2-e, equivalent to a carbon emission intensity of 195 g CO2-e kWh(-1). This is 111.17% higher than the traditional carbon footprint for this project. The results indicate that the low-carbon status of LHP may be overestimated at present, and could help in preventing the blind enthusiasm on LHP in low-carbon energy choice. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For many companies, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with their purchased and consumed electricity form one of the largest contributions to the GHG emissions that result from their activities. Currently, hourly variations in electricity grid emissions are not considered by standard GHG accounting protocols, which apply a national grid emission factor (EF), potentially resulting in erred estimates for the GHG emissions. In this study, a method is developed that calculates GHG emissions based on real-time data, and it is shown that the use of hourly electricity grid EFs can significantly improve the accuracy of the GHG emissions that are attributed to the purchased and consumed electricity of a company. A model analysis for the electricity delivered to the Spanish grid in 2012 reveals that, for companies operating during the day, GHG emissions calculated by the real-time method are estimated to be up to 5% higher (and in some special cases up to 9% higher) than the emissions calculated by the conventional method in which a national grid EF is applied, whereas for companies operating during nightly hours, GHG emissions are estimated to be as low as 3% below the GHG emissions determined by the conventional method. A significant error can therefore occur in the organizational carbon footprint (CF) of a company and, consequently, also in the product CF. It is recommended that hourly EFs be developed for other countries and power grids.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the most popular methods of technical-environmental assessment for informing environmental policies, as, for instance, in municipal solid waste (MSW) management. Because MSW management involves many stakeholders with possibly conflicting interests, the implementation of an LCA-based policy can, however, be blocked or delayed. A stakeholder assessment of future scenarios helps identify conflicting interests and anticipate barriers of sustainable MSW management systems. This article presents such an approach for Swiss waste glass-packaging disposal, currently undergoing a policy review. In an online survey, stakeholders (N=85) were asked to assess disposal scenarios showing different LCA-based eco-efficiencies with respect to their desirability and probability of occurrence. Scenarios with higher eco-efficiency than the current system are more desirable and considered more probable than those with lower eco-efficiency. A combination of inland recycling and downcycling to foam glass (insulation material) in Switzerland is desired by all stakeholders and is more eco-efficient than the current system. In contrast, institutions of MSW management, such as national and regional environmental protection agencies, judge a scenario in which nearly all cullet would be recycled in the only Swiss glass-packaging factory as more desirable than supply and demand stakeholders of waste glass-packaging. Such a scenario involves a monopsony rejected by many municipalities and scrap traders. Such an assessment procedure can provide vital information guiding the formulation of environmental policies.This paper focuses on urban passenger transport eco-efficiency, which can be defined as the production of maximum benefits to society while minimising environmental impacts from urban transport's inputs of energy and materials. Researchers have intensively studied transport's varied environmental impacts, particularly through Life Cycle Assessment; this paper argues that primary transport energy per capita is presently the best measure of impact. Although transport's societal benefits have generally been regarded as self-evident, access to out-of-home activities, not passenger-km, should be considered as the fundamental useful output of an urban transport system, since transport is a derived demand. We argue that access levels are roughly similar in all high-income OECD cities, so that these cities can be ranked on transport eco-efficiency simply on the basis of per capita primary transport energy.Growing populations and a constrained fossil-manufactured energy supply present a major challenge for society and there is a real need to develop forms of agriculture that are less dependent on finite energy sources. It has been suggested that organic agriculture can provide a more energy efficient approach due to its focus on sustainable production methods. This review has investigated the extent to which this is true for a range of farming systems. Data from about 50 studies were reviewed with results suggesting that organic farming performs better than conventional for nearly all crop types when energy use is expressed on a unit of area basis. Results are more variable per unit of product due to the lower yield for most organic crops. For livestock, ruminant production systems tend to be more energy efficient under organic management due to the production of forage in grass-clover leys. Conversely, organic poultry tend to perform worse in terms of energy use as a result of higher feed conversion ratios and mortality rates compared to conventional fully housed or free-range systems. With regard to energy sources, there is some evidence that organic farms use more renewable energy and have less of an impact on natural ecosystems. Human energy requirements on organic farms are also higher as a result of greater system diversity and manual weed control. Overall this review has found that most organic farming systems are more energy efficient than their conventional counterparts, although there are some notable exceptions.Energy and its usage constitute one of the most important environmental issues nowadays that substantially affect economic and social development and the improvement of the quality of life in all countries. The risk of climate change and environmental degradation is real with the global development process and human intervention being the key components in dictating the nature of environmental problems. Education on energy issues should be the means for helping students cope with present and future energy needs and the adoption of appropriate, attitudes, lifestyle practices and behavior is deemed necessary. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the complex of student's views and attitudes about energy and its usage related to the environment A questionnaire has been used as a research tool most appropriate to these research's goals. The results expose the need for a radical change in patterns of human behavior towards an environmentally sustainable orientation and the dominant role that environmental education possesses in realizing this direction. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Currently, hydrogen is mainly produced through steam reforming of natural gas. However, this conventional process involves environmental and energy security concerns. This has led to the development of alternative technologies for (potentially) green hydrogen production. In this work, the environmental and energy performance of biohydrogen produced in Europe via steam reforming of glycerol and bio-oil is evaluated from a life-cycle perspective, and contrasted with that of conventional hydrogen from steam methane reforming. Glycerol as a by-product from the production of rapeseed biodiesel and bio-oil from the fast pyrolysis of poplar biomass are considered. The processing plants are simulated in Aspen Plus (R) to provide inventory data for the life cycle assessment. The environmental impact potentials evaluated include abiotic depletion, global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, land competition, acidification and eutrophication. Furthermore, the cumulative (total and non-renewable) energy demand is calculated, as well as the corresponding renewability scores and life-cycle energy balances and efficiencies of the biohydrogen products. In addition to quantitative evidence of the (expected) relevance of the feedstock and impact categories considered, results show that poplar-derived bio-oil could be a suitable feedstock for steam reforming, in contrast to first-generation bioglycerol.This paper studies life cycle environmental impacts and costs of the household cooking sector in Nigeria from 2003 to 2030. Five scenarios are considered: business as usual, dominated by fuel wood stoves; low penetration of improved fuel wood and solar stoves, as planned by the government; high penetration of these stoves; increased use of fossil fuel stoves; and increased use of electric stoves. If business as usual (BAU) continues, the environmental impacts would increase by up to four times and costs by up to five times, mainly because of high fuel wood consumption. Implementing the government's plan to introduce improved fuel wood and solar stoves would yield no environmental advantages, as the proposed number of stoves is too low. A higher number of the advanced stoves would lead to significant improvements in some impacts but would worsen others so that some trade-offs are needed. From the economic perspective, the scenario with a high use of advanced stoves has the lowest total costs but its capital costs are three times higher than for BAU. The government should prioritise the introduction of advanced stoves to reduce health impact from indoor pollution and reduce pressures on biomass resources; however, this may require subsidies. Fossil fuel and electric stoves would also help to preserve biomass and reduce health impacts from indoor pollution but would lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and depletion of fossil resources.Purpose: Environmental impact allocation has been noted as one of the life cycle assessment's (LCA) most controversial methodological issues given that it highly influences the study's final result. This paper analyses the appropriateness of available multifunctional modeling methods to distribute environmental loads between pig iron and bfs produced in the steelmaking process, and the influence that modeling choices have on LCA results for different blended cement types commercialized in Brazil. Methods: Allocation by mass and by economic value, as well as system expansion, are examined for ordinary Portland cement and two types of blended cements with higher ggbfs contents as clinker replacement. The support platform used for performing the LCA was SimaPro 7.3, and the impact evaluation method was CML 2001 (baseline). The data for the production processes' modeling came from national and/or local reports; when national data were unavailable, the corresponding processes found in the SimaPro built-in Ecoinvent database were adapted to better represent the Brazilian context. Results and discussion: As expected, impact allocation based on mass induces large impacts on bfs and the environmental loads of blended cements gradually increase with the increased bfs content. A similar trend was observed for economic allocation, except for global warming and terrestrial ecotoxicity, which are particularly sensitive to the allocation procedure choice. In the system expansion approach, impact values in all categories decreased with increased ggbfs content in cement. Conclusion: Impact distribution across products is a legitimate way for an industry to be held accountable only for the true impacts of a given process. Each method presents its advantages and disadvantages. Independently of the criterion chosen, the conceptual limitations of allocation methods are that they do not look beyond impacts partitioning, and awkward ratios between physical characteristics and market value blur the vision and distort results. In our case, the system expansion approach precisely modeled the studied processes, following a complete and conceptually consistent description, which also allows for consideration of potential improvements at whole-system level. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As concern about resource conservation has grown, research efforts have increased to develop materials out of rapidly renewable constituents, to assess their life cycle environmental impacts, and to predict their service-life performance. Assessing time-dependent material property deterioration, often a concern for polymers and their composites, is essential to evaluating the viability of novel materials to serve as lower environmental impact replacements for conventional materials. However, research in methods to combine environmental impacts from production and material deterioration is limited. In this research, a durability-based service-life model was used to assess and incorporate composite deterioration into life cycle environmental impact analyses. The inclusion of composite deterioration under differing temperature and moisture conditions in these analyses typically resulted in higher volumes of material needed to serve the desired function compared to volumes needed to satisfy initial design requirements, leading to a change in environmental impact. While this concept falls in line with the classic definition of material efficiency, namely improving mass yield for materials, the results of the life cycle impact assessment showed with certain process modifications lower environmental impacts could be achieved even in cases where more material was being used. These findings indicate that design decisions must account for application-specific requirements and consider environmental impacts concurrently with material deterioration. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We present a life cycle analysis (LCA) and an environmental impact analysis (EIA) of lead based perovskite solar cells prepared according to the two most successfully reported literature methods that comprise either vapour phase deposition or solution phase deposition. We have developed the inventory for all the components employed for the two different device architectures that resemble respectively a traditional dye sensitised solar cell (DSSC) and an inverted polymer solar cell (OPV). We analyse the impacts from generation of 1 kWh of electricity and assume a lifetime of 1 year in the analysis and further present a sensitivity analysis with the operational lifetime as a basis. We find that the major impact comes from the preparation of the perovskite absorber layer due to the electrical energy required in the manufacture and also make the striking observation that the impact of toxic lead(II)halides is very limited compared to methylammoniumhalides employed. This applies during the raw materials extraction, synthesis of the starting materials and manufacture of the perovskite solar cells and from these points of view the lead based perovskite solar cells do not pose extra concerns when compared to contending solar cell technologies in the cradle-to-gate scenario considered here. The environmental impact of the perovskite solar cells in the operational phase and the decommissioning phase representing a cradle-to-grave analysis is not currently possible and will have to await large scale outdoor demonstration where emission to the environment during the operation and decommissioning phase can be measured. The main conclusion is that in the cradle-to-gate analysis there are no compelling reasons to dismiss lead based perovskites as a solar cell technology. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Incremental biomass losses during the harvest and storage of energy crops decrease the effective crop yield at the biorefinery gate. These losses can affect the environmental performance of biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks by indirectly increasing agricultural inputs per unit of fuel and increasing direct emissions of pollutants during biomass decomposition in storage. In this study, we expand the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET(TM)) model to include parameters for harvest and storage of dry bales, bale silage, and bulk silage and examine the potential impact of the biomass supply chain on energy use and air pollutants from cellulosic ethanol from corn stover, switchgrass, and miscanthus feedstocks. A review of storage methods shows substantial differences in expected losses (4.2 to 16.0 %) and variability. Model results indicate that inclusion of feedstock harvest and storage pathways increases net fossil energy consumption (0.03-0.14 MJ/MJ) and greenhouse gas emissions (2.3-10 g CO(2)e/MJ) from cellulosic ethanol compared to analyses that exclude feedstock losses, depending on the storage scenario selected. Greenhouse gas emissions were highest from bulk ensiled silage and bale silage pathways, driven by direct emissions of greenhouse gasses during storage and material use, respectively. Storage of dry bales indoors or under cover minimizes emissions. This report emphasizes the need to increase the detail of biofuel production models and address areas of great uncertainty in the biomass supply chain, such as biomass decomposition emissions and dry matter losses.The objective of this investigation is to environmentally evaluate three concrete design methods through a Life Cycle Assessment using the methodology of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), from Leiden University, one of the most commonly applied in practice. Included is a novel method for designing recycled aggregate concretes, named Equivalent Mortar Volume. The evaluation is done by comparing certain key life cycle stages of four concretes, two designed through the proposed method and two others designed through widely known methods. These experimentally assessed concretes have equal sets of properties in terms of mechanical resistance, durability, and workability. According to the calculated emission quantities, concretes designed using the novel method show better environmental performance than their counterparts in all of the selected impact categories. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present paper focuses on understanding the relationship between the mixing proportion parameters of self-compacting concrete (SCC) and its environmental impact and thus developing more greener SCC. Three simple indices combining the embodied environmental impacts with engineering properties (such as strength) of SCC are proposed. And 16 SCC mixtures with different compositions are designed to quantitatively evaluate the corresponding environmental impacts of SCC by use of the proposed index. Results indicate the ecological impact index of SCC closely depends on the mixing proportions. The addition of high volume mineral admixtures not only can effectively reduce the e-CO2 and e-resource indices but also decrease thee-energy index. Selecting a reasonable aggregate volume can help decrease the environmental impact of SCC. Employing recycled limestone sand to replace river sand will increase the e-CO2 index and e-energy index of SCC, although it can reduce the e-resource index. Regardless of the mixing proportion parameters, the e-CO2, e-energy and e-resource index of SCC both decrease with the increasing compressive strength for SCCs with a compressive strength ranging from 30 to 60 MPa. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bioenergy and biomaterials from fiber crops are regarded as promising substitutes for conventional ones, considering the growing concern about oil and other non-renewable resources depletion and the environmental impacts of the conventional systems. In this paper, the environmental aspects of fiber crops cultivation and use are reviewed. The analysis was based on the following categories: use of resources, emission of gases, effects on the quality of soil and water and biological and landscape diversity. As bioenergy and biomaterials carriers, fiber crops offer ecological advantages over conventional ones by contributing to carbon sequestration and energy savings, and to the reduction of greenhouse gases and non-renewable resources. However, other environmental outcomes, such as acidifying and eutrophication emissions, may limit the conversion and use of fiber crops. Even so, the low input requirements associated with this class of crops and its phytoremediation aptness for wastewaters or contaminated land, are some of the environmental advantages associated with fiber crops. Crop management options and processing choices can influence the outcomes, but site specific factors should be accurately assessed to evaluate the adequacy between crop and location. Opportunities for improvement are indicated, in order to provide new insights for the future development of these crops in a sustainable agro-industrial framework. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The success of eco-innovations in sustainable supply chains aiming a low-carbon economy is related to a broad range of human critical success factors. Thus, the goal of this research was to analyse how certain human critical success factors are related to specific low-carbon eco-innovation projects in leading companies in Brazil operating in some of the most sustainable supply chains in the country. As a consequence, this study qualitatively analysed three cases of low carbon eco-innovation discussing the necessary human critical success factors (HCSF). The results show that the companies in this study are at different stages of maturity with respect to climate change mitigation practices. It was found that the role of HCSF in the process of developing low-carbon products tends to intensify as corporations respond to advances in climate change mitigation. In organisations adopting a sustainable supply chain perspective (for example, adopting Life Cycle Assessment approach) and with a more evolved response to climate change, the product development process tended to be supported by all of the HCSF in the area of product innovation. In contrast, organisations whose practices for mitigating climate change were in the early stages tended not to show evidence of support from HCSF. This is the first study relating eco-innovation, sustainable supply chain, climate change and cases from leading Brazilian companies. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work describes the lifecycle of wood pallets as they move through the supply chain and compares the environmental impacts of the three predominant pallet management strategies: single-use expendable, reusable buy/sell, and reusable leased pool. The pallet lifecycle is characterized in five phases: raw material sourcing, manufacturing, transportation and use, refurbishing, and end of life (EOL) disposal. Given that the useful life of a pallet and the environmental impacts that are generated during each phase of the pallet lifecycle vary, carbon equivalent emission functions are developed for each of the three pallet management strategies. The loading and handling conditions that pallets are subjected to as they move through the supply chain are considered as these greatly affect their useful life, and therefore have a significant impact on carbon emissions. In addition, an optimization model is developed to explore the effectiveness of blended or mixed pallet management strategies in minimizing carbon equivalent emissions under various loading, handling, and EOL scenarios. The findings suggest that no single pallet management approach is universally preferred in terms of minimizing carbon equivalent emissions. Under different handling, loading, and EOL conditions and different distribution distance requirements, any of the three available pallet management strategies may be preferred, or a combination of strategies may be required to minimize carbon equivalent emissions. This work can support decision making by logisticians and managers as they seek to minimize the carbon footprint of their operations by adopting practices and adapting the models to their specific conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, increased concerns over pollution and greenhouse gas emissions have initiated a wave of policy change in both governmental, industry and non-governmental organisations in order to reduce the overall environmental impact and ensure a sustainable future. The UK Green Building Council for instance has identified construction as one of the most emission-intensive industries, accounting for around 50% of greenhouse gas production in the UK. In this study, a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) technique is used to analyse the plasterboard supply chain; the most commonly used product in the UK construction industry of one of the Europe's leading distributor and contractor of building materials. This study demonstrates how emission 'hotspots' across the lifecycle of products can be identified and analysed using different intervention options in the supply chain in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the plasterboard supply chain, the implementation of cross-docking principles and use of renewable sources of energy in warehousing were determined to be major decarbonzation interventions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Environmental initiatives such as carbon labelling have been suggested as a driver for achieving sustainable production systems of product supply chains. The paper therefore presents a systematic process of developing an environmental labelling framework as an extension of carbon labelling using the fairtrade certification as a platform to facilitate the process. Using the general theoretical constructs of lifecycle assessments, the framework presented provides insight into the formulation of multi-regional supply chains which has been specifically characterised in this paper for the UK-India-Rest of the World supply chain. The environmental labelling process presented in this paper is based on two key principles; Quantitative Principle in Eco-labelling and the Principle of Whole Lifecycle Perspective and it is used to inform two key stakeholder groups in the supply chain: consumers and supply chain partners. For consumers, a consistent way of presenting the environmental label information is presented highlighting the supply chain impacts across the indicators of CO2-eq emissions, water consumption and land use in addition to regional contributions to these impacts from a global supply chain perspective. Additionally, communicating the environmental impacts to supply chain partners provides a decision support to take actions to reduce the overall impacts by identifying processes within the global supply chain that needed prioritisation. Given that fairtrade partnership is based on participatory development and a strict guidelines and standardisation process, it is envisaged that synergies can be derived by integrating environmental labelling with the fairtrade scheme to enhance the environmental sustainability of product supply chains. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present study aimed to identify and compare the carbon footprint associated with polyolefin films (linear low-density polyethylene, high-density polyethylene and polypropylene), with the idea of developing a simple and affordable empirical method to assist the flexible packaging industry, notably small and medium-sized enterprises, in estimating the carbon footprint of different products or of new products at the early stage of development. It was found that the total global warming potential (GWP) of the studied films increased 19-67% during processing when compared with the GWP embodied in plastic resins. This indicated that film production processes greatly contribute to the carbon footprint of plastic films. The relative impact of the film-making process on the total GWP of films is largely a function of plastic type, in particular, its melting point. Printing and lamination processes also contribute significantly to the total GWP of films, with the major factor being electricity use. The constant k was derived to indicate the influences of plastic types and manufacturing processes on the total GWP of films and to help calculate the carbon footprint of polyolefin films for which the production process and weight are known. Moreover, the GWP of each studied film was normalized with respect to film thickness and area. This information would be useful for packaging manufacturers and users to calculate the carbon footprint of multilayer films. The proposed empirical model showed satisfactory results, as the difference was less than 10% when compared with the results obtained from life cycle assessment studies. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Environmental performance (EP) uncertainties span a number of energy technology options, and pose planning risk when the energy system is subject to environmental constraints. This paper presents two approaches to integrating EP uncertainty into the long-term energy planning framework. The methodologies consider stochastic EP metrics across multiple energy technology options, and produce a development strategy that hedges against the risk of exceeding environmental targets. Both methods are compared within a case study Of emission-constrained electricity generation planning in British Columbia, Canada. The analysis provides important insight into model formulation and the interactions with concurrent environmental policy uncertainties. EP risk is found to be particularly important in situations where environmental constraints become increasingly stringent. Model results indicate allocation of a modest risk premium in these situations can provide valuable hedging against EP risk. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, a simplified methodology for the calculation of the balance of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and corresponding saving compared with the fossil reference is presented. The proposed methodology allows the estimation of the anthropogenic GHG emissions of thermochemical biorefineries (net emitted to the atmosphere). In the calculation of the GHG balance, all relevant factors have been identified and analyzed including multiproduction, emissions from biogenic carbon capture and storage (Bio-CCS), co-feeding of fossil fuels (secondary feedstock) and possible carbon storage in biomass-derived products (chemicals). Therefore, it is possible to calculate the balance of GHG emissions of a hypothetical thermochemical biorefinery considering different alternatives of land-use, biomass feedstock, co-feeding of fossil fuels, Bio-CCS incorporation and final use of the products. The comparison of the estimated GHG balance with the corresponding fossil reference for each product is of special relevance in the methodology since it is the parameter used in European regulation for the fulfillment of sustainability criteria in biomass-derived fuels and liquids. The proposed methodology is tested using a previously assessed set of different process concepts of thermochemical biorefineries (techno-economic analysis). The resulting GHG balance and saving are analyzed to identify uncertainties and provide recommendations for future regulation. In all process concepts, the GHG savings are above the minimum requirement of GHG emissions for 2018. In the case of incorporating Bio-CCS, cradle-to-grave negative GHG emissions are obtained. However, in order to assess the role of chemical co-production from biomass, they need to be included in future regulation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.EU targets require nearly zero energy buildings (NZEB) by 2020. However few monitored examples exist of how NZEB has been achieved in practise in individual residential buildings. This paper provides an example of how a low-energy building (built in 2006), has achieved nearly zero energy heating through the addition of a solar domestic hot water and space heating system ("combi system") with a Seasonal Thermal Energy Store (STES). The paper also presents a cumulative life cycle energy and cumulative life cycle carbon analysis for the installation based on the recorded DHW and space heating demand in addition to energy payback periods and net energy ratios. In addition, the carbon and energy analysis is carried out for four other heating system scenarios including hybrid solar thermal/PV systems in order to obtain the optimal system from a carbon efficiency perspective. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study a prospective life cycle assessment of biorefinery system from vetiver leaves was carried out to know the environmental benefits of this system over conventional systems considering the geographical context of India. The composition of vetiver leaves from the experimental analysis revealed that vetiver is rich in cellulose (32.6%), hemicellulose (31.5%) and lignin (17.3%) that could be used as a feed-stock for biorefinery. The comparative life cycle assessment results show that the carbon dioxide emission and fossil oil depletion could be reduced by 95% and 23% respectively in case of standalone bioethanol system, and 99% and 17% respectively in case of bioethanol and furfural system compared to that of conventional petrol and furfural systems. The sensitivity study indicates that the impact could be further reduced if vetiver biomass is used as a source of energy in biorefinery plant instead to the coal. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tomato chlorosis virus (ToCV) is a whitefly-transmitted crinivirus that causes interveinal chlorosis and bronzing on tomato leaves. Although outbreaks of ToCV have been reported in many countries, the virus was not reported in Korea until 2013. To identify weed hosts of ToCV that may serve as virus reservoirs, we analyzed various weeds that were growing together with ToCV-infected tomatoes and viruliferous Bemisia tabaci in a tomato greenhouse. We performed reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis of root samples from 148 samples of 61 species from 24 families of plants grown in the greenhouse to avoid possible ToCV contamination by whiteflies on leaves. Seventeen weed species were identified as ToCV hosts based on RT-PCR results of root samples: Conyza canadensis, Erigeron annuus, Sonchus asper, Youngia japonica, Trigonotis peduncularis, Cardamine flexuosa, Cerastium glomeratum, Stellaria media, Chenopodium album, Ipomoea hederacea, Quamoclit coccinea, Vicia angustifolia var. segetilis, V. tetrasperma, Phytolacca americana, Mazus pumilus, Solanum americanum and S. nigrum. The amplicons obtained by RT-PCR were confirmed as ToCV by sequence analysis. Life cycle analysis of the weeds indicated that each weed could play an important role as a "green bridge" or virus reservoir between tomato cultivation seasons. This is the first report documenting the possible occurrence of ToCV in tomato plants based on weed life cycles.A review of 55 pretreatment and bio-conversion methods for the production of lignocellulose-ethanol was carried out. Bio-conversion studies include enzymatic fermentation, simultaneous saccharffication and fermentation, process modelling, supply chain simulations, Life Cycle Assessment and other experimental studies. A new sustainability indicator labeled Land Footprint, from farm-to-fuel, was introduced. The Land Footprint (LF) results are projected for bio-ethanol derived from stover and switchgrass from U.S., sugarcane bagasse from Brazil and India, and rice husk and straw from China and India. In order to produce 1 million L bio-ethanol, bagasse and rice straw are observed to have the highest potential to be sustainable resources that demand the least amount of agricultural land. The Land Footprints for both countries are 85 ha-yr for bagasse-ethanol and 80 ha-yr for China rice straw-ethanol. The Land Footprints per 1 million bio-ethanol from switchgrass and stover in the U.S. are 140 ha-yr and 366 ha-yr, respectively. Utilizing stover as a feedstock, an estimated LF of 14.7 million ha-yr is required to satisfy up to 50% of U.S.'s year 2022 bio-ethanol mandate. The more efficient switchgrass-ethanol would require 4.4-6.6 million ha-yr agricultural land to meet 40-60% of bio-ethanol demands for year 2022. As the most productive crop per hectare of land, sugarcane bagasse require about 2.4 million ha-yr land to supply sufficient amount of bagasse to meet up to 60% of bio-ethanol national demands. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A universal systems design process is specified, tested in a case study and evaluated. It links English narratives to numbers using a categorical language framework with mathematical mappings taking the place of conjunctions and numbers. The framework is a ring of English narrative words between 1 (option) and 360 (capital); beyond 360 the ring cycles again to 1. English narratives are shown to correspond to the field of fractional numbers. The process can enable the development, presentation and communication of complex narrative policy information among communities of any scale, on a software implementation known as the "ecoputer". The information is more accessible and comprehensive than that in conventional decision support, because: (1) it is expressed in narrative language; and (2) the narratives are expressed as compounds of words within the framework. Hence option generation is made more effective than in conventional decision support processes including multiple criteria decision analysis, life cycle assessment and cost-benefit analysis. The case study is of a participatory workshop in UK bioenergy project objectives and criteria, at which attributes were elicited in environmental, economic and social systems. From the attributes, the framework was used to derive consequences at a range of levels of precision; these are compared with the project objectives and criteria as set out in the Case for Support. The design process is to be supported by a social information manipulation, storage and retrieval system for numeric and verbal narratives attached to the "ecoputer". The "ecoputer" will have an integrated verbal and numeric operating system. Novel design source code language will assist the development of narrative policy. The utility of the program, including in the transition to sustainable development and in applications at both community micro-scale and policy macro-scale, is discussed from public, stakeholder, corporate, Governmental and regulatory perspectives. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electricity generation using renewable energy generation technologies is one of the most practical alternatives for network planners in order to achieve national and international Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. Renewable Distributed Generation (DG) based Hybrid Energy System (HES) is a sustainable solution for serving electricity demand with reduced GHG emissions. A multi-objective optimisation technique for minimising cost, GHG emissions and generation uncertainty has been proposed in this paper to design HES for sustainable power generation and distribution system planning while considering economic and environmental issues and uncertainty in power availability of renewable resources. Life cycle assessment has been carried out to estimate the global warming potential of the embodied GHG emissions from the electricity generation technologies. The uncertainty in the availability of renewable resources is modelled using the method of moments. A design procedure for building sustainable HES has been presented and the sensitivity analysis is conducted for determining the optimal solution set. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The replacement of diesel by biofuels is considered unrealistic because of the land used to produce their feedstock. One appointed solution is the use of algae which have higher productivity per unit area when compared with other feedstocks. In light of this, the total area, including water and land required for the European Union (EU), the United States (US), and Brazil was determined using international policies and targets, the present and future diesel demand, the current biodiesel production (released by international organizations), and specific data of algae productivity from the literature. GIS software was used to locate possible cities where algae cultivation could occur nearby. Bearings on the availability of area (flat and unoccupied zones), favourable climate, proximity to the process inputs (such as nutrients (preferably from municipal waste water treatment), CO2 and water sources) and political boundaries were used as assessment criteria. It was possible to identify seven suitable cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants in the EU, two in the USA and thirteen in Brazil. It was also shown that it is possible to attain targets required by current policies and replace diesel with algae-derived diesel based on attainable cultivation areas. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industrial ecology has revolutionized our understanding of material stocks and flows in our economy and society. For this important discipline to have even deeper impact, we must understand the inherent nature of these materials in terms of human health and the environment. This paper focuses on methods to design synthetic chemicals to reduce their intrinsic ability to cause adverse consequence to the biosphere. Advances in the fields of computational chemistry and molecular toxicology in recent decades allow the development of predictive models that inform the design of molecules with reduced potential to be toxic to humans or the environment. The approach presented herein builds on the important work in quantitative structure-activity relationships by linking toxicological and chemical mechanistic insights to the identification of critical physical-chemical properties needed to be modified. This in silico approach yields design guidelines using boundary values for physiochemical properties. Acute aquatic toxicity serves as a model endpoint in this study. Defining value ranges for properties related to bioavailability and reactivity eliminates 99% of the chemicals in the highest concern for acute aquatic toxicity category. This approach and its future implementations are expected to yield very powerful tools for life cycle assessment practitioners and molecular designers that allow rapid assessment of multiple environmental and human health endpoints and inform modifications to minimize hazard.Globally, the hydropower (HP) sector has Significant potential to increase its capacity by 2050. This study quantifies the energy and resource. demands of small-scale HP projects and presents methods to reduce associated environmental impacts based on potential growth in the sector. The environmental burdens Of three (50-650 kW) run-of-river HP projects were calculated using life Cycle assessment (LCA). The global warming potential (GWP) for the projects to generate electricity ranged from g CO2 eq/kWh, compared with 403 g CO2 eq/kWh for UK marginal grid electricity. A sensitivity analysis accounted for alternative manufacturing processes, transportation, ecodesign considerations, and extended project lifespan. These findings were extrapolated for technically viable HP sites in Europe, with the potential to generate 7.35 TWh and offset over 196 Mt of CO2 from grid electricity per annum. Incorporation of ecodesign could provide resource savings for these HP projects: avoiding 800 000 tonnes of concrete, 10 000 tonnes of steel, and 65 million vehicle miles. Small additional material and energy contributions, can double a HP system lifespan, providing 39-47%, reductions for all environmental impact categories. In a world of finite resources, this,paper highlights the importance of HP as a resource-efficient, renewable energy system.Decarbonization of electricity generation can support climate-change mitigation and presents an opportunity to address pollution resulting from fossil-fuel combustion. Generally, renewable technologies require higher initial investments in infrastructure than fossil-based power systems. To assess the tradeoffs of increased up-front emissions and reduced operational emissions, we present, to our knowledge, the first global, integrated life-cycle assessment (LCA) of long-term, wide-scale implementation of electricity generation from renewable sources (i.e., photovoltaic and solar thermal, wind, and hydropower) and of carbon dioxide capture and storage for fossil power generation. We compare emissions causing particulate matter exposure, freshwater ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and climate change for the climate-change-mitigation (BLUE Map) and business-as-usual (Baseline) scenarios of the International Energy Agency up to 2050. We use a vintage stock model to conduct an LCA of newly installed capacity year-by-year for each region, thus accounting for changes in the energy mix used to manufacture future power plants. Under the Baseline scenario, emissions of air and water pollutants more than double whereas the low-carbon technologies introduced in the BLUE Map scenario allow a doubling of electricity supply while stabilizing or even reducing pollution. Material requirements per unit generation for low-carbon technologies can be higher than for conventional fossil generation: 11-40 times more copper for photovoltaic systems and 6-14 times more iron for wind power plants. However, only two years of current global copper and one year of iron production will suffice to build a low-carbon energy system capable of supplying the world's electricity needs in 2050.In the quest for sustainability of island regions, coastal shipping ought to be at the forefront because it provides essential and often sole lifeline services for the island inhabitants and visitors. Air pollution caused by the exhaust emissions of coastal ships has a detrimental environmental effect upon the coastal human population and the natural resources. The high coastal shipping activity within the Greek seas and the environmental vulnerability of the Greek coasts present a case that undoubtedly deserves particular attention. To this extent, the utilization of liquified natural gas (LNG) for powering island ferries constitutes a promising alternative to oil-fuel for achieving a sizable reduction of SOX, NOX, and porous medium (PM) exhaust pollution. Furthermore, in their effort to improve the quality of the shipping services, island communities often appear to be constantly pushing for new vessels, and LNG engines constitute a suitable opportunity for fleet renewal through the introduction of "green" shipboard technology. In this paper, the connection of the Greek Dodecanese Islands and the main port of Piraeus with an oil- vs. LNG-fueled ferry line is analyzed. The results indicate that, compared to conventional oil-fuel, natural gas currently offers a favorable alternative in terms of private costs (technical and fuel costs), as well as in terms of the external (damage) costs due to ship exhaust pollution. It is also shown that the LNG shipboard technology has the prospect of extending its advantage with respect to private costs, due to the increasing pressure on oil-fuel-related environmental control and the expansion of the natural gas market. Finally, a justifiable argument is made regarding the improvement of the techno-economics of the LNG ferry through the utilization of the "land transport equivalent" principle, in conjunction with "green" technology funding under the European policy framework for transport, energy, and regional development.Life cycle marketing strategy is emerging as a way for firms to enhance new product development efforts whilst managing ecological impacts. Such pursuits combining life cycle assessment and ecological marketing offer promise when it comes to assisting firms to decrease product based ecological impacts. The current lack of definition has implications for firms running such strategies with potential for adverse outcomes from well-meaning projects ranging from incorrect claims to the market place, through to products that actually contribute to, rather than mitigate, ecological impacts. The first contribution of this paper is the identification of key aspects of the emerging area of life cycle marketing strategy, and where these insights apply in practise. The reason to do this is to create an understanding of life cycle marketing strategy and the extent of issues facing marketers and companies embarking on such strategies. Life cycle marketing strategy is analyzed in the context of a new product development framework, to explore where it may fit within organizations. This is a pre-theoretical inductive framework rather than deductive allowing the model to be flexible and adaptive as further knowledge is uncovered. Investigations identify who or what may drive marketing strategies incorporating life cycle assessment, and how life cycle assessment may integrate into such strategies in organizations engaged with new product development. Insights meaningful to current managerial practise are developed using an organizational environment, life cycle assessment and ecological marketing lens, which derive from and develop the pre theoretical framework. This paper also contributes propositions for further organizational based research, in order to consolidate the findings of this review further with the body of new product development knowledge. Review results, insights and further research is envisioned to assist firms by providing a method to support global efforts in attaining ecological sustainability, rather than adversely contribute to ecological impacts through the marketing process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in concrete blends is often promoted as a way to reduce the environmental impacts of concrete. SCMs can include fly ash, silica fume or steel slag. Another SCM, and the focus of this paper, is ground-granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), which can be co-produced with pig iron. Previous studies that cite environmental benefits of GGBFS in concrete do not account for supply conditions of GGBFS. In this paper, this supply assumption is challenged through a market analysis. The environmental consequences of GGBFS supply conditions are assessed using a system expansion approach to life cycle assessment. When the supply of GCBFS is not constrained, greenhouse reductions of a given GGBFS-concrete blend are in the order of 47.5%. However, market analysis indicates that the supply of GGBFS can be constrained. Under a supply constraint, the 47.5% additional greenhouse reductions from the use of GGBFS are no longer applicable. Environmental certification schemes could ensure ongoing benefits of GGBFS by promoting the use of steel sourced from a supply chain which co-produces granulated blast furnace slag at the blast furnace. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Transport is energy-intensive, and inevitably raises serious environmental concerns. This paper characterizes the Chinese transport service sector, which moves freight and passengers, using national official statistical data. A Streamlined life cycle assessment method is employed to address: (1) What proportions of carbon emissions generated at national level are due to road, air, water, rail and pipeline transport services and what key factors impact carbon emissions? (2) How may the process to dynamically quantify the carbon emission impact of the transport service sector be streamlined? Specifically, activities related to transport services in China are formed including transport modes, freight volume and passenger turnover volume, travel distance, and other aspects related to life cycle. The emissions factors corresponding to transport modes are derived from commercial databases (China-specific case studies). The results show that carbon emissions from the transport service sector has rapidly grown over the past few decades, closely corresponding with increases in annual turnover. The total impact in 2012 was estimated to be 3184 million tons. The impact caused by moving freight is as much as 8 times greater than passengers'. Road sector emissions dominate transport emissions with light duty trucks accounting for more than 70% of the impact. The potential carbon abatement strategy in China might be less than expected, if their carbon intensity maintains on this level. To summarize, the obtained results constitute a necessary base in order to accomplish an adequate dimensioning of emissions in the transport service sector. This study can be considered as an opportunity for further research and evaluate the available options for a sustainable transportation system planning in China. In addition, the method development is also important for future quantifications of carbon emissions by other sectors in China and beyond. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article contains the analysis of the possibilities of biosynthetic oils selection scheme. The properties of the newly produced biosynthetic oils (enzymatic production method) and their impact on the environment were analyzed. The assessment of the life cycle was made and the results obtained with biosynthetic oils (chemical production method) and mineral oils were compared. For the process of oleic acid esterification with 1.2-propanediol, the following biocatalysts were applied: Lipolase 100 L, Lipex 100 L, Resinase A, Lipozyme TL IM, Novozym 435 and Lipozyme RM IM. The analysis of biotechnological esterification indicated that the enzyme preparation Lipolase 100L was the most effective during the esterification reaction. The following optimal conditions of 1.2-propanediol oleate during biotechnological production were determined: the molar ratio of oleic acid and 1.2-propanediol - 1:3.72, the amount of Lipolase 100L-1.84% (of oleic acid quantity), temperature - 33 degrees C, duration - 4 h. The obtained lubricant 1.2-propanediol oleate was characterized by a low coefficient of friction. The results obtained after the completion of the life cycle assessment in accordance with the methodologies of Environmental Design of Industrial Products 2003 and Impact 2002+ indicated that enzymatic production of 1 ton of biosynthetic oils (using 1.2-propanediol, oleic acid and biological catalyst), 1.2-propanediol oleate causes the least impact on the environment in the categories of global warming, ozone layer depletion, eutrophication, acidification, etc., in comparison with biosynthetic oils (when the amounts of raw materials of methanol, rapeseed oil, trimethylolpropane and catalyst NaOH are used) of trimethylolpropane oleate and mineral oils. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China is an important refrigerator producer and consumer in the world. The refrigerator industry is an important contributor to China's economy; however, it also impacts the environment negatively. To improve the sustainability of Chinese refrigerators, it is necessary to evaluate their environmental impacts throughout their life cycles and identify improvement opportunities. This study provides a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment of a direct-cooling double-door household refrigerator. Inventory data are obtained from onsite investigations of refrigerator producers and disposal enterprises. Environmental impacts are evaluated using the CML 2001 method built into GaBi (version 6.0). The results show that the environmental impacts of 11 categories are relatively high in the usage phase, and four types of environmental impacts (ODP, TETP, ADP-elements, and ADP-fossil) are also high during the production phase. The hotspots in the life cycle of a refrigerator have been identified as electricity consumption in the usage phase and the consumption of material resources (such as steel) and natural gas in the assembly phase. This quantitative life cycle assessment helps decision-makers to understand the life-cycle environmental impacts of Chinese refrigerators and improve its sustainability. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Harvested rainwater is an alternative water source for buildings, especially for non-potable uses such as irrigation and toilet flushing. While rainwater harvesting is perceived as a sustainable design approach, there is limited information on the environmental and economic performance of this technology. To address this literature gap, life cycle assessment and life cycle costing tools were applied for a dormitory that could potentially use harvested rainwater to flush toilets or to irrigate the lawn. Five scenarios were modeled including a new versus renovated building and irrigation versus toilet flushing water end use. The rainwater cisterns for all the scenarios were sized using the Yield After Spillage approach and long term daily precipitation of Toledo. Energy and greenhouse gas emissions were calculated using Economic Input Output Life Cycle Assessment (for construction phase and energy use by pump) and GaBi (for water and wastewater treatment) databases. The life cycle environmental impacts and costs were estimated and compared to the business as usual scenario, where the water supply demands are met by municipally supplied potable water in a combined or separate sanitary sewer network. It was discovered that energy and greenhouse gas emission payback periods can be achieved for almost every scenario. Yet cost payback periods of implementing harvested rainwater were found to be longer than the life time of the building except for two scenarios: using rainwater for irrigation in a renovation project and using rainwater for toilet flushing in a new construction project. These two scenarios had the lowest cost, energy and greenhouse gas emission impacts among all scenarios modeled. Reducing occupancy to match toilet flushing demand increased the per person impact. However, in general, the per person impacts were much lower than a person's impact from driving or electricity use. While separate sewers divert the stormwater runoff to the water bodies and thereby prevent the environmental problems resulting from combined sewer overflows, a rainwater harvesting system connected to separate sewers was found to reduce the energy and greenhouse gas emissions less than so if the rainwater harvesting system were connected to combined sewers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An assessment of the environmental aspects related to the life cycle of disposable baby diapers in Europe is presented in this paper with the aim of analysing recent improvements and identifying key environmental areas on which to focus in order to further decrease impacts. Average products available on the European market in recent years have been modelled and evaluated from "cradle to grave". Results point out the importance of materials in the definition of the environmental profile of the product. These are followed by the end of life for some impact categories, while the contribution of manufacturing, packaging and transport to the overall LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) results seems of minor relevance. Significant environmental improvements at European level have been achieved in recent years through the design of lighter products and the introduction of superabsorbent polymers. Careful selection and use of materials at the design stage could allow life cycle impacts of products to be further decreased, while ensuring that human health and environmental risks are controlled and that functionality and performance requirements are fulfilled. Indeed, potential malfunctioning of products would result in increasing consumption. Resource efficiency is also important at the manufacturing level to optimise the demand for materials and limit waste production. Special forms of treatment at the end of life stage of the product could instead require significant structural changes of the waste management system. The outcomes of this paper could be applied to support the design and environmental labelling of disposable baby diapers for promoting the production and consumption of product options characterised by lower environmental impacts. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).The long-term generation of acid rock drainage (ARD) from sulfide-bearing mine waste is a major environmental liability for the mining sector. Previous studies have demonstrated that these ARD risks can be effectively avoided, and resource recovery simultaneously improved, through the pre-disposal removal of sulfide minerals, by means of flotation. This study uses life cycle assessment to evaluate the broader environmental consequences of incorporating a desulfurisation flotation unit for the pre-disposal treatment of a base metal sulfide tailings wastestream. The desulfurisation flotation process is shown to result in a significant decrease in human toxicity, eco-toxicity, urban land occupation and natural land transformation impacts, but an increase in climate change, fossil fuel depletion and terrestrial acidification impacts. Desulfurisation flotation also offers the opportunity for improved recovery of valuable resources, such as water, residual metals and sulfur. An expanded system boundary would, however, be required to capture the environmental benefits of upstream and downstream utilisation of recovered resources. The study also highlighted the deficiencies of current life cycle impact assessment tools, in terms of their ability to adequately assess the environmental impacts associated with solid mineral wastes. These deficiencies and shortcomings will be the subject of further studies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wireless charging, as opposed to plug-in charging, is an alternative charging method for electric vehicles (EVs) with rechargeable batteries and can be applicable to EVs with fixed routes, such as transit buses. This study adds to the current research of EV wireless charging by utilizing the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to provide a comprehensive framework for comparing the life cycle energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions associated with a stationary wireless charging all-electric bus system to a plug-in charging all-electric bus system. Life cycle inventory analysis of both plug-in and wireless charging hardware was conducted, and battery downsizing, vehicle lightweighting and use-phase energy consumption were modeled, A bus system in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti area in Michigan is used as the basis for bus system modeling. Results show that the wirelessly charged battery can be downsized to 27-44% of a plug-in charged battery. The associated reduction of 12-16% in bus weight for the wireless buses can induce a reduction of 5.4-7.0% in battery-to-wheel energy consumption. In the base case, the wireless charging system consumes 0.3% less energy and emits 0.5% less greenhouse gases than the plug-in charging system in the total life cycle. To further improve the energy and environmental performance of a wireless charging electric bus system, it is important to focus on key parameters including carbon intensity of the electric grid and wireless charging efficiency, If the wireless charging efficiency is improved to the same level as the assumed plug-in charging efficiency (90%), the difference of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions between the two systems can increase to 6.3%. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work aims at optimizing life cycle performance of a hybrid combined cooling heating and power (CCHP) system incorporating with solar energy and natural gas. A basic natural gas CCHP system containing power generation unit, heat recovery system, hybrid cooling system and storage tank, is integrated with solar photovoltaic (PV) and/or heat collector. LCA optimization methodology is proposed to optimize the configuration and variable load operation of the solar-assisted CCHP system to minimize the life cycle environmental impact. CCHP schemes in following electrical load (FEL) and following thermal load (FTL) strategies are optimized by different objectives respectively. Analysis and comparison are performed on life cycle environmental impacts caused by global warming potential, acidification potential and respiratory effect potential. The influences of main independent decision variables are discussed to discover the generic configuration rules for hybrid CCHP system. The results indicate that FTL strategy is superior to FEL strategy at taking the environmental compensation of surplus products from the hybrid CCHP system into consideration. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy storage may serve as a solution to the integration challenges of high penetrations of wind, helping to reduce curtailment, provide system balancing services, and reduce emissions. This study determines the minimum cost configuration of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB), wind turbines, and natural gas reciprocating engines in an off-grid model. A life cycle assessment (LCA) model is developed to determine the system configuration needed to achieve a variety of CO2-eq emissions targets. The relationship between total system costs and life cycle emissions are used to optimize the generation mixes to achieve emissions targets at the least cost and determine when VRFBs are preferable over wind curtailment. Different greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets are defined for the off-grid system and the minimum cost resource configuration is determined to meet those targets. This approach determines when the use of VRFBs is more cost effective than wind curtailment in reaching GHG emissions targets. The research demonstrates that while incorporating energy storage consistently reduces life cycle carbon emissions, it is not cost effective to reduce curtailment except under very low emission targets (190 g of CO2-eq/kW h and less for the examined system). This suggests that "overbuilding" wind is a more viable option to reduce life cycle emissions for all but the most ambitious carbon mitigation targets. The findings show that adding VRFB as energy storage could be economically preferable only when wind curtailment exceeds 66% for the examined system. The results were most sensitive to VRFB costs, natural gas upstream emissions (e.g. methane leakage), and wind capital cost. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of hydrogen and electricity production by supercritical water reforming (SCWR) of glycerol was evaluated following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The heat-integrated process was designed to be energy self-sufficient. Mass and energy balances needed for the study were performed using Aspen Plus 8.4, and the environmental assessment was carried out through SimaPro 8.0. CML 2000 was selected as the life cycle impact assessment method, considering as impact categories the global warming, ozone layer depletion, abiotic depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, eutrophication, acidification, and cumulative energy demand. A distinction between biogenic and fossil CO2 emissions was done to quantify a more realistic GHG inventory of 3.77 kg CO2-eq per kg H-2 produced. Additionally, the environmental profile of SCWR process was compared to other H-2 production technologies such as steam methane reforming, carbon gasification, water electrolysis and dark fermentation among others. This way, it is shown that SCWR of glycerol allows reducing greenhouse gas emissions and obtaining a favorable positive life cycle energy balance, achieving a good environmental performance of H-2 and power production by SCWR of glycerol. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Antimicrobial coatings are being increasingly used as a means to extend the shelf life of food products. This extension helps consumers cut down on the food waste generated at household level, while at the same time reducing the impact, which these products' life cycle has on the environment. The aim of this Life Cycle Assessment study is thus to assess the consequences on the environment arising from the application of an antimicrobial coating onto the packaging of a fresh milk product, while also taking into account the reduction in milk waste. The antimicrobial coating considered is a synthetic derivative of lauric acid. The application of the coating involves additional environmental impacts caused by all the inputs and outputs which occur during its life cycle. At the same time, however, the use of this coating allows to extend the fresh milk's shelf life with a consequent reduction in food waste. The data related to the production and application of the coating were provided by the packaging laboratory of the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (Valencia) and by manufacturing companies. The data related to food waste, milk processing, refrigeration transports, storage, and end of life of both product and packaging were obtained from previous studies, institutional reports and Ecoinvent database v2.2. The Midpoint Impact 2002 method was used to assess impacts. The results show how the reduction in milk waste achievable by using the coating generates higher environmental benefits than the impacts caused by the coating's life cycle due to milk saving. Furthermore this study demonstrates the importance of including food waste in Life Cycle Assessment studies of packaging systems. The connection between packaging design and food waste is a decisive aspect in the evaluation of actual environmental sustainability and should thus be considered in all assessments of packaging solutions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A comparative life cycle assessment, under a cradle to gate scope, was carried out between two hand drying methods namely conventional hand dryer use and dispenser issued roll paper towel use. The inventory analysis for this study was aided by the deconstruction of a hand dryer and dispenser unit besides additional data provided by the Physical Resources department, from the product system manufacturers and information from literature. The LCA software SimaPro, supported by the ecoinvent and US-EI databases, was used towards establishing the environmental impacts associated with the lifecycle stages of both the compared product systems. The Impact 2002+ method was used for classification and characterization of these environmental impacts. An uncertainty analysis addressing key input data and assumptions made, a sensitivity analysis covering the use intensity of the product systems and a scenario analysis looking at a US based use phase for the hand dryer were also conducted. Per functional unit, which is to achieve a pair of dried hands, the dispenser product system has a greater life cycle impact than the dryer product system across three of four endpoint impact categories. The use group of lifecycle stages for the dispenser product system, which represents the cradle to gate lifecycle stages associated with the paper towels, constitutes the major portion of this impact. For the dryer product system, the use group of lifecycle stages, which essentially covers the electricity consumption during dryer operation, constitutes the major stake in the impact categories. It is evident from the results of this study that per dry, for a use phase supplied by Ontario's grid (2010 grid mix scenario) and a United States based manufacturing scenario, the use of a conventional hand dryer (rated at 1800 W and under a 30 s use intensity) has a lesser environmental impact than with using two paper towels (100% recycled content, unbleached and weighing 4 g) issued from a roll dispenser. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of the study is to determine environmentally friendlier construction materials for constructed wetland facilities treating wastewater. This is done by computing the environmental footprint of the facility based on the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA). This methodology reveals the dominant aggravating processes during the construction of a constructed wetland (CW) and can help to create alternative environmentally friendlier solutions. This methodology was applied for the determination of the overall environmental profile of a hybrid CW facility. The LCA was applied first to the facility as originally designed, where reinforced concrete was used in some components. Then, alternative construction materials to reinforced concrete were used, such as earth covered with high density polyethylene (HDPE) or clay, and LCA was applied again. Earth structures were found to have reduced environmental impact compared to concrete ones, and clay was found environmentally friendlier compared to HDPE. Furthermore, estimation of the construction costs of the three scenarios indicate that the last scenario is also the least expensive.Carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (CO2EOR) is a proven and available technology used to produce incremental oil from depleted fields while permanently storing large tonnages of injected CO2. Although this technology has been used successfully onshore in North America and Europe, there are currently no CO2EOR projects in the United Kingdom. Here, we examine whether offshore CO2EOR can store more CO2 than onshore projects traditionally have and whether CO2 storage can offset additional emissions produced through offshore operations and incremental oil production. Using a high-level Life Cycle system approach, we find that the largest contribution to offshore emissions is from flaring or venting of reproduced CH4 and CO2. These can already be greatly reduced by regulation. If CO2 injection is continued after oil production has been optimized, then offshore CO2EOR has the potential to be carbon negative - even when emissions from refining, transport, and combustion of produced crude oil are included. The carbon intensity of oil produced can be just 0.056-0.062 tCO(2)e/bbl if flaring/venting is reduced by regulation. This compares against conventional Saudi oil 0.040 tCO(2)e/bbl or mined shale oil >0.300 tCO(2)e/bbl.The fossil fuel power generation sector is facing critical decisions to significantly reduce CO2 emissions by implementing carbon capture technologies at industrial scale for transition to low carbon economy. This paper assesses the usage of reactive absorption/adsorption systems for post-combustion CO2 capture from Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) power plants. As reactive gas liquid absorption system assessed for post-combustion CO2 capture, the alkanolamine-based gas liquid absorption was evaluated (MDEA was considered as illustrative example). As reactive gas solid adsorption system, the innovative Calcium Looping (CaL) method was considered. The work evaluates how chemical absorption/adsorption influence the techno-economic performances of NGCC power plants. As benchmark option used to quantify the carbon capture energy and cost penalties, NGCC plant without CO2 capture was considered. The post-combustion carbon capture options have at least 90% carbon capture rate. As the results show, CaL concept exhibits improved environmental performances (e.g. >98 vs. 90% carbon capture rate) and economic indicators (e.g. 969 vs. 1238 (sic)/kW net power as specific capital investment, 42.82 vs. 46.24 (sic)/MWh as O&M costs, 56.91 vs. 66.12 (sic)/MWh as electricity cost etc.) compared to MDEA case. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) in classical life cycle assessment (LCA) aims at analyzing potential impacts of products and services typically on three so-called areas of protection (AoPs): Natural Environment, Human Health, and Natural Resources. This paper proposes an elaboration of the AoP Natural Resources. It starts with analyzing different perspectives on Natural Resources as they are somehow sandwiched in between the Natural Environment (their cradle) and the human-industrial environment (their application). Reflecting different viewpoints, five perspectives are developed with the suggestion to select three in function of classical LCA. They result in three safeguard subjects: the Asset of Natural Resources, their Provisioning Capacity, and their role in Global Functions. Whereas the Provisioning Capacity is fully in function of humans, the global functions go beyond provisioning as they include nonprovisioning functions for humans and regulating and maintenance services for the globe as a whole, following the ecosystem services framework. A fourth and fifth safeguard subject has been identified: recognizing the role Natural Resources for human welfare, either specifically as building block in supply chains of products and services as such, either with or without their functions beyond provisioning. But as these are far broader as they in principle should include characterization of mechanisms within the human industrial society, they are considered as subjects for an integrated sustainability assessment (LCSA: life cycle sustainability assessment), that is, incorporating social, economic and environmental issues.In salmonid aquaculture, a variety of technologies have been deployed that attempt to limit a range of environmental impacts associated with net-pen culture. One such technology employs a floating, solid-walled enclosure as the primary culture environment, providing greater potential control over negative interactions with surroundings waters while limiting energy use required for water circulation, thermoregulation and supplemental oxygen provision. Here, we utilize life cycle assessment to model contributions to a suite of global-scale resource depletion and environmental concerns (including global warming potential, acidification potential, marine eutrophication potential, cumulative energy use, and biotic resource use) of such a technology deployed commercially to rear Chinook salmon in coastal British Columbia, Canada. Results indicate that at full grow-out, feed provisioning and on-site energy use dominate contributions across four of five impact categories assessed. For example, per tonne of salmon harvested, feed contributed approximately 72% to global warming potential, 72% to acidification potential, and accounted for 100% of biotic resource use. However, for both feed and on-site energy use, impacts are heavily influenced by specific sources of inputs; therefore efforts to improve the environmental performance of this technology should focus on reducing these in favor of less impactful alternatives.This paper aims to present the relevant results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study conducted on printed matter under a sheet-fed offset printing process by a company located in northwestern Mexico. Different scenarios were simulated in order to support decisions related to the improvement of environmental performance along the production processes. The study design was based on the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA), which is in line with the ISO 14040 and 14044:2006 standards on LCA. The scope of the study was cradle-to-gate, with emphasis on the production of printed matter. The method chosen for the impact assessment was Impact 2002+ with a combined midpoint-damage approach. The results of the study showed that the major contributors to adverse effects were, primarily electricity consumption followed by paper consumption during the printing operation, as well as consumption of ink to a small degree. As for the plate-making operation along with the generation of secondary products, the result was negative. This is essentially due to involvement of recyclable materials, thus contributing to the prevention of raw material extraction. The smallest impact was observed from processes involving cleaning products and LP gas. The main issues of concern stemming from the results are electricity consumption and printing - both activities dominate almost all the midpoint categories. Generation of secondary products also had a relative environmental impact along the supply chain. Cleaning agents and LP gas did not have a significant impact on the final results of the process.The behaviour of structural systems can change during their service lives due to unexpected loadings, environmental effects and deterioration processes. In order to optimise maintenance interventions, the life cycle of a structure has to be properly assessed. Structural health monitoring (SHM) using collected experimental data provides a method for assessing structural behaviour over time. As the cost related to SHM is substantial, sometimes that monitoring is limited in space and time. However, the modelling of the structural behaviour using experimental data-sets is characterised by increased uncertainty both in the choice of the appropriate model (epistemic uncertainty) and in parameters estimation (aleatory uncertainty). This paper provides an original procedure to support decisions in the presence of epistemic uncertainty. The procedure provides the development of a credibility index able to catch, between two possible models, which is the most reliable to describe the evolution of parameters of interest. Considering as a case study the occurrence of a foundation settlement in an arch bridge, the efficacy of the model proposed is assessed. The approach can be applied to investigate the behaviour of other aspects of the life-cycle assessment: the evolution of structural resistance, the failure time of an element or of the whole system.As global demand for livestock products (such as meat, milk and eggs) is expected to double by 2050, necessary increases to future production must be reconciled with negative environmental impacts that livestock cause. This paper describes the LivestockPlus concept and demonstrates how the sowing of improved forages can lead to the sustainable intensification of mixed crop-forage-livestock-tree systems in the tropics by producing multiple social, economic and environmental benefits. Sustainable intensification not only improves the productivity of tropical forage-based systems but also reduces the ecological footprint of livestock production and generates a diversity of ecosystem services (ES) such as improved soil quality and reduced erosion, sedimentation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Integrating improved grass and legume forages into mixed production systems (crop-livestock, tree-livestock, crop-tree-livestock) can restore degraded lands and enhance system resilience to drought and waterlogging associated with climate change. When properly managed tropical forages accumulate large amounts of carbon in soil, fix atmospheric nitrogen (legumes), inhibit nitrification in soil and reduce nitrous oxide emissions (grasses), and reduce GHG emissions per unit livestock product. The LivestockPlus concept is defined as the sustainable intensification of forage-based systems, which is based on 3 interrelated intensification processes: genetic intensification - the development and use of superior grass and legume cultivars for increased livestock productivity; ecological intensification - the development and application of improved farm and natural resource management practices; and socio-economic intensification - the improvement of local and national institutions and policies, which enable refinements of technologies and support their enduring use. Increases in livestock productivity will require coordinated efforts to develop supportive government, non-government organization and private sector policies that foster investments and fair market compensation for both the products and ES provided. Effective research-for-development efforts that promote agricultural and environmental benefits of forage-based systems can contribute towards implemention of LivestockPlus across a variety of geographic, political and socio-economic contexts.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an environmental management tool used to determine the environmental impact of a product, process or service throughout its lifecycle from data collection, especially in the phase of the Life Cycle Inventory (ICV). There is a wide variety of software available in the market to assist in these studies, and considering the ease that it and provide the database for LCA, this study conducts a review of literature on the subject. By analyzing the literature, it was found that the software has several methods of analysis impacts and database processes, enabling the comparison of scenarios. The results obtained with the software are impact analysis and interpretation of the results of the system, presenting them through graphs, flowcharts and tables. The software offer database that have information on the lifecycle of products generating a reduction in the time of data collection, but it should be remembered that the database have regional character and your data should be analyzed, since the set of data from a database may not cover exactly the studied system, affecting the results.One of the main concerns regarding the development of microalgal biofuels is the tremendous demand of nutrients that they require for growing, which places a question mark with their sustainability. In this paper, cultivation trials of Nannochloropsis gaditana, Phaeodactylum tricornutum, Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus almeriensis are performed by reusing nutrients recovered from the aqueous by-product obtained during biofuel production via hydrothermal liquefaction. This provides away to recover nutrients while simultaneously treating the waste water generated during the production of biofuel. Direct recycling of the aqueous phase is compared to the use of an intermediate step (supercritical water gasification) to purify this stream. Also, two growth parameters (pH and percentage of substitution of nutrients from the standard medium) are studied. The results show that the response of microalgae species to the recycling of nutrients is strain-dependent: P. tricornutum and S. almeriensis were not able to grow satisfactorily in recovered aqueous by-products. On the other hand, C. vulgaris and N. gaditana could grow by replacing 75% of the nutrients from the standard medium with nutrients recovered from HTL without reducing the algae growth, compared to the standard medium. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The green economy mandate seeks to reduce transportation emissions by replacing traditional fossil fuels with alternative low-carbon fuels. The present article provides a comparative "cradle-to-grave" life cycle assessment (LCA) of light duty commercial vehicles (LDCVs) powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) and diesel. The LCA scope is based on conditions for municipal vehicle fleet operation in a semi-urban Canadian city, suitable for adoption of alternative fuels such as CNG. An in-house application is developed to conduct the LCA with a combination of real-time vehicle fleet data and Natural Resources Canada's GHGenius as the inventory database. The results indicate that the net energy consumed is comparable for both fuels. Mixed results are obtained for criteria air contaminant (CAC) emissions, indicating the need for exhaust treatment for both vehicles. More importantly, a 34% reduction of GHG emissions is predicted by replacing the diesel vehicles with CNG vehicles. The analysis of fugitive methane emissions caused by newly developed hydraulic fracturing methods shows that CNG vehicles are still favorable. The lifetime fuel cost can also be reduced by about $30,000 per vehicle by switching to CNG. Therefore, fleet operators and policy developers are recommended to consider adoption of CNG-powered LDCVs. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A comprehensive national assessment of the sustainability of beef is being conducted by the U.S. beef industry. The first of 7 regions to be analyzed is Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. A survey and visits conducted throughout the region provided data on common production practices. From these data, representative ranch and feedyard operations were defined and simulated for the varying climate and soil conditions throughout the region using the Integrated Farm System Model. These simulations predicted environmental impacts of each operation including cradle-to-farm gate footprints for greenhouse gas emissions, fossil-based energy use, nonprecipitation water use, and reactive N loss. Individual ranch and feedyard operations were linked to form 28 representative production systems. A weighted average of the production systems was used to determine the environmental footprints for the region where weighting factors were developed based on animal numbers reported in the survey and agricultural statistics data. Along with the traditional beef production systems, Holstein steer and cull cow production from the dairy industry in the region were also modeled and included. The carbon footprint of all beef produced was 18.3 +/- 1.7 kg CO2 equivalents (CO2e)/kg carcass weight (CW) with the range in individual production systems being 13 to 25 kg CO2e/kg CW. Energy use, water use, and reactive N loss were 51 +/- 4.8 MJ/kg CW, 2,470 +/- 455 L/kg CW, and 138 +/- 12 g N/kg CW, respectively. The major portion of each footprint except water use was associated with the cow-calf phase; most of the nonprecipitation water use was attributed to producing feed for the finishing phase. These data provide a baseline for comparison as new technologies and strategies are developed and implemented to improve the sustainability of cattle production. Production information also will be combined with processing, marketing, and consumer data to complete a comprehensive life cycle assessment of beef.The indicator domestic material consumption (domestic extraction + imports - exports) is widely used to track the scale, composition, and dynamics of material use. As production increasingly occurs at a spatial distance from the demand it ultimately satisfies, new accounting challenges arise that this indicator may not be able to meet. In response, indicators in raw material equivalents (RME) have been developed to account for material use, no matter where it occurs, associated with final demand. RME indicators are most commonly calculated based on monetary input-output tables with material extensions. The resulting indicators, which are rapidly gaining scientific and political importance, must be interpreted as stemming from a mixed monetary and physical accounting approach. How such an approach differs from a physical accounting approach is shown in this article using an input-output model with a material extension. Neither the physical nor the mixed monetary and physical approach is found to generate results which are incorrect. Instead, the results must be interpreted in light of the assumptions entailed in the approach on which they are based. In making possibilities and limits of interpretation in both cases transparent, RME indicators can more readily be discussed and used by sustainability scientists and practitioners.Five multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) methods are used to rank the four most commonly used wastewater treatment technologies in India using pre-defined set of criteria and their indicators. Results show that it is difficult to get similar ranking using different MADM methods for equal set of weights. However, for varying weights all MADM methods generated similar ranking. It is found that in wastewater treatment alternative selection problem, it is essential to define set of weights considering priorities of the decision situation. Emphasis on a rational structuring of decision-making problem is more required than searching for more sophisticated MADM methods. TOPSIS is found to be the most suitable MADM method as it considers ideal and non-ideal solutions simultaneously to select appropriate wastewater treatment alternative.End of life tires require sound accounting of environmental performances to design sustainable procedures for material recovery. Their use in rubber modified asphalt provides could lead to the improvement of technical and environmental performances of asphalt roads, but the effectiveness of simplified procedures is to be proved. During LIFE+ project ROADTIRE, a rubber modified asphalt road prototype, with the upper surface layer containing 10% crumb rubber in the bituminous binder, was implemented in Lamia, Greece. The prototype was compared to a conventional asphalt road by Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate the environmental performances and the results were critically interpreted to highlight its benefits. The impact categories considered, assessed with the ReCiPe Midpoint (H) v1.06/Europe ReCiPe H method, were: Climate change, Ozone depletion, Human toxicity, Photochemical oxidant formation, Terrestrial acidification, Freshwater eutrophication, Freshwater ecotoxicity, Terrestrial ecotoxicity, Water depletion, Fossil depletion. Compared to the conventional asphalt road, the global environmental performances of the rubberized asphalt road are improved of 30-40%, depending on the impact category. For both scenarios, the road construction phase, with bitumen production, is the most impacting process, compared to maintenance and end-of-life. The global environmental advantages are proved to depend on the longer lifetime and the less maintenance required for the rubberized asphalt road, as indicated from laboratory tests. It is therefore important to monitor such parameters during the road lifecycle in order to validate this preliminary outcome. Based on these results, policy and management implications are discussed.The carbon footprint of spectator and team travel was analyzed at small-scale varsity sports events held at the University of British Columbia. Sport management literature suggests a need for quantitative environmental impact studies of events, in particular to seek out transport footprint reduction opportunities. This study applies a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based approach to increase methodological rigour and transparency. We analyze travel patterns of spectators and teams and put forward several scenarios for impact reduction. Results show that UBC spectators had a smaller footprint than teams on a per person basis but a larger overall carbon footprint. Although only 4% of the spectators travelled by air, this constituted 52% of total spectator impact. We find the biggest opportunities for footprint reductions by spectators and teams alike are strategies that (a) reduce long-distance air travel, (b) increase vehicle occupancy rates, and (c) encourage low-emission travel mode choices. (C) 2014 Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study is to quantify and objectively evaluate the extent of environmental health risks from three waste treatment options suggested by the national municipal solid waste management enhancing strategy (No [2011] 9 of the State Council, promulgated on 19 April 2011), which includes sanitary landfill, waste-to-energy incineration and compost, together with the material recovery facility through a case study in Zhangqiu City of China. It addresses potential chronic health risks from air emissions to residential receptors in the impacted area. It combines field survey, analogue survey, design documents and life cycle inventory methods in defining the source strength of chemicals of potential concern. The modelling of life cycle inventory and air dispersion is via integrated waste management(IWM)-2 and Screening Air Dispersion Model (Version 3.0) (SCREEN3). The health risk assessment is in accordance with United States Environmental Protection Agency guidance Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund (RAGS), Volume I: Human Health Evaluation Manual (Part F, Supplemental Guidance for Inhalation Risk Assessment). The exposure concentration is based on long-term exposure to the maximum ground level contaminant in air under the reasonable worst situation' emissions and then directly compared with reference for concentration and unit risk factor/cancer slope factor derived from the national air quality standard (for a conventional pollutant) and toxicological studies (for a specific pollutant). Results from this study suggest that the option of compost with material recovery facility treatment may pose less negative health impacts than other options; the sensitivity analysis shows that the landfill integrated waste management collection rate has a great influence on the impact results. Further investigation is needed to validate or challenge the findings of this study.Since medical insurance was introduced in the Republic of Korea, there have been several increases concerning medical waste. In order to solve these problems, we have applied life cycle assessment and life cycle cost. But these methods cannot be a perfect decision-making tool because they can only evaluate environmental and economic burdens. Thus, as one of many practical methods the shared smart and mutual - green growth considers economic growth, environmental protection, social justice, science technology and art, and mutual voluntarism when applied to medical waste management in the Republic of Korea. Four systems were considered: incineration, incineration with heat recovery, steam sterilisation, and microwave disinfection. This research study aimed to assess pollutant emissions from treatment, transport, and disposal. Global warming potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, acidifications potential, and human toxicity are considered to be environmental impacts. Total investment cost, transport cost, operation, and maintenance cost for the medical waste are considered in the economy evaluations though life cycle cost. The social development, science technology and art, and mutual voluntarism are analysed through the Delphi-method conducted by expert groups related to medical waste. The result is that incineration with heat recovery is the best solution. However, when heat recovery is impossible, incineration without heat recovery becomes the next best choice. That is why 95% of medical waste is currently treated by both incineration and incineration with heat recovery within the Republic of Korea.Together, hydroelectric and nuclear power account for roughly 30% of all electricity generated on earth. Both technologies are often presented as answers to the dual challenge of meeting ever-increasing global energy demand while meeting stricter GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions targets. Indeed, the last two decades have witnessed a great deal of research on the life cycle GHG emissions of these technologies. On the basis of carbon intensity, the general consensus is that these technologies are more efficient than all other technologies of similar scale (e.g. coal, natural gas). However, hydroelectric and nuclear power come with environmental costs that sit outside the boundaries of traditional energy-based accounting methods, including water consumption, land change, and waste generation. We provide a novel framework that integrates energy and environmental life cycle assessment techniques so that dissimilar impacts can be more equitably assessed. The analysis considers diffusion- and centrifuge-based nuclear technologies, as well as reservoir and run-of-river hydropower. Results suggest that these resources are substantially less efficient (in our examples, anywhere from 5 to 85%) when key externalities are included. In the conclusion, we reflect on the benefits of using a physics-based method of measuring the externalities of power generation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We examine and compare economic feasibilities and environmental effects of two energy investments options in Turkey: a NE-PP (nuclear power plant) in Mersin province on the Mediterranean coast and a large scale photovoltaic solar energy power plant (PV-PP) to be built in a governmentally reserved land area in mid-south Anatolia, namely Karapinar Energy Specialized Industrial Zone (Karapinar-ESIZ). Total installed power of both plants is taken to be 4800 MW, which is the contracted value for the four units of NE-PP. In terms of investments and energy outputs, both options have their respective advantages and disadvantages over the other. While PV-PP is cheaper without land cost, NE-PP produces quite more electricity throughout its lifetime. Applying a tool to calculate the emission factor for an electricity system (taken from UNFCCC), although NE-PP has more cumulative CO2 emission reduction potential than PV-PP, PV-PP seems slightly more advantageous in terms of CO2 reduction per unit of produced electricity. PV-PP needs more land area than NE-PP; however, it requires considerably less time for commissioning and decommissioning. The outcomes of the study notably reveal that the NE-PP has a payback only if inflation rate is taken into consideration in the unit electricity price, while PV-PP pays back with and without inflation rate. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Management of emerging technologies may play a significant role in the advancement towards sustainable development. While the development of consistent management policies requires inputs from a wide spectrum of specialists and other stakeholders, current platforms for facilitating their participation are insufficient. In this study, we present a framework for a visualized scenario analysis that comprehensively assesses combinations of multiple technologies. This framework (1) helps our understanding of scenario performance and behaviors of technology-introduction, (2) identifies the relationships and trade-offs based on evaluation indices, and (3) allows for visualization of various technology-introduction scenarios accounting for time frame. The applicability of this methodology is demonstrated using case studies that evaluate scenario performances and behaviors when implementing various power generation technologies in the Japanese electricity supply system. Different scenarios (e.g., renewable energy-based power generation, operation choice of nuclear power) are visualized to assist stakeholders with evaluation of the trade-offs. (c) 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 832-840, 2015In this paper, the Performance analysis in terms of effect of carbon credit earned on annualized uniform cost of glazed hybrid photovoltaic thermal air collector on the basis of annual thermal energy and exergy have been analyzed for New Delhi climatic conditions. The effect of interest rates on annualized uniform cost has also been evaluated. For the lifetime (30 year) analysis, the carbon emission reduction comes to Rs 1.09,242 and Rs 25275.6 on the basis of overall thermal energy and exergy basis. It has also been observed that there is significant decrease in annualized uniform cost due to carbon credit earned. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Full-scale traditional metal solar collectors and solar collector specimens fabricated from polymeric materials were investigated in the present study. A polymeric collector is 67.8% lighter than a traditional metal solar collector, and a metal solar collector with transparent plastic covering is 40.3% lighter than a traditional metal solar collector. Honeycomb multichannel plates made from polycarbonate were chosen to create a polymeric solar collector. A test rig for the natural circulation of the working fluid in a solar collector was built for a comparative experimental investigation of various solar collectors operating at ambient conditions. It was shown experimentally that the efficiency of a polymeric collector is 8-15% lower than the efficiency of a traditional collector. The results of a Life Cycle Assessment study showed the advantages of the application of polymeric materials in the construction of solar collectors. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Significant environmental problems have been caused by the growth in the volume of used tires each year. In addition, remanufacturing and recycling options related to the end of life for tires are crucial issues at present because of difficulties related to the degradation of these scrap tires in the environment and the economic benefits of material and energy recovery. Thus, effective collection, storage, recycling, and appropriate disposal methods are required for used tires without damaging the environment by designing an efficient closed-loop supply chain network. Based on this motivation, we present a holistic modeling approach for a tire closed-loop supply chain using mixed integer linear programming. Alternative recovery options such as remanufacturing, recycling, and energy recovery are considered simultaneously in the model. The main objective of this study was to develop a multi-objective, multi-echelon, multi-product, and multi-period logistics network design model in a more holistic manner while also considering environmental issues. To quantify the environmental impact and the closed-loop supply chain, we used a life cycle assessment-based and damage-oriented method (eco-indicator 99). We applied the model to an illustrative case study and an interactive fuzzy goal programming approach was utilized to solve the proposed fuzzy multiple-objective network optimization model. In order to obtain the best profit values and to satisfy the environmental indicator targets, we examined the effects of some parameters (factors) within the profit and damage function using an experimental technique based on the Taguchi design. Experimental runs were conducted using the optimization solver in ILOG OPL Studio 6.3 and the results were evaluated based on Taguchi's (S/N) ratios, analysis of means graphs, interaction graphs, and analysis of variance with MINITAB 14. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This study is aimed at analysing the environmental impacts of environment-friendly clean briquette, being a new kind of briquette product, and compared with lignite by life-cycle assessment. The results based on inventory analysis and the assessment of environmental effects are obtained as follows: The environment load index for environment-friendly clean briquette is 0.29, and for lignite coal is 0.50. It is obvious that the environmental effects of environment-friendly clean briquette are far lower than that of lignite coal. Among the environmental effects, global warming is the most serious type for environment-friendly clean briquette, and CO2 is the most contributory. The emissions of environment concentrates are mainly on the stage of combustion in the whole life cycle for environment-friendly clean briquette, so the important way to improve environment-friendly clean briquette is to reduce the emissions to environment from the stage of combustion.Marine energy in the United Kingdom is undergoing a period of growth in terms of development and implementation. The current installed tidal energy capacity is expected to rise to provide 20% of the United Kingdom's electricity demand by 2050. This article used life cycle assessment to study four tidal energy devices, comparing their embodied energy and carbon dioxide emissions. The device designs studied included a multi-blade turbine, two three-blade horizontal axis turbine machines and an Archimedes' screw device. These machines were chosen to represent a cross section of design for the device, foundation, installation and operation. Embodied energy was considered over the lifetime of each device. Energy use from fabrication, transport, installation, maintenance, decommissioning and recycling was all calculated and compared to the energy generated by each device. Finally, the embodied energy, CO2 intensity and energy payback periods were compared to those of conventional power generating systems and other renewable energy sources. Devices were studied based on a functional unit, defined as a 10 MW array installed for 100 years. Of the devices studied, the OpenHydro Open Centre turbine was found to have the best ratio of generated to embodied energy. All devices achieved CO2 and energy payback within 12 years and exhibited CO2 intensity between 18 and 35 gCO(2)/kW h. This compares favourably against current energy sources such as wind (8-12 gCO(2)/kW h), solar photovoltaic (similar to 30 gCO(2)/kW h), nuclear (similar to 70 gCO(2)/kW h) and coal (similar to 1000 gCO(2)/kW h).A life cycle assessment was carried out to assess a selection of the factors influencing the environmental impacts and benefits of incinerating the fraction of municipal waste remaining after source-separation for reuse, recycling, composting or anaerobic digestion. The factors investigated were the extent of any metal and aggregate recovery from the bottom ash, the thermal efficiency of the process, and the conventional fuel for electricity generation displaced by the power generated. The results demonstrate that incineration has significant advantages over landfill with lower impacts from climate change, resource depletion, acidification, eutrophication human toxicity and aquatic ecotoxicity. To maximise the benefits of energy recovery, metals, particularly aluminium, should be reclaimed from the residual bottom ash and the energy recovery stage of the process should be as efficient as possible. The overall environmental benefits/burdens of energy from waste also strongly depend on the source of the power displaced by the energy from waste, with coal giving the greatest benefits and combined cycle turbines fuelled by natural gas the lowest of those considered. Regardless of the conventional power displaced incineration presents a lower environmental burden than landfill. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recently, developed and emerging countries have increasingly adopted the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR) to reduce waste. In 2003, South Korea replaced the waste deposit recycling (WDR) program with the EPR program. Previous comparative analyses between the WDR and EPR programs have been qualitative evaluations and have not yet quantitatively shown whether the change has increased benefits. The aim of this paper is to explore which program brings larger net benefits. Because of limited data availability, here we focus on metal packaging exclusively. We find that the recycling rate dropped from 59% in 2000 to 40% in 2011 and recycling volume dropped accordingly. Cost-benefit incidence analysis shows that net social benefits decreased by 2.8 billion won (2.5 million US dollars), while the net benefits to producers increased by 1.9 billion won (1.7 million US dollars) under the EPR program compared with the WDR program. The government of South Korea should set an ambitious recycling target and narrow the scope of the exemption from the mandatory recycling requirement. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Small-scale household digesters have been promoted across Asia as a sustainable way of handling manure. The major advantages are that they produce biogas and reduce odor. However their disadvantages include the low recycling of nutrients, because digestate is dilute and therefore difficult to transport, and the loss of biogas as a result of cracks and the intentional release of excess biogas. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to assess the environmental impacts associated with biogas digesters in Vietnam. Handling 1,000 kg of liquid manure and 100 kg of solid manure in a system with a biogas digester reduced the impact potential from 4.4 kg carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents to 3.2 kg CO2 equivalents compared with traditional manure management. However, this advantage could easily be compromised if digester construction is considered in the LCA or in situations where there is an excess of biogas which is intentionally released. A sensitivity analysis showed that biogas digesters could be a means of reducing global warming if methane emissions can be kept low. In terms of eutrophication, farms with biogas digesters had 3 to 4 times greater impacts. In order to make biogas digesters sustainable, methods for recycling digestates are urgently required.Bioplastics are a growing field, but with their expansion come unique environmental issues associated with the cultivation and processing of feedstocks. Availability of appropriate, high-quality data is a problem in life cycle assessment (LCA) of biopolymers and other bio-based materials that limits the accuracy and usefulness of study results. It is therefore critical that these data gaps be closed. To determine what data is needed to close these gaps, this study reviews currently available life cycle inventory data for biopolymer feedstocks and assesses the data quality for the selected feedstocks of corn, sugarcane, and soy. Life cycle inventory databases and relevant publications were searched for appropriate data, and the results collected into a summary table. The quality review was conducted using a pedigree matrix type scoring system which was adapted from the ILCD handbook, and an overall quality score for each dataset was calculated based on the matrix scores. A total of 287 datasets were collected during the review for a total of 22 different feedstocks. The majority of these datasets are from Europe and the USA, with most of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa having very limited data available. From the quality analysis, it was determined that more datasets that capture regional variations in crop cultivation are needed, as well as more data on land use change.In order to understand the environmental outcomes associated with the life cycle of a product, to compare these outcomes across products, or to design more sustainable supply chains, it is often desirable to estimate results for a reference supply chain representative of the conditions for a sector in a specific region. This paper, by examining ethanol and gasoline production processes, explains how choices made in the calculation of sector-representative emission factors can have a significant effect on the emission estimates used in life cycle assessments. This study estimates reference emission factors for United States dry-grind corn ethanol production and gasoline production processes suitable for use in baseline life cycle assessment unit processes. Based on facility-specific emissions and activity rates from the United States National Emissions Inventory, the Energy Information Administration, and an ethanol industry trade publication, the average emissions per unit energy content of fuel are computed using three different approaches. The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) characterization factors are used to estimate impact potentials for six environmental and three human health categories. Sector-specific direct emissions and impact potentials are compared across the three approaches and between the two sectors. The system boundary for this analysis is limited to the fuel production stage of these transportation fuel lifecycles. Findings from this work suggest that average emission factors based on total emissions and total production may significantly under estimate actual process emissions due to reporting thresholds and otherwise unreported emissions. Because of the potential for unreported emissions in regional inventories, it is more appropriate to estimate sector reference emission factors based on matched sets of facility or process level emissions and activity rates than to use aggregated totals. This study demonstrates a method which can be used for inventory development in cases where multiple facilities producing the same product are involved.Rapeseed is being considered as a potential feedstock for hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) fuel in the USA through its cultivation in rotation with wheat. The goal of this research was to determine the impact of soil C changes, induced through replacing the fallow period with rapeseed in rotation with wheat, and the effects it would have on emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) of rapeseed HRJ. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Tier 1) method was used with modifications to determine the changes in soil C of wheat-wheat-rapeseed (WWR) relative to the reference wheat-wheat-fallow (WWF) rotation for 20 years of cultivation. The 27 case scenarios were conducted to study the impacts of changes in management practices (tillage practice and residue input) on changes in soil C for WWR rotation in multiple locations in 10 US states. The CO2 emissions resulting from soil C changes were incorporated into the rapeseed HRJ pathway in order to evaluate the GHG emissions. Introducing rapeseed to replace the fallow period with wheat could either increase or decrease changes in soil C, depending on management practices. Soil C is predicted to increase with increased residue input and reduced tillage. The greatest gain of soil C was found when using high residue input for wheat and rapeseed under no tillage, resulting in the best management practice. Conversely, adding low residue input to both crops with full tillage created the highest loss of soil C, referring to as the worst management practice. Soil C changes varied across locations from -0.22 to 0.32 Mg C ha(-1) year(-1). Consequently, the GHG emissions of rapeseed HRJ ranged from 4 to 70 g CO2 eq./MJ, comparing to 46 g CO2 eq./MJ for excluding soil C change. The rapeseed HRJ exhibited the GHG savings of 65-96 % for the best practice and 20-42 % for the worst practice when compared to petroleum jet fuel. Based on results using the modified IPCC method, adoption of high residue input with no tillage for the rotation cropping of rapeseed with wheat had the potential to increase soil C. However, the method has limitations for predicting soil C changes regarding crop management practices. Biogeochemical-based models that have a potential to capture processes of C and N dynamics in soil and yield may be better suited to quantify regional variations in soil C changes for the rotation cropping of rapeseed with wheat.Corncob as agricultural waste has dramatically increased in recent years. Some corncobs are recycled and reused as bioproducts, whereas a large amount remains unused and burned in the fields. Currently, furfural production technology is one of the most commonly used technologies for corncob valorization because furfural is one of the most promising chemicals for sustainable chemical production. However, very few studies have analyzed the impact of furfural and furfuralcohol production on the environment and economy via life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). This study aims to quantify the environmental and economic impacts of furfural and furfuralcohol production, identify the main pollution processes and substances, improve potentials, and build a database on the furfural industry. Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing were carried out to estimate the environmental and economic impact of corncob-based furfural and furfuralcohol production. The corncob production, transport, and electricity consumption stages had the greatest impact on the environment because of direct heavy metal, phosphate, and phosphorus emissions. The overall economic impact was mainly attributed to tax, corncob, transport, electricity, and infrastructure investment. Optimizing corncob transport, raw materials and consumption efficiency, and waste disposal is highly important in reducing both environmental and economic burden. The key factors that contribute to reducing the overall environmental and economic impacts are increasing electricity consumption efficiency and furfural product yield, decreasing transport distance from corncob buyers to suppliers, choosing the appropriate corncob compression technology, and optimizing the wastewater reuse system.To reduce its environmental impact, the chemical industry is investigating the biomass-based production of chemicals such as ethylene, including fermentation and gasification conversion processes. However, a comprehensive study that compares the environmental impact of these biomass routes is missing. This study assesses and compares a wood gasification with a wood fermentation route to ethylene in Sweden, as well as compares it with the commercialized sugarcane and fossil oil alternatives. The study followed the methodology of life cycle assessment. A cradle-to-gate perspective for the production of 50,000 t ethylene/year was applied, and the following impact categories were investigated: global warming (GWP), acidification (ACP), photochemical ozone creation (POCP), and eutrophication (EP). Biomass acquisition including transport to the gasification plant was the major cause of the gasification route's GWP and POCP, suggesting improvements with regard to fuel source and machine efficiency. NOx emissions from the gasification process had the main share on the ACP and EP. The comparison of the gasification with a wood and a sugarcane fermentation route showed a lower impact for the gasification route. Among other things, this is caused by high emissions from transport and cultivation for the sugarcane route and high emissions from enzyme and ethanol production for the wood fermentation route. The results were less distinct for a comparison of the gasification with a fossil-based route. Fossil-based ethylene production was found to be preferable for the ACP and the EP, but less preferable for the GWP and POCP. However, it needs to be considered that the fossil route has been optimized for decades and is still ahead of the gasification and other biomass routes. The study shows that a gasification-based production of ethylene could outperform a fermentation-based one; however, further investigations are recommended, given the state of development of the investigated biomass routes. Moreover, based on the limited availability of biomass, further investigations into economical and ecological restrictions are of importance.This paper aims to provide an alternative method for calculating the environmental credits associated with material recycling in life cycle assessment (LCA) of waste management systems. The method proposed here is more consistent with the general attributional approach in LCA than the hitherto common practice of simply assuming a 1:1 substitution of primary material production. The formula proposed for estimating the environmental credit is applicable for the recovered materials that are reintroduced into the market (outputs of the recycling facilities), after all process losses in the various stages of the waste management system have been accounted for. It considers the displacement of materials by using the mix of virgin and recycled materials for each individual material that is used in the market for the production of goods. Moreover, it also considers the changes in the inherent properties of the materials undergoing a recycling process ('downcycling'), by introducing a quality (Q) factor, affecting the proportion of virgin material that is accounted for. Example applications of the proposed formula to a number of different materials (aluminium, steel, paper and cardboard and plastics) illustrate the range of possible results obtained. The environmental credit calculated using the proposed formula can be interpreted as an indication of the remaining margin for improvement, since it depends on the existing mix of virgin and recycled materials already on the market and on the potential of the recycled material to actually replace the primary one on a functional basis. We also discuss the possible use of a material's Q factor to estimate the maximum allowable % of recycled material in a product consistent with the quality demands of selected applications. We have introduced here a consistent and unified formula for the evaluation of the credits associated with material recovery of all waste materials in waste management systems (paper, glass, plastics, metals, etc.). Such a formula requires the knowledge of the current average market consumption mixes of primary and secondary materials (or the application-specific average mixes when the final application of the recovered materials is known) and of suitable Q factors for the material(s) that are recycled. As the latter are often not readily available, more research is called for to arrive at a ready-to-use Q factor database.This paper presents a specific tool called "ECORCE" (French acronym for ECO-comparator applied to Road Construction and Maintenance) dedicated to the road pavement life cycle assessment. This tool aims to reduce the consumption of materials, water, and energy by means of evaluating impacts. The environmental assessment has been based on the LCA framework established by the SETAC and ISO 14040 series of standards, as well as by NFP 01010 for French products. The pavement life cycle is divided into the initial construction and maintenance operations. Several functional units can be defined in order to compare roads or road layers that have been designed to offer the same service. The system is built by selecting the processes to be considered during the impact assessment; this selection step relies on lists of main processes, such as road materials, road equipment, and material transport. The keys to building this tool were to specifically propose simple functionalities for road engineers and researchers, allow for quick case study implementation, and display a user-friendly interface. Moreover, the tool takes into account civil engineering practices and provides a set of dedicated data related to road materials, road works, and earthworks. ECORCE also allows easily changing input data (geometry, operations, materials, and transport distances); its output screens and tables offer several approaches to investigating environmental LCA results on roads. It becomes possible to compare not only the materials used in a given layer but also the pavement structures composed of several layers using various mixed materials. Lastly, the tool is able to assess initial construction and maintenance policies. Various road structures and their associated traffic conditions may be examined with ECORCE. Results obtained with the tool are detailed in the paper for a highway case study aimed at demonstrating its possible uses. These results highlight that the relative magnitude of impacts from each main process can be analyzed for road design optimization. The tool reveals that road pavement materials have more impact than other processes such as transport and non-road equipment running within the life cycle. The investigation of standard road practices can thus focus on various alternative materials and pavement structures, depending on the configurable functional units already implemented in the tool, as explained in this paper. The highway case study and accompanying sensitivity testing campaign serve to discuss the benefits of this tool.This paper illustrates how a product-centric approach to recycling, building on the extensive expertise, knowhow and tools of the mineral-centric classical minerals and metallurgical processing, should be core to Design for Resource Efficiency (DfRE). Process simulation (HSC Sim 1974-2014, Outotec's design tool) and environmental software (GaBi 2014) are applied to quantify resource efficiency (RE) in a rigorous manner. These digitalisation tools are linked and will be used to show how the environmental performance of copper primary production, the processing of residues and the recycling of e-waste, e.g. light emitting diode (LED) lamps as well as the production of nickel pig iron can be evaluated. The paper also shows how technologies can be compared relative to a precise thermodynamic and techno-economic baseline. The results include simulation-based environmental indicators, exergy, recycling and recovery rates, as well as the qualities and quantities of the recyclates, losses and emissions of materials during production recycling. The complete mass and energy balance simulation provides the mineralogical detail of all streams (both mineral and recyclate as well as offgas and dust) to define and improve environmental assessment, while at the same time revealing the aspects of LCA databases and their results that require improvement. Furthermore, this paper presents an approach for industry to implement life-cycle methods in practice. It shows that the DfRE is all about predicting stream grades and thus is equivalent to Design for Recyclate grade and quality (as this determines whether a recyclate or product stream has economic value and can be treated or processed further). DfRE also reveals especially the grade, composition, minerals etc. of the leakage streams, i.e. diffuse emissions, thus permitting a more precise evaluation of environmental impact. The prediction of recyclate and stream compositions and grade makes the environmental analysis of systems more precise and will help to expand the detail that defines these flows on environmental databases. This is especially valuable for DfR, where the methodological rigour suggested in this paper is a very necessary addition and requirement for estimating the true environmental impact of product redesigns and the resource efficiency of processing technology and complete recycling systems. The methodology produces mass- and energy-consistent, economically viable best available technique (BAT) process blocks, the inclusion of which on environmental databases will be invaluable in benchmarking technology and systems in terms of estimating the achievable resource efficiency baseline.Numerous strategies have been implemented to reduce the global environmental burden of construction activities in order to achieve sustainable development goals. However, with regard to renovating and retrofitting existing buildings, life cycle assessment (LCA)-based studies mostly focus on the improvement of a building's energy performance rather than on the structural aspects of the retrofit itself. The present study assesses the life cycle environmental impacts of different replacement options for a typical old flat roof belonging to a masonry building. Three different structural options are considered: reinforced concrete joists and hollow clay blocks, steel joists and concrete slab, and reinforced concrete joists and polystyrene panels. The environmental analysis is based on a new approach wherein the structural and functional properties of a new flat roof are set as fixed requirements for the design of the different replacement options. A cradle-to-grave LCA-based study is then conducted for the environmental assessment of the entire retrofit process, including different waste scenarios. SimaPro software and IMPACT2002+ methodology are used for the LCA analysis, enabling quantification of the environmental impacts of the three flat roofing options by means of 4 endpoint and 15 midpoint indicators. The environmental contribution of each life cycle phase related to the replacement of the old flat roof is assessed. The results demonstrate that within the life cycle of each option, the use phase and the construction phase have the highest environmental impact, ranging from 60 to 70 % and 50 to 80 % of the total burden in the Climate Change/Resources and Human Health/Ecosystem Quality damage categories, respectively. Having initially set structural and functional constraints for the analysis, the results show that any of the different options exhibits an overall lowest environmental performance. Consequently, specific environmental burdens/categories can be identified to optimize the sustainable retrofit design. The work demonstrates that a comprehensive LCA-based approach can be used to effectively drive the design of structural and functional retrofit operations on existing buildings. This study also shows how a rigorous environmental analysis, conducted by implementing the proposed approach, can influence decision-making for the most sustainable design alternatives.The depletion of abiotic resources needs to be discussed in the light of available geologic stocks. For the evaluation of long-term resource availability under consideration of the resources' functional relevance, the abiotic resource stock that is ultimately available for human purposes needs to be identified. This paper discusses the determination of geologic resources stocks and outlines an approach for the estimation of the resource stocks ultimately available for human use in the long-term. Based on these numbers, existing characterization factors for the assessment of resource depletion by means of the anthropogenic stock extended abiotic depletion potential (AADP) model can be updated. For the assessment of long-term resource availability, the share of abiotic resources ultimately available for human extraction needs to be inferred from the quantity of the elements available in the earth's crust. Based on existing data on crustal concentrations and assumptions regarding the maximal extractable amount of resource, three different approaches for the determination of ultimately extractable reserves are proposed. The different resource numbers are compared, and their effects on the resulting characterization factors derived from the abiotic depletion potential (ADP) and the AADP models are analyzed. A best estimate for the determination of ultimately extractable reserves is proposed. Based on this new resource number, AADP characterization factors for 35 materials are calculated. The use of ultimately extractable reserves leads to an improved applicability of the AADP model and increases the overall significance of the results. Resource security is a premise for sustainable development. The use of resources needs to be evaluated in the context of their decreasing availability for future generations. Thus, resource choices should also be based on an analysis of available resource stocks. The proposed AADP characterization factors based on ultimately extractable reserves will enable a more realistic evaluation of long-term resource availability for human purposes.The importance of integrating resources criticality assessment into Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) under the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) framework has been discussed for some time. However, the question how to proceed towards integration remain unclear. Only very few work is published on this issue and to our knowledge only Schneider et al. (2014) have developed one operational model. In this paper we review existing literature critically and explain why integration is important and how it could be done, using knowledge from outside the LCA field. The criticality assessment method proposed by Graedel et al. (2012) is identified as the best starting point. This paper shows based on a critical review why bridging towards such a method could help addressing criticality in LCSA, what are possible options and which research needs exists. It reveals that currently LCA does not adequately cover resource criticality and that methods like Graedel et al. (2012) are inspiring further development of LCA; both approaches have a complementary nature and hence could be developed towards integration within the LCSA framework. Currently resource indicators are not meaningful in LCA, wherefore there is no consensus in LCA community on what to recommend; hence the Area of Protection Natural Resources needs to be rethought. Broadening the scope of LCA towards LCSA provides a conceptual framework to keep LCA relevant for assessing sustainability challenges like access to resources. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We performed a life-cycle environmental assessment of China's multi-crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) modules associated with international trade. The study distinguished domestic and imported raw materials for PV modules within the framework of a life-cycle assessment based on traditional processes. Domestic process data were collected from typical PV companies in China and the literature. Imported raw material data were obtained from international trade databases and life-cycle inventory primary databases. The results indicate that it is necessary to consider the international trade of raw materials in life-cycle environmental impacts of PV modules produced in China when considering the shift of environmental impacts between countries associated with international trade of material and products. Multi-crystalline silicon PV production and PV module packaging are important manufacturing processes within the context of environmental impacts of the manufacture of PV modules in China. This assessment also reveals that production of multi-crystalline silicon PV modules in the country has emitted significant amounts of greenhouses gases (GHG). For example, over 2.21E+07 tons of CO(2)eq were emitted in 2010, of which 94% were from Chinese domestic industries and only 6% from imported raw materials. Regarding the export of PV modules, 82.4% of GHG emissions in China were from imports of PV modules by other countries. This result implies that while the export of Chinese PV modules supplied a large amount of clean energy to the world, it also caused significant environmental impacts in China. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Disposable materials contribute to healthcare's estimated production of 33 pounds of waste per patient bed per day or approximately 5.9 million tons of waste each year. The shift toward disposable materials was initially driven by a variety of factors including the potential for infection control, convenience, and cost. The current use of single-use disposables in healthcare, however, has become costly, wasteful, and to some extent, unnecessary. Disposable custom packs, a set of products prepackaged for a specific procedure to reduce time and error, are utilized in nearly every medical procedure performed in the US and internationally. This study analyzed 15 custom packs from geographically diverse hospitals using life cycle assessment and design for the environment. Polypropylene, the material used to make gowns and drapes, was the most prominent material by weight, followed by cotton. However, the life cycle assessment results show that cotton composed the largest portion of environmental impacts in every,category. Finally, a new green custom pack was designed. By using tools and strategies such as life cycle assessment and design for the environment,, healthcare institutions can make educated streamlining efforts for their disposable custom packs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Soils are one of earth's essential natural resources, supporting nearly all terrestrial life. By and large, current life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies are limited in their assessment of potential land use impacts in terms of terrestrial biodiversity loss. The land use life cycle impact assessment (LULCIA) project spearheaded by the United Nations Environment Programme/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (UNEP/SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative recently broadened the scope of land use evaluation in life cycle assessment (LCA) by encompassing six additional indicators that represent ecosystem provision and regulation services, as defined in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Although LCIA methodology is more comprehensive with regards to relevant impact pathways linked to land use, the development could potentially decrease the capacity of LCA as a decision support system by increasing the number of indicators from one to seven for the assessment of the land use impact category alone. To overcome this limitation, the project proposes a new LCIA method to estimate the decrease in value of the ecosystem services provided to society due to land use. The six midpoint land use indicators proposed by the LULCIA project are further modeled into a new area of protection, resources and ecosystem services, based on a functional approach. To do so, indicators expressed in biophysical units are converted into monetary units based on the economic valuation of the reduction of a given ecosystem service. The loss of provision services biotic production and fresh water recharge are estimated through productivity loss and water supply cost, respectively. The regulation services erosion resistance and mechanical and physicochemical water filtration are estimated through the cost of erosion mitigation measures and water purification process costs, respectively. The climate regulation potential is estimated through the social carbon cost: a decrease in carbon sequestration by soils is considered equivalent to an amount of carbon emitted in the atmosphere. We also propose to consider the local socioeconomic context by evaluating the economic adaptation capacity of countries: impacts on the resources and ecosystem services area of protection are only accounted for when the country has the capacity to adapt (while indirect impacts would be calculated by assessing the burdens of the adaptation scenario by performing a full LCA of these adaptation measures). The application of the method is illustrated through a case study evaluating the cradle-to-gate land use impacts of three bio-based polymers (biopolyethylene, polylactic acid and thermoplastic starch) produced in Brazil, Italy, Thailand and the United States. Impact scores are not only influenced by the biophysical specificity of the studied systems (e.g. crop yield affecting the inventory flow, type of biome affecting impact characterisation) but also by the local socioeconomic capacity to compensate for an ecosystem service loss and available compensation measures and technologies. In this case study, thermoplastic starch appears to have fewer impacts on land use and ecosystem services than biopolyethylene or polylactic acid. Overall, the research demonstrates the feasibility of further modeling the biophysical indicators of land use into an economic metric. This additional and complementary modeling step is meant to facilitate the interpretation of LCA results, enabling discussions on the relevance of the biophysical indicators affecting the loss of ecosystem services from land use. It may also be used as an explicit weighting scheme to aggregate the midpoint results into a single value expressing the social cost to compensate for the loss of the ecosystem services. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The paper analyzes biodiesel chains of rapeseed (Brassica napus) and carinata (Brassica carinata) cultivated in Central and Southern Italy, assessing the impact on Global Warming Potential by means of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The production chains differed in use of the oilcake, as animal feed for rapeseed and as biofumigant for B. carinata. The allocation of emissions across co-products was first calculated on the basis of their energy content according to the criterion proposed by European Commission for biofuel production. The resulting impacts were then compared to those obtained through the substitution approach (system expansion method), which considers emissions that are saved by replacing the equivalent conventional product with co-product bio-based materials i.e. soybean meals, nematicidal fumigants, fertilizers and glycerol. The results showed that this method is sensitive to pointing out the importance of the valorization of co-products to the sustainability of bioenergy supply chain. Among the different options taken into consideration, in the case of the B. carinata biodiesel chain, the substitution of conventional fumigants and fertilizers with biofumigants and amendments is able to determine a global net saving of 134 g CO(2)eq per MJ of biodiesel, reversing the sustainability assessment obtained through the energy allocation method. Overall, the results suggest that, when planning future biorefineries, environmental assessment should take the substitution approach into account in order for valorization of co-products and diversification of processes to be rewarded. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A steady growth of the number of existing Type III environmental programmes (schemes) has been noticed in recent years. Consequently, overlapping and duplication of the product category rules supervised by these programmes is increasing, risking the legitimacy of environmental claims. To overcome these difficulties and challenges, different approaches striving for mutual recognition and harmonization of schemes have been launched, e.g. the Guidance for Product Category Rules Development (the Guidance). Since a proper reflection of these current developments is not yet available, this paper reviews existing Type III programmes and their conformance to ISO 14025. Further, an overview of cooperation approaches and global trends for harmonization of rules is provided, including the latest European product environmental footprint initiative. As a case study, the requirements of the Guidance are tested by aligning them to a set of exemplary product category rules under development. Challenges in both review and alignment processes are described. The results show that out of 39 analysed programmes, over 75% are fully ISO-conformant Nearly half claim to cover all types of products and services, followed by the "building and construction sector" related schemes that currently reach a share of over 35%, after a steady growth in the last 2-3 years. Concerning the origin of schemes, European based ones are dominating (over 55% of all). The cooperation initiatives analysis outlines that mutual recognition of instructions and rules among operators is becoming a valuable approach to reduce time, costs and duplication of documentation. The development of supplementary guidelines is also considered useful in order to assure harmonization among parties. Finally, the draft category rules alignment test is acknowledged as a challenging, but feasible task. Based on this review, more than 10 areas for improvement of the harmonization level of instructions are identified. The paper provides recommendations for the development of the new ISO/DTS 14027, one of which is the adoption of the Guidance as seed document. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To mitigate climate change and to ensure energy security, society is searching for alternatives to fossil fuels. Biomass is an interesting renewable resource, because it can be used both as energy and as feedstock for material and chemical production. The aim of this article is to present the environmental impacts associated with products from a biorefinery in Norway (Borregaard). More specifically, the article shows results from studies on the products ethanol 96%, ethanol 99%, cellulose, liquid lignin, lignin powder and vanillin, and identifies the processes which contribute most in each impact category and product. Comparative emissions are also shown for at least one product alternative. The study has been carried out using the life cycle assessment method from "cradle to gate". The functional unit is 1 tonne product for cellulose, lignin and vanillin and 1 m(3) product for ethanol. All of the products are based on the same raw materials (timber and wood chips). The infrastructure of the biorefinery has been included. The study has, as far as possible, avoided allocation by analysing and modelling the processes at a detailed level. Where necessary, energy allocation, using dry weight energy content, has been applied. Climate change, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical ozone creation, ozone depletion and cumulative energy demand have been selected as environmental impact categories. Different processes relating to the biorefinery have significance for the various environmental impact categories. This has made it difficult to single out the processes to be studied further. Oil combustion is the most important process in relation to climate change. Infrastructure is not important for either impact category. The global warming potential for bioethanol from Borregaard is in the lower range when compared with earlier studies. To conclude, this article demonstrates that the biofuel under study is, even at worst, comparable to that produced using other bioethanol production processes. The other products are also substitutes for fossil derived chemicals, but as the available literature lacks data for such chemicals, the environmental profiles for these have not been compared. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to determine the environmental aspects of a less impactful municipal solid waste management system through life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. In order to achieve this goal, first, the composition study was conducted in Sakarya, Turkey for one year. The results of first step are to be utilized as a reliable data source in establishing a complete picture of the environmental performances of municipal solid waste management systems with a life cycle perspective. The functional unit of the study was selected as one ton of municipal solid waste generated in Sakarya. System boundaries included collection and transportation of municipal solid waste and its treatment and disposal by MRF, incineration, composting and landfilling methods. Data on the process was gathered from a field study conducted in Sakarya, and from SimaPro 8.0.2 literature and libraries. The data was evaluated with CML-IA methodology by the means of abiotic depletion, abiotic depletion (fossil fuels), acidification, global warming, ozone depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidation. According to the results, while landfilling and incineration have been confirmed as the worst waste final disposal alternatives, composting and material recovery showed better performance. An integrated system (MRF, composting, incineration and landfilling) is considered as a solution towards improved sustainability to overcome the existing waste management problem. The paper showed LCA to be a valuable tool which can help governors and managers plan an integrated waste management strategy that provides more preferable environmental outcomes than the strategy suggested. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study proposes personal mobility carbon allowance scheme, collects the data using an online experimental game, and analyzes data with econometric models. Personal mobility carbon allowance (PMCA) schemes allocate carbon credits to users at no cost based on the emissions reduction goal of the system. Users spend carbon credits for travel and a market place exists where users can buy or sell credits. To understand this process, a real-time experimental game tool is developed where players are asked to make travel decisions within the carbon budget set by PMCA and they are allowed to trade carbon credits in a market modeled as a double auction game. Results from estimated random parameter models show that medium and low income group users are highly sensitive to increase in carbon cost for grocery (non-work) trips. Further, the elasticity values show that high income group are less sensitive to carbon cost increase for work trips. The market dynamics such as number of total bids or asks are examined through count data models. The insights from the models can be used to effectively design the parameters of PMCA schemes. In addition, the experimental game tool and the analysis framework can be applied to understand other market based strategies such as carbon tax and tradable emissions permits. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study demonstrates life cycle assessment (LCA) on a reference wooden building according to the latest normative standards: EN 15978, EN 15804 and EN 16485. Global warming potential and primary energy balance over the reference building were assessed in a case study. Through the assessment, the application of the standards was studied. In addition, possible points for development in the standards, especially concerning wood products and wood construction, were discussed from a practical perspective. The lack of proper data is a critical issue in conducting the assessment in compliance with the standards. Since LCA is a data-intensive method, the preparation of data for the building assessment according to the standard is certainly required. This paper also raises questions about the life cycle modules defined in the standards and the importance of the communication system used for the assessment results. It would be of importance to develop the communication system in such a way as to stimulate environmental consciousness in society. In order to develop a relevant communication system, further discussion and case studies would be important and feedback from such practices should be incorporated into the development of the guideline for the assessment.In this study, a wave park is analysed from the economic and electrical points of view. The system under consideration goes from each wave energy unit up to the point of common connection with the main grid. Time series are obtained from simulation models for a scaled prototype and include data for mild, medium and strong sea states. The simulation models have been validated against the small scale tank testing of a prime mover, a wave rider buoy and a scaled testing of the power take-off in a land-based test rig. The design of the proposed wave park layout aims to minimise its cost and power losses. A life-cycle analysis of the park is performed showing that around 30 Euro/MWh will be the share of the electricity price required to install and operate the wave park grid. The power quality of the wave park and its compliance with regulations are also analysed. Special emphasis is put in the study of flicker emissions concluding that the proposed wave park is within the grid code limitations and even a reduction of a 66% in the flicker coefficients is reported when considering the aggregation of several units in one model.A railway track asset management strategy must ensure that the condition of the track stays at an acceptable level, ensuring passenger comfort and safety. The determination of an efficient and effective strategy is a complex problem that requires consideration of the interrelated processes of deterioration, inspection, maintenance and renewal. Railway traffic causes the track's geometry to deteriorate through time. When the track's geometry has been assessed and seen to have deteriorated, maintenance is scheduled to restore the track's geometry using a tamping machine. Tamping involves lifting the track to the required position before inserting vibrating tines into the ballast either side of the sleepers and using them to pack the ballast below. This process causes damage to the ballast, causing a relative acceleration in future track geometry deterioration and decreasing the time between subsequent maintenance interventions. This paper describes a Markov model that can be used to investigate the asset management strategy applied to a railway track section. The model predicts the way that the track section's condition changes with time for a given asset management strategy, which is defined through the specification of a number of model parameters. The model is applied to a track section with a specified maintenance strategy and is used to investigate the track's performance for that strategy. Parameters corresponding to asset management decisions that relate to inspection, maintenance and renewal are then changed in order to illustrate the effects of the decisions on the track's life cycle. The Markov model provides a simple yet powerful means of investigating the effects of an asset management strategy on a railway track section.The long-term greenhouse gas emissions implications of wood biomass (bioenergy') harvests are highly uncertain yet of great significance for climate change mitigation and renewable energy policies. Particularly uncertain are the net carbon (C) effects of multiple harvests staggered spatially and temporally across landscapes where bioenergy is only one of many products. We used field data to formulate bioenergy harvest scenarios, applied them to 362 sites from the Forest Inventory and Analysis database, and projected growth and harvests over 160years using the Forest Vegetation Simulator. We compared the net cumulative C fluxes, relative to a non-bioenergy baseline, between scenarios when various proportions of the landscape are harvested for bioenergy: 0% (non-bioenergy); 25% (BIO25); 50% (BIO50); or 100% (BIO100), with three levels of intensification. We accounted for C stored in aboveground forest pools and wood products, direct and indirect emissions from wood products and bioenergy, and avoided direct and indirect emissions from fossil fuels. At the end of the simulation period, although 82% of stands were projected to maintain net positive C benefit, net flux remained negative (i.e., net emissions) compared to non-bioenergy harvests for the entire 160-year simulation period. BIO25, BIO50, and BIO100 scenarios resulted in average annual emissions of 2.47, 5.02, and 9.83Mg Cha(-1), respectively. Using bioenergy for heating decreased the emissions relative to electricity generation as did removing additional slash from thinnings between regeneration harvests. However, all bioenergy scenarios resulted in increased net emissions compared to the non-bioenergy harvests. Stands with high initial aboveground live biomass may have higher net emissions from bioenergy harvest. Silvicultural practices such as increasing rotation length and structural retention may result in lower C fluxes from bioenergy harvests. Finally, since passive management resulted in the greatest net C storage, we recommend designation of unharvested reserves to offset emissions from harvested stands.Localism or regionalization has become a popular topic in urban design, but recent critics raise the question of whether the local or regional scale is most desirable for industrial ecosystems. As a way to explore the claim that localized metabolism is more sustainable, this study examines the costs and benefits of two differentially scaled strategies for the management of post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles originating in the city of Honolulu, Hawai'i: local incineration and transcontinental recycling. We first estimate total environmental impacts of two options using life cycle assessment, and then disaggregate them into local versus non-local impacts to examine the spatial distribution of costs and benefits. We further assess the environmental justification for localized waste management in relation to the broader socio-economic motivations that underlie the way that plastics are managed in Honolulu. In doing so we assess the scale at which waste management is optimized from an environmental standpoint as well as the non-environmental considerations such as security and safety that influence the politics of scale involved in urban metabolic design. By illustrating the trade-offs between a local versus global metabolic pathway for plastic waste, the results from our Honolulu case study are globally relevant for communities interested in sustainable urban design and in particular urban waste management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the great pressure on global natural resources, few LCA studies focus on total resource consumption and the efficiency of the use of those resources. Moreover, a total resource use assessment for agricultural systems is highly relevant because many of these systems have become high input/high output systems in order to achieve higher productivity. In this study, we propose a framework to evaluate total resource consumption of agricultural systems at the process level using an Exergy Analysis (EA) and at the life cycle level using an Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA). We evaluate the applicability and usefulness of this approach based on a case study of an intensive confinement-based dairy farm in the region of Flanders, Belgium. The EA showed that more than half of the resources consumed by the dairy farm's herd was irreversibly lost, as a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. The remaining went for almost two-thirds to manure (54%) and methane emissions (9%), while only one-third flowed to end-products, i.e. milk (32%) and the animals awaiting slaughter (2%). The ELCA identified the feed supply as the most demanding part of the dairy production chain by far, representing 93% of the resource footprint. Overall, concentrates were on average 2.5 times more resource-intensive per kg dry matter than roughages, while wet by-products were 34% and 73% less resource-intensive than roughages and concentrates, respectively. Mainly land (77%) and fossil resources (17%) were required throughout the life cycle. About 36% of the occupied land (in terms of m(2)*year) was located off-farm. Slightly less than one-quarter of the fossil resources were used on-farm as fuel and electricity. The on-farm use of groundwater accounted for about half of the total blue water use across the life cycle. With this paper, we show the usefulness of the proposed framework to evaluate total resource consumption of dairy farms and to identify on-farm and off-farm improvement opportunities. This framework has potential to support research on whole-farm improvement strategies such as pasture-based systems and low-input farming, and to compare populations of contrasting milk production systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Livestock production is a major consumer of fresh water, and the influence of livestock production on global fresh water resources is increasing because of the growing demand for livestock products. Increasing water use efficiency of livestock production, therefore, can contribute to the overall water use efficiency of agriculture. Previous studies have reported significant variation in livestock water productivity (L WP) within and among farming systems. Underlying causes of this variation in LWP require further investigation. The objective of this paper was to identify the factors that explain the variation in LWP within and among farming systems in Ethiopia. We quantified LWP for various farms in mixed-crop livestock systems and explored the effect of household demographic characteristics and farm assets on LWP using ANOVA and multilevel mixed-effect linear regression. We focused on water used to cultivate feeds on privately owned agricultural lands. There was a difference in LWP among farming systems and wealth categories. Better-off households followed by medium households had the highest LWP, whereas poor households had the lowest LWP. The variation in LWP among wealth categories could be explained by the differences in the ownership of livestock and availability of family labor. Regression results showed that the age of the household head, the size of the livestock holding and availability of family labor affected LWP positively. The results suggest that water use efficiency could be improved by alleviating resource constraints such as access to farm labor and livestock assets, oxen in particular.Nowadays, many countries adopt an active agenda to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions by moving towards less polluting energy generation technologies. The environmental costs, directly or indirectly generated to achieve such a challenging objective, remain however largely underexplored. Until now, research has focused either on pure economic approaches such as Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) and partial equilibrium (PE) models, or on (physical) energy supply scenarios. These latter could be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of various energy saving or cleaner technologies via Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. These modelling efforts have, however, been pursued in isolation, without exploring the possible complementarities and synergies. In this study, we have undertaken a practical combination of these approaches into a common framework: on the one hand, by coupling a CGE with a PE model, and, on the other hand, by linking the outcomes from the coupling with a hybrid input-output process based life cycle inventory. The methodological framework aimed at assessing the environmental consequences of two energy policy scenarios in Luxembourg between 2010 and 2025. The study highlights the potential of coupling CGE and PE models but also the related methodological difficulties (e.g. small number of available technologies in Luxembourg, intrinsic limitations of the two approaches, etc.). The assessment shows both environmental synergies and trade-offs due to the implementation of energy policies. For example, despite the changes in technologies towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, only marginal improvements are observed in the climate change mitigation scenario as compared to the Business-As-Usual. The energy related production and imports are indeed expected to increase over time and represent a large contribution to the country's impacts. Interestingly, side effects on other impacts than climate change or fossil resource depletion (e.g. ionising radiation and water depletion) may also occur mainly due to the use of nuclear energy in neighbouring countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We evaluated the fuel-cycle emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and air pollutants (NOx, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5) of electric vehicles (EVs) in China and the United States (U.S.), two of the largest potential markets for EVs in the world. Six of the most economically developed and populated regions in China and the U.S. were selected. The results showed that EV fuel-cycle emissions depend substantially on the carbon intensity and cleanness of the electricity mix, and vary significantly across the regions studied. In those regions with a low share of coal-based electricity (e.g., California), EVs can reduce GHG and air pollutant emissions (except for PM) significantly compared with conventional vehicles. However, in the Chinese regions and selected U.S. Midwestern states where coal dominates in the generation mix, EVs can reduce GHG emissions but increase the total and urban emissions of air pollutants. In 2025, EVs will offer greater reductions in GHG and air pollutant emissions because emissions from power plants will be better controlled; EVs in the Chinese regions examined, however, may still increase SO2 and PM emissions. Reductions of 60-85% in GHGs and air pollutants could be achieved were EVs charged with 80% renewable electricity or the electricity generated from the best available technologies of coal-fired power plants, which are futuristic power generation scenarios. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgal biofuels are not yet economically viable due to high material and energy costs associated with production process. Microalgae cultivation is a water-intensive process compared to other downstream processes for biodiesel production. Various studies found that the production of 1 L of microalgal biodiesel requires approximately 3000 L of water. Water recycling in microalgae cultivation is desirable not only to reduce the water demand, but it also improves the economic feasibility of algal biofuels as due to nutrients and energy savings. This review highlights recently published studies on microalgae water demand and water recycling in microalgae cultivation. Strategies to reduce water footprint for microalgal cultivation, advantages and disadvantages of water recycling, and approaches to mitigate the negative effects of water reuse within the context of water and energy saving are also discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An interest in biodiesel as an alternative fuel for diesel engines has been increasing because of the issue of petroleum depletion and environmental concerns related to massive carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers are strongly driven to pursue the next generation of vegetable oil-based biodiesel. Oleaginous microalgae are considered to be a promising alternative oil source. To commercialize microalgal biodiesel, cost reductions in oil extraction and downstream biodiesel conversion are stressed. Herein, starting from an investigation of oil extraction from wet microalgae, a review is conducted of transesterification using enzymes, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts, and yield enhancement by ultrasound, microwave, and supercritical process. In particular, there is a focus on direct transesterification as a simple and energy efficient process that omits a separate oil extraction step and utilizes wet microalgal biomass; however, it is still necessary to consider issues such as the purification of microalgal oils and upgrading of biodiesel properties. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgae biofuel production has been extensively evaluated through resource, economic and life cycle assessments. Resource assessments consistently identify land as non-limiting and highlight the need to consider siting based on combined geographical constraints of land and other critical resources such as water and carbon dioxide. Economic assessments report a selling cost of fuel that ranges between $1.64 and over $30 gal (1) consistent with large variability reported in the life cycle literature, -75 to 534 g CO2-eq MJ (1). Large drivers behind such variability stem from differences in productivity assumptions, pathway technologies, and system boundaries. Productivity represents foundational units in these assessments with current assumed yields in various assessments varying by a factor of 60. A review of the literature in these areas highlights the need for harmonized assessments such that direct comparisons of alternative processing technologies can be made on the metrics of resource requirements, economic feasibility, and environmental impact. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the advantages of friction stir welding (FSW) is reduced energy consumption as compared to arc welding processes. This advantage has been predicted and qualitatively established. However, a quantitative analysis based on energy measurements during the processes and how to equitably compare them is missing. The objective of this work is to quantitatively compare the energy consumption associated with the creation of full-penetration welds in aluminum 6061-T6 workpieces by FSW and gas metal arc welding (GMAW) processes. The workpiece thicknesses for the two processes (5-mm-thick for FSW and 7.1-mm-thick for GMAW) are chosen such that the maximum tensile force sustained by the joints during tensile testing is similar. This accounts for material saving due to the higher ultimate tensile strength resulting from FSW. The energy consumed for any pre-processes, the welding processes, and post-processes was measured. Finally, a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to determine and compare the environmental impact of FSW and GMAW. For the welding parameters used in this study joining by FSW consumes 42% less energy as compared to GMAW and utilizes approximately 10% less material for the design criteria of similar maximum tensile force. This leads to approximately 31% less greenhouse gas emissions for FSW as compared to GMAW. Both, the lower energy consumption during FSW, and involved pre and post processes contributed in the overall energy reduction. (C) 2014 CIRP.Water environment carrying capacity (WECC) is an important foundation of sustainable socioeconomic development and may be affected by many factors such as water resources, water quality, economy, population and environmental protection. This article focuses on the temporal and spatial variability of WECC to explore a method of dynamic successive assessment. First, the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework is used to develop a systematic and causal indicator system representing the three aspects of water environment pressure carrying capacity (WEPCC), water environment state carrying capacity (WESCC) and water environment response carrying capacity (WERCC). The Variable Fuzzy Pattern Recognition (VFPR) model and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model are combined to successively and dynamically assess WEPCC, WESCC and WERCC, and after that the weighting method is used to calculate WECC. Furthermore, WECC is divided into 27 classes on the basis of WEPCC, WESCC and WERCC contributions. The proposed method is applied to the dynamic successive assessment of WECCs in China, including inter-province comparisons. The results show that the dynamic successive WECC assessment method is reasonable, and it can be used not only to accurately understand the changes of WECC through time but also to distinguish qualitative differences masked by similar WECC values. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The CO2 adsorption on biochar produced by microwave pyrolysis of rice straw was investigated in this study. A microwave power level of 200 W and a maximum temperature of approximately 300 degrees C would be the optimal parameters to adsorb the most CO2. The CO2 adsorption capacity was up to 80 mg/g at 20 degrees C. The adsorption capacity decreased at higher power levels and temperatures possibly owing to the pore destruction. The CO2 adsorption capacity was highly correlated with the specific surface area of biochar. The conventional pyrolysis at 550 degrees C was optimal to produce the biochar absorbing the most CO2 which, however, was still lower than that of the biochar produced by microwave pyrolysis by about 14%. Low activation energy implies that CO2 adsorption on the biochar is physisorption. The ratio of CO2 quantity versus solid product quantity can almost match the CO2 adsorption capacity of the biochar produced at 200 W microwave power levels, so the microwave pyrolysis without further processes to meet the zero emission of CO2 should be workable. Compared with conventional pyrolysis, microwave pyrolysis could produce the biochar with lower time, cost, and energy consumptions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The electrical modelling of HCPV (high concentrator photovoltaic) modules is a key issue for systems design and energy prediction. However, the electrical modelling of HCPV modules shows a significantly level of complexity than conventional photovoltaic technology because of the use of multi-junction solar cells and optical devices. In this paper, a method for the simulation of the I-V curves of a HCPV module at any operating condition is introduced. The method is based on three different ANN (artificial neural networks)-based models: one to spectrally correct the direct normal irradiance, one to predict the cell temperature and one to generate the I-V curve of the HCPV module. The method has the advantage that is fully based on atmospheric parameter and outdoor measurements. The analysis of results shows that the method accurately predicts the I-V curve of a HCPV module for a wide range of atmospheric operating conditions with a RMSE (root mean square error) ranging from 0.19% to 1.66% and a MBE "(mean bias error) ranging from -0.38% to 0.40%. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The airline industry has a strong interest in developing sustainable aviation fuels, in order to reduce their exposure to increasing oil prices and cost liability for greenhouse gas emissions. The feasibility and cost of producing sustainable biomass-based jet fuels at a sufficient scale to materially address these issues is an enormous challenge. This paper builds directly on the biophysical study by H.T. Murphy, D.A. O'Connell, R.J. Raison, A.C. Warden, T.H. Booth, A. Herr, A.L. Braid, D.F. Crawford, J.A. Hayward, T. Javonovic, J.G. McIvor, M.H. O'Connor, M.L. Poole, D. Prestwidge, N. Raisbeck-Brown & L. Rye, In review, which examined a 25year scale-up strategy to produce 5% of projected jet fuel demand in Australia in 2020 (470mL) in the Fitzroy region of Queensland, Australia. The strategy was based on the use of a mixed ligno-cellulosic biomass feedstock and assumed, for the sake of exploring and quantifying the scenario, a simplified two-step conversion process - conversion of biomass to crude bio-oil within the region, and upgrade to jet fuel at a central Brisbane facility. This paper provides details on the costs of production in this scenario, focusing on two different strategies for biomass utilization, and two types of novel small-medium scale conversion technologies. The cost analyses have taken into account technology learning curves, different economies of scale and key cost sensitivities. The cost of biomass-based jet fuels is estimated to be between 0.70 and 1.90 $L-1 when the efficiency of conversion of biomass to biocrude and subsequently to aviation fuel is varied by +/- 10% of published values, with an average value of 1.10 $L-1. This is within the range of the projected 2035 conventional jet fuel price of 1.50 $L-1. Therefore, biomass-based jet fuel has the potential to contribute to supply of Australia's jet fuel needs in the future.The WULCA group, active since 2007 on Water Use in LCA, commenced the development of consensus-based indicators in January 2014. This activity is planned to last 2 years and covers human health, ecosystem quality, and a stress-based indicator. This latter encompasses potential deprivation of both ecosystem and human, hence aiming to represent potential impacts more comprehensively than any other available LCA-oriented method assessing the "water scarcity footprint" (ISO 2014). A series of three expert workshops, including non-LCA experts from hydrology, eco-hydrology, and water supply science, was organized specifically on the topic of this generic midpoint indicator. They were held in Zurich on 10th September, in San Francisco on 5th October and in Tsukuba on 27th October 2014. In total 49 experts attended. The specific objectives of the workshops were twofold. First, it was to present the identified options of the stress-based indicator narrowed down by the active members of WULCA during the first 8 months of the project and to receive comments on the relevance, usefulness, acceptability, and focus of the selected indicator. Second, the workshop covered different challenges in the modeling of the indicator and presented the experts with background information and specific questions. This paper summarizes the discussions and outcome of these workshops. Where no agreement was reached, the working group of active members is considering all inputs received and continues the work. The discussion covered first the question to be answered by such indicator, resulting on an agreement on the evaluation of the potential to deprive other users of water, independently of who the user is (i.e., human or ecosystems). Special attention was given to the special case of arid areas as well as the definition of environmental water requirements. Specific modeling challenges were then addressed: definition and quantification of human and ecosystem water demand, consideration of green water and terrestrial ecosystems, sources of data, distinction of groundwater and surface water, and temporal and geographical resolution. The input, decisions, and points of discussion were compiled and brought back within the group of active members. The group is using the recommendations and works further on the harmonization of the points of disagreement. It is expected that a selection of indicators representing different ways to address the most important issues will be produced and tested in spring 2015. The analysis of the result should lead to a provisional recommendation by summer 2015.The rapid proliferation of electronic devices in the last two decades has compelled the researchers to find a remedy for one of the most toxic and hazardous waste materials - the waste Printed Circuit Boards. Numerous articles have been published demonstrating the process routes for recycling of this toxic but otherwise useful waste due to nearly 30% metal content. In this paper, more than 150 related articles mostly published in the last 15 years and covering the broad areas like characterization of waste Printed Circuit Boards, health hazards associated with the processing and the different routes of recycling have been analyzed to provide a comprehensive overview on this topic. Physical separation processes employing electrostatic separator, magnetic separator, froth floatation, etc., has been reviewed for separation of metals and non-metals, along with useful utilizations of the non-metallic materials. The recovery of metals from this waste material through pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical or bio-hydrometallurgical routes is also critically discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Australia is one of the two largest exporting nations for beef and lamb in the world and the USA is a major export market for both products. To inform the Australian red meat industry regarding the environmental performance of exported food products, this study conducted the first multi-impact analysis of Australian red meat export supply chains including all stages through to warehousing in the USA. A large, integrated dataset based on case study farms and regional survey was used to model beef and lamb from major representative production regions in eastern Australia. Per kilogram of retail-ready red meat, fresh water consumption ranged from 441.7 to 597.6 L across the production systems, stress-weighted water use from 108.5 to 169.4 L H2O-e, fossil energy from 28.1 to 46.6 MJ, crop land occupation from 2.5 to 29.9 m(2) and human edible protein conversion efficiency ranged from 7.9 to 0.3, with major differences observed between grass finished and grain finished production. GHG emissions excluding land use and direct land use change ranged from 16.1 to 27.2 kg CO2-e per kilogram, and removals and emissions from land use and direct land use change ranged from -2.4 to 8.7 kg CO2-e per kilogram of retail retail ready meat. Process based life cycle assessment shows that environmental impacts and resource use were highest in the farm and feedlot phase. Transportation contributed <= 5% of greenhouse gas emissions, water and land, confirming that food miles is not a suitable indicator of environmental impacts for red meat transported by ocean shipping. The contribution of international transportation to total energy demand was higher, ranging from 14 to 23%. These beef and lamb supply chains were found to rely on small volumes of water from stressed water catchments, and occupied only small amounts of crop land suited to other food production systems. Production of high quality protein foods for human consumption used only small amounts of protein from human edible grain. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Research on the sustainability of capture fisheries has focused more on environmental and economic sustainability than on social sustainability. To assess social sustainability, first relevant and important social sustainability issues need to be identified. The objective of this study was to identify relevant social sustainability issues for cod and haddock fisheries in the northeast Atlantic and to determine the importance of these issues based on stakeholder input. A heterogeneous group of stakeholders was invited to take part in two consecutive surveys on social sustainability issues. The first survey (n = 41) resulted in a long list of 27 relevant social sustainability issues, including six issues that were not identified in previous studies and that address aspects of fish welfare, employees' training and education opportunities, and employees' time off from work. The second survey (n = 51) resulted in a ranking of the social sustainability issues in order of importance. The most important issues are worker safety, product freshness and companies' salary levels. In general, social sustainability issues concerning working conditions, employees' job fulfilment and fish welfare are seen as more important than other social sustainability issues. A main discussion point concerns the relation between the importance of a social sustainability issue on the one hand and the type of need that the issue relates to and the state of the issue on the other hand. From the study it can be concluded that the relative importance of social sustainability issues differs per stakeholder group depending on the relation between the stakeholder group and each particular issue. This demonstrates the importance of consulting different stakeholder groups in future studies on social sustainability in order to get a balanced view on the importance of social sustainability issues. Results on the relevance and importance of social sustainability issues for cod and haddock fisheries in the northeast Atlantic enable the fishing industry and policy-makers to direct improvement efforts towards the more important issues. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides an environmental, energy and economic analysis of a biomass supply chain based on an experimental poplar plantation grown as a Short Rotation Coppice in Southern Spain. The investigation was based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology, considering two harvesting technologies and including a sensitivity analysis on the effect of transportation distance. The results show that harvesting was the most significant life cycle phase both in terms of environmental damage and economic costs, primarily due to the strong energy demand of the machinery employed in these activities. Transportation had a comparatively lower environmental and economic significance than harvesting, although the effect of this operation increased rapidly with distance. Agricultural operations related to the use of fertilizers and herbicides were found to have a limited effect on the economics of the system but they had a notable impact on certain midpoint categories relating to human and environmental toxicity, eutrophication and acid emissions. Normalized LCA results point to agricultural land occupation as the most affected environmental category of the system. The bioenergy supply system was highly energy efficient with a Cumulative Energy Demand and a Net Energy Ratio determined at 29.1 MJ/GJ and 34.0, respectively. Poplar collection by chip harvesting was less energy intensive and was more benign to the environment. The results also show a linear relationship between biomass transportation distance and impact values in all midpoint LCA indicators. Biomass collection by chip harvesting was more cost-effective than bale harvesting, while transportation costs were decisive in the economic viability of the system. However, in the conditions assumed, current wood chip prices are too low to make this project economically viable in Spain. This conclusion may be different for other locations that have reduced rental costs for land, lower irrigation needs or improved biomass production yields. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.For the protection of the aquatic environment and public health, China has implemented increasingly stringent sewage discharge standards for municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), but faces critical challenges in terms of additional environmental burdens. In this work, a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to determine the adverse environmental consequences of increasingly stringent discharge standards in a domestic WWTP, and to identify the main contributors and propose alternatives that minimize negative environmental impacts. The LCA-derived findings indicate that tightening discharge levels will indeed reduce local eutrophication but without net environmental improvement satisfied. If the treated water is not required for further reuse, it appears more environmentally promising to establish WWTPs in regions that implementing moderate-level treatment than to upgrade existing WWTPs to much higher standards, except in conservation zones, areas of high population density, and in watersheds with less resilience to pollution. Overall, environmental improvement can be satisfied by introducing consistent "cradle-to-cradle/grave" legislation for WWTPs. It was implicated that decision makers should therefore emphasize energy conservation and wastewater-derived resource recovery approaches to the operation of WWTPs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Waste plastics can be utilised in blast furnaces as an alternative reducing agent. However, the use of waste plastics also implies an additional input of heavy metals into the process. The present paper investigates the extent to which this increased input influences the emissions of heavy metals from blast furnaces. A multitude of measurements characterising the input and output flows of a full-scale blast furnace that utilised waste plastics over a period of 4 years have been analysed with respect to their contents of Mercury (Hg), Cadmium (Cd), Zinc (Zn) and Lead (Pb). The results of the study indicate that despite the fact that waste plastics were utilised only at a maximum rate of 35 kg/t HM (Hot Metal) (during the considered time period), they contribute significantly to the total input of Hg (<44%) and Cd (>54%) into the blast furnace. By contrast, waste plastics are of minor importance (<14%) to the overall input of Zn and Pb. Investigations of the process outputs demonstrate that the heavy metals under investigations are to a large extent transferred into outputs that are subsequently landfilled (Cd 98%, Hg 90%, Pb 62%, and Zn 35%). Significant amounts of only Zn and Pb are internally recycled (Pb 11%, Zn 34%) or end up in the final product, hot metal (Pb 27%, Zn 30%). With the exception of Hg (10%), emissions to air or water account for less than 1.5% of the total output. The results of further analyses indicate that the emissions of heavy metals to the atmosphere and the hydrosphere are completely independent from their input into the blast furnace. Thus, the usage of transfer coefficients to predict emission levels is (at least for minor flows such as emissions) inadequate. It has been shown that constant emission factors (describing the specific emission load of a heavy metal per unit hot metal), which are independent from the input of heavy metals, describe process emissions at least as well as transfer coefficients, which require detailed information about the input flow to predict emissions. This finding also implies that a certain increased input of heavy metals into a blast furnace does not necessarily increase its emissions, and thus, the usage of transfer coefficients would result in a significant overestimation of environmental burdens associated with plastic utilisation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this paper is to contribute to the debate on environmental labelling by exploring the potential of economic value as a functional unit (FU) for the environmental labelling of food and other consumer products. We used life cycle inventory (LCI) data for organic and conventional pigs and broiler chickens from the public French AGRIBALYSE LCI database and the CML 2001 method to calculate impacts per ton of animal live weight at the farm gate, per hectare (ha) of land occupied and per 1000 Euro of animal live weight. We also examined the relationship between carbon footprint (CF) and price for 24 food product groups representative of French food consumption. When using the FU live weight, organic animals had larger impacts than conventional animals. Per ha of land occupied, organic animals had smaller impacts than conventional animals, but production was lower. Per 1000 Euro of value, organic animals had similar or lower values for eutrophication, lower values for climate change and higher or similar values for land occupation. These results illustrate that the choice of FU is crucial when comparing products from highly efficient conventional systems to products from less intensive organic systems. For the 24 food product groups CF per product mass was positively correlated with product price; CF per product economic value was not correlated with product price. This suggests that a rebound effect may occur: consumers that choose foods with lower CFs per mass will tend to spend less money on food, leaving them with more money to buy other products which may compensate the reduced food CF. This type of correlation has not been observed for non-food sectors of the economy. Nevertheless, the FU economic value is attractive, as it considers product quality through the product's price. An economic-value-based FU will be more favourable to systems producing products of superior quality. More generally, an economic-value-based FU is well suited for environmental labelling of consumer products. A consumer has a certain budget to spend; an economic-value-based FU may guide the consumer towards reduced impacts per Euro spent. We recommend the use of an FU based on economic value for the environmental labelling of food and other consumer products. This FU will be a complement to currently used FUs. It will guide consumers towards lower impacts for a given expenditure. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As one of the largest human activities, World Expo is an important source of anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas emission (GHG), and the GHG emission and other environmental impacts of the Expo Shanghai 2010, where around 59,397 tons of waste was generated during 184 Expo running days, were assessed by life cycle assessment (LCA). Two scenarios, i.e., the actual and expected figures of the waste sector, were assessed and compared, and 124.01 kg CO2-equivalent (CO2-eq.), 4.43 kg SO2-eq., 4.88 kg NO3--eq., and 3509 m(3) water per ton tourist waste were found to be released in terms of global warming (GW), acidification (AC), nutrient enrichment (NE) and spoiled groundwater resources (SGWR), respectively. The total GHG emission was around 3499 ton CO2-eq. from the waste sector in Expo Park, among which 86.47% was generated during the waste landfilling at the rate of 107.24 kg CO2-eq., and CH4, CO and other hydrocarbons (HC) were the main contributors. If the waste sorting process had been implemented according to the plan scenario, around 497 ton CO2-eq. savings could have been attained. Unlike municipal solid waste, with more organic matter content, an incineration plant is more suitable for tourist waste disposal due to its high heating value, from the GHG reduction perspective. (C) 2015 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.The article presents an assessment of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and pointed out its advantages in the analysis of the environmental impact of electricity generation. The article also points to the direction of development of the Polish energy sector and pointed out the need to determine the environmental risks associated with the production of electricity. The use of coal and lignite as the primary fuel causes a significant burden on the environment. An analysis by the method of LCA based on data obtained from two Polish power plants. The results were compared and identified the cause of the existing differences in the results obtained. The article sets out the actions that contributed to reduce the negative impact on the environment, taking place during the production of electricity.For commercial success, enhanced poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) production must address both material performance and economic aspects. Conventional PHA production consumes expensive feedstocks dedicated to nutrition. Switching to carbon-rich (agro)industrial side-streams alleviates industrial disposal problems, preserves food resources, and can be economically superior. Processes developed in the recently performed EU-FP7 project ANIMPOL resort to lipid-rich surplus streams from slaughterhouses and the rendering industry; these materials undergo chemical transformation to crude glycerol phase (CGP) and biodiesel. The saturated biodiesel share (SFAE) counteracts its applicability as a biofuel but, in addition to CGP, can be converted biotechnologically to PHAs. Depending on the applied microbial production strain and the selected carbon source (SFAE or CGP), thermoplastic short chain length PHA (scl-PHA), as well as elastomeric to latex-like medium chain length PHA (mcl-PHA), can be produced from these inexpensive feed stocks. The article illustrates the biotechnological conversion of animal-based CGP and SFAE towards poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) and poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), respectively, by Cupriavidus necator strain DSM 545. SFAE conversion towards mcl-PHAs consisting of various saturated and unsaturated building blocks by two pseudomonades, Ps. citronellolis DSM 50332 and Ps. chlororaphis DSM 50083, are also shown. Together with the kinetics of the bioprocesses, the results from the characterization of isolated samples of these structurally diverse biopolyesters are compared; data demonstrate the high versatility of biopolymer properties making them applicable in various fields of the plastic market. In addition to the need for inexpensive carbon feed stocks, the article points to further hot spots of the PHA-production chain that must be considered in order to lower the overall PHA production costs, and to enhance product quality. The benefits arising from multistage continuous cultivation production set-ups, namely high-throughput production of PHA of predefined composition and constant quality, are especially discussed. Finally, contemporary approaches towards environmentally and ecologically sustainable PHA recovery from biomass are summarized.Logistics and supply chain management of maintenance is a very critical task in the offshore wind energy industry. A failure to deliver proper maintenance services may adversely affect the wind farm availability and thereby reducing power output as well as profitability. The organization of maintenance logistics for offshore wind farms has received a reasonable attention in the literature to date. The purpose of this article is to review the state-of-the-art of maintenance logistics in offshore wind energy. It proposes a classification scheme involving three echelons of strategic, tactical and operational decision-making. The strategic echelon deals with decisions regarding wind farm design for reliability, location and capacity of maintenance accommodations, selection of wind farm maintenance strategy, and outsourcing the repair services. The tactical echelon embraces spare parts inventory management, maintenance support organization, and all decisions regarding purchase or lease of maintenance resources. The operational echelon includes scheduling of maintenance tasks, routing of vessels, and measuring the maintenance performance. Our findings indicate that the strategic decisions of maintenance logistics have received the most attention in the literature, followed by the tactical and operational decisions. Also, three categories of selection of maintenance strategy, maintenance support organization and scheduling of maintenance tasks are the most addressed areas of research. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A recent study suggested that buildings globally consume up to 40% of energy and responsible for half of world greenhouse gas emission. Introducing life cycle assessment (LCA) to the building industry is important because it can measure every environmental impact involved in every process from cradle to grave systematically. Within the last decade, research on LCA has increased covering from construction process to manufacturing of building materials. The methods to assess buildings are diverse as buildings have different functions, materials, sizes and locations. The aim of this article is to review the LCA methods and to distinguish phases and materials that affect significantly to environment. The findings show the methods are based on ISO 14040 series with variance to suit different scopes, aims and limitations. The operational phase is identified to consume the highest energy and concrete responsible for the highest embodied energy. The findings also suggested that building material with lower embodied energy does not necessarily have lower life cycle energy. Therefore, implementation of LCA can determine and mitigate the environmental impacts in the development stage thus promoting sustainability in building industry. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cork oak forest grows endemically in the coastal regions of the western Mediterranean basin, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. The cork agro-forestry systems play a key role in ecological processes, and the outer bark, or cork, can be extracted sustainability without damaging the tree or affecting biodiversity. Because of the properties of the cork, an important forestry and industrial structure has been developed around its most valuable goods. This paper describes the current global trade patterns in the Iberian Peninsula, where Portugal and Spain are world leaders. Although these countries bring most of their cork trade flows together with the rest of the world, there are clear differences between these sectors. The aim of this study was to identify these differences and to characterize each analysed sector from an economic perspective. The primary difference between the sectors lies in the characteristics of their supply chain and their capacity to generate wealth from raw cork. Portugal primarily produces and processes raw cork into products with high added value. Spain bases its cork sector on raw material and half-manufactured cork, and it is not able to use the full potential that cork provides. Catalonia is an exception because it is the global leader in the champagne stopper market. To encourage the development of the entire cork sector, every link in the supply chain should be strengthened through the establishment of companies and the generation of employment, and therefore the development of rural areas. Moreover, this industry must establish its own development strategies for the future, thereby increasing its investment in R&D and innovation in relation to the opportunities identified as follows: the potential for diversification beyond the wine market, the improvement potential for forest management and the enhancement of sustainability and eco-efficiency in every link of the cork supply chain. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Solar energy systems are currently the most widely installed renewable energy systems in the building sector in an effort to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. This paper investigates solar potential regarding photovoltaic and solar thermal utilization in typical residential buildings in order to identify their impact towards nearly Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB). Different options regarding the installed capacity of photovoltaics and solar combi systems in various locations and climatic conditions are evaluated from a technical as well as from an economic point of view. The results indicate that in all cases, photovoltaics are able to cover the annual electricity demand of a residential building with a payback period of less than 7 years. In the case of solar combi systems, payback period ranges between 5.5 and 6.5 years when compared with a conventional fuel oil heating boiler and 9 years when compared with a natural gas boiler, providing at least 50% of the total heating demand of the buildings. In total, solar energy systems are able to cover at least 76% of the primary energy demand of residential buildings proving that they are a viable solution towards NZEB. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the context of sustainability, life cycle approaches are becoming increasingly popular for the assessment of potential impacts of a product or a system, from raw materials production to decommissioning and end-of-life processes. In relation to highway bridges, lifetime analysis implies consideration of the way the bridge is maintained over the lifespan of the analysis. Different maintenance strategies can be defined depending on the policy followed by highway administrations, which are usually subject to budget restraints. An overview of different European practices in the maintenance of highway bridges is provided in this paper; then, a methodology for life cycle analysis of bridges is presented, which enables assessment of the influence of different strategies of maintenance of highway bridges, in terms of environmental burdens, and direct and indirect costs over the lifespan of the bridge. The discussion is based on a case study of a composite bridge crossing a dual carriageway. The methodology presented in this paper is part of a research work carried out in the framework of the European research project SBRI: Sustainable Steel-Composite Bridges in Built Environment.Loss of biodiversity is one of the most severe threats to sustainability, and land use and land use changes are still the single most important factor. Still, there is no sign of any consensus on how to include impacts on biodiversity from land use and land use changes in LCIA. In this paper, different characteristics of biodiversity are discussed and related to proposals on how to include land use and land use changes in LCIA. We identify the question of why we should care about biodiversity as a key question, since different motivations will result in different choices for the indicators, and we call for more openness in the motivation for indicator selection. We find a promising trend in combining pressure indicators with geographic weighting and regard this as a promising way ahead. More knowledge on the consequences of different choices, such as the selection of a reference state, is still needed.This paper uses a case study of a UK inter-urban road, to explore the impact of extending the system boundary of road pavement life cycle assessment (LCA) to include increased traffic emissions due to delays during maintenance. Some previous studies have attempted this but have been limited to hypothetical scenarios or simplified traffic modelling, with no validation or sensitivity analysis. In this study, micro-simulation modelling of traffic was used to estimate emissions caused by delays at road works, for several traffic management options. The emissions were compared to those created by the maintenance operation, estimated using an LCA model. In this case study, the extra traffic emissions caused by delays at road works are relatively small, compared to those from the maintenance process, except for hydrocarbon emissions. However, they are generally close to, or above, the materiality threshold recommended in PA52050 for estimating carbon footprints, and reach 5-10% when traffic flow levels are increased (hypothetically) or when traffic management is imposed outside times of lowest traffic flow. It is recommended, therefore, that emissions due to traffic disruption at road works should be included within the system boundary of road pavement LCA and carbon footprint studies and should be considered in developing guidelines for environmental product declarations of road pavement maintenance products and services. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).The environmental performance of mechanical biological pre-treatment (MBT) of Municipal Solid Waste is quantified using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), considering one of the 57 French plants currently in operation as a case study. The inventory is mostly based on plant-specific data, extrapolated from on-site measurements regarding mechanical and biological operations (including anaerobic digestion and composting of digestate). The combined treatment of 46,929 tonnes of residual Municipal Solid Waste and 12,158 tonnes of source-sorted biowaste (as treated in 2010 at the plant) generates 24,550 tonnes CO2-eq as an impact on climate change, 69,943 kg SO2-eq on terrestrial acidification and 19,929 kg NMVOC-eq on photochemical oxidant formation, in a life-cycle perspective. On the contrary MBT induces environmental benefits in terms of fossil resource depletion, human toxicity (carcinogenic) and ecotoxicity. The results firstly highlight the relatively large contribution of some pollutants, such as CH4, emitted at the plant and yet sometimes neglected in the LCA of waste MBT. Moreover this study identifies 4 plant-specific operation conditions which drive the environmental impact potentials induced by MBT: the conditions of degradation of the fermentable fraction, the collection of gaseous flows emitted from biological operations, the abatement of collected pollutants and NOx emissions from biogas combustion. Finally the results underline the relatively large influence of the operations downstream the plant (in particular residuals incineration) on the environmental performance of waste MBT. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.It is still not proven that treatment of sewage in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is (in every case) environmentally friendly. To address this matter, we have applied a state-of-the-art life cycle assessment (LCA) to an energy self-sufficient WWTP in Strass (Austria), its supply chain and the valorization of its 'products': produced electricity out of biogas from sludge digestion and the associated stabilized digestate, applied as agricultural fertilizer. Prominent aspects of our study are: a holistic environmental impact assessment, measurement of greenhouse gas emissions (including N2O), and accounting for infrastructure, replacement of conventional fertilizers and toxicity of metals present in the stabilized digestate. Additionally, the environmental sustainability improvement by implementing one-stage partial nitritation/anammox (e.g. DEMON (R)) and co-digestion was also assessed. DEMON on the digesters reject water leads to a considerable saving of natural resources compared to nitritiation/denitritation (about 33% of the life cycle resource input), this through the lowering of sludge consumption for N-removal, and thus increasing electricity production via a higher sludge excess. However, its N2O emission could be restrained through further optimization as it represents a large share (30-66%) of the plants damaging effect on human health, this through climate change. The co-substrate addition to the digester resulted in no significant improvement of the digestion process but induced net electricity generation. If respective amounts of conventional fertilizers are replaced, the land application of the stabilized digestate is environmentally friendly through prevention of natural resource consumption and diversity loss, but possibly not regarding human health impact due the presence of toxic heavy metals, mainly Zn, in the digestate. The outcomes show that the complete life cycle results in a prevention of resource extraction from nature and a potential mitigation of diversity loss (though for some impact categories no quantification of associated diversity loss is possible) but it also leads to a damaging effect on human health, mainly via climate change and heavy metal toxicity. Since it is for now impossible to aggregate the impact to these different aspects in a sound manner, it is not yet possible to consider in this case the studied system as environmentally friendly. Generally, the field of LCA needs further development to present a better and single outcome. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In continuation of authors' previous study, the present investigation regards the comprehensive evaluation of the environmental profile of a patented building-integrated solar thermal collector, based on multiple Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodologies. The system has been developed and experimentally tested at the University of Corsica, in France and it consists of collectors integrated into building gutters. Three alternative configurations ate examined by means of the LCIA methodologies Eco-Indicator 99 (EI99) and IMPACT 2002+ along with embodied energy and embodied carbon. Multiple approaches and scenarios are examined in order to evaluate the effect of several parameters on system environmental performance. The results, based on all the LCIA methodologies used, reveal that the configuration with collectors in parallel connection can considerably improve the environmental profile of the reference system (collectors in series). This impact can be further reduced by using systems with double absorber surface/output and/or recycling. On the other hand, the present investigation provides a critical comparison of the proposed system with other types of solar thermal and conventional heating systems. The primary energy and CO2 savings (per month) related with the production of energy by the proposed BI solar thermal systems, instead of using a conventional heating system, are also presented. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Farm management affects the global greenhouse gas (GHG) budget by changing not only soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions but also other pre-farm, on-farm and off-site emissions. The life cycle assessment (LCA) approach has been widely adopted to assess the "carbon footprint" of agricultural products, but rarely used as a tool to identify effective mitigation strategies. In this study, the global warming impacts of no-till (NT) vs. conventional till (CT), stubble retention (SR) vs. stubble burning (SB), and N fertilization (NF) vs. no N fertilization (NO) in an Australian wheat cropping system were assessed using in situ measurements of N2O fluxes over three years, SOC changes over forty years and including other supply chain GHG sources and sinks. The results demonstrated the importance of full GHG accounting compared to considering SOC changes or N2O emissions alone for assessing the global warming impacts of different management practices, and highlighted the significance of accurately accounting for SOC changes and 1120 emissions in LCAs. The GHG footprints of wheat production were on averaged 475 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) ha(-1) (or 186 kg CO2-e t(-1) grain) higher under NF than NO. Where fertilizer N was applied (70 kg N ha-1), the life cycle emissions were 200 kg CO2-e ha(-1) (or 87 t(-1) grain) lower under NT than CT and 364 kg CO2-e ha(-1) (or 155 t(-1) grain) lower under SR than SB. Classification of the emission sources/sinks and re-calculation of published data indicated that under the common practices of SR combined with NT, N-related GHG emissions contributed 60-95% of the life cycle emissions in the predominantly rain-fed wheat production systems in Australia Therefore, future mitigation efforts should aim to improve N use efficiency, explore non-synthetic N sources, and most importantly avoid excessive N fertilizer use whilst practising NT and SR. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Building-Integrated Solar Thermal (BIST) systems are a new tendency in the building sector and provide multiple advantages in comparison with the Building-Added (BA) installations. The present paper is a critical review about solar system modelling with emphasis on BIST configurations. The review includes also BI solar systems which produce electricity (Photovoltaic: PV) or both electrical/thermal energy (Photovoltaic/Thermal: PVT) in order to provide a more complete view of the current literature. For some cases where the system and/or the model are of great interest, BA configurations are also cited. The references are presented separated into groups, based on the model type (thermal, energetic simulation, etc.) and system characteristics (solar thermal collector, skin facade, etc.). The present review is the 2(nd) part of an investigation about BIST modelling and it focuses on modelling studies about the solar system itself. The results reveal that most of the investigations about BI configurations refer to PVT, PV or skin facades while there are few studies about BIST systems. Thus, there is a need for more investigations about BIST installations, especially for active configurations which could provide thermal (or electrical/thermal) energy for building energy requirements. On the other hand, more optical simulations as well as more life-cycle analysis studies about BIST are also necessary. Taking into account the findings of the 1(st) part of the present investigation, majority of the BIST modelling studies focus on the system itself; thereby, more investigations which examine the system in conjunction with the building are needed. Moreover, concepts such as BI concentrating solar systems could also be examined provided that the system is viable from technical/economic point of view. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Several environmental rating methodologies are available worldwide to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of vehicles, which can be useful for consumers decisions and for organizations in the promotion of less pollutant technologies and fuels. This paper presents an overview of vehicle environmental rating methodologies available worldwide. Four of them adopt a life-cycle perspective: Green Score (US), Ecoscore (Belgium), Green Car Rating (UK) and EcoTest (Europe), while VCD (Germany), Eco vehicles rating (Mexico) and Green Vehicle (Australia) only consider the fuel in-use stage. Fuel in-use stages methodologies are good indicators of air quality rankings but would rank a fuel cell hydrogen vehicle on top along with the electric vehicles which does not reflect the carbon footprint of the overall fuel pathways and side effect pollutants. Therefore life cycle based methodologies are worth being further explored. Between the more complete life cycle based methodologies, Green Score and Ecoscore differ in terms of the impact categories considered, stages of the life cycle taken into account, weighting system and geographical application, but both use environmental economics and translate the results into a single indicator 0-100 (best). For this relevant variability of aspects they were selected to be applied to a set of seven real vehicles, comprising internal combustions engines and alternative vehicles, including the alternative fuels hydrogen and biodiesel. The application of methodologies shows that the position of the commercial vehicles obtained in the ranking for both methodologies differs. Internal combustion engine (ICE) has the higher impact in the environment and electric vehicle (EV) scores between the best positions; the position of the fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle (FCHEV) and the biodiesel ICE vary significantly. A sensitivity analysis shows that the US rating has high sensitivity to variations, namely in damage costs and fuel pathway. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The number of energy-water nexus studies has been increasing recently due to the significant linkages between energy generation and water consumption, but no study has looked at water quantity and quality impacts as well as carbon emissions associated with electricity production. Using integrated hybrid life cycle analysis, this study examines the life cycle impacts of pulverized coal, wind power and solar power on, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, water consumption and water quality in Inner Mongolia, China. Our research findings show that pulverized coal emits 1213.5 g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (g/kW h) of electricity output, compared with 34.4 g/kW h for wind power and 67.4 g/kW h for solar photovoltaic. Water consumption for pulverized coal, wind power and solar photovoltaic are 3.3, 0.7 and 0.9 l/kW h, respectively. The water requirement to dilute the life cycle chemical oxygen demand (COD) discharge would increase water consumption during production processes of pulverized coal, wind power and solar photovoltaic systems by 0.11, 0.09 and 0.19 l/kW h, respectively. Given that the State Grid Corporation of China aims to increase the power generation capacity that provides power supply to regions outside Inner Mongolia to 120 GW by 2020, electricity outflows could contribute 520 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, which would be similar to the CO2 emissions of the UK in 2010, and 1460.8 million m(3) of water. This study reveals that substantial reductions in CO2 emissions and water consumption can be attained if the existing coal-dominated power generation was substituted by wind power in Inner Mongolia. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides a comprehensive review of the current state of the art of the economics and socio-economics of ocean renewable energy (ORE); the many ways in which the viability and impacts of an ORE project are assessed, and an analysis of the current weaknesses, issues or inappropriateness of the metrics and methodologies used in their definition and presentation. The outcomes of this paper are anticipated to benefit the ORE and wider renewable sector as a whole. The review revealed that, for the most part, the current study of economics and socio-economics of ORE remain separate and discrete areas of research. The economic methods utilised appear to be comprehensive but are limited to project (or private investor) level. The methods identified for socioeconomic assessment fall between traditional, and now routine, environmental assessment approaches and more novel holistic approaches such as ecosystem services and life cycle assessment. The novel section of the paper explored the connectivity between the economics and socio-economics of ORE in relation to project developments and policy/planning. A visualisation method was created of concentric rings intersected by related axis of economic, socio-economic and environment, and enabled the examination of the benefits arising from the connectivity between the two spheres. The concept of sustainable development process and the integration of environmental assessment for ORE was also explored and how it responds to differing stakeholder aspirations and interpretations. The analysis revealed that there was a divergence between public and private economic and socioeconomic assessments for ORE: environmental assessment is primarily a public responsibility but with significant inputs from the private developer involved while economic assessments are conducted primarily by the developer and/or investor at their own behest. However, the two spheres of economic and socio-economic for ORE are highly connected and synergistic and must be examined in a holistic manner. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There has been a growing interest in jatropha- and sugarcane-based biofuels across Sub-Sahara Africa. Biofuel expansion in the region reflects policy concerns related to energy security, poverty alleviation and economic development However, biofuels have also been linked to numerous environmental and socioeconomic impacts such as GHG emissions, water availability/pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation, energy security, loss of access to land and food security to name just a few. Yet there is (a) an insufficient understanding of these impacts (and their synergies) in Sub-Sahara Africa, and (b) a lack of policies that could regulate the biofuel sector and ensure its viability while at the same time preventing its negative impact The aim of this literature review is to synthesize the current knowledge about biofuel impacts in Africa and to identify priority policy areas that should be targeted for enhancing biofuel sustainability in the continent. The findings of this review indicate that biofuel impacts can be positive or negative depending on several factors such as the feedstock, the environmental/socio-economic context of biofuel production, and the policy instruments in place during biofuel production, use and trade. In most cases there are significant trade-offs but at least part of the negative impacts can be mitigated through careful planning. The incomplete and piecemeal understanding of these trade-offs combined with agronomic, institutional and market failures are currently the most important barriers for the viability and sustainability of biofuel investments in the continent. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compared the solar energy utilization of a closed microalgae-based bio-loop for energy efficient production of biogas with fertilizer recovery against that of a stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) system. The comparison was made from the perspective of broad life cycle assessment, simultaneously taking exergy to be the functional unit. The results indicated that the bio-loop was more environmentally competitive than an equivalent stand-alone PV system, but had higher economic cost due to high energy consumption during the operational phase. To fix the problem, a patented, interior pressurization scheduling method was used to operate the bio-loop, with microalgae and aerobic bacterial placed together in the same reactor. As a result, the overall environmental impact and total investment were respectively reduced by more than 75% and 84%, a vast improvement on the bio-loop. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The objective of this work is to establish whether algal bio-crude production is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. To this end, an economic multi-regional input-output model of Australia was complemented with engineering process data on algal bio-crude production. This model was used to undertake hybrid life-cycle assessment for measuring the direct, as well as indirect impacts of producing bio-crude. Overall, the supply chain of bio-crude is more sustainable than that of conventional crude oil. The results indicate that producing 1 million tonnes of bio-crude will generate almost 13,000 new jobs and 4 billion dollars' worth of economic stimulus. Furthermore, bio-crude production will offer carbon sequestration opportunities as the production process is net carbon-negative. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The application of biochar as a soil amendment is a potential strategy for carbon sequestration. In this paper, a slow pyrolysis system for generating heat and biochar from lignocellulosic energy crops is simulated and its life-cycle performance compared with that of direct biomass combustion. The use of the char as biochar is also contrasted with alternative use option's: cofiring in coal power plants, use as charcoal, and use as a fuel for heat generation. Additionally, the influence on the results of the longterm stability of the biochar in the soil, as well as of biochar effects on biomass yield, is evaluated. Negative greenhouse gas emissions are obtained for the biochar system, indicating a significant carbon abatement potential. However, this is achieved at the expense of lower energy efficiency and higher impacts in the other assessed categories when compared to direct biomass combustion. When comparing the different use options of the pyrolysis char, the most favorable result is obtained for char cofiring substituting fossil coal, even assuming high long-term stability of the char. Nevertheless, a high sensitivity to biomass yield increase is found for biochar systems, In this sense, biochar application to low-quality soils where high yield increases are expected would show a more favorable performance in terms of global warming.This paper presents a comparative life cycle assessment of cumulative energy demand (CED) and global warming potential (GWP) of four stationary battery technologies: lithium-ion, lead-acid, sodium sulfur, and vanadium-redox-flow. The analyses were carried out for a complete utilization of their cycle life and for six different stationary applications. Due to its lower CED and GWP impacts, a qualitative analysis of lithium-ion was carried out to assess the impacts of its process chains on 17 midpoint impact categories using ReCiPe-2008 methodology. It was found that in general the use stage of batteries dominates their life cycle impacts significantly. It is therefore misleading to compare the environmental performance of batteries only on a mass or capacity basis at the manufacturing outlet ("cradle-to-gate analyses") while neglecting their use stage impacts, especially when they have different characteristic parameters. Furthermore, the relative ranking of batteries does not show a significant dependency on the investigated stationary application scenarios in most cases. Based on the results obtained, the authors go on to recommend the deployment of batteries with higher round-trip efficiency, such as lithium-ion, for stationary grid operation in the first instance.Amine scrubbing, a mature post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, could increase ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) due to its ammonia emissions. To capture 2.0 Gt CO2/year, for example, it could emit 32 Gg NH3/year in the United States given current design targets or 15 times higher (480 Gg NH3/year) at rates typical of current pilot plants. Employing a chemical transport model, we found that the latter emission rate would cause an increase of 2.0 mu g PM2.5/m(3) in nonattainment areas during wintertime, which would be troublesome for PM2.5-burdened areas, and much lower increases during other seasons. Wintertime PM2.5 increases in nonattainment areas were fairly linear at a rate of 3.4 mu g PM2.5/m(3) per 1 Tg NH3, allowing these results to be applied to other CCS emissions scenarios. The PM2.5 impacts are modestly uncertain (+/- 20%) depending on future emissions of SO2, NOx, and NH3. The public health costs of CCS NH3 emissions were valued at $31+68 per tonne CO2 captured, comparable to the social cost of carbon itself. Because the costs of solvent loss to CCS operators are lower than the social costs of CCS ammonia, there is a regulatory interest to limit ammonia emissions from CCS.This meta-analysis quantifies the changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dairy farms, caused by anaerobically digesting (AD) tattle mature. As this is a novel quantifiable synthesis of the literature, a database of GHG emissions from dairy farms is created. Each case in the database consists of a baseline (reference with no AD system) and an AD scenario. To enable interstudy comparison, emissions are normalized by calculating relative changes (RCs). The distributions of RCs are reported by specific GHGs and operation units. Nonparametric tests are applied to the RCs in order to identify a statistical difference of AD with respect to baseline scenarios (Wilcoxon rank test), correlations (Spearman test), and best estimation for changes in emissions (Kernel density distribution estimator). From 749 studies identified, 30 papers yield 89 independent cases. The median reductions in emissions from the baseline scenarios, according to operation units, are -43.2% (n.s.) for storage, -6.3% for field application of slurries, -11.0% for offset of energy from fossil fuel, and +0.4% (n.s.) for offset of inorganic fertilizers. The leaks from digesters are found to significantly increase the emissions from baseline scenarios (median = +1.4%).Improving the sustainability of road pavements requires road agencies and construction companies to identify, by means of appropriate methodologies and tools, the priority areas of action. The life cycle assessment method has gradually become a versatile tool capable of informing decisions on resource and process selection to better understand, measure and reduce the environmental impacts of a system. This article presents the results of a study aimed at estimating and comparing the life cycle impacts of the flexible pavement structures defined in the Portuguese pavement design catalogue. The analysis assessed the functional units over a 40-year project analysis period (PAP), considering all pavement life cycle phases: extraction of raw materials and production; transportation of materials; construction, maintenance and rehabilitation; work zone traffic management; usage and end-of-life. The results of the case study showed that for the less demanding traffic classes the materials phase is the main contributor to the road pavement's overall life cycle environmental impact. However, if the road pavement is expected to carry significant volumes of traffic over its PAP, then the usage phase dominates the road pavement's overall environmental performance. The analysis also showed that, as expected, the foundation class impacts the environmental performance of the pavement under high traffic volumes. Stronger pavement foundations require thinner pavement, resulting in lower overall environmental burdens.Nanomaterials may have a key role since they can be applied in several vehicle components (such as H-2 storage, vehicle structure, batteries), but there is the concern that some nanomaterials may lead to relevant environmental impacts. This paper addresses a revision of the environmental impacts of different types of nanomaterials applied to alternative vehicles in order to reduce energy use (and consequently the global greenhouse gases emissions). A literature review is performed in order to analyze the recent improvements in nanomaterials applied to alternative vehicles. This revision will be based on life cycle assessment and risk analysis. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rapid urbanization has greatly impacted housing demand and housing development in Iskandar Malaysia, Johor. Iskandar Malaysia vision towards development of a low carbon society and in line with Malaysian government policy promoting industrialized building system (IBS) to meet the increasing housing demand. Hence, a comparative analysis of life cycle analysis (LCA) at assembly phase has been conducted to identify life cycle impact assessment and hotspot for material and construction stage between IBS and conventional cast in situ for residential apartment buildings in Iskandar Malaysia. The purpose is to apply IBS in residential building construction towards greener building and sustainable development. The functional unit of the comparison analyses was one square metre of produced building area for the respective construction period. A comparable inventory analysis will be carried out between two case studies. An input-output flowchart is created for each process to determine the components included in the analysis. Flows of assembly phase will be modelled in Gabi 6.0 software to further interpret the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) between the two construction methods, and to determine the hotspot between the processes. Finally, a sensitivity analysis will be conducted to determine the influence of variations in assumptions, methods and data on the results. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Soybean is an important feedstock and its oil represents 70% of the raw material used for the production of Brazilian biodiesel. The main purposes of this work was to present a Life Cycle Inventory of soybean produced in Rio Qrande do Sul, state in Brazil, based on primary data of agricultural soybean production in this region. Inventory data was collected in 23 municipalities that account for 32% of total soybean production. A Machinery Operation Modeling was suggested to adjust agricultural machinery inputs/outputs for harvesting under study. The soybean cultivation Life Cycle Inventory was divided into four stages and not as a black box. Based on questionnaire responses, it was possible to characterize some regional peculiarities of soybean production. For the estimation of Greenhouse Gas emissions from direct land use change and nitrous oxide emissions from soil, an assessment of soybean advancement over distinguished areas was performed. The results showed that for 15.4% of cultivated area from 1992/93 to 2012/13 transition from pasture to farming has occurred, mainly over rice and corn crops. It should be underscore that no evidence of soybean advances from forest to farming was found for the region. Moreover, this work considered nitrous oxide emissions from soil and a complete inventory was presented. Lastly, this works aims to offer soybean inventory data specifically to Rio Grande do Sul state and presents a new approach to perform environmental results related to agricultural life cycle assessment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agricultural production is a sector with high socio-economic significance and key implications on employment and nutritional security. However, the impacts of agrifood production and consumption patterns on the environment are considerable, mainly due to the demand of large inputs of resources. This paper presents a case study of olive oil production in Greece, an important agri-product especially for countries in the Mediterranean basin. Life Cycle Assessment has been used to quantify the environmental performance of olive oil production. Fourteen sub-systems of the overall olive oil production are investigated. All key parameters that are associated with the life cycle of olive oil production are studied and environmental "hotspots" are diagnosed. Cultivation of olive trees and production of olive oil are the sub-systems that are responsible for the majority of the environmental impacts and thus any effort to minimize the overall life cycle impact from olive oil production should include them. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Only few LCI data are by now available concerning Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons emitted by asphalt plants. Depending on the type of airborne emissions the influence of plant technology and of input materials can be significant on environmental performances of products. Then, the use of generic Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data is not satisfying because results do not allow the comparison between technologies, and it is necessary to produce data for gate-to-gate technologies. The objective of this paper is to provide suitable LCI data for PAH airborne stack emissions of an asphalt plant equipped with a parallel drum mixer and fed with natural gas. The purpose is not to serve as a generic LCI data, but on the contrary, to serve as a first step to future comparisons to other asphalt manufacturing technologies (batch mix, counter flow drums) and to other fuels (fuel oil). The studied (and sampled) PAH are chosen from the US-EPA list of carcinogens, or expected carcinogens. Operation conditions were varied (different asphalt manufacturing temperatures and production rates) in order to obtain inventory data more representative from various working conditions. PAH values are found highly variable, probably depending on instability of natural combustion chemical reactions. An empirical model is proposed that defines a. multi-linear relationship between some PAHs emissions and both the bitumen content in asphalt and the CO/CO2 ratio. The model is discussed in terms of physic-chemical significance, limits of application and feasibility for LCA. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of biorefinery products, a common challenge is the choice of method for allocating environmental burdens of multifunctional processes (feedstock cultivation and biorefinery processes), a choice which can substantially influence LCA results and hence decision-making. The aim of this paper is to explore how this choice influences results and in which decision contexts the choice is particularly important To do this, we tested six allocation methods in a case study of a biorefinery using pulpwood as feedstock. Tested methods included: main product bears all burden, substitution, traditional partitioning methods (based on economic value and exergy), a hybrid method combining elements of substitution and partitioning, and an alternative hybrid method developed by us, which allocates less environmental burden to co-products with a high potential to mitigate environmental burdens. The methods were tested in relation to decision contexts and LCA questions of relevance for biorefineries. The results indicate that the choice of allocation method deserves careful attention, particularly in consequential studies and in studies focussed on co-products representing relatively small flows. Furthermore, the alternative hybrid allocation method is based on a logical rationale favouring products with higher substitution potential and has some other potential benefits. However, in cases where the scales of co-product flows are of different orders of magnitude, the method yields extreme results that could be difficult to interpret. Results also show that it can be important with consistent allocation for both cultivation and biorefinery processes, particularly when substitution is applied. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment compared the environmental impacts of two typical road lighting technologies: high-pressure sodium (HPS) and light-emitting diode (LED) luminaires. The environmental impacts of manufacturing, use and end-of-life of the luminaires were studied with a special regard to the functional unit. The results confirmed that the use caused the majority of the environmental impacts: 96% in HPS and 87% in LED luminaire over 30 years of operation, while manufacturing accounted for 4% and 13%, and end-of-life less than 1%, respectively. In the comparison per luminaire or per lumenhour, the LED luminaire caused 26% or 17% lower average environmental impacts than the HPS luminaire, respectively. However, a luminaire or an amount of lumenhours does not describe the actual function of the luminaire. When the luminaires were compared on the basis of a kilometre of lit road, the difference between the LED and HPS technologies was only 3% on average. This illustrates the importance of the functional unit. In addition, the development of the LED technology will decrease its environmental impacts and make it clearly environmentally favourable: with the estimated luminous efficacy development in 2020, the environmental impacts of the LED luminaire per kilometre of lit road were estimated to be 41% lower compared to the HPS technology. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certification has gained popularity amongst companies as a way to distinguish more environmentally friendly products. This article analyzes the C2C certification by determining how successful this eco-labeling scheme is in distinguishing environmentally preferable products in order to probe if the certification informs correctly to the consumer about the environmental performance of products. Furthermore, we identify for which product types the C2C certification really results in environmental impact reduction. First a review is done in order to detect the debilities, if any, of C2C. Secondly, the fact that C2C requirements do not tackle environmental aspects of products from a life cycle approach, and concentrates exclusively on raw materials and end of life phases, is further analyzed in depth. To do so, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) already published results for different product categories are used to determine if the life-cycle stages considered under the C2C approach coincide with the most relevant stages in terms of life-cycle environmental impacts. This helps ascertain if and when C2C can be considered an appropriate ecolabel. It is concluded that for products with high-energy consumption during use, C2C does not guarantee relevant environmental improvements, since it does not account for a substantial part of the product's environmental impact. For these reasons, we argue that C2C is not always an appropriate scheme to distinguish environmentally preferable products. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Engineered nanomaterials are used to improve the properties of products. Often this results in size reduction or increased functionality, which may result in reduced environmental impacts. At the same time the manufacturing and disposal of the nanomaterials increases the life cycle impacts of the product. In this study the effects of using nano-silica polymers in power capacitors were investigated through life cycle assessment (LCA). The analysis was based on existing production technology which was modified to represent a prototype using nanomaterials. Based on the results, the nanomaterials would reduce impacts by c.a. 20% in the most relevant environmental life cycle impact categories. The main impact categories of the power capacitors were in metal depletion, land transformation and ecotoxicity. Although the nanomaterial based capacitor had slightly lower impacts, it did not resolve the main problems in these categories. Contribution analysis revealed that most of the impact is caused by only a few processes in the life cycle, especially raw materials supply for tin solders and waste treatment of insulating oil. Ecodesign alternatives for targeting the identified environmental hotspots are discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The welding process is viewed as an environmentally vulnerable due to its energy intensive nature, human hazards and environmental burden. But, the deployment of sustainable manufacturing strategies (SMSs) can improve the sustainability of the welding processes. in this study, shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) process is considered as a candidate process for which the influence of implementing SMSs on sustainable performance was studied. Using the graph theory approach, interdependence among the Sustainable Manufacturing Measures (SMMs) was modelled to assess the SMSs. Based on the study, two SMSs, namely, employee skill training and involvement program, and waste minimization and disposal strategies were resorted to. The waste minimization and disposal strategy resulted in improved environmental performance and conservation of materials. Based on the findings, manufacturing organizations will be motivated to initiate sustainable manufacturing practices in their processes. This study also appreciates the application of modelling approach in sustainability studies from an economic point of view. Further, the study extends the scope of welding research to sustainable process optimization and redesigning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Post-combustion CO2 capture by reaction with a strong alkali such as NaOH appears a promising strategy to mitigate CO2 emission. This study proposes bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED) as a technology for the reclamation of NaOH from glyphosate neutralization liquor and its subsequent use as an absorbent for CO2 capture. The proposed method produces a NaOH solution for further reaction with CO2 while recovering the glyphosate from the wastewater. A NaOH solution with a concentration of similar to 1.45 mol L-1 and purity of similar to 96.5% was obtained. Accordingly, a current efficiency of 80.8%, 76.2%, 68.7% and 69.0% at current densities of 30, 40, 50 and 60 mA cm(-2) was observed, respectively. In addition, the lowest energy utilization recorded as 2.15 kW h kg(-1) was obtained by the BMED process at a low current density of 30 mA cm(-2), resulting in a better performance in view of energy saving. A glyphosate recovery of ca. 98.2% was also achieved. The environmental impact of the BMED process was evaluated in terms of the amount of CO2 emissions produced and the total amount of CO2 captured taking into account of the CO2 production through BMED process. The results demonstrate that a promising CO2 capture (up to 530.65 g CO2 kg(-1) NaOH) can be only achieved if the electricity resources originate from renewable sources such as wind, hydroelectric, as well as solar photovoltaics or nuclear energy. However, the utilization of non-renewable energy resources for NaOH production by BMED process imposes a risk on producing a significant emission of CO2, which makes the application of BMED unviable for a CO2 capture scenario. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This research considers the compressive strength, embodied CO2, embodied energy and binder intensity of hydraulic lime-pozzolan concretes, in comparison with those of Portland-cement based concretes of equivalent 28-day compressive strength. Production of a lime-pozzolan concrete with a 28-day cube strength of approximately 50 MPa and an elastic modulus of 20 GPa has demonstrated the feasibility of producing modern, structural grade hydraulic lime-pozzolan concretes. Furthermore, construction and testing of two reinforced lime-pozzolan concrete beams has demonstrated the possibility of producing structural elements with a finished appearance and flexural behaviour similar to Portland cement concrete. This paper reflects on the value of this new material's technological progress in the context of the industry wide search for low carbon cements. Results of the research reported in this paper demonstrate that the use, of aluminosilicate by-products, specifically ground granulated blastfurnace slag and silica fume, in combination with naturally hydraulic lime can realise savings in environmental impact; but that the savings are both future-orientated and highly dependent on the boundaries of the analysis. When considering only the secondary impacts of ground granulated blastfurnace slag and silica fume production, a ternary combination was observed to result in a lime-pozzolan concrete with a 28-day cube strength of 33 MPa and an embodied-CO2 of 95 kgCO(2)/m(3), 64% lower than a CEMI, and 41% lower than a CEMIII/A concrete of equivalent strength. Both mass and economic allocation procedures were, however, shown to have a very detrimental effect on the environmental credentials of silica fume and thus also on hydraulic lime-concretes containing this pozzolanic addition. It is recognised that technical performance alone cannot be used to assess or compare the merits of any new material. This paper focus on the production, environmental impact and long-term availability of individual constituents of this novel binder, with a view to addressing important questions about the viability and desirability of re-producing this novel cementitious system in a commercial setting. Such information is acknowledged to be critical in the dialogue about the potential adoption and development of this emerging binder technology. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food waste is a problem with economic, environmental and social implications, making it both important and complex. Previous studies have addressed food waste management options at the less prioritised end of the waste hierarchy, but information on more prioritised levels is also needed when selecting the best available waste management options. Investigating the global warming potential of different waste management options offers a limited perspective, but is still important for validating generations from the waste hierarchy in a local context. This study compared the effect on greenhouse gas emissions of different food waste management scenarios representing different levels in the waste hierarchy in the city of Uppsala, Sweden. A life cycle assessment was performed for six waste management scenarios (landfill, incineration, composting, anaerobic digestion, animal feed and donations), using five food products (bananas, grilled chicken, lettuce, beef and bread) as examples when treated as individual waste streams. For all five waste streams, the established waste hierarchy was a useful, but approximate, tool for prioritising the various options, since landfill proved to tie the worst option and donation, anaerobic digestion and incineration with energy recovery the best options, for easily handle products, wet products and dry products, respectively, taking into account the GHG emissions. The greatest potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions was in the bread waste stream, since bread is an energy-rich product with a relatively low carbon footprint, increasing the possibilities for replacing fossil energy carriers. Lettuce, with its high water content, had the least potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when the waste management method was changed. Waste valorisation measures should therefore focus on food products with the potential to replace production of goods and services, rather than on food products that are wasted in large quantities or have a high carbon footprint. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper describes a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of offset paper production in Brazil. The production system is classified into two subsystems: a forest production subsystem, which involves seedling production, soil preparation, seedling planting, forest maintenance, and wood harvesting and transport processes; and an industrial production subsystem, involving wood pulp extraction and bleaching, chemical recovery, and offset paper manufacturing processes. The environmental analysis includes the primary energy demand, environmental impact assessment, and land use indicators. The primary energy demand indicated that the largest amount of both renewable and non-renewable primary energy is consumed by the industrial production subsystem, accounting for 91.0% of the total energy demand. The potential environmental impact assessment included eight impact categories: acidification, ecotoxicity, global warming, human toxicity cancer effects, human toxicity non-cancer effects, nutrient enrichment, ozone depletion, and photochemical oxidation. Most of the potential impacts are attributed to the processes of pulp extraction and bleaching, and offset paper manufacturing, mainly due to the production of electricity and thermal energy. As for impacts on land use during the forest activities, a recent developed approach was applied for the regionalized assessment of impacts. Land occupation impacts on erosion resistance, physicochemical filtration, and mechanical filtration showed a reduction in the soil ecological functions, whereas groundwater recharge indicated a credit for the performance of the soil function. With a view to reducing the main life cycle impacts of the industrial production subsystem, an evaluation is made of alternative production scenarios. The best scenario was the substitution of biomass and diesel in the energy generation unit by biomass gasification and optimization of the recovery boiler. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years, numerous efforts have been made to include water-related issues in life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. This study provides an overview of existing methods that address green water use in LCA. In this overview, we analyse the main features of existing LCA methods used to examine changes in long-term blue water availability caused by variations in green water flows, particularly with respect to inventory,the characterisation model and characterisation factors. Moreover, we propose a method of assessing impacts on terrestrial green water flows (TGWI) and addressing reductions in surface blue water production (RBWP) caused by reductions in surface runoff due to land-use production systems. Both TGWI and RBWP are analysed, taking into account the green water use/atmosphere and green water use/soil interfaces. In this proposed method, the life cycle inventory (LCI) phase considers the net green water flow that leaves the land-use production system, allowing the study of two alternative reference land uses: 1) quasi-natural forest and 2) grasslands/shrublands. In the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase, regional- and species-specific characterisation factors,(CFs) for the amount of green water evaporated or transpired are also proposed. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed method, we employed a case study on Eucalyptus globulus stands (first rotation), located in Portugal. The results show that different impacts on terrestrial green water flows and on surface blue water production are obtained depending on the alternative reference land use. Moreover, the case study shows that the method developed can be a useful tool assisting in improved national E. globulus forest planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study we review the trends and trajectories of energy use and emissions in Australia's road transport sector. We find that energy use and emissions in heavy-duty vehicles are growing at a greater rate than light-duty vehicles, and that heavy-duty vehicle energy consumption will surpass that of light-duty vehicles by 2032. We explore whether popular light-duty alternative energy concepts, such as battery electric technology, are also competitive for heavy-duty vehicles. We observe that finding a sustainable energy technology that competes with the high energy density of diesel is a formidable challenge. Alternatives such as natural gas, propane and biofuels have managed to establish a beachhead. However, none have constituted a disruptive threat to diesel oil. The lack of any silver bullet technology indicates that further research into technology options is warranted. Hydrogen fuel cell systems have many characteristics which are attractive for the heavy-duty transport task, including complementarity with electric vehicles and a cross-benefit from developments in batteries and electric drivetrains. We conclude that for Australia, fuel cells may find their niche in the electrification of heavy-duty drivetrains, in markets where zero emissions are desirable, and where range, duty cycle or payload requirements exceed the capabilities of battery-only vehicles. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An integrated simulation tool was developed for assessing the potential release and environmental distribution of nanomaterials (RedNano) based on a life cycle assessment approach and multimedia compartmental modeling coupled with mechanistic intermedia transport processes. The RedNano simulation tool and its web-based software implementation enables rapid "what-if?" scenario analysis, in order to assess the response of an environmental system to various release scenarios of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs). It also allows for the investigation of the impact of geographical and meteorological parameters on ENM distribution in the environment, comparison of the impact of ENM production and potential releases on different regions, and estimation of source release rates based on monitored ENM concentrations. Moreover, the RedNano simulation tool is suitable for research, academic, and regulatory purposes. Specifically, it has been used in environmental multimedia impact assessment courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The RedNano simulation tool can also serve as a decision support tool to rapidly and critically assess the potential environmental implications of ENMs and thus ensure that nanotechnology is developed in a productive and environmentally responsible manner.This research investigates the relationship between energy use, geographic location, life cycle environmental impacts, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). The researchers studied worldwide variations in building energy use and associated life cycle impacts in relation to the LEED rating systems. A Building Information Modeling (BIM) of a reference 43 000 ft(2) office building was developed and situated in 400 locations worldwide while making relevant changes to the energy model to meet reference codes, such as ASHRAE 90.1. Then life cycle environmental and human health impacts from the buildings' energy consumption were calculated. The results revealed considerable variations between sites in the U.S. and international locations (ranging from 394 ton CO2 equiv to 911 ton CO2 equiv, respectively). The variations indicate that location specific results, when paired with life cycle assessment, can be an effective means to achieve a better understanding of possible adverse environmental impacts as a result of building energy consumption in the context of green building rating systems. Looking at these factors in combination and using a systems approach may allow rating systems like LEED to continue to drive market transformation toward sustainable development, while taking into consideration both energy sources and building efficiency.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique and field of expertise aimed at modeling the complete 'cradle-to-grave' life of goods and services, as well as their multiple impacts on environmental and human well-being. Although not new, in recent years LCA has become a central tool in corporate and government initiatives to improve overall product sustainability. These initiatives show how corporate supply chains have become increasingly important sites and objects of knowledge production. But the production process is not straightforward. LCA practitioners must navigate complicated relationships with corporations that serve as both clients and sources of vital information. The challenges of generating knowledge deemed both credible and useful are compounded by the complexity, diversity and contingency of product life cycles, as well as by ongoing debates about exactly how product sustainability should be modeled and assessed. While some of these challenges are unique to LCA, others reflect tensions common to many fields that assess corporate conduct in order to improve it.A common shortcoming of available multi-regional input-output (MRIO) data sets is their lack of regional and sectoral detail required for many research questions (e.g. in the field of disaster impact analysis). We present a simple algorithm to refine MRIO tables regionally and/or sectorally. By the use of proxy data, each MRIO flow in question is disaggregated into the corresponding sub-flows. This downscaling procedure is complemented by an adjustment rule ensuring that the sub-flows match the superordinate flow in sum. The approximation improves along several iteration steps. The algorithm unfolds its strength through the flexible combination of multiple, possibly incomplete proxy data sources. It is also flexible in a sense that any target sector and region resolution can be chosen. As an exemplary case we apply the algorithm to a regional and sectoral refinement of the Eora MRIO database.Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to quantify the environmental impacts of construction materials. However, the relationship between the durability and LCA of these complex products with long life-cycles must be analysed in detail, namely using stochastic data from service life prediction (SLP) studies. However, SLP uncertainty is not yet considered in LCA, thus resulting in insufficiently sound decisions at the design stage. This paper presents the modelling of the uncertainty of SLP using advanced statistical methods and its application in the estimation of SL and corresponding number of replacements of claddings (renderings and stone claddings). These results are used in an interdisciplinary study of SLP and LCA to apply in the stochastic comparison of the LCA of claddings. This methodology aids in the choice of the option with better environmental performance right at the design stage, via the comparison of their standard, deterministic and stochastic LCA results.Energy usage and CO2 emission between traditional electrodialysis reversal (EDR) and innovative EDR desalinations were compared. The difference between traditional and innovative EDR desalination depended on which concentrate treatment was employed. Traditional EDR desalination consists of electrodialysis as concentrate treatment, while innovative EDR desalination consists of Dunaliella salina production as concentrate treatment. Microalgae species D. salina and Arthrospira (Spirulina) platensis were cultured in used bottles (3.7 L) as reactors and using desalination concentrate and supernatant from anaerobic digested sludge (SADS) as growth medium and nutrients. D. salina was grown in reactors D-1, D-2, D-3, and D-4. Spirulina platensis was in S-1, S-2, S-3, and S-4. SADS was supplied to reactors D-1, D-2, S-1, and S-2 as nutrient. Bold's Basal Medium was supplied to reactors D-3 and D-4 while F2 was supplied to reactors S-3 and S-4 as nutrient. Conductivity of desalination concentrates used in reactors D-1 and D-3 was 31.8 and in D-2 and D-4 25.4 mS/cm, respectively. Conductivity of concentrate in reactors S-1 and S-3 was 35.9 and in S-2 and S-4 21.5 mS/cm, respectively. Dry weight concentrations of D. salina grown in reactors D-1 and D-2 with SADS (1.36-1.49 g/L) were achieved which were more than that with Bold's Basal Medium (0.84-1.04 g/L) in reactors D-3 and D-4. Dry weight concentrations of S. platensis with SADS (1.41-1.98 g/L) in reactors S-1 and S-2 were achieved which were more than that supplied with F2 (0.68-1.20 g/L) in reactors S-3 and S-4. In those cases where SADS was the nutrient, low conductivity mediums provided the higher microalgae dry weight concentrations. Dry weights of both species achieved by reusing concentrate and SADS in our studies were 1.49 g/L (D. Salina) and 1.98 g/L (S. platensis) that are comparable to that of literature data where sea water and pretreated sea water were used. Both species gain a negative net energy ratio. Energy content of 3.02-4.24 kJ/L is required for a positive net energy ratio in microalgae growth culture. Conductivities of growth mediums from all reactors in which D. salina were grown are less than the conductivity of drinking water quality required for sheep. Net energy ratio of D. salina is less than that of S. platensis. For conservative and reusable drinking water for sheep, D. salina was used as microalgae to treat concentrate in our analyses. Energy usage and CO2 emission saved from innovative integrated desalination were 4-14%.The Chinese energy system, a major CO2 emitter, relies heavily on fossil fuels, especially coal. Coal will continue to play a major role in the new installed power generation capacity in the future, which will cause unavoidable environmental problems. Clean coal technologies (CCTs) are essential for emissions reduction in the power sector. In general, CCTs cover coal upgrading, efficiency improvements, advanced technologies and zero emissions technologies. Besides these, CCTs also include other emissions reduction technologies and comprehensive utilization technologies in China. This paper review the complete life cycle modeling of CCTs. The advanced technologies include super-critical (super-C), ultra super-critical (USC) and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). The results show that the higher efficiency technologies have lower potential impacts. Compared with the average level of power generation technology, CO2 emissions reduction is 6.4% for super-C, 37.4% for USC and 61.5% for IGCC. Four coal power scenarios are developed based on the assumption of potential investment power for CCTs in 2020, which are super-C, USC, USC and old low efficiency generation substitution by USC, IGCC and carbon capture and storage (CCS). The CO2 emissions intensity is 1.93 kg/kWh for super-C, 1.69 kg/kWh for USC, 1.59 kg/kWh for USC + replacement and 1.29 kg/kWh for IGCC + CCS. The CO2 emissions intensity was 1.95 kg/kWh in 2010, which had decreased 5.5% compared with the level in 2005. The energy structure is continuously being improved and optimized. The potential carbon reduction will be limited in the power system in 2020 by current commercial CCTs with the generation efficiency increase. The most impressive technology is IGCC with CCS which enables greenhouse gas reduction of 37.6% compared with the level in 2005. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Industries heavily dependent on the use of petroleum-based plastics are seeking lower cost, green materials to replace these existing products for financial and environmental reasons. One example of a petroleum based material that is used widely in industry is acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), which has good mechanical properties and low cost. Poly(lactic acid), which is a biodegradable plastic derived from 100% renewable resources like corn, can be blended with ABS and engineered soy hull to offset some petroleum use. Known as BioABS, it is can be a bio-based substitute for ABS. BioABS is a potential substitute for acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) in a number of transportation applications. The purpose of this study is to assess the financial feasibility of BioABS for automotive applications relative to the petroleum-based ABS composite. The first step in the project is a description of the production process for traditional ABS and a comparison to the bio-based alternative. The differences in inputs required for traditional ABS and BioABS will be determined. The next step is to price the inputs and outputs using a technical cost model. Finally, the break-even price for each composite will be determined to ascertain if BioABS is financially feasible. The cost comparison will be subject to a sensitivity analysis to see how price changes could influence the results. The cost comparison will indicate to the auto industry whether BioABS is financially feasible alternative and, if not, what improvements are required to make it attractive to the current composite.With growing concern about the sustainability of materials, research efforts have increased in advancing material selection and design methods to incorporate environmental impact metrics. However, these tools typically are based on initial properties, which are assumed to remain static during the duration of material use and do not account for time-dependent material properties. This assumption of static material properties is not applicable to many common materials, such as polymers and their composites, which are susceptible to changes in material properties as time elapses. In this research, time-dependent material selection charts are developed based on Ashby-type material selection methods and applied to the growing field of bio-based composite material development. Wood flour filled poly(hydroxybutyrate)-co-(hydroxyvalerate) and wood flour filled polypropylene were examined in terms of flexural properties, creep properties, and life cycle environmental impacts. Results were compared using time-dependent material selection charts. The findings indicated that common comparison methods for bio-based composites, such as material property comparison and environmental impact comparison based on volume, cannot adequately capture which composites, constituents, or processing methods are most favorable.High dependence on imported oil has increased U.S. strategic vulnerability and prompted more research in the area of renewable energy production. Ethanol production from renewable woody biomass, which could be a substitute for gasoline, has seen increased interest. This study analysed energy use and greenhouse gas emission impacts on the forest biomass supply chain activities within the State of Michigan. A life-cycle assessment of harvesting and transportation stages was completed utilizing peer-reviewed literature. Results for forest-delivered ethanol were compared with those for petroleum gasoline using data specific to the U.S. The analysis from a woody biomass feedstock supply perspective uncovered that ethanol production is more environmentally friendly (about 62% less greenhouse gas emissions) compared with petroleum based fossil fuel production. Sensitivity analysis was conducted with key inputs associated with harvesting and transportation operations. The results showed that research focused on improving biomass recovery efficiency and truck fuel economy further reduced GHG emissions and energy consumption.The past decade has seen an increasing focus on the issues surrounding climate change and this has triggered international governments to develop environmental legislation and policies for the energy-intensive industries (Ells) that can help reduce their anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. The biopharmaceutical industry is a relatively new EH. The industry is important for global health as it is a main provider of affordable new therapies, achieved through the genetic manipulation of living organisms. Historically, attractive financial returns have encouraged the biopharmaceutical industry to focus on employing decision-support tools to estimate the process economics of manufacture. However, as the industry matures, the level of environmental scrutiny is increasing. Therefore, there is a need for the development of environmental tools specific to this industry to help guide the selection of environmentally favourable manufacturing operations. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used environmental tool. We study the potential for application in the biopharmaceutical industry as an aid to decision making. Such tools assess the environmental impacts of a product or process over the entire life cycle. This paper reviews the use of LCA in the context of decision-making when applied to evaluate the environmental impact of the biopharmaceutical industry's manufacturing processes. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The paper examines, under specific local situation of planning of innovative solutions for municipal solid waste treatment, the results obtained from a technical, economic and environmental comparison between two different scenarios for waste management: the first scenario foresees the gasification of the residual waste after separate collection and the energetic utilization of the produced syngas, while the second one is based on a mechanical separation of the residual waste in three fluxes: a combustible flux to be utilized, after quality improvement, as RDF (residue derived fuel), a wet organic flux to be sent to anaerobic digestion and a residual essentially mineral flux. For both the scenarios different levels of separate collection were considered. The comparison took into account environmental and economic aspects. From the environmental point of view, the tool of LCA (life cycle assessment) has been used to address some key environmental aspects and the global acceptance of the two scenarios. As concerns the economic point of view, conventional economic criteria, i.e. investment and operating costs transferred to citizens, have been considered. For the practical implementation of the scenarios and in order to verify the possibility to adopt them in a specific territorial situation, additional aspects of practical management, reliability and need to individuate synergies with other territorial infrastructures have been considered. The results of the analysis for this specific case revealed that the MBT (mechanical biological treatment) option is preferable from the environmental point of view, while the pyro-gasification option is better from the economic point of view under the vast majority of operating conditions considered. Different practical implementations problems characterize both the scenarios. More generally, the comparison methodology that has been defined and used for the scenarios of the considered case can establish a more general useful approach, in order to help the definition of the best solution for waste management planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.With the aggressive cost reductions for 3-D printing made available by the open-source self-replicating rapid prototypers (RepRaps) the economic advantage of custom distributed manufacturing has become substantial. In addition, the number of free designs is growing exponentially and the development and commercialization of the recyclebot (plastic extruders that fabricate 3-D printing filament from recycled or virgin materials) have greatly improved the material selection available for prosumer 3-D printer operators. These trends indicate that more individuals will manufacturer their own polymer products, however, there is a risk that an even larger fraction of polymer waste will not be recycled because it has not been coded. The current limited resin identification code available in the U.S. similarly restricts closing the loop on less popular polymers, which could hamper the environmental impact benefits of distributed manufacturing. This paper provides a solution for this challenge by (1) developing a recycling code model based off of the resin identification codes developed in China that is capable of expansion as more complex 3-D printing materials are introduced, (2) creating OpenSCAD scripts based on (1) to be used to print resin identification codes into products, (3) demonstrating the use of this functionality in a selection of products and polymer materials, and (4) outlining the software and policy tools necessary to make this application possible for widespread adoption. Overall the results showed that a far larger resin code identification system can be adopted in the U.S. to expand distributed recycling of polymers and manufacturing of plastic-based 3-D printed products. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Recycling is considered as core element of the sustainable development. In reality, however, due to the physical and chemical limits of current recycling technologies, material and quality losses occur that affect the efficiency of recycling. This paper aims to assess the environmental performance of metallurgical recycling, from both a donor and user-side perspective, by using the emergy evaluation combined with exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA). The developed evaluation model is based on Ulgiati's proposition to erase the memory of the recovered material and to account only for the current recycling cycle. The use of an average transformity is proposed to measure the environmental performance of recycled materials. Contrary to classical transformities, it evaluates the material based on all previous processes that generated the material while avoiding the "double counting". Finally, three sustainability ratios have been defined to further assess the benefits and limits of consecutive metallurgical recycling processes: the resource efficiency ratio alpha, the performance ratio beta and the eco-design ratio chi. Their functions have been.described and clarified with provided examples. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A model-FUNNEL-GHG-OS (FUNdamental ENgineering PrinciplEs- based ModeL for Estimation of GreenHouse Gases in the Oil Sands) based on fundamental engineering principles was developed to estimate the specific energy consumption and GHGs (greenhouse gas emissions) for upgrading bitumen to produce SCO (synthetic crude oil). The model estimates quantity of SCO produced, the consumption of hydrogen, steam, natural gas and power in two different upgrading operations, namely delayed coking and hydroconversion. Hydroconversion upgrading is more energy and GHG (433.4 kgCO(2)eq/m(3) of bitumen) intensive than delayed coker upgrading (240.3 kgCO(2)eq/m(3) of bitumen) but obtains a higher yield of SCO. This research explores bitumen pathways in oil sands - upgrading bitumen to SCO, followed by transporting and refining SCO as compared to transporting and refining dilbit. The energy consumption, GHG emissions and volume of transportation fuels obtained from refining of different oil sands feeds has been investigated. Refining of oil sands products produce 7.9 to 15.72 gCO(2)eq per MJ of refined product. Refining of SCO to transportation fuels produces 41% and 49% less emissions than dilbit and bitumen respectively. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although studies can be found in the literature that present emissions inventories associated with different types of automobiles, distinct technologies or various stages of their life cycles, they do not enable us to compare the environmental impact of the complete life cycle of two vehicles. This is because there is no valid emissions inventory for all types of automobiles that covers all the life cycle stages (the cradle to grave approach). This paper proposes a method to estimate the principal types of emissions throughout a vehicle's life cycle based on primary data (weight, year of manufacture, engine technology, fuel type used, etc.). The proposed method requires neither sophisticated life cycle assessment software nor knowledge of specific information on individual vehicles. The proposal has been validated by analyzing three different gasoline and diesel-fueled internal combustion engine vehicles and by considering a life span of 100,000 km. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study presents a comparative analysis between jatropha seed production systems to generate bioelectricity versus production of biodiesel under current and optimised conditions. An LCA (life cycle assessment) has been developed, comprising both upstream and downstream processes, encompassing the farming, collection, fuel processing and usage phases. The following energy and environmental indicators were assessed: fossil depletion, GWP (global warming potential), TAP (terrestrial acidification potential), and PMF (particulate matter formation). The rural electrification based on the JCO (latropha crude oil) system is more environmentally friendly compared to generation of biodiesel, in terms of TAP and PMF indicators. Under current practices, two out of the four evaluated indicators score positive benefits, when compared to the generation of marginal diesel-based electricity. The optimisation of the expelling pressing process and the power generation engine could bring further improvements in terms of fossil depletion, GWP and PMF indicators. The biodiesel route, on the other hand, presents a limited local environmental performance, showing only gains in terms of fossil depletion and GWP. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.India's biofuel programme relies on the ethanol from molasses for blending into gasoline. Therefore, quantification of GHG (green house gas) emissions and the energy consumed during the process of ethanol production is desirable to help policy makers to take meaningful decisions. In order to establish the environmental impact of the biofuels, LCA (life cycle assessment) is conducted for 1 ton of fuel grade ethanol in the NR (northern region) and WR (western region) of India. Four different allocation approaches, WA (without any allocation), MA (mass allocation), EA (energy allocation) and MPA (market price allocation) are used to distribute emissions and energy consumption between the product and the co-products. Total GHG emissions are from 5433 (-75.9%) to 8219.8 kg CO2-eq. (262.7%) in NR and 552.0 (-75.8%) to 7382.4 kg CO2-eq. (225.6%) with respect to gasoline. Similarly, the NER (net energy ratio) also varies with different allocation approaches and ranged from 0.38 to 3.39 in the NR and 0.48 to 4.23 in WR. Using MA approach, maximum GHG emissions reduction are, -75.9 and -75.8% and NER, 3.39 and 4.23 in NR and WR respectively indicates the environment and net energy benefits of fuel ethanol. It is observed that MA and EA approaches give more acceptable and real life results. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Large-scale incinerators are applied widely as a result of the heavy burden of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated, while strong opposition is arising from the public living nearby. A large-scale working incineration plant of 1500 ton/day was chosen for evaluation using life cycle assessment. It was found that the corresponding human toxicity impacts via soil (HTs), human toxicity impacts via water (HTw) and human toxicity impacts via air (HTa) categories are 0.213, 2.171, and 0.012 personal equivalents (PE), and global warming (GW100) and nutrient enrichment (NE) impacts are 0.002 and 0.001 PE per ton of waste bumed for this plant. Heavy metals in flue gas, such as Hg and Pb, are the two dominant contributors to the toxicity impact categories, and energy recovery could reduce the GW100 and NE greatly. The corresponding HTs, HTw and HTa decrease to 0.087, 0.911 and 0.008 PE, and GW100 turns into savings of -0.007 PE due to the increase of the heating value from 3935 to 5811 kJ/kg, if a trommel screener of 40 mm mesh size is used to pre-separate MSW. MSW sorting and the reduction of water content by physical pressure might be two promising pre-treatment methods to improve the combustion performance, and the application of stricter standards for leachate discharge and the flue gas purification process are two critical factors for improvement of the environmental profile identified in this work. (C) 2015 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.A convergent synthesis of (S)-(4-benzylmorpholin-2-yl)(morpholino)methanone methanesulfonate (1), a key regulatory starting material for edivoxetine HCl, was developed at Eli Lilly & Company. This novel synthesis utilizes d-serine as the source of chirality, which is preserved throughout the synthesis. Key features include the development of a scalable diazotization process to produce (S)-epoxy acid 7, which was optimized to improve the process safety profile. The final (S)-morpholino acid intermediate 11 was converted to the title compound using T3P with >99.9% purity in 75% yield. Life cycle analysis of the new route revealed a 69% reduction in global warming potential (GWP) for solvent usage relative to the prior route of manufacture.During the last decades, society's concern for the environment has increased. Specific tools like the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and software and databases to apply this method have been developed to calculate the environmental burden of products or processes. Calculating the environmental impact of plastic products is relevant as the global plastics production rose to 288 million tons in 2012. Among the different ways of processing plastics, the injection molding process is one of the most used in the industry worldwide. In this paper, a sensitivity analysis of the environmental impact of the injection molding process has been carried out. In order to perform this study, the EcoInvent database inventory for injection molding, and the data from which this database is created, have been studied. Generally, when an LCA of a product is carried out, databases such as EcoInvent, where materials, processes and transports are characterized providing average values, are used to quantify the environmental impact. This approach can be good enough in some cases but in order to assess a specific production process, like injection molding, a further level of detail is needed. This study shows how the final results of environmental impact differ for injection molding when using the PVC's, PP's or PET's data. This aspect suggests the necessity of studying, in a more precise way, this process, to correctly evaluate its environmental burden. This also allows us to identify priority areas and thereby actions to develop a more sustainable way of manufacturing plastics.The aim of this study is to determine the impact potential of land use on biotic production and climate regulation in the agricultural phase of a product, taking into account the varied soil and crop management. Land occupation and transformation impacts of soybean production in Argentina for different agricultural systems are evaluated. The results indicate that the magnitude of occupation and transformation impacts is considerably reduced by implementing no-tillage instead of conventional tillage. Nevertheless, the methodologies adopted are unable to show any of the expected differences between rainfed or irrigation systems, crop sequences and delays in seed-planting, due to failures in the specific characterization factors. On the other hand, an uncertainty is demonstrated by the results associated with the choice of regeneration time corresponding to the different ecoregions over which soybean cultivation extends across the country. One of the recommendations that comes to the fore is to consider in the characterization factors increments in the soil organic carbon stock and in the mineralization rates, associated with the presence of the preceding crop and the greater availability of water in the soil of irrigated systems.Developing renewable energy sources with low environmental impacts is becoming increasingly important as concerns about consuming fossil fuel sources grow. Cultivating, harvesting, drying, and densifying raw biomass feedstocks into pellets for easy handling and transport is one step forward in this endeavor. However, the corresponding environmental performances must be quantified. This study presents cradle-to-gate life cycle inventory and impact assessment data for switchgrass fuel pellets potentially manufactured in the US Southeast. Because there are no current manufacturers of switchgrass pellets, inventory data were based on field trials of cultivation and harvest of switchgrass combined with a separate study of wood pelletization. Energy inputs for cultivation and harvest of switchgrass were collected by survey from farmers in Tennessee and represent the years 2008, 2009, and 2010. Data for pelletization were taken from a report on wood pellet manufacturing in the US Southeast. To produce 1.0 Mg of pellets that contain 18.0 GJ of potential bioenergy, 4.1 GJ of fossil energy inputs were required. Switchgrass crops require relatively little energy and inputs for the cultivation and harvest processes. The majority of the environmental burdens are associated with drying and pelletizing the raw material.Sewer systems, over their life cycle, suffer deterioration due to aging, aggressive environmental factors, increased demand, inadequate design, third party intervention, and improper operation and maintenance activities. As a result, their state and overall long-term performance can be affected, which often requires costly and extensive maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation. Furthermore, these pressures can enhance the risk of failures (e.g., sewer leakage) which in turn can have serious impacts on the environment, public safety and health, economics, and the remaining service life of these assets. Effective asset management plans must be implemented to address long-term sustainability principles, i.e., economic growth, human health and safety, and environmental protection, simultaneously. The aim of this paper is to evaluate and compare four typical sewer pipe materials [i.e., concrete, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), vitrified clay, and ductile iron] and identify sustainable solutions. Two comprehensive life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) frameworks were applied. The first LCSA framework was based on the integration of emergy synthesis, life cycle assessment (LCA), and life cycle costing (LCC). In this framework, emergy synthesis has been applied to integrate the results from environmental analysis (i.e., LCA) and economic analysis (i.e., LCC) to an equivalent form of solar energy: a solar emergy joule. The second LCSA framework was based on a conventional, multi-criteria decision-making technique, i.e., the analytical hierarchy process, to integrate the results from environmental analysis (i.e., LCA) and economic analysis (i.e., LCC) and find the most sustainable solution over the sewer pipe life cycle. The results demonstrate that PVC pipe is the most sustainable option from both environmental and economic view points and can ensure a more sustainable sewer system.The purpose of this article was to present a tool for the assessment of the environmental performance of bus transit operators. The research method was the qualitative modeling. Environmental performance is the result of the environmental management practices adopted by an organization. Environmental performance was hierarchically structured in criteria and indicators. The assessment process produces an overall dimensionless index, a pure number without an associated physical dimension, originated from expert judgments and according to a composition rule. Experts attribute a degree of compliance to expected performance, ranging between 0 and 100 % (respectively the worst and the best), to the situation of environmental categorical indicators. Five criteria, apprehended by 32 indicators and prioritized by analytic hierarchy process, were used in the tool: Atmosphere (39 %), regarding impacts of the bus operation in air quality; effluents (6 %), regarding impacts caused by liquid waste; solid waste (8 %), regarding the generation of solids; land use (18 %), regarding how the operation uses the land; and natural resources (29 %), regarding how efficient the operation is in using natural resources. The tool was tested in six bus transit operations of a Latin America city of about 1,500,000 inhabitants. Indicators were assessed by scales fulfilled by managers of the operations. The overall dimensionless results for the six operators were: 58.96; 53.24; 50.97; 54.07; 47.01; and 37.69 % of the maximum possible performance. This numbers represent the degree of global satisfaction of the experts with the environmental results obtained by the operators. For all six operators, the more problematic criterion was Atmosphere. An improvement strategy should focus on it, implementing corrective actions monitored by the indicators of the criteria.Artificial lighting has allowed the decoupling of human activities from natural daylight hours. Electricity utilized for artificial lighting accounts for 18.8% of U.S. electricity consumption. Compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and light-emitting diode (LED) options are more efficient and have longer lifetimes than conventional incandescent bulbs, but the question remains about the actual energy savings likely to be realized through more efficient lighting delivery systems. This uncertainty influences the rate of adoption and use of efficient lighting technology (and thus the extent and time lags of efficiency gains). Once adopted, gains in efficiency can lead to rebound effects that eliminate these gains and, paradoxically, lock society into increased use of energy. In this study, an agent-based model and complex systems approach is used to understand how available information and perceptions of different lighting options influence adoption and use, and the potential impact of the rebound effect to reduce the energy savings of energy-efficient lighting options in a residential setting. Individual households and their decisions are modeled to create overall population-level consumption data. The multifunctionality of LED lighting may cause consumers to use significantly more light, creating the potential for both rebound and backfire to occur. The results indicate that the adoption of CFL and LED lighting will decrease residential energy consumption if consumers continue to use the same amount or slightly more light; however, when an expansion of lit spaces is included or a large increase in lighting usage occurs, energy consumption will increase and, over time, reduce or completely erode energy savings.Resilience is the capacity of systems to withstand and recover from disturbance. It depends on the structure and architecture of a system and plays a key role for the sustainability of complex systems. Despite its importance, resilience is not explicitly taken into account by studies of life cycle assessment (LCA), whose main objective is determining the eco-efficiency of a product system, with limited focus on its structure. The question is whether a product system whose structure is improved or designed to be more resilient will result in being not only inefficient, but also eco-inefficient, when assessed by means of LCA. This study proposes a theoretical modeling approach, consisting of assessment of disturbance and system expansion, to compare vulnerable and resilient product systems within the framework of LCA. Examples are provided where the theory is made operational. The structure of a vulnerable product system changes under disturbance: some processes are constrained and others are made necessary. In a resilient product system, the number and type of processes do not change under conditions of disturbance, because some redundant disturbance-preventing activities are included. If this modeling approach is applied, resilient product systems are not necessarily less eco-efficient than their vulnerable counterparts. This runs contrary to the intuitive idea that optimizing a system only for efficiency will necessarily allow achievement of eco-efficiency as well. This modeling approach is then critically discussed.Because home composting is a prevention option in managing biowaste at local levels, the objective of the present study was to contribute to the knowledge of the process evolution and compost quality that can be expected and obtained, respectively, in this decentralized option. In this study, organized as the research portion of a provincial project on home composting in the territory of Pesaro-Urbino (Central Italy), four experimental composters were first initiated and temporally monitored. Second, two small sub-sets of selected provincial composters (directly operated by households involved in the project) underwent quality control on their compost products at two different temporal steps. The monitored experimental composters showed overall decreasing profiles versus composting time for moisture, organic carbon, and C/N, as well as overall increasing profiles for electrical conductivity and total nitrogen, which represented qualitative indications of progress in the process. Comparative evaluations of the monitored experimental composters also suggested some interactions in home composting, i.e., high C/N ratios limiting organic matter decomposition rates and final humification levels; high moisture contents restricting the internal temperature regime; nearly horizontal phosphorus and potassium evolutions contributing to limit the rates of increase in electrical conductivity; and prolonged biowaste additions contributing to limit the rate of decrease in moisture. The measures of parametric data variability in the two sub-sets of controlled provincial composters showed decreased variability in moisture, organic carbon, and C/N from the seventh to fifteenth month of home composting, as well as increased variability in electrical conductivity, total nitrogen, and humification rate, which could be considered compatible with the respective nature of decreasing and increasing parameters during composting. The modeled parametric kinetics in the monitored experimental composters, along with the evaluation of the parametric central tendencies in the sub-sets of controlled provincial composters, all indicate that 12-15 months is a suitable duration for the appropriate development of home composting in final and simultaneous compliance with typical reference limits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment was conducted to estimate the environmental impact of electronic waste (e-waste) treatment. E-waste recycling with an end-life disposal scenario is environmentally beneficial because of the low environmental burden generated from human toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, and marine ecotoxicity categories. Landfill and incineration technologies have a lower and higher environmental burden than the e-waste recycling with an end-life disposal scenario, respectively. The key factors in reducing the overall environmental impact of e-waste recycling are optimizing energy consumption efficiency, reducing wastewater and solid waste effluent, increasing proper e-waste treatment amount, avoiding e-waste disposal to landfill and incineration sites, and clearly defining the duties of all stakeholders (e.g., manufacturers, retailers, recycling companies, and consumers). (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A possible solution for the oversupply of dredged sediments is their use as a raw material in brick production. Despite the fact that several examples (e.g., Agostini et al., 2007; Hamer and Karius, 2002; Xu et al., 2014) show that this application is feasible, some economic, technical and social limitations interfere with the development of a market of dredged materials in brick production in Flanders. While we describe the main characteristics of the supply side, we focus on the limitations and barriers from the demand side in the present study. Based on a consumers survey we analyze consumers' risk perceptions and attitudes towards bricks produced from dredged sediments. Consumers in Flanders are rather suspicious with respect to bricks produced from dredged sediments and their risk perception is mainly determined by the possibility of a bad bargain (brick of inferior quality) and the connotation with chemical contamination. The willingness to pay for bricks made from dredged sediments is mainly influenced by the age of the respondents, as well environmental awareness, and the respondents' belief in their ability to influence environmental problems. Sensitization and information of customers seems to be of primary importance to make dredged-sediment-derived bricks a successful product. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article presents the new systems engineering optimization model, OptiWaste, which incorporates a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and captures important characteristics of waste management systems. As part of the optimization, the model identifies the most attractive waste management options. The model renders it possible to apply different optimization objectives such as minimizing costs or greenhouse gas emissions or to prioritize several objectives given different weights. A simple illustrative case is analysed, covering alternative treatments of one tonne of residual household waste: incineration of the full amount or sorting out organic waste for biogas production for either combined heat and power generation or as fuel in vehicles. The case study illustrates that the optimal solution depends on the objective and assumptions regarding the background system - illustrated with different assumptions regarding displaced electricity production. The article shows that it is feasible to combine LCA methodology with optimization. Furthermore, it highlights the need for including the integrated waste and energy system into the model. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Following water, tea is the second most consumed drink worldwide and has the peculiarity that not only its production but especially its preparation can be associated with considerable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The aims of this study were to calculate the cradle-to-gate and cradle-to-grave product carbon footprint (PCF) of Darjeeling tea and to identify potentials to reduce GHG emissions along its life cycle. Therefore, various options for action and their impact on the PCF were modeled by using a scenario analysis. To assess the PCF of Darjeeling tea, the method based on ISO/TS 14067 was used with some limitations. Besides one base scenario, alternative cradle-to-gate scenarios and different use profiles were modeled. The results were split in a cradle-to-gate and a cradle-to-grave perspective. For the cradle-to-gate phase a functional unit of one kilogram loose black Darjeeling tea was chosen, whereas for the cradle-to-grave phase one liter black Darjeeling tea that is prepared and ready to drink in Germany was seen as appropriate functional unit. Primary data for the present study has been collected from local farmers, manufacturers, and agents in Darjeeling, Kolkata, and Rotterdam. For secondary data, the database ecoinvent 2.2 was mainly used. The cradle-to-gate PCF of 1 kg Darjeeling tea is between 7.1 and 25.3 kg CO(2)e depending on the cultivation method, energy sources used, or mode of transportation. The cradle-to-grave PCF for 1 l organic Darjeeling tea is about 0.15 kg CO(2)e. The largest share, 51 %, makes up the use phase, which is clearly dominated by the boiling of water. The variety of possible use profiles yields results of great breadth. It shows that the life cycle of organic Darjeeling tea transported by ship, depending on the preparation variants can cause emissions from 0.12 to 0.51 kg CO(2)e/l tea. The main reduction potentials for GHG emissions were identified in the process of water boiling, the intercontinental transport mode, and the cultivation method. Since the climate impact of tea strongly depends on the way in which it is prepared, the consumer has a decisive influence on the PCF. Therefore, in order to make a reliable statement about the climate performance of consumer goods such as tea, the whole life cycle must be considered.In life cycle assessment (LCA), the impact assessment on natural resources is still in the early stages of research, and the impacts of biotic resources are usually not evaluated. The human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) is a well-known indicator of land use impacts, but it cannot be easily implemented in LCA. The objective of this paper was to create a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method on land use impacts on net primary production (NPP) based on the HANPP approach. To create an operational LCIA method, the midpoint characterization factors (CF) were calculated by comparing the NPP of plants occurring under current land uses with a baseline scenario, i.e., the NPP of potential natural vegetation. For the endpoint CF, we considered the backup technology concept and included in the calculation the marginal cost for additional biomass production through algae cultivation in the ocean. Site-generic and site-specific midpoint and endpoint characterization factors (CF) were created in a global scale for 162 countries and for four types of land uses (cropland, pasture, infrastructure, and wilderness). For cropland, we also created biomass-specific CF for ten particular crops in a global scale. The LCIA method was tested in particular case studies and seemed to produce comparable results, with the possibility of coupling it with other LCIA methodologies, as recipe endpoint. The LCIA method proposed in this paper provides an assessment of the decrease of biomass availability due to land use (affecting the AoP resources), which is an impact category poorly considered in LCA. Nevertheless, the method has some future challenges, for instance to take into account site-specific backup technologies for the endpoint CF.While lasting mitigation solutions are needed to avoid climate change in the long term, temporary solutions may play a positive role in terms of avoiding certain climatic target levels, for preventing the crossing of critical and perhaps irreversible climatic tipping points. While the potential value of temporary carbon storage in terms of climate change mitigation has been widely discussed, this has not yet been directly coupled to avoiding climatic target levels representing predicted climatic tipping points. This paper provides recommendations on how to model temporary carbon storage in products in life cycle assessment (LCA), in order to include the potential mitigation value relative to crossing critical climatic target levels. Further, estimates are made on potential magnitude of this value, highlighting the importance of including this aspect in climate change impact assessment of biomaterials. The recently developed approach for quantifying the climate tipping potential (CTP) of emissions is used, with some adaption, to account for the value of temporary carbon storage. CTP values for short-, medium- and long-term carbon storage in chosen biomaterials are calculated for two possible future atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration development scenarios. The potential magnitude of the temporary carbon storage in biomaterials is estimated by considering the global polymer production being biobased in the future. Both sets of CTP values show the same trend; storage which releases the carbon again before the climatic target level is reached increases the CTP value of the product compared to a situation with no storage of the product, whereas storage extending beyond the time where the climatic target level is predicted to be crossed according to the GHG concentration scenarios contributes with negative CTP values, which means mitigation. The longer the duration of the storage, the larger the mitigation potential. Temporary carbon storage in biomaterials has a potential for contributing to avoid or postpone the crossing of a climatic target level of 450 ppm CO(2)e, depending on GHG concentration development scenario. The potential mitigation value depends on the timing of sequestration and re-emission of CO2. The suggested CTP approach enables inclusion of the potential benefit from temporary carbon storage in the environmental profile of biomaterials. This should be seen as supplement to the long-term climate change impacts given by the global warming potential which does not account for temporary aspects like benefits from non-permanent storage in terms of avoiding a critical climatic target level.Methodology of co-product handling is a critical determinant of calculated resource use and environmental emissions per kilogram (kg) product but has not been examined in detail for different sheep production systems. This paper investigates alternative approaches for handling co-production of wool and live weight (LW, for meat) from dual purpose sheep systems to the farm-gate. Seven methods were applied; three biophysical allocation (BA) methods based on protein requirements and partitioning of digested protein, protein mass allocation (PMA), economic allocation (EA) and two system expansion (SE) methods. Effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fossil energy demand and land occupation (classified according to suitability for arable use) were assessed using four contrasting case study (CS) farm systems. A UK upland farm (CS 1) and a New Zealand hill farm (CS 2) were selected to represent systems focused on lamb and coarse-textured wool for interior textiles. Two Australian Merino sheep farms (CS 3, CS 4) were selected to represent systems focused on medium to superfine garment wool, and lamb. Total GHG emissions per kilogram total products (i.e. wool + LW) were similar across CS farms. However, results were highly sensitive to the method of co-product handling. GHG emissions based on BA of wool protein to wool resulted in 10-12 kg CO2-e/kg wool (across all CS farms), whereas it increased to 24-38 kg CO2-e/kg wool when BA included a proportion of sheep maintenance requirements. Results for allocation% generated using EA varied widely from 4 % (CS 1) to 52 % (CS 4). SE using beef as a substitution for sheep meat gave the lowest, and often negative, GHG emissions from wool production. Different methods were found to re-order the impacts across the four case studies in some instances. A similar overall pattern was observed for the effects of co-product handling method on other impact categories for three of the four farms. BA based on protein partitioning between sheep wool and LW is recommended for attributional studies with the PMA method being an easily applied proxy for the more detailed BA methods. Sensitivity analysis using SE is recommended to understand the implications of system change. Sensitivity analysis using SE is recommended to investigate implications of choosing alternative products or systems, and to evaluate system change strategies in which case consequential modelling is appropriate. To avoid risks of burden shifting when allocation methods are applied, results should be presented for both wool and LW.Power-to-gas technology enables storage of surplus electricity from fluctuating renewable sources such as wind power or photovoltaics, by generating hydrogen (H-2) via water electrolysis, with optional methane (CH4) synthesis from carbon dioxide (CO2) and H-2; the advantage of the latter is that CH4 can be fed into existing gas infrastructure. This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of this technological concept, evaluating the main parameters influencing global warming potential (GWP) and primary energy demand. The conducted LCA of power-to-gas systems includes the production of H-2 or CH4 from cradle to gate. Product utilization was not evaluated but considered qualitatively during interpretation. Material and energy balances were modeled using the LCA software GaBi 5 (PE International). The assessed impacts of H-2 and CH4 from power-to-gas were compared to those of reference processes, such as steam reforming of natural gas and crude oil as well as natural gas extraction. Sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate the influence of the type of electricity source, the efficiency of the electrolyzer, and the type of CO2 source used for methanation. The ecological performance of both H-2 and CH4 produced via power-to-gas strongly depends on the electricity generation source. The assessed impacts of H-2 production are only improved if GWP of the utilized electricity does not exceed 190 g CO2 per kWh. Due to reduced efficiency, the assessed impacts of CH4 are higher than that of H-2. Thus, the environmental break-even point for CH4 production is 113 g CO2 per kWh if utilized CO2 is treated as a waste product, and 73 g CO2 per kWh if the CO2 separation effort is included. Electricity mix of EU-27 countries is therefore not at all suitable as an input. Utilization of renewable H-2 and CH4 in the industry or the transport sector offers substantial reduction potential in GWP and primary energy demand. H-2 and CH4 production through power-to-gas with electricity from renewable sources, such as wind power or photovoltaics, offers substantial potential to reduce GWP and primary energy demand. However, the input of electricity predominately generated from fossil resources leads to a higher environmental impact of H-2 and CH4 compared to fossil reference processes and is not recommended. As previously bound CO2 is re-emitted when CH4 is utilized for instance in vehicles, the type of CO2 source and the allocation method have a significant influence on overall ecological performance.The BioValueChain model facilitates the calculation of environmental impacts throughout the value chain for production of biogas from organic waste and manure in Norway. This paper describes the methodology of the model, presents the results based on general data and performs a sensitivity analysis for the input data. The model is based on life cycle assessment methodology and defines the boundaries of the system and a set of default parameter values which can easily be changed to obtain relevant results for a specific region or a specific biogas plant. The general results from application of the model show that the application of biogas and digestate, including the assumption regarding which products are substituted, has significance for the results. The sensitivity analysis reveals that results for global warming potential (GWP) appear to be less sensitive for the different parameter values than the other environmental indicators. Increased biogas production from source separated organic household waste and manure from cattle and pigs appears to be an appropriate greenhouse gases (GHG) mitigation measure for Norwegian conditions if the biogas substitutes fossil fuels and if the digestate substitutes mineral fertiliser. The results underline the need for the use of specific data, especially for transport distances, biogas potential and efficiency of biogas plant. Furthermore, in order to decrease the uncertainty of the results, more research is required into ways of modelling and quantifying direct emissions from the storage and application of manure and digestate on land.This paper presents a life cycle inventory (LCI) describing the material and energy demands for constructing and operating a geothermal combined heat and power (GCHP) plant as well as direct emissions of gases, waste water, and waste heat. The data are based on a newly constructed GCHP plant in Iceland, representing the design of both single flash (SF) and double flash (DF) power plants that currently produce the majority of electricity from geothermal plants worldwide. Primary data were collected for the construction, operation, and maintenance of a GCHP plant. As the design and operation of geothermal flash power plants is site-specific due to the different nature of geothermal resources, a method of scaling data to a site specific parameter is proposed to make the LCI available as representative secondary data for such plants. These parameters along with other data identified as site-specific serve as the minimum data to be collected for adjusting the presented data to represent other flash power plants with or without combined heat production. The construction stage dominates the material burdens for the electricity and heat production. For the life cycle of electricity, it includes 80 % of diesel fuel use (whereof 96 % originates from well drilling), while 99 % of groundwater is used during the operational stage. The use and composition of geothermal fluid is site-specific but accounts for all direct emissions from the electricity production. The main materials in terms of mass used for the construction of the GCHP plant are water, diesel, steel, cement, asphalt, bentonite, and silica flour. Mineral wool and aluminum were also among the main material contributors. Material and energy burdens per functional unit are generally higher for a SF plant compared with DF plants. For heat production, 1.7 MJ of waste heat from power generation is used to produce 1 MJ of usable heat. By presenting LCI data scaled with site-specific parameters, the flexibility of its use is increased as secondary data. However, the collection of primary data for the composition of geothermal fluid and values for site specific parameters is always required to represent local conditions. Thus, the LCI for HellisheiA degrees i GCHP can be regarded as representative data for electricity and heat from geothermal flash power plants.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has a technical architecture that limits data interoperability, transparency, and automated integration of external data. More advanced information technologies offer promise for increasing the ease with which information can be synthesized within an LCA framework. A new architecture is described that combines, stores, and annotates data for life cycle assessment. The Resource Description Framework is proposed for managing LCA data. To explore the capabilities of this approach, the LCA Harmonization Tool (LCA-HT) is being developed to map and store data from different sources and to clearly capture user-defined relationships between nomenclatures for easy use. It will enable increased interoperability of LCA data and more structured and automated incorporation of non-LCA data into LCA models. The LCA-HT is intended to be a core component of LCA data architecture (a data commons) used by US federal agencies and other data providers to make data representing US conditions more accessible for public use. It will also be used to bring together data from human health exposure models with traditional LCA for evaluating near-field human health risk in the life cycle context to demonstrate the practical advancements possible with this new architecture. The tool will remain open source and freely available.Total metal-based toxicity potentials, like the ones used in life cycle assessment (LCA), can sometimes introduce bias and significantly affect the validity of LCA results since toxicity is associated with the bioavailable metal fraction. Here, the bioavailable fraction of zinc (Zn) for world soil types is obtained using the WHAM 6.0 geochemical speciation model. Prior to this, the usability of the WHAM model for soils using only globally available soil properties (soil texture, pH, cation exchange capacity, carbonate, and organic matter content) was validated with experimental soil data and compared to the use of empirical regressions. The results confirm that WHAM can predict Zn bioavailable fraction with an uncertainty of less than 2 orders of magnitude-41 % being of the same order of magnitude-for a wide variety of soils relative to field data, yielding estimates that are better than empirical regression results in terms of rank and value. World BFs for Zn span over 6 to 18 orders of magnitude for soluble and true solution Zn, respectively, thus confirming the importance of considering spatial variability. In total, 231 soil archetypes are defined based on the soil properties that influence speciation. When compared to experimental values, soluble Zn obtained with WHAM seems to constitute a more reliable indicator of the bioavailable fraction of Zn than true solution Zn. Estimates obtained with the WHAM 6.0 model for soluble Zn were closer to field data in terms of value and rank as compared to estimates obtained with empirical regressions. Refining is required to obtain true solution Zn in organic soils. Although not exhaustive, the validation process covers a considerable proportion of world soils, therefore indicating that the method is promising to study Zn bioavailability at the global scale.A bibliometric analysis of life cycle assessment (LCA)-related research literature is reported in this study. Based on databases of Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science (CPCI-S), and Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), this study aims to evaluate the research trends of LCA-related research literature from 1998 to 2013 by using bibliometric techniques. The documents were analyzed according to their type, language(s), subject(s), journal(s), citation analysis of articles, authors' address information, and keyword distribution, etc. H-index and impact factor (IF) were applied to characterize the LCA publications. Furthermore, co-word analysis and social network analysis (SNA) were employed to evaluate the interactions in this research field. The findings showed that the pace of publishing in this field increased exponentially over past 16 years. A total of 6616 records were obtained from the four databases. Journal articles are the most frequently used document type representing 74.33 % (4918) of the records, and English is the dominant language with 5914 records (97.53 %). The most common subject category is environmental sciences, and the most productive journal is International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. The USA, focusing on "energy," "industrial ecology," and "greenhouse gas emissions," is the most productive country in the research field of LCA. Technology University of Denmark is the most productive institute all over the world over the past 16 years. According to the ranking of keywords, "greenhouse gas," "energy", and "biofuel" are the hotspots of LCA research. The main purpose of LCA is sustainability assessment whereas climate change is one of the most outstanding environmental issues. By identifying global hotspots in the LCA research, this study provides a useful reference to researchers for the future research directions.The application of irrigation water and nitrogen (N) fertilizer in excess of crop demand reduces profitability and has multiple detrimental impacts on the environment. N dynamics in agro-ecosystems are extremely complex, and mechanistic crop models are most often required to quantify the impact of improved management practices on reducing fertilizer N losses. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and mechanistic modelling were used to quantify the environmental benefits of improved management of water and fertilizer N by sugar cane farmers in a case study in Pongola, South Africa. A baseline scenario, representing farmer intuition-based irrigation scheduling management, and two additional scenarios in which water, and water and N were more rationally managed, were compared. Results show that improved water and N management can lead to a 20% reduction in non-renewable energy consumption per functional unit (FU), with sustained or even increased yields. Total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can potentially be reduced by 25% through more efficient water and N management. Limiting the rates of fertilizer N applied, made possible by decreasing N leaching through improved irrigation scheduling, resulted in the highest reductions for both impact categories. While total water consumption was very similar between the scenarios, more efficient use of rainfall was achieved through accurate scheduling, reducing blue water requirements. Through the simultaneous consideration of multiple environmental impacts, combining mechanistic crop modelling and LCA shows potential to identify improved management practices as well as to establish environmental stewardship incentives. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Objective To aid radiologists by measuring the carbon footprint of CT scans by quantifying in-hospital and out-of-hospital energy use and to assess public health impacts. Method The study followed a standard life cycle assessment protocol to measure energy from a CT scan then expanding to all hospital electrical energy related to CT usage. In addition, all the fuel energy used to generate electricity and to manufacture the CT consumables was measured. The study was conducted at two hospitals. Results The entire life cycle energy for a CT scan was 24-34kWh of natural resource energy per scan. The actual active patient scan energy that produces the images is only about 1.6% of this total life cycle energy. This large multiplier to get total CT energy is a previously undocumented environmental response to the direct radiology order for a patient CT scan. The CT in-hospital energy related to idle periods, where the machine is on but no patients are being scanned and is 14-30-fold higher than the energy used for the CT image. The in-hospital electrical energy of a CT scan makes up only about 25% of the total energy footprint. The rest is generated outside the hospital: 54-62% for generation and transmission of the electricity, while 13-22% is for all the energy to make the consumables. Different CT scanners have some influences on the results and could help guide purchase of CT equipment. Conclusions The transparent, detailed life cycle approach allows the data from this study to be used by radiologists to examine details of both direct and of unseen energy impacts of CT scans. The public health (outside-the-hospital) impact (including the patients receiving a CT) needs to be measured and included.Today considerable efforts are being made in identifying means of further energy efficiencies within the UK food system. Current air importation of fruit and vegetables (FVs) generates large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions part of which could be avoided. Local food production has been recognized as an environmentally feasible alternative production option and could help reduce GHG emissions, as required under the legally binding emissions targets stipulated by the UK Climate Change Act 2008. Climate change impacts of FVs importation were determined for a selection of five indigenous FV commodities, namely: apples, cherries, strawberries, garlic and peas. Carbon dioxide equivalents (CO(2)e) emissions associated with the production and transport stages were calculated using the sample of selected fruit and vegetables (SFVs). The latter stage includes three diverse geographic locations/regions for emissions comparison, namely the UK, Europe and non-European (NE) countries. On average (across the five SFVs), NE commodities, all in fresh/chilled state, were found to contain embedded (arising from production, air freighting and distribution within the UK) GHG emissions of 10.16 kg CO(2)e/kg. This is 9.66 kg more CO(2)e emissions compared to a kilogram of these commodities produced and supplied locally. A scenario-based approach determined the level of emissions savings that could be achieved by local FVs production in the UK. The least dramatic change of SCENARIO-1 (25% reduction in NE SFVs imports by increasing their local production by the same amount) could save 28.9 kt CO(2)e/year, while SCENARIO-2 (50% reduction in NE SFVs imports) and SCENARIO-3 (75% reduction in NE SFVs imports) could result in saving of 57.8 kt and 86.7 kt, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A Rapid Life Cycle Assessment (RLCA) method based on Green features is proposed in order to solve the inherent limitations of conventional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), such as long period, massive data requirement, which result in difficulties in supporting product conceptual design. Firstly, Green Feature is proposed in supporting the LCA in conceptual design, where a mapping relationship is established between green feature and design information to achieve the transformation from the design information to green features. Secondly, product conceptual design model is proposed based on modular configuration. The approximate products program will be obtained through retrieval and matching of each module of product using the knowledge base and case base. Thirdly, Intuitionistic Fuzzy theory and Monte Carlo method are respectively used to process the qualitative and quantitative uncertain information of green features in order to ensure the accuracy of the evaluation results. Besides, the appropriate life cycle impact assessment method is selected to complete the life cycle impact assessment and obtain the LCA results. Consequently, the RLCA of product design program is completed to support product green design. Finally, a fan of a ventilation system is studied as an example to verify the proposed RLCA theory.Chile needs to diversify its energy supply, and should establish policies that encourage the production and use of biofuels. The demand for energy resources increases with population growth and industrial development, making it urgent to find green alternatives to minimize the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of traditional fuels. However, it is required that sophisticated strategies consider all externalities from the production of biofuels and should be established on the basis of protecting the environment, reducing GHG emissions and to avoid violating human rights. This article presents the Chilean reality, based on ethical principles that should be guarded to regulate the bioenergy market. These principles are: (1) human rights, (2) environmental sustainability, (3) climate change mitigation, (4) right to a fair reward, and (5) equitable distribution. It is concluded that in Chile the concentration of land and water for the development of extractive industries; and for agricultural and forestry purposes, contradicts the principle of human rights. The unequal distribution of income is also highlighted as part of a cycle of social injustice, with a high Gini coefficient (0.52). However, the policy of biofuels can be strengthened with the early use of second generation feedstock, the introduction of fair trade and regulation by the state to encourage participation of small farmers, and allows a position for Chile at the forefront of bioenergy production.A model - FUNNEL-GHG-OS (FUNdamental ENgineering PrinciplEs-based ModeL for Estimation of Green-House Gases in the Oil Sands) was developed to estimate project-specific energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in major recovery and extraction processes in the oil sands, namely surface mining and in situ production. This model estimates consumption of diesel (4.4-7.1 MJ/GJ of bitumen), natural gas (52.7-86.4 MJ/GJ of bitumen) and electricity (1.8-2.1 kW h/GJ of bitumen) as fuels in surface mining. The model also estimates the consumption of natural gas (123-462.7 MJ/GJ of bitumen) and electricity (1.2-3.5 kW h/GJ of bitumen) in steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), based on fundamental engineering principles. Cogeneration in the oil sands, with excess electricity exported to Alberta's grid, was also explored. Natural gas consumption forms a major portion of the total energy consumption in surface mining and SAGD and thus is a main contributor to GHG emissions. Emissions in surface mining and SAGD range from 4.4 to 7.4 gCO(2)eq/MJ of bitumen and 8.0 to 34.0 gCO(2)eq/MJ of bitumen, respectively, representing a wide range of variability in oil sands projects. Depending upon the cogeneration technology and the efficiency of the process, emissions in oil sands recovery and extraction can be reduced by 16-25% in surface mining and 33-48% in SAGE). Further, a sensitivity analysis was performed to determine the effects of key parameters on the GHG emissions in surface mining and SAGD. Temperature and the consumption of warm water in surface mining and the steam-to-oil ratio (SOR) in SAGD are major parameters affecting GHG emissions. The developed model can predict the energy consumption and emissions for surface mining and SAGD for oil sands. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bei betrieblichen Ma ss nahmen zur Energieeffizienz und zum Klimaschutz wird meist nur auf die direkten Einsparpotenziale, d.h. den verringerten Energieeinsatz oder die reduzierten Treibhausgasemissionen, geachtet. Doch auch Ma ss nahmen zur Verbesserung der Materialeffizienz tragen erheblich zur geringeren Energieverbrauchen und Emissionen bei. Da der Anteil von Materialien an den Kosten im Unternehmen deutlich hoher ist als der Anteil von Energie, und weil dort noch erhebliche Einsparpotenziale existieren, konnen damit indirekt auch der Energiebedarf und Treibhausgasemissionen verringert werden. Usually, only direct savings in energy consumption or direct greenhouse gas emissions are considered in operational measures for energy efficiency and climate protection. However, measures to improve the material efficiency can also contribute significantly to lower energy consumption and emissions. They work in some cases even outside the company in the prechain. Because the contribution of materials to the expense of companies is significantly higher than the energy costs and because substantial saving potentials still exist in the field of material use, considerable amounts of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced indirectly by material efficiency measures.Sown biodiverse permanent pastures rich in legumes (SBPPRL) were developed in Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s as a strategy to increase grassland productivity by sowing mixtures of up to 20 species/cultivars of legumes and grasses. Compared to semi-natural pastures, the resulting engineered system provides higher yields of better quality pasture, significantly increasing sustainable stocking rates, with multiple environmental co-benefits. Here, we propose a conceptual framework for the sustainability assessment of SBPPRL and apply it with existing data. Our objective is to inquire if this system is an example of sustainable intensification of livestock production, i.e., an economic and ecological win-win solution that can answer many of the causes for ecosystem degradation in semi-arid and sub-humid climate zones, such as in the Mediterranean basin. We build on experimental results from previous studies, which suggest that SBPPRL replenish soil organic matter pools and improve soil structure. The high increase in stable soil organic matter acts as a carbon sink, turning the system into an optimum tool for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Portugal made use of this fact by supporting the expansion of SBPPRL areas and abating the corresponding carbon from Kyoto Protocol emissions calculations. We resorted to the literature to evaluate other environmental effects due to the absence of data specifically for SBPPRL. Surface water runoff decreases and pirophyte shrub vegetation is eliminated or much reduced. Nitrogen accumulates in stable forms in the soil after being fixed by Rhizobium/legume symbiotic associations. Legumes depend on phosphorus fertilization; as such the nitrogen cycle in SBPPRL relies on a potentially non-renewable resource (required during the first years after installation of the pasture), which may be a potential limiting factor in the future. The effects on wild biodiversity are unclear. The methodology laid out in this article provides an innovative framework to assess these effects as additional experimental data becomes available. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The valorization of three different manure samples via pyrolysis and combustion processes was evaluated. Dairy manure (sample Pre) was biologically pretreated by anaerobic digestion (sample Dig R) whereas swine manure (sample SW) was pretreated by a biodrying process. Thermal behavior of manure samples were studied by means of thermogravimetric analysis coupled with mass spectrometry (TGA-MS). These processes could be divided into four general stages: dehydration, devolatilization, char transformation (oxidation for combustion) and inorganic matter decomposition. The main differences observed among the samples were attributed to their different composition and pretreatment. The economic feasibility, energetic and environmental impacts of pyrolysis and combustion technologies for dairy samples were carried out by means of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Four different scenarios were analyzed. The economic feasibility of the pyrolysis process was demonstrated, being sample Dig R the best environmental option. However, the combustion of sample Pre was the best energetic option. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Renewable substitutes for natural gas, such as biogas, require adequate treatment to remove impurities. This paper presents the life cycle and environmental impact of upgrading biogas using absorption-desorption process with three different solvents: water, diglycolamine and polyethylene glycol dimethyl ether. The results showed that water produces a minor impact in most of the considered categories, and an economic analysis showed that water is the most feasible solvent for obtaining the lowest payback period. This analysis includes three different sources for biogas production and two end uses for biomethane. The use of different wastes as sources results in different environmental impacts depending on the type of energy used in the anaerobic digestion. The same situation occurs when considering the use of biomethane as a domestic fuel or for power generation. Using energy from biogas to replace conventional energy sources in production and upgrading biogas significantly reduce the environmental impacts of processes. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Intensive arable crop production has major impacts on the environment and solutions for their reduction are needed. Diversification of crop rotations together with improved nitrogen management is an option for more eco-efficient cropping systems. The potentials for reducing the environmental impacts cropping systems were investigated by means of life cycle assessment (LCA) in three regions in France (Beauce, Burgundy and Moselle). The crop management data were compiled by the Chambers of Agriculture in the three regions based on field survey data (2002-2009 in Burgundy and Moselle and 2004-2008 in Beauce) and completed by experts. The LCA calculations were carried out by the SALCA-crop tool, using the ecoinvent and SALCA inventory databases and SALCA emission models. The LCAs were calculated for crop combinations, which were an efficient way to analyse a large number of crop rotations. A crop combination is defined as the inventory of a given crop, with a defined preceding crop and eventually including a catch crop. Nitrogen management revealed to be a key driver for the environmental impacts. It dominated the non-renewable energy demand, the global warming potential, the ozone formation potential, the acidification potential, and the eutrophication potential. Strong correlations between N fertilisation and these environmental impacts were found. The introduction of pea allowed to reduce the total eutrophication over the whole crop rotation. The mitigation of environmental impacts was not only possible per hectare, but also per gross margin II. The eco-efficiency can thus be improved by reducing the level of N fertilisation. A reduction of N fertilisation could be achieved also by a reduction of the fertiliser doses to the non-legume crops, in addition to the introduction of legumes. Both ways proved to be effective and the combination of both was the most promising. However, trade-off between environmental and economic goals was identified. Diversification of cereal intensive crop rotations proved to be generally favourable from an environmental point of view. Catch crops had favourable effects on nutrient leaching a slightly favourable effects on biodiversity and soil quality. The ecotoxicity potentials were dominated by a few active ingredients only; the diversification did not lead to generally reduced ecotoxicity potentials. Diverse crop rotations with reduced N input are a promising way to reduce the environmental impacts of intensive arable crop rotations. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Livestock production is increasingly facing consumer concern about the environmental impact of different production systems. In order to provide a detailed insight into the contribution of pork production, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of average German pork production was performed. In this way, the global warming potential was estimated at 3.22 kg CO2-eq/kg pork, eutrophication at 23.3 g PO4-eq and acidification at 57.1 g SO2-eq. The functional unit was 1 kg pork as a slaughter weight. The analysis aimed at identifying those farm parameters which had most impact on the LCA results. For that purpose, a deterministic pig farm model was developed which reflected all the processes of a pig farm, while focusing on five distinct areas: general farm information, biological performance, basic feed data, manure management and resource use and emissions. In this way, it was possible to vary the level of performance parameters from farrowing (piglet losses and number of piglets born alive per litter) and finishing stage (lean-meat content, daily weight gain, animal losses and feed conversion ratio). The number of piglets born alive, the lean-meat content and the feed conversion ratio were identified as having the greatest influence on the results. In comparison with average pork production, the values of the impact categories increased and decreased by up to 4.7%. The results show that the fertility of sows and the feed management of finishers should be optimized to mitigate environmental impacts at pig farm level.The high environmental costs of raising livestock are now widely appreciated, yet consumption of animal-based food items continues and is expanding throughout the world. Consumers' ability to distinguish among, and rank, various interchangeable animal-based items is crucial to reducing environmental costs of diets. However, the individual environmental burdens exerted by the five dominant livestock categories - beef, dairy, poultry, pork and eggs - are not fully known. Quantifying those burdens requires splitting livestock's relatively well-known total environmental costs (e.g. land and fertilizer use for feed production) into partial categorical costs. Because such partitioning quantifies the relative environmental desirability of various animal-based food items, it is essential for environmental impact minimization efforts to be made. Yet to date, no such partitioning method exists. The present paper presents such a partitioning method for feed production-related environmental burdens. This approach treated each of the main feed classes individually - concentrates (grain, soy, by-products; supporting production of all livestock), processed roughage (mostly hay and silage) and pasture - which is key given these classes' widely disparate environmental costs. It was found that for the current US food system and national diet, concentrates are partitioned as follows: beef 0.21 +/- 0.112, poultry 0.27 +/- 0.046, dairy 0.24 +/- 0.041, pork 0.23 +/- 0.093 and eggs 0.04 +/- 0.018. Pasture and processed roughage, consumed only by cattle, are 0.92 +/- 0.034 and 0.87 +/- 0.031 due to beef, with the remainder due to dairy. In a follow-up paper, the devised methodology will be employed to partition total land, irrigated water, greenhouse gases and reactive nitrogen burdens incurred by feed production among the five edible livestock categories.Agricultural activities emit the greenhouse gases and the other environmental contaminants to the atmosphere. Thus, the environmental impacts of agricultural activities have to be examined for identification, assessment and mitigation. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used to determine the environmental impacts of peanut production system in Guilan province of Iran. These environmental impacts were classified into six impact categories including global warming, acidification, terrestrial eutrophication, depletion of fossil resources, depletion of phosphate and potash resources. Results indicated that the final indices for these six impact categories were calculated as 0.040, 0.216, 0.360, 3.98, 0.291 and 0.026 for one ton peanut production in this region, respectively. The depletion of fossil resources had wider negative effects on the environment. Farms of 0.1-0.5 ha showed the highest amount of global warming potential as well as the depletion of fossil resources. The environmental index and resource depletion index for one ton production of peanut were 0.62 and 4.30, respectively. Also, the final indices of global warming, acidification, terrestrial eutrophication, fossil, phosphate and potash resource depletion were revealed to be 0.0017, 0.0091, 0.0152, 0.168, 0.012 and 0.001 for generating 1000 MJ energy, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The timber industry in Ireland is an important producer of wood products for export and indigenous use, and supplies significant volumes of sawmill co-products as biomass for energy generation. This research expands existing knowledge on the environmental impacts of wood supply chains in Ireland by widening the analysis to incorporate the wood processing stage. The study determines and analyses energy and material inputs in the production of several timber products; sawnwood, wood chip, wood-based panel (WBP) boards and wood pellets, with an analysis of the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. Forestry operations and transportation make an important contribution to overall emissions. Electricity usage is responsible for the majority of emissions in sawmilling. Integration of combined heat and power (CHP) systems with sawmilling and pellet manufacture reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The penetration of renewables in the Irish national grid mix is forecast to increase by 2020 in line with EU renewable energy targets. Analysis shows that the forecast fall in the carbon intensity of the grid will have a positive effect on the reduction of GHG emissions from the wood processing supply chains. Wood energy products compare favourably with other sources of biomass energy and with fossil fuels. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents the first results concerning a life cycle assessment of the energetic coal obtained from a southern Brazil underground mine, through the rooms and pillars technique, and used for electric power generation. The main purpose was to identify, according to the technology in question, the environmental impacts associated with the production of 1 kg of energetic coal. Two methods of assessment were considered: the Eco-indicator 99 analyzing five environmental categories: carcinogens, respiratory inorganics, ecotoxicity, acidification and land use, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing in global warming category over 100 years. The life cycle inventory was obtained from data collected in situ during coal mining and its beneficiation process. Short and long term scenarios were analyzed. In case of long term, due to the highest contribution of tailings, the weighting showed that the carcinogens category was the most representative, followed by respiratory inorganics, land use and ecotoxicity categories. For short term, the respiratory inorganics was found as the most representative category, with important contributions of explosives, electricity and diesel consumption. For both scenarios, the global warming potential index showed 0.0856 kg of CO2-eq per kg of energetic coal, which is a low value when compared with reported values for similar processes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) provides information on a product's environmental performance along its life cycle. This paper aims to contribute to the development of Product Category Rules (PCR) specific for ceramic bricks in order to support the establishment of a "cradle to grave" EPD. The methodology for developing the PCR takes into account ISO 14025, ISO 21930 and EN 15804, and the environmental profile is based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. In this context, some core issues like product category definition, impact categories, indicators, cut-off criteria and allocation criteria are addressed. The selected impact categories for this study were: global warming, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation, acidification, eutrophication, depletion of abiotic resources and respiratory inorganics. Indicators of energy and water consumption were also considered, as well as particle emissions to air. The results obtained from an LCA study on ceramic bricks produced in Portugal, to support the development of the PCR, show that the use of different fuels in the brick manufacturing stage has a significant effect in some impact categories. The use of petroleum coke generates higher impacts than natural gas or biomass. In general, the major environmental impacts occur in the brick manufacturing stage, mainly due to fuel usage in the firing operation. Particle emissions to air should be considered as an additional parameter in the EPD, being especially important when solid fuels are used. A sensitivity analysis of the cut-off criteria options was also conducted, which concluded that a 0.5% decrease in mass proved to be adequate for adoption, with a significant reduction in the effort required for data collection. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, the relationship between the U.S. manufacturing and transportation industries was studied from economic and environmental life cycle sustainability perspective. The main objectives were 1) to quantify the life cycle impacts of national freight transportation activities that were triggered by the U.S. manufacturing industries and supply chains, a.k.a. manufacturing transportation nexus, and 2) assess the transportation-focused sustainability performance of manufacturing sectors based on eco-efficiency. Three environmental impact categories were focused, namely: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy use, and water withdrawals along with the economic outputs. To achieve the goals, a novel integrated methodology that consists of Economic Input-Output Life-Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was utilized. The scope of the study consists of 276 U.S manufacturing sectors' economic and environmental impacts associated with four transportation modes including air, rail, truck, and water transportation. Based on EIO-LCA results, food manufacturing sector was found to be responsible for the highest environmental impacts and economic output with a share of over 20% for GHG emissions, energy use, and water withdrawals and about 12% for economic output. Motor vehicle manufacturing and motor vehicle body, trailer and parts manufacturing were found to have the second and third largest share of environmental impacts and economic output, respectively. From the result of the eco-efficiency analysis, ordinance and accessory manufacturing (0.719) was found to have the highest and iron and steel mills manufacturing and agricultural chemical manufacturing (0.130) were found to have the least eco-efficiency scores. It was also critical to address that a significant negative correlation was observed between the eco-efficiency and the ton-km transportation trends. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Energy consumption and its negative environmental impacts are of interesting topics in the recent centuries. Agricultural systems are both energy users and suppliers in the form of bio energy and play a key role in world economics as well as food security. A high amount of energy from different sources is used in this sector while researchers who investigated energy flow in crops production especially in developing countries, have reported a high degree of inefficiency. It is necessary for the modem management of cropping systems to have all factors (economics, energy and environment) in the decision-making process simultaneously. Accordingly, the application of multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) was investigated in this study and it was employed to find the best mix of agricultural inputs, which could be able to minimize GHG emissions and maximize output energy and benefit cost ratio. The results revealed that on average 28% of the total energy input in watermelon production, as a case study, can be reduced and simultaneously 33% of the total GHG emissions can be decreased while the benefit cost ratio shows a significant increase under optimum application of inputs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increase in energy prices and the stagnation of sales prices of the main agricultural commodities required a rethinking of farm production strategies. Since during the last years, thanks to a series of policies aimed at promoting renewable sources it has been a rapid diffusion of lignocellulosic biomass species, this paper aimed at evaluating the economic feasibility of the introduction of eucalyptus (Eucalyptus spp.) as energy crop for farmers of Southern Italy, by comparing it with traditional crop rotations. In particular, economic analysis has been carried out in a representative case study located in the Sicilian hilly hinterland where, in 2013, it has been built a biomass plant for energy production. However, results showed that introduction of eucalyptus for biomass production is less profitable for farmers than traditional crops, considering the incompressibility of production costs and the actual market price of woodchips. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The empirical and theoretical justification of Gartner "hype curves" is a very relevant open question in the field of Technological Life Cycle analysis. The scope of the present paper is to introduce a simple model describing the growth of scientific/technological research impact, in the specific case where science is the main source of a new idea driving a technological development, leading to "hype-type" evolution curves. The main idea of the model is that, in a first stage, the growth of the scientific interest of a new specific field (as can be measured by publication numbers) basically follows the classical "logistic" growth curve. At a second stage, starting at a later trigger time, the technological development based on that scientific idea (as can be measured by patent deposits) can be described as the integral (in a mathematical sense) of the first curve, since technology is based on the overall accumulated scientific knowledge. The model is preliminary tested through a bibliometric analysis of the publication and patent deposit rate for organic light emitting diodes scientific research and technology.The construction industry plays an important role in economic and social development, yet it is also a primary source of carbon emissions. Accordingly, owing to global climate change, energy conservation and carbon reduction have become critical issues in the construction industry. However, to date, no established theory has been proposed for the life-cycle carbon assessment of typical buildings in China. To address this, the present study proposes a detailed carbon emission inventory for buildings and divides the life-cycle of a typical building into three stages based on material and energy flow: the materialization stage, the operation stage, and the disposal stage. Additionally, an analytical framework and evaluation indices are established and the proposed methodology is applied to three case studies. The results demonstrate that residential and office buildings with a reinforced concrete block masonry structure could reduce carbon emissions by 38-112 kgCO(2)/m(2) compared with either a reinforced concrete structure or a brick concrete structure. Although the operation stage appears to contribute approximately 82-86% of the total emissions, the materialization stage is also of considerable importance in alleviating the present environmental pressure. Furthermore, possible measures to control carbon during the materialization stage are proposed and evaluated, including optimization design of building structures based on carbon emissions and the selection of insulation materials. Accordingly, this study provides a standard method for life-cycle carbon assessment of buildings, which will be critical for future low-carbon development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Dredging to maintain navigable waterways is important for supporting trade and economic sustainability. Dredged sediments are removed from the waterways and then must be managed in a way that meets regulatory standards and properly balances management costs and risks. Selection of a best management alternative often results in stakeholder conflict regarding tradeoffs between local environmental impacts associated with less expensive alternatives (e.g., open water placement), more expensive measures that require sediment disposal in constructed facilities far away (e.g., landfills), or beneficial uses that may be perceived as risky (e.g., beach nourishment or island creation). Current sediment-placement decisions often focus on local and immediate environmental effects from the sediment itself, ignoring a variety of distributed and long-term effects from transportation and placement activities. These extended effects have implications for climate change, resource consumption, and environmental and human health, which may be meaningful topics for many stakeholders not currently considered. Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides a systematic and quantitative method for accounting for this wider range of impacts and benefits across all sediment management project stages and time horizons. This paper applies a cradle-to-use LCA to dredged-sediment placement through a comparative analysis of potential upland, open water, and containment-island placement alternatives in the Long Island Sound region of NY/CT. Results suggest that, in cases dealing with uncontaminated sediments, upland placement may be the most environmentally burdensome alternative, per ton-kilometer of placed material, due to the emissions associated with diesel fuel combustion and electricity production and consumption required for the extra handling and transportation. These results can be traded-off with the ecosystem impacts of the sediments themselves in a decision-making framework. Published by Elsevier B.V.There is an urgent need for a trans-disciplinary approach for the collective evaluation of engineered nanomaterial (ENM) benefits and risks. Currently, research studies are mostly focused on examining effects at individual end-points with emphasis on ENM risk effects. Less research work is pursuing the integration needed to advance the science of sustainable ENMs. Therefore, the primary objective of this article is to discuss the system-of-systems (SoS) approach as a broad and integrated paradigm to examine ENM benefits and risks to society, environment, and economy (SEE) within a sustainability context. The aims are focused on: (a) current approaches in the scientific literature and the need for a broad and integrated approach, (b) documentation of ENM SoS in terms of architecture and governing rules and practices within sustainability context, and (c) implementation plan for the road ahead. In essence, the SoS architecture is a communication vehicle offering the opportunity to track benefits and risks in an integrated fashion so as to understand the implications and make decisions about advancing the science of sustainable ENMs. In support of the SoS architecture, we propose using an analytic-based decision support system consisting of a knowledge base and analytic engine along the benefit and risk informatics routes in the SEE system to build sound decisions on what constitutes sustainable and unsustainable ENMs in spite of the existing uncertainties and knowledge gaps. The work presented herein is neither a systematic review nor a critical appraisal of the scientific literature. Rather, it is a position paper that largely expresses the views of the authors based on their expert opinion drawn from industrial and academic experience. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.Research relating to the use of organic amendments on soils has focused largely on agricultural soils, and there is a lack of information worldwide on their efficacy as amendments for urban soil management, especially in tropical urban environments. A pot experiment was conducted to assess the influence of biochar and organic compost on urban soil properties and on tree growth performance in Singapore. Biochar and compost were mixed with topsoil in different proportions, and two urban tree species commonly grown in Singapore (Samanea saman and Suregada multiflora) were used. There were significant additional height increments for both the tree species following application of biochar. S. saman exhibited greater stem elongation compared with S. multiflora in response to organic amendments. A significantly higher foliar N content was found in both tree species in biochar-amended treatments along with significant increases in P and K. Increases in soil nutrient concentrations were also observed in combined biochar-compost treatments for both species. Combined compost and biochar had the strongest effects on soils and growth of the two urban tree species examined and applications containing biochar resulted in the most significant soil improvements.Agriculture is a major driver of climate change, particularly when all indirect emission sources are accounted for. Mitigation options targeted on one process are often proposed, ignoring their secondary effects on the overall greenhouse gas balance. Integrative methodologies such as life cycle assessment (LCA) are often applied without adjusting emission factors to specific site characteristics. Here, we used LCA to calculate the global warming potential of 38 pairs of organic and conventional herbaceous cropping systems and products in Spain. Crop products included rainfed cereals and pulses, rice, open-air vegetables, and greenhouse vegetables. We used data from farmer interviews and published conversion factors. Our results show that the emission balances were dominated by fossil fuel use rather than by direct field emissions. Organic management reduced crop emissions by 36-65 %, with the exception of rice showing an increase of 8 % due to methane generation. Product-based emissions of organic crops were also lower by 30 % on average, except for rice.Fruit tree orchards have a historical and economic importance for Mediterranean agriculture, notably in Spain. Fruit tree orchards have the potential to mitigate global warming by sequestrating carbon (C) and providing renewable fuels. Actually, there is few information on the benefits of organic practices. Therefore, we analyzed the greenhouse gas contribution of 42 pairs of organic and conventional perennial cropping systems, including citrus, subtropical trees, other fruit trees, treenuts, vineyards, and olives, using life-cycle assessment (LCA). The assessment was based on management information from interviews and involved the estimation of soil carbon sequestration, specific Mediterranean N2O emission factors, and the consideration of coproducts. Results show on average a 56 % decrease of greenhouse gas emissions under organic versus conventional cropping, on an area basis. On a product basis, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 39 % on average. These findings are explained mainly by C sequestration in soils, which is due in turn to higher C inputs by cover cropping and incorporation of pruning residues.A novel process design for a more cost-effective, greener process for making chemicals from shale gas and bioethanol is presented. The oxidative coupling of methane and cocracking technologies are considered for converting methane and light natural gas liquids, into value-added chemicals. Overall, the process includes four process areas: gas treatment, gas to chemicals, methane-to-ethylene, and bioethanol-to-ethylene. A simulation-optimization method based on the NSGA-II algorithm for the life cycle optimization of the process modeled in the Aspen HYSYS is developed. An energy integration model is also fluidly nested using the mixed-integer linear programming. The results show that for a "good choice" optimal design, the minimum ethylene selling price is $655.1/ton and the unit global-warming potential of ethylene is 0.030 kg CO2-eq/kg in the low carbon shale gas scenario, and $877.2/ton and 0.360 kg CO2-eq/kg in the high carbon shale gas scenario. (C) 2014 American Institute of Chemical EngineersThis paper provides a review on three streams of life cycle studies that have been frequently applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of building construction with a major focus on whether they can be used for decision making. The three streams are Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Energy Assessment (LCEA) and Life Cycle Carbon Emissions Assessment (LCCO(2)A). They were compared against their evaluation objectives, methodologies, and findings. Although they share similar objectives in evaluating the environmental impacts over the life cycle of building construction, they show some differences in the major focuses of evaluation and methodologies employed. Generally, it has been revealed that quite consistent results can be derived from the three streams with regard to the relative contribution of different phases of life cycle. However, discrepancies occur among the findings obtained from the three streams when different compositions of fuel mixes are used in power generation, or when the overall impacts are not contributed mostly by greenhouse gases emissions. The use of different functional units in different studies also makes it difficult to compare results with benchmarks or results from previous studies. Besides, there are drawbacks in boundary scoping, methodology framework, data inventory and practices which impair their usefulness as a decision making support tool for sustainable building designs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Biofuels are likely to play an increasingly important role in the transportation sector in the coming decades. To ensure the sustainability of the biofuel chain, regulatory criteria and reduction targets for greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions have been defined in different legislative frameworks (e.g. the European Renewable Energy Directive, RED). The provided calculation methods, however, leave room for interpretation regarding methodological choices, which could significantly affect the resulting emission factors. In this study, GHG reduction factors for a range of biofuels produced in a Danish biorefinery system were determined using five different emission allocation principles. The results show that emission savings ranged from -34% to 71%, indicating the need for a better definition of regulatory calculation principles. The calculated emission factors differed significantly from default values provided in the literature, suggesting that case-specific local conditions should be taken into consideration. A more holistic LCA-based approach proved useful in overcoming some of the issues inherent in the regulatory allocation principles. On this basis, indirect land use change (ILUC) emissions were shown to have the same magnitude as the direct emissions, thus indicating that the overall system should be included when assessing biofuel sustainability criteria. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent literature about life-cycle models for earthquake resistant structures considers that damage accumulation and failure are possibly due to subsequent shocks occurring during the time period of interest. In fact, most of these models only consider the effect of mainshocks. On the other hand, it is well known that earthquakes occur in clusters in which the mainshock represents only the principal (e.g., prominent magnitude) event. Because there is a chance that aftershocks can also cause deterioration of structural conditions, it may be appropriate to include this effect in the life-cycle assessment. Recently, stochastic processes describing the occurrences of aftershocks and their effect on cumulative structural damage have been formalized. These can be employed to develop stochastic damage accumulation models for earthquake resistant structures, accounting for the cluster effect. In the paper, such a model is formulated with reference to simple elastic-perfectly-plastic single degree of freedom systems. Temporal distribution of mainshocks is modeled via a homogeneous Poisson process. Occurrence of aftershocks is modeled by means of non-homogeneous Poisson processes conditional to the characteristics of the triggering mainshock. Approximate closed-form solutions are derived for the reliability assessment under the two hypotheses that total damages produced by events pertaining to different clusters can be assumed to be independent and identically distributed gamma or inverse-Gaussian random variables. An application illustrates the implications of the model on the life-cycle assessment when compared to the case where the effect of damaging aftershocks is ignored.Sustainable energy derision-making requires comparing energy options across a wide range of economic, environmental, social and technical implications. However, such comparisons based on quantitative data are currently limited at the national level. This is the first comparison of 13 currently operational renewable and non-renewable options for new US electricity generation using multi-criteria decision analysis with quantitative input values (minimum, nominal, and maximum) for 8 sustainability criteria (levelized cost of energy, life cycle greenhouse gas and criteria air pollutant emissions, land and water use, accident-related fatalities, jobs, and annual capacity factor) and 10 representative decision-maker preference scenarios. Results across several preference scenarios indicate that biopower and geothermal (flash and binary) currently score highest in sustainability for the US. Other renewable energy technologies generally offer substantial sustainability improvements over fossil fuel or nuclear technologies, and nuclear is preferable to fossil fuels in most scenarios. The relatively low ranking of natural gas combined cycle in most preference scenarios should encourage caution in adopting NGCC as a "bridge" to renewables. Although NGCC ranks high under economic and technical preference scenarios, renewables actually rank higher in both scenarios (hydro - economic; geothermal and biopower - technical). (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment can generate significant amounts of pollutants, and thus pose a risk on human health. Besides, in MSW management, various uncertainties exist in the related costs, impact factors, and objectives, which can affect the optimization processes and the decision schemes generated. In this study, a life cycle assessment-based interval-parameter programming (LCA-IPP) method is developed for MSW management associated with environmental-impact abatement under uncertainty. The LCA-IPP can effectively examine the environmental consequences based on a number of environmental impact categories (i.e., greenhouse gas equivalent, acid gas emissions, and respiratory inorganics), through analyzing each life cycle stage and/or major contributing process related to various MSW management activities. It can also tackle uncertainties existed in the related costs, impact factors, and objectives and expressed as interval numbers. Then, the LCA-IPP method is applied to MSW management for the City of Beijing, the capital of China, where energy consumptions and six environmental parameters [i.e., CO2, CO, CH4, NOX, SO2, inhalable particle (PM10)] are used as systematic tool to quantify environmental releases in entire life cycle stage of waste collection, transportation, treatment, and disposal of. Results associated with system cost, environmental impact, and the related policy implication are generated and analyzed. Results can help identify desired alternatives for managing MSW flows, which has advantages in providing compromised schemes under an integrated consideration of economic efficiency and environmental impact under uncertainty.Reusing industrial waste may have impressive potential environmental benefits, especially in terms of the total life cycle, and life cycle assessment (LCA) has been proved to be an effective method to evaluate industrial symbiosis (IS). Circular economy and IS have been developed for decades and have been successful in China. However, very few studies about the environmental benefit assessment of IS applied by LCA in China have been conducted. In the current article, LCA was used to evaluate the environmental benefits and costs of IS, compared with a no-IS scenario for four environmental impact categories. The results showed that four environmental benefits were avoided by the 11 symbiosis performances, namely, 41.6 thousand TJ of primary energy, 4.47 million t CO(2)e of greenhouse gasses, 19.7 thousand t SO(2)e of acidification, and 81.1 t PO(4)(3+)e of eutrophication. Among these IS performances, the comprehensive utilization of red mud produced the most visible benefit. The results also present that energy conservation was the distinctive feature of IS in China.According to official figures, estimated using the UNFCCC methodology, the agricultural sector is responsible for around 10 per cent of EU-15 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, these figures rise substantially if we consider the lifecycle of a product, from the cradle to the farm gate. This study investigates six livestock products in Italy, in order to estimate their carbon footprint and to explore their mitigation potential. The products analysed were fresh milk, milk for Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, beef, pork, eggs and poultry. Their carbon footprint was estimated using a Life Cycle Assessment approach. Although mitigation measures on the supply side are the focus of European agricultural and climate policies, the study shows that the potential of each individual action is quite limited, due to technical constraints. Nevertheless, some mitigation options can also reduce production costs, generating a win-win situation between public and private benefits. Dissemination programmes, which will be examined in 2015, are important to raise awareness among farmers about climate change scenarios in the agricultural sector and to build capacity for cost-saving mitigation options. The demand side is also being explored in 2015 to evaluate the mitigation potential, through experimental auctions, of consumer willingness to pay for livestock products with a carbon footprint label.Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a fundamental tool used in eco-design. However, it can be costly and resource intensive. We take steps toward the automation of the inventory and impact analyses stages of LCA via the proposal and development of a case-based reasoning (CBR) procedure to estimate the ecological effects of a product. The case memory in CBR, which contains representations and ecological effects of known products, is organized using an extension of the function-behavior-structure (FBS) representation for products. The extension includes ecological characteristics and values. We develop similarity metrics to measure the distance between cases in the case memory and the new product. The k-medoids algorithm is used to cluster the case memory, our metrics enable cluster retrieval and case selection, and multiple linear regression analysis is employed for adaptation. Using a database of 100 fans, we test the accuracy of the proposed approach on a cross flow fan not in the database. The method gives ecological effect estimates within 3% of the true values when there are similar fans in the retrieved cluster and about 7% when the retrieved cluster does not contain similar fans. Note to Practitioners-While life cycle assessment (LCA) is an essential component of modern eco-design practices, it is cost and resource intensive. We propose and develop a case-based reasoning (CBR) procedure that allows swift and accurate estimates of the ecological effects of a new product. The estimated ecological effects are within about 5% of the true ecological values for the new product. Such accuracy is obtained by having a relatively large database of existing products with LCA data and using an intermediate level of detail when describing the products. As such, the LCA via CBR is most applicable to products which are developed as modifications of existing ones (e.g., cell phones, automobiles). It is hoped that the proposed method can be extended to allow for LCA estimates at many levels of product detail.The 57th life cycle assessment (LCA) forum was held on December 2, 2014 to discuss the European and Swiss situation with regard to the environmental assessment of buildings. This conference report presents the highlights of the LCA forum. Several methodological approaches exist to assess the environmental assessment of buildings. In Switzerland, all technical bulletins of the Swiss Society of Architects and Engineers (SIA) related to this topic and most labels and certification schemes rely on the KBOB recommendation 2009/1:2014, which in turn is based on the ecoinvent database. In Europe, the standards on environmental product declarations (EPD) of construction products and buildings and the guide on product environmental footprints published by the European Commission are applied. In Austria, France and Germany, environmental product declarations form an important part of certification schemes of buildings. The European construction product directive names the quantification of the environmental performance as one of the seven basic requirements on construction works. This basic requirement needs now to be embedded into the harmonised technical specifications (such as harmonised European Standards, hEN or European Technical Assessments (ETA)). The situation in Austria, France and Germany illustrates the diversity of European labels, certifications and information schemes even though they all refer to the European EPD standards. France for instance asks for requirements additional to the European Standards, and several labels using different life cycle assessment databases are in operation in Austria. On the other hand, the two main certification schemes in Germany use the same approach, indicators and database. Several initiatives are ongoing or being launched in Europe which try to further harmonise the environmental assessment of buildings and construction materials. The different presentations showed the variety of applications of life cycle-based environmental information in the planning process of buildings, ranging from conceptual decisions to suppliers' choices, decisions on materialisation up to labelling and certification of built properties. It was concluded that unifying life cycle inventory methodology, environmental indicators and life cycle inventory background databases is most important in view of further harmonisation. At the same time, it was admitted that harmonisation in these areas is difficult if not out of reach.Life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques have been developed since the late 1960s in order to analyze environmental impacts of various products or companies. Although LCA techniques of forest production have been already conducted since the early 1990s, consistent and comprehensive LCA studies are still lacking for the forestry sector. In order to support better comparability between LCA studies, we analyzed the problems and differences by conducting a descriptive and quantitative analysis of existing LCA studies of forest production with special focus on Global Warming Potential (GWP). We analyzed 22 different peer-reviewed studies, four original reports and two databases. Important issues were, among others, the goal of the studies, system boundaries, functional units, impact categories and involved processes. In addition, a quantitative analysis was purchased where the results of the GWP of the reviewed studies were analyzed. The studies showed large differences between methodical assumptions and their subsequent results. For the GWP, we found a range of 2.4-59.6 kg CO2-equiv.*m(-3) over bark (ob; median = 11.8; n = 41) from site preparation to forest road and 6.3-67.1 kg CO2-equiv.*m(-3) ob (median = 17.0; n = 36) from site preparation to plant gate or consumer. Results varied as a function of the included processes and decisive assumptions, e.g., regarding productivity rates or fuel consumption of machineries. Raw wood products are widely declared as "carbon neutral," but the above-mentioned results show that absolute carbon neutrality is incorrect, although the GWP is low compared with the carbon storage of the raw wood product (range of C-emitted/C-stored in wood is 0.008-0.09 from forest to plant gate or consumer). Thereby, raw wood products can be described as "low emission raw materials" if long-term in situ carbon losses by changed forest management or negative direct or indirect land use change effects (LUC, iLUC) can be excluded. In order to realize improved comparisons between LCA studies in the forestry sector in the future, we propose some methodical approaches regarding the harmonization of system boundaries, functional units, considered processes, and allocation assumptions. These proposals could help to specify the description of the forest production outlined in existing Product Category Rules for Environmental Product Declarations (e.g., EN ISO 16485 2014 or EN ISO 15804 2012) following EN ISO 14025 (2011) and for carbon footprinting standards like the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050 (2011) or the European Environmental Footprinting Initiative.The emergent field of green supply chain management has been rapidly evolving with a geometric growth in the number of academic publications in this field. A number of literature reviews have been published focusing on specific aspects of green supply chain management such as performance measurement, supplier selection/evaluation, analytical modeling efforts, and some others with broader areas of focus. This paper presents a thorough bibliometric and network analysis that provides insights not previously fully grasped or evaluated by other reviews on this topic. The analysis begins by identifying over 1000 published studies, which are then distilled down to works of proven influence and those authored by influential investigators. Using rigorous bibliometric tools, established and emergent research clusters are identified for topological analysis, identification of key research topics, interrelations, and collaboration patterns. This systematic mapping of the field helps graphically illustrate the publications evolution over time and identify areas of current research interests and potential directions for future research. The findings provide a robust roadmap for further investigation in this field. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study provides a life cycle assessment of the energy balance and the potential greenhouse gas impacts of heterotrophic microalgal-derived biodiesel estimated from the upstream biomass production to the downstream emissions from biodiesel combustion. Heterotrophic microalgae can be cultivated using a by-product from biodiesel production such as glycerol as a carbon source. The oils within the algal biomass can then be converted to biodiesel using transesterification or hydroprocessing techniques. This approach may provide a solution to the limited availability of biomass feedstock for production of biorefined transportation fuels. The life cycle assessment of a virtual production facility, modeled on experimental yield data, has demonstrated that cultivation of heterotrophic microalgae for the production of biodiesel is comparable, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage (90 g CO(2)e MJ(-1)), to fossil diesel (85 g CO(2)e MJ(-1)). The life cycle assessment identified that improvement in cultivation conditions, in particular the bioreactor energy inputs and microalgae yield, will be critical in developing a sustainable production system. Our research shows the potential of heterotrophic microalgae to provide Australia's transportation fleet with a secure, environmentally sustainable alternative fuel.This paper is based upon research designed to investigate the Sicilian red peach production system within two phases. The first regarded application of Life Cycle Assessment to investigate, at the farm level, the red peach production system in eastern Sicily by using one ha of peach orchard as the functional unit, while the second paper in this series will be focussed upon both environmental improvement assessment and sensitivity analysis. In this context, this paper reports on results from the first phase of the research and, therefore, highlights the inventory and the highest impact processes associated with the analysed system. The topic was addressed because agriculture is responsible for major environmental impacts, which must be reduced. The literature review provided insights into deficiencies in environmental assessments in the fruit production sector, especially within the peach and nectarine sectors. The researchers worked closely with an Eastern Sicilian red peach farmer and had access to in-depth data, which were analysed to identify and quantify hotspots that can be improved to enhance environmental and economic sustainability of red peach production in this region. The researchers documented that the largest impacts were due to irrigation due to large volumes of water and energy used. There are opportunities to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions by improving irrigation practices and in the production and usage of agricultural machinery. Other impacts were found to be due to land transformation, fertiliser and pesticide production and usage. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.China is the largest producer of iron and steel in the world. This heavy industry is characterized by significant water consumption and numerous water-related hazards. In this study, we propose the use of water footprint instead of conventional indicators (fresh water consumption (FWC) per tonne of steel or water consumption (WC) per tonne of steel) for the iron and steel industry. Using an iron factory in Eastern China as an example, we develop a water footprint calculation model that includes direct and virtual water footprints. A system boundary analysis method is then proposed to develop a common and feasible industrial water footprint assessment methodology. Specifically, we analyze the characteristics of the iron and steel industry from a life cycle assessment perspective. A water risk assessment was performed based on the results of the water footprint calculations. The selected iron factory has a water consumption (blue water) footprint of 2.24 x 10(7) m(3), including virtual water, and a theoretical water pollution (gray water) footprint of 6.5 x 10(8) m(3) in 2011, indicating that the enterprise poses a serious risk to the water environment. The blue water and gray water footprints are calculated separately to provide more detailed water risk information, instead of adding these two indicators, which has less environmental significance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cascading, the use of the same unit of a resource in multiple successional applications, is considered as a viable means to improve the efficiency of resource utilization and to decrease environmental impacts. Wood, as a regrowing but nevertheless limited and increasingly in demand resource, can be used in cascades, thereby increasing the potential efficiency per unit of wood. This study aims to assess the influence of cascading wood utilization on optimizing the overall environmental impact of wood utilization. By combining a material flow model of existing wood applications both for materials provision and energy production - with an algebraic optimization tool, the effects of the use of wood in cascades can be modelled and quantified based on life cycle impact assessment results for all production processes. To identify the most efficient wood allocation, the effects of a potential substitution of non-wood products were taken into account in a part of the model runs. The considered environmental indicators were global warming potential, particulate matter formation, land occupation and an aggregated single score indicator. We found that optimizing either the overall global warming potential or the value of the single score indicator of the system leads to a simultaneous relative decrease of all other considered environmental impacts. The relative differences between the impacts of the model run with and without the possibility of a cascading use of wood were 7% for global warming potential and the single score indicator, despite cascading only influencing a small part of the overall system, namely wood panel production. Cascading led to savings of up to 14% of the annual primary wood supply of the study area. We conclude that cascading can improve the overall performance of a wood utilization system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Eutrophication is a major water pollution issue and can lead to excessive growth of aquatic plant biomass (APB). However, the assimilation of nutrients into APB provides a significant target for their recovery and reuse, and harvesting problematic APB in impacted freshwater bodies offers a complementary approach to aquatic restoration, which could potentially deliver multiple wider ecosystem benefits. This critical review provides an assessment of opportunities and risks linked to nutrient recovery from agriculturally impacted water-bodies through the harvesting of APB for recycling and reuse as fertilisers and soil amendments. By evaluating the economic, social, environmental and health-related dimensions of this resource recovery from 'waste' process we propose a research agenda for closing the loop on nutrient transfer from land to water. We identify that environmental benefits are rarely, if ever, prioritised as essential criteria for the exploitation of resources from waste and yet this is key for addressing the current imbalance that sees environmental managers routinely undervaluing the wider environmental benefits that may accrue beyond resource recovery. The approach we advocate for the recycling of 'waste' APB nutrients is to couple the remediation of eutrophic waters with the sustainable production of feed and fertiliser, whilst providing multiple downstream benefits and minimising environmental trade-offs. This integrated 'ecosystem services approach' has the potential to holistically close the loop on agricultural nutrient loss, and thus sustainably recover finite resources such as phosphorus from waste. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Resilience is an increasingly popular concept in academic research and public discourse and is closely connected to complex systems theory. This article reviews research on resilience and complexity in industrial ecology and the broader academy by conducting a bibliometric analysis of the academic literature over a 40-year period (1973-2014). The review revealed a large body of scholarship composed of five clearly identifiable intellectual communities, with resilience theory from ecology especially influential. Based on the study of ecosystems, these scholars conceptualize resilience as a dynamic and adaptive property of systems with multiple stable states that evolve over time. In comparison, resilience research in industrial ecology is limited and underdeveloped. Bibliometric analysis of this literature yielded just 37 publications and a scholarly network with no well-formulated research communities. This contrasts with industrial ecology scholarship on sustainability; a similar search yielded 1,581 publications. Given the emerging importance of the resilience concept and its relevance for sustainability issues, industrial ecology should expand research efforts in this area. The growing body of industrial ecology scholarship on complex systems provides a foundation to do so, as does the field's long-standing practice of using ecological principles to inform the study and design of industrial ecosystems. The article concludes by discussing how industrial ecology would benefit from incorporating principles of dynamic resilience and, conversely, how industrial ecology approaches could advance broader resilience scholarship.Purolator is a Canadian courier company that recently introduced hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) into their fleets. This paper estimates the fuel savings and greenhouse gas reductions for Purolator's hybrid trucks using a life-cycle assessment executed with GHGenius, a Government of Canada model. Overall, it was found that Purolator's hybrid diesel trucks reduce GHG emissions by 23% and 8% for city and highway driving, respectively. The results confirm that switching to an HEV fleet could reduce CO2 emissions during vehicle operations by 25%, as the vehicle manufacturer (Azure Dynamics) has advertised. Moreover, the modeled emission reductions (1,668 t CO2 -eq) and fuel savings (609,000 L) over a distance of 5,200,000 km are similar to Purolator's advertised values (1,900 t CO2-eq, 645,000 L). The life-cycle costs of hybrid delivery trucks do not presently make them financially favorable alternatives to conventional diesel trucks, but their financial competitiveness is sensitive to vehicle service life, diesel fuel price, assumed discount rate, and incremental hybrid cost. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.Responsible sourcing (RS) of materials is defined as the ethical management of sustainability issues within the construction supply chain, and engagement is typically evidenced by certification to BES 6001, the framework standard for the RS of construction products. Points are scored in BES 6001 under a number of clauses, yet little is known about RS practices. The aim of this study was to extract knowledge about RS practices from all 138 BES 6001 certificates issued to UK companies between 2008 and 2013. Data by performance rating, company size and product sector were analysed using Spearman's rho (rho) and Cronbach's alpha (alpha). Performance against the life cycle assessment and resource use clauses was found not to influence overall performance significantly, so neither of these clauses can be assumed to represent good summary measures of sustainability performance. This suggests that a refocusing of the scope of both these clauses might be appropriate in future developments of the standard.As environmental issues become increasingly important, the buildings have focused on energy efficiency and energy needed for the construction and production of material. This research shows a simplified life cycle analysis study of operational and embodied energy of four new houses located in Temuco - Chile, structured with SIP (Structural insulated panel), in order to quantify the energy at each stage of this construction system. To obtain embodied energy were used two international databases in order to quantify the energy of each material, and the energy contained in the process relating with structure SIP was determined through measures in a company specializing in SIP construction. For the operational energy, computational models were carried out with Design Builder software, and this energy was projected at 50 years lifespan. The analysis of the data obtained show that the energy contained by construction processes represents about 1.7% of embodied energy, while the total embodied energy represents 11% of the total life cycle energy of houses, the remaining 89% represents the energy of occupation. On the other hand, we observe that SIP houses generate figures close to 60% savings in energy demand, compared to a masonry houses commonly built in this city.This paper examines the energy and environmental benefits within the whole life cycle shifting from traditional gasoline vehicles to electrified advanced vehicles under regional real-world driving behaviors. The advance vehicles focus on family passenger cars and include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). The GREET (greenhouse gases, regulated emissions, and energy use in transportation) model is adopted with regional circumstances modifications, especially the UF (utility factors) of PHEVs. The results show that the electrified vehicles offer great benefits concerning energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as urban Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM2.5) emissions. Compared to conventional gasoline vehicles, the life-cycle total energy reduction for advance vehicles is 51% to 57%. There is little difference on energy reduction among the HEVs, PHEVs and BEVs, with the energy mix shifting from petroleum to coal for the stronger electrification. The reductions of GHG emissions are 57% for HEV, 54% to 48% for PHEVs with 10 miles to 40 miles CD range, and 40% for BEV. The life-cycle and local PM2.5 emissions are discussed separately. The life-cycle PM2.5 emissions increase with vehicle electrification and reach a maximum for the BEV which are 5% higher than the conventional vehicle (CV). However, electric vehicles can shift PM2.5 emissions from vehicle operation to upstream operations and help mitigate PM2.5 emissions in urban areas. The local emissions of PHEVs and BEVs can be reduced by 37% to 81% and 100% compared with CVs.Understanding environmental impacts of complete food supply chains is important for the food industry to help devise strategies for reducing the impacts of current and future products. Breakfast cereals are one of the most important foods consumed in many countries, but their environmental impacts are currently unknown. Therefore, this study explores the environmental sustainability issues in the food-energy-water nexus by considering breakfast cereals manufactured by one of the world's largest producers, Kellogg Europe. A life cycle assessment has been carried out for these purposes with the aim of helping the Company to integrate environmental sustainability considerations into the design of their products and packaging. The results indicate that the average global warming potential (GWP) of Kellogg's breakfast cereals is 2.64 kg CO2 eq. per kg of product. The main GWP hotspots are the ingredients (48%) and energy used in the manufacturing process (23%); packaging and transport contribute 15% each. Rice is the single largest contributor to the GWP of the ingredients (38%). The manufacturing stage is the main contributor of primary energy demand (34%), while the ingredients are responsible for more than 90% of the water footprint. The ingredients are also the main contributors to most other environmental impacts, including land use (97%), depletion of elements (61%), eutrophication (71%), human toxicity (54%) and photochemical smog (50%). The impacts from packaging are high for freshwater and marine toxicity. The contribution of transport is significant for depletion of elements and fossil resources (23%), acidification (32%), ozone depletion (28%) and photochemical smog (24%). Improvement opportunities explored in the paper include better agricultural practices, recipe modifications, improved energy efficiency of manufacturing processes and use of alternative packaging. Impacts from consumption are also discussed.Wine is one of the most popular alcoholic drinks in the world. This beverage, in moderation, is considered to be heart healthy, particularly the red variety. However, civil concerns and some health reasons have greatly increased the consumer demand for dealcoholised wines. Several techniques for producing low- and reduced-strength alcoholic beverages have been developed over the last several years. The most common treatments are spinning cone column (SCC) and membrane technologies such as reverse osmosis (RO) or ultrafiltration (UF). An innovative technology, called evaporative pertraction (EP) has shown promising results for the partial dealcoholisation of wine. This technology has some drawbacks and some benefits such as low energy demand. Therefore, a life cycle perspective is required to evaluate technology along with its environmental impacts. This work assesses and compares the environmental performance of EP, SCC and RO fusing a life cycle assessment methodology based on the use of two variables: natural resources sustainability (NRS) and environmental burdens sustainability (EBS). For the technologies, RO presented a higher energy consumption and lower materials and water demands than did EP, whereas the latter displayed better results in all of the air categories except for human health effects (HHE) and in three of the five water categories. The highest consumption of natural resources (NR) and the greatest environmental burdens (EB) in all of the categories were given by the SCC technology. Nevertheless, this situation was reversed when the wastewater from the SCC process, with its high ethanol content, was energy valorised.Industrial symbiosis principles, reprized in industrial ecology definition, are recently embraced by circular economy concept as the basis for characterization of cradle-to-cradle approach, with particular interest on global markets with growing environmental issues such as food sector. This paper investigates a potential innovative pattern of recycling food waste from cruise ships for use as feed in aquaculture, in terms of environmental sustainability. Comparative Life Cycle Assessment is used to evaluate the possible potential benefits of replacing conventional formulations of feed mix for salmon with food waste, generated and processed onboard a vessel where turbo-drying technology has been tested as a case study. A set of three indices, otherwise possible stand-alone indicators, is selected to measure global warming potential, non-renewable cumulative energy demand, and water scarcity index. The basis for comparison is represented by a typical commercial feed product for aquaculture in Norway and UK. A conventional feed formulation shows higher life cycle burdens for the whole set of indicators, with respect to the analysed case study. In particular, traditional feed product in UK shows the worst performance in terms of carbon footprint and non-renewable energy demand, whilst the Norwegian traditional mix is source of the highest impact for water scarcity. The investigation of supply chains results particularly relevant for highlighting that bottle-necks are not univocal for the different impact categories. For instance, when conventional mix in Norway is analysed from a water footprint perspective, crop-derived products result to be more influent than fish-derived ones, unlike for carbon and energy indicators.As the demand for services and products continues to increase in light of rapid population growth, the question of energy, water and food (EWF) security is of increasing importance. The systems representing the three resources are intrinsically connected and, as such, there is a need to develop assessment tools that consider their interdependences. Specifically when evaluating the environmental performance of a food production system, it is necessary to understand its life cycle. The objective of this paper is to introduce an integrated energy, water and food life cycle assessment tool that integrates EWF resources in one robust model and at an appropriate resolution. The nexus modelling tool developed is capable of providing an environmental assessment for food production systems utilising a holistic systems approach as described by a series of subsystems that constitute each of the EWF resources. A case study set in Qatar and characterised by an agriculture sub-system, which includes the production and application of fertilisers and the raising of livestock, a water sub-system represented by mechanical and thermal desalination processes and an energy sub-system, which includes fossil fuel in the form of combined cycle natural gas based energy production and solar renewable energy is used to illustrate the model function. For the nexus system analysed it is demonstrated that the food system is the largest contributor to global warming. The GWP can be reduced by up to 30% through the utilisation of solar energy to substitute fossil fuels, which, however, comes with a significant requirement for land investment.Several methods for physical pre-treatments of source sorted organic fraction of municipal solid waste (SSOFMSW) before for anaerobic digestion (AD) are available, with the common feature that they generate a homogeneous slurry for AD and a dry refuse fraction for incineration. The selection of efficient methods relies on improved understanding of how the pre-treatment impacts on the separation and on the slurry's AD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of the performance of physical pre-treatment of SSOFMSW on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and on the economy of an AD system including a biogas plant with supplementary systems for heat and power production in Sweden. Based on the performance of selected Swedish facilities, as well as chemical analyses and BMP tests of slurry and refuse, the computer-based evaluation tool ORWARE was improved as to accurately describe mass flows through the physical pre-treatment and anaerobic degradation. The environmental and economic performance of the evaluated system was influenced by the TS concentration in the slurry, as well as the distribution of incoming solids between slurry and refuse. The focus to improve the efficiency of these systems should primarily be directed towards minimising the water addition in the pre-treatment provided that this slurry can still be efficiently digested. Second, the amount of refuse should be minimised, while keeping a good quality of the slurry. Electricity use/generation has high impact on GHG emissions and the results of the study are sensitive to assumptions of marginal electricity and of electricity use in the pre-treatment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.There is a worldwide trend towards stricter control of diesel exhaust emissions, however presently, there are technical impediments to the use of FAME (fatty acid methyl esters)-type biodiesel fuel (BDF). Although hydrogenated biodiesel (HBD) is anticipated as a new diesel fuel, the environmental performance of HBD and its utilization system have not been adequately clarified. Especially when waste cooking oil is used as feedstock, not only biofuel production but also the treatment of waste cooking oil is an important function for society. A life cycle assessment (LCA), including uncertainty analysis, was conducted to determine the environmental benefits (global warming, fossil fuel consumption, urban air pollution, and acidification) of HBD produced from waste cooking oil via catalytic cracking and hydrogenation, compared with fossil-derived diesel fuel or FAME-type BDF. Combined functional unit including "treatment of waste cooking oil" and "running diesel vehicle for household waste collection" was established in the context of Kyoto city, Japan. The calculation utilized characterization, damage, and integration factors identified by LIME2, which was based on an endpoint modeling method. The results show that if diesel vehicles that comply with the new Japanese long-term emissions gas standard are commonly used in the future, the benefit of FAME-type BDF will be relatively limited. Furthermore, the scenario that introduced HBD was most effective in reducing total environmental impact, meaning that a shift from FAME-type BDF to HBD would be more beneficial. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Residues from industrial processes and waste management systems (WMSs) have been increasingly reutilised, leading to landfilling rate reductions and the optimisation of mineral resource utilisation in society. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic methodology allowing for the analysis of systems and products and can be applied to waste management systems to identify environmental benefits and critical aspects thereof. From an LCA perspective, residue utilisation provides benefits such as avoiding the production and depletion of primary materials, but it can lead to environmental burdens, due to the potential leaching of toxic substances. In waste LCA studies where residue utilisation is included, leaching has generally been neglected. In this study, municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash (MSWI BA) was used as a case study into three LCA scenarios having different system boundaries. The importance of data quality and parameter selection in the overall LCA results was evaluated, and an innovative method to assess metal transport into the environment was applied, in order to determine emissions to the soil and water compartments for use in an LCA. It was found that toxic impacts as a result of leaching were dominant in systems including only MSWI BA utilisation, while leaching appeared negligible in larger scenarios including the entire waste system. However, leaching could not be disregarded a priori, due to large uncertainties characterising other activities in the scenario (e.g. electricity production). Based on the analysis of relevant parameters relative to leaching, and on general results of the study, recommendations are provided regarding the use of leaching data in LCA studies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental performance of a 50 MW parabolic trough Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant hybridised with different fuels was determined using a Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Six different scenarios were investigated, half of which involved hybridisation with fossil fuels (natural gas, coal and fuel oil), and the other three involved hybridisation with renewable fuels (wheat straw, wood pellets and biogas). Each scenario was compared to a solar-only operation. Nine different environmental categories as well as the Cumulative Energy Demand and the Energy Payback Time (EPT) were evaluated using Simapro software for 1 MWh of electricity produced. The results indicate a worse environmental performance for a CSP plant producing 12% of the electricity from fuel than in a solar-only operation for every indicator, except for the eutrophication and toxicity categories, whose results for the natural gas scenario are slightly better. In the climate change category, the results ranged between 26.9 and 187 kg CO2 eq/MW h, where a solar-only operation had the best results and coal hybridisation had the worst. Considering a weighted single score indicator, the environmental impact of the renewable fuels scenarios is approximately half of those considered in fossil fuels, with the straw scenario showing the best results, and the coal scenario the worstones. EPT for solar-only mode is 1.44 years, while hybridisation scenarios EPT vary in a range of 1.72-1.83 years for straw and pellets respectively. The fuels with more embodied energy are biomethane and wood pellets. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Dairy processing is one of the most energy intensive sectors within the food processing industry. Accordingly, reducing energy use and energy-related air emissions is of critical importance to improve its economic and environmental performance. This paper focuses on product-based energy intensity (PEI) metrics for improving the energy efficiency of dairy processing by presenting a process-by-process (PBP) method to determine PEls in a multi-product system, with a focus on U.S. dairy processing operations. This method is compared with two alternative methods in the case of a cheese and whey processing system. For all three methods, energy use is allocated on a mass and solids basis. The results show that the PEI values depend highly on the choice of method. In the case of an energy benchmarking program relying on the PBP method, the choice of PEI basis has an impact on the allowances permitted for each plant and should be chosen carefully. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper examines impacts of regional factors affecting biomass and process input supply chains and ongoing technology development on the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of ethanol production from corn stover in the U.S. Corn stover supply results in GHG emissions from 6 gCO(2)eq./MJ ethanol (Macon County, Missouri) to 13 gCO(2)eq./MJ ethanol (Hardin County, Iowa), reflecting location-specific soil carbon, and N2O emissions responses to stover removal. Biorefinery emissions based on the 2011 National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) process model are the single greatest emissions source (18 gCO(2)eq./MJ ethanol) and are approximately double those assessed for the 2002 NREL design model, due primarily to the inclusion of GHG-intensive inputs (caustic, ammonia, glucose). Energy demands of on-site enzyme production included in the 2011 design contribute to reducing the electricity co-product and associated emissions credit, which is also dependent on the GHG-intensity of regional electricity supply. Life cycle emissions vary between 1.5 and 22 gCO(2)eq./MJ ethanol (2011 design) depending on production location (98%-77% reduction vs. gasoline). Using system expansion for co-product allocation, ethanol production in studied locations meet the Energy Independence and Security Act emissions requirements for cellulosic biofuels; however, regional factors and on-going technology developments significantly influence these results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Under the framework of the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment, the European Reference Life-Cycle Database (ELCD - developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission), provides core Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data from front-running EU-level business associations and other sources. The ELCD contains energy-related data on power and fuels. This study describes the methods to be used for the quality analysis of energy data for European markets (available in third-party LC databases and from authoritative sources) that are, or could be, used in the context of the ELCD. The methodology was developed and tested on the energy datasets most relevant for the EU context, derived from GaBi (the reference database used to derive datasets for the ELCD), Ecoinvent, E3 and Gemis. The criteria for the database selection were based on the availability of EU-related data, the inclusion of comprehensive datasets on energy products and services, and the general approval of the LCA community. The proposed approach was based on the quality indicators developed within the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, further refined to facilitate their use in the analysis of energy systems. The overall Data Quality Rating (DQR) of the energy datasets can be calculated by summing up the quality rating (ranging from 1 to 5, where 1 represents very good, and 5 very poor quality) of each of the quality criteria indicators, divided by the total number of indicators considered. The quality of each dataset can be estimated for each indicator, and then compared with the different databases/sources. The results can be used to highlight the weaknesses of each dataset and can be used to guide further improvements to enhance the data quality with regard to the established criteria. This paper describes the application of the methodology to two exemplary datasets, in order to show the potential of the methodological approach. The analysis helps LCA practitioners to evaluate the usefulness of the ELCD datasets for their purposes, and dataset developers and reviewers to derive information that will help improve the overall DQR of databases.The regulation by vegetation of heat, momentum, and moisture exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere is a major component in Earth's climate system. By altering surface biogeophysics, anthropogenic land use activities often perturb these exchanges and thereby directly affect climate. Although long recognized scientifically as being important, biogeophysical climate forcings from land use and land cover changes (LULCC) are rarely included in life cycle assessment (LCA). Here, I review climate metrics for characterizing biogeophysical climate forcings from LULCC, focusing mostly on those that do not require coupled land-atmosphere climate models to compute. I discuss their merits, highlight their pros and cons in terms of their compatibility with the LCA framework, outline near-term practical guidelines and solutions for their integration, and point to areas of longer term research needs in both the climate science and LCA research communities.Addressing biodiversity impacts in life cycle assessment (LCA) has recently been significantly improved. Advances include the consideration of several taxa, consideration of vulnerability of species and ecosystems, global coverage and spatial differentiation. To allow a comparison of biodiversity impacts of different stressors (e.g., land and water use), consistent approaches for assessing and aggregating biodiversity impacts across taxa are needed. We propose four different options for aggregating impacts across taxa and stressors: equal weight for species, equal weight for taxa and two options with special consideration of species vulnerability. We apply the aggregation options to a case study of coffee, tea and sugarcane production in Kenya for the production of 1 kg of crop. The ranking between stressors (land vs water use) within each crop and also of the overall impact between crops (coffee > sugarcane > tea) remained the same when applying the different aggregation options. Inclusion of the vulnerability of species had significant influence on the magnitude of results, and potentially also on the spatial distribution of impacts, and should be considered.In response to growing awareness of climate change, requests to establish product carbon footprints have been increasing. Product carbon footprints are life cycle assessments restricted to just one impact category, global warming. Product carbon footprint studies generate life cycle inventory results, listing the environmental emissions of greenhouse gases from a product's lifecycle, and characterize these by their global warming potentials, producing product carbon footprints that are commonly communicated as point values. In the present research we show that the uncertainties surrounding these point values necessitate more sophisticated ways of communicating product carbon footprints, using different sizes of catfish (Pangasius spp.) farms in Vietnam as a case study. As most product carbon footprint studies only have a comparative meaning, we used dependent sampling to produce relative results in order to increase the power for identifying environmentally superior products. We therefore argue that product carbon footprints, supported by quantitative uncertainty estimates, should be used to test hypotheses, rather than to provide point value estimates or plain confidence intervals of products' environmental performance.The life cycle analysis (LCA) is a versatile tool to evaluate process and production systems, and is useful to compare environmental burdens. For the purposes of this LCA, a high temperature electrolysis process was coupled to a high temperature gas nuclear reactor. The system function is the production of hydrogen using electricity and heat from nuclear power, with a functional unit of 1 kg of hydrogen, at the plant gate. The product system consists of the following steps: (i) the extraction and manufacturing of raw materials (upstream flows), (ii) the electrolytic cell fabrication, (iii) the nuclear fuel cycle, and, (iv) the hydrogen production plant. Particular attention was paid to those processes where there was limited information available on inventory data, for example mining and processing of rare earth metals, and electrolytic cell assembly, which are the primary components of a hydrogen generation plant. The environmental impact assessment focuses on the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), as related to global warming. Additionally, other environmental loads, to complete the environmental profile of the product system, were included. The results were low GHGs emissions, with a value of 416 g of CO(2)eq kg(-1)H(2). As to the process components, the electrolytic cell showed the highest environmental impact. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the general consensus among stakeholders on how useful the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology can be in helping to reduce the environmental burdens of a road pavement, very few pavement LCA models have considered the entire pavement life cycle. This paper presents the development of a highly customisable LCA tool that provides an integrated, project-level approach that includes all six pavement life cycle phases. The developed tool encompasses six main modules, including extraction of raw materials and production; construction, maintenance and rehabilitation; transportation of materials; work-zone traffic management; usage; and end-of-life. Data regarding the Portuguese practise of pavement construction and management have been collected on site with certified Portuguese construction companies and complemented using published literature and databases. The research described in this paper provides a widely applicable pavement LCA model that will enable highway agencies, private companies and the construction industry to estimate emissions and environmental impacts during the project analysis period for road pavement. The use of the proposed tool for benchmarking current practises in pavement construction and management enhances the scientific basis for understanding where further efforts can be undertaken to promote sustainable pavement investment decisions.It is important for an architect or a construction manager to easily and accurately estimate the heating and cooling demand of a residential building with a different envelope design in the early design phase. To achieve this objective, this study aimed to develop a nine-node-based Lagrangian finite element model for estimating the heating and cooling demand of a residential building with a different envelope design, which can be useful for an architect or a construction manager in the early design phase. This study was conducted in the following steps: (i) definition of the building envelope design elements; (ii) establishment of a standard database through energy simulation; and (iii) development of a Lagrangian finite element model. The prediction performance of the proposed nine-node-based model was improved in comparison with the four-node-based model. It was concluded that the prediction performance of the proposed nine-node-based model was superior to that of the four-node-based model. For the heating demand, RMSE(9-node, heating) (61.2), MAE((9-node, heating)) (45.1), and MAPE((9-node, heating)) (1.18%) of the proposed nine-node-based model was lower than that of the four-node-based model (73.9, 53.2, and 1.36%). For the cooling demand, RMSE(9-node, cooling) (71.5), MAE((9-node, cooling)) (55.3), and MAPE((9-node, cooling)) (8.24%) of the proposed nine-node-based model was lower than that of the four-node-based model (84.1, 61.1, and 8.71%). The series of processes used in this study could be applied to any other energy-saving technique or to a new/renewable energy system. It could also be extended to any other country or sector in the global environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this study was to assess the life cycle of rainbow trout under three culturing systems including flow-through, recirculating and semi-closed recirculating systems in Iran. The life cycle assessment (LCA) method was found to be suited very well for this purpose. LCA method was used to quantify and compare the potential environmental impacts of culturing rainbow trout in the above three aquaculture systems. Differences were found between the above three systems in terms of water dependence, land competition, feed production processes and energy use. Feed production was found to be the major contributor to the potential impacts such as climate change and acidification in all of the above three systems due to variable feed conversion ratios (FCR, 1.15, 1.47 and 1.57) in flow-through, recirculating and semi-closed recirculating systems, respectively. The results indicated that the semi-closed recirculating system was less efficient than the flow-through system, with a higher level of potential eutrophication (49% greater), abiotic depletion (80% greater) and global warming (82% greater). The recirculating system required about 10 time more material and energy demands compared to the flow-through system. Water dependence in the flow-through system was calculated to be 27 and 3.7 times more than for the recirculating and semi-closed recirculating systems, respectively for the same quantity of biomass production. The major contribution to the land use was feed ingredient production (up to 95%) for the semi-closed recirculating and recirculating system. On the other hand, the land use in the flow-through system on farm rainbow trout production and feed ingredient production were calculated about 11 and 89%, respectively. Therefore, many options exist for improving the environmental performance of these aquaculture systems. The most important measure is to increase the feed and energy efficiency through improvements in rearing modes and the optimisation of feeding practices. It is recommended that excluded impacts such as biodiversity and socio-economic impacts be carefully considered in further sustainability assessments of recirculating and semi-closed recirculating systems and in continuing efforts to improve and develop these technologies on a larger scale. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The wine industry worldwide is undergoing a chronic surplus of production, estimated at more than 30 millions of hectoliters. This extra waste (unsold wines) have to be handled in order to not aggravate the wine environmental impacts. With the aim to reduce this surplus, the present research evaluates new grape uses: by blending them with other fruits in the formulation of a "100% fruit juice". The idea is to move from a linear model, in which grapes are grown only for wine production, to a complex one, in which grapes are grown for other uses too, in order to obtain a better use of raw materials, as opposed to waste production. This research apply a particular form of Industrial Ecology, integrating raw materials among farms. In order to evaluate the idea, a life cycle assessment was carried out, to make a comparison of two scenarios (the linear and the complex). Results show reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and a reduced amount of unsold wine to be treated. The wider market scenario provides healthy products to consumers: fruit juices. Regarding this last point, it should be emphasized that this fruit juice concept is already on the market since two years. This approach to wine surplus has demonstrated that transferring part of the must to the fruit juice production lightens the environmental load of a company (increased sustainability), lightens the unsold wine problem (increased efficiency in the resources use), and expands market opportunity by providing healthy products to consumers (increased competitiveness). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The co-production and co-application to land of biochar and biosolids may make conventional wastewater treatment more sustainable; therefore, this study provides a first life cycle evaluation of the co-location of a pyrolysis (biochar production) plant with a municipal wastewater treatment plant. Life cycle energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are evaluated for the co-production of these two materials. Three US national scenarios are included: biosolids only produced and disposed of as is the current common practice in the US (landfilled, incinerated, and land applied); biosolids only produced but not land applied; and co-production of biosolids and biochar and their disposal as currently practiced. A case study is also presented with slightly different disposal practices. Large contributors to life cycle greenhouse gas emissions are from the disposal of biosolids in landfills and incinerators, making alternatives like land application attractive for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. The addition of biochar production adds little to the overall energy use but provides substantial (26%) reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the national case, largely due to the recalcitrant carbon storage in biochar. Because biochar production is an energy positive process, incorporation of the energy co-products into the plant is explored for producing high quality Class A biosolids. The addition of biochar to biosolids is shown to be more sustainable from a co-production standpoint This study contributes a benchmark analysis in evaluating the co-production of biochar and biosolids for potential environmental, economic, and health benefits and the results are useful for utility planning. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Information & Communication Technology (ICT) industry meets great expansion in China, in production as in diffusion, as the derived environmental impact becomes an increasing key issue in concern of Chinese policy makers. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used tool for measuring ICT products' environmental impact then for estimating relative legislative measures' efficiency. Consider the vast territory with highly centralized of power in China, this paper introduces the geographical factor into the study on the environmental impact according to different categories of ICT product. From this article, the geographically unbalanced development of ICT industry together with disproportional distribution of energy consumption over different phases of ICT products' life cycle may eventually contributes to the inconsistent results on environmental benefits or loss in different regions, according to the concept of LCA. In ignoring the fact that environmental balance varies from one region to another, according to the product's category and how the LCA result is distributed over different phases of life cycle, there could be eventual inefficiency of China's environmental policy-making in subject of ICT industry's environmental impact for the past, today and tomorrow. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Spatial planning establishes conditions for societal patterns of production and consumption. However, the assigned Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) tend to have a too narrow focus. In particular, there is a need for applying a system perspective in SEA, extending assessment beyond the spatial boundaries of a plan to further focus on global, indirect and cumulative impacts. These impacts are referred to as "systemic impacts". This study proposes a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure which can be adopted in SEAs of various types of planning. The procedure represents a first step towards operationalising LCA in SEA by adjusting LCA methodology to focus on the ways planners and planning processes can influence the environmental impacts of interconnected activities. The proposed procedure was tested on a case study of Danish extraction planning, and it was found to generate new knowledge for decision support. The procedure enabled identification of key systemic impacts, as well as it enabled formulation of recommendations for how to address these impacts in planning processes. On a more general level, this article demonstrates an application of LCA which until now has received little attention, and it highlights the role of spatial planners in facilitating cleaner production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lamination technologies used to produce lithium ion batteries are limited by the capital investment needed for multiple unit operations, solvent use for electrolyte and electrode slurries, and an inability to exert control over active material particle morphology and homogeneity. Advancements in thin-film solid-state processing using vacuum coating hold promise to overcome these challenges for batteries with superior energy density and cycle life, if cost and scalability issues can be overcome. A comparative life cycle assessment is reported for battery production using lamination and thin-film vacuum vapor deposition. Lithium vanadium oxide solid-state cells are found to have the lowest impact, per unit energy storage, in cumulative energy demand (CED), global warming potential (GWP), and six other midpoint environmental indicators. Human health and resource depletion impacts are generally higher for lithium manganese oxide and lithium cobalt oxide solid-state cells than for their laminated counterparts, whereas CED and GWP per unit energy storage are 25-65% lower for solid-state cells across all cathode chemistries. Sensitivity analysis, taking into account uncertainties related to solid-state cell properties and vacuum vapor deposition process efficiencies, indicates that CED and GWP impacts for battery electric vehicle mobility using packs with solid-state cells will be lower than those incurred using laminated cells. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to the antiquated processes, fused magnesia (FM) production in China causes many problems such as high energy consumption and heavy greenhouse gas emissions, which have gradually become a barrier to the future sustainable development of the industry. These issues are creating pressure to find alternative processes that can reduce energy consumption and pollution in the industry, while guaranteeing the quality of products. We develop a transparent life cycle inventory of two conventional and two new FM processes from magnesite mining to FM production and apply the inventory to conduct a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of four scenarios, including: Scenario 1 (S1) - a Single Phase Process using natural magnesite as raw material; Scenario 2 (S2) - a Two Phase Process using caustic calcined magnesia as raw material; Scenario 3 (S3) - an alternative process based on raw material substitution; and, Scenario 4 (S4) - another alternative improving from the overall process. Results indicate that in two traditional processes, S1 is superior to S2 in terms of environmental impacts. However, the two alternatives show significant differences. S3 doesn't reduce the environmental impacts as a whole, but transfers them from the production phase to other raw material production phases. S4 has the best environmental performance with an effective reduction of each impact category, especially the global warming potential (GWP), which was reduced by 48% compared to S1. The study shows that promoting the sustainable development of the FM industry requires overall process improvement to ensure comprehensive utilization of resources and energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Assessment of the ability of climate policies to produce desired improvements in public health through co-benefits of air pollution reduction can consume resources in both time and research funds. These resources increase significantly as the spatial resolution of models increases. In addition, the level of spatial detail available in macroeconomic models at the heart of climate policy assessments is much lower than that available in traditional human health risk modeling. It is therefore important to determine whether increasing spatial resolution considerably affects risk-based decisions; which kinds of decisions might be affected; and under what conditions they will be affected. Human health risk co-benefits from carbon emissions reductions that bring about concurrent reductions in Particulate Matter (PM10) emissions is therefore examined here at four levels of spatial resolution (Uniform Nation, Uniform Region, Uniform County/city, Health Risk Assessment) in a case study of Taiwan as one of the geographic regions of a global macroeceonomic model, with results that are representative of small, industrialized nations within that global model. A metric of human health risk mortality (TOLL, years of life lost in life expectancy) is compared under assessments ranging from a "uniform simulation" in which there is no spatial resolution of changes in ambient air concentration under a policy to a "highly spatially resolved simulation" (called here Health Risk Assessment). PM10 is chosen in this study as the indicator of air pollution for which risks are assessed due to its significance as a co-benefit of carbon emissions reductions within climate mitigation policy. For the policy examined, the four estimates of mortality in the entirety of Taiwan are 747 TOLL, 834 YOLL, 984 TOLL and 916 YOLL, under Uniform Taiwan, Uniform Region, Uniform County and Health Risk Assessment respectively; or differences of 18%, 9%, 7% if the HRA methodology is taken as the baseline. While these differences are small compared to uncertainties in health risk assessment more generally, the ranks of different regions and of emissions categories as the focus of regulatory efforts estimated at these four levels of spatial resolution are quite different. The results suggest that issues of risk equity within a nation might be missed by the lower levels of spatial resolution, suggesting that low resolution models are suited to calculating national cost-benefit ratios but not as suited to assessing co-benefits of climate policies reflecting intersubject variability in risk, or in identifying sub-national regions and emissions sectors on which to focus attention (although even here, the errors introduced by low spatial resolution are generally less than 40%). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As conventional oil production becomes limited, transportation fuels are being produced from other unconventional fossil resources such as oil sands. Oil sands are a combination of clay, sand, water and bitumen. Vast quantities of oil sands resources have been found worldwide. The largest known reservoir of oil sands in the world is located in the province of Alberta (Canada). Several techniques for the extraction of the oil from oil sands have been developed in recent decades. Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is the most promising approach for recovering heavy and viscous oil resources. In SAGD, two closely-spaced horizontal wells, one above the other, form a steam-injector and producer pair. The reservoir oil is heated by the injected steam and drains to the producer under the effect of gravity. First aim of this work is an economic optimization and evaluation of an hypothetical industrial scale facility (named LINK), located in Alberta. All data relating to LINK plant have been obtained from a review of the existing literature references or have been assumed. A Discounted Cash Flow Analysis (DCFA) of LINK plant has been performed. Costs of existing projects have been found in literature. The results show that the hypothetical plant LINK is a profitable investment and that the investment cost has a significant effect on the competitiveness of the LINK facility. Second purpose of the present work is an environmental analysis of the LINK plant: in order to evaluate GHG emissions from LINK plant, a LCA analysis has been carried out. The calculated emissions from oil sand production by SAGD technology have been compared with values relating to conventional crude oil pathways and to recovery and extraction of bitumen through surface mining from literature. The comparison demonstrated that SAGD is a promising technology also from an environmental point of view. An economic-environmental model for SAGD technology optimization has been developed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The waste production from the food processing industry causes serious environmental, economic and social problems. However, this waste streams can be used and transformed into added value products for food packaging applications. With this aim, this work is focused on the manufacture of sustainable films by using chitosan derived from wastes of fishery industry. Since chitosan is a hydrophilic polymer, moisture sorption behaviour was analysed in order to provide novel knowledge related to the best use conditions for chitosans as packaging films. Chitosan films were prepared using different contents of glycerol as plasticizer to improve functional properties. Water sorption isotherms were determined in the range of 0.1-0.9 water activity using a gravimetric method. The experimental data were fitted to several sorption models and the Guggenheim-Anderson-de Boer equation was found to best represent the experimental data through the entire range of water activity in order to predict the moisture sorption behaviour of the films prepared in this study. The results revealed that chitosan films show a great potential to be used as packaging films for food products with intermediate moisture sorption. These findings are expected to aid in the suitable design of chitosan-based sustainable food packaging films that contribute to improve consumer perception of food products, valorise a waste product, maintain food quality and thus, reduce food waste and environmental impact caused by conventional packaging systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the last two decades, the olive oil industry in Australia has been growing at an annual rate of 9%. Nevertheless, the highly polluting solid waste and wastewater generated by the industry poses significant challenges for the environmental sustainability of the industry. This paper analysed five alternatives for managing this waste stream using life cycle assessment methodology. The options included manufacturing briquettes as solid fuel for home heating; pellets for domestic or industrial water heating; pyrolysis and composting. The functional unit used in this study is the processing of 1 Mg of olive solid waste at the mill. Emissions were categorised into eight impact categories: ozone layer depletion potential (ODP), global warming potential (GWP100), eutrophication potential (EP), acidification potential (AP), human toxicity (HTP), fossil fuel depletion potential (FDP), ionising radiation potential (IRP), and photochemical oxidant formation potential (POFP). The study showed that although composting (current best practices - CBP) can achieve significant environmental benefits, using the olive waste to produce energy products may achieve better results, especially when displacing electricity from the main grid. The production of pellets for use in domestic hot water boilers (PHWH) is the option that is likely to deliver the highest environmental benefits. For example, GWP100 and ODP of the PHWH were estimated to be -1057 kg CO2-Eq, -1.5 x 10(-5) kg CFC-11-Eq compared to -12.4 kg-CO2-Eq and 5.3 x 10(-5) kg CFC-11-Eq achieved by the CBP, respectively. Future energy scenario and transportation distances were identified as significant parameters affecting the performance of the options. Sensitivity analysis showed that the expected change in the future Australian energy mix to cleaner energy sources is unlikely to have a significant effect on the performance of the alternatives. The results also showed little sensitivity to transportation distances of the energy product to the end user. This paper is the first to evaluate options for energy utilisation of olive solid waste using life cycle assessment and compare it to industry current best practices (composting). Although the paper focuses on the Australian olive oil industry, the results are also relevant to other countries and regions were olive solid waste is generated in relatively moderate quantities but distributed over large geographic area. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy flow in apple orchards related to Natura 2000 sites can help to determine the best management strategies. Apple orchards found in or out Natura 2000 site, were selected in order to (a) determine energy equilibrium among farming systems, (b) reveal groups of orchards on the basis of their similarities to energy inputs, (c) estimate gas emissions, and (d) clarify the role agriculture to habitat conservation within Natura 2000 site. Seventeen farms (six conventional, seven integrated, and four organic) were selected. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed three groups of the studied apple orchards. Group 1 (four conventional and three integrated orchards) had the highest energy inputs, while Group 3 (all organic orchards) the lowest. The highest contributors in cluster formation were insecticides, herbicides, and irrigation. Fruit production (41,189.1 kg ha(-1)) and energy outputs (98,853.9 MJ ha(-1)) were the highest for Group I. Energy use for herbicides (0.0 kg MJ(-1)) and renewable inputs (35,673.8 MJ ha(-1)), energy efficiency (0.7) and productivity (0.3 kg MJ(-1)), and renewable energy efficiency (1.4) were the lowest for Group 3; but renewable energy consumption (1.82 MJ kg(-1)), intensity (3.6 MJ kg(-1)), and energy use for insecticides (213.5 kg MJ(-1)) were the highest. The largest contributors for gas emissions were fuels (46.4%) and fertilizers (20.9%). Organic orchards all located in Natura 2000 site (Group 3) had the lowest gas emissions (2.72 Mg ha(-1) CO2, 0.68 kg ha(-1) CH4 and 0.25 kg ha(-1) N2O). Agricultural policies should regulate the balance between Natura 2000 sites and agriculture. Local management practices mainly affected the grouping of the study apple orchards revealing their importance for the development of agro-environment plans and for the influence on Natura 2000 sites. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Including bio-sources as raw materials in a process has been widely studied to provide a positive environmental approach but it should not be the only parameter considered for greener concepts in various industries. By performing a life cycle assessment at an early stage, each phase of a given process can be analysed to identify the overall improvement of environmental efficiency. A life cycle assessment comparing two methods of preparing porous polymers from Kraft black liquor was carried out at lab-scale. The purpose of this study was to identify efficient and sustainable methods of porous materials production by determining the sources of environmental burdens. Castor oil and 1,2-dichloroethane were found to be the best solvents to produce stable black liquor emulsions. The results showed that neither of them performed the best in all environmental impact categories studied, however several trade-offs arose. Indeed, the use of castor oil in the process might be a starting point to lower global warming and acidification potential at a loss of other environmental benefits. In the case of 1,2-dichloroethane, a recycling technique was established and seemed to be a promising option in terms of environmental benefit. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Bottom ash, the main solid output from municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI), has significant potential for the recovery of resources such as scrap metals and aggregates. The utilisation of these resources ideally enables natural resources to be saved. However, the quality of the recovered scrap metals may limit recycling potential, and the utilisation of aggregates may cause the release of toxic substances into the natural environment through leaching. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to a full-scale MSWI bottom ash management and recovery system to identify environmental breakeven points beyond which the burdens of the recovery processes outweigh the environmental benefits from valorising metals and mineral aggregates. Experimental data for the quantity and quality of individual material fractions were used as a basis for LCA modelling. For the aggregates, three disposal routes were compared: landfilling, road sub-base and aggregate in concrete, while specific leaching data were used as the basis for evaluating toxic impacts. The recovery and recycling of aluminium, ferrous, stainless steel and copper scrap were considered, and the importance of aluminium scrap quality, choice of marginal energy technologies and substitution rates between primary and secondary aluminium, stainless steel and ferrous products, were assessed and discussed. The modelling resulted in burdens to toxic impacts associated with metal recycling and leaching from aggregates during utilisation, while large savings were obtained in terms of non-toxic impacts. However, by varying the substitution rate for aluminium recycling between 0.35 and 0.05 (on the basis of aluminium scrap and secondary aluminium alloy market value), it was found that the current recovery system might reach a breakeven point between the benefits of recycling and energy expended on sorting and upgrading the scrap. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Desertification is a global environmental problem, and arid dunes with sparse vegetation are especially vulnerable to desertification. One way to combat desertification is to increase vegetation cover by planting plant species that can realize fast population expansion, even in harsh environments. To evaluate the success of planted species and provide guidance for selecting proper species to stabilize active dunes, demographic studies in natural habitats are essential. We studied the life history traits and population dynamics of a dominant clonal shrub Hedysarum laeve in Inner-Mongolia, northern China. Vital rates of 19057 ramets were recorded during three annual censuses (2007-2009) and used to parameterize Integral Projection Models to analyse population dynamics. The life history of H. laeve was characterized by high ramet turnover and population recruitment entirely depended on clonal propagation. Stochastic population growth rate was 1.32, suggesting that the populations were experiencing rapid expansion. Elasticity analysis revealed that clonal propagation was the key contributor to population growth. The capacity of high clonal propagation and rapid population expansion in mobile dunes makes H. laeve a suitable species to combat desertification. Species with similar life-history traits to H. laeve are likely to offer good opportunities for stabilizing active dunes in arid inland ecosystems.This research aims at assessing the environmental impact of the poultry supply chain from cradle to grave using case study research and also life cycle assessment (LCA). While a limited number of generic poultry production LCA studies have been published, fewer yet assess the whole process of a specific organisation, none comparing the increased impact of further processing. Our results show that irrespectively of the impact assessment method utilised, the process of producing portions is considerably higher in total environmental impact due to the extra raw material required to produce the same mass into retail. Our research contributes to the growing number of LCA studies and could be used by practitioners for comparison against national and international averages. From a theoretical point of view, this research provides new insights into the relationship between vertically integrated supply chains and environmental performance which has not been examined in the past.A general framework implementing process design, simulation, heat integration, and life cycle assessment (LCA) is illustrated to develop a sustainable route, which is particularly exploited to evaluate the environmental impacts of the p-xylene production from both generation biomass feedstocks. Noticeably, the lignocellulose-based p-xylene is comparable with the petroleum-based p-xylene, while the starch-based p-xylene appears less environmentally friendly. In the latter case, the cultivation and processing of maize starch and heating requirements dominate total environmental impacts. The main contributions for the lignocellulose-based p-xylene arise from the cultivation of biomass and the large requirements of nonrenewable chemicals (i.e., the makeup solvent (THF) and ethylene). Sensitivity analysis indicates that high selectivity is also favored to achieve better environmental performance, while the impacts of conversion are negligible and discovers a large variance from different biomass feedstocks. The uncertainties caused by the assumptions and developing technologies are assessed by uncertainty analysis.Emerging products and technologies pose unique challenges for the life cycle assessment (LCA) community, given the lack of data and inherent uncertainties regarding their development. An emerging technology that has the potential to be transformative and effect broad-scale change within society, as well as the underpinning assumptions associated with its life cycle, is particularly difficult to analyze. Despite the associated challenges, LCA methods must be developed for transformative technologies. The greatest improvement potential occurs at the early phases of technology development; therefore, prospective LCA results can be used to anticipate potential unintended consequences and develop design pathways that lead to preferential outcomes. This paper identifies and categorizes ten factors that influence the LCA results of transformative technologies in order to provide a formal structure for determining appropriate factors for inclusion within an LCA. Appropriate factors for an analysis should be selected according to the overall research questions of the study and are applicable to both attributional and consequential approaches to LCA.This study sets out to measure CWU (litre/kg ECM, energy-corrected milk) of typical milk production systems in 60 dairy regions from 49 countries representing 85% of the world's milk production. The extended version of TIFI-CAL 5.2 including water model was used for data analysis. The results have shown the CWU/kg ECM ranged between 739 L on the Danish farm to 5622 I on the Ugandan farm with a global average of 1833 L When looking at averages per region, the CWU was lowest in Europe (913 L) and highest in Africa (3384 L) with large intra- and inter-regional differences. Compared with grazing and intensive production system, low yielding cows on small-scale farms have the highest CWU/kg ECM. The key driver for variation in CWU/kg ECM is feed, accounting for 94-99% of the total CWU. Increasing milk productivity might be one of the promising ways to reduce CWU/kg ECM. However, this might also lead to the negative impact into water supply systems if this increase is dependent on land irrigation in water scarce areas. The findings of this study showed the need to address the location of the farm, the feed quality, feeding system and milk production intensity simultaneously when aiming at efficient water resource management which would help to contribute food production and livelihood security of dairy farmers worldwide. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The energy conservation plays an important role for low carbon development. In order to evaluate the energy conservation in the full life-cycle, a scheme to estimate the energy consumption, or alternatively the energy pay, in constructing an overhead transmission line is proposed in this paper. The analysis of a typical projection is given for demonstration. With new additional overhead transmission lines, the energy consumption, known as the power loss in power network, is expected to be decline, which is defined in this paper as the energy payback. In order to estimate this kind of contribution, the scheme that consisted of load forecast, production simulation for generating systems, load flow simulation and power loss calculation has been proposed. Case studies, based on the IEEE 24-bus test system, are given to demonstrate the efficacy of the schemes. Moreover, several presumptive scenarios are deployed and analysed with the presented schemes for comparison.Currently, green rating systems are not directly related to environmental consequences. Moreover, rating systems score both building-related tasks with long lifetime expectancies and system-related tasks with short lifetime expectancies without separating them. Therefore, passive solar and bio-climatic architectures, which have long lifetime expectancies and thus have a strong, negative impact on the environment, are neglected. The main goal of this study is to explore differences in total environmental impact for a single "typical" building module (with the heavy wall building technology accepted in Israel) in terms of six different lifetime shearing layers, Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space Plan, and Stuff, each of which reflects a different form of environmental damage. The objective of this study was to evaluate the six shearing layers using life cycle assessment (LCA) by applying Eco-indicator 99 (EI99). It was found that the environmental damage associated with the Building layers (Site, Structure, and Skin) was higher than that associated with the Service layers (Services, Space Plan, and Stuff). The paper may contribute to the development of a more scientific (quantitative) background for green rating systems. As a result, a greater decrease in building-related ecological impacts can be achieved, thus encouraging sustainable building activities.This research uses a life cycle analysis and economic engineering approach to determine the costs and global warming potential (GWP) of production and post-production practices associated with Taxus Xmedia 'Densiformis', which is often grown using a more capital-intensive regime during the propagative and harvesting stages than the typical field-grown shrub. Total variable costs incurred during the rooted cutting stage were slightly over $0.24 per marketable rooted cutting. This was made up of $0.1966, $0.032, and $0.0127 for labor, materials, and equipment operating costs, respectively. The GWP of materials and equipment used during the rooted cutting stage of production was 0.0097 and 0.2762 kg CO2 equivalent (CO(2)e), respectively. Equipment costs in this phase were predominantly from heating the greenhouse (92%) and the greenhouse heating functions comprised 95% of the rooting cutting GWP. GWP during the post-farm gate stage was 2.4506 kg CO(2)e per marketable shrub but was offset by 12.5522 kg CO2 being sequestered in the shrub during its time in the landscape and weighted over the 100-year assessment period, leaving a net GWR of-8.1824 kg CO(2)e per marketable shrub by the end of the life cycle. Total takedown and disposal costs (labor) after an assumed 50-year life in the landscape were $9.0610. During the entire life cycle from cutting to landscape to takedown and disposal, total variable costs incurred were $17.9856 per shrub. These findings are consistent with previous studies in that the GWP is positive when considering the entire life cycle of the shrub from propagation to eventual removal from the landscape. Knowing the carbon footprint of production and distribution components of field-grown shrubs will help nursery managers understand the environmental costs associated with their respective systems and evaluate potential system modifications to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.Degradation of environment can significantly affect human existence and development. Therefore, environmental protection deserves significant attention. Low-carbon products have become an attractive option due to global warming. To efficiently and effectively achieve the aim of eco-friendly electronic product design, this paper develops a decision-making methodology for low-carbon electronic product design. First the proposed methodology estimates the released amounts of greenhouse gases for different product designs throughout the major phases of a product's life cycle. This research can subsequently determine the benchmarking low-carbon design parts (as compared with other competitive products) and discern the causes of the poor carbon footprint (CF) performance. This will stimulate innovation to propose the low-carbon design alternatives. This research creates an evaluation model of low-carbon design alternative combinations in order to assess their performance. A multi-objective genetic algorithm is employed to determine an optimal low-carbon design alternative combination satisfying the CF constraint of a new product and minimizing the design time and cost. Finally, this research utilizes an MP3 player as a case study to showcase the significant efficacy of the proposed methodology. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Planktivorous fish which limit zooplankton grazing have been predicted to increase algal biodiesel production in wastewater fed open reactors. In addition, tanks with higher algal diversity have been predicted to be more stable, more productive, and to more fully remove nutrients from wastewater. To test these predictions, we conducted a 14-week experiment in Houston, TX using twelve 2,270-L open tanks continuously supplied with wastewater. Tanks received algal composition (monocultures or diverse assemblage) and trophic (fish or no fish) treatments in a full-factorial design. Monocultures produced more algal and fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) mass than diverse tanks. More than 80% of lipids were converted to FAME indicating potentially high production for conversion to biodiesel (up to 0.9 T ha(-1) y(-1)). Prolific algal growth lowered temperature and levels of total dissolved solids in the tanks and increased pH and dissolved oxygen compared to supply water. Algae in the tanks removed 91% of nitrate-N and 53% of phosphorus from wastewater. Monocultures were not invaded by other algal species. Fish did not affect any variables. Our results indicated that algae can be grown in open tank bioreactors using wastewater as a nutrient source. The stable productivity of monocultures suggests that this may be a viable production method to procure algal biomass for biodiesel production.This paper undertakes an environmental evaluation of bioethanol production, using wheat cultivated in Belgium. Cultivation steps are modelled using Belgian specific data. Wheat transformation in ethanol relies on industrial data. GHG emissions of the whole life cycle are calculated and compared with the default values given by the European Renewable Energy Directive. Belgian wheat bioethanol achieves a 5% higher GHG reduction than the one mentioned in the European directive but impact repartition is different with a higher importance of cultivation step in our case. Belgian wheat bioethanol complies with the current sustainability criteria but is also able to conform to further ones. Sensitivity analyses are performed on the importance of N fertilizers and associated emissions known as main important parameters. These analyses reveal non negligible variations and then a range of available GHG reduction when using wheat bioethanol. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study explores how two different cellulosic ethanol production system configurations (distributed versus centralized processing) affect some aspects of the economic and environmental performance of cellulosic ethanol, measured as minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) and various environmental impact categories. The eco-efficiency indicator, which simultaneously accounts for economic and environmental features, is also calculated. The centralized configuration offers better economic performance for small-scale biorefineries, while the distributed configuration is economically superior for large-scale biorefineries. The MESP of the centralized configuration declines with increased biorefinery size up to a point and then rises due to the cost of trucking biomass to the biorefinery. In contrast, the MESP in the distributed configuration continuously declines with increasing biorefinery size due to the lower costs of railroad transportation and the greater economies of scale achieved at much larger biorefinery sizes, including biorefineries that reach the size of an average oil refinery-about 30,000 tons per day of feedstock. The centralized system yields lower environmental impacts for most impact categories than does the distributed system regardless of the biorefinery size. Eco-efficiency analysis shows that the centralized configuration is more sustainable for small-scale biorefineries, while the distributed configuration with railroad transport is more sustainable for large-scale biorefineries. Compared with gasoline from petroleum, cellulosic ethanol fuel offers sustainability advantages for the following environmental impact categories: fossil energy consumption, global warming, human health impacts by particulate matter, ozone layer depletion, ecotoxicity, human health cancer, and human health non-cancer, depending somewhat on the biorefinery sizes and the system configurations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life-cycle greenhouse gas (LC-GHG) emissions are a principal metric used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine whether a biofuel qualifies under the U.S. EPAs Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2). This paper identifies important factors in the quantification of LC-GHG of algae-derived diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline, using hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) as a case study for algal biofuels. The results indicate that, under certain conditions, algae biofuels produced using HTL offer an over 50% reduction in LC-GHG emissions compared to their petroleum counterparts and would thus qualify as advanced biofuel and biomass-based biodiesel under RSF2. However, the results are sensitive to several upstream and downstream factors, specifically the CO2 supply chains used in feedstock production and the fuels that are produced using these algal feedstocks, respectively. Upstream processes for the production of algae include supplying gas or liquid phase CO2 to maintain culture viability, which is unlike terrestrial crops. Many commercial CO2 sources, such as natural deposits, do not qualify for the biogenic carbon credit, and consequently, the fuels do not qualify under RFS2. When CO2 is a byproduct of industrial processes, the fuels may qualify under RSF2. Downstream, the decisions about the fuel produced are also found to significantly impact LC-GHG emissions; whereby combustion of aviation biofuels in the atmosphere, specifically the non-CO2 emissions, contributes to the global warming potential (GWP) of the fuels. When the atmospheric, non-CO2 combustion effects are considered, HTL aviation biofuel achieves only 25% reduction in GWP compared to petroleum jet fuel.With rapid urbanization and infrastructure investment, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Chinese cities are putting increased pressure on energy consumption and exacerbating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A carbon footprint is provided as a tool to quantify the life cycle GHG emissions and identify opportunities to reduce climate change impacts. This study examined three mainstream wastewater treatment technologies: Anaerobic-Anoxic-Oxic (A-A-O), Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) and Oxygen Ditch, considering four different sludge treatment alternatives for small-to-medium-sized WWTPs. Following the life cycle approach, process design data and emission factors were used by the model to calculate the carbon footprint. Results found that direct emissions of CO2 and N2O, and indirect emissions of electricity use, are significant contributors to the carbon footprint. Although sludge anaerobic digestion and biogas recovery could significantly contribute to emission reduction, it was less beneficial for Oxygen Ditch than the other two treatment technologies due to its low sludge production. The influence of choosing "high risk" or "low risk" N2O emission factors on the carbon footprint was also investigated in this study. Oxygen Ditch was assessed as "low risk" of N2O emissions while SBR was "high risk". The carbon footprint of A-A-O with sludge anaerobic digestion and energy recovery was more resilient to changes of N2O emission factors and control of N2O emissions, though process design parameters (i.e., effluent total nitrogen (TN) concentration, mixed-liquor recycle (MLR) rates and solids retention time (SRT)) and operation conditions (i.e., nitrite concentration) are critical for reducing carbon footprint of SBR. Analyses of carbon footprints suggested that aerobic treatment of sludge not only favors the generation of large amounts of CO2, but also the emissions of N2O, so the rationale of reducing aerobic treatment and maximizing anaerobic treatment applies to both wastewater and sludge treatment for reducing the carbon footprint, i.e., the annamox process for wastewater nutrient removal and the anaerobic digestion for sludge treatment.Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is a technique to assess the potential social impacts of a product or service caused by its life cycle. The aim of this paper is to critically review the methodologies applied in S-LCIA and establish its current development status by highlighting areas for improvement. The UNEP/SETAC Guidelines published in 2009 provided general procedures for conducting S-LCA, but lack S-LCIA methods. Many new S-LCIA methods have been proposed but these are inherently different, indicating a scientific and well-accepted S-LCIA method is yet to be developed. Broadly, two types of S-LCIA methods, i.e. performance reference point and impact pathways methods are in use. A direction for future research could be the refinement of the social hotspots database and the social hotspot index calculation method. Moreover, the S-LCIA method could be developed by combining the performance reference point and impact pathways methods.Biodiesel is obtained by the process of transesterification of vegetable oils and animal fats and crude glycerol is the main by-product of the biodiesel manufacturing chain. As a result glycerol production has rapidly increased in the last decades. This work focuses on the development and the validation of a process to convert biodiesel-derived glycerol into a fuel for internal combustion engines. In order to obtain a higher conversion efficiency it was necessary to convert crude glycerol to tert-butyl ethers by means of an etherification process that was carried out in the laboratory. Then the obtained glycol-ethers mixture (GEM) was blended with a commercial diesel fuel to improve its thermal efficiency. In this paper a life cycle analysis for these GEM/diesel blends was carried out using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, in order to evaluate the environmental impacts of these new oxy-fuels; from GEM production to GEM use as an additive for diesel fuel. The LCA results highlight that the use of these new oxy-fuels in diesel engines can lead to an effective reduction in terms of greenhouse gases emissions throughout the entire life cycle.Seaweed may be a source of third generation gaseous biofuel, in the form of biomethane. The scientific literature is sparse on the relative suitability of different varieties of seaweed to produce biomethane. This paper assesses the BMP (biochemical methane potential), ultimate analysis and theoretical yields of ten species of seaweed which may be found in commercial quantities around the coastline of Ireland. Saccharina latissima reported the highest BMP yield (ca. 342 L CH4 kg VS-1). S. latissima if farmed, may produce 10,250 m(3) CH4 ha(-1) yr(-1) (365 GJ ha(-1) yr(-1)) which is in excess of all land based liquid biofuel systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sugarcane ethanol biorefineries in Brazil produce carbon dioxide, electricity and heat as byproducts. These are essential inputs for algae biodiesel production. In this paper, we assessed ethanol's life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy use produced in an integrated sugarcane and algae biorefinery where biodiesel replaces petroleum diesel for all agricultural operations. Carbon dioxide from cane juice fermentation is used as the carbon source for algae cultivation, and sugarcane bagasse is the sole source of energy for the entire facility. Glycerin produced from the biodiesel plant is consumed by algae during the mixotrophic growth phase. We assessed the uncertainties through a detailed Monte-Carlo analysis. We found that this integrated system can improve both the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and the fossil energy use of sugarcane ethanol by around 10% and 50%, respectively, compared to a traditional Brazilian sugarcane ethanol distillery. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Heat demand is a large contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the European Union (EU), as heat is largely produced using fossil fuel resources. Extended use of district heating (DH) could reduce climate impact, as DH systems can distribute heat produced in efficient combined heat and power (CHP) plants and industrial excess heat, thus utilising heat that would otherwise be wasted. The difficulty to estimate and compare GHG emissions from DH systems can however constitute an obstacle to an expanded implementation of DH. There are several methods for GHG emission assessments that may be used with varying assumptions and system boundaries. The aim of this paper is to illuminate how methodological choices affect the results of studies estimating GHG emissions from DH systems, and to suggest how awareness of this can be used to identify possibilities for GHG emission reductions. DH systems with CHP production and industrial excess heat are analysed and discussed in a systems approach. We apply different methods for allocating GHG emissions between products and combine them with different system boundaries. In addition, we discuss the impact of resource efficiency on GHG emissions, using the framework of industrial symbiosis (IS). We conclude that assessments of the climate impact of DH systems should take local conditions and requirements into account. In order for heat from CHP production and industrial excess heat to be assessed on equal terms, heat should be considered a by-product regardless of its origin. That could also reveal opportunities for GHG emission reductions. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of global food supply chains are growing with the need for their measurement and management. This paper explores the operations of a global supply chain for extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) according to a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The LCA assessment methodology is applied to determine the environmental impact categories associated with the bottled EVOO life cycle, focusing on packaging decisions. The proposed analysis identifies the greatest environmental stressors of the EVOO supply chain, thereby supporting strategic and operative decisions toward more efficient and environmentally-friendly operations management and packaging choices. This paper quantifies the environmental categories of the impacts of global warming potential, ozone layer depletion, non-renewable energy use, acidification, eutrophication and photochemical smog, for the observed EVOO supply chain, given alternative packaging configurations, i.e., a glass bottle vs. a plastic bottle. The observed system includes the supply of EVOO, the EVOO processing and bottling, the supply of packaging, the distribution of final products to customers, the end-of-life (EOL) treatments regarding the management, recycling and the disposal of waste across a global supply chain. The findings from the LCA highlight the potential of PET bottles in reducing the environmental impact of EVOO supply chains and identifies hotspots of discussion for policy-makers, EVOO producers and consumers.In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) applied to estimate the cradle-to-grave environmental impact of agricultural products or processes. Furthermore, including in the analysis an economic evaluation, from the perspective of an integrated life cycle approach, appears nowadays as a fundamental improvement. In particular, Life Cycle Costing (LCC), is a method that could integrate financial data and cost information with metrics of life cycle approaches. In this study, LCA in conjunction with LCC methods were used, with the aim to evaluate the main cost drivers-environmental and economic-of five widely diffused and market-valued agricultural productions (organic tomato and pear, integrated wheat, apple and chicory) and to combine the results in order to understand the long-term externalities impacts of agricultural productions. Data obtained in local assessment show a wide margin of improvement of resources management at farms level in the short-term, but also allow for the investigation of future effects of environmental impacts not expressed in product price on the market. Reaching a real sustainable model for agriculture could be a value added approach firstly for farmers, but also for all the people who live in rural areas or use agricultural products.Growing heterotrophic algae in reactors with sugar as the energy and carbon source rather than sunlight and carbon dioxide is an approach being commercialized today. However, the full environmental impacts of this fuel pathway have not been explored. The objective of this analysis was to compare the life cycle impacts of algal biodiesel produced heterotrophically to a phototrophic pathway featuring algae grown in ponds. A third, hybrid approach utilizing algae capable of both phototrophy and heterotrophy was also explored. Sugar beet and sugarcane were examined as feedstocks for the heterotrophic process. The results indicate that a reduction in the global warming potential (GWP) and an improvement in the net energy ratio (NER) for algal biodiesel could be possible for the heterotrophic and hybrid pathways relative to the phototroplaic, but only if reactor cultivation can be performed efficiently and with sugarcane as the feedstock For example, the NER varies from 0.6 to 1.6 for the heterotrophic pathway, depending on reactor performance, compared to 1.3 for the phototrophic pathway. Sugar crops used as feedstocks for heterotrophic cultivation present concerns about land constraints that are less of an issue for the phototrophic pathway. No pathway presented a clear advantage for the water stress impact metric.Dietary Guidelines for many countries recommend that people should eat 'nutrient dense' foods, which are foods with a high nutrient to energy ratio; and that people should limit their intake of saturated fat, added salt or added sugar. In addition, consumers and environmentalists increasingly want their food to be produced with a low impact on the environment, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), yet agriculture is a major source of CH4 and N2O emissions, as well as producing CO2 emissions. Current research on GHGE from agriculture does not incorporate the nutritional value of the foods studied. However, the nutritional content of food is important, given the prevalence of malnutrition, including obesity (due to over-consumption of foods high in energy yet low nutritional density), and the negative health impacts they produce. This paper introduces the metric, emissions/unit nutrient density, and compares the results with three other metrics: emissions intensity (t CO(2)e/t product), emissions/t protein and emissions/GJ. The food products examined are wheat flour, milk, canola oil, lean lamb, lean beef, untrimmed lamb and untrimmed beef. The metric t CO(2)e/unit nutrient density was the preferred metric to use when examining GHGE from food production because it compares different types of products based on their nutritional value, rather than according to singular nutrients such as protein, or specific attributes such as product weight or energy content. Emissions/unit nutrient density has the potential to inform consumer choices regarding foods that have a higher nutritional content relative to the GHGE generated. Further analysis would be useful to develop and expand the use of this metric further.Farmers can use their own agricultural biomass residues for heat production in small-scale systems, enabling synergies between the district heating (DH) sector and agriculture. The barriers to entry into the Swedish heat market were extremely high as long as heat distribution were considered natural monopoly, but were recently lowered due to the introduction of a regulated third party access (TPA) system in the DH sector. This study assesses the potential impact on greenhouse gas emissions and cost-based heat price in the DH sector when farmers vertically integrate into the heat supply chain and introduce more local and agricultural crops and residues into the fuel mix. Four scenarios with various degree of farmer integration, were assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, and by analysis of the heat production costs. The results show that full integration of local farm and forest owners in the value chain can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower production costs/heat price, if there is an incentive to utilise local and agricultural fuels. The results imply that farmer participation in the DH sector should be encouraged by e.g. EU rural development programmes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores the potential of integrated management of neighboring wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The novelty lies in the integration of environmental aspects, with the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, together with economic criteria for the selection of best alternatives. A case study illustrates how the connection of neighboring wastewater systems by constructing an extra pipeline provides positive results in the economic assessment, and in the majority of the LCA categories used in the global environmental assessment. The consideration of local environmental constraints suggests that the usage of the connection should be limited to periods when the minimum ecological flow in the river section between the discharges of the two WWTPs is maintained. In this particular case, the scenario that promotes the usage of the connection between the two WWTPs (but with some restrictions in dry weather periods) is preferred because it provides cost savings of 45,053(sic).year(-1) and satisfies environmental criteria. A scenario analysis has been conducted to evaluate the influence of the pipe length on both economic and environmental aspects and the influence of individual cost terms on the economic assessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This review discusses and analyses previous results in identification, development and implementation of cleaner production strategies within the seafood industry. The relevant peer reviewed articles were identified from a structured keyword search and analysed by both supply chain stage (capture and aquaculture, transport, processing, storage and retail), and examination of the cleaner production strategies implemented. Results found entities along the seafood supply chain generally worked separately to improve cleaner production processes and outputs to grow their own businesses. Whilst this approach can be beneficial, it ignores the broader cleaner production potential benefits gained when applied across multiple supply chain entities. The most effective cleaner production strategies for improved environmental performance in each sector of the supply chain were identified with the potential to reduce unnecessary handling, energy usage, storage costs and waste production. To ensure the greatest reduction in environmental impact, a whole of supply chain management system that incorporates life cycle assessment modelling is recommended. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we used LCA to test the influence of practicing low-input farming, on-farm processing and direct distribution on the environmental impact of bread consumption. Primary data were collected from four commercially active producers (two in France, one in Italy and one in Portugal) who cultivate cereals under low levels of inputs, process grains on farm and distribute their products directly to end consumers. Environmental impacts of products were compared to equivalents from supermarkets, characterised by higher rates of applied inputs at the agricultural stage, industrial processing and centralised distribution. The scope of LCA was from cradle to the consumer. The study revealed a high variability of results between individual cases. At the agricultural stage, products from a low-input cropping system integrated with livestock production in France and from a small-scale labour intensive production in Portugal showed similar or better performance on most impact categories to those from high-input agriculture, while horse farming in France and a stockless cultivation of ancient wheat cultivars in Italy revealed mostly higher environmental burdens. Decentralised processing and distribution in France had similar or slightly higher impacts to conventional supply chains, while Italian and Portuguese cases revealed clearly higher environmental burdens for most impact categories. Results demonstrate that while there might be a positive relationship between the scale and eco-efficiency of processing and distribution, the level of agricultural inputs, yields and transport distances cannot be used as proxies of environmental performance. Products of low-input systems can have much higher, similar or lower impacts to their high-input counterparts due to the influence of site conditions and the management. More research assessing the effectiveness of context-specific management systems is needed as oppose to the generic comparisons between labelling schemes (i.e. organic and conventional farming). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The European Commission presented the Life Cycle Assessment as the best framework for evaluating the environmental impact of products/processes. Companies are trying to reduce the environmental impact of products/processes, therefore the European Commission underlined the need for guidelines that select the most relevant impact categories depending on the type of product/process analysed. This work aims to propose a new framework called Roadmap for Environmental Impact Retrofit, which assesses different retrofit design alternatives of a given chemical process, through the application of Life Cycle Impact Assessment methods, and identifies a path for possible environmental impact improvements based on the identification of the most critical impact categories. The framework has been applied to the acetone-chloroform separation process as an illustrative case study. The framework has proved to be an efficient tool to assess different design alternatives in chemical processes in terms of environmental impacts. From the application of the framework, it was possible to conclude that future retrofit actions should primarily focus on some critical impact categories. The most important impact categories are identified by the Pareto principle. The framework allows practitioners to assess retrofit designs in terms of their environmental impact improvements and guides them in the elaboration of a new retrofit action plan, which will give priority to the most critical environmental impact categories. Therefore the framework represents a first step towards the European Commission goals. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conducting life cycle assessments (LCA) of complex multi-line, multi-product manufacturing facilities can be challenging. There is no standard method to assign or allocate resource use and environmental impacts to the individual products. The Industrial Process System Assessment method is presented to address this gap in current approaches for LCA allocation by making use of a multiscale model of process systems. Algorithms for the allocation procedure rectify process, ancillary, and non-process data from a facility such that inputs (e.g., raw materials) and outputs (e.g., emissions) can be assigned to a particular product from a particular line. The allocation approach demonstrates systematic multiscale process model development to avoid arbitrary allocation assumptions. This standardized method will enable LCA practitioners and process engineers to more clearly differentiate resource use and environmental impacts of co-products from complex facilities. The model could be further extended to provide product allocation based on individual unit operations when data are available. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Understanding how anthropogenic impacts are generated at a global scale is a major challenge to face. This work studies the environmental impact patterns of the wealthiest nations using environmentally extended multi-regional input output tables. A multivariate statistical analysis is performed on data covering 69 environmental indicators (classified into 5 main categories: energy, emissions, material, water and land) and 41 countries. This analysis shows that damages in different categories (and also within the same one) are highly correlated and that the wealthiest countries display very similar environmental impact patterns. These findings might help to develop more effective environmental regulations that will focus on controlling a reduced number of key indicators. In addition, the analysis of pollution patterns at a global scale will help to establish unified environmental regulations in countries with similar patterns. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper shows that, due to the way in which Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are constructed, the global warming potential (GWP) of products made of wood or wood composites with low density (and thus low weight-light-weight design) is higher compared to wood products with a higher weight (with similar functional unit). GWP is generally regarded as a major indicator in LCA studies. The paper concludes that the underlying model used for lifecycle analysis, and therefore for EPDs, is inadequate for properly assessing the raw material efficiency of wood products and instead recommends using the opportunity costs model typically applied in economics for LCA/EPD purposes.This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of industrial scale microalgae biomass production in compact photobioreactor (PBR) systems (2 x 5 x 8 m) for supplying biofuel/electricity generation processes and synthesis of new materials. Other objectives are as follows: (i) to compare the impact of various raw materials, substances, and services; and (ii) to evaluate environment-relevant aspects of the proposed system as compared to microalgae raceway ponds. The life cycle inventory assessment shows that (i) only atmospheric CO2 is used for PBR microalgae cultivation, whereas in raceway ponds, injection of CO2 from fossil origin is largely required to allow for microalgae growth; and (ii) the PBR daily production rate of dry biomass is currently at 1.5 kg m(-3) day(-1) for each PBR, which is 12.82 times larger than the reported average 0.117 kg m(-3) day(-1) race-way ponds production. It is found that in general the association of the effects of the production of steel, PVC, and the packaging contribute to more than 85% of the total impact in each analyzed category. Therefore, to achieve PBR biomass production impact reduction and sustainability, PVC and steel utilization need to be minimized, as well as packaging materials. Based on the PBR LCA results, that is, due to no CO2 injection from fossil origin and low area occupation, it is expected that high density production of truly renewable microalgae biomass could be obtained from PBR systems.Due to higher oil prices, abundance of labor and suitable land and its stable political climate, Tanzania attracted many investments in Jatropha. Although several studies on Jatropha's economic potential are available, its true economics are still uncertain. This paper aims to add to the growing body of knowledge on the socio-economic performance of the Jatropha system by (i) studying the economic potential (net present value - NPV) of the current most prevailing Jatropha system for Tanzanian farmers and its regional differences, by (ii) making a greenhouse gas (GHG) balance and its economic value of the Jatropha activities on regional level, and by (iii) calculating break-even thresholds for yield and seed price. Therefore, regional yield modeling, regional life-cycle assessment, and NPV calculations based on Monte Carlo simulations, each with its set of assumptions, are combined. This study shows positive economic potential of Jatropha cultivation in most of the Tanzanian regions. However, the results also show that 13 of 20 Tanzanian regions will not attain a net positive GHG balance within 10 years. This indicates that the environmental impacts might be more restrictive for Jatropha's sustainability potential in Tanzania than the socio-economic potential. These results are based on the combination of three models, which consists of strong interdisciplinary modeling work. However, this modeling also contains simplifications (e.g., no opportunity cost for 'marginal' land) and uncertainties (e.g., using globally modeled potential yield estimations), which have to be considered in the interpretation of the results.The role and importance of CO2 in the mining sector has been overlooked until relatively recently. This review presents the complexities of CO2 and mine water evolution . Carbon sequestration using mine waters and solid wastes and recent research on the profound impacts of dissolved CO2 on active and passive treatment were reviewed. The literature indicates great promise for more efficient and fiscally competitive operations, lower environmental impacts, and a decreased carbon footprint for such operations. However, a tremendous amount of research and field testing is necessary to move many of these approaches forward to full scale common application.The environmental performance of biogas plant configurations for a demand - oriented biogas supply for flexible power generation is comparatively assessed in this study. Those configurations indicate an increased energy demand to operate the operational enhancements compared to conventional biogas plants supplying biogas for baseload power generation. However, findings show that in contrast to an alternative supply of power generators with natural gas, biogas supplied on demand by adapted biogas plant configurations saves greenhouse gas emissions by 54-65 g CO2-eq MJ(-1) and primary energy by about 1.17 MJ MJ(-1). In this regard, configurations with flexible biogas production profit from reduced biogas storage requirements and achieve higher savings compared to configurations with continuous biogas production. Using thicker biogas storage sheeting material reduces the methane permeability of up to 6 m(3) d(-1) which equals a reduction of 8% of the configuration's total methane emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since 1999, there have been advancements in the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) in Mexico. Many of the efforts, such as training, research, and application of life cycle thinking for decision-making, have been carried out across the government, industrial, and academic sectors, but mostly as independent initiatives, without communication or cooperation between the LCA practitioners. This independent approach to LCA has resulted in the perception that LCA advances in Mexico are minimal. However, there have been advancements and notable achievements. This paper presents a review of the history of the application of LCA in Mexico over the past 15 years. Information was obtained from bibliographic research (i.e., scientific journals, conferences proceedings, thesis, national reports), informal interviews, and the experiences of the authors. Results show that up till 2010, the research and academic communities were leading LCA efforts with a focus on waste management topics. After 2010, there was a shift to study energy systems, carbon and water footprint analysis, and the construction sector. In the private sector, early LCA interest came from companies that were heavily invested in international markets and susceptible to growing international and national support for environmental regulation, such as CEMEX, the mining sector, the footwear sector, Mexican Petroleum (PEMEX), and Federal Electricity Commission. Moreover the government sector has attracted international recognition for its National Strategy for Sustainable Consumption and Production, which is based on an LCA approach. Accordingly, LCA has thrived and continues to grow in Mexico. However, to improve future LCA studies, policies, and analysis, a national life cycle inventory (LCI) database needs to be developed and maintained, and care will need to be taken to ensure that there is proper guidance and training to safeguard the quality of LCA methods and results,.Life cycle assessment (LCA) can reveal valuable information pertaining to materials, water, and energy that will be consumed throughout a building's entire predicted life span; however, it is often underutilized in practice. Individuals in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) community are in positions to influence the use of LCA. Thus, this article seeks to clarify the state of knowledge of LCA among this population and understand the perceived benefits of and barriers to its application. Building upon the researchers' results using focus groups, a national survey of AEC professionals, owners/clients, and related groups was developed to educe knowledge and perceptions within the AEC community. Existing literature suggests time and data demands, complexity, and cost to benefit ratio uncertainty among current LCA framework shortcomings. The survey was structured to further investigate these findings. Furthermore, the survey recorded both a self-assessed and measured level of each respondent's LCA understanding, which served as a validation for other responses. The information collected spanned a broad range, including LCA knowledge, LCA experience, perceived benefits and barriers to LCA adoption, software tool utilization, and LCA in conjunction with sustainability, in general, and with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. Respondents represented over a dozen AEC professions, approximately half being architects and engineers. Ninety percent reported having at least moderate familiarity with sustainability, and 62 % considered sustainability important in their projects for at least 4 years. Only 33 % of those individuals, however, used LCA in half of their projects or more, predominantly for energy analysis. A substantial percentage of respondents exhibited competency in defining LCA, but the disconnect between awareness and the use of LCA can be largely attributed to a perceived lack of demand. However, 86 % of respondents who currently use LCA reported being at least moderately likely to increase their usage of LCA in the future. The ability of an LCA to advance sustainability by informing decision-making and provide environmental impact information using a long-term, holistic perspective is valuable to most potential users. Additional benefits and barriers specific to the building sector were revealed in this study, and the factors that may contribute to these perceptions were explored, the knowledge of which can be beneficial in efforts to optimize LCA adoption. Finally, since Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) version 4.0 explicitly includes LCA, we anticipate a greater integration and use of LCA in the AEC community.Data centres are high-energy consumers, and historical assessment of their environmental impact has focused largely on energy consumption. Widely adopted assessment methods consider either single issues or do not comprehensively assess links between issues. One exception is the CLEER Model, which compares life cycle energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of Cloud-based and present-day services. However, there remains the need to verify components for inclusion in a data centre life cycle assessment (LCA), assess quality and quantity of secondary data, benchmark an existing data centre LCA, assess non-Cloud-based services for multiple impacts, and establish facility areas that are sensitive to change. A hybrid approach, combining process-based and economic input output (EIO) data, was used to perform the screening LCA of an existing UK data centre. The study includes the definition of the goal and scope, modelling assumptions, a life cycle inventory, results and interpretation and a sensitivity check. The dominance of the information technology (IT) operational phase to the overall impact and the severity of the impact on human health are concluded. Due to the use of free cooling, the IT-embodied impact is greater than the combined mechanical and electrical operational impact. Electricity production dominates the total life cycle impact; however, the second most significant impact derives from the disposal of metal refining waste products during the manufacture of IT components and electricity distribution networks. The release of carcinogens is one of the largest contributors to the whole life cycle impact and is almost equal in value between the embodied and operational phases. Finally, a sensitivity check found that a Swedish facility optimised for operational energy efficiency with a 1.25-year server refresh resulted in an embodied impact almost double the operational. It was concluded that current LCI data, software packages and project data allow for a sufficiently accurate data centre LCA model. The results support the need to broaden environmental impact reduction to beyond operational energy consumption for cooling and that building environmental assessment methods (BEAMs) should consider more embodied impacts. It is concluded also that three parameters are sensitive to design changes that influence the overall impact: operational energy for the IT equipment, cooling and power delivery; the energy mix; and the amount of IT equipment across the facility's lifetime. The results present a clear need to monitor life cycle impact, develop further tools to compare different design/operation options and functional units, improve data and develop an LCA-based BEAM.Rooftop greenhouses (RTGs) are increasing as a new form of urban agriculture. Several environmental, economic, and social benefits have been attributed to the implementation of RTGs. However, the environmental burdens and economic costs of adapting greenhouse structures to the current building legislation were pointed out as a limitation of these systems in the literature. In this sense, this paper aims to analyse the environmental and economic performance of RTGs in Barcelona. A real RTG project is here analysed and compared to an industrial greenhouse system (i.e. multi-tunnel), from a life cycle perspective. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methods are followed in the assessment. The analysis is divided into three parts that progressively expand the system boundaries: greenhouse structure (cradle-to-grave), at the production point (cradle-to-farm gate), and at the consumption point (cradle-to-consumer). The applied LCIA methods are the ReCiPe (hierarchical, midpoint) and the cumulative energy demand. A cost-benefit analysis (CBA) approach is considered in the LCC. For the horticultural activity, a crop yield of 25 kg center dot m(-2) is assumed for the RTG reference scenario. However, sensitivity analyses regarding the crop yield are performed during the whole assessment. The greenhouse structure of an RTG has an environmental impact between 17 and 75 % higher and an economic cost 2.8 times higher than a multi-tunnel greenhouse. For the reference scenario (yield 25 kg center dot m(-2)), 1 kg of tomato produced in an RTG at the production point has a lower environmental impact (10-19 %) but a higher economic cost (24 %) than in a multi-tunnel system. At the consumption point, environmental savings are up to 42 % for local RTGs tomatoes, which are also 21 % cheaper than conventional tomatoes from multi-tunnel greenhouses in Almeria. However, the sensitivity assessment shows that the crop efficiency is determinant. Low yields can produce impacting and expensive vegetables, although integrated RTGs, which can take advantage from the residual energy from the building, can lead to low impacting and cheap local food products. RTGs face law limitations that make the greenhouse structure less environmentally friendly and less economically competitive than current industrial greenhouses. However, as horticultural systems and local production systems, RTGs can become an environmentally friendly option to further develop urban agriculture. Besides, attention is paid to the crop yield and, thus, further developments on integrated RTGs and their potential increase in crop yields (i.e. exchange of heat and CO2 with the building) are of great interest.Phase change materials (PCMs) hold considerable promise for thermal energy storage and reduction of temperature swings in building space, and can reduce reliance on fossil fuel sources for both heating and cooling. Previous studies have evaluated the use of PCMs for energy storage and provided some limited information on the embodied energy of the PCM; however, an important factor that has not fully been addressed until now is the environmental impact of preparation of organic PCMs. This study presents life cycle assessments (LCAs) of two organic, biosourced PCMs for their applications, focusing on embodied energy and CO2 emissions. Dodecanoic acid produced from palm kernel oil was considered as a PCM for use in a solar thermal water heating application, and ethyl hexadecanoate produced from algae was considered for thermal buffering. The functional units were defined as 1 t of dodecanoic acid PCM and 1 kg of encapsulated ethyl hexadecanoate PCM, respectively. The LCA encompasses all phases in the PCM production: growth and harvesting of the feedstocks, extraction of the oil, treatment of the oil, and separation of singular components. The two PCMs were evaluated in terms of the payback times for their embodied energies and embodied CO2 under a modeled use phase. The energy payback time for dodecanoic acid in a solar thermal application was found to be less than 2 years. Although production of dodecanoic acid is a net CO2 emitter, use of this PCM in a solar thermal system can recoup the CO2 of production in less than a year. Ethyl hexadecanoate produced from algae, considered for use in a thermal buffering wallboard product, would require at least 30 years of use before its energy savings would match its embodied energy, mostly due to the drying step in the production of the PCM. However, ethyl hexadecanoate is a strong sequester of CO2 at 7.6 t per ton of ethyl hexadecanoate. Dodecanoic acid produced from palm kernel oil for use in a solar thermal hot water system appears to be a viable PCM. Its payback time, both for energy and carbon emissions, is under 3 years. On the other hand, the high embodied energy of ethyl hexadecanoate produced from algae gives a prohibitively long payback time for use in domestic thermal buffering applications.This paper presents a structured comparison of the European Commission (EC) Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method with a number of existing European environmental accounting methods and standards that were taken into account during its development. In addition to the ISO 14040 and 14044 which represent the main reference, also the ISO/TS 14067, ILCD Handbook, PAS 2050, Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Ecological Footprint and BPX 30-323-0 were considered. This comparison aims at evaluating the extent to which the EC PEF method contributes to filling the identified methodological gaps and, ultimately, the extent to which it meets a number of key principles for PEF studies: relevance, completeness, consistency, accuracy and transparency. The EC PEF method has been developed by the Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) in close cooperation with the Directorate General for Environment (DG ENV). It aims at providing a European, common methodology for evaluating the environmental performance of products. Its use for undertaking product environmental footprint studies is supported by the 2013 Recommendation to the EC Communication "Building the single market for green products - Facilitating better information on the environmental performance of products and organisations." In this paper, the selected environmental accounting methods are compared against a set of nine identified core criteria for EF studies. These criteria include, e.g. applicability of results, boundary of the evaluation, requirements on data type and quality, requirements on uncertainty evaluation, requirements on reporting and review. Results from this comparison have been used to evaluate the extent to which the methods considered meet a number of key identified principles for EF studies: relevance, completeness, consistency, accuracy and transparency. Overall, results of the analysis demonstrate that the EC PEF method resolves most shortcomings identified in the other methods with respect to the core comparison criteria. This, in turn, allows the EC PEF method to largely satisfy all of the key identified principles for PEF studies, and in particular the consistency principle, which is often not fulfilled by the other environmental accounting methods. The EC PEF method provides for a greater degree of methodological consistency and establishes unambiguous requirements, hence facilitating increased consistency, comparability and reproducibility of results. It fills most of the shortcomings of the other methods, meeting virtually all of the key principles for PEF studies.This paper presents a general impact assessment relationship, intended to contribute to the development of social life cycle analysis. This relationship and the conditions of its use are called the "Wilkinson pathway". When used for comparisons, the pathway assesses the anticipated change in the infant mortality rate caused by a change in income distribution in the population of a country, itself generated by an important change in a life cycle. Since the 1980s, numerous authors have examined the relationship between income inequality and human health. Without formally proving so, these studies suggest that increases in inequality have negative consequences for health. First, this effect is re-examined using the most up-to-date time series data. Econometric modelling allowed calculating the coefficients of variation of infant mortality in relation to variations in income inequality for member and non-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, taking into account the lag time. Then, a method to translate the effect of an important economic change in a life cycle on income distribution is proposed. The econometric estimations show that a 1 % variation in income inequality leads to an approximately equivalent variation, with a lag time of about 15 years, in infant mortality in OECD member countries. The effect is two times larger than in non-OECD member countries. Together with input-output data, labour productivity and average wages in different economic sectors, this information makes it possible to quantify the probable effects of an important change in the life cycle production stage on income inequality and then infant mortality. Due to data constraints and the many assumptions made, the tools and results presented here should be used and interpreted cautiously. Above all, what is involved is a comparative method. An isolated result must not be interpreted in absolute terms. This work is in line with efforts to formalize general pathways allowing a comparison of socioeconomic impacts linked to various important changes in the production stage of life cycles. There are diverse prospects for improvement. A challenge for further research will be to propose methods enabling assessments of the socioeconomic impacts generated in life cycle stages other than production.This research explored the relationships between the energy use and economic output and pollution emissions in China's crop production system during 1995-2011. A set of indicator system based on energy and money and quality were proposed to describe these complex interactions between them. The results show that (I) Productivity of crop production system in China has been obviously enhanced through limited manpower inputs. However, this case leads to increasing share of fossil energy related agricultural supplies in the total agricultural investment. Moreover, fossil energy has an increasing contribution to the total energy use, which makes pollution emissions derived from fossil energy production and use become the largest contributor to the total emissions, especially thermal power production. Meanwhile, direct emissions from fuel energy use should be also emphasized. In terms of emission amount, thermal power and fertilizers production has the largest impact on atmospheric environment; thermal power production also contributes the largest to solid wastes; fuel oil production has the largest effect on the water environment; (2) the emission intensity of energy consumption in China's crop production system has risen; (3) the structure coordination degree of crop production system in China has been greatly enhanced; however, its scale harmony degree has no obvious changes. Therefore, the sustainability of China's crop production system is being challenged by unreasonable energy mix, high emission intensity of energy consumption and bad scale harmony degree. Finally, the related issues are discussed and some beneficial suggestions are put forward. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the current energy conjunction, with an expected growth of energy consumption in a context of fossil fuel depletion, more focus is being placed on renewable energy sources (RES) for electricity generation. One of the most appealing alternatives is biomass, which can be efficiently used to generate electricity as well as heat with the application of cogeneration technologies that enhance the efficiency of the entire energy conversion process. The Mediterranean basin is a region with a recognized potential for electricity and heat production using primary forest biomass and sub-products from sawmills, among which highlight wood chips for their easiness to be obtained, processed and dried as well as for their good and stable burning or gasification behavior. However, in order to efficiently use the available resources, that is, minimizing logistical requirements to reduce the energy necessary for the electricity generation process, the biomass found in Mediterranean forests can only be used at micro- and small-scale levels to be compatible with sustainable forestry practices. This article is aimed to describe the different technological alternatives to convert wood chips into electricity and heat and it also reviews and compares the current performances in terms of efficiency of these technologies at the micro- and small-scale levels. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a comprehensive literature review and a full process-based life-cycle analysis (LCA) of three types of batteries, viz., (1) valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA), (2) flow-assisted nickel-zinc (NiZn), and (3) non-flow manganese dioxide-zinc (MnO2/Zn) for stationary-grid applications. We used the Ecoinvent life-cycle inventory (LCI) databases for the VRLA battery, coupled with inventory data from the CUNY Energy Institute (El) for the NiZn and MnO2/Zn batteries under development there. In doing so, two indicators were tracked: the cumulative energy demand (CED) and global warming potential (GWP) of the upstream processes for producing, manufacturing, and transporting the finished product, as well as the effects of end-of-life impacts. We conducted a normalization of CED and GWP according to Wh of battery capacity to illustrate the effects of discharge rate on this commonly reported metric. We subsequently normalized according to the cumulative kWh of electricity throughput (kWh(throughput)) to account for cycle life and efficiency data. This was done considering slow- and fast-discharge parameters for PbA chemistry and for current- and projected- parameters for the NiZn and MnO2/Zn chemistries to examine all possible effects. Additionally, the effects of recycle content on reducing CED and GWP were considered. Discharge rate was seen to have a significant effect for the VRLA system, with impacts over 41-46% higher in terms of CED and GWP at the 2-h discharge time, versus an 8-h discharge time, when considering the entire life cycle (kWh(throughput) normalization). With kWh(throughput) normalization, the NiZn- chemistry under development has lower CED and GWP than PbA-VRLA batteries for both current and projected targets of round-trip efficiency and cycle life. MnO2/Zn performs poorer than VRLA currently (41-52% higher CED and 35-38% higher GWP), but performs significantly better than VRLA when using projected targets (43% lower CEO and 47% lower GWP). The energy requirement for battery production and transport is most significant for PbA and MnO2/Zn batteries. This is the case for PbA due to its relatively short service life- and this battery was found to be most sensitive to changes in battery service life and efficiency. For MnO2/Zn this was a result of low specific energy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mathematical models have been widely used to simulate all aspects of bioenergy production systems including the growth kinetics of energy crops, conversion processes, production economics, supply logistics and environmental impacts. There is limited commercial experience to produce and process energy crops at a large scale around the world. Those models can provide powerful tools to design a bioenergy system and evaluate its technical feasibility, economics and environmental impacts. A crop growth model can be used to estimate the yields of energy crops in a region under different growth conditions. A geographical information system (GIS) model can be used to maximize the energy production of energy crops by indentifying suitable land to grow them based on their specific characteristics and the current use of the land. A combination of process models and reaction kinetics provides advanced computational tools for the design and optimization of various biomass conversion processes. The biomass supply chain consists of multiple harvesting, storage, pre-processing and transport options. Mathematical models have been developed to analyze and optimize complex biomass supply systems. A life cycle assessment (LCA) model can be used to compare the environmental impacts of different biomass production and conversion technologies. Various mathematical models applied to bioenergy systems were reviewed. The challenges in mathematical modeling of bioenergy systems which include the difficulty in generalizing a bioenergy system, the lack of physical and chemical properties of various biomass, the complexity of multi-scale processes and the validation of the models were then discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Appropriately implemented bioenergy could be a renewable source of energy contributing to fossil fuels substitution and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation in Mexico. This work explores eleven bioenergy options with environmentally sustainable biomass production potential. Mature and widely used technologies for biomass transformation are selected. Mitigation costs and investments are calculated for each option. The options cover electricity, heat, and mobile power for use in the agricultural, industrial, transport, services and residential sectors. By the year 2035 the set of bioenergy options considered could replace 16% of the final energy consumption currently provided by fossil fuels, and could mitigate 17% of GHG emissions compared to the baseline. Wood pellets for industrial, efficient cook stoves and efficient charcoal kilns show negative mitigation costs and low investment requirements, and are thus promising as regards implementation in the short to mid-term. Liquid biofuels on the other hand show high mitigation costs and low to high mitigation potential, depending on the feedstock, although most of these options also offer important sustainable development co-benefits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main objective of this study is to develop a methodology adapted to the prospective environmental evaluation of actions in the energy sector. It describes how a bottom-up long-term energy model can be used in a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. The proposed methodology is applied in a case study about the global warming impacts occurring as a consequence of the future production of synthetic diesel from biomass ("biomass to liquids"-BTL), a second-generation biofuel, in France. The results show a high sensitivity of the system-wide GHG balance to (i) the policy context and to (ii) the economic environment. Both influence the substitutions occurring within the system due to the production of BTL Under the specific conditions of this study, the consequences of introducing BTL are not clear-cut. Therefore, we focus on the lessons from the detailed analysis of the results more than in the precise-looking projections, illustrating how this type of models can be used for strategic planning (industry and policy makers). TIMES-type models allow a detailed description of the numerous technologies affected by BTL production and how these vary under different policy scenarios. Moreover, some recommendations are presented, which should contribute for a proper systematization of consequential and prospective LCA methodologies. We provide argumentation on how to define a functional unit and system boundaries that are better linked with the goal of the study. Other crucial methodological issues are also discussed: how to treat temporal aspects in such environmental evaluation and how to increase the consistency of prospective life cycle assessments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aviation industry accounts for 2% of all carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Based on that, various companies and agencies have developed a growing interest in developing alternative fuels for aviation in recent decades. Few studies related to the production and use of biofuels in aviation can be found in the literature, and some of them are even contradictory. Thus, this study aims at discussing the current scenario and prospects for the use of aviation biofuels in Brazil, coming to the conclusion that despite Brazil having vast farmland and several oilseed crops with potential for biofuel production, the high demand caused by the current use of biodiesel added to diesel oil in the Brazilian vehicle fleet compromises the use of these materials with other energy purposes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Kyoto protocol has established an accounting system for national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions according to a geographic criterion (producer perspective), such as that proposed by the IPCC guidelines for national GHG inventories. However, the representativeness of this approach is still being debated, because the role of final consumers (consumer perspective) is not considered in the emission allocation system. This paper explores the usefulness of a hybrid analysis, including input-output (IO) and process inventory data, as a complementary tool for estimating and allocating national GHG emissions according to both consumer- and producer-based perspectives. We assess the historical GHG impact profile (from 1995 to 2009) of Luxembourg, which is taken as a case study. The country's net consumption over time is estimated to generate about 28,700 Gg CO(2)e/year on average. Compared to the conventional IPCC inventory, the IO-based framework typically shows much higher emission estimations. This relevant discrepancy is mainly due to the different points of view obtained from the hybrid model, in particular with regard to the contribution of imported goods and services. Detailing the GHG inventory by economic activity and considering a wider system boundary make the hybrid IO method advantageous as compared to the IPCC approach, but its effective implementation is still limited by the relatively complex modeling system, as well as the lack of coordination and scarce availability of datasets at the national level. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cell disruption of microalgae is usually evaluated by microscopic observations and quantification of the target molecules before and after cell disruption. The following study considers a new approach by analysing the diffusion behaviour of proteins and pigments of Chlorella vulgaris in an aqueous medium after applying different cell disruption methods. Results were revealed by microscopic observations, quantifying the concentration of the molecules of interest, and calculating their diffusion coefficient. Microscopic observations showed intact cells after applying chemical hydrolysis and ultrasonication. However, the majority of the cells lost their globular shape after bead milling and high-pressure homogenization. The protein concentration increased in the following order: ultrasonication < chemical hydrolysis < high-pressure homogenization < bead milling. Conversely, their diffusion increased in a different order: chemical hydrolysis > bead milling > ultrasonication > high-pressure homogenization. Pigments were not detected in the aqueous phase of the chemical hydrolysis treatment, but their concentration and their diffusion were in the same order as proteins in the mechanical treatments. The study implied that diffusivity of the target molecules was not directly correlated to their increase concentration in the aqueous phase. Therefore, even if the cells were completely broken, diffusivity followed the hindered molecule diffusion phenomenon, which implies that somehow cells are not completely disrupted. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Today "ecodesign" is a necessary consideration in the product development process. With increasing general awareness of the need for environmental production and more stringent regulatory requirements, manufacturers have to try to minimize their environmental impact. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is a generally accepted quantitative approach that can be applied to support environmental impact evaluations of a product. However, despite the time-consuming and resource-consuming attributes of the LCA, it has difficulty to deal with uncertain information. Therefore, LCA is yet to be a practical approach for environmental impact evaluation, particularly, during new product development (NPD). This paper proposes an approach to evaluate the environmental performance of design alternatives during NPD. The use of multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches with LCA methodology for the evaluation of design alternatives' environmental performance during NPD processes is first discussed. The proposed approach integrates analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy set theory (FST) with evidential reasoning (ER) in the evaluation of environmental performance to prioritize different design options. A case study is described to illustrate the use of the proposed method.The knowledge of the service life and durability of building components is paramount to sustainable analysis and decision making since it allows a more rational management of the maintenance of building and provides data for life cycle analysis procedures. Nevertheless, predicting the service life of a building or its components is a complex process with which a number of variables are associated. The main difficulties associated with service life prediction are related to the complexity of the degradation phenomena and to the lack of understanding of degradation factors and mechanisms. This paper aims at establishing a model for the service life prediction of rendered facades using a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. The models proposed include the variables that influence the degradation of rendered facades (render age, render type, building height, facade orientation, exposure to damp, and facade protection level). In this study, the degradation condition of 100 case studies located in Portugal is analyzed based only on in situ visual inspections. The proposed models are able to describe appropriately the degradation of rendered facades and to predict the service life of the sample analyzed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The increase in the generation of solid waste is a problem for society and find ways for your equation and environmentally safe disposal is one of the biggest challenges today. The objective of this paper is to determine the most relevant variables for proposing and evaluating public policies for the urban solid waste management. The study evaluated theoretical models of waste management and presented a theoretical proposition of a model from these studied. From this theoretical model, the method allowed the definition of a model adjusted to the perception of an expert panel. The research is exploratory and descriptive, using bibliographic and documentary method and subsequently lifting the main variables with experts through the Delphi technique. As a result, we defined a model assessment analysis and proposition of waste management, which establishes the main variables, their degree of relevance to plan and manage solid waste.In this study, different alternatives of bio-oil use are evaluated through life cycle assessment. Bio-oil is produced via fast pyrolysis of hybrid poplar and used as a fuel for cogeneration in a district heating plant, for co-combustion in a coal power plant, or as feedstock for its upgrading via hydrotreating in biorefineries. For the latter, two different configurations are assessed: one with the pyrolysis plant integrated in the biorefinery and another with several decentralized pyrolysis plants that deliver bio-oil to a central biorefinery. Process data are obtained by simulation in Aspen Plus r. The assessment follows an avoided burden approach, with all products of the processes replacing equivalent conventional products. Although the cogeneration option shows the highest life cycle energy savings, co-combustion in coal power plants (substituting coal) shows the best results in most of the assessed categories. The two biorefinery options generally score worse than direct combustion. When compared against each other, the main difference in their environmental impact arises from the use of the co-produced char, while transport distances have little influence. In order to assess the influence of the assumptions concerning the substituted products, alternative utilizations of the products are further investigated. The environmental performance of the assessed processes is found to be highly conditioned by the use assumed for the products.Microalgae are a potential source for various valuable chemicals for commercial applications ranging from nutraceuticals to fuels. Objective in a biorefinery is to utilize biomass ingredients efficiently similarly to petroleum refineries in which oil is fractionated in fuels and a variety of products with higher value. Downstream processes in microalgae biorefineries consist of different steps whereof cell disruption is the most crucial part. To maintain the functionality of algae biochemicals during cell disruption while obtaining high disruption yields is an important challenge. Despite this need, studies on mild disruption of microalgae cells are limited. This review article focuses on the evaluation of conventional and emerging cell disruption technologies, and a comparison thereof with respect to their potential for the future microalgae biorefineries. The discussed techniques are bead milling, high pressure homogenization, high speed homogenization, ultrasonication, microwave treatment, pulsed electric field treatment, non-mechanical cell disruption and some emerging technologies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper uses input-output analysis to model the environmental impacts of the weekly food consumption of Australia's households sorted by income quintile in 2003. We found that weekly food consumption of the relatively better off households caused greater environmental burden than that of the less well-off household. Meat and bakery products/flour/cereals were the categories that contributed the largest share of environmental impacts in an average household's food consumption footprint: 58% water, 26% energy, 29% CO2, and 31% wasted materials. Per dollar spent, fruit and vegetables generated 0.0874 m(3) of water, 0.0055 GJ of energy, 037 kg of CO2, and 0.0114 kg of wasted materials. This was lower than the per dollar impacts of bakery products (0.8482, 0.0067, 0.63, 0.0204), meat (0.3471, 0.0070, 0.65, 0.0203), dairy (0.0995, 0.0114, 0.98, 0.0192), and edible fats (0.2373, 0.0080, 0.70, 0.0165). Eating out and fast food consumption also had a low per dollar impact (0.1317, 0.0046, 038, 0.0141). We surmise that substituting fruit and vegetables at the expense of animal products, processed foods, and fats would decrease environmental impacts. Change at low income levels should be focused upon meat, bakery and dairy consumption, while higher incomes should be focused upon the consequences of eating food outside the home. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.As the world's largest developing economy, China plays a key role in global climate change and other environmental impacts of international concern. Environmentally extended input-output analysis (EE-IOA) is an important and insightful tool seeing widespread use in studying large-scale environmental impacts in China: calculating and analyzing greenhouse gas emissions, carbon and water footprints, pollution, and embodied energy. This paper surveys the published articles regarding EE-IOA for China in peer-reviewed journals and provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview of the body of literature, examining the research impact, environmental issues addressed, and data utilized. The paper further includes a discussion of the shortcomings in official Chinese data and of the potential means to move beyond its inherent limitations. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Bioplastics are biobased materials, usually easy biodegradable, derived from renewable resources. Evolution of bioplastics production is related to: bio starch and starch mixtures (74.5%); bioplastic products from fermentation (13%), bioplastic from petrochemicals materials (12.5%). They are seen as a viable solution to avoid some environmental impacts caused by the use of fossil-based conventional plastics. In this context, the general objectives of this study entail the analysis and selection of the optimal alternative of bioplastics able to be used for packaging production, considering social, economic and environmental criteria. In order to accomplish these objectives, we applied the ELECTRE method (ELimination Et Choix TRaduisant la RealitE), a multi-criteria analysis method. Application of this method enables the use of qualitative and quantitative discrete criteria, making also possible alternatives ranking. The application of ELECTRE method in our study consisted in selecting different types of bioplastics which were compared considering some consistent criteria so as to assess their economic and environmental performances. Based on the application of multiple criteria evaluation we concluded that bioplastics, in particular polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are suitable from economic and environmental points of views for manufacturing and utilization of packaging.Over the past 30 years of rapid development, industrial parks have been an important sustained resource for economic development in China. However, due to economic yield-oriented policy and deficient scientific planning, excessive resource consumption and environmental pollution caused by industrial activities in industrial parks has led to ecological degradation and loss in the local areas. To respond to this issue, many researchers have focused on studying the overall efficiency of industrial parks from the perspective of metabolism of material and energy and have proposed some methods such as life cycle assessment, system of environmental economic accounting (SEEA), material flow analysis, and emergy synthesis, which indeed have improved the methods of evaluating industrial activities shift from only an economic perspective to a more comprehensive direction. However, these approaches have only focused on the efficiency of industrial activities while ignoring ecological conditions of the local areas. This article addressed this issue by proposing an emergy-ecological footprint hybrid model to show how this method could be applied to demonstrate both the energy metabolism of industrial parks' activities and ecological capacity of the local areas. We took the Shenyang economic technological development area (SETDA) and the Fuzhou Qingkou investment zone (FZQKIZ) as case studies to validate this method. Results showed that although the environmental burden of SETDA was heavier than FZQKIZ, the ecological capacity of surplus for SETDA was also stronger than FZQKIZ, which caused ecological surplus of SETDA compared with FZQKIZ. This study indicated that we should pay more attention to ecological capacity of the local areas surrounding industrial parks rather than only focusing on environmental impacts caused by industrial activities.The number of electric vehicles are increasing in the society as they are considered as zero emission vehicles and also because conventional fuels are becoming expensive. Additional electrical power should be produced to meet the energy requirement of this increase in electric vehicle population. To use the existing grid infrastructure without any failure, installing distributed generator at secondary distribution network is essential. In this work, sizing of wind-driven permanent magnet synchronous generator-photovoltaic hybrid distributed generating system has been attempted to meet the energy demand of electric vehicles of a particular residential area. Different feasible combinations for wind generator capacity and photovoltaic capacity are obtained to satisfy the additional energy requirement. Results are analyzed based on energy, financial payback periods and daily power profile of the hybrid system. Based on this analysis, the sizes of wind generator and photovoltaic array have been chosen to meet the energy demand of electric vehicles of that particular residential locality.Spider silk is a highly interesting protein fiber with outstanding properties. Since natural spider silk is not available for technical applications due to spiders' cannibalism, the production of recombinant spider silk proteins has been established. The goal of this study was to examine the ecological impact of spider silk nonwoven layers in an air filtration device using comparative life cycle assessment. The investigation focused on the environmental benefits of using recombinantly produced spider silk proteins processed into nonwoven meshes in comparison to melt-blown synthetic polymer filter layers in dust bags. The considered functional unit was one dust bag containing spider silk in comparison to one commercially available dust bag. In case of spider silk dust bags, 9 kg of CO2-equivalents could be saved per domestic home and year in the category of global warming potential in comparison to commercially available ones. Assuming that all used dust bags would be furnished with spider silk nonwoven meshes, the overall benefit for exemplary Germany would be 241 million kg CO2-equivalents. This article contains supporting information that will be made available online once the issue is published.The benefits and environmental burden of two different strategies (incineration vs anaerobic digestion followed by composting) to manage the organic fraction of municipal solid waste were assessed. Particular attention was also focused on system components, including collection, treatment, facility construction, and disposal, as well as the effect of the energetic context. Source segregation intensities considered for the scenario with incineration and with anaerobic digestion followed by composting were respectively of 0 and 52 %. The analysis was performed by an LCA approach, and the impact was assessed by the CML method. The functional unit was a single ton of organic waste generated in the area considered. System boundaries were expanded to include the differences in waste collection and multi-functionality waste treatments. Existing databases were retrieved, also adopting experimental data for the waste management area considered. Overall, the scenario with the highest rate of source segregation of organic waste, using anaerobic digestion followed by composting, gave a lower impact for human and terrestrial toxicity. Concerning the other impacts, incineration gave the maximum benefits. The impact of anaerobic digestion and composting arises mainly from energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., N2O, VOC), and landfilling of residues. The sensitivity analysis performed by varying the energetic mix of the context confirmed the advantages of incineration of the organic fraction. Incineration of organic waste leads to maximum environmental benefits compared to anaerobic digestion and composting. Furthermore, anaerobic digestion and composting was characterized by high gaseous emissions with high greenhouse gas potential even if the production of organic fertilizer gave some benefits concerning the avoided exploitation of mineral resources. The impact due to the collection phase and facility construction was quite limited and in some cases negligible.Transportation accounts for 80% of open-cut coal mine carbon emissions. With regard to the energy consumption and carbon emissions of transportation within an open-cut mine, this paper systematically compared the work and energy consumption of a truck and belt conveyor on a theoretical basis, and constructed a model to calculate the energy consumption of open-cut mine transportation. Life cycle carbon emission factors and power consumption calculation model were established through a Process AnalysisLife Cycle Analysis (PA-LCA). The following results were obtained: (1) the energy consumption of truck transportation was four to twelve times higher than that of the belt conveyor; (2) the CO2 emissions from truck transportation were three to ten times higher than those of the belt conveyor; (3) with the increase in the slope angle for transportation, the ratio of truck to belt conveyor for both energy consumption and carbon emissions gradually decreased; (4) based on 2013 prices in China, the energy cost of transportation using a belt conveyor in open-cut coal mines could save 0.6-2.4 Yuan/(t km) compared to truck transportation. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology.The architectural engineer has a considerable influence on the sustainability of buildings. The reduction in environmental impacts of building materials, as measured by life-cycle assessment (LCA), has recently become a focus in construction sustainability initiatives. The LCA comparisons of material alternatives in building structures, like concrete and steel, have not captured the material efficiency that the comparisons of structural system alternatives can provide. This paper compares the LCAs of two long-span structural systems, a truss system and a cable system, for the same application. Lower environmental outcomes are shown for the cable system when comparing the two systems' LCAs. Results showed a 29% reduction in structural system mass, a 65.1% reduction in embodied energy, and a 67.2% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when comparing the cable to the truss system. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.This article presents the most popular methods of sewage sludge management and associated unit operations and processes referring to them. The most popular methods are: Reclamation and adaptation of lands to specific needs; plant cultivation not intended for consumption or for production of food; usage in agriculture; usage in building; recovery of phosphorus, rare earth metals or fats and usage in industry; producing combustible pellets, granulates or other usable materials such as absorbents; and storage on territory of treatment plant and landfills. Processing connected with stabilization leads to generation of materials which might be contaminated with variety of organic compounds. Since this type of management generally assumes introduction of processed sludge to the ground, it can cause soil contamination with unknown compounds of organic origin. However, thermal processing of raw sewage sludge essentially excludes such possibility. Majority of organic matter is transformed into simple, mineralized form. In this case the most problematic issue is sewage sludge ash contamination with heavy metals. Although, determination of heavy metals in ashes is much simpler than determination of organic compounds. Chemical analysis can be very useful to asses environmental safety of processed and managed sewage sludge. That is why there is a significant quantity of used analytical techniques which are likely to support the processes of designing and implementing new economically and environmentally reasonable ways of re-using sewage sludge. Further, the process of technological utilization of sewage sludge conducted in Wastewater Treatment Plant "Wschod" in Gdansk is described. Recently technological line was upgraded. Now excessive sewage sludge is anaerobic digested with biogas recovery. Fermentation residues are incinerated in fluidized bed furnace. Ashes are cemented and land filled. Gdariska Infrastruktura Wodociagowo-Kanalizacyjna, which is owner of the treatment plant "Wschod" is planning development strategy for the implementation of a pro-ecological management method connected with production of light construction materials and phosphorus recovery. Management of thermal treated sewage sludge is simpler and cheaper than non-thermal management, especially in case of large amounts of treated sewage sludge like in Wastewater Treatment Plant "Wschod". Management in smaller installations of treatment plants collecting sewage sludge from less industrialized agglomerations is also less complicated. Sewage sludge management process should be developed separately for each treatment plant. Only then all management methods will be ecologically and economically justified. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A carbon footprint accounting of food production is useful for acquainting policy makers with both the potentials and the challenges of GHG mitigation in agriculture. In this study, a hybrid Economic Input-Output and Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) model was developed to investigate the carbon footprint of Chinese food production from 1979 to 2009. The change patterns and compositions of emission sources, impacts of urbanization, carbon footprint and carbon emission factors of 15 food types were examined. Research results indicate that the total carbon footprint of food production had doubled in those three decades, alongside rapid urbanization. The emission sources showing the most dramatic increases were synthetic fertilizer, direct energy use, enteric fermentation and manure management. Among all types of food, the carbon footprint of rice production increased most, and the carbon footprint of milk, bovine meat, fruit and vegetable production also grew rapidly due to increasing yields. There was an overall decreasing trend for carbon emission factors of rice, vegetable, fruit and animal-food production from 1979 to 2009. Notably, the carbon emission factors of most vegetable food production rebounded after hitting bottom in 1999 due principally to enhanced agricultural input. Compared with the U.S.A., China had a higher ratio of indirect carbon footprint in its food production system, which showed high material input and energy intensity. China had smaller carbon emission factors from rice and pigmeat production, but larger carbon emission factors from bovine meat production than the U.S.A., indicating the relative strengths and weaknesses of Chinese food-production technology. Mitigation solutions rely upon better balancing the dietary structure, improving the productivity of animal foods, and reducing agricultural inputs, especially synthetic fertilizer. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The increasing production of bio-based plastics calls for thorough environmental assessments. Using life cycle assessment, this study compares European supply of fully bio-based high-density polyethylene and partially bio-based polyethylene terephthalate from Brazilian and Indian sugarcane ethanol with production of their petrochemical counterparts in Europe. Bio-based polyethylene results in greenhouse gas emissions of around -0.75 kg CO2eq/kg(polyethylene), i.e. 140% lower than petrochemical polyethylene; savings on non-renewable energy use are approximately 65%. Greenhouse gas emissions of partially bio-based polyethylene terephthalate are similar to petrochemical production (+/- 10%) and non-renewable energy use is lower by up to 10%, partly due to the low bio-based content of the polymer. Assuming that process energy is provided by combined heat and power reduces the greenhouse gas emissions of partially bio-based polyethylene terephthalate production to a range from -4% (higher) to 15% (lower) compared to petrochemical polyethylene terephthalate depending on the methodological choices made. Production from Brazilian ethanol leads to slightly higher impacts than production from Indian ethanol due to dampening effects of allocation on Indian ethanol produced from sugarcane molasses, different sugarcane pre-harvesting practices and inter-continental transport of Brazilian ethanol to India. Internal technical improvements such as fuel switch, new plants and best available technology offer savings up to 30% in greenhouse gas emissions compared to current production of petrochemical polyethylene terephthalate. The combination of some of these measures and the use of biomass for the supply of process steam can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions even further. In human health and ecosystem quality, the impact of the bio-based polymers is up to 2 orders of magnitude higher, primarily due to pesticide use, pre-harvesting burning practices in Brazil and land occupation. When improvements are assumed across the supply chain, such as pesticide control and elimination of burning practices, the impact of the bio-based polymers can be significantly reduced. Realising such improvements will minimise the greenhouse gas and other emissions and resource use associated with bio-based polyethylene terephthalate and will allow to alleviate further pressure on fragile ecosystems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of green roofs in urban areas across the world. The research to date has tended to focus on the general advantages of such roofs while less attention has been paid to environmental impacts of the layers used in the construction of green roofs. In this paper, the environmental performance of two complete lightweight green roof systems were analyzed with the aim of determining the potential environmental impact of the different layers of the systems. The results show that among the materials we analyzed, the water retention, drainage and substrate layers contained the components that had the greatest negative environmental impact. More specifically, our results show that when the required performance is not impaired 1) Rockwool, virgin HIPS and expanded clay should be avoided in order to produce environmentally responsible roof systems; 2) simple roof systems may be recommendable whenever feasible and 3) recycled and local materials are better than virgin and those requiring long distance transport; and 4) the use of compost on the roofs may be recommendable if taking into account that using organic waste in landfill is a worse scenario than composting it. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology can be used to assess the environmental impacts of a road system over its entire life time. However, it is very important to align the potentials and limitations of such tools with their intended purpose. For the LCA to be useful for the decision support in a procurement situation, it should therefore be important to have a clear understanding of the technical features (attributes) that build up the life cycle phases. In this paper, different types of decisions situations are outlined based on at what level of complexity (network or specific project) and at what stage within the planning process (early planning or late planning/design) the decision is to be made, and relevant methodological choices for these decision situations are discussed. Further, the attributes that are important to consider in an asphalt road LCA that seeks to serve as a decision support in a procurement situation are suggested and technical features for these attributes are outlined with focus on Energy and GreenHouse Gas emissions. It can be concluded that in order to aid the implementation of green procurement, it would help if the attributes of the system are defined in a transparent manner and consistently calculated. It is, however, also important that the attributes should mirror the material properties used in a pavement design and therefore be closely linked to the performance of the road in its life time. It is also recommended to report the feedstock energy in the road LCAs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the most important challenges facing our society is the efficient and economic use of energy, and with it the corresponding need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Due to growing concerns over global warming and climate change in recent years, warm mix asphalt (WMA) has become an important new research topic in the field of pavement materials, as it offers a potential solution for the reduction of energy consumption and GHG emissions during the production and placement of asphalt mixtures. While many studies have been conducted to demonstrate that the mechanical properties of such mixtures are not significantly affected, many questions and concerns regarding the environmental benefits they offer have yet to be addressed. In this study, a comprehensive hybrid life cycle assessment of WMA production was carried out to accurately evaluate and quantify the potential benefits of WMA technology by assessing the environmental impacts of its production associated with energy consumption and GHG emissions. The results of this study show that, for the WMA mixtures considered here, when the upstream supply chain related to the production of the materials composing such mixtures is taken into account, WMA technology is able to significantly save energy and reduce GHG emissions when compared to the control mixtures. However, it must be noted that in some cases, the manufacturing temperature at the asphalt plant must be reduced before the benefits of reduced emissions and fuel usage can be obtained. The results of a detailed production layer decomposition indicate that the fuel, mining and construction sectors are the main contributors to the environmental impacts of manufacturing the WMA mixtures studied. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a first comprehensive comparison of environmental impacts of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) technologies. Life cycle assessment studies found in the literature have been reviewed for these purposes. In total, 27 studies have been found of which 11 focus on CCS and 16 on CCU. The CCS studies suggest that the global warming potential (GWP) from power plants can be reduced by 63-82%, with the greatest reductions achieved by oxy-fuel combustion in pulverised coal and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants and the lowest by postcombustion capture in combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants. However, other environmental impacts such as acidification and human toxicity are higher with than without CCS. For CCU, the GWP varies widely depending on the utilisation option. Mineral carbonation can reduce the GWP by 4-48% compared to no CCU. Utilising CO2 for production of chemicals, specifically, dimethylcarbonate (DMC) reduces the GWP by 4.3 times and ozone layer depletion by 13 times compared to the conventional DMC process. Enhanced oil recovery has the GWP 23 times lower compared to discharging CO2 to the atmosphere but acidification is three times higher. Capturing CO2 by microalgae to produce biodiesel has 2.5 times higher GWP than fossil diesel with other environmental impacts also significantly higher. On average, the GWP of CCS is significantly lower than of the CCU options. However, its other environmental impacts are higher compared to CCU except for DMC production which is the worst CCU option overall. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of integrating dairy and bioenergy systems on land use, net energy intensity (NEI), and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A reference dairy farm system representative of Wisconsin was compared with a system that produces dairy and bioenergy products. This integrated system investigates the effects at the farm level when the cow diet and manure management practices are varied. The diets evaluated were supplemented with varying amounts of dry distillers grains with solubles and soybean meal and were balanced with different types of forages. The manure-management scenarios included manure land application, which is the most common manure disposal method in Wisconsin, and manure anaerobic digestion (AD) to produce biogas. A partial life cycle assessment from cradle to farm gate was conducted, where the system boundaries were expanded to include the production of biofuels in the analysis and the environmental burdens between milk and bioenergy products were partitioned by system expansion. Milk was considered the primary product and the functional unit, with ethanol, biodiesel, and biogas considered co-products. The production of the co-products was scaled according to milk production to meet the dietary requirements of each selected dairy ration. Results indicated that land use was 1.6 m(2), NET was 3.86 MJ, and GHG emissions were 1.02 kg of CO2-equivalents per kilogram of fat- and protein-corrected milk (FPCM) for the reference system. Within the integrated dairy and bioenergy system, diet scenarios that maximize dry distillers grains with solubles and implement AD had the largest reduction of GHG emissions and NET, but the greatest increase in land use compared with the reference system. Average land use ranged from 1.68 to 2.01 m(2)/kg of FPCM; NET ranged from -5.62 to -0.73 MJ/kg of FPCM; and GHG emissions ranged from 0.63 to 0.77 kg of CO2-equivalents/kg of FPCM. The AD contributed 65% of the NEI and 77% of the GHG emission reductions.This paper will illustrate how a product-centric simulation approach to recycling is core to Design for Recycling (DfR) & Design for Resource Efficiency. This approach is underpinned by rigorous recycling rate calculations, building on the extensive expertise, knowhow and tools of classical minerals, and metallurgical processing. Process simulation and design tools such as the commercial HSC Sim software are applied to quantify critical DfR rules for a particular product as well as to quantify the recycling rates of all materials and elements in a product. The ten DfR rules we have developed for Waste Electric and Electronic Waste recycling in a study performed for NVMP/Wecycle (the Netherlands) are applied to light emitting diode (LED) lamps. The results produced include recycling and recovery rates, as well as recyclate qualities and quantities, and losses and emissions of materials during recycling for various LED lamp redesigns. Metallurgical processing is also briefly discussed, showing that, in many cases, element recoveries are reduced to zero due to product complexity and ppm levels in the products. Simulation models are linked to life cycle assessment (LCA) and exergy, demonstrating how the applied simulation basis provides the detail to innovate the system. In addition, rigorous environmental assessment is a further outcome of the approach, while at the same time revealing the development that has to occur in LCA databases to improve their value for Ecodesign.This paper provides a summary of the progress made over the 8 years of an R&D program that focused on the development of know-how and processes that could result in substantial reduction in net CO2 emission by the steel industry. The processes that were developed covered introduction of renewable carbon and energy sources as well as minimising waste heat from processes. The current status of each of the processes and application areas is provided. The use of biomass-derived fuels and reductants in the ironmaking and steelmaking industry provides a sustainable option for reducing net CO2 emissions at a lower capital cost and technological risk than other breakthrough technologies under development. A key focus of this program has been to partially substitute these fossil-based fuels with renewable carbon (charcoal) from sustainable sources such as plantations of biomass species or forest wastes. Raw biomass is unsuitable for applications in ironmaking and steelmaking and should be converted into charcoal (char) through a pyrolysis process before use. A new pyrolysis process which operates continuously and autogenously has been developed and piloted. The biomass-derived chars and hydrocarbon fuels have great potential in lowering the net CO2 emissions of integrated (BF-BOF route) steel plants. Life cycle assessment has quantified the potential reduction in net CO2 emissions and covers cradle to gate, including plantation, harvesting, transport, pyrolysis and use of chars and bio-oil products. The properties of chars produced by biomass pyrolysis can be tailored to each of the several applications proposed (sintering solid fuel, cokemaking blend component, blast furnace tuyere injectant, liquid steel recarburiser, etc.), thus resulting in optimal performance and greater value-in-use of the char. Our economic analysis has made allowance for such value-in-use in applications, particularly as a replacement for BF pulverised coal injection. This analysis shows that key factors influencing the economics are the net cost of producing charcoal from biomass, selection of pyrolysis technology, value of the pyrolysis by-products, as well as the value-in-use for the charcoal. Dry slag granulation (DSG) has the potential to make a fundamental change in slag treatment and deliver a more sustainable alternative compared with the conventional water granulation process. The DSG process not only saves valuable water resources and reduces sulphurous emissions, but it may also recover a large amount of the high-grade heat in molten slag so to reduce greenhouse gas emission. CSIRO has been working on the development of a novel DSG process, integrated with heat recovery, since 2002 and has made significant progress in process design and optimisation based on process modelling, laboratory investigations, extensive pilot plant trials and characterisation of the solidified product granules.Where urban planning is used to promote environmental sustainability, it has traditionally focused on reducing emissions from housing and traffic. However, cities are increasingly being recognized as consumption centers of the global economy, as the origin of demand, and as the point of termination for complex economic supply chains. Based on results produced by a hybrid life-cycle assessment model, which attributed the end-to-end emissions of supply chains to end users, consumption that is not related to housing or ground transportation was found to account for 30% of regional greenhouse gas emissions on average. In highly urbanized areas, the figure was even higher, at 45%. Furthermore, a literature review indicated that most environmental assessment tools for local city-level and subcity-level urban planning are neither able to identify the environmental impacts of personal consumption nor the relationships between urban structures and personal consumption. Thus, this study concludes that there is an apparent gap between the needs and the means of the regional environmental management of urban areas. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.A life-cycle assessment framework was used to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with processing, producing, and marketing three novel value-added bioproducts, intended as substitutes for peat growing media and soil amendments, namely: dried composted forestry bark (DCFB); dehydrated topdressing (DTD); and organic bio-fertilizer (OBF). Total cost of processing and producing the final bioproducts ($ t(-1)) was highest for OBF and lowest for DCFB. Environmental and ecological impacts were quantified and compared using indicators commonly used in the scholarly literature to capture global warming, and human and eco-toxicity impacts. Global warming impacts (measured in terms of total CO2-equivalent of dehydrated final bioproduct) were highest for OBF, followed by DTD, and then DCFB. Among the human and eco-toxicity indicators considered, NOx emissions were highest, followed by SO2, and lowest for CO emissions, for all three bioproducts.Food security (FS) is a function of food availability, accessibility, stability and utilization. Food value chains (FVCs) are part of the food system and are characterized by five main components: natural resources, food production, processing, markets and consumption. Many methods are available to assess single FVC components, but few cover a series of FVC components. This paper introduces an integrated research framework which combines both qualitative and quantitative methodologies across a generic FVC. Furthermore, this approach provides mechanisms to identify the contribution to FS of each component in the FVC. The methodology uses an FVC as an analytical framework within which to assess FS in a systematic approach. Starting with a working scenario, each tool was evaluated according to its potential to assess FS indicators in different components, and then classified according to its temporal and spatial scales. The advantages, challenges and limitations of this conceptual approach are evaluated and discussed.Building-Integrated (BI) solar thermal are systems which are integrated into the building, are a new tendency in the building sector and they provide multiple advantages in comparison with the Building-Added (BA) solar thermal configurations. The present investigation is a critical review about Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) studies of solar systems. Emphasis is given on the BI solar thermal installations. Studies about BA configurations and systems which produce electrical (or electrical/thermal) energy are also presented in order to provide a more complete overview of the literature. The influence of the BI solar thermal systems on building environmental profile is also examined. Critical issues such as ongoing standardization and environmental indicators are discussed. The results reveal that there is a gap in the field of LCA about real BI solar thermal (and solar thermal/electrical) installations. Thus, there is a need for more LCA studies which examine the BI solar thermal system itself and/or in conjunction with the building. Active systems which could provide energy for the building would be interesting to be studied. Investigations about the influence of the BI solar thermal systems on building life-cycle performance could also provide useful information in the frame of a more sustainable built environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the current paper is to discuss the sustainability aspect of biorefinery systems with focus on biomass supply chains, processing of biomass feedstocks in biorefinery platforms and sustainability assessment methodologies. From the stand point of sustainability, it is important to optimize the agricultural production system and minimize the related environmental impacts at the farming system level. These impacts are primarily related to agri-chemical inputs and the related undesired environmental emissions and to the repercussions from biomass production. At the same time, the biorefineries need a year-round supply of biomass and about 40-60% of the total operating cost of a typical biorefinery is related to the feedstocks chosen, and thus highlights on the careful prioritization of feedstocks mainly based on their economic and environmental loadings. Regarding the processing in biorefinery platforms, chemical composition of biomasses is important. Biomasses with higher concentrations of cellulose and hemicelluloses compared to lignin are preferred for bioethanol production in the lignocellulosic biorefinery, since the biodegradability of cellulose is higher than lignin. A green biorefinery platform enables the extraction of protein from grasses, producing an important alternative to importing protein sources for food products and animal feed, while also allowing processing of residues to deliver bioethanol. Currently, there are several approaches to integrate biorefinery platforms, which are aimed to enhance their economic and environmental sustainability. Regarding sustainability assessment, the complexities related to the material flows in a biorefinery and the delivery of alternative biobased products means dealing with multiple indicators in the decision-making process to enable comparisons of alternatives. Life Cycle Assessment is regarded as one of the most relevant tools to assess the environmental hotspots in the biomass supply chains, at processing stages and also to support in the prioritization of any specific biobased products and the alternatives delivered from biorefineries. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global container port authorities worldwide are competing increasingly to improve the throughput of containers, and to enhance performance improvement, which has resulted in port reform since the 1980s to gain a competitive advantage. Because port reforms in various countries have unique motivations, incentives, and goals, no consensus has been reached regarding the relationship between port governance and related performance. Therefore, various port authorities may adopt diverse models according to their respective operating conditions and constraints. To avoid the indecisive argument of effectiveness when conducting port reform, it may be sound practice to conduct situational analysis by introducing organizational life cycle theory to present the negative factors of a "declining" organization that must urgently be reconstructed and introduced to new revitalization measures. The port reform case in Taiwan demonstrates that organizational life cycle analysis can be employed as an alternative approach to gaining a thorough understanding of the importance of this reform in relation to port personnel. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis was carried out to evaluate the environmental performance related to a corn starch wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) with simultaneous microbial oil production in Shandong, China, compared against a non-oil producing WWTP. The software GaBi 5.43 was employed for the LCA analysis. Applying an attributional modeling LCA the results showed that the WWTP, despite removing high concentrations of organic matter from the wastewater and being economically feasible by the production of crude bio-oil, has 2330% increased emissions related to energy consumption into the air compared to a non-oil production process. Taking in consideration an estimated activated sludge WWT and anaerobic digester process, the conventional process would have higher GHG emissions. With the LCA results, a consequential modeling LCA taking corn stover biomass as renewable energy source in a direct-fire system was proposed. It showed that corn stover biomass has the potential to mitigate the high emissions to the air due to the abundant available resources near the plant location. Global and regional normalization references were also used to represent the real impact of the LCA results. This study not only revealed an environmental evaluation of the current wastewater microbial oil production technology, but it also helped to identify process bottlenecks and the use of renewable energy opportunities which should receive specific research efforts to make this process environmentally sustainable. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.In this paper, the life cycle environmental performance of miscanthus gasification for electricity production in Denmark is evaluated and compared with that of direct combustion and anaerobic digestion. Furthermore, the results obtained are compared to those of natural gas to assess the potential of miscanthus as an energy source. Our results indicate that production of 1 kWh electricity from miscanthus via gasification leads to a global warming potential (100-year GWP) of 26 g and 296 g CO2e, without and with consideration of CO2 emissions from indirect land use change respectively. For other impact categories, the production results in non-renewable energy use of 0.6 MJ primary, acidification of 1.6 g SO2e, eutrophication of 7.8 g NO3e and respiratory inorganics of 0.1 g PM2.5e. Of the three alternatives, gasification is found to have the best performance in all impact categories considered, with the exception of nonrenewable energy use where anaerobic digestion performs best. Our results also show that replacing natural gas with miscanthus reduces global warming and non-renewable energy use. The results of the study are region-specific, i. e., valid for Denmark, but we believe that the general conclusions are applicable to those regions/ areas with similar conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper offers a systematic review of the literature of the last 15 years, which applies economic analysis and theories to the issue of combustion of solid waste. Waste incineration has attracted the interest of economists in the first place concerning the comparative assessment of waste management options, with particular reference to external costs and benefits. A second important field of applied economic research concerns the market failures associated with the provision of thermal treatment of waste, that justify some deviation from the standard competitive market model. Our analysis discusses the most robust achievements and the more controversial areas. All in all, the economic perspective seems to confirm the desirability of assigning a prominent role to thermal treatments in an integrated waste management strategy. Probably the most interesting original contribution it has to offer concerns the refusal of categorical assumptions and too rigid priority ladders, emphasizing instead the need to consider site-specific circumstances that may favor one or another solution. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used extensively within the recent decade to evaluate the environmental performance of thermal Waste-to-Energy (WtE) technologies: incineration, co-combustion, pyrolysis and gasification. A critical review was carried out involving 250 individual case-studies published in 136 peer-reviewed journal articles within 1995 and 2013. The studies were evaluated with respect to critical aspects such as: (i) goal and scope definitions (e.g. functional units, system boundaries, temporal and geographic scopes), (ii) detailed technology parameters (e.g. related to waste composition, technology, gas cleaning, energy recovery, residue management, and inventory data), and (iii) modeling principles (e.g. energy/mass calculation principles, energy substitution, inclusion of capital goods and uncertainty evaluation). Very few of the published studies provided full and transparent descriptions of all these aspects, in many cases preventing an evaluation of the validity of results, and limiting applicability of data and results in other contexts. The review clearly suggests that the quality of LCA studies of WtE technologies and systems including energy recovery can be significantly improved. Based on the review, a detailed overview of assumptions and modeling choices in existing literature is provided in conjunction with practical recommendations for state-of-the-art LCA of Waste-to-Energy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study aims to promote a methodological scheme to combine the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to tourism activity in order to characterize environmental sustainability for a defined area of concentrated tourism (DACT). The methodological framework is demonstrated in the prevalent tourism destination of Northern Greece, Chalkidiki. The approach puts forward the tourism environmental composite indicator (TECI) which is analytically defined, mathematically formulated and finally implemented for the case under study. TECI provides the basis for a comparative analysis for typical all-sized hotel categories in terms of their combined environmental pressure. Apart from energy and water consumption and waste generation, the presented scheme establishes links with life cycle assessment (LCA) in order to include estimations of carbon footprint (CO2-eq) for hotels' accommodation and transport, embedded in the TECI concept. A questionnaire for hoteliers was designed for the above purposes, and was used as input, among other data, to the overall methodological approach. The hotel managers gave their feedback via a face-to-face interview. Different normalized key performance indicators, i.e., pressure per m(2), pressure per room, pressure per guest night are combined in one single composite indicator. The relative significance of each environmental pressure considered is realized by embedding weighting factors in the TECI mathematical formulation. To demonstrate the methodology TECI provides a comparative analysis for typical all-sized hotel categories in Chalkidiki and concludes with characterizing the level of the environmental sustainability as very poor. The results provide a rich insight into the trade-offs/synergies between the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to tourism activity. The work presented adds up to the low number of respective implementations found in the literature, especially by combining the theoretical background of environmental indicators with LCA. Last but not least, the identification of environmental degradation "hot spots" is realized in order to provide insights for sustainable tourism practices to stakeholders of the tourism industry and highlight insights for strategic governance and policy modeling for the area under consideration. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within a life cycle assessment (LCA), normalization is an essential part for interpretation. In Europe, only the European Union normalization factors (EU NFs), with 2000 as the reference year, are available for LCA practitioners, although they work on a regional level. The hypothesis of this research was based on the assumption that some regional NFs deviate from the EU NFs due to unique regional profiles, or because of previously omitted or generalized human impact. In this particular case study set in Slovenia has been tested. By working on the ReCiPe 1.08 life cycle impact assessment methodology, 18 impact categories were investigated, and an additional 3 were added: electromagnetic radiation, light pollution and electric use. To meet practitioners' needs, the most up-to-date inventory data was used with the reference years of 2007-2012. Out of 440 environmental interventions that were investigated, 139 had no characterization factors (CFs), 97 were estimated using machine learning and 42 had to be omitted. The final result confirmed our hypothesis. Twenty NFs were compared with the EU NFs, and the results have shown that on average, the NFs differ by a factor of 9.76 (median = 1.65). The reasons for the high deviation are due to natural land transformation, and ionising radiation, toxicological and ecotoxicological impact categories; where there are major data gaps in the CFs. The primary concern of the research was data availability for toxicological and ecotoxicological parameters for toxicity-related emissions, and the fact that original CFs covered only 50.25% of plant protection products used in Slovenia. Toxicological and ecotoxicological uncertainties were illustrated by comparing four different results. Future studies should be focused on the use of machine learning to provide the next generation of CFs and to go beyond the CFs' damage-oriented assessment. Remediation should be the new endpoint category and its units should be joules. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, the technical effectiveness of solar cooling and heating was investigated for typical low-rise residential building in the subtropical Hong Kong. Since water heating was required for domestic hot water supply rather than space heating, a separate or an integrated provision of solar cooling and heating could be considered. In the separate provision, cooling was handled by an independent solar absorption air-conditioning system, while water heating was offered by a packaged solar thermal collector already equipped with a storage tank. In the integrated provision, all the solar collectors and a centralized hot water storage tank were collectively applied for both driving the absorption chiller and generating domestic hot water. Through year-round dynamic simulation, it was found that the integrated provision could have annual primary energy saving of 13.5% against the separate provision. The effectiveness of the integrated provision was further verified through two energy-saving scenarios, with energy reduction by 17.7% and 18.0% correspondingly as compared to the separate provision. Under the synergistic effect of centralized thermal harness and storage, the integrated solar cooling and heating is more appropriate for typical low-rise residential application in Hong Kong. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A new approach for quantifying the net environmental impact of a community of interrelated products is demonstrated for consumer electronics owned by an average U.S. household over a 15-year period (1992-2007). This consumption-weighted life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology accounts for both product consumption (number of products per household) and impact (cumulative energy demand (MJ) and greenhouse gas emissions (MT CO2 eq) per product), analyzed using a hybrid LCA framework. Despite efficiency improvements in individual devices from 1992 to 2007, the net impact of the entire product community increased, due primarily to increasing ownership and usage. The net energy impact for the product community is significant, nearly 30% of the average gasoline use in a U.S. passenger vehicle in 2007. The analysis points to a large contribution by legacy products (cathode ray tube televisions and desktop computers), due to historically high consumption rates, although impacts are beginning to shift to smaller mobile devices. This method is also applied to evaluate prospective intervention strategies, indicating that environmental impact can be reduced by strategies such as lifespan extension or energy efficiency, but only when applied to all products owned, or by transforming consumption trends toward fewer, highly multifunctional products.Agricultural land use is a main driver of global biodiversity loss. The assessment of land use impacts in decision-support tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) requires spatially explicit models, but existing approaches are either not spatially differentiated or modeled at very coarse scales (e.g., biomes or ecoregions). In this paper, we develop a high-resolution (900 m) assessment method for land use impacts on biodiversity based on habitat suitability models (HSM) of mammal species. This method considers potential land use effects on individual species, and impacts are weighted by the species conservation status and global rarity. We illustrate the method using a case study of crop production in East Africa, but the underlying HSMs developed by the Global Mammals Assessment are available globally. We calculate impacts of three major export crops and compare the results to two previously developed methods (focusing on local and regional impacts, respectively) to assess the relevance of the methodological innovations proposed in this paper. The results highlight hotspots of product-related biodiversity impacts that help characterize the links among agricultural production, consumption, and biodiversity loss.Green product development has become a key strategic consideration for many companies due to regulatory requirements and the public awareness of environmental protection. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular tool to measure the environmental impact of new product development. Nevertheless, it is often difficult to conduct a traditional LCA at the design phase due to uncertain and/or unknown data. This research adopts the concept of LCA and introduces a comprehensive method that integrates Fuzzy Extent Analysis and Fuzzy TOPSIS for the assessment of environmental performance with respect to different product designs. Methodologically, it exhibits the superiority of the hierarchical structure and the easiness of TOPSIS implementation whilst capturing the vagueness of uncertainty. A case study concerning a consumer electronic product was presented, and data collected through a questionnaire survey were used for the design evaluation. The approach presented in this research is expected to help companies decrease development lead time by screening out poor design options. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Buildings are of great importance in terms of consumption of energy all over the world. Building sector has a significant influence over the total natural resource consumption and is significant contributors of greenhouse gases. Exergy-based methods in assessing the performance of buildings have become very popular in recent years. In this context, conventional exergoenvironmental methods include exergy and life cycle analysis and are considered to be very reliable to evaluate environmental impacts of any system. Advanced exergoenvironmental analysis is a combination of advanced exergy analysis and life cycle assessment. This study deals with determining the environmental effects of a building heating system at various stages. Advanced exergoenvironmental method is applied to the system from the primary energy transformation to the environment. Using advanced exergoenvironmental analysis relations, between the components and the stages (endogenous, exogenous parts), the improvement potentials (avoidable and unavoidable parts) and the advanced exergoenvironmental rates for the system stages are determined. A parametric study is undertaken to investigate effects of the environment temperature on exergy destruction rates and the environment temperature on efficiencies. Based on the environmental temperature, a sensitivity analysis is also performed for exergy destruction rates and efficiencies. Results show that the exogenous environmental impact of the system is 68.6% while the avoidable exergoenvironmental impact is only 7%. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The present study deals with the management of end-of-life copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film photovoltaic (PV) panels. We quantitatively compare the impacts and environmental weak points of the recycling processes of such panels, and their disposal in a landfill site. Two scenarios of recycling are considered: conventional and innovative. In the conventional recycling, the modules are crushed, glass is recovered, ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) is sent to thermal treatment to gain energy and the residual material is disposed of in a landfill site. Conversely, the innovative recycling option goes beyond conventional technologies and it allows to recover also selenium, indium and gallium from the CIGS panels, and tellurium from the CdTe panels. The potential impacts on the environment are similar for the conventional recycling processes of both the typologies of PV panels. Conversely, the innovative recycling of the CdTe panels creates a net production of environmental credits thanks to the recovery of valuable materials. The innovative recycling of CIGS panels has a higher impact than the recycling of CdTe panels (e.g. 2.5 vs 0.7 kg CO2-eq., respectively, for global warming potential). In any case, the disposal of end-of-life panels is not advantageous for the environment according to life cycle assessment. Data obtained with the recycling processes currently available suggest that the innovative recycling is environmentally beneficial only for the CdTe panels, due to the very low content of valuable elements in the CIGS panels. More effort should be directed to the development of a pre-treatment that can effectively concentrate the valuable elements. Overall, the results of this study give a quantitative basis to support the recycling of PV panels and the recovery of secondary raw materials like tellurium, indium, gallium and selenium. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Chemical pollution is, globally, a serious problem that can be induced e.g. by pesticide usage. Reduction of health and environmental risks of pesticides is a goal in the implementation of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) via the EU agricultural strategy. In this study, potential environmental impacts of agricultural plant protection products (PPP) were studied, in Finland, using freshwater ecotoxicity impact, in the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) approach, as an indicator. Potential impacts of these chemicals were studied between 2000 and 2011, and substance sale data (active ingredient kg/year) was surveyed by the Finnish Chemical and Safety Agency. The most sold agricultural PPPs in Finland are herbicides. Total sales amounted to 1707.5 tonnes in 2011, which means 0.7 kg/ha, if counted for the total agricultural land of the country. PPP emissions from field application to the different environmental compartments were modelled on the average Finnish agriculture circumstances with PestLCI. The emissions were converted into impacts using the life cycle inventory assessment (LCIA), using characterisation factors from USEtox (TM). The model was customised to fit Finnish regional environmental conditions by obtaining the relevant parameters from GIS. According to the results, ecotoxic pressure decreased over the period, mainly because of the decreased sales of the main hazardous substance fluazinam. Single very hazardous substances had a strong contribution tothe total impact. No correlation between the sales amount and ecotoxic pressure was found, thus PPP risks cannot be indicated based only on their sale amount. The main contributors to the total potential ecotoxic impact were fungicides, and the most hazardous substances were fluazinam (used on potato), aclonifen (used mostly on peas, carrot and onion), methiocarb (strawberries), pendimethalin (carrot, onion), and prochloraz (cereals, oil seeds). In conclusion, the first priority in the usage of this LCA approach is to identify environmental impacts of single hazardous PPPs and according to that to develop environmental management of plant protection and, if needed, build up restrictions which are specifically directed to causes of impacts. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Irregularities in grape yields can often affect wine production both quantitatively and qualitatively. Hence concentration systems, such as those based on reverse osmosis, are often employed to overcome such problems. The present study illustrates the results of a life cycle assessment approach implemented as means to improve the existing performance and sustainability of a specific industrial reverse osmosis concentration system used in a southern Italian winery to concentrate a specific must. The application of lifecycle approaches to reverse osmosis must concentration is sparsely documented in scientific literature with little or no specific data. The life cycle assessment of this study, developed using large amounts of inventory data and other novel information gathered from industrial testing, has highlighted the use phase as the most impacting one due to the energy consumption during the concentration operations and due to the membrane cleaning operations. In view of these results, the machine setup was improved and tested by varying the feed-flow velocity and the resulting new setup re-assessed via a life cycle approach. The final results exhibit the relationship between permeate production and feed flow velocity that does not appear to have been sufficiently investigated in other work found in literature regarding wine must. Specifically, the curve fitted to the experimental readings indicates that the maximum performance of the reverse osmosis system under analysis is achieved with a feed-flow velocity of approximately 2 m/s. Furthermore the new optimised setup of the machine lowered the environmental profile of all impact categories within a range from a minimum of 25.3% to a maximum of 26.7%, due to lower energy consumption, higher permeate production and reduced cleaning operations for the membranes. Concurrently to the environmental optimisation a technical improvement was identified, namely the substitution of the over-dimensioned piston pump, together with a potential reduction of purchase, running and labour costs of the optimised reverse osmosis system. Overall the study highlights the utility of analysing industrial machinery, such as reverse osmosis must concentration systems, from a life cycle analysis perspective, that can bring about not only environmental sustainability improvements but also technical and economic developments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The central Fars province is the main tomato producer region in Southwest Iran. This study was undertaken to evaluate the energy consumption patterns of tomato production, corresponding GHG emissions, and relationships between inputs and output by a Cobb-Douglass econometric model. The changes in GHG emissions were also investigated to display if the result is in favor of the environment as well as economy. The non-hierarchical cluster analysis determined three groups of tomato farmers with respect to the energy inputs and tomato yield; C1, C2 and C3 including 90, 46 and 20 farmers, respectively. The findings showed that around 40-60 GJ/ha energy is needed to produce 54-70 ton/ha tomato. Although, the C1 farmers consumed around 20 Gllha higher energy than C3, they also had a higher output input energy ratio; 1.15 and 1.12, respectively. The GHG emission index (I-GHG) disclosed that energy efficiency indices cannot represent the environmental risks of energy inputs since some higher energy efficient groups also emitted higher carbon. The econometric analysis revealed that some energy inputs significantly correlates with the yields of C1 and C2 farmers. The highest marginal physical productivities (MPPs), however, indicated that tomato yield is most sensitive to machinery and chemicals energy inputs in the C1 and C2, respectively, which should be considered first to increase in order to achieve productivity enhancement. The result displayed that higher energy consumption according to the econometric models and MPPs may lead to much higher CO2 emissions compared to the current average emissions particularly when MPP is low. Hence, it is suggested that production types with the highest MPPs should be considered if change in energy inputs is desired. In addition, it is recommended that "green econometric" models are needed to evaluate balanced energy use consumption together with other agronomical, economical and the environmental sustainability impact assessment criteria. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of the paper was to evaluate the environmental burden of the organic waste management systems implemented in Umbria region in Italy, in order to provide useful information for taking strategic decisions aimed at the improvement and optimization. The two most widespread scenarios were analyzed: source-segregated collection followed by organic fertilizer production and not-differentiated collection followed by mechanical and biological treatment and disposal in landfill of the biostabilized material. The environmental performance was assessed through Life Cycle Assessment methodology, assuming one ton of organic waste as functional unit. Most of data for life cycle inventory were provided by actual facilities while background data were obtained from Ecolnvent database. The alternative scenarios were compared through the IMPACT 2002+ method and the assessment was carried out on both midpoint and endpoint levels. Results showed that the landfilling of the undifferentiated organic waste has the least impact on the analyzed impact categories, except on the Global Warming, mostly due to the uncollected methane released by the landfill. As regards the aerobic composting of the source-segregated organic fraction, the efforts to reduce the impact should be mainly focused on the reduction of the air emissions (hydrogen sulfide, particulate, ammonia and NMVOC) from the biostabilization process. Furthermore the sensitivity analysis indicated that the increase of the biogas collection efficiency could significantly improve the performance of the not-differentiated collection scenario. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is used as pigment in a wide variety of domestic and industrial applications, and is becoming an increasingly valuable nanomaterial. TiO2 is manufactured by the traditional sulfate process or high temperature chloride process. Several hydrometallurgical processes for manufacturing TiO2 have recently emerged to reduce the environmental impact of TiO2 production. A new process is reported that features alkaline roasting of titania slag (ARTS), with subsequent washing, leaching, solvent extraction, hydrolysis, and calcination stages, and implements the recycling and regeneration of alkaline and acid process streams to minimize waste generation. A virtual ARTS processing plant is described in detail and is used to conduct an LCA comparison with the sulfate, chloride, and Altairnano processes. The cumulative energy demand (CED) and total CO2 emissions for the ARTS process are 92.6 MJ/kg TiO2 and 7.47 kg CO2/kg TiO2, respectively, which compares favorably with the traditional and Altairnano processes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) technology innovation is strongly related to Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management strategies. It does not only effect the amount and speed of WEEE generation through products replacement, but it also exerts overall long-term impacts on the environmental performance of EEE system. Therefore, those impacts should be evaluated quantitatively. A concept framework is developed and applied in the case study of display product technology innovation, and a Multi-Life Cycle Assessment method is proposed to evaluate the environmental impacts of technology innovation on multi-generation systems. The study concludes that constant EEE technology innovation along with frequent product replacement may lead to acute fluctuations of WEEE generation and significant multi-generation products system environmental impacts. Hence, the product-oriented environmental policies, including waste management policies, should take technology innovation into consideration. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To reduce the environmental impacts of civil explosive production, it is essential to adopt a life-cycle perspective. The main goal of this article is to present a comprehensive Life-Cycle Assessment of civil explosive production and assess the environmental impacts of five alternative explosive compositions in order to identify the compositions with lower impacts and opportunities for improvement. A detailed inventory was implemented, based on data collected from a specific European company. Three complementary Life-Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods were used to assess primary energy, six environmental impacts (CML method) and three toxicity impacts (USEtox method). The results obtained with the CML and USEtox were compared with a recent LCIA method (ReCiPe), aiming at improving the robustness of our conclusions and understanding the differences between LCIA methods. The results showed that the main contributor for the ten impact categories is the emulsion explosive composition, mainly due to ammonium nitrate production. The comparison of five alternative emulsion explosive compositions showed that the inclusion of sodium nitrate leads to a reduction in impacts. A contribution analysis carried out with ReCiPe provided similar conclusions with those calculated with CML; however ReCiPe and USEtox calculated different toxicology impacts, due to different substances coverage and characterization factors. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Brazilian ceramic industry is responsible for providing more than 90% of the roof coverings and wall bricks in the country, producing more than 15 billion pieces per year. In order to compare the life cycle impacts of ceramic versus concrete roofing tiles and identify potential improvements in ceramic products, we carried out a life cycle impact assessment of both products. This study aimed to compare the life cycle impacts of ceramic and concrete roof coverage over 1 m(2), with an assumed life time of 20 years in Brazil. Nine different sensitivity analyses were carried out followed by a Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis to verify the robustness of the study. The results show that ceramic tiles appear to have less impact than concrete tiles on Climate Change, Resource Depletion and Water Withdrawal, while for the remaining damage categories, Human Health and Ecosystem Quality, the difference between the two alternatives was too low to be considered significant. The use of wood chips led to significant impacts, mainly related to respiratory inorganics. Assessment of the data quality identified that the data is of generally high or acceptable quality. The sensitivity analysis and uncertainty assessment show that the conclusions are robust. (C) 2014 European Commission, Joint Research Centre. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The environmental profile of plasma assisted methane reforming for the production of synthesis gas was researched. A miniaturized gliding arc discharge reactor was applied for the partial oxidation of methane in this study. The best operational condition regarding to the lowest CO2-eq emission was screened out. Studied were the global warming potential, the acidification potential, the eutrophication potential, the human toxicity, the NO photochemical oxidant creation potential, and the ozone depletion potential. The electricity consumption was the main contribution to the four of these six impacts. A sensitivity research of different energy resources of electricity and electricity mix of different countries was carried out in order to decrease the emission caused by the electricity consumption. Then, the conventional steam reforming was benchmarked to the plasma reforming process, which shows that the global warming potential of the plasma reforming is comparably on the same level as the conventional reforming only in the case when the electricity is generated from renewable or clean energy. So, the environmental impact research of the plasma assisted methane reforming in lab scale shed light on its industrial application from the viewpoint of the environmental profile. In order to decrease the emissions from electricity production, it's recommended that such plasma plant should be built close to power plants from the renewable or clean energy. The compactness of plasma plants due to their expected process intensification would facilitate such distributed approach, while conventional reforming plants are very large and need Verbund-type integration into ChemParks. Finally, another option to make the plasma reforming process more energy efficient and green is proposed which is to combine the plasma reforming unit with Solid Oxide Fuel Cells. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Water contamination by organic compounds is a ubiquitous problem, requiring their removal to meet stringent water quality standards. This paper presents for the first time the life cycle environmental impacts and economic costs of a new water treatment technology for removal of organic compounds known as the 'Arvia' process. The impacts and costs are compared with the widely-used granulated activated carbon (GAC) process. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to estimate the environmental impacts and the economic analysis is based on the operating costs. For the GAC system, two scenarios are considered: no regeneration of the spent GAC which is landfilled (GAC-1) and 90% regeneration with 10% of fresh GAC added to replace losses (GAC-2). The LCA results suggest that the Arvia process has lower environmental impacts in comparison to both GAC scenarios for at least seven out of 11 impacts considered. Relative to the GAC-1 scenario, Arvia has 70% lower global warming, acidification, eutrophication, depletion of fossil resources, human, freshwater and marine toxicity. Compared to GAC-2, the reductions in these impacts range between 5% and 50%. However, GAC-2 has lower depletion of elements and ozone layer, photochemical smog and terrestrial toxicity than the Arvia process. The results also show that Arvia has slightly higher operational costs than GAC-2 but significantly lower than GAC-1. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Nanotechnologies are expected to hold considerable potential for the development of new materials in the construction sector. Up to now the environmental benefits and risks of products containing manufactured nanomaterials (MNM) have been quantified only to a limited extent. This study aims to assess the potential environmental, health and safety impacts of coatings containing MNM using Life-cycle assessment: Do paints containing MNM result in a better environmental performance than paints not containing MNM? The study shows that the results depend on a number of factors: (i) The MNM have to substitute an (active) ingredient of the initial paint composition and not simply be an additional ingredient. (ii) The new composition has to extend the lifetime of the paint for such a time period that the consumption of paint along the life cycle of a building is reduced. (iii) Releases of MNM have to be reduced to the lowest level possible (in particular by dumping unused paint together with the packaging). Only when all these boundary conditions are fulfilled, which is the case only for one of the three paint systems examined, is an improved environmental performance of the MNM-containing paint possible for the paint compositions examined in this study.This article presents agent-based modeling (ABM) as a novel approach for consequential life cycle assessment (C-LCA) of large scale policies, more specifically mobility-related policies. The approach is validated at the Luxembourgish level (as a first case study). The agent-based model simulates the car market (sales, use, and dismantling) of the population of users in the period 2013-2020, following the implementation of different mobility policies and available electric vehicles. The resulting changes in the car fleet composition as well as the hourly uses of the vehicles are then used to derive consistent LCA results, representing the consequences of the policies. Policies will have significant environmental consequences: when using ReCiPe2008, we observe a decrease of global warming, fossil depletion, acidification, ozone depletion, and photochemical ozone formation and an increase of metal depletion, ionizing radiations, marine eutrophication, and particulate matter formation. The study clearly shows that the extrapolation of LCA results for the circulating fleet at national scale following the introduction of the policies from the LCAs of single vehicles by simple up-scaling (using hypothetical deployment scenarios) would be flawed. The inventory has to be directly conducted at full scale and to this aim, ABM is indeed a promising approach, as it allows identifying and quantifying emerging effects while modeling the Life Cycle Inventory of vehicles at microscale through the concept of agents.Even though the importance of ecosystems in sustaining all human activities is well-known, methods for sustainable engineering fail to fully account for this role of nature. Most methods account for the demand for ecosystem services, but almost none account for the supply. Incomplete accounting of the very foundation of human well-being can result in perverse outcomes from decisions meant to enhance sustainability and lost opportunities for benefiting from the ability of nature to satisfy human needs in an economically and environmentally superior manner. This paper develops a framework for understanding and designing synergies between technological and ecological systems to encourage greater harmony between human activities and nature. This framework considers technological systems ranging from individual processes to supply chains and life cycles, along with corresponding ecological systems at multiple spatial scales ranging from local to global. The demand for specific ecosystem services is determined from information about emissions and resource use, while the supply is obtained from information about the capacity of relevant ecosystems. Metrics calculate the sustainability of individual ecosystem services at multiple spatial scales and help define necessary but not sufficient conditions for local and global sustainability. Efforts to reduce ecological overshoot encourage enhancement of life cycle efficiency, development of industrial symbiosis, innovative designs and policies, and ecological restoration, thus combining the best features of many existing methods. Opportunities for theoretical and applied research to make this framework practical are also discussed.The healthcare sector is a driver of economic growth in the U.S., with spending on healthcare in 2012 reaching $2.8 trillion, or 17% of the U.S. gross domestic product, but it is also a significant source of emissions that adversely impact environmental and public health. The current state of the healthcare industry offers significant opportunities for environmental efficiency improvements, potentially leading to reductions in costs, resource use, and waste without compromising patient care. However, limited research exists that can provide quantitative, sustainable solutions. The operating room is the most resource-intensive area of a hospital, and surgery is therefore an important focal point to understand healthcare-related emissions. Hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to quantify environmental emissions from four different surgical approaches (abdominal, vaginal, laparoscopic, and robotic) used in the second most common major procedure for women in the U.S., the hysterectomy. Data were collected from 62 cases of hysterectomy. Life cycle assessment results show that major sources of environmental emissions include the production of disposable materials and single-use surgical devices, energy used for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, and anesthetic gases. By scientifically evaluating emissions, the healthcare industry can strategically optimize its transition to a more sustainable system.With continuing growth in the reverse osmosis water treatment industry and the finite lifespan of the membranes, the number of membrane modules requiring disposal is expected to drastically increase over time. This study aimed to provide a quantitative assessment of the environmental impact from membrane manufacturing and its impact on the desalination process, using the tool of life cycle assessment. The results showed no significant difference between the manufacturing of 16" and 8" elements, and that module fabrication contributed to less than 1% of the CO2-e emissions for the production of potable water from seawater. The study also looked at the environmental impact of a number of proposed end-of-life disposal options for membranes within the context of the Australian desalination industry. The results of the study show that membrane reuse over one year is more environmentally favourable to landfill disposal, regardless of the transportation distance required. However, in terms of direct reduction of waste to landfill, incineration provided the greatest benefit, at the expense of increased greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, this study provides detailed quantitative information for membrane users and manufacturers to enhance their decision making process when it comes to end-of-life membrane options. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) and levelised cost (LC) analysis of two scenarios: an open intake scenario in which a seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant employs an open intake and membrane pre-treatment prior to RO, and a beach well scenario in which feedwater is extracted from the subsurface using beach well intake and cartridge filtration prior to RO. In both scenarios, desalination plants with 35,000 m(3)/day capacities were modelled. Results indicate that the beach well intake plant life cycle environmental burdens and LC were as much as 31% and 13% lower respectively, compared with the open intake plant. A detailed contribution analysis revealed that the better environmental performance of the beach well intake plant was significantly influenced by its comparatively low electricity use in the simplified pre-treatment process. The better economic performance of the plant with beach well intake was mostly due to savings in chemical use. The results are based on site specific assumptions. However, the LCA and LC framework developed herein could be used to determine the optimum SWRO seawater intake and pre-treatment configuration at plant sites with different characteristics to those modelled herein, provided sufficient data is available. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Currently biomass gasification-exhausted heat power generation technology has received extensive attention all around the world. In this study, life cycle analysis is adopted to evaluate the greenhouse gas impacts of the electricity generation from biomass gasification combined with exhausted heat boiler in China. This paper covers all stages of the system, including the biomass growth, transportation to the plant, construction of the power plant and the biomass gasification to generate electricity. 1 MWh of electricity generating at the power plant was used as functional unit. CO, N(2)0, NOx and dust mainly come from the biomass grown stage. SO2, CH4 and NMVOC mainly release from the electricity generation stage. The transport stage is mainly contributed to the emission of carbohydrates. The total greenhouse gas emissions per MWh electricity output is -112.96 kg CO2-eq./MWh in consideration of the carbon sequestration of corn stover. The usage of fertilizer is found to be the decisive factor of the greenhouse gas emissions of the studied system. The results play an important role on the improvement of the key technologies and reduction of the environment impact.Temporal homogeneity of inventory data is one of the major problems in life cycle assessment (LCA). Addressing temporal homogeneity of life cycle inventory data is important in reducing the uncertainties and improving the reliability of LCA results. This paper attempts to present a critical review and discussion on the fundamental issues of temporal homogeneity in conventional LCA and propose a theoretical framework for temporal discounting in LCA. Theoretical perspectives for temporal discounting in life cycle inventory analysis are discussed first based on the key elements of a scientific mechanism for temporal discounting. Then generic procedures for performing temporal discounting in LCA is derived and proposed based on the nature of the LCA method and the identified key elements of a scientific temporal discounting method. A five-step framework is proposed and reported in details based on the technical methods and procedures needed to perform a temporal discounting in life cycle inventory analysis. Challenges and possible solutions are also identified and discussed for the technical procedure and scientific accomplishment of each step within the framework. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The environmental impacts of rotary kiln incineration, which is widely used in China for treating industrial hazardous waste (IHW), is evaluated in this work through life cycle assessment (LCA). Emissions data of key pollutants, along with energy and material inputs and outputs of rotary kiln incineration, were collected from a commercial-scale operating IHW incineration plant located in Hangzhou city in eastern China, and the corresponding environmental impacts were analyzed based on the LCA model. It is concluded that the IHW incineration process has the greatest impact on human toxicity, followed by global warming. Heavy metals, especially Pb and As, are the main contributors to human toxicity, while CO2 is the main cause of global warming. PCDD/Fs have a relatively small contribution to human toxicity and overall environmental safety. This study has two improvement suggestions based on the assessment results: An energy recovery system and a DeNO(x) system should be added to the IHW incineration process, since the former would reduce the contribution of IHW incineration to global warming, while the latter would enable incineration plants to minimize the emissions of NOx; Fly ash and bottom ash should be stabilized and further treated to mitigate the problems caused by heavy metals.Processed food products present high energy intensity, along with a large amount of food losses and waste. The recovery of residual biomass as integrated renewable energy source could represent an interesting option for the substitution of fossil energy, contributing to the transition of agro-food sector towards a low-carbon economy. Two scenarios were compared, in order to evaluate the impacts of a fossil fuel-based food chain and the potential benefits of the integration of bioenergy production, using peach nectar as case study. In the first scenario, peach nectar is produced, distributed and consumed using fossil energy, while residuals are wasted. In the second scenario, byproducts from the nectar chain are used to produce bioenergy from combustion or anaerobic digestion, which is then consumed to substitute electricity and heat. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) based on the same functional unit was performed. Main results show that, in the conventional scenario, most of the damage derives from land use, especially for sugar and glucose production, from the fossil energy consumption of about 15 MJ l(-1), and the related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 0.91 kg CO2 eq l(-1). Food waste leads to a loss of about 20 kcal l(-1). Bioenergy integration would allow a-13-15% damage reduction, mainly due to the substitution of indirect energy consumption. The effects on human health and ecosystem quality are limited. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper we investigate the influence of fugitive methane emissions from coal, natural gas, and shale gas extraction on the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of fossil fuel power generation through its life cycle. A multiregional hybridized life cycle assessment (LCA) model is used to evaluate several electricity generation technologies with and without carbon dioxide capture and storage. Based on data from the UNFCCC and other literature sources, it is shown that methane emissions from fossil fuel production vary more widely than commonly acknowledged in the LCA literature. This high variability, together with regional disparity in methane emissions, points to the existence of both significant uncertainty and natural variability. The results indicate that the impact of fugitive methane emissions can be significant, ranging from 3% to 56% of total impacts depending on type of technology and region. Total GHG emissions, in CO2-eq./kWh, vary considerably according to the region of the power plant, plant type, and the choice of associated fugitive methane emissions, with values as low as 0.08 kg CO2-eq./kWh and as high as 1.52 kg CO2-eq./kWh. The variability indicates significant opportunities for controlling methane emissions from fuel chains. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Focusing on a timber check dam, this study evaluated the carbon balance in the life cycle of wood, taking into account both carbon emissions and reductions associated with fossil fuel use and carbon stocks in wood and forests. A significant difference can occur because the net carbon balance may be either on the emission side or on the reduction side, depending on the implementation of reforestation after harvesting, the use of forest-residue- and sawmill-residue-based energy, and the difference in the evaluation period. Thus, it is necessary to examine which framework should be used to conduct an evaluation. Post-harvesting reforestation is essential to achieve net carbon emission reduction effects by substituting the concrete check dam with the timber check dam. Then, with the energy use of forest and sawmill residues, the net carbon emission reduction effects per dam can be expected after an evaluation period of 35 years, and 28 t-C/dam of those can be obtained during an evaluation period of 100 years. From mid- to long-term perspectives, carbon emission will be reduced more if the carbon balance of wood and forests is taken into account rather than focusing only on fossil fuel consumption.This study assessed the environmental impacts of recycling the plant nutrients in anaerobically digested food waste as fertilizer in agriculture. This was compared with the impacts of using chemical fertilizer, where the food waste was incinerated, producing heat. The study site was a biogas plant in central Sweden and life cycle assessment methodology was used. The impacts studied were primary energy use, global warming potential (GWP), potential acidification, potential eutrophication, cadmium flow to farmland and use of phosphate rock. Use of digested food waste as fertilizer proved to have larger negative results than use of chemical fertilizer in all categories assessed except use of non-renewable phosphate rock. Sensitivity analyses showed that the scenarios were comparable in terms of primary energy use and better for GWP if some improvements in the anaerobic digestion system were made. However, acidification and eutrophication caused by digestate handling and the cadmium content of digestate should still be considered. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.New and improved Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is being produced every day. With every new product on the market, an older product becomes obsolete. These obsolete products are being added to the world's fastest growing waste stream, ICT electronic waste (e-waste). This is formally recycled in developed countries, stockpiled, landfilled or shipped to developing countries, such as Pakistan, here it is recycled informally through crude processes (e.g. manual dismantling, burning, dumping and dipping in acids to extract gold and other precious metals). This study assessed the social impacts of informal e-waste recycling in Pakistan using data obtained in a detailed on-site inventory of the processes directly involved in informal e-waste recycling. The inventory and assessment were conducted according to United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) guidelines on Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). The results presented in this paper fill an important data gap and can be integrated with data on other stages of ICT product lifecycle to produce a full SLCA of such products. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Transition of the current gasoline-based transportation system into a renewable fuel-based clean vehicle system has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve national energy security. However, the realized net environmental benefit or energy security improvement is tightly linked to the electricity fuel mix (for electric cars and plug-in hybrids) and fueling strategy (for cars using alternative liquid fuels). In addition, different types of transportation fuels have significantly different demands on land resources, both on land type and quantity. For example, biofuel production requires large quantities of agricultural land, while wind farms require land with sufficient wind density. Furthermore, there is substantial regional variation in the quality of necessary resources. Regions with higher wind speeds require less land to produce the same amount of electricity than those with lower wind speed, assuming the same turbine design. Similarly, regions with optimal soil conditions and climate for crop cultivation require less land to produce the same amount of biofuel. To enable comparison of land demand among different fuel choices for clean vehicles, this research provides a county-scale assessment of land demand based on a "per-vehicle-mile-traveled" basis. Potential clean vehicle fuels assessed in this study include ethanol produced from different feedstocks (corn and switchgrass), biodiesel from algae cultivated in open ponds and closed systems, and electricity produced from renewable sources (wind and solar). Our results show that, in general, engineered systems (wind electricity, solar electricity, and biodiesel from closed-system algae) are more land efficient than natural systems (corn ethanol from corn starch and stover, switchgrass ethanol, and biodiesel from open-pond algae). Solar electricity is the dominant regional optimal fuel choice from the land-use perspective for engineered systems while lowland switchgrass ethanol and biodiesel from open-pond algae are the major optimal choices for the natural systems. These results shed light on developing both federal and state level policies to minimize land-use impact for the development of a clean vehicle system. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the present work, different scenarios for the treatment of the organic fraction of municipal waste at regional scale are proposed and assessed by means of LCA. The geographical area under study is Catalonia (Spain). The current Catalan waste management scenario treating 1218 Gg of organic waste is analyzed and compared to a new scenario treating the same amount of waste but fulfilling the European Landfill Directive and the new recently approved Catalan waste management plan. As final disposal (incineration and sanitary landfill) of untreated municipal solid waste is not permitted, the new scenario includes increasing anaerobic digestion treatment of source selected organic fraction of municipal solid waste while maintaining the existing composting plants for this type of waste. Gaseous emissions treatment equipment will be provided when not installed in composting plants. Home composting is also included. Non-source selected organic fraction of municipal solid waste will be treated by composting. Different scenarios for sensitivity analysis have also been proposed dealing with the influence of transport, fugitive methane emissions from anaerobic digestion plants and the use of compost among other issues. The new scenario proposed decreases the impact in five out of the six impact categories studied (from a 49% in eutrophication potential to a 9% in ozone depletion potential). The inclusion of methane fugitive emissions in anaerobic digestion installations in impacts calculation impairs the environmental benefits of this type of treatment facilities (increasing global warming potential value up to a 31%). Improvement of landfill gas collection is of utmost importance in decreasing global warming potential. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Materials and energy used for construction of anaerobic digestion (AD) and windrow composting plants were quantified in detail. The two technologies were quantified in collaboration with consultants and producers of the parts used to construct the plants. The composting plants were quantified based on the different sizes for the three different types of waste (garden and park waste, food waste and sludge from wastewater treatment) in amounts of 10,000 or 50,000 tonnes per year. The AD plant was quantified for a capacity of 80,000 tonnes per year. Concrete and steel for the tanks were the main materials for the AD plant. For the composting plants, gravel and concrete slabs for the pavement were used in large amounts. To frame the quantification, environmental impact assessments (EIAs) showed that the steel used for tanks at the AD plant and the concrete slabs at the composting plants made the highest contribution to Global Warming. The total impact on Global Warming from the capital goods compared to the operation reported in the literature on the AD plant showed an insignificant contribution of 1-2%. For the composting plants, the capital goods accounted for 10-22% of the total impact on Global Warming from composting.The built environment creates significant environmental, economic, and social impacts. In the building construction industry, building designers, contractors, and owners have developed methods to consider costs, but currently have few methods to effectively assess and control a building's life cycle energy and environmental impacts during the design phase. Managing and reducing these environmental impacts during the course of design development requires iterative assessment and rapid information turnaround and decision-making. When left unconsidered, poor environmental design decisions leave potential design revisions and their value unrealized. This research combines life cycle assessment (LCA) and target value design (TVD) to rapidly produce more sustainable building designs in a methodology called sustainable target value (SW) design. The SW design process involves environmental design targets and an SW tool to quantify environmental design performance in an iterative design process. By establishing site-specific sustainability targets and iteratively using the SW tool to assess the impacts of design changes, this research demonstrates that building designs can be improved at the design stage to perform at higher environmental standards than if they are only assessed once design is complete. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents an LCA-based environmental impact assessment model and an evaluation index system for the pre-use phase of buildings using distance-to-target as weightings. Environmental impacts are categorized into three broad categories: ecological damage, natural resources depletion and human health damage, and quantified by three corresponding specific indexes (Ecological Damage Index, Resource Depletion Index and Life Damage Index) at three scales of globe, nation and region. Emission standards of pollutants issued by the government authorities, three resources characteristics of available resource supply capacity and resource demand and resource utilization as well as the remaining life expectancies for different age groups are taken as the targets in weighting definition to reflect the environment protection priorities and public concerns. A residential building is used as a case study to test and validate the presented model. Results indicate that the proposed model and index system can effectively quantify the environmental impacts of new construction projects, and can potentially be used as a tool for construction industry to fit environmental priorities and provide clear implications for practice. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A large proportion of existing buildings require thermal efficiency improvements to the building fabric. One method which can be utilised is external wall insulation. It is important for designers to have a good understanding of the materials that they specify and this includes the initial environmental impacts that occur from extraction, processing and manufacture of insulation. This paper quantifies and compares the environmental impact of three insulation materials: expanded polystyrene, phenolic foam and rockwool insulation. It was found that expanded polystyrene had the lowest environmental impact in fourteen of the sixteen impact categories examined. When applied to a typical dwelling, all three insulation materials demonstrated a net positive benefit over a thirty year life span due to the reduced heating requirements of the building. A study of embodied carbon also included PIR and woodfibre boards. This demonstrated that woodfibre board had the lowest embodied carbon, mainly due to carbon sequestration. Modest savings (e.g. 115 kgCO(2)eq if EPS is used instead of phenolic foam) can be made from insulation choice for a single house but these savings become much more significant if scaled across the large number of UK homes that would benefit from external wall insulation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Integrating occupational safety and health (OSH) into life cycle assessment (LCA) may provide decision makers with insights and opportunities to prevent burden shifting of human health impacts between the nonwork environment and the work environment. We propose an integration approach that uses industry-level work environment characterization factors (WE-CFs) to convert industry activity into damage to human health attributable to the work environment, assessed as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). WE-CFs are ratios of work-related fatal and nonfatal injuries and illnesses occurring in the U.S. worker population to the amount of physical output from U.S. industries; they represent workplace hazards and exposures and are compatible with the life cycle inventory (LCI) structure common to process-based LCA. A proof of concept demonstrates application of the WE-CFs in an LCA of municipal solid waste landfill and incineration systems. Results from the proof of concept indicate that estimates of DALYs attributable to the work environment are comparable in magnitude to DALYs attributable to environmental emissions. Construction and infrastructure-related work processes contributed the most to the work environment DALYs. A sensitivity analysis revealed that uncertainty in the physical output from industries had the most effect on the WE-CFs. The results encourage implementation of WE-CFs in future LCA studies, additional refinement of LCI processes to accurately capture industry outputs, and inclusion of infrastructure-related processes in LCAs that evaluate OSH impacts.Simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) is an attempt to expedite standard LCA methodology. One common simplification is to use secondary databases comprised of results, instead of inventories, from previous LCA studies to avoid data collection and speed up calculations. This article contains an assessment of the depth and variance in such databases, using descriptive analyses and clustering of 2,276 published global warming potential weighted emissions records for agri-food products. Tables with mean and standard deviation for each product were generated and can be used in the future by LCA practitioners. The analysis of the data sets shows that clustering emissions by product name explains 55% of the variance in the database, whereas geographic region and method of production of the material explain only 2%. Significant gaps in the richness and comprehensiveness of databases available are also identified; data unavailability is one of the main reasons for uncertainty. The conclusion is thus that the use of secondary databases looks promising, but there are still challenges to overcome regarding the depth of databases.This article compares climate impacts of two heat-pump systems for domestic heating, that is, energy consumption for space heating of a residential building. Using a life cycle approach, the study compared the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of direct electric heating, a conventional air-source heat pump, and a novel ground-source air heat pump innovated by a citizen user, to assess whether such user innovation holds benefit. The energy use of the heat pumps was modeled at six temperature intervals based on duration curves of outdoor temperature. Additionally, two heat pump end-of-life scenarios were analyzed. Probabilistic uncertainty analysis was applied using a Monte Carlo simulation. The results indicated that, in ideal conditions, that is, assuming perfect air mixing, the conventional air-source heat pump's emissions were over 40% lower and the ground-air heat pump's emissions over 70% lower than in the case of direct electric heating. Although proper handling of the refrigerant is important, total leakage from the retirement of the heat-pump appliance would increase GHG emissions by just 10%. According to the sensitivity analysis, the most influential input parameters are the emission factor related to electricity and the amount of electricity used for heating.Representing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) in vehicle GHG emissions regulations is complex because of spatial and temporal variation in fueling sources and vehicle use. Previous work has shown that the environmental performance of PEVs significantly varies depending on the characteristics of the electricity grid and how the vehicle is driven. This article evaluates the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) GHG emissions accounting methodology in current and future standards for new electrified vehicles. The current approach employed by the EPA in their 2017-2025 model year light-duty vehicle GHG regulation is compared with an accounting mechanism where the actual regional sales of PEVs, and the regional electricity emission factor in the year sold, are used to determine vehicle compliance value. Changes to the electricity grid over time and regional vehicle sales are included in the modeling efforts. A projection of a future GHG regulation past the 2017-2025 rule is used to observe the effect of such a regional regulation. The results showed that the complexity involved in tracking and accounting for regional PEV sales will not dramatically increase the effectiveness of the regulations to capture PEV electricity-related GHG emissions in the absence of a major policy shift. A discussion of the feasibility and effectiveness of a regional standard for PEVs, and notable examples of region-specific regulations instated in past energy policies, is also addressed.The paper presents a methodology to define reference values regarding building environmental impacts, energy outputs, and global costs. Four exemplary Italian residential categories were analyzed, focusing on the recent existing stock and on the most common kinds of houses. Buildings were subjected to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analyses, through SimaPro software, in order to define specific values linked to the environmental impacts and to the total energy spent. The amount of energy related to the use phase, including heating, domestic hot water, and cooling systems, was estimated by using the energy simulation program EnergyPlus. Building economic performance was analyzed through Life Cycle Costing (LCC) analyses, with the global cost approach. The results showed that the use phase implied the largest contribution to the environmental and energy impacts; instead the pre-use phase was predominant in life cycle costs. Furthermore, since a considerable amount of consistent data was used for this study, the outcomes could be treated as reliable for the definition of benchmarks. For instance, the results indicated that, during the whole life cycle, Italian residential buildings could spend around 140 kWh/m(2), with a production of about 35 kg CO2 eq/m(2) each year, reaching a global cost of nearly 1420 (sic)/m(2). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Water quality assessment is an important foundation of water resource protection and is affected by many indicators. The dynamic and fuzzy changes of water quality lead to problems for proper assessment. This paper explores a method which is in accordance with the water quality changes. The proposed method is based on the variable fuzzy pattern recognition (VFPR) model and combines the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model with the entropy weight (EW) method. The proposed method was applied to dynamically assess the water quality of Biliuhe Reservoir (Dailan, China). The results show that the water quality level is between levels 2 and 3 and worse in August or September, caused by the increasing water temperature and rainfall. Weights and methods are compared and random errors of the values of indicators are analyzed. It is concluded that the proposed method has advantages of dynamism, fuzzification and stability by considering the interval influence of multiple indicators and using the average level characteristic values of four models as results.Most studies on the environmental performance of irrigation have focused on the water-food-energy nexus, i.e. relationships between food production, water consumption and energy. However, water and energy are not the only relevant indicators of the environmental performance of irrigation systems. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic method that is well suited to comprehensive assessment. This paper aims at using LCA to assess the environmental impacts of contrasted groundwater pumping systems in semi-arid central Tunisia. In line with previous studies, our results confirm that for groundwater pumping, energy has the highest environmental impacts on human health, the ecosystem and resource depletion. Our work also highlights that along with pump efficiency, the type of power source must be considered when ranking pumping systems based on environmental performance. Indeed, diesel-powered pumping systems are more harmful than electric pumps when electricity is generated from natural gas and diesel-powered pump efficiency is low. However, the diesel pumping system becomes the best option when electricity is derived from coal and diesel-powered pump efficiency exceeds 12%. Finally, water depletion has been shown of great importance in this study, and ongoing LCA improvements should facilitate a more comprehensive picture of these site-specific impacts. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. RESUME La plupart des etudes sur la performance environnementale de l'irrigation ont mis l'accent sur le lien eau-alimentation-energie, c'est a dire, les relations entre la production alimentaire, la consommation d'eau et d'energie. Cependant, l'eau et l'energie ne sont pas les seuls indicateurs pertinents de la performance environnementale des systemes d'irrigation. L'Analyse du Cycle de Vie (ACV) est une methode holistique adaptee a l'evaluation globale. Cet article vise a utiliser l'ACV pour evaluer les impacts environnementaux de systemes contrastes de pompage d'eau souterraine, en zone semi-aride, au centre de la Tunisie. En accord avec les etudes anterieures, nos resultats confirment que pour le pompage des eaux souterraines, c'est l'energie qui domine les impacts environnementaux sur la sante humaine, les ecosystemes et l'epuisement des ressources. Notre travail met egalement en evidence que pour classer les systemes de pompage selon leurs performances environnementales, il faut prendre en compte non seulement l'efficience du systeme de pompage mais aussi le type d'energie utilisee. En effet, les systemes de pompage alimentes au diesel sont plus nuisibles que les pompes electriques lorsque l'electricite est produite a partir du gaz naturel et que l'efficience de la pompe est faible. Cependant, le systeme de pompage alimente au diesel devient la meilleure option des lors que l'electricite est produite a partir de charbon et l'efficience de la pompe depasse 12%. Enfin, les impacts sur l'epuisement en eau se sont reveles tres importants dans notre cas d'etude et les avancees methodologiques en cours permettront d'affiner la modelisation de ces impacts de type locaux. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is a common approach used by public agencies to decide among a set of alternative investments. Such analysis, however, is not structured to handle complex problems with multi-level decisions, such as distributing a limited rehabilitation fund among a large number of infrastructure assets, considering alternative rehabilitation strategies and life cycle analysis over multiple years. This paper, therefore, extends the current BCA to the complex infrastructure fund allocation problem. It first reviews the origins of BCA and then proposes a microeconomic-based heuristic approach that optimizes decisions by achieving an equilibrium state in which fair and equitable allocations are made where the marginal benefit per dollar is equalized for all asset categories. Using a case study of 800 building components, the enhanced BCA proved to be able to arrive at optimum solutions, supported with credible economic basis, and as such, can efficiently justify the spending of public money.Load following is the potential for a power plant to adjust its power output as demand and price for electricity fluctuates throughout the day. In nuclear power plants, this is done by inserting control rods into the reactor pressure vessel. This operation is very inefficient as nuclear power generation is composed almost entirely of fixed and sunk costs; therefore, lowering the power output doesn't significantly reduce generating costs and the plant is thermo-mechanical stressed. A more efficient solution is to maintain the primary circuit at full power and to use the excess power for cogeneration. This paper assesses the technical-economic feasibility of this approach when applied to Small Modular Reactors (SMR) with two cogeneration technologies: algae-biofuel and desalinisation. Multiple SMR are of particular interest due to the fractional nature of their power output. The result shows that the power required by an algae-biofuel plant is not sufficient to justify the load following approach, whereas it is in the case of desalination. The successive economic analysis, based on the real options approach, demonstrates the economic viability of the desalination in several scenarios. In conclusion, the coupling of SMR with a desalination plant is a realistic solution to perform efficient load following. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Germanium is a semiconducting metalloid element used in optical fibers, catalysis, infrared optics, solar cells, and light-emitting diodes. The need for Ge in these markets is considered to increase by a steady similar to 1% on a yearly basis. Its economic importance, coupled with the identified supply risks, has led to the classification of germanium as a critical raw material within Europe. Since the early 1950s, Umicore Electro-Optic Materials has supplied germanium-based materials solutions to its markets around the world. Umicore extracts germanium from a wide range of refining and recycling feeds. The main objectives of this study were to quantify the potential environmental impacts of the production of germanium from production scraps from the photovoltaic industry and to compare them with the potential impacts of the primary production of germanium from coal. The data related to the secondary production are Umicore-specific data. Environmental impact scores have been calculated for the impact categories recommended by the International reference life cycle data system. The comparison of the primary and secondary production highlights the benefit linked to the recycling of metals.This study develops a sustainability assessment model for analysis and decision-making of the impact of China's municipal solid waste management enhancement strategy options based on three waste treatment scenarios: landfill disposal, waste-to-energy incineration, and a combination of a material recovery facility and composting. The model employs life cycle assessment, health risk assessment, and full cost accounting to evaluate the treatment scenarios regarding safeguarding public health, protecting the environment and conserving resources, and economic feasibility. The model then uses an analytic hierarchy process for an overall appraisal of sustainability. Results suggest that a combination of material recovery and composting is the most efficient option. The study results clarify sustainable attributes, suitable predications, evaluation modeling, and stakeholder involvement issues in solid waste management. The demonstration of the use of sustainability assessment model (SAM) provides flexibility by allowing assessment for a municipal solid waste management (MSWM) strategy on a case-by-case basis, taking into account site-specific factors, therefore it has the potential for flexible applications in different communities/regions.Industrial ecology introduced a new paradigm of principles and tools useful to academic analysis and decision support activities for industry and policymakers. This paper presents a view of the state of the art of industrial ecology, encompassing the four major theoretical traditions comprising the field, and emphasizing the relevance to practice. The principles of industrial ecology offer a basis for integrating environmental perspectives into production and consumption strategies, though there are significant challenges to be addressed.Domestic solar hot water systems (SHWS), which are used to reduce domestic energy use, represent one of the most widely known technologies of solar thermal applications. Taking into account the sizing of these systems during its design phase, it is also important to consider the effects on the environment of their use from a life cycle perspective. An evaluation method based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used in this paper to analyse the environmental implications of SHWS considering the production, use, maintenance and end-of-life stages. As a case study, 32 different types of SWHS to meet the hot water demand (HWD) of 2 dwellings and 2 hotels, located in the region of Aragon in Spain, are studied. The aim of the case study is to compare the environmental performance of SHWS and to select the best environmentally friendly solution while considering their energy pay-back time (EPBT). From an environmental point of view, comparing the results obtained in all cases studies, e.g., in terms of kg CO2 eq, the use of biomass as fuel for the auxiliary system in each SHWS considered provides the greatest environmental benefit in comparison with the other fuels, usually followed by the use of natural gas. However, in terms of the EPBT, because biomass is the fuel with lowest environmental impact and associated embodied energy, the avoided embodied energy due to the solar contribution in SHWS is the lowest in the biomass case, thereby resulting in a higher value of the EPBT. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Buildings are the largest consumer of energy and greatest contributor to climate change in the United States consuming approximately half of energy produced and contributing close to half of greenhouse gas emissions. Building designers, contractors, and owners currently have few methods to effectively control a building's life cycle energy and environmental impacts during the design phase. Managing and reducing these impacts during design requires rapid information turnaround and decision-making. When left unconsidered, poor environmental design decisions leave potential design value uncaptured. This research combines life cycle assessment (LCA) and target value design (TVD) to rapidly produce more sustainable building designs. By establishing site-specific sustainability targets and using dynamically-updating life cycle assessments, this research demonstrates that buildings can be designed to perform at higher environmental standards than those designed without a target in place. The research also offers unique opportunities to analyze the tradeoffs between design and operational decisions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Sustainability guidelines can help to safeguard the sustainable use of biological materials. When these guidelines are legally prescribed, their influence on the economic viability of bioenergy, biofuel and bioliquid projects is increased substantially, through their impact on national subsidy regimes and international trade. One of the key examples is the European directive 2009/28/EC, or the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), and the related COM/2010/11 that integrate guidelines for calculating greenhouse gas impact for various bioenergy pathways. This paper looks further into the sustainability results when influenced by principal decisions that are legally open for debate. Therefore, a concise review is conducted of the legal state-of-the-art on whether a product is waste or not. The review pinpoints uncertainty, leading to four potential legal scenarios. The sustainability of a complex biorefinery is analysed for each scenario. The results show (i) a high sensitivity to the principal decisions on the nature of waste materials in the scenarios, and (ii) to the definition of boundaries between the processes. More detailed rules for the application of the RED guidelines are needed, and should be complemented with methods specifically targeting all relevant sustainability aspects, thereby enhancing the overall understanding of the sustainability of the process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Present day energy policies are increasingly being focused towards local energy systems. Local communities may be more effective when implementing energy objectives due to the lower losses of energy during transmissions, closer contact with the end-users, and also greater support from local decision makers. Different tools, approaches and concepts are available for achieving greater energy efficiency within local energy systems. One of them is the Locally Integrated Energy Sectors (LIES) concept that provides energy integration with end-users from various sectors such as the industry, service, household, agriculture, transport and public sectors within a particular geographical area. LIES could well contribute towards lower energy consumption, novel opportunities for sustainable energy supply, decreased negative impact on the environment and consequently towards the amplification of sustainable development (SD) regarding local communities. The presented research focused on developing suitable metrics for evaluating the sustainability of LIES. These metrics are comprised of general sustainability indicators grouped into four major categories: energy, environmental, economic, and social. The applicability of the proposed metrics for LIES evaluation is illustrated by a case study of the district heating system within the Ormo2 municipality in Slovenia. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, the comprehensive approach provided by the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) iri water management is shown. It includes the LCA of the diverse water supply alternatives within a region but also the LCA of further water uses. The case study is the Segura Basin, a dry area in the southeast of Spain with important water demands. Thus, external alternatives like water transfers and desalination are required to partly balance the reduced natural water availability. The paper firstly shows the environmental impacts of water supply alternatives, depending on its contribution to the water balance in the watershed. Secondly, the LCA of water use in that water stressed area is also analysed, in order to compare both impacts. The target is to analyse if alternatives reduce the global impact of water supply and to compare that damage with that derived from water use. Both LCA approaches are integrated by using the Eco-Indicator 99 method. Results show that seawater desalination has the highest impact, but external solutions as the Tajo-Segura water transfer are also impacting solutions when low water volumes are delivered. The lowest impacts are found for local natural resources. Regarding the freshwater use, highest impacts are due to agriculture, since water consumed exceeded its natural resources. It has been demonstrated that diversification of water supply alternatives considerably increases the environmental impact of the use of water in scarce areas. Consequently, water users and policy makers should be aware of hidden costs to guarantee the water supply in these regions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Using biowaste as a resource is required in order to meet the EU common objectives for waste management. Biowaste management should be considered from the economic, environmental, and social perspectives. The resulting complexity constitutes an important barrier to the implementation of biowaste planning projects. The goal of this study is to propose an effective tool to assess, compare, and select the best biowaste management alternatives for stakeholders. In order to reach research goal a methodological approach based on the combination of Multi-Criteria Analysis and System Dynamics method is proposed. The aim of the proposed method implemented in a modelling tool is mainly addreSsed to policy and decision makers specifically (1) to evaluate biowaste management options, (2) to assess the sustainability of bioenergy projects, and (3) to find an optimal solution for biowaste treatment given the conditions in a particular region. The proposed method can help to structure and assess complex problems while both responding to the interests of multiple stakeholders and avoiding the weaknesses of other evaluation techniques. The Method has been applied to a case study involving the three Baltic States Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The results obtained showed that separate collection and Anaerobic Digestion of biowaste is the best solution in all three Baltic States. Other acceptable options include incineration with energy recovery and Mechanical Biological Treatment with Anaerobic Digestion. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Reinforced refractories have been demonstrated to be economically and technically useful in industrial furnaces to improve energy efficiency. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge from the environmental point of view in which the end-of-life of these materials was analysed from a life cycle perspective. This research examines the use of the Life Cycle Assessment.(LCA) methodology to evaluate the environmental impact of alumina/ZrO2 and MgO/ZrO2 as reinforced refractories, considering the manufacturing and two different end-of-life scenarios, disposal in landfills and recycling. The results indicated that the environmental performance of these reinforced refractories can be improved by means of promoting the reuse or recycling of the materials and reducing the amount of landfill waste within an integrated waste management system. Greater environmental benefits were obtained when the recycling efficiency was increased and the transport distance was decreased, especially in the case of alumina/ZrO2. The research demonstrated that it was more sensible to use recycling. Consequently, efforts to consider these environmental results should be undertaken by the industrial sector to promote material recovery. In this sense, a matrix of additional actions is proposed to reduce the overall environmental impact of the system further. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main barrier in the commercialization of phytoextraction as a sustainable alternative for remediating metal contaminated soils is its long time period, which can be countered by biomass valorization. From an environmental point of view, fast pyrolysis of the biomass is promising because its lower process temperature prevents metal volatilization. The remaining question is whether fast pyrolysis is also preferred from an economic point of view. Therefore, a techno-economic assessment of fast pyrolysis has been performed for a case study in the Campine region in Belgium. For this region, willow trees cultivated in short rotation have the right characteristics to serve as a phytoextracting crop. A techno-economic assessment requires by definition a multidisciplinary approach. The problem statement urges for a focus on the economic profitability from the viewpoint of an investor, including economic risk analysis. Fast pyrolysis seems more profitable than gasification. The profit is dependent on the scale of operation, the policy support (subsidies) and the oil yield. The economic risk can be reduced by increasing the scale of operation by means of complementing feedstocks, and by valorization of the char byproduct by subsequent processing to activated carbon. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims at analysing the environmental benefits and impacts associated with the treatment of malodorous emissions from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to two biological treatments, namely biofilter (BF) and biotrickling filter (BTF), two physical/chemical alternatives, namely activated carbon tower (AC) and chemical scrubber (CS), and a hybrid combination of BTF + AC. The assessment provided consistent guidelines for technology selection, not only based on removal efficiencies, but also on the environmental impact associated with the treatment of emissions. The results showed that biological alternatives entailed the lowest impacts. On the contrary, the use of chemicals led to the highest impacts for CS. Energy use was the main contributor to the impact related to BF and BTF, whereas the production of glass fibre used as infrastructure material played an important role in BTF impact. Production of NaCIO entailed the highest burdens among the chemicals used in CS, representing similar to 90% of the impact associated to chemicals. The frequent replacement of packing material in AC was responsible for the highest environmental impacts, granular activated carbon (GAC) production and its final disposal representing more than 50% of the impact in most categories. Finally, the assessment of BTF + AC showed that the hybrid technology is less recommendable than BF and BTF, but friendlier to the environment than physical/chemical treatments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Stormwater treatment technologies to manage runoff during rain events are primarily designed to reduce flood risks, settle suspended solids and concurrently immobilise metals and nutrients. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is scarcely documented for stormwater systems despite their ubiquitous implementation. LCA modelling quantified the environmental impacts associated with the materials, construction, transport, operation and maintenance of different stormwater treatment systems. A prefabricated concrete vortex unit, a sub-surface sandfilter and a raingarden, all sized to treat a functional unit of 35 m(3) of stormwater runoff per event, were evaluated. Eighteen environmental mid-point metrics and three end-point 'damage assessment' metrics were quantified for each system's lifecycle. Climate change (kg CO2 eq.) dominated net environmental impacts, with smaller contributions from human toxicity (kg 1,4-DB eq.), particulate matter formation (kg PM10 eq.) and fossil depletion (kg oil eq.). The concrete unit had the highest environmental impact of which 45% was attributed to its maintenance while impacts from the sandfilters and raingardens were dominated by their bulky materials (57%) and transport (57%), respectively. On-site infiltrative raingardens, a component of green infrastructure (GI), had the lowest environmental impacts because they incurred lower maintenance and did not have any concrete which is high in embodied CO2. Smaller sized raingardens affording the same level of stormwater treatment had the lowest overall impacts reinforcing the principle that using fewer resources reduces environmental impacts. LCA modelling can serve as a guiding tool for practitioners making environmentally sustainable solutions for stormwater treatment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tanzania being a prospective producer and exporter of liquid biofuels, information on local contribution of this sector to the environmental burden of the country is highly required in order to ensure sustainable liquid biofuels. Therefore, this paper evaluates a life cycle carbon footprint (or greenhouse (GHG) gas emissions) of liquid biofuels (biodiesel produced from jatropha oil and bioethanol produced from sugarcane molasses as alternative to fossil fuels in Tanzania. The functional unit (FU) of the study is defined as 1 Giga Joule (GJ) of output energy when a biofuel is combusted in the engine. The study found a positive GHG emissions related to biofuels. A carbon footprint (in CO2 equivalents) of jatropha biodiesel is 23.9 kg FU-1 while that of molasses bioethanol is 17.4 kg FU-1. Biodiesel combustion found to be a major contributor to carbon footprint by 41% which is attributed to methanol used during tansesterification of jatropha oil followed by the use of chemical fertilizers (31%). Sugarcane production phase on the other hand found to be the highest contributor to carbon footprint of molasses bioethanol accounting for more than 80%. This is due to the use of diesel fuel, chemical fertilizers and burning of sugarcane prior to harvesting. Sensitivity analysis indicates that higher market prices of molasses increases carbon footprint of bioethanol same as higher market price of biodiesel. For the same energy output of 1 GJ, molasses bioethanol observed to have lower carbon footprint than jatropha biodiesel by 272%. Both biofuels observed to save GHG emissions by >70% when used as fossil fuel replacement The study recommends further research on socio-economic implication of large scale biofuel production; impact of land use change and land use competition and sustainability of biofuels to be carried out in near future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A significant number of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analyses of renewable energy technologies is available in the literature, even though there is a lack of consistent conclusions about the life cycle impacts of the different technologies. The reported results vary consistently, according to the size and the technology of the considered plant, thus limiting the utility of LCA to inform policy makers and constituting a barrier to the deployment of a full awareness on sustainable energies. This variability in LCA results, in fact, can generate confusion regarding the actual environmental consequences of implementing renewable technologies. The article reviews approximately 50 papers, related to more than 100 different case studies regarding solar energy (Concentrated Solar Power, Photovoltaic), wind power, hydropower, and geothermal power. A methodology for the harmonization of the results is presented. The detailed data collection and the results normalization and harmonization allowed a more reliable comparison of the various renewable technologies. For most of the considered environmental indicators, wind power technologies turn out to be the low end while geothermal and PV technologies the high end of the impact range where all the other technologies are positioned. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A high number of life cycle assessment of the production of lignocellulosic bioethanol have been published to evaluate or to demonstrate its environmental benefits, in most of the cases the comparison of results and conclusions is difficult due the different methodological approaches of the analysts. The aim of this review is to synthesize and to analyze the available and updated information concerning to life cycle assessment (LCA) of lignocellulosic bioethanol and to compare its environmental impacts with conventional fossil fuels and the first-generation bioethanol. This review analyzes more than, one hundred case studies reported in the last decade, whose main focus were the energy balance and the green house gas (GHG) emissions, considering the methods of analysis, assumptions and the most used impact categories. The studies showed a clear reduction in GHG emissions and ozone layer depletion, while results in other impact categories, such as acidification, eutrophication, human health and photochemical smog showed to be positively or negatively affected. The LCA results of the bioethanol production are highly influenced by the bioethanol proportion in the gasoline-bioethanol blend and by the source of raw material: GHG emissions reduction is less than 10% for E10 blend and higher than 40% for E85 and upper blends. When comparing raw materials for E100 blend, the highest GHG reduction per distance traveled were obtained for agricultural residues, with reductions between 82 and 91%. In the case of switchgrass and wood, the reduction values were between 53-93% and 50-62%, respectively. Most of the reviewed studies found that lignocellulosic bioethanol production is energetically sustainable, being this result dependent on the possibility of using by-products as fuel in a cogeneration system. It has been shown that lignocellulosic bioethanol have lower impacts in most of the categories and a positive energy balance compared with first generation bioethanol and gasoline. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is one of the key instruments for implementing sustainable development strategies in planning in general; in addition to being used in sectoral planning, it can also be used in other areas such as waste management planning. SEA in waste management planning has become a tool for considering the benefits and consequences of the proposed changes in space, also taking into account the capacity of space to sustain the implementation of the planned activities. In order to envisage both the positive and negative implications of a waste management plan for the elements of sustainable development, an adequate methodological approach to evaluating the potential impacts must be adopted and the evaluation results presented in a simple and clear way, so as to allow planners to make relevant decisions as a precondition for the sustainability of the activities planned in the waste management sector. This paper examines the multi-criteria evaluation method for carrying out an SEA for the Waste Management Plan for the city of Belgrade (BWMP). The method was applied to the evaluation of the impacts of the activities planned in the waste management sector on the basis of the environmental and socioeconomic indicators of sustainability, taking into consideration the intensity, spatial extent, probability and frequency of impact, by means of a specific planning approach and simple and clear presentation of the obtained results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rare earth elements (REEs) are a collection of 17 chemical elements that are critical to be functionality of a host of modern commercial industries including emerging clean energy technologies, electronics, medical devices, and national defense applications. Despite their key importance in multiple industires, to-date there has been little emphasis on environmental systems analysis of REE production. Rapid growth in these industrial sectors could result in hightened global demand for REE. As such, assessing the broader ramifications of REE production on human health and the environment is crucial for guiding the sustainable and development of these industries. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed to evaluate the environmental impacts and resource intensity of producing rare earth oxides (REO) from the Bayan Obo mine located in Inner Mongolia, China. Analysis indicates that the mining, as well as extraction and roasting phase(S), had the greatest contribution to overall life cycle environmental impacts. Additionally, the results reveal that the production of heavy REO consumes over 20 times more primary energy as compared to steel (per unit mass). The high energy consumption and life cycle environmental impacts of REO production highlight the critical need for development of REE recycling operations and infrastrcture.Critical materials as well as rare earth elements and precious metals such as platinum, gold and silver are used significantly for computer hard disk drives, mobile phones, hybrid electric vehicles, batteries, renewable energy system and many other applications. It is therefore important to quantify and estimate both current stocks and flows of such materials, as well as future requirement for industries and economies. In this study, which is focused on wind energy system in the European Union (EU) 27, the current consumption and future requirement of critical and precious materials were calculated and estimated using the wind power production dataset from ecoinvent and data from National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP). It is shown that fluorspar has been the most consumed material to date, and will probably be the most required material in the future. Among other critical and valuable materials, the main materials used for current wind energy system are silver, magnesium, indium, gold and tantalum. These materials will also be required significantly by 2020 for the wind energy system in the EU 27. It is argued that these results should be connected to the future energy and material policy and management. (C) 20114 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Within the global challenge of sustainable energy supply and greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, carbon capture and storage and the deployment of renewable resources are considered as promising solutions. In this study the production of ammonia mainly used in the fertilizer industry and that is responsible for around 2-3% of the world greenhouse gas emissions is analyzed. Considering natural gas and biomass as a resource and the option of CO2 capture and storage, different process configurations are systematically compared with regard to energy, economic and environmental considerations. A consistent thermo-environonomic optimization approach combining flowsheeting, process integration techniques, economic performance evaluation, life cycle assessment and multi-objective optimization is applied for the conceptual process design and competitiveness evaluation. It is highlighted that the quality of the process integration is a key factor for improving the performance by valorizing the heat excess through electricity cogeneration. Including CO2 mitigation in the ammonia production allows to reduce the emissions but leads to a slight efficiency decrease due to the energy consumption for the CO2 compression. For the natural gas fed process yielding an energy efficiency around 65%, the overall life cycle emissions can be reduced to 0.79kg(CO2)/kg(NH3) with CO2 capture compared to 1.6kg(CO2)/kg(NH3) without capture. Considering the biogenic nature of the carbon in the biomass, the emissions drop to -1.79kg(CO2)/kg(NH3) for the biomass process having an energy efficiency of 50%. The economic competitiveness highly depends on the resource price and the introduction of a carbon tax. This study reveals the potential of the decarbonization of the fertilizer industry.Three alternative processes for the production of liquid transportation biofuels from sugar cane bagasse were compared, on the perspective of energy efficiencies using process modelling, Process Environmental Assessments and Life Cycle Assessment. Bio-ethanol via two biological processes was considered, i.e. Separate Hydrolysis and Fermentation (Process 1) and Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation (Process 2), in comparison to Gasification and Fischer Tropsch synthesis for the production of synthetic fuels (Process 3). The energy efficiency of each process scenario was maximised by pinch point analysis for heat integration. The more advanced bio-ethanol process was Process 2 and it had a higher energy efficiency at 42.3%. Heat integration was critical for the Process 3, whereby the energy efficiency was increased from 51.6% to 55.7%. For both the Process Environmental and Life Cycle Assessment, Process 3 had the least potential for detrimental environmental impacts, due to its relatively high energy efficiency. Process 2 had the greatest Process Environmental Impact due to the intensive use of processing chemicals. Regarding the Life Cycle Assessments, Process 1 was the most severe due to its low energy efficiency. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ethanol from biomass feedstocks has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for fuel production. This work calculates the potential environmental impact from the production of ethanol from sweet sorghum using several processing options. The following three processing options were evaluated: 1) a farm scale decentralized option where all steps except the dehydration are performed on the farm, 2) a semi-centralized process where distillation and dehydration are performed at a biofuel refinery, and 3) a centralized process where sorghum stem is transported to a facility where all processing is performed. Results show that a centralized process where sweet sorghum stem is transported to a processing facility to produce ethanol has significant negative environmental impacts when compared to corn ethanol and other processing options. The centralized option resulted in a 62% increase in GHG emissions and a 50% increase in non-renewable energy use compared to corn ethanol. When the decentralized and semi-centralized options were compared to corn ethanol production, GHG emissions were reduced by 39% and 25% respectively. Non-renewable energy use reductions were 27% in the decentralized process and a 15% reduction in the semi-centralized process. (C) 2014 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.PES (payment for ecosystem services) programmes require evaluation to ensure intended outcomes are realised. Although it is acknowledged that environmental consequences of PES schemes should be considered from a wider systems perspective, there is no recommendation on any evidence-based framework to support such assessment. A starting point to address this gap is that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers advantages for the evaluation of local PES proposals by identifying whether an increase in ecosystem benefit from PES schemes is undermined by (1) displacement of environmental impact to another part of the agricultural product supply chain; (2) displacement of environmental impact to another impact category (environmental trade-offs); (3) indirect environmental effects within the landowners property (activity shifting); and (4) indirect environmental effects elsewhere (indirect land use change to compensate for loss of output where PES operates). However, LCA continues to remain an evolving field of science; as the analytic capability of LCA develops in terms of reducing uncertainty, including regional detail and economic and social aspects, it will further help for a more thorough assessment of land use policies such as PES schemes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Human activities have become a major source of Earth's climate change, which brings the rise of surface air temperature and subsurface ocean temperature. Therefore, promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns is imperative to minimize the use of natural resources and reduce emissions of pollutants. This study uses Economic Input-Output Life-Cycle Assessment method and structural decomposition model to identify the driving forces that influence the changes in carbon emissions from China's residential consumption in the context of sustainable consumption. The findings of the study are as follows: (1) indirect carbon emissions from Chinese household consumption increase rapidly over time; (2) the largest carbon dioxide emitting sector turns from agriculture sector in 1992 into service sector in 2007; (3) the consumption level and the emission intensity are the main drivers that influence the change in indirect carbon emissions; and (4) the factor of consumption level presents positive effect on the emissions, while the emission intensity effect plays a negative role. Besides, the factors of urbanization, production structure, population size and consumption structure also promote the rapid increase in carbon emissions.Purpose Working hours, child labour and property rights have been suggested as topics to assess in social life cycle assessment (SLCA). The purpose of this study is to investigate the scientific justification of the current use of these topics. The long-term aim is to contribute to the future development of SLCA. Methods A literature review was conducted for each of the three topics. One thousand scientific articles were analysed for each topic, and relevant articles were selected. The articles were analysed based on whether the topics facilitated or obstructed beneficial social values, and whether they facilitated or obstructed adverse social values. Results and discussion The results show that the three topics both facilitate and obstruct beneficial social values. They also show that the topics both facilitate and obstruct adverse social values. Considering the complex and ambiguous nature of these topics reported in the scientific literature, the current use of these topics in the SLCA literature is found not to be completely scientifically justified. Conclusions Based on this study, the current use of working hours, child labour and property rights in SLCA studies should be questioned. We suggest that the fields of social science and economics may be fruitfully considered when seeking scientific justification for topics to assess in SLCA.Purpose This paper estimates the life cycle environmental impacts of the standard road tunnel in Norway. The results can then serve as input to the environmental impact assessment in the planning of future road projects and as a tool to identify hot spots for reducing the environmental impacts from future tunnel projects. Methods This life cycle assessment (LCA) study follows the ISO 14040/44 methodology. The construction, operation and maintenance stages are assessed. The functional unit of this study is defined as '1-m standard Norwegian road tunnel with 100-year lifetime'. This study estimate the life cycle inventory by the following: (1) road tunnel construction tenders completed during 2004-2011 in Norway and (2) the Norwegian excavation practice of rock tunnels over the past 20 years. The Ecoinvent database provides the background data to the analysis. Results and discussion The construction stage is found to contribute the most to the impact categories of climate change, photochemical oxidant formation, ozone depletion and terrestrial acidification. The consumption of concrete and explosives constitute the main elements causing these impacts. Equally, the construction stage is the main contributor to ozone depletion, caused by the consumption of bitumen and transport of materials. The maintenance stage contributes with 58 % of the particulate matter formation, due to the consumption of crushed aggregates and bitumen. The operation stage also plays a major role in human toxicity, ionising radiation and terrestrial ecotoxicity, contributing 57, 85 and 72 % of these impact categories, respectively, mainly due to the consumption of electricity. One Norwegian standard road tunnel emits at least 31 kt CO2 eq greenhouse gases during its 100-year lifetime. The total greenhouse gases embodied in current the Norwegian road tunnel stock amount to at least 8.3 million tonnes, equal to 83 % of the total national direct CO2 eq emissions due to road traffic in 2011. In recent years, around 150 kt CO2 eq has been emitted annually to the atmosphere due to the construction, maintenance and operation of Norwegian road tunnels. Conclusions The policy implication from this study is that greenhouse gas emissions caused by the transport infrastructure is significant, and it is strongly recommended to be taken into account from the early planning phase of infrastructure projects in order to identify the best project proposal and to minimise the negative environmental impacts.Purpose Chinese coal power generation is part of the life cycle of most products and the largest single source for many emissions. Reducing these emissions has been a priority for the Chinese government over the last decade, with improvements made by replacing older power plants, improving thermal efficiency and installing air pollution control devices. In the present research, we aim to acknowledge these improvements and present updated unit process data for Chinese coal power. In the course of doing so, we also explore the implementation and interpretation of overall dispersions related to a generically averaged process, such as Chinese coal power. Methods In order to capture geographical and temporal dispersions, updated unit process data were calculated for Chinese coal power at both a national and a provincial level. The updated unit process dataset was also propagated into life cycle inventory (LCI) ranges using Monte Carlo simulations, allowing for discrepancies to be evaluated against the most commonly used inventory database (ecoinvent) and overall dispersions to be shown for some selected provinces. Results and discussion Compared to ecoinvent, the updated dataset resulted in reductions with between 8 and 67 % for all evaluated inventory flows except for dinitrogen monoxide N2O). However, interprovincial differences in emissions diverged with up to 250 %. A random outcome in a few Monte Carlo runs was inverted operators, where positive values became negative or the other way around. This is a known possible outcome of matrix calculations that needs to be better evaluated when interpreting propagated outcomes. Conclusions The present manuscript provides recommendations on how to implement and interpret dispersions propagated into LCI results. In addition, updated and easily accessible unit process data for coal power plants averaged across China and for individual provinces are presented, with clear distinctions of inherent uncertainties, spread variance) and unrepresentativeness. Recommendations are also provided for future research and software developments.Purpose Rising corn prices in the USA due partly to increasing ethanol demands have led to a significant expansion of corn areas displacing natural vegetation and crops including cotton. From 2005 to 2009, cotton area harvested in the USA nearly halved with a reduction of 2.5 million hectares, while that of corn increased by 1.8 million hectares. However, environmental impacts of land shifts from cotton and corn have been largely neglected in literature. Methods In this study, we evaluate the environmental properties of US corn and cotton production and implications of land cover change from cotton to corn using state-specific data and life cycle impact assessment. Focusing on regional environmental issues, we cover both on-farm direct emissions such as different types of volatile organic compounds and pesticides and indirect emissions embodied in input materials such as fertilizers. TRACI 2.0 is used to evaluate the environmental impacts of these emissions. Results and discussion The results show that US cotton and corn productions per hectare on average generate roughly similar impacts for most impact categories such as eutrophication and smog formation. For water use and freshwater ecotoxicity, corn shows a smaller impact. When land shifts from cotton to corn in cotton-growing states, however, the process may aggravate most of the regional environmental impacts while relieving freshwater ecotoxicity impact. The differences in the two estimates are due mainly to underlying regional disparities in crop suitability that affects input structure and environmental emissions. Conclusions Our results highlight the importance of potential, unintended environmental impacts that cannot be adequately captured when average data are employed. Understanding the actual mechanisms under which certain policy induces marginal changes at a regional and local level is crucial for evaluating its net impact. Further, our study calls for an attention to biofuel-induced land cover change between crops and associated regional environmental impacts.Purpose The purpose of this study is to demonstrate ecological benefits of the thermal modernization of the central heating system in terms of the replacement of the central heating boiler for a modern boiler that is characterized by economically and ecologically beneficial parameters of the operation. It is particularly important in industrial regions where the concentration of harmful gases is high. An example is a region in Poland, which is the most industrialized and urbanized. Methods The methodology is underpinned by life cycle thinking. The evaluation of the environmental benefits resulting from the modernization of heat sources was made with the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) technique, which was conducted according to the methodology defined in standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, using assessment methods included in Sima Pro 7 program with reference to a so-called representative building. The calculations were based on the assessment procedure of Ecoindicator 99, which allows for the presentation of the impact results with respect to 11 impact categories and/or three damage categories. Results and discussion The LCA analysis of the considered heat sources points out unambiguously the most environmentally friendly option with a gas boiler combined with a solar collector. Nevertheless, this option belongs to one of the most expensive solutions of supplying thermal energy in the house. The optimum appears to be a variant using the ecological fuel for biomass, due to widely available biomass in the whole country, a low impact on the environment, the lowest operating costs and moderately high investment costs. The replacement of a low-efficient heat source in the municipal economy is the most energetically effective undertaking. It should be emphasized that the replacement of the inefficient boiler provides the greatest ecological effect in relation to investment costs. Conclusions The aspect of the heat source selection is not only justified by economic and ecological reasons; it primarily results from the local availability of fuel. The use of the environmental technique-the assessment of the product life cycle-to support the decision of the heat source selection becomes a significant aspect in helping investors make environmentally friendly choices.Purpose The goal of this study is to analyze the environmental improvement brought about by an alternative system for waste management proposed by the Integral-b project, funded by the European Union (EU). Its aim is to treat both used cooking oil (UCO) and organic waste from the restaurant and catering sector in Spain, by biodiesel production and anaerobic digestion, respectively. A cogeneration engine adapted to use glycerin as a fuel is implemented. Methods The functional unit (FU) is the management of the UCO and organic waste from restaurants and catering produced per person and year in Spain. The system proposed (scenario A) is compared to a system consisting of the prevailing management options for the same kind of waste (scenario B). Apart from including biodiesel production from the UCO, this reference scenario assumes that the organic waste is allocated to different streams, according to Spanish statistics. The systems under study generate different coproducts and as such are complex; therefore, system expansion is performed. Different scenario formulations are set to analyze the influence of assumptions regarding co-product credits in the results. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to analyze parameter uncertainty. Results and discussion The environmental benefits caused by scenario A are conditional on the choices regarding coproduct credits. Scenario A causes a reduction of the impact (43-655 %) in most of the scenario formulations when the current levels of UCO collection are considered. However, when higher levels of UCO collection are taken into account for the definition of the FU, scenario B performs better for half of the scenario formulations, due to the increase in the environmental credits from glycerin production. The only impact categories for which scenario A performs unconditionally better than scenarioBare global warming and photochemical ozone creation. Parameter uncertainty appears to influence the comparative results to a lesser extent, mainly caused by the parameters involved in avoided processes. Conclusions Although system expansion appears as an option for dealing with the multifunctionality of waste management processes, uncertainty caused by choices must be assessed. Under our scenario assumptions, re-using the glycerol in the system proposed by Integral-b can be detrimental, and the reference scenario results in higher avoided burdens in some scenario formulations. Including glycerin valorization in scenario B should be considered if the biodiesel production keeps increasing in Spain. Analyzing parameter uncertainty helps to provide reliable results.Purpose Current comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) studies claim to answer whether it is better or worse for the environment to change from old to new systems. Most commonly, the attributional LCA (ALCA) is practised despite its limitations to describe market effects. Hence, an attempt is done here to include market effects in the ALCA practice for comparisons in order to improve ALCA. The purpose is neither to investigate which LCA concept, ALCA, consequential LCA or decisional LCA, is the best for comparisons nor which is the best for decision-making. Methods Here, for the first time, a method based on marked changes which can be used for sensitivity checks of comparative ALCAs, advanced ALCA (AALCA) is presented. The new concept of global change mix factors (GCMF) is introduced. The method, based on accessible market data, is applied to previous comparative ALCAs of conductive adhesives, cooling modules used in radio base stations, office computing systems, as well as personal devices usage, here represented by multifunctional smartphones replacing other devices such as digital cameras. Results and discussion The results show that AALCA based on market data improves the understanding and can act as a sensitivity check of comparative ALCA results. For declining markets of products, with relatively high eco-environmental impacts, the difference between comparative AALCA and ALCA can be significant. As AALCA is founded in marginal electricity thinking and uses market data, there are similarities between AALCA and simplistic consequential LCA (CLCA). However, AALCA is not intended to replace CLCA or decisional LCA (DLCA). Conclusions By applying allocation factors, GCMF, based on real or future market changes, the interdependence of global markets and micro-level LCA shifts can be taken into account in comparative micro-level ALCA studies and make them more robust. Further, the sensitivity of using price units instead of physical units, as the basis for the GCMF, should be investigated. The degree to which AALCA and CLCA can complement each other should be examined. Also, the degree to which the GCMF used in AALCA-H address rebound effects should be further explored. The annual eco-environmental impacts of mobile devices towards 2020 are also of interest, and more LCA case studies are welcome.Purpose Polychlorodibenzo-p-dioxins and -furans (PCDD/Fs) are always produced as undesired impurities and are found in traces in mixtures such as pentachlorophenol (PCP) pole-treating oil. PCDD/Fs were previously shown to follow the oil's fate by affinity, but life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has never taken into account such interactions within an organic contaminant mixture. An approach was developed to assess the potential human toxic and aquatic ecotoxic impacts of PCDD/Fs, including the influence of oil on fate. Methods 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) was used as a PCDD/Fs mixture proxy. The new TCDD fate was approximated in two steps: (1) TCDD was considered to follow the oil's environmental fate and (2) when the oil is degraded, the fraction of nondegraded TCDD carried by oil was considered emitted from the oil's receiving compartments and distributed into the environment. This distribution generates a new fate factor ((FF') over bar) matrix, and characterization factors ((CFs') over bar) are obtained by associating (CFs') over bar to exposure and effect factors from the USEtox model. Scenario analyses on TCDD's degradation kinetic in the oil phase and its affinity for the volatilized oil fraction were conducted, since both mechanisms are poorly documented and weak assumptions were made to model them. Results and discussion The model predicts that the presence of oil increases the transfer of TCDD from air, freshwater, and natural soil into air through oil volatilization. This presence moderately changes the FF values of TCDD for an emission to air, as compared to the significant variations for emissions into freshwater and soil. The most influenced CFeco and CFtox are those for an emission into natural soil, which increase up to one and two order(s) of magnitude, respectively, due to oil influence (CFeco'= 5.3E+04 PAF.m(3).d/kg and CFtox'=24.3 cases/kg). By reducing degradation kinetics by 50 %, both CFs' decrease by at least 14 %, and decreasing the affinity of TCDD for volatilization through oil induces important variations of both CFs' for emissions into freshwater and natural soil. Conclusions An innovative approach was developed to include interactions between co-contaminants, which seem to be significant in the studied situation, in an LCA context. However, the most influent mechanism highlighted by the model-the affinity of PCDD/Fs for the oil volatilized fraction-is poorly documented and modeled based on certain weak and influent assumptions. A better understanding of the PCDD/Fs' affinity for the volatilized oil fraction is therefore a key issue.Global mobile telecommunication is possible due to millions of Base Transceiver Stations (BTS). Nearly 1 million of these are operating off-grid, typically powered by diesel generators and therefore leading to significant CO2 emissions and other environmental burdens. A novel type of Alkaline Fuel Cell (AFC) powered by cracked ammonia is being developed for replacement of these generators. This study compares the environmental and economic performance of the two systems by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE), respectively. Results show that the production of ammonia dominates the LCA results, and that renewable ammonia production pathways greatly improve environmental performance. Sensitivity analyses reveal that the fuel cell parameters that most affect system cost and environmental burdens are cell power density and lifetime and system efficiency. Recycling of anode catalyst and electrode substrate materials is found to have large impacts on environmental performance, though without large cost incentives. For a set of target parameter values and fossil sourced ammonia, the AFC is calculated to produce electricity with life cycle CO2 eq emissions of 1.08 kg kWh(-1), which is 23% lower than a diesel generator with electricity costs that are 14% higher in the same application. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Understanding the consequences of changes in land use and land cover is among the greatest challenges in sustainability science, yet key themes related to land cover change are often left out of sustainability assessment tools. Because sustainability teaching is expanding at a rapid rate, incorporation of interdisciplinary, rigorous, quantitative tools to distinguish sustainable and unsustainable landscape change are needed. As a heuristic exercise, we contrast and synthesize two approaches to quantifying sustainability using a case study of palm oil and tropical deforestation in Borneo, Indonesia. First, we use Markovian land cover change analysis (from 2000 to 2010) to estimate changes in forest cover, project these rates of change into the near future, and estimate changes in carbon stocks due to palm oil conversion. Second, we estimate greenhouse gas emissions from a typical Indonesian palm oil biodiesel plantation using a life cycle assessment approach (LCA). These two approaches show conflicting assessments for the carbon footprint of palm biodiesel: a sustainable endeavor when short-term global warming potential is evaluated yet highly unsustainable when rates of forest loss are measured. Furthermore, accounting for carbon that incorporated prior land cover dramatically altered sustainability assessments. Thus, integration of these two approaches reveals the importance of including both historic and future land cover changes into sustainability assessments. This synthesis demonstrates the importance of using a plurality of approaches from different disciplines when teaching sustainability, and highlights the unique role that landscape ecological approaches can play in sustainability assessments such as LCA.Gasoline is the second most consumed fuel in Chile, accounting for 34% of the total fuel consumption in transportation related activities in 2012. Chilean refineries process more than 97% of the total gasoline commercialized in the national market. When it comes to evaluating the environmental profile of a Chilean process or product, the analysis should consider the characteristics of the Chilean scenario for fuel production and use. Therefore, the identification of the environmental impacts of gasoline production turns to be very relevant for the determination of the associated environmental impacts. For this purpose, Life Cycle Assessment has been selected as a useful methodology to assess the ecological burdens derived from fuel-based systems. In this case study, five subsystems were considered under a "well-to-wheel" analysis: crude oil extraction, gasoline importation, refinery, gasoline storage and distribution/use. The distance of 1 km driven by a middle size passenger car was chosen as functional unit. Moreover, volume, economic and energy-based allocations were also considered in a further sensitivity analysis. According to the results, the main hotspots were the refining activities as well as the tailpipe emissions from car use. When detailing by impact category, climate change was mainly affected by the combustion emissions derived from the gasoline use and refining activities. Refinery was also remarkable in toxicity related categories due to heavy metals emissions. In ozone layer and mineral depletion, transport activities played an important role. Refinery was also predominant in photochemical oxidation and water depletion. In terms of terrestrial acidification and marine eutrophication, the combustion emissions from gasoline use accounted for large contributions. This study provides real inventory data for the Chilean case study and the environmental results give insight into their influence of the assessment of products and processes in the country. Moreover, they could be compared with production and distribution schemes in other regions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents an alternative approach to assess the impacts of biofuel production using a method integrating the simulated values of a new semi-empirical model at the crop production stage within a life cycle assessment (LCA). This new approach enabled us to capture some of the effects that climatic conditions and crop management have on soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, crop yields and other nitrogen (N) losses. This analysis considered the whole system to produce 1 MJ of biofuel (bioethanol from wheat and biodiesel from rapeseed). Non-renewable energy use, global warming potential (GWP), acidification, eutrophication and land competition are considered as potential environmental impacts. Different co-products were handled by system expansion. The aim of this study was (i) to evaluate the variability due to site-specific conditions of climate and fertiliser management of the LCA of two different products: biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from wheat produced in the Basque Country (Northern Spain), and (ii) to improve the estimations of the LCA impacts due to N losses (N2O, NO3, NH3), normally estimated with unspecific emission factors (EFs), that contribute to the impact categories analysed in the LCA of biofuels at local scale. Using biodiesel and bioethanol derived from rapeseed and wheat instead of conventional diesel and gasoline, respectively, would reduce non-renewable energy dependence (-55%) and GWP (-40%), on average, but would increase eutrophication (42 times more potential). An uncertainty analysis for GWP impact showed that the variability associated with the prediction of the major contributor to global warming potential (soil N2O) can significantly affect the results from the LCA. Therefore the use of a model to account for local factors will improve the precision of the assessment and reduce the uncertainty associated with the convenience of the use of biofuels. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper, we assess the total cost of energy recovery from sewage sludge through anaerobic digestion with biogas utilization in combined heat and power (CHP) system. The important advantage of anaerobic digestion process is the production of biogas, which can be used to generate electricity and heat as a source of renewable energy. From this study, it can be retained that the generated thermal energy from the anaerobic digestion process meets the needs of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and guarantees its self-sufficiency in heat. The surplus of renewable heat produced by CHP is not a primary factor to improve the economic viability of the process. Moreover, the sales of electricity output represent about 76% of the operating costs of anaerobic digestion process. Renewable energy production is not economically viable by its own, without considering the wastewater treatment function and the associated incomes. Nevertheless, sludge digestion helps to reduce the wastewater treatment costs mainly by giving a good source of revenue via electricity production. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Over the past three decades major changes have occurred in Australia's beef industry, affecting productivity and potentially the amount of resources used and environmental impacts from production. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach with a 'cradle-to-farm gate' boundary the changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity and key resource use efficiency factors (water use, fossil fuel energy demand and land occupation) are reported for the 30 years from 1981 to 2010, for the Australian beef industry. The analysis showed that over the three decades since 1981 there has been a decrease in GHG emission intensity (excluding land use change emissions) of 14% from 15.3 to 13.1 kg CO2-e/kg liveweight (LW). The improvement was largely due to efficiency gains through heavier slaughter weights, increases in growth rates in grass-fed cattle, improved survival rates and greater numbers of cattle being finished on grain. However, the increase in supplement and grain use on farms, and the increase in feedlot finishing, resulted in a twofold increase in fossil fuel energy demand for beef production over the same time. Fresh water consumption for beef production dropped to almost a third from 1465 L/kg LW in 1981 to 515 L/kg LW in 2010. Three contributing factors for this dramatic reduction in water use were: (i)an increase in the competitive demand for irrigation water, resulting in a transfer away from pasture for cattle to higher value industries such as horticulture, (ii) an initiative to cap free flowing artesian bores in the rangelands, and (iii) an overall decline in water available for agriculture compared to industrial and domestic uses. While there was higher uncertainty relating to estimates of land occupation and emissions from land use (LU) and direct land use change (dLUC), an inventory of land occupation indicated a decline in non-arable land occupation of about 19%, but a sevenfold increase in land occupation for feed production, albeit from a low base in 1981. GHG emissions associated with LU and dLUC for grazing were estimated to have declined by around 42% since 1981, due largely to legislated restrictions on broadscale deforestation which were introduced progressively between 1996 and 2006. This paper discusses the prospects and challenges for further gains in resource use efficiency and reductions in greenhouse gas intensity for Australian beef production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The challenge of developing clean and renewable energy sources is becoming ever more urgent. Over the last decade, the concept of carbon footprint has been used to report direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and as a support for sustainable consumption decisions. However, the discrepancies in the approaches based on either the product or corporate carbon footprint can seriously hinder its successful implementation. The so-called compound method based on financial accounts is a tiered hybrid method which enables the calculation of both the product and corporate carbon footprint. This work aims to assess this method as a tool for carbon footprint through its implementation in a comprehensive life-cycle assessment of the Osorio Wind Farms in Brazil. The total cumulative life-cycle emissions are 362.455 t CO(2)eq, representing 18.33 gr CO(2)eq per kW h delivered to the Brazilian national power grid. The difference with regard to previous works derives from its broader scope and different assumptions. In this study the comparable value from wind turbine manufacture, transport and construction is 8.42 gr CO(2)eq per kW h, 56% lower than the mean figure reported by Arvesen and Hertwich (2012). This study includes sources, phases and areas previously unreported in the carbon footprint reviews for the wind power sector. We conclude that the compound method based on financial accounts is a practical method that allows the definition of a more comprehensive goal and scope. Its implementation at Osorio Wind Farms demonstrates the method's suitability for application-in major international projects and institutions interested in closely monitoring their carbon footprint. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A rapid increase in household solar PV uptake has caused concerns regarding intermittent exports of electricity to the grid and related balancing problems. A microgeneration system combining solar PV, combined heat and power plant (CHP) and battery storage could potentially mitigate these problems whilst improving household energy self-sufficiency. This research examines if this could also lead to lower environmental impacts compared to conventional supply of electricity and heat. Life cycle assessment has been carried out for these purposes simulating daily and seasonal energy demand of different household types. The results suggest that the impacts are reduced by 35-100% compared to electricity from the grid and heat from gas boilers. The exception is depletion of elements which is 42 times higher owing to the antimony used for battery manufacture. There is a large variation in impacts with household energy demand, with higher consumption resulting in a far greater reduction in impacts compared to the conventional supply. CHP inefficiency caused by user maloperation can decrease the environmental benefits of the system significantly; for example, the global warming potential increases by 17%. This highlights the need for consumer information and training to ensure maximum environmental benefits of microgeneration. Appropriate battery sizing is essential with the 10-20 kWh batteries providing greatest environmental benefits. However, any reduction in impacts from battery storage is heavily dependent on the assumptions for system credits for electricity export to the grid. Effective management of the battery operation is also required to maximise the battery lifetime: a reduction from 10 to five years increases depletion of elements by 45% and acidification by 32%. Increasing the recycling of metals from 0% to 100% reduces the impacts from 46% to 179%. If 90% of antimony is recycled, the depletion of elements is reduced by three times compared to the use of virgin antimony. However, this impact is still 12 times higher than for the conventional system owing to the use of other metals in the system. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The cultivation of giant reed lignocellulosic feedstock on marginal land, appears of great interest in the Mediterranean basin, due to its high production potential under drought conditions. Starting from a three years field survey, in this paper a LCA was applied to the overall 15 years life cycle of a Mediterranean giant reed cultivation in Southern Italy, including Direct Field Emissions (DFE) and non-productive phases of cultivation. Agricultural practices performed yearly for field maintenance (FM-urea fertilization) and harvest operation (HO) shared the largest part of total burdens, nonetheless, the impact of crop establishment and final removal appeared significant. FM was strongly affected by DFE of soil biogenic N2O and fossil CO2 (about 23% and 9% of total Climate change, respectively) and volatilized NH3 (about 69%, 42% and 35% of total impact for Terrestrial acidification, Particulate matter formation and Marine eutrophication, respectively). For Marine eutrophication, also nitrate leaching in the plantation year, affected significantly the overall life cycle. Differently DFE linked to field application of K-P fertilizers for seedbed preparation (P and heavy metal emissions) and pest for final eradication (glyphosate emission), appeared more circumscribed. The study highlighted the need to carefully approach to soil carbon storage, and disclosed to be sensitive to uncertainty linked to DFE and crop yield pattern estimation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper reports the composition and properties of highly flowable self-consolidating concrete (SCC) mixtures made of high proportions of cement replacement materials such as fly ash and pulverized limestone instead of high dosage of a plasticizing agent or viscosity-modifying chemical admixtures. Self-consolidating concrete mixtures are being increasingly used for the construction of highly reinforced complex concrete elements and for massive concrete structures such as dams and thick foundation. In this study, by varying the proportion of portland cement (OPC), Class F-fly ash (F), and limestone powder (L), SCC mixtures with different strength values were produced, and the properties of both fresh and hardened concrete were determined. For a comprehensive analysis and quantification of emissions and global warming potential (GWP) from concrete production, life-cycle assessment (LCA) was employed. We find that high volume, up to 55% by weight replacement of OPC with F, or F and L produces highly workable concrete that has high 28-day and 365-day strength, and extremely high to very high resistance to chloride penetration along with low GWP for concrete production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Differences between product and corporate carbon footprint seriously hinder its wider implementation. The compound method based on financial accounts is a tiered hybrid analysis developed from advances in ecological footprint which main strength is its capability to calculate both product and corporate carbon footprint in a comprehensive assessment. This work aims to evaluate the compound method based on financial accounts as a tool for product carbon footprint. The objective is twofold: (1) to assess its advantages and disadvantages for product carbon footprint; and (2) to evaluate differences with process-based analysis. EUR-flat wood pallet is selected as the unit of study in a cradle-to-gate life-cycle perspective. Due to method requirements, a Spanish pallet manufacturer that produces and markets 1.6 million EUR-flat wood pallets annually has been selected for an in-depth assessment. Our life-cycle implementation reveals the following findings: (1) emissions from the compound method based on financial accounts are 22% higher than ones from process-based analysis, (2) process-based analysis provides greater detail in first life cycle phases than the compound method based on financial accounts, and (3) calculation time is drastically reduced using the compound method based on financial accounts. This study shows the compound method based on financial accounts as providing a correct assessment of the amount of direct and indirect emissions with easy-to-obtain data. Calculation time is drastically reduced, making it applicable to all shapes and sizes of businesses. It could, therefore, improve the CF in both approaches (product and corporate), stimulating innovation and increasing support for sustainable consumption decisions. Process-based analysis, in contrast, is not so easily implemented due to the large number of units involved in the upstream supply chain, and the use of thresholds hinders comparison. Even with these advantages, MO should consider other areas for improvement. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Energy efficiency strategies, such as building insulation, improve the building performance without compromising comfort. This study presents a methodology for determining the optimal insulation thickness for external building surfaces. Our approach is based on a multi-objective optimization model that minimizes simultaneously the cost and environmental impact associated with both the energy consumption over the operational phase and the generation of the construction materials (including the waste produced during the disposal phase). The thermal loads of the cubicles were calculated with EnergyPlus, a widely used simulation program for buildings. The environmental impact was quantified following the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Our approach was applied to a case study of a house-like cubicle located in Lleida (northeast Spain). Taking as a basis a standard cubicle without insulation, our approach identifies solutions that reduce around 40% both, the cost and environmental impact. Optimal solutions show also important economic and environmental improvements compared to cubicles constructed with the Spanish legislation requirements. Our method is intended to assist decision-makers in the design of buildings. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global warming mitigation has recently become a priority worldwide. A large body of literature dealing with energy related problems has focused on reducing greenhouse gases emissions at an engineering scale. In contrast, the minimization of climate change at a wider macroeconomic level has so far received much less attention. We investigate here how to mitigate global warming by performing changes in an economy. To this end, we make use of a systematic tool that combines three methods: linear programming, environmentally extended input output models, and life cycle assessment principles. The problem of identifying key economic sectors that contribute significantly to global warming is posed in mathematical terms as a bi-criteria linear program that seeks to optimize simultaneously the total economic output and the total life cycle CO2 emissions. We have applied this approach to the European Union economy, finding that significant reductions in global warming potential can be attained by regulating specific economic sectors. Our tool is intended to aid policy makers in the design of more effective public policies for achieving the environmental and economic targets sought. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) had been detected in eggs of seabirds and fish, toxicity of waterborne PFOS to embryonic development of zebrafish (Danio rerio) was investigated. However, because assessment of effects by use of dietary exposure of adults is time-consuming and expensive, a study was conducted to compare effects on embryos via nanoinjection and waterborne exposure. Nanoinjection, in which small amounts of chemicals are injected into developing eggs, was used to incorporate PFOS into the yolk sac of embryos of zebrafish. Effects of PFOS during the period of development of the embryo were assessed within 96 h post-fertilization (hpf). PFOS significantly retarded development of embryos of zebrafish and resulted in abnormalities as well as lethality of developing embryos. Both methods of exposure, waterborne and nanoinjection, resulted in similar dose-dependent effects. Some sublethal effects, such as edema at 48 hpf, delayed hatching, and curvature of the spine was observed after 72 hpf. In ovo, nanoinjection was deemed to be an accurate method of exposure for controlling the actual internal dose for study of adverse effects, which closely mimicked responses to waterborne exposure of zebrafish embryo to PFOS.This article presents an integral approach to sustainable noise control system design for building ventilation systems in Hong Kong. This approach combines the analytic hierarchy process and life cycle analysis (LCA) to obtain a holistic view of the system performance in terms of human, economic, and environmental impacts. The approach was applied to the evaluation of various noise control systems including duct liners, silencers, semi-active noise control, and active noise control for ventilation systems. Although passive systems such as duct liners and silencers seem to consume more material resources than semi-active and active systems, the latter require sensors, controllers, resonators or loudspeakers, and electricity. In fact, the LCA showed little difference between the semi-active and active systems and the passive systems in term of resource depletion and carbon emission. As human impact and economic impact dominated the experts' views on sustainability, the analysed results indicated that the most sustainable design was duct liners, followed by silencers, active noise control, and semi-active noise control.Purpose Palm oil systems generate substantial amounts of biomass residues which are, according to best agricultural practices, preferably returned back to plantation in order to maintain soil fertility. However, there are often variations in this practice. Differences in economic status and possible treatment options for biomass residues determine the preferences to perform life cycle assessment (LCA), leading to a divergence in results. Difficulties when comparing LCA results based on literature are not unusual. The objectives of this paper are to provide guidelines for methodological choices that enable a systematic comparison of diverse scenarios for the treatment and valuation of empty fruit bunches (EFBs) and to explore effects of the scenarios on the environmental performances of a palm oil system. Methods Eleven scenarios were selected to address the possible EFB valuation and expanded boundaries with reference to the main palm oil system (EFBs applied as mulch, converted to compost or ethanol, treated in an incinerator, and sold as coproducts). The life cycle inventories were modeled based upon an Ecoinvent database. Solutions to multifunctional problems were suggested, including the application of system expansion, substitution, and partitioning, depending upon the nature of the scenarios. Results and discussion Comparison among LCA results based on the same multifunctional units (crude palm oil + palm kernel oil + palm kernel cake) can be accomplished only in cases where additional coproducts were utilized internally. Based on the global warming impact, the mulch option was preferred. The effect of the avoided process of producing synthetic fertilizers and the assumption that all parts of mulch are available as soil nutrient dominantly determined the final result. These need further verification. This study also demonstrates that the status of EFB as waste or goods is influential on the final results if the EFB is employed externally but has no effect if it is utilized internally. Conclusions The proposed guidelines provide methodological choices in terms of system boundary, functional unit, and solutions to multifunctional problems. The methods can be used to systematically compare LCA results of different treatment options and valuation of EFB. The preferred alternative for managing this biomass residue could improve environmental performances and orient toward best practices, such as those suggested by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Further studies incorporating a site-specific case of palm oil systems would better illustrate the usefulness of the proposed guidelines.Purpose Previous estimates of carbon payback time (CPT) of corn ethanol expansion assumed that marginal yields of newly converted lands are the same as the average corn yield, whereas reported marginal yields are generally lower than the average yield (47-83 % of average yield). Furthermore, these estimates assumed that the productivity of corn ethanol system and climate change impacts per unit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remain the same over decades to a century. The objective of this study is to re-examine CPT of corn ethanol expansion considering three aspects: (1) yields of newly converted lands (i.e., marginal yield), (2) technology improvements over time within the corn ethanol system, and (3) temporal sensitivity of climate change impacts. Methods Anew approach to CPT calculation is proposed, where changes in productivity of ethanol conversion process and corn yield are taken into account. The approach also allows the use of dynamic characterization approach to GHGs emitted in different times, as an option. Data are collected to derive historical trends of bioethanol conversion efficiency and corn yield, which inform the development of the scenarios for future biofuel conversion efficiency and corn yield. Corn ethanol's CPTs are estimated and compared for various marginal-to-average (MtA) yield ratios with and without considering technology improvements and time-dependent climate change impacts. Results and discussion The results show that CPT estimates are highly sensitive to both MtAyield ratio and productivity of ethanol system. Without technological advances, our CPT estimates for corn ethanol from newly converted Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land exceed 100 years for all MtA yield ratios tested except for the case where MtAyield ratio is 100 %. When the productivity improvements within corn ethanol systems since previous CPT estimates and their future projections are considered, our CPT estimates fall into the range of 15 years (100 % MtA yield ratio) to 56 years (50 % MtA yield ratio), assuming land conversion takes place in early 2000s. Incorporating diminishing sensitivity of GHG emissions to future emissions year by year, however, increases the CPT estimates by 57 to 13 % (from 17 years for 100 % MtAyield ratio to 88 years for 50 % MtAyield ratio). For 60 MtA yield ratio, CPT is estimated to be 43 years, which is relatively close to previous CPT estimates (i.e., 40 to 48 years) but with very different underlying reasons. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of considering technological advances in understanding the climate change implications of land conversion for corn ethanol. Without the productivity improvements in corn ethanol system, the prospect of paying off carbon debts from land conversion within 100 years becomes unlikely. Even with the ongoing productivity improvements, the yield of newly converted land can significantly affect the CPT. The results reinforce the importance of considering marginal technologies and technology change in prospective life cycle assessment.Purpose Carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRP) have been developed by the aviation industry to reduce aircraft fuel burn and emissions of greenhouse gases. This study presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of an all-composite airplane, based on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The global transition of aircraft to those of composite architecture is estimated to contribute 20-25 % of industry CO2 reduction targets. A secondary stage of the cradle-to-grave analysis expands the study from an individual aircraft to the global fleet. Methods An LCA was undertaken utilising SimaPro 7.2 in combination with Ecoinvent. Eco-indicator 99 (E) V2.05 Europe EI 99 E/E was the chosen method to calculate the environmental impact of the inventory data. The previously developed aviation integrated model was utilised to construct a scenario analysis of the introduction of composite aircraft against a baseline projection, through to 2050, to model CO2 emissions due to their particular relevance in the aviation sector. Results and discussion The analysis demonstrated CFRP structure results in a reduced single score environmental impact, despite the higher environmental impact in the manufacturing phase, due to the increased fossil fuel use. Of particular importance is that CFRP scenario quickly achieved a reduction in CO2 and NOx atmospheric emissions over its lifetime, due to the reduced fuel consumption. The modelled fleet-wide CO2 reduction of 14-15 % is less than the quoted emission savings of an individual aircraft (20 %) because of the limited fleet penetration by 2050 and the increased demand for air travel due to lower operating costs. Conclusions The introduction of aircraft based on composite material architecture has significant environmental benefits over their lifetime compared to conventional aluminium-based architecture, particularly with regards to CO2 and NOx a result of reduced fuel burn. The constructed scenario analyses the interactions of technology and the markets they are applied in, expanding on the LCA, in this case, an observed fleet-wide reduction of CO2 emission of 14-15 % compared to an individual aircraft of 20 %.Purpose Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is considered to be one of the most important environmental factors contributing to the global human disease burden. However, due to the lack of broad consensus and harmonization in the life cycle assessment (LCA) community, there is no clear guidance on how to consistently include health effects from PM2.5 exposure in LCA practice. As a consequence, different models are currently used to assess life cycle impacts for PM2.5, sometimes leading to inconsistent results. In a global effort initiated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative, respiratory inorganics' impacts expressed as health effects from PM2.5 exposure were selected as one of the initial impact categories to undergo review with the goal of providing global guidance for implementation in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The goal of this paper is to summarize the current knowledge and practice for assessing health effects from PM2.5 exposure and to provide recommendations for their consistent integration into LCIA. Methods A task force on human health impacts was convened to build the framework for consistently quantifying health effects from PM2.(5) exposure and for recommending PM2.5 characterization factors. In an initial Guidance Workshop, existing literature was reviewed and input from a broad range of internationally recognized experts was obtained and discussed. Workshop objectives were to identify the main scientific questions and challenges for quantifying health effects from PM2.5 exposure and to provide initial guidance to the impact quantification process. Results and discussion A set of 10 recommendations was developed addressing (a) the general framework for assessing PM2.5-related health effects, (b) approaches and data to estimate human exposure to PM2.5 using intake fractions, and (c) approaches and data to characterize exposure-response functions (ERFs) for PM2.5 and to quantify severity of the diseases attributed to PM2.5 exposure. Despite these advances, a number of complex issues, such as those related to nonlinearity of the ERF and the possible need to provide different ERFs for use in different geographical regions, require further analysis. Conclusions and outlook Questions of how to refine and improve the overall framework were analyzed. Data and models were proposed for harmonizing various elements of the health impact pathways for PM2.5. Within the next two years, our goal is to build a global guidance framework and to determine characterization factors that are more reliable for incorporating the health effects from exposure to PM2.5 into LCIA. Ideally, this will allow quantification of the impacts of both indoor and outdoor exposures to PM2.5.Purpose USEtox is a scientific consensus model for assessing human toxicological and ecotoxicological impacts that is widely used in life cycle assessment (LCA) and other comparative assessments. However, how user requirements are met has never been investigated. To guide future model developments, we analyzed user expectations and experiences and compared them with the developers' visions. Methods We applied qualitative and quantitative data collection methods including an online questionnaire, semi-structured user and developer interviews, and review of scientific literature. Questionnaire and interview results were analyzed in an actor-network perspective in order to understand user needs and to compare these with the developers' visions. Requirement engineering methods, more specifically function tree, system context, and activity diagrams, were iteratively applied and structured to develop specific user requirements-driven recommendations for setting priorities in future USEtox development and for discussing general implications for developing scientific models. Results and discussion The vision behind USEtox was to harmonize available data and models for assessing toxicological impacts in LCA and to provide global guidance for practitioners. Model developers show different perceptions of some underlying aspects including model transparency and expected user expertise. Users from various sectors and geographic regions apply USEtox mostly in research and for consulting. Questionnaire and interview results uncover various user requests regarding USEtox usability. Results were systematically analyzed to translate user requests into recommendations to improve USEtox from a user perspective and were afterwards applied in the further USEtox development process. Conclusions We demonstrate that understanding interactions between USEtox and its users helps guiding model development and dissemination. USEtox-specific recommendations are to (1) respect the application context for different user types, (2) provide detailed guidance for interpreting model and factors, (3) facilitate consistent integration into LCA software and methods, (4) improve update/testing procedures, (5) strengthen communication between developers and users, and (6) extend model scope. By generalizing our recommendations to guide scientific model development in a broader context, we emphasize to acknowledge different levels of user expertise to integrate sound revision and update procedures and to facilitate modularity, data import/export, and incorporation into relevant software and databases during model design and development. Our fully documented approach can inspire performing similar surveys on other LCA-related tools to consistently analyze user requirements and provide improvement recommendations based on scientific user analysis methods.Optimization of the production rate of biomass rich in N (e.g. for protein) or C (e.g. for biofuels) is key to making algae-based technology commercially viable. Creating the appropriate conditions to achieve this is a challenge; operational permutations are extensive, while geographical variations localise effective methods of cultivation when utilising natural illumination. As an aid to identifying suitable operational envelopes, a mechanistic acclimative model of microalgae growth is used for the first time to simulate production in virtual systems over a broad latitudinal range. Optimization of production is achieved through selection of strain characteristics, system optical depth, nutrient supply, and dilution regimes for different geographic and seasonal illumination profiles. Results reveal contrasting requirements for optimising biomass vs biofuels production. Trade-offs between maximising areal and volumetric production while conserving resources, plus hydrodynamic limits on reactor design, lead to quantifiable constraints for optimal operational permutations. Simulations show how selection of strains with a high maximum growth rate, U (m) , remains the prime factor enabling high productivity. Use of an f/2 growth medium with a culture dilution rate set at similar to 25 % of U (m) delivers sufficient nutrition for optimal biomass production. Further, sensitivity to the balance between areal and volumetric productivity leads to a well-defined critical depth at similar to 0.1 m at which areal biofuel production peaks with use of a low concentration f/4 growth medium combined with a dilution rate similar to 15 % of U (m) . Such analyses, and developments thereof, will aid in developing a decision support tool to enable more productive methods of cultivation.Comprehensive assessment tools are needed that reliably describe environmental impacts of different agricultural systems in order to develop sustainable high yielding agricultural production systems with minimal impacts on the environment. Today, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to assess and compare the environmental sustainability of agricultural products from conventional and organic agriculture. However, LCA studies comparing agricultural products from conventional and organic farming systems report a wide variation in the resource efficiency of products from these systems. The studies show that impacts per area farmed land are usually less in organic systems, but related to the quantity produced impacts are often higher. We reviewed 34 comparative LCA studies of organic and conventional agricultural products to analyze whether this result is solely due to the usually lower yields in organic systems or also due to inaccurate modeling within LCA. Comparative LCAs on agricultural products from organic and conventional farming systems often do not adequately differentiate the specific characteristics of the respective farming system in the goal and scope definition and in the inventory analysis. Further, often only a limited number of impact categories are assessed within the impact assessment not allowing for a comprehensive environmental assessment. The most critical points we identified relate to the nitrogen (N) fluxes influencing acidification, eutrophication, and global warming potential, and biodiversity. Usually, N-emissions in LCA inventories of agricultural products are based on model calculations. Modeled N-emissions often do not correspond with the actual amount of N left in the system that may result in potential emissions. Reasons for this may be that N-models are not well adapted to the mode of action of organic fertilizers and that N-emission models often are built on assumptions from conventional agriculture leading to even greater deviances for organic systems between the amount of N calculated by emission models and the actual amount of N available for emissions. Improvements are needed regarding a more precise differentiation between farming systems and regarding the development of N emission models that better represent actual N-fluxes within different systems. We recommend adjusting N- and C-emissions during farmyard manure management and farmyard manure fertilization in plant production to the feed ration provided in the animal production of the respective farming system leading to different N- and C-compositions within the excrement. In the future, more representative background data on organic farming systems (e.g. N content of farmyard manure) should be generated and compiled so as to be available for use within LCA inventories. Finally, we recommend conducting consequential LCA if possible when using LCA for policy-making or strategic environmental planning to account for different functions of the analyzed farming systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been applied for assessing emerging technologies, where large-scale production data are generally lacking. This study introduces a standardized scheme for technology and manufacturing readiness levels to contextualize a technology's development stage. We applied the scheme to a carbon nanotube (CNT) LCA and found that, regardless of synthesis technique, CNT manufacturing will become less energy intensive with increased levels of readiness. We examined the influence of production volume on LCA results using primary data from a commercial CNT manufacturer with approximately 100grams per day production volume and engineering design of a scaled-up process with 1 tonne per day production capacity. The results show that scaling up could reduce 84% to 94% of its cradle-to-gate impacts, mainly as a result of the recycling of feedstock that becomes economically viable only beyond certain minimum production volume. This study shows that LCAs on emerging technologies based on immature data should be interpreted in conjunction with their technology and manufacturing readiness levels and reinforces the need of standardizing and communicating information on these readiness levels and scale of production in life cycle inventory practices.Industrial assets or fixed capital stocks are at the core of the transition to a low-carbon economy. They represent substantial accumulations of capital, bulk materials, and critical metals. Their lifetime determines the potential for material recycling and how fast they can be replaced by new, more efficient facilities. Their efficiency determines the coupling between useful output and energy and material throughput. A sound understanding of the economic and physical properties of fixed capital stocks is essential to anticipating the long-term environmental and economic consequences of the new energy future. We identify substantial overlap in the way stocks are modeled in national accounting, dynamic material flow analysis, dynamic input-output (I/O) analysis, and life cycle assessment (LCA) and we merge these concepts into a common framework for modeling fixed capital stocks. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework for simultaneous accounting of capital and material stocks and for consequential LCA. We apply the framework to design a demand-driven dynamic I/O model with dynamic capital stocks, and we synthesize both the marginal and attributional matrix of technical coefficients (A-matrix) from detailed process inventories of fixed assets of different age cohorts and technologies. The stock modeling framework allows researchers to identify and exploit synergies between different model families under the umbrella of socioeconomic metabolism.The life cycle assessment of a grid-connected, parking integrated, 222kW(p) cadmium telluride photovoltaic system has been performed. The system was built at the University of Murcia and has been monitored for 2.5 years (sampling data every 5 min). The detailed material inventory, the energy embedded in the system, the energy payback time, and the energy return factor of the facility have been obtained and are 6.31 TJ equivalent primary energy, 2.06 and 12.16years, respectively. The average performance ratio is 0.8 with a slight monthly variation. Additionally, the environmental benefits of the architectural integration (in this case parking integration) have been quantified using a standard methodology for the calculation of several environmental parameters. Finally, the environmental benefits of renewable energy generation because of the savings of producing the same amount of electricity by the Spanish grid system have been assessed. Copyright (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Rapeseed is widely used to produce biodiesel, especially in Europe. In several studies, it has been shown that there is a good potential for growing this crop across the continent. However there is still little awareness that the energy efficiency of biofuel production from rapeseed is very low, Energy efficiency can be expressed in terms of Energy Return for Energy Invested (EROEI). We mapped EROEI values for all EU countries plus Switzerland based on expected yields derived from rapeseed suitability maps. We find that EU countries produce rapeseed biofuel with EROEI values of 2.2 and lower. We suggest that plans for biofuel cropping have to be supplemented by maps of EROEI. It is not only relevant to show where rapeseed can be grown, but we should also look at where its use for bioenergy can be efficient. In the area theoretically suitable for growing rainfed rapeseed (excluding unsuitable areas and water), 37.6% of the area can produce rape methyl ester (RME) biofuel only with an energy loss. We conclude that the energy efficiency of rapeseed biodiesel is low and spatially heterogeneous, and unless there are major technological improvements in the production process, replacing fossil fuels by biofuels from rapeseed is hardly a feasible option. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The aim of this article is to report a comprehensive review of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) implication on residential buildings. It discusses the contemporary issues, and its relationship and significance of system boundary, assumptions, and reports how it effects on economic and environmental impacts. The tools, frameworks and processes of LCA and LCC of buildings are also discussed. It critically illustrates the existing LCA and LCC studies on residential house designs to determine the causes for the widely varying results of numerous previous studies. It evaluates life cycle cost and life cycle environmental impacts of a case study building, and compares with very similar LCA and LCC studies. Finally, it reports the implications and perspectives of LCA and LCC studies on building designs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides an extensive review of anaerobic digestion (AD) systems, with a specific focus on community scale digesters for urban applications, processing either municipal organic waste exclusively or as mix feed. Emphasis is placed on reducing the systems scale environmental impact of AD technologies, including pre- and post-treatment stages, alongside biogas production. Developments to-date in AD system research in Europe and in the Asia region have been compared, providing a comprehensive evaluation of current practice, elucidating the areas of further potentials. The scope of this review is two-fold one, covering AD technologies including a cohort of simple and integrated wet and dry systems, which can be operated as continuous flow designs in single- or multi-stages. Two, focusing more on practices in digestate handling that minimise environmental impacts arising from their storage and land application. From an environmental perspective, we note the following trends emerging in the literature for processing urban waste that need further exploitation: dry AD (60-85% moisture) is suitable for low organic loads, mainly owing to resource savings in terms of water usage; co-digestion has shown better buffering capability, especially for two-stage digestion of food-based feed stocks; separating the digestate into liquid/solid fractions is effective for handling post-digestion emissions, mainly for mitigating ammonia volatilisation to air and phosphate leaching to soil. We report responses to a survey, conducted for this review, highlighting the contemporary issues and challenges with particular focus on the operational, social and management issues from an Indian perspective. There is need for follow-up of running plants to ensure their environmental performance. Such initiatives will have to consider managing of pollution footprints from AD, alongside the current drive for its widespread implementation for two incentives: greenhouse gas mitigation and fossil-fuel independence. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The transition toward resource efficient production and consumption patterns is currently one of the main challenges in engineering, environmental science and especially in governmental policies. This transition has led to a proliferation of meanings related to the resource efficiency concept, resulting in a wide variety of indicators. In this paper, we propose a systematized framework in which resource efficiency indicators can be structured and comprehensively positioned. The aim is to provide a proper understanding of the scope and limitations of particular existing resource efficiency indicators in order to assist policy makers and the scientific community in the application and further development of indicators. This framework covers all different resource use-related aspects evaluated in existing approaches, including simple accounting of resource extraction and use; environmental impact assessment due to resource extraction and use; accounting and environmental impact assessment of specific processes and of full supply chains; analyses at micro-scale and macro-scale; and analysis of both natural resources versus waste-as-resources. To illustrate the potential application of the framework, a set of currently used indicators was selected, whereupon these indicators were structured and evaluated within the framework. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is widely applied in several industrial sectors to evaluate the environmental performance of processes, products and services. Recently, several reports and studies have emphasized the importance of LCA in the field of engineered nanomaterials. However, to date only a few LCA studies on nanotechnology have been carried out, and fewer still have assessed aspects relating to ecotoxicity. This is mainly due to the lack of knowledge in relation on human and environmental exposure and effect of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs). This bottleneck is continued when performing Life Cycle Impact Assessment, where characterization models and consequently characterization factors (CFs) for ENPs are missing. This paper aims to provide the freshwater ecotoxicity CF for titanium dioxide nanoparticles (nano-TiO2). The USEtox (TM) model has been selected as a characterisation model. An adjusted multimedia fate model has been developed which accounts for nano-specific fate process descriptors (i.e. sedimentation, aggregation with suspended particle matter, etc) to estimate the fate of nano-TiO2 in freshwater. A literature survey of toxicity tests performed on freshwater organism representative of multiple trophic levels was conducted, including algae, crustaceans and fish in order to collect relevant EC50 values. Then, the toxic effect of nano-TiO2 was computed on the basis of the HC50 value. Thus, following the principle of USEtox (TM) model and accounting for nano-specific descriptors a CF for the toxic impact of freshwater ecotoxicity of 028 PAF day m(3) kg(-1) is proposed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines the sustainability of phytoremediation for soils contaminated with heavy metals, especially the influence of management of the produced metal-enriched biomass on the environmental performance of the complete system. We examine a case study in Asturias (north of Spain), where the land was polluted with Pb by diffuse emissions from an adjacent steelmaking factory. A Phytoremediation scenario based on this case was assessed by performing a comparative life cycle assessment and by applying the multi-impact assessment method ReCiPe. Our Baseline scenario used the produced biomass as feedstock for an anaerobic digester that produces biogas, which is later upgraded cryogenically. The Baseline scenario was compared with two alternative scenarios: one considers depositing the produced biomass into landfill, and the other considers excavating the contaminated soil, disposing it in a landfill, and refilling the site with pristine soil. A sensitivity analysis was performed using different yields of biomass and biogas, and using different distances between site and biomass valorization/disposal center. Our results show that the impacts caused during agricultural activities and biomass valorization were compensated by the production of synthetic natural gas and the avoided impact of natural gas production. In addition, it was found that if the produced biomass was not valorized, the sustainability of phytoremediation is questionable. The distance between the site and the biomass processing center is not a major factor for determining the technology's sustainability, providing distances are less than 200-300 km. However, distance to landfill or to the source of pristine soil is a key factor when deciding to use phytoremediation or other ex-situ conventional remediation techniques. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sound waste management and optimisation of resource recovery require reliable data on solid waste generation and composition. In the absence of standardised and commonly accepted waste characterisation methodologies, various approaches have been reported in literature. This limits both comparability and applicability of the results. In this study, a waste sampling and sorting methodology for efficient and statistically robust characterisation of solid waste was introduced. The methodology was applied to residual waste collected from 1442 households distributed among 10 individual sub-areas in three Danish municipalities (both single and multi-family house areas). In total 17 tonnes of waste were sorted into 10-50 waste fractions, organised according to a three-level (tiered approach) facilitating,comparison of the waste data between individual sub-areas with different fractionation (waste from one municipality was sorted at "Level III", e.g. detailed, while the two others were sorted only at "Level I"). The results showed that residual household waste mainly contained food waste (42 +/- 5%, mass per wet basis) and miscellaneous combustibles (18 +/- 3%, mass per wet basis). The residual household waste generation rate in the study areas was 3-4 kg per person per week. Statistical analyses revealed that the waste composition was independent of variations in the waste generation rate. Both, waste composition and waste generation rates were statistically similar for each of the three municipalities. While the waste generation rates were similar for each of the two housing types (single-family and multi-family house areas), the individual percentage composition of food waste, paper, and glass was significantly different between the housing types. This indicates that housing type is a critical stratification parameter. Separating food leftovers from food packaging during manual sorting of the sampled waste did not have significant influence on the proportions of food waste and packaging materials, indicating that this step may not be required. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper provides a detailed and comprehensive cost model for the economic assessment of solid waste management systems. The model was based on the principles of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and followed a bottom-up calculation approach providing detailed cost items for all key technologies within modern waste systems. All technologies were defined per tonne of waste input, and each cost item within a technology was characterised by both a technical and an economic parameter (for example amount and cost of fuel related to waste collection), to ensure transparency, applicability and reproducibility. Cost items were classified as: (1) budget costs, (2) transfers (for example taxes, subsidies and fees) and (3) externality costs (for example damage or abatement costs related to emissions and disamenities). Technology costs were obtained as the sum of all cost items (of the same type) within a specific technology, while scenario costs were the sum of all technologies involved in a scenario. The cost model allows for the completion of three types of LCC: a Conventional LCC, for the assessment of financial costs, an Environmental LCC, for the assessment of financial costs whose results are complemented by a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the same system, and a Societal LCC, for socio-economic assessments. Conventional and Environmental LCCs includes budget costs and transfers, while Societal LCCs includes budget and externality costs. Critical aspects were found in the existing literature regarding the cost assessment of waste management, namely system boundary equivalency, accounting for temporally distributed emissions and impacts, inclusions of transfers, the internalisation of environmental impacts and the coverage of shadow prices, and there was also significant confusion regarding terminology. The presented cost model was implemented in two case study scenarios assessing the costs involved in the source segregation of organic waste from 100,000 Danish households and the subsequent co-digestion of organic waste with animal manure. Overall, source segregation resulted in higher financial costs than the alternative of incinerating the organic waste with the residual waste: 1.6 M[SIC]/year, of which 0.9 M[SIC]/year was costs for extra bins and bags used by the households, 1.0 M[SIC]/year for extra collections and -0.3 M[SIC]/year saved on incineration. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper aims to assess the sustainability and the environmental performance of hot filling systems and aseptic packaging systems used for beverages. These technologies are the systems mostly adopted nowadays to package high acid beverages with extended shelf life. The potential environmental impacts are calculated using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The analysis only includes materials and processes that differ between the two technologies, i.e. heat treatment, filling operations, and packaging materials. PET bottles are considered in this study. Beverage production and transport of raw food materials are not taken into consideration as there are no differences between the two systems in these phases. Impact assessment is performed using ReCiPe method. The results from the analysis indicate that aseptic packaging systems on the whole have lower impacts in all the impact categories assessed. This is mainly due to the greater weight of PET bottles used in hot filling systems, necessary to withstand the higher filling temperatures. This aspect enhances the impacts of hot filling compared to aseptic packaging systems, while the environmental profile of the processing phase is similar between the two technologies in most of the impact categories considered. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wheat is a very strategic production in West Azarbayjan which is cultivated in extensive scale and can have strong role economically for the sustainable development. The aim of the present study was to analyze the energy consumption of wheat production in West Azarbayjan utilizing life cycle assessment (LCA). The assessment was carried out in terms of energy input and output, yield, energy use efficiency, specific energy, energy productivity, and net energy gain. As well, the allocations of different direct, indirect, renewable and nonrenewable energy sources were encompassed. The energy input and output were obtained as 30626.4 and 53480.4 MJ ha(-1), respectively. It was disclosed that the greatest shares of input energy with 11984 MJ ha(-1) and 6824.2 MJ ha(-1) corresponded to the diesel fuel and Nitrogen, respectively. The total consumed energy input could be classified as direct energy (53.81%), and indirect energy (38.39%) or renewable energy (30.23%) and nonrenewable energy (88.81%). Finally, some economic indices were incorporated in the present investigation such as the total value of production, productivity and benefit. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Significant energy mismatch exists in solar water heating systems as the time and amount of solar energy supply are usually different from that of hot water demand. Using a hot water storage tank can reduce or eliminate such mismatch in short term while it is difficult to avoid this mismatch in long term. In many optimal design and life-cycle analysis methods, the energy mismatch is ignored which causes the system performance to be overestimated and also misleads the optimal design of the system. This paper presents a simplified method for optimizing the key parameters of solar water heating systems based on life-cycle energy analysis. This optimal method considering the energy mismatch phenomenon can be implemented through two steps. In the first step, a simplified energy model based hourly energy matching different components of the system, is developed for determining the operating performance of system with different solar collector areas and water storage volumes. In the second step, the law of diminishing marginal utility is employed to determine the optimum size of the system. The optimum size is identified when the maximal life-cycle net energy saving is achieved. A case study on the application of the proposed method in a building is presented as well. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Microalgal biomass cultivation as a byproduct of wastewater treatment represents an interesting opportunity for wastewater valorization. Several studies analyzed the growth of microalgae in urban and agricultural wastewaters, evaluating the potential of microalgae strains to remove organic pollutants. To assess the actual environmental impact of such an integrated system, life cycle assessment (LCA) provides the proper tools for a comprehensive and effective analysis. In this study, olive mill wastewaters (OMW) are chosen and the selected microalgal strains are Chlrorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus quadricauda. Technical activities were carried out to obtain, starting from OMW, a cultivation medium with the same composition of the synthetic substrate (BG 11) used to grow the selected microalgal strains. Then, by means of LCA, a comparison between the environmental burden of the different scenarios was performed. Particular attention was devoted to the environmental indicators and a sensitivity analysis was performed to account for the transportation of OMW from olive mills to a centralized OMW treatment plant. The results show that the wastewater valorization can bring about an environmental benefit if the treatment plant is properly located. This is largely due to the avoided impact of the OMW purification treatment.This paper presents the case study of two wind turbines installed in Mexico which are analyzed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Environmental impacts of different fabrication materials and electricity consumption were studied for the main turbine components. The designs of both turbines were examined through the phases of manufacture, construction, and final disposal. Both turbines (turbine A and turbine B) were of 2.0 megawatts (MW). Results ascertain that the most intensive environmental impacts come from the nacelle and tower components of both turbines; and that within life cycle phases, turbine A influences the environment less than turbine B, specifically during manufacture and final disposal. This study is valuable for decision makers in the domain of technological product design and marketing; in order to determine which features of the wind turbines can be modified to mitigate environmental impacts, contributing to technological innovation in the domains of sustainability and renewable energies in Mexico. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The useful life (UL) of the failure assessment in blades of steam turbines is optimized using the artificial intelligence. The objective of this paper is to develop an integrated approach using artificial neural network inverse (ANNi) coupling with a Nelder Mead optimization method to estimate the resonance stress when the UL of the blades is required. The proposed method ANNi is a new tool which inverts the artificial neural network (ANN). Firstly, It is necessary to build the artificial neural network (ANN) that simulates the output parameter (UL). ANN's model is constituted of feedforward network with one hidden layer to calculate the output of the process when input parameters are well known, then inverting ANN. The ANNi could be used as a tool to estimate the optimal unknown parameter required (resonance stress). Very low percentage of error and short computing time are precise and efficient, make this methodology (ANNi) attractive to be applied for control on line the UL of the system and constitutes a very promising framework for finding set of "good solutions". (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Due to economic and societal reasons, informal activities including open burning, backyard recycling, and landfill are still the prevailing methods used for electronic waste treatment in developing countries. Great efforts have been made, especially in China, to promote formal approaches for electronic waste management by enacting laws, developing green recycling technologies, initiating pilot programs, etc. The formal recycling process can, however, engender environmental impact and resource consumption, although information on the environmental loads and resource consumption is currently limited. To quantitatively assess the environmental impact of the processes in a formal printed wiring board (PWB) recycling chain, life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to a formal recycling chain that includes the steps from waste liberation through materials refining. The metal leaching in the refining stage was identified as a critical process, posing most of the environmental impact in the recycling chain. Global warming potential was the most significant environmental impact category after normalization and weighting, followed by fossil abiotic depletion potential, and marine aquatic eco-toxicity potential. Scenario modeling results showed that variations in the power source and chemical reagents consumption had the greatest influence on the environmental performance. The environmental impact from transportation used for PWB collection was also evaluated. The results were further compared to conventional primary metals production processes, highlighting the environmental benefit of metal recycling from waste PWBs. Optimizing the collection mode, increasing the precious metals recovery efficiency in the beneficiation stage and decreasing the chemical reagents consumption in the refining stage by effective materials liberation and separation are proposed as potential improvement strategies to make the recycling chain more environmentally friendly. The LCA results provide environmental information for the improvement of future integrated technologies and electronic waste management.The main objective of this study is to develop a model for decision-making associated with the activity-based costing (ABC) system within the life-cycle assessment (LCA) aspects for the electrical and electronic industry. In order to maximise a company's profits and minimise environmental impact within limited constraints and resources, a mathematical programming model and green optimal manufacturing decisions have been proposed. Our findings provide insight into 'green businesses', and are beneficial in terms of environmental management in a competitive industry. The proposed programming model is put forward as a green management tool that provides enterprise advantages and niches, and reaches environmental sustainability goals.This paper presents an integrated eco-design decision-making (IEDM) methodology that is formed using three stages: life cycle assessment, an eco-design process (Eco-Process) model and an enhanced eco-design quality function deployment process. All product sustainability considerations are conducted within a special eco-design house of quality. This brings together the analysis of factors relating to manufacturing processes, product usage and end-of-life strategy. The concentration of environmental considerations in one place insures that product sustainability is central to any design development and that the implications of change are fully identified and justified. The IEDM methodology utilises of a set of Eco-Process parameters and their associated relationships to allow users with complementary knowledge to enter and access information in a timely and controlled manner. They are then able to contribute their expertise to support decisions with the aim of providing more sustainable products. An application of the approach is presented in the context of a case study considering the redesign of a single-use medical forceps. The materials and production methods used are investigated with a view to quantifying their environmental impact. The resulting IEDM methodology can be seen to be widely and easily applicable.This paper aims to develop benchmark coefficients for water consumption' and water withdrawals over the full life cycle of coal-based power generation. This study considered not only all of the unit operations involved in the full electricity generation life cycle but also compared different coal-based power generating technologies. Overall this study develops the life cycle water footprint for 36 different coal-based electricity generation pathways. Power generation pathways involving new technologies of integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) or ultra supercritical technology with coal transportation by conventional means and using dry cooling systems have the least complete life cycle water-demand coefficients of about 1 L/kW h. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the impact of power plant performance and coal transportation on the water demand coefficients. The consumption coefficient over life cycle of ultra supercritical or IGCC power plants are 0.12 L/kW h higher when conventional transportation of coal is replaced by coal-log pipeline. Similarly, if the conventional transportation of coal is replaced by its transportation in the form of a slurry through a pipeline, the consumption coefficient of a subcritical power plant increases by 0.52 L/kW h. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents for the first time the results of a life cycle assessment study for an intelligent energy management system. We considered material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, assembly, operation and maintenance stages. The results show that the assembly phase had an environmental impact of 897 Eco-indicator 99 points that was mainly due to the monitoring subsystem (87.80%). When the analysis was extended to cover the use phase, the environmental impact ranged from 1963 (useful life of 5 years) to 3029 Eco-indicator 99 points (useful life of 10 years). The environmental impact of the use stage was found to represent 54-70% of the total, whereas the assembly stage represented 46-30%. The maintenance phase contributed to a very small extent to the total environmental impact (less than 0.5%). In any case, the impact on resources was the largest (about 51%), whereas the human health damage category amounted to approximately 35% and the ecosystem quality damage category represented about 14% of the total impact. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Plugin and hybrid vehicles have been shown to offer possible reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, depending on grid-carbon-intensity, range and thus life-cycle battery emissions and vehicle weight, and on trip patterns. We present a framework that enables GHG comparisons (well-to-wheel plus storage manufacturing) for three drivetrains (pure-electric, gasoline-hybrid, and plugin-hybrid), both for individual vehicles and for fleets. The framework captures effects of grid- versus vehicle-based electricity generation, grid transmission and charging losses, and manufacturing and carrying batteries. In contrast to previous work, GHG comparisons can be obtained for heterogeneous fleets of varying vehicle sizes (cars, vans, buses, trucks) and performances, without requiring forecasting of such vehicle specs and their respective market penetrations. Further, we show how a novel adaptation of the Utility Factor concept from plug-in-hybrids to mixed fleets of battery-only and gasoline-hybrids is crucial to quantifying battery-only-vehicles' impact on fleet-wide GHG. To account for regional variations and possible future technology improvements, we show scenarios over a wide spectrum of grid-carbon-intensities (50-1200 g CO(2)e/kW h at wall), vehicle range (similar to 5-500 km), battery energy densities, and battery life-cycle GHG. Model uncertainties are quantified via sensitivity tests. Applying the framework to trip patterns of US passenger transportation, we find that owing to the interplay of GHG/km, battery size, all-electric range, and trip patterns, GHG reductions achievable from electrified transportation are smaller than previously considered (e.g., 55% reduction instead of 80%; scenario-dependent), even when assuming largely decarbonized grid-electricity. Optimal battery range that achieves lowest GHG for partially electrified fleets is different for plug-in hybrids versus pure electrics and furthermore varies strongly (similar to 35 to similar to 200 km) with the predominant carbon-intensity of the grid. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fisheries globally are facing multiple sustainability challenges, including low fish stocks, overcapacity, unintended bycatch and habitat alteration. Recently, fuel consumption has joined this list of challenges, with increasing consumer demand for low-carbon food production and the implementation of carbon pricing mechanisms. The environmental impetus for improving fishery fuel performance is coupled with economic benefits of decreasing fuel expenditures as oil prices rise. Management options to improve the fuel performance of fisheries could satisfy multiple objectives by providing low-carbon fish products, improving economic viability of the industry, and alleviating pressure on overfished stocks. We explored the association of fuel consumption and fuel costs in a wide range of Australian fisheries, tracking trends in consumption and expenditure over two decades, to determine if there is an economic impetus for improving the fuel efficiency - and therefore carbon footprint - of the industry. In the years studied, Australian fisheries, particularly energy-intensive crustacean fisheries, consumed large quantities of fuel per kilogram of seafood product relative to global fisheries. Many fisheries improved their fuel consumption, particularly in response to increases in biomass and decreases in overcapacity. Those fisheries that improved their fuel consumption also saw a decrease in their relative fuel expenditure, partially counteracted by rising oil prices. Reduction in fuel use in some Australian fisheries has been substantial and this has resulted not from technological or operational changes but indirectly through fisheries management. These changes have mainly resulted from management decisions targeting ecological and economic objectives, so more explicit consideration of fuel use may help in extending these improvements. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Altering agricultural practices to meet the sustainability criteria can be a promising solution for reducing environmental burdens related to intensive agricultural management practices. In this study, different wheat management practices are proposed and evaluated for their environmental performances from a life cycle prospective. Information on crop yield response to nitrogen (N) fertilizer rates and soil disturbance was collected from field experiments conducted during the growing season (2010-2012) at Pantanelli experimental farm in southern Italy. Environmental impacts are organized in impact categories, which are estimated under the proposed scenarios using different methodology. All impacts are linked to the production of 1 kg of durum wheat using farm gate as a system boundary. Results showed that for all the examined scenarios, largest burdens are related to the production of farm inputs, while the lowest to cultivation face, except for no nitrogen supply scenarios. Impact assessment results at midpoint level indicate that most impact categories have a direct correlation between impact assessment values, which are very much linked to grain productivity, and management intensity with some exceptions. In most cases, T1 performed better than other scenarios whereas T8 reported the highest impact. At damage category, however, most of the impacts on human health came from Climate change (49.4%) and Particulate matter formation (49.5%). For the damage to ecosystems, minor differences between the different production scenarios were calculated with best option was for the lowest input scenario (T1). Only two impact categories contributed in a clear manner to the total impact on ecosystem. Climate change and Agricultural land occupation represent the majority of the total impacts on ecosystem with 50.5% and 46.3%, respectively. Impact assessment for the damage category "Resources" show that the majority of the impacts came from the depletion of fossil fuel. The use of diesel fuel in tractors for the various agricultural steps was a significant process that was responsible for the impact on the proposed scenarios. Comparative analysis for the proposed management scenarios give the possibility for the optimization of farming systems, which resulted in increasing productivity with minimum input. This has led to the reduction of impacts resulted from the production of 1 kg of product. It was found that the contribution of conservation agriculture technique (NT with low input of N fertilizer) to the impact categories and GWP index was small compared to that of Cr and RT. Data obtained from this study could help farmers as well as the industry to focus on the most emission-intensive stages of durum wheat production in order to reduce impacts by improving productivity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Agricultural systems are increasingly subjected to environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) but generating life cycle inventory (LCI) data in agriculture remains a challenge. In Part I, it was suggested that traceability data are a good basis for generating precise LCI with reduced effort, especially when collected by efficient information and communication technologies (ICTs). The aim of this paper is to demonstrate this for wine grape production and generate a list of data to be collected for streamlined LCI generation. The study is carried out in the South of France, on a viticultural farm implementing electronic traceability of each cultivation operation, i.e. tillage, fertilisation, crop protection, weeding, canopy management and harvesting (no irrigation is needed at this vineyard). For each operation, specific emission models which satisfy the trade-off between accuracy and need for data have been identified. Traceability data must be supplemented with data related to the plot, equipment and inputs to feed the models. The sensitivity of the LCA outputs to plot soil type and year of cultivation was studied. Consistent with previous agricultural studies, the results show that operations such as pesticide spraying and fertilising have large environmental impacts in this Mediterranean vineyard. Notable variations occur in life cycle impact assessment indicators, principally due to variations in crop yield; however, the influence of secondary factors such as soil type and agricultural practices is also evident and this contribution allows us to better characterise the variability of grape production and to show that streamlined LCI can be created using traceability data. Ultimately, this paper delivers two results. It provides simple models, and relevant data and methodology to enable viticultural LCAs to be undertaken. Additionally, it demonstrates that accurate LCIs can be built based on data already collected for traceability when supplemented with other easily collectable data (weather and farm structural data). Overall, this work paves the way for streamlined LCI in agriculture. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental impact of imported fresh agricultural products, such as off-season vegetables transported over long distances, is under growing scrutiny. We hypothesised that the environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) ranking between local and imported vegetables might change depending on the impact category considered. We focused on the case study of off-season tomatoes produced in Morocco under unheated greenhouses in a water-scarce area, which covers 68% of the fresh tomatoes imported to France. First, we performed a cradle-to-market gate LCA of the Moroccan production using primary data based on a field survey. Second, we applied the same Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method to published cradle-to-farm-gate results of the French tomato cropping system, which also provides offseason tomatoes to the French market and which is characterised by heated greenhouses with a high level of inputs. In addition to typical environmental impact categories, the freshwater use impact was included. The ranking between imported and local tomatoes was different depending on the impact category. Freshwater use had greater impacts under the Moroccan arid climate: 28.0 L H2Oeq kg(-1) of Moroccan tomato and 7.5 L H2Oeq kg(-1) of French tomato. Conversely, the higher level of artificialisation of the French production resulted in greater impacts on total energy consumption, global warming, and eutrophication, even including transport to France for the Moroccan tomato. This reveals a trade-off between freshwater use impacts and the usual/other impacts, mostly energy-related. At the farm gate, we found that the Moroccan tomato water consumption highly contributed to the total damages to Human Health (14%), and Ecosystems (20%) (contribution to Resources depletion was only 2%). Therefore, ignoring the impacts of freshwater use in LCA also underestimates the damages. Moreover, we showed that the assessment of freshwater use impacts and damages still has shortcomings, leading to an underestimation of the impact for the Moroccan tomato case. These results emphasised the importance of considering all of the impact categories when performing an agricultural LCA and the need for a more comprehensive method for assessing the impacts of freshwater use. In particular, the use of an operational tool for estimating water and solute fluxes at the field level is recommended to feed freshwater impact assessment methods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In an international context characterised by the promotion of renewable sources to face an increasing energy demand, grape marc is an organic co-product of the vinification process whose potential as an energy source has been underexploited. This study analysed the production chain of grape marc pellets and evaluated, through an attributional Life Cycle Assessment based on primary data from field experiments, the overall environmental performance of using grape marc pellets for heat production, as well as its comparison with alternative fossil and renewable energy resources. A sensitivity analysis was carried out concerning the type of fuel used for drying, the methodological approach to solve multifunctionality, as well as the influence of the water content of grape marc. The combustion and drying of pellets were found to be the main contributors to the environmental impacts, although a crucial influence of methodological choices on co-products management was observed. The use of wood chips for drying and an optimization of the pellets loading rate in the combustion process are the main improvement recommendations. Overall, results showed that the production of pellets from grape marc for heat production purposes is a promising technology from an environmental perspective, which is always superior to alternative fuels at the endpoint impact level. Compared to fossil fuels, its main advantage lies in the reduced contribution to climate change. When compared to mixed wood chips, it has an advantage regarding the contribution of agricultural land occupation. For policy support purposes, however, this study should be complemented by further analyses focussing, for instance, on marketdriven consequences of large scale implementation. The results were shown to be dependent on the midpoint and endpoint impact categories. Their comprehensive interpretation led to the overarching clear recommendation to adapt the impact assessment categories and models and the approach to deal with multi-functionality to the geographical and market specificities features and to assure maximum transparency in the communication of results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global climate change problem can be linked to production efficiency and everyday consumption patterns by calculating the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from each product. This is usually referred to as product carbon footprint (PCF). Only limited information is available about the PCF of German horticultural products. We measured the cradle-to-grave PCF of German strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in different production systems and compared it to the PCF of the same products grown in other countries. For the production and customer stage we collected primary data, for the comparison with products in other countries we used literature data. The results showed that the average consumer stage constitutes 3-71% of the PCF, the best case consumer scenario 1-39% and the worst case 60-99%. The consumer shopping trip was a hotspot in all analysed systems where a private car was used. Electricity for production, fuel use for soil management, and cooking and washing dishes were also among the most often identified hotspots. German open field strawberries perform better, German open field roses and asparagus are on the similar level with the same products produced abroad. However, asparagus transported by plane, and strawberries and roses grown in greenhouses have several times higher PCF regardless of the producing country. Consumers as well as producers are responsible for reducing the climate impact of horticultural products. Shopping trip on foot or by bike and using renewable energy can reduce the PCF significantly. We recommend extending the analysis to the life cycle assessment or product environmental footprint to consider more indicators to identify which products are less harmful to the environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer-to-peer (P2P) has been suggested as an energy-efficient means of movie distribution, indicating potential environmental benefits. An alternative option for the user would be to stream the movie from an internet protocol television (IPTV) solution. This paper presents an assessment of the carbon footprint of these two alternatives. When studying the environmental impacts of a product (goods or services), it is important to adopt a life cycle perspective in order to avoid moving the potential impacts from one part of the life cycle to another. Therefore the carbon footprint was assessed with a screening life cycle assessment (LCA). The results show that end-use equipment and distribution (in both P2P and IPTV systems) are clearly key aspects. Both manufacturing and use are important. In the use phase, the electricity for using the end-use devices and for distribution is the main contributor to the carbon footprint. For the distribution, another major contributor to the carbon footprint is the construction work involved in installing cables. Downlink/uplink bandwidth and movie size have a major influence on the environmental impact related to watching a movie by P2P, as the total time for which end-use devices need to be used is critical. Movie size determines the impact related to the distribution. In terms of the carbon footprint from the two systems, the P2P system has a higher impact, mainly caused by the end-use devices. Downlink uplink bandwidth and movie size determine the overall impact of the P2P system. The carbon footprint from P2P systems could be lowered either through higher uplink bandwidth or through decreased movie size. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The extensive use of fossil-based plastics has raised concerns regarding the depletion of fossil resources and the deterioration of the environment. Phenyllactic acid (PhLA), fermented from renewable resources, could be used to produce high-performance bio-plastics able to replace the fossil-based engineering plastics (FBEPs) in many applications. In order to evaluate the environmental performance of poly(PhLA) produced from sweet sorghum, a cradle-to-factory-gate life cycle assessment was performed for two impact categories, namely fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per kilogram of poly(PhLA). These two impact categories were compared with those of the FBEPs, and with those of the bio-based polylactides (PLA) and poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA). The fossil energy consumption for poly(PhLA) is 24.2 MJ/kg, which is lower than that of the FBEPs and the bio-based PLA and PHA. However, the GHG emissions are 6.2 kg CO2 eq/kg using the current technology; these are higher than those of the FBEPs and bio-based PLA and PHA. The results of a sensitivity analysis show that the GHG emissions become less than those of FBEPs when increasing the efficiency of separation and purification to more than 903%, the PhLA yield to more than 20.6%, the sugar extraction rate to 96%, the Brix of sorghum juice to more than 19.4%, and the sorghum yield to more than 79.2 t/ha. These results show that using the poly(PhLA) produced from sweet sorghum to replace the FBEPs has the potential to reduce fossil energy consumption and GHG emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As the use of second-generation biofuel crops increases, so do questions about sustainability, particularly their potential to affect fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This study used a life-. cycle approach to compare environmental impacts associated with three switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L) production scenarios: i) regional production from a pool of Tennessee farmers based on in-field inputs and biomass yield; ii) varying nitrogen (N)-input levels from a replicated field study for 8-yrs i.e., a 100% and 9% decrease, and an 81% and 172% increase from 'baseline levels' of N inputs used under objective i; and, iii) a legume-intercrop system compared to baseline levels in order to determine effects of displacing synthetic-N with legumes. When compared across all agricultural inputs, nitrogen fertilizer production and breakdown resulted in the greatest environmental impacts. Although fertilization increased lignocellulosic yields, a 100% reduction in N-inputs from baseline levels reduced the formation of carbon, methane, and nitrous oxides per unit of production, (or dry tonne of biomass over 10-yrs) compared to a 172% increase. Switchgrass yield response indicated a 'less is more' scenario, as inputs beyond the current recommended input level (67 kg N ha(-1)) are not environmentally remunerating. During switchgrass biomass production, inputs with lesser impacts included phosphorus, herbicides, pesticides, and diesel fuel. Legume-intercropping reduced greenhouse gas emissions and groundwater acidification (5% and 27% reduction in global warming potential and formation of acidifying species, respectively) compared with the 67 kg N ha irate. Although N-fertilizers impact environmental sustainability of regional switchgrass feedstock production, environmental consequences can be reduced under proper N-management i.e., <= 67 kg N ha(-1) or legume intercropping. However, given that the aim of second-generation feedstocks is to reduce the current reliance on fossil fuels, their production still requires fossil energy-based inputs. Consequently, greenhouse gas reductions and the extent of cleaner feedstock production during the agricultural biofuel supply chain is contingent upon input management and optimizing synthetic fertilizer usage. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.This paper describes the development of a quantitative analysis system as a platform for rapidly estimate energy, costs and carbon emission to facilitate the comparison of different wind turbine concept designs. This system aimed specifically at wind turbine manufacturing processes due to the fact that a large proportion of the environmental, costs and energy impacts would occur at this stage. The proposed method supports an initial assessment of multiple design concepts which allows the selection and development of a "greener" wind turbine. The developed system enables concept design of commercial wind turbine towers of hub heights between 44 and 135 m. The method supports an accurate estimation in regards to the dimension, energy consumed, maximum power output, costs and carbon emission in the early design phases of a wind turbine. As a result of the development, the proposed approach could potentially be used to minimise the carbon footprints of major engineering projects such as wind farms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Life cycle assessment has been widely adopted to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product. In many cases, a local life cycle inventory (LCI) is not available and the substitution of overseas LCIs by local data has become a common practice. Although substituting local data into existing LCIs is considered as an efficient way to create a 'partially localized' inventory, little has been known on the consequences of such adjustments, not to mention about the availability of a standard governing this issue. This study investigates the changes caused by replacing overseas LCIs with local data and provides suggestions based on a case study of concrete production in Hong Kong. Two existing overseas LCI datasets are used, namely Ecoinvent and US PCA. Thirty localized scenarios are performed at three different levels and the localized scenarios are compared with the two original datasets. The results indicate that the change of single score increases with the adjustments in the original LCIs. It is found that the substitution of local data into US PCA and Ecoinvent would yield different changes, despite the same adjustments are performed. The changes in the localized concrete datasets are mainly attributed to the adjustments of cement and transportation. Based on the research findings, it is suggested to examine the changes due to the data substitution and define the levels of adjustment. The percentage of adjustment should also be specified. The research findings of this study shall pave a way for the standardization of the adaptation of overseas LCIs in the future. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study was to investigate whether a pyrolysis plant using municipal solid waste (MSW) in North Carolina would be environmentally friendly. Based on the analysis of primary landfills and wasteflow across North Carolina, five pyrolysis plants were assumed to be built to utilize MSW. Life cycle assessment results indicate that global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), human toxicity potential (HTP) and photochem ozone creation potential (POCP) are mainly from bio-oil production, which accounts for 32.8%, 59.4%, 98.2% and 99.8% of the total potentials generated by the whole process, respectively. Besides, the main source of ozone depletion potential (ODP) and terrestric ecotoxicity potential (TETP) is electricity for bio-oil production. Eutrophication potential (EP) emission is mainly from the exhaust of diesel vehicle operation. Hydrogen and char are produced in production and upgrading of bio-oil as co-products, which generate 5.5 MJ and 2.7 MJ energy credits per kg MSW, respectively. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the yield of bio-oil is the most sensitive parameter in determining GWP and the electricity consumption also plays a significant role on GWP. The impact potentials of MSW pyrolysis were compared with those of other three alternatives of anaerobic digestion, incineration and landfill for treating MSW. Results show fast pyrolysis for bio-oil causes the least impact, while the disposal of the MSW in landfills causes the worst impact on the environment. Based on above results, pyrolysis of MSW for transportation fuels is an environment-friendly way to utilize the MSW. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Carbon steel slag is quite commonly used in road construction to replace natural aggregate. Since it is important to evaluate such a replacement from the environmental point of view, a Life Cycle Assessment was carried out in order to compare the environmental impacts of the construction of asphalt wearing courses with the use of siliceous aggregates (the "conventional scenario"), and the use of alternative, steel slag aggregates (the "alternative scenario"). The main advantage of the alternative scenario is that a reduction can be achieved in the consumption of natural aggregate, as well as in the quantity of slag deposited on landfill sites. On the other hand larger amount of bitumen is needed as a binder. However, the results of the Life Cycle Assessment (based on consequential modelling) revealed that the alternative scenario is to be significantly preferred if the following impact categories are taken into account: Acidification, Eutrophication, Photochemical Ozone Creation and Human Toxicity. In the case of the discussed indicators, the impacts are reduced to a level equal to about 80% of the conventional scenario impacts. This benefit was additionally evaluated by means of a transport sensitivity analysis, which provided results which could be useful for road managers working on case studies using similar construction materials. The alternative scenario is more sustainable than the conventional scenario with regard to the discussed impact categories even when taking into account long delivery distances of the steel slag aggregate (similar to 100 km) and minimal delivery distances of the siliceous aggregate. Considering similar delivery distances in both scenarios, the alternative scenario was found to be beneficial also with regard to the Global Warming, but only when the delivery distance of the steel slag aggregates did not exceed 160 km. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental criteria have to be taken into account when it comes to selecting a specific building component among a set of candidates with the same function. This article presents a methodological approach based on both Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for the selection of building components according to their environmental impact efficiency. A three-step LCA + DEA approach is proposed and tested through a case study for 175 external walls. The three steps of this approach involve data collection, life cycle impact assessment, and DEA of the sample of building components using environmental impacts as DEA inputs. Overall, from the availability of multiple data on the material and energy flows of each building component, the method provides decision makers with eco-efficiency scores and environmental benchmarks. A cautious definition of the set of candidates is critical, as relative efficiency scores are calculated. Data availability and functional homogeneity regarding the building components evaluated are the key requirements for the general use of the method. The three-step LCA + DEA approach proposed is proven to be a useful method to enhance decision making and environmental benchmarking in the building sector. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recycling of concrete waste to produce recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) and its use in the production of structural concrete is the way towards reducing the depletion of natural mineral resources and the amount of construction and demolition waste being land-filled. The goal of this study was to determine the optimal choice of aggregate type and transport scenario in concrete production, employing a multicriteria optimization method taking into account technical, economical and environmental limits and constraints. Several concrete types with different type of used aggregate (river aggregate, crushed stone and recycled concrete aggregate) and different transport scenarios were analyzed. The environmental system evaluation criteria were chosen according to the Life Cycle Assessment methodology and the economical system evaluation criteria were determined in accordance with the current state of the ready-mixed concrete market in Serbia. The normative multicriteria optimization method (VIKOR method) was employed to determine the optimal solution. Analysis was performed for different decision making scenarios that gave emphasis to different criteria. Results have shown that concrete with a 50% replacement ratio of coarse aggregate with RCA can be presented as an optimal solution. Since natural aggregate concrete made with river aggregate was shown to have the lowest price, a further analysis was conducted to determine what economical measures should be undertaken in order to achieve cost equality of recycled and natural aggregate concrete. The analysis identified taxes on river aggregate, taxes on land-filling and subsidies for using RCA as viable measures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The railway system represents one of the most resource-efficient answer to the ever-growing demand for transport service. Development trends for the following years project substantial increase in this sector. To date, environmental effects caused by railway transport services have been rarely inspected systematically and existing studies focus on single typologies of environmental aspects, like energy consumption and air emissions. The article presents a predictive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a heavy metro train that will operate in the urban area of Rome. A predictive analysis on recyclability/recoverability at the end of life has also been performed according to the ISO 22628. The LCA inventory captures the whole vehicle Life-Cycle (LC) subdivided in four stages: Material acquisition, Manufacturing, Use and End of life. In comparison with existing studies, this work examines a broader range of impacts to human and ecosystems health using primary data supplied by vehicle manufacturers whenever possible to reduce the uncertainty of results. Results show that Use is largely the most influential stage for the majority of the considered impact categories. This fact is due to the energy intensity of Use stage since it accounts for almost the entire amount (98.3%) of electricity consumed during vehicle LC. Material acquisition is the second most influential stage based on resource consumption and emissions during extraction of Iron and Bauxite: vehicle parts that mainly contribute to impacts of Material acquisition are body structure and bogies. The impacts associated with Manufacturing and End of life are low compared to the other stages. The projected recyclability and recoverability rates at the end of life stage are respectively 87.4% and 92.1%. A sensitivity analysis of the LCA results stresses the influence of vehicle occupancy on the electricity consumption during operation and the overall LCIA results. In light of LCA results, major improvement potential is identified in the reduction of electricity consumption during use stage, primarily due to Traction and Heating systems. The key recommendations for future design strategies are the decrease of vehicle mass by the application of lightweight materials for metro construction and the improvement of efficiency of the Heating system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The scientific studies in the domain of environmental sustainability of metal processing technologies predominantly focus on conventional material removal processes, as milling and turning. Despite some exceptions, many other non-machining technologies, such as metal forming processes, are still not well documented in terms of their energy and resource efficiency. Moreover, to properly evaluate the environmental impact of a given process, a standing-alone approach is no longer sufficient. In order to offer a valuable contribution in the domain of metal shaping sustainability, the present paper proposes a thorough methodology entailing to compare, from the environmental point of view, two traditional technologies: a hot extrusion process (mass conserving approach) and a turning (subtractive) one. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based approach is implemented to properly analyze the considered processes. An axi-symmetric aluminum component was selected to develop the analysis on. Besides the analysis of material flows occurring all along the life cycle of the component, the material use and the consumed electrical energy necessary for the tools manufacturing are measured to properly quantify the environmental impact of the production phases. The most relevant influencing factors within each technology are identified and quantified. Moreover, an analysis of the environmental performance of the two processes at the varying of the batch size is presented. The paper aims at providing some general guidelines for the identification of the greenest technology as the main influencing factors change. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, precast concrete panel was developed by substituting blast-furnace slag for part of the unit weight of cement in the precast concrete mix. A life cycle assessment technique was used to estimate the carbon dioxide reduction. Carbon reduction in the materials as well as during the production phase was considered. Blast-furnace slag substitution ratios of 50, 60, and 70 wt.% were used to develop the precast concrete panel formulation. The steam curing time was taken as a variable with values of 8, 7, 6, 5, and 4 h. Results showed that the precast concrete panel formulation with 60% of the unit weight of cement replaced by blast-furnace slag satisfied the design compressive strength criterion when steam curing was applied for 6 h. The carbon dioxide emission was 33.8% lower than that of the control mix, which underwent no blast-furnace slag substitution and 8 h of steam curing. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper takes an integrated analysis approach to explore the options available for a UK homeowner to reduce their domestic emissions to the level advised by the UK governments Committee on Climate Change of 20% of those associated with a typical house in 1990. It uses proven thermal models of a typical house and low carbon heating systems to estimate the emissions associated with domestic heating and electricity consumption from a number,of combinations of low carbon micro generation technologies. The amount of additional low carbon electricity needed to offset these emissions to the desired level was then calculated. The capacity of photo voltaic panels needed to generate it was then estimated. This has been done over a range of different grid carbon intensities and the resulting configurations have been subjected to energy analysis and financial appraisal. An environmental life cycle assessment was also undertaken to see if there were any unacceptable environmental consequences of an owner adopting any of the options. The research shows that in all cases operational GHG target can be met, but that emissions associated with the production of the systems is variable, meaning that with current technology a 25% house is more likely. It has also been shown that given current subsidies the installation of some of the proposed systems should be financially attractive to the home owner. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Torrefaction is a thermal pre-treatment process for upgrading raw biomass into a more energy dense fuel. Torrefied biomass is combined with a densification process to increase its bulk density similar to conventional wood-pelleting production. This paper identifies the significant environmental impacts associated with production and delivery of these two fuels, using cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment. A feedstock of Scots Pine is modelled for a localised torrefaction/wood pellet plant located in Norway, with the products from each facility delivered to a power station in the UK. Results show that the relative benefits of torrefaction over wood-pellets are higher on per MJ delivered basis due to the higher calorific value of the fuel. The climate change and fossil depletion impacts for torrefied pellets modelled were lower than wood pellets, using an assumption that the drying requirement of the reactor was 3.0 MJ/kg water removed for both cases. Sensitivity analysis of the model indicated that the relative impact improvement of the torrefied pellet case compared to wood pellets is strongly dependent on the biomass drying requirement and the proportion of total process heat supplied by the re-circulated torrefaction gas. Land requirements for torrefied pellets are higher due to the mass losses in production. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Olefins are important platform chemicals widely used in industry. In terms of the short supply of oil resources, natural gas and coal are two significant alternative feedstocks. In this paper, energy consumption and GHG emissions of olefins production are analysed with life cycle assessment methods. Results showed the energy consumption and GHG emissions of natural gas-to-olefins are roughly equivalent to those of oil-to-olefins, while coal-to-olefins suffers from higher energy consumption and serious GHG emissions, including 5793 kg eq. CO2/t olefins of direct emissions and 5714 kg eq. CO2/t olefins of indirect emissions. To address the problem, the effect of carbon capture on coal-to-olefins is investigated. In comprehensive consideration of energy utilization, environmental impact, and economic benefit, the coal-to-olefins with SO% CO2 capture of the direct emissions is found to be an appropriate choice. With this carbon capture configuration, the direct emissions of the coal-to-olefins are reduced to 1161 kg eq. CO2/t olefins. However, the indirect emissions are still not captured, which should be strictly monitored and significantly reduced. Finally, a scenario analysis is conducted to estimate resource utilization and GHG emissions of olefins production of China in 2020. Several suggestions are also proposed for policy making on the sustainable development of olefins industry. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Numerous mitigation strategies have been proposed in order to reduce environmental impacts from beef cattle production. In this sense, this study aimed to evaluate the effects of additive changes in the animal and pasture management of a beef cattle production system typical of south Brazil (baseline scenario BS), in terms of climate change, land use and fossil depletion. These changes included: increasing the forage production; improving the forage quality; introducing legumes to replace nitrogen fertilization; improving the reproductive rates and; increasing the forage utilization efficiency. It was also considered the stabilization of the soil carbon (C) stocks in a long-term perspective. In BS was estimated, per kg of live weight gain, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of 22.5 kg of CO2 equivalents; the land use of 234.8 m(2)a and; 0.004 kg of oil equivalents in fossil depletion. Changes in forage production and quality resulted in GHG emissions equivalent to 7.8-20.7% of the BS and, to 0.5-1.2% of the BS with reproductive animal improvements. Land use reduces 9.4-30.6 times with these changes. The introduction of legumes to replace the nitrogen fertilizers engendered negative values of fossil depletion. The intensification of pasture utilization results in GHG emissions corresponding to 0.5% of the BS, and in a land use 32 times lower. Considering the long-term stabilization of soil C stocks, the systems that received nutritional and reproductive improvements presented reductions of GHG emissions from 2.5 to 3.2 times. A sensitivity analysis indicated the possibility of all short term improved scenarios become net sinks of C if gradual increments of root/shoot ratios in the range of values suggested by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for Pampa Biome were applied. The scenarios confirm the hypothesis that productive improvements and environmental protection are not contradictory, and highlight the importance of biomass C dynamics and regional peculiarities in mitigation of environmental impacts from forage-livestock systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Population growth and the consequent increase in food demand will certainly intensify the threat to the environment. Brazil, the fourth largest producer and exporter of swine meat, has an important role to ensure the fulfillment of the goals of food security and climate change mitigation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the environmental impact of swine production in Brazil based on life cycle assessment, comparing four manure management systems: liquid manure storage in slurry tanks; the biodigestor by flare; the biodigestor for energy purposes; and composting. Additionally, we performed a Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the uncertainty due to different emissions factors to estimate nitrogen-related emissions from the manure-handling stage. The functional unit considered was 1000 kg of swine carcass in the equalization chamber for cutting or further distribution. The results indicated an environmental profile of swine production in Brazil of 3503.29 kg of CO2 eq. for climate change, 76.13 kg of SO2 eq. for terrestrial acidification, 2.15 kg of P eq. for freshwater eutrophication, 12.33 kg of N eq. for marine eutrophication, 21,521.12 MJ for cumulative energy demand, 1.63 kg of 1.4-DB eq. for terrestrial ecotoxicity, 1706.26 BDP for biodiversity damage potential and 14.99 m(2) for natural land transformation. Feed production had a significant contribution with a range of 17.6-99.5% for all environmental impact categories. Deforestation represented 9.5 and 31.3% of the total impacts for cumulative energy demand and climate change, respectively. Therefore, avoiding the use of grain from deforested areas can significantly decrease the impacts for these impact categories. Regarding the uncertainty analysis, we observed greater variations for terrestrial acidification in slurry tanks, biodigestor by flare and for energy purposes, while for the case of composting, major uncertainties were observed for climate change. For manure management systems, efforts should be made to reduce the emissions of methane in the storage and ammonia in the field application. In this sense, the comparative life cycle assessment indicated that the biodigestor for energy purposes had the best environmental performance for almost all the environmental impacts, mainly due to the biogas capture and the potential of energy saves. Nevertheless, if the goal is to decrease the impacts for terrestrial acidification and marine eutrophication, the slurry tanks is the most preferable scenario compared to all alternative options. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Trout farming is the main fish production system in France. This article describes a system to classify trout farms based on environmental impacts calculated by life cycle assessment and technical and economic indicators. Since the number of surveyed farms was too small for a robust assessment, we combined principal component analysis (PCA) with a non-parametric bootstrap technique. French trout farms were surveyed to collect technical and economic indicators. The representativeness of the survey was verified by comparing it to a national inventory. Life cycle assessment was used to estimate environmental impacts of farms and the contribution of each production stage to impacts. PCA was used to evaluate both technical-economic and environmental indicators of the trout farms, which were separated into three groups based on the size of fish produced (pan-size, large and mixed-size, and very large). Non-parametric bootstrap was used to compare the groups and to test the significance of PCA results. Results validated the fish-farm classification system based on the size of fish produced and indicated that farm operations and fish feeding contributed the most to environmental impacts. The PCA method distinguished three groups via their technical indicators, with non-significant differences among the groups in environmental impacts. However, environmental indicators showed strong links with technical and economic indicators. In conclusion, bootstrapped PCA offers the ability to assess groups of trout production system when the sample size is too small and provides more conservative results by considering uncertainty. Future studies should focus on providing reliable data to reduce uncertainty. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Prawns and shrimp are among the most popular seafood consumed globally and their production is responsible for a range of environmental impacts in wild capture fisheries and associated supply chains. Management of the Australian Northern Prawn Fishery has been promoted as a sustainable model for other countries to emulate, although broader environmental impacts, such as those relating to energy and water use or greenhouse gas emissions are not currently monitored under sustainability assessments. We use life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impacts of the white banana prawn (Fenneropenaeus merguiensis). Fishing operations were the main source of impacts for the supply chain examined, contributing 4.3 kg CO(2)e kg(-1) prawn or 63% of the overall global warming potential. This result was lower than emissions reported for other prawn species, including tiger prawns from the same fishery. Processing and storage were key contributors to ecotoxicity while transport made a negligible contribution to any impact category. We discuss how LCA can complement existing fisheries management, and broaden current seafood sustainability assessments including the potential for emerging fishery-specific indicators to improve the efficacy of seafood LCAs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of five different vegetable oils, including the relevant market responses induced by the oils' by-products. The oils under study are palm oil, soybean oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil and peanut oil. These oils are to a large extent substitutable and they are among the largest oils in terms of global production. Besides evaluating the environmental performance of each oil individually, the effect of reducing each one of the oils and replacing it with a mix of the others is also evaluated. The life cycle inventory is carried out using a consequential approach, which implies that co-product allocation is avoided by use of substitution, and that marginal market mixes are generally applied. The environmental performance is evaluated by focussing on global warming, land use and water consumption. With respect to global warming, rapeseed oil and sunflower oil are the best performing, followed by soybean oil and palm oil, and with peanut oil as the least good performing. For land use, palm oil and soybean oil are the oils associated with the smallest contribution, followed by rapeseed oil, and with sunflower oil and peanut oil as the oils with the largest net occupation of land. When focussing on water consumption (using the water stress index), sunflower oil had the smallest impact, followed by rapeseed oil, palm oil and soybean oil, and with peanut oil as the oil with the largest contribution. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Previous studies assessing the environmental impacts of drinking water supply networks have considered a bottom-up approach, analysing single case studies. This paper presents a top-down approach for the assessment of the operational phase of a water supply network. A representative sample of 50 cities was statistically analysed to find relations between different variables regarding electricity and water consumption linked with the environmental impacts of the network. The results show that some of the variables are clearly related to the relative energy consumption of the network. Such is the case for population size, where small municipalities have up to 14 times higher relative electricity consumption compared with medium-sized municipalities (1.15E-2 as opposed to 8.3E-4 kWh/m(3) registered water km of network) due to case-specific factors such as a strong gradient between a water tank and the consumption point. Similarly, the cases showing low population density exhibit 7 times higher relative electricity consumption because of the longer distances that must be covered and the correlation between population density and size. The values found for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions derived from the energy consumption are consistent with results from previous studies: on average, 5.53 kg of CO2 eq. emissions/inhabitant-year are released, but the variability is very high, ranging from 0.005 to 67.8 kg of CO2 eq. emissions/inhabitant-year. No clearly significant correlations were found between the relative water demand and variables such as seasonality or income per capita, which might indicate that water consumption depends on individual decisions of the population rather than on the variables assessed. Models for the estimation of water demand, length of network and electricity consumption were defined. However, the modelling of electricity consumption presented more difficulties because of its high variability. A protocol for data collection should be defined and implemented in the future to enable the analysis of more high quality case studies and for the definition of more accurate and reliable models. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As a result of the integration of different methodological tools (life cycle assessment and dynamics simulation) and studies to evaluate the economic cost and the potential environmental impact of alternative water supplies (rainwater and greywater) for urban use, the software program Plugrisost (pluvials, greys and sustainability) has been developed. This modelling tool aims to contribute to urban water planning for smart city development. Plugrisost is a simulation model that facilitates the evaluation of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and greywater systems at different scales of urban planning, It is the only tool known thus far to integrate structural elements such as the sizing of storage tanks, estimated cost and quantitative environmental analysis. Plugrisost can be an adequate tool in the design stage because it provides environmental and economic information related to rainwater tank sizing and its estimates are more conservative than those of other tools. Plugrisost contributes to the design of urban infrastructure of low environmental impact, such as infrastructure that incorporates the use of rainwater, and the self-sufficiency analysis of water in cities. Using Plugrisost, we have found that on the singlehouse scale, the economic viability of an RWH system would be possible if the price of water is greater than 4 Euros/m(3); and the environmental analysis would be favourable to tanks with less than 5 m(3) of storage capacity. On the apartment-building scale, the results are 1.4 Euros/m(3) and 33 m(3), respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The accumulation of plastic waste and the increasing awareness of the environmental implications and technical challenges associated to their treatment and recycling have led to a constant increase of bio-polymers market in the 90's. Polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most promising biodegradable plastics, showing a wide range of potential applications, e.g. in the packaging industry. However, the high production costs hamper its further development. The use of PLA in multilayer (ML) films is a potential opportunity to reduce the production costs. This study tackled the ecodesign of a clam shell for packaging applications based on a novel ML film made of PLA and thermoplastic starch (TPS), evaluating the environmental performance of different design concepts through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In order to assure proper compatibility between PLA and TPS, the use of dielectric barrier discharge (dbd) plasma technology at atmospheric pressure to increase the hydrophilicity of PLA was investigated. The results have highlighted the significant contribution of plasma treatment to the overall environmental impact of the ML film and the need for further optimisation. Despite the contribution of the PLA end-of-life phase to the overall environmental impact of the ML clam shell is low, the methodological approach to end-of-life can have a significant influence on the LCA results. This seems to be due to the low PLA recycling and recovery rate assumed, which is nevertheless realistic. The promotion of high recovery and recycling rates should therefore be a priority in the future. At the current development stage, even the most improved ML clam shell concept obtained using atmospheric plasma technology is not an environmentally sound alternative to pure PLA clam shell, although it is likely to be a cost-effective option. A good compromise between cost and environmental constrains to be further investigated could be to increase further the proportion of PLA in the ML, by improving the water adsorption capability of TPS through, e.g., the addition of a phthalate free plasticiser. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The resource efficiency of biofuel production via biomass pyrolysis is evaluated using exergy as an assessment metric. Three feedstocks, important to various sectors of U.S. agriculture, switchgrass, forest residue, and equine waste, are considered for conversion to bio-oil (pyrolysis oil) via fast pyrolysis, a process that has been identified as adaptable to on- or near-farm application. Biomass and biofuel production pathways are defined, material flows are determined, and exergy in- and outflows associated with biomass production and conversion are computed, including the depletion of exergy from its natural state (cumulative exergy demand, CExD). Sources of exergy depletion are quantified and categorized by energy carriers, e.g., electricity and diesel fuel, and materials, e.g., fertilizer, as well as renewable and nonrenewable resources. Yields for biomass to bio-oil conversion by fast pyrolysis are determined experimentally. Breeding factors, a measure of exergy production (the ratio of the chemical exergy of the output product to process exergy inputs), are determined for the production of biomass and bio-oil. The quantification of exergy depletion for process pathways enables the possible identification of more sustainable (resource efficient) pathways for biomass and bio-oil production. It is shown, for example, that feedstocks grown primarily for biomass such as switchgrass may be less sustainable using the exergy measure compared to use of residue (e.g., forest thinnings) or waste biomass (e.g., equine waste). With regard to the pyrolysis process, there is substantial reduction in exergy depletion when the coproducts noncondensable gases and biochar are recycled and utilized as a source of heat. The sustainability of biomass production and conversion, as measured by exergy depletion, is strongly influenced by energy carriers. The study reveals that the method of electricity production, i.e., on-site generation or grid electricity, as well as the choice of grid electricity can have a significant impact on sustainability. The exergy content of the bio-oil produced varies from 24 to 27 MJ/kg bio-oil, which is much lower than traditional fuels. However, the cumulative exergy depletion for the production and conversion to bio-oil varies from approximately 4 to 11 MJ/kg bio-oil, which is also much lower than traditional fuels. Breeding factors for biomass production and conversion to bio-oil based on cumulative exergy depletion vary from approximately 2 to 5, demonstrating the potential exergy benefit of bio-oil production using fast pyrolysis.The narrow scope of the U.S. renewable fuel standard (RFS2) is a missed opportunity to spur a wider range of biomass use. This is especially relevant as RFS2 targets are being missed due to demand-side limitations for ethanol consumption. This paper examines the greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of a more flexible policy based on RFS2, which includes credits for chemical use of bioethanol (to produce bioethylene). A Monte Carlo simulation is employed to estimate the life-cycle GHG emissions of conventional low-density polyethylene (LDPE), made from natural gas derived ethane (mean: 1.8 kg CO(2)e/kg LDPE). The life-cycle GHG emissions from bioethanol and bio-LDPE are examined for three biomass feedstocks: U.S. corn (mean: 97g CO(2)e/MJ and 2.6 kg CO(2)e/kg LDPE), U.S. switchgrass (mean: -18g CO(2)e/MJ and -2.9 kg CO(2)e/kg LDPE), and Brazilian sugar cane (mean: 33g CO(2)e/MJ and -1.3 kg CO(2)e/kg LDPE); bioproduct and fossil-product emissions are compared. Results suggest that neither corn product (bioethanol or bio-LDPE) can meet regulatory GHG targets, while switchgrass and sugar cane ethanol and bio-LDPE likely do. For U.S. production, bioethanol achieves slightly greater GHG reductions than bio-LDPE. For imported Brazilian products, bio-LDPE achieves greater GHG reductions than bioethanol. An expanded policy that includes bio-LDPE provides added flexibility without compromising GHG targets.Over 400 tons of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are produced annually, 30% of which are used in medical applications due to their antibacterial properties. The widespread use of AgNPs has implications over the entire life cycle of medical products, from production to disposal, including but not limited to environmental releases of nanomaterials themselves. Here a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment from nanoparticle synthesis to end-of-life incineration was performed for a commercially available nanosilver-enabled medical bandage. Emissions were linked to multiple categories of environmental impacts, making primary use of the TRACI 2.1 impact assessment method, with specific consideration of nanosilver releases relative to all other (non-nanosilver) emissions. Modeling results suggest that (1) environmental impacts of AgNP synthesis are dominated by upstream electricity production, with the exception of life cycle ecotoxicity where the largest contributor is mining wastes, (2) AgNPs are the largest contributor to impacts of the bandage for all impact categories considered despite low AgNP loading, and (3) impacts of bandage production are several times those bandage incineration, including nanosilver releases to the environment. These results can be used to prioritize research and policy measures in order to improve the overall ecotoxicity burdens of nanoenabled products under a life cycle framework.Sensitivity analysis (SA) is a significant tool for studying the robustness of results and their sensitivity to uncertainty factors in life cycle assessment (LCA). It highlights the most important set of model parameters to determine whether data quality needs to be improved, and to enhance interpretation of results. Interactions within the LCA calculation model and correlations within Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) input parameters are two main issues among the LCA calculation process. Here we propose a methodology for conducting a proper SA which takes into account the effects of these two issues. This study first presents the SA in an uncorrelated case, comparing local and independent global sensitivity analysis. Independent global sensitivity analysis aims to analyze the variability of results because of the variation of input parameters over the whole domain of uncertainty, together with interactions among input parameters. We then apply a dependent global sensitivity approach that makes minor modifications to traditional Sobol indices to address the correlation issue. Finally, we propose some guidelines for choosing the appropriate SA method depending on the characteristics of the model and the goals of the study. Our results clearly show that the choice of sensitivity methods should be made according to the magnitude of uncertainty and the degree of correlation.Designing environmentally friendly products has become a tighter requirement in the marketplace because of both the increasing trend in awareness of consumers and the obligations from legislation requirements. Unfortunately, this is not a straight forward decision for designers to evaluate whether their design options are satisfactory in terms of balancing various factors (for examples, different forms of environmental assessment) or not. This is partly attributed to the fact that there is no universally accepted approach for conducting such analysis. In this connection, this research makes reference to a European Union (EU) directive as a reference model and makes use of Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP), which is a useful tool to help designers to make decision, for evaluating eco-design options. The AHP model is developed based on two case studies on consumer electronic products. Pairwise comparisons, one of the key steps in AHP, are conducted with the expertise gained from the case studies and the help from the software package Expert Choice. The paper also reveals how design options can be evaluated, or be screened out. The proposed method does not require the designers to conduct detailed analysis (life-cycle assessment for example) for every new product options and hence can save their time. This is particularly important when they are facing shorter and shorter product life cycle nowadays.A greater appreciation of architecture as a means to drive social, economic and environmental sustainability is emerging around the world. Practices are beginning to adopt closed-loop and cradle-to-cradle strategies, and some are even aiming toward net-positive design. However, life cycle assessment (LCA) tools do not measure 'beyond zero'. The question of how net-positive carbon sequestration (i.e. impacts beyond net-zero) can be assessed within LCA is explored through a proposed carbon amortization performance (CAP) method. CAP overlays energy-related carbon and biomass sequestration over the building life cycle. CO2 equivalence (CO(2)e) is used to combine both positive and negative impacts from different sources. Net-positive contributions are defined as those exceeding 'zero operational carbon' - after the embodied carbon is paid back during the life cycle. The CAP method was tested on a building design with the technical support of multidisciplinary experts. The results indicate that a building can sequester more carbon over its life cycle than it emits by using on-site current renewable energy technology and extensive building-integrated vegetation. Buildings designed on net-positive development principles can potentially reverse their carbon impact and begin to regenerate their regions, while providing multiple eco-services.The net-zero emissions building (nZEB) performance is investigated for building operation (EO) and embodied emissions in materials (EE) for Norway's cold climate. nZEB concepts for new residential and office buildings are conceived in order to understand the balance and implications between operational and embodied emissions over the building's life. The main drivers for the CO2 equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions are revealed for both building concepts through a detailed emissions calculation. The influence of the CO(2)e factor for electricity is emphasized and it is shown to have significant impact on the temporal evolution of the overall CO(2)e emissions balance. The results show that the criterion for zero emissions in operation is easily reached for both nZEB concepts (independent of the CO(2)e factor considered). Embodied emissions are significant compared to operational emissions. It was found that an overall emissions balance including both operational and embodied energy is difficult to reach and would be unobtainable in a scenario of low carbon electricity from the grid. In this particular scenario, the net balance of emissions alone is nonetheless not a sufficient performance indicator for nZEB.This study reports the results of designed-based education offered by the Environmental Engineering Department of Istanbul Technical University (ITU) through an example of a Graduation Design Project, as well as the outcomes of introducing new environmental management considerations to environmental system design, and impacts of those on the senior-year Environmental Engineering undergrad students. Overall outcomes of the study and the student entries gathered on risk assessment, uncertainty, sustainability, life-cycle-assessment, and resilience issues demonstrated that inclusion of those environmental management considerations to the senior-year Graduation Design Project, as well as the new and innovative approaches about handling the design-based education, significantly broadened the perspective of our senior-year students at the onset of their profession.Biopolymers are generally considered eco-friendly alternatives to petrochemical polymers due to their renewable feedstock and biodegradability. However, the farming practices used to grow these feedstocks carry significant environmental burdens, and the production energy can be higher than for petrochemical polymers. Biobased polymers have become feasible alternatives to traditional petroleum-based plastics. However, the factors that influence the sustainability of biobased polymers are oft en unclear. This chapter reviews the published life cycle assessments (LCAs) and commonly used LCA databases that quantify the environmental sustainability of biobased polymers and summarizes the range of findings reported within the literature. LCA is discussed as a means for quantifying environmental impacts for the product from its cradle, or raw materials extraction, to the grave, or end of life. The results of LCAs from existing databases as well as the peer-reviewed literature allow for the comparison of environmental impacts. Recently, interest in composite manufacturing has shifted towards the use of natural fibers as reinforcement because of their environmental benefits. The use of a biodegradable matrix is worth considering since this would result in a completely biodegradable composite. In order to assess the most suitable matrix polymer, one must know the properties of the available polymers. This chapter reviews the importance of biopolymers in the present decade and also discusses the preparation of biopolymers and its properties.This study compares the energy return on investment (EROI) of organic and conventional farms in Iceland. It examines which farming method returns the highest amount of edible energy to society relative to the input required. Twenty farms were studied: two organic and 18 conventional. Real data were gathered directly from five farms (including both of the organic farms in the study). Further data from 15 conventional dairy farms of different sizes were collected from a database maintained by the Icelandic Farmers Association. One of the organic farms studied (Org1) was found to have an EROI of 2.68, whereas two conventional farms used as controls for comparison (Con1-a and Con1-b) had EROIs of 0.60 and 0.69, respectively. The second organic farm (Org2) had an EROI of 0.55, versus the control farm ratio of 0.27. On average, large (<170 hectares) conventional dairy farms had an EROI of 0.65, while medium (<70 hectares) and small (<40 hectares) conventional farms had average EROIs of 0.56 and 0.50, respectively. This limited analysis suggests that organic dairy farms may provide better EROIs than conventional farms, but that their dairy yields per hectare are lower.The paper focuses on the assessment of natural resources consumed by the walls of buildings according to their lifespan. These assessments take account of the construction, maintenance and end of life. In the first part of the paper, the methodology is described, finally modeling the evolution of these indicators with time. In the second part, since the lifespan of a product is very difficult to determine objectively, it is considered as a variable. The numerical results presented point out the need to revisit the current life cycle tools. (C) 2015, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.First, this paper reviews the literature of technology competition in car industry. Secondly, technology forecasting method used in this study utilized retrieved patent data to define the technological life cycles of battery electric vehicle technology. Thirdly, life cycle assessment (LCA) is made for six selected OECD countries (Estonia, Finland, France Iceland, Israel and Norway) in order to compare the environmental impacts of internal combustion engine and electric vehicle technologies with widely different electricity generation mixes. For cars, the life cycle assessment considers the environmental impact throughout the entire life cycle, from raw material extraction and acquisition, through energy and material production and manufacturing, to use and end-of-life treatment and final disposal. For fuels and electricity, the whole life cycle from cradle to gate is considered. The results show significant differences in the environmental impacts between the countries. In addition of analyzing industrial dynamics and environmental impacts, we also provide policy recommendations for how government's policy can support the transition towards more sustainable automobile transportation.Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is emerging as a powerful and necessary tool in sustainability science. With its great flexibility, SLCA can be applied toward quantifying social impacts on a system. However, the literature lacks a review of the current methods that hinder its applicability. This chapter provides an overview of the popular methods in SCLA, including process identifications and quantifications. Specifically, we review the four methods of Dreyer, Norris, Hunkeler, and Weidema. We found that the definition of human well-being seems to be the basis for all SLCAs. The SLCA method can effectively measure social impacts and provide a sound basis for decision-making. Case studies are included in the chapter to illustrate the applications.Over the years, the agricultural sector, and the livestock and dairy sectors in particular, have been increasingly criticized for their environmental impacts, especially with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, there has been a growing awareness that farm activities equally induce significant social and economic impacts over a wide range of stakeholders. In order to face the new challenges arising from this context and to clarify the path towards sustainable milk production in Canada, the Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) commissioned the realization of a Social and Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (SELCA) of Canadian Milk. Launched in 2010, this project, which ended in September 2012, was conducted as part of the Dairy Research Cluster. The study was conducted by three partners, two consulting firms (Groupe AGECO and Quantis) and a research center (CIRAIG), based at the Montreal Polytechnic, with a section dedicated to socioecomic life cycle assessment based at the University of Quebec in Montreal. It aimed at providing a comprehensive assessment of the Canadian milk production sector with respect to sustainability. The main deliverables include an environmental profile of the average kilogram of milk produced in Canada, as well as an evaluation of the socioeconomic performance of the Canadian dairy sector. This chapter addresses the social and socioeconomic dimensions of the global project. It presents the methodological choices made, such as combining a specific analysis and a potential hotspots analysis (PHA) for two parts of the system under study. It then presents the economic contributions of the Canadian dairy sector, which has generated over 127,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs in 2009, contributed approximately $ 7.2 billion to the national GDP, and procured almost $ 1.4 billion in total tax revenue. Canadian dairy farmers are also corporate citizens whose behaviors-individually and collectivel-impact their stakeholders. This SLCA provides a detailed picture of this socioeconomic performance. It appears from this assessment that the Canadian dairy farms perform positively overall. The dairy farmers' engagement towards their local communities is significant, with the vast majority involved in their communities in many different ways. However, more could be done in terms of cohabitation, with producers adopting practices minimizing the spreading of odors, for example. The picture is also contrasted with regard to farm workers. Although dairy farmers provide overall working conditions that go beyond labor standards-to which they are mostly not legally subjected-there is room for improvement regarding various issues, such as professional training and communication of working conditions. The same holds true with respect to their suppliers and business partners, given that a majority of dairy producers do not usually consider their suppliers' performance in regards to social responsibility in their procurement decisions.The South African sugar industry is one of the world's leading cost-competitive producers of high-quality sugar and makes an important contribution to employment and sustainable socioeconomic development, particularly in rural areas, as well as to the national economy. The South African sugar industry is divided into growers and millers. South Africa produces its sugar from sugar cane, which is a tall tropical grass with thick, solid, tough stems that are a chief commercial source of sugar. The objectives of the study were directed by the guidelines on social life cycle assessment of products developed by the United Nations Environmental Programme and SETAC initiatives. The data were collected using field research, historic comparative research, interviews and questionnaires. The analysis and validation data was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. The impacts identified and discussed were health and safety, gender equality, and wages; these impacts were analyzed in terms of descriptives and factor matrix. The employers in the sugar industry provide full independence of the operations and procedures of the existing associations, but do not encourage their workers to become members. It was found that workers do not have wage-related incentives, and that wages have not increased in the past 2 years. The workers reported that they have been discriminated against due to their genders; it was also found that male workers were favored by employers as compared to women, with regard to remuneration, training and development, and promotional opportunities. It was also found that the workers are exposed to unpleasant smells and dust particles in their working environment. Recommendations were made to enable favorable working conditions for both employers and employees.The word "sustainability" is often used to refer to equity within and between generations, as explained in the Brundtland Report (1987). The clarification of the concept in the triple bottom line is often used to illustrate the need to investigate the social, environmental, and economic decisions. The classification of stakeholders is still controversial and not universally agreed upon in the various analysis models, are a common point balance categories: customers, staff, suppliers, and the local community (Hinna 2005; Schwartz 2006a). The Social Life Cycle Assessment (SCLA) methodology can be described as a tool that allows a strategic vision and management of the social sustainability of the product and takes the form of an analysis that lets the company observe the social impact of the product through its sustainability evaluation throughout its life cycle (Benoit et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 15, 156-163, 2010). The possible solution to this gap can be represented by models of assessment of social impacts based on Life Cycle Thinking, and especially through the application of the Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) methodology that is suitably integrated with the models until now mentioned in the literature (UNEP/SETAC, United Nations Environment Program, Paris SETAC Life Cycle Initiative United Nations Environment Programme, 2009b). The evaluation of the life cycle for the social aspects (social LCA) is a framework that allows the generation, organization, evaluation and communication of social impacts on the life cycle of a product, process, or service. The aim of this study is to create a framework for the social impact evaluation in the cultural heritage sector, through the association of existing Social Life Cycle Assessment tools with data resulting from social evaluation of the relationship between cultural services and stakeholders in order to point out the criticalities of the cultural heritage sector. This study introduced a theoretical framework for the evaluation of social impact on the cultural heritage sector, through the application of SLCA methods, and shows how it could be possible to classify the stakeholder subcategories in order to consistency. It is the preliminary approach of an integrative support to the SAM methods for SLCA.The journey towards sustainability for the chemical and food industries requires sustainable production and consumption and also requires the social responsibility of organizations. Companies' stakeholders ask themselves more and more about the social impacts of products and production processes. The chemical and food industries can be considered to be among the most important industries with strong impacts on society, and they bring about many social interactions. Both industries are interested in solving the questions of the impacts of their products on health, working conditions, production, and product safety, as well as the protection of human rights and cultural heritage. It is necessary to discuss conditions and limitations for effective assessment of social impacts along the whole product's life cycle. The assessment of chemical and food products' impacts requires identification of the industry specifics and the regional specifics; traditionally, the chemical industry is perceived as an indispensable and helpful, but on the other hand, a dangerous, hazardous and environmentally harmful industry branch. The food industry can be considered to be essential and beneficial, but with a strong influence on landscape utilization, human health, and social welfare. Both industries have strong social interactions and are under the strict supervision of EU legislation authorities and stakeholders; therefore, it is necessary to discuss the scope of social impact assessment studies, the choice of suitable indicators, and data availability. This chapter characterizes the perceived importance of the social impacts of chemical and food products on stakeholders. There are determined sector-specific and national-specific social impacts of chemical and food production processes in the EU area. Also, the possibilities of monitoring and evaluation of appropriate Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) indicators at the corporate level are disscused. On the basis of the data collected from semi-structured interviews with top managers from more than 35 chemical and food companies, it was possible to conclude that there is a considerable effort on the part of the companies not to underestimate the assessment of social impacts of their products. Both industries are influenced by many specifics, but a lack of information support for the collection of data or selection of indicators is evident. The absence of branch data and absence of information about the social impacts of the origins of the basic raw materials complicate monitoring in the initial stages and in the final life cycle stages of chemical substances. The assessment of food products can be considered to be significantly simpler than the assessment of chemical products, but the absence of branch-specific data and availability of branch-oriented indicators complicate the assessment. Future effective assessment of social impacts requires closer understanding of the life cycles of chemical and food products-especially with chemicals. It is necessary to carry out further theoretical developments in the field of branch-specific indicators and the development of an information basis for the collection and processing of generic (hotspot) data. It is also necessary to encourage further improvement of an information basis on the corporate level.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technique to study the environmental impacts of products from cradle-to-grave that was developed at the end of the 1960s and standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO) at the end of the millennium. The discussion and research efforts to broaden the scope of the technique to include social impacts (e. g., O'Brien et al. Int J Life Cycle Assess 1 (4): 231-237, 1996, and Gauthier J Bus Ethics 59: 199-206, 2005) accelerated with the creation of a project group in 2004 under the umbrella of the Life Cycle Initiative, a joint enterprise of the United Nations Environment Programme and the Society for Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry. Numerous authors have highlighted the institutionalization process of LCA and the social shaping of the technique (e. g., Heiskanen Sci Stud 11(1): 27-51, 1997, Heiskanen J Clean Prod 10 (5): 427-437, 2002; Frankl INSEAD Working Paper, Fontainebleau, France, 2001; Baumann et al. Towards Life Cycle Sustainability Management, 73-83, 2011). However, none of this research applies stakeholder theory, considers these forums as epistemic communities, nor strives to explain the organizational processes and dynamics of the field's development. A new theoretical framework (Rasche et al. J Bus Ethics 115: 651-663, 2013) based on advancements in the sphere of organization studies (Arhne et al. Organization 18(1): 83-104, 2011) offers a new perspective regarding the elements that enable and constrain organized orders. Rasche et al. (J Bus Ethics 115: 651-663, 2013) argue that it is useful to analytically distinguish different modes of organizing for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) along the dimensions of complete-partial organization. They call for research to further examine the role of actors in the processes of organizing for CSR that would also highlight the dynamics of CSR multi-stakeholder initiatives. The phenomenon of Social Life Cycle Assessment development offers the context for a rich case study that can draw upon and contribute to these new research avenues. Researching the organization of the development of this new phenomena contributing to CSR will also help to further reveal the process of social construction of scientifically based methods. An analytical framework proposed by Glasbergen (Environ Policy Governance 21(1): 1-13, 2011) serves as a starting point to map the process of the partnership and method development. This framework is then refined with reflections regarding epistemic communities.The attention regarding social, economic and environmental impacts and the increase in the attention on sustainability by the customers and the other general stakeholders has led businesses to adopt several tools for sustainable development patterns and, in particular, for social development patterns. The development of social impacts' evaluation is one of the cornerstones of products and services sustainability. Concerning that, Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA hereafter) focuses on studying the social impacts of life cycles, but as this is a relatively new analytical approach, no globally shared application tools have yet been developed. The purpose of this study is to analyze the tools of stakeholder management and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to create a pathway of integration between the tools of social responsibility, SLCA and Stakeholder Management Approach. The research has characterized two main phases; the first is devoted to the critical analysis of the literature on the subject, and specifically on SLCA methodology. The objectives to be achieved are to carry out a comprehensive review of the existing literature on the subject for developing a conceptual model for the interpretation of the behaviour observed. In conclusion, we can say that the innovative model is properly inherent in the various interpretations of the stakeholders and the assessment of social impacts of product or services.In order to certify the positive environmental impact emerging from white'R results, a procedure to apply a specific Green Label was defined. At this purpose, a life cycle assessment study must be undertaken, broadening the WEATool's investigations also to the Beginning Of Life phase, which includes the design, the extraction of materials, their processing and the assembly of the machine, and the End of Life, which concerns disassembly and potential recycling of components. To better evaluate production and disposal phases of the machinery, the MEErP tool (Methodology for the Eco-design of Energy-related Products) was introduced. Since energy is not the only relevant value, to verify that white'R satisfies the objectives set, the WEATool provides some more data such as the time cycle and the unit production cost. All those indicators are identified as KPIs, "Key Performance Indicators", very significant parameters that describe the economic, technical and environmental characteristics of the robotic island. At this phase of the project, the WEATool provides guidelines for manufacturing partners such as decision-making instrument, by picking best technical choices like the identification of materials or the size of the robotic island. When the prototype will be ready to work, a campaign of measurements will be made by populating databases with real measured values, in order to develop logical optimization scenarios identifying the most economically efficient and environmentally sustainable solutions. Finally, after results validation, the calculated KPIs will be used to submit the request for a green label.Waste is a substance that is considered by all as unwanted or additional material arising out of any industrial or agricultural operation process, product, by-product, or any other item at the end of their requisite service life. In a country such as the United Kingdom, about 4-5 % of municipal solid waste is composed of clothes/textiles, 25 % of which is recycled. A large amount of unutilised/processed material is generated in the agricultural, food processing, paper-pulp, and textile industries as waste or residue, such as lignin, sericin, dyes, sizing paste, leather fibre, banana pseudostem sap, cellulosic and ligno-cellulosic short to long biofibres, corncob, tomato seed and peel, and many others. The disposal of such waste or residue creates serious environmental pollution, either during their natural degradation, through the microbial pathway, or through incineration. As many of the agro, food, textile, and paper-pulp processing wastes or residues have high technical potential to be used for many diversified end-applications, they have been seriously considered through R&D efforts and application for the production of nanocellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, bacterial cellulose, recovery of dyes, water purification, biodegradable hard and flexible composites, substrates for tissue engineering, recycled textiles, UV protective and antimicrobial agents, binder and biodegradable pots for transplanting of plants, and so on. Life-cycle assessment has also been explored to analyse the environmental performances of different shopping bags.Geotechnical engineering practice interacts with the natural and built environments because of which the geotechnical engineering profession has the opportunity to significantly contribute to sustainable development. Sustainability assessment is an important part of sustainable design and construction; therefore, developing sustainability assessment tools is important in geotechnical engineering. In this paper, the use of a recently developed, multi-criteria based quantitative sustainability assessment framework is demonstrated by applying it to mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls. The framework is comprised of life cycle assessment (LCA), cost-benefit analysis, and multi-criteria analysis. The resource use and environmental impacts of MSE walls are identified and quantified by LCA. The cost-benefit analysis is performed to address the socioeconomic benefits of the walls. Subsequently, the results of analysis are integrated by multi-criteria analysis to decide the most sustainable solution with concurrent consideration of all relevant criteria.Geotechnical engineering practice interacts with the natural and built environments because of which the geotechnical engineering profession has the opportunity to significantly contribute to sustainable development. Sustainability assessment is an important part of sustainable design and construction; therefore, developing sustainability assessment tools is important in geotechnical engineering. In this paper, the use of a recently developed, multi-criteria based quantitative sustainability assessment framework is demonstrated by applying it to mechanically stabilized earth ( MSE) walls. The framework is comprised of life cycle assessment ( LCA), cost-benefit analysis, and multi-criteria analysis. The resource use and environmental impacts of MSE walls are identified and quantified by LCA. The cost-benefit analysis is performed to address the socioeconomic benefits of the walls. Subsequently, the results of analysis are integrated by multi-criteria analysis to decide the most sustainable solution with concurrent consideration of all relevant criteria.Renewable energy technologies (RET) present an emission free means of energy harvesting in the current energy scenario demanding sustainable needs. However, the production process of RETs especially solar photovoltaic (SPV) is material and energy expensive process. In this paper such material and energy intensive production processes of SPV systems are analyzed. The systems are analyzed up to the production stage with focus given to energy and material differentiation among different stages of production. The evaluation of emissions during production stage is carried out for a 1KWp SPV system. A comparison is made between different types of technologies i.e., mono, poly, thin film CdTe and ribbon Si. Also, comparison of sustainability aspects of rooftop and ground mounted installations is carried out. Results indicate that, in case of mono Si technology emissions during wafer production phase are pronounced compared to cell and module preparation stages. In poly and thin film technologies, emission share of wafer stage is comparable with module preparation stages. In ribbon Si, energy inputs accounted for higher emissions rather than materials as in case of other technologies. In the mounting structures, in roof structures resulted in least emissions through material savings while, ground mounting structures are environmentally expensive due to high material consumption. Also, the emission share of materials used in production stage is reduced linearly from mono Si to ribbon Si when in roof mounting is used. Therefore, thin film CdTe, ribbon Si presents an environmentally cheaper options of harnessing solar energy and production processes of technologies like mono Si, poly Si need to be improved to make them environmentally sustainable.Since buildings count for half of the primary energy sources consumption as well as half of all consumed raw materials, produce hundreds of million tons of waste and a third of the world's CO2 production, construction and building of low energy buildings has become an international trend. More than transportation, mining industry, or any other type of industry it is primarily the area of building industry and building administration that lead to better management of narrow resources as well as to the reduction of greenhouse gases emissions. In this area facility management also plays an important role. The aim of the article is via analysis of building life cycle to present possibilities of the influence of a facility manager on the investment and running costs of buildings with respect to the environmental management principle. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Nowadays a wide range of options of vehicles fuels and technologies are commercially available. Still, the complicated nature of environmental impacts caused by each option makes it a tough decision for the consumer, fleet manager, or policy maker to find the best choice. Even policy makers may run into trouble regarding the relative advantages of cleaner options and their relative effects on fuel and vehicle cycle. In light of these, the present paper is an attempt to evaluate the life cycle environmental impacts of road vehicle fuels and available technologies and compare the cleaner options with each other and the main stream fuel/technologies. A complete fuel life cycle assessment (LCA) on petrol, diesel, compressed natural gas (CNG), electric vehicle (EV), hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (FCV), and biodiesel vehicles was made. Results are shown for climate change, air quality effects and Energy resource depletion impact of the different vehicle technologies. As recommended by the results, none of the options dominated the others regarding all dimensions. Instead of mandating a particular solution, such as electric cars or biofuels, probably successful vehicle and fuel policies include established standards of performance and levies to attenuate emissions and let the market to find the best effective alternative. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Assessments of carbon and economic efficiencies, completed by an environmental load computation using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, could be a useful tool for assessing sustainable forest management (e.g. Berg & Lindholm 2005, Michelsen et al. 2008). The purpose of this study was to compare forestry operations focused on manually operated (chainsaw) and fully mechanized (harvester) felling in Norway spruce monocultures and mixed forests within the Novohradske Mts. (Czech Republic) using the methods of carbon efficiency (including LCA) and economic efficiency. In general terms, these methods consist of comparing quantified human inputs (e.g. fossil fuels, electricity, used machinery, and fertilizers, converted into emission units of carbon in t C in CO2 equivalent or EUR) with quantified ecosystem outputs (biomass production in t C or EUR). Forest operations were modelled for one rotation period. The results showed the main differences in carbon emissions and carbon efficiency related to forest operations with different types of felling. In contrast, the economic efficiency results did not differ much with different types of felling. Differences between Norway spruce monocultures and mixed forests using the same type of felling were relatively small for carbon efficiency but large for economic efficiency (Norway spruce monocultures recorded higher economic efficiency).The Multi Material Lightweight Vehicle (MMLV) developed by Magna International and Ford Motor Company is a result of a US Department of Energy project DE-EE0005574. The project demonstrates the lightweighting potential of a five passenger sedan, while maintaining vehicle performance and occupant safety. Prototype vehicles were manufactured and limited full vehicle testing was conducted. The Mach-I vehicle design, comprised of commercially available materials and production processes, achieved a 364kg (23.5%) full vehicle mass reduction, enabling the application of a 1.0-liter three-cylinder engine resulting in a significant environmental benefit and fuel reduction. The Regulation requirements such as the 2020 CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard, growing public demand, and increased fuel prices are pushing auto manufacturers worldwide to increase fuel economy through incorporation of lightweight materials in newly-designed vehicle structures. This paper is aimed at communicating the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) study which compares the lightweight auto parts of the new multi material lightweight (MMLV) Mach-I (1.0l I3) vehicle design to the conventional auto parts of the baseline 2013 Ford Fusion (1.6l I4), both internal combustion engine vehicles (gasoline fuelled), built and driven for 250,000 km in North America [1]. The new Mach-I design has achieved an overall 364 kg (23%) mass reduction enabling engine downsizing, which resulted in a total life cycle mass-induced fuel savings of 3,642 liters (or 962 gallons) and a projected combined cycle fuel economy of 34 mpg (6.9 l/100 km), as compared to 28 mpg (8.4 l/100 km) for the 2013 Ford Fusion. The Mach-I design vehicle includes materials and technologies which are commercially available. This LCA study assesses the potential environmental impacts of the auto parts throughout their cradle-to-grave life cycle, with a focus on weight differences between design options. Primary interested parties are the US Department of Energy (DOE), Province of Ontario, Ford Motor Company and Magna International. LCA of the auto parts is conducted in accordance with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards 14040/44 and follow the specific rules and guidance provided in the CSA Group 2014 LCA Guidance document for auto parts [2,3,4].The article focuses on a specific environmental evaluation method - Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and it estimates biofuel greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and compares to fossil fuels. It is mainly evaluated by the mean Global Warming impact indicator, expressed in grams of CO2 equivalent per MJ of energy (gCO(2)eq.MJ(-1)). Biofuels are highly relevant renewable energy options on a global scale. Comparing with fossil fuels, biofuels in some cases can be carbon neutral or even carbon negative and play an important role in the reduction of GHG emissions. A number of LCA have shown that first generation biofuels provide a little to no benefit for GHG reductions compared to fossil fuels, particularly when indirect effects are considered. LCAs of second and third generation biofuels exhibit great variability and uncertainty but are intended to achieve greater GHG reductions. Highly possible Arctic Ocean ice meltdown in the late summer as soon as in September 2015 and accelerated methane hydrate destabilization in the Arctic Ocean seabed via ocean warming could cause abrupt climate change in the following decade. Mitigation of climate change requires to use only biofuels with the global warming impact indicator close to 0 gCO(2)eq.MJ(-1) (Carbon Neutral) or - gCO(2)eq.MJ(-1) (Carbon Negative).Hydrogenation of vegetable oils (HVO) or animal fats is an alternative process to the esterification. HVOs have straight chain of paraffinic hydrocarbons that are free of aromatics, oxygen and sulphur having high cetane number. Hydrotreating of vegetable oils produces very high-quality biobased diesel fuels without compromising fuel logistics, engines, exhaust after treatment devices, or exhaust emissions. The article deals with the fuel properties of blends of HVO and biobutanol. Biobutanol is an alternative to bioethanol with more favourable combustion parameters in diesel engines. Biobutanol is produced from the same raw materials as bioethanol. The experimental part measures the influence of biobutanol on HVO parameters for engines and the nature because biobutanol and HVO can be produced from waste biomass as one and half generation biofuel. Model fuel blends were tested according to the standard EN 590. The article raises a number of advantages of HVO compared to the standard fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) and also the possibility of adding larger volume of biobutanol than it is possible with diesel or FAME. Development of renewable energy sources and applications of hydrotreated oils and biobutanol can also reduce dependence on import of fossil fuels besides increased employment in agriculture and in the region.In this article, the connotation of sustainable service supply chain and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are introduced; the basic network structure of service supply chain's impact on the environment is constructed based on the LCA in the case of Cosco. Through the analysis of the example we find that energy consumption and carbon emissions in the service supply chain is huge, so at the end, to ease the impact of service supply chains on the environment, strengthening the information sharing between the nodes of supply chain and paying attention to the environmental protection are put forward.The key objective of the present study is to compare two types of building envelopes, glass curtain walls and insulated brick walls with windows, as applied on a hypothetical building case, with respect to their life-cycle energy and environmental impacts. An integrated energy and environmental Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to achieve the research objective. LCA analysis is accomplished in four stages: goal and scope definition, inventory modeling, impact assessment, and interpretation of results. The impacts were assessed in three categories of fossil fuel consumption, global warming, and ozone depletion. We conclude that a brick wall system with window primarily consisting of brick veneer, air gap, polystyrene insulation, concrete block and gypsum plasterboard will result in lower environmental impacts in all categories.The so-called energetic leverage effect describes the influence of manufacturing strategies on the energy balance in the use-phase of tribological components in technical products. The objective of the presented approach is to consider this effect in early phases of product engineering of construction and agriculture machinery with the help of a prospective life-cycle-assessment. In the approach a virtual prototype is developed. This enables a quantitative assessment of the use-phase of a product in early product development phase. The virtual prototype simulates the behavior of considered components, in this case gear wheels, and the effect on the energy consumption of the whole machine in its use-phase. In different simulation runs gear wheels with differences in surface quality, tribological characteristics but also in energy consumption during their production-phase resulting from different manufacturing strategies are compared. The life-cycle-assessment ensures that energy consumption of all life cycle phases is included and optimized. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The aim of this study was to conduct a streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify the global warming potential (GWP) of a single-storey residential house (283 m(2) floor area) located in Melbourne, Australia. Evaluation of the initial design through a life cycle assessment approach was used to inform further improvements to the house across its initial construction, operation and maintenance stages with the aim of reducing its global warming impact. An input-output-based hybrid approach was used to calculate embodied energy of building materials and components based on a bill of quantities. IES-VE software was used to estimate operational energy demands of the house. Energy demand was converted into carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) using emissions factors to determine global warming potential. Based on the initial design, the total life cycle energy demand of the house was 18,758 GJ (66 GJ/m(2)) and the initial global warming potential a significant 1,474 t CO2-e (5.2 t CO2-e/m(2)). The operational stage contributed 83% to the total global warming potential of the house. The redesign of the house focused on improving passive thermal performance using materials and systems readily available in the construction industry. Total life cycle energy demand was reduced by 29% to 13,238 GJ (47 GJ/m(2)). The initial global warming potential decreased by 29%, down to 1,039 t CO2-e (3.67 t CO2-e/m(2)) for the redesigned house. The study highlights the potential for further improvements and the need for alternative construction materials and technologies in the local construction industry.The significant effects of the building industry on the natural environment are well documented and improving the environmental performance of buildings is an on-going challenge. This is particularly the case for projects with restrictive budgets and timelines and because many existing environmental assessment tools are designed to be used too late in the design process. The use of tools during the early design stages may assist in achieving greater improvements in a building's environmental performance. However, user-friendly tools with the ability to comprehensively compare environmental information between various building assemblies and materials, which can be easily adopted during the early design stages of a project, are not readily available. This paper presents the progress to date in developing a tool which supports building designers in identifying and selecting preferred building assemblies with the aim of minimising a building's life cycle energy demand. The tool is based on comprehensive energy performance data for a broad range of building assemblies across all Australian climate zones. Allowing for adjustments to a set of pre-defined and user-defined assemblies the designer is able to see how assemblies perform in relation to each other. This provides valuable information to support decision-making relating to minimising the life cycle energy demand of buildings.The aim of this study was to use a life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify the potential global warming impacts associated with the construction and on-going use of a 158 m(2) single-storey house located in Melbourne, Australia. This information was then used to inform improvements to the performance of the house with the aim of minimising energy demand and associated global warming impacts across its life. A streamlined LCA approach was used to quantify inputs of energy across the entire life of the house. Embodied energy associated with the initial construction of the house as well as the replacement of materials and components throughout its assumed 50-year life were quantified using embodied energy coefficients for specific construction materials. Energy demand associated with the operation of the house over its life was determined with the use of IES-VE software. Total energy demand in primary terms was converted to global warming potential (GWP) (in t CO2-e) with the use of greenhouse gas emissions factors to provide an indication of the associated global warming impacts. The results of the analysis were then used to identify strategies for improving the environmental performance of the house, which was then reassessed to estimate the level of improvement.Platinum group metals (PGM) are accredited for their contribution in reducing environmental damage through technological innovations. In recent years interest in hydrogen has grown rapidly resulting to the development of the concept of hydrogen economy to address two growingly noticed challenges namely climate change impacts due to GHG emissions and the need for clean energy and sustainability supply. The credits to PGM are of no doubt, but activities around PGM recovery process are reported with environmental concerns; the best known are identified as land transformation, livestock and wildlife affected by use of chemicals and other non-renewable resources. Life cycle analysis of ore-concentration was developed and equivalent carbon dioxide emissions quantified. For one metric ton of Ore-based PGM Concentrate, a total amount of equivalent carbon dioxide of about 1.574,96 kgCO(2)-eq was associated with this process. In an annual initiative, the concentrator can process up to 36,547 million metric tons of ore milled accounting for 57,560,063,120 kgCO(2)-eq. Important emissions in this phase are waterborne and emissions to soil.Platinum group metals are acknowledged for their contribution to the reduction of environmental damage thanks to technological innovations. A growing demand on PGM is expected to contribute to the supply of clean and renewable energy using systems such as hydrogen fuel cell technology. The credits to PGM are of no doubt, yet some environmental concerns in PGM recovery process are reported with a massive harmful SO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Life cycle analysis of smelter section was developed and equivalent carbon dioxide emissions were quantified. For one metric ton of ore milled, a total amount of equivalent carbon dioxide of about 2,084.72kg CO2-eq was associated with the smelting process. SO2 was revealed not to be the most important emission. In an annual initiative, smelter can process up to 36,547 million metric tons of ore milled accounting for 76,163,948,000 kg CO2-eq. The section of the smelter showed emissions to water and emissions to soil mainly. Significant air emissions are identified as Sulphur dioxide (SO2) efflux in the plant.Standardization for manufacturing systems is essential for constructing and managing transparent and flexible systems in global competitive environment. In this paper, as a basis for realizing sustainable manufacturing systems in such environment, standardization activity for an environmental influence evaluation method is explained. Background and overview of the standardization are described, and cooperative development with industry is briefly discussed.Competitive single-number Life Cycle Assessment is performed between existing and near-term electrical power plants at the infrastructure level. The focus is on an alternative to current electrical power production in the US in the form of Earth-orbiting Solar Power Satellites Two. This modernized SPS2 theoretical architecture is compared to Combined Cycle Natural Gas and terrestrial solar photovoltaic fields at 5GW capacity as delivered on-site. The SPS2 configuration presented is a modest, research-driven modification to a standard model that assumes medium-high technological readiness levels for equipment and employs predicted launch costs and capacity.Various cities in the Philippines have started to prohibit the use of plastic bags and packaging materials in favor of paper products for waste disposal and management reasons. This study evaluated the soundness of these initiatives based on life-cycle analysis (LCA) framework. While a number of studies have looked at similar issues in other countries, results may not be entirely valid in the Philippines due to different variations in energy and material supply chain and waste disposal practices and system. Considering the usual products being purchased by a Filipino family and the amount, 12 liter sando bags and 14 liter paper bag capacity were used as the functional units for the research. Comparison of the impact assessment was done by looking into the cradle-to-grave processes of the two bag materials. The study covered disposal to land, air and water effluents and included the global warming, acidification, ozone depletion and human toxicity impact areas. A modified EDIP was used for the life-cycle inventory and results show that out of the four impact factors, three favored the use of plastic bags. Future studies may be done on other impact factors as well as on other bag materials. This study was commissioned by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to aid policy development in waste management in the country.Global warming effects have become very apparent in many parts of the world causing governments to force their industries to be environmentally conscious. Small individual contributions will help abate global warming. The steel industry, if left unattended, has great potential of releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In this paper a life cycle assessment (LCA) for steel balls used as grinding media in mines that are produced at Craster International in Zimbabwe is discussed. Knowing the life cycle environmental impacts of the steel balls is very important since they produce greenhouse gases in their production. The emitted carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides and other trace greenhouse gases have adverse effects on flora, fauna, water bodies and humans. Interviews, questionnaire and direct observation and measurements were used to generate the data. The data is analyzed and a new LCA diagram from the results of the research and recommendations was made.The rapid growth of the auto industry is a major challenge to reduce CO2 emissions in China. Promoting energy-saving & new energy vehicles should be effective to tackle the issue. This paper aims to evaluate impacts of such promotion on CO2 emission reduction. Scenario analysis method and the Gompertz model are adopted to simulate future auto market scale and structure. Possible emission reduction effects from promotion in 4 distinct scenarios are estimated based on Life Cycle Analysis and Tier 3 method of the IPCC guidelines. We find that the market scale will be 169-213 million in 2015 and 241-350 million in 2020; the market share of energy-saving & new energy vehicles will be 1.9- 2.3 times higher with effective promotion; 86.7-147.1 million tons of CO2 emissions may be reduced (15.2%-19.6% of CO2 emissions by vehicles in 2015), and the amount will increase to 153.1- 250.9 million tons with the ratio rising to 15.3%- 26.0% in 2020.According to the management problem of green building materials and BIM advantages under the background of the development of green building, the green building materials management system was framed based on BIM, combing with life cycle assessment theory, and at last safety monitoring management system with RFID and BIM of construction site was built. This study shows that, the BIM technology advantages and the building materials features fit well, the safety monitoring management system achieves the real-time visualization, information automation, and multi-collaborative participation, which can effectively promote the development of green building.With the idea of sustainable development is increasingly deeply rooted in the minds of people, Green building has received more and more attention in the construction industry. In this paper, Hall three dimensions structure was applied to study green buildings systematically. On the time dimension, this paper stands in the view of the whole life cycle of green buildings. In order to demonstrate the knowledge dimension of green construction systems clearly and comprehensively, and provide a kind of thinking processes at the same time, a large number of literatures were reviewed to discover the theory and methodology related to each project phase of green buildings. Finally, Hall three dimensions structure model was established in this paper to contribute to the further research about the green buildings.a social life cycle assessment is a social impact assessment technique that aims to assess the social and socioeconomic aspects of products and their positive and negative impacts along their lifecycle. The focus is mainly on the impact on workers and communities at large, where production and consumption generally takes place. This work is justified, mainly because there is growing customer/market pressure on the state of the social and economic circumstances of production and services for products like bio-fuel. Issues like corruption, unionization of workforce, policies and laws in the creation of bio-fuels and its by-products are increasingly being recognised as important as they affect production largely.Development of mankind adversely affects flora and fauna, air, water and soil on earth - called "Environment-E". States make legislative and standardization measures to protect the Environment. In 1991, the International Organization for Standardization ISO created a specialized Technical Committee TC 207/ISO for standardization of "Environment management-EM" by the ISO 14000 series. The report analyzes the conditions and relations between standardization documents (standards, recommendations ISOTTR and specifications ISO/TS), included in the ISO 14000 series, which prevent their proper application by the manufacturers. For this purpose the documents (common standards) of the ISO 14000 series are grouped into 5 groups. The first four groups include standards that define the specific impacts of the manufacturer for EM without built Environment Management System-EMS. These are: 1. "EMS. Environmental assessment of sites and organizations (EASO)"; 2. "EMS. Environment tags and declarations. Principles; Claims; Procedures"; 3. "EMS. Performance evaluation of environmental (ecological efficiency)" 4. "EMS. Life Cycle Assessment (LC); principles; assessment of the impacts of LC; requirements and guidelines; examples; format for documentation of the data; scope and inventory analysis of LC." Two standards that define requirements for construction, certification (declaration) and the operation of the EMS are included in the fifth group. The report clarifies the advantages and disadvantages of self-administration of (i) environment assessments standardized in the first 4 groups or (ii) interconnected elements of their application by manufacturers developed and implemented EMS.this paper presents an analysis of the environmental impacts during hydraulic fracturing process of shale gas in Tunisia. The different steps of hydraulic fracturing process of shale gas such as site preparation, exploration, development, production, distribution and closing wells are described to analyze operation of the process. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was achieved out focusing on both exploration and development stages of hydraulic fracturing process. The SimaPro Software based on ReCip Endpoint version 1.06 methods was used as the assessment tool to indicate the environmental impacts quantitatively. The results of LCA affirm that the process of hydraulic fracturing contributes to the impact category such as climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, ionizing radiation, climate change ecosystems, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, agricultural land occupation, urban land occupation, natural land transformation, metal depletion and fossil depletion.The aim of this paper is to select the most appropriate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) eco-design software currently available. The multi-criteria decision method AHP is applied to establish the comparison between six LCA's softwares (Simapro 7, TEAM 4.0, GaBi 4, Umberto 5.1, KCL-ECO 4.0, EcoLab 6.2.0e) considering 20 different criteria.The challenges imposed on the current electric power grid have led to the need of an improved and smarter electric power grid, i.e., the smart grid. The smart grid will enable not only a bidirectional transfer of electricity, but also a two-way data exchange between various systems essential for a correct operation of the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and home area network (HAN) applications. The realization of the smart grid will require the deployment of additional information and communication technology (ICT) equipment in various domains. This will unavoidably lead to an increase in electricity consumption. In order to obtain a meaningful environmental sustainability analysis, additional to the operation phase, various other ICT equipment life cycle stages, i.e., raw material extraction and processing, manufacturing and assembly, recycling and disposal, as well as transportation, have to be included in the assessment as well. In this paper, we present an exergy-based life cycle assessment (E-LCA) of ICT equipment for smart grids involved in AMI and HAN applications. Based on a model developed for the city of Vienna, it is shown that the cumulative embodied and operational exergy consumption distribution and their development significantly differ for the AMI and the AMI/ HAN scenario.Life cycle assessment (LCA) as a decision support tool for evaluating the environmental load of products has been widely used in many fields. However, applying LCA in the building industry is expensive and time consuming. This is due to the complexity of building structure along with a large amount of high-dimensional heterogeneous building data. So far building environmental impact assessment (BEIA) is an important yet under-addressed issue. This paper gives a brief survey of BEIA and investigates potential advantages of using data mining techniques to discover the relationships between building materials and environment impacts. We formulate three important BEIA issues as a series of data mining problems, and propose corresponding solution schemes. Specifically, first, a feature selection approach is proposed based on the practical demand and construction characteristics to perform assessment analysis. Second, a unified framework for solving constraint-based clustering ensemble selection is proposed to extend the environmental impact assessment range from the building level to the regional level. Finally, a multiple disparate clustering method is presented to help sustainable new buildings design. We expect our proposal would shed light on data-driven approaches for environment impact assessment.Integration of wireless power transfer (WPT) systems in roadways and vehicles represents a promising alternative to traditional internal combustion transportation systems. The economic feasibility and environmental impact of WPT applied to the transportation system is evaluated through the development of engineering system models. For a 20% penetration of the WPT technology in vehicles, results show a 20% reduction in air pollutants, 10% reduction in energy use and CO2 emissions and a societal level payback (defined as total cost of ownership savings compared to a traditional vehicle equal to roadway infrastructure) of 3 years. The modeled system covers 86% of all traffic in the US, impacts 40% of all roadways and shifts $ 180 billion per year from oil production to jobs in local power generation and development, construction, and maintenance of electrified roadways and new electric vehicles. Results on model sensitivity to energy prices, payback as a function of penetration, and trucking vs light duty use are presented.The aim of this study was to develop multi-objective optimization model for wheat flour supply chain. The model was developed by considering raw material substitution with local flour. The local flour such as mocaf, tapioca, sweet potato, modified corn flour etc. can substitute a part or whole of wheat flour for wheat flour-based product application. However, raw material substitution can impact supply chain network, raw material supply policy, and product quality so that it is important to optimize supply chain for that case. In this work, we used mocaf as flour substitution for wheat flour in wheat flour mill. We developed multi-objective supply chain model that minimized total cost and maximized product quality. Genetic algorithm approach was used to solve the optimization problem. For numerical experiment, we used supply chain configuration consisting of three wheat suppliers, three mocaf suppliers, three wheat flour mills, four distribution centers, and two food factories.Renewable energy technologies (RET) present an emission free means of energy harvesting in the current energy scenario demanding sustainable needs. However, the production process of RETs especially solar photovoltaic (SPV) is material and energy expensive process. In this paper such material and energy intensive production processes of SPV systems are analyzed. The systems are analyzed up to the production stage with focus given to energy and material differentiation among different stages of production. The evaluation of emissions during production stage is carried out for a 1KWp SPV system. A comparison is made between different types of technologies i.e., mono, poly, thin film CdTe and ribbon Si. Also, comparison of sustainability aspects of rooftop and ground mounted installations is carried out. Results indicate that, in case of mono Si technology emissions during wafer production phase are pronounced compared to cell and module preparation stages. In poly and thin film technologies, emission share of wafer stage is comparable with module preparation stages. In ribbon Si, energy inputs accounted for higher emissions rather than materials as in case of other technologies. In the mounting structures, in roof structures resulted in least emissions through material savings while, ground mounting structures are environmentally expensive due to high material consumption. Also, the emission share of materials used in production stage is reduced linearly from mono Si to ribbon Si when in roof mounting is used. Therefore, thin film CdTe, ribbon Si presents an environmentally cheaper options of harnessing solar energy and production processes of technologies like mono Si, poly Si need to be improved to make them environmentally sustainable.Rapid growth in the field of IoT makes our life very simple and easy. The IoT technology gives rise to a new era where "Things Speak". Hitherto we only have heard people connected to the internet but today the scenario has totally changed. Now every object and machine is getting connected to the internet. IoT brings life to the machines and we can visualize a world where a new communication system has been established between Man and Machine (M2M communication). Earlier we have seen communication between "man-to man" and "machine-to-machine", but today Man-to-Machine communication is also possible. There are many areas in Home Automation System where researches are going on to make the life much better. "Life-Cycle Tracking System of LED Bulbs" also belongs to one of those categories. The proposed model will provide a platform to a user to track the lifetime of an LED bulb. The benefit of using this model is that, if it is applied to all the connected devices then it can also be integrated with the Big Data where it will provide a lot of data about an individual device. The idea of Life Cycle Tracking System may also solve many industrial problems, by giving the up-to-date status of all the devices and machines.In the era of big data processing, the type and scale of human society data are increasing rapidly. Data processing gradually transformed from the traditional simple objects into a basic social resource. Along with the technology development of expansion and storage of massive complex data, manage building information has gradually become possible. For a long time, building life cycle assessment(BLCA) of energy consumption is an important issue in the field of sustainable development and green building. However, the BLCA is facing huge amounts of data processing, which makes the subject remained in theory. The emergence and development of big data technology and building information model (BIM) provide effective tool for building a full life cycle energy assessment. This paper summarized the features of building life cycle energy consumption(BLCEC) data, proposed the method of information exchange and integration management by BIM, and ultimately utilize cloud computing technology to achieve wide-area BLC energy data management. It provides a broader vision for future Big data application studies.Most solar cell manufacturing plants and research laboratories in the U.S. use non-renewable energy for their operations. This energy paradox must be addressed, especially due to the increased spending toward photovoltaic (PV) technology research and manufacturing fueled by the growing demand for renewable energy supply. At the same time, it is also important that the scientific community be made aware of the energy cost of energy research. While keeping scientific discovery a priority, it must be understood that energy is precious and must be conserved, including at the research and development stage of a product's life cycle. With energy conservation in mind, a case study was conducted to quantify the energy demand for the research phase of an emerging PV technology and identify energy intensive components. The test-bed system chosen for this study was a quantum-wire (QWR) based intermediate band solar cell grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and fabricated by photolithography. This paper presents the results of the energy demand analysis performed on the QWR-based solar cell research test-bed system. Life cycle assessment (LCA), an internationally accepted tool for energy and sustainability analysis, was chosen as the methodology for conducting this case study.Critical or strategic minerals are important for the future sustainable energy and economic security. Unconventional resources are being sought to obtain these minerals. Research about the extraction of deep ocean resources (DOR) has increased significantly over the past decades. However, the understanding of social and environmental implications is still very poor-especially for remote, deep deposits where the relevant stakeholders are unclear and the environment is mostly unknown. This research will use reviews of law and literature, workshops interviews, and practitioner interviews to elucidate social acceptance of extracting these resources with web-based approaches. The research will also clarify environmental impacts by undertaking the first full life cycle assessment on DOR extraction to compare with land-based projects. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Due to its low durability, the bamboo preservation is needed to prolong the bamboo lifespan. Although the preservatives have a great impact to make bamboo lifespan longer, some of bamboo preservation methods use chemical additives that have a negative impact on environment. Since there are so many kinds of bamboo preservation used, the observation study was carried out to reveal the bamboo preservation methods used by society in Indonesia. Three kinds of bamboo preservations were assessed, they are traditional method, modern method and the one which does not belong to traditional or modern one but it is generally used by some of society (trial-error). The object of the study is to assess the impact of bamboo preservation method used by society. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method and eco-costs as marginal prevention cost were used as a tool analysis of this study. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper discusses the development of a green energy manufacturing laboratory for student learning experience in the emerging fields of renewable energy and green manufacturing. The development involves a creation of a series of experiments to stimulate discoveries and developments that promise to sustain a wave of new technological innovations on energy and manufacturing throughout the world. The needs for engineering students and practicing engineers to understand sustainability concepts and concerns have been noted by educators, scientists or engineers and all engineering students need to become versed in sustainability ideas. This paper describes key factors in enhancing the ability of future engineering graduates to better contribute to a more sustainable future, preserving natural resources and advancing technological development. Two main components are used to incorporate sustainability into the green energy manufacturing laboratory, including: (1) renewable energy and (2) manufacturing energy efficiency. The efforts presented in the paper also include life-cycle assessment, development of innovative thinking skills, better understanding of sustainability issues, and increasing students' interests in the engineering and technology programs. A concluding section discusses laboratory development for student hands-on learning experience within the context of a project. The paper will present the how it establishes its long-term sustainability and support through a variety of mechanisms including the energy mission, the award of federal grants, program projects, private foundation support, partnerships, and university-based investments. The GEM/Institute/Community College research model and the supporting the hardware, software and middleware are being installed, developed and enabled by the joint project between two universities in the nation.Hazardous and toxic materials are not only produced by industrial sectors. But also by household sector. Unfortunately, no establish regulation and standard operational procedure was found for handling HHW. Most of HHW are currently mixed with domestics waste. So that, it can impact on the health and the reduction environment quality. The research aimed to produce the most effective and efficient model of household hazardous waste by considering the impact on the environment especially related to global warming and the indicator of greenhouse gas emissions. This research used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach according to ISO 14040 : 2006 by using 150 kg of household hazardous waste. The impact category (LCIA) was observed and limited on global warming with the indicator of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. The LCIA method used was IPCC 2007 GWP 100a V1.01 by using Simapro program version 7.1. The result show, recycling HHW is the best scenario based on the LCA approach. The impact of greenhouse gases emissions is only about 135,25 kg CO2 eq release to environment. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Ancient civilizations had agriculture production in their metropolis but modem urban planning separated agriculture from cities, such as Chandigarh by Le Corbusier. At present, FAO estimates that urban agriculture produces food for a quarter of world's population, reducing food transport, package and waste impact among others and improving food safety. Meanwhile, city governments and citizens are reinventing their roofs usage in order to take more advantage of them. Rooftop Greenhouses (RTGs) are an interesting option because they increase the scarce green area of the cities, create new agricultural spaces and promote food self-sufficiency in urban areas among other growing interests. RTGs are greenhouses located on the roof of the buildings that usually produce food using soil-less culture systems. These structures as well as the green facades called Vertical Farming (VF) are part of the "building-based Urban Agriculture (UA)". In this sense, this article presents the first results of the research project Fertilecity, which aims to analyze, from a technological and sustainability approach, a new agricultural production system for Mediterranean urban areas through the integration of greenhouses on the roof of buildings. This innovative system is an integrated RIG (i-RTG) that includes energy, water and CO2 flows in the metabolism of the building. Multidisciplinary experts participate in Pertilecity Project using multiple methods such as Life Cycle Assessment and the Integrated Value Model for Sustainable Assessment (MIVES). Their first results are: a review of the main experiences in UA; an environmental and economic life cycle analysis of implementing Rooftop Greenhouses (RTGs) in Barcelona and the construction of the ICTA Rooftop Greenhouse Lab (RTG-Lab) near Barcelona. This project aims to demonstrate the potential of i-RTGs and quantify their environmental, economic and social benefits, as well as study how they can change the image of our cities. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The development of green building rating systems (GBRS) and sustainability metrics for buildings, including building products, is reviewed from a North American perspective. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system and the Living Building Challenge (LBC) are highlighted as primary examples of different levels of GBRS. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is introduced as a preferred method of quantifying sustainability, and its integration into current GBRS is examined a prominent building example. Two example applications of LCA to building products associated with GBRS - carpet and roof membranes are provided. In the first example, conventional carpet was compared with carpet meeting the standards of the LBC's materials exclusion criteria (Red List, via the Declare product labeling system). In the second example, LCA was applied to both the manufacture and use phases of roof membrane alternatives for a building retrofit project, one of which would have aided in achieving LEED certification. The Declare-listed products did not perform better in every LCA impact category, and the GBRS-preferred roof system performed more poorly in all LCA impact categories, while suggesting the need for additional LCA categories. Both examples help to illustrate the complexity and tradeoffs encountered while integrating the quantitative perspective of LCA and the qualitative perspective of GBRS. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The use of daylight has become an essential concern in improving environmental quality and decreasing overall energy consumption by providing natural daylight, which results in minimizing the energy use for indoor lighting, cooling and heatin g loads. Exterior solar shadings for windows have been widely used in hot or subtropics climates to reduce energy consumption and cut air conditioning costs in residential sector. The most common material types used in exterior solar shadings are aluminum and wood. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate the environmental effects of the aforementioned materials in typical exterior shadings used in residential buildings. The study compiled a Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) for quantifying and characterizing the energy consumption and emissions to the environment of these common materials during the life cycle of solar shadings. A life cycle methodology that follows the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 standard for life cycle assessment was used in this study. Based on the analysis conducted, the positive and negative effects of aluminum and wood shadings on environment for different types of shadings are presented. It was concluded that wood shadings are more environmentally friendly than aluminum shadings during their life cycles and are better alternatives to be used by building professionals to achieve a more sustainable design. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Introduction: In the U.S., about 50% of total CO2 emissions stem from the built environment (e.g., building construction, operation [ heating, lighting, cooling], and end-of-life) (EPA 2012). Improving the performance and efficiency of the built environment offers the largest and least cost GHG mitigation option of any sector of the global economy (IPCC 2007). Science-based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods are increasingly being used to analyse the environmental impact of construction materials and products. Objectives: This paper presents a framework for LCA-based environmental decision making for commercial buildings at the conceptual design phase, compares it to the currently available LCA tools and data bases, and identifies the "next steps" in developing a comprehensive LCA standard for assessing whole building life cycles to support environmental decision making in design and construction. Methodology/approach: 1) CSU/AIA conducted focus groups in 8 US cities to explore actual and potential use of LCA in decision making by architects; 2) A framework created based on feedback from focus groups, 3) The framework was compared to existing LCA tools and databases, 4) Gaps were identified for next stages in developing an LCA-based environmental decision-making tool for conceptual design. Findings and contributions: 1) Current LCA tools are balkanized and usually address only one life cycle stage, material or system in a building. 2) LCA-related databases normally only address materials and product; they do not address construction activities or building operations. 3) LCA tools and databases generally require a completely separate activity, data input and expertise; they are not integrated into routinely used architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) tools, methods or best practices. 4) LCA based decision-making will not become an AEC best practice until it is fully integrated, comprehensive, standardized, affordable, and demanded by customers and municipalities. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.As demand for alternatives to petroleum fuels increases to meet renewable fuel policy requirements (an attempt to address global climate change concerns) both agricultural production of biofuel feedstock and feedstock-to-fuel conversion pathways must be examined for both energy efficiency and sustainability. The overarching agricultural method evaluated in this research is that of cultivating low-input biofuel feedstock on marginal lands. With a growing body of literature on sunflower crops cultivated on marginal land, as well as previous work by these researchers, describing positive overall outcomes, this study extended the scope of that previous research conducted by this group, specifically, examining low-input sunflower feedstock production on abandoned mine lands in the Appalachia, and subsequent feedstock conversion to diesel fuel alternatives. The previous life cycle assessment (LCA) demonstrated that growing sunflower feedstock on a specific abandoned coal mine refuse pile in Appalachia for production of biodiesel would be environmentally sound and net-energy positive if conducted with low input agricultural practices, and if production continues five years after initial soil amelioration [1]. This LCA normalized the data and generalized the method in order to apply them to over 1000 coal mine refuse piles in three Appalachian states located through global information systems (GIS). Additionally, this study included two conversion pathways for diesel replacement biofuels, namely transesterification of sunflower oilseed for biodiesel production - included in the original LCA - and fast pyrolysis of sunflower silage for green diesel production - new to this study. The results of this study indicate when cultivating sunflower feedstock for biodiesel production on the average coal refuse pile in the Appalachian region produce approximately 11.6 barrels of biodiesel, plus 18.5 barrels of green diesel, with a similar environmental impact landscape to that of the specific site explored in the original LCA. Including the additional biofuel pathway of fast pyrolysis does alter the energy return outlook for the average Appalachian site, depending on the transportation distances and yields, the energy return varies greatly between sites, however overall environmental impacts only increase nominally. Site by site evaluation should be conducted before implementation to ensure the benefits outweigh negative impacts and a positive energy return is achieved. Because of the approximately 32 thousand barrels per year of renewable diesel biofuel which could be produced from 6642 ha of coal refuse piles in only three states, it is highly recommended that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) consider expanding the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) to include biofuel production on marginal land for Renewable Identification Number (RIN) assignment. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Many countries consider the fly ash produced from the incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW) as hazardous waste. In Taiwan, 24.5 thousand tons of MSW is incinerated and 554.7 tons of fly ash is produced daily. As landfill capacity in the country is limited, this vast amount of fly ash should ideally be reused. However, some treatment methods to enable the reuse of fly ash can have a worse impact on the environment than was previously believed. The aim of this research was therefore to compare the different processes for the reuse of fly ash by employing data collected from the incineration process in Taiwan in order to establish a life-cycle assessment (LCA) database. The database, containing information on the assessment of reuse treatments, is intended to inform decision making on the best practices for the reuse of fly ash. The study poses four scenarios for reuse treatment and disposal of one ton of fly ash: 1) landfilling after solidification, 2) reuse as cement after a washing process, 3) reuse as bricks after a washing process, 4) reuse as an alkali in the waelz process of steelmaking. The results from the LCA showed that the washing processes consumed more water but less electricity; however, more electricity was consumed and higher toxicity was caused in scenario 4, the reuse as an alkali in the waelz process. More water and chemical additives were used in scenario 2 because of the higher limits of chloride compounds and heavy metals used in construction materials. To conclude, the comprehensive LCA inventory database established by this study could assist in reducing the environmental impacts of reuse treatments for fly ash, and consequently could contribute to the safer management of fly ash worldwide. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The purpose of this study is to adopt the urban metabolism method to compare bio-waste scenarios of reuse and landfills. The study focuses on food waste (FW) generated from Taipei City to determine what outcomes will result if bio-waste is transformed into energy or material resources. The results show that under the scenario of bio-waste reuse, metabolic efficiency in Taipei increases, e.g., the same amount of resources can be used to produce more products. However, the urban impact also increases due to the bio-waste conversion process. Applying the life cycle assessment method of quantifying the environmental burden for bio-waste conversion technology selection enhances the urban metabolism efficiency of resources in Taipei and reduces the urban impact on the environment. The most environmentally friendly FW conversion technology is composting after pre-treatment of high-temperature cooking. The next most environmentally friendly method is direct composting treatment. This is followed by anaerobic co-digestion with sewage sludge, and the worst option is transforming FW into bio-ethanol. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Over the past decades, dramatic increases in population and quality of life have led to an ever-growing need for wastewater infrastructure systems. Designing and applying novel pipelines with lower installation and long-term operation and maintenance expense will become crucial in the near future for the implementation of the best environmental management strategies. In this paper, a comparative life cycle analysis (LCA) was performed for four different types of wastewater pipe materials: composite fiber reinforced Polymer (FRP), PVC, ductile iron, and concrete. The functional unit in our analysis was defined as the infrastructure needed for the collection and transportation of one cubic meter of waste water from a city for a period of 50 years. Assuming a city that has a population of 200,000 and generates 0.3 cubic meter of wastewater per person per day, the reference flow for the above assumed functional unit can be deduced. Considering various life cycle stages, environmental impacts such as "ozone layer depletion", eco-toxicity", and "energy consumption" were quantified and compared for all pipe materials. The results show the production phase has the maximum impact among the different phases of all pipe manufacturing and within different environmental impacts; fossil fuel is the largely affected area in all piping systems and among the four pipes, ductile iron has the maximum impact and PVC has the minimum impact on most of these areas. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The purpose of this study is to apply life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for green building certification in South Korea. The method of environmental assessment in the field of building materials was examined using United States' LEED, and the United Kingdom's BREEAM building certification systems. Life cycle data and assessment methods were established on major categories of materials thorough theoretical consideration on life cycle assessment. Building materials, assembly methods, and building use considerations were used to develop an assessment model to evaluate the environmental performance of a building. Numeric values for use in the developed model were established for concrete, rebar, gypsum board, steel, cement brick, glass, and insulation materials to potentially reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 95% or more. An assessment method and LCA database were established. The model will be used to show that the choice of building materials can affect the GHG emissions during the construction phase of a building. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Rethinking the existing buildings is a non-deferrable imperative for the very life of the contemporary city. The implementation of well-established techniques in the architectural project, such as intelligent and "informing" BIM modelling, the Life cycle analysis, the energy and waste management for the purpose of savings and of efficiency, can be applied in cases of reuse and transformation of the built heritage. The paper illustrates, through the presentation of a project carried out on a former hospital pavilion, the path followed. From the survey and the historical-critical analysis, through the study of the vocation of the building, up to the planning, to end with the yard. The interventions aimed at reducing energy consumption begin with the evaluation of materials, that are preserved as much as possible, to focus on the thermal and acoustic insulation of windows, roof, walls and floors, to the search for an appropriate energy source, in this case the geothermal. The result is that a historical organism, bound by the Superintendent, comes back to life with function of hospitality, in a carbon neutral intended production cycle.The objective of this research is to develop a tool for assessing carbon footprints of a building in the design process using BIM technology. Life cycle assessment and carbon footprint assessment are the two basic criteria in evaluating the emission reduction of CO2e. International assessment standards have been established for mass-produced merchandise and organizational operations. However, the existing standards cannot directly disclose the hotspots of carbon footprints in the building life cycle. An assessment method concerning local climate, living culture, ecology and local construction style is required for building design. This research work presents a framework by which a BIM-enabled data visualization tool is developed to support the carbon disclosure in the building design process.The climate change and the environment crisis are threatening the survival and development of human beings. The energy saving and carbon emissions reduction has become a hot issue in the whole society. Construction projects can produce a large amount of greenhouse gases in its whole life cycle, from the perspective of low carbon. Choosing a reasonable scheme is an effective measure to control carbon emissions of construction industry. Based on the theory of Life Cycle Assessment, this paper studies the calculation of carbon emissions in each stage of a construction project, and proposes a scheme optimization model of construction projects. This research can serve as a good example in the decision-making process of construction projects, which has important theoretical and practical significance.In recent years, an increase of research on microalgae have been seen due its promising potential as an alternative feedstock for biofuel. It offers high oil yield per land area compared to the first and second generation biofuel feedstock. Given the tropical climate and the archipelagic structure of the Philippine islands, it provides a thriving habitat for more than a thousand species of microalgae. Hence, abundance of microalgae species are found in the country. However, the archipelagic structure of the country also may come as a disadvantage as the transportation of biofuels may require varying shipping routes. In life-cycle assessment of biofuels, transportation is one of the sources of environmental emissions. Thus, minimizing the distance travelled by the ship can dramatically reduce the energy usage and environmental impact of the transportation process. This study proposes an ant colony optimization (ACO) method in determining the optimal route between the different ports in the Philippines. The results in the study showed that the choice of vehicle used has significant impacts on the total shipping distance travelled. This study can be further expanded with the inclusion of time windows.Biodiesel is seen as one of the promising alternatives for fossil-based fuels while reducing the carbon dioxide emissions. However, as first generation biodiesels are derived from food crops, the concern on food versus fuel heightens. As such, algal biodiesel is perceived as a solution to this problem, due to its lesser land requirement while having high oil yield compared to biofuels derived from conventional feedstocks. As the Philippines is considered as a thriving habitat for numerous microalgae species in the tropics, it offers a big potential for algae biofuel production. However, like any other bioenergy system, algal biofuels require natural resource consumption and entails environmental impact. Hence, a life cycle assessment approach is proposed in this study to assess the current microalgae cultivation setup in the Philippines. A validation study is conducted to compare the results of an aquaculture setup in the Philippines and a cultivation system by Khoo et al. (2011). The functional unit used is 1 ton algal biodiesel. The results of the study revealed that the cultivation system found in the Philippines has performed well as compared to Khoo et al. (2011), in terms of the impact assessment and energy consumption. However, the study also found that the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of the two models were less than the benchmark value of one. Thus, the result of this study can be used to improve the EROEI of the algal biodiesel life cycle in the Philippines.Carbon emission of residential buildings is calculated based on LCA (life cycle assessment). The influence factors, such as the insulation thickness, air conditioning form and service life are analyzed. A typical energy efficient residential building was selected to calculate its carbon emission in different conditions. In this case, when the insulation thickness is 100mm, the life cycle carbon emission is the minimum. In other words, each residential building has its optimum insulation thickness. And with the building service life extending, the emission will decrease. As for the air conditioning forms, the results show that the carbon emission of residential building with split air conditioning is less than with centralized air conditioning. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).In order to solve the issue of applicability of solar water source heat pump for building, this article analyzes the load characteristics in different climate regions based on the three typical cities which are Harbin, Beijing, Shanghai, then sets up system mathematical models, uses the eQUEST set up the building model and puts the model into TRNSYS to do the optimization calculation. According to the theory of Life Cycle Assessment, this article analyzes the applicability of solar water source heat pump for building by taking feasibility, energy saving property, economy and environmental protection property as technical index and get the conclusion that the applicability of solar water source heat pump for building in severe cold region and cold region is well and the environmental benefit is obvious. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Despite, or perhaps because of, the rapid growth of green construction over the past 20 years, consensus over what products are appropriate for use in sustainable building remains in flux. Many factors are at play within the green building movement, including different and sometimes competing green goals and rating systems. Quantifying and evaluating the sustainability of building materials has proven difficult, adding to confusion. However, building on the work of standards setting bodies such as ASTM, tools are emerging that allow consumers to make choices among various building products based not only on performance but also on the total environmental impact of the product itself, including embodied energy, global warming potential, resource use, and pollution caused by or created by the material during its manufacturing process or anticipated life span (or both). This "life cycle analysis" of products allows consumers and their agents or designers to make informed choices and more sustainable trade-offs when selecting building products. The Gypsum Association's recent experience producing product category rules (PCR), a life cycle assessment (LCA), and an environmental product declaration (EPD) for 5/8-in Type X gypsum board offers insight into the sometimes complex process of developing these LCA tools. The association's lessons learned and future plans for providing additional tools for other generic gypsum panel products offer a valuable perspective on a sustainability initiative that is gaining increasing traction among producers and consumers of building products.In the presented research study, a parametric model of a bulk carrier design is utilized in order to explore the technical and economic ship design features (design attributes) in the frame of a stochastic optimization procedure. The life cycle assessment of a newbuilding's investment that includes ship's acquisition and operation cost for ship's life cycle is affected by a variety of cost and other parameters have an inherent uncertainty. The ship design attributes are herein represented by six main ship parameters that define the basic characteristics of a vessel: length, breadth, depth, draft, block coefficient and speed. Among the ship characteristics that are related to high uncertainty are ship's energy consumption in terms of fuel consumption, fuel mix and fuel prices. In the present paper, an attempt is made to investigate how the uncertainty of estimations of the fuel consumption, fuel mix and prices, which are made at an early stage of ship design, can affect the outcome of the ship design optimization procedure with respect to ship's life cycle cost. Therefore, a stochastic optimization procedure is being applied, which is utilizing well established optimization algorithms and techniques in a robust and efficient manner. Sample results of this stochastic optimization are compared with solutions of a deterministic optimization and eventually lead to a rational basis for the decision making regarding the life cycle assessment of ship investments.This paper presents an environmental impact assessment of important air emissions produced by the hull subsystem of an oil tanker over a typical life cycle of twenty five years. This assessment makes use of a novel framework for ship life cycle analysis which considers the ship as a system that may be detailed into major subsystems and further into system elements for which: (a) inputs, (b) processes, and (c) outputs, are identified and elaborated. Four important ship life cycle stages are taken into account in this framework; namely the shipbuilding stage, ship operation, major maintenance activities and finally ship dismantling. Emissions inventories for all identified processes are first developed and subsequently the impacts to the environment and human health are estimated by applying standardized and widely accepted impact assessment techniques.This paper presents a comprehensive model for life cycle analysis of ships from their construction to operation and final recycling. The model describes the major ship-related material energy flows at a process level and records all the relevant pollutants at the ship lifetime horizon. Then, the pollutants are linked to a wide list of environmental phenomena, including climate change, ozone depletion, human health and marine environment degradation. Our methodology is based on the framework of the ISO standardised Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. Its applicability is illustrated via three typical cases for a tanker, a containership and a bulk carrier vessel.Solid waste management (SWM) has become one of the priority issues to decision makers in modern municipalities. This paper proposes a life cycle assessment-based (LCA-based) two-stage mixed-integer stochastic programming model for an integrated solid waste management (ISWM) system design. Different from previous models that commonly focus on improving the overall performance of an ISWM system, the proposed model considers the sustainability of each involved individual agent within the complex system. In addition, the proposed model simultaneously considers both internal and external uncertainties during the ISWM system design. The simulation results show that the proposed model can help decision makers identify what the optimal ISWM system design under uncertainties is and how uncertainties influence the optimal ISWM system design. The model comparison shows that considering individual agent sustainability during the ISWM system design process can help enhance the system stability under uncertain circumstances.Cycling brings advantages to the environment and is also an affordable transportation mode. The number of people using bicycles has been increasing in several European countries as well as the interest in manufacturing new types of bicycles with different materials. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the complete life cycle of a bicycle (cradle-to-grave analysis) and to quantify which components have the highest environmental impact. The production, maintenance, use and waste scenarios were modelled using the life cycle assessment software SimaPro. The use of bicycles in two different realities in terms of bicycle modal share (Portugal and The Netherlands) was considered. Then, some "what- if" scenarios were performed, in which some bicycles components were replaced with different materials, with the objective to decrease the environmental impact of the product itself. Aluminium, steel, wood and carbon fiber were tested in SimaPro. Results indicate that the components made in aluminium have the highest environmental impact. On the other hand, a bicycle with carbon fiber shows the lowest impact for the majority of the environmental categories. When evaluating the entire life cycle of the bicycle, the production phase has the highest negative impact. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The increasing demand for plastics in the world leads to pressures on the environment generated by the consumption of raw materials based on fossil fuels and the need for plastic waste reduction and absorption to diminish their environmental impacts. In this paper we evaluated the environmental impacts induced by the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), one of the most widely used plastics in the manufacture of various goods. The impacts were calculated based on Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The negative environmental impacts of PVC production may be reduced by recycling, a sustainable, effective, currently available alternative of waste management. Our study showed that the use of recyclable materials, such as organic biodegradable waste as raw materials instead of crude oil can lead to significant reduction of environmental impacts.Industrial Robotics (IR) may be envisaged as the key technology to keep the manufacturing industry at the leading edge. Unfortunately, at the current state-of-the-art, IR is intrinsically energy intensive, thus compromising factories sustainability in terms of ecological footprint and economic costs. Within this scenario, this paper presents a new framework called AREUS, focusing on eco-design, eco-programming and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of robotized factories. The objective is to overcome current IR energetic limitations by providing a set of integrated technologies and engineering platforms. In particular, novel energy-saving hardware is firstly introduced, which aim at exchanging/storing/recovering energy at factory level. In parallel, innovative engineering methods and software tools for energy-focused simulation are developed, as well as energy-optimal scheduling of multi-robot stations. At last, LCA methods are briefly described, which are capable to assess both environmental and economic costs, linked to the flows of Material, Energy and Waste (MEW). A selected list of industrially-driven demonstration case studies is finally presented, along with future directions of improvement.The environmental and energy challenges associated with turning society in a more sustainable direction are tremendous and urgent. The sustainable construction becomes more and more essential. This paper tries to investigate the environmental burdens of residential buildings in Shenzhen. Assessment indicators including embodied energy consumption and CO2 emissions are taken into account. Two different building layouts are analyzed (three apartment units and six apartment units). The quantitative methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to the estimation of environmental burdens. The results show these two building layouts do not have great difference in embodied environmental impacts. However, based on LCA model, manufacturing process of materials leads to the highest impacts, accounting for more than 90% of total energy needs.Many countries like the US, Brazil, Australia, Canada and some European countries have proposed policies to encourage the use of biofuels by the implementation of regulations to encourage their use in the different sectors of the economy. Among them we find the public transport sector. It is still difficult to assess the potential environmental and social benefits of the use of biofuels because they are distributed throughout the supply chain. The way to supply can influence the level of environmental and social impacts. It is possible to observe a gap in supply decision models taking into account the environmental and social impacts in the case of chains of biofuels that are already established. In the case of biodiesel used by a public transport company, its use should represent the maximum of environmental and social benefits. It is therefore possible to put our research question: "What is the ideal way to supply biodiesel to transportation companies considering environmental and social dimensions?". Our research goal is to provide an evaluation model to support the biodiesel supplier choice decision-making. We expect that the results of our study support the decision making process related to the biodiesel supply for transport companies in Quebec.This paper gives an overview of the environmental impact of the meat chain. This industry has a significant impact on the environment and current scientific research outlines three main perspectives - product-based using life cycle assessment as a tool; process-based exploring the main environmental aspects and; systems-based, analyzing the rationale for environmental management. Environmental impacts influence three dimensions - climate change, consumption of natural resources and environmental pollution. Future research should focus on environmental impacts of the meat chain expressed in terms of existing and newly developed environmental indicators and identifying solutions for decreasing the overall environmental impact. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This review aims to give an overview of published environmental assessments using the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. LCA was deployed in terms of five main subsystems in the poultry meat chain: poultry farm, slaughterhouse, meat processing plant, retail and household use. This review revealed that 15 different environmental potentials are used as environmental indicators for estimating environmental performance of the poultry meat chain. General finding is that further research should use the LCA approach to assess the environmental performance of an overall poultry meat chain, focusing on the global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential and ozone layer depletion.This contribution aims at introducing the innovative possibility of biogas use through its upgrading to biomethane and to evaluate this process from an environmental point of view, by applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), in comparison with direct use of biogas in energy conversion devices, namely, internal combustion engines and molten carbonate fuel cells. Due to their high energy conversion efficiency, fuel cell use resulted the solution with the best environmental performances, followed by internal combustion engines and the by biomethane production. However, when thermal energy is not recovered in the case of both fuel cell and internal combustion engine, the differences with respect to the biomethane case are strongly reduced. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The importance of sustainability assessment along the product life cycle is getting more significant in companies and the scientific community. The BMW Group uses life cycle assessment (LCA) as tool for improving the environmental performance of its products. The definition of a sustainability assessment of a product life cycle says that three dimensions should be evaluated: environmental, economic and social. The success of the BMW Group has always been built on long-term thinking and responsible action. The company has therefore established environmental and social sustainability throughout the value chain and along the entire product life cycle with a clear commitment to conserving resources, emissions reduction and, a comprehensive product responsibility. Because there is still no standard available to assess social performance along the product life cycle, the BMW Group together with 11 other companies and Pre Sustainability started the Roundtable for Product Social Metrics in 2013. The main goal of the project is to develop a feasible and practicable methodology for assessing positive and negative social impacts of a product. A handbook to support LCA practitioners in assessing social performance quantitatively and qualitatively has already been published. It is the first time that a group of companies has worked together towards a harmonized approach to assess social performance of a product life cycle using bottom-up approach. Case studies for implementing this method were carried out by partners of the project to prove its feasibility and to identify its benefits and challenges. An example of a case study was the assessment of the social performance of a Run On Flat tire as mounted onto a BMW vehicle. Benefits and challenges of the methodology as well as the case study were identified to move a step forward towards a standard for the social assessment of a product.A municipal solid waste landfills are complex systems, because your waste in a landfill body has a large heterogeneous mixture, high levels of different organic and inorganic matter. Environmental problems are results about intense urbanization, but different solutions offered for alternatives mitigating the environmental impacts. These solutions are the best practices in the recovery of such wastes when disposed of in landfills. But recent concepts in modern landfill management, in the Sao Paulo City, incorporate strategies in their life cycle, so since the beginning of the landfill, different techniques have been tested to stabilize the amount of methane gas emissions and energy recovery. This work finds the perspective, sustainability electricity generation, these uses of landfill gas are divided into electricity generation and direct use. The scenery, study sustainability indicators are Bandeirantes Landfill, with application of fuzzy logic to estimate production methane for energy generation.In this study, we have asked respondents to rank ten different waste fractions that are both common in manufacturing industry and easily recognizable. The purpose of the study has been to clarify to what extent individuals are able to identify the waste fractions that are most important to recycle from an environmental perspective. The individuals' perception has then been correlated with a life cycle assessment of the ten materials. In addition, the respondents were also asked to rank the fractions according to cost. The results show that metals are consistently considered most important to recycle, and plastics are commonly among the top five amongst the ten waste fractions together with glass. The cellulose based fractions, cotton, and compost are commonly rated low. In addition, there is a perceived correlation between the environmental and economic impact.This study combines two techniques for the assessment of sustainability in cement and concrete production: Life Cycle Analysis and Eco-efficiency. The first technique is used to assess the environmental impact of Low Carbon Cement (LC3) production from quarrying to the factory's gate. The LCA is developed in order to compare three Cuban cements and its associated impacts: OPC, PPC and LC3. For that purpose, an inventory is developed using official statistics of the cement sector, calculated productive and economic indexes and emission factors. Global warming and energy use, are the main identified impacts. The second method is employed for the calculation of the improvement potential derived from the substitution of OPC by LC3 in a model house built with LC3 in Santa Clara city. A considerable improvement of 54 percent in the eco-efficiency indicator has been achieved as a result of using blended cement that is a proper combination of clinker, metakaolin, gypsum and limestone. The results become a challenge for Cuban construction sector in order to generalize the technology as a sustainable product from the economic, social and environmental point of view.This study investigates the performance of polycarboxylate ether (PCE), polymelamine sulfonate (PMS), sodium lignosulfonate and naphthalene formaldehyde condensate (PNS) superplasticizers (SPs) with ASTM C595 Type IL cement (with up to 15% calcium carbonate) combined with 10 and 30 % metakaolin (MK) substitutions by mass. The required dosage of each SP for 10 % and 30 % MK substitutions were determined based on mini slump test to establish equivalent paste flow. At these dosage rates, the effects of SPs on setting time, hydration kinetics, and strength development were measured. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out on different cement compositions used in this study to evaluate the greenhouse gas emissions and embodied energy of limestone-metakaolin blended cement with SP addition. While MK substitution decreases the workability of samples and shortens the setting time, this study shows that adequate dosages of a compatible type of SP can be used to compensate for these effects. Of the SPs examined, PCE and PMS are found to be more compatible, compared to PNS and sodium lignosulfonate, with limestone-metakaolin blended cements.The Operating Energy Racks for Full Electric Vehicles project (OPERA4FEV) is a European project under the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. The project started in September 2011 for a total period of 54 months and aims to propose a cheap, light and versatile alternative solution to the present metal-based technology for power battery racks in electric vehicles. It also aims for a high level of function integration while taking crash and safety regulations into account in the mean time. It involves a consortium of 10 partners from 6 European countries and has a total budget of (sic)7 millions.The overall goal of the present study is to find integrated patterns and synergies among different approaches for the evaluation of complex production systems. In order to merge the different methodological, spatial and time-scale perspectives, an extended LCA framework (SUMMA, Sustainability Multi-method Multi-scale Assessment) is developed and tested focusing on the dynamics and performance of the agricultural sector in Italy. The SUMMA framework builds on LCA inventory and results complemented by the quality and time perspectives of the Emergy Synthesis method by which the free renewable flows, embodied time, direct and indirect labour, as well as economic and quality aspects are accounted for. The study, carried out within the EU funded SMILE project, is aimed at developing an integrated evaluation tool taking into account environmental, economic and social aspects, identification of drivers for change, and potential synergies. The development of an integrated model is crucial: the flows of energy and materials, land use, the rate of using resources, interrelations of socioeconomic and natural systems, and the time and spatial scales are all interlinked and cannot be evaluated separately without losing generality and wholeness. Most often, the economic performance, due to links with employment and social parameters (economic and social sustainability), is the aspect considered with more interest by policy makers and managers. Nevertheless, a comprehensive assessment cannot disregard environmental aspects and use of resource being important requisites of sustainability for the evaluation of different sectors or processes.Urban planners are facing a growing demand for high performance projects in terms of control and reduction of environmental impacts. However, the complex and multi-dimensional concept of sustainable urban development often loses its core substance when confronted to practice realities of urban projects because of a lack of adapted decision support tools. The question arises as to how the effective consideration of the environment and the limitation of the project impacts can be taken into account as soon as the early design stages? As an answer to this question, we developed NEST (Neighborhood Evaluation for Sustainable Territories), a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool for the built environment at the neighborhood scale. LCA has been increasingly used to assess the environmental impacts of construction products and buildings during the last 25 years. And today, a new trend stems in the application of LCA to larger systems such as urban islets or neighborhoods. NEST addresses early design stages, and uses 3D models of neighborhood projects to quantitatively assess a set of environmental impacts. In this paper we propose a presentation of the tool, and an application through the case study of a new development project for a peri-urban area. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The paper is focused on the application of ABM to simulate the evolution of the agricultural system of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg under the external shock of fostering the production of maize to be used for bio-methane generation. The modeling exercise is part of a larger scale effort, which aims at the evaluation of the potential environmental impacts arising from policy implementation, following the methodology known as Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (CLCA). The application of ABM brings from one side an additional level of complexity to the assessment, but it also allows a finer scale bottom-up modeling, allowing the simulation of aspects (such as behavioral components in farmers' choices or adaptive social processes such as imitation) that was not possible to grasp from other (e.g. purely economically oriented) modeling perspectives. The ABM model implemented has as many agents as the inventoried farmers in Luxembourg are. Although the paper only presents preliminary results, it already allows exploring the influence of farmers' environmental awareness on the environmental impacts linked to farming activities. This is possible thanks to the attribution to the agents' profiles of one specific feature which simulates their "green consciousness level".The valley of the Temples in Agrigento is one the most known wonders of the ancient Greek time to be still standing is South Italy. Chosen as an emblematic location in the center of the island, it is the exemplary site used to assess the potential for electric mobility in terms of energy and environmental benefits of electricity over standard fuels. Such an assessment is performed by means of a life-cycle approach, including the use of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, the use of the standard ILCD-PEF indicators and the development of a parametric analysis investigating the impact of different electricity penetration levels in the local transports system. The results identify relevant energy savings in the electricity mobility scenarios (5-6%) as well a mixed trend for the environmental impacts: some indicators would show some relevant reductions (e.g. -70% for GWP) but others would grow as relevantly (e.g. +50% resource consumption for PV generated electricity). The research is developed in the context of the project Innovation for greeN Energy and eXchange in Transportation (i-NEXT).This study aims to characterize the economic and environmental performance of bagasse-derived ethanol (SGe) over its life cycle, from a cradle-to-gate perspective. This characterization is based on a macrostructure of the Brazilian economic system, and identifies, quantifies and ranks all input chains that contribute most to the sustainability of the Brazilian hypothetical SGe sector. This Structural Path Analysis (SPA) uses the Brazilian 2005 Input-Output table as a database to compute the economic and environmental impacts. The economic factors are Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment (E), the environmental factors are CO2 emissions (CO2) and fuel consumption (TJ). This cradle-to-gate analysis assisted in identifying input chains, in which efforts can be exerted to effectively promote sustainability in the sector. We observed that the economic performance of the bagasse-derived ethanol industry depends on direct actions in the industrial phase and in the production structure of chemicals, enzymes and commerce-and-services suppliers. The environmental panorama of this potential sector calls also for introducing cleaner energy sources and implementing energy efficiency programs in transport services and chemical processes. Hence, political support towards technological innovation, research and development on advanced biofuels will keep Brazilian ethanol industry competitive domestic and internationally, at the same time that brings economic and environmental benefits for the country.This work seeks to evaluate the implications of a life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas (LCA-GHG) emissions in the optimisation of the power generation mix of Brazil through 2050, under baseline and low-carbon scenarios. Furthermore, this work assesses the impacts of enacting a tax on LCA-GHG emissions as a strategy to mitigate climate change. To this end, a model that integrates regional life cycle data with optimised energy scenarios was developed using the MESSAGE-Brazil integrated model. Following a baseline trend, the power sector in Brazil would increasingly rely on conventional coal technologies. GHG emissions in 2050 are expected to increase 15-fold. When enacting a tax on direct-carbon emissions, advanced coal and onshore wind technologies become competitive, GHG emissions peak at 2025 and decrease afterwards, reaching an emission level 40% lower in 2050 than that of 2010. However, if impacts were evaluated through the entire life cycle of power supply systems, LCA-GHG emissions increase to a level 50% higher in 2050 than 2010 emissions under the same tax. This is due to loads associated with the construction of plant infrastructures and extraction and processing of fossil fuel resources. Thus, this study suggests that taxes might not be as effective in tackling GHG emissions as predicted in past studies if they are only applied to direct emissions.The economic and environmental sustainability of beef cattle from pasture use and preservation in specific biomes is still not well evaluated. In this context, the study of the viability of beef production in the Pampa Biome stands out because of its relevance in southern Brazil. Thus, this paper aims to not only know the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in different feeding management systems of beef cattle, but also to evaluate the economic and environmental viability of that industry. Seven typical production systems in the region were considered, and it was aimed to determine which one would be the most viable environmental and economic point of view. The results showed that under certain feed conditions, it is possible to optimize the production of low greenhouse gases emission beef with a significant economic return. Furthermore, it is possible to obtain an increase in beef production without the need of new livestock areas, and also contribute to the proper use and preservation of the Pampa biome.Trees can be harvested and re-grown based on sustainable forest management plans while the carbon stock in the timber from harvested trees could be retained for years in the form of wood products to limit the release of carbon back to atmosphere. The process of storing carbon for longer period in long lived harvested wood products have been recognized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) as one of the mitigating measure under Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) categories. The carbon stock in harvested wood products has been considered by various countries in their national accounting processes. There have been several studies by various researchers to estimate the carbon stock in harvested wood products pool. This paper uses life cycle analysis to trace the fate of carbon bound in harvested wood products produced from a mature stand of Dalbergia sissoo trees until most of the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. This is followed by a sensitivity analysis with twelve different scenarios to analyze the effect of change in terminal use and half life patterns on the carbon stock with respect to passing years.In this paper it analyzes the feasibility and the use of technical based in life cycle analysis (LCA) in industrial design projects. Six projects were analyzed to determine how techniques based on the analysis of the life cycle as influenced design decisions in the final product were integrated. To perform statistical analysis was performed ANOVA test to decide whether the random samples of k populations are not the same mean. The results show that in the projects that took into account the analysis of the life cycle of the product developed, the resulting products were more robust and reliable.The paper describes the methodology and carries out an energy and exergy-net analysis of multi-blade, low-speed, wind turbine WPI-5-4, and obtains the coefficients of energy and exergy-net conditions of several regions of The Russian Federation. It was determined that at the average wind speed in the considered area of approximately 5 m/s, the coefficients of energy - and exergy-net for the wind turbine WPI-5-4 are at the same level of performance as thermal and nuclear power plants. At higher wind speeds, these coefficients increase and begin to exceed the level of similar indicators of traditional energy power plants, reaching an average wind speed of 9.9 m/s of the exergy-net coefficient of hydroelectric power plants. The terms of energy and exergy payback for the conditions of the considered meteorological stations range from 1.06 to 9.55 and from 0.9 to 8.1, respectively. The calculations given in the paper show high exergy efficiency of wind turbines because their end product is electric power while a lot of thermal energy is spent for creation of such systems.Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to analyze the impact of input materials and equipment use on the global warming potential (GWP) of production system components of field-grown trees in the U.S. Midwestern states. GWP of container system components in the Western U.S. has also been studied. The resulting carbon footprint (CF) of these trees at the farm gate and transplanted into the landscape can be used to increase production system efficiency and decrease the GWP impact of the product. Reported propagation-to-landscape CF for field-grown 5-cm caliper, spade-dug trees have ranged from 8.3 to 13.6 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent. Equipment use at harvest was a major component of CF. Transport distance of the finished tree was also important. Knowledge of the positive impact of trees in the landscape through carbon sequestration, as well as the CF at the farm gate and planted into the landscape, can be the basis for differentiating products in the marketplace relative to such environmental issues. Management practices that minimize CF were identified and such information could be critical to purchasing decisions based on environmental issues. In marketing, product differentiation is the process of distinguishing the differences of a product from others to make it more attractive to a particular target market. This is done to demonstrate the unique aspects of the product and create a sense of value. Industry participants can utilize these CF findings in developing marketing programs for plant material targeted specifically at the consumer segments identified as environmentally conscious. This research will benefit the green industry consumer by ensuring that environmentally friendly products marketed to them in the future truly meet their "sustainability" needs and/or expectations.Agribusinesses with the purpose of growing and supplying horticultural crops to the end-user often realize there is power in numbers; in other words, using some form of organizational structure to provide economic gains (acquiring inputs cheaper, increasing distribution efficiencies, combining selling activities). Accomplishing these growth or survival strategies often involves collaborative purchasing and marketing with supply chain partners. The horticultural industry, among others, is abuzz with sustainability, emphasizing it as the original green industry. Sustainability encompasses three components: societal or community wellbeing, economics and profitability, and environmental quality. Hence, adopting a strategic alliance among industry partners should enhance the horticulture supply chain sustainability and profitability; but does it? The formation of horticultural crops producer strategic alliances, evaluating the supply chain participation within each of the alliances, and conducting a life cycle assessment to determine the carbon neutrality and sustainability of the supply chain was the impetus of this study. Net results of five transportation alliances established among small-to mid-sized greenhouse (floriculture) and container nurseries (annuals and perennials) in Georgia indicated a 12% average annual total cost savings to participating firms in each alliance, a 23% average annual total miles driven reduction and savings, an 18% average annual vehicle ownership expense savings to the alliance partners, a 31% average annual savings in driver labor and hours of drive time, and a 19% overall (system-wide) reduction in total carbon dioxide equivalent (CO(2)e) emissions-reducing the carbon footprint, but not reaching carbon neutrality.Discussions about a sustainable development provoked the initiative to focus to methods based on evaluation of environmental, social and economical production impacts. The interest in taking into consideration also the social point of view appears recently more and more often in connection with the environmental evaluation of any product life cycle. This way a motion to formation of the SLCA (Social Life Cycle Assessment) has been made. This paper describes the results of a research in some selected companies in the Czech Republic the subject of which was questioning about the knowledge of SLCA, measurement of social impacts indicators of production to employees and their use and reporting. Within the research it was examined how business identify, monitor and evaluate the social impacts of their activities on employees in the areas mentioned above. It was analysed why, and what are the indicators compiled these impacts, how their value is reflected in the management of business operations and human resources. Attention of the research has been also paid to social reporting system (both external and internal) as complex aggregation of information that is presented to company stakeholders that could, based on these reports, consider the social impacts of planned decisions. The research was carried out with a form of controlled talk to personnel officers and to staff of health and safety department. The goal of the paper is to bring interpretation of empirical evidence and to find among generally recommended indicators these that are suitable for the Czech companies and to find out whether and which way they are treated there.One of the basic requirements for sustainability is to focus upon the entire lifecycle of the product. In the agri-food sector, companies which achieve climate neutral agri-food products are distinguished by climate-neutral labels, in recognition of their social responsibility and contribution to environment protection. Valid CO2 certificates which minimize climate-impacting emissions include the right to achieve net zero carbon emissions by offsetting or buying enough carbon credits to achieve carbon neutral, or having a net zero carbon footprint. Furthermore, value adding can be achieved in the customer-driven value creation chains, as more and more consumers are becoming aware of the company's contribution in environmental protection. In this respect, the aim of this study is to shed light in the specific attributes and perspectives of such practices and to explore how they can transform the challenge of climate change to opportunity for environment protection and sustainability. The paper highlights the need for successfully implemented climate neutral products and services, involving collaborative innovations which may also result in total cost reduction and product quality upgrading, particularly if incorporated in Sustainable or Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM). Moreover, social and company benefits can accrue especially for agri-food products which have already labels like protected designation of origin (PDO), protected geographical indication (PGI) and traditional specialty guaranteed (TSG). This paper also includes a survey conducted with consumers for assessing their behavioral patterns with regard to such issues. Finally, the major contribution of this study is the development of a conceptual model that presents the necessary managerial steps towards the production of green and climate neutral products.Small islands are often characterized by water availability problems becoming critical in summer time during the touristic season. The current water supply systems rely on the shipping of water from the mainland, with relevant-fall. backs in terms of water price and CO2 emissions. On the other hand the recur to local desalination raises the other issue in minor islands: energy supply. In this respect, the use of renewable energy appears to be the most natural option to the power mix pending the adequate consideration of the environmental constraints. In minor islands, the high environmental quality could often results in more severe landscape conservation rules as such introducing limitations to the most common renewable energy based installations. To this end, this paper discusses the use of near-shore wave energy technologies as a solution to cope with low impact energy generation to the water demand of a typical island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the island of Ponza. The preliminary assessment focuses on the analysis of the impact on diesel fuel oil use and GHG emissions reduction. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The carbon emissions were accounted of raw materials production stages, transportation phase, construction phase and operational phase for typical hydraulic of Northeast China, then, the difference of carbon emissions between various construction methods and construction machinery configuration was contrasted in this paper, which provides a theoretical basis for the energy conservation of construction project.The method of life cycle assessment has been carried out for BEV, PHEV and HEV, including production, use and recycling. The result indicates that the energy depletion potential of 3 electric vehicles are 0.318mPR90, 0.952mPR90 and 0.592mPR90. The total environmental impact load are 5.52, 65.57 and 26.47 people equivalent after weighting. The main energy consumption and emissions of 3 electric vehicles come from the use part. BEV, which has the most advantages in reducing energy consumption, has the least impact on the environment.Bio-composites are materials made up of a bio-fibre and a polymer, the latter being either bio-based or fossil-based, and are developed for various reasons, for example to decrease the use of non-renewable resources such as crude oil. DuraPulp, a bio-composite of wood pulp and poly-lactic acid (PLA) developed by Sodra in Sweden is such a material. The goals of this study were to evaluate the main environmental impacts arising from the different life cycle phases of DuraPulp using life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare its impacts with those of several other composites and to evaluate two applications of the material from an environmental point of view. These two applications are a car door panel (a product with a long lifespan) and a packaging unit (a product with a short lifespan). The results show that bio-composites have a smaller environmental impact than composite materials made of 100% fossil-based plastics. The results also indicate that the packaging unit is the preferred application from an environmental point of view. Furthermore, the main contributors to the impact depend on the application. Lastly, the results indicate that replacing PLA with bio-polyethylene lowers the environmental impact of DuraPulp regardless of its application.Animal production contributes substantially to global greenhouse gas emissions (about 14.5%). So-called carbon footprints (CFs) consider the greenhouse gas potential of climate-relevant gases (e.g. CO2 x 1; CH4 x 23; N2O 296), which is given in carbon dioxide (CO2)-equivalent g(-1) or kg(-1) of product or unit of edible protein. CFs may help to assess the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of food of animal origin such as milk, meat, eggs or fish, and they may contribute to sensitizing producers and consumers to a more resource-efficient and environmentally friendly production and consumption of food of animal origin and to avoiding food wastage. The highest CFs per unit edible protein are calculated for products of growing ruminants (beef and lamb), followed by milk, pork, eggs and poultry meat, with the lowest values. Discrepancies in the results of various studies are explained mainly by different system boundaries, allocation methods and computation of emissions, especially with regard to land-use changes, enteric methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. A more standardized approach for CF calculations would be a very useful tool to compare CFs between production systems, regions and countries, and as an indicator for food labelling. The production of food of animal origin is a very complex process, and a selective consideration, i.e. focusing on single factors, does not provide an assessment that reflects the complexity of the subject.The pollution caused by the construction, operation and scrap of the oilfield produced water treatment technology has gained growing attention. This article focuses on the quantitative study of the oilfield produced water treatment, and takes a sewage treatment plant as the example to study the environmental impact load of the whole life cycle with the life cycle assessment method and Gabi software. The result of the research shows that the most significant impact is marine aquatic ecotixicity potential, followed by human toxic potential, global warming potential, acidification potential, and photochemical ozone creation potential. Lastly, this article proposes improvement measures according to results of evaluation to reduce resource consumption and pollutant emissions.Nowadays, more than 10 billion tons of concrete are produced and employed every year. Due to its large consumption, the concrete industry requires considerable amounts of energy and resources (e.g., Portland cement) that result in the generation of global CO2 emissions. Hence, there is an increasing concern over the development of green concrete to help lower the CO2 emissions arising from concrete production. However, producing green concrete is not an easy task as it requires changes of certain parameters in concrete mix design in order to achieve desirable mechanical properties while minimizing CO2 emissions. This study presents a systematic approach that can determine low carbon mix design for green concrete production. The approach can identify theoretical mixture proportions that achieve minimum compressive strength (fc) requirement and lower the resulting embodied CO2 emissions. The proposed approach was examined to identify low carbon mixture proportions for each strength class, considering the use of eco-cement, larger-sized aggregate and different supplementary cementitious materials. The resulting CO2 is quantified and recommendations to improve mixture proportions are proposed. The results can serve as a basis for green concrete production and help reduce the CO2 emissions from the built environment.The worldwide awareness of the impact of buildings and infrastructure on the environment has increased the need for construction industry's professionals to embrace sustainable practices. As a result, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a comprehensive environmental assessment approach has been widely adopted to evaluate the environmental impacts of many building materials. However, in many countries, a local life cycle inventory (LCI) is not available to calculate LCA of construction materials, and utilizations of overseas LCI have become an effective way to create a localized inventory. This study aims to develop a framework which makes use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) models and non-local LCI database to compute carbon emissions generated from the production and transportation of local construction materials. Inputs, outputs and data conversion methods are analyzed in a detailed manner. The study contributes to a systematic data conversion method that can localize existing LCIs with high accuracy and efficiency.This paper proposes the tunnel lining deterioration model which is based upon actual inspection data in order to carry out strategic maintenance and to rationalize life cycle cost analysis for tunnel structures. The evaluation value of deteriorating tunnel structures is a non-stationary stochastic process, and reliability problems of such structures are needed to the consideration of the future risk. In Japan, the probability that an earthquake occurs is high compared with other countries. A risk analysis of seismic motion and technical components as well as damages associated with cost variables have to be dealt with. The model of the tunnel management system presented in the paper is applied to the asset management of the cold region road tunnels. This research will be developed to the efficient tunnel maintenance system and a quantitative criterion from pictures of tunnel lining using the life cycle cost analysis. And also, in order to describe the deterioration model of the life cycle assessment is needed to consider the large-scale earthquake phenomena in Japan.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is important management tool for evaluation of the environmental impacts in whole life cycle of product or technology from the extraction of the raw materials to the end-of-life. In the paper, special attention is given to the role of LCA as a tool for natural resources management, environmental implications of critical raw materials evaluation and resources depletion assessment in the steel industry. It was presented environmental life cycle impact assessment methods and impact categories relevant to the assessment of natural resources in steel sector. Based on the own analysis, it was found that LCA can help optimize environmental performance connected with natural resource and critical raw materials management in steel industry.The life cycle thinking is a concept promoted by the World Steel Association as a basic requirement for making all manufacturing decisions. One of the tools of this approach is life cycle costing. It is a process of an economic analysis to assess life cycle costs (LCC) of a product over its life cycle from its conception and fabrication through operation to the end of its life. In most cases the process takes into account only the pure financial costs incurred in the product life cycle called conventional LCC. There is another type of LCC in the literature - the environmental LCC. It comprises all costs of life cycle product directly covered by actors involved in the product life cycle and externalities felt by society and environment, which are anticipated to be internalized in the future. The paper presents the results of research work aimed at expressing the LCA results in monetary terms and calculation the environmental life cycle costs based on these results. This allowed to connect and present LCA and LCC results in one value which can be used in the decision-making process where there is a choice of options. Proposed conception has been used for estimating the environmental LCC for selected steel products.Fire safety and sustainability goals in building design are frequently interdependent. Design elements chosen for their fire safety can have energy efficiency implications and vice versa. Furthermore, the environmental damage and carbon emissions from a single fire event can negate the utility of green features invested in the building. Therefore, while not obvious, fire safety and its impact on sustainability are inextricably linked. One of the decisions related to both sustainability and fire safety is the selection of thermal insulation materials. Insulating materials have always been an integral part of building design, serving as a key component in thermally controlling indoor environments. Modern designs and construction techniques often incorporate sustainability goals by seeking to minimize life cycle energy consumption and environmental impact. A well-insulated building reduces thermal load on the HVAC system, thus reducing energy consumption of the building. Therefore, a sustainably designed building is typically a heavily insulated building. In addition to thermal resistance characteristics, the choice of insulating material is often based on acoustic damping and cost. However; fire safety is generally overlooked as a factor for insulation material selection. Few treatments have considered how the competing objectives for sustainability and fire safety should be assessed when choosing insulation. This paper discusses a methodology for balancing' these requirements by evaluating the aforementioned attributes of various insulating materials through implementation of a weighted mean. Each variable is normalized and then weighted according to the emphasis placed on each attribute, using experimental data for the relevant material property. Four weighting scenarios are presented, each emphasizing a different area of consideration: installed cost, fire safety, life-cycle assessment, and thermal. Materials considered are cellulose (newspaper), denim (cotton), fiberglass, stone wool, polyurethane, and polystyrene. Results of this analysis rank the materials in order of desirability and provide a method to reorder this ranking based on the priority assigned to each attribute. For the weighting scenarios presented herein, stone wool was consistently ranked as the best performer; while extruded polystyrene was typically the weakest. The intent is that this methodology would be informative for designers selecting materials and for planners contemplating revised building codes.The article discusses the selected issues related to the development of methods and indicators for measuring eco-innovation at the micro-level and explores how they may, be employed in practice. On the basis of multidisciplinary literature review the various economic and environmental methods and indicators, which might be involved in measuring eco-innovation, have been discussed. This analysis has resulted in development of an original approach to measuring eco-innovation based on eco-efficiency indicator. It takes into account the Life Cycle Assessment results (endpoints) expressed in monetary terms and the value added by particular eco-innovation defined as specific functional unit. The economic value of the Life Cycle Assessment results comprises a sum of values of damage in human health, damage in ecosystem quality and damage in resources, whereas the value added is a difference between the value of revenues generated in the eco-innovation life cycle and the conventional life cycle cost of eco-innovation calculated for functional unit.This work presents environmental aspects of LED lighting systems based on existing Life-Cycle-Assessment (LCA) studies in the context of different approaches: LEDs are a lamp group consisting of various materials, properties, and packaging designs. A variety of functional units are discussed followed by detailed lighting energy statistics of Austria representative for Central Europe. LCA studies should differentiate between private and commercial lighting due to different packaging and color temperature. During the last ten years a significant rebound effect can be observed in household lighting although energy-efficient lamp technologies were introduced to the market at the same time. The results of existing LCA studies of LEDs and other lamps are compiled and compared among each other and with the real market situation. It shows that for middle to long operation time all lamp types except for incandescent/halogen lamps the environmental impact is in a similar range and the variations largely depend on proper power data, the used LCA method, and the end-of-life management. The last part presents the deposition and environmental data of rare earths which are used in LEDs.The paper presents an analysis of usage the SimaPro 8 software as a tool supporting new products design decision making process on the base of defective products management. At first it briefly introduces the management of defective products concept, the specificity of design process, decision making process in case of new product design and the complexity of decisions necessary in case of designing new household goods. Then the importance of Life - Cycle - Assessment (LCA) is discussed together with presentation of SimaPro 8 software as a very useful tool for decision making in case of new household goods design on the base of information about defective products management. And finally the SimaPro 8 is presented with the practical use in case of washing machine product. In general the paper implies the useful role of SimaPro 8 (as an IT solution example) in the processes of decision making for the companies dealing with design of new products and defective products that have to be managed properly. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The utilization of agricultural residues as a substrate for bioenergy production could increase overall renewable energy production, significantly contributing to European Union (EU) policy goals. Unlike traditional energy crops, agricultural residues do not compete with food or feed production and represent a largely unused resource. Agricultural residues are primarily comprised of lignocellulosic material that is difficult to digest in anaerobic digestion processes. Various pretreatments (an array of physical, chemical, and biological methods) can help increase digestion efficiency and biogas production. Steam explosion has proven to be an effective pretreatment method, significantly changing biomass morphology, decreasing hemicellulose content, and increasing methane yields. Life-cycle assessments of steam explosion of select agricultural residues have indicated that this pretreatment can decrease the environmental impacts of biogas production. If used on a broad yet sustainable scale, 117 Mt DM per year of main crop residues could be available in the EU.The environmental impact of wheat production was assessed through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Local data were collected to characterize Walloon conventional and organic wheat production systems. Two functional units (FU) were investigated: 1 kg of wheat grains at 15% humidity and 1 ha used for wheat cropping. An uncertainty analysis assessed the significance of differences between conventional and organic systems. Using 1 kg of grains as FU, results are not significantly different in global warming and cumulative energy demand. Very highly significant differences for soil acidification and eutrophication, and significant differences for agricultural land occupation were found to be in favor of conventional wheat production. Due to the high yield level in conventional farming (8.5 t/ha at 15% humidity against 4.5 t/ha for organic wheat), organic winter wheat has an equivalent or even, in some impact categories, a higher impact than conventional winter wheat. Using 1 ha as FU, organic production is less impacting than conventional production, except for soil acidification and eutrophication. The choice of the FU has proven to be very sensitive. This study could be improved by accounting for rotation effects, by using more specific models to calculate emissions due to organic and mineral fertilization, and by accounting for carbon storage in soil. (c) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This study investigates the combined impact of carbon and bioenergy markets on upland oak dominated mixed hardwood forests in the Central Hardwood Forest Region (CHFR) of the United States. A modification of the Hartman model was used for the economic analysis of carbon sequestration and using wood-based biomass for bioenergy. A life-cycle assessment was used to determine the amount of carbon sequestered due to stand growth and emitted during harvesting and decay of wood products. Two scenarios were taken, one where additionality of carbon is considered and the other where it is not. Sensitivity analysis was done with the range of carbon and bioenergy prices. The results show that net carbon payments have more impact on land expectation value (LEV) when additionality is not considered; in contrast, bioenergy payments have more impact on LEV when additionality is considered. Carbon and bioenergy prices also influenced the amount of stand level supply of forest products and carbon in both scenarios. In general, sawtimber, wood bioenergy, and carbon supply increased with an increase in carbon prices, whereas, pulpwood supply decreased. With few exceptions at higher carbon prices, bioenergy supply decreased with the increase in wood bioenergy prices, showing a backward bending supply curve in both scenarios.The oxidative stability or durability is an important indicator of performance that depends on the composition of the sample. The fatty oil or polymer degradation processes have generally been established as being free radical mechanism yielding primary oxidation products. We propose to explain in detail all the analytical methods and tools used for the determination of the initial physico-chemical properties of oils and the properties in ageing conditions. Chemical titrations for acid or peroxide value, Rancimat method or thermogravimetric measurements are discussed. Accelerated ageing tools for thermal or photochemical exposures are also shown. After the assessment of oil durability, the development of new bio-based polymer with vegetable oil is tackled because of its industrial interest. It is essential to understand the long term behavior of oils and biopolymers and to assess exactly the durability which is useful to produce life cycle analysis of materials. At last we underline the advantages of a new Fourier transform infrared ( FTIR) instrumentation with in-situ irradiation and gas cell to give a screening of the durability of various oils or polymers. Main durability criteria of oils and biopolymers are linked to the production of volatile organic compounds and the resistance to the oxidation process.Based on the realistic situation of China, and the mature experience of Target cost management abroad, this paper discussed a reasonable path to integrate the target cost management into the construction project of an environment-friendly hotel. During the process to formulate a target cost depending on Stakeholder Theory, applied by using Value engineering (VE), making an environment-friendly level as a life cycle assessment index for formulating a target cost. Thus, an optimal control path is established for the construction of an environment-friendly hotel using target cost management.This paper discusses the potential of a BIM platform for offsite timber construction within the context of the UK construction industry. It examines the benefits, limitations, and challenges that BIM brings for offsite timber. Proof-of-concept projects are presented that deal with the architectural technology, structural engineering, and life cycle analysis aspects. These demonstrate the feasibility of the development of an open BIM platform which would establish a common standard for the industry. The paper concludes by suggesting an alternative business model for offsite timber construction, as enabled by Building Information Modelling.The area of information flows control and coordination plays an important part in environment protection and care. Information on the environmental impacts of waste processing and waste usage should be regularly monitored, analyzed and evaluated. In order to include the information on environmental impacts in corporate decision-making it is necessary to adhere to the conceptual and legal framework for environmental protection at the national, and even on international level. Everyday need to continually record, archive and summarize data on waste (such as emissions of particulates, CO, SO2, NOx, HF, HCl, the amount of carbon emitted, dioxins, heavy metals) puts pressure both on management and on staff of production companies. In order to facilitate the demanding and time consuming task to process and analyze the data on environmental impact and life cycle assessment of waste incineration; this tailor-made, user-friendly application written in JAVA was created. This paper describes in details and inner workings of said application.Net energy balance (NEB) is the second important indicator following green house gases in developing a sustainable biodiesel industry. The extent of the production chain and various ways to reduce the use of fossil fuels, increase the complexity of finding an optimal NEB value of the industry. The main objective of this study was to design an NEB optimization model, which was supported by genetic algorithm (GA). The model was applied in a crude palm oil (CPO) industry that produces raw material for biodiesel which is located in North Sumatra province. The model was solved by using an optimization computer software package. The results showed that the NEB value was better than the previous one. The model was also able to provide biomass usage composition to achieve the optimal NEB value, and the unit processes that need to be improved.Sustaining the material needs of society is an increasingly complex task, as demand grows for sophisticated materials. Concerns regarding material availability are rising, thus many studies following material stocks and flows in the economy and defining material criticality are being conducted. These assessments provide information that can be decisive for the industrial implementation of sustainable and innovative technologies. Disruption risks to the supply chains must be predicted to prevent material shortages at the corporate, national and global scale. Designers can play a major role for the preservation of material resources by considering the evolution of availability at the material selection stage. With the product lifecycle in mind, material recyclability will progressively become a key factor for the design process, in order to foresee potential vulnerabilities and foster material recycling. This paper is part of an on-going research being conducted at the G-SCOP lab of the Grenoble Institute of Technology, whose aim is to provide dynamic resource scenarios and additional input to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods and Design for Recycling guidelines, so as to assist material selection in the design process. It presents a framework and the research methodology employed to identify the parameters that determine the evolution of recycling chains, based on material flow data and historical accounts of the shifts, ascent and decline of recycling activities. This should allow designers to incorporate material criticality and recyclability to their Life Cycle Assessments and fill an important gap since there are very few wide-ranging compilations of data describing the history of the recycling processes and industry in literature.Global trade is depending on the seaborne transport of goods. Over two thirds of the transport worldwide is carried by ships. After the financial crisis in 2008 the worldwide economy experienced turbulences which had a direct impact on the volume of trade. All of a sudden there was an overcapacity of ships cruising on the oceans of the world. Many of the older ships were decommissioned and scrapped. Numerous scrapyards are in South Asia, where the ships are dismantled under harsh working conditions and with no environmental protection measures. A lot of these scrap yards are merely beaches where the ships are beached (beach-breaking yards) and disassembled manually. International agreements and efforts exist to tackle this kind of end-of-life treatment of ships which is dangerous for humans and the environment. One example is the Basel Convention to control hazardous waste, to which disposed ships also belong. In 2009 the Hong Kong Convention was adopted, which aims at reducing the risks to human health, safety and to the environment during the recycling of ships. Just recently the European Commission has adopted the EU Ship Recycling Regulation to reduce the negative impacts linked to the recycling of EU-flagged ships. The Regulation sets out a number of requirements for European ships, European ship owners and ship recycling facilities. Confronting existing challenges of ship scrapping and the international activities to tackle these challenges a literature research is performed to assess in what way the end-of-life of ships has been covered in LCA studies. Based on these findings an own approach to an end-of-life (EoL) assessment is set up and illustrated by an example. In order to develop a comprehensive assessment of the EoL of cargo ships, a simplified model based on the mentioned preexisting information is created. All three phases: ship building, ship operation and ship scrapping are taken into account. Two scenario groups for the ship scrapping were defined, with different approaches to re-use and recycling. The overall contribution of the end-of-life phase to the life cycle (construction of the ship, Use, EoL) of a ship is ranged and evaluated. The results of the assessed scenarios confirm that the re-use and recycling process is environmentally preferable. However, the processes and human labour have not been taken into account yet. The overall impact on the lifecycle remains negligible within the assessed impact categories. A more significant impact of the EoL on the lifecycle might be seen if other impact categories, such as indicators for resource efficiency are taken into account.The promotion of efficient use of resources is at the core of the Europe 2020 Strategy and its flagship initiative on "A Resource Efficient Europe". Ambitious goals are defined, whose achievement requires actions across different sectors. Mechatronic products play an important role in this framework for three main reasons: (i) the high energy and resource consumption they generate; (ii) the volume of products traded on the international market, since mechatronics cover products ranging from small and large household appliances, to cars, planes, robots and manufacturing machines; (iii) they are replaced before becoming obsolete, making the end of life management challenging. The Ecodesign Directive is supporting the improvement of the environmental performance of this product group by providing measures to intervene in the design process, the phase that determines 80% of the whole environmental impact generated by a product or service. However, designers often struggle with the inclusion of environmental considerations into the design process and further supporting measures are necessary. To address this challenge, the G. EN. ESI research project was launched in 2012, aimed at developing a software engineering platform of different tools that support designers' choices from an environmental point of view. The main goals of the platform are: to exploit the interoperability of the design tools traditionally used in the product development with the environmental assessment ones; to allow for a rapid environmental assessment of design choices, by adopting simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools. As far as simplified LCA is concerned, different simplification techniques have been developed and are available in the scientific literature, but a general agreement on which strategy is more robust has not yet been found. However, many agree that the availability of detailed LCA studies for specific applications is important to define simplifying methods for those applications, together with the exchange and availability of relevant data along the supply chain. Building upon these two concepts, this paper presents the approach developed for simplifying LCA within the GENESI platform, with an application to the product "cooker hood". The repeatability of the strategy to other product groups is also discussed, together with the next development steps.A stable power grid requires a balance between electricity supply and demand. To compensate for changes in the demand the network operator puts on or takes off power plants from the net. Peak load plants operate only at times of high electricity demand. As levels for air pollutants emissions are typically lower for peak load plants for reasons of cost-effectiveness, one could argue that a unit of electric energy consumed during peak load has always been associated with a higher environmental impact than at other times. Furthermore, renewable energy technologies, smart approaches for improving the matching between electricity consumption and supply and new products such as electric vehicles or net zero emission buildings gain in importance. In life cycle assessment (LCA) environmental impacts associated with the production and possibly transmission of electricity are most often assessed based on temporally averaged national electricity mixes as electricity flows cannot be traced back to their origin. Neither fluctuations in the supply structure nor the composition of energy supply at a certain moment or regional differences are accounted for. A literature review of approaches for handling electricity in LCA is carried out to compare strengths and weaknesses of the approaches. A better understanding and knowledge about the source of electricity at a given time and place might be valuable information for further reducing environmental impacts, e. g. by shifting electricity consumption to times with ample supply of renewables. Integrating such information into LCA will allow a fairer assessment of a variety of new products which accept a lower energy efficiency to achieve a better integration of renewables into the grid.Building construction plays important role in a sustainable development because of constructed environment great influence on life quality and health. Thus the selection of building materials used can significantly affect the environment and human health. Nowadays, the environmental evaluation of buildings and building materials is of great interest not only of many researchers but public authorities and professionals as well. This paper provides a comparison of environmental impacts of a wooden house in terms of used building materials. A number of studies have been devoted to assessing LCA indicators such as Primary Energy Intensity and Global Warming Potential. However, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the LCA results within the "cradle to gate" boundaries for used materials using much more indicators of the evaluation process (abiotic depletion, eutrophication potential, ozone layer depletion potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, human toxicity potential, fresh water aquatic eco-toxicity potential, marine aquatic eco-toxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity). The average global warming potential per 1 m(2) of houses reached the value of 2.2E03 kg CO(2)eq/m(2) while acidification potential has been calculated to be of 3.3 kg SO(2)eq/m(2) per floor area. Terrestrial ecotoxicity and fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity have been calculated much lower than for the masonry houses.In the light of extreme weather events and climate change observed during last years, one of the necessary action that should to be undertaken is the immediate reduction of global warming potential which is directly related to CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. The aim of this paper is to present architectural solutions to this issue. The approach is based on the analysis of one of the basic human necessities i.e. the need of having functional, contemporary and affordable home, which does not harm the environment. New methods of reducing CO2 emissions, developed and tested in modern individual houses in Nyborg, Denmark, are presented and discussed. Five extreme ways to reduce CO2 footprint were used to create five prototypes of different energy efficient houses. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out and all the buildings were carefully investigated in various categories (e.g. usage of recycled and upcycled materials, adaptive and flexible building systems, extraordinarily long lifespan up to 150 years, extremely low demand for maintenance, etc.). Occupants behavior patterns were also examined in order to improve them towards reduction of resource consumption. On the basis of the lessons learned within the whole process, the single-family MiniCO2 standard house was developed and important guidance were given to the users. The paper aims to draw conclusions from the research, so that the results can be further used in other regions and countries with the benefit for the inhabitants and the environment.In this article, we described an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost analysis for water disinfection technologies. We compared the technologies of disinfection for drinking water treatment plant (DWTP) with capacity of 700 thousand cubic meters per day and 10 thousand cubic meters per day. For DWTP with capacity of 700 thousand cubic meters per day we compared two water disinfection technologies: conventional disinfection with gaseous chlorine and combined disinfection technology with sodium hypochlorite and ultraviolet (UV). For DWTP with capacity of 10 thousand cubic meters per day we compared three water disinfection technologies: disinfection with gaseous chlorine, disinfection with chlorine dioxide and combined disinfection technology with sodium hypochlorite and UV. The software Sima Pro 8.0.2 has been used as the LCA analysis tool. Eco-Indicator 99 method has been applied.The selection of building materials is one of the most important issues in the phase of building design. This decision has impact on the energy performance of the building as well asits indoor environmental quality. Energy needed forthe extraction, processing and transportation of materials used in building structures can be a significant part of the total energy within the entire life cycle of the building. The environmental impacts are expressed by indicators such as embodied energy, CO2eq and SO2eq emissions. The aim of this analysis is to identify the environmental quality of material compositions of exterior walls. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In many countries of Central Europe is a stock of existing buildings from 1950's to 1980's featuring original panel curtain walls. These envelope structures are now at the end of their service life and thus replacement solution is needed. There are various replacement alternatives such as aluminium, steel or steel-plastic panels, but these structures have typically high amounts of embodied energy and carbon footprint. Within national research project Intelligent Buildings, Czech Technical University in Prague has developed a timber-based curtain wall system called Envilop. The paper presents its development and laboratory testing. Properties of Envilop were proven by modeling, calculations and experiments inline with actual standards on curtain walls systems and in addition life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed. Heat and moisture simulations proved that does not suffer from thermal bridges and has U-values at levels suitable for passive housing; air tightness testing proved high quality of design. LCA calculations compared the system to aluminum-based alternative and show significant potential to savings in embodied energy and carbon footprint by using Envilop. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Since the beginning of the 21st century, straw-bale buildings are reappearing in the world; however, their thermal performances were not thoroughly investigated up to now. The purpose of this study is to analyze thermal behavior and energy performance of a straw-bale building in Switzerland. Using Pleiades+Comfie Software, building designs have been studied to understand the best way to mitigate overheating risks due to the low heat capacity of straw. Thermal-dynamic results and Life Cycle Assessment conclude that straw bale buildings can be a sustainable alternative in the energy evolution of building construction, due to its low embodied energy and excellent thermal performance. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this study based on life cycle energy and environmental performance, the alternatives related to energy retrofit strategies were evaluated in order to improve the energy performance of the existing residential buildings. In this context, the effect of each measure on life cycle energy consumption and CO2 emission was determined by using the "Life Cycle Energy (LCE)" and "Life Cycle CO2 (LCCO2)" analyses developed based on life cycle assessment (LCA) method. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.A family of composite cool thermal insulation materials has been developed as part of the DICOM research project, in order to provide building materials optimized for the retrospective insulation of existing buildings, which contribute in particular to the reduction of cooling loads in summer. An integrated evaluation of the materials was carried out in 2013-2014, by means of in vitro and in situ measurements, in order to determine and evaluate the materials' performance and the thermal comfort conditions before and after the retrofitting. Finally, a Life Cycle Analysis was carried for the materials, in order to evaluate their environmental impact. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under he CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the CENTRO CONGRESS INTERNAZIONALE SRLRenovating the European building stock shows high potential for energy and greenhouse gas reductions. Thereby the optimum balance between energy conservation or efficiency measures and renewable energy generation on-site has to be found, regarding the primary energy and carbon emissions reductions as well as the renovation costs. The whole life cycle of the building has to be considered and therefore Life Cycle Cost (LCC) calculations and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are of importance. This paper shows some results to these issues and was prepared within the frame of the IEA EBC Annex 56 research project [1]. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.In this paper we would like to show the readers two case studies of energy-, environmentally- and cost-efficient renovations of contemporary buildings in Czech Republic that were assessed according to the IEA ECBS Annex 56 methodology - elementary school Kaminky 5 (built 1987) and block-of-flats Konildecova 4 (built 1983). Both buildings are located in Brno - Novy Liskovec. They were recently renovated into low-energy standard, with emphasis on low renovation costs and high operating cost savings. In both cases the renovation reduced energy consumption by approximately 60 %. It also improved wellbeing of the users and visual perception of the buildings. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The paper analyses the impact of embodied energy over a building's life cycle as an important factor in construction planning, particularly for temporary structures. In fact, a choice of low-embodied energy construction materials, technological components, and construction systems is essential to guarantee a very high-energy performance of those constructions. Temporary buildings are exempted from the application of the minimum requirements to reduce energy in use as set by the European directive 2010/31/EU due to their short expected service life. Hence, it becomes even more important to consider the impact of their embodied energy and the one of their end of life. Results from a case study, a temporary building designed for Milan Expo 2015, are presented to compare embodied energy of construction materials, including scenarios for their end-of-life, and predicted energy consumption at use stage. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.While new buildings should be designed as intelligent low or zero-energy buildings, refurbishment of the existing building stock may present even a greater challenge, when in particular financing of the necessary investments to energy saving measures poses the biggest barrier. As the residential sector in the EU is responsible for about 40% of the total energy consumption and up to 40 % of the total carbon dioxide emissions, the residential building stock offers high potential for energy savings. By applying the life cycle assessment, it is possible to optimise the social, economic and environmental aspects, starting from the extraction of raw materials, up to the final disposal of waste materials. A case study of a selected representative residential building located in Slovakia is presented, for which the cost-optimal levels of energy performance are determined in terms of life-cycle costs of the building. Three variants of renovation were defined, each variant having different level of thermal insulation of building constructions. The method of Life-Cycle Costs was used to evaluate the economic feasibility of the suggested renovation scenarios for the apartment house. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Phase change materials (PCMs) are an emerging technology that can be integrated in building envelope components. PCMs are able to stabilise indoor air temperature and increase thermal energy storage especially in lightweight constructions. Within a research activity aimed at developing advanced plasters with improved thermal properties, a plaster which incorporates a microencapsulated paraffin-based PCM was developed. The paper highlights the importance of an overall analysis, facing both operational and embodied energy, since the expected decrease of the energy consumption during the operational stage difficultly counterbalances the high energy impact related to manufacturing processes. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper presents the results of comparative analysis of energy and environmental life cycle assessment of a building envelope with different WWR. The analysis is simplified to: product stage and use stage as the main sources of GHG emissions. Embodied and operational CO2 equivalent were evaluated for two typical office buildings located in Poland with different wall to floor ratio. Carbon footprint of the use stage, associated with the energy consumption, was calculated according to polish energy fuel mix. The maximum emission of CO(2)eq occurred for the scenario with glass curtain wall and it decreased along with reduced window area. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.It is common knowledge that forests represent the most proficient tool of the planet Earth for improving air quality, by sequestering and replacing a significant volume of carbon dioxide (CO2) with oxygen (O-2). Moreover, wood plantations are known to provide a natural habitat for animals, making them an important element in the global efforts of protecting the fauna. Due to the crucial influence of trees in ensuring such life conditions, during the latest years, international debates concerning the protection of old-growth forests by reducing the consumption of trees as a material in different economic industries have intensified. World-wide, a significant amount of wood is processed in order to be utilised in the civil engineering sector. Even if the utilization of trees from certified forests is encouraged, at the moment, only a small part of the amount of timber products used in this sector is fabricated by processing materials originated from sustainable wood plantations. Therefore, besides increasing the volume of the processed certified trees, the construction field should also implement new solutions in order to minimize the environmental load resulted from using uncertified timber solutions. The reusing of existing timber structures by applying different fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites strengthening solutions can represent an efficient approach for achieving this goal. The present paper evaluates the environmental impact of a glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) strengthening technique utilized on a timber beam by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and the GaBi 6 software. The resulted values point to the fact that despite their negative influence, FRP materials can have an important role in protecting and improving the condition of the natural environment by reducing the quantity of timber used in this sector.One of the negative side effects of the consumer society and the increasing number of consumer goods available to the average household is the intransparency of product quality, especially product lifetime. There are many examples on failing products and premature obsolescence. Often this phenomenon is related to companies' profit maximization strategies (planned obsolescence) and consumer protection policy is mobilized to stop this type of exploitation. The paper applies micro-economic analysis to discuss the problem of optimal product quality (e. g. lifetime) in terms of cost-benefit-analysis and under imperfect information (based on Akerlof's lemon problem). Given consumers' actual willingness to pay there is an optimal quality which is lower than the technically possible. If the innovation perspective (Schumpeter's "creative destruction") is added to the analysis, increasing global competition and speed of product innovation are identified as core drivers for shorter product lifecycles and tend to be the actual limiting factor of product lifetime (economic vs. technical obsolescence). Even if the goals of sustainable development are included in the analysis, this does not provide an unambiguous argument for long-life products as new products tend to be more eco-efficient. A broader discussion on optimal quality (lifetime) of products is necessary, based on holistic life-cycle assessment of alternative product quality options. And finally: The tendency of increasing aftersales disappointment of consumers' expectations and conflicts with sustainable development goals need to be addressed in a more general debate on (limits of) consumerism. Minor changes in the laws for protecting consumers (e. g. longer warranty) will not do the job.Studies on the effects of research and innovation in agriculture have been largely characterised by efforts to make a connection between expenditure and productivity. A number of issues have challenged the ability of productivity to measure the effects of research, namely, in recent years, increasing efforts towards improving the environmental performance of the farming sector. Besides environmental concerns, however, a number of recent concepts have emerged that are shaping the current research and policy agenda and which could result in a revision of the productivity concepts used to evaluate research impacts. The objective of this paper is to discuss these issues and their implications for studies on the impact of research and innovation. We address, in particular, the following issues: a) the development of the of bioeconomy and related concepts such as the circular economy, resource efficiency and bio-refinery; b) the connection with entrepreneurship and eco-innovation; c) changing tools in research assessment, in particular the widespread use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); and d) the evolving concepts of sustainability and ecosystem services. We argue that while the traditional notion of productivity, intended as output/input ratio, maintains (and may be strengthens) its role on the aggregate, a more analytical interpretation of the pathways towards research impacts is needed, as well as a broadened view of productivity and its determinants.Paper aims to analyse the principal aspects of ecodesign development process, putting attention to current problems, necessary preconditions and development measures in Latvia. Ecodesign development had been defined by EC Integrated product policy, comprising ecodesign, green procurement and environmental technology issues. The current research is based on literature analysis, thus composing theoretical framework, as well as, sociological research methods - deep interviews and questionnaires representing principal target groups (state institutions, entrepreneurships, consumers, retail sector). The integration of ecodesign related strategies into strategic planning documents in economy sectors, improvement of ecodesign competences in enterprises, better cooperation with science and technology are issues, recognized as principal measures for ecodesign development in country. Environmental information and communication measures should comprise the main three target groups - state institutions, employers and consumers. These issues cover the necessary legal measures and voluntary measures. The latter is based on environmental competence and motivation and precisely the voluntary part of ecodesign development measures are issues, which are not enough accepted in enterprises. Research confirmed the importance of life cycle assessment end stages, which are related with product distribution and consumption, where the retail industry also plays role; the ecodesign development possibilities in retail industry had been considered.Environmental impact assessment is used to evaluate the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or project prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. The contemporary methods are usually based on the life cycle approach. In some methodologies, like CML2001, the output of the analysis consist of several impact indicators given in the different impact categories. This is usually the source of interpretation problems. In some methodologies, like ReCeiPe, some effort has been made to create the single score describing the overall environmental effect. The further problem is how to express the environmental effect as a function of the impact on society and economy. The proposal of solution is given in the manuscript by defining the Sustainable development indicator. It includes the overall impact on the environment according to life-cycle analysis approach, but it also covers the economic and social aspects. The single score which is the result of complex analysis is very helpful and delivers coherent and reliable picture of real impact in all dimensions of the sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Indicator could turn out to be the powerful tool in decision making related to power and mining industry as well as administration.Despite the existing regulatory frameworks at the international and national levels a life cycle assessment (LCA) does not receive any significant dissemination and practical application in Russia. Only a few research papers devoted to implementation of LCA in industries were published so far concerning results of investigation in the field of automobile and aircraft engineering, building construction, water treatment and packaging materials. The Russian life cycle studies on foods are almost not known. The article discusses the application of the LCA indicators to identify opportunities for resource efficiency improvements of bakery production. The features of the life cycle inventory analysis in the Russian context are shown. The most significant environmental aspects of the bakery production that recommended for control of resource efficiency are summarized.This paper presents results of research aimed at expressing the results of life cycle assessment (LCA) in monetary terms. The study complements the earlier research carried out in this area. The valuation of damages to human health expressed in DALY has been determined on the basis of estimated value of life year in full health. In addition, the value of damages in natural environment expressed in PDF/PAF has been estimated with the use of transfer benefit method on the basis of data collected in NEEDS Project. The valuation of damages in natural resources has not been included in this paper because its impact indicator (surplus cost) is already expressed in monetary terms. The proposed methodology allows the calculation of the environmental LCC taking into account both conventional LCC and the value of environmental effects generated in life cycle. This value can then be used, inter alia, in the analysis of costs and benefits and to evaluate the eco-efficiency of the proposed solutions.Number of holdings for processing of biomass and wood steadily increasing and thus also importance of their environmental assessment. In this paper we have identified important elements for assembly evaluation model of the environmental footprint for Wood processing for made wood board. Methodology was applied life cycle assessment according ISO 14040 a ISO 14044. Data were converted to the functional unit 1 m(3) of made wooden boards. 1 m(3) of wood boards consumes 1.7025 cubic meters of raw strain, representing a yield of 58.7%. Important inputs include electricity consumption, consumption of fuel, oil and vaseline. Hazardous wastes represent mainly worn waste oils, hazardous waste from the operation and maintenance of machinery and packaging of hazardous waste. Wood waste is a waste bark, wood chips, sawdust, and wood shavings. Organic waste is pelletized or directly used as fuel, which greatly helps to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of the enterprise for Wood processing for made wood board.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that enables the evaluation of the environmental performance of processes, products and services. In this work, the LCA is used to assess stages of the life cycle of polyethylene bottles. The raw materials (high density polyethylene, low density polyethylene, and, pigment) are acquired in the petrochemical pole of Recife, PE and transported to Teresina, PI by road transport, where they are using the process of blow molding. After that, the bottles are distributed to the municipality of Parnaiba, PI. Primary data were collected in a plastic processing factory in Teresina, PI and modeled using SimaPro software version 8.0.3.1 PhD in conjunction with the information obtained from the Ecoinvent 3 and USLCI libraries. The Impact Assessment was carried out according to the model Recipe Midpoint (E). It was observed that the production process in the manufacturing factory, that demand a high consumption of electricity, stood out to contribution to impact categories; followed by transportation of raw materials and the final product due to the use of diesel fuel. Improving the environmental performance of plastic bottles made in Teresina, PI can be achieved with the implementation of energy efficiency in the factory itself.A life cycle energy, emission and economic assessment model of biological butanol-gasoline blend fuel was established based on life cycle. Then, the life cycle energy, environment, and economy of biological butanol-gasoline blend fuel used as automotive fuel were assessed. Comparing with conventional gasoline, biological butanol-gasoline blend fuel has higher life-cycle total energy, and fossil fuels consumption, higher HC, NOX, SOX, PM, and CO2 pollutants, higher life cycle cost, lower petroleum consumption, lower CO, and CH4 pollutants. The promotion and application of biological butanol is beneficial for vehicles to reduce the consumption of oil, but needs subsidy.This paper discusses the possibilities of using spatial data coming from geographic information systems systems which acquire, store and process spatial data to assess selected stages in the life cycle of a granite deposit, i.e. deposit exploration, development and post-mining management. The unit processes occurring in the particular stages in the life of a granite quarry were described on the basis of the literature on the subject. For each of the processes the categories of mining impacts on the particular environmental and human components were specified. Spatial data acquired from many sources (indicated in the paper) were used in the analyses. Analytical results are presented for only for the selected stages in the life of the granite deposit. The result maps show, among other things, the impact of the mining activities on three groups of objects: environmental objects, social objects and technical objects and indicate the objects located in a debris scatter danger zone around the places where blasting works are carried out, and in a ground seismic vibration hazard zone. Moreover, it is shown that using basic data acquired from geological documentation one can create a terrain model with wireframe models of stratigraphic layers in the deposit and on this basis built a deposit block model and then use it in further deposit life cycle assessment to acquire data, such as the overburden volume, the resource volume and the output volume. An example of the application of the geoprocessing tools in excavation post-mining management planning to highlight environmental qualities and enhance the attractiveness of the area for its future user is presented. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.One of the most important renewable energy source is the energy from phytomass. Recently, there has been significant development of growing energy crops as raw materials for biogas production in biogas plants (BGP). In the conditions of the Czech Republic, it is mainly maize. Maize cultivation itself and especially technical processes associated with it participate significantly in the anthropogenic emission production. One of the ways of reducing these emissions is the substitution of maize with another plant suitable for such purposes. This may be Miscanthus x giganteus. This article presents the results of monitoring of emission load resulting from the cultivation of maize (Zea mays L.) and Miscanthus x giganteus for energy purposes. The tool to determine the level of emission load (expressed in CO(2)e where CO(2)e = 1x CO2 + 23x CH4 + 298x N2O) is the simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, respectively its Climate Impact category. For the calculations, the SIMAPro software and the ReCiPe Midpoint (H) method is used. The results show that within the cultivation of Miscanthus x giganteus for energy purposes, the CO(2)e production decreases during the second year of cultivation by nearly 40% per 1 kg of dry matter. While in comparison with maize, it is almost half production of CO(2)e per the production unit depending on the yields and energy inputs.This work discusses the life-cycle impact associated with manufacturing silicon monocrystalline (c-Si) and multi-crystalline (mc-Si) photovoltaic (PV) panels in the United States compared to China. It has two significant contributions. First, the impact of importing panels manufactured in China to install in the US is compared with domestic US manufacturing using a database modeling approach. Second, the life cycle analysis is improved by using specific electricity and material inventory based on disassembled Suniva panels for which the actual material inventory has been compiled. The results from the U.S. lifecycle assessment using standard lifecycle inventory shows that modules entirely made in China or assembled in U.S. from Chinese solar cells have a similar carbon footprint. However, the complete manufacturing of panels in the U.S. reduces the carbon footprint by 13 to 22% because of the difference in the energy mix and the reduction in transportation. By incorporating the data from dismantling and digesting modules, the use of metals in small quantities is accounted for, unlike previous studies, and allows for a more complete environmental comparison. Evaluating the metal use in PV modules shows the metal usage in the U.S. manufactured c-Si module is four times higher than other scenarios.GHG emissions and Energy Payback Time for AC electricity generated by the SunPower (R) Oasis (R) ground-mounted solar power plant were evaluated through a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a 579MWp solar plant in California. The combination of the high efficiency SunPower (R) solar panels and the smart Oasis (R) tracking technology generates AC electricity at only 199 CO(2)eq/kWh AC and 0.32MJ/kWh AC over a 30 year lifetime. The high electricity generation of this plant allows for a reduced Energy Payback time in AC electricity to 9 months.The sector of protective textiles was one of the European Lead Market Initiatives launched in 2012. As a result seven research and development projects were financed to support new and innovative products to enter to this market to increase safety at work. Also the legislation within Europe has a tendency towards this aim having higher impact on professional than on private clothing. If it is not possible to decrease the risks of a work place, the employer shall provide personal protective equipment (PPE), of which protective clothing is an essential part. In order to facilitate the choice, use and control of PPE, a large amount of EN standards and technical reports have been developed and published including requirements, classifications, test methods to be used, terminology and SUCAM. However, in the selection criteria, the environmental impact related with the production, use and disposal of different materials available in the market. In order to overcome this limitation within the SAFEPROTEX project, environmental impact of three different uniforms was evaluated using Life Cycle Analysis in comparison to reference garments.This paper quantifies the environmental improvements in current versus past pavement materials and construction practices employed by the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (tollway authority). Improvements in sustainability performance were measured with a life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Three scenarios were generated to evaluate tollway authority practices on the basis of eight 2013 Interstate reconstruction and rehabilitation projects. The first scenario, 2013 projects, analyzed the actual pavement material and designs of the 2013 projects. The second scenario, materials baseline, was based on the 2013 projects but modified to include mix designs with less-sustainable materials used by the tollway authority circa 2000. The third scenario, design and materials baseline, considered both mix designs and pavement design practices used circa 2000. To improve the spatial and temporal relevance of the analyses, two regional databases of life-cycle inventories representing processes from 2013 and 2000 were developed and applied to the 2013 projects and 2000 baselines. A tool developed by the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, the pavement ICT-LCA 0.95, was used to evaluate the sustainability performance indicator (SPI), global warming potential (GWP), and cumulative energy demand (CED) for each scenario. The resultant savings in SPI, GWP, and CED from the first scenario ranged between 17% and 28 %, 12% and 16%, and 13% and 26%, respectively, compared with the second scenario, and 12% and 33%, 8% and 26%, and 11% and 32%, respectively, compared with the third scenario.Recognizing the potential for cool pavements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to improve heat islands and air quality, local governments in California are beginning to adopt cool-pavement strategies in their climate action plans. Reflective pavement is one cool-pavement strategy and uses high albedo to reduce temperature. This paper details the results of a pavement management survey, the albedo of pavement treatment materials, and dynamic modeling of the albedo of public pavements for various local governments in California. This information is intended for use in a life-cycle assessment tool for an urban heat island and for inputs into climate modeling during the use phase for that tool. Key findings include the following. First, most local governments treat a small portion ranging from 1.3% to 20%, with an average of 7% for the eight local governments studied of the pavement network of public streets every year. Second, slurry seal and asphalt overlay are the two major treatments used, with an average of 41% and 37% of mileage treated, respectively. Third, most pavement treatments currently used have relatively low albedos, ranging from 0.05 to 0.15, with an average of 0.1 for asphalt concrete, and from 0.1 to 0.24, with an average of 0.15, for chip seal. Albedos for cape seals and slurry seals range from 0.06 to 0.15, averaging 0.12. Finally, because of the small portion of typical pavement networks currently having treatments of relatively low albedo applied every year, the average increase of urban pavement network in the 50-year analysis period is relatively low, ranging from 0.02 to 0.12.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present novel modifications to a RepRap design that increase RepRap capabilities well beyond just fused filament fabrication. Open-source RepRap 3-D printers have made distributed manufacturing and prototyping an affordable reality. Design/methodology/approach - The design is a significantly modified derivative of the Rostock delta-style RepRap 3-D printer. Modifications were made that permit easy and rapid repurposing of the platform for milling, paste extrusion and several other applications. All of the designs are open-source and freely available. Findings - In addition to producing fused filament parts, the platform successfully produced milled printed circuit boards, milled plastic objects, objects made with paste extrudates, such as silicone, food stuffs and ceramics, pen plotted works and cut vinyl products. The multi-purpose tool saved 90-97 per cent of the capital costs of functionally equivalent dedicated tools. Research limitations/implications - While the platform was used primarily for production of hobby and consumer goods, research implications are significant, as the tool is so versatile and the fact that the designs are open-source and eminently available for modification for more purpose-specific applications. Practical implications - The platform vastly broadens capabilities of a RepRap machine at an extraordinarily low price, expanding the potential for distributed manufacturing and prototyping of items that heretofore required large financial investments. Originality/value - The unique combination of relatively simple modifications to an existing platform has produced a machine having capabilities far exceeding that of any single commercial product. The platform provides users the ability to work with a wide variety of materials and fabrication methods at a price of less than $1,000, provided users are willing to build the machine themselves.This study aims to assess the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of cassava ethanol production system focusing on utilization of biomass and biogas as energy sources in the steam production process. Scope of life cycle assessment is "cradle to gate" and the functional unit of this study is 1 liter of anhydrous ethanol produced. The use of biogas from wastewater treatment system for steam production greatly affects the GHG reduction. The GHG emissions of bioethanol plant that uses biogas from wastewater for steam production is 0.548 kg-CO2-eq/L-ethanol, while the bioethanol plant without biogas utilization is 1.031 kg-CO2-eq/L-ethanol. From the result, the utilization of biogas in steam production insignificantly reduce the GHG emission, if primary fuel in steam production is biomass. In contrast, using biomass such as wood chip and rice husk substitutes for fossil fuel as primary fuel in steam production greatly affects to GHG emission reduction (approximately 96% reduction compared to literature). (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper examines features of energy consumption in the food service industry considering the possible effects caused by properties of service such as intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability, and simultaneity. This study examines four food service businesses: restaurant services with a cook-chill system, restaurant services with a cook-serve system, delivery of prepared food services, and home-meal replacements. The service provision process is analysed along with the energy input for each process. Subsequently, a conceptual model of energy demand management considering the simultaneity of service is proposed as a first step goal to enhance energy demand management.The present study propose a thorough approach to the optimization of the whole-life cost of a timber building focusing mostly on its mechanical, structural and energy subsystems for a life cycle of 20 years. Another parameter that is examined, is the effect of the fuzziness of the design temperature inside a building on its life cycle cost. The objective function of the energy performance optimization problem of the study is a cost function. The components of the timber frame are optimized according to Eurocode 5. Two scenarios for the management of the timber frame components at the end of the building's life cycle are examined. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.World population and energy consumption per capita have highly increased significantly during the last two centuries. At the same time the relative contribution of bioenergy has decreased and been replaced by fossil fuels. However, these fossil resources will eventually become exhausted and their use is causing social and environmental problems. Hence in many regions the use of bioenergy is promoted by law. The role of agriculture in the production of bioenergy feedstock is predicted to increase and therefore minimising potential social and environmental risks is essential. For this purpose balanced analyses on the impacts of the different bioenergy crops and of new conversion technologies are required. This review reveals that very sophisticated matrixes of biorefinery are theoretically available. The greatest attention has been paid to technologies of producing transport-fuels from lignocellulose and therefore an increased demand for this type of feedstock can be expected. Besides the high concentration of material that is needed for a specific bioenergy conversion method, the choice of potential bioenergy crop species should also be taken into account in relation to the local weather conditions since both the natural species and genetically modified cultivars can only perform to their full growth potential under optimal growing conditions. Unfortunately there is no clear picture available about trends in areas under energy crop cultivation. For a deeper analysis of both the economic and ecological attributes of different crops and patterns of common practice we used the wide-spread classification of different generations of energy crops. In general, both the investment costs and potential ecological benefits increase with each generation and therefore special support mechanisms are required in order to increase the area of dedicated and multiannual energy crops. The impact of land use change can be diminished by better utilisation of areas experiencing human population decline especially through the cultivation of perennial crop, since its carbon sequestration is greater than that of annual food crops. To help reduce greenhouse gas emission the number of work operations in the field should be kept to a minimum and use of wastewater or sewage sludge instead of mineral fertilizers should be considered. Biodiversity can be protected by planting of scattered areas of perennial crops and avoidance of potentially invasive species. The ecological benefits of bioenergy production can be increased by more efficient utilization of by-products. Manure, straw or biomass from high conservation-value grasslands can be used for bioenergy production, if their feedstock-specific characteristics are taken into account to protect the environment. All these activities should be incorporated into the goal of energy saving and should be a platform for establishing good practice standards of bioenergy production in agriculture.Environmental friendly treatment of textile materials is a high priority in the 21st century. Classical treatment of textile materials is a manufacturing process, consuming a large amount of water, dyestuff and energy. The plasma treatment has a significant improved efficiency in the consumption of raw materials, auxiliaries and energy. Hence, studies regarding the plasma treatment on textile materials have been performed aiming to prove the reducing of the environmental impact. A comprehensive LCA study has been accomplished in this regard: the supporting software program used was Sima Pro 7. The research results obtained have shown that textile materials treated with plasma nanotechnology have similar or even improved functional properties compared to the textile materials treated with the classical process. Moreover, the plasma nanotechnology treated fabrics have a significantly reduced impact on the; environment, accordingly to the LCA study.Deforestation as an activity of forest management is an intermediate link in timber production. Different models of timber production make a difference in GHG emissions and to a certain extent affect the sustainable development of the ecological environment. Accordingly, due to global climate change, energy conservation and emission reduction have become critical issues concerning all humans. This paper taking the operating systems of timber production in the southern China, as a case study, and GHG emissions and the optimum operation model of timber production are analysed with the B2B model of life cycle assessment (LCA) and the current forest industry standard. The results indicate that the total emissions of GHG range between 11.600 9 kg/m(3) and 15.303 6 kg/m(3), accounting for approximately 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent of their carbon sequestration abilities. Direct GHG emissions generated by fuel consumption during harvesting, skidding, loading, transportation and production are the primary emissions, accounting for approximately 69.1 percent to 91.5 percent of the total emissions. Moreover, the emission of every type of GHG is lowest under model IV (which included chainsaw cutting, cableway skidding, winch loading, diesel vehicle transportation and vehicle transmission). From the perspective of ecology, therefore, model IV is the optimal operation model. On the other hand, the emission from timber transportation is highest, accounting for approximately 61.5 percent to 72.3 percent. Therefore, appropriate operation models should be choose according to the mechanical production and management, production tasks and scales, foundations of forest mechanization and economic conditions. In terms of carbon reduction, improvement of the mechanical equipment efficiency, operation skills and utilization of new energy resources should be considered.Environmental burdens of one ton baled abaca fiber which is exported as Manila hemp, were determined using life cycle assessment with three phases: plantation establishment and fiber harvesting, fiber trading, and grading and baling of fiber. Abaca fiber was organically produced in Catanduanes. One hectare abaca plantation produced an average of 830 kgfiber with a total mean discarded biomass of 5.7 t. A barangay trader can purchased 712 kg of dry fiber per week while Grading and Baling Establishment (GBE) procured and processed 250 t mo(-1). One ton of baled fiber required 1.6 ha plantation with 2,132 undamaged abaca hills that produced 1,052.6 kg dry abaca fiber. Harvesting produced about 80.2 t of discarded materials and weeds which used as mulch, however, estimated soil nutrient loss was 0.5 kg Nand 0.1 kg P and 5.4 kg K Trading and baling produced 52.6 kg fiber by-product used for furniture making; more than 5 kg of fiber dust and a total global warming potential of 47.7 kg CO2 equivalent. The following are recommended to improve farm productivity: a) use of organic fertilizer to replace the nutrient loss; b) improve stripping device to enhance fiber quality; and c) utilize farm waste for soil conservation. Local policy on abaca trading was recommended to increase farmer's share. GBE must provide mechanism to improve environmental work condition and strictly enforce the use of ear plug to avoid hearing loss of workers.In order to respond to increasing global food demand and provide for national economic growth, the Estonian Dairy Strategy for 2012-2020 aims to achieve a 30% growth in milk production. At the same time, there is a global attempt to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper analyses the medium-term (2015-2020) projections for milk production and associated GHG emissions from dairy cows in Estonia. The FAPRI-GOLD type market model of Estonian agriculture, which is used for projections of agricultural production, was supplemented with a module that helps project GHG emissions. The paper demonstrates the endogenisation of GHG emission factors in a relatively general agricultural market model context. The results imply that increasing milk production by 30% by 2020 would jeopardise Estonia's commitments with regard to agricultural GHG emissions. However, the average GHG emission per tonne of produced milk will decline, thus reducing the "carbon footprint" of milk production.Mercury cell chlor-alkali plants are not anymore considered a good industrial practice and the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control of the European Union has indicated that chlor-alkali installations require obtaining licenses based on the Best Available Techniques. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings on the environmental impact study of current and future technologies to remediate mercury contaminated wastes from a chlor-alkali Cuban plant using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The future remediation alternative consists on the proposal of thermal treatment to remove Hg while the current option includes the waste stabilization and disposal. The environmental impact assessments for both technological alternatives have been compared regarding their impact and damage categories using LCA. From an environmental point of view, a significant reduction on the human health impact (95.4 %), ecosystem quality impact (83 %) and impact on resources (78.5 %) would be achieved in comparison with the existing treatment applied by the chlor-alkali Cuban plant. The proposed thermal treatment technology is a significant costs project, but represents considerable benefits for the environment and human health.In the modern era, tremendous technological and sustainable development has forced the societies to adopt modern energy efficient lighting devices instead of old fashioned less efficient incandescent lamps. The examples of such new lamps compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps. These devices can provide similar light output at the expense of only 20 % electricity consumption in comparison to incandescent lamps due to less energy lost as heat during luminance phenomenon. CFLs convert about 45 % energy into visible light, while incandescent lamp converts only 10 % (Tosenstock, 2007). The ecological footprint evaluation for street lighting network in Veszprem County, Hungary has been carried out utilising Sustainable Process Index (SPI) methodology (Narodoslawsky and Krotscheck, 1995). The analysis was carried out considering three different light bulbs i.e. conventional or old fashioned less energy efficient incandescent lamps and high tech more energy efficient CFLs and LED lamps. The analysis results reveal that there is a potential to decrease environmental impacts by 2 to 4 times by changing lamps from conventional incandescent to CFL and LEDs. These results are in coherence with the ecological assessment study conducted by the Department of Energy (DOE, 2012) for replacement of incandescent lamps with more efficient CFLs and LED lamps.The depletion of fossil fuel reserves and increment of concern on environmental sustainability has motivated industries to search for alternatives for both energy generation and production of chemicals and materials. Among the alternative sources which are deemed to be viable, biomass has been identified as one of those with the highest potential sources to replace fossil fuel. In order to convert biomass into biofuels, bioenergy and biochemical, a sustainable integrated biorefinery is needed to integrate multiple biomass conversion processes with minimum impact to the environment, health and safety aspects. Currently, integrated biorefinery is designed primarily based on economic performance and environmental impact as these are the most important factors for decision makers especially for the development of new processes. However, the challenge is mounted up in a way that the design of an integrated biorefinery needs to also simultaneously consider other factors such as energy utilization, inherent occupational health and safety hazard. The increasing number of technologies available in the market will add to the complexities in the synthesis and design of an integrated biorefinery. Hence, the aim of the current paper is to conduct a review on the sustainability assessment methodologies which was used during the process synthesis of an integrated biorefinery system.In the development of sustainable system, biomass is one of the best options of renewable resources. However, there are many issues in biomass supply chain management. Element Targeting Approach is a novel approach introduced in Demand-Resources Value Targeting (DRVT) and Biomass Element Life Cycle Analysis (BELCA) to improve existing biomass supply chain. It enables consideration of underutilised biomass in biomass supply chain optimization model. The approach integrates biomass resources and process technology via biomass element characteristics to allow more flexibility in biomass feedstock selection without compromising process operation. However, fluctuation of biomass availability such as seasonal biomass remains as one the main problem in biomass supply chain management. In this work, functionality of element targeting to handle fluctuation of biomass availability is conducted. Several case studies to simulate dynamic scenario in biomass resources are constructed. DRVT model with element targeting approach is used to evaluate the problems and alternative biomass supply chain is proposed to optimise each scenario by maximising overall profit. Promising result is presented and biomass selection for each process technology in the case study is compared. The approach allows the model to tackle dynamic situation in biomass resources and this can be used as management tools to propose optimum supply chain network for dynamic problems in biomass industry.The reduction in embodied carbon footprint is one of the major concerns in the construction industry. Among many other adopted techniques, the use of recycled materials is one of recommended method to lower the environmental effects of construction materials. However, the potential of recycled materials to offset the embodied carbon footprint from conventional Malaysian housing construction requires to be evaluated. The main focus of study was to perform a comparative analysis for minimization of embodied carbon footprint from the conventional materials used Malaysian housing industry by using recycled materials. A typical double story semi-detached house commonly constructed in Malaysian tropical climate was selected as case study. The model of the house was generated in a virtual environment using Building information modelling (BIM) process. The results highlighted that with incorporation of recycled materials within a range of 0 % to 100 %, the embodied carbon footprint offset potential varied up to 18 % as compared to conventional construction.In the last few years, composites have been used increasingly in different applications (aerospace, automobile, industry, sports.). Both environmental and economic factors have driven the development of recycling pathways for the increasing amount of fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) scrap generated. A recycling system for FRP has to be designed to recover and reuse the fibre and matrix content of the scrap. The objective of this paper is to model and compare the different routes of end-of-life FRP from both environmental and economic viewpoint combining Life Cycle Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis. More precisely, mechanical recycling, pyrolysis and fluidized bed are investigated and compared to low value end-of-life solutions (incineration, co-incineration and landfill) both for Glass and Carbon FRPs. Pyrolysis turns out to be an attractive recycling solution for CFRP that satisfies both environmental and economic benefit while co-incineration seems more promising for GFRP.Life Cycle Assessment or LCA is an effective tool for quantifying the potential environmental impacts of products, processes, or services in order to support the selection making of desired products and/or processes from different alternatives. For more sustainable process designs, technical requirements have to be evaluated together with environmental and economic aspects. The LCSoft software-tool has been developed to perform LCA as a stand-alone tool as well as integrated with other process design tools such as process simulation, economic analysis (ECON), and sustainable process design (SustainPro). An extended version of LCSoft is presented in this paper. The development work consists of four main tasks. The first task consists of the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) calculation function. The second task deals with the extension of the Life Cycle Inventory database and improvement of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment calculation. The third task deals with analysis to investigate the contributions of processes, LCI results, and environmental impact results with respect to the production stage. Also, an uncertainty analysis is included to investigate the influence of uncertain parameters on the LCI assessment results. The fourth task has been added to validate and improve LCSoft by testing it against several case studies and compare the assessment results with other available tools.Biorefineries constitute representative examples of multifunctional systems which are able to produce, similarly to conventional petroleum refineries, a wide range of chemicals (pharmaceutical constituents, plastics, food additives etc.), energy carriers and power through the optimal use of diverse biomass forms (wheat straw, oils, wood chips, municipal solid waste). For this purpose, biorefineries typically comprise a complicated, integrated network of physical and chemical transformation processes, such as mechanical and physical biomass pretreatment, pyrolysis, gasification, catalytic and enzymatic reactions, and downstream purification processes. For the environmental sustainability assessment of these complicated production systems, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA, ISO-Norm 14040) is considered as a widely acceptable methodology from scientists and engineers including, however, the debated aspect of partitioning the impacts among the co-products' in the biorefinery product portfolio. The aim of this study is to present the influence of the various allocation approaches on the LCA results of biorefinery products. The framework of this analysis systematically incorporates the steps of the LCA methodology as described in the ISO norms and estimates the impacts related with the products of interest, taking into account the contribution of the co- and by-products in the overall production path. For this reason, two wider approaches were adopted, the attributional which describes the impact of the production process itself from a retrospective point of view, and the consequential which focuses on the changes in the level of the output (as well as consumption and disposal) of a product, including market effects from increasing or decreasing demand for the study product, having therefore a more prospective point of view. Several scenarios which describe the possible options for handling those products, were developed and assessed based on different allocation methodologies, namely system expansion (substitution method) and partitioning methods according to the mass, thermal and economic values of the co-products. The estimation of the life cycle impacts of the processes was performed using the Global Warming Potential (GWP), Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) and RECIPE methodologies which provide an assessment of the burdens through the associated LCA indicators. The outcome of this approach provides a range of LCA metrics emphasizing at the variation of the results according to the followed allocation methods and to identify those properties of products (physical, economic, thermal) and system factors (processes to be substituted from the renewable ones, degree of utilization of co- and by-products from the markets etc.) which dominate the LCA results.This study focuses on uncertainty analysis of environmental indicators used to support sustainable process design efforts. To this end, the Life Cycle Assessment methodology is extended with a comprehensive uncertainty analysis to propagate the uncertainties in input LCA data to the environmental indicators. The resulting uncertainties in the environmental indicators are then represented by empirical cumulative distribution function, which provides a probabilistic basis for the interpretation of the indicators. In order to highlight the main features of the extended LCA, the production of biodiesel from algae biomass is used as a case study. The results indicate there are considerable uncertainties in the calculated environmental indicators as revealed by CDFs. The underlying sources of these uncertainties are indeed the significant variation in the databases used for the LCA analysis. The extended LCA procedure is flexible and generic and can handle various sources of uncertainties in environmental impact analysis. This is expected to contribute to more reliable calculation of impact categories and robust sustainable process design.The idea of sustainable production and consumption is becoming a widely-accepted societal goal worldwide. However, its implementation is slow and the world continues to speed down an unsustainable path. One of the difficulties is the sheer complexity of production systems that would need to be re-engineered in a more sustainable way as well as the number of sustainability constraints that have to be considered and satisfied simultaneously. This paper argues that bringing about sustainable production and consumption requires a systems approach underpinned by life cycle thinking as well as an integration of economic, environmental and social aspects. In an attempt to aid this process, a decision-support framework has been developed comprising a range of tools, including scenario analysis, life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social sustainability assessment, system optimisation and multi-attribute analysis. An application of the framework is illustrated on a case study related to energy.To minimize environmental impacts, coupling integrated product and process design with life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful yet challenging approach. A challenge in LCA is the proper accounting for all co-products occurring along the entire supply chain, known as allocation problem. In this paper, we provide a systematic analysis for LCA-based product and process design including alternative allocation methods. We apply the approach to polyol production from CO2. Here, alternative allocation methods lead to very different polyol products and processes. Finally, we derive general principles regarding co-product allocation in LCA-based product and process design.This paper addresses the sustainable design and synthesis of producing biofuels and bioproducts from microalgae. We propose a comprehensive superstructure with multiple technology alternatives in the seven processing sections. The major products of the superstructure are biodiesel, hydrogen, propylene glycol, glycerol-tert-butyl ether, and poly-3-hydroxybutyrate. Following the life cycle optimization methodology, we propose a bi-criteria mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem to simultaneously optimize the environmental and economic performance. We apply a tailored global optimization algorithm to efficiently tackle the separable concave terms and fractional terms in the objective functions. The most environmentally sustainable processes with respect to various algal bioproducts reduce the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions by 5% to 63%, compared with petrochemical counterparts. Moreover, the minimum biodiesel production cost is $2.79 per gasoline-gallon-equivalent, if all byproducts and value-added bioproducts are considered as credits.Applying life cycle thinking at an early design stage can help engineers to deliver sustainable systems by design. To demonstrate how this can be carried out at a practical level, this paper proposes a simplified methodology for integrating life cycle considerations into process design. Combining flowsheeting and life cycle assessment, it shows how environmental 'hotspots' can be identified and translated into key design targets to improve the sustainability of a system from 'cradle to grave'. The method is applied to a carbon capture and utilisation system using waste CO2 to produce synthetic diesel in a Fischer-Tropsch process. Although the system is energy intensive, applying life cycle thinking helps to make synthetic diesel competitive not only with fossil but also with biodiesel in terms of the climate change impact.Society's demand for ecologically produced and sustainably operable goods is a key driver to substitute conventional substances such as metals or plastics. Most of today's eco-design approaches are limited to the selection of the right material and the industrial processing, to manufacture the desired design. The authors of this work are scientists from the areas of cell-biology, eco-toxicology, engineering-and industrial-design, and teamed up to use directed natural growth of bio-materials. The aim is to minimize conventional production steps and decrease the amount of resources needed for manufacturing. In the first step the team categorizes and analyzes potential plants. In addition, requirements for different sorts of products are defined. Matching parts of both databases are identified. The aim of this research is to give an overview of possible function-plant relations of near net shape grown materials. Single materials as well as composites are taken into account. Eco-investigations include the whole Life Cycle Assessment. Additionally mechanical properties, design restrictions and surface quality are examined as major issues for sustainable, safe and sound products.Is in the early stages of design process where decisions can have most influence on the definition of product environmental performance. Nevertheless, is difficult to integrate environmental considerations into a phase where designers have a reduced knowledge about the product. In fact, functional requirements present in conceptual phase are qualitatively subjective to allow the prediction of environmental impacts in the future product. Anyway, some authors suggest that establishing environmental performance in a functional structure can influence a more effective eco-design practice for products. This paper present the construction of a collaborative process where functional analysis will be related with environmental considerations with the aim to help designer to propose products that have less environmental impact from the early stages. The chosen methods to carry out this proposal are Functional Analysis, based in Value Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment method.Life Cycle Assessment is one of the most popular environmental assessment tools. However, due to its comparative nature, assessing a newly developed product relies on having benchmark information. Since data on previous products is bound not to be of identical products, this entails scaling on functional terms (i.e., in terms of the product's functional unit). For that reason, the authors developed the concept of LCP-families for scaling, and that of fuons to standardize the parameters by which they would be scaled. In order to facilitate the development of new fuons, a systematic stepwise approach is presented in this paper. Step one defined the basic functional flows of the fuon, step two defines and analyzes the scaling parameters through a linear regression model, and step three covers parameters that can potentially differentiate between LCP-families. The framework is shown in the development of two fuons in a case study, and their statistical suitability to be used in scaling through LCP-families is assessed.Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is the framework for assessing the environmental impact of a product over its entire lifecycle. There have been numerous LCIA studies in the past conducted on stand-alone heavy-duty machines, but the usefulness of the methods in these studies is limited when the goal is to compare the environmental impact of two cotton stripper designs. Cotton strippers do not operate in isolation - they always operate in unison with supporting machinery such as tractors, or tractor-powered machinery, which means any meaningful comparison of cotton stripper designs must also account for the close coupling between cotton strippers and their supporting machinery. This paper proposes a new framework for comparing the environmental impact generated by two cotton harvesting systems. The proposed framework is task-based in the sense that a series of common tasks defined on a given field serve as a standard unit of work in a fair comparison of the two cotton harvesting systems. A simulation model is used in the proposed framework to simulate the movements and interactions of the machines on the field.Detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provide tools to quantitatively illustrate the environmental impacts of a product throughout its life cycle. Effectively interpreting the results of a detailed LCA are fundamental for taking reliable decisions about evaluating design alternatives w.r.t environmental impact and for communicating the same across various actors. The goal of our research is to develop target specific interfaces to aid designers to make practitioner like interpretation of LCA results. In this paper we describe the challenges involved in practitioner like interpretation of LCA results and describe general requirement of a LCA interface to support effective (Practitioner -like) interpretation. We develop a novel questionnaire based evaluation method to identify the issues in LCA tools, faced by designers in pursuit of practitioner like interpretations. In order to describe underlying cause of these issues, we use two constructs derived from domain of information visualization, namely explanatory and exploratory mode of interfaces.Sustainability in relation to the human food chain is defined as the global balance/equilibrium between efficient use of limited natural resources (such as arable land, water, fuel, etc.), emissions (e.g., carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide (laughing gas), etc.), and socio-economic and ethical aspects as a basis for the existence of future generations. Sustainability in the production of food of animal origin or edible protein necessitates efficient production. Efficiency calculations should not be limited to only the food chain links 'feed-animal-food of animal origin', but should include the entire food chain. A system has the highest efficiency or the greatest sustainability if it is impossible to improve one parameter without deterioration of one or more of the other parameters. The present review is divided into two parts. In the first, the authors define the term sustainability and the objective of the paper. Protein of animal origin is the main topic and is the focus of the chapters regarding resource inputs in the form of arable land, water, fuel, etc., and outputs in form of animal yields and emissions such as carbon dioxide, methane and laughing gas. Carbon Footprints (CF) as an 'overall measure of emissions' are defined.This part describes challenges to improving sustainability during the production of food of animal origin. Some potential advancements in the sustainability of producing food of animal origin, such as feeds that do not compete with human nutrition, plant and animal breeding, trends in animal nutrition, potential alternative protein sources, alternatives of animal products in nutrition, including lower food losses, are discussed in the paper. The potential for reducing gaseous emissions is also an important chapter in this contribution. Complex calculations employing parameters of efficient use of limited resources and reduction of emissions seem to be helpful in finding optimums in production of food of animal origin.This work aimed at evaluating the environmental performances of apple powders production based on a life cycle approach. Fruit powders are convenient, easy to handle and can be used to prepare several products such as snacks, beverages, bakery goods and baby foods. To preserve fruit nutritional properties, mainly three drying methodologies are used: convective or direct (for example, spray drying), indirect or contact (for example, drum drying), and freeze drying (lyophilisation). Among them, drum drying is often used in the case of large and continuous productions because of the simple structure of the dryers, less failure and low maintenance costs. In this work, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was performed to evaluate the environmental impacts of the industrial phases of apple powders production, obtained by a drum drying process. The system boundaries covered the industrial stages of the process, the distribution and the waste disposal (gate-to-gate and gate-to-grave approach). The materials and energy consumption and the emissions to air, soil and water were reported to the chosen functional unit (1 package of apple powder). Data were analysed using SimaPro 8.0.3 software and the Ecoinvent database, in accordance with the reference standard for LCA (i.e., ISO 14040-14044) to identify environmental key performance indicators (KPIs).We propose a dedicated tool that permits the evaluation of food production process sustainability, in particular virgin olive oil process. It is based on an integrated process-product-enterprise ((PE)-E-2) approach that allows systematically taking into account sustainable issues within food production process design. The domain specific tool "&cOlive" is implemented as an Excel application. This CAPE based tool assesses sustainability of a future or an existing system of virgin olive oil production. In the first case, 28 configurations of the system may be chosen based on 7 agricultural scenarios and 4 industrial scenarios (extraction). These scenarios were built with field data directly collected through questionnaires and visits of olive oil producers in France, in the context of the European OiLCA project. Complementary data were provided by French experts from the Centre Technique de l'Olivier. They completed and reinforced the relevance and the quality of the model. Finally, commercial databases such as Ecoinvent for environmental LCA were used. The tool offers the opportunity to simulate a lot of scenarios and to study the influence of different extraction technologies and different operating parameters on sustainability.This paper addresses the optimal operation of a petrochemical complex under economic and environmental criteria. The site mathematical model includes linear and nonlinear simplified models for single plants to calculate site production taking into account main operating variables, intermittent deliveries and inventory variable profiles. The objective function considers the maximization of total profit and the minimization of environmental impact, subject to constraints on mass balances, bounds on product demands, equipment capacities and intermediate and final product storage tanks limitations. The environmental objective is measured with the global warming potential (GWP) and Eco-indicator 99 metrics according to the life cycle assessment procedures. The resulting mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) models have been implemented in GAMS. The bi-criteria MINLP model is solved with the e-constraint method. The resulting pareto-optimal curve shows the tradeoff between the economic and environmental aspects to pursuit a sustainable operation of an existing integrated petrochemical complex. The optimal solution shows that polyethylene plants have the best environmental and economic performances in the entire complex. As compared to current situation, optimization results show that the petrochemical complex can satisfy product demands while improving the environmental behavior by decreasing greenhouse gases emissions in almost 26 %, from 1,018 to 750.42 kt CO2-eq/y.In the last twenty years, the worldwide interest regarding environmental aspects has consistently increased. Despite the wine's industry has been always considered as environmentally safe, some research has shown that a large number of environmental concerns can be associated with the wine's production. In this study, the environmental emissions, with particular reference to carbon dioxide, related to the vinification stages of a high quality white wine produced in Campania (Italy) were determined using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. An in-depth analysis was performed aimed at proposing alternative solutions that assess the reduction of environmental emissions of the more critical stages. The emissions to air were reported to the chosen functional unit (a 0.75 L bottle of wine). The study was performed, according to the international standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, using SimaPro 8.0.3 software and the Ecoinvent database.This paper describes the assessment of the use of resources such as mineral extraction and non-renewable energy of a dense graded hot mix asphalt production in a facility located in Colombia, considering four different scenarios for comparison purposes; the reference scenario is the conventional hot mix asphalt process, and the other three scenarios assess the impact of adding three different additives that help lowering the mixing temperatures. These additives allow for lower temperatures during the mixing and laying processes, and this technology is known as warm mix asphalt process. The inventory analysis of the life cycle was done by gathering and calculating information related to the inputs and outputs of the process, in order to identify the hypothesis and limits of the study. Data files of the company were consulted, from January 2011 to June 2012. Based on the inputs and outputs, mass and energy balances were verified, in order to establish the goals and scope for the assessment. The units used for the mass balances were kg/month, and the units for energy balance were MJ/month. Based on this information, the process was quantitatively described. Each units of the process was associated to relevant data, while some stages of the process were excluded of this analysis. Specialized software for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and several databases were used to analyze the process stages that involve most of the time and effort of the dense graded hot mix asphalt. Some limitations related to the data gathering were defined; the data excluded from this study were associated to the exploitation and transport of aggregates from the source to the plant, the crude oil refining for producing asphalt binder, and its transportation from the refinery to the mixing plant.The direct-transesterification method based on acetyl chloride and methanol was optimized to extract fatty acid methyl esters from Chlorella vulgaris by selection of a proper internal standard and optimization of extraction parameters. Glyceryl triheptadecanoate was proven to be the right internal standard for quantification of fatty acid methyl esters from microalgae. The optimized extraction parameters were more mildness, which were 80 degrees C for 45 min with 1/9 of chloride/methanol (v/v) and 80 mL/g of solvent/dried biomass. More importantly, the authors' optimized method was quite robust for either autotrophic or heterotrophic microalgae as the fatty acid methyl esters yield changed less than 5% with the varied parameters.Potential environmental benefits have been identified for the utilization of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a feedstock for polyurethanes (PUR). CO2 can be utilized in the PUR supply chain in a wide variety of ways ranging from direct CO2 utilization for polyols as a PUR precursor, to indirect CO2 utilization for basic chemicals in the PUR supply chain. In this paper, we present a systematic exploration and environmental evaluation of all direct and indirect CO2 utilization options for flexible and rigid PUR foams. The analysis is based on an LCA-based PUR supply chain optimization model using linear programming to identify PUR production with minimal environmental impacts. The direct utilization of CO2 for polyols allows for large specific impact reductions of up to 4 kg CO2-eq. and 2 kg oil-eq. per kg CO2 utilized, but the amounts of CO2 that can be utilized are limited to 0.30 kg CO2 per kg PUR. The amount of CO2 utilized can be increased to up to 1.7 kg CO2 per kg PUR by indirect CO2 utilization in the PUR supply chain. Indirect CO2 utilization requires hydrogen (H-2). The environmental impacts of H-2 production strongly affect the impact of indirect CO2 utilization in PUR. To achieve optimal environmental performance under the current fossil-based H-2 generation, PUR production can only utilize much less CO2 than theoretically possible. Thus, utilizing as much CO2 in the PUR supply chain as possible is not always environmentally optimal. Clean H-2 production is required to exploit the full CO2 utilization potential for environmental impact reduction in PUR production.Despite the agro-food sustainability issues have been developed and strengthened considerably for a long time, from an operational point of view the sustainable agriculture is still evolving and improvements of production systems are increasingly required to move farmers toward the implementation of agricultural practices environmental friendly and economically viable. Therefore, the evaluation of the economic sustainability becomes a key prerequisite to carry out business operations, while the environmental sustainability assessment can be a strategic tool also to increase the value of product and to structure green-oriented marketing strategies. In this sense, the development of innovative approaches for a systemic and integrated assessment of the sustainability represents an ambitious goal to pursue for scientists, practitioners and for the overall society. In this study, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) were applied to evaluate, jointly, the environmental and economic sustainability of different vineyard production scenarios in a PDO (Protected Designation Origin) wine-growing area in southern Italy. Two cropping systems (organic and conventional) and two training systems (espalier and gobelet) have been analysed. According to ISO norms 14040 (ISO, 2006a) and 14044 (ISO, 2006b), the study was carried out firstly defining goal and scope of the analysis and, then, considering as "functional unit" 1 ha of planted surface and as system boundaries the agricultural production phases "from cradle to gate", or rather from plantation to wine grapes harvesting, excluding wine processing, distribution and consumption. The considered life cycle goes from vineyard plantation to disposal (25 y). The same life cycle, as well as the same parameters were considered for the LCC methodology by realizing in this way an inventory of costs complementary to LCA inventory data by adding to the analysis also other costs as farm labour remuneration, land and working capital. The results allowed to ranking the sustainability performances of different wine-growing scenarios.There are major challenges for the designer to include Sustainable Development aspects into product design activities; particularly related to the social and wider environmental aspects. One way of giving a more accurate meaning to sustainability is the territorial understanding of the term. A territorial interpretation can make sustainability a more articulate, current, and pragmatic theory. Literature review shows that the existing product design approaches are mostly general at global level and very little attention has been paid to integrate territorial characteristics into product information-modeling. Despite, in recent years, some agriculture products having been designed and developed based on territorial specifications, but this approach is needs to be expanded with other types of products. Therefore, in this paper we describe a general product information-modeling framework that we believe can help designers to optimize product performance in the design phase by taking into account territorial conditions and requirements. The framework is based on the Core Product Model (CPM) which is extended with geographical and environmental data models.Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is one of basic steps in life cycle assessment methodology (LCA). This paper presents the application of approach LCA for the rejections of drugs company SAIDAL, in order to determine the environmental impacts relative to this industrial activity, since it is classified among industry leader in the pharmaceutical field in Algeria, and that it takes part largely in the environmental disturbance by generating various categories of impacts. For this purpose, an eco-balance was establish by the collection of the theoretical data to the meadows of the company and of the practical data, resulting from the assay of pharmaceutical liquid.Climate change mitigation is the most important driving force for bioenergy development. Consequently, the environmental design of bioenergy value chains should address the actual savings of both primary energy demand and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. According to the EU Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC), no direct impacts and no GHG emissions should be attributed to crop residues (like cereal straws) when they are removed from agricultural land for the purpose of bioenergy utilisation. The carbon neutral assumption applied to crop residues is, however, a rough simplification. Crop residues, indeed, should not be viewed simply as a waste to be disposed, because they play a critical role in sustaining soil organic matter and therefore have an inherent C-capturing value. Moreover, considering straws as an energy feedstock, its status of co-product is clearly recognised and its availability could be obtained according to different cropping systems, corresponding to different primary energy costs and GHG emissions. This paper highlights some hidden features in the assessment of agricultural energy and carbon balance, still very difficult to be detected and accounted for. Although they are frequently disregarded, these features (such as long term dynamic trend of soil organic carbon and annual nitrous oxide emissions from the soil) should be carefully considered in assembling the energy and emission balance. By using a crop simulation model, the long-term soil organic matter and annual N2O soil emissions were estimated. Consequently, a comprehensive energy and GHG balance was determined in accordance with the life cycle assessment methodology. Contrasting methods of straw management and wheat cultivation were compared: straw retention vs removal from the soil; conventional vs conservation tillage; wheat cropping system as a single-crop or in rotation. The resulting carbon footprint of straws has different magnitudes with respect to the several experimental conditions. By selecting the best agricultural practices, energy from straw can be optimally coupled with grain productions, without detrimental effects on soil fertility. An improved and specifically tailored cropping system is designed to obtain an optimal trade-off.The following paper presents how life cycle assessment (LCA) helps to establish the environmental impact of energy production of three Polish power plants. Ecological differences between discussed power plants as well as reasons for such differences have also been pointed out. The calculations were based on the assessment procedure of Eco-indicator 99, which allows for the presentation of the impact results with respect to three damage categories. The study also determines actions which, if undertaken, will reduce the negative environmental impact of energy production. Even though coal-fired energy production is ecologically harmful, implementation of modem technologies allows for reduction of raw material consumption and limits greenhouse gas emissions.The use of qualitative eco-evaluation methods for product concept eco-evaluation is explored in a case study where mechanical engineers performed an eco-evaluation of product concepts in a two-stage evaluation process. In the first stage of the case study, the evaluators were asked to evaluate the environmental friendliness of the product concepts and to rank the concepts accordingly. The obtained rankings were based upon subjective preferences of the evaluators and their subjective interpretation of the eco-value of the considered concepts. In the second stage of the case study, the evaluators eco-evaluated the same concepts, but this time they used ecodesign guidelines as eco-criteria. The evaluators have obtained different rankings of the concepts, so the results of the two sets of rankings are compared. Findings are analysed in the context of confounding variables of the case study design.This review on Sustainability covers selected 2014 publications on the focus of the following sections: Sustainable water and wastewater utilities Sustainable water resources management Stormwater and green infrastructure Sustainability in wastewater treatment Life cycle assessment (LCA) applications Sustainability and energy in wastewater industry, Sustainability and asset managementThe management and disposal of agricultural waste are drawn more and more attention because of the increasing yields and negative effects on the environment. However, proper treatments such as converting abundant biomass wastes into biogas through anaerobic digestion technology, can not only avoid the negative impacts, but also convert waste into available resources. This review summarizes the studies of nearly two hundred scholars from the following four aspects: the characterization, reuse, treatment, and management of agricultural waste.Introduction. Consumers are attaching increasing importance to the sustainability of the products they purchase. The agribusiness sector is well aware of this trend and is making efforts to guarantee product sustainability. Literature. Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) is a widely used methodology (like others in this field, such as ISO 26000 and SA 8000) for evaluating the social impact of the activities involved in the life cycle of a product. The S-LCA guidelines were published in 2009 and therefore the framework for this methodology is not yet well established. Nevertheless, some S-LCA studies have been completed and have contributed to the development of the methodology. The objective of this paper is to give feedback to the agribusiness sector and researchers regarding prospects for future use of Social Life Cycle Assessment in the agribusiness sector. Papers selected for this literature review have been chosen on the basis of Scopus's query from 2000 to the present day. Scopus's query contains analyses of major international conferences. The case studies in the agribusiness sector that are reviewed in this paper highlight the usefulness of a social hotspots database, the need for stakeholder involvement in S-LCA implementation, the link between S-LCA and its regional context, and the benefits of developing causal links between indicators and impact categories, such as working conditions and governance. Conclusions. Further methodological investigation needs to be conducted in order to standardize this new methodology. Its ability to provide an overview of assessment of socioeconomic impacts makes it a good choice for evaluating the aspect of social impact as part of sustainability studies.With rapidly growing energy demand and concerns over energy security and environment, researchers worldwide are exploring hard to deploy renewable energy sources. Development of economical biofuel at sufficiently large scale may provide major breakthrough in this direction, with strong impact on sustainability. More importantly, environmental benefits may also be achieved by the utilization of renewable biomass resources, which could help the biosphere in longer time. This chapter reviews the availability and bioenergy potentials of the current biomass feedstock. These include the following: (i) food crops such as sugarcane, corn and vegetable oils, classified as the first-generation feedstocks, and environmental and socio-economic barriers limiting its use; (ii) second-generation feedstocks involving lignocellulosic biomass derived from agricultural and forestry residues and municipal waste followed by constraints for their full commercial deployment. Key technical challenges and opportunities of the lignocellulosic biomassto- -bioenergy production are discussed in comparison with the first-generation technologies. (iii) The potential of the emerging third-generation biofuel from algal biomass is also reviewed.This paper takes common material (including Q345. Q420angle steel, Q345. Q420 large size angle steel, Q345. Q420. Q460 steel pipe) of tower in 500kV transmission lines as the object to carry out the application technology of life design evaluation and comprehensive comparison research. According to the State Grid guidelines for transmission line of whole life cycle design and construction (for Trial Implementation), the economic and technical evaluation of different tower material are carried out in 6 indexes of whole life cycle design evaluation by fuzzy hierarchy evaluation method, and the life cycle assessment and discuss of different material in design scheme of 500kV transmission lines tower are analyzed and evaluated.Additive manufacturing has emerged as an arena that is receiving intense interest from numerous technology domains, traditional and non-traditional manufacturers. With this growing interest, concerns have arisen regarding the relative performance of these novel processes compared to conventional techniques from economic, environmental, and social perspectives. Sustainability-related benefits can be realized through additive manufacturing, and it is often promoted as a sustainable technology. For appropriate future development and application, however, it will be important to understand relative costs, environmental impacts, and human health effects of processes and materials. Prior research addressing sustainability and additive manufacturing is briefly reviewed. A life cycle assessment is then conducted to understand the environmental performance of a novel additive manufacturing process known as fast mask-image-projection based stereolithography (Fast MIP-SL). In Fast MIP-SL, projection light is patterned by a digital micromirror device as a mask image to selectively cure liquid photopolymer resin, and a two-way movement design is adopted to quickly recoat material. The cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment considers the impacts related to the curing of one resin type and the consumption of electricity in the production of parts of various geometries. Using the ReCiPe 2008 method (hierarchist weighting), it is found that damage to resource availability dominates ecosystems and human health damage types for each part assessed.Growing awareness and concern within society over the use of and reliance on fossil fuels has stimulated research efforts in identifying, developing, and selecting alternative energy sources and energy technologies. Bioenergy represents a promising replacement for conventional energy, due to reduced environmental impacts and broad applicability. Sustainable energy challenges, however, require innovative manufacturing technologies and practices to mitigate energy and material consumption. This research aims to facilitate sustainable production of bioenergy from forest biomass and to promote deployment of novel processing equipment (mobile bio-reflnery units). The study integrates knowledge from the renewable energy production and supply chain management disciplines to evaluate economic targets of bioenergy production with use of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The decision support system method employs two phases: (1) classification of potential biomass harvesting sites via decision tree analysis and (2) optimization of the supply network through a mixed integer linear programming model that minimizes the costs of upstream and midstream supply chain segments. While mobile units are shown to reduce biomass-to-bioenergy supply chain costs, production and deployment of the units is limited due to undeveloped bioenergy supply chains and quality uncertainty. It is reiterated that future research must address process-related and systemic issues in pursuit of sustainable energy technology development.Device and system design choices for solar energy conversion and storage approaches require holistic design guidelines which simultaneously respect and optimize technical, economic, sustainability, and operating time constraints. We developed a simulation platform which allows for the calculation of solar-to-hydrogen efficiency, hydrogen price, device manufacture and operation energy demand, and the component degradation and replacement time of photo-electrochemical water splitting devices. Utilizing this platform, we assessed 16 different design types representing all possible combinations of a system: (i) operating with or without irradiation concentration, (ii) utilizing high-performing and high-cost or low-performing but low-cost photoabsorbers, (iii) utilizing high-performing and high-cost or low-performing but low-cost electrocatalysts, and (iv) operating with or without current concentration between the photoabsorber and the electrocatalyst. Our results show that device types exist with a global optimum (a Pareto point), simultaneously maximizing efficiency, while minimizing cost and the energy demand of manufacture and operation. In our examples, these happen to be the device types utilizing high irradiation concentration, as well as expensive photoabsorbers and electrocatalysts. These device types and designs were the most robust to degradation, exhibiting the smallest price sensitivity for increasing degradation rates. Other device types did not show a global optimum, but rather a set of partially optimized designs, i.e. a Pareto front, requiring a compromise and prioritization of either performance, cost, or manufacture and operation energy demand. In our examples, these happen to be the device types using low-cost photoabsorbers. The targeted utilization of irradiation and current concentration predicted that even device types utilizing expensive components can provide competitive solutions to photo-electrochemical water splitting. The quantification of the influence of component degradation on performance allows the suggestion of best practice for device operational time and component replacement. The framework and findings presented here provide holistic design guidelines for photo-electrochemical devices, and support the decision-making process for an integral and practical approach to competitive solar hydrogen production in the future.Life cycle assessment (LCA) - a comprehensive modeling framework used to identify environmental and human health impacts associated with products, processes, and technologies - is increasingly recommended for emerging nanotechnologies. LCA applied prospectively can guide design decisions and enable reduction of future impacts. A growing literature describes the potential for LCA to inform development of safer nanotechnologies, for example by identifying the manufacturing inputs or processes with the greatest potential for improvement. However, few published studies to date include all life cycle stages in part because of uncertainty regarding engineered nanomaterial (ENM) releases and impacts, which precludes comprehensive environmental assessment of nano-enabled products. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) converts emissions into environmental damages through linked fate-exposure-effect models that require robust experimental data and a mechanistic understanding for each of these components. In the case of ENMs, there are pertinent knowledge gaps, high uncertainties in experimental data, and disagreement regarding the suitability of existing fate, exposure, and effect models. This frontier review summarizes recent advances in human and aquatic ecotoxicity LCIA for ENMs and calls for greater coordination between LCA modelers and experimentalists, including those that study fate and transport, environmental transformations, occupational exposure, and toxicology, to inform responsible development of nanotechnology, enabling ENMs to reach their full potential.In practice many multi-objective optimization problems relying on computationally expensive black-box model simulators of industrial processes have to be solved with limited computing time budget. In this context, this paper proposes and explores the uses of an iterative heuristic approach aiming at quickly providing a satisfactory accurate approximation of the Pareto front. The approach builds, in each iteration, a multi-objective nonlinear programming (MO-NLP) surrogate problem model using curve fitting of objectives and constraints. The approximated solutions of the Pareto front are generated by applying the "epsilon-constraint method to the multi-objective surrogate problem, converting it into a desired number of single objective (SO) NLP problems, for which mature and computationally efficient solvers exist. The proposed approach is applied to the cost versus life cycle assessment (LCA)-based environmental optimization of drinking water treatment chains. The paper thoroughly investigates various settings choices of the approach such as: the type of the polynomial function to be fit, the input points, choice of weights in curve fitting, and analytical fit. The numerical simulations results with the approach show that a good quality approximation of Pareto front can be obtained with a significantly smaller computational time than with the popular SPEA2 state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithm.The building sector represents one of the major sources of environmental impact due especially to space and domestic hot water heating and construction works. A number of studies focused so far on estimating the energy savings and carbon emissions reduction potential achievable by retrofitting urban building stocks, nevertheless a shift to life cycle assessment is needed to properly assess the environmental impacts in a more holistic way. The aim of this study is to develop a geospatial data model for the life cycle assessment of environmental impacts of building stocks at the urban scale. The methodology includes: geospatial processing of building-related data to characterize urban building stocks; a spatio-temporal database to store and manage data; life cycle assessment to estimate potential environmental impacts. The methodology was tested for a case study in Luxembourg and preliminary results regarding the retrofitting stage of residential buildings were provided for one entire city. The data model is part of a wider bottom-up framework being developed to support decision about building stock retrofitting for sustainable urban planning.This paper addresses the multi-objective constrained optimization of a drinking water production plant. It reports the successful coupling between the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm (SPEA2), which is a well-established multi-goal elitist metaheuristic global optimizer, and EVALEAU, which is a state-of-the-art process modelling - life cycle assessment (LCA) tool for simulation of potable water treatment chains. The paper assesses as well the pros and cons of using midpoint versus single score as environmental goal metrics in a decision making process based on very challenging multi-goal optimization of potable water treatment chains. The proposed approach is illustrated using the model of a real-world drinking water production plant.This paper describes a collaborative approach to ontology development for data qualification for life cycle assessment by taking into consideration the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Data Quality Indicator (DQI). The developed ontology is integrated with rule-based knowledge, to provide user-defined policies for LCI based on DQI. An ontology application management framework is developed to provide a collaborative environment for knowledge engineers and domain experts to define the knowledge explication and recommendation rules based on usage scenario. LCI data from agricultural domain is collected, and mapped to the knowledge base. To demonstrate the advantage of transformed rules, a scenario-based recommender system is built on top of the ontology, and carries out data quality measurement.Using ISO life cycle analysis and assessment methods, life cycle assessment (LCA) of anaerobic digestion of municipal waste for vehicle biogas production in Anyang was studied. Through the confirmation of the goal and scope, the inventory analysis and environment impact potential calculation were made to the vehicle biogas production process of anaerobic digestion of municipal waste. The results show that the maximum pollution emissions is in vehicle operation phase, and the maximum energy consumption is in vehicle biogas production phase, and the maximum contributions to environmental impact load is global warming, and the biogas generated by anaerobic digestion of municipal waste fully meets national standards for vehicle compressed natural gas. Finally According to life cycle inventory and environment impact assessment the analysis and suggestions were made to the city decision makersMaterial environment performance will become a basic performance of new materials in the 21stcentury, various environmental materials and the development of green products will become a dominant direction of the development of the material industry. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has developed into key tools of a system to evaluate the environmental impact of product whole life cycle process. In this paper, based on the LCA to evaluate and analysis the ecological environment material, and introduce the evaluation system and method of environmental materials and design principles.Since the year 1908 there has been research into the use alkali activated materials (AAM) in order to develop cementitious materials with similar properties to Ordinary Portland Cement. AAMs are considered green materials since their production and synthesis is not energy intensive. Even though AAMs have a high compressive strength, the average cost of production among other issues limits its feasibility. Previous research by the authors yielded a low cost AAM that uses mine tailings, wollastonite and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). This mortar has an average compressive strength of 50MPa after 28 days of curing. In this paper the software SimaPro was used to create a product base cradle to gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This compared the environmental impact of the AAM mortar to an Ordinary Portland Cement mortar (PCHM) with similar compressive strength. The main motivation for this research is the environmental impact of producing Ordinary Portland Cement as compared to alkali activated slag materials. The results of this LCA show that the Alkali Activated Material has a lower environmental impact than traditional Portland cement hydraulic mortar, in 10 out of 12 categories including Global Warming Potential, Ecotoxicity, and Smog. Areas of improvement and possible future work were also discovered with this analysis.Achieving a truly sustainable energy transition requires progress across multiple dimensions beyond climate change mitigation goals. This article reviews and synthesizes results from disparate strands of literature on the coeffects of mitigation to inform climate policy choices at different governance levels. The literature documents many potential cobenefits of mitigation for nonclimate objectives, such as human health and energy security, but little is known about their overall welfare implications. Integrated model studies highlight that climate policies as part of well-designed policy packages reduce the overall cost of achieving multiple sustainability objectives. The incommensurability and uncertainties around the quantification of coeffects become, however, increasingly pervasive the more the perspective shifts from sectoral and local to economy wide and global, the more objectives are analyzed, and the more the results are expressed in economic rather than nonmonetary terms. Different strings of evidence highlight the role and importance of energy demand reductions for realizing synergies across multiple sustainability objectives.Solar irradiation concentration is considered a viable strategy for reducing the energy and financial investment of photo-electrochemical hydrogen generation. We quantified and compared the sustainability benefit of this approach to non-concentrating and conventional approaches using life cycle assessment coupled to device performance modeling. We formulated design guidelines to reduce the environmental impact of a device. Model devices were composed of a concentrator module (with tracking, supporting, and framing components), photoabsorbers, membrane-separated electrocatalysts, and a cooling circuit. We selected eight concentrator types covering five concentrating technologies. For each device we studied the effect of the irradiation concentration ratio, electrode to photoabsorber area ratio, manufacturing requirements, incoming irradiance, and efficiency of components on sustainability utilizing two indices: (i) the energy yield ratio, and (ii) the greenhouse gas yield ratio. Both indices combine the performance of the system and its environmental impact. Two design guidelines were formulated based on the analysis: (i) any concentration-stable photoabsorber and electrocatalyst are equally feasible at concentrations larger than 55, as their performance prevails over their energy demand, and (ii) the system needs to be designed at an optimum concentration which depends on: performance, the relative surfaces of the photoabsorber and electrode, and irradiance. This study quantified and confirmed that concentrating solar irradiation has a beneficial effect on sustainability, energy yield, and greenhouse gas emissions compared to nonconcentrated approaches. This was true for all concentrating technologies investigated. Consequently, this study provides an eco-performance-based rationale to further pursue the research and development of concentrated photo-electrochemical devices.Cities are developing greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation plans and reduction targets on the basis of a growing body of knowledge about climate change risks, and changes to passenger transportation are often at the center of these efforts. Yet little information exists for characterizing how quickly or slowly GHG emissions reductions will accrue given changes in urban form around transit and whether benefits will accrue quickly enough to meet policy year targets (such as reaching 20% of 1990 GHG emissions levels by 2050). Achieving GHG reductions through integrated transportation and land use planning is even more complicated for cities because changes in emissions can occur across many sectors (such as transportation, building energy use, and electricity generation). With the use of the Los Angeles, California, Expo Line, a framework was developed to assess how financing schemes could affect the rate of building redevelopment and resulting life-cycle GHG emissions from travel and building energy use. The framework leveraged an integrated transportation and land use life-cycle assessment model that captured upfront construction of new development near transit and the long-term changes in household energy use for travel and buildings. The results show that for the same amount of development around the Expo Line, it is possible either to meet state GHG goals by 2050 (if aggressive redevelopment happens early) or not meet those goals by 2050 (if significant redevelopment does not start for decades). The time-based approach reveals how redevelopment schedules should be considered when strategies for meeting future GHG emissions targets are set.The Brazilian building sector does not have an organized and reliable database of sustainability indicators based on LCA - life-cycle assessment - that would allow for a comprehensive sustainability assessment of buildings. The aim of this research is to propose requirements and parameters to assist designers in taking into account sustainable performance, with respect to ISO 21.921-1: 2011 concepts, when selecting a building technology, for those situations in which an organized LCA database does not exist. The proposal also exemplifies an application of the sustainability requirements using the compensatory techniques of multi-criteria decision analysis. In addition, the paper discusses the identification of the stage of the building project in which technological selection must be conducted. Recommendations are based on a literature review of concepts, frameworks, methods and requirements of sustainability and on the consideration of sustainability requirements in building projects.Light Emitting Diodes (LED) lighting products require more reliable data to inform Life Cycle Assessment. Understanding why and when they fail under real operating conditions provides better data for this assessment contributing to: (1) understanding of how to extend its lifespan, (2) informing design recommendations to extend their lifespan and (3) reducing the total amount of waste produced by LED lighting products. This paper investigates the life span of LED lighting products under real operating conditions and explores the causes of failure or replacement of the products. The study consisted of close-ended questionnaires distributed to LED lighting product manufacturers and consumers in four EU countries. Out of 140 respondents of the questionnaire survey, 57 were manufacturing organizations and 83 were consumers. The results indicate that: (1) the causes of failure were primarily due to wear and tear of components, and changes in consumer requirements; (2) the consumers' survey showed that, the lifespan is 27,375 h in the best case scenario and 1460 h in the worst case scenario, indicating that the worst case scenarios can be substantially improved through proper use and maintenance, as well as selection of products with features to enhance the lifespan; (3) the manufacturers' survey showed that, the lifespan is 32,850 h in the best case scenario and 3650 h in the worst case scenario, indicating the need for better design and manufacturing guidelines to extend their lifespan. The paper concludes with recommendations for both manufacturers and consumers, based on a combined analysis of the survey data and a comprehensive literature review of recommendations to extend the lifespan of LED lighting products.An informal community has regularly organized annual conferences in Europe since 2007, on the connection between core commodities like materials and society and societal challenges: they are called SAM (Society and Materials). The approach is trans-and multi-disciplinary. Thus, sociologists, historians, architects, political scientists and policymakers, engineers, material scientists, life cycle community experts, business people and philosophers come together each year in cohorts of about 100 people from Europe, but also Asia, America and Africa, to give 30 to 40 presentations. They are made available on the SOVAMAT website (www.sovamat.org) and are published in journals like Revue de Metallurgie, Metallurgical Research & Technology and Materiaux et Techniques: Many kinds of materials are regularly discussed. Until today, the conferences have produced about 350 communications, many of which have been translated into peer-reviewed papers. These series of conferences were launched in order to address the complexity of technology evolution in the context of societal challenges. The intuition was that purely mono-disciplinary approaches would not be sufficient to address the future and that holistic methods like Life Cycle Analysis were still too narrowly focused to lead seamlessly to what was needed. Inviting separate communities to participate turned out to be quite popular and people have been coming back regularly and have attracted new players. The outcome is a mixture of disciplines speaking together, but also of practical proposals alongside methodological, meta-or ontological ones. With the hindsight of 10 years of practical experience, it is clear that the scientific agenda in terms of methodology, which was set at the beginning of the adventure, has been achieved. The paths followed were somewhat different, more empirical and more imaginative, than the initial vision of the organizers: a cluster of approaches was explored, which turned out to be richer than an improved version of LCA and MFA. Moreover, new issues have been raised, which make it likely that the initiative will continue indefinitely. This experience can probably help others find their way forward.Hexamethylenediamine (HMDA) is one of the key intermediates in the preparation of nylon 6-6 by polycondensation with adipic acid. Currently, the most used commercial process for HMDA manufacture proceeds via the hydrogenation of adiponitrile in ammonia, which is in turn produced by the hydrocyanation of butadiene. In this paper, we explore three alternative bio-based paths for HMDA production starting from high fructose syrup made from maize and potato-derived starch and using 5-(hydroxymethyl) furfural (HMF) as intermediate building block. Different routes have been compared using a combined economic and life-cycle assessment study including a sensitivity analysis on potential key parameters. Overall, our study reflects a higher economic benefit and a lower environmental impact of the benchmark fossilbased route. As for the environmental impact, the most advantageous of the three bio-based routes could present benefits in terms of CO2 footprint when the carbon sink is taken into account, but at the expense of a higher impact on terrestrial, marine and freshwater eutrophication. Possible process improvements to make bio-based routes affordable for HMDA production are proposed as an attempt to draw general rules for process eco-design.Thailand is currently the world's leader in para-rubber wood furniture exports, contributing revenue to the country of more than $1 billion US annually. However, the life cycle of para-rubber wood production causes environmental impact in multiple ways. This research aims to investigate the environmental impact and eco-efficiency of the para-rubber wood industry. The life cycle inventory of such is gathered from more than 60% of the entire para-rubber cultivation areas in Thailand, which can be considered as the national database. Five gate-to-gate procedures are included in this assessment, namely plantation, felling, mill saw, finger joint, and lamination. The life cycle impacts of 15 products are assessed on a cradle-to-gate basis with SimaPro 7.3.2 applied to characterize five impact categories, including global warming potential, abiotic depletion potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, and ozone depletion potential. The eco-efficiency level of each process is calculated and compared. According to this study, emission sources of the industry can be pointed to the activities in each life cycle step: direct emission, fertilizer production, chemical production, biomass fuel production, fossil fuel production, transport fuel production, and electricity. As a result, plantations exhibit the most eco-efficiency while the mill saw is the step that possesses the highest potential to be enhanced to the highest eco-efficiency. A potential to move onto a higher level in terms of felling and the finger-joint process is virtually impossible.Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been recognized as a suitable tool for efficiency assessment of the economic and environmental performance of multiple similar units in the agri-food sector. In the present study, DEA methodologies were applied to 55 winter wheat farms in three farm sizes in Poland to benchmark the level of operational efficiency for each producer. Next, the potential reduction in the consumption levels of inputs were defined, and the environmental profits linked to these reduction targets were calculating. Our results indicate that 55% of the analysed farms operated efficiently. The technical efficiency scores of inefficient farms were 0.72 for small farms and 0.84 for medium and large ones. The production of 1 kg winter wheat results with average greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 0.448, 0.481, and 0.411 kg CO2 eq. per kg of grain, for small, medium, and large farms, respectively. The performed analysis shows that GHG emissions per hectare depend on farm size and ranged from 2,378 kg CO2 eq. for the small farms to 2,759 kg CO2 eq. for large farms The reduction of material input in inefficient farms, converted into environmental gains, resulted in GHG emissions reduction of 25.7, 29.0, and 28.6% for small, medium, and large farms, respectively. The estimated potential reduction of global warming potential (GWP) according to the DEA for the whole sample ranged from 7 to 18%, and was dependent on farm size. The major contributor to GWP was nitrous oxide field emissions (49-52%), followed by nitrogen fertilizer (31-33%), and diesel (11-13%). Raising operational efficiency is recommended for potential environmental improvement in the surveyed region.Biodiesel, which comprises fatty acid esters, is derived from different sources, such as vegetable oils from palm, sunflower, soybean, canola, Jatropha, and cottonseed sources, animal fats, and waste cooking oil. Biodiesel is considered as an alternative fuel for diesel engines. However, biodiesel has poor cold flow behavior (i.e., high cloud point & pour point) and oxidation stability compared with petroleum diesel because of the presence of saturated and unsaturated fatty acid esters. Consequently, the performance of biodiesel during cold weather is affected. When biodiesel is oxidized, the subsequent dregs can adversely affect the performance of the fuel system as well as clog the fuel filter, fuel lines, and injector. This phenomenon results in start-up and operability problems. Cold flow behavior is usually assessed through the pour point (PP), cloud point (CP), and cold filter plugging point (CFPP). Earlier studies on cold flow focused on reducing the devastating effect of poor cold flow problems, such as lowering the PP, CP, and CFPP of biodiesel. This present paper provides an overview of the cold flow behavior and oxidation stability of biodiesel, as well as their effect on the engine operation system. The improvements on the behavior of cold flow of biodiesel are also discussed.Advancements in building materials and technology have led to the rapid development of various design solutions. At the same time, life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) of such solutions have become a great burden to engineers and project managers. To help conduct LCA and LCCA conveniently, this study (i) analyzed the information needed to conduct LCA and LCCA, (ii) evaluated a way to obtain such information in an easy and accurate manner using a building information modeling tool, and (iii) developed an Excel spreadsheet-based framework that allowed for the simultaneous implementation of LCA and LCCA. The framework developed for LCA and LCCA was applied to a real building case to evaluate three possible alternatives for an external skin system. The framework could easily and accurately determine which skin system had good properties in terms of the LCA and LCCA performance. Therefore, these results are expected to assist in decision making based on the perspectives of economic and environmental performances in the early phases of a project, where various alternatives can be created and evaluated.In life-cycle assessments of roadway infrastructure projects, the significant amount of energy consumed during the use phase has been largely ignored when decisions related to roadway construction and rehabilitation have been evaluated. Traffic congestion, pavement types, and surface roughness conditions affect energy consumption throughout the use phase. This study developed an integrated modeling framework that accounted for the effects of pavement roughness degradation on estimated energy consumption for freeways and other restricted access highways, considering vehicle types and traffic growth, as well as congestion Patterns. The framework was achieved through three interdependent modules: Module 1 estimated vehicle specific power (VSP) by relating the International Roughness Index (IRI) of pavements to coefficients used in the Environmental Protection Agency's motor vehicle emission simulator, Module 2 used the state-of-the-art cell transmission model to predict traffic evolution and congestion on the freeway and determined the total vehicle miles traveled at a spectrum of speed ranges, and Module 3 estimated energy consumption from an IRI profile, VSP coefficients, and traffic speed miles profile. A case study confirmed that IRI and congestion had significant impacts on estimates of energy consumption during the use phase. The study showed that ignoring IRI variation or traffic congestion could lead to underestimations in VSP by up to 2.5% and energy consumption by approximately 6%.Beijing is experiencing a shortage of water resources. Its rapid development and dense population have caused an extreme demand for water. This study quantifies the water footprint of Beijing at the sectoral level using a modified input-output model and estimates the impacts of freshwater use by life cycle impact assessment. The results suggest that the main water source of Beijing industries is groundwater, which is quite different from the main use of surface water in China. By coupling the input-output model with the eco-indicator 99 method, the environmental impact of the water footprint was quantified. The results show those sectors that introduced severe impacts in 2002 and continued to make large impacts in the following 5 years; the major impact of water use is resource depletion. In addition, the inconsistency of the eco-indicator points and the eco-indicator index of sectors leads us to control sectors with large eco-indicator points and develop those with small eco-indicator indexes. Furthermore, a regional comparison was conducted using the eco-scarcity method and verified that Beijing is under severe water pressure, with a value ranked fifth nationally. We conclude that the control of groundwater use and the externalization of local water pressure should be prioritized in water management in Beijing.In various manufacturing processes, metalworking fluids (MWFs) are applied to ensure workpiece quality, to reduce tool wear, and to improve process productivity. The specific chemical composition of an applied MWF should be strongly dependent on the scope of application. Even small changes of the MWF-composition can influence the performance of MWFs in manufacturing processes considerably. Besides defined variations of the composition, the MWF-chemistry furthermore changes over the service life of the fluid. This paper presents the current state of the art regarding the assumed working mechanisms of MWFs including the effects of desired and undesired changes of the MWF properties. (C) 2015 CIRP.We conduct a comparative life cycle assessment of two business card options: a smartphone software and the common paperbased alternative. Life cycle impacts of production, distribution and use of business cards were compared and contrasted for both systems. Given the prevalence and multifunctionality of digital devices and services, we analyze the environmental impacts of the two systems and evaluate their total energy consumption, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and toxic releases by conducting a two-stage life cycle assessment with alternating functional units. The results indicate that, for a small-scale functional unit, the paper-based business card system causes slightly less environmental impact and has lower energy demand than the software-based (digital) business card system. Whereas when considering the more likely, large scale (real world scenario) functional unit, the digital business card system is more environmentally friendly and economical in terms of energy consumption. By comparing these two systems, this paper serves businesses and consumers when considering environmental consequences and energy depletion of their business networking options. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creavativecommons.org/licesses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program ChairsShipbuilding industry is one of the oldest and most complex production and transportation methods. Merchant and military ships had significant importance throughout the history for both transportation of humans and goods. Due to its great carrying capacity, shipping is still the most important transportation method. Besides the uncountable benefits, ships have a considerable role on both human health and environment. Due to the combustion techniques, various operations and heavy fossil fuels, ships can produce remarkable amounts of solid, liquid and gaseous emissions. These emissions have serious effects on the environment, and it is predicted that the effects will increase in the near future. In order to prevent these effects, emission estimation techniques are very important. Through these methods, the emission amounts can be calculated, and thus, estimations for future can be realized. In this study, the harmful effects and previous studies on emission estimation methods are investigated. Using the annual cruise data, annual emission footprint is calculated of three different cargo ships. The emission density of the different routes is also calculated. Some formulas are obtained according to the estimation methods, characteristic principal dimensions of ships. These formulas can be used in order to estimate ships' emission footprints by using the information of ships' routes and main dimensions. The developed formulas provide estimation, even during the pre-design.This study analyzed the case of manufacturing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) using as raw material biopolymers produced from ethanol from sugar cane, known as green polypropylene, produced since 2008 by BRASKEM. This article studied the PPE for the employee's head protection, named helmet by NR 6, which is used in situations of exposure to weather and work scenarios in places where there is risk of impact from falling or projecting objects, burns, electric shock, and solar radiation. The MSA, green helmet manufacturer, made an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere by comparing the two manufacturing processes of the helmet shell, covering the January 1 to December 31, 2011 period. It concluded that the sustainable helmet (green polyethylene and pigments) robs 231g of CO2 from the atmosphere per produced unit, while the helmet's production with traditional raw materials (polyethylene and petrochemical pigments) found that, for each unit produced, 1029g of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere. The study showed that substitution of raw materials has led to reduction in the impact generated in the helmets' production.Malaysia is the second largest palm oil producer in the world. Palm oil production contributes to 6.4% of its gross national income and is important to the socio-economic growth of the country. Palm oil is cheap, high-yield and versatile in various applications. However, the Malaysian palm oil industries are facing enormous challenges due to environmental criticism from pressure groups, green consumerism and increasingly stringent sustainability criterion of importing countries. As a result, various assessment methods have been applied to assess the sustainability performance of palm oil production in Malaysia. This paper reviews how the stakeholders define sustainable palm oil, the effectiveness of existing sustainability assessment through tools (e.g. LCA), standards (e.g. ISPO, ISCC) and legislative requirements (RFS2, REDcert) to identify gaps and barriers to achieve environmental, economic and social objectives of sustainable palm oil production. The gaps and barriers identified would be the basis for developing a holistic framework to attain sustainable palm oil production in Malaysia. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Developments in sustainability assessment tools are leading to an increased interest in sustainability assessment for products and services. Several sustainability measurement tools and frameworks have been developed. However, most of these tools only focus on environmental considerations while some of the frameworks only focus on governmental progress. In this paper, a comprehensive framework for assessing sustainability is presented. During framework development, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and fuzzy logic approach was applied. LCA determined the sustainability parameters and estimated the potential environmental impact from the membrane product. Next, the fuzzy logic approach was applied to deal with the qualitative and quantitative data. The proposed framework focuses on the evaluation of membrane products. However, the proposed framework can be adopted for other related products. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.VSustainable manufacturing is creation of manufactured products through economically-sound processes that minimize negative environmental impacts while conserving energy and natural resources. Sustainable manufacturing also enhances employee, community, and product safety. In order to adapt sustainable Manufacturing concepts, it is essential to plan and decide from a product design and development stage as it has been revealed that 80% of sustainability impacts from the product are decided in the product design and development stage. In modern day Products Design and manufacturing it is always advantages to have complete knowledge of the Life Cycle of the Product. If Life cycle information is available for the designers, it will be easy for them to take many decisions related to specially the environmental performance or eco efficiency which is one of the emerging marketing tools. Further, with the full knowledge of the product life cycle, new / existing products can be designed / redesigned based on eco-design principals or environmentally friendly manner, thereby to improve the material and energy efficiency during the manufacturing and user phases and finally will have better environmental performances. The product life cycle and Eco design are two key techniques used in Sustainable Manufacturing specially these will enable to convert any existing product or process to be competitive in the market by better environmental performances and quality while minimizing manufacturing cost beside with better environmental performances. These issues prevail mainly since there is no such systematic approach towards Product Design and Development among the many manufacturers. Since Sustainable Manufacturing Concept applicable for all major phases of the product Life cycle, it is essential to co-relate life cycle assessment outcomes with product design and development process. However, there are numerous decisions needed to take into account at different stages of product design and development process. Therefore, in this research, a decision support model is developed based on LCA and Eco Design concepts. The developed model has been validated with few existing product decision and development processes. The results shows that significant number of issues and potential improvements to the existing design and development processes can be taken from the proposed model and that will leads to many sustainability options to the whole product life cycle than what is persist presently. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Many manufacturing companies recognise the need to produce products that are cleaner, greener, and environmentally sustainable, yet they are only at the early stages of this transition in addressing the symptoms of unsustainability at their direct operations by reducing waste and the use of energy, water and material. The implementation of reductions in these areas can be disparate and minimal given the life cycle of a product. Bridging the gap between the rhetoric of sustainable manufacturing and reality requires a holistic, systems thinking approach to ensure the implementation of sustainability is unified and strategic. This paper presents a novel environmentally sustainable manufacturing framework that encompasses energy, water, waste, biodiversity, and people & community. It adopts a systems thinking perspective to address the factories 'environmental life cycle impact to deliver factory and supply chain benefits. The insights from the application at a Nestle confectionery factory are reported.Cutting machine tools have a significant impact on manufacturing and sustainability. There exist a large number of outdated cutting machine tools especially in developing and emerging countries which are still taking a considerable share in global value creation. Furthermore, an increasing trend in field of reuse, retrofitting and upgrading can be observed. For Life-Cycle-Assessment and analyses of end-of-life behavior of such machine tools in context of sustainability, reliable values for energy consumption and machining efficiency under realistic machining conditions are indispensable. In the present paper the energy consumption and machining efficiency of an exemplary outdated milling machine have been measured and analyzed under consideration of different influences such as process parameter, machining material and ratio of prim time to secondary time. Additionally a comparison between a newer and the outdated milling machine has been carried out in order to identify and quantify possible improvement potentials of outdated machine tool concerning energy consumption and machining efficiency. Based on obtained results more accurate and realistic decision can be made by enterprises who aim to promote sustainable manufacturing. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Product services systems (PSS) provide a promising opportunity for industries to propose both prosper and eco-friendly solutions to fulfill consumer needs. By shifting from traditional offer, comprised of physical products, to an integrated solution of product and services, it is assumed that PSS may reduce the environmental impact and provide benefits for the PSS provider and the consumer in economic and social ways. However, sustainability is not intrinsic characteristic of PSS. Operational methods and tools are needed to help companies develop such business models and support customer choices relating to PSS contracts. Although there are already well established assessment methods in literature, such as Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing, there is still a lack of evidences from the particular field of PSS. Further on, most of existing methods and tools dealing with PSS assessment are based on qualitative parameters, which are subjective and hard to evaluate, and do not provide detailed views of the results. This paper analyses this piece of literature (i.e. relating to PSS assessment) to emphasize similarities and differences between available methods and tools. The aim is to identify the issues underpinning the development of methods for sustainable design in the particular case of PSS. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The ambition of this action research is to construct and experiment a partial transition of a company's business model from sales to renting for small household equipment for B-to-C market. Our paper aims at presenting this project and the development of a transdisciplinary method for sustainability assessment from the perspective of the sociology of the organization, life cycle assessment, management and design. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.IPSS are popular in different fields of transport, mainly for personal use (car-sharing, bike-sharing). Their usage in urban goods transport is not still generalized but those systems present a good potential. This paper proposed to assess and analyze four different scenarios for urban goods transport to compare IPSS configurations to a business as usual situation, in terms of environmental impacts. Those impacts will be estimated via a life cycle analysis (LCA) method. First, the four scenarios are presented. The first scenario is the reference one, i.e. the business as usual situation. The other three scenarios represent possible IPSS configuration, i.e. a vehicle leasing system, a vehicle sharing system and an urban consolidation system. Second, the methodology for scenario assessment using LCA is described, and the main proposed indicators defined. Third, the main results of the scenario assessment are presented, analyzed and discussed. Finally, future researches are proposed. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Research in Advanced Biofuels steadily developed during recent years. A number of highly innovative technologies have been explored at various scale: among these, lignocellulosic ethanol and CTO (Crude Tall Oil)-biofuel technologies already achieved the early-commercial status, while hydrotreating of vegetable oils (HVO, or HEFA) can be considered today fully commercial. However, despite the level of innovation in each specific technological process under consideration, the feedstock maintains a central role in making a biofuel chain really sustainable. In this context, microalgae grown in salt-water and arid areas offers a considerable opportunity for advanced biofuel production: at the same time, however, they also represent a considerable challenge. Processing microalgae in an economic way into a viable and sustainable liquid biofuel (a low-cost mass-produced product) is not trivial. So far, the main attention has been given to cultivating the microorganism, accumulating lipids, extracting the oil, valorising co-products, and treating the algae oil into biodiesel (through esterification) or HEFA (Hydrotreated Esthers and Fatty Acids), this second one representing a very high quality biofuels, almost a drop-in fuel (suitable either for road transport or for aviation), which production exceed 2 Mt y-1 today. However, extracting the algae oil at low cost and at industrial scale is not yet a full industrial mature process, and the still limited market size of algae-to-biofuels makes difficult the development of industrial-scale systems. Nevertheless, another option can be considered, i. e. processing the whole algae into dedicated thermochemical reactors, thus approaching the downstream processing of algae in a completely different way from separation. The present work examines the possible routes for thermochemical conversion of microalgae, distinguishing between dry-processes (namely pyrolysis and gasification) and wet-processes (near critical water hydrothermal liquefaction and hydrothermal gasification). Typical expected elementary composition of major products is given. Main peculiarities of batch versus continuous processing are also discussed from an engineering point of view. Major engineering advantages and challenges in thermochemically conversion of algae are identified and discussed, in view of the production of a transport biofuel. Finally, future perspectives for each route are given in terms of current and expected technological readiness level. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The remarkable US growth of shale gas and the associated decrease in the US natural gas prices has catalysed an increasing interest of shale gas resource exploration in other areas of the world. Commercial drilling operations have not yet commenced, but exploration is taking place in some European countries, including the UK. Major environmental concerns, regarding the amount and the handling method of the emissions associated with hydraulic fracturing, the disposal of waste water and the low well productivity, have pushed some countries to ban exploration and trials. We contextualized the shale gas extraction to the UK condition where the estimate of recoverable gas has made the debate on shale gas highly interesting. We used the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and estimated the environmental burden of shale gas production, processing and distribution at low pressure to the consumer. In this paper we have reported the detailed hot spot analysis of the impact of shale gas on the watersheds. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper investigates environmental impacts of high pressure alkaline water electrolysis systems. An advanced system with membranes on polymer basis is compared to a state-of-the-art system with asbestos membranes using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. For the advanced system, a new improved membrane technology has been investigated within the EU research project "ELYGRID". Results indicate that most environmental impacts are caused by the electricity supply necessary for operation. During the construction phase cell stacks are the main contributor to environmental impacts. New improved membranes have relatively small contributions to impacts caused by cell construction within the advanced systems. As main outcome the systems comparison illustrates a better ecological performance of the new developed system. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The Rio +20 conference in 2012 confirmed not only the sustainability concept as the new development goal but also introduced the green economy as its implementation strategy and the life cycle assessment (LCA) as one of its analysis tools to reveal the current production and consumption patterns which affect human well-being. Human well-being therefore has to be defined. We describe human well-being using the capability approach of Amartya Sen. Current production and consumption patterns have an influence on human well-being, on people's functioning and capabilities. Consumption patterns alter and the energy sector is in Germany at the centre of that process. Renewable energy technologies are seen as instruments for a transformation of the energy system, causing non-renewable (mineral) resources such as the rare earth elements to be of high significance for the transformation. To analyse social conditions (human well-being) throughout the life cycle of the product we focused on five major functionings (welfare basis, health & safety, social participation, democracy & freedom, decent life) and assigned 24 impact issues to them to enable an assessment of the social effects of the rare earth production along the whole process chain. The analysis of social impacts of the production of the rare earth elements using S-LCA is developed to illustrate the connection between the S-LCA and the capability approach-Amartya Sen's concept of human well-being. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Many researchers have investigated the energy consumption and CO2 emission of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in China. Their studies show that BEVs will not be able to deliver a meaningful decrease in CO2 emissions because coal is the overwhelming power source. This study take the Tsinghua-LCAM module, which is a life-cycle analysis tool based on the GREET plat form, to exam the energy consumption and CO2 emission at Well-to-Tank (WTT) stage, and adopt different type of drivetrain technologies of BEVs to analyze the fuel economy at Tank-to-Wheels (TTW) stage. Amongst the results, the life cycle fossil consumption and CO2 emission of BEVs are lower than that of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) with fuel consumption of 5 L/100km in China. With the improvement of upstream coal power generation efficiency and the rise of the contribution of cleaner electricity, BEVs show more rapid decreases in life cycle fossil consumption and CO2 emissions over time than that of ICEVs. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Carbon dioxide emission is an important parameter for indication of environmental impact of an industrial process. For a process that has known product capacity or revenue information, an Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) model can be applied to estimate the carbon dioxide emission. Due to the difficulty in obtaining such information for many industries, a simple linear correlation was developed using data obtained from applying EIO-LCA model on certain known processes in conjunction with the land area information obtained by ArcGIS, a geographic information software program. Jurong Island, an industrial park housing more than 100 companies in Singapore is chosen as the case study site. Carbon dioxide emission from different industrial sectors in Jurong Island were also compared. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The rapid advancement of the global optical disc industry results from systematic changes during the product life cycles of digital audio-visual technology. Compact discs (CD) and Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) sales reached record highs in 2004 and 2006 respectively, and the markets continue to shrink as CDs, DVDs, and related consumer electronic products have entered the mature stage of development following the entry of Blu-ray Disc(TM) (BD) products. This research explores the history, evolution, and systematic innovation driven by consumer demands for these products. The research provides a life cycle analysis of technology and market trends for the optical disc industry. Logistic curves are used to model the patent statistics and market values of DVD and BD technologies to document data trends from the mid-1990s till now. The results show that BD technology patent filings rapidly reached the decline point two years after DVD technology matured. The results also show that systematic innovation of optical disc technology is consumer demand driven with BD technology forecasted to replace DVDs in a very short period of time. Technology and market growth curves are used to model the entry times of DVDs and BDs into the mature stage of the product life cycle. The patent based forecasts indicate that new DVD entrants should be cautious since there will be decreasing economic benefits as the new BD technologies gain popularity and market share. The most valuable contribution of this research is the use of the quantitative logistic analytic techniques for technology forecasting incorporating both patent and marketing data. The methodology enables the integrated analysis of technology and marketing intelligence and can be applied to other industry domains and assist the allocation of research funding in their systematic innovation development.This paper aims at quantifying the lifecycle environmental impacts of the poly silicon-made solar cells. The environmental profile of the entire lifecycle of solar cells was firstly established from the input-output inventory data through literature reviews and previous studies. Then based on BEPAS (Building Environment Performance Analysis System), the data was classified, characterized and conveyed to a single WTP (willingness-to-pay) value. In addition, a contrastive analysis with thermal power generation was implemented, and the result reveals that the environmental impacts of generating the same amount of power by solar cells is only a quarter of the thermal power.This paper presents the Renewable Energy Decision Making Model, and applies it to a case study of a Hydrogen Bus Fleet. The model intends to aid users who are planning small scale renewable energy projects during the decision making phase in order to identify if the entire lifecycle of the project is sustainable economically, environmentally and socially. This Renewable Energy Decision Making Model incorporates the Triple Bottom Line approach utilizing a combination of three different analyses: After Tax Analysis, Streamlined Life Cycle Analysis, and Stakeholder Analysis. The results of the model are beneficial to decision makers in that they will show the level of sustainability by indicating negative or positive impacts of a proposed renewable project. Further, it allows for alterations to the design, during the planning phase to improve the sustainability of the project. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Life cycle assessment (LCA) considers the whole life cycle of a product or process, from the origin of the raw materials up to the final disposition of the wastes. In this work, LCA methodology was applied in the evaluation of the environmental impact that is caused by the use of alumina nanoparticles as an additive in biodiesel/diesel blends, considering the synthesis of the alumina nanoparticles through sol-gel method. SIMAPRO software (CML method) was used to evaluate the potential impacts of each stage of the process. Although the use of the nanoparticles caused a reduction in the emissions of CO2, SO2 and particulate material (PM); an increase in most of the impact categories (acidification, eutrophication and marine eco-toxicity) was observed during combustion. This can be attributed to the increasing emissions of NOx and the toxic effect related to the synthesis of the nanoparticles, when compared to combustion without nano-additive. These results indicated that there is a need to carry further research on the use of nanoadditives in biofuels, to verify the renewability of these alternatives regarding the sustainability of the process.In this study, a detailed economic analysis is combined with an ecological analysis of electricity storage systems. On the economic side, a "Levelized Cost of Storage (LCOS)" analysis is conducted, which assesses the cost of stored electricity. The LCOS is determined for a specific case of a private household in combination with a PV system. On the ecological side a "Life Cycle Assessment" (LCA) is used to calculate the environmental impact of electricity storage as well as the CO2 abatement costs. In the parameterized LCA the energy generation process used to feed the storage system, the material and the energy demand during the life cycle of the storage options is considered. With the parameterized LCA approach, the ecologically most rational storage systems can be identified. Results show that PV storage systems at household level are an environmental friendly option to increase the self-consumption and will be economically attractive in about ten years. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Increasing renewable energy generation influences the reliability of electric power grids. Thus, there is a demand for new technical units providing ancillary grid services. Intermittent renewable energy sources can be balanced by energy storage devices, especially battery storage systems. By battery systems grid efficiency and reliability as well as power quality can be increased. A further characteristic of battery systems is the ability to respond rapidly and precisely to frequency deviations, making them technical ideal candidates for primary control provision (PCP). PCP by battery systems is applied in form of positive (discharge mode) and negative control (charge mode) and can reduce must-run capacity of fossil power plants. In this study environmental impacts of PCP by novelLi-ion large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are compared to impacts of PCP by state-of-the-art coal power plants (CPPs) using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. An inventory of all relevant inputs (resources, material and energy flows) and outputs (emissions, wastes and waste water) is compiled. Environmental impacts associated with these inputs and outputs are evaluated. Finally, PCP by BESSs and fossil power plants are compared in terms of environmental performance. Different scenarios are analyzed by varying sensitive parameters like efficiency loss due to PCP at fossil power plants and required must-run capacity for PCP. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Life-cycle analysis (LCA) allows the scientific community to identify the sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of novel routes to produce renewable fuels. Herein, we integrate LCA into our investigations of a new route to produce drop-in diesel/jet fuel by combining furfural, obtained from the catalytic dehydration of lignocellulosic pentose sugars, with alcohols that can be derived from a variety of bio- or petroleum-based feedstocks. As a key innovation, we developed recyclable transition-metal-free hydrotalcite catalysts to promote the dehydrogenative cross-coupling reaction of furfural and alcohols to give high molecular weight adducts via a transfer hydrogenation- aldol condensation pathway. Subsequent hydrodeoxygenation of adducts over Pt/NbOPO4 yields alkanes. Implemented in a Brazilian sugarcane biorefinery such a process could result in a 53-79% reduction in life-cycle GHG emissions relative to conventional petroleum fuels and provide a sustainable source of low carbon diesel/jet fuel.Due to environmental and geopolitical reasons, the need for substitution of fossil fuels with renewable alternatives in industry is augmenting. The main objective was to assess environmental impacts of "cradle-to-gate" brick production stages and to evaluate the effect of fuel substitution and variation of electricity mix on the impact. Scenarios with natural gas, bio-methane, first and second generation bio-fuels used as the fuels in industrial furnace were studied. Scenarios were analyzed using "ReCiPe" and "EcoIndicator' 99" impact assessment methods. Results show that environmental impact can be reduced by circa 50 % when natural gas is substituted with bio-methane or second generation bio-fuel. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Having summarized cold chain logistics concept, characteristic of our country and analyzed the refrigerating transportation facilities and means of inside and outside. Describes the relationship between the environment and the application of thermal storage materials research, environmental regenerator material and cold chain logistics process, and application life cycle assessment (LCA) of content, technical framework for applications of thermal storage materials for a full range of analysis, the conclusion that regenerator material environment has a very important role and impact on the sustainable development of cold chain logistics conclusions.This chapter describes the process of change of attitude towards sustainability and its consequences for manufacturing and logistics industries. It was recognized that sustainable production strategies are dependent upon policies, regulations and green demand. This chapter summarizes environmental initiatives used by manufacturers and logistics service providers. The target was the identification of initiatives realized in this field. Part of the chapter contains terms connected with sustainability, supply chains and others. The literature review was intended to show the theoretical background, to define several terms, and describe details of potential effects of solutions and practices. There is also description of policy and regulation initiatives, description of green production and green supply chain, the environmental impacts of different industries and transport, and also identification of main sources of pollution. There are also many examples showing impacts of regulations on industry. Environmental and sustainable operations realized in supply chains demonstrate a high level of complexity. Final part of the chapter presents a set of practices connected with environmental decision making. They match the broad range of processes and operations realized in manufacturing and logistics industries.For aggregates as for most engineering materials, standards have been written by engineers. And engineers are first of all concerned with technical requirements. However, in the future, probably the environmentalists will take over much of the standardisation work. And they will focus on environmental impact and sustainability. Already we see an increasing awareness from society when it comes to the exploration, quarrying, production and use of mineral resources: The non-renewable character of the resources; the environmental impact on neighbourhood and nature; the conflicts of interest versus preservation, groundwater, agriculture and building areas; sustainability concerning mass balance and deposition of surplus sizes; and not least-the increasing transport lengths required to get the materials to the places of use. Actions should be taken to meet these challenges by following up the principles of a Best Available Concept (BAC), as suggested in the EU project EcoServe. This concept works with four essential phases: (1) Inventory and planning, (2) Quarrying and production, (3) Use of aggregates in construction, and finally (4) Reclamation of mined-out areas. LCC (Life Cycle Cost) and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) tools should be used to compare alternatives and calculate/foresee the environmental as well as economic consequences of choices and decisions.Underground Thermal Energy Storage (UTES) systems are used to buffer the seasonal difference between heat and cold supply and demand and, therefore, represent an interesting option to conserve energy. Even though UTES are considered environmental friendly solutions they are not completely free of impacts on the environment in general and the subsurface in particular. In order to improve the understanding and knowledge on the environmental performance of UTES techniques, this study performed a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on two different UTES systems: Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) and Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES).There is a great significance to analyze carbon footprint of iron-making process and to reduce its environmental impact since iron-making enterprises generate massive greenhouse gas. In this paper, the environmental impact type referred to Global Warming Potential was applied to analyze the carbon footprint and environmental impact for each production process in iron-making enterprise based on life cycle assessment. Blast furnace process has the largest contribution in carbon footprint, followed by sintering process. According to the analysis, seven carbon emission reduction projects were carried out in series. Afterwards, the LCA was used to evaluate the environmental benefits by seven projects.Method of life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to compare the environmental impacts of biological filter process and SBR process in two wastewater treatment plants which effluent quality reach to the same standard. Nine types of environmental impacts were constructed by using Gabi 5.0 software. After considered water reuse, the results indicate that marine aquatic toxicity potential (MAETP) of two plants contribute most which value is 3.69E-13 and 2.04E-13 respectively; Ozone depletion potential (ODP) can be negligible when compared with other impacts.This study intends to quantify the energy consumption and environmental emissions in the entire life cycle of a scroll compressor produced in a Chinese factory and to determine the stage with the largest environmental impact. The results show that energy consumption, CO2 and dust are three predominant impacts along with the entire life cycle of the compressor. The usage process in the compressor life cycle consumes the maximum energy and brings about the largest environmental impacts, followed by raw material acquisition and components manufacturing.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the existing barriers to the slow adoption of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in construction, and the main responsible actors. Design/methodology/approach - The research design is based on a two-phase approach. First, the existing literature was studied through a multiple-step content analysis (CA) approach, which combined unsupervised concept mapping with computer aided CA. Using a relational CA approach, statistical-based analysis tools were initially used to identify the relationships between actors and barriers. Later, a Delphi study was administered to a panel of experts, to triangulate, validate, and refine the initial results. Findings - The study revealed that organizational culture is the most relevant barrier, and that clients and professionals are the actors that predominantly influence the adoption of LCC and LCA in projects. Technical and financial barriers, such as the lack and quality of input data and the high costs of implementation are also deemed relevant. Research limitations/implications - The CA was performed by a single rater on a sample that included 50 papers in English language. Future research may focus on enlarging the sample, extending it to other languages, and linking the source (or the expert) to their professional context to evaluate geographical differences in barriers. Originality/value - The adopted approach gives new insights on the relationships behind the rejection of LCA and LCC suggesting that solutions at the organizational level may be more effective than technical ones.Managing waste is becoming more challenging than ever with the rate of increase of the global population and industrialization. The need for an optimal waste management system, offering added value to the population and industrial growth, is of utmost importance with the increase in energy and food demand, particularly that for organically grown food. In this study, waste generated by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) was taken as a case study. The waste was converted to electricity and compost for use on farmland and the environmental effect of both processes was determined by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach using GaBi (TM) software. The impacts analyzed were based on the level of emissions from each process. During the comparison, it was found that, if the waste generated by the UTM were used to generate electricity, the outcome would be a reduced emissions profile throughout the cycle as compared to using the waste as compost. However, the saving in emissions from indirect inputs was not considered for the purpose of this study. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Residential buildings play prominent role in sustainable development and environmental impacts. Therefore, the aim of this paper is using the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to assess the environmental impacts of the Egyptian typical residential building. SimaPro V8.1 was used in the analysis under ISO 14040 standards. Results show that the main contributor to all other environmental impacts are mainly those related to energy use in the operational/use stage contributing by (71.9%). On the other hand, the disposal scenarios provide positive environmental impacts by (-12.1%). Further possible measures to enhance the environmental impacts are mentioned in the paper conclusions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry were first published in 1998 and provide a framework that has been adopted not only by chemists, but also by design practitioners and decision-makers (e.g., materials scientists and regulators). The development of the Principles was initially motivated by the need to address decades of unintended environmental pollution and human health impacts from the production and use of hazardous chemicals. Yet, for over a decade now, the Principles have been applied to the synthesis and production of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) and the products they enable. While the combined efforts of the global scientific community have led to promising advances in the field of nanotechnology, there remain significant research gaps and the opportunity to leverage the potential global economic, societal and environmental benefits of ENMs safely and sustainably. As such, this tutorial review benchmarks the successes to date and identifies critical research gaps to be considered as future opportunities for the community to address. A sustainable material design framework is proposed that emphasizes the importance of establishing structure-property-function (SPF) and structure-property-hazard (SPH) relationships to guide the rational design of ENMs. The goal is to achieve or exceed the functional performance of current materials and the technologies they enable, while minimizing inherent hazard to avoid risk to human health and the environment at all stages of the life cycle.Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) can be produced through a variety of synthesis routes with differing mechanisms, inputs, yields, reaction conditions, and resulting size distributions. Recent work has focused on applying green chemistry and sustainable manufacturing principles to nanomaterial synthesis, with the goal of reducing life cycle energy use and environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used here to analyze and compare the environmental impacts of AgNPs produced through seven different synthesis routes (cradle-to-gate). LCA reveals both direct and indirect or upstream impacts associated with AgNPs. Synthesis routes were chosen to represent current trends in nanoparticle synthesis and include physical, chemical and bio-based methods of production. Results show that, across synthesis routes, impacts associated with the upstream production of bulk silver itself were dominant for nearly every category of environmental impact, contributing to over 90% of life cycle burdens in some cases. Flame spray methods were shown to have the highest impacts while chemical reduction methods were generally preferred when AgNPs were compared on a mass basis. The bio-based chemical reduction route was found to have important tradeoffs in ozone depletion potential and ecotoxicity. Rescaling results by the size-dependent antimicrobial efficacy that reflects the actual function of AgNPs in most products provided a performance-based comparison and changed the rank order of preference in every impact category. Comparative results were also presented in the context of a nanosilver-doped wound dressing, showing that the overall environmental burdens of the product were highly sensitive to the synthesis route by which the AgNPs are produced.Purpose - This study aims to propose a hotel life cycle model and applies this model to examine the development of international tourist hotels (ITHs) in Taipei. Design/methodology/approach - In this study, a two-stage approach is proposed to examine the life cycles of 20 ITHs in Taipei. First, we evaluate the overall and departmental efficiencies by using a two-layer bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. Second, we divide the phases of the hotel life cycle by incorporating two objective indicators, namely, the average efficiency change rate (AECR) and the annual average efficiency (AE). Findings - The results show not only that the efficiency scores derived from the bootstrap DEA model could help assess the performance of individual ITHs but also that the resulting AECR and AE could help to objectively classify the development of the hotels under study into the following phases: initial, growth, maturity and recession and regeneration phases. Practical implications - The method proposed in, and the results obtained from, this study can provide the stakeholders of the ITHs in Taipei with an alternative to the existing subjective enterprise life cycle (ELC) model for identifying these ITHs' stages of development using quantitative and objective criteria. Originality/value - Existing hotel management research rarely focuses on hotel life cycle analysis, likely due to the adoption of subjective criteria by the conventional ELC model, which limits the practical application of the research. To improve on the conventional ELC model, our proposed quantitative approach involves dividing the hotel life cycle by employing two objective indicators and then empirically presenting the results.The increasing worldwide demand of sustainable palm oil product has encouraged the industry to develop a sustainability strategy on the unintended social, environmental, and economic consequences of rapid population growth, economic growth, and consumption of natural resources. This study reviews the manufacturing perspective on the current sustainability effort and identifies the drivers for sustainability particularly in Malaysia that control almost 50 percent of the global export market share. It revealed current research on sustainability in general palm oil manufacturing (or palm oil mill) which involves empty fruit bunches, crude palm oil, crude palm kernel oil, the refinery process, and palm oil waste management. It also highlights the drivers for sustainability in the Malaysian palm oil industry. The findings of our study suggest that manufacturing sustainability in Malaysian palm oil manufacturing is driven by three main objectives: environmental consciousness, economic escalation, and social commitment which all link to each other and demonstrate progress toward sustainability. Nevertheless, social commitment shows a lesser amount of publications among the drivers. This study can be helpful for palm oil organisations (particularly in Malaysia) to recognize their opportunities and threats in efforts to enhance business profiles, corporate reputations, and market growth without neglecting environmental and social impacts.This article examines the dynamics of the community of practice (CoP) through a case study of Electric Cars - Now! We analysed the CoP by considering its entire life cycle, starting from the motives for its establishment, through its active performance, up to the current stage, where the members need to decide whether the community will remain viable. Particular attention was paid to the group dynamics and issues that seemed relevant to the change in dynamics why a CoP maintain its vitality or dissipate. In the analysis, different motives bound the group together at various stages of the community's life cycle. Shared interest was a combining force. However, it was affected by motives and realisation of plans, the pace at which the CoP evolved and finally, the sense of communality. Thereby the life cycle analysis revealed three themes that explained the change in the group dynamics and the dispersal of the community: 1) differentiation and dispersal of interests, 2) growth that resulted in role differentiation and 3) inclusion of investors. The themes were all related to the fact that the case community operated with not only knowledge, but also a tangible product. Therefore, the tangibility of a problem to be solved seems to play a pivotal role in a CoP's operations and dynamics. As a result of a tangible objective in the case study, outside investors were included in the operations. Our interpretation is that if a CoP needs external funding to achieve its goals, it creates a new situation that significantly affects its operations, particularly the group dynamics. We conclude that a CoP's group dynamics and cohesion are reinforced by shared interests and weakened by goals set by external stakeholders. Such goals affect the members' roles, thus degenerating the CoP's original idea.Power generation from high-ash coals is a niche technology for power generation, but coal cleaning is deemed necessary to avoid problems associated with low combustion efficiencies and to minimize environmental burdens associated with emissions of pollutants originating from ash. Here, chemical beneficiation of coals using acid and alkali-acid leaching procedures is evaluated as a potential coal cleaning technology employing life cycle assessment (LCA). Taking into account the environmental benefits from firing cleaner coal in pulverized coal power plants and the environmental burden of the cleaning itself, it is demonstrated that for a wide range of cleaning procedures and types of coal, chemical cleaning generally performs worse than combustion of the raw coals and physical cleaning using dense medium separation. These findings apply for many relevant impact categories, including climate change. Chemical cleaning can be optimized with regard to electricity, heat and methanol use for the hydrothermal washing step, and could have environmental impact comparable to that of physical cleaning if the overall resource intensiveness of chemical cleaning is reduced by a factor 5 to 10, depending on the impact category. The largest potential of the technology is observed for high-ash lignites, with initial ash content above 30%, for which the environmental benefits from firing cleaner coal can outweigh the environmental burden of cleaning for some impact categories. Overall, we recommend to policy makers that coal cleaning using acid or alkali-acid leaching procedures should not be considered for direct implementation as a coal beneficiation technology. We encourage further research on chemical cleaning and its optimization, however, as chemical cleaning has advantages that might make it attractive for cleaning of difficult to treat coals when compared to the less efficient option of physical cleaning.The sheep industry has played an important role in Australia's development and economy over the 220 years since European settlement and remains an important land use in Australia, occupying an estimated 85 million ha of continental land mass. Historically, deforestation was carried out in many sheep-rearing regions to promote pasture growth but this has not occurred within recent decades and many wool producers have invested in planting trees as well as preserving patches of remnant vegetation. Although the limitations of single environmental impact studies are recognised, this paper focuses on the contribution of carbon sequestration in trees and shrubs on sheep farms to the global warming potential impact category in life cycle assessment of wool. The analysis represents three major wool-producing zones of Australia. Based on default regional yields as applied in Australia's National Inventory model, FullCAM, CO2 removals in planted exotic pines and mixed native species were estimated to be 5.0 and 3.0 t CO2 ha(-1) year(-1), respectively, for the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales in the 'high-rainfall zone' and 1.4 t CO2 ha(-1) year(-1) for mixed native species in the 'sheep-wheat zone' of Western Australia. Applying modified factors allowing for the higher measured growth rates in regions with rainfall >300 mm, gave values for native species reforestation of 4.4 and 2.0 t CO2 ha(-1) year(-1) for New South Wales and Western Australia, respectively. Sequestration was estimated to be 0.07 t CO2 ha(-1) year(-1) over 100 years for chenopod shrublands of the 'pastoral zone' of South Australia but this low rate is significant because of the extent of regeneration. Sequestration of soil organic carbon in improved permanent pastures in the New South Wales Northern Tablelands was evaluated to be highly uncertain but potentially significant over large areas of management. Improved data and consistent methodologies are needed for quantification of these benefits in life cycle assessment studies for wool and sheep meat, and additional impact categories, such as biodiversity, need to be included if the public and private benefits provided by good management of vegetation resources on farms are to be more fully recognised.The paper presents an author's method of eco-efficiency assessment of mining production processes in hard coal mines, which enables integrating results of evaluating both environmental and economic aspects. The proposed method uses life cycle approach to assess environmental efficiency and the result of operating activities to assess economic efficiency. The comprehensive method of assessing mining production processes was proposed as the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) in hard coal mines in Poland to be used to support decision making in mining companies.Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEM FCs) are seen as a suitable technology supporting the transformation towards decarbonised societies. Decision makers face the problem that there is no sound basis of the environmental performance of cutting edge technology available. We developed a comprehensive product system for two types of high temperature (HT) PEM FCs and conducted a life cycle assessment. One system utilizes functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as carbon support materials for platinum. The reference product applies carbon black. MWCNTs render possible platinum savings of 27% simultaneously retaining equal performance parameters as for the reference FC. The inventories include all components of a FC starting with the production of the carbon support material, the catalyst powder with platinum nanoparticles, a membrane, a gas diffusion layer, bipolar flow plates up to the FC stack and the FC unit including end of life treatment. Our analysis shows that platinum is the key material in HT PEM FCs and the benefits from platinum savings outweigh by far the impacts on the MWCNT production. The HT PEM FC was adjusted such that it typifies (1) a PEM FC for an electric vehicle (FCEV) allowing comparison with internal combustion engine vehicles (ICVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) or (2) a PEM FC suitable for micro-combined heat and power (mu-CHP) to be compared with a Stirling engine. We found an environmental advantage of a FCEV vis-a-vis the ICV, but only if hydrogen is produced with renewable electricity. We found similar environmental impacts for the FCEV and the BEV when both vehicles are propelled with renewable energy. Both m-CHP plants produce similar amounts of useful energy and have comparable environmental performance. Nonetheless, the PEM FC produces more electricity (less heat) than the Stirling engine. System expansion such that both systems deliver equal amounts of electricity and heat resulting in an advantage of nearly 20% for the PEM FC powered system. Thus, the PEM FC technology offers great potential to reduce a personal environmental (and carbon) footprint - a prerequisite on the way of a transformation to more sustainable societies.Design of asphalt concrete, required properties of constituent materials and their mixing ratios, is of tremendous significance and should be implemented with consideration given to the whole life cycle of those materials and the final construction. Conformity with requirements for long term performance of embedded materials is the general objective of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Therefore, within the assessment, material properties need to be evaluated with consideration given to the whole service life-from the point of embedding in the construction until their disposal or recycling. The evaluation focuses on verification of conformity with criteria set for these materials and should guarantee serviceability and performance during their whole service life. Recycling and reuse of asphalt concrete should be preferred over disposal of thematerial. This paper presents methodology for LCA of asphalt concrete. It was created to ensure not only applicability of the materials in the initial stage, at the point of their embedding, but their suitability in terms of normatively prescribed service performance of the final construction. Methods described and results are presented in a case study for asphalt mixture AC 11; I design.Purpose - Packed salads are popular in many countries of the world. The purpose of this paper is to assess the energy footprint of these products from farm gate to retail gate, compared with unpacked produces distributed by retailers and farmers' markets in Italy. Design/methodology/approach - Life cycle assessment served as methodological background, even if the analysis was focused on direct and indirect energy consumption. Three supply chains were analysed: packed (P-S) and unpacked (U-S) sold in supermarkets, and unpacked produce sold locally (U-L). Energy inputs were accounted for processing, packaging, refrigeration, transport, and distribution. Data were collected from available literature and from interviews with key experts in the transformation, packaging, and retail sectors. Energy inputs were computed for 1 kg of finished edible product (kg(p)). Findings - Packed salads require an elevated energy input ranging from 16 to 37 MJ kg(p)(-1). Input energy is mostly required for packaging and refrigeration. By comparison, the U-L chain requires about one tenth of the energy (1.8-2.6 MJ.kg(p)(-1)), but local sold produces attain the best performance with only 0.6-1.2 MJ.kg(p)(-1), since they do not need processing, refrigeration, and disposable packages. Packed products mainly rely on the availability of cheap fossil fuels and all the sector has significantly suffered after the oil shock of 2008. Increasing energy costs may lead the price of the commodity out of the market. Originality/value - The paper addresses the subject of energy consumption in a popular sector of processed food to which at present little attention has been paid in the domain of food research.Although the arboriculture industry plants and maintains trees that remove CO2 from the atmosphere, it uses heavy-duty equipment and vehicles that release more CO2 per year than other similar-sized industries in the service sector. This study used lifecycle assessment to compare CO2 emissions associated with different decisions by arborists to the amount of CO2 sequestered over 50 years for California sycamore (Platanus racemosa) planted in Los Angeles, CA. Scenarios examined effects of equipment and vehicle choices, different operational efficiencies, amounts of irrigation water applied and the fate of wood residue from pruning and tree removal. For the Highest Emission Case, total emissions (9.002t) exceeded CO2 stored (-7.798 t), resulting in net emissions of 1.204 t. The Lowest Emission Case resulted in net removal of -3.768 t CO2 over the 50-year period. Tree selection and irrigation water management were key leverage points in Los Angeles. Converting residue from the removed tree to wood products resulted in substantially lower net CO2 emissions than did converting it into bioenergy or mulch. Although emissions from vehicles and equipment accounted for less than 6% of the CO2 stored in the tree, substantial reductions are achievable. Arborists can reduce CO2 emissions threefold by converting from high- to low-emitting equipment and vehicles. By reducing travel distances and equipment run-times, twofold emission reductions are possible. Reducing the amount of aboveground biomass pruned from 20% to 10% every five years lowered pruning emissions fivefold. Published by Elsevier GmbH.Sustainable design of engineered products and systems is fantastically challenging. Think up a technology that protects the environment and perhaps a business model cannot be developed for it. Think up a business model for the technology that resonates with the market and consumers use so much of the technology that Earth would have been better without it. In the meantime the landscape is constantly shifting due to transient regulations, technology potential, and knowledge about anthropogenic impacts on Earth. This presentation focuses on the effectiveness of sustainable design and emphasizes the need to simultaneously evaluate market success, environmental impact, and meeting societal needs under regulatory constraints. The paper provides framework approaches to concept generation and design validation that facilitate the evaluation of design sustainability. The presentation that will accompany this paper will discuss research case studies from the University of Michigan and evaluate them against these frameworks as illustrative examples. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Given the high amount of resources consumed and waste generated by the construction industry it was identified the need to seek for constructive systems that take into account three aspects of sustainable development - economic, social and environmental - in a balanced way. This paper aims at comparing through sustainability assessment in different industrialized building systems to the conventional system which are used in the construction of social housing in Brazil. An assessment that provides a way to improve production processes for sustainability of buildings is looked for, stimulating lower environmental impact, meeting the needs and providing conditions for their employees and users in the best cost/benefit ratio. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The paper proposes a system to increase the environmental sustainability and to guarantee the traceability along the whole product supply chain. A methodology to efficiently model complex supply chains, share data between all the actors and measure the environmental sustainability, has been developed and implemented in a distributed software system. The experimental case study, realized in collaboration with a manufacturer of leather products, allowed demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach in the selection of suppliers and in the optimization of the whole supply chain, taking into account the environmental aspects together with the other constraints such as design, costs and quality. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The environmental impacts of electric vehicles (EVs) partially depend on the parameters of their site of operation. Variations of average driving patterns in different geographic locations and the use of heating and cooling due to local climate conditions have an impact on the energy consumption of EVs. In combination with the regional electricity mix these factors influence the environmental impact of EVs. Hence, these influencing factors must be included in an ecological assessment. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is used for the quantitative ecological assessment. An LCA can e.g. serve as a decisions support tool in vehicle engineering. This paper proposes a framework to consider influencing factors for the ecological assessment of EVs. A case study is used to demonstrate the capability of the framework. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.There is a growing demand for ultra-high speed precision machine tool spindles to create complex miniature devices and features, in consumer markets such as medical devices, electronics and communications. The key enabling drive technologies for spindle rotational speeds in the 100,000 rpm range includes electric motors, both AC and DC powered, and air turbines. In particular for high speed micromachining, turbine spindles have advantages in terms of precision and cost. A widely considered drawback of pneumatic technology though is low energy efficiency, but to date there has been little in depth analysis of commercial/state-of-art turbo-spindle energy performance. This paper provides a holistic comparative analysis of electric motor and turbine powered spindle electrical power requirements, by including the power demand of supporting systems and infrastructure. The analysis indicates that at present the energy usage associated with turbine spindles is significantly higher than electric spindles. However, a number of technically feasible energy efficiency measures are identified for turbine spindles, which would make their energy performance comparable with electro-spindles. The analysis and results will contribute towards an overall life cycle assessment of high speed turbo-spindle technology, and provide impetus to further explore energy optimization approaches and methods. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Todays efforts to optimize industrial production processes exceedingly focus on tools' life cycle costs. Toolmaker and its customer are the two entities influencing tools' life cycle costs. Due to lack of information exchange neither life cycle assessment nor cost efficient life cycles can be realized. An effective lever for penetrating information exchange and therefore gaining cost efficiency alongside tool's life cycle is the integration of the toolmaker into the value creation process of its customer. The so called customer integration succeeds through innovative product-service systems alongside tools' life cycle networking the value creation processes of toolmaker and tool user. As the findings of research project TEC in this paper practical solutions for realizing customer integration are introduced and measures for gaining life cycle cost efficiency alongside tool's life cycle are explained. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Global and local environmental impacts of products or services can sometimes be in conflict with one another. Therefore, the importance of considering both impacts in environmental management must be recognised. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is useful in evaluating global impacts while quantitative risk assessment (QRA) is effective in local impact assessments. The benefits of combining LCA and QRA in this regard have been recognised. Advantages and disadvantages of different hybridisation approaches were critically examined in this paper. There seems to be no single best approach and a method needs to be carefully selected depending on the type of application. (C) 2015 The Authors, Published by Elsevier B.V.The design of products with environmental considerations is a global strategy based on life cycle thinking. All stages of the design process should take into account environmental considerations in order to face the environmental challenge. Unfortunately, designers encounter difficulties in the case of brand new products due to the absence of environmental impacts feedback. The designers need assistance early in the design process to acquire environmental knowledge. In order to solve this problem, the paper argues that the functional analysis of products (early stage in the design process) and Life Cycle Assessment (late stage in the design process) can benefit each other in a collaborative process. A comparative analysis is first proposed between Functional Analysis (FA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to highlight propositions that could assist both FA practitioners and LCA experts. A strategy is then proposed to create a win-win situation to enhance environmental knowledge early in the design process. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.In the current age of big data and sustainability, accuracy and effectiveness of life-cycle assessment (LCA) are becoming more important for strategic decision-making. This paper describes a data-intensive approach to life-cycle assessment, with the use phase of a lithium-ion mobile phone battery as a case study. LCA datasets involving a temporal dependence can be created for the use phase of products and to improve the accuracy of the analysis. In order to demonstrate the procedure, energy density data over the life-cycle of a lithium-ion battery and the evolution of its technology are analyzed to synthesize a more accurate methodology to perform the life cycle analysis of the product. In the case study, DILCA estimates an impact 47.8% to 42.9% higher than traditional LCA. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The application of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) in vehicles is considered to be an important way to solve the energy and environmental problems. In China, many waste diesel engines are beginning to be remanufactured to LNG engines. In this study, a life cycle assessment is carried out to quantify the energy saving and environmental emission of a remanufactured LNG engine and newly manufactured diesel engine, both engines are compared by means of material usage, cumulative energy requirements and environmental emissions over the entire life. The results show that, compared with diesel engine newly manufacturing, LNG engine remanufacturing could reduce 42.62% of primly energy demand (FED); the environmental impacts reduction of acidification potential (AP) and nutrient enrichment potential (EP) could reach to 69.61% and 71.34% which are most distinct; global warming potential (GWP) and photochemical ozone formation potential (POCP) can be reduced by 46.42% and 43.90% respectively.Adding layer after layer of material is the operating principle of Additive Manufacturing (AM) and has the potential to change fundamental conditions in all phases of the product life cycle. AM implications such as design freedom allow the optimization of product properties such as weight or efficiency to achieve a better life cycle performance. Considering AM implications for highly utilized products such as commercial vehicles may have big sustainable impacts if fuel consumption can be reduced. Thereby manufacturers are challenged to implement new manufacturing technologies that enable sustainable products and production. The objective of this article is to provide guidance for manufacturers to decrease the environmental impact of their product through manufacturing components with AM. Therefore a framework is presented to identify components with potential for improvement and to predict the required improvement to decrease the environmental impact with AM. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Questions remain over the environmental performance of pooled pallets compared to one-way pallet alternatives. The environmental impacts of softwood, hardwood, plastic and cardboard pallets, for use in one-way and pooled pallet systems with manufacturing in either China or Australia, were compared with the use of life cycle assessment. The use of wood and regular maintenance leads to lesser environmental impact, as well as reduced servicing costs, in many typical applications through allowing a greater number of pallet uses between servicing and over the whole lifecycle. The environmental benefits of one-way pallets emerge for specific scenarios involving longer transport distances outside pooling catchments. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The use of lightweight materials and multi-material concepts in car manufacturing has been focused to produce more sustainable vehicles. This has resulted in significant reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions during use phase to achieve the strict vehicle emission standards. Nevertheless, the varied range of joining techniques used to join multi-material vehicle designs presents challenges at the end-of-life, especially the feasibility of current recycling processes to recover materials in a closed-loop recycling. Life Cycle Assessment has been widely used to assess the environmental impacts throughout the vehicle life cycle stages. However, the correlation between the increasing development in new multi-material vehicle designs, and the commonly used shredding process for material recovery is not captured well in the current analysis. This paper presents a dynamic hypothesis that illustrates the time effect on life cycle analysis of a car to investigate the challenges associated to the material recovery efficiency. It shows that the short term effective reduction in environmental impact through multi-material structures have consequently created a long term effect of increasing waste produced. Thus, the current evolution in automotive industry adheres to the widely studied "Fixes that Fail" system archetype. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Holistic Life Cycle Investigations for products and the related manufacturing chains require large efforts. The pre-quantification of sensitivities for process inputs underscores their importance for the results and determines the required Dude of accuracy for quantification. Those indicators support an expedient construction of process models for the LCA/LCC application. Furthermore, a pre-analysis of the differences between product systems for comparative investigations support an adequate and tailored setting of system boundaries. The approach for those goal-oriented Life Cycle Investigations is applied in a Use Case describing a manufacturing chain of automotive structural parts made of composites with a focus on environmental impacts. The results of the pre-analysis are used for recommendations and rules for an expedient development of LCA models and later investigations. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Indonesia is a vast archipelago with more than 10,000 islands spread across the nation. One of the cyhallenge to provide better lives for the residents is energy distribution to remote areas. With many rivers in the islands, hydropower plants become the best renewable energy source for these remote areas. This paper aims to assess the life cycle of a mini hydro power plant in Simalungun, Indonesia. Life cycle inventory data were collected and impacts were assessed using SimaPro software. A sensitivity analysis comparing two methods, CML-IA and TRACT 2.1 were conducted. Result shows that carcinogenic, marine aquatic eco-toxicity and freshwater aquatic eco-toxiticity are the highest environmental impact, generated from the construction of the mini hydropower plant. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Carbon footprint was calculated for cassava starch product in Thailand. Objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the global warming impacts of cassava starch production in 3 factories located in North-Eastern Thailand. The system boundary was defined from cradle to factory gate, starting from cassava cultivation and harvesting until cassava starch production by using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology based on ISO 14040 series. The selected functional unit was 1,000 kg of dry native starch, excluding packaging. Input and output data were analyzed and results were shown in terms of global warming potential (GWP) impact categories. The average greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission value based on LCA methodology of 3 factories was 594 kgCO(2)e per one ton of dry native starch. The results indicated that the cultivation and harvesting procedure was the major source emitting GHGs, around 40-59% of the total, if the factory used the biogas from wastewater treatment plant. Based on this result, the estimated total GHGs emission of cassava starch production in Thailand in the year 2013 was a total of approximately 10,500 million tons of CO(2)e. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.As companies try to embrace life cycle thinking, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) have proven to be powerful tools. In this paper, an Environmental Input-Output model is used for analysis as it enables an LCA using the same economic input data as LCC. This approach helps align LCA and LCC while avoiding cut-offs in the LCA. The efficacy of the method is illustrated by a real case study of a tanker ship. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.One third of global greenhouse gas emissions are emitted from the building sector contributing significantly to the problem of climate change. While more work has been done on decreasing direct emissions from the operation of buildings, embodied emissions of construction materials receive little consideration even though they constitute a significant additional proportion of emissions. The main objective of this study is to harmonise different data and methods such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Input Output Analysis (IOA) and Material Flow Analysis (MFA) to accurately calculate the embodied carbon emissions of construction materials in Australia. This study will develop and streamline efficient hybrid methodologies in analysing embodied emissions of the built environment at multiple scales and develop a comprehensive database of embodied carbon LCI data for building and construction materials that will be derived from an economy-wide modelling framework. This work is part of the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living under the Integrated Carbon Metrics project. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Nearly a quarter of the energy consumption of Europe is required for industrial processes. Huge efficiency potentials can be exploited. One such is under research within the EU funded project DAPhNE by developing an integrated solution for energy intensive firing processes with microwave technologies. A methodology towards the preliminary definition of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with focus on economical, environmental and operational aspects is presented within this paper. By means of lab-scale measurements, the preliminary selected KPIs are determined and benchmarked against conventional KPIs to develop an eco-efficient production system. Moreover life cycle assessment (LCA) results support the evaluation and quantify the environmental benefits of microwave heating. Lab-scale results indicate a high carbon emission reduction potential. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Water is critically important to human life. However, the demands for fresh water in many regions are much more than those can load. The concept of water footprint came from virtual water which can help us roughly understand the water consuming of a product manufacturing process and after services. This paper presents a methodology for assessing water footprint of machine tools. Detail assessment steps and calculation process for life cycle of machine tools is described in this paper. The difficulty in inventory process and data selection during water footprint assessment will be presented. A case study is used to explain the capabilities of the proposed methodology. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The number of studies on green manufacturing has increased over the past years and particular focus has been placed on machining processes and the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper reports the results of the use of a modeling approach that combines Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Design of Experiments (DOE) to investigate a cylindrical plunge grinding for 21-2N steel. The effect of two process parameters on the LCA results of the grinding machining was studied through an analysis of variance (ANOVA). The parameters investigated were type of CBN grinding wheel (JB126 K150 VSS and 8B126 K150 VT2) and different levels of specific material removal rate (50, 100, 150 and 200 mm(3)/mm.min). (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), packaging has been considered environmentally damaging due to its material use and issues with disposal at the end of it life. Consumers' relationship with packaging is short-lived with the focus of desire being the product contained in the package, and once received the packaging is no longer required and is in certain circumstances a waste management issue. Packaging designers however have long since known the function of the packaging is to deliver the product to the consumer is such a way that the product is protected and possibly enhanced. However, to date packaging design tools which evaluate the environmental performance of packaging design have ignored the product delivery function, or at least considered it to be equivalent in all cases. The packaging quick evaluation tool (PIQET) is expanding its evaluation to incorporate product production impacts, product loss and the disposal of product loss into the life cycle of packaging. As a screening tool, it is not practical to include detailed LCAs of all products, however using environmentally extended input output data to ratio product to packaging impact, it is possible to provide sufficient guidance to the packaging designer as to the benefits or high quality packaging design. This paper presents a case study application of this approach as a proof of concept to its value in the environmental assessment of packaging design. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The machining of metals has traditionally involved the use of large quantities of water and oils for dissipating the cutting tool temperature, improving the surface finish of parts and increasing tool life. Invariably, the cutting fluid has become contaminated with use, has required being environmentally disposed and has accounted for approximately 17% of the total production cost of parts. A Streamline Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) of machining of parts has been carried out to investigate the environmental and energy saving benefits associated with the replacement of traditional cooling method, with Minimum Quantities of Liquid (MQL) combined with cold compressed air. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Recent trends in the proper management of End of Life Vehicles have led some auto recyclers to adopt machine-based dismantling to improve their yield. The machines are modified excavators that allow a greater degree of control and force for vehicle disassembly. We present and discuss the results of a 3-month real world trial conducted at an Australian auto dismantler assessing the environmental impact of using a multi-dismantling machine for material segregation. The results suggest that this process is a better alternative to the current norm used by metal recyclers, shredding followed by shredder output separation, in terms of environmental impact but not energy consumption. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Remanufacturing cleaning can lay foundation for testing, painting and assembling waste products and components in remanufacturing procedure. Currently, high temperature decomposition and shot blasting cleaning are conventional industrial cleaning technologies for remanufacturing while supercritical CO2 cleaning and liquid blasting cleaning are the relatively new ones. This study completed by the method of simplified life cycle assessment aims at comparing the environmental impacts of the cleaning process of these two types of cleaning technologies. Most of the data were collected from a remanufacturing company directly and some laboratorial data were used to speculate about the industrial data for the difficulties of collection. The results indicate that, compared with conventional cleaning technologies, the new cleaning technologies are relatively environmental friendly since they are more favorable in terms of several environmental impact indicators such as GPW, AP, EP, ODP, POCP and most of emissions have been reduced dramatically. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The product material supply chain starts with stage 1 in manufacturing. In Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) or in an SLCA (streamlined LCA) this is premanufacture. Ideally the first stage starts with recycled material, however most material comes from mining, and will do so for the foreseeable future. The first stage has five elements: material, energy, solids, liquid and gas. Important considerations are water use (liquids), emissions (toxicity and carbon) and energy consumption. This paper considers energy use in mining extraction, in particular energy consumption by equipment such as LHD's (Load-Haul-Dump machinery) and by HVAC systems. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Aquifer recharge with reclaimed water is a promising means to store and supply on demand reclaimed water of high quality for further non-potable reuse. The reuse applications may include indirect agricultural or landscape irrigation, saltwater intrusion barriers, subsidence mitigation or aquifer replenishment. As an alternative to high-pressure or double-membrane systems, hybrid schemes consisting of a disinfection/filtration step prior to aquifer recharge were assessed in this study regarding their environmental footprint and energy efficiency. A simplified life-cycle assessment (LCA) for a hypothetical case study in a water-scarce country was conducted to compare these hybrid schemes to a double-membrane system working under similar conditions. The results show that there is a significant margin for lowering the environmental impact, energy demand and operational costs if non-potable water quality is targeted. While the hybrid schemes outperform high-pressure membranes for these factors, land footprint and final water quality also need to be considered in the choice of solution for specific conditions.Pharmaceutical chemicals are complex, high value added products that typically impose significantly greater impacts on the environment per kilogram compared to basic chemicals. A variety of green metrics have been developed to guide the design of chemistries and processes that are more sustainable. Among these, Process Mass Intensity (PMI) was selected by the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable as the key parameter to express sustainability. However, researchers were concerned that these metrics could miss relevant factors that would be addressed by a more comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Lack of inventory data for many chemicals poses a significant barrier to more extensive implementation of LCA for pharmaceuticals. A cradle-to-gate LCA of Viagra (TM) is used to present a practical approach to construct inventories using patent and literature data. Details of the improved inventory data were presented for four chemicals to illustrate the methodology and highlight the importance of considering out-sourced processing of reagents used in pharmaceutical synthesis. A more comprehensive impact assessment was conducted using ReCiPe v1.11 at both midpoint and end-point levels. A comparison of two synthesis routes rated them well against results from the simpler green metrics. An area for future work is to address the lack of characterization factors for toxicity and other impact categories for many chemicals.Woody resource can be a sustainable resource if it is kept under appropriate management. However, because of ad-hoc based consumption/renewal management, woody resource in Japan has been on the verge of losing its supply/demand balance and may become insufficient at any time in the near future. Furthermore, environmental load reduction issues related to its utilization are as important as the management For planning better wood resource utilization and environmental load reduction, it is essential to discuss them based on material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). This paper overviews the MFA and LCA studies relevant to these issues, while clarifying the future tasks to be assigned.A new generation of ultralight particleboards (ULPB) with an expanded foam core layer produced in an in-line foaming step is under development. The environmental impacts of three types of ULPB containing foam based on 100% polylactic acid (PLA), 100% expanded polystyrene, and 50% PLA/50% polymethyl methacrylate, as well as a conventional particleboard (PB), have been compared in an LCA. Two approaches were chosen for the assessment: first, the "EPD-approach" in accordance with EN 15804 for EPD of building materials and second, a holistic-approach which allows an expansion of the system boundaries in order to forecast the consequences of a broader replacement of PB with ULPB. The results show that most of the environmental impacts are related to raw materials and end-of-life stages. Both approaches show that the exchange of PB with ULPB with a foam core based on PLA leads to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, the PLA is responsible for higher ecotoxicity results in comparison to non-bio-based polymers mainly due to agricultural processes. Both approaches allowed the drafting of complementary advisories for environmental impact reduction addressed to the developers.Direct energy consumption of ICT hardware is only "half the story." In order to get the "whole story," energy consumption during the entire life cycle has to be taken into account. This chapter is a first step toward a more comprehensive picture, showing the "grey energy" (i.e., the overall energy requirements) as well as the releases (into air, water, and soil) during the entire life cycle of exemplary ICT hardware devices by applying the life cycle assessment method. The examples calculated show that a focus on direct energy consumption alone fails to take account of relevant parts of the total energy consumption of ICT hardware as well as the relevance of the production phase. As a general tendency, the production phase is more and more important the smaller (and the more energy-efficient) the devices are. When in use, a tablet computer is much more energy-efficient than a desktop computer system with its various components, so its production phase has a much greater relative importance. Accordingly, the impacts due to data transfer when using Internet services are also increasingly relevant the smaller the end-user device is, reaching up to more than 90 % of the overall impact when using a tablet computer.Sales statistics of computing devices show that users are not replacing units one by one, but rather adding additional devices to their hardware portfolios. This chapter describes the outcomes of a first attempt to quantify the ecological implications of changes in the use of ICT hardware for computing services by using LCA and applying three different perspectives ranging from individual devices to global sales of desktop, laptop, and tablet computers. In particular, it addresses the question of which effect actually predominates: the increase in efficiency induced by the emergence of new technologies or the growing energy consumption due to an increased number of devices combined with a higher utilization rate by individual users. The comparison shows a clear reduction of the environmental impact per hour of active use; and the smaller the device, the smaller the impact due to the active use of the device. However, when the evolution in the use of these kinds of devices is taken into account as well, the picture changes. The calculations show that the higher in-use efficiency of individual devices is fully compensated by the efforts for the production of the increasing number of devices in use, without even considering increased use time. If increased use intensity is assumed as well, a clear increase of the overall impact per day can be observed.While the traditional roles of the computer as a machine for scientific calculations, text editing, and graphic design are still significant, computers are increasingly perceived as means of accessing information and interacting with other people-i.e., as electronic media. The aim of this chapter is to analyze digital electronic media and their effects on environmental sustainability. Two fields of application are addressed: electronic media that may replace or augment traditional print media such as newspapers or magazines, and videoconferencing as a potential substitute for traveling to a face-to-face meeting or conference. In both cases, the environmental costs of the electronic media are compared to those of their conventional counterparts. The examples show that electronic media can represent an energy-efficient alternative to traditional activities such as long-distance travel. But they can also be added on top of existing activities instead of replacing them. In such cases, a net increase in the environmental impact results. The availability of small, energy-efficient devices being used as electronic media does not guarantee dematerialization. The overall resource use and emissions throughout the life cycle of the media product systems and, more importantly, at the macro level of total global production and consumption need to be considered. To achieve the dematerialization potential of new electronic media solutions, their efficiency needs to be combined with sufficiency; thus additional measures are necessary to turn the dematerialization potential of electronic media into environmental relief.Amidst the great technological progress being made in the field of nanotechnology, we are confronted by both conventional and novel environmental challenges and opportunities. Several gaps exist in the present state of knowledge or experience with nanomaterials. Understanding and managing the uncertainties that these gaps cause in LCAs is essential. Traditionally used for more established technology systems, environmental LCA is now being applied to nanomaterials by policy-makers, researchers and industry. However, the aleatory (variability) and epistemic (system process) uncertainties in LCAs of nanomaterials need to be handled correctly and communicated in the analysis. Otherwise, the results risk being misinterpreted, misguiding decision-making processes and could lead to significant detrimental effects for industry, research and policy-making. Here, we review current life cycle assessment literature for carbon nanotubes, and identify the key sources of uncertainty that need to be taken into consideration. These include: the potential for non-equivalency between mass and toxicity (potentially requiring inventory and impact models to be adjusted); the use of proxy data to bridge gaps in inventory data; and the often very wide ranges in material performance, process energy and product lifetimes quoted.The rapid growth of a population in a country can contribute to high production of waste. Municipal waste and industrial waste can bring unhealthy and unpleasant environment or even diseases to human beings if the wastes are not managed properly. With increasing concerns over waste and the need for 'greener' products, it is necessary to carry out Life Cycle Assessments of products and this will help manufacturers take the first steps towards greener designs by assessing their product's carbon output. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process or activity by identifying and quantifying energy and materials used and wastes released to the environment, and to assess the impact of those energy and material used and released to the environment. The aim of the study was to use a life cycle assessment approach to determine which waste disposal options that will substantially reduce the environmental burdens posed by the Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottle. Several important observations can be made. 1) Recycling of the PET bottle waste can significantly reduce the energy required across the life cycle because the high energy inputs needed to process the requisite virgin materials greatly exceeds the energy needs of the recycling process steps. 2) Greenhouse gases can be reduced by opting for recycling instead of landfilling and incineration. 3) Quantity of waste emissions released from different disposal options was identified. 4) Recycling is the environmentally preferable disposal method for the PET bottle. Industry can use the tools and data in this study to evaluate the health, environmental, and energy implications of the PET bottle. LCA intends to aid decision-makers in this respect, provided that the scientific underpinning is available. Strategic incentives for product development and life cycle management can then be developed.Quantitative methods for environmental and cost analyses of energy, industrial, and infrastructure systems are briefly introduced and surveyed, with the aim of encouraging broader utilization and development of quantitative methods in sustainable energy research. Material and energy flow analyses can provide an overall system overview. The methods of engineering economics and cost benefit analysis, such as net present value, are the most straightforward approach for evaluating investment options, with the levelized cost of energy being a widely used metric in electricity analyses. Environmental lifecycle assessment has been extensively developed, with both detailed process-based and comprehensive input-output approaches available. Optimization methods provide an opportunity to go beyond engineering economics to develop detailed least-cost or least-impact combinations of many different choices.Using agricultural residues, such as corn stover, as feedstocks for liquid fuel or electricity generation has the potential to offset anthropogenic climate impacts associated with conventional utilities and transportation fuels. In this paper, the environmental and economic costs and benefits associated with the usage of corn stover for different applications are calculated. Combined heat and power (CHP), ethanol, Fischer-Tropsch (FT) middle distillate (MD) fuels (i.e. diesel and jet), and advanced fermentation (AF) MD fuels are considered. The net societal costs or benefits of different corn stover usages are calculated as the difference between the sum of monetized greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the supply costs of a certain corn stover usage, and the sum of these metrics for the conventional commodity that is assumed to be displaced by the renewable alternative. Uncertainty associated with the analysis is captured using a Monte Carlo approach. It is found that corn stover derived electricity and fuels, compared to their conventional counterparts, reduce GHG emissions by 21-92%. The mean reduction for electricity in a CHP plant is 89% compared to the US grid-average, 70% for corn stover ethanol compared to conventional US gasoline and 85% and 55% for FT MD and AF MD compared to conventional US MD, respectively. Mean supply costs for corn stover-derived utilities and liquid fuels are similar to 9% and similar to 1% lower than the conventional counterparts for electricity and FT MD, respectively, and similar to 45% and similar to 300% higher for ethanol and AF MD, respectively. Using corn stover for CHP yields a net mean societal benefit of $131.23 per t of corn stover, which decreases by two-thirds if only electricity is produced, while FT MD production presents a mean societal benefit of $27.70 per t of corn stover. Using corn stover for ethanol and AF MD results in a mean societal cost of $24.86 per t and $121.81 per t of corn stover use, respectively, driven by higher supply costs compared to their conventional counterparts.In this study, in order to provide the input for decision-makers in Turkey, the environmental impact of a waste tire pyrolysis plant was researched using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The functional unit is defined as it of waste tires entering the pyrolysis process. The system boundary, including feedstock pretreatment and pyrolysis, was illustrated and material/energy flows, including raw material, pyrolysis products were determined according to a pilot pyrolysis plant and literature data. The LCA calculations were carried out using licensed SimaPro 8 software. At the impact assessment step, the CML-IA baseline (V3.00) method was applied for selected impact categories (abiotic depletion, global warming, human toxicity, marine aquatic toxicity, acidification and eutrophication). The characterization results show that all the impact categories have negative values, except for acidification. Negative values resulting from avoided products were due to the valuable products of pyrolysis. The acidification impact resulted mainly from SO2 emissions in combustion flue gases. As a summary, the results show that utilization of pyrolysis products in sufficient quantities and the application of flue gas treatment systems play an important role in presenting pyrolysis as an environmentally effective solution for waste tires.The program of activities (PoA) proposed in this study aims to disseminate household Biogas Micro-digesters (BMDs) in rural areas surrounding Chongqing city, China, using well-established technical approaches and an innovative business model utilizing carbon benefits from a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The PoA would reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in two ways: by replacing fossil fuels, and by avoiding the release of methane to the atmosphere from decomposed swine and human manure. The PoA would generate emission reductions of about 5,475 t CO2 per annum over a 10-year fixed crediting period from 2013 to 2022. A large part of the carbon revenues would be used to financially support the households participating in the PoA, and to improve network services for installation, maintenance and technical assistance as well as CDM project management. The PoA aims to expand the scope of financial assistance to poor farmers and to help rural households take an active part in building biogas pools by offering economic and technical support, thereby greatly improving the rural ecological environment.According to the U.S. Department of Energy's wind energy scenario, 20% share of the U. S. energy portfolio is to come in from wind power plants by the year 2030. This research aims to quantify the direct and supply chain related indirect environmental impacts of onshore and offshore wind energy technologies in the United States. To accomplish this goal, a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) model is developed. On average, offshore wind turbines produce 48% less greenhouse gas emissions per kWh produced electricity than onshore wind turbines. It is also found that the more the capacity of the wind turbine, the less the environmental impact when the turbine generates per kWh electricity.The objective of this study was to perform and compare LCA of biodiesel production from crude palm oil and crude Jatropha curcas oil. The system boundary for LCA study from cradle to gate. The produced palm oil biodiesel has higher GWP value than Jatropha curcas biodiesel. Utilization of agrochemical, in form of fertilizer and plant protection, generate significant contribution to environmental impact of biodiesel production i.e. 50.46 % and 33.51 % for palm oil and Jatropha curcas oil, respectively. GWP emission up to five years of plantation is 1 695.36 kg-CO(2)eq./t-BDF and 740.90 kg-CO(2)eq./t-BDF for palm oil and Jatropha curcas, respectively. After production stabilised, CO2 emission of diesel fuel decreases up to 37.83 % and 63.61 % for BDF-CPO and BDF-CJCO, respectively. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).In order to achieve stringent environmental and safety requirements, refineries are in search of "green" and cost-effective methods for crude oil desulphurization. Combined desulphurization technologies are being studied, including bioprocessing to upgrade fossil fuels. Using biodesulphurization (BDS), which is a biochemical process mediated by specific microorganisms, it is possible to desulphurize most of the hydrodesulphurization (HDS) recalcitrant sulphur compounds under mild operating conditions, making it a simple and eco-friendly process. In this study, two BDS process designs are compared, in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and operational costs by following a life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) based methodology. The industrial HDS process is used as the reference technology for sulphur removal from fossil fuels. Different theoretical scenarios were considered and the best BDS results are scaled-up to evaluate a case study of providing ultra low sulphur diesel to an urban taxi fleet. This study exploits the potential of BDS as a cost-effective and eco-friendly alternative or complementary technology to the commonly HDS towards ultra low sulphur fuels.Compaction and pelletization processes increase the bulk density and energy density of biomass, making it easy to handle, transport, and utilize. Abundant amounts of wheat straw biomass are produced every year. This article presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) study to compare five different pretreatment methods during wheat straw pelletization. The system boundary was defined from a wheat straw bale (from field production) to transporting pellets to the customer. Steam explosion (SE), microwave alkaline (MA), binder addition (BD), radio frequency alkaline (RF), and torrefaction (TF) as well as no pretreatment (base case) are potential pretreatment methods prior to pelletization. SimaPro software incorporating the Ecoinvent database and literature data were used to conduct this LCA study. The environmental impact of each pretreatment method was evaluated in terms of global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, ozone layer depletion, abiotic depletion, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and non-renewable energy use. The results revealed that TF and BD, especially involving the addition of wood residue, had lower environmental impacts compared to the other pretreatment methods including the base case. The SE and RF pretreatment methods had more negative environmental impacts compared to the other pretreatment methods including the base case. All pretreatment options except SE can reduce the global warming potential and human toxicity. A densification system involving BD, TF, and MA can conserve non-renewable energy resources compared to the other pretreatment options.Camelina sativa could be a potential feedstock to help meet the U.S. biodiesel production goal of 36 billion gallons by 2022, as set forth by Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This research is focused on assessing the energy balance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of camelina biodiesel production in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region of the U.S. Field data were collected from a camelina farm in the region, and crushing and transesterification data were measured using facilities at the University of Idaho. It was estimated that use of camelina biodiesel reduces GHG emissions by 69% compared to 2005 baseline diesel. However, camelina biodiesel does not meet the ASTM D6751 specification for oxidative stability without an additive. Camelina has a smaller seed size compared to canola and required 23% more energy for crushing. The net energy ratio for camelina biodiesel was found to be 3.6, and the fossil energy ratio was found to be 4.2. From an agronomic standpoint, camelina can be incorporated into low rainfall areas of the PNW as a rotational crop. Wheat areas of the PNW with annual rainfall of 19 to 38 cm that currently incorporate fallow into their rotations were considered as potential areas for camelina production. There were 846,500 ha (2.1 million acres) of land meeting the criteria in the region that could potentially produce 443.0 million L of biodiesel (117.1 million gal) and 1.2 billion kg of meal per year. This is 12.1% of the approved amount of camelina meal that could be used in livestock feed within the PNW. It was concluded that camelina biodiesel qualifies as an advanced biofuel, and camelina meal has potential to be consumed locally as a feed mix for livestock.Residents in localities throughout the world voluntarily participate in the routine recycling of household wastes, such as paper, metals, and plastics containers. But when a house in their neighborhood gets built or torn down, most of the debris - including wood waste - gets landfilled. Such a waste of material suggests that there are opportunities to add value to these under-utilized resources. The great variability, as well as contamination, pose major challenges. It is recommended that reclaimed wood be primarily used in the manufacture of durable goods, and then whatever is left over be used for energy (or heat) generation.Straw is considered to be a renewable resource for bioenergy and biomaterial. However, about 70% of straw is burned in fields, which causes serious air pollution in China. In this study, a life cycle assessment (LCA) model, together with emergy evaluation, was built to compare four straw applications after harvest vs. direct burning, including bioethanol (BE), combined heat and power plant (CHP), corrugated base paper (CP), and medium-density fiberboard (MDF). The results showed that BE and MDF would avoid greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 82% and 36%, respectively, while CHP and CP would emit 57% and 152% more GHG, respectively, compared with direct straw burning. Bioethanol had the highest renewability indicator (RI) of 47.7%, and MDF obtained the greatest profit of 657 Yuan.bale(-1). The applications CHP and CP had low RI (< 10.3%) and profit (< 180 Yuan.bale(-1)). Due to water recycling and electrical power as a coproduct, BE had the lowest value (3 x 10(11) sej.Yuan(-1)) of EmPM (emergy per unit money profit); the EmPM value of CP was 18.6 times higher than that of BE. The four straw applications would also greatly reduce particles emission (57 to 98%) to air. BE was judged to be the most environmentally friendly application among the four straw applications. Imposing a carbon tax would encourage investment in BE, but discourage the applications CHP and CP.Composting has always been considered a way to optimize use of biodegradable wastes. The point which is perhaps less noticed is that this process is not necessarily always and everywhere economical. Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are among factors that can impugn eco-efficiency of the process in composting factories. The present study is an eco-efficiency assessment of a composting factory in Tehran calculating the real economic and ecological efficiency of cthe omposting process by considering two main external burdens: energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions over the period 2007-11. In this research, the instruction presented by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development [1] was followed up to quantify eco-efficiency indicators. The obtained results revealed that the composting factory experienced a negative energy eco-efficiency within the periods 2007-08 (-71.97%) and 2008-09 (-69.82%). In terms of CO2 emission eco-efficiency, there were also inefficient periods in the plant in two time intervals: 2007-08 (-71.97%) and 2008-09 (-69.80%). Fortunately, this was a temporary situation so that at the ultimate year of 2011, the composting plant had an acceptable performance in terms of energy consumption (with an eco-efficiency of 166%) and CO, emission (with an eco-efficiency of 165.85%). Overall, although the composting process is an effective strategy for better use of resources, it will sometimes impose additional burdens on the environment if the external expenditures such as energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are neglected or less-intentioned.Straw as construction raw material assures economical, environmental sound, fire-resistant and quake-proof buildings, moreover it lends to self-construction and social housing. For all these reasons straw bale technology has been used in the post-earthquake reconstruction in Pescomaggiore, in the Municipality of L'Aquila, (Italy) after the last earthquake the 6th April 2009 (5.8 degrees on Richter scale). The house has been self-constructed by a team of volunteers in collaboration with EVA (EcoVillaggioAutocostruito) Pescomaggiore Association and a large part of the construction materials has been selected in order to reduce the impact of transportations. The paper is aimed at investigating the "hot spots" of this solution and improving straw bale building technology. The results indicate that some materials can be substituted to assure smaller impact in pre-use phase. Furthermore an end of life scenario, considering the house compostable, has been analysed and a correct use of plaster in order to assure compostability has been investigated in the paper.The research presented here used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool to guide the decision making in the refurbishment of a vernacular building in Valencia. The objective was to improve designers' awareness in the choice of a refurbishment intervention, by identifying its impact over the lifecycle. After a thorough investigation of the building, three heavily damaged subsystems were identified: a wooden beam, attacked by insects, a deformed wood-brick floor slab, and a clay vault, subject to partial side sinking. For each subsystem, three alternatives were identified. The environmental impact of each solution was calculated using Eco-Indicator 99 and compared using the cultural theory. Predictably, the results showed that the solutions employing less raw materials were the most environmentally sustainable. Surprisingly, LCA highlighted how the "less is more" principle, typical of sustainable development theory, and the "minimal intervention" issue, typical of restoration theory, are perfectly aligned in the conservation of vernacular architecture.The use of materials in architecture is lacking a systematic approach allowing the adequate comparison of performance from well established criteria and international standards. Sustainability of materials in architecture requires a thorough analysis on the concepts of the ecology of contemporary construction, and the relevance for the final user. This effort involves standards and databases for defining attributes for our existing buildings. After considering all relevant information a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach is introduced for the correct evaluation of materials in the sustainable building. This paper provides a systematic approach to this evaluation. The impact of hybrid materials is also explored as an alternative strategy for the architectural use of materials today. At the final stage the relevance of materials is performed through commercial software solutions and incorporated to the design. Relevant conclusions are identified for the design and use of new materials in architectural design.The world energy crisis and increased greenhouse gas emissions have driven the search for alternative and environmentally friendly renewable energy sources. According to life cycle analysis, microalgae biofuel is identified as one of the major renewable energy sources for sustainable development, with potential to replace the fossil-based fuels. Microalgae biofuel was devoid of the major drawbacks associated with oil crops and lignocelluloses-based biofuels. Algae-based biofuels are technically and economically viable and cost competitive, require no additional lands, require minimal water use, and mitigate atmospheric CO2. However, commercial production of microalgae biodiesel is still not feasible due to the low biomass concentration and costly downstream processes. The viability of microalgae biodiesel production can be achieved by designing advanced photobioreactors, developing low cost technologies for biomass harvesting, drying, and oil extraction. Commercial production can also be accomplished by improving the genetic engineering strategies to control environmental stress conditions and by engineering metabolic pathways for high lipid production. In addition, new emerging technologies such as algal-bacterial interactions for enhancement of microalgae growth and lipid production are also explored. This review focuses mainly on the problems encountered in the commercial production of microalgae biofuels and the possible techniques to overcome these difficulties.The generation of electricity has been known to cause important damages to ecosystems and human health. The recognition of the global challenges posed by climate change and energy security has guided several countries to change their electricity policies over the past decades. However, have such changes entailed reduced or increased environmental impacts? Are there any identifiable patterns that could serve for steering future energy planning? To address these questions, we applied life cycle assessment to quantify a whole spectrum of environmental impacts caused by electricity generation in 199 countries for the period 1980-2011, with national differentiation of energy sources and, wherever possible, technology efficiencies. The results show that (i) environmental impact burden-shifting has occurred in the past for several countries as a result of national policies, (ii) all environmental impacts have globally increased since 1980 but with faster increase rates over the last decade, and (iii) important variations exist in the impact trends across countries and across impact categories. Our findings therefore demonstrate the need for integrating quantitative assessments of all relevant environmental impacts associated with foreseen energy systems when identifying the most sustainable energy pathways. We provide recommendations on the use of life cycle assessment for such purposes with a strong focus on application at the country level so that it can directly support national energy policy-making.In future, standard output (SO) will be the economic variable used to define the target population from which the Swiss FADN sample is drawn. This study assesses the impact of the SO threshold on key economic variables at national level. The analysis demonstrates that raising the SO threshold will lead to higher average values of key economic variables such as work income per family labour unit. This result is confirmed by two entirely different approaches, the first of which takes the FADN data into account, and the second of which considers census data supplemented by imputed economic variables.This study tries to develop the overall environmental cost management in enterprise method by using both Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) and Life cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling (LIME). Here, LIME is one of the techniques of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This can be called material flow cost assessment for the life cycle (Lifecycle Material Flow Cost Assessment: LC-MFCA). It can be thought that MFCA is an internal diseconomy for the enterprise and LIME is an external diseconomy. This evaluation approach is a technique to make the external diseconomy internal. It is possible to tie to strengthening the approach on environmental consideration by doing the case study that uses LC-MFCA in the place of the business decision making. Input information for the managerial judgement was able to be offered by converting the environmental impact into information of a comprehensible amount of money for the management.The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) according to DIN EN ISO 14040 and 14044 is an established method to determine environmental impacts of a product system and represents a crucial part of the ecological sustainability assessment of buildings within the German Certification for Sustainable Buildings. Here, the duality of two LCA procedure options (Complete vs. simplified procedure) - in conjunction with a lack of experience in applying the complete respectively the dominating application of the simplified procedure - causes a strategic sustainability-related problem. The question is if a possible deviation of results between both procedures induces a systematic assessment error of environmental impacts of buildings with regard to a sustainability appraisal. This paper presents actual scientific findings which can resolve the tension between the outlined LCA procedures and shows a condensed view to the results of an authors' recent research project.The interest in using microalgae to produce biodiesel is rapidly increasing in an effort to search for renewable and alternative energy. In an attempt to support algal biodiesel industry, the exploration of sustainability concerns involved in biodiesel refinery is becoming more and more necessary and important. From a sustainability perspective, this paper addresses the environmental, economic, social, and cultural implications of microalgae-based biodiesel refinery. From an environmental standpoint, there are four main related concerns: first, less water is required and water used can be recycled greatly, but it might cause water and even groundwater pollution; second, although low-value lands can be used for construction, it might cause land use changes and soil erosion; third, infrastructure construction and eutrophication by water pollution will threaten on local biodiversity; finally, there are some disputes of energy input and greenhouse gases emissions. From an economic point of view, the main benefit lies in an increase of employment and incomes, while the main drawback is the overwhelming investments required due to high costs. Socially, it can improve energy security and create jobs, while, on the other hand, it might affect the health of local animals and people. From a cultural viewpoint, algal biodiesel concept is a new element, and it requires time for people to adapt. With effective use of measures in technologies and policies, the microalgae-derived biodiesel industry will commercialize at levels of sustainability.This article presents main results of a comparative study of different nanoparticle (NP) production technologies, e.g. flame pyrolysis, plasma synthesis, combustion synthesis, sol-gel, solvothermal and hydrothermal synthesis have been considered. Evaluation criteria were primarily focused on environmental impacts of compared technologies but also general criteria as productivity, quality, technical conditions or economic criteria have been envisaged. Available LCA studies assessing particular NP production technologies were used as an important source for this comparison. The study has been elaborated within 7. RP Sustainable Hydrothermal Manufacturing of Nanomaterials (SHYMAN), which aims to develop competitive and sustainable continuous NP production technology based on supercritical hydrothermal synthesis. The study will serve for the assessment of this newly developed and scaled up technology. Except general evaluation of different technologies on the basis of particular criteria presented in the table form, the article shows in detail, for the declared unit of 1 kg of produced NPs, the comparison of energy consumption, CO2 emissions, unwanted emissions of nanoparticles and other pollutants. The evaluation has demonstrated that besides specific processes of different technologies it is the choice of precursor which has essential influence on energy demand of the whole life cycle of NPs; the CED (Cumulative energy demand) incorporated in the precursor could be higher than the process energy of selected technology.Biogas produced in municipal and industrial wastewater treatment facilities (BWWF) is a resource wasted in several socio-economic contexts. BWWF-based projects are compared against energy projects using conventional electricity or natural gas (NG), following strict economic considerations that usually tip the balance in favour of conventional energy supply. This is because the economic gain associated with the environmental benefits of using small biogas sources like BWWF does not overcome the technical and financial effort required in these types of project. This paper shows a broader application of life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to explore opportunities for positive (or effective) utilization of BWWF in the Colombian context. LCA has been used to evaluate the supply-chain of NG which is the direct competitor of BWWF, in three different Colombian regions, in order to identify those where higher NG environmental impacts offer increased environmental added-value to BWWF use. LCA was also applied to study two BWWF valorization scenarios in the poultry processing industry. It shows how valorization options for BWWF are more realistic and effective when specific-regional loads are applied to the environmental assessment of NG supply-chain and BWWF valorization.Charcoal is used for cooking in many parts of the developing world. Charcoal from agricultural materials can also be used as a soil amendment to enhance agricultural production, and is often termed "biochar" in this case. Charcoal may be produced in various types and scales of systems, but for rural tropical areas, traditional kiln technologies without treatment of the pyrolysis gases dominate. Traditional charcoal industry is considered to be both inefficient and polluting, emitting harmful off-gases containing methane, carbon monoxide and particles. Retort kilns, which recirculate and combust the pyrolysis gases internally have been claimed to overcome this problem. Even though retort technology has frequently been discussed, this paper is the first study determining gas emission factors for operational retort kilns in rural tropical areas. The mean emission factors for the retort ldlns found in this study using identical feedstock were (in g kg(-1) charcoal); carbon dioxide (CO2) = 1950 +/- 209, carbon monoxide (CO) = 157 +/- 64, nonmethane volatile organic components (NMVOC) = 6.1 +/- 3.4, methane (CH4) = 24 +/- 17, total solid particles (TSP) = 12 +/- 18, products of incomplete combustion (plc) = 200 +/- 97 and nitric oxides (NOx) = 1.8 +/- 1.0. The corresponding value for the non-retort ldlns tested was in general higher; CO2 = 2380 +/- 973, CO = 480 +/- 141, NMVOC = 13 +/- 3.8, CH4 = 54 +/- 29, TSP = 7.9 +/- 2.6, PIC = 554 +/- 138 and NOx = 4.3 +/- 1.6. The difference between the kiln types was statistically significant (p < 0.05) for CO, NMVOC, PIC and NOx. However, the retort kilns consumed ignitable fuel such as wood in the start-up phase to reach pyrolysis temperature resulting in insignificant difference in yield between retort and non-retort kilns. In addition, retort kilns are more costly than traditional kilns, which may be challenging for implementation. It is therefore important to continue design development, especially with regard to wood consumption during the start-up phase. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study discusses about the environmental performance of Miscanthus conversion to district heat. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is used as a tool to assess the environmental impacts related to the biomass conversion to heat. Energy conversion of Miscanthus is compared in two combustion scenarios: (i) in Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant and (ii) in a Boiler (producing heat only). Biomass conversion to heat is also compared with the conversion of natural gas (NG). The environmental impact categories considered for the assessment are: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Non-Renewable Energy (NRE) use and Land use (LU). The current study revealed that for 1 MJ of heat production, Miscanthus fired in the CHP plant would lead to a GWP at -0.071 kg CO2-eq, an NRE use -0.767-MJ primary, and LU 0.09 m(2)-a (square metre-annual). For the same heat output, Miscanthus fired in the boiler would lead to a GWP of 0.005 kg CO2-eq, NRE use 0.172 MJ-primary and land use 0.063 m(2)-a. Miscanthus fired in the CHP plant is better than in the boiler from the stand point of lowering the GWP and increasing the savings in fossil fuel, but with slightly higher LU. A comparison between Miscanthus and NG has showed that despite the biomass possessed advantage in reducing GWP and NRE use, additional land required for Miscanthus could be seen as a disadvantage. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.LCA is a popular tool widely used to assess the environmental impact of waste management systems, which is illustrated by the substantial number of LCA computer models specifically addressing this subject. Due to the complex nature of waste management modelling and the range of country-specific data, as well as lack of harmonization, it has been observed that there are large discrepancies between the results using different models. Many studies have underlined the necessity of clearly identifying both the scope and methodological assumptions of LCAs in order to have confidence in the results. Therefore, the paper presented here reveals several methodology-related issues. The study tests two different pieces of LCA software, i.e. IWM-2 (designed specifically for MSW) and SimaPro (a generic and widely used LCA software). The pieces of software were used to LCA an MSW scenario and the results obtained (calculated using Ecoindicator'99 H/A) were compared to show the strengths and weaknesses of these tools, i.e., generic software usually treats the waste as a set of separate fractions, not as a whole mass, which means that the software is not highly sensitive to the composition of the waste and does not take into account the environmental impacts produced as a result of the interaction between the waste components after mixing. As waste composition is very important in planning, one study combines these two software packages to get final results, i.e., data generated by IWM-2 were entered into SimaPro. The discussion is built around a case study in Poland where waste management scenarios have been analyzed. The research carried out has shown that having the same initial inventory data collected on the basis of the same assumptions and with the same boundaries to the system model used and using the same method of LCIA to assess the impact on the environment, may not produce the same end results. In the presented study, the main differences in the LCIA results appeared in four output-related impact categories: carcinogens, climate change, ecotoxicity, and eutrophication/acidification, and for one input related impact category fossil fuels. Four reasons responsible for these differences are identified: (1) The IWM-2 program identified a smaller number of substances emitted to air and water associated with landfill and recycling than the Ecoinvent database (IWM-2 identified a total of 31 types of emissions to air and water for landfill while Ecoinvent identified 405 types, IWM-2 identified 39 types of emissions for recycling while Ecoinvent identified 403 types) (2) The IWM-2 program did not cover emissions to the soil, while the Ecoinvent database identified 60 types of such impact for landfill and 58 for recycling (3) The IWM-2 program does not cover consumption of resources, while the Ecoinvent database covered the use of 198 kinds of raw material (including 100 different minerals and fossil fuels) (4) In each case a different total mass of emissions and resources consumed was identified in the analysis of the inventory included in both analyses.This study uses a systems-level modeling approach to illustrate a novel synergy between municipal wastewater treatment and large-scale algaculture for production of bio-energy, whereby algae-mediated tertiary treatment provides efficient removal of unregulated, strongly estrogenic steroid hormones from the secondary effluent. Laboratory results from previously published studies suggested that algae-mediated treatment could deliver roughly 75-85% removal of a model estrogen (17 beta-estradiol) within typical algae pond residence times. As such, experimental results are integrated into a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) framework, to assess the environmental performance of an algae-based tertiary treatment system relative to three conventional tertiary treatments: ozonation, UV irradiation, and adsorption onto granular activated carbon. Results indicate that the algae-mediated tertiary treatment is superior to the selected benchmarks on the basis of raw energy return on investment (EROI) and normalized energy use per mass of estrogenic toxicity removed. It is the only tertiary treatment system that creates more energy than it consumes, and it delivers acceptable effluent quality for nutrient and coliform concentrations while rendering a significant reduction in estrogenic toxicity. These results highlight the dual water and energy sustainability benefits that accrue from the integration of municipal wastewater treatment and large-scale algae farming.The environmental implications of cultured meat are profound. An anticipatory life cycle assessment of cultured meat published in 2011 suggested it could have a smaller impact than agricultural meat in all categories except energy consumption. As with most technologies, cultured meat will almost certainly be accompanied by unintended consequences as well as unforeseen costs and benefits that accrue disproportionately to different stakeholders. Uncertainty associated with new engineered products cannot be completely eliminated prior to introduction, but ongoing environmental assessments of the technologies as they advance can serve to reduce unforeseen risks. Given the pace at which tissue engineering is advancing, systemic assessments of the technology will be pivotal in mitigating unintended environmental consequences.Heterogeneous catalysis, flow chemistry, continuous processing, green solvents, catalyst immobilization and recycling are some of the most relevant, emerging key technologies to achieve green synthesis. However, a quantification of potential effects on a case to case level is required to provide a profound answer, whether they can lead to a superior process compared to the industrial standard. To do so, holistic environmental assessment approaches are very useful tools providing insights and decision support during the process development phase. Herein, novel heterogeneous nanoparticulate ruthenium catalysts immobilized on hyperbranched polystyrene (HPS) and nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (NCNT) were investigated with respect to their potential environmental impacts and improvements if utilized in an industrially highly relevant process, namely glucose hydrogenation to sorbitol. The results of a comparative Life Cycle Assessment of the alternative catalytic systems under consideration of RANEY (R) nickel as benchmark catalyst revealed that in particular Ru nanoparticles on porous HPS beads processed under flow-chemistry conditions have the potential to improve the greenness of the overall synthesis, but the concentration of glucose in the reaction mixture is in fact the most influential parameter.This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of bleached eucalyptus kraft pulp production in Brazil. The entire production system was investigated, starting with forestry and ending with bleached pulp at the gate of the pulp mill. Alternative bleaching sequences were compared for three different scenarios using somewhat different elemental chlorine-free (ECF) sequences: D-hot(EPO) DD, D-hot(EPO) DP, and aZeDP. The main difference between the scenarios investigated was the magnitude of the carbon footprint contribution from bleaching. For the base case and chemical island scenarios (both reflecting Brazilian conditions), the contribution was 15%-18% of the total carbon footprint. For the ecoinvent scenario, the corresponding share was 34%-41%. The ecoinvent scenario represents generic LCA data for bleaching chemicals. Ecoinvent is a public database commonly included in commercial LCA software. For each scenario, the alternative bleaching sequences studied resulted in similar carbon footprints of the bleached pulp. A comparison of the data from the different scenarios showed a large range of carbon footprints for the chemicals used for pulp bleaching. It is crucial to select data sets that are relevant in terms of geography and technology. The most dominant contributors to the carbon footprint of the unbleached pulp were forestry and pulp production. Although the focus has been on carbon footprints, the contributions to other environmental effects commonly included in LCAs were also assessed and only minor differences between the alternative bleaching sequences were found.This study proposes a process design methodology based on the combined use of process simulation in Super Pro Designer with economic, environmental and energetic balances implemented in Matlab and heat integration using Aspen Energy Analyzer. We model a 2.4 MMgal/year alkali-catalyzed biodiesel process using vegetable oil and a 40 MMgal/year dry-grind corn based bioethanol production plant. Then, we analyse the cost, the environmental impact, and the energy required to produce one gallon of the desired biofuel. Finally, we determine the optimal heat integration strategy of the plant in order to reduce the cost, environmental impact and energy consumption associated to the biofuel production. In the case of biodiesel the cost is reduced from 2.27$/gal to 2.19 $/gal, the environmental impact from 4.52 kgCO(2)eq/gallon to 4.26 kgCO(2)eq/gallon and the energy from 8274BTU/gal to 8410 BTU/gal. Reductions are also obtained in the bioethanol plant in which the cost is reduced from 1.79 $/gal to 1.75 $/gal, the environmental impact from 4.97 kgCO(2)eq/gal to 4.77 kgCO(2)eq/gal and the energy from 24,681 BTU/gal to 23,168 BTU/gal. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Biomass gasification has the potential to produce renewable fuels, chemicals and power at large utility scale facilities. In these plants catalysts would likely be used to reform and clean the generated biomass syngas. Traditional catalysts are made from transition metals, while catalysts made from biochar are being studied. A life cycle assessment (LCA) study was performed to analyze the sustainability, via impact assessments, of producing a metal catalyst versus a dedicated biochar catalyst. The LCA results indicate that biochar has a 93% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and requires 95.7% less energy than the metal catalyst to produce. The study also estimated that biochar production would also have fewer impacts on human health (e. g., carcinogens and respiratory impacts) than the production of a metal catalyst. The possible disadvantage of biochar production in the ecosystem quality is due mostly to its impacts on agricultural land occupation. Sensitivity analysis was carried out to assess environmental impacts of variability in the two production systems. In the metal catalyst manufacture, the extraction and production of nickel (Ni) had significant negative effects on the environmental impacts. For biochar production, low moisture content (MC, 9%) and high yield type (8 tons/acre) switchgrass appeared more sustainable.The environmental impact associated with a SOFC (solid-oxide fuel-cell) power generation system has been assessed using a LCA (life cycle assessment) method. LCA is a technique assessing the environmental aspects associated with a system during its entire life cycle. To calculate the environmental impact of the analyzed system, a commercial software package, SimaPro version 73.3., was used; the ReCiPe method, endpoint approach, and the hierarchist's perspective were selected for calculating the values. The calculation results reveal that the manufacturing stage and the disposal stage have small contributions to the total environmental impact, which just cover 2.1%-9.5% and 0.1%-0.6% of the total, respectively, depending on the assumption made for the lifetime of the SOFC stack and the overall system. The SOFC stack is a dominant contributor to the environmental impact associated with manufacturing; 72% of the total environmental impact of manufacturing comes from the SOFC stack; the remaining balance-of-plant (BOP) components account for 28% of the total environmental impact. Options for reducing the overall environmental impact are presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper presents a review of the available literature on solar systems (solar thermal collectors and Photovoltaic-Thermal (PV/T) collectors) and their integration with heat pumps. Most of the research covered in this review show that the dominant source of solar assisted heat pumps (SAHPs) is liquid with a thermal storage; direct expansion or indirect expansion. SAHPs are mostly used for heating purposes. Few studies investigated the possibilities of combining a solar system with an air source heat pump (ASHP). The integration of a PV/T system with a heat pump, which provides both thermal energy and electrical power, existing in most researches is PV-evaporator type, which is the evaporator of the heat pump. It is required to control the mass flow rate of the refrigerant to prevent remaining liquid refrigerant at the outlet of the PV-evaporator due to the fluctuation of solar radiation; consequently, the system works inefficiently. It is possible to overcome this issue by separating the PV/T unit from the heat pump evaporator. There is a lack of investigations of connecting an air-based solar system (especially PV/T system) with an ASHP, including air-based thermal energy storage. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) use in the United States (US) has doubled in recent years and is projected to continue increasing rapidly. This is especially true in California, which makes up nearly one-third of the current US PEV market. Planning and constructing the necessary infrastructure to support this projected increase requires insight into the optimal strategies for PEV battery recycling. Utilizing life-cycle perspectives in evaluating these supply chain networks is essential in fully understanding the environmental consequences of this infrastructure expansion. This study combined life-cycle assessment and geographic information systems (GIS) to analyze the energy, greenhouse gas (GHG), water use, and criteria air pollutant implications of end-of-life infrastructure networks for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in California. Multiple end-of-life scenarios were assessed, including hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical recycling processes. Using economic and environmental criteria, GIS modeling revealed optimal locations for battery dismantling and recycling facilities for in-state and out-of-state recycling scenarios. Results show that economic return on investment is likely to diminish if more than two in-state dismantling facilities are constructed. Using rail as well as truck transportation can substantially reduce transportation-related GHG emissions (23-45%) for both in-state and out-of-state recycling scenarios. The results revealed that material recovery from pyrometallurgy can offset environmental burdens associated with LIB production, namely a 6-56% reduction in primary energy demand and 23% reduction in GHG emissions, when compared to virgin production. Incorporating human health damages from air emissions into the model indicated that Los Angeles and Kern Counties are most at risk in the infrastructure scale-up for in-state recycling due to their population density and proximity to the optimal location.This study investigates the potential integration of a dairy farm and a greenhouse into an eco-industrial system to promote waste-to-energy and waste-to-material exchanges. Natural gas consumption is substituted by renewable biogas generated from anaerobic digestion (AD) of the dairy manure; CO2 for plant enrichment in greenhouses is supplied by biogas combustion and the digestate (digestion residue) from digesters is used as animal bedding, plant growing media and liquid fertilizers. A life cycle analysis (LCA) was conducted to quantify the environmental impacts of the eco-industrial system in comparison to the conventional agriculture practices. The results show that the integrated system reduces non-renewable energy consumption, climate change impact, acidification, respiratory effects from organic emissions, and human toxicity by more than 40%. If the digestate surplus is treated as a waste, the integrated system shows an increase in eutrophication and respiratory effects from inorganic emissions while all the analyzed impacts are reduced if the digestate can be used for substituting chemical fertilizers. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Municipal Solid Waste in general and its organic fraction in particular is a potential renewable and non-seasonal resource. In this work, a life cycle assessment has been performed to evaluate the environmental impacts of two future scenarios using biogas produced from the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) to supply energy to a group of dwellings, respectively comprising distributed generation using solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) micro-CHP systems and condensing boilers. The London Borough of Greenwich is taken as the reference case study. The system is designed to assess how much energy demand can be met and what is the best way to use the digestible waste for distributed energy purposes. The system is compared with two alternative scenarios fuelled by natural gas: a reference scenario, where the electricity is supplied by the grid and the heat is supplied from condensing boilers, and a fuel cell micro-CHP system. The results show that, although OFMSW alone can only supply between 1% and 4% of the total energy demand of the Borough, a saving of similar to 130 tonnes of CO2 eq per year per dwelling equipped with micro-CHP is still achievable compared with the reference scenario. This is primarily due to the surplus electricity produced by the fuel cell when the micro-CHP unit is operated to meet the heat demand. Use of biogas to produce heat only is therefore a less desirable option compared with combined heat and power production. Further investigation is required to identify locally available feedstock other than OFMSW in order to increase the proportion of energy demand that can be met in this way. (C) 2014 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Multivariate statistical techniques of cluster analysis (CA) and discriminant analysis (DA) were applied in this study for the evaluation of water resource management strategies in high-tech industries, on the basis of the existing water use related data of 70 participating plants in Taiwan since 2011. The existing water use data were collected and transformed into detailed water balance charts, and the water use performance at individual plants was evaluated by three indices, namely the "processing water recovery rate", the "plant water recovery rate", and the "plant discharge rate". Results from discriminant analysis showed that increase in the ratios of effluent recycled to pure water system (EPWR) and recycled to secondary water system (ESWR) had positive effects on achieving higher water use performance. On the other hand, process water consumption and ESWR were influential factors in discriminating samples with lower water use performance. The results also confirmed the finding from synergistic effect that improvement on both EPWR and ESWR contributed to the highest water use performance. Opportunities for water recycling in high-tech industries appears to be technically feasible, future efforts could usefully be undertaken to implement further investment on water-use efficiency and novel treatment techniques, and investigation on various reuse purposes. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Food waste is a major problem in modern society and carries considerable social, economic and environmental costs. Food production causes greenhouse gas emissions along the entire food supply chain and wasting food means that those emissions are produced in vain. There is consensus that food waste has to be reduced. For example, the EU and some of its member countries have set concrete targets to reduce the amount of waste. However, in order to achieve the overall goal of a more sustainable economy, not only quantitative but also environmental indicators have to be considered when pursuing waste reduction goals. This study analysed the discrepancies between the waste quantity and wastage carbon footprint (CF) profiles of perishable food products wasted in Swedish supermarkets. The wastage CF, defined as the product CF from cradle up to and including delivery to the retailer times the amount of the product wasted at the store, was calculated for products in the meat, deli, cheese, dairy and fruit & vegetable departments of six Swedish supermarkets. The CF from cradle to retailer of the various products was determined based on existing life cycle assessment (LCA) literature. Emissions due to production and transportation were considered. Data on wasted mass of the products in the period 2010-2012 was provided by the Swedish retail chain Willys. Data on bread waste are mainly held by the bakeries, and were thus not included in the study. Over a three-year period, 1570 t of fresh food (excluding bread) were wasted in the six supermarkets. The associated total wastage CF was 2500 t CO(2)e. The fruit & vegetable department contributed 85% of the wasted mass and 46% of the total wastage CF. The meat department contributed 3.5% of the wasted mass, while it accounted for 29% of the total wastage CF. The wastage CF of each department tended to be highly concentrated in certain products and thus halving the waste of the top three products in each department could save more than 25 t CO(2)e per store and year. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The motivation for the current study is based on the observation that close to metropolitan areas, abiotic resources are becoming scarce and need to be imported and transported over long distances in order to be used in construction. The issue of local resource scarcity, with respect to resources used in the construction sector, is not adequately depicted in environmental impact assessment methods such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and despite the documented need by many researchers to evaluate resource availability on a regional rather than global scale, no cost-efficient, fast and reliable indicator has been proposed. Additionally, the existing indicators take into account only the issue of physical availability of a resource and normally neglect the impact of other parameters, including social or legislative issues. A resource can be physically available and yet the access to it may be prohibited. It is argued here that social and anthropogenic factors, such as the proximity to an urban area or the existence of a protected zone, can be a barrier to the authorization of quarry operation and expansion and that the accessibility to a resource is often threatened by competing land uses. In this study, we developed an indicator for assessing local accessibility from quarries rather than global availability of resources used in the construction industry. This indicator reflects the impact of social factors on resource exploitation and expresses the space competition between built area and quarry based on land cover data. For a complete sustainability assessment, this social indicator should be used in conjunction with other environmental and economic indicators, such as the indicator on resource availability or the impact of the transportation. The validation of this accessibility indicator, with French and Swiss data, is performed both at national and regional levels. The results show that this new indicator is robust and reliable as similar local contexts provide similar results. Furthermore, it allows to understand the dynamics of the studied area in terms of human pressure on resource accessibility in a very fast and cost-efficient way. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Sicily has a long tradition in citrus fruit cultivations that with vineyard and olive tree represent the main Mediterranean tree crops. In this paper we have evaluated the economic and financial sustainability of lemon production, both in organic farming and in conventional farming; the two systems differing just for inputs utilized in production process. Economic analysis has been carried out in a representative case study located in the Sicilian northwestern coast, considering an orchard economic life equal to 50 years. Results, which referred to one hectare area, showed both a higher economic and financial sustainability of organic farming respect to conventional farming. The higher profitability of organic farming was due to minor labor requirement and to greater market appreciation for organic products that granted a premium price respect to conventional prices. Moreover, greater profitability of organic farming and use of environmentally friendly inputs in production process make farms competitive and eco-friendly.Pretreatment as a crucial step in the process of ethanol production has significant influences on the process efficiency and on the environmental performance of the bioethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass. In present life cycle analysis (LCA) study, two cases for pretreatment of woodchips were considered as the focal point of the ethanol plant. One was assumed as base scenario whereas the second is the proposed alternative by implementation of modifications on the base design. In the first stage, LCA results of pretreatment unit showed lower environmental impacts in respiratory inorganics and land use than in new scenario, while the base scenario revealed better performance in fossil fuels. The results of the second stage of LCA study demonstrated improvement in proposed design in most categories of environmental impacts such as 18.5 % in land use as well as 17 % improvement in ecosystem quality.This paper develops a political-industrial ecology approach to explore the urban water metabolism of Los Angeles, which sprawls for thousands of miles across the American West. Conventional approaches to quantify urban carbon footprints rely on global, national, or regional averages and focus narrowly on improving the efficiency of flows of resources moving into and out of the city. These approaches tend to "black box" the methodologies that guide the carbon emissions calculus and the social, political, ecological, and economic processes that perpetually reshape nature-society metabolisms. To more fully delineate the water supply metabolism of Los Angeles, this paper combines theory and method from urban political ecology and industrial ecology. Specifically, we infuse spatiality into the traditional life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach by coupling it with GIS. By illustrating how decisions about system boundaries, emissions factors, and other building blocks fundamentally shape the end result, this intervention at once destabilizes and advances the LCA enterprise. Then, using interviews and historical analysis, we provide a critical analysis of how LA's various water supply infrastructures came to be and illustrate how a sustainable transition based on a narrow carbon calculus is problematized by historical circumstances and strategic (and often conflicting) new paradigms to secure water resources. The political-industrial ecology approach offers valuable insights into the spatiality of material metabolisms and the socio-political processes (re)shaping the relations between nature and society. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Dairy farms in the northeast typically produce their own forage, import grain crops, and rely heavily on other inputs. Feed production inputs include fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and fuel that require fossil energy and produce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during their manufacture and transport. This study uses the Farm Energy Analysis Tool (FEAT) to compare and contrast the fossil energy consumption, energy efficiency, and GHG emissions for three different Pennsylvania dairy cropping systems that vary in their reliance on imported grains and fuel, and thus, land area to produce the same quantity of milk. One novel cropping system, implemented at Penn State University, includes a diverse rotation designed to produce forage, grain, and fuel on-farm (NSVO). The 'NSVO' cropping system employs a number of best management practices, including manure injection, cover crops, and integrated pest management. The two modeled-systems require fewer hectares than 'NSVO' because they do not produce fuel on-farm but produce forage only (FOR), or forage and grain (FORGr), while producing the same amount of milk. Relative to the 'FOR' system, even while requiring larger land areas locally, we found that the 'NSVO' and FORGr' systems lowered total fossil energy inputs per Mg of milk produced by 18% and 15% respectively, largely by importing 77% and 71% less feed crops that would have been grown elsewhere. GHG emissions were similar among farms, on the order of 229 kg CO(2)e Mg-milk(-1). On-farm fuel production in the 'NSVO' system lowered fossil energy inputs but required more land area and may not provide economic savings with current diesel fuel prices. To reduce the fossil energy impact of their operations, dairy farmers in the Northeast should consider growing more livestock grain on-farm. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In this paper the environmental performance of an advanced hybrid energy storage system, comprising high power and high energy lithium iron phosphate cells, is compared with a stand alone battery concept composed of lithium manganese oxide cells. The methodology used to analyse the environmental impacts is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The manufacturing, use phase and end-of-life of the battery packs are assessed for twelve impact categories. The functional unit is 1 km driven under European average conditions. The present study assesses the environmental performance of the two battery packs for two scenarios: scenario 1 with a vehicle total drive range of 150,000 km and scenario 2 with total driving range of the car of 300,000 km. The results of scenario 1 show that the increased efficiency of the hybrid system reduces, in general, the environmental impact during the use stage, although the manufacturing stage has higher impact than the benchmark. Scenario 2 shows how the extended lifetime of the hybrid system benefits the emissions per km driven. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The negative environmental impacts of existing buildings can be significantly reduced by implementing various green upgrade measures to minimize their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, refrigerant impacts, mercury-vapor emissions, lighting pollution, and water use. This paper presents the development of a novel optimization model that provides the capability of optimizing building upgrade decisions in order to minimize their negative environmental impacts while complying with a specified upgrade budget and owner-specified building operational performance. The model is developed in three main phases: metrics identification phase that develops metrics to quantify the negative environmental impacts of existing buildings; formulation phase that formulates the model decision variables, objective function, and constrains; and implementation phase that performs the optimization computations and specifies the model input and output data. A case study of a rest area building is analyzed to evaluate the performance of the developed model and illustrate its new capabilities. The results of analyzing the case study demonstrated the capabilities of the model in optimizing building upgrade measures to minimize the building negative environmental impacts while complying with the specified upgrade budget and the building operational performance. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research presents a new methodology of environmental building design with an integrated energy -emergy (spelled with an "m") approach to study building form optimization in the schematic phases. In architecture, selection of sustainability assessment methods critically affects design goals, favoring or restricting choices designers can make. A building subsumes matter and energy to support human lives, but current building performance indicators are still hard to equate technical sides and human dominant sides of various scales in a synthetic metric. Moreover, in order to achieve global sustainability in a building, as a part of the whole built environment, it is necessary to integrate energy and environmental impacts at the highest scope of analysis. Emergy analysis coupled with building energy simulation can be suggested as a holistic indicator for architectural design process. To test the proposed method, a pilot study with a mid-size office building evaluates the consequences of early design decisions such as basic geometry, aspect ratio, window-wall ratio, construction types, etc. The integrated energy-emergy approach to building form optimization consists of three modules namely, Building Energy Simulation (BES) module, Building EMergy Analysis (BEMA) module, and (iii) MetaModel Development (MMD) module. The BES module uses the EnergyPlus tool for whole building energy analysis, while the BEMA module employs analytical methods to estimate emergy quantities, and the MMD module employs the Taguchi method to develop a metamodel for faster and easier whole building emergy simulation. The metamodel developed using Taguchi-ANOVA method for building form optimization was validated with analytical test results to accelerate environmental design decision-making. This study demonstrates possibility of wider applications of emergy synthesis to building energy research and facilitates practical use of emergy simulation in the environmental design process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The present study evaluates the use of supercritical fluid technology, particularly supercritical water gasification (SCWG), to add value to residues from a sugarcane biorefinery that produces first and second generation ethanol. This case study aims at elucidating how process system engineering tools such as thermal process integration, life cycle analysis, economic evaluation and multi-objective optimization can contribute to minimizing some future challenges of the industrial implementation of supercritical fluid-based technologies, which were discussed in the Workshop on Supercritical Fluids and Energy - SFE'13. In addition, this case study exposes future perspectives in terms of the requirements to further develop this field. The optimized solutions of the evaluated case showed that the SCWG process increases the overall efficiency of the process in terms of energy and carbon fixation. It decreases the CO2 equivalent emissions and it leads to a thermally self-sufficient process. The economic analysis showed a high investment cost but a feasibility of using the current market prices for the produced fuels and electricity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Reducing wafer thickness while increasing power conversion efficiency is the most effective way to reduce cost per Watt of a silicon photovoltaic module. Within the European project 20 percent efficiency on less than 100-mu m-thick, industrially feasible crystalline silicon solar cells ("20pl mu s"), we study the whole process chain for thin wafers, from wafering to module integration and life-cycle analysis. We investigate three different solar cell fabrication routes, categorized according to the temperature of the junction formation process and the wafer doping type: p-type silicon high temperature, n-type silicon high temperature and n-type silicon low temperature. For each route, an efficiency of 19.5% or greater is achieved on wafers less than 100 mu m thick, with a maximum efficiency of 21.1% on an 80-mu m-thick wafer. The n-type high temperature route is then transferred to a pilot production line, and a median solar cell efficiency of 20.0% is demonstrated on 100-mu m-thick wafers. (C) 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, WeinheimThe performances of a new dolomitic sorbent, named Depurcal (R) MG, to be directly injected at high temperature in the combustion chamber of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) plants as a preliminary stage of deacidification, were experimentally tested during full-scale commercial operation. Results of the experimentations were promising, and have been extensively described in Biganzoli et al. (2014). This paper reports the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study performed to compare the traditional operation of the plants, based on the sole sodium bicarbonate feeding at low temperature, with the new one, where the dolomitic sorbent is injected at high temperature. In the latter the sodium bicarbonate is still used, but at lower rate because of the decreased load of acid gases entering the flue gas treatment line. The major goal of the LCA was to make sure that a burden shifting was not taking place somewhere in the life cycle stages, as it might be the case when a new material is used in substitution of another one. According to the comparative approach, only the processes which differ between the two operational modes were included in the system boundaries. They are the production of the two reactants and the treatment of the corresponding solid residues arising from the neutralisation of acid gases. The additional CO2 emission at the stack of the WTE plant due to the activation of the sodium bicarbonate was also included in the calculation. Data used in the modelling of the foreground system are primary, derived from the experimental tests described in Biganzoli et al. (2014) and from the dolomitic sorbent production plant. The results of the LCA show minor changes in the potential impacts between the two operational modes of the plants. These differences are for 8 impact categories in favour of the new operational mode based on the addition of the dolomitic sorbent, and for 7 impact categories in favour of the traditional operation. A final evaluation was conducted on the potential role of the dolomitic sorbent in enhancing the electric energy production efficiency of the plant, thanks to the better cleaning of the heat exchange surface that can be achieved. If such improvement is accounted for, all the potential impacts are considerably decreased (e.g. the Climate change by 28%), and in the comparison with the traditional operation 17 impact categories out of 19 are reduced. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Insights derived from life-cycle assessment of solid waste management strategies depend critically on assumptions, data, and modeling at the unit process level. Based on new primary data, a process model was developed to estimate the cost and energy use associated with material recovery facilities (MRFs), which are responsible for sorting recyclables into saleable streams and as such represent a key piece of recycling infrastructure. The model includes four modules, each with a different process flow, for separation of single-stream, dual-stream, pre-sorted recyclables, and mixed-waste. Each MRF type has a distinct combination of equipment and default input waste composition. Model results for total amortized costs from each MRF type ranged from $19.8 to $24.9 per Mg (1 Mg = 1 metric ton) of waste input. Electricity use ranged from 4.7 to 7.8 kWh per Mg of waste input. In a single-stream MRF, equipment required for glass separation consumes 28% of total facility electricity consumption, while all other pieces of material recovery equipment consume less than 10% of total electricity. The dual-stream and mixed-waste MRFs have similar electricity consumption to a single-stream MRF. Glass separation contributes a much larger fraction of electricity consumption in a pre-sorted MRF, due to lower overall facility electricity consumption. Parametric analysis revealed that reducing separation efficiency for each piece of equipment by 25% altered total facility electricity consumption by less than 4% in each case. When model results were compared with actual data for an existing single-stream MRF, the model estimated the facility's electricity consumption within 2%. The results from this study can be integrated into LCAs of solid waste management with system boundaries that extend from the curb through final disposal. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mexico's government has introduced a Law on Climate Change that is unique worldwide; it establishes targets for greenhouse gases reductions at the same level of developed countries despite being an emerging country. This reform represents a crucial challenge for the electrical and transport sectors largely dependent on fossil energy since Mexico is the ninth-largest oil producer in the world. Local industry and academic sectors are called to lead the introduction of renewable energy sources, and particularly to enhance the share of energy from biomass in the local energy basket. Thus, this paper outlines the baseline on regulatory, energy, and carbon markets, and the scientific capacity to increase bioenergy utilization in Mexico. Furthermore, it opens a discussion about the steps forward with regard to sustainability and research needs, emphasizing some priorities and principles to develop a bioenergy system environmentally compatible in this country. (c) 2014 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts, Biorefining published by Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Markets are increasingly demanding more sustainable products and services, as well as more information about the environmental qualities of the products and services they use. To meet market expectations, modern management needs powerful tools that can create an understanding about the environmental traits of products and services and how these products and services can be made more sustainable. The environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is one such powerful tool that can evaluate the environmental aspects and impacts of a product or service from cradle to grave. While LCA was originally designed to support decisions in the environmental engineering area, it is a tool that can also be used managerially to develop valuable and fact-based sustainability strategies within the company regarding its products and services. Recent examples from industry leaders report exciting evidence of the power of LCA. This article introduces the LCA method as a management decision tool, and illustrates its value creation potential through multiple industry examples. (C) 2014 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper presents the energy savings in refurbishment of the buildings using Life Cycle Assessment at material level by comparing three insulation materials that offer higher thermal performance and greater environmental sustainability. The comparison is made on products having the same insulation performance (U-value). After the enumeration of intervention practices for energy saving in buildings, the Life Cycle Assessment methodology in refurbishment of the buildings is applied at material level using Life Cycle Inventory to transform material volume input into impact on the environment as output. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out according to the requirements of the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). After assessing the building performance before and after isolation, the "embodied energy", which comes from the materials manufacturing as phases of the refurbishment of the buildings, was determinate and compared with the operational energy of the building. This LCA methodology in refurbishment of the buildings at material level was evaluated for Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), Extruded Polystyrene (XPS) and Rigid polyurethane (PUR) insulation products. This methodology has been used on a building in Galati, Romania (School No. 9). A spider diagram was used to represent the criteria in a consistent, graphical way in relative units. The extreme values for a given criteria indicate the poor performance of the insulation material. Finally, the assessment of the building performance before and after using the insulation and the determination of the "embodied energy" compared to the operational energy of the building resulted in a 55% energy saving in the use stage of the building after refurbishment. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the present work, insulation materials are produced by using clay (C), fly ash (FA), rice husk ash (RHA) and epoxidized tall oil (ETC)). Density and thermal conductivity properties of these materials are analyzed. Environmental and economical analyses of sample with code T36 as insulation material are numerically investigated by using a computer program developed in LINGO. The optimum insulation thickness of this insulation material applied externally on wall for Elazig city of Turkey, energy saving over a lifetime of 10 years, payback periods, sensitivity analysis and emissions of CO2-SO2 versus insulation thickness are calculated for the four energy types. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Cumulative energy demand (CED) estimates from life cycle assessments (LCAs) are increasingly used to determine energy return on investment (EROI), but the difference in indicators can lead to a misclassification of energy flows in the assessment. The core idea of EROI is to measure the relation of energy diverted from society to make energy available to society. CED, on the other hand, includes forms of energy that are not appropriated by society, such as fugitive methane emissions from oil wells as well as losses of heating value of coal during transport and storage. Such energy forms should be excluded from EROI; failure to do so leads to results that are inconsistent with the intention of EROI and potentially misleading. We demonstrate how this problem is at least partially rectifiable by adopting consistent energy accounting, but also note that among the energy flows not appropriated by society occurring in CED, not all flows can easily be removed. Further, we point to inconsistencies in heating value assumptions in a widely used database that have misled analysts. Finally, we argue that the differential weighting of primary energy forms in published CED-based EROI work is unsubstantiated and should be reconsidered. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Different options for managing the organic fraction (OF) of municipal solid waste generated in a given urban area were analyzed by life cycle assessment (LCA) for different source segregation (SS) intensities ranging from 0 to 52 %. The best management option for processing the OF remaining in the residual organic fraction (ROF) for the different SS intensities was by incineration. Landfilling and mechanical biological treatment (MBT) of ROF gave higher impacts. Aerobic treatment alone or combined with anaerobic digestion (AD) for processing the source-segregated organic fraction (SSOF) led to relevant environmental impact reduction even if the difference between the two options was quite negligible. The weighted impact showed that scenarios using incineration always gave environmental gains, whereas there was a higher environmental burden with the scenarios using MBT.The livestock industry is a significant component of the agricultural and rural sectors in the UK. Grassland for livestock accounts for almost half of the terrestrial surface of the UK and almost two-thirds of its managed agricultural land. It therefore accounts for a major proportion of rural employment and income and provides many landscape and biodiversity benefits. Taking an ecosystems-services-framework approach, an integrated livestock-ecosystems linear programming model was developed to assess economic and environmental impacts of the livestock sector. This combined life cycle assessment systems analysis with economic and valuation data and enabled plausible future scenarios to be assessed in terms of provisioning, regulating and cultural services. Analysis showed the main benefit coming from provisioning services and also the significant role the sector plays in providing cultural services, and the trade-offs between these and the cost of regulating services with respect to emissions to air and water. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study the environmental performances of the two most widespread cropping systems for cereal silage production in Northern Italy were analysed. Three different technical solutions for the seedbed preparation (conventional tillage, minimum tillage, and no tillage) were considered too. The Life Cycle Assessment method was chosen for the environmental analysis. The following impact potentials were evaluated: abiotic depletion, climate change, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical oxidant formation. One ton of dry matter was chosen as the functional unit. Taking into account that the functional unit selection can affect the environmental results, a sensitivity analysis was performed considering three other different functional units (area, biomethane production, and nutritive value). For both the crop systems, the emissions due to fertiliser application, diesel fuel consumption and production are the hotspots process with the greater influences on the overall environmental burden. Compared to single crop, the double crop system shows the worst environmental performance for all the evaluated impact categories except for euthrophication and acidification (-21% and -14%, respectively). Among the different technical solutions for seedbed preparations, the minimum tillage and the sod seeding achieve better results than the conventional tillage. For impact categories such as abiotic depletion, photochemical oxidation, climate change and ozone layer depletion there are impact reductions ranging from -2.5% to -11.5% for single crop and from -9.4% to -11.7% for double crop. For acidification and eutrophication the impact reduction is minimal for single crop while, for minimum tillage in double crops a slight increase is observed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental effects of anaerobic digestion (AD) plants have not, to date, been thoroughly analysed. The technology of biogas production has developed enormously in the last 10 years, with equipment functioning at ever-improving efficiency. In the present study, we aimed to examine the environmental effects of biogas plants that operate with the same power production capacity, but use different raw materials during the full life cycle. In addition, the environmental effects that occur during the establishment of AD plants were defined and contrasted against emissions during the full life cycle. In life cycle analysis (LCA), the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission effect of biogas production was measured as kg CO2 eq/kWh(e), the acidification potential as kg SO2 eq/kWh(e), and the eutrophication potential as kg PO4 eq/kWh(e). The calculations proved that an AD plant that processes only energy crops as raw materials can be regarded as a CO2 absorber (-188 g/kWh(e)). The CO2 emission of all three examined plants was below the average emission of electrical power currently produced in a conventional manner. The AD plant that processes low-energy-density agricultural wastes produced 7.7% of its full-life-cycle CO2 emissions during its construction phase, compared with a 0.9% ratio for the AD plant processing only energy crops. However, the manure-based AD plant contributed the most to the decline in environmental acidification. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The environmental awareness of people has increased in recent decades, and the demand for environmentally friendly products has caused agro-scientists to give more attention to cleaner production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been identified as a suitable tool for assessing environmental impacts associated with a product over its life cycle. The implementation of LCA with other management tools can help LCA practitioners to evaluate agri-food systems from different viewpoints. In this study, LCA, multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA), and data envelopment analysis (DEA) were combined, and the pros and cons of their application were investigated. Three impact categories global warming (GW), respiratory inorganics (RI) and non-renewable energy use (NRE) - were selected to be evaluated. The results revealed mean RI, GW and NRE in a case study of watermelon production of 10.3 kg PM2.5 eq ha(-1), 9485.5 kg CO2 eq ha(-1) and 186,432 MJ primary energy ha(-1) respectively. The results of LCA + MOGA showed that a reduction of 27% in RI and 35% in GW and NRE can occur if an appropriate combination of resources is used in watermelon production. The use of LCA + DEA revealed that if all farmers operate on the efficient frontier (suggested values) impacts in all three categories can be reduced by 8%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The semiconductor industry plays an ever-increasing role in society, providing microelectronic components called chips that are used in a wide variety of electronic applications. The rapid increase of the production of chips is responsible for considerable effects on the environment during the different phases of their life cycle. In spite of increasing pressure from stakeholders to control these effects, no international standard or agreement has yet been established. In this context, the paper proposes a set of environmental indicators that take into account the most serious damages induced by these products. To establish an exhaustive list of indicators, the specificities of the semiconductor branch are first analysed in literature, identifying pressures on the sector coming from the downstream chain - chip buyers and users - and finally by analysing data from industrial case studies. In order to highlight the most significant direct and indirect impacts, each aspect of the chips' life cycle phases is studied independently. The indicators reflect the particularities of the industry and point out the major impact categories. They can be therefore be used for standardized environmental analysis of microelectronic products. The paper retains seven environmental indicators: resource depletion, eutrophication, water stress, toxicity, summer smog and local electrical consumption. The final set of indicators will help draw the environmental profile of the microelectronic chips over the full life cycle of the products. It is a step towards necessary standardization in the microelectronic industry. The indicators are consistent with current state of the art and can evolve as progress is made on the definition and calculation of new indicators. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper explores the environmental impacts of drill and blast tunnelling by life cycle assessment. In order to understand the potential of cleaner tunnelling, this paper also analysis the influence of tunnel length and size on pollutant emissions. The excavation practices of rock tunnel in Norway over past 20 years are used to estimate material, equipment and energy consumption. The background data are drawn out from various databases in the Simapro software. The results indicate that: 1) the most important contributor to the climate change and terrestrial ecotoxicity impacts are the loading and hauling process. Its relative contribution also increases when the tunnel becomes bigger or longer. 2) The drilling and blasting process is the dominate contributor to the human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation and terrestrial acidification impacts. The relative influence of this process, however, slightly decreases when tunnels become bigger or longer. 3) The three main sources for all impacts are explosives, diesel and electricity. Therefore, a significant potential of environmental impacts reduction could be reached by optimising drilling and blasting operation to reduce explosive consumption, and by improving renewable energy sharing. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Mercury releases from used thermometers at the end of their life in the Mexican health sector are estimated to be 2166 kg/year. Some actions are being implemented at the hospital level to eliminate the use of mercury thermometers in some cities. This study evaluated the impact of policy alternatives for the sound management of mercury released from used thermometers using a life cycle assessment with Umberto software and Ecoinvent databases. The results identified that the elimination of open dumping and increasing the recycling rate of mercury up to 60% will lead to the highest net benefits compared with the use of virgin materials in new products. This study showed different scenarios of recycling and end of life practices in the management of mercury waste from glass thermometers in Mexico to know the environmental burdens of each treatment strategy and identified recommendations for development of public policies for handling of this type of waste with focus in the decrease of associated risks. It was demonstrated that increase of recycling allows reducing the environmental impacts caused by the use of raw materials and that decrease of landfills for deposit of mercury waste, preventing uncontrolled emissions of mercury to the atmosphere. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The scale of industry clusters and their significant environmental impact make addressing environmental strategies on the cluster level an intriguing task. Although several studies indicate that upstream processes contribute significantly to the total environmental impact of the system, few studies assess how environmental strategy development can be approached from a life cycle perspective. The aim of this paper was to investigate the practical significance of life cycle-based environmental strategy development using a chemical industry cluster in Sweden as the case study. To assess the environmental impact, a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) was chosen as the method, with the total annual production of the cluster in 2011 as the functional unit. To cover the whole value chain, the global warming potential for downstream processes was also estimated. The findings were linked to the cluster vision, which aims to reduce environmental impact by 2030. The results indicate that the cluster must focus on the whole value chain when pursuing the aim of producing sustainable products as environmental impact both upstream and downstream of the cluster accounts for a larger share than on-site processes. The assessment also enables distribution of environmental impact among incoming material streams, thus providing the cluster with decision support when introducing renewable and recycled materials. Additionally, the assessment supports strategy comparison and serves as a base case against which strategy opportunities can be evaluated. This study demonstrates that the life cycle approach has interesting potential to support industry cluster companies in their mutual effort to improve environmental performance. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The purpose of this study is to assess whether for dry biodegradable packaging without food contamination, a detailed life cycle assessment supports the priorities suggested by the five-level hierarchy, as described by the European Waste Directive 2006/12/EC. Environmental impacts and water withdrawal were assessed using an extended version of IMPACT 2002+, accounting for the dynamic pattern of greenhouse gas releases for each scenario when determining Global Warming Potentials for a time horizon of 100 years (in this paper defined as dynamic assessment). The present assessment shows that, for most impact categories, mechanical recycling is the most interesting option, followed by direct fuel substitution. Intermediate performances are obtained by anaerobic digestion and municipal incineration. Landfill and industrial composting of dry packaging generate the highest environmental impacts of the studied end-of-life options. Indeed, the composting of the studied materials does not substantially improve compost quality and does not enable energy recovery. The hypothesis that composting is by default environmentally preferable over energy recovery because it is a form of recycling is not confirmed by the present study, thus underlining the importance of a sound and case-specific application of the EU waste hierarchy and the need to complete the hierarchy by product specific studies. Though of limited effect on the present study, the dynamic assessment of greenhouse gas may moderately decrease the impacts effectively taking place over the 100-year horizon. More important is to consider the degradation patterns of biodegradable materials and present to the decision makers both the 100-year and the long term impacts of the end-of-life options. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In order to complete a life cycle assessment (LCA) study of the product, each activity interacting with the environment during the product life cycle should be given an explicit description, namely an LCA-oriented representation for the product life cycle should be constructed. A complex functional product usually consists of many parts made of different materials and its LCA-oriented life cycle modeling involves many complex semantic relationships. In this paper, a new LCA-oriented and ontology-based semantic representation model and methodology for the product life cycle are proposed. First, the concepts of processes and flows, and the semantic relationships among processes, and between processes and flows are analyzed in detail. The ontology classes of processes and flows are defined using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Then, an LCA-oriented semantic concept model for the product life cycle is presented. Based on the proposed semantic representation model, all processes, flows, and the relationships among them can be represented as a Resource Description Framework (RDF) graph in which each node is an instance tagged by an ontology class. A formalization of lifecycle processes on flows is provided, which can be encoded with Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) and formed into a knowledge rule base. In addition, a semantic query method for the life cycle inventory of. a product is proposed. Finally, an implementation framework and an example of the semantic representation for a ball bearing's life cycle are provided. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Monetary valuation is the practice of converting measures of social and biophysical impacts into monetary units and is used to determine the economic value of non-market goods, i.e. goods for which no market exists. It is applied in cost benefit analysis to enable the cross-comparison between different impacts and/or with other econoinic costs and benefits. For this reason, monetary valuation has a great potential to be applied also in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), especially in the weighting phase. However, several challenges limit its diffusion in the field, which resulted in only a few applications so far. The authors have performed a review of different monetary valuation methods for use in LCA. Firstly, monetary valuation approaches, methods, and LCA applications were identified. Secondly, key features and the strengths and weaknesses of each monetary valuation method were determined. Finally, monetary valuation methods and LCA applications were evaluated according to a comprehensive set of criteria, ranging from scientific foundation to uncertainty and complexity. It was found that observed-and revealed-preference methods and the abatement cost method have limited applicability in LCA, whereas the choice experiment method and the budget constraint method are the best options for monetary valuation in LCA. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Efforts undertaken for reducing environmental impacts of energy production have been primarily focused on carbon reduction while the fact that energy production also reciuires water has been largely overlooked. During the last decade, and despite the fact that global warming still remains today the focus of many environmental evaluations, water scarcity issues have increasingly received attention. Despite the fact that recently, an increasing demand for large industrial companies to calculate and report on their water footprint exists, water resources have only recently been addressed in life cycle assessment (LCA) and their assessment still lacks wide application. The paper presents a practitioner's experience with respect to the application of three recently developed water footprinting methodologies that are considered as current-state-of-the-art. The methods are applied with as objective the estimation of the water footprint of combined cycle gas turbines with different cooling technologies. The study reveals that absolute values of water footprints (L-eg. kWh(-1)) are very different among methods and therefore results are not directly comparable in terms of their absolute results. In contrast, ranking among power plants agree for the different methods when large differences in water consumption/impact exist. However, the ranking may differ between different methods when differences are small. It therefore remains impossible to select one method as the preferred method to use. This study therefore serves as support to the recently emerging working groups (eg. WULCA) that aim at harmonizing the different existing methodologies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Academic interests in the product-service system have shifted from the area of environmental sustainability to the socio-economic issues. In this context, life cycle assessment is no longer the only approach to interpreting the performances of product-service systems. Multiple criteria reflecting product-service quality, customer satisfaction, and the full sustainability concerns would be needed to evaluate the system solutions. In this paper, a concept of sustainable product-service efficiency is proposed to explore the relationship between product-service value and the sustainability impact. Additionally, the authors discuss how this concept can be applied to assess sustainable product-service systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is expected to affect agricultural production in the coming decades, to which agriculture must adapt in order to maintain productivity and profitability. The effect of such changes on environmental impacts must be assessed, if the environmental goals of agriculture are also to be achieved in the future. We therefore assess the environmental impacts of adaptation scenarios previously developed with a purely economic perspective, for two case study regions in Switzerland. We use life cycle assessment at the whole-farm level, which enables the consideration of multiple environmental impact indicators, allowing us to identify potential trade-offs. We assess a simulated mixed livestock and arable crop farm representative of average farms in the two case study regions. The simulated farm is economically optimized for a reference scenario (current situation) and four future scenarios combining a climate change scenario representing a "worst case" change signal, and various price and policy scenarios. Results show that environmental impacts tend to increase in the future climate. Farms tend to extensify production, leading to a decrease in eco-efficiency, even more so if a decrease in agricultural product prices is assumed: socio-economic conditions may have even more influence than climate change, suggesting that there is a high potential for policy-makers to influence and mitigate the effects of climate change on agricultural productivity and the associated environmental impacts. The impacts of irrigation water use on aquatic biodiversity are revealed to be an important trade-off with farm economic optimization in the future. It is therefore recommended that aquatic biodiversity impacts be considered in assessments of agricultural adaptation to climate change. Policies directly targeting restriction of water use do not resolve this trade-off, although they do reduce impacts on aquatic biodiversity. Broader and more integrative policies are therefore required to support agricultural adaptation to the future climate while mitigating environmental impacts. In addition, different regions are found to react in a different way, suggesting that differentiated policies may be required for specific regions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study tries to find out the hotspots of the Spanish cement sector in 2010 by the life cycle assessment (LCA) and evaluates some improvement scenarios where best available technologies and substitution measures are taken into consideration. The document presents an environmental LCA of the cement production using the 2011 International Reference Life Cycle Data System method recommended by the European Commission. Attending to the clinker production by stage, fossil fuel combustion is the most important source in terms of impacts. Besides, limestone's calcination is crucial attending to the climate change. Electricity consumption is also relevant both in human toxicity with cancer effects and freshwater eutrophication (FE). Accordingly, solutions deployed lead to reductions in different impact categories. Fossil fuel substitution scenario achieves to reduce 33 and 37 % photochemical ozone formation and acidification (A), while material substitution scenario leads to reduce 10-13 % each impact category. On the other hand, fossil fuel substitution scenario entails an increase of 10 % in FE. Considering the ideal case of applying all these improvements together, reductions go from 15 % in FE to 49 % in A, respectively. To face the problems derived from fossil fuel combustion, a fuel shift is needed to reach less contaminant options such as biomass and bio-waste. Material substitution is another good solution for the industry, but it requires a change in the demand and further research to ensure the properties of cement. Authors recommend taking into consideration the collateral increase of the FE due to the phosphates increase coming from the alternative fuels combustion.In different process industries, central site utility can produce steam at different levels. A central site utility can be coupled with a Desalination plant. In this paper, we seek the optimum integration of a central utility and a Desalination plant. Estimation of cogeneration potential prior to the design of a central utility system is important for setting targets for site fuel demand as well as steam, power, and desalinated production. Total site analysis has been applied to better understanding of the integration process. In this regard, the Total site sink/source profiles and site utility grand composite curves have been demonstrated to find best scenario for integration. Also, an accurate targeting procedure has been used. In the next step, the thermodynamic modeling and exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental evaluation have been performed. Moreover, the exergoeconomic optimization has been applied to find optimum desalination system working point while it is integrated with central utility. Exergoenvironmental analysis has been obtained by life cycle assessment. A central utility of process plant is used as a case study to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed procedure to find optimum integrated plant. In addition, the cogeneration targeting method has been applied.Brazil's mandatory blending of 5.0 % biodiesel with diesel calls for an assessment of the environmental impacts of the biodiesel production process chain. Life-cycle Assessment (LCA) and energy efficiency analysis methodologies were used to assess biodiesel production from soybeans in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. The study used a "Cradle to Gate" boundary and two levels in the energy analysis. The main results of the LCA were given in terms of environmental impact categories and indicated that phosphorus-rich fertilizers along with herbicides were responsible for major environmental impacts in the agricultural sector, whereas diesel accounted for greater damage in the soybean oil extraction sector. The influence of material flows in the refining of soybean oil varied according to the impact. The highest impacts were obtained using firewood to generate steam and phosphoric acid using sodium hydroxide for oil neutralization. Sodium methoxide and methanol more significantly influenced the transesterification step. Diesel affects all of the industrial sectors, mainly in relation to respiratory organics, the ozone layer, and fossil fuels, contributing no less than 50 % of the impact. Comparing the individual process sectors, the agricultural sector had the highest environmental impact. In terms of energy gain, biodiesel production presented a net energy gain of 3.08 units of useful energy when glycerin and soy meal are considered. Without these co-products, the process was very close to be unfavorable (1.04).Life cycle impacts have been evaluated to compare and assess six tertiary treatment alternatives for secondary treated municipal wastewater for reuse in thermo-electric power plant cooling systems. Impacts during construction and operation of tertiary treatment processes using databases and characterization tools embedded in the process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) software, Simapro v7.3, and the Carnegie Mellon economic input-output LCA (EIO-LCA) 2002 model were estimated. Infrastructure cost estimates from life cycle cost analysis were used as inputs to the EIO-LCA model. Inputs to the process-based analysis included chemical doses added during and after tertiary treatment, approximate transport distance of chemicals from producer to treatment site, and energy generation to operate major equipment during treatment. Impacts considered included global warming potential (in kg CO2 eq.), acidification (in kg SO2 eq.), eutrophication (in kg N eq.) and ecotoxicity (in kg 2,4-D eq.)estimated using TRACI model characterization factors. The environmental impacts analysis showed that manufacture of chemicals for tertiary treatment and conditioning, and electric power generation were the main processes that contribute to environmental impacts. Thus, alternatives with no or less tertiary treatment are recommended from an environmental impact perspective for reuse of secondary treated wastewater in cooling systems. (c) 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 178-187, 2015This article addresses the life cycle assessment of (i) power generation in a binary-cycle power plant using high-enthalpy geothermal resources, and (ii) heat generation in a closed-loop geothermal heat pump system using low-enthalpy resources. For the geothermal power system, production and injection wells show a high contribution to the environmental impacts, mainly due to activities such as drilling and casing. Power plant operation is also identified as an important source of impact because of working fluid losses. A favourable life-cycle energy balance is estimated for this system. Furthermore, when compared to fossil electricity, geothermal electricity is generally found to be a promising alternative. For the geothermal heat system, the electricity demands for heat generation and use are the main sources of impact. An unfavourable life-cycle energy performance is predicted for this system. When compared to fossil heat, the environmental suitability of geothermal heat highly depends on the availability of eco-friendly electrical grids. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Cellulosic bioenergy production provides opportunities to utilize a range of cropping systems that can enhance the multifunctionality of agricultural landscapes. In a 9-ha field experiment located on fertile land in Boone County, IA, USA, we directly compared a corn-soybean rotation harvested for grain, continuous corn harvested for grain and stover, continuous corn harvested for grain and stover with a rye cover crop, newly reconstructed prairie harvested for biomass and fertilized with nitrogen, and unfertilized newly reconstructed prairie harvested for biomass. Comparisons were made using four performance indicators: harvestable yield, net energy balance (NEB), root production, and nutrient balances. We found trade-offs among systems in terms of the measured performance indicators. Continuous corn systems were the highest yielding, averaging 13Mgha(-1) of harvested biomass (grain plus stover), whereas fertilized and unfertilized prairies produced the least harvested biomass at 8.8 and 6.5Mgha(-1), respectively. Mean NEBs were highest in continuous corn systems at 45.1GJha(-1), intermediate in the corn-soybean rotation at 28.6GJha(-1), and lowest in fertilized and unfertilized prairies at 11.4 and 10.5GJha(-1), respectively. Concomitant with the high yields of the continuous corn systems were the large nutrient requirements of these systems compared to the prairie systems. Continuous corn with rye required three times more nitrogen inputs than fertilized prairie. Root production, on the other hand, was on average seven times greater in the prairie systems than the annual crop systems. On highly fertile soils, corn-based cropping systems are likely to play an important role in maintaining the high productivity of agricultural landscapes, but alternative cropping systems, such as prairies used for bioenergy production, can produce substantial yield, require minimal externally derived inputs, and can be incorporated into the landscape at strategic locations to maximize the production of other ecosystem services.Construction, as a sector of the economy, is a significant source of negative environmental impacts. The development of sustainable construction and associated initiatives are meant to reduce that impact. Buildings, for many reasons, are the complex objects of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, which in this case can be particularly time-, data- and cost-consuming. Therefore, an attempt was made to explore the possibility of finding a methodological compromise between a full LCA and the compulsory energy certification. Six methodological variants, so called compromise solutions (CS) were identified and assessed. This article presents the results of the research project financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (N N309 078138) and coordinated by the Wood Technology Institute in Poznan. The proposed CS were hybrids utilising, to various degrees, the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and energy certification. Life cycle impact assessments were carried out using IMPACT 2002+. The achieved results showed that the simplifications included in the energy certification lead to a significant drop in environmental impacts (by 77.9 % on average) in relation to the impact calculated for the full LCA. The results closest to the full LCA were achieved by the compromise solution no. 4 (CS4), where simplification included the exclusion from the life cycle of: transport processes, construction site, demolition, final disposal of waste, and the majority of elements associated with the use of the building. CS4 analysed all inventory inputs which were assessed with regard to the entire environmental profile. The following truncation levels were achieved for CS4-10.7 % (conventional masonry building), 9.9 % (passive masonry building), 8.3 % (conventional wooden building) and 7.4 % (passive wooden building), indicating that 90 % of the impact calculated for the full LCA was retained. CS4 seems to be a rational compromise between the simplicity of the methodology and the environmental significance. With the exception of the energy usage for heating, hot water and ventilation, CS4 also proposes including, in the analysis, the production of building material and additional elements associated with the use stage, e.g. energy usage for home appliances and lighting, land occupation, water use and wastewater treatment. However, if we were to find a rational minimum, which is close to the energy certification, then a good improvement of this methodology would be to include energy usage for home appliances and lighting as well as introducing conversion indicators, based not only on the depletion of energy resources, but also factoring in global warming and respiratory effects/inorganic compounds. Moreover, it seems that the LCA methodology and, specifically, characterisation factors, are refined to such a degree and scientifically proved that it would be possible to use the knowledge with regard to LCA to establish such indicators for energy certification.Over the last decade, the rehabilitation/renovation of existing buildings has increasingly attracted the attention of scientific community. Many studies focus intensely on the mechanical and energy performance of retrofitted/renovated existing structures, while few works address the environmental impact of such operations. In the present study, the environmental impact of typical retrofit operations, referred to masonry structures, is assessed. In particular, four different structural options are investigated: local replacement of damaged masonry, mortar injection, steel chain installation, and grid-reinforced mortar application. Each different option is analyzed with reference to proper normalized quantities. Thus, the results of this analysis can be used to compute the environmental impact of real large-scale retrofit operations, once the amount/extension of them is defined in the design stage. The final purpose is to give to designers the opportunity to monitor the environmental impact of different retrofit strategies and, once structural requirements are satisfied, identify for each real case the most suitable retrofit option. The environmental impact of the structural retrofit options is assessed by means of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach. A cradle to grave system boundary is considered for each retrofit process. The results of the environmental analysis are presented according to the data format of the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) standard. Indeed, the environmental outcomes are expressed through six impact categories: global warming, ozone depletion, eutrophication, acidification, photochemical oxidation, and nonrenewable energy. For each retrofit option, the interpretation analysis is conducted in order to define which element, material, or process mainly influenced the LCA results. In addition, the results revealed that the recycling of waste materials provides environmental benefits in all the categories of the LCA outcomes. It is also pointed out that a comparison between the four investigated options would be meaningful only once the exact amount of each operation is defined for a specific retrofit case. This paper provides a systematic approach and environmental data to drive the selection and identification of structural retrofit options for existing buildings, in terms of sustainability performance. The final aim of this work is also to provide researchers and practitioners, with a better understanding of the sustainability aspects of retrofit operations. In fact, the environmental impacts of the retrofit options here investigated can be used for future research/practical activities, to monitor and control the environmental impact of structural retrofit operations of existing masonry buildings.An life cycle assessment (LCA) study of a field emission display (FED) television device was established. The first objective of this study was to get an up-to-date and comprehensive picture by applying the latest developments in the area of LCA, especially concerning the use of nanoparticles. In its second part, the study shows a comparison with today's display technologies (i.e. CRT, LCD, plasma) and the timely development of the assessment of a FED television device. This LCA study covers the complete life cycle of a FED television device in accordance with the ISO 14040 standard, from the extraction of raw materials until the final end-of-life treatment in a European WEEE recycling system. Two different functional units were applied in this study: For the in-depth analysis of the FED television device, an entire device along its complete life cycle was considered as functional unit-for the subsequent comparison with today's display technologies, "one square-inch of display during 1 h of active use" was used as an appropriate functional unit. Main data source for the FED device was patent information; ecoinvent was used as default background database. The in-depth analysis of this FED television device shows a clear dominance of the production phase (independently of the impact category). Within the production of such a device, the electronics part (i.e. the printed wiring boards) shows the highest contribution-while, even when focussing on the glass and its various coating layers only, the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) production has a very minor influence. The releases of CNTs during the End-of-Life treatment do not contribute in a relevant manner to the overall impact neither-even when focussing on the "ecotoxicity potential" by using conservative CFs reported for this type of releases. Last but not least, the comparison with the existing television display technologies shows that an FED device has an environmental advantage over all three other technologies using the above stated functional unit of "one square-inch of display during 1 h of active use". Traditional impact categories as well as the ecotoxicity factor results in clear environmental advantages for an FED television device when comparing it to the three display technologies used today. Concerning the general issue of evaluating applications of manufactured nanomaterials in LCA studies, this case study shows the high relevance of an adequate integration of nanoparticle releases into LCA studies in order to achieve an actually comprehensive evaluation.The ISO 14044 standard for life cycle assessment (LCA) provides the reference decision hierarchy for dealing with multi-functional processes. We observe that, in practice, the consistent implementation of this hierarchy by LCA practitioners and LCA guidance document developers may be limited. In an attempt to explain this observation, and to offer suggestions as to how consistency in LCA practice might be improved, we identify and compare the rationales for (and limitations of) different common approaches to solving multi-functionality problems in LCA. The different prevalent understandings of specific approaches for dealing with multi-functional processes were identified, and their respective rationales were analyzed. This takes into account identifying the implicit underlying assumptions regarding the nature and purpose of LCA that support each approach. We identified what we believe to be three internally consistent but mutually exclusive schools of thought amongst LCA practitioners, which differ in subtle but important ways in terms of their understanding of the nature and purpose of LCA, and the multi-functionality solutions necessary to support them. These three divisions follow two demarcations. The first is between consequential and attributional data modeling approaches. The second is between adherence to a natural science-based approach (privileging physical allocation solutions) and a socioeconomic approach (favoring economic allocation solutions) in attributional data modeling. We conclude that the ISO 14044 multi-functionality hierarchy should explicitly differentiate between attributional and consequential data modeling applications. We question the feasibility and practical utility of system expansion (currently privileged in the ISO hierarchy) in attributional data modeling applications. We suggest that ISO 14044 should also make explicit its rationale for privileging natural science-based approaches to solving multi-functionality problems and to more clearly differentiate between natural science and social science-based approaches. We also call for the formulation of additional guidance for solving multi-functionality problems, in particular for justifying the use of lower-tier solutions from the ISO hierarchy when these are applied in LCA studies. We suggest that this additional guidance and clarity in ISO 14044 will contribute to increased consistency in LCA practice and also increase the potential for users of information from LCA studies to make informed decisions as to their relevance within the context of specific intended applications.Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been identified as a major source of human health impact for many products in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). However, this result is highly dependent on the LCIA method. Based on the USEtox model, this study aims to improve health impact estimates of 16 PAHs, explore the importance of emission profiles of PAH mixture, and illustrate how these improvements affect an LCIA case study. We model the influences of two factors neglected in previous LCIA methods-black carbon adsorption and photolysis degradation-providing refined intake fractions. We use epidemiological data to estimate the carcinogenic effect factor of benzo[a]pyrene, rather than extrapolating it from animal toxicity tests as in previous studies. Toxicity equivalence factors (TEFs) are employed to estimate the 16 PAHs USEtox characterization factors, expressed in cancer cases per kilogram of PAH emitted. These are applied to determine industry-specific characterization factors of PAH mixtures for the aluminum industry, for domestic combustion, and for the overall world PAH emissions. Black carbon adsorption extends the persistency of PAHs with four or more rings and increases their intake fractions by up to 350 % even when photolysis is considered. The epidemiologically derived carcinogenic effect factor of benzo[a]pyrene increases 61-fold compared to previous studies, with 1.2 cancer cases per kilogram of benzo[a]pyrene intake. Source-specific emission profiles of PAHs, especially the fraction of benzo[a]pyrene and dibenz[a,h]anthracene in the mixture, have high influences on the health impact of mixtures. A default characterization factor of 5.7 x 10(-5) cancer cases per kilogram emitted is derived for the world PAH mixture. The proposed health impact estimates for PAH mixtures substantially affect overall health impacts for 1 kg aluminum produced and fall intermediary between the overestimated CML 2001 and the much lower ReCiPe results. This study improves characterization factors of PAHs by incorporating considerations of black carbon adsorption, photolysis, and epidemiological data. It is important for future LCIA practices and epidemiological studies to include emissions of individual PAHs, specifically of dibenz[a,h]anthracene in addition to benzo[a]pyrene, when assessing human health impact of PAH mixtures.Regionalised characterisation factors (CFs) for watersheds around the world are available to assess water use-related environmental impacts. The main problem with using the watershed regionalisation level arises when a single CF is generated for large watersheds in countries where water availability and demand are not uniform. Additionally, water availability and use vary over time because of the effects of climate change and changing human lifestyles. These two factors are currently not taken into account in CFs, but should be included for the sake of the accuracy of LCA results. The aim of this research was to provide water stress index CFs at the sub-watershed spatial level for three temporal scenarios (present, short-term future and mid-term future) for Spain (Southern Europe), a country with considerable variability in water availability that is especially vulnerable to climate change effects. CFs were calculated following the water stress index (WSI) definition of Pfister et al. (Environ Sci Technol 43(11):4098-4104, 2009). The WSI was calculated on a yearly basis for 117 sub-watersheds-compared to 56 regionalisation units provided in the original method-and for (i) the current situation: current water use and availability; (ii) short-term future: projections for 2015; and (iii) mid-term future: projections for 2030. The uncertainties of the CFs were calculated for each sub-watershed. Temporal trend analysis of the CFs showed a general relaxation of water stress over the short-term when compared to the current situation, followed by a new increase. Major differences were noticed in the WSIs calculated by Pfister et al. (Environ Sci Technol 43(11):4098-4104, 2009) using global data and maps and the WSIs calculated in this study using national and regional data. The WSIs under consideration of uncertainty were higher than the deterministic result for intermediate WSIs. The CFs generated are useful compared with the CFs previously available because they improve evaluation of the water use-related impacts of present and future technologies with the life cycle stages located in Spain. We encourage LCA developers to update WSIs for other countries using information at the national level that is usually freely accessible.The implementation of Life Cycle Assessment and related methods in green chemical process and synthesis design strongly supports the development of greener concepts on the basis of deep and profound insights into the dependences between the selection of compounds and process parameters and the resulting environmental impacts. This review article provides an overview on things to know about LCA in general, specifics to be considered during its application in the field of chemical (re-) designs and current application examples from emerging research areas such as active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing, nanotechnology, flow chemistry, process intensification under harsh synthesis conditions, process integration, waste treatment, the use of alternative energy sources or solvents as well as chemistry based on renewable resources.A green metrics evaluation of the bottom-up hydrolytic sol-gel synthesis of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles has been performed by following two different approaches, namely, EATOS software and LCA methodology. Indeed, the importance of engineered nanomaterials is increasing worldwide in many high-technological applications. Due to the as yet completely un-established environment and human health impact of nano-sized materials, the possibility of at least choosing a greener synthetic strategy through an accurate comparison of detailed environmental assessments will soon be of absolute importance in both the small and large scale production of these advanced inorganic materials. The present LCA study has been carried out following an ecodesign approach, in order to limit the environmental impacts and protect human health. The results of LCA analysis suggest that the highest environmental impact is mainly due to energy and the titanium isopropoxide precursor used in the synthesis process. Concurrently, software EATOS has been employed to calculate the environmental parameters that account for the environmental and social costs related to all the chemicals involved in the analyzed synthesis. As the EATOS approach is based purely on synthetic chemical mechanism considerations, thus neglecting any energy contributions, and its results cannot be directly compared to those arising from LCA analysis. However, similar and comparable outcomes are obtained by simply neglecting the energy contributions, broadening the application fields of the combined EATOS-LCA approach to the inorganic synthesis of engineered nanomaterials, highlighting the great potential of their synergy.Biogas-linked agro-ecosystems provide economic and environmental benefits by using resources in a multipurpose manner. They utilize an energy consumption pattern that has prominent advantages in relieving energy shortages and reducing environmental pollution. To better understand the effects of these multiple aspects, it is important to study how much of the energy flow is extracted and available through the biogas-linked agro-ecosystem using an economic input-output evaluation or ecological and social influence assessments. It is also equally important to understand the conversion efficiency during the life cycle of biogas production, and how humans influence the whole process of the biogas-linked agro-ecosystem. This paper attempts to establish a life cycle-based accounting model of a household biogas system using different economic and ecological metrics for multiple objective considerations, to provide a powerful and comprehensive perspective to illustrate sustainability problems. In this study we use a typical household biogas system in Gongcheng Autonomous County (Guangxi Province, China) as a case study to reveal an effective route and strategy to relieve energy shortage, reduce environmental pollution, and improve human productivity. In this way, we can construct an exemplary example of how to realize sustainable development in a rural area with positive objective conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Glycerol is an important bio-platform molecule, potentially usable for the synthesis of various chemicals and fuel additives, the synthesis of acrolein by dehydration being one of the most studied reactions. Through the application of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology we investigated the production of acrolein from glycerol, by comparing two alternative scenarios in which glycerol is obtained as a coproduct either in triglyceride trans-esterification to FAME or in hydrolysis to fatty acids. Our results show how the main impacts are not related to the energy involved in the two processes. In fact, the use of dedicated crops as a source of triglycerides in the biodiesel production entailed higher impacts in terms of land exploitation. On the other hand, beef tallow was assumed as a starting raw material in the production of fatty acids, and this involved some significant impacts associated with animal rearing. At the same time, however, avoiding the use of dedicated biomass ensured a lower global impact (in terms of single scores). Lastly, in order to validate the model created, a sensitivity analysis using the Monte Carlo method was performed. The two routes from glycerol were also compared with the classical chemical route where acrolein is produced by propylene oxidation.In this article, models for the management of the ethanol waste of a solar ethanol distillation system prototype have been proposed. The solar distillation system operates as a batch operation and consists of three stages of distillation, which increase the ethanol concentration from 8% to 80% (v/v). In each distillation stage, various volumes of ethanol solutions with different concentrations were obtained; three reuse scenarios (1, 2, and 3) have been proposed for extracting the ethanol solution from the distillation tank in order to increase the overall efficiency of the ethanol distillation system and reduce the amount of materials (cassava broth) fed into the distillation system. The most efficient distillation process, in terms of the final product volume and ethanol concentration in the product, was realized by using scenario 3, which involved recycling a mixture of the waste from the first stage and the second stage, for redistillation in the first stage and returning the waste obtained from the third stage for redistillation in the second stage than in scenarios 2 and 1 under the same condition, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In addition, by using scenario 3 for managing the ethanol waste, the amount of feedstock (cassava broth) annually fed to the system in the first stage could be reduced by 88-92% (96,522-100,073 L/year), compared to using the other two scenarios. Compared to a distillation process without recycling, the amount of cassava broth fed to the system can be reduced by over 180,000 L/year by using scenario 3. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper discusses the overall energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions when extracting pigments and producing hydrogen from Spirogyra sp. microalga biomass. The energy evaluation from the biomass leftovers was also included in this work. The influence of the functional unit and different allocation criteria on the biorefinery assessments is also shown. The study consists of laboratory tests showing Spirogyra sp. growth, harvesting, drying, pigment extraction and fermentation by Clostridium butyricum. Electrocoagulation and solar drying were tested and compared to conventional centrifugation and electrical dewatering in terms of their energy consumption for harvesting and dewatering, respectively. To discuss the biorefinery viability, the pigments and biohydrogen (bioH(2)) retail costs are considered against operational costs according to electricity needs. The low yield of biochemical hydrogen and the high energy requirements for the pigment extraction were identified as main topics for further research. This research hopefully contributes to highlight the importance of energy and emission balances in order to decide on feasibility of the biorefinery. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this paper, a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) from "cradle to gate" of one anhydrous ton of ammonia with a purity of 99% was achieved. Particularly, the energy and environmental performance of the product (ammonia) were evaluated. The eco-profile of the product and the share of each stage of the Life Cycle on the whole environmental impacts have been evaluated. The flows of material and energy for each phase of the life cycle were counted and the associated environmental problems were identified. Evaluation of the impact was achieved using GEMIS 4.7 software. The primary data collection was executed at the production installations located in Algeria (Annaba locality). The analysis was conducted according to the LCA standards ISO 14040 series. The results show that Cumulative Energy Requirement (CER) is Of 51.945 x 10(3) MJ/t of ammonia, which is higher than the global average. Global Warming Potential (GWP) is of 1.44 t CO2 eq/t of ammonia; this value is lower than the world average. Tropospheric ozone precursor and Acidification are also studied in this article, their values are: 549.3 x 10(-6) t NMVOC eq and 259.3 x 10(-6) t SO2 eq respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) are applied in evaluating possible social and environmental impacts of the state-of-art welding technologies, such as Manual Metal Arc Welding (MMAW), Manual Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW), Automatic GMAW and Automatic Laser-Arc Hybrid Welding (LAHW). The LCA results indicate that for 1 meter weld seam, MMAW consumes the largest amount of resources (like filler material and coating on electrodes) and energy, which contributes to comparatively higher environmental impacts in global warming potential, acidification, photochemical ozone creation potential and eutrophication than other chosen processes. With regard to social aspects, the health issues and fair salary are under survey to compare the relative potential risk on human health caused by fumes in different welding technologies, and to indicate the sufficiency of current salary of welders in Germany. The results reflect that the wage status of welders is still fair and sufficient. The manual processes bring much higher potential risk of welders' health than the automatic processes, especially MMAW. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.In this work, a multi-objective mixed integer linear programming (moMILP) model is presented for the design and planning of sustainable closed loop supply chains. It includes strategic decisions such as facility location, definition of transportation modes, technology selection and allocation, as well as tactical decisions. The model includes four objectives: 1) The economic pillar, measured through the net present value (NPV); 2) the environmental pillar, which includes Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), through the application of the ReCiPe methodology; 3 and 4) The social pillar measured using two socio-economic indicators applied by the European Union in its Sustainable Development Strategy. The applicability of the model is demonstrated through a representative supply chain case study. Results show that the different objectives influence the supply chain structure and translate in significantly different and conflicting decisions, showing the importance of such type of models to better understand the decisions implications on the different dimensions of sustainability.In this paper we apply a whole-life assessment approach to estimate the environmental impact of the use of ICT of an individual within the UK over a one-year period. By estimating the energy and data consumption of an average user's use of a typical device, and estimating the associated energy usage (and thus CO2 produced) of each stage in the data chain, we are able to calculate the summed CO2 value for embodied carbon of an average device. Overall, device energy is seen to dominate; within device, desktops dominate, both due to their high energy use for a given task, but also their high standby power, which is the most significant point of behaviour-driven waste. Geographical, behavioural and chronological factors are all evaluated to be highly significant to the impact of a user's ICT use, along with a number of secondary factors. Finally, we present policy recommendations to further the understanding of the factors affecting the environmental impact of ICT, particularly focusing on sustainability, resource efficiency and the social implications of ICT in a low-carbon transformation.For IT data center and high voltage UPS applications, selecting a lithium-ion (Li-ion) backup solution for a critical standby power source can help users to benefit from a reduced installed footprint, optimized total facility energy and a reduced environmental footprint when compared to conventional battery solutions. Backup systems utilizing high power Li-ion cells offer the ability to significantly reduce the installed capacity (Ah) while providing the same discharge duty when a short backup time is required. With less stored energy combined with the highly efficient re-charge of the Li-ion cells, the total recharge energy needed to maintain 100% duty contributes to reduced total facility energy. These benefits are emphasized by the capability of Li-ion systems to operate for an extended period at higher temperature. Saft's Intensium r Flex concept demonstrates these benefits. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was conducted on a Saft Li-Ion battery system and compared to a conventional battery solution. The assessment used the ISO 14040 LCA procedure which evaluates the environmental impacts from cradle to grave. In this comparative peer-reviewed study, the Saft Li-Ion system was concluded to have the lowest impact when compared to a conventional battery technology.The context where European manufacturers of industrial systems operate has dramatically changed over recent years: the pressure of emerging countries they have to face, policy makers' environmental laws and industrial companies' interests are pushing towards sustainable manufacturing and a holistic view of industrial systems. Designers and system engineers are the main actors involved, because they have high influence on product life cycle costs and environmental impacts. However they need tools to pursue a holistic view. The aim of this paper is to propose a closed loop framework to improve life cycle performances of industrial systems, focusing on the automotive sector. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The green cleaning industry continues to pursue products that reduce or eliminate impacts on human health and the environment; however, these impacts over the life cycle are not well understood. This study assessed environmental impacts of four green cleaning products from Method Products, PBC (all-purpose cleaner, hand wash, dish soap) and Ecover (dish soap). A life cycle assessment from cradle-to-grave was performed using ReCiPe and IPCC GWP methodologies. Results correlated greatest impact contributors to ingredient composition and identified the need to improve data quality. Based on the findings, a prioritized list of actions for green cleaning companies was developed. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The increasing consumption patterns in emerging economies like India and China with half the world population has increased the environmental concerns. E-waste in these countries is rapidly increasing and monitor is one of the major contributors to it The paper aims at assessing the life cycle environmental impact of Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) monitors. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of three widely used monitors has been performed based on the international standards of ISO 14040 series. The LCA was constructed using Umberto software version 5.6 and expressed with both CML (Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen) 2001, mid-point assessment method and Impact 2002+, end point assessment method. This study is expected to guide policy makers in government to improve e-waste management strategies and also it will create awareness among the user. The monitor manufacturers may leverage the study to improve the environmental impact of these products. Sensitivity analysis for the use phase has been performed to confirm the robustness of results. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The environmental profiles certification means a method about assessment of environmental performance for building materials in building industries. This research discusses the methodology for the environmental impact evaluation and support system for composite boats manufacturing process using environmental profiles certification concepts. For this work, the generic yacht work breakdown structure (G-YWBS) which is developed for yacht engineering management system was used. The G-YWBS is detailed component breakdown structure, focused on the lifecycle of yacht including project management, manufacturing process, maintenance process, product information, and all the other relation things. Finally, environmental impact evaluation system was developed to calculate the environmental impact from the composite boat manufacturing process based on the G-YWBS. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The paper aims at analyzing the water supply, its consumption, recycling and related energy consumption at a University campus in India. The university is located in semi-arid area and provides a unique example where the per capita water consumption is above the Indian average and the water is extracted from the overexploited groundwater aquifer. The groundwater is the only source of water supply providing 2.05 million liters of fresh water per day. In the last few years the university has embarked on water saving techniques using rain water harvesting and water recycling. The ground water extraction and its supply consume a lot of energy thereby increasing the environmental impact of the water supply. Mapping of the water source and consumption has provided valuable information to assess the major sources of water consumption and to take appropriate actions to optimize per capita water consumption and reduce water losses. The environmental impact of the water supply system on campus has been determined by conducting a life cycle assessment using Umberto NXT universal life cycle assessment software with ReCiPe endpoint and midpoint methods. It was found that tap water used in buildings has highest impact on environment while the recycled water used for irrigation has nearly zero impact. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Historical buildings are a significant part of the Italian building stock and, in most cases, need deep refurbishment interventions to reach the energy criteria required by the current standards. A workflow that integrates on-site surveys and building modeling is mandatory to obtain effective energy saving measures. This work describes the analysis and modeling of the San Vito alla Rivera church, a XIV century building that was damaged during 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, suffering a partial collapse of the facade and of the roof. The latter was selected for a complete restoration that could improve its thermal performance while maintaining, as much as possible, the original structure. Several elements of the roof were collected in situ in order to measure, in laboratory, its thermophysical properties applying standard techniques and alternative methods based on infrared thermography. The accurate characterization of the materials was the starting point for the estimation of the environmental impact of the retrofit aimed to reach a defined thermal transmittance. A model of the building was created with TRNSYS software to calculate the energy consumption before and after the intervention. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis was conducted on different insulation materials to determine the one with the lowest impact.Climate change is one of the biggest sustainability challenges of our time. In the context of the built environment, the emphasis is on increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, whereas other building life cycle phases are generally considered less important. However, in recent research it has been suggested that more attention should be given to construction phases, including emissions embodied in materials. They occur in early life cycle stages whereas a large share of use-phase related emissions occur outside the existing climate change mitigation target years, and, due to development in energy sector, might significantly deviate from what is projected today. In this study, by using the life cycle assessment (LCA), we assess the greenhouse gas emissions related to the materials and construction of a low-energy multi-storey residential building in Finland. We depict how the emissions are allocated to the different building systems and look for opportunities to reduce the emissions from this perspective. The novelty of the study arises from two factors: (1) we utilize the wide assessment scope that enables depicting the importance of the boundary decision and (2) not many construction-phase LCA studies of modern low-energy residential buildings exist. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper addresses the sustainable design and synthesis of manufacturing processes for making algal bioproducts. We propose by far the most comprehensive superstructure capable of producing biodiesel, hydrogen, propylene glycol, glycerol-tert-butyl ether, and poly-3-hydroxybutyrate from microalgae. The major processing sections include cultivation, harvesting, lipid extraction, remnant treatment, biogas utilization, biofuel proneduction, and bioproduct manufacturing. On the basis of the superstructure, we integrate a cradle-to-gate life cycle analysis and techno-economic analysis with multiobjective optimization to simultaneously optimize the environmental and economic performance. We also apply a tailored global optimization algorithm to efficiently solve the problem in reasonable computation times. Results show that the most environmentally sustainable processes reduce life cycle greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of the algal bioproducts by 5% to 63%, compared with petrochemical counterparts. In addition, the coproduction of value-added bioproducts in the algal glycerol process helps reduce the biodiesel production cost to as low as $2.79 per gasoline-gallon-equivalent.The environmental impacts of livestock production are attracting increasing attention, especially the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Currently, pork is the most widely consumed meat product in the world, and its production is expected to grow in the next few decades. This paper deals with the production of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) by animals and by manure from pig buildings, with a focus on the influence of rearing techniques and nutrition. GHG emissions in piggeries originate from animals through CO2 exhalation and CH4 enteric fermentation, and from manure through the release of CO2, CH4 and N2O. The level of the CO2 exhalation (E-CO2, (pig)) depends on the physiological stage, the body weight (BW), the production level and the feed intake of the animals concerned. Enteric CH4 (E-CH4, (pig)) is principally related to dietary fibre intake and the fermentative capacity of the pig's hindgut Based on a review of the literature, the following equations are proposed in order to estimate E-CO2, pig (in kg day(-1)) and E-CH4,pig (in g day(-1)) for fattening pigs: E-CO2, (pig) = 0.136 x BW0.573; E-CH4,pig = 0.012 x dRes; with BW (in kg) and dRes for digestible residues (in g day(-1)). Numerous pathways are responsible for GHG production in manure. In addition, the microbial, physical and chemical properties of manure interact and modulate the level of emissions. Influencing factors for removal systems for both liquid and solid fractions of manure have been investigated. A large range of parameters showing an impact on the level of GHG production from pig houses has been reported. However, few of these can be considered unquestionably as GHG mitigation techniques because some strategies have shown contradictory effects depending on the gas, the circumstances and the study. Nevertheless, frequent manure removal seems to be an efficient means to reduce concurrently CO2-, CH4- and N2O-emissions from pig buildings for both slatted and bedded floor systems. Manure removal operations may be associated with specific storage conditions and efficient treatment in order to further reduce emissions. Several feeding strategies have been tested to decrease GHG emissions but they seem to be ineffective in reducing emissions both significantly and durably. In general, good management practices that enhance zootechnical performance will have beneficial consequences on GHG emission intensity. Taking into account the results described in the literature regarding CO2-, CH4- and N2O-production from animals and manure in pig houses, we estimate total GHG emissions to 448.3 kg CO(2)equiv. per slaughter pig produced or 4.87 kg CO(2)equiv. per kg carcass. The fattening period accounts for more than 70% of total emissions, while the gestation, lactation and weaning periods each contribute to about 10% of total emissions. Emissions of CO2, CH4 and N2O contribute to 81, 17 and 2% of total emissions from pig buildings, representing 3.87, 0.83 and 0.11 kg CO(2)equiv. per kg carcass, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The global energy consumption was 540 EJ in 2010, representing an increase of about 80 % from 1980. Energy demand is predicted to grow more than 50 % by 2025. Fossil fuels will supply about 75 % of the future energy demand in 2030-2050 if there are no significant technological innovations or carbon emission constraints. This will induce in a substantial increase of CO2 atmospheric concentration and, in turn, adverse climatic impacts. A solution to this issue is to replace fossil fuels by renewable fuels such as biomass. For instance cultivated woody biomass shows many advantages such as allowing multiple harvests without having to re-plant. Poplar, eucalyptus, salix, paulownia and black locust are common examples of woody biomass. Here we review the current situation and future tendency of renewable energy focusing on solid biomass in Europe and Spain. We also discuss the potential production for short-rotation plantations in the bioenergy sector and existing constraints for the implantation in Spain in a sustainable context. Countries with low biomass resources and high targets for renewable electricity may have to depend on imported solid biomass, whereas countries with wide solid biomass resources benefit from international markets. The expansion of short-rotation plantations is much lower than expected in some countries such as Spain.In sub-Saharan Africa, urban farmers have recently intensified the production of vegetables to cope with the increasing food demand. As a consequence, such an intensification may lead to potential risks for the environment and human health. There is therefore a need for an integrated evaluation of urban agricultural practices. Here, we studied tomato production in Benin cities. We measured performances and the environmental risks. We have monitored 12 cropping systems during 6 months and we calculated the pesticide treatment frequency index (TFI), the nutrient budgets, and the field emissions. Our results show that yields were low and variable, averaging at 9,533 kg.ha(-1) and ranging from 0 to 21,163 kg.ha(-1). The average TFI for pesticides was 8.9. The maximum TFI of 25 was observed for an insecticide applied weekly at 2.3 times the official rate. We observed an excess of the average nutrient budget of 120 kg N and 84 kg P. ha(-1). In conclusion, our study of urban tomato production revealed poor practices and high risks for health and the environment.The 2030 policy framework for climate and energy, proposed by the European Commission, aims towards the reduction of European greenhouse gas emissions by 40% in comparison to the 1990 level and to increase the share of renewable energy of at least the 27% of the European's energy consumption of 2030. The use of biomass as sustainable and renewable energy source may be a viable tool for achieving the above goals. However, renewable energy technologies are not totally clean because they cause energy and environmental impacts during their life cycle, and in particular they are responsible of air pollutant emissions. In this context, the paper assesses the energy and environmental impacts of a 46 kW biomass boiler by applying the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, as regulated by the international standards of series ISO 14040, ISO 21930 and EN 15804. The following life-cycle steps are included in the analysis: raw materials and energy supply, manufacturing, installation, operation, transport, and end-of-life. The results of the analysis, showing a life-cycle primary energy consumption of about 2,622 GJ and emissions of about 21,664 kg CO2eq, can be used as a basis for assessing the real advantages due to the use of biomass boilers for heating and hot water production.The life cycle of ethanol derived from miscanthus has been evaluated to determine its environment and economic viability. Net energy consumption, production cost and emission are estimated considering three scenarios (S1: all classes of land; S2: prime land; S3: marginal land, are used for miscanthus cultivation). Depending on the scenarios net energy consumption, production cost and emissions are found to be varied from 12.1 to 12.5 GJ m(-3), 776.7 to 811.3$ m(-3) and 0.7 to 1.3 t-CO(2)e m(-3), respectively. Although energy consumption and production cost is slightly varied among the scenarios, the variation seems to be robust in the case of GHG emissions, where carbon dynamics play an important role. This study revealed that miscanthus is a promising feedstock for ethanol even if it is grown on marginal land which may abate competition with food crops and improve the farm economy in Ontario, Canada.Currently, there is an increasing interest in concentrated solar power (CSP) plants as alternative to produce renewable electricity at large scale by using mirrors to concentrate the solar energy and to convert it into high temperature heat. These facilities can be combined with thermal energy storage (TES) systems, which are, nowadays, one of the most feasible solutions in facing the challenge of the intermittent energy supply and demand. However, they are still in research process and, for that, there is a lack of environmental impact studies of these TES systems complementing solar plants. This paper accounts the environmental impact of three TES systems used nowadays in high temperature applications for CSP plants: first, a system which stores sensible heat in high temperature concrete; second, a system storing sensible heat in molten salts; and third, another system with molten salts but storing latent heat. All the systems are normalised in order to be comparable between them due to its initial storage capacity difference. The environmental impact is accounted by calculating the amount of embodied energy in the components of the different TES systems. Notice that embodied energy refers to the total energy inputs required to make a component. Between the three systems, the sensible heat system using concrete as storage material is the one with less environmental impact while the molten salts and PCM have a higher value of embodied energy, mainly due to the nitrate mixture used as storage material. Finally, advantages and disadvantages of the method proposed used are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate some of the environmental implications of using commercial versus artisanal feeds in Peruvian freshwater aquaculture of trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), tilapia (Oreochromis spp.) and black pacu (Colossoma macropomum). Several scenarios believed to be representative of current Peruvian aquaculture practices were modelled, namely: production of trout in Andean lake cages; and culture of black pacu and tilapia in Amazonian and coastal lowland ponds, respectively. In general, Peruvian aquaculture is characterised by low technological intensity practices. Use of commercial aquafeeds is widespread, but artisanal feeds are frequently used in certain small-scale farms. We found that trout feeds feature higher environmental burdens than do black pacu and tilapia feeds. A similar trend is observed for production of these species. Across species, the substitution of artisanal with commercial feeds, despite improving feed conversion ratios in all cases, does not always reduce overall environmental impacts. This is due to the additional energy use and transportation requirements associated with commercial feed inputs. The substitution of artisanal feeds with commercial ones generally increases environmental impacts of the fish farming systems for the specific feeds considered, despite enhanced FCRs and economies of scale. This is due to the higher environmental impacts associated to certain feed inputs used in commercial feeds, in particular highly refined feed inputs. Consequently, in light of the importance of feeds to overall life cycle impacts of aquaculture production, the Peruvian aquafeed industry should preferentially source less refined and, in general, less environmentally burdened feed inputs (e. g. Bolivian soybean products over Brazilian, high quality over lower quality fishmeal, avoiding protein concentrates, etc.), to the extent that fish farming performance (i.e. feed conversion efficiency and cost structure) is not strongly affected. Among species, black pacu aquaculture shows the best environmental performance. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to assess the environmental performance of brackish water polyculture of black tiger prawn, mud crabs, tilapia and milkfish in a pond aquaculture system. The study was conducted on 15 production sites, located in Pampanga Province of the Philippines. The scope of analysis covered the hatchery or capture of juveniles from the wild up to the delivery of products to auction markets. Impact categories included eutrophication, acidification, climate change, land occupation, net primary production use, total cumulative energy demand (TCED), and total human labour. Life cycle impact indicators were calculated for one tonne of product (total production or that of individual species) using both energy-based and economic allocations. The results indicated that the main impacts from farming operations were eutrophication, land occupation, acidification and human labour. Feed (molluscs harvested from aquatic ecosystems) mainly influenced net primary production use, TCED and climate change, and harvesting and delivery mainly influenced climate change and TCED. Differences in farm practices and yields induced high variability in impacts. Production site size had no significant effect; however, its distance from the sea appeared to affect its efficiency and, consequently, impacts. Changing the allocation method changed the ranking of species' impacts within each impact category, milkfish having the highest impacts with energy-based allocation and prawn and crabs having the highest impacts with economic allocation. The lack of differences in impacts between intensive monocultures of prawn and tilapia recorded in the literature and the same species in Pampanga's polyculture suggests that the degree of intensification is not a relevant concept for distinguishing impacts of aquaculture systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop an effective approach to decide design details using benchmarking to capture the existing practice in sustainable design. Design/methodology/approach - This paper reports a systematic method for sustainable product design. The method uses benchmarks as references searching for design details to achieve sustainable solutions. Quality function deployment is used to guide the search process for competitive products using benchmarking to meet quantitative targets of product and to increase knowledge for sustainable design. Findings - The proposed method can meet both functional and sustainable requirements of product design. 18.55 percent reduction in carbon equivalent emissions is achieved compared to benchmarks in wheelchair design. The research reveals that when weight, material and number of components used in product decrease, environmental footprints and cost of the product improve. Originality/value - The research improves the existing method of sustainable product design. Both sustainable requirements and functional demands of product are identified from qualitative criteria to quantitative metrics using benchmarking and the life cycle assessment.Purpose - In this study, an optimal green product is selected from three newly developed ecological products and a non-environmentally friendly product. An analytic network process (ANP), used widely for multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), is applied to account for the tradeoff issues among the criteria (quality, cost and green issue) in the new green product selection processes. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - This paper focuses on current social and consumer requirements. New product selection processes consider three major perspectives, i.e., quality, cost and environment, as criteria. The following two main methods are applied to respond to this multi-disciplinary issue: the eight quality dimensions proposed by Garvin are used to manage the quality issue, and a life cycle costing (LCC) method is applied for consideration of the cost and green issue. Therefore, the dependency issue among the criteria is considered, using a suitably selected method, the ANP method, and all the methods are applied to a real business, which produces roof tiles, for the delivery of a new optimal green product. Findings - An optimal environmentally friendly product does not overcome the existing toxic product of the focused company. The environmental performance is necessarily balanced by the quality and cost capabilities. Research limitations/implications - This paper focuses on the new product selection of roof tile products. The criteria or measuring indicators may be dissimilar, and cannot be applied to other products. Practical implications - The proposed approach can be applied to other manufacturing companies or services to allow decision makers to make better determinations for a comprehensive dependency problem. The managers can apply the proposed model to benchmark the considered products as well as to find the weaknesses of products. Originality/value - This method considers the relationship among quality, cost and environment for newly developed green products. The method produces better results than former MCDM studies which did not account for the dependency issue among the criteria.Biofuels have great potential as low-carbon transportation fuel alternatives and can be essentially drop-in fuels for existing fossil-fuel-based transportation infrastructures. Thus, the incentives for biofuel development are large but there are a number of issues: competition with food, land use, fresh water use, economics in comparison to fossil fuels, and achievable reduction in carbon footprint in comparison to other transportation fuel options. This paper focuses on utilization of anthropogenic CO2 from power plants in advanced biofuel production systems and the integration of those systems with various power plant designs. In doing so, the boundary of the life cycle analysis is expanded to include the power plant CO2 source, considering specifically natural gas, pulverized coal, supercritical coal, and IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle) options. The carbon footprints for the integrated systems are compared to CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) as well as the current status quo of CO2 release to the atmosphere. The integrated biorefinery-power plant options considered here are shown to be greatly advantaged compared to the status quo (no CO2 capture) carbon footprint, and also advantaged with respect to CCS as long as the biorefinery alone operates with a carbon footprint that is 75% or more lower than that of gasoline. In addition, the projected carbon footprint values, and estimated production costs, for algal-based ethanol are favorable compared to other transportation fuel options including corn-based ethanol and electricity. (c) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdMicroalgae cultivation is a promising methodology for solving some of the future problems of biomass production (i.e. renewable food, feed and bioenergy production). There is no doubt that in conjunction with conventional growth systems, novel technologies must be developed in order to produce the large-scale sustainable microalgae products. Here, we review some of the most promising existing microalgae biomass growth technologies and summarise some of the novel methodologies for sustainable microalgae production.Microalgae biofuels have been under development for the last 40 years; however, in the last 6 years, this development has intensified due to higher oil prices and wider acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. Despite the excellent potential of algal biofuels, they are not yet commercially viable. The reason for this lack of progress is examined in this chapter by firstly reviewing the range of different technology options for biofuels from microalgae. Secondly, an analysis of the available techno-economic and energy assessments is performed highlighting the effect that each system element has on the overall viability.The interest in the biotechnological production of lactic acid has increased due to the prospects of environmental friendliness and of using renewable resources instead of petrochemicals. Besides, this type of lactic acid is important for polylactic acid (PLA) production, as it is not toxic as packaging in food application while monomers of many fossil polymers are. However, lack of information can be found about the efficiency of fermentative production of lactic acid from biomass in compare with its production in a chemical way. The present paper reviews some of our recent studies concerning metrics relevant to the development of a cost-effective and sustainable viable processes for lactic acid production. In particular, the following metrics were taken for consideration: (i) material efficiency; (ii) total energy efficiency, (iii) economic added value and (iv) land use. Higher economical effect has been found by using biological conversion of wheat biomass to lactic acid vs chemical synthesis by increasing the energy efficiency by 47% and decreasing the total costs by 17%. Chemical synthesis from petrochemical resources always results in a racemic mixture of D/L-lactic acid, which is a major disadvantage of this approach, while fermentation-derived lactic acid mixtures of poly D(-) and poly L(+) give the high crystalline melting point (T-m), which is a very important criteria for improving PLA applicability for bioplastics production. Conversely, microbial lactic acid fermentation offers an advantage in terms of utilization of renewable carbohydrate biomass, low production temperature, low energy consumption, and the production of optically high pure lactic acid by selecting an appropriate strain. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The main objective of this research is to evaluate the environmental impact associated with the life cycle of seed production of bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) var. CC 25-9 N and maize (Zeamays L.) var. TGH on the Soterrado farm. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied, according to the NC-ISO14040, which includes the life cycle inventory of the crop, the assessment of the environmental impact of beans and maize crops and the assessment of the alternatives for environmental, agricultural and economic improvement. The environmental impact assessment helped determine the most affected impact categories: the non-renewable energy, global warming and respiratory inorganics. The most affected damage categories were damage to resources, human health and climate change. The consumption of urea, NPK and diesel represented an environmental impact with the highest contribution percentage. Two alternatives of environmental, agricultural and economic improvement for each crop were evaluated. They could reduce the environmental impact of the production of beans in 53,28 % and 79,25 % respectively and corn on 47,64 % and 63,48 % respectively. These alternatives would increase yields and soil characteristics, and help to reduce the production cost. It is recommended to inform the results of research to producers of Soterrado farm, validate the results, and apply this methodology to other crops in order to reduce the impact associated with agriculture.According to the logic process of carbon reduction in China which arises from the measurement to reduction, from reduction to offsetting, the measurement of carbon emission in the tourism industry was the first and key step. Based on the life cycle assessment theory and input-output analysis, this article used economic and environmental measurement technologies, The System of National Accounting (SNA), Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), System of Integrated Environment and Economic Accounting (SEEA), and so on, and built up a top-down carbon emission analysis framework for the tourism industry and estimated carbon emission of the tourism industry in China in 2007. The finding showed that the total carbon emission of the tourism industry in China in 2007 was 169.78 million tons, covering 2.71% of carbon emission of all industries in China in 2007, and 2.44% of the total carbon emission in China in 2007. The direct carbon emission of the tourism industry in China in 2007 was 73.56 million tons, including transportation (50.14 million tons), sightseeing (1.33 million tons), lodging (4.19 million tons), accommodation (4.73 million tons), shopping (8.14 million tons), entertainment (0.67 million tons), communication (0.45 million tons), and others (3.90 million tons). The indirect carbon emission of the tourism industry in China in 2007 was 96.23 million tons, mostly contributed by coking, gas, and petroleum processing industries, transportation and warehousing industry, machinery and equipment manufacturing industry, and food manufacturing and tobacco processing industry, which covered 57%.Based on the theory of life cycle assessment (LCA), this article analyzes the influence factors on carbon emissions from residential buildings. In the article, the life cycle of residential buildings has been divided into five stages: building materials production period, construction period, operation and maintenance period, demolition period, and solid waste recycle and disposal period. Based on this definition, the authors provide a theoretical model to calculate carbon emissions of residential building life cycle. In particular, the factor of human activities was introduced in the calculation of carbon emissions from the buildings. Furthermore, the authors put forward a model for calculation with the unit of carbon emissions for per-capita living space.As greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming increase, it is becoming more important to consider the "carbon footprints" of engineering projects; however, the carbon footprints of water resource projects are often overlooked during environmental impact assessments. Notably, carbon releases occur when water is extracted and transported to industrial, agricultural, and residential areas for use, which consumes energy and materials. For different water extracting and transporting processes, the carbon footprints can be very different. This paper defines the carbon footprint concept in relation to water resources-the carbon emissions generated by acquiring one cubic meter of water-and estimates the carbon footprints for several water resource projects including China's south-to-north water diversion project and desalination plants in the UAE. The results show that the carbon footprint of China's south-to-north water diversion project decreased as the number of operating years increased. When the operation period reaches 30 years, the carbon footprint of China's south-to-north water diversion project will be about 0.179 kg CO2. The carbon footprints for UAE desalination plants were 2.988 kg CO2 for the multi-stage flash (MSF) method, 1.280 kg CO2 for the multiple effect distillation (MED) method, and 2.562 kg CO(2)for the reverse osmosis (RO) method. Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that the calculation of carbon footprints for water resource projects can be a valuable source of information for decision-making involving water utilization and conservation. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.The carbon (C) footprint of palm oil production is needed to judge emissions from potential biofuel use. Relevance includes wider sustainable palm oil debates. Within life cycle analysis, aboveground C debt is incurred if the vegetation replaced had a higher C stock than oil palm plantations. Our study included 25 plantations across Indonesia, in a stratified study design representing the range of conditions in which oil palm is grown. From allometric equations for palm biomass and observed growth rates, we estimated the time-averaged aboveground C stock for 25-year rotation and 95%-confidence interval to be 42.07 (42.04-42.10) Mg C ha(-1) for plantations managed by company on mineral soils, 40.03 (39.75-40.30) Mg C ha(-1) for plantations managed by company on peat, and 37.76 (37.42-38.09) Mg C ha(-1) for smallholder oil palm on mineral soils. Oil palm can be established C debt-free on mineral soils with aboveground C stocks below these values; neutrality of mineral soil C pools was documented in a parallel study. Acknowledging variation in shoot: root ratios, the types of vegetation that can be converted debt-free to oil palm include grasslands and shrub, but not monocultural rubber plantations, rubber agroforest, and similar secondary or logged-over forests of higher C stock.Global warming is a worldwide issue with its evident impact across a wide range of systems and sectors. It is caused by a number of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions, in which food system has made up of a large part. Recently, reduction of GHG emissions has become an urgent issue to be resolved in the food system. Many governments and organizations are making great endeavors to alleviate the adverse effect of this phenomenon. In this review, methods to reduce the carbon footprint within the life cycle of a food system are presented from the technical, consumption behavior and environmental policies perspectives. The whole food system including raw material acquisition, processing, packaging, preservation, transportation, consumption, and disposal are covered. Improving management techniques, and adopting advanced technology and equipment are critical for every stage of a food system. Rational site selection is important to alleviate the influence of land use change. In addition, environmental choices of packaging stage, reduction in refrigeration dependence, and correct waste treatment are essential to reduce the total carbon footprint of the production. However, only technical methods cannot radically reverse the trend of climate change, as consumption behaviors present a great deal of influence over climate change. Appropriate purchase patterns and substitution within food product categories by low carbon products can reduce GHG emissions. Development of methods to calculate the carbon footprint of every kind of food and its processing technology enable people to make environmental choice. Policy can shape and cultivate the new code of consumption and influence the direction of emerging technology and science. From political perspectives, government intervention and carbon offset are common tools, especially for carbon tax and a real or implicit price of carbon. Finally, by mitigating the methodologies described above, the rate and magnitude of climate changes can be also reduced to some extent.Different seafood products based on Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens) fisheries and freshwater aquaculture of trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), tilapia (Oreochromis spp.) and black pacu (Colossoma macropomum), contribute at different scales to the socio-economic development, environmental degradation and nutrition of the Peruvian population. Various indicators have been used in the literature to assess the performance of these industries regarding different aspects of sustainability, notably their socio-economic performance. In this study, a novel set of indicators is proposed to evaluate the sustainability performance of these industries in Peru, based on life cycle assessment (LCA) and nutritional profiling, as well as on energy and socio-economic assessment approaches. The emphasis is put on the potential of different products to contribute to improving the nutrition of the Peruvian population in an energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and socio-economically sound way. The set of indicators includes biotic resource use (BRU), cumulative energy demand (CED), energy return on investment (EROI), production costs, gross profit generation, added value, and nutritional profile in terms of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids; as well as a number of life cycle impact assessment indicators commonly used in seafood studies, and some recently proposed indicators of resource status (measuring the impacts of fish biomass removal at the species and ecosystem levels). Results suggest that more energy-intensive/highly processed products (cured and canned anchoveta products) represent a higher burden, in terms of environmental impact, than less energy-intensive products (salted and frozen anchoveta products, semi-intensive aquaculture products). This result is confirmed when comparing all products regarding their industrial-to-nutritional energy ratio. Regarding the other attributes analysed, the scoring shows that salted and frozen anchoveta products generate fewer jobs and lower gross profit than canned and cured, while aquaculture products maximise them. Overall, it was concluded that less energy-intensive industries (anchoveta freezing and salting) are the least environmentally impacting but also the least economically interesting products, yet delivering higher nutritional value. Aquaculture products maximise gross profit and job creation, with lower energy efficiency and nutritional values. The proposed set of sustainability indicators fulfilled its goal in providing a multi-criteria assessment of anchoveta direct human consumption and freshwater aquaculture products. As often the case, there is no ideal product and the best trade-off must be sought when making decision regarding fisheries and seafood policy. No threshold for performance of the different indicators is offered, because the goal of the comparison is to contrast the relative performance among products, not of products against reference values. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The first step towards a sustainable agriculture is to know the impacts that it generates. Although this is a complex task, since the environmental impact of agriculture depends not only on the production system (e.g. conventional or organic) and farmer practices, but also on the production site (soil and climate conditions). The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impact of clementine production farming systems (conventional, CFS, and organic, OFS) in Italy (Calabria region) and Spain (Comunidad Valenciana) through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The functional unit to which the results were referred was 1 hectare (ha(-1)). The system boundaries considered were from "farm gate to farm gate", which included the production of the machinery, fertilizers and pesticides and also the field operations. The study is based on one year of primary data, collected from surveys of 19 Italian and 23 Spanish farmers. Ten impact categories were assessed by CML2001 and USEtox methods. No significant differences were found between CFS and OFS in both countries and the impacts present a high variability depending on the farm. In CFS the fertilizers production is the stage most impacting in almost all categories (Global Warming Potential: Italy 92% - Spain 89%; Acidification: Italy 91% - Spain 80%) with the exception for the Ecotoxicity in which field operations have a great contribution (Spain: 97%; Italy: 78%). Regarding OFS, no stage contributes specifically to all the impacts. The main difference between Italian and Spanish organic farms arises in the Ecotoxicity category. In Italy the stage with the greatest contribution is the production of fertilizers (87%), whereas in Spain it is the field operation (95%). In general, the impacts generated by OFS are lower than for CFS. The LCA results of this study allow identifying those agricultural practices that can help to reach a more environmentally sustainable agriculture.Sustainability has been recognized, when facing multifaceted decision and policy making processes, as a discipline that broadens the scope under which issues are taken into account. This is considered important given the complex and interrelated challenges faced by societies nowadays. However, it has been found in literature that the sustainable approach still has several obstacles to tackle, from the weakening of its discourse to the lack of real influence and low consensus on its meaning and practice. To reinforce the operational side of sustainability, several methodologies have been designed and implemented over the years with two main shortcomings: an inability to assess sustainability issues as a whole and more specifically, a lack of practical steps that can be included on a day-to-day basis. Integrated assessment emerges as a possible way to summarize the complexity of studying issues from a broader perspective but it is applied in different ways with diverse outcomes that require careful examination. These outcomes are compared by analyzing four integrated assessment tools: life cycle assessment, cost-benefit analysis, stakeholder analysis and multiple scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism. The aim is to observe and determine the degree to which they contribute to the consolidation of the sustainable approach and how they support decision-making processes. It is intended that this exercise help build a diverse yet deep common base for further conversation that will facilitate the process of searching and selecting alternatives to drive socio-ecological systems towards a more sustainable future.SOMABAT aims to develop more environmental friendly, safer and better performing high power Li polymer battery by the development of novel breakthrough recyclable solid materials to be used as anode, cathode and solid polymer electrolyte, new alternatives to recycle the different components of the battery and life cycle analysis. This challenge is being achieved by using new low-cost synthesis and processing methods in which it is possible to tailor the different properties of the materials. Development of different novel synthetic and recyclable materials based carbon based hybrid materials, novel LiFePO4 and LiFeMnPOd(4) based nanocomposite cathode with a conductive polymers or carbons, and highly conductive polymer electrolyte membranes based on fluorinated matrices with nanosized particles and others based on a series of polyphosphates and polypho-sphonates polymers respond to the very ambitious challenge of adequate energy density, lifetime and safety. An assessment and test of the potential recyclability and revalorisation of the battery components developed and life-cycle assessment of the cell will allow the development of a more environmental friendly Li-polymer battery in which a 50 % weight of the battery will be recyclable and a reduction of the final cost of the battery up to 150 (sic)/kWh is achievable. The consortium is made up of experts in the field and is complementary in terms of R&D expertise and geographic distribution.We tested a wet extraction method for lipid extraction from Euglena gracilis water slurry at 0.51 MPa and 20 degrees C using liquefied dimethyl ether (DME). The yields, proximate analyses, elemental composition, and molecular weight distribution properties of the extracts from E. gracilis and the remaining residues obtained by DME extraction were compared with those of the extracts obtained by hexane Soxhlet extraction.This paper describes an optimization approach of balancing life cycle cost and environmental impacts for typical Australian houses. It evaluates the effects of various alternative wall, floor and roofing assemblages to select an optimized house design. A Base House was modified with 18 alternative wall, 4 floor and 8 roofing designs. Each design was varied in such a way that it achieved specific star rating based on materials and assemblages. Two sets of objective functions, namely life cycle cost and environmental impacts were evaluated for each design using life cycle costing and life cycle assessment approaches, respectively. The use of Linear Programming helped to identify alternative best designs depending on single-objective (SOO) or multi-objective optimization (MOO). Outcomes from SOO depended on the choice of particular objective function, while outcomes from MOO depended on the decision-makers preferences in terms of weightings. A high star-rating weatherboard house with ceramic tiles and wooden floor, and skillion flat roofing was the best design if the weighting of all five objective functions were equal. A house designed with these optimal wall, floor and roofing had a much higher rating (by 1.3 stars), lower environmental impacts (by 10-20%) for the same life cycle cost. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A large variety of energy storage systems are currently investigated for using surplus power from intermittent renewable energy sources. Typically, these energy storage systems are compared based on their Power-to-Power reconversion efficiency. Such a comparison, however, is inappropriate for energy storage systems not providing electric power as output. We therefore present a systematic environmental comparison of energy storage systems providing different products. As potential products, we consider the reconversion to power but also mobility, heat, fuels and chemical feedstock. Using life cycle assessment, we determine the environmental impacts avoided by using 1 MW h of surplus electricity in the energy storage systems instead of producing the same product in a conventional process. Based on data for several countries including the United States, Brazil, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, our analysis determines the highest reduction of global warming and fossil depletion impact for using surplus power in heat pumps with hot water storage and battery electric vehicles. Third highest environmental benefits are achieved by electrical energy storage systems (pumped hydro storage, compressed air energy storage and redox flow batteries). Environmental benefits are also obtained if surplus power is used to produce hydrogen but the benefits are lower. Our environmental assessment of energy storage systems is complemented by determination of CO2 mitigation costs. The lowest CO2 mitigation costs are achieved by electrical energy storage systems.Recently, lactic acid has emerged as one of the most relevant platform molecules for the preparation of bio-chemicals. Due to the limited productivity of sugar fermentation, the dominant industrial technology practiced for its manufacture, new chemocatalytic processes are being developed in order to meet the expected demand for this intermediate. The Lewis-acid catalysed isomerisation of dihydroxyacetone has attracted particular interest. If the reaction is performed in water, lactic acid is attained directly, while if alcohol is used as the solvent, the desired product can be obtained upon subsequent hydrolysis of the alkyl lactates formed. Herein, we (i) demonstrate tin-containing MFI zeolites prepared by scalable methods as highly active, selective and recyclable catalysts able to operate in concentrated dihydroxyacetone aqueous and methanolic solutions, and (ii) reveal by life cycle analysis that a process comprising the enzymatic production of dihydroxyacetone from crude glycerol and its chemocatalytic isomerisation in methanol is advantageous for the production of lactic acid compared to glucose fermentation in terms of both sustainability and operating costs. In particular, we demonstrate that the reduced energy requirements and CO2 emissions of the cascade process originate from the valorisation of a waste feedstock and from the high performance and recyclability of the zeolite catalyst and that the economic advantage is strongly determined by the comparably low market price of glycerol. It is also shown that the bio-/chemocatalytic route remains ecologically and economically more attractive even if the purity of glycerol is as low as 38%.The past few years have witnessed a rapid evolution of perovskite solar cells, an unprecedented photovoltaic (PV) technology with both relatively low cost and high power conversion efficiency. In this paper, we perform a life cycle assessment for two types of solution-processed perovskite solar modules to shed light on the environmental performance of this promising class of PVs. One module is equipped with FTO glass, a gold cathode, and mesoporous TiO2 scaffold; the other is equipped with ITO glass, a silver cathode, and ZnO thin film. We develop comprehensive life cycle inventories (LCIs) for all components used in the modules. Based on the LCI results, we conduct life cycle impact assessment for 16 common life cycle impact indicators, Eco-indicator 99, and two sustainable indicators: the energy payback time (EPBT) and the CO2 emission factor. We compare the results of Eco-indicator 99, the EPBT, and the CO2 emission factor among existing PV technologies, and further perform uncertainty analysis and sensitivity analysis for the two modules. The results demonstrate that perovskite solar modules possess the shortest EPBT, and future research should be directed to improving the system performance ratio and the device lifetime, and reducing precious metal consumption and energy-intensive operations in order to lower the CO2 emission factor.In the agricultural sector of many European countries, biogas production through anaerobic digestion (AD) is becoming a very fast-growing market. AD is a simple and robust process that biologically converts an organic matrix into biogas and digestate, the latter corresponding to the anaerobically non-degraded fraction. So far, digestate has been mostly used at farm-scales for improving soils. However, its ever-increasing production induces problems related to transport costs, greenhouse-gas emissions during storage and high nitrogen content that constrains its use to land application only. Consequently, research on alternative valorisation routes to reduce its environmental impact and to improve the economical profitability of AD plants should draw increasing interest in the future. This review therefore focuses on the different alternatives of digestate valorisation, apart from land applications: (I) the use of the digestate liquor for replacing freshwater and nutrients in algae cultivation; (II) the use of solid digestate for energy production through biological (i.e. AD, bioethanol) or thermal processes (i.e. combustion, hydrothermal carbonization and pyrolysis); (III) the conversion of solid digestate into added-value products (char or activated carbons) through a pyrolysis process.This article provides an overview of the design, fabrication and characterization of the most widely used cathode buffer layers (CBLs) constructed using pristine zinc oxide (ZnO), doped-ZnO, and ZnO-based composites as well as the surface modified ZnO-based CBLs for the improvement of power conversion efficiency (PCE) and long-term device stability of inverted polymer solar cells (PSCs). To achieve high PCE in inverted PSCs, the selection of an appropriate material to form high quality CBLs so as to optimize the electron collection and transport is particularly important. ZnO has been the most extensively studied material for CBL of inverted PSCs in view of its relatively high electron mobility, optical transparency, ease of being synthesized with low cost solution methods at low temperature, versatile morphologies, and being environmentally stable. It is pointed out in this review that the electronic processes at the interface between the ZnO CBL and polymer active layer play an important role in determining the solar cells performance. This review attempts to deliver better understanding with regard of the impacts of (1) morphology, (2) thickness, (3) nanostructures, (4) doping, (5) surface modification and (6) composition/hybrids of ZnO CBLs on the inverted PSCs performance. Well understanding the interfacial processes in PSCs is believed also a benefit to the emerging perovskite solar cells in view of their similar energy levels and device structures.The assessment of the embodied environmental impacts of buildings can help decision-makers plan environment-friendly buildings and reduce environmental impacts. For a more comprehensive assessment of the embodied environmental impacts of buildings, a hybrid life cycle assessment model was developed in this study. The developed model can assess the embodied environmental impacts (global warming, ozone layer depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical ozone creation, abiotic depletion, and human toxicity) generated directly and indirectly in the material manufacturing, transportation, and construction phases. To demonstrate the application and validity of the developed model, the environmental impacts of an elementary school building were assessed using the developed model and compared with the results of a previous model used in a case study. The embodied environmental impacts from the previous model were lower than those from the developed model by 4.6-25.2%. Particularly, human toxicity potential (13 kg C6H6 eq.) calculated by the previous model was much lower (1965 kg C6H6 eq.) than what was calculated by the developed model. The results indicated that the developed model can quantify the embodied environmental impacts of buildings more comprehensively, and can be used by decision-makers as a tool for selecting environment-friendly buildings. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Based on the samples of 113,468 publications on environmental assessment (EA)from the past 20 years, we used a bibliometric analysis to study the literature in terms of trends of growth, subject categories and journals, international collaboration, geographic distribution of publications, and scientific research issues. By applying thresholds to network centralities, a core group of countries can be distinguished as part of the international collaboration network. A frequently used keywords analysis found that the priority in assessment would gradually change from project environmental impact assessment (EIA) to strategic environmental assessment (SEA). Decision-theoretic approaches (i.e., environmental indicator selection, life cycle assessment, etc.), along with new technologies and methods (i.e., the geographic information system and modeling) have been widely applied in the EA research field over the past 20 years. Hot spots such as "biodiversity" and "climate change" have been emphasized in current EA research, a trend that will likely continue in the future. The h-index has been used to evaluate the research quality among countries all over the world, while the improvement of developing countries' EA systems is becoming a popular research topic. Our study reveals patterns in scientific outputs and academic collaborations and serves as an altemative and innovative way of revealing global research trends in the EA research field. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.All buildings have a specific lifetime which can be divided as construction, operation, and demolition phases. A lot of energy and capital are required in the construction phase of a building inasmuch as a large variety of materials is required for building construction. A high amount of waste material is generated in the construction and demolition (C and D) phases of a building. Due to this fact the dumping of C and D waste materials for landfill is neither economical nor environmentally friendly due to the many environmental impacts associated with it. Thus it becomes quite important to think about the reuse of C and D waste of a building. Recycling and reuse of waste material reduces the requirement of fresh and virgin materials in construction of new buildings. Along with the requirement of fresh material, it increases energy requirements as well as externalities. As we know, many GHG emissions are associated with procurement, manufacturing, transportation of building material, and on-site construction activities which can be reduced by reuse of waste materials in new building construction. This chapter reviews the recycling potential of different types of building materials as well as the energy, economic, and environmental impacts on construction of buildings.As the world's the largest dumping ground for e-waste, much of the population in China is exposed to heavy metals due to informal e-waste recycling processes. We reviewed recent studies on body burdens and human health effects of heavy metals from the major e-waste recycling sites in China. The results showed that the residents in the e-waste recycling sites are facing a potential higher daily intake of heavy metals. Moreover, heavy metals had entered subjects' bodies (the collected 5 tissue samples). Additionally, individual exposure to heavy metals in e-waste has also caused negative health outcomes, especially in neonates and children. We also recorded plausible outcomes associated with exposure to e-wast (to heavy metals). A precautionary approach toward exposure, especially in neonates and children, therefore seems warranted. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In this study, we report the first room temperature seed-mediated synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in the presence of citrate and a gold salt. In contrast to citrate-reduction in boiling water, these mild reaction conditions provide expanded capacity to probe the mechanism of seed-mediated growth following gold salt addition. Moreover, comparative life cycle assessment indicates significant reductions in the environmental impacts for the room temperature synthesis. For this study, highly uniform gold seeds with Z-average diameter of 17.7 +/- 0.8 nm and a polydispersity index of 0.03 +/- 0.01 were prepared by a pH controlled protocol. We investigated the AuNP growth mechanism via time resolved UV-vis spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, and transmission electron microscopy. This study indicates that citrate and its oxidation byproduct acetone dicarboxylate serve to bridge and gather Au(III) ions around gold nanoparticle seeds in the initial growth step.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to quantify and profile the indicative amount of retrofits in office buildings as a necessary step in quantifying the recurring embodied energy in office buildings. Buildings are a major source of energy usage and emissions, and office buildings are a significant contributor to this situation. Life cycle assessments in this area have tended to neglect the potentially large impact arising from recurring embodied energy associated with office fit-out-which is often akin to a short-term consumable rather than a long-term durable in many multi-storey buildings. Design/methodology/approach - This study used building permit data from the Melbourne Central Business District (n = 986) over the period 2006-2010 (inclusive) to quantify the number of retrofits and related trends. Building on this, a small number of targeted case study buildings were used to probe specific issues in profiling trends associated with high-frequency trends arising from the main sample. Findings - The data show that the number of retrofits varies according to location, grade, size and the age of buildings. Using the case study data, there is initial evidence to suggest that between 46 and 70 per cent of the floors in a high-rise office building will undergo retrofit in a five-year period. Further research should apply these data to recurring energy modelling for office buildings. Research limitations/implications - One limitation which applies to this study is that the research is limited to a defined geographical area in one Australian city, Melbourne. Secondly the study covers a specific period, and the number of retrofits may be affected negatively or positively depending on the prevailing market conditions. Practical implications - This paper raises important questions in respect of life cycle carbon emissions in the context of prevailing trends to shorter lease terms and practices around fit-out. Originality/value - The retrofit of office buildings tends to go unnoticed and unmeasured in the debate about sustainable buildings. The paper provides original thought development and important measurement input which will assist in providing a more accurate and meaningful life cycle assessment of office buildings.Purpose - This study aims at capturing the perspectives of construction professionals into a classified taxonomy of the various characteristics of smart buildings and at developing an index able to define their level of smartness. Design/methodology/approach - A questionnaire survey has been administrated to construction professionals in the service of designers, constructors and owners. Results have been analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis test and they have been used to develop a smartness index. Findings - Designers and owners are more focused on the energy issue than constructors. The energy captures the attention of practitioners with less years of experience, confirming that the awareness of the energy topic is rather recent. Originality/value - The main characteristics of smart buildings have been structured in domains and subdomains. Their importance has been rated by construction professional and a smartness index for smart building has been developed to provide with a convenient tool for evaluation and benchmarking.Ecosystems are under increasing pressure from human activities, with land use and land-use change at the forefront of the drivers that provoke global and regional biodiversity loss. The first step in addressing the challenge of how to reverse the negative outlook for the coming years starts with measuring environmental loss rates and assigning responsibilities. Pinpointing the global pressures on biodiversity is a task best addressed using holistic models such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is the leading method for calculating cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of products and services; it is actively promoted by many public policies, and integrated as part of environmental information systems within private companies. LCA already deals with the potential biodiversity impacts of land use, but there are significant obstacles to overcome before its models grasp the full reach of the phenomena involved. In this review, we discuss some pressing issues that need to be addressed. LCA mainly introduces biodiversity as an endpoint category modeled as a loss in species richness due to the conversion and use of land over time and space. The functional and population effects on biodiversity are mostly absent due to the emphasis on species accumulation with limited geographic and taxonomical reach. Current land-use modeling activities that use biodiversity indicators tend to oversimplify the real dynamics and complexity of the interactions of species among each other and with their habitats. To identify the main areas for improvement, we systematically reviewed LCA studies on land use that had findings related to global change and conservation ecology. We provide suggestion as to how to address some of the issues raised. Our overall objective was to encourage companies to monitor and take concrete steps to address the impacts of land use on biodiversity on a broader geographical scale and along increasingly globalized supply chains.Biochar application to soil is currently widely advocated for a variety of reasons related to sustainability. Typically, soil amelioration with biochar is presented as a multiple-win' strategy, although it is also associated with potential risks such as environmental contamination. The most often claimed benefits of biochar (i.e. the wins') include (i) carbon sequestration; (ii) soil fertility enhancement; (iii) biofuel/bioenergy production; (iv) pollutant immobilization; and (v) waste disposal. However, the vast majority of studies ignore possible trade-offs between them. For example, there is an obvious trade-off between maximizing biofuel production and maximizing biochar production. Also, relatively little attention has been paid to mechanisms, as opposed to systems impacts, behind observed biochar effects, often leaving open the question as to whether they reflect truly unique properties of biochar as opposed to being simply the short-term consequences of a fertilization or liming effect. Here, we provide an outline for the future of soil biochar research. We first identify possible trade-offs between the potential benefits. Second, to be able to better understand and quantify these trade-offs, we propose guidelines for robust experimental design and selection of appropriate controls that allow both mechanistic and systems assessment of biochar effects and trade-offs between the wins. Third, we offer a conceptual framework to guide future experiments and suggest guidelines for the standardized reporting of biochar experiments to allow effective between-site comparisons to quantify trade-offs. Such a mechanistic and systems framework is required to allow effective comparisons between experiments, across scales and locations, to guide policy and recommendations concerning biochar application to soil.We present simulation results for the production of algae-derived syngas using dual fluidized bed (DFB) gasifiers. A global sensitivity analysis was performed to determine the impact of key input parameters (i.e. algae composition, gasification temperature, feed water content, steam-to-biomass ratio, and fuel-air equivalence ratio) on the product yields. The algae oil content was varied from 0 to 40 wt% to account for different algae strains and varying extents of oil extraction prior to the gasification process. It was found that the lower heating value (LHV) of syngas, typically ranging from 15 to 22 MJ kg(algae)(-1), is heavily dependent on the algae oil content. The cold gas efficiency (CGE) of the process varies over a range of 75 to 90%, depending primarily on the feedstock water content and steam-to-biomass ratio. A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment indicated that the carbon footprint of syngas produced from algae feedstocks with 20 to 40 wt% oil fraction that is dried by a gas-fired dryer lies within a range of 70 to 195 g CO2 MJ(-1). However, decarbonization of the drying stage via utilization of solar energy reduce the carbon footprint to values below 40 g CO2 MJ(-1), which would compare favorably with the carbon footprint of syngas produced via steam reforming of natural gas (i.e. similar to 100 g CO2 MJ(-1))The assessment of the implementation of green chemistry principles in the syntheses of nanomaterials is a complex decision-making problem that necessitates the integration of several evaluation criteria. Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) provides support for such a challenge. One of its methods - Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA) - was used in this research to develop a model for the green chemistry-based classification of silver nanoparticle synthesis protocols into preference-ordered performance classes. DRSA allowed integration of knowledge from both peer-reviewed literature and experts (decision makers, DMs) in the field, resulting in a model composed of decision rules that are logical statements in the form: "if conditions, then decision". The approach provides the basis for the design of rules for the greener synthesis of silver nanoparticles. Decision rules are supported by synthesis protocols that enforce the principles of green chemistry to various extents, resulting in robust recommendations for the development and assessment of silver nanoparticle synthesis that perform at one of five pre-determined levels. The DRSA-based approach is transparent and structured and can be easily updated. New perspectives and criteria could be added into the model if relevant data were available and domain-specific experts could collaborate through the MCDA procedure.Volatile organic solvents derived from non-renewable fossil feedstocks are commonplace in analytical laboratories. In spite of their convenient performance in countless unit operations, their environmental, health and safety issues represent a major area of concern. The progressive replacement of organic solvents obtained from fossil resources by eco-friendly alternatives would involve remarkable advances within the framework of green analytical chemistry, while avoiding future uncertainties regarding forthcoming regulations. This perspective tackles the problem of organic solvent use in analytical methodologies, providing relevant information for solvent selection and identifying a range of solvents derived from natural and/or renewable resources, namely bio-based molecular solvents, ionic liquids composed wholly of biomaterials and natural deep eutectic mixtures that could potentially be exploited toward advanced, more benign, analytical methodologies. In addition, physicochemical properties are provided, and a number of challenging aspects to be considered in the implementation of eco-friendly alternatives are evaluated.This chapter discusses the problem of Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) as one of the largest growing waste streams globally, the influence of the product complexity and liberation in separation, and the basics of electrostatic separation. A very short review of mechanical separation processes is given and research conducted on one fraction of CRT TV set is presented. A CRT TV set fraction with higher copper content consists of yokes of a cathode tube, cables, connectors, and wires, which were tested by electrostatic separation method. The aim of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of electrostatic separation, to determine and rank the influence of separator operating parameters, and to set models for assessment of the concentration quality and recovery of metals. The results show that it is possible to achieve a high quality of concentrates (metal content from 77 to 100%), while recovery varies greatly (from 10 to 99%).This work aims to perform a preliminary optimization of the fermentation of brewers' spent grain (BSG) sugars to bioethanol, focusing on the pentose sugars. Firstly, it was conducted the acid pre- treatment and enzymatic hydrolysis for studying different reaction times and amounts of enzymes in order to convert cellulose and hemicelluloses into simple sugars. The greatest amount of total sugars achieved experimentally is 5.56 g/25 g of dry BSG, corresponding to a sugars maximum conversion of 22.24 % from a BSG sample with about 6 % cellulose and about 40 % hemicelluloses. This was obtained by sequentially adding the acids HCl and HNO3 with 1 wt% of concentration to BSG to perform the pre- treatment, simultaneously with 1.0657 g of Glucanex 100g and 2.0 mL of Ultraflo L for the hydrolysis. Secondly, it was studied the fermentation step, using both synthetic medium and BSG hydrolyzate, and the yeasts Pichia stipitis NCYC 1541 (P. stipitis) and Kluyveromyces marxianus NYCY 2791 (K. marxianus). Results show that the fermentation efficiency of all sugars in the synthetic media is higher than 80_% for both yeasts, but in the BSG hydrolyzate it is just 45.10 % for P. stipitis and 36.58 % for K. marxianus for a 72 h fermentation time at a 30 degrees C temperature. The theoretical ethanol yield from BSG hydrolyzates is 0.27 and 0.19 g ethanol/g of sugars for respectively, P. stipitis and K. marxianus, but the actual ethanol yield obtained in this work is 0.0856 and 0.0308 g ethanol/g of sugars, respectively that is three times smaller than the theoretical yield for P. stipitis and six times smaller for K. marxianus, which can be attributed to the presence of inhibitors resulting from the previous steps.Purpose - This paper aims to set the framework for measuring the energy performance of a manufacturing process. The availability and affordability of energy is becoming a critical parameter nowadays, affecting the whole lifecycle of the product, and hence the production phase as well. The energy efficiency of the grinding process, as a widely used manufacturing process in the industry, is assessed with regard to the selected process strategies. Design/methodology/approach - To assess the grinding machine tool energy performance, a measuring framework is designed, implemented and validated. The process strategy effect on the energy consumption is experimentally assessed through energy audits of the grinding machine tool. Such energy audits provide better insights into the way subsystems composing a machine tool affect the energy consumption. Findings - It is revealed that the proper selection of process strategy can significantly reduce the energy consumption. The amount of energy consumed for the actual process is less than the energy required for maintaining the processing environment (e.g. for the coolant pump delivering coolant fluid in the processing area). The key finding is that the measuring framework can be used for the understanding and analysis of the energy consumption of the various machine tool components. Additionally, for the grinding process itself, the energy audits indicate that reducing the processing duration can significantly reduce the overall energy. Originality/value - The main novel contribution of the present paper is the development of a measurement framework for assessing the energy consumption of subsystems running simultaneously when processing a workpiece. Grinding process energy demand is analysed in detail, allowing for the first time to consider energy consumption as a manufacturing decision criterion.The possibility of applying anaerobic digestion (AD) process of the source-selected organic fraction (SS-OF) of municipal solid waste in the south of Tuscany (IT) territory was proposed and evaluated. With respect to a reference scenario, in which the overall amount of SS-OF and garden waste-expected in 2013-is addressed to aerobic composting process, three alternative scenarios were proposed, modeled, and compared by life cycle assessment (LCA). The first one is based on realizing six AD plants upstream of each already existing aerobic plant. The second one is based on realizing only three centralized anaerobic plants. The third alternative is based on co-digestion of a part of the SS-OF with sludge from waste water treatment plants in existing sludge AD plants; the remaining part of SS-OF is processed in devoted AD plants upstream of each already existing aerobic plant. LCA results show that AD application is always favorable with respect to the reference scenario in which organic wastes are aerobically processed. AD allows for net production of thermal and electric energy, generating negative impacts due to avoided emissions and avoided resource consumptions. Among the compared alternatives of AD application, the scenario based on decentralized plants (one anaerobic plant upstream of each existing aerobic plant) resulted to be most favorable, collecting the best value for almost all the considered environmental indicators.Various methods exist for evaluating the environmental consequences of products. With climate change high up on the political and corporate agendas, carbon footprint (CF) calculations are in strong demand. However, there are certain serious shortcomings related to the CF concept which every practitioner and potential user should be aware of. Although building upon a life cycle approach, CF addresses only impacts on climate change that may give a misleading picture of the environmental impacts and shift environmental burdens to other impacted areas, thus leading to incomplete decisions for sustainable development policies. Another very important issue is how the CF results are presented to the customer. All these conceptual and methodological shortcomings demand better understanding of the value of CF results within product development and marketing activities. In addition, understanding of the uncertainties can be crucial for properly interpreting CF results.This study presents the application of exergy analysis in assessing how effectively resources are utilised in construction material manufacturing. The role of exergy is discussed from several key perspectives such as quality, energy conservation and process improvement potentials. Both primary and secondary processes (recycling) of nine major non-renewable construction materials (steel, aluminium, copper, cement, concrete, ceramic, glass, polypropylene and polyvinylchloride (PVC)) have been evaluated in this study. The outlined theoretical exergy efficiency approach assesses the improvement potentials of the present manufacturing processes. The large difference between theoretical and industrial exergy demand suggests that exergy resources are utilised very inefficiently in current technologies. The study reveals that more than 55% of exergy is being lost in current technologies even though a significant amount of waste heat is recovered in different segments of the case study processes. Thus, attention is required to reduce the specific exergy losses through improved process design and introduction of new technology.Most life cycle assessment (LCA) studies for flooring exclude the environmental and economic impacts incurred from the maintenance required due to uncertainty in average cleaning procedures, although some studies indicate that it may be the most significant component of the life cycle. This study investigates the impacts of maintenance on types of flooring and develops a single scoring system to compare floors based on both environmental and economic impacts. The focus of this study was on the impact of maintenance on the life cycle of flooring choices. Maintenance data was collected from trade association studies and manufacturer's recommendations. This data was compiled, along with data from previous flooring studies, to create a comprehensive life cycle inventory which was analyzed with the LCA software, SimaPro. A number of maintenance techniques and frequencies were tested in order to do a sensitivity analysis. An uncertainty analysis was completed using Monte Carlo simulations. A life cycle costing (LCC) analysis was used to evaluate the total present value cost of flooring including maintenance. Environmental and economic impacts were normalized to create a single score in order to compare the overall performance of flooring choices. Maintenance procedures may account for a significant portion of environmental and economic impacts of floorings. In the case of environmental scores, adding high maintenance to the life cycle can increase scores by anywhere from 31 % (hardwood) to 114 % (carpet). A sensitivity analysis of these scores shows that most of the score increase can be attributed to vacuuming. Maintenance costs considerably increase the total cost, accounting for 49 % of hardwood's total cost and about 30 % of costs for linoleum, vinyl, and carpet. The expected service life of the home greatly influences which flooring is best, as costs and environmental scores change dynamically over time. For the expected service life of a home of 61 years, carpet has the worst and linoleum has the best overall performance. Although averages for maintenance techniques are not currently known, ignoring maintenance as a part of the use phase presents a significant error in the comparison of flooring options environmentally and economically. Due in part to yearly maintenance effects, the flooring choice with the best overall performance changes dynamically depending on the expected service life remaining for the home.Livestock production is a recognized source of environmental impact, and this sector indirectly involves approximately 5 million people in Brazil. Livestock production includes nearly 1.5 million milk producers that use several different production systems. We chose the southern region of Brazil to evaluate the carbon footprint (CF) per 1 kg of energy-corrected milk (ECM) at the farm gate for different dairy production systems with the use of a good level of technology. The dairy production systems were confined feedlot system, semi-confined feedlot system (including some grazing), and pasture-based grazing system. A sensitivity analysis of the dry matter intake (DMI) in each farming system and an uncertainty analysis based on a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation were performed to complement the discussion. The standards ISO 14040: 2006 and ISO 14044: 2006 were used for the comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) focused on the CF. The LCA software tool SimaPro 7.3.3 was used. Sensitivity analyses were conducted on input data for total digestible nutrients (TDN) and crude protein (CP) based on values from the literature. The comparative LCA showed that the confined feedlot system had a lower CF than the other systems studied. Total greenhouse gas emissions were 0.535 kg CO(2)e kg ECM-1 for the confined feedlot system, 0.778 kg CO(2)e kg ECM-1 for the semi-confined feedlot system, and 0.738 kg CO(2)e kg ECM-1 for the pasture-based system without considering the impact from direct land use change (dLUC). When considering these emissions, the CFs for grain and cottonseed production showed CF increases of 45.0, 36.9, and 37.3 % for the confined feedlot, semi-confined feedlot, and pasture-based systems, respectively. The results from the MC simulations showed low uncertainty through variations in TDN and CP. The coefficient of variation was 1.1 % for the confined feedlot, 0.7 % for the semi-confined feedlot, and 1.0 % for the pasture systems. The uncertainties were due mainly to variations in N2O emissions from manure for the three systems. The CF in Brazilian systems was lower than almost all the results found in the literature, even when impacts from the dLUC were considered. The lowest CF in this case study was due mainly to the emission factor used for enteric fermentation.The security of the supply of resources is a key policy and business concern. This concern has been increasingly addressed by bodies such as the European Commission to help identify materials of potential concern in terms of economic importance and supply risks. Equally, tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) systematically compile inventories of the resources attributable to the supply of goods and services. Such well-established tools, hence, provide an important opportunity for business and governments for strategic management and for identifying improvement options that reduce reliance on so-called critical raw materials (CRMs). This paper explores current practice and the potential of LCA to help business and governments more systematically assess their supply chains. Raw materials of concern to business and governments in relation to security of supply are denoted as critical. This paper highlights how such CRMs are identified in the existing methodologies. It then focuses on LCA methodology and explores its potential in providing information on CRMs at different levels: considering the flows of CRMs at inventory level, including criticality criteria in the impact assessment, and analyzing the flows of CRMs associated with the consumption of goods and services at macroeconomic scale. Consideration of resource security can be specifically addressed in LCA starting from the goal and scope definition. These CRMs may otherwise be neglected due to cut-off criteria based, e.g., on quantity. If systematically addressed, LCA can provide such CRM information routinely at inventory level. Inclusion of further indicators under the Area of Protection (AoP) "Resources" in LCA may also ensure such assessments more systematically address issues such as criticality. In strategic analysis, as those at macroeconomic scale, LCA results at the inventory (e.g., amounts of CRMs domestically extracted and those used for producing imported and exported intermediate products) and at impact assessment level can better support decision making. At both microscale and macroscale, LCA might have more potential in capturing hot spots and improvement opportunities of raw materials of concern, not only in terms of scarcity. This paper highlights that LCA is well positioned for providing information on resource-related issues of concern to business and governments such as the criticality of raw materials used in the supply chains. The paper outlines the methodological developments that could enhance LCA potential to further support resource assessments to help more systematically meet such business and governmental interests.Cement production is associated with a considerable environmental load, which needs to be fully understood before effective measures can be taken. The existing literature did not give detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) study of China and had limited potential for investigating how best available techniques (BATs) would provide a maximum benefit when they are applied in China. Japan was selected as a good example to achieve better environmental performance of cement production. We identified potentials for reducing emissions and saving energy and natural resources in Chinese cement industry through the comparative analysis. This paper follows the principal of Life Cycle Assessment and International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD). The functional units are "1 t of portland cement" and with 42.5 MPa of strength grade. The input (limestone, sandstone, ferrous tailings, coal, and electricity) and output (CO2 from limestone decomposition and coal combustion, NOx, PM, and SO2) of cement manufacturing were calculated by use of on-site measurements, calculation by estimated coefficients, and derivation by mass and heat balance principle. The direct (cement manufacturing) and indirect (electricity production) LCI are added to be total LCI results (cement production). The impact categories of global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), photochemical oxidant formation potential (POCP), and human toxicity potential (HTP) are used to calculate environmental impact. Only in GWP of cement manufacturing China has advantage. Japanese cement industry shows remarkable superiorities in the environmental impacts of AP, POCP, HTP, and EP due to advanced technologies. SO2 emissions make the corresponding AP and HTP. PM emissions result in part of HTP. The NOx emissions are the major contributors of POCP, AP, EP, and HTP in China. China emits fewer CO2 emissions (2.09 %) in cement manufacturing than Japan but finally makes higher total GWP than Japan due to more GWP of electricity generation in power stations. The waste heat recovery technology can save electricity but bring more coal use and CO2 emissions. The alternative fuel and raw materials usage and denitration and de-dust technologies can relieve the environmental load. Using the functional unit with the strength grade, the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results are affected. LCA study allows a clear understanding from the view of total environmental impact rather than by the gross domestic product (GDP) unit from an economic development perspective. In an LCA study, the power generation should be considered in the life cycle of cement production.In the past decade, several methods have emerged to quantify water scarcity, water availability and the human health impacts of water use. It was recommended that a quantitative comparison of methods should be performed to describe similar impact pathways, namely water scarcity and human health impacts from water deprivation. This is precisely the goal of this paper, which aims to (1) identify the key relevant modeling choices that explain the main differences between characterization models leading to the same impact indicators; (2) quantify the significance of the differences between methods, and (3) discuss the main methodological choices in order to guide method development and harmonization efforts. The modeling choices are analysed for similarity of results (using mean relative difference) and model response consistency (through rank correlation coefficient). Uncertainty data associated with the choice of model are provided for each of the models analysed, and an average value is provided as a tool for sensitivity analyses. The results determined the modeling choices that significantly influence the indicators and should be further analysed and harmonised, such as the regional scale at which the scarcity indicator is calculated, the sources of underlying input data and the function adopted to describe the relationship between modeled scarcity indicators and the original withdrawal-to-availability or consumption-to-availability ratios. The inclusion or exclusion of impacts from domestic user deprivation and the inclusion or exclusion of trade effects both strongly influence human health impacts. At both midpoint and endpoint, the comparison showed that considering reduced water availability due to degradation in water quality, in addition to a reduction in water quantity, greatly influences results. Other choices are less significant in most regions of the world. Maps are provided to identify the regions in which such choices are relevant. This paper provides useful insights to better understand scarcity, availability and human health impact models for water use and identifies the key relevant modeling choices and differences, making it possible to quantify model uncertainty and the significance of these choices in a specific regional context. Maps of regions where these specific choices are of importance were generated to guide practitioners in identifying locations for sensitivity analyses in water footprint studies. Finally, deconstructing the existing models and highlighting the differences and similarities has helped to determine building blocks to support the development of a consensual method.This study aims to quantify the socio-economic and environmental impacts of producing electricity by wind power plants for the US electricity mix. To accomplish this goal, all direct and supply chain-related impacts of different onshore and offshore wind turbines are quantified using a hybrid economic input-outputbased triple bottom line (TBL) life cycle assessment model. Furthermore, considering TBL sustainability implications of each onshore and offshore wind energy technology, a multi-criteria decision-making tool which is coupled with Monte Carlo simulation is utilised to find the optimal choice of onshore and offshore wind energy. The analysis results indicate that V90-3.0MWwind turbines have lower impacts than V80-3.0 MW for both socio-economic and environmental indicators. The Monte Carlo simulation results reveal that when environmental issues are more important than socio-economic impacts, V90-3.0 MW offshore is selected among the alternatives.In the age of climate awareness, energy and eco-efficiency have become an issue of great importance, particularly in the field of manufacturing. Due to the dynamic nature of manufacturing processes, reducing their energy consumption and the associated environmental impacts require knowledge about energy consumption as a function of shop-floor processes and their process parameters. However, the industrial average data were normally used for the energy estimation or life cycle assessment, which may underestimate the energy consumption 10-fold than the actual consumption in some cases. Alternatively, this paper proposes an empirical approach to characterise the energy efficiency on different injection moulding machine tools. The derived models offer a unique ability to predict energy consumption of a given machine tool with an accuracy of over 90%, which can also improve the quality of current life cycle inventory database. The ecoefficiency of the injection moulding process has also been discussed in this paper. The inverse of specific energy consumption models can be directly used for evaluating the eco-efficiency, since injection moulding processes mainly consume electricity in a dynamic manner. The throughput rate has been found as a decisive factor for the energy and ecoefficiency of injection moulding processes.The roadway network in the USA earned a grade of D representing poor condition in the latest report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers. To maintain economic and environmental sustainability during the roadway network development and rehabilitation, it is critical to apply sustainable materials and intelligent design. A good estimation on project-level life-cycle costs and environmental impacts is one of the important steps in the highway investment decision-making process. This article examines the current life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) practice employed by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) in their pavement investment decision-making process, and proposes a regional environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) model to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with Colorado highway pavements. Both LCCA and LCA are performed for a highway reconstruction project with Portland cement concrete pavement (PCCP) and hot-mixed asphalt (HMA) alternatives. The LCCA is 7.4% in favour of HMA. Since the difference is less than 10%, it indicates equivalent designs. However, in the LCA, the GHG emission from PCCP is 26% less than the HMA over the 40-year analysis period. The vehicle fuel consumption will increase due to the deterioration of pavements. But the increased user cost is not included in the current LCCA employed by CDOT as well as user cost due to crashes and nonuser costs. The LCA can be an optional criterion for the selection of the preliminary pavement type.For Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies of products where the use phase is responsible for a large share of the total environmental impact, variations in the way the products are being used may have a significant impact on the results. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a better understanding of the use phase, and possibly techniques and experience applied in Design for Sustainable Behaviour (DfSB), may contribute to the way LCA deals with uncertainties related to variations in the use phase. To inform the investigation of how variations in the use phase are dealt with in the LCA literature today, three previously published LCA studies are analysed. Among these studies, there is a clear variation in where the ( limited) attention given to this uncertainty is directed to, and how this is done. Improving the understanding of the potential variations and thereby the ability to take them into account in the LCA may require additional measurements. For situations where limited resources make extensive real-life user studies problematic, a small-scale approach is suggested. The DfSB literature both contains insight into how a large number of user research methods best can be applied to investigate the environmental aspects of how people interact with products and a growing database of case studies that may contribute to reducing the uncertainty of the use phase in LCAs.The objective of the research was to create improved understanding of the significance of diverse factors for the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of buildings. The specific focus of the study was on the assessment of the significance of building materials and embodied carbon. The scope of the study covers multi-storey residential buildings in Finland. This research was based on a literature survey and supported by a parametric case study. The parametric study assessed the building-material-related GHG emissions relative to total GHG emissions and the possible range of variation. The research assesses the minimum and maximum GHG emissions for production of buildings with similar spaces, to reveal the likely range of variation for the emissions. The calculations for the 'minimum' and 'maximum' scenarios assume a similar purpose of use, occupancy and spaces in the building, while the production methods, materials, site conditions and location are varied. The research also assesses the relative importance of various building components and other calculation parameters in terms of GHGs. Total material-related GHG emissions were compared with the GHG emissions caused by the operation of the building, at three distinct levels of energy performance. In addition, the material- and operation-related GHG emissions were compared with the location-related GHG emissions arising from people's mobility.This paper deals with simplifying the environmental evaluation of an innovative sub-system related to the future complex system that will include it, by using evolving generic models built on a limited number of characteristics. For a complex system range, the evolving approach of the environmental modelling aims to generate a learning dynamics, to avoid the paralysing complexity induced in design by the valuation of many components according to many impact categories. Applied to the automotive sector, dendrograms are made with results of life cycle assessments (LCA) of 17 vehicles for 4 environmental indicators and on 3 life cycle steps. In an iterative process, a limit condition threshold on the resulting relative errors aims to cluster the vehicles. First, several calculation methods of dendrograms are tested. Second, the influence of the limit condition on the models is observed. Lastly, by simulating the vehicle population increase, the modelling capacity to evolve is tested. Five vehicle characteristics are sufficient to identify a model to be equivalent to the future vehicle. While the number of clusters is increased to simplify their identification with the system characteristics, the relative error variability increases too. The generic models are stable when adding LCA's results.The objective of the research is to develop a life cycle assessment (LCA) model for environmental evaluation of two landfill mining alternatives - on-site sorting of mined waste using mobile sorting equipment or sorting at a centralised waste sorting plant located 12.6 km from the mined territory. Life cycle inventory data is based on the real landfill mining project implemented in Latvia and additional experimental data collected from the scientific papers. The results show that waste sorting at the landfill site succeeds in minimizing the effects to the environment by 28% more than sorting of waste at the centralised plant. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The present paper contains calculations of energy savings delivered through the use of mineral wool insulation throughout the life cycle. The calculation of energy savings in the production of the insulation material is based on ISO 14025 Principles and Procedure of Environmental Labels and Declarations. The calculation of energy savings in the process of building operation is based on comparing the heat energy losses through the external walls of a model Moscow apartment building before and after fa ade insulation. The insulation material used is 100-mm ISOVER's staple glass wool with synthetic binding agents. The insulation system type is hinged ventilated facade. The calculations yield a decrease in heat leakage through 11-18/12 buildings' external walls over heating period, achieved through fa ade insulation. Based on the calculated decrease in transmission loss, we were able to evaluate the energy savings potentially achieved over the life cycle of the insulation. The energy used to produce a unit of insulation material was compared to the amount of energy saved throughout the life cycle. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecomons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Increasingly, environmental policies and laws in the European Union (EU) refer to 'life cycle thinking' as an important guidance for policy. The concept of life cycle thinking however has no formal definition in EU law, making its application and relevance open to interpretation. This contribution explores the concept of life cycle thinking by looking at various policy documents, and by examining how life cycle thinking has influenced lawmaking in four legal processes at the EU and member state levels. We find that life cycle thinking contributes positively to the development of environmental law, but that it may be applied in ways that limit its potential, or may even lead to undesired outcomes from a sustainability perspective.SimaPro and GaBi are the leading software tools used for life cycle assessments. Assessing product systems applying the exact same unit process foundation would be expected to yield comparable result sets with either tool. The software performances are compared based on a random sample of 100 unit processes. The research question investigated here is; can there be a difference between SimaPro and GaBi influencing the results and the decisions based on them? In many cases the results are identical between SimaPro and GaBi or nearly so, but in other cases the results reveal differences. Some of these differences are so large that they could influence the conclusions. For some of the 100 unit processes, six elementary flows were inventoried differently in SimaPro and GaBi, with an extreme maximum comparative ratio of 10(9). The implementation of the impact assessment methodologies shows notable differences. For the same life cycle inventory the maximum result ratio for the characterized results is 0.0076 for Terrestrial Ecotoxicity Potential. The observed differences appear to originate primarily from errors in the software databases for both inventory and impact assessment. SimaPro and GaBi are used by many Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practitioners worldwide as a decision-support tool; if the results of the present analysis are representative of the differences obtained when using either one or the other, then the implications of this paper are worrying. It is clearly in the interest of both software developers and LCA practitioners that the observed differences be addressed, for example through ring tests comparing the tools. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study performs a life-cycle assessment for a photovoltaic (PV) system with multi-crystalline silicon (multi-Si) modules in China. It considers the primary energy demand, energy payback time (EPBT), and environmental impacts, such as global warming potential and eutrophication, over the entire life cycle of the PV system, including the upstream process, ranging from silica extraction to the multi-Si purification, the midstream process, involving crystalline silicon ingot growth and wafering; and the downstream process, consisting of cell and module fabrication. The data were collected with recommendations provided by the ISO norms and acquired from typical PV companies in China. The results show that the most critical phase of life cycle of Chinese PV system was the transformation of metallic silicon into solar silicon, which was characterized by high electricity consumption, representing most of the environmental impact. The other electricity generation systems were compared to PV. Considering that Chinese electricity is mainly produced by coal-fired power plants, the installation of multi-Si PV systems is recommended over exporting them from China. Furthermore, being higher solar radiation areas, areas in western China, such as the Tibet Autonomous Region, northeastern Qinghai, and the western borders of Gansu, are best suited for the installation of the PV systems even if the long distance of transportation. Finally, recommendations were provided with respect to the sustainable development of the Chinese PV industry and environmental protection. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article investigates potentials and environmental impacts related to household food waste minimization, based on a case study in Southern Sweden. In the study, the amount of avoidable and unavoidable food waste currently being disposed of by households was assessed through waste composition analyses and the different types of avoidable food waste were classified. Currently, both avoidable and unavoidable food waste is either incinerated or treated through anaerobic digestion. A hypothetical scenario with no generation of avoidable food waste and either anaerobic digestion or incineration of unavoidable food waste was compared to the current situation using the life-cycle assessment method, limited to analysis of global warming potential (GWP). The results from the waste composition analyses indicate that an average of 35% of household food waste is avoidable. Minimization of this waste could result in reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 800-1400 kg/tonne of avoidable food waste. Thus, a minimization strategy would result in increased avoidance of GWP compared to the current situation. The study clearly shows that although modern alternatives for food waste treatment can result in avoidance of GWP through nutrient and energy recovery, food waste prevention yields far greater benefits for GWP compared to both incineration and anaerobic digestion. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Critical errors exist in some methodologies applied to evaluate the effects of using forest biomass for bioenergy on atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. The most common error is failing to consider the fate of forest carbon stocks in the absence of demand for bioenergy. Without this demand, forests will either continue to grow or will be harvested for other wood products. Our goal is to illustrate why correct accounting requires that the difference in stored forest carbon between harvest and no-harvest scenarios be accounted for when forest biomass is used for bioenergy. Among the flawed methodologies evaluated in this review, we address the rationale for accounting for the fate of forest carbon in the absence of demand for bioenergy for forests harvested on a sustained yield basis. We also discuss why the same accounting principles apply to individual stands and forest landscapes.This study uses a bibliometric approach to identify global trends related to the municipal solid waste (MSW). It applies related literature in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (CPCI-S) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), retrieved from the ISI Web of Science. The data used covers the period from 1997 to 2014. Analyzed aspects included document type, and publication output as well as distribution of journals, subject category, countries, institutions, title-words, author keywords, and keywords plus. An evaluating indicator, citation score, was applied to characterize the MSW publications. The research outputs of MSW had steadily increased in the field of energy fuels, engineering chemical and biotechnology applied microbiology, especially environmental sciences and engineering environmental. The predominance of Chinese institutions in terms of article count and a predominance of industrialized countries' institutions in terms of citation score were compared. Finally, author keywords, words in title, and keywords plus were analyzed to provide research emphasis, with the developing trends and recent hotspots provided.Implications:A systematic overview of scientific literature dealing with municipal solid waste (MSW) is provided by a bibliometric analysis. The analysis of author keywords helps in drawing the research trends in a special perspective. Research studies on food waste, life cycle assessment (LCA), and renewable energy tend to be a new research focus in the area of MSW. The conclusions could provide a reference to the decision making and policy of MSW management for the government to some extent.Previously published life cycle assessment (LCA) studies regarding the global warming potential (GWP) of tree production have shown that the carbon footprint during the cradle-to-grave life cycle of a tree can reduce atmospheric CO2. This study provides another unique contribution to the literature by considering other potential midpoint environmental impacts such as ozone depletion, smog, acidification, eutrophication, carcinogenic or non-carcinogenic human toxicity, respiratory effects, ecotoxicity, and fossil fuel depletion for 5-cm-caliper, field-grown, spade-dug trees. Findings from this study validate using data from various literature sources with a single-impact focus on GWP and compiled and calculated in a spreadsheet or using a LCA software package with embedded databases (SimaPro) to generate comparable GWP estimates. Therefore, it is appropriate to use SimaPro to generate midpoint environmental impact estimates in LCA studies of field-grown trees. The authors also compared the midpoint environmental impacts with other agricultural commodities [corn (Zea mays), soybean (Glycine max), potato (Solanum tuberosum), and wool] and determined that trees compare favorably, with the exception that fossil fuel depletion for the trees was greater than the other products as a result of the high equipment use in harvesting and handling trees. In addition, the water footprint (WF) associated with tree production is also determined through LCA using the Hoekstra water scarcity method in SimaPro. The propagation-to-gate WF for the three tree production systems ranged from 0.09 to 0.64 m(3) per tree and was highly influenced by irrigation water, which was the major contributor to WF for each production system. As expected, the propagation stage of each tree represented significantly less WF than the field production phase with larger plants and lower planting densities, even with more frequent irrigation/misting in liner production.Japan and Malaysia are among the sustainable countries in the world ranking 26 and 51 in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), accordingly. Recent data obtained from the statistical department shows that both countries GDP contributed by the construction industries amounting 18.6% in Malaysia while Japan at 10% contribution in 2012. Malaysia and Japan are the countries that depend on the concrete infrastructure construction. As the development demand of the countries increase rapidly, it is a huge challenge to the construction industry player to sustain the environment from degradation. Hence, this paper offer strategic plans mitigation measures in resolving those issues. CO2 is the environmental performance indicator to be evaluated in this paper, specifically on bore piling concrete structure construction. Construction site from Malaysia had been investigated. These data are then being analysed by using the 2014 Malaysia inventory data that was developed through this study. The key finding of this research is the 2014 Malaysian energy CO2 emission inventory data, the concrete bore pile life cycle analysis for the scope of construction and transportation of materials of CO2 emissions found at 20,910.54kg-CO2/m3. In comparison with Japanese concrete infrastructure, this amount is the highest thus proven that volume of concrete did not affect the amount of disseminated CO2 to the environment but the amount of combustion from machineries from and transportation affect the CO2 emissions. Another significant finding of this paper is the strategic mitigation measure that was done in the planning stage and imposed on site. Hence, CO2 emissions ground from the concrete construction activities are turning back its cycle by affecting construction industry itself.This chapter serves as an introduction to the presentation of the many aspects of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) in this volume of the book series 'LCA Compendium'. It starts with a brief historical overview of the development of life cycle impact assessment driven by numerous national LCIA methodology projects and presents the international scientific discussions and methodological consensus attempts in consecutive working groups under the auspices of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) as well as the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, and the (almost) parallel standardisation activities under the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). A brief introduction is given on the purpose and structure of LCIA. As a common background for the 11 chapters dealing with the characterisation modelling of the most common impact categories, the chapter concludes with an introduction of the general principles and features of characterisation.This chapter concerns 'selection of impact categories' and 'assignment of LCI results to selected impact categories (classification)'. These elements are the first two mandatory elements of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). They have largely been developed during the 1990s. In practice these mandatory steps are often performed using default lists of impact categories and default lists of inventory items classified to these default impact categories as part of LCA handbooks, guides and software tools. Despite these default lists, it is still important to pay sufficient attention to both these steps in any LCA case study. Every practitioner of LCA will always need to justify the completeness of default lists of impact categories and default classification lists for their study. In addition, the handling of missing information needs to be reported explicitly and transparently, and needs to be taken into consideration when developing conclusions and recommendations for the study at stake. After the 1990s, the attention to selection of impact categories and classification in LCA methodology studies and papers has been limited. Still, there are issues that deserve further attention from LCA method developers such as the harmonisation of naming impact categories while distinguishing or not between names for midpoint impact categories and names for endpoint category indicators, keeping default lists of impact categories manageable, and the classification of inventory results that relate to more than one impact category.Climate change is defined as the warming of the climate system due to human activities. Emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which cause an increase in radiative forcing, is the main contributor, and the only climate forcing agent currently considered in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies. The direct consequence is an increase in the temperature of atmosphere and oceans, which leads to several types of higher-level impacts such as sea level rise, extreme meteorological events and perturbations in rainfalls, which in turn cause damages to human health and ecosystem quality. All the LCIA methodologies use GWPs (Global Warming Potentials), developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as midpoint characterisation factors since they are based on state-of-the art and peer-reviewed publications and have a relatively low associated uncertainty. Some LCIA methodologies also propose endpoint characterisation factors. However, these factors are considered highly uncertain because of the complexity of the impact pathway so that further research is still needed to improve robustness of the models. Recent new developments are addressing the accounting of biogenic CO2 emissions, the timing of GHG emissions, and the development of characterisation factors for terrestrial albedo changes induced by human activities.The stratospheric ozone layer plays a critical role in regulating conditions on Earth, but has been substantially depleted by CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) and other halocarbon emissions. This has increased transmission of UVB radiation to the surface, and been implicated in a range of negative human and ecosystem health impacts. Midpoint-level LCA has traditionally utilised the steady-state Ozone Depletion Potential factors that are prominent in policy making. Current ozone-depletion endpoint models incorporate skin cancer, cataract damages, and certain changes in ecosystem productivity caused by excess UVB exposure. Other health, ecosystem and agri-production impacts are still to be incorporated into the LCA framework. As the ozone layer recovers following regulated halocarbon emission reductions, scientific attention turns to the question of longer term ozone layer management. While growing anthropogenic emissions of N2O (nitrous oxide) might pose a threat to ozone layer recovery, the mitigating effects of CH4 (methane) and CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions will more than compensate for this. Global stratospheric ozone is expected to exceed pre-industrial levels sometime this century, albeit with a very different spatial distribution. Predictions are that UVB levels will remain elevated in the tropics, but become depressed in other regions. That latter situation might increase the incidence of diseases associated with insufficient UVB exposure. Whatever the policy response to these new challenges, it seems the interface of ozone layer science and management will become increasingly complex. It may be that the metrics used for ozone layer analysis will also need to evolve, if LCA is to remain relevant to this new management paradigm.This chapter reviews the human toxicological impacts of chemicals and how to assess these impacts in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), in order to identify key processes and pollutants. The complete cause-effect pathway - from emissions of toxic substances up to damages on human health - demonstrates the importance to account for both outdoor and indoor exposure, including consumer products. Analysing the variations in intake fraction (the fraction of the emitted or applied chemical that is taken in by the consumer and the general population), effect factor and characterisation factor across all chemicals and impact pathways characterizes the contribution of each factor to the total variation of 10-12 orders of magnitude in impacts per kg across all chemicals. This large variation between characterisation factors for different chemicals as well as the 3 orders of magnitude uncertainty on characterisation factors means that results should by default be reported and interpreted in log scales when comparing scenarios or substance contribution! We conclude by outlining future trends in human toxicity modelling for LCIA, with promising developments for (a) better estimates of degradation half-lives, (b) the inclusion of ionization of chemicals in human exposure including bioaccumulation, (c) metal speciation, (d) spatialised models to differentiate the variability associated with spatialisation from the uncertainty, and (e) the assessment of chemical exposure via consumer products and occupational settings. As a whole, the assessment of toxicity in LCA has progressed on a very sharp learning curve during the past 20 years. This rapid progression is expected to continue in the coming years, focusing more on direct exposure of workers to chemicals during manufacturing and of consumers during product use. The first section of this chapter outlines the complete cause-effect pathway, from emissions of toxic substances to intake by the population up to damages in terms of human health effects. Section 2 outlines the framework for assessing human toxicity in LCIA. Section 3 discusses the contributing substances and their coverage in LCIA methods. Section 4 provides an overview of the main LCIA methods available to address human toxicological impacts. Section 5 presents the range of variation of factor across chemicals, the main sources of uncertainty and good interpretation practice of results from human toxicity assessments. Section 6 finally discusses new developments and research needs.This chapter deals with the causes and consequences of exposure from emissions of primary particles and secondary particle precursors on human health and how to deal with them in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Following a short introduction and literature review, the first part outlines the complete emission-to-damage pathway, from emissions of primary particles and secondary particle precursors to damage on human health, so called 'respiratory effects from particles'. It describes the assessment framework for quantifying respiratory effects from particles in the context of LCIA. The second part provides an overview of methods that have been available in LCA to address impact of particles on human health. We finally discuss variability and main sources of uncertainties, as well as future trends in modelling respiratory effects of particles in LCIA.Anthropogenic ozone arises as the product of reactions in the atmosphere between OH-radicals, the anthropogenic air pollutants nitrogen oxides (NOx) and different non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC). The photochemical oxidant of main interest within LCA is ground level ozone (O-3) caused by the emission of the air pollutants NOx and NMVOC within life cycles of products and services. Several different LCIA methods have been developed in the last 20 years to characterise this impact category. Some provide midpoint and some endpoint characterisation factors, and there are site generic and spatially explicit methods. They all struggle with the highly non-linear dependence of ozone creation on background conditions regarding chemical substances and meteorology and also the fact that many response functions include thresholds and that resulting impacts depend on the ozone exposure, both for impacts on human health and on other living beings and even on materials. Hence, the modelled impacts due to ozone caused by anthropogenic emissions are subject to large variability and uncertainty.Ecotoxicity impact assessment of chemicals in life cycle assessment (LCA) adheres to a number of underlying principles and boundary conditions: (1) a large number of emitted substances to cover (at least 100,000 potentially relevant elementary flows with current models covering around 2,500), (2) linearity of characterisation models, (3) conservation of mass and mass balance, (4) infinite time horizon, (5) additivity of toxicity, (6) assuming average conditions as best estimates to avoid bias in the comparison (including consideration of generic/average ecosystems and impacts). The cause-effect mechanism for ecotoxicity impacts of chemicals can be divided into four parts: (1) chemical fate (i.e. chemical behaviour/distribution in the environment), (2) exposure (i.e. bioavailability), (3) effects (i.e. affected species), and (4) severity (i.e. disappeared species). In terms of species represented, a freshwater ecosystem is described in this chapter by three trophic levels: (1) primary producers (e.g. algae), (2) primary consumers (i.e. invertebrates), and (3) secondary consumers (e.g. fish). Model uncertainty was estimated at about three orders of magnitude on top of important sources of parameter uncertainty such as degradation rates and effect factors. Current midpoint LCIA methodologies covering ecotoxicity include TRACI 2.0, and the ILCD recommended methodology, both employing the USEtox factors. Current LCIA methodologies covering midpoint and endpoint characterisation are ReCiPe, LIME, IMPACT 2002+, and IMPACT World+. Important research needs are (1) increasing substance coverage, (2) further developing marine and terrestrial ecotoxicity modelling for midpoint, (3) improving endpoint modelling for ecotoxicity towards biodiversity, (4) consideration of long-term emissions and impacts of metals, (5) importance of spatial and temporal variability, (6) mixture toxicity, and (7) decreasing model and parameter uncertainty.This chapter outlines the cause-effect pathway of terrestrial and aquatic acidification from air emissions to ecosystem damage. Carbon dioxide is the main cause of (coastal) marine acidification, while nitrogen and sulfur inputs are underlying the damage due to freshwater and terrestrial acidification. Various life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods address parts of the impact pathway. Terrestrial acidification, caused by base cation leaching, has been addressed by a number of midpoint methods and several methods determining impacts to biodiversity. To decrease uncertainty in the ecological effect predictions, more insight needs to be gained in the stressor-response curves for many regions of the world. Moreover, research is needed regarding other indicators related to biodiversity than relative species richness as such. For freshwater acidification, only one midpoint and one endpoint method are available, with substantial options for improvement. To address ocean acidification in LCIA in the future, a carbon cycle model needs to be used to make the link to ocean acidification and stressor-response curves that assess impacts on marine biodiversity.Anthropogenic increases in nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems have driven increases in eutrophication, the occurrence of ecosystem changes due to over-supply of nutrients. Eutrophic water bodies exhibit changes in species composition that often include algal blooms and oxygen depletion, with occasionally arresting images of fish kills or dead zones. Though dramatic and subtle consequences of eutrophication itself have been described for over 100 years, understanding of nutrients as the main drivers for this phenomenon is more recent. Modelling nutrient fate has reached a basic level of operability, with a general rule that freshwaters are limited in phosphorus (and hence respond to its addition), and terrestrial and marine systems are nitrogen limited. However, understanding of ecosystems responses such as species shifts or changes in primary productivity is still growing. Future work should incorporate more comprehensive metrics to quantify impacts of eutrophication on ecosystems - and the human systems that depend on them.Land use impacts are the effects caused by the use of land by humans, which range from changes in species composition and abundance to the disruption of ecosystem processes contributing to climate and water regulation. These impacts end up affecting key areas of protection such as human health, ecosystem quality, and natural resources. In life cycle assessment (LCA), land use impact assessment quantifies the difference between the land quality level of the studied system and a reference level over the duration and the area being used. For land transformations (change of land use), the time required for land to naturally regenerate is often considered as the duration when calculating impacts. Indicators to assess land use impacts on biodiversity in LCA focus on either species richness or on ecosystem metrics; whereas the indicators for land use impacts on ecosystem services are classed as pressure (describing land degradation processes) and state (describing overall quality) indicators. Many approaches to describe such impact indicators are presented in this chapter. The key areas for further research relate to (1) the description of the reference used to quantify the impacts; (2) aggregation of impacts on different ecosystem services; (3) the availability of inventory information to be able to inform the spatial differentiation level required for a more accurate impact assessment; (4) leveraging 'big data' processes to allow full utilisation of the data available on ecosystem quality; and (5) promote global consensus on impact indicators in order to facilitate comparison and stability of LCA results.Water use impacts have two different dimensions: pollution (degradative use) and consumption (consumptive use). Degradative use is mainly tackled by impact assessment of pollutant emissions. This chapter focuses on water deprivation due to consumption. The impacts considered here address the case of ecosystems and human users being deprived of water, but also the depletion of stock resources, potentially depriving future users of water. The short-term water cycle is dominated by evaporation from sea, precipitation on land and runoff in rivers. Groundwater and lakes play a longer-term role but are crucial for the assessment of effects of water use competition. While the global water cycle is not heavily influenced by human activities, the impacts can be significant in specific regions, and therefore regional water cycles are relevant. The temporal variability of the hydrological processes is also important for considerations of water use effects on environment. The existing methods consider the main features of the hydrological cycle but still many improvements in the global, regionalised data are required for proper integration of relevant aspects in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of water use. Moreover, the available life cycle inventories have generally low data quality for the relevant flows for most processes and often lack global coverage. The impact assessment methods can be grouped into four main categories: water scarcity as midpoint, impacts on human health, impacts on ecosystem quality, and resource depletion. They cover a variety of impact pathways, while still many important issues such as in-stream use of dams are currently missing.Abiotic resource use in life cycle assessment (LCA) deals with the environmental concerns due to the use of resources such as metals, minerals, fossil energy, nuclear energy, atmospheric resources (e.g. argon), and flow energy resources (e.g. wind energy). Land and water may also be considered as abiotic resources, but these are dealt with elsewhere in the book series in dedicated chapters (Chap. 11 Land use by Llorenc, Mila i Canals and Laura de Baan and Chap. 12 Water use by Stephan Pfister). Methods that evaluate 'abiotic resource use' in LCA were divided in three categories: (1) Resource accounting methods, which are methods that account for the overall natural resource use along the life cycle of a product; (2) Resource depletion methods at the midpoint level, which are methods that address the scarcity of resources (and therefore damage to the area of protection Resources), but at a midpoint level; and (3) Resource depletion methods at the endpoint level, which are methods that address the scarcity of resources at an endpoint level. Numerous methods are presented in this chapter, with different concepts and approaches. However, several gaps still exist in the evaluation of abiotic resource use in LCA, and more research is needed.Defined as an optional step in the ISO14044 requirements, normalisation in LCA relates the characterised impact indicator scores of an analysed system to those of a reference system. By putting the LCA results in a broader perspective, it can facilitate their interpretation and communication, and allow checking whether their magnitude looks reasonable. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the two major normalisation approaches, internal and external normalisation, encompassing for the latter both production-based and consumption-based inventory methods. Pros and cons are addressed for each approach. Because of its wide use and usefulness, emphasis is put on external normalisation. The chapter details the calculation of external normalisation references, including their scoping, the collection of data for building their associated production-based or consumption-based normalisation inventories, their computation by use of adequate sets of characterisation factors, and their resulting uncertainties. The chapter provides insights in the application of normalisation in practice. After listing the past efforts of establishing external normalisation references for different regions in the world, the use of different normalisation approaches and their possible interpretation in relation to the goals and scope of an LCA study are discussed, along with the potential uncertainties and biases in the normalised scores.In the ISO 14044 standard 2006, weighting is an optional step in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). It enables the user to integrate various environmental impacts in order to facilitate the interpretation of the life cycle assessment (LCA) results. Many different weighting methodologies have been proposed and several are currently being used regularly. Most existing studies apply the average of the responses obtained from the people (i.e. the decision makers) that were sampled. Others believe that weighting factors should be based on the preferences of society as a whole so that LCA practitioners can successfully apply them to products and services everywhere. This chapter classifies methods of weighting into three categories: proxy, midpoint, and endpoint methods. Results using proxy methods, such as MIPS (Material Input Per Service), CED (Cumulative Energy Demand), TMR (Total Material Requirement), Ecological Footprint, and CExD (Cumulative Exergy Demand), are fairly easy to understand because physical quantities such as weight and energy are used. The advantages of midpoint methods include compliance with the ISO framework and how it permits weighting that uses characterisation results. Endpoint methods allocate weights to Areas of Protection (AoP) rather than at midpoints, reducing the number of subject items and simplifying interpretation. Recently, weighting with endpoint methods has attracted attention due to the advancement of characterisation methodologies of this type. This chapter presents the different features of weighting and integration approaches applied in LCIA. The important differences and future problems concerning five key endpoint weighting methods are described. It concludes with a brief summary of the key features of the weighting methods introduced herein.Environmental management practices in most business organizations from the early 1990s were characterized by their focus on internal operations, cost savings, and compliance and risk management approaches. Such a traditional view of sustainability management, however, is not sufficient to address current business challenges - to create competitive advantages while contributing to sustainable development. There is a need for a life cycle management practice that expands the scope through including the complete value chain and that links sustainability management and performance of organizations and products to business value and value creation. Being an extremely powerful concept and process, life cycle management can ensure businesses deliver real-world improvements for all stakeholders. In the long term, it can also help to transform the market by making sustainability a differentiator just as quality is today.Life cycle management is a business management concept applied in industrial and service sectors to improve products and services, while enhancing the overall sustainability performance of the business and its value chains. Life cycle thinking and product sustainability is operational for businesses that are ambitious and committed to reducing their environmental and socio-economic burden while maximizing economic and social value. In this regard, life cycle management is used beyond short-term business success and aims at long-term achievements. The term "life cycle management" has been confused with other uses in engineering and manufacturing (product life cycle management) and in software development (application life cycle management), in buildings, plants, information management and so on. There is a need to clarify this term and its definition more than a decade since the concept was first introduced. This chapter aims at elaborating the concept and definitions of life cycle management as currently found in literature and as extending it from focusing on implementation of life cycle sustainability assessment into business practice to include it as part of sustainable consumption and production strategies and policies. Methods and tools used and the general framework for life cycle sustainability management covering environmental, social and economic aspects in business practices are discussed in detail.This chapter proposes a value creation framework to operationalize sustainability within organizations through an improved link between life cycle management tools and business drivers for value creation. Internal and external stakeholders' need to be first identified and accounted for, and value creation must be clearly identified in order to be acknowledged and communicated. The question "what do we want to achieve?" needs to be answered before thinking how to best achieve the identified business value. We propose to apply "reverse-engineering" to define the value creation path and identify the departments and collaborators to be involved at different level of the organization. LCM offers an essential and flexible integrated management framework of concepts, techniques and procedures to think how to best operationalize sustainable actions to achieve the identified business value. The sustainability action involves a team that should include, at least a sponsor or a pilot from the department that is expecting final value creation (Human Resources - HR for employee engagement, marketing for product positioning, etc.) and a representative from each department involved in the value creation path. Each of them will need an LCM tool adapted to their need and specific objectives. Last but not least, one needs measurable indicators on global goals that are to be monitored by the overall project sponsor, through KPI (key performance indicators) and follow-up.This chapter discusses how business can implement life cycle sustainability assessment into their management strategies. Life cycle management is a management approach that provides business a systematic way of managing their sustainability issues. The PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Act) cycle is one of the quality management tools that can be used by companies to implement life cycle management initiatives in order to improve their sustainability performance. The relevance of the PDCA cycle is discussed to ensure a continuous performance improvement by setting and implementing a well-defined plan, checking whether the ambition goals are achieved or any adjustment actions are needed to continue the evaluation process.Starting from the output 'The Future We Want' of the Rio+20 conference 2012, the main focus of this chapter is on social responsibility (SR) in the value chain. The historical context of SR is discussed, related to the international standards as are the Guidance on Social Responsibility and the Global Reporting Initiative, linked with the management of organizations and enterprises. It is emphasized that due diligence along the value chain is seen as a requirement for claiming 'social responsibility'. Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) contributes to the assessment and life cycle management (LCM) to the follow-up of exercising due diligence, all within the context of sustainable development. The over-arching LCSA is a combination of three different life cycle assessment techniques allowing to assess the impacts along the value chain: environmental LCA, social LCA and life cycle costing.The focus of this chapter is on external communication of product features intended to provide professional, commercial and private consumers with information on the characteristics of products and services. Mandatory approaches are distinguished from voluntary ones; the chapter is focused on the latter. Based on ISO standardization work, this chapter differentiates between qualitative, quantitative and self-declared voluntary approaches. Section 2 presents an overview of different concepts and approaches as tools applicable within Life Cycle Management. Section 3 deepens relevant approaches by describing some characteristic elements. Section 4 elaborates on a hierarchy, whereas the final Sect. 5 summarizes the outcomes and draws some conclusions.Although Life Cycle Management (LCM) is becoming commonplace in larger corporations it is far from mainstream. To achieve sustainable production and consumption patterns, LCM needs to be taken up by whole supply chains that include small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). From a business perspective, this represents a competitivity issue, as these SMEs are increasingly under pressure from clients and legislators to provide more information about the environmental impacts of their products, and to take responsibility for them both up and down the value chain. Therefore a sector based and regional approach is needed to foster the implementation of LCM in SMEs. This has been done in Northern France, where professional support organizations, including clusters, business federations and Chambers of Commerce, have come together under the auspices of the [avniR] LCA Platform to explore ways to help businesses to adopt LCM. Nine pioneer sectors, textile, seafood, packaging, mechanical, food, wood, construction, recycling and renewable energies, have undertaken an ambitious project to integrate LCM into their business. The methodology for all nine sectors follows five major steps: benchmark, sector maturity assessment, needs identification, action plan and implementation.In general, companies start using a life cycle approach to manage the sustainability challenges and opportunities of their products through projects using life cycle assessment or other tools of the life cycle management toolbox like greenhouse gases accounting. As companies gain experience the way they manage the life cycle of their products matures, it becomes less about implementing projects and more about putting in place organization-wide procedures. The latter allow companies to address systematically the identified business challenges and opportunities of their whole portfolio or at least their key products with much less effort than carrying out multiple individual projects.In this chapter we explore the need and opportunities to make the life cycle assessment (LCA) team more relevant for the business. Sustainability trends and alternatives for LCA are analyzed to identify what makes them relevant for and appealing to business managers, the difficulties LCA practitioners face to get their message across have been identified, and a five-step approach to make the LCA team a business partner will be described. The goal is to empower LCA teams and practitioners to create sustainable value for the business they work in.Prioritizing sustainability as a key strategic focus and managing it similar to other parts of business such as marketing and sales, leading companies have been able to better identify and manage risks as well as enhance brand value and corporate reputation. With industry partnerships a holistic approach is possible. Common metrics, shared value chain data and joint sustainability management form the basis of a successful cooperation. Decision-making processes can be supported efficiently and influence the whole product system, thereby facilitating clear, measurable value creation throughout the supply chain. Industry partnerships with implementation of innovative business models are a key enabler for companies to realize more sustainable solutions.Life cycle management has gained traction in the last decades. However, even today it is not yet implemented in all companies due to lack of the connection between sustainability and value creation. In fact, managers are pressed to deliver value, and their performance is measured on how well they deliver the value. In this chapter the authors contribute to bridging the gap between sustainability science and business management by application of life cycle assessment (LCA) in corporate sustainability and aligning it with business activities/functions and value creation. They illustrate the context of corporations, sustainable value creation opportunities and the role of different business functions in integrating sustainability in the core business. Two cases demonstrate how business functions can use LCA-based insights for business decisions and how they are directly connected with value creation opportunities.The technique 'hotspots analysis' belongs to the toolbox life cycle management. 'Hotspotting' or 'hotspots analysis' is an emergent technique being used in a growing number of different analytical disciplines, so research disciplines and functions within organizations (e.g., R&D, new product development, procurement), and in diverse geographies, in support of the green economy and the United Nations post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. It can be used to inform government policy priorities, drive growth and innovation in business and empower citizens. Due to the growing interest of various stakeholders in applying hotspot analysis methodologies, the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative initiated the project "Global Principles and Practices for Hotspot Analysis". During the first phase of the project, a study was conducted to map existing hotspots analysis methodologies and studies world-wide, which culminated in the report: Hotspots Analysis: mapping of existing methodologies, tools and guidance and initial recommendations for the development of global guidance. This chapter draws on knowledge derived from this report and presents a number of relevant findings.The objective of this chapter is to explain which secondary - environmental consequences (often called rebound effects) life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle management (LCM) of products need to consider in addition to the conventional product LCA, and which roles different actors in society have in the context of environmentally sustainable consumption. The key issue is that any consumption decision affects the consumer's household resources of available income, time, and space (volume, area), what leads to additional or reduced overall consumption, within the limits of further consumption constraints and cross-category effects. Exactly how any additional resources are used by the consumer strongly affects the overall consumption. Moreover, this chapter considers the consumption on person, on national and global level, with some focus on sustainable lifestyles, and concludes with recommendations on next steps towards better measurement and management of the environmental secondary consequences of consumption.Product life cycles and companies' value chain dynamics now extend to far-away countries, linking a multitude of end-users with numerous upstream suppliers and manufacturers. The breadth of the sustainability issues of popular concern, together with the complex nature of supply chains from which they arise, leads to serious management challenges. These challenges have been met in different ways depending on the interests and the institutional context of the actors. Corporations are strongly focused on optimizing product performance through a reliance on life cycle assessment based procedures. Commodity sectors are often seeking harmonized sustainability performance across a broad geographical range. Management institutions and business associations are providing life cycle management frameworks for corporations, followed up with training, and further research into improved metrics. At regional level some efforts have been made to introduce life cycle approaches, e.g. sustainable procurement, but the formal application of structured life cycle management is not yet widespread. The different approaches taken by the above actors reflects not only their different situations, but also the lack of a clear universal framework for life cycle management and a more generalized toolbox that will support their sustainability ambitions throughout the value chain. Limitations of current life cycle assessment methodologies imply that not all sustainability challenges are addressed in a consistent manner.Life cycle thinking is on the political agenda and widely used in practice. Moreover, numerous industries have actively been developing life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches for many years. As the authors think that it is in substance "right" to base environmental legislation on LCA, they started to explore and to develop policy options for integrating LCA into legislation. Commissioned by WorldAutoSteel, the authors focused on CO2 legislation in the automotive industry, but the options developed based on this example can be used for other industries and other environmental impacts as well. It was found that theoretically a broad range of policy options exists, and that practically some of them are already implemented in real world legislation and that there is no clear scientific overall preference for one single option. It was also shown that solutions for most technical requirements are already available, but that a consensus on proper setting of these requirements is missing.What does it take for life cycle management (LCM) to capture the attention of the financial community? LCM experts face a window of opportunity as technological progress and economic developments lead to greater interest in main-streaming the sustainability agenda and integrating it in business decision-making. This includes new approaches to the assessment of impacts on Natural Capital, environmental management as well as annual corporate reporting. Having highlighted these, this chapter employs a Green Business Case Model to define ways in which life cycle applications can be employed to link with core financial indicators of special interest to investors. It describes three hypotheses to illustrate where LCM tools can best make a difference, positively affecting core financial value drivers. The author suggests three hypothetical pathways to capture the attention of investors, linking environmental life cycle costing (LCC) and financial, activity-based costing. These are complemented with company case examples. It draws lessons from past work on the business case as well research on environmental versus financial life cycle costing (LCC).Corporations are being pressured to integrate life cycle thinking and practices across global supply chains. The UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has been developing a life cycle management capability maturity model (LCM CMM) to help mainstream life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle management (LCM). Pilot projects in small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to apply the model showed the companies were able to identify and implement projects that delivered both near-term business value and developed the organizational capability for LCM. A key benefit of the life cycle approach was enhanced cross-functional integration and collaboration with suppliers and customers. The projects did identify a need for more guidance on how to interpret the business impact of environmental concerns and to align LCM efforts with company business strategy. Collaborative networks where more advanced companies can share their knowledge are a key enabler, particularly in developing economies.The development of life cycle assessment in Brazil began in 1994. Business companies were involved in this process by the government, and in this way life cycle management developed. To support and disseminate LCA and LCM, a group of nine companies created the Brazilian Business Network for LCA in 2013. In 2014, the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development became the coordinator of the Network. Despite the many challenges in promoting the theme in Brazil, the Network is advancing and benefits from the representativeness of large companies and their power to push governments, peers and their value chains.Professionals in companies in industrialised countries as well as consultants and academics working for these companies have acquired capabilities in life cycle sustainability management (LCSM). Actors in emerging economies are beginning to develop those capacities as well, supported by training programmes. This chapter highlights the work of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative which has worked toward strengthening LCSM/LCA capacities worldwide since its creation in 2002; presents the current conditions for mainstreaming LCSM following an analysis of available knowledge and infrastructure in 18 rapidly growing economies (including least developed countries, rapidly growing and emerging economies) based on four criteria; and discusses the results and proposes a framework to develop LCSM capacities and provides conclusions and an outlook with recommendations. As some capacities in a number of emerging economies are beginning to consolidate, the implementation and changes of current practices toward improved performance by implementing LCSM remain insufficient.This chapter addresses two major challenges for mainstreaming life cycle management that are intrinsically linked: collaboration and communication. To this end it is argued that in order to radically increase the take up of life cycle based approaches in business and government, life cycle professionals need to enhance global collaboration among themselves, as well as with others and communicate to a wider set of stakeholders. The chapter makes the case that the life cycle community does not have a home, and thus currently does not exist as one coherent and clearly identifiable stakeholder. It concludes that successful communication on behalf of and with the community can only be achieved when the community is formally organized. To this end the newly established Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation is presented as a possible way to overcome the outlined gaps and challenges.Electricity supply is often cited as a significant hot spot in life cycle assessment results, and consequently in life cycle management results. Despite its importance, however, practitioners continue to overuse generic LCI data and different simplified methodologies regarding electricity supply modeling. Such simplifications and inconsistencies can result in difficulties, e.g. to compare the findings of various studies. This chapter is intended to highlight issues on electricity supply modeling, methodological choices and data set selections. Attributional and consequential perspectives as well as systemic aspects of the electricity sector are also reflected. Finally, key challenges and opportunities are summarized and suggestions on how to deal with such problems are provided when possible.Due to the rapid urbanization and the large contribution of cities to the global environmental impact, urban policies integrate sustainability in the public space design. Current literature has accounted for the environmental impact of the main elements of the urban fabric, although studies have dealt with them individually. This chapter aims to optimize the environmental performance of the urban fabric for supporting planning processes, based on existing life cycle assessment (LCA) data of the main elements of urban fabric: sidewalks, pavements, and the gas, water and wastewater networks. Material selection and lifespan are key issues in the environmental profile of the paved skin, while the installation accounts for the greatest share of the burdens in subterranean networks. The best design consists of concrete sidewalks, asphalt pavements, HDPE (high density polyethylene) gas pipes, PVC (polyvinyl chloride) water pipes, and concrete sewer pipes. Pavements and sidewalks are the most contributing elements to the overall environmental burdens of streets.This chapter describes the implementation of life cycle engineering, a life cycle management component that focuses on the environmental performance improvement, in the context of automotive design for environment. The purpose of life cycle engineering is to derive measurable technical targets from life cycle assessment (LCA). This approach is described using the example of lightweight design. The progress in this methodology is the ability to calculate measurable targets - such as weight reduction, fuel reduction on a vehicle level, or the amount of secondary material - on the basis of LCA results. It is important to note that LCA is not used here for comparing the environmental performance between competing materials or technologies. Instead, life cycle engineering, as a helpful management tool to support design for environment, shows the technical roadmap of measures that must be taken in order to assure environmental progress over the entire life cycle. In doing so, this tool supports putting life cycle assessment results into business practice.An important target on the way to a sustainable development is ensuring a more sustainable production and a reduced consumption of energy and material resources. The automotive industry is considered one of the most strategic contributors to reach this objective. On the one hand, the automotive sector represents a meaningful pillar for the economic stability and social welfare of several countries; on the other hand, with its huge supply chain, it is often a cause of negative environmental as well as social impacts. In the past, the main focus was the reduction of environmental impacts in the use phase first, and then along the entire life cycle. More recently, the attention has moved to include the social performance according to the three pillars concept of sustainability. If the target of achieving a more sustainable development is clear, the methodology and tools that should be used to assess the sustainability performance of a vehicle along its life cycle still needs to be settled. This chapter presents and discusses the benefits and challenges of methods and tools that have been used in the automotive industry.Nestle is using life cycle management approaches to operationalize the Creating Shared Value concept that is strongly promoted by the company. Following the success of the implementation of PIQET, an LCA software for packaging designers to integrate environmental criteria in their decision-making, Nestle has decided to develop a specific tool moving from packaging to product ecodesign tool. This tool, EcodEX, is linked to the recipe system of the company to facilitate the realization and improve the quality of LCA. The number of users has increased to reach 700 people today. However, there have been many challenges to overcome, such as: the availability and the management of inventory data, following-up the latest methodology, as well as the training and education of users.For concrete structures exposed to corrosion, the identification of the local failure modes and of their occurrence in time represent an important information. This information is necessary in order to maintain a suitable level of system performance and to avoid collapse over the structural lifetime. In fact, repairable local failures can be considered as a warning of damage propagation and possible occurrence of more severe and not repairable failures. Failure loads and failure times are investigated and life-cycle probabilistic performance indicators, related to load redundancy and elapsed times between sequential failures, are proposed. The effects of the damage process on the structural performance are evaluated based on a methodology for life-cycle assessment of concrete structures exposed to diffusive attack from environmental aggressive agents. The uncertainties involved in the problem are taken into account in probabilistic terms. The proposed approach is illustrated through the application to a reinforced concrete frame and a reinforced concrete bridge deck under corrosion. The results demonstrate that both failure loads and failure times can provide relevant information to plan emergency procedures, repair interventions and maintenance actions in order to ensure suitable levels of life-cycle structural performance and functionality.In this paper a comprehensive methodology for the time-dependent seismic risk assessment of structures located in a multi-hazard environment, that explicitly accounts for the effects of (1) time-varying seismic hazard, (2) long-term structural deterioration, and (3) losses from damage to structural components and those from environmental impacts is presented as an extension of the PEER performance based earthquake engineering framework. The time-dependent hazard is modeled through an increasing hazard rate distribution. Structural deterioration depends on the deterioration rate and the time since construction. After verification with laboratory data, the methodology is applied to columns found in bridges in California corresponding to different design dates. Life cycle analysis is performed for direct damage losses and for environmental impacts. It is found that the time-dependent hazard and deterioration modeling have important implications to the risk. Moreover, the environment where the structure is located is found to be important in the evaluation of deterioration rate.A changing climate may result in more intense tropical cyclones and storms, more intense rain events and flooding, and other natural hazards. Moreover, increases in CO2 atmospheric concentrations, and changes in temperature and humidity, may reduce the durability of concrete, steel and timber structures. There is increasing research that takes into account the changing climate risks and life-cycle costs in engineering to reduce the vulnerability or increase the resiliency of infrastructure - we define this as 'climate adaptation engineering'. The paper will describe how risk-based approaches are well suited to optimising climate adaptation strategies related to the construction, design, operation and maintenance of built infrastructure. Stochastic methods are used to model infrastructure performance, risk reduction and effectiveness of adaptation strategies, exposure, and costs. These concepts will be illustrated with state-of-the-art research on risk-based life-cycle assessment of climate adaptation strategies. Uncertainties of climate projections are also discussed. This will pave the way for more efficient and resilient infrastructure, and help 'future proof' new and existing infrastructure to a changing climate.Railway bridges pose substantial components of the Austrian rail network in terms of safety and costs. An optimized maintenance strategy is essential for increasing the efficiency of the existing track network and also bears great cost saving potential. With the aid of stochastic numerical simulation, the project CILIA investigated the factors which considerably contribute to the ageing of bridge structures and ultimately aims to facilitate life-cycle cost analysis.This paper discusses activities that have been developed with Brazilian bridges, in order to monitor and inspect the structural health of highway and railway bridges. The result of the monitoring/ inspection campaigns generates data about loads, structural response and characterization of the structure's material. This information is useful for a later activity of computational numerical models calibration and evaluation of lifetime of the structure with respect to several limit states related to deterioration mechanisms, such as carbonation, corrosion and fatigue. To accomplish such task, probabilistic tools are used along with numerical models that provide the evolution of deterioration over time and as a result of such analysis is the behavior of the reliability index and, consequently, the probability of failure over time. Case studies regarding carbonation and fatigue are presented in order to exemplify the use of deterioration modeling to assess bridge's remaining life. In addition, it is important to take into account the amount of time a monitoring campaign lasts as well the number of monitored members: as bigger the time and number of sensors, as better the results, and the data better represent the phenomena. The importance of structural health and life lies in an improvement in the form of managing the human and financial resources on the part of the owner of the bridge, generating savings of time and money, since it eliminates unnecessary interventions.Building life-cycle assessments should consider both sustainability and hazard vulnerability. This paper presents an innovative building life-cycle assessment framework quantifying environmental metrics and economic indicators of building performance, while accounting for potential risk of hazard events. The framework outlines interactions between building design and modeling, structural and environmental analysis, and life-cycle analysis. A lifecycle assessment of a commercial building in California, designed with and without a green roof, illustrates this methodology. Nonlinear analysis under earthquake ground motions assesses the seismic vulnerability of the structures through probabilistic loss estimation of required repairs. Environmental analysis quantifies building impacts in terms of fossil fuel consumption and climate change potential. The case study findings offer insight into the effects of seismic hazard performance on building environmental impact.The assessment of the life-cycle performance of deteriorated structures can be formulated as a reliability problem involving a transition process through different levels of performance. A probabilistic approach, such as a Markovian approach, can represent a proper tool for interpreting transition processes. The proposed procedure has been applied on a steel bridge located in an industrial area with a significant pollution rate to assess its life- cycle performance and to plan appropriate selective maintenance.The paper presents results of the determination of mechanical fracture parameters for specified concrete types after different hardening periods. The concretes subjected to investigation are used in industry for the production of prefabricated concrete elements. Mechanical fracture parameters were determined with the cooperation of two laboratories (the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria and Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic) using two different test configurations. wedge splitting and three-point bending. In addition, identification was performed based on artificial neural networks in combination with stochastic analysis using the whole experimentally obtained load-deflection curve. The obtained mechanical fracture parameters can be used to quantify the structural resistance against crack initiation and propagation (or the brittleness and toughness of the structural members). Simultaneously, they can be employed for the simulation of the quasi-brittle random behavior of beams/structures made of cement-based composites, including material uncertainties required for reliability analysis (statistical characteristics of fracture-mechanical parameters, including statistical correlations).A generalized model is presented for the evaluation of several damage indicators for systems exposed to the action of groups of multiple simultaneous natural hazards, each group associated with events generated by a given hazard source. All relevant hazard sources that may significantly contribute to risk for the system of interest are taken into account in an all-inclusive life-cycle analysis. For any given hazard source, the estimation of life-cycle risk indicators starts from the estimation of the joint probability density function of variables measuring the intensities of the different natural hazards that may be associated with events generated by that hazard source and, therefore, of the physical damage and/or economic losses that may be produced by their combined action. An approximate criterion is proposed to deal with this problem, in terms of probabilistic distribution functions of the damage indicators resulting from the combined effect of several natural hazards associated with the same event. Some illustrative examples are presented about the implications of the foregoing concepts on optimal life-cycle engineering decisions.One of the important causes of environmental burdens associated with the construction of transportation infrastructures is the energy consumption and air emissions. It is generally believed that, Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) technology has advantages related to the reduction of fuel consumption and gas emissions, because it produces asphalt at temperatures 20-40 degrees C lower in comparison to Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA). In order to quantitatively analyze and compare the environmental impacts of HMA and WMA with the addition of Evotherm, an asphalt emulsion, a comprehensive life cycle assessment of asphalt pavements was conducted, except for use stage. The LCA analysis suggested that the increased environmental impacts of the materials used by WMA pavements, especially the impacts of the asphalt emulsion agent, are largely offset by the greater impacts resulting from lowered manufacturing temperature.While buildings, including office building, residential building, etc. are vital assets to provide shelters for people to work and live, they also impose significant environmental impact onto the society due to enormous amount of raw materials, energy consumption and various emissions involved during their construction, operations, maintenance and end-of-life demolish. For example, more than one third of the US total CO2 emissions are attributed to the building sector alone, which poses a serious challenge yet also provide a great opportunity for the building industry to be greener. Green building research has been rapidly advanced recently through advanced material technology, innovative construction methods, smart building operations and management strategy, etc. On the other hand, life cycle assessment has been widely accepted as a scientific tool to quantify the environmental impacts for chemicals, consumer products, and service and now increasingly adopted for long-lasting building infrastructures. The longevity of the buildings and complexity of the building systems also raise many challenges and uncertainties in the modeling of their life cycle environment performance. In this paper we would like to conduct a literature review on the impact of various green building technologies on the sustainability performance of buildings based on life cycle assessment technique. Through this literature review, the direction and research needs for potential improvement of these technologies can be found in line with sustainable development.In this study, regular (20-year) and long life (40-year) designs of flexible pavements in U.S. at three traffic levels were examined for their environmental impacts. The study first introduced a previously built life cycle assessment (LCA) model in pavement engineering and then performed the detailed modeling for each pavement design, with special efforts devoting to the congestion module and usage module. In the context of this study, it is found that 40-year pavement designs do not necessarily carry environmental advantages over their 20-year counterparts, unless at "high" traffic volumes, which may shed some light on the determination of pavement design policy.Photocatalytic concrete is an innovative advancement in material science which enables a photocatalytic process that reduces airborne pollutants such as SOx, PM10, VOCs, and NOx. This research was undertaken in order to quantify the environmental impacts (both positive and negative) of photocatalytic concrete utilizing life-cycle assessment (LCA) software. This preliminary study examined some of the environmental impacts of constructing highway noise barriers with photocatalytic concrete covers. The LCA captures the amount of NOx that is broken down by the photocatalytic processes and also the NOx and CO2 emissions released during manufacturing. The results show that there is an overall increase in CO2 produced when photocatalytic concrete is used but a lifetime net reduction in NOx due to photocatalysis. Without ranking the relative importance of NOx versus CO2 it is difficult to identify whether photocatalytic are preferable to traditional concrete noise barriers.Currently it is common that published LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) studies of buildings differ in the estimates of lifespan of individual building structures. Comparison of various studies with different life spans are complicated, as this parameter has significant impact on the operational (use) phase of the building's life cycle - overall energy consumption, repair and maintenance scenarios. For example estimates of common wooden building's lifespan vary between 30 and 50 years. But in reality there are far older buildings that still serve their original purpose. This paper deals with the influence the building's lifespan has on its overall environmental impacts. Wooden (made of Structural Insulated Panels) single-family house representing common contemporary buildings of this category in Czech Republic is assessed. Service life of the building is set, between 50 and 100 years. Two different repair and maintenance scenarios with variants in 5-year steps are considered.Life cycle analysis is a systematic procedure enabling for the identification of critical processes over the lifespan of a system. In relation to bridges, the initial stage of material production and the maintenance of the structure over its service life are usually considered to be critical processes, when environmental and user costs are considered together with the usual costs. A methodology for integrated life cycle analysis of bridges was developed within the framework of the European research project SBRI: Sustainable SteelComposite Bridges in Built Environment. In the context of this project, different strategies were taken into account in order to improve the lifetime performance of highway composite bridges, namely, the use of high strength steel, the use of self- weathering steel and improved fatigue design. In this paper, these strategies are discussed in relation to medium span highway bridges.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is currently being widely used within the construction sector as the most accurate and effective methodology to quantify the environmental impact associated with construction projects. Taking into account project stages such as raw material acquisition, construction, operation and the handling of the materials at the demolition stage, it constitutes a valuable tool to optimize the sustainability of technical structures. The purpose of the current research is to investigate the last stage of a project considered in LCA analysis, namely the end scenario. A steel- framed residential building is used as the basis for the defmition of a set of alternative end scenarios which cover the complete range of handling options for the construction materials retrieved after the service life of the building. These scenarios are used to complement a corresponding set of alternative life cycles, for which environmental impact assessment calculations are executed. The results are used to draw conclusions regarding the influence of end scenarios and material handling at the end of a construction project on the minimization of its environmental impact and the subsequent optimization of its sustainability.The assessment of the environmental impact caused throughout the life cycle of a structure is a major step towards optimizing its sustainability. Based on methodologies such as life cycle assessment, these calculations can be used to determine the life cycle stages -as well as the very processes or materialsthat are responsible for the largest environmental impacts. It is then in the hands of those carrying out the construction works to incorporate this knowledge into standard project delivery with the aim to minimize environmental impacts and ultimately increase the sustainability of the construction sector. This research aims to materialize this prospect by investigating the environmental impact caused by the life cycle of a steel-framed building in order to determine the aspects that significantly influence its sustainability. An existing building is selected as the basis of the calculations and the influence of several factors is assessed through the results that are obtained. The conclusions drawn highlight the issues that affect the environmental sustainability of steel construction, while also furthering knowledge concerning the determination of factors and criteria that can be used as the basis for recommendations that can be applied to similar projects is produced.Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to quantify the human health impacts of soy-biodiesel production with the aim to discuss about its environmental sustainability. Design/methodology/approach-The integrated use of two current approaches, risk assessment (RA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), has allowed improvement of the potentialities of both in obtaining a more complete analysis. The implementation of a life cycle indicator for the assessment of the impacts on the human health, integrating the features of both approaches, is the main focus of this paper. Findings-It has been found that, although the biodiesel is a green fuel, it has some criticalities in its life cycle, which cannot be disregarded. In fact, even if biodiesel is essentially a clean fuel there are some phases, prior to the industrial phase, that can cause negative effects on human health and ecosystems. Practical implications-Results suggest some measures which can be adopted to substantially reduce human health impacts. Further alternative could be analysed in future to gain more insight about the use of biodiesel fuels. Originality/value-The estimation of the impacts of a process producing biodiesel has been made by using a novel approach. The novelty is associated with the calculation of the impacts on human health by using the transfer factors applied in RA. The use of such factors, properly modified in order to estimate the impacts on a wider scale than a site-dimension, allows defining a holistic approach, as LCA and RA are used as complete units but at the same time can be related to each other.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to review the green manufacturing and similar frameworks in order to trace the origin, definitions, scope, similarities, differences, and publications of these manufacturing frameworks. Design/methodology/approach - A review of 113 research articles is conducted for various terms, namely, green manufacturing (GM); environmentally conscious manufacturing; environmentally responsible manufacturing; environmentally benign manufacturing; sustainable manufacturing; clean manufacturing; cleaner production; sustainable production with reference to triple bottom line, product life cycle engineering, systems approach, resource and energy efficiency, supply chain, pollution prevention and closed loop system/6R. Findings - It can be said with reasonable confidence that all these eight frameworks have been used interchangeably by researchers but it requires some standardization. It has been observed during literature review that to standardize the terminology researchers have to clear emphatically in their research the use of various life cycle engineering approach; clarity on the end-of-life strategies used; clarity in use of various components of triple bottom line perspectives; inclusion of the whole supply chain and integration of environmental improvement strategies with the business strategy. Research limitations/implications - The literature reviewed for the study is the literature available online using Google scholar. Originality/value - This is one of the first known studies to review the GM and similar frameworks for their origin, definition, scope, similarities, and differences.This book chapter analyses specific trends and pressures in agri-food supply chain management in respect to sustainability and resource efficiency. Relevant applications, implementation practices, research implications and challenges are examined in the context of contemporary agri-food supply chains. This analysis will benefit supply chain managers, researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders involved with the agri-food sector.The Circular Economy is a contemporary and popular concept that describes how materials and resources should be handled in the future: the European Commission has recently published a communication setting the relevant policy trends. The present paper discusses some of these issues, proposing an analysis of what the concept means from the standpoint of materials stakeholders and how it can be refined or nuanced with a practical approach in mind. The core of the Circular Economy is the recycling of materials, which are recovered from the collection of end-of-life (EoL) investment or consumer goods. The key word is therefore recycling of EoL goods, materials, metals, minerals, residues and by-products and also molecules, like CO or CO2 (Carbon Capture Use and Storage, CCUS). Recycling brings materials savings and reduces the need for virgin resources (primary raw materials). When materials are recycled to the same material, other environmental benefits can also be collected, like energy savings, greenhouse gas emission reduction and a smaller environmental footprint in general. The kind of recycling that ought to be privileged is therefore that which improves all of these indicators at the same time, thus material-to-the same material recycling. The circular economy should be described material by material, in order to analyze in detail what is already being done and what can still be improved: the various materials achieve very different levels of recycling and thus policies for going beyond present achievements will differ according to each material. The circular economy has an important time dimension, as many materials are stocked in the economy for long times, sometimes half a century or more. The lifespan of the material stocks means that high recycling rates today will be translated into high-recycled contents only in the future, sometimes in the long time. The Circular Economy is a long-time endeavor! There are two important tools for dealing with these issues, LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and MFA (Materials Flow Analysis). They incorporate the cycle time of recycling but need to be expanded into dynamic LCA and MFA in order to become fully time-dependent. Policies founded on LCA at a microeconomic scale, and MFA at a macro-economic scale are the most apt to mirror how the socio-economic system works and thus to avoid negative rebound effects. Fostering the use of these tools is an important element in encouraging the Circular Economy. But it is also important to understand that the rationale for moving in this direction is environmental and political, not necessarily economical. Thus it will not be enough to foster technological R&D (Research & Development) and to achieve R& I (Research & Innovation): tools to internalize these externalities in the market economy will need to be introduced more widely.Serpentine (i.e. ultramafic) outcrops in Europe cover >10,000 km(2) and have a low fertility and low productivity, making them unattractive for traditional agriculture. Many of these areas are slowly abandoned by local farmers, with a rural exodus and landscape closure. However, ultramafic landscapes have the potential to provide multiple ecosystem services and can contribute to Europe's goals towards ensuring food security, production of renewable raw materials and renewable energy. Phytomining (Agromining) cultivates plants that are able to accumulate trace metals from metal-rich soils and transport them to the shoots (>1%), which can then be harvested as a bio-ore to recover highly valuable metals such as nickel (Ni). Nickel agromining can offer an eco-efficient alternative to classical pyro- or hydrometallurgical processes, as well as providing biomass for local energy production. Phytomining agroecosystems can lead to better soil resource efficiency and can offer a fully integrated, new agromining agriculture that could cover thousands of km(2) in Europe and benefit local communities with a sustainable rural development.Mineral carbon sequestration (MCS) is a type of carbon storage based on natural rock weathering processes where CO2, dissolved in rainwater, reacts with alkaline minerals to form solid carbonates. Although MCS has advantages over other carbon storage techniques, an economic MCS process has not yet been developed. Two approaches were taken in this work to attempt to reduce the cost of MCS. The first approach was to use a waste material, serpentine waste from ultramafic nickel ore processing, as a feedstock. The second approach was to develop pre-treatments to increase the carbon storage capacity of the feedstock. Two pre-treatments were investigated in this work, including microwave pre-treatment and leaching with ligands at neutral to alkaline pH. The carbon uptake of ultramafic ores was found to increase with increasing microwave pre-treatment after a threshold heating time of 4 min was surpassed. A maximum carbon uptake of 18.3 g CO2/100 g ore (corresponding to a carbonate conversion of 36.6%) was observed for microwave pre-treated ore. The increase in carbon uptake was attributed primarily to the conversion of serpentine to olivine in ultramafic ores that occurs as result of microwave pretreatment. The effect of five different ligands (catechol, citrate, EDTA, oxalate and tiron) on the carbon uptake of ultramafic ores was investigated. Of the ligands tested, only catechol and tiron were found to both improve the leaching of magnesium from the ores and the quantity of CO2 stored. A maximum carbon uptake of 9.7 g/100 g ore (corresponding to a carbonate conversion of 19.3%) was observed for ultramafic ore pre-leached and carbonated in tiron solution at pH 10. This is the first time ligands have been reported to improve the carbon uptake of mineral carbon sequestration feedstock. Although process optimization work was not conducted, both microwave pre-treatment and leaching with ligands at neutral to alkaline pH show promise as ways to lower the cost of MCS. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ever-growing energy needs and depleting fossil-fuel resources demand the pursuit of sustainable energy alternatives, including both renewable energy sources and sustainable storage technologies. It is therefore essential to incorporate material abundance, eco-efficient synthetic processes and life-cycle analysis into the design of new electrochemical storage systems. At present, a few existing technologies address these issues, but in each case, fundamental and technological hurdles remain to be overcome. Here we provide an overview of the current state of energy storage from a sustainability perspective. We introduce the notion of sustainability through discussion of the energy and environmental costs of state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries, considering elemental abundance, toxicity, synthetic methods and scalability. With the same themes in mind, we also highlight current and future electrochemical storage systems beyond lithium-ion batteries. The complexity and importance of recycling battery materials is also discussed.An optimized electrochemical sensor was developed to assess the antioxidant capacity of carotenoids, accumulating during the life cycle of Haematococcus pluvialis cell cultures. The sensor was improved with a composite renewable surface made of immobilised phosphatidylcholine (PC) on magnetic nanobeads of iron oxide (Fe3O4) and PC/Fe3O4, and it was used to monitor the antioxidant properties of the ketocarotenoid astaxanthin against in situ generated phosphatidylcholine lipoperoxides. The surface configuration was able to mimic the natural position and orientation of astaxanthin in the cellular membrane, conferring to the whole experimental set-up good sensitivity for reactive oxygen species (limit of detection for peroxyl radicals 9.1 x 10(-10) mol L-1) with a linear response ranging between 10(-8) and 1.6 x 10(-6) mol L-1. The sensor has been proved suitable for both batch and flow measurements. The accuracy of the flow measurements was unaffected by the magnetic field intensity. Electrochemical measurements confirmed that natural astaxanthin is a more effective antioxidant than synthetic astaxanthin, vitamin E and lutein and the protective effect of astaxanthin correlates with its concentration inside the cell. The newly developed sensor is hence useable for in-line monitoring of whole-cell based industrial bioprocesses for the production of astaxanthin.This work focuses on the carbon reduction potential from an oxy combustion system. The oxy fuel combustion of biomass and coal co-firing in a power plant in different ratios is studied using the Aspen plus modelling. The carbon and energy balance of various co-firing ratios is obtained. The influences of energy efficiency are also examined for each configuration. The global warming potential results show that the net CO2 emissions reduces as biomass co-firing ratio increases, however the net energy efficiency decreases. The CO2 from biomass is not included in the calculation as it is sequestered from the atmosphere during forest growth. On the other hand, other environmental impact such as Marine Eco Toxicity, Human Toxicity potential and fresh water toxicity potential increase with higher biomass ratios due to associated agricultural practices.Since a feed-in-tariff (FIT) was introduced in Japan, the power generation which used woody biomass is attracting more attention. Profitability of the plant above a certain scale would be able to be secured by FIT. On the other hand, it is also necessary for the plant to implement life cycle assessment (LCA). First of all, we developed the simulator which enabled to estimate the overall efficiency of the plant by entering the supply amount of wood and extraction condition of steam and so on. Environmental performance of power generation, and combined heat and power generation by woody biomass were evaluated based on LCA. The following 3 scenarios were schemed on the condition that the woody biomass of 200,000 m(3) (log equivalent)/year was available. The following three scenarios for woody biomass systems were considered for LCA: scenario B-1: 200,000 m(3) of woody biomass is consumed by one power plant that produces power only; scenario B-2: 200,000 m(3) of woody biomass is divided evenly and consumed by each of two power plants that produce power only; scenario B-3: the 200,000 m(3) of woody biomass is divided evenly and consumed by each of two CHP plants that produce heat and power. The external costs associated with woody biomass systems are at least 24%, at most 69% lower than those associated with fossil fuel systems, and woody biomass systems are more eco-friendly than fossil fuel systems. The reduction in external costs is greater for CHP systems that produce both heat and power than systems that product power only. Recycling ash and combustion residue and preventing these materials from being landfilled are important means for efficiently lowering the external costs associated with woody biomass systems.The IEA Bioenergy Task 42 "Biorefining" with its 11 member countries (A, AUS, CA, DK, G, I, IR, J, NL, NZ, USA) has the following definition on biorefining: "Biorefining is the sustainable processing of biomass into a spectrum of bio-based products (food, feed, chemicals, and materials) and bioenergy (biofuels, power and/or heat)". Based on the activities in the 11 member countries of Task 42 the assessment framework is developed based on a life cycle basis to cover all relevant issues from the production, operation and end of life phase of the whole value chain of various biorefineries. The framework follows the following hierarchy procedure: 1) biorefinery classification and assessment of the technologies and processes using the 9 levels of the " Technology Readiness Level (TRL)". 2) Calculation of most relevant economic data using the approach of Life Cycle Costing (LCC). 3) Application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the most relevant environmental aspects. 4) Screening of relevant social issues in a Social Life Cycle Assessment (sLCA). 5) Integration of these aspects in the approach of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) 6) Identification of most attractive industry sectors ("Hot Spots") for the integration of biorefineries in the existing industrial infrastructure 7) Highlighting necessary R&D demand for commercialization until 2025, 8) Concluding on the possible future role in a BioEconomy in a regional, national and international context. A compact format is developed to present the results of the assessing framework. The framework is applied to different biorefinery concepts. The results assist various stakeholders in finding their position on biorefining in a future biobased economy while minimizing unexpected technical, economic and financial risks by significantly contributing to the development of a BioEconomy.Bioeconomy has gained political momentum since 2012 when the European Commission adopted the strategy "Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe". Assessing the environmental performance of different bioeconomy value chains (divided in three pillars: food and feed, bio-based products and bioenergy) is key to facilitate solid and evidence-based policy making. The objectives of this work are: (1) to map and analyse existing and accessible LCA data related to bioeconomy value chains in order to identify knowledge gaps; (2) provide a more robust and complete picture of the environmental performance of three bioeconomy value chains (i.e. one per each bioeconomy pillar). This analysis reveals that apart from few products (such as liquid biofuels, some biopolymers and food crops) the environmental assessment of bioeconomy value chains is still incipient and limited to few indicators (e.g. Global Warming Potential and energy efficiency). In this study, a harmonised procedure - the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology, which includes 14 impact categories - is used to estimate the environmental performance of tomato (food and feed), bioalcohols (bioenergy) and polyhydroxyalkanoates (bio-based product). Normalisation of the estimated impact scores is also preformed to evaluate the relative contributions of each value chain to the overall impacts from EU domestic emissions.The study analyzed cover crops as a source of biomass (not competing with food and feed) for energy production. The field trials with maize (main crop) and winter rye (cover crop) were accompanied by an economic study, comparing the costs of rye silage production to possible revenues from its selling, as well as an environmental analysis of anaerobic co-digestion of rye. The total cultivation costs of rye reach 680-810(sic)/ha and revenues of 102-232(sic)/ha can be generated. Cultivation of rye and its use in co-digestion generates advantages linked to optimized land use, applying less fertilizer and no herbicides, reducing leaching effects and avoiding biomass transport, as compared to digestion of solely maize silage. However, for the production of 1 MJ of energy, larger amounts of rye silage are required as compared to maize, which counterbalances the advantages of rye. According to the summarized results, cover crops can be considered as additional biomass source securing local supplies with an overall similar balance of environmental impacts when comparing to the digestion of maize silage and additionally generating multiple benefits for the soil and profits for the farmer.Trends of externalities of wood combustion in Switzerland are assessed. The total amount of wood combustion in Switzerland tended to increase significantly during the past two decades. Due to the partial shift from small wood appliances with high emission factors to larger systems with low emission factors, the overall external costs remained almost constant during this period. Contributions from direct appliance emissions and indirect contributions from the rest of the life cycle chain are considered. Open issues of the environmental impact and life cycle assessment methods are discussed and improvements are proposed. The "semi-regionalized approach" combining spatially differentiated environmental impact pathway analysis with full chain life cycle analysis is explained in a general way and in view of further developments. Effects of aerosols on climate are discussed. Estimates of health impacts based on a pulse emission model are derived. Optimized systems for the use of wood energy are discussed. The "life cycle energy penalties" of complex systems compared to simple systems are estimated. Cost-benefit analysis shows that there is a net benefit of emission reduction (electrostatic precipitators) for large wood systems.The mitigation of the environmental impact and the further development of the existing technologies for the treatment and exploitation of biomass resources towards biofuels, currently consist a major scientific challenge. This study aims to the comparative assessment using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of two alternative technologies for upgrading solid biofuels: torrefaction and hydrothermal carbonization. In terms of this study olive husk, a biomass source widely used in the Mediterranean basin, is considered. The environmental footprint of each process is evaluated using GaBi 6 software and the CML 2001 impact assessment methodology. The examined impact categories consist of the global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential, eutrophication potential (EP), and abiotic depletion potential (ADP-fossils), since they indicate the most significant environmental issues with regard to the energy sector. The study indicated the effect of the water content of the biomass feedstock and the importance of the drying process. The study confirmed the statement that torrefaction is not energetically feasible compared to HTC when wet biomass feedstock with high water content is processed.In Germany, nearly 8,000 biogas plants were in operation up to the end of 2014. Biogas plants are mostly operated by farms which use energy crops and manure as feedstock. Establishment and subsidies for this kind of renewable energy is justified by its environmental advantage in terms of mitigation global warming by reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from power production based on biogas depends highly on the feedstock used and, in case of energy crops, on site specific production circumstances. To assess regional greenhouse gas emissions of German biogas production, we propose an economic-ecologic model approach which was based on almost 8,000 geocoded biogas plants. First, site specific production costs of silage corn, sugar beet, winter wheat as whole crop silage and grain were calculated. Second, a linear model approach minimized feedstock production costs and determined feedstock input to biogas plants. Third, greenhouse gas emissions based on feedstock input and biogas plant configuration were calculated and aggregated on district and national level. Results showed that power production based on biogas emitted, in general, less greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to current German power mix. Furthermore, site specific differences of greenhouse gas emissions were identified and mapped.The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) [1] and Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) [2] set the sustainability criteria for biofuels to be consumed in Europe. Following these criteria, biofuels have to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 35% (and 50% from 2017 and 60% from 2018) in comparison with the estimated fossil fuels reference emissions by the European Directive (83.8 gCO2equiv/MJ). LCA calculations on GHG emissions from energy crops have been usually carried out considering common agricultural practices. This paper explores the amount of GHG emissions which could be saved by introducing conservation agriculture. No till and reduced tillage emission savings have been calculated in comparison with full tillage crop management. These improvements in agricultural management, are still a minority in the country, but gradually increase year by year, by environmental awareness to prevent soil erosion, increase biodiversity, provide higher water storage capacity, rise organic matter on topsoil, etc.Riparian buffer strips represent edges of land that can be implemented along water bodies in order to reduce nutrients and pesticides runoffs from the agricultural fields. Based on a demonstration pilot in the Netherlands, an economic and environmental impact assessment of grassy and cereal buffer strips, as a potential source of biomass for energetic or material valorisation, was conducted. The impacts generated during extensive cultivation and harvesting of the buffer strip were significantly lower than those indicated by intensive agriculture. Agricultural use of the harvested products turned out to be the better best valorisation option from both environmental and economic perspective. This scenario generated lower environmental impacts in total but also with regard to the water protection linked impact categories. Additionally the total net cultivation costs for agricultural use were nearly equal to the greening costs, while for energetic use, additional net costs were generated through biomass valorisation. In general, the results showed that the biomass streams from buffer strips can only be activated, if certain buffer strips subsidy schemes will be sustained or even extended to support this type of biomass sourcing.The Pilot Project "Enhancement of agroforestry biomass in Tuscany: Limits and Opportunities" developed in the Enermed project for the regional government of Tuscany entails assessing the environmental sustainability of those sectors considered as the most representative of the chain of energy production from biomass in Tuscany. Estimates were carried out to examine the exploitation of biomass that is already available in the area, such as compounds of agricultural production, forestry activities, animal husbandry, agro-industry and the primary processing of wood, and secondly, the possibility of introducing dedicated energy crops in the region. The sustainability of these chains was assessed by comparing their environmental performance in terms of energy use indexes, land use and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared with the fossil reference using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, adopted also by the European Commission to evaluate the sustainability of biofuels (EC, 2009). The chosen reference unit for all three studies is one kWh of electricity produced by a plant of 1 MW fed into the national grid, excluding the energy consumed by the power plant itself.When addressing environmental sustainability of alternative energy production technology, such as biogas, life cycle analysis (LCA) represents a widely used approach as it considers several sources of emissions whose different impacts on acidification, soil depletion or human health play an important role in the overall sustainability evaluation. To incorporate environmental effects in the optimization procedure, two complementary methodological streams are followed in literature, namely multicriteria analysis and monetization. The latter method is generally carried out by integrating in energy prices either an emission tax (such as carbon tax or tradable emission permit) or the external costs (i.e. those cost imposed on society by the impact of energy production on human health and on the environment). Such internalization method is receiving a growing interest in decision making especially in supporting policy makers in energy and pollution taxes or subsidies determination. The present work focus on this issue, considering the external cost associated with the biogas production supply chain and with the delivery of its corresponding byproducts. The spatial explicit BeWhere model has been implemented with the biogas technology while external costs have been incorporated in the objective function to assess the environmental impact associated with several steps of the biogas supply chain. Different emission inventory database for the stationary processes (i.e. GEMIS database) have been coupled with their associated emission cost derived from the ExternE project, while the IMPACT database has been used for the transport activities. The results show that biogas is not automatically synonymous with sustainable energy, as differences in environmental performance can be remarkable. In particular, the sensitivity analysis shows that the optimal solution can be highly influenced by the complex combination of the territorial context, including site-specific substrates characterization, location and availability, the local agri-forestry practices, the adopted energy conversion technologies and the presence of specific energy infrastructure supplying the final products.This study presents a "from cradle to farm gate" Life Cycle Assessment on cow milk produced in Northeast Italy. System boundaries consider milk and meat delivered at farm gate, including all upstream emissions. All farm activities were considered. Inputs and outputs required in one year are counted and information about 34 dairy farms are used to represent the production area. Different allocation approaches were used to share resources and emissions between milk and meat. Functional unit was one kg of raw milk. The Ecoinvent v3.1 and Agri-footprint v1.0 database were used for secondary data, and SimaPro(C) 8 was the main software in the analysis. The following impact categories were investigated: Climate Change (CC), Terrestrial Acidification (TA), Freshwater Eutrophication (FE), Land Occupation (L0), Water Depletion (WD) and Cumulative Fossil Energy Demand (CFED). Purchased feed production was the first emitter, followed by on-farm crop production, animals and manure management emissions. Considering the most debated impact categories, 1.80-2.19 kg CO(2)eq and 8.84-10.78 MJ represent, respectively, CC and CFED per kg of raw milk. This research could be applied in regional studies on environmental impact of Italian dairy production.Environmental sustainability analysis of technologies for electricity generation of renewable energy sources (RES) was done using fuzzy logic, in order to compare and choose the best alternative for giving potential solutions to supply the electricity deficit in non-interconnected zones (ZNI per it initials in Spanish) from Colombia. The analysis took into account the availability of energy resources; energetic demand in each zone; and indicators of life cycle analysis (LCA) and environmental impact data from the literature. The results indicate that the small hydro technology is the first alternative on the departments of Amazonas, Caqueta, Choco, Guaviare, Putumayo and Vaupes, while photovoltaic is the top in Guainia, Meta, Arauca, Casanare and Vichada.This article discusses the current situation and challenges posed by nanotechnology from a sustainability point of view. It presents an objective methodology to evaluate the sustainability of nanotechnology products, based on a life cycle thinking approach, a framework particularly suited to assess all current and future relevant economic, societal and environmental impacts products and processes. It is grounded on a hierarchical definition of indicators, starting from 3D indicators that take into account all relevant dimensions of sustainability and support decision making, and continue to more specific 2D and 1D indicators that address specific issues. This article also identifies the key aspects that should be considered when assessing the sustainability of current and future nanotechnology products or where it performs a central role.The specific objectives of this paper are to formulate answers to the following questions: a. which is the accurate possibility of assessing environmental impact for geothermal waters, what are its stages? b. can we develop the types of impact assessment? c. what are the prospects for our research, what are the limits of research in this case? Our subject is inciting through the timeliness and importance in the present context of a globalized economic environment, further less the challenge for the European and national authorities to build a proper correlation between the environmental policy and a renewable resource of energy. We chose the geothermal area Beius (north-western Romania), while being a leading example for investments in geothermal heating system with available geothermal primary source through its main characteristic: it stands for the benefit of citizens by way of keeping a clean environment.Considering the impacts of human activities on the environment, emissions of greenhouse gases are one of the major concerns. The CCS technologies are seen as an option that can help to decrease the emissions of CO2 and reduce potential effects that a heightened CO2 concentration might have. The technical solution of capture, transport and storage of the CO2 originating in large emission point sources (power plants, industry) is depending on local conditions and can vary significantly. The ammonia scrubbing was chosen for CO2 separation from flue gas of lignite coal power plant (typical conditions for the Czech Republic) in the national project MPO FR-TI1/379. Environmental gains and impacts of the power plant and the optimized variant of the capture technology based on ammonia scrubbing were assessed on the basis of material and energy flow balance. The potential environmental impacts of the power plant with and without CO2 capture were compared using LCA methodology.Water treatment plant in Pilsen (Czech Republic) uses as the source of raw water the surface water from a river. Water treatment technology is set with respect to variable quality of raw water. Some technological units are exacting for consumption of chemicals, others for electrical energy consumption. In this paper, we evaluated the waterworks facility of the WTP in Pilsen from an environmental point of view using the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) method. In the previous studies, we evaluated waterworks facility in Pilsen using LCA as a whole. We used the obtained results and we concentrated on selected technological part of the waterworks operation. First, we compared environmental impacts of two specific coagulants - alum and ferric, by means of method LCA. Based on the results of the inventory and characterization analyses, we found out that the technology of water treatment which uses a ferric coagulant has a lower environmental impact. Very interesting topic for WTP in Pilsen is consumption of electrical energy. A part of WTP in particular demanding in terms of the electrical energy is the distribution of produced water. Distribution of produced water into reservoirs is energy-intensive. The objective of this paper is also interpretation of the results of inventory analysis and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) for the current state of water treatment plant with the use of all electricity from electricity grid. For comparison, we made different models that use electrical energy from alternative sources (e.g. solar, natural gas). We established the option with electricity from natural gas as the most suitable with respect to the environment.In life cycle assessment studies, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from direct land-use change have been estimated to make a significant contribution to the global warming potential of agricultural products. However, these estimates have a high uncertainty due to the complexity of data requirements and difficulty in attribution of land-use change. This paper presents estimates of GHG emissions from direct land-use change from native woodland to grazing land for two beef production regions in eastern Australia, which were the subject of a multi-impact life cycle assessment study for premium beef production. Spatially- and temporally consistent datasets were derived for areas of forest cover and biomass carbon stocks using published remotely sensed tree-cover data and regionally applicable allometric equations consistent with Australia's national GHG inventory report. Standard life cycle assessment methodology was used to estimate GHG emissions and removals from direct land-use change attributed to beef production. For the northern-central New South Wales region of Australia estimates ranged from a net emission of 0.03 t CO2-e ha(-1) year(-1) to net removal of 0.12 t CO2-e ha-1 year-1 using low and high scenarios, respectively, for sequestration in regrowing forests. For the same period (1990-2010), the study region in southern-central Queensland was estimated to have net emissions from land-use change in the range of 0.45-0.25 t CO2-e ha(-1) year(-1). The difference between regions reflects continuation of higher rates of deforestation in Queensland until strict regulation in 2006 whereas native vegetation protection laws were introduced earlier in New South Wales. On the basis of liveweight produced at the farm-gate, emissions from direct land-use change for 1990-2010 were comparable in magnitude to those from other on-farm sources, which were dominated by enteric methane. However, calculation of land-use change impacts for the Queensland region for a period starting 2006, gave a range from net emissions of 0.11 t CO2-e ha(-1) year(-1) to net removals of 0.07 t CO2-e ha(-1) year(-1). This study demonstrated a method for deriving spatially-and temporally consistent datasets to improve estimates for direct land-use change impacts in life cycle assessment. It identified areas of uncertainty, including rates of sequestration in woody regrowth and impacts of land-use change on soil carbon stocks in grazed woodlands, but also showed the potential for direct land-use change to represent a net sink for GHG.Purpose - The purpose of this study is to compare the environmental impacts of two additive manufacturing machines to a traditional computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine to determine which method is the most sustainable. Design/methodology/approach - A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed, comparing a Haas VF0 CNC mill to two methods of additive manufacturing: a Dimension 1200BST FDM and an Objet Connex 350 "inkjet"/"polyjet". The LCA's functional unit was the manufacturing of two specific parts in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic or similar polymer, as required by the machines. The scope was cradle to grave, including embodied impacts, transportation, energy used during manufacturing, energy used while idling and in standby, material used in final parts, waste material generated, cutting fluid for CNC, and disposal. Several scenarios were considered, all scored using the ReCiPe Endpoint H and IMPACT 2002+ methodologies. Findings - Results showed that the sustainability of additive manufacturing vs CNC machining depends primarily on the per cent utilization of each machine. Higher utilization both reduces idling energy use and amortizes the embodied impacts of each machine. For both three-dimensional (3D) printers, electricity use is always the dominant impact, but for CNC at maximum utilization, material waste became dominant, and cutting fluid was roughly on par with electricity use. At both high and low utilization, the fused deposition modeling (FDM) machine had the lowest ecological impacts per part. The inkjet machine sometimes performed better and sometimes worse than CNC, depending on idle time/energy and on process parameters. Research limitations/implications - The study only compared additive manufacturing in plastic, and did not include other additive manufacturing technologies, such as selective laser sintering or stereolithography. It also does not include post-processing that might bring the surface finish of FDM parts up to the quality of inkjet or CNC parts. Practical implications - Designers and engineers seeking to minimize the environmental impacts of their prototypes should share high-utilization machines, and are advised to use FDM machines over CNC mills or polyjet machines if they provide sufficient quality of surface finish. Originality/value - This is the first paper quantitatively comparing the environmental impacts of additive manufacturing with traditional machining. It also provides a more comprehensive measurement of environmental impacts than most studies of either milling or additive manufacturing alone it includes not merely CO2 emissions or waste but also acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, ecotoxicity and other impact categories. Designers, engineers and job shop managers may use the results to guide sourcing or purchasing decisions related to rapid prototyping.Global energy demand and environmental concerns are the driving force for use of alternative, sustainable, and clean energy sources. Solar energy is the inexhaustible and CO2-emission-free energy source worldwide. The Sun provides 1.4 x 10(5) TW power as received on the surface of the Earth and about 3.6 x 10(4) TW of this power is usable. In 2012, world power consumption was 17 TW, which is less than 3.6 x 10(4) TW. Photovoltaic (PV) cells are the basic element for converting solar energy into electricity. PV cell technologies, energy conversion efficiency, economic analysis, energy policies, environmental impact, various applications, prospects, and progress have been comprehensively reviewed and presented in this paper. This work compiles the latest literature (i.e. journal articles, conference proceedings, and reports, among others) on PV power generation, economic analysis, environmental impact, and policies to increase public awareness. From the review, it was found that PV is an easy way to capture solar energy where PV based power generation has also rapidly increased. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Wind power can help ensure regional energy security and also mitigate both global greenhouse gas and local air pollutant emissions, leading to co-benefits. With rapid installation of wind power equipment, it is critical to uncover the embodied emissions of greenhouse gas and air pollutants from wind power sector so that emission mitigation costs can be compared with a typical coal-fired power plant. In order to reach such a target, we conduct a life cycle analysis for wind power sector by using the Chinese inventory standards. Wind farms only release 1/40 of the total CO2 emissions that would be produced by the coal power system for the same amount of power generation, which is equal to 97.48% of CO2 emissions reduction. Comparing with coal power system, wind farms can also significantly reduce air pollutants (SO2, NOx and PM10),leading to 80.38%, 57.31% and 30.91% of SO2, NOx and PM10 emissions reduction, respectively. By considering both recycling and disposal, wind power system could reduce 2.74 x 10(4) t of CO2 emissions, 5.65 x 10(4) kg of NOx emissions, 2.95 x 10(5) kg of SO2 emissions and 7.97 x 10(4) kg of PM10 emissions throughout its life cycle. In terms of mitigation cost, a wind farm could benefit 37.14 US$ from mitigating 1ton of CO2 emissions. The mitigation cost rates of air pollutants were 7.94 US$/kg of SO2, 10.79 US$/kg of NOx, and 80.79 US$/kg of PM10. Our research results strongly support the development of wind power so that more environmental benefits can be gained. However, decentralized wind power developers should consider not only project locations close to the demand of electricity and wind resources, but also the convenient transportation for construction and recycling, while centralized wind power developers should focus on incorporating wind power into the grids in order to avoid wind power loss. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the strategies to ensure energy security and to mitigate climate change in the European Union (EU) is the establishment and the use of short rotation woody crops (SRWCs) for the production of renewable energy. SRWCs are cultivated in the EU under different management systems. Addressing the energy security problems through SRWCs requires management systems that maximize the net energy yield per unit land area. We assembled and evaluated on-farm data from within the EU, (i) to understand the relationship between the SRWC yields and spatial distribution of precipitation, as well as the relationship between SRWC yield and the planting density, and (ii) to investigate whether extensively managed SRWC systems are more energy efficient than their intensively managed counterparts. We found that SRWC yield ranged from 1.3 to 24 t ha(-1) y(-1) (mean 9.3 +/- 4.2 t ha(-1) y(-1)) across sites. We looked for, but did not find a relationship between yield and annual precipitation as well as between yield and planting density. The energy inputs of extensively managed SRWC systems ranged from 3 to 8 GJba(-1) y-1 whereas the energy ratio (i.e. energy output to energy input ratio) varied from 9 to 29. Although energy inputs (3-16 GJ ha(-1)y(-1)) were larger in most cases than those of extensively managed SRWC systems, intensively managed SRWC systems in the EU had higher energy ratios, i.e. between 15 and 62. The low energy ratio of extensively managed SRWC systems reflected their lower biomass yield per unit area. Switching from intensively managed SRWC systems to extensively managed ones thus creates an energy gap, and will require more arable land to be brought into production to compensate for the yield loss. Consequently, extensification is not the most appropriate path to the success of the wide scale deployment of SRWC for bioenergy production in the EU. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Fossil energy burning is one of the most important sources of atmospheric mercury emissions, which poses great threats to both environment and human health. Urban regions are dominant energy consumers; however, the information on the resultant mercury emissions in urban regions has been lacking. Therefore, in light of environmentally extended input-output analysis, this study used Beijing as a case to investigate embodied (direct plus indirect) mercury emissions induced by fossil energy consumption in urban regions. The results show that embodied mercury emissions caused by Beijing's fossil energy consumption amounted to 5.86 tonnes, which is over 1.5 times the direct emissions, indicating that the conventional direct emission accounting method will lead to significant emission leakage. Coal combustion takes the major responsibility for energy-related mercury emissions. As a net importer of embodied mercury emissions, Beijing avoided a considerable amount of mercury emissions. Sectors like construction which play key role in embodied mercury emissions are also identified in this study. To comprehensively reduce mercury emissions from energy consumption the Beijing government should devote efforts to develop clean coal technology and high efficiency mercury removal devices, shift investment from infrastructure construction to tertiary industries and optimize green consumption among the residents, especially the urban residents. The method and findings may be useful for compilation of overall urban mercury emissions inventory as well as have important policy implications for global cities to control mercury emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Solar energy is one of the cleanest forms of energy sources and considered as a green source of energy. Solar energy benefit ranges from low carbon emission, no fossil fuel requirement, long term solar resources, less payback time and other. However like other power generation sources, solar energy has also some Safety, Health and Environmental (SHE) concerns. This paper presents the overview of solar energy technologies and addresses the SHE impact of solar energy technologies to the sustainability of human activities. This paper will also recommend the possible ways to reduce the effect of potential hazards of widespread use of solar energy technologies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are widely employed in the study of topics related to industrial ecology. However, unlike this study, they are normally used separately rather than jointly. Educational institutions are among the most deeply rooted services in society, producing knowledge, research and culture. This paper reports on a case study conducted in the region of Catalonia, Spain, to evaluate the metabolism of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) based on a combined MFA and LCA approach on two levels: macro-level analysis using MFA, and micro-level analysis using LCA. The MFA results indicated that energy consumption represents more than 50.00% of all inputs, and its associated indirect flows are highly relevant for UAB's overall metabolism, accounting for 69.30% of all energy inputs. As for the LCA results, the ReCiPe2008 method was adopted and 92.00% of all normalized impacts were related to the category of Climate Change Potential (CCP), also attributed mainly to energy consumption. Thus, both MFA and LCA methodologies indicated energy consumption is the main hotspot. The results of MFA indicators, energy and water flows were compared with earlier literature, revealing a clear tendency for industrial areas in Catalonia to show higher results than service polygons, as an effect of population density. Finally, the newly erected building of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and the Catalan Institute of Paleontology (ICTA-ICP) is described as an innovative alternative to promote environmental sustainability at universities that focus on energy and water conservation and CCP impacts reduction. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Purpose - The environmental performance of several flat roof systems with different materials and insulation thicknesses is compared using life cycle assessment (LCA), with the aim to determine the roofing materials with the highest environmental performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - The calculations were carried out for an existing apartment block with a 300 m(2) flat roof. Five insulation materials with three different heat resistances each, five types of waterproof layers, three covering layers, and a green roof are assessed using LCA. Foreground data including maintenance are obtained from roofing companies, and background data are taken from Ecoinvent. ReCiPe is used as impact method. Energy losses through the roof are calculated using the energy software EPA-W. Findings - Improving the insulation from 2.5 to 5m(2)K/W leads to reductions of the damage scores from about 10 to 40 per cent. Polyisocyanurate and expanded polystyrene were found to have the lowest environmental damage, although the differences are small. Regarding the other layers, PVC mechanically fixed, ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) mechanically fixed, EPDM glued and PVC with gravel ballast were found to have the lowest environmental damage of the materials assessed. Practical implications - The outcomes of this study will aid building owners and construction and maintenance companies to choose renovation options for flat roofs with the lowest impact on the environment. Originality/value - A smart choice of materials for a roofing system, with enough consideration of other aspects such as practical applicability, can thus significantly improve the environmental performance of the roof of a building.Purpose - This research paper is a literature review of the existing building retrofitting process. It proposes studying the functional, technical, and organizational issues of the green retrofit process. The purpose of this paper is to expand the domain of design framework for retrofitting existing buildings. Design/methodology/approach - The paper provides a review of the model-based design process from enrollment to evaluation stages representing the green retrofitting process in selected publications. The paper opted to review the Green Retrofit Design (GRD) process model for achieving a systematic design model of GRD development in the future. Findings - Functional and maintenance issues are mainly for new buildings, also in the field for renovation and demolishing. Publications also show that environmental, social, and technical issues are often examined separately in the decision process of GRD. Papers in the facility management scale would concentratemore on organization/legal issues. Publications with questionnaire design are devoted to the usage on life-cycle assessment on existing building, but not yet on the stakeholder management and design process and related issues. Social implications - The achievement of the study is to provide a new framework of design approach that is significant to the theoretical research, education, communication, and practical works in terms of GRD development. Originality/value - The paper not only achieves a specific sequence of practical approaches, including awareness of problems, conceptual development, and design embodiment, to meet design objectives, but also conforms to academic practice-based research of creative design taking on GRD practice.The evolution of naval vessels toward high-speed crafts subjected to severe sea conditions has promoted an increasing interest in lightweight high-strength materials. Due to its strength and weight characteristics, aluminum has been proven especially suitable as construction material for hull structures as well as other vessel parts. However, fatigue in aluminum naval crafts needs to be effectively addressed for the proper life-cycle assessment. Structural health monitoring systems constitute effective tools for measuring the structural response and assessing the structural performance under actual operational conditions. In this article, an approach for using structural health monitoring information in the fatigue reliability analysis and service life prediction of aluminum naval vessels is presented. The accumulated fatigue damage and the fatigue reliability are quantified based on structural health monitoring data acquired under different operational conditions, specified by the ship speeds, sea states, and heading angles. Additionally, an approach for estimating the reliability-based fatigue life under a given operational profile is presented. Seakeeping trial data of an aluminum high-speed naval vessel are used to illustrate the proposed approach.This study assesses the environmental impacts of an archetypical contemporary 42-story residential concrete building designed to meet minimum code requirements and compares it to the impacts from a "beyond code" design. The earthquake performance of the building in terms of financial loss and repair time was previously evaluated using a FEMA P-58 based approach; this research used Life Cycle Assessment to estimate the environmental impact of both initial construction and seismic repair when the building is subjected to an earthquake with a 475-year return period. Three seismic force resisting configurations (fixed-base, base-isolated, and damped-outrigger) as well as two design approaches (minimum code equivalence and a resilience-based design approach) were considered. This study found that the magnitude of environmental impact of seismic damage repair can be significant; that the ratio of environmental impact to cost is higher for seismic repair than initial construction; and that the protection of non-structural components, such as partitions, can result in significant reduction in overall environmental impact of seismic damage when subjected to large earthquakes.A multi-hazard life-cycle methodology is used to assess the effects of flood-induced scour on the seismic system failure performance of bridge systems. Based on a case-study for a simple bridge system supported by shallow foundation systems, our results show that scour effects are time-varying: during the first 45 years, scour has insignificant effect on modifying the seismic vulnerability of the bridge in terms of two levels of system failures (i.e. extensive system damage or system collapse); after 65 years, scour dominates the cause to system failure; and while between 45 to 65 years, bridge scour and earthquakes jointly contribute to system failure. This result implies that caution is necessary for managing aging bridges serving in both seismicity and flooding active regions.Many buildings in the U.S. are vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters due to the increased popularity of sustainable building infrastructure. Life cycle assessment analyses are required to design and achieve "green" building status. These analyses do not require evaluations of building performance during natural or man-made hazards. Increases in labor and material caused by robust and resilient systems also often increase embodied energy and carbon dioxide emissions. Those LCA analyses which do consider seismic performance of a building many times do not take into account the seismic performance of the non-structural secondary systems (partition walls, drop ceilings, etc.). In the particular case of fire hazards, automatic sprinkler systems add 30-40kg of embodied carbon to a building; however, reduce the risk factor for fire during the life span of a building. To prevent post-fire repairs, which would increase the embodied energy and carbon of the building more, hazard mitigation needs to be integrated with sustainability. The development of performance-based design standards helps this integration; however, the lack of risk factors incorporated into life cycle assessments needs to be remedied, not just for seismic design, but all natural disasters. This paper references previous developments in the marriage between natural hazard mitigation and sustainability as well as the limitations of the tools available to structural engineers. Advancements in the development of a risk factor for fire is discussed as well as the increased carbon emissions and embodied energy of buildings without active fire protective measures.Purpose - The study aims to define a research agenda for creating resource-efficient supply chains (RESCs) by identifying and analysing their key characteristics as well as future research opportunities. Design/methodology/approach - We follow a systematic review method to analyse the literature and to understand RESC, taking a substantive theory approach. Our approach is grounded in a specific domain, the agri-food sector, because it is an intensive user of an extensive range of resources. Findings - The review shows that works of literature has looked at the use of resources primarily from the environmental impact perspective. There is a need to explore whether or not and how logistics/supply chain decisions will affect the overall configuration of future food supply chains in an era of resource scarcity and depletion and what the trade-offs will be. Research limitations/implications - The paper proposes an agenda for future research in the area of RESC. The framework proposed along with the key characteristics identified for RESC can be applied to other sectors. Practical implications - Our research should facilitate further understanding of the implications and trade-offs of supply chain decisions taken on the use of resources by supply chain managers. Originality/value - The paper explores the interaction between supply chains and natural resources and defines the key characteristics of RESC.As nations face the need to decarbonise their energy supply, there is a risk that attention will be focused solely on carbon and climate change, potentially at the expense of other environmental impacts. To explore the trade-offs between climate change mitigation and other environmental impacts, this work focuses on electricity and considers a number of scenarios up to 2070 in a UK context with different carbon reduction targets and electricity demand to estimate the related life cycle environmental impacts. In total, 16 scenarios are discussed, incorporating fossil-fuel technologies with and without carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and a range of renewable options. A freely available model - Electricity Technologies Life Cycle Assessment (ETLCA) - developed by the authors has been used for these purposes. The results suggest that decarbonisation of electricity supply to meet carbon targets would lead to a reduction in the majority of the life cycle impacts by 2070. The exceptions to this are depletion of elements which would increase by 4-145 times and health impacts from radiation which would increase two- to four-fold if nuclear power were used. Ozone layer depletion would also go up in the short-term by between 2.5-3.7 times. If energy demand continued to grow, three other impacts would also increase while trying to meet the carbon targets: human toxicity (two times), photochemical smog (12%) and terrestrial eco-toxicity (2.3 times). These findings demonstrate the importance of considering a broader range of environmental impacts alongside climate change to avoid decarbonising the economy at the expense of other environmental impacts.Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices. The theoretical underpinning of this research is 'sustainability' and the 'supply chain processes' in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and 'design science' methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains. The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model's unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.The aim of this work is to carry out a comparative analysis of environmental impacts for different scenarios of a typical local road. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the modeling tool used to quantify and characterize comparative environmental impacts. In carrying out this specific application of the LCA, different road construction techniques were considered with regards to the whole structure and compared in order to identify the best alternative in terms of environmental sustainability. So far, in fact, typical LCA frameworks of roads have focused on recycled materials for pavement layers only, thus neglecting study of the materials used in the embankment or in the subgrade. In this study, these materials were included too, in order to prove the environmental benefit of using a sustainable technique such as in situ stabilization of fine soils with lime (typically dumped clayey soils) in order to reduce the need for virgin material for embankment and subgrade construction. When using different percentages of recycled materials (such as reclaimed asphalt pavement - RAP) in the bituminous layer or in the foundation, the analysis of the functional unit studied shows a significant reduction of energy consumption and pollutant emissions mainly due to transportation of materials involved, in this way increasing the environmental performance of the road. Another important consideration is that the use of fine soils stabilized with lime "in situ", instead of dumping it, not only is a good technical solution for improving soil mechanical properties, but it also produces a reduction of energy consumption and of pollutant emissions. It is noticeable that this technique results in a significant reduction of pollutant emissions due the transportation of involved materials, increasing the environmental performance of the road. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) is continuously increasing worldwide and, consequently, so is the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) it generates at its end-of-life. In parallel to this growth, legislation related to this issue has been passed in different countries with the aim of improving the management of WEEE. In order to raise awareness about the situation in which the generation, composition, management or final treatment of this kind of waste currently finds itself, an extensive number of articles have been published around the world. The aim of this paper is to define and analyse the main areas of research on WEEE by offering a broader analysis of the relevant literature in this field published between 1992 and August 2014. The literature researched comprises 307 articles, which are analysed according to the topic they focus on (WEEE management, WEEE generation, WEEE characterisation, social aspects of WEEE, re-use of EEE or economic aspects of WEEE). In addition, a deeper analysis is also presented, which takes into account the temporal evolution (globally and by topic), location of the study, categories and subcategories analysed, etc.This annual review covers the literature published in 2014 on topics related to the occurrence and fate of emerging environmental pollutants in wastewater. Due to the vast amount of literature published on this topic, I have discussed only a fraction of the quality research publications, up to maximum 15 relevant articles per section, due to limitation of space. The abstract search was carried out using Web of Science, and the abstracts were selected based on their relevance. In few cases, full-text articles were referred to better understand new findings. This review is divided into the following sections: biological agents, disinfection by-products (DBPs), halogenated compounds, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), and other emerging contaminants.Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are regarded as units designed for the efficient removal of organic matter and nutrients from polluted wastewaters, avoiding their discharge into the environment. Despite these benefits, they have also been found to be highly energy intensive, with consequent increased emissions in terms of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts. Therefore, it has become imperative to monitor thoroughly the overall functioning of WWTPs from an integrated perspective with the aim of understanding how these can improve their eco-efficiency. In this case study, a group of 113 WWTPs located in regions across Spain were analysed using the methodology that combines life cycle assessment (LCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The aim of this work was to determine the operational efficiency of each unit in order to obtain environmental benchmarks for inefficient plants. Thereafter, the environmental gains linked with the inputs reduction proposed for the DEA model for each unit were computed in order to verify eco-efficiency criteria. The operational complexity of WWTPs resulted in several identified factors affecting their efficiency which are discussed in depth, including the size of the facility, the climatic influence, the influent load and the over- or underuse of the plant. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Calcium carbonate pellets are produced as a by-product in the pellet softening process. In the Netherlands, these pellets are applied as a raw material in several industrial and agricultural processes. The sand grain inside the pellet hinders the application in some high-potential market segments such as paper and glass. Substitution of the sand grain with a calcite grain (100% calcium carbonate) is in principle possible, and could significantly improve the pellet quality. In this study, the grinding and sieving of pellets, and the subsequent reuse as seeding material in pellet softening were tested with two pilot reactors in parallel. In one reactor, garnet sand was used as seeding material, in the other ground calcite. Garnet sand and ground calcite performed equally well. An economic comparison and a life-cycle assessment were made as well. The results show that the reuse of ground calcite as seeding material in pellet softening is technologically possible, reduces the operational costs by (sic)38,000 (1%) and reduces the environmental impact by 5%. Therefore, at the drinking water facility, Weesperkarspel of Waternet, the transition from garnet sand to ground calcite will be made at full scale, based on this pilot plant research.Indonesia is the second largest country that produce natural rubber in the world after Thailand. The present practice in crumb rubber factories uses large volume of water and energy needs to be more efficient in their materials and energy usage and leads to environmental problems. The rubber industry needs to improve its competitiveness not only to increase profits but to ensure sustainability. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Eco-Efficiency are used as the combined approach in this research to attain that objective. The study was conducted on two selected crumb rubber processing plants, Factory A and Factory B, in North Sumatera, Indonesia. The main objectives of the study are to conduct life cycle inventory for crumb rubber processing, analyze the environment impact from the life cycle processing activities, and implement opportunities towards environmental improvements through LCA and also to suggest improvements of the impacts from the current practices of crumb rubber processing towards eco-efficiency. This study is a gate to gate study where data inventory starts from acceptance of cup lump from plantation and skim latex as a by product of latex concentrate processing. Based on the results obtained, Factory A contributed higher environmental impact than Factory B. Damage to resources is very high, dominantly contributed from fossil fuel. The highest impact in crumb rubber processing for Factory A is caused by formic acid (46.5%) and plastic (40.5%) with a total impact of 5.483 Pt, while for Factory B it is caused by plastic (64.5%), sulphuric acid (27.6%) with a total impact of 3.439 Pt. Factory B is found to be more eco-efficient in water consumption. As for energy intensity, Factory A has greater energy intensity compared to Factory B. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Although sheep milk production is a significant sector for the European Mediterranean countries, it shows serious competitiveness gaps. Minimizing the ecological impacts of dairy sheep farming systems could represent a key factor for farmers to bridging the gaps in competitiveness of such systems and also obtaining public incentives. However, scarce is the knowledge about the environmental performance of Mediterranean dairy sheep farms. The main objectives of this paper were (i) to compare the environmental impacts of sheep milk production from three dairy farms in Sardinia (Italy), characterized by different input levels, and (ii) to identify the hotspots for improving the environmental performances of each farm, by using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The LCA was conducted using two different assessment methods: Carbon Footprint-IPCC and ReCiPe end-point. The analysis, conducted "from cradle to gate", was based on the functional unit 1 kg of Fat and Protein Corrected Milk (FPCM). The observed trends of the environmental performances of the studied farming systems were similar for both evaluation methods. The GHG emissions revealed a little range of variation (from 2.0 to 23 kg CO2-eq per kg of FPCM) with differences between farming systems being not significant. The ReCiPe end-point analysis showed a larger range of values and environmental performances of the low-input farm were significantly different compared to the medium-and high-input farms. In general, enteric methane emissions, field operations, electricity and production of agricultural machineries were the most relevant processes in determining the overall environmental performances of farms. Future research will be dedicated to (i) explore and better define the environmental implications of the land use impact category in the Mediterranean sheep farming systems, and (ii) contribute to revising and improving the existing LCA dataset for Mediterranean farming systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A biofuel process chain based on fast pyrolysis of hybrid poplar and subsequent hydroupgrading of the obtained bio-oil is simulated using Aspen Plus (R). The simulation includes the pyrolysis plant and the biorefinery with its hydrotreating, hydrocracking, distillation and steam reforming sections. All parts of the process are modeled with a high level of detail, using 83 model compounds and a kinetic reaction model for the pyrolysis plant. A cross-check with published experimental data is included in order to validate the model. Based on the simulation results, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is conducted for the biofuel products, identifying the processes with the highest contribution to the environmental impacts. The obtained synthetic biofuels are compared with their fossil fuel equivalents in order to quantify their potential environmental benefits. LCA results show greenhouse gas (GHG) savings of 54.5% for the produced fuel mix compared to conventional gasoline and diesel. Electricity consumption is one of the keys for reducing the overall environmental impact, while GHG savings could be enhanced by improving the thermal efficiency of the combustion processes in the plants. The biofuel pathway assessed is found to be an interesting option to produce second-generation biofuels with optimization potential in all phases of the system. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Use of sustainability metrics can help channel chemical research toward important long-term societal goals. For effective outcomes, it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the sustainability assessment methods that can be applied in the chemical process development chain. In this paper we report the results from application of sustainability metrics in parallel with findings from laboratory research for production of higher alcohols from ethanol by application of the Guerbet reaction. 2-Ethyl-1-hexanol is used as an exemplary compound for the targeted higher alcohols. The accuracy of early-stage sustainability metrics using laboratory data is evaluated by comparing the results with metrics based on detailed process simulation models, techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment. The analysis has provided insights on pitfalls to avoid and effective application of early-stage metrics considering the dynamic nature of information available from laboratory research. Anticipation of the process configuration was found to be particularly important for effective application of early-stage metrics. The results from catalysis research for 2-ethyl-1-hexanol highlight the potential opportunities for higher chain Guerbet alcohols from biobased ethanol. The comparison of this biobased route with conventional fossil based process shows the challenges for such a process from an economic and environmental perspective. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The earlier developed flow protocol for stoichiometric reduction of an important biologically derived pharmaceutical precursor, artemisinin, to dihydroartemisinin was extended to a sequential reaction to produce one of the final APIs, artemether. A highly active heterogeneous catalyst was found for the etherification reaction. The use of QuadraSil catalyst allows to eliminate one step of reaction workup. A comparative Life Cycle Assessment of both reactions has shown advantages of the flow process over the optimized literature batch protocols. Results of LCA highlight the significance of solvents in pharmaceuticals manufacture and the advantage of flow technology, enabling small solvent inventories to be used. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Scientific research has characterized the effects of dredging, an underwater excavation process for navigational purposes or material extraction, and has shown its association with a number of chemical, physical and biological impacts. Due to this, much environmental management has been applied in the dredging industry in order to manage its detrimental effects. However, developing nations may have different approaches towards their dredging environmental management to compare to their companions with higher economic strength. Moreover, scientific evidence to make an informed decision is often lacking, hence affecting the number of research executed at these nations, limiting their efforts to preserve the environment. This paper reviews the dredging environmental impacts and its two important factors, dredging technology and sediment characteristic, that determine the magnitude of impacts through literature review, and discusses the need for a more integrated dredging environmental management to be developed for developing nations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Emissions reduction and energy certifications of products are critical current issues. Both industry trends and the general public opinion are showing an increased concern about what is sustainable, green, or energy-efficient. Many processes and raw materials especially referring to industrial products have been analyzed to determine their environmental impacts, and green certifications and eco-labels are starting to be used by industries and companies, especially in Europe. This article presents a methodology designed to compute the carbon footprint of the stabilization of in situ soils with hydraulic binders and compares the results with the traditional supply of non-renewable resources used to build road foundation layers. The analysis is conducted by computing the emissions related to all processes (and equipment) involved in both in situ and traditional methods. A sensitivity analysis of the hauling distance of virgin aggregates (the most critical activity in the traditional process) assesses the influence of transportation activities on the entire construction process. The analysis shows that improving in situ soils through cement stabilization can save more than 80% in emissions if compared to the supply of traditional granular layers (assuming embodied energies are not considered). A sustainable road pavement should certainly consider the reuse of in situ soils to limit emissions during construction activities. Municipal solid waste management is one of the key subsystems of urban metabolism, which significantly impacts urban carbon cycles. A conceptual model for analyzing the carbon cycle of the municipal solid waste management system was established based on the theory of urban metabolism with regard to urban carbon cycling. The model includes horizontal fluxes, vertical fluxes and carbon stocks of the waste managing processes such as waste collection, transportation, treatment and disposal. The current carbon cycling of the municipal solid waste management system and two other scenarios were analyzed using a jingmen City case study. The results indicate that the input horizontal flux in municipal solid waste between 1989 and 2004 was 293.47 Gg. Among all of the considered scenarios, the landfill formed the largest carbon stocks; incineration showed the largest vertical fluxes of carbon dioxide, and source separation and integrated technologies decreased carbon emissions by adding new carbon sources to the urban system. Improving municipal solid waste management using techniques, such as waste minimization, source separation, recycling, technical innovations of incineration, compost and digestion of organic waste, landfill mining, etc., could impact the urban carbon cycle by reducing carbon emissions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved,Campuses, communities, and other building clusters are major users of energy and water and thus can have a significant environmental impact. Frequently, their buildings' resource consumption is metered to various levels of resolution to attempt to track and reduce it. However, the metering and data logging systems are often inconvenient and difficult to access due to use of multiple systems and technologies of varying vintages. This paper proposes several methods to analyze and visualize building-level water, natural gas, and electricity consumption and the upstream environmental impacts: Sankey diagrams and bar charts that normalize metered values by floor area and occupancy. The objective is to improve accessibility of these data to all stakeholders, including building operators, planners, occupants, and utilities. The methods are then applied to a 45-building Canadian university campus and an array of graphical representations of the data is provided. The resulting analysis and visualization reveals significant variation in consumption between buildings regardless of building vintage and function. Furthermore, it is concluded that identifying resource consumption reducing strategies, once inefficient buildings have been identified, would require higher data resolution - both spatial and temporal. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban marginal land can be used for growing high yield bioenergy crops such as miscanthus and poplar. Here, a GIS-based modeling framework was created to assess potential urban marginal lands in Boston that include vacant lands and under-utilized public and private areas with adequate soil quality and sunlight. Using ArcGIS model builder as a spatial analysis tool, land parcels were screened for typical urban features such as buildings, driveways, parking lots, water and protected areas. The resultant layer was subjected to bio-geophysical modeling that includes soil quality, slope analysis and finally shadow analysis. Approximately 2660 ha of potential marginal land was identified as suitable, representing 24% of total land area in Boston. Using crop yield information, it was estimated that this marginal land could be used to produce up to a total of nearly 42,130 tons of high yield short rotation poplar biomass in a regular growing season. Also, bioenergy potential calculation revealed that for short rotation poplar, this amount of biomass can potentially yield up to 745 TJ (LHV) to 830 (HHV) TJ of yearly primary energy for the city of Boston that can be used for heat or electricity production, particularly for microgrid or district heating applications. This is equivalent to similar to 0.6% of Massachusetts primary energy demand for 2012. Ongoing work will explore other urban regions of Massachusetts and the Eastern US that might be able to fulfill part of their energy demand locally while providing benefits in environmental quality, economic development, and urban resilience. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers the limits and potential of urban metabolism' to conceptualize city processes. Three ecologies' of urban metabolism have emerged. Each privileges a particular dimension of urban space, shaped by epistemology, politics, and model-making. Marxist ecologies theorize urban metabolism as hybridized socio-natures that (re)produce uneven outcomes; industrial ecology, as stocks and flows of materials and energy; and urban ecology, as complex socio-ecological systems. We demarcate these scholarly islands through bibliometric analysis and literature review, and draw on cross-domain mapping theory to unveil how the metaphor has become stagnant in each. To reinvigorate this research, the paper proposes the development of political-industrial ecology, using urban metabolism as a boundary metaphor.Rapid worldwide urbanization calls for a better understanding of phosphorus (P) metabolism and the interaction of the physical, ecological and social drivers of P cycling in urban systems. We quantified the P metabolism in Longyan, a city with a major agricultural economy, and analyzed its long-term trends over the rapid urbanization period of 1985-2010. Both input P (from 4811 t P to 14,296 t P) and output P (from 4565 t P to 13,509 t P) increased significantly. The agricultural subsystem contributed most to the P metabolism, accounting for 85% of total P input. The share of P input lost to the environment, i.e. discharge to water, accumulation in the soil and landfill, increased from 66% to 72%, while food production efficiency decreased from 48% to 29%. Per capita P input showed linear relationships with the Human Development Index (HDI), S-curve relationship with the urbanization rate, and logistic curve relationship with per capita disposable income. A more meat-based diet shift both in Longyan and surrounding cities greatly affected Longyan's food production structure. Our results demonstrate that P metabolic quantity, configuration, and efficiency in production systems can change drastically in response to changes in consumer and producer behavior as well as in socioeconomic structure. A larger regional scale should be considered in urban P management, when trying to mitigate the increase in P use. The results also imply that sustainable urban P management will require a system-wide, cross-sector and cross-boundary approach. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.As a direct consequence of bad habits marked by wastefulness, the production of huge waste quantities makes our urban systems vulnerable being under rare and uncontrolled cases of pressures in a state of emergency. A suitable and proper integrated waste management contributes to the urban system resilience. This is the reason why planning and designing new services are fundamental: in addition to the identification and integration of spaces and technologies, it is possible to stimulate inhabitants to sort waste properly and constantly. This paper offers the results of a search realized in a small Sicilian town. We have started our work analyzing typological, technological, and building features of constructions in the historical center in addition to their state of preservation. Then, we have drawn up a proposal concerning new infrastructures for the involved urban area and buildings - consistent with the historical value of the town center - aiming at the creation of proper networks of eco stations where inhabitants can sort waste constantly, and acquire loose stuff (refill points). We have identified and suggested technological solutions - already on sale - whose integration with the current historical heritage is proper and feasible from the economic and technological points of view. The expected results are the following: to improve services for a better life quality; to increase waste sorting; to produce resources with interesting economic effects on inhabitants; to reduce management costs and atmospheric emissions.Global climate change has aroused widespread interest in reducing carbon emissions and increasing carbon sequestration. Thus, an urban carbon inventory must consider both emissions and sequestration. In this context, we analyzed the main contributors to the flows that comprise a city's carbon metabolic processes employing methods and concepts from ecological science. The carbon emissions and sequestration by urban carbon metabolic processes can be compared to ecological catabolism and anabolism, respectively. We used empirical coefficients to estimate the rates of carbon catabolism and anabolism and calculate the resulting carbon imbalance index. Our analysis reveals the contributions of individual metabolic actors and the distribution of the metabolic flows among them. Taking Beijing as a case study, we found that the catabolic rate of the metabolic actors was more than five times the anabolic rate from 1995 to 2010, leading to a carbon imbalance index that was twice the average Chinese level. The major catabolic actors were the other services and domestic sectors. These catabolic rates were primarily influenced by the flows of electricity, heating energy consumption, and mobile energy consumption. The overall carbon imbalance resulted from greatly reduced metabolic flows in farmland anabolism due to conversion of farmland into urban land. Identifying the metabolic actors and flows in this manner will inform government mitigation efforts by identifying where reduction is required and guiding planning of appropriate mitigation actions. Our study also provides directions for conservation of the urban ecological environment. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines the stocks of clay brick in Toronto's single detached housing, to provide parameters for city scale material reuse and recycling. Based on consensus from the literature and statistics on Toronto's single detached housing stocks, city scale reusable and recyclable stocks were estimated to provide an understanding of what volume could be saved from landfill and reintroduced into the urban fabric. On average 2523-4542 m(3) of brick was determined to be available annually for reuse, which would account for 20-36% of the volume of virgin brick consumed in new house construction in 2012. A higher volume, 6187 m(3) of brick, was determined to be available annually for recycling because more of the prevalence of cement-based mortar, which creates challenges for brick reuse in Toronto. The results demonstrated that older housing containing reusable brick were being mostly landfilled and replaced with housing that contained only recyclable brick. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.During the SO years since the concept of urban metabolism was proposed, this field of research has evolved slowly. On the basis of an analogy with an organism's metabolism, the concept of urban metabolism has become an effective method to evaluate the flows of energy and materials within an urban system, thereby providing insights into the system's sustainability and the severity of urban problems such as excessive social, community, and household metabolism at scales ranging from global to local. Researchers have improved this approach, evolving from models of linear to cyclic processes and then to network models. Researchers account for flows of energy and materials, ecological footprints, inputs and outputs, and the characteristics of the system's ecological network. However, the practical methods of analysis need to be improved. Future analysis should focus on establishing a multilevel, unified, and standardized system of categories to support the creation of consistent inventory databases; it should also seek to improve the methods used in the analysis to provide standards and guidance that will help governments to achieve sustainable development. Finally, researchers must improve the ability to provide spatially explicit analyses that facilitate the task of applying research results to guide practical decision-support.Studies of urban metabolism provide important insights for environmental management of cities, but are not widely used in planning practice due to a mismatch of data scale and coverage. This paper introduces the Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA) model as a potential decision support tool aimed as a contribution to overcome some of these difficulties and describes its pilot use at the county level in the Republic of Ireland. The results suggest that SAMFA is capable of identifying hotspots of higher material and energy use to support targeted planning initiatives, while its ability to visualise different policy scenarios supports more effective multi-stakeholder engagement. The paper evaluates this pilot use and sets out how this model can act as an analytical platform for the industrial ecology-spatial planning nexus.A discussion between researchers in the field of industrial ecology led to the question of whether Wolman's work on the urban metabolism (UM) of cities in 1965 was the first to quantify material flows of urban societies. This forum communication retrieves an apparently lost, but remarkable, work in the development of material flow analysis (MFA). That work is known as the Essay on the metabolism of Berlin, published in 1894 by the renowned German chemist and medical doctor, Theodor Weyl. To investigate the nutrition situation among the population in the city of Berlin, Weyl investigated the nutrient flows discharged from the city and compared these values to the nutrient consumption through food intake. The title, approach, and wording make his work a forerunner of UM studies today. This forum contribution aims to introduce Weyl's work to an interdisciplinary international readership. Therefore, we (1) give a brief overview of Weyl's professional life, (2) summarize his study based on the German article, and (3) conclude with a discussion of the relevance of his study for the tool, MFA, and the concept of UM today. A major difference between his work and contemporary studies on UM is the motivation of the author. Weyl's aim was not to highlight the problems associated with excessive human consumption of resources and pollution of the environment, but to investigate the nutrition situation of a society with a significant degree of malnutrition. The existence of the latter, particularly in developing countries, makes Weyl's study still relevant.Metabolism is a key concept in industrial ecology (IE). Industrial metabolism (IM) is widely used but seldom discussed, and the rare contributions discussing the concept show divergent views, so the debate is still open. Building on recent contributions that broaden the scope of the epistemological debate, the goal of the present discussion is to go beyond the general statement of IM as a biological analogy in IE. The aim is to infer a definition by a thorough deduction so as to further the debate or even federate the community. An etymological analysis demonstrates the eligibility of standpoints other than biological analogy. Moreover, an analysis of the biological characteristics of a metabolism to be emulated may question the pertinence of the currently employed biological analogy. Here, I propose an alternative view based on the present analysis results and in line with modern ecological precepts, whereby IM is considered as an actual phenomenon. According to the definition derived from the analysishuman-mediated matter change for sustaining a productive system's economic activityIM should be considered as a subset of a complex system of interconnected transformative processes across all scales of life: the metabolic network. The consequences and promising future orientations that may result from adopting such a shift in definition are succinctly explored.Material flow analysis (MFA) is a tool for research and decision support in environmental policy and management. In order to promote the use of MFA at different spatial scales, a quantification of the uncertainty in nationwide, regional, and urban MFA methodologies is provided. In particular, the impact of the input data quality on the main MFA indicators is analyzed and the sources and extent of uncertainties for different spatial scales are listed. The types, origin, and extent of the errors are described in detail and several imputation methods are explained and evaluated. By introducing a novel approach to account measurement errors in data sets with very few details on the measurement errors, this article aims at contributing to the development of a standardized method to account for the uncertainty in MFA studies. This study uses the time series of MFA data for 1996-2011 at three spatial scalesnationwide (Sweden), regional (the Stockholm Region), and metropolitan (Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo)to determine how propagation of measurement errors affects the MFA results. The following MFA indicators were studied: direct material input; domestic processed output; and domestic material consumption. Generally, availability decreased as the spatial scale was lowered, whereas data errors increased. In the specific case of Sweden, the data on freight transport by rail and on waste produced by economic activities at the regional and metropolitan level should be improved.For half a century, system scientists have relied on urban metabolism (UM) as a pragmatic framework to support the needed transition toward sustainable urban development. It has been suggested that information and communication technology (ICT) and, more specifically, smart cities can be leveraged in this transition. Given the recent advances in smart cities, smart urban metabolism (SUM) is considered a technology-enabled evolution of the UM framework, overcoming some of its current limitations. Most significantly, the SUM framework works at high temporal (up to real-time) and spatial (down to household/individual) resolutions. This article presents the first implementation of SUM in the Smart City Stockholm Royal Seaport R&D project; it further analyzes barriers and discusses the potential long-term implications of the findings. Four key performance indicators (KPIs) are generated in real time based on the integration of heterogeneous, real-time data sources. These are kilowatt-hours per square meter, carbon dioxide equivalents per capita, kilowatt-hours of primary energy per capita, and share of renewables percentage. These KPIs are fed back on three levels (household, building, and district) on four interfaces, developed for different audiences. The most challenging barrier identified was accessing and integrating siloed data from the different data owners (utilities, building owners, and so forth). It is hard to overcome unless a significant value is perceived. A number of long-term opportunities were described in the SUM context; among those, it is envisioned that SUM could enable a new understanding of the causalities that govern urbanism and allow citizens and city officials to receive feedback on the system consequences of their choices.This paper aims to provide a historical reading of the urbanization of the water cycle in Madrid and Barcelona. Starting from an urban political ecology view, the urbanization of the water cycle is understood as the mobilization of water resources to keep pace with and sustain urban growth. This process could not be understood without inquiring into the evolution of the urban fabric in both cities. At the same time an understanding of the power choreographies over the water cycle needs to be brought to the fore. In Barcelona, disputes between the municipality and private capital over the water monopoly deeply shaped the trajectory of the urban supply from the mid-19th century until the early 20th century. Later on, under private monopoly, the search for water resources beyond the urban limits required the development of infrastructures such as dams and channels to keep pace with the intense urbanization of the postwar period. On the other hand, the fully public nature of the supplier in Madrid may help to explain the impressive magnitude of the waterworks, which belittle the urbanization of water of the Catalan city, while showing that modernity' in the form of ample supplies of good-quality water arrived in Madrid almost 100 years before Barcelona. Recent environmental and economic crises bring to light the hidden, complex and fragile entanglements that permit the flowing of water into the urban and suburban fabrics.For some years now, interactions between societies and the biosphere have been the subject of socio-ecological studies (SESs), which analyse socio-ecological regimes, trajectories and transitions. This article follows the approach, and seeks to contribute to the analysis of socio-ecological urban trajectories since the Industrial Revolution. It draws on some key notions which are tested and applied to Paris. The urban socio-ecological regime of the industrial era has three major characteristics: i) the near-total externalisation of a more intensive urban metabolism, associated with the breakup of supply areas and the deepening, urban footprint on the environment; ii) the importance of infrastructure to this metabolism, which fits into a process of generalised networking led by engineers and leads to urban technical inter-dependencies; and iii) the urbanisation of landscapes associated with the proliferation of extra-territorial urban influences, despite the loss of certain skills available to the French capital. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Exploring the socioeconomic drivers of environmental pressures in cities is vital for national and global environmental management. The unique features of the mega-city of Chongqing make it a valuable case study to examine environmental pressures from rapid economic development at the city level. This paper reveals the socioeconomic drivers of environmental pressures in Chongqing during the period of 2000-2010 for energy consumption and air, water, and land emissions. Results indicate that Chongqing's environmental pressures increased for energy consumption and CO2 emissions white decreased for SO2, soot, waste water, and solid waste discharge. The main direct contributors, from the producer perspective, to the overall change of environmental pressures were the manufacturing, electricity and water, and construction sectors. From the consumer perspective, the most significant contributors were gross fixed capital formation and net export. In general, changes of per capita final demand and environmental pressure intensity were the most prominent drivers for increasing and reducing environmental pressure. Final demand structure and final demand composition also contributed towards stabilizing environmental pressures while production structure and residential population had a negligible effect. In this light, we suggest approaches for policymakers to systemically balance between different drivers and to reduce environmental pressures in cities. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It is important understanding urbanization where residents outside of the area come into the urbanized region. Urbanized area is the one facing more environmental problems because of intensive population density amplifying more damage to the environment. This paper targets China's rapid urbanization and discusses research and policy needs in the field of sustainable urbanization. We discuss research needs for metabolism studies for sustainability of cities, major driving forces in the context of urbanization, and knowledge integration through stakeholder engagement. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Based on urban metabolism theory, urban energy consumption and carbon emission can be analyzed and the urban energy structure and carbon metabolic processes can be specified. By combining input-output analysis with ecological network analysis, the embodied energy and carbon footprint implied in urban products and services can be quantified. On this basis, we introduced energy structure indices based on the embodied energy per unit carbon emitted (i.e., the emission efficiency), which we used to evaluate the energy structure attributes of the metabolic actors. This approach provides a scientific basis for energy conservation and carbon emission reduction. Beijing is trying to control pollution (especially the smog produced by coal combustion), and this task is complicated by its large metabolic fluxes and strong metabolic influence. In this study, we analyzed the energy consumption structure of 28 sectors in Beijing from the perspective of their carbon footprint, and divided the sectors into four categories based on the relationship between their embodied energy consumption and the emission efficiency. We found that most sectors had high energy consumption and low emission efficiency, and that from 2000 to 2010, Beijing's overall consumption structure alternated between high and low embodied energy per unit of carbon emission, but the overall trend of emission efficiency changed toward higher. The insights provided by our analysis reveal ways to reduce carbon emission. Based on the carbon footprints of the 28 sectors, we propose how managers could adjust its energy consumption structure to decrease energy consumption and carbon emission. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An analysis of the utilisation and quality of rainwater in different collection systems located in the Pereira-Dosquebradas (Colombia) conurbation was conducted to evaluate the conditions in these systems and thus determine whether rainwater is safe water for domestic, commercial and industrial purposes. The quality of rainwater and its relation to selected variables (roofing material, material deposits, piping material and amount of precipitation) were evaluated. Six buildings with different types of roofing (zinc, polycarbonate or fibre cement) that have installed systems to capture rainwater were selected for the evaluation. According to the results, the sampled water is suitable for different uses. In cities, rainwater can be adapted and eventually used as an alternative water source, thereby reducing dependence on local and external sources.Using data from the water service area of the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Northern California, we develop and discuss a method for assessing, at a high resolution, the energy intensity of water treated and delivered to customers of a major metropolitan water district. This method extends previous efforts by integrating hourly data from supervisory control and data acquisition systems with calculations based on the actual structure of the engineered infrastructure to produce a detailed understanding of energy use in space and time within the territory of a large-scale urban water provider. We found significant variations in the energy intensity of delivered potable water resulting from seasonal and topographic effects. This method enhances our understanding of the energy inputs for potable water systems and can be applied to the entire delivery and postuse water life cycle. A nuanced understanding of water's energy intensity in an urban setting enables more intelligent, targeted efforts to jointly conserve water and energy resources that take seasonal, distance, and elevation effects into account.Cities are hotspots of commodity consumption, with implications for both local and systemic water resources. Water flows virtually into and out of cities through the extensive cross-boundary exchange of goods and services. Both virtual and real water flows are affected by water supply investments and urban planning decisions, which influence residential, commercial, and industrial development. This form of water teleconnection is being increasingly recognized as an important aspect of water decision-making. The role of trade and virtual water flows as an alternative to expanding a city's real water supply is rarely acknowledged, with an emphasis placed instead on monotonic expansion of engineering potable water supplies. We perform a literature review of water footprint studies to evaluate the potential and importance of taking virtual flows into account in urban planning and policy. We compare and contrast current methods to assess virtual water flows. We also identify and discuss priorities for future research in urban water footprint analysis.Water footprinting has revealed hydro-economic interdependencies between distant global geographies via trade, especially of agricultural and manufactured goods. However, for metropolitan areas, trade not only entails commodity flows at many scales from intra-municipal to global, but also substantial intra-metropolitan flows of the skilled labor that is essential to a city's high-value economy. Virtual water flows between municipalities are directly relevant for municipal water supply policy and infrastructure investment because they quantify the hydro-economic dependency between neighboring municipalities. These municipalities share a physical water supply and also place demands on their neighbors' water supplies by outsourcing labor and commodity production outside the municipal and water supply system boundary to the metropolitan area. Metropolitan area communities span dense urban cores to fringe agricultural towns, spanning a wide range of the US hydro-economy. This study quantifies water footprints and virtual water flows of the complete economy of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area's municipalities. A novel approach utilized journey to work data to estimate virtual water flows embedded in labor. Commodities dominate virtual water flows at all scales of analysis, however labor is shown to be important for intra-metropolitan virtual water flows. This is the first detailed water footprint analysis of Phoenix, an important city in a water-scarce region. This study establishes a hydro-economic typology for communities to define several niche roles and decision making points of view. This study's findings can be used to classify communities with respect to their relative roles, and to benchmark future improvements in water sustainability for all types of communities. More importantly, these findings motivate cooperative approaches to intra-metropolitan water supply policy that recognize the hydro-economic interdependence of these municipalities and their shared interest in ensuring a sustainable and resilient hydro-economy for all members of the metropolitan area.Urban metabolism refers to the assessment of the amount of resources produced and consumed by urban ecosystems. It has become an important tool to understand how the development of one city causes impacts to the local and regional environment and to support a more sustainable urban design and planning. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to measure the changes in material and energy use occurred in the city of Curitiba (Brazil) between the years of 2000 and 2010. Results reveal better living conditions and socioeconomic improvements derived from higher resource throughput but without complete disregard to environmental issues. Food intake, water consumption and air emissions remained at similar levels; energy use, construction materials and recycled waste were increased. The paper helps illustrate why it seems more adequate to assess the contribution a city makes to sustainable development than to evaluate if one single city is sustainable or not. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban authorities in Europe are confronted with increasing demands by urban dwellers for allotment gardens, but vacant urban soil tends to be scarce and/or polluted by past industrial activities. A possible solution for local authorities could therefore be to promote rooftop gardening. However little technical information exists on certain forms of rooftop urban agriculture, called Z-Farming. In 2012, a pilot experiment was run in Paris (France). Simple and cheap systems of rooftop gardening were tested on a rooftop using as crop substrates only local urban organic waste so as to contribute to the urban metabolism. Production levels and heavy metal contents in cropping substrates and edible vegetables were measured. Available results show (i) high levels of crop production with limited inputs compared to land professional gardening, (ii) low levels of heavy metal pollutants in the edible parts of the crops, especially for Cd and Pb with respect to EU norms for vegetables and (iii) positive influence on yields on organizing the substrate in layers and enhancing the biological activity through earthworm inoculation. These encouraging results allow us to consider that rooftop gardening is feasible and seem to have a great potential to improve urban resiliency. It will nevertheless be necessary to identify more precisely the types of roof that can be used and to assess more fully the generic result of the low level of pollution, as well as the global sustainability of these cropping systems.The correlation of urban metabolism and changes in land use is an important issue in urban ecology, but recent research lacks consideration of the mechanisms and interactions between them. In this research, we did an emergy analysis of the flows of materials, energy, and capital within the socioeconomic system of Beijing. We calculated emergy-based evaluation indices of urban metabolism and land use change, to analyze the relationship between urban metabolism and land use by correlation analysis and regression analysis. Results indicate that the socio-economic activities on built-up land depend on local, non-renewable resource exploitation and external resource inputs. The emergy utilization efficiency of farmland has consistently decreased, but there remains significant utilization potential there. Urban development in Beijing relies on production activities on built-up land, which is subjected to great environmental pressure during extraction of material resources. To keep the economy developing effectively, we suggest that Beijing should commit to development of a circular economy, and change the land-use concept to "Smart Growth". In this paper, we efficaciously solve the problem of conflicting measurement units, and avoid the disadvantages of subjective assignment. Consequently, this work provides not only a more scientific way to study land problems, but also provides a reliable reference for ecological construction and economic development in Beijing.As human society has entered the century of the city, studies of urban ecosystems have shown a booming increase since the beginning of the 21st century. Urban ecology aims to fully understand the problems and find the solutions to sustainability challenges of an increasingly urbanized planet. As typical representatives of developed and developing nations, the U.S. and China are experiencing different urbanization processes. Yet the development of scientific investigations in the field of urban ecology in the two countries seems to have reached the same goal by different means. We compare the development of urban ecology in the U.S. and China in terms of related disciplines, main research fields, and hot topics. In general, American urban ecology connects tightly to a basic ecology research paradigm and trans-disciplinary study, while Chinese urban ecology emphasizes practical problem-solving but lacks sufficient theoretical and technical support. In the end, four key differences between American cities and Chinese cities are discussed, including urbanization stage, urban boundary and population, urban form and landscape, and urban metabolism and management. These differences present both challenges and opportunities for collaboration in urban ecological studies between U.S. and China. The collaboration between urban ecologists of the U.S. and China will contribute not only to the two countries' cities but also to cities from both developed and developing countries.Understanding the drivers of energy and material flows of cities is important for addressing global environmental challenges. Accessing, sharing, and managing energy and material resources is particularly critical for megacities, which face enormous social stresses because of their sheer size and complexity. Here we quantify the energy and material flows through the world's 27 megacities with populations greater than 10 million people as of 2010. Collectively the resource flows through megacities are largely consistent with scaling laws established in the emerging science of cities. Correlations are established for electricity consumption, heating and industrial fuel use, ground transportation energy use, water consumption, waste generation, and steel production in terms of heating-degree-days, urban form, economic activity, and population growth. The results help identify megacities exhibiting high and low levels of consumption and those making efficient use of resources. The correlation between per capita electricity use and urbanized area per capita is shown to be a consequence of gross building floor area per capita, which is found to increase for lower-density cities. Many of the megacities are growing rapidly in population but are growing even faster in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and energy use. In the decade from 2001-2011, electricity use and ground transportation fuel use in megacities grew at approximately half the rate of GDP growth.Localism or regionalization has become a popular topic in urban design, but recent critics raise the question of whether the local or regional scale is most desirable for industrial ecosystems. As a way to explore the claim that localized metabolism is more sustainable, this study examines the costs and benefits of two differentially scaled strategies for the management of post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles originating in the city of Honolulu, Hawai'i: local incineration and transcontinental recycling. We first estimate total environmental impacts of two options using life cycle assessment, and then disaggregate them into local versus non-local impacts to examine the spatial distribution of costs and benefits. We further assess the environmental justification for localized waste management in relation to the broader socio-economic motivations that underlie the way that plastics are managed in Honolulu. In doing so we assess the scale at which waste management is optimized from an environmental standpoint as well as the non-environmental considerations such as security and safety that influence the politics of scale involved in urban metabolic design. By illustrating the trade-offs between a local versus global metabolic pathway for plastic waste, the results from our Honolulu case study are globally relevant for communities interested in sustainable urban design and in particular urban waste management. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The construction sector has grown to have the second-highest energy consumption in China, smaller only than the industrial sector. The objective of this paper is to explore whether compactness is sustainable city form from aspects of urban household energy use carbon emission (UHEUCE). To eliminate social influence as much as possible, we designated a standard family whose social conditions represent the entire city average. Normalized compactness index, connectivity of green space (GS) and water bodies (WB), and accessibility to GS and WB by households were selected as quantitative indicators related to urban sprawl. These indicators were quantified using remote sensing and geophysical information system methods. Urban sprawl aspects of compactness were positively correlated with UHEUCE. The other urban sprawl form indicated by GS and WB connectivity had the same positive correlations with UHEUCE. The greater the GS and WB accessibility, the less UHEUCE. This indicates that designing cities to be compact with less accessibility to GS and WB may increase household energy consumption. Substantial use of GS and WB, even if they are fragmented, will reduce carbon emission from residential energy use. This study provides useful implication toward achieving scientific landscape plans for low carbon city construction. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This forum article explores thermodynamic understanding of the growth of cities, including theoretical foundations, observations, and analysis. The general theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics is reviewed, recognizing differences in interpretation between Prigogine and Schneider and Kay as well as discussing the hypothesis of maximum entropy production. Calculations of exergy gradients in a few cities and settlements, along with measures of anthropogenic heat loss in further cities, support the notion that cities are dissipative structures. The observation that primary energy use per capita increases in Singapore and Hong Kong as they grow is further evidence to support the thermodynamic understanding of the growth of cities, indicative of an increasing rate of entropy production. At the global scale, the strong linear relationship between global urban population and total global energy use, and the distribution of city sizes according to Zipf's law, can be understood as emergent results based on thermodynamics. Parallel results might be derived from models that represent underlying microscale processes, several of which are reviewed. Issues for future research include: development of nonequilibrium thermodynamic models specific to city growth; further study of exergy flows of cities with consistent methodology, including attention to solar energy exchanges in cities; and further exploration of links between thermodynamic and economic models of urban growth.The concept of urban resilience has so far been related mainly to climate change adaptation and disaster management perspectives. Here we aim to broaden the discussion by showing how the framework of urban resilience should be related to wider sustainability challenges, including i) climate change and natural hazard threats, ii) unsustainable urban metabolism patterns and iii) increasing social inequalities in cities. Using three case studies (flood risk management in the Dutch polders, urban-rural teleconnections driving the Bolivian quinoa market, and spatial diversity in the adaptive capacity of Kampala slums),((1)) we draw out significant insights related to scales and sustainability, which will push urban resilience research forward. The key move is to consider both spatial and temporal interactions, in order to shift from the mainstreaming of the resilience-building paradigm toward a critical understanding and management of resilience trade-offs. While urban resilience emerges not necessarily as a normatively positive concept anymore, we argue that addressing multi-scale and temporal aspects of urban resilience will allow greater understanding of global sustainability challenges.This paper investigates the critical role of workers to enhance the resilience of water supply services in cities at war through analyzing the case of Madrid and the Madrid water company Canales del Lozoya during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). We argue that securing the protection of vital urban flows mediated through infrastructures is a key objective of cities under attack. In doing so we contend that examining how those affected by the interruption of these flows cope with the situation represents a valuable but largely neglected form of water management. We illustrate how quotidian knowledge about the urban geography of water flows may have important repercussions for the war effort itself. In a nutshell, the case of Madrid offers an early account of the critical role of water workers in sustaining urban ecologies under fire securing the complex urban metabolism while also contributing to the struggle against invading forces.Energy-related greenhouse gas emission is emerging as a major concern to be addressed. The structure of the urban economy, as the center of energy consumption, has therefore arrested widespread attention on the globe. By employing input-output model as a dynamic approach to simulate urban metabolism processes, structure decomposition analysis is undertaken as a unified framework to clarify the underlying reasons behind increment of GHG emission in Beijing with the latest data. The eight components classified into three categories of changes, i.e., intensity structure, production linkage, and final demand are investigated from the perspectives of comparative contribution and hierarchical structure, identifying the crucial components for total changes and the characteristics within each category at the aggregated and sectoral levels. The asymmetries of contribution across the components and the essential implications for policy makers are presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Considering the complexity that characterizes current socio-ecological crisis, this paper argues that analyses based on complex systems and interdisciplinary approaches are increasingly needed, which in turn appeal for the emergency of novel hybrid socioecological perspectives. Arguments in favor of encouraging the co-production of knowledge of participatory and reflexive nature are presented, followed by a discussion on the main desirable characteristics and prevailing pathologies of knowledge-exchange practices and, in fact, within knowledge production. The just said is then exemplified with the case of political ecology of urban metabolism, a hybrid knowledge frontline field. It is concluded that the convergence of interdisciplinary approaches is a key feature of robust co-production of hybrid knowledge practices (based on broad participatory processes); the later particularly useful for consensual decision-making, say around socioecological complex problems of today.The key to studying urban sustainable development depends on quantifying stores, efficiencies of urban metabolisms and capturing urban metabolisms' mechanisms. This paper builds up the metabolic emergy account and quantifies some important concepts of emergy stores. Emphasis is placed on the urban metabolic model based on the slack based model (SBM) method to measure urban metabolic efficiencies. Urban metabolic mechanisms are discussed by using the regression method. By integrating these models, this paper analyzes the urban metabolic development in Beijing from 2001 to 2010. We conclude that the metabolic emergy stores of Beijing increased significantly from 2001 to 2010, with the emergy imported accounting for most of the increase. The metabolic efficiencies in Beijing have improved since the 2008 Olympic Games. The population, economic growth, industrial structures, and environmental governance positively affect the overall urban metabolism, while the land expansion, urbanization and environmentally technical levels hinder the improving of urban metabolic efficiencies. The SBM metabolic method and the regression model based on the emergy analysis provide insights into the urban metabolic efficiencies and the mechanism. They can promote to integrate such concepts into their sustainability analyses and policy decisions.Industrial ecology introduced a new paradigm of principles and tools useful to academic analysis and decision support activities for industry and policymakers. This paper presents a view of the state of the art of industrial ecology, encompassing the four major theoretical traditions comprising the field, and emphasizing the relevance to practice. The principles of industrial ecology offer a basis for integrating environmental perspectives into production and consumption strategies, though there are significant challenges to be addressed.Studies on urban metabolism have provided important insights in the material and sociopolitical issues associated with the flow of water. However, there is a dearth of studies that reveal how infrastructure, as a hybrid of social and material construct, facilitates disease emergence. The article brings together urban metabolism, political ecology, and anthropological studies to examine the social construction and reconstruction of the material flow through everyday practices for addressing the water problem and its health burden in Ahmedabad city. The article georeferences the water problems and occurrence of diseases and, through interviews, documents Ahmedabad's sociospatial characteristics of water problems and health burden in two case study wards. Through a situated understanding of the everyday practices, the infrastructure is exposed through leakages, reveals the citizens desire for better water quality, and struggle to gain access to water using diverse pressure' tactics. It is these social-material constructs of water that give structure and coherence to urban space, which spatially coincides with the occurrence of diseases. It reveals the sociopolitical drivers of the water problems and identifies different hypotheses of the hotspots of disease emergences. The methodology offers a way forward for researchers and development agencies to improve the surveillance and monitoring of water infrastructure and public health through an incremental approach that takes into consideration the diffuse interplay of power by diverse actors. It charts out avenues for building on the urban metabolism by emphasizing the importance of examining the sociospatiality of the everyday practices for improving resource use efficiencies in cities of rapidly growing economies.Taking an urban metabolism perspective, this article investigates food and feed consumption as well as flows of nitrogen in the city of Vienna during the industrial transformation. It addresses the question of the amount of agricultural products consumed in the city and their nitrogen content, their origin and their fate after consumption. Changes in dietary nitrogen flows in nineteenth century Vienna are embedded in the context of a socio-ecological transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-metabolic regime. Similarities and differences in the size and dynamics of urban nitrogen flows in Vienna and Paris are discussed. Critical reading of historical sources and historical material flow accounting are the methodological backbone of this study. Between 1830 and 1913, inflows of dietary nitrogen into the city increased fivefold. Throughout the time period under observation, the urban waterscape was the most important sink for human and animal excreta. The amount of nitrogen disposed of in the urban waterscape via urban excreta increased sevenfold. The average daily consumption of nitrogen per capita was very similar to that in Paris, but the composition of foodstuff differed. In Vienna, the share of meat in food consumption was considerably higher. Both cities had to face the challenge of increasing output flows. However, urban authorities in Vienna and Paris came to different solutions of how to deal with this challenge. Besides institutional settings, the specific geomorphology of the cities as well as biogeographic factors such as the absorption capacity of the Danube in Vienna and the Seine in Paris mattered.Urban public open space has continuously played a significant role in enhancing the quality of life of urban inhabitants and in supporting urban metabolism. However, open space has experienced a physical and social decline, while its heterogeneity and richness is often neglected and its contribution to the wellbeing of a community ignored within current planning instruments. Therefore, the aim of the research presented in this study is to develop a multicriteria analysis (MCA) method to support the decision process of open space renovation and the selection of a renovation scenario. The method is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and adapts existing models and criteria to the investigation field. It is applied by means of a computer-based tool, which permits an ex-ante evaluation of alternative projects, rating them against several weighted objectives using a set of indicators, thus combining the common design practice of scenario planning with a multicriteria analysis. In order to clarify the tool operation, this article illustrates its application to a theoretical case, which represents a conceivable public open space renovation in a simplified way. The choice of a theoretical case, instead of an actual one, permits us to follow the process without referring to a specific situation, in order to have a general overview of the MCA method's implementation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban metabolism is a concept employed to understand the flow of energy and materials through urban areas. However, applying this approach at the city level has been limited by the lack of data at this scale. This paper reviews the current application of the urban metabolism concept and proposes the concept of a "smart urban metabolism" (SUM). Through integrating ICT and smart-city technologies, the SUM model can provide real-time feedback on energy and material flows, from the level of the household to the urban district. This is highlighted through an example of its application in the Stockholm Royal Seaport, Sweden.Urban areas cover 2% of the Earth's land surface, while hosting more than half of the global population and are estimated to account for around three quarters of CO2 emissions from global energy use. In order to mitigate existing and future direct and indirect environmental pressures resulting from urban resource use, it is necessary to investigate and better understand resource and pollution flows associated with urban systems. Urban Metabolism (UM) is an urban environmental assessment framework that measures resource and pollution flows that enter and exit urban systems. However, UM presents an important shortcoming, namely its "black box" approach. Indeed, standalone, UM figures are not enough to explain why they are specific and exclusive to a city and whether this city is heading towards a more sustainable state. In this study, four transversal aspects that attempt to overcome this "black box" approach are presented. These additional layers of understanding include temporal evolution, spatialisation and disaggregation, identification of resource use and pollution drivers and finally the indirect resource use and pollution emissions that occur outside of the urban boundaries.The purpose of this study is to adopt the urban metabolism method to compare bio-waste scenarios of reuse and landfills. The study focuses on food waste (FW) generated from Taipei City to determine what outcomes will result if bio-waste is transformed into energy or material resources. The results show that under the scenario of bio-waste reuse, metabolic efficiency in Taipei increases, e.g., the same amount of resources can be used to produce more products. However, the urban impact also increases due to the bio-waste conversion process. Applying the life cycle assessment method of quantifying the environmental burden for bio-waste conversion technology selection enhances the urban metabolism efficiency of resources in Taipei and reduces the urban impact on the environment. The most environmentally friendly FW conversion technology is composting after pre-treatment of high-temperature cooking. The next most environmentally friendly method is direct composting treatment. This is followed by anaerobic co-digestion with sewage sludge, and the worst option is transforming FW into bio-ethanol. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.A half-a-century historical series (1962-2008) of energy and resource consumption in the city of Rome (Italy) is investigated in order to ascertain the links between resource use and complexity change. Environmental, material, and energy inputs evaluated as actual energy and mass flows, are converted into impact indicators (local and cumulative abiotic material requirement, water demand, energy demand, airborne emissions and finally total emergy use). All calculated indicators are interpreted within a comprehensive framework SUMMA (SUstainability Multimethod Multiscale Assessment) capable to take into account different dimensions of the investigated systems. Based on the same set of input data, SUMMA generates consistent performance indicators, in which the results of each method are set up against each other and contribute to providing a comprehensive picture on which conclusions can be drawn. An evaluation of inter-linkages and synergies among the different resources and performance patterns in the city of Rome is also presented by decomposition equations to identify the major drivers of change within the period investigated as well as the future low-resource scenarios. Results show that sustainability of the urban system decreased steadily during the investigated period, as confirmed by intensive and extensive parameters. The increased fraction of imports compared to local sources, of non-renewables compared to renewables, as well as of population and per capita income not accompanied by sufficient increase of energy and material efficiency are the major drivers of the pattern of unsustainability and call for policies that focus on optimisation of the patterns of production and consumption in times of unavoidable shrinking of the resource base.The concept of urban metabolism was first used by Wolman (1965) to quantify the flows of energy and materials in and out of a hypothetical city and was developed by Douglas (1983), which describes the equations to measure energy, water and balances that constitute the urban metabolism. However, most studies are focused on research rather than practice-oriented and tend to focus on one or more aspects of urban metabolism. The proper integration of available models has not yet managed to give an integral vision of urban sustainability in support of assessment practices of planning and impact (Zhang, 2013). The urban metabolism is built from systems such as water, energy and materials, and generally these systems have a linear sequence of processing, so that the operation of the city depends entirely on imported resources high quality. So in terms of the linear resource management is highly inefficient metabolism and promotes a high dependence on external resources to the city (Leduc & Van Kann, 2012). The analysis of urban metabolism can be an important tool for the study of urban ecosystem. Cities like artificial systems can be redesigned from a better perspective as ecosystems natural, but what approaches should be considered for simulating a natural ecosystem? For this it is appropriate to analyze the performance standards of the urban system based on ecological principles and methods. When a city is compared as a living organism studying its urban metabolism, all flows of energy and materials must be considered.Urban communities can be defined as key unit in advancing low-carbon city. The perspective of carbon metabolism in urban communities can help in unveiling emission characteristics and complex interactions between urban environment and communities. This paper introduced the metabolic perspective to unveil the intrinsic impetus of carbon emissions and reflect environmental impact to related systems in urban communities integrating the urban and household metabolism. The interactions of carbon metabolism at urban, communal and household levels were investigated to trace carbon flows. A conceptual metabolic model was also developed to reveal the mechanism of carbon metabolism in urban communities. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Ground-based measurements of atmospheric trace gas species and criteria pollutants are essential for understanding emissions dynamics across space and time. Gas composition in the lower 50m of the atmosphere has the greatest direct impacts on human health as well as ecosystem processes; hence data at this level are necessary for addressing carbon-cycle- and public-health-related questions. However, such surface data are generally associated with stationary measurement towers, where spatial representation is limited due to the high cost of establishing and maintaining an extensive network of measurement stations. We describe here a compact mobile laboratory equipped to provide high-precision, high-frequency, continuous, on-road synchronous measurements of CO2, CO, CH4, H2O, NOx, O-3, aerosol, meteorological, and geospatial position data. The mobile laboratory has been deployed across the western USA. In addition to describing the vehicle and its capacity, we present data that illustrate the use of the laboratory as a powerful tool for investigating the spatial structure of urban trace gas emissions and criteria pollutants at spatial scales ranging from single streets to whole ecosystem and regional scales. We assess the magnitude of known point sources of CH4 and also identify fugitive urban CH4 emissions. We illustrate how such a mobile laboratory can be used to better understand emissions dynamics and quantify emissions ratios associated with trace gas emissions from wildfire incidents. Lastly, we discuss additional mobile laboratory applications in health and urban metabolism.This paper explores the potential of immaterial forms of work for a renewed politics of urban metabolisms where the production of emancipatory subjectivity is recast as a crucial moment in the process of making urban space. Through a critical engagement with the works of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, it will be argued that their investigations of the current condition of labour provide a powerful toolkit to get a glimpse of the dense, intricate entanglements between human and nonhuman worlds that emerge from science, innovation, affects, arts, and so forth, in the constitution of radical political ecologies. The paper then analyses the case of the struggle for water in Bucaramanga, a city in Colombia threatened by a large-scale mining project, which illustrates how collaborative engagement, communicational strategies, technoscientific debates, and legal action-among others-can produce political solidarities and social subjects that enhance the democratic and socioecological content of contemporary urban worlds.This paper develops a political-industrial ecology approach to explore the urban water metabolism of Los Angeles, which sprawls for thousands of miles across the American West. Conventional approaches to quantify urban carbon footprints rely on global, national, or regional averages and focus narrowly on improving the efficiency of flows of resources moving into and out of the city. These approaches tend to "black box" the methodologies that guide the carbon emissions calculus and the social, political, ecological, and economic processes that perpetually reshape nature-society metabolisms. To more fully delineate the water supply metabolism of Los Angeles, this paper combines theory and method from urban political ecology and industrial ecology. Specifically, we infuse spatiality into the traditional life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach by coupling it with GIS. By illustrating how decisions about system boundaries, emissions factors, and other building blocks fundamentally shape the end result, this intervention at once destabilizes and advances the LCA enterprise. Then, using interviews and historical analysis, we provide a critical analysis of how LA's various water supply infrastructures came to be and illustrate how a sustainable transition based on a narrow carbon calculus is problematized by historical circumstances and strategic (and often conflicting) new paradigms to secure water resources. The political-industrial ecology approach offers valuable insights into the spatiality of material metabolisms and the socio-political processes (re)shaping the relations between nature and society. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Today, 52% of the world's population live in urban areas and this number is expected to rise to 64-69% by 2050. Cities consume most of the world's energy and materials, and are responsible of about three quarters of direct and indirect GHG emissions. Consumption patterns, however, are asymmetrical among cities and citizens. Urban metabolism, or the analysis of energy and material flows and stocks (infrastructure) that shape settlements, allows the identification not only of the dimensions of these flows and stocks, but also their main technical and socio-ecological features. These can also be evaluated from an urban political ecology perspective, that is, in terms of power relationships that define who gets access to, or control over, natural resources and other components of urban space. This article opens with a general introduction to urbanization trends, followed by a presentation of urban metabolism and urban political ecology approaches as useful analytical tools for assessing the access, management and usufruct of water in Mexico City's Metropolitan Area. A general description of the hydropolitan region of study is then offered in order to analyze urban water flows and their socioecological implications for the water-energy nexus and climate. The article concludes with a call for a paradigm change in order to transform urban settlements towards more livable, sustainable and equitable ones; a process that demands not only paying attention to the form but also to the function of urban territories within capitalist productive relationships. In this context the design and execution of public policies needed for transforming the current trend of constructing, operating, managing, and living in cities must be proactive, imaginative, and based on an integral metabolic planning that allows the adjustment of planning and policy tools to overarching contextual changes and to historical trends and socially desirable futures. Specific recommendations include the bottom-up management of water infrastructure and the guarantee of human rights to water, sanitation and a healthy environment; these are components of the ' right to the city.'Since the Balearics are one of the key tourism destinations in Europe, the tourism industry has entailed a radical transformation of coastal life on the islands. In the 1960s and 1970s, fish captures increased enormously due to the expansion of consumption derived from tourism, and through technological improvements. There has been a change in target species from cheap fish consumed by local people towards expensive species consumed by tourists. However, since the 1980s a combination of factors including the adoption of the EU Common Fisheries Policy, the globalization of trade, and overfishing of some target species has led to a drastic fall in fishing sector jobs, catch reductions, and an increase in cheap imports. This article analyses the transformation of Balearic fisheries combining ecological economics (EE) and political ecology (PE) approaches. Material flow accounting (MFA) and the ecological footprint (EF) are applied in order to conceptualize the biophysical dimension of fisheries in relation to the historical dynamics of capital in the archipelago. Between 1940 and 2012, total fish catches doubled the official landings, while non-reported or hidden catches were underestimated. In the neoliberal period (1990-2012), fish catches decreased and seafood consumption was satisfied mainly through imports, five times the local captures. Thus, the metabolism of fish consumption in the Balearics illustrates the logics of capital and its metabolism in advanced capitalist regions, characterized by the displacement of socio-ecological conflicts to distant waters.Purpose - City is an artificial dynamic open giant complex system, whose multifunctional and interdisciplinary characteristics leads to significant complexity. While challenges arising from individual urban functions have been the focus of urban studies, major urban challenges such as traffic congestion and inefficiency of resource usages may originate from the "interface" where different urban functions interact. Previous research has revealed the potential that regarding city as a system-of-systems (SoS) may shed light on solutions to various urban challenges. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - To examine this research potential, this paper begins with an overview of challenges in urbanization and current approaches which lack systematic solutions. The idea of applying SoS approach is then inspired by existing studies on urban metabolism where city is regarded as an entire system. This idea is followed by definition and characteristics of SoS, as well as comprehensive overview of the state of the art on SoS-based solutions to urban challenges. This paper then discusses the merits and limitations of current studies on SoS for urbanization, followed by a case study which precedes research visions. Findings - The paper finds that regarding city as SoS is a potentially effective approach for urban studies. This is highlighted by original research visions on how to advance this line of research. These research visions point out a few ideas for future research. It particularly highlights the role of human and information in the establishment, management and evolution of various urban functions. Originality/value - The originality of this paper lies in the use of the conception of "SoS" to emphasize the importance of properly modeling human and information in an urban system so as to better reveal the intra-SoS mechanism.

 After the severe droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, and subsequent debates about desertification, analyses of satellite images reveal that the West African Sahel has become greener again. In this paper we report a study on changes in tree cover and tree species composition in three village landscapes in northern Burkina Faso, based on a combination of methods: tree density change detection using aerial photos and satellite images, a tree species inventory including size class distribution analysis, and interviews with local farmers about woody vegetation changes. Our results show a decrease in tree cover in the 1970s followed by an increase since the mid-1980s, a pattern correlating with the temporal trends in rainfall as well as remotely sensed greening in the region. However, both the inventory and interview data shows that the species composition has changed substantially towards a higher dominance of drought-resistant and exotic species. This shift, occurring during a period of increasing annual precipitation, points to the complexity of current landscape changes and questions rain as the sole primary driver of the increase in tree cover. We propose that the observed changes in woody vegetation (densities, species composition and spatial distribution) are mediated by changes in land use, including intensification and promotion of drought tolerant and fast growing species. Our findings, which indicate a rather surprising trajectory of land cover change, highlight the importance of studies that integrate evidence of changes in tree density and species composition to complement our understanding of land use and vegetation change trajectories in the Sahel obtained from satellite images. We conclude that a better understanding of the social-ecological relations and emerging land use trajectories that produce new types of agroforestry parklands in the region is of crucial importance for designing suitable policies for climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation and the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services that benefit local livelihoods in one of the world's poorest regions. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.This paper investigates the feasibility of changes in cropland-use as an adaptation strategy to minimise the economy-wide costs of climate change on agriculture. Nepal makes an interesting case study as it is one of the most vulnerable agricultural economies within South Asia. We develop a comparative static multi household computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Nepal, with a nested set of constant elasticity of transformation (CET) functional forms, to model the allocation of land within different agricultural sectors. Land transformation elasticities in these CET functions are allowed to reflect the ease of switching from one crop to another based on their agronomic characteristics. The results suggest that, in the long run, farmers in Nepal tend to allocate land to crops that are comparatively less impacted by climate change, such as paddy, thereby minimising the economy-wide impacts of climate change. Furthermore, the results reveal that land-use change tends to reduce the income disparity between different household groups by significantly moderating the income losses of marginal farmers. Therefore, it is suggested that policy makers in Nepal should prioritise schemes such as providing climate-smart paddy varieties (i.e., those that are resistant to heat, drought and floods) to farmers, subsidising fertilizers, improving agronomic practices, and educating farmers to switch from crops that are highly impacted by climate change to those that are not, such as paddy. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To understand better the adaptation strategies of intra-annual radial growth in Pious halepensis and Pious sylvestris to local environmental conditions, we examined the seasonal rhythm of cambial activity and cell differentiation at tissue and cellular levels. Two contrasting sites differing in temperature and amount of precipitation were selected for each species, one typical for their growth and the other represented border climatic conditions, where the two species coexisted. Mature P. halepensis trees from Mediterranean (Spain) and sub-Mediterranean (Slovenia) sites, and P sylvestris from sub-Mediterranean (Slovenia) and temperate (Slovenia) sites were selected. Repeated sampling was performed throughout the year and samples were prepared for examination with light and transmission electron microscopes. We hypothesized that cambial rhythm in trees growing at the sub-Mediterranean site where the two species co-exist will be similar as at typical sites for their growth. Cambium in P halepensis at the Mediterranean site was active throughout the year and was never truly dormant, whereas at the sub-Mediterranean site it appeared to be dormant during the winter months. In contrast, cambium in P. sylvestris was clearly dormant at both sub-Mediterranean and temperate sites, although the dormant period seemed to be significantly longer at the temperate site. Thus, the hypothesis was only partly confirmed. Different cambial and cell differentiation rhythms of the two species at the site where both species co-exist and typical sites for their growth indicate their high but different adaptation strategies in terms of adjustment of radial growth to environmental heterogeneity, crucial for long-term tree performance and survival.This study evaluates the effect on the availability of water resources for agriculture of expected future changes in precipitation and temperature distributions in north-western Africa. It also puts forward some locally derived adaptation strategies to climate change that can have a positive impact on water resources in the Chtouka Alt Baha region. Historical baselines of precipitation and temperature were derived using satellite data respectively from CHIRPS and CRU, while future projections of temperature and precipitation were extracted from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment database (CORDEX). Projections were also generated for two future periods (2030-2049 and 2080-2099) under two Representative Concentration Pathways: RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Regional climate models and satellite data outputs were evaluated by calculating their bias and RMSE against historical baseline and observed data. Under the RCP8.5 scenario, temperature in the region shows an increase by 2 degrees C for the 2030-2049 time period, and by 4 to 5 degrees C towards the end of the 21st century. According to the RCP4.5 scenario, precipitation shows a reduction of 10 to 30% for the period 2030-2049, up to 60% for 2080-2099. Outputs from the climate change projections were used to force the HEC-HMS hydrological model. Simulation results indicate that water deficit at basin level will likely triple towards 2050 due to increase in water demand and decrease in aquifer recharge and dam storage. This alarming situation, in a country that already suffers from water insecurity, emphasizes the need for more efforts to implement climate change adaptation measures. This paper presents an assessment of 38 climate change adaptation measures according to several criteria. The evaluation shows that measures affecting the management of water resources have the highest benefit-to-effortsxatio, which indicates that decision makers and stakeholders should increasingly focus their efforts on management measures. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The study of psychological barriers and the attribution of social meaning is a complex and subjective process, but essential for the development of strategies to adapt to climate change and land-use management. The objective of this paper is to point out and discuss aspects that comprise climate vulnerability, especially regarding the climate perceptions understood as an element for the development of community adaptation strategies. The first part presents two study cases and the second part presents propositions for developing climate adaptation strategies based on the results of these cases. The paper focuses on two aspects: the perception of climate dynamics and the relationship between vulnerability and local climate dynamics. In order to establish the relationship between climate dynamics and the level of vulnerability perceived, a qualitative approach was adopted. Field data collection consisted of observing local civil association meetings and conducting semi-structured interviews with local actors. Although both communities studied are strongly affected by climate events, their perception of climate influences is essentially different. The difference in perception arises mainly from the different context in which climate events acquire meaning, rather than any ability of assigning meaning to possible climate change. To understand the dynamics of establishing an adaptation strategy, the motivational problems would be a stimulus, a causative agent of reflections on the conditions of vulnerability to climate change and reflection about their limit-situations. The final propositions present "Adaptation learning process pre-steps framework" that emerges from the description of contrasts in perceptions/cognitions observed between the two study cases. It is a model for the visualization of different and better living conditions, the unknown-viable, which enable social actors to become aware of capacity of acting and governance. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This study compared the densest available database of tree-ring growth with the longest Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) information available at the global scale to quantify the relationship between annual forest growth and the NDVI across different forest types and regions and to characterize the patterns of response of forest growth to NDVI values at different temporal scales. We found a general positive relationship between the inter-annual NDVI variability and the annual tree growth in most of the analyzed forests. Nevertheless, there were strong differences in the tree growth responses to NDVI, given that the annual tree-ring records in each forest responded in a different way to the magnitude, seasonality and accumulation period of the NDVI values. Thus, we found eight main patterns of tree-ring response to the NDVI, which were related to the forest type and climate conditions of each corresponding site. The identified patterns may be useful for determining early-warning signals of changes in forest growth over large areas based on remote sensing information. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This paper analyzes and explains the development of forest governance over time and its impact on forest dependent livelihoods in Sudan. Therefore, a qualitative historical analysis method was used to capture and interpret the analytical dimensions of the Political Ecology Approach (PEA). The historical review of the forestry development provides an insight into Sudan's transforming governance framework for forest access and use, especially the related legislation, policies and resource administrations. This study concludes that unequally distributed forest resource access and institutional arrangements over time are detrimental factors for forest-dependent poverty and environmental degradation. Our study suggests that a more supportive governance framework, which integrates rural livelihood vulnerability with sustainability parameters, is needed thus to resolve the currently most contradictory forest management paradigms. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in the Sahel mainly arise from competition over land and water resources or because of livestock damage to crops. Rather than being linked to larger environmental change processes such as climate change, conflicts are often caused by inappropriate zoning of land, governance and unequal power relations between stakeholders. However, conflicts may be affected by more short-term weather and resource information that guide mobility of pastoralists. In this paper, we therefore explore if improved weather and resource information and improvement in its communication could prevent conflicts or reduce their severity. Based on a survey of key stakeholders involved in dissemination of weather and resource information and studies on pastoral access to and use of information, we conclude that improved information may both reduce and increase the level of conflict, depending on the context. Communication of information will need to go beyond just the weather and resource information and also include the multiple options for herd movements as well as providing information on herd crowding and potential conflict areas.Anthropogenic climate change will likely increase diarrhea rates for communities with inadequate water, sanitation, or hygiene facilities including those with intermittent water supplies. Current approaches to study these impacts typically focus on the effect of temperature on all-cause diarrhea while excluding precipitation and diarrhea etiology while not providing actionable adaptation strategies. We develop a partially mechanistic, systems approach to estimate future diarrhea prevalence and design adaptation strategies. The model incorporates downscaled global climate models, water quality data, quantitative microbial risk assessment, and pathogen prevalence in an agent-based modeling framework incorporating precipitation and diarrhea etiology. It is informed using water quality and diarrhea data from Hubli-Dharwad, India a city with an intermittent piped water supply exhibiting seasonal water quality variability vulnerable to climate change. We predict all-cause diarrhea prevalence to increase by 4.9% (Range: 1.5-9.0%) by 2011-2030, 11.9% (Range: 7.1-18.2%) by 2046-2065, and 18.2% (Range: 9.1-26.2%) by 2080-2099. Rainfall is an important modifying factor. Rotavirus prevalence is estimated to decline by 10.5% with Cryptosporidium and E. coli prevalence increasing by 9.9% and 6.3%, respectively, by 2080-2099 in this setting. These results suggest that ceramic water filters would be recommended as a climate adaptation strategy over chlorination. This work highlights the vulnerability of intermittent water supplies to climate change and the urgent need for improvements.Climate change is a threat to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in sub-Saharan Africa as its impacts can lead to increased incidences of poverty and inequality which can subsequently lead to a 12% decline in the Human Development Index (HDI) for sub-Saharan Africa. Emerging countries such as China have the potential to support Africa to achieve the SDGs by pioneering South-South Climate Finance (SSCF) modalities. In order to increase knowledge on climate informed development and the role of China in global climate governance, the paper examined various research articles, case studies, policy briefs and project reports. Sino-African aid, investments and trade were noted as essential in mitigating Africa's climate change vulnerabilities which induce poverty traps and inequality. Some African countries were noted to have a comparative advantage in environmental standards over China but lacked the initiative to use this comparative advantage to enhance the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and assist China to have a sustainable growth trajectory. The paper concludes that SSCF modalities can enhance climate risk management in Africa if they focus on improving financial inclusion and improving climate finance flows towards climate change adaptation activities in Africa. Additionally, to increase the effectiveness and impact of Chinese climate finance support to Africa, African policymakers should not allow political and market forces to decide how climate related support from China should be allocated as decisions based on political and market forces could potentially promote an inequitable distribution of funds and ignore the most vulnerable countries and regions.In this paper, we propose climate adaptation solutions for the green sectors in three different zones of MENA: Egypt's Delta (irrigated), Karak, in the highlands of Jordan (rainfed), and Lebanon's Orontes basin (mixed: rainfed-irrigated). We analysed land use and crop intensification, and calculated the economic productivity of water - a critical scarce resource in MENA. By integrating the results with evidence from literature on the potential impacts of climate change and socio-economic factors, we could identify vulnerability levels of the three regions and propose adaptation measures relying of the concept of the "food-water-energy nexus." While the vulnerability levels are found to be high in the Delta (Egypt) and Karak (Jordan), mainly due to water scarcity and poor adaptive capacity, the vulnerability level is moderate in the Orontes zone (Lebanon) due to a diversified agricultural sector and good market development, coupled with moderate water scarcity. Proposed adaptation solutions range from measures to improve technical efficiency, to measures that encourage economically efficient allocation by use of market forces. For both cases, the development of market opportunities is emphasized to make the proposed measures attractive to farmers.The demands of mitigation and adaptation policies are important to understanding a country's climate change preparation by providing microfinance in the agricultural sector. This could be seen as a strategy to fight against the challenges of future food security. In 2014, Indonesia established climate change adaptation policies. This legislation aims to pave the way for making actions on climate change adaptation mainstream in national and local development planning. Public and private finance have supported the implementation of the climate actions. However, most funding is still used for mitigation. Adaptation finance needs support, especially in agriculture. This research paper studies opportunities for microfinance to play a role together with existing resources in supporting climate change adaptation in Indonesia. The data was acquired and analysed through a literature review, analysis of case studies and interviews with stakeholders in the climate change-related financial sector. The central findings regarding the opportunity for microfinance to contribute to the existing schemes in Indonesian climate change adaptation finance for agriculture are worthy of the result. This study found that adaptation finance is mostly used for indirect activities. Meanwhile, local communities, and farmers in particular, need directly targeted measures to adapt to climate change. An alternative approach is providing microfinance, insurance and capacity development for farmers to produce high quality agricultural products. This would contribute to optimizing the agri-food value chain, which supports socio-economic development of stakeholders, especially farmers. Hence, microfinance appears to be one potential solution to support direct climate change adaptation actions for the agricultural sector. However, this may not be strong enough to finance the entire needs for agricultural climate actions. Adaptation is contextual, so it has to be grounded in the needs of local communities. Microfinance needs public sectors support as well as other resources from the private sector. In the case of rapid response to disasters, which often destroy the agricultural sector, microfinance should be advantageous in supporting adaptation. However, in reality, it does not work, as it is prevented by regulations. So, this can be an area the public sector can support as a risk-taker as well as by providing initial funds and resources for scaling up efforts.Fire refugia, sometimes referred to as fire islands, shadows, skips, residuals, or fire remnants, are an important element of the burn mosaic, but we lack a quantitative framework that links observations of fire refugia from different environmental contexts. Here, we develop and test a conceptual model for how predictability of fire refugia varies according to topographic complexity and fire weather conditions. Refugia were quantified as areas unburned or burned at comparatively low severity based on remotely sensed burn severity data. We assessed the relationship between refugia and a suite of terrain-related explanatory metrics by fitting a collection of boosted regression tree models. The models were developed for seven study fires that burned in conifer-dominated forested landscapes of the Western Cordillera of Canada between 2001 and 2014. We fit nine models, each for distinct levels of fire weather and terrain ruggedness. Our framework revealed that the predictability and abundance of fire refugia varied among these environmental settings. We observed highest predictability under moderate fire weather conditions and moderate terrain ruggedness (ROC-AUC = 0.77), and lowest predictability in flatter landscapes and under high fire weather conditions (ROC-AUC = 0.63-0.68). Catchment slope, local aspect, relative position, topographic wetness, topographic convergence, and local slope all contributed to discriminating where refugia occur but the relative importance of these topographic controls differed among environments. Our framework allows us to characterize the predictability of contemporary fire refugia across multiple environmental settings and provides important insights for ecosystem resilience, wildfire management, conservation planning, and climate change adaptation.This study examined the strategies employed by farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change on agricultural practices. A structured interview schedule was used to collect data from 220 farmers. Frequency, percentages and mean statistic were used to present the results of the data collected. The results show that the mean age of the farmers was 51 years with an average of 22 years of farming experience. The majority (75%) of the farmers were aware of climate change within their environment. Self-observation and experience (42.4%) over the years was the source of awareness of climate change. The majority (73.6%) of the farmers opined that in recent times, flooding had increased which is an indication of climate change. Reduction in the use of generator to get power in the farmers' houses (69.1%) and crop rotation practices (67.3%) were mitigation and adaptation strategies employed by the farmers against the effect of climate change. The study recommends that government of states should enforce the policy on afforestation as a mitigation measure against climate change.The study assessed the information needs of rural farmers on climate change issues in Enugu State, Nigeria. Using the multistage sampling procedure, 152 respondents were selected and data were collected through the use of a structured interview schedule. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and multiple linear regression model were used for the analysis. Results of the study showed that all (100.0%) the respondents were aware of climate change, but lacked adequate knowledge of key climate change issues. The multiple linear regression model revealed a significant influence of years of formal education (t= 2.020; p <= 0.05), membership of social organizations (t= 2.385; p <= 0.05), number of climate change training (t= -2.438; p= p <= 0.05), farm size (t=2.564; p <= 0.05), and access to credit (t=2.833; p <= 0.05) on the respondents' level of knowledge on climate change. The information needs on climate change as perceived by farmers were: use of improved varieties (over bar(x)=1.80), occupational diversification (over bar(x)=1.78), and change in timing of farm operations (over bar(x)=1.76), among others. Poor extension services and infrastructure were the major constraints to effective communication of climate change information. The study recommends the empowerment of extension agents by government to teach farmers climate change adaptation and mitigation measures using languages they can understand and in a participatory manner so as to enable them cope with the challenges of climate change.Climate change is expected to have immensely detrimental effects on agriculture. Changing climate patterns will also make many locations inhospitable to the crops currently grown there. In order to mitigate the effects of climate change on agriculture, farmers should adapt by changing the mix of crops grown in a given location. Federal crop insurance masks incentives American farmers would otherwise have to adapt to climate change through crop choice. Large premium subsidies-with most insured farmers paying less than half of the actuarially sound premium-are a huge part of this problem. This Note explains the connection between crop choice and climate change. It then analyzes existing proposals for reforming the crop insurance system to better incentivize adaptation to climate change, and highlights some political and practical obstacles to doing so. Finally, it argues that a tiered subsidy system-in which crops at high risk of failure due to location-specific climate risks would receive lower subsidies-could be a feasible, incremental solution to the problem.Many amphibian populations in desert environments are likely at risk of decline or extirpation due to more extreme weather driven by climate change. Most desert species are explosive breeders, taking advantage of rainfall large enough to potentially support reproduction. Hence, management strategies for amphibians in general may not apply to anurans in temperate and subtropical deserts. Sustaining populations of desert amphibians is complex in that we are managing species assemblages that are relatively vulnerable to climate change, while planning for an environment that will change in ways that are not clear. However, we can improve the success of proactive management by integrating physiology with ecology within the context of a changing climate. Explicit consideration of physiology and ecology can target efficient habitat management actions such as identifying where to add shading or to extend hydroperiod. This approach can also improve outcomes when re-establishing native fauna by identifying life stages robust to release. Further we can improve our management of invasive species by explicit consideration of physiological constraints on dispersal capability of the invasive species to help plan where to fragment habitat connectivity to block invasions. To effectively plan for desert amphibians and climate change, science, management and policy makers must openly communicate about what we know, what information we lack, and the limitations of our knowledge. By explicitly including physiology in our management decisions we can refine our approach and more efficiently apply limited resources of time and money.Understanding the potential future impacts of climate change along the supply chain for highly traded fisheries products can inform choices to enhance future global seafood security. We examine the supply chains of the Australian tropical rock lobster fishery (TRL) and southern rock lobster fishery (SRL), with similar destination markets but different catch methods and fishing communities. A boat-to-market analysis allows for comparison and illustration of the effects of single supply-chain aspects. We used life cycle assessment to provide an overview of the environmental footprint, expressed as global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication, and cumulative energy demand, for two lobster products: live animals and frozen tails. The export phase contributed 44% and 56% of GWP of live-weight lobster for SRL and TRL, respectively. The SRL fishery currently produces 68% of the combined 1,806.7 tonnes of lobster product and 78% of the combined global warming for the two fisheries over the whole supply chain. We develop climate adaptation options that: (1) reduce the overall footprint; (2) consider alternative supply-chain strategies (e.g., reduce cost); and (3) predicted impact of future climate change. Adaptation options include: more direct export routes and change in the export transport mode. Value adding and product differentiation, which can level out seasonality and thus spread risk, is likely to become increasingly important for both increases and decreases in predicted climate-induced abundance of fish species.Urban green infrastructure (UGI) has been increasingly promoted as a key measure to mitigate heat stress in cities caused by the urban heat island effect and climate change impacts, including climate variability and extremes. However, comparable information concerning the performance of different UGI types to moderate such impacts is mostly lacking. This creates serious challenges for urban planners who need to decide on the most effective measures while considering spatial and administrative constraints. This study investigates how different types and quantities of UGI, i.e. trees, green roofs, and green facades, affect pedestrian thermal comfort. The study was applied to high-density residential areas under current and future climatic conditions. Climate change will on average increase afternoon Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) values by 2.4 K; however, this could be vastly reduced by different UGI scenarios. Planting trees had the strongest impact with an average PET reduction of 13% compared with existing vegetation. Trees shade open spaces and provide evapotranspirative cooling. Another valuable adaptation option is green facades, which have mitigating effects of 5%-10%. In contrast, the effects of green roofs were negligible. Our results indicate that increasing the share of green cover did not directly correspond to the magnitude of the PET reduction. Placing vegetation strategically in heat-exposed areas is more effective than just aiming at a high percentage of green cover. We conclude that our extensive comparative analysis provides empirical evidence to support UGI on the micro-scale and assists planners and decision-makers to effectively select and prioritise concrete measures to adapt to climate change. (C) 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.Climate change and related adaptation strategies have gender-differentiated impacts. This paper reviews how gender is framed in 41 papers on climate change adaptation through an intersectionality lens. The main findings show that while intersectional analysis has demonstrated many advantages for a comprehensive study of gender, it has not yet entered the field of climate change and gender. In climate change studies, gender is mostly handled in a men-versus-women dichotomy and little or no attention has been paid to power and social and political relations. These gaps which are echoed in other domains of development and gender research depict a 'feminization of vulnerability' and reinforce a 'victimization' discourse within climate change studies. We argue that a critical intersectional assessment would contribute to unveil agency and emancipatory pathways in the adaptation process by providing a better understanding of how the differential impacts of climate change shape, and are shaped by, the complex power dynamics of existing social and political relations.This paper examines climate change adaptation and gender issues through an application of a feminist intersectional approach. This approach permits the identification of diverse adaptation responses arising from the existence of multiple and fragmented dimensions of identity (including gender) that intersect with power relations to shape situation-specific interactions between farmers and ecosystems. Based on results from contrasting research cases in Bihar and Uttarakhand, India, this paper demonstrates, inter alia, that there are geographically determined gendered preferences and adoption strategies regarding adaptation options and that these are influenced by the socio-ecological context and institutional dynamics. Intersecting identities, such as caste, wealth, age and gender, influence decisions and reveal power dynamics and negotiation within the household and the community, as well as barriers to adaptation among groups. Overall, the findings suggest that a feminist intersectional approach does appear to be useful and worth further exploration in the context of climate change adaptation. In particular, future research could benefit from more emphasis on a nuanced analysis of the intra-gender differences that shape adaptive capacity to climate change.The main goal of this special issue is to offer a room for interdisciplinary and engaged research in global environmental change (GEC), where gender plays a key role in building resilience and adaptation pathways. In this editorial paper, we explain the background setting, key questions and core approaches of gender and feminist research in vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to GEC. Highlighting the interlinkages between gender and GEC, we introduce the main contributions of the collection of 11 papers in this special issue. Nine empirical papers from around the globe allow to understand how gendered diversity in knowledge, institutions and everyday practices matters in producing barriers and options for achieving resilience and adaptive capacity in societies. Additionally, two papers contribute to the theoretical debate through a systematic review and an insight on the relevance of intersectional framings within GEC research and development programming.We examine the wider social knowledge domain that complements technical and environmental knowledge in enabling adaptive practices through two case studies in Tanzania. We are concerned with knowledge production that is shaped by gendered exclusion from the main thrusts of planned adaptation, in the practice of irrigation in a dryland village and the adoption of fast-maturing seed varieties in a highland village. The findings draw on data from a household survey, community workshops, and key informant interviews. The largest challenge to effective adaptation is a lack of access to the social networks and institutions that allocate resources needed for adaptation. Results demonstrate the social differentiation of local knowledge, and how it is entwined with adaptive practices that emerge in relation to gendered mechanisms of access. We conclude that community-based adaptation can learn from engaging the broader social knowledge base in evaluating priorities for coping with greater climate variability.Most current approaches focused on vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation to climate change frame gender and its influence in a manner out-of-step with contemporary academic and international development research. The tendency to rely on analyses of the sex-disaggregated gender categories of 'men' and 'women' as sole or principal divisions explaining the abilities of different people within a group to adapt to climate change, illustrates this problem. This framing of gender persists in spite of established bodies of knowledge that show how roles and responsibilities that influence a person's ability to deal with climate-induced and other stressors emerge at the intersection of diverse identity categories, including but not limited to gender, age, seniority, ethnicity, marital status, and livelihoods. Here, we provide a review of relevant literature on this topic and argue that approaching vulnerability to climate change through intersectional understandings of identity can help improve adaptation programming, project design, implementation, and outcomes.The Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR) in the western Canadian Arctic is experiencing environmental changes that affect subsistence harvesting practices and are of concern to local communities. In order to assess the impacts of multiple disturbances on culturally important ecosystems in the ISR, we created a cumulative disturbance map that represents relative intensity of terrestrial disturbances across the study region. We then assessed the relative level of environmental disturbance in important harvesting areas and management zones. Subsequently, we modeled nine future disturbance scenarios that included combinations of increased human impacts and more frequent and widespread wildfires. Using the conservation planning software Marxan, we assessed the potential to conserve large, contiguous areas of unaffected harvesting lands across all scenarios. Our results show that important management zones, wildlife harvesting areas, and community planning zones are all affected by environmental disturbances. Marxan optimizations show that existing disturbance levels create thresholds for current conservation potential and indicate that future disturbances will further limit conservation potential. These results suggest that conservation planners in the region must take steps to anticipate more widespread natural and human-caused disturbance in the ISR and work to maintain large contiguous landscapes that can support wildlife harvesting in the face of ongoing environmental disturbance.Across North America, grassland songbirds have undergone steep population declines over recent decades, commonly attributed to agricultural intensification. Understanding the potential interactions between the impacts of climate change on the future distributions of these species and the availability of suitable vegetation for nesting can support improved risk assessments and conservation planning for this group of species. We used North American bioclimatic niche models to examine future changes in suitable breeding climate for 15 grassland songbird species at their current northern range limits along the boreal forest-prairie ecotone in Alberta, Canada. Our climate suitability projections, combined with the current distribution of native and tame pasture and cropland in Alberta, suggest that some climate-mediated range expansion of grassland songbirds in Alberta is possible. For six of the eight species projected to experience expansions of suitable climate area in Alberta, this suitable climate partly overlaps the current distribution of suitable land cover. Additionally, for more than half of the species examined, most of the area of currently suitable climate was projected to remain suitable to the end of the century, highlighting the importance of Alberta for the long-term persistence of these species. Some northern prairie-endemic species exhibited substantial projected northward shifts of both the northern and southern edges of the area of suitable climate. Baird's Sparrow (Ammodramus bairdii) and Sprague's Pipit (Anthus spragueii), both at-risk grassland specialists, are predicted to have limited climate stability within their current ranges, and their expansion into new areas of suitable climate may be limited by the availability of suitable land cover. Our results highlight the importance of the preservation and restoration of remaining suitable grassland habitat within areas of projected climate stability and beyond current northern range limits for the long-term persistence of many grassland songbird species in the face of climate change.Precipitation and temperature variability present significant agricultural risks worldwide. Northern Iran's agriculture mainly depends on paddy fields, which are directly affected by precipitation and temperature variability. The main aim of this study is to explore farmers' attitudes towards precipitation and temperature variability and their adaptation strategies in paddy fields in a typical agricultural province in northern Iran. Primary survey data were collected from a sample of 382 paddy farmers of Rasht County in Guilan Province. Data have been analyzed using both summary statistics and bivariate analysis (Pearson, Spearman, and Eta correlation coefficients). Empirical findings reveal that most paddy farmers had experienced precipitation and temperature variability and were taking measures to reduce its negative impacts on their crops. Results also indicate that farm size and household income influence farmers' perception to precipitation and temperature variability, while availability of water resources also influence farmers' adaptation decisions.This paper aims at enhancing the previously formulated culture-theoretical explanation of risk-related perception and action with ecological and institutional connectedness. This is needed for global comparison of adaptation cultures as well as transferability of local knowledge. Differences in climate-related patterns of knowledge will therefore be explained by common patterns of socially shared knowledge in relation to ecological and institutional transformation. This will be done by combining a cultural-knowledge approach with different social-ecological and institutional contexts. Changes in knowledge development as well as in adaptation practices will be described by state-and-transition. The proposed approach combines the culture-theoretical explanation of Values-Beliefs-Identities (VBI) and socio-ecological as well as institutional approach of the state-and-transition model.Apple genetic resources in Norway are currently conserved within a number of local clonal archives. However, during establishment of these ex situ collections, primary focus was not on capturing as much of the diversity as possible, but instead on preserving cultivars of particular importance to specific fruit-growing areas. To identify redundancies within the collection as well as to assess the genetic diversity and structure of apple germplasm currently being conserved in Norway, eight microsatellites were used in genetic characterization of 181 apple accessions. Overall, 14 cases of synonym or possibly mislabeled accessions were identified, as well as several homonyms and duplicates within and among the analyzed collections. The information obtained should contribute to overall better management of the preserved germplasm. Bayesian analysis of genetic structure revealed two major clusters, one containing most of the foreign cultivars, while the other consisted mainly of traditional Scandinavian cultivars, but also some very winter-hardy genotypes such as 'Charlamovsky', 'Gravenstein', 'Transparente Blanche', and 'Wealthy'. Analyses of molecular variance (AMOVA) detected a significant genetic differentiation among the clusters (f(CT) = 0.077; P < 0.01). The results of the Bayesian analyses do not indicate a strong differentiation between the foreign and the Norwegian apple accessions, however, they do suggest that climate adaptation has had a significant influence on the genetic structure of the preserved germplasm. Overall, apple accessions currently maintained ex situ in Norway represent a diverse germplasm which could be very valuable in future breeding programs, especially for the Scandinavian climate.Conservation tillage has the potential to decrease the environmental footprint of pumpkin production, but possible trade-offs with yield are not well understood. This study experimentally tested the effects of three cultivation techniques (conventional-till, strip-till, and no-till) on pumpkin production, weed pressure, soil moisture, and soil erosion. Randomized complete block field experiments were conducted on Cucurbita pepo L. 'Gladiator' pumpkins in 2014 and 2015. Overall yields were higher in 2015, averaging 45.2 t.ha(-1), compared with 37.4 t.ha(-1) in 2014. In 2014, pumpkin yields were similar across tillage treatments. In 2015, the average fruit weight of no-till pumpkins was significantly greater than strip-till and conventional-till pumpkins, which corresponded to a marginally significant 13% and 22% yield increase, respectively (P = 0.11). Weed control was variable between years, especially in the strip-till treatment. Soil moisture was consistently highest in the no-till treatment in both years of study. Conventional-till pumpkin plots lost approximate to 9 times more soil than the two conservation tilled treatments during simulated storm events. The 2015 yield advantage of no-till pumpkins seems related to both high soil moisture retention and weed control. Research results suggest that no-till and strip-till pumpkin production systems yield at least as well as conventional-till systems with the advantage of reducing soil erosion during extreme rains.Three recent global agreements have been established to facilitate the implementation of global-level responsibilities to deal with disaster risk reduction (DRR), human development, and climate change adaptation (CCA) respectively. While these agreements have a common goal of reducing social, economic, and environmental vulnerability, they have been developed by largely independent communities of practice. This has limited cross-fertilization despite the inherent multidimensional nature of global challenges and the considerable thematic overlap. We argue that developing a transdisciplinary strategy that effectively integrates disciplines, approaches, and knowledge systems will lead to greater and more sustainable impacts, together with a more efficient use of financial resources. Hybrid approaches should be encouraged during planning of future development efforts so that risk reduction is conducted simultaneously with CCA. Transdisciplinary processes are central to generating context-sensitive knowledge to support decisions on CCA and DRR options that minimize trade-offs and maximize synergies and complementarities required to guide sustainable development trajectories. Finally, building codes together with climate and risk-smart research, education, and awareness raising, are identified as priority entry points to materialize the blending of DRR and CCA approaches and effectively reduce risk while mitigating and adapting to climate change.Dealing with the effects of climate change poses new challenges for biosphere reserves as model regions for sustainable development. Although the impacts on ecosystems or landscapes can only be managed to a limited extent and are difficult to predict, the effects of climate change should be strategically addressed. Furthermore, it is necessary to involve numerous actors with various perspectives in the decisions that must be reached against a background of uncertain prognoses for the future. The paper uses the example of the UNESCO-Biosphere Reserve Elbe-Brandenburg River Landscape to illustrate the concrete fields of action that are emerging and the possible work phases involved in a planned approach to dealing with climate change. Various measures relevant to landscape water balance, vegetation, fauna and land use are demonstrated. On the Elbe, river basin management is particularly important. The discussion of possible strategic fields of action elucidates the roles that can be assumed by the administrations of biosphere reserves in a process of climate adaptation. The options and the extent to which biosphere reserves can develop into model regions for adaptation to climate change depend in practice on the capacities and expertise available.The natural hazards and influence of climate change are uncertain. Supporting adaptation management strategies therefore requires a strong research basis, including prediction and vulnerability assessments. However, the practical value of research results tends to be under explored because of the lack of channel through which to apply the results. This study suggests means of strengthening local adaptation strategies and reducing social vulnerability by encouraging communities to work together to deal with the threat of climate change. We highlight the balance among built-environmental sensitivity and human adaptability dimensions, thereby emphasizing social vulnerability and addressing social resilience from risk perception perspectives. On the basis of the concept of vulnerability and the driver-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) causal framework, semi-structured interviews were designed to explore social resilience. We discuss how a knowledge gap can lead to social vulnerability and maladaptation. In addition, we propose the prototype of a decision-making tool for facilitating adaptation by emphasizing a co-design process between residents and decision makers.Little is known about how place attachment affects natural hazard risk perception and coping. A systematic search of social science databases revealed 31 works (1996-2016) that directly address place attachment in relation to natural hazard risk or natural environmental risks (seismic, volcanic, etc.). Across different contexts, the research shows: (a) both positive and negative relations between place attachment and natural environmental risk perception; (b) both positive and negative relations between place attachment and risk coping; and (c) mediating and moderating relations. In particular, results show that: (a) strongly attached individuals perceive natural environmental risks but underestimate their potential effects; (b) strongly attached individuals are unwilling to relocate when facing natural environmental risks and are more likely to return to risky areas after a natural environmental disaster; (c) place attachment acts both as a mediating and moderating variable between risk perception and coping. Place attachment should play a more significant role in natural hazard risk management. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Measuring evaporation (E) with lysimeters is costly and prone to numerous errors. By comparing the energy balance and the remotely sensed surface temperature of lysimeters with those of the undisturbed surroundings, we were able to assess the representativeness of lysimeter measurements and to quantify differences in evaporation caused by spatial variations in soil moisture content. We used an algorithm (the so called 3T model) to spatially extrapolate the measured E of a reference lysimeter based on differences in surface temperature, net radiation and soil heat flux. We tested the performance of the 3T model on measurements with multiple lysimeters (47.5 cm inner diameter) and micro lysimeters (19.2 cm inner diameter) installed in bare sand, moss and natural dry grass. We developed different scaling procedures using in situ measurements and remotely sensed surface temperatures to derive spatially distributed estimates of R-n and G and explored the physical soundness of the 3T model. Scaling of R-n and G considerably improved the performance of the 3T model for the bare sand and moss experiments (Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) increasing from 0.45 to 0.89 and from 0.81 to 0.94, respectively). For the grass surface, the scaling procedures resulted in a poorer performance of the 3T model (NSE decreasing from 0.74 to 0.70), which was attributed to effects of shading and the difficulty to correct for differences in emissivity between dead and living biomass. The 3T model is physically unsound if the field scale average air temperature, measured at an arbitrarily chosen reference height, is used as input to the model. The proposed measurement system is relatively cheap, since it uses a zero tension (freely draining) lysimeter which results are extrapolated by the 3T model to the unaffected surroundings. The system is promising for bridging the gap between ground observations and satellite based estimates of E. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In the drylands of Africa, pastoralists have been facing new challenges, including those related to environmental shocks and stresses. In northern Kenya, under conditions of reduced rainfall and more frequent droughts, one response has been for pastoralists to focus increasingly on camel herding. Camels have started to be kept at higher altitudes and by people who rarely kept camels before. The development has been understood as a climate change adaptation strategy and as a means to improve climate resilience. Since 2003, development organizations have started to further the trend by distributing camels in the region. Up to now, little has been known about the nature of, reasons for, or ramifications of the increased reliance on camels. The paper addresses these questions and concludes that camels improve resilience in this dryland region, but only under certain climate change scenarios, and only for some groups.As climate change continues to impact socio-ecological systems, tools that assist conservation managers to understand vulnerability and target adaptations are essential. Quantitative assessments of vulnerability are rare because available frameworks are complex and lack guidance for dealing with data limitations and integrating across scales and disciplines. This paper describes a semi-quantitative method for assessing vulnerability to climate change that integrates socio-ecological factors to address management objectives and support decision making. The method applies a framework first adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and uses a structured 10-step process. The scores for each framework element are normalized and multiplied to produce a vulnerability score and then the assessed components are ranked from high to low vulnerability. Sensitivity analyses determine which indicators most influence the analysis and the resultant decision-making process so data quality for these indicators can be reviewed to increase robustness. Prioritisation of components for conservation considers other economic, social and cultural values with vulnerability rankings to target actions that reduce vulnerability to climate change by decreasing exposure or sensitivity and/or increasing adaptive capacity. This framework provides practical decision-support and has been applied to marine ecosystems and fisheries, with two case applications provided as examples: (1) food security in Pacific Island nations under climate-driven fish declines, and (2) fisheries in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. The step-wise process outlined here is broadly applicable and can be undertaken with minimal resources using existing data, thereby having great potential to inform adaptive natural resource management in diverse locations.In the Wasatch Range Metropolitan Area of Northern Utah, water management decision makers confront multiple forms of uncertainty and risk. Adapting to these uncertainties and risks is critical for maintaining the long-term sustainability of the region's water supply. This study draws on interview data to assess the major challenges climatic and social changes pose to Utah's water future, as well as potential solutions. The study identifies the water management adaptation decision-making space shaped by the interacting institutional, social, economic, political, and biophysical processes that enable and constrain sustainable water management. The study finds water managers and other water actors see challenges related to reallocating water, including equitable water transfers and stakeholder cooperation, addressing population growth, and locating additional water supplies, as more problematic than the challenges posed by climate change. Furthermore, there is significant disagreement between water actors over how to best adapt to both climatic and social changes. This study concludes with a discussion of the path dependencies that present challenges to adaptive water management decision making, as well as opportunities for the pursuit of a new water management paradigm based on soft-path solutions. Such knowledge is useful for understanding the institutional and social adaptations needed for water management to successfully address future uncertainties and risks.Barriers to climate change adaptation might not lie so much in 'gaps' in scientific or technical understandings but rather in the complexities of social, institutional and cultural transitions in climate change governance. Effective responses to complex environmental issues seem to require 'co-learning for systemic governance transformations'. However, this process remains poorly understood. This article analyses the performance and orchestration of governance learning for systemic transformation in practice, drawing on examples from the international climate change adaptation and water governance (CADWAGO) project. We show that in these examples the interplay of 'separating' and 'connecting' is central to transforming governance in the European water management landscape. The article concludes that an orientation to boundary work and co-production of knowledge contributes to scientific narratives that can inspire meaningful connective action and move complex socioecological systems into a more sustainable trajectory.People have long migrated for many reasons, often with a combination of forced and voluntary reasons combining to push them away from current situations and to pull them towards new situations. Bangladesh is one example where environmental changes have long been amongst the multitude of reasons for migrating, with contemporary climate change suggested as a major impetus towards more migration. This paper examines local expert perceptions of migration as a climate change adaptation strategy for Bangladeshis. Seventeen in-depth interviews were conducted with local experts in Bangladesh and Assam (India) on environmental change and migration to understand the perspectives of those with formal education and expert-related jobs who come from the areas being directly affected by Bangladeshi migration. Findings show that local experts consider that migration is used and will be used for climate change adaptation in Bangladesh, but migration is not solely for climate change adaptation, instead interweaving with all other factors influencing migration-related decisions.City planners have an opportunity to act as agents of change to build resilience within their cities to respond to climate change. This article builds on urban climate governance research and organizational change theory to focus on how city planners' partnerships with boundary organizations influence adaptation planning. At the root of effective urban climate governance is the integration of science and policy. Boundary organizations offer a governance approach that disseminates knowledge, builds capacity, and engages more participants in the adaptation planning process. However, little is known about how these partnerships foster adaptation at the local scale. Using a case study in Metro Vancouver, this study investigated how boundary organizations can better influence municipal adaptation action. The results of this study demonstrated that boundary organizations were perceived as more influential when they were credible, legitimate, and salient as well as when they provided action-oriented support. Ultimately, this paper contributes to the literature by illustrating how boundary organizations operate at the sub-regional scale to foster adaptation and proposing tangible practices to improve the effectiveness of partnerships.Uncertainty in climate projections poses a serious challenge to adaptation planning. Ignoring this uncertainty can cause adaptation plans and strategies to be ineffective and even maladaptive. As such, there is growing awareness that adaptation planning must adopt approaches that enable discovering, assessing, and addressing uncertainty. In this paper, I examine how uncertainty is managed in adaptation planning. Content analysis of 44 local climate adaptation plans in the U.S. indicates that most plans recognize uncertainty, however, very few employ approaches to address uncertainty. To better understand how uncertainty influences the planning process, I conducted informant interviews in three communities: Boulder, CO; Denver, CO and Salem, MA. These communities capture the variation across plans in content analysis scores, climate threats, and plan author. Interview results suggest that adaptation plans do not fully reflect how uncertainty is managed in the planning process. Rather than focusing on climate projections in the vulnerability assessment, which may reinforce planning for one future, communities in which interviews were conducted emphasized sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Interviewees also emphasized the importance of no-regrets strategies and an iterative adaptation process. Institutional barriers were viewed as a major challenge for adopting uncertainty approaches. For approaches, such as robust strategies and flexible strategies, to be more widely used, we must first breakdown the deeply embedded practice of planning for one future.Climate change is predicted to lead to warmer temperatures and more intense storms within the century in central and northern Australia. The ensuing impacts are anticipated to present immense challenges for remote communities, in terms of maintaining housing comfort, family health and wellbeing, engagement in education and employment, and community services and businesses. About 50 % of the Australian landmass is considered remote and it is home to a highly dispersed population of about half a million people (with 30 % being Indigenous people). Much of the population in remote Australia is considered highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change as they are highly exposed and sensitive to the impacts, with many having a low adaptive capacity. The lives of Aboriginal Australians living in remote communities are strongly influenced and governed by traditional customs, knowledge and practices. Even when living in large towns, people who are strongly connected to their country are able to blend knowledge from traditional and modern sources to adapt to the current climate. This article explores the extent of adaptive capacity of people to climate change in a small remote community and large service town in the Northern Territory of Australia and provides insights about their capacities and vulnerabilities. Results indicate that the social and cultural capital are of greater importance than commonly assessed and provide scope to enhance effective community-based climate adaptation.This study investigated the feasibility of PCM as a retrofitting option to reduce the zone air temperature and improve occupant thermal comfort under free running condition in an existing house in Melbourne, Australia. Both the experimental and numerical approach were applied in this study. In the experimental study, PCM was installed in the ceiling of one of the rooms and indoor air temperatures of two rooms (one with PCM and the other without PCM) were recorded. A simulation model was developed using building simulation software EnergyPlus and validated using the recorded experimental temperature data. The results showed up to 1.1 degrees C reduction in BED 2 indoor air temperature during daytime and 34% reduction in thermal discomfort hours through the passive installation of PCM on the ceilings. Several simulations including different user behaviour scenario (windows and internal door operations) were carried out to identify the influence of user behaviour on the effectiveness of PCM. It was observed that integration of PCM is more effective in reducing thermal discomfort hours if windows are kept open at night for night purging and the internal doors are remained closed at all time to prohibit any mixing with surrounding zones without PCM. Further improvement in PCM effectiveness was observed when similar amount of PCM was spread in the ceiling and walls. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Although climate scientists explore the effects of climate change for 2100, it is a challenging time frame for urban modellers to foresee the future of cities. The question addressed in this paper is how to improve the existing methodologies in order to build scenarios to explore urban climate impacts in the long term and at a fine scale. This study provides a structural framework in six steps that combines narratives and model-based approaches. The results present seven scenarios of urban growth based on land use strategies and technological and socio-economic trends. These contrasted scenarios span the largest possible world of futures for the city under study. Urban maps for 2010, 2040 and 2100 were used to assess the impacts on the Urban Heat Island. The comparison of these scenarios and related outputs allowed some levers to be evaluated for their capacity to limit the increase of air temperature. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coastal embayments are at risk of impacts by climate change drivers such as ocean warming, sea level rise and alteration in precipitation regimes. The response of the ecosystem to these drivers is highly dependent on their magnitude of change, but also on physical characteristics such as bay morphology and river discharge, which play key roles in water residence time and hence estuarine functioning. These considerations are especially relevant for bivalve aquaculture sites, where the cultured biomass can alter ecosystem dynamics. The combination of climate change, physical and aquaculture drivers can result in synergistic/antagonistic and nonlinear processes. A spatially explicit model was constructed to explore effects of the physical environment (bay geomorphic type, freshwater inputs), climate change drivers (sea level, temperature, precipitation) and aquaculture (bivalve species, stock) on ecosystem functioning. A factorial design led to 336 scenarios (48 hydrodynamicx7 management). Model outcomes suggest that the physical environment controls estuarine functioning given its influence on primary productivity (bottom-up control dominated by riverine nutrients) and horizontal advection with the open ocean (dominated by bay geomorphic type). The intensity of bivalve aquaculture ultimately determines the bivalve-phytoplankton trophic interaction, which can range from a bottom-up control triggered by ammonia excretion to a top-down control via feeding. Results also suggest that temperature is the strongest climate change driver due to its influence on the metabolism of poikilothermic organisms (e.g. zooplankton and bivalves), which ultimately causes a concomitant increase of top-down pressure on phytoplankton. Given the different thermal tolerance of cultured species, temperature is also critical to sort winners from losers, benefiting Crassostrea virginica over Mytilus edulis under the specific conditions tested in this numerical exercise. In general, it is predicted that bays with large rivers and high exchange with the open ocean will be more resilient under climate change when bivalve aquaculture is present.Worsening climate change impacts and environmental degradation are increasingly supporting policies and plans in framing a linear understanding of resilience building and vulnerability reduction. However, adaptations to different but interacting drivers of change are unclear in the mix of opportunities and threats related to increasing connections, emerging technologies, new patterns of dependency and possible lock-in effects. This paper discusses a more open-ended understanding of the relationship between resilience and vulnerability, highlighting emerging trade-offs among adaptive capacities and exposures to different (and new) threats as they relate to social-ecological sustainability. The transition of the Southern Bolivian Altiplano, from being a remote rural area of subsistence farming to a global leader in quinoa production and exportation, has been taken as a study case. Results from 18 workshops organised within different communities provide insights about a range of trade-offs between community resilience attributes and social-ecological vulnerability induced from land use changes, livestock strategies, communities' behavioural change and institutions' emerging policies. The main theoretical advances of the paper relate to the need for critically framing multiple threat exposures and adaptive capacity trade-offs, contributing to arguing the usually positive meaning of resilience, and taking into account "to whom or to what is positive which adaptation" and "which trade-off should be accepted, and why". Framing adaptive pathways through these questions would serve as a tool for addressing sustainable development goals, while avoiding lock-ins or unsustainable path dependencies.African mixed crop-livestock systems are vulnerable to climate change and need to adapt in order to improve productivity and sustain people's livelihoods. These smallholder systems are characterized by high greenhouse gas emission rates, but could play a role in their mitigation. Although the impact of climate change is projected to be large, many uncertainties persist, in particular with respect to impacts on livestock and grazing components, whole-farm dynamics and heterogeneous farm populations. We summarize the current understanding on impacts and vulnerability and highlight key knowledge gaps for the separate system components and the mixed farming systems as a whole. Numerous adaptation and mitigation options exist for crop-livestock systems. We provide an overview by distinguishing risk management, diversification and sustainable intensification strategies, and by focusing on the contribution to the three pillars of climate-smart agriculture. Despite the potential solutions, smallholders face major constraints at various scales, including small farm sizes, the lack of response to the proposed measures and the multi-functionality of the livestock herd. Major institutional barriers include poor access to markets and relevant knowledge, land tenure insecurity and the common property status of most grazing resources. These limit the adoption potential and hence the potential impact on resilience and mitigation. In order to effectively inform decision-making, we therefore call for integrated, system-oriented impact assessments and a realistic consideration of the adoption constraints in smallholder systems. Building on agricultural system model development, integrated impact assessments and scenario analyses can inform the co-design and implementation of adaptation and mitigation strategies.F.Coastal areas will increasingly experience adverse climate hazards such as coastal flooding and severe storms as a result of climate change. These hazards adversely affect drinking-water systems and thereby reduce access to safe drinking-water. Effective adaptation implementation minimizes the damaging impacts of these hazards. However, research on the enablers of and barriers to effective adaptation in low-income countries is lacking. This study maps enablers and barriers to climate change adaptation of water systems in coastal low-income countries using evidence from Viet Nam and the Philippines, countries which experience frequent extreme climate events. Interviews were carried out with staff from 29 water utilities and government agencies. A systematic framework for diagnosing barriers to climate change adaptation was used to analyze the responses. Five factors were identified as relevant to effective adaptation: partnerships; financial resources; human and technical resources; leadership and political will; and awareness of climate change. The factors identified were related to all the elements of the framework-actors, system of concern, and context-and were relevant to the three phases of the adaptation process (understanding the problem, planning the adaptation, and managing the implementation). Our findings can assist water system managers in diagnosing barriers to effective adaptation that may exist and identifying relevant partnerships and resources that will aid in overcoming these barriers.Expected increases in pluvial flooding, due to climatic changes, require large investments in the retrofitting of cities to keep damage at an acceptable level. Many cities have investigated the possibility of implementing stormwater management (SWM) systems which are multi-functional and consist of different elements interacting to achieve desired safety levels. Typically, an economic assessment is carried out in the planning phase, while environmental sustainability is given little or no attention. In this paper, life cycle assessment is used to quantify environmental impacts of climate change adaptation strategies. The approach is tested using a climate change adaptation strategy for a catchment in Copenhagen, Denmark. A stormwater management system, using green infrastructure and local retention measures in combination with planned routing of stormwater on the surfaces to manage runoff, is compared to a traditional, sub-surface approach. Flood safety levels based on the Three Points Approach are defined as the functional unit to ensure comparability between systems. The adaptation plan has significantly lower impacts (3-18 person equivalents/year) than the traditional alternative (14-103 person equivalents/year) in all analysed impact categories. The main impacts are caused by managing rain events with return periods between 0.2 and 10 years. The impacts of handling smaller events with a return period of up to 0.2 years and extreme events with a return period of up to 100 years are lower in both alternatives. The uncertainty analysis shows the advantages of conducting an environmental assessment in the early stages of the planning process, when the design can still be optimised, but it also highlights the importance of detailed and site-specific data. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Tea is an important cash crop for the economy in northeast India. It also supports the livelihoods of a large proportion of the population. At the same time, tea growth is sensitive to climatic conditions making it vulnerable to climate change and variability. Identifying the tea yield response to climatic variability in operational plantations, and identifying the most important climatic variables that impact tea yield is critical to assessing the vulnerability of the industry and informing adaptation. Here, we developed a garden level panel dataset and estimated statistical models to identify the causal effect of monthly temperature, monthly precipitation, drought intensity, and precipitation variability on tea yield. We found decreasing tea yield returns to warmer monthly average temperatures, and when monthly temperatures were above 26.6 degrees C warming had a negative effect. We found that drought intensity did not affect tea yield and that precipitation variability, and in particular precipitation intensity, negatively affect tea yield. An increase in average temperatures as expected with global warming will reduce the productivity of tea plantations, all else held equal. Further, interventions to reduce the sensitivity of tea plantations to warming and precipitation variability will have immediate pay-offs as well as providing climate change adaptation benefits. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.International cooperation and learning may accelerate climate change adaptation and help countries and regions to adapt more effectively and efficiently. Recognizing the importance and opportunities for mutual learning and knowledge transfer, international and supranational organizations, such as the European Commission, have put programmes for international cooperation in place. This paper presents and tests a framework for assessing multi-level learning outcomes of such international cooperation processes and the conditions that produce these outcomes. The framework distinguishes between: (1) group learning by individual process participants; (2) organizational learning by organizations represented in the process; and (3) network and societal learning by actors external to the process. We verify the analytical potential of the framework by comparing learning by six partners in an adaptation-oriented European cooperation project. The project scores rather high on group learning with participants learning from and - to a lesser extent - also with each other. Learning by partner organizations varied and was generally less whereas learning by external actors was very limited. The case study confirms our expectation that learning outcomes are produced by combinations of partner specific, process-specific and process-external conditions. The presented framework and insights can be used to stimulate learning in and from international cooperation processes. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Will African voters support climate change policies? By 2020, the United Nations' Green Climate Fund intends to provide tens of billions of dollars per year to African nations to support climate adaptation and mitigation policies. It is widely assumed that African citizens will support implementation of these climate policies. We observe the opposite result. In this article - across two experimental studies - we find evidence that Sub-Saharan African politicians who commit to climate change policies may lose electoral support. Electorally important swing voters with weak party affiliations are least likely to support party statements about climate change. Interviews with standing elected officials from Malawi and South Africa corroborate our experimental findings. The combined results suggest voter preferences may hinder the successful implementation of climate change policy in Sub-Saharan African democracies. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.To examine whether U.S. public opinion may become as sharply polarized on adaptation responses as it has been on mitigation policies, we surveyed a sample of urban coastal residents in Maryland (n=378). We then tested the impact of a community deliberative event (n=40) with small-group sea level rise discussions as a depolarization strategy. Cultural worldviews which contribute to politically polarized beliefs about climate were predictive of perceptions of sea level rise risk. Living close to flooding hazards. also significantly predicted respondents' perceptions of household or neighborhood risks, but not of risks to the entire county. The event significantly increased topic knowledge among all participants and, among those with a worldview predisposing them to lower risk perceptions, significantly increased problem identification and concern about impacts. These results suggest small-group deliberation focused on local problem-solving may be an effective tool for reducing the polarizing effects of cultural worldviews on decision-making. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Local governments are on the front line of efforts to address climate-related impacts. Recognizing this, there is a growing movement to develop and deliver tools, resources, and services to support local communities' climate adaptation initiatives. There is, however, limited understanding of what specific types of resources exist and how well these resources match the needs of local practitioners. To bring clarity to these questions, we: 1) assessed the current landscape of climate-adaptation resources and services; 2) surveyed community practitioners to learn how well these resources align with their needs; and 3) convened leading service providers and local practitioners to identify strategic opportunities for moving the adaptation field forward. Findings demonstrate that existing services and resources are meeting the early phases of local adaptation efforts such as conducting vulnerability assessments and creating adaptation plans, but are failing to meet the needs associated with implementing, monitoring, and evaluating adaptation activities. Additionally, a lack of funding and staff time to support adaptation, as well as inaccessible resource formats are barriers impeding local climate adaptation efforts. The mismatch between the types and formats of services being provided and the needs of local governments means that more work is needed to ensure that climate adaptation resources are responsive to the existing and future needs of local governments. Moreover, our research finds that there is a strong and growing need to organize and streamline the climate adaptation resource and service landscape so that practitioners can easily, effectively, and efficiently access the resources they need to build more resilient local communities. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Amid growing effort to move towards implementation of climate change adaptation, serious interest is emerging about how to use indicators and metrics (I&M) to evaluate adaptation success. Cities are among the leading experimenters developing I&M, but many other entities also view I&M as a tool for providing clarity and accountability about the goals and progress of adaptation. The current landscape of this work is scattered: I&M examples, frameworks, and guidance documents reflect motivations, contexts, and approaches as diverse as the field of adaptation itself. This study systematically surveys the "growth industry" of I&M, including a special focus on I&M approaches.developed for cities anywhere and by US cities in particular. We classify these I&M efforts into four domains: those developed in academia, by program sponsors, boundary organizations, and on-the-ground implementers. With attention to theory on (program) evaluation and on science-practice interaction, we reveal a broad range of I&M evaluation purposes and collaboration practices. We conclude that evaluation of adaptation progress and effectiveness - if it is to usefully inform the work of cities or other implementers - would benefit from greater attention to the best practices and guidance offered in the related, but largely still separate, fields of evaluation and science-practice interaction. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban areas are increasingly seen as having distinct need for climate adaptation. Further, as resources are limited, it is essential to prioritize adaptation actions. At the municipal scale, we suggest that priorities be placed where there is a gap between adaption need and existing adaptation effort. Taking Seattle, USA, as an example, we present this gap in terms of four categories of adaptation options (no-regret, primary, secondary, and tertiary) for the three primary urban hazards flooding, heat wave, and drought. To do so, we first establish current adaptation need by identifying and categorizing adaptation options. Next, we consider for each option the number of hazards addressed and benefit to and beyond climate adaptation, the projected magnitude of the hazards addressed, the projection's uncertainty, and the required scale and irreversibility of investment. Third, we assessed Seattle's current adaptation efforts by reviewing adaptation plans and related materials. Finally, we identify the distance or "gap" as the proportion of adaptation options not identified by existing adaptation plans. For Seattle, we categorized seven options as no-regret adaptation, five as primary, two as secondary, and three as tertiary. Each level's adaptation gap highlights significant opportunities to take steps to reduce climate risks in key areas. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As urban populations grow and climate exposure increases, more cities are introducing formal planning processes to adapt to climate change. This paper explains the process applied to eight cities in the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) for developing indicators for planning and monitoring local climate resilience. This process relied on transferring a common conceptual framework for climate resilience, together with a locally led iterative and collaborative process that engaged technical and planning authorities and vulnerable groups. The process varied slightly between cities and generated indicators that were chosen for their contextual fit and availability of data. The main benefit of developing resilience indicators in this way was the local capacity that the process built, in terms of understanding resilience, shared understanding of concepts and measurement and establishment of a common platform for future planning and monitoring of climate adaptation interventions at the city level. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Currently, most tools, guidelines and benchmarks for urban adaptation raise awareness on climate change impacts, assess the city's vulnerability and/or address the need for adaptation on a policy-level. However, tools that have the ability to implement adaptation solutions in the actual urban planning and design practice seem to be missing. We developed and tested the Adaptation Planning Support'Toolbox (APST) to fill this gap. This toolbox supports local policymakers, planners, designers and practitioners in defining the program of demands, in setting adaptation targets, in selecting from more than 60 blue, green and grey adaptation measures and with informed co-creation of conceptual adaptation plans. The APST provides quantitative, evidence-based performance information on (cost)effectiveness of adaptation measures regarding climate resilience and co-benefits. The APST can be used design workshops, to feed dialogues among stakeholders on where and how which ecosystem-based adaptation measures can be applied. Applications of the AST in various settings and context in cities on different continents have illustrated the added value of the toolbox in bringing policy and practice together with help of science. With more and more cities worldwide that will make the step from policymaking to actual adaptation-inclusive urban (re)development practice we foresee a growing demand for such tools. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.Urban and peri-urban forests provide a variety of ecosystem service benefits for urban society. Recognising and understanding the many human-tree interactions that urban forests provide may be more complex but probably just as important to our urbanised society. This paper introduces four themes that link the studies from across the globe presented in this Special Issue: (1) human-tree interactions; (2) urban tree inequity; (3) carbon sequestration in our own neighbourhoods; and (4) biodiversity of urban forests themselves and the fauna they support. Urban forests can help tackle many of the "wicked problems" that confront our towns and cities and the people that live in them. For urban forests to be accepted as an effective element of any urban adaptation strategy, we need to improve the communication of these ecosystem services and disservices and provide evidence of the benefits provided to urban society and individuals, as well as the biodiversity with which we share our town and cities.A key narrative within climate change science is that conserving and improving soil carbon through agricultural practices can contribute to agricultural productivity and is a promising option for mitigating carbon loss through sequestration. This paper examines the potential disconnect between science and practice in the context of communicating information about soil carbon management. It focuses on the information producing process and on stakeholder (adviser, farmer representative, policy maker etc) assessment of the attributes credibility, salience and legitimacy. In doing this it draws on results from consultations with stakeholders in the SmartSOIL project which aimed to provide decision support guidelines about practices that optimise carbon mitigation and crop productivity. An iterative methodology, used to engage stakeholders in developing, testing and validating a range of decision support guidelines in six case study regions across Europe, is described. This process enhanced legitimacy and revealed the importance, and the different dimensions, of stakeholder views on credibility and salience. The results also highlight the complexities and contested nature of managing soil carbon. Some insights are gained into how to achieve more effective communication about soil carbon management, including the need to provide opportunities in projects and research programmes for dialogue to engender better understanding between science and practice. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change adaptation is largely a local matter, and adaptation planning can benefit from local climate change projections. Such projections are typically generated by accepting climate model outputs in a relatively uncritical way. We argue, based on the IPCC's treatment of model outputs from the CMIP5 ensemble, that this approach is unwarranted and that subjective expert judgment should play a central role in the provision of local climate change projections intended to support decision-making.Managed relocation is a biological resource management intervention that moves a portion of a species negatively affected by climate change to sites outside of its historic range where the species' productivity is expected to be higher. We numerically solve for the optimal managed relocation policy in a spatial-dynamic bioeconomic model. The model includes three sites where climate change causes the local productivity of a beneficial species to change over time. The optimal policy is characterized by complex transient dynamics that reflect productivity trends, the local benefit of the species, and the cost of relocation. Given concerns about the impact of a relocated species on destination ecosystems, we consider the implications of blocking relocation to a site. We also compare optimal managed relocation to the relocation policy that achieves a future population distribution with the least investment.Including stakeholder perspectives in environmental decision making is in many countries a legal requirement and is widely seen as beneficial as it can help increase decision legitimacy, likelihood of implementation, and quality of the outcome. Whereas the theoretical literature on stakeholder engagement is large, less attention has been devoted to comparing and discussing different methodological approaches. Here, we compare three approaches-multi-criteria analysis, plural rationality theory, and scenario construction-that include stakeholders' perspectives in environmental decision making. We find differences between the approaches concerning the assumptions about stakeholder rationality and whether experts and/or stakeholders are in charge of framing the problem. Further differences concern the type of data input from stakeholders and how it is used by the experts, as well as the role of stakeholders and whether they are involved early-already for identifying options-or later in the process, for evaluating or ranking alternatives analyzed by the experts. The choice of approach thus predetermines the type and depth of stakeholder engagement. No approach is "better" than another, but they are suited for different problems and research aims: the choice of the approach, however, has a large impact on the results.Environmental Finance is an emerging and rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of research, concerned with the financial implications of environmental change for industries and firms, and the need to transition to a sustainable economy. The field brings together research in finance and the natural sciences to develop financial and market solutions to some of humanity's most pressing concerns; namely, climate change and shifts in other Earth system processes. Firms need to adjust to these environmental changes, which offer many opportunities for wealth and growth. There are various historical examples of technological breakthroughs over the history of modern markets that have driven growth and wealth; such as, railways, electricity, automobiles, radio, microelectronics, personal computers, biotechnology, and the internet. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement has given the green light to clean technology firms worldwide to start commercializing their patents. This will create the next technological breakthrough - a clean tech revolution that will drive growth and wealth in the same way as earlier breakthroughs. This article summarizes the state of this newly formed interdisciplinary field and sets out avenues for future research. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Political will for action on climate change requires support from the electorate and low levels of climate change skepticism. Rational models suggest that skepticism influences voting behavior; however, other theories suggest the reverse direction of influence may also hold. There is a body of research on associations between climate change skepticism and political preferences, but this has been limited to cross-sectional analyses. This article uses longitudinal data and cross-lagged modeling to infer the direction of influence in a post-election context. We found that voting behavior influenced climate change skepticism after an election more than climate change skepticism influenced voting intentions. This suggests that partisan politics increases fluctuations in climate change skepticism, and there may be more or less opportune times to pursue climate change policies. Similar research is now needed in pre- and mid-election cycle contexts to determine the direction of influence over the election cycle.The Krishna-Godavari coastal region in east coast of India has a 525.15-km-long coastline with low-lying tidal mudflats, beaches, mangrove swamp, creek and tidal channels. Recently, the increasing frequency of tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, i.e., Phylin and Hudhud in Andhra Pradesh coast, and the devastating impact of the 2004 tsunami in India increased the significance in assessing the vulnerability of the coastal lands to inundation and flooding, notably in the context of climate change-induced sea level rise. This study aims to estimate a coastal vulnerability index (CVI) for the coastal subregion of Krishna-Godavari delta and to use the calculated index to evaluate the vulnerability of 14 coastal talukas of the Krishna-Godavari delta region. This CVI is calculated by using four geological and three physical parameters characterizing the vulnerability of the study coastal region, including regional slope, coastal elevation, geomorphology, significant wave height, mean tidal range and relative sea level using different conventional and remotely sensed data. Using a composite coastal vulnerability index based on the relative risk rating of those parameters, each of the 14 coastal talukas was classified according to their vulnerability. The CVI results depict that coasts are least and most vulnerable to inundation, flooding and erosion of coastal lands where geological parameters are more efficient to CVI. The paper alerts to decision makers and planners to mitigate the natural disaster and manage the coastal zone and is a primary step toward prioritizing coastal lands for climate change adaptation strategies in the view of increased storminess and projected sea level rise.Background. Wildfires are anticipated to be more frequent and intense under climate change. As a result, wildfires may emit more air pollutants that can harm health in communities in the future. The health impacts of wildfire smoke under climate change are largely unknown. Methods. Welinked projections of future levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) specifically from wildfire smoke under the A1B climate change scenario using the GEOS-Chem model for 2046-2051, present-day estimates of hospital admission impacts from wildfire smoke, and future population projections to estimate the change in respiratory hospital admissions for persons >= 65 years by county (n. = 561) from wildfire PM2.5 under climate change in the Western US. Results. The increase in intense wildfire smoke days from climate change would result in an estimated 178 (95% confidence interval: 6.2, 361) additional respiratory hospital admissions in the Western US, accounting for estimated future increase in the elderly population. Climate change is estimated to impose an additional 4990 high-pollution smoke days. Central Colorado, Washington and southern California are estimated to experience the highest percentage increase in respiratory admissions from wildfire smoke under climate change. Conclusion. Although the increase in number of respiratory admissions from wildfire smoke seems modest, these results provide important scientific evidence of an often-ignored aspect of wildfire impact, and information on their anticipated spatial distribution. Wildfires can cause serious social burdens such as property damage and suppression cost, but can also raise health problems. The results provide information that can be incorporated into development of environmental and health policies in response to climate change. Climate change adaptation policies could incorporate scientific evidence on health risks from natural disasters such as wildfires.Cities globally face significant risks from climate change, and are taking an increasingly active role in formulating and implementing climate change adaptation policy. However, there are few, if any, global assessments of adaptation taking place across cities. This study develops and applies a framework to track urban climate change adaptation policy using municipal adaptation reporting. From 401 local governments globally in urban areas with >1 m people, we find that only 61 cities (15%) report any adaptation initiatives, and 73 cities (18%) report on planning towards adaptation policy. We classified cities based on their adaptation reporting as extensive adaptors, moderate adaptors, early stage adaptors, and non-reporting. With few exceptions, extensive adaptors are large cities located in high-income countries in North America, Europe, and Oceania, and are adapting to a variety of expected impacts. Moderate adaptors usually address general disaster risk reduction rather than specific impacts, and are located in a mix of developed and developing countries. Early stage adaptors exhibit evidence of planning for adaptation, but do not report any initiatives. Our findings suggest that urban adaptation is in the early stages, but there are still substantive examples of governments taking leadership regardless of wealth levels and institutional barriers. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The Ariake Sea has Japan's largest tidal range - up to six meters. Given previous Ariake Sea disasters caused by storm surges and high waves, it is considered highly likely that the bay's innermost coast will be damaged by typhoon-triggered storm surges. Concern with increased storm-surge-related disasters is associated with rising sea levels and increasing typhoon intensity due to global warming. As increasingly more potentially disastrous typhoons cross the area, preventing coastal disasters has become increasingly important. The first step toward doing so is damage prediction, which requires numerical simulation. Our study considers the tracks of typhoons considerably influencing the Ariake Sea. To examine storm-surge risk related to both inundation area and process, we calculated storm surges inundating the Sea's innermost coastal area using an improved ocean-flow finite-volume coastal ocean model. Results showed that enhanced storm surges were to be anticipated and that inundation areas could be extensive where typhoons followed a route from west to northeast across the Sea. We also found that even under current climatic conditions, typhoons able to cause significant storm-surge and inundation disasters could adversely affect the Bay's innermost coastal area. Our analysis of this area and process indicated that the inundation extent around the bay's innermost coast varies with the typhoon, confirming the importance of determining typhoon routes triggering the potentially greatest inundation damage.Climate compatible development (CCD) is gaining traction as a conceptual framework for mainstreaming climate change mitigation and adaptation within development efforts. Understanding whether and how CCD design processes reconcile different stakeholder preferences can reveal how the concept contends with patterns of sociocultural and political oppression that condition patterns of development. We, therefore, explore procedural justice and power within CCD design through a case study analysis of two donor-funded projects in Malawi. Findings show that donor agencies are driving design processes and involving other stakeholders selectively. While considerable overlap existed between stakeholders' revealed priorities for CCD, invisible power dynamics encourage the suppression of true preferences, reducing the likelihood that CCD will be contextually appropriate and have widespread stakeholder buy in. Visible, hidden, and invisible forms of power create barriers to procedural justice in CCD design. We present five recommendations to help policy makers and practitioners to overcome these barriers.Adaptation to climate change is needed as an effort to minimize climate change impact, especially in big cities in Indonesia. From BNPB studies in 2013, 87% of hazards that occurred in Indonesia are related to hydrometeorology including floods, landslides, and drought. The impact of climate change also extends to many different sectors including social, economic, environmental and infrastructure, which can become an obstacle in achieving city development goals. Bandar Lampung as one of Indonesia's big cities, which serves as a connecting point between the islands of Java and Sumatera, is also affected by the impacts of climate change. Based on the Bandar Lampung climate risk assessment in 2010, the biggest impact of climate change is caused by flood and drought. This study aims to assess the resilience of cities through the development process of the climate change adaptation program launched by the City of Bandar Lampung. The government of Bandar Lampung (especially the climate change coordination team) in cooperation with other parties such as URDI, CCROM, University of Bandar Lampung and Mercy Corps Indonesia has made an assessment of the vulnerability of the city, a resilience strategy for the city, and has run one of its a priority programs called biopores. This study will assess the resilience building process of the city and compile the lesson learned that can be taken from the implementation in Bandar Lampung.Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal. The views expressed in this Forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of ASCE or the Editorial Board of the journal.Heavy rainfall in June 2013 triggered flash flooding and landslides throughout the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, killing more than 6000 people. The vast majority of fatalities and destruction resulted directly from a lake outburst and debris flow disaster originating from above the village of Kedarnath on June 16 and 17. Here, we provide a systematic analysis of the contributing factors leading to the Kedarnath disaster, both in terms of hydrometeorological triggering and topographic predisposition. Topographic characteristics of the lake watershed above Kedarnath are compared with other glacial lakes across the north-western Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and implications for glacier lake outburst hazard assessment in a changing climate are discussed. Our analysis suggests that the early onset of heavy monsoon rainfall (390 mm, June 10-17) immediately following a 4-week period of unusually rapid snow cover depletion and elevated streamflow was the crucial hydrometeorological factor, resulting in slope saturation and significant run-off into the small seasonal glacial lake. Between mid-May and mid-June 2013, snow-covered area above Kedarnath decreased by around 50 %. The unusual situation of the lake being dammed in a steep, unstable paraglacial environment but fed entirely from snowmelt and rainfall within a fluvial dominated watershed is important in the context of this disaster. A simple scheme enabling large-scale recognition of such an unfavourable topographic setting is introduced. In view of projected 21st century changes in monsoon timing and heavy precipitation in South Asia, more emphasis should be given to potential hydrometeorological triggering of lake outburst and debris flow disasters in the Himalaya.The aim of this study is to address the problem of balance between water scarcity and sustainability, which are the key components of water security of cities located in arid lands, particularly those under constant expansion and population growth. In this paper, we have highlighted the problem of water security for the sustainability of the La Serena-Coquimbo conurbation (LSCC). The coastal LSCC is located at the outlet of the Elqui River basin, in the southern edge of the Chilean Atacama Desert. We have analyzed the available information including drinking water production and consumption data, groundwater levels, precipitation data and population data. Between the years 2009 and 2013 the total water consumption for the area has significantly increased. On the other hand, there has been a significant decrease trend in the precipitations and the groundwater levels show a decrease of about 30 m between the years 1995 and 2014. In a few years, this urban area could face a general water scarcity problem if the drought conditions remain unchanged and if the water demand trend for the agricultural, mining and drinking water continues its increasing. The cities located in the arid lands are particularly vulnerable to water scarcity because their populations are highly concentrated and requires reliable supplies of water to make possible human and economic activities. We discuss how adaptation of the arid land urban areas to water scarcity requires a range of solutions, including economic incentives, regulatory measures, and technology.Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are a serious and potentially increasing threat to livelihoods and infrastructure in most high-mountain regions of the world. Here, we integrate modelling approaches that capture both current and future potential for GLOF triggering, quantification of affected downstream areas, and assessment of the underlying societal vulnerability to such climate-related disasters, to implement a first-order assessment of GLOF risk across the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh (HP), Northern India. The assessment thereby considers both current glacial lakes and modelled future lakes that are expected to form as glaciers retreat. Current hazard, vulnerability, and exposure indices are combined to reveal several risk 'hotspots', illustrating that significant GLOF risk may in some instances occur far downstream from the glaciated headwaters where the threats originate. In particular, trans-national GLOFs originating in the upper Satluj River Basin (China) are a threat to downstream areas of eastern HP. For the future deglaciated scenario, a significant increase in GLOF hazard levels is projected across most administrative units, as lakes expand or form closer towards steep headwalls from which impacts of falling ice and rock may trigger outburst events. For example, in the central area of Kullu, a 7-fold increase in the probability of GLOF triggering and a 3-fold increase in the downstream area affected by potential GLOF paths can be anticipated, leading to an overall increase in the assigned GLOF hazard level from 'high' to 'very high'. In such instances, strengthening resilience and capacities to reduce the current GLOF risk will provide an important first step towards adapting to future challenges.This article assesses the usefulness of conceptions of policy capacity for understanding policy and governance outcomes. In order to shed light on this issue, it revisits the concept of governance, derives a model of basic governance types and discusses their capacity pre-requisites. A model of capacity is developed combining competences over three levels of activities with analysis of resource capabilities at each level. This analysis is then applied to the common modes of governance. While each mode requires all types of capacity if it is to match its theoretically optimal potential, most on-the-ground modes do not attain their highest potential. Moreover, each mode has a critical type of capacity which serves as its principle vulnerability; its Achilles' heel. Without high levels of the requisite capacity, the governance mode is unlikely to perform as expected. While some hybrid modes can serve to supplement or reinforce each other and bridge capacity gaps, other mixed forms may aggravate single mode issues. Switching between modes or adopting hybrid modes is, therefore, a non-trivial issue in which considerations of capacity issues in general and Achilles' heel capacities in particular should be a central concern.In order to mitigate areas of high urban air temperature (or 'hotspots'), advice and tools are currently being sought to help inform urban planning and decision making around urban greening. One potential tool receiving growing interest is the use of thermal imagery for identifying hotspots, however this relies on the assumption that patterns in land surface temperature (LST) coincide with patterns in air temperature. This study explores the capacity of very high resolution (VHR), airborne thermal infrared (TIR) remotely sensed data to identify hotspots at a neighbourhood and street scale resolution. As such it assesses whether VHR TIR remote sensing is an appropriate tool for urban planning and urban greening decision making. In partnership with a local municipality in Melbourne, Australia, VHR (0.5 m) daytime and night time TIR images were captured during warm summertime conditions in February 2012. We found that VHR TIR data certainly identified locations of high LST that could be prioritized for urban greening, however at very high resolutions, VHRTIR data could not identify hotspots because patterns in LST did not strongly correlate with patterns of high air temperature. When VHR TIR data was aggregated to a coarser resolution, it could be used at the neighbourhood-scale to identify hotspots due to greater confidence that areas of high LST do represent air temperature hotspots. Increased vegetation proportion was associated with a reduction in LST for both the day and night meaning urban greening can be used to mitigate hotspots and should be prioritized in wide, open streets where building shade is less. While VHR TIR remote sensing may be an attractive option, this study shows it is not a suitable tool to help inform urban planning and urban greening decision making as the capture, post-processing and interpretation requirements and costs of delivering a high quality product are prohibitive for many end users. We suggest that those seeking to use thermal imagery to identify hotspots in the urban landscape, strongly consider more accessible and cheaper satellite remote sensing products (such as Landsat). VHR TIR derived LST may be useful in designing urban spaces for improved human thermal comfort and focusing on a small region of interest, but the numerous complexities and limitations of the data must be recognized. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.There is increasing concern over deep uncertainty in the risk analysis field as probabilistic models of uncertainty cannot always be confidently determined or agreed upon for many of our most pressing contemporary risk challenges. This is particularly true in the climate change adaptation field, and has prompted the development of a number of frameworks aiming to characterize system vulnerabilities and identify robust alternatives. One such methodology is robust decision making (RDM), which uses simulation models to assess how strategies perform over many plausible conditions and then identifies and characterizes those where the strategy fails in a process termed scenario discovery. While many of the problems to which RDM has been applied are characterized by multiple objectives, research to date has provided little insight into how treatment of multiple criteria impacts the failure scenarios identified. In this research, we compare different methods for incorporating multiple objectives into the scenario discovery process to evaluate how they impact the resulting failure scenarios. We use the Lake Tana basin in Ethiopia as a case study, where climatic and environmental uncertainties could impact multiple planned water infrastructure projects, and find that failure scenarios may vary depending on the method used to aggregate multiple criteria. Common methods used to convert multiple attributes into a single utility score can obscure connections between failure scenarios and system performance, limiting the information provided to support decision making. Applying scenario discovery over each performance metric separately provides more nuanced information regarding the relative sensitivity of the objectives to different uncertain parameters, leading to clearer insights on measures that could be taken to improve system robustness and areas where additional research might prove useful.Irrigated agriculture in Mediterranean areas faces tremendous challenges because of its exposure to hydroclimatic variability, increasing competition for water from different sectors, and the possibility of a climatic change. In this context, efficient management of water resources emerges as a critical issue. This requires the adoption of technological innovations, investment in infrastructure, adequate institutional arrangements, and informed decision makers. To understand farmers' perceptions and their implementation of climate change adaptation strategies with regards to water management, primary information was captured in the Limari and Maule river basins in Chile. Farmers identified stressors for agriculture; climate change, droughts, and lack of water appeared as the most relevant stressors compared to others productive, economic, and institutional factors; revealing a rising relevance of climate related factors. While most producers perceived climate changes in recent years (92.9 %), a significant proportion (61.1 %) claim to have experienced drought, whereas only a fraction (31.9 %) have implemented a strategy to deal with this situation. Identified actions were classified in four groups: investments for water accumulation, modernization of irrigation systems, rationalization of water use, and partnership activities. Using a multinomial logit model these strategies were related to socioeconomic and productive characteristics. Results show that gender and farm size are relevant for investments, implementation and improvement of irrigation systems. For all the strategies described, access to weather information was a relevant element. The study provides empirical evidence of a recent increase in the importance assigned to climate factors by producers and adaptation options that can be supported by agricultural policy.The ongoing climate change can influence the dynamic of insect populations and therefore the Insect species Responsible for Forest Damage ("insects-RFD" hereafter). The present study aims at identifying the most occurring insects-RFD in Sweden, and exploring the relationships between insects-RFD and climate and land management changes. The recorded insect attacks based on historical reports, literature and databases, were collected for North, Central and South of Sweden, and for two periods at yearly time scales: 1850-1950 and 1961-2014. A series of analyses has been carried out based on this dataset: 1 Estimation of the occurrence of each insects-RFD over years to assess which insect species have caused the major forest damage, 2-Ratios of broadleaved versus conifer host trees to estimate the main types of damaged forests, and 3-Canonical correspondence analyses to evaluate how much climate (winter and summer temperature, winter and summer precipitation, and storms) and land management (land areas for wood production, standing volume for all trees and standing volume for deciduous trees) changes have affected insects-RFD. The results reveal that the most occurring insects-RFD differ between the North and South of Sweden, and between 1850-1950 and 1961-2014. The most occurring insects-RFD since 1850 were Ips typographus, Neodiprion sertifer, Tortrix viridana, Hylobius abietis and Tomicus piniperda. The occurrences of insects-RFD have been higher in the South of Sweden since at least 1850 than in other regions. The North of Sweden have been mostly affected by insects-RFD between 1911 and 1950. Canonical correspondence analyses show that the spread of insects-RFD might be related to environmental conditions. More particularly, the insects-RFD variation explained are increasing between 1902-1950 and 1961-2007 in all Sweden for temperature (winter and summer) and in Central and South of Sweden for storm damage. However, the evolution of landscape management would participate in influencing insects-RFD, in particular from 1961, when changes in forest management (e.g. increase in land areas for wood production) have been developed, as well as the way to report insect forest damages. This long-term perspective of how changes in climate and land management have influenced insects-RFD is of great interest for further discussion about climate adaptation strategies in forestry and ecosystem services. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.While temperature effects on species' vulnerability to climate change are well studied, desiccation effects receive comparatively little attention. In addition, we poorly understand the capacity of ectotherms, and especially reptiles, to control water loss rates behaviourally by selecting suitable microhabitats. This study examined water loss rates and behavioural hydroregulation in the tropical rainforest skink Carlia rubrigularis to assess whether this dry-skinned ectotherm actively avoids desiccation and whether trade-offs occur between desiccation avoidance and selection of optimal temperatures, as previously shown in amphibians. Higher temperatures elicited humid refuge choice despite placing individuals in suboptimal thermal conditions, as indicated by preferred substrate temperatures. This finding emphasizes the importance of water loss even for taxa traditionally assumed to be highly desiccation resistant, and highlights this factor's potential influence on vulnerability to climate change by limiting activity times or by restricting individuals to thermally suboptimal microhabitats.This paper describes the impact of drainage and grassland use on selected soil parameters (e.g. organic carbon content, bulk density) of typical fen soils in Northeast Germany and, hence, their influence on grassland productivity. A broad investigation of site conditions has been realized at 23 grassland fields concerning soil properties, vegetation attributes and groundwater dynamics. Collectively selected fields represent characteristic types of grassland management and stages of moorsh-forming process. Concerning the entire sample, site conditions of agriculturally used peatlands vary strongly. Based on that complex data-set, the importance of defined potential impact factors on grassland production is tested and expressed in a linear regression model. Annual yield of the 2011 growing season, as a quantitative parameter of grassland productivity, does not indicate any correlation to site-specific conditions or cultivation strategy. In contrast, energy content as a qualitative measure varies strongly in relation to defined environmental parameters. Model performance is indicated with an adjusted R-square of 0.89 while the main impact factors are annual use frequency, mean summer water table (MSWT), maximum groundwater drawdown (GWmax), and organic carbon content (Corg). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper analyzes a unique data set that details the daily advertisements on Information, Education and Communication (IEC) material to avert heat stroke mortality in different media used by the state government of Odisha, India and the actual daily heat wave mortalities in the state over a period of eight years. The paper then investigates the relative effectiveness of the different media in reducing mortality econometrically. The government adopted awareness generation as an adaptation strategy for heat waves in the year 2003 and intensified the use of public media from 2007 when multiple newspapers and radio and television channels were used for dissemination. I analyze the district-level daily death occurrences due to heat stroke using both linear and non-linear econometric models. Media used on the same day or on previous days are represented in the models by grouping them as either print, audio or video media. The data used is a daily panel data set consisting of only summer days (15th March-20th June) for the years 2005-12 for each of the 30 districts of the state. The estimated models account for the gap in data and the multidimensional nature of the panel, (days, months, years). The results show the repeated use of video media to be the most effective in reducing deaths followed by newspapers and radio. The paper's novel contribution is the use of secondary data to evaluate media and compare media effect of public health communication strategies in a developing country. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A substantial change in energy policy in Germany towards the substitution of fossil, nonrenewable energy resources is part of a current political and social process. This change has been accelerated by the government's decision in summer 2011 to phase out nuclear energy, a direct result of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. As part of this development, new business activities and modes of organization for the provisioning of energy from alternative sources have emerged; one such activity is short rotation coppice (SRC) cultivation on agricultural land. In this paper, we compare the two prevailing organizational modes for SRC: independent production and contract farming. We use a mixed-methods approach to examine these modes from the producers' point of view in Brandenburg/Germany. First, we give reasons for the producer's choice between these two modes of organization based on the interviewee's qualitative assessment of how these modes cope with perceived SRC-related challenges e.g. uncertainties. As economic uncertainty plays a major role in both refusal to adopt SRC and the choice of the mode of organization for SRC production, we secondly model the unknown economic outcome of the independent mode. We thereby give insights into the "black box". This consists on the one hand of lacking economic figures for an economic comparison of both modes, and on the other hand of the producer's decision-making process between both modes. For the latter, we use the theoretical approach of transaction costs to display ostensible non-monetary decision factors. Using a known monetary reference for the contract farming mode, we are able firstly to support a comparison of economic factors and secondly to identify and interpret the critical variables whose manifestations and/or changes are decisive for the economic outcome. The modelling results show that neither of the two modes performs better per se. This finding suggests that the weight ascribed to the transaction costs of SRC in each individual producer's decision-making process is decisive for the producer's choice of mode. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Crop growth and agricultural management can affect climate at various spatial and temporal scales through the exchange of heat, water, and gases between land and atmosphere. Therefore, simulation of fluxes for heat, water, and gases from agricultural land is important for climate simulations. A land surface model (LSM) combined with a crop growth model (CGM), called an LSM-CGM combined model, is a useful tool for simulating these fluxes from agricultural land. Therefore, we developed a new LSM-CGM combined model for paddy rice fields, the MATCRO-Rice model. The main objective of this paper is to present the full description of MATCRO-Rice. The most important feature of MATCRO-Rice is that it can consistently simulate latent and sensible heat fluxes, net carbon uptake by crop, and crop yield by exchanging variables between the LSM and CGM. This feature enables us to apply the model to a wide range of integrated issues.We conducted two types of validation for the simulations by MATCRO-Rice developed by Masutomi et al. (2016). In the first validation, we compared simulations with observations for latent heat flux (LHF), sensible heat flux (SHF), net carbon uptake by crop, and paddy rice yield from 2003 to 2006 at the site where model parameters are parameterized. In the second validation, we compared the observed and simulated paddy rice yields over Japan from 1991 to 2010 between observations and simulations. The 4-year average root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the first validation for LHF and SHF were 18.20 and 15.47Wm(-2), respectively. These values for errors are comparable to those reported in earlier studies. The comparison of biomass growth during growing periods from 2003 to 2006 at the parameterization site shows that the simulations were in agreement with the observations, indicating that the model can reproduce the net carbon uptake by crops well. The 4-year average RMSE of the first validation for crop yield in the same period was 410.6 kg ha(-1), which accounted for 8.1% of the mean observed yields. The error of the second validation for crop yield was 16.7% and the correlation of crop yields between observations and simulations from 1991 to 2010 was significant at 0.663 (P < 0 : 01). These results indicate that MATCRO-Rice has high ability to accurately and consistently simulate LHF, SHF, net carbon uptake by crop, and crop yield.Diversity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are now recognized as vital to tackling wicked problems such as those presented by a changing climate (Nature editorial 2015, Ledford 2015; Dick et al., 2016). Including diverse disciplines in science projects enables a range of different views which often facilitate the creation of innovative solutions. Supporting multiple views and options requires a different way of worldng beyond traditional reductionist approaches to science, communication and decision-making. To embrace diversity in scientific project teams in order to tackle complex, integrated and urgent issues but to expect singular and linear pathways forward is paradoxical. Much has been written about the need for the scientific community to embrace uncertainty (e.g. Popper, Lempert & Bankes 2005; Lempert et al., 2004; Nelson, Howden & Hayman 2013; Bammer & Smithson 2008). We argue that this in itself will not suffice, and that there is also a need to embrace ambiguity in certain. situations. Thus, in this article we explore: (1) what ambiguity is, including the benefits it can offer to climate adaptation in particular, using existing approaches to ambiguity in the arts and humanities as examples (2), we discuss practical meanings of ambiguity in relation to climate change, (3) we propose possible next steps for bringing ambiguity into interdisciplinary practice, and (4) we identify some challenges and necessary preconditions to successfully and appropriately embracing ambiguity. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study investigated the potential effect of climate changes on stormwater pollution runoff characteristics and the treatment efficiency of a stormwater retention pond in a 95 ha catchment in Denmark. An integrated dynamic stormwater runoff quality and treatment model was used to simulate two scenarios: one representing the current climate and another representing a future climate scenario with increased intensity of extreme rainfall events and longer dry weather periods. 100-year long high-resolution rainfall time series downscaled from regional climate model projections were used as input. The collected data showed that total suspended solids (TSS) and total copper (Cu) concentrations in stormwater runoff were related to flow, rainfall intensity and antecedent dry period. Extreme peak intensities resulted in high particulate concentrations and high loads but did not affect dissolved Cu concentrations. The future climate simulations showed an increased frequency of higher flows and increased total concentrations discharged from the catchment. The effect on the outlet from the pond was an increase in the total concentrations (TSS and Cu), whereas no major effect was observed on dissolved Cu concentrations. Similar results are expected for other particle bound pollutants including metals and slowly biodegradable organic substances such as PAH. Acute toxicity impacts to downstream surface waters seem to be only slightly affected. A minor increase in yearly loads of sediments and particle-bound pollutants is expected, mainly caused by large events disrupting the settling process. This may be important to consider for the many stormwater retention ponds existing in Denmark and across the world.Climate change is occurring. Deviations from historic temperatures and precipitation plus increased frequency of extreme events are modifying agriculture systems globally. Adapting agricultural management practices offers a way to lessen the effects or exploit opportunities. Herein many aspects of the adaptation issue are discussed, including needs, strategies, observed actions, benefits, economic analysis approaches, role of public/private actors, limits, and project evaluation. We comment on the benefits and shortcomings of analytical methods and suggested economic efforts. Economists need to play a role in such diverse matters as projecting adaptation needs, designing adaptation incentives, and evaluating projects to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.Payments for environmental services (PES) have gained wide popularity as approaches to promote environmentally friendly land use or agricultural production practices. Yet academics have also voiced concerns against seeing PES as a panacea. This article discusses whether PES is an appropriate and promising approach to promote so-called "climate-smart agriculture" (CSA) practices, which we define as agricultural production practices that contribute to CO2 emission reductions and/or removals and provide benefits to farmers via increased productivity and profits and reduced vulnerability to climate change. PES appears most promising for the promotion of CSA practices in small-scale farming contexts with low incomes. Effective design, however, requires solid estimates of cost and benefit flows from CSA adoption over time, accounting for differences in socioeconomic and ecological conditions, and addressing the risk of leakage. Funding for such PES will likely have to come from public sources, and seems most promising where synergies with other objectives such as agricultural development, food security, and climate adaptation or other environmental services exist. The potential of alternative approaches for CSA support such as taxation with rebates for CSA practices, CSA-related investment support such as microcredits, and hybrid approaches such as conditional microcredit should be further investigated.Typical of urbanization in China, dense, high-rise relocation residences have poor open space provision, leading to sedentary lifestyles and limited contact with nature. Located 5 km east of the city center of Ningbo, the 83-hectare Platform Park strives to solve the conflict and creates a centerpiece of the urban development, providing a significant open space for adjacent new communities, technology sector, universities, and cultural facilities including a historic temple. Particularly, the first phase provides a much-needed open space for multi-generational families, directly benefiting an adjacent relocation community. The 2.5-hectare area has transformed the way people connect to the waterfront, encouraging daily exercise and contact with nature through a diverse range of uses and landscape types. The park integrates typhoon resilience, climate change adaptation and creates a platform for health, fitness, social interaction and ecological restoration.Reducing uncertainty in data inputs at relevant spatial scales can improve tidal marsh forecasting models, and their usefulness in coastal climate change adaptation decisions. The Marsh Equilibrium Model (MEM), a one-dimensional mechanistic elevation model, incorporates feedbacks of organic and inorganic inputs to project elevations under sea-level rise scenarios. We tested the feasibility of deriving two key MEM inputs-average annual suspended sediment concentration (SSC) and aboveground peak biomass-from remote sensing data in order to apply MEM across a broader geographic region. We analyzed the precision and representativeness (spatial distribution) of these remote sensing inputs to improve understanding of our study region, a brackish tidal marsh in San Francisco Bay, and to test the applicable spatial extent for coastal modeling. We compared biomass and SSC models derived from Landsat 8, DigitalGlobe WorldView-2, and hyperspectral airborne imagery. Landsat 8-derived inputs were evaluated in a MEM sensitivity analysis. Biomass models were comparable although peak biomass from Landsat 8 best matched field-measured values. The Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer SSC model was most accurate, although a Landsat 8 time series provided annual average SSC estimates. Landsat 8-measured peak biomass values were randomly distributed, and annual average SSC (30 mg/L) was well represented in the main channels (IQR: 29-32 mg/L), illustrating the suitability of these inputs across the model domain. Trend response surface analysis identified significant diversion between field and remote sensing-based model runs at 60 yr due to model sensitivity at the marsh edge (80-140 cm NAVD88), although at 100 yr, elevation forecasts differed less than 10 cm across 97% of the marsh surface (150-200 cm NAVD88). Results demonstrate the utility of Landsat 8 for landscape-scale tidal marsh elevation projections due to its comparable performance with the other sensors, temporal frequency, and cost. Integration of remote sensing data with MEM should advance regional projections of marsh vegetation change by better parameterizing MEM inputs spatially. Improving information for coastal modeling will support planning for ecosystem services, including habitat, carbon storage, and flood protection.Drought stress and associated low soil moisture can decrease N status of forage plants by reducing nitrogen (N) uptake. Conversely, rainfall and associated favorable soil moisture can improve plant N status. Yet, it is unclear to which degree drought combined with rewetting can buffer negative effects of drought on N status of forage plants and their populations. Here, we compared shoot N status (N concentration, total N uptake and C/N ratio) of four temperate grass species. Particularly, we investigated ecotypes (populations) grown from seeds from four to six European provenances/species after a drought treatment combined with rewetting (10 day harvest delay) versus continuously watered conditions for control. The experimental combination of drought and rewetting significantly increased shoot N concentration (+96%), N uptake (+31%); and decreased C/N ratio (-46%), biomass production (-29%) and C concentration (-1.4%) compared to control. Shoot N status was found to be different between target grass species and also within their populations under drought combined with rewetting treatment. Presumably drought-adapted populations did not perform better than populations from moist sites indicating no evidence of local adaptation. The drought combined with rewetting event could buffer the negative effects of drought. Shoot N status of grasses after drought and rewetting even exceeded control plants. This surprising finding can potentially be explained by higher N uptake, lack of growth dilution effects or delayed plant maturation. Furthermore, within-species shoot N status responses to drought combined with rewetting event were ecotype-specific, hinting at diverse responses of different population. For rangeland management, we recommend that if a drought event occurs during the growing season, harvesting should be delayed beyond a following rain event. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.Expansive areas of low elevation in many densely populated coastal areas are at elevated risk of storm surges and flooding due to torrential precipitation, as a result of sea level rise. These phenomena could have catastrophic impacts on coastal communities and result in the destruction of critical infrastructure, disruption of economic activities and salt water contamination of the water supply. The objective of the study presented in this paper was to identify various impacts of sea level rise on civil infrastructures in coastal areas and examine the adaptation measures suggested in the existing literature. To this end, a systemic review of the existing literature was conducted in order to identify a repository of studies addressing sea level rise impacts and adaptation measures in the context of infrastructure systems. The study focused on three infrastructure sectors: water and wastewater, energy, and road transportation. The collected information was then analyzed in order to identify different categories of sea level rise impacts and corresponding adaptation measures. The findings of the study are threefold: (1) the major categories of sea level rise impacts on different infrastructure systems; (2) measures for protection, accommodation, and retreat in response to sea level rise impacts; and (3) challenges related to implementing adaptation measures.London's ability to remain a world-leading city in an increasingly globalised economy is dependent on it being an efficient, low-risk place to do business and a desirable place to live. However, increasing climate risk from flooding, overheating and water scarcity threatens this, creating the need for adaptation. An adaption pathway describes a structured sequence of adaptation decisions that are designed to manage climate risk in a wide range of possible future conditions. Analysis of sequential adaptation decision 'pathways' helps to demonstrate how climate risk can (or cannot) be managed, whilst retaining the flexibility to respond to future uncertainties. Whilst adaptive planning has gained increasing attention, the uptake of such methods has been relatively limited compared to the scale of the adaptation challenge due to institutional, financial and methodological barriers. This paper introduces a framework for adaptation planning in urban water supply systems that links existing risk-based decision-making with the development of long-term adaptation pathways. We present a quantified assessment of how the risk of water shortages in London is predicted to vary dynamically through to 2100 depending on the choice of adaptation pathways and under different long-term transient population and climate scenarios. This approach helps to reconcile multiple decision timescales and demonstrates the value of strategic long-term adaptation planning to stakeholders by outlining long-term futures that may influence medium-term decision-making. Adopting a flexible approach to adaptation will be critical to the management of risk under uncertainty. This adaptation pathways approach demonstrates an effective framework for informing such decision processes. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Increases in water treatment technology have made water recycling a viable engineering solution to water supply limitations. In spite of this, such water recycling schemes have often been halted by lack of public acceptance. Previous studies have captured the public's attitudes regarding planned reuse schemes, but here we focus on unplanned reuse (i.e. de facto reuse), present in many cities across the U.S. We performed a survey in three metropolitan areas, Atlanta, GA (N = 421), Philadelphia, PA (N = 490), and Phoenix, AZ (N = 418), to assess basic perceptions of treated wastewater occurrence and its acceptance in the public water supply. These perceptions were then coupled by estimates of the actual extent of occurrence in the corresponding cities. The key results are that (1) de facto reuse occurs at rates across the three cities higher than what is perceived; (2) roughly 25% of respondents perceive de facto reuse to occur in their home tap water; and (3) respondents who perceived de facto reuse to occur at their tap were ten times more likely to have a high level of acceptance for de facto reuse in their home tap. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper considers how learning for transformation of water governance in the context of climate change adaptation can be designed for and supported, drawing examples from the international climate change adaptation and water governance project (CADWAGO). The project explicitly set out to design for governance learning in the sense of developing elements of social infrastructure such as workshops, performances and online media to bring stakeholders together and to facilitate co-learning of relevance to governance. CADWAGO drew on a variety of international cases from past and ongoing work of the project partners. It created a forum for dialogue among actors from different contexts working at different levels and scales. The range of opportunities and constraints encountered are discussed, including the principles and practicalities of working with distributed processes of design and leadership of events. A range of concepts, tools and techniques were used to consider and facilitate individual and collective learning processes and outcomes associated with water governance in the context of climate adaptation. Questions were addressed about how elements of past, present and future water governance thinking and practice are connected and how multi-level systemic change in governance can take place. Some reflections on the effectiveness of the design for learning process are included. The nature of the contribution that projects such as CADWAGO can make in learning for transformation of water governance practices is also critically considered.In 2015, water governance in England finds itself part way through perhaps the most significant changes since the privatisation of the water industry in 1989. Each of the changes is a response to the specific challenges that fall within the realm of improving water governance. However, they also raise many questions: How will the changes play out in practice? Will they work together to form a coherent `whole'? Can collaborative and competitive approaches really co-exist? This research aims to engage researchers, policy-makers and practitioners in a systemic co-inquiry in order to improve understandings and practices in relation to water governance in England. The two workshops undertaken as part of the research focused on the current and future water governance situation in England, respectively. The findings from the workshops demonstrate that the systemic co-inquiry process generally proved very successful and useful for this group of stakeholders. The workshops provided the opportunity for participants to share, explore and challenge their ideas, knowledge and experiences in water governance; and in doing so, they brought about shared understandings, revealed new insights and identified concerted actions to improve (transform) water governance. However, it is recognised that whilst significant progress has been made towards improving understanding and practices in relation to water governance in England, there is still further work required in order to implement these improvements on a local, national or global scale.Climate change will likely have significant effects on forest ecosystems worldwide. In Mediterranean regions, such as that in southwestern Oregon, USA, changes will likely be driven mainly by wildfire and drought. To minimize the negative effects of climate change, resource managers require tools and information to assess climate change vulnerabilities and to develop and implement adaptation actions. We developed an approach to facilitate development and implementation of climate change adaptation options in forest management. This approach, applied in a southwestern Oregon study region, involved establishment of a science-manager partnership, a science-based assessment of forest and woodland vulnerabilities to climate change, climate change education in multiple formats, hands-on development of adaptation options, and application of tools to incorporate climate change in planned projects. Through this approach, we improved local manager understanding of the potential effects of climate change in southwestern Oregon, and enabled evaluation of proposed management activities in the context of climatic stressors. Engaging managers throughout the project increased ownership of the process and outcomes, as well as the applicability of the adaptation options toe-ground actions. Science-management partnerships can effectively inco on-thrporate evolving science, regardless of the socio-political environment, and facilitate timely progress in adaptation to climate change.The Northwest Atlantic continental slope features strong interactions among the western boundary currents of the subpolar and subtropical gyres, and, thus, the sea-level variability over the slope may be an indicator for the large-scale ocean circulation. In this study, temporal and spatial sea-level variability in the Northwest Atlantic continental slope has been investigated based on a satellite altimetry dataset and a temperature and salinity dataset. The altimetric results from 1993 to 2012 are compared with steric height anomalies relative to 1500 m, calculated from the temperature and salinity dataset. This study shows significant interannual and decadal sea-level variability, with prominent regional differences and varying linkages to large-scale atmospheric and oceanic variability in the North Atlantic. Both the altimeric and steric height anomalies in the western Labrador Sea are negatively correlated with the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index primarily via wintertime deep convection. The altimetric height anomalies in the Laurentian Fan have a weak (insignificant at the 95% confidence level) positive correlation with those in the Labrador Sea, while the steric height anomalies have a negative correlation. The thermosteric (halosteric) height anomalies in the Labrador Sea are negatively (positively) correlated with the winter NAO index, while those in the Laurentian Fan are not correlated with the winter NAO index. The along-slope differences in the interannual and decadal variations of the sea surface height anomalies imply that there is an interior pathway of the southward-flowing Labrador Sea intermediate water toward the central North Atlantic basin before reaching 55 degrees N.An analysis of tropical cyclone (TC) data from 1951 to 2013 in the Philippines revealed that an average of 19.4 TCs enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR) every year and nine TCs cross the country. Time series analysis of the TC datasets shows no significant trends in the annual number of TCs in PAR but a slightly decreasing trend in the number of landfalling TCs in the Philippines, particularly in the last two decades. However, while the analysis shows fewer typhoons (above 118 kph), more extreme TCs (above 150 kph) have affected the Philippines. The study also confirms that the Northern island of Luzon is most frequently hit by TCs, and that TC-associated rainfall is greatest in this region compared to the southernmost part of the country. The impact of TCs shows a consistently increasing trend in economic losses and damages. Further understanding of past and future trends of TC activity in the Western North Pacific Basin, and the PAR, including the impacts associated with them, will provide valuable insights for climate change adaptation and disaster risk management.Industrial complexes may be subject to significant risk of cascading failure caused by various disruptions and emerging economies are potentially more susceptible to the impacts as less established policies are in place to deal with these issues. In particular, there is a need to develop adaptation strategies to ensure the resilience of industrial activities to various perturbations that may result from climate change. The inherent complexity of such systems makes decision-making for risk management a non-trivial task that is best facilitated with the aid of mathematical models. Enterprise input-output models have been used extensively to model production systems at different scales. In this work, a fuzzy linear programming enterprise input-output model is developed to determine optimal adjustments in production levels of multi-product systems when a crisis is induced by a loss of resource inputs. The model allows for adjustments that are equitable for different decision-makers that may comprise an industrial complex or a supply chain. Capabilities of the model are illustrated with a case study on the effect of water shortage on an aluminum production system. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In an era when climate records are continually being broken, climate change adaptation is becoming relevant for communities around the globe, particularly the most vulnerable and poor communities. Governments around the world collectively agreed in Paris in 2015 to combat the threats and challenges posed by climate change, yet the matter of how to finance adaptation for those in need remains unsettled. There are two major issues related to the future of adaptation funding: where the funds will flow from, and how to ensure the appropriate distribution and allocation of the available funds. This paper discusses political economy factors at the global, national, and local levels that affect the distribution and allocation of available funds. It argues that appropriate consideration of political economy factors is needed in designing future finance programs, to ensure that funds reach those who need them most.Increasing temperatures and a reduction in the frequency and severity of freezing events have been linked to species distribution shifts. Across the globe, mangrove ranges are expanding toward higher latitudes, likely due to diminishing frequency of freezing events associated with climate change. Continued warming will alter coastal wetland plant dynamics both above- and belowground, potentially altering plant capacity to keep up with sea level rise. We conducted an in situ warming experiment, in northeast Florida, to determine how increased temperature (+2 degrees C) influences co-occurring mangrove and salt marsh plants. Warming was achieved using passive warming with three treatment levels (ambient, shade control, warmed). Avicennia germinans, the black mangrove, exhibited no differences in growth or height due to experimental warming, but displayed a warming-induced increase in leaf production (48%). Surprisingly, Distichlis spicata, the dominant salt marsh grass, increased in biomass (53% in 2013 and 70% in 2014), density (41%) and height (18%) with warming during summer months. Warming decreased plant root mass at depth and changed abundances of anaerobic bacterial taxa. Even while the poleward shift of mangroves is clearly controlled by the occurrences of severe freezes, chronic warming between these freeze events may slow the progression of mangrove dominance within ecotones.The Athabasca River Basin, home to Canada's growing oil sands mining industry, faces challenging trade-offs between energy production and water security. Water demand from the oil sands mining industry is projected to increase as climate change is projected to alter the seasonal freshwater supply. In this study, a range of water management options are developed to investigate the potential trade-offs between the scale of bitumen production and industry growth, water storage requirements, and environmental protection for the aquatic ecosystems, under projections of mid-century climate change. It is projected that water storage will be required to supplement river withdrawals to maintain continuous bitumen production under the impacts of future climate warming. If high growth in future bitumen production and water demand is the priority, then building sufficient water storage capacity to meet industry demand will be comparable to a week of lost revenue because of interrupted production. If environmental protection is prioritized instead, it will require over nine times the water storage costs to maintain water demand under a high industry growth trajectory. Future water use decisions will need to first, determine the scale of industry and environmental protection, and second, balance the costs of water storage against lost revenue because of water shortages that limit bitumen production. This physically based assessment of future water trade-offs can inform water policy, water management decisions, and climate change adaptation plans, with applicability to other regions facing trade-offs between industrial development and ecosystem water needs. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Predictions of river flow dynamics provide vital information for many aspects of water management including water resource planning, climate adaptation, and flood and drought assessments. Many of the subjective choices that modellers make including model and criteria selection can have a significant impact on the magnitude and distribution of the output uncertainty. Hydrological modellers are tasked with understanding and minimising the uncertainty surrounding streamflow predictions before communicating the overall uncertainty to decision makers. Parameter uncertainty in conceptual rainfall-runoff models has been widely investigated, and model structural uncertainty and forcing data have been receiving increasing attention. This study aimed to assess uncertainties in streamflow predictions due to forcing data and the identification of behavioural parameter sets in 31 Irish catchments. By combining stochastic rainfall ensembles and multiple parameter sets for three conceptual rainfall-runoff models, an analysis of variance model was used to decompose the total uncertainty in streamflow simulations into contributions from (i) forcing data, (ii) identification of model parameters and (iii) interactions between the two. The analysis illustrates that, for our subjective choices, hydrological model selection had a greater contribution to overall uncertainty, while performance criteria selection influenced the relative intra-annual uncertainties in streamflow predictions. Uncertainties in streamflow predictions due to the method of determining parameters were relatively lower for wetter catchments, and more evenly distributed throughout the year when the Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency of logarithmic values of flow (lnNSE) was the evaluation criterion. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In ecosystems where large-scale disturbances are infrequent, the mode of succession may be difficult to discern and floristic surveys alone cannot be used determine the underlying processes causing vegetation change. To determine the causes of vegetation change in response to a large-scale fire event, we combined traditional floristic survey data, plant functional traits and environmental variables in a model-based solution to the fourth-corner problem. This approach allowed us to describe the trait-environment relationship and provides an intuitive matrix of environment by trait interaction coefficients. We could then quantify the strength and direction of associations between plant traits, species life-forms and environmental factors in two alpine plant communities over nine years post-fire. Initially, the fire drastically reduced vegetation cover and species density to very low levels. The fourth-corner analysis interaction coefficients indicated that over the course of the nine-year study a high abundance of graminoids, a low abundance of shrubs, tall species and those with high leaf dry matter content had the strongest associations with the two plant communities. We also found evidence for functional homogenisation between these two communities using this novel technique. Analysing plant traits and species responses post-fire in this manner can be used to infer the ecological processes driving shifts in vegetation.A three-dimensional variable-density groundwater flow and salinity transport model is implemented using the SEAWAT code to quantify the spatial variation of water-table depth and salinity of the surficial aquifer in Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral Island in east-central Florida (USA) under steady-state 2010 hydrologic and hydrogeologic conditions. The developed model is referred to as the 'reference' model and calibrated against field-measured groundwater levels and a map of land use and land cover. Then, five prediction/projection models are developed based on modification of the boundary conditions of the calibrated 'reference' model to quantify climate change impacts under various scenarios of sea-level rise and precipitation change projected to 2050. Model results indicate that west Merritt Island will encounter lowland inundation and saltwater intrusion due to its low elevation and flat topography, while climate change impacts on Cape Canaveral Island and east Merritt Island are not significant. The SEAWAT models developed for this study are useful and effective tools for water resources management, land use planning, and climate-change adaptation decision-making in these and other low-lying coastal alluvial plains and barrier island systems.A two-dimensional high-order Boussinesq-type model was derived to simulate wave propagation and relevant processes in the nearshore zone. Because of its enhanced nonlinear character, the model can describe more accurately the amplitude dispersion compared to its weakly nonlinear counterpart. Extension to the surf zone was accomplished using the eddy-viscosity concept for simulating breaking waves. Swash-zone dynamics were simulated by applying a modified narrow-slot technique. Bottom friction and subgrid turbulent mixing were also incorporated. The model can estimate the wave-induced current field, including the undertow effect. The numerical model relied on a generalized multistep predictor-corrector scheme, and the waves were generated using the source function method. Both the one-horizontal-dimensional (1DH) and two-horizontal-dimensional (2DH) versions were validated against a variety of experimental tests, including regular and irregular wave propagation and breaking on plane beaches and submerged shoals. Breaking and run-up of a solitary wave were also modeled. Furthermore, a wave overtopping test was also included. Oblique long-crested irregular wave incidence and a test including a rip channel were simulated to check the model's performance. The agreement, in general, is satisfactory, and most of the nearshore phenomena were accurately reproduced.Climate change poses major challenges to agricultural systems in drought prone regions of the world especially in the areas with high poverty, lack of irrigation facilities and low productivity. Towards this it is essential to understand the climate change perceptions, adaptation practices and barriers to effective adaptation at household and community level. This paper using household surveys and focus group discussions in one of the drought prone areas of Odisha in India, explores various aspects of perception on climate change and barriers to adaptation. It also analyses the accuracy of perceptions based on rainfall data from nearest meteorological stations. The study reinforces the argument by earlier studies that the perception by people simply cannot be wrong because they may have a just a low correlation with underlying meteorological data. Results suggest that farmers increasingly perceive the changes in the rainfall and temperature patterns. However, when compared with the trend in actual rainfall data, perceptions on rainfall are found to more closely align with the results from the nearest station as compared to the station farther from it. Analysis revealed that seasonal rainfall variability has a profound influence on the farmers' perceptions on climate change and drought in the study region. Farmers' are still dependent on the traditional forecasting system because of the lack of access to modern climate forecasting and tailored information for agricultural practice. Although farmers in the study region are already adapting to the changing climate, the study finds that while lack of access to water and irrigation, information on climate change adaptation and early warning systems are major barriers to adaptation at the household level lack of government intervention, lack of knowledge on drought resistant crops and varieties and lack of renovation of water bodies and irrigation were mentioned as the major barriers at the community level. Findings from the paper argue for better adaptation planning at the local level incorporating local level perceptions and barriers to adaptation. In such areas local level planning can be crucial in enhancing the adaptive capacity of the farmers.Assisted colonizationthe intentional movement of species as a climate adaptation strategyhas emerged as a divisive controversy in the conservation biology literature. We review selected scientific literature to understand the nature of the controversy, alongside relevant scholarship on the science-policy interface to highlight ways in which scientists and their work might most effectively and appropriately inform decisions on this management strategy. The scientific literature thus far is problematic in two ways that threaten to undermine the utility of science to actual decision-making processes: As a collection, it contains abundant and seemingly incommensurable insights about assisted colonization. This is at least in part a product of nature, which is sufficiently diverse to provide examples and case studies that appear to justify any number of policy preferences regarding ecosystem management. This first shortcoming exacerbates the second: Scientific authors thus far have not adequately addressed the value-based considerations implicit in their own work, nor acknowledged public's legitimate standing in these inherently value-based decisions. In combination, these attributes of the literature ensure that additional knowledge on assisted colonization will exacerbate public controversyrather than dispel itwhen public attention increases. We propose that if scientists appropriately disentangle value considerations from technical ones, invite public debates over values, and treat proposals individually rather than debating the approach writ-large, they stand to have the greatest influence over technical aspects of decision processes. Scientists would serve themselves well to acknowledge the limits of science and embrace public dialogue about specific management proposals. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:852-868. doi: 10.1002/wcc.420 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .Cities are increasingly prone to urban flooding due to heavier rainfall, denser populations, augmenting imperviousness, and infrastructure aging. Urban pluvial flooding causes damage to buildings and contents, and disturbs stormwater drainage, transportation, and electricity provision. Designing and implementing efficient adaptation measures requires proper understanding of the urban response to heavy rainfall. However, implemented stormwater drainage models lack flood impact data for calibration, which results in poor flood predictions. Moreover, such models only consider rainfall and hydraulic parameters, neglecting the role of other natural, built, and social conditions in flooding mechanisms. This paper explores the potential of open spatial datasets to explain the occurrence of citizen-reported flood incidents during a heavy rain event. After a dimensionality reduction, imperviousness and proximity to watershed outflow point were found to significantly explain up to half of the flooding incidents variability, proving the usefulness of the proposed approach for urban flood modelling and management. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is increasingly posing risks to infrastructure and public services in cities across the global South. Building on ideas of policy experimentation at the nexus of institutional and transition theories, this paper assesses six climate change adaptation experiments across the cities of Surat, Indore and Bhubaneswar in India to uncover the politics behind how experiments are conceived of, implemented, and supported in light of local development needs. Through employing both embedded and cross-case comparative methods, I argue that policy experiments are often framed around achieving tangible urban economic benefits and maximizing specific project complementarities, which allow emerging adaptation priorities access to established policy directives and funding streams. However, I conclude that despite being arenas for testing new ideas, quantifying climate and development co-benefits, and engaging private and civil society actors, adaptation policy experiments must be coherent with urban political economic contexts in order for them to affect sustained, equitable and transformative programmatic change. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentFuture changes in temperature, rainfall and soil moisture could threaten agricultural land use and crop productivity in Europe, with major consequences for food security. Weassessed the projected impacts of climate change on the yield of seven major crop types (viz wheat, barley, maize, potato, sugar beet, rice and rye) grown in Europe using a systematic review (SR) and meta-analysis of data reported in 41 original publications from an initial screening of 1748 studies. Our approach adopted an established SR procedure developed by the Centre for Evidence Based Conservation constrained by inclusion criteria and defined methods for literature searches, data extraction, meta-analysis and synthesis. Whilst similar studies exist to assess climate impacts on crop yield in Africa and South Asia, surprisingly, no comparable synthesis has been undertaken for Europe. Based on the reported results (n =729) we show that the projected change in average yield in Europe for the seven crops by the 2050s is + 8%. For wheat and sugar beet, average yield changes of + 14% and + 15% are projected, respectively. There were strong regional differences with crop impacts in northern Europe being higher (+ 14%) and more variable compared to central (+ 6%) and southern (+ 5) Europe. Maize is projected to suffer the largest negative mean change in southern Europe (-11%). Evidence of climate impacts on yield was extensive for wheat, maize, sugar beet and potato, but very limited for barley, rice and rye. The implications for supporting climate adaptation policy and informing climate impacts crop science research in Europe are discussed.Water year types (WYTs), whereby years are classified by river runoff quantity compared to historical runoff, are one tool to help make major water management decisions. Increasingly, these decisions include instream flow requirements (IFRs) below dams for river ecosystem management. However, WYTs are typically based on assumptions of stationarity, and are thus rendered less meaningful with climate change. Hydrologic alteration resulting from climate change means that a WYT-based IFR scheme using stationary historical observations might inadvertently result in long-term river management outcomes inconsistent with original water management goals. This study assesses the management implications of assuming hydrologic nonstationarity in a WYT-based IFR scheme in California's upper Yuba River and demonstrates a rolling period of record as a climate adaptation strategy. The existing, nonadaptive water management scheme leads to vastly different possible water allocation outcomes than originally planned for. Results indicate that water year types, if regularly updated, can help maintain historical instream flow distributions. However, gains toward maintaining desired IFRs are obfuscated by future increases in unmanaged reservoir spill. These findings indicate that hydroclimatic uncertainty can partially be accounted for with simple modifications to existing operating rules for reservoirs, though other, risk-based management approaches are also likely needed. (C) 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.Housing growth can alter suitability of matrix habitats around protected areas, strongly affecting movements of organisms and, consequently, threatening connectivity of protected area networks. Our goal was to quantify distribution and growth of housing around the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System. This is important information for conservation planning, particularly given promotion of habitat connectivity as a climate change adaptation measure. We quantified housing growth from 1940 to 2000 and projected future growth to 2030 within three distances from refuges, identifying very low housing density open space, "opportunity areas" (contiguous areas with < 6.17 houses/km(2)), both nationally and by USFWS administrative region. Additionally, we quantified number and area of habitat corridors within these opportunity areas in 2000. Our results indicated that the number and area of open space opportunity areas generally decreased with increasing distance from refuges and with the passage of time. Furthermore, total area in habitat corridors was much lower than in opportunity areas. In addition, the number of corridors sometimes exceeded number of opportunity areas as a result of habitat fragmentation, indicating corridors are likely vulnerable to land use change. Finally, regional differences were strong and indicated some refuges may have experienced so much housing growth already that they are effectively too isolated to adapt to climate change, while others may require extensive habitat restoration work. Wildlife refuges are increasingly isolated by residential housing development, potentially constraining the movement of wildlife and, therefore, their ability to adapt to a changing climate.Climate change alters global food systems, especially agriculture and fisheries-significant aspects of the livelihoods and food security of populations. The 2014 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report identified Southeast Asia as the most vulnerable coastal region in the world, and highlighted the potential distribution of impacts and risks of climate change in the region. While climate hazards may differ across geographical regions, the impact of climate extremes on food production will affect marginal farmers, fishers and poor urban consumers disproportionately, as they have limited capacities to adapt to and recover from extreme weather events. Governments and other stakeholders need to respond to climate extremes and incorporate adaptation into national development plans. Unfortunately, there is still limited peer-review publication on the subject matter. This paper presents some findings from research on observed and projected loss and damage inflicted by climate extremes on agricultural crops in Southeast Asia.The capacity to tolerate freezing temperatures limits the geographical distribution of many plants, including several species of agricultural importance. However, the genes involved in freezing tolerance remain largely unknown. Here, we describe the variation in constitutive freezing tolerance that occurs among worldwide accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana. We found that although plants from high latitudes tend to be more freezing tolerant than plants from low latitudes, the environmental factors that shape cold adaptation differ across the species range. Consistent with this, we found that the genetic architecture of freezing tolerance also differs across its range. Conventional genome-wide association studies helped identify a priori and other promising candidate genes. However, simultaneously modelling climate variables and freezing tolerance together pinpointed other excellent a priori candidate genes. This suggests that if the selective factor underlying phenotypic variation is known, multi-trait mixed models may aid in identifying the genes that underlie adaptation. The ability to withstand freezing temperatures limits the geographical distribution of many plants, but the genes involved remain largely unknown. Here, we investigate the genetic bases of freezing tolerance in the model system, Arabidopsis thaliana. By using quantitative trait locus and genome-wide association studies and data from the 1001 Genomes Project, we identified several promising candidate genes. Our results suggest that the genetic architecture of freezing tolerance varies across the species range. Moreover, we found evidence that the climate variables that shape freezing tolerance also vary across the range, and that modelling climate variables with freezing tolerance may improve power in genome-wide association studies.Increases in precipitation variability, coupled with higher temperatures, will lead to greater frequencies of severe, prolonged droughts for many regions with the expectation of attendant increases in woody plant die-off events. We took advantage of a 2-yr extension of a severe drought following an initial study of woody plant dieback in a woody-encroached semiarid savanna in west-central Texas, United States. This study tests for the emergence of alternative vegetation trajectories as a result of continued drought persistence: 1) whether additional woody plant dieback occurred following the initial study, leading to a grass-dominated community, or 2) whether desertification became a major feature (defined as a loss of herbaceous cover and increase in bare ground). Neither the emergence of a grass-dominated community nor the prevalence of desertification was observed during the initial study. After 2 additional yr of drought, we found that dieback of woody plants did not increase above previously observed levels, suggesting that the prolongation of drought did not cause the emergence of a grass-dominated community in this heavily encroached rangeland. However, drought severity did lead to increases in desertification, with increases in bare ground owed to declines in grass cover. While previous research at this long-term research site suggests that desertification is transient with grasses rebounding once precipitation returns to predrought levels, rangeland managers should be aware of lags in vegetation response to drought and the increased potential for a shift toward a bare-ground dominated community following extended extreme drought. In this Texas semiarid savanna, major losses in herbaceous cover lagged behind woody plant dieback, so dieback of the woody component might hold promise as an indicator for near-termpotential of desertification. (C) 2016 The Society for Range Management. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Coupled with green house effects, the urban heat island is occurring more frequently, and thus is becoming a serious social problem. In order to elicit policy implications, the current study assesses the economic values on the heat island-mitigating functions of urban forest through choice experiments. The analytical results suggest that metropolitan city residents' utility can be increased by raising the size of life zone forests which is comprised of street trees, parks in residential regions, and small forests in school zones. The derived marginal willingness to pay for the life zone forests suggest that the respondents are willing to pay $56.68-76.59 for every increase of the urban forest by 1 m(2).The likelihood of being faced with trap-like situations is a worrisome aspect of long-term policy-making, such as for climate change adaptation. Even when a policy may be effective in the short-term, changes in problem or policy contexts may render it ineffective over time. The design of 'robust' policies, meaning those which are able to self-adjust to linear changes in their environment, can be contrasted with 'resilient' ones which are able to adjust not only to linear, but also non-linear shifts in their contexts. Building on Boonstra and de Boer (AMBIO 43:260-274, 2014)'s argument that traps should not be considered as a static phenomenon; rather their emergence and development is often directly influenced by history and path-dependency, this paper elaborates how trap-like situations can emerge with increase in climate uncertainty over time. Three strategies to address policy traps due to climate change form subjects of inquiry in this paper: avoiding traps in the first place, designing against traps, and overcoming traps once in them. Each requires a specific type of design thinking and practice.Within the varied contexts of environmental policy, conservation of imperilled species populations, and restoration of damaged habitats, an emphasis on idealized optimal conditions has led to increasingly specific targets for management. Overly-precise conservation targets can reduce habitat variability at multiple scales, with unintended consequences for future ecological resilience. We describe this dilemma in the context of endangered species management, stream restoration, and climate-change adaptation. Inappropriate application of conservation targets can be expensive, with marginal conservation benefit. Reduced habitat variability can limit options for managers trying to balance competing objectives with limited resources. Conservation policies should embrace habitat variability, expand decision-space appropriately, and support adaptation to local circumstances to increase ecological resilience in a rapidly changing world.While climate change is confirmed to have serious impacts on agricultural production in many regions worldwide, researchers have proposed various measures that farmers can apply to cope with and adapt to those changes. However, it is often the case that not every adaptation measure would be practical and adoptable in a specific region. Farmers may have their own ways of managing and adapting to climate change that need to be taken into account when considering interventions. This study aimed to engage with farmers to: (1) better understand small-holder knowledge, attitudes and practices in relation to perceived or expected climate change; and (2) document cropping practices, climate change perceptions, constraints to crop production, and coping and adaptation options with existing climate variability and expected climate change. This study was conducted in 2015 in Sala Krau village near Pailin (12 degrees 52'N, 102 degrees 45'E) and Samlout (12 degrees 39'N, 102 degrees 36'E) of North-West Cambodia. The methods used were a combination of focus group discussions and one-on-one interviews where 132 farming households were randomly selected. We found that farmers were conscious of changes in climate over recent years, and had a good understanding of likely future changes. While farmers are aware of some practices that can be modified to minimize risk and cope with anticipated changes, they are reluctant to apply them. Furthermore; there are no government agricultural extension services provided at the village level and farmers have relied on each other and other actors in the value chain network for information to support their decision-making. There is a lack of knowledge of the principles of conservation agriculture that urgently require agricultural extension services in the region to build farmer ability to better cope and adapt to climate change. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is altering sea level rise rates and precipitation patterns worldwide. Coastal wetlands are vulnerable to these changes. System responses to stressors are important for resource managers and environmental stewards to understand in order to best manage them. Thin layer sand or sediment application to drowning and eroding marshes is one approach to build elevation and resilience. The above-and below-ground structure, soil carbon dioxide emissions, and pore water constituents in vegetated natural marsh sediments and sand-amended sediments were examined at varying inundation regimes between mean sea level and mean high water (0.82 m NAVD88 to 1.49 m NAVD88) in a field experiment at Laws Point, part of the Plum Island Sound Estuary (MA). Significantly lower salinities, pH, sulfides, phosphates, and ammonium were measured in the sand-amended sediments than in the natural sediments. In natural sediments there was a pattern of increasing salinity with increasing elevation while in the sand-amended sediments the trend was reversed, showing decreasing salinity with increasing elevation. Sulfide concentrations generally increased from low to high inundation with highest concentrations at the highest inundation (i. e., at the lowest elevations). High pore water phosphate concentrations were measured at low elevations in the natural sediments, but the sand-amended treatments had mostly low concentrations of phosphate and no consistent pattern with elevation. At the end of the experiment the lowest elevations generally had the highest measures of pore water ammonium. Soil carbon dioxide emissions were greatest in the sandamended mesocosms and at higher elevations. Differences in coarse root and rhizome abundances and volumes among the sediment treatments were detected with CT imaging, but by 20 weeks the natural and sand-amended treatments showed similar total belowground biomass at the intermediate and high elevations. Although differences in pore water nutrient concentrations, pH, salinity, and belowground root and rhizome morphology were detected between the natural and sand-amended sediments, similar belowground productivity and total biomass were measured by the end of the growing season. Since the belowground productivity supports organic matter accumulation and peat buildup in marshes, our results suggest that thin layer sand or sediment application is a viable climate adaptation action to build elevation and coastal resiliency, especially in areas with low natural sediment supplies.Our scientific view on climate change adaptation (CCA) is unsatisfying in many ways: It is often dominated by a modernistic perspective of planned pro-active adaptation, with a selective focus on measures directly responding to climate change impacts and thus it is far from real-life conditions of those who are actually affected by climate change. Farmers have to simultaneously adapt to multiple changes. Therefore, also empirical climate change adaptation research needs a more integrative perspective on real-life climate change adaptations. This also has to consider "hidden" adaptations, which are not explicitly and directly motivated by CCA but actually contribute to the sector's adaptability to climate change. The aim of the present study is to develop and test an analytic framework that contributes to a broader understanding of CCA and to bridge the gap between scientific expertise and practical action. The framework distinguishes three types of CCA according to their climate related motivations: explicit adaptations, multi-purpose adaptations, and hidden adaptations. Although agriculture is among the sectors that are most affected by climate change, results from the case study of Tyrolean mountain agriculture show that climate change is ranked behind other more pressing "real-life-challenges" such as changing agricultural policies or market conditions. We identified numerous hidden adaptations which make a valuable contribution when dealing with climate change impacts. We conclude that these hidden adaptations have not only to be considered to get an integrative und more realistic view on CCA; they also provide a great opportunity for linking adaptation strategies to farmers' realities.Railway tracks are vulnerable to buckling when subjected to temperature increases, as occurs frequently during heatwaves. This paper presents an investigation of the lateral buckling and postbuckling response of railway tracks under thermal loading that includes the restraining effect of the ballast in the longitudinal and lateral directions. The principle of stationary total potential is used to develop the differential equations of equilibrium, as well as the bifurcation buckling from this equilibrium, and these equations are shown to be highly non-linear. The buckling analysis shows that first-order symmetric and antisymmetric modes may govern the buckling, and that for very long members the two buckling loads are the same. The highly non-linear equations for the postbuckling response are solved by making recourse to a shooting technique, and it is shown that following the bifurcation buckling under displacement control the response is initially unstable, followed by a stable branch of the postbuckling equilibrium response. Under thermal loading, which occurs in practice, the response is one of snap-through buckling to the remote stable path, and the solution is shown to capture the localisation of the buckling modes that is observed in practice. The effects of the lateral and longitudinal ballast resistance are quantified, and it is shown that the lateral resistance is predominant when compared with the longitudinal resistance. The influence of lateral track imperfections is also studied, which is shown to have considerable effect on the critical temperature. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: It is almost an axiom that in the African highlands (above 1,500 m) transmission of Plasmodium falciparum is limited primarily by low ambient temperature and that small changes in temperature could result in temporary favorable conditions for unstable transmission within populations that have acquired little functional immunity. The pattern of malaria transmission in the highland plateau ecosystems is less distinct due to the flat topography and diffuse hydrology resulting from numerous streams. The non-homogeneous distribution of larval breeding habitats in east African highlands obviously affects Anopheles spatial distribution which, consequently, leads to heterogeneous human exposure to malaria. Another delicate parameter in the fragile transmission risk of malaria in the highlands is the rapid loss of primary forest due to subsistence agriculture. The implication of this change in land cover on malaria transmission is that deforestation can lead to changes in microclimate of both adult and larval habitats hence increase larvae survival, population density, and gametocytes development in adult mosquitoes. Deforestation has been documented to enhancing vectorial capacity of Anopheles gambiae by nearly 100% compared to forested areas. Method: The study was conducted in five different ecosystems in the western Kenya highlands, two U-shaped valleys (Iguhu, Emutete), two V-shaped valleys (Marani, Fort Ternan), and one plateau (Shikondi) for 16 months among 6- to 15-year-old children. Exposure to malaria was tested using circumsporozoite protein (CSP) and merozoite surface protein immunochromatographic antibody tests. Malaria parasite was examined using different tools, which include microscopy based on blood smears, rapid diagnostic test based on HRP 2 proteins, and serology based on human immune response to parasite and vector antigens have been also examined in the highlands in comparison with different topographical systems of western Kenya. Results: The results suggested that changes in the topography had implication on transmission in highlands of western Kenya and appropriate diagnosis, treatment, and control tool needed to be considered accordingly. Both plateau and U-shaped valley found to have higher parasite density than V-shaped valley. People in V-valley were less immune than in plateau and U-valley residents. Conclusion: Topography diversity in western Kenya highlands has a significant impact on exposure rates of human to malaria vectors and parasite. The residents of V-shaped valleys are at risk of having explosive malaria outbreaks during hyper-transmission periods due to low exposure to malaria parasite; hence, they have low immune response to malaria, while the U-shaped valleys have stable malaria transmission, therefore, the human population has developed immunity to malaria due to continuous exposure to malaria.Anchored by a case study research, the paper asks whether rural socially innovative initiatives in Portugal can be considered sources of adaptability and increased resilience to land abandonment and land degradation in a vulnerable region to climatic changes. The article retells a systematization of experiences of a grassroots innovation in the Alentejo region. Elaborating on the lessons learned by the participants, the discussion reflects on the sources of social and ecological resilience created. These include facilitating new modes of participatory governance, a shared vision for a sustainable village, building up social capital and the steady collection of memories of traditional land use and resource management practices. In the final conclusions, key findings are distilled and prospects for further research suggested.Changes in marine fog in a warmer climate are investigated through simulations using the atmospheric component of a global climate model, with both observed and perturbed sea surface temperature forcing. Global changes in marine fog occurrence in different seasons are compared. We show that the changes in marine fog occurrence correspond well to changes in horizontal temperature advection near the surface in a warmer climate. Therefore, the changes in marine fog can be well explained by large-scale circulation changes. Regarding changes in the characteristics of marine fog, we show that the in-cloud liquid water content of marine fog is consistently increased in a warmer climate, for a given horizontal surface temperature advection. It is also confirmed that the contribution of changes in marine fog to cloud feedback is not negligible, but is small.Despite the large amount of research into disaster risk reduction [DRR], there remain significant difficulties in attempting to measure the impact of these policies. In particular, an urgent priority is the need to produce a theoretical framework for researchers and practitioners to enable the comparative assessment of the success of DRR policies. The measurement of these policies is unsatisfactory, creating a situation where it is almost impossible to assess how well the resources committed to these policies translate to improving DRR in at-risk communities. This article proposes an innovative approach to the measurement of DRR through a minimal procedural operationalization of the concept. The paper illustrates the utility of the framework through presentation of original survey data about individual DRR among residents of California. The results indicate that although most people are aware of measures of individual DRR, they have not advanced beyond that stage to plan and implement those measures themselves. The article marks a critical step towards the better measurement of success of intractable policy initiatives through the introduction of a novel measure of DRR.Due to the common objectives and similarities of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA), their policy level integration has been gaining increasing attention. However, concise DRR and CCA definitions for policy integrate are yet to be provided. Drawing from the Environmental Policy Integration, this paper suggests definitions for the integration of CCA policy into DRR policy, further addressing the importance of its horizontal (inter-ministerial) and vertical (intra-ministerial) dimensions. The definitions were empirically examined in Zambia during the formulation and implementation of the DRR and CCA policies (at the horizontal dimension), and water management, agriculture and forestry policies (at the vertical dimension). Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and document review, and analysed within a policy integration cycle. Zambia is a good example of the increased understanding of the linkages of the two fields, and the role of governance in progressing the integration. Governance challenges and the historical burden have resulted in overlapping policy processes, as both policies incorporate the other field, and creates a threat of parallel national-level structures, thereby increasing potential inefficiencies in governance and policy implementation. The importance of developing a horizontal integration strategy prior to policy formulation processes to avoid the potential of inefficiencies became evident. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The development of green space along urban rivers could mitigate urban heat island effects, enhance the physical and mental well-being of city dwellers, and improve flood resilience. A linear park has been recently created along the ephemeral Pedieos River in the urban area of Nicosia, Cyprus. Questionnaire surveys and micrometeorological measurements were conducted to explore people's perceptions and satisfaction regarding the services of the urban park. People's main reasons to visit the park were physical activity and exercise (67%), nature (13%), and cooling (4%). The micrometeorological measurements in and near the park revealed a relatively low cooling effect (0.5 degrees C) of the park. However, the majority of the visitors (84%) were satisfied or very satisfied with the cooling effect of the park. Logistic regression analysis indicated that the odds of individuals feeling very comfortable under a projected 3 degrees C future increase in temperature would be 0.34 times lower than the odds of feeling less comfortable. The discrepancies between the observed thermal comfort index and people's perceptions revealed that people in semi-arid environments are adapted to the hot climatic conditions; 63% of the park visitors did not feel uncomfortable at temperatures between 27 degrees C and 37 degrees C. Further research is needed to assess other key ecosystems services of this urban green river corridor, such as flood protection, air quality regulation, and biodiversity conservation, to contribute to integrated climate change adaptation planning.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013 report claims that climate change from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions will cause increasing temperatures in many regions and various detrimental effects such as rising sea levels, ecosystem changes, droughts, and floods. This study proposes a method for assessing the climate risks resulting from climate change as well as a tool that companies can use to assess those risks. The method for assessing climate risk is proposed in accordance with the ISO 31000 risk management process. We then design a web-based tool to implement the climate change risk assessment process. The data the tool generates enable companies to identify and analyze their climate risks to reduce potentially negative future financial impacts. The data on potential damage costs indicate that climate change is no longer an environmental issue but rather an economic one for companies, and the results presented through the proposed assessment method can be used to establish countermeasures and sustainable planning at companies. The results of this research are significant in that they provide companies with the critical information needed to improve their planning and response to climate risk.One of the first airmail services in the world, the Aeropostale, was located at the Montaudran airport of Toulouse, France. This landmark and its surroundings will be refurbished in the years to come and will be transformed into a mixed-use development, the Aerospace Campus, with residential buildings, and commercial, sports, educational and cultural facilities. This new district has been planned mostly on the basis of heritage and functional rules. The UCI project (from "Urban Cool Islands") is a French national research project that discusses procedures aiming at incorporating a set of reasoned measures for local climate adaptation into this new urban area that will be set as a landmark development. This research aims to analyse and compare various suitable, resilient urban design strategies to provide support for their application in the Montaudran district, focusing on mitigating urban heat island effects in summer conditions. Three main methodological steps were undertaken: (1) the initial urban plan was assessed relative to a set of well-known urban morphology parameters and a microclimate analysis; (2) a set of urban design variations was established based on important microclimate adaptation measures as well as on the constraints and opportunities of the original plan; (3) the microclimate was modelled and the thermal comfort of pedestrians analysed. Results pointed out the major influence of water and green features on the mitigation of urban heat islands, notably in daytime. Besides creating an important urban cool island for pedestrians, the results showed great opportunities for supporting decision makers on specific integrated actions towards a truly sustainable neighbourhood. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The adaptation of water resource systems to the potential impacts of climate change requires mixed portfolios of supply and demand adaptation measures. The issue is not only to select efficient, robust, and flexible adaptation portfolios but also to find equitable strategies of cost allocation among the stakeholders. Our work addresses such cost allocation problems by applying two different theoretical approaches: social justice and cooperative game theory in a real case study. First of all, a cost-effective portfolio of adaptation measures at the basin scale is selected using a least-cost optimization model. Cost allocation solutions are then defined based on economic rationality concepts from cooperative game theory (the Core). Second, interviews are conducted to characterize stakeholders' perceptions of social justice principles associated with the definition of alternatives cost allocation rules. The comparison of the cost allocation scenarios leads to contrasted insights in order to inform the decision-making process at the river basin scale and potentially reap the efficiency gains from cooperation in the design of river basin adaptation portfolios.Many U.S. national parks are already at the extreme warm end of their historical temperature distributions. With rapidly warming conditions, park resource management will be enhanced by information on seasonality of climate that supports adjustments in the timing of activities such as treating invasive species, operating visitor facilities, and scheduling climate-related events (e.g., flower festivals and fall leaf-viewing). Seasonal changes in vegetation, such as pollen, seed, and fruit production, are important drivers of ecological processes in parks, and phenology has thus been identified as a key indicator for park monitoring. Phenology is also one of the most proximate biological responses to climate change. Here, we use estimates of start of spring based on climatically modeled dates of first leaf and first bloom derived from indicator plant species to evaluate the recent timing of spring onset (past 10-30 yr) in each U.S. natural resource park relative to its historical range of variability across the past 112 yr (1901-2012). Of the 276 high latitude to subtropical parks examined, spring is advancing in approximately three-quarters of parks (76%), and 53% of parks are experiencing "extreme" early springs that exceed 95% of historical conditions. Our results demonstrate how changes in climate seasonality are important for understanding ecological responses to climate change, and further how spatial variability in effects of climate change necessitates different approaches to management. We discuss how our results inform climate change adaptation challenges and opportunities facing parks, with implications for other protected areas, by exploring consequences for resource management and planning.Climate change adaptation has grown rapidly in prominence in development practice and scholarship. Alongside this growth, adaptation has been folded into the world of development. This article reviews the ways that adaptation has become a concern for the world of development, suggesting three important trends: problematizations of vulnerability, the financial architecture of adaptation, and the tool of climate change mainstreaming'. Given that adaptation has entered the development arena, this article reviews relevant critical development literature that might helpfully shed light on the operation of adaptation. The article first reviews a tripartite typology of development scholarship: pro-development/instrumental, post-development, and critical development studies. Then, it reviews the analogous research on adaptation according to this typology, showing the limits to both the instrumental and post-adaptation scholarship. Finally, the article engages a vein of critical development studies - concerned particularly with the churning of development priorities and their management and governance - in order examine how adaptation works as an organizing principle.In Europe increasing flood risks challenge societies to diversify their Flood Risk Management Strategies (FRMSs). Such a diversification implies that actors not only focus on flood defence, but also and simultaneously on flood risk prevention, mitigation, preparation and recovery. There is much literature on the implementation of specific strategies and measures as well as on flood risk governance more generally. What is lacking, though, is a clear overview of the complex set of governance challenges which may result from a diversification and alignment of FRM strategies. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap. It elaborates on potential processes and mechanisms for coordinating the activities and capacities of actors that are involved on different levels and in different sectors of flood risk governance, both concerning the implementation of individual strategies and the coordination of the overall set of strategies. It identifies eight overall coordination mechanisms that have proven to be useful in this respect.We created a measure to help comprehend population vulnerability to potential flooding and excessive heat events using health, built environment and social factors. Through principal component analysis (PCA), we created non-weighted sum index scores of literature-reviewed social and built environment characteristics. We created baseline poor health measures using 1999-2005 age-adjusted cardiovascular and combined diabetes and hypertension mortality rates to correspond with social-built environment indices. We mapped US Census block groups by linked age-adjusted mortality and a PCA-created social-built environment index. The goal was to measure flooding and excessive heat event vulnerability as proxies for population vulnerability to climate change for Travis County, Texas. This assessment identified communities where baseline poor health, social marginalisation and built environmental impediments intersected. Such assessments may assist targeted interventions and improve emergency preparedness in identified vulnerable communities, while fostering resilience through the focus of climate change adaptation policies at the local level.Cassava is an important dietary component for over 1 billion people, and its ability to yield under drought has led to it being promoted as an important crop for food security under climate change. Despite its known photosynthetic plasticity in response to temperature, little is known about how temperature affects plant toxicity or about interactions between temperature and drought, which is important because cassava tissues contain high levels of toxic cyanogenic glucosides, a major health and food safety concern. In a controlled glasshouse experiment, plants were grown at 2 daytime temperatures ( 23 degrees C and 34 degrees C), and either well-watered or subject to a 1 month drought prior to harvest at 6 months. The objective was to determine the separate and interactive effects of temperature and drought on growth and toxicity. Both temperature and drought affected cassava physiology and chemistry. While temperature alone drove differences in plant height and above-ground biomass, drought and temperature x drought interactions most affected tuber yield, as well as foliar and tuber chemistry, including C : N, nitrogen and cyanide potential ( CNp; total cyanide released from cyanogenic glucosides). Conditions that most stimulated growth and yield ( well-watered x high temperature) effected a reduction in tuber toxicity, whereas drought inhibited growth and yield, and was associated with increased foliar and tuber toxicity. The magnitude of drought effects on tuber yield and toxicity were greater at high temperature; thus, increases in tuber CNp were not merely a consequence of reduced tuber biomass. Findings confirm that cassava is adaptable to forecast temperature increases, particularly in areas of adequate or increasing rainfall; however, in regions forecast for increased incidence of drought, the effects of drought on both food quality ( tuber toxicity) and yield are a greater threat to future food security and indicate an increasing necessity for processing of cassava to reduce toxicity.Conservation organizations worldwide are investing in climate change vulnerability assessments. Most vulnerability assessment methods focus on either landscape features or species traits that can affect a species vulnerability to climate change. However, landscape features and species traits likely interact to affect vulnerability. We compare a landscape-based assessment, a trait-based assessment, and an assessment that combines landscape variables and species traits for 113 species of birds, herpetofauna, and mammals in the northeastern United States. Our aim is to better understand which species traits and landscape variables have the largest influence on assessment results and which types of vulnerability assessments are most useful for different objectives. Species traits were most important for determining which species will be most vulnerable to climate change. The sensitivity of species to dispersal barriers and the species average natal dispersal distance were the most important traits. Landscape features were most important for determining where species will be most vulnerable because species were most vulnerable in areas where multiple landscape features combined to increase vulnerability, regardless of species traits. The interaction between landscape variables and species traits was important when determining how to reduce climate change vulnerability. For example, an assessment that combines information on landscape connectivity, climate change velocity, and natal dispersal distance suggests that increasing landscape connectivity may not reduce the vulnerability of many species. Assessments that include landscape features and species traits will likely be most useful in guiding conservation under climate change. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Point-based crop models are frequently used to investigate the interaction of genotype, environment and management (G x E x M) for breeding programs and adaptation research. These studies require the processing of millions of simulations to make assessments in national scales. Here we demonstrate a platform to run crop simulations with HTCondor as implemented across more than 120 000 cores on CSIRO network. The workflow of HTCondor usages was built through a server-client structure with standardized messages (simulations), which were queued by message queue sever. The new workflow maximized the performance of the CSIRO HTCondor service and could simultaneously utilize more than 8000 cores. A case study of 4.8 million APSIM simulations (ca. 2 mins each on model desktop), was completed in 32.5 h. This platform makes it is possible to assess all combinations of G x E x M in a short period. The generic platform has since been used to run other massive serial processing tasks. Crown Copyright (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Food security and the ability to meet this fundamental need is without a doubt an important objective to all nations. This study deals with climate change adaptation and its costs-benefits with an empirical analysis optimizing food security related adaptation strategy over a 50-year time frame. An Empirical Dynamic Commutable General Equilibrium Model for Climate and the Economy (EDCGECE) is applied to describe the potential effects of climate change on food security and examine the implications of future strategies for Malaysia. Specifically, this study considers the potential effects of climate change on food security and explores the prioritizing of mitigation options. Different scenarios show a baseline scenario without adaptation action followed by introduction of adaptation actions. The analysis reveals important contrasts from baseline to future options over time. The results indicate that food sustainability gap in Malaysia is about 30-35% below the national targets in 2015 (baseline) and the gap is rising over time due to climatic effects in agriculture. However, applying different levels of adaptation actions, (e.g. 5-20%) food security gaps are reduced over time considerably. The projected adaptation strategies applied in this study would be effective and helpful to support sustainable food security related strategies in Malaysia. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite the growth of adaptation plans and action by municipalities, there are limited examples of opportunities for effectively mainstreaming climate adaptation into policy and practice in local government. This paper uses the experiment of co-producing an adaptation plan for a small municipality in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, to illustrate how opportunities were leveraged. The findings suggest that a shift from strengthening the science-policy interface to the knowledge-policy interface might be more appropriate in the context of adaptation planning that requires an understanding of the local context as well as of global science. In order to align adaptation plans with developmental priorities and to secure support from actors at multiple levels, the integration of multiple knowledge forms, including climate science, should be prioritized. Such a task could be strengthened if co-production is prioritized. Building on these opportunities is critical to scaling up adaptation in local government and building on its transformative potential.This study attempts to understand local people's perceptions of climate change, its impacts on agriculture and household food security, and local adaptation strategies in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan (HKH) region, using data from 8083 households (HHs) from four river sub-basins (SBs), i.e. Upper Indus (Pakistan), Eastern Brahmaputra (India), Koshi (Nepal) and Salween and Mekong (China). The majority of households in SBs, in recent years, have perceived that there have been more frequent incidences of floods, landslides, droughts, livestock diseases and crop pests, and have attributed these to climate change. These changes have led to low agricultural production and income, particularly in Eastern Brahmaputra (EB) where a substantial proportion of HHs reported a decline in the production of almost all staple and cash crops, resulting in very low farm income. Consequently, households' dependency on external food items supplied from plain areas has increased, particularly in the Upper Indus (UI) and EB. After hazards, households face transitory food insecurity owing to damage to their local food systems and livelihood sources, and constrained food supply from other areas. To cope with these, HHs in SBs make changes in their farming practices and livestock management. In EB, 11 % of HHs took on new off-farm activities within the SB and in SM, 23 % of HHs chose out-migration as an adaptation strategy. Lastly, the study proposes policy instruments for attaining sustainable food security, based on agro-ecological potential and opportunities for increasing agricultural resilience and diversity of livelihoods.Localized vulnerability assessments are critical to effective climate adaptation. However, the differences between how local decision-makers and experts see vulnerability have not yet been fully explored, especially in the United States. Seeing possible distinctions between these approaches is critical since it is necessary to ensure a comprehensive, accountable approach. This research explores the distinct approach of local stakeholders to conceptualizing climate vulnerability in six American cities. Sixty-five interviews of cross-sectoral local stakeholders were conducted in: Boston (MA), Los Angeles (CA), Portland (OR), Raleigh (NC), and Tampa (FL). Findings demonstrate that conceptualizations of vulnerability are affected by intellectual frameworks that tend to orient around infrastructure and human health; that retrospective and prospective thinking are inter-related and affect one another; and that institutionalized forms and biases are critical. These factors shape the way that vulnerability is conceived differently than traditional expert frameworks.As the practice of Community Based Adaptation (CBA) to climate change in countries like Nepal is growing, the literature has pointed out the need for more research in order to test the effectiveness of CBA in reaching the most vulnerable households and its wider applicability. This paper reviews a Community Adaptation Plan (CAP) piloted and implemented in Nepal. The study involved interviews and interaction with a wide range of relevant stakeholders, in order to map their perceptions on the effectiveness of CAP. The findings show that the CAP process and implementation provided for recognition of the role of local communities in climate change adaptation, and ensured their participation and leadership in the planning process. However, due to issues related to the local structure and governance of community-based organizations, the benefits of climate change adaptation support were enjoyed mostly by elites and powerful individuals. The paper suggests that more inclusive approaches are needed, so as to ensure the planning and governance of local institutions is more accountable and responsive to vulnerable households. This could be achieved by devolving decision-making power to the vulnerable households and ensuring inclusive provisions in membership, representation and resource allocation that encourage more equitable sharing of benefits.This study projects land cover probabilities under climate change for corn (maize), soybeans, spring and winter wheat, winter wheat-soybean double cropping, cotton, grassland and forest across 16 central U.S. states at a high spatial resolution (see , while also taking into account the influence of soil characteristics and topography. The scenarios span three coupled climate models, three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and three time periods (2040, 2070, 2100). As climate change intensifies, the suitable area for all six crops display large northward shifts. Total suitable area within the study area for spring wheat, followed by corn and soybeans, diminish. Suitable area for winter wheat and for winter wheat-soybean double-cropping expand northward, while cotton suitability migrates to new, more northerly, locations. Grassland intensifies in the western Great Plains as crop suitability diminishes; suitability for forest intensifies in the south while yielding to crops in the north. To maintain current broad geographic patterns of land use, large changes in the thermal response of crops such as corn would be required. A transition from corn-soybean rotations to winter wheat-soybean doubling cropping is an alternative adaptation.Freshwater ecosystems in many parts of the world have been severely affected by past management practices that have altered the volume, timing and quality of water flows and caused a decline in their ecological health. Some of these systems are also experiencing the negative impacts of climate change. Adaptation to climate change and the continual need to address existing ecological damage poses ongoing challenges for freshwater managers. In this paper we propose and discuss a Catchment Assessment Framework (CAF) that is used to evaluate existing and potential freshwater management actions, such as riparian revegetation and habitat connectivity, for their adaptation potential. The CAF was developed as a tool for prioritizing low risk climate change adaptation options in Australian catchment management. The CAF enables catchment managers and technical experts to assess management actions against seven inter-related criteria to provide a holistic assessment: relevance to the catchment; climate change adaptation potential, including potential for maladaptation and benefit under different climate scenarios; ecosystem service benefits; compatibility with other actions; implementation constraints; socio-economic consequences; and a risk assessment. It was developed and applied by assessing nine management options with stakeholders in three catchments within the Murray-Darling Basin in south-eastern Australia. We found that while management options are undertaken as a response to existing degradation, they can be used as building blocks for a climate change adaptation strategy that considers a range of different but complementary measures to better manage climate-related risk. The CAF enables practitioners to assess the advantages of a range of adaptation options and to subject them to their wider decision making and management planning.Critical infrastructures are essential for the society and economy. In recent years, climate change has been identified as an urgent and growing threat to critical infrastructures, and many studies have been conducted to assess the vulnerability of critical infrastructures to climate change. However, despite these research efforts, the vulnerability of critical infrastructures is often vaguely defined and inconsistently studied in the literature. This paper proposes a framework to analyze critical infrastructure's vulnerability to climate change based on the traditional vulnerability/sustainability framework and hazard-of-place model of vulnerability. The vulnerability assessment of emergency services to sea level rise and storm surge in Collier County, Florida, is taken as an example to validate the proposed framework. Flood simulation, comparisons of storm surge models, spatial analysis, and network-based service area analysis are conducted to assess the vulnerability of fire stations in the case study area. The vulnerability assessment identifies the predominant hazard risk and the exposed infrastructures, analyzes the sensitivity of serviceability, and evaluates the effectiveness of potential adaptive capacity. The results show that the fire stations in the case study area are more vulnerable to the potential landfall and changes in hurricane and tropical cyclone patterns compared to the flooding caused directly by sea level rise. It indicates that the lack of consideration of potential landfall and changes in storms could greatly underestimate the vulnerability to climate change, especially in coastal areas with limited historical tidal data. The analysis also illustrates the current floodplain management that focuses primarily on the 100-year flood may not be a sufficient standard for all regions given the potential changes in frequency and magnitude of climate-related hazards. Finally, it confirms that disaster risk management strategies could also contribute to climate change adaptation. The weak linkages between existing climate change adaptation and disaster risk management need to be strengthened. The proposed concept and framework could be generalized and expanded to other critical infrastructures, regions, and climate-related hazards.An understanding of the factors that shape resource-poor households' heterogeneity in adopting adaptation strategies is crucial in developing adaptation policies. This research examines the determinants of household adaptation choices and the barriers to adaptation. It also focuses on the influence of institutional access and social capital on adaptation choice as a way forward to support and sustain local adaptation process by using the survey data of 380 hazards-prone vulnerable households in Bangladesh. The results reveal that households are implementing adaptation strategies such as diversifying crops, tree plantation (adopted by large and medium farmers), and homestead gardening and migration (adopted by small and landless farmers). Barriers to adaptation are observed heterogeneously among the farming groups where access to credit and lack of information on appropriate adaptation strategies are among the important barriers to adaptation. The model results indicate that the choice of adaptation strategies is significantly influenced by social capital and access to institutions. To support adaptation locally and to enhance vulnerable households' resilience to better cope with riverbank erosion and other climatic change issues, interventions by the government through planned adaptation, such as access to institutions and credit facilities, and a package of technologies through agro-ecological based research are required. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This article explores the elements limiting adaptive governance in the Tisza sub-basin, considers policy options available to the sub-basin, and concludes that more attention must be paid to frameworks governing adaptation in transboundary sub-basins where resources are limited.The Tisza is the largest sub-basin in the Danube River basin, and faces increasing water management pressures exacerbated by climate change. The Tisza countries have experienced challenges with managing climate change adaptation in a nested, consistent and effective manner pursuant to the EU Water Framework Directive. This is due to inefficiencies in climate change adaptation, such as weakened vertical coordination.The dynamic nature of environmental change in coastal areas means that a flexible "learning by doing" management strategy has a number of advantages. This article lays out the principles of such a strategy and then assesses an actual planning and management process focused on climate change consequences for the Broads wetland on the East coast of England. The management strategy focused on the concept of ecosystem services (stocks and flows) provided by the coastal wetland and the threats and opportunities posed to the area by sea level rise and other climate change impacts. The analysis explores the process by which an adaptive management plan has been formulated and coproduced by a combination of centralized (vertical) and stakeholder social network (horizontal) arrangements. The process values where feasible the ecosystem services under threat and prioritizes response actions. Coastal management needs a careful balance between strategic requirements imposed at a national scale and local schemes that affect regional and/or local communities and social networks. These networks aided by electronic media have allowed groups to engage more rapidly and effectively with policy proposals. However, successful deliberation is conditioned by a range of context specific factors, including the type of social networks present and their relative competitive and/or complementary characteristics. The history of consultation and dialogue between official agencies and stakeholders also plays a part in contemporary deliberation processes and the success of their outcomes. Among the issues highlighted are the multiple dimensions of nature's value; the difficulty of quantifying some ecosystem service changes, especially for cultural services; and the problem of "stakeholder fatigue" complicating engagement arrangements. (C) 2016 SETACMainstreaming climate change adaptation (CCA) into plans and programs is still a new approach in adaptation and thus there is limited information on how to operationalize it on-ground. This paper addresses this gap by investigating the challenges in mainstreaming CCA into the local land use plans in the province of Albay, Philippines. Specifically, this paper developed 20 quantitative "mainstreaming indicators" to assess the state-of-play and the challenges for local mainstreaming. These indicators were classified under three groupings, namely, the information, institutional, and resource capacities of systems. Qualitative analysis of the indicator scores suggested that developing the institutional capacities of local governments is crucial in the local mainstreaming process. Likewise, the results highlighted the "institutional issues" indicator as the primary barrier in operationalizing the approach. These institutional issues are: fragmented laws and regulations; overlapping policy requirements; and the lack of guidelines for mainstreaming CCA into the local land use plans. Meanwhile, the "leadership" indicator, as signified by a climate change champion in Albay, was evaluated as an opportunity for local mainstreaming. The champion effectively led the CCA efforts because the existing institutional mechanisms supported the champion's capacity to influence the behavior of people and produce collective action towards CCA.Drylands are home to more than two billion people and are characterised by frequent, severe droughts. Such extreme events are expected to be exacerbated in the near future by climate change. A potentially simple and cost-effective mitigation measure against drought periods is sand dams. This little-known technology aims to promote subsoil rainwater storage to support dryland agro-ecosystems. To date, there is little long-term empirical analysis that tests the effectiveness of this approach during droughts. This study addresses this shortcoming by utilising multi-year satellite imagery to monitor the effect of droughts at sand dam locations. A time series of satellite images was analysed to compare vegetation at sand dam sites and control sites over selected periods of drought, using the normalised difference vegetation index. The results show that vegetation biomass was consistently and significantly higher at sand dam sites during periods of extended droughts. It is also shown that vegetation at sand dam sites recovers more quickly from drought. The observed findings corroborate modelling-based research which identified related impacts on ground water, land cover, and socio-economic indicators. Using past periods of drought as an analogue to future climate change conditions, this study indicates that sand dams have potential to increase adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change in drylands. It therefore can be concluded that sand dams enhance the resilience of marginal environments and increase the adaptive capacity of drylands. Sand dams can therefore be a promising adaptation response to the impacts of future climate change on drylands.Using province-level yield data and daily weather data from 1980 to 2012, we investigated the responses of early rice, middle-season rice, and late rice yields to weather variations in China. In contrast to prior studies that found negative impacts of elevated daily minimum temperature (T (min)) on rice yield in tropical and subtropical regions, we discovered that rising T (min) increased early and late rice yields in China, with the positive temperature effects varying by rice-growth stage. Consistent with the previous assessments, we found that precipitation had small but negative effects on early and late rice yields. Responses of middle-season rice yield to variations in T (min) and precipitation are statistically insignificant. The effect of radiation on rice yields also differed by rice variety and rice-growth stage. Our findings provide useful information for developing effective rice-breeding programs and climate adaptation strategies in China.Governance across the land-sea interface is an emerging challenge. The propensity for, and intensity of social-ecological interactions across this interface (e.g., eutrophication, sedimentation) are being exacerbated by cross-system threats (e.g., climate change). We draw on a systematic review of 151 peer reviewed papers on governance and land-sea connections to (1) outline the current state of the literature, (2) examine the predominance of different approaches to address land-sea interactions, (3) characterize how governance is conceptualized within these approaches, (4) investigate governance challenges, and (5) provide insights into effective governance. The review finds that the number of relevant papers published per year has generally been increasing, and most of these papers are found in interdisciplinary journals. Ecosystem-based management is the most predominant approach found in the literature as a means to address land-sea interactions. Papers referring to ecosystem-based management are more likely than those referring to alternative management approaches (e.g., integrated management) to highlight science-policy integration and the need to account for interactions between ecosystem components as elements of effective governance. The main governance challenges include determining boundaries, addressing cross-scale effects, and accessing knowledge. However, few empirical studies of governance across the land-sea interface have been completed. A richer conceptual framework of governance is required to improve our ability to navigate the rapid social and environmental change occurring across the land-sea interface. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Environmental management and regional land use planning has become more complex in recent years as growing world population, climate change, carbon markets and government policies for sustainability have emerged. Reforestation and agroforestry options for environmental benefits, carbon sequestration, economic development and biodiversity conservation are now important considerations of land use planners. New information has been collected and regionally-calibrated models have been developed to facilitate better regional land use planning decisions and counter the limitations of currently available models of reforestation productivity and carbon sequestration. Surveys of above-ground biomass of 264 reforestation sites (132 woodlots, 132 environmental plantings) within the agricultural regions of South Australia were conducted, and combined with spatial information on climate and soils, to develop new spatial and temporal models of plant density and above-ground biomass productivity from reforestation. The models can be used to estimate productivity and total carbon sequestration (i.e. aboveground + below-ground biomass) under a continuous range of planting designs (e.g. variable proportions of trees and shrubs or plant densities), timeframes and future climate scenarios. Representative spatial models (1 ha resolution) for 3 reforestation designs (i.e.,woodlots, typical environmental planting, biodiverse environmental plantings) x 3 timeframes (i.e. 25, 45, 65 years) x 4 possible climates (i.e. no change, mild, moderate, severe warming and drying) were generated (i.e. 36 scenarios) for use within land use planning tools. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Last century, during the 'Green Revolution' the use of synthetic fertilizers contributed to increased agricultural production. However, their use did not reflect local soil and water conditions because recommendations were developed for larger agro-ecological zones. They only focused on increased productivity, neglecting any adverse environmental consequences. Largely, this legacy remains and recommendations are still made using top-down' procedures based on limited data and generic, empirical relations between soil nutrient contents, fertilization rates and yields. Using soil sensors in agriculture can fundamentally change this approach by allowing innovative 'bottom-up' approaches that characterize local soil and environmental conditions in space and time, improving the efficiency of production to maximize farm incomes and minimize environmental side effects. The sensed information can be used to build site-specific databases of relations between soil and plant condition and growth. Recent technological developments in sensing coupled with ongoing advances in information and communication technologies have given ground to a renewed interest in soil sensing and its use in different applications at different spatial scales. Soil sensing can facilitate the measurement and monitoring of the soil's physical and biochemical attributes (e.g. nutrients, water) to better understand their dynamics, their interactions with the environment while considering their large spatial heterogeneity. The new sensing methods can also be used to effectively monitor soil organic carbon and be central to the adoption of best agronomic practices that also allow carbon sequestration and a reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Thus, sensing can help us to better articulate the potential of soil to meet the world's needs for food, fiber, climate adaptation and environmental sustainability allowing the design and implementation of innovative management practices and policy aimed at sustainable development. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Large-scale data from digital infrastructure, like mobile phone networks, provides rich information on the behavior of millions of people in areas affected by climate stress. Using anonymized data on mobility and calling behavior from 5.1 million Grameenphone users in Barisal Division and Chittagong District, Bangladesh, we investigate the effect of Cyclone Mahasen, which struck Barisal and Chittagong in May 2013. We characterize spatiotemporal patterns and anomalies in calling frequency, mobile recharges, and population movements before, during and after the cyclone. While it was originally anticipated that the analysis might detect mass evacuations and displacement from coastal areas in the weeks following the storm, no evidence was found to suggest any permanent changes in population distributions. We detect anomalous patterns of mobility both around the time of early warning messages and the storm's landfall, showing where and when mobility occurred as well as its characteristics. We find that anomalous patterns of mobility and calling frequency correlate with rainfall intensity (r = .75, p < 0.05) and use calling frequency to construct a spatiotemporal distribution of cyclone impact as the storm moves across the affected region. Likewise, from mobile recharge purchases we show the spatiotemporal patterns in people's preparation for the storm in vulnerable areas. In addition to demonstrating how anomaly detection can be useful for modeling human adaptation to climate extremes, we also identify several promising avenues for future improvement of disaster planning and response activities.Our paper has two major aims: to argue that lessons from modern political economy are critical for urban transitions to sustainability and to position relevant urban sustainability transitions literature within distinct focus areas of modern political economy-in particular, endogenous institutions. We address those aims by providing examples of recent scholarship on institutional change and modern urban political economy that has significant implications for the understanding of urban transitions to sustainability. Furthermore, we explore the relevance of endogenous institutions for global environmental change and urban sustainability transitions; we utilize three relevant conceptual areas: (i) the choice of institutions and institutional change; (ii) the maintenance of institutions and institutional robustness; (iii) effective or ` good' urban governance and government failures.As human history is changing on many fronts, it is appropriate for us to understand the different perspectives of major global challenges, of which, water is a major priority. The water resources in urban areas are either approaching or exceeding the limits of sustainable use at alarming rates. Groundwater table depletion and increasing flood events can be easily realized in rapidly developing urban areas. It is necessary to improve existing water management systems for high-quality water and reduced hydro meteorological disasters, while preserving our natural/pristine environment in a sustainable manner. This can be achieved through optimal collection, infiltration and storage of stormwater. Stormwater runoff is rainfall that flows over the ground surface; large volumes of water are swiftly transported to local water bodies and can cause flooding, coastal erosion, and can carry many different pollutants that are found on paved surfaces. Sustainable stormwater management is desired, and the optimal capture measure is explored in the paper. This study provides commentary to assist policy makers and researchers in the field of stormwater management planning to understand the significance and role of remote sensing and GIS in designing optimal capture measures under the threat of future extreme events and climate change. Community attitudes, which are influenced by a range of factors, including knowledge of urban water problem, are also considered. In this paper, we present an assessment of stormwater runoff management practices to achieve urban water security. For this purpose, we explored different characteristics of stormwater runoff management policies and strategies adopted by Japan, Vietnam and Thailand. This study analyses the abilities of Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai stormwater runoff management policies and measures to manage water scarcity and achieve water resiliency. This paper presents an overview of stormwater runoff management to guide future optimal stormwater runoff measures and management policies within the governance structure. Additionally, the effects of different onsite facilities, including those for water harvesting, reuse, ponds and infiltration, are explored to establish adaptation strategies that restore water cycle and reduce climate change-induced flood and water scarcity on a catchment scale. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Predicting the impacts of climate change to biological systems requires an understanding of the ability for species to acclimate to the projected environmental change through phenotypic plasticity. Determining the effects of higher temperatures on individual performance is made more complex by the potential for environmental conditions experienced in previous and current generations to independently affect phenotypic responses to high temperatures. We used a model coral reef fish (Acanthochromis polyacanthus) to investigate the influence of thermal conditions experienced by two generations on reproductive output and the quality of offspring produced by adults. We found that more gradual warming over two generations, +1.5 degrees C in the first generation and then +3.0 degrees C in the second generation, resulted in greater plasticity of reproductive attributes, compared to fish that experienced the same increase in one generation. Reproduction ceased at the projected future summer temperature (31.5 degrees C) when fish experienced +3.0 degrees C for two generations. Additionally, we found that transgenerational plasticity to +1.5 degrees C induced full restoration of thermally affected reproductive and offspring attributes, which was not possible with developmental plasticity alone. Our results suggest that transgenerational effects differ depending on the absolute thermal change and in which life stage the thermal change is experienced.Protected area networks are the foundation of conservation, even in northern Canada where anthropogenic impact on the landscape is currently limited. However, the value of protected areas may be undermined by climate change in this region where the rate and magnitude is high, and shifts in vegetation communities and associated wildlife species are already underway. Key to developing responses to these changing conditions is anticipating potential impacts and the risks they pose. Capitalizing on an existing modeled dataset for Yukon from Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning ( SNAP), we examine projected shifts in the distribution of 18 clusters of climate parameters, and the vegetation communities currently associated with them (collectively termed "cliomes'') across three 30-year time steps, from the present through the 2090s. By the 2090s, Yukon may lose seven cliomes and gain one. Three regional changes, if accompanied by vegetation redistribution, represent biome shifts: complete loss of climate conditions for arctic tundra in northern Yukon; emergence of climate conditions supporting grasslands in southern Yukon valleys; reduction in climates supporting alpine tundra in favor of boreal forests types across the mountains of central and northern Yukon. Projections suggest that, by the end of the 21st century, higher elevations in southern Yukon change least when compared to the turnover in cliomes exhibited by the high latitude, arctic parks to the north. This analysis can assist with: planning connectivity between protected areas; identifying novel conservation zones to maximize representation of habitats during the emerging changes; designing plans, management and monitoring for individual protected areas. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.As polities grow and expand into environments distinct from their homeland, settlers moving to new landscapes may need to adapt familiar agricultural strategies to a new climate. This article explores one such case through the site of Kerkenes, a fortified, mountaintop urban center of Iron Age Central Anatolia evidently founded by Phrygian settlers from further west. New archaeobotanical data from Kerkenes indicate a set of agricultural practices broadly similar to that of other contemporary sites in Anatolia. Farmers at Kerkenes, however, appear to have prioritized bread wheat cultivation over that of barley, in stark contrast to agricultural strategies at Gordion, capital of the Phrygian kingdom. Placing Kerkenes in its environmental and economic landscape suggests that farmers took advantage of favorable rainfall patterns to emphasize a preferred cereal crop, deploying new strategies to minimize local subsistence risk. These results highlight the potential of regional syntheses of agricultural practices within large territorial states to illuminate the environmental footprints and agricultural signatures of individual polities. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Adapting social-ecological systems to the projected effects of climate change is not only a complex technical matter but above all a demanding governance issue. As climate change has all the characteristics of a wicked problem, conventional strategies of governance do not seem to work. However, most conventional governance institutions are poorly equipped to enable, or at least tolerate, innovative strategies. This paper analyses the various strategies used to cope with the wicked problem of climate adaptation across scales, and the institutional conditions that enable or constrain such strategies. For this, it relies on a theoretical framework consisting of five governance capabilities that are considered crucial for coping with wicked problems: reflexivity, resilience, responsiveness, revitalization and rescaling. This framework is used to analyse the governance of adaptation to climate change at three different levels: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its activities to assist adaptation; the European Union and its climate adaptation strategy; and the Netherlands and its Delta Program. The results show that conventional governance strategies are rather absent and that mixtures of reflexive, resilient, responsive, revitalizing and rescaling strategies were visible at all levels, although not equally well developed and important. In contrast to the literature, we found many examples of enabling institutional conditions. The constraining conditions, which were also present, tend to lead more to postponement than to obstruction of decision-making processes. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Saline coastal wetlands, such as mangrove and coastal salt marsh, provide many ecosystem services. In Australia, large areas have been lost since European colonization, particularly as a result of drainage, infilling and flood-mitigation works, often starting in the mid-19th century and aimed primarily towards converting land to agricultural, urban or industrial uses. These threats remain ongoing, and will be exacerbated by rapid population growth and climate change in the 21st century. Establishing the effect of wetland loss on the delivery of ecosystem services is confounded by the absence of a nationally consistent approach to mapping wetlands and defining the boundaries of different types of coastal wetland. In addition, climate change and its projected effect on mangrove and salt marsh distribution and ecosystem services is poorly, if at all, acknowledged in existing legislation and policy. Intensifying climate change means that there is little time to be complacent; indeed, there is an urgent need for proper valuation of ecosystem services and explicit recognition of ecosystem services within policy and legislation. Seven actions are identified that could improve protection of coastal wetlands and the ecosystem services they provide, including benchmarking and improving coastal wetland extent and health, reducing complexity and inconsistency in governance arrangements, and facilitating wetland adaptation and ecosystem service delivery using a range of relevant mechanisms. Actions that build upon the momentum to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon 'blue carbon' could achieve multiple desirable objectives, including clithate-change mitigation and adaptation, floodplain rehabilitation and habitat protection. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In recent years (2013-2016), extreme weather events have caused substantial disruption to Great Britain's (GB's) railway infrastructure. In the coming decades this vulnerability is unlikely to subside as the effects of climate change become more intense. Railway stakeholders in GB are strongly engaged with understanding climate change impacts on the railway system and how the industry could adapt to these impacts. Since 2010, Network Rail and RSSB have supported research into these topics under the Tomorrow's Railway and Climate Change Adaptation programme. Under this programme, an analogue study was performed to determine whether lessons could be learned from other countries' weather management. Two types of analogue were used to identify suitable locations. First, climate data from 20 models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) were used to identify regions with similar present-day climate to that projected for GB in the future. The analogue locations were found to be largely insensitive to the climate indicators and the methods used to compare climate at different locations. Next, railway networks in many countries were studied to find those with similar physical and operational characteristics to the GB network. The regions with both climate and railway analogues are France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Denmark. As part of a wider aim to support the GB railway network's weather resilience and climate change adaptation (WR/CCA) activities, focused stakeholder engagement has been undertaken with representatives of most of these countries' railways. This targeted approach is complementary to a broader collation of existing WR/CCA measures used globally.This paper is based on the interdisciplinary research conducted in the south of France that analyses the different economic, social and environmental roles played by agricultural irrigation canals. We argue that beyond their productive role, which is to supply farmers with water, they fulfil other environmental services and play an important role in the context of future climate change to face challenges of adaptation. We point up several ecosystem services provided by such canals, e.g. replenishing the groundwater table, the development of riparian vegetation and wet areas in the Mediterranean zone, tools for regulating flooding and drought, the bases for new cultural approaches to nature. Moreover, they play an important role in the maintenance of an ichthyological biodiversity that is indispensable for the persistence of natural ecosystem. Functioning as an ecological corridor, they display interesting capacities as refuges for certain fish species under stress. Indeed, they can potentially connect upstream and downstream zones over a continuum of more than 300 km and thus covering very contrasted climatic zones (alpine versus Mediterranean). For now, most of these services remain largely unknown and underestimated. However, they serve as assets for territorial development since they combine economic, ecological and social factors whose remodelling is becoming increasingly necessary in the face of climate change.Urban climate change in cold-climate cities of Canada is an important consideration for global climate moderation, energy consumption, citizen safety and wellbeing. Recently, many Canadian cities have started to pay attention to climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. They need policy-relevant data and analysis in these efforts. The current data mostly focuses on the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions levels rather than providing specific adaptation strategies on the urban scale. In this research, we analyze and demonstrate how street vegetation planting, albedo and urban canopy characteristics affect urban climate in a specific Canadian city, Montreal. We use ENVI-met (a three-dimensional computer model which analyzes micro-scale thermal interactions within urban environments) to calculate the sky view factor (SVF) for a 300 m x 300 m section of the city, and simulate the environmental conditions including air temperature (Ta), human weighted mean radiant temperature (MRTh-w), wind speed, and physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) at the community scale. These simulation comparisons demonstrate the effects on each environmental factor for a typical summer day and provide hints for mitigation of the urban heat island (UHI) and new urban development. The effectiveness of each UHI mitigation strategy is evaluated for providing guidelines for policy development. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Most agree that large sums of money should be transferred to the most vulnerable countries in order to help them adapt to climate change. But how should that money be allocated within those countries? A popular and intuitively plausible answer, in line with the strong standing of the norm of ownership in development aid circles, is that this is for the recipient country to decide. The paper investigates the three most important types of ethical arguments for such 'recipient control': the epistemic argument, the entitlement argument, and the legitimacy argument. It is argued that there is a good case for recipient control in democratic countries, because such countries can be expected to act in the name of the people to whom adaptation finance is ultimately owed. However, the three arguments do not support, even if taken jointly, recipient control in nondemocratic countries. This is a significant result seeing as the majority of the most vulnerable countries are nondemocratic.The growing concern of the impact of climate change in forestry has prompted tree improvement programs and regulatory agencies to integrate climate change adaptation in the production and use of tree seed. In support of such adaptation strategies, we conducted a case study for lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl.) in Alberta, Canada. We compared the tree height for populations and families planted across 37 progeny and provenance trials when transferred among six physiogeographically and climatically distinct breeding regions. Based on these results we infer how lodgepole populations and families are adapted to current climate conditions and how they might respond to future changes in climate. Interestingly, in almost all regions we found that local populations grew better than introduced sources, suggesting that in the current climate the use of local populations is still an appropriate reforestation strategy with some exceptions. Notably, in cool and wet higher elevation environments (between 1050 and 1650 m), local populations were outgrown by populations originating from warmer lower elevation regions. Moreover, these higher elevation populations were always outgrown when transferred to other regions. A number of transfers among regions were identified that ensure productivity gains under recent climate conditions, and simultaneously represent a short term adaptation measure for warming of about +0.5 degrees C. Further, we provide a database for selection of families within breeding populations to enhance their resilience to climate change. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Uncertainty and unpredictability characterising complex socio-ecological systems challenge conventional hierarchical governance regimes seen in South Asian developing countries such as Sri Lanka. Though experimental interventions that seek to engage communities have been implemented in a number of regions, most of these interventions stall after the experimental stage. This research utilised opportunities provided by a landmark intervention on Special Area Management in Negombo, Sri Lanka, to draw lessons for community-based interventions for climate change adaptation. Short term policy interventions can lead to irrevocable changes within complex socio-ecological systems, disintegrating identities and functions. Such systems become artificial, empty shells, losing their former richness and serenity. Tight social networks and bonds, which prevailed through centuries disappear, taking away the ability of communities to engage in collective action that allowed sustainable use of their common resource base. The resulting degradation of the natural resource base that form the livelihood of communities leads to further breaking down of the social network, driving this vicious cycle. It is clear that the Special Area Management (SAM) intervention in Negombo, Sri Lanka needs further improvement if it were to further the adaptive co-management approach, though the project that funded the intervention clearly expected to utilise this approach. The current national and provincial level institutional set up is not conducive for effective adaptive co-management. This is mainly due to conventional institutions adhering to governance regimes that are rigid and inflexible, and as such are not prepared to be adaptive through policy learning. It is also due to the fact that existing systems are not serious about community empowerment in the governance process. It is clear that any breakthrough allowing for an adaptive co-management kind of approach needs policy and institutional change. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Coastal climate adaptation, as a response to managing the increasing risk of inundation of coastal settlements and infrastructure, is a global challenge. As a result, there is a burgeoning body of studies recommending adaptation options, pathways and strategies generated by the research and increasingly private consulting sector. However, recent reviews of global adaptation performance repeatedly highlight a lack of implementation of many adaptation studies and plans. It is suggested here that one of the reasons why many coastal adaptation plans have not been applied is due to inadequate consideration of the political risk, underpinned by lack of consideration of potential allocation and distributional impacts of adaptation strategies. The work presented here identifies the political risk of the most common coastal adaptation pathways and approaches ('retreat', 'protect' and 'manage'). This work especially highlights the major political risk of pre-emptive planned retreat adaptation strategies, which may seem the most obvious adaptation approach from the perspective of minimising future risks to settlements and infrastructure. However, it carries the largest political risk and potential distributional impacts, which is likely to hinder the adoption of this adaptation strategy in the short term. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The human population is projected to grow to more than 9 billion by 2050. New farming and fishing techniques are continually being developed. However, food production remains restricted by the finiteness of natural resources and the rapid increase in the global population. In the future, food production may decline because of the aggravated effects of climate change. Food production will be unable to satisfy the demands of the global population, leading to a food security crisis. As the world population continues to increase, food shortages will become increasingly severe, particularly for regions located in "climate impact hot spots" in tropical and subtropical zones and for small-island countries such as Taiwan. In the present study, supply and demand are analysed to examine the risks and uncertainties associated with the impact of climate change on the domestic and imported seafood supply. First, we conduct a literature review to identify the climate risk for sea food security, and then, we analyse the domestic production of both the marine fishing catch and aquaculture. This study also examines the critical problems of the imported seafood supply and applies a comparative analysis of impact type and differences in the top 10 seafood import countries to organize adaptation strategies to climate change. Moreover, due to the type of climate impact and the differences between long-term climate impact and extreme climate impact, we collect and compile the existing climate adaptation strategies of fishery production, seafood importing, and the demand and supply of seafood in Taiwan. Finally, we perform a comparative analysis to seek any deficiencies in the existing climate adaptation strategies and offer new adaptation guidelines based on the existing climate adaptation strategies. The results show that Taiwan's major adaptation strategies have been precautionary mitigation measures. In terms of resilience management, only the buffer stock scheme plan and the stabilization funds method are selected for some specific species to mitigate the short-term fluctuation in both yield and price for imported domestic seafood. However, we will confront uncertainties stemming from global climate change in the future; the existing climate adaptation strategies of Taiwan are still not sufficient to respond to climate impacts. For example, the climate change early warning system is still very inadequate, the existing scientific knowledge is insufficient, and the current adaptation strategies are insufficient for resolving the fluctuations in the market mechanism of seafood. According to the principles of risk management, the adaptation strategies recommended in this study can be differentiated into two categories: precautionary mitigation measures can be used to adapt to domestic production and uncertainties; such measures include avoidance, transfer, and reduction to prevent the frequency and consequences of climate change for building a resilient fisheries sector. Moreover, resilience management (e.g., risk retention) can be used to respond to uncertainties in supply for adjusting production and mitigating the risks of climate change. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Water scarcity is increasingly raising the need for non-conventional water resources, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. In this context, atmospheric moisture can potentially be harvested in the form of dew, which is commonly disregarded from the water budget, although its impact may be significant when compared to rainfall during the dry season. In this study, a dew atlas for the Mediterranean region is presented illustrating dew yields using the yield data collected for the 2013 dry season. The results indicate that cumulative monthly dew yield in the region can exceed 2.8 mm at the end of the dry season and 1.5 mm during the driest months, compared to <1mm of rainfall during the same period in some areas. Dew yields were compared with potential evapotranspiration (PET) and actual evapotranspiration (ET) during summer months thus highlighting the role of dew to many native plants in the region. Furthermore, forecasted trends in temperature and relative humidity were used to estimate dew yields under future climatic scenarios. The results showed a 27% decline in dew yield during the critical summer months at the end of the century (2080). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Greenhouse gases (GHGs) and aerosols are the two most important anthropogenic forcing agents in the 21st century. The expected declines of anthropogenic aerosols in the 21st century from present-day levels would cause an additional warming of the Earth's climate system, which would aggravate the climate extremes caused by GHG warming. We examine the increased rate of precipitation extremes with global mean surface warming in the 21st century caused by anthropogenic GHGs and aerosols, using an Earth system model ensemble simulation. Similar to mean precipitation, the increased rate of precipitation extremes caused by aerosol forcing is significantly larger than that caused by GHG forcing. The aerosol forcing in the coming decades can play a critical role in inducing change in precipitation extremes if a lower GHG emission pathway is adopted. Our results have implications for policy-making on climate adaptation to extreme precipitation events.We investigated the impact of using high-resolution sea surface temperature (SST) data and a sophisticated urban model on the simulation of surface air temperature (SAT) in the Nagoya metropolitan area using a regional climate model. The spatially detailed structure of SST, expressed in high-resolution SST data, had relatively little impact on SAT. On the other hand, the difference in areal mean value of SST strongly affected SAT across a wide range of land surfaces. When a spatially inhomogeneous distribution was used for the urban fraction and anthropogenic heat, and appropriate physical properties for building materials were given according to the specific urban categories, we achieved significant improvements in both the diurnal range of SAT and its daily mean. Based on a comparison with an additional sensitivity experiment for building albedo, the sophistication of urban fraction and thermal parameters related to building materials had a comparable impact on SAT as presumable building albedo in the daytime, while they indicated a larger impact on the nighttime SAT. We conclude that (1) the areal mean SST is critical rather than its resolution for the climatological average of SAT over the land; (2) the simultaneous refinement of the urban fraction and building material parameters, as well as an appropriate building albedo setting, greatly improves the representation of SAT; and (3) the refinement of areal mean SST and the urban data have the same degree of importance for a better representation of the SAT.Efficiency in the use of resources stream-lined for expected conditions could lead to reduced system diversity and consequently endanger resilience. We tested the hypothesis of a trade-off between farm resource-use efficiency and land-use diversity. We applied stochastic frontier production models to assess the dependence of resource-use-efficiency on land-use diversity as illustrated by the Shannon-Weaver index. Total revenue in relation to use of capital, land and labour on the farms in Southern Finland with a size exceeding 30 ha was studied. The data were extracted from the Finnish Profitability Bookkeeping data. Our results indicate that there is either no trade-off or a negligible trade-off of no economic importance. The small dependence of resource-use efficiency on land-use diversity can be positive as well as negative. We conclude that diversification as a strategy to enhance farm resilience does not necessarily constrain resource-use efficiency.As our climate changes through time there is an ever-increasing need to quantify how and where it is changing so that mitigation strategies can be implemented. Urban areas have a disproportionate amount of warming due, in part, to the conductive properties of concrete and asphalt surfaces, surface albedo, heat capacity, lack of water, etc. that make up an urban environment. The NASA Climate Adaptation Science Investigation working group at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, conducted a study to collect temperature and humidity data at 15 min intervals from 12 sites at the center. These sites represent the major surface types at the center: asphalt, building roof, grass field, forest, and rain garden. The data show a strong distinction in the thermal properties of these surfaces at the center and the difference between the average values for the center compared to a local meteorological station. The data have been submitted to Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL-DAAC) for archival in comma separated value (csv) file format (Carroll et al., 2016) and can be found by following this link: http://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dsviewer.pl?ds_id=1319.Public investment into risk reduction infrastructure plays an important role in facilitating adaptation to climate impacted hazards and natural disasters. In this paper, we provide an economic framework to incorporate investment timing and insurance market risk preferences when evaluating projects related to reducing climate impacted risks. The model is applied to a case study of bushfire risk management. We find that optimal timing of the investment may increase the net present value (NPV) of an adaptation project for various levels of risk aversion. Assuming risk neutrality, while the market is risk averse, is found to result in an unnecessary delay of the investment into risk reduction projects. The optimal waiting time is shorter when the insurance market is more risk averse or when a more serious scenario for climatic change is assumed. A higher investment cost or a higher discount rate will increase the optimal waiting time. We also find that a stochastic discount rate results in higher NPVs of the project than a discount rate that is assumed fixed at the long run average level. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Tropical dry forests cover less than 13 % of the world's tropical forests and their area and biodiversity are declining. In southern Africa, the major threat is increasing population pressure, while drought caused by climate change is a potential threat in the drier transition zones to shrub land. Monitoring climate change impacts in these transition zones is difficult as there is inadequate information on forest composition to allow disentanglement from other environmental drivers. Methods: This study combined historical and modern forest inventories covering an area of 21,000 km(2) in a transition zone in Namibia and Angola to distinguish late succession tree communities, to understand their dependence on site factors, and to detect trends in the forest composition over the last 40 years. Results: The woodlands were dominated by six tree species that represented 84 % of the total basal area and can be referred to as Baikiaea-Pterocarpus woodlands. A boosted regression tree analysis revealed that late succession tree communities are primarily determined by climate and topography. The Schinziophyton rautanenii and Baikiaea plurijuga communities are common on slightly inclined dune or valley slopes and had the highest basal area (5.5 - 6.2 m(2) ha(-1)). The Burkea africana - Guibourtia coleosperma and Pterocarpus angolensis - Dialium englerianum communities are typical for the sandy plateaux and have a higher proportion of smaller stems caused by a higher fire frequency. A decrease in overall basal area or a trend of increasing domination by the more drought and cold resilient B. africana community was not confirmed by the historical data, but there were significant decreases in basal area for Ochna pulchra and the valuable fruit tree D. englerianum. Conclusions: The slope communities are more sheltered from fire, frost and drought but are more susceptible to human expansion. The community with the important timber tree P. angolensis can best withstand high fire frequency but shows signs of a higher vulnerability to climate change. Conservation and climate adaptation strategies should include protection of the slope communities through refuges. Follow-up studies are needed on short term dynamics, especially near the edges of the transition zone towards shrub land.Background: Climate change is likely to cause significant modifications in forests. Rising to this challenge may require adaptation of forest management, and therefore should trigger proactive measures by forest managers, but it is unclear to what extent this is already happening. Methods: The survey carried out in this research assesses how forest stakeholders in Belgium perceive the role of their forest management in the context of climate change and the impediments that limit their ability to prepare and respond to these changes. Results: Respondents indicated strong awareness of the changing climate, with more than two-thirds (71 %) expressing concern about the impacts of climate change on their forests. However, less than one-third of the respondents (32 %) reported modifying their management practices motivated by climate change. Among the major constraints limiting their climate related actions, lack of information was considered the most important for managers of both public and private forests. Conclusions: Knowledge transfer is an essential condition for research to lead to innovation. Improving the communication and demonstration of possible solutions for climate change adaptation is therefore likely to be the most effective strategy for increasing their adoption.UV/Vis spectrophotometers have been used for one decade to monitor water quality in various locations: sewers, rivers, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), tap water networks, etc. Resulting equivalent concentrations of interest can be estimated by three ways: i) by manufacturer global calibration; ii) by local calibration based on the provided global calibration and grab sampling; iii) by advanced calibration looking for relations between UV/Vis spectra and corresponding concentrations from grab sampling. However, no study has compared the applied methods so far. This collaborative work presents a comparison between five different methods. A Linear Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), EVOlutionary algorithm method (EVO) and Partial Least Squares (PLS) have been applied on various data sets (sewers, rivers, WWTPs under dry, wet and all weather conditions) and for three water quality parameters: TSS, COD total and dissolved. Two criteria (r(2) and Root Mean Square Error RMSE) have been calculated - on calibration and verification data subsets - to evaluate accuracy and robustness of the applied methods. Values of criteria have then been statistically analysed for all and separated data sets. Non-consistent outcomes come through this study. According to the Kruskal-Wallis test and RMSEs, PLS and SVM seem to be the best methods. According to uncertainties in laboratory analysis and ranking of methods, LR and EVO appear more robust and sustainable for concentration estimations. Conclusions are mostly independent of water matrices, weather conditions or concentrations investigated. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Hydropower is a clean, renewable, and environmentally friendly source of energy. It produces 3930 (TW.h).a(-1), and yields 16% of the world's generated electricity and about 78% of renewable electricity generation (in 2015). Hydropower and climate change show a double relationship. On the one hand, as an important renewable energy resource, hydropower contributes significantly to the avoidance of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to the mitigation of global warming. On the other hand, climate change is likely to alter river discharge, impacting water availability and hydropower generation. Hydropower contributes significantly to the reduction of GHG emissions and to energy supply security. Compared with conventional coal power plants, hydropower prevents the emission of about 3 GT CO2 per year, which represents about 9% of global annual CO2 emissions. Hydropower projects may also have an enabling role beyond the electricity sector, as a financing instrument for multipurpose reservoirs and as an adaptive measure regarding the impacts of climate change on water resources, because regulated basins with large reservoir capacities are more resilient to water resource changes, less vulnerable to climate change, and act as a storage buffer against climate change. At the global level, the overall impact of climate change on existing hydropower generation may be expected to be small, or even slightly positive. However, there is the possibility of substantial variations across regions and even within countries. In conclusion, the general verdict on hydropower is that it is a cheap and mature technology that contributes significantly to climate change mitigation, and could play an important role in the climate change adaptation of water resource availability. However, careful attention is necessary to mitigate the substantial environmental and social costs. Roughly more than a terawatt of capacity could be added in upcoming decades. (C) 2016 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education Press Limited Company.The developing countries are suffering the most because of climatic variability and they have an enormous backlog in basic infrastructure to protect their cities. In addition, the resources and technical expertise are limited. Therefore, the adaptation measures to protect their cities are needed to be planned and prioritized carefully to reduce the vulnerability simultaneously considering the risk reduction, local constraints and development goals. A framework for prioritization of adaptation measures is lacking in the decision making in this context which could immensely assist in informed and structured decisions during the planning process of adaptation strategies in developing countries. This paper is exploring the potential of Multi-Criteria Analysis as a methodology for climate adaptation assessment in order to prioritize the adaptation measures to be undertaken. Hence in this paper Adaptation assessment is conducted within the framework of Multi-Criteria Analysis methodology which allows both normative judgement and technical expertise in the assessment process. Such a participatory integrated assessment of adaptation options is a new approach in flood management in least developed countries. The assessment framework has been applied and tested at the Eastern fringe of Dhaka city which is highly vulnerable to flooding. Based on the assessment and analysis, adaptive measures are prioritized to enable more effective action. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Mangrove forests, distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, are in a constant flux. They provide important ecosystem goods and services to nature and society. In recent years, the carbon sequestration potential and protective role of mangrove forests from natural disasters is being highlighted as an effective option for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The forests are under threat from both natural and anthropogenic forces. However, accurate, reliable, and timely information of the distribution and dynamics of mangrove forests of the world is not readily available. Recent developments in the availability and accessibility of remotely sensed data, advancement in image pre-processing and classification algorithms, significant improvement in computing, availability of expertise in handling remotely sensed data, and an increasing awareness of the applicability of remote sensing products has greatly improved our scientific understanding of changing mangrove forest cover attributes. As reported in this special issue, the use of both optical and radar satellite data at various spatial resolutions (i.e., 1 m to 30 m) to derive meaningful forest cover attributes (e.g., species discrimination, above ground biomass) is on the rise. This multi-sensor trend is likely to continue into the future providing a more complete inventory of global mangrove forest distributions and attribute inventories at enhanced temporal frequency. The papers presented in this Special Issue provide important remote sensing monitoring advancements needed to meet future scientific objectives for global mangrove forest monitoring from local to global scales.Studies of heat shock response show a correlation with local climate, although this is more often across altitudinal than latitudinal gradients. In the present study, differences in constitutive but not inducible components of heat shock response are detected among populations of the Glanville fritillary butterfly Melitaea cinxia L. that exist at the species' latitudinal range limits (Finland and Spain). The study demonstrates that macroclimatic differences between these sites should cause greater exposure of the Spanish population to higher temperatures. Thermal stress treatments are used to estimate differences in the expression of four genes potentially relevant for tolerating these temperatures. For the analysis, three heat-shock proteins and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (G3PDH), a glycolysis enzyme that also modulates cell growth based on metabolic state, are chosen. Two constitutive differences are found between the sites. First, insects from Spain have higher levels of Hsp 21.4 than those from Finland regardless of thermal stress treatment; this protein is not inducible. Second, insects from Finland have higher levels of G3PDH. The two remaining Hsps, Hsp20.4 and Hsp90, show dramatic up-regulation at higher temperatures, although there are no significant differences between insects from the different populations in either constitutive levels or inducibility. In nature, differences between the study populations likely occur in the expression of all four genes that were studied, although these differences would be directly climate-induced in Hsp20.4 and Hsp90 and constitutive in Hsp21.4 and G3PDH. Inducibility may mitigate the need for constitutive variation in traits that adapt insects to local climate.ObjectivesCraniofacial variation in past and present Amerindians has been attributed to the effect of multiple founder events, or to one major migration followed by in situ differentiation and possibly recurrent contacts among Circum-Arctic groups. Our study aims to: (i) detect morphological differences that may indicate several migrations; (ii) test for the presence of genetic isolation; and (iii) test the correlation between shape data and competing settlement hypotheses by taking into account geography, chronology, climate effects, the presence of genetic isolation and recurrent gene flow. MethodsWe analyzed a large sample of three-dimensional (3D) cranial surface scans (803 specimens) including past and modern groups from America and Australasia. Shape variation was investigated using geometric morphometrics. Differential external gene flow was evaluated by applying genetic concepts to morphometric data (Relethford-Blangero approach). Settlement hypotheses were tested using a matrix correlation approach (Mantel tests). ResultsOur results highlight the strong dichotomy between Circum-Arctic and continental Amerindians as well as the impact of climate adaptation, and possibly recurrent gene flow in the Circum-Arctic area. There is also evidence for the impact of genetic isolation on phenetic variation in Baja California. Several settlement hypotheses are correlated with our data. ConclusionsThe three approaches used in this study highlight the importance of local processes especially in Baja California, and caution against the use of overly simplistic models when searching for the number of migration events. The results stress the complexity of the settlement of the Americas as well as the mosaic nature of the processes involved in this process. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 28:646-661, 2016. (c) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Coral grouper (genus Plectropomus), or coral trout, are members of the grouper family (Epinephelidae) and are one of the largest and most conspicuous predatory fishes on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. They are highly-prized food fishes that are targeted by subsistence, artisanal, commercial and recreational fisheries throughout their geographic range. Plectropomus have broadly similar diets and habitat requirements to other tropical groupers, but typically have faster growth and higher natural mortality rates. Although these characteristics are expected to increase population turnover and reduce innate vulnerability to environmental and anthropogenic impacts relative to other groupers, many Plectropomus populations are in decline due to the combined effects of overfishing and habitat degradation. In many locations, stock depletion from uncontrolled fishing, particularly at spawning aggregation sites, has resulted in local fishery collapse. Therefore, improved management of wild populations is urgently required to ensure conservation and sustainable fisheries of Plectropomus. Where possible, a combination of no-take marine reserves, market-based management approaches, and allocation or resurrection of property rights systems are recommended to complement conventional fishery management actions that limit catch and effort. Additional investment in aquaculture propagation is also needed to reduce fishing pressure on wild stocks and support management initiatives. This global synthesis of information pertaining to the biology, fisheries and management of Plectropomus will assist in guiding future management actions that are attempting to address a range of stressors including fishing, reef habitat degradation, and the escalating effects of climate change.The revealing and concealing features of the metaphor earth as Anthropocene' are explored in an inquiry that asks: In the Anthropocene what possible futures emerge for systems thinking in practice? Framing choice, so important yet so poorly realised, is the starting point of the inquiry. Three extant conceptual pathway-dependencies are unpacked: governance or governing; practice or practising and system'. New data on the organisational complexity within the field of cybersystemics is presented; new imaginaries' including systemic co-inquiry and institutional recovery are proposed as novel institutions and practices to facilitate systemic transformations within an Anthropocene setting. The arguments of the paper are illustrated through a research case study based on attempts to transform water and/or river situations towards systemic water governance. It is concluded that future systems research can be understood as the search for effective imaginaries' that offer fresh possibilities within an Anthropocene framing. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable and adaptation-prone sources of livelihood facing climate change. Joint adaptation planning by farmers and researchers can help develop practically feasible and environmentally and economically sound adaptation actions as well as encourage the proactive building of farm adaptive capacity. Here, the perceptions of Finnish farmers and rural stakeholders regarding intercropping, the cultivation of two or more crop genotypes together in time and space, as a means to prepare for climate change, were collected in an open workshop. Our aim was to identify the potentials and challenges associated with intercropping, its role as an adaptation strategy, and in farm adaptive capacity. Qualitative analysis revealed better yield security, increased nutrient and protein self-sufficiency, soil conservation and maintenance, reduced pathogen pressure and regulation of water dynamics as the main perceived potentials of intercropping. Potentials relating to the farm economy and environment were also recognized. The main challenges associated with intercropping were related to the lack of information on crop variety performance and optimal yielding in mixtures, industry and policy requirements for seed purity, more complicated crop management and harvesting, and the economic risks associated with experimenting with novel mixtures. Nitrogen-fixing legumes; deep-rooted species, such as lucerne (Medicago sativa L.); special crops, such as herbs in forage mixtures; and autumn-sown winter oilseeds and cereals were highlighted as the most promising intercrops. Because the recognized potentials relate to the safeguarding of field cropping from anticipated climate change and the associated weather variability, we conclude that intercropping can serve as one adaptation strategy to strengthen the adaptive capacity of Finnish farms. However, assuring markets and policies that allow the development of intercropping, performing experiments to assess the benefits and implement options in practice, and providing farmers and farm advisors with more knowledge on the method represent the critical prerequisites for the broader adoption of intercropping.The objective of this study is to understand which requirements for cereal cultivarswith regard to climate change adaptationare in demand by farmers and advisors, and to clarify whether there are any differences in their assessments. A comparative survey was used to collect data from 410 farmers and 114 advisors in Germany. The majority of both farmers and advisors reported perceivable effects of climatic change on plant production. The increase in droughts and hot spells, the increased incidence of torrential rain, and mild winters were mentioned as the main effects of climate change. For climate change adaptation, the farmers and advisors mostly relied on a locally-adapted cultivar selection. It is estimated that eco-stability, grain yield, resistance to lodging and drought tolerance are important cultivar properties. In the study, farmers and advisors equally pointed out the need for additional cultivar evaluation according to eco-stability. Finally, only minor differences regarding farmers' and advisors' assessments were found within the study. The outcome of this research points to the need of implementing farmers' demands in cultivar recommendations. For example, an impartial assessment of cultivars' eco-stability could help support the choice of cultivars and reduce the growing risks in cereal production with regard to climate change.For cities, climate change is a major concern due to its severe impacts and its inherent complexity. City and building designers could be pivotal actors, but have yet to fully take on this role. Research can support adaptation action through greater collaboration with practitioners and a better understanding of their knowledge and practices. This paper presents results from a research project undertaken in Toulouse (France) last year. Urban practitioners were consulted through an online survey and observed in action during two design workshops. The findings highlight: (i) the hidden knowledge within design practice; (ii) the importance of providing designers with solution-focused and form-giving data; and (iii) the potential offered by design constraints to trigger changes in the practices of professionals.Rice is one of the most important food crops in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change, variability, and economic globalization threatens to disrupt rice value chains across the subcontinent, undermining their important role in economic development, food security, and poverty reduction. This paper maps existing research on the vulnerability of rice value chains, synthesizes the evidence and the risks posed by climate change and economic globalization, and discusses agriculture and rural development policies and their relevance for the vulnerability of rice value chains in sub-Saharan Africa. Important avenues for future research are identified. These include the impacts of multiple, simultaneous pressures on rice value chains, the effects of climate change and variability on parts of the value chain other than production, and the forms and extent to which different development policies hinder or enhance the resilience of rice value chains in the face of climatic and other pressures.Botswana is a semi-arid, middle-income African country that imports 90 percent of its food. Despite its relative prosperity, Botswana also suffers from one of the highest measures of income inequality in the world, persistent poverty, and relatively high levels of food insecurity. The objective of this paper is to explore how political economy, climate change and livelihood dynamics are synergistically impacting household food security. The major finding is that the marginalization of smallholder farming in Botswana has as much or more to do with domestic, regional and international political economy as it does with climate change. As such, international efforts to support climate change adaptation in Botswana will have a limited effect on smallholder farming livelihoods and rural food security unless such efforts take account of political economic constraints. Effective support must be based on a grounded understanding of the real drivers of marginalization and food insecurity. One initiative that merits further exploration is the government's backyard gardening initiative, which could be viewed as a pro-poor climate adaptation strategy. The findings of this paper are based on semi-structured interviews with policymakers and surveys with urban, peri-urban and rural households undertaken in 2012 and 2015.Rangelands in the Hindu Kush Karakoram region provide a resource base for nomadic livestock grazing, which is one of the major traditional livelihood practices in the area. The present study assessed the spatiotemporal patterns and trends of rangelands using satellite remote-sensing time-series data. Moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data, collected at fortnightly intervals over 12 years (2001-2012), were used as a proxy for the vegetation conditions of the grasslands. The analysis revealed that rangeland productivity increased with increasing elevation up to the sub-alpine zone, which had a higher productivity than the moist temperate zone and humid sub-tropical zone. The high sub-alpine productivity was attributed to seasonal amplitude and the extended length of the growing season in the phenological cycle. In the temporal analysis of productivity, the majority of the area exhibited improvements in vegetation conditions, which were strongest in the humid sub-tropical zones and weakest in the alpine zones. The sub-alpine grasslands were found to be the most productive and heterogeneous habitat; however, the relatively strong negative temporal trend in productivity in this zone indicates ongoing degradation in these rangelands. Thus, special attention is needed for the sustainable management of rangelands in the sub-alpine zones of the Hindu Kush Karakoram region.Rice crop models, such as CERES-Rice, are useful tools to predict rice growth and understand the effects of climatic and management changes on rice yield. As these models involve complex processes, non-linearity and interdependence of parameters may result in high uncertainty in model results. In this study, we tested the CERES-Rice model in the Vietnam Mekong Delta for two rice cultivars (Jasmine 85 and VD20) in four experimental sites. We applied a two-stage calibration procedure. In the first stage, initial sets of good performing parameters were identified. In the second stage, the good performing parameter sets and their minimum-maximum ranges were refined using the Robust Parameter Estimation (ROPE) approach. We found that in the first calibration stage, the majority of the parameter sets that performed well in the calibration sites performed poorly in the validation sites. For example, the simulated rice yields were within +/-5% of the observed yields in the calibration sites. But in the validation sites, the same parameter sets resulted in the differences of -77% to 19% for Jasmine 85 and -47% to 9.5% for VD20. This is because these parameter sets had a broad range of values, which compensated each other well in calibration but were less successful to do so in validation. When the ROPE was applied, the value ranges of the parameters narrowed down and the model performance in validation improved. In general, the parameter ranges identified by ROPE are considered more robust and have higher probability to perform better. Our positive results show a good potential of the ROPE approach for calibration of the CERES-Rice model, which can also be applied with similar other crop growth models. The robust parameter value ranges derived in this study may be used as reference parameter values for future applications of the model in the region. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study shows that the total hemispheric cold air mass (CAM) amount below a designated potential temperature of 280K serves as a good indicator of long-term climate change trends in the polar region. We conduct quantitative analyses of the warming trends of Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) winters using five reanalysis data sets (Climate Forecast System Reanalysis, ERA-Interim, Japanese 55year Reanalysis Japanese 25 year Reanalysis, JRA-25, and National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research) and JRA-55-related data sets (JRA-55 Conventional reanalysis and JRA-55 Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project type simulation). Total hemispheric CAM amount for the NH winter shows a significant decreasing trend for most of the reanalyses at a rate of approximately -1.37 to -0.77%decade(-1) from 1959 to 2012 and at a rate of approximately -1.57 to -0.84%decade(-1) from 1980 to 2012. The CAM amount trends show very different geographic patterns during the two periods, which suggests that geographical patterns of the trends estimated for these periods are largely controlled by internal low-frequency dynamics. The CAM flux across 45 degrees N, which serves as an indicator of hemispheric scale cold air outbreaks, has so large interannual variability that its trend becomes insignificant. In the SH winter, trends of total hemispheric CAM amount and its equatorward flux across 50 degrees S are not consistent among the new reanalyses for 1980-2012. Although total hemispheric CAM amount decreases for 1959-2012, sparse observations and changes in systematic bias, due to the implementation of assimilation of satellite observation data in 1979, compromise the reliability of the trends. Improvements to the reanalyses are desirable as a means of monitoring historical changes in CAM for the SH winter.The supply of municipal water in Germany is often governed by policies that warrant occurrence-based reliabilities of 99.5 % or more. Such reliabilities have to be considered in the optimization of reservoir operation. A reliability-based optimization requires sufficiently long simulation periods of several thousand years of time series of inflow and demand. However, long simulation periods lead, especially for multi-objective parameterization-simulation-optimization (MOPSO), to unacceptable computational burden. Therefore, techniques need to be developed that increase the computational efficiency of MOPSO for such optimization problems. In this paper, a novel Monte Carlo recombination method (MCR) is proposed. MCR reduces the length of inflow time series significantly while preserving critical statistics, i.e., characteristics of probability distributions and variability of wet and dry conditions. It could be shown that simulations based on these shortened time series allow for highly efficient MOPSO and yield comparable Pareto-fronts and reliabilities. For the demonstration of the capabilities of MCR, it is integrated into a MOPSO framework for the optimization of a multipurpose multi-reservoir system in the Eastern Ore Mountains, Germany. For this real-world application, synthetic time series of a length of 10,000 years are generated and reduced to 882 years, which results in a reduction of the computational burden by a factor of eleven. A validation of the results shows that the MOPSO framework allows for optimization of operational policies that yield reliabilities over 99.95 % on a monthly scale and up to 99.7 % on an annual timescale.The relationship between poverty and climate change vulnerability is complex and though not commensurate, the distinctions between the two are often blurred. There is widespread recognition of the need to better understand poverty-vulnerability dynamics in order to improve risk management and poverty reduction investments. This is challenging due to the latent nature of adaptive capacities, frequent lack of baseline data, and the need for high-resolution studies. Here we respond to these challenges by analyzing household-level data in Northeast Brazil to compare drought events 14 years apart. In the period between droughts, the government implemented an aggressive anti-poverty program that includes financial and human capital investments. Poverty declined significantly, but the expected reduction in vulnerability did not occur, in part because the households were not investing in risk management strategies. Our findings complement other research that shows that households make rational decisions that may not correspond with policymaker expectations. We emphasize the need for complementary investments to help channel increased household wealth into risk reduction, and to ensure that the public sector itself continues to prioritize the public functions of risk management, especially in areas where the social cost of climatic risk is high.Various institutions are working for lowering the CO2 concentration through different strategies like reduction in energy use, developing low or no-carbon fuel technologies, CO2 sequestration by forestry/agroforestry and engineering techniques. Among all the techniques, agroforestry was recognized as one of the important means to reduce CO2 emissions as well as enhancing carbon sinks. Agroforestry provides unique opportunity to combine the twin objectives of climate change adaptation and mitigation. In India, area under agroforestry was estimated at 25.3 m ha, which can further be increased up to a considerable level. Recent studies under various agroforestry systems in diverse ecological conditions emphasized that agroforestry systems increase and store carbon stocks in above ground biomass and in soil and also has an important role in increasing livelihood security and reducing vulnerability to climate change. In India carbon sequestration potential of agroforestry systems is estimated between 0.25 - 76.55 and 0.01 to 0.60 Mg C/ha/yr for tree and crop component, respectively. The contribution of agroforestry in soil carbon sequestration varied between 0.003 to 3.98 Mg C/ha/yr. The total C sequestered in each component differs greatly depending on region, types of-species, -system, -site quality, and previous land-use. The review indicates that agroforestry systems in addition to accumulate and sequester carbon, provide an excellent opportunity to increase the tree cover to a level of 33% of the total geographical area of the country as desired by the National Forest Policy.Conventional water treatment processes (e.g., coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, and filtration) are widely used for producing drinking water from surface water sources. Transient, gradual, or abrupt changes in source water quality that could compromise treatment effectiveness can be triggered by climate and related meteorological events, accidental or intentional contamination, security breaches, or other disruptions. However, the design principles that underpin the majority of existing conventional treatment systems predate climate adaptation considerations. This paper considers the adaptation capacity of conventional water treatment systems. A modeling framework is used to illustrate climate adaptation mechanisms that could enable conventional treatment systems to accommodate water quality impairments. Treatment system resiliency is explored in response to generic climate-relevant water quality perturbations such as extreme temperature variations and changes in the quantity and characteristics of solids, particles, and organic constituents. Promising adaptation options include modifying chemical parameters (e.g., types of chemicals, dosages, sequence of chemical addition, mixing intensity and duration), filter operations, and microbiological augmentation of existing physical/chemical treatment systems. The capacity reserve concept provides an organizing principle that could be useful for prioritizing climate adaptation strategies such as major or minor treatment/infrastructure modifications, system-wide upgrades such as off-line storage, operational changes in distribution systems, or the use of supplemental water sources including reclaimed or recycled water.1. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have a long history, originating in traditional and cultural initiatives often focused on reserving resources for food security. A handful of 'parks' were established between the 1870s and 1940s and, following World War II, increased awareness of threats to the ocean led to global programmes that started in the 1970-1980s. 2. Initially IUCN became the leader, piloting a science-based 'critical marine habitats' approach, by which MPAs were aimed at conserving the healthiest and most diverse ecosystems, endangered and charismatic species, and high-profile habitats. 3. During the 1970s, with the support of WWF, UNESCO, UNEP, and growing national efforts, the MPA concept evolved to include biosphere reserves, marine reserves and sanctuaries, large ocean reserves, and other designations that aimed to reconcile long-term protection with human use. 4. From the 1980s, MPAs greatly expanded in number and scope. By the turn of the millennium, MPAs were proliferating, and principles and methodologies were available to guide their establishment and management in a harmonized manner. Zoning for different uses was widespread, but questions were being raised about the efficacy of biodiversity conservation in areas where extractive uses were permitted. 5. MPA implementation accelerated once targets were introduced by the Convention on Biological Diversity. Campaigns and fundraising by non-governmental organizations and further national efforts resulted in a rapid increase although, by 2015, less than 4% of ocean surface was protected. 6. Current challenges include: (1) understanding the role of MPAs in maintaining ecosystem services, fishery management, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and other emergent problems; (2) more rigorous network design; (3) effective governance and demonstration of 'success'; and (4) integrating MPAs with marine spatial planning. 7. While MPAs have provided one of the most viable and politically acceptable approaches to marine conservation for 50 years, their role in developing a fully effective marine ecosystems management regime has yet to be fully explored and understood. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Factors governing landscape-scale flammability are poorly understood, yet critical to managing fire regimes. Studies of the extent and severity of the 2003 Australian alpine fires revealed marked differences in flammability between major alpine plant communities, with the occurrence and severity of fire greater in heathland compared to grassland. To understand this spatial variation in landscape flammability, we documented variation in two physical properties of fuel - load and bulk density - at the life-form and plant community scale. We measured the load (mass per unit area) and bulk density (mass per unit volume) of fine fuels (<6mm) at 56 sites across the Bogong High Plains, southeastern Australia. Fine fuel load was positively correlated with shrub cover, and fine fuel bulk density was negatively correlated with shrub cover. Furthermore, fine fuel load and bulk density were accurately predicted using simple measures of canopy height and shrub cover. We also conducted a burning experiment on individual shrubs and snowgrass (Poa spp.) patches to assess comparative differences in flammability between these life-forms. The burning experiment revealed that shrubs were more flammable than snowgrass as measured by a range of flammability variables. Consequently, our results indicate that treeless alpine landscapes of southeastern Australia are differentially flammable because of inherent life-form differences in both fine fuel load and bulk density. If shrub cover increases in these alpine landscapes, as projected under climate change, then they are likely to become more flammable and may experience more frequent and/or severe fires.While (urban) resilience has become an increasingly popular concept, especially in the areas of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), it is often still used as an abstract metaphor, with much debate centered on definitions, differences in approaches, and epistemological considerations. Empirical studies examining how community-based organizations (CBOs) "practice" resilience on the ground and what enables these CBOs to organize and mobilize around resilience are lacking. Moreover, in the growing context of competitive and entrepreneurial urbanism and conflicting priorities about urban (re)development, it is unclear how urban development dynamics influence community based resilience actions. Through empirical research conducted on the Lower East Side, a gentrifying neighborhood in Manhattan, and in Rockaway, a socio-spatially isolated neighborhood in Queens, we investigate community organizing of low-income residents for (climate) resilience in a post-disaster context. Results show that both the operationalization of resilience- how resilience is "practiced"- and the community capacity to organize for the improved resilience of low-income residents are strongly influenced by pre-existing urban development dynamics and civic infrastructure- the socio-spatial networks of community-based organizations- in each neighborhood. The Lower East Side, with its long history of community activism and awareness of gentrification threats, was better able to mobilize broadly and collectively around resilience needs while the more socio-spatially isolated neighborhoods on the Rockaway peninsula were more constrained. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate adaptation for coastal infrastructure projects raises unique challenges because global-scale environmental changes may require similar projects to be completed in many locations over the same time frame. Existing methods to forecast resource demand and capacity do not consider this phenomenon of a global change affecting many localities and the resulting increased demand for resources. Current methods do not relate to the most up-to-date climate science information, and they are too costly or too imprecise to generate global, regional, and local forecasts of "climate-critical resources" that will be required for infrastructure protection. They either require too much effort to create the many localized designs or are too coarse to consider information sources about local conditions and structure-specific engineering knowledge. We formalized the concept of a "minimum assumption credible design" (MACD) to leverage available local information (topography/bathymetry and existing infrastructure) and the essential engineering knowledge and required construction materials (i.e., a design cross-section template). The aggregation of the resources required for individual local structures then forecasts the resource demand for global adaptation projects. We illustrate the application of the MACD method to estimate the demand for construction materials critical to protect seaports from sea level -rise-enhanced storm surges. We examined 221 of the world's 3,300+ seaports to calculate the resource requirements for a coastal storm surge protection structure suited to current upper-bound projections of two meters of sea level rise by 2100. We found that a project of this scale would require approximately similar to 49 million cubic meters of construction materials, including cement, sand, aggregate, steel rebar, and riprap. For cement alone, 49 million metric tons would be required. The deployment of the MACD method would make resource forecasts for adaptation projects more transparent and widely accessible and would highlight areas where current engineering knowledge or material, engineering workforce, and equipment capacity fall short of meeting the demands of adaptation projects. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent advances on power, politics, and pathways in climate change adaptation aim to re-frame decision making processes from development-as-usual to openings for transformational adaptation. This paper offers empirical insights regarding decision-making politics in the context of collective learning through participatory scenario building and flexible flood management and planning in the Eastern Brahmaputra Basin of Assam, India. By foregrounding intergroup and intragroup power dynamics in such collective learning spaces and how they intersect with existing micropolitics of adaptation on the ground, we examine opportunities for and limitations to challenging entrenched authority and subjectivities. Our results suggest that emancipatory agency can indeed emerge but is likely to be fluid and multifaceted. Community actors who are best positioned to resist higher-level domination may well be imbricated in oppression at home. While participatory co-learning as embraced here might open some spaces for transformation, others close down or remain shut. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate change is leading to more frequent and longer heat waves and in many places, such as large parts of Australia, to an increase in average temperatures. Rising temperatures can reduce well-being and influence decisions about residency and mobility among people. This study assesses the intentions of a nationally representative sample of working-age people living in Australia to move to somewhere cooler than where they currently live as a response to increasing heat. We found that 11 % of respondents intend to move away from their current place or residence because of increasing temperatures. We also found that men are more likely to intend to move, as are those who feel often stressed by heat, those with a generally high level of mobility, and those who are worried about climate change. Age does not explain movement intentions although it has been found that young people are generally the most mobile, and then those in retirement age again. This means that people formerly expected to be rather immobile might be more likely to intend to move when they feel the local climate has become intolerably hot. Planning for infrastructure and service provision, which has a long lead time, will therefore need adjustment to account for the likely effects of climate change on mobility decisions and settlement patterns.Sea-level rise (SLR) presents risks to communities and ecosystems because of hazards like coastal erosion. In order to adapt, planners and the public seek estimates of shoreline change with high confidence and accuracy. The complexity of shorelines produces considerable uncertainty in the timing, location and magnitude of change. We present and discuss a probabilistic shoreline model for SLR planning. Using the coast of Maui as an illustrative case, we compare this model to a common deterministic model. We discuss the advantages of a probability-based model for SLR adaptation, including for prioritizing actions, phasing, visualizing risk and uncertainty, and improving adaptive management.While recent research has recognized the importance of considering social vulnerability, the changing patterns of social vulnerability within cities and the climate adaptation challenges these shifts pose have yet to receive much attention. In this article, we evaluate the changing patterns of social vulnerability in three coastal cities (Houston, New Orleans, and Tampa) over a thirty-year time period (1980-2010) and integrate neighborhood change theories with theories of social vulnerability to explain those patterns. Through this analysis, we highlight emerging dimensions of vulnerability that warrant attention in the future adaptation efforts of these cities.Sea level rise is one of the climate change effects most amenable to adaptation planning as the impacts are familiar and the nature of the phenomenon is unambiguous. Yet, significant uncertainties remain. Using a normative framework of adaptive management and natural hazards planning, we examine how coastal communities in Florida are planning in the face of accelerating sea level rise through analysis of planning documents and interviews with planners. We clarify that communities are taking a low-regrets incremental approach with increasingly progressive measures motivated by confidence in planning intelligence and direct experience with impacts attributable to sea level rise.Climate change impact assessments often apply models of individual sectors such as agriculture, forestry and water use without considering interactions between these sectors. This is likely to lead to misrepresentation of impacts, and consequently to poor decisions about climate adaptation. However, no published research assesses the differences between impacts simulated by single-sector and integrated models. Here we compare 14 indicators derived from a set of impact models run within single-sector and integrated frameworks across a range of climate and socio-economic scenarios in Europe. We show that single-sector studies misrepresent the spatial pattern, direction and magnitude of most impacts because they omit the complex interdependencies within human and environmental systems. The discrepancies are particularly pronounced for indicators such as food production and water exploitation, which are highly influenced by other sectors through changes in demand, land suitability and resource competition. Furthermore, the discrepancies are greater under different socio-economic scenarios than different climate scenarios, and at the sub-regional rather than Europe-wide scale.Climate scientists have developed and refined climate change models on a global scale. One of the aims of these models is to predict the effects of human activities on climate, and thus the delivery of information that is useful to devise mitigation actions. Moreover, if they can be properly downscaled to a regional and local level, they might be useful to deliver support for adaptation actions. For example, they may be used as an input for the better design of the features of buildings in order to make them resilient to climate modification, e.g., able to passively control heat flows to produce comfortable indoor conditions not only in the present climate, but also in future climate conditions. Taking into account the future weather scenarios that show an increase in the global temperature and climate severity, a likely consequence on building energy use will be a substantial shift from space heating to space cooling, and potentially uncomfortable thermal conditions during the summer will became a major challenge, both for new and existing buildings. In this paper, a deep energy retrofit of a child care centre located in Milan (Italy) is analysed on the basis of future weather scenarios; the analysis aims to identify to what extent choices that are made nowadays on the basis of a typical meteorological year may succeed to provide acceptable energy and indoor environmental performance throughout the future decades. The analysis confirms that climate change might require the installation of active cooling systems to compensate for harsher summer conditions over a long-term horizon, however, in the mid-term, passive cooling strategies combined with envelope refurbishment may still guarantee thermally comfortable conditions, and they will reduce energy cooling needs when active cooling is eventually installed. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Riparian vegetation directly or indirectly affects many important structural and functional processes in stream ecosystems. We used a contiguous paired-reach approach in 4 km of open and shaded reaches in 8 boreal streams to study the effects of canopy cover on in-stream physicochemical (temperature, nutrients), substratum, and biotic assemblages (benthic diatom, macrophyte, invertebrate). Canopy cover, woody debris, and summer temperatures differed between paired reaches. Variation partitioning (partial redundancy analysis) showed that benthic diatom traits, but not species composition, were related strongly to canopy cover (33% of the variance was explained by canopy cover alone). In contrast, using variation partitioning, we found no support for the hypothesis that canopy cover was a strong predictor of macrophyte or benthic invertebrate assemblages. However, multivariable regression (redundancy analysis) showed that canopy cover was a significant predictor of invertebrate taxonomic and trait composition (explaining similar to 26% of the variability), after accounting for covariance with other environmental variables. In agreement with predictions, univariate analyses revealed that macrophyte traits related to light and growth forms were correlated negatively with canopy cover. Our findings that canopy cover resulted in lower summer temperatures, higher amounts of woody debris, and differences in community structure and traits support the importance of riparian buffer strips as a management tool for maintaining biodiversity and for managing stream ecosystems for the warmer future.Strong wind causes damages and losses around the world. The windborne debris carried by strong wind might impact on building and create openings on the building envelop, which might threaten the occupants and cause further damages to the building. To address this issue, some wind loading codes including the Australian Wind Loading Code (AS/NZS 1170:2:2011) give design requirements. The resistance capacity of oriented strand board skins structural insulated panel was investigated and proved having low resistance to the projectile impact, and could not meet the impact resistance requirement for application in cyclonic region C and D defined in Australian Wind Loading Code. In this study, basalt fibre cloth is used to strengthen oriented strand board structural insulated panel to increase its capacity to resist windborne debris impact. This paper presents experimental and numerical study of structural insulated panel with or without basalt fibre cloth strengthening under windborne debris impact. Five specimens with different configurations were tested. The dynamic responses were quantitatively compared in terms of residual speed of debris after impact. The results indicate that basalt fibre cloth enhanced the resistance capacity of oriented strand board structural insulated panel. A numerical model is developed in LS-DYNA to simulate the debris impact. The testing results are used to verify the accuracy of the numerical model, which can be used in subsequent parametric studies.This study examines the extent to which the choice of management approach is a critical factor in enabling climate change adaptation in marine fisheries. Climate change is expected to compound many pressing issues affecting fisheries management. Good governance of fisheries, which is critical to building their adaptive capacity and social-ecological resilience, is seen as ever more important in the context of climate change. A range of fisheries management approaches have been developed and, to varying degrees, applied. Each has been described in the literature as a promising way to manage marine resources. Through literature reviews and a survey of practitioners, this study explores how theoretical properties of selected major management approaches (i.e., ecosystem-based management, adaptive management, co-management, adaptive co-management, and active adaptive management) enable climate change adaptation, and how such properties are perceived by practitioners to manifest in practice using an Australian marine fisheries context. Overall, the selected management approaches have the potential to enable climate change adaptation to varying degrees. Ecosystem-based management, in combination with adaptive management and co-management as nested management approaches, possesses the full array of adaptation capacities and attributes required for adaptation in fisheries. Distinctions between theory and practice observed in this study highlight the importance of practitioner perceptions and enabling institutional arrangements in adapting management to climate change. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate and socio-economic change will affect the land use and the economic viability of Dutch dairy farms. Explorations of future scenarios, which include different drivers and impacts, are needed to perform ex-ante policy assessment. This study uses a bio-economic farm model to assess impacts of climate and socio-economic change on dairy farms in a sandy area in the Netherlands. Farm data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network provided information on the current production levels and available farm resources. First, the farm plans of individual farms were optimized in the current situation to benchmark farms and assess the current scope for improvement. Secondly, simulations for two scenarios were included: a Global Economy with 2 degrees C global temperature rise (GE/W+) and a Regional Community with 1 degrees C global temperature rise (RC/G). The impacts of climate change, extreme events, juridical change (including abolishment of milk quota), technological change and price changes were evaluated in separate model runs within the predefined scenarios. We found that farms can increase profit both by intensification and land expansion; the latter especially for medium sized farms (less than 70 cows). Climate change including the effect of increased occurrence of extreme events may negatively affect farm gross margin in the GE/W+ scenario. Lower gross margins are compensated for by the effects of technology and price changes. In contrast with the GE/W+ scenario, climate change has positive impacts on farm profit in RC/G, but less favourable farm input-output price ratios have a negative effect. Technological change is needed to compensate for revenue losses due to higher input prices. In both GE/W+ and RC/G scenarios, dairy farms increase production and the use of artificial fertilizer. Medium sized farms have more options to increase profit than the large farms: they benefit more from the abolishment of the milk quota and better adapt to negative and positive impacts of climate change. While the exact impact of different drivers will always remain uncertain, this study showed that changes in prices, technology and markets have a relatively larger impact than climate change, even when extreme events are taken into account. By using whole farm plans as activities that can be selected, the model is grounded in observations, and it was shown that half of the farms are gross margin maximizers as assumed in the model. The model therefore indicates 'what could happen if', and gives insights in drivers and impacts of dairy farming in the region. (C) 2015 Royal Netherlands Society for Agricultural Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, putting years of progress in developing countries at risk. The emerging discourse at the international policy level calls for a 'resilience-based' response to climate adaptation and infrastructure planning. This paper reviews the relevance of resilience theory in the context of infrastructure in developing countries and finds that 'resilience thinking' offers a way to improve engineers' understanding of the adaptation needs of vulnerable communities. The paper develops a conceptual framework based on resilience thinking, and applies it to the case of a vulnerable coastal community in Honduras where primary fieldwork was undertaken to assess infrastructure planning. The analysis exposes the unintended consequences of traditional planning that exacerbates climate vulnerability and adversely impacts the long-term preparedness of vulnerable communities. Civil engineering scholars and practitioners concerned with sustainable development in developing countries may gain a superior understanding of climate adaptation by integrating resilience thinking into infrastructure planning.Changing unsustainable natural resource use in agricultural landscapes is a complex social-ecological challenge that cannot be addressed through traditional reductionist science. More holistic and inclusive (or transdisciplinary) processes are needed. This paper describes a transdisciplinary project for natural resource management planning in two regions (Eyre Peninsula and South Australian Murray-Darling Basin) of southern Australia. With regional staff, we reviewed previous planning to gain an understanding of the processes used and to identify possible improvement in plan development and its operation. We then used an envisioning process to develop a value-rich narrative of regional aspirations to assist stakeholder engagement and inform the development of a land use management option assessment tool called the landscape futures analysis tool (LFAT). Finally, we undertook an assessment of the effectiveness of the process through semi-structured stakeholder interviews. The planning process review highlighted the opinion that the regional plans were not well informed by available science, that they lacked flexibility, and were only intermittently used after publication. The envisioning process identified shared values-generally described as a trust, language that is easily understood, wise use of resources, collaboration and inclusiveness. LFAT was designed to bring the best available science together in a form that would have use in planning, during community consultation and in assessing regional management operations. The LFAT provided spatially detailed but simple models of agricultural yields and incomes, plant biodiversity, weed distribution, and carbon sequestration associated with future combinations of climate, commodity and carbon prices, and costs of production. Stakeholders were impressed by the presentation and demonstration results of the software. While there was anecdotal evidence that the project provided learning opportunities and increased understanding of potential land use change associated with management options under global change, the direct evidence of influence in the updated regional plan was limited. This project had elements required for success in transdisciplinary research, but penetration seems limited. Contributing factors appear to be a complexity of climate effects with economic uncertainty, lack of having the project embedded in the plan revision process, limited continuity and capacity of end users and limited after project support and promotion. Strategies are required to minimise the controlling influence that these limitations can have.Sustainability research has gained scholarly attention since the 1980s as the new science investigating the changes in social, environmental and economic systems and their impacts on the future of planetary life support systems. Whilst broad literature on sustainability has expanded significantly over the past decades, academic literature developing sustainability as a distinct science has received little attention. After more than two decades of sustainability research, the time has come for us to begin asking reflective questions about what sort of science we call sustainability science. How has the broader research on sustainability contributed to developing sustainability science as a unique discipline within the past two decades? How has the label science promoted or hindered the interdisciplinary project of integrating the natural and social sciences as well as arts and humanities in addressing human nature problems? I argue in this review paper that special efforts need to be made towards the building and positioning of sustainability as an umbrella science for global sustainability research. The benefits of the new sustainability science advocated for in this paper are that; a) it offers a universal definition of sustainability that accounts for both the needs of life and the capacity of planetary life support systems to provide for those needs and b) proposes ways of bridging gaps among different research traditions, facilitating cross disciplinary communication and addressing the challenge of multiple meanings and definitions of concepts facing sustainability research today.Lake Urmia (LU) is an internationally-registered protected area that has declined steeply since 1995. One main cause for the decline has been attributed to climate change. The simulation and evaluation of the potentially negative effects of climate change and formation of adaption measures are essential to saving the lake. An integrated modeling framework is required to allow linkage and integration of climate models with basin and field scale models. The present study applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) framework (1994) for definition and assessment of climate change adaptation strategies. Siminehrud catchment is a major sub-basin of LU basin and was selected to explore the methodology. The results of simulations show that the catchment inflow into the lake could decrease up to 30% and agriculture production up to 50%. A number of adaptation strategies were examined and it was found that revision of cropping patterns is the best measure to mitigate the negative effect of climate change; however, none of the strategies proposed thus far will maintain the long-term average inflow into the lake at the current fig. of 570 MCM. The results demonstrated the ability of SWAT to link with the OECD framework and perform the required simulations and estimations of relevant indicators. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work attempts to present the complex human-flood interactions from the chronically flood-affected district of Dhemaji in the Upper Brahmaputra floodplain. The objectives are to analyse perceptions, susceptibilities, indigenous knowledge and adaptations that enable coexistence of floods with floodplain dwellers. In addition, data on flood damage, breaches and cuts to embankments are collected from government departments and analysed. Results revealed a realistic perception of flood hazard amongst the floodplain dwellers. Susceptibility is higher due to the lack of infrastructure. Indigenous knowledge and adaptation strategies exist in the area enabling the floodplain dwellers to live with floods. The results also underscore the paradoxical situation where flood-control measures themselves have become detrimental to the floodplain dwellers. This creates a situation where environmental challenges outstrip the evolution of indigenous adaptation strategies. Our work is based in the Upper Brahmaputra River plains and is a contribution towards the long-standing debate on the choices humans make in response to riverine hazards.Vegetative enhancement in the form of tree planting has been found to be a highly effective strategy for cooling urban environments, yet as cities continue to warm, the suitability of urban environments for some tree species is changing with shifting hardiness zones. Trees are assigned to hardiness zones, which are based on the average annual minimum temperature that a species can thrive. In recent decades, human induced global warming has shifted the location of hardiness zones across the United States. Our study examines the historical range of similar to 200 common US tree species and how climate change-induced shifts in hardiness zones are affecting historical tree ranges in 20 highly populated metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) with high rates of urban heat island growth over time. MSAs are areas with at least one urban area of 50,000 or more people and adjoining territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core. We found 6 of the 20 MSAs lost tree species, with the Atlanta (13.51%) and Washington DC (3.61%) MSAs suffering the greatest losses. If historical rates of hardiness zone migration continue, a simple projection exhibits >6% average tree species loss across all MSAs in the study. As hardiness zones continue to migrate northward with climate change, heat island mitigation and other environmental management strategies employing green infrastructure must identify tree species that are likely to remain well adapted to urban climates many years into the future. Published by Elsevier B.V.This paper summarizes recent studies on the effects of urbanization on climate in China. The effects of urbanization on local climate trends have been re-estimated based on homogenized observations and using improved methods. In this respect, the effect of urbanization on the observed warming trend of local surface air temperatures during the last few decades is determined as being about 20% at urban stations such as the Beijing Observatory. The large-scale weakening trend of wind speed is also about 20% more prominent at the city center than its surroundings. The effect of urbanization on precipitation is not profound, but results of high-resolution regional climate modeling suggest that this effect may depend on the urban extent. Although the urban heat island (UHI) should favor local atmospheric convection and hence precipitation, the increasingly extending urban land-use may reduce precipitation over the urban cluster in North China. It is found that urbanization can play a more notable role in extreme events than usual weather. High-resolution simulations show a positive feedback between the UHI and the super-heat wave in Shanghai during July-August 2013. Relevant studies dealing with urban climate adaptation are discussed in relation to recent findings.The complexity of climate information, particularly as related to climate scenarios, impacts, and action alternatives, poses significant challenges for science communication. This study presents a geographic visualization approach involving lay audiences to address these challenges. VisAdapt (TM) is a web-based visualization tool designed to improve Nordic homeowners' understanding of climate change vulnerability and to support their adaptive actions. VisAdapt is structured to enable individual users to explore several climate change impact parameters, including temperature and precipitation, for their locations and to find information on specific adaptation measures for their house types and locations. The process of testing the tool included a focus group study with homeowners in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden to assess key challenges in geographic visualization, such as the level of interactivity and information. The paper concludes that geographic visualization tools can support homeowners' climate adaptation processes, but that certain features, such as downscaled climate information are a key element expected by users. Although the assessment of interactivity and data varied both across countries and user experience, a general conclusion is that a geographic visualization tool, like VisAdapt, can make climate change effects and adaptation alternatives tangible and initiate discussions and collaborative reflections. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 mu m, known as PM2.5, can affect human health, especially in elderly people. Because of the imminent aging of society in the near future in most developed countries, the human health impacts of PM2.5 must be evaluated. In this study, we used a global-to-regional atmospheric transport model to simulate PM2.5 in Japan with a high-resolution stretched grid system (similar to 10 km for the high-resolution model, HRM) for the present (the 2000) and the future (the 2030, as proposed by the Representative Concentrations Pathway 4.5, RCP4.5). We also used the same model with a low-resolution uniform grid system (-100 km for the low-resolution model, LRM). These calculations were conducted by nudging meteorological fields obtained from an atmosphere-ocean coupled model and providing emission inventories used in the coupled model. After correcting for bias, we calculated the excess mortality due to long-term exposure to PM2.5 among the elderly (over 65 years old) based on different minimum PM2.5 concentration (MINPM) levels to account for uncertainty using the simulated PM2.5 distributions to express the health effect as a concentration response function. As a result, we estimated the excess mortality for all of Japan to be 31,300 (95% confidence intervals: 20,700 to 42,600) people in 2000 and 28,600 (95% confidence intervals: 19,000 to 38,700) people in 2030 using the HRM with a MINPM of 5.8 mu g/m(3). In contrast, the LRM resulted in underestimates of approximately 30% (for PM2.5 concentrations in the 2000 and 2030), approximately 60% (excess mortality in the 2000) and approximately 90% (excess mortality in 2030) compared to the HRM results. We also found that the uncertainty in the MINPM value, especially for low PM2.5 concentrations in the future (2030) can cause large variability in the estimates, ranging from 0 (MINPM of 15 mu g/m(3) in both HRM and LRM) to 95,000 (MINPM of 0 mu g/m(3) in HRM) people. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate change is a major challenge for managers of protected areas world-wide, and managers need information about future climate conditions within protected areas. Prior studies of climate change effects in protected areas have largely focused on average climatic conditions. However, extreme weather may have stronger effects on wildlife populations and habitats than changes in averages. Our goal was to quantify future changes in the frequency of extreme heat, drought, and false springs, during the avian breeding season, in 415 National Wildlife Refuges in the conterminous United States. We analyzed spatially detailed data on extreme weather frequencies during the historical period (1950-2005) and under different scenarios of future climate change by mid- and late-21st century. We found that all wildlife refuges will likely experience substantial changes in the frequencies of extreme weather, but the types of projected changes differed among refuges. Extreme heat is projected to increase dramatically in all wildlife refuges, whereas changes in droughts and false springs are projected to increase or decrease on a regional basis. Half of all wildlife refuges are projected to see increases in frequency (>20% higher than the current rate) in at least two types of weather extremes by mid-century. Wildlife refuges in the Southwest and Pacific Southwest are projected to exhibit the fastest rates of change, and may deserve extra attention. Climate change adaptation strategies in protected areas, such as the U.S. wildlife refuges, may need to seriously consider future changes in extreme weather, including the considerable spatial variation of these changes. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.We study the optimal role of mitigation and adaptation strategies for environmentally small economies, that is, economies that are witnessing an exogenous increase in emissions to which they are contributing very little. Our results lead to three main conclusions. First, small economies should concentrate their environmental efforts, if any, on adaptation. This is a recommendation based on cost effectiveness rather than on any idea about these economies indulging in free riding. Second, environmentally small economies that are unable to spend enough on adaptation may end up spending less on mitigation in the long term, owing to their impoverishment as a result of negative climate shocks. Third, higher mitigation expenditures may arise not only as a result of greater optimal adaptation expenditures, but also because of increased adaptation to the incentives for mitigation provided by richer countries. For the simulations, we use a calibrated optimal growth model for Brazil, Chile, and the United States.This paper presents a comparative analysis of the use of climate science for adaptation policy in Queensland, Australia and the UK. We examine policy players' perceptions of climate science alongside prevailing political influences on evidence-based policy making. In Queensland, the evidence-based mandate has been weakened by partisan politics so that the political acceptability of evidence is a foremost concern for policy makers. In the UK, the evidence-based mandate is enshrined in the Climate Change Act (2008), yet here too political forces have sought to limit the acceptable use of climate science for policy making. Both cases reveal normative and political tensions in the interpretation and use of climate science, suggesting that important political challenges must be overcome by the scientific community to ensure the ongoing utility of climate science for policy making.This paper presents results from a study of Czech Local Action Groups (LAGs), focusing on gaining knowledge about their internally perceived legitimacy and their potential role in local adaptation to climate change. Former studies on the role of governance networks in climate change adaptation have suggested that these networks' legitimacy are crucial for their success. In this article we provide an analytical framework that can be used to address different aspects of local governance networks which are important for their legitimacy and the way they are apt as instruments for climate change adaptation actions. We also present a survey among LAG members that provide empirical data that we discuss in the article. The framework and the data are discussed with reference to existing contributions in the intersection of legitimacy, governance networks and climate change adaptation. A specific aim is to provide research based recommendations for further improving LAGs as an adaptation instrument. In addition, knowledge is generated that will be interesting for further studies of similar local governance initiatives in the climate change adaptation context.Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been increasing from about 280 ppm to 400 ppm from the pre-industrial era until now. If intraspecific variability in the response to elevated CO2 (e[CO2]) can be found, then it should be possible to select for greater responsiveness in crop breeding programs. Our experiment aimed to determine the effects of e[CO2] on the yield, biomass, leaf and grain nitrogen content of a range of field pea (Pisum sativum L.) cultivars subjected to rainfed and supplemental irrigation conditions. Plants were grown under Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) at the Australian Grains FACE facility in Horsham, Victoria, Australia under e[CO2] (550 ppm) or at ambient CO2 (390-400 ppm) under rainfed conditions and supplemental irrigation during three seasons, 2010-2012. Yields were significantly increased by 26% under e[CO2] due to an increase in the number of pods per area. Grain size, the number of grains per pod and the harvest index remained unaffected by e[CO2]. Grain nitrogen concentration ([N]) was slightly, but significantly, decreased by e[CO2], but this was not consistent across cultivars under all water regimes. The dual purpose cultivar PBA Hayman consistently maintained grain [N] in response to e[CO2] while the response in grain [N] in the cultivars Sturt and PBA Twilight depended on the irrigation treatment. While there was no evidence for consistent differences in seed yield response to e[CO2] for the chosen cultivars, understanding the mechanisms for why some cultivars are able to maintain [N] under e[CO2] would allow breeding programs to develop varieties resistant to decreases in [N] under e[CO2]. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change affects human health, and climate change adaptation aims to reduce these risks through infrastructural, behavioral, and technological measures. However, attributing direct human health effects to climate change adaptation is difficult, causing an ethical dilemma between the need for evidence of strategies and their precautionary implementation before such evidence has been generated. In the absence of conclusive evidence for individual adaptation strategies, alternative approaches to the measurement of adaptation effectiveness need to be developed. This article proposes a theoretical framework and a set of guiding questions to assess effects of adaptation strategies on seven domains of health determinants, including social, economic, infrastructure, institutional, community, environmental, and cultural determinants of health. Its focus on advancing gender equity and environmental justice concurrently with the implementation of health-related adaptation could serve as a template for policymakers and researchers.Global patterns of development suggest that as more projects are initiated, business will need to find acceptable measures to conserve biodiversity. The application of environmental offsets allows firms to combine their economic interests with the environment and society. This article presents the results of a multi-stakeholder analysis related to the design of offsets principles, policies, and regulatory processes, using a large infrastructure projects context. The results indicate that business was primarily interested in using direct offsets and other compensatory measures, known internationally as indirect offsets, to acquit their environmental management obligations. In contrast, the environmental sector argued that highly principled and scientifically robust offsets programs should be implemented and maintained for enduring environmental protection. Stakeholder consensus stressed the importance of offsets registers with commensurate monitoring and enforcement Our findings provide instructive insights into the countervailing views of offsets policy stakeholders. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A growing number of cities are preparing for climate change impacts by developing adaptation plans. However, little is known about how these plans and their implementation affect the vulnerability of the urban poor. We critically assess initiatives in eight cities worldwide and find that land use planning for climate adaptation can exacerbate socio-spatial inequalities across diverse developmental and environmental conditions. We argue that urban adaptation injustices fall into two categories: acts of commission, when interventions negatively affect or displace poor communities, and acts of omission, when they protect and prioritize elite groups at the expense of the urban poor.The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact (SFRCCC) has been highlighted as a regional climate change governance exemplar for land use planning. After six years, we find the compact has given momentum to local climate change planning through the Regional Climate Action Plan and provides a foundation for adaptive governance for climate change adaptation. We also find aspects of the compact lacking in terms of representation, decision making, learning, and problem responsiveness. Efforts are now needed to scale down implementation and scale up governance and planning more systematically to address climate change adaptation needs at multiple levels.The role of policy integration in the governance of cross-cutting policy problems has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Nevertheless, the concept of policy (dis)integration is still under theorized, particularly regarding its inherent processual nature. The main argument of this paper is that policy integration should be understood as a process that entails various elements that do not necessarily move in a concerted manner but may develop at different paces or even in opposite directions. To study such dynamic integration pathways, the paper proposes a multi-dimensional framework. Drawing on existing literature, the framework distinguishes four dimensions of integration: (1) policy frame, (2), subsystem involvement, (3) policy goals, and (4) policy instruments. For each of these dimensions, we describe different manifestations that are associated with lesser or more advanced degrees of policy integration within a governance system. Apart from offering an innovative theoretical approach that does justice to the dynamic and oftentimes asynchronous nature of integration processes, the framework allows for holding decision-makers accountable for promises they make about enhancing policy integration. Simultaneously, it is argued that the merit of lower degrees of integration should not be underestimated, as these may sometimes be the most feasible or appropriate for the governance of a cross-cutting problem.Urban heat island (UHI) effect, the side effect of rapid urbanization, has become an obstacle to the further healthy development of the city. Understanding its relationships with impact factors is important to provide useful information for climate adaptation urban planning strategies. For this purpose, the geographically-weighted regression (GWR) approach is used to explore the scale effects in a mountainous city, namely the change laws and characteristics of the relationships between land surface temperature and impact factors at different spatial resolutions (30-960 m). The impact factors include the Soil-adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), the Index-based Built-up Index (IBI), and the Soil Brightness Index (NDSI), which indicate the coverage of the vegetation, built-up, and bare land, respectively. For reference, the ordinary least squares (OLS) model, a global regression technique, is also employed by using the same dependent variable and explanatory variables as in the GWR model. Results from the experiment exemplified by Chongqing showed that the GWR approach had a better prediction accuracy and a better ability to describe spatial non-stationarity than the OLS approach judged by the analysis of the local coefficient of determination (R-2), Corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc), and F-test at small spatial resolution (< 240 m); however, when the spatial scale was increased to 480 m, this advantage has become relatively weak. This indicates that the GWR model becomes increasingly global, revealing the relationships with more generalized geographical patterns, and then spatial non-stationarity in the relationship will tend to be neglected with the increase of spatial resolution.Current debate on the implementation of resilience in addressing climatic impacts calls for more pragmatic means of reducing losses. In this study we aimed to generate context-specific knowledge about resilience factors for addressing the impacts of drought, with the expectation that bringing forth experiential knowledge on how impacts were addressed in the past would shed light on what constitutes key resilience factors for practitioners working in urban contexts. The study was carried in three of the largest cities in Chile: Santiago, Concepcion, and Valdivia. The analytical framework consists of urban and regional resilience incorporating transdisciplinary approaches applying the Resilience-Wheel tool, combined with participatory methods for the co-production of knowledge and qualitative content analysis of documents and workshops. Results show that key determinants of building resilience to drought were: improving education and access to information, enhancing preparedness, promoting technology transfer, reinforcing organizational linkages and collaboration, decentralizing governance, and encouraging citizen participation. The Resilience-Wheel was useful for navigating the conceptual complexity and diversity of perspectives inherent among social actors. The transdisciplinary approach allowed us to co-produce key knowledge that can be applied to build resilience in future, through a bottom-up approach that bridges the science-policy interface.Academic attention to local climate policy usually focuses on large-sized cities. Given the climate challenges ahead this seems unjustified. Small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) deserve scholarly attention as well. The main question is: What factors influence climate change policy and local climate actions in SMCs? In this article we present an analytical framework to analyze climate change policy and local climate actions of SMCs. The framework addresses different aspects: policy-input, -throughput, -output, -outcome, characteristics of the local environment, local action arenas, influence by higher government levels, and interaction with climate change issue networks. The framework is used to analyze and compare four case studies of SMCs in the Dutch region of Twente (two urban and two rural municipalities, and addresses both adaptation and mitigation). Results show that both localist', multi-level' and issue network membership factors influence local climate policy action. Governance modes discerned concern mostly governing by authority' and self-governing'. When reflecting on the role of SMCs in climate action the study revealed the importance of local capacity building schemes issued by provincial government, inter-municipal network collaboration, and the potential for local governments to mobilize and organize citizen action.Urban populations are at large risk from climate change and particularly extreme heat events. While there are various studies about heat risks, including those based on modeling experiments examining hazards and vulnerability related to heat (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity), methods to develop urban heat scenarios built upon in-depth knowledge on urban governance are missing. The aim of this paper is to create exploratory and anticipatory storylines for heat adaptation in urban planning using the method of Constellation Analysis. Focusing on the case of Berlin, Germany, the complex sets of urban governance measures that exist on different spatial levels are introduced. From the analyzed governance and planning processes three exploratory storylines for 2040/2050 are derived. Additionally, the paper presents an anticipatory storyline of a "heat adapted city". The limitations and benefits of these perspectives and the need for quantitative and spatially explicit scenarios are discussed. Systematic approaches to identifying urban heat governance constellations and deriving respective storylines are of utmost importance for discussing possible urban development paths with different stakeholders. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.The paper presents a thermodynamic basis for water balance partitioning at the catchment scale, through formulation of flux-force relationships for the constituent hydrological processes, leading to the derivation of optimality conditions that satisfy the principle of Maximum Entropy Production (MEP). Application of these optimality principles at three different time scales leads to the derivation of water balance equations that mimic widely used, empirical models, i.e., Budyko-type model over long-term scale, the abcd model at monthly scale, and the SCS model at the event scale. The applicability of MEP in each case helps to draw connections between the water balances at the three different time scales, and to demonstrate a common thermodynamic basis for the otherwise empirical water balance models. In particular, it is concluded that the long time scale Budyko-type model and the event scale SCS model are both special cases of the monthly abcd model.In recent years, China's central government has begun to articulate its adaptation policy and to identify measures to adapt the nation's agriculture to changing precipitation patterns, higher temperatures, and extreme events. These developments are occurring at a time when the agricultural sector is in flux: while the major grain cropsrice, wheat, and cornare still central to food security, many smallholder farmers have shifted away from land-intensive production to growing higher-value, labour-intensive horticultural products, such as fruit and vegetables. In addition, new forms of agriculture are emerging because of out-migration and land transfers. This review introduces the adaptation policy context for agricultural adaptation in China and reviews existing research on impacts and adaptation. It then discusses how well existing research and policy actually reflect the challenges of adapting China's farms to climate change. Four issues are discussed which together suggest that current science and policy very poorly reflect challenges on the ground: the framing of agriculture as a relatively homogeneous sector; the absence of any vulnerability assessments attuned to local contexts; a bias toward large-scale engineering solutions; and insufficient consideration of local government capacity. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:693-706. doi: 10.1002/wcc.414 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .Climate change adaptation is increasingly considered an urgent priority for policy action. Billions of dollars have been pledged for adaptation finance, with many donor agencies requiring that adaptation is distinct from baseline development. However, practitioners and academics continue to question what adaptation looks like on the ground, especially in a developing country. This study examines the current framing of planned adaptation amidst low socioeconomic development and considers the practical implications of this framing for adaptation planning. Three overarching approaches to planned adaptation in a developing country context emerged in a systematic review of 30 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2015, including: (1) technocratic risk management, which treats adaptation as additional to development, (2) pro-poor vulnerability reduction, which acknowledges the ability of conventional development to foster and act as adaptation, and (3) sustainable adaptation, which suggests that adaptation should only be integrated into a type of development that is socially and environmentally sustainable. Over half of sustainable adaptation' articles in this review took a critical adaptation approach, drawing primarily from political ecology and postdevelopment studies, and emphasizing the malleability of adaptation. The reviewed articles highlight how the different framings of the relationship between adaptation and development result in diverse and sometimes contradictory messages regarding adaptation design, implementation, funding, monitoring, and evaluation. This review illustrates the need to continually interrogate the multiple framings of adaptation and development and to foster a pragmatic and pluralistic dialogue regarding planned adaptation and transformative change in developing countries. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:707-726. doi: 10.1002/wcc.416 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .XBeach, a process-based numerical model designed to simulate morphologic change during extreme storm events, was calibrated and compared to observations from a large-scale laboratory dune erosion experiment. Wave conditions along the tan, wave runup at the beach, and 3-dimensional position of the dune were measured throughout the experiment. Seiching modes in the tank were simulated and matched the observations once the model was calibrated. Simulated waves were sensitive to gamma, the ratio of wave height to water depth, and c(f)., the coefficient of friction. Simulated runup explained 50-87% of the observed variance in observations. However, the magnitude of simulated wave runup was underestimated throughout the experiment Errors in simulated runup were composed of a high bias and gain error in mean water level, low bias in the infragravity swash, and low bias and gain errors in incident swash. Observed probability density functions of swash were statistically consistent between times when swash was confined to the foreshore and times when swash interacted with the dune. However, simulated probability density functions of swash were statistically different during the collision regime. Despite the systematic underestimation of wave runup, modeled dune erosion compared well with observations after the sediment transport parameters were calibrated. Modeled dune erosion was sensitive to the critical slope parameters over the wet and dry regions of the beach, the depth of the interface between the wet and dry regions of the beach, and the threshold depth for sediment transport and return flow. Published by Elsevier B.V.Full-scale tests were carried out on a part of representative brick veneer contemporary house to assess the loading effects on roof to wall connections and load sharing. Tests were carried out at each stage of construction: bare frame followed by the installation of roof battens and cladding, wall lining, ceiling, etc. These construction stages were used to assess the contribution of the structural and lining (i.e. ceiling, ceiling cornice and wall lining) elements to the load sharing and response of the timber-framed house structure to wind loading. Results of the full-scale test show that the vertical reaction force at the loaded truss support was reduced by about 20% when the lining elements were added to the system with structural elements (i.e. truss, batten and roof cladding). The vertical load sharing of the timber framed house through the roof to wall connection (RWC) depends on the stiffness of the RWC and the truss location (i.e. whether located at the end or middle). The contribution of the lining elements to the vertical load sharing is about 15-20%. The lateral load resistance of RWCs significantly increased, when ceiling, ceiling cornice and wall lining were added to the structural system. The outcome of this study can be used to assess the structural response and vulnerability of these houses to windstorms. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As climate change adaptation is increasingly discussed and becoming a mainstream concept, different types of users are asking themselves if and when they should develop an adaptation strategy, often not knowing where to begin. Climate experts, on the other hand, have access to an enormous amount of data that could be useful to users but often do not know how to translate it into something practical. Both users and experts can be linked through two timescales, the system lifespan and climate vulnerability. While the system lifespan relies on the user's estimation of his planning timeframe, the climate vulnerability is estimated from climate model projections and observations. We propose a simple tool to relate user and climate expert knowledge by combining the two timescales. To be reliable, the interconnection implies a dialogue to first identify what sensitive climate variable will impact the system and subsequently the extent of the impact. Climate data can then be used to identify, with the use of a simple graph, how sensitive a system is likely to be and help users position themselves about the urgency of adaptation. The concept has been successfully presented and applied to the tourismindustry, notably the ski industry, which is showcased in this paper. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.In Australia, shared responsibility is a concept advocated to promote collective climate change adaptation by multiple actors and institutions. However, a shared response is often promoted in the absence of information regarding actions currently taken; in particular, there is limited knowledge regarding action occurring at the household scale. To address this gap, we examine household actions taken to address climate change and associated hazards in two Australian coastal communities. Mixed methods research is conducted to answer three questions: (1) what actions are currently taken (mitigation, actions to lobby for change or adaptation to climate impacts)? (2) why are these actions taken (e.g. are they consistent with capacity, experience, perceptions of risk); and (3) what are the implications for adaptation? We find that households are predominantly mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and that impact orientated adaptive actions are limited. Coping strategies are considered sufficient to mange climate risks, proving a disincentive for additional adaptive action. Influencing factors differ, but generally, risk perception and climate change belief are associated with action. However, the likelihood of more action is a function of homeownership and a tendency to plan ahead. Addressing factors that support or constrain household adaptive decision-making and action, from the physical (e.g. homeownership) to.the social (e.g. skills in planning and a culture of adapting to change) will be critical in increasing household participation in adaptation. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lake Sakylan Pyhajarvi has been an important fishing site and drinking water source for the local population for centuries. The lake has undergone significant changes: (1) the water level was lowered in the 1600s and in the 1850s; (2) planktivorous coregonid fish were successfully introduced in the early 1900s; (3) nutrient input from intensified agriculture has increased since the 1950s and (4) the effects of the current variable climate on the lake and its catchment have become more evident since the 1990s. We determined the phases of oligotrophication, eutrophication and recovery and elucidated the ecosystem changes by combining palaeolimnological records with detailed neolimnological data. The sedimentary diatom and cladoceran assemblages first showed a relatively eutrophic period followed by oligotrophic periods, linked with the artificial changes in water level and consequent shifts in macrophyte abundance. The oligotrophic period in the early 1900s is thought to represent the target trophic state for the lake. After the 1950s, introduction of vendace resulted in higher planktivory reflected by an increased relative abundance of small-bodied pelagic cladocerans. Signs of eutrophication occurred due to increased nutrient load. During the last 10 years, signs of recovery have been recorded. A complex history such as that of Lake Pyhajarvi illustrates the difficulties in selecting management targets, and the risk of setting false targets, for lakes based solely on monitoring data-both neolimnological and palaeolimnological approach are needed.To optimize flood management, it is crucial to determine whether rain will fall within a river basin. This requires very fine precision in prediction of rainfall areas. Cloud data assimilation has great potential to improve the prediction of precipitation area because it can directly obtain information on locations of rain systems. Clouds can be observed globally by satellite-based microwave remote sensing. Microwave observation also includes information of latent heat and water vapor associated with cloud amount, which enables the assimilation of not only cloud itself but also the cloud-affected atmosphere. However, it is difficult to observe clouds over land using satellite microwave remote sensing, because their emissivity is much lower than that of the land surface. To overcome this challenge, we need appropriate representation of heterogeneous land emissivity. We developed a coupled atmosphere and land data assimilation system with the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (CALDAS-WRF), which can assimilate soil moisture, vertically integrated cloud water content over land, and heat and moisture within clouds simultaneously. We applied this system to heavy rain events in Japan. Results show that the system effectively assimilated cloud signals and produced very accurate cloud and precipitation distributions. The system also accurately formed a consistent atmospheric field around the cloud. Precipitation intensity was also substantially improved by appropriately representing the local atmospheric field. Furthermore, combination of the method and operationally analyzed dynamical and moisture fields improved prediction of precipitation duration. The results demonstrate the method's promise in dramatically improving predictions of heavy rain and consequent flooding.In this study, the fully distributed, physically based hydroclimatological model AMUNDSEN is set up for catchments in the highly glacierized Otztal Alps (Austria, 558 km(2) in total). The model is applied for the period 1997-2013, using a spatial resolution of 50m and a temporal resolution of 1 h. A novel parameterization for lateral snow redistribution based on topographic openness is presented to account for the highly heterogeneous snow accumulation patterns in the complex topography of the study region. Multilevel spatiotemporal validation is introduced as a systematic, independent, complete, and redundant validation procedure based on the observation scale of temporal and spatial support, spacing, and extent. This new approach is demonstrated using a comprehensive set of eight independent validation sources: (i) mean areal precipitation over the period 1997-2006 derived by conserving mass in the closure of the water balance, (ii) time series of snow depth recordings at the plot scale, (iii-iv) multitemporal snow extent maps derived from Landsat and MODIS satellite data products, (v) the snow accumulation distribution for the winter season 2010/2011 derived from airborne laser scanning data, (vi) specific surface mass balances for three glaciers in the study area, (vii) spatially distributed glacier surface elevation changes for the entire area over the period 1997-2006, and (viii) runoff recordings for several subcatchments. The results indicate a high overall model skill and especially demonstrate the benefit of the new validation approach. The method can serve as guideline for systematically validating the coupled components in integrated snow-hydrological and glacio-hydrological models.We analysed recent evolution and meteorological drivers of the atmospheric evaporative demand (AED) in the Canary Islands for the period 1961-2013. We employed long and high-quality time series of meteorological variables to analyse current AED changes in this region and found that AED has increased during the investigated period. Overall, the annual ETo, which was estimated by means of the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equation, increased significantly by 18.2 mm decade(-1) on average, with a stronger trend in summer (6.7 mm decade(-1)). In this study we analysed the contribution of (i) the aerodynamic (related to the water vapour that a parcel of air can store) and (ii) radiative (related to the available energy to evaporate a quantity of water) components to the decadal variability and trends of ETo. More than 90% of the observed ETo variability at the seasonal and annual scales can be associated with the variability in the aerodynamic component. The variable that recorded more significant changes in the Canary Islands was relative humidity, and among the different meteorological factors used to calculate ETo, relative humidity was the main driver of the observed ETo trends. The observed trend could have negative consequences in a number of water-depending sectors if it continues in the future.In this paper, we argue that individuals - as members of society - play an important role in the expectations of whether or not companies are responsible for addressing environmental issues, and whether or not governments should regulate them. From this perspective of corporate social responsibility as a social contract we report the results of a survey of 1066 individuals. The aim of the survey was to assess participants' belief in anthropogenic climate change, free-market ideology, and beliefs around who is responsible for dealing with climate change. Results showed that both climate change views and free market ideology have a strong effect on beliefs that companies are responsible for dealing with climate change and on support for regulatory policy to that end. Furthermore, we found that free market ideology is a barrier in the support of corporate regulatory policy. The implications of these findings for research, policy, and practice are discussed.Mountain ranges are the world's natural water towers and provide water resources for millions of people. However, their hydrological balance and possible future changes in river flow remain poorly understood because of high meteorological variability, physical inaccessibility, and the complex interplay between climate, cryosphere, and hydrological processes. Here, we use a state-of-the art glacio-hydrological model informed by data from high-altitude observations and the latest climate change scenarios to quantify the climate change impact on water resources of two contrasting catchments vulnerable to changes in the cryosphere. The two study catchments are located in the Central Andes of Chile and in the Nepalese Himalaya in close vicinity of densely populated areas. Although both sites reveal a strong decrease in glacier area, they show a remarkably different hydrological response to projected climate change. In the Juncal catchment in Chile, runoff is likely to sharply decrease in the future and the runoff seasonality is sensitive to projected climatic changes. In the Langtang catchment in Nepal, future water availability is on the rise for decades to come with limited shifts between seasons. Owing to the high spatiotemporal resolution of the simulations and process complexity included in the modeling, the response times and the mechanisms underlying the variations in glacier area and river flow can be well constrained. The projections indicate that climate change adaptation in Central Chile should focus on dealing with a reduction in water availability, whereas in Nepal preparedness for flood extremes should be the policy priority.Understanding the impacts of CV&C-2 (climate variability and change) on electricity systems is paramount for operators preparing for weather-related disruptions, policymakers deciding on future directions of energy policies and European decision makers shaping research programs. This study conducted a systematic literature review to collate consistent patterns of impacts of CV&C on electricity systems in Europe. We found that, in the absence of adaptation and for current capacity, thermal electricity generation will decrease for the near term to mid-21st century(3) (NT-MC) and the end of the 21st century(4) (EC). In contrast, renewable electricity generation will increase for hydroelectricity in Northern Europe (NT-MC and EC), for solar electricity in Germany (NT-MC) and the United Kingdom and Spain (NT-MC and EC) and for wind electricity in the Iberian Peninsula (NT-MC) and over the Baltic and Aegean Sea (NT-MC and EC). Although the knowledge frontier in this area has advanced, the evidence available remains patchy. Future assessments should not only address some of the gaps identified but also better contextualise their results against those of earlier assessments. This review could provide a starting point for doing so. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Forest fires coupled with logging have now become one of the most extensive causes of forest degradation, affecting the balance between carbon emissions and sequestration in lowland tropical forests in Southeast Asia. Being transient pools of disturbance-killed trees, coarse woody debris (CWD) stocks play a key role in the carbon budget of such disturbed forests. Here, we investigated for the first time how logging affects the CWD input during and following a fire and, consequently, post-fire CWD stocks. Measurements were made at a permanent site in Bukit Soeharto Education Forest (BSEF) in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. This site consisted of plots that had been subjected to three different logging intensities (HF: heavily felled, trees with diameter at breast height (DBH) >= 30 cm were felled; LF: lightly felled, trees with DBH >= 50 cm were felled; UF: unfelled), all of which were burned by a fire that occurred during a drought associated with the El Nino Southern Oscillation in 1998, shortly after logging. CWD mass were measured in 2012, following 14 years of monitoring the CWD inputs. The average CWD mass across the three logging treatments was 89 Mg ha(-1), which is higher than the reported values for undisturbed forests but within the recorded range for recently disturbed forests. The amount of CWD inputs due to tree death during the fire was similar among the three treatments. However, there was a large difference in the CWD input in the post-fire period. In UF plots, large CWD inputs lasted for 2 years following the fire due to delayed tree death, whereas in HF and LF plots, where the above-ground biomass had greatly reduced by selective logging, no further large CWD inputs occurred after the fire. Consequently, the CWD stocks in the HF and LF plots were 50-60% lower than those in the UF plots. A simulation predicted that these CWD inputs during and shortly after the fire still constitute a large proportion of the CWD stocks in 2012, suggesting that the CWD pool is a rather durable carbon store in BSEF. In the HF and LF plots, there was few large diameter CWD pieces, reflecting the selective logging of large diameter trees, whereas, in the UF plots, there were large standing dead and uprooted trees. Since the larger diameter CWD pieces are persist in the forest for a longer time continuing to store carbon and to provide habitats for diverse wild life, selective logging could have large impacts on forest ecology and function not only by decreasing the total CWD inputs and stocks but also by decreasing the large diameter CWD pieces. (c) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Global climate change is likely to pose increasing threats in nearly all sectors and across all sub-regions worldwide (IPCC, 2014). Particularly, extreme weather events (e.g. heavy precipitations), together with changing exposure and vulnerability patterns, are expected to increase the damaging effect of storms, pluvial floods and coastal flooding. Developing climate and adaptation services for local planners and decision makers is becoming essential to transfer and communicate sound scientific knowledge about climate related risks and foster the development of national, regional and local adaptation strategies. In order to analyze the effect of climate change on pluvial flood risk and advice adaptation planning, a Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) methodology was developed and applied to the urban territory of the municipality of Venice. Based on the integrated analysis of hazard, exposure, vulnerability and risk, RRA allows identifying and prioritizing targets and sub -areas that are more likely to be affected by pluvial flood risk due to heavy precipitation events in the future scenario 2041-2050. From the early stages of its development and application, the RRA followed a bottom-up approach taking into account the requests, knowledge and perspectives of local stakeholders of the North Adriatic region by means of interactive workshops, surveys and discussions. Results of the analysis showed that all targets (i.e. residential, commercial -industrial areas and infrastructures) are vulnerable to pluvial floods due to the high impermeability and low slope of the topography. The spatial pattern of risk mostly reflects the distribution of the hazard and the districts with the higher percentage of receptors' surface in the higher risk classes (i.e. very high, high and medium) are Lido-Pellestrina and Marghera. The paper discusses how risk -based maps and statistics integrate scientific and local knowledge with the final aim to mainstream climate adaptation in the development of risk mitigation and urban plans. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights eserved.Collaborative Indo-Swiss research on permafrost has thrown new light on this rarely studied component of the Indian Himalayan cryosphere. Under a pilot study, first maps of estimated permafrost distribution in Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh, India have been produced, using a combination of simple topographic and climatic principles, more sophisticated numerical modelling, and mapping of permafrost indicators. Overall, 9% (420 sq. km) of the land area in Kullu is classified as permafrost terrain, extending down to as low as similar to 4200 m amsl in isolated instances. Between similar to 4200 and 5000 m amsl, permafrost underlies a surface area comparable in size to that overlaid by glacier ice. Hence, permafrost is identified as a significant component of the local cryosphere. These results now provide a scientific basis for assessing the wide-ranging potential impacts, hazards and risk associated with warming and thawing of frozen ground, with relevance for climate change adaptation studies across the entire Himalaya.Refugia have long been studied from paleontological and biogeographical perspectives to understand how populations persisted during past periods of unfavorable climate. Recently, researchers have applied the idea to contemporary landscapes to identify climate change refugia, here defined as areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time that enable persistence of valued physical, ecological, and socio-cultural resources. We differentiate historical and contemporary views, and characterize physical and ecological processes that create and maintain climate change refugia. We then delineate how refugia can fit into existing decision support frameworks for climate adaptation and describe seven steps for managing them. Finally, we identify challenges and opportunities for operationalizing the concept of climate change refugia. Managing climate change refugia can be an important option for conservation in the face of ongoing climate change.The intensification of precipitation extremes in a warming world has been reported on a global scale and is traditionally explained with the Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) relation. The relationship is observed to be valid in mid-latitudes; however, the debate persists in tropical monsoon regions, with the extremes of the Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall (ISMR) being a prime example. Here, we present a comprehensive study on the dependence of ISMR extremes on both the 2 m surface air temperature over India and on the sea surface temperature over the tropical Indian Ocean. Remarkably, the ISMR extremes exhibit no significant association with temperature at either spatial scale: neither aggregated over the entire India/Tropical Indian Ocean area nor at the grid levels. We find that the theoretical C-C relation overestimates the positive changes in precipitation extremes, which is also reflected in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) simulations. We emphasize that the changing patterns of extremes over the Indian subcontinent need a scientific re-evaluation, which is possible due to availability of the unique long-term in-situ data. This can aid bias correction of model projections of extremes whose value for climate adaptation can hardly be overemphasized, especially for the developing tropical countries.Several commentators have suggested adoption of improved irrigation will be important for agricultural adaptation to climate change. This study used data from a special tabulation of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey to examine how climate and other factors influence the choice of sprinkler versus gravity-flow irrigation across 17 western states. Because studies of irrigation technology adoption often concentrate on small geographic areas with the same climate, few have estimated effects of climate on irrigation technology choice. Results suggest sprinkler irrigation is a more promising climate adaptation in areas that are relatively cooler and where extreme precipitation events increase. Sprinkler adoption is less likely in warmer climates and under drier climate change scenarios. An implication is that for hot, arid parts of the West, other climate adaptation strategies may be more important to pursue. Consistent with several previous studies, sprinkler adoption was greater among farms that were larger, had higher water costs, and relied more on groundwater. Sprinkler adoption was also greater in states with a higher erosion index that captured effects of rainfall, field slope, and soil water-holding capacity, which also have been found to be important adoption predictors in a number of previous studies.An online survey was undertaken to document the extent of green infrastructure (GI) installations throughout New Jersey at the municipal level and to determine the barriers to implementation of these techniques for the state's municipalities. An in-depth online survey was sent to various officials in each of the state's municipalities. Responses were received from 147 (26%) of New Jersey's 565 municipalities. Of the respondents, 108 (74%) already had at least one GI practice installed in their town, with rain gardens being the most popular practice with installations in 91 municipalities (62%). Reducing stormwater runoff was the most common primary motivating factor for GI installations with 19 affirmative responses (13%), while climate change adaptation was not chosen by any respondents. Funding was stated as the primary barrier to GI installation, but many municipalities had not applied for grants to defray costs. Despite the lack of state incentives and inconsistent municipal conformance with components of the state stormwater rules, the movement to manage stormwater through the use of GI techniques appears to be steadily moving forward in New Jersey. (C) 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.Small-scale irrigation systems managed by farmers are facing multiple challenges including competing water demand, climatic variability and change, and socioeconomic transformation. Though the relevant institutions for irrigation management have developed coping and adaptation mechanisms, the intensity and frequency of the changes have weakened their institutional adaptive capacity. Using case examples mostly from Nepal, this paper studies the interconnections between seven key dimensions of adaptive capacity: the five capitals (human, financial, natural, social, and physical), governance, and learning. Long-term adaptation requires harnessing the synergies and tradeoffs between generic adaptive capacity that fosters broader development goals and specific adaptive capacity that strengthens climate-risk management. Measuring and addressing the interrelations among the seven adaptive capacity dimensions aids in strengthening the long term sustainability of farmer-managed irrigation systems.Pastoralists have a rich tradition of 'innovation', as continuous adaptation to new ecological and economic scenarios has been a prerequisite for their survival through the millennia. One of their greatest assets is the large number of locally adapted livestock breeds they have developed, which represent a major resource for climate change adaptation as well as mitigation. Pastoralists are beginning to position themselves as providers of ecological services as well as of livestock products that represent a healthy and eco-friendly alternative to the products from industrial production systems. Nevertheless, many governments continue with antagonistic policies, being unaware of the ecological and economic significance of their pastoral populations. Biocultural Community Protocols, as specified in the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing to the Convention on Biological Diversity, are emerging as an important tool for setting the record straight about the role of pastoralists in food security and biodiversity conservation. There is a need for increased recognition of the inherent 'modernity' of pastoralism and the role it can play in creating a more green economy. If this recognition is forthcoming and is rewarded appropriately with government support, this may also overcome the current problem of finding enough capable young people interested in pursuing pastoralist careers.Extreme climate events, floods, and drought, cause huge impact on daily lives. In order to produce society resilient to extreme events, it is necessary to assess the impact of frequent and high intensity storm events on design parameters. This article describes a methodology to develop future peak "design discharges" throughout the United States that can be used as a guidance to map future floodplains. In order to develop a lower and upper limit for anticipated peak flow discharges, two future growth scenarios - Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)-RCP 2.6 and 8.5 were identified as the weak and strong climate scenario respectively based on the output from the global climate models. The Generalized Least Square technique in United States Geological Survey's Weighted Multiple Regression (WREG) program was used to develop regression equations that relate peak discharges to basin and climate parameters of the contributing watershed. The design discharges reflect the most recent climate model results. Number of frost days, heavy rainfall days, high temperature days, and snow depth were found to be the common extreme climate parameters influencing the regression equations. This methodology can be extended to other flood frequency events if rainfall data is available. The future discharges can be utilized in hydraulics models to estimate floodplains that can assist in resilient infrastructure planning and outline climate change adaptation strategies.The impacts on the Australian coast of a changing climate include environmental and property damage arising from increased frequency and severity of coastal weather events, storm surge, coastal erosion, and coastal flooding. Coastal management policies and planning laws are often relied upon to manage both the impacts and competing interests in the coast. The existence of these policies and laws, and their interpretation by the courts, bears a weight of expectation upon them to deliver in the face of climate change which merits further consideration. Indeed, a rich field is open from which to consider the constitution and construction of law in and across different places, in the context of climate change adaptation. The Australian coast is a unique and locally specific context from which to explore the relationship between law and place as performed in the Vaughan litigation, and this paper considers such important potential as it gains expression in the Vaughan litigation.As the prospect for more frequent and severe extreme weather events gains scientific support, many nations are evaluating mitigation and adaptation options. Insurance and home retrofits could reduce household welfare losses due to flood events. Yet even after disasters, households often fail to take risk mitigation actions. This paper presents the first randomized field experiment that tests the effect of information provision on household uptake of flood insurance and home retrofits. A sample of 364 flood-prone households in Bangkok was randomly split into treatment and control groups. The treatment group received practical details on home retrofits and flood insurance as well as social information regarding the insurance purchase decisions of peers. Results indicate that the information intervention increased insurance purchases by about five percentage points, while no effect was detected for home retrofits. This effect is nearly equal to the increase in uptake that the national insurance program in Thailand has achieved through all other means since its establishment in 2012. If scaled up to include all uninsured, flood-prone households in Bangkok, nearly 70,000 additional households could be insured. The results suggest that well-designed information interventions could increase uptake of flood insurance, without additional premium subsidies or mandates.We investigate the potential of integrating desalination to existing reservoir systems to mitigate supply uncertainty. Desalinated seawater and wastewater are relatively reliable but expensive. Water from natural resources like reservoirs is generally cheaper but climate sensitive. We propose combining the operation of a reservoir and seawater and wastewater desalination plants for an overall system that is less vulnerable to scarcity and uncertainty, while constraining total cost. The joint system is modeled as a multiobjective optimization problem with the double objectives of minimizing risk and vulnerability, subject to a minimum limit on resilience. The joint model is applied to two cases, one based on the climate and demands of a location in India and the other of a location in California. The results for the Indian case indicate that it is possible for the joint system to reduce risk and vulnerability to zero given a budget increase of 20-120% under current climate conditions and 30-150% under projected future conditions. For the Californian case, this would require budget increases of 20-80% and 30-140% under current and future conditions, respectively. Further, our analysis shows a two-way interaction between the reservoir and desalination plants where the optimal operation of the former is just as much affected by the latter as the latter by the former. This highlights the importance of an integrated management approach. This study contributes to a greater quantitative understanding of desalination as a redundancy measure for adapting water supply infrastructures for a future of greater scarcity and uncertainty.The empirical proportionality relationship, which indicates that the ratio of cumulative surface runoff and infiltration to their corresponding potentials are equal, is the basis of the extensively used Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) method. The objective of this paper is to provide the physical basis of the SCS-CN method and its proportionality hypothesis from the infiltration excess runoff generation perspective. To achieve this purpose, an analytical solution of Richards' equation is derived for ponded infiltration in shallow water table environment under the following boundary conditions: (1) the soil is saturated at the land surface; and (2) there is a no-flux boundary which moves downward. The solution is established based on the assumptions of negligible gravitational effect, constant soil water diffusivity, and hydrostatic soil moisture profile between the no-flux boundary and water table. Based on the derived analytical solution, the proportionality hypothesis is a reasonable approximation for rainfall partitioning at the early stage of ponded infiltration in areas with a shallow water table for coarse textured soils.The DRIB Index-Disaster Risk Indicators in Brazil - provides a tool to help assess, visualise and communicate different levels of exposure, vulnerability and risk in Brazil. The index may sensitise public and political decision-makers towards the important topic of disaster risk and climate change adaptation. This article aims to explore the feasibility and usefulness of such a national risk index that considers both natural hazard phenomena and social vulnerability. The exposure to natural hazards was assessed by using four indicators that describe the exposure of people towards landslides, floods, droughts and sea level rise. Whereas vulnerability dimension consists of susceptibility, coping capacity and adaptive capacity was calculated on the basis of 32 indicators which comprise social, economic and environmental conditions of a society. The county comparison provides an initial ranking of exposure and vulnerability. Specific analysis of coping and adaptation capacities also indicates that risk or vulnerability are not pre-defined conditions, but rather are constructed by societies exposed to natural hazards. The results of the DRIB Index were mapped and classified by means of a GIS system to show different patterns of exposure, vulnerability and risk on global scale. The national perspective of risk clearly shows that the vulnerability of a society or a country is not the same as exposure to natural hazards. The information provided by the DRIB Index highlights the need for preventive measures towards Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation in the country as a whole, but also at regional and local scales. The results showed that the risk is strongly interwoven with social-economic and cultural conditions and normal everyday life, as well as with the performance of state institutions dealing with Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), in other words, vulnerability. Spatial trends of disaster risk and vulnerability, products of this research, also have stressed the serious social inequalities between and within regions of the country, which result in barriers to the development of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)in Brazil as a whole. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Mountain ecosystems around the world are recognized to be among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The need to develop sound adaptation strategies in these areas is growing. Knowledge from the natural sciences has an important role to play in the development of adaptation strategies. However, the extent of and gaps in such knowledge have not been systematically investigated for mountain areas. This paper analyzes the status of knowledge from natural science disciplines and research needs relevant to the national and subnational climate adaptation policies of 1 US state (Washington) and 7 countries (Austria, Bhutan, Colombia, Germany, Nepal, Peru, and Switzerland), in particular the elements of those policies focused on mountain areas. In addition, we asked key individuals involved in drafting those policies to answer a short questionnaire. We found that research needs mainly concern impact and vulnerability assessments at regional and local levels, integrated assessments, and improved climate and socioeconomic data. These needs are often related to the challenges to data coverage and model performance in mountainous areas. In these areas, the base data are often riddled with gaps and uncertainties, making it particularly difficult to formulate adaptation strategies. In countries where data coverage is less of an issue, there is a tendency to explore quantitative forms of impact and vulnerability assessments. We highlight how the knowledge embedded in natural science disciplines is not always useful to address complex vulnerabilities in coupled human and natural systems and briefly refer to alternative pathways to adaptation in the form of no-regret, flexible, and adaptive management solutions. Finally, in recognition of the trans-and interdisciplinary nature of climate change adaptation, we raise the question of which knowledge production paradigms are best able to deliver sustainable adaptations to growing environmental stressors in mountain regions.In order to effectively adapt to climate change, public officials and other stakeholders need to rapidly enhance their understanding of local risks and their ability to collaboratively and adaptively respond to them. We argue that science-based role-play simulation exercises - a type of 'serious game' involving face-to-face mock decision-making - have considerable potential as education and engagement tools for enhancing readiness to adapt. Prior research suggests role-play simulations and other serious games can foster public learning and encourage collective action in public policy-making contexts. However, the effectiveness of such exercises in the context of climate change adaptation education and engagement has heretofore been underexplored. We share results from two research projects that demonstrate the effectiveness of role-play simulations in cultivating climate change adaptation literacy, enhancing collaborative capacity and facilitating social learning. Based on our findings, we suggest such exercises should be more widely embraced as part of adaptation professionals' education and engagement toolkits.Adaptation planning offers a promising approach for identifying and devising solutions to address local climate change impacts. Yet there is little empirical understanding of the content and quality of these plans. We use content analysis to evaluate 44 local adaptation plans in the United States and multivariate regression to examine how plan quality varies across communities. We find that plans draw on multiple data sources to analyse future climate impacts and include a breadth of strategies. Most plans, however, fail to prioritize impacts and strategies or provide detailed implementation processes, raising concerns about whether adaptation plans will translate into on-the-ground reductions in vulnerability. Our analysis also finds that plans authored by the planning department and those that engaged elected officials in the planning process were of higher quality. The results provide important insights for practitioners, policymakers and scientists wanting to improve local climate adaptation planning and action.This introductory paper aims to synthesize the findings on on-farm trees research with the integration of traditional silvicultural knowledge on multipurpose trees for the design of small scale forestry practices in Africa and Asia. The science, socio-economics and governance aspects of traditional tree based management systems have been documented through the different papers. The findings provide a synopsis of on- farm tree management in Africa and Asia. The synthesis shows that there are still important knowledge gaps such as the ownership of land and trees, gender, the motivation to invest on farm trees, income and livelihood strategies and ecological issues of on farm trees in the context of climate change adaptation and sustainable development goals. There is a general consensus that successful implementation of community involvement in natural resource management in Africa and Asia will only be realized by implementing enabling policies on land tenure, devolution for full empowerment visa viz planning, beneficiation and sharing of benefits.Climate change threatens agricultural productivity worldwide, resulting in higher food prices. Associated economic gains and losses differ not only by region but also between producers and consumers and are affected by market dynamics. On the basis of an impact modeling chain, starting with 19 different climate projections that drive plant biophysical process simulations and ending with agro-economic decisions, this analysis focuses on distributional effects of high-end climate change impacts across geographic regions and across economic agents. By estimating the changes in surpluses of consumers and producers, we find that climate change can have detrimental impacts on global agricultural welfare, especially after 2050, because losses in consumer surplus generally outweigh gains in producer surplus. Damage in agriculture may reach the annual loss of 0.3% of future total gross domestic product at the end of the century globally, assuming further opening of trade in agricultural products, which typically leads to interregional production shifts to higher latitudes. Those estimated global losses could increase substantially if international trade ismore restricted. If beneficial effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide fertilization can be realized in agricultural production, much of the damage could be avoided. Although trade policy reforms toward further liberalization help alleviate climate change impacts, additional compensation mechanisms for associated environmental and development concerns have to be considered.This paper analyses the influence of different atmospheric circulation indices on the multi-scalar drought variability across Europe by using the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). The monthly circulation indices used in this study include the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO), the East Atlantic (EA), the Scandinavian (SCAN) and the East Atlantic-Western Russia (EA-WR) patterns, as well as the recently published Westerly Index (WI), defined as the persistence of westerly winds over the eastern north Atlantic region. The results indicate that European drought variability is better explained by the station-based NAO index and the WI than by any other combination of circulation indices. In northern and central Europe the variability of drought severity for different seasons and time-scales is strongly associated with the WI. On the contrary, the influence of the NAO on southern Europe droughts is stronger than that exerted by the WI. The correlation patterns of the NAO and WI with the SPEI show a spatial complementarity in shaping drought variability across Europe. Lagged correlations of the NAO and WI with the SPEI also indicate enough skill of both indices to anticipate drought severity several months in advance. As long as instrumental series of the NAO and WI are available, their combined use would allow inferring European drought variability for the last two centuries and improve the calibration and interpretation of paleoclimatic proxies associated with drought.Urban partnerships are an instrument of urban governance common in major urban development projects. However, the potential for these traditional urban policy instruments to promote climate-adapted greenfield development remains largely untested. This study examines this potential through an analysis of four urban development partnerships for master-planned estates in two rapidly urbanising regions of Australia. We interview private property developers, government land organisations and municipal level actors. The analysis focuses on the convergence, and tensions, between partners' goals of affordability, profitability and sustainability; benefits and risks of partnering; and, the management of assets over time, in light of environmental risks. The partnerships studied contributed to the state's capacity to implement policy efficiently, encourage innovation and de-risk projects for private partners. However, these initiatives also transferred longer term environmental risks to the broader planning system and to non-partners. The central role of the state in coordinating these arrangements presents opportunities to redress these limitations.Although there have been a lot of studies on climate change adaptation, the cultural dimension has generally been left out of the debate. This study uses household surveys and focus group discussion to methodically assess cultural dimensions (using Hofstede) of communities, and how these dimensions influence preference for adaptation options to floods in a coastal settlement (James Town) and a savannah community (Dungu) in Ghana. The results show that first, inequalities in rank and traditional hierarchical governance structures in Dungu are relatively lower than in James Town, second, that there is considerable gender bias in favour of males in Dungu, third, there is high level of avoidance of unstructured and unpredictable situations in both communities, fourth, members in both communities are at present very willing to sacrifice their time and resources in order to achieve a better life in the future, and fifth, community members in Dungu perceive themselves as a single unit, and will do their best to come to the aid of members who need help during environmental disasters. The analysis further shows that cultural dimensions in the two communities generally influence the choice of adaptation options to floods. It has been recommended that specific local research such as this one which provides opportunities to analyse the cultural dimensions of adaptation within communities should be encouraged. This is because an understanding of the local cultural context has the potential to assist with the design of effective adaptation options in communities.Vulnerable human populations are exposed to social and biophysical stressors, but have limited capacity to mitigate them, and thus may access ecosystem services in unconventional ways. As a result of this access, they may also experience disservices (i.e., functions of ecosystems harmful to human wellbeing) in ways that are not well understood. We use a mixed-method socio-ecological approach to examine how persons experiencing homelessness in Phoenix, Arizona, access ecosystem services and encounter disservices in urban waterways. We find that urban waterways provide users with drinking and bathing water, and cooler, shaded areas, but potentially expose them to pathogens and legal persecution. The wetlands provide cultural services by affording a sense of place and safety; however, these locations can also be associated with restrictive ordinances and aggressive law enforcement. This study explores the role of ecosystem services and disservices in bridging the gap between biophysical and social vulnerability.In the climate adaptation literature, leadership tends to be an understudied factor, although it may be crucial for regional adaptation governance. This article shows how leadership can be usefully conceptualized and operationalized within regional governance networks dealing with climate adaptation. It applies an integrative framework inspired by complexity leadership theory, distinguishing several leadership functions to enhance the adaptive capacity of regional networks. We focus on one specific institutional innovation, appointed climate adaptation officers, who seek to connect science and governance practice, and to mainstream climate adaptation. Our question is twofold: What is the potential of climate adaptation officers to advance the adaptation agenda and to what extent did their establishment and working practice mirror the various leadership functions needed to raise the adaptive capacity of the regional network they operated in? The integrative leadership framework structures the analysis of climate adaptation officers forming part of a government-funded project seeking to enhance adaptation to climate variability in the central German region of Northern Hesse. The data consist of interviews with scientists and regional authority employees and project documentation including an evaluation. We find that climate adaptation officers raised awareness for climate adaptation and helped to shape and implement a number of projects within the overall KLIMZUG programme, highlighting impeding and enabling factors. The process of setting up this institutional innovation involved all forms of leadership functions and is an example of vertical mainstreaming. Its operation involved most clearly enabling and connective leadership functions and is an example of horizontal mainstreaming.In many parts of the world, urban planning has a renewed focus on addressing the multiple challenges associated with population growth and climate change. Focused on local needs and priorities, these planning processes are raising tensions between more compact and dense urban form to reduce energy use and associated emissions and the provision of urban green infrastructure for ecosystem services and climate adaptation. In this study, we investigated the spatial distribution of green infrastructure at the neighbourhood scale in Sydney, Australia and examined how a mix of landscape types (pavement, bare soil/dry grass, green grass, and tree cover) affect temperature variation in three important locations for urban residents-around the home, in the roads and footpaths where people walk, and in parkland areas. Considering that residential and parkland areas contribute to the majority of green space in Sydney, it is important to understand how changes in landscape mix within these three neighbourhood areas will affect local temperature for urban residents. For residential houses, it was found that the percentage of tree canopy cover around the house had a significant negative relationship (p = 0.002) with surface temperatures of rooftops where greater tree cover led to lower rooftop temperatures. In streetscapes, both the percentage of tree cover (p < 0.0001) and the percentage of green grass (p < 0.0001) within the road segment had a significant negative relationship with the surface temperature of the road pavement. In the parks, the percentage of pavement (p < 0.0001) and the percentage of bare soil/dry grass (p < 0.0001) showed a significantly positive trend with land surface temperatures where greater land cover in the form of pavement and bare soil/dry grass led to higher temperatures. Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of promoting or reducing certain landscape covers depending on the land use type in order to maximise the cooling potential of green infrastructure.Woody plant demographics provide important insight into ecosystem state-shifts in response to changing fire regimes. In Australian tropical savannas, the switch from patchy landscape burning by Aborigines to unmanaged wildfires within the past century has been implicated in biodiversity declines including the fire-sensitive conifer, Callitris intratropica. C. intratropica commonly forms small, closed-canopy groves that exclude fire and allow recruitment of conspecifics and other fire-sensitive woody plants. C. intratropica groves provide a useful indicator of heterogeneity and fire regime change, but the mechanisms driving the species' persistence and decline remain poorly understood. We examined the hypothesis that C. intratropica population stability depends upon a regime of frequent, low-intensity fires maintained by Aboriginal management. We combined integral projection models of C. intratropica population behaviour with an environmental state change matrix to examine how vital rates, grove dynamics and the frequency of high- and low-intensity fires contribute to population stability. Closed-canopy C. intratropica groves contributed disproportionately to population growth by promoting recruitment, whereas singleton trees accounted for a larger proportion of adult mortality. Our patch-based population model predicted population declines under current fire frequencies and that the recruitment of new groves plays a critical role in the species' persistence. Our results also indicated that reducing fire intensity, a key outcome of Aboriginal burning, leads to C. intratropica population persistence even at high fire frequencies. These findings provide insight into the relationship between ecosystem composition and human-fire interactions and the role of fire management in sustaining the mosaics that comprise 'natural' systems.The timing of significant shifts in urban water use is highly relevant to water managers, who can better manage demand with an understanding of historic change. This study employs breakpoint and decomposition analyses to explore changes in water use for three North Carolina municipalities between 1990 and 2014. Although water demands were on the rise in each city during the early 1990s, per capita demands began to trend downward in the middle-to-latter years of that decade. The timing of this shift correlates with declines in manufacturing water uses. Per capita demand then remained stable from 2002 until 2007, when rates for all three cities shifted downward once again. This second shift follows the coordination and institutionalization of drought responses at the state level. Only Raleigh experienced another significant decline, with the implementation of conservation pricing in 2010. Moreover, while total withdrawals have remained stable for the cities of Durham and Greensboro since the mid-to-late 1990s, Raleigh saw rapid growth until 2010, when water policies caused the withdrawal rate to drop markedly. In sum, these results suggest that past shifts in urban water use have resulted from the interaction of globalization, water stress, and cross-scale policies. Water managers may wish to consider how globalization and water stress shape demand, both directly and through policy adoption.This study analyzes effects of soil and water conservation (SWC) on soil quality and implications to climate change adaptation and mitigation in the Upper Blue Nile River Basin of Ethiopia by using the Anjeni watershed as a case study site. Disturbed and undisturbed soil samples were collected from two sub-watersheds of Anjeni: the Minchet sub-watershed (with SWC measures) and the Zikrie sub-watershed (without SWC measures). Soil samples were taken from 30-cm depth from five representative landscape positions and analyzed following the standard soil lab analysis procedures. The results show that soils from the conserved sub-watershed had improved quality indicators compared with those from the non-conserved site. Significant improvement due to SWC measures was observed in the soil hydrological [total moisture content (+543%), field capacity (+535%), and available water capacity (+418%)] and chemical [cation exchange capacity (+440cmol(+)kg(-1)), Mg2+ (+190cmol(+)kg(-1)), Na+ (+010cmol(+)kg(-1))] properties. SWC interventions significantly reduced soil erosion by 57-81% and surface runoff by 19-50% in the conserved sub-watershed. Reduction in soil erosion can maintain the soil organic carbon stock, reduce the land degradation risks, and enhance the C sequestration potential of soils. Therefore, adoption of SWC measures can increase farmers' ability to offset emissions and adapt to climate change. However, SWC measures that are both protective and sufficiently productive have not yet been implemented in the conserved sub-watershed. Therefore, it is important that SWC structures be supplemented with other biological and agronomic measures in conjunction with soil fertility amendments appropriate to site-specific conditions. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Assisted migration is a controversial conservation measure that includes moving species threatened by climate change beyond their indigenous range. Sandler argues that assisted migration exhausts most of the value of the species moved and that assisted migration, thus, fails to be a workable conservation measure. We show how accepting the moral relevance of species' indigenous range helps to reconcile Sandler's argument with earlier arguments about value loss in ecosystem restoration by Elliot and Katz. Contrary to Sandler, they do not favour losing a biological unit to retaining it in a human-influenced form. Drawing on the distinction between property- and history-based understandings of naturalness, we further argue that the outcomes of assisted migration to the predicted range are more natural in the property-based sense of the term, and thus retain more value, than the outcomes of "assisted migration" elsewhere.Urban flooding is of growing concern due to increasing densification of urban areas, changes in land use, and climate change. The traditional engineering approach to flooding is designing single-purpose drainage systems, dams, and levees. These methods, however, are known to increase the long-term flood risk and harm the riverine ecosystems in urban as well as rural areas. In the present paper, we depart from resilience theory and suggest a concept to improve urban flood resilience. We identify areas where contemporary challenges call for improved collaborative urban flood management. The concept emphasizes resiliency and achieved synergy between increased capacity to handle stormwater runoff and improved experiential and functional quality of the urban environments. We identify research needs as well as experiments for improved sustainable and resilient stormwater management namely, flexibility of stormwater systems, energy use reduction, efficient land use, priority of transport and socioeconomic nexus, climate change impact, securing critical infrastructure, and resolving questions regarding responsibilities.Anthropogenic climate change will influence winter chill accumulation, with future declines likely in temperate locations. However, these declines only translate as impacts when cultivar winter chilling requirements are not satisfied. This study presents a methodology to evaluate future impacts of declining winter chill through a cultivarspecific approach which is useful for growers, industry and policy-makers to develop adaptation strategies. A risk based system was applied to represent the likelihood of meeting cultivar chilling requirements using low, medium, medium-high and high risk ratings based on percentiles. This was combined with climate projection uncertainty graphically at 16 Australian growing districts historically (1981-2010) and for 2030, 2050 and 2090. The results demonstrated that impacts and likely adaptation options differed between cultivars, some recording limited risk at all sites out to 2090 ('Nonpareil' almond) whilst others recorded greater risk both historically and into the future ('Chandler' walnut). Notably, risk differed across sites and with the future time period. These results highlight which cultivars are susceptible to low winter chill conditions, where this risk does and does not manifest and the different time horizons at which the risk will materialise across Australia's main growing districts. Using this approach, changes in winter chill conditions are presented in a useable form which allows for appropriate climate adaptation strategies to be developed, securing the industries into the future.There is increasing interest in transformational adaptation to climate change in agriculture, i.e. adaptation that involves large-scale, novel responses to reduce vulnerability to climate risks. Transformational adaptation is less well understood than incremental adaptation, since there are few studies of agricultural enterprises making transformative changes in response to climatic change. This paper is an in-depth study of an agricultural company's attempt to implement transformational adaptation in response to climate change. We document the Peanut Company of Australia's (PCA) response to predicted climatic change by expanding its operations into Katherine, Northern Territory, after decades of below-average rainfall in their traditional production region in south-east Queensland. Our research question was: what conditions and processes influenced the outcome of the company's response? We conducted 37 semi-structured interviews with company, government and community representatives to examine diverse perspectives on PCA's expansion into Katherine and its subsequent strategic retreat. To reveal insights into why, when and how this attempted transformational adaptation occurred we reviewed the literature and identified Park et al.'s (2012) Adaptation Action Cycles (AAC) framework and aspects from the organisational adaptation literature as useful for our analysis. Based on our findings, we revised the AAC framework to better reflect the way that incremental adaptation in situ can occur simultaneously with transformational adaptation at a new location. Our study illustrates that transformational adaptation in agriculture is difficult, complex, risky and costly and sometimes unsuccessful, revealing some of the challenges of and barriers to organisational adaptation in agriculture, especially when moving to a new location.Large-scale infrastructure networks are vulnerable to climate change. Their operation involves public and private actors under complex legislative and market regulations. We analyze climate adaptation of railway infrastructure, based on an in-depth case study of the German railway system. The case includes a unique set of qualitative interviews with key players of operating and regulative organizations, as well as a document study. Our analysis crucially extends previous technology-oriented research on the railway sector by applying core insights and categories from the actor-centered institutionalism. We trace observed obstacles for a climate resilient railway system and adaptation decisions back to deeper causes, in particular political priorities and values. Moreover, diverging perceptions and the competition among different actors hamper adaptation. On the other hand, single actors who display a great willingness to act are able to make use of unclear responsibilities to integrate adaptation concerns into existing institutions. Our research suggests that changes in technical standards and in economic regulation support adaptation of infrastructure systems.The integrated landscape approach is re-emerging in the global agenda as an approach which can give a fair deal to landscape functions such as climate change response, biodiversity conservation, food security, poverty reduction and economic growth. However, transformational change might be required to enable landscapes respond to these different functions. This is due to the sensitive nature of landscapes to local, national and global economic, social and political drivers. Based on national policy instruments, this paper presents a situational analysis of the landscape concept in Cameroon, operationalized as Technical Operation Units (TOUs) and in the context of the present institutional, social, economic and political features, it examines the rationale for a landscape approach in Cameroon. We notice potential trade-offs, indicating that the landscape approach is an opportunity for TOUs in Cameroon. Firstly, TOUs are characterized by multiple resource regimes with overlapping claims each having a legal land allocation and management plan. Secondly, TOUs are characterized by different stakeholders, with different land-use interests and motives, each controlling key components in the landscapes. Thirdly, the interests and motives of stakeholders overlap spatially and are connected to different sectoral policies at the national level. This setting might threaten decision making and the sustainability potentials of landscapes. Nonetheless, we propose areas for in-depth studies to generate knowledge and information to orientate win-win policy construction for landscapes. This is relevant for the social, ecological and economic objectives that underpin the sustainable development goals proposed in the post-2015 development agenda.Climate change and urbanization are among the most significant trends of the twenty-first century, affecting global natural resources such as water, economic development and human well-being. The growth of the world population will be absorbed by the cities. The necessity of cities adapting to these trends calls for radical changes in urban water management. In this paper, baseline assessments, i.e., City Blueprints, have been carried out for 45 municipalities and regions in 27 countries, mainly in Europe. The assessments showed that cities vary considerably with regard to their water management. This is also captured in the Blue City Index(A (R)) (BCI), the arithmetic mean of 24 indicators comprising the City Blueprint(A (R)). Theoretically, the BCI has a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 10. The actual BCIs in the 45 cities and regions varied from 3.5 (Kilamba Kiaxi in Angola) to 8.5 (Helsingborg in Sweden). The BCI was positively and significantly correlated with the gross domestic product per person, the ambitions of the local authorities regarding water management, the voluntary participation index and governance indicators according to the World Bank (2013). The study also demonstrated a very significant correlation between the BCI and the University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. The impacts of water scarcity and floods in cities are discussed. It is concluded that cities in transitional and developing countries are particularly at risk.The aim of this paper is to assess the impacts of projected climate change on a Mediterranean catchment, and to analyze the effects of a suite of representative land use practices as an adaptation tool to reduce climate change driven erosion and hydrologic extremes. Relevant climatic variables from the ERA-Interim global atmospheric re-analysis of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) were downscaled for the study area, and perturbed with the anomalies of 23 global circulation models for three emission scenarios (B1, A1B and A2). Both a projected daily rainfall time series for the period 2010-2100, and a single precipitation event with a one-hundred year return period were used to assess the impact of climate change. The downscaled data were fed into a distributed hydro-sedimentary model (TETIS) with five land use configurations representative of future demographic tendencies, geographical characteristics and land management policies (e.g. European Union CAP). The projected changes showed a general decrease in runoff and sediment production by the end of the century regardless of land use configuration. Sediment production showed a positive relationship with an increase in agricultural land and a decrease in natural land under present day agricultural management. According to our simulations, some conservation practices in agriculture can effectively reduce net erosion while maintaining agricultural production. As such, they can play a critical role as an adaptation tool to reduce climate change impacts in the 21st century. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Transboundary river basins face significant threats from climate change, with the need for adaptation widely noted. In this paper we develop a theoretically-rooted indicator-based evaluation framework to identify transboundary river basins where the need for adaptation support is pronounced and prioritize where attention is best placed. The framework combines indicators which capture the broad level potential to adapt (adaptive capacity) and the actual preparedness for adaptation (adaptation readiness) at the level of transboundary institutions. Adaptive capacity and adaptation readiness have not previously been evaluated and compared within a single framework, and by combining them we gain a more comprehensive and nuanced basis for characterising and evaluating the adaptation landscape and diagnosing opportunities and constraints for adaptation. We apply the framework to 42 transboundary basins in Mediterranean Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, which account for 15 % of global transboundary river basins, are home to over 550 million people, and cover 8 % of Earth's total land area. We find: 1) There is widespread need for improving national and transboundary institutional support for adaptation spanning basins of various economic, physical, and demographic characteristics; 2) Many transboundary basins in Africa have low adaptive capacity, but were found to have high readiness to begin adapting if resources were available; and 3) Improved coverage of River Basin Organisations and treaties with mandates to recognise and respond actively to climate change would underpin adaptation efforts across basins.Combining climate change, crop growth and crop disease models to predict impacts of climate change on crop diseases can guide planning of climate change adaptation strategies to ensure future food security. This review summarises recent developments in modelling climate change impacts on crop diseases, emphasises some major challenges and highlights recent trends. The use of multi-model ensembles in climate change modelling and crop modelling is contributing towards measures of uncertainty in climate change impact projections but other aspects of uncertainty remain largely unexplored. Impact assessments are still concentrated on few crops and few diseases but are beginning to investigate arable crop disease dynamics at the landscape level.A sizable minority of people doubt that climate change is primarily caused by human activity (attribution skeptics). Consequently, it is important to examine the psychological drivers of pro-environmental intentions among attribution skeptics and the extent to which they are more or less influenced by traditional climate change messages. Study 1 (N = 4,345) examined the psychological correlates of motivation to engage in pro-environmental behaviors among people at various points of the spectrum of belief in anthropogenic climate change. As expected, motivation to engage in pro-environmental behaviors is related to risk perceptions and concern about the consequences of climate change. Interestingly, however, these links were stronger the more participants reported being skeptical that climate change is anthropogenic. This suggests that climate change interventions might be especially successful in changing pro-environmental motivation among attribution skeptics, a prediction supported by an experimental intervention (Study 2; N = 600). Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.Globally, municipalities are tackling climate adaptation and resilience planning. Urban green space has crucial biophysical buffering capacities, but also affects social interactions and human well-being. This paper considers the social dimension of urban green space, through an assessment focused on park use, function, and meanings, and compares results to categories of cultural ecosystem services. We develop a mixed-method approach for assessment of uses and social meanings of parkland and pilot this method in 2140 acres of parkland in waterfront neighborhoods surrounding New York City's Jamaica Bay, an area heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy. This method combines observation of human activities and signs of prior human use with structured interviews of park users. We find that urban parkland is a crucial form of 'nearby nature' that provides space for recreation, activities, socialization, and environmental engagement and supports place attachment and social ties. We show that parks, through their use by and interactions with humans, are producing vital cultural ecosystem services that may help to strengthen social resilience. Certain services were more easily detectable than others via our assessment technique, including recreation, social relations, and sense of place. The assessment method was designed to be spatially explicit, scalable, and replicable; natural resource managers engaged in park management and/or resilience planning could apply this method across individual sites, in particular districts-such as vulnerable waterfront areas, and citywide. This study demonstrates a way in which cultural ecosystem services and an understanding of social meaning could be incorporated into park management and, resilience planning. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The response of terrestrial ecosystems to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration (C-a), particularly under nutrient-limited conditions, is a major uncertainty in Earth System models. The Eucalyptus Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (EucFACE) experiment, recently established in a nutrient- and water-limited woodland presents a unique opportunity to address this uncertainty, but can best do so if key model uncertainties have been identified in advance. We applied seven vegetation models, which have previously been comprehensively assessed against earlier forest FACE experiments, to simulate a priori possible outcomes from EucFACE. Our goals were to provide quantitative projections against which to evaluate data as they are collected, and to identify key measurements that should be made in the experiment to allow discrimination among alternative model assumptions in a postexperiment model intercomparison. Simulated responses of annual net primary productivity (NPP) to elevated C-a ranged from 0.5 to 25% across models. The simulated reduction of NPP during a low-rainfall year also varied widely, from 24 to 70%. Key processes where assumptions caused disagreement among models included nutrient limitations to growth; feedbacks to nutrient uptake; autotrophic respiration; and the impact of low soil moisture availability on plant processes. Knowledge of the causes of variation among models is now guiding data collection in the experiment, with the expectation that the experimental data can optimally inform future model improvements.Promoting effective responses to climate change, especially among people who reject its anthropogenic causes, has been challenging. Following a qualitative study, we experimentally induce one of four frames of reference (identity, biodiversity conservation, economic prosperity, and climate change), and assess their effects on participants' behavioral intentions using three scales (consumption-investment, consumption-reduction, and political participation). The sample (N=156) included people who thought climate change is natural and those who thought it is human-induced. Results show a significant impact of the identity frame, relative to the climate-change frame, for both consumption scales, in the total sample, and among those who reject the anthropogenic causes. These results offer a way to address behavioral resistances associated with antagonistic views on climate change.Assessment of regional forest carbon stocks and underlying controls is critical for guiding forest management in the context of carbon sequestration. We investigated the variations in tree biomass carbon stocks relating to forest types, and estimated the total tree biomass carbon stocks and projected gains through natural stand development by 2020 and 2050 in the Daqing Mountain Nature Reserve based on Category II data of the Forest Inventory of Inner Mongolia for the period ending 2008. Over a total area of 388,577 ha, this nature reserve currently stores an estimated 2221 GgC in tree aboveground biomass alone, with potential to grow by more than 30 % to reach 2938 GgC by 2020 and nearly double to 4092 GgC by 2050 through natural development of the existing forest stands. The tree biomass carbon density and potential gain in tree biomass carbon stocks vary markedly among forest types and with stand development. The variations in the potential change of tree biomass carbon density for the periods 2008-2020 and 2008-2050 among forest types partly reflect the varying relationships of tree biomass carbon density with stand age for different tree species, and partly are attributable to variations in the stand age structure among different forest types. Of the major forest types, the ranking of projected changes in tree biomass carbon density are not consistent with variations in the relationship between tree biomass carbon density and stand age, neither are they explainable by variations in stand age structures, implying the interactive effect between forest type and stand dynamics on temporal changes in tree biomass carbon density. Birch rank highest for future biomass carbon sequestration because of its dominance in cover area and better age structure for potential gain in tree biomass carbon stocks. Poplar and larch were out-performers compared to other forest types given their greater contribution to total tree biomass carbon stocks relative to their distributional areas. Findings in this study illustrate that protection and proper management of under-aged forests can deliver marked gains in biomass carbon sequestration. This is of great importance to policy-makers as well as to scientific communities in seeking effective solutions for adaptive forest management and mitigation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions using forest ecosystems.Adaptation tracking seeks to characterize, monitor, and compare general trends in climate change adaptation over time and across nations. Recognized as essential for evaluating adaptation progress, there have been few attempts to develop systematic approaches for tracking adaptation. This is reflected in polarized opinions, contradictory findings, and lack of understanding on the state of adaptation globally. In this paper, we outline key methodological considerations necessary for adaptation tracking research to produce systematic, rigorous, comparable, and usable insights that can capture the current state of adaptation globally, provide the basis for characterizing and evaluating adaptations taking place, facilitate examination of what conditions explain differences in adaptation action across jurisdictions, and can underpin the monitoring of change in adaptation over time. Specifically, we argue that approaches to adaptation tracking need to (i) utilize a consistent and operational conceptualization of adaptation, (ii) focus on comparable units of analysis, (iii) use and develop comprehensive datasets on adaptation action, and (iv) be coherent with our understanding of what constitutes real adaptation. Collectively, these form the 4Cs of adaptation tracking (consistency, comparability, comprehensiveness, and coherency).The current discussion of anticipated climate change impacts and future sea level rise is particularly relevant to small island states. An increase in natural hazards, such as floods and storm waves, is likely to have a devastating impact on small islands' coastlines, severely affecting targeted sustainable development. Coastal erosion, notably human-induced erosion, has been an ongoing threat to small island biodiversity, resources, infrastructure, and settlements, as well as society at large. In the context of climate change, the problem of coastal erosion and the debate surrounding it is gaining momentum. Before attributing associated impacts to climate change, current human activities need to be analysed, focusing not only on geomorphological and climatological aspects, but also on political and traditional cultural frameworks. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of the social-political-ecological systems analysis for adaptation strategies, and thus for future sustainable development. Coastal use is based on human constructs of the coast, as well as local perceptions and values ascribed to the coast. We use the case study of Anjouan, Comoros to differentiate between constructive and destructive practices on the coast, from both a mental and technical perspective. Beach erosion is described as more than a resource problem that manifests itself locally rather than nationally. Divergent political scales of interest impact future development as much as local action. Local action is not least framed by mental contribution and attribution of coasts as places for living, recreation and resource use. The present case study demonstrates that mental constructs of coasts as valuable areas can, in some cases, lead to the protection and preservation of beaches by initiatives of collective action. At the same time, local communities see the negative impacts of sand mining as causes of coastal erosion and, therefore, it is difficult to mobilize them to adapt to climate change and sea level rise.In the Los Angeles metropolitan region, nearly 100 public and private entities are formally involved in the management and distribution of potable water-a legacy rooted in fragmented urban growth in the area and late 19th century convictions about local control of services. Yet, while policy debates focus on new forms of infrastructure, restructured pricing mechanisms, and other technical fixes, the complex institutional architecture of the present system has received little attention. In this paper, we trace the development of this system, describe its interconnections and disjunctures, and demonstrate the invisibility of water infrastructure in LA in multiple ways-through mapping, statistical analysis, and historical texts. Perverse blessings of past water abundance led to a complex, but less than resilient, system with users accustomed to cheap, easily accessible water. We describe the lack of transparency and accountability in the current system, as well as its shortcomings in building needed new infrastructure and instituting new water rate structures. Adapting to increasing water scarcity and likely droughts must include addressing the architecture of water management.The assessment of future trends in urban stormwater quality should be most helpful for ensuring the effectiveness of the existing stormwater quality infrastructure in the future and mitigating the associated impacts on receiving waters. Combined effects of expected changes in climate and socio-economic factors on stormwater quality were examined in two urban test catchments by applying a source-based computer model (WinSLAMM) for TSS and three heavy metals (copper, lead, and zinc) for various future scenarios. Generally, both catchments showed similar responses to the future scenarios and pollutant loads were generally more sensitive to changes in socio-economic factors (i.e., increasing traffic intensities, growth and intensification of the individual land-uses) than in the climate. Specifically, for the selected Intermediate socio-economic scenario and two climate change scenarios (RSP = 2.6 and 8.5), the TSS loads from both catchments increased by about 10 % on average, but when applying the Intermediate climate change scenario (RCP = 4.5) for two SSPs, the Sustainability and Security scenarios (SSP1 and SSP3), the TSS loads increased on average by 70 %. Furthermore, it was observed that well-designed and maintained stormwater treatment facilities targeting local pollution hotspots exhibited the potential to significantly improve stormwater quality, however, at potentially high costs. In fact, it was possible to reduce pollutant loads from both catchments under the future Sustainability scenario (on average, e.g., TSS were reduced by 20 %), compared to the current conditions. The methodology developed in this study was found useful for planning climate change adaptation strategies in the context of local conditions.The Northeast Farming Region of China (NFR) is a very important crop growing area, comprising seven sub-regions: Xing'anling (XA), Sanjiang (SJ), Northwest Songliao (NSL), Central Songliao (CSL), Southwest Songliao (SSL), Changbaishan (CB) and Liaodong (LD), which has been severely affected by extreme climate events and climatic change. Therefore, a set of expert survey has been done to identify current and project future climate limitations to crop production and explore appropriate adaptation measures in NFR. Droughts have been the largest limitation for maize (Zea mays L.) in NSL and SSL, and for soybean (Glycine max L Merr.) in SSL. Chilling damage has been the largest limitation for rice (Oryza sativa L) production in XA, SJ and CB. Projected climate change is expected to be beneficial for expanding the crop growing season, and to provide more suitable conditions for sowing and harvest. Autumn frost will occur later in most parts of NFR, and chilling damage will also decrease, particularly for rice production in XA and SJ. Drought and heat stress are expected to become more severe for maize and soybean production in most parts of NFR. Also, plant diseases, pests and weeds are considered to become more severe for crop production under climate change. Adaptation measures that have already been implemented in recent decades to cope with current climatic limitations include changes in timing of cultivation, variety choice, soil tillage practices, crop protection, irrigation and use of plastic film for soil cover. With the projected climate change and increasing risk of climatic extremes, additional adaptation measures will become relevant for sustaining and improving productivity of crops in NFR to ensure food security in China. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.For the 2nd and 3rd river basin management cycles (2015-2027) of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), EU Member States are required to fully integrate climate change into the process of river basin management planning (RBMP). Complying with the main WFD objective of achieving 'good ecological status' in all water bodies in Denmark requires Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to reduce nitrogen (N) pollution from point and diffuse sources. Denmark is among the world's most intensively farmed countries and in spite of thirty years of significant policy actions to reduce diffuse nutrient emissions, there is still a need for further reductions. In addition, the impacts of climate change are projected to lead to a situation where nutrient loads will have to be reduced still further in comparison to current climate conditions. There is an urgent need to address this challenge in WFD action programmes in order to develop robust and cost-effective adaptation strategies for the next WFD RBMP cycles. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate and discuss how a map-based PoMs assessment tool can support the development of adaptive and cost-effective strategies to reduce N losses in the Isefjord and Roskilde Fjord River Basin in the north east of Denmark. The tool facilitates assessments of the application of agri-environmental measures that are targeted towards low retention agricultural areas, where limited or no surface and subsurface N reduction takes place. Effects of climate change on nitrate leaching were evaluated using the dynamic agro-ecosystem model 'Daisy'. Results show that nitrate leaching rates increase by approx. 25% under current management practices. This impact outweighs the expected total N reduction effect of Baseline 2015 and the first RBMP in the case study river basin. The particular PoMs investigated in our study show that WFD N reduction targets can be achieved by targeted land use changes on approx. 4% of the agricultural area under current climate conditions and approx. 9% of the agricultural area, when projected climate change impacts on nitrate leaching rates are included in the assessment. The study highlights the potential of the PoMs assessment tool to assist in evaluation of alternative WFD RBMP scenarios to achieve spatially targeted and cost-effective reductions of N loads at catchment scale in the context of a changing climate. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Glutamate is of great importance in food and pharmaceutical industries. There is still lack of effective statistical approaches for fault diagnosis in the fermentation process of glutamate. To date, the statistical approach based on generalized additive model (GAM) and bootstrap has not been used for fault diagnosis in fermentation processes, much less the fermentation process of glutamate with small samples sets. Results: A combined approach of GAM and bootstrap was developed for the online fault diagnosis in the fermentation process of glutamate with small sample sets. GAM was first used to model the relationship between glutamate production and different fermentation parameters using online data from four normal fermentation experiments of glutamate. The fitted GAM with fermentation time, dissolved oxygen, oxygen uptake rate and carbon dioxide evolution rate captured 99.6 % variance of glutamate production during fermentation process. Bootstrap was then used to quantify the uncertainty of the estimated production of glutamate from the fitted GAM using 95 % confidence interval. The proposed approach was then used for the online fault diagnosis in the abnormal fermentation processes of glutamate, and a fault was defined as the estimated production of glutamate fell outside the 95 % confidence interval. The online fault diagnosis based on the proposed approach identified not only the start of the fault in the fermentation process, but also the end of the fault when the fermentation conditions were back to normal. The proposed approach only used a small sample sets from normal fermentations excitements to establish the approach, and then only required online recorded data on fermentation parameters for fault diagnosis in the fermentation process of glutamate. Conclusions: The proposed approach based on GAM and bootstrap provides a new and effective way for the fault diagnosis in the fermentation process of glutamate with small sample sets.Introduction: Global consciousness on climate change problems and adaptation revolves around the disparity of information sharing and communication gap between theoretical scientific knowledge at academic end and practical implications of these at the vulnerable populations' end. Coastal communities facing socio-economic stress, like densely populated Sundarbans, are the most affected part of the world, exposed to climate change problems and uncertainties. This article explores the successes of a socio-environmental project implemented at Indian Sundarbans targeted towards economic improvement and aims at communicating environmental conservation through organized community participation. Case description: Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and the wealth rank tool (WRT) were used to form a "group based organization" with 2100 vulnerable families to give them knowledge about capacity building, disaster management, resource conservation and sustainable agriculture practices. Training was conducted with the selected group members on resource conservation, institution building, alternative income generation activities (AIGA) like, Poultry, Small business, Tricycle van, Organic farming and disaster management in a participatory mode. The climate change 'problems-solutions' were communicated to this socio-economically marginalized and ostracized community through participatory educational theater (PET). Discussion and evaluation: WRT revealed that 45 % of the population was under economic stress. Out of 2100 beneficiaries', 1015 beneficiaries' started organic farming, 133 beneficiaries' adopted poultry instead of resource exploitive livelihood and 71 beneficiaries' engaged themselves with small business, which was the success stories of this project. To mitigate disaster, 10-committees were formed and the endemic knowledge about climate change was recorded by participatory method validated through survey by structured questionnaire. As a part of this project 87 ha of naked deforested mudflat was reclaimed with endangered mangroves involving target community members aimed to sequester CO2, control soil erosion and act as a barrier during natural disasters. Conclusion: This case study concluded that participatory method of communication, aiming not only to communicate theoretical knowledge, but also to devise adaptation strategies through conservation of endemic knowledge, popularizing sustainability through Micro Finance Institutions and promoting AIGA along with motivating vulnerable community to restore degraded forest lands, could be a effective solution to practically combat climate change problems.Operational approaches have been more and more widely developed and used for providing marine data and information services for different socio-economic sectors of the Blue Growth and to advance knowledge about the marine environment. The objective of operational oceanographic research is to develop and improve the efficiency, timeliness, robustness and product quality of this approach. This white paper aims to address key scientific challenges and research priorities for the development of operational oceanography in Europe for the next 5-10 years. Knowledge gaps and deficiencies are identified in relation to common scientific challenges in four EuroGOOS knowledge areas: European Ocean Observations, Modelling and Forecasting Technology, Coastal Operational Oceanography and Operational Ecology. The areas "European Ocean Observations" and "Modelling and Forecasting Technology" focus on the further advancement of the basic instruments and capacities for European operational oceanography, while "Coastal Operational Oceanography" and "Operational Ecology" aim at developing new operational approaches for the corresponding knowledge areas.Characterizing precipitation seasonality and variability in the face of future uncertainty is important for a well-informed climate change adaptation strategy. Using the Colwell index of predictability and monthly normalized precipitation data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) multi-model ensembles, this study identifies spatial hotspots of changes in precipitation predictability in the United States under various climate scenarios. Over the historic period (1950-2005), the recurrent pattern of precipitation is highly predictable in the East and along the coastal Northwest, and is less so in the arid Southwest. Comparing the future (2040-2095) to the historic period, larger changes in precipitation predictability are observed under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 8.5 than those under RCP 4.5. Finally, there are region-specific hotspots of future changes in precipitation predictability, and these hotspots often coincide with regions of little projected change in total precipitation, with exceptions along the wetter East and parts of the drier central West. Therefore, decision-makers are advised to not rely on future total precipitation as an indicator of water resources. Changes in precipitation predictability and the subsequent changes on seasonality and variability are equally, if not more, important factors to be included in future regional environmental assessment.This paper presents a design optimization related to the application of phase change materials within buildings, which aims to maximize the utilization of latent heat capacity to improve indoor thermal comfort during summer season. Two performance indicators are developed: efficiency coefficient (a representation of the effective utilization of latent heat storage capacity) and effectiveness coefficient (a representation of improvement of indoor thermal comfort). A series of parameters which influence the efficiency coefficient and effectiveness coefficient are identified and then formulated to quantify those coefficients for optimal design. With the performance indicators defined, a case study is performed in a typical standard Australian residential house to derive the optimized design of PCM refurbishment utilizing the developed performance indicators. Results reveal that the performance indicators are effective in the selection of optimum PCM configurations so that the resultant PCM storage efficiency and indoor thermal comfort are optimized. This is particularly demonstrated by the significant enhancement of storage efficiency and effectiveness of optimized PCM compared to non-optimized cases for each climate conditions. Furthermore, an optimized PCM condition is found to be more cost-effective than the non-optimized conditions. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Iran Urmia Lake, the world second largest hypersaline lake, has been largely desiccated over the last two decades resulting in socio-environmental consequences similar or even larger than the Aral Sea disaster. To rescue the lake a new water management plan has been proposed, a rapid 40% decline in irrigation water use replacing a former plan which intended to develop reservoirs and irrigation. However, none of these water management plans, which have large socio-economic impacts, have been assessed under future changes in climate and water availability. By adapting a method of environmental flow requirements (EFRs) for hypersaline lakes, we estimated annually 3.7.10(9) m(3) water is needed to preserve Urmia Lake. Then, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model was forced with bias-corrected climate model outputs for both the lowest (RCP2.6) and highest (RCP8.5) greenhouse-gas concentration scenarios to estimate future water availability and impacts of water management strategies. Results showed a 10% decline in future water availability in the basin under RCP2.6 and 27% under RCP8.5. Our results showed that if future climate change is highly limited (RCP2.6) inflow can be just enough to meet the EFRs by implementing the reduction irrigation plan. However, under more rapid climate change scenario (RCP8.5) reducing irrigation water use will not be enough to save the lake and more drastic measures are needed. Our results showed that future water management plans are not robust under climate change in this region. Therefore, an integrated approach of future land-water use planning and climate change adaptation is therefore needed to improve future water security and to reduce the desiccating of this hypersaline lake. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Projecting suitable conditions for a species as a function of future climate provides a reasonable, although admittedly imperfect, spatially explicit estimate of species vulnerability associated with climate change. Projections emphasizing range shifts at continental scale, however, can mask contrasting patterns at local or regional scale where management and policy decisions are made. Moreover, models usually show potential for areas to become climatically unsuitable, remain suitable, or become suitable for a particular species with climate change, but each of these outcomes raises markedly different ecological and management issues. Managing forest decline at sites where climatic stress is projected to increase is likely to be the most immediate challenge resulting from climate change. Here we assess habitat suitability with climate change for five dominant tree species of eastern North American forests, focusing on areas of greatest vulnerability (loss of suitability in the baseline range) in Quebec (Canada) rather than opportunities (increase in suitability). Results show that these species are at risk of maladaptation over a remarkably large proportion of their baseline range. Depending on species, 5-21% of currently climatically suitable habitats are projected to be at risk of becoming unsuitable. This suggests that species that have traditionally defined whole regional vegetation assemblages could become less adapted to these regions, with significant impact on ecosystems and forest economy. In spite of their well-recognised limitations and the uncertainty that remains, regionally-explicit risk assessment approaches remain one of the best options to convey that message and the need for climate policies and forest management adaptation strategies.Spanish Mediterranean coast is one of the European areas where may be more obvious changes caused by climatic conditions in the coming decades. Rising temperatures and decreased rainfall forced to take measures for adaptation to reduce the projected thermal discomfort and the reduction of conventional water resources that would result in a decreased rainfall. Tourism is a very vulnerable sector to climate change and its associated risks that must be adapted to the expected new climate conditions. Together with international protocols to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, several countries have set up plans for adaptation to climate change, with specific measures for each economic sector. In this paper, we analyze climate change adaptation policies developed in Spain in recent years, with special detal in regions of the Mediterranean coast, due to grear economic and territorial importante of tourism in them, and worrying effects listed in the climate change models for coming decades in these territories.This article describes in what ways international environmental law, the international regime of climate change and the European Union have influenced current climate change adaptation governance in the United Kingdom, especially in relation with the sustainable development policy.Climate change and variability present a major challenge to agricultural production and rural livelihoods, including livelihoods of women smallholder farmers. There are significant efforts underway to develop, deploy, and scale up Climate-Smart Agricultural (CSA) practices and technologies to facilitate climate change adaptation for farmers. However, there is a need for gender analysis of CSA practices across different farming and cultural systems to facilitate adoption by, and livelihood improvements for, women smallholder farmers. Climate change poses challenges for maintaining and improving agricultural and labor productivity of women smallholder farmers. The labor productivity of many women smallholders is constrained by lack of access to labor-saving technologies and the most basic of farm tools. Poorer smallholders face a poverty trap, due to low agricultural and labor productivity, from which they cannot easily escape without access to key resources such as rural energy and labor-saving technologies. In Malawi, the agricultural system is predominantly rainfed and largely composed of smallholders who remain vulnerable to climate change and variability shocks. Despite the aspirations of women smallholders to engage in CSA, our research highlights that many women smallholders have either limited or no access to basic agricultural tools, transport, and rural energy. This raises the question of whether the future livelihood scenarios for such farmers will consist of barely surviving or hanging in; or whether such farmers can step up to adapt better to future climate constraints; or whether more of these farmers will step out of agriculture. We argue that for women smallholder farmers to become more climate change resilient, more serious attention to gender analysis is needed to address their constraints in accessing basic agricultural technologies, combined with participatory approaches to develop and adapt CSA tools and technologies to their needs in future climates and agro-ecologies.In the countries most affected by climate change, such as Nicaragua, adaptation technologies are promoted with the twofold aim of securing the livelihoods of rural women and men while reducing the climate-related risks they face. Although researchers and practitioners are usually aware that not every technology may be beneficial, they do not sufficiently take into account the injustices that these adaptation technologies could (re)produce. Inspired by the works of feminist scholars engaged in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article attempts to demonstrate the need to broaden the debate on gender-sensitive climate change adaptation technologies. I argue that, first and foremost, this debate must question the potentially oppressive effects of the climate change narratives that call for technological solutions. Second, I urge feminist researchers and practitioners to denounce the counter-productive effects of adaptation technologies that impede the transformation of the traditional gender roles. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in rural Nicaragua, this article calls for rethinking the role of climate change adaptation technologies in offering possibilities for challenging gender inequalities.The use of automated methods to estimate fractional vegetation cover (FVC) from digital photographs has increased in recent years given its potential to produce accurate, fast and inexpensive FVC measurements. Wide acceptance has been delayed because of the limitations in accuracy, speed, automation and generalization of these methods. This work introduces a novel technique, the Automated Canopy Estimator (ACE) that overcomes many of these challenges to produce accurate estimates of fractional vegetation cover using an unsupervised segmentation process. ACE is shown to outperform nine other segmentation algorithms, consisting of both threshold-based and machine learning approaches, in the segmentation of photographs of four different crops (oat, corn, rapeseed and flax) with an overall accuracy of 89.6%. ACE is similarly accurate (88.7%) when applied to remotely sensed corn, producing FVC estimates that are strongly correlated with ground truth values.Recently, urban areas have experienced frequent, large-scale flooding, a situation that has been aggravated by climate change. This study aims to improve the urban drainage system to facilitate climate change adaptation. A methodology and a series of mitigation strategies are presented to efficiently improve the urban drainage system in light of climate change. In addition, we assess the impact of climate change and predict the scale of potential future flood damage by applying the methodology and mitigation strategies to urban areas. Based on the methodology presented, urban flood prevention measures for Gyeyang-gu (Province), Incheon, Korea, was established. The validity of the proposed alternatives is verified by assessing the economic feasibility of the projects to reduce flood damage. We expect that the methodology presented will aid the decision-making process and assist in the development of reasonable strategies to improve the urban drainage system for adaptation to climate change.Neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii) is a large pelagic squid internationally harvested in the North Pacific. Here, we examined its potential habitat in the central North Pacific using an ensemble modelling approach. Initially, ten statistical models were constructed by combining the squid fishing points, selected vertical layers of the sea temperature and salinity, sea surface height (SSH), and SSH gradient from the multi-variate ocean variational estimation system for the western North Pacific from June to July 1999-2011. The variable selection analyses have captured the importance of vertical temperature and salinity layers at the upper 300 and 440 m, respectively, coinciding with the reported vertical ranges of diel migration for the squid's primary prey species in the North Pacific. The evaluation of the habitat predictions using the independent sets of the presence data from 2012 to 2014 showed significant variability in the predictive accuracy, which is likely reflective of the interannual differences in environmental conditions across the validation periods. Our findings from ensemble habitat model approach using three-dimensional oceanographic data were able to characterize the near-and subsurface habitats of the neon flying squid. Moreover, our results underpinned the possible link between interannual environmental variability and spatio-temporal patterns of potential squid habitats. As such, these further suggest that an ensemble model approach could present a promising tool for operational fishery application and squid resource management.Conservation Agriculture (CA) has been widely promoted as an agro-ecological approach to sustainable production intensification. Despite numerous initiatives promoting CA across Sub-Saharan Africa there have been low rates of adoption. Furthermore, there has been strong debate concerning the ability of CA to provide benefits to smallholder farmers regarding yield, labour, soil quality and weeding, particularly where farmers are unable to access external inputs such as herbicides. This research finds evidence that CA, using no external inputs, is most attractive among the very poor and that farmers are driven primarily by strong motivational factors in the key areas of current contention, namely yield, labour, soil quality and weeding time benefits. This study is the first to incorporate a quantitative socio-psychological model to understand factors driving adoption of CA. Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), it explores farmers' intention to use CA (within the next 12 months) in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique where CA has been promoted for almost a decade. The study site provides a rich population from which to examine farmers' decision making in using CA. Regression estimates show that the TPB provides a valid model of explaining farmers' intention to use CA accounting for 80% of the variation in intention. Farmers' attitude is found to be the strongest predictor of intention. This is mediated through key cognitive drivers present that influence farmers' attitude such as increased yields, reduction in labour, improvement in soil quality and, reduction in weeds. Subjective norm (i.e. social pressure from referents) and perceived behavioural control also significantly influenced farmers' intention. Furthermore, path analysis identifies farmers that are members of a Farmer Field School or participants of other organisations (e.g. savings group, seed multiplication group or a specific crop/livestock association) have a significantly stronger positive attitude towards CA with the poorest the most likely users and the cohort that find it the easiest to use. This study provides improved understanding relevant to many developing countries, of smallholder farmers' adoption dynamics related-to CA, and of how farmers may approach this and other 'new' management systems. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate-change adaptation planning for managed wetlands is challenging under uncertain futures when the impact of historic climate variability on wetland response is unquantified. We assessed vulnerability of Modoc National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR) through use of the Basin Characterization Model (BCM) landscape hydrology model, and six global climate models, representing projected wetter and drier conditions. We further developed a conceptual model that provides greater value for water managers by incorporating the BCM outputs into a conceptual framework that links modeled parameters to refuge management outcomes. This framework was used to identify landscape hydrology parameters that reflect refuge sensitivity to changes in (1) climatic water deficit (CWD) and recharge, and (2) the magnitude, timing, and frequency of water inputs. BCM outputs were developed for 1981-2100 to assess changes and forecast the probability of experiencing wet and dry water year types that have historically resulted in challenging conditions for refuge habitat management. We used a Yule's Q skill score to estimate the probability of modeled discharge that best represents historic water year types. CWD increased in all models across 72.3-100 % of the water supply basin by 2100. Earlier timing in discharge, greater cool season discharge, and lesser irrigation season water supply were predicted by most models. Under the worst-case scenario, moderately dry years increased from 10-20 to 40-60 % by 2100. MNWR could adapt by storing additional water during the cool season for later use and prioritizing irrigation of habitats during dry years.The frontal part of the westernmost Eastern Alps comprises from top to bottom of the Austroalpine and Penninic nappes, Ultrahelvetic slices, and two Helvetic thrust sheets, thrust upon the northern Alpine Molasse Basin. The thermal evolution of the Penninic Rhenodanubian Flysch nappes, the Helvetic nappes, and the allochthonous part of the Alpine Molasse Basin is constrained by vitrinite reflectance measurements and apatite fission track dating and implemented in a tectonic evolution scheme. Within the Helvetic nappes, vitrinite reflectance increases regionally from north to south and stratigraphically from the Campanian-Maastrichtian Wang Formation to the Toarcian Mols Member. Apatite fission track ages from Penninic and Subalpine Molasse units are consistently younger than the deposition age. They indicate therefore a post-depositional thermal overprint exceeding approximately 120 A degrees C, the upper temperature limit of the apatite partial annealing zone. 1D thermal modelling suggests that the Penninic nappes attained deepest burial between the latest Cretaceous and Early Palaeocene with the Penninic basal thrust being located at approximately 8 km in the north compared to approximately 12 km in the south. Deepest burial of the upper Helvetic nappe occurred between the latest Eocene and Early Miocene. Its base was buried down to approximately 10.5 km in the north compared to 11.5 km in the south. Exhumation of the entire nappe stack started in the Early to Middle Miocene. For both Penninic and Helvetic models, a heatflow minimum during the Cenozoic deformation (max. 27-32 mW/m(2)), followed by an increase from the Middle Miocene onwards (up to 60 mW/m(2)), was assumed.Weathering of materials leads to degradation of the fabric of buildings which if left unchecked will lead to an increase in the rate, and possibly severity, of degradation. Adjustments to maintenance regimes could accommodate marginal changes to degradation rate. However, for significant increases in degradation rate, adaptations may be required. Globally, any new deterioration mechanisms are unlikely. However, in the future previously insignificant problems may start to become significant at a local level, for which there is a lack of local knowledge or experience. Adaptation in the context of existing buildings is a means to further protect the existing fabric, to consolidate performance and control the rate of deterioration. This adaptation goes beyond the scope of enhanced maintenance. For historic buildings, there will be tension between the need to conserve the building and simultaneously adapt in the face of increased climate change driven weathering. Impact studies are needed to identify priorities for adaptation by identifying the scale and impact of degradation-related defects for the future building stock. Such studies need to be integrated with authoritative information on projected future climate. Adaptation of building design is needed to ensure new buildings consider performance in both current and future climates. A whole-life approach to building design is needed. To achieve this building standards, building codes need to be developed which consider future climate design. Traditional vernacular styles may offer an opportunity for learning design lessons and adapting design practices that could help facilitate appropriate climate protection. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:590-599. doi: 10.1002/wcc.398 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .Over the last decade a plethora of action-oriented research projects has been conducted in developing countries, exploring how to effectively adapt to the anticipated impacts of climate change. Many intergovernmental agencies and development organizations have chosen to disseminate their research results via online databases. It is unclear, however, whether these databases are useful in terms of actual adaptation planning and implementation. A systematic review of online databases has found at least 64 databases and tools online related to climate change adaptation. Despite the abundance of databases, this analysis reveals that the existing body of online databases generally lack the structure and mechanics to identify, extract, and synthesize both effective and ineffective climate change adaptation practices, projects, programs, and policies. Even relatively basic information, such as identification of projects' projected versus actual costs is absent, which are crucial decision-making criteria particularly in developing country contexts where resource constraints are significant. In this paper we evaluate these online tools with a focus on identifying features that potentially could contribute to knowledge sharing and successful exchange of climate change adaptation projects and practices within a developing country context. We conclude the paper with recommendations for how to improve efforts to communicate climate change research, such as more nuanced needs assessments of potential users of databases. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:600-613. doi: 10.1002/wcc.401 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .Extreme temperature events and global climatic changes may put human health at risk. Urban centers are particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change. Japan is a densely populated and highly urbanized island frequently exposed to natural hazards and heat episodes. Japanese governments and practitioners design heat adaptation strategies to protect health and reduce risks. Are these strategies implemented at the local level? How do policymakers and researchers perceive heat and climate change adaptation measures? How are these strategies evaluated? In short: what is happening in Japan "on the ground"? This critical review briefly outlines heat adaptation solutions and challenges from three Japanese prefectures. It draws attention to implementation and evaluation barriers, and highlights creative approaches to adaptation, such as involving civil society volunteers. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The long-standing lack of river basin management policies in Buenos Aires has impacted the development of strategies for facing climate change. This is a highly complex matter in a metropolis that has developed in a context of significant social and environmental inequality. An environmental justice perspective on the institutional changes in the wake of the Supreme Court's rulings in favor of citizens invoking the constitutional right to a healthy environment in the Matanza-Riachuelo Basin illustrates the challenges of environmental management in greater Buenos Aires and the obstacles and opportunities in the development of climate change adaptation policies in the medium term. El deficit historico en materia de politicas de gestion hidrica en Buenos Aires ha condicionado las estrategias de adaptacion al cambio climatico. Se trata de un asunto de alta complejidad en una metropolis que se ha desarrollado en presencia de fuertes desigualdades sociales y ambientales. Un enfoque de justicia ambiental centrado en los cambios institucionales a partir de la intervencion de la Corte Suprema de Justicia en favor de ciudadanos exigiendo su derecho constitucional a la recuperacion ambiental de la cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo identifica los desafios que enfrenta la gestion ambiental metropolitana y las oportunidades y barreras en materia de politicas de adaptacion al cambio climatico en el mediano plazo.Global climate models project large changes in the terrestrial water balance for many regions over this century in response to greenhouse gas emission(1-9), but insufficient resolution precludes such knowledge for approximately 18 million people living on small islands scattered across the world ocean. By accounting for evaporative demand a posteriori at 80 island groups distributed among Earth's major ocean basins, we reveal a robust yet spatially variable tendency towards increasing aridity at over 73% of island groups (16 million people) by mid-century. Although about half of the island groups are projected to experience increased rainfall predominantly in the deep tropics projected changes in evaporation are more uniform, shifting the global distribution of changes in island freshwater balance towards greater aridity. In many cases, the magnitude of projected drying is comparable to the amplitude of the estimated observed interannual variability, with important consequences for extreme events as well as mean climate. Future freshwater stress, including geographic and seasonal variability, has important implications for climate change adaptation scenarios for vulnerable human populations living on islands across the world ocean.On August 3, 2015 the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized the Clean Power Plan (CPP) which aims to reduce CO2 emissions from the electricity generating sector by 32% of their 2005 levels by the year 2030. With the rule now finalized, in order to understand how the impact of this will unfold, we need to understand the factors that may influence how the electricity sector evolves given the targets that must now be met. To both identify and understand these relevant factors, we have completed an analysis of US electricity generation data for the period between 2001 and 2014. The result is a detailed fingerprint of the sector per state based on monthly data at the resolution of individual generators. This analysis demonstrates that several "building blocks" or decarbonization strategies encouraged by the CPP are already being utilized in the period analyzed across US states, resulting in CO2 emissions that have already dropped 12% in the period studied. Furthermore, we show how the states exhibit considerable differences due to the complexity of their existing generation portfolios, geography, climate and demand patterns. We also examine to what extent the targets of the CPP may impact the most polluting part of their generation portfolios, and how this relates to developments with shale gas and state policies. We then conclude with an overview of which factors may either enable or hinder how the goals of the Clean Power Plan will be met. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.We investigated the impacts of long-term climate variability and change on per capita water demand in urban and suburban service areas that have different degrees of development density in the Portland metropolitan area, USA. Together with historical daily weather and water production data, socioeconomic data such as population and unemployment rate were used to estimate daily per capita water demand in the two service areas. The structural time series regression model results show that the sensitivity of per capita water demand to both weather and unemployment rate variables is higher in suburban areas than in urban areas. This is associated with relatively higher proportional demand by the residential sector in the suburban area. The estimated coefficients of the historical demand model were used to project the mid-21st century (2035-2064) per capita water demand under three climate change scenarios that represent high (HadGEM2-ES), medium (MIROC5), and low (GFDL) climate changes. Without climate adaptation, compared to the historical period between 1983 and 2012, per capita water demand is projected to increase by 10.6% in the 2035-2064 period under the HadGEM2-ES in suburban areas, while per capita demand is projected to increase by 4.8% under the same scenario in urban areas. Our findings have implications for future urban water resource management and land use planning in the context of climate variability and change. A tight integration between water resource management and urban planning is needed for preparing for climate adaptation in municipal water planning and management. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Farmers are continually striving to adapt to Australia's highly variable climate. As a function of global warming, future climatic conditions will present further challenges, but may also present many new opportunities for farmers. We involved a range of rural communities via 14 workshops across a range of Australia's large-scale broadacre cropping regions employing a rural livelihoods framework to elicit and interpret community responses. Farmers identified indicators and rated them on the extent to which they might constrain or enable adaption to increased climate variability or climate change. Financial issues, such as low equity or limited capital were, considered to be most constraining, and natural capital assets, such as high soil productivity and low rainfall variability were considered to be most enabling. Most indicators were of broad-scale significance, affecting broadacre mixed farmers across a range of locations, and were not necessarily specific to climate change only. Broad-scale constraints identified were isolation/rural decline, limited access to services, poor regional infrastructure, equity/debt, and the high cost of production. Conversely, enabling factors identified were farmer education/experience, sense of community, and off-farm income. Actions to address these perceived constraints related to farm management practices, training, community, technology/research, communication, funding and institutional arrangements. In the Australian context, adapting to climate variability and change is more than just implementing a new technology, but is also about enhancing the broader resilience of the community in ways that will ensure its long term viability. To achieve this it will be necessary for different components of government and other institutional actors to work together to improve the adaptation capacity of farmers in the future. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent decades have seen a strong increase in bioenergy utilization in Sweden, from 52 TWh in 1983 to 128 TWh in 2013. Much of this increase has been achieved by replacing fossil fuels with different forms of bioenergy in district heating. Increased use of bioenergy is generally seen as key to reducing fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy security. However, replacing fossil fuels with solid biomass fuels in stationary heat and power generation entails significantly more complicated fuel supply logistics, with geographically scattered material associated with storage difficulties and low energy density. Given these risks and challenges and the key role of biomass-based district heating in the Swedish energy system, disturbances in fuel supply to district heating could potentially be an energy security issue. Through literature studies and interviews with employees at 18 district heating plants, we mapped present and future risks and risk management strategies in district heating supply in the Malardalen region, south-east Sweden. We found that although small disturbances to fuel supply are not uncommon, the likelihood of heat supply failures due to fuel supply problems is low. Risk awareness is generally high among fuel supply managers, with widespread use of multilevel redundancies and diversification as key risk management strategies. However, fuel supply to plants is highly dependent on functioning truck transport and, consequently, availability of diesel fuel for trucks. Risk management can be strengthened further by implementation of forward-looking risk assessments that are less reliant on past experiences. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Ecosystem-based adaptation (i.e. the use of ecosystem services to adapt to climate change) and its mainstreaming into municipal planning to foster sustainable transformation is receiving increasing interest from both academic and governmental bodies. However, little is known about the pathways for its systematic implementation, or the extent to which it is already mainstreamed in municipal planning practice. This article reports on a study in which local pathways to sustainably mainstream ecosystem-based adaptation were compared in 12 municipalities in Germany and Sweden. The results show that while progress is seemingly similar in the two countries, there are noticeable differences regarding the local triggers, the importance given to particular mainstreaming strategies and their link to climate policy integration. Ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation are not labelled or systematised in either country. In addition, the mainstreaming of ecosystem-based adaptation is enabled through municipalities' level of experience in mainstreaming other issues. In Sweden, the ecosystem service concept drives adaptation mainstreaming, which is often disconnected from the integration of climate mitigation policy. In contrast, German structures and planning processes established for climate change mitigation are paving the way. We conclude that systematic adaptation mainstreaming and its potential linkages and disconnects with climate mitigation policy integration require more explicit consideration, both in research and practice. We call for more research on the role of inclusive (as opposed to fragmented) climate policy integration to assure sustainable planning and transformation.Water resources in many of the world's arid mountain ranges are threatened by climate change, and in parts of the South American Andes this is exacerbated by glacier recession and population growth. Alternative sources of water, such as more resilient permafrost features (e.g. rock glaciers), are expected to become increasingly important as current warming continues. Assessments of current and future permafrost extent under climate change are not available for the Southern Hemisphere, yet are required to inform decision making over future water supply and climate change adaptation strategies. Here, downscaled model outputs were used to calculate the projected changes in permafrost extent for a first-order assessment of an example region, the Bolivian Andes. Using the 0 A degrees C mean annual air temperature as a proxy for permafrost extent, these projections show that permafrost areas will shrink from present day extent by up to 95 % under warming projected for the 2050s and by 99 % for the 2080s (under the IPCC A1B scenario, given equilibrium conditions). Using active rock glaciers as a proxy for the lower limit of permafrost extent, we also estimate that projected temperature changes would drive a near total loss of currently active rock glaciers in this region by the end of the century. In conjunction with glacier recession, a loss of permafrost extent of this magnitude represents a water security problem for the latter part of the 21st century, and it is likely that this will have negative effects on one of South America's fastest growing cities (La Paz), with similar implications for other arid mountain regions.Himalayan water resources attract a rapidly growing number of hydroelectric power projects (HPP) to satisfy Asia's soaring energy demands. Yet HPP operating or planned in steep, glacier-fed mountain rivers face hazards of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) that can damage hydropower infrastructure, alter water and sediment yields, and compromise livelihoods downstream. Detailed appraisals of such GLOF hazards are limited to case studies, however, and a more comprehensive, systematic analysis remains elusive. To this end we estimate the regional exposure of 257 Himalayan HPP to GLOFs, using a flood-wave propagation model fed by Monte Carlo-derived outburst volumes of >2300 glacial lakes. We interpret the spread of thus modeled peak discharges as a predictive uncertainty that arises mainly from outburst volumes and dam-breach rates that are difficult to assess before dams fail. With 66% of sampled HPP are on potential GLOF tracks, up to one third of these HPP could experience GLOF discharges well above local design floods, as hydropower development continues to seek higher sites closer to glacial lakes. We compute that this systematic push of HPP into headwaters effectively doubles the uncertainty about GLOF peak discharge in these locations. Peak discharges farther downstream, in contrast, are easier to predict because GLOF waves attenuate rapidly. Considering this systematic pattern of regional GLOF exposure might aid the site selection of future Himalayan HPP. Our method can augment, and help to regularly update, current hazard assessments, given that global warming is likely changing the number and size of Himalayan meltwater lakes.Disaster risk management, particularly management of climate-related risks, has become central to the international policy agenda. Reducing hazard-related loss and damage relies heavily on scientific inputs. Science, in turn, relies on data-in this case 1) risk-related data on hazards, exposure and vulnerability, and 2) data on associated loss and damage outcomes. The latter, data on losses and damage, are also post 2015 international policy outcome indicators at the highest level, required for countries' monitoring of progress in reducing disaster risk, adapting to climate change, and achieving sustainable development. Although the quantity and accessibility of loss and damage data are improving, a number of issues continue to constrain their potential. These include needs for more consistent cataloguing of hazards and extreme events, more systematic and accurate documentation of per-event losses and damage, more precise cross-referencing of hazard events with associated loss and damage, and improved standardization and interoperability among databases. We identify measures for improvement in this regard, both for research purposes and for post-2015 international policy implementation. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In the South of France, around the Mediterranean coast, specific episodes of intense rain cause tremendous floods, with special effects such as run off or landslides. Hot and humid air masses from the Mediterranean Sea regularly confront cold air masses coming over the mountains (the Massif Central) from the Atlantic Ocean. This phenomenon creates strong and intense storms lasting a few hours, with up to 400-500 mm of precipitation in a single location. With climate change, the Mediterranean Sea temperature is rising and thus increasing the frequency of this phenomenon throughout the year. The change is drastic. Unusual events of this type used to occur every 10 years (Nimes 1988, Aude 1999, Var 2010). Currently, the same events are producing high death tolls every year (23 people killed in 2014 and about 30 in 2015). These accidents can be prevented: most of the time, they are due to lack of adequate information for visitors, tourists, or newcomers, unaware of the region's characteristics or of local climate issues. The most appropriate answer is real empowerment of local communities, as a means to climate change adaptation.Sustainable climate change adaptation requires an understanding of people's place attachments, so that potential impacts and trade-offs are illuminated when making adaptation decisions. Methods are needed that elucidate these important, but often intangible, place attachments at risk. A study was undertaken to explore place attachment, and how these person-place bonds might be impacted by flooding and sea-level rise. It engaged with a small town in coastal Australia that is already highly vulnerable to flooding, and which has been subject to numerous policy directives intended to reduce climate change-induced flood risk. The town therefore acts as an analogue for climate change adaptation in other semi-rural coastal communities. Photo-elicitation was found to be highly effective at elucidating multifarious dimensions of residents' place attachment. The attachments that were likely to be affected by flooding (and adapting to flood risk) were encapsulated in: the personal and communal identities associated with the tourism and fishing industries, the sense of belonging from living and re-living family connections to local places, and the sense of community and enjoyment derived from diverse recreational activities. The photoelicitation process provided different outcomes to conventional interviews, focus groups and questionnaires. Participants sought to both vision (by elucidating their current experiences) and re-envision (in advocating for different futures) their everyday experiences of adapting to flooding through their photographs and accompanying narratives. A video introduction to this paper is available at: https://vimeo.com/83484905.This article adopts a "capabilities" approach to climate justice to examine a globally unique phenomenon: a decade of unprecedented surface area growth in Lake Azuei (the largest lake in Haiti) and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic (the largest lake in the Caribbean region). The objective was to explore how two neighbouring communities and their governments respond to large-scale environmental change within connected but uneven political ecological contexts. Current climate change impacts in this bi-national island present an opportunity to better understand not only local climate justice but also how fragmented sovereignty, territoriality, and citizenship regimes may affect processes of climate adaptation. The researchers conducted 27 semi-structured interviews in the Dominican Republic and 11 in Haiti, with open ended questions. The data analysis explores impacts of the lakes' growth; perceived causes and solutions; access to assistance; views on responsibility; and capacities for mobilization, bi-national cooperation, and international partnerships. The article argues that different capabilities for climate adaptation are shaped by historical path dependencies, local institutional contexts, and international linkages; and that attaining climate justice requires attention to these factors within a collective normative framework. The conclusion examines how climate science, research partnerships, and citizen participation might be leveraged to help build binational adaptation strategies grounded in a capabilities approach to climate justice. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.High CO2 and high temperature have an antagonistic interaction effect on rice yield potential and present a unique challenge to adapting rice to projected future climates. Understanding how the differences in response to these two abiotic variables are partitioned across rice germplasm accessions may be key to identifying potentially useful sources of resilient alleles for adapting rice to climate change. In this study, we evaluated eleven globally diverse rice accessions under controlled conditions at two carbon dioxide concentrations (400 and 600ppm) and four temperature environments (29 degrees C day/21 degrees C night; 29 degrees C day/21 degrees C night with additional heat stress at anthesis; 34 degrees C day/26 degrees C night; and 34 degrees C day/26 degrees C night with additional heat stress at anthesis) for a suite of traits including five yield components, five growth characteristics, one phenological trait, and four photosynthesis-related measurements. Multivariate analyses of mean trait data from these eight treatments divide our rice panel into two primary groups consistent with the genetic classification of INDICA/INDICA-like and JAPONICA populations. Overall, we find that the productivity of plants grown under elevated [CO2] was more sensitive (negative response) to high temperature stress compared with that of plants grown under ambient [CO2] across this diversity panel. We report differential response to CO2 x temperature interaction for INDICA/INDICA-like and JAPONICA rice accessions and find preliminary evidence for the beneficial introduction of exotic alleles into cultivated rice genomic background. Overall, these results support the idea of using wild or currently unadapted gene pools in rice to enhance breeding efforts to secure future climate change adaptation.How individuals perceive climate change is linked to whether individuals support climate policies and whether they alter their own climate-related behaviors, yet climate perceptions may be influenced by many factors beyond local shifts in weather. Infrastructure designed to control or regulate natural resources may serve as an important lens through which people experience climate, and thus may influence perceptions. Likewise, perceptions may be influenced by personal beliefs about climate change and whether it is human-induced. Here we examine farmer perceptions of historical climate change, how perceptions are related to observed trends in regional climate, how perceptions are related to the presence of irrigation infrastructure, and how perceptions are related to beliefs and concerns about climate change. We focus on the regions of Marlborough and Hawke's Bay in New Zealand, where irrigation is utilized on the majority of cropland. Data are obtained through analysis of historical climate records from local weather stations, interviews (n = 20), and a farmer survey (n = 490). Across both regions, no significant historical trends in annual precipitation and summer temperatures since 1980 are observed, but winter warming trends are significant at around 0.2-0.3 degrees C per decade. A large fraction of farmers perceived increases in annual rainfall despite instrumental records indicating no significant trends, a finding that may be related to greater perceived water availability associated with irrigation growth. A greater fraction of farmers perceived rainfall increases in Marlborough, where irrigation growth has been most substantial. We find those classes of farmers more likely to have irrigation were also significantly more likely to perceive an increase in annual rainfall. Furthermore, we demonstrate that perceptions of changing climate - regardless of their accuracy - are correlated with increased belief in climate change and an increased concern for future climate impacts. Those farmers that believe climate change is occurring and is human induced are more likely to perceive temperature increases than farmers who believe climate change is not occurring and is not human induced. These results suggest that perceptions are influenced by a variety of personal and environmental factors, including infrastructure, which may in turn alter decisions about climate adaptation. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.To respond to climate impact, poor agricultural households in less developed regions rely on different types of assets that define their overall adaptive capacity (AC). However not all assets build capacity equally. In this study we argue that building AC requires a combination of interventions that address not only climate-related risks (specific capacity) but also the structural deficits (e.g., lack of income, education, health, political power) (generic capacity) that shape vulnerability. Focusing on rainfed agriculture in NE Brazil, we investigate how households leverage and combine generic and specific capacities to reduce vulnerability. Particularly we explore: 1) the relative importance of different kinds of capacity in shaping vulnerability on these households and 2) how the level of generic capacities (particularly as a result of Brazil's anti-poverty program Bolsa Familia) influences the adoption of specific ones. We find that both kinds of capacity matter, as relatively higher levels of generic capacity (in terms of income in general, and climate-neutral income specifically) are associated with higher levels of specific capacity (irrigation). In addition we find that while Bolsa Familia has been positive in increasing income, it has not been sufficient to manage the risk of food insecurity during drought events, suggesting a 'poverty trap' in which families are constantly coping with drought but failing to overcome the conditions that make them vulnerable. Our findings indicate that in order to decrease climate vulnerability of poor agricultural households, development interventions, such as anti-poverty programs, have to go beyond cash transfer and should incorporate risk management policies that enhance synergies between generic and specific capacities. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The community composition and metabolism of Mediterranean temporary lakes are sensitive to meteorology, determining the length of the flooded period and water depth. We studied the biological communities and metabolism of Laguna de Talayuelas, a Mediterranean temporary lake selected as a model to disentangle key ecological processes. The development and activity of hydrophytes were determined by hydrology. Water depth favoured differential development of emerged-floating versus submerged species. Rooted macrophytes, especially Ranunculus, extracted nutrients from the sediments, making them bioavailable for phytoplankton after senescence. During the studied period the lake showed three functional phases. The first period, with low water depth, was governed by autotrophic processes and coincided with the development of submerged macrophytes. These accounted for most lake's productivity, and a highly diverse community was maintained. A second phase occurred by late spring, coinciding with a sudden increase of the water depth after strong rainfalls; then submerged macrophytes decayed and decomposed, and respiration increased. The lake had a net heterotrophic behaviour and biodiversity decreased. During the third period, in summer, nutrients released from macrophytes decomposition favoured phytoplankton blooms. The system turned to net autotrophy but now based on phytoplankton photosynthesis. Floating macrophytes developed, though the benthic component maintained net heterotrophy.This study employed a Monte-Carlo simulation approach to characterise the uncertainties in climate change induced variations in storage requirements and performance (reliability (time- and volume based), resilience, vulnerability and sustainability) of surface water reservoirs. Using a calibrated rainfall-runoff(R-R) model, the baseline runoff scenario was first simulated. The R-R inputs (rainfall and temperature) were then perturbed using plausible delta-changes to produce simulated climate change runoff scenarios. Stochastic models of the runoff were developed and used to generate ensembles of both the current and climate-change-perturbed future runoff scenarios. The resulting runoff ensembles were used to force simulation models of the behaviour of the reservoir to produce 'populations' of required reservoir storage capacity to meet demands, and the performance. Comparing these parameters between the current and the perturbed provided the population of climate change effects which was then analysed to determine the variability in the impacts. The methodology was applied to the Pong reservoir on the Beas River in northern India. The reservoir serves irrigation and hydropower needs and the hydrology of the catchment is highly influenced by Himalayan seasonal snow and glaciers, and Monsoon rainfall, both of which are predicted to change due to climate change. The results show that required reservoir capacity is highly variable with a coefficient of variation (CV) as high as 0.3 as the future climate becomes drier. Of the performance indices, the vulnerability recorded the highest variability (CV up to 0.5) while the volume-based reliability was the least variable. Such variabilities or uncertainties will, no doubt, complicate the development of climate change adaptation measures; however, knowledge of their sheer magnitudes as obtained in this study will help in the formulation of appropriate policy and technical interventions for sustaining and possibly enhancing water security for irrigation and other uses served by Pong reservoir. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.Background. Positive associations have been noted between temperature and diarrhea incidence, but considerable uncertainty surrounds quantitative estimates of this relationship because of pathogen-specific factors and a scarcity of data on the influence of meteorological factors on the risk of disease. Quantifying these relationships is important for disease prevention and climate change adaptation. Methods. To address these issues, we performed a systematic literature review of studies in which at least 1 full year of data on the monthly incidence of diarrheagenic Escherichia coli were reported. We characterized seasonal patterns of disease incidence from 28 studies. In addition, using monthly time-and location-specific weather data for 18 studies, we performed univariate Poisson models on individual studies and a meta-analysis, using a generalized estimating equation, on the entire data set. Results. We found an 8% increase in the incidence of diarrheagenic E. coli (95% confidence interval, 5%-11%; P<.0001) for each 1 degrees C increase in mean monthly temperature. We found a modest positive association between 1-month-lagged mean rainfall and incidence of diarrheagenic E. coli, which was not statistically significant when we controlled for temperature. Conclusions. These results suggest that increases in ambient temperature correspond to an elevated incidence of diarrheagenic E. coli and underscore the need to redouble efforts to prevent the transmission of these pathogens in the face of increasing global temperatures.The notion that conservation areas are static geographical units for biodiversity conservation should be revised when planning for climate-change adaptation. Since species are expected to respond to climate change by shifting their distributions, conservation areas can lose the very same species that justified their designation. Methods exist to take into account the potential effects of climate on spatial priorities for conservation. One of such methods involves the identification of time-ordered linkages between conservation areas (hereafter termed climate-change corridors), thus enabling species tracking their suitable changing climates. We critically review and synthesise existing quantitative approaches for spatial conservation planning under climate change. We extend these approaches focusing on the identification of climate-change corridors, using three alternative models that vary on the objective function (minimum cost or maximum benefit sought) and on the nature of conservation targets (area-based or persistence probabilities). The three models for establishing climate-change corridors are illustrated with a case study involving two species distributed across the Iberian Peninsula. The species were modelled in relation to climate-change scenarios using ensembles of bioclimatic models and theoretical dispersal kernels. The corridors obtained are compared for their location, the temporal sequence of priorities, and the effectiveness with which solutions attain persistence and cost objectives. By clearly framing the climate-change corridors problem as three alternative models and providing the corresponding mathematical descriptions and solving tools, we offer planners a wide spectrum of models that can be easily adapted to a variety of conservation goals and constraints.Local climatic conditions likely constitute an important selective pressure on genes underlying important fitness-related traits such as flowering time, and in many species, flowering phenology and climatic gradients strongly covary. To test whether climate shapes the genetic variation on flowering time genes and to identify candidate flowering genes involved in the adaptation to environmental heterogeneity, we used a large Medicago truncatula core collection to examine the association between nucleotide polymorphisms at 224 candidate genes and both climate variables and flowering phenotypes. Unlike genome-wide studies, candidate gene approaches are expected to enrich for the number of meaningful trait associations because they specifically target genes that are known to affect the trait of interest. We found that flowering time mediates adaptation to climatic conditions mainly by variation at genes located upstream in the flowering pathways, close to the environmental stimuli. Variables related to the annual precipitation regime reflected selective constraints on flowering time genes better than the other variables tested (temperature, altitude, latitude or longitude). By comparing phenotype and climate associations, we identified 12 flowering genes as the most promising candidates responsible for phenological adaptation to climate. Four of these genes were located in the known flowering time QTL region on chromosome 7. However, climate and flowering associations also highlighted largely distinct gene sets, suggesting different genetic architectures for adaptation to climate and flowering onset.This article explores how agrarian change and the current prevalence of non-agrarian livelihoods in rural South Africa might be assessed using the concept of adaptive capacity. Agrarian change is often characterised as "de-agrarianisation" or "de-peasantisation," which implies a wholesale change in the composition of agricultural areas. While some of the research on southern Africa regards these processes as linear, other studies argue that the dynamics are hybridised: large-scale agriculture is being increasingly abandoned, while smallholder agriculture remains intact or becomes even more robust. We argue that a complex non-linear deactivation process is taking place, leading to less agricultural activity and a reduction in the levels of agricultural production. Adaptive capacity and agrarian change are not necessarily related, and households' livelihoods and health status may continuously evolve without being adversely affected by an alteration in their use of resources, particularly natural resources. Using a mixed methodological framework, including social network analysis and qualitative interviews, the article highlights the importance of considering rural people's responses to global environmental change, and how their agrarian contexts may not align perfectly with discourses surrounding adaptive capacity.Adapting to climate change requires the engagement of all actors in society. Until recently, the predominant research focus has been on governments, communities, and the third sector as key actors in the adaptation process. Yet, there is a growing emphasis internationally on understanding the role of and the need to engage businesses in adaptation given their potential to finance projects, develop technologies and innovative solutions, and enhance the scale and cost-effectiveness of certain adaptation measures. Large national and multinational corporations are among the key actors in this respect. Already, many of these corporations are purportedly taking steps to adapt their operations to climate change. Some stated reasons for their engagement include minimizing potential impacts on value chains, improving resource efficiency, enhancing production of sustainable raw materials, and supporting customers', suppliers', and communities' climate change adaptation efforts. However, there is a paucity of work analysing adaptation actions by these corporations, their motivations and contribution to broader adaptation and climate-resilient development efforts, as well as possible instances of maladaptation. We apply a three-tier framework on drivers, responses, and outcomes to examine the state of knowledge according to recent literature on private sector and corporate adaptation to climate change. Our review highlights that the literature on the impact and outcomes of corporate adaptation actions is sparse and we consider the implications for future research. Our analysis concludes with a reflection on the relevance of corporate-led adaptationfor the companies themselves, policymakers at all scales, as well as society at large. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:517-536. doi: 10.1002/wcc.402 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .Cyclone and tornado as common nature disasters have caused devastating damages and losses around the world. In such events loose objects might be lifted and propelled by strong wind as the windborne debris, which is a potential hazard to the building facade because windborne debris impact may create openings on the building envelop, threaten the safety of occupants inside the building and cause further damages to the structure. Some wind loading codes e.g., the Australian Wind Loading Code (AS/NZS 1170:2:2011) specifies the design requirements to address this issue. On the other hand, structural insulated panel (SIP) has been increasingly used in building constructions owing to the advantages of thermal insulation and easy to build, but it is vulnerable to windborne debris impact owing to its insufficient impact resistance capacity. This disadvantage prevents the wide applications of SIP in regions with strong winds, such as the Cyclone region C and D defined in Australian Wind Loading Code. In this study, glass fibre laminate was used to strengthen SIP with OSB (Oriented Strand Board) skins to improve its capacity to resist windborne debris impact. One unstrengthened and six strengthened SIP panels were manufactured and tested by using a pneumatic cannon system. Two high speed cameras were used to capture failure modes and dynamic responses. The effectiveness of glass fibre laminate strengthening was examined and compared in terms Of the residual velocity of the projectile. A numerical model was also developed to simulate the laboratory tests. The accuracy of the model was calibrated by the test results. The validated numerical model was then used to conduct more numerical simulations to obtain vulnerability curves of OSB skin SIP panels against windborne debris impact. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This article sets out to evaluate the range of meanings and preferences for the concepts of adaptation, resilience, mitigation and coping of a variety of professionals in NewYork who are undertaking leadership positions in developing climate change policies and practices. This article positions a normative set of simplified meanings for each of the aforementioned concepts based on a review of existing literature. Utilizing a survey, these normative meanings are evaluated by and between the: (a) concepts and meanings; (b) concepts and applications and (c) applications and preferences, as applied to various risk-based scenarios ranging from sea-level rise to heat waves. This survey tests the hypotheses that the respondents: (i) are unable to consistently match the concept of resiliency with the normative meanings or applications: and (ii) will not consistently show a preference for resilience applications or outcomes ahead of other concepts. The results of the survey confirm both hypotheses, which is demonstrative of the inadequacy of the current framework dominated by a narrowly defined framework for resilience. It is anticipated that the results of this article will advance an argument for the necessity to develop consistent meanings for concepts which bridge the scientific, policy and popular domains.This paper attempts to assess the value of urban views in a bay city (Yokohama), Japan. Firstly, three types of views, open view (goodness of visibility), green view (visibility of open space), and ocean view (visibility of ocean), were quantified employing the viewshed analysis implemented on the GIS with airborne LiDAR data and 0.5 m x 0.5 m high resolution aerial photos. Secondly, hedonic analyses were conducted to test the capitalization of value of those views into condominium prices using the spatial multilevel additive regression (SMAR) model, where possible non-linearity, multilevel structure of condominiums (unit building), and spatial dependence were considered. This study implies that "very nice" open view (in terms of the amount of visibility) and ocean view may have a positive premium, whereas "slightly nice" open and ocean views may not. Also, a "moderate amount" of green view may raise condominium prices, but "poor" and "too much" green view may reduce condominium prices. These results indicate that the effects of views are indeed non-linear, and therefore it may be misleading to interpret the results obtained by linear models as existing studies have done. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Freshwater systems provide various resources and services. These are often vulnerable to climate change and other pressures. Therefore, enhancing resilience to climate change is important for their long term viability. This paper explores how management options can be evaluated on their resilience implications. The approach included five steps: (1) characterizing the system, (2) characterizing the impacts of climate change and other disturbances, (3) inventorying management options, (4) assessing the impacts of these on climate resilience, and (5) follow-up analysis. For the resilience assessment, we used a set of 'resilience principles': homeostasis, omnivory, high flux, flatness, buffering, and redundancy. We applied the approach in a case study in a Dutch wetlands region. Many options in the region's management plan contribute to resilience, however, the plan underutilised several principles, particularly flatness, but also redundancy and omnivory for agriculture, and high flux for nature. Co-benefits was identified as an important additional criterion to obtain support for adaptation from local stakeholders, such as farmers. The approach provided a relatively quick and participatory way to screen options. It allowed us to consider multiple impacts and sectors, multiple dimensions of resilience, and stakeholder perspectives. The results can be used to identify gaps or pitfalls, and set priorities for follow-up analyses.Exposure to extreme heat was reconstructed based on regional land-atmosphere processes from 1979 to 2010 in the South Central U.S. The study region surrounds the Chickasaw Nation (CN), a predominantly Native American population with a highly prevalent burden of climate-sensitive chronic diseases. Land surface and atmospheric conditions for summer heat waves were analyzed during spring (March-April-May, MAM) and summer (June-July-August, JJA) based on the Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability, and Change maximum temperature definition for heat wave frequency (HWF). The spatial-temporal pattern of HWF was determined using empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis and the corresponding principle component time series of the first EOF of HWF. Statistically significant analyses of observed conditions indicated that sensible heat increased and latent heat fluxes decreased with high HWF in the South Central U.S. The largest positive correlations of sensible heat flux to HWF and the largest negative correlations of latent heat flux to HWF were specifically observed over the CN. This is a significantly different energy transfer regime due to less available soil moisture during the antecedent MAM and JJA. The higher sensible heat from dry soil could cause significant warming from the near surface (>2.0 degrees C) to the lower troposphere (>1.5 degrees C), and accumulated boundary layer heat could induce the significant patterns of higher geopotential height and enhance anticyclonic circulations (negative vorticity anomaly) at the midtroposphere. Results suggested a positive land-atmosphere feedback associated with heat waves and called attention to the need for region-specific climate adaptation planning.The West African cocoa belt, reaching from Sierra Leone to southern Cameroon, is the origin of about 70% of the world's cocoa (Theobroma cacao), which in turn is the basis of the livelihoods of about two million farmers. We analyze cocoa's vulnerability to climate change in the West African cocoa belt, based on climate projections for the 2050s of 19 Global Circulation Models under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change intermediate emissions scenario RCP 6.0. We use a combination of a statistical model of climatic suitability (Maxent) and the analysis of individual, potentially limiting climate variables. We find that: 1) contrary to expectation, maximum dry season temperatures are projected to become as or more limiting for cocoa as dry season water availability; 2) to reduce the vulnerability of cocoa to excessive dry season temperatures, the systematic use of adaptation strategies like shade trees in cocoa farms will be necessary, in reversal of the current trend of shade reduction; 3) there is a strong differentiation of climate vulnerability within the cocoa belt, with the most vulnerable areas near the forest-savanna transition in Nigeria and eastern Cote d'Ivoire, and the least vulnerable areas in the southern parts of Cameroon, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia; 4) this spatial differentiation of climate vulnerability may lead to future shifts in cocoa production within the region, with the opportunity of partially compensating losses and gains, but also the risk of local production expansion leading to new deforestation. We conclude that adaptation strategies for cocoa in West Africa need to focus at several levels, from the consideration of tolerance to high temperatures in cocoa breeding programs, the promotion of shade trees in cocoa farms, to policies incentivizing the intensification of cocoa production on existing farms where future climate conditions permit and the establishment of new farms in already deforested areas. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Light quantity and quality modulate grapevine development and influence berry metabolic processes. Here we studied light as an information signal for developing and ripening grape berries. A Vitis vinifera Sauvignon Blanc field experiment was used to identify the impacts of UVB on core metabolic processes in the berries under both high light (HL) and low light (LL) microclimates. The primary objective was therefore to identify UVB-specific responses on berry processes and metabolites and distinguish them from those responses elicited by variations in light incidence. Canopy manipulation at the bunch zone via early leaf removal, combined with UVB-excluding acrylic sheets installed over the bunch zones resulted in four bunch microclimates: (1) HL (control); (2) LL (control); (3) HL with UVB attenuation and (4) LL with UVB attenuation. Metabolite profiles of three berry developmental stages showed predictable changes to known UV-responsive compound classes in a typical UV acclimation (versus UV damage) response. Interestingly, the berries employed carotenoids and the associated xanthophyll cycles to acclimate to UV exposure and the berry responses differed between HL and LL conditions, particularly in the developmental stages where berries are still photosynthetically active. The developmental stage of the berries was an important factor to consider in interpreting the data. The green berries responded to the different exposure and/or UVB attenuation signals with metabolites that indicate that the berries actively managed its metabolism in relation to the exposure levels, displaying metabolic plasticity in the photosynthesis-related metabolites. Core processes such as photosynthesis, photo-inhibition and acclimation were maintained by differentially modulating metabolites under the four treatments. Ripe berries also responded metabolically to the light quality and quantity, but mostly formed compounds (volatiles and polyphenols) that have direct antioxidant and/or "sunscreening" abilities. The data presented for the green berries and those for the ripe berries conform to what is known for UVB and/or light stress in young, active leaves and older, senescing tissues respectively and provide scope for further evaluation of the sink/source status of fruits in relation to photosignalling and/or stress management.Urban plannings and design processes, through land management, are important factors that significantly influence the distribution of urban green lands (UGLs), and thus, the provision of ecosystem services (ESs), thereby providing opportunities for managing climate adaptation processes at the local level. However, planning for UGLs is often secondary to other planning categories, and they often remain underutilized. Through an analysis of Master Plans of major urban centres in Serbia and Bulgaria, this paper discusses the conceptualization of UGLs and the integration of ESs in planning and design processes. Based on findings obtained through an Analytical Hierarchy Process, this paper develops a conceptual framework for linking ESs with different UGL types in the course of urban planning, in order to achieve a better application of UGLs in strategies for the amelioration of micro-climatic conditions in urban areas. This paper proposes framework for an ecosystem sensitive conceptualization of UGLs in planning and design process, where UGL typology should replace functional categories, and spatial indicators are defined in relation to UGL types. Such an approach can improve the understanding and ES-sensitive application of UGLs in planning processes and local adaptation strategies.This paper addresses the mainstreaming of uncertainty in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) using as a case South and Southeast Asia, a region highly vulnerable to a wide range of natural disasters. Improvements in the implementation of DRR and CCA at the community and regional levels can be realized when the underlying uncertainties are understood and made transparent by all those involved in the science, practice and decision making of natural hazard management. This theme has been explored in a think tank fashion through knowledge elicitation and sharing among experts in the research community as well as practitioners and policy advisers with extensive experience with and insight into DRR and CCA at the regional and/or local levels. The intended result has been the identification of the means by which the capacity to integrate uncertainty can be developed. In this elicitation process, sources of uncertainty associated with the implementation of best practices in DRR and CCA at the regional and local levels. The results of presented are considered by the stakeholders involved to be valuable in expanding capacity to plan and implement more effective DRR and CCA policies and measures particularly at the community level where uncertainty plays a central role for those most vulnerable to current and future climate extreme events, and socio-economic constraints and changes. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Small islands are among regions most affected by the impacts of global climate change. They are regarded as particularly vulnerable, but from a different point of view, island societies also feature a particular sociocultural resilience, which distinguishes them from continental societies. How do social structures increase the adaptive capacity of small islands towards sea-level rise? I consider the concept of social capital as applicable in order to understand the role of communities and collective action in a context of vulnerability and resilience. In this paper, I present results from a case study on the Isles of Scilly, UK. A mixed methods qualitative approach has been applied to analyse the various roles of social capital for the adaptation to climate change impacts on this small archipelago, which is representative of European small islands in an economically advanced, but isolated context. The Isles of Scilly are among the most vulnerable island regions in Europe. The results of the research contribute to the general discussion on social capital and the relevance of collective action for the adaptation to global climate change. How useful is the concept? And how relevant is it for small islands, such as the Isles of Scilly?Governments face the daunting task of developing policies and making investment decisions for climate change adaptation in an environment that consist of complex, interlinked systems with manifold uncertainties. Instead of responding to surprises and making decisions on ad hoc basis, a structured approach to deal with complex systems and uncertainties can provide indispensable support for policy making. This contribution proposes a structured approach for designing climate adaptation policies based on the concepts of Adaptation Pathways, Adaptive Policy Making, and Real Options Analysis. Such an approach results in incorporation of flexibility that allows change over time in response to how the future unfolds, what is learned about the system, and changes in societal preferences. The approach is illustrated by looking at drainage policies and measures to address flooding in Singapore. (C) 2016 Policy and Society Associates (APSS). Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The management of water is a topic of great concern. Inadequate management may lead to water scarcity and ecological destruction, but also to an increase of catastrophic floods. With climate change, both water scarcity and the risk of flooding are likely to increase even further in the coming decades. This makes water management currently a highly dynamic field, in which experiments are made with new forms of policy making. In the current paper, a case study is presented in which different interest groups were invited for developing new water policy. The case was innovative in that stakeholders were invited to identify and frame the most urgent water issues, rather than asking them to reflect on possible solutions developed by the water authority itself. The case suggests that stakeholders can participate more effectively if their contribution is focused on underlying competing values rather than conflicting interests.The past decade has witnessed significant growth across the globe of domestic and international initiatives designed to ameliorate both existing and potential impacts of climate change. The threat of altered environments and possibility of mass migrations of people have spurred intensive planning as well as the commitment of considerable resources to addressing such threats. Indeed, the primacy of climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts and planning has become so pronounced that one might argue that this is a new and pre-eminent form of development in the international arena. As with previous developmental preoccupations such as progress, modernity, gender, microcredit, participation and good governance, climate change adaptation and mitigation is today a central part of the development mantra. In this paper I examine the 'climate change turn' in development work by focusing on the case of Bangladesh, a country often discussed in both scholarly literature and popular discourse as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the possible effects of climate change. Images of rising waters, flooded fields and displaced farmers in the region have become an iconic symbol deployed during debates on climate change both locally and globally. As a result Bangladesh has emerged as a laboratory of sorts in which a series of national-level strategic plans, projects, programmes, trust funds and financing schemes are being designed and tested in partnership with international donors and development agencies, all built around the idea of climate change and resilience. Looking specifically at some of the most marginalised communities in Bangladesh -such as char dwellers and slum populations -I question in this paper what impact these efforts to combat climate change may have, in particular the possibility of being displaced not by climate change but rather by development processes meant to ameliorate its effects.This paper serves to introduce the topic of intergenerational trust funds and their legal forms in the Pacific. It gives an overview of the nature of these funds, what distinguishes them one from the other, and their strengths and weaknesses from a legal point of view. Intergenerational trust funds started with primarily budget support purposes but have been adapted over the years to serve other purposes, in particular the protection of ecosystems and for climate adaptation and environmental protection and disaster relief. Following a consideration of the structural and operational aspects of some key Pacific funds, the paper concludes with a reflection on practice over the years and identifies what is or should be best practice for such funds.As one of the fastest growing countries in the Middle East, and the one most vulnerable to climate change, the main challenge now facing Iran today is how to house its growing population in a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable way. However, in the absence of a national framework to guide the sustainable development of the built environment, responding to this challenge is problematic. The articulation of a comprehensive assessment method that would enable issues of sustainability to be addressed and incorporated within building construction projects is urgently required. The research that underpins this paper takes account of current tools in aiming to support the development of a national building sustainability assessment method (BSAM) for use in Iran that involves the identification of sources of impact, specific benchmarks, and priorities for a weighting system for assessment criteria. This paper profiles the basis of a contextual framework that will inform the development of such a regional-based tool, taking account of Iran's current climate change adaptation policies and priorities, its environmental conditions and socio-economic challenges, building typologies, standards and benchmarks.The urban heat island effect poses a challenge in several cities, and may affect human and ecosystem health. It was proven that relatively small urban conglomerations in mid-latitudes, such as the case study region of Rostock, have undergone a considerable effect recently, noticeable particularly in the warm season. Due to climatic changes, these effects are expected to alter in intensity and/or frequency. This was investigated using a model that focuses on interactions between land use and surface temperatures and on specific air conditions in cities. The model enables urban surface temperature differences to be projected with regard to different assumptions of (future or planned) land use/land cover and its specific characteristics. In addition, 99th percentile summer days from the period 1961-1990 and scenario runs from regional climate models (RCMs) were used as an example of extreme heat events. The frequency of occurrence of extreme heat events resembling those occurring in the present day will be up to four (2041-2070) and six (2071-2100) times higher, respectively. Furthermore, the average temperature on defined extreme heat days will rise by 1.6 to 3.4 degrees C (2041-2070) and 2.2 to 4.4 degrees C (2071-2100), respectively. The model calculated no significant effects for differences in maximum surface temperatures between land use classes. Some parts of land use change scenarios constructed during scenario workshops in Rostock were integrated into the surface temperature model with regard to climate change adaptation. The results revealed a range of outcomes, from an enlargement of vulnerable areas to the near eradication of climate change-related heat effects in several areas.The Anthropocene is generating new demands on societies to learn how to establish flexible and resilient socio-ecosystems. The proposed new epoch, driven in large part by human actions, enhances the need for new knowledge on how modernity could respond effectively to environmental extremes and change. New knowledge can be drawn from various sources, but one vital approach will be to learn from the wealth of ancient, traditional forms of cultural adaptation in societal margins, where people have interacted sustainably with difficult environments throughout the Holocene. To achieve that goal, adaptation research with the Anangu of the Alinytjara Wilurara region in South Australia is critically reviewed through the lens of socio-ecological theory. Complex, interactive local biophysical, cultural and political ecologies must be negotiated to learn to adapt to environmental extremes and change. A social learning approach successfully integrated local Indigenous and external knowledge to identify biophysical vulnerabilities, and generated risk narratives that are helping to guide spatial and systemic adaptation planning on heatwave, wildfire and bushfood management. Yet, political ecologies continue to inhibit support for Indigenous stewardship of local environments. Institutional investment into the knowledge and management activities of Indigenous people could generate sustainable development opportunities, while also providing universal lessons about stewarding local environments through periods of change. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Current and future impacts of climate change include increasing variability in a number of biophysical processes, such as temperature, precipitation, and flooding. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested that Southern Africa is particularly vulnerable to the anticipated impacts from global climate change and that social and ecological systems in the region will be disrupted and likely transformed in future decades. This article engages with current research within geography and cognate disciplines on the possibilities for responsive livelihoods within socio-ecological systems experiencing biophysical change. The paper draws from an ongoing research project that is evaluating perceptions of environmental change, specifically of precipitation and flooding dynamics, in order to understand social responses. We report on the findings from qualitative interviewing conducted in 2010 and 2011 in the communities of Etsha 1, Etsha 6, and Etsha 13 within the Okavango Delta of Botswana. While flooding and precipitation patterns have been dynamic and spatially differentiated, some livelihood systems have proven rigid in their capacity to enable adaptive responses. We assert this demonstrates the need for detailed research on livelihood dynamics to support adjustments to biophysical variability within socio-ecological systems experiencing change.1. Successful conservation will increasingly depend on our ability to help species cope with climate change. While there has been much attention on accommodating or assisting range shifts, less has been given to the alternative strategy of helping species survive climate change through in situ management. 2. Here we provide a synthesis of published evidence examining whether habitat management can be used to offset the adverse impacts on biodiversity of changes in temperature, water availability and sea-level rise. Our focus is on practical methods whereby the local environmental conditions experienced by organisms can be made more suitable. 3. Many studies suggest that manipulating vegetation structure can alter the temperature and moisture conditions experienced by organisms, and several demonstrate that these altered conditions benefit species as regional climatic conditions become unsuitable. The effects of topography on local climatic conditions are even better understood, but the alteration of topography as a climate adaptation tool is not ingrained in conservation practice. Trials of topographic alteration in the field should therefore be a priority for future research. 4. Coastal systems have the natural capacity to keep pace with climate change, but require sufficient sediment supplies and space for landward migration to do so. There is an extensive literature on managed realignment. While the underlying rationale is simple, successful implementation requires careful consideration of elevation and past land use. Even with careful management, restored habitats may not attain the physical and biological attributes of natural habitats. 5. Synthesis and applications. The recent literature provides a compelling case that some of the adverse effects of climate change can be offset by appropriate management. However, much of the evidence for this is indirect and too few studies provide empirical tests of the long-term effectiveness of these management interventions. It is clear from the existing evidence that some techniques have a higher risk of failure or unexpected outcomes than others and managers will need to make careful choices about which to implement. We have assessed the strength of evidence of these approaches in order to demonstrate to conservation professionals the risks involved.1. Management strategies intended to reduce the impacts of future climate change on montane species ought to consider fine-scale variation in microclimate (e.g. because of topography) and vegetation conditions that create climate refugia. Identifying potential refugia and quantifying their importance is facilitated by analytical approaches that explicitly model associations between dynamic population processes and environmental conditions. 2. We developed a population model to project future site occupancy dynamics in spotted owls Strix occidentalis under climate change and forest-management scenarios. The model was parameterized with statistical relationships derived from dynamic occupancy analyses applied to 20 years of spotted owl presence/nondetection data in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA. This approach allowed us to link colonization and extinction processes with spatial and temporal variation in vegetation characteristics, microclimate and weather while accounting for imperfect detection. 3. Occupancy analyses indicated that greater prevalence of closed-canopy forest in owl sites was associated with lower extinction and higher colonization rates. Both rates increased following consecutive warm summers, but warm summer temperatures had a greater effect on extinction than colonization. Following the warmest summers, extinction was most likely to occur in owl sites with cool microclimates and relatively little closed-canopy forest, but extinction became considerably less likely in cool microclimates when greater amounts of closed-canopy forest were present. By comparison, extinction probability was lower at owl sites with warmer microclimates and relatively invariant to the amount of closed-canopy forest present. 4. Simulations of our population model suggested that managing for greater amounts of closed-canopy forest may ameliorate the potential negative effects of warm summer temperatures by the mid-century, especially at high elevations. The model also allowed us to identify sites where potential management efforts would be most effective. 5. Synthesis and applications. By modelling environmental processes influencing site colonization and extinction dynamics, we were able to identify features of potential climate change refugia for a montane species of management interest that could be promoted by land managers to increase species persistence. We also provided a general, process-based population modelling approach for projecting changes in animal populations and developing habitat-based climate change adaptation strategies using presence/nondetection data.1. Climate change models predict more extreme rainfall patterns, ranging from droughts to deluges, which will inevitably affect primary productivity in many terrestrial ecosystems. Insects within the ecosystem, living above-and below-ground, may modify plant responses to water stress. For example, some functional groups improve soil conditions via resource provision, potentially alleviating water stress. Enhanced resource provision may, however, render plants more susceptible to herbivores and negate beneficial effects. 2. Using a model system, we tested how plants (Brassica oleracea) responded to drought, ambient and increased precipitation scenarios when interacting with both a soil conditioning ecosystem engineer (dung beetles; Bubas bison) and an above-ground herbivore, the major crop pest diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella). 3. Dung beetles enhanced soil water retention by 10% and promoted growth in plants subjected to drought by 280%, relieving the impacts of water stress on plants. Under drought conditions, plants grown with dung beetles had c. 30% more leaves and were over twice as tall as those without dung beetles. Dung beetles produced a 2.7-fold increase in nitrogen content and more than a threefold increase in carbon content of the shoots, though shoot concentrations of nitrogen and carbon were unchanged. Carbon concentrations in roots, however, were increased by dung beetles under both ambient and increased precipitation regimes. 4. Increased precipitation reduced root and shoot nitrogen concentrations by 16% and 30%, relative to plants under ambient regimes, respectively, most likely due to dilution effects of increased plant growth under increased precipitation. Soil carbon and nitrogen concentrations were largely unaffected. 5. While dung beetles enhanced plant growth and nitrogen content in plants experiencing drought, the anticipated increase in plant suitability to herbivores did not arise, possibly because shoot nitrogen concentrations and C:N ratio were unaffected. 6. To our knowledge, this is the first report of an insect ecosystem engineer alleviating the effects of predicted drought events on plants via physical manipulation of the soil matrix. Moreover, their effects did not change plant suitability to an above-ground herbivore, pointing to potential beneficial role for insect ecosystem engineers in climate change adaptation and crop protection.Climate influences geographic differences of vegetation phenology through both contemporary and historical variability. The latter effect is embodied in vegetation heterogeneity underlain by spatially varied genotype and species compositions tied to climatic adaptation. Such long-term climatic effects are difficult to map and therefore often neglected in evaluating spatially explicit phenological responses to climate change. In this study we demonstrate a way to indirectly infer the portion of land surface phenology variation that is potentially contributed by underlying genotypic differences across space. The method undertaken normalized remotely sensed vegetation start-of-season (or greenup onset) with a cloned plants-based phenological model. As the geography of phenological model prediction (first leaf) represents the instantaneous effect of contemporary climate, the normalized land surface phenology potentially reveals vegetation heterogeneity that is related to climatic adaptation. The study was done at the continental scale for the conterminous U.S., with a focus on the eastern humid temperate domain. Our findings suggest that, in an analogous scenario, if a uniform contemporary climate existed everywhere, spring vegetation greenup would occur earlier in the north than in the south. This is in accordance with known species-level clinal variationsfor many temperate plant species, populations adapted to colder climates require less thermal forcing to initiate growth than those in warmer climates. This study, for the first time, shows that such geographic adaption relationships are supported at the ecosystem level. Mapping large-scale vegetation climate adaptation patterns contributes to our ability to better track geographically varied phenological responses to climate change.Climate change adds an additional layer of complexity that needs to be considered in business strategy. For firms in the food industry, many of the important climate impacts are not directly related to food processing so a value chain approach to adaptation is recommended. However, there is a general lack of operational tools to support this. In this study, carbon and water footprints were conducted at a low-precision screening level in three case studies in Australia: Smith's potato chips, OneHarvest Calypso mango and selected Treasury Wine Estates products. The approach was cost-effective when compared to high-definition studies intended to support environmental labels and declarations, yet provided useful identification of physical, financial, regulatory and reputational hotspots related to climate change. A combination of diagnostic footprinting, downscaled climate projection and semi-quantitative value chain analysis is proposed as a practical and relevant toolkit to inform climate adaptation strategies.The terrestrial carbon cycle in Asia is highly uncertain, and it affects our understanding of global warming. One of the important issues is the need for an enhancement of spatial resolution, since local regions in Asia are heterogeneous with regard to meteorology, land form, and land cover type, which greatly impacts the detailed spatial patterns in its ecosystem. Thus, an important goal of this study is to reasonably reproduce the heterogeneous biogeochemical patterns in Asia by enhancing the spatial resolution of the ecosystem model biosphere model integrating eco-physiological and mechanistic approaches using satellite data (BEAMS). We estimated net ecosystem production (NEP) over eastern Asia and examined the spatial differences in the factors controlling NEP by using a 10km grid-scale approach over two different decades (2001-2010 and 2091-2100). The present and future meteorological inputs were derived from satellite observations and the downscaled Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) data set, respectively. The results showed that the present NEP in whole eastern Asia was carbon source (-214.9TgCyr(-1)) and in future scenarios, the greatest positive (76.4TgCyr(-1)) and least negative (-95.9TgCyr(-1)) NEPs were estimated from the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 6.0 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. Calculated annual NEP in RCP8.5 was mostly positive in the southern part of East Asia and Southeast Asia and negative in northern and central parts of East Asia. Under the RCP scenario with higher greenhouse gases emission (RCP8.5), deciduous needleleaf and mixed forests distributed in the middle and high latitudes served as carbon source. In contrast, evergreen broadleaf forests distributed in low latitudes served as carbon sink. The sensitivity study demonstrated that the spatial tendency of NEP was largely influenced by atmospheric CO2 and temperature.Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) throughout the United States are identifying goals and implementation strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change through transportation adaptation initiatives. Using vulnerability assessments as well as adaptation practices that support mitigation, MPOs are beginning to integrate climate change planning into the long range planning process. Evaluating the state-of-the-practice of adaptation planning and adaptation in support of mitigation is useful in that it helps identify gaps and areas of improvement. Therefore, this research investigates the state-of-the-practice of MPO adaptation planning using the Mid-Atlantic region as a case study. Surveys, administered in 2012 and 2014, are used to identify the level of progress of MPOs with regard to climate change adaptation practices as well as barriers before and after Hurricane Sandy. A cross-sectional analysis using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) maps the results of the surveys and spatially compares regional trends. The results of the case study suggest growing interest in adaptation efforts such as floodplain area designations and efforts to enhance coordination and collaboration as transportation jurisdictions respond to the potential climate change impacts. In addition, MPOs with dense, smaller geographic areas prioritize inter-jurisdictional collaboration as high, suggesting that they are more reliant on other agencies to maintain inter-connectivity of transportation networks and further implement adaptation planning practices. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Despite significant progress in understanding climate risks, adaptation efforts in biodiversity conservation remain limited. Adaptation requires addressing immediate conservation threats while also attending to long term, highly uncertain and potentially transformative future changes. To date, conservation research has focused more on projecting climate impacts and identifying possible strategies, rather than understanding how governance enables or constrains adaptation actions. We outline an approach to future-oriented conservation that combines the capacities to anticipate future ecological change; to understand the implications of that change for social, political and ecological values; and the ability to engage with the governance (and politics) of adaptation. Our approach builds on the adaptive management and governance literature, however we explicitly address the (often contested) rules, knowledge and values that enable or constrain adaptation. We call for a broader focus that extends beyond technical approaches to acknowledge the socio-political challenges inherent to adaptation. More importantly, we suggest that conservation policy makers and practitioners can use this approach to facilitate learning and adaptation in the context of complexity, transformational change and uncertainty.Rivers, their associated floodplains and wetlands are considered as the lifeline of millions. Globally these ecosystems are now considered as the most degraded, and losing species at a rate faster than the terrestrial and marine systems. Serious anthropogenic pressures and climate change are likely to intensify the degradation processes further. Hence, need of the hour is to develop a holistic management tool for protecting these freshwater ecosystems. Ecohydrology is a tool that integrates hydrology, geomorphology and biodiversity and forms a framework at catchment level for protecting the physical modification and biodiversity in rivers with the basic concept of environmental flows. Though the concept of environmental flows/ecological release for Indian rivers is recently introduced in national water policy, it further needs to be suitably incorporated in the climate adaptation strategies for an effective integrated water resources development and management programme.Many plants in fire-prone environments have limited dispersal ability and thus rely on in situ mechanisms such as evolutionary responses to persist through climate change. The regenerative phases of the plant life cycle, such as seed dispersal, germination and seedling establishment, are likely to be critical to defining species' environmental niches and, in fire-prone environments, are cued to fire events. Adaptive potential in traits that regulate these processes is key to in situ persistence, yet variability in fire adaptive traits at the population level remains largely unexplored. To investigate adaptive potential, we quantified population-level variability in the thermal germination niche of a widespread fire-prone species complex, the Banksia spinulosa group. In one of the first studies of rising temperatures on germination in serotinous plants, we sampled seeds from 12 source populations spanning seven degrees of latitude and more than 1000 m of elevation and tested germinability over a range of incubation temperatures in common laboratory conditions. Thermal germination niches varied appreciably among source populations, suggesting local adaptation or other mechanisms of differentiation. Some of this variation was explained by current taxonomic boundaries, but germination responses also varied within recognised taxa and within populations. A small but significant portion of the interpopulation variation was related to thermal conditions at the source populations. As well, intrapopulation variation was greater within source populations of taxa from warm climates than those from cooler climates. The expected effect of warming is to narrow the window for germination to the cooler months of the year. The development of fire management strategies that reduce risks of post-fire mortality of seeds and seedlings, and exploit adaptive potential to promote in situ persistence as the climate changes, should therefore be a priority for climate adaptation research.The roles of forest and wetland ecosystems in regulating flooding have drawn increasing attention in the contexts of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. However, data on floods are scarce in many of the countries where people are most exposed and vulnerable to their impacts. Here, our separate analyses of village interview surveys (364 villages) and news archives (16 sources) show that floods have major impacts on lives and livelihoods in Indonesian Borneo, and flooding risks are associated with features of the local climate and landscape, particularly land uses that have seen rapid expansions over the past 30 years. In contrast with government assessments, we find that flooding is far more widespread, and that frequent, local, events can have large cumulative impacts. Over three years, local news agencies reported floods that affected 868 settlements, 966 times (including 89 in urban areas), inundated at least 197 000 houses, and displaced more than 776 000 people, possibly as many as 1.5 million (i.e. 5%-10% of the total population). Spatial analyses based on surveys in 364 villages show that flood frequency is associated with land use in catchment areas, including forest cover and condition, and the area of wetlands, mines (open-cut coal or gold mines), and oil palm. The probability that floods have become more frequent over the past 30 years was higher for villages closer to mines, and in watersheds with more extensive oil palm, but lower in watersheds with greater cover of selectively-logged or intact forests. We demonstrate that in data-poor regions, multiple sources of information can be integrated to gain insights into the hydrological services provided by forest and wetland ecosystems, and motivate more comprehensive assessment of flooding risks and options for ecosystem-based adaptation.The objective of this study was to understand what particular crop variety requirements farmers were demanding in the context of climate change adaptation. A broad-based survey was used to collect primary data from 515 farmers. The majority of farmers interviewed perceived climatic change impacts on crop production, with more than half stating that they would rely on a locally adapted variety selection. The respondents identified yield stability, yield performance, and drought tolerance as being particularly important variety properties. In selecting varieties, their own experience, exchanges with colleagues, and recommendations from the State Plant Varieties Offices were identified as being important sources of information. The research highlights a need to reflect farmers' demands in official variety recommendations such as plant breeding. This would help support the choice of varieties in agricultural practice and reduce crop production risks in regard to climate change risk.Water has often been the source of crises and their frequency will intensify due to climate change impacts. The Niagara River Watershed provides an ideal case to study water crises as it is an international transboundary system (Canada-United States) and has both historical and current challenges associated with water quantity and quality, which resonates broadly in water basins throughout the world. The aim of this study was to understand how stakeholders perceive ecosystems and the relationship with preferences for governance approaches in the context of water governance. An online survey instrument was employed to assess perceptions of the system in terms of resilience (engineering, ecological, social-ecological, or epistemic), preferences for governance approaches (state, citizen, market, and hybrid forms), and the most pressing issues in the watershed. Responses showed that, despite demographic differences and adherence to different resilience perspectives, support was strongest for governance approaches that focused on state or state-citizen hybrid forms. The validity of the resilience typology as a grouping variable is discussed. The roles of institutional constraints, pragmatism in governance approach preferences, and the influence of multiple crises are explored in relation to the context of the study site, as well as to water governance scholarship more broadly.This paper investigates what information water resource managers think they need to make decisions on climate change adaptation. This is achieved through a hypothetical case study where participants, all actual water resource managers or in research, practitioner or administration roles linked to Australian water resources management, were given theoretical future climate scenarios and asked to make decisions based on the available information. The case study provided useful insights into why there is little evidence of effective climate change adaptation being implemented despite significant advances in climate impacts and adaptation science over the last decade. It was found that in order to bridge the gap between climate change adaptation recommendations and successful implementation at practitioner level there is a demand for: improved translation, communication and packaging of existing climate science information into sector-and location-specific impacts (e.g. hydrological interpretation of climate model rainfall projections and the associated uncertainties); attribution of historical and future hydroclimatic changes (e.g. not just what has happened or is going to happen but why and the confidence and likelihoods surrounding that); quantification of costs and benefits of any decision; and understanding of the social, political, and environmental contexts and level of acceptance associated with any decision.Social learning concepts of developed countries are often recommended for implementing strategies for climate change adaptation in developing countries. The effectiveness of these replications is questionable, because it is necessary to align the set-up of learning processes with the social, economic and environmental conditions of the local context. In this paper, we compare the theory of social learning in Learning Alliances with a Working Group for climate change adaptation in Can Tho City in Vietnam to see how far it is possible to extrapolate current social learning concepts from developed countries to developing countries. The Working Group facilitates participation processes among stakeholders to use and produce knowledge, to work together on problems and to further develop solutions. This is mostly similar to the social learning form of a Learning Alliance. However, the interactions among stakeholders in the Working Group evolve in a much more formal way, which leads to several problems caused by the relative inflexibility of the top-down stipulation of stakeholders' participation, planning procedures and solution approaches. To overcome this challenge, we recommend introducing elements of Learning Alliances to the Working Group, in order to stimulate an open dialogue with incentives and an extension of an action practice approach.Water research projects are often interdisciplinary and participatory in nature. Scientists and managers involved strive to create learning that advances science in various fields while providing benefits for society. They also face challenges of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for accountability and measurement of impacts, required by funding agencies. In this paper we tested selected M&E processes and methods for their potential to increase capacity in a cross-cultural inter-disciplinary research setting of an urban water research project. A total of eight different qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods were assessed using two processes: self-evaluation by researchers, testing five methods; and the external evaluations by stakeholders, testing three methods. Both processes were found useful. Of the five self-evaluation methods tested, the Logical Frameworks method was deemed a good planning tool but not one contributing to learning. The qualitative (Factors of Success and Obstacles/Enablers) and the Best Case/Worst Case Scenarios quantitative method were effective learning methods. Tracking Change was found suitable for measuring learning. We recommended that a combination of methods be used in order to capture the full dynamic of projects in various stages. Explicit timelines for indicators and measures of project success are recommended for managing expectations of both researchers and funding agencies.Obesity in the sub-Saharan Africa region has been portrayed as a problem of affluence, partly because obesity has been found to be more common in urban areas and among the rich. Recent findings, however, reveal rising prevalence among the poor particularly the urban poor. A growing body of literature mostly in Western countries shows that obesity among the poor is partly the result of an obesogenic-built environment. Such studies are lacking in the African context. This study examines the characteristics of the local food environment in an urban poor setting in Accra, Ghana and further investigates the associated risk of obesity for residents. Data on the local food environment was collected using geographic positioning system (GPS) technology. The body mass indices (BMI) of females (15-49 years) and males (15-59 years) were calculated from measured weight and height. Data on the socio-demographic characteristics and lifestyle behaviors of respondents was also collected through a household survey. Spatial analysis tools were used to examine the characteristics of the local food environment while the influence of the food environment on BMI was examined using a two-level multilevel model. The measures of the food environment constituted the level 2 factors while individual socio-demographic characteristics and lifestyle behaviors constituted the level 1 factors. The local food environment in the study communities is suggestive of an obesogenic food environment characterized by an abundance of out-of-home cooked foods, convenience stores, and limited fruits and vegetables options. The results of the multilevel analysis reveal a 0.2 kg/m(2) increase in BMI for every additional convenience store and a 0.1 kg/m(2) reduction in BMI for every out-of-home cooked food place available in the study area after controlling for individual socio-demographic characteristics, lifestyle behaviors, and community characteristics. The findings of this study indicate that the local food environment in urban poor Accra is associated with increased risk of obesity through providing access to convenience stores. In order to reduce the risk of obesity in these urban poor communities, there is the need to regulate the availability of and access to convenience stores while also encouraging healthier offerings in convenience stores.This article explores the role of international climate change adaptation law in promoting the use of genetically engineered crops as an adaptation strategy. The severity of climate change impacts and the realization that, by now, some adverse effects are inevitable, has intensified the urgency to devise effective adaptation strategies. Genetically engineered climate-resilient crops are presented as one possible means to adapt to the predicted adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture and crop yields. Despite increased attention on the research and development of climate-resilient crops, particularly by private sector seed corporations, there are many controversies surrounding this proposed adaptation strategy. The key contentions relate to apprehensions about genetically engineered crops more generally, the effectiveness of climate-resilient crops, and the involvement of the private sector in international climate change adaptation initiatives. The main argument in this article is that the emerging field of international climate change adaptation law contributes to promoting genetically engineered climate-resilient crops as a possible means of adaptation. Moreover, international adaptation law creates an enabling environment for the active engagement of private sector corporations in devising adaptation strategies. Notwithstanding controversies over genetically engineered crops and the role of the private sector, there has been little consideration so far of the influence of the growing international legal regime on climate change on the types of adaptation strategies that are devised and promoted.Climate change (CC) potentially affects people travel behaviour, due to extreme weather conditions. This is particularly true for pedestrians, that are more exposed to weather conditions. Introducing the effect of this change in transport modelling allows to analyse and plan walking networks taking into-consideration the climatic variable. The aim of this work is to develop a tool that can support planning and design of walking networks, by assessing the effects of actions oriented to increase resilience with respect to extreme weather conditions (CC adaptation). An integrated approach is used, thus combining transport and land-use planning concepts with elements of outdoor thermal comfort and network accessibility. Walking networks are analysed through centrality indexes, including thermal comfort aspects into a general cost function of links and weighted nodes. The method has been applied to the walking network inside the Campus of the University of Catania (Italy), which includes different functions and where pedestrian paths are barely used by people. Results confirm that this tool is sensitive to the variables representing weather conditions and it can measure the influence of CC adaptation measures (e.g. vegetation) on walking attitude and on the performance of the walking network. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This paper updates the SCVI (Socio-Climatic Vulnerability Index) maps developed by Torres et al. (2012) for Brazil, by using the new Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) projections and more recent 2010 social indicators data. The updated maps differ significantly from their earlier versions in two main ways. First, they show that heavily populated metropolitan areas - namely Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Salvador, Manaus, Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo - and a large swath of land across the states of So Paulo, Minas Gerais and Bahia now have the highest SCVI values, that is, their populations are the most vulnerable to climate change in the country. Second, SCVI values for Northeast Brazil are considerably lower compared to the previous index version. An analysis of the causes of such difference reveals that changes in climate projections between CMIP3 and CMIP5 are responsible for most of the change between the different SCVI values and spatial distribution, while changes in social indicators have less influence, despite recent countrywide improvements in social indicators as a result of aggressive anti-poverty programs. These results raise the hypothesis that social reform alone may not be enough to decrease people's vulnerability to future climatic changes. Whereas the coarse spatial resolution and relatively simplistic formulation of the SCVI may limit how useful these maps are at informing decision-making at the local level, they can provide a valuable input for large-scale policies on climate change adaptation such as those of the Brazilian National Policy on Climate Change Adaptation.A sample of 1226 students at the University of the South Pacific, the premier tertiary institution in the Pacific Islands, answered a range of questions intended to understand future island decision-makers' attitudes towards Nature and concern about climate change. Questions asking about church attendance show that the vast majority of participants have spiritual values that explain their feelings of connectedness to Nature which in turn may account for high levels of pessimism about the current state of the global/Pacific environment. Concern about climate change as a future livelihood stressor in the Pacific region is ubiquitous at both societal and personal levels. While participants exhibited a degree of understanding matching objective rankings about the vulnerability of their home islands/countries, a spatial optimism bias was evident in which 'other places' were invariably regarded as 'worse'. Through their views on climate change concern, respondents also favoured a psychological distancing of environmental risk in which 'other places' were perceived as more exposed than familiar ones. Influence from spirituality is implicated in both findings. Most interventions intended to reduce exposure to environmental risk and to enable effective and sustainable adaptation to climate change in the Pacific Islands region have failed to acknowledge influences on decisionmaking of spirituality and connectedness to Nature. Messages that stress environmental conservation and stewardship, particularly if communicated within familiar and respected religious contexts, are likely to be more successful than secular ones.Evidence on the impacts of climate change is rapidly increasing but there is little change to the speed of climate adaptation by governments and individuals. There are multiple barriers to climate adaptation, including among others: the lack of the public understanding of risks, lack of leadership and availability of resources to adapt. In this study, we assess to what extent coastal residents understand their properties' flood risk, and what predicts their risk perception and adaptation behaviour. We surveyed 420 individuals in South East Queensland projected to be within the permanent or temporary flood zone in 2100 based on combined sea-level rise and storm surge scenarios. We assessed the correlations between the projected (i.e. objective) and perceived risk of inundation, adaptation behaviour, and the individual characteristics considered to influence risk perception and adaptation. While we found a correlation between perceived and some objective flood risks, perceived risk only partially reflected objective risk. Other factors that influenced risk perception were previous experience of flooding events, belief in climate change, risk aversion, age and gender. Factors driving risk perception varied with the type (permanent, temporary) and frequency of flooding event (1 in 20 or 1 in 100 years). Previous experience with extreme event impacts and belief in climate change influenced all future perceived risks. However, even after being impacted by an extreme event, adaptation was moderate (58 %). Personal as well as environmental factors influence the likelihood of adaptation. The moderate adaptation response within our case study is likely a result of most respondents considering large flooding events to be rare and of limited impact, and anticipating future government aid to overcome flooding damage costs. Existing attitudes towards risk, which influence the extent of proactive adaptation, should be of concern to governments who will likely be facing these costs at increasing frequencies.Making decisions and efficiently allocating resources to reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities requires, among other things, an understanding of the factors that make a society vulnerable to climate and coastal hazards. One way of doing this is through the analysis of spatial data. We demonstrate how to apply GIS methods to spatially represent socioeconomic vulnerability in Grenada, a tropical small island developing state (SIDS) in the Eastern Caribbean. Our model combines spatial features representing variables of social sensitivity, community adaptive capacity, and community exposure to flooding in an integrated vulnerability index. We draw from the fields of climate change adaptation, disaster management, and poverty and development to select our variables enabling unique, cross sector, applications of our assessment. Mapping our results illustrates that vulnerability to flooding is not evenly distributed across the country and is not driven by the same factors in all areas of Grenada. This indicates a need for the implementation of different strategies in communities across Grenada to help effectively reduce vulnerability to climate and coastal hazards. The approach presented in this paper can be used to address national issues on climate change adaptation, disaster management, and poverty and development and more effectively utilize funds in order to reduce community vulnerability to natural hazards today and in the future.Estimating the exposure of agriculture to climate variability and change can help us understand key vulnerabilities and improve adaptive capacity, which is vital to secure and increase world food production to feed its growing population. A number of indices to estimate exposure are available in literature. However, testing or validating them is difficult and reveals a considerable variability, and no systematic methodology has been developed to guide users in selecting indices for particular applications. This need is addressed in this paper by developing a flowchart from a conceptual model that uses a system's approach. Also, we compare five approaches to estimate exposure indices (EIs) to study the exposure of agriculture to climate variability and change: single stressor-mean climate, single stressor-extreme climate, multiple stressor-mean climate, multiple stressor-extreme climate; and combinations of the above approaches. The developed flowchart requires gathering information on the region of study, including its agriculture, stressor(s), climate factor(s) (CF), period of interest and the method of aggregation. The flowchart was applied to a case study in Kansas to better understand the five approaches to estimate EIs and the implications of the choices made in each step on the estimated the exposure. The flowchart provides options that guide EI estimation by selecting the most appropriate stressor(s), associated CF(s), and aggregation methods when a detailed methodological analysis is possible, or proposes a default method when data or resources do not allow a detailed analysis. Climate adaptation involves integration of a multitude of factors across complex systems. A more standardized approach to assessing exposure can promote information sharing across different locations and systems as this rapidly evolving area of study moves forward.Mainstreaming climate change adaptation (CCA) links adaptation and sustainable development goals by integrating climate change information, concerns, and considerations into existing development planning, policy- and decision-making processes. It is gaining popularity in developing countries, but its operationalization has been slow because of the challenges that hinder its on-ground application. To understand the nature of these challenges, this paper developed a four-stage mixed methodology that examined mainstreaming of CCA into local land use planning in Albay, Philippines. The methodology includes a modified Institutional Analysis and Development framework for the qualitative analysis, and 20 mainstreaming indicators for the quantitative assessment. The data used in the analysis were collected from a survey and the interviews conducted among the key players in local land use planning in Albay. The correlation analysis showed that the challenges related to knowledge and awareness, local government prioritization, institutional incentives, availability of funds, access to funds, and stability of funds had the highest frequency of interconnections with the other challenges. Also, a strong tripartite relationship among local leadership, local government prioritization, and local government's commitment to CCA was observed. The paper suggests that mainstreaming challenges are interconnected at varying degrees. It presents analytical tools and quantifiable measures that can be used to develop a reliable basis for the qualitative assessments of adaptation needs and effectiveness. These sets of information can help analyst and practitioners make informed decisions regarding the operationalization of mainstreaming CCA.Background: The world's population is increasingly becoming urbanized. If the current urban growth rate is to continue, new and unprecedented challenges for food security will be inevitable. Dietary diversity has been used to ascertain food security status albeit at the multicountry and country levels. Thus, household-level studies in urban settings, particularly in sub-Sahara African, are few. Yet, it is imperative that assessments of food security are undertaken particularly in urban settings, due to the projected fast rate of urbanization and the challenges of attaining food security. Objective: To examine household characteristics and dietary diversity. Methods: The study uses data from 452 households from the second round of the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) EDULINK urban poverty and health study. Bivariate and multivariate analyses are undertaken. Results: Mean dietary diversity for all households is 6.8. Vegetables have the highest diversity, followed by cereal-based and grain products. Household characteristics that have statistically significant associations with dietary diversity include sex and level of education of household head, household wealth quintile, and source of food. Conclusions: There is high dietary diversity in the study communities of Accra but low consumption of foods rich in micronutrient, such as fruits and milk/dairy products. The study brings to fore issues related to resource-disadvantaged entities of the urban system, namely, females, poor households, and the non-educated who have food insecurity problems.This paper utilizes a multi-level governance framework to explain how and at what scale climate adaptation, exemplified by flood risk management, was governed in the medium-scale city of Saint Louis, Senegal. It explores how this policy sector worked toward a "resilient city'' pointing to gaps between governance as prescribed and as practiced. The paper suggests that strong coordination of climate change adaptation and flood risk management should take place at city level, reflecting the "place-based'' character of these policy sectors. However, adaptation cannot be addressed successfully at any single geographic scale or by any one category of actor. Effective collaboration across politico-administrative boundaries at multiple scales is required in order to address tensions between competing policy agendas and tackle socio-spatial inequality and vulnerability. We found that public officials at the city and regional state level encouraged some degree of citizen participation in planning and input into adaptation. However, despite emerging networks for city-level coordination and capacity to adapt to flood risks among local residents, there were limitations in how higher-level government and institutions supported the lower levels in vertical and horizontal coordination. In particular, services and investments within poor and vulnerable settlements were lacking. This undermined the capability of municipal staff for local engagement and for diverse groups of residents to become really effective partners with the government in coproducing services required to enhance resilience. More so, it limited opportunities to bring local actions to scale-beyond the city boundaries and toward transitional adaptation and transformation.Climate change is projected to constitute a significant threat to food security if no adaptation actions are taken(1,2). Transformation of agricultural systems, for example switching crop types or moving out of agriculture, is projected to be necessary in some cases(3-5). However, little attention has been paid to the timing of these transformations. Here, we develop a temporal uncertainty framework using the CMIP5 ensemble to assess when and where cultivation of key crops in sub-Saharan Africa becomes unviable. We report potential transformational changes for all major crops during the twenty-first century, as climates shift and areas become unsuitable. For most crops, however, transformation is limited to small pockets (<15% of area), and only for beans, maize and banana is transformation more widespread (similar to 30% area for maize and banana, 60% for beans). We envisage three overlapping adaptation phases to enable projected transformational changes: an incremental adaptation phase focused on improvements to crops and management, a preparatory phase that establishes appropriate policies and enabling environments, and a transformational adaptation phase in which farmers substitute crops, explore alternative livelihoods strategies, or relocate. To best align policies with production triggers for no-regret actions, monitoring capacities to track farming systems as well as climate are needed.Climate change-related risks encompass an intensification of extreme weather events, such as fluvial and pluvial flooding, droughts, storms, and heat stress. A transparent and comprehensive division of responsibilities is a necessary-but not the only-precondition for being prepared for climate change. In this paper, we present, and preliminarily test, a method for the ex-ante assessment of the division of public and private responsibilities for climate adaptation in terms of comprehensiveness, transparency, legitimacy, and effectiveness. This method proofs particularly suited for the assessment of adaptation responsibilities in combination with a sectoral approach. It helps identifying a number of shortcomings in divisions of responsibilities for climate adaptation. We conclude that this method is useful as a diagnostic tool for identifying the expected climate change preparedness level, and recommend to combine this with ex-post analyses of real-life cases of extreme events in order to assess the actual preparedness for climate change. Besides the scientific purpose of providing a generally applicable assessment method, with this method, we also intend to assist policy-makers in developing and implementing adaptation plans at various levels.This paper contributes to an enhanced understanding of present climatic conditions, observed climate trends and regional climate vulnerability of the Bhutan Himalayas. Bhutan's complex, often high-altitude terrain and the severe impact of the Indian summer monsoon leads to a strong exposure of the countries' key economic sectors (agriculture, forestry, hydropower generation and tourism) to climatic changes. Climate change also threatens Bhutan's vast biodiversity and increases the likelihood of natural hazards (e.g. glacier lake outburst floods, flash floods, droughts and forest fires). A better understanding of Bhutan's climate and its variability, as well as observed and possible climate impacts, will help in improving the handling of regional social, economic and ecologic challenges not limited to the Himalayas. Only a few climatological studies exist for the eastern Himalayas. They mainly focus on adaptation to immediate threats by glacier lake outbursts. In contrast, this paper (1) investigates the average spatial and inner-annual diversity of the air temperature regime of Bhutan, based on local meteorological observations, (2) discusses past temperature variability, based on global datasets, and (3) relates effects of observed warming to water availability, hydropower development, natural hazards, forests, biodiversity, agriculture, human health and tourism in the Bhutan Himalayas. Results indicate a large spatial and temporal temperature variability within Bhutan and considerably increasing temperatures especially over recent decades. Implications of regional climatic changes on various socio-economic sectors and possible adaptation efforts are discussed.The Carpathians are the largest European mountain range and harbour exceptional biodiversity. However, recent and anticipated changes in climate along with rapid social and economic development suggest that the region's values may not be sustained. We strived to identify the main regional climate change hot-spots and evaluate the distribution of climatically exposed land-use types and ecosystems. The analysis was based on 10 climate models driven by the emission scenario A1B. To identify the hot-spots, we adopted a methodology based on change trajectories in a multidimensional climate space. Three hot-spots were in the Western Carpathians (Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary), two were in Ukraine, and three were in the Romanian and Serbian Carpathians. Regions with the highest aggregate climate exposure (i.e. above 70 % of the regional range) were mostly covered by broadleaved forests (39 %), agricultural land (30 %), and pastures and woodlands (15 %). These regions also contained 15 % of protected areas and 36 % of the total human population in the Carpathians. While growing season length was the main factor affecting hot-spot magnitude in the north-west, precipitation-related variables were the main factors in the east and south. Analysis of inter-climate model variability indicated that the level of confidence in hot-spot position and magnitude differed among hot-spots. In addition to identifying a large-scale regional pattern of climate change, we showed that there are sub-regions with remarkably high climate exposure. The hot-spot distribution in lower elevations suggests that Carpathian ecosystems in water-limited environment may be particularly exposed to climate change.Potato (Solanum tuberosum L) is a major food commodity becoming increasingly important for food security, especially in the developing world. The rising demand for potatoes combined with yield gaps and potential adverse impacts from climate change call' for strategies for yield improvement and environmental adaptation. Crop growth models can help identify and assess such strategies. In this study, the SUBSTOR potato model was used in a systematic assessment of all cultivar parameters in the model in a range of environments including temperate, subtropical, and tropical regions to identify options for future crop improvement and to develop strategies for climate change adaptation in potato production. Our results show that yield responses to changes in cultivar parameters are specific to the environment. Some changes are less effective in subtropical and tropical environments and more effective in increasing yields in temperate environments. Solar radiation, day length, and temperature are the environmental factors that constrain the effectiveness of cultivar parameters in changing yields. The simulated variation in yields among environments was larger than the variation from changes in cultivar parameters. The impact of cultivar parameter changes on yield also varied with the cultivar parameter. The potential tuber growth rate was the cultivar parameter with the strongest effect on yields. Changes in the potential tuber growth rate parameter can lead to large yield changes in tropical highlands and temperate environments that have high solar radiation to ensure sufficient assimilate production for a larger sink. Results also suggest that improving crop management (e.g., N input) is more important for increasing yields than the potential in cultivar improvement. The study showed that crop modeling can help assess alternative strategies of yield improvement and support targeting and prioritization of efforts to improve crop productivity across different environments, based on an improved understanding of genotype by environment by management interactions. Results also showed how crop models can yield insights relevant for climate change adaptation even when only using weather data of the current climate. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Recent studies have highlighted the importance of trees and agroforestry in climate change adaptation and mitigation. This paper analyzes how farmers, members of their households, and community leaders in the Wahig-Inabanga watershed, Bohol province in the Philippines perceive of climate change, and define and value the roles of trees in coping with climate risks. Focus group discussions revealed that farmers and community leaders had observed changes in rainfall and temperature over the years. They also had positive perceptions of tree roles in coping with climate change, with most timber tree species valued for regulating functions, while non-timber trees were valued as sources of food and income. Statistical analysis of the household survey results was done through linear probability models for both determinants of farmers' perceived changes in climate, and perceived importance of tree roles in coping with climate risks. Perceiving of changes in rainfall was more likely among farmers who had access to electricity, had access to water for irrigation, and derived climate information from government agencies and mass media, and less likely among farmers who were members of farmers' organizations. On the other hand, perceiving of an increase in temperature was more likely among famers who were members of women's organizations and had more off/non-farm sources of income, and less likely among those who derived climate information from government agencies. Meanwhile, marginal effects of the regression on perceived importance of trees in coping with climate change revealed positively significant relationships with the following predictor variables: access to electricity, number of off/non-farm sources of income, having trees planted by household members, observed increase in temperature and decline in yield, and sourcing climate information from government agencies. In contrast, a negatively significant relationship was observed between recognition of the importance of tree roles, and level of education, and deriving income from tree products. In promoting tree-based adaptation, we recommend improving access to necessary inputs and resources, exploring the potentials of farmer-to-farmer extension, using participatory approaches to generate farmer-led solutions based on their experiences of climate change, and initiating government-led extension to farmers backed by non-government partners.Although China has experienced a wide variety of regional conflicts between water scarcity and electricity generation, there are few comprehensive quantifications that explicitly reveal the location and severity of these conflicts. Triggered by the soaring need for such information, we performed a high-resolution evaluation and projection of the spatial vulnerability of thermoelectric power generation to water scarcity problems. The study provides a comprehensive assessment by incorporating thermoelectric plants' reliance on water, local water supply stress and future impacts brought about by planning and climate change into the analysis simultaneously. To measure the vulnerability of thermoelectric plants to water scarcity, a vulnerability index was constructed and multi-disciplinary approaches were integrated to quantify this index. Seven hotpots in North China were highlighted as power-vulnerable to water scarcity currently. In order to fulfill the power generation target in the future, less-vulnerable watersheds identified by this study are suggested to become the sites of future power plants. Besides, lowering the water withdrawal intensity of power plants alone is not enough to solve the vulnerability concerns. Instead, it is necessary to implement other water management, including water rights allocation in the trans boundary river basins. This paper also highlights regions where climate change will threaten power generation by decreasing the water availability. These insights are valuable for adding the alleviation of water and electricity conflicts to climate change adaptation agenda. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background and Aims: From 2004 to 2013, the vineyard area in the United Kingdom (UK) increased 148%. Observed climate change and underlying weather variability were assessed for their influence on the development and viability of UK viticulture. Methods and Results: The perspectives of grapegrowers in the UK on climate change and weather variability were complemented by a quantitative analysis of climate and weather data (1954-2013) for the main UK viticultural regions. The variability of growing season average temperature (GST) was calculated and also mapped using a modelling approach. Since 1993, GST has consistently been above the 13 degrees C cool climate viticulture threshold. Alone, GST does not reliably assure yield predictability but does correlate more closely following the recent increasing UK focus on sparkling wine cultivars. June precipitation demonstrates the strongest relationship with yield. Conclusions: Increasing GST superficially suggests enhanced UK cool climate viticultural opportunities, but critically masks the additional impact of shorter term temperature and precipitation events and a high degree of inter-annual variability that continues to threaten productivity. A recent change in dominant UK vine cultivars appears to have increased viticultural sensitivity to inter-annual weather variability. Significance of the Study: This first quantitative and qualitative analysis of climate vulnerability in UK viticulture identifies threats and opportunities and helps steer studies of the impact of future climate change.Urban heat island (UHI) describes the higher temperature that occurs in built-up areas compared to surrounding natural landscapes. The article identifies the evidence of UHI in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the extent to which the Territory is addressing this through urban planning and climate adaptation regimes. Remotely sensed data were used to retrieve land surface temperature to outline the spatial form of surface heat hotspots. It was found that established town centres in the Territory have hotspots. Hotspots were also found in grasslands, bare ground and dry forests. Research from other jurisdictions provides insights on potential UHI responses at city, neighbourhood and building scales. Whilst current ACT Government planning and adaptation regimes do not address UHI explicitly, they do promote urban forests, integrated open space and urban water bodies which, along with various building standards and guides, can help ameliorate UHI. The ACT has adopted the compact city' as a future development strategy. Urban intensification will occur in areas that are already identified as hotspots. This, along with the potential impacts of climate change, will require more explicit and increased focus on UHI in the future.The rising popularity of biodiversity offsetting as a tool for balancing biodiversity losses from development with equivalent gains elsewhere has sparked debate on many fronts. The fundamental questions are the following: Is offsetting good, bad, or at least better than the status quo for biodiversity conservation outcomes, and what do we need to know to decide? We present a concise synthesis of the most contentious issues related to biodiversity offsetting, categorized as ethical, social, technical, or governance challenges. In each case, we discuss avenues for reducing disagreement over these issues and identify those that are likely to remain unresolved. We argue that there are many risks associated with the unscrutinized expansion of offset policy. Nevertheless, governments are increasingly adopting offset policies, so working rapidly to clarify and-where possible-to resolve these issues is essential.The impacts of global environmental change create new challenges and opportunities for indigenous peoples worldwide. Yet, there remains limited recognition that indigenous knowledge frameworks could (and should) influence the processes and outcomes of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This paper presents insights relating to indigenous issues in a global environmental change context from two workshops, which were held in Brisbane, Australia, and Umea, Sweden. These workshops were attended by more than 30 indigenous and non-indigenous researchers, natural resource managers, policy-makers, and representatives from government and non-governmental organizations from across Asia, Oceania, and Scandinavia. This paper builds on workshop participants' insights and illuminates key components of the process of co-creation of knowledges for and with indigenous communities, and describes some of the main challenges to, and opportunities for, transdisciplinary and cross-cultural knowledge production. We argue that indigenous methodologies offer important lessons for current efforts within global sustainability research to integrate different knowledges and design and conduct research in culturally and ethical respectful manner.Adaptation services are the ecosystem processes and services that benefit people by increasing their ability to adapt to change. Benefits may accrue from existing but newly used services where ecosystems persist or from novel services supplied following ecosystem transformation. Ecosystem properties that enable persistence or transformation are important adaptation services because they support future options. The adaptation services approach can be applied to decisions on trade-offs between currently valued services and benefits from maintaining future options. For example, ecosystem functions and services of floodplains depend on river flows. In those regions of the world where climate change projections are for hotter, drier conditions, floods will be less frequent and floodplains will either persist, though with modified structure and function, or transform to terrestrial (flood-independent) ecosystems. Many currently valued ecosystem services will reduce in supply or become unavailable, but new options are provided by adaptation services. We present a case study from the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, for operationalizing the adaptation services concept for floodplains and wetlands. We found large changes in flow and flood regimes are likely under a scenario of +1.6 degrees C by 2030, even with additional water restored to rivers under the proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We predict major changes to floodplain ecosystems, including contraction of riparian forests and woodlands and expansion of terrestrial, drought-tolerant vegetation communities. Examples of adaptation services under this scenario include substitution of irrigated agriculture with dryland cropping and floodplain grazing; mitigation of damage from rarer, extreme floods; and increased tourism, recreational, and cultural values derived from fewer, smaller wetlands that can be maintained with environmental flows. Management for adaptation services will require decisions on where intervention can enable ecosystem persistence and where transformation is inevitable. New ways of managing water that include consideration of the increasing importance of adaptation services requires major changes to decision-making that better account for landscape heterogeneity and large-scale change rather than attempting to maintain ecosystems in fixed states.Complexities of the post-NPM era have resulted into a new governance approach based on 'collaboration', a network-based model that links various stakeholders [state and non-state actors], ostensibly to maximise public value. The 'consensus model' has its underpinning 'rules of the game'; without which collaborative outcomes may end up being conflictual and counter-productive. Adopting a critical stage review, this paper draws mainly from theoretical and recent empirical literature to unpack the factors that catalyse successful collaborative natural resource governance. We reflect on these to design an 'ABC framework' aimed at providing signpost to agencies, governments and conveners of collaboration on how to execute this socio-technical process to maximise value. The framework hinges on three broad pillars: Adopting and advancing human skills, Building integrity and legitimacy and Creating a sense of attachment to the resource in question. We discuss these with specific indicators synchronized from recent natural resources collaboration experiences in the literature. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The effects of the El Nio Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-mediated environmental changes to marine resources were long recognized; however, species-specific responses were also reported to vary, possibly more so, under the emerging event-to-event diversity of the ENSO conditions. Hence, the objective of this study is to characterize the potential impacts of the ENSO-regulated environmental variability to squid habitat in the central North Pacific under the different ENSO flavors, using habitat models developed from at least a decade of fishery-dependent dataset and environmental parameters. Our findings revealed that the potential squid habitats were largely influenced by ENSO-forced environmental changes during the squid's spawning and nursery periods, resulting in substantial reduction/enhancement of available habitats in the succeeding summers of Central Pacific El Nio/La Nia, where the latter led to an expansion of favorable spawning and nursery grounds. However, the autumn-winter periods of weaker and short-lived Eastern Pacific El Nio showed elevated potential habitats due to minimal sea surface temperature drop and close proximity of spawning and nursery grounds to optimal feeding environments. The quick, albeit variable, squids' responses to ENSO flavors accentuate their promising potential as ecological beacons under climate changes, aiding the development of adaptive management strategies for commercially exploited fisheries.There is a large number of peer-reviewed publications reporting that a changing climate is one of the biggest challenges humanity will have during the 21st century. With population growth and the need to significantly increase agricultural production per unit of area during the 21st century, a changing climate will put additional stress on soil resources. Soil and water conservation will be key for the future of humanity. Professional societies in the area of agriculture and soil and water conservation have recognized the importance that soil resources will have for humanity during this century and have made calls for implementation of worldwide soil and water conservation. For example, in 2010 the Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) invited a group of scientists to review the literature about the potential to use conservation practices for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Delgado et al. (2011) paper was used by the SWCS to develop and adopt a position statement about the importance of using soil and water conservation practices to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The International Soil Conservation Organization (ISCO) invited the lead author to present the paper as a keynote presentation at the ISCO 2013 conference. The European Society of Soil Conservation (ESSC) published a short communication about this paper in one of their newsletters in 2014. The World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (WASWAC) also invited the lead author to present a keynote presentation on this topic at the 2015 WASWAC annual meeting in Nanchang. This paper (the Nanchang Communication) is a summary of the Delgado et al. (2011) paper that was used by the SWCS to develop the SWCS position statement related to soil and water conservation and climate change. The Nanchang Communication (this paper) was used by WASWAC to develop a position statement about the immediate need for implementation of conservation practices for mitigation of and adaptation to climate change to achieve food security in the 21st century. These papers (Delgado et al., 2011, Nanchang Communication), and the SWCS and WASWAC position statements, support the conclusions from the worldwide literature that without implementation of soil and water conservation practices for climate change mitigation and adaptation, the survival of life, including our own species, will be in jeopardy, since soils will be key to meeting the higher demands for food during the 21st century. (C) 2016 International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation and China Water and Power Press. Production and Hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND licenseUrban footprint reduction will be the key to climate adaptation and mitigation as most of the footprint of our civilization has its source in cities. WWF Earth Hour City Challenge has been collecting data on carbon footprint reduction commitments and actions from cities since 2010 with 166 cities participating in the Challenge during its 2014 iteration. A research project now envisions to build a collaborative research team to identify transformative actions for urban footprint reduction utilizing and building on the Challenge data. The project will result in delineation of transition pathways for key urban typologies (especially fast growing cities), will help develop a framework for identifying high leverage points for phase change in complex urban and other systems, and will propose tools for selecting ideal indicator systems for different types of cities and different urban governance objectives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Global climate change is becoming one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. This article proposes a psychological perspective of climate change adaptation. Climate change-related severe adverse weather events may trigger mental health problems, including increased post-traumatic stress disorder ( PTSD), depression, anxiety, violence, and even suicide. Forced migration could be considered a coping method for dealing with weather events, but it may also pose a psychological threat. People respond to severe weather events in different ways based on their individual characteristics. Psychological risks from adverse weather events are mediated and moderated by these factors, which are influenced by personal cognition, affect, and motivation. Examinations from a psychological perspective, which have been neglected in the science of climate change thus far, may provide keys to successful adaptation and the prevention of serious psychological problems resulting from the experience of severe weather events. A new prevention strategy has been suggested for coping with climate threats through encouraging attitude change, establishing proactive support systems for vulnerable groups, establishing a PTSD network, and implementing a stress inoculation program.Wetlands provide a diverse range of ecosystem services supporting livelihoods of many people. Despite their value, wetlands are continuously being degraded. There is scant information on individual wetlands, people's dependency and their exploitation at a local scale. We therefore assessed wetland ecosystem services, the drivers of change and impacts of those drivers on ecosystem services and people's dependency through a case study of the Maguri-Motapung Beel wetlands of Assam, India. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews and community workshops. The analyses showed a total of 29 ecosystem services, and high dependency on these with five out of seven livelihood strategies sourced from ecosystem services. Over-exploitation of wetland resources and siltation were reported as the major direct drivers of change with impacts on both ecosystem services and people's livelihoods. Drastic decreases in availability of thatch, fish stocks, fodder and tourism were observed. This suggests that there is an urgent need for a comprehensive participatory management plan. Actions are needed to maintain the Maguri-Motapung Beel wetlands and the flow of services in order to sustain people's livelihoods in the area. With an estimated 50% global loss of wetlands in the last century and the loss of 5,000 square kilometers a year in Asia alone, the loss of ecosystem services and livelihood impacts shown in our study may be typical of what is occurring in the region and perhaps globally.Effective publicly developed adaptation strategies are crucial in managing the impacts of Climate Change. Adaptation strategy development is particularly complex in estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems because of their diverse environmental values, extensive human utilisation and the complex socioecological systems they support. Although many generic adaptation frameworks are available they cannot provide specific guidance for locally relevant strategy development. In contrast, situation-specific tools work well for their intended purpose but are usually unsuitable for a different situation. The gap between generic frameworks and situation-specific tools is addressed in this study by developing a set of general principles to provide guidance for the efficient and robust development of adaptation strategies. The nine principles comprise a conceptualisation of the various factors that are likely to have an effect on the success or otherwise of an adaptation strategy and they apply in any situation. An example 'adaptation checklist' that serves as a guide to practitioners in the field, will help ensure that all critical components are covered during the development of an adaptation strategy. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban areas are increasingly at risk from climate change, with negative impacts predicted for human health, the economy and ecosystems(1,2). These risks require responses from cities to improve their resilience. Policymakers need to understand current adaptation spend to plan comprehensively and effectively. Through the measurement of spend in the newly defined 'adaptation economy', we analyse current climate change adaptation efforts in ten megacities. In all cases, the adaptation economy remains a small part of the overall economy, representing a maximum of 0.33% of a city's gross domestic product (here referred to as GDPc). Differences in total spend are significant between cities in developed, emerging and developing countries, ranging from 15 pound million to 1,600 pound million. Comparing key subsectors, we demonstrate the differences in adaptation profiles. Developing cities have higher proportional spend on health and agriculture, whereas developed cities have higher spend on energy and water. Spend per capita and percentage of GDPc comparisons more clearly show disparities between cities. Developing country cities spend half the proportion of GDPc and significantly less per capita, suggesting that adaptation spend is driven by wealth rather than the number of vulnerable people. This indicates that current adaptation activities are insufficient in major population centres in developing and emerging economies.Adaptation strategies to reduce smallholder farmers' vulnerability to climate variability and seasonality are needed given the frequency of extreme weather events predicted to increase during the next decades in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in West Africa. We explored the linkages between selected agricultural adaptation strategies (crop diversity, soil and water conservation, trees on farm, small ruminants, improved crop varieties, fertilizers), food security, farm household characteristics and farm productivity in three contrasting agro-ecological sites in West Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana and Senegal). Differences in land area per capita and land productivity largely explained the variation in food security across sites. Based on land size and market orientation, four household types were distinguished (subsistence, diversified, extensive, intensified), with contrasting levels of food security and agricultural adaptation strategies. Income increased steadily with land size, and both income and land productivity increased with degree of market orientation. The adoption of agricultural adaptation strategies was widespread, although the intensity of practice varied across household types. Adaptation strategies improve the food security status of some households, but not all. Some strategies had a significant positive impact on land productivity, while others reduced vulnerability resulting in a more stable cash flow throughout the year. Our results show that for different household types, different adaptation strategies may be 'climate-smart'. The typology developed in this study gives a good entry point to analyse which practices should be targeted to which type of smallholder farmers, and quantifies the effect of adaptation options on household food security. Subsequently, it will be crucial to empower farmers to access, test and modify these adaptation options, if they were to achieve higher levels of food security.The European Commission (EC) introduced the concept of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) as a new planning paradigm with a focus on people's needs Planning for people. This represents a change from traditional planning approaches centred on motorized road traffic/infrastructure provision and a shift towards more sustainable transport options. SUMPs require a long-term and sustainable vision for cities and these are to pay special attention to the participation of citizens and stakeholders and to coordination of policies across sectors (transport, land use, health, energy, and so on). The EC guidelines on developing and implementing SUMPs (EC, 2013) establish the following primary objectives of this "new way of planning urban mobility": accessibility and quality of life, as well as sustainability, economic viability, social equity, health and environment quality. Since urban areas in Europe account for 23%-25% of CO2 emissions from transport (EC, 2013b; EEA, 2014), SUMPs are expected to contribute to meet longterm climate change policy goals. However, it is less clear how SUMPs can contribute to address key societal challenges such as equity issues in accessibility. According to the EC guidelines SUMPs are still non-existing concepts in most European member states. However, several cities in Europe and beyond have already formulated and adopted SUMPs. This paper is built on a review of former voluntary SUMPs developed in Portugal. A sample of forty case studies is considered in the analysis. It aims: a) to understand how climate change goals and equity issues in accessibility have been addressed through the first generation of SUMPs; b) to reflect on the role of SUMPs as tools to answer climate change goals without putting at risk social equity issues, and c) to outline further research needs in the SUMP approach. The research results are expected to give insights into social equity needs in urban transport and climate change adaptation policies in Europe. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urban heat island (UHI) countermeasures are of growing interest for cities. Field studies of their micro-climatic effects are scarce, yet are essential to properly evaluate their effectiveness and that of anti-UHI policies. The standard approach to determining their micro-climatic effects is to study the difference in measurements made at case and control stations. However, measurements conducted during a pavement-watering experiment in Paris, France reveal that this method mistakes preexisting differences for pavement-watering effects. An alternative approach based on a two-sample t-test was therefore developed and tested with the pavement-watering field trial as a case study. The proposed method proved able to determine the effects of pavement-watering, without misinterpreting preexisting differences. In the process of the case study, watering was found to reduce maximum daily heat stress, while having smaller statistically significant UHI-reducing effects. The greatest effects were reached during the day for all parameters with maximum reductions of 0.79 degrees C, 1.76 degrees C and 1.03 degrees C for air, mean radiant and UTCI-equivalent temperatures and a 4.1% increase in relative humidity, while UHI-mitigation reached up to -0.22 degrees C. The methodology developed is not specific to pavement-watering and recommendations for its improvement and its application to the field-evaluation of other UHI countermeasures are made. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In recent years, many North American municipalities have adopted urban forest management plans. These plans typically include ambitious tree planting goals, with a focus on increasing native species' presence. Having a high percentage of native species can increase ecological integrity, but there are also benefits associated with planting non-native trees in urban forests. The possibility of using assisted migration as a way for cities to respond to climate change raises additional questions about the importance of managing for native species. This study explores the ways native tree species are treated in urban forestry planning and practice in light of on-going debates around ecological integrity, non-native benefits, and assisted migration through a case study of municipalities in Carolinian Canada (Ontario, Canada). In particular, we (1) examine the role of native species in urban forest management plans, (2) explore municipal foresters' attitudes and actions related to native tree species, and (3) determine if municipalities with and without formal management plans are making different decisions regarding native tree species planting. The objectives are addressed by examining management plans and interviewing urban foresters from municipalities with and without formal plans. We found all of the municipalities with management plans emphasize native species, and many justify their planting as a way to increase ecological integrity. These municipalities are also considering more of the managerial aspects associated with native species than municipalities without a plan. However, only a fraction of species native to the region are available through nursery stock, meaning many native species are not planted by municipalities. Most municipalities are also passively practicing assisted migration without considering the ways it can be used as a climate change adaptation tool. The gaps between municipal plans and practice are discussed, as well as future research needed to help guide treatment of native species in urban forests. (C) 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.This article examines practical measures for integrating risk assessment of extreme weather events into spatial planning. An approach that integrates risks due to ice storms into spatial suitability analysis is presented in two case studies: in siting transmission and distribution power lines, and in siting windfarms. Assessment of risks to the power grid due to ice storms is carried out first. The results of the risk assessment are then used as a basis for analysing proposed alternatives for siting high-voltage power lines and as input in analysing the suitability of space for siting windfarms. The results of a cost-benefit analysis of various alternatives for siting windfarms (an alternative that takes risks due to ice storms into account and one that does not) show that the damage caused by extreme weather events has a significant impact on the economic viability of a plan. There are two options for integrating risk assessment results into planning electric energy infrastructure: by updating engineering standards and by avoiding areas where greater damage to infrastructure due to extreme weather events is expected. Risk assessment provides important information that can affect decisions about land use and decisions about technical measures for enhancing the physical resilience of infrastructure.Many cities worldwide seek to understand local policy priorities among their general populations. This study explores how differences in local conditions and among citizens within and across Mumbai, India shape local infrastructure (e.g. energy, water, transport) and environmental (e.g. managing pollution, climate-related extreme weather events) policy priorities for change that may or may not be aligned with local government action or global environmental sustainability concerns such as low-carbon development. In this rapidly urbanizing city, multiple issues compete for prominence, ranging from improved management of pollution and extreme weather to energy and other infrastructure services. To inform a broader perspective of policy priorities for urban development and risk mitigation, a survey was conducted among over 1200 citizens. The survey explored the state of local conditions, the challenges citizens face, and the ways in which differences in local conditions (socio-institutional, infrastructure, and health-related) demonstrate inequities and influence how citizens perceive risks and rank priorities for the future design and implementation of local planning, policy, and community-based efforts. With growing discussion and tensions surrounding the new urban sustainable development goal, announced by the UN in late September 2015, and a new global urban agenda document to be agreed upon at 'Habitat III', issues on whether sustainable urbanization priorities should be set at the international, national or local level remain controversial. As such, this study aims to first understand determinants of and variations in local priorities across one city, with implications discussed for local-to-global urban sustainability. Findings from survey results indicate the determinants and variation in conditions such as age, assets, levels of participation in residential action groups, the health outcome of chronic asthma, and the infrastructure service of piped water provision to homes are significant in shaping the top infrastructure and environmental policy priorities that include water supply and sanitation, air pollution, waste, and extreme heat. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Black carbon aerosol (BCA) in the Arctic has profound impacts on the global climate system through radiation processes. Despite its enormous impacts, current global scale models, powerful tools for estimating overall impact, tend to underestimate the levels of BCA in the Arctic over several seasons. Using a global aerosol transport simulation with a horizontal grid resolution of 3.5 km, we determined that a higher resolution significantly reduced the underestimation of BCA levels in the Arctic, mainly due to an enhancement of the representation of low-pressure and frontal systems. The BCA mass loading in the Arctic simulated with 3.5-km grid resolution was 4.2-times larger than that simulated with coarse (56-km) grid resolution. Our results also indicated that grid convergence had not occurred on both the contrast between the cloud/cloud free areas and the poleward BCA mass flux, despite the use of the 3.5-km grid resolution. These results suggest that a global aerosol transport simulation using kilometre-order or finer grid resolution is required for more accurate estimation of the distribution of pollutants in the Arctic.Governments have a key role to play in the process of climate adaptation, through the development and implementation of public policy. Governments have access to a diverse array of instruments that can be employed to adapt their operations and influence the behaviour of individuals, organizations, and other governments. However, the choice of policy instrument is political, because it affects the distribution of benefits and costs, and entrenches institutional procedures and resources that are difficult to redeploy. This article identifies four key governing resources that governments employ in the service of adaptation and analyses these resources using criteria drawn from the policy studies literature. For each category, specific policy instruments are described, and examples are provided to illustrate how they have been used in particular jurisdictions. The article also discusses instrument selection, focusing on trade-offs among the instrument attributes, processes for setting the stage for instrument choice, jurisdictional constraints on instrument selection, and ways to avoid negative vertical and horizontal policy interplay. Policy relevance Adaptation is a nascent field of public policy, and courses of action to reduce vulnerability and build adaptive capacity are in their infancy. This article contributes to policy development and analysis by identifying the range of policy instruments available to governments and analysing concrete ways in which they are employed to implement adaptation policy objectives. Taking stock of these adaptation tools and comparing their behavioural assumptions and attributes helps to illuminate potential policy options, and to evaluate their technical viability, political acceptability, and economic feasibility. Providing examples of how these instruments have been implemented successfully in other jurisdictions offers ideas and lessons for public officials.As developing countries around the world formulate policies to address climate change, concerns remain as to whether the voices of those most exposed to climate risk are represented in those policies. Developing countries face significant challenges for contextualizing global-scale scientific research into national political dynamics and downscaling global frameworks to sub-national levels, where the most affected are presumed to live. This article critiques the ways in which the politics of representation and climate science are framed and pursued in the process of climate policy development, and contributes to an understanding of the relative effectiveness of globally framed, generic policy mechanisms in vulnerable and politically volatile contexts. Based on this analysis, it also outlines opportunities for the possibility of improving climate policy processes to contest technocratic framing and generic international adaptation solutions. Policy relevance Nepal's position as one of the countries most at risk from climate change in the Himalayas has spurred significant international support to craft climate policy responses over the past few years. Focusing on the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) and the Climate Change Policy, this article examines the extent to which internationally and scientifically framed climate policy in Nepal recognizes the unfolding political mobilizations around the demand for a representative state and equitable adaptation to climate risks. This is particularly important in Nepal, where political unrest in the post-conflict transition after the end of the civil war in 2006 has focused around struggles over representation for those historically on the political margins. Arguing that vulnerability to climate risk is produced in conjunction with social and political conditions, and that not everyone in the same locality is equally vulnerable, we demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of the politics of representation for climate policy making in Nepal. However, so far, this policy making has primarily been shaped through a technocratic framing that avoids political contestations and downplays the demand for inclusive and deliberative processes. Based on this analysis, we identify the need for a flexible, contextually grounded, and multi-scalar approach to political representation while also emphasizing the need for downscaling climate science that can inform policy development and implementation to achieve fair and effective adaptation to climate change.Holocene sequences in the humid tropical region of Kerala, South-western (SW) India have preserved abundance of organic-rich sediments in the form of peat and its rapid development in a narrow time frame towards Middle Holocene has been found to be significant. The sub-coastal areas and flood plains of the Greater Pamba Basin have provided palaeorecords of peat indicating that the deposits are essentially formed within freshwater. The combination of factors like stabilized sea level and its subsequent fall since the Middle Holocene, topographic relief and climatic conditions led to rapid peat accumulation across the coastal lowlands. The high rainfall and massive floods coupled with a rising sea level must have inundated > 75% of the coastal plain land converting it into a veritable lagoon-lake system that eventually led to abrupt termination of the forest ecosystem and also converted the floodplains into peatland where accumulation of peat almost to 2.0-3.0 m thickness in coastal lowlands and river basins during the shorter interval in the Middle Holocene. Vast areas of the coastal plains of Kerala have been converted into carbon rich peatland during the Middle Holocene and transforming the entire coastal stretch and associated landforms as one of the relatively youngest peatlands in the extreme southern tip of India. Unlike the uninterrupted formation of peatlands of considerable extent during the Holocene in Southeast Asia, the south Peninsular Indian region has restricted and short intervals of peatlands in the floodplains and coastal lowlands. Such a scenario is attributed to the topographic relief of the terrain and the prevailing hydrological regimes and environmental conditions as a consequence of monsoon variability since Middle Holocene in SW India. Considering the tropical coastal lowlands and associated peatlands are excellent repositories of carbon, they are very important for regional carbon cycling and habitat diversity. The alarming rate of land modification and development is destabilizing these carbon pools resulting in large scale carbon emissions to the atmosphere and loss of low-latitude peat palaeorecords. Therefore, these palaeorecords are to be conserved and addressed for better understanding and utilizing the carbon pool for effective climate change adaptation. This communication is the first attempt of addressing the peat formation and peatland development during the Holocene from the tropical region of Peninsular India.Background One of the most important consequences of climate change could be its effects on agriculture. Although much research has focused on questions of food security, less has been devoted to assessing the wider health impacts of future changes in agricultural production. In this modelling study, we estimate excess mortality attributable to agriculturally mediated changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors by cause of death for 155 world regions in the year 2050. Methods For this modelling study, we linked a detailed agricultural modelling framework, the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT), to a comparative risk assessment of changes in fruit and vegetable consumption, red meat consumption, and bodyweight for deaths from coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, and an aggregate of other causes. We calculated the change in the number of deaths attributable to climate-related changes in weight and diets for the combination of four emissions pathways (a high emissions pathway, two medium emissions pathways, and a low emissions pathway) and three socioeconomic pathways (sustainable development, middle of the road, and more fragmented development), which each included six scenarios with variable climatic inputs. Findings The model projects that by 2050, climate change will lead to per-person reductions of 3.2% (SD 0.4%) in global food availability, 4.0% (0.7%) in fruit and vegetable consumption, and 0.7% (0.1%) in red meat consumption. These changes will be associated with 529 000 climate-related deaths worldwide (95% CI 314 000-736 000), representing a 28% (95% CI 26-33) reduction in the number of deaths that would be avoided because of changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors between 2010 and 2050. Twice as many climate-related deaths were associated with reductions in fruit and vegetable consumption than with climate-related increases in the prevalence of underweight, and most climate-related deaths were projected to occur in south and east Asia. Adoption of climate-stabilisation pathways would reduce the number of climate-related deaths by 29-71%, depending on their stringency. Interpretation The health effects of climate change from changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors could be substantial, and exceed other climate-related health impacts that have been estimated. Climate change mitigation could prevent many climate-related deaths. Strengthening of public health programmes aimed at preventing and treating diet and weight-related risk factors could be a suitable climate change adaptation strategy.Loggers and other natural-resource-dependent workers are impacted by variable environmental conditions. This research shares logger perceptions of the impacts of seasonal environmental factors on their operations, which are important for informing forest management and policy. We conducted in-depth interviews with 17 professional loggers and 15 other forestry stakeholders to assess the challenges faced in forest operations in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We analyzed interviews and documents to create one representative seasonal calendar, which shows the multiple, overlapping factors affecting timber operations. Many loggers identified impacts from seasonal variability and restrictions related to transportation, environmental conditions, and recreation. Seasonal environmental challenges are intertwined with and inseparable from economic challenges. Spring break-up used to be the time for rest, but increasingly, loggers do not stop working because of financial pressures to continue logging. Understanding the seasonal dynamics of timber operations can inform forest policies and climate change adaptation strategies.This article reviews the conceptual development of the disaster risk reduction perspective in research in general as well as its formalization as an instrument of policy and practice at the international level. I also review current programmatic applications of disaster risk reduction in research and policy fora and assay key anthropological contributions to risk reduction policies and practice. I also consider the links between disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, as the possible trajectories of these phenomena are as intimately bound to one another as are their root causes. Finally, I discuss some of the major critiques of the application or lack thereof of disaster risk reduction in the context of critical discussions of contemporary understandings of risk and development.This article examines the implications of the growing discussion around transformation and adaptation for development policy and practice. While there is increasing agreement that incremental approaches are insufficient to tackle climate change, and that deeper transformative change is also necessary, the ways in which transformation is understood vary significantly, and hence how it is to be operationalised remains unclear. Tracing the emergence of transformation in adaptation debates, and linking them to the intellectual roots of the idea of transformation, we interrogate different approaches that exist towards transformation in terms of moving beyond dominant neoliberal development trajectories. The article discusses some of the conceptual and practical challenges in bringing about transformational change in international development, concluding with some suggestions for the way forward in operationalising transformation for development in line with long-term climate change adaptation goals.The paper discusses the arguments in favor of urban green infrastructure and the provision of ecosystem services as key components of urban-ecological systems resilient to climate change. The analytical framework developed here is then applied to the riparian corridor of the Mapocho River in Santiago, in order to discuss its current and potential contributions to tackling climate change. The discussion is based on the evaluation of three key ecosystem services: (1) cooling effects, (2) routes for non-motorized transport, and (3) flood mitigation. The integration of concepts of green infrastructure, ecosystem services and adaptation/mitigation of climate change, provide an appropriate framework to clarify how urban green spaces can contribute to address global warming and the negative effects of climate change. In Santiago, currently the main contribution of Mapocho River's riparian corridor is to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by acting as an important route for non-motorized transport, particularly for cycling. Currently its contribution to the reduction of atmospheric temperatures and to flood mitigation is limited. The development of a riparian greenway along the Mapocho River could help improve the provision of the three evaluated ecosystem services and thus constitute an important connector in the green infrastructure system in Santiago to address mitigation and adaptation to climate change.Since the late 1980s, a new vocabulary associated with concerns about climate change has emerged. Nevertheless, this article argues that the concepts used to describe urban adaptation are a part of the history of urban planning. Consequently, climate change should not be seen as a new phenomenon disconnected from this past. By means of a historically contextualized conceptual discussion and a review of urban planning instruments used to address climate change in Chile, the article argues that climate change has been central to urban planning and that the emphasis on climate change is no more than a reaffirmation of this connection built on the concept of 'urban risk'. It concludes that an integrated and historically contextualized approach based on urban risk should form the basis to the response within the framework of the National Climate Change Adaptation Policy (2014) in conjunction with the National Urban Development Policy (2014).Decision makers and consultants are particularly interested in detailed information on future climate to prepare adaptation strategies and adjust design criteria. Projections of future climate at local spatial scales and fine temporal resolutions are subject to the same uncertainties as those at the global scale but the partition among uncertainty sources (emission scenarios, climate models, and internal climate variability) remains largely unquantified. At the local scale, the uncertainty of the mean and extremes of precipitation is shown to be irreducible for mid and end-of-century projections because it is almost entirely caused by internal climate variability (stochasticity). Conversely, projected changes in mean air temperature and other meteorological variables can be largely constrained, even at local scales, if more accurate emission scenarios can be developed. The results were obtained by applying a comprehensive stochastic downscaling technique to climate model outputs for three exemplary locations. In contrast with earlier studies, the three sources of uncertainty are considered as dependent and, therefore, non-additive. The evidence of the predominant role of internal climate variability leaves little room for uncertainty reduction in precipitation projections; however, the inference is not necessarily negative, because the uncertainty of historic observations is almost as large as that for future projections with direct implications for climate change adaptation measures.Urban societies are increasingly affected by climatic variability and extremes. In theory, adaptation policy creates the conditions needed to support autonomous adaptation - or deliver public adaptation if autonomous adaptation fails to develop. However, little attention has been given to autonomous adaptation by private households and individuals, and how it is taken into account in cities' strategic adaptation planning. Against this background, this paper examines the synergies between measures taken by city authorities and citizens, and, more specifically, how public adaptation planning enhances or inhibits private (individual) adaptation. Based on a literature review and an in-depth study of German municipalities, existing types of city-citizen interaction are systematized. The results show that targeted city-citizen collaboration for climate change adaptation is practically non-existent. City authorities rarely pay sufficient attention to financial and structural aid for individual adaptation. Conversely, the available municipal support for individual adaptation has little take-up by members of the public. Furthermore, urban policy and planning often counteract collaboration and the implementation of measures that meet citizens' capacities and needs. The paper concludes that improving city-citizen collaboration for adaptation co-production is an important step in fostering transformative adaptation, if the barriers and driving forces identified in the study are addressed. The framework that is presented advances theory on city-citizen interactions for adaptation co-production, providing a basis for related analyses, action and further research. (c) 2016 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons LtdThe Himalayan mountain forest ecosystem has been degrading since the British ruled the area in the 1850s. Local understanding of the patterns and processes of degradation is desperately required to devise management strategies to halt this degradation and provide long-term sustainability. This work comprises a satellite image based study in combination with national expert validation to generate sub-district level statistics for forest cover over the Western Himalaya, Pakistan, which accounts for approximately 67% of the total forest cover of the country. The time series of forest cover maps (1990, 2000, 2010) reveal extensive deforestation in the area. Indeed, approximately 170,684 ha of forest has been lost, which amounts to 0.38% per year clear cut or severely degraded during the last 20 years. A significant increase in the rate of deforestation is observed in the second half of the study period, where much of the loss occurs at the western borders along with Afghanistan. The current study is the first systematic and comprehensive effort to map changes to forest cover in Northern Pakistan. Deforestation hotspots identified at the sub-district level provide important insight into deforestation patterns, which may facilitate the development of appropriate forest conservation and management strategies in the country.A shift appears to be occurring in thinking about flooding, from a resistance-based approach to one of resilience. Accordingly, how stakeholders in flood-prone regions perceive the system and its governance are salient questions. This study queried stakeholders' internal representations of ecosystems (resistance- or resilience-based), preferences for governance actors and mechanisms for flooding, and the relationship between them in five different regions of the world. The influence of personal experience on these variables was also assessed. Most respondents aligned themselves with a resilience-based approach in relation to system connectedness and response to disturbance; however, respondents were almost evenly split between resistance- and resilience-based approaches when considering system management. Responses generally were considered to hold for other disturbances as well. There was no clear relationship between internal representations and preferences for governance actors or mechanisms. Respondents generally favoured actor combinations that included governments and mechanism combinations that included regulations and policies. Those who had personal experience with flooding tended to align themselves with a resilience-based internal representation of system management, but personal experience showed no clear relationship with governance preferences. The findings support an evolutionary perspective of flood management where emerging paradigms enhance preceding ones, and prompt a critical discussion about the universality of resilience as a framing construct.Fourteen years of data collected by the Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program served to model the habitat of four dominant copepod species (Calanus glacialis, Calanus hyperboreus, Calanus finmarchicus, Paracalanus sp.) on the continental shelf and slope waters in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) were applied to abundance and presence-absence data for C. hyperboreus, C. glacialis and Paracalanus sp. and abundance for C. finmarchicus, to describe the optimal environmental productivity envelopes associated with the occurrence and/or the net productivity of these species. The models for Calanus species considered two main phases of their life cycle: (i) an active population growth phase dominated by early stages that occur primarily in surface layers, and (ii) a dormant phase dominated by overwintering stages generally found in deeper layers. GAMMs identified a marked contrast in environmental envelopes occupied by arctic and temperate species. Our analyses underline the importance of using data representative of all the copepodid developmental stages and occupied habitats in order to accurately model the distribution of Calanus species. The value of our models as tools to understand past events in the Northwest Atlantic or to predict future distributions of the species is also discussed.Freshwater ecosystems are declining under climate change and land-use change. To maximize the return on investment in freshwater conservation with limited financial resources, managers must prioritize management actions that are most cost-effective. However, little is known about what these priorities may be under the combined effects of climate and land-cover change. We present a novel decision-making framework for prioritizing conservation resources to different management actions for the conservation of freshwater biodiversity. The approach is novel in that it has the ability to model interactions, rank management options for dealing with conservation threats from climate and land-cover change, and integrate empirical data with expert knowledge. We illustrate the approach using a case study in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia under climate change, land-cover change and their combined effects. Our results show that the explicit inclusion of multiple threats and costs results in quite different priorities than when costs and interactions are ignored. When costs are not considered, stream and riparian restoration, as a single management strategy, provides the greatest overall protection of macroinvertebrate and fish richness in rural and urban areas of SEQ in response to climate change and/or urban growth. Whereas, when costs are considered, farm/land management with stream and riparian restoration are the most cost-effective strategies for macroinvertebrate and fish conservation. Our findings support riparian restoration as the most effective adaptation strategy to climate change and urban development, but because it is expensive it may often not be the most cost-efficient strategy. Our approach allows for these decisions to be evaluated explicitly. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Instead of re-orienting towards enhancing efficiency, the attention of political economies of the Central Asian States continues to be riveted on increasing resource extraction. Hydraulic mission (engineering water management) maintains its dominating status within water sector reforms of all countries. Forging mutually beneficial regimes for water-energy-agriculture-climate change systems as per the nexus concept requires robust governance and intersectorial coordination. It is historically evident that the Asian countries in question utilized a partial nexus system under the common Soviet centralized economic model. Within the nexus context, the current situation is outlined against the background of the boundary concept, security approach, and systems analyses as well as its holistic melding with the decade-long integrated water resources management efforts in Central Asia. The ability of existing institutional platforms, such as basin councils, to implement a nexus approach to local river catchments, regional watersheds or a national level is examined.The developed world has pledged to mobilize at least US $100 billion per year of 'new' and 'additional' funds by 2020 to help the developing world respond to climate change. Tracking this finance is particularly problematic for climate change adaptation, as there is no clear definition of what separates adaptation aid from standard development aid. Here we use a historical database of overseas development assistance projects to test the effect of different accounting assumptions on the delivery of adaptation finance to the developing countries of Oceania, using machine algorithms developed from a manual pilot study. The results show that explicit adaptation finance grew to 3%-4% of all development aid to Oceania by the 2008-2012 period, but that total adaptation finance could be as high as 37% of all aid, depending on potentially politically motivated assumptions about what counts as adaptation. There was also an uneven distribution of adaptation aid between countries facing similar challenges like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The analysis indicates that data allowing individual projects to be weighted by their climate change relevance is needed. A robust and mandatory metadata system for all aid projects would allow multilateral aid agencies and independent third parties to perform their own analyses using different assumptions and definitions, and serve as a key check on international climate aid promises.Pathway approaches to adaptation highlight the uncertainty of future impacts of climate change and the ongoing, contingent nature of responses to these effects. This article reviews adaptation to climate change literature employing the notion of pathways and argues that these approaches offer a useful framework to spur meaningful adaptation action. After providing an overview of the history of pathway approaches, the paper focuses on four approaches that apply the metaphor of pathways differently: the socioeconomic pathways, dynamic adaptive policy pathways, pathways to resilience, and the social, technology, and environmental pathways to sustainability. Lessons and strengths from each of these approaches are highlighted. Utilizing multiple pathway approaches can further aid in creating useful and usable knowledge. However, the paper concludes by arguing that pathway approaches could be further strengthened by including political concerns and processes. Working to include the broader public within the coproduction of pathways would help achieve this goal.As the central product of the BMBF-KLIMZUG-funded Joint Network and Research Project (JNRP) 'dynaklim - Dynamic adaptation of regional planning and development processes to the effects of climate change in the Emscher-Lippe region (North Rhine Westphalia, Germany)', the Roadmap 2020 'Regional Climate Adaptation' has been developed by the various regional stakeholders and institutions containing specific regional scenarios, strategies and adaptation measures applicable throughout the region. This paper presents the method, elements and main results of this regional roadmap process by using the example of the thematic sub-roadmap 'Water Sensitive Urban Design 2020'. With a focus on the process support tool 'KlimaFLEX', one of the main adaptation measures of the WSUD 2020 roadmap, typical challenges for integrated climate change adaptation like scattered knowledge, knowledge gaps and divided responsibilities but also potential solutions and promising chances for urban development and urban water management are discussed. With the roadmap and the related tool, the relevant stakeholders of the Emscher-Lippe region have jointly developed important prerequisites to integrate their knowledge, to clarify vulnerabilities, adaptation goals, responsibilities and interests, and to foresightedly coordinate measures, resources, priorities and schedules for an efficient joint urban planning, well-grounded decision-making in times of continued uncertainties and step-by-step implementation of adaptation measures from now on.This paper compares the different ways in which the cities of Hamburg and Rotterdam are taking preemptive action to adapt to climate change. Literature, interviews, secondary data, official statistics, project reports and policy briefs were used to identify institutional arrangements used by the city governments to encourage innovations in climate adaptation strategies and involve the private sector in climate change policy implementation. We focus on cases that create positive opportunities; exploring how innovations are facilitated within the theoretical frameworks of the Porter hypothesis and eco-innovation. We examine two possible pathways of climate change governance, firstly strict regulation and formal enforcement, and secondly institutional eco-innovation and voluntary measures. We found that different emphasis is placed on the preferred pathway in each of the case studies. Hamburg focuses on formal enforcements while the Rotterdam city government encourages institutional eco-innovation by acting as a platform and also providing incentives. Our findings suggest that a well-designed institutional framework can enhance innovation and increase environmental and business performance. The framework could vary in instruments and patterns, using both formal constraints and incentives to increase voluntary actions to shape policy. The formal rules could be stringent or incentivising to shape the climate change measures. The research aims to contribute to both practice and science by providing examples that might motivate and inspire other cities to design appropriate institutions for climate change policy implementation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The financial incentives offered by the risk-based pricing of insurance can stimulate policyholder adaptation to flood risk while potentially conflicting with affordability. We examine the trade-off between risk reduction and affordability in a model of public private flood insurance in France and Germany estimating household flood adaptation decisions in response to financial insurance incentives. An integrated model of household level mitigation behaviour and insurance premiums is developed. The model investigates how aggregated household adaptation behaviour differs under financial incentives as compared to when households act on their own subjective risk beliefs. The results indicate that insurance based incentives are able to promote adaptation. The incentives could reduce residential flood risk by 12% in Germany and 24% in France by 2040. The higher level of flood risk in France results in a strong present incentive to reduce risk. Rapid growth of flood risks in Germany results in more effective incentives in later periods. Insurance is unaffordable for approximately 20% of households at risk. Providing vouchers, to correct for unaffordability, after 2040 has a lower cost than the total incentivised damage reduction. A policy recommendation is that strengthening the link between flood insurance and financial incentives can guide household level adaptation. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Background: Seasonal variation and regional heterogeneity have been observed in the estimated effect of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) mass on mortality. Differences in the chemical compositions of PM2.5 may cause this variation. We investigated the association of the daily concentration of PM2.5 components with mortality in Nagoya, Japan. Methods: We combined daily mortality counts for all residents aged 65 years and older with concentration data for PM2.5 mass and components in Nagoya from April 2003 to December 2007. A time-stratified case-crossover design was used to examine the association of daily mortality with PM2.5 mass and each component (chloride, nitrate, sulfate, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, ammonium, elemental carbon [EC], and organic carbon [OC]). Results: We found a stronger association between mortality and PM2.5 mass in transitional seasons. In analysis for each PM2.5 component, sulfate, nitrate, chloride, ammonium, potassium, EC, and OC were significantly associated with mortality in a single-pollutant model. In a multi-pollutant model, an interquartile range increase in the concentration of sulfate was marginally associated with an increase in all-cause mortality of 2.1% (95% confidence interval, -0.1 to 4.4). Conclusions: These findings suggest that some specific PM components have a more hazardous effect than others and contribute to seasonal variation in the health effects of PM2.5.A map is not a product, the temporary representation of reality, but rather the most visible component at the surface of an ongoing and often contested mapping process. This significant epistemological recognition directs our attention towards the linkages between 'mapped space', 'everyday space', and 'spaces of knowledge building and decision-making'. Applying an organizational ethnography and critical cartography, this paper argues that a shift in the production and circulation of spatial knowledge concerning coastal set-back lines occurred in Cape Town. It describes the shift, interrogates how it came about, and what the implications are. As a governance instrument to promote risk-averse decision-making concerning dynamic coastal ecosystems and coastal infrastructure exposed to storm surges and sea-level rise, the set-back line discursively and materially re-shapes people's realities. But its delineation and the linked multi-actor discussions led by the City of Cape Town's Coastal Management Unit (CMU) also emerge from a specific context. Caught in a constant balancing act between varying interests, sources of knowledge and epistemologies on map-making, the CMU engaged in strategic negotiations and counter-mapping. Effectively acting as 'champions', or 'bureaucratic activists', local government officials enabled the transition towards a reflexive, iterative and inclusive delineation process, departing from a technical knowledge building model according to which coastal engineers and consultants still dominate the intellectual space regarding coastal risk governance in South Africa. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Lima's environmental sustainability is threatened by increasing water scarcity, heavy rain events and limited attention for water vulnerability and climate change scenarios. In this paper we examine how knowledge construction and risk perception on water-related disaster risks and vulnerabilities affects decision-making and implementation in urban governance networks, specifically looking at some of the reasons behind high levels of risk tolerance and the lack of decision-making initiatives in putting adaptation and/or preventive measures in place. New forms of metropolitan governance have constructed spatial knowledge about water-related vulnerabilities using inclusive scenario-building processes. These unpack complexities, uncertainties and spatial inequalities in water governance, making them visible by mapping and spatial representations as strategic instrument for social and policy learning. This article analyzes two case studies, which either already are or can become disasters (scenario building). The first, concerns the long-term plausible scenario of water scarcity and droughts analyzing population growth rates, water distribution and consumption through the Chance2Sustain research project and presenting spatial representations. The maps were used to define possible spatial intervention priorities to deal with future water vulnerabilities in Lima. The second, refers to short term extreme weather events that already manifest as mudslides and floods and El Nino in Chosica, eastern Lima. We investigate the first at the metropolitan city scale level and the second at the scale of vulnerable communities. The cases illustrate iterative spatial knowledge construction, in which processes of risk prioritization, normalization and tolerance occur, and the resulting [in-]action by a variety of actors so far. The methodology used collective and iterative mapping processes, using technical, organizational and geographical knowledge from a variety of governance, experts and practitioner networks in Lima. The main outcome is the social learning derived from bringing together different kinds of knowledge and integrating several dimensions through spatial representations. This has raised awareness, increased capacities for dealing with uncertainty and contributed to the approved metropolitan Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, but not implemented by the Lima Municipality yet. The main conclusions are two: 1) spatial planning is a quite political process (c.f. Flyvbjerg 1998), in which knowledge is contested or even when acknowledged, does not necessarily steer decision-making processes, either by local communities, authorities and private institutions. And 2) existing models linking knowledge construction to risk framing, risk tolerance and how these influence decision-making processes and actions to prevent disaster may ignore the issues of risk tolerance, through normalization and prioritization at their peril. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The value of the social sciences to climate change research is well recognized, but notable gaps remain in the literature on adaptation in agriculture. Contributions focus on farmer behaviour, with important research regarding gender, social networks and institutions remaining under-represented.The agriculture industry is significantly exposed to the impacts of climate change, and is also responsible for contributing extensive greenhouse gas emissions. As a way of responding to both adaptation and mitigation challenges within the industry, this article examines how community-based climate change adaptation initiatives might provide mitigation outcomes in the agriculture sector in Timor-Leste. Beginning with an exploration of nation-wide institutional responses to climate change, the study utilises interviews, field observations and document analysis to examine an extensive community-based adaptation program in two districts in Timor-Leste focused on increasing the resilience of the agriculture sector and the livelihoods of poor rural farmers. Analysis of this program reveals a largely synergistic relationship between adaptation measures focused on land and water management and agriculture and their corresponding greenhouse gas mitigation potential, including co-benefits such as soil/atmospheric carbon sequestration, reduced emissions, soil nitrification and reduced use of inorganic fertilisers. Community-based adaptation programs in the agriculture sector have a significant influence on mitigation outcomes, which is often overlooked in community-based programs. The adaptation program in Timor-Leste has provided useful insights into the inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation at the community level, which could be further supported and scaled-up in other Southeast Asia countries and elsewhere.There are limited examples of efforts to systematically monitor and track climate change adaptation progress in the context of natural resource management, despite substantial investments in adaptation initiatives. To better understand the status of adaptation within state natural resource agencies, we utilized and problematized a rational decision-making framework to characterize adaptation at the level of public land managers in the Upper Midwest. We conducted in-depth interviews with 29 biologists and foresters to provide an understanding of managers' experiences with, and perceptions of, climate change impacts, efforts towards planning for climate change, and a full range of actions implemented to address climate change. While the majority of managers identified climate change impacts affecting their region, they expressed significant uncertainty in interpreting those signals. Just under half of managers indicated planning efforts are underway, although most planning is remote from local management. Actions already implemented include both forward-looking measures and those aimed at coping with current impacts. In addition, cross-scale dynamics emerged as an important theme related to the overall adaptation process. The results hold implications for tracking future progress on climate change adaptation. Common definitions or measures of adaptation (e.g., presence of planning documents) may need to be reassessed for applicability at the level of public land managers.This paper presents a supply-and-demand model for the fisheries sector developed to assess the effect of climate change and related adaptation strategies in four Pacific coral triangle (CT) countries Fiji, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, and Vanuatu. The modeling approach used in this paper represents climate change in terms of supply shocks, and works out its economic consequences using the microeconomic tools of supply and demand. The analysis has considered three time periods: current (represented by the average data of the three most recent available years 2006-2009), medium term (2035), and long term (2050). The study covers all fisheries and aquaculture species, grouped into six key subsectors: tuna, other oceanic finfish, coastal finfish, coastal invertebrates, freshwater finfish, and freshwater invertebrates. Results of the baseline model indicate that with rising per capita income and population, fish demand is expected to increase substantially up to 2050. In contrast to significant growth in fish demand, growth in domestic fish production is projected to be slow due to climate change and other constraints. There is a strong likelihood that many Pacific countries will become large net importers of fish under the baseline scenario (i.e., without implementing climate change adaptation strategies). Likewise, per capita consumption of domestically produced fish is projected to decline under the baseline scenario. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Capture fisheries and aquaculture sectors have played major roles in the national economy and food security of Fiji. But climate change may place substantial stress on these sectors within this archipelago. This paper assesses the potential economic impact of two important climate change adaptation strategies in Fiji, natural resource management (NRM) and aquaculture, using a market fish supply-demand model. The model undertakes a comparative analysis of alternative fisheries development scenarios for 2035 and 2050, while taking account of the impact of climate change on the fisheries sector. The modeling and scenario analyses show that promoting aquaculture can help raise aggregate fish production, consumption, and trade. However, the required increases in aquaculture could be massive. While aqua culture development alone is unlikely to meet the growing excess demand for fish in Fiji, it will be an important component in adapting to the negative effects of climate change on capture fisheries. Various NRM strategies, such as marine protected areas (MPAs) and locally managed marine areas (LMMA5), are projected to have positive impacts in Fiji, expanding the stock and catch of fish. But current efforts on various NRM strategies are too small to have any meaningful impact to reverse the declining trends of coastal fisheries catch. Efforts would need to be greatly scaled-up to achieve significant production gains. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Fisheries resources play a major role in the national economy and to food security in Solomon Islands. Climate change is likely to have a substantial impact on fish production that can lead to a fragile food security condition in the country. This paper assesses the potential economic impact of three important climate change adaptation strategies - natural resource management (NRM), fish aggregating devices (FAD) and aquaculture - in Solomon Islands. The study used a country-specific partial equilibrium economic model with six fish sub-sectors and analyzed potential impact of alternate climate change adaptation strategies for 2035 and 2050. The modeling and scenario analyses show that total fish demand is likely to surpass domestic fish production in 2050. Without appropriate climate adaptation strategy, per capita consumption of domestically produced fish will decline, which has serious negative food security implications for the country. The economic (welfare) analysis conducted based on modeling results show that the national level net economic gains due to climate change adaptation strategies are substantial. If cost and topographic conditions permit, low-cost inshore FADs are expected to be a good mechanism for augmenting domestic supplies of tuna and similar species in Solomon Islands. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The fisheries sectors in Vanuatu and Timor-Leste are important sources of food and income. Similar to other developing countries and those in the Pacific, they are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change more so because of their geographic location, socioeconomic conditions and political instability. Nonetheless, there are approaches to alleviate the damaging effects of climate change in the region's fisheries sector. Using economic modeling, this paper estimates the economic costs of potential climate change adaptation strategies for the fisheries sector in Vanuatu and Timor-Leste through assessment of alternative future scenarios. Strategies include aquaculture development, natural resource management through establishment and/or expansion of marine protected areas, and deployment of low-cost inshore fish aggregating devices. Modeling results demonstrate that the above innovations will enable the two countries to significantly improve coastal and freshwater fish production in the medium-term (2035) and long-term (2050). Fish consumption is projected to grow due to population and income improvements; yet considerable increases in production will augment demand. Furthermore, national-level gains are projected from these adaptation strategies through fish exports. Improved production under climate change will require significant investments from the national governments of Vanuatu and Timor-Leste and/or private sectors. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate vulnerability of managed forest ecosystems is not only determined by ecological processes but also influenced by the adaptive capacity of forest managers. To better understand adaptive behaviour, we conducted a questionnaire study among current and future forest managers (i.e. active managers and forestry students) in Austria. We found widespread belief in climate change (94.7 % of respondents), and no significant difference between current and future managers. Based on intended responses to climate-induced ecosystem changes, we distinguished four groups: highly sensitive managers (27.7 %), those mainly sensitive to changes in growth and regeneration processes (46.7 %), managers primarily sensitive to regeneration changes (11.2 %), and insensitive managers (14.4 %). Experiences and beliefs with regard to disturbance-related tree mortality were found to particularly influence a manager's sensitivity to climate change. Our findings underline the importance of the social dimension of climate change adaptation, and suggest potentially strong adaptive feedbacks between ecosystems and their managers.Electricity is becoming ever more central to the everyday practices of households. As the energy system decarbonises, it is likely that electricity will supply even more services, thereby increasing the dependence of communities on reliable electricity supply. In this situation, the risk of power outages during extreme weather events poses a serious challenge to the safety and wellbeing of communities. However, little is known of the capacity of households to manage normal day-to-day life in such circumstances. This paper focuses on the UK winter storms that occurred in February 2014, the result of which 80,000 homes were left without power and communities not reconnected for several days. We outline the impacts these power outages had on households, describing the challenges faced and the strategies adopted to alleviate impacts. This provides insight into everyday household-level resilience achieved through social and material elements that constitute everyday life. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Traditionally, dispersal of aquatic invertebrates has been thought to be very closely associated with river network structure, despite many species being capable of active or passive dispersal across the terrestrial matrix. However, recent studies of both population genetics and community structure from dryland regions indicate that aquatic species commonly disperse across catchments, implying that movement away from streams is more common than originally thought. This study investigated how aquatic invertebrate metacommunity structure in central Australia is influenced by interactions between species' dispersal traits, dispersal routes and local environmental conditions. We sampled community composition in 16 perennial and long-term inundated freshwater habitats in central Australia. Aquatic invertebrate taxa were allocated to one of four dispersal trait groups: obligate aquatic, passive aerial, weak flying and strong flying. We then used Mantel tests to examine correlations between trait group community dissimilarities, and four isolation models representing (i) local environmental conditions, (ii) geographical distances, (iii) landscape resistances restricted to river networks and (iv) landscape resistances incorporating overland dispersal conduits'. We found that the community composition of aquatic invertebrates in three of four dispersal trait groups, and all traits combined, was influenced primarily by topographic connectivity via overland dispersal conduits. Our results suggest that rainfall events and their effect on the landscape as a whole, rather than river flow during these events, shape aquatic invertebrate metacommunity structure in central Australia. This study provides further support for the importance of overland dispersal conduits to aquatic invertebrates, particularly in arid environments with irregular rainfall.Aquatic ecological responses to climatic warming are complicated by interactions between thermal effects and other environmental stressors such as organic pollution and hypoxia. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated how oxygen limitation can set heat tolerance for some aquatic ectotherms, but only at unrealistic lethal temperatures and without field data to assess whether oxygen shortages might also underlie sublethal warming effects. Here, we test whether oxygen availability affects both lethal and nonlethal impacts of warming on two widespread Eurasian mayflies, Ephemera danica, Muller 1764 and Serratella ignita (Poda 1761). Mayfly nymphs are often a dominant component of the invertebrate assemblage in streams, and play a vital role in aquatic and riparian food webs. In the laboratory, lethal impacts of warming were assessed under three oxygen conditions. In the field, effects of oxygen availability on nonlethal impacts of warming were assessed from mayfly occurrence in 42293 UK stream samples where water temperature and biochemical oxygen demand were measured. Oxygen limitation affected both lethal and sublethal impacts of warming in each species. Hypoxia lowered lethal limits by 5.5 degrees C (+/- 2.13) and 8.2 degrees C (+/- 0.62) for E.danica and S.ignita respectively. Field data confirmed the importance of oxygen limitation in warmer waters; poor oxygenation drastically reduced site occupancy, and reductions were especially pronounced under warm water conditions. Consequently, poor oxygenation lowered optimal stream temperatures for both species. The broad concordance shown here between laboratory results and extensive field data suggests that oxygen limitation not only impairs survival at thermal extremes but also restricts species abundance in the field at temperatures well below upper lethal limits. Stream oxygenation could thus control the vulnerability of aquatic ectotherms to global warming. Improving water oxygenation and reducing pollution can provide key facets of climate change adaptation for running waters.Mitigation of climate change (CC) is a regulating ecosystem service provided by priority habitats that is often co-delivered alongside their conservation of biodiversity. Carefully planned conservation management is thought necessary to support biodiversity adaptation to CC, but could also contribute to CC mitigation. This paper presents a methodology for assessing direct emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG: CO2, CH4 and N2O) from 12 UK priority habitats in 26 Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) using readily available data. Background emissions are estimated on the basis of published field research. The contribution of conservation management to GHG emission reduction is estimated using the IPCC GHG accounting methodology and other methods. Management Data Acquisition surveys carried out at selected SACs provided data on management practises for Scotland and Wales. Climate change mitigation actions identified in this study for priority habitats included livestock removal or change in stocking density, with GHG reduction potential of up to 3 tCO(2)e/animallyear, afforestation of acid grasslands-up to 19.4 tCO(2)e/ha/year, wetland restoration-0.3-0.8 tCO(2)e/ha/year and cessation of moorland burning-6.9 tCO(2)e/ha/year. Estimated GHG emissions from priority habitats can be used to identify win:win management options that co-deliver GHG mitigation, climate adaptation and conservation benefits for consideration by policy makers and conservation managers. (C) 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.The use of selective brain cooling, where warm arterial blood destined for the brain is cooled in the carotid rete via counter-current heat exchange when in close proximity to cooler venous blood, contributes to the conservation of body water. We simultaneously measured carotid blood and hypothalamic temperature in four gemsbok, five red hartebeest and six blue wildebeest to assess the extent to which these free-living animals, with varying water dependency, routinely rely on selective brain cooling. We investigated the hypothesis that innate differences in selective brain cooling exist in large, sympatric artiodactyls with varying water dependency. All three species used selective brain cooling, without any discernible differences in three selective brain cooling indices. GLMMs revealed no species differences in the threshold temperature for selective brain cooling (z = 0.79, P = 0.43), the magnitude (z = -0.51, P = 0.61), or the frequency of selective brain cooling use (z = -0.47, P = 0.64), after controlling for carotid blood temperature and black globe temperature. Comparison of anatomical attributes of the carotid retes of the three species revealed that the volume (F (2,9) = 5.54, P = 0.03) and height (F (2,9) = 5.43, P = 0.03) of the carotid rete, per kilogram body mass, were greater in the red hartebeest than in the blue wildebeest. Nevertheless, intraspecific variability in the magnitude, the frequency of use, and the threshold temperature for selective brain cooling exceeded any interspecific variability in the three indices of selective brain cooling. We conclude that the three species have similar underlying ability to make use of selective brain cooling in an environment with freely available water. It remains to be seen to what extent these three species would rely on selective brain cooling, as a water conservation mechanism, when challenged by aridity, a condition likely to become prevalent throughout much of southern Africa under future climate change scenarios.This study compares climatological data for two climate extremes, severe drought and excessive moisture, to the experience and memories of agriculturalists based on extensive interviews with farmers and ranchers in the southern Great Plains of Canada. The climate data used were the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index. While differences are expected between these quantitative and qualitative sources due to the fact that there is often a gap between any extreme weather event and its impact, there was less difference than expected. However, these gaps are significant because politicians, policy makers and emergency preparedness planners do, or at least should, take into account the perceptions of those most directly affected by climate extremes and understand the instances. The findings confirm the importance of localized and experiential knowledge in climate change adaptation.The invasion success of exotic plant species is often dependent on resource availability. Aspects of climate change such as rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and extreme climatic events will directly and indirectly alter resource availability in ecological communities. Understanding how these climate change-associated changes in resource availability will interact with one another to influence the invasion success of exotic plant species is complex. The aim of the study was to assess the establishment success of an invasive exotic species in response to climate change-associated changes in resource availability (CO2 levels and soil water availability) as a result of extreme drought. We grew grassland mesocosms consisting of four co-occurring native grass species common to the Cumberland Plain Woodland of western Sydney, Australia, under ambient and elevated CO2 levels and subjected them to an extreme drought treatment. We then added seeds of a highly invasive C-3 grass, Ehrharta erecta, and assessed its establishment success (biomass production and reproductive output). We found that reduced biomass production of the native grasses in response to the extreme drought treatment enhanced the establishment success of E. erecta by creating resource pulses in light and space. Surprisingly, CO2 level did not affect the establishment success of E. erecta. Our results suggest that the invasion risk of grasslands in the future may be coupled to soil water availability and the subsequent response of resident native vegetation therefore making it strongly context- dependent.Using a large sample of articles and books published between 2012 and 2015, this review shows the recent trends in environmental politics and policy scholarship. Environmental policy scholarship has embraced the concept of governance to explain the variety of actors and institutions that surround environmental problems and solutions. Scholars in the past three years used theories and methods to capture these governing dynamics in far-reaching and complicated issues like climate change. This article discusses recent patterns in the literature and demonstrates that new methods, recent theoretical focuses, and even the environmental issues covered by scholars reflect the field's acknowledgement that scholars can and should account for complexity in their work. However, the literature has neglected certain regions and processes, such as the developing world and policy feedback processes, leaving significant gaps in our understanding.Use of Urban Underground Space (UUS) has been growing significantly in the world's biggest and wealthiest cities. UUS has been long acknowledged to be important to the urban development agenda: sustainability, resilience, livability, and creating a better urban environment in particular. These issues are traditionally monitored using urban indicators, however UUS has not been properly included and considered in urban indicator lists (sets or systems) yet - the gap this paper is aiming to bridge. The paper reviews existing approaches to the composition of urban indicator lists, highlighting indicator types, challenges related to data collection, and agencies that are concerned with the issue. Further the paper has identified the importance of UUS inclusion in the lists that give integrated assessment and monitor urban sustainability, resilience, climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as progress towards smart, livable, and compact cities. Existing global quantitative data on UUS have been examined in 8 cities; and three key indicators (descriptors) were suggested to monitor UUS use: Developed UUS volume (m(3)); UUS use density (m(3)/m(2)); and Developed UUS volume per person (m(3)/person). Current average UUS use densities in cities are identified as up to about 0.05 (m(3)/m(2)) (which can be interpreted as a virtual depth of UUS use of 5 cm), and the developed UUS volume per person is up to about 10 m(3)/person; while city central areas (central business districts) can have a virtual depth of developed UUS of several metres (m(3)/m(2)). Compatibility, comparability, uniformity, and sustained monitoring of urban indicators data (including UUS indicators) found to be posing significant challenges to the research across geographies, and industry/economic sectors. (C) 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate variability has been causally linked to the transformation of society in pre-industrial southeast Africa. A growing critique, however, challenges the simplicity of ideas that identify climate as an agent of past societal change; arguing instead that the value of historical climate-society research lies in understanding human vulnerability and resilience, as well as how past societies framed, responded and adapted to climatic phenomena. We work across this divide to present the first critical analysis of climate-society relationships in southeast Africa over the last millennium. To achieve this, we review the now considerable body of scholarship on the role of climate in regional societal transformation, and bring forward new perspectives on climate-society interactions across three areas and periods using the theoretical frameworks of vulnerability and resilience. We find that recent advances in paleoclimatology and archaeology give weight to the suggestion that responses to climate variability played an important part in early state formation in the Limpopo valley (1000-1300), though evidence remains insufficient to clarify similar debates concerning Great Zimbabwe (1300-1450/1520). Written and oral evidence from the Zambezi-Save (1500-1830) and KwaZulu-Natal areas (1760-1828) nevertheless reveals a plurality of past responses to climate variability. These were underpinned by the organization of food systems, the role of climate-related ritual and political power, social networks, and livelihood assets and capabilities, as well as the nature of climate variability itself. To conclude, we identify new lines of research on climate, history and society, and discuss how these can more directly inform contemporary African climate adaptation challenges. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:370-392. doi: 10.1002/wcc.389 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .This paper concerns numerical modelling of the impact on the littoral drift and the shoreline from groynes forming a field of equidistant and identical groynes. The most important effect of a groyne on the shoreline morphology is that the littoral drift is blocked completely or partially. A local reduction in the littoral drift around the groyne introduces alongshore gradients in the alongshore sediment transport and sedimentation and erosion around the groyne which will cause re-orientation of the bed contours towards the prevailing wave direction until an equilibrium is reached. A discussion of this mechanism is presented including effects of scales, e.g. the effect of the relative length of the groynes (compared to the width of the surf zone). The model results indicate a strong dependency of the reduction in littoral drift on the initial geometric bypass ratio (Q(geo)*), which is defined from the groyne length and the littoral transport on the undisturbed coastline; Q(geo)* is the transport occurring outside the tip of the groynes divided by the total transport. It is found that the sensitivity of the littoral drift to variations in groyne spacing and the angle, of the approaching waves, is inversely proportional to Q(geo)*. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study examines support for climate adaptation planning and the role of perceived risk, uncertainty, and trust on adaptation of U.S. coastal communities. This assessment is based on the analysis of web-based questionnaires (n = 137) among state, local, and non-government organization (NGO) planners in Alaska, Florida, and Maryland. Ordinal regression and correlation analysis were used to assess which factors are related to support for adaptation during two planning stages. Findings from this study suggest the influence of perceived risk, uncertainty, and trust on support for climate change adaptation (CCA) varies across two stages of adaptation planning (support for the development of plans and willingness to allocate human and financial resources to implement plans). The disaggregation of planning entities into different study areas and levels of management revealed significant differences in the relationship between perceived risk, uncertainty, and trust and support for CCA planning. These findings have implications for the design of communication and engagement strategies.Coastal ecosystems are especially vulnerable to global change; e.g., sea level rise (SLR) and extreme events. Over the past century, global change has resulted in salt-tolerant (halophytic) plant species migrating into upland salt-intolerant (glycophytic) dominated habitats along major rivers and large wetland expanses along the coast. While habitat transitions can be abrupt, modeling the specific drivers of abrupt change between halophytic and glycophytic vegetation is not a simple task. Correlative studies, which dominate the literature, are unlikely to establish ultimate causation for habitat shifts, and do not generate strong predictive capacity for coastal land managers and climate change adaptation exercises. In this paper, we first review possible drivers of ecotone shifts for coastal wetlands, our understanding of which has expanded rapidly in recent years. Any exogenous factor that increases growth or establishment of halophytic species will favor the ecotone boundary moving upslope. However, internal feedbacks between vegetation and the environment, through which vegetation modifies the local microhabitat (e.g., by changing salinity or surface elevation), can either help the system become resilient to future changes or strengthen ecotone migration. Following this idea, we review a succession of models that have provided progressively better insight into the relative importance of internal positive feedbacks versus external environmental factors. We end with developing a theoretical model to show that both abrupt environmental gradients and internal positive feedbacks can generate the sharp ecotonal boundaries that we commonly see, and we demonstrate that the responses to gradual global change (e.g., SLR) can be quite diverse. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change is altering the productivity of natural resources with far-reaching implications for agriculture. In some instances, the scale and nature of the likely impacts means that transformations of function or structure of agriculture and/or agricultural enterprises will be required if communities dependent on agriculture are to be sustained. However, industry-wide transformations are unlikely to be supported unless individual primary producers have sufficient capacity to undergo transformational change. We look at: (i) the extent to which primary producers in Australia would be willing to transform, (ii) the extent that transformational capacity is likely to exist within producers, and (iii) the common attributes of producers with high levels of transformational capacity. We conducted a telephone survey of 195 primary producers (response rate 59%) across livestock, cropping and mixed enterprises across five national transects on the Australian continent with a high to low rainfall gradient. About half of the sample (55%) suggested that their land would be suitable for diversification and 45% would consider land-use change. These producers were more likely to come from a dry region rather than a wet region, came from an already mixed production enterprise, were more likely to irrigate and have completed university or a trade. These producers were also more likely to have a higher transformational capacity, particularly in their level of interest in adapting to the future. Across our sample, 23% had high levels of transformational capacity, whilst nearly half (45%) had either low or extremely low capacity to implement such change. Producers with a higher capacity were more likely to have a mixed enterprise, an internal locus of control, and higher levels of trust in networks, government, researchers, and agronomists and in self. Our results provide some important insights into what makes some producers more successful or able to transform than others. Investment in the capacity of producers to transform is likely to be an effective strategy to support Australian agriculture in the face of climate change. Crown Copyright (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Future threats of climate variability and change and accelerated soil degradation in southern Africa have increased the need for more sustainable and "climate-smart" agriculture practices. Manual systems of conservation agriculture (CA) based on seeding into planting basins or direct seeding techniques have received increased attention over the last decade. However, a critical review of the pros and cons of the different manual seeding systems under different agro-ecologies has been lacking. This paper aims at analysing different manual seeding systems in areas extending from central Mozambique to central Malawi. Results show that CA systems perform differently in contrasting agro-ecological environments. Direct seeded treatments had greater maize yields than conventional tillage practices by an average of 12-27% and outperformed the conventional practice in nine out of fourteen yield comparisons. Basin planted treatments performed well only in Sofala and Manica (15%) with yield penalties of 9% in Tete. The strongest factor influencing maize grain yields in the more variable areas of Manica and Sofala was the quality of season and the location, whereas tillage treatment and location were more important in the higher rainfall areas of Tete. Direct seeding systems out-yielded other treatments in areas of higher rainfall and responded better to a favourable environment than conventional tillage practices. CA systems, especially direct seeding in Malawi, Manica and Sofala, showed greater financial returns to investments and labour productivity due to reduced labour costs and higher yields. Labour savings of up to 43 labour days ha(-1) could be achieved with direct seeded treatments in Malawi. The results of this research clearly highlight the need for site-specific recommendations and adaptation of CA systems to different agro-ecological environments. Blanket recommendations of one CA system across many agroecologies, as has often been done in the past, will only lead to underperformance of CA in some areas and rejection by smallholder farmers if yield benefits are not achieved. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.It is imperative to understand the effects of climate change on household members and the vulnerability level in and across agricultural households for India in general, and for eastern coastal part of the country in particular. This study covers primary data from 150 households from 2 blocks of Kendrapara district in Odisha. The household level unit of analysis is policy driven and follows the IPCC model on Vulnerability Analysis and Climate Change Adaptation Research. The model is expanded to include the livelihood strategies of the households, in order to empirically assess their vulnerability and adaptive responses. This study uses an econometric model on household vulnerability and adaptive capacity of rural households. The results imply that access to credit facilities and experiences of the households in farming are important factors to improve farmers' adaptation to climate change.Sea Level Rise (SLR) caused by climate change is impacting coastal wetlands around the globe. Due to their distinctive biophysical characteristics and unique plant communities, freshwater tidal wetlands are expected to exhibit a different response to SLR as compared with the better studied salt marshes. In this study we employed the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM), which simulates regional- or local-scale changes in tidal wetland habitats in response to SLR, and adapted it for application in a freshwater-dominated tidal river system, the Hudson River Estuary. Using regionally-specific estimated ranges of SLR and accretion rates, we produced simulations for a spectrum of possible future wetland distributions and quantified the projected wetland resilience, migration or loss in the HRE through the end of the 21(st) century. Projections of total wetland extent and migration were more strongly determined by the rate of SLR than the rate of accretion. Surprisingly, an increase in net tidal wetland area was projected under all scenarios, with newly-formed tidal wetlands expected to comprise at least 33% of the HRE's wetland area by year 2100. Model simulations with high rates of SLR and/or low rates of accretion resulted in broad shifts in wetland composition with widespread conversion of high marsh habitat to low marsh, tidal flat or permanent inundation. Wetland expansion and resilience were not equally distributed through the estuary, with just three of 48 primary wetland areas encompassing >50% of projected new wetland by the year 2100. Our results open an avenue for improving predictive models of the response of freshwater tidal wetlands to sea level rise, and broadly inform the planning of conservation measures of this critical resource in the Hudson River Estuary.Social capital has the potential to influence the success of biodiverse carbon plantings in the face of uncertainty amongst rural landholders about the need or efficacy of efforts to address climate change through tree planting. We conducted 17 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with landholders in Victoria, Australia who voluntarily participate in biodiverse carbon plantings on their land, focusing in particular on the role of social capital for understanding how 'early adopters' can advocate for programs locally. The interviews revealed the importance of social networks and the profound impact of trusted peers on the diffusion of carbon planting schemes. These social capital dimensions are especially important for shaping ongoing participation and the ways in which participants become active agents in trusted relationships that influence the participation of others. Our results suggest that the positive impact of social networks can counteract doubts about the validity of climate adaptation responses such as carbon planting, and enable landholders to connect the program with their existing stewardship motivations. The ability for early adopters of the program to demonstrate the physical materialisation of their plantings to others was vital to this process. We propose that targeting champions and trusted peers in local communities could accelerate the proliferation of biodiverse carbon planting schemes.As cities increasingly engage in climate adaptation planning, many are seeking to promote public participation and facilitate the engagement of different civil society actors. Still, the variations that exist among participatory approaches and the merits and tradeoffs associated with each are not well understood. This article examines the experiences of Quito (Ecuador) and Surat (India) to assess how civil society actors contribute to adaptation planning and implementation. The results showcase two distinct approaches to public engagement. The first emphasizes participation of experts, affected communities, and a wide array of citizens to sustain broadly inclusive programmes that incorporate local needs and concerns into adaptation processes and outcomes. The second approach focuses on building targeted partnerships between key government, private, and civil society actors to institutionalize robust decision-making structures, enhance abilities to raise funds, and increase means to directly engage with local community and international actors. A critical analysis of these approaches suggests more inclusive planning processes correspond to higher climate equity and justice outcomes in the short term, but the results also indicate that an emphasis on building dedicated multi-sector governance institutions may enhance long-term programme stability, while ensuring that diverse civil society actors have an ongoing voice in climate adaptation planning and implementation. Policy relevance Many local governments in the Global South experience severe capacity and resource constraints. Cities are often required to devolve large-scale planning and decision-making responsibilities, such as those critical to climate adaptation, to different civil society actors. As a result, there needs to be more rigorous assessments of how civil society participation contributes to the adaptation policy and planning process and what local social, political, and economic factors dictate the way cities select different approaches to public engagement. Also, since social equity and justice are key indicators for determining the effectiveness and sustainability of adaptation interventions, urban adaptation plans and policies must also be designed according to local institutional strengths and civic capacities in order to account for the needs of the poor and most vulnerable. Inclusivity, therefore, is critical for ensuring equitable planning processes and just adaptation outcomes.An ecomimetic method is developed as an innovative and transdisciplinary design approach rooted in the field of biomimetics. This new method emulates the interrelated complexity of the parts of an ecosystem with the intent to design buildings that are more efficient, effective and holistic. Ecomimetics refers to the design of buildings that mimic ecosystem processes and functions. This approach provides potential opportunities for climate change adaptation and mitigation by optimizing the use of resources in buildings. One challenge to the application of ecomimetics in architecture is the lack of systematic methods supported by scientific research, which may prevent development in this field. A theoretical basis and the initial development of an ecomimetic design method is presented, with a description of each step of the design process. Ecological systems are selected for functional properties that match architectural design goals, and then design tools are used to abstract and transfer those properties to architectural systems. The design tools integrated in the method are from the fields of ecological engineering, systems dynamics and architecture. The case of the Eastgate Center in Harare, Zimbabwe, is used to illustrate the method.Climate change has led to an increase in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves as well as the risk of heat stress within buildings. To provide habitable indoor conditions without air-conditioning during heatwave, residential building energy efficiency need to be upgraded. The aim of this research is to investigate the possible correlation of building energy rating upgrading with heat-related health hazard during heatwave, with case data drawing from Melbourne, Australia. Using building simulations, indoor heat stress conditions of different energy rated houses were calculated using wet bulb globe temperature and discomfort index under the Melbourne 2009 heatwave conditions. The results showed that during three days heatwave period, residents of 0.9 star energy rated house were exposed to extreme heat stress conditions for almost 25 h compared to only 6 h experienced by the occupants of 5.4 star energy rated house. Several robust empirical relationships were proposed to predict deaths, ambulance calls, emergency department presentations and after hour doctor calls during heatwave. It was concluded that mortality rate from a Melbourne 2009 type, as well as, future more intense heatwave may reduce by 90% if entire existing lower energy star rated houses can be upgraded to minimum 5.4 star energy rating. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.One of the main challenges urban areas, and more particularly the compact ones, are facing is their adaptation to climate change. In recent years, is had been recognized that a more ecosystem approach to spatial planning can play a critical role in meeting these challenges. Green Infrastructure (GI) and its integration in spatial planning emerges as one of the most appropriate and effective ways to improve microclimate and tackle the impacts of climate change and mainly the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. This paper initially attempts to clarify the term GI and portrays its benefits and its role as an important spatial planning tool to fulfill different environmental, social and economic needs of urban areas. Then, the paper proceeds to an empirical evaluation of the role of GI in reducing the vulnerability to UHI effect in a compact urban area of the city of Thessaloniki. For this reason, a simple methodology is developed with a twofold purpose: to recognize the risks posed by climate change and especially UHI and to assess the potential offered by available in a compact area GI assets as well as by their redesign in order to maximize their contribution to climate change adaptation.The development of climate adaptation strategies to address social problems derived from climate change is pressing. Yet, in addition to providing means to minimise the impact of climate variability and change on livelihoods, climate adaptation strategies might exacerbate environmental change and cause negative social impacts. Systematic research has not addressed the impacts of adaptation on environmental change. In this paper, I focus on land use change as a specific type of environmental change and on three adaptation strategies: diversification, pooling and out-migration. I analyse the influence of adaptation strategies on land use change by drawing on interviews with the managers of 56 internationally adjoining protected areas in 18 countries in the Americas. The findings indicate that the impact of adaptation depends on the adaptation strategy people choose. When people out-migrate, land use change increases. Community elite control for decision-making, shorter distances between communities and markets and more communities in and around the protected areas also increase land use change. These findings show that adaptation can be a driver of further environmental change, and thus further study is needed to understand the likely impacts of adaptation on conservation.This article draws on assemblage and actor-network theories to analyze local struggles of adaptation to glacier thinning in Nagar, a high mountain community in the central Karakoram of northern Pakistan. Framing adaptation as a process of assemblage-building of heterogeneous human and non-human actants, two village case studies are investigated where glacier thinning has dried up a source of irrigation water, turning cropland into desert. While in the first case case, villagers were able to construct a new and extraordinary water supply scheme with the help of external development agencies, in the second case, several approaches to utilize alternative water sources over three decades were unsuccessful. An account of the adaptation assemblages shows how a diversity of actants such as individual leaders, community, external agencies, construction materials, landslides and geomorphological features play variable and contingent roles in the success or failure of adaptation efforts, thus co-defining their outcome in complex ways. This article argues that a framing of adaptation as assemblage could offer an empirical and conceptually balanced perspective on adaptation that has the potential to account for the socio-natural complexities involved. While bearing some analytical challenges, it may provide an alternative to other understandings of adaptation to environmental and climate change by refraining from environmental reductionist theories, while avoiding to downplay the natural environment as a mere stage or object of sociopolitical struggles.This paper describes the integration of social-ecological science with traditional knowledge to address global-change challenges faced by indigenous communities in rural Alaska. The Community Partnership for Self-Reliance is a novel boundary organization that uses community visions for self-reliance, based on local and traditional knowledge, to link bottom-up with top-down adaptation planning. We suggest that similar boundary strategies can improve the communication of adaptation needs and opportunities across scales, empowering local communities to select adaptation choices that fit their own goals. This would facilitate regional experimentation and diffusion of innovative solutions to address rapid and heterogeneous environmental andAssisted colonization is a proposed climate change adaptation strategy. Martin-Alcon et al. (Applied Vegetation Science, this issue) report an experiment to evaluate the efficacy of assisted colonization and identify thermal distance as a critical consideration. By extension, we should consider the role that ecological distance and socio-political distance play within any plan to reduce extinction risk through assisted colonization.Adaptation of cereal crops to variable or changing climates requires that essential quality attributes are maintained to deliver food that will be acceptable to human consumers. Advances in cereal genomics are delivering insights into the molecular basis of nutritional and functional quality traits in cereals and defining new genetic resources. Understanding the influence of the environment on expression of these traits will support the retention of these essential functional properties during climate adaptation. New cereals for use as whole grain or ground to flour for other food products may be based upon the traditional species such as rice and wheat currently used in these food applications but may also include new options exploiting genomics tools to allow accelerated domestication of new species.Sharp rises in the atmospheric abundance of ethane (C2H6) have been detected from 2009 onwards in the Northern Hemisphere as a result of the unprecedented growth in the exploitation of shale gas and tight oil reservoirs in North America. Using time series of C2H6 total columns derived from groundbased Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) observations made at five selected Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change sites, we characterize the recent C2H6 evolution and determine growth rates of similar to 5% yr(-1) at mid-latitudes and of similar to 3% yr-1 at remote sites. Results from CAM-chem simulations with the Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollutants, Phase II bottom-up inventory for anthropogenic emissions are found to greatly underestimate the current C2H6 abundances. Doubling global emissions is required to reconcile the simulations and the observations prior to 2009. We further estimate that North American anthropogenic C2H6 emissions have increased from 1.6 Tg yr(-1) in 2008 to 2.8 Tg yr(-1) in 2014, i.e. by 75% over these six years. Wealso completed a second simulation with new top-down emissions of C2H6 from North American oil and gas activities, biofuel consumption and biomass burning, inferred from space-borne observations of methane (CH4) from Greenhouse Gases Observing SATellite. In this simulation, GEOS-Chem is able to reproduce FTIR measurements at the mid-latitudinal sites, underscoring the impact of the North American oil and gas development on the current C2H6 abundance. Finally we estimate that the North American oil and gas emissions of CH4, a major greenhouse gas, grew from 20 to 35 Tg yr(-1) over the period 2008-2014, in association with the recent C2H6 rise.The Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes climate change as a threat to its mission and recently issued policy to implement climate change adaptation measures. However, the DoD has not conducted a comprehensive assessment of health-related climate change effects. To catalyze the needed assessmenta first step toward a comprehensive DoD climate change adaptation plan for healththis article discusses the DoD relevance of 3 selected climate change impacts: heat injuries, vector-borne diseases, and extreme weather that could lead to natural disasters. The author uses these examples to propose a comprehensive approach to planning for health-related climate change impacts in the DoD.Climate change adaptation is an important issue for water and food security but also to sustainable development in the future. How the weather and climate elements will change in the future under climate change conditions will determine the long-term sustainability of water supplies for food production in many areas. Therefore, it is critical to address the issue of climate variability and change on the impacts on water availability. This paper highlights the following topics: latest scientific understanding on climate change; efforts being made by World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through its network of National Hydrological and Meteorological Services in delivering science based services; establishment of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) which has been established by the WMO in collaboration with other international agencies to provide climate information and services; and need for broader collaboration and cooperation among different development sectors at global as well as regional and national levels. ICID and its members were urged to establish linkages at the global, regional and national levels to ensure that climate information and services reach their audiences for the betterment of humanity. It was stressed that the various ICID and WMO communities can make a difference by working together. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Resume L'adaptation au changement climatique est une question importante pour l'eau et la securite alimentaire, mais aussi pour le developpement durable dans l'avenir. Les elements meteorologiques et climatiques vont impacter a long terme l'approvisionnement en eau pour la production alimentaire, et de nombreux autres domaines. Par consequent, il est essentiel d'aborder la question de l'impact du changement climatique sur la variabilite et la disponibilite de l'eau. Ce document met en evidence les themes suivants ; dernieres connaissances scientifiques sur le changement climatique ; efforts deployes par l'Organisation meteorologique mondiale (OMM) a travers son reseau de National de Services Hydrologiques et Meteorologiques dans la prestation de services scientifiques ; mise en place du cadre mondial pour les services climatologiques (CMSC), qui a ete etabli par l'OMM en collaboration avec d'autres organismes internationaux pour fournir des informations et des services climatologiques ; necessite d'une collaboration et de cooperation plus large entre les differents secteurs de developpement au niveau mondial ainsi que les niveaux regionaux et nationaux. La CIID et ses membres ont ete invites a etablir des liens aux niveaux mondial, regional et national pour assurer que l'information climatique et les services atteignent leur public pour le bien de l'humanite. Il a ete souligne que les diverses communautes de CIID et de l'OMM peuvent faire une difference en travaillant ensemble. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The 22nd International Congress on Irrigation and Drainage with the main theme 'Securing Water for Food and Rural Community under Climate Change' was held in September 2014 in Gwangju, Korea. Under this theme, Congress Question 58 'How do Irrigation and Drainage Play an Important Role in Climate Change Adaptation?' was raised. This paper summarizes the discussions and results of 48 papers and 27 posters accepted under this question. This overview confirms the role of irrigation and drainage management as intervention to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and consequent extreme climate events have to be factored into all decision-making processes. It also highlights that particular attention should be paid to the uncertainty in climate change assessment and that the assessment is expected to be more dependable with the development of better analysis methods and a greater availability of reliable climate data and future scenarios. At this stage, it is very hard to do an integrated impact assessment, which covers the whole agricultural and hydrological process, including all scales and aspects such as on-farm to basin, crop growth to farming system, production to environment, etc. Therefore, each sub-process is to be evaluated and accumulation of its outcomes and cases promoted. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Resume Le 22(eme) Congres international des irrigations et du drainage dont le theme principal etait Garantir l'eau pour l'alimentation et communaute rurale dans le contexte du changement climatique' a eu lieu en septembre 2014 a Gwangju, en Coree. Sous ce theme, la question 58s'intitulait Comment est-ce que l'irrigation et le drainage jouent un role important dans l'adaptation au changement climatique?' Le present document resume les conclusions et les discussions resultats de 48 communications et 27 posters acceptes dans le cadre de cette question. Ce tour d'horizon confirme le role de la gestion de l'irrigation et du drainage pour attenuer les impacts du changement climatique, et montre que les evenements climatiques extremes ont a etre pris en compte dans tous les processus de prise de decision. Il souligne egalement qu'une attention particuliere doit etre portee aux incertitudes de l'evaluation du changement climatique, et que cette evaluation devrait etre plus fiable avec le developpement de meilleures methodes d'analyse et une plus grande disponibilite de donnees climatiques fiables et de scenarios prospectifs. A ce stade, il est tres difficile de faire une evaluation integree de l'impact, qui couvre l'ensemble du processus agricole et hydrologique, a toutes les echelles et pour tous les aspects, de l'exploitation agricole au bassin hydrographique, du developpement vegetal aux systemes d'exploitation agricole, de la production a l'environnement, etc. Par consequent, chaque sous-processus est a evaluer, et la consolidation des resultats et de cas doit etre encouragee.Water scarcity at an alarming rate has been a limiting factor for sustainable agriculture in arid and semi-arid environments of the world. It has resulted in a number of problems such as poverty and food insecurity among farm households. Therefore, building and improving resilience, as a way to mitigate the impacts of water scarcity, is important for farm households. But one of the significant steps for planning to improve farm households' resilience under water scarcity is investigation of the current level of resilience of these households and understanding their variances. Therefore, this study offers a classification of farm households' diversity based on resilience. Primary data were collected from 260 randomly selected farm households in 21 villages around Parishan wetland, Iran. Farm Household Resilience Scale was used to measure resilience. Cluster analysis suggested three groups: highly, medium-, and low-resilient farm households. The results of comparing three groups revealed that highly resilient farm households characterize with higher risk management, more agricultural water security, more positive psychological traits, and better knowledge management. Also, they had better water quality, attended more agricultural extension activities, and used modern irrigation systems. Farm households' resilience map using GIS software illustrated that there is a relationship between resilience and farm location from the wetland. The findings of this study could be used by planner and policy-makers to improve farm households' resilience in arid and semi-arid environments. Improvement in knowledge management system is recommended as one of the most effective policy instruments in building resilience.The perception of climate change impacts is strongly influenced by the underlying social realities. In order to develop a model for climate change adaptation policies, the CC-VISAGES project (Climate Change Inferred through Social Analysis, Geography, and Environmental Systems) developed a Climatological Environmental Justice Index (CEJI) based on a developed Human Stress Index (HSI) and the Temperature Humidity Index (THI). Through a geographical information system (GIS) representation of HSI, THI, and CEJI, a vulnerability ranking of all communities in Germany, Canada, and Brazil could be revealed. The variables have been selected and measured in a country comparable manner allowing to proportion communities between the different countries. The data have been gathered from the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) level 3 (community level). This article will show how HSI has been developed and combined with the THI in order to develop the CEJI. A list of the vulnerable areas in each country according to HIS, THI, and ECJI will be presented as the findings and discussed.Early climate change ideas warned of widespread species extinctions. As scientists have probed more deeply into species responses, a more nuanced perspective emerged indicating that some species may persist in microrefugia (refugia), including in mountainous terrain. Refugia are habitats that buffer climate changes and allow species to persist in-and to potentially expand under-changing environmental conditions. While climate and species interactions in refugia have been noted as sources of uncertainty, land management practices and disturbances, such as wildland fire, should also be considered when assessing any given refugium. Our landscape scale study suggests that cold-air pools, an important type of small-scale refugia, have unique fire occurrence, frequency, and severity patterns in frequent-fire mixed conifer forests of California's Sierra Nevada: cold-air pool refugia have less fire and if it occurs, it is lower severity. Therefore, individuals and small populations are less likely to be extirpated by fire. Active management, such as restoration and fuels treatments for climate change adaptation, may be required to maintain these distinctive and potentially important refugia.Cities with a Mediterranean-type climate (Med-cities) are particularly susceptible to health risks from climate change since they are located in biogeographical hot-spots that experience some of the strongest effects of the changing climate. The study aims to highlight health impacts of climate change in Med-cities, analyze local climate adaptation plans and make adaptation policy recommendations for the Med-city level. We identified five Med-cities with a climate change adaptation plan: Adelaide, Barcelona, Cape Town, Los Angeles and Santiago. Beyond their similar Med-climate features (although Santiago's are slightly different), the cities have different socio-economic characteristics in various aspects. We analyzed each plan according to how it addresses climate change-related drivers of health impacts among city dwellers. For each driver, we identified the types of policy adaptation tools that address it in the urban climate adaptation plans. The surveyed cities address most of the fundamental climate change-related drivers of risks to human health, including rising temperatures, flooding and drought, but the policy measures to reduce negative impacts vary across cities. We suggest recommendations for Med-cities in various aspects, depending on their local needs and vulnerability challenges: assessment of health risks, extreme events management and long-term adaptation, among others.In this introduction to the Special Issue on Gender and Geoethics in the Geosciences is a focus on the participation of women in traditionally male-dominated professions, with geography as an exemplary academic subject. The Special Issue stems from the Commission of Gender and Geoethics as part of the International Association of Geoethics, and endeavors to bring together efforts at various spatial scales that examine the position of women in science and engineering in particular, as conveyed in engineering geology, disaster management sciences, and climate change adaptation studies. It has been discovered, for instance, that men are more active and personally prepared at the community level (in Atlantic Canada coastal communities), and more action is still required in developing countries especially to promote gender equality and empower women. Studies contained in this Special Issue also reveal that tutoring and mentoring by other women can promote further involvement in non-traditional professions, such as professional engineering geology, where women are preferring more traditional (less applied) approaches that may circumscribe their ability to find suitable employment after graduation. Moreover, the hiring policy needs to change in many countries, such as Canada, where there are fewer women at entry-level and senior ranks within geography, especially in physical geography as the scientific part of the discipline. The exclusion of women in traditionally male-dominated spheres needs to be addressed and rectified for the ascent of women to occur in scientific geography and in other geosciences as well as science and engineering at large.The world is increasingly concerned with sustainability issues. Climate change is not the least of these concerns. The complexity of these issues is such that data and information management form an important means of making the right decisions. Nowadays, however, the sheer quantity of data is overwhelming; large quantities of data demand means of representation that are comprehensible and effective. The above dilemma poses questions as to how one incorporates unknown climatologic parameters, such as urban heat, in future urban planning processes, and how one ensures the proposals are specific enough to actually adapt cities to climate change and flexible enough to ensure the proposed measures are combinable and compatible with other urban planning priorities. Conventional urban planning processes and mapping strategies are not adapted to this new environmental, technological and social context. In order come up with more appropriate urban planning strategies, in its first section this paper analyzes the role of the urban planner, reviews the wide variety of parameters that are starting to be integrated into the urban planners practice, and considers the parameters (mainly land surface temperature, albedo, vegetation, and imperviousness) and tools needed for the assessment of the UHI (satellite imagery and GIS). The second part of the study analyzes the potential of four catalyzing mapping categories to integrate urban heat into spatial planning processes: drift, layering, game-board, and rhizome.This study presents a conceptual framework for analyzing urban resilience in the context of climate change. The key conceptual elements of resilience are first identified and then reorganized with a focus on cities and climate change adaptation. This study covers not only ecological and engineering resilience but also resilience as a sociopolitical process from an evolutionary perspective. The study's conceptual framework centers on resilience as it relates to cities and climate change. Its findings are expected to shed light on future urban planning and policies for adapting to climate change.Underutilised crops represent an important component of Southern Africa's agro-biodiversity that has potential to contribute to the region's post-2015 development discourse. We reviewed the potential of underutilised crops with respect to how they can contribute to topical challenges, such as food and nutrition security, human health and well-being, climate change adaptation, the environment, and employment creation in poor rural communities. The fact that underutilised crops are the product of generations of landrace agriculture supports the idea that they are resilient and adapted to the needs of farmers in marginal agricultural environments. In addition, underutilised crops are also seen as offering economic advantages due to their uniqueness, suitability to environments in which they are grown and low input requirements. In certain cases, underutilised crops are associated with specific gender roles with women being seen as particularly significant in their production. Evidence also suggests that the inclusion of underutilised crops in cropping systems contributes to dietary diversity and improved nutrition. In the context of the post-2015 agenda, the potential of underutilised crops to generate income, address food security and their status as a "subset of biodiversity" links with a number of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressing social, economic and environmental issues.Academic research and technological innovation associated with rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems in the UK has seen a shift of emphasis in recent years. Traditional design approaches use whole life cost assessments that prioritise financial savings associated with the provision of an alternative water supply. However, researchers and practitioners are increasingly recognising broader benefits associated with rainwater reuse, such as stormwater attenuation benefits. This paper identifies and describes a set of novel RWH system configurations that have potential for deployment in UK houses. Conceptual schematics are provided to define these innovations alongside traditional configurations. Discussion of the drivers supporting these configurations illustrates the opportunities for RWH deployment in a wide range of settings. A quantitative multi criteria analysis was used to evaluate and score the configurations under a range of emerging criteria. The work identifies several RWH system configurations that can outperform traditional ones in terms of specified cost and benefits. Selection of a specific RWH technology is shown to be highly dependent on user priorities. It is proposed that the system configurations highlighted could enable RWH to be cost-effectively installed in a broad set of contexts that have experienced minimal exploitation to date.Rice production is susceptible to damage from the changes in temperature and rainfall patterns, and in the frequency of major storm events that will accompany climate change. Deltaic areas, in which millions of farmers cultivate from one to three crops of rice per year, are susceptible also to the impacts of a rising sea level, submergence during major storm events, and saline intrusion into groundwater and surface water resources. In this paper, I review the current state of knowledge regarding the potential impacts of climate change on rice production and I describe adaptation measures that involve soil and water management. In many areas, farmers will need to modify crop choices, crop calendars, and soil and water management practices as they adapt to climate change. Adaptation measures at the local, regional, and international levels also will be helpful in moderating the potential impacts of climate change on aggregate rice production and on household food security in many countries. Some of the changes in soil and water management and other production practices that will be implemented in response to climate change also will reduce methane generation and release from rice fields. Some of the measures also will reduce the uptake of arsenic in rice plants, thus addressing an important public health issue in portions of South and Southeast Asia. Where feasible, replacing continuously flooded rice production with some form of aerobic rice production, will contribute to achieving adaptation objectives, while also reducing global warming potential and minimizing the risk of negative health impacts due to consumption of arsenic contaminated rice.Under likely climate change scenarios, changes to fisheries assessment, monitoring, management and governance, intended to reduce negative impacts and seize opportunities to improve performance, will form an important part of climate change adaptation responses for fisheries. Comprehensively and consistently assessing possible management adaptation options requires a clear definition of a multi-criteria evaluation framework incorporating information about the relative importance of often competing criteria or objectives. Such a framework is often missing from climate change adaptation evaluation, with adaptation priorities and plans often developed without direct reference to the key objectives of management. We used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to develop a weighted hierarchy of objectives in four south-eastern Australian fisheries. The developed hierarchy included fisheries management objectives routinely articulated in policy and management documents, those that may underpin effective adaptation and adaptation planning, and objectives likely to contribute to ongoing adaptive capacity and resilience of fisheries and associated communities. Results of an interactive survey of managers, researchers and commercial and recreational fishers yielded average weightings of objectives that were quite consistent across the four fisheries, with a very strong preference for ensuring that adaptations support environmental and ecological values, particularly through sustaining the harvested population. However, differences between stakeholder groups were more marked, with economic objectives considered more important by commercial fishers, and social objectives by recreational fishers, than by other groups. This suggests the possibility of conflicts between groups when determining appropriate adaptation strategies, as alternative strategies will have different economic and social outcomes even if achieving comparable environmental outcomes.Sociologists have done important research documenting the key role that think tanks play in the climate change denialism movement in the United States, which has sought to mislead the American public about the realities of global warming. Sociologists have not, however, assessed the full range of ways that think tanks are responding to - or planning for - global environmental change. This article proposes a typology of elite responses to global warming, which goes beyond denialism to include (i) limited climate mitigation, (ii) climate adaptation/privileged accommodation, and (iii) climate opportunism. Ultimately, this article provides insights on ways to build upon previous research in both environmental and political sociology to study the interface between elite-driven policy, climate change, and capitalism.The most important land and water issues facing North America and the world - including land-use patterns, water management, biodiversity protection, and climate adaptation - require innovative governance arrangements. Most of these issues need to be addressed at several scales simultaneously, ranging from local to global. They require action at the scale of large landscapes given that the geographic scope of the issues often transcends the legal and geographic reach of existing jurisdictions and institutions. No single entity has the authority to address these types of cross-boundary issues, resulting in gaps in governance and a corresponding need to create formal and informal ways work more effectively across administrative boundaries, land ownerships, and political jurisdictions. In response to this challenge, numerous models of network governance are emerging. These approaches vary in terms of purpose, spatial scale, composition, organization, and complexity. This article explains what network governance is, why it is emerging, how it compares to other models of natural resource governance, and the different ways in which it develops and evolves.The majority of vulnerability and adaptation scholarship, policies and programs focus exclusively on climate change or global environmental change. Yet, individuals, communities and sectors experience a broad array of multi-scalar and multi-temporal, social, political, economic and environmental changes to which they are vulnerable and must adapt. While extensive theoretical-and increasingly empirical-work suggests the need to explore multiple exposures, a clear conceptual framework which would facilitate analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to multiple interacting socioeconomic and biophysical changes is lacking. This review and synthesis paper aims to fill this gap through presenting a conceptual framework for integrating multiple exposures into vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning. To support applications of the framework and facilitate assessments and comparative analyses of community vulnerability, we develop a comprehensive typology of drivers and exposures experienced by coastal communities. Our results reveal essential elements of a pragmatic approach for local-scale vulnerability analysis and for planning appropriate adaptations within the context of multiple interacting exposures. We also identify methodologies for characterizing exposures and impacts, exploring interactions and identifying and prioritizing responses. This review focuses on coastal communities; however, we believe the framework, typology and approach will be useful for understanding vulnerability and planning adaptation to multiple exposures in various social-ecological contexts.The distribution of risk of coastal inundation, and the potential benefits of adapting to protect against inundation, vary greatly both within and between coastal communities. This diversity is a result of physical factors, such as the risk of storm surge, sea level rise projections, and the topography of the landscape, as well as socio-economic factors, such as the level of development, and the capacity within the community to adapt. Despite this strong local variation, various communities share common characteristics that constrain or enable different adaptation options in different situations. Understanding these drivers is likely to be important in engaging coastal communities in the discussion around adaptation and may provide new insights into which adaptation options are suitable for each of our at-risk coastal communities. We performed a property-level analysis of 6 suburb-sized case studies distributed along the coast of Queensland, Australia. We assessed the potential economic costs of inundation events now and in the future under sea level rise projections, and the potential avoided costs following adaptation to protect against inundation. We went beyond this to estimate the distribution of risk in each community and compared the potential costs of adaptation with the capacity of the community to pay for their implementation. We used these insights to propose a typology of coastal communities based on their exposure to total inundation risk, the distribution of that risk within the community, and their capacity to adapt.Transport infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to climate impacts as it is designed for long operational lives, and both episodic and seasonal conditions contribute to deterioration, disruption and unsafe incidents. There are some examples of adaptation in transportation design, but many communities do not have the capacity to incorporate climate change considerations into infrastructure planning and management. Researchers worked closely with the City of Prince George, in Central British Columbia, Canada, to build on existing work and explore how the City could plan, design, and maintain roads and other structures to account for climate change. A local steering committee was formed, and created and evaluated 23 potential research topics. Two focus areas were selected for further investigation and explored during a workshop with practitioners, researchers, consultants and other representatives. The workshop precipitated an investigation of projected impacts of climate change on road maintenance and road safety, and plans to explore alternative paving techniques. Outcomes of the case study provide insights regarding climate change and local transportation infrastructure, including: how researchers can engage with local experts to explore adaptation; issues local governments perceive as important; and barriers communities face as they attempt to address vulnerabilities.Information helps decision makers to address and to decide about environmental problems. In the context of climate change adaptation, often knowledge is missing on how the available information from impact models affects the decision-making process. The main aim of this study was to explore the extent of ambiguity and how new climate change information influenced decision of forest planners. We investigated changes in decisions of planners about forestry actions representing species choice and forest tourism and expiry dates of these actions leading to environmental constraints in the provision of ecosystem services. Forest planners evaluated expiry dates using four forest ecosystem services: forest production, stand yield class, sequestered carbon, and potential tourism. Data were collected during workshops with eleven forest planners from three forest districts in Scotland. Presented climate change information modified the understanding and frames of planners about forestry actions assessed with accompanying expiry dates. Changes in the frames of planners often result in both earlier and later expiry dates. Ambiguity of planners was found to be dependent on diversity in frames and difficulty in evaluating multiple ecosystem services. These findings imply that due to ambiguity forest planners might find it hard to choose climate change adaptation measures and researchers can struggle to convince planners with new research findings.Strategies to promote synergistic responses to both urban development issues and climate change adaptation have become central to policy advice on adaptation. However, the empirical evidence for the effective utilisation of adaptation synergies in planning practices is insufficient. Taking urban planning in Johannesburg as a case study and using the risks of flooding as an illustrative example, this qualitative study explores how adaptation synergies can be realised in planning practices. In this specific case, significant synergy possibilities in planning practices are not observed. Instead, political challenges of reconciling adaptation measures with planning responses to the considerable developmental challenges of urban divide and multiple urban risks in Johannesburg substantially limit the response space for adaptation practices, including those achievable through synergies. Insights gained in this study underline the necessity of giving greater attention to the empirics of observed synergies. The study provides initial indications that it may be necessary to adjust elements of the conceptual arguments concerning adaptation synergies and related policy advice.Behavioral thermoregulators leverage environmental temperature to control their body temperature. Habitat thermal quality therefore dictates the difficulty and necessity of precise thermoregulation, and the quality of behavioral thermoregulation in turn impacts organism fitness via the thermal dependence of performance. Comparing the body temperature of a thermoregulator with a null (non-thermoregulating) model allows us to estimate habitat thermal quality and the effect of behavioral thermoregulation on body temperature. We define a null model for behavioral thermoregulation that is a random walk in a temporally and spatially explicit thermal landscape. Predicted body temperature is also integrated through time, so recent body temperature history, environmental temperature, and movement influence current body temperature; there is no particular reliance on an organism's equilibrium temperature. We develop a metric called thermal benefit that equates body temperature to thermally dependent performance as a proxy for fitness. We measure thermal quality of two distinct tropical habitats as a temporally dynamic distribution that is an ergodic property of many random walks, and we compare it with the thermal benefit of real lizards in both habitats. Our simple model focuses on transient body temperature; as such, using it we observe such subtleties as shifts in the thermoregulatory effort and investment of lizards throughout the day, from thermoregulators to thermoconformers.We present a field-verified algorithm for retrieving vegetation water content (VWC), which is the mass of water in vegetation tissue per ground area, using observed microwave brightness temperatures (TBs). We can use 6.925- and 10.65-GHz microwave observations to minimize the species dependence of the relationship between vegetation optical depth (VOD) and VWC. Then, we can easily estimate the VWC after obtaining the VOD. Although the VOD retrieved at these frequencies is highly affected by uncertainties in the surface roughness, we found that the effects of the bias of the roughness parameters in a radiative transfer model can effectively be eliminated by introducing leaf area index (LAI) data. The TBs observed using ground-based microwave radiometer and field-observed LAI were used to successfully reproduce the field-observed VWC below 2.0 kg/m(2) (R-2 = 0.712 and RMSE = 0.393 kg/m(2)). This strategy of surface roughness correction also positively impacts the performance of soil moisture retrieval. This field-verified algorithm can contribute to global scale VWC retrieval using satellite microwave radiometers such as the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on Earth Observation Systems (AMSR-E) and its successor (AMSR2).In the field of adaptation governance research, current discussion on the barriers to adaptation shows that theoretical explanations for why institutions emerge and how they enable or constrain adaptation are underdeveloped. In this Perspective, we show that there is a significant opportunity to advance the understanding of adaptation governance by integrating insights that have been developed in the extensive commons literature on the institutions that work to overcome social conflicts or dilemmas. 'Realist-materialist' approaches to understanding such collective action are particularly valuable to adaptation governance research because they emphasize how biophysical conditions give rise to certain types of social dilemma. Climate change affects these biophysical conditions, and thus may alter dilemmas or create new ones. Based on realist-materialist reasoning, this Perspective describes six types of dilemma, illustrates each with a case from the adaptation literature and draws on insights from the commons literature regarding relevant contextual conditions and effective policy instruments for overcoming social dilemmas. The dilemma types provide entry points for rigorous comparative adaptation research to deepen understanding of how context influences adaptation governance processes.Contemporary climate change is having widespread impacts on plant populations. Understanding how plants respond to this change is essential to our efforts to conserve them. The key climate responses of plant populations can be categorised into one of three types: migration, in situ adaptation, or extirpation. If populations are to avoid extirpation then migration and/or in situ adaptation is essential. In this review we first articulate the current and future constraints of plant populations, but trees in particular, to the different adaptation strategies (e.g. space availability, rate of change, habitat fragmentation, niche availability). Secondly, we assess the use of the most appropriate methods (e.g. natural environmental gradients, genome and transcriptome scans) for assessing and understanding adaptive responses and the capacity to adapt to future challenges. Thirdly, we discuss the best conservation approaches (e.g. assisted migration, biodiversity corridors, ex situ strategies) to help overcome adaptive constraints in plants. Our synthesis of plant, and particularly tree, responses and constraints to climate change adaptation, combined with the identification of conservation strategies designed to overcome constraints, will help deliver effective management actions to assist adaptation in the face of current and future climate change.Climate change adaptation is a rapidly evolving field in conservation biology and includes a range of strategies from resisting to actively directing change on the landscape. The term 'climate change resilience,' frequently used to characterize adaptation strategies, deserves closer scrutiny because it is ambiguous, often misunderstood, and difficult to apply consistently across disciplines and spatial and temporal scales to support conservation efforts. Current definitions of resilience encompass all aspects of adaptation from resisting and absorbing change to reorganizing and transforming in response to climate change. However, many stakeholders are unfamiliar with this spectrum of definitions and assume the more common meaning of returning to a previous state after a disturbance. Climate change, however, is unrelenting and intensifying, characterized by both directional shifts in baseline conditions and increasing variability in extreme events. This ongoing change means that scientific understanding and management responses must develop concurrently, iteratively, and collaboratively, in a science-management partnership. Divergent concepts of climate change resilience impede cross-jurisdictional adaptation efforts and complicate use of adaptive management frameworks. Climate change adaptation practitioners require clear terminology to articulate management strategies and the inherent tradeoffs involved in adaptation. Language that distinguishes among strategies that seek to resist change, accommodate change, and direct change (i.e., persistence, autonomous change, and directed change) is prerequisite to clear communication about climate change adaptation goals and management intentions in conservation areas.Consumption is the basis of metabolic and trophic ecology and is used to assess an animal's trophic impact. The contribution of activity to an animal's energy budget is an important parameter when estimating consumption, yet activity is usually measured in captive animals. Developments in telemetry have allowed the energetic costs of activity to be measured for wild animals; however, wild activity is seldom incorporated into estimates of consumption rates. We calculated the consumption rate of a free-ranging marine predator (yellowtail king-fish, Seriola lalandi) by integrating the energetic cost of free-ranging activity into a bioenergetics model. Accelerometry transmitters were used in conjunction with laboratory respirometry trials to estimate kingfish active metabolic rate in the wild. These field-derived consumption rate estimates were compared with those estimated by two traditional bioenergetics methods. The first method derived routine swimming speed from fish morphology as an index of activity (a "morphometric" method), and the second considered activity as a fixed proportion of standard metabolic rate (a "physiological" method). The mean consumption rate for free-ranging kingfish measured by accelerometry was 152 J center dot g(-1)center dot day(-1), which lay between the estimates from the morphometric method (mu = 134 J center dot g(-1)center dot day(-1)) and the physiological method (mu = 181 J center dot g(-1)center dot day(-1)). Incorporating field-derived activity values resulted in the smallest variance in log-normally distributed consumption rates (sigma = 0.31), compared with the morphometric (sigma = 0.57) and physiological (sigma = 0.78) methods. Incorporating field-derived activity into bioenergetics models probably provided more realistic estimates of consumption rate compared with the traditional methods, which may further our understanding of trophic interactions that underpin ecosystem-based fisheries management. The general methods used to estimate active metabolic rates of free-ranging fish could be extended to examine ecological energetics and trophic interactions across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.Green infrastructure in developed countries has been used as a climate change adaptation strategy to lower increased temperatures in cities. But, the use of green infrastructure to provide ecosystem services and increase resilience is largely overlooked in climate change and urban policies in the developing world. This study analyzed the role of urbanization and green infrastructure on urban surface temperatures in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, in sub-Saharan Africa. We use available geospatial data and techniques to spatially and temporally explore urbanization and land surface temperatures (LSTs) over 20 years. The effect of specific green infrastructure areas in the city on LSTs was also analyzed. Results show increased urbanization rates and increased temperature trends across time and space. But, LST in green infrastructure areas was indeed lower than adjacent impervious, urbanized areas. Seasonal phenological differences due to rainfall patterns, available planting space, and site limitations should be accounted for to maximize temperature reduction benefits. We discuss an approach on how study findings and urban and peri-urban agriculture and forestry are being used for policy uptake and formulation in the field of climate change, food security, and urbanization by the municipal government in this city in Burkina Faso.Success stories from the developed and developing world show that EWS are a useful tool to save lives, prevent damage and enhance the resilience of a society. Despite the substantial technical progress, from an operational point of view, major challenges remain to achieve the potential benefits of EWS, in particular in communicating risk information and early warnings to emergency services and the population at-risk and consequently trigger response actions. Case studies from Europe (Belgium) and Africa (Egypt, Mali) demonstrate the actual use of EWS for flood emergency response. Recommendations are consequently provided to better trigger a response from stakeholders at all levels and across sectors (authorities and at-risk population) and to realise benefits that go beyond flood risk reduction, but also address climate change adaptation. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Governance networks can facilitate coordinated action and shared opportunities for learning among conservation scientists, policy makers, and communities. However, governance networks that link local, regional, and international actors just as often reflect social relationships and arrangements that can undermine conservation efforts, particularly those concerning community-level priorities. Here, we identify three waypoints or navigational guides to help researchers and practitioners explore these networks, and to inspire them to consider in a more systematic manner the social rules and relationships that influence conservation outcomes. These waypoints encourage those engaged in community-based conservation (CBC) to: (1) think about the networks in which they are embedded and the constellation of actors that influence conservation practice; (2) examine the values and interests of diverse actors in governance, and the implications of different perspectives for conservation; and (3) consider how the structure and dynamics of networks can reveal helpful insights for conservation efforts. The three waypoints we highlight synthesize an interdisciplinary literature on governance networks and provide key insights for conservation actors navigating the challenges of CBC at multiple scales and levels.Fishing is the traditional occupation of Nigeria's coastal communities. There is total dependence on wild caught fishes while aquaculture or fish farming is almost unknown. In addition to the numerous impacts of fishing on the ecosystem, mangroves are heavily exploited for fish processing and domestic energy needs. A survey was conducted in the fishing communities of two coastal States of Akwa Ibom and Cross River. The aim of this survey was to ascertain the communities' awareness of climate change, create awareness on the interrelationship of climate change impacts and coastal ecosystems, and to drive home the need for adaptation through alternative livelihood and sustainable mangrove exploitation. The changes in climatic conditions acknowledged by the local communities include irregular rainfall patterns, heavy runoff, flooding, sea level rise and increased storm surges. They also acknowledged depletion in capture fisheries output, and increased risks for fishing at estuary and coastal waters. To encourage the communities' adaptation to climate change, two pilot projects were introduced simultaneously in two communities of Cross River State, namely: fish farming as an alternative livelihood source, and locally fabricated fuel efficient wood stove aimed at minimizing mangrove deforestation for fish processing and other domestic energy needs. The position of this paper is that alternatives for energy and livelihood are necessary adaptation options for these coastal communities in the face of increasing climate change impacts.There is a need to create competency among Extension professionals on the topic of climate change adaptation and mitigation in animal agriculture. The Animal Agriculture in a Changing Climate online course provides an easily accessible, user-friendly, free, and interactive experience for learning science-based information on a national and regional level. The web-based curriculum is proving to be a useful tool and valuable resource for Extension educators in gaining knowledge and being better equipped to inform and influence livestock and poultry producers regarding climate issues.Climate projections indicate an average rise in temperature in the range of 3-7 degrees C for central Australia by 2100 and a decline in thermal comfort. There is uncertainty in the future spatial and temporal occurrences of extreme events such as floods and droughts, though heat stress is predicted to become more frequent in central Australia. To a large extent, sustainable development in this region aims to create self-sufficient and vibrant remote desert-based communities. In this paper, we examine the prospects for sustaining native bush food production in central Australia under a changing climate. Harvesting of native plants for bush food has strong relevance in a central Australian context, where many bush foods have cultural significance to Aboriginal peoples. The native bush food industry is also important in central Australia as it provides employment for local people and sustains the knowledge and practice associated with culturally significant plants. However, the projections of climate change in the region suggest an increasing risk - to plant production, workers' safety, and getting product to markets. A pathway of the potential steps needed for adaptation (i. e. adaptive pathway) is conceptualised in this paper as to how native bush food production can become a climate-ready and enduring industry in central Australia.Extreme climate events such as typhoons, heat waves, and floods have increased in frequency with climate change. Many municipalities within the Republic of Korea (ROK) have experienced damage from these events, necessitating countermeasures. Vulnerability assessment has been suggested in the implementation of a national plan for reducing damage resulting from climate change. Thus, in this study, we assess the vulnerability of the ROK and identify key vulnerable municipalities in support of the national adaptation plan. We create a framework for assessing the vulnerability of all 232 municipalities of the ROK with respect to 32 items in 7 fields. The framework regards decision makers' comprehension and availability of data as important factors. We assess the vulnerability index of each municipality by using variables of climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation capacity. The weights of variables are determined by the Delphi method. We used the representative concentration pathways 8.5 climate scenario to reflect future climate exposure for the vulnerability assessment. From the analysis, vulnerability maps are prepared for the 32 items of 7 fields, and key vulnerable municipalities are identified by aggregating the maps. The distribution of vulnerable municipalities changes with the future climate conditions. These maps provide a scientific and objective basis for the ROK government to establish adaptation plans and allocate resources. The ROK government can utilize the results to identify the characteristics of highly vulnerable areas, and municipalities can use the results as a basis for requesting support from the national government.The IPCC is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, forming the interface between science, policy and global politics. Indigenous issues have been under-represented in previous IPCC assessments. In this Perspective, we analyse how indigenous content is covered and framed in the Working Group II (WGII) portion of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). We find that although there is reference to indigenous content in WGII, which increased from the Fourth Assessment Report, the coverage is general in scope and limited in length, there is little critical engagement with indigenous knowledge systems, and the historical and contextual complexities of indigenous experiences are largely overlooked. The development of culturally relevant and appropriate adaptation policies requires more robust, nuanced and appropriate inclusion and framing of indigenous issues in future assessment reports, and we outline how this can be achieved.The impacts of climate change are apparent in various regions of the world. Even though climate change may have a positive effect, it is anticipated that there will be many severely negative effects on human and natural resources in the future. Therefore, in addition to the need for stronger promotion of mitigation policies, it is urgently necessary to study and implement adaptation policies over the longer term to prepare for the possible negative impact of climate change. To implement climate change adaptation measures rapidly in Japan, it would seem practical and effective to make good use of the various countermeasures already promoted by both the national and the local governments for many sectors such as disaster prevention, environmental management, food production, and protection of the nation's health. These countermeasures are considered to have potential for effecting climate change adaptation. This study, focusing on adaptation to climate change negative impacts, investigates to what extent the existing policies of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government could contribute to climate change adaptation, based on a comprehensive examination of targeted fields and indicators for which adaptation policies could be pursued. The results showed many of the existing policies could be useful for adaptation to climate change in many sectors. Furthermore, less than half of these policies need to take future climate change into account in order to contribute to climate change adaptation. This study proposes three basic steps that consider future climate change and local governmental propositions for the rapid implementation of adaptation policies in Japan.Getting farmers to adopt new cultivars with greater tolerance for coping with climatic extremes and variability is considered as one way of adapting agricultural production to climate change. However, for successful adaptation to occur, an accurate recognition and understanding of the climate signal by key stakeholders (farmers, seed suppliers and agricultural extension services) is an essential precursor. This paper presents evidence based on fieldwork with smallholder maize producers and national seed network stakeholders in Malawi from 2010 to 2011, assessing understandings of rainfall changes and decision-making about maize cultivar choices. Our findings show that preferences for short-season maize cultivars are increasing based on perceptions that season lengths are growing shorter due to climate change and the assumption that growing shorter-season crops represents a good strategy for adapting to drought. However, meteorological records for the two study areas present no evidence for shortening seasons (or any significant change to rainfall characteristics), suggesting that short-season cultivars may not be the most suitable adaptation option for these areas. This demonstrates the dangers of oversimplified climate information in guiding changes in farmer decision-making about cultivar choice.A multivariate data assimilation experiment was conducted in order to improve the global representation of both the ocean and sea ice fields through the inclusion of sea ice concentration (SIC) data. Our method corrects the surface forcing and ocean temperature fields (as well as the SIC field) through the use of three-dimensional variational analysis. The adjustments to surface air temperatures resulting from the SIC assimilation are estimated on the basis of two constraints. First, we assume that the interfacial temperature difference between the surface air and the average value at the "top" of the grid (which represents a weighted mean according to the relative coverage of sea ice to open water within the grid) is maintained at the pre-assimilation value. Similarly, the vertical temperature structure for each of the five sea ice categories considered here remains unchanged throughout the assimilation. In making the necessary adjustments to upper-layer ocean temperatures, we again adopt a weighting procedure based on the condition that ice-free water temperature must remain the same. Thus, areas containing sea ice are allotted the freezing-point temperature such that the weighted mean value across the grid can be derived. The reproduction of the SIC field in both hemispheres is improved by incorporating the resulting corrections to the surface forcing and ocean temperature values, indicating that these boundary conditions produce results that are more consistent with the corrected SIC field in the sea ice model. The enhanced ocean-sea ice fields provide initial conditions that are better suited for coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice prediction experiments.The perspectives and knowledge of decision makers, especially those at the provincial level, have great impact on the progress of climate change adaptation in China. Therefore, identifying knowledge gaps and enhancing climate adaptation awareness of decision makers at that level is very important. Based on this aim, we conducted a survey of climate change adaptation awareness among 85 administrative and management personnel from governmental departments responsible for climate change adaptation planning in five provinces. Study findings revealed that over half of respondents have knowledge of climate change adaptation measures, but the extent of understanding varied across different adaptation aspects and regions. Among the different aspects, understanding of measures related to human health protection was the lowest. A large majority of respondents indicated an eagerness to obtain knowledge and information about climate change adaptation, but the main barrier is a lack of training and learning material. When making adaptation plans or policies, the greatest obstacle expressed was a funding shortage. Information generated from this study can provide direction and guidance for training and educating provincial decision makers in order to improve the levels of adaptation planning and policy making. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This research explores the institutional water governance system of irrigated agricultural producers in Mendoza, Argentina in the context of a changing climate (predominantly increasing events of drought and water scarcity). An assessment is made of the impact of water governance instruments on producers using the methodology of vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Analysis focuses on the impact of the institutional water governance system on the adaptive capacity of producers' resources, or capitals (human, social, economic, technological, and natural). Conclusions and suggestions for improving the resiliency of agricultural producers and increasing the adaptive dimensions of Mendoza's water governance system are made based on this analysis. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Urbanization has increased heat in the urban environment, with many consequences for human health and wellbeing. Managing climate change in part through increasing vegetation is desired by many cities to mitigate current and future heat related issues. However, little information is available on what influences the current effectiveness and availability of vegetation for local cooling. In this study, we identified the variation in the interacting relationships among vegetation (normalized difference vegetation index), socioeconomic status (neighborhood income), elevation and land surface temperature (LST) to identify how vegetation based surface cooling services change throughout the pronounced coastal to desert climate gradient of the Los Angeles, CA metropolitan region, a megacity of >18 million residents. A key challenge for understanding variation in vegetation as a climate change adaptation tool spanning neighborhood to megacity scales is developing new "big data" analytical tools. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to quantify the interacting relationships among socio-economic status data obtained from government census data, elevation and new LST and vegetation data obtained from an airborne imaging campaign conducted in 2013 for the urban and suburban areas across a series of fifteen climate zones. Vegetation systematically increased in cooling effectiveness from 6.06 to 31.77 degrees with increasing distance from the coast. Vegetation and neighborhood income were positively correlated throughout all climate zones with a peak in the relationship occurring near 25 km from the coast. Because of the interaction between these two relationships, we also found that higher income neighborhoods were cooler and that this effect peaked at about 30 km from the coast. These results show the availability and effectiveness of vegetation on the local climate varies tremendously throughout the Los Angeles, CA metropolitan area. Further, using the more inland climate zones as future analogs for more coastal zones, suggests that in the warmer climate conditions projected for the region the effectiveness of vegetation for regional cooling may increase thus acting as a localized negative feedback mechanism. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Industrial complexes allow for efficient and sustainable production of various goods, but at the same time they are also vulnerable to cascading failures caused by disruptions in process capacity or resource availability. Climate change in particular may cause significant perturbations in the supply of important process inputs such as water, energy, or feedstocks. Thus, for industrial complexes, proper risk management strategies must be developed as part of overall climate change adaptation and resilience measures. Rigorous modeling approaches are needed to ensure that economic losses resulting from a disruption are minimized. In this paper, a P-graph-based methodology is used to determine optimal adjustments to crisis conditions in order to minimize manufacturing losses; this graph theoretic methodology has traditionally been used for process network synthesis problems but has recently proven to be useful for structurally analogous problem domains. Two case studies on the reallocation of production capacities and product streams in an aluminum production complex and a biomass processing complex are used to illustrate the methodology.In opposition to the originally proposed Log-logistic distribution, Stagge et al. (2015) recommended the use of the general extreme value (GEV) distribution to calculate the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI). This is not an irrelevant issue, as the use of different distribution functions may lead to different SPEI values, and thus can make them not compatible with those of other users. Stagge et al. (2015) based their recommendation on the results of goodness-of-fit tests applied to climate data in Europe. Here we provide evidence that these tests do not have enough power for discriminating between very similar distribution functions. Even more, their results are not robust and depend on the data used. Other criteria based on the adaptation to the tails of the distribution and the fraction of cases with no solution are more relevant to guide the selection of the most adequate distribution. We have tested both distribution functions based on these criteria and using global gridded data of precipitation and reference evapotranspiration. Our results clearly recommend the use of the Log-logistic distribution to calculate the SPEI, as originally proposed by Vicente-Serrano et al. (2010a).This paper reports the results of an intervention study that aimed to encourage workplace energy conservation behavior by office-based employees. Taking a coproduction approach we worked with the participating organization to design and implement an intervention that used the influence of top management commitment and prompts to encourage workplace energy reduction. Whilst past research has shown top management is related to workplace pro-environmental behavior, this study extends this work by examining a field-based intervention over a longitudinal period. The efficacy of the intervention was measured using observational and self-reported data over a period of 6 months. Results showed that there were significant changes in objective and self-reported energy conservation behavior, perceived top management commitment, organizational culture, norms, and knowledge regarding energy conservation behavior over the course of the study. The findings also demonstrated that the intervention was most successful for those behaviors where employees have individual responsibility. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.Species' tolerance limits determine their capacity to tolerate climatic extremes and limit their potential distributions. Interspecific variation in thermal tolerances is often proposed to indicate climatic vulnerability and is, therefore, the subject of many recent meta-studies on differential capacities of species from climatically different habitats to deal with climate change. Most studies on thermal tolerances do not acclimate animals or use inconsistent, and insufficient, acclimation times, limiting our knowledge of the shape, duration and extent of acclimation responses. Consequently patterns in thermal tolerances observed in meta-analyses, based on data from the literature are based on inconsistent, partial acclimation and true trends may be obscured. In this study we describe time-course of complete acclimation of critical thermal minima in the tropical ectotherm Carlia longipes and compare it to the average acclimation response of other reptiles, estimated from published data, to assess how much acclimation time may contribute to observed differences in thermal limits. Carlia longipes decreased their lower critical thermal limits by 2.4 degrees C and completed 95% of acclimation in 17 weeks. Wild populations did not mirror this acclimation process over the winter. Other reptiles appear to decrease cold tolerance more quickly (95% in 7 weeks) and to a greater extent, with an estimated average acclimation response of 6.1 degrees C. However, without data on tolerances after longer acclimation times available, our capacity to estimate final acclimation state is very limited. Based on the subset of data available for meta-analysis, much of the variation in cold tolerance observed in the literature can be attributed to acclimation time. Our results indicate that (i) acclimation responses can be slow and substantial, even in tropical species, and (ii) interspecific differences in acclimation speed and extent may obscure trends assessed in some meta-studies. Cold tolerances of wild animals are representative of cumulative responses to recent environments, while lengthy acclimation is necessary for controlled comparisons of physiological tolerances. Measures of inconsistent, intermediate acclimation states, as reported by many studies, represent neither the realised nor the potential tolerance in that population, are very likely underestimates of species' physiological capacities and may consequently be of limited value.The relationship between the outdoor temperature and the indoor comfort temperature in naturally ventilated buildings is close to linear; this relationship is complex in heated or cooled buildings. To explore the influencing mechanism of the outdoor temperature on the indoor air temperature and thermal adaptation in winter, field studies on the thermal comfort in residential buildings with heating systems during the heating season have been conducted in three northern cities of China, with both subjective questionnaire surveys and objective on-site measurements performed simultaneously in every field survey. The results indicated that the indoor temperature is affected by the outdoor climate to some extent, even under conditions of space heating. When the outdoor temperature was below 10 degrees C in cold climates, the indoor temperature gradually increased with the decrease of the outdoor temperature. The outdoor temperature affected not only the adaptive behavior, but also the thermal acceptability. When the outdoor temperature experienced by the occupants in winter was lower, and the low temperature was experienced longer, the dependence on heating equipment, acceptability of a high temperature, and impatience with a low temperature environment were stronger. When the mean outdoor temperature experienced by the occupants was only slightly cold, the occupants expressed a lower thermal expectation and accepted a wider temperature range. The above climate adaptation mechanism provides a valuable reference for the design of higher efficient space heating systems. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Conservation agriculture (CA), comprising minimum soil disturbance, retention of crop residues and crop diversification, is widely promoted for reducing soil degradation and improving agricultural sustainability. It is also claimed to mitigate climate change through soil carbon sequestration: we conducted a meta-analysis of soil organic carbon (SOC) stock changes under CA practices in two tropical regions, the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), to quantify this. In IGP annual increases in SOC stock compared to conventional practice were between 0.16 and 0.49 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). In SSA increases were between 0.28 and 0.96 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1), but with much greater variation and a significant number of cases with no measurable increase. Most reported SOC stock increases under CA are overestimates because of errors introduced by inappropriate soil sampling methodology. SOC increases require careful interpretation to assess whether or not they represent genuine climate change mitigation as opposed to redistribution of organic C within the landscape or soil profile. In smallholder farming in tropical regions social and economic barriers can greatly limit adoption of CA, further decreasing realistic mitigation potential. Comparison with the decreases in greenhouse gas emissions possible through improved management of nitrogen (N) fertilizer in regions such as IGP where N use is already high, suggests that this is a more effective and sustainable means of mitigating climate change. However the mitigation potential, and other benefits, from crop diversification are frequently overlooked when considering CA and warrant greater attention. Increases in SOC concentration (as opposed to stock) in near-surface soil from CA cause improvements in soil physical conditions; these are expected to contribute to increased sustainability and climate change adaptation, though not necessarily leading to consistently increased crop yields. CA should be promoted on the basis of these factors and any climate change mitigation regarded as an additional benefit, not a major policy driver for its adoption. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In Ghana, the agricultural sector is climate-dependent and susceptible to threatening impacts of climate change, yet, little is known about climate change adaptation in rural farming communities. This article examines the effects of, and local adaptation response to, climate change in rural farming communities in the Jaman North District of Ghana. Using meteorological data, changes in rainfall and temperature over the past 30 years were analyzed. In addition, social research methods were used to analyse interviews and household survey data on climate change impacts on, and adaption responses of rural communities. Results showed that the changing weather patterns, in the form of erratic rainfall and increasing temperatures, have become an additional burden to rural farming communities who are already faced with limited level of mechanization.Over the last 40 years, warmer temperatures have caused a considerable decrease in snow cover on glaciers and high rates of glacial melt, particularly in tropical mountains. In the Bolivian Andes, the Chacaltaya glacier (5400 masl) had been a tourist destination known as the highest ski slope in the world since 1939. As a result of climate change, skiing has not been possible after 1987 and the glacier definitely disappeared in 2009. However, since 2005, the place has become a new attraction for tourists. Travel agencies in La Paz now offer day trips to the Chacaltaya site. In order to understand the present attraction of the site and its potential for reproduction elsewhere, 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted with various categories of stakeholders involved in the tourism industry in La Paz, and archives and images were analysed. Our results show that the multifunctional character of this tourist site, including easy access to a summit, beautiful views, acclimatisation to altitude and opportunity to experience snow, are key factors in its renewed attraction for visitors, together with, to a lesser extent, the incentive of being able to watch a famous and evident full disappearance of a glacier and former ski slope. The stakeholders' groups share general views and perceptions about environmental changes and about the qualities of the site, but they also differ in terms of projects and evaluation of potential attractiveness. In particular, the development of the visibility of climate change impacts on mountain environment is valued by experts or by members of the Andean Club, but not by travel agencies. The example of Chacaltaya shows that multifunctional tourist sites may still be attractive in the future.There is a growing concern that climate variability and change, combined with other environmental, social and political pressures, may overwhelm resilience of pastoral systems if local adaptation strategies are not strengthened. Understanding pastoralists' perception of and response to climatic change is necessary for sustainable adaptation strategies. Systematic and purposive sampling techniques were used to select 302 households in Turkana County of northwestern Kenya. Descriptive statistics and Heckman probit model were used to analyse the data obtained from the household's interviews. The results show that majority of households' perceive rise in temperatures and rainfall variability over the past three decades. Pastoralists' perception of climate change was significantly (p<.05) associated with gender of the household head, livestock ownership, herd size and access to extension services. Heckman's sample selectivity probit model revealed that factors influencing pastoralist's choices of climate change adaptation include gender and education level of the household head, household size, wealth in terms of livestock ownership, distance to markets, access to credit and extension services. We conclude that as a prerequisite for long-term commitment to household's climate resilience, policies and programmes should aim at improving these factors.This paper aims to understand the role of organizational routines as possible barriers to the mainstreaming of climate adaptation at the implementation stage. While the mainstreaming of climate adaptation into policy documents is relatively easy, the implementation of these policies seems to be more problematic. Barriers to climate adaptation often occur during this stage as the implementation of the policies is generally undertaken by other actors than the policy-makers. These actors act based on organizational routines. As organizational routines aim to provide stability, they tend to be reaffirmative. Reorganizing the resources and practices of these actors to initiate mainstreaming then proves difficult. Consequently, the routines could prevent change that might be necessary to address new policy objectives such as climate adaptation. An analytical framework consisting of four self-reinforcing mechanisms is used to understand and explain why and how organizational routines can hamper the mainstreaming of climate adaptation during implementation. A case study is used to illustrate organizational routines as possible barriers. The paper concludes by stating that to optimize the possibilities of mainstreaming climate adaptation, a change in routines is necessary. In order to stimulate change in organizational routines, the focus should be on reflecting on existing routines, legitimacy building and learning.This study presents monthly and annual climate maps for relevant hydroclimatic variables in Bolivia. We used the most complete network of precipitation and temperature stations available in Bolivia, which passed a careful quality control and temporal homogenization procedure. Monthly average maps at the spatial resolution of 1km were modeled by means of a regression-based approach using topographic and geographic variables as predictors. The monthly average maximum and minimum temperatures, precipitation and potential exoatmospheric solar radiation under clear sky conditions are used to estimate the monthly average atmospheric evaporative demand by means of the Hargreaves model. Finally, the average water balance is estimated on a monthly and annual scale for each 1km cell by means of the difference between precipitation and atmospheric evaporative demand. The digital layers used to create the maps are available in the digital repository of the Spanish National Research Council.Adaptation, as a strategy to respond to climate change, has limits: there are conditions under which adaptation strategies fail to alleviate impacts from climate change. Research has primarily focused on identifying absolute bio-physical limits. This paper contributes empirical insight to an emerging literature on the social limits to adaptation. Such limits arise from the ways in which societies perceive, experience and respond to climate change. Using qualitative data from multi-stakeholder workshops and key-informant interviews with representatives of the fisheries and tourism sectors of the Great Barrier Reef region, we identify psycho-social and structural limits associated with key adaptation strategies, and examine how these are perceived as more or less absolute across levels of organisation. We find that actors experience social limits to adaptation when: i) the effort of pursuing a strategy exceeds the benefits of desired adaptation outcomes; ii) the particular strategy does not address the actual source of vulnerability, and; iii) the benefits derived from adaptation are undermined by external factors. We also find that social limits are not necessarily more absolute at higher levels of organisation: respondents perceived considerable opportunities to address some psycho-social limits at the national-international interface, while they considered some social limits at the local and regional levels to be effectively absolute.This study investigates changes in assets owned by the household head, his spouse, or jointly in response to shocks in rural agricultural households in Bangladesh with household survey panel data. Looking at changes within households over time, we find that weather shocks adversely affect the asset holdings of household heads relatively strongly, while predicted negative shocks more strongly lead to assets of both spouses being drawn down. The results, furthermore, suggest that jointly owned assets are not easily sold in response to shocks, and that women's asset holdings and coping strategies are shaped by their lower involvement in agriculture.In the light of the rising cost of natural disasters we review the provision of catastrophe insurance by the public sector in the US, France, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and its absence in the Netherlands, where flood risk is viewed as a national security concern. We do this in the context of the Australian home insurance market where insurers increasingly employ risk-reflective, multi-peril premiums as new technology allows them to better understand their exposure to risk. Motivations behind government pools vary by country, as do hazard profiles. In the US, for example, pools have usually arisen in the face of market failure of private sector insurance following a significant natural disaster; the initial concern has been the provision of affordable insurance rather than disaster risk reduction. Government pools have certain advantages over the private sector including their ability to raise funds post-event, but face financial unsustainability given political intervention to maintain affordability of cover in high-risk areas. In Australia, it is too early to judge whether risk-based premiums are leading to better land-use planning and increased mitigation spending, but in the case of northern Australia, a region that faces flooding and tropical cyclone risks, rising premiums are causing concern in Government. Nonetheless, the corollary seems self-evident, i.e. in the absence of transparency about the cost of risk, there is no incentive on the part of homeowners, local councils or land developers to improve the 'riskscape'; insurers are the only actors with immediate financial incentives to acknowledge these risks. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate change is a worldwide phenomenon that does not respect national boundaries nor affects one specific region. Hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, drought and floods are just a few of its many disastrous forms. Most world countries, especially in the arid and semi-arid regions, have been seriously devastated by the consequences of climate change at the economic, health, social, and environmental level. Adaptation and mitigation strategies have become the top priority of most international conferences and symposia around the world. The notion "Act locally and think globally" has become the main slogan and the most urgent need for collective action to ease the impacts of climate change. Such efforts like information, education, and technology transfer can make the difference due to their enormous potential to mitigate the implications of climate change. They represent the hope to face negative impacts of climate and the right path to mitigate its various implications, and consequently adapt to its future development.This article focuses on the implications for the US National Climate Assessment (NCA) of diversifying information needs to support climate change risk management. It describes how the Third US National Climate Assessment (NCA3) evolved to begin to narrow the gap between information from climate and impact scientists and "intermediaries" (individuals who have expertise in climate science, communication, and decision-support processes)-who are sometimes collectively described as "producers" in this article-and the decision-making needs of a wide range of "users" (individuals involved in advising or making a wide range of policy and management decisions). One step in the evolution of the NCA3 included adding a chapter to assess decision-support tools and systems being used in climate-related decisions. Another involved efforts to improve characterization of the level of confidence of NCA3 authors in their findings to help decision-makers and their advisors differentiate well-established and more preliminary conclusions. This paper lays out an argument for increasing the role of the NCA in assessing decision-support systems in the Fourth Assessment (NCA4) and the Sustained Assessment. It also briefly reviews approaches and potential next steps related to characterizing uncertainty and communicating confidence intended to improve application of assessment findings by decision-makers.Well-targeted scientific assessments can support a range of decision-making processes, and contribute meaningfully to a variety of climate response strategies. This paper focuses on opportunities for climate assessments to be used more effectively to enhance adaptive capacity, particularly drawing from experiences with the third US National Climate Assessment (NCA3). We discuss the evolution of thinking about adaptation as a process and the importance of societal values, as well as the role of assessments in this evolution. We provide a rationale for prioritizing future assessment activities, with an expectation of moving beyond the concept of climate adaptation as an explicit and separable activity from "normal" planning and implementation in the future. Starting with the values and resources that need to be protected or developed by communities rather than starting with an analysis of changes in climate drivers can provide opportunities for reframing climate issues in ways that are likely to result in more positive outcomes. A critical part of successful risk management is monitoring and evaluating the systems of interest to decision-makers and the effectiveness of interventions following integration of climate considerations into ongoing strategic planning activities and implementation. Increasingly this will require consideration of path dependency and coincident events. We argue that climate adaptation is a transitional process that bridges the gap between historically time-tested ways of doing business and the kinds of decision processes that may be required in the future, and that scientific assessments will be increasingly central to these transitions in decision processes over time.This study develops a multidisciplinary framework composed of a range of determinants of adaptive capacity to climate change found in economic, sociological, political, geographical and psychological literature. The framework is then used to carry out a survey of community managed forest organisations to measure their adaptive capacity and establish the characteristics that enable their adaptation. The research finds that adaptive organisations spend a substantial amount of time on community consultation and involvement, and prioritize environmental considerations over other aspects of their organisation. The effort invested in creating and maintaining links with the wider community by adaptive organisations may give them a legitimacy which enables adaptive changes to be made with community support. Reflecting calls for values based approaches to climate change, the article discusses the role that different values play in adaptation, and the 'transcendent' values that adaptive organisations tend to hold. The article concludes by suggesting that a deeper understanding of community adaptation to climate change could be derived from an exploration of the role of human values in adaptation across the disciplines.The objective of the analysis is to compare the current status of state level climate change adaptation plans across the United States (U.S.) and to analyze potential factors that may influence their status. Based on their most current adaptation planning documentation individual states are grouped into four categories depending on how far they are in their approach towards adaptation to predicted changes in climate and how they have progressed with their planning efforts in defining adaptation measures. The analysis of the state adaptation plans showed that 13 states had detailed sector specific actions recommended, 2 states had sector specific targets and recommendation, 14 states had expressed concern and need for adaptation planning, whereas 21 states did not mention the need for adaptation planning. The statistical analysis showed that Democratic Party popular votes are 10 % higher in states with detailed sector specific actions recommended in comparison to states with no mention of adaptation planning (p < 0.01). The average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in states having an adaptation planning status with detailed sector specific actions recommended is more than $6,000 higher compared to states with expressed concern and need for adaptation planning and states with no mention of adaptation planning (p < 0.05). The average coastal population in states with detailed sector specific actions recommended is more than seven times higher compared to states with expressed concern and states with no mention of adaptation planning (p < 0.01). It is concluded that the U.S. state planning initiatives will need to strengthen their approach to adaptation planning substantially to have holistic and more coordinated adaptation planning efforts.Reuse of agricultural waste plays a pivotal role in sustainable development and carbon emission abatement (CEA). We seek to confirm that social capital, which is a sociological concept, can influence farmers' willingness to reuse agricultural waste for CEA. Controlling for human capital and physical capital factors, we prove that social capital significantly affects farmers' willingness to reuse agricultural waste for CEA. In terms of driving farmers' willingness, the marginal utility of social capital varies with the dimension. Specifically, institutional trust is the largest driver, followed by civic engagement, interpersonal trust and norms of reciprocity networks. We also verify that a higher educational level, surplus labor (a human capital variable) and waste facility (a physical capital variable) can enhance farmers' willingness to reuse agricultural waste for CEA. Effective approaches to improve farmers' willingness to reuse agricultural waste for CEA include establishing a learning organization, strengthening the adaptability of environmental regulations in rural areas and forming strong social mores of mutual trust, mutual reciprocity and mutual benefit. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP EnvironmentContainer-inhabiting mosquitoes such as Aedes notoscriptus, Aedes aegypti, and Aedes albopictus are potential vectors of a number of arboviruses of significance to human health and domestic animals. To assess the risk of mosquito-borne viruses, residential properties were surveyed for mosquito larvae within the Brisbane area during 2010-2012. A two-stage modeling approach was used to model both the presence/absence of Ae. notoscriptus larvae and abundance of larvae when present. Results indicate the total number of wet containers found on a property is the main driving factor of both presence/absence and abundance of Ae. notoscriptus larvae. The generalized additive modeling approach used indicates more standard logistic regression and odds ratios may overestimate the importance of common covariates. The two-stage modeling also potentially allows for predictions of Ae. notoscriptus abundance and common risk indices that are not possible using traditional logistic regression. Factors influencing the number of wet containers are explored with a view toward risk mitigation.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014, suggests that an important increase in frequency and magnitude of hazardous processes related to climate change is to be expected at the global scale. Consequently, it is necessary to improve the level of preparedness and the level of public awareness, to fill institutional gaps, and to improve territorial planning in order to reduce the potentially disastrous impact of natural hazards related to climate change. This paper mainly presents a new framework for risk assessment and mapping which enables countries with limited data sources to assess their risk to climate change related hazards at the local level, in order to reduce potential costs, to develop risk reduction strategies, to harmonize their preparedness efforts with neighboring countries and to deal with trans-boundary risk. The methodology is based on the European Commission's "Risk Assessment and Mapping Guidelines for Disaster Management" (2010) and considers local restrictions, such as a lack of documentation of historic disastrous events, spatial and other relevant data, offering alternative options for risk assessment, and the production of risk maps. The methodology is based on event tree analysis. It was developed within the European project SEERISK and adapted for a number of climate change-related hazards including floods, heat waves, wildfires, and storms. Additionally, the framework offers the possibility for risk assessment under different future scenarios. The implications for climate change adaptation policy are discussed.Several studies have concluded that mountainous countries such as Nepal are more vulnerable to climate change; thus, a changing climate should have a significant impact on crop yields. This work aims to explore the impact of climate change on major crop yields in the mountainous parts of Nepal and to determine their relationships based on a regression model between historical climatic data and yield data for food crops. The study starts with an analysis of the last 30 years of climatic data from Lamjung district. Mann-Kendall and Sen's Slope methods have been used for the trend analysis and quantification. The results showed an increase in temperature of approximately 0.02 degrees C to 0.07 degrees C per year in different seasons and a mixed trend in precipitation. Although there was no significant impact of the climate variables on the yields of all crops, the regression analysis revealed negative relationships between maize yield and summer precipitation and between wheat yield and winter minimum temperature, and a positive relationship between millet yield and summer maximum temperature.In response to climate change at different spatial scales, adaptation has become one of the focal points of current research and policy developments. In the context of coastal Cambodia, there is little research on local level adaptation to climate change. Using ordinal logistic and logistic regression analyses, this study examines the relationship between perceived self-efficacy and anticipatory and reactive adaptation to climate change among 1823 households in coastal communities in Cambodia. Findings indicate that individuals who reported higher categories of self-efficacy were more likely to report both anticipatory (OR = 1.74, p < 0.001) and reactive adaptation (OR = 3.61, p < 0.001) measures. Similary, tndividuals who had higher education had higher odds of reporting anticipatory adaptation (OR = 1.71, p < 0.001) and reactive adaptation (OR = 1.63, p < 0.05) when compared with those without formal education. Participants who have been living in their current residence for six years or more were more likely to report anticipatory adaptation (OR = 1.09, p < 0.05) and reactive adapation (OR = 1.22, p < 0.001) compared with those who had lived there for a shorter duration of time. Region of residence was positively associated with both anticipatory and reactive adaptation. In this context, it is important to note that individuals in the most agriculture-dependent and climate sensitive province reported the least anticipatory and reactive adaptation measures. Policy makers should target empowerment of the most vulnerable population to facilitate better adaptation behavior, and mainstreaming of knowledge on climate change adaptation through both formal and informal education at the community level.The observed and anticipated impacts of climate change interacting with the responses of actors and institutions to these changes are together poised to transform and reconfigure resource management systems across scales. Within many if not most resource management agencies, the number of programs and initiatives designed to adapt to the expected impacts of climate change has risen sharply over the past decade. This article examines the implementation of such climate adaptation initiatives in the context of the United States Forest Service (USFS). Based on semi-structured interviews (N = 25), this paper provides an empirical account of how USFS aquatic resources managers and specialists working at regional and sub-regional levels within the Pacific Northwest region (PNW) are responding to adaptation planning directives established at the federal level, as well as how managers are advancing their own unit-level initiatives. Results illustrate a spectrum of engagement with adaptation across the region. In addition to the expected influence of limited human and financial capacity and institutional constraints, key factors perceived by managers as shaping engagement across the region include the attitudes of key actors, and legacies of (mis-) trust (with respect to the stability of the climate mandate). In contrast, managers did not perceive technical information as a major barrier to adaptation. These observations highlight the asymmetry between the widespread emphasis on the role of technical information in shaping adaptation relative to the often overlooked, but influential role of nonmaterial factors (like attitudes and trust). Findings are discussed in the context of deepening understanding about the interrelated roles of material and nonmaterial barriers in shaping currently unfolding adaptation efforts. Crown Copyright (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public participation is commonly advocated for as part of policy responses to climate change. This study examines the prospects for inclusive approaches to climate change adaptation, drawing particularly on studies of long-term climate change adaptation in a coastal region in Bangladesh. It has been suggested that public perception, knowledge, and participation are important goals in the process of formulating response to climate change risks. This study found that local people as well as other stakeholders who participated in the study were more or less familiar with the term "climate change." However, the participants' understanding of what the term means and climate change's causes varied widely. The results also showed that a large number of the participants were uncertain about the solution to the climate change problems they are already experiencing, due to lack of accessible information from different governmental and non-governmental sources. It is notable that, despite being a country with a high level of political commitment to dealing with climate change, supported by plans, programs, and interventions, the people of Bangladesh are largely unaware of these efforts. This study explores the Social Ecological Inventory (SEI) tool as a means of managing the governance system for climate change adaptation in order to explore the public's perception of, knowledge about, and participation in developing adaptation plans. In this study, we used the SEI tool to systemically map the values, motives, activities, knowledge, and experiences of different actors over time and in different networks in order to prepare the ground for participation in developing climate change adaptation plans by helping identify and select the most appropriate set of actors to work with; build trust between these different actors; and, finally, reach a consensus among actors on how to enhance a region's sustainability and resilience.The plant canopy surface is cooled by radiative cooling at night. Cooling of the canopy surface results in cooling of the surrounding air by convective heat exchange between the canopy surface and the air. Convective heat exchange at the canopy surface is proportional to the convective heat transfer conductance, which depends on the wind speed and the canopy surface area. We conducted physical model experiments using a polyethylene chamber to examine the dependence of the heat exchange at the canopy surface on the canopy surface area during nocturnal radiative cooling. We introduced three canopy models, each having a canopy surface area equivalent to a Leaf Area Index (LAI) of 1,2, or 4. The models were placed in two polyethylene chambers located outdoors and exposed to a nocturnal radiation regime. The canopy surface temperature of the LAI = 1 model was the lowest among the three models, whereas the convective heat exchange between the canopy surface and the air traveling into the chamber was the smallest for the LAI = 1 model. The convective heat exchange did not differ significantly between the LAI = 2 and 4 canopy models. The results showed that the air traveling through the canopy was cooled more at night, when the canopy LAI was large and the canopy surface temperature was relatively high. This air-cooling effect tended to approach an asymptotic value as the LAI became large. We were able to simulate these phenomena with a simple heat balance analysis of the heat exchange between the canopy surface and the air.This paper analyses the effect of observed vegetation characteristics on modelled wave heights. Detailed information on species composition, as well as on height, number of stems, and diameter of the plant species of a restored salt marsh on the Wadden barrier island of Terschelling was used to parameterize and apply the Simulating Waves Nearshore Vegetation wave model to a schematized restored salt-marsh zone in front of the dike. The results indicate that wave damping by vegetated forelands is strongly related to vegetation heterogeneity and salt-marsh zonation. The modelling works suggest that at the study site under storm conditions with a frequency of 5-10 times/y, a vegetated foreland of some 90 m in width will dampen the wave height more than 80%, whereas under extreme conditions (1/2000 y) a foreland covered with dense vegetation will dampen the wave height up to 50%. These results imply that at the study site a vegetated foreland in front of the dike leads to reduced wave attack on the dike, which may result in changed requirements for both height and revetment of the dike while maintaining the required safety level. Although there are still many questions concerning dimensions, management, and performance, developing a vegetated foreland seems an interesting strategy to adapt existing flood protection works to the effects of climate change.Evolutionary processes are expected to be crucial for the adaptation of natural populations to environmental changes. In particular, the capacity of rear edge populations to evolve in response to the species limiting conditions remains a major issue that requires to address their evolutionary potential. In situ quantitative genetic studies based on molecular markers offer the possibility to estimate evolutionary potentials manipulating neither the environment nor the individuals on which phenotypes are measured. The goal of this study was to estimate heritability and genetic correlations of a suite of leaf functional traits involved in climate adaptation for a natural population of the tree Fagus sylvatica, growing at the rear edge of the species range. Using two marker-based quantitative genetics approaches, we obtained consistent and significant estimates of heritability for leaf phenological (phenology of leaf flush), morphological (mass, area, ratio mass/area) and physiological (C-13, nitrogen content) traits. Moreover, we found only one significant positive genetic correlation between leaf area and leaf mass, which likely reflected mechanical constraints. We conclude first that the studied population has considerable genetic diversity for important ecophysiological traits regarding drought adaptation and, second, that genetic correlations are not likely to impose strong genetic constraints to future population evolution. Our results bring important insights into the question of the capacity of rear edge populations to evolve.Documented impacts of climate change on marine systems indicate widespread changes in many geographic regions and throughout all levels of the ocean's food webs. Oceans provide the main source of animal protein for over a billion people, and contribute significantly to food security for billions more. Clearly, if we are to continue to derive these benefits, then the rate of adaptation in our human systems needs to at least keep pace with the rate of ecological change for these benefits to continue. An Australia-wide program of research into marine biodiversity and fisheries explored the opportunities for policy and management to respond to a changing climate. The research program spanned all Australian estuarine-nearshore and marine environments-tropical, subtropical, and temperate-and focused on two key marine sectors: biodiversity conservation and fisheries (commercial, recreational, and aquaculture). Key findings from across this strategic and extensive research investment were the need to foster resilience through habitat repair and protection, improve resource allocation strategies, fine-tune fisheries management systems, and enhance whole of government approaches and policies. Building on these findings, from a climate adaptation perspective, we generated a checklist of thirteen elements encompassing all project findings to assess and steer progress towards improving marine policy and management. These elements are grouped in three broad areas: preconditioning; future proofing; and transformational changes and opportunities. Arising from these elements is a suite of priority strategies that provide guidance for marine managers, policy practitioners, and stakeholders as they prepare for a future under climate change. As the research program encompassed a wide range of habitats and ecosystems, spanned a latitudinal range of over 30A degrees, and considered a diversity of management systems and approaches, many of these elements and strategies will be applicable in a global context.Determining the impact of catchment flooding requires an estimate of extreme spatial rainfall intensity. Current flood design practice typically converts a point estimate of rainfall intensity into a spatial rainfall intensity using an areal reduction factor, assumed constant across an entire region. Areal reduction factors do not explicitly consider regional variations in extreme rainfall. Here, a new approach for spatial estimates of extreme rainfall is introduced that directly incorporates the spatial area (A) into an intensity-frequency-duration relationship (IFD). This IFDA approach uses spatial rainfall fields to overcome shortcomings of the areal reduction factor by explicitly incorporating spatial variations in the extreme rainfall intensity. The IFDA approach is evaluated for 11 case study regions in Australia, across climates (tropical to Mediterranean), areas (25-7,225km2), durations (1-4days), and average recurrence intervals (ARI 2-100years). The change in extreme spatial rainfall with respect to area varies markedly within each region suggesting that constant areal reduction factors for a region are inappropriate. Constant areal reduction factors are shown to underestimate extreme spatial rainfall intensities by 5-15%. The IFDA approach avoids these biases and is a promising new technique for use in design flood estimation.The hydrolysis reaction rates of tropolone tosylate have been investigated in 20-90% (v/v) MeCN-H2O binary media containing n-Bu4NOH at 50 degrees C. Increasing concentration of n-Bu4NOH causes an increase in the hydrolysis rate. Two diverse effects have been observed with increasing content of MeCN, i.e., a decrease in the rate and the successive increase for up to the 60% (v/v) MeCN and further increasing MeCN proportions. At a constant n-Bu4NOH concentration, the added salts (0.0-1.0 mol dm(-3)) have caused various influences on the "pseudo" first order rate constant [log (k/s(-1))] of the substrate. Among alkali metal and alkaline earth metal perchlorates, NaClO4 and Ba(ClO4)(2) cause the obvious rate acceleration especially in the media of higher MeCN proportions. However, LiClO4 and Ca(ClO4)(2) cause the rate deceleration, whereas Mg(ClO4)(2) has resulted in a total suppression of the hydrolysis reaction. All the salts of NaN3, Et4NCl, and Et4NBr appear to increase the log (k/s(-1)) value in the order of Et4NCl-Et4NBr < NaN3. The Arrhenius plots of the hydrolysis in the 50% (v/v) MeCN-H2O binary media containing 2.0 mmol dm(-3) n-Bu4NOH in the presence of various kinds of salts have been evaluated. All the salt systems have given a good linearity from 35 to 60 degrees C with the activation energy (E-a) of 83.7, 793, 81.9, 79.1, 87.1, and 79.1 kJ mol(-1) for no salt, 0.50 mol dm(-3) LiClO4, NaClO4, Ba(ClO4)(2),Et4NBr, and NaN3, respectively. These large values suggest that the hydrolysis reactions in the presence of various salts are controlled by the normal temperature dependent and non-catalytic mechanism with the ions from the added salt. The emerged scenarios have been discussed in terms of changes in the structure of bulk water and/or activities of H2O and OH- in the presence of both the added organic solvent and salts, and also in terms of the nucleophilicities of anions or the coordination abilities of the metal ions in the "modified" media. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Climate change and the growth of coastal communities will significantly increase the socio-economic risks associated with coastline recession (i.e. the net long term landward movement of the coastline). Coastal setback lines are a commonly adopted management/planning tool to mitigate these risks. While it is widely recognized that planning decisions should be risk-informed, setback lines are presently determined using deterministic methods that cannot easily be related to considerations regarding the tolerability of risks. Here, we present a model for quantifying the risks posed by coastline recession and show how it can be used for deriving economically optimal setback lines. A demonstration at Narrabeen beach, Sydney, Australia illustrates that the proposed risk-informed approach to coastal zone management can significantly improve the transparency and efficiency of land-use planning decisions. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The field of climate services for development (CSD) is growing rapidly, presented by donors and implementers as an opportunity to address the needs of the global poor, whether informing agricultural decisionmaking in rural communities, facilitating disaster preparedness or promoting public health. To realise this potential, however, CSD projects must understand the information needs of their intended users. This raises a critical epistemological challenge for CSD: how can we know who is vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change, and why are they vulnerable to particular impacts? In this paper, we consider both the epistemological tension arising over the construction of vulnerability that emerges at the intersection of the physical and social science communities within CSD and a second, less-discussed epistemological stress surrounding how user identities are understood within the social science community engaged in CSD-related research and implementation. We illustrate these tensions through the example of a climate services programme that delivers agrometeorological advice to farmers in Mali, demonstrating the ramifications of these epistemological issues for the design and delivery of services that further development and adaptation goals.Climate change, along with other so-called global challenges, demands that scholars work across disciplines. Drawing on Donna Haraway's idea of situated knowledges, this paper develops an approach to mixing disciplines by engaging in epistemological pluralism, or approaching a research problem through more than one way of conceptualising it. The example of climate change adaptation planning in Nepal is used to show how a hybrid methodology research design requires thinking through what can be known and also what cannot be known by using a particular method. The main argument is that it is not possible to prove methodologically which conceptualisation or analytical entry point is better than another. Rather, new insights are gained both by triangulating data from different methods, and by probing the ways that they present contradictory results. An interdisciplinary research design is therefore used as a kind of kaleidoscope wherein plural epistemologies help to reveal new, albeit partial and situated, patterns.There has been little policy effort to address sea level rise in coastal states in the US. It is important to examine, at the state level, how the multitude of different (and changing) actors with different preferences and perspectives contribute to such inertia. This study examines state-level legislative inaction with regards to sea level rise. Using Kingdon's multiple streams framework, we draw a picture of the policy landscape in Virginia as one where the problem of sea level rise is perceived as a low priority, with little consensus on achievable policy solutions, and is politically controversial. We find that policy inertia in Virginia is a result of (1) fractious viewpoints regarding sea level rise as a problem, (2) a lack of clear consensus on policy solutions, and (3) conflicting perspectives of the role of the state.Despite signing the Mayors Climate Change Agreement, few US cities have made significant progress in either climate mitigation or adaptation. For the most part, European cities have been more effective, albeit with assistance from the European Union and their national governments. Several of the most successful European cities have implemented eco-districts, which have offered many lessons for overall sustainability planning. Using Malmo, Sweden as a case study, we ask how planners and elected officials learned from implementing an eco-district, focusing on experimentation with new technologies and approaches to planning. We identify how "double-loop learning", a term coined by Argyris and Shon, was at play in changing planning practice. As eco-districts are catching on in North American cities, there is much to be learned from European practice.A set of short-term experiments using a regional atmospheric model (RAM) were carried out to investigate the response of tropical cyclone (TC) tracks to sea surface temperature (SST) in the western North Pacific. For 10 selected TC cases occurring during 2002-07, a warm and a cold run are performed with 2 and -2 K added to the SSTs uniformly over the model domain, respectively. The cases can be classified into three groups in terms of recurvature: recurved tracks in the warm and cold runs, a recurved track in the warm run and a nonrecurved track in the cold run, and nonrecurved tracks in both runs. Commonly the warm run produced northward movement of the TC faster than the cold run. The rapid northward migration can be mainly explained by the result that cyclonic circulation to the west of the TC is found in the steering flow in the warm run and it is not in the cold run. The beta effect is also activated under the warm SST environment. For the typical TC cases, a linear baroclinic model experiment is performed to examine how the cyclonic circulation is intensified in the warm run. The stationary linear response to diabatic heating obtained from the RAM experiment reveals that the intensified TC by the warm SST excites the cyclonic circulation in the lower troposphere to the west of the forcing position. The vorticity and thermodynamic equation analysis shows the detailed mechanism. The time scale of the linear response and the teleconnection are also discussed.Potential environmental impacts of biogas electricity from agricultural residues (maize stover) with steam explosion (SE) pretreatment were compared to a typical Austrian biogas system (maize silage) using the method of life cycle assessment. Besides the biogas plant, the system includes substrate production, a combined heat-and-power (CHP) unit, digestate management, and transportation. The stover scenario (including construction and operation of the SE unit) results in lower total climate change impacts than those of the typical biogas system (239 g CO2-eq/kWh electricity vs. 287 g CO2-eq/kWh electricity; 100-year global warming potential (GWP)), and this holds also for the other impact categories (e.g., cumulative energy demand, acidification, eutrophication). While uncertainties in other areas could change the results, based on the uncertainty information considered, the overall results for the two scenarios were significantly different. Methane slip emissions from the CHP exhaust account for the largest GWP share in both scenarios. Other large GWP contributions are from substrate production and grid electricity for plant operations. The findings were robust against worst-case assumptions about the energy requirements of the SE pretreatment.The eastern Himalayas, especially the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon Nature Reserve (YNR), is a global hotspot of biodiversity because of a wide variety of climatic conditions and elevations ranging from 500 to > 7000m above sea level (a.s.l.). The mountain ecosystems at different elevations are vulnerable to climate change; however, there has been little research into the patterns of vegetation greening and their response to global warming. The objective of this paper is to examine the pattern of vegetation greening in different altitudinal zones in the YNR and its relationship with vegetation types and climatic factors. Specifically, the inter-annual change of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and its variation along altitudinal gradient between 1999 and 2013 was investigated using SPOT-VGT NDVI data and ASTER global digital elevation model (GDEM) data. We found that annual NDVI increased by 17.58 % in the YNR from 1999 to 2013, especially in regions dominated by broad-leaved and coniferous forests at lower elevations. The vegetation greening rate decreased significantly as elevation increased, with a threshold elevation of approximately 3000 m. Rising temperature played a dominant role in driving the increase in NDVI, while precipitation has no statistical relationship with changes in NDVI in this region. This study provides useful information to develop an integrated management and conservation plan for climate change adaptation and promote biodiversity conservation in the YNR.Social learning can be a vital tool in assisting communities to adapt to change. Local governments can be a conduit between the communities they serve and the policy that they are trying to implement. Social learning in this context can be an iterative, often organic process. Based on a case study of coastal planning in South Australia, Australia, this paper presents the results of a qualitative mixed-method approach that documents the aspects of social learning within coastal management and evaluates the various lessons learned by local governments in South Australia. The role of social learning and adaptive governance is discussed. The paper concludes that by deliberatively incorporating the notion of communities of practice into learning frameworks, local governments can more effectively manage their coastal zones in response to global change.It has been widely acknowledged that people's beliefs and perceptions influence implementation of climate change adaptation. Regarding perception barriers, some authors keep highlighting the confused definition of adaptation and its various interpretations. Our research contributes to this area by exploring how adaptation to climate change is perceived through 83 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (public and municipal organizations, ENGO, private sector) from Montreal and Paris. Our results demonstrate a mirror opposition in the perception of adaptation to climate change. Indeed, while several respondents interpreted adaptation as a resignation, many interviewees perceived adaptation as an opportunity. The analysis showed that adaptation referring to resignation includes the ideas of a non-action and detrimental to mitigation; an excuse for not changing; anxiety about climate change; fatalism; and human failure. Adaptation perceived as an opportunity is divided into a source of creativity; toward sustainable development; led by the emergency; and awareness and making society of its responsibilities. Our findings confirm that terminological ambiguity of the term "adaptation" has to be considered in the decision-making process, which can be influenced by the perception of stakeholders.The prospect of unprecedented environmental change, combined with increasing demand on limited resources, demands adaptive responses at multiple levels. In this article, we analyze different attributes of farm-level capacity in central Arizona, USA, in relation to farmers' responses to recent dynamism in commodity and land markets, and the institutional and social contexts of farmers' water and production portfolios. Irrigated agriculture is at the heart of the history and identity of the American Southwest, although the future of agriculture is now threatened by the prospect of "mega-droughts," urbanization and associated inter-sector and inter-state competition over water in an era of climatic change. We use farm-level survey data, supplemented by in-depth interviews, to explore the cross-level dimensions of capacity in the agriculture-urban nexus of central Arizona. The surveyed farmers demonstrate an interest in learning, capacity for adaptive management and risk-taking attitudes consistent with emerging theory of capacity for land use and livelihood transformation. However, many respondents perceive their self-efficacy in the face of future climatic and hydrological change as uncertain. Our study suggests that the components of transformational capacity will necessarily need to go beyond the objective resources and cognitive capacities of individuals to incorporate "linking" capacities: the political and social attributes necessary for collective strategy formation to shape choice and opportunity in the future.A major gap exists in integrating climate projections and social-ecological vulnerability analyses at scales that matter, which has affected local-scale adaptation planning and actions to date. We address this gap by providing a novel methodology that integrates information on: (i) the expected future climate, including climate-related extreme events, at the village level; (ii) an ecological assessment of the impacts of these climate forecasts on coral reefs; and (iii) the social adaptive capacity of the artisanal fishers, to create an integrated vulnerability assessment on coastal communities in five villages in Papua New Guinea. We show that, despite relatively proximate geographies, there are substantial differences in both the predicted extreme rainfall and temperature events and the social adaptive capacity among the five fishing-dependent communities, meaning that they have likely different vulnerabilities to future climate change. Our methodology shows that it is possible to capture social information and integrate this with climate and ecological modeling in ways that are best suited to address the impacts of climate-mediated environmental changes currently underway across different scales.Drought hazard is the main restrictive factor in the field of food production in China, and climate change may aggravate it over the long run. The present study aims to assess the potential drought hazard at present, as well as determine future different climate change scenarios based on the data of monthly precipitation and temperature. Drought is defined using the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index. The probability density function of SPEI was used to create the drought hazard index (DH), which provides a comprehensive overview of the frequency and intensity of drought events. The statistical downscale method was used to convert the regional climate model output grid data into meteorological station data for the near future (2020-2050) under three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). The results showed that in the baseline (1981-2010), DH is much serious in Jilin compared with Henan. In the near future (2020-2050), DH increases in the case of RCP8.5, and the increased scale is larger in Henan. In the case of RCP4.5, the DH will be flat with baseline in Jilin and slightly increase in Henan. DH may relieve in case of RCP2.6. The results can help to optimize agriculture allocation and policy making with regard to climate change adaptation.This paper describes a new weather generator - the 10-state empirical model - that combines a 10-state, first-order Markov chain with a non-parametric precipitation amounts model. Using a doubly-stochastic transition-matrix results in a weather generator for which the overall precipitation distribution (including both wet and dry days) and the temporal-correlation can be modified independently for climate change studies. This paper assesses the ability of the 10-state empirical model to simulate daily area-average precipitation in the Torne River catchment in northern Sweden/western Finland in the context of 3 other models: a 10-state model with a parametric (Gamma) amounts model; a wet/dry chain with the empirical amounts model; and a wet/dry chain with the parametric amounts model. The ability to accurately simulate the distribution of multi-day precipitation in the catchment is the primary consideration. Results showed that the 10-state empirical model represented accumulated 2-to 14-day precipitation most realistically. Further, the distribution of precipitation on wet days in the catchment is related to the placement of a wet day within a wet-spell, and the 10-state models represented this realistically, while the wet/dry models did not. Although all four models accurately reproduced the annual and monthly averages in the training data, all models underestimated inter-annual and inter-seasonal variance. Even so, the 10-state empirical model performed best. We conclude that the multi-state model is a promising candidate for hydrological applications, as it simulates multi-day precipitation well, but that further development is required to improve the simulation of interannual variation.Declining soil fertility and limited farmer access to inorganic fertilizer frequently cause sub-optimal grain yields throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Farm productivity is also at risk from extreme weather and future climate change. Significant uncertainty remains in predicting climate in Africa, increasing the challenge of planning for climate change adaptation. Sorghum is adapted to African climate patterns and is predicted to maintain widespread suitability across different African climatic zones under climate change. Sorghum's drought tolerance and ability to withstand water logging make it an important crop for maintaining productive agroecosystems under a changing climate. Due to its status as a staple grain, improved sorghum management can provide smallholder farmers with stability in their household nutritional needs. We reviewed sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) yield trends across nutrient management scenarios using meta-analysis. We compared yield across eight nutrient management practices: (i) N-only, (ii) P-only, (iii) N and P, (iv) N and P microdose, (v) legume management, (vi) manure addition, (vii) organic matter (OM) amendment, and (viii) mixed amendment. Our review demonstrated (1) yield improvement considering all scenarios averaged 66 % relative to no nutrient inputs, (2) yield under chemical fertilizer amendment increased by 47-98 % of control yield, (3) yield under organic nutrient amendment increased by 43-87 % of control yield, and (4) the profitability of a management scenario was not solely determined by the magnitude of yield increase. For example, due to the high cost of fertilizer, addition of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) generated the largest yield increase, but the lowest profit, in two of three countries analyzed. In contrast, an edible legume in rotation averaged 43 % yield improvement relative to no nutrient inputs and a net profit of US $146 to $263 per hectare. Facilitating access to both fertilizer inputs and diversified rotations has the greatest potential to increase grain yield in Africa.One feature of climate change is the increasing heat exposure in many workplaces where efficient cooling systems cannot be applied. Excessive heat exposure is a particular problem for working people because of the internal heat production when muscle work is carried out. The physiological basis for severe heat stroke, other clinical effects, and heat exhaustion is well known. One feature of this health effect of excessive workplace heat exposure is reduced work capacity, and new research has started to quantify this effect in the context of climate change. Current climate conditions in tropical and subtropical parts of the world are already so hot during the hot seasons that occupational health effects occur and work capacity for many working people is affected. The Hothaps-Soft database and software and ClimateCHIP.org website make it possible to rapidly produce estimates of local heat conditions and trends. The results can be mapped to depict the spatial distribution of workplace heat stress. In South-East Asia as much as 15% to 20% of annual work hours may already be lost in heat-exposed jobs, and this may double by 2050 as global climate change progresses. By combining heat exposure data and estimates of the economic consequences, the vulnerability of many low- and middle-income countries is evident. The annual cost of reduced labor productivity at country level already in 2030 can be several percent of GDP, which means billions of US dollars even for medium-size countries. The results provide new arguments for effective climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and preventive actions in all countries.Recently, considerable focus, e.g., in the fifth IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Report (2014) has been trained on why adaptation and mitigation have not been developed more than at present, with relatively few local government actions taken compared with, for example, more discursive policy agreement on the importance of the issue of climate change. Going beyond a focus on general limits and barriers, this comment suggests that one important issue is that climate change has not yet been sufficiently integrated into the state regulative structure of legislation and policy-making. A comparison between three cases suggests that local developments that are not supported in particular by binding regulation are unlikely to achieve the same general level of implementation as issues for which such regulative demands (and thereby also requirements for prioritization) exist. This constitutes an important consideration for the development of adaptation and mitigation as policy areas, including on the local level.The reality of anthropogenic climate change has rendered adaptive responses at all scales an imperative. Households are an increasing focus of attention, but more in the developing world than the developed world, because of the presumed lesser vulnerabilities and stronger adaptive capacities of the latter. Critiques of such presumptions, and the quantitative, macro-scale focus of much adaptation research are emergent. How relatively affluent households, as complex social assemblages, may adapt to climate change impacts encountered in their day-to-day functioning remains unclear. There is, however, a sizeable body of research on household environmental sustainability in the developed world. That research has significant implications for climate change adaptation. This paper brings household environmental sustainability research into productive conversation with the climate change adaptation literature. The former shows that sustainability issues are refracted through social relations within households, and the demands of everyday life. This has three implications for how adaptation needs to be re-framed. First, climate change will not be experienced only via climatic stimuli and extreme weather events. It will be entwined in the complexity of everyday life. Second, knowledge of climate change is not a prerequisite for household adaptive capacity. Third, household-scale analyses show that assumed capacities and vulnerabilities may end up being quite different to those imagined or measured at a macro-scale. These insights invite consideration of how householders' adaptive capacities can be better supported.Worldwide, many species are responding to ongoing climate change with shifts in distribution, abundance, phenology, or behavior. Consequently, natural-resource managers face increasingly urgent conservation questions related to biodiversity loss, expansion of invasive species, and deteriorating ecosystem services. We argue that our ability to address these questions is hampered by the lack of explicit consideration of species' adaptive capacity (AC). AC is the ability of a species or population to cope with climatic changes and is characterized by three fundamental components: phenotypic plasticity, dispersal ability, and genetic diversity. However, few studies simultaneously address all elements; often, AC is confused with sensitivity or omitted altogether from climate-change vulnerability assessments. Improved understanding, consistent definition, and comprehensive evaluations of AC are needed. Using classic ecological-niche theory as an analogy, we propose a new paradigm that considers fundamental and realized AC: the former reflects aspects inherent to species, whereas the latter denotes how extrinsic factors constrain AC to what is actually expressed or observed. Through this conceptualization, we identify ecological attributes contributing to AC, outline areas of research necessary to advance understanding of AC, and provide examples demonstrating how the inclusion of AC can better inform conservation and natural-resource management.This paper argues for a political economic approach to understanding climate change adaptation and development planning in an urban context. Based on field research conducted in Surat, India, across a period of two years, I illustrate how climate adaptation is rooted in preexisting and contextually specific urban political relationships that can be traced through the city's developmental history. Through assessing Surat's experience with recent industrialization, episodes of natural disasters, to more recent engagement with the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, I highlight how adaptation planning, as well as how adaptation is integrated into urban development planning, occurs through processes of prioritizing adaptation against development needs and implementing options that are cocreated among public and civic actors. This case empirically shows how adaptation is mainstreamed into urban development planning, illustrates the trade-offs associated with how different urban actors plan and implement adaptation in the context of rapid industrialization, and assesses how internationally funded adaptation programs are operationalized in the context of local social and political realities.This paper updates and builds on 'Modelling with Stakeholders' Voinov and Bousquet, 2010 which demonstrated the importance of, and demand for, stakeholder participation in resource and environmental modelling. This position paper returns to the concepts of that publication and reviews the progress made since 2010. A new development is the wide introduction and acceptance of social media and web applications, which dramatically changes the context and scale of stakeholder interactions and participation. Technology advances make it easier to incorporate information in interactive formats via visualization and games to augment participatory experiences. Citizens as stakeholders are increasingly demanding to be engaged in planning decisions that affect them and their communities, at scales from local to global. How people interact with and access models and data is rapidly evolving. In turn, this requires changes in how models are built, packaged, and disseminated: citizens are less in awe of experts and external authorities, and they are increasingly aware of their own capabilities to provide inputs to planning processes, including models. The continued acceleration of environmental degradation and natural resource depletion accompanies these societal changes, even as there is a growing acceptance of the need to transition to alternative, possibly very different, life styles. Substantive transitions cannot occur without significant changes in human behaviour and perceptions. The important and diverse roles that models can play in guiding human behaviour, and in disseminating and increasing societal knowledge, are a feature of stakeholder processes today. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of thermokarst, but the influences of regional climate and physiography remain poorly understood. Retrogressive thaw slumping is one of the most dynamic forms of thermokarst and affects many areas of glaciated terrain across northwestern Canada. In this study, we used airphotos and satellite imagery to investigate the influence of climate and landscape factors on thaw slump dynamics. We assessed slump size, density, and growth rates in four regions of ice-rich terrain with contrasting climate and physiographic conditions: the Jesse Moraine, the Tuktoyaktuk Coastlands, the Bluenose Moraine, and the Peel Plateau. Observed increases in: (1) the area impacted by slumps (+2 to +407%), (2) average slump sizes (+0.31 to +1.82 ha), and (3) slump growth rates (+169 to +465 m(2) yr(-1)) showed that thermokarst activity is rapidly accelerating in ice-rich morainal landscapes in the western Canadian Arctic, where slumping has become a dominant driver of geomorphic change. Differences in slump characteristics among regions indicate that slump development is strongly influenced by topography, ground ice conditions, and Quaternary history. Observed increases in slump activity occurred in conjunction with increases in air temperature and precipitation, but variation in slump activity among the four regions suggests that increased precipitation has been an important driver of change. Our observation that the most rapid intensification of slump activity occurred in the coldest environment (the Jesse Moraine on Banks Island) indicates that ice-cored landscapes in cold permafrost environments are highly vulnerable to climate change.Responding to global change represents an unprecedented challenge for society. Decision makers tend to address this challenge by framing adaptation as a decision problem, whereby the responses to impacts of change are addressed within existing decision processes centred on defining the decision problem and selecting options. However, this 'decision-making perspective' is constrained by societal values and principles, regulations and norms and the state of knowledge. It is therefore unsuitable for addressing complex, contested, cross-scale problems. In this paper we argue that simply broadening the decision making perspective to account for institutions and values is not enough. We contend the decision-malting perspective needs to be connected with a broader 'decision-context perspective' that focuses on how the societal system of decision processes affects the manner in which a particular problem is addressed. We describe the decision context as an interconnected system of values, rules and knowledge (vrk). The interaction of systems of vrk both creates and limits the set of practical, permissible decisions; the types of values, rules and knowledge that influence the decision and the capacity for change and transformation in the decision context. We developed a framework to analyse the interactions between values, rules and knowledge and their influence on decision making and decision contexts of adaptation initiatives, and applied it retrospectively to three projects on adaptation to sea-level rise. Our analysis revealed: (1) specific examples of how interactions between vrk systems constrained existing framings of decision making and the development of options for coastal adaptation; (2) limitations in the adaptive management strategies that underpinned the projects and (3) how the linked systems of vrk can allow adaptation practitioners to structure adaptation as a process of co-evolutionary change that enables a broader set of social issues and change processes to be considered. Adaptation projects that focus on the decision context represent a pragmatic alternative to existing decision-focused adaptation. By using the vrk model to diagnose constraints in decision processes, we show how the reframing of adaptation initiatives can reveal new approaches to developing adaptation responses to complex global change problems. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.The climate change-induced expansion of mangroves into salt marshes could significantly alter the carbon (C) storage capacity of coastal wetlands, which have the highest average C storage per land area among unmanaged terrestrial ecosystems. Mangrove range expansion is occurring globally, but little is known about how these rapid climate-driven shifts may alter ecosystem C storage. Here, we quantify current C stocks in ecotonal wetlands across gradients of marsh- to mangrove-dominance, and use unique chronological maps of vegetation cover to estimate C stock changes from 2003 to 2010 in a 567-km(2) wildlife refuge in the mangrove-salt marsh ecotone. We report that over the 7-yr. period, total wetland C stocks increased 22 % due to mangrove encroachment into salt marshes. Newly established mangrove stands stored twice as much C on a per area basis as salt marsh primarily due to differences in aboveground biomass, and mangrove cover increased by 69 % during this short time interval. Wetland C storage within the wildlife refuge increased at a rate of 2.7 Mg C ha(-1) yr.(-1), more than doubling the naturally high coastal wetland C sequestration rates. Mangrove expansion could account for a globally significant increase of terrestrial C storage, which may exert a considerable negative feedback on warming.In this study we report the results obtained from an island-wide survey aimed at researching an under-emphasized key feature of climate change adaptation namely willingness to adapt on the basis of the perceptions and beliefs held by the Gozitan livestock and crop farmers. Some of the main objectives of this study included the: (1) determination of whether the current perception is in line with the observed climatic changes at the local scale, and (2) identification of the typology of these farmers, together with those factors that affect both skepticism and acceptance of climate change. This study provided an important first step in the objective validation of local farmers' perceptions of climate change, as well as in the development of a comprehensive understanding of their attitude, beliefs, willingness and capacity to adjust their practices in response to climate change. The results pointed to several important conclusions that can be used to inform research, outreach strategies and policy formulation, targeting the Gozitan farming sector to adapt to climate change without delay. The forgoing analysis showed a dire need for more information both on impacts and risks, as well as on ways how to introduce new farming techniques and practices. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Urban stormwater runoff is a critical source of degradation to stream ecosystems globally. Despite broad appreciation by stream ecologists of negative effects of stormwater runoff, stormwater management objectives still typically center on flood and pollution mitigation without an explicit focus on altered hydrology. Resulting management approaches are unlikely to protect the ecological structure and function of streams adequately. We present critical elements of stormwater management necessary for protecting stream ecosystems through 5 principles intended to be broadly applicable to all urban landscapes that drain to a receiving stream: 1) the ecosystems to be protected and a target ecological state should be explicitly identified; 2) the postdevelopment balance of evapotranspiration, stream flow, and infiltration should mimic the predevelopment balance, which typically requires keeping significant runoff volume from reaching the stream; 3) stormwater control measures (SCMs) should deliver flow regimes that mimic the predevelopment regime in quality and quantity; 4) SCMs should have capacity to store rain events for all storms that would not have produced widespread surface runoff in a predevelopment state, thereby avoiding increased frequency of disturbance to biota; and 5) SCMs should be applied to all impervious surfaces in the catchment of the target stream. These principles present a range of technical and social challenges. Existing infrastructural, institutional, or governance contexts often prevent application of the principles to the degree necessary to achieve effective protection or restoration, but significant potential exists for multiple co-benefits from SCM technologies (e.g., water supply and climate-change adaptation) that may remove barriers to implementation. Our set of ideal principles for stream protection is intended as a guide for innovators who seek to develop new approaches to stormwater management rather than accept seemingly insurmountable historical constraints, which guarantee future, ongoing degradation.Investing in global environmental and adaptation benefits in the context of agriculture and food security initiatives can play an important role in promoting sustainable intensification. This is a priority for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), created in 1992 with a mandate to serve as financial mechanism of several multilateral environmental agreements. To demonstrate the nature and extent of GEF financing, we conducted an assessment of the entire portfolio over a period of two decades (1991-2011) to identify projects with direct links to agriculture and food security. A cohort of 192 projects and programs were identified and used as a basis for analyzing trends in GEF financing. The projects and programs together accounted for a total GEF financing of US$ 1,086.8 million, and attracted an additional US$6,343.5 million from other sources. The value-added of GEF financing for ecosystem services and resilience in production systems was demonstrated through a diversity of interventions in the projects and programs that utilized US$810.6 million of the total financing. The interventions fall into the following four main categories in accordance with priorities of the GEF: sustainable land management (US$ 179.3 million), management of agrobiodiversity (US$ 113.4 million), sustainable fisheries and water resource management (US$ 379.8 million), and climate change adaptation (US$ 138.1 million). By aligning GEF priorities with global aspirations for sustainable intensification of production systems, the study shows that it is possible to help developing countries tackle food insecurity while generating global environmental benefits for a healthy and resilient planet.Within the broad discourses of environmental change, sustainability science, and anthropogenic Earth-surface systems, a focused body of work involves the coupled economic and physical dynamics of developed shorelines. Rapid rates of change in coastal environments, from wetlands and deltas to inlets and dune systems, help researchers recognize, observe, and investigate coupling in natural (non-human) morphodynamics and biomorphodynamics. This same intrinsic quality of fast-paced change also makes developed coastal zones exemplars of observable coupling between physical processes and human activities. In many coastal communities, beach erosion is a natural hazard with economic costs that coastal management counters through a variety of mitigation strategies, including beach replenishment, groynes, revetments, and seawalls. As cycles of erosion and mitigation iterate, coastline change and economically driven interventions become mutually linked. Emergent dynamics of two-way economic-physical coupling is a recent research discovery. Having established a strong theoretical basis, research into coupled human-coastal systems has passed its early proof-of-concept phase. This paper frames three major challenges that need resolving in order to advance theoretical and empirical treatments of human-coastal systems: (1) codifying salient individual and social behaviors of decision-making in ways that capture societal actions across a range of scales (thus engaging economics, social science, and policy disciplines); (2) quantifying anthropogenic effects on alongshore and cross-shore sediment pathways and long-term landscape evolution in coastal zones through time, including direct measurement of cumulative changes to sediment cells resulting from coastal development and management practices (e.g., construction of buildings and artificial dunes, bulldozer removal of overwash after major storms); and (3) reciprocal knowledge and data exchange between researchers in coastal morphodynamics and practitioners of coastal management. Future research into human-coastal systems can benefit from decades of interdisciplinary work on the complex dynamics of common-pool resources, from computational efficiency and new techniques in numerical modeling, and from the growing catalog of high-resolution geospatial data for natural and developed coastlines around the world. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper focuses on how scientific uncertainties about future peak flood flows and sea level rises are accounted for in long term strategic planning processes to adapt inland and coastal flood risk management in England to climate change. Combining key informant interviews (n = 18) with documentary analysis, it explores the institutional tensions between adaptive management approaches emphasising openness to uncertainty and to alternative policy options on the one hand and risk-based ones that close them down by transforming uncertainties into calculable risks whose management can be rationalized through cost-benefit analysis and nationally consistent, risk-based priority setting on the other hand. These alternative approaches to managing uncertainty about the first-order risks to society from future flooding are shaped by institutional concerns with managing the second-order, 'institutional' risks of criticism and blame arising from accountability for discharging those first-order risk management responsibilities. In the case of river flooding the poorly understood impacts of future climate change were represented with a simplistic adjustment to peak flow estimates, which proved robust in overcoming institutional resistance to making precautionary allowances for climate change in risk-based flood management, at least in part because its scientific limitations were acknowledged only partially. By contrast in the case of coastal flood risk management, greater scientific confidence led to successively more elaborate guidance on how to represent the science, which in turn led to inconsistency in implementation and increased the institutional risks involved in taking the uncertain effects of future sea level rise into account in adaptation planning and flood risk management. Comparative analysis of these two cases then informs some wider reflections about the tensions between adaptive and risk-based approaches, the role of institutional risk in climate change adaptation, and the importance of such institutional dynamics in shaping the framing uncertainties and policy responses to scientific knowledge about them. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Considerable controversy continues to exist in scientific and policy circles about how to tackle issues of global hunger, malnutrition, and rural economic decline, as well as environmental issues, such as biodiversity loss and climate change adaptation. On the one hand, powerful vested interests, with close ties to government, media, and academic institutions, propose high-input technology-based solutions, speculative and neoliberal "market-based" solutions, and export-oriented agricultural models. On the other hand, an international scientific and grassroots Food Movement has emerged, calling for a redesign of the Global Food System in support of small-scale agroecological farming systems. A call to re-evaluate our current Food Systems was made in 2008 by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Here, using the IAASTD study as a backdrop, we review the recent literature to outline key contentious points in the controversy between the need for high-input and "techno-based" versus agroecological farming models. A critical assessment is made of proposed strategies to protect soil resources, improve nutrient and energy cycles, protect agrobiodiversity, and promote social well-being in rural communities. With an increase in the number of affluent consumers (i.e., the middle class) in the developing world, and with the continued problem of extreme and chronic poverty with other larger sectors of society, Organic Farming and Agroecology models are put forward as a sound social, scientific, and rural development strategy.The 187 countries that adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 at the March 2015 UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction included most African countries. Many developing regions of the world, particularly in Asia and Latin America, made considerable progress in implementing the previous Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015. But, despite the fact that Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable and least resilient to disasters, which continue to be exacerbated by poverty, climate change, rapid urbanization, and structural transformation, it saw only slow progress. This article considers the challenges Africa faces in implementing the Sendai Framework and recommends that besides "Africanizing" Sendai goals and strengthening the region's political commitment to disaster risk reduction (DRR), Africa should also develop a single framework that integrates DRR, sustainable development, climate change adaptation, and conflict prevention. Equally important is the need for a strong recognition that disasters are created endogenously as well as exogenously, and thus require local solutions and local investment.Starting from a critical discussion of current arguments and concepts in research on the environment-migration nexus, the article analyses how environmental migration is discussed in the Pacific region. In the first section we provide a short overview of the academic debates on environmental migration and describe their limitations. We suggest that a legal stalemate has arisen at global level regarding environmental migrants. The second section examines the evolving negotiations to address environmental migrants in the Pacific region that are, in contrast to the global North, based on climate science and on calls for climate justice and solidarity. We conclude that the inclusion of post-colonial perspectives in the debates on environmental migration can render visible the political nature of climate adaptation choices and reconnect global negotiations to questions of fair burden sharing in adaptation. The article brings a legal anthropological lens to bear on empirical material from the Pacific region, to show the new rights, resources and policies that may emerge from climate change and migration debates. The article offers insights into the increasingly complex decision-making processes and development of policies and laws in the context of global climate change.Fostering resilience in the face of environmental, socioeconomic, and political uncertainty and risk has captured the attention of academics and decision makers across disciplines, sectors, and scales. Resilience has become an important goal for cities, particularly in the face of climate change. Urban areas house the majority of the world's population, and, in addition to functioning as nodes of resource consumption and as sites for innovation, have become laboratories for resilience, both in theory and in practice. This paper reviews the scholarly literature on urban resilience and concludes that the term has not been well defined. Existing definitions are inconsistent and underdeveloped with respect to incorporation of crucial concepts found in both resilience theory and urban theory. Based on this literature review, and aided by bibliometric analysis, the paper identifies six conceptual tensions fundamental to urban resilience: (1) definition of 'urban'; (2) understanding of system equilibrium; (3) positive vs. neutral (or negative) conceptualizations of resilience; (4) mechanisms for system change; (5) adaptation versus general adaptability; and (6) timescale of action. To advance this burgeoning field, more conceptual clarity is needed. This paper, therefore, proposes a new definition of urban resilience. This definition takes explicit positions on these tensions, but remains inclusive and flexible enough to enable uptake by, and collaboration among, varying disciplines. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the definition might serve as a boundary object, with the acknowledgement that applying resilience in different contexts requires answering: Resilience for whom and to what? When? Where? And why? (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Ecosystem services such as protection from storms and erosion, tourism benefits, and climate adaptation and mitigation have been increasingly recognized as important considerations for environmental policymalcing. Recent research has shown that coastal ecosystems such as seagrasses, salt marshes, and mangroves provide climate mitigation services because they are particularly effective at sequestering and storing carbon dioxide, referred to as "coastal blue carbon". Unfortunately, degradation of blue carbon ecosystems due to anthropogenic impacts contributes to anthropogenic carbon emissions from land use impacts and prevents these ecosystems from continuing to sequester and store carbon. Given the impressive carbon sequestration and storage in coastal ecosystems, many countries with blue carbon resources are beginning to implement blue carbon restoration projects using carbon financing mechanisms. This study analyzed four case studies of projects in Kenya, India, Vietnam, and Madagascar, evaluating the individual carbon financing mechanisms, the project outcomes, and the policy implications of each. Strengths and challenges of implementing blue carbon projects are discussed and considerations that all projects should address are examined in order to develop long-term sustainable climate mitigation or adaptation policies. This analysis can help to inform future project design considerations as well as policy opportunities. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.A key challenge in climate change adaptation in developing countries as a whole, and to handling global change in particular, is to link local adaptation needs on the one hand, with national adaptation initiatives on the other, so that vulnerable households and communities can directly benefit. This study assesses the impact of the Nepal government's efforts to promote its Local Adaptation Plan of Action (LAPA) and its applicability to other least developed countries (LDCs). Based on data gathered from two field studies in Nepal, the research shows that the Nepal's LAPA has succeeded in mobilizing local institutions and community groups in adaptation planning and recognizing their role in adaptation. However, the LAPA approach and implementation have been constrained by sociostructural and governance barriers that have failed to successfully integrate local adaptation needs in local planning and increase the adaptive capacity of vulnerable households. This paper describes the mechanisms of suitable governance strategies for climate change adaptation specific to Nepal and other LDCs. It also argues the need to adopt an adaptive comanagement approach, where the government and all stakeholders identify common local- and national-level mainstreaming strategy for knowledge management, resource mobilization, and institutional development, ultimately using adaptation as a tool to handle global change.It is increasingly evident that adaptation will figure prominently in the post-2015 United Nations climate change agreement(1,2). As adaptation obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change evolve, more rigorous approaches to measuring adaptation progress among parties will be critical. In this Letter we elaborate on an emerging area of research referred to as 'adaptation tracking', which has potential to inform development of a global adaptation monitoring framework(3). We evaluate this potential by presenting evidence on policy change for 41 high-income countries between 2010 and 2014. We examine whether countries that were in early stages of adaptation planning in 2010 are making progress to close adaptation gaps, and how the landscape of adaptation in these countries has evolved. In total we find an 87% increase in reported adaptation policies and measures, and evidence that implementation of concrete adaptation initiatives is growing. Reflecting on the strengths and challenges of this early methodology, we further discuss how adaptation tracking practices could guide development of a robust framework for monitoring global adaptation progress and inform future research on policy change across countries.Background. Child undernutrition and flooding are highly prevalent public health issues in many developing countries, yet we have little understanding of preventive strategies for effective coping in these circumstances. Education has been recently highlighted as key to reduce the societal impacts of extreme weather events under climate change, but there is a lack of studies assessing to what extent parental education may prevent post-flood child undernutrition. Methods and Materials. One year after large floods in 2008, we conducted a two stage cluster population-based survey of 6-59 months children inhabiting flooded and non-flooded communities of Jagatsinghpur district, Odisha (India), and collected anthropometric measurements on children along with child, parental and household level variables through face-to-face interviews. Using multivariate logistic regression models, we examined separately the effect of maternal and paternal education and other risk factors (mainly income, socio-demographic, and child and mother variables) on stunting and wasting in children from households inhabiting recurrently flooded communities (2006 and 2008; n = 299). As a comparison, separate analyses Ion children in non-flooded communities were carried out (n = 385). All analyses were adjusted by income as additional robustness check. Results. Overall, fathers with at least completed middle education (up to 114 years of age and compulsory in India) had an advantage in protecting their children from child wasting and stunting. For child stunting, the clearest result was a 100-200% lower prevalence associated with at least paternal secondary schooling (compared to no schooling) in flooded-areas. Again, only in flooded communities, an increase in per capita annual household income of 1,000 rupees was associated to a 4.7-4.9% lower prevalence of child stunting. For child wasting in flooded areas, delayed motherhood was associated to better nutritional outcomes (3.4% lower prevalence per year). In flooded communities, households dedicated to activities other than agriculture, a 50-51% lower prevalence of child wasting was estimated, suggesting farmers and fishermen as the most vulnerable livelihoods under flooding. In flooded areas, lower rank castes were at higher odds of both child wasting and stunting. Conclusions. In the short-term, protracted nutritional response in the aftermath of floods should be urgently implemented and target agricultural livelihoods and low rank castes. Education promotion and schooling up to 14 years should have positive impacts on improving children nutritional health in the long run, especially under flooding. Policies effectively helping sustainable livelihood economic development and delayed motherhood are also recommended.The search for strategies to address 'super wicked problems' such as climate change is gaining urgency, and a collaborative governance approach, and adaptive co-management in particular, is increasingly recognized as one such strategy. However, the conditions for adaptive co-management to emerge and the resulting network structures and relational patterns remain unclear in the literature. To address these identified needs, this study examines social relationships from a network perspective while initiating a collaborative multiactor initiative aimed to develop into adaptive co-management for climate change adaptation, an action research project undertaken in the Niagara region of Canada. The project spanned 1 year, and a longitudinal analysis of participants' networks and level of participation in the process was performed. Evidence of support for climate change adaptation from the process included the development of deliberative and adaptive responses to opportunities presented to the group and the development of a strong subgroup of participants where decision-making was centered. However, the complexity of the challenge of addressing climate change, funding constraints, competing initiatives, and the lack of common views among participants may have contributed to the group, highlighting the finding that beneficial network structural features and relational patterns are necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of an adaptive co-management process. The context of climate change adaptation may require a different social network structure and processes than other contexts for adaptive co-management to occur, and there may be limitations to adaptive co-management for dealing with super wicked problems.While there is general agreement on the necessity for local adaptation, there is a wide range of different understandings of what type of adaptation is seen as legitimate. It is often contested who should actively steer and take part in local adaptation, for which reasons and based on what kind of mandate, and with which methods. Planning theory can serve as a helpful reference point for examining the sources of legitimacy for adaptation in an urban context. From a planning perspective, adaptation is concerned with climate change as one out of many issues planning has to respond to. The layered co-existence of planning paradigms in practice suggests diverse, sometimes contradictory sources of legitimacy for urban planning and-as we claim here-also for climate change adaptation. This study examines the legitimacy of adaptation from a planning theoretical perspective in Helsinki, drawing on semi-structured interviews and social network analysis to show how adaptation is commonly understood from a rationalist perspective as an apolitical activity with local authorities' experts designing and implementing adaptation. Nevertheless, some of the central actors understand adaptation as a communicative activity and a common deliberation of solutions. The co-occurrence of disparate paradigms results in ambiguous legitimacy that can impede the successful implementation of local climate change adaptation.yyThis essay defends a strong right against displacement as part of a basic individual right to secure access to one's home. The analysis is purposefully situated within the difficult context of climate change adaptation policies. Under increasing environmental pressures, especially regarding water security, there are weighty reasons motivating the forced displacement of persons-to safeguard water resources or prevent water-related disasters. Even in these pressing circumstances, I argue, individuals have weighty rights to secure access to their homes. I explain how the home provides a functional context for conditions of autonomous agency. Being coerced from the home disrupts and subverts the conditions necessary for autonomous processes. I conclude by suggesting that the right to the home could be a foundational element of territorial rights.The UN General Assembly has just adopted the post 2015 Sustainable Development Agenda articulated in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Achieving the SDGs will be furthered by the closer integration of the climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) agendas. Gender provides us a valuable portal for considering this integration. Acknowledging that gender relaters to both women and men and that men and women experience climate variability and disasters differently, in this paper the role of women in both CCA and DRR is explored, shifting the focus from women as vulnerable victims to women as critical agents for change with respect to climate change mitigation and adaptation and reduction of disaster risks. Appropriately targeted interventions can also empower women and contribute to more just and inclusive sustainable development.Climate is a major influence on residential energy demand and energy demand patterns. A better understanding of the link between climate and energy demand responses is crucial to improve energy forecasting outcomes and to evaluate the potential of climate change adaptation strategies. This paper reviews models of residential energy demand to temperature. We classify the models used in papers published in peer-reviewed journals and observe that the credibility of energy demand projections hinges in part on the assumption that the shape and type of the temperature response function is stationary. The evidence of acclimatization to warmer conditions may oppose this assumption. While the studies reviewed here only tested the impact of changes in the temperature thresholds and the shape of temperature response functions, a comprehensive understanding of changes in energy demand patterns and climate adaptation potentials requires knowledge of building stock turnover rates and associated changes in technology and behavioral responses of building occupants. These are not yet part of the standard repertoire of temperature-based demand models. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Municipal governments have to contend with climate change dynamics with household-level adaptive capacity becoming an increasingly important component to the urban setting. However, methods in the quantification of adaptation, and what factors may drive adaptation at the urban household level, remain poorly resolved. In this study, we proposed an empirical approach and a set of 17 adaptive indicators to assess the adaptive capacity of urban households to climate change. The adaptive indicators were tested from three urban districts of the Da Nang city, Vietnam. A household survey using socioeconomic data was conducted in 617 urban households. The empirical results showed that inherent capacity of urban households was relatively high in term of wealth, housing condition and durable assets, and low for livelihood diversity and knowledge to climate change. Six components, consisting of household economy, social relation, human capital, adaptation practices, municipal services and urban governance, and livelihood protection were extracted from the adaptive indicators. Of these, household economy, social relation, and adaptation practices were major factors determining the adaptation of urban households to climate change. The adaptive indicators present here, with appropriate modification, could be used to assess adaptive capacity of urban households to climate change from other coastal areas. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Although ecosystem services have been intensively examined in certain domains (e.g., forests and wetlands), little research has assessed ecosystem services for the most dominant landscape type in urban ecosystems-namely, residential yards. In this paper, we report findings of a cross-site survey of homeowners in six U.S. cities to 1) examine how residents subjectively value various ecosystem services, 2) explore distinctive dimensions of those values, and 3) test the urban homogenization hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that urbanization leads to similarities in the social-ecological dynamics across cities in diverse biomes. By extension, the thesis suggests that residents' ecosystem service priorities for residential landscapes will be similar regardless of whether residents live in the humid East or the arid West, or the warm South or the cold North. Results underscored that cultural services were of utmost importance, particularly anthropocentric values including aesthetics, low-maintenance, and personal enjoyment. Using factor analyses, distinctive dimensions of residents' values were found to partially align with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment's categories (provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural). Finally, residents' ecosystem service priorities exhibited significant homogenization across regions. In particular, the traditional lawn aesthetic (neat, green, weed-free yards) was similarly important across residents of diverse U.S. cities. Only a few exceptions were found across different environmental and social contexts; for example, cooling effects were more important in the warm South, where residents also valued aesthetics more than those in the North, where low-maintenance yards were a greater priority.Community-based adaptation (CBA) has emerged over the last decade as an approach to empowering communities to plan for and cope with the impacts of climate change. While such approaches have been widely advocated, few have critically examined the tensions and challenges that CBA brings. Responding to this gap, this article critically examines the use of CBA approaches with Inuit communities in Canada. We suggest that CBA holds significant promise to make adaptation research more democratic and responsive to local needs, providing a basis for developing locally appropriate adaptations based on local/indigenous and Western knowledge. Yet, we argue that CBA is not a panacea, and its common portrayal as such obscures its limitations, nuances, and challenges. Indeed, if uncritically adopted, CBA can potentially lead to maladaptation, may be inappropriate in some instances, can legitimize outside intervention and control, and may further marginalize communities. We identify responsibilities for researchers engaging in CBA work to manage these challenges, emphasizing the centrality of how knowledge is generated, the need for project flexibility and openness to change, and the importance of ensuring partnerships between researchers and communities are transparent. Researchers also need to be realistic about what CBA can achieve, and should not assume that research has a positive role to play in community adaptation just because it utilizes participatory approaches. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:175-191. doi: 10.1002/wcc.376 For further resources related to this article, please visit the .This article links the concept of access and benefit-sharing as it pertains to crop genetic resources to climate change adaptation and argues that systems for access and benefit-sharing can, and should, be designed to contribute to climate change adaptation for agriculture. The access and benefit-sharing provisions of the two international agreements that together provide the international legal framework for access and benefit-sharing - the Convention on Biological Diversity (with its Nagoya Protocol) and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture - are presented and analysed. How these agreements are implemented is central to adaptation, as the effects of climate change threaten crop genetic resources and future adaptive capacity, and, if properly maintained and utilized, crop genetic resources will be essential to climate change adaptation across the globe. This article, therefore, argues that an important adaptation strategy linked to such implementation is to direct benefit-sharing for crop genetic resources towards adaptation efforts and to ensure facilitated and efficient access to crop genetic resources for adaptation purposes. Some options for how this can be pursued at both the international and national level are offered.This study seeks to determine the role of land architecture the composition and configuration of land cover as well as cadastral-demographic-economic factors on land surface temperature (LST) and the surface urban heat island effect of Phoenix, Arizona. It employs 1 m National Agricultural Imagery Program data of land-cover with 120 m Landsat-derived land surface temperature, decomposed to 30 m, a new measure of configuration, the normalized moment of inertia, and U.S. Census data to address the question for two randomly selected samples comprising 523 and 545 residential neighborhoods (census blocks) in the city. The results indicate that, contrary to most other studies, land configuration has a stronger influence on LST than land composition. In addition, both land configuration and architecture combined with cadastral, demographic, and economic variables, capture a significant amount of explained variance in LST. The results indicate that attention to land architecture in the development of or reshaping of neighborhoods may ameliorate the summer extremes in LST. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Climate scholars are increasingly recognizing the importance of gender in climate change vulnerability, but often either dichotomize men and women as homogeneous categories or limit themselves to comparing male-and female-headed households. We use an intersectionality framework to examine how the adaptive strategies of Tanzanian farmers are mediated through their gender and marital statuses. Drawing on focus group discussions and using logistic regression to analyze questionnaire data, we compare the relative adoption of the different adaptive strategies of single, married, divorced, and widowed men and women. Our study shows that, while a woman's marital status is a vital factor in determining her access to adaptive strategies, it is a less important factor in the case of men. We show that, compared with other women, widows and female divorcees are disadvantaged in the field of agricultural water management, and divorced women assume relatively more income-earning activities outside the farming sector. Finally, we find evidence of livelihood diversification at the household level through specialization by individual household members. Based on the empirical evidence, we develop a typology with which to synthesize the linkages between gender, marital status, and adaptive strategies; and we subsequently emphasize the importance of an intersectionality approach to gender and climate change policy and practice. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Since soil organic matter (SOM) buffers against impacts of climatic variability, the objective of this study was to assess on-farm distribution of SOM and propose realistic options for increasing SOM and thus the adaptation of smallholder farmers to climate change and variability in the interior northern savannah of Ghana. Data and information on spatial distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC), current practices that could enhance climate adaptation including management of organic resources were collected through biophysical assessments and snap community surveys. Even though homestead fields were more frequently cultivated, higher amounts of SOC (15 +/- 2gkg(-1)) were observed in homesteads when compared to the periphery cropped sections in bushes (SOC=9 +/- 1gkg(-1)). Possibly, a combination of household wastes, droppings of domestic animals that are mostly reared in a free-range system, manures applied to crops and cultural norms of chieftaincy, which cause short-term fallowing of homestead fields could account for the differences in SOC. Use of organic resources for soil amendment among farmers was low (31% of interviewed farmers) due largely to ignorance of fertilizer values of manures and residues, traditions for bush-burning and competing use of organic resources for fuels. Our findings suggest a need for effective management practices, training and awareness aimed at improving management of organic resources and, consequently, increasing SOC and resilience to climate-change-induced risks.Narrowing research and policy, while challenging, is especially important in climate change adaptation work (CCA) due to the high uncertainties involved in planning for climate change. This article aims to seek stakeholders' opinions regarding how research and policy development can be bridged within the Cambodian water resources and agriculture sectors. The study used institutional ethnography methods with informants from government organizations, local academia, and development partners (DPs). This article identifies a number of challenges, and barriers for narrowing research policy development gaps, including: limited effectiveness of governmental policies and planning; lack of relevant information required to promote evidence-based planning and policy development; and communication barriers. Evidence-based planning is valued by government officials most when there is actual and effective implementation of policies and plans. In practice, this often implies that governmental policies and plans need be scoped and scaled down to meet the available budget, and thus be achievable. In the long term, it also means building the capacity for policy-relevant research on climate change adaptation within Cambodia. Engaging policy stakeholders in research process for co-producing adaptation knowledge, and introducing knowledge intermediaries are suggested by informants as means to narrowing gaps between research and policy development. The presence of the Cambodia's Prime Minister in research policy dialogues is recommended as important for attracting the attention of high-level policy makers.Knowledge of farmers' perceptions of and adaptations to climate change is important to inform policies addressing the risk of climate change to farmers. This case study explored those issues in the Melamchi Valley of Nepal through a survey of 365 households and focus group discussions in 6 communities using a Community-Based Risk Screening Tool-Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL). Analysis of climate trends in the study area for 1979-2009 showed that mean annual temperatures rose by 1.02 degrees C and the frequency of drought increased measurably after 2003. Farmers reported increases in crop pests, hailstorms, landslides, floods, thunderstorms, and erratic precipitation as climate-related hazards affecting agriculture. They responded in a variety of ways including changing farming practices, selling livestock, milk, and eggs, and engaging in daily wage labor and seasonal labor migration. With more efficient support and planning, some of these measures could be adjusted to better meet current and future risks from climate change.Bhutan, located in the Himalayas in the South Asian monsoon region, has extremely high variation in elevation, climatic conditions, and land cover despite its small geographical area, as well as great biodiversity. This paper provides the first comprehensive description of climatic conditions in Bhutan. It assesses the spatial variation of temperature and precipitation across the country and evaluates the causes for this variation based on daily data from 70 meteorological stations that have been recording data for time spans ranging from 3 to 21 years. Temperature and precipitation show contrasting spatial variation, with temperature primarily affected by elevation and precipitation by latitude. Models were developed using mixed linear regression models to predict seasonal and annual mean temperature and precipitation based on geographical location. Using linear regression we found that temperatures changed by about 0.5 degrees C for every 100 m of change in elevation, with lapse rates being highest in February, March, and November and lowest from June to August. The lapse rate was highest for minimum temperatures and lowest for maximum temperatures, with the greatest difference during winter. The spatial distribution of precipitation was mainly controlled by latitude, having a quadratic relationship, with the highest rates in the southern foothills of the Himalayan range and the lowest at midlatitudes. The land cover is affected by topography and local climate, with variations in temperature being a main deciding factor for vegetation types; most human settlements and associated land uses are concentrated at lower elevations.Timing of leaf out in woody plants is being affected by global climate change, with cascading effects on associated organisms and ecosystem processes. However, the timing and responsiveness of this important phenological event are not well understood, especially in relation to the geographic origin of species and populations. This study assessed the effect of anomalous spring warming on leaf out timing for woody plant species and individuals from a range of taxa and geographic origins. Timing of leaf out was assessed across 4 years (2011-2014) for 478 plants, representing 96 species and 21 genera, planted together in a common environment at The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Illinois, USA. An anomalously warm spring in 2012 strongly affected leaf out timing, advancing mean leaf out date for every species by an average of 31 days across all individuals. Responsiveness was related to species traits, as species classified as early-successional, with diffuse-porous wood anatomy, or with a weak chilling requirement were much more responsive. There was strong variation among individuals within a species in leaf out timing and responsiveness. These patterns were somewhat related to geographical origin of the individual, but were not consistent among species or genera. High responsiveness of leaf out to anomalous spring warming, which is forecasted to be more common with global climate change, could have important implications for climate change adaptation, assisted migration, and ecological interactions. Chilling requirements may have limited responsiveness for some species, which could affect competitive dynamics within plant communities. Through such interactions and direct effects on woody plant species, variation in spring leaf out phenology will likely affect biodiversity and functioning in many ecosystems.We draw on our research experiences with municipal workers in Alaska, where the impacts of climate change are already extensive, to examine adaptation and related concepts, such as resilience and vulnerability, which have become widely used in science and policy formulation for addressing climate change despite also being subject to multiple critiques. We use local people's experiences with environmental challenges to illustrate limitations of the climate change adaptation paradigm, and offer the additional concept of "community work" - analogous to niche construction - as a counterpart to the adaptive process at the community level. Whereas climate change adaptation insinuates active and purposive change, the reality we have repeatedly encountered is that people in these communities focus not on changing but on building and maintaining capacity and achieving stability: keeping aging and overtaxed infrastructure running while also working toward improving quality of life and services in their communities. We discuss how these findings are congruent with recent calls to better situate climate change adaptation policy in the context of community development, and argue that scientists and policymakers need to understand this context of community work to avoid the pitfalls that potentially accompany the adaptation paradigm.The risks presented by climate change mean that there is a need to future-proof the UK's energy (electricity and natural gas) infrastructure. The scale of investment required is estimated at more than 200 pound billion by 2030. Although there are a variety of funding sources available, increasing proportions of infrastructure investment are now being funded by the private sector. Therefore, it will be necessary to find ways to incentivise private investors to accommodate for adaptation requirements in their decision-making processes. Research was undertaken to explore the UK energy infrastructure under the following three main lenses. (a) What technical aspects of energy infrastructure need to consider the effects of climate change? (b) What investment is required in the near future to adapt to climate change? (c) What types of policy could create reliable signals for investment in climate change adaptation? This paper presents key findings and considerations for policy covering the three questions above: (a) there are data gaps, interdependencies not effectively assessed and techniques available but not yet adopted; (b) the investment community suffers from a lack of climate change expertise and a short-term mindset; and (c) there is a need for a clearer policy vision and greater collaboration.We investigate the links between multidecadal changes in extreme sea levels (expressed as 100 year return water levels (RWLs)) along the United States coastline and large-scale climate variability. We develop different sets of simple and multiple linear regression models using both traditional climate indices and tailored indices based on nearby atmospheric/oceanic variables (winds, pressure, sea surface temperature) as independent predictors. The models, after being tested for spatial and temporal stability, are capable of explaining large fractions of the observed variability, up to 96% at individual sites and more than 80% on average across the region. Using the model predictions as covariates in a quasi nonstationary extreme value analysis also significantly reduces the range of change in the 100 year RWLs over time, turning a nonstationary process into a stationary one. This suggests that the modelswhen used with regional and global climate model output of the predictorswill also be capable of projecting future RWL changes. Such information is highly relevant for decision makers in the climate adaptation context in addition to projections of long-term sea level rise.Long term policy issues like climate change adaptation are considered wicked in the sense that uncertain knowledge and volatile societal understandings associated to the issue might jeopardize long term sustainment of adaptation policies. Uncertainty or sudden societal opposition might politically be employed to dismantle earlier made policies or investments and therefore threaten longterm adaptive capacity. This article highlights how successful long-term decision-making can be understood as a matter of puzzling over uncertainty and powering for getting things done, but above all requires sustainment of these decisions on the long term. For doing so the paper analyses the decision-making process of the Dutch Delta Committee in 2008, which firmly put the climate adaptation issue on the Dutch political agenda and subsequently sustained the issue on the policy agenda through the creation of a Delta Commissioner, a Delta Fund and a Delta Act. Our analysis illustrates how the crucial actors in and around the Second Delta Committee deployed strategies of puzzling, powering, and what we define as perpetuation to deal with the long-term policy issue of climate adaptation. The latter is especially important for policy issues that require a long-term continued effort by policy-makers, or will only manifest themselves on the long term. Then, it is not only important to create meaning and organize power now, but also to maintain and ensure that meaning and power for time to come. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Projects in which science-based futures are produced indicating the relevant impacts of climatic changes are proliferating, in tandem with the increasing attention for climate change adaptation. Constructionist science studies have put forward the concept of 'co-production' to understand how knowledge claims become stable, authoritative, get institutionalised and reorder science and society. Moreover, knowledge and structures of power are co-evolutionary. Exercises in constructing futures are interesting practices where what is and what ought are enmeshed, and where knowledge claims may in turn be performative for societal reordering. This article presents a conceptual framework to understand the transformation of knowledge claims about the future in more analytical detail. Five concepts are suggested to aid the analysis of transformations: reduction, extension, rhetorical packaging, modification and redefinition. This conceptual framework is used to present a qualitative, in-depth study about the transformation of the volatile issue of urban warming in the face of climate change in the Netherlands, and the related knowledge claims on the future of this issue. As this case makes clear, the constant erosion of legitimacy for urban warming as a matter of collective concern is important to understand the transformation of knowledge claims. Also, the context and organisational embedding in which the projects originated had direct consequences for the construction of relevant knowledge on future urban warming. Moreover, the pre-existing methodologies science brings to the production of knowledge functioned as important templates which transformed the issue of urban warming. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.As climate change impacts result in more extreme events (such as droughts and floods), the need to understand which policies facilitate effective climate change adaptation becomes crucial. Hence, this article answers the question: How do governments and policymakers frame policy in relation to climate change, droughts, and floods and what governance structures facilitate adaptation? This research interrogates and analyzes through content analysis, supplemented by semi-structured qualitative interviews, the policy response to climate change, drought, and flood in relation to agricultural producers in four case studies in river basins in Chile, Argentina, and Canada. First, an epistemological explanation of risk and uncertainty underscores a brief literature review of adaptive governance, followed by policy framing in relation to risk and uncertainty, and an analytical model is developed. Pertinent findings of the four cases are recounted, followed by a comparative analysis. In conclusion, recommendations are made to improve policies and expand adaptive governance to better account for uncertainty and risk. This article is innovative in that it proposes an expanded model of adaptive governance in relation to risk that can help bridge the barrier of uncertainty in science and policy.Since the publication of the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change there has been scientific and planning political consensus on the ability of regional planning to implement climate change adaptation contents. To which extent the formal regional spatial planning meets this ability, is the key issue of this article. The analysis is a census for the regional planning territories of Germany. Their regional plans are examined regarding the presence and bindingness of adaptation-relevant designations. The action plan of spatial planning on prevention, mitigation and adaptation strategies with regard to the spatial consequences of climate change of the Conference of Ministers on Spatial Planning and its seven adaptation-related fields of action serve as a basis for the analysis. As a result, the state of implementation of adaptation-relevant regional plan contents is presented-both for each field of action as well as comprehensively. Furthermore, the results are reflected and further adaptation potentials are presented.A 30-year meteorological station and reanalysis datasets revealed that the frequency and intensity of hot extremes have increased dramatically around Mongolia since the late 1990s. Many recent heat waves (HWs) were triggered by atmospheric forcing with a mid-tropospheric ridge pattern which appears frequently around Mongolia in 2000s. An observational data analysis for each HW event indicates that the rate of temperature increase at the beginning stage of HW is sensitive to the soil moisture condition. Therefore, it is suggested that the recent drier soil conditions played a role in enhancing the frequency and intensity of HWs and localization around Mongolia.Mass and energy fluxes were measured over a field of Agave tequilana in Mexico using eddy covariance (EC) methodology. Data were gathered over 252 d, including the transition from wet to dry periods. Net ecosystem exchanges (F-N,F-EC) displayed a crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) rhythm that alternated from CO2 sink at night to CO2 source during the day, and partitioned canopy fluxes (F-A,F-EC) showed a characteristic four-phase CO2 exchange pattern. Results were cross-validated against diel changes in titratable acidity, leaf-unfurling rates, energy exchange fluxes and reported biomass yields. Projected carbon balance (gCm(-2) year(-1), mean +/- 95% confidence interval) indicated the site was a net sink of -333 +/- 24, of which contributions from soil respiration were +692 +/- 7, and F-A,F-EC was -1025 +/- 25. EC estimated biomass yield was 20.1 Mg(dry) ha(-1) year(-1). Average integrated daily F-A,F-EC was -234 +/- 5 mmol CO2 m(-2) d(-1) and persisted almost unchanged after 70 d of drought conditions. Regression analyses were performed on the EC data to identify the best environmental predictors of F-A. Results suggest that the carbon acquisition strategy of Agave offers productivity and drought resilience advantages over conventional semi-arid C3 and C4 bioenergy candidates.Air supported structures made of PVC coated polyester fabric materials have been used in industrial and commercial building constructions. If they are used in cyclonic regions, the structure envelop might be impacted by windborne debris. The windborne debris might perforate the fabric material, which not only results in total collapse of the structure, flying debris at high speed also imposes threats to people and facilities inside the structure. In this study, the penetration resistant capability of PVC coated polyester fabric material commonly used in air supported structures construction was tested by using a pneumatic cannon system. The impact loading from windborne debris equivalent to a timber projectile of 4 kg mass as specified in the Australian Wind Loading Code (AS/NZS 1170.2:2011) was applied in the test. The failure and damage modes under various projectile impact scenarios were observed and compared. Its capability of resisting projectile impact was assessed. The performances of PVC coated polyester fabric material were examined quantitatively in terms of projectile residual velocity and energy absorption. The effects of various projectile velocity, impact location, fabric pretension and boundary condition on their penetration resistance performance were studied. The testing results will benefit construction designers involved in the fabric material applications in high wind speed area. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Declining crop and livestock production due to a degrading land resource base and changing climate among other biophysical and socio-economic constraints, is increasingly forcing rural households in Zimbabwe and other parts of Southern Africa to rely on common natural resource pools (CNRPs) to supplement their household food and income. Between 2011 and 2013, we combined farmer participatory research approaches, remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) to (1) understand the contribution of CNRPs to household food and income in Dendenyore and Ushe smallholder communities in Hwedza District, eastern Zimbabwe and (2) assess changes of the CNRPs in both space and time, and their implications on climate change adaptation. Across study sites, wetlands and woodlands were ranked as the most important CNRPs. Extraction and use patterns of products from the different pools differed among households of different resource endowment. Resource-constrained households (RG3) sold an average of 183 kg household(-1) year(-1) of wild loquats fruits (Uapaca kirkiana), realising about US$48, while resource-endowed farmers (RG1) had no need to sale any. The RG3 households also realised approximately US$70 household(-1) year(-1) from sale of crafts made from water reeds (Phragmites mauritianus). Empirical data closely supported communities' perceptions that CNRPs had declined significantly in recent years compared with two to three decades ago. More than 60 % of the respondents perceived that the availability of natural resources drawn from wetlands and woodlands, often used for food, energy and crafts, has decreased markedly since the 1980s. Classification of land cover in a GIS environment indicated that CNRPs declined between 1972 and 2011, supporting farmers' perceptions. Overall, woodlands declined by 37 % in both communities, while the total area under wetlands decreased by 29 % in Ushe, a drier area and 49 % in Dendenyore, a relatively humid area. The over-reliance in CNRPs by rural communities could be attributed to continued decline in crop yields linked to increased within-season rainfall variability, and the absence of alternative food and income sources. This suggests limited options for rural communities to adapt to the changing food production systems in the wake of climate change and variability and other challenges such as declining soil fertility. There is therefore a need to design adaptive farm management options that enhance both crop and livestock production in a changing climate as well as identifying other livelihood alternatives outside agriculture to reduce pressure on CNRPs. In addition, promotion of alternative sources of energy such as solar power and biogas among rural communities could reduce the cutting of trees for firewood from woodlands.This study is about 16 policy-induced innovation networks on climate change adaptation, i.e., subsidised multi-actor networks that are initiated by research institutes and formed around a particular real-life problem aiming at joint development, test, and implement adaptation measures. The political administrative context is Germany, and the institutional context is a joint research framework in which each network works independently on a particular topic, but remains bound to the principle of practical and solution-oriented research carried out in close partnership between scientific and extra-scientific actors. Our objective is to provide empirical insights into the processes and outcomes of such networks and to systematically analyse the networks' collaboration success and its influencing factors. To this end, collaboration success is operationalised as a three-dimensional metric including (1) the practitioners' satisfaction with the cooperation, (2) their perceived learning effects, and (3) their perceived implementation capacity. Results show a decreasing level of success throughout the three dimensions and particularly a gap between knowledge acquisition and learning on the one hand and implementation, i.e., transforming the knowledge into action, on the other. While the positive relationship between these dimensions is confirmed, results of correlation analysis highlight the importance of repeated participation, appropriate information management, and inclusive as well as responsive network practices. We discuss the results against our existing knowledge on multi-actor collaborative research and deduce (methodological) lessons learnt as well as future research needs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.By accelerating crop development, warming climates may result in mismatches between key sensitive growth stages and extreme climate events, with severe consequences for crop yield and food security. Using recent estimates of gene responses to vernalization and photoperiod in wheat, we modelled the flowering times of all potential' genotypes as influenced by the velocity of climate change across the Australian wheatbelt. In the period 1957-2010, seasonal increases in temperature of 0.012 degrees Cyr(-1) were recorded and changed flowering time of a mid-season wheat genotype by an average -0.074dayyr(-1), with flowering velocity' of up to 0.95kmyr(-1) towards the coastal edges of the wheatbelt; this is an estimate of how quickly the given genotype would have to be moved' across the landscape to maintain its original flowering time. By 2030, these national changes are projected to accelerate by up to 3-fold for seasonal temperature and by up to 5-fold for flowering time between now and 2030, with average national shifts in flowering time of 0.33 and 0.41dayyr(-1) between baseline and the worst climate scenario tested for 2030 and 2050, respectively. Without new flowering alleles in commercial germplasm, the life cycle of wheat crops is predicted to shorten by 2weeks by 2030 across the wheatbelt for the most pessimistic climate scenario. While current cultivars may be otherwise suitable for future conditions, they will flower earlier due to warmer temperatures. To allow earlier sowing to escape frost, heat and terminal drought, and to maintain current growing period of early-sown wheat crops in the future, breeders will need to develop and/or introduce new genetic sources for later flowering, more so in the eastern part of the wheatbelt.North America has few cultural agricultural landscapes, and often commensurately poor governance arrangements for managing change in such settings. This research uses the Acadian dykelands of Nova Scotia, Canada, as an opportunity to explore the social and governance limits to coastal climate adaptation in 'new world' cultural agricultural landscapes, as well as inform local decision-making. Approximately half of Nova Scotia's coastal wetlands were converted to dykeland in the 1600s, lowering local resilience to the increased frequency and storm severity anticipated with climate change. Today, dykelands protect a diversity of public and private interests, meanings and values, yet are controlled by the agricultural sector, which can no longer afford to maintain them all to 2050 climate projections. We report here on a representative online Q-methodology survey of 183 adult Nova Scotians in the spring of 2015. Respondents sorted 34 statements along a normal distribution about whether they prefer dykeland maintenance or wetland restoration, and under what governance arrangements. Four factors were derived: the dominant discourse was local, female and strongly pro-dykeland, indicating the likelihood for local resistance to dykeland removal on for cultural, recreational and farming reasons. The second factor was supportive of wetland restoration for reasons of efficiency, not wetland affinity, but characterized by those in positions of management power. The two minority viewpoints were less informed about dykelands, characteristic of outsiders, and concerned more with governance. More education is needed about the challenges facing dykelands, the benefits of coastal wetlands, and the management options, but this research shows proposals to change landscape should emphasize flood mitigation over cost-saving. Cultural values and status quo bias are clearly barriers to adaptation planning, even when discussing the removal of man-made structures. The factors were surprisingly polarized, suggesting the forced-normal distribution affects the space available to convey nuanced perspectives. Large p-set Q-method of this kind is likely most useful for characterizing the emergent discourses demographically, and understanding their prevalence; the same discourses had emerged within a much smaller pilot study. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The rapidly changing climate makes humans realize that there is a critical need to incorporate climate change adaptation into conservation planning. Whether the wintering habitats of Great Bustards (Otis tarda dybowskii), a globally endangered migratory subspecies whose population is approximately 1,500-2,200 individuals in China, would be still suitable in a changing climate environment, and where this could be found, is an important protection issue. In this study, we selected the most suitable species distribution model for bustards using climate envelopes from four machine learning models, combining two modelling approaches (TreeNet and Random Forest) with two sets of variables (correlated variables removed or not). We used common evaluation methods area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) and the True Skill Statistic (TSS) as well as independent test data to identify the most suitable model. As often found elsewhere, we found Random Forest with all environmental variables outperformed in all assessment methods. When we projected the best model to the latest IPCC-CMIP5 climate scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 in three Global Circulation Models (GCMs)), and averaged the project results of the three models, we found that suitable wintering habitats in the current bustard distribution would increase during the 21st century. The Northeast Plain and the south of North China were projected to become two major wintering areas for bustards. However, the models suggest that some currently suitable habitats will experience a reduction, such as Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake in the Middle and Lower Yangtze River Basin. Although our results suggested that suitable habitats in China would widen with climate change, greater efforts should be undertaken to assess and mitigate unstudied human disturbance, such as pollution, hunting, agricultural development, infrastructure construction, habitat fragmentation, and oil and mine exploitation. All of these are negatively and intensely linked with global change.Recent efforts to influence the efficiency and timing of urban indoor water use through education, technology, conservation, reuse, economic incentives, and regulatory mechanisms have enabled many North American cities to accommodate population growth and buffer impacts of drought. It is unlikely that this approach will be equally successful into the future because the source of conservation will shift from indoor to outdoor use. Outdoor water is climate sensitive, difficult to measure, hard to predict, linked to other components of complex and dynamic urban resource systems, imbued with behavioral and cultural dimensions, and implicated in societal conflicts about climate risk, modern lifestyles, social justice, and future growth. Outdoor water conservation is not a traditional management problem focused on the water sector, assuming a stationary climate, and set aside from public debate. Instead, outdoor water is an adaptation problem, involving complex and uncertain system dynamics, the need for cross-sector coordination, strategies for dealing with climatic uncertainty, and mechanisms for engaging stakeholders with differing goals. This paper makes the case for treating outdoor water as an adaptation problem and offers a six-point strategy for how cities can better prepare their water systems for the uncertainties of climate and societal change.Clear degradable mulch film (CDMF), when installed over a newly sown crop, fundamentally alters the growing environment through the entrapment of heat and CO2, the attenuation of incident solar radiation and, the capture and return of evapotranspiration losses back to the soil. These changes can be harnessed by farmers in a variety of ways to increase crop production through, for example, earlier sowing and more rapid crop establishment, reduced frost risk, geographical expansion of a crop into new areas otherwise unsuited to that crop, and soil water conservation in low rainfall areas. Conversely, when used at the wrong time of year, the temperatures under the film can reach levels that result in plant heat stress. This paper reports on an investigation conducted in southeast Tasmania into how key headspace climate variables (daily maximum and minimum temperatures, relative humidity, total daily radiation and atmospheric CO2 concentration) under CDMF respond to changing ambient climatic conditions and underlying soil characteristics. The film fundamentally altered the growing environment with incident solar radiation reduced by up to 34%, daily maximum temperatures reaching a peak of similar to 60 degrees C, daily minimum temperatures up to 20 degrees C above ambient levels in summer and, atmospheric CO2 concentrations up to 100 times ambient levels. The magnitude of these responses was all sensitive to soil type. Simple models were derived for predicting daily headspace solar radiation, maximum temperature and minimum temperature from readily available ambient data. These models can be used to identify site-specific, operational limits for film application and, when integrated into farm system models, enable the prediction of wider production and environmental impacts under film. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Management and restoration of the dry, frequent-fire forests of the North American west depend on sound information about both historical and contemporary conditions to adequately address repercussions of fire suppression and changing climate. The purpose of this study is to quantify historical tree spatial patterns and assess recent mortality trends for old and large tree populations in dry mixed-conifer forests of the Northern Rocky Mountains. We analyzed historical reconstructions of forest spatial structure across six 1.0 ha plots located in mixed ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir stands in western Montana, USA. Across plots, 10-23% of trees occurred as widely spaced individuals (no neighbors within 6 m), with the remaining 77-90% of trees occurring in clumps (groups of two or more trees spaced less than 6 m apart). Mean clump size was 2.2-4.2 trees per clump, although large clumps (>10 trees) were common. Global spatial analysis with the pair correlation function indicated that ponderosa pine patterns were spatially random at all scales, while Douglas-fir trees were spatially aggregated at scales less than 6 m. The proportion of plot area farther than 9 m from the nearest tree ranged from 1% to 20% across the six study plots. Mortality rates between 1991 and 2012 averaged 0.8% yr(-1) for old ponderosa pine and 2.1% yr(-1) for old Douglas-fir. We found limited evidence of density-dependent mortality for both species pooled and for ponderosa pine individually. Douglas-fir that died between 1991 and 2012 had higher local Stand Density Index (SDI) of Douglas-fir neighbors than did Douglas-fir that survived (P = 0.003), indicating conspecific density-dependent mortality. When compared to ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer forests in other regions, trees were distributed much more evenly across clump sizes in our Montana study sites. Our analysis provides an estimate of the historical range of variability for spatial aspects of forest structure in dry mixed-conifer forests of the northern US Rockies and is relevant to the design of restoration and climate change adaptation treatments in such forests. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.In response to climate change, vulnerability assessment of water resources systems is typically performed based on quantifying the severity of the failure. This paper introduces an approach to assess vulnerability that incorporates a set of new factors. The method is demonstrated with a case study of a reservoir system in Salt Lake City using an integrated modeling framework composed of a hydrologic model and a systems model driven by temperature and precipitation data for a 30-year historical (1981-2010) period. The climate of the selected future (2036-2065) simulation periods were represented by five combinations of warm or hot, wet or dry, and central tendency projections derived from the World Climate Research Programme's (WCRP's) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5. The results of the analysis illustrate that basing vulnerability on severity alone may lead to an incorrect quantification of the system vulnerability. In this study, a typical vulnerability metric (severity) incorrectly provides low magnitudes under the projected future warm-wet climate condition. The proposed new metric correctly indicates the vulnerability to be high because it accounts for additional factors. To further explore the new factors, a sensitivity analysis (SA) was performed to show the impact and importance of the factors on the vulnerability of the system under different climate conditions. The new metric provides a comprehensive representation of system vulnerability under climate change scenarios, which can help decision makers and stakeholders evaluate system operation and infrastructure changes for climate adaptation. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.Coastal sustainability is elusive in South Africa and the Mississippi delta. These case studies and convergent literatures demonstrate the merits of reconceptualising coastal management as a transformative practice of deliberative governance. A normative framework is presented that focuses attention on underpinning deliberative outcomes to enable governance actors and networks to build cognitive, democratic, sociopolitical and institutional capacity to transform unsustainable and maladaptive coastal practices. But operationalising such intentions is complex and contested and requires a volte-face in thinking and practice. The South African and Mississippi delta experiences provide insights about how to develop a deliberative praxis of coastal governance based on consideration of the choice of process, timeliness, quality of process, equity and representation, connections to the policy cycle, impact, implementation and institutionalisation.In view of past environmental degradation and anticipated climate change impacts, we assessed the potential for ecosystem-based adaptation in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. In a workshop with staff from three Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) who had jurisdiction over three sub-basins, as well as technical experts, nine adaptation options were identified that ranged from environmental flows, restoring river channel habitat, reoperating infrastructure and controlling invasive species. A Catchment Adaptation Framework was developed and used to assess and compare these adaptation options with each of the CMAs, drawing on interviews with their key stakeholders, to identify the risks, benefits and costs. We found that ecosystem-based adaptation can augment catchment management programs and requires investment in a suite of different but complementary measures to lower risk. Our research found institutional challenges in implementing this approach, including the complexities of multi-agency management, constricting legal requirements, narrow funding arrangements, under-developed institutional capacity, difficulties of implementing catchment-scale programs on private property and the need to adhere to community expectations. These institutional issues are ubiquitous internationally and point to the wider issues of providing sufficient management capacity to support adaptation. The Catchment Adaptation Framework presented here enables river basin managers to systematically assess the adaptation options to better inform their decision-making.Over the past decade, climate change adaptation has become an integral item on the climate policy agendas of several European countries. As such, researchers have begun to question what concrete changes in polices are occurring at national levels and what dynamics can explain these changes. While new laws, policies and institutions have been created to deliver adaptation, supported through processes of cross-national policy innovation and learning, another interesting observation being made is that adaptation is steadily emerging into a new separate and distinct policy field in a handful of countries. The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to empirically map where and to what degree adaptation is emerging as a policy field; second, to theoretically and empirically explore the drivers underpinning policy field emergence. Based upon a survey of leading adaptation policy makers in 27 European countries, we show that there are signs of adaptation becoming a policy field in 15 countries. Furthermore, we find that even though institutional change, coupled with increasing public attention and pressure on governments to react to climate change, has helped drive the emergence of adaptation as a policy field, it would appear that it is the activities of elite policy makers and experts that have had the most influence.Several decision support systems were developed in recent years to encourage climate adaptation planning in coastal areas, especially at a national to global scale. However, few prototypes are easy to use and accessible for decision-makers to evaluate and manage risks locally. DESYCO is a GIS based decision support system specifically designed to better understand the risks that climate change poses at the regional/subnational scale (e.g. the effect of sea level rise and coastal erosion on human assets and ecosystems) and set the context of strategic adaptation planning within Integrated Coastal Zone Management. It implements a Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) methodology allowing the spatial assessment of multiple climate change impacts in coastal areas and the ranking of key elements at risk (beaches, wetlands, protected areas, urban and agricultural areas). The core of the system is a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) model used to operationalize the steps of the RRA (hazard, exposure, susceptibility, risk and damage assessment) by integrating a blend of information from climate scenarios (global/regional climate projections and hydrodynamic/hydrological simulations) and from non-climate vulnerability factors (physical, environmental and socio-economic features of the analysed system). User-friendly interfaces simplify the interaction with the system, providing guidance for risk mapping, results communication and understanding. DESYCO was applied to low-lying coastal plains and islands (the North Adriatic Sea, the Gulf of Gabes and the Republic of Mauritius), river basins and groundwater systems (Upper Plain of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Marche Region). The paper presents the RRA methodology, the structure of DESYCO and its software architecture, showing the capabilities of the tool to support decision making and climate proofing in a wide range of situations (e.g. shoreline planning, land use and water resource management, flood risk reduction). (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Under climate change, sea-level rise and increasing storm surge intensity will increase the likelihood of floods for low-lying coastal areas. Therefore, Coastal Flood Vulnerability Assessments (CFVA) are necessary to inform decision making for coastal management, where applicable. Two types of tools, hydrodynamic models and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), are commonly employed for these evaluations. Using Pigeon Point, Southwest Tobago, as a case study, this paper compares the application of both to determine the best approach for CFVA that can be used to guide coastal management. For hydrodynamic modelling, available and surveyed data on bathymetry, topography and tides along with current and future estimates of mean sea-level were used to create a structured and an unstructured grid model via the LISFLOOD-FP and TELEMAC-2D codes, respectively. For the GIS assessment, a coastal digital elevation model was developed using the same data on bathymetry and elevation. These models were used to project the present and future impact of storm surges on coastal flood extent at Pigeon Point. Outputs generated were compared and analysed within a GIS. Using predictions from TELEMAC-2D (full shallow water equations) as the baseline for comparison, average results acquired revealed that projections generated by all three models were consistent (less than 5.00% difference in flood predictions). To add certainty to the modelling results, all models were used to simulate an observed spring high tide event for model validation purposes. The Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) was calculated as an indication of model performance. RMSE values indicated that all models were consistent and matched well to the field observations. However, further analysis revealed that inherent in the use of GIS for CFVA is hydraulic connectivity issues due to exclusion of flow dynamics, which leads to over-estimation in flood extent. Acknowledging the theory that over-estimation leads to over-management, it is suggested that hydrodynamic models are better suited for detailed CFVA, while GIS can be used rapidly as a potential indicator of flood exposure for large sites. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Surf Lifesaving (SLS) in Australia is an icon of local beach culture with more than 300 clubhouses distributed along the coastline. Their distribution at the interface of the terrestrial and marine environments means that assets and operations associated with SLS are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate variability and climate change from both the land and the sea. For Australia, this is particularly pertinent given that the east coast is projected to experience SLR that is higher than global average. This study describes how a probabilistic modelling approach (Bayesian belief networks (BBNs)) and participatory modelling techniques were used to help elicit information on the key adaptive capacity determinants influencing the ability of Australian SLS to implement climate change adaptation options. 10 BBNs were developed across four stakeholder workshops at four locations within Australia. Results of this participatory modelling show that most determinants of adaptive capacity broadly related to funding, knowledge, equipment, communication and community support. For each workshop, the BBNs indicated broad consensus in the beliefs of the stakeholders for these broad and perhaps well-known determinants of effective adaptation. Conversely, there was less agreement between the stakeholders regarding the more specific determinants as evidenced by the results of the sensitivity analyses and in the levels of debate between the stakeholders. This highlights that as the determinants of adaptive capacity become more nuanced, there is more likely to be an imperfect, and less likely to be a shared, understanding of the system by the stakeholders. Overall, the approach used in this study has shown to be effective in exploring adaptive capacity at the community level and to improve community understanding and awareness of coastal hazards and climate change risks. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Rubber tree plantations (Hevea brasiliensis) are expanding into marginal areas with low soil fertility and long dry seasons with a high risk of soil erosion and drought damage to trees. Introducing an N-2-fixing legume cover crop in rubber plantations may reduce runoff and soil erosion as well as increasing the availability of nutrients but may also increase competition for water. This study quantified the effect of the legume cover crop Pueraria phaseoloides on N, P and K nutrition, water status and growth of young rubber trees (three years old in 2007) over a four year period (2007-2010). The plantation was located on a toposequence with a range of soil depths and water storage capacities in northeast Thailand. The legume aboveground biomass production and its nutrient content and decomposition rate were measured and the N-2 fixation was estimated using the abundance of N-15 (delta N-15) in the legume. Measurements were taken of the tree stem girth and height and tree leaf predawn water potential, nutrient content and greenness. The transfer of N2 fixed by the cover crop to the trees was estimated using delta N-15 in the tree leaves. The annual biomass production of the legume was 8 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) and the N accumulation by the legume was 250 kg N ha(-1) year(-1). The natural abundance method applied to the aboveground components of the legume gave N-2 fixation rates varying from 85 to 93% depending on the year. The leaf delta N-15 was similar in the three non-legumes (H. brasiliensis,Vetiveria zizanioides and Praxelis clematidea) used as reference plants for estimating the N-2 fixation. The higher level of N and the much lower leaf delta N-15 values for the rubber trees intercropped with P. phaseoloides, compared to rubber trees growing without a legume cover crop, showed that there was a relatively high transfer of fixed N from the legume to the trees, varying from 39% to 46% of tree leaf N depending on the year. Neither N2 fixation nor N transfer varied significantly along the toposequence. At the bottom of the toposequence, both the nutrient (N, P and K) and water status of trees was significantly improved with the legume cover crop, doubling the tree girth at seven years of age (tree girth: 28 cm, tree height: 700 cm). However, at the top of the toposequence with low water storage capacity, the legume cover crop improved tree nutrition and growth but reduced the trees' ability, to survive intense drought. These results raise concern about the resilience to drought of the rubber tree/P. phaseoloides system, since the positive effect of the legume on rubber tree nutrition and growth may increase the risk of water stress and tree mortality. With future changes in climate, an increasing number of areas will be concerned by the question of optimizing the tradeoff between N inputs and water availability. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.Whereas there is evidence that mixed-species approaches to production forestry in general can provide positive outcomes relative to monocultures, it is less clear to what extent multiple benefits can be derived from specific mixed-species alternatives. To provide such insights requires evaluations of an encompassing suite of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and forest management considerations provided by specific mixtures and monocultures within a region. Here, we conduct such an assessment in Sweden by contrasting even-aged Norway spruce (Picea abies)-dominated stands, with mixed-species stands of spruce and birch (Betula pendula or B. pubescens), or spruce and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). By synthesizing the available evidence, we identify positive outcomes from mixtures including increased biodiversity, water quality, esthetic and recreational values, as well as reduced stand vulnerability to pest and pathogen damage. However, some uncertainties and risks were projected to increase, highlighting the importance of conducting comprehensive interdisciplinary evaluations when assessing the pros and cons of mixtures.Anthropogenic climate change is altering the management of production forests. These changes are motivated by the need to adapt to the uncertainties and risks of climate change, and by the need to enlist their carbon storage and sequestration capacity as part of global mitigation efforts. These changes do however raise concerns regarding the potential implications for forest biodiversity. Here we evaluate these concerns by assessing the biodiversity implications of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies (CCAMS) being implemented in the production forests of Sweden. We do so by identifying biodiversity goals aimed specifically at closing the existing gap between the habitat requirements of forest-dependent species, and the conditions provided by production forests, in terms of tree species composition, forest structures, and spatio-temporal forest patterns. We then use the existing literature to determine whether and by which pathway each CCAMS is likely to bridge or extend this gap. Our results indicate that CCAMS will often come into direct or partial conflict with Swedish biodiversity goals in production forests. Furthermore, some CCAMS which are inconsistent with biodiversity goals, such as logging residue removal, are being implemented more extensively than those which were most consistent with biodiversity goals. We nevertheless challenge the necessity of setting the preservation of forest biodiversity against climate change mitigation and adaptation. We clarify how CCAMS with negative biodiversity implications may still be implemented without adverse outcomes, if coupled with conservation interventions, or combined with other CCAMS deemed complementary in habitat provision. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Applying standard decision-making processes such as cost benefit analysis in an area of high uncertainty such as climate change adaptation is challenging. While the costs of adaptation might be observable and immediate, the benefits are often uncertain. The limitations of traditional decision-making processes in the context of adaptation decisions are recognised, and so-called robust approaches are increasingly explored in the literature. Robust approaches select projects that meet their purpose across a variety of futures by integrating a wide range of climate scenarios, and are thus particularly suited for deep uncertainty. We review real option analysis, portfolio analysis, robust-decision making and no/low regret options as well as reduced decision-making time horizons, describing the underlying concepts and highlighting a number of applications. We discuss the limitations of robust decision-making processes to identify which ones may prove most promising as adaptation planning becomes increasingly critical; namely those that provide a compromise between a meaningful analysis and simple implementation. We introduce a simple framework identifying which method is suited for which application. We conclude that the 'robust decision making' method offers the most potential in adaptation appraisal as it can be applied with various degrees of complexity and to a wide range of options. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Current political discussions and developments indicate the importance and urgency of incorporating climate change considerations into EIA processes. The recent revision of the EU Directive 2014/52/EU on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) requires changes in the EIA practice of the EU member states. This paper investigates the extent to which the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) can contribute to an early consideration of climate change consequences in planning processes. In particular the roles of different actors in order to incorporate climate change impacts and adaptation into project planning subject to EIA at the appropriate levels are a core topic. Semi-structured expert interviews were carried out with representatives of the main infrastructure companies and institutions responsible in these sectors in Austria, which have to carry out EIA regularly. In a second step expert interviews were conducted with EIA assessors and EIA authorities in Austria and Germany, in order to examine the extent to which climate-based changes are already considered in EIA processes. This paper aims to discuss the different perspectives in the current EIA practice with regard to integrating climate change impacts as well as barriers and solutions identified by the groups of actors involved, namely project developers, environmental competent authorities and consultants (EIA assessors/practitioners). The interviews show that different groups of actors consider the topic to different degrees. Downscaling of climate change scenarios is in this context both, a critical issue with regards to availability of data and costs. Furthermore, assistance for the interpretation of relevant impacts, to be deducted from climate change scenarios, on the specific environmental issues in the area is needed. The main barriers identified by the EIA experts therefore include a lack of data as well as general uncertainty as to how far climate change should be considered in the process without reliable data but in the presence of knowledge about possible consequences at an abstract level. A joint strategy on how to cope with uncertain prognoses about main impacts on environmental issues for areas without reliable data requires a discussion and cooperation between EIA consultants and environmental authorities. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.As planetary boundaries are rapidly being approached, humanity has little room for additional expansion and conventional intensification of agriculture, while a growing world population further spreads the food gap. Ample evidence exists that improved on-farm water management can close water-related yield gaps to a considerable degree, but its global significance remains unclear. In this modeling study we investigate systematically to what extent integrated crop water management might contribute to closing the global food gap, constrained by the assumption that pressure on water resources and land does not increase. Using a process-based bio-/agrosphere model, we simulate the yield-increasing potential of elevated irrigation water productivity (including irrigation expansion with thus saved water) and optimized use of in situ precipitation water (alleviated soil evaporation, enhanced infiltration, water harvesting for supplemental irrigation) under current and projected future climate (from 20 climate models, with and without beneficial CO2 effects). Results show that irrigation efficiency improvements can save substantial amounts of water in many river basins (globally 48% of non-productive water consumption in an 'ambitious' scenario), and if rerouted to irrigate neighboring rainfed systems, can boost kcal production significantly (26% global increase). Low-tech solutions for small-scale farmers on water-limited croplands show the potential to increase rainfed yields to a similar extent. In combination, the ambitious yet achievable integrated water management strategies explored in this study could increase global production by 41% and close the water-related yield gap by 62%. Unabated climate change will have adverse effects on crop yields in many regions, but improvements in water management as analyzed here can buffer such effects to a significant degree.We investigated adaptation to climate in populations of two widespread tree species across a range of contrasting environments in western Canada. In a series of common garden experiments, bud phenology, cold hardiness, and seedling growth traits were assessed for 254 populations in the interior spruce complex (Picea glauca, P.engelmannii, and their hybrids) and for 281 populations of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta). Complex multitrait adaptations to different ecological regions such as boreal, montane, coastal, and arid environments accounted for 15-20% of the total variance. This population differentiation could be directly linked to climate variables through multivariate regression tree analysis. Our results suggest that adaptation to climate does not always correspond linearly to temperature gradients. For example, opposite trait values (e.g., early versus late budbreak) may be found in response to apparently similar cold environments (e.g., boreal and montane). Climate change adaptation strategies may therefore not always be possible through a simple shift of seed sources along environmental gradients. For the two species in this study, we identified a relatively small number of uniquely adapted populations (11 for interior spruce and nine for lodgepole pine) that may be used to manage adaptive variation under current and expected future climates.This study attempts to confirm the differences in carbon sink according to each type of land use by using the biotope map and reviewing carbon sink considering topography, and comparing those before-and-after topographic correction. The types of carbon sink were focused on Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Net Primary Productivity (NPP). Results indicate that the NPP values for 3 periods were found to be 142.885 gC/m(2)/year (1999), 133.416 gC/m(2)/year (2004), 163.650 gC/m(2)/year (2009) on the average and the average NPP values have increased for 10 years. The NPP value for 10 years has been increased. The forest areas showed the highest NPP values (average 250.188 gC/m(2)/year) and the NPP values (average 102.095 gC/m(2)/year) of rivers and wetlands were lowest. The NPP-values revised by topographical correction in forest areas showed bigger differences from NPP-values than other land use. The range of NPP-values showed from 0.001 gC/m(2)/year to 326.342 gC/m(2)/year. The NPP-values after topographical correction varied according to rugged terrain. The forest areas in South Korea have many curves different from other land use, and slopes have uneven topographical characteristics. In the case of residential areas and commercial areas transformed to even topography from uneven topography, the effects by topographical correction are found less.This study aimed to measure the changes of the carbon stock of Robinia pseudoacacia stands in Seoul, Korea from 2000 to 2010. The area of Robinia pseudoacacia stands in the city occupied 33.7 km(2) (5.5%) of the total area of Seoul (605 km(2)) as of 2010. Its carbon stock was calculated through using an allometric equation recommended by Korea Forest Research Institute. The result showed that the carbon stock of Robinia pseudoacacia in Seoul decreased for the last 10 years: from 231,753 tC in 2000, 185,204 tC in 2005 and 185,111 tC in 2010. Robinia pseudoacacia are a plant species that absorbs carbon (in an era of climate change) and also plays a role of a nectar source plant. Since the carbon stock has been reduced in Seoul, it is required to consider the preservation and management of Robinia pseudoacacia. One of the ways to increase carbon stock is to preserve and manage trees. It is necessary to have a plan to maintain the current size of forests and enhance carbon stock by taking advantage of the favorable characteristics of Robinia pseudoacacia.The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) highlighted the importance of cities to climate action, as well as the unjust burdens borne by the world's most disadvantaged peoples in addressing climate impacts. Few studies have documented the barriers to redressing the drivers of social vulnerability as part of urban local climate change adaptation efforts, or evaluated how emerging adaptation plans impact marginalized groups. Here, we present a roadmap to reorient research on the social dimensions of urban climate adaptation around four issues of equity and justice: (1) broadening participation in adaptation planning; (2) expanding adaptation to rapidly growing cities and those with low financial or institutional capacity; (3) adopting a multilevel and multi-scalar approach to adaptation planning; and (4) integrating justice into infrastructure and urban design processes. Responding to these empirical and theoretical research needs is the first step towards identifying pathways to more transformative adaptation policies.To understand the situation of climate risk management we need to understand the priorities and politics of the wider policy context. The framing of potentially incompatible policy issues is important to take into account when analysing policy processes. In this article, we focus on two policy issues aiming at local adaptation to global forces: facilitating city competiveness and adapting to the impacts of global climate change. Global climate change always manifests itself in the local arena, which thus becomes a crucial site for adaptation to the risks connected to climate change. Adaptation has to correspond with the city policy agenda to build the attractive city through waterfront housing as a means to strengthen its competitiveness in a globalised economy. This article focuses on the relationship between pursuing competitiveness through waterfront housing and the needs to adapt to climate change in terms of contemporary and future flood risks.Precipitation extremes affect various economic sectors and may result in substantial costs for societies. Future projections of such extreme occurrences are needed to successfully develop robust regional adaptation strategies. Model ensemble-based approaches provide a higher level of confidence since they compensate to some degree for the uncertainties of individual climate model projections. An ensemble of twelve regional climate projections from five regional climate models was used to evaluate the suitability of a modified version of the Rainfall Anomaly Index (mRAI) as an alternative to the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) in assessing future precipitation conditions. We compared frequency distributions and trends of the mRAI with the SPI for a test region that is climatologically representative of Central Eastern Europe. Both indices are highly correlated with each other at all tested timescales-both for stations and for regionally averaged data-with Pearson correlation coefficients >> 0.9 and Spearman correlation coefficients > 0.99. There are no significant differences in their frequency distributions, although the mRAI shows slightly higher frequencies in the classes of 'moderately dry' to 'very dry' conditions. The change signals revealed by SPI and mRAI are very similar for mean changes as well as for changes in the extremes. Considering the large bandwidth of change signals of individual regional climate projections, the mRAI provides sufficiently robust results for the evaluation of future precipitation anomaly trends. The notably more complex calculation of the SPI has no appreciable advantage for this application.The need for credible, salient and legitimate climate change adaptation options in the water sector, which target location specific adaptation requirements, is well recognized. In developing countries, the low-hanging fruit; no-regret options, should be identified with stakeholders and assessed against future changes in water availability and demand, for comparing effectiveness and robustness. Such integrated basin-scale assessments, including reservoir catchment and command areas, can suitably inform adaptation decision-making. In this study, we integrate participatory and modelling approaches for evaluation of reservoir catchment and command area no-regret options addressing water availability and demand in the Kangsabati river basin. Through multi-level stakeholder workshops we identify and prioritize options, followed by evaluation of two reservoir catchment options; check dams and increasing forest cover and three reservoir command options; changing cropping pattern, traditional ponds and waste water reuse, using the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) model. We use four high resolution (similar to 25 km) regional climate model simulations of future climatic factors, along with non-climatic factors affecting water demand, for forcing WEAP. We find that options have varied ability in addressing adaptation requirements. Amongst catchment options, increasing forest cover addresses adaptation requirements more suitably than check dams, while in the command areas we observe mixed abilities of options, leading to the inference that combining complementary options may be a more useful strategy. We conclude by discussing our experiences with this approach in a developing country context, in terms of benefits, limitations, lessons learnt and future research directions.Choosing secure water resource management plans inevitably requires trade-offs between risks (for a variety of stakeholders), costs, and other impacts. We have previously argued that water resources planning should focus upon metrics of risk of water restrictions, accompanied by extensive simulation and scenario-based exploration of uncertainty. However, the results of optimization subject to risk constraints can be sensitive to the specification of tolerable risk, which may not be precisely or consistently defined by different stakeholders. In this paper, we recast the water resources planning problem as a multiobjective optimization problem to identify least cost schemes that satisfy a set of criteria for tolerable risk, where tolerable risk is defined in terms of the frequency of water use restrictions of different levels of severity. Our proposed method links a very large ensemble of climate model projections to a water resource system model and a multiobjective optimization algorithm to identify a Pareto optimal set of water resource management plans across a 25 years planning period. In a case study application to the London water supply system, we identify water resources management plans that, for a given financial cost, maximize performance with respect to one or more probabilistic criteria. This illustrates trade-offs between financial costs of plans and risk, and between risk criteria for four different severities of water use restrictions. Graphical representation of alternative sequences of investments in the Pareto set helps to identify water management options for which there is a robust case for including them in the plan.Assessments of species vulnerability to climate change should increase the effectiveness of interventions in the current decline in biodiversity. Species vulnerability to climate change is a consequence of their sensitivity and adaptive capacity, in combination with their exposure to climate change. We apply a vulnerability assessment framework to 243 bird species inhabiting the tropical savannas of northern Australia. We build on previous vulnerability studies by including detailed data for variables relating to species sensitivity to change (relative abundance, clutch size, sensitivity to fire and distribution area), species adaptive capacity (movement behaviour and dietary breadth) and proportional changes predicted for their geographic range (i.e. exposure to climate change). These are integrated to provide a ranking of vulnerability. Our analysis found that birds of Australian tropical savannas cluster together with high sensitivity, with a few wide-ranging increasing species with very low sensitivity. Australian tropical savanna birds have a range of adaptive capacities, and the impact of climate change on these species is predicted to be substantial. Two already endangered species are among the most vulnerable. Species largely restricted to Cape York Peninsula (a geographically distinct region) had the greatest overall vulnerability; these species were, in general, sensitive due to small distributions, sensitivity to fire frequency and had a lower capacity for dispersal. It will be important for the future of Australian tropical savanna birds to mitigate ecological threats and maintain extensive areas of suitable habitat to facilitate species dispersal.A portfolio of water management strategies now exists to contribute to reach water demand and supply targets. Among them, integrated water resource management has a large potential for reducing water disagreement in water scarcity regions. Many of the strategies are based on well tested choices and technical know-how, with proven benefits for users and environment. This paper considers water management practices that may contribute to reduce disagreement in water scarcity areas, evaluating the management alternatives in the Mediterranean basins of Europe, a region that exemplifies other water scarcity regions in the world. First, we use a model to compute water availability taking into account water management, temporal heterogeneity, spatial heterogeneity and policy options, and then apply this model across 396 river basins. Second, we use a wedge approach to illustrate policy choices for selected river basins: Thrace (Greece), Guadalquivir, Ebro, Tagus and Duero (Spain), Po (Italy) and Rhone (France). At the wide geographical level, the results show the multideterminant complexities of climate change impacts and adaptation measures and the geographic nature of water resources and vulnerability metrics. At the local level, the results show that optimisation of water management is the dominating strategy for defining adaptation pathways. Results also show great sensitivity to ecological flow provision, suggesting that better attention should be paid to defining methods to estimate minimum ecological flows in water scarcity regions. For all scales, average water resource vulnerability computed by traditional vulnerability indicators may not be the most appropriate measure to inform climate change adaptation policy. This has large implications to applied water resource studies aiming to derive policy choices, and it is especially interesting in basins facing water scarcity. Our research aims to contribute to shape realistic water management options at the regional level and therefore provide information to climate change, agricultural and water policies. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The aim of this paper was to review the progress made so far at European level in establishing a European framework on adaptation to climate change and integrating climate change and adaptation considerations into existing and new European policies in the sectors of water resources, biodiversity and agriculture. Furthermore, the advances made in Cyprus up to this point with respect to mainstreaming European policy on adaptation in its national policy, strategies, plans and legislation are assessed. The analysis begins with the overall framework on adaptation and continues with the sectors of water resources, biodiversity and agriculture. The study revealed that a solid framework for promoting and enhancing climate change adaptation action is being systematically built during the last decade in the EU. Action on adaptation has been promoted in the EU through a number of policy-making tools (preparatory acts), such as green papers, white papers, communications, working documents, guidelines and legislative proposals. These tools, although not binding in nature, set the pathway for the integration of climate change adaptation into existing and new legislation. With respect to the actual mainstreaming of adaptation into sectoral policies, this has started to take place during the last 1-2years. However, the framework has not yet been sufficiently transformed into legally binding goals. As for the progress made so far in Cyprus for integrating adaptation into its policies, plans and strategies, it is recognized that several such documents have been developed and proposed, but until now, none of them have actually been put into practice.Climate change poses multiple risks to the population of Lima, the largest city and capital of Peru, located on the Pacific coast in a desert ecosystem. These risks include increased water scarcity, increased heat, and the introduction and emergence of vector-borne and other climate sensitive diseases. To respond to these threats, it is necessary for the government, at every level, to adopt more mitigation and adaptation strategies. Here, focus groups were conducted with representatives from five Lima municipalities to determine priorities, perception of climate change, and decision-making processes for implementing projects within each municipality. These factors can affect the ability and desire of a community to implement climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. The results show that climate change and other environmental factors are of relatively low priority, whereas public safety and water and sanitation services are of highest concern. Perhaps most importantly, climate change is not well understood among the municipalities. Participants had trouble distinguishing climate change from other environmental issues and did not fully understand its causes and effects. Greater understanding of what climate change is and why it is important is necessary for it to become a priority for the municipalities. Different aspects of increased climate change awareness seem to be connected to having experienced extreme weather events, whether related or not to climate change, and to higher socioeconomic status.Searches related to global warming have provided important insights into the response of terrestrial ecosystems, but few have examined the impacts on agricultural crops, particularly those associated with the monitoring of agrotoxin residues. In this context, the agriclimatological zoning is an important tool in the planning and consolidation of crops and should be considered in any initiative that involves such planning. This tool is particularly important in the analysis of agrotoxin residues and may be applied by the Program Analysis of Agrotoxin Residues in Food (PARA) created by the National Health Vigilance Agency of Brazil (ANVISA), which enables greater food security and contributes to the improvement of human health. The aim of this study was to elaborate the current and future agriclimatological zoning for the tomato crop, relating it with the monitoring of samples collected by PARA in Espirito Santo State, Brazil. The results indicate that a temperature increase of 5 degrees C creates a decrease in apt areas from 37.3% to 43%, for a total reduction of 33 percentage points (-88.5%). It is noted that of the 41 producing municipalities, only 26 have apt areas greater than 50%, highlighting the municipalities with apt areas greater than 90%, represented by Mantenopolis (100%), Guacui (98.5%), Sao Jose do Calcado (97.8%), Irupi (94.4%), Santa Teresa (92.3%), and Marechal Floriano (91.4%). The veracity of agriclimatological zoning is proved by a Kendall rank correlation coefficient of 0.876, indicating that the distribution of the variables of apt areas and productivity are similar at the significance level of 0.05 with a confidence interval 95%. After validation of the agriclimatological zoning for the tomato crop, it is recommended that the PARA should monitor 36 municipalities rather than the current 18, representing an increase of 100%. The methodology can be adjusted to agricultural crops of other countries. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An assessment of residential CO2 emissions is typically performed through the intensity method, in which total energy consumption is estimated by multiplying floor space by intensity value. Although spatially detailed intensity data is required for an accurate estimation, the finer spatial resolution will result in a less stable estimated value due to the small sample size; hence, existing studies in Japan created intensity data at a regional or prefectural level. The objective of this study is to create municipality level intensity data via a statistical approach, using the household level micro data from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure, of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, by focusing on electricity. First, this study builds several (spatial) statistical models, where per household electricity expenditure is regressed on housing types (two categories), household types (seven categories), and other household specific variables. Second, by substituting averaged municipality level explanatory variables from official statistics into the model, it estimates municipality level intensity data. The obtained results suggest that conventional intensity data in Japan, created by the simple average of samples in each unit (prefecture), may suffer from an upward bias, suggesting a danger of overestimation of residential CO2 emissions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Dryland grasslands in Central Asia were prone to concurrent high levels of grazing intervention and climatic variability in the past decades. However, the influences of grazing on carbon cycling under climate change are still uncertain in this region. We modeled the carbon dynamics in Central Asia for different grassland types (i.e., Temperate Grassland, TG; Desert Grassland, DG; Forest Meadow, FM) that varied in grazing intensity from 1979 to 2011 by using the modified Biome-BGC grazing model. In addition, an inventory approach was also employed to estimate the CO2-eq emission from meat and milk production. The regional simulation estimated that the grassland ecosystems in Central Asia acted as a net carbon source with a value of 0.83 PgC for the last 33 years (1 Pg= 10(15) g). However, Central Asian grasslands had a weak carbon sink of 0.10 Pg when the grazing effect was eliminated. Grazing resulted in the release of 0.93 Pg C in Central Asia according to the modeling approach and 0.25-1.39 PgC to inventory approach. Nevertheless, proper grazing intensities for TG, DG, and FM at approximately 0.23, 0.35, and 0.35 head ha(-1), respectively, can result in overcompensation, which means that plants have higher productivity after herbivory compared with ungrazed condition under proper grazing intensity. These results can be attributed to the decreasing evapotranspiration (ET) in grazed grasslands, which can effectively promote grass growth. Therefore, restricting the grazing intensity to less than 0.23, 0.35, and 035 head ha(-1) for TG, DG, and FM, respectively, to mitigate the degradation and maintain its carrying capacity for livestock is important. Our research explored the possible implications for grazing management of grasslands in Central Asia and concluded that grazing can eventually be assembled into a set of biophysical tools for climate adaptation and mitigation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The sensitivity of forests to local climate and the long time periods involved in forest management combine to result in conditions where forests and forest management are vulnerable to climate change. Minimizing the risks and impacts of climate change on forest management outcomes and reducing the vulnerability of forest management systems requires adaptation. Forest management system adaptation is a multi-scale incremental process that involves diverse actors collaborating to define issues, develop options, and implement solutions. Enabling adaptation may require revising assumptions (e.g., assumptions about stationary climate), upgrading formal and informal institutions (including mandates), re-engineering governance, addressing knowledge gaps and information management issues, and changing practices. Given the heightened uncertainty associated with climate change, adaptation also includes enhancing capacities, reducing risks through diversification, increasing flexibility, and enhancing resiliency by creating decision environments conducive to learning, foresight, knowledge integration, and adaptive management. Forest management practitioners have a fundamental role in identifying, evaluating, and implementing climate change adaptation measures. This study develops and applies a framework (derived from recent scholarship on adaptation) for assessing the perceptions of forest management practitioners about issues, challenges, and factors that they consider important relative to their potential to contribute to climate change adaptation. The framework draws from, and ties together various aspects of adaptation process including psychological factors, knowledge management, forest management capacity, institutions and governance, and the state of information methods that support forest management (i.e., planning, monitoring, and assessment). The framework is applied utilizing the results of surveys of forest practitioners in British Columbia, Canada. The application provides an opportunity to test concepts and to identify key barriers from a practitioner perspective. Proof of concept is tested by evaluating the extent to which respondents were able and willing to provide answers to survey questions. In general, responses were robust suggesting some understanding and recognition of the importance and validity of the underlying adaptation concepts by forest professionals. The results suggest that forest professionals have diverse viewpoints about climate change. The majority is concerned and support adaptation. However, a significant minority do not support modification of current forest management. Discourse, education, and engagement are called for. Other key factors that from the perspective of professionals may reduce participation potential include knowledge deficits, lack of mandate to adapt, limited resources for adaptation, institutional barriers, inadequate assessment, and persistence of planning and monitoring approaches that do not account for climate change. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This paper presents a risk-based method to quantify climate change effects on road infrastructure, as a support for decision-making on interventions. This can be implemented in climate adaptation plans as an element of asset management. The method is illustrated by a specific case in which traffic on a road network is disrupted by the flooding of a tunnel due to extreme rainfall. Novel techniques to describe both probability of occurrence and consequences of an event are integrated into the proposed risk-based approach. To model a typical climate-change related phenomenon, i.e. rainfall intensity-duration, a model using copulas is proposed as well as a method to account for uncertainty using structured expert judgement. To quantify the consequences, an existing quick scan tool is adopted. The method calculates the risk of flooding of a tunnel, expressed in both probability of occurrence and subsequent additional travel duration on the road network. By comparison of this evolving risk to a societally acceptable threshold, the remaining resilience of the tunnel is evaluated. Furthermore, the method assesses the development of the resilience over time as a result of projected climate change. The maximum time-to-intervention is defined as the period up until the moment when the resilience is depleted. By application of the method to a tunnel in two different contexts, i.e. in a regional road network and a highway network, it is shown that the consequences of tunnel flooding may differ by an order of magnitude (25-fold for the example). Using a risk-based decision-making perspective leads to significant differences in the maximum time-to-intervention. In the example case the year of intervention is determined at 2020 for a tunnel in a highway network, while interventions can be postponed until 2140 in a regional road network.Adverse weather conditions regularly lead to severe congestion and large travel time delays on road networks all over the world. Different climate scenarios indicate that in the future adverse weather conditions are likely to become more frequent, last longer and will be more extreme. Although climate mitigation measures are being taken, it remains important to investigate how adverse weather events will affect the performance of the road network in the future. The main objective of this paper is to give an overview of how the impact of adverse weather conditions and adaptation measures on road network performance can be quantified. A literature review has been performed to show what is empirically known about the impact of adverse weather conditions on the road network performance. Furthermore, available methods to quantify the impact of adverse weather conditions and adaptation measures on the road network performance for future situations are reviewed. As an example, a case study for the municipality of Rotterdam has been carried out that shows how a combination of models can be used to analyse which links in the road network are most vulnerable for increasingly severe local weather related disturbances. The results of the case study allow local authorities to decide whether or not they need to take adaptation measures.The road transport sector is facing rising uncertainties in planning and operations due to climate change induced changes in weather variability and extreme events. However, because of the high level of uncertainty related to the future climate, adaptation measures should be robust so as to retain the option value of the portfolio of measures. As an example of such a measure, this paper evaluates how foreseen innovations in weather services could reduce weather sensitivity and, consequently reduce the negative effects of climate change in the sector. The study is based on a theoretical framework on climate change adaptation and valuation of weather and climate services using the Weather Service Chain Analysis. We apply these frameworks to the road transport sector with a special emphasis on drivers' decision making before and during a trip. We show that improved weather information, including more accurate weather forecasts, new applications and information dissemination channels can decrease the vulnerability of the mode to projected shifts in extreme weather patterns due to climate change.This paper develops a methodology to design a Container Terminal Operation Simulation (CTOS), which simulates the vulnerability of port operations to extreme weather events. In CTOS, an agent based model was built for a container terminal at the Port of Sydney to simulate the operations of port operational assets such as cranes, straddle carriers and trucks to observe the individual and collective behaviour under various extreme weather events using a set of Key Performance Indicators (e.g. crane rates, straddle productivity, truck queue length, yard utilisation). The CTOS results show that the crane throughput loss due to six hours of heavy rain and six hours of high speed wind (separately) is 13 per cent within a 24 hour period. While high speed wind and heavy rain have the highest impact on the crane throughput, high speed wind and flooding in the port area leads to a backlog in servicing trucks. Using a single terminal for the purpose of the simulation, as opposed to the entire Sydney Port, is a limitation. However, the CTOS is designed and coded in a manner that permits its modification such that it can be applied to other port contexts. CTOS offers a versatile tool for port authority to enable estimating performance implications of extreme weather-related disruptions to port operations. CTOS provides an effective proof of concept prototype where the system architecture can be reused in developing an open generic port operations model.Joint fact-finding has been advanced as a method for helping stakeholders grappling with technically intensive policy and planning challenges to collaboratively engage in research and arrive at shared sets of facts to inform their decision-making. This paper introduces joint fact-finding and considers its application in the context of infrastructure stakeholders aiming to assess and increase the resilience of their infrastructure systems to climate change. A set of evaluative criteria is introduced, which are proposed for assessing joint fact finding processes both procedurally and substantively in terms of the outcomes, considering them to be both arenas for collaborative governance and joint knowledge production efforts. These criteria are applied to a case in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. This case suggests that joint fact-finding can provide value, but also reveals some lessons. For the efforts themselves, these lessons relate to: The practical applicability of the outcomes; the inherently contingent nature of the outcomes when addressing wicked problems; questions of representation from stakeholder groups; and the importance of leadership and good process design. The following observations are made regarding the criteria: While they are typically interdependent, both process and outcomes should be evaluated; and more attention should be paid to the method and metrics of evaluation, while recognizing that there is no single formula or approach that can be applied, given the heterogeneity of the criteria.Physical infrastructures facilitate much of societal and economic wellbeing of countries, regions and urban areas. In our increasingly urbanizing world, infrastructures in urban areas are densely located and interconnected. The effects of this interconnectedness are being studied increasingly, particularly in light of climate change effects. In this paper, we develop an agent-based simulation model that allows us to study interconnected infrastructure. We present a layered approach that is analogous to GIS overlay approaches, which allows us to integrate representations of different infrastructures. We explore how this approach can help asset managers to gain insights in interconnected infrastructure by estimating their total damage and repair requirements during a flood event. The results show a difference in these estimates, when compared to non-integrated models, highlighting the need for asset managers to consider interconnectedness in infrastructure.Successfully navigating the complex challenges posed by wicked environmental problems requires that inter- and intra-organisational policy networks share information, integrate knowledge and collaborate in decision-making processes. However, within government, the hierarchical and mechanistic design of bureaucratic agencies is often not well suited to this task. As a result, governments have increasingly implemented mechanisms encouraging interagency collaboration to better address complex environmental governance challenges, an example being climate change adaptation. In this article, we take an inside look' at how civil servants, working in the government agencies responsible for progressing climate change adaptation strategies, view collaboration and draw on science-based knowledge to inform decision-making. Focusing on civil servants in agencies from the states of Victoria, Australia, and New York, the USA, and the province of British Columbia, Canada, the results show variation across jurisdictions in terms of the collaborative mechanisms used. However, respondents in all three jurisdictions reported remarkably consistent views on the importance of collaboration and scientific knowledge to their role. Overall, our results suggest a gap exists between the motivation of civil servants to collaborate and draw on scientific information and their capacity/ability to do so, pointing to potential institutional and systemic barriers that require further research.Using a participatory learning approach, we report on the delivery and evaluation of a climate change and risk assessment tool to help manage water risks within the agricultural sector. Post-graduate water-professional students from a range of countries, from both developed and emerging economies were involved in using this tool. Our approach included participative learning tools - group discussion, software, and risk matrices. The materials developed met the needs of the students, allowing these students to incorporate their learning and adapt the package of materials for use in their home countries. Analysis of evaluations show that the tools and materials are particularly useful and emphasizes the need for sound learning materials and tools, funding to deliver training, and policy support to accelerate education and adoption of authentic climate change adaptation practices. The expected benefits for water professionals about climate change will be translated into improved socioeconomic and environmental outcomes if adopted.When managing urban flood risk, traditional flood risk management which prioritizes infrastructural and technical solutions is important but is not sufficient to reduce the risk to acceptable levels, particularly in informal settlements. Understanding how flood risk is governed needs to complement flood risk interventions in order to be able to move towards a more collaborative response to managing flood risk. Drawing on the case of Cape Town, South Africa, where annual flood events impact on many informal settlements, we identify barriers to collaborative governance that could be addressed to help to build a more holistic flood management approach that proactively reduces flood risk. Our focus is on local government as a key arena of flood risk management. Using a nodal governance framework, we assess the mentalities, technologies, resources and institutional structures of four different local government departments in the City of Cape Town and the extent to which they collaborate on flood risk management. Four key constraints to collaborative urban flood risk management are identified: the domination of a technocratic approach, lack of particular capacities, the challenge of how to share risk, and political contestation and short-termism. Unpacking the nature of nodal governance is a key step in identifying possibilities for collaboration and thus strengthening processes of urban flood management. This is particularly important for urban environmental risk management in the global South, which needs to engage with a development agenda that includes the politics of informality and the complexities of social, as well as environmental, change.Bringing a wider range of stakeholders together has become increasingly important in disaster risk reduction discourse, particularly in informal settlements located on marginal, flood-prone land in many cities of the global South. Attempts by the City of Cape Town (CCT) municipality, civil society organizations (CSOs) and affected residents to cope with floods, which impact about 88,000 households on the low-lying Cape Flats, reflect the ongoing political, social and technical constraints inherent in areas of informality. Using the flood-prone informal settlement of Sweet Home as a case study, a participatory, qualitative methodology was adopted to question the extent to which the CCT, CSOs and Sweet Home residents currently collaborate to address flood risk. Although the CCT's Flood and Storms Task Team is recognized as an innovative, collaborative and pro-active approach for addressing city-wide flood risk, shortcomings still remain. Focusing not only on why collaboration is necessary', but also on how' collaboration can be achieved in the highly politicized context of South African informal settlements, this research identifies some of the critical barriers faced by stakeholders in Cape Town to address flood risk collaboratively. It explores how these barriers can be overcome and highlights the role that academics can play in creating more politically neutral platforms for stakeholders to engage with each other.Climate change is a significant global risk that is predicted to be particularly devastating to coastal communities. Climate change adaptation and mitigation have been hindered by many factors, including psychological barriers, ineffective outreach and communication, and knowledge gaps. This qualitative study compares an expert model of climate change risks to county administrators' mental models of climate change and related coastal environmental hazards in Crystal River, Florida, USA. There were 24 common nodes in the expert and the combined non-expert models, mainly related to hurricanes, property damage, and economic concerns. Seven nodes mentioned by non-experts fit within, but were not a part of, the expert model, primarily related to ecological concerns about water quality. The findings suggest that effective climate outreach and communication could focus on compatible parts of the models and incorporate local concerns to find less controversial ways to discuss climate-related hazards.This article discusses the state of the art in geovisualization supporting climate change adaptation. We reviewed twenty selected map-based Web tools, classified by their content and functionality, and assessed them by visual representations, interactive functions, information type, target audience, and how vulnerability and adaptation to climate change are addressed. Our study concludes that the tools (1) can be classified as data viewers with basic functionality and data explorers offering more sophisticated interactive functions; (2) mostly feature moderate or high richness of data content; and (3) predominantly target expert users.The recent 2014 floods in Serbia highlighted the potential extent of climate-related risks in the region, resulting in more than 30 deaths and more than 30,000 displaced people, with the overall cost of the damage close to Euro1.5 billion. By the end of this century, Serbia will experience an increase in temperature of up to 4 degrees C and a decrease in summer precipitation of up to 50%. Adaptation to those changes calls for the redefinition of a strategic approach and the integration of climate change challenges into the processes of local sustainable development planning. The objective of this study was to assess current local sustainable development strategies (LSDSs) and highlight some of the threats and opportunities which may help or hinder the adaptation process, the evaluation of development priorities, coordination mechanisms at the local level and risk management practice. Based on climate trends and vulnerability level, 20 of the potentially most vulnerable municipalities in Serbia were selected. The analysis shows that although local sustainable development planning still lacks cross-sectorial planning practice and risk management plans and measures, and does not yet recognize vulnerable sectors as climate sensitive, it can still serve as a platform for adaptation planning. Based on the assessed LSDS framework, the most suitable approach to the development of an adaption strategy is the vulnerability-based approach. At the same time, the potential for initiating adaptation planning is recognized in the utilization of already established networks with external and international donors and planning experts, joined county or regional adaptation planning, and cross-border collaboration.Informal settlements are particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards, due to the lack of infrastructure such as drainage systems and because residents' homes are built with inferior materials. A number of case studies analyse flood-prone informal settlements, mostly with a focus on describing the flooding, household vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms. Although this is important, it is also acknowledged that better collaborative efforts, both within communities and between communities and local government, are needed to move from coping towards adaptation. In order to better understand the capacities of communities to engage in collaborative efforts, we need to look at issues of governance, political dynamics and leadership. Drawing on insights from 3 years of field visits to three flood-prone informal settlements in Cape Town, this paper first illustrates that, although residents apply coping mechanisms on a household scale, the common spaces of the settlements continue to become flooded. Thereafter, context-specific conditions for engaging in collaborations that could improve adaptation at the community scale are discussed. Community leaders are central actors in this regard as intermediaries between residents and local government or non-governmental organizations, and three factors condition their chances of working towards community-scale adaptation: the location of the settlement, external connections and internal consolidation. Comparing the settlements, these factors show how both macro-policies and micro-politics restrict adaptation. To enable community leaders to work towards community-scale upgrading, macro-policies that establish uneven possibilities for different settlements need to be addressed, in addition to the lack of transparency that fragments micro-politics and trust within the settlements.Individual local governments are key players in Sweden's strategy for climate adaptation but their authority does not match the scale of climate change and its impacts. Competences are divided among local, regional and national authorities. Climate adaptation thus requires cooperation, particularly in metropolitan regions. This raises issues of coordination, legitimacy and effectiveness of adaptation measures recommended in local Master Plans. The focus here is on how the 13 municipalities in the Gothenburg Metropolitan Areaexpected to be the part of Sweden most affected by impacts of climate changeaddress and act upon issues of climate change adaptation within the framework of Sweden's Planning and Building Act, which places responsibility for the common interest of climate adaptation with local governments. Analysing municipal Master Plans, as well as the comments on these plans from the regional County Administrative Board and from Goteborg Region Association of Local Authorities, the inter-municipal association charged with infrastructural planning, I identify patterns in terms of coordination, legitimacy and effectiveness of planning for climate change adaptation. Results are discussed in relation to propositions from recent research on planning for climate adaptation in multi-level contexts.The paper regards the issues connected to architecture at water for and by women. It is about two pillars: water as a hazard and the way gender issues are considered in climate change adaptation and post-disaster reconstruction and water as heritage: the design of leisure architecture next to water or architecture objects such as thermal bathes. The needs of women have to be included in the architecture programmes which react to the presence of water, as well as in research programme dealing with this (ex. Horizon 2020). Architects' and researchers' mobility contribute to the fact that little cultural differences can be observed between the countries. We will concentrate on Romania and Italy. From the historical evolution conclusions can be drawn regarding architecture design today. Women can take different roles in the project: expert, user or investor. Other countries comparison can be made with are: Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, Germany, Austria, considering thus both the East and the West, which is relevant from the point of view of participation. From the historical evolution conclusions can be drawn regarding architecture design today. For this reason, apart of the pioneers, also contemporary women figures in architecture, be it research or practice, are included.Climate change presents many challenges for local government in Victoria, Australia. In the Macedon Ranges local government area the future climate is likely to include more hot days, less rainfall and run-off and increased frequency and intensity of extreme events such as drought, flash flooding and wildfire. The purpose of this project was to identify, analyse and evaluate climate change risks and develop an adaptation plan that would assist the Macedon Ranges Shire Council on the outskirts of Melbourne begin to plan for likely impacts arising from climate change. The development of the adaptation plan employed a best practice risk management approach in line with AS/NZS 31000: 2009 and AS 5334: 2013 and took and whole-of-council approach. Undertaking a risk assessment approach to climate change adaptation planning for a peri-urban local government area was successful. The approach assisted council to build capacity in climate change, adaptation and the process of undertaking a risk assessment and define their area of operation, influence and responsibility in regards to adaptation actions and the role of other external stakeholders. Further, it helped them to integrate the risks and associated adaptation options directly into the existing risk register system and understand the relativity of climate risks to non-climate risks that the council faces, such as land use change, increasing proportions of absentee landholders and an ageing demographic.Climate change awareness is an imperative to achieve sustainability in developing countries. Lack of awareness is a significant barrier to climate change adaptation in developing countries. Raising climate change awareness at the local level is critical for Pakistan as climate change impacts are exacerbating the number and extent of disasters in this disaster-prone country. Pakistan's vulnerability to climate change impacts is very high (ranked 12th in the world). This research assesses the awareness of climate change impacts among the local planning officials in Punjab, Pakistan. The research contextualises its findings in the context of Pakistan's resilience to deal with the adverse impacts of climate change given its unique and unusual set of socio-political circumstances. The findings of this chapter are based on a detailed survey conducted with local planning officials of Lahore, Pakistan. The survey explores the level of awareness of climate change, its causes and impacts in Pakistan. The survey and subsequent analysis in particular focuses on the potential role of use of Geographical Information System (GIS) in raising climate change awareness.This chapter discusses the adaptive capacity of coastal urban and peri-urban Indigenous People's to climate change. It is based on the findings of a National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) funded project that utilised a series of case studies that engaged key representatives from Indigenous organisations in five coastal locations in three states of south-eastern Australia (Low Choy D, Clarke P, Jones D, Serrao-Neumann S, Hales R, Koschade O et al., Aboriginal reconnections: understanding coastal urban and peri-urban Indigenous people's vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, 139 pp, 2013). The study has highlighted the social, economic and environmental impacts on urban and peri-urban Indigenous communities inhabiting coastal areas throughout south-eastern Australia. These impacts include a loss of community and environmental assets, such as cultural heritage sites, with significant impacts on their quality of life and the establishment of potential favourable conditions for the spread of plant diseases, weeds and pests. The study also found that opportunities did not readily exist for engagement with climate change adaptation policy and initiatives and this was further exacerbated by acute shortages of qualified/experienced Indigenous members that could represent their communities' interests in climate change adaptation forums. The evidence emerging from this research clearly demonstrates that Aboriginal people's consideration of the future, even with the overlay of climate change and the requirements for serious considerations of adaptation, are significantly influenced and dominated by economic aspirations which are seen as fundamental survival strategies for their communities. A number of specific climate change induced issues to emerge from the research included: the potential for Indigenous involvement in the 'bush tucker' industry utilising wild plant species will potentially suffer from changes in species availability; concern was expressed about changes associated with peri-urban and urban development which appears to be escalating micro-environmental changes; peri-urbanisation is a major environmental change which threatens cultural assets including Aboriginal sites; Indigenous communities need representation in climate change adaptation forums and to be more directly involved in land and sea care projects. The chapter concludes with recommendations to better position Aboriginal engagement and knowledge systems in the wider climate change adaptation policy discourse.In the past few years, many advances in terms of research, implementation and policies have taken place around the world with respect to understanding, capturing and facilitating the uptake of ecosystem-based approaches for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). We highlight some of these advances here, particularly for coastal (various hazards), riverine (floods), and mountain (landslides) environments. We also highlight that many international agreements reached in 2015 can facilitate the uptake of these approaches whereas ecosystem-based solutions can facilitate the achievement of many goals and targets related to DRR, CCA, and/or sustainable development enclosed in these agreements. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the rest of the book.Even though 'green' options for addressing the impacts of climate change have gained in currency over recent years, they are yet to be fully mainstreamed into development policy and practice. One important reason is the lack of economic evidence as to why investing in ecosystems offers a cost-effective, equitable and sustainable means of securing climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and other development co-benefits. This chapter presents a conceptual framework for integrating ecosystem values into climate-compatible development planning. Case studies from coastal areas of Kenya and Sri Lanka illustrate how such an approach can be applied in practice to make the economic and business case for ecosystem-based measures. It is argued that, rather than posing 'grey' and 'green' options as being necessarily in opposition to each other or as mutually incompatible, from an economic perspective both should be seen as being part and parcel of the same basic infrastructure that is required to deliver essential development services in the face of climate change.Organisations and governments around the globe are developing methodologies to cope with increasing numbers of disasters and climate change as well as implementing risk reducing measures across diverse socio-economic and environmental sectors and scales. What is often overlooked and certainly required for comprehensive planning and programming are better tools and approaches that include ecosystems in the equations. Collectively, these mechanisms can help to enhance societies' abilities to capture the protective benefits of ecosystems for communities facing disaster and climate risks. As illustrated within this chapter, decision support tools and approaches are clearly improving rapidly. Despite these advancements, factors such as resistance to change, the cautious approach by development agencies, governance structure and overlapping jurisdictions, funding, and limited community engagement remain, in many cases, pre-requisites to successful implementation of ecosystem-based solutions. Herein we provide case studies, lessons learned and recommendations from applications of decision support tools and approaches that advance better risk assessments and implementation of ecosystem-based solutions. The case studies featured in this chapter illustrate opportunities that have been enhanced with cutting edge tools, social media and crowdsourcing, cost/benefit comparisons, and scenario planning mechanisms. Undoubtedly, due to the large areas and extent of exposure to natural hazards, ecosystems will increasingly become a critical part of societies' overall responses to equitably solve issues of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.The linkages between ecosystem conditions and disaster risk reduction have gained increasing international attention. Despite this growing awareness, national and local decision makers often lack the tools to visualize disaster risk under different ecosystem conditions. As a result, the importance of ecosystems continues to be under-appreciated in decision-making processes related to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. While spatial models have commonly been applied in both ecological assessments and disaster management, there have been relatively few studies that merge these two applications. This chapter demonstrates applications of the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) tool in data-deficient countries where the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is currently implementing ecosystem-based field interventions to reduce disaster risk. InVEST software (developed by the Natural Capital Project) provides spatial tools for assessing ecosystems and disaster risk even when limited data is available. The first study presented in this chapter takes into consideration the role of coastal and marine ecosystems in reducing exposure to coastal hazards in a small municipality in the south of Haiti. It provides an example of a qualitative assessment of exposure to storm surges and coastal flooding under different ecosystem management scenarios. The second study examines realistic land use change scenarios such as reforestation and urbanization and their impacts on soil erosion and sedimentation in a river basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Through detailed examination of the two case studies, this chapter aims to demonstrate how integrated models such as InVEST could function as decision-support tools for considering ecosystem-based solutions for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The limitations, challenges and areas for improvement of each model application, as well as implications for local decision-making and awareness-raising, are discussed.This chapter elaborates on the potential for applying ecosystem-based solutions for urban disaster risk reduction in developing countries, based on the case study of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The high level of mainly informal urbanization in the Kathmandu Valley has led to severe environmental problems and loss of ecosystem services. As a consequence, the livelihoods of the 2.5 million inhabitants in the almost entirely built-up Kathmandu Valley are increasingly at risk, as seen in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes that caused widespread damage in the urban area. Combined risks from natural hazards and unsuitable urban planning are likely to be exacerbated by climate change. Due to political instability during the past decades, the poor execution of existing plans and policies as well as the enactment of new ones remain challenging, without real signs for improvement. In addition, the complex governance system involving local, national and international actors is another challenge being faced in this urban agglomeration. Understanding of human-nature interactions, including values attached to natural assets by local communities, is crucial for the development of successful long-term strategies for risk reduction that integrate ecosystem-based solutions.A perception analysis is an important approach for developing adequate sensitization activities and increasing the participation of local populations in ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) and ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). These concepts have great potential in the study area, the mountain region of Rio de Janeiro state, where a disaster in 2011 showed once more that landslides, mudslides and floods are recurrent. Although degradation of the natural ecosystems is one of the main reasons for the high vulnerability of the local population, ecosystem-based measures to reduce disaster risks and to adapt to climate change are still uncommon. Valuing the benefits of nature through community-based adaptation measures is one promising approach to reduce landscape and ecosystem degradation and vulnerability, but a high level of community awareness is needed to generate their active participation in protecting and restoring ecosystems. To analyze the degree of awareness and the reasons for the barriers to participation, a perception analysis was conducted based on collected quantitative and qualitative data. Results show that people (a) have a high perception of their vulnerability, but (b) have poor knowledge about the relation between risks and ecosystem services, (c) do not feel responsible for participating, and (d) do not see possibilities for a better engagement in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. We conclude that these three gaps (b, c and d) need to be addressed as a main component of a sensitization concept for Eco-DRR and EbA in the region.Rural communities have long been using ecosystems to sustain their livelihoods, especially in times of disasters when forests act as safety nets and natural buffers. However, it is less clear how climate variability influences changes in land uses, and their implications for human well-being. We examined how forests and trees can reduce human vulnerability by affecting the three components of vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. A total of 24 focus group discussions and 256 household surveys were conducted in two smallholder-dominated rural landscapes in Indonesia, which were affected by floods, drought and disease outbreaks. Our results suggest that forests and trees are important in supporting community resilience and decreasing their vulnerabilities to climate-related stresses in different ways. The role of trees varied according to the type of ecosystem service, whether provisioning or regulating, in relation to the phase of the climatic hazard, either in the pre-disaster phase or in the post-disaster recovery phase. It is therefore important to distinguish between these elements when analyzing people's responses to climatic variability in order to fully capture the contribution of forests and trees to reducing people's vulnerability. Landscape spatial characteristics, environmental degradation and community awareness of climate variability are crucial because if their linkages are recognized, local people can actively manage natural resources to increase their resilience. Interventions related to forests and trees should take into consideration these aspects to make ecosystem services a valuable option for an integrated strategy to reduce disaster risks and climate-related vulnerabilities.Floods are usually related to extreme and/or long-lasting intense precipitation events. In warmer climate, future precipitation extremes could be higher than nowadays. Assessment of these future changes and climate adaptation to future flood risk are very important issues. In this study, four regional climate models and seven global climate models for two climate scenarios A1B and A2 were used to get better description of the range of changes in annual as well as extreme precipitation events. With help of the delta-change method, projections were made based on responses from regional and global climate models, for 11 precipitation stations in the Tatra Mountains in Poland, for which observation data for 19611990 were available. Analyses were made of various indices, such as annual totals, maximum 24 h, 5-day; 10-day, monthly maximum sum of precipitation and also numbers of days with intense precipitation equal or above the thresholds of 30 and 50 mm. It was found that all RCM and GCM models under examination project an increase in mean annual precipitation totals as well as in heavy precipitation in two future time windows considered (2061-2090 and 2080-2100).Purpose - The paper aims to examine one local government's efforts to increase local-level engagement in building community disaster resilience. Presenting the empirical evidence of stakeholder engagement activities that increase risk awareness and encourage collective action, the study addresses a key priority for the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (Hyogo Framework for Action 2) to identify methods for increasing local-level implementation of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative, case study approach is used to explore the case in depth. A review of literature from the multidisciplinary areas of communication, social and political theory frames data collection and analysis. Data collection includes observation, document analysis and interviews with policymakers, practitioners and local stakeholders to document achievements and lessons learnt from all perspectives. Findings - Preliminary results indicate that strong political leadership and inter-departmental coordination have contributed to engaging local-level participation in disaster risk reduction in the Municipality of Amadora, Portugal. Findings indicate that the implementation of a wide spectrum of public engagement initiatives has increased awareness of hazard risks amongst specific demographic groups and improved community and government capacity to identify and implement risk reduction strategies. Research limitations/implications - As this study is a work-in-progress and data analysis is in the early stages, interview transcripts included in this paper are limited to members of the team and their Director, Amadora Town Councillor for Civil Protection Services. Practical implications - It is commonly acknowledged that to date, achievements of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2010-2015 largely remain at the national level and have not reached local levels in a substantial manner. Addressing the need for more industry-led research to explore examples of successful stakeholder participation, the paper's findings can be used by emergency management practitioners who recognise the need to merge climate change adaptation, risk reduction and local-level engagement to encourage public participation, inclusiveness and proactive planning. Originality/value - Co-authored by an Australian academic and a member of Amadora's Campaign Team, the paper is a combination of empirical data from one city's practical experience to develop and implement communication strategies in developing and implementing strategies to build community disaster resilience, analysed within a framework of communication, social and political theory.The changes in climate parameters induce hydrometeorological circumstances, which are very likely to influence current water management regimes in a significant manner. Thus, particularly water balance and water related natural hazards should be thoroughly considered. The possible effects are challenging us to search for a new balance between water availability and demand as well as between natural hazards and socio-economically acceptable risks. The adaptation to extreme water quantity situations is becoming the key water management issue worldwide. This paper gives an overview on climate change related risks in Slovenia. A way towards an adaptive water management is taken by identifying the key issues of the future national adaptation strategy, which should be aimed at building adaptive capacity and reducing sectoral instability. A strategy should be introduced into the existing programmes for the implementation of the EU Directive 2000/60/EC (Water Framework Directive) through the next planning cycles, taking in consideration the climate change hazard indicators, impact vulnerability factors, risk levels and corresponding adaptation measures.Australian farmers will be greatly impacted by climate change. But farmers' attitudes and actions to climate change vary. Rather than changing attitudes to increase actions this paper considers addressing farmer adaptation and mitigation through understanding farmer decision making drivers. Using two waves of a large-scale climate change survey of Victorian farmers, four distinct farming styles were derived using cluster analysis. Each style had varying propensity to risks, planning, innovation, technology use and farming practice. The farming styles also reflect uncertainty and division in belief about causes of local climatic changes in Australia. However, there were few differences in actions between the groups. Thus, rather than attempt to change farmer beliefs, social drivers can be used to tailor key messages and outreach programs to appeal to each styles goals, experiences, and climate concerns. The findings support the need for segmentation that considers the broader socio-economic drivers of farming.According to the Global Risks Landscape 2015 published by World Economic Forum, water crises and failure of climate-change adaptation are perceived as more likely and impactful than many other risks in the next I0 years. Water security is also deemed as cross-cutting issue for many-other related policy domains such as energy, agriculture, infrastmetare, biodiversity, disaster risk reduction and health. hi Taiwan, increased water risk and growing uncertainty about future conditions has also reported by local scientific research, which may exacerbate existing water security challenges and complicate the adaptation planning of water system. This research focuses on designing a mechanism for collaborative governance of climate change adaptation planning for water system in order to form integrated adaptation responses to climate change. Also, a risk-based framework, which was developed by International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), is also integrated into our mechanism to provide a systematic approach for the analysis, assessment and governance of adapting water systems to climate change, in order to enhance the adaptation planning methodology widely used in Taiwan status quo, such as down scaling techniques and traditional risk assessment methodology.The Murray-Darling Basin is one of the most significant agricultural areas in Australia. The construction of major run-of-the-river dams and water storages on its waterways has made a major contribution to maintaining water supply during times of drought. Run-of-the-river dam construction and excessive water extractions have also degraded the ecological condition of rivers and wetlands, prompting the development of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2010. This study explored alternative solutions for alleviating the recovery target of 2,750 GL per annum presently being acquired under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Wastewater generated east of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales could be diverted westwards but the available volume is significantly less that the recovery target. The option of treatment, diversion and reuse does not warrant serious consideration. Pumping of desalinated seawater could provide the required volume of water to match the recovery target. The energy requirements of desalination are greater than feasibly-available renewable energy. Mitigation of dam evaporation in the Murray-Darling Basin would alleviate the recovery target at minimal cost. Appropriate new off-stream dam construction, accompanied by transformation of Australian run-of-the-river dams towards flood diversion would result in several benefits. These include: mitigation of present significant losses of water due to evaporation; remediation of present environmental degradation by run-of-the-river dams; significant expansion of available renewable energy storage; better dam and reservoir management; and, provision of ecosystem refugia during climate change. With appropriate dam construction and operation, there is potential for greater capture of flood flows from the catchments east of the Great Dividing Range. Present evidence is that there are sufficient eastern catchment runoff volumes and renewable energy resources for the Murray-Darling Basin recovery target to be alleviated by inland diversion whilst enhancing the reliability of present water supplies.We constructed the habitat suitability index (HSI) model of the winter-spring cohort of neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii) for the estimate of its potential fishing zone off shore of Sanriku coast by applying Generalized Additive Model (GAM), which includes the stock term describing the effect of interannual change in the squid stocks. The results demonstrated that a significant improvement of HSI model performance by adding the stock effect term to GAM. This indicates that the potential habitat of neon flying squid could be better predicted by taking account of the stock effect, which includes the feeding condition of its paralavae and juveniles and the associated ocean state in the spawning ground a year before fishing.The Nile Basin is one of the most important shared basins in Africa. Managing and developing the water resources within the basin must not only address different water uses but also the trade-off between developments upstream and water use downstream, often between different countries. Furthermore, decisionmakers in the region need to evaluate and implement climate adaptation measures. Previous work has shown that the Nile flows can be highly sensitive to climate change and that there is considerable uncertainty in climate projections in the region with no clear consensus as to the direction of change. Modelling current and future changes in river runoff must address a number of challenges; including the large size of the basin, the relative scarcity of data, and the corresponding dramatic variety of climatic conditions and diversity in hydrological characteristics. In this paper, we present a methodology, to support climate adaptation on a regional scale, for assessing climate change impacts and adaptation potential for floods, droughts and water scarcity within the basin.The timing and the volume of snow and ice melt in Alpine catchments are crucial for management operations of reservoirs and hydropower generation. Moreover, a sustainable reservoir operation through reservoir storage and flow control as part of flood risk management is important for downstream communities. Forecast systems typically provide predictions for a few days in advance. Reservoir operators would benefit if lead times could be extended in order to optimise the reservoir management. Current seasonal prediction products such as the NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) enable seasonal forecasts up to nine months in advance, with of course decreasing accuracy as lead-time increases. We present a coupled seasonal prediction modelling system that runs at monthly time steps for a small catchment in the Austrian Alps (Gepatschalm). Meteorological forecasts are obtained from the CFSv2 model. Subsequently, these data are downscaled to the Alpine Water balance And Runoff Estimation model AWARE running at monthly time step. Initial conditions are obtained using the physically based, hydro-climatological snow model AMUNDSEN that predicts hourly fields of snow water equivalent and snowmelt at a regular grid with 50m spacing. Reservoir inflow is calculated taking into account various runs of the CFSv2 model. These simulations are compared with observed inflow volumes for the melting and accumulation period 2015.Apple production has a long history in the Nordic countries, but high labour costs and challenging climatic conditions result in production costs that are not competitive on the international market. In addition, access to permitted pre-harvest chemicals in the orchards has been severely restricted in recent years, and post-harvest applications are completely banned. Moreover, grower economy would benefit from being able to forego chemical fungicides altogether, as there is an increasing demand for locally produced, organic fruit. Consequently, climate adaptation and disease resistance/tolerance are major issues for apple breeding programmes in Norway, Sweden and Finland. A public-private partnership project initiated by the Nordic Council of Ministers and administered by NordGen started in 2012 with the aim of producing and disseminating knowledge concerning levels of susceptibility against some of the most devastating apple diseases in the Nordic countries, namely fruit tree canker (Neonectria ditissima) and storage diseases (Neofabraea spp. and Penicillium expansum), in apple cultivars of potential interest for plant breeding and cultivar development in the Nordic countries. Inoculation of fruit of 81 different apple cultivars with blue mould, P. expansum, has been carried out in Norway and Sweden, whereas evaluation of spontaneous infections of various fungi during storage has been carried out in Finland using fruit of organically produced, local apple cultivars. For fruit tree canker, inoculations have been carried out on detached shoots of 50 different apple cultivars in Norway and Sweden. For both apple canker and blue mould, reproducibility among years and sites was sufficiently high to enable an approximate determination of the level of susceptibility of the studied cultivars.Worldwide, rice is the most important food staple. Climate change is expected to affect rice yields and overall rice production in tropical locations. With less than 10% of rice produced traded internationally, there will be increasing pressure on the rice supply available for international trade to be retained to meet domestic market needs. Such a scenario would severely threaten food security in the Pacific islands, which are increasingly dependent on grain imports. The production of breadfruit and most other traditional crops is expected to be far less adversely impacted by climate change. Breadfruit is a high-yielding tree crop, the fruit of which can be converted to high quality gluten-free flour and starch. However, breadfruit is not yet cultivated as an orchard crop, which is necessary to achieve high-volume and low-cost production. For this reason, one of the key objectives of the Pacific Breadfruit Project is to establish breadfruit as a smallholder-based orchard crop. This paper reports on the progress being made in developing breadfruit orchards in Fiji and discusses their sustainability.Land use and climate change are both important drivers for ecosystem degradation. Human-driven land use changes, such as deforestation and urbanization, reduce ecosystem resilience to disasters. The impacts of climate change include global warming and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as storms, flood, and drought. In order to understand how land use change and climate change affect the ecosystem services in the Chenyulan watershed, Taiwan, we first classified the satellite images during 2008-2013 for land use maps. The impact of cumulative natural disturbances on watershed was quantified by using a hydrological model, SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) under various historical (1996-2013) land use conditions. Based on our results, we could further develop an integrated plan including ecosystem service management, land use management and climate change adaptation to increase the resilience of the ecosystem in the Chenyulan watershed.South Florida is home to about 8 million people. The region is characterized by low relief, flat topography, and hydrology driven by a delicate balance between rainfall and evapotranspiration, high surface-water and groundwater interaction, presence of urbanized areas along the coast, significant agricultural areas, and a protected natural area-the Everglades. The water resources of this complex region is managed by the South Florida Water Management District (District). The district operates this system for flood control, water supply, water quality treatment, and ecosystem restoration. The hydrology of this region is driven mainly by rainfall and evapotranspiration. Thus, knowledge of changes in future climate parameters that affect these hydrologic components is critical for (i) projecting water resources availability, (ii) identifying water management system vulnerability, and (iii) designing adaptation measures. In an attempt to evaluate future water resources availability of the region, downscaled daily bias-corrected and constructed analogs of precipitation, minimum temperature and maximum temperature projections from the World Climate Research Programme'sCoupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) multi-model dataset were analyzed. Data analysis included (i) identification of future trends in precipitation and temperature based on a total of 119 models and three climate forcing scenarios, (ii) evaluation of future seasonal water availability of the region, and (iii) assessing the impact of changes in precipitation, temperature and sea level on south Florida's water management system. The results of this study will be beneficial for water resources planners to design climate change adaptation measures that enhance the resiliency of the water management system.Excessive heat and flooding are extreme weather events associated with climate change, and they pose serious threats to global health. By conducting a review of literature, we assessed the effect of heat on human health among the Thai population. Our review showed that previous studies focused on mortality, especially among the elderly or persons with preexisting illnesses, and overlooked the idea that physical labor adds to the heat exposure risks via the surplus heat generated due to muscular movements. We also assessed the demographic profiles and existing public health resources in Bangkok and surrounding provinces as part of the wider project to develop a health and climate change adaptation resilience simulator for coastal cities. This comes following a realization that recurrent flooding makes the Thai capital, Bangkok, and surrounding areas prone to inundation because of the low-lying topography. This has created a need for Thailand to protect its people, natural and man-made resources, and productive capacities in response to the impact of climate change induced floods. Primary and secondary data sources were used to describe demographic characteristics of the population and to assess the adequacy of public health emergency resources. Our study results showed that the study area falls short of the Southeast Asia as well as World Health Organization's set standards for health worker densities and hospital beds.The world population is expected to increase by a further three billion by 2050 and 90% of the three billion will be from developing countries that rely on existing land, water, and ecology for food and well-being of human kind. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fifth assessment report (AR5) stated that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and is more pronounced since the 1950s. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850 and the globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend show a warming of 0.85 degrees C (0.65-1.06 degrees C) over the period of 1880-2012. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) ranked 2015 as the hottest year on record. Climate change poses many challenges to growth and development in South Asia. The Indian agriculture production system faces the daunting task of feeding 17.5% of the global population with only 2.4% of land and 4% of water resources at its disposal. India is more vulnerable to climate change in view of the dependence of huge population on agriculture, excessive pressure on natural resources, and relatively weak coping mechanisms. The warming trend in India over the past 100 years has indicated an increase of 0.6 degrees C, which is likely to impact many crops, negatively impacting food and livelihood security of millions of farmers. There are already evidences of negative impacts on yield of wheat and paddy in some parts of India due to increased temperature, water stress, and reduction in number of rainy days. Significant negative impacts have been projected under medium-term (2020-39) climate change scenario, for example, yield reduction by 4.5-9%, depending on the magnitude and distribution of warming. Since agriculture currently contributes about 15% of India's gross domestic product (GDP), a negative impact on production implies cost of climate change to roughly range from 0.7% to 1.35% of GDP per year. Indian agriculture, with 80% of farmers being smallholders (<0.5 ha) having diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, is monsoon-dependent rainfed agriculture (58%), about 30% of population undernourished, migration from rural to urban regions, child malnutrition etc., has become more vulnerable with changed climate or variability situations. During the past decade, frequency of droughts, cyclone, and hailstorms increased, with 2002, 2004, 2009, 2012, and 2014 being severe droughts. Frequent cyclones and severe hailstorms in drought prone areas have become common. Eastern part of the country is affected by seawater intrusion. Reduced food grain productivity, loss to vegetable and fruit crops, fodder scarcity, shortage of drinking water to animals during summer, forced migration of animals, severe loss to poultry and fishery sectors were registered, threatening the livelihoods of rural poor. Enhancing agricultural productivity, therefore, is critical for ensuring food and nutritional security for all, particularly the resource-poor, small, and marginal farmers who would be the most affected. In the absence of planned adaptation, the consequences of long-term climate change on the livelihood security of the poor could be severe. In India, the estimated countrywide agricultural loss in 2030 is expected to be over $ 7 billion that will severely affect the income of at least 10% of the population. However, this could be reduced by 80%, if cost-effective climate resilient measures are implemented. Climate risks are best addressed through increasing adaptive capacity and building resilience which can bring immediate benefits and can also reduce the adverse impacts of climate change. Climate resilient agriculture (CRA) encompasses the incorporation of adaptation and resilient practices in agriculture which increases the capacity of the system to respond to various climate-related disturbances by resisting damage and ensures quick recovery. Such disturbances include events such as drought, flood, heat/cold wave, erratic rainfall pattern, pest outbreaks, and other threats caused by changing climate. Resilience is the ability of the system to bounce back and essentially involves judicious and improved management of natural resources, land, water, soil, and genetic resources through adoption of best bet practices. CRA is a way to achieve short-and long-term agricultural development priorities in the face of climate change and serves as a bridge to other development priorities. It seeks to support countries and other actors in securing the necessary policy, technical and financial conditions to enable them to: (1) sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes in order to meet national food security and development goals, (2) build resilience and the capacity of agricultural and food systems to adapt to climate change, and (3) seek opportunities to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and increase carbon sequestration. These three conditions (food security, adaptation, and mitigation) are referred to as the "triple win" of overall CRA. The concept of climate resilient village (CRV) has been taken up by Government of India, to provide stability to farm productivity and household incomes and resilience through livelihood diversification in the face of extreme climatic events like droughts, cyclones, floods, hailstorms, heat wave, frost, and seawater inundation. Development of CRVs warrants establishment of a host of enabling mechanisms to mobilize and empower communities in the decision-making process to manage and recover from climate risks. The overall program of establishing CRVs have structured village level institutions such as Village Climate Risk Management Committee (VCRMC), custom hiring center (CHC) for farm implements, community seed and fodder banks, commodity groups etc. The establishment of CRVs was based on bottom-up approach with village community taking a central role in decision making on institutional requirements, technological interventions and supporting systems with able support from experts. In our knowledge, the CRV network of National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) is by far the largest outreach program involving farmer's participation ever undertaken in the field of climate change adaptation anywhere in the world. Planning, coordination, monitoring, and capacity building of the program at the country level is the responsibility of the research organization (ICAR-Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture). At the district level, Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK; Farm Science Centre) under the Division of Agricultural Extension under Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), All India Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture (AICRPDA) centers and Transfer of Technology divisions of various ICAR Institutions across the country are responsible in implementing the project at village level through farmers' participatory approach. To address the climate vulnerabilities of the selected villages, different interventions were planned under the four modules; however, the specific intervention under each module for a particular village was need based and decided based on climatic vulnerability and resource situation of the particular village. The four intervention modules being implemented are (1) Natural resource management (in situ moisture conservation, biomass mulching, residue recycling, manure management, soil health card-based nutrient application, water harvesting and recycling for supplementary or life saving irrigation, improved drainage in high rainfall/flood prone villages, conservation tillage, and water saving irrigation methods). (2) Crop production module consisting of introduction of short-duration and drought/flood-tolerant varieties, modifications in planting dates for postrainy (winter) season crops to cope with terminal heat stress, water saving paddy systems (System of Rice Intensification, aerobic, direct seeding), frost management in fruit/vegetables, community nursery in staggered dates to meet delay in onset of monsoon, energy-efficient farm machinery through village CHC with timely completion of farm operation in limited sowing window, location specific intercropping systems, and suitable agroforestry systems. (3) Module III covers livestock and fisheries interventions through augmentation of fodder production, fodder storage methods, prophylaxis, and improved shelters for reducing heat stress in livestock, management of fish ponds/tanks during water scarcity and excess water, and promotion of livestock as climate adaptation strategy. (4) Module IV consists of village level institutions, collective marketing groups, introduction of weather-based insurance, and climate literacy though establishment of automated weather stations. Impacts of these climate resilient interventions in the villages were assessed through various resilience indicators, importantly, improved farm productivity, farm income, livelihoods at household and village level. Environmental impacts were assessed on improved soil carbon sequestration, groundwater recharge, vegetation and forest cover, and measurements of GHG emissions which were correlated with ex ante assessment of village level carbon balance and overall contribution to global warming potential. These 151 CRVs are learning sites for further expanding resilient villages to adjoining clusters and districts so that large number of villages will become part of the overall adaptation-led climate change mitigation mission in the country.Purpose - Climate adaptation, energy efficiency, sustainable development and green growth are societal challenges for which the Facilities Management (FM) profession can develop solutions and make positive contributions on the organisational level and with societal-level effects. To base the emerging sub-discipline of sustainable facilities management (SFM) on research, an overview of current studies is needed. The purpose of this literature review is to provide exactly this overview. Design/methodology/approach - This article identifies and examines current research studies on SFM through a comprehensive and systematic literature review. The literature review included screening of 85 identified scientific journals and almost 20,000 articles from the period of 2007-2012. Of the articles reviewed, 151 were identified as key articles and categorised according to topic. Findings - The literature review indicated that the current research varies in focus, methodology and application of theory, and it was concluded that the current research primary addresses environmental sustainability, whereas the current research which takes an integrated strategic approach to SFM is limited. The article includes lists of reviewed journals and articles to support the further development of SFM in research and practice. Research limitations/implications - The literature review includes literature from 2007 to 2012, to manage the analytical process within the project period. However, with the current categorisation and the access to the reviewed journals and articles, it is possible to continue with the latest literature. Practical implications - The article provides an overview of theoretical and practical knowledge which can guide: how to document and measure the performance of building operations in terms of environmental, social and economical impacts? How to improve the sustainability performance of buildings? What are the potentials for and barriers to integrating sustainability into FM on strategic, tactical and operational levels? Originality/value - The paper presents the most comprehensive literature study on SFM so far, and represents an important knowledge basis which is likely to become a key reference point for pioneers and scholars in the emerging sub-discipline of SFM.As global warming persists, regions with moderate climatic conditions will be confronted with exacerbating seasonal variations, including aggravating dry periods. This upcoming drought challenge receives, however, little attention from policymakers. Likewise, Flemish planners and designers focus on floods, not droughts. This research concentrates on design strategies that deal with a lack of water in highly urbanized territories such as Flanders. The article analyses the results of a design workshop on ( future) drought issues in the Campine region: 'Shifting Climate, Reshaping Urban Landscapes'. Four distinct strategies are delineated: 'remodelling the valleys', 'retrofitting urbanization', 'aqueducts 2.0', and 'autonomous, local water networks'. The article discusses the premise of each strategy and its approach to the local landscape and urban tissue. Moreover, it highlights key issues to drought design in highly urbanized territories.Nordregion arranged in 2014 five meetings with the largest Nordic city regions, discussing challenges and opportunities in planning of Nordic city regions. Three types of challenges were identified, the first relating to urban form, urban qualities, densification, population growth, localisation and mix of functions. The second concerned social inclusion and segregation, everyday life, lifestyles and mobility. The third, the need for new and innovative forms of planning and governance in order to meet the other challenges, and in relation hereto, planning at the city-regional scale was pointed out as the most potential planning level and form. In relation to the third challenge this paper suggests, that climate change adaptation planning should be added as a challenge, and the city-regional scale is the appropriate scale to provide and support a substantial and effective climate change adaptation planning. There is no universal definition of a city region, but three elements seem to be common in various conceptualisations: the core(s), the hinterland(s) and the linkage(s). Also common, seems to be spatial demarcation in relation to functional urban areas, usually defined in terms of commuting patterns and density of economic activities and/or population. But climate change doesn't respect such de-naturalized definitions and categorizations. Climate change is universal and global but the impact is local, and the impact interacts with specific natural conditions on site. The definition of city-regions is suggested adapted hereto by connecting it with landscape a re-naturalizing of the concept. An interesting example from urban theory based upon natural landscape conditions is professor in urban planning, Peter Bredsdorff s so called, Dry Feet Theory, (1973) focusing on how man in historic times used his ability to read and understand the natural landscape, its features, and to settle, cultivate and transport him self accordingly. Peter Bredsdorff based his analysis, and thus his theorizing, on a cross reading of orohydrological maps and urban planning. In light of the climate adaptation challenges in planning it seems interesting and relevant to discuss whether such a 'back to nature' in city-regional scale might hold a potential in qualifying climate adaptation planning. Taking point of departure in onetwo examples this paper discusses and suggests that natural watersheds could be used in defining and demarcating city-regions, and thus support and qualify climate change adaptation planning.This paper evaluates the ability of a regional-scale climate model to simulate precipitation over the South Asian tropical region. Experiments were conducted using three different spatial resolutions, with and without cumulus parameterization (CP), to assess the influence of horizontal mesh size and the CP on regional-scale precipitation. The experiments that used a finer mesh size but no CP improved the spatial distribution of monthly precipitation relative to that in the experiments based on a coarser spatial resolution. Meanwhile, the impact of horizontal mesh size was much less in the experiments that included the CP because an overestimation of precipitation caused by the CP strongly affected the simulation accuracy in these experiments. Regional differences in diurnal variations in precipitation intensity and frequency were captured reasonably well in the pre-monsoon season regardless of the spatial resolution, and both with and without the CP. In contrast, the diurnal characteristics of precipitation were difficult to simulate during the mature monsoon season. During both seasons, those experiments that incorporated the CP tended to predicted a continuous weak precipitation due to the excessive release of convective instability; accordingly, precipitation intensity was weaker, and precipitation frequency greater than in those experiments that did not use the CP.Conservation Agriculture (CA), comprising minimum or no mechanical soil disturbance through no-till seeding, organic soil mulch cover, and crop diversification is now practiced on some 157 million ha worldwide, corresponding to about 11% of the global cropped land. CA adoption in the Middle-East is low compared to other regions. Lack of knowledge on CA practices and systems discourages farmers from giving up ploughing. The main reason why farmers in the Middle-East have begun to apply the no-till system has been the cost reduction in fuel, labor and machinery required for land preparation. Soil and water conservation concerns do not appear to be the main drivers in the Middle-Eastern farmers' decision to adopt or not to adopt CA. The adoption and uptake of CA by Middle Eastern farmers has been slow but it is nonetheless occurring gradually. Collection of information and research parameters related to agricultural practices are needed for designing a suitable soil and water conservation program for sustainable production intensification. Governmental policy encouraging the adoption and spread of CA systems in the Middle-East region is certainly a necessary condition for uptake. The objective of this article is to review the current status of adoption and spread of CA in the Middle-East, focusing mainly on Syria and Lebanon, and the potential beneficial consequences that can be harnessed through CA systems under rainfed conditions in both countries. The benefits include: higher factor productivity, yield and income; improved soil properties; climate change adaptation, including reduced vulnerability to the erratic rainfall distribution; and reduction in machinery, fuel and labor costs.Climate change is likely to lead to increased water scarcity in the coming decades and to changes in patterns of precipitation. The result will be more short-term crop failures and long-term production declines. Improved soil management is key to climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. There is growing interest in the promotion of climate smart agricultural practices. Many of these are the same practices that were promoted in the 1980s and 1990s under the guise of soil and water conservation. Farmer non-adoption of soil conservation technologies was rife and suggests that different approaches are needed today. Much can be learnt from these past endeavors to ensure that current efforts are better designed and implemented. We use the example of Central America to highlight some of these lessons and suggest alternative ways forward. Technology per se is not the limiting factor; many suitable technologies and practices are extant. What is required is a more nuanced approach to soil conservation efforts. There is a need to focus less on capturing soil once it has been eroded, via the use of cross-slope soil conservation practices, and more on improving soil quality of the soil that remains through improved soil cover. It is also critical to understand farming systems as a whole i.e. the full range of interlinked activities and the multiplicity of goals that farm households pursue. Furthermore, it is important to engage farmers as active players in conservation efforts rather than passive adopters of technologies, and to adopt a board value chain approach and engage a plethora of value chain actors (researchers, extension agents, equipment manufacturers, input suppliers, farmers, traders, and processors) in an agricultural innovation system.Costa Rica is a country exposed to diverse natural and social conditions that favor the risk of disasters. Diverse sectors work to prevent and mitigate them, as well as doing territorial planning, research, socialization, training, and acting when emergencies happen. There is, in addition, a growing awareness of the need for actions with an inter-and-multidisciplinary framework for an effective risk management, and the relevance of the participation of the population and different public institutions, particularly local governments. Those actions and initiatives are intended to be harmonized on instruments like the National Politics of Risk Management 2016-2030, the National Plan of Risk Management 2016-2020, and the National Strategy for the Climatic Change. A complex but necessary task, which advances can be valuate in national congresses. The three national congresses made since 1988, have allowed valuating such advances and the route that is following the country about those actions, and the third one is not an exception. This article synthesizes the relevant aspects of such congress, as well as the diverse approaches that were exposed, much of them referred to climate change.Interactions of climate and natural resources with environmental and social deterioration are analyzed in this study of an arid region of northern Mexico known as Galeana Valley. The story of the social development of the region was constructed through face-to-face interviews. The perceptions of farmers regarding vulnerability to climate change, water use and the possibility of adaptation were also analyzed. The main problems in the region arising from the analysis are drought and the depletion of hydrological resources, for which the aquifers are the only source of supply. The importance of direct sources of information and interaction with local stakeholders for creating diagnostics, aligning assistance and agendas of rural development is discussed.Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to explore how climate change and the discourses about adaptation to climate change are altering the spatial development of the tourism industry in coastal destinations. The paper also identifies how tourist development and climate change adaptation can be combined to transform space and place, especially in coastal tourism areas. Design/methodology/approach - Using a theoretical approach based on the concept of production of space, the study focuses on relational space, relationships expressed through representations of space and social practices. A case study method is used to analyze the socio-geographic processes at work in the adaptation to climate change in a coastal tourism community in Quebec, Canada. The analysis of the study utilized Nvivo with thematic textual queries. Findings - The results reveal an adaptation process at work, based on a "hold the line" strategy, where private stakeholders choose to invest in defensive structures to mitigate the impact of rising sea levels and erosion. This strategy reflects coordinated action in the face of the risk and to protect high-value land property. Research limitations/implications - This research illustrates how tourism and climate change adaptation discourses intersect. It also reveals how tourism development promotes the values and image of coastal space and how this can conflict with an efficient climate change adaptation strategy. Originality/value - This research provides guidelines for coastal tourism communities, enabling them to design their own climate change adaptation strategy, taking into account how the different social discourses and tourism practices interact with climate change adaptation. It also provides some insights into the criteria that influence an effective climate change adaptation strategy.Purpose - This paper aims to investigate weather sensitivity of tourism businesses in New Zealand to examine whether adaptive responses and "learning" about current weather can help operators to prepare more proactively for future climatic changes. Design/methodology/approach - This paper draws on data from interviews with 57 tourism operators and stakeholders in three key tourist destinations in New Zealand. Data were content-analysed and coded into weather types, impacts and business responses. Findings - This research found that tourism stakeholders were well aware of the specific weather conditions that caused business problems, and they had considerable knowledge and experience in responding to conditions effectively, even though the causal chain of weather conditions and direct and indirect tourism impacts was often quite complex. Importantly, operators were found to learn from previous experience and also from other agents at the destination. Thus, the research established that a collective process of "sense making" occurred in relation to managing the weather. A longer term perspective of future, and possibly more dramatic, climatic changes, was not taken however. Research limitations/implications - This paper is limited to three case study destinations and is also subject to the usual limitations of qualitative research (including interviewee selection and coding). However, the research does indicate a great level of weather literacy which could be extended into adaptive capacity for climate change, if general awareness of climate change adaptation needs could be enhanced among operators. Originality/value - This paper provides detailed insights into the weather sensitivity of tourism operators and stakeholders, and of their current ability to deal with various conditions and impacts. Their weather "sense" and weather responses provide a solid platform on which more explicit and planned climate change adaptation might be based.Process-level modeling at the farm scale provides a tool for evaluating strategies for both mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change. The Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM) simulates representative crop, beef, or dairy farms over many years of weather to predict performance, economics, and environmental impacts including various emissions and a farm-gate life cycle assessment of carbon, energy, water, and reactive nitrogen footprints of the feed, meat, or milk produced. To illustrate use of the model, a representative dairy farm in central New York was simulated over 25 years of recent historical weather to determine the environmental benefits and economic costs of alternative manure handling strategies. Use of an enclosed manure storage with a flare to burn the methane produced decreased the farm-gate carbon footprint of the milk produced by 20% at an increased annual cost of $42 cow(-1). Using an anaerobic digester to produce gas and electricity used on the farm reduced the carbon footprint by 19% and reduced profitability by $56 cow(-1). The addition of subsurface injection of manure along with a reduction in N fertilizer use greatly reduced ammonia emission from the farm and increased annual profit by $9 cow(-1). Climate change is projected to affect many aspects of dairy production, including growing season length, crop growth processes, harvest timing and losses, cattle performance, nutrient emissions and losses, and ultimately farm profitability. Climate projections for high and low emission scenarios were downscaled from nine general circulation models. IFSM was then used to simulate the same New York dairy farm over 25-year periods using recent, mid-century, and late century climate projected by each of the climate models. Simulations were done without and with adaptation through modified crop varieties and planting and harvest dates. Forage production normally increased with projected climate change and corn grain yields decreased, and together feed production was maintained. Warmer temperatures increased volatile loss of ammonia N, and changes in precipitation patterns increased nutrient runoff losses in surface water. The reactive N footprint of the milk produced was increased by 2% to 11% with the change in climate, but other environmental footprints were relatively unaffected. With appropriate adaptation to climate change, annual farm profitability increased by about $100 cow(-1). However, for the high emission, late century projection, profit decreased by $10 cow(-1) and the risk or annual variance in profit increased by 34%, reflecting greater annual variation in crop and animal productivity. Whole-farm and climate models provide useful tools for studying the benefits and costs of greenhouse gas mitigation and the adaptation of farms to changing climate.There is increasing awareness worldwide that traditional flood-mitigation strategies that attempt to control the flow of water only increase the likelihood of catastrophic consequences in the long run, when failure inevitably occurs after years of complacency and development behind flood barriers. Amphibious architecture is a non-defensive flood mitigation and climate change adaptation strategy that works in synchrony with a floodprone region's natural cycles of flooding, allowing water to flow rather than creating an obstruction. Since the height to which an amphibious building rises is not necessarily fixed but adapts to the variable depth of flood water, amphibiation can accommodate rising sea levels and land subsidence as well. Amphibious retrofitting can provide measurable cost savings compared to other flood mitigation strategies, performing well in loss avoidance studies for both flood and wind damage. An amphibious approach to planning and construction recognizes the beneficial aspects of seasonal and occasional flooding, allowing us not merely to live with water, but to thrive with it. This paper reviews case studies of both existing and proposed amphibious buildings, with discussion of their systems and components. It also discusses the limitations of amphibious construction, some of the regulatory obstacles that have discouraged its development, and possible paths forward. The first International Conference on Amphibious Architecture, Design and Engineering, ICAADE 2015, was held in Bangkok, Thailand, in August 2015. The second, ICAADE 2017, will convene at the University of Waterloo in Canada in June 2017.Approximately 12,000 people live in the flood risk areas in Finland. New flood risk management plans were prepared for 21 areas as a part of the EU Floods Directive in 2015. In connection with this work, we conducted a survey in three flood risk areas in 2014. The total number of recipients was 4,710 and the response rate 39%. The study provided an indication of how local citizens perceive flood risk, and specifically whether they have already invested or would be willing to invest in private flood mitigation measures or to purchase flood insurance. We also examined how previous personal experiences of flooding affected their responses. The questionnaires were georeferenced in GIS and compared with flood hazard maps on a detailed scale. Over 27% of the respondents had experienced a recent flooding event, but only 9% had implemented flood mitigation measures and 10% knew that flood coverage was included in their insurance. A young age and having property at risk of flooding increased the willingness of respondents to consider implementing flood protection measures and purchasing flood insurance.In the Netherlands, the concept of a multifunctional dike has already often been implemented, and has been identified as a promising climate adaptation measure. In a multifunctional dike, functions like urban development, transport infrastructure, recreation, agriculture or nature are deliberately combined with its primary flood protection function. This means that the design must be based on the requirements and life span of all different functions, while in a monofunctional dike only the flood protection function is considered. By accommodating other functions, a multifunctional dike may easier fit into, or even contribute to the quality of the landscape. Moreover, these other functions may help in financing the flood protection works, but governance is more complicated. To avoid costly adjustments forthcoming from changed safety standards, incorporation of multiple functions can require a more "robust" flood defence than a monofunctional flood defence. A robust flood defence can withstand more extreme situations than required by the present safety standards, and has a substantially lower flooding probability. Therefore, a multifunctional dike may be attractive in view of the uncertainties regarding the effects of climate change and a changing world. Moreover, it will result in reduced flood risk. As part of the Dutch Delta programme, several explorative studies on multifunctional dikes were initiated. Most studies focused on urban areas, but also in the rural area interest emerged for multifunctional dikes, e.g. for the integration of salt marshes into the flood defences. Marshes provide valuable habitat for vegetation and invertebrate species, and are important for wading birds. Furthermore, under condition of abundant sediment availability they can keep pace with sea level rise. Explorative modelling results indicate that vegetated forelands affect wave heights, even under extreme conditions. However, the inclusion of a vegetated foreland into the dike design does not automatically mean that nature values and flood protection are well integrated. Flood protection imposes rather different requirements on the extent and features of marshes than nature conservation and development. Wave damping is most effective with a high and stable marsh, while nature thrives with dynamic processes and differences in elevation. Therefore, only a design that allows natural marsh dynamics and includes different marsh zones could combine nature values with flood protection. In practice, this means a dike design with an uncertain foreland, that offers space for natural processes. The uncertainty in foreland development reduces the possible flood risk reduction. In our paper we describe the critical points of interest concerning risk reduction in this system.Today, water authorities face a set of water management challenges, related to new European policies, climate change adaptation, land use planning, urban wastewater and storm water management. In response to these evolutions and anticipating on fast changing IT-technologies, Flanders Environment Agency has developed a set of next generation tools for operational hydrology. These tools are flexible, open and integrate all major components of the water system (principle toolbox). Rather than just providing a set of tools, the toolbox is integrated into existing information systems by the latest technologies using open standards and web protocols. Currently, the toolbox is used to establish a regional hydrological model set for Flanders. This large scale model will produce information on the hydrological status (runoff, subflow, infiltration, soil storage, etc.) at any location in Flanders. Furthermore, an interactive web-application of the toolbox was developed to enable hydrological modelling through the internet. Besides the fulfilment of the modelling needs of the Flanders Environment Agency, the initiative aims to foster collaboration, not only between governmental agencies with operational duties in water management, but also between the different communities in support of operational hydrology.Purpose - Ongoing climate risks require all levels of society to be resilient. Urban areas, which are densely developed with huge levels of population and infrastructure, are critical places to develop adaptation and resilience strategies. This study aims to conceptualize evolutionary urban climate resilience strategies with a step-by-step analytic framework that will be called 3R: Recognition-Readiness-Response. Design/methodology/approach - This analytic framework is then applied to assess whether and to what extent the components of urban climate resilience are incorporated into the pertinent ordinances and policies of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, including climate change, urban planning and disaster management. Findings - The findings of this study suggest that the climate change ordinances of Seoul have focused on climate mitigation rather than resilience. Practical implications - Thus, comprehensive efforts are required to incorporate evolutionary urban climate resilience strategies into ordinances and practices. Originality/value - This paper contributes to build an analytic framework that provides a step-by-step process with check-list questions based on the sub-components of urban climate resilience procedure.Purpose - This paper aims to explore how the implementation of community-driven approaches to improve the living conditions of the urban poor can also have positive co-benefits for resilience to climate change, by addressing the underlying drivers of physical, social and economic vulnerability. Design/methodology/approach - The paper applies a case study approach, drawing from the documented experiences of organised urban poor groups in Asian countries already actively participating in collective settlement upgrading, building networks and financial resources for further action. Findings - The findings show that while certain actions might not be taken with climate change adaptation specifically in mind, these development activities also contribute to broader resilience to climate change, by reducing exposure to risk and addressing other drivers of vulnerability. The findings also show that partnerships between low income communities and other urban stakeholders, including local government, and innovative financial mechanisms managed by communities, can lead to scaled-up action to address development and adaptation deficits. This can lead the way for transformation in socio-political systems. Practical implications - The approaches applied by organised urban poor groups in Asia show that community-level actions can make a positive contribution to building their resilience to climate change, and with local government support and partnership, it could lead to scaled-up actions, through a bottom-up approach to multi-level governance. Originality/value - This paper considers how community-driven actions can build resilience to climate change, and it argues that adaptation and development should be considered together.Purpose - Changing climate has increasingly become a challenge for smallholder farmers. Identification of technical, institutional and policy interventions as coping and adaptation strategies and exploring risks of their adoption for smallholder farms are the important areas to consider. The aim of the present study was to carry out an in-depth analysis of adaptation strategies followed and the associated risk premium in technology adoption. Design/methodology/approach - The study was carried out in the dryland systems of three Indian states - Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan - and was based on a survey of 1,019 households in 2013. The flexible moment-based approach was used for estimating the stochastic production function, which allowed estimation of the relative risk premium that farmers are willing to pay while adopting the technologies to avoid crop production risks. Findings - In all the three states, the risk premium (INR ha(-1)) was higher for farm mechanization compared to supplemental irrigation, except in the case of Andhra Pradesh. The higher the level of technology adoption, the higher the risk premium that households have to pay. This can be estimated by the higher investment needed to build infrastructure for farm mechanization and supplemental irrigation in the regions. The key determinants of technology adoption in the context of smallholder farmers were climatic shocks, investment in farm infrastructure, location of the farm, farm size, household health status, level of education, married years, expected profit and livestock ownership. Originality/value - Quantification of the risk premium in technology adoption and conducting associated awareness programs for farmers and decision-makers are important to strengthen evidence-based adoption decisions in the dryland systems of India.Global changes, especially the progression of climate change, create a plethora of adaptation needs for social-ecological systems. With increasing uncertainty, more resilient food systems that are able to adapt and shape their operations in response to emerging challenges are required. Most of the research on this subject has been focused on developing countries; however, developed countries also face increasing environmental, economic, and social pressures. Because food systems are complex and involve multiple actors, using codesign might be the most productive way to develop desirable system characteristics. For this study, we engaged food system actors in a scenario-planning exercise to identify means of building more resilient food systems. In particular, the actors focused on determinants of adaptive capacity in developed countries, with Finland as a case study. The brainstorming session followed by a two-round Delphi study raised three main characteristics for effective food system resilience, namely, energy and nutrient sovereignty, transparency and dialogue in the food chain, and continuous innovativeness and evidence-based learning. In addition, policy interventions were found instrumental for supporting such food system resilience. The main actor-specific determinants of adaptive capacity identified included the farmers' utilization of agri-technology and expertise; energy and logistic efficiency of the input and processing industry; and for retail, communication to build consumer trust and environmental awareness, and effective use of information and communication technology. Of the food system actors, farmers and the processing industry were perceived to be the closest to reaching the limits of their adaptive capacities. The use of adaptive capacity as a proxy seemed to concretize food system resilience effectively. Our study suggests that the resilience approach generates new perspectives that can guide actors in developing food systems that are adaptive in uncertainty.When something unfamiliar emerges or when something familiar does something unexpected people need to make sense of what is emerging or going on in order to act. Social representations theory suggests how individuals and society make sense of the unfamiliar and hence how the resultant social representations (SRs) cognitively, emotionally, and actively orient people and enable communication. SRs are social constructions that emerge through individual and collective engagement with media and with everyday conversations among people. Recent developments in text analysis techniques, and in particular topic modeling, provide a potentially powerful analytical method to examine the structure and content of SRs using large samples of narrative or text. In this paper I describe the methods and results of applying topic modeling to 660 micronarratives collected from Australian academics/researchers, government employees, and members of the public in 2010-2011. The narrative fragments focused on adaptation to climate change (CC) and hence provide an example of Australian society making sense of an emerging and conflict ridden phenomena. The results of the topic modeling reflect elements of SRs of adaptation to CC that are consistent with findings in the literature as well as being reasonably robust predictors of classes of action in response to CC. Bayesian Network (BN) modeling was used to identify relationships among the topics (SR elements) and in particular to identify relationships among topics, sentiment, and action. Finally the resulting model and topic modeling results are used to highlight differences in the salience of SR elements among social groups. The approach of linking topic modeling and BN modeling offers a new and encouraging approach to analysis for ongoing research on SRs.We seek to examine the manner in which either the EU member states of France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden or parts of them, such as the country of England in the UK or the Flemish Region in Belgium, deal with the distributional effects of the flood risk management strategies prevention, defense, and mitigation. Measures carried out in each of these strategies can cause preflood harm, as in the devaluation of property or loss of income. However, different member states and authorities address this harm in different ways. A descriptive overview of the different compensation regimes in the field of flood risk management is followed by an analysis of these differences and an explanation of what may cause them, such as the geographical differences that lead to differences in the way that they interfere with private rights and the dominant legal principles that underlie compensation regimes. An elaborated compensation regime could lead to more equitable and legitimate flood risk management because the burdens are fairly spread and all interests-including those of injured parties-are considered in the decision-making process. Our aim is to stimulate the hardly existent discussion on the financial harm that is caused by measures to prevent floods (preflood), in addition to the already existing discussion on the ex post flood distributional effects.Climate change has a major impact on freshwater resources from Europe. Changes in the water availability (shortage, excess, poor quality, ecosystem services) are noted all over the continent. The biggest challenges for Europe at the moment are the increase of water stress (and related droughts) and of flood risks. Romania is no exception to this situation. Extreme water-related events have affected the country in the last few years, affecting agriculture, energy and other socio-economic factors. Policies related to climate adaptation have to be taken into consideration in order to ensure resilience to these extreme water events. All these pressures on Europe's waters (diffuse pollution, hydromorphological alteration and over abstraction) are driven by the way agricultural land is managed, and by society's need for energy, transport and urbanization. To solve this problem we need to look at water and water ecosystems as one of the natural resources - like food or energy - needed in an economy. This paper will try to identify the water problems in Romania, from a European perspective, and propose measures of climate mitigation and climate adaptation.Frameworks of environmental regulations are fundamental yet problematic factors in achieving climate mitigation and adaptation policy goals. Recent theoretical arguments claim the value of general legal frameworks to enable experimentation and contextual adaptation of policies. However, empirical research regarding the effects of both general and specific norms in the practice of urban intervention remains limited. In this article we empirically discern how city governments deal with the tension between control and flexibility in the implementation of urban climate change goals. We argue that policies of adaptation/mitigation face two types of implementation problems: non-adaptive implementation and non-implementation. The first stems from an excessively constraining use of rules, while the second derives from a too general and undefined regulatory framework. Analysing two empirical cases in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Boston, MA, USA, we conclude that there are three elements that affect the way actors deal with these deficits: the level of scale at which regulations are established, the degree of land ownership which provides margin of manoeuvre to public authorities, and the sense of political urgency behind mitigation and adaptationThis article describes a climate change adaptation planning process triggered by a group of researchers and stakeholders in a context where no collective responses or long-term plans for protecting a vulnerable coastal system had been initiated, despite local perceptions of vulnerability and risk. The case study shows the application of two methods: scenario workshops and adaptation pathways in the context of a participatory action research methodological design. Participatory action research and qualitative scenario methods are highlighted as accelerators of climate change adaptation processes by calling to action, facilitating and connecting diverse social groups with a stake in a long-term plan towards a more adapted society. The experience leads to the conclusion that planning climate change adaptation has to go far beyond the technical dimension and take into account those affected (in the present and the future) by decisions made. A holistic approach to climate change adaptation planning will depend on the interrelations of managerial and top-down approaches with localized initiatives driven through an inclusive and collective action research process.Development agencies which address climate change adaptation (CCA) are increasingly adopting human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) as central to their policies and principles. What, however, does that entail in practice? This qualitative case study examines whether and how development NGOs in Cambodia understand and apply HRBAs to CCA programming. We explore the themes of participation, transparency, accountability, and non-discrimination, and examine the experiences and implications of these efforts. An HRBA is a political agenda that is often assumed to challenge a dominant discourse which emphasises technical solutions and sidesteps structural factors of power, vulnerability, inequality, and responsibility. Despite agency commitments to HRBAs, however, this perspective is only cautiously being applied to climate change due to hesitance to critically engage in politics and governance. Linking CCA and human rights would require anchoring efforts within broader efforts related to the participation of vulnerable populations in national development, pressure for greater transparency, accountability of duty bearers, and spotlighting discriminatory governance practices. An HRBA, as currently perceived and applied, has yet to contribute to breaking down the ` silos' and other incentives to treat CCA as a technical concern rather than as an impetus for transformational change. Changes in Cambodia's political landscape may intersect with the global HRBA discourse to challenge dominant development approaches.Extreme heat is a leading weather-related cause of morbidity and mortality, with heat exposure becoming more widespread, frequent, and intense as climates change. The use of heat early warning and response systems (HEWSs) that integrate weather forecasts with risk assessment, communication, and reduction activities is increasingly widespread. HEWSs are frequently touted as an adaptation to climate change, but little attention has been paid to the question of how best to ensure effectiveness of HEWSs as climates change further. In this paper, we discuss findings showing that HEWSs satisfy the tenets of an intervention that facilitates adaptation, but climate change poses challenges infrequently addressed in heat action plans, particularly changes in the onset, duration, and intensity of dangerously warm temperatures, and changes over time in the relationships between temperature and health outcomes. Iterative management should be central to a HEWS, and iteration cycles should be of 5 years or less. Climate change adaptation and implementation science research frameworks can be used to identify HEWS modifications to improve their effectiveness as temperature continues to rise, incorporating scientific insights and new understanding of effective interventions. We conclude that, at a minimum, iterative management activities should involve planned reassessment at least every 5 years of hazard distribution, population-level vulnerability, and HEWS effectiveness.This study assessed the effectiveness of and barriers to adaptation of upland farming households in Bukidnon Province, Southern Philippines to climate variability. Using focus group discussions, key informant interviews and household surveys combined with the analysis of climate variability in the area, the study described key adaptation strategies commonly practiced at the household and community levels in relation to crop production and income generation, domestic and farm water supply, soil conservation, health and livelihood; and assessed the effectiveness and barriers in the implementation of these strategies. There were few variations in adaptation strategies across different crops grown by farmers. While few ineffective adaptation strategies were noted, current strategies were perceived to be generally effective although some barriers exist in their implementation. Among these barriers include high cost, limited adaptation options, and difficulty in implementation. Despite the perceived effectiveness, future uncertainty is a major concern since climate variability is likely to worsen, threatening health, food and livelihood security. Planned adaptation founded on robust current and future vulnerability assessments is necessary to address the future risks associated with the changing climate. Moreover, to realize effective farmers' adaptation to future climate change impacts, the anticipated critical adaptation barriers should be successfully overcome.There are practical links between water resources management, climate change adaptation and sustainable development leading to reduction of water scarcity risk and re-enforcing resilience as a new development paradigm. Water scarcity, due to the global change (population growth, land use change and climate change), is of serious concern since it can cause loss of human lives and serious damage to the economy of a region. Unfortunately, in many regions of the world, water scarcity is, and will be unavoidable in the near future. As the scarcity is increasing, at the same time it erodes resilience, therefore global change has a magnifying effect on water scarcity risk. In the past, standard water resources management planning considered arrangements for prevention, mitigation, preparedness and recovery, as well as response. However, over the last ten years substantial progress has been made in establishing the role of resilience in sustainable development. Dynamic resilience is considered as a novel measure that provides for better understanding of temporal and spatial dynamics of water scarcity. In this context, a water scarcity is seen as a disturbance in a complex physical-socio-economic system. Resilience is commonly used as a measure to assess the ability of a system to respond and recover from a failure. However, the time independent static resilience without consideration of variability in space does not provide sufficient insight into system's ability to respond and recover from the failure state and was mostly used as a damage avoidance measure. This paper provides an original systems framework for quantification of resilience. The framework is based on the definition of resilience as the ability of physical and socio-economic systems to absorb disturbance while still being able to continue functioning. The disturbance depends on spatial and temporal perspectives and direct interaction between impacts of disturbance (social, health, economic, and other) and adaptive capacity of the system to absorb disturbance. Utility of the dynamic resilience is demonstrated through a single-purpose reservoir operation subject to different failure (water scarcity) scenarios. The reservoir operation is simulated using the system dynamics (SD) feedback-based object-oriented simulation approach.A project funded by the Queensland Government in 2010 sought to improve the capacity of primary producers in selected horticultural industries to manage risks and identify opportunities arising from Queensland's changing and variable climate. Tomato growers in the Granite Belt in south-east Queensland documented their vulnerability to climate change, adaptation options and economically evaluated risk management responses in the supply of fresh tomatoes. The production and quality of field grown tomatoes is significantly reduced when mean monthly maximum temperatures exceed 29 degrees C two weeks prior to flowering. Granite Belt tomato growers who took part in this extensive series of interactive climate awareness workshops were presented with (best knowledge) future climate scenarios for their Granite Belt production location. Once aware of the Tomato plants intrinsic high temperature flowering threshold they concluded that the possibility of reaching this threshold was unlikely in the medium term (i.e. by 2030). Granite Belt summer tomato production has evolved in a unique high altitude region, where mean maximum monthly temperature, both current and projected, does not exceed the maximum temperature threshold above which tomato crop yield is reduced. Growers understand that their unique high altitude location gives them a production advantage, and that their industry will benefit from projected future temperature changes. Granite Belt growers now have a better understanding of the impact of climate variables on tomato production through increased knowledge which they applied using the Horticulture Vulnerability Matrix. Discussion of projected future climate impacts and the populating of this Vulnerability Matrix was a major focus of each workshop session, and allowed growers to increase their knowledge, identify areas of vulnerability and document adaptation options necessary to build industry resilience.Purpose - Social protection (SP) and climate change adaptation (CCA) are two subjects highly debated when discussing social vulnerabilities and food insecurity in rural areas of developing countries. Both fields address matters related to socioeconomic vulnerabilities and thus present opportunities for integration. However, many studies have stated the lack of interaction within the study areas. When dealing with CCA and SP in Brazil, the two offer an opportunity for integration since some SP programmes (such as food-based safety nets) can both affect adaptation and be impacted by expected changes in climate. Impacts from CC are projected to be extreme in the Brazilian semi-arid Northeast, a region where social programmes of assistance and aid are historically crucial during periods of drought. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to address the interaction of CCA and SP in a conceptual level on policies and programmes in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach - A desk review of government documents (policies, plans, decrees) related to food security, food-based programmes and CC. Findings - Based on the results the authors highlight the limited integration between CC and SP in Brazil and the potential for interaction in many of the programmes already in place. Originality/value - The authors attribute findings to the segmented governmental structure and the weak interaction between sectors, and the only recent discussion of linkages between CC and poverty, development and food insecurity. Discussion on the challenges and benefits of this interaction are provided in a context of CC in Brazil, still not very debated in the academic literature.Scenario planning is a technique used to inform decision-making under uncertainty, and is increasingly applied in the field of climate change adaptation and policy. This paper describes applications that combine previously distinct scenario methods in new and innovative ways. It draws on numerous recent independent case studies to illustrate emerging practices, such as far stronger connections between researcher-driven and participatory approaches and cycling between exploratory and normative perspectives. The paper concludes with a call for greater support for, and collaboration among, practitioners with the argument that mixed methods are most effective for decision-making in the context of climate change challenges. Published by Elsevier B.V.Oti-Keran-Mandouri (OKM) is a complex of protected areas with national and international ecological importance. It is located in the flood plain of the Oti River in Togo. Unfortunately, this area is under anthropogenic pressure. In order to enhance biodiversity conservation, this study aims to assess the spatial changes in land cover within OKM. Landsat images from different missions spanning the time steps 1987, 2000 and 2013 were used to produce land cover maps involving six classes. The classification was based on the maximum likelihood algorithm and the change analyses were performed using Land Change Modeler software integrated in Idrisi GIS and Image Processing system. From 1987 to 2013, wetlands, forests and savannahs diminished while cropland and settlements expanded. Considering the overall area of OKM, wetlands decreased from 43.05 % in 1987 to 31.71 % in 2013. Meanwhile, croplands increased from 0.91 % in 1987 to 34.81 % in 2013. Considering their earlier areas in 1987, forests, savannahs and wetlands have experienced an average annual loss of 5.74 %, 3.94 % and 2.02 %, respectively, while croplands increased at an average annual rate of 285.39 %. The main drivers of these changes appear to be the inadequacy of the management system and increasing anthropogenic pressures. These are intensified by climate change since adaptive strategies, such as recessional agriculture, play an important role in land cover change. The ongoing process of rehabilitation should be strengthened to enable this protected area to play its roles as Ramsar site, biosphere reserve and priority corridor for the migration of the West African savannah elephant. Data from this study could be used to guide conservation planning, further landscape pattern assessment and land cover modelling in the framework of climate change.This paper presents research results of the German-Namibian joint research project CuveWaters in which different technologies for small-scale rain- and floodwater harvesting were introduced as pilot plants in central-northern Namibia as part of a broader Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach. Central-northern Namibia has semi-arid climate conditions with clearly distinctive dry and wet seasons. Rain-and floodwater harvesting for irrigation purposes are intended to increase resilience in agricultural production by building buffers for interseasonal dry spells and to make irrigation farming possible during the dry season. This is intended to improve availability of vegetables in rural parts of Namibia and to derive income on local markets. Besides raising temperatures, climate change in sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to increase rainfall variability. Therefore, these adaptations also present a precondition for adapting to future climate change. Within the project, different organisational approaches such as harvesting of rainwater at the household as well as at the communal level were tested, as well as different locally available tank construction materials. All technologies were developed in cooperation with the local communities and framed by capacity development measures which yielded very good results and enabled a diffusion of the technology in the region. Based on 5 years of research the construction of ferrocement tanks on the household level and ponds covered with shade nets on the communal level can be recommended. Due to high evaporation rates all gardens irrigated with harvested rainwater were equipped with water saving drip irrigation systems. In combination with capacity development focusing on water management this enabled the users to irrigate their gardens throughout the dry season.While it is widely recognised that the impacts of both climate change and the policy response will be distributed, there is an absence of complete information regarding the socio-economic and geographic patterning of such impacts in the intra-national context. This paper seeks to address this gap, presenting a climate justice toolkit (indicator set and guidance) that enables the consistent assessment of distributional impacts of climate policy, and thus allows cumulative impacts to be assessed across the broad suites of policies that comprise national adaptation programmes. The objective in so doing is to inform the selection of appropriate policy options and to identify situations where supplementary policy may be required to redress negative or inequitable impacts. Drawing on a pilot impact assessment of the Scottish Climate Change Adaptation Programme, this paper discusses the rationale behind the development of a climate justice indicator set and presents a guide to the screening of large policy suites for potential cumulative impacts across communities of living (households) and working (private and public sectors). The methodological perspectives discussed can be useful in studies of climate change and social issues elsewhere, particularly in assessing the likely 'winners' and 'losers' of policy implementations.Achieving food security in its totality continues to be a challenge not only for the developing nations, but also for the developed world. The difference lies in the magnitude of the problem in terms of its severity and proportion of the population affected. In developed nations the problem is alleviated by providing targeted food security interventions, including food aid in the form of direct food relief, food stamps, or indirectly through subsidized food production. Similar approaches are employed in developing countries but with less success. The discrepancy in the results may be due to insufficient resource base, shorter duration of intervention, or different systems most of which are inherently heterogeneous among other factors. In this study; results of regression model on production entitlement suggest that climate variability has relatively minor effects on food production. It shows moderate positive relationship but not significant; where temperature has more effects than that of rainfall on production. However the difference is statistically insignificant. The relatively minor impact of weather variations on food production, combined with the analysis of other qualitative analysis such as household survey, observation, discussions, participatory techniques and thematic interviews in Western Bagamoyo district, Coast region in Tanzania reveal how extreme climatic events affect rural food security entitlements of production, labor, exchange and trade. It also reveals households adaptation strategies implemented by the communities during droughts/floods which serve as a foundation for planning responses to future climate variability and change. Results of this study suggest that food security in Tanzania where droughts and floods are expected to become more severe due to climate change could be enhanced by adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practises to increase productivity, adaptation and mitigation of Green House gases (GHGs). It was revealed that agriculture as their main source of income contributes 69.7 % of income to household's food security.In the Netherlands awareness regarding the Urban Heat Island (UHI) was raised relatively recently. Because of this recent understanding, there is a lack of consistent urban micro-meteorological measurements to allow a conventional UHI assessment of Dutch cities during heat waves. This paper argues that it is possible to retrieve relevant UHI information-including adaptation guidelines-from satellite imagery. The paper comprises three parts. The first part consists of a study of suited indicators to identify urban heat islands from which a method is presented based on ground heat flux mapping. The second part proposes heat mitigation strategies and identifies the areas where these strategies could be applied within the hotspots identified in the cities of The Hague, Delft, Leiden, Gouda, Utrecht and Den Bosch. The third part estimates the reduction of urban heat generated by the increase of roof albedo in the hotspots of the six cities. The six cities hotspots are located within the boundaries of the seventeenth century city centres. In order to avoid interference with cultural values of these historical environments most likely UHI mitigation measures regard improving the thermal behaviour of the city roofs. For instance, applying white coatings on bitumen flat roofs (or replacing them by white singleply membranes) and replacing sloped roof clay tiles by coloured tiles with cool pigments can reduce the urban heat hotspots by approximately 1.5 degrees C. Remote sensing provides high level information that provide urban planners and policy makers with overall design guidelines for the reduction of urban heat.Spatial planning has an important role to play in addressing climate change issues, taking into account that contemporary global and other international and regional frameworks support an integrated approach in adapting to climate change. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the role of planning in the context of climate change with special reference to current practice and the legal and other planning frameworks in the Republic of Serbia. The example of the Spatial Plan for the Specific Purposes Area of the International Waterway E-80 Danube (Pan-European Corridor VII) is introduced, and issues related to the influence of climate change on water regimes are analysed by reviewing the presence of planning measures that cover natural and cultural heritage. The results indicate that despite the lack of an adequate legal base, current practice offers indirect support to adaptation measures through promoting ecological networks, increasing the extent of protected areas, and building systems for flood protection among others.Having joined to the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol the Republic of Belarus has developed its own programs of Climate Change Adaptation. The first one, that is, "National program of measures to mitigate the effects of climate change", was adopted for the period of 2008-2012 years. As a result some environmental laws were adopted, different environmental projects were realized. During this period the Republic of Belarus fulfilled its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, that is, GHG emission was reduced by a third with the increase in GDP by a factor of 2 as compared to 1990. At the same time in the process of discussion on prolongation of the Kyoto Protocol the Republic of Belarus together with Russia refused to take part in the second commitment period. A new "State program of measures to mitigate the effects of climate change (2013-2020)" adopted in 2013 is also analyzed in this article. The goals of this program are the fulfillment of international obligations of the Republic of Belarus on the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, the implementation of measures aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change for ensuring the sustainable development of the economy, reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in order to decrease the rate and magnitude of climate change. As a result GHG emission should be decreased by 8 % to the level of 1990, energy intensity of GDP should be decreased by 50 % in 2015 and by 60 % in 2020 to the level of 2005.The Catalan Office for Climate Change has been working on a pioneering and innovative document, "A Global Indicator of Climate Change Adaptation in Catalonia". The study took 83 indicators as its starting point, identifying and classifying 29 key indicators as the methodology was developed. These are grouped under the following headings: water management, agriculture and livestock farming, forestry, health, the energy sector, industry, services and commerce, tourism, town planning and housing, mobility and transport infrastructures, research, development and innovation. The subsequent statistical analysis of these 29 indicators, with the assistance of the Catalan Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (Ivalua), produced a global adaptation indicator quantifying Catalonia's capacity to adapt to climate change impacts. This global indicator is based on two factors: use of resources and environmental quality. Effectively, capacity to adapt to the impacts of climate change depends on how we use resources (primarily water and energy) and on the quality of the environment (primarily air quality). The global indicator allows a country's capacity to adapt to climate change to be monitored over time. The absolute value of the indicator (from 0 to 10) dropped slightly between 2005 and 2011. Catalonia is working on the issue, but must continue to make every effort to improve the extent to which we are adapting to ensure that our land, natural systems and society are progressively less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In developing this indicator, Catalonia has a tool which provides guidance on where to focus efforts towards developing a green, circular, low-carbon economy which is adaptable to the new conditions brought about by climate change. This is opening up a range of economic and social opportunities which are currently being developed in fields such as energy efficiency, saving water, renewable energies, smart mobility, forestry management and healthcare. The indicators included in the global indicator should be reviewed every 5 or 10 years based on new information available (in order to include more aspects in the global indicator).In India, Bangladesh and Nepal 70 % of farms are less than 2 ha in size. These subsistence oriented, rain-fed farming systems are highly vulnerable to climate variability. Climate change challenges local food and nutritional security. Adaptation is the key to address these vulnerabilities. Agricultural research and extension systems in the region ignore traditional food systems and culturally accepted food baskets. The EU funded project "Strengthening Adaptive Farming in Bangladesh, India and Nepal (SAF-BIN)", implemented by Caritas organisations, is building resilience to climate change through strengthening adaptive small scale farming systems in rain-fed areas. In a multi-sectoral collaboration a farmers' collective-led approach has been implemented with smallholder farmers at the centre. A major tool has been on-farm adaptive research trials in which farmers' collectives have developed and implemented on-farm trials in ten districts in Bangladesh, India and Nepal with the active involvement of civil society, researchers and government officials. Results are documentation and increased adoption of locally appropriate farming practises achieved through blending traditional and modern practices with awareness on organic, sustainable production. Farmers' collectives successfully built resilience to climate change, increased yields, improved nutritional security, reduced external dependency, and reduced input costs. SAF-BIN is evolving as a successful model for strengthening adaptive capacities of smallholders. Lessons on integration of a diverse set of stakeholders are transferable and applicable to similar initiatives.Climate change hits agricultural production areas hard. There is no knowledge base to counter its effects and this makes education and other capacity building in adapting to climate change imperative. In the course of the last quarter of the twentieth century, applied agrometeorology/agroclimatology started to focus on traditional knowledge and agrometeorological services in agriculture. Since 2005, "Agromet Vision" offers Roving Seminars (RSs) of 2-5 days for university staff, professional agrometeorologists and extension intermediaries. They are particularly useful for training of extension trainers. To date, 37 RSs have been successfully delivered in 13 countries. The first RSs offered were "Agrometeorological Services: Theory and Practice" and "Agrometeorology and Sustainable Development", followed from 2011 by "Reaching Farmers in a Changing Climate". In 2013 "What Climate Change Means for Farmers in Africa" was added, while in 2015 "Agroforestry and Climate Change" was included. This paper wants to review the need for and the contents of these RSs and reports on local evaluation by the institutes involved. Applied agrometeorology should not start with agrometeorology but with the conditions of where it should be applied, the livelihood of farmers. In the development of such RSs elsewhere, our experience could be of much value.The effects of climate change are widely threatening West African farming. The case of the farmers in the West African Sudan savannah is particularly severe due to the specific ecological vulnerability and the political and socioeconomic instability in the region. Since 2012, the West African Science Service on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) has been leading a regional effort to enhance the understanding, data availability and building capabilities to strengthen the ability of agricultural systems in coping with the effects of climate change. One of the activities focuses on determining the drivers of farmers' adaptation. The case studies in this research in Benin and Burkina Faso identified major climate hazards, farmers' perceptions and adaptation measures. Research methods included ethnography, quantitative and mixed analyses. Results show mixed mainstream and specific perceptions of climate change and its effects. The mainly perceived impacts relate to yield decline, pest increase and water scarcity. Adaptation is widespread, but practices are diverse and often neither correlated with the type of hazards nor with impacts. This indicates that it is necessary to acknowledge the role of adaptation to problems not only caused by climate change, and to consider adaptation as an enhancing factor of social-ecological resilience. Furthermore, the focus on technological changes in the local context should be directed towards enhancing adaptive and transforming institutions. Ongoing studies on agroforestry, subsidies provision and livestock demonstrate such strategies.Climate variability is no doubt one of the greatest challenges facing inhabitants of sub-Sahara African countries, and especially those relying on agriculture as their primary source of livelihood. This is not unconnected with the fact that agriculture, a climate-dependent and climate-controlled livelihood source, remains the largest employer of labour in these countries. This study examined the activities engaged in by farming households in rural southwest Nigeria as a way of mitigating climate variability shocks. Data was collected through a questionnaire administered to a random sample of 250 households in rural Nigeria. Analytical methods employed include descriptive statistics and tobit regression model. A descriptive analysis of respondents' socioeconomic characteristics revealed their average age to be 52 years with only about one-third having tertiary education. Results indicated a noticeable shift in farming household activities, where livelihood options embraced to cushion climate variability include 'okada' riding ( motorcycle passenger transport), attending political rallies, taking up menial jobs in neighbouring communities, trading, and migrating to city centres in search of paid jobs. However, this development is already taking its toll on food security status of residents in terms of availability and affordability. Results of a Tobit model revealed a positive and statistically significant correlation between the livelihood options harnessed and age, years of formal education, income, membership of social group, as well as access to credit. However, negative and significant relationships were found between the livelihood options harnessed and household size and poverty status of respondents. Suggested policy prescriptions include investment in capacity building of farming households so as to enhance their earning potential and effort should be geared at encouraging cooperative activities since this can help in sharing and mitigating covariate shocks like climate change.Numerous studies worldwide emphasize the impacts that cities now face due to increasing variability of weather extremes associated with climate change, exacerbating the urban heat island effect, air pollution and health impacts. In this respect, cities need to cope with these new threats and get prepared. One way of doing this is to develop climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, focusing on local vulnerabilities in relation to the current societal development needs and adaptation options. There are many recent initiatives and examples for climate change adaptation strategies and plans for large cities, but only a few examples for small and medium-size cities. This paper investigates the mid-(2021-2050) and far-future (2071-2100) climate change signals in an urban area located in northern Romania (Baia Mare town), with around 200,000 inhabitants, exploring the results of some CORDEX GCMs under the new IPCC RCPs (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The study analyzes these signals in relation to the local awareness of key institutional stakeholders, as well as to the current social and economic constraints towards considering the climate change adaptation. The findings, based on a survey, highlight how the local authorities perceive and include climate change aspects in their activities as an important step towards real implementation of specific climate-based decisions, as well as their needs in terms of climate information and data. The study provides useful scientific insights about future climate and expected impacts in the Baia Mare Urban System to stakeholders, which could increase their awareness and knowledge in terms of climate change.This paper focuses on Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development, a flagship initiative of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. We attempt to identify trends and challenges for climate change education (CCE) programs currently underway in Japan and to provide recommendations for improving such programs by comparing a number of specific programs. With regard to the skills expected to be acquired through CCE programs, the paper relies on the literature review and classification of "key competencies in sustainability" employed by Wiek et al. (Key Competencies in Sustainability: a Reference Framework for Academic Program Development. Springer, 2011). In addition, regarding the content and methods of CCE programs, this paper organizes the connections between issues identified in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and key competencies in sustainability, and provides recommendations regarding the framework and educational methods required for capacity development programs based on previous research by two of the authors (Sato and Takahashi, Capacity Development Programme for Climate Change Education (CCE) in the context of ESD, based on the International Discussion on "Key Competencies in Sustainability" and the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. J Energy Environ Educ 2015). Among the issues revealed by our investigation are the lack of a common definition of CCE or established content or methods for CCE programs in Japan and a weighting of instruction towards knowledge which does not employ methods intended to develop key competencies in sustainability, with general suggestions to improve on current circumstances in Japanese CCE also provided.The author conducts in-depth interviews with individuals who describe themselves as having undergone a change in attitude with regards to climate change. Determinants of attitudinal change, and characteristics of the process, are identified and compared with those found in the literature on attitudes towards climate change. Given that changes in attitude are often linked with transformation in perspectives, the author proposes transformative learning theory as a framework with which to interpret and explain the experiences of the respondents.Societal Transformation (ST) is taken as the promise towards successful Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) in recent discourses. With the example of the Nyangatom, one of the World Cultural Heritage (UNESCO) pastoralist ethnic groups in South Omo/South Ethiopia, any unanimous belief in the power of ST is challenged! In interpretation of data from ethnographic research, perspectives of actors on the ground highlight imminent dangers of well-recognized and accepted adaptive measures. The 'committee', central requisite of Enclosed Rangeland Management schemes, translates into a ST without return! The paper is meant to warn against a too ready euphuism towards ST as well as to give a voice to pastoralists in their needs and concerns, a voice, which is generally refused to them in given political environments in Ethiopia and in Africa in general.The renewed quest for specific climate change adaptation measures that will address the needs of rural dwellers in their specified location prompted this study. This study analysed climate change adaptation measures used by rural dwellers in southeast and Southsouth Nigeria. Structured questionnaire, interview schedule, focused group discussion and direct observation were used to collect data from 320 respondents selected using a multi-stage sampling method. Data obtained were analysed using descriptive, multivariate and inferential statistics namely mean, percentages, frequency count, Varimax rotated factor analysis, analysis of variance and Turkey HSD post hoc multiple comparison test. The major occupation of the rural dwellers in the study area was farming (70.9 %) and 95 % have a farm size of less than 1 ha of land. The majority (83.7 %) had at least 10 years farming experience and earned an average monthly income of less than fifty thousand naira (77.2 %). The majority (60.3 %) maintained a household size of between 6 and 10 persons. Cassava and yam were the major crops cultivated while poultry, goat and fish were the major animals reared. The results further showed that 97 % of the respondents were already aware of the change in climate mainly through personal experience (78 %). Variation in rainfall patterns (46.9 %) was found to be the most prominent climate change variable in the study area. The Varimax rotated factor analysis identified eight major climate change adaptation measures used by farmers in the study area namely improved livestock management practices and mixed farming, soil fertility improvement measures and use of information from Agricultural Extension agent, use of improved crop species and diversification, change in planting/harvesting dates, application of agricultural chemicals, irrigation facilities and insurance, increase farm size and reliance on family labour, use of cover crops and avoidance of sale of remaining seedling after planting. The result of the ANOVA revealed that significant differences were found to exist in the adaptation measures use amongst the rural dwellers in the study area. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that there is a need for expansion in the role of agricultural extension agents in the nation. In addition, more studies addressing the differences in climate change adaptation measures are encouraged as this will equip the extension agencies and other stakeholders in climate change issues to develop relevant location-specific climate change adaptation measures that will effectively address the needs of farmers.The knowledge on climate variability in parts of Southern Africa is limited because of the low availability of historic and present-day ground-based observations (Niang et al., 2014). However, there is an increased need of climate information for research, climate adaptation measures and climate services. To respond to the challenges of climate change and related issues, Angola, Botswana, Germany, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia have initiated the interdisciplinary regional competence centre SASSCAL, the "Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management". As part of the initiative, Germany's national meteorological service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) cooperates with the meteorological services of Angola, Botswana and Zambia in order to improve the management and availability of historical and present-day climate data in these countries. The first results of the cooperation between the German and the Angolan Meteorological Services are presented here. International assessments have shown that improvements of the data management concepts are needed in several countries. The experience of this cooperation can therefore provide hints for comparable activities in other regions.This study examined the post-disaster adaptation since 2009 of a fishing harbor Linbian in southern Taiwan. This study found that locals have developed adaptation plans different from the expert planning after participating in the call for adaptation action plans, technology actant inventions, and decision-making with locally inherited wisdom to re-define action plans for climate change adaptation. Local adaptation actions responding to climate change not only require the involvement of local knowledge covering history, culture, and the environment, but also needs modern knowledge capital similar to community building and public affair participation experiences to stimulate each other, accomplish one another's goals, and empower mobilization, thus bringing locale-specific characteristics, and creating value for local actions.Background: This review assessed Ethiopia's existing situation on issues related to the environment, climate change and health, and identifies gaps and needs that can be addressed through research, training, and capacity building. Methods: The research was conducted through a comprehensive review of available secondary data and interviewing key informants in various national organizations involved in climate change adaptation and mitigation activities. Results: Climate change-related health problems, such as mortality and morbidity due to floods and heat waves, vector-borne diseases, water-borne diseases, meningitis, and air pollution-related respiratory diseases are increasing in Ethiopia. Sensitive systems such as agriculture, health, and water have been affected, and the effects of climate change will continue to magnify without the right adaptation and mitigation measures. Currently, research on climate change and health is not adequately developed in Ethiopia. Research and other activities appear to be fragmented and uncoordinated. As a result, very few spatially detailed and methodologically consistent studies have been made to assess the impact of climate in the country. There has often been a lack of sufficient collaboration among organizations on the planning and execution of climate change and health activities, and the lack of trained professionals who can perform climate change and health-related research activities at various levels. Conclusion: Firstly, there is a lack of organized structure in the various organizations. Secondly, there is inadequate level of inter-sectoral collaboration and poor coordination and communication among different stakeholders. Thirdly, there are no reliable policy guidelines and programs among organizations, agencies and offices that target climate change and health. Fourth, the existing policies fail to consider the gender and community-related dimensions of climate change. Fifth, the monitoring and evaluation efforts exerted on climate change and health activities are not strong enough to address the climate change and health issues in the country.Recently, the number of public policies initiated within the framework of CCA has increased in several western countries. On the other hand, the evaluation and measurement of CCA progress remain embryonic and inadequately charted by indicators quantifying the changes and impacts attributable to these policies that engender new stakes and concepts that are difficult to measure and do not always produce a consensus. Our paper presents the results of a scoping review examining the extent, scope and nature of the literature dealing with CCA indicators and metrics. Using scoping-review protocol, bibliographic databases were examined (for the years 2005-2015), using key words, in both English and French, dealing with the measurement of progress in public CCA efforts in coastal areas. In all, 165 documents were selected and analyzed and more than 200 indicators were looked at. Our analyses point out that the conceptual framework for CCA remains fragmented given the different scientific approaches and disciplines. The lack of consensus about CCA and about the indicators designed to assess CCA initiatives is a major limitation in coastal zone management. One way is to harmonize the practices for analyzing human and environmental systems respectively, both in the fields of the social and the natural sciences. In terms of governance, network management appears to be the most effective method in the context of social and environmental change. In terms of indicators, the WorldRiskIndex provides a useful estimate of the vulnerability of countries with respect to the effects of climate change in a context of rapid urbanization. In a regional context or a smaller geographical area, GIS stands out for being able to incorporate a lot of data, and to ensure their continuous update. Moreover, the ICZM is an effective approach at the national level that nevertheless takes into account the regional differences in coastal zones. The studies included in this analysis also demonstrate that the process of adopting CCA measures must be transparent and participatory since they aim for both short-term and long-term objectives.With increasing evidence of climate change, future decision-making among crop modelers and agronomists will require the inclusion of high-resolution climate predictions from regional climate models as input into agricultural system simulation models to assess the impacts of projected ambient CO2 increases, temperature and general climatic change on crop production. Before they can be implemented in climate adaption studies and decision-support systems, weather variables must be reliable and accurate. This study evaluated weather variables generated from computer simulations using two land surface models, (LSMs) coupled to a regional climate model, namely, Weather Research Forecasting (WRF 3.2). The land surface models tested are the Community Land Surface Model CLM 3.5 and the Noah Land surface model. Ground truth observations from 7 stations in Nebraska from a dry year, a normal year and a wet year (2002, 2005 and 2008 respectively) were used to evaluate the model results. Model results were also compared for their spatial ability to mimic distance-standard error weather variables. Both LSMs performed well in predicting the maximum and minimum temperatures in 2002, 2005 and 2008. Rainfall predictions by both models were not as reliable, based on evaluation for individual stations as well as spatially (state-wide).Effective and appropriate climate change adaptation requires a greater understanding and appreciation of the diverse ways in which the issue of climate change is constructed and understood. The ways in which an issue is framed should not be overlooked in interdisciplinary and intersectoral efforts given that implicit and divergent frames often impede the processes of knowledge integration and collaboration and therefore, can hinder adaptation processes. This study used frame analysis to identify and summarize the climate change frames in public health and water resource management texts. Five frames emerged from the analysis of the public health texts: Preventing direct and indirect health impacts, promoting health and sustainability, climate change as a complex problem, strengthening the evidence base, and health equity in a changing climate. Three frames emerged from the analysis of water resource management texts: planning and decision-making under uncertainty, managing multiple drivers of water insecurity, and understanding impacts on complex systems. Drawing on insights from this work, we assert that the notion of frames and the process of frame-reflection are useful tools to foster integration and intersectoral collaboration and an opportunity to foster enabling conditions for climate change adaptation.Climate change has affected both the natural and human systems, of which the women in the rural areas and their livelihood practices are the mostly affected. This study was conducted in some selected rural communities of Osun state in Southwest, Nigeria among women involved in different livelihood practices to find out issues about climate change impacts on the rural women such as: Are the rural women aware of climate change and its impacts? How prepared are they for climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies? Are there any socio-cultural barriers to combating climate change? The study therefore focused attention on their beliefs, attitude and perception about climate change. It also discussed the barriers their beliefs and attitude posed to the establishment and implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies in the rural areas. Focus Group Discussions, in-depth interview and questionnaire were employed to capture awareness, actual beliefs and attitude, the effect of such attitude and beliefs on adopting mitigation and adaptation strategies. Data collected were analysed using Atlas.ti and SPSS. Most of the women in the rural areas are aware of the impacts of climate change in their environment, especially, on their livelihoods. However, the awareness level has not impacted on them positively to adopt any mitigation and adaptation strategies. This is due to their belief system that climate change is not a consequence of anthropogenic activities. Recommendations were made as to how these problems could be solved for the women in the rural areas to embrace mitigation and adaptation strategies.Climate change determines the retreat of ice. This has created a huge access to petroleum, attracting strong interest by some states, especially energy hungry-countries and increasing competition between states, resulting in tension and threats, even military ones. Climate change has, therefore, to be perceived as a threat to international peace and security. However, recognition of the nexus between climate change, human security and conflicts in the prism of international law and politics is weak, leading to a difficulty institutions have for regulating and governing this nexus. Climate change can thus be considered as threat-multiplier, something that can exacerbate existing tensions, and the resolution of this threat will be the most difficult task to achieve where adaptation takes place in fragile and vulnerable areas, such as the Arctic, an area which is highly exposed to environmental risks and uncertainty. The region is populated by one of the most vulnerable groups, the indigenous people, such as the Inuit of the Arctic with low adaptive capacity compared to the pace of change. In the Arctic Environmental Ocean governance, access to natural resources, the potential of navigability, extension of maritime borders, and the desire of some states to extend their jurisdiction, all depict a situation of criss-crossing potential conflicts that could escalate and should, therefore, be perceived as "tinderboxes". This article relatedly explores the existing legal framework in the case of the Arctic environmental ocean to provide effective and legitimate governance for a peaceful and "stable space" to prevent threats from both Arctic and non-Arctic states. It will be shown that Arctic Environmental Ocean activities need multi-level governance (global, regional, national and local) and that Arctic environmental security challenges cannot be addressed without a broader holistic vision. The article treat the United Nations regulatory level and how it could support many issues which have an impact on Arctic Environmental Ocean governance, and the Law on the Sea. Methodologically, the way to increase effectiveness to maintain and stabilize the Arctic environmental ocean governance entails that "stability" is achieved by integrating elements of climatology, international law, political science and agent based modelling to act in a preventative way to protect the Arctic environmental ocean and its societies and formulate effective policies. The conclusion led on how the current Arctic environmental ocean framework could be changed in order to increase effectiveness by incorporating risk analysis into a universal equation based model to redesign a new regulatory package at United Nations level and recommend changes at institutional level.Climate Change is a major challenge to agricultural development in Africa, Nigeria in particular and the world at large. Agriculture, as one of the most weather-dependent of all human activities, is highly vulnerable to climate change. The study was carried out to examine farmers' perception and adaptation strategies to citrus and tomatoes response to climate change in Northern Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select the study area. Purposely, North central and North-eastern zones were selected due to distinct comparative advantage in horticultural crop production. Benue (Central zone) and Gombe (North-east) agricultural zones were selected using random sampling technique, while Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) zones that are known for mass production of selected horticultural crops within the state were purposively selected. However, 271 farmers were proportionately sampled. Secondary (weather data) as well as primary sources were used for data collection. Primary sources of data used include structured questionnaire and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) which were subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics. Result of analysis shows that majority of the respondents were between the ages of 35 and 45 years of age, married (89.7 %), and had formal education (84.5 %). Fifty-seven percent (57 %) were in high adaptation category, while 52.0 % were favorably disposed to the effect of climate change on production. Binomial logit regression shows that soil fertility, farmers' financial capacity and access to inputs to a large extent determine their choice of adaptation strategy. However, the inferential statistics result shows a significant difference in the adaptation strategies (p = 0.000, t = -24.106) and farmers' perception of citrus and tomatoes response to climate change (p - 0.004, t - - 182.269). Intervention by relevant government and nongovernmental agencies toward adaptation strategies to mitigate the effect to this response will ultimately promote food security in Nigeria.Large coastal cities are often the engines of national growth but also tend to be areas with high sensitivity to the impacts of climate change. Therefore, integrated adaptation plans are essential for turning them into resilient cities. National competitiveness strategies are, however, increasingly at odds with the very idea of resilient cities, either forcing urban sprawl to its limits or transforming green spaces into grey spaces within the city. In the midst of heated conflict about how to use public land, the role of networks of local initiatives to protect green spaces and residential rights of poor and marginal groups becomes pivotal to achieve equity and urban resilience. The aim of this paper is to explore the dynamics of such networks in Istanbul and investigate how to integrate them into local climate change adaptation plans. Conflicts over Istanbul's historical urban vegetable gardens (bostan) and the construction of the third bridge are good examples of sites of contestation which, unless resolved, seriously hinder any possibility of agreement and action on climate adaptation plans.Although climate change is a global challenge, its effects occur locally and differ by region. A feasible adaptation strategy needs to assess regional damages and their socio-economic effects. For Germany, the largest threat comes from extreme weather events, which will impact residential and commercial buildings, infrastructure and in the case of heat waves will limit labor productivity. This paper presents findings from a study of economic effects of climate change adaptation until the year 2050 in Germany on different scales. In particular, the authors have applied an input-output-based macroeconometric model, adjusting it to cope with the challenges of damages from heat waves, and river flood events, by integrating suitable adaptation measures to such events into the model. Infrastructure damages, shifts from domestic production to imports, and low levels of productivity due to heat waves, are some of the topics the paper deals with. Comparing scenarios with (a) integrated extreme weather events and (b) adaptation measures with a reference scenario without extreme weather or adaptation, the simulation results reveal slightly negative effects on economic sectors and Germany's economy as a whole. These effects intensify over time and hurt the economy. Adaptation measures reduce the damages and pay off, but the economy is still worse off with climate change.Many regions of the world are experiencing impacts of climate change of increasing variability, including drought and flood events. Proactive adaptation to climate change builds resiliency and reduces vulnerability to extreme events, lessening their impact and also their classification as "disasters." Adaptive strategies need to address the changing climate, other exposures (i.e. globalization and neo-liberalism), and sensitivities (i.e. unequal access to economic capital or lack of human capital). This paper presents a research framework used by an international and interdisciplinary research project for assessing and building resiliency to climate change and extreme events of drought and flood in five countries of the Americas. The paper discusses how past, present, and future vulnerabilities are integrated into the research process, the complexities and nuances of dealing with local vulnerabilities to extreme climate events, and the incorporation of an adaptive governance assessment.The adoption of climate smart agriculture as an adaptation strategy is overwhelmingly stressed in recent times. The Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan 2009 has envisaged adaptation through adoption of climate smart agriculture. Although the literature on agricultural adaptation in general has noticeably increased in recent times, little is known about the adoption of climate smart agriculture as a strategy of adaptation against climate change and extreme events. This study is intended to achieve two objectives. First, to assess the status of the adoption of climate smart agriculture as an adaptation strategy and second to examine the factors that influence the adoption of climate smart agriculture in environmentally stressed areas of coastal Bangladesh. The empirical part of this study was conducted in Dacope Upazila (sub-district) of south-west coastal Bangladesh. Two hundred and thirty five randomly selected households were interviewed through a semi-structured questionnaire during March-June in 2011. From a literature review, 25 indicators which capture three dimensions of climate smart agriculture, such as sustainability of production, resilience to change and the potential for mitigation of emissions were used in the questionnaire. Responses against each of these were rated in a 5-point Likert scale. Information about various socio-demographic, economic, ecological, and adaptive behavioural characteristics of households and their farms were collected as well. By employing the Principle Component Analysis (PCA) technique, weak adopters and strong adopters of the three dimensions of climate smart agriculture are identified. Finally, by employing the Multivariate Probit model, the influence of various factors on the adoption of climate smart agriculture are assessed. The adoption of sustainable production is mostly related to the frequent exposure to rainfall (irrigation facility), sharecropping, and the age of the household head. The adoption of adaptive measures for resilient agriculture are related to frequent exposures to dry spells, the size of farm landholding and frequent exposures to saline water. On the other hand the adoption of measures for the reduction of emissions are related to land degradation by salt, membership of a social group, and the education of the head of household. Other factors have very limited influence in this regard. Finally this study came up with some policy suggestions, the implementation of which would help the coastal inhabitants to better adopt climate smart agriculture as an adaptation strategy to ensure livelihood and food security against climate change and extreme events.Lack of perception of the risks posed by climate change has been identified as a major constraint to social adaptation. Factors contributing to risk perception include experience of extreme weather events; socio-cultural factors (norms and values); knowledge of causes, impacts and responses, and socio-demographics. Qualitative data was collected from a series of participatory placed-based workshops conducted in the Greater Sydney and South East regions of New South Wales, Australia with participants drawn from a mix of 12 urban and rural communities. Workshop discussions were based on an Emergency Management Framework: Prepare, Prevent, Respond and Recover (PPRR) for the most important local climate hazards-bushfires, drought, storms, and flooding. Qualitative information from the workshops was examined for evidence of the role of risk perception in the management of natural resources for extreme climate events and the capacity of communities to adapt. Perception of risk differed among locations (urban vs. rural) and types of events, in particular bushfire and flood. Recent experience of an event, livelihood dependency on natural resources and the socio-demographic dynamics of communities were identified as factors contributing to adaptive responses to improve protection of natural resources (such as soils, water and biodiversity).Climate change is arguably one of the World's gravest environmental and developmental challenge that has subsequently necessitated a re-contextualisation of many seemingly unrelated subjects such as poverty reduction, economic development, green growth, sustainability, equity and justice, trade, technology, investments and finance, and innovation. In Africa, managing climate change is hampered by Africa's adaptation deficit as caused by a lack of institutional, financial or technological capacity to adapt effectively; and a lack of effective delivery mechanisms to channel climate finance resources at the sub-national level, particularly to target the poor who are also often the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In-order to encourage debate and discussion on the role to which microfinance may have in improving climate change mitigation and adaptation, this paper expounds upon the Microfinance-Climate Finance Framework that was shortlisted for the 2014 UNDP MDG Carbon Climate Finance Innovation Award. The paper shows that microfinance institutions in Africa may be sustainable mechanisms for financing climate change initiatives whilst promoting rural development and financial inclusion. Additionally, successfully adapting to climate change requires policy makers to focus on empowering the youth to transform them into ( social) entrepreneurs capable of reducing social marginalisation and youth unemployment.The Grijalva-Usumacinta watershed in Mexico's Tabasco and Chiapas states is home to six million people and a rich biodiversity. It is also the major source of Mexico's hydropower, as well as in-land and coastal hydrocarbons. However, the area's close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico makes it highly vulnerable to climate change effects: rising sea levels, destructive hurricanes, heightened rainfall and floods. These climate change impacts could be devastating, particularly for the 31 % of the population that live in extreme poverty and face food insecurity. This paper presents an inter-disciplinary assessment of future climate change scenarios and associated impacts in the region, particularly for vulnerable populations living in rural areas. It focuses on the role of institutions in mediating interactions between climate change impacts and livelihoods, as well as in shaping adaptation responses. The assessment used can be broadly applied in comparable settings in developing states and emerging economies, with increasing climate change risks and threats. In so doing, it provides a reliable methodology that can be used to assess regional vulnerability and design climate change adaptation initiatives in rural areas.Many regions of the world are experiencing the impacts of climate change, which include the increasing variability of weather as well as increased drought and flood. Although many areas have had a long history of this variability and have a strong historic practice of adaptation, increasing variability has had a significant impact on adaptive strategies of agricultural producers over the last several years. Drawing on comparative vulnerability studies of agricultural producers in dryland river basins in Argentina, Canada, and Colombia, this paper presents an analysis of the adaptive strategies employed by agricultural producers in responding to climate change impacts and an analysis of how these adaptive strategies have built resilience and improved producers' living conditions. Common exposures and sensitivities, linked with increasing variability, isolate important new adaptive strategies. Particular attention to the connection of these strategies to social, economic and institutional capital and the inter-relationship of these provides important insight for future adaptation. These research findings will be useful for governments, policymakers, and organizations assisting with adaptation.Extreme weather events and the resulting hydro-climatic disasters have increased in frequency and intensity in recent decades, confirming trends outlined in the Fourth and Fifth IPCC reports on the increased susceptibility of Southeast Europe to drought, extreme temperatures, heat waves, and floods. Currently, climate change in the region is most apparent in the frequency and intensity of climate extremes, specifically in temperature and precipitation. These changes may significantly affect the water sector in Bulgaria by the end of this century. The long-term strategic objective of the water sector in Bulgaria is to ensure sustainable use of water resources and to secure the future needs for water of the population, economy and aquatic ecosystems. The water sector operates in three main business areas: plumbing (supply, drainage and sanitation), irrigation (irrigation, drainage and protection from the harmful effects of water) and hydropower systems and equipment (dams and hydropower facilities). The operation of each one of these systems depends on the availability, quantity, and quality of water. This paper analyzes the impact and sensitivity of the Bulgarian water sector to climate change and assesses the sector's vulnerability index. The results show that the water sector in Bulgaria is characterised by higher sensitivity and vulnerability toward changes in water quantity and quality and to climate-related extremes such as drought and floods. The Climate Change Vulnerability Index describes the sector as moderately vulnerable to climate change over the 2016-2035 time horizon. Some adaptation measures are proposed in respect of these results. The need of better integration between Water Framework Directive, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR) and EU Strategy for adaptation to climate change (2013) are discussed.The role of human activities in degradation of estuarine resources has been well documented. Besides the effects of climate change, activities such as clearing of mangroves for tourism, use of inappropriate fishing gear and excessive use of pesticides for agricultural productivity are the most powerful ecological stressors. In the Sahelian climate zone, hydrological regimes are changing due to reduced river flow and increase in atmospheric temperatures leading to the formation of inverse estuaries. The evaluation and documentation of local adaptation practices is one way to prevent "conservation bottlenecks" and encourage sustainable use of estuarine resources. This study used a questionnaire-based approach to evaluate local adaptation strategies to climate-induced ecological changes in the Tanbi Wetland National Park (TWNP) over the past three decades, targeting the communities that are engaged in the four major socio-economic sectors in the wetland i.e. Fishing, Agriculture, Oyster collection and Tourism. The agricultural zone presented the best local adaptation techniques employed as a response to ecosystem changes in the TWNP (23.53 %), followed by tourism zones (7.35 %) and fishing (5.88 %). With the disappearance of many fish species within the same timeframe, this leaves much to be desired. Bearing in mind that fisheries and tourism are the second and third largest contributors to the Gambia's GDP, this paper provides useful recommendations for management of this important wetland.The impacts of climate change are expected to be the most devastating market failure in modern times. India's vulnerability to climate change is apparent with the frequent occurrence of flood, drought and cyclones in the recent past. Agriculture being one of the primary sources of livelihood of the country and the most climate centric activity, climate change is likely to significantly affect the key outcomes of agriculture systems and economic development. The most practical way to manage the undesirable climatic consequences is adaptation. Therefore, farm-level analysis of adaptive endeavors is prime requisite to understand the dynamics of adaptation to climate change. This paper, tries to identify the major parameters which determine Indian farmers' awareness and expectation of climate change and the factors affecting their adaptive choices. The study also attempts to assess the key adaptive strategies which farmers intend to adapt depending upon agro-climatic conditions and constrained by their socio-economic situations. The observations of this paper will help in identification of micro-level barriers to adaptation and will facilitate appropriate policy formulation to ensure maximum returns out of the changing climatic conditions.This paper exemplifies how agricultural production suffers from climate change and how short term seasonal rainfall prediction improves its resilience under tropical lowland rice production in Indonesia. An introduction to and explanations on climate change and long term climate predictions in agriculture form the first parts of this paper. Two problems haunt seasonal climate predictions for farmers to increase their resilience. These are the skill of predictions and the terminology chosen for monthly updated seasonal rainfall predictions. These "scenarios"are part of climate change adaptation attempts on the islands of Java and Lombok, Indonesia. Originally, NOAA and subsequently NOAA/IRI monthly ENSO predictions for a period of 3 months were chosen to build planting season "scenarios", because they often explicitly mention Indonesia in their predictions, including recent higher atmosphere convection situations. More recently a check was added on these ENSO predictions, by reading IRI prediction maps for Asia, provided each third Thursday of the month. These maps are more detailed than the written predictions but not more accurate. However, these maps make it possible to separate Java from Nusa Tenggara (region of the islands east of Bali, like Lombok). The wordings chosen for the monthly SMS messages on seasonal rainfall "scenarios" to farmers use terminology of probabilities as common in daily life. Replies to February 2015 questionnaires show how satisfied farmers are but also how they must get used to this wording.This work seeks to comprehend how covos, anzol and redes (creels, hooks and net fishermen-artisanal fishing gear) artisanal fishermen in the Fishing Artisanal Local Community (small-scale fisheries for subsistence or local, small markets, generally using traditional fishing techniques and small boats -12 m) from Peniche, explain and deal with Climate Change in their daily lives. The study was based on a sociological theoretical and methodological approach with contributions of environment sciences. Qualitative methodological procedures included the application of a semi-structured interview to 12 artisanal fishermen between March and May 2013. Findings were analysed with a content analysis matrix built in the basis of the initial theoretical framework and, at the same time, integrating the new information resulting from and on the field, and reported the elements that characterize the relation of the fisherman with Climate Change. The findings in this study characterize the scenario where lay rationalities contextualize, highlighting the importance of considering the qualitative approaches to climate change by studying and interpreting lay rationalities.In 2010 and 2011 Colombia was hit by severe floods. After this situation, Colombian government and river basin authorities started developing plans and preparing actions for adaptation to climate change. Together with Dutch institutes a demonstration study and capacity building program was executed in 2013-2014. A systematic analysis of future extreme discharges (as a proxy for the risks of flooding) for the upper and middle Magdalena river basin and water shortages for the Coello sub catchment was done using state of the art downscaling and hydrological modeling tools. In this analysis plausible future projections of climate (based on IPCC fifth assessment), land use and water demand (based on expert workshops and literature) were used to explore consequences of climate change. Recent maps, data and expertise of Colombian partners contributed for necessary input data and to validate the tools used. The study is presenting main results and is discussing its limitations and replicability. Climate scenarios show a persistent increase in the occurrence of extreme rainfall events and that, as a consequence, extreme discharges like during the recent floods in 2011 are likely to increase as well. The return period of the 2011 discharge is already quite high under current climate and might increase by a factor five under climate change. For water shortages the results are more ambiguous showing both the possibility of an increase and decrease of the unmet water demand depending on different future scenarios, the water use category and location within the catchment. The unmet demand is however also under the current climate substantial. The question whether this unmet demand is critical or not could not be answered. The modest length of the reference period in comparison with time period of the ENSO phenomenon, the relatively restricted modeling effort (only using hydrological and no hydrodynamic and damage-cost models) are limitations to keep in mind when interpreting these results. There are no principle barriers for replication the methodology in countries like Colombia that in addition is steadily increasing its data, modeling and knowledge capacities. For the adaptation tipping point analysis presented in this study the main challenge is to derive the necessary objectives, sufficiently supported by the relevant stakeholders and policies, as the starting point for a targeted adaptation process.Coastal areas and wetlands are on the frontline of climate change and variability in Bangladesh. Small-scale coastal and floodplain fishers continually face a host of cross-scale stressors, some induced by climate change. This research is based on 21-month long field study carried out in two coastal and floodplain fishing villages represented by two distinct ethnic groups. Adopting nuanced people-centered ethnographic approach of field research, this study examines the ways small-scale fishers address the arrays of stressors in order to construct and reconstruct their livelihoods. Findings of our study highlight fishers' capability to plan and construct creative livelihood strategies and their adaptability in the face of stresses. We observed that fisher's coping strategies comprise a fluid combination of complex overlapping set of actions that they undertake based on their capabilities, socio-cultural embeddedness, and experiential learning under different adverse situations. Broadly, the coping strategies embody under economic, physiological, social, survival, institutional and religiosity-psychological factors. In this article, considering its predominant roles, only economic dimensions of coping actions that fishers undertake under unusual and abnormal stresses for survival and well-being are analyzed.This paper discusses the issue of how to integrate the impact of climate change into a risk analysis framework at both, business and country levels. It is argued that climate change related risk should be treated as a particular risk category. It is further emphasised that a lack of perception contributes to a systemic failure of integrating climate change related risk as a regular feature in a risk analysis framework, after all, there has to be acceptance of a particular risk before one can assess it. It is further argued that risk analysis and risk management is not just about identifying risk but equally in identifying opportunities as well, and the impact of climate change provides a good example for that.Airports ask for environmental, social and economic sustainability instances as the core of the project development. The project design must focus on the role of sustainability taking into account new performance's classes to face higher levels of building resilience to the changing climate effects. Airports need to adopt long-term strategic approach to address the need of adaptation to the climate change and mitigation of impacts on the environment. This will require new designs and materials for future airport infrastructure and retrofitting of the existing ones. The paper reports ongoing research analysis of a broad study focused on the evaluation of the project compliance with the green building requirements and the definition of technological strategies for climate change adaptation. The correct identification and evaluation of climate sensitivities enable to prioritize adaptive responses. It also creates new opportunities for airport authorities and operators to anticipate the consequences of project changing conditions during operation using sustainable strategies to enhance building resilience. European and international airports examples and case studies are presented in this paper in order to illustrate the good practices and methods already adopted for assessing and minimising the risk of climate change and to formulate a proposal for the design of airports for the future.Much of the Brazilian territory is located in tropical regions, where yearlong high temperatures are an obstacle to the best expression of milk potential of high performance dairy cows from Continental breeds. In southern Brazil, some areas have subtropical characteristics, with mild summers and cold winters where average temperatures are within the thermal comfort range for dairy cattle breeds of European origin. To assess the relationship between meteorological variables and milk production from Continental breeds in southern Brazil was the goal of this study. A multivariate analysis was carried out using meteorological variables, including minimum, maximum and average compensated temperature, relative humidity of air, wind speed, solar radiation, temperature and humidity and temperature-humidity corrected by wind speed and solar radiation index obtained from official weather station the National Institute of Meteorology located in Castro, Parana, Brazil along with the milk production of Holstein dairy herds controlled in this municipality during the years 1996 to 2010. Although the minimum and maximum temperature variables showed higher relationships with milk production when compared with other variables, they were not responsible for a marked change in the milk production. The mesoregion of Castro, Parana, Brazil has adequate weather for milk production from high performance European dairy breeds.An important determinant of adaptive capacity to climate change and extreme events of drought and flood is institutional capital, or the assistance provided by government, civil society and private companies through programs and policy. A strong institutional capital provides adaptive strategies for agricultural producers and rural communities that not only assist in prevention of disaster, but recovery and rebuilding from disaster. But what are the components of strong institutional capital? This paper reports research studies drawing on comparative institutional governance studies of agricultural producers in river basins in Canada, Argentina, and Colombia, in relation to climate change and extreme events of drought and flood. An assessment is made comparing and contrasting the different suites of institutional capital (organizations, policy, and programs) in relation to drought and flood and their impact on different types, sizes, and sensitivities of agricultural producers. This comparative analysis provides useful insights into what specific policies and programs build resilience and how this institutional capital is distributed amongst agricultural producers. Recommendations for improving institutional capital and its equitable distribution are made. This paper will be informative for policy makers, civil society organizations, and government.Although estimates of the global climate finance flows vary, bulk of the funding has been targeted at climate change mitigation and only a fraction to adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Mitigation actions have also received more private sector funds as compared to adaptation. The current financial flows targeted at adaptation fall short of the current estimates for funding needs and call for increased private sector involvement and finance. This article discusses the mobilisation of private sector funds for climate change adaptation using experiences from the Nordic Climate Facility (NCF), a competitive partial grant facility, as a case study. Since its launch in 2009 NCF has approved financing for 49 climate change mitigation and adaptation projects in selected developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The aim of this paper is to showcase, using selected NCF projects as examples, how adapting to climate change can also have business linkages, especially when combined with mitigation activities, and how public sector funding can be used to leverage private sector funds through local business development for climate change adaptation.Historically, drought has been responded to rather than prepared for, yet studies have illustrated that proactive investment in drought risk management reduces impacts and overall response costs. One key element of preparedness is the use of sufficient climate information for monitoring, forecasting, and tracking long-term trends. In the face of a changing climate and increasing variability, these types of data are even more critical for planning and overall resiliency. The systematic use of these data to inform the drought planning component of drought risk management is a relatively recent development. Actionable science has direct applicability for planning and decision-making, and allows for an iterative process between scientists and end users that can build long-term drought resiliency. The article will describe how planners in Colorado are increasingly relying on climate data, ranging from paleoclimatological records to experimental seasonal forecasts, to guide their long-term drought preparedness and climate change adaptation efforts. This information can then be used to inform broader policy and planning efforts, unifying the scientific basis across multiple processes. In addition, the Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP), with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) as co-leads, promotes national policies encouraging proactive risk management, and provides a platform for sharing the lessons learned by the planners, policy makers, and scientists around the world. Data-driven decision-making using climate information can help depoliticize actions and increase overall resiliency and response in times of drought, which will be increasingly important as the world warms.Climate change adaptation is gaining traction as a necessary policy alongside mitigation, particularly for developing countries, many of which lack the resources to adapt. However, funding for developing country adaptation remains woefully inadequate. This paper identifies the burden of responsibility that individuals in the UK are willing to incur in support of adaptation projects in developing countries. Results from a nationally representative survey indicate that UK residents are willing to contribute 27 pound per year (or a median of 6 pound per year) towards developing country adaptation (US$30 and $7 using the World Bank's purchasing power conversion factors). This represents less than one-third of the back-of-the-envelope $100-$140 per capita per year that the authors estimate would be needed to raise the $70-$100 bn/yr recommended by the World Bank to fund developing country adaptation. Regressions indicate that willingness to pay is driven mostly by a combination of beliefs and perceptions about one's own knowledge levels, rather than actual knowledge of climate change. We conclude that, to engage the many different audiences that make up the 'public', communication efforts must move beyond the simple provision of information and instead, connect with people's existing values and beliefs.Until recently, climate scientists were unable to link the occurrence of extreme weather events to anthropogenic climate change. In recent years, however, climate science has made considerable advancements, making it possible to assess the influence of anthropogenic climate change on single weather events. Using a new technique called 'probabilistic event attribution', scientists are able to assess whether anthropogenic climate change has changed the likelihood of the occurrence of a recorded extreme weather event (e.g. an extreme storm season, extreme rainfall, heatwave, drought, etc.). These advancements raise the expectation that this branch of climate science can contribute to climate adaptation efforts. This paper examines the normative underpinnings of these policy discussions. To date, the debates revolve around whether the findings of attribution science can be used to establish moral liability for harms resulting from climate change. On close analysis, this normative framework has serious shortcomings. The paper rejects the moral liability framework and suggests, through a review of the international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC, that the science of event attribution can inform adaptation policy within a risk-pooling and climate risk insurance framework. The proposed framework is defended both on normative grounds and on the basis of its potential application within the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage under the Cancun Adaptation Framework.Most of developing countries suffer from climate change impacts. Scenarios projected increase intensity and frequency of climate hazards especially sea level rise and storm surge. Coastal areas in developing countries already suffer coastal erosion in developing countries situation of coastal areas is the worst due to human-induced pressures on environmental and absence of sustainable development. The inevitability of climate change highlights the importance of adaptation. Climate change adaptation through land use planning strategies increase the resilience to risks, enhance economic and social conditions of community and safeguarding resources for next generations. Mainstreaming the UN millennium development goals in climate change adaptation process through sustainable planning of coastal areas will maximize the benefits of the adaptation process. Land use planning adapt with sea level rise risks through use some strategies ranging between official or local plans, zoning, land subdivision and development controls, design guidelines, environmental review of development projects. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Increased population and urban growth have made converting open spaces that can cause flooding. Thailand and Indonesia are two of the most prone areas to various types of disaster but especially to floods. However, the climate change is the significance factor impact to floods risk. The climate change makes direct and indirect effects to floods. In addition, adaptation and mitigation to climate change are an important aspect to reduce and prevent the impact of floods. This paper tries to explore flood management in Ayutthaya, Thailand and Samarinda, Indonesia. Primary and secondary data are used in this paper. This objective of this paper is done by using qualitative analysis. This paper shows that the flood risk on both cities has same characteristics and indicates that the role of government of Ayutthaya also stronger than Samarinda. The comparison shows that flood management especially on adaptation is main challenges for Indonesia government that will require further plan to establish how manage water, and increase adaptive capacity for reduce the flood damage. This paper provides us to understand the important of climate change adaptation in real cases. As flood hazard, we learn about the impact of big flood causing to damage loss in many sectors, and we also learn to assess the risk by assess vulnerability and adaptive capacity. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Many scientific evidences have shown that Earth's climate is rapidly changing. By 2050, European Union is aiming to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the building sector. Achieving this target might help the mitigation of global warming, but the climate change seems inevitable. This means that both new and refurbished buildings should be able to face those conditions that they are going to experience during their lifetime. Therefore, any building design should be checked both for current and future climate scenarios. This study describes the use of a downscaling method named morphing to generate future weather scenarios and intends to support the design process of a deep energy retrofit of a day care center in order to improve the energy and thermal comfort performance of the building under the current and future weather scenarios. The retrofit concept of the building also includes hybrid ventilation, automated solar shading, lighting controls and renewable energy generation systems. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.We tested whether exposing rice plants to abiotic stress (salt or shade) during vegetative growth affects the chilling tolerance of reproductive organs, which is one of the most important traits for rice growing in a cool climate; we used two rice cultivars with different tolerance in two growing seasons. We divided the vegetative growth into three phases to clarify the most sensitive period: 7-22 days after transplanting (DAT), 23-38 DAT and 39-54 DAT. Chilling tolerance of the pre-stressed plants was based on the male sterility induced by low temperatures. Shade and salt stress during all three vegetative growth phases significantly reduced stomatal conductance. Shade decreased the specific leaf weight and the leaf sugar and starch contents, but salt had no significant effect, despite causing leaf damage. Low temperatures during the reproductive stage induced spikelet sterility in all plants, but the magnitude was greater in the salt-and shade-stressed plants of both cultivars, especially those stressed late during vegetative growth. The increased spikelet sterility caused by chilling was closely related to the reduction of the total spikelet number per panicle. This is the first study to show that salt and low light stress during vegetative growth increased the susceptibility of rice plants to chilling damage during panicle development.Chalky rice (Oryza sativa L.) grains are induced by high temperature during the grain-filling period. Plant nitrogen status also affects the occurrence of basal- and back-white grains (BBWG). The objective of this study was to elucidate the relations between nitrogen availability per spikelet during the grain-filling period (N-GF) and each of the percentage of BBWG and grain protein content (GPC). We further compared the effect of the components of N-GF determined before heading (N-BH) and after heading (N-AH) on BBWG and GPC. We grew the rice cultivar 'Koshihikari' in pots in 2012 and 2013, and top-dressed nitrogen at the panicle formation and heading stages, under two (2012) or three (2013) temperature regimes during the grain-filling period. GPC was explained well by N-GF, but BBWG was not. BBWG was best explained in a multiple-regression equation by mean air temperature after heading and by N-BH and N-AH. The partial correlation coefficients for N-BH were 1.6 and 3.0 times those for N-AH in 2012 and 2013, respectively. On the other hand, in a multiple-regression equation for GPC, the partial correlation coefficients for N-BH were 0.91 and 0.71 times those for N-AH in 2012 and 2013, respectively. These results suggest that rice grains are most sensitive to plant nitrogen status before heading for BBWG but after heading for GPC, and that there is an optimal timing for nitrogen top-dressing that would maximize the reduction in BBWG per unit increment of GPC.Evidences are accumulating on the long-term changes in seawater temperature, acidity, deoxygenation, cyclones and sea level in the Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem. These changes have impacts on ocean productivity, habitats and biological processes. Distributional and phenological changes in fish species, and increase in frequency and intensity of coral bleaching are becoming evident. Fisheries, particularly traditional fisheries, will be the most vulnerable to climate change. Climate warming will also affect the inland and coastal aquaculture sectors of the Bay of Bengal LME countries. Impacts will include changes in hydrology and therefore availability of water, physical threats to aquaculture facilities, and prevalence or spread of known and new diseases of aquatic organisms. The most important and critical adaptation measures will be to develop human resources capacity to increase understanding of the marine resources, and implement measures to sustainably manage fisheries. Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem project's two main directions taken for climate change response are contribution to the understanding of large-scale processes and climate change effects on one hand, and contributions to adaptation by addressing habitat degradation, pollution and fisheries management, as well as developing capacity and resilience of coastal populations on the other. Recognizing that current problems in weak fisheries management make the sector vulnerable to climate change, BOBLME supports adaptation and increases resilience by strengthening fisheries management and providing assistance to improve fisheries assessments. By strengthening governance, BOBLME also contributes to the integration of climate change adaptation into decision-making and response initiatives, e.g. disaster risk management plans. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.A key aim of the Eastern Seaboard Climate Change Initiative (ESCCI) is understanding the effect of climate change on the eastern seaboard of Australia, and the implications for climate change adaptation in this area. The New South Wales (NSW)/Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Regional Climate Modelling project (NARCliM) has produced three dynamically downscaled reanalysis climate datasets along with 12 downscaled general circulation model (GCM) projections of current (1990-2009) and future climate. It is expected that the NARCliM dataset will be used for many climate change impact studies including water security assessment. Therefore, in this study we perform a case study investigation into the usefulness and limitations of using NARCliM data for water security assessment, using the Lower Hunter urban water supply system managed by Hunter Water Corporation. We compare streamflow and reservoir levels simulated using NARCliM rainfall and a gridded historical rainfall dataset (AWAP) and focus our analysis on the differences in the simulated streamflow and reservoir levels. We show that when raw (i.e. not bias-corrected) NARCliM rainfall and potential evapotran-spiration (PET) data is used to simulate streamflow and reservoir storage levels, some of the NARCliM datasets produce unrealistic results when compared with the simulations using AWAP; for example, some NARCliM datasets simulate reservoirs at or near empty while the AWAP reservoir simulations rarely drop below 60%. The bias-corrected NARCliM rainfall (corrected to AWAP) produces estimates of streamflow and reservoir levels that have a closer, but still inconsistent, match with the streamflow and reservoir levels simulated using AWAP directly. The inconsistency between the simulations using bias-corrected rainfall and historical AWAP rainfall is potentially because while bias-correction reduces systematic deviations it does not fix temporal rainfall sequencing issues. Additionally, the NARCliM PET is not bias-corrected and using bias-corrected rainfall with uncorrected PET in hydrological models results in physical inconsistencies in the rainfall-PET relationship and simulated streamflow. We demonstrate that rainfall plays a large role in the streamflow simulations, while PET seems to play a large role in the reasonableness of the simulated reservoir dynamics by determining the evaporation losses from the reservoirs. The downscaled GCM datasets that simulate the greatest average PET for 1990-2009 show reservoirs often (unrealistically) near empty. This study highlights the need to assess the validity of all climate data for the applications required, with a focus on long-term statistics for reservoir modelling and ensuring realism and coherence across all projected variables.The importance of problems caused by global warming and increased GHG emissions have been recognised by the international community which responded to this challenge through a growing number of studies, agreements and policies dealing with climate change prevention, mitigation and adaptation. The shift to green economy is confirmed as the highest development aim, while establishing a balanced relationship between environmental policies, economic efficiency, technological upgrading and behavioural transition is one of main global assignments of our epoch. The importance of knowledge and innovations is also emphasised, while their availability, diffusion and exchange represent a key-reinforcement of green transition, especially in societies which are facing severe economic, social and environmental problems caused by sensitive local circumstances. The case of Serbia, which is the focus of this article, presents one of possible paths towards climate change adaptation, conditioned by more than two turbulent decades of the recent history of the country. Since democratic changes in 2000, environmental issues have become visible on institutional (governmental) level - through introduction of new environmental laws, research funding, preparation and implementation of specific documents or strategies, and on non-institutional (non-governmental) level - as different environmentally focused initiatives, usually supported by international, regional or local funds. However, on both levels information networks represent an inevitable structural ingredient, which enables a sustainable and locally adjusted approach to climate adaptation. Following global trends, information networks in Serbia are mainly used in the domain of public communication of climate changes, covering three major thematic areas of climate adaptability - human behaviour, ecological awareness and general efficiency. Considering all these specificities, the article provides a review of detected practices related to the use of information networks in climate change adaptation on both global and local level, stressing the possible benefits and limitations in the context of Serbia. The first part of the article introduces a global background of the problem of climate adaptation, summarising major environmental trends, research problems and policy responses, and emphasising the relation between climate change and urban(ised) environment. The second part is dedicated to the case of Serbia, focusing on three aspects - general condition of the environment, the legal framework and the perception/recognition of urban context and its environmental effects in recent development documents. The third part is focused on the relation between information networks, built environment/cities and climate changes, providing an overview of global trends and Serbian practice, while possible improvements of detected local weaknesses are given in the concluding part.The paper argues that policies towards upland communities in Vietnam tend to reinforce land use strategies that increase vulnerability to climate-related risk and undermine adaptive capacity of upland communities. It is argued that the division of land use between intensive agriculture/tree plantation and protected forest is increasing both livelihood- and environmental risk. Qualitative interviews and group discussion with upland villagers and local government staff in two districts of north and central Vietnam suggest that farmers are facing frequent loss and damage due to floods, storms and drought. Changing production patterns, together with the increase in climate-related hazards and stresses, is changing the character of vulnerability of upland communities. The study primarily explores village-level perspectives regarding impacts of hazards and stresses, ideas of how to reduce risk, along with how related policies and institutions influence local possibilities of risk reduction and adaptation. Our fieldwork results suggest that many villagers and local leaders see adaptation and risk reduction in terms of improved irrigation and in terms of access to land and forests for their livelihoods. The findings support arguments for more integration of agriculture and forestry land use, allowing for more flexibility in the development of upland livelihoods, with the aim of facilitating adaptation to climate change.Supporting smallholder households to adapt to climate variability is a high priority for development agencies and national governments. Efforts to support climate adaptation in developing countries occur within highly dynamic contexts. Macro-level changes in national and regional economies manifest in dynamic local conditions, such as migration, changing household labour dynamics, market access and land-use options. Research aimed at developing adaptation options is often focused on particular activities or industries and struggles to take into account the broader, interrelated suite of household livelihood activities or the non-climate stressors driving change and adaptation. This paper explores the use of household types to (a) understand the diversity of household circumstances and (b) place agricultural adaptation options within the broader context of household livelihoods. Results from application in four countries are discussed, which highlight the utility of the method and identify broader level trends and drivers that are common challenges (experienced differently) across multiple contexts.Through a practical application in the municipality of Riviere-au-Tonnerre on the Northern coast of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, this article explores the advantages of using a vision of future desired conditions for planning adaptation to climate change. Such an approach was used in small kitchen meetings for the elaboration of an adaptation action plan that was approved by the municipal council in September 2013 and revised in November 2014. The impacts of climate hazards were discussed as obstacles to the desired future conditions expressed by participants. This approach allowed the planning of a number of adaptation options, to define roles and responsibilities of different actors involved and to articulate different plans that are either in existence or being developed, linking them with adaptation. Based on our observations and on other studies in the fields of social movements, psychology and risk perception, we suggest that the use of a vision in discussion meetings with local actors could increase their motivation by placing the avoidance of undesired situations in the context of reaching their aspirations, in other words by embedding a prevention problem in promotion logic. The expression of a vision of a desired future could allow them to express their values and could facilitate the framing of a plan in a way that is coherent with them. The visions could then also be used to frame awareness-raising activities along the values they express.Indigenous Arctic and Subarctic communities currently are facing a myriad of social and environmental changes. In response to these changes, studies concerning indigenous knowledge (IK) and climate change vulnerability, resiliency, and adaptation have increased dramatically in recent years. Risks to lives and livelihoods are often the focus of adaptation research; however, the cultural dimensions of climate change are equally important because cultural dimensions inform perceptions of risk. Furthermore, many Arctic and Subarctic IK climate change studies document observations of change and knowledge of the elders and older generations in a community, but few include the perspectives of the younger population. These observations by elders and older generations form a historical baseline record of weather and climate observations in these regions. However, many indigenous Arctic and Subarctic communities are composed of primarily younger residents. We focused on the differences in the cultural dimensions of climate change found between young adults and elders. We outlined the findings from interviews conducted in four indigenous communities in Subarctic Alaska. The findings revealed that (1) intergenerational observations of change were common among interview participants in all four communities, (2) older generations observed more overall change than younger generations interviewed by us, and (3) how change was perceived varied between generations. We defined "observations" as the specific examples of environmental and weather change that were described, whereas "perceptions" referred to the manner in which these observations of change were understood and contextualized by the interview participants. Understanding the differences in generational observations and perceptions of change are key issues in the development of climate change adaptation strategies.Global environmental change (GEC) is an increasingly discussed phenomenon in the scientific literature as evidence of its presence and impacts continues to grow. Yet, while the documentation of GEC is becoming more readily available, local perceptions of GEC-particularly in small-scale societies-and preferences about how to deal with it, are still largely overlooked. Local knowledge and perceptions of GEC are important in that agents make decisions (including on natural resource management) based on individual perceptions. We carried out a systematic literature review that aims to provide an exhaustive state-of-the-art of the degree to and manner in which the study of local perceptions of change are being addressed in GEC research. We reviewed 126 articles found in peer-reviewed journals (between 1998 and 2014) that address local perceptions of GEC. We used three particular lenses of analysis that are known to influence local perceptions, namely (i) cognition, (ii) culture and knowledge, and (iii) possibilities for adaptation. We present our findings on the geographical distribution of the current research, the most common changes reported, perceived drivers and impacts of change, and local explanations and evaluations of change and impacts. Overall, we found the studies to be geographically biased, lacking methodological reporting, mostly theory based with little primary data, and lacking of indepth analysis of the psychological and ontological influences in perception and implications for adaptation. We provide recommendations for future GEC research and propose the development of a "meta-language" around adaptation, perception, and mediation to encourage a greater appreciation and understanding of the diversity around these phenomena across multiple scales, and improved codesign and facilitation of locally relevant adaptation and mitigation strategies.Recent global climate changes have increased the frequency of disasters. Therefore, land-use plans should immediately account for climate change impacts, which can help to reduce the risks and damage associated with development under extreme climate events. This study used secondary data analysis, literature review, focus group discussions and key informant interviews to explore climate change issues and strategies for two townships along the coastal areas of Chiayi County, Taiwan. Accordingly, this study follows the guidelines from Taiwan's Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change to work out sustainable adaptation plans for the coastal areas. Basic principles are proposed for disaster prevention and mitigation, adaptation, and transformation. In accordance with these principles, strategies are suggested for five areas: managing water resources, restoring the ecological habitat, constructing community-based green energy storage systems, ensuring safety and reforming the landscape. The last section concludes the study.Indonesia has a great potential supply from its local resources, namely sago palm. It could be an alternative crop because its production is not significantly influenced by climate. This paper interrogates local actions in South Sulawesi Province in promoting sago palm. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), in-depth interview and observation were used for this study. The findings show that sago palm still plays an important role in providing income and food for the local community. However, a drastic change happened due to the expansion of other profitable crops during late 1990s-2000s. Sago production has also decreased significantly by 86.9% from 2006 to 2013. Several local actions have been done to revive sago palm, however, these actions were not sustainable due to heavily independent action without support from local government. Now, small initiatives with the local government are being implemented. The local government is endorsing sago palm into Regional Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMD) 2016-2020 as an alternative crop to adapt to climate change. They are also designing local regulation (PERDA) regarding the protection of sago palm. What is noteworthy is the strong commitment from the government and engaging stakeholders with rural communities wherein these became a key foundation for co-existence of sago palm for a more comprehensive view on sustainable development.Rural communities in the Peruvian Andes are already feeling the negative impacts of climate change, further impacts are expected to arrive comparatively early and be particularly damaging for indigenous communities in the mountains. Therefore there is a pressing need to ensure effective and sustained adaptation is undertaken. Rural communities studied in the Potato Park in the Cusco Region of Peru are shown to possess a number of cultural values, in Quechua known as ayni, ayllu, yanantin and chanincha. These form the foundation of the community's ability to successfully respond to the challenges presented by climate change. The limited current adaptation strategies and methods not only neglect these values but also undermine and erode them. Future strategies should instead complement, maintain and utilise these values.This paper investigates the hydrological response of glacierized headwater catchments to future climate change in the Otztal Alps, Austria. To this end, two conceptual hydrological models, HBV (Hydrologiska Byrans Vattenbalansavdelning) and HQsim, are applied for the simulation of future daily discharge in three (nested) catchments with varying degrees of glaciation. The models are forced with downscaled climate change projections, and outputs from an empirical glacier model, which is able to simulate future glacial evolution. Under the future conditions, the outcomes show initially that runoff increases for all catchments without changes in the runoff regimes. In the long term, summer runoff is expected to decrease and winter/spring runoff is expected to increase in all catchments. These runoff changes are accompanied with regime shifts from glacial/glacio-nival runoff regimes to runoff regimes with a higher nival component. Changing runoff conditions might also lead to changes in the seasonality of annual flood peaks with an earlier appearance of flood peaks, and an increasing appearance of low flow conditions during summer months. The outcomes of the two hydrological models show minor differences. The results of this study provide improved understanding of the future impact of climate change on the water cycle of glacierized Alpine catchments.Knowing the height of the snowfall limit during precipitation events is crucial for better understanding a number of hydro-climatic processes, for instance glacier-climate interactions or runoff from high mountain catchments. However, knowledge on heights of the phase change during precipitation events is limited by the small number of meteorological measurements available at high altitudes, such as the Himalayas. The bright band (BB) of satellite based radar data may be a promising proxy for the snow/rain transition during particular stratiform precipitation events over high mountain regions. The BB is a horizontal layer of stronger radar reflectivity caused by the melting of hydrometeors at the level where solid precipitation turns into rain. Here, we present BB heights detected by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR) 2A23 algorithm over a mountainous area. To assess the performance of BB heights, we have compared a 17-year data set of BB estimations of the TRMM PR with radiosonde observations and meteorological station data from Srinagar, Kashmir Valley, India. During March to November, the BB lies mostly about 200 to 800m below the freezing level (FL) recorded by radiosondes. The correlation between BB and FL heights extrapolated from a ground-based station is smaller and depends on the timing of the air temperature measurement - an important finding for applying extrapolation techniques in data sparse regions. Further on, we found a strong seasonal and monthly variability of the BB height, e.g. extending in summer months from about 2700m to almost 6000m asl. Comparison with near surface rain intensity from the TRMM PR product 2A25 indicates that - during intense monsoonal summer precipitation events - the BB height is concentrated between about 3500 and 4000m asl. We can conclude that TRMM PR BB data deliver valuable complementary information for regional or seasonal variability in snow/rain transition in data sparse regions and, further on, BB data from surrounding lowlands could be used to validate extrapolation approaches to assess snowfall limit for mainly stratiform precipitation events where stations at high elevations are missing.Airports are often classed as nationally critical infrastructure as they facilitate both mobility and economic growth. However, due to their fixed infrastructure and vulnerability to disruptive weather, they are particularly at risk from the potential consequences of climate change, with impacts such as sea level rise, higher temperatures and greater weather extremes creating both an operational and business risk. Therefore, to protect vital infrastructure and ensure future service continuity for airport operations, it is necessary to develop resilience to such risks. This paper expands on previous analysis from EUROCONTROL, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, to further clarify what the expected impacts for airports might be. In particular it highlights the need for action in areas which are expected to experience both high growth in demand and significant climate change impacts. It also presents an analysis of the outcomes of a stakeholder consultation which identifies lack of awareness, information and guidance as key barriers preventing aviation organisations from taking climate adaptation. It then introduces work carried out by EUROCONTROL in collaboration with aviation sector organisations to develop awareness of those risks so as to promote action to develop resilience. Following this, it identifies some key questions to ask when initiating a climate change risk assessment at an airport and provides examples of organisations which have already carried out risk assessments. Finally, the paper presents the outcomes of a recent workshop on Adapting Aviation to a Changing Climate which identified four key priorities for action to develop climate change resilience. It highlights identifying knowledge gaps, raising awareness and promoting collaboration as key steps in building climate change resilience for the European and global aviation sector. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.International cooperation between national road owners can aid structuring and implementing climate change adaptation strategies throughout the European network. Climate change adaptation on roads can be defined as the concrete measures implemented to reduce vulnerability to more extreme weather phenomena in the future in order to increase resilience and robustness for continuous road safety and mobility. As evident in multiple scientific papers and authorities, such as the IPCC, climate change adaptation is gaining more general interest and political focus since actions of mitigation to climate change no longer seem to singlehandedly provide sufficient effect to future sustainable transportation on roads. As with actions related to mitigating climate change, allocating resources to climate change adaptation and successfully anchoring this subject in an organization, e.g. a national road authority (NRA), can be a highly demanding task which oftentimes can be overwhelming in its nature. Implementation of climate change R&D projects, alone, is a topic where interdisciplinary approaches are of high request, regularly resulting in time-consuming processes with many potential pitfalls, politically and technically. Therefore, the CEDR I4 group on mitigation and adapting to climate change has decided to have the following three topics as a combined objective to generate an outcome which will act as a template for organizations, e.g. NRAs, to initiate, develop, and/or complete climate change adaptation measures: Strategy and action plan Awareness Risk methodology approach The strategy template will focus on managing, improving, preventing and cooperation, and will provide specific examples on areas to study. These include examples of information to road users, incident management, implementation through planning phases, tools for risk analyses, legislative work, research and information sharing and many others. Likewise, a template for an action plan is provided, giving examples on how to ensure responsibility and anchor climate change adaptation in the organization in order to actually direct the organization towards a more climate-resilient profile. The organizational awareness of climate change adaptation in an interdisciplinary context is considered undeniably crucial in this regard, since this will form the basis on how to act and prioritize resources. Examples of known methodologies of climate change adaptation will be highlighted to act as inspirational examples. As an example, such methodologies include risk mapping, e.g. the Blue Spot model or the Quick Scan approach. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Infrastructure is the backbone of our society. Citizens, companies and governments have come to rely on and expect uninterrupted availability of the road network. Extreme weather is an important factor for the reliability of the road network. At the same time it is generally understood that the climate is changing and that this will have significant effects on the road infrastructure. Since road infrastructure is vital to society, climate change calls for timely adaptation. Immediately, questions arise how to deal with the large uncertainties involved in the projections of future climate, how to assess their effects on the road infrastructure and related socio economic developments, and how to integrate adaptation into decision making. The ROADAPT project was commissioned under the CEDR Call 2012 'Road owners adapting to climate change'. It adopts a risk based approach using the RIMAROCC framework (Risk Management for Roads in a Changing Climate, developed under a previous ERA NET ROAD project). The approach addresses cause, effect and consequence of weather-related events to identify the top risks that require action with mitigating measures for climate change adaptation. Output of the ROADAPT project is a single ROADAPT-RIMAROCC integrating guideline. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate, with no remaining scientific uncertainties is changing. First impacts of climate change are already felt in several fields, such as transport energy, agriculture and are expected to increase in the near future. Notably, transport networks are essential for economy and society: their adaptation is necessary. Therefore, the French National Climate Change Adaptation Plan has defined actions in its field "transport infrastructures and systems". Transversal working groups with experts of various transport infrastructures were established in 2011 and have developed a strong cooperation to address this issue. They published: i) a thorough review of technical, regulatory and normative standards that require an update to adapt construction, maintenance and operation of infrastructures and networks to climate trends and ii) a risk assessment framework to prevent future extreme weather events on transport. Aim of this paper is to present methodologies and results of both publications. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Significant air pollutants of Slovakia are heating plants and thermal power plants, waste incinerators, chemical industry, transportation, surface mining and nuclear energy. Emissions from these sources affect agricultural production cumulating at soil surface and decrease soil characteristics. This leads to soil acidification, alkalization of soils and metallization, it also causes reduction of yields and descent performance of animals. In this paper we analyze the impact of air pollution on rainwater quality. For the performance the research we selected three locations: Oslany, Nitra and Kezmarok. The first monitored area was Oslany which is a load area, situated near the Slovak power plant Novaky, which is one of the key industrial and energy centers with lignite mining in the neighborhood. The second researched monitored area is medium-sized regional town (87,533 inhabitants) Nitra representing urbanized area. The last area of research is Kezmarok located near High Tatra representing the area of the lowest air pollution. The analyzes of rainwater were carried out using HI 99300, Colorimeter DR/890, the conductivity meter HQ 14d and DR 6000 spectrophotometer. Using these instruments in the laboratory, we monitored parameters such as temperature, pH, conductivity, TDS (total dissolved solids), the amount of the compounds PO4-3-P (mg.l(-1)), NO3--N (mg.l(-1)) and SO42--S (mg.l(-1)). Monitoring of the Atmospheric deposition is important apart from the determination of deposition flows to ecosystems, but also for servesing as a basis for calculating critical loads of acidity and eutrophication as well as for the validation of other models evaluating the impact of air pollution on the ecosystem. Development heads for to confirmation of our hypothesis that measured values AMS are higher in case of less rainfall. Thereby there is less amount of NO3--N contained in rainfall. The air cleans at the expense of the environment by rainfall. From the obtained results, we expect prospective benefits and clarify the dynamics of environmental pollution by oxides of sulfur and nitrogen in various locations SR, which we consider significant in terms of geographical and environmental burdens of pollutants. The current situation of certain habitats continues to cause damage to the individual components of the environment. For this reason, we consider as very important to monitor the load and quantify the negative effect, which is the basis to propose corrective measures to improve the current situation.There has been a growing recognition regarding the use of social networks to engage communities in government actions. However, despite increasing awareness of social networks, there is very limited evidence for their application in relation to climate policy. This study fills this gap by assessing the potential of social networks for engaging local communities in climate adaptation policy, drawing on a case study of the Shoalhaven region in Australia. Participants from key representative groups were recruited using a purposive snowball sampling technique (N=24). By mapping knowledge acquisition and diffusion networks in relation to climate adaption at the local scale, this study identified key nodes within the networks. Findings demonstrate that although climate adaptation information was acquired from a diverse range of sources, the sharing knowledge networks were far more dispersed. Furthermore, although 165 knowledge sources were identified, three nodes had coverage cross the entire network, and as such acted as boundary spanners within the sharing network. This research demonstrates the utility of social network analysis to reveal the underlying knowledge networks and structures that influence community engagement pathways and in doing so outlines key implications in relation to engaging local communities in climate policy and action.Policy relevanceThe rapid development of adaptation as a mainstream strategy for managing the risks of climate change has resulted in the emergence of a broad range of adaptation policies and management strategies globally. However, the success of these initiatives is largely dependent on their acceptance and uptake by local communities, which to date remains a significant challenge. Accordingly, policy makers require novel approaches to overcome barriers to community engagement so as to enhance the likely success of community engagement pathways. This article demonstrates the value of using social network analysis to reveal the underlying knowledge network structures. This approach makes it possible to identify key individuals within a community who can disseminate adaptation information quickly across broad geographic ranges. By utilizing this approach, policy makers globally will be able to increase the extent to which adaption initiatives are accepted and adhered to by local communities, thus increasing their success.The separation of Australian housing production from its consumption has long-term consequences for sustainability in the built environment, and for anticipatory adaptation to climate change. This article investigates how the institutional structure of the Australian private housing development industry influences its risk profile and its ability to innovate, particularly in the type of housing produced. Consumers on the other hand are reluctant to invest in climate-adapted housing, particularly if adaptive products are costlier. Using the results of a multi-method study, including a questionnaire survey and a series of interviews and focus groups, the broader issue of sustainability in housing development is revealed. The article highlights the complex and diverse structure of the various players in the development industry, and shows how their position within the broader structure of the housing and financial market influences their adaptive capacity.A future change in the soil-frost depth in eastern Hokkaido was assessed with multiple local climate scenarios. The bias-corrected downscaled data with an aid of a simple snow-depth model were applied to the empirical estimation from cumulative freezing degree-days (CFD) for days when the snow depth is less than 20 cm. Consequently, as the response to global warming climate that was defined as +2-K world in this paper, the maximum soil-frost depth significantly decreased in the coastal regions along the Pacific and in central Tokachi subprefecture with a slight variation among climate scenarios. Parameter-sweep experiments for two observed cases clarified that the temperature increase would bring the soil warming in the environment where the insulation effect of snow cover does not work at present, while it would bring the soil frosting in the environment where the insulation effect works.This paper is part of a larger research into the conditions and challenges of mainstream or opportunistic adaptation of climate change adaptation in Bangkok in which adaptation measures are implemented in an integrative way with autonomous urban redevelopment projects. When compared to the application of stand-alone measures, mainstream adaptation will require a longer implementation period as it pace of implementation is depended on the so called adaptation opportunities arisen from the redevelopment needs and moments. Consequently, the integration of adaptation into the autonomous redevelopments is a transformation process of continuous adaptation. This paper explores the potential role amphibious architecture, design and construction can play in the transformation challenge of Bangkok to become a flood resilient city on the longer term. It will focus on a typical neighbourhood, more importantly infrastructure, building, and public spaces. A typical outcome of this process would be a master plan detailing the improvement strategies. The chosen neighborhood will be analyzed in three steps, explained in the following. First we introduce and characterize the urban structure in terms of flood hazard, exposure and sensitivity. Then we provide a few adaptation measures into the real condition. Finally, approximate when and where these measures can be applied in the future that able to be upgraded to assess the spatial and temporal adaptation opportunities included in terms of different detail of scaling effects such as architecture and urban infrastructure. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Climate change poses critical threats to water-related safety and sustainability in the Mekong River basin. Hydrological impact signals from earlier Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3)-based assessments, however, are highly uncertain and largely ignore hydrological extremes. This paper provides one of the first hydrological impact assessments using the CMIP5 climate projections. Furthermore, we model and analyse changes in river flow regimes and hydrological extremes (i.e. high-flow and low-flow conditions). In general, the Mekong's hydrological cycle intensifies under future climate change. The scenario's ensemble mean shows increases in both seasonal and annual river discharges (annual change between +5 and +16 %, depending on location). Despite the overall increasing trend, the individual scenarios show differences in the magnitude of discharge changes and, to a lesser extent, contrasting directional changes. The scenario's ensemble, however, shows reduced uncertainties in climate projection and hydrological impacts compared to earlier CMIP3-based assessments. We further found that extremely high-flow events increase in both magnitude and frequency. Extremely low flows, on the other hand, are projected to occur less often under climate change. Higher low flows can help reducing dry season water shortage and controlling salinization in the downstream Mekong Delta. However, higher and more frequent peak discharges will exacerbate flood risks in the basin. Climate-change-induced hydrological changes will have important implications for safety, economic development, and ecosystem dynamics and thus require special attention in climate change adaptation and water management.The aim of this paper is to discuss improvements for the Master in Sustainability Management of Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV), in order to incorporate the topic of disaster risk management (DRM). Considering the risks and opportunities that climate change - and more specifically extreme weather events that can lead to disasters -represent to business, it is essential that business schools help prepare managers to deal with this critical sustainability issue. Therefore, it is extremely important to include this topic in management education. Aiming to support companies to assess and address business risks and opportunities derived from climate change, the Business for Climate Platform (EPC) of the Center for Sustainability Studies (GVces) of FGV has developed a framework and a tool for business adaptation strategies for climate change and implemented them with seven large companies in Brazil. Thus, based on EPC's experience, the paper brings a proposal for the inclusion of DRM in the MSM's syllabi, through the lens of climate change adaptation.Effective climate adaptation requires engagement (awareness, motivation, and capacity to act) at relevant scales, from individuals to global institutions. In many parts of the world, research attention has focused on the engagement of the general public. We suggest that studies also need to focus on key stakeholders in the government and non-governmental sectors who participate in adaptation planning processes, so that a better understanding may be achieved of the distinct knowledge cultures that influence their engagement with climate change. Indonesia is a key actor in climate adaptation because of the potentially dire consequences for its population's livelihoods and well-being. In this paper we consider whether 'climate knowledge cultures' exist amongst stakeholders at multiple organisational levels in Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) Province, Eastern Indonesia. Surveys were conducted with 124 stakeholders from differing levels at the beginning of four multi-stakeholder climate adaptation workshops. Questions elicited perceptions of their region's challenges, observation and awareness of climate change, feelings they associated with climate change, beliefs regarding causes, risks and preparedness for climate change, and timeframes they associated with the future. Across all levels, climate change ranked highest as the first challenge participants identified, followed by food security, but well-being ranked highest when the top three challenges were combined. Most participants believed climate change was happening, but those working at higher organisational levels were more likely to attribute climate change to human factors whereas those at lower levels were more likely to think it was a natural phenomenon. Women were in greater agreement and more optimistic than men about current government policies to cope with climate change. Perceptions differed between sub-districts, reflecting NTB's climatic diversity. We note that although climate change is an issue of concern among NTB stakeholders, the potential privileging of some knowledge cultures may lead to its association with cultural and political elitism. Second, climate change needs to be viewed alongside the myriad other challenges facing NTB, some of which have greater perceived immediacy. This analysis highlights the need for planning that can accommodate and integrate the diverse knowledge cultures and adaptation objectives that exist at multiple levels. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Climate change impacts are most likely to be felt by resource-dependent communities, and consequently locally-relevant data are necessary to inform livelihood adaptation planning. This paper presents information for historical and future seasonal rainfall variability in Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) Province, Indonesia, where rural livelihoods are highly vulnerable to current climate variability and future change. Historical rainfall variability is investigated using observational data from two stations located on the islands of Lombok and Sumbawa. Future rainfall is examined using an ensemble of six downscaled climate model simulations at a spatial resolution of 14 km for 1971-2100, applying the IPCC SRES-A2 'Business as Usual' emissions scenario, and the six original global climate models (GCMs). Analyses of the observed seasonal rainfall data highlight cyclical variability and long-term declines. The observed periodicities are of about 2-4, 5, 8, 11, and 40-50 years. Furthermore, dry season rainfall is significantly correlated with the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), while wet season rainfall is weakly correlated with ENSO. The simulated rainfall data reproduce the observed seasonal cycle very well, but overestimate the magnitude of rainfall and underestimate inter-annual rainfall variability. The models also show that the observed rainfall periodicities will continue throughout the 21st century. The models project that rainfall will decline, although with wide ranges of uncertainty, depending on season and location. Crop water demand estimates show that the projected changes will potentially impact the first growing period for rice during November-March. Rainfall may also be insufficient to meet water demand for many crops in the second growing period of March-June, when high value commodities such as chillies and tobacco are produced. The results reinforce the importance to consider all uncertainties when utilizing climate projections in subsequent impact assessments. Recommendations on the effective presentation of these results to inform multi-stakeholder adaptation planning for livelihoods, agriculture and irrigation are given. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The vulnerability of less developed regions is exacerbated by a lack of information to inform appropriate adaptation planning. We addressed this challenge in the islands of Lombok and Sumbawa (Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, Indonesia) by combining multiple sources of knowledge to develop a typology of natural resource use by communities of the province. This enabled an assessment of future impacts of drivers of change such as population growth and climate change. The typology was developed by cluster analysis of an inventory of the use of ecosystem goods and services (EGS) by the 105 rural subdistricts in the province. The data were largely elicited from expert knowledge, augmented by a rapid rural appraisal of communities' marine resource use in Sumbawa. Exploratory analysis of existing secondary data on livelihoods and land use provided context and skeleton data, which were developed further by experts. Overall, 82 EGS were identified from nine terrestrial, coastal, marine and freshwater habitats. EGS included livestock, cropping, forestry, wildlife hunting, fishing, aquaculture, mining, water (for drinking and agriculture) and tourism. The typology comprised seven types that captured 42% of the variation in the data matrix. The types were moderately spatially aggregated and showed some congruence with administrative (district) boundaries. We discuss the implications of the results for planning livelihood adaptation strategies, and out-scaling these among subdistricts of matching types. (C) 2015 CSIRO. Published by Elsevier B.V.Research on climate change and migration usually assesses the effects of natural hazards and/or creeping environmental degradation on people's livelihoods and their migration. This chapter looks at changing rainfall patterns, local perception of these changes, and the decision to migrate, or not, to cope with rainfall variability and hunger. Based on empirical evidence from a case study undertaken in Kurigram District in northern Bangladesh, this chapter addresses four key questions: (1) Is the rural population sensitive to rainfall variability? (2) How is rainfall variability related to food security? (3) Which labour-migration systems can be used by the local people to cope with environmental shocks and adapt to change? and (4) Do people migrate for work to cope with and adapt to the effects of rainfall variability or because of food insecurity and social inequality? Although rainfall variability can play an important role in people's decisions to migrate, we argue that migration from the region is not driven so much by climate changes as it is by the persistent local patterns of social inequality and food insecurity coupled with the structural economic disparities that exist in Bangladesh.This paper synthesizes peer-reviewed literature on smallholders' adaptation to climate change in developing countries. The synthesis shows that multiple definitions of adaptation were used across studies, resulting in a conceptual murkiness that is a barrier to generalizing the findings to inform planned adaptation policies and projects. By using a seven-category typology to classify and compare smallholder farmer adaptations across communities, the synthesis shows that in order to reduce their vulnerability smallholder farmers have mostly taken action on environmental management and diversified their livelihoods through market exchange. Some have engaged in labour migration. Very few have pursued communal pooling, storage, or mobility as risk-reducing strategies. Despite the increasing recognition that adaptation is driven by multiple stressors, less than half of the adaptation studies included discussions of multiple stressors. The synthesis points to the need for (1) improved methodological clarity in climate change adaptation research, (2) more research on labour migration and climate change interactions, (3) more research to determine the conceptual and practical significance of communal pooling and storage as risk-reducing strategies, (4) the incorporation of the assessment of multiple stressors into climate change adaptation research and policy, and (5) more empirical research on what adaptive strategies are not adopted by smallholder farmers and why.This paper reviews the latest policy responses towards mainstreaming climate adaptation through watershed development in rainfed farming systems of India, with reference to the multilevel governance structure from which they emerge. It employs a qualitative text review of the policy documents such as National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), relevant National Missions and selected State Action Plans for Climate Change (SAPCCs) and uses an illustrative case of action responses from the multilevel network of non-state actors. Through this exercise, it finds that the multilevel structure of these domains here offer facilitations as well as obstacles for proposed mainstreaming. The obstacles are in two forms. The first is yet an incomplete process of policy integration across different levels of governance. The second is the already existing set of challenges before watershed development in India, such as governance fragmentation, equity concerns in participation, and capacity-building and intercommunication between the levels. The facilitation comes through extra sources of knowledge and innovation from various state and non-state actors and their networks in multilevel systems, which need to be tapped in the current drive of mainstreaming for achieving the ends of climate adaptation in rainfed farming systems.Disaster risk reduction (DRR) and emergency management (EM) efforts are integral to climate change adaptation (CCA). The integration of DRR with adaptation is globally recognized as a rational use of resources benefiting both areas. There is a substantial literature on the topic, but little on the practice of implementing such integration on the ground. This paper presents some of these experiences at national and agency levels in the south-west Pacific and outlines possible future directions to support policy and practice. Based on the perspectives of practitioners from Australia, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, it explores institutional changes with country examples, and the range of constraints and enabling factors in integrating adaptation with DRR and EM practices. The Australian aim of spreading responsibility for CCA and DRR integration through mainstreaming across departments and agencies was seen as effective in increasing whole-of-government approaches. However, in both Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands the concentration of information, responsibility and actions through a single focal point was more effective in reducing overlap and providing a clearer picture of what was being implemented, by whom and where. The findings demonstrate a need to consider the experiences arising from practical implementation of the integration agenda and to document the lessons from this experience in a way that can inform policy and practice.Based on qualitative interviews with Swedish forest owners this study focuses on climate change, risk management and forest governance from the perspective of the forest owners. The Swedish forest governance system has undergone extensive deregulation, with the result that social norms and knowledge dissemination are seen by the state as important means of influencing forest owners' understandings and practices. Drawing on Foucault's concept of governmentality this study contributes knowledge on how forest owners understand and manage climate-related risk and their acceptance of advice. From the interview study, three main conclusions can be drawn: (1) forest owners' considerations largely concern ordinary forestry activities; (2) knowledge about forest management and climate adaptation combines experiences and ideas from various sources; and (3) risk awareness and knowledge of "best practices" are not enough to ensure change in forestry practices. The results of this study show that the forest owners have to be selective and negotiate about what knowledge to consider relevant and meaningful for their own forest practice. Accordingly, local forest management can be understood as situated in a web of multifarious interests, claims, concerns and knowledges, where climate change adaptation is but one of several aspects that forest owners have to consider.To explore modifications in water temperature and salinity under warmer climate change conditions, we performed simulations from 1970 to 2069 with the CANadian Ocean PArallelise (CANOPA) model for the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Scotian Shelf. The surface fields to drive CANOPA were provided by the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM), driven by the outputs from the third-generation Canadian Global Climate Model (CGCM3) following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B climate change scenario. The sea-ice concentration and volume simulated by CANOPA are shown to have patterns consistent with those seen in observations; CANOPA is also shown to simulate sea surface temperature (SST) well. Although CANOPA can simulate the observed vertical structure of water temperature and salinity, it tends to underestimate the cold intermediate layer and overestimate water salinity in the central Gulf of St. Lawrence (GSL). In terms of the possible future climate, CANOPA simulations suggest that the GSL will be largely ice free in January, with ice volume in March steadily decreasing from about 80 km(3) in the 1980s to near zero by the late 2060s. On average, the GSL water will become warmer and fresher over this time period. In January, maximum SST increases occur near eastern Cabot Strait, with amplitudes of about 1.5 degrees-2.5 degrees C, corresponding to reduced sea ice in that area, and there is no notable change along the western and northern coasts of the GSL. In July, maximum SST increases occur over the western GSL corresponding to the largest increases in surface air temperature in the region. The maximum decreases in surface salinity also occur near western coastal areas and the Scotian Shelf, whereas reductions in the eastern GSL are relatively weak. Finally, compared with the present climate, the cold intermediate layer is significantly weaker in 2040-2069 than in 1980-2009.Climate change is one of the most serious threats the world faces. It will have disproportionate impacts on millions of poor rural people in Ethiopia. For development work to be effective, it should not only help rural people emerge from poverty, it should also enable them to cope with and mitigate the impact of climate change. Agriculture is the human enterprise that is most vulnerable to climate change, because of the subsistence nature of the farming practices. Farmer's adaptive capacity is constrained by a lack of economic and technical resources, and they are vulnerable due to a strong dependence on rain-fed crops. While agroforestry may play a significant role in mitigating the atmospheric accumulation of Greenhouse Gases (GHG), it also has a role to play in helping smallholder farmers adapt to climate change. This paper examines the mitigation and adaptation potential of home garden and tree-based agroforestry systems. The planting of fast growing and nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs releases nitrogen for crop growth and save fertilizers. They also buffer climate extremes and temperature increases. Within the Sodo reforestation project mainly Grevillea robusta is used due to its improvements by fixing nitrogen without chemical effects on the soil. The research focuses on the role of agroforestry in both mitigation and adaptation to climate change. It is recommended that in low-income and food-deficit regions livelihoods including food security and climate change cannot be tackled in isolation.Meteorological time series with 1aEuro-h time steps are required in many applications in geoscientific modelling. These hourly time series generally cover shorter periods of time compared to daily meteorological time series. We present an open-source MEteoroLOgical observation time series DISaggregation Tool (MELODIST). This software package is written in Python and comprises simple methods to temporally downscale (disaggregate) daily meteorological time series to hourly data. MELODIST is capable of disaggregating the most commonly used meteorological variables for geoscientific modelling including temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind speed, and shortwave radiation. In this way, disaggregation is performed independently for each variable considering a single site without spatial dependencies. The algorithms are validated against observed meteorological time series for five sites in different climates. Results indicate a good reconstruction of diurnal features at those sites. This makes the methodology interesting to users of models operating at hourly time steps, who want to apply their models for longer periods of time not covered by hourly observations.Purpose - Implementing climate change adaptation measures immediately is considered both to minimize considerably negative impacts on biodiversity as well as on outdoor recreation in protected area management. This study aims to give answers, why, however, climate change issues receive very limited implementation by practitioners in day-to-day-management. Design/methodology/approach - Using a motivation model by Rheinberg (2006), a more differentiated understanding was gained why stakeholders took almost no action regarding climate change adaptation. A participatory spatial scenario method including a map exercise was used to motivate stakeholders to develop, discuss, exchange and negotiate strategies under different possible future developments and their implementation in protected area management. Findings - According to the motivation model, taking action is dependent on a number of factors and will only happen when all correlations are positive. It can be shown that for adaptation to climate change, concerning almost all of the various factors, no stimuli existed or actors expected a positive outcome when taking action. More motivation was generated for halting the loss of biodiversity and visitor management. In the participatory spatial scenario planning work, stakeholders from different sectors and decision-makers found consensus to implement integrated strategies, considering adaptation to climate change, reduction of greenhouse gases, better protection of biodiversity and different future developments in outdoor recreation activities. Originality/value - The paper demonstrates the importance of single motivation factors such as perceived competence, abilities to act and perceived positive outcomes including rewards for taking action. Using participatory spatial scenario planning methods can be powerful tools to stimulate joint action, though implementing organizations must be willing to make real use of the outcome of such work.Purpose - Drawing on qualitative fieldwork on a remote outer island in Fiji, this paper aims to address a shortcoming in the literature on climate adaptation in the Pacific. Internationally community-based adaptation (CBA) is recognised as a promising approach to help vulnerable populations adjust to climate change. However, with pilot projects in their infancy documented experience for Pacific Islands remains scarce. This limits the ability of the region - faced with persisting development challenges and predicted significant climate impacts - to learn from and build on previous experiences and develop robust responses to climate change. Design/methodology/approach - By using a community-based initiative in response to environmental challenges and unsustainable development as a proxy, the paper interrogates the potential usefulness of the CBA framework for the Pacific and identifies potential strengths and weaknesses. Sketching out the process and its outcomes, it shows how the initiative has resulted in a diversity of strategies, ranging from pollution control measures, to improved governance of resources and community participation in decision making, to livelihood and income diversification. Findings - Findings indicate that CBA could have a lot of potential for building more resilient communities in the face of climate change and other pressures associated with modernising Pacific societies. However, to be effective, interventions should pay attention to people's development aspirations; immediate economic, social and environmental benefits; dynamics of village governance, social rules and protocols; and traditional forms of knowledge that can inform sustainable solutions. Originality/value - The conclusions provide a reflection on the CBA framework in general and make concrete suggestions for practitioners on how the framework could be usefully implemented in the Pacific context.Purpose - This paper aims to contribute to adaptation research by devising a systematic method for examining the challenges in mainstreaming climate change adaptation (CCA) into local land use planning. It argues that mainstreaming operationalization necessitates a methodology that focuses on the challenges in applying the approach and an analytical framework that can examine the mainstreaming process from an institutional perspective. Design/methodology/approach - This paper applied triangulation by data method (i.e. document review, interview, survey and key informant consultations) and incorporated the scorecard approach in developing the four-stage mixed methodology. It used a modified Institutional Analysis and Development framework as primary analytical guide and applied the case study methodology for structure and focus in relation to data collection activities. Findings - This paper devised the four-stage mixed methodology and successfully applied it in examining the challenges in mainstreaming CCA into local land use planning in Albay, Philippines. Using the methodology, this paper developed 20 quantitative "mainstreaming indicators" and generated qualitative analyses to assess the state of play of the challenges in local mainstreaming of CCA. Results suggest that mainstreaming challenges exist within a certain spectrum, with one end composed of barriers to, and the other, opportunities for CCA. Furthermore, the challenges occur at varying degrees of severity depending on the conditions that surround them. Research limitations/implications - This paper is limited to illustrating the process involved in developing the four-stage mixed methodology and presents only a brief discussion of the quantitative and qualitative results. Practical implications - Although the methodology is at its initial stages of development, it generated results that can help analysts, planners and decision-makers: determine the nature of the challenges in mainstreaming CCA, thereby understand the mainstreaming process; prioritize the mainstreaming challenges to address; and design strategies that will maximize the use of limited resources (i.e. utilizing the opportunities to overcome the existing barriers), among others. Originality/value - The four-stage mixed methodology was developed to aid analysts, planners and decision-makers determine the state-of-play of the challenges in mainstreaming CCA and make informed decisions in overcoming these challenges. Thus, the mixed method can be a useful tool in advancing the operationalization of the mainstreaming approach.The mining sector is a significant contributor to the gross domestic product of many global economies. Given the increasing trends in climate-induced disasters and the growing desire to find lasting solutions, information and communication technology (ICT) has been introduced into the climate change adaptation mix. Climate change-induced extreme weather events such as flooding, drought, excessive fog, and cyclones have compounded the environmental challenges faced by the mining sector. This article presents the adoption of ICT innovation as part of the adaptation strategies towards reducing the mining sector's vulnerability and exposure to climate change disaster risks. Document analysis and systematic literature review were adopted as the methodology. Findings from the study reflect how ICT intervention orchestrated changes in communication patterns which are tailored towards the reduction in climate change vulnerability and exposure. The research concludes with a proposition that ICT intervention must be part of the bigger and ongoing climate change adaptation agenda in the mining sector.This article analysed vulnerability of smallholder agriculture to climate variability, particularly the alternating incidences of drought and heavy precipitation events in Ghana. Although there is an unmet need for understanding the linkages between climate change and livelihoods, the urgent need for climate change adaptation planning (CCAP) in response to climate change makes vulnerability assessment even more compelling in development research. The data for analysis were collected from two complementary studies. These included a regional survey in the Upper West Region and an in-depth study in three selected communities in the Sissala East District. The results showed that smallholder agriculture is significantly vulnerable to climate variability in the region and that three layers of vulnerability can be identified in a ladder of vulnerability. Firstly, farmers are confronted with the double tragedy of droughts and heavy precipitation events, which adversely affect both crops and livestock. Secondly, farmers have to decide on crops for adaptation, but each option - whether indigenous crops, new early-maturing crops or genetically modified crops - predisposes farmers to a different set of risks. Finally, the overall impact is a higher-level vulnerability, namely the risk of total livelihood failure and food insecurity. The article recommended CCAP and an endogenous development (ED) approach to addressing agriculture vulnerability to climate variability within the framework of decentralisation and local governance in Ghana.The Rio+20 outcomes document, the Future We Want, enshrines green economy as one of the platforms to attain sustainable development and calls for measures that seek to address climate change and biodiversity management. This paper audits climate change policies from selected east and southern African countries to determine the extent to which climate change legislation mainstreams biodiversity and wildlife management. A scan of international, continental, regional and national climate change policies was conducted to assess whether they include biodiversity and/or wildlife management issues. The key finding is that many climate change policy-related documents, particularly the National Adaptation Programme of Actions (NAPAs), address threats to biodiversity and wildlife resources. However, international policies like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol do not address the matter under deliberation. Regional climate change policies such as the East African Community, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and African Union address biodiversity and/or wildlife issues whilst the Southern African Development Community region does not have a stand-alone policy for climate change. Progressive countries like Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia have recently put in place detailed NAPAs which are mainstream responsive strategies intended to address climate change adaptation in the wildlife sector.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made it clear that anthropogenic greenhouse gasses are the main cause of observed global warming that leads to climate change. Climate change is now a global reality. In the South African political set-up, local municipalities are the structures that are in direct contact with communities and they draw up Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), which are reviewed and upgraded annually. The article seeks to investigate the extent to which climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies are embedded IDPs in seven vulnerable municipalities in the Limpopo Province. The article conducted an in-depth content analysis of the IDPs of the seven municipalities and the results have revealed that these municipalities have not included adaptation and mitigation strategies adequately in their IDPs despite being the most vulnerable municipalities in the province. The article concludes that these municipalities have not as yet institutionalised climate change in their daily operations, planning and decision making. To this end, the paper recommends that local municipalities should include climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in their IDPs.Forest benefit analysis is vital in ensuring sustainable community-based natural resources management. Forest depletion and degradation are key issues in rural Zimbabwe and strategies to enhance sustainable forest management are continually sought. This study was carried out to assess the impact of forests on communities from Nyanga, Guruve and Zvimba districts of Zimbabwe. It is based on a Big Lottery Fund project implemented by Progressio-UK and Environment Africa. It focuses on identifying replicable community forest and land management strategies and the level of benefits accruing to the community. Analysis of change was based on the Income and Food Security and Forest benefits, which also constitutes the tools used during the research. The study confirms the high rate of deforestation and the increased realisation by communities to initiate practical measures aimed at protecting and sustaining forest and land resources from which they derive economic and social benefits. The results highlight the value of community structures (Farmer Field Schools and Environmental Action Groups) as conduits for natural resource management. The interconnectivity among forests, agricultural systems and the integral role of people are recognised as key to climate change adaptation.Climate change is destroying Zimbabwean communal farmers' agricultural activities - a source of living for most people. As communal farmers struggle to adapt, the media is expected to assume a fundamental theoretical role of educating and informing them about the appropriate adaptation techniques. Located in Umguza District in Matabeleland North Province, the study explored how communal farmers created meaning out of climate change media content and its influence on their agricultural practices from October 2014 to April 2015. In doing so, the study used the Two-Step Flow theory and Hall's Encoding and Decoding Model. Entrenched in pragmatism, the study embedded quantitative techniques at different stages. Multistage sampling combining Simple Random Sampling (SRS), purposive and systematic sampling techniques was used to identify the 263 households for semi structured questionnaires, direct observations and in-depth interviews. The findings were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), thematic analysis and pattern matching. The results show that personal observations; print, broadcast and online media; and opinion leaders were the main sources of climate change information. The radio was the most used medium in communicating climate change adaptation though it was the second most accessed after mobile phones. Conservation Agriculture and planting of drought-resistant crops were some of the adaptation techniques communicated in the media. When interacting with media content, communal farmers create their own meaning influenced by their cultural values, resulting in some adopting, rejecting or modifying certain adaptation techniques. The study concludes that opinion leaders are fundamental in communal farmers' interaction with media but their influence must not be overestimated.Whilst local projections of sea-level rise (SLR) are necessary to facilitate targeted climate change adaptation and communication strategies, downscaling from global climate models can be problematic. Here, we use expert probability judgement to elicit a suite of local projections, and associated uncertainties, for future SLR on the Severn Estuary in the south-west of the UK. Eleven experts from a range of policy and academic backgrounds took part in a structured probability elicitation exercise for the years 2050, 2100 and 2200. In addition to the quantitative elicitation, the experts' reasoning during the task was qualitatively analysed. Quantitative analyses show that although there is consensus that sea levels will rise on the Estuary in future, there is wide variation between judgements and much uncertainty regarding the magnitude of future rise. For example, median estimates of SLR (compared to the 2011 level) range from 9.6 to 40 cm in the year 2050; 20 to 100 cm in 2100; and 35 to 300 cm in 2200. Fifty per cent confidence intervals and ninety per cent confidence intervals vary even more. Qualitative analyses indicate that experts' judgements may have been influenced by their choice of methods and information sources, the ways in which they thought about the future, and heuristics. The study shows the merits of integrating qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the reasoning behind uncertainty judgements. We conclude that where expert probability judgements are to be used to characterise uncertainty such reasoning should be made explicit.Beef businesses in northern Australia are facing increased pressure to be productive and profitable with challenges such as climate variability and poor financial performance over the past decade. Declining terms of trade, limited recent gains in on-farm productivity, low profit margins under current management systems and current climatic conditions will leave little capacity for businesses to absorb climate change-induced losses. In order to generate a whole-of-business focus towards management change, the Climate Clever Beef project in the Maranoa-Balonne region of Queensland trialled the use of business analysis with beef producers to improve financial literacy, provide a greater understanding of current business performance and initiate changes to current management practices. Demonstration properties were engaged and a systematic approach was used to assess current business performance, evaluate impacts of management changes on the business and to trial practices and promote successful outcomes to the wider industry. Focus was concentrated on improving financial literacy skills, understanding the business' key performance indicators and modifying practices to improve both business productivity and profitability. To best achieve the desired outcomes, several extension models were employed: the group facilitation/empowerment model', the individual consultant/mentor model' and the technology development model'. Providing producers with a whole-of-business approach and using business analysis in conjunction with on-farm trials and various extension methods proved to be a successful way to encourage producers in the region to adopt new practices into their business, in the areas of greatest impact. The areas targeted for development within businesses generally led to improvements in animal performance and grazing land management further improving the prospects for climate resilience.This article argues that smallholder agroforestry farmers in the selected provinces in the Philippines have already been experiencing climate change in their respective areas as indicated by the change in the rainfall and temperature patterns. Using direct interviews and focus group discussions, the respondent-farmers highlighted that increased incidence of pests and diseases, stunted growth of crops, low crop productivity, delayed planting, delayed fruiting of some crops particularly perennial species, poor quality of produce, increased cost in farm operations, low income and decreased yield of some crops, are among the general impacts of climate change in their agricultural production systems. On the positive aspect, some crops had increased yield as an impact of climate change. The farmers employ their local knowledge and skills in adapting to the impacts of climate change. Among these include changing cropping patterns, integrating more crops in the farm, engaging in other off-farm and non-farm activities as additional source of income, changing the cultivated crops, mulching, and using organic fertilizers, among others. This article also highlights the benefits that the respondent-farmers derive from agroforestry, a land use management system that is currently being practiced in the study sites.Climate change will affect the agricultural productivity in dry zone area due to insufficient knowledge, inadequate human capacity development, and limited institution al interventions dealing with farm level climate change adaptation. This paper examined factors influencing climate change awareness, the effects of climate change as perceived by farmers and farm level adaptations practiced by farmers in coping with climate variation and other factors in Myanmar. One hundred fifty respondents were interviewed from three geographical strata in Monywa Township (Central Dry Zone), Sagaing Region, in Myanmar namely upstream, midstream and downstream. Climate change awareness influenced by socio-economic and institutional factors can provide the effective decisions for better farming practices to minimize the risks of climate variation in rainfed areas. The development and application of relatively simple and reliable methods for assessing the impacts of climate change and adaptation strategies at the agricultural system and/or household level are still demanded to provide timely recommendations for alternative technologies and policies.This paper examines two climate adaptation assessment studies conducted in significantly different climates Alaska and southeast Florida. The purpose of the studies was to identify areas of commonality between the two studies with respect to the assessment steps, tools used, and the types of strategies and actions recommended. Four topics were identified for the assessment: forecasting future climate conditions, identifying impacts and disruptions, identifying adaptation strategies and options, and considering risks and uncertainties and the implications for engineering design. The paper concludes that the use of surrogate approaches for considered environmental conditions can be a valuable tool for those conducting adaptation assessment studies. Data quality was an important concern in both studies, and adaptation strategies should include both those designed to avoid damage and disruption and those designed to mitigate any potential consequence of an event. A broader concept of loss should be incorporated into the assessment process and into the engineering decisions relating to individual project designs.Water scarcity involves quantity and quality risks, as well as technological, behavioral, and policy-based factors. This study informs understanding of water scarcity by examining perceived threats and solutions across sites in the United States, New Zealand, Fiji, and Bolivia. Using interview data, we (1) characterize perceived water scarcity risks and solutions for each setting and (2) examine how perceptions differ across countries based on development and water scarcity. Broadly, residents in developed contexts worried more about quality than about quantity, and individual practices (e.g., preventing pollution) were most commonly cited as remedies. Yet significant differences exist across geographies. First, residents in water-scarce regions were relatively concerned about quantity, and they tended to emphasize collective policies and technologies. Second, residents of developed countries were more likely to suggest collective water policies as strategies, whereas those in developing areas stressed behavioral and technological strategies as solutions, primarily to pollution.The occurrence of extreme climate events in Mozambique constitutes a great barrier to swift sustainable economic development due to associated human and material damages. As a result, the population lives in a situation of threat and instability. The most vulnerable societies in Mozambique are those inhabiting settling areas along coastal or river plains, and those whose economies are strictly related to resources highly sensitive to climate changes. The vulnerability factors of two communities in the lower Limpopo River were analysed using a participative tool, the top mecca. The Zongoene and Mahielene communities in the lower Limpopo River basin lack essential adaptation elements that enable responses to climate change and natural disasters. These elements are required nationwide and include a highly diversified economy and access to new production technologies. In addition and in particular, the Zongoene and Mahielene communities rely directly on the services offered by the coastal ecosystems that have been affected by the impacts of floods, droughts, sea level rise and tropical cyclones. Some activities for climate change adaptation were identified and discussed based on the weaknesses and strengths identified.Climate change and ENSO events are increasing hydro-climatic risks and health impacts in Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay, as well as social inequalities in Bolivia and Paraguay. Climate scenarios project increase in average temperature in the whole region, a slight decrease in precipitation and modified rainy patterns in the Andean region and Paraguay for 2040. More hydro-climatic extremes are also expected, which will likely worsen health vulnerability without further adaptation measures. A Vulnerability, Impact and Adaptation Network conducted research on excessive rainfall, floods and land-slides from 2007 to 2014 in Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. Herein, a case study of the vulnerability and human impacts of an extreme rainfall and land-slide in Callapa, La Paz, Bolivia in 2011 is presented. As result of early warning system (EWS) and emergency systems human life losses were not recorded. A comparison between two districts (with and without landslide) was made modifying Urban HEART equity instrument. Its goal was to better inform the adaptation and community resilience measurements design. The health outcomes included dehydration, diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, and mental health issues. Inter-sectoral policies and strategies were developed to improve climate adaptation measures. Despite strong differences in socio-economic and health status the three studied countries are vulnerable to hydro-climatic extremes. EWS and preparedness based on climate and socio-economic assessments and monitoring are crucial to increase resilience to extreme events.A decision support tool aiming to facilitate discussion and transparency in land-use planning processes has been developed. It includes process steps initiating with an analysis of the current situation, identification of relevant actions and sustainability analysis steps. The sustainability was subdivided into human health and environment, resources, and social and economic impacts. The main difference between this risk analysis tool and others is the allowance of comparisons of present risks and consequences of measures early in the process. It also includes assessments from short-and long-term perspectives, such as taking into account climate change. It combines classic risk analysis with life-cycle assessment procedure. It has been developed and tested in co-operation with municipalities. The tests show that the tool is applicable and can be relevant in the planning process. It offers an iterative discussion framework that is systematic, condensed and yet a simplistic way of describing consequences. The criticism is that it is regarded as time demanding, but this can be managed by preparatory work.This paper situates livelihood adaptations in two coastal villages within the broader context of Belize's colonial and post-colonial history and environmental processes of change. Through observations, qualitative interviews, and archival reviews, we explore the dynamics of livelihood change and analyse the diverse factors that have been influencing options and adaptation over time. The results reveal that both villages have undergone profound changes in livelihoods and productive activities on several occasions. While the villages' histories, geographies, and cultures are different, similarities in long-term trends include the transition from land-based to marine resources and the decline of small-scale agriculture. Our analysis illuminates the deep connections between local livelihoods and national as well as global political-economic processes, which favour extraction and export of natural resources throughout the period investigated, whereby resource access and market mechanisms create and constrict adaptation options for the villagers. Gradual environmental changes, such as erosion, and episodic events, such as hurricanes, have also influenced livelihood shifts and adaptations in combination with a wide range of political-economic factors. Despite the demonstrated importance of the influence of history and dimensions of political economy on contemporary adaptation options in the communities studied, the literature on climate change adaptation inadequately accounts for these factors. This paper adds new perspectives to current debates in climate change research by emphasising that longer temporal dimensions of livelihood change are important for understanding the current context for adaptation.In the midst of rapidly proliferating engagement efforts around climate adaptation, attention to the design and evaluation of decision support processes and products is warranted. We report on the development and evaluation of a process framework called the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process. VCAPS is a systematic approach to integrate local knowledge with scientific understanding by providing opportunities for facilitated, deliberative learning-based activities with local decision makers about climate change vulnerability and adaptation. We introduce the conceptual basis of the process in analytic-deliberation, hazard management, and vulnerability. Our evaluations from eight coastal communities where the approach was applied point to four assets of VCAPS: it promotes synthesis of local and scientific knowledge; it stimulates systems thinking and learning; it facilitates governance by producing action plans with transparent justifications; and it accommodates participant time constraints and preferences.Calls for more stakeholder participation and cooperation, the acknowledgement of uncertainties as well as for flexible and robust solutions have become frequent in the literature on climate change adaptation. Recent studies show that these calls are taken up only reluctantly in local adaptation compared to sectoral and technical solutions. The aim of this study is to examine to which extent adaptation as an embedded process within the local context allows for stakeholder participation, cooperation and the robustness and flexibility of adaptation measures. It applies an analytical approach, combining an action framework of adaptation and document-based discourse analysis, to assess both the procedural and the substantive viewpoint of an adaptation case in Finland. This twofold approach provides insight into how the adaptation process and content influence and condition each other. The analysis highlights how new approaches to adaptation have to compete with prevailing discourses and institutionalised practices, as public authorities take the dominant role in adaptation, striving for certain and safe solutions. This process has few participatory elements and leaves little leeway to address uncertainty.The contribution of the informal community sector to the development of collective response strategies to socioecological change is not well researched. In this article, we examine the role of community opinion leaders in developing and mobilising stocks of adaptive capacity. In so doing, we reveal a largely unexplored mechanism for building on latent social capital and associated networks that have the potential to transcend local-scale efforts - an enduring question in climate change adaptation and other cross-scalar sustainability issues. Participants drawn from diverse spheres of community activity in the Sunshine Coast, Australia, were interviewed about their strategies for influencing their community objectives and the degree to which they have engaged with responding to climate change. The results show community opinion leaders to be politically engaged through rich bridging connections with other community organisations, and vertically with policy-makers at local, state, national and international levels. Despite this latent potential, the majority of community opinion leaders interviewed were not strategically engaged with responding to climate change. This finding suggests that more work is needed to connect networks knowledgeable about projected climate change impacts with local networks of community opinion leaders. Attention to the type of community-based strategies considered effective and appropriate by community opinion leaders and their organisations also suggests avenues for policy-makers to facilitate community engagement in responding to climate change across sectors likely to be affected by its impacts. Opportunities to extend understanding of adaptive capacity within the community sector through further research are also suggested.This article presents a novel methodology to assess flood risk to people by integrating people's vulnerability and ability to cushion hazards through coping and adapting. The proposed approach extends traditional risk assessments beyond material damages; complements quantitative and semi-quantitative data with subjective and local knowledge, improving the use of commonly available information; and produces estimates of model uncertainty by providing probability distributions for all of its outputs. Flood risk to people is modeled using a spatially explicit Bayesian network model calibrated on expert opinion. Risk is assessed in terms of (1) likelihood of non-fatal physical injury, (2) likelihood of post-traumatic stress disorder and (3) likelihood of death. The study area covers the lower part of the Sihl valley (Switzerland) including the city of Zurich. The model is used to estimate the effect of improving an existing early warning system, taking into account the reliability, lead time and scope (i.e., coverage of people reached by the warning). Model results indicate that the potential benefits of an improved early warning in terms of avoided human impacts are particularly relevant in case of a major flood event.This paper examines the effects of climate change and drought on agricultural incomes in Spanish rural areas. Present research has focused on the effects of these extreme climatological events through response functions, considering effects on crop productivity and average incomes. Among the impacts of droughts, we focused on potential effects on income distribution. The study of the effects on abnormally dry periods is therefore needed in order to perform an analysis of diverse social aspects in the long term. We estimate crop production functions for a range of Mediterranean crops in Spain and we use a measure of the decomposition of inequality to estimate the impact of climate change and drought on yield disparities. Certain adaptation measures may require a better understanding of risks by the public to achieve general acceptance. We provide empirical estimations for the marginal effects of the two impacts considered: farms' average income and income distribution. Our estimates consider crop production response to both biophysical and socioeconomic aspects to analyse long-term implications on competitiveness and disparities. As for the results, we find disparities in the adaptation priorities depending on the crop and the region analysed.Reinforced concrete (RC) structures placed in chloride-contaminated environments are subjected to deterioration processes that affect their performance, serviceability and safety. Chloride ingress leads to corrosion initiation and its interaction with service loading could reduce its operational life. Chloride ingress and corrosion propagation are highly influenced by weather conditions in the surrounding environment including climate change. Therefore, both structural design and maintenance should be adapted to these new environmental conditions. This study focuses on the assessment of the costs and benefits of climate adaptation strategies for existing RC structures subjected to chloride ingress and climate change. We studied RC structures built at different periods under different construction standards in France. The cost-effectiveness of adaptation measures was measured in terms of the benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) and the probability that BCR exceeds unity - i.e. Pr(BCR > 1). The results of the paper could provide practical advice to policy-makers to improve the management of existing RC structures under a changing climate by discussing the influence of the following factors on the mean BCR and Pr(BCR > 1): specific exposure conditions, climate change scenarios, risk reduction due to the implementation of adaptation strategies, type of structural component, years of construction and adaptation, discount rates and damage costs.Decision-making concerned with managing the possible increased risk of disasters arising from climate change requires tools to forecast changes in disaster risk with time. These changes will be a function of the projected changes not only in weather-related hazard activity due to climate change but also in the vulnerability of the built environment and the aggregate value of assets exposed due to the growth of communities and associated increased concentrations of wealth. Tools developed for the insurance industry over the past three decades to assist decision-makers in estimating and managing catastrophe insurance risk can be adapted to assess the impact of these changes. This paper presents a probabilistic method for undertaking cost-benefit analyses of proposed building adaptation measures using these insurance-based models. The approach accounts for the direct and indirect cost of disasters on a community, including the transfer of risk through insurance and the associated aleatory and epistemic risks. A simplified hypothetical case study focussed on the impact of potential changes to structural design standards for tropical cyclone winds is presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed approach.In this work, a risk-based assessment method and benefit-cost analysis to support policy decisions for adapting Australian coastal residential buildings to future coastal inundation hazard is presented. Future coastal inundation is mainly influenced by storm surge and rising sea level. The sea level rises projected by the A1FI, A1B and B1 emissions scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are considered. The effects of economic and population growth are accounted for by three urban development scenarios: (a) business as usual, (b) urban consolidation and (c) regional development. The adaptation policy actions investigated include a 'protect' stance (involving the construction of seawalls), an 'accommodate' stance that mandates raising house floors to a certain height (e.g. at heights of 100-year events) and an 'avoid' stance that limits new developments in hazardous areas. Policy stances classified as reactive (i.e. action taken after damage being incurred) and anticipatory (i.e. action taken anticipating what will happen) are developed for asset investment choices. In general, adaptation costs are an order of magnitude lower than benefits gained from avoided damages. The results highlight that adaptation action for coastal inundation has a no-regrets character and provides a strong case for reform to ensure that Australia-wide adaptation opportunities are realised.To achieve water resource sustainability in the water-limited southwestern US, it is critical to understand the potential effects of proposed forest thinning on the hydrology of semi-arid basins, where disturbances to headwater catchments can cause significant changes in the local water balance components and basinwise streamflows. In Arizona, the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) is being developed with the goal of restoring 2.4 million acres of ponderosa pine along the Mogollon Rim. Using the physically based, spatially distributed triangulated irregular network (TIN)-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator (tRIBS) model, we examine the potential impacts of the 4FRI on the hydrology of Tonto Creek, a basin in the Verde-Tonto-Salt (VTS) system, which provides much of the water supply for the Phoenix metropolitan area. Long-term (20-year) simulations indicate that forest removal can trigger significant shifts in the spatiotemporal patterns of various hydrological components, causing increases in net radiation, surface temperature, wind speed, soil evaporation, groundwater recharge and runoff, at the expense of reductions in interception and shading, transpiration, vadose zone moisture and snow water equivalent, with south-facing slopes being more susceptible to enhanced atmospheric losses. The net effect will likely be increases in mean and maximum streamflow, particularly during E1 Nino events and the winter months, and chiefly for those scenarios in which soil hydraulic conductivity has been significantly reduced due to thinning operations. In this particular climate, forest thinning can lead to net loss of surface water storage by vegetation and snowpack, increasing the vulnerability of ecosystems and populations to larger and more frequent hydrologic extreme conditions on these semi-arid systems.Globally, shoreline protection approaches are evolving towards the incorporation of natural and nature-based features (living shorelines henceforth) as a preferred alternative to shoreline armoring. Emerging research suggests that living shorelines may be a viable approach to conserving coastal habitats (marshes, beaches, shallows, seagrasses) along eroding shorelines. Living shorelines typically involve the use of coastal habitats, such as wetlands, that have a natural capacity to stabilize the shore, restore or conserve habitat, and maintain coastal processes. They provide stability while still being dynamic components of the ecosystem, but due to their dynamic nature, careful designs and some maintenance will be required if habitat conservation is a goal. Living shorelines may represent a singular opportunity for habitat conservation in urban and developing estuaries because of their value to society as a shoreline protection approach and resilience to sea level rise. However, enhanced public acceptance and coordination among regulatory and advisory authorities will be essential to expand their use. To fully understand their significance as habitat conservation strategies, systematic and standardized monitoring at both regional and national scales is vital to evaluate the evolution, persistence, and maximum achievable functionality (e.g., ecosystem service provision) of living shoreline habitats.Freshwater-related risks of climate change increase significantly with increasing global temperatures. Globally, the negative impacts of future climate change on freshwater systems are expected to outweigh the benefits, and agriculture and irrigation, as the largest consumers of water globally, are most at risk. This book analyses the potential impacts of climate change on water for agriculture, and the adaptation strategies in water management to deal with these impacts, drawing on global assessments and regional studies. This chapter introduces the book, sets the scene for research on climate change in agricultural water management, and synthesizes the issues, methodologies and findings in the chapters to follow. Chapters 2 and 3 provide an overview of global assessment of climate change impacts and water requirement for future agriculture. Chapters 4-7 provide analyses of crop water requirements in four case studies in developing countries. Chapters 8 and 9 are studies of irrigation management under sea-level rise in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Chapters 10-12 discuss examples of adaptation alternatives such as water-saving techniques and groundwater exploitation, and related policy settings. The last chapter links the dominant approach of uncertainty presented in the climate change discourse with policy discussions on climate adaptation strategies.Future inflow to the irrigation scheme of the Syr Darya Basin is modelled under two climate scenarios, based on outputs of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) core models run under IPCC-SRES A2 emission scenario. Under the GFDL99-R30-based scenario, the mean annual flow (MAF) is likely to increase by 10-20%. Under HadCM3-based scenario, MAF is supposed to decrease by 10-20%. Simulating water allocation in the basin in 2070-2099 shows that 14-21% of water demands in the agriculture sector in a normal hydrological year and 28-51% in a dry year are likely to be unmet. The challenges expected from future climate change can be paralleled to those resulting from the political change due to the collapse of the USSR, which left 18% (normal year) and 46% (dry year) of agricultural water demands unmet in 1992-2001. The study stresses the point that the adaptation measures employed in the post-Soviet transitional period are likely to serve as a basis for the future climate change adaptation strategies, since the development of the agriculture sector under climate change impact will remain handicapped without a more efficient water management at all hierarchical levels.Current discourse on climate change highlights the issue of uncertainty, risks and the importance of systems' resilience as a means to cope with impacts of climate change and climate variability. This chapter links the dominant approach of uncertainty as presented in the climate change discourse with policy discussions on climate adaptation strategies in the Lower Mekong Basin. Taking Lao PDR as our case study, we discuss how the idea of uncertainty can be perceived and interpreted differently by policy actors. While these different perceptions and interpretations might lead to multiple problem framings, they also reflect structural impediments and institutional barriers in the overall formulation process of climate change policy and adaptation strategies. The main message of the chapter is that understanding of these different notions of uncertainty is crucial to increase the actual significance of climate change policy. Policy and governance responses to climate change need to be formulated based on a more nuanced, sophisticated understanding of how various policy actors and stakeholders perceive and experience uncertainty.Urban physical public infrastructure is a frontline defense mechanism to manage and mitigate climate-related impacts. Market instruments are often cited as possible means to spread risk and reduce financial burdens on the public sector. The authors argue that existing research tends to focus on the technical issues of instruments and neglects considering institutional dynamics that may enable or constrain local market-based financing mechanisms. In this article, three core dilemmas (values uncertainty, planning horizon, and indirect benefits) are used to analyze the responses of practitioners to a possible financing instrument. The findings indicate that the practitioner's responses to tax increment financing were largely shaped by the adaptation dilemmas and not the characteristics of the instrument per se. By mapping the dilemmas onto whether they would recommend it, participants imposed a financial barrier on climate adaptation investments. The authors conclude that a key imperative in the design of policy instruments is to pay attention to the congruency of informal institutions at the 'street level' in order to be in-step with the current sociopolitical conditions. The findings also point to four key attributes that a local market-based instrument would need to be aligned and responsive to the Dutch planning and development context.Research on adaptive capacity often focuses on economics and technology, despite evidence from the social sciences finding that socially shared beliefs, norms, and networks are critical in increasing individuals' and communities' adaptive capacity. Drawing upon social cognitive theory, this paper builds on the first author's Ph.D. dissertation and examines the role of collective efficacy people's shared beliefs about their group's capabilities to accomplish collective tasks in influencing Indians' capacity to adapt to drinking water scarcity, a condition likely to be exacerbated by future climate change. Using data from a national survey (N = 4031), individuals with robust collective efficacy beliefs were found to be more likely to participate in community activities intended to ensure the adequacy of water supplies, and this relationship was found to be stronger in communities with high levels of community collective efficacy compared to communities with low levels of community collective efficacy. In addition, community collective efficacy was positively associated with self-reported community adaptation responses. Public education campaigns aimed at increasing collective efficacy beliefs are likely to increase adaptive capacity.Climate change directly threatens Indigenous cultures and livelihoods across Australia's Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). Using a modified grounded theory methodology, this study draws on in-depth interviews with Indigenous leaders and elders across the MDB to highlight that climate variability and over-extraction of water resources by agricultural users directly threatens the integrity of aquatic systems. As a consequence, Indigenous cultures and livelihoods reliant on these natural systems are at risk. Interviewees identify a range of systemic barriers that entrench vulnerability of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the MDB. Building on insights from the literature and from interviews, a Recognition, Empowerment and Devolution (RED) framework is developed to establish possible pathways to support climate adaptation by rural IPs. Fundamental to this RED framework is the need for non-Indigenous socio-institutional structures to create a 'space' to allow IPs the ability to adapt in their own ways to climate impacts.Since the advent of Global Navigation Satellite Systems, it has been possible to perform hydrographic survey reductions through the ellipsoid, which has the potential to simplify operations and improve bathymetric products. This technique requires a spatially continuous separation surface connecting chart datum (CD) to a geodetic ellipsoid. The Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), with support from the Canadian Geodetic Survey, has developed a new suite of such surfaces, termed Hydrographic Vertical Separations Surfaces, or HyVSEPs, for CD and seven tidal levels. They capture the spatial variability of the tidal datum and levels between tide gauges and offshore using semiempirical models coupling observations at tide stations with relative sea-level rise estimates, dynamic ocean model solutions, satellite altimetry, and a geoid model. HyVSEPs are available for all tidal waters of Canada, covering over seven million square kilometers of ocean and more than 200,000 kilometers of shoreline. This document provides an overview of the CHS's modeling approach, tools, methods, and procedures.The HyVSEP for CD defines the new hydrographic datum for the tidal waters of Canada. HyVSEPs for other tidal levels are fundamental for coastal studies, climate change adaptation and the definition of the Canadian shoreline and offshore boundaries. HyVSEPs for inland waters are not discussed.Community has long been used as the preferred scale for implementing development projects, but it is being increasingly pitched as the panacea for climate change adaptation. The Pacific region is no exception and given the speed at which projects are being implemented it is important to extract lessons from past community-based projects more generally to inform adaptation activities now and in the future. This article draws from in-depth focus-group discussions (n = 10) in four village communities in Pele Island (Vanuatu) to understand the key factors influencing the success and failure of community-based projects (n = 34) since the late 1970s until the end of 2013. The overwhelming sense from participants is that projects have largely failed in these communities, due in part to a number of standard challenges associated with sustaining projects, including issues of finance, maintenance, management expertise and so on. But it has been the social dynamics, power relations and changing traditional norms at the community level that have been at the epicentre of project failure. This points to an urgent need for "community" to be re-framed as more than just the place where projects are rolled out. Instead, it needs to be a site where the socio-political context is understood and transformed to: avoid problems being built into projects; guarantee that project goals and outcomes do not exacerbate existing inequalities; and ensure that projects do not fail, weaken adaptive capacity or result in maladaptation. This article concludes with a preliminary set of four guidelines that may contribute to the climate change adaptation literature and assist practitioners and donors working with "community" on climate change adaptation efforts now and in the future.Context: Public health climate change adaptation planning is an urgent priority requiring stakeholder feedback. The 10 Essential Public Health Services can be applied to adaptation activities. Objective: To develop a state health department climate and health adaptation plan as informed by stakeholder feedback. Design: With Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding, the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) implemented a 2010-2013 climate and health planning process, including 7 surveys on perceptions and adaptation priorities. Participants: New York State Department of Health program managers participated in initial (n = 41, denominator unknown) and follow-up (72.2%) needs assessments. Surveillance system information was collected from 98.1% of surveillance system managers. For adaptation prioritization surveys, participants included 75.4% of NYSDOH leaders; 60.3% of local health departments (LHDs); and 53.7% of other stakeholders representing environmental, governmental, health, community, policy, academic, and business organizations. Interviews were also completed with 38.9% of other stakeholders. Results: In 2011 surveys, 34.1% of state health program directors believed that climate change would impact their program priorities. However, 84.6% of state health surveillance system managers provided ideas for using databases for climate and health monitoring/surveillance. In 2012 surveys, 46.5% of state health leaders agreed they had sufficient information about climate and health compared to 17.1% of LHDs (P = .0046) and 40.9% of other stakeholders (nonsignificant difference). Significantly fewer (P < .0001) LHDs (22.9%) were incorporating or considering incorporating climate and health into planning compared to state health leaders (55.8%) and other stakeholders (68.2%). Stakeholder groups agreed on the 4 highest priority adaptation categories including core public health activities such as surveillance, coordination/collaboration, education, and policy development. Conclusions: Feedback from diverse stakeholders was utilized by NYSDOH to develop its Climate and Health Strategic Map in 2013. The CDC Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework and funding provides a collaborative model for state climate and health adaptation planning.Purpose - This paper aims to present an investigation of the climate adaptation planning and implementation process undertaken by the municipal government of Cape Town, South Africa, situating the findings within the broader literature on governance-related barriers to adaptation. Design/methodology/approach - By developing an in-depth case study using methods of organizational ethnography, the research traces phases of climate adaptation planning and implementation in Cape Town. Applied thematic analysis surfaces issues of coordination, decision-making, resource constraints and tracking progress as key constraints to urban climate adaptation. Findings - While considerable progress has been made on developing a citywide climate adaptation plan for Cape Town, implementation is constrained by poor monitoring and feedback within and between departments and a lack of oversight and impetus from central authorities within the government hierarchy. Research limitations/implications - Further research is needed on the interface between technical and political decision-making, governance arrangements that facilitate coordination and iterative adjustment and the organizational uptake of externally commissioned work on climate adaptation. Practical implications - The paper points to the need for a climate adaptation coordination function situated higher up in the municipal government structure than the environment department to implement, monitor, evaluate and revise measures to reduce climate risks and vulnerabilities citywide. Originality/value - The paper is of value to those seeking to understand local government decision-making, as it pertains to climate adaptation and those looking for means to address climate risks and vulnerabilities in cities, especially in South Africa.Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess the inherent adaptive capacities of multilevel flood management institutions in England that are necessary to espouse the concept of Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA). Design/methodology/approach - This paper is based on an extensive assessment of flood management literature including European and English flood management policies, strategies, regulations and reports. First, an assessment protocol was developed from systematic literature search and, second, multilevel flood management policies and organizations were evaluated. A qualitative scoring method was applied at the assessment stage. Findings - The protocol included 18 major assessment criteria under seven EbA principles. Application of the protocol showed that English national flood policies showed comparatively greater adaptive capacities than European-and local-level policies and local organizations. Specialized flood management policies such as Catchment Flood Management Policies at the local level and European Policies such as flood directives are among the lowest-scoring policy institutions. It was also identified that there is an emerging trend of stakeholder participation, catchment-based approach and knowledge-based adaptation planning at the national level which potentially can be the entry points of wider-scale EbA implementation. This paper recommends proactive roles of local executive organizations through improving institutional communication, consideration of catchment-scale planning with clear adaptation goals and valuing local knowledge base. Originality/value - The research is important to identify the institutional aspects of adaptive capacity that require attention for promoting alternative adaptation measures such as EbA.The field of adaptive management has been embraced by researchers and managers in the United States as an approach to improve natural resource stewardship in the face of uncertainty and complex environmental problems. Integrating multiple knowledge sources and feedback mechanisms is an important step in this approach. Our objective is to contribute to the limited literature that describes the benefits of better integrating indigenous knowledge (IK) with other sources of knowledge in making adaptive-management decisions. Specifically, we advocate the integration of traditional phenological knowledge (TPK), a subset of IK, and highlight opportunities for this knowledge to support policy and practice of adaptive management with reference to policy and practice of adapting to uncharacteristic fire regimes and climate change in the western United States.Climate change may be a game-changer for scientific research by promoting a science that is grounded in linking the production of knowledge and societal action in a transition toward more sustainable development pathways. Here, we discuss participatory action-research (PAR) as a way of thinking and leading investigations that may promote incremental and transformative changes in the context of climate change adaptation research. Our exploration is addressed in the Portuguese context, where PAR and sustainable transition studies are still marginal, and adaptation processes are a recent topic on political agendas. We describe the characteristics of PAR and use two studies of adaptation to illustrate how research and practice co-evolve through interactive cycles. The two studies are works in progress, rather than completed PAR processes. Climate change adaptation is an ongoing and long-term process. Moreover, in Portugal, as in many regions of the world, climate change adaptation is a fairly new topic. Thus, both case studies are now initiating a long-term process of change and adaptation. The completion of one research cycle is a realistic expectation that we have achieved in the two case study experiences. In our discussion of the case studies, we consider how these experiences provide insights into the role of PAR for long-term regime changes. We conclude by pointing to the societal needs addressed by PAR, as a pragmatically oriented and context-specific research design. The approach can be complementary to other frameworks in sustainable transition studies such as transition management. Being more pragmatically oriented, PAR cycles may influence incrementally transformative changes that can be guided by transition management's long-term design for governing sustainable transitions.Changing climate, social institutions, and natural resource management policies are reshaping the dynamics of socialecological systems globally, with subsistence-based communities likely to be among the most vulnerable to the impacts of global change. These communities' local ecological knowledge is increasingly recognized as a source of adaptive capacity for them as well as a crucial source of information to be incorporated into scientific understanding and policy making. We interviewed Tibetan pastoralists about their observations of environmental changes, their interpretations of the causes of these changes, and the ways in which they acquire and transmit this knowledge. We found that community members tended to agree that changing climate is driving undesirable trends in grassland and livestock health, and some also viewed changing management practices as compounding the impacts of climate change. However, those nominated by their peers as experts on traditional, pastoral knowledge observed fewer changes than did a more heterogeneous group of people who reported more ways in which the environment is changing. Herders mostly discussed these changes among themselves and particularly with village leaders, yet people who discussed environmental changes together did not necessarily hold the same knowledge of them. These results indicate that members of the community are transferring knowledge of environmental change primarily as a means for seeking adaptive solutions to it, rather than for learning from others, and that local leaders can serve as critical brokers of knowledge transfer within and beyond their communities. This highlights not only the interconnectedness of knowledge, practice, and power, but also points toward the important role that local governance can have in helping communities cope with the impacts of global change.A vast body of literature suggests that the European Alpine Region is extremely sensitive to climate change. Winter tourism is closely related to climate variations, especially in mountain regions where resorts are heavily dependent on snow. This paper explores how to effectively integrate a climate change adaptation perspective with local discourses about sustainability and tourism, an increasing priority for policy-makers in the region and elsewhere. It reports on the development and application of a participatory decision support process for the analysis of adaptation strategies for local development of an Alpine tourism destination, Auronzo di Cadore (Dolomites, Italy). This experience significantly contributed to the idea that an efficient combination of modelling capabilities, decision support tools, and participatory processes can substantially improve decision-making for sustainability. The authors show that, in this case study, such a combination of methods and tools allowed for managing the involvement of local actors, stimulating local debates on climate change adaptation and possible consequences on winter tourism, encouraging creativity and smoothing potential conflicts, and easing the integration of the qualitative knowledge and the preferences of the involved actors with quantitative information. This contributed to an integrated sustainability assessment of alternative strategies for sustainable tourism planning.The features of the natural environment in China were described in this chapter, including topography, hydrology and water resources, cryospheric resources, plants, animals and biodiversity, soil types and land resources, and ocean and islands. After that, an eco-geographical region system of depicting zonal distribution of physiographical factors was introduced. China's climate is governed by its geography and topography, with most of the territory falling in the monsoon zone. The most direct component influencing China's climate is the East Asian atmospheric circulation (monsoon). Climate zoning in China provides a service for targeted industrial and agricultural activities, and socioeconomic development, and also a scientific basis for climate change adaptation. However, China is susceptible to weather and climatic disasters. As one of the world's emerging economies, China has experienced rapid and stable socioeconomic development, industrialization, urbanization, and further internationalization since the introduction of reform and opening-up policy, ranking second of gross domestic product (GDP) around the world. At present, China is confronted with two main challenges: addressing climate change in the international arena and protecting its resources and environment with a domestic socioeconomic transition.China has adopted a wide range of measures in the energy sector including energy conservation, renewable energy, and nuclear energy development, as well as in the field of climate change adaptation. These practical actions enabled China to achieve considerable progress and development in climate change mitigation and adaptation, which also provides strong support for China's transition to a low-carbon economy. Under the scenario of global temperature rising more than 3 degrees C in the future, implementing adaptation actions in China will require additional capital inputs, new policy guidance, and strengthened research and development of new technologies, in order to offset the negative impacts of climate change. By reinforcing policies and promoting technological advancement, China may expect its CO2 emissions to peak before 2030, or even 2025, to contribute to meeting the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C.This paper identifies the conceptual similarities between ecological designs and ecosystem-based adaptations to climate change. The former includes approaches grounded in expert knowledge, such as landscape ecological urbanism, while the latter is rooted in local experiential knowledge and relies on community-based adaptations. This paper bridges these expert and experiential knowledge forms through a transactive planning model by deploying design charrettes in the context of Negril, Jamaica. The findings reveal that local people are aware of ecosystems and prefer ecologically sensitive adaptation interventions. This study concludes with planning and design recommendations for climate change adaptation in Negril.Information on the relationship between cumulative fossil CO2 emissions and multiple climate targets is essential to design emission mitigation and climate adaptation strategies. In this study, the transient response of a climate or environmental variable per trillion tonnes of CO2 emissions, termed TRE, is quantified for a set of impact-relevant climate variables and from a large set of multi-forcing scenarios extended to year 2300 towards stabilization. An similar to 1000-member ensemble of the Bern3D-LPJ carbon-climate model is applied and model outcomes are constrained by 26 physical and biogeochemical observational data sets in a Bayesian, Monte Carlo-type framework. Uncertainties in TRE estimates include both scenario uncertainty and model response uncertainty. Cumulative fossil emissions of 1000 Gt C result in a global mean surface air temperature change of 1.9 degrees C (68% confidence interval (c.i.): 1.3 to 2.7 degrees C), a decrease in surface ocean pH of 0.19 (0.18 to 0.22), and a steric sea level rise of 20 cm (13 to 27 cm until 2300). Linearity between cumulative emissions and transient response is high for pH and reasonably high for surface air and sea surface temperatures, but less pronounced for changes in Atlantic meridional overturning, Southern Ocean and tropical surface water saturation with respect to biogenic structures of calcium carbonate, and carbon stocks in soils. The constrained model ensemble is also applied to determine the response to a pulse-like emission and in idealized CO2-only simulations. The transient climate response is constrained, primarily by long-term ocean heat observations, to 1.7 degrees C (68% c.i.: 1.3 to 2.2 degrees C) and the equilibrium climate sensitivity to 2.9 degrees C (2.0 to 4.2 degrees C). This is consistent with results by CMIP5 models but inconsistent with recent studies that relied on short-term air temperature data affected by natural climate variability.Adaptation pathways are increasingly being used as a foresight tool to help guide the implementation of climate change adaptation and deliberate transformation. This paper applies a pathways lens as a hindsight tool to provide new understanding about past change and adaptation relevant for improving future adaptation pathways approaches. Four case studies of past adaptations to change are examined: Solomon Islands Communities, Canadian forest-dependent communities, a Transylvanian village, and responses to climate adaptation policies in Australia. The results highlight that responses to change in these diverse case studies involve complex transitions that gradually create new conditions and trajectories; manifest as multiple but inter-related pathways of change and response at different social or spatial scales (e.g. different paths for different households or communities); have legacies and continuities across time that affect future pathways of change; are affected by power in complex ways; and can create further change and need for adaptation. Analyses also highlight that when working with prospective adaptation approaches as a response to climate change there is a need to consider: (1) underlying assumptions, values and principles associated with the future; (2) the existence of inter-connected multiple pathways and their implications for reinforcing existing social inequalities; and (3) how understanding past change provides inspiration for new and transformative futures. Overall, the paper concludes that shifts towards analyses for change rather than simply about change, such as adaptation pathways, will require more careful consideration of underlying ontological assumptions about the relationships between past, present and future.This paper explores vulnerability and adaptive capacity of rural communities in Southern Laos, where households are highly dependent on climate-sensitive natural resources and vulnerable to seasonal weather fluctuations. The speed and magnitude of climate-induced changes may seriously challenge their ability to adapt. Participatory group discussions and 271 household surveys in three villages highlight the current level of vulnerability and adaptive capacity towards climatic variability and risks. This paper visualizes three dimensions of the vulnerability framework at two levels using the Community Climate Vulnerability Index and household climate vulnerability cube. Results show that not only poor households are most at risk from climate change challenges, but also those better-off households highly dependent on specialized agricultural production are locally exposed to climate change risks. The majority of vulnerable households are characterized by low adaptive capacity. Floods and drought regularly put the poor under stress, which has led to various coping mechanisms; but capability of applying long-term adaptive strategies remains low among all households. The outco